CHAPTER I

"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that
Antichrist--I really believe he is Antichrist--I will have nothing more
to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful
slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened
you--sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna
Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna. With
these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and
importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pavlovna
had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la
grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the
elite.

All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered
by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:

"If you have nothing better to do, Count (or Prince), and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible,
I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10--Annette
Scherer."

"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the least
disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an
embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on
his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that
refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and
with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance
who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pavlovna,
kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining head,
and complacently seated himself on the sofa.

"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's mind
at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the politeness and
affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be
discerned.

"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like
these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are staying the
whole evening, I hope?"

"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I must
put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is coming for
me to take me there."

"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."

"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have been
put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by force of habit
said things he did not even wish to be believed.

"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."

"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold, listless
tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that Buonaparte has
burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale
part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty years,
overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had
become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel
like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the
expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it
did not suit her faded features, always played round her lips expressed,
as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect,
which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to
correct.

In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna burst
out:

"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand things,
but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. She is
betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign
recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is the one
thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform
the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that God will
not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and crush the hydra of
revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the person of
this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the just
one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial
spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness
of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and
still seeks, some secret motive in our actions. What answer did
Novosiltsev get? None. The English have not understood and cannot
understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for
himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And what have they
promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not
perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and
that all Europe is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word
that Hardenburg says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian
neutrality is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty
destiny of our adored monarch. He will save Europe!"

She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been sent
instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of
Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me a
cup of tea?"

"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am expecting
two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who is
connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best
French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good ones. And
also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He has been
received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"

"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me," he
added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him,
though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive of his
visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be
appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts is a poor
creature."

Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were
trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it for the
baron.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor
anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was
pleased with.

"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her sister,"
was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.

As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke
beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.

The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and
courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pavlovna wished
both to rebuke him (for daring to speak as he had done of a man
recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she
said:

"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came out
everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."

The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer to
the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political and
social topics were ended and the time had come for intimate
conversation--"I often think how unfairly sometimes the joys of life are
distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid children? I don't
speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like him," she added in a tone
admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows. "Two such charming
children. And really you appreciate them less than anyone, and so you
don't deserve to have them."

And she smiled her ecstatic smile.

"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I lack the
bump of paternity."

"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I am
dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her face
assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her Majesty's
and you were pitied...."

The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.

"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all a
father could for their education, and they have both turned out fools.
Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That
is the only difference between them." He said this smiling in a way more
natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles round his mouth
very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant.

"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father
there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna Pavlovna,
looking up pensively.

"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?" she
asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I
don't feel that weakness in myself as yet, I know a little person who is
very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary
Bolkonskaya."

Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and
perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of
the head that he was considering this information.

"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in five
years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what we
fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"

"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is the
well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army under the
late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is very clever
but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. She has a
brother; I think you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately. He is an
aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here tonight."

"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna Pavlovna's
hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange that affair for
me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-slafe with an f, as a
village elder of mine writes in his reports. She is rich and of good
family and that's all I want."

And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised the
maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro as
he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.

"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise, young
Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can be
arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."




CHAPTER II

Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her father
to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and her badge
as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess Bolkonskaya, known as la
femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg, * was also there. She had been
married during the previous winter, and being pregnant did not go to any
large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Prince Vasili's son,
Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio
and many others had also come.


* The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.

To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my aunt,"
or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or her to a
little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who had come
sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to arrive; and
slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna Pavlovna
mentioned each one's name and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not
one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them
cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful and
solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in
the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her
Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each visitor, though
politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman with a
sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not return
to her the whole evening.

The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a gold-
embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a delicate
dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her teeth, but it
lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming when she
occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always the case
with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect--the shortness of her
upper lip and her half-open mouth--seemed to be her own special and
peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this pretty
young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life and health, and
carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull dispirited young ones
who looked at her, after being in her company and talking to her a
little while, felt as if they too were becoming, like her, full of life
and health. All who talked to her, and at each word saw her bright smile
and the constant gleam of her white teeth, thought that they were in a
specially amiable mood that day.

The little princess went round the table with quick, short, swaying
steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her dress sat
down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was doing was a
pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought my work,"
said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all present.
"Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick on me," she
added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to be quite a
small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed." And she spread
out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray dress,
girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone else,"
replied Anna Pavlovna.

"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.

"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince Vasili to
Anna Pavlovna.

One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had only
just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this was his
first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with the nod she
accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But in spite of
this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight
of something too large and unsuited to the place, came over her face
when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger than
the other men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference to the
clever though shy, but observant and natural, expression which
distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.

"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her aunt
as she conducted him to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look round as
if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to the little
princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.

Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health. Anna
Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know the Abbe
Morio? He is a most interesting man."

"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."

"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and get
away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now committed a
reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before she had
finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak to another who
wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet spread apart,
he began explaining his reasons for thinking the abbe's plan chimerical.

"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, she
resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready
to help at any point where the conversation might happen to flag. As the
foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to work, goes
round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or there one that
creaks or makes more noise than it should, and hastens to check the
machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pavlovna moved about her
drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-noisy group, and by a
word or slight rearrangement kept the conversational machine in steady,
proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares her anxiety about
Pierre was evident. She kept an anxious watch on him when he approached
the group round Mortemart to listen to what was being said there, and
again when he passed to another group whose center was the abbe.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna Pavlovna's
was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all the
intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like a child
in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of missing any
clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the self-confident and
refined expression on the faces of those present he was always expecting
to hear something very profound. At last he came up to Morio. Here the
conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an opportunity
to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing.




CHAPTER III

Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company had
settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed round the
abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the beautiful Princess
Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little Princess Bolkonskaya,
very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump for her age. The third
group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna Pavlovna.

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and polished
manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out of
politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up as a
treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a specially
choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it in the
kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served up to her
guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly choice
morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the
murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d'Enghien had
perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular reasons
for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna, with a
pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in the sound of
that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."

The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness to
comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone to
listen to his tale.

"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to one of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to another.
"How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a third; and
the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest and most
advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef on a hot
dish.

The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.

"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the beautiful
young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of another
group.

The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with which
she had first entered the room--the smile of a perfectly beautiful
woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed with moss and
ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and sparkling
diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her, not looking
at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously allowing each the
privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and shapely shoulders, back,
and bosom--which in the fashion of those days were very much exposed--
and she seemed to bring the glamour of a ballroom with her as she moved
toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so lovely that not only did she not
show any trace of coquetry, but on the contrary she even appeared shy of
her unquestionable and all too victorious beauty. She seemed to wish,
but to be unable, to diminish its effect.

"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted his
shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something extraordinary
when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also with her
unchanging smile.

"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he, smilingly
inclining his head.

The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and considered
a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the story was
being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful round arm,
altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her still more
beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond necklace. From time
to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and whenever the story
produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at once adopted just
the expression she saw on the maid of honor's face, and again relapsed
into her radiant smile.

The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.

"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."

There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in her
seat.

"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.

Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle and
moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.

Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary resemblance to
his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that in spite of this
resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features were like his
sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by a joyous, self-
satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation, and by the
wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the contrary was
dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of sullen self-
confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes, nose, and mouth
all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace, and his arms and
legs always fell into unnatural positions.

"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside the
princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.

"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging his
shoulders.

"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone which
showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he had
uttered them.

He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure
whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was dressed in a
dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of cuisse de nymphe
effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.

The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then current,
to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to Paris to visit
Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon Bonaparte, who also
enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in his presence Napoleon
happened to fall into one of the fainting fits to which he was subject,
and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter spared him, and this
magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by death.

The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point where
the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies looked
agitated.

"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the little
princess.

"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle into her
work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of the story
prevented her from going on with it.

The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he was
talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to the
rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe about
the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by the young
man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet theory. Both were
talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally, which was why Anna
Pavlovna disapproved.

"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the
people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one powerful
nation like Russia--barbaric as she is said to be--to place herself
disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object the
maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save the
world!"

"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.

At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at Pierre,
asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The Italian's face
instantly changed and assumed an offensively affected, sugary
expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing with women.

"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have had
the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think of
the climate," said he.

Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.




CHAPTER IV

Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome young
man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about
him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step,
offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It was
evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had
found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to
them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed to
bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away from her
with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's
hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.

"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.

"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been pleased
to take me as an aide-de-camp...."

"And Lise, your wife?"

"She will go to the country."

"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"

"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same coquettish
manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has been telling us
such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"

Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who from the
moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with glad,
affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he looked round
Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance with whoever was
touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming face he gave him an
unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.

"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to Pierre.

"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper with
you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the vicomte
who was continuing his story.

"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished to
say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his daughter
got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the Frenchman,
holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent his rising.
"This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me of a pleasure,
and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to leave your
enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.

His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.

"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.

"Very," said Pierre.

In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna Pavlovna:
"Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a whole month and
this is the first time I have seen him in society. Nothing is so
necessary for a young man as the society of clever women."

Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew his
father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who had
been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook Prince Vasili
in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had assumed had
left her kindly and tear-worn face and it now expressed only anxiety and
fear.

"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him into the
anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me what news I
may take back to my poor boy."

Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to the
elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might not go
away.

"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he would
be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.

"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered Prince
Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I should advise
you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn. That would be the
best way."

The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now come to
Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her only son. It
was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had obtained an
invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat listening to the
vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened her, an embittered
look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a moment; then she
smiled again and clutched Prince Vasili's arm more tightly.

"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to do
this for my son--and I shall always regard you as a benefactor," she
added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked Golitsyn
and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always were," she said,
trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.

"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her beautiful
head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she stood
waiting by the door.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be economized
if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having once realized that
if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him, he would soon be unable
to ask for himself, he became chary of using his influence. But in
Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her second appeal, something
like qualms of conscience. She had reminded him of what was quite true;
he had been indebted to her father for the first steps in his career.
Moreover, he could see by her manners that she was one of those women--
mostly mothers--who, having once made up their minds, will not rest
until they have gained their end, and are prepared if necessary to go on
insisting day after day and hour after hour, and even to make scenes.
This last consideration moved him.

"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's memory,
I will do the impossible--your son shall be transferred to the Guards.
Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"

"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you--I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.

"Wait--just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..." she
faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich Kutuzov...
recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at rest, and
then..."

Prince Vasili smiled.

"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered since
his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that all the
Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as adjutants."

"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."

"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before, "we
shall be late."

"Well, au revoir! Good-bye! You hear her?"

"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"

"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."

"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.

Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit employed all
the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone her face
resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She returned to the
group where the vicomte was still talking, and again pretended to
listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her task was
accomplished.




CHAPTER V

"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at Milan?"
asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa and Lucca
laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and Monsieur
Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of the
nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is as if
the whole world had gone crazy."

Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a sarcastic
smile.

"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!' * They say he was very fine
when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in Italian: "'Dio
mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"


* God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!

"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."

"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite but
hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis XVII,
for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he became more
animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward of their betrayal
of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they are sending ambassadors
to compliment the usurper."

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.

Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much gravity
as if she had asked him to do it.

"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d'azur--maison Conde," said he.

The princess listened, smiling.

"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which he
is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others but
follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone too far.
By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French society--I mean
good French society--will have been forever destroyed, and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which always
accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family, "has declared
that he will leave it to the French people themselves to choose their
own form of government; and I believe that once free from the usurper,
the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the arms of its
rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the royalist
emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it will
be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into the
conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte without
looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to know the real
state of French public opinion."

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic smile.

It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'" Prince
Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting Napoleon's words.
"'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I do not know how far
he was justified in saying so."

"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the duc
even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one
hero less on earth."

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their appreciation
of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the conversation, and
though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say something inappropriate, she
was unable to stop him.

"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was a
political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed greatness
of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole responsibility of
that deed."

"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing her
work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping his knee
with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at his
audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled from
the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon alone
understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general good,
he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great because
he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all
that was good in it--equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and
of the press--and only for that reason did he obtain power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to commit
murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have called him
a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he might rid
them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a great man. The
Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by
this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his
wish to express all that was in his mind.

"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that... But
won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.

"Rousseau's Contrat Social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.

"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."

"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected an
ironical voice.

"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most important.
What is important are the rights of man, emancipation from prejudices,
and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas Napoleon has retained
in full force."

"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at last
deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words were,
"high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does not love
liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and equality.
Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the contrary. We
wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."

Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment of
Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had not
exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the vicomte in
a vigorous attack on the orator.

"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the fact
of a great man executing a duc--or even an ordinary man who--is innocent
and untried?"

"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"

"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.

"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His
smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled, his
grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by another-
-a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed to ask
forgiveness.

The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly that this
young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested. All were
silent.

"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince Andrew.
"Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish between
his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor. So it
seems to me."

"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of this
reinforcement.

"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man was
great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa where he
gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are other acts
which it is difficult to justify."

Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness of
Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time to
go.

Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to attend,
and asking them all to be seated began:

"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to it.
Excuse me, Vicomte--I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.

"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She must
have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was her
taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."

Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.

"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a livery,
get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some calls.'"

Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long before his
audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several
persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did however
smile.

"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat and
her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no longer and
went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world knew...."

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had told
it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna and the
others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so agreeably ending
Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the anecdote the
conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about the last and
next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom, and when and
where.




CHAPTER VI

Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests began
to take their leave.

Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with huge
red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a drawing
room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say something
particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he was absent-
minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his own, the general's
three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the plume, till the general
asked him to restore it. All his absent-mindedness and inability to
enter a room and converse in it was, however, redeemed by his kindly,
simple, and modest expression. Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with
a Christian mildness that expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion,
nodded and said: "I hope to see you again, but I also hope you will
change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre."

When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again everybody
saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, "Opinions are
opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am." And
everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.

Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders to
the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened
indifferently to his wife's chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also
come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty, pregnant
princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.

"Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold," said the little princess,
taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. "It is settled," she added in a low
voice.

Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match she
contemplated between Anatole and the little princess' sister-in-law.

"I rely on you, my dear," said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low tone. "Write
to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au revoir!"--
and she left the hall.

Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his face
close to her, began to whisper something.

Two footmen, the princess' and his own, stood holding a shawl and a
cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to the
French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of
understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as usual
spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.

"I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador's," said Prince Hippolyte
"-so dull-. It has been a delightful evening, has it not? Delightful!"

"They say the ball will be very good," replied the princess, drawing up
her downy little lip. "All the pretty women in society will be there."

"Not all, for you will not be there; not all," said Prince Hippolyte
smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he even
pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either from
awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after the
shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long time, as
though embracing her.

Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at her
husband. Prince Andrew's eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did he
seem.

"Are you ready?" he asked his wife, looking past her.

Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest fashion
reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out into the porch
following the princess, whom a footman was helping into the carriage.

"Princesse, au revoir," cried he, stumbling with his tongue as well as
with his feet.

The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the dark
carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince Hippolyte, under
pretense of helping, was in everyone's way.

"Allow me, sir," said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold, disagreeable
tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.

"I am expecting you, Pierre," said the same voice, but gently and
affectionately.

The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte
laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte
whom he had promised to take home.

"Well, mon cher," said the vicomte, having seated himself beside
Hippolyte in the carriage, "your little princess is very nice, very nice
indeed, quite French," and he kissed the tips of his fingers. Hippolyte
burst out laughing.

"Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,"
continued the vicomte. "I pity the poor husband, that little officer who
gives himself the airs of a monarch."

Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, "And you were
saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One has to
know how to deal with them."

Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew's study like one
quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa, took
from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was Caesar's
Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it in the middle.

"What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite ill now," said
Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white hands.

Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his eager
face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.

"That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the thing in the
right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but--I do not
know how to express it... not by a balance of political power...."

It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such abstract
conversation.

"One can't everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you at
last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a
diplomatist?" asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.

Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.

"Really, I don't yet know. I don't like either the one or the other."

"But you must decide on something! Your father expects it."

Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe as tutor, and
had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow his
father dismissed the abbe and said to the young man, "Now go to
Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to
anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money. Write to
me all about it, and I will help you in everything." Pierre had already
been choosing a career for three months, and had not decided on
anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was speaking.
Pierre rubbed his forehead.

"But he must be a Freemason," said he, referring to the abbe whom he had
met that evening.

"That is all nonsense." Prince Andrew again interrupted him, "let us
talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?"

"No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to
tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for
freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the army;
but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the world is
not right."

Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish words. He
put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such nonsense,
but it would in fact have been difficult to give any other answer than
the one Prince Andrew gave to this naive question.

"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars,"
he said.

"And that would be splendid," said Pierre.

Prince Andrew smiled ironically.

"Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about..."

"Well, why are you going to the war?" asked Pierre.

"What for? I don't know. I must. Besides that I am going..." He paused.
"I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit me!"




CHAPTER VII

The rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the next room. Prince Andrew
shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it had had
in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from the sofa.
The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a house dress as
fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose and politely placed a
chair for her.

"How is it," she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly and
fussily in the easy chair, "how is it Annette never got married? How
stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying so,
but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative fellow you are,
Monsieur Pierre!"

"And I am still arguing with your husband. I can't understand why he
wants to go to the war," replied Pierre, addressing the princess with
none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their
intercourse with young women.

The princess started. Evidently Pierre's words touched her to the quick.

"Ah, that is just what I tell him!" said she. "I don't understand it; I
don't in the least understand why men can't live without wars. How is it
that we women don't want anything of the kind, don't need it? Now you
shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is Uncle's aide-de-
camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well known, so much
appreciated by everyone. The other day at the Apraksins' I heard a lady
asking, 'Is that the famous Prince Andrew?' I did indeed." She laughed.
"He is so well received everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp
to the Emperor. You know the Emperor spoke to him most graciously.
Annette and I were speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?"

Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the
conversation, gave no reply.

"When are you starting?" he asked.

"Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it spoken of," said
the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had spoken
to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly ill-suited to
the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member. "Today when I
remembered that all these delightful associations must be broken off...
and then you know, Andre..." (she looked significantly at her husband)
"I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she whispered, and a shudder ran down her
back.

Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone besides
Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a tone of
frigid politeness.

"What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don't understand," said he.

"There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a whim of
his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up alone in
the country."

"With my father and sister, remember," said Prince Andrew gently.

"Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to be
afraid."

Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a
joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if she
felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though the
gist of the matter lay in that.

"I still can't understand what you are afraid of," said Prince Andrew
slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.

The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.

"No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have..."

"Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier," said Prince Andrew. "You
had better go."

The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip quivered.
Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about the room.

Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now at him and
now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.

"Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?" exclaimed the little
princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a tearful
grimace. "I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you have changed so
to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the war and have no
pity for me. Why is it?"

"Lise!" was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an
entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself
regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:

"You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you behave
like that six months ago?"

"Lise, I beg you to desist," said Prince Andrew still more emphatically.

Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened to
all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to bear the
sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.

"Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because... I assure you I
myself have experienced... and so... because... No, excuse me! An
outsider is out of place here... No, don't distress yourself... Good-
bye!"

Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.

"No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of the
pleasure of spending the evening with you."

"No, he thinks only of himself," muttered the princess without
restraining her angry tears.

"Lise!" said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch which
indicates that patience is exhausted.

Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess' pretty
face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes
glanced askance at her husband's face, and her own assumed the timid,
deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its
drooping tail.

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she muttered, and lifting her dress with one hand
she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.

"Good night, Lise," said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand as
he would have done to a stranger.




CHAPTER VIII

The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre
continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead
with his small hand.

"Let us go and have supper," he said with a sigh, going to the door.

They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining room.
Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and glass bore
that imprint of newness found in the households of the newly married.
Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the table and,
with a look of nervous agitation such as Pierre had never before seen on
his face, began to talk--as one who has long had something on his mind
and suddenly determines to speak out.

"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry till
you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and
until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her
plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable
mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing--or all that is
good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise. If you marry
expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every
step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room,
where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an
idiot!... But what's the good?..." and he waved his arm.

Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different and
the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend
in amazement.

"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of those
rare women with whom a man's honor is safe; but, O God, what would I not
give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I
mention this, because I like you."

As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkonski who
had lolled in Anna Pavlovna's easy chairs and with half-closed eyes had
uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his thin face
was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which the fire
of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant light. It
was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at ordinary times, the more
impassioned he became in these moments of almost morbid irritation.

"You don't understand why I say this," he continued, "but it is the
whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career," said he
(though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), "but Bonaparte when he
worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing
but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with a
woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you
have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with
regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality--these are
the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to the war,
the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am fit for
nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic wit," continued Prince
Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen to me. And that stupid set
without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women... If you only knew
what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right.
Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything--that's what women are when
you see them in their true colors! When you meet them in society it
seems as if there were something in them, but there's nothing, nothing,
nothing! No, don't marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!" concluded Prince
Andrew.

"It seems funny to me," said Pierre, "that you, you should consider
yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have everything
before you, everything. And you..."

He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he
thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.

"How can he talk like that?" thought Pierre. He considered his friend a
model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the highest
degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which might be best
described as strength of will. Pierre was always astonished at Prince
Andrew's calm manner of treating everybody, his extraordinary memory,
his extensive reading (he had read everything, knew everything, and had
an opinion about everything), but above all at his capacity for work and
study. And if Pierre was often struck by Andrew's lack of capacity for
philosophical meditation (to which he himself was particularly
addicted), he regarded even this not as a defect but as a sign of
strength.

Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, praise
and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels
that they may run smoothly.

"My part is played out," said Prince Andrew. "What's the use of talking
about me? Let us talk about you," he added after a silence, smiling at
his reassuring thoughts.

That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre's face.

"But what is there to say about me?" said Pierre, his face relaxing into
a careless, merry smile. "What am I? An illegitimate son!" He suddenly
blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a great effort to say
this. "Without a name and without means... And it really..." But he did
not say what "it really" was. "For the present I am free and am all
right. Only I haven't the least idea what I am to do; I wanted to
consult you seriously."

Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance--friendly and
affectionate as it was--expressed a sense of his own superiority.

"I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among our
whole set. Yes, you're all right! Choose what you will; it's all the
same. You'll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up visiting
those Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so badly--all
this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!"

"What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered Pierre, shrugging his
shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow; women!"

"I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew. "Women who are comme il
faut, that's a different matter; but the Kuragins' set of women, 'women
and wine' I don't understand!"

Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin's and sharing the dissipated
life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to reform by
marrying him to Prince Andrew's sister.

"Do you know?" said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy thought,
"seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading such a life I
can't decide or think properly about anything. One's head aches, and one
spends all one's money. He asked me for tonight, but I won't go."

"You give me your word of honor not to go?"

"On my honor!"




CHAPTER IX

It was past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a cloudless,
northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending to drive
straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more he felt the
impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was light enough to
see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed more like morning or
evening than night. On the way Pierre remembered that Anatole Kuragin
was expecting the usual set for cards that evening, after which there
was generally a drinking bout, finishing with visits of a kind Pierre
was very fond of.

"I should like to go to Kuragin's," thought he.

But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go
there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so
passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so accustomed to
that he decided to go. The thought immediately occurred to him that his
promise to Prince Andrew was of no account, because before he gave it he
had already promised Prince Anatole to come to his gathering; "besides,"
thought he, "all such 'words of honor' are conventional things with no
definite meaning, especially if one considers that by tomorrow one may
be dead, or something so extraordinary may happen to one that honor and
dishonor will be all the same!" Pierre often indulged in reflections of
this sort, nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to
Kuragin's.

Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards' barracks, in which
Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the stairs,
and went in at the open door. There was no one in the anteroom; empty
bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there was a smell of
alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the distance.

Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet dispersed.
Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in which were the
remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw him, was drinking on
the sly what was left in the glasses. From the third room came sounds of
laughter, the shouting of familiar voices, the growling of a bear, and
general commotion. Some eight or nine young men were crowding anxiously
round an open window. Three others were romping with a young bear, one
pulling him by the chain and trying to set him at the others.

"I bet a hundred on Stevens!" shouted one.

"Mind, no holding on!" cried another.

"I bet on Dolokhov!" cried a third. "Kuragin, you part our hands."

"There, leave Bruin alone; here's a bet on."

"At one draught, or he loses!" shouted a fourth.

"Jacob, bring a bottle!" shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow who
stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine linen
shirt unfastened in front. "Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here is Petya!
Good man!" cried he, addressing Pierre.

Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes,
particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober ring,
cried from the window: "Come here; part the bets!" This was Dolokhov, an
officer of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler and duelist, who
was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about him merrily.

"I don't understand. What's it all about?"

"Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here," said Anatole, taking a
glass from the table he went up to Pierre.

"First of all you must drink!"

Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows at
the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and listening
to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre's glass while
explaining that Dolokhov was betting with Stevens, an English naval
officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the outer ledge
of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.

"Go on, you must drink it all," said Anatole, giving Pierre the last
glass, "or I won't let you go!"

"No, I won't," said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to the
window.

Dolokhov was holding the Englishman's hand and clearly and distinctly
repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself particularly to
Anatole and Pierre.

Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue eyes. He
was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore no mustache,
so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was clearly
seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely curved. The middle
of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed firmly on the firm
lower one, and something like two distinct smiles played continually
round the two corners of the mouth; this, together with the resolute,
insolent intelligence of his eyes, produced an effect which made it
impossible not to notice his face. Dolokhov was a man of small means and
no connections. Yet, though Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles,
Dolokhov lived with him and had placed himself on such a footing that
all who knew them, including Anatole himself, respected him more than
they did Anatole. Dolokhov could play all games and nearly always won.
However much he drank, he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kuragin
and Dolokhov were at that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces
of Petersburg.

The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented anyone
from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two footmen, who
were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions and shouts of
the gentlemen around.

Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted to
smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame, but
could not move it. He smashed a pane.

"You have a try, Hercules," said he, turning to Pierre.

Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame out with
a crash.

"Take it right out, or they'll think I'm holding on," said Dolokhov.

"Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?" said Anatole.

"First-rate," said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with a bottle of rum
in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of the sky,
the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.

Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the window
sill. "Listen!" cried he, standing there and addressing those in the
room. All were silent.

"I bet fifty imperials"--he spoke French that the Englishman might
understand him, but he did not speak it very well--"I bet fifty
imperials... or do you wish to make it a hundred?" added he, addressing
the Englishman.

"No, fifty," replied the latter.

"All right. Fifty imperials... that I will drink a whole bottle of rum
without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on this
spot" (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the window)
"and without holding on to anything. Is that right?"

"Quite right," said the Englishman.

Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the buttons of
his coat and looking down at him--the Englishman was short--began
repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.

"Wait!" cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill to
attract attention. "Wait a bit, Kuragin. Listen! If anyone else does the
same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?"

The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to
accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and though he
kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on translating
Dolokhov's words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar of the Life
Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the window sill,
leaned over, and looked down.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he muttered, looking down from the window at the stones of
the pavement.

"Shut up!" cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad
jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.

Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it easily,
Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and lowered his
legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he adjusted himself on
his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the right and then to the
left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought two candles and placed
them on the window sill, though it was already quite light. Dolokhov's
back in his white shirt, and his curly head, were lit up from both
sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the Englishman in front. Pierre
stood smiling but silent. One man, older than the others present,
suddenly pushed forward with a scared and angry look and wanted to seize
hold of Dolokhov's shirt.

"I say, this is folly! He'll be killed," said this more sensible man.

Anatole stopped him.

"Don't touch him! You'll startle him and then he'll be killed. Eh?...
What then?... Eh?"

Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands, arranged
himself on his seat.

"If anyone comes meddling again," said he, emitting the words separately
through his thin compressed lips, "I will throw him down there. Now
then!"

Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the bottle
and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised his free hand
to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped to pick up some
broken glass remained in that position without taking his eyes from the
window and from Dolokhov's back. Anatole stood erect with staring eyes.
The Englishman looked on sideways, pursing up his lips. The man who had
wished to stop the affair ran to a corner of the room and threw himself
on a sofa with his face to the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a
faint smile forgot to fade though his features now expressed horror and
fear. All were still. Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dolokhov
still sat in the same position, only his head was thrown further back
till his curly hair touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the
bottle was lifted higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The
bottle was emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head
tilting yet further back. "Why is it so long?" thought Pierre. It seemed
to him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly Dolokhov made a
backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously; this
was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the sloping
ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm wavered still more
with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the window sill, but
refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered his eyes and thought he
would never open them again. Suddenly he was aware of a stir all around.
He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on the window sill, with a pale but
radiant face.

"It's empty."

He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. Dolokhov
jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.

"Well done!... Fine fellow!... There's a bet for you!... Devil take
you!" came from different sides.

The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the money.
Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon the window
sill.

"Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I'll do the same thing!" he
suddenly cried. "Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a
bottle. I'll do it.... Bring a bottle!"

"Let him do it, let him do it," said Dolokhov, smiling.

"What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why, you go
giddy even on a staircase," exclaimed several voices.

"I'll drink it! Let's have a bottle of rum!" shouted Pierre, banging the
table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb out
of the window.

They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone who
touched him was sent flying.

"No, you'll never manage him that way," said Anatole. "Wait a bit and
I'll get round him.... Listen! I'll take your bet tomorrow, but now we
are all going to ----'s."

"Come on then," cried Pierre. "Come on!... And we'll take Bruin with
us."

And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the ground,
and began dancing round the room with it.




CHAPTER X

Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess Drubetskaya who
had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Boris on the evening of Anna
Pavlovna's soiree. The matter was mentioned to the Emperor, an exception
made, and Boris transferred into the regiment of Semenov Guards with the
rank of cornet. He received, however, no appointment to Kutuzov's staff
despite all Anna Mikhaylovna's endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna
Pavlovna's reception Anna Mikhaylovna returned to Moscow and went
straight to her rich relations, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed when
in the town and where her darling Bory, who had only just entered a
regiment of the line and was being at once transferred to the Guards as
a cornet, had been educated from childhood and lived for years at a
time. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August, and
her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join them
on the march to Radzivilov.

It was St. Natalia's day and the name day of two of the Rostovs--the
mother and the youngest daughter--both named Nataly. Ever since the
morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going
continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostova's big house on
the Povarskaya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself and
her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing-room with the visitors
who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one another in
relays.

The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental type
of face, evidently worn out with childbearing--she had had twelve. A
languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness, gave her a
distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikhaylovna
Drubetskaya, who as a member of the household was also seated in the
drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the visitors. The young
people were in one of the inner rooms, not considering it necessary to
take part in receiving the visitors. The count met the guests and saw
them off, inviting them all to dinner.

"I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher," or "ma chere"--he called
everyone without exception and without the slightest variation in his
tone, "my dear," whether they were above or below him in rank--"I thank
you for myself and for our two dear ones whose name day we are keeping.
But mind you come to dinner or I shall be offended, ma chere! On behalf
of the whole family I beg you to come, mon cher!" These words he
repeated to everyone without exception or variation, and with the same
expression on his full, cheerful, clean-shaven face, the same firm
pressure of the hand and the same quick, repeated bows. As soon as he
had seen a visitor off he returned to one of those who were still in the
drawing room, drew a chair toward him or her, and jauntily spreading out
his legs and putting his hands on his knees with the air of a man who
enjoys life and knows how to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity,
offered surmises about the weather, or touched on questions of health,
sometimes in Russian and sometimes in very bad but self-confident
French; then again, like a man weary but unflinching in the fulfillment
of duty, he rose to see some visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray
hairs over his bald patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his
way back from the anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and
pantry into the large marble dining hall, where tables were being set
out for eighty people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing in
silver and china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he
would call Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family and the manager of
all his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table
would say: "Well, Dmitri, you'll see that things are all as they should
be? That's right! The great thing is the serving, that's it." And with a
complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room.

"Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!" announced the countess'
gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The
countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with
her husband's portrait on it.

"I'm quite worn out by these callers. However, I'll see her and no more.
She is so affected. Ask her in," she said to the footman in a sad voice,
as if saying: "Very well, finish me off."

A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling
daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.

"Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child... at
the Razumovski's ball... and Countess Apraksina... I was so
delighted..." came the sounds of animated feminine voices, interrupting
one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and the scraping
of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which last out until,
at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of dresses and say, "I
am so delighted... Mamma's health... and Countess Apraksina..." and
then, again rustling, pass into the anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles,
and drive away. The conversation was on the chief topic of the day: the
illness of the wealthy and celebrated beau of Catherine's day, Count
Bezukhov, and about his illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved
so improperly at Anna Pavlovna's reception.

"I am so sorry for the poor count," said the visitor. "He is in such bad
health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill him!"

"What is that?" asked the countess as if she did not know what the
visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of
Count Bezukhov's distress some fifteen times.

"That's what comes of a modern education," exclaimed the visitor. "It
seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do as he
liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible things
that he has been expelled by the police."

"You don't say so!" replied the countess.

"He chose his friends badly," interposed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Prince
Vasili's son, he, and a certain Dolokhov have, it is said, been up to
heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it. Dolokhov has
been degraded to the ranks and Bezukhov's son sent back to Moscow.
Anatole Kuragin's father managed somehow to get his son's affair hushed
up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg."

"But what have they been up to?" asked the countess.

"They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the visitor.
"He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a worthy woman, but
there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear somewhere, put it in a
carriage, and set off with it to visit some actresses! The police tried
to interfere, and what did the young men do? They tied a policeman and
the bear back to back and put the bear into the Moyka Canal. And there
was the bear swimming about with the policeman on his back!"

"What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted the
count, dying with laughter.

"Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?"

Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.

"It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the
visitor. "And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov's son who
amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so well
educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has done for
him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in spite of his
money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite declined: I have
my daughters to consider."

"Why do you say this young man is so rich?" asked the countess, turning
away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of inattention. "His
children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also is illegitimate."

The visitor made a gesture with her hand.

"I should think he has a score of them."

Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the conversation, evidently
wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went on in
society.

"The fact of the matter is," said she significantly, and also in a half
whisper, "everyone knows Count Cyril's reputation.... He has lost count
of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite."

"How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!" remarked the
countess. "I have never seen a handsomer man."

"He is very much altered now," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "Well, as I was
saying, Prince Vasili is the next heir through his wife, but the count
is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to the
Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death--and he is so ill
that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from Petersburg-
-no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune, Pierre or Prince
Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles! I know it all very
well for Prince Vasili told me himself. Besides, Cyril Vladimirovich is
my mother's second cousin. He's also my Bory's godfather," she added, as
if she attached no importance at all to the fact.

"Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on some
inspection business," remarked the visitor.

"Yes, but between ourselves," said the princess, "that is a pretext. The
fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladimirovich, hearing how ill he
is."

"But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke," said the count; and
seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to the young
ladies. "I can just imagine what a funny figure that policeman cut!"

And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly form
again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who always eats
well and, in particular, drinks well. "So do come and dine with us!" he
said.




CHAPTER XI

Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably, but
not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they now
rose and took their leave. The visitor's daughter was already smoothing
down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when suddenly from
the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls running to the
door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a girl of thirteen,
hiding something in the folds of her short muslin frock, darted in and
stopped short in the middle of the room. It was evident that she had not
intended her flight to bring her so far. Behind her in the doorway
appeared a student with a crimson coat collar, an officer of the Guards,
a girl of fifteen, and a plump rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.

The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his arms wide
and threw them round the little girl who had run in.

"Ah, here she is!" he exclaimed laughing. "My pet, whose name day it is.
My dear pet!"

"Ma chere, there is a time for everything," said the countess with
feigned severity. "You spoil her, Ilya," she added, turning to her
husband.

"How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your name
day," said the visitor. "What a charming child," she added, addressing
the mother.

This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life--with
childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook her bodice,
with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little legs in lace-
frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers--was just at that charming age
when a girl is no longer a child, though the child is not yet a young
woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her flushed face in the
lace of her mother's mantilla--not paying the least attention to her
severe remark--and began to laugh. She laughed, and in fragmentary
sentences tried to explain about a doll which she produced from the
folds of her frock.

"Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha managed
to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against her mother
and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim
visitor could not help joining in.

"Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you," said the mother,
pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and turning to the
visitor she added: "She is my youngest girl."

Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother's mantilla,
glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.

The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it
necessary to take some part in it.

"Tell me, my dear," said she to Natasha, "is Mimi a relation of yours? A
daughter, I suppose?"

Natasha did not like the visitor's tone of condescension to childish
things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.

Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer, Anna Mikhaylovna's
son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count's eldest son; Sonya, the
count's fifteen-year-old niece, and little Petya, his youngest boy, had
all settled down in the drawing room and were obviously trying to
restrain within the bounds of decorum the excitement and mirth that
shone in all their faces. Evidently in the back rooms, from which they
had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had been more amusing
than the drawing-room talk of society scandals, the weather, and
Countess Apraksina. Now and then they glanced at one another, hardly
able to suppress their laughter.

The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from childhood,
were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though not alike. Boris
was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had regular, delicate
features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and an open expression.
Dark hairs were already showing on his upper lip, and his whole face
expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas blushed when he entered
the drawing room. He evidently tried to find something to say, but
failed. Boris on the contrary at once found his footing, and related
quietly and humorously how he had known that doll Mimi when she was
still quite a young lady, before her nose was broken; how she had aged
during the five years he had known her, and how her head had cracked
right across the skull. Having said this he glanced at Natasha. She
turned away from him and glanced at her younger brother, who was
screwing up his eyes and shaking with suppressed laughter, and unable to
control herself any longer, she jumped up and rushed from the room as
fast as her nimble little feet would carry her. Boris did not laugh.

"You were meaning to go out, weren't you, Mamma? Do you want the
carriage?" he asked his mother with a smile.

"Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready," she answered, returning
his smile.

Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha. The plump boy
ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been
disturbed.




CHAPTER XII

The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting the
young lady visitor and the countess' eldest daughter (who was four years
older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person), were
Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender little brunette with
a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black
plaits coiling twice round her head, and a tawny tint in her complexion
and especially in the color of her slender but graceful and muscular
arms and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness and
flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve of
manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten which promises
to become a beautiful little cat. She evidently considered it proper to
show an interest in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of
herself her eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who
was going to join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that
her smile could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was
clear that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more
energy and again play with her cousin as soon as they too could, like
Natasha and Boris, escape from the drawing room.

"Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the visitor and pointing
to Nicholas, "his friend Boris has become an officer, and so for
friendship's sake he is leaving the university and me, his old father,
and entering the military service, my dear. And there was a place and
everything waiting for him in the Archives Department! Isn't that
friendship?" remarked the count in an inquiring tone.

"But they say that war has been declared," replied the visitor.

"They've been saying so a long while," said the count, "and they'll say
so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My dear, there's
friendship for you," he repeated. "He's joining the hussars."

The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.

"It's not at all from friendship," declared Nicholas, flaring up and
turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It is not from friendship
at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation."

He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were both
regarding him with a smile of approbation.

"Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us
today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him.
It can't be helped!" said the count, shrugging his shoulders and
speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.

"I have already told you, Papa," said his son, "that if you don't wish
to let me go, I'll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except in the
army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.--I don't know how to
hide what I feel." As he spoke he kept glancing with the flirtatiousness
of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady visitor.

The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any moment
to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.

"All right, all right!" said the old count. "He always flares up! This
Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he rose
from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it," he added,
not noticing his visitor's sarcastic smile.

The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to young
Rostov.

"What a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday. It was so dull
without you," said she, giving him a tender smile.

The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish
smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation
without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the heart
of Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of his talk
he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry glance, and
hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the artificial smile on
her lips, she got up and left the room. All Nicholas' animation
vanished. He waited for the first pause in the conversation, and then
with a distressed face left the room to find Sonya.

"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their sleeves!"
said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went out. "Cousinage--
dangereux voisinage;" * she added.


* Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.

"Yes," said the countess when the brightness these young people had
brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question no
one had put but which was always in her mind, "and how much suffering,
how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might rejoice in them
now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is
always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so dangerous both
for girls and boys."

"It all depends on the bringing up," remarked the visitor.

"Yes, you're quite right," continued the countess. "Till now I have
always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full
confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who
imagine that their children have no secrets from them. "I know I shall
always be my daughters' first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with his
impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can't help it), he will
all the same never be like those Petersburg young men."

"Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters," chimed in the count, who
always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding that
everything was splendid. "Just fancy: wants to be an hussar. What's one
to do, my dear?"

"What a charming creature your younger girl is," said the visitor; "a
little volcano!"

"Yes, a regular volcano," said the count. "Takes after me! And what a
voice she has; though she's my daughter, I tell the truth when I say
she'll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an Italian to
give her lessons."

"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train it
at that age."

"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our mothers used
to be married at twelve or thirteen."

"And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!" said the countess
with a gentle smile, looking at Boris and went on, evidently concerned
with a thought that always occupied her: "Now you see if I were to be
severe with her and to forbid it... goodness knows what they might be up
to on the sly" (she meant that they would be kissing), "but as it is, I
know every word she utters. She will come running to me of her own
accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I spoil her, but
really that seems the best plan. With her elder sister I was stricter."

"Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked the handsome elder
daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.

But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally do; on
the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant,
expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at learning,
was well-brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what she said was true
and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone--the visitors and
countess alike--turned to look at her as if wondering why she had said
it, and they all felt awkward.

"People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to make
something exceptional of them," said the visitor.

"What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too
clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what of that? She's turned out
splendidly all the same," he added, winking at Vera.

The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.

"What manners! I thought they would never go," said the countess, when
she had seen her guests out.




CHAPTER XIII

When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the
conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation
in the drawing room, waiting for Boris to come out. She was already
growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not coming
at once, when she heard the young man's discreet steps approaching
neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly among the
flower tubs and hid there.

Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a little
dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror examined
his handsome face. Natasha, very still, peered out from her ambush,
waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while before the
glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natasha was about to
call him but changed her mind. "Let him look for me," thought she.
Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears, and muttering
angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked her first impulse to
run out to her, and remained in her hiding place, watching--as under an
invisible cap--to see what went on in the world. She was experiencing a
new and peculiar pleasure. Sonya, muttering to herself, kept looking
round toward the drawing-room door. It opened and Nicholas came in.

"Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?" said he, running up
to her.

"It's nothing, nothing; leave me alone!" sobbed Sonya.

"Ah, I know what it is."

"Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!"

"So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like that,
for a mere fancy?" said Nicholas taking her hand.

Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not stirring
and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with sparkling eyes.
"What will happen now?" thought she.

"Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are everything!"
said Nicholas. "And I will prove it to you."

"I don't like you to talk like that."

"Well, then, I won't; only forgive me, Sonya!" He drew her to him and
kissed her.

"Oh, how nice," thought Natasha; and when Sonya and Nicholas had gone
out of the conservatory she followed and called Boris to her.

"Boris, come here," said she with a sly and significant look. "I have
something to tell you. Here, here!" and she led him into the
conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.

Boris followed her, smiling.

"What is the something?" asked he.

She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had thrown
down on one of the tubs, picked it up.

"Kiss the doll," said she.

Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not
reply.

"Don't you want to? Well, then, come here," said she, and went further
in among the plants and threw down the doll. "Closer, closer!" she
whispered.

She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and
fear appeared on her flushed face.

"And me? Would you like to kiss me?" she whispered almost inaudibly,
glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying from
excitement.

Boris blushed.

"How funny you are!" he said, bending down to her and blushing still
more, but he waited and did nothing.

Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him so
that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and, tossing
back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.

Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of the tubs
and stood, hanging her head.

"Natasha," he said, "you know that I love you, but..."

"You are in love with me?" Natasha broke in.

"Yes, I am, but please don't let us do like that.... In another four
years... then I will ask for your hand."

Natasha considered.

"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen," she counted on her slender
little fingers. "All right! Then it's settled?"

A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.

"Settled!" replied Boris.

"Forever?" said the little girl. "Till death itself?"

She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining
sitting room.




CHAPTER XIV

After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she gave
orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to
dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished to have a
tête-à-tête talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from
Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face, drew
her chair nearer to that of the countess.

"With you I will be quite frank," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "There are not
many left of us old friends! That's why I so value your friendship."

Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The countess pressed her
friend's hand.

"Vera," she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a
favorite, "how is it you have so little tact? Don't you see you are not
wanted here? Go to the other girls, or..."

The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.

"If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone," she replied as
she rose to go to her own room.

But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting, one
pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Sonya was
sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the
first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were at the other window
and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and Natasha looked at Vera
with guilty, happy faces.

It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but
apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera.

"How often have I asked you not to take my things?" she said. "You have
a room of your own," and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.

"In a minute, in a minute," he said, dipping his pen.

"You always manage to do things at the wrong time," continued Vera. "You
came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed of
you."

Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no one
replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered in the
room with the inkstand in her hand.

"And at your age what secrets can there be between Natasha and Boris, or
between you two? It's all nonsense!"

"Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?" said Natasha in defense,
speaking very gently.

She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to
everyone.

"Very silly," said Vera. "I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!"

"All have secrets of their own," answered Natasha, getting warmer. "We
don't interfere with you and Berg."

"I should think not," said Vera, "because there can never be anything
wrong in my behavior. But I'll just tell Mamma how you are behaving with
Boris."

"Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me," remarked Boris. "I have
nothing to complain of."

"Don't, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really tiresome," said
Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly. (She used the word
"diplomat," which was just then much in vogue among the children, in the
special sense they attached to it.) "Why does she bother me?" And she
added, turning to Vera, "You'll never understand it, because you've
never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a Madame de Genlis and
nothing more" (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by Nicholas, was
considered very stinging), "and your greatest pleasure is to be
unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you please," she
finished quickly.

"I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..."

"Well, now you've done what you wanted," put in Nicholas--"said
unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let's go to the nursery."

All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.

"The unpleasant things were said to me," remarked Vera, "I said none to
anyone."

"Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!" shouted laughing voices through
the door.

The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant effect
on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been said to her,
went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf. Looking at
her own handsome face she seemed to become still colder and calmer.

In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.

"Ah, my dear," said the countess, "my life is not all roses either.
Don't I know that at the rate we are living our means won't last long?
It's all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the country do we
get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows what besides! But
don't let's talk about me; tell me how you managed everything. I often
wonder at you, Annette--how at your age you can rush off alone in a
carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those ministers and great people,
and know how to deal with them all! It's quite astonishing. How did you
get things settled? I couldn't possibly do it."

"Ah, my love," answered Anna Mikhaylovna, "God grant you never know what
it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you love to
distraction! One learns many things then," she added with a certain
pride. "That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of those big
people I write a note: 'Princess So-and-So desires an interview with So
and-So,' and then I take a cab and go myself two, three, or four times--
till I get what I want. I don't mind what they think of me."

"Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?" asked the countess. "You
see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my Nicholas is
going as a cadet. There's no one to interest himself for him. To whom
did you apply?"

"To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to everything, and
put the matter before the Emperor," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna
enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she had endured
to gain her end.

"Has Prince Vasili aged much?" asked the countess. "I have not seen him
since we acted together at the Rumyantsovs' theatricals. I expect he has
forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days," said the countess,
with a smile.

"He is just the same as ever," replied Anna Mikhaylovna, "overflowing
with amiability. His position has not turned his head at all. He said to
me, 'I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear Princess. I am at your
command.' Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very kind relation. But,
Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do anything for his
happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way that my position is now
a terrible one," continued Anna Mikhaylovna, sadly, dropping her voice.
"My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and makes no progress. Would you
believe it, I have literally not a penny and don't know how to equip
Boris." She took out her handkerchief and began to cry. "I need five
hundred rubles, and have only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a
state.... My only hope now is in Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If
he will not assist his godson--you know he is Bory's godfather--and
allow him something for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been
thrown away.... I shall not be able to equip him."

The countess' eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.

"I often think, though, perhaps it's a sin," said the princess, "that
here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov so rich, all alone... that
tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It's a burden to him,
and Bory's life is only just beginning...."

"Surely he will leave something to Boris," said the countess.

"Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish. Still,
I will take Boris and go to see him at once, and I shall speak to him
straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it's really all the
same to me when my son's fate is at stake." The princess rose. "It's now
two o'clock and you dine at four. There will just be time."

And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the most of
time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone to call her son, and went into the
anteroom with him.

"Good-bye, my dear," said she to the countess who saw her to the door,
and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, "Wish me good
luck."

"Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my dear?" said the count
coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added: "If he
is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the house, you
know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite him, my dear. We
will see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He says Count Orlov
never gave such a dinner as ours will be!"




CHAPTER XV

"My dear Boris," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to her son as Countess
Rostova's carriage in which they were seated drove over the straw
covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril
Vladimirovich Bezukhov's house. "My dear Boris," said the mother,
drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and
tenderly on her son's arm, "be affectionate and attentive to him. Count
Cyril Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your future depends on
him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you so well know how
to be."

"If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of it..."
answered her son coldly. "But I have promised and will do it for your
sake."

Although the hall porter saw someone's carriage standing at the
entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to
be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the
rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady's old
cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses, and,
hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency was worse
today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.

"We may as well go back," said the son in French.

"My dear!" exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand on
his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.

Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without taking
off his cloak.

"My friend," said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones, addressing the hall
porter, "I know Count Cyril Vladimirovich is very ill... that's why I
have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him, my friend... I
only need see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying here, is he not?
Please announce me."

The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and turned
away.

"Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich," he called to a
footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat, who
ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.

The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a large
Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes briskly
ascended the carpeted stairs.

"My dear," she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a touch,
"you promised me!"

The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.

They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to the
apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.

Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall, were
about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as they
entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and Prince Vasili
came out--wearing a velvet coat with a single star on his breast, as was
his custom when at home--taking leave of a good-looking, dark-haired
man. This was the celebrated Petersburg doctor, Lorrain.

"Then it is certain?" said the prince.

"Prince, humanum est errare, * but..." replied the doctor, swallowing
his r's, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.


* To err is human.

"Very well, very well..."

Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the doctor
with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of inquiry. The
son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow suddenly clouded his
mother's face, and he smiled slightly.

"Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our
dear invalid?" said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive look
fixed on her.

Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly and perplexed.
Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili without acknowledging the bow turned
to Anna Mikhaylovna, answering her query by a movement of the head and
lips indicating very little hope for the patient.

"Is it possible?" exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Oh, how awful! It is
terrible to think.... This is my son," she added, indicating Boris. "He
wanted to thank you himself."

Boris bowed again politely.

"Believe me, Prince, a mother's heart will never forget what you have
done for us."

"I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna,"
said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace frill, and in tone and manner,
here in Moscow to Anna Mikhaylovna whom he had placed under an
obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than he had done
in Petersburg at Anna Scherer's reception.

"Try to serve well and show yourself worthy," added he, addressing Boris
with severity. "I am glad.... Are you here on leave?" he went on in his
usual tone of indifference.

"I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency," replied
Boris, betraying neither annoyance at the prince's brusque manner nor a
desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so quietly and
respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance.

"Are you living with your mother?"

"I am living at Countess Rostova's," replied Boris, again adding, "your
excellency."

"That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly Shinshina," said Anna
Mikhaylovna.

"I know, I know," answered Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice. "I
never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that
unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler too,
I am told."

"But a very kind man, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a pathetic
smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostov deserved this censure,
but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. "What do the
doctors say?" asked the princess after a pause, her worn face again
expressing deep sorrow.

"They give little hope," replied the prince.

"And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me and
Boris. He is his godson," she added, her tone suggesting that this fact
ought to give Prince Vasili much satisfaction.

Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikhaylovna saw that
he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezukhov's fortune,
and hastened to reassure him.

"If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle," said
she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern, "I know
his character: noble, upright... but you see he has no one with him
except the young princesses.... They are still young...." She bent her
head and continued in a whisper: "Has he performed his final duty,
Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can make things no
worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if he is so ill. We
women, Prince," and she smiled tenderly, "always know how to say these
things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it may be for me. I
am used to suffering."

Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he had done
at Anna Pavlovna's, that it would be difficult to get rid of Anna
Mikhaylovna.

"Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna Mikhaylovna?"
said he. "Let us wait until evening. The doctors are expecting a
crisis."

"But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the
welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a
Christian..."

A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses, the
count's niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of her body
was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince Vasili turned
to her.

"Well, how is he?"

"Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise..." said the
princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a stranger.

"Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a happy
smile, ambling lightly up to the count's niece. "I have come, and am at
your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have gone
through," and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.

The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room as
Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position she had
conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasili to take a
seat beside her.

"Boris," she said to her son with a smile, "I shall go in to see the
count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile and
don't forget to give him the Rostovs' invitation. They ask him to
dinner. I suppose he won't go?" she continued, turning to the prince.

"On the contrary," replied the prince, who had plainly become depressed,
"I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young man.... Here
he is, and the count has not once asked for him."

He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris down one flight of
stairs and up another, to Pierre's rooms.




CHAPTER XVI

Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in
Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and
sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true.
Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now been
for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his father's house.
Though he expected that the story of his escapade would be already known
in Moscow and that the ladies about his father--who were never favorably
disposed toward him--would have used it to turn the count against him,
he nevertheless on the day of his arrival went to his father's part of
the house. Entering the drawing room, where the princesses spent most of
their time, he greeted the ladies, two of whom were sitting at
embroidery frames while a third read aloud. It was the eldest who was
reading--the one who had met Anna Mikhaylovna. The two younger ones were
embroidering: both were rosy and pretty and they differed only in that
one had a little mole on her lip which made her much prettier. Pierre
was received as if he were a corpse or a leper. The eldest princess
paused in her reading and silently stared at him with frightened eyes;
the second assumed precisely the same expression; while the youngest,
the one with the mole, who was of a cheerful and lively disposition,
bent over her frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene
she foresaw. She drew her wool down through the canvas and, scarcely
able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying to make out the
pattern.

"How do you do, cousin?" said Pierre. "You don't recognize me?"

"I recognize you only too well, too well."

"How is the count? Can I see him?" asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual, but
unabashed.

"The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently you have
done your best to increase his mental sufferings."

"Can I see the count?" Pierre again asked.

"Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see
him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle's beef tea is ready--it is almost
time," she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were busy, and
busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he, Pierre, was only
busy causing him annoyance.

Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed and
said: "Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can see
him."

And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of the
sister with the mole.

Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the count's house. He
sent for Pierre and said to him: "My dear fellow, if you are going to
behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very badly; that is
all I have to say to you. The count is very, very ill, and you must not
see him at all."

Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole time in
his rooms upstairs.

When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his room,
stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at the wall,
as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and glaring savagely
over his spectacles, and then again resuming his walk, muttering
indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating.

"England is done for," said he, scowling and pointing his finger at
someone unseen. "Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the rights
of man, is sentenced to..." But before Pierre--who at that moment
imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just effected the
dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured London--could
pronounce Pitt's sentence, he saw a well-built and handsome young
officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left Moscow when Boris
was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten him, but in his usual
impulsive and hearty way he took Boris by the hand with a friendly
smile.

"Do you remember me?" asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile. "I have
come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not well."

"Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him," answered
Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.

Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it
necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least
embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.

"Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today," said he, after a
considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.

"Ah, Count Rostov!" exclaimed Pierre joyfully. "Then you are his son,
Ilya? Only fancy, I didn't know you at first. Do you remember how we
went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It's such an age..."

"You are mistaken," said Boris deliberately, with a bold and slightly
sarcastic smile. "I am Boris, son of Princess Anna Mikhaylovna
Drubetskaya. Rostov, the father, is Ilya, and his son is Nicholas. I
never knew any Madame Jacquot."

Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.

"Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I've mixed everything up. One has so
many relatives in Moscow! So you are Boris? Of course. Well, now we know
where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne expedition? The
English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon gets across the
Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible. If only Villeneuve
doesn't make a mess of things!"

Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read the
papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve's name.

"We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal
than with politics," said he in his quiet ironical tone. "I know nothing
about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy with
gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and your
father."

Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his companion's
sake that the latter might say something he would afterwards regret. But
Boris spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly, looking straight into
Pierre's eyes.

"Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip," Boris went on. "Everybody is
wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune, though he may
perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will..."

"Yes, it is all very horrid," interrupted Pierre, "very horrid."

Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say
something disconcerting to himself.

"And it must seem to you," said Boris flushing slightly, but not
changing his tone or attitude, "it must seem to you that everyone is
trying to get something out of the rich man?"

"So it does," thought Pierre.

"But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are quite
mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are very
poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that your
father is rich, I don't regard myself as a relation of his, and neither
I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him."

For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he jumped
up from the sofa, seized Boris under the elbow in his quick, clumsy way,
and, blushing far more than Boris, began to speak with a feeling of
mingled shame and vexation.

"Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I know
very well..."

But Boris again interrupted him.

"I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You
must excuse me," said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being put at
ease by him, "but I hope I have not offended you. I always make it a
rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you come to
dinner at the Rostovs'?"

And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and
extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it,
became quite pleasant again.

"No, but I say," said Pierre, calming down, "you are a wonderful fellow!
What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you don't know me.
We have not met for such a long time... not since we were children. You
might think that I... I understand, quite understand. I could not have
done it myself, I should not have had the courage, but it's splendid. I
am very glad to have made your acquaintance. It's queer," he added after
a pause, "that you should have suspected me!" He began to laugh. "Well,
what of it! I hope we'll get better acquainted," and he pressed Boris'
hand. "Do you know, I have not once been in to see the count. He has not
sent for me.... I am sorry for him as a man, but what can one do?"

"And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?" asked
Boris with a smile.

Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and being of the
same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the
Boulogne expedition.

A footman came in to summon Boris--the princess was going. Pierre, in
order to make Boris' better acquaintance, promised to come to dinner,
and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his spectacles
into Boris' eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing up and down
the room for a long time, no longer piercing an imaginary foe with his
imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance of that pleasant,
intelligent, and resolute young man.

As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a lonely
life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man and made up
his mind that they would be friends.

Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her eyes
and her face was tearful.

"It is dreadful, dreadful!" she was saying, "but cost me what it may I
shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be left
like this. Every moment is precious. I can't think why his nieces put it
off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare him!... Adieu,
Prince! May God support you..."

"Adieu, ma bonne," answered Prince Vasili turning away from her.

"Oh, he is in a dreadful state," said the mother to her son when they
were in the carriage. "He hardly recognizes anybody."

"I don't understand, Mamma--what is his attitude to Pierre?" asked the
son.

"The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends on it."

"But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?"

"Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!"

"Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma..."

"Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!" exclaimed the mother.




CHAPTER XVII

After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count Cyril
Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess Rostova sat for a long time all alone
applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.

"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she said crossly to the maid who
kept her waiting some minutes. "Don't you wish to serve me? Then I'll
find you another place."

The countess was upset by her friend's sorrow and humiliating poverty,
and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with her always
found expression in calling her maid "my dear" and speaking to her with
exaggerated politeness.

"I am very sorry, ma'am," answered the maid.

"Ask the count to come to me."

The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look as
usual.

"Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere we are to have,
my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Taras were not ill-
spent. He is worth it!"

He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands ruffling
his gray hair.

"What are your commands, little countess?"

"You see, my dear... What's that mess?" she said, pointing to his
waistcoat. "It's the saute, most likely," she added with a smile. "Well,
you see, Count, I want some money."

Her face became sad.

"Oh, little countess!"... and the count began bustling to get out his
pocketbook.

"I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles," and taking out
her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband's waistcoat.

"Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who's there?" he called out in a
tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call will rush
to obey the summons. "Send Dmitri to me!"

Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the count's
house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the room.

"This is what I want, my dear fellow," said the count to the deferential
young man who had entered. "Bring me..." he reflected a moment, "yes,
bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don't bring me such
tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean ones for the
countess."

"Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please," said the countess, sighing deeply.

"When would you like them, your excellency?" asked Dmitri. "Allow me to
inform you... But, don't be uneasy," he added, noticing that the count
was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always a sign of
approaching anger. "I was forgetting... Do you wish it brought at once?"

"Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess."

"What a treasure that Dmitri is," added the count with a smile when the
young man had departed. "There is never any 'impossible' with him.
That's a thing I hate! Everything is possible."

"Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world," said
the countess. "But I am in great need of this sum."

"You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift," said the count,
and having kissed his wife's hand he went back to his study.

When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count Bezukhov's the money, all in
clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the countess'
little table, and Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something was agitating
her.

"Well, my dear?" asked the countess.

"Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is so
ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word..."

"Annette, for heaven's sake don't refuse me," the countess began, with a
blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified, elderly face, and
she took the money from under the handkerchief.

Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be ready
to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.

"This is for Boris from me, for his outfit."

Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess
wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were
kindhearted, and because they--friends from childhood--had to think
about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....
But those tears were pleasant to them both.




CHAPTER XVIII

Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests, was
already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen into
his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes. From
time to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were
expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le terrible
dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for common
sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was known to the
Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and Petersburg, and both cities
wondered at her, laughed privately at her rudenesses, and told good
stories about her, while none the less all without exception respected
and feared her.

In the count's room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of war
that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the recruiting. None
of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew it had appeared.
The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were smoking and
talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his head first to one
side and then to the other watched the smokers with evident pleasure and
listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he egged on
against each other.

One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and wrinkled
face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a most fashionable
young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as if quite at home and,
having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was inhaling the
smoke spasmodically and screwing up his eyes. This was an old bachelor,
Shinshin, a cousin of the countess', a man with "a sharp tongue" as they
said in Moscow society. He seemed to be condescending to his companion.
The latter, a fresh, rosy officer of the Guards, irreproachably washed,
brushed, and buttoned, held his pipe in the middle of his mouth and with
red lips gently inhaled the smoke, letting it escape from his handsome
mouth in rings. This was Lieutenant Berg, an officer in the Semenov
regiment with whom Boris was to travel to join the army, and about whom
Natasha had teased her elder sister Vera, speaking of Berg as her
"intended." The count sat between them and listened attentively. His
favorite occupation when not playing boston, a card game he was very
fond of, was that of listener, especially when he succeeded in setting
two loquacious talkers at one another.

"Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse Karlovich," said
Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary Russian
expressions with the choicest French phrases--which was a peculiarity of
his speech. "Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur l'etat; * you want
to make something out of your company?"


* You expect to make an income out of the government.

"No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry the
advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own
position now, Peter Nikolaevich..."

Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His
conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain calm
and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no direct bearing
on himself. He could remain silent for hours without being at all put
out of countenance himself or making others uncomfortable, but as soon
as the conversation concerned himself he would begin to talk
circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.

"Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in the cavalry I should
get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even with the
rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and thirty," said
he, looking at Shinshin and the count with a joyful, pleasant smile, as
if it were obvious to him that his success must always be the chief
desire of everyone else.

"Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into the Guards I shall
be in a more prominent position," continued Berg, "and vacancies occur
much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what can be
done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a little
aside and to send something to my father," he went on, emitting a smoke
ring.

"La balance y est... * A German knows how to skin a flint, as the
proverb says," remarked Shinshin, moving his pipe to the other side of
his mouth and winking at the count.


* So that squares matters.

The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that Shinshin was
talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or indifference,
continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards he had already
gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps; how in wartime the
company commander might get killed and he, as senior in the company,
might easily succeed to the post; how popular he was with everyone in
the regiment, and how satisfied his father was with him. Berg evidently
enjoyed narrating all this, and did not seem to suspect that others,
too, might have their own interests. But all he said was so prettily
sedate, and the naivete of his youthful egotism was so obvious, that he
disarmed his hearers.

"Well, my boy, you'll get along wherever you go--foot or horse--that
I'll warrant," said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and taking his
feet off the sofa.

Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went into the drawing
room.

It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled guests,
expecting the summons to zakuska, * avoid engaging in any long
conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in order to
show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The host and
hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at one another,
and the visitors try to guess from these glances who, or what, they are
waiting for--some important relation who has not yet arrived, or a dish
that is not yet ready.


* Hors d'oeuvres.

Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in the
middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come across,
blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make him talk, but
he went on naively looking around through his spectacles as if in search
of somebody and answered all her questions in monosyllables. He was in
the way and was the only one who did not notice the fact. Most of the
guests, knowing of the affair with the bear, looked with curiosity at
this big, stout, quiet man, wondering how such a clumsy, modest fellow
could have played such a prank on a policeman.

"You have only lately arrived?" the countess asked him.

"Oui, madame," replied he, looking around him.

"You have not yet seen my husband?"

"Non, madame." He smiled quite inappropriately.

"You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it's very
interesting."

"Very interesting."

The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhaylovna. The latter
understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and
sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he
answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other
guests were all conversing with one another. "The Razumovskis... It was
charming... You are very kind... Countess Apraksina..." was heard on all
sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.

"Marya Dmitrievna?" came her voice from there.

"Herself," came the answer in a rough voice, and Marya Dmitrievna
entered the room.

All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very
oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,
holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood
surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if
rolling them up. Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.

"Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to her
children," she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned all
others. "Well, you old sinner," she went on, turning to the count who
was kissing her hand, "you're feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay? Nowhere
to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old man? Just see how
these nestlings are growing up," and she pointed to the girls. "You must
look for husbands for them whether you like it or not...."

"Well," said she, "how's my Cossack?" (Marya Dmitrievna always called
Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the child's arm as she came up
fearless and gay to kiss her hand. "I know she's a scamp of a girl, but
I like her."

She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge reticule and,
having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with the pleasure of
her saint's-day fete, turned away at once and addressed herself to
Pierre.

"Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit," said she, assuming a soft high tone
of voice. "Come here, my friend..." and she ominously tucked up her
sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a childlike
way through his spectacles.

"Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell
your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it's my
evident duty." She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to
follow, for this was clearly only a prelude.

"A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed and
he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame, sir,
for shame! It would be better if you went to the war."

She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly keep
from laughing.

"Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?" said Marya Dmitrievna.

The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the countess followed on
the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them because
Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna Mikhaylovna
with Shinshin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling Julie Karagina
went in with Nicholas. After them other couples followed, filling the
whole dining hall, and last of all the children, tutors, and governesses
followed singly. The footmen began moving about, chairs scraped, the
band struck up in the gallery, and the guests settled down in their
places. Then the strains of the count's household band were replaced by
the clatter of knives and forks, the voices of visitors, and the soft
steps of the footmen. At one end of the table sat the countess with
Marya Dmitrievna on her right and Anna Mikhaylovna on her left, the
other lady visitors were farther down. At the other end sat the count,
with the hussar colonel on his left and Shinshin and the other male
visitors on his right. Midway down the long table on one side sat the
grownup young people: Vera beside Berg, and Pierre beside Boris; and on
the other side, the children, tutors, and governesses. From behind the
crystal decanters and fruit vases, the count kept glancing at his wife
and her tall cap with its light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his
neighbors' glasses, not neglecting his own. The countess in turn,
without omitting her duties as hostess, threw significant glances from
behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by
their redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the
ladies' end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the
men's end the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the
colonel of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so
much that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg
with tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but a
heavenly feeling. Boris was telling his new friend Pierre who the guests
were and exchanging glances with Natasha, who was sitting opposite.
Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a great deal. Of
the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and went on to the
game without omitting a single dish or one of the wines. These latter
the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in a napkin, from behind
the next man's shoulders and whispered: "Dry Madeira"... "Hungarian"...
or "Rhine wine" as the case might be. Of the four crystal glasses
engraved with the count's monogram that stood before his plate, Pierre
held out one at random and drank with enjoyment, gazing with ever-
increasing amiability at the other guests. Natasha, who sat opposite,
was looking at Boris as girls of thirteen look at the boy they are in
love with and have just kissed for the first time. Sometimes that same
look fell on Pierre, and that funny lively little girl's look made him
inclined to laugh without knowing why.

Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie Karagina, to whom
he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sonya wore a
company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now she turned
pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what Nicholas and
Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept looking round
uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might be put upon the
children. The German tutor was trying to remember all the dishes, wines,
and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full description of the dinner
to his people in Germany; and he felt greatly offended when the butler
with a bottle wrapped in a napkin passed him by. He frowned, trying to
appear as if he did not want any of that wine, but was mortified because
no one would understand that it was not to quench his thirst or from
greediness that he wanted it, but simply from a conscientious desire for
knowledge.




CHAPTER XIX

At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more animated. The
colonel told them that the declaration of war had already appeared in
Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself seen, had that day been
forwarded by courier to the commander-in-chief.

"And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?" remarked Shinshin.
"He has stopped Austria's cackle and I fear it will be our turn next."

The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted to
the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshin's remark.

"It is for the reasson, my goot sir," said he, speaking with a German
accent, "for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He declares in ze
manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze danger vreatening
Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as vell as ze sanctity
of its alliances..." he spoke this last word with particular emphasis as
if in it lay the gist of the matter.

Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he
repeated from the opening words of the manifesto:

... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor's sole and absolute aim-
-to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations--has now decided him
to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a new condition for
the attainment of that purpose.

"Zat, my dear sir, is vy..." he concluded, drinking a tumbler of wine
with dignity and looking to the count for approval.

"Connaissez-vous le Proverbe: * 'Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but turn
spindles at home!'?" said Shinshin, puckering his brows and smiling.
"Cela nous convient a merveille.*(2) Suvorov now--he knew what he was
about; yet they beat him a plate couture,*(3) and where are we to find
Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un peu,"*(4) said he, continually changing
from French to Russian.


*Do you know the proverb?

*(2) That suits us down to the ground.

*(3) Hollow.

*(4) I just ask you that.

"Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!" said the colonel,
thumping the table; "and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen all vill
pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible"... he dwelt
particularly on the word possible... "as po-o-ossible," he ended, again
turning to the count. "Zat is how ve old hussars look at it, and zere's
an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a young hussar, how do you
judge of it?" he added, addressing Nicholas, who when he heard that the
war was being discussed had turned from his partner with eyes and ears
intent on the colonel.

"I am quite of your opinion," replied Nicholas, flaming up, turning his
plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as much decision and
desperation as though he were at that moment facing some great danger.
"I am convinced that we Russians must die or conquer," he concluded,
conscious--as were others--after the words were uttered that his remarks
were too enthusiastic and emphatic for the occasion and were therefore
awkward.

"What you said just now was splendid!" said his partner Julie.

Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them and down
to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.

Pierre listened to the colonel's speech and nodded approvingly.

"That's fine," said he.

"The young man's a real hussar!" shouted the colonel, again thumping the
table.

"What are you making such a noise about over there?" Marya Dmitrievna's
deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the table. "What are
you thumping the table for?" she demanded of the hussar, "and why are
you exciting yourself? Do you think the French are here?"

"I am speaking ze truce," replied the hussar with a smile.

"It's all about the war," the count shouted down the table. "You know my
son's going, Marya Dmitrievna? My son is going."

"I have four sons in the army but still I don't fret. It is all in God's
hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a battle,"
replied Marya Dmitrievna's deep voice, which easily carried the whole
length of the table.

"That's true!"

Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies' at the one end and
the men's at the other.

"You won't ask," Natasha's little brother was saying; "I know you won't
ask!"

"I will," replied Natasha.

Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She half
rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to what
was coming, and turning to her mother:

"Mamma!" rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice,
audible the whole length of the table.

"What is it?" asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her daughter's
face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her sternly with a
threatening and forbidding movement of her head.

The conversation was hushed.

"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" and Natasha's voice sounded
still more firm and resolute.

The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya Dmitrievna shook her
fat finger.

"Cossack!" she said threateningly.

Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at the
elders.

"You had better take care!" said the countess.

"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" Natasha again cried boldly,
with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in good part.

Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.

"You see! I have asked," whispered Natasha to her little brother and to
Pierre, glancing at him again.

"Ice pudding, but you won't get any," said Marya Dmitrievna.

Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even
Marya Dmitrievna.

"Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don't like ice cream."

"Carrot ices."

"No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?" she almost screamed; "I
want to know!"

Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the guests
joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Marya Dmitrievna's answer but at the
incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who had dared to
treat Marya Dmitrievna in this fashion.

Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there would be
pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band
again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests, leaving
their seats, went up to "congratulate" the countess, and reached across
the table to clink glasses with the count, with the children, and with
one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs scraped, and in the
same order in which they had entered but with redder faces, the guests
returned to the drawing room and to the count's study.




CHAPTER XX

The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the count's
visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms, some in the
sitting room, some in the library.

The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty from
dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at everything. The
young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered round the
clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played first. After she
had played a little air with variations on the harp, she joined the
other young ladies in begging Natasha and Nicholas, who were noted for
their musical talent, to sing something. Natasha, who was treated as
though she were grown up, was evidently very proud of this but at the
same time felt shy.

"What shall we sing?" she said.

"'The Brook,'" suggested Nicholas.

"Well, then, let's be quick. Boris, come here," said Natasha. "But where
is Sonya?"

She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room ran to
look for her.

Running into Sonya's room and not finding her there, Natasha ran to the
nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded that she must
be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage was the place
of mourning for the younger female generation in the Rostov household.
And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on Nurse's dirty feather
bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy pink dress under her,
hiding her face with her slender fingers, and sobbing so convulsively
that her bare little shoulders shook. Natasha's face, which had been so
radiantly happy all that saint's day, suddenly changed: her eyes became
fixed, and then a shiver passed down her broad neck and the corners of
her mouth drooped.

"Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!" And
Natasha's large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she began
to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sonya was crying.
Sonya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and hid her face
still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the blue-striped
feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort Sonya sat up and
began wiping her eyes and explaining.

"Nicholas is going away in a week's time, his... papers... have come...
he told me himself... but still I should not cry," and she showed a
paper she held in her hand--with the verses Nicholas had written,
"still, I should not cry, but you can't... no one can understand... what
a soul he has!"

And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.

"It's all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and Boris
also," she went on, gaining a little strength; "he is nice... there are
no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin... one would
have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it can't be done.
And besides, if she tells Mamma" (Sonya looked upon the countess as her
mother and called her so) "that I am spoiling Nicholas' career and am
heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God is my witness," and she
made the sign of the cross, "I love her so much, and all of you, only
Vera... And what for? What have I done to her? I am so grateful to you
that I would willingly sacrifice everything, only I have nothing...."

Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in the
feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that she
understood all the gravity of her friend's trouble.

"Sonya," she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true reason
of her friend's sorrow, "I'm sure Vera has said something to you since
dinner? Hasn't she?"

"Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some others, and
she found them on my table and said she'd show them to Mamma, and that I
was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him to marry me, but
that he'll marry Julie. You see how he's been with her all day...
Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..."

And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha lifted
her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began comforting
her.

"Sonya, don't believe her, darling! Don't believe her! Do you remember
how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting room after
supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don't quite remember
how, but don't you remember that it could all be arranged and how nice
it all was? There's Uncle Shinshin's brother has married his first
cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know. And Boris says it is
quite possible. You know I have told him all about it. And he is so
clever and so good!" said Natasha. "Don't you cry, Sonya, dear love,
darling Sonya!" and she kissed her and laughed. "Vera's spiteful; never
mind her! And all will come right and she won't say anything to Mamma.
Nicholas will tell her himself, and he doesn't care at all for Julie."

Natasha kissed her on the hair.

Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it
seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin
playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.

"Do you think so?... Really? Truly?" she said, quickly smoothing her
frock and hair.

"Really, truly!" answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock that had
strayed from under her friend's plaits.

Both laughed.

"Well, let's go and sing 'The Brook.'"

"Come along!"

"Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!" said
Natasha, stopping suddenly. "I feel so happy!"

And she set off at a run along the passage.

Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the
verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran
after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face
and light, joyous steps. At the visitors' request the young people sang
the quartette, "The Brook," with which everyone was delighted. Then
Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:


At nighttime in the moon's fair glow How sweet, as fancies wander free,
To feel that in this world there's one Who still is thinking but of
thee!

That while her fingers touch the harp Wafting sweet music o'er the lea,
It is for thee thus swells her heart, Sighing its message out to thee...

A day or two, then bliss unspoilt, But oh! till then I cannot live!...

He had not finished the last verse before the young people began to get
ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and the
coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.

Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had engaged him,
as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political conversation in
which several others joined but which bored Pierre. When the music began
Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre said, laughing and
blushing:

"Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers."

"I am afraid of mixing the figures," Pierre replied; "but if you will be
my teacher..." And lowering his big arm he offered it to the slender
little girl.

While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning up,
Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly happy;
she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was
sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up lady.
She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had given her to hold.
Assuming quite the pose of a society woman (heaven knows when and where
she had learned it) she talked with her partner, fanning herself and
smiling over the fan.

"Dear, dear! Just look at her!" exclaimed the countess as she crossed
the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.

Natasha blushed and laughed.

"Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be surprised at?"

In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of chairs being
pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Marya Dmitrievna had
been playing cards with the majority of the more distinguished and older
visitors. They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long, and
replacing their purses and pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First came
Marya Dmitrievna and the count, both with merry countenances. The count,
with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to
Marya Dmitrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit
up his face and as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended,
he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery,
addressing the first violin:

"Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?"

This was the count's favorite dance, which he had danced in his youth.
(Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the anglaise.)

"Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite
forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her
curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her laughter.

And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure at the
jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout partner,
Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened his
shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot, and, by a
smile that broadened his round face more and more, prepared the
onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the provocatively gay
strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling those of a merry peasant
dance) began to sound, all the doorways of the ballroom were suddenly
filled by the domestic serfs--the men on one side and the women on the
other--who with beaming faces had come to see their master making merry.

"Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!" loudly remarked the
nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.

The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did not
want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her powerful arms
hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the countess), and only her
stern but handsome face really joined in the dance. What was expressed
by the whole of the count's plump figure, in Marya Dmitrievna found
expression only in her more and more beaming face and quivering nose.
But if the count, getting more and more into the swing of it, charmed
the spectators by the unexpectedness of his adroit maneuvers and the
agility with which he capered about on his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna
produced no less impression by slight exertions--the least effort to
move her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or stamp her foot--
which everyone appreciated in view of her size and habitual severity.
The dance grew livelier and livelier. The other couples could not
attract a moment's attention to their own evolutions and did not even
try to do so. All were watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha
kept pulling everyone by sleeve or dress, urging them to "look at Papa!"
though as it was they never took their eyes off the couple. In the
intervals of the dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to
the musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more
lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying round Marya
Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his
partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft
foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a wide
sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and laughter led by
Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping their
faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.

"That's how we used to dance in our time, ma chere," said the count.

"That was a Daniel Cooper!" exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna, tucking up her
sleeves and puffing heavily.




CHAPTER XXI

While in the Rostovs' ballroom the sixth anglaise was being danced, to a
tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired footmen and
cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had a sixth stroke. The
doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute confession,
communion was administered to the dying man, preparations made for the
sacrament of unction, and in his house there was the bustle and thrill
of suspense usual at such moments. Outside the house, beyond the gates,
a group of undertakers, who hid whenever a carriage drove up, waited in
expectation of an important order for an expensive funeral. The Military
Governor of Moscow, who had been assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to
inquire after the count's health, came himself that evening to bid a
last farewell to the celebrated grandee of Catherine's court, Count
Bezukhov.

The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up
respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an
hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging their
bows and trying to escape as quickly as possible from the glances fixed
on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince
Vasili, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days,
escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times in
low tones.

When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all alone on
a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the other, leaning
his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his hand. After sitting
so for a while he rose, and, looking about him with frightened eyes,
went with unusually hurried steps down the long corridor leading to the
back of the house, to the room of the eldest princess.

Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous
whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying man's
room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or expectancy at
his door, which creaked slightly when opened.

"The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be o'erpassed," said
an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was
listening naively to his words.

"I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?" asked the lady,
adding the priest's clerical title, as if she had no opinion of her own
on the subject.

"Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament," replied the priest, passing his
hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his bald
head.

"Who was that? The Military Governor himself?" was being asked at the
other side of the room. "How young-looking he is!"

"Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes
anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction."

"I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times."

The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes red
from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a
graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a
table.

"Beautiful," said the doctor in answer to a remark about the weather.
"The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow one feels as
if one were in the country."

"Yes, indeed," replied the princess with a sigh. "So he may have
something to drink?"

Lorrain considered.

"Has he taken his medicine?"

"Yes."

The doctor glanced at his watch.

"Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar," and
he indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.

"Dere has neffer been a gase," a German doctor was saying to an aide-de-
camp, "dat one liffs after de sird stroke."

"And what a well-preserved man he was!" remarked the aide-de-camp. "And
who will inherit his wealth?" he added in a whisper.

"It von't go begging," replied the German with a smile.

Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second
princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to Lorrain's
instructions. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.

"Do you think he can last till morning?" asked the German, addressing
Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.

Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger before
his nose.

"Tonight, not later," said he in a low voice, and he moved away with a
decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to understand
and state the patient's condition.

Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the princess' room.

In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning before
the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt pastilles.
The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture, whatnots,
cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white feather bed was
just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to bark.

"Ah, is it you, cousin?"

She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely smooth
that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and covered with
varnish.

"Has anything happened?" she asked. "I am so terrified."

"No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about business,
Catiche," * muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on the chair
she had just vacated. "You have made the place warm, I must say," he
remarked. "Well, sit down: let's have a talk."


*Catherine.

"I thought perhaps something had happened," she said with her unchanging
stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the prince, she
prepared to listen.

"I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can't."

"Well, my dear?" said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and bending it
downwards as was his habit.

It was plain that this "well?" referred to much that they both
understood without naming.

The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for her
legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no sign of emotion in her
prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up at the icons
with a sigh. This might have been taken as an expression of sorrow and
devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting before long. Prince Vasili
understood it as an expression of weariness.

"And I?" he said; "do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn out as
a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a very
serious talk."

Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously, now
on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant expression
which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His eyes too seemed
strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly and at the next
glanced round in alarm.

The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony
hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili's eyes evidently resolved
not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till morning.

"Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna,"
continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not without
an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of
everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love you
all, like children of my own, as you know."

The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the same
dull expression.

"And then of course my family has also to be considered," Prince Vasili
went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at her.
"You know, Catiche, that we--you three sisters, Mamontov, and my wife--
are the count's only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it is for you
to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for me; but, my dear,
I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for anything. Do you know
I have sent for Pierre? The count," pointing to his portrait,
"definitely demanded that he should be called."

Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but could not make
out whether she was considering what he had just said or whether she was
simply looking at him.

"There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin," she
replied, "and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow his
noble soul peacefully to leave this..."

"Yes, yes, of course," interrupted Prince Vasili impatiently, rubbing
his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little table that
he had pushed away. "But... in short, the fact is... you know yourself
that last winter the count made a will by which he left all his
property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre."

"He has made wills enough!" quietly remarked the princess. "But he
cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate."

"But, my dear," said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching the little table
and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: "what if a letter
has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for Pierre's
legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of the count's
services, his request would be granted?..."

The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about the
subject under discussion than those they are talking with.

"I can tell you more," continued Prince Vasili, seizing her hand, "that
letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew of it.
The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not, then as soon
as all is over," and Prince Vasili sighed to intimate what he meant by
the words all is over, "and the count's papers are opened, the will and
letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and the petition will certainly
be granted. Pierre will get everything as the legitimate son."

"And our share?" asked the princess smiling ironically, as if anything
might happen, only not that.

"But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be the
legal heir to everything and you won't get anything. You must know, my
dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether they have
been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been overlooked, you
ought to know where they are, and must find them, because..."

"What next?" the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and not
changing the expression of her eyes. "I am a woman, and you think we are
all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot inherit... un
batard!" * she added, as if supposing that this translation of the word
would effectively prove to Prince Vasili the invalidity of his
contention.


* A bastard.

"Well, really, Catiche! Can't you understand! You are so intelligent,
how is it you don't see that if the count has written a letter to the
Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate, it follows that
Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count Bezukhov, and will then
inherit everything under the will? And if the will and letter are not
destroyed, then you will have nothing but the consolation of having been
dutiful et tout ce qui s'ensuit! * That's certain."


* And all that follows therefrom.

"I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and you,
mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool," said the princess with
the expression women assume when they suppose they are saying something
witty and stinging.

"My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna," began Prince Vasili impatiently,
"I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about your interests
as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I tell you for the
tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and the will in Pierre's
favor are among the count's papers, then, my dear girl, you and your
sisters are not heiresses! If you don't believe me, then believe an
expert. I have just been talking to Dmitri Onufrich" (the family
solicitor) "and he says the same."

At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess' ideas; her
thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her voice when
she began to speak passed through such transitions as she herself
evidently did not expect.

"That would be a fine thing!" said she. "I never wanted anything and I
don't now."

She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.

"And this is gratitude--this is recognition for those who have
sacrificed everything for his sake!" she cried. "It's splendid! Fine! I
don't want anything, Prince."

"Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters..." replied
Prince Vasili.

But the princess did not listen to him.

"Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could expect
nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and ingratitude--the
blackest ingratitude--in this house..."

"Do you or do you not know where that will is?" insisted Prince Vasili,
his cheeks twitching more than ever.

"Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and
sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has
been intriguing!"

The princess wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand. She
had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole human race.
She gave her companion an angry glance.

"There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it was
all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was afterwards
forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to ease his
last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and not to let
him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who..."

"Who sacrificed everything for him," chimed in the princess, who would
again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, "though he
never could appreciate it. No, mon cousin," she added with a sigh, "I
shall always remember that in this world one must expect no reward, that
in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this world one has
to be cunning and cruel."

"Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart."

"No, I have a wicked heart."

"I know your heart," repeated the prince. "I value your friendship and
wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don't upset yourself, and let
us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or be it but an
hour.... Tell me all you know about the will, and above all where it is.
You must know. We will take it at once and show it to the count. He has,
no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it. You understand that
my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his wishes; that is my
only reason for being here. I came simply to help him and you."

"Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing--I know!" cried the
princess.

"That's not the point, my dear."

"It's that protege of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskaya, that Anna
Mikhaylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the infamous, vile
woman!"

"Do not let us lose any time..."

"Ah, don't talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here and told
the count such vile, disgraceful things about us, especially about
Sophie--I can't repeat them--that it made the count quite ill and he
would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was then he wrote this
vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was invalid."

"We've got to it at last--why did you not tell me about it sooner?"

"It's in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow," said the
princess, ignoring his question. "Now I know! Yes; if I have a sin, a
great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!" almost shrieked the
princess, now quite changed. "And what does she come worming herself in
here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind. The time will come!"




CHAPTER XXII

While these conversations were going on in the reception room and the
princess' room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent for) and
Anna Mikhaylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him) was driving
into the court of Count Bezukhov's house. As the wheels rolled softly
over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna, having turned with
words of comfort to her companion, realized that he was asleep in his
corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre followed Anna
Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only then began to think of the
interview with his dying father which awaited him. He noticed that they
had not come to the front entrance but to the back door. While he was
getting down from the carriage steps two men, who looked like
tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and hid in the shadow of
the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed several other men of the
same kind hiding in the shadow of the house on both sides. But neither
Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the coachman, who could not help
seeing these people, took any notice of them. "It seems to be all
right," Pierre concluded, and followed Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly
ascended the narrow dimly lit stone staircase, calling to Pierre, who
was lagging behind, to follow. Though he did not see why it was
necessary for him to go to the count at all, still less why he had to go
by the back stairs, yet judging by Anna Mikhaylovna's air of assurance
and haste, Pierre concluded that it was all absolutely necessary.
Halfway up the stairs they were almost knocked over by some men who,
carrying pails, came running downstairs, their boots clattering. These
men pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass
and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there.

"Is this the way to the princesses' apartments?" asked Anna Mikhaylovna
of one of them.

"Yes," replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were now
permissible; "the door to the left, ma'am."

"Perhaps the count did not ask for me," said Pierre when he reached the
landing. "I'd better go to my own room."

Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come up.

"Ah, my friend!" she said, touching his arm as she had done her son's
when speaking to him that afternoon, "believe me I suffer no less than
you do, but be a man!"

"But really, hadn't I better go away?" he asked, looking kindly at her
over his spectacles.

"Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done you.
Think that he is your father... perhaps in the agony of death." She
sighed. "I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust yourself to
me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests."

Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this had
to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikhaylovna who was
already opening a door.

This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the
princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been
in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of
these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past
with a decanter on a tray as "my dear" and "my sweet," asked about the
princess' health and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The first
door on the left led into the princesses' apartments. The maid with the
decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything in the house
was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna in
passing instinctively glanced into the room, where Prince Vasili and the
eldest princess were sitting close together talking. Seeing them pass,
Prince Vasili drew back with obvious impatience, while the princess
jumped up and with a gesture of desperation slammed the door with all
her might.

This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear depicted on
Prince Vasili's face so out of keeping with his dignity that Pierre
stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his guide. Anna
Mikhaylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly and sighed, as
if to say that this was no more than she had expected.

"Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests," said she in
reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.

Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what
"watching over his interests" meant, but he decided that all these
things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly lit
room adjoining the count's reception room. It was one of those sumptuous
but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front approach, but
even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and water had been
spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a censer and by a
servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them. They went into
the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian windows opening
into the conservatory, with its large bust and full length portrait of
Catherine the Great. The same people were still sitting here in almost
the same positions as before, whispering to one another. All became
silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn Anna Mikhaylovna as she
entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre who, hanging his head,
meekly followed her.

Anna Mikhaylovna's face expressed a consciousness that the decisive
moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg lady she now,
keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even more boldly than
that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her the person the
dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured. Casting a rapid
glance at all those in the room and noticing the count's confessor
there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble, not exactly bowing yet
seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and respectfully received the blessing
first of one and then of another priest.

"God be thanked that you are in time," said she to one of the priests;
"all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man is the
count's son," she added more softly. "What a terrible moment!"

Having said this she went up to the doctor.

"Dear doctor," said she, "this young man is the count's son. Is there
any hope?"

The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his
shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the same movement raised her
shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved away
from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful and
tenderly sad voice, she said:

"Trust in His mercy!" and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit and
wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone was
watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind it.

Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly, moved
toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikhaylovna had
disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned to him
with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that they
whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him with a kind
of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had never before
received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had been talking to
the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an aide-de-camp picked up
and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the doctors became respectfully
silent as he passed by, and moved to make way for him. At first Pierre
wished to take another seat so as not to trouble the lady, and also to
pick up the glove himself and to pass round the doctors who were not
even in his way; but all at once he felt that this would not do, and
that tonight he was a person obliged to perform some sort of awful rite
which everyone expected of him, and that he was therefore bound to
accept their services. He took the glove in silence from the aide-de-
camp, and sat down in the lady's chair, placing his huge hands
symmetrically on his knees in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue,
and decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in
order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on his
own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the will of
those who were guiding him.

Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with head erect
majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three
stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the morning;
his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and noticed
Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never used to do),
and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain whether it was firmly
fixed on.

"Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is well!"
and he turned to go.

But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: "How is..." and hesitated, not
knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man "the count,"
yet ashamed to call him "father."

"He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my friend..."

Pierre's mind was in such a confused state that the word "stroke"
suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasili in
perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of
illness. Prince Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went
through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his
whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him, and
the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the door.
Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about, and at
last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale but resolute
in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly on the arm
said:

"The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be administered.
Come."

Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed
that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all
followed him in, as if there were now no further need for permission to
enter that room.




CHAPTER XXIII

Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its
walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the
columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side and on
the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly illuminated
with red light like a Russian church during evening service. Under the
gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in that chair on snowy-
white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed, Pierre saw--covered to
the waist by a bright green quilt--the familiar, majestic figure of his
father, Count Bezukhov, with that gray mane of hair above his broad
forehead which reminded one of a lion, and the deep characteristically
noble wrinkles of his handsome, ruddy face. He lay just under the icons;
his large thick hands outside the quilt. Into the right hand, which was
lying palm downwards, a wax taper had been thrust between forefinger and
thumb, and an old servant, bending over from behind the chair, held it
in position. By the chair stood the priests, their long hair falling
over their magnificent glittering vestments, with lighted tapers in
their hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the service. A little behind
them stood the two younger princesses holding handkerchiefs to their
eyes, and just in front of them their eldest sister, Catiche, with a
vicious and determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though
declaring to all that she could not answer for herself should she glance
round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a meek, sorrowful, and all-forgiving
expression on her face, stood by the door near the strange lady. Prince
Vasili in front of the door, near the invalid chair, a wax taper in his
left hand, was leaning his left arm on the carved back of a velvet chair
he had turned round for the purpose, and was crossing himself with his
right hand, turning his eyes upward each time he touched his forehead.
His face wore a calm look of piety and resignation to the will of God.
"If you do not understand these sentiments," he seemed to be saying, "so
much the worse for you!"

Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants; the
men and women had separated as in church. All were silently crossing
themselves, and the reading of the church service, the subdued chanting
of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and the shuffling of
feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna Mikhaylovna, with an
air of importance that showed that she felt she quite knew what she was
about, went across the room to where Pierre was standing and gave him a
taper. He lit it and, distracted by observing those around him, began
crossing himself with the hand that held the taper.

Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the mole,
watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and remained
with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing Pierre she again
began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look at him without
laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be out of
temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In the midst
of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased, they whispered
to one another, and the old servant who was holding the count's hand got
up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna stepped forward
and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to Lorrain from behind her
back. The French doctor held no taper; he was leaning against one of the
columns in a respectful attitude implying that he, a foreigner, in spite
of all differences of faith, understood the full importance of the rite
now being performed and even approved of it. He now approached the sick
man with the noiseless step of one in full vigor of life, with his
delicate white fingers raised from the green quilt the hand that was
free, and turning sideways felt the pulse and reflected a moment. The
sick man was given something to drink, there was a stir around him, then
the people resumed their places and the service continued. During this
interval Pierre noticed that Prince Vasili left the chair on which he
had been leaning, and--with an air which intimated that he knew what he
was about and if others did not understand him it was so much the worse
for them--did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him, joined the
eldest princess, and moved with her to the side of the room where stood
the high bedstead with its silken hangings. On leaving the bed both
Prince Vasili and the princess passed out by a back door, but returned
to their places one after the other before the service was concluded.
Pierre paid no more attention to this occurrence than to the rest of
what went on, having made up his mind once for all that what he saw
happening around him that evening was in some way essential.

The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest was
heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received the
sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as before. Around
him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and whispers, among which
Anna Mikhaylovna's was the most distinct.

Pierre heard her say:

"Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be impossible..."

The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and servants that
Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face with its gray mane--
which, though he saw other faces as well, he had not lost sight of for a
single moment during the whole service. He judged by the cautious
movements of those who crowded round the invalid chair that they had
lifted the dying man and were moving him.

"Catch hold of my arm or you'll drop him!" he heard one of the servants
say in a frightened whisper. "Catch hold from underneath. Here!"
exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the bearers and
the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the weight they
were carrying were too much for them.

As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna, passed the young man he
caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the dying
man's high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders, raised by
those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his gray, curly,
leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow and cheekbones,
its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic expression, was not
disfigured by the approach of death. It was the same as Pierre
remembered it three months before, when the count had sent him to
Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly with the uneven
movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze fixed itself upon
nothing.

After a few minutes' bustle beside the high bedstead, those who had
carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikhaylovna touched Pierre's hand
and said, "Come." Pierre went with her to the bed on which the sick man
had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the ceremony just
completed. He lay with his head propped high on the pillows. His hands
were symmetrically placed on the green silk quilt, the palms downward.
When Pierre came up the count was gazing straight at him, but with a
look the significance of which could not be understood by mortal man.
Either this look meant nothing but that as long as one has eyes they
must look somewhere, or it meant too much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing
what to do, and glanced inquiringly at his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna made
a hurried sign with her eyes, glancing at the sick man's hand and moving
her lips as if to send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck
so as not to touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his
lips to the large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a single
muscle of the count's face stirred. Once more Pierre looked
questioningly at Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he was to do next. Anna
Mikhaylovna with her eyes indicated a chair that stood beside the bed.
Pierre obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were doing right. Anna
Mikhaylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naively
symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that his
stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing his utmost to look
as small as possible. He looked at the count, who still gazed at the
spot where Pierre's face had been before he sat down. Anna Mikhaylovna
indicated by her attitude her consciousness of the pathetic importance
of these last moments of meeting between the father and son. This lasted
about two minutes, which to Pierre seemed an hour. Suddenly the broad
muscles and lines of the count's face began to twitch. The twitching
increased, the handsome mouth was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre
realize how near death his father was), and from that distorted mouth
issued an indistinct, hoarse sound. Anna Mikhaylovna looked attentively
at the sick man's eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed
first to Pierre, then to some drink, then named Prince Vasili in an
inquiring whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the
sick man showed impatience. He made an effort to look at the servant who
stood constantly at the head of the bed.

"Wants to turn on the other side," whispered the servant, and got up to
turn the count's heavy body toward the wall.

Pierre rose to help him.

While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back
helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward. Whether he
noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded that lifeless arm,
or whether some other thought flitted across his dying brain, at any
rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre's terror-stricken face,
and again at the arm, and on his face a feeble, piteous smile appeared,
quite out of keeping with his features, that seemed to deride his own
helplessness. At sight of this smile Pierre felt an unexpected quivering
in his breast and a tickling in his nose, and tears dimmed his eyes. The
sick man was turned on to his side with his face to the wall. He sighed.

"He is dozing," said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that one of the
princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. "Let us go."

Pierre went out.




CHAPTER XXIV

There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasili and the
eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of Catherine the
Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre and his companion
they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the princess hide
something as she whispered:

"I can't bear the sight of that woman."

"Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room," said Prince
Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. "Go and take something, my poor Anna
Mikhaylovna, or you will not hold out."

To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze
below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikhaylovna into the small
drawing room.

"There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup of this
delicious Russian tea," Lorrain was saying with an air of restrained
animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese handleless cup
before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid in the small
circular room. Around the table all who were at Count Bezukhov's house
that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre well remembered
this small circular drawing room with its mirrors and little tables.
During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not know how to dance,
had liked sitting in this room to watch the ladies who, as they passed
through in their ball dresses with diamonds and pearls on their bare
shoulders, looked at themselves in the brilliantly lighted mirrors which
repeated their reflections several times. Now this same room was dimly
lighted by two candles. On one small table tea things and supper dishes
stood in disorder, and in the middle of the night a motley throng of
people sat there, not merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and
betraying by every word and movement that they none of them forgot what
was happening and what was about to happen in the bedroom. Pierre did
not eat anything though he would very much have liked to. He looked
inquiringly at his monitress and saw that she was again going on tiptoe
to the reception room where they had left Prince Vasili and the eldest
princess. Pierre concluded that this also was essential, and after a
short interval followed her. Anna Mikhaylovna was standing beside the
princess, and they were both speaking in excited whispers.

"Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not
necessary," said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the same
state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.

"But, my dear princess," answered Anna Mikhaylovna blandly but
impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other
from passing, "won't this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment when he
needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul is already
prepared..."

Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar attitude, with
one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which were so flabby
that they looked heavier below, were twitching violently; but he wore
the air of a man little concerned in what the two ladies were saying.

"Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases. You know
how fond the count is of her."

"I don't even know what is in this paper," said the younger of the two
ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and pointing to an inlaid portfolio she
held in her hand. "All I know is that his real will is in his writing
table, and this is a paper he has forgotten...."

She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter sprang so as to bar
her path.

"I know, my dear, kind princess," said Anna Mikhaylovna, seizing the
portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily. "Dear
princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je vous en
conjure..."

The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the
portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if the
princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna
Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost none
of its honeyed firmness and softness.

"Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place in a
family consultation; is it not so, Prince?"

"Why don't you speak, cousin?" suddenly shrieked the princess so loud
that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled. "Why do you
remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to interfere, making
a scene on the very threshold of a dying man's room? Intriguer!" she
hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the portfolio.

But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold on the
portfolio, and changed her grip.

Prince Vasili rose. "Oh!" said he with reproach and surprise, "this is
absurd! Come, let go I tell you."

The princess let go.

"And you too!"

But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him.

"Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will go
and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?"

"But, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna, "after such a solemn sacrament,
allow him a moment's peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your opinion," said
she, turning to the young man who, having come quite close, was gazing
with astonishment at the angry face of the princess which had lost all
dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of Prince Vasili.

"Remember that you will answer for the consequences," said Prince Vasili
severely. "You don't know what you are doing."

"Vile woman!" shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna
Mikhaylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.

Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.

At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so long and
which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and banged
against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed out
wringing her hands.

"What are you doing!" she cried vehemently. "He is dying and you leave
me alone with him!"

Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna, stooping, quickly
caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom. The eldest
princess and Prince Vasili, recovering themselves, followed her. A few
minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard face, again
biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression showed an
irrepressible hatred.

"Yes, now you may be glad!" said she; "this is what you have been
waiting for." And bursting into tears she hid her face in her
handkerchief and rushed from the room.

Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre was
sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand. Pierre
noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as if in an
ague.

"Ah, my friend!" said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there was in
his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in it
before. "How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I am
near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all! Death is
awful..." and he burst into tears.

Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow, quiet
steps.

"Pierre!" she said.

Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his
forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:

"He is no more...."

Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.

"Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as
tears."

She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one could
see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned he was
fast asleep with his head on his arm.

In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:

"Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you. But
God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in command of
an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I know you well
enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but it imposes
duties on you, and you must be a man."

Pierre was silent.

"Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not been
there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle promised
me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But he had no
time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your father's wish?"

Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in
silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna
Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs' and went to bed. On waking in the
morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details of
Count Bezukhov's death. She said the count had died as she would herself
wish to die, that his end was not only touching but edifying. As to the
last meeting between father and son, it was so touching that she could
not think of it without tears, and did not know which had behaved better
during those awful moments--the father who so remembered everything and
everybody at last and had spoken such pathetic words to the son, or
Pierre, whom it had been pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief,
though he tried hard to hide it in order not to sadden his dying father.
"It is painful, but it does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such
men as the old count and his worthy son," said she. Of the behavior of
the eldest princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in
whispers and as a great secret.




CHAPTER XXV

At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski's estate, the
arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but this
expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the old
prince's household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich
(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor
Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously
with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that
anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from Moscow to
Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He used to say
that there are only two sources of human vice--idleness and
superstition, and only two virtues--activity and intelligence. He
himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these two
cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry till
she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time was
occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving
problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working
in the garden, or superintending the building that was always going on
at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition facilitating activity,
regularity in his household was carried to the highest point of
exactitude. He always came to table under precisely the same conditions,
and not only at the same hour but at the same minute. With those about
him, from his daughter to his serfs, the prince was sharp and invariably
exacting, so that without being a hardhearted man he inspired such fear
and respect as few hardhearted men would have aroused. Although he was
in retirement and had now no influence in political affairs, every high
official appointed to the province in which the prince's estate lay
considered it his duty to visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber
just as the architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince
appeared punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this
antechamber experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when
the enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather
small old man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray
eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his shrewd,
youthfully glittering eyes.

On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive, Princess
Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed for the
morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and repeating a
silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and every morning
prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.

An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose
quietly and said in a whisper: "Please walk in."

Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess timidly
opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused at the
entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after glancing round
continued his work.

The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The
large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted
bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while
standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with
tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around--all indicated
continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of the small foot
shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and the firm pressure of
the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince still possessed the
tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age. After a few more turns
of the lathe he removed his foot from the pedal, wiped his chisel,
dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching
the table, summoned his daughter. He never gave his children a blessing,
so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding
her tenderly and attentively, said severely:

"Quite well? All right then, sit down." He took the exercise book
containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a chair
with his foot.

"For tomorrow!" said he, quickly finding the page and making a scratch
from one paragraph to another with his hard nail.

The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.

"Wait a bit, here's a letter for you," said the old man suddenly, taking
a letter addressed in a woman's hand from a bag hanging above the table,
onto which he threw it.

At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the
princess' face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it.

"From Heloise?" asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his still
sound, yellowish teeth.

"Yes, it's from Julie," replied the princess with a timid glance and a
timid smile.

"I'll let two more letters pass, but the third I'll read," said the
prince sternly; "I'm afraid you write much nonsense. I'll read the
third!"

"Read this if you like, Father," said the princess, blushing still more
and holding out the letter.

"The third, I said the third!" cried the prince abruptly, pushing the
letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward him the
exercise book containing geometrical figures.

"Well, madam," he began, stooping over the book close to his daughter
and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat, so that
she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of old age
and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now, madam, these triangles
are equal; please note that the angle ABC..."

The princess looked in a scared way at her father's eyes glittering
close to her; the red patches on her face came and went, and it was
plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened that her fear
would prevent her understanding any of her father's further
explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was the teacher's
fault or the pupil's, this same thing happened every day: the princess'
eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear anything, but was
only conscious of her stern father's withered face close to her, of his
breath and the smell of him, and could think only of how to get away
quickly to her own room to make out the problem in peace. The old man
was beside himself: moved the chair on which he was sitting noisily
backward and forward, made efforts to control himself and not become
vehement, but almost always did become vehement, scolded, and sometimes
flung the exercise book away.

The princess gave a wrong answer.

"Well now, isn't she a fool!" shouted the prince, pushing the book aside
and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up and down,
lightly touched his daughter's hair and sat down again.

He drew up his chair, and continued to explain.

"This won't do, Princess; it won't do," said he, when Princess Mary,
having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day's lesson,
was about to leave: "Mathematics are most important, madam! I don't want
to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and you'll like it,"
and he patted her cheek. "It will drive all the nonsense out of your
head."

She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an uncut
book from the high desk.

"Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Heloise has sent
you. Religious! I don't interfere with anyone's belief... I have looked
at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go."

He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.

Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared expression that
rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly face yet plainer. She
sat down at her writing table, on which stood miniature portraits and
which was littered with books and papers. The princess was as untidy as
her father was tidy. She put down the geometry book and eagerly broke
the seal of her letter. It was from her most intimate friend from
childhood; that same Julie Karagina who had been at the Rostovs' name-
day party.

Julie wrote in French:

Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is
separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my happiness
are wrapped up in you, and that in spite of the distance separating us
our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart rebels against
fate and in spite of the pleasures and distractions around me I cannot
overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in my heart ever since we
parted. Why are we not together as we were last summer, in your big
study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa? Why cannot I now, as
three months ago, draw fresh moral strength from your look, so gentle,
calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so well and seem to see before me
as I write?

Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the mirror
which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful figure and
thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular hopelessness
at her reflection in the glass. "She flatters me," thought the princess,
turning away and continuing to read. But Julie did not flatter her
friend, the princess' eyes--large, deep and luminous (it seemed as if at
times there radiated from them shafts of warm light)--were so beautiful
that very often in spite of the plainness of her face they gave her an
attraction more powerful than that of beauty. But the princess never saw
the beautiful expression of her own eyes--the look they had when she was
not thinking of herself. As with everyone, her face assumed a forced
unnatural expression as soon as she looked in a glass. She went on
reading:

All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is already
abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on their march to
the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg and it is thought
intends to expose his precious person to the chances of war. God grant
that the Corsican monster who is destroying the peace of Europe may be
overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the Almighty, in His
goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing of my brothers, this
war has deprived me of one of the associations nearest my heart. I mean
young Nicholas Rostov, who with his enthusiasm could not bear to remain
inactive and has left the university to join the army. I will confess to
you, dear Mary, that in spite of his extreme youth his departure for the
army was a great grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you
last summer, is so noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which
one seldom finds nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly,
he is so frank and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that my
relations with him, transient as they were, have been one of the
sweetest comforts to my poor heart, which has already suffered so much.
Someday I will tell you about our parting and all that was said then.
That is still too fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know
these poignant joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are
generally the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too
young ever to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship,
this poetic and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of
this! The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of
old Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses
have received very little, Prince Vasili nothing, and it is Monsieur
Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been
recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezukhov and possessor
of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince Vasili played
a very despicable part in this affair and that he returned to Petersburg
quite crestfallen.

I confess I understand very little about all these matters of wills and
inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom we all used
to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count Bezukhov and the
owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I am much amused to
watch the change in the tone and manners of the mammas burdened by
marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies themselves, toward him,
though, between you and me, he always seemed to me a poor sort of
fellow. As for the past two years people have amused themselves by
finding husbands for me (most of whom I don't even know), the
matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as the future Countess
Bezukhova. But you will understand that I have no desire for the post. A
propos of marriages: do you know that a while ago that universal auntie
Anna Mikhaylovna told me, under the seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of
marriage for you. It is neither more nor less than with Prince Vasili's
son Anatole, whom they wish to reform by marrying him to someone rich
and distinguee, and it is on you that his relations' choice has fallen.
I don't know what you will think of it, but I consider it my duty to let
you know of it. He is said to be very handsome and a terrible
scapegrace. That is all I have been able to find out about him.

But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper, and
Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apraksins'. Read the
mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here. Though
there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to grasp, it
is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul. Adieu! Give my
respects to monsieur your father and my compliments to Mademoiselle
Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.

JULIE

P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife.

The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her luminous
eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then she suddenly
rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She took a sheet of
paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is the reply she wrote,
also in French:

Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great
delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which
you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual effect
on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I say, if I
dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me? Ah, if we
had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why do you
suppose that I should look severely on your affection for that young
man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I understand such
feelings in others, and if never having felt them I cannot approve of
them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me that Christian
love, love of one's neighbor, love of one's enemy, is worthier, sweeter,
and better than the feelings which the beautiful eyes of a young man can
inspire in a romantic and loving young girl like yourself.

The news of Count Bezukhov's death reached us before your letter and my
father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last
representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own turn
now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as late as
possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!

I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He always
seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the quality I value
most in people. As to his inheritance and the part played by Prince
Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear friend, our divine
Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of
a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, are terribly
true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still more sorry for Pierre. So young,
and burdened with such riches--to what temptations he will be exposed!
If I were asked what I desire most on earth, it would be to be poorer
than the poorest beggar. A thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume
you have sent me and which has such success in Moscow. Yet since you
tell me that among some good things it contains others which our weak
human understanding cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend
time in reading what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit.
I never could understand the fondness some people have for confusing
their minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their
doubts and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration
quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the Epistles
and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they contain;
for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the terrible and
holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh which forms an
impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us rather confine
ourselves to studying those sublime rules which our divine Saviour has
left for our guidance here below. Let us try to conform to them and
follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less we let our feeble
human minds roam, the better we shall please God, who rejects all
knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we seek to fathom
what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner will He
vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.

My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me that he
has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince Vasili. In
regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you, dear sweet
friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution to which we must
conform. However painful it may be to me, should the Almighty lay the
duties of wife and mother upon me I shall try to perform them as
faithfully as I can, without disquieting myself by examining my feelings
toward him whom He may give me for husband.

I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy arrival at
Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief one,
however, for he will leave us again to take part in this unhappy war
into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only where you
are--at the heart of affairs and of the world--is the talk all of war,
even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature--which townsfolk
consider characteristic of the country--rumors of war are heard and
painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and
countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day before
yesterday during my daily walk through the village I witnessed a
heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts enrolled from our
people and starting to join the army. You should have seen the state of
the mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and should
have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws
of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries--
and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one
another.

Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most Holy
Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!

MARY

"Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already dispatched
mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling Mademoiselle
Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with guttural r's.
She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous, mournful, and gloomy world a
quite different atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and self-satisfied.

"Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her voice and evidently
listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with exaggerated
grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael Ivanovich. He is in
a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared."

"Ah, dear friend," replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to
warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge him
and would not have others do so."

The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five minutes
late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the sitting
room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o'clock, as the day
was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played the
clavichord.




CHAPTER XXVI

The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the snoring of
the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side of the house
through the closed doors came the sound of difficult passages--twenty
times repeated--of a sonata by Dussek.

Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to the
porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little wife to
alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old Tikhon, wearing
a wig, put his head out of the door of the antechamber, reported in a
whisper that the prince was sleeping, and hastily closed the door.
Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival nor any other unusual event
must be allowed to disturb the appointed order of the day. Prince Andrew
apparently knew this as well as Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to
ascertain whether his father's habits had changed since he was at home
last, and, having assured himself that they had not, he turned to his
wife.

"He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary's room," he
said.

The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes and
her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak just as
merrily and prettily as ever.

"Why, this is a palace!" she said to her husband, looking around with
the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball. "Let's
come, quick, quick!" And with a glance round, she smiled at Tikhon, at
her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.

"Is that Mary practicing? Let's go quietly and take her by surprise."

Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.

"You've grown older, Tikhon," he said in passing to the old man, who
kissed his hand.

Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord
came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.

"Ah! what joy for the princess!" exclaimed she: "At last! I must let her
know."

"No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne," said the little
princess, kissing her. "I know you already through my sister-in-law's
friendship for you. She was not expecting us?"

They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the sound
of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped and
made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.

The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the
middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary's heavy tread and the sound
of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who had only
met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in each other's
arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they happened to
touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her hand to her
heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready to cry or to
laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as lovers of
music do when they hear a false note. The two women let go of one
another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each other's
hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and again began kissing each
other on the face, and then to Prince Andrew's surprise both began to
cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle Bourienne also began to cry. Prince
Andrew evidently felt ill at ease, but to the two women it seemed quite
natural that they should cry, and apparently it never entered their
heads that it could have been otherwise at this meeting.

"Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!" they suddenly exclaimed, and then laughed.
"I dreamed last night..."--"You were not expecting us?..." "Ah! Mary,
you have got thinner?..." "And you have grown stouter!..."

"I knew the princess at once," put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.

"And I had no idea!..." exclaimed Princess Mary. "Ah, Andrew, I did not
see you."

Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another, and he
told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess Mary had
turned toward her brother, and through her tears the loving, warm,
gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment,
rested on Prince Andrew's face.

The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip
continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary and
drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of
glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had
had on the Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in her
condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had left
all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would have
to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that Kitty
Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor for Mary,
a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess Mary was
still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful eyes were full
of love and sadness. It was plain that she was following a train of
thought independent of her sister-in-law's words. In the midst of a
description of the last Petersburg fete she addressed her brother:

"So you are really going to the war, Andrew?" she said sighing.

Lise sighed too.

"Yes, and even tomorrow," replied her brother.

"He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had
promotion..."

Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of
thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her figure.

"Is it certain?" she said.

The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said: "Yes,
quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful..."

Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law's and
unexpectedly again began to cry.

"She needs rest," said Prince Andrew with a frown. "Don't you, Lise?
Take her to your room and I'll go to Father. How is he? Just the same?"

"Yes, just the same. Though I don't know what your opinion will be,"
answered the princess joyfully.

"And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the
lathe?" asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which
showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he was
aware of his weaknesses.

"The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and my
geometry lessons," said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her lessons in
geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.

When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the old
prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the young prince to his father.
The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor of his
son's arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments while he
dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in old-fashioned
style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and when Prince Andrew
entered his father's dressing room (not with the contemptuous look and
manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the animated face with which
he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting on a large leather-covered
chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head to Tikhon.

"Ah! here's the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?" said the old
man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tikhon was
holding fast to plait, would allow.

"You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like this
he'll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?" And he held out
his cheek.

The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He used
to say that a nap "after dinner was silver--before dinner, golden.") He
cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his thick, bushy
eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father on the spot
indicated to him. He made no reply on his father's favorite topic--
making fun of the military men of the day, and more particularly of
Bonaparte.

"Yes, Father, I have come to you and brought my wife who is pregnant,"
said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his father's face with
an eager and respectful look. "How is your health?"

"Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy from
morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well."

"Thank God," said his son smiling.

"God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on," he continued, returning to
his hobby; "tell me how the Germans have taught you to fight Bonaparte
by this new science you call 'strategy.'"

Prince Andrew smiled.

"Give me time to collect my wits, Father," said he, with a smile that
showed that his father's foibles did not prevent his son from loving and
honoring him. "Why, I have not yet had time to settle down!"

"Nonsense, nonsense!" cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to see
whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand. "The house
for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there and show her
over, and they'll talk nineteen to the dozen. That's their woman's way!
I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About Mikhelson's army I
understand--Tolstoy's too... a simultaneous expedition.... But what's
the southern army to do? Prussia is neutral... I know that. What about
Austria?" said he, rising from his chair and pacing up and down the room
followed by Tikhon, who ran after him, handing him different articles of
clothing. "What of Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?"

Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began--at first
reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from habit
changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on--to explain
the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained how an army,
ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as to bring her out
of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part of that army was
to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two hundred and twenty
thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand Russians, were to operate in
Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty thousand Russians and as many English
were to land at Naples, and how a total force of five hundred thousand
men was to attack the French from different sides. The old prince did
not evince the least interest during this explanation, but as if he were
not listening to it continued to dress while walking about, and three
times unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: "The
white one, the white one!"

This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he wanted.
Another time he interrupted, saying:

"And will she soon be confined?" and shaking his head reproachfully
said: "That's bad! Go on, go on."

The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his
description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old age:
"Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra." *


* "Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he'll return."

His son only smiled.

"I don't say it's a plan I approve of," said the son; "I am only telling
you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now, not worse than
this one."

"Well, you've told me nothing new," and the old man repeated,
meditatively and rapidly:

"Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room."




CHAPTER XXVII

At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the
dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle
Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who by
a strange caprice of his employer's was admitted to table though the
position of that insignificant individual was such as could certainly
not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who generally kept
very strictly to social distinctions and rarely admitted even important
government officials to his table, had unexpectedly selected Michael
Ivanovich (who always went into a corner to blow his nose on his checked
handkerchief) to illustrate the theory that all men are equals, and had
more than once impressed on his daughter that Michael Ivanovich was "not
a whit worse than you or I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to the
taciturn Michael Ivanovich more often than to anyone else.

In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was
exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen--one
behind each chair--stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head
butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making
signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the door
by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at a large
gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of the Princes
Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a badly painted
portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the estate)
of a ruling prince, in a crown--an alleged descendant of Rurik and
ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew, looking again at that
genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a man laughs who looks at
a portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.

"How thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who had
come up to him.

Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not understand
what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired her with
reverence and was beyond question.

"Everyone has his Achilles' heel," continued Prince Andrew. "Fancy, with
his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!"

Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother's
criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were heard
coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily as was
his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of his manners
with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the great clock
struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from the drawing
room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes from under
their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and rested on
the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar enters, the
sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired in all around
him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly on the back of
her neck.

"I'm glad, glad, to see you," he said, looking attentively into her
eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. "Sit down, sit
down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!"

He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman moved
the chair for her.

"Ho, ho!" said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded figure.
"You've been in a hurry. That's bad!"

He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips only
and not with his eyes.

"You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible," he said.

The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She was
silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father, and
she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual acquaintances, and
she became still more animated and chattered away giving him greetings
from various people and retelling the town gossip.

"Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has cried
her eyes out," she said, growing more and more lively.

As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more sternly,
and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had formed a
definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael Ivanovich.

"Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time of it.
Prince Andrew" (he always spoke thus of his son) "has been telling me
what forces are being collected against him! While you and I never
thought much of him."

Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when "you and I" had said such
things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as a peg on
which to hang the prince's favorite topic, he looked inquiringly at the
young prince, wondering what would follow.

"He is a great tactician!" said the prince to his son, pointing to the
architect.

And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and the
generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced not
only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know the A
B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant
little Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any
Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced that
there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war, but only
a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were playing,
pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily bore with his
father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and listened to him
with evident pleasure.

"The past always seems good," said he, "but did not Suvorov himself fall
into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not know how to
escape?"

"Who told you that? Who?" cried the prince. "Suvorov!" And he jerked
away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught. "Suvorov!... Consider,
Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would
have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled the
devil himself! When you get there you'll find out what those Hofs-
kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn't manage them so what chance has
Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy," he continued, "you and your generals
won't get on against Buonaparte; you'll have to call in the French, so
that birds of a feather may fight together. The German, Pahlen, has been
sent to New York in America, to fetch the Frenchman, Moreau," he said,
alluding to the invitation made that year to Moreau to enter the Russian
service.... "Wonderful!... Were the Potemkins, Suvorovs, and Orlovs
Germans? No, lad, either you fellows have all lost your wits, or I have
outlived mine. May God help you, but we'll see what will happen.
Buonaparte has become a great commander among them! Hm!..."

"I don't at all say that all the plans are good," said Prince Andrew, "I
am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You may laugh as much as
you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great general!"

"Michael Ivanovich!" cried the old prince to the architect who, busy
with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you
Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says the same thing."

"To be sure, your excellency," replied the architect.

The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.

"Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got
splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only
idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began everybody
has beaten the Germans. They beat no one--except one another. He made
his reputation fighting them."

And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to
him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His son
made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were
presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion. He
listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how this
old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could know and
discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European military and
political events.

"You think I'm an old man and don't understand the present state of
affairs?" concluded his father. "But it troubles me. I don't sleep at
night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours shown his
skill?" he concluded.

"That would take too long to tell," answered the son.

"Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here's
another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours," he exclaimed in
excellent French.

"You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!"

"Dieu sait quand reviendra..." hummed the prince out of tune and, with a
laugh still more so, he quitted the table.

The little princess during the whole discussion and the rest of the
dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at her father-in-
law and now at Princess Mary. When they left the table she took her
sister-in-law's arm and drew her into another room.

"What a clever man your father is," said she; "perhaps that is why I am
afraid of him."

"Oh, he is so kind!" answered Princess Mary.




CHAPTER XXVIII

Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not altering
his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little princess was in
her sister-in-law's room. Prince Andrew in a traveling coat without
epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms assigned to him.
After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing the trunks put in, he
ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those things he always kept
with him remained in his room; a small box, a large canteen fitted with
silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a saber--a present from his father
who had brought it from the siege of Ochakov. All these traveling
effects of Prince Andrew's were in very good order: new, clean, and in
cloth covers carefully tied with tapes.

When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men capable
of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At such moments
one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince Andrew's face
looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind him he paced
briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking straight before him
and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear going to the war, or was
he sad at leaving his wife?--perhaps both, but evidently he did not wish
to be seen in that mood, for hearing footsteps in the passage he
hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped at a table as if tying the cover
of the small box, and assumed his usual tranquil and impenetrable
expression. It was the heavy tread of Princess Mary that he heard.

"I hear you have given orders to harness," she cried, panting (she had
apparently been running), "and I did so wish to have another talk with
you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You are not angry
with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha," she added, as if to
explain such a question.

She smiled as she uttered his pet name, "Andrusha." It was obviously
strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be Andrusha-
-the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in childhood.

"And where is Lise?" he asked, answering her question only by a smile.

"She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room. Oh,
Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have," said she, sitting down on
the sofa, facing her brother. "She is quite a child: such a dear, merry
child. I have grown so fond of her."

Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical and
contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.

"One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from them,
Andrew? Don't forget that she has grown up and been educated in society,
and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter into
everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. * Think
what it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to, to
be parted from her husband and be left alone in the country, in her
condition! It's very hard."


* To understand all is to forgive all.

Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at those we
think we thoroughly understand.

"You live in the country and don't think the life terrible," he replied.

"I... that's different. Why speak of me? I don't want any other life,
and can't, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young society
woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her life, all
alone--for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what poor
resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best society.
There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne...."

"I don't like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all," said Prince Andrew.

"No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she's much to be pitied.
She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don't need her, and she's
even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am even more so.
I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She and Michael
Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle and kind,
because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne says: 'We don't
love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we
have done them.' Father took her when she was homeless after losing her
own father. She is very good-natured, and my father likes her way of
reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads splendidly."

"To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father's character sometimes makes
things trying for you, doesn't it?" Prince Andrew asked suddenly.

Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question.

"For me? For me?... Trying for me!..." said she.

"He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he's getting very
trying," said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their father
in order to puzzle or test his sister.

"You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a kind of intellectual
pride," said the princess, following the train of her own thoughts
rather than the trend of the conversation--"and that's a great sin. How
can one judge Father? But even if one might, what feeling except
veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I am so contented
and happy with him. I only wish you were all as happy as I am."

Her brother shook his head incredulously.

"The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth,
Andrew... is Father's way of treating religious subjects. I don't
understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what is as
clear as day, and can go so far astray. That is the only thing that
makes me unhappy. But even in this I can see lately a shade of
improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was a
monk he received and had a long talk with."

"Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your powder,"
said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.

"Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear me. Andrew..."
she said timidly after a moment's silence, "I have a great favor to ask
of you."

"What is it, dear?"

"No--promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble and
is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise,
Andrusha!..." said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet
taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were the
subject of her request and must not be shown before the request was
granted.

She looked timidly at her brother.

"Even if it were a great deal of trouble..." answered Prince Andrew, as
if guessing what it was about.

"Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as you
please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father's father, our
grandfather, wore it in all his wars." (She still did not take out what
she was holding in her reticule.) "So you promise?"

"Of course. What is it?"

"Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will
never take it off. Do you promise?"

"If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won't break my neck... To
please you..." said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing the pained
expression his joke had brought to his sister's face, he repented and
added: "I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad."

"Against your will He will save and have mercy on you and bring you to
Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace," said she in a voice
trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before her
brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour in a gold
setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.

She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew.

"Please, Andrew, for my sake!..."

Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes lit up
the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her brother
would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew understood,
crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of tenderness, for
he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.

"Thank you, my dear." She kissed him on the forehead and sat down again
on the sofa. They were silent for a while.

"As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you always used
to be. Don't judge Lise harshly," she began. "She is so sweet, so good-
natured, and her position now is a very hard one."

"I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Masha, or blamed
her. Why do you say all this to me?"

Red patches appeared on Princess Mary's face and she was silent as if
she felt guilty.

"I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to. And I
am sorry for that," he went on.

The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried to
say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the little
princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her forebodings
about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had complained of her
fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After crying she had fallen
asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister.

"Know this, Masha: I can't reproach, have not reproached, and never
shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach myself with
anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in whatever
circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the truth... if
you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No! But why this
is so I don't know..."

As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed her
forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and
unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over
her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.

"Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or--go and wake and I'll come in
a moment. Petrushka!" he called to his valet: "Come here, take these
away. Put this on the seat and this to the right."

Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said:
"Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him to
give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have been
answered."

"Well, may be!" said Prince Andrew. "Go, Masha; I'll come immediately."

On the way to his sister's room, in the passage which connected one wing
with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne smiling
sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic and
artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.

"Oh! I thought you were in your room," she said, for some reason
blushing and dropping her eyes.

Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger suddenly
came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at her forehead
and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt that the
Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he reached his
sister's room his wife was already awake and her merry voice, hurrying
one word after another, came through the open door. She was speaking as
usual in French, and as if after long self-restraint she wished to make
up for lost time.

"No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false curls and her mouth
full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old age.... Ha, ha,
ha! Mary!"

This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same laugh Prince
Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of others some
five times. He entered the room softly. The little princess, plump and
rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work in her hands, talking
incessantly, repeating Petersburg reminiscences and even phrases. Prince
Andrew came up, stroked her hair, and asked if she felt rested after
their journey. She answered him and continued her chatter.

The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn
night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole.
Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense
house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The
domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to the
young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in the
reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess
Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been called to his
father's study as the latter wished to say good-by to him alone. All
were waiting for them to come out.

When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age
spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but his
son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round.

"Going?" And he went on writing.

"I've come to say good-by."

"Kiss me here," and he touched his cheek: "Thanks, thanks!"

"What do you thank me for?"

"For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman's apron strings. The
Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!" And he went on writing, so
that his quill spluttered and squeaked. "If you have anything to say,
say it. These two things can be done together," he added.

"About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your hands..."

"Why talk nonsense? Say what you want."

"When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an accoucheur.... Let
him be here...."

The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed his
stern eyes on his son.

"I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work," said
Prince Andrew, evidently confused. "I know that out of a million cases
only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been
telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened."

"Hm... Hm..." muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what he was
writing. "I'll do it."

He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to
laugh.

"It's a bad business, eh?"

"What is bad, Father?"

"The wife!" said the old prince, briefly and significantly.

"I don't understand!" said Prince Andrew.

"No, it can't be helped, lad," said the prince. "They're all like that;
one can't unmarry. Don't be afraid; I won't tell anyone, but you know it
yourself."

He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it, looked
straight into his son's face with keen eyes which seemed to see through
him, and again laughed his frigid laugh.

The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him. The
old man continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and throwing
down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed rapidity.

"What's to be done? She's pretty! I will do everything. Make your mind
easy," said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter.

Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his father
understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his son.

"Listen!" said he; "don't worry about your wife: what can be done shall
be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilarionovich. * I have
written that he should make use of you in proper places and not keep you
long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember and like him.
Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all right--serve him.
Nicholas Bolkonski's son need not serve under anyone if he is in
disfavor. Now come here."


*Kutuzov.

He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his son
was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised the
lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled with his
bold, tall, close handwriting.

"I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs;
hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond and
a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of Suvorov's
wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for you to read
when I am gone. You will find them useful."

Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long time
yet. He felt that he must not say it.

"I will do it all, Father," he said.

"Well, now, good-by!" He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced
him. "Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt me,
your old father..." he paused unexpectedly, and then in a querulous
voice suddenly shrieked: "but if I hear that you have not behaved like a
son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!"

"You need not have said that to me, Father," said the son with a smile.

The old man was silent.

"I also wanted to ask you," continued Prince Andrew, "if I'm killed and
if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you--as I said
yesterday... let him grow up with you.... Please."

"Not let the wife have him?" said the old man, and laughed.

They stood silent, facing one another. The old man's sharp eyes were
fixed straight on his son's. Something twitched in the lower part of the
old prince's face.

"We've said good-by. Go!" he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry voice,
opening his door.

"What is it? What?" asked both princesses when they saw for a moment at
the door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white dressing
gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.

Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.

"Well!" he said, turning to his wife.

And this "Well!" sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying,: "Now go
through your performance."

"Andrew, already!" said the little princess, turning pale and looking
with dismay at her husband.

He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.

He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her face,
and carefully placed her in an easy chair.

"Adieu, Mary," said he gently to his sister, taking her by the hand and
kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.

The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne chafing
her temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law, still looked
with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through which Prince
Andrew had gone and made the sign of the cross in his direction. From
the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent sound of the old man
angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince Andrew gone when the study
door opened quickly and the stern figure of the old man in the white
dressing gown looked out.

"Gone? That's all right!" said he; and looking angrily at the
unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed
the door.

BOOK TWO: 1805




CHAPTER I

In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and towns of
the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly arriving from
Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and burdening the
inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the headquarters of
the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.

On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just reached
Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be inspected by
the commander-in-chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance of the
locality and surroundings--fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled roofs, and
hills in the distance--and despite the fact that the inhabitants (who
gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not Russians, the regiment
had just the appearance of any Russian regiment preparing for an
inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.

On the evening of the last day's march an order had been received that
the commander-in-chief would inspect the regiment on the march. Though
the words of the order were not clear to the regimental commander, and
the question arose whether the troops were to be in marching order or
not, it was decided at a consultation between the battalion commanders
to present the regiment in parade order, on the principle that it is
always better to "bow too low than not bow low enough." So the soldiers,
after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending and cleaning all night long
without closing their eyes, while the adjutants and company commanders
calculated and reckoned, and by morning the regiment--instead of the
straggling, disorderly crowd it had been on its last march the day
before--presented a well-ordered array of two thousand men each of whom
knew his place and his duty, had every button and every strap in place,
and shone with cleanliness. And not only externally was all in order,
but had it pleased the commander-in-chief to look under the uniforms he
would have found on every man a clean shirt, and in every knapsack the
appointed number of articles, "awl, soap, and all," as the soldiers say.
There was only one circumstance concerning which no one could be at
ease. It was the state of the soldiers' boots. More than half the men's
boots were in holes. But this defect was not due to any fault of the
regimental commander, for in spite of repeated demands boots had not
been issued by the Austrian commissariat, and the regiment had marched
some seven hundred miles.

The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and
thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider from
chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new uniform
showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold epaulettes
which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive shoulders. He
had the air of a man happily performing one of the most solemn duties of
his life. He walked about in front of the line and at every step pulled
himself up, slightly arching his back. It was plain that the commander
admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and that his whole mind was
engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to indicate that, besides military
matters, social interests and the fair sex occupied no small part of his
thoughts.

"Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?" he said, addressing one of the battalion
commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain that they both
felt happy). "We had our hands full last night. However, I think the
regiment is not a bad one, eh?"

The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.

"It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin Meadow."

"What?" asked the commander.

At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had been
posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an aide-de-camp
followed by a Cossack.

The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been
clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander-in-chief
wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on the
march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation
whatever.

A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutuzov the day
before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army of
the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering this
junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of his view,
to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the troops
arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the regiment;
so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the commander-
in-chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know these
circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that the men
should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and that the
commander-in-chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On hearing this the
regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged his shoulders, and
spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.

"A fine mess we've made of it!" he remarked.

"There now! Didn't I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if it was said 'on
the march' it meant in greatcoats?" said he reproachfully to the
battalion commander. "Oh, my God!" he added, stepping resolutely
forward. "Company commanders!" he shouted in a voice accustomed to
command. "Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?" he asked the
aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently relating to the
personage he was referring to.

"In an hour's time, I should say."

"Shall we have time to change clothes?"

"I don't know, General...."

The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered the
soldiers to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders ran off
to their companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the greatcoats
were not in very good condition), and instantly the squares that had up
to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and stretch and
hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were running to and fro, throwing
up their knapsacks with a jerk of their shoulders and pulling the straps
over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and drawing the sleeves on
with upraised arms.

In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had become gray
instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his jerky steps
to the front of the regiment and examined it from a distance.

"Whatever is this? This!" he shouted and stood still. "Commander of the
third company!"

"Commander of the third company wanted by the general!... commander to
the general... third company to the commander." The words passed along
the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing officer.

When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination in a
cry of: "The general to the third company," the missing officer appeared
from behind his company and, though he was a middle-aged man and not in
the habit of running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on his toes toward the
general. The captain's face showed the uneasiness of a schoolboy who is
told to repeat a lesson he has not learned. Spots appeared on his nose,
the redness of which was evidently due to intemperance, and his mouth
twitched nervously. The general looked the captain up and down as he
came up panting, slackening his pace as he approached.

"You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?"
shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and pointing
at a soldier in the ranks of the third company in a greatcoat of bluish
cloth, which contrasted with the others. "What have you been after? The
commander in chief is expected and you leave your place? Eh? I'll teach
you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade.... Eh...?"

The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior,
pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this
pressure lay his only hope of salvation.

"Well, why don't you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as a
Hungarian?" said the commander with an austere gibe.

"Your excellency..."

"Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your
excellency?... nobody knows."

"Your excellency, it's the officer Dolokhov, who has been reduced to the
ranks," said the captain softly.

"Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier? If
a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the others."

"Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march."

"Gave him leave? Leave? That's just like you young men," said the
regimental commander cooling down a little. "Leave indeed.... One says a
word to you and you... What?" he added with renewed irritation, "I beg
you to dress your men decently."

And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his jerky
steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display of
anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further excuse for
wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished badge, at another
because his line was not straight, he reached the third company.

"H-o-o-w are you standing? Where's your leg? Your leg?" shouted the
commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there were still
five men between him and Dolokhov with his bluish-gray uniform.

Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with his
clear, insolent eyes in the general's face.

"Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his coat... the
ras..." he did not finish.

"General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure..." Dolokhov
hurriedly interrupted.

"No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!"

"Not bound to endure insults," Dolokhov concluded in loud, ringing
tones.

The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became silent,
angrily pulling down his tight scarf.

"I request you to have the goodness to change your coat," he said as he
turned away.




CHAPTER II

"He's coming!" shouted the signaler at that moment.

The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the stirrup
with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle, righted himself,
drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute countenance, opening his
mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment fluttered like a bird
preening its plumage and became motionless.

"Att-ention!" shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking voice
which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment, and welcome
for the approaching chief.

Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a high,
light blue Viennese caleche, slightly creaking on its springs and drawn
by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the caleche galloped the suite and
a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian general, in a white
uniform that looked strange among the Russian black ones. The caleche
stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov and the Austrian general were
talking in low voices and Kutuzov smiled slightly as treading heavily he
stepped down from the carriage just as if those two thousand men
breathlessly gazing at him and the regimental commander did not exist.

The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as with a
jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence the feeble
voice of the commander-in-chief was heard. The regiment roared, "Health
to your ex... len... len... lency!" and again all became silent. At
first Kutuzov stood still while the regiment moved; then he and the
general in white, accompanied by the suite, walked between the ranks.

From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander-in-chief and
devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and from
the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals, bending forward
and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and from the way he
darted forward at every word or gesture of the commander-in-chief, it
was evident that he performed his duty as a subordinate with even
greater zeal than his duty as a commander. Thanks to the strictness and
assiduity of its commander the regiment, in comparison with others that
had reached Braunau at the same time, was in splendid condition. There
were only 217 sick and stragglers. Everything was in good order except
the boots.

Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few
friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war, sometimes
also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several times shook his
head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian general with an expression
which seemed to say that he was not blaming anyone, but could not help
noticing what a bad state of things it was. The regimental commander ran
forward on each such occasion, fearing to miss a single word of the
commander-in-chief's regarding the regiment. Behind Kutuzov, at a
distance that allowed every softly spoken word to be heard, followed
some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen talked among themselves
and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the commander-in-chief walked a
handsome adjutant. This was Prince Bolkonski. Beside him was his comrade
Nesvitski, a tall staff officer, extremely stout, with a kindly,
smiling, handsome face and moist eyes. Nesvitski could hardly keep from
laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who walked beside him.
This hussar, with a grave face and without a smile or a change in the
expression of his fixed eyes, watched the regimental commander's back
and mimicked his every movement. Each time the commander started and
bent forward, the hussar started and bent forward in exactly the same
manner. Nesvitski laughed and nudged the others to make them look at the
wag.

Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which were
starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the third
company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected this,
involuntarily came closer to him.

"Ah, Timokhin!" said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had been
reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.

One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself more
than Timokhin had done when he was reprimanded by the regimental
commander, but now that the commander-in-chief addressed him he drew
himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not have sustained
it had the commander-in-chief continued to look at him, and so Kutuzov,
who evidently understood his case and wished him nothing but good,
quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile flitting over his
scarred and puffy face.

"Another Ismail comrade," said he. "A brave officer! Are you satisfied
with him?" he asked the regimental commander.

And the latter--unconscious that he was being reflected in the hussar
officer as in a looking glass--started, moved forward, and answered:
"Highly satisfied, your excellency!"

"We all have our weaknesses," said Kutuzov smiling and walking away from
him. "He used to have a predilection for Bacchus."

The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this and did
not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of the red-nosed
captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his expression and pose
with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help laughing. Kutuzov
turned round. The officer evidently had complete control of his face,
and while Kutuzov was turning managed to make a grimace and then assume
a most serious, deferential, and innocent expression.

The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered, apparently trying
to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from among the
suite and said in French:

"You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, reduced to the ranks
in this regiment."

"Where is Dolokhov?" asked Kutuzov.

Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier's gray greatcoat, did
not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired soldier,
with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks, went up to the
commander in chief, and presented arms.

"Have you a complaint to make?" Kutuzov asked with a slight frown.

"This is Dolokhov," said Prince Andrew.

"Ah!" said Kutuzov. "I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your duty.
The Emperor is gracious, and I shan't forget you if you deserve well."

The clear blue eyes looked at the commander-in-chief just as boldly as
they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by their expression
to tear open the veil of convention that separates a commander-in-chief
so widely from a private.

"One thing I ask of your excellency," Dolokhov said in his firm,
ringing, deliberate voice. "I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault
and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!"

Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had turned
from Captain Timokhin again flitted over his face. He turned away with a
grimace as if to say that everything Dolokhov had said to him and
everything he could say had long been known to him, that he was weary of
it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away and went to the
carriage.

The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their appointed
quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and clothes and
to rest after their hard marches.

"You won't bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?" said the regimental
commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its quarters and
riding up to Captain Timokhin who was walking in front. (The regimental
commander's face now that the inspection was happily over beamed with
irrepressible delight.) "It's in the Emperor's service... it can't be
helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on parade... I am the first to
apologize, you know me!... He was very pleased!" And he held out his
hand to the captain.

"Don't mention it, General, as if I'd be so bold!" replied the captain,
his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where two front
teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end of a gun at
Ismail.

"And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won't forget him--he may be quite easy.
And tell me, please--I've been meaning to ask--how is he behaving
himself, and in general..."

"As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your excellency;
but his character..." said Timokhin.

"And what about his character?" asked the regimental commander.

"It's different on different days," answered the captain. "One day he is
sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he's a wild
beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew."

"Oh, well, well!" remarked the regimental commander. "Still, one must
have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important
connections... Well, then, you just..."

"I will, your excellency," said Timokhin, showing by his smile that he
understood his commander's wish.

"Well, of course, of course!"

The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the ranks and, reining
in his horse, said to him:

"After the next affair... epaulettes."

Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the mocking
smile on his lips change.

"Well, that's all right," continued the regimental commander. "A cup of
vodka for the men from me," he added so that the soldiers could hear. "I
thank you all! God be praised!" and he rode past that company and
overtook the next one.

"Well, he's really a good fellow, one can serve under him," said
Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.

"In a word, a hearty one..." said the subaltern, laughing (the
regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).

The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected the
soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers' voices could be
heard on every side.

"And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?"

"And so he is! Quite blind!"

"No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands... he
noticed everything..."

"When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..."

"And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were smeared
with chalk--as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as they do
the guns."

"I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You were
near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau."

"Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn't know!
The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are putting
them down. When they've been put down, the war with Buonaparte will
begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you're a fool. You'd
better listen more carefully!"

"What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is turning
into the village already... they will have their buckwheat cooked before
we reach our quarters."

"Give me a biscuit, you devil!"

"And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That's just it, friend! Ah,
well, never mind, here you are."

"They might call a halt here or we'll have to do another four miles
without eating."

"Wasn't it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still and
are drawn along."

"And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all seemed
to be Poles--all under the Russian crown--but here they're all regular
Germans."

"Singers to the front" came the captain's order.

And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A
drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and flourishing
his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers' song, commencing with the
words: "Morning dawned, the sun was rising," and concluding: "On then,
brothers, on to glory, led by Father Kamenski." This song had been
composed in the Turkish campaign and now being sung in Austria, the only
change being that the words "Father Kamenski" were replaced by "Father
Kutuzov."

Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms as
if flinging something to the ground, the drummer--a lean, handsome
soldier of forty--looked sternly at the singers and screwed up his eyes.
Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on him, he raised
both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but precious object
above his head and, holding it there for some seconds, suddenly flung it
down and began:

"Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!"

"Oh, my bower new...!" chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet player,
in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the front and,
walking backwards before the company, jerked his shoulders and
flourished his castanets as if threatening someone. The soldiers,
swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously, marched with long
steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the creaking of springs,
and the tramp of horses' hoofs were heard. Kutuzov and his suite were
returning to the town. The commander-in-chief made a sign that the men
should continue to march at ease, and he and all his suite showed
pleasure at the sound of the singing and the sight of the dancing
soldier and the gay and smartly marching men. In the second file from
the right flank, beside which the carriage passed the company, a blue-
eyed soldier involuntarily attracted notice. It was Dolokhov marching
with particular grace and boldness in time to the song and looking at
those driving past as if he pitied all who were not at that moment
marching with the company. The hussar cornet of Kutuzov's suite who had
mimicked the regimental commander, fell back from the carriage and rode
up to Dolokhov.

Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to the
wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had met Dolokhov abroad as a private
and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutuzov had spoken
to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the cordiality of an old
friend.

"My dear fellow, how are you?" said he through the singing, making his
horse keep pace with the company.

"How am I?" Dolokhov answered coldly. "I am as you see."

The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy
gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the intentional coldness of
Dolokhov's reply.

"And how do you get on with the officers?" inquired Zherkov.

"All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto the
staff?"

"I was attached; I'm on duty."

Both were silent.

"She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve," went the song,
arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness. Their
conversation would probably have been different but for the effect of
that song.

"Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?" asked Dolokhov.

"The devil only knows! They say so."

"I'm glad," answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the song demanded.

"I say, come round some evening and we'll have a game of faro!" said
Zherkov.

"Why, have you too much money?"

"Do come."

"I can't. I've sworn not to. I won't drink and won't play till I get
reinstated."

"Well, that's only till the first engagement."

"We shall see."

They were again silent.

"Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the staff..."

Dolokhov smiled. "Don't trouble. If I want anything, I won't beg--I'll
take it!"

"Well, never mind; I only..."

"And I only..."

"Good-bye."

"Good health..."


"It's a long, long way. To my native land..."

Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly from foot
to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down, galloped past
the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping time to the song.




CHAPTER III

On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Austrian general into his
private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers relating
to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the letters that
had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in command of the advanced
army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the room with the required
papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian member of the Hofkriegsrath were
sitting at the table on which a plan was spread out.

"Ah!..." said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this exclamation he
was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with the conversation in
French.

"All I can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of expression
and intonation that obliged one to listen to each deliberately spoken
word. It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened with pleasure to his
own voice. "All I can say, General, is that if the matter depended on my
personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the Emperor Francis would have
been fulfilled long ago. I should long ago have joined the archduke. And
believe me on my honour that to me personally it would be a pleasure to
hand over the supreme command of the army into the hands of a better
informed and more skillful general--of whom Austria has so many--and to
lay down all this heavy responsibility. But circumstances are sometimes
too strong for us, General."

And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, "You are quite at
liberty not to believe me and I don't even care whether you do or not,
but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole point."

The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to reply
in the same tone.

"On the contrary," he said, in a querulous and angry tone that
contrasted with his flattering words, "on the contrary, your
excellency's participation in the common action is highly valued by His
Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the splendid
Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have been
accustomed to win in their battles," he concluded his evidently
prearranged sentence.

Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.

"But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with which
His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine that the
Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a leader as General
Mack, have by now already gained a decisive victory and no longer need
our aid," said Kutuzov.

The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an Austrian
defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the unfavorable rumors
that were afloat, and so Kutuzov's suggestion of an Austrian victory
sounded much like irony. But Kutuzov went on blandly smiling with the
same expression, which seemed to say that he had a right to suppose so.
And, in fact, the last letter he had received from Mack's army informed
him of a victory and stated strategically the position of the army was
very favorable.

"Give me that letter," said Kutuzov turning to Prince Andrew. "Please
have a look at it"--and Kutuzov with an ironical smile about the corners
of his mouth read to the Austrian general the following passage, in
German, from the Archduke Ferdinand's letter:

We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men with
which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech. Also, as
we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage of
commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not cross
the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line of
communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his
intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful
ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the Imperial
Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in conjunction with
it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the fate he deserves.

Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at the
member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.

"But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect the
worst," said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have done with
jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round at the
aide-de-camp.

"Excuse me, General," interrupted Kutuzov, also turning to Prince
Andrew. "Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlovski all the reports
from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and here is one
from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these," he said,
handing him several papers, "make a neat memorandum in French out of all
this, showing all the news we have had of the movements of the Austrian
army, and then give it to his excellency."

Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from the
first not only what had been said but also what Kutuzov would have liked
to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both, stepped
softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.

Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia, he
had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his face,
in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of his former
affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man who has time to
think of the impression he makes on others, but is occupied with
agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed more satisfaction
with himself and those around him, his smile and glance were brighter
and more attractive.

Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very kindly,
promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the other adjutants,
and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more serious commissions.
From Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade, Prince Andrew's father.

Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his industry,
firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to have such a
subordinate by me.

On Kutuzov's staff, among his fellow officers and in the army generally,
Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two quite
opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be different
from themselves and from everyone else, expected great things of him,
listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with them Prince Andrew
was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority, disliked him and
considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But among these people
Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that they respected and even
feared him.

Coming out of Kutuzov's room into the waiting room with the papers in
his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp on duty,
Kozlovski, who was sitting at the window with a book.

"Well, Prince?" asked Kozlovski.

"I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not
advancing."

"And why is it?"

Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.

"Any news from Mack?"

"No."

"If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come."

"Probably," said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.

But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the
order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head,
who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door.
Prince Andrew stopped short.

"Commander in Chief Kutuzov?" said the newly arrived general speaking
quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and advancing
straight toward the inner door.

"The commander-in-chief is engaged," said Kozlovski, going hurriedly up
to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door. "Whom shall I
announce?"

The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlovski, who was
rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.

"The commander-in-chief is engaged," repeated Kozlovski calmly.

The general's face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He took out
a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out the leaf,
gave it to Kozlovski, stepped quickly to the window, and threw himself
into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if asking, "Why do they
look at me?" Then he lifted his head, stretched his neck as if he
intended to say something, but immediately, with affected indifference,
began to hum to himself, producing a queer sound which immediately broke
off. The door of the private room opened and Kutuzov appeared in the
doorway. The general with the bandaged head bent forward as though
running away from some danger, and, making long, quick strides with his
thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.

"Vous voyez le malheureux Mack," he uttered in a broken voice.

Kutuzov's face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly
immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a wave
and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head respectfully,
closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before him, and closed
the door himself behind him.

The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been beaten
and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be correct.
Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various directions with
orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had hitherto been
inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.

Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief interest
lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack and heard the
details of his disaster he understood that half the campaign was lost,
understood all the difficulties of the Russian army's position, and
vividly imagined what awaited it and the part he would have to play.
Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the thought of the
humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week's time he might,
perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian encounter with the
French since Suvorov met them. He feared that Bonaparte's genius might
outweigh all the courage of the Russian troops, and at the same time
could not admit the idea of his hero being disgraced.

Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward his
room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the corridor
he met Nesvitski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag Zherkov; they
were as usual laughing.

"Why are you so glum?" asked Nesvitski noticing Prince Andrew's pale
face and glittering eyes.

"There's nothing to be gay about," answered Bolkonski.

Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov, there came toward them
from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian general who on
Kutuzov's staff in charge of the provisioning of the Russian army, and
the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived the previous evening.
There was room enough in the wide corridor for the generals to pass the
three officers quite easily, but Zherkov, pushing Nesvitski aside with
his arm, said in a breathless voice,

"They're coming!... they're coming!... Stand aside, make way, please
make way!"

The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid
embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkov there suddenly
appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.

"Your excellency," said he in German, stepping forward and addressing
the Austrian general, "I have the honor to congratulate you."

He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with the
other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.

The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing the
seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment's
attention. He screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening.

"I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived, quite
well, only a little bruised just here," he added, pointing with a
beaming smile to his head.

The general frowned, turned away, and went on.

"Gott, wie naiv!" * said he angrily, after he had gone a few steps.


* "Good God, what simplicity!"

Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but
Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and
turned to Zherkov. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of
Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the
Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkov's untimely jest.

"If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself," he said sharply,
with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, "I can't prevent your doing
so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in my presence, I
will teach you to behave yourself."

Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst that they gazed
at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes.

"What's the matter? I only congratulated them," said Zherkov.

"I am not jesting with you; please be silent!" cried Bolkonski, and
taking Nesvitski's arm he left Zherkov, who did not know what to say.

"Come, what's the matter, old fellow?" said Nesvitski trying to soothe
him.

"What's the matter?" exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in his
excitement. "Don't you understand that either we are officers serving
our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and grieving at the
misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely lackeys who care
nothing for their master's business. Quarante mille hommes massacres et
l'armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la le mot pour rire," *
he said, as if strengthening his views by this French sentence. "C'est
bien pour un garcon de rien comme cet individu dont vous avez fait un
ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour vous. *(2) Only a hobbledehoy could
amuse himself in this way," he added in Russian--but pronouncing the
word with a French accent--having noticed that Zherkov could still hear
him.


* "Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies destroyed,
and you find that a cause for jesting!"

* (2) "It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow of whom you
have made a friend, but not for you, not for you."

He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he turned
and went out of the corridor.




CHAPTER IV

The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The
squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served as a cadet was quartered in the
German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were
assigned to cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known
throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov. Cadet Rostov,
ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had lived with the
squadron commander.

On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the news
of Mack's defeat, the camp life of the officers of this squadron was
proceeding as usual. Denisov, who had been losing at cards all night,
had not yet come home when Rostov rode back early in the morning from a
foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet uniform, with a jerk to his
horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg over the saddle with a supple
youthful movement, stood for a moment in the stirrup as if loathe to
part from his horse, and at last sprang down and called to his orderly.

"Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!" said he to the hussar who rushed up
headlong to the horse. "Walk him up and down, my dear fellow," he
continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted young
people show to everyone when they are happy.

"Yes, your excellency," answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his head.

"Mind, walk him up and down well!"

Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarenko had already
thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse's head. It was
evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that it paid to
serve him. Rostov patted the horse's neck and then his flank, and
lingered for a moment.

"Splendid! What a horse he will be!" he thought with a smile, and
holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the
porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork in
hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his face
immediately brightened on seeing Rostov. "Schon gut Morgen! Schon gut
Morgen!" * he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased to
greet the young man.


* "A very good morning! A very good morning!"

"Schon fleissig?" * said Rostov with the same gay brotherly smile which
did not leave his eager face. "Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen! Kaiser
Alexander hoch!" *(2) said he, quoting words often repeated by the
German landlord.


* "Busy already?"

* (2) "Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians! Hurrah for
Emperor Alexander!"

The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and
waving it above his head cried:

"Und die ganze Welt hoch!" *


* "And hurrah for the whole world!"

Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German and cried laughing,
"Und vivat die ganze Welt!" Though neither the German cleaning his
cowshed nor Rostov back with his platoon from foraging for hay had any
reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with joyful delight and
brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of their mutual affection,
and parted smiling, the German returning to his cowshed and Rostov going
to the cottage he occupied with Denisov.

"What about your master?" he asked Lavrushka, Denisov's orderly, whom
all the regiment knew for a rogue.

"Hasn't been in since the evening. Must have been losing," answered
Lavrushka. "I know by now, if he wins he comes back early to brag about
it, but if he stays out till morning it means he's lost and will come
back in a rage. Will you have coffee?"

"Yes, bring some."

Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. "He's coming!" said he.
"Now for trouble!" Rostov looked out of the window and saw Denisov
coming home. Denisov was a small man with a red face, sparkling black
eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore an unfastened cloak,
wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a crumpled shako on the back
of his head. He came up to the porch gloomily, hanging his head.

"Lavwuska!" he shouted loudly and angrily, "take it off, blockhead!"

"Well, I am taking it off," replied Lavrushka's voice.

"Ah, you're up already," said Denisov, entering the room.

"Long ago," answered Rostov, "I have already been for the hay, and have
seen Fraulein Mathilde."

"Weally! And I've been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a damned
fool!" cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r's. "Such ill luck! Such ill
luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on. Hullo there! Tea!"

Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong
teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his thick
tangled black hair.

"And what devil made me go to that wat?" (an officer nicknamed "the
rat") he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both hands.
"Just fancy, he didn't let me win a single cahd, not one cahd."

He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in his
fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while he
continued to shout.

"He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles it;
gives the singles and snatches the doubles!"

He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it away.
Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked cheerfully
with his glittering, black eyes at Rostov.

"If at least we had some women here; but there's nothing foh one to do
but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who's there?"
he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy boots and the
clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a respectful cough.

"The squadron quartermaster!" said Lavrushka.

Denisov's face puckered still more.

"Wetched!" he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in it.
"Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove the
purse undah the pillow," he said, and went out to the quartermaster.

Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new coins
in separate piles, began counting them.

"Ah! Telyanin! How d'ye do? They plucked me last night," came Denisov's
voice from the next room.

"Where? At Bykov's, at the rat's... I knew it," replied a piping voice,
and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the same squadron, entered
the room.

Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little hand
which was offered him. Telyanin for some reason had been transferred
from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very well in the
regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested him and was
unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to the man.

"Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?" he asked. (Rook was a
young horse Telyanin had sold to Rostov.)

The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in the
face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.

"I saw you riding this morning..." he added.

"Oh, he's all right, a good horse," answered Rostov, though the horse
for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half that sum.
"He's begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg," he added.

"The hoof's cracked! That's nothing. I'll teach you what to do and show
you what kind of rivet to use."

"Yes, please do," said Rostov.

"I'll show you, I'll show you! It's not a secret. And it's a horse
you'll thank me for."

"Then I'll have it brought round," said Rostov wishing to avoid
Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.

In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on the threshold
facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing Rostov,
Denisov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder with his
thumb to the room where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned and gave a
shudder of disgust.

"Ugh! I don't like that fellow," he said, regardless of the
quartermaster's presence.

Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: "Nor do I, but what's
one to do?" and, having given his order, he returned to Telyanin.

Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostov had left
him, rubbing his small white hands.

"Well there certainly are disgusting people," thought Rostov as he
entered.

"Have you told them to bring the horse?" asked Telyanin, getting up and
looking carelessly about him.

"I have."

"Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov about yesterday's
order. Have you got it, Denisov?"

"Not yet. But where are you off to?"

"I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse," said Telyanin.

They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant
explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.

When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on the
table. Denisov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a sheet of
paper. He looked gloomily in Rostov's face and said: "I am witing to
her."

He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and,
evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to
write, told Rostov the contents of his letter.

"You see, my fwiend," he said, "we sleep when we don't love. We are
childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God, one is
pua' as on the first day of cweation... Who's that now? Send him to the
devil, I'm busy!" he shouted to Lavrushka, who went up to him not in the
least abashed.

"Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It's the quartermaster
for the money."

Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.

"Wetched business," he muttered to himself. "How much is left in the
puhse?" he asked, turning to Rostov.

"Seven new and three old imperials."

"Oh, it's wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you sca'cwow?
Call the quahtehmasteh," he shouted to Lavrushka.

"Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know," said
Rostov, blushing.

"Don't like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don't," growled Denisov.

"But if you won't accept money from me like a comrade, you will offend
me. Really I have some," Rostov repeated.

"No, I tell you."

And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.

"Where have you put it, Wostov?"

"Under the lower pillow."

"It's not there."

Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.

"That's a miwacle."

"Wait, haven't you dropped it?" said Rostov, picking up the pillows one
at a time and shaking them.

He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.

"Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you kept it
under your head like a treasure," said Rostov. "I put it just here.
Where is it?" he asked, turning to Lavrushka.

"I haven't been in the room. It must be where you put it."

"But it isn't?..."

"You're always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget it.
Feel in your pockets."

"No, if I hadn't thought of it being a treasure," said Rostov, "but I
remember putting it there."

Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and under
the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of the
room. Denisov silently watched Lavrushka's movements, and when the
latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found
Denisov glanced at Rostov.

"Wostov, you've not been playing schoolboy twicks..."

Rostov felt Denisov's gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and instantly
dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested somewhere
below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not draw breath.

"And there hasn't been anyone in the room except the lieutenant and
yourselves. It must be here somewhere," said Lavrushka.

"Now then, you devil's puppet, look alive and hunt for it!" shouted
Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man with a
threatening gesture. "If the purse isn't found I'll flog you, I'll flog
you all."

Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his coat, buckled on
his saber, and put on his cap.

"I must have that purse, I tell you," shouted Denisov, shaking his
orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.

"Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it," said Rostov, going
toward the door without raising his eyes. Denisov paused, thought a
moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostov hinted at, seized his
arm.

"Nonsense!" he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood out
like cords. "You are mad, I tell you. I won't allow it. The purse is
here! I'll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be found."

"I know who has taken it," repeated Rostov in an unsteady voice, and
went to the door.

"And I tell you, don't you dahe to do it!" shouted Denisov, rushing at
the cadet to restrain him.

But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though Denisov
were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his face.

"Do you understand what you're saying?" he said in a trembling voice.
"There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it is not
so, then..."

He could not finish, and ran out of the room.

"Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody," were the last words Rostov
heard.

Rostov went to Telyanin's quarters.

"The master is not in, he's gone to headquarters," said Telyanin's
orderly. "Has something happened?" he added, surprised at the cadet's
troubled face.

"No, nothing."

"You've only just missed him," said the orderly.

The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and
Rostov, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was
an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to
it and saw Telyanin's horse at the porch.

In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish of
sausages and a bottle of wine.

"Ah, you've come here too, young man!" he said, smiling and raising his
eyebrows.

"Yes," said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the word; and
he sat down at the nearest table.

Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in the
room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of knives
and the munching of the lieutenant.

When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a double
purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white, turned-up
fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his eyebrows gave it to
the waiter.

"Please be quick," he said.

The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Telyanin.

"Allow me to look at your purse," he said in a low, almost inaudible,
voice.

With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin handed him the
purse.

"Yes, it's a nice purse. Yes, yes," he said, growing suddenly pale, and
added, "Look at it, young man."

Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in it, and
looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was looking about in his usual way
and suddenly seemed to grow very merry.

"If we get to Vienna I'll get rid of it there but in these wretched
little towns there's nowhere to spend it," said he. "Well, let me have
it, young man, I'm going."

Rostov did not speak.

"And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite decently
here," continued Telyanin. "Now then, let me have it."

He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostov let go of
it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into the
pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his mouth
slightly open, as if to say, "Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in my
pocket and that's quite simple and is no one else's business."

"Well, young man?" he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted brows
he glanced into Rostov's eyes.

Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin's eyes to Rostov's
and back, and back again and again in an instant.

"Come here," said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin's arm and almost
dragging him to the window. "That money is Denisov's; you took it..." he
whispered just above Telyanin's ear.

"What? What? How dare you? What?" said Telyanin.

But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an entreaty for
pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an enormous load of doubt fell
from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to pity the
miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun had to be
completed.

"Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine," muttered Telyanin,
taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room. "We must have an
explanation..."

"I know it and shall prove it," said Rostov.

"I..."

Every muscle of Telyanin's pale, terrified face began to quiver, his
eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not rising
to Rostov's face, and his sobs were audible.

"Count!... Don't ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money,
take it..." He threw it on the table. "I have an old father and
mother!..."

Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin's eyes, and went out of the
room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced his
steps. "O God," he said with tears in his eyes, "how could you do it?"

"Count..." said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.

"Don't touch me," said Rostov, drawing back. "If you need it, take the
money," and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.




CHAPTER V

That same evening there was an animated discussion among the squadron's
officers in Denisov's quarters.

"And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the colonel!" said a
tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and many
wrinkles on his large features, to Rostov who was crimson with
excitement.

The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks for
affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.

"I will allow no one to call me a liar!" cried Rostov. "He told me I
lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me on duty
every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make me
apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it
beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then..."

"You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen," interrupted the
staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache. "You
tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an officer has
stolen..."

"I'm not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of other
officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but I am not a
diplomatist. That's why I joined the hussars, thinking that here one
would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying--so let him give
me satisfaction..."

"That's all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that's not the point.
Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet to demand
satisfaction of his regimental commander?"

Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the
conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered the
staff captain's question by a disapproving shake of his head.

"You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other
officers," continued the staff captain, "and Bogdanich" (the colonel was
called Bogdanich) "shuts you up."

"He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth."

"Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and must
apologize."

"Not on any account!" exclaimed Rostov.

"I did not expect this of you," said the staff captain seriously and
severely. "You don't wish to apologize, but, man, it's not only to him
but to the whole regiment--all of us--you're to blame all round. The
case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and taken
advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the
officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and
disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of one
scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don't see it like that. And
Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what was not true.
It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear fellow? You landed
yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth the thing over, some
conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish to make the whole affair
public. You are offended at being put on duty a bit, but why not
apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever Bogdanich may be,
anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel! You're quick at taking
offense, but you don't mind disgracing the whole regiment!" The staff
captain's voice began to tremble. "You have been in the regiment next to
no time, my lad, you're here today and tomorrow you'll be appointed
adjutant somewhere and can snap your fingers when it is said 'There are
thieves among the Pavlograd officers!' But it's not all the same to us!
Am I not right, Denisov? It's not the same!"

Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked with
his glittering black eyes at Rostov.

"You value your own pride and don't wish to apologize," continued the
staff captain, "but we old fellows, who have grown up in and, God
willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of the
regiment, and Bogdanich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old fellow! And
all this is not right, it's not right! You may take offense or not but I
always stick to mother truth. It's not right!"

And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostov.


"That's twue, devil take it!" shouted Denisov, jumping up. "Now then,
Wostov, now then!"

Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one officer
and then at the other.

"No, gentlemen, no... you mustn't think... I quite understand. You're
wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of the
regiment I'd... Ah well, I'll show that in action, and for me the honor
of the flag... Well, never mind, it's true I'm to blame, to blame all
round. Well, what else do you want?..."

"Come, that's right, Count!" cried the staff captain, turning round and
clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big hand.

"I tell you," shouted Denisov, "he's a fine fellow."

"That's better, Count," said the staff captain, beginning to address
Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confession. "Go and
apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!"

"Gentlemen, I'll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me," said
Rostov in an imploring voice, "but I can't apologize, by God I can't, do
what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little boy asking
forgiveness?"

Denisov began to laugh.

"It'll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you'll pay for your
obstinacy," said Kirsten.

"No, on my word it's not obstinacy! I can't describe the feeling. I
can't..."

"Well, it's as you like," said the staff captain. "And what has become
of that scoundrel?" he asked Denisov.

"He has weported himself sick, he's to be stwuck off the list tomowwow,"
muttered Denisov.

"It is an illness, there's no other way of explaining it," said the
staff captain.

"Illness or not, he'd better not cwoss my path. I'd kill him!" shouted
Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.

Just then Zherkov entered the room.

"What brings you here?" cried the officers turning to the newcomer.

"We're to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his whole
army."

"It's not true!"

"I've seen him myself!"

"What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?"

"Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how did
you come here?"

"I've been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil, Mack.
An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on Mack's
arrival... What's the matter, Rostov? You look as if you'd just come out
of a hot bath."

"Oh, my dear fellow, we're in such a stew here these last two days."

The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by
Zherkov. They were under orders to advance next day.

"We're going into action, gentlemen!"

"Well, thank God! We've been sitting here too long!"




CHAPTER VI

Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges over
the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October 23 the
Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the Russian
baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were defiling
through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.

It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out
before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the
bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, and
then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects could be
clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down below, the
little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed houses, its
cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed jostling
masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels, an island,
and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the confluence of
the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky left bank of the
Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic background of green
treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a convent stood out beyond a
wild virgin pine forest, and far away on the other side of the Enns the
enemy's horse patrols could be discerned.

Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in command of
the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the country through
his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvitski, who had been sent to the
rearguard by the commander-in-chief, was sitting on the trail of a gun
carriage. A Cossack who accompanied him had handed him a knapsack and a
flask, and Nesvitski was treating some officers to pies and real
doppelkummel. The officers gladly gathered round him, some on their
knees, some squatting Turkish fashion on the wet grass.

"Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It's a fine
place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?" Nesvitski was
saying.

"Thank you very much, Prince," answered one of the officers, pleased to
be talking to a staff officer of such importance. "It's a lovely place!
We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a splendid
house!"

"Look, Prince," said another, who would have dearly liked to take
another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining the
countryside--"See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look there in
the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging something.
They'll ransack that castle," he remarked with evident approval.

"So they will," said Nesvitski. "No, but what I should like," added he,
munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, "would be to slip in
over there."

He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed and
gleamed.

"That would be fine, gentlemen!"

The officers laughed.

"Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls among
them. On my word I'd give five years of my life for it!"

"They must be feeling dull, too," said one of the bolder officers,
laughing.

Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out something to
the general, who looked through his field glass.

"Yes, so it is, so it is," said the general angrily, lowering the field
glass and shrugging his shoulders, "so it is! They'll be fired on at the
crossing. And why are they dawdling there?"

On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and from
their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant report of
a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the crossing.

Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.

"Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?" he said.

"It's a bad business," said the general without answering him, "our men
have been wasting time."

"Hadn't I better ride over, your excellency?" asked Nesvitski.

"Yes, please do," answered the general, and he repeated the order that
had already once been given in detail: "and tell the hussars that they
are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the
inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected."

"Very good," answered Nesvitski.

He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the knapsack
and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.

"I'll really call in on the nuns," he said to the officers who watched
him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the hill.

"Now then, let's see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!" said the
general, turning to an artillery officer. "Have a little fun to pass the
time."

"Crew, to your guns!" commanded the officer.

In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and began
loading.

"One!" came the command.

Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening
metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our
troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little smoke
showing the spot where it burst.

The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone got
up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as plainly
visible as if but a stone's throw away, and the movements of the
approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came fully
out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the solitary shot and
the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a single joyous and
spirited impression.




CHAPTER VII

Two of the enemy's shots had already flown across the bridge, where
there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvitski, who had
alighted from his horse and whose big body was jammed against the
railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood a few steps
behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each time Prince
Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed him back again and
pressed him against the railings, and all he could do was to smile.

"What a fine fellow you are, friend!" said the Cossack to a convoy
soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were
crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. "What a fellow! You
can't wait a moment! Don't you see the general wants to pass?"

But the convoyman took no notice of the word "general" and shouted at
the soldiers who were blocking his way. "Hi there, boys! Keep to the
left! Wait a bit." But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder to
shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense
mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the rapid, noisy
little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying round the piles of
the bridge chased each other along. Looking on the bridge he saw equally
uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder straps, covered shakos,
knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and, under the shakos, faces with
broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired expressions, and
feet that moved through the sticky mud that covered the planks of the
bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of
white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with a
type of face different from that of the men, squeezed his way along;
sometimes like a chip of wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot,
an orderly, or a townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and
sometimes like a log floating down the river, an officers' or company's
baggage wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on all sides,
moved across the bridge.

"It's as if a dam had burst," said the Cossack hopelessly. "Are there
many more of you to come?"

"A million all but one!" replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat, with
a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.

"If he" (he meant the enemy) "begins popping at the bridge now," said
the old soldier dismally to a comrade, "you'll forget to scratch
yourself."

That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a cart.

"Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?" said an orderly,
running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.

And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry soldiers who
had evidently been drinking.

"And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt end
of his gun..." a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said gaily,
with a wide swing of his arm.

"Yes, the ham was just delicious..." answered another with a loud laugh.
And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did not learn who had been
struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.

"Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they'll all
be killed," a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.

"As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean," said a young soldier with
an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, "I felt like dying
of fright. I did, 'pon my word, I got that frightened!" said he, as if
bragging of having been frightened.

That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had gone
before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a German, and
seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine brindled cow with
a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A woman with an unweaned
baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl with bright red cheeks
were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently these fugitives were
allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes of all the soldiers
turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was passing at foot pace
all the soldiers' remarks related to the two young ones. Every face bore
almost the same smile, expressing unseemly thoughts about the women.

"Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!"

"Sell me the missis," said another soldier, addressing the German, who,
angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast eyes.

"See how smart she's made herself! Oh, the devils!"

"There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!"

"I have seen as much before now, mate!"

"Where are you going?" asked an infantry officer who was eating an
apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.

The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.

"Take it if you like," said the officer, giving the girl an apple.

The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the men on the
bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed. When
they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with the same
kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens, the horses of a
convoy wagon became restive at the end of the bridge, and the whole
crowd had to wait.

"And why are they stopping? There's no proper order!" said the soldiers.
"Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can't you wait? It'll be
worse if he fires the bridge. See, here's an officer jammed in too"--
different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men looked at one
another, and all pressed toward the exit from the bridge.

Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitski
suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching...
something big, that splashed into the water.

"Just see where it carries to!" a soldier near by said sternly, looking
round at the sound.

"Encouraging us to get along quicker," said another uneasily.

The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was a cannon ball.

"Hey, Cossack, my horse!" he said. "Now, then, you there! get out of the
way! Make way!"

With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting
continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make way
for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and those
nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed still
harder from behind.

"Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!" came a hoarse voice from behind
him.

Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but separated by
the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska Denisov, red and shaggy, with
his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak hanging jauntily over
his shoulder.

"Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!" shouted Denisov
evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot
whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a small
bare hand as red as his face.

"Ah, Vaska!" joyfully replied Nesvitski. "What's up with you?"

"The squadwon can't pass," shouted Vaska Denisov, showing his white
teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which twitched
its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting white foam
from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his hoofs, and
apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider let him. "What
is this? They're like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of the way!... Let us
pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart! I'll hack you with my
saber!" he shouted, actually drawing his saber from its scabbard and
flourishing it.

The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and
Denisov joined Nesvitski.

"How's it you're not drunk today?" said Nesvitski when the other had
ridden up to him.

"They don't even give one time to dwink!" answered Vaska Denisov. "They
keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to fight,
let's fight. But the devil knows what this is."

"What a dandy you are today!" said Nesvitski, looking at Denisov's new
cloak and saddlecloth.

Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that diffused
a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski's nose.

"Of course. I'm going into action! I've shaved, bwushed my teeth, and
scented myself."

The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and the
determination of Denisov who flourished his sword and shouted
frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through to
the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the
bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the order,
and having done this he rode back.

Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of the bridge.
Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the
ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw
nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping,
resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in
front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to emerge
on his side of it.

The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the
trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will,
estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually
encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past them in
regular order.

"Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!" said one.

"What good are they? They're led about just for show!" remarked another.

"Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose prancing
horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.

"I'd like to put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine
cords would soon get a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the mud
off his face with his sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more like a bird
than a man."

"There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. You'd look fine,"
said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent under the
weight of his knapsack.

"Take a stick between your legs, that'll suit you for a horse!" the
hussar shouted back.




CHAPTER VIII

The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing
together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last
the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last
battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denisov's squadron of hussars
remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could
be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible from
the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which the
river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile away. At
the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of our
Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the high
ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These were the
French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at a trot. All
the officers and men of Denisov's squadron, though they tried to talk of
other things and to look in other directions, thought only of what was
there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking at the patches
appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the enemy's troops. The
weather had cleared again since noon and the sun was descending brightly
upon the Danube and the dark hills around it. It was calm, and at
intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of the enemy could be heard
from the hill. There was no one now between the squadron and the enemy
except a few scattered skirmishers. An empty space of some seven hundred
yards was all that separated them. The enemy ceased firing, and that
stern, threatening, inaccessible, and intangible line which separates
two hostile armies was all the more clearly felt.

"One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing
the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And
what is there? Who is there?--there beyond that field, that tree, that
roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear
and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must
be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you will
inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of death. But you are
strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other such
excitedly animated and healthy men." So thinks, or at any rate feels,
anyone who comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives a
particular glamour and glad keenness of impression to everything that
takes place at such moments.

On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon rose, and
a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron. The
officers who had been standing together rode off to their places. The
hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence fell on the whole
squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and at the squadron
commander, awaiting the word of command. A second and a third cannon
ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the hussars, but the balls
with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads of the horsemen and fell
somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not look round, but at the sound
of each shot, as at the word of command, the whole squadron with its
rows of faces so alike yet so different, holding its breath while the
ball flew past, rose in the stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers
without turning their heads glanced at one another, curious to see their
comrades' impression. Every face, from Denisov's to that of the bugler,
showed one common expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement,
around chin and mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the
soldiers as if threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every
time a ball flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook--a
handsome horse despite its game leg--had the happy air of a schoolboy
called up before a large audience for an examination in which he feels
sure he will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a
clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat
under fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same indication of
something new and stern showed round the mouth.

"Who's that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight! Look at
me," cried Denisov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept turning
his horse in front of the squadron.

The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his whole short
sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in which he
held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually did,
especially toward evening when he had emptied his second bottle; he was
only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown back like birds when
they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into the sides of his good
horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling backwards in the saddle,
he galloped to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in a hoarse
voice to the men to look to their pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The
staff captain on his broad-backed, steady mare came at a walk to meet
him. His face with its long mustache was serious as always, only his
eyes were brighter than usual.

"Well, what about it?" said he to Denisov. "It won't come to a fight.
You'll see--we shall retire."

"The devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah,
Wostov," he cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it at
last."

And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet. Rostov felt
perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the bridge. Denisov
galloped up to him.

"Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll dwive them off."

"Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his
face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you stopping
here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the squadron
back."

The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire without
having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in the front
line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted the farther side
of the river.

The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up the
hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdanich Schubert, came
up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not far from Rostov,
without taking any notice of him although they were now meeting for the
first time since their encounter concerning Telyanin. Rostov, feeling
that he was at the front and in the power of a man toward whom he now
admitted that he had been to blame, did not lift his eyes from the
colonel's athletic back, his nape covered with light hair, and his red
neck. It seemed to Rostov that Bogdanich was only pretending not to
notice him, and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet's courage,
so he drew himself up and looked around him merrily; then it seemed to
him that Bogdanich rode so near in order to show him his courage. Next
he thought that his enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack
just to punish him--Rostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack,
Bogdanich would come up to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously
extend the hand of reconciliation.

The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the Pavlograds as he
had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After his
dismissal from headquarters Zherkov had not remained in the regiment,
saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front when he could get
more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and had succeeded in
attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince Bagration. He now came
to his former chief with an order from the commander of the rear guard.

"Colonel," he said, addressing Rostov's enemy with an air of gloomy
gravity and glancing round at his comrades, "there is an order to stop
and fire the bridge."

"An order to who?" asked the colonel morosely.

"I don't myself know 'to who,'" replied the cornet in a serious tone,
"but the prince told me to 'go and tell the colonel that the hussars
must return quickly and fire the bridge.'"

Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the
colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout Nesvitski
came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely carry his
weight.

"How's this, Colonel?" he shouted as he approached. "I told you to fire
the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are all beside
themselves over there and one can't make anything out."

The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to Nesvitski.

"You spoke to me of inflammable material," said he, "but you said
nothing about firing it."

"But, my dear sir," said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off his cap and
smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand, "wasn't I
telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material had been put
in position?"

"I am not your 'dear sir,' Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell me to
burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders strictly
to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would it burn, I
could not know by the holy spirit!"

"Ah, that's always the way!" said Nesvitski with a wave of the hand.
"How did you get here?" said he, turning to Zherkov.

"On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!"

"You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer..." continued the colonel in an
offended tone.

"Colonel," interrupted the officer of the suite, "You must be quick or
the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot."

The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the stout
staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned.

"I will the bridge fire," he said in a solemn tone as if to announce
that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would still
do the right thing.

Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to blame
for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second
squadron, that in which Rostov was serving under Denisov, to return to
the bridge.

"There, it's just as I thought," said Rostov to himself. "He wishes to
test me!" His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his face. "Let
him see whether I am a coward!" he thought.

Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression
appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostov watched his enemy,
the colonel, closely--to find in his face confirmation of his own
conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov, and looked as
he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came the word of
command.

"Look sharp! Look sharp!" several voices repeated around him.

Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the
hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The men
were crossing themselves. Rostov no longer looked at the colonel, he had
no time. He was afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much afraid
that his heart stood still. His hand trembled as he gave his horse into
an orderly's charge, and he felt the blood rush to his heart with a
thud. Denisov rode past him, leaning back and shouting something. Rostov
saw nothing but the hussars running all around him, their spurs catching
and their sabers clattering.

"Stretchers!" shouted someone behind him.

Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,
trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not
looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud, stumbled,
and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.

"At boss zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who, having
ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a
triumphant, cheerful face.

Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy and
was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the front the
better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing Rostov, shouted
to him:

"Who's that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right! Come
back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who, showing off
his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:

"Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he said.

"Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning in
his saddle.

Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite were standing
together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small group of men
with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord, and blue
riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and then at what was
approaching in the distance from the opposite side--the blue uniforms
and groups with horses, easily recognizable as artillery.

"Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first? Will they get
there and fire the bridge or will the French get within grapeshot range
and wipe them out?" These were the questions each man of the troops on
the high ground above the bridge involuntarily asked himself with a
sinking heart--watching the bridge and the hussars in the bright evening
light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with their
bayonets and guns.

"Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said Nesvitski; "they are within
grapeshot range now."

"He shouldn't have taken so many men," said the officer of the suite.

"True enough," answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have done
the job just as well."

"Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the hussars,
but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know whether he
was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency! How you look
at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the Vladimir medal
and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the squadron may be
recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon. Our Bogdanich knows how
things are done."

"There now!" said the officer of the suite, "that's grapeshot."

He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being detached
and hurriedly removed.

On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke
appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at the
moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two
reports one after another, and a third.

"Oh! Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the officer of
the suite by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen, fallen!"

"Two, I think."

"If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning away.

The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue
uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but
at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the
bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening there,
as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had succeeded in
setting it on fire and the French batteries were now firing at them, no
longer to hinder them but because the guns were trained and there was
someone to fire at.

The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the hussars
got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot went too
high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of hussars and
knocked three of them over.

Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on the
bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he had
always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the
bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like the
other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard a
rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar nearest
to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to him with
the others. Again someone shouted, "Stretchers!" Four men seized the
hussar and began lifting him.

"Oooh! For Christ's sake let me alone!" cried the wounded man, but still
he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.

Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed
into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the
sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How
bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the
waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the faraway
blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and
the pine forests veiled in the mist of their summits... There was peace
and happiness... "I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I
were there," thought Rostov. "In myself alone and in that sunshine there
is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, fear, and this
uncertainty and hurry... There--they are shouting again, and again are
all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is
here above me and around... Another instant and I shall never again see
the sun, this water, that gorge!..."

At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other
stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and of
the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one
feeling of sickening agitation.

"O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect
me!" Rostov whispered.

The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their voices
sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from sight.

"Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!" shouted Vaska Denisov just above
his ear.

"It's all over; but I am a coward--yes, a coward!" thought Rostov, and
sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one foot,
from the orderly and began to mount.

"Was that grapeshot?" he asked Denisov.

"Yes and no mistake!" cried Denisov. "You worked like wegular bwicks and
it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work! Hacking away at the dogs!
But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting at you like
a target."

And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostov, composed of
the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer from the suite.

"Well, it seems that no one has noticed," thought Rostov. And this was
true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation which
the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.

"Here's something for you to report," said Zherkov. "See if I don't get
promoted to a sublieutenancy."

"Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!" said the colonel
triumphantly and gaily.

"And if he asks about the losses?"

"A trifle," said the colonel in his bass voice: "two hussars wounded,
and one knocked out," he added, unable to restrain a happy smile, and
pronouncing the phrase "knocked out" with ringing distinctness.




CHAPTER IX

Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the command
of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to it,
losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of supplies,
and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything that had
been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men commanded by
Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube, stopping where
overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions only as far as
necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its heavy equipment.
There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and Melk; but despite the
courage and endurance--acknowledged even by the enemy--with which the
Russians fought, the only consequence of these actions was a yet more
rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had escaped capture at Ulm and had
joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and
Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and exhausted forces. The
defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought of. Instead of an
offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared in accord with the
modern science of strategics, had been handed to Kutuzov when he was in
Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the sole and almost unattainable
aim remaining for him was to effect a junction with the forces that were
advancing from Russia, without losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.

On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army crossed to the
left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with
the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the
thirtieth he attacked Mortier's division, which was on the left bank,
and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were taken:
banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time, after a
fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a fight had
not only held the field but had repulsed the French. Though the troops
were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of their number in
killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number of sick and
wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube with a letter
in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of the enemy; and though
the big hospitals and the houses in Krems converted into military
hospitals could no longer accommodate all the sick and wounded, yet the
stand made at Krems and the victory over Mortier raised the spirits of
the army considerably. Throughout the whole army and at headquarters
most joyful though erroneous rumors were rife of the imaginary approach
of columns from Russia, of some victory gained by the Austrians, and of
the retreat of the frightened Bonaparte.

Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the Austrian
General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse had been
wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a bullet. As a mark
of the commander-in-chief's special favor he was sent with the news of
this victory to the Austrian court, now no longer at Vienna (which was
threatened by the French) but at Brunn. Despite his apparently delicate
build Prince Andrew could endure physical fatigue far better than many
very muscular men, and on the night of the battle, having arrived at
Krems excited but not weary, with dispatches from Dokhturov to Kutuzov,
he was sent immediately with a special dispatch to Brunn. To be so sent
meant not only a reward but an important step toward promotion.

The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow that
had fallen the previous day--the day of the battle. Reviewing his
impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself the
impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the send-off
given him by the commander-in-chief and his fellow officers, Prince
Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise enjoying the feelings of a
man who has at length begun to attain a long-desired happiness. As soon
as he closed his eyes his ears seemed filled with the rattle of the
wheels and the sensation of victory. Then he began to imagine that the
Russians were running away and that he himself was killed, but he
quickly roused himself with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that
this was not so but that on the contrary the French had run away. He
again recalled all the details of the victory and his own calm courage
during the battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark
starry night was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was
thawing in the sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides
of the road were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.

At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded. The
Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the front
cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each of the
long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were being
jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he heard Russian
words), others were eating bread; the more severely wounded looked
silently, with the languid interest of sick children, at the envoy
hurrying past them.

Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what
action they had been wounded. "Day before yesterday, on the Danube,"
answered the soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the
soldier three gold pieces.

"That's for them all," he said to the officer who came up.

"Get well soon, lads!" he continued, turning to the soldiers. "There's
plenty to do still."

"What news, sir?" asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a
conversation.

"Good news!... Go on!" he shouted to the driver, and they galloped on.

It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the paved
streets of Brunn and found himself surrounded by high buildings, the
lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all that
atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so attractive to a
soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and sleepless night,
Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt even more vigorous and
alert than he had done the day before. Only his eyes gleamed feverishly
and his thoughts followed one another with extraordinary clearness and
rapidity. He again vividly recalled the details of the battle, no longer
dim, but definite and in the concise form in which he imagined himself
stating them to the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual
questions that might be put to him and the answers he would give. He
expected to be at once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance
to the palace, however, an official came running out to meet him, and
learning that he was a special messenger led him to another entrance.

"To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will find
the adjutant on duty," said the official. "He will conduct you to the
Minister of War."

The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait, and went
in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and bowing
with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along a
corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The
adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any
attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.

Prince Andrew's joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he
approached the door of the minister's room. He felt offended, and
without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into
one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind instantly
suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to despise the
adjutant and the minister. "Away from the smell of powder, they probably
think it easy to gain victories!" he thought. His eyes narrowed
disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with peculiarly
deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened when he saw the
minister seated at a large table reading some papers and making pencil
notes on them, and for the first two or three minutes taking no notice
of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each side of the minister's bent
bald head with its gray temples. He went on reading to the end, without
raising his eyes at the opening of the door and the sound of footsteps.

"Take this and deliver it," said he to his adjutant, handing him the
papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.

Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov's army interested
the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he was concerned
with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger that
impression. "But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me," he
thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together, arranged them
evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual and distinctive
head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the firm, intelligent
expression on his face changed in a way evidently deliberate and
habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial smile (which
does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man who is
continually receiving many petitioners one after another.

"From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?" he asked. "I hope it is good news?
There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was high time!"

He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it
with a mournful expression.

"Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!" he exclaimed in German. "What a calamity!
What a calamity!"

Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and looked
at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.

"Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is not
captured." Again he pondered. "I am very glad you have brought good
news, though Schmidt's death is a heavy price to pay for the victory.
His Majesty will no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I thank you!
You must have a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the parade.
However, I will let you know."

The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking,
reappeared.

"Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to see
you," he added, bowing his head.

When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest and
happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the
indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant. The
whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle seemed
the memory of a remote event long past.




CHAPTER X

Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance of
his in the diplomatic service.

"Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor," said
Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. "Franz, put the prince's
things in my bedroom," said he to the servant who was ushering Bolkonski
in. "So you're a messenger of victory, eh? Splendid! And I am sitting
here ill, as you see."

After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat's
luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin
settled down comfortably beside the fire.

After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived of
all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life, Prince
Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious surroundings such
as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was pleasant,
after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not in Russian (for
they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who would, he
supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the Austrians which was
then particularly strong.

Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle as
Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in Petersburg, but
had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutuzov.
Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising high in
the military profession, so to an even greater extent Bilibin gave
promise of rising in his diplomatic career. He still a young man but no
longer a young diplomat, as he had entered the service at the age of
sixteen, had been in Paris and Copenhagen, and now held a rather
important post in Vienna. Both the foreign minister and our ambassador
in Vienna knew him and valued him. He was not one of those many
diplomats who are esteemed because they have certain negative qualities,
avoid doing certain things, and speak French. He was one of those, who,
liking work, knew how to do it, and despite his indolence would
sometimes spend a whole night at his writing table. He worked well
whatever the import of his work. It was not the question "What for?" but
the question "How?" that interested him. What the diplomatic matter
might be he did not care, but it gave him great pleasure to prepare a
circular, memorandum, or report, skillfully, pointedly, and elegantly.
Bilibin's services were valued not only for what he wrote, but also for
his skill in dealing and conversing with those in the highest spheres.

Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be made
elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to say
something striking and took part in a conversation only when that was
possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with wittily original,
finished phrases of general interest. These sayings were prepared in the
inner laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally, so
that insignificant society people might carry them from drawing room to
drawing room. And, in fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about in
the Viennese drawing rooms and often had an influence on matters
considered important.

His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which always
looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's fingers after a
Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the principal play
of expression on his face. Now his forehead would pucker into deep folds
and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows would descend and deep
wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small, deep-set eyes always
twinkled and looked out straight.

"Well, now tell me about your exploits," said he.

Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, described the
engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.

"They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of
skittles," said he in conclusion.

Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.

"Cependant, mon cher," he remarked, examining his nails from a distance
and puckering the skin above his left eye, "malgre la haute estime que
je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j'avoue que votre victoire
n'est pas des plus victorieuses." *


* "But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox Russian
army, I must say that your victory was not particularly victorious."

He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those words in
Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.

"Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate Mortier and
his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your fingers!
Where's the victory?"

"But seriously," said Prince Andrew, "we can at any rate say without
boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm..."

"Why didn't you capture one, just one, marshal for us?"

"Because not everything happens as one expects or with the smoothness of
a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at their rear by seven
in the morning but had not reached it by five in the afternoon."

"And why didn't you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have
been there at seven in the morning," returned Bilibin with a smile. "You
ought to have been there at seven in the morning."

"Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic
methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?" retorted Prince Andrew in
the same tone.

"I know," interrupted Bilibin, "you're thinking it's very easy to take
marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but still why
didn't you capture him? So don't be surprised if not only the Minister
of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and King Francis is
not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor secretary of the
Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of my joy to give my
Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to the Prater... True,
we have no Prater here..."

He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his
forehead.

"It is now my turn to ask you 'why?' mon cher," said Bolkonski. "I
confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties
here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can't make it out. Mack loses
a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl give no signs
of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at last gains a
real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility of the French,
and the Minister of War does not even care to hear the details."

"That's just it, my dear fellow. You see it's hurrah for the Tsar, for
Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but what do
we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories? Bring us nice
news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one archduke's as
good as another, as you know) and even if it is only over a fire brigade
of Bonaparte's, that will be another story and we'll fire off some
cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on purpose to vex us. The
Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke Ferdinand disgraces himself.
You abandon Vienna, give up its defense--as much as to say: 'Heaven is
with us, but heaven help you and your capital!' The one general whom we
all loved, Schmidt, you expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us
on the victory! Admit that more irritating news than yours could not
have been conceived. It's as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose.
Besides, suppose you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke
Karl gained a victory, what effect would that have on the general course
of events? It's too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French
army!"

"What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?"

"Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and the count, our
dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders."

After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception, and
especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt that he could not take in
the full significance of the words he heard.

"Count Lichtenfels was here this morning," Bilibin continued, "and
showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was fully
described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that your
victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can't be
received as a savior."

"Really I don't care about that, I don't care at all," said Prince
Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle before Krems
was really of small importance in view of such events as the fall of
Austria's capital. "How is it Vienna was taken? What of the bridge and
its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard reports that
Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?" he said.

"Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is defending
us--doing it very badly, I think, but still he is defending us. But
Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has not yet been taken and I
hope it will not be, for it is mined and orders have been given to blow
it up. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the mountains of
Bohemia, and you and your army would have spent a bad quarter of an hour
between two fires."

"But still this does not mean that the campaign is over," said Prince
Andrew.

"Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they daren't
say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign, it won't
be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that will
decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin quoting one
of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and pausing.
"The only question is what will come of the meeting between the Emperor
Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia joins the
Allies, Austria's hand will be forced and there will be war. If not it
is merely a question of settling where the preliminaries of the new
Campo Formio are to be drawn up."

"What an extraordinary genius!" Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, "and what luck
the man has!"

"Buonaparte?" said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to
indicate that he was about to say something witty. "Buonaparte?" he
repeated, accentuating the u: "I think, however, now that he lays down
laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l'u! * I
shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!"


* "We must let him off the u!"

"But joking apart," said Prince Andrew, "do you really think the
campaign is over?"

"This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is not
used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the first
place because her provinces have been pillaged--they say the Holy
Russian army loots terribly--her army is destroyed, her capital taken,
and all this for the beaux yeux * of His Sardinian Majesty. And
therefore--this is between ourselves--I instinctively feel that we are
being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France and
projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately."


* Fine eyes.

"Impossible!" cried Prince Andrew. "That would be too base."

"If we live we shall see," replied Bilibin, his face again becoming
smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.

When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in a
clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows, he
felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far away
from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria's treachery, Bonaparte's
new triumph, tomorrow's levee and parade, and the audience with the
Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.

He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of musketry
and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his ears, and now
again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were descending the hill,
the French were firing, and he felt his heart palpitating as he rode
forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily whistling all around,
and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as he had not done since
childhood.

He woke up...

"Yes, that all happened!" he said, and, smiling happily to himself like
a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.




CHAPTER XI

Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first
thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be presented to
the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War, the polite
Austrian adjutant, Bilibin, and last night's conversation. Having
dressed for his attendance at court in full parade uniform, which he had
not worn for a long time, he went into Bilibin's study fresh, animated,
and handsome, with his hand bandaged. In the study were four gentlemen
of the diplomatic corps. With Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, who was a
secretary to the embassy, Bolkonski was already acquainted. Bilibin
introduced him to the others.

The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin's were young, wealthy, gay society
men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which Bilibin, their
leader, called les notres. * This set, consisting almost exclusively of
diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had nothing to do with
war or politics but related to high society, to certain women, and to
the official side of the service. These gentlemen received Prince Andrew
as one of themselves, an honor they did not extend to many. From
politeness and to start conversation, they asked him a few questions
about the army and the battle, and then the talk went off into merry
jests and gossip.


* Ours.

"But the best of it was," said one, telling of the misfortune of a
fellow diplomat, "that the Chancellor told him flatly that his
appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it.
Can you fancy the figure he cut?..."

"But the worst of it, gentlemen--I am giving Kuragin away to you--is
that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is taking
advantage of it!"

Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over its
arm. He began to laugh.

"Tell me about that!" he said.

"Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!" cried several voices.

"You, Bolkonski, don't know," said Bilibin turning to Prince Andrew,
"that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of the
Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing among
the women!"

"La femme est la compagne de l'homme," * announced Prince Hippolyte, and
began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.


* "Woman is man's companion."

Bilibin and the rest of "ours" burst out laughing in Hippolyte's face,
and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom--he had to admit--he had
almost been jealous on his wife's account, was the butt of this set.

"Oh, I must give you a treat," Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski. "Kuragin
is exquisite when he discusses politics--you should see his gravity!"

He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began talking to
him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered round these
two.

"The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance," began
Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, "without
expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless
His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our alliance...

"Wait, I have not finished..." he said to Prince Andrew, seizing him by
the arm, "I believe that intervention will be stronger than
nonintervention. And..." he paused. "Finally one cannot impute the
nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end." And
he released Bolkonski's arm to indicate that he had now quite finished.

"Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden
mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with
satisfaction.

Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was evidently
distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain the wild
laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.

"Well now, gentlemen," said Bilibin, "Bolkonski is my guest in this
house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I can, with
all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it would be easy,
but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more difficult, and I
beg you all to help me. Brunn's attractions must be shown him. You can
undertake the theater, I society, and you, Hippolyte, of course the
women."

"We must let him see Amelie, she's exquisite!" said one of "ours,"
kissing his finger tips.

"In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane
interests," said Bilibin.

"I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality,
gentlemen, it is already time for me to go," replied Prince Andrew
looking at his watch.

"Where to?"

"To the Emperor."

"Oh! Oh! Oh! Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir, Prince! Come back
early to dinner," cried several voices. "We'll take you in hand."

"When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the way
that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated," said Bilibin,
accompanying him to the hall.

"I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I know the facts, I
can't," replied Bolkonski, smiling.

"Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for giving
audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can't do it, as you
will see."




CHAPTER XII

At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he had
been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into his
face and just nodded to him with his long head. But after it was over,
the adjutant he had seen the previous day ceremoniously informed
Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give him an audience. The Emperor
Francis received him standing in the middle of the room. Before the
conversation began Prince Andrew was struck by the fact that the Emperor
seemed confused and blushed as if not knowing what to say.

"Tell me, when did the battle begin?" he asked hurriedly.

Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple:
"Was Kutuzov well? When had he left Krems?" and so on. The Emperor spoke
as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions--the answers
to these questions, as was only too evident, did not interest him.

"At what o'clock did the battle begin?" asked the Emperor.

"I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o'clock the battle began at the
front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our attack began after five in
the afternoon," replied Bolkonski growing more animated and expecting
that he would have a chance to give a reliable account, which he had
ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the Emperor smiled
and interrupted him.

"How many miles?"

"From where to where, Your Majesty?"

"From Durrenstein to Krems."

"Three and a half miles, Your Majesty."

"The French have abandoned the left bank?"

"According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during the
night."

"Is there sufficient forage in Krems?"

"Forage has not been supplied to the extent..."

The Emperor interrupted him.

"At what o'clock was General Schmidt killed?"

"At seven o'clock, I believe."

"At seven o'clock? It's very sad, very sad!"

The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew withdrew and
was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides. Everywhere he saw
friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday's adjutant reproached
him for not having stayed at the palace, and offered him his own house.
The Minister of War came up and congratulated him on the Maria Theresa
Order of the third grade, which the Emperor was conferring on him. The
Empress' chamberlain invited him to see Her Majesty. The archduchess
also wished to see him. He did not know whom to answer, and for a few
seconds collected his thoughts. Then the Russian ambassador took him by
the shoulder, led him to the window, and began to talk to him.

Contrary to Bilibin's forecast the news he had brought was joyfully
received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutuzov was awarded the
Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army received rewards.
Bolkonski was invited everywhere, and had to spend the whole morning
calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries. Between four and five in
the afternoon, having made all his calls, he was returning to Bilibin's
house thinking out a letter to his father about the battle and his visit
to Brunn. At the door he found a vehicle half full of luggage. Franz,
Bilibin's man, was dragging a portmanteau with some difficulty out of
the front door.

Before returning to Bilibin's Prince Andrew had gone to a bookshop to
provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent some
time in the shop.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Oh, your excellency!" said Franz, with difficulty rolling the
portmanteau into the vehicle, "we are to move on still farther. The
scoundrel is again at our heels!"

"Eh? What?" asked Prince Andrew.

Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed excitement.

"There now! Confess that this is delightful," said he. "This affair of
the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without striking a
blow!"

Prince Andrew could not understand.

"But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the town
knows?"

"I come from the archduchess'. I heard nothing there."

"And you didn't see that everybody is packing up?"

"I did not... What is it all about?" inquired Prince Andrew impatiently.

"What's it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that
Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat is
now rushing along the road to Brunn and will be here in a day or two."

"What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was mined?"

"That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why."

Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders.

"But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It
will be cut off," said he.

"That's just it," answered Bilibin. "Listen! The French entered Vienna
as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday, those
gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux, * Murat, Lannes, and Belliard, mount
and ride to the bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.)
'Gentlemen,' says one of them, 'you know the Thabor Bridge is mined and
doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its head and
an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow up the bridge
and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign the Emperor
Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and take it!' 'Yes,
let's!' say the others. And off they go and take the bridge, cross it,
and now with their whole army are on this side of the Danube, marching
on us, you, and your lines of communication."


* The marshalls.

"Stop jesting," said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news
grieved him and yet he was pleased.

As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless
situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead it
out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift him from
the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to fame!
Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching the army
he would give an opinion at the war council which would be the only one
that could save the army, and how he alone would be entrusted with the
executing of the plan.

"Stop this jesting," he said.

"I am not jesting," Bilibin went on. "Nothing is truer or sadder. These
gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white handkerchiefs; they
assure the officer on duty that they, the marshals, are on their way to
negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets them enter the tête-de-pont. *
They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that the war is over, that
the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting with Bonaparte, that they
desire to see Prince Auersperg, and so on. The officer sends for
Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace the officers, crack jokes, sit on the
cannon, and meanwhile a French battalion gets to the bridge unobserved,
flings the bags of incendiary material into the water, and approaches
the tête-de-pont. At length appears the lieutenant general, our dear
Prince Auersperg von Mautern himself. 'Dearest foe! Flower of the
Austrian army, hero of the Turkish wars Hostilities are ended, we can
shake one another's hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience
to make Prince Auersperg's acquaintance.' In a word, those gentlemen,
Gascons indeed, so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so
flattered by his rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals,
and so dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes, qu'il
n'y voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur
l'ennemi!" *(2) In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did not
forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due appreciation.
"The French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes the guns, and the
bridge is taken! But what is best of all," he went on, his excitement
subsiding under the delightful interest of his own story, "is that the
sergeant in charge of the cannon which was to give the signal to fire
the mines and blow up the bridge, this sergeant, seeing that the French
troops were running onto the bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes
stayed his hand. The sergeant, who was evidently wiser than his general,
goes up to Auersperg and says: 'Prince, you are being deceived, here are
the French!' Murat, seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed
to speak, turns to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a true
Gascon) and says: 'I don't recognize the world-famous Austrian
discipline, if you allow a subordinate to address you like that!' It was
a stroke of genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and
orders the sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair
of the Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
rascality...."


* Bridgehead.

* (2) That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that he ought to
be firing at the enemy.

"It may be treachery," said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the gray
overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of firing, and the
glory that awaited him.

"Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light," replied
Bilibin. "It's not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just as
at Ulm... it is..."--he seemed to be trying to find the right
expression. "C'est... c'est du Mack. Nous sommes mackes (It is... it is
a bit of Mack. We are Macked)," he concluded, feeling that he had
produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His
hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a
slight smile he began to examine his nails.

"Where are you off to?" he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had risen
and was going toward his room.

"I am going away."

"Where to?"

"To the army."

"But you meant to stay another two days?"

"But now I am off at once."

And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went to
his room.

"Do you know, mon cher," said Bilibin following him, "I have been
thinking about you. Why are you going?"

And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles
vanished from his face.

Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.

"Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back to the
army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher, it is
heroism!"

"Not at all," said Prince Andrew.

"But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the other
side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the contrary,
is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no longer fit for
anything else.... You have not been ordered to return and have not been
dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and go with us wherever our
ill luck takes us. They say we are going to Olmutz, and Olmutz is a very
decent town. You and I will travel comfortably in my caleche."

"Do stop joking, Bilibin," cried Bolkonski.

"I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are you
going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two things,"
and the skin over his left temple puckered, "either you will not reach
your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will share defeat and
disgrace with Kutuzov's whole army."

And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was
insoluble.

"I cannot argue about it," replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he thought:
"I am going to save the army."

"My dear fellow, you are a hero!" said Bilibin.




CHAPTER XIII

That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War, Bolkonski
set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would find it and
fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.

In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the heavy
baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf Prince
Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was moving with
great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so obstructed
with carts that it was impossible to get by in a carriage. Prince Andrew
took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack commander, and hungry and
weary, making his way past the baggage wagons, rode in search of the
commander-in-chief and of his own luggage. Very sinister reports of the
position of the army reached him as he went along, and the appearance of
the troops in their disorderly flight confirmed these rumors.

"Cette armee russe que l'or de l'Angleterre a transportee des extremites
de l'univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le meme sort--(le sort de
l'armee d'Ulm)." * He remembered these words in Bonaparte's address to
his army at the beginning of the campaign, and they awoke in him
astonishment at the genius of his hero, a feeling of wounded pride, and
a hope of glory. "And should there be nothing left but to die?" he
thought. "Well, if need be, I shall do it no worse than others."


* "That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of the earth
by English gold, we shall cause to share the same fate--(the fate of the
army at Ulm)."

He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of detachments,
carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and vehicles of all
kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy road, three and
sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and before, as far as ear
could reach, there were the rattle of wheels, the creaking of carts and
gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the crack of whips, shouts, the
urging of horses, and the swearing of soldiers, orderlies, and officers.
All along the sides of the road fallen horses were to be seen, some
flayed, some not, and broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers
sat waiting for something, and again soldiers straggling from their
companies, crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or
returned from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At
each ascent or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the
din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud
pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped,
traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers
directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their
voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their faces
that they despaired of the possibility of checking this disorder.

"Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army," thought Bolkonski, recalling
Bilibin's words.

Wishing to find out where the commander-in-chief was, he rode up to a
convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse vehicle,
evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available materials and
looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet, and a caleche. A
soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in shawls sat behind the
apron under the leather hood of the vehicle. Prince Andrew rode up and
was just putting his question to a soldier when his attention was
diverted by the desperate shrieks of the woman in the vehicle. An
officer in charge of transport was beating the soldier who was driving
the woman's vehicle for trying to get ahead of others, and the strokes
of his whip fell on the apron of the equipage. The woman screamed
piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew she leaned out from behind the apron
and, waving her thin arms from under the woolen shawl, cried:

"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven's sake... Protect me!
What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh
Chasseurs.... They won't let us pass, we are left behind and have lost
our people..."

"I'll flatten you into a pancake!" shouted the angry officer to the
soldier. "Turn back with your slut!"

"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?" screamed the
doctor's wife.

"Kindly let this cart pass. Don't you see it's a woman?" said Prince
Andrew riding up to the officer.

The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the
soldier. "I'll teach you to push on!... Back!"

"Let them pass, I tell you!" repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his
lips.

"And who are you?" cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy rage,
"who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander here, not you!
Go back or I'll flatten you into a pancake," repeated he. This
expression evidently pleased him.

"That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp," came a voice from
behind.

Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless, tipsy
rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his
championship of the doctor's wife in her queer trap might expose him to
what he dreaded more than anything in the world--to ridicule; but his
instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence Prince
Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised his
riding whip.

"Kind...ly let--them--pass!"

The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.

"It's all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there's this
disorder," he muttered. "Do as you like."

Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the
doctor's wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with a
sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he
galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander-in-chief
was.

On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,
intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to sort
out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his mind. "This
is a mob of scoundrels and not an army," he was thinking as he went up
to the window of the first house, when a familiar voice called him by
name.

He turned round. Nesvitski's handsome face looked out of the little
window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed something, and
flourishing his arm, called him to enter.

"Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don't you hear? Eh? Come quick..." he shouted.

Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another adjutant
having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he
had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm. This
was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski's usually laughing countenance.

"Where is the commander-in-chief?" asked Bolkonski.

"Here, in that house," answered the adjutant.

"Well, is it true that it's peace and capitulation?" asked Nesvitski.

"I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I could
do to get here."

"And we, my dear boy! It's terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack, we're
getting it still worse," said Nesvitski. "But sit down and have
something to eat."

"You won't be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,
Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is," said the other
adjutant.

"Where are headquarters?"

"We are to spend the night in Znaim."

"Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses," said Nesvitski.
"They've made up splendid packs for me--fit to cross the Bohemian
mountains with. It's a bad lookout, old fellow! But what's the matter
with you? You must be ill to shiver like that," he added, noticing that
Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.

"It's nothing," replied Prince Andrew.

He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor's wife and
the convoy officer.

"What is the commander-in-chief doing here?" he asked.

"I can't make out at all," said Nesvitski.

"Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable, abominable,
quite abominable!" said Prince Andrew, and he went off to the house
where the commander-in-chief was.

Passing by Kutuzov's carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his
suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince
Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the
house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the Austrian
general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little Kozlovski was
squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk, with cuffs turned
up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom upwards. Kozlovski's face
looked worn--he too had evidently not slept all night. He glanced at
Prince Andrew and did not even nod to him.

"Second line... have you written it?" he continued dictating to the
clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..."

"One can't write so fast, your honor," said the clerk, glancing angrily
and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.

Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov's voice, excited and
dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the
sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him, the
disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk and
Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to the commander
in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks holding the horses
near the window, Prince Andrew felt that something important and
disastrous was about to happen.

He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.

"Immediately, Prince," said Kozlovski. "Dispositions for Bagration."

"What about capitulation?"

"Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle."

Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard. Just
as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened, and
Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the doorway.
Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the expression of the
commander in chief's one sound eye showed him to be so preoccupied with
thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of his presence. He looked
straight at his adjutant's face without recognizing him.

"Well, have you finished?" said he to Kozlovski.

"One moment, your excellency."

Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,
impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander-in-chief.

"I have the honor to present myself," repeated Prince Andrew rather
loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.

"Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!"

Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.

"Well, good-by, Prince," said he to Bagration. "My blessing, and may
Christ be with you in your great endeavor!"

His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his left
hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right, on which he wore
a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a gesture evidently
habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration kissed him on the neck
instead.

"Christ be with you!" Kutuzov repeated and went toward his carriage.
"Get in with me," said he to Bolkonski.

"Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to remain
with Prince Bagration's detachment."

"Get in," said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still delayed, he
added: "I need good officers myself, need them myself!"

They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.

"There is still much, much before us," he said, as if with an old man's
penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkonski's mind. "If
a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God," he added as
if speaking to himself.

Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov's face only a foot distant from him and
involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar near his
temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty eye
socket. "Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men's death,"
thought Bolkonski.

"That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment," he said.

Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had been
saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently swaying
on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince Andrew. There
was not a trace of agitation on his face. With delicate irony he
questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his interview with the
Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court concerning the Krems
affair, and about some ladies they both knew.




CHAPTER XIV

On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news that the army he
commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported that the
French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing in immense
force upon Kutuzov's line of communication with the troops that were
arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at Krems, Napoleon's
army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him off completely
and surround his exhausted army of forty thousand, and he would find
himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If Kutuzov decided to abandon
the road connecting him with the troops arriving from Russia, he would
have to march with no road into unknown parts of the Bohemian mountains,
defending himself against superior forces of the enemy and abandoning
all hope of a junction with Buxhowden. If Kutuzov decided to retreat
along the road from Krems to Olmutz, to unite with the troops arriving
from Russia, he risked being forestalled on that road by the French who
had crossed the Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his baggage and
transport, having to accept battle on the march against an enemy three
times as strong, who would hem him in from two sides.

Kutuzov chose this latter course.

The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were
advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles off
on the line of Kutuzov's retreat. If he reached Znaim before the French,
there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the French
forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army to a
disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to forestall
the French with his whole army was impossible. The road for the French
from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for the
Russians from Krems to Znaim.

The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent Bagration's vanguard, four
thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the Krems-Znaim to
the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march without resting,
and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and if he succeeded in
forestalling the French he was to delay them as long as possible.
Kutuzov himself with all his transport took the road to Znaim.

Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills, with his
hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as stragglers
by the way, Bagration came out on the Vienna-Znaim road at Hollabrunn a
few hours ahead of the French who were approaching Hollabrunn from
Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to march for some days
before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagration with his four thousand
hungry, exhausted men would have to detain for days the whole enemy army
that came upon him at Hollabrunn, which was clearly impossible. But a
freak of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the trick
that had placed the Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without a
fight led Murat to try to deceive Kutuzov in a similar way. Meeting
Bagration's weak detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be
Kutuzov's whole army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited the
arrival of the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna, and
with this object offered a three days' truce on condition that both
armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared that
negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he therefore
offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count Nostitz, the
Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed Murat's emissary
and retired, leaving Bagration's division exposed. Another emissary rode
to the Russian line to announce the peace negotiations and to offer the
Russian army the three days' truce. Bagration replied that he was not
authorized either to accept or refuse a truce and sent his adjutant to
Kutuzov to report the offer he had received.

A truce was Kutuzov's sole chance of gaining time, giving Bagration's
exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport and heavy convoys
(whose movements were concealed from the French) advance if but one
stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the only, and a quite
unexpected, chance of saving the army. On receiving the news he
immediately dispatched Adjutant General Wintzingerode, who was in
attendance on him, to the enemy camp. Wintzingerode was not merely to
agree to the truce but also to offer terms of capitulation, and
meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back to hasten to the utmost the
movements of the baggage trains of the entire army along the Krems-Znaim
road. Bagration's exhausted and hungry detachment, which alone covered
this movement of the transport and of the whole army, had to remain
stationary in face of an enemy eight times as strong as itself.

Kutuzov's expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which were in
no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to pass, and
also that Murat's mistake would very soon be discovered, proved correct.
As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen miles from
Hollabrunn) received Murat's dispatch with the proposal of a truce and a
capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the following letter to
Murat:

Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,

at eight o'clock in the morning

To PRINCE MURAT,

I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command only
my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice without my
order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign. Break the
armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him that the
general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so, and that no
one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.

If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I will
ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy the Russian
army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage and artillery.

The Russian Emperor's aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are nothing
when they have no powers; this one had none.... The Austrians let
themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna bridge, you are
letting yourself be tricked by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor.

NAPOLEON

Bonaparte's adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to
Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all
the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim
escape, and Bagration's four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,
dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first time
for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was in store
for him.




CHAPTER XV

Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who had
persisted in his request to Kutuzov, arrived at Grunth and reported
himself to Bagration. Bonaparte's adjutant had not yet reached Murat's
detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In Bagration's detachment
no one knew anything of the general position of affairs. They talked of
peace but did not believe in its possibility; others talked of a battle
but also disbelieved in the nearness of an engagement. Bagration,
knowing Bolkonski to be a favorite and trusted adjutant, received him
with distinction and special marks of favor, explaining to him that
there would probably be an engagement that day or the next, and giving
him full liberty to remain with him during the battle or to join the
rearguard and have an eye on the order of retreat, "which is also very
important."

"However, there will hardly be an engagement today," said Bagration as
if to reassure Prince Andrew.

"If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a medal
he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he wishes to
stay with me, let him... he'll be of use here if he's a brave officer,"
thought Bagration. Prince Andrew, without replying, asked the prince's
permission to ride round the position to see the disposition of the
forces, so as to know his bearings should he be sent to execute an
order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly dressed man with a
diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of speaking French though
he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince Andrew.

On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who
seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors, benches,
and fencing from the village.

"There now, Prince! We can't stop those fellows," said the staff officer
pointing to the soldiers. "The officers don't keep them in hand. And
there," he pointed to a sutler's tent, "they crowd in and sit. This
morning I turned them all out and now look, it's full again. I must go
there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won't take a moment."

"Yes, let's go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese," said
Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything.

"Why didn't you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you something."

They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed and
weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking.

"Now what does this mean, gentlemen?" said the staff officer, in the
reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more than
once. "You know it won't do to leave your posts like this. The prince
gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you, Captain," and he
turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer who without his boots
(he had given them to the canteen keeper to dry), in only his stockings,
rose when they entered, smiling not altogether comfortably.

"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Captain Tushin?" he continued.
"One would think that as an artillery officer you would set a good
example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be sounded
and you'll be in a pretty position without your boots!" (The staff
officer smiled.) "Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of you,
all!" he added in a tone of command.

Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery officer
Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged foot to the
other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent, kindly eyes from
Prince Andrew to the staff officer.

"The soldiers say it feels easier without boots," said Captain Tushin
smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently wishing to adopt
a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt that his jest was
unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.

"Kindly return to your posts," said the staff officer trying to preserve
his gravity.

Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer's small figure.
There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather comic,
but extremely attractive.

The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode on.

Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking
soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left some
entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which showed up
red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt sleeves despite the
cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host of white ants;
spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown up from behind the
bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer rode up, looked at
the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it they came upon some
dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by others, who ran from the
entrenchment. They had to hold their noses and put their horses to a
trot to escape from the poisoned atmosphere of these latrines.

"Voila l'agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince," * said the staff
officer.


* "This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince."

They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could already be
seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the position.

"That's our battery," said the staff officer indicating the highest
point. "It's in charge of the queer fellow we saw without his boots. You
can see everything from there; let's go there, Prince."

"Thank you very much, I will go on alone," said Prince Andrew, wishing
to rid himself of this staff officer's company, "please don't trouble
yourself further."

The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone.

The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly and
cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had been
in the baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road seven
miles away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and alarm
could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French lines the
more confident was the appearance of our troops. The soldiers in their
greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major and company
officers were counting the men, poking the last man in each section in
the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers scattered over
the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and were building
shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the fires sat others,
dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg bands or mending
boots or overcoats and crowding round the boilers and porridge cookers.
In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers were gazing eagerly at
the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample, which a quartermaster
sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an officer who sat on a log
before his shelter, had been tasted.

Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,
crowded round a pockmarked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who, tilting
a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to him. The
soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with reverential faces,
emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths, and walked away from
the sergeant major with brightened expressions, licking their lips and
wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats. All their faces were as
serene as if all this were happening at home awaiting peaceful
encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before an action in which
at least half of them would be left on the field. After passing a
chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev grenadiers--fine fellows
busy with similar peaceful affairs--near the shelter of the regimental
commander, higher than and different from the others, Prince Andrew came
out in front of a platoon of grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two
soldiers held him while two others were flourishing their switches and
striking him regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally. A
stout major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the
screams kept repeating:

"It's a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest,
honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor in
him, he's a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!"

So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but unnatural
screams, continued.

"Go on, go on!" said the major.

A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his face
stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the adjutant
as he rode by.

Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our front
line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and left flanks,
but in the center where the men with a flag of truce had passed that
morning, the lines were so near together that the men could see one
another's faces and speak to one another. Besides the soldiers who
formed the picket line on either side, there were many curious onlookers
who, jesting and laughing, stared at their strange foreign enemies.

Since early morning--despite an injunction not to approach the picket
line--the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away. The
soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a curiosity,
no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the sight-seers and
grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew halted to have a look
at the French.

"Look! Look there!" one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a
Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer and
was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. "Hark to him
jabbering! Fine, isn't it? It's all the Frenchy can do to keep up with
him. There now, Sidorov!"

"Wait a bit and listen. It's fine!" answered Sidorov, who was considered
an adept at French.

The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince Andrew
recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying. Dolokhov had
come from the left flank where their regiment was stationed, with his
captain.

"Now then, go on, go on!" incited the officer, bending forward and
trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible to
him. "More, please: more! What's he saying?"

Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot
dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about the
campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the Russians, was
trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and had fled all the
way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the Russians had not
surrendered but had beaten the French.

"We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you off," said
Dolokhov.

"Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!" said the
French grenadier.

The French onlookers and listeners laughed.

"We'll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...," * said Dolokhov.


* "On vous fera danser."

"Qu' est-ce qu'il chante?" * asked a Frenchman.


* "What's he singing about?"

"It's ancient history," said another, guessing that it referred to a
former war. "The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the
others..."

"Bonaparte..." began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.

"Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!" cried he angrily.

"The devil skin your Emperor."

And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier's Russian and shouldering
his musket walked away.

"Let us go, Ivan Lukich," he said to the captain.

"Ah, that's the way to talk French," said the picket soldiers. "Now,
Sidorov, you have a try!"

Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless
sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaska," he said,
trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.

"Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!" came peals of such healthy and
good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the French
involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed to be to
unload the muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return home as
quickly as possible.

But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and
entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon
confronted one another as before.




CHAPTER XVI

Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left, Prince
Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff officer had
told him the whole field could be seen. Here he dismounted, and stopped
beside the farthest of the four unlimbered cannon. Before the guns an
artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he stood at attention when the
officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his measured, monotonous pacing.
Behind the guns were their limbers and still farther back picket ropes
and artillerymen's bonfires. To the left, not far from the farthest
cannon, was a small, newly constructed wattle shed from which came the
sound of officers' voices in eager conversation.

It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and the
greater part of the enemy's opened out from this battery. Just facing
it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schon Grabern
could be seen, and in three places to left and right the French troops
amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of whom were
evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To the left from
that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a battery, but it
was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye. Our right flank was
posted on a rather steep incline which dominated the French position.
Our infantry were stationed there, and at the farthest point the
dragoons. In the center, where Tushin's battery stood and from which
Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the easiest and most
direct descent and ascent to the brook separating us from Schon Grabern.
On the left our troops were close to a copse, in which smoked the
bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood. The French line was
wider than ours, and it was plain that they could easily outflank us on
both sides. Behind our position was a steep and deep dip, making it
difficult for artillery and cavalry to retire. Prince Andrew took out
his notebook and, leaning on the cannon, sketched a plan of the
position. He made some notes on two points, intending to mention them to
Bagration. His idea was, first, to concentrate all the artillery in the
center, and secondly, to withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the
dip. Prince Andrew, being always near the commander in chief, closely
following the mass movements and general orders, and constantly studying
historical accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the
course of events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined
only important possibilities: "If the enemy attacks the right flank," he
said to himself, "the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseurs must
hold their position till reserves from the center come up. In that case
the dragoons could successfully make a flank counterattack. If they
attack our center we, having the center battery on this high ground,
shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and retreat to the dip by
echelons." So he reasoned.... All the time he had been beside the gun,
he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly, but as often happens
had not understood a word of what they were saying. Suddenly, however,
he was struck by a voice coming from the shed, and its tone was so
sincere that he could not but listen.

"No, friend," said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, a
familiar voice, "what I say is that if it were possible to know what is
beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That's so, friend."

Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: "Afraid or not, you can't
escape it anyhow."

"All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people," said a third manly
voice interrupting them both. "Of course you artillery men are very
wise, because you can take everything along with you--vodka and snacks."

And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,
laughed.

"Yes, one is afraid," continued the first speaker, he of the familiar
voice. "One is afraid of the unknown, that's what it is. Whatever we may
say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is no sky but only
an atmosphere."

The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.

"Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin," it said.

"Why," thought Prince Andrew, "that's the captain who stood up in the
sutler's hut without his boots." He recognized the agreeable,
philosophizing voice with pleasure.

"Some herb vodka? Certainly!" said Tushin. "But still, to conceive a
future life..."

He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air; nearer and
nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon ball, as if it
had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded into the ground near
the shed with super human force, throwing up a mass of earth. The ground
seemed to groan at the terrible impact.

And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth and
his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed followed
by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer who hurried
off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.




CHAPTER XVII

Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,
looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes ran
rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto
motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was a
battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two
mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A
small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,
probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had
not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a report.
The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and galloped back
to Grunth to find Prince Bagration. He heard the cannonade behind him
growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our guns had begun to reply.
From the bottom of the slope, where the parleys had taken place, came
the report of musketry.

Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte's stern letter,
and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at once
moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the Russian
wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the Emperor to
crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.

"It has begun. Here it is!" thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood
rush to his heart. "But where and how will my Toulon present itself?"

Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and drinking
vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same rapid
movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets ready, and
on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that filled his
heart. "It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but enjoyable!" was what the
face of each soldier and each officer seemed to say.

Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up, he saw,
in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming toward him.
The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and riding a
white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew stopped, waiting for
him to come up; Prince Bagration reined in his horse and recognizing
Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while Prince Andrew
told him what he had seen.

The feeling, "It has begun! Here it is!" was seen even on Prince
Bagration's hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.
Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face and
wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking and
feeling at that moment. "Is there anything at all behind that impassive
face?" Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince Bagration bent
his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew told him, and
said, "Very good!" in a tone that seemed to imply that everything that
took place and was reported to him was exactly what he had foreseen.
Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride, spoke quickly. Prince
Bagration, uttering his words with an Oriental accent, spoke
particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that there was no need to
hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the direction of Tushin's
battery. Prince Andrew followed with the suite. Behind Prince Bagration
rode an officer of the suite, the prince's personal adjutant, Zherkov,
an orderly officer, the staff officer on duty, riding a fine bobtailed
horse, and a civilian--an accountant who had asked permission to be
present at the battle out of curiosity. The accountant, a stout, full-
faced man, looked around him with a naive smile of satisfaction and
presented a strange appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and
adjutants, in his camlet coat, as he jolted on his horse with a convoy
officer's saddle.

"He wants to see a battle," said Zherkov to Bolkonski, pointing to the
accountant, "but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach already."

"Oh, leave off!" said the accountant with a beaming but rather cunning
smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of Zherkov's joke, and
purposely trying to appear stupider than he really was.

"It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince," said the staff officer. (He
remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing a
prince, but could not get it quite right.)

By this time they were all approaching Tushin's battery, and a ball
struck the ground in front of them.

"What's that that has fallen?" asked the accountant with a naive smile.

"A French pancake," answered Zherkov.

"So that's what they hit with?" asked the accountant. "How awful!"

He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished speaking
when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which suddenly
ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a Cossack, riding
a little to their right and behind the accountant, crashed to earth with
his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent over their saddles and
turned their horses away. The accountant stopped, facing the Cossack,
and examined him with attentive curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the
horse still struggled.

Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing the
cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to say, "Is
it worth while noticing trifles?" He reined in his horse with the care
of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged his saber
which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber of a kind
no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story of Suvorov
giving his saber to Bagration in Italy, and the recollection was
particularly pleasant at that moment. They had reached the battery at
which Prince Andrew had been when he examined the battlefield.

"Whose company?" asked Prince Bagration of an artilleryman standing by
the ammunition wagon.

He asked, "Whose company?" but he really meant, "Are you frightened
here?" and the artilleryman understood him.

"Captain Tushin's, your excellency!" shouted the red-haired, freckled
gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.

"Yes, yes," muttered Bagration as if considering something, and he rode
past the limbers to the farthest cannon.

As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and his
suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they could see
the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its
former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number One, holding a
mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while Number Two with a
trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon's mouth. The short, round-
shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over the tail of the gun carriage,
moved forward and, not noticing the general, looked out shading his eyes
with his small hand.

"Lift it two lines more and it will be just right," cried he in a feeble
voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill-suited to his weak
figure. "Number Two!" he squeaked. "Fire, Medvedev!"

Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three fingers to his cap
with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military salute but
like a priest's benediction, approached the general. Though Tushin's
guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing incendiary
balls at the village of Schon Grabern visible just opposite, in front of
which large masses of French were advancing.

No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to fire, but after
consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had great
respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the
village. "Very good!" said Bagration in reply to the officer's report,
and began deliberately to examine the whole battlefield extended before
him. The French had advanced nearest on our right. Below the height on
which the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the hollow where the rivulet
flowed, the soul-stirring rolling and crackling of musketry was heard,
and much farther to the right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the
suite pointed out to Bagration a French column that was outflanking us.
To the left the horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagration
ordered two battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right
flank. The officer of the suite ventured to remark to the prince that if
these battalions went away, the guns would remain without support.
Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull eyes looked at
him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the officer's remark was
just and that really no answer could be made to it. But at that moment
an adjutant galloped up with a message from the commander of the
regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses of the French were
coming down upon them and that his regiment was in disorder and was
retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince Bagration bowed his head in
sign of assent and approval. He rode off at a walk to the right and sent
an adjutant to the dragoons with orders to attack the French. But this
adjutant returned half an hour later with the news that the commander of
the dragoons had already retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as a
heavy fire had been opened on him and he was losing men uselessly, and
so had hastened to throw some sharpshooters into the wood.

"Very good!" said Bagration.

As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also, and as
it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go there
himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov to tell the general in command
(the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutuzov at Braunau) that he
must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow in the rear, as
the right flank would probably not be able to withstand the enemy's
attack very long. About Tushin and the battalion that had been in
support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince Andrew listened
attentively to Bagration's colloquies with the commanding officers and
the orders he gave them and, to his surprise, found that no orders were
really given, but that Prince Bagration tried to make it appear that
everything done by necessity, by accident, or by the will of subordinate
commanders was done, if not by his direct command, at least in accord
with his intentions. Prince Andrew noticed, however, that though what
happened was due to chance and was independent of the commander's will,
owing to the tact Bagration showed, his presence was very valuable.
Officers who approached him with disturbed countenances became calm;
soldiers and officers greeted him gaily, grew more cheerful in his
presence, and were evidently anxious to display their courage before
him.




CHAPTER XVIII

Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of our right flank,
began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard but where
on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer they got to
the hollow the less they could see but the more they felt the nearness
of the actual battlefield. They began to meet wounded men. One with a
bleeding head and no cap was being dragged along by two soldiers who
supported him under the arms. There was a gurgle in his throat and he
was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently hit him in the throat or
mouth. Another was walking sturdily by himself but without his musket,
groaning aloud and swinging his arm which had just been hurt, while
blood from it was streaming over his greatcoat as from a bottle. He had
that moment been wounded and his face showed fear rather than suffering.
Crossing a road they descended a steep incline and saw several men lying
on the ground; they also met a crowd of soldiers some of whom were
unwounded. The soldiers were ascending the hill breathing heavily, and
despite the general's presence were talking loudly and gesticulating. In
front of them rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the
smoke, and an officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting after
the crowd of retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagration rode up
to the ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning
the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked with
smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with it. Some
were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the touchpans or
taking charges from their pouches, while others were firing, though who
they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke which there was no
wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and whistling of bullets were
often heard. "What is this?" thought Prince Andrew approaching the crowd
of soldiers. "It can't be an attack, for they are not moving; it can't
be a square--for they are not drawn up for that."

The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a
pleasant smile--his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,
giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as a
host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had been
attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been
repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack had
been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had
occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know what
had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to him, and
could not say with certainty whether the attack had been repulsed or his
regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at the commencement of
the action balls and shells began flying all over his regiment and
hitting men and that afterwards someone had shouted "Cavalry!" and our
men had begun firing. They were still firing, not at the cavalry which
had disappeared, but at French infantry who had come into the hollow and
were firing at our men. Prince Bagration bowed his head as a sign that
this was exactly what he had desired and expected. Turning to his
adjutant he ordered him to bring down the two battalions of the Sixth
Chasseurs whom they had just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by the
changed expression on Prince Bagration's face at this moment. It
expressed the concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of a
man who on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water.
The dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation of
profound thought. The round, steady, hawk's eyes looked before him
eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although his
movements were still slow and measured.

The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagration, entreating him
to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were. "Please,
your excellency, for God's sake!" he kept saying, glancing for support
at an officer of the suite who turned away from him. "There, you see!"
and he drew attention to the bullets whistling, singing, and hissing
continually around them. He spoke in the tone of entreaty and reproach
that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who has picked up an ax: "We are
used to it, but you, sir, will blister your hands." He spoke as if those
bullets could not kill him, and his half-closed eyes gave still more
persuasiveness to his words. The staff officer joined in the colonel's
appeals, but Bagration did not reply; he only gave an order to cease
firing and re-form, so as to give room for the two approaching
battalions. While he was speaking, the curtain of smoke that had
concealed the hollow, driven by a rising wind, began to move from right
to left as if drawn by an invisible hand, and the hill opposite, with
the French moving about on it, opened out before them. All eyes fastened
involuntarily on this French column advancing against them and winding
down over the uneven ground. One could already see the soldiers' shaggy
caps, distinguish the officers from the men, and see the standard
flapping against its staff.

"They march splendidly," remarked someone in Bagration's suite.

The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The clash
would take place on this side of it...

The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly formed up
and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the laggards, came
two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order. Before they had
reached Bagration, the weighty tread of the mass of men marching in step
could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to Bagration, marched a
company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a stupid and happy
expression--the same man who had rushed out of the wattle shed. At that
moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how dashing a fellow he
would appear as he passed the commander.

With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly with
his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to his full
height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with the heavy
tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He carried close
to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and not like a real
weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and now back at the men
without losing step, his whole powerful body turning flexibly. It was as
if all the powers of his soul were concentrated on passing the commander
in the best possible manner, and feeling that he was doing it well he
was happy. "Left... left... left..." he seemed to repeat to himself at
each alternate step; and in time to this, with stern but varied faces,
the wall of soldiers burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched in
step, and each one of these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be repeating
to himself at each alternate step, "Left... left... left..." A fat major
skirted a bush, puffing and falling out of step; a soldier who had
fallen behind, his face showing alarm at his defection, ran at a trot,
panting to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the air,
flew over the heads of Bagration and his suite, and fell into the column
to the measure of "Left... left!" "Close up!" came the company
commander's voice in jaunty tones. The soldiers passed in a semicircle
round something where the ball had fallen, and an old trooper on the
flank, a noncommissioned officer who had stopped beside the dead men,
ran to catch up his line and, falling into step with a hop, looked back
angrily, and through the ominous silence and the regular tramp of feet
beating the ground in unison, one seemed to hear left... left... left.

"Well done, lads!" said Prince Bagration.

"Glad to do our best, your ex'len-lency!" came a confused shout from the
ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on
Bagration as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: "We know
that ourselves!" Another, without looking round, as though fearing to
relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.

The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.

Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past him and dismounted.
He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over his felt coat,
stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The head of the French
column, with its officers leading, appeared from below the hill.

"Forward, with God!" said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous voice,
turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging his arms,
he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the awkward gait of a
cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible power was leading him
forward, and experienced great happiness.

The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside Bagration,
could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets, and even their
faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who, with gaitered legs
and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with difficulty.) Prince Bagration
gave no further orders and silently continued to walk on in front of the
ranks. Suddenly one shot after another rang out from the French, smoke
appeared all along their uneven ranks, and musket shots sounded. Several
of our men fell, among them the round-faced officer who had marched so
gaily and complacently. But at the moment the first report was heard,
Bagration looked round and shouted, "Hurrah!"

"Hurrah--ah!--ah!" rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and passing
Bagration and racing one another they rushed in an irregular but joyous
and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.




CHAPTER XIX

The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right
flank. In the center Tushin's forgotten battery, which had managed to
set fire to the Schon Grabern village, delayed the French advance. The
French were putting out the fire which the wind was spreading, and thus
gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the center to the other side
of the dip in the ground at the rear was hurried and noisy, but the
different companies did not get mixed. But our left--which consisted of
the Azov and Podolsk infantry and the Pavlograd hussars--was
simultaneously attacked and outflanked by superior French forces under
Lannes and was thrown into confusion. Bagration had sent Zherkov to the
general commanding that left flank with orders to retreat immediately.

Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse about and
galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagration than his courage
failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it was
dangerous.

Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where the
firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where they
could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.

The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander of
the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which Dolokhov was
serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left flank had been
assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment in which Rostov was
serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two commanders were much
exasperated with one another and, long after the action had begun on the
right flank and the French were already advancing, were engaged in
discussion with the sole object of offending one another. But the
regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were by no means ready for the
impending action. From privates to general they were not expecting a
battle and were engaged in peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the
horses and the infantry collecting wood.

"He higher iss dan I in rank," said the German colonel of the hussars,
flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, "so let him do
what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars... Bugler, sount ze
retreat!"

But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling
together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the capotes of
Lannes' sharpshooters were already seen crossing the milldam and forming
up within twice the range of a musket shot. The general in command of
the infantry went toward his horse with jerky steps, and having mounted
drew himself up very straight and tall and rode to the Pavlograd
commander. The commanders met with polite bows but with secret
malevolence in their hearts.

"Once again, Colonel," said the general, "I can't leave half my men in
the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you," he repeated, "to occupy the
position and prepare for an attack."

"I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!" suddenly
replied the irate colonel. "If you vere in the cavalry..."

"I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if you
are not aware of the fact..."

"Quite avare, your excellency," suddenly shouted the colonel, touching
his horse and turning purple in the face. "Vill you be so goot to come
to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don't vish to
destroy my men for your pleasure!"

"You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own pleasure and
I won't allow it to be said!"

Taking the colonel's outburst as a challenge to his courage, the general
expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the front line, as
if their differences would be settled there amongst the bullets. They
reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and they halted in
silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the line, for from
where they had been before it had been evident that it was impossible
for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken ground, as well as that
the French were outflanking our left. The general and colonel looked
sternly and significantly at one another like two fighting cocks
preparing for battle, each vainly trying to detect signs of cowardice in
the other. Both passed the examination successfully. As there was
nothing to be said, and neither wished to give occasion for it to be
alleged that he had been the first to leave the range of fire, they
would have remained there for a long time testing each other's courage
had it not been that just then they heard the rattle of musketry and a
muffled shout almost behind them in the wood. The French had attacked
the men collecting wood in the copse. It was no longer possible for the
hussars to retreat with the infantry. They were cut off from the line of
retreat on the left by the French. However inconvenient the position, it
was now necessary to attack in order to cut a way through for
themselves.

The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely time to mount
before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns bridge,
there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and again that
terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear--resembling the line
separating the living from the dead--lay between them. All were
conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether they would cross
it or not, and how they would cross it, agitated them all.

The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to questions put
to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately insisting on having
his own way, gave an order. No one said anything definite, but the rumor
of an attack spread through the squadron. The command to form up rang
out and the sabers whizzed as they were drawn from their scabbards.
Still no one moved. The troops of the left flank, infantry and hussars
alike, felt that the commander did not himself know what to do, and this
irresolution communicated itself to the men.

"If only they would be quick!" thought Rostov, feeling that at last the
time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which he had so
often heard from his fellow hussars.

"Fo'ward, with God, lads!" rang out Denisov's voice. "At a twot
fo'ward!"

The horses' croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at the
reins and started of his own accord.

Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of his hussars and
still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see distinctly but
took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some way off.

"Faster!" came the word of command, and Rostov felt Rook's flanks
drooping as he broke into a gallop.

Rostov anticipated his horse's movements and became more and more
elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had been
in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible--and now he had
crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but
everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. "Oh, how I
will slash at him!" thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber.

"Hur-a-a-a-ah!" came a roar of voices. "Let anyone come my way now,"
thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a full
gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was already
visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep over the
squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at that instant
the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away from him, and
Rostov felt as in a dream that he continued to be carried forward with
unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same spot. From behind him
Bondarchuk, an hussar he knew, jolted against him and looked angrily at
him. Bondarchuk's horse swerved and galloped past.

"How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!" Rostov asked
and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle of a field.
Instead of the moving horses and hussars' backs, he saw nothing before
him but the motionless earth and the stubble around him. There was warm
blood under his arm. "No, I am wounded and the horse is killed." Rook
tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back, pinning his rider's leg.
Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled but could not rise. Rostov
also tried to rise but fell back, his sabretache having become entangled
in the saddle. Where our men were, and where the French, he did not
know. There was no one near.

Having disentangled his leg, he rose. "Where, on which side, was now the
line that had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself and
could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he wondered
as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something superfluous was
hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if it were not his.
He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find blood on it. "Ah,
here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing some men running
toward him. "They will help me!" In front came a man wearing a strange
shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned, and with a hooked nose. Then
came two more, and many more running behind. One of them said something
strange, not in Russian. In among the hindmost of these men wearing
similar shakos was a Russian hussar. He was being held by the arms and
his horse was being led behind him.

"It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will take
me too? Who are these men?" thought Rostov, scarcely believing his eyes.
"Can they be French?" He looked at the approaching Frenchmen, and though
but a moment before he had been galloping to get at them and hack them
to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful that he could not believe
his eyes. "Who are they? Why are they running? Can they be coming at me?
And why? To kill me? Me whom everyone is so fond of?" He remembered his
mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the
enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible. "But perhaps they may
do it!" For more than ten seconds he stood not moving from the spot or
realizing the situation. The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked
nose, was already so close that the expression of his face could be
seen. And the excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down,
holding his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostov. He seized
his pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran
with all his might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the
feeling of doubt and conflict with which he had trodden the Enns bridge,
but with the feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One single
sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed his
whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he fled across the field with
the impetuosity he used to show at catchplay, now and then turning his
good-natured, pale, young face to look back. A shudder of terror went
through him: "No, better not look," he thought, but having reached the
bushes he glanced round once more. The French had fallen behind, and
just as he looked round the first man changed his run to a walk and,
turning, shouted something loudly to a comrade farther back. Rostov
paused. "No, there's some mistake," thought he. "They can't have wanted
to kill me." But at the same time, his left arm felt as heavy as if a
seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He could run no more. The
Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov closed his eyes and stooped
down. One bullet and then another whistled past him. He mustered his
last remaining strength, took hold of his left hand with his right, and
reached the bushes. Behind these were some Russian sharpshooters.




CHAPTER XX

The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the outskirts of
the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting mixed, and
retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his fear, uttered the
senseless cry, "Cut off!" that is so terrible in battle, and that word
infected the whole crowd with a feeling of panic.

"Surrounded! Cut off? We're lost!" shouted the fugitives.

The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the general
realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment, and the
thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years' service who had
never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters for
negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the
recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and above
all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for self-preservation, he
clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring his horse, galloped to
the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell around, but fortunately
missed him. His one desire was to know what was happening and at any
cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he had made one, so that he, an
exemplary officer of twenty-two years' service, who had never been
censured, should not be held to blame.

Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind the
copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and
descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides the
fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of soldiers
attend to the voice of their commander, or would they, disregarding him,
continue their flight? Despite his desperate shouts that used to seem so
terrible to the soldiers, despite his furious purple countenance
distorted out of all likeness to his former self, and the flourishing of
his saber, the soldiers all continued to run, talking, firing into the
air, and disobeying orders. The moral hesitation which decided the fate
of battles was evidently culminating in a panic.

The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the
powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at that
moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any apparent
reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and Russian
sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was Timokhin's company,
which alone had maintained its order in the wood and, having lain in
ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French unexpectedly. Timokhin, armed
only with a sword, had rushed at the enemy with such a desperate cry and
such mad, drunken determination that, taken by surprise, the French had
thrown down their muskets and run. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin,
killed a Frenchman at close quarters and was the first to seize the
surrendering French officer by his collar. Our fugitives returned, the
battalions re-formed, and the French who had nearly cut our left flank
in half were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to
join up, and the fight was at an end. The regimental commander and Major
Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the retreating companies
pass by them, when a soldier came up and took hold of the commander's
stirrup, almost leaning against him. The man was wearing a bluish coat
of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or cap, his head was bandaged, and
over his shoulder a French munition pouch was slung. He had an officer's
sword in his hand. The soldier was pale, his blue eyes looked impudently
into the commander's face, and his lips were smiling. Though the
commander was occupied in giving instructions to Major Ekonomov, he
could not help taking notice of the soldier.

"Your excellency, here are two trophies," said Dolokhov, pointing to the
French sword and pouch. "I have taken an officer prisoner. I stopped the
company." Dolokhov breathed heavily from weariness and spoke in abrupt
sentences. "The whole company can bear witness. I beg you will remember
this, your excellency!"

"All right, all right," replied the commander, and turned to Major
Ekonomov.

But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around his
head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.

"A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your excellency!"

Tushin's battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of the
action did Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in the center,
send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew also, to order
the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When the supports attached
to Tushin's battery had been moved away in the middle of the action by
someone's order, the battery had continued firing and was only not
captured by the French because the enemy could not surmise that anyone
could have the effrontery to continue firing from four quite undefended
guns. On the contrary, the energetic action of that battery led the
French to suppose that here--in the center--the main Russian forces were
concentrated. Twice they had attempted to attack this point, but on each
occasion had been driven back by grapeshot from the four isolated guns
on the hillock.

Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had succeeded in
setting fire to Schon Grabern.

"Look at them scurrying! It's burning! Just see the smoke! Fine! Grand!
Look at the smoke, the smoke!" exclaimed the artillerymen, brightening
up.

All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the
direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the soldiers
cried at each shot: "Fine! That's good! Look at it... Grand!" The fire,
fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French columns that had
advanced beyond the village went back; but as though in revenge for this
failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the right of the village and began
firing them at Tushin's battery.

In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in
successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed this
battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our guns, one
knocking over two horses and another tearing off a munition-wagon
driver's leg. Their spirits once roused were, however, not diminished,
but only changed character. The horses were replaced by others from a
reserve gun carriage, the wounded were carried away, and the four guns
were turned against the ten-gun battery. Tushin's companion officer had
been killed at the beginning of the engagement and within an hour
seventeen of the forty men of the guns' crews had been disabled, but the
artillerymen were still as merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed
the French appearing below them, and then they fired grapeshot at them.

Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly to
"refill my pipe for that one!" and then, scattering sparks from it, ran
forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the French.

"Smack at 'em, lads!" he kept saying, seizing the guns by the wheels and
working the screws himself.

Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always made him
jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from gun to gun, now
aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing dead
or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and shouting in his feeble
voice, so high pitched and irresolute. His face grew more and more
animated. Only when a man was killed or wounded did he frown and turn
away from the sight, shouting angrily at the men who, as is always the
case, hesitated about lifting the injured or dead. The soldiers, for the
most part handsome fellows and, as is always the case in an artillery
company, a head and shoulders taller and twice as broad as their
officer--all looked at their commander like children in an embarrassing
situation, and the expression on his face was invariably reflected on
theirs.

Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and
activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense of
fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded never
occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more elated. It
seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a day, since he
had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and that the corner
of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar ground. Though he
thought of everything, considered everything, and did everything the
best of officers could do in his position, he was in a state akin to
feverish delirium or drunkenness.

From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle and
thud of the enemy's cannon balls, from the flushed and perspiring faces
of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight of the blood of men
and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on the enemy's side (always
followed by a ball flying past and striking the earth, a man, a gun, a
horse), from the sight of all these things a fantastic world of his own
had taken possession of his brain and at that moment afforded him
pleasure. The enemy's guns were in his fancy not guns but pipes from
which occasional puffs were blown by an invisible smoker.

"There... he's puffing again," muttered Tushin to himself, as a small
cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left by the
wind.

"Now look out for the ball... we'll throw it back."

"What do you want, your honor?" asked an artilleryman, standing close
by, who heard him muttering.

"Nothing... only a shell..." he answered.

"Come along, our Matvevna!" he said to himself. "Matvevna" * was the
name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which was large
and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their guns seemed to
him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard Number One of the
second gun's crew was "uncle"; Tushin looked at him more often than at
anyone else and took delight in his every movement. The sound of
musketry at the foot of the hill, now diminishing, now increasing,
seemed like someone's breathing. He listened intently to the ebb and
flow of these sounds.


* Daughter of Matthew.

"Ah! Breathing again, breathing!" he muttered to himself.

He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was throwing
cannon balls at the French with both hands.

"Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don't let me down!" he was saying as
he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice called above his
head: "Captain Tushin! Captain!"

Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had turned
him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping voice:

"Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you..."

"Why are they down on me?" thought Tushin, looking in alarm at his
superior.

"I... don't..." he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap. "I..."

But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon
ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse.
He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another ball
stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.

"Retire! All to retire!" he shouted from a distance.

The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the same
order.

It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the space
where Tushin's guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with a
broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed horses.
Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the limbers lay
several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he approached
and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the mere thought
of being afraid roused him again. "I cannot be afraid," thought he, and
dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the order and did not
leave the battery. He decided to have the guns removed from their
positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together with Tushin, stepping
across the bodies and under a terrible fire from the French, he attended
to the removal of the guns.

"A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off," said an
artilleryman to Prince Andrew. "Not like your honor!"

Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both so busy as to seem
not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two cannon
that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down the hill
(one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind), Prince Andrew rode
up to Tushin.

"Well, till we meet again..." he said, holding out his hand to Tushin.

"Good-bye, my dear fellow," said Tushin. "Dear soul! Good-bye, my dear
fellow!" and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his eyes.




CHAPTER XXI

The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,
hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing dark
and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous. The
cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on the
right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin with his guns,
continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range
of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the staff,
among them the staff officer and Zherkov, who had been twice sent to
Tushin's battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one another,
they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to proceed,
reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin gave no orders, and, silently--
fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to weep without
knowing why--rode behind on his artillery nag. Though the orders were to
abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves after troops and
begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty infantry officer who
just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin's wattle shed was laid,
with a bullet in his stomach, on "Matvevna's" carriage. At the foot of
the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one hand with the other, came
up to Tushin and asked for a seat.

"Captain, for God's sake! I've hurt my arm," he said timidly. "For God's
sake... I can't walk. For God's sake!"

It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift and
been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.

"Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!"

"Give him a seat," said Tushin. "Lay a cloak for him to sit on, lad," he
said, addressing his favorite soldier. "And where is the wounded
officer?"

"He has been set down. He died," replied someone.

"Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,
Antonov."

The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the other; he was pale
and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on "Matvevna,"
the gun from which they had removed the dead officer. The cloak they
spread under him was wet with blood which stained his breeches and arm.

"What, are you wounded, my lad?" said Tushin, approaching the gun on
which Rostov sat.

"No, it's a sprain."

"Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?" inquired Tushin.

"It was the officer, your honor, stained it," answered the artilleryman,
wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if apologizing for the
state of his gun.

It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by the
infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they halted. It
had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the uniforms ten paces
off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly, near by on the
right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of shot gleamed in
the darkness. This was the last French attack and was met by soldiers
who had sheltered in the village houses. They all rushed out of the
village again, but Tushin's guns could not move, and the artillerymen,
Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances as they awaited their
fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking eagerly, streamed out
of a side street.

"Not hurt, Petrov?" asked one.

"We've given it 'em hot, mate! They won't make another push now," said
another.

"You couldn't see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows! Nothing
could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn't there something to drink?"

The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and again in
the complete darkness Tushin's guns moved forward, surrounded by the
humming infantry as by a frame.

In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was flowing
always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and the sound of
hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and voices of the
wounded were more distinctly heard than any other sound in the darkness
of the night. The gloom that enveloped the army was filled with their
groans, which seemed to melt into one with the darkness of the night.
After a while the moving mass became agitated, someone rode past on a
white horse followed by his suite, and said something in passing: "What
did he say? Where to, now? Halt, is it? Did he thank us?" came eager
questions from all sides. The whole moving mass began pressing closer
together and a report spread that they were ordered to halt: evidently
those in front had halted. All remained where they were in the middle of
the muddy road.

Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Tushin,
having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a dressing
station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a bonfire the
soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostov, too, dragged himself to the
fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering shook his whole
body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but he kept awake by an
excruciating pain in his arm, for which he could find no satisfactory
position. He kept closing his eyes and then again looking at the fire,
which seemed to him dazzlingly red, and at the feeble, round-shouldered
figure of Tushin who was sitting cross-legged like a Turk beside him.
Tushin's large, kind, intelligent eyes were fixed with sympathy and
commiseration on Rostov, who saw that Tushin with his whole heart wished
to help him but could not.

From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry, who
were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The sound of
voices, the tramping feet, the horses' hoofs moving in mud, the
crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous rumble.

It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through the
gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a storm.
Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what passed before and
around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on his heels, held
his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.

"You don't mind your honor?" he asked Tushin. "I've lost my company,
your honor. I don't know where... such bad luck!"

With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came up to
the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked him to have the guns moved a
trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers rushed to
the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately, each trying
to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding on to.

"You picked it up?... I dare say! You're very smart!" one of them
shouted hoarsely.

Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg
band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.

"Must one die like a dog?" said he.

Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier ran
up, begging a little fire for the infantry.

"A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you, fellow
countrymen. Thanks for the fire--we'll return it with interest," said
he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.

Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and passed
by the fire. One of them stumbled.

"Who the devil has put the logs on the road?" snarled he.

"He's dead--why carry him?" said another.

"Shut up!"

And they disappeared into the darkness with their load.

"Still aching?" Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.

"Yes."

"Your honor, you're wanted by the general. He is in the hut here," said
a gunner, coming up to Tushin.

"Coming, friend."

Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight, walked
away from the fire.

Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared for
him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking with some commanding
officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old man with the
half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton bone, and the
general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years, flushed by a
glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with the signet
ring, and Zherkov, uneasily glancing at them all, and Prince Andrew,
pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering eyes.

In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French, and
the accountant with the naive face was feeling its texture, shaking his
head in perplexity--perhaps because the banner really interested him,
perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was, to look on at a
dinner where there was no place for him. In the next hut there was a
French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our dragoons. Our officers
were flocking in to look at him. Prince Bagration was thanking the
individual commanders and inquiring into details of the action and our
losses. The general whose regiment had been inspected at Braunau was
informing the prince that as soon as the action began he had withdrawn
from the wood, mustered the men who were woodcutting, and, allowing the
French to pass him, had made a bayonet charge with two battalions and
had broken up the French troops.

"When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was
disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let them come on
and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'--and that's
what I did."

The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not managed
to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened. Perhaps it
might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid all that
confusion what did or did not happen?

"By the way, your excellency, I should inform you," he continued--
remembering Dolokhov's conversation with Kutuzov and his last interview
with the gentleman-ranker--"that Private Dolokhov, who was reduced to
the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my presence and
particularly distinguished himself."

"I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency," chimed in
Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the hussars all that
day, but had heard about them from an infantry officer. "They broke up
two squares, your excellency."

Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting one of his
usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to the glory
of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a serious expression,
though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie devoid of any
foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the old colonel:

"Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically: infantry,
cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were abandoned in the
center?" he inquired, searching with his eyes for someone. (Prince
Bagration did not ask about the guns on the left flank; he knew that all
the guns there had been abandoned at the very beginning of the action.)
"I think I sent you?" he added, turning to the staff officer on duty.

"One was damaged," answered the staff officer, "and the other I can't
understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had only just
left.... It is true that it was hot there," he added, modestly.

Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close to the
village and had already been sent for.

"Oh, but you were there?" said Prince Bagration, addressing Prince
Andrew.

"Of course, we only just missed one another," said the staff officer,
with a smile to Bolkonski.

"I had not the pleasure of seeing you," said Prince Andrew, coldly and
abruptly.

All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and made his way
timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past the
generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always was by the
sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of the banner and
stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.

"How was it a gun was abandoned?" asked Bagration, frowning, not so much
at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom Zherkov laughed
loudest.

Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his guilt
and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive present
themselves to Tushin in all their horror. He had been so excited that he
had not thought about it until that moment. The officers' laughter
confused him still more. He stood before Bagration with his lower jaw
trembling and was hardly able to mutter: "I don't know... your
excellency... I had no men... your excellency."

"You might have taken some from the covering troops."

Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that was
perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into
trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagration as a schoolboy who has
blundered looks at an examiner.

The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently not wishing
to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture to
intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Tushin from under his brows and his
fingers twitched nervously.

"Your excellency!" Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt
voice, "you were pleased to send me to Captain Tushin's battery. I went
there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two guns
smashed, and no supports at all."

Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at Bolkonski,
who spoke with suppressed agitation.

"And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion," he
continued, "we owe today's success chiefly to the action of that battery
and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company," and without
awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.

Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to show distrust
in Bolkonski's emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to credit it,
bent his head, and told Tushin that he could go. Prince Andrew went out
with him.

"Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!" said Tushin.

Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He felt
sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had hoped.

"Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will all
this end?" thought Rostov, looking at the changing shadows before him.
The pain in his arm became more and more intense. Irresistible
drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his eyes, and the
impression of those voices and faces and a sense of loneliness merged
with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers--wounded and
unwounded--it was they who were crushing, weighing down, and twisting
the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm and shoulder. To
rid himself of them he closed his eyes.

For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things
appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand, Sonya's
thin little shoulders, Natasha's eyes and laughter, Denisov with his
voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that affair with Telyanin and
Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing as this soldier with the harsh
voice, and it was that affair and this soldier that were so agonizingly,
incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and always dragging it in one
direction. He tried to get away from them, but they would not for an
instant let his shoulder move a hair's breadth. It would not ache--it
would be well--if only they did not pull it, but it was impossible to
get rid of them.

He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung less
than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling snow were
fluttering in that light. Tushin had not returned, the doctor had not
come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was sitting naked at
the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow body.

"Nobody wants me!" thought Rostov. "There is no one to help me or pity
me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved." He sighed and,
doing so, groaned involuntarily.

"Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier, shaking his shirt out
over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt and added:
"What a lot of men have been crippled today--frightful!"

Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,
bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his
healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. "And why did
I come here?" he wondered.

Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant of
Bagration's detachment was reunited to Kutuzov's army.

BOOK THREE: 1805




CHAPTER I

Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out his plans.
Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own advantage. He was
merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom getting on had
become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he never rightly accounted
to himself, but which formed the whole interest of his life, were
constantly shaping themselves in his mind, arising from the
circumstances and persons he met. Of these plans he had not merely one
or two in his head but dozens, some only beginning to form themselves,
some approaching achievement, and some in course of disintegration. He
did not, for instance, say to himself: "This man now has influence, I
must gain his confidence and friendship and through him obtain a special
grant." Nor did he say to himself: "Pierre is a rich man, I must entice
him to marry my daughter and lend me the forty thousand rubles I need."
But when he came across a man of position his instinct immediately told
him that this man could be useful, and without any premeditation Prince
Vasili took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him,
become intimate with him, and finally make his request.

He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an appointment as
Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time conferred the status of
Councilor of State, and insisted on the young man accompanying him to
Petersburg and staying at his house. With apparent absent-mindedness,
yet with unhesitating assurance that he was doing the right thing,
Prince Vasili did everything to get Pierre to marry his daughter. Had he
thought out his plans beforehand he could not have been so natural and
shown such unaffected familiarity in intercourse with everybody both
above and below him in social standing. Something always drew him toward
those richer and more powerful than himself and he had rare skill in
seizing the most opportune moment for making use of people.

Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezukhov and a rich man, felt
himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset and
preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He had to
sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the purpose of
which was not clear to him, to question his chief steward, to visit his
estate near Moscow, and to receive many people who formerly did not even
wish to know of his existence but would now have been offended and
grieved had he chosen not to see them. These different people--
businessmen, relations, and acquaintances alike--were all disposed to
treat the young heir in the most friendly and flattering manner: they
were all evidently firmly convinced of Pierre's noble qualities. He was
always hearing such words as: "With your remarkable kindness," or, "With
your excellent heart," "You are yourself so honorable Count," or, "Were
he as clever as you," and so on, till he began sincerely to believe in
his own exceptional kindness and extraordinary intelligence, the more so
as in the depth of his heart it had always seemed to him that he really
was very kind and intelligent. Even people who had formerly been
spiteful toward him and evidently unfriendly now became gentle and
affectionate. The angry eldest princess, with the long waist and hair
plastered down like a doll's, had come into Pierre's room after the
funeral. With drooping eyes and frequent blushes she told him she was
very sorry about their past misunderstandings and did not now feel she
had a right to ask him for anything, except only for permission, after
the blow she had received, to remain for a few weeks longer in the house
she so loved and where she had sacrificed so much. She could not refrain
from weeping at these words. Touched that this statuesque princess could
so change, Pierre took her hand and begged her forgiveness, without
knowing what for. From that day the eldest princess quite changed toward
Pierre and began knitting a striped scarf for him.

"Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put up with a
great deal from the deceased," said Prince Vasili to him, handing him a
deed to sign for the princess' benefit.

Prince Vasili had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to throw
this bone--a bill for thirty thousand rubles--to the poor princess that
it might not occur to her to speak of his share in the affair of the
inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed the deed and after that the princess
grew still kinder. The younger sisters also became affectionate to him,
especially the youngest, the pretty one with the mole, who often made
him feel confused by her smiles and her own confusion when meeting him.

It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like him, and it
would have seemed so unnatural had anyone disliked him, that he could
not but believe in the sincerity of those around him. Besides, he had no
time to ask himself whether these people were sincere or not. He was
always busy and always felt in a state of mild and cheerful
intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some important and
general movement; that something was constantly expected of him, that if
he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many people, but if he
did this and that, all would be well; and he did what was demanded of
him, but still that happy result always remained in the future.

More than anyone else, Prince Vasili took possession of Pierre's affairs
and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of Count
Bezukhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air of a man
oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would not, for
pity's sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was the son of
his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth, to the caprice
of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few days he spent in
Moscow after the death of Count Bezukhov, he would call Pierre, or go to
him himself, and tell him what ought to be done in a tone of weariness
and assurance, as if he were adding every time: "You know I am
overwhelmed with business and it is purely out of charity that I trouble
myself about you, and you also know quite well that what I propose is
the only thing possible."

"Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last," said Prince Vasili
one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre's elbow, speaking as if
he were saying something which had long since been agreed upon and could
not now be altered. "We start tomorrow and I'm giving you a place in my
carriage. I am very glad. All our important business here is now
settled, and I ought to have been off long ago. Here is something I have
received from the chancellor. I asked him for you, and you have been
entered in the diplomatic corps and made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber.
The diplomatic career now lies open before you."

Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with which these words
were pronounced, Pierre, who had so long been considering his career,
wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasili interrupted him in the
special deep cooing tone, precluding the possibility of interrupting his
speech, which he used in extreme cases when special persuasion was
needed.

"Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my conscience,
and there is nothing to thank me for. No one has ever complained yet of
being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you could throw it up
tomorrow. But you will see everything for yourself when you get to
Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from these terrible
recollections." Prince Vasili sighed. "Yes, yes, my boy. And my valet
can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly forgetting," he added. "You
know, mon cher, your father and I had some accounts to settle, so I have
received what was due from the Ryazan estate and will keep it; you won't
require it. We'll go into the accounts later."

By "what was due from the Ryazan estate" Prince Vasili meant several
thousand rubles quitrent received from Pierre's peasants, which the
prince had retained for himself.

In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of
gentleness and affection. He could not refuse the post, or rather the
rank (for he did nothing), that Prince Vasili had procured for him, and
acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so numerous
that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of bewilderment, bustle,
and continual expectation of some good, always in front of him but never
attained.

Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in Petersburg.
The Guards had gone to the front; Dolokhov had been reduced to the
ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the provinces; Prince Andrew
was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity to spend his nights as he
used to like to spend them, or to open his mind by intimate talks with a
friend older than himself and whom he respected. His whole time was
taken up with dinners and balls and was spent chiefly at Prince Vasili's
house in the company of the stout princess, his wife, and his beautiful
daughter Helene.

Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of
attitude toward him that had taken place in society.

Formerly in Anna Pavlovna's presence, Pierre had always felt that what
he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that remarks
which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind became foolish
as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary Hippolyte's stupidest
remarks came out clever and apt. Now everything Pierre said was
charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say so, he could see that she
wished to and only refrained out of regard for his modesty.

In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna
Pavlovna's usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added: "You
will find the beautiful Helene here, whom it is always delightful to
see."

When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some
link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and
Helene, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation were
being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased him as an
entertaining supposition.

Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" was like the former one, only the novelty she
offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a diplomatist fresh
from Berlin with the very latest details of the Emperor Alexander's
visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august friends had pledged
themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold the cause of justice
against the enemy of the human race. Anna Pavlovna received Pierre with
a shade of melancholy, evidently relating to the young man's recent loss
by the death of Count Bezukhov (everyone constantly considered it a duty
to assure Pierre that he was greatly afflicted by the death of the
father he had hardly known), and her melancholy was just like the august
melancholy she showed at the mention of her most august Majesty the
Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre felt flattered by this. Anna Pavlovna
arranged the different groups in her drawing room with her habitual
skill. The large group, in which were Prince Vasili and the generals,
had the benefit of the diplomat. Another group was at the tea table.
Pierre wished to join the former, but Anna Pavlovna--who was in the
excited condition of a commander on a battlefield to whom thousands of
new and brilliant ideas occur which there is hardly time to put in
action--seeing Pierre, touched his sleeve with her finger, saying:

"Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening." (She
glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) "My dear Helene, be charitable to
my poor aunt who adores you. Go and keep her company for ten minutes.
And that it will not be too dull, here is the dear count who will not
refuse to accompany you."

The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained Pierre, looking
as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.

"Isn't she exquisite?" she said to Pierre, pointing to the stately
beauty as she glided away. "And how she carries herself! For so young a
girl, such tact, such masterly perfection of manner! It comes from her
heart. Happy the man who wins her! With her the least worldly of men
would occupy a most brilliant position in society. Don't you think so? I
only wanted to know your opinion," and Anna Pavlovna let Pierre go.

Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Helene's perfection of
manner. If he ever thought of Helene, it was just of her beauty and her
remarkable skill in appearing silently dignified in society.

The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed
desirous of hiding her adoration for Helene and inclined rather to show
her fear of Anna Pavlovna. She looked at her niece, as if inquiring what
she was to do with these people. On leaving them, Anna Pavlovna again
touched Pierre's sleeve, saying: "I hope you won't say that it is dull
in my house again," and she glanced at Helene.

Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not admit the
possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt
coughed, swallowed, and said in French that she was very pleased to see
Helene, then she turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome and the
same look. In the middle of a dull and halting conversation, Helene
turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she gave to
everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it had so little meaning
for him, that he paid no attention to it. The aunt was just speaking of
a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to Pierre's father, Count
Bezukhov, and showed them her own box. Princess Helene asked to see the
portrait of the aunt's husband on the box lid.

"That is probably the work of Vinesse," said Pierre, mentioning a
celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the table to take the
snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.

He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed him the snuffbox,
passing it across Helene's back. Helene stooped forward to make room,
and looked round with a smile. She was, as always at evening parties,
wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut very low at front and
back. Her bust, which had always seemed like marble to Pierre, was so
close to him that his shortsighted eyes could not but perceive the
living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near to his lips that he need
only have bent his head a little to have touched them. He was conscious
of the warmth of her body, the scent of perfume, and the creaking of her
corset as she moved. He did not see her marble beauty forming a complete
whole with her dress, but all the charm of her body only covered by her
garments. And having once seen this he could not help being aware of it,
just as we cannot renew an illusion we have once seen through.

"So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?" Helene seemed to
say. "You had not noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a woman who may
belong to anyone--to you too," said her glance. And at that moment
Pierre felt that Helene not only could, but must, be his wife, and that
it could not be otherwise.

He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing at the
altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know, he did not
even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he knew not why,
that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would happen.

Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more to see
her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen her every
day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could not, any more
than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe grass through the
mist and taking it for a tree can again take it for a tree after he has
once recognized it to be a tuft of grass. She was terribly close to him.
She already had power over him, and between them there was no longer any
barrier except the barrier of his own will.

"Well, I will leave you in your little corner," came Anna Pavlovna's
voice, "I see you are all right there."

And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done anything
reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him that everyone
knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.

A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna said
to him: "I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?"

This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and
Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg house
done up.

"That's a good thing, but don't move from Prince Vasili's. It is good to
have a friend like the prince," she said, smiling at Prince Vasili. "I
know something about that. Don't I? And you are still so young. You need
advice. Don't be angry with me for exercising an old woman's privilege."

She paused, as women always do, expecting something after they have
mentioned their age. "If you marry it will be a different thing," she
continued, uniting them both in one glance. Pierre did not look at
Helene nor she at him. But she was just as terribly close to him. He
muttered something and colored.

When he got home he could not sleep for a long time for thinking of what
had happened. What had happened? Nothing. He had merely understood that
the woman he had known as a child, of whom when her beauty was mentioned
he had said absent-mindedly: "Yes, she's good looking," he had
understood that this woman might belong to him.

"But she's stupid. I have myself said she is stupid," he thought. "There
is something nasty, something wrong, in the feeling she excites in me. I
have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with her and she
with him, that there was quite a scandal and that that's why he was sent
away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasili is her father... It's
bad...." he reflected, but while he was thinking this (the reflection
was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and was conscious that
another line of thought had sprung up, and while thinking of her
worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be his wife, how she
would love him become quite different, and how all he had thought and
heard of her might be false. And he again saw her not as the daughter of
Prince Vasili, but visualized her whole body only veiled by its gray
dress. "But no! Why did this thought never occur to me before?" and
again he told himself that it was impossible, that there would be
something unnatural, and as it seemed to him dishonorable, in this
marriage. He recalled her former words and looks and the words and looks
of those who had seen them together. He recalled Anna Pavlovna's words
and looks when she spoke to him about his house, recalled thousands of
such hints from Prince Vasili and others, and was seized by terror lest
he had already, in some way, bound himself to do something that was
evidently wrong and that he ought not to do. But at the very time he was
expressing this conviction to himself, in another part of his mind her
image rose in all its womanly beauty.




CHAPTER II

In November, 1805, Prince Vasili had to go on a tour of inspection in
four different provinces. He had arranged this for himself so as to
visit his neglected estates at the same time and pick up his son Anatole
where his regiment was stationed, and take him to visit Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski in order to arrange a match for him with the daughter of that
rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking these new affairs,
Prince Vasili had to settle matters with Pierre, who, it is true, had
latterly spent whole days at home, that is, in Prince Vasili's house
where he was staying, and had been absurd, excited, and foolish in
Helene's presence (as a lover should be), but had not yet proposed to
her.

"This is all very fine, but things must be settled," said Prince Vasili
to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that Pierre who
was under such obligations to him ("But never mind that") was not
behaving very well in this matter. "Youth, frivolity... well, God be
with him," thought he, relishing his own goodness of heart, "but it must
be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow will be Lelya's name day. I
will invite two or three people, and if he does not understand what he
ought to do then it will be my affair--yes, my affair. I am her father."

Six weeks after Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" and after the sleepless night
when he had decided that to marry Helene would be a calamity and that he
ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision, had not
left Prince Vasili's and felt with terror that in people's eyes he was
every day more and more connected with her, that it was impossible for
him to return to his former conception of her, that he could not break
away from her, and that though it would be a terrible thing he would
have to unite his fate with hers. He might perhaps have been able to
free himself but that Prince Vasili (who had rarely before given
receptions) now hardly let a day go by without having an evening party
at which Pierre had to be present unless he wished to spoil the general
pleasure and disappoint everyone's expectation. Prince Vasili, in the
rare moments when he was at home, would take Pierre's hand in passing
and draw it downwards, or absent-mindedly hold out his wrinkled, clean-
shaven cheek for Pierre to kiss and would say: "Till tomorrow," or, "Be
in to dinner or I shall not see you," or, "I am staying in for your
sake," and so on. And though Prince Vasili, when he stayed in (as he
said) for Pierre's sake, hardly exchanged a couple of words with him,
Pierre felt unable to disappoint him. Every day he said to himself one
and the same thing: "It is time I understood her and made up my mind
what she really is. Was I mistaken before, or am I mistaken now? No, she
is not stupid, she is an excellent girl," he sometimes said to himself
"she never makes a mistake, never says anything stupid. She says little,
but what she does say is always clear and simple, so she is not stupid.
She never was abashed and is not abashed now, so she cannot be a bad
woman!" He had often begun to make reflections or think aloud in her
company, and she had always answered him either by a brief but
appropriate remark--showing that it did not interest her--or by a silent
look and smile which more palpably than anything else showed Pierre her
superiority. She was right in regarding all arguments as nonsense in
comparison with that smile.

She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant for him
alone, in which there was something more significant than in the general
smile that usually brightened her face. Pierre knew that everyone was
waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line, and he knew that
sooner or later he would step across it, but an incomprehensible terror
seized him at the thought of that dreadful step. A thousand times during
that month and a half while he felt himself drawn nearer and nearer to
that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to himself: "What am I doing? I need
resolution. Can it be that I have none?"

He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this matter
he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself and really
possessed. Pierre was one of those who are only strong when they feel
themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was overpowered by
a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at Anna Pavlovna's,
an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire paralyzed his will.

On Helene's name day, a small party of just their own people--as his
wife said--met for supper at Prince Vasili's. All these friends and
relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young girl
would be decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper.
Princess Kuragina, a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome,
was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat the more
important guests--an old general and his wife, and Anna Pavlovna
Scherer. At the other end sat the younger and less important guests, and
there too sat the members of the family, and Pierre and Helene, side by
side. Prince Vasili was not having any supper: he went round the table
in a merry mood, sitting down now by one, now by another, of the guests.
To each of them he made some careless and agreeable remark except to
Pierre and Helene, whose presence he seemed not to notice. He enlivened
the whole party. The wax candles burned brightly, the silver and crystal
gleamed, so did the ladies' toilets and the gold and silver of the men's
epaulets; servants in scarlet liveries moved round the table, the
clatter of plates, knives, and glasses mingled with the animated hum of
several conversations. At one end of the table, the old chamberlain was
heard assuring an old baroness that he loved her passionately, at which
she laughed; at the other could be heard the story of the misfortunes of
some Mary Viktorovna or other. At the center of the table, Prince Vasili
attracted everybody's attention. With a facetious smile on his face, he
was telling the ladies about last Wednesday's meeting of the Imperial
Council, at which Sergey Kuzmich Vyazmitinov, the new military governor
general of Petersburg, had received and read the then famous rescript of
the Emperor Alexander from the army to Sergey Kuzmich, in which the
Emperor said that he was receiving from all sides declarations of the
people's loyalty, that the declaration from Petersburg gave him
particular pleasure, and that he was proud to be at the head of such a
nation and would endeavor to be worthy of it. This rescript began with
the words: "Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides reports reach me," etc.

"Well, and so he never got farther than: 'Sergey Kuzmich'?" asked one of
the ladies.

"Exactly, not a hair's breadth farther," answered Prince Vasili,
laughing, "'Sergey Kuzmich... From all sides... From all sides... Sergey
Kuzmich...' Poor Vyazmitinov could not get any farther! He began the
rescript again and again, but as soon as he uttered 'Sergey' he sobbed,
'Kuz-mi-ch,' tears, and 'From all sides' was smothered in sobs and he
could get no farther. And again his handkerchief, and again: 'Sergey
Kuzmich, From all sides,'... and tears, till at last somebody else was
asked to read it."

"Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears," someone repeated
laughing.

"Don't be unkind," cried Anna Pavlovna from her end of the table holding
up a threatening finger. "He is such a worthy and excellent man, our
dear Vyazmitinov...."

Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where the
honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in high spirits and under the
influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre and Helene
sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the table, a
suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that had nothing
to do with Sergey Kuzmich--a smile of bashfulness at their own feelings.
But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked, much as they
enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however they avoided
looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant as they seemed
of them, one could feel by the occasional glances they gave that the
story about Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the food were all a
pretense, and that the whole attention of that company was directed to--
Pierre and Helene. Prince Vasili mimicked the sobbing of Sergey Kuzmich
and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his daughter, and while he
laughed the expression on his face clearly said: "Yes... it's getting
on, it will all be settled today." Anna Pavlovna threatened him on
behalf of "our dear Vyazmitinov," and in her eyes, which, for an
instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasili read a congratulation on his
future son-in-law and on his daughter's happiness. The old princess
sighed sadly as she offered some wine to the old lady next to her and
glanced angrily at her daughter, and her sigh seemed to say: "Yes,
there's nothing left for you and me but to sip sweet wine, my dear, now
that the time has come for these young ones to be thus boldly,
provocatively happy." "And what nonsense all this is that I am saying!"
thought a diplomatist, glancing at the happy faces of the lovers.
"That's happiness!"

Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting that
society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a healthy
and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this human feeling
dominated everything else and soared above all their affected chatter.
Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the animation was
evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the footmen waiting at
table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their duties as they looked
at the beautiful Helene with her radiant face and at the red, broad, and
happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It seemed as if the very light of
the candles was focused on those two happy faces alone.

Pierre felt that he was the center of it all, and this both pleased and
embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some occupation.
He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only now and then
detached ideas and impressions from the world of reality shot
unexpectedly through his mind.

"So it is all finished!" he thought. "And how has it all happened? How
quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself alone,
but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They are all
expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I cannot, I
cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not know, but it will
certainly happen!" thought Pierre, glancing at those dazzling shoulders
close to his eyes.

Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it
awkward to attract everyone's attention and to be considered a lucky man
and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris possessed
of a Helen. "But no doubt it always is and must be so!" he consoled
himself. "And besides, what have I done to bring it about? How did it
begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasili. Then there was
nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I played cards with
her and picked up her reticule and drove out with her. How did it begin,
when did it all come about?" And here he was sitting by her side as her
betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her nearness, her breathing, her
movements, her beauty. Then it would suddenly seem to him that it was
not she but he was so unusually beautiful, and that that was why they
all looked so at him, and flattered by this general admiration he would
expand his chest, raise his head, and rejoice at his good fortune.
Suddenly he heard a familiar voice repeating something to him a second
time. But Pierre was so absorbed that he did not understand what was
said.

"I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski," repeated Prince
Vasili a third time. "How absent-minded you are, my dear fellow."

Prince Vasili smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling at
him and Helene. "Well, what of it, if you all know it?" thought Pierre.
"What of it? It's the truth!" and he himself smiled his gentle childlike
smile, and Helene smiled too.

"When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmutz?" repeated Prince
Vasili, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a dispute.

"How can one talk or think of such trifles?" thought Pierre.

"Yes, from Olmutz," he answered, with a sigh.

After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the
drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking leave of
Helene. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an important
occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go away,
refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a mournful
silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity of his
diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre's happiness. The old general
grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was. "Oh, the old fool,"
he thought. "That Princess Helene will be beautiful still when she's
fifty."

"I think I may congratulate you," whispered Anna Pavlovna to the old
princess, kissing her soundly. "If I hadn't this headache I'd have
stayed longer."

The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her
daughter's happiness.

While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a long time
alone with Helene in the little drawing room where they were sitting. He
had often before, during the last six weeks, remained alone with her,
but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt that it was inevitable,
but he could not make up his mind to take the final step. He felt
ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone else's place here beside
Helene. "This happiness is not for you," some inner voice whispered to
him. "This happiness is for those who have not in them what there is in
you."

But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether she was
satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple manner that
this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest she had ever had.

Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in the
large drawing room. Prince Vasili came up to Pierre with languid
footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasili gave
him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just said was so
strange that one could not take it in. But then the expression of
severity changed, and he drew Pierre's hand downwards, made him sit
down, and smiled affectionately.

"Well, Lelya?" he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and
addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural to
parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which Prince
Vasili had only acquired by imitating other parents.

And he again turned to Pierre.

"Sergey Kuzmich--From all sides-" he said, unbuttoning the top button of
his waistcoat.

Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the story
about Sergey Kuzmich that interested Prince Vasili just then, and Prince
Vasili saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered something and
went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince was disconcerted.
The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the world touched
Pierre: he looked at Helene and she too seemed disconcerted, and her
look seemed to say: "Well, it is your own fault."

"The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!" thought Pierre, and he
again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergey Kuzmich,
asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it properly.
Helene answered with a smile that she too had missed it.

When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the princess, his wife,
was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre.

"Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear..."

"Marriages are made in heaven," replied the elderly lady.

Prince Vasili passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat down on
a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and seemed to be
dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself.

"Aline," he said to his wife, "go and see what they are about."

The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified and
indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room. Pierre and
Helene still sat talking just as before.

"Still the same," she said to her husband.

Prince Vasili frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and his
face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him. Shaking
himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps went past
the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he went
joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant that Pierre
rose in alarm on seeing it.

"Thank God!" said Prince Vasili. "My wife has told me everything!" (He
put one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)--"My dear
boy... Lelya... I am very pleased." (His voice trembled.) "I loved your
father... and she will make you a good wife... God bless you!..."

He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with his
malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks.

"Princess, come here!" he shouted.

The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using her
handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful
Helene's hand several times. After a while they were left alone again.

"All this had to be and could not be otherwise," thought Pierre, "so it
is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because it's
definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt." Pierre held the
hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom as it
rose and fell.

"Helene!" he said aloud and paused.

"Something special is always said in such cases," he thought, but could
not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face. She
drew nearer to him. Her face flushed.

"Oh, take those off... those..." she said, pointing to his spectacles.

Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes have
from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a frightened and
inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and kiss it, but
with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she intercepted his
lips and met them with her own. Her face struck Pierre, by its altered,
unpleasantly excited expression.

"It is too late now, it's done; besides I love her," thought Pierre.

"Je vous aime!" * he said, remembering what has to be said at such
moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of himself.


* "I love you."

Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezukhov's large,
newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as people said,
of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions of money.




CHAPTER III

Old Prince Nicholas Bolkonski received a letter from Prince Vasili in
November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying him a
visit. "I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of course I shall
think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see you at the same
time, my honored benefactor," wrote Prince Vasili. "My son Anatole is
accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you will allow him
personally to express the deep respect that, emulating his father, he
feels for you."

"It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors are
coming to us of their own accord," incautiously remarked the little
princess on hearing the news.

Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.

A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili's servants came one evening
in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.

Old Bolkonski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasili's
character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and
Alexander Prince Vasili had risen to high position and honors. And now,
from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little princess,
he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion changed into
a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever he mentioned
him. On the day of Prince Vasili's arrival, Prince Bolkonski was
particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether he was in a bad
temper because Prince Vasili was coming, or whether his being in a bad
temper made him specially annoyed at Prince Vasili's visit, he was in a
bad temper, and in the morning Tikhon had already advised the architect
not to go to the prince with his report.

"Do you hear how he's walking?" said Tikhon, drawing the architect's
attention to the sound of the prince's footsteps. "Stepping flat on his
heels--we know what that means...."

However, at nine o'clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable
collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day
before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the
habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still
visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of the
soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince went
through the conservatories, the serfs' quarters, and the outbuildings,
frowning and silent.

"Can a sleigh pass?" he asked his overseer, a venerable man, resembling
his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him back to the
house.

"The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor."

The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. "God be thanked,"
thought the overseer, "the storm has blown over!"

"It would have been hard to drive up, your honor," he added. "I heard,
your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor."

The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,
frowning.

"What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?" he said in his
shrill, harsh voice. "The road is not swept for the princess my
daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!"

"Your honor, I thought..."

"You thought!" shouted the prince, his words coming more and more
rapidly and indistinctly. "You thought!... Rascals! Blackguards!... I'll
teach you to think!" and lifting his stick he swung it and would have
hit Alpatych, the overseer, had not the latter instinctively avoided the
blow. "Thought... Blackguards..." shouted the prince rapidly.

But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding the
stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly before
him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he continued to
shout: "Blackguards!... Throw the snow back on the road!" did not lift
his stick again but hurried into the house.

Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew that
the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle
Bourienne with a radiant face that said: "I know nothing, I am the same
as usual," and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with downcast eyes.
What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such occasions she
ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could not. She thought:
"If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not sympathize with
him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he will say (as he has
done before) that I'm in the dumps."

The prince looked at his daughter's frightened face and snorted.

"Fool... or dummy!" he muttered.

"And the other one is not here. They've been telling tales," he thought-
-referring to the little princess who was not in the dining room.

"Where is the princess?" he asked. "Hiding?"

"She is not very well," answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with a bright
smile, "so she won't come down. It is natural in her state."

"Hm! Hm!" muttered the prince, sitting down.

His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he flung
it away. Tikhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little
princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the prince
that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to appear.

"I am afraid for the baby," she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne: "Heaven
knows what a fright might do."

In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear, and
with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not realize
because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The prince
reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his contempt for
her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to life at Bald
Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle Bourienne, spent whole
days with her, asked her to sleep in her room, and often talked with her
about the old prince and criticized him.

"So we are to have visitors, mon prince?" remarked Mademoiselle
Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. "His
Excellency Prince Vasili Kuragin and his son, I understand?" she said
inquiringly.

"Hm!--his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the
service," said the prince disdainfully. "Why his son is coming I don't
understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don't
want him." (He looked at his blushing daughter.) "Are you unwell today?
Eh? Afraid of the 'minister' as that idiot Alpatych called him this
morning?"

"No, mon pere."

Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice of
a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the
conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and
after the soup the prince became more genial.

After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess
was sitting at a small table, chattering with Masha, her maid. She grew
pale on seeing her father-in-law.

She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her cheeks
had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.

"Yes, I feel a kind of oppression," she said in reply to the prince's
question as to how she felt.

"Do you want anything?"

"No, merci, mon pere."

"Well, all right, all right."

He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpatych stood with
bowed head.

"Has the snow been shoveled back?"

"Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven's sake... It was only my
stupidity."

"All right, all right," interrupted the prince, and laughing his
unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpatych to kiss, and then
proceeded to his study.

Prince Vasili arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by coachmen
and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to one of the
lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.

Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.

Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo before a
table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly fixed his
large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a continual round
of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for him. And
he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and a rich and ugly
heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought, turn out very well
and amusingly. "And why not marry her if she really has so much money?
That never does any harm," thought Anatole.

He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had
become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his
father's room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to him.
Prince Vasili's two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked round
with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter
entered, as if to say: "Yes, that's how I want you to look."

"I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?" Anatole asked, as if
continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been mentioned
during the journey.

"Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious
with the old prince."

"If he starts a row I'll go away," said Prince Anatole. "I can't bear
those old men! Eh?"

"Remember, for you everything depends on this."

In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants' rooms that
the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of both had
been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in her room,
vainly trying to master her agitation.

"Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never
happen!" she said, looking at herself in the glass. "How shall I enter
the drawing room? Even if I like him I can't now be myself with him."
The mere thought of her father's look filled her with terror. The little
princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received from Masha, the
lady's maid, the necessary report of how handsome the minister's son
was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and with what difficulty
the father had dragged his legs upstairs while the son had followed him
like an eagle, three steps at a time. Having received this information,
the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne, whose chattering voices
had reached her from the corridor, went into Princess Mary's room.

"You know they've come, Marie?" said the little princess, waddling in,
and sinking heavily into an armchair.

She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the morning,
but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully done and her
face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its sunken and faded
outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg society, it was still
more noticeable how much plainer she had become. Some unobtrusive touch
had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne's toilet which rendered her
fresh and pretty face yet more attractive.

"What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?" she began.
"They'll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing room and we
shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself up at all!"

The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and merrily
began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary should be
dressed. Princess Mary's self-esteem was wounded by the fact that the
arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both her
companions' not having the least conception that it could be otherwise.
To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them would be to
betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to dress her would
prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, her beautiful eyes
grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took on the unattractive
martyrlike expression it so often wore, as she submitted herself to
Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these women quite sincerely tried
to make her look pretty. She was so plain that neither of them could
think of her as a rival, so they began dressing her with perfect
sincerity, and with the naive and firm conviction women have that dress
can make a face pretty.

"No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty," said Lise, looking
sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. "You have a maroon
dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life may
be at stake. But this one is too light, it's not becoming!"

It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary
that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little
princess felt this; they still thought that if a blue ribbon were placed
in the hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged lower on
the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They forgot that
the frightened face and the figure could not be altered, and that
however they might change the setting and adornment of that face, it
would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three changes to
which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair had been arranged
on the top of her head (a style that quite altered and spoiled her
looks) and she had put on a maroon dress with a pale-blue scarf, the
little princess walked twice round her, now adjusting a fold of the
dress with her little hand, now arranging the scarf and looking at her
with her head bent first on one side and then on the other.

"No, it will not do," she said decidedly, clasping her hands. "No, Mary,
really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little gray
everyday dress. Now please, do it for my sake. Katie," she said to the
maid, "bring the princess her gray dress, and you'll see, Mademoiselle
Bourienne, how I shall arrange it," she added, smiling with a foretaste
of artistic pleasure.

But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained
sitting motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in the
mirror her eyes full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to burst
into sobs.

"Come, dear princess," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "just one more
little effort."

The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to Princess
Mary.

"Well, now we'll arrange something quite simple and becoming," she said.

The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne's, and Katie's, who was
laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping of
birds.

"No, leave me alone," said Princess Mary.

Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds
was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful
eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at
them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel to insist.

"At least, change your coiffure," said the little princess. "Didn't I
tell you," she went on, turning reproachfully to Mademoiselle Bourienne,
"Mary's is a face which such a coiffure does not suit in the least. Not
in the least! Please change it."

"Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same to me,"
answered a voice struggling with tears.

Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to themselves
that Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse than usual,
but it was too late. She was looking at them with an expression they
both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This expression in Princess
Mary did not frighten them (she never inspired fear in anyone), but they
knew that when it appeared on her face, she became mute and was not to
be shaken in her determination.

"You will change it, won't you?" said Lise. And as Princess Mary gave no
answer, she left the room.

Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise's request,
she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look in her
glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with downcast eyes and
pondered. A husband, a man, a strong dominant and strangely attractive
being rose in her imagination, and carried her into a totally different
happy world of his own. She fancied a child, her own--such as she had
seen the day before in the arms of her nurse's daughter--at her own
breast, the husband standing by and gazing tenderly at her and the
child. "But no, it is impossible, I am too ugly," she thought.

"Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment," came the
maid's voice at the door.

She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking, and
before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and, her
eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit by a
lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments. A painful
doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly love for a man,
be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess Mary dreamed of
happiness and of children, but her strongest, most deeply hidden longing
was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide this feeling from
others and even from herself, the stronger it grew. "O God," she said,
"how am I to stifle in my heart these temptations of the devil? How am I
to renounce forever these vile fancies, so as peacefully to fulfill Thy
will?" And scarcely had she put that question than God gave her the
answer in her own heart. "Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be
not anxious or envious. Man's future and thy own fate must remain hidden
from thee, but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be
God's will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfill
His will." With this consoling thought (but yet with a hope for the
fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing) Princess Mary sighed, and
having crossed herself went down, thinking neither of her gown and
coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what she would say. What
could all that matter in comparison with the will of God, without Whose
care not a hair of man's head can fall?




CHAPTER IV

When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasili and his son were already in
the drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle
Bourienne. When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her heels,
the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little princess,
indicating her to the gentlemen, said: "Voila Marie!" Princess Mary saw
them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince Vasili's face, serious
for an instant at the sight of her, but immediately smiling again, and
the little princess curiously noting the impression "Marie" produced on
the visitors. And she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne, with her ribbon and
pretty face, and her unusually animated look which was fixed on him, but
him she could not see, she only saw something large, brilliant, and
handsome moving toward her as she entered the room. Prince Vasili
approached first, and she kissed the bold forehead that bent over her
hand and answered his question by saying that, on the contrary, she
remembered him quite well. Then Anatole came up to her. She still could
not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking hers firmly, and she
touched with her lips a white forehead, over which was beautiful light-
brown hair smelling of pomade. When she looked up at him she was struck
by his beauty. Anatole stood with his right thumb under a button of his
uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in, slightly swinging one
foot, and, with his head a little bent, looked with beaming face at the
princess without speaking and evidently not thinking about her at all.
Anatole was not quick-witted, nor ready or eloquent in conversation, but
he had the faculty, so invaluable in society, of composure and
imperturbable self-possession. If a man lacking in self-confidence
remains dumb on a first introduction and betrays a consciousness of the
impropriety of such silence and an anxiety to find something to say, the
effect is bad. But Anatole was dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly
examined the princess' hair. It was evident that he could be silent in
this way for a very long time. "If anyone finds this silence
inconvenient, let him talk, but I don't want to," he seemed to say.
Besides this, in his behavior to women Anatole had a manner which
particularly inspires in them curiosity, awe, and even love--a
supercilious consciousness of his own superiority. It was as if he said
to them: "I know you, I know you, but why should I bother about you?
You'd be only too glad, of course." Perhaps he did not really think this
when he met women--even probably he did not, for in general he thought
very little--but his looks and manner gave that impression. The princess
felt this, and as if wishing to show him that she did not even dare
expect to interest him, she turned to his father. The conversation was
general and animated, thanks to Princess Lise's voice and little downy
lip that lifted over her white teeth. She met Prince Vasili with that
playful manner often employed by lively chatty people, and consisting in
the assumption that between the person they so address and themselves
there are some semi-private, long-established jokes and amusing
reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really exist--just as none
existed in this case. Prince Vasili readily adopted her tone and the
little princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew, into these
amusing recollections of things that had never occurred. Mademoiselle
Bourienne also shared them and even Princess Mary felt herself
pleasantly made to share in these merry reminiscences.

"Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to
ourselves, dear prince," said the little princess (of course, in French)
to Prince Vasili. "It's not as at Annette's * receptions where you
always ran away; you remember cette chere Annette!"


* Anna Pavlovna.

"Ah, but you won't talk politics to me like Annette!"

"And our little tea table?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Why is it you were never at Annette's?" the little princess asked
Anatole. "Ah, I know, I know," she said with a sly glance, "your brother
Hippolyte told me about your goings on. Oh!" and she shook her finger at
him, "I have even heard of your doings in Paris!"

"And didn't Hippolyte tell you?" asked Prince Vasili, turning to his son
and seizing the little princess' arm as if she would have run away and
he had just managed to catch her, "didn't he tell you how he himself was
pining for the dear princess, and how she showed him the door? Oh, she
is a pearl among women, Princess," he added, turning to Princess Mary.

When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne for her part seized the
opportunity of joining in the general current of recollections.

She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long since Anatole had
left Paris and how he had liked that city. Anatole answered the
Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a smile, talked to her
about her native land. When he saw the pretty little Bourienne, Anatole
came to the conclusion that he would not find Bald Hills dull either.
"Not at all bad!" he thought, examining her, "not at all bad, that
little companion! I hope she will bring her along with her when we're
married, la petite est gentille." *


* The little one is charming.

The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and considering
what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed him. "What are
Prince Vasili and that son of his to me? Prince Vasili is a shallow
braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine specimen," he grumbled to
himself. What angered him was that the coming of these visitors revived
in his mind an unsettled question he always tried to stifle, one about
which he always deceived himself. The question was whether he could ever
bring himself to part from his daughter and give her to a husband. The
prince never directly asked himself that question, knowing beforehand
that he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only
with his feelings but with the very possibility of life. Life without
Princess Mary, little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to him.
"And why should she marry?" he thought. "To be unhappy for certain.
There's Lise, married to Andrew--a better husband one would think could
hardly be found nowadays--but is she contented with her lot? And who
would marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward! They'll take her for her
connections and wealth. Are there no women living unmarried, and even
the happier for it?" So thought Prince Bolkonski while dressing, and yet
the question he was always putting off demanded an immediate answer.
Prince Vasili had brought his son with the evident intention of
proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask for an answer.
His birth and position in society were not bad. "Well, I've nothing
against it," the prince said to himself, "but he must be worthy of her.
And that is what we shall see."

"That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!" he added aloud.

He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing rapidly
round the company. He noticed the change in the little princess' dress,
Mademoiselle Bourienne's ribbon, Princess Mary's unbecoming coiffure,
Mademoiselle Bourienne's and Anatole's smiles, and the loneliness of his
daughter amid the general conversation. "Got herself up like a fool!" he
thought, looking irritably at her. "She is shameless, and he ignores
her!"

He went straight up to Prince Vasili.

"Well! How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Glad to see you!"

"Friendship laughs at distance," began Prince Vasili in his usual rapid,
self-confident, familiar tone. "Here is my second son; please love and
befriend him."

Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole.

"Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!" he said. "Well, come and kiss
me," and he offered his cheek.

Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and perfect
composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his father had
told him to expect.

Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the sofa
and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasili, pointed to it and began
questioning him about political affairs and news. He seemed to listen
attentively to what Prince Vasili said, but kept glancing at Princess
Mary.

"And so they are writing from Potsdam already?" he said, repeating
Prince Vasili's last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his
daughter.

"Is it for visitors you've got yourself up like that, eh?" said he.
"Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for the
visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you are
never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent."

"It was my fault, mon pere," interceded the little princess, with a
blush.

"You must do as you please," said Prince Bolkonski, bowing to his
daughter-in-law, "but she need not make a fool of herself, she's plain
enough as it is."

And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who was
reduced to tears.

"On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well," said
Prince Vasili.

"Now you, young prince, what's your name?" said Prince Bolkonski,
turning to Anatole, "come here, let us talk and get acquainted."

"Now the fun begins," thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile beside
the old prince.

"Well, my dear boy, I hear you've been educated abroad, not taught to
read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me, my
dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?" asked the old man,
scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.

"No, I have been transferred to the line," said Anatole, hardly able to
restrain his laughter.

"Ah! That's a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the Tsar
and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve. Well, are
you off to the front?"

"No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am attached...
what is it I am attached to, Papa?" said Anatole, turning to his father
with a laugh.

"A splendid soldier, splendid! 'What am I attached to!' Ha, ha, ha!"
laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly
Prince Bolkonski frowned.

"You may go," he said to Anatole.

Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.

"And so you've had him educated abroad, Prince Vasili, haven't you?"
said the old prince to Prince Vasili.

"I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education there
is much better than ours."

"Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The lad's
a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now." He took Prince
Vasili's arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were alone
together, Prince Vasili announced his hopes and wishes to the old
prince.

"Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can't part from her?"
said the old prince angrily. "What an idea! I'm ready for it tomorrow!
Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better. You know my
principles--everything aboveboard? I will ask her tomorrow in your
presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can stay and I'll
see." The old prince snorted. "Let her marry, it's all the same to me!"
he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting from his son.

"I will tell you frankly," said Prince Vasili in the tone of a crafty
man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so keen-sighted a
companion. "You know, you see right through people. Anatole is no
genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an excellent son or
kinsman."

"All right, all right, we'll see!"

As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time
without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women of
Prince Bolkonski's household felt that their life had not been real till
then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing immediately
increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in
darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full of significance.

Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The
handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband absorbed
all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave, determined, manly, and
magnanimous. She felt convinced of that. Thousands of dreams of a future
family life continually rose in her imagination. She drove them away and
tried to conceal them.

"But am I not too cold with him?" thought the princess. "I try to be
reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him already,
but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine that I do
not like him."

And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to her new
guest. "Poor girl, she's devilish ugly!" thought Anatole.

Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole's
arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young woman
without any definite position, without relations or even a country, did
not intend to devote her life to serving Prince Bolkonski, to reading
aloud to him and being friends with Princess Mary. Mademoiselle
Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian prince who, able to
appreciate at a glance her superiority to the plain, badly dressed,
ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in love with her and carry her
off; and here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew
a story, heard from her aunt but finished in her own way, which she
liked to repeat to herself. It was the story of a girl who had been
seduced, and to whom her poor mother (sa pauvre mere) appeared, and
reproached her for yielding to a man without being married. Mademoiselle
Bourienne was often touched to tears as in imagination she told this
story to him, her seducer. And now he, a real Russian prince, had
appeared. He would carry her away and then sa pauvre mere would appear
and he would marry her. So her future shaped itself in Mademoiselle
Bourienne's head at the very time she was talking to Anatole about
Paris. It was not calculation that guided her (she did not even for a
moment consider what she should do), but all this had long been familiar
to her, and now that Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself around
him and she wished and tried to please him as much as possible.

The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet,
unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the
familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any
struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.

Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man
tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the
spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was
beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne
that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him with great
suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless actions.

After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess Mary was
asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in high spirits,
came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion.
Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately poetic world and the
look she felt upon her made that world still more poetic. But Anatole's
expression, though his eyes were fixed on her, referred not to her but
to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne's little foot, which he was
then touching with his own under the clavichord. Mademoiselle Bourienne
was also looking at Princess Mary, and in her lovely eyes there was a
look of fearful joy and hope that was also new to the princess.

"How she loves me!" thought Princess Mary. "How happy I am now, and how
happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband? Can it be
possible?" she thought, not daring to look at his face, but still
feeling his eyes gazing at her.

In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole
kissed Princess Mary's hand. She did not know how she found the courage,
but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came near to her
shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up and kissed
Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand. (This was not etiquette, but then he did
everything so simply and with such assurance!) Mademoiselle Bourienne
flushed, and gave the princess a frightened look.

"What delicacy!" thought the princess. "Is it possible that Amelie"
(Mademoiselle Bourienne) "thinks I could be jealous of her, and not
value her pure affection and devotion to me?" She went up to her and
kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little princess' hand.

"No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are behaving
well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!" she said. And
smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room.




CHAPTER V

They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as he
got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night.

"Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind--yes, kind,
that is the chief thing," thought Princess Mary; and fear, which she had
seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round, it seemed
to her that someone was there standing behind the screen in the dark
corner. And this someone was he--the devil--and he was also this man
with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.

She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.

Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a long
time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at someone, now
working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of her pauvre mere
rebuking her for her fall.

The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly made.
She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every position was
awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her now more than
ever because Anatole's presence had vividly recalled to her the time
when she was not like that and when everything was light and gay. She
sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and nightcap and Katie, sleepy
and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy feather bed for the third
time, muttering to herself.

"I told you it was all lumps and holes!" the little princess repeated.
"I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it's not my fault!" and her
voice quivered like that of a child about to cry.

The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep, heard him
pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though he had
been insulted through his daughter. The insult was the more pointed
because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter, whom he
loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he would consider
the whole matter and decide what was right and how he should act, but
instead of that he only excited himself more and more.

"The first man that turns up--she forgets her father and everything
else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags her tail and is unlike
herself! Glad to throw her father over! And she knew I should notice it.
Fr... fr... fr! And don't I see that that idiot had eyes only for
Bourienne--I shall have to get rid of her. And how is it she has not
pride enough to see it? If she has no pride for herself she might at
least have some for my sake! She must be shown that the blockhead thinks
nothing of her and looks only at Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but
I'll let her see...."

The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a
mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne,
Princess Mary's self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to be
parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this
thought, he called Tikhon and began to undress.

"What devil brought them here?" thought he, while Tikhon was putting the
nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest. "I never
invited them. They came to disturb my life--and there is not much of it
left."

"Devil take 'em!" he muttered, while his head was still covered by the
shirt.

Tikhon knew his master's habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and
therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive expression of
the face that emerged from the shirt.

"Gone to bed?" asked the prince.

Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of his
master's thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince
Vasili and his son.

"They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency."

"No good... no good..." said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his feet
into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing gown, he
went to the couch on which he slept.

Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle Bourienne,
they quite understood one another as to the first part of their romance,
up to the appearance of the pauvre mere; they understood that they had
much to say to one another in private and so they had been seeking an
opportunity since morning to meet one another alone. When Princess Mary
went to her father's room at the usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and
Anatole met in the conservatory.

Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special trepidation. It
seemed to her that not only did everybody know that her fate would be
decided that day, but that they also knew what she thought about it. She
read this in Tikhon's face and in that of Prince Vasili's valet, who
made her a low bow when she met him in the corridor carrying hot water.

The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of his
daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking
expression of her father's. His face wore that expression when his dry
hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in
arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk away from her,
repeating in a low voice the same words several times over.

He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.

"I have had a proposition made me concerning you," he said with an
unnatural smile. "I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasili has not
come and brought his pupil with him" (for some reason Prince Bolkonski
referred to Anatole as a "pupil") "for the sake of my beautiful eyes.
Last night a proposition was made me on your account and, as you know my
principles, I refer it to you."

"How am I to understand you, mon pere?" said the princess, growing pale
and then blushing.

"How understand me!" cried her father angrily. "Prince Vasili finds you
to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to you on his
pupil's behalf. That's how it's to be understood! 'How understand
it'!... And I ask you!"

"I do not know what you think, Father," whispered the princess.

"I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I'm not going to get
married. What about you? That's what I want to know."

The princess saw that her father regarded the matter with disapproval,
but at that moment the thought occurred to her that her fate would be
decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not to see the gaze
under which she felt that she could not think, but would only be able to
submit from habit, and she said: "I wish only to do your will, but if I
had to express my own desire..." She had no time to finish. The old
prince interrupted her.

"That's admirable!" he shouted. "He will take you with your dowry and
take Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She'll be the wife, while
you..."

The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had produced on his
daughter. She lowered her head and was ready to burst into tears.

"Now then, now then, I'm only joking!" he said. "Remember this,
Princess, I hold to the principle that a maiden has a full right to
choose. I give you freedom. Only remember that your life's happiness
depends on your decision. Never mind me!"

"But I do not know, Father!"

"There's no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry you or
anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room, think it over,
and come back in an hour and tell me in his presence: yes or no. I know
you will pray over it. Well, pray if you like, but you had better think
it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!" he still shouted when the
princess, as if lost in a fog, had already staggered out of the study.

Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had said
about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be sure, but
still it was terrible, and she could not help thinking of it. She was
going straight on through the conservatory, neither seeing nor hearing
anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of Mademoiselle
Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes, and two steps away saw
Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to her. With
a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole looked at Princess
Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the waist of Mademoiselle
Bourienne who had not yet seen her.

"Who's that? Why? Wait a moment!" Anatole's face seemed to say. Princess
Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand it. At last
Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole bowed to
Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in a laugh at
this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders went to the door
that led to his own apartments.

An hour later, Tikhon came to call Princess Mary to the old prince; he
added that Prince Vasili was also there. When Tikhon came to her
Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in her room, holding the weeping
Mademoiselle Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her hair. The
princess' beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance were
looking with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle Bourienne's
pretty face.

"No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!" said Mademoiselle
Bourienne.

"Why? I love you more than ever," said Princess Mary, "and I will try to
do all I can for your happiness."

"But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand being so
carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother..."

"I quite understand," answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile. "Calm
yourself, my dear. I will go to my father," she said, and went out.

Prince Vasili, with one leg thrown high over the other and a snuffbox in
his hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion on his face, as
if stirred to his heart's core and himself regretting and laughing at
his own sensibility, when Princess Mary entered. He hurriedly took a
pinch of snuff.

"Ah, my dear, my dear!" he began, rising and taking her by both hands.
Then, sighing, he added: "My son's fate is in your hands. Decide, my
dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a daughter!"

He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.

"Fr... fr..." snorted Prince Bolkonski. "The prince is making a
proposition to you in his pupil's--I mean, his son's--name. Do you wish
or not to be Prince Anatole Kuragin's wife? Reply: yes or no," he
shouted, "and then I shall reserve the right to state my opinion also.
Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion," added Prince Bolkonski, turning
to Prince Vasili and answering his imploring look. "Yes, or no?"

"My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my life from
yours. I don't wish to marry," she answered positively, glancing at
Prince Vasili and at her father with her beautiful eyes.

"Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!" cried Prince Bolkonski,
frowning and taking his daughter's hand; he did not kiss her, but only
bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and pressed her hand so
that she winced and uttered a cry.

Prince Vasili rose.

"My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never
forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching
this heart, so kind and generous? Say 'perhaps'... The future is so
long. Say 'perhaps.'"

"Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you for
the honor, but I shall never be your son's wife."

"Well, so that's finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have seen
you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!" said the old
prince. "Very, very glad to have seen you," repeated he, embracing
Prince Vasili.

"My vocation is a different one," thought Princess Mary. "My vocation is
to be happy with another kind of happiness, the happiness of love and
self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will arrange poor Amelie's
happiness, she loves him so passionately, and so passionately repents. I
will do all I can to arrange the match between them. If he is not rich I
will give her the means; I will ask my father and Andrew. I shall be so
happy when she is his wife. She is so unfortunate, a stranger, alone,
helpless! And, oh God, how passionately she must love him if she could
so far forget herself! Perhaps I might have done the same!..." thought
Princess Mary.




CHAPTER VI

It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till midwinter
was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son's
handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm and
haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read the
letter.

Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the house,
on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the room and
found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing at the same
time.

Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still
living with the Rostovs.

"My dear friend?" said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry, prepared to
sympathize in any way.

The count sobbed yet more.

"Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling boy...
the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How tell the
little countess!"

Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief wiped
the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried her own
eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and till
teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God's help,
would inform her.

At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time about the war news and
about Nikolenka, twice asked when the last letter had been received from
him, though she knew that already, and remarked that they might very
likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each time that these hints
began to make the countess anxious and she glanced uneasily at the count
and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter very adroitly turned the
conversation to insignificant matters. Natasha, who, of the whole
family, was the most gifted with a capacity to feel any shades of
intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her ears from the beginning
of the meal and was certain that there was some secret between her
father and Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had something to do with her
brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was preparing them for it. Bold as
she was, Natasha, who knew how sensitive her mother was to anything
relating to Nikolenka, did not venture to ask any questions at dinner,
but she was too excited to eat anything and kept wriggling about on her
chair regardless of her governess' remarks. After dinner, she rushed
head long after Anna Mikhaylovna and, dashing at her, flung herself on
her neck as soon as she overtook her in the sitting room.

"Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!"

"Nothing, my dear."

"No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won't give up--I know you know
something."

Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.

"You are a little slyboots," she said.

"A letter from Nikolenka! I'm sure of it!" exclaimed Natasha, reading
confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna's face.

"But for God's sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your mamma."

"I will, I will, only tell me! You won't? Then I will go and tell at
once."

Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the letter,
on condition that she should tell no one.

"No, on my true word of honor," said Natasha, crossing herself, "I won't
tell anyone!" and she ran off at once to Sonya.

"Nikolenka... wounded... a letter," she announced in gleeful triumph.

"Nicholas!" was all Sonya said, instantly turning white.

Natasha, seeing the impression the news of her brother's wound produced
on Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.

She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.

"A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he
wrote himself," said she through her tears.

"There now! It's true that all you women are crybabies," remarked Petya,
pacing the room with large, resolute strides. "Now I'm very glad, very
glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself so. You are all
blubberers and understand nothing."

Natasha smiled through her tears.

"You haven't read the letter?" asked Sonya.

"No, but she said that it was all over and that he's now an officer."

"Thank God!" said Sonya, crossing herself. "But perhaps she deceived
you. Let us go to Mamma."

Petya paced the room in silence for a time.

"If I'd been in Nikolenka's place I would have killed even more of those
Frenchmen," he said. "What nasty brutes they are! I'd have killed so
many that there'd have been a heap of them."

"Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!"

"I'm not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles," said Petya.

"Do you remember him?" Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment's silence.

Sonya smiled.

"Do I remember Nicholas?"

"No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you remember him perfectly,
remember everything?" said Natasha, with an expressive gesture,
evidently wishing to give her words a very definite meaning. "I remember
Nikolenka too, I remember him well," she said. "But I don't remember
Boris. I don't remember him a bit."

"What! You don't remember Boris?" asked Sonya in surprise.

"It's not that I don't remember--I know what he is like, but not as I
remember Nikolenka. Him--I just shut my eyes and remember, but Boris...
No!" (She shut her eyes.) "No! there's nothing at all."

"Oh, Natasha!" said Sonya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her
friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to
say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was
out of the question, "I am in love with your brother once for all and,
whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him as
long as I live."

Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and said
nothing. She felt that Sonya was speaking the truth, that there was such
love as Sonya was speaking of. But Natasha had not yet felt anything
like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.

"Shall you write to him?" she asked.

Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas, and
whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already an
officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of herself
and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had taken on
himself?

"I don't know. I think if he writes, I will write too," she said,
blushing.

"And you won't feel ashamed to write to him?"

Sonya smiled.

"No."

"And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I'm not going to."

"Why should you be ashamed?"

"Well, I don't know. It's awkward and would make me ashamed."

"And I know why she'd be ashamed," said Petya, offended by Natasha's
previous remark. "It's because she was in love with that fat one in
spectacles" (that was how Petya described his namesake, the new Count
Bezukhov) "and now she's in love with that singer" (he meant Natasha's
Italian singing master), "that's why she's ashamed!"

"Petya, you're a stupid!" said Natasha.

"Not more stupid than you, madam," said the nine-year-old Petya, with
the air of an old brigadier.

The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna's hints at dinner. On
retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her eyes fixed on a
miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a snuffbox, while the tears
kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna, with the letter, came on
tiptoe to the countess' door and paused.

"Don't come in," she said to the old count who was following her. "Come
later." And she went in, closing the door behind her.

The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.

At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna
Mikhaylovna's voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then silence,
then both voices together with glad intonations, and then footsteps.
Anna Mikhaylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud expression of
a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation and admits the
public to appreciate his skill.

"It is done!" she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the
countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait and
in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her lips.

When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him, embraced his
bald head, over which she again looked at the letter and the portrait,
and in order to press them again to her lips, she slightly pushed away
the bald head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya now entered the room, and
the reading of the letter began. After a brief description of the
campaign and the two battles in which he had taken part, and his
promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his father's and mother's hands
asking for their blessing, and that he kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya.
Besides that, he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss,
and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss for him "dear Sonya, whom he
loved and thought of just the same as ever." When she heard this Sonya
blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks
turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at
full speed with her dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and
smiling, plumped down on the floor. The countess was crying.

"Why are you crying, Mamma?" asked Vera. "From all he says one should be
glad and not cry."

This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natasha looked at
her reproachfully. "And who is it she takes after?" thought the
countess.

Nicholas' letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were
considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she did
not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses, and
Dmitri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter
each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it fresh
proofs of Nikolenka's virtues. How strange, how extraordinary, how
joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of whose
tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son about whom
she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count, that son who had
first learned to say "pear" and then "granny," that this son should now
be away in a foreign land amid strange surroundings, a manly warrior
doing some kind of man's work of his own, without help or guidance. The
universal experience of ages, showing that children do grow
imperceptibly from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the
countess. Her son's growth toward manhood, at each of its stages, had
seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the
millions of human beings who grew up in the same way. As twenty years
before, it seemed impossible that the little creature who lived
somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to
speak, so now she could not believe that that little creature could be
this strong, brave man, this model son and officer that, judging by this
letter, he now was.

"What a style! How charmingly he describes!" said she, reading the
descriptive part of the letter. "And what a soul! Not a word about
himself.... Not a word! About some Denisov or other, though he himself,
I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about his
sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has remembered
everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was only so
high--I always said...."

For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of
letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied out,
while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of the
count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and equipment of
the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna Mikhaylovna,
practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor with army
authorities to secure advantageous means of communication for herself
and her son. She had opportunities of sending her letters to the Grand
Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the Guards. The Rostovs
supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was quite a definite address,
and that if a letter reached the Grand Duke in command of the Guards
there was no reason why it should not reach the Pavlograd regiment,
which was presumably somewhere in the same neighborhood. And so it was
decided to send the letters and money by the Grand Duke's courier to
Boris and Boris was to forward them to Nicholas. The letters were from
the old count, the countess, Petya, Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, and
finally there were six thousand rubles for his outfit and various other
things the old count sent to his son.




CHAPTER VII

On the twelfth of November, Kutuzov's active army, in camp before
Olmutz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors--the
Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia, spent
the night ten miles from Olmutz and next morning were to come straight
to the review, reaching the field at Olmutz by ten o'clock.

That day Nicholas Rostov received a letter from Boris, telling him that
the Ismaylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles from Olmutz
and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money for him.
Rostov was particularly in need of money now that the troops, after
their active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the camp swarmed
with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all sorts of
tempting wares. The Pavlograds held feast after feast, celebrating
awards they had received for the campaign, and made expeditions to
Olmutz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who had recently
opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses. Rostov, who had just
celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought Denisov's horse,
Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and the sutlers. On
receiving Boris' letter he rode with a fellow officer to Olmutz, dined
there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set off alone to the Guards'
camp to find his old playmate. Rostov had not yet had time to get his
uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket, decorated with a soldier's
cross, equally shabby cadet's riding breeches lined with worn leather,
and an officer's saber with a sword knot. The Don horse he was riding
was one he had bought from a Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a
crumpled hussar cap stuck jauntily back on one side of his head. As he
rode up to the camp he thought how he would impress Boris and all his
comrades of the Guards by his appearance--that of a fighting hussar who
had been under fire.

The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip, parading
their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy stages, their
knapsacks conveyed on carts, and the Austrian authorities had provided
excellent dinners for the officers at every halting place. The regiments
had entered and left the town with their bands playing, and by the Grand
Duke's orders the men had marched all the way in step (a practice on
which the Guards prided themselves), the officers on foot and at their
proper posts. Boris had been quartered, and had marched all the way,
with Berg who was already in command of a company. Berg, who had
obtained his captaincy during the campaign, had gained the confidence of
his superiors by his promptitude and accuracy and had arranged his money
matters very satisfactorily. Boris, during the campaign, had made the
acquaintance of many persons who might prove useful to him, and by a
letter of recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become
acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom he hoped to obtain
a post on the commander-in-chief's staff. Berg and Boris, having rested
after yesterday's march, were sitting, clean and neatly dressed, at a
round table in the clean quarters allotted to them, playing chess. Berg
held a smoking pipe between his knees. Boris, in the accurate way
characteristic of him, was building a little pyramid of chessmen with
his delicate white fingers while awaiting Berg's move, and watched his
opponent's face, evidently thinking about the game as he always thought
only of whatever he was engaged on.

"Well, how are you going to get out of that?" he remarked.

"We'll try to," replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing his
hand.

At that moment the door opened.

"Here he is at last!" shouted Rostov. "And Berg too! Oh, you
petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!" he exclaimed, imitating his Russian
nurse's French, at which he and Boris used to laugh long ago.

"Dear me, how you have changed!"

Boris rose to meet Rostov, but in doing so did not omit to steady and
replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace his
friend, but Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of youth,
that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner
different from that of its elders which is often insincere, Nicholas
wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He wanted to pinch
him, push him, do anything but kiss him--a thing everybody did. But
notwithstanding this, Boris embraced him in a quiet, friendly way and
kissed him three times.

They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when young
men take their first steps on life's road, each saw immense changes in
the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which they had taken
those first steps. Both had changed greatly since they last met and both
were in a hurry to show the changes that had taken place in them.

"Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you'd been to a fete, not
like us sinners of the line," cried Rostov, with martial swagger and
with baritone notes in his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his own mud-
bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov's loud voice,
popped her head in at the door.

"Eh, is she pretty?" he asked with a wink.

"Why do you shout so? You'll frighten them!" said Boris. "I did not
expect you today," he added. "I only sent you the note yesterday by
Bolkonski--an adjutant of Kutuzov's, who's a friend of mine. I did not
think he would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you? Been
under fire already?" asked Boris.

Without answering, Rostov shook the soldier's Cross of St. George
fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm,
glanced at Berg with a smile.

"As you see," he said.

"Indeed? Yes, yes!" said Boris, with a smile. "And we too have had a
splendid march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness rode
with our regiment all the time, so that we had every comfort and every
advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and balls! I
can't tell you. And the Tsarevich was very gracious to all our
officers."

And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of his
hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the pleasures
and advantages of service under members of the Imperial family.

"Oh, you Guards!" said Rostov. "I say, send for some wine."

Boris made a grimace.

"If you really want it," said he.

He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and sent
for wine.

"Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you," he added.

Rostov took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both
arms on the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he
glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind the
letter.

"Well, they've sent you a tidy sum," said Berg, eying the heavy purse
that sank into the sofa. "As for us, Count, we get along on our pay. I
can tell you for myself..."

"I say, Berg, my dear fellow," said Rostov, "when you get a letter from
home and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk everything
over with, and I happen to be there, I'll go at once, to be out of your
way! Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!" he exclaimed, and
immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking amiably into his
face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his words, he added,
"Don't be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak from my heart as to an
old acquaintance."

"Oh, don't mention it, Count! I quite understand," said Berg, getting up
and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice.

"Go across to our hosts: they invited you," added Boris.

Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of dust,
stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples
upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor Alexander, and, having
assured himself from the way Rostov looked at it that his coat had been
noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile.

"Oh dear, what a beast I am!" muttered Rostov, as he read the letter.

"Why?"

"Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them such a
fright! Oh, what a pig I am!" he repeated, flushing suddenly. "Well,
have you sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let's have some!"

In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of recommendation
to Bagration which the old countess at Anna Mikhaylovna's advice had
obtained through an acquaintance and sent to her son, asking him to take
it to its destination and make use of it.

"What nonsense! Much I need it!" said Rostov, throwing the letter under
the table.

"Why have you thrown that away?" asked Boris.

"It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want it
for!"

"Why 'What the devil'?" said Boris, picking it up and reading the
address. "This letter would be of great use to you."

"I want nothing, and I won't be anyone's adjutant."

"Why not?" inquired Boris.

"It's a lackey's job!"

"You are still the same dreamer, I see," remarked Boris, shaking his
head.

"And you're still the same diplomatist! But that's not the point...
Come, how are you?" asked Rostov.

"Well, as you see. So far everything's all right, but I confess I should
much like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front."

"Why?"

"Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try to
make as successful a career of it as possible."

"Oh, that's it!" said Rostov, evidently thinking of something else.

He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently
trying in vain to find the answer to some question.

Old Gabriel brought in the wine.

"Shouldn't we now send for Berg?" asked Boris. "He would drink with you.
I can't."

"Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?" asked
Rostov, with a contemptuous smile.

"He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow," answered Boris.

Again Rostov looked intently into Boris' eyes and sighed. Berg returned,
and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three officers
became animated. The Guardsmen told Rostov of their march and how they
had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They spoke of the
sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke, and told stories
of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual, kept silent when the
subject did not relate to himself, but in connection with the stories of
the Grand Duke's quick temper he related with gusto how in Galicia he
had managed to deal with the Grand Duke when the latter made a tour of
the regiments and was annoyed at the irregularity of a movement. With a
pleasant smile Berg related how the Grand Duke had ridden up to him in a
violent passion, shouting: "Arnauts!" ("Arnauts" was the Tsarevich's
favorite expression when he was in a rage) and called for the company
commander.

"Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I knew I
was right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know the Army
Orders by heart and know the Regulations as well as I do the Lord's
Prayer. So, Count, there never is any negligence in my company, and so
my conscience was at ease. I came forward...." (Berg stood up and showed
how he presented himself, with his hand to his cap, and really it would
have been difficult for a face to express greater respect and self-
complacency than his did.) "Well, he stormed at me, as the saying is,
stormed and stormed and stormed! It was not a matter of life but rather
of death, as the saying is. 'Albanians!' and 'devils!' and 'To
Siberia!'" said Berg with a sagacious smile. "I knew I was in the right
so I kept silent; was not that best, Count?... 'Hey, are you dumb?' he
shouted. Still I remained silent. And what do you think, Count? The next
day it was not even mentioned in the Orders of the Day. That's what
keeping one's head means. That's the way, Count," said Berg, lighting
his pipe and emitting rings of smoke.

"Yes, that was fine," said Rostov, smiling.

But Boris noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and
skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and where
he got his wound. This pleased Rostov and he began talking about it, and
as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of his Schon
Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a battle generally
do describe it, that is, as they would like it to have been, as they
have heard it described by others, and as sounds well, but not at all as
it really was. Rostov was a truthful young man and would on no account
have told a deliberate lie. He began his story meaning to tell
everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly, involuntarily, and
inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told the truth to his
hearers--who like himself had often heard stories of attacks and had
formed a definite idea of what an attack was and were expecting to hear
just such a story--they would either not have believed him or, still
worse, would have thought that Rostov was himself to blame since what
generally happens to the narrators of cavalry attacks had not happened
to him. He could not tell them simply that everyone went at a trot and
that he fell off his horse and sprained his arm and then ran as hard as
he could from a Frenchman into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as
it really happened, it would have been necessary to make an effort of
will to tell only what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth,
and young people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a story
of how beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like
a storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his
saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And so he
told them all that.

In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: "You cannot imagine
what a strange frenzy one experiences during an attack," Prince Andrew,
whom Boris was expecting, entered the room. Prince Andrew, who liked to
help young men, was flattered by being asked for his assistance and
being well disposed toward Boris, who had managed to please him the day
before, he wished to do what the young man wanted. Having been sent with
papers from Kutuzov to the Tsarevich, he looked in on Boris, hoping to
find him alone. When he came in and saw an hussar of the line recounting
his military exploits (Prince Andrew could not endure that sort of man),
he gave Boris a pleasant smile, frowned as with half-closed eyes he
looked at Rostov, bowed slightly and wearily, and sat down languidly on
the sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped in on bad company.
Rostov flushed up on noticing this, but he did not care, this was a mere
stranger. Glancing, however, at Boris, he saw that he too seemed ashamed
of the hussar of the line.

In spite of Prince Andrew's disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of the
contempt with which Rostov, from his fighting army point of view,
regarded all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the newcomer
was evidently one, Rostov felt confused, blushed, and became silent.
Boris inquired what news there might be on the staff, and what, without
indiscretion, one might ask about our plans.

"We shall probably advance," replied Bolkonski, evidently reluctant to
say more in the presence of a stranger.

Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as was
rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies would be
doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that he could give
no opinion on such an important government order, and Berg laughed
gaily.

"As to your business," Prince Andrew continued, addressing Boris, "we
will talk of it later" (and he looked round at Rostov). "Come to me
after the review and we will do what is possible."

And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to Rostov,
whose state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now changing to
anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: "I think you were
talking of the Schon Grabern affair? Were you there?"

"I was there," said Rostov angrily, as if intending to insult the aide-
de-camp.

Bolkonski noticed the hussar's state of mind, and it amused him. With a
slightly contemptuous smile, he said: "Yes, there are many stories now
told about that affair!"

"Yes, stories!" repeated Rostov loudly, looking with eyes suddenly grown
furious, now at Boris, now at Bolkonski. "Yes, many stories! But our
stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy's fire! Our
stories have some weight, not like the stories of those fellows on the
staff who get rewards without doing anything!"

"Of whom you imagine me to be one?" said Prince Andrew, with a quiet and
particularly amiable smile.

A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this man's
self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostov's soul.

"I am not talking about you," he said, "I don't know you and, frankly, I
don't want to. I am speaking of the staff in general."

"And I will tell you this," Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of quiet
authority, "you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree with you that
it would be very easy to do so if you haven't sufficient self-respect,
but admit that the time and place are very badly chosen. In a day or two
we shall all have to take part in a greater and more serious duel, and
besides, Drubetskoy, who says he is an old friend of yours, is not at
all to blame that my face has the misfortune to displease you. However,"
he added rising, "you know my name and where to find me, but don't
forget that I do not regard either myself or you as having been at all
insulted, and as a man older than you, my advice is to let the matter
drop. Well then, on Friday after the review I shall expect you,
Drubetskoy. Au revoir!" exclaimed Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them
both he went out.

Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostov think of what he ought to
have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He
ordered his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Boris, rode home.
Should he go to headquarters next day and challenge that affected
adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question that worried
him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure he would have at
seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud man when covered by
his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of all the men he knew
there was none he would so much like to have for a friend as that very
adjutant whom he so hated.




CHAPTER VIII

The day after Rostov had been to see Boris, a review was held of the
Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia and
those who had been campaigning under Kutuzov. The two Emperors, the
Russian with his heir the Tsarevich, and the Austrian with the Archduke,
inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men.

From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move, forming up
on the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and bayonets
moved and halted at the officers' command, turned with banners flying,
formed up at intervals, and wheeled round other similar masses of
infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the rhythmic beat of hoofs
and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red, and green braided
uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in front mounted on black, roan,
or gray horses; then again, spreading out with the brazen clatter of the
polished shining cannon that quivered on the gun carriages and with the
smell of linstocks, came the artillery which crawled between the
infantry and cavalry and took up its appointed position. Not only the
generals in full parade uniforms, with their thin or thick waists drawn
in to the utmost, their red necks squeezed into their stiff collars, and
wearing scarves and all their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded
officers, but every soldier with his freshly washed and shaven face and
his weapons clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse groomed
till its coat shone like satin and every hair of its wetted mane lay
smooth--felt that no small matter was happening, but an important and
solemn affair. Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own
insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and yet
at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that
enormous whole.

From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by ten
o'clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were drawn up on
the vast field. The whole army was extended in three lines: the cavalry
in front, behind it the artillery, and behind that again the infantry.

A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The
three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutuzov's fighting
army (with the Pavlograds on the right flank of the front); those
recently arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the line; and
the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines, under one
command, and in a like order.

Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: "They're coming! They're
coming!" Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final preparation
swept over all the troops.

From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group was seen
approaching. And at that moment, though the day was still, a light gust
of wind blowing over the army slightly stirred the streamers on the
lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their staffs. It
looked as if by that slight motion the army itself was expressing its
joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was heard shouting: "Eyes
front!" Then, like the crowing of cocks at sunrise, this was repeated by
others from various sides and all became silent.

In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard. This was
the Emperors' suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank, and the
trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general march. It
seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as if the army
itself, rejoicing at the Emperors' approach, had naturally burst into
music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of the Emperor
Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of greeting, and the
first regiment roared "Hurrah!" so deafeningly, continuously, and
joyfully that the men themselves were awed by their multitude and the
immensity of the power they constituted.

Rostov, standing in the front lines of Kutuzov's army which the Tsar
approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in
that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of
might, and a passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this
triumph.

He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass (and he
himself an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and water,
commit crime, die, or perform deeds of highest heroism, and so he could
not but tremble and his heart stand still at the imminence of that word.

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" thundered from all sides, one regiment after
another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and then
"Hurrah!"... Then the general march, and again "Hurrah! Hurrah!" growing
ever stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening roar.

Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and immobility
seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it became alive,
its thunder joining the roar of the whole line along which he had
already passed. Through the terrible and deafening roar of those voices,
amid the square masses of troops standing motionless as if turned to
stone, hundreds of riders composing the suites moved carelessly but
symmetrically and above all freely, and in front of them two men--the
Emperors. Upon them the undivided, tensely passionate attention of that
whole mass of men was concentrated.

The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse
Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his
pleasant face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone's
attention.

Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight had
recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within twenty
paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of his
handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling of tenderness and
ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every
movement of the Tsar's seemed to him enchanting.

Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said something in French
to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.

Seeing that smile, Rostov involuntarily smiled himself and felt a still
stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show that love in
some way and knowing that this was impossible was ready to cry. The Tsar
called the colonel of the regiment and said a few words to him.

"Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?" thought
Rostov. "I should die of happiness!"

The Tsar addressed the officers also: "I thank you all, gentlemen, I
thank you with my whole heart." To Rostov every word sounded like a
voice from heaven. How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!

"You have earned the St. George's standards and will be worthy of them."

"Oh, to die, to die for him," thought Rostov.

The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not hear, and the
soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted "Hurrah!"

Rostov too, bending over his saddle, shouted "Hurrah!" with all his
might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout, if
only to express his rapture fully.

The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if undecided.

"How can the Emperor be undecided?" thought Rostov, but then even this
indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like everything else
the Tsar did.

That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar's foot, in the narrow
pointed boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the bobtailed bay
mare he rode, his hand in a white glove gathered up the reins, and he
moved off accompanied by an irregularly swaying sea of aides-de-camp.
Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at other regiments, till at
last only his white plumes were visible to Rostov from amid the suites
that surrounded the Emperors.

Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed Bolkonski, sitting his
horse indolently and carelessly. Rostov recalled their quarrel of
yesterday and the question presented itself whether he ought or ought
not to challenge Bolkonski. "Of course not!" he now thought. "Is it
worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment? At a time of such
love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do any of our quarrels
and affronts matter? I love and forgive everybody now."

When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops began a
ceremonial march past him, and Rostov on Bedouin, recently purchased
from Denisov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron--that is, alone
and in full view of the Emperor.

Before he reached him, Rostov, who was a splendid horseman, spurred
Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in which the
animal went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to his chest, his
tail extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the Emperor's eye upon
him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a high and graceful
action, as if flying through the air without touching the ground.

Rostov himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and feeling
himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a frowning but
blissful face "like a vewy devil," as Denisov expressed it.

"Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!" remarked the Emperor.

"My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the fire
this instant!" thought Rostov.

When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also
Kutuzov's, collected in groups and began to talk about the awards, about
the Austrians and their uniforms, about their lines, about Bonaparte,
and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if the Essen corps
arrived and Prussia took our side.

But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander. His
every word and movement was described with ecstasy.

They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against the
enemy under the Emperor's command. Commanded by the Emperor himself they
could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might: so thought
Rostov and most of the officers after the review.

All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two battles
would have made them.




CHAPTER IX

The day after the review, Boris, in his best uniform and with his
comrade Berg's best wishes for success, rode to Olmutz to see Bolkonski,
wishing to profit by his friendliness and obtain for himself the best
post he could--preferably that of adjutant to some important personage,
a position in the army which seemed to him most attractive. "It is all
very well for Rostov, whose father sends him ten thousand rubles at a
time, to talk about not wishing to cringe to anybody and not be anyone's
lackey, but I who have nothing but my brains have to make a career and
must not miss opportunities, but must avail myself of them!" he
reflected.

He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmutz that day, but the appearance of
the town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were stationed
and the two Emperors were living with their suites, households, and
courts only strengthened his desire to belong to that higher world.

He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman's uniform, all these
exalted personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages
with their plumes, ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military men,
seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the
Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could not, be
aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander-in-chief,
Kutuzov, where he inquired for Bolkonski, all the adjutants and even the
orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a great
many officers like him were always coming there and that everybody was
heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather because of it, next
day, November 15, after dinner he again went to Olmutz and, entering the
house occupied by Kutuzov, asked for Bolkonski. Prince Andrew was in and
Boris was shown into a large hall probably formerly used for dancing,
but in which five beds now stood, and furniture of various kinds: a
table, chairs, and a clavichord. One adjutant, nearest the door, was
sitting at the table in a Persian dressing gown, writing. Another, the
red, stout Nesvitski, lay on a bed with his arms under his head,
laughing with an officer who had sat down beside him. A third was
playing a Viennese waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on the
clavichord, sang the tune. Bolkonski was not there. None of these
gentlemen changed his position on seeing Boris. The one who was writing
and whom Boris addressed turned round crossly and told him Bolkonski was
on duty and that he should go through the door on the left into the
reception room if he wished to see him. Boris thanked him and went to
the reception room, where he found some ten officers and generals.

When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously (with
that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says, "If it
were not my duty I would not talk to you for a moment"), was listening
to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very erect, almost
on tiptoe, with a soldier's obsequious expression on his purple face,
reporting something.

"Very well, then, be so good as to wait," said Prince Andrew to the
general, in Russian, speaking with the French intonation he affected
when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Boris, Prince
Andrew, paying no more heed to the general who ran after him imploring
him to hear something more, nodded and turned to him with a cheerful
smile.

At that moment Boris clearly realized what he had before surmised, that
in the army, besides the subordination and discipline prescribed in the
military code, which he and the others knew in the regiment, there was
another, more important, subordination, which made this tight-laced,
purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain Prince Andrew, for
his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant Drubetskoy. More than
ever was Boris resolved to serve in future not according to the written
code, but under this unwritten law. He felt now that merely by having
been recommended to Prince Andrew he had already risen above the general
who at the front had the power to annihilate him, a lieutenant of the
Guards. Prince Andrew came up to him and took his hand.

"I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about
with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions.
When Germans start being accurate, there's no end to it!"

Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to as
something generally known. But it was the first time he had heard
Weyrother's name, or even the term "dispositions."

"Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have been
thinking about you."

"Yes, I was thinking"--for some reason Boris could not help blushing--
"of asking the commander-in-chief. He has had a letter from Prince
Kuragin about me. I only wanted to ask because I fear the Guards won't
be in action," he added as if in apology.

"All right, all right. We'll talk it over," replied Prince Andrew. "Only
let me report this gentleman's business, and I shall be at your
disposal."

While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general, that
gentleman--evidently not sharing Boris' conception of the advantages of
the unwritten code of subordination--looked so fixedly at the
presumptuous lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he had to
say to the adjutant that Boris felt uncomfortable. He turned away and
waited impatiently for Prince Andrew's return from the commander-in-
chief's room.

"You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you," said Prince
Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the clavichord was.
"It's no use your going to the commander-in-chief. He would say a lot of
pleasant things, ask you to dinner" ("That would not be bad as regards
the unwritten code," thought Boris), "but nothing more would come of it.
There will soon be a battalion of us aides-de-camp and adjutants! But
this is what we'll do: I have a good friend, an adjutant general and an
excellent fellow, Prince Dolgorukov; and though you may not know it, the
fact is that now Kutuzov with his staff and all of us count for nothing.
Everything is now centered round the Emperor. So we will go to
Dolgorukov; I have to go there anyhow and I have already spoken to him
about you. We shall see whether he cannot attach you to himself or find
a place for you somewhere nearer the sun."

Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a young
man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining help of
this kind for another, which from pride he would never accept for
himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers success and
which attracted him. He very readily took up Boris' cause and went with
him to Dolgorukov.

It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmutz
occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.

That same day a council of war had been held in which all the members of
the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that council, contrary
to the views of the old generals Kutuzov and Prince Schwartzenberg, it
had been decided to advance immediately and give battle to Bonaparte.
The council of war was just over when Prince Andrew accompanied by Boris
arrived at the palace to find Dolgorukov. Everyone at headquarters was
still under the spell of the day's council, at which the party of the
young had triumphed. The voices of those who counseled delay and advised
waiting for something else before advancing had been so completely
silenced and their arguments confuted by such conclusive evidence of the
advantages of attacking that what had been discussed at the council--the
coming battle and the victory that would certainly result from it--no
longer seemed to be in the future but in the past. All the advantages
were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly superior to
Napoleon's, were concentrated in one place, the troops inspired by the
Emperors' presence were eager for action. The strategic position where
the operations would take place was familiar in all its details to the
Austrian General Weyrother: a lucky accident had ordained that the
Austrian army should maneuver the previous year on the very fields where
the French had now to be fought; the adjacent locality was known and
shown in every detail on the maps, and Bonaparte, evidently weakened,
was undertaking nothing.

Dolgorukov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just returned
from the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud of the victory
that had been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his protege, but Prince
Dolgorukov politely and firmly pressing his hand said nothing to Boris
and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts which were uppermost in
his mind at that moment, addressed Prince Andrew in French.

"Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that the
one that will result from it will be as victorious! However, dear
fellow," he said abruptly and eagerly, "I must confess to having been
unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother. What exactitude,
what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what foresight for
every eventuality, every possibility even to the smallest detail! No, my
dear fellow, no conditions better than our present ones could have been
devised. This combination of Austrian precision with Russian valor--what
more could be wished for?"

"So the attack is definitely resolved on?" asked Bolkonski.

"And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte has
decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received from him
today for the Emperor." Dolgorukov smiled significantly.

"Is that so? And what did he say?" inquired Bolkonski.

"What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain time. I
tell you he is in our hands, that's certain! But what was most amusing,"
he continued, with a sudden, good-natured laugh, "was that we could not
think how to address the reply! If not as 'Consul' and of course not as
'Emperor,' it seemed to me it should be to 'General Bonaparte.'"

"But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him General
Bonaparte, there is a difference," remarked Bolkonski.

"That's just it," interrupted Dolgorukov quickly, laughing. "You know
Bilibin--he's a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him as
'Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.'"

Dolgorukov laughed merrily.

"Only that?" said Bolkonski.

"All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form for the address.
He is a wise and clever fellow."

"What was it?"

"To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement
francais," said Dolgorukov, with grave satisfaction. "Good, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but he will dislike it extremely," said Bolkonski.

"Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he's dined with him--the
present Emperor--more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met a
more cunning or subtle diplomatist--you know, a combination of French
adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale about him and
Count Markov? Count Markov was the only man who knew how to handle him.
You know the story of the handkerchief? It is delightful!"

And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris, now to Prince
Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markov, our ambassador,
purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking at
Markov, probably expecting Markov to pick it up for him, and how Markov
immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up without touching
Bonaparte's.

"Delightful!" said Bolkonski. "But I have come to you, Prince, as a
petitioner on behalf of this young man. You see..." but before Prince
Andrew could finish, an aide-de-camp came in to summon Dolgorukov to the
Emperor.

"Oh, what a nuisance," said Dolgorukov, getting up hurriedly and
pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Boris. "You know I should be
very glad to do all in my power both for you and for this dear young
man." Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of
good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. "But you see... another
time!"

Boris was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher powers
as he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious that here he
was in contact with the springs that set in motion the enormous
movements of the mass of which in his regiment he felt himself a tiny,
obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince Dolgorukov out
into the corridor and met--coming out of the door of the Emperor's room
by which Dolgorukov had entered--a short man in civilian clothes with a
clever face and sharply projecting jaw which, without spoiling his face,
gave him a peculiar vivacity and shiftiness of expression. This short
man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an intimate friend and stared at Prince
Andrew with cool intensity, walking straight toward him and evidently
expecting him to bow or to step out of his way. Prince Andrew did
neither: a look of animosity appeared on his face and the other turned
away and went down the side of the corridor.

"Who was that?" asked Boris.

"He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of men--the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartoryski.... It is such men
as he who decide the fate of nations," added Bolkonski with a sigh he
could not suppress, as they passed out of the palace.

Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle of
Austerlitz, Boris was unable to see either Prince Andrew or Dolgorukov
again and remained for a while with the Ismaylov regiment.




CHAPTER X

At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denisov's squadron, in which
Nicholas Rostov served and which was in Prince Bagration's detachment,
moved from the place where it had spent the night, advancing into action
as arranged, and after going behind other columns for about two thirds
of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostov saw the Cossacks and then
the first and second squadrons of hussars and infantry battalions and
artillery pass by and go forward and then Generals Bagration and
Dolgorukov ride past with their adjutants. All the fear before action
which he had experienced as previously, all the inner struggle to
conquer that fear, all his dreams of distinguishing himself as a true
hussar in this battle, had been wasted. Their squadron remained in
reserve and Nicholas Rostov spent that day in a dull and wretched mood.
At nine in the morning, he heard firing in front and shouts of hurrah,
and saw wounded being brought back (there were not many of them), and at
last he saw how a whole detachment of French cavalry was brought in,
convoyed by a sotnya of Cossacks. Evidently the affair was over and,
though not big, had been a successful engagement. The men and officers
returning spoke of a brilliant victory, of the occupation of the town of
Wischau and the capture of a whole French squadron. The day was bright
and sunny after a sharp night frost, and the cheerful glitter of that
autumn day was in keeping with the news of victory which was conveyed,
not only by the tales of those who had taken part in it, but also by the
joyful expression on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and
adjutants, as they passed Rostov going or coming. And Nicholas, who had
vainly suffered all the dread that precedes a battle and had spent that
happy day in inactivity, was all the more depressed.

"Come here, Wostov. Let's dwink to dwown our gwief!" shouted Denisov,
who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some food.

The officers gathered round Denisov's canteen, eating and talking.

"There! They are bringing another!" cried one of the officers,
indicating a captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot by
two Cossacks.

One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he had
taken from the prisoner.

"Sell us that horse!" Denisov called out to the Cossacks.

"If you like, your honor!"

The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner. The
French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German
accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when he
heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers,
addressing first one, then another. He said he would not have been
taken, it was not his fault but the corporal's who had sent him to seize
some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were there. And at
every word he added: "But don't hurt my little horse!" and stroked the
animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where he was. Now he
excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now, imagining
himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly discipline
and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our rearguard all the
freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which was so alien to us.

The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostov, being the
richest of the officers now that he had received his money, bought it.

"But don't hurt my little horse!" said the Alsatian good-naturedly to
Rostov when the animal was handed over to the hussar.

Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.

"Alley! Alley!" said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to make
him go on.

"The Emperor! The Emperor!" was suddenly heard among the hussars.

All began to run and bustle, and Rostov saw coming up the road behind
him several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment everyone
was in his place, waiting.

Rostov did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted.
Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected mood
amid people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every thought of
himself had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his nearness to
the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made up to him for the
day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when the longed-for moment of
meeting arrives. Not daring to look round and without looking round, he
was ecstatically conscious of his approach. He felt it not only from the
sound of the hoofs of the approaching cavalcade, but because as he drew
near everything grew brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more
festive around him. Nearer and nearer to Rostov came that sun shedding
beams of mild and majestic light around, and already he felt himself
enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm, and
majestic voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with Rostov's
feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was heard the
Emperor's voice.

"The Pavlograd hussars?" he inquired.

"The reserves, sire!" replied a voice, a very human one compared to that
which had said: "The Pavlograd hussars?"

The Emperor drew level with Rostov and halted. Alexander's face was even
more beautiful than it had been three days before at the review. It
shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that it suggested
the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was the face of
the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the squadron, the
Emperor's eyes met Rostov's and rested on them for not more than two
seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was going on in
Rostov's soul (it seemed to Rostov that he understood everything), at
any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two seconds into Rostov's
face. A gentle, mild light poured from them. Then all at once he raised
his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse with his left foot, and
galloped on.

The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the
battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at twelve
o'clock left the third column with which he had been and galloped toward
the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars, several adjutants met
him with news of the successful result of the action.

This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron, was
represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the Emperor
and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over the
battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were
retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had
passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau
itself, a petty German town, Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the market
place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
Emperor's arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom there
had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his suite of
officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, a
different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and bending
to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes and looked
at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered head. The
wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his proximity
to the Emperor shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the Emperor's rather round
shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run down them, how his left
foot began convulsively tapping the horse's side with the spur, and how
the well-trained horse looked round unconcerned and did not stir. An
adjutant, dismounting, lifted the soldier under the arms to place him on
a stretcher that had been brought. The soldier groaned.

"Gently, gently! Can't you do it more gently?" said the Emperor
apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.

Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor's eyes and heard him, as he was
riding away, say to Czartoryski: "What a terrible thing war is: what a
terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!"

The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within sight
of the enemy's lines, which all day long had yielded ground to us at the
least firing. The Emperor's gratitude was announced to the vanguard,
rewards were promised, and the men received a double ration of vodka.
The campfires crackled and the soldiers' songs resounded even more
merrily than on the previous night. Denisov celebrated his promotion to
the rank of major, and Rostov, who had already drunk enough, at the end
of the feast proposed the Emperor's health. "Not 'our Sovereign, the
Emperor,' as they say at official dinners," said he, "but the health of
our Sovereign, that good, enchanting, and great man! Let us drink to his
health and to the certain defeat of the French!"

"If we fought before," he said, "not letting the French pass, as at
Schon Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We will
all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not saying
it right, I have drunk a good deal--but that is how I feel, and so do
you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!"

"Hurrah!" rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.

And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and no
less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostov.

When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kirsten filled
others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand to the
soldiers' bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white chest
showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the light
of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.

"Lads! here's to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our
enemies! Hurrah!" he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar's baritone.

The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.

Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his short hand
patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder.

"As there's no one to fall in love with on campaign, he's fallen in love
with the Tsar," he said.

"Denisov, don't make fun of it!" cried Rostov. "It is such a lofty,
beautiful feeling, such a..."

"I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove..."

"No, you don't understand!"

And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of
what happiness it would be to die--not in saving the Emperor's life (he
did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before his eyes.
He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms
and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only man to
experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding the battle
of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army were then in
love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of the
Russian arms.




CHAPTER XI

The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his physician,
was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and among the troops
near by the news spread that the Emperor was unwell. He ate nothing and
had slept badly that night, those around him reported. The cause of this
indisposition was the strong impression made on his sensitive mind by
the sight of the killed and wounded.

At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with a
flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was
brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The
Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At midday
he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off with
Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French army.

It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander a
meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a
personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince
Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate
with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were
actuated by a real desire for peace.

Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to the Tsar, and
remained alone with him for a long time.

On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced two
days' march and the enemy's outposts after a brief interchange of shots
retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the nineteenth, a
great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till the morning
of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz was fought.

Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity--the eager talk, running to
and fro, and dispatching of adjutants--was confined to the Emperor's
headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this activity reached
Kutuzov's headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns. By
evening, the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army,
and in the night from the nineteenth to the twentieth, the whole eighty
thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices,
and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles long.

The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's headquarters
in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed was like
the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower clock. One wheel
slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began
to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to work, chimes to
play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with regular motion
as a result of all that activity.

Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military
machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as
indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to
them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet
reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and
the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a
neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared
to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever
catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins
in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.

Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable
wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands
which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human
activities of 160,000 Russians and French--all their passions, desires,
remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and
enthusiasm--was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called
battle of the three Emperors--that is to say, a slow movement of the
hand on the dial of human history.

Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the
commander-in-chief.

At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor's headquarters and
after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand
marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.

Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the
coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and
dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were
dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor's headquarters
everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something others do
not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.

"Well, how d'you do, my dear fellow?" said Dolgorukov, who was sitting
at tea with Bilibin. "The fete is for tomorrow. How is your old fellow?
Out of sorts?"

"I won't say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be heard."

"But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when he
talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when Bonaparte
fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible."

"Yes, you have seen him?" said Prince Andrew. "Well, what is Bonaparte
like? How did he impress you?"

"Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a
general engagement," repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this general
conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with Napoleon. "If
he weren't afraid of a battle why did he ask for that interview? Why
negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat is so contrary to
his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is afraid, afraid of a
general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!"

"But tell me, what is he like, eh?" said Prince Andrew again.

"He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him
'Your Majesty,' but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me! That's
the sort of man he is, and nothing more," replied Dolgorukov, looking
round at Bilibin with a smile.

"Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov," he continued, "we should be
a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a chance
to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in our hands!
No, we mustn't forget Suvorov and his rule--not to put yourself in a
position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe me in war the
energy of young men often shows the way better than all the experience
of old Cunctators."

"But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the
outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces are
situated," said Prince Andrew.

He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself
formed.

"Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting up he
spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been foreseen. If he
is standing before Brunn..."

And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's
plan of a flanking movement.

Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which might have
been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage that Weyrother's
had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began to demonstrate
the defects of the latter and the merits of his own plan, Prince
Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed absent-mindedly not at the
map, but at Prince Andrew's face.

"There will be a council of war at Kutuzov's tonight, though; you can
say all this there," remarked Dolgorukov.

"I will do so," said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.

"Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?" said Bilibin, who, till
then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and now
was evidently ready with a joke. "Whether tomorrow brings victory or
defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except your Kutuzov,
there is not a single Russian in command of a column! The commanders
are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le Prince de
Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally Prishprish, and so on
like all those Polish names."

"Be quiet, backbiter!" said Dolgorukov. "It is not true; there are now
two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov, and there would be a third,
Count Arakcheev, if his nerves were not too weak."

"However, I think General Kutuzov has come out," said Prince Andrew. "I
wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!" he added and went out after
shaking hands with Dolgorukov and Bilibin.

On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking Kutuzov,
who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of tomorrow's
battle.

Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause, replied: "I
think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy and asked him
to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? 'But, my dear
general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after military matters
yourself!' Yes... That was the answer I got!"




CHAPTER XII

Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his plans
to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held. All the
commanders of columns were summoned to the commander-in-chief's and with
the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to come, were all there
at the appointed time.

Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his
eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the dissatisfied
and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly played the part of chairman and
president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt himself to be
at the head of a movement that had already become unrestrainable. He was
like a horse running downhill harnessed to a heavy cart. Whether he was
pulling it or being pushed by it he did not know, but rushed along at
headlong speed with no time to consider what this movement might lead
to. Weyrother had been twice that evening to the enemy's picket line to
reconnoiter personally, and twice to the Emperors, Russian and Austrian,
to report and explain, and to his headquarters where he had dictated the
dispositions in German, and now, much exhausted, he arrived at
Kutuzov's.

He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the
commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and indistinctly,
without looking at the man he was addressing, and did not reply to
questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had a pitiful,
weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was haughty and
self-confident.

Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman's castle of modest dimensions near
Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the commander in
chief's office were gathered Kutuzov himself, Weyrother, and the members
of the council of war. They were drinking tea, and only awaited Prince
Bagration to begin the council. At last Bagration's orderly came with
the news that the prince could not attend. Prince Andrew came in to
inform the commander-in-chief of this and, availing himself of
permission previously given him by Kutuzov to be present at the council,
he remained in the room.

"Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin," said Weyrother,
hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on which an
enormous map of the environs of Brunn was spread out.

Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged over
his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low chair,
with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms. At the sound
of Weyrother's voice, he opened his one eye with an effort.

"Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late," said he, and nodding his
head he let it droop and again closed his eye.

If at first the members of the council thought that Kutuzov was
pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading that
followed proved that the commander-in-chief at that moment was absorbed
by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his contempt for the
dispositions or anything else--he was engaged in satisfying the
irresistible human need for sleep. He really was asleep. Weyrother, with
the gesture of a man too busy to lose a moment, glanced at Kutuzov and,
having convinced himself that he was asleep, took up a paper and in a
loud, monotonous voice began to read out the dispositions for the
impending battle, under a heading which he also read out:

"Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz and
Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805."

The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began as
follows:

"As the enemy's left wing rests on wooded hills and his right extends
along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there, while we,
on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his right, it is
advantageous to attack the enemy's latter wing especially if we occupy
the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can both fall on his
flank and pursue him over the plain between Schlappanitz and the
Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of Schlappanitz and Bellowitz
which cover the enemy's front. For this object it is necessary that...
The first column marches... The second column marches... The third
column marches..." and so on, read Weyrother.

The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult dispositions.
The tall, fair-haired General Buxhowden stood, leaning his back against
the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and seemed not to listen
or even to wish to be thought to listen. Exactly opposite Weyrother,
with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed upon him and his mustache
twisted upwards, sat the ruddy Miloradovich in a military pose, his
elbows turned outwards, his hands on his knees, and his shoulders
raised. He remained stubbornly silent, gazing at Weyrother's face, and
only turned away his eyes when the Austrian chief of staff finished
reading. Then Miloradovich looked round significantly at the other
generals. But one could not tell from that significant look whether he
agreed or disagreed and was satisfied or not with the arrangements. Next
to Weyrother sat Count Langeron who, with a subtle smile that never left
his typically southern French face during the whole time of the reading,
gazed at his delicate fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners a
gold snuffbox on which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the
longest sentences, he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised
his head, and with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his
thin lips interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the
Austrian general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his
elbows, as if to say: "You can tell me your views later, but now be so
good as to look at the map and listen." Langeron lifted his eyes with an
expression of perplexity, turned round to Miloradovich as if seeking an
explanation, but meeting the latter's impressive but meaningless gaze
drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox.

"A geography lesson!" he muttered as if to himself, but loud enough to
be heard.

Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his hand
to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in
attention. Dohkturov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with an
assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map
conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar locality. He
asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had not clearly heard
and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother complied and Dohkturov
noted them down.

When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron again
brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother or at
anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry out
such a plan in which the enemy's position was assumed to be known,
whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.
Langeron's objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief aim
was to show General Weyrother--who had read his dispositions with as
much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children--that he
had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him something in
military matters.

When the monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov opened
his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel
is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking, "So
you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed his eye again, and
let his head sink still lower.

Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's vanity
as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily
attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of this plan
perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a firm and
contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all objections
be they what they might.

"If he could attack us, he would have done so today," said he.

"So you think he is powerless?" said Langeron.

"He has forty thousand men at most," replied Weyrother, with the smile
of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the treatment of a
case.

"In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack," said
Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round for support
to Miloradovich who was near him.

But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything
rather than of what the generals were disputing about.

"Ma foi!" said he, "tomorrow we shall see all that on the battlefield."

Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it was
strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals and to
have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced himself of, but
had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.

"The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard from
his camp," said he. "What does that mean? Either he is retreating, which
is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing his position." (He
smiled ironically.) "But even if he also took up a position in the
Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of trouble and all our
arrangements to the minutest detail remain the same."

"How is that?..." began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting an
opportunity to express his doubts.

Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the generals.

"Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow--or rather for today, for it
is past midnight--cannot now be altered," said he. "You have heard them,
and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there is nothing more
important..." he paused, "than to have a good sleep."

He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was past
midnight. Prince Andrew went out.

The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to express
his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy
impression. Whether Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron, and
the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were right--he did
not know. "But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to state his views
plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account of court and
personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and my life, my
life," he thought, "must be risked?"

"Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow," he thought.
And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of most distant,
most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he remembered his last
parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the days when he
first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for her and
for himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he went out
of the hut in which he was billeted with Nesvitski and began to walk up
and down before it.

The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed
mysteriously. "Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!" he thought. "Tomorrow
everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more, none
of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even certainly,
I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall have to show all I
can do." And his fancy pictured the battle, its loss, the concentration
of fighting at one point, and the hesitation of all the commanders. And
then that happy moment, that Toulon for which he had so long waited,
presents itself to him at last. He firmly and clearly expresses his
opinion to Kutuzov, to Weyrother, and to the Emperors. All are struck by
the justness of his views, but no one undertakes to carry them out, so
he takes a regiment, a division-stipulates that no one is to interfere
with his arrangements--leads his division to the decisive point, and
gains the victory alone. "But death and suffering?" suggested another
voice. Prince Andrew, however, did not answer that voice and went on
dreaming of his triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are
planned by him alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutuzov's
staff, but he does everything alone. The next battle is won by him
alone. Kutuzov is removed and he is appointed... "Well and then?" asked
the other voice. "If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed,
or betrayed, well... what then?..." "Well then," Prince Andrew answered
himself, "I don't know what will happen and don't want to know, and
can't, but if I want this--want glory, want to be known to men, want to
be loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it and want nothing but
that and live only for that. Yes, for that alone! I shall never tell
anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and
men's esteem? Death, wounds, the loss of family--I fear nothing. And
precious and dear as many persons are to me--father, sister, wife--those
dearest to me--yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would give them
all at once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of love from men
I don't know and never shall know, for the love of these men here," he
thought, as he listened to voices in Kutuzov's courtyard. The voices
were those of the orderlies who were packing up; one voice, probably a
coachman's, was teasing Kutuzov's old cook whom Prince Andrew knew, and
who was called Tit. He was saying, "Tit, I say, Tit!"

"Well?" returned the old man.

"Go, Tit, thresh a bit!" said the wag.

"Oh, go to the devil!" called out a voice, drowned by the laughter of
the orderlies and servants.

"All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I
value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in this
mist!"




CHAPTER XIII

That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in front
of Bagration's detachment. His hussars were placed along the line in
couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master the
sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with our army's
campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind him; in front
of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing, peer as he would
into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray, now there was
something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer where the enemy
ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in his own eyes. His
eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared--now the Emperor, now
Denisov, and now Moscow memories--and he again hurriedly opened his eyes
and saw close before him the head and ears of the horse he was riding,
and sometimes, when he came within six paces of them, the black figures
of hussars, but in the distance was still the same misty darkness. "Why
not?... It might easily happen," thought Rostov, "that the Emperor will
meet me and give me an order as he would to any other officer; he'll
say: 'Go and find out what's there.' There are many stories of his
getting to know an officer in just such a chance way and attaching him
to himself! What if he gave me a place near him? Oh, how I would guard
him, how I would tell him the truth, how I would unmask his deceivers!"
And in order to realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign,
Rostov pictured to himself an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would
not only kill with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before
the Emperor. Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started and opened
his eyes.

"Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and watchword--
shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in reserve
tomorrow," he thought. "I'll ask leave to go to the front, this may be
my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won't be long now before I am
off duty. I'll take another turn and when I get back I'll go to the
general and ask him." He readjusted himself in the saddle and touched up
his horse to ride once more round his hussars. It seemed to him that it
was getting lighter. To the left he saw a sloping descent lit up, and
facing it a black knoll that seemed as steep as a wall. On this knoll
there was a white patch that Rostov could not at all make out: was it a
glade in the wood lit up by the moon, or some unmelted snow, or some
white houses? He even thought something moved on that white spot. "I
expect it's snow... that spot... a spot--une tache," he thought. "There
now... it's not a tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes... Na...
tasha... (Won't she be surprised when I tell her how I've seen the
Emperor?) Natasha... take my sabretache..."--"Keep to the right, your
honor, there are bushes here," came the voice of an hussar, past whom
Rostov was riding in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his head
that had sunk almost to his horse's mane and pulled up beside the
hussar. He was succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish
drowsiness. "But what was I thinking? I mustn't forget. How shall I
speak to the Emperor? No, that's not it--that's tomorrow. Oh yes!
Natasha... sabretache... saber them... Whom? The hussars... Ah, the
hussars with mustaches. Along the Tverskaya Street rode the hussar with
mustaches... I thought about him too, just opposite Guryev's house...
Old Guryev.... Oh, but Denisov's a fine fellow. But that's all nonsense.
The chief thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and
wished to say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not.
But that's nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important
thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes! That's
right!" And his head once more sank to his horse's neck. All at once it
seemed to him that he was being fired at. "What? What? What?... Cut them
down! What?..." said Rostov, waking up. At the moment he opened his eyes
he heard in front of him, where the enemy was, the long-drawn shouts of
thousands of voices. His horse and the horse of the hussar near him
pricked their ears at these shouts. Over there, where the shouting came
from, a fire flared up and went out again, then another, and all along
the French line on the hill fires flared up and the shouting grew louder
and louder. Rostov could hear the sound of French words but could not
distinguish them. The din of many voices was too great; all he could
hear was: "ahahah!" and "rrrr!"

"What's that? What do you make of it?" said Rostov to the hussar beside
him. "That must be the enemy's camp!"

The hussar did not reply.

"Why, don't you hear it?" Rostov asked again, after waiting for a reply.

"Who can tell, your honor?" replied the hussar reluctantly.

"From the direction, it must be the enemy," repeated Rostov.

"It may be he or it may be nothing," muttered the hussar. "It's dark...
Steady!" he cried to his fidgeting horse.

Rostov's horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground,
pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting
grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army of
several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and
farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no longer
wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy army had a
stimulating effect on him. "Vive l'Empereur! L'Empereur!" he now heard
distinctly.

"They can't be far off, probably just beyond the stream," he said to the
hussar beside him.

The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The sound
of horse's hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars was
heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of hussars
suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.

"Your honor, the generals!" said the sergeant, riding up to Rostov.

Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode with
the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the line.
One was on a white horse. Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov with
their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the lights
and shouts in the enemy's camp. Rostov rode up to Bagration, reported to
him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the generals were
saying.

"Believe me," said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, "it is
nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to
kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us."

"Hardly," said Bagration. "I saw them this evening on that knoll; if
they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too.... Officer!"
said Bagration to Rostov, "are the enemy's skirmishers still there?"

"They were there this evening, but now I don't know, your excellency.
Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?" replied Rostov.

Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostov's face in
the mist.

"Well, go and see," he said, after a pause.

"Yes, sir."

Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko and two other
hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the direction
from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and pleased to be
riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and dangerous misty
distance where no one had been before him. Bagration called to him from
the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostov pretended not to hear
him and did not stop but rode on and on, continually mistaking bushes
for trees and gullies for men and continually discovering his mistakes.
Having descended the hill at a trot, he no longer saw either our own or
the enemy's fires, but heard the shouting of the French more loudly and
distinctly. In the valley he saw before him something like a river, but
when he reached it he found it was a road. Having come out onto the road
he reined in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it
and ride over the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which
gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it would be
easier to see people coming along it. "Follow me!" said he, crossed the
road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop toward the point where
the French pickets had been standing that evening.

"Your honor, there he is!" cried one of the hussars behind him. And
before Rostov had time to make out what the black thing was that had
suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a report,
and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive sound passed
out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in the pan.
Rostov turned his horse and galloped back. Four more reports followed at
intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the fog singing in
different tones. Rostov reined in his horse, whose spirits had risen,
like his own, at the firing, and went back at a footpace. "Well, some
more! Some more!" a merry voice was saying in his soul. But no more
shots came.

Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his horse gallop again,
and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.

Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had
only lit fires to deceive us.

"What does that prove?" he was saying as Rostov rode up. "They might
retreat and leave the pickets."

"It's plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince," said Bagration.
"Wait till tomorrow morning, we'll find out everything tomorrow."

"The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was in
the evening," reported Rostov, stooping forward with his hand at the
salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his ride
and especially by the sound of the bullets.

"Very good, very good," said Bagration. "Thank you, officer."

"Your excellency," said Rostov, "may I ask a favor?"

"What is it?"

"Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached to
the first squadron?"

"What's your name?"

"Count Rostov."

"Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me."

"Count Ilya Rostov's son?" asked Dolgorukov.

But Rostov did not reply.

"Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?"

"I will give the order."

"Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the Emperor,"
thought Rostov.

"Thank God!"

The fires and shouting in the enemy's army were occasioned by the fact
that while Napoleon's proclamation was being read to the troops the
Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing him,
lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, "Vive l'Empereur!"
Napoleon's proclamation was as follows:

Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the
Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at
Hollabrunn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position we
occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round me on
the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will myself direct
your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with your habitual valor
carry disorder and confusion into the enemy's ranks, but should victory
be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see your Emperor exposing
himself to the first blows of the enemy, for there must be no doubt of
victory, especially on this day when what is at stake is the honor of
the French infantry, so necessary to the honor of our nation.

Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let every
man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these hirelings
of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This victory will
conclude our campaign and we can return to winter quarters, where fresh
French troops who are being raised in France will join us, and the peace
I shall conclude will be worthy of my people, of you, and of myself.

NAPOLEON




CHAPTER XIV

At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the
center, the reserves, and Bagration's right flank had not yet moved, but
on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, which
were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French right
flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to plan, were
already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into which they were
throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes smart. It was cold and
dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking tea and breakfasting, the
soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a tattoo with their feet to warm
themselves, gathering round the fires throwing into the flames the
remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, and everything that they
did not want or could not carry away with them. Austrian column guides
were moving in and out among the Russian troops and served as heralds of
the advance. As soon as an Austrian officer showed himself near a
commanding officer's quarters, the regiment began to move: the soldiers
ran from the fires, thrust their pipes into their boots, their bags into
the carts, got their muskets ready, and formed rank. The officers
buttoned up their coats, buckled on their swords and pouches, and moved
along the ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and
packed the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and battalion and
regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave final
instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men who remained
behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet resounded. The
column moved forward without knowing where and unable, from the masses
around them, the smoke and the increasing fog, to see either the place
they were leaving or that to which they were going.

A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his regiment as
much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has walked, whatever
strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches, just as a sailor is
always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and rigging of his ship, so
the soldier always has around him the same comrades, the same ranks, the
same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the same company dog Jack, and the
same commanders. The sailor rarely cares to know the latitude in which
his ship is sailing, but on the day of battle--heaven knows how and
whence--a stern note of which all are conscious sounds in the moral
atmosphere of an army, announcing the approach of something decisive and
solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of
battle the soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their
regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning
what is going on around them.

The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they could
not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and level
ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one might
encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns advanced for
a long time, always in the same fog, descending and ascending hills,
avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and unknown ground, and
nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary, the soldiers became
aware that in front, behind, and on all sides, other Russian columns
were moving in the same direction. Every soldier felt glad to know that
to the unknown place where he was going, many more of our men were going
too.

"There now, the Kurskies have also gone past," was being said in the
ranks.

"It's wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last night
I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A regular
Moscow!"

Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or talked to
the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war, were out of
humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not exert themselves
to cheer the men but merely carried out the orders), yet the troops
marched gaily, as they always do when going into action, especially to
an attack. But when they had marched for about an hour in the dense fog,
the greater part of the men had to halt and an unpleasant consciousness
of some dislocation and blunder spread through the ranks. How such a
consciousness is communicated is very difficult to define, but it
certainly is communicated very surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly,
and irrepressibly, as water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been
alone without any allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before
this consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as
it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the stupid
Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had been
occasioned by the sausage eaters.

"Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up
against the French?"

"No, one can't hear them. They'd be firing if we had."

"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in the
middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's all those damned
Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!"

"Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're crowding up
behind. And now here we stand hungry."

"I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking the
way," said an officer.

"Ah, those damned Germans! They don't know their own country!" said
another.

"What division are you?" shouted an adjutant, riding up.

"The Eighteenth."

"Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you won't
get there till evening."

"What stupid orders! They don't themselves know what they are doing!"
said the officer and rode off.

Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.

"Tafa-lafa! But what he's jabbering no one can make out," said a
soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. "I'd shoot them, the
scoundrels!"

"We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven't got
halfway. Fine orders!" was being repeated on different sides.

And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to
turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the
Germans.

The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was
moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center
was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all
ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in
front of the infantry, who had to wait.

At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a
Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry should be
halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher command, was to
blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and dispirited. After
an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending the hill. The fog that
was dispersing on the hill lay still more densely below, where they were
descending. In front in the fog a shot was heard and then another, at
first irregularly at varying intervals--trata... tat--and then more and
more regularly and rapidly, and the action at the Goldbach Stream began.

Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having
stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their
commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading through
the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front or around
them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the enemy
lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders from
the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in those unknown
surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this way the action
began for the first, second, and third columns, which had gone down into
the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov was, stood on the
Pratzen Heights.

Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog; on the
higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of what was
going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we supposed,
six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea of mist, no one
knew till after eight o'clock.

It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a sea down
below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where Napoleon stood
with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above him was a clear
blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a huge hollow, crimson
float on the surface of that milky sea of mist. The whole French army,
and even Napoleon himself with his staff, were not on the far side of
the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and Schlappanitz beyond which we
intended to take up our position and begin the action, but were on this
side, so close to our own forces that Napoleon with the naked eye could
distinguish a mounted man from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak
which he had worn on his Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab
horse a little in front of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills
which seemed to rise out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian
troops were moving in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of
firing in the valley. Not a single muscle of his face--which in those
days was still thin--moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one
spot. His predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian force
had already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes and
part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack and
regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that in a
hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian
columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one
direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into the
mist. From information he had received the evening before, from the
sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the night, by
the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all
indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far away
in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen constituted
the center of the Russian army, and that that center was already
sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still he did not
begin the engagement.

Today was a great day for him--the anniversary of his coronation. Before
dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and in good
spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field in that happy
mood in which everything seems possible and everything succeeds. He sat
motionless, looking at the heights visible above the mist, and his cold
face wore that special look of confident, self-complacent happiness that
one sees on the face of a boy happily in love. The marshals stood behind
him not venturing to distract his attention. He looked now at the
Pratzen Heights, now at the sun floating up out of the mist.

When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and mist were
aglow with dazzling light--as if he had only awaited this to begin the
action--he drew the glove from his shapely white hand, made a sign with
it to the marshals, and ordered the action to begin. The marshals,
accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in different directions, and a
few minutes later the chief forces of the French army moved rapidly
toward those Pratzen Heights which were being more and more denuded by
Russian troops moving down the valley to their left.




CHAPTER XV

At eight o'clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth
column, Miloradovich's, the one that was to take the place of
Przebyszewski's and Langeron's columns which had already gone down into
the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and gave them
the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to lead that
column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen he halted.
Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number forming the
commander-in-chief's suite. He was in a state of suppressed excitement
and irritation, though controlledly calm as a man is at the approach of
a long-awaited moment. He was firmly convinced that this was the day of
his Toulon, or his bridge of Arcola. How it would come about he did not
know, but he felt sure it would do so. The locality and the position of
our troops were known to him as far as they could be known to anyone in
our army. His own strategic plan, which obviously could not now be
carried out, was forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother's plan, Prince
Andrew considered possible contingencies and formed new projects such as
might call for his rapidity of perception and decision.

To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen forces
could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight would
concentrate. "There we shall encounter difficulties, and there," thought
he, "I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there, standard in
hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of me."

He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions.
Seeing them he kept thinking, "That may be the very standard with which
I shall lead the army."

In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights was a
hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay like a
milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left into which
our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of firing.
Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the vast orb
of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that sea of mist,
some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there the enemy probably
was, for something could be descried. On the right the Guards were
entering the misty region with a sound of hoofs and wheels and now and
then a gleam of bayonets; to the left beyond the village similar masses
of cavalry came up and disappeared in the sea of mist. In front and
behind moved infantry. The commander-in-chief was standing at the end of
the village letting the troops pass by him. That morning Kutuzov seemed
worn and irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt
without any command being given, apparently obstructed by something in
front.

"Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the village!"
he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. "Don't you understand,
your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile through narrow
village streets when we are marching against the enemy?"

"I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,"
answered the general.

Kutuzov laughed bitterly.

"You'll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy! Very
fine!"

"The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the
dispositions..."

"The dispositions!" exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. "Who told you that?...
Kindly do as you are ordered."

"Yes, sir."

"My dear fellow," Nesvitski whispered to Prince Andrew, "the old man is
as surly as a dog."

An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his hat
galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the Emperor's name had the fourth
column advanced into action.

Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to fall upon
Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutuzov's malevolent and
caustic expression softened, as if admitting that what was being done
was not his adjutant's fault, and still not answering the Austrian
adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski.

"Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed the
village. Tell it to stop and await my orders."

Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.

"And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted," he added. "What are
they doing? What are they doing?" he murmured to himself, still not
replying to the Austrian.

Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.

Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped the
third division and convinced himself that there really were no
sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of the
regiment was much surprised at the commander-in-chief's order to throw
out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were other troops
in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six miles away.
There was really nothing to be seen in front except a barren descent
hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the commander-in-chief's
name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew galloped back. Kutuzov
still in the same place, his stout body resting heavily in the saddle
with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily with closed eyes. The
troops were no longer moving, but stood with the butts of their muskets
on the ground.

"All right, all right!" he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a
general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all
the left-flank columns had already descended.

"Plenty of time, your excellency," muttered Kutuzov in the midst of a
yawn. "Plenty of time," he repeated.

Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the sound of regiments
saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole extended
line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person they were
greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the regiment in front
of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he rode a little to one
side and looked round with a frown. Along the road from Pratzen galloped
what looked like a squadron of horsemen in various uniforms. Two of them
rode side by side in front, at full gallop. One in a black uniform with
white plumes in his hat rode a bobtailed chestnut horse, the other who
was in a white uniform rode a black one. These were the two Emperors
followed by their suites. Kutuzov, affecting the manners of an old
soldier at the front, gave the command "Attention!" and rode up to the
Emperors with a salute. His whole appearance and manner were suddenly
transformed. He put on the air of a subordinate who obeys without
reasoning. With an affectation of respect which evidently struck
Alexander unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.

This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy face
of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and vanished.
After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than on the field of
Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time abroad, but there
was still the same bewitching combination of majesty and mildness in his
fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the same capacity for varying
expression and the same prevalent appearance of goodhearted innocent
youth.

At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed
brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping two
miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked round at
the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own. Czartoryski,
Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the others, all richly
dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh, only slightly
heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had stopped behind the
Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced young man, sat very
erect on his handsome black horse, looking about him in a leisurely and
preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his white adjutants and asked
some question--"Most likely he is asking at what o'clock they started,"
thought Prince Andrew, watching his old acquaintance with a smile he
could not repress as he recalled his reception at Brunn. In the
Emperors' suite were the picked young orderly officers of the Guard and
line regiments, Russian and Austrian. Among them were grooms leading the
Tsar's beautiful relay horses covered with embroidered cloths.

As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields enters a
stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and confidence of
success reached Kutuzov's cheerless staff with the galloping advent of
all these brilliant young men.

"Why aren't you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?" said the Emperor
Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov, glancing courteously at the same time at
the Emperor Francis.

"I am waiting, Your Majesty," answered Kutuzov, bending forward
respectfully.

The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had not
quite heard.

"Waiting, Your Majesty," repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrew noted that
Kutuzov's upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the word "waiting.")
"Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty."

The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his
rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosiltsev who was near him, as
if complaining of Kutuzov.

"You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not on the Empress' Field where
a parade does not begin till all the troops are assembled," said the
Tsar with another glance at the Emperor Francis, as if inviting him if
not to join in at least to listen to what he was saying. But the Emperor
Francis continued to look about him and did not listen.

"That is just why I do not begin, sire," said Kutuzov in a resounding
voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not being heard, and
again something in his face twitched--"That is just why I do not begin,
sire, because we are not on parade and not on the Empress' Field," said
clearly and distinctly.

In the Emperor's suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed
dissatisfaction and reproach. "Old though he may be, he should not, he
certainly should not, speak like that," their glances seemed to say.

The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutuzov's eye waiting to
hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutuzov, with respectfully
bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence lasted for about a
minute.

"However, if you command it, Your Majesty," said Kutuzov, lifting his
head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning, but
submissive general.

He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich, the commander of
the column, gave him the order to advance.

The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Novgorod and
one of the Apsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.

As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Miloradovich,
without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous
tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners front
and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing salute reined
in his horse before the Emperor.

"God be with you, general!" said the Emperor.

"Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilite, sire," *
he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among the
gentlemen of the Tsar's suite by his poor French.


* "Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to do, Sire."

Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a little
behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men, excited by the Tsar's presence,
passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a bold, brisk
pace.

"Lads!" shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery
voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect of
battle, and by the sight of the gallant Apsherons, his comrades in
Suvorov's time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors, that he
forgot the sovereigns' presence. "Lads, it's not the first village
you've had to take," cried he.

"Glad to do our best!" shouted the soldiers.

The Emperor's horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had
carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the
field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot and
pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the
Empress' Field, not understanding the significance of the firing, nor of
the nearness of the Emperor Francis' black cob, nor of all that was
being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.

The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a
remark to him, pointing to the gallant Apsherons.




CHAPTER XVI

Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind the
carabineers.

When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column he
stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been an
inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops were
marching along both.

The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly visible
about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down below, on the
left, the firing became more distinct. Kutuzov had stopped and was
speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who was a little behind
looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask him for a field glass.

"Look, look!" said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the
distance, but down the hill before him. "It's the French!"

The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass, trying
to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their faces
suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to be a mile
and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared just in
front of us.

"It's the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But how is
that?" said different voices.

With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not more
than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing, a dense French
column coming up to meet the Apsherons.

"Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come," thought
Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutuzov.

"The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency," cried he. But at that
very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was heard quite
close at hand, and a voice of naive terror barely two steps from Prince
Andrew shouted, "Brothers! All's lost!" And at this as if at a command,
everyone began to run.

Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where five
minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would it
have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible not to be
carried back with it oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to lose touch
with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp what was
happening in front of him. Nesvitski with an angry face, red and unlike
himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he did not ride away at once he
would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov remained in the same place
and without answering drew out a handkerchief. Blood was flowing from
his cheek. Prince Andrew forced his way to him.

"You are wounded?" he asked, hardly able to master the trembling of his
lower jaw.

"The wound is not here, it is there!" said Kutuzov, pressing the
handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing soldiers.
"Stop them!" he shouted, and at the same moment, probably realizing that
it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and rode to the right.

A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.

The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by
them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, "Get on! Why
are you hindering us?" Another in the same place turned round and fired
in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode. Having
by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of men, Kutuzov,
with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward a sound of
artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the crowd of
fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutuzov, saw on the slope
of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was still firing and
Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some Russian infantry,
neither moving forward to protect the battery nor backward with the
fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself from the infantry and
approached Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov's suite only four remained. They were all
pale and exchanged looks in silence.

"Stop those wretches!" gasped Kutuzov to the regimental commander,
pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to punish
him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment and across
Kutuzov's suite like a flock of little birds.

The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were firing at
him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his leg;
several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding the flag
let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on the
muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing without
orders.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Kutuzov despairingly and looked around....
"Bolkonski!" he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness of
the feebleness of age, "Bolkonski!" he whispered, pointing to the
disordered battalion and at the enemy, "what's that?"

But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of
shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and run to
the standard.

"Forward, lads!" he shouted in a voice piercing as a child's.

"Here it is!" thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and hearing
with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him. Several
soldiers fell.

"Hurrah!" shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up the heavy
standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole battalion
would follow him.

And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then
another and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting "Hurrah!" and
overtook him. A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag that
was swaying from its weight in Prince Andrew's hands, but he was
immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard and,
dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front he saw our
artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others, having abandoned
their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French infantry
soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning the guns
round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within twenty paces
of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above him unceasingly and
to right and left of him soldiers continually groaned and dropped. But
he did not look at them: he looked only at what was going on in front of
him--at the battery. He now saw clearly the figure of a red-haired
gunner with his shako knocked awry, pulling one end of a mop while a
French soldier tugged at the other. He could distinctly see the
distraught yet angry expression on the faces of these two men, who
evidently did not realize what they were doing.

"What are they about?" thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them. "Why
doesn't the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed? Why doesn't the
Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the Frenchman remembers
his bayonet and stabs him...."

And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to the
struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had
triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited him,
was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it ended. It
seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him on the head
with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but the worst of it
was that the pain distracted him and prevented his seeing what he had
been looking at.

"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way," thought he, and
fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of
the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner had
been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or saved.
But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the sky--the
lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds
gliding slowly across it. "How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all
as I ran," thought Prince Andrew--"not as we ran, shouting and fighting,
not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry
faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide
across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky
before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity,
all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but
that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace.
Thank God!..."




CHAPTER XVII

On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine o'clock the battle
had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorukov's demand to
commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility from himself,
Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to inquire of the
commander-in-chief. Bagration knew that as the distance between the two
flanks was more than six miles, even if the messenger were not killed
(which he very likely would be), and found the commander-in-chief (which
would be very difficult), he would not be able to get back before
evening.

Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his suite,
and the boyish face Rostov, breathless with excitement and hope, was the
first to catch his eye. He sent him.

"And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander-in-chief,
your excellency?" said Rostov, with his hand to his cap.

"You can give the message to His Majesty," said Dolgorukov, hurriedly
interrupting Bagration.

On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had managed to get a few
hours' sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute, with
elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and generally in that
state of mind which makes everything seem possible, pleasant, and easy.

All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be a
general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he was
orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going with a
message to Kutuzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself. The morning
was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart was full of joy
and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his horse the rein and
galloped along the line. At first he rode along the line of Bagration's
troops, which had not yet advanced into action but were standing
motionless; then he came to the region occupied by Uvarov's cavalry and
here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation for battle; having
passed Uvarov's cavalry he clearly heard the sound of cannon and
musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder and louder.

In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket shots
at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two cannon shots,
but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the hill before
Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon that sometimes
several of them were not separated from one another but merged into a
general roar.

He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one another
down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling, spreading, and
mingling with one another. He could also, by the gleam of bayonets
visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of infantry and narrow
lines of artillery with green caissons.

Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was going
on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand or make
out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men of some sort
were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of troops; but why,
whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make out. These sights
and sounds had no depressing or intimidating effect on him; on the
contrary, they stimulated his energy and determination.

"Go on! Go on! Give it them!" he mentally exclaimed at these sounds, and
again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther and
farther into the region where the army was already in action.

"How it will be there I don't know, but all will be well!" thought
Rostov.

After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part of the
line (the Guards) was already in action.

"So much the better! I shall see it close," he thought.

He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came
galloping toward him. They were our uhlans who with disordered ranks
were returning from the attack. Rostov got out of their way,
involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.

"That is no business of mine," he thought. He had not ridden many
hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole
width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white
uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and
across his path. Rostov put his horse to full gallop to get out of the
way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at the
same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of the
horses were already galloping. Rostov heard the thud of their hoofs and
the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their figures, and
even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our Horse Guards,
advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming to meet them.

The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their horses.
Rostov could already see their faces and heard the command: "Charge!"
shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to full speed.
Rostov, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack on the French,
galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go, but still was
not in time to avoid them.

The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned angrily
on seeing Rostov before him, with whom he would inevitably collide. This
Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostov and his Bedouin over
(Rostov felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to these gigantic men
and horses) had it not occurred to Rostov to flourish his whip before
the eyes of the Guardsman's horse. The heavy black horse, sixteen hands
high, shied, throwing back its ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman drove
his huge spurs in violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail and
extending its neck, galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse Guards
passed Rostov before he heard them shout, "Hurrah!" and looking back saw
that their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry with
red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing more, for
immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke
enveloped everything.

At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him, disappeared in
the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after them or to go where
he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of the Horse Guards that
amazed the French themselves. Rostov was horrified to hear later that of
all that mass of huge and handsome men, of all those brilliant, rich
youths, officers and cadets, who had galloped past him on their
thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were left after the charge.

"Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall see
the Emperor immediately!" thought Rostov and galloped on.

When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them and
around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so much
because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on the
soldiers' faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the
officers.

Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he heard a
voice calling him by name.

"Rostov!"

"What?" he answered, not recognizing Boris.

"I say, we've been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!" said Boris
with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have been under
fire for the first time.

Rostov stopped.

"Have you?" he said. "Well, how did it go?"

"We drove them back!" said Boris with animation, growing talkative. "Can
you imagine it?" and he began describing how the Guards, having taken up
their position and seeing troops before them, thought they were
Austrians, and all at once discovered from the cannon balls discharged
by those troops that they were themselves in the front line and had
unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov without hearing Boris to the end
spurred his horse.

"Where are you off to?" asked Boris.

"With a message to His Majesty."

"There he is!" said Boris, thinking Rostov had said "His Highness," and
pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high shoulders and frowning
brows stood a hundred paces away from them in his helmet and Horse
Guards' jacket, shouting something to a pale, white uniformed Austrian
officer.

"But that's the Grand Duke, and I want the commander-in-chief or the
Emperor," said Rostov, and was about to spur his horse.

"Count! Count!" shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager as
Boris. "Count! I am wounded in my right hand" (and he showed his
bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) "and I remained at the
front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family--the von
Bergs--have been knights!"

He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to hear it and rode
away.

Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostov, to avoid
again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the Horse
Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round the place
where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard. Suddenly he
heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind our troops,
where he could never have expected the enemy to be.

"What can it be?" he thought. "The enemy in the rear of our army?
Impossible!" And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself
and for the issue of the whole battle. "But be that what it may," he
reflected, "there is no riding round it now. I must look for the
commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish with
the rest."

The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostov was more and
more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the village of
Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.

"What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is firing?"
Rostov kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian soldiers
running in confused crowds across his path.

"The devil knows! They've killed everybody! It's all up now!" he was
told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who
understood what was happening as little as he did.

"Kill the Germans!" shouted one.

"May the devil take them--the traitors!"

"Zum Henker diese Russen!" * muttered a German.


* "Hang these Russians!"

Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse, screams,
and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing died down.
Rostov learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing
at one another.

"My God! What does it all mean?" thought he. "And here, where at any
moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a handful
of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can't be that, it can't be! Only
to get past them quicker, quicker!"

The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov's head. Though he
saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights just where he
had been ordered to look for the commander-in-chief, he could not, did
not wish to, believe that.




CHAPTER XVIII

Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor near the
village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer
were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He
urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but
the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
which he had come out was thronged with caleches, carriages of all
sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the
dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries
stationed on the Pratzen Heights.

"Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?" Rostov kept asking everyone he
could stop, but got no answer from anyone.

At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.

"Eh, brother! They've all bolted long ago!" said the soldier, laughing
for some reason and shaking himself free.

Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov stopped the
horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to
question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a
carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and
that he was dangerously wounded.

"It can't be!" said Rostov. "It must have been someone else."

"I saw him myself," replied the man with a self-confident smile of
derision. "I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I've seen
him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat in the
carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black horses fly!
Gracious me, they did rattle past! It's time I knew the Imperial horses
and Ilya Ivanych. I don't think Ilya drives anyone except the Tsar!"

Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a wounded
officer passing by addressed him:

"Who is it you want?" he asked. "The commander-in-chief? He was killed
by a cannon ball--struck in the breast before our regiment."

"Not killed--wounded!" another officer corrected him.

"Who? Kutuzov?" asked Rostov.

"Not Kutuzov, but what's his name--well, never mind... there are not
many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders are
there," said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek, and he
walked on.

Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now
going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible to
doubt it now. Rostov rode in the direction pointed out to him, in which
he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now to say
to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were alive and unwounded?

"Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!" a
soldier shouted to him. "They'd kill you there!"

"Oh, what are you talking about?" said another. "Where is he to go? That
way is nearer."

Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where they said he
would be killed.

"It's all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to save
myself?" he thought. He rode on to the region where the greatest number
of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The French had not yet
occupied that region, and the Russians--the uninjured and slightly
wounded--had left it long ago. All about the field, like heaps of manure
on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded to each
couple of acres. The wounded crept together in twos and threes and one
could hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes feigned--or
so it seemed to Rostov. He put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all
these suffering men, and he felt afraid--afraid not for his life, but
for the courage he needed and which he knew would not stand the sight of
these unfortunates.

The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and
wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an adjutant
riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several shots. The
sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the corpses around
him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling of terror and pity for
himself. He remembered his mother's last letter. "What would she feel,"
thought he, "if she saw me here now on this field with the cannon aimed
at me?"

In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from the
field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less
disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry fire
sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the battle was
lost. No one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the Emperor or
Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was wounded was
correct, others that it was not, and explained the false rumor that had
spread by the fact that the Emperor's carriage had really galloped from
the field of battle with the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal Count
Tolstoy, who had ridden out to the battlefield with others in the
Emperor's suite. One officer told Rostov that he had seen someone from
headquarters behind the village to the left, and thither Rostov rode,
not hoping to find anyone but merely to ease his conscience. When he had
ridden about two miles and had passed the last of the Russian troops, he
saw, near a kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men on horseback
facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed familiar to
Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which Rostov fancied he
had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his horse with his spurs,
and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only a little earth crumbled
from the bank under the horse's hind hoofs. Turning the horse sharply,
he again jumped the ditch, and deferentially addressed the horseman with
the white plumes, evidently suggesting that he should do the same. The
rider, whose figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily riveted
his attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head and hand and by
that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his lamented and adored
monarch.

"But it can't be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!" thought
Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostov saw the
beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory. The Emperor
was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm, the
mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostov was happy in the
assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded were false. He
was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and even ought to go
straight to him and give the message Dolgorukov had ordered him to
deliver.

But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter the
thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help or a
chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and he is
alone with her, so Rostov, now that he had attained what he had longed
for more than anything else in the world, did not know how to approach
the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him why it would be
inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.

"What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of his
being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant or
painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him
now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere sight of
him?" Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the Emperor that
he had composed in his imagination could he now recall. Those speeches
were intended for quite other conditions, they were for the most part to
be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph, generally when he was
dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked him for heroic deeds, and
while dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.

"Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the right
flank now that it is nearly four o'clock and the battle is lost? No,
certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his
reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind
look or bad opinion from him," Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and with
a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at the Tsar,
who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.

While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,
Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the
Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him
to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling
unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.
Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke long
and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,
covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll's hand.

"And I might have been in his place!" thought Rostov, and hardly
restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter
despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.

His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness was
the cause of his grief.

He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the sovereign. It
was a unique chance to show his devotion to the Emperor and he had not
made use of it.... "What have I done?" thought he. And he turned round
and galloped back to the place where he had seen the Emperor, but there
was no one beyond the ditch now. Only some carts and carriages were
passing by. From one of the drivers he learned that Kutuzov's staff were
not far off, in the village the vehicles were going to. Rostov followed
them. In front of him walked Kutuzov's groom leading horses in
horsecloths. Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old, bandy-
legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.

"Tit! I say, Tit!" said the groom.

"What?" answered the old man absent-mindedly.

"Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!"

"Oh, you fool!" said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed in
silence, and then the same joke was repeated.

Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points. More
than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.

Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other columns
after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly confused
masses.

The remains of Langeron's and Dokhturov's mingled forces were crowding
around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of Augesd.

After five o'clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot cannonade
(delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from numerous
batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights, directed at our
retreating forces.

In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions kept up
a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It
was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the
old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap peacefully
angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled up, handled the
floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on that dam over which for
so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully
driven their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had returned dusty
with flour whitening their carts--on that narrow dam amid the wagons and
the cannon, under the horses' hoofs and between the wagon wheels, men
disfigured by fear of death now crowded together, crushing one another,
dying, stepping over the dying and killing one another, only to move on
a few steps and be killed themselves in the same way.

Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around, or a
shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and
splashing with blood those near them.

Dolokhov--now an officer--wounded in the arm, and on foot, with the
regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,
represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by the
crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and, jammed in
on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had fallen under a
cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon ball killed someone
behind them, another fell in front and splashed Dolokhov with blood. The
crowd, pushing forward desperately, squeezed together, moved a few
steps, and again stopped.

"Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here another
two minutes and it is certain death," thought each one.

Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the edge of
the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto the slippery
ice that covered the millpool.

"Turn this way!" he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked under
him; "turn this way!" he shouted to those with the gun. "It bears!..."

The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it
would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon even
under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to the bank,
hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at the
entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to address
Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd that
everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general fell
from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or thought of
raising him.

"Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don't you hear? Go on!"
innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the
general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were
shouting.

One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto the
ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen pond.
The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg slipped
into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to his waist.
The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped his horse, but
from behind still came the shouts: "Onto the ice, why do you stop? Go
on! Go on!" And cries of horror were heard in the crowd. The soldiers
near the gun waved their arms and beat the horses to make them turn and
move on. The horses moved off the bank. The ice, that had held under
those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, and some forty men who were on
it dashed, some forward and some back, drowning one another.

Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop onto the
ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd that covered
the dam, the pond, and the bank.




CHAPTER XIX

On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his
hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding profusely and unconsciously
uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.

Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did not know
how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt that he was
alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.

"Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw
today?" was his first thought. "And I did not know this suffering
either," he thought. "Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all till
now. But where am I?"

He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices
speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same lofty
sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher, and
between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and did not
see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had ridden up
and stopped near him.

It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding over
the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the batteries
firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and wounded left
on the field.

"Fine men!" remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian grenadier, who,
with his face buried in the ground and a blackened nape, lay on his
stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.

"The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your Majesty,"
said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were firing at
Augesd.

"Have some brought from the reserve," said Napoleon, and having gone on
a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back with
the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had already
been taken by the French as a trophy.)

"That's a fine death!" said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonski.

Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was
Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he
heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not only
did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at once
forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to death,
and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He knew it
was Napoleon--his hero--but at that moment Napoleon seemed to him such a
small, insignificant creature compared with what was passing now between
himself and that lofty infinite sky with the clouds flying over it. At
that moment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over him, or
what was said of him; he was only glad that people were standing near
him and only wished that they would help him and bring him back to life,
which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had today learned to
understand it so differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and
utter a sound. He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan
which aroused his own pity.

"Ah! He is alive," said Napoleon. "Lift this young man up and carry him
to the dressing station."

Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who, hat in
hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the victory.

Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from the
terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting while
being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing station. He
did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when with other
wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the hospital.
During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was able to look
about him and even speak.

The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a French
convoy officer, who said rapidly: "We must halt here: the Emperor will
pass here immediately; it will please him to see these gentlemen
prisoners."

"There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army, that
he is probably tired of them," said another officer.

"All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor
Alexander's Guards," said the first one, indicating a Russian officer in
the white uniform of the Horse Guards.

Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met in Petersburg
society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of
the Horse Guards.

Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.

"Which is the senior?" he asked, on seeing the prisoners.

They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.

"You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander's regiment of Horse
Guards?" asked Napoleon.

"I commanded a squadron," replied Repnin.

"Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably," said Napoleon.

"The praise of a great commander is a soldier's highest reward," said
Repnin.

"I bestow it with pleasure," said Napoleon. "And who is that young man
beside you?"

Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.

After looking at him Napoleon smiled.

"He's very young to come to meddle with us."

"Youth is no hindrance to courage," muttered Sukhtelen in a failing
voice.

"A splendid reply!" said Napoleon. "Young man, you will go far!"

Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the Emperor's
eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to attract his
attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on the battlefield
and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young man" that was
connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.

"Well, and you, young man," said he. "How do you feel, mon brave?"

Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few
words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed
straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that moment
seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did his
hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory appear, compared
to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he had seen and
understood, that he could not answer him.

Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the
stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood,
suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into
Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of
greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and
the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one
alive could understand or explain.

The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to one of
the officers as he went: "Have these gentlemen attended to and taken to
my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their wounds. Au revoir,
Prince Repnin!" and he spurred his horse and galloped away.

His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.

The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the
little gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother's neck, but
seeing the favor the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now hastened to
return the holy image.

Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the
little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his chest
outside his uniform.

"It would be good," thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon his
sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, "it
would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to
Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this life,
and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm I
should be if I could now say: 'Lord, have mercy on me!'... But to whom
should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable, incomprehensible,
which I not only cannot address but which I cannot even express in
words--the Great All or Nothing-" said he to himself, "or to that God
who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! There is nothing certain,
nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand, and
the greatness of something incomprehensible but all-important."

The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable pain;
his feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his father,
wife, sister, and future son, and the tenderness he had felt the night
before the battle, the figure of the insignificant little Napoleon, and
above all this the lofty sky, formed the chief subjects of his delirious
fancies.

The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented
itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that little
Napoleon had suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of
shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and torments
had followed, and only the heavens promised peace. Toward morning all
these dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness of
unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon's doctor,
Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in convalescence.

"He is a nervous, bilious subject," said Larrey, "and will not recover."

And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care of
the inhabitants of the district.

BOOK FOUR: 1806




CHAPTER I

Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home on leave. Denisov
was going home to Voronezh and Rostov persuaded him to travel with him
as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a comrade at the
last post station but one before Moscow, Denisov had drunk three bottles
of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts across the snow-covered
road, did not once wake up on the way to Moscow, but lay at the bottom
of the sleigh beside Rostov, who grew more and more impatient the nearer
they got to Moscow.

"How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets,
shops, bakers' signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!" thought Rostov,
when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and they had
entered Moscow.

"Denisov! We're here! He's asleep," he added, leaning forward with his
whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed of the
sleigh.

Denisov gave no answer.

"There's the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhar, has his
stand, and there's Zakhar himself and still the same horse! And here's
the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can't you hurry up?
Now then!"

"Which house is it?" asked the driver.

"Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don't you see? That's our
house," said Rostov. "Of course, it's our house! Denisov, Denisov! We're
almost there!"

Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.

"Dmitri," said Rostov to his valet on the box, "those lights are in our
house, aren't they?"

"Yes, sir, and there's a light in your father's study."

"Then they've not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now, don't
forget to put out my new coat," added Rostov, fingering his new
mustache. "Now then, get on," he shouted to the driver. "Do wake up,
Vaska!" he went on, turning to Denisov, whose head was again nodding.
"Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for vodka--get on!" Rostov
shouted, when the sleigh was only three houses from his door. It seemed
to him the horses were not moving at all. At last the sleigh bore to the
right, drew up at an entrance, and Rostov saw overhead the old familiar
cornice with a bit of plaster broken off, the porch, and the post by the
side of the pavement. He sprang out before the sleigh stopped, and ran
into the hall. The house stood cold and silent, as if quite regardless
of who had come to it. There was no one in the hall. "Oh God! Is
everyone all right?" he thought, stopping for a moment with a sinking
heart, and then immediately starting to run along the hall and up the
warped steps of the familiar staircase. The well-known old door handle,
which always angered the countess when it was not properly cleaned,
turned as loosely as ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in the
anteroom.

Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the footman, who was so
strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat
plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the opening
door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly changed to one
of delighted amazement.

"Gracious heavens! The young count!" he cried, recognizing his young
master. "Can it be? My treasure!" and Prokofy, trembling with
excitement, rushed toward the drawing-room door, probably in order to
announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss the
young man's shoulder.

"All well?" asked Rostov, drawing away his arm.

"Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They've just finished supper. Let me have a
look at you, your excellency."

"Is everything quite all right?"

"The Lord be thanked, yes!"

Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not wishing anyone to
forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the
large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card
tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had
already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the drawing
room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and began
hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the same
kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more kissing,
more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish which was
Papa, which Natasha, and which Petya. Everyone shouted, talked, and
kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not there, he noticed
that.

"And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..."

"Here he is... our own... Kolya, * dear fellow... How he has changed!...
Where are the candles?... Tea!..."


* Nicholas.

"And me, kiss me!"

"Dearest... and me!"

Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and the old count were
all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the room,
exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing.

Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, "And me too!"

Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his face
with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang away and
pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked piercingly.

All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all around
were lips seeking a kiss.

Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss,
looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she
longed. Sonya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at
this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not taking
her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave her a
grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for someone. The old
countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard at the door, steps
so rapid that they could hardly be his mother's.

Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made since
he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her. When they
met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her face, but
only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar's jacket. Denisov,
who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there and wiped
his eyes at the sight.

"Vasili Denisov, your son's friend," he said, introducing himself to the
count, who was looking inquiringly at him.

"You are most welcome! I know, I know," said the count, kissing and
embracing Denisov. "Nicholas wrote us... Natasha, Vera, look! Here is
Denisov!"

The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of Denisov.

"Darling Denisov!" screamed Natasha, beside herself with rapture,
springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This
escapade made everybody feel confused. Denisov blushed too, but smiled
and, taking Natasha's hand, kissed it.

Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostovs all
gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room.

The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every
moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every
movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully adoring
eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places nearest
to him and disputed with one another who should bring him his tea,
handkerchief, and pipe.

Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first moment
of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed
insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more.

Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers slept
till ten o'clock.

In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers,
satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly
cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The servants
were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving, and their well-
brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell of tobacco.

"Hallo, Gwiska--my pipe!" came Vasili Denisov's husky voice. "Wostov,
get up!"

Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his
disheveled head from the hot pillow.

"Why, is it late?"

"Late! It's nearly ten o'clock," answered Natasha's voice. A rustle of
starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of girls' voices
came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a crack and there was
a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black hair, and merry faces. It
was Natasha, Sonya, and Petya, who had come to see whether they were
getting up.

"Nicholas! Get up!" Natasha's voice was again heard at the door.

"Directly!"

Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer room,
with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder brother, and
forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see men undressed,
opened the bedroom door.

"Is this your saber?" he shouted.

The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs under the blanket,
looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door, having let
Petya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from behind it.

"Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!" said Natasha's voice.

"Is this your saber?" asked Petya. "Or is it yours?" he said, addressing
the black-mustached Denisov with servile deference.

Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing gown,
and went out. Natasha had put on one spurred boot and was just getting
her foot into the other. Sonya, when he came in, was twirling round and
was about to expand her dresses into a balloon and sit down. They were
dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and were both fresh, rosy, and
bright. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking her brother's arm, led him
into the sitting room, where they began talking. They hardly gave one
another time to ask questions and give replies concerning a thousand
little matters which could not interest anyone but themselves. Natasha
laughed at every word he said or that she said herself, not because what
they were saying was amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable
to control her joy which expressed itself by laughter.

"Oh, how nice, how splendid!" she said to everything.

Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that
childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he left
home now for the first time after eighteen months again brightened his
soul and his face.

"No, but listen," she said, "now you are quite a man, aren't you? I'm
awfully glad you're my brother." She touched his mustache. "I want to
know what you men are like. Are you the same as we? No?"

"Why did Sonya run away?" asked Rostov.

"Ah, yes! That's a whole long story! How are you going to speak to her--
thou or you?"

"As may happen," said Rostov.

"No, call her you, please! I'll tell you all about it some other time.
No, I'll tell you now. You know Sonya's my dearest friend. Such a friend
that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!"

She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her long,
slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is covered
even by a ball dress.

"I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in the
fire and pressed it there!"

Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what used
to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natasha's wildly bright eyes,
Rostov re-entered that world of home and childhood which had no meaning
for anyone else, but gave him some of the best joys of his life; and the
burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of love did not seem to him
senseless, he understood and was not surprised at it.

"Well, and is that all?" he asked.

"We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just
nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does it
for life, but I don't understand that, I forget quickly."

"Well, what then?"

"Well, she loves me and you like that."

Natasha suddenly flushed.

"Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are to
forget all that.... She says: 'I shall love him always, but let him be
free.' Isn't that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn't it?" asked
Natasha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that what she
was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.

Rostov became thoughtful.

"I never go back on my word," he said. "Besides, Sonya is so charming
that only a fool would renounce such happiness."

"No, no!" cried Natasha, "she and I have already talked it over. We knew
you'd say so. But it won't do, because you see, if you say that--if you
consider yourself bound by your promise--it will seem as if she had not
meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were marrying her because you
must, and that wouldn't do at all."

Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them. Sonya had already
struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when he had caught
a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She was a charming girl
of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with him (he did not doubt
that for an instant). Why should he not love her now, and even marry
her, Rostov thought, but just now there were so many other pleasures and
interests before him! "Yes, they have taken a wise decision," he
thought, "I must remain free."

"Well then, that's excellent," said he. "We'll talk it over later on.
Oh, how glad I am to have you!"

"Well, and are you still true to Boris?" he continued.

"Oh, what nonsense!" cried Natasha, laughing. "I don't think about him
or anyone else, and I don't want anything of the kind."

"Dear me! Then what are you up to now?"

"Now?" repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her face. "Have you
seen Duport?"

"No."

"Not seen Duport--the famous dancer? Well then, you won't understand.
That's what I'm up to."

Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran back a
few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply
together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.

"See, I'm standing! See!" she said, but could not maintain herself on
her toes any longer. "So that's what I'm up to! I'll never marry anyone,
but will be a dancer. Only don't tell anyone."

Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in his bedroom, felt
envious and Natasha could not help joining in.

"No, but don't you think it's nice?" she kept repeating.

"Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?"

Natasha flared up. "I don't want to marry anyone. And I'll tell him so
when I see him!"

"Dear me!" said Rostov.

"But that's all rubbish," Natasha chattered on. "And is Denisov nice?"
she asked.

"Yes, indeed!"

"Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible, Denisov?"

"Why terrible?" asked Nicholas. "No, Vaska is a splendid fellow."

"You call him Vaska? That's funny! And is he very nice?"

"Very."

"Well then, be quick. We'll all have breakfast together."

And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet
dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When
Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how
to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of
meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could not be
done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, was
looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave with
her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you--Sonya.
But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender kisses. Her looks
asked him to forgive her for having dared, by Natasha's intermediacy, to
remind him of his promise, and then thanked him for his love. His looks
thanked her for offering him his freedom and told her that one way or
another he would never cease to love her, for that would be impossible.

"How strange it is," said Vera, selecting a moment when all were silent,
"that Sonya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet like
strangers."

Vera's remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like most of
her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not only Sonya,
Nicholas, and Natasha, but even the old countess, who--dreading this
love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a brilliant match--
blushed like a girl.

Denisov, to Rostov's surprise, appeared in the drawing room with pomaded
hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as he made
himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the ladies
and gentlemen than Rostov had ever expected to see him.




CHAPTER II

On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was welcomed by
his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their darling
Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and polite young
man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good
dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.

The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough
that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,
acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the
latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the
latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,
passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself to
the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be at
home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His
despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money from
Gavril to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on the sly--he now
recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind. Now
he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and
wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in
action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected racing
men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a lady on one
of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led the mazurka at
the Arkharovs' ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal Kamenski,
visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with a colonel of
forty to whom Denisov had introduced him.

His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But still, as
he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him, he often spoke
about him and about his love for him, letting it be understood that he
had not told all and that there was something in his feelings for the
Emperor not everyone could understand, and with his whole soul he shared
the adoration then common in Moscow for the Emperor, who was spoken of
as the "angel incarnate."

During Rostov's short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, he did
not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted away from her. She was very
pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was at
the period of youth when there seems so much to do that there is no time
for that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself and prizes
his freedom which he needs for so many other things. When he thought of
Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself, "Ah, there will
be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom I do not yet
know. There will be time enough to think about love when I want to, but
now I have no time." Besides, it seemed to him that the society of women
was rather derogatory to his manhood. He went to balls and into ladies'
society with an affectation of doing so against his will. The races, the
English Club, sprees with Denisov, and visits to a certain house--that
was another matter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar!

At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very busy arranging
a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English Club.

The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving
orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist, the club's head
cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish for
this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of the
club from the day it was founded. To him the club entrusted the
arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagration, for few men knew so
well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and
still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of
their own resources what might be needed for the success of the fete.
The club cook and the steward listened to the count's orders with
pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could they
so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing
several thousand rubles.

"Well then, mind and have cocks' comb in the turtle soup, you know!"

"Shall we have three cold dishes then?" asked the cook.

The count considered.

"We can't have less--yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's one," said he,
bending down a finger.

"Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward.

"Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah, dear me! I was
forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness gracious!" he
clutched at his head. "Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh,
Dmitri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate," he said to the factotum who
appeared at his call. "Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to set
the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must be
brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred pots here
on Friday."

Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his "little
countess" to have a rest, but remembering something else of importance,
he returned again, called back the cook and the club steward, and again
began giving orders. A light footstep and the clinking of spurs were
heard at the door, and the young count, handsome, rosy, with a dark
little mustache, evidently rested and made sleeker by his easy life in
Moscow, entered the room.

"Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old man with a smile, as if
he felt a little confused before his son. "Now, if you would only help a
bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own orchestra, but
shouldn't we get the gypsy singers as well? You military men like that
sort of thing."

"Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself less before
the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now," said his son with a smile.

The old count pretended to be angry.

"Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!"

And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and respectful
expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the father and
son.

"What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said he.
"Laughing at us old fellows!"

"That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good
dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their
business!"

"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his son
by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and pair
at once, and go to Bezukhov's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has sent you to
ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get them from
anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in and ask the
princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay--the coachman Ipatka
knows--and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who danced at Count
Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and bring him along to
me."

"And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked Nicholas,
laughing. "Dear, dear!..."

At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the businesslike,
preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never left her face, Anna
Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon the count in his
dressing gown every day, he invariably became confused and begged her to
excuse his costume.

"No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly closing her eyes.
"But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre has arrived, and now we shall
get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in any case.
He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is now on the
staff."

The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon herself one of
his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.

"Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his wife with him?"
he asked.

Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was depicted
on her face.

"Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she said. "If what we hear
is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing when we
were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul as young
Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to give him what
consolation I can."

"Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and old Rostov.

Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.

"Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper, "has
compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him up, invited him to
his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here and that daredevil
after her!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to show her sympathy for
Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half smile betraying her
sympathy for the "daredevil," as she called Dolokhov. "They say Pierre
is quite broken by his misfortune."

"Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the club--it will all blow
over. It will be a tremendous banquet."

Next day, the third of March, soon after one o'clock, two hundred and
fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting the
guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagration, to
dinner.

On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow had
been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to victories
that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not believe it,
while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so strange an
event. In the English Club, where all who were distinguished, important,
and well informed foregathered when the news began to arrive in
December, nothing was said about the war and the last battle, as though
all were in a conspiracy of silence. The men who set the tone in
conversation--Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count
Markov, and Prince Vyazemski--did not show themselves at the club, but
met in private houses in intimate circles, and the Moscovites who took
their opinions from others--Ilya Rostov among them--remained for a while
without any definite opinion on the subject of the war and without
leaders. The Moscovites felt that something was wrong and that to
discuss the bad news was difficult, and so it was best to be silent. But
after a while, just as a jury comes out of its room, the bigwigs who
guided the club's opinion reappeared, and everybody began speaking
clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for the incredible, unheard-
of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat, everything became clear,
and in all corners of Moscow the same things began to be said. These
reasons were the treachery of the Austrians, a defective commissariat,
the treachery of the Pole Przebyszewski and of the Frenchman Langeron,
Kutuzov's incapacity, and (it was whispered) the youth and inexperience
of the sovereign, who had trusted worthless and insignificant people.
But the army, the Russian army, everyone declared, was extraordinary and
had achieved miracles of valor. The soldiers, officers, and generals
were heroes. But the hero of heroes was Prince Bagration, distinguished
by his Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat from Austerlitz, where he
alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and had all day beaten back an
enemy force twice as numerous as his own. What also conduced to
Bagration's being selected as Moscow's hero was the fact that he had no
connections in the city and was a stranger there. In his person, honor
was shown to a simple fighting Russian soldier without connections and
intrigues, and to one who was associated by memories of the Italian
campaign with the name of Suvorov. Moreover, paying such honor to
Bagration was the best way of expressing disapproval and dislike of
Kutuzov.

"Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent
him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire. Kutuzov no
one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers, calling him a
court weathercock and an old satyr.

All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you go on modeling
and modeling you must get smeared with clay," suggesting consolation for
our defeat by the memory of former victories; and the words of
Rostopchin, that French soldiers have to be incited to battle by
highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to show them that it
is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but that Russian soldiers
only need to be restrained and held back! On all sides, new and fresh
anecdotes were heard of individual examples of heroism shown by our
officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a standard, another had
killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five cannon singlehanded. Berg
was mentioned, by those who did not know him, as having, when wounded in
the right hand, taken his sword in the left, and gone forward. Of
Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those who knew him intimately
regretted that he had died so young, leaving a pregnant wife with his
eccentric father.




CHAPTER III

On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were filled
with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in springtime.
The members and guests of the club wandered hither and thither, sat,
stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in evening dress,
and a few here and there with powdered hair and in Russian kaftans.
Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and smart stockings,
stood at every door anxiously noting visitors' every movement in order
to offer their services. Most of those present were elderly, respected
men with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers, and resolute gestures
and voices. This class of guests and members sat in certain habitual
places and met in certain habitual groups. A minority of those present
were casual guests--chiefly young men, among whom were Denisov, Rostov,
and Dolokhov--who was now again an officer in the Semenov regiment. The
faces of these young people, especially those who were military men,
bore that expression of condescending respect for their elders which
seems to say to the older generation, "We are prepared to respect and
honor you, but all the same remember that the future belongs to us."

Nesvitski was there as an old member of the club. Pierre, who at his
wife's command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles, went
about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull. Here, as
elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience to his
wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people, he
treated them with absent-minded contempt.

By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his wealth
and connections he belonged to the groups of old and honored guests, and
so he went from one group to another. Some of the most important old men
were the center of groups which even strangers approached respectfully
to hear the voices of well-known men. The largest circles formed round
Count Rostopchin, Valuev, and Naryshkin. Rostopchin was describing how
the Russians had been overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to
force their way through them with bayonets.

Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been sent from
Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.

In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the meeting of the
Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov crowed like a cock in reply to
the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshin, standing close
by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had evidently failed to
learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of crowing like a
cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the wit, making him feel
that in that place and on that day, it was improper to speak so of
Kutuzov.

Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft boots
between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the important and
unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all equals, while his
eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up young son, resting on
him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostov stood at a window with
Dolokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately made and highly valued. The
old count came up to them and pressed Dolokhov's hand.

"Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been together out
there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasili Ignatovich... How d'ye do,
old fellow?" he said, turning to an old man who was passing, but before
he had finished his greeting there was a general stir, and a footman who
had run in announced, with a frightened face: "He's arrived!"

Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and--like rye shaken together
in a shovel--the guests who had been scattered about in different rooms
came together and crowded in the large drawing room by the door of the
ballroom.

Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or sword,
which, in accord with the club custom, he had given up to the hall
porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded whip
over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of the battle
of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian and foreign
Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast. Evidently just
before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and whiskers trimmed,
which changed his appearance for the worse. There was something naively
festive in his air, which, in conjunction with his firm and virile
features, gave him a rather comical expression. Bekleshev and Theodore
Uvarov, who had arrived with him, paused at the doorway to allow him, as
the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration was embarrassed, not
wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and this caused some delay
at the doors, but after all he did at last enter first. He walked shyly
and awkwardly over the parquet floor of the reception room, not knowing
what to do with his hands; he was more accustomed to walk over a plowed
field under fire, as he had done at the head of the Kursk regiment at
Schon Grabern--and he would have found that easier. The committeemen met
him at the first door and, expressing their delight at seeing such a
highly honored guest, took possession of him as it were, without waiting
for his reply, surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room. It was
at first impossible to enter the drawing-room door for the crowd of
members and guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look at
Bagration over each other's shoulders, as if he were some rare animal.
Count Ilya Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, "Make way, dear
boy! Make way, make way!" pushed through the crowd more energetically
than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and seated them on
the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members of the club,
beset the new arrivals. Count Ilya, again thrusting his way through the
crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a minute later with
another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver which he presented
to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some verses composed and printed
in the hero's honor. Bagration, on seeing the salver, glanced around in
dismay, as though seeking help. But all eyes demanded that he should
submit. Feeling himself in their power, he resolutely took the salver
with both hands and looked sternly and reproachfully at the count who
had presented it to him. Someone obligingly took the dish from Bagration
(or he would, it seemed, have held it till evening and have gone in to
dinner with it) and drew his attention to the verses.

"Well, I will read them, then!" Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing his
weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and serious
expression. But the author himself took the verses and began reading
them aloud. Bagration bowed his head and listened:


Bring glory then to Alexander's reign And on the throne our Titus
shield. A dreaded foe be thou, kindhearted as a man, A Rhipheus at home,
a Caesar in the field! E'en fortunate Napoleon Knows by experience, now,
Bagration, And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...

But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo announced
that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the dining room came
the resounding strains of the polonaise:


Conquest's joyful thunder waken, Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...

and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading his
verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was more
important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the rest, went
in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between two
Alexanders--Bekleshev and Naryshkin--which was a significant allusion to
the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took their seats in the
dining room, according to their rank and importance: the more important
nearer to the honored guest, as naturally as water flows deepest where
the land lies lowest.

Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son to Bagration,
who recognized him and said a few words to him, disjointed and awkward,
as were all the words he spoke that day, and Count Ilya looked joyfully
and proudly around while Bagration spoke to his son.

Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance, Dolokhov, sat
almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre, beside Prince
Nesvitski. Count Ilya Rostov with the other members of the committee sat
facing Bagration and, as the very personification of Moscow hospitality,
did the honors to the prince.

His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and the
other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till the
end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions to the
footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety. Everything
was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet (at sight of
which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious pleasure), the footmen
began popping corks and filling the champagne glasses. After the fish,
which made a certain sensation, the count exchanged glances with the
other committeemen. "There will be many toasts, it's time to begin," he
whispered, and taking up his glass, he rose. All were silent, waiting
for what he would say.

"To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he cried, and at the same
moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and enthusiasm. The
band immediately struck up "Conquest's joyful thunder waken..." All rose
and cried "Hurrah!" Bagration also rose and shouted "Hurrah!" in exactly
the same voice in which he had shouted it on the field at Schon Grabern.
Young Rostov's ecstatic voice could be heard above the three hundred
others. He nearly wept. "To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!"
he roared, "Hurrah!" and emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to
the floor. Many followed his example, and the loud shouting continued
for a long time. When the voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the
broken glass and everybody sat down again, smiling at the noise they had
made and exchanging remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced at a
note lying beside his plate, and proposed a toast, "To the health of the
hero of our last campaign, Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration!" and again
his blue eyes grew moist. "Hurrah!" cried the three hundred voices
again, but instead of the band a choir began singing a cantata composed
by Paul Ivanovich Kutuzov:


Russians! O'er all barriers on! Courage conquest guarantees; Have we not
Bagration? He brings foe men to their knees,... etc.

As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was proposed
and Count Ilya Rostov became more and more moved, more glass was
smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to Bekleshev,
Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the committee, to
all the club members and to all the club guests, and finally to Count
Ilya Rostov separately, as the organizer of the banquet. At that toast,
the count took out his handkerchief and, covering his face, wept
outright.




CHAPTER IV

Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As usual, he ate and
drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed that
some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all through
dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed eyes and
a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge of his
nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and hear
nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by some
depressing and unsolved problem.

The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by the
princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dolokhov's intimacy with his
wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that morning, which in
the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters said that he saw badly
through his spectacles, but that his wife's connection with Dolokhov was
a secret to no one but himself. Pierre absolutely disbelieved both the
princess' hints and the letter, but he feared now to look at Dolokhov,
who was sitting opposite him. Every time he chanced to meet Dolokhov's
handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt something terrible and monstrous
rising in his soul and turned quickly away. Involuntarily recalling his
wife's past and her relations with Dolokhov, Pierre saw clearly that
what was said in the letter might be true, or might at least seem to be
true had it not referred to his wife. He involuntarily remembered how
Dolokhov, who had fully recovered his former position after the
campaign, had returned to Petersburg and come to him. Availing himself
of his friendly relations with Pierre as a boon companion, Dolokhov had
come straight to his house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him
money. Pierre recalled how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of
Dolokhov's living at their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised
his wife's beauty to him and from that time till they came to Moscow had
not left them for a day.

"Yes, he is very handsome," thought Pierre, "and I know him. It would be
particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule me, just
because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended him, and helped
him. I know and understand what a spice that would add to the pleasure
of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it were true, but I do
not believe it. I have no right to, and can't, believe it." He
remembered the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in his moments of
cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and dropping them into
the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel without any reason, or
shot a post-boy's horse with a pistol. That expression was often on
Dolokhov's face when looking at him. "Yes, he is a bully," thought
Pierre, "to kill a man means nothing to him. It must seem to him that
everyone is afraid of him, and that must please him. He must think that
I, too, am afraid of him--and in fact I am afraid of him," he thought,
and again he felt something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul.
Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov were now sitting opposite Pierre and
seemed very gay. Rostov was talking merrily to his two friends, one of
whom was a dashing hussar and the other a notorious duelist and rake,
and every now and then he glanced ironically at Pierre, whose
preoccupied, absent-minded, and massive figure was a very noticeable one
at the dinner. Rostov looked inimically at Pierre, first because Pierre
appeared to his hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty,
and in a word--an old woman; and secondly because Pierre in his
preoccupation and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and had
not responded to his greeting. When the Emperor's health was drunk,
Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass.

"What are you about?" shouted Rostov, looking at him in an ecstasy of
exasperation. "Don't you hear it's His Majesty the Emperor's health?"

Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting till
all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostov.

"Why, I didn't recognize you!" he said. But Rostov was otherwise
engaged; he was shouting "Hurrah!"

"Why don't you renew the acquaintance?" said Dolokhov to Rostov.

"Confound him, he's a fool!" said Rostov.

"One should make up to the husbands of pretty women," said Denisov.

Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were talking
about him. He reddened and turned away.

"Well, now to the health of handsome women!" said Dolokhov, and with a
serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of his
mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre.

"Here's to the health of lovely women, Peterkin--and their lovers!" he
added.

Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking at
Dolokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing leaflets
with Kutuzov's cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of the principal
guests. He was just going to take it when Dolokhov, leaning across,
snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre looked at
Dolokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and monstrous that
had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took possession of him. He
leaned his whole massive body across the table.

"How dare you take it?" he shouted.

Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitski and the
neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezukhov.

"Don't! Don't! What are you about?" whispered their frightened voices.

Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that
smile of his which seemed to say, "Ah! This is what I like!"

"You shan't have it!" he said distinctly.

Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.

"You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!" he ejaculated, and, pushing
back his chair, he rose from the table.

At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt
that the question of his wife's guilt which had been tormenting him the
whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative. He
hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov's request
that he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to be Dolokhov's
second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements for the duel with
Nesvitski, Bezukhov's second. Pierre went home, but Rostov with Dolokhov
and Denisov stayed on at the club till late, listening to the gypsies
and other singers.

"Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki," said Dolokhov, as he took leave
of Rostov in the club porch.

"And do you feel quite calm?" Rostov asked.

Dolokhov paused.

"Well, you see, I'll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two words.
If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write
affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be
killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the firm
intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as possible, and
then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostroma used to tell
me. 'Everyone fears a bear,' he says, 'but when you see one your fear's
all gone, and your only thought is not to let him get away!' And that's
how it is with me. A demain, mon cher." *


* Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.

Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski drove to the
Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov already there.
Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations which had no
connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face was yellow. He had
evidently not slept that night. He looked about distractedly and screwed
up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He was entirely absorbed by two
considerations: his wife's guilt, of which after his sleepless night he
had not the slightest doubt, and the guiltlessness of Dolokhov, who had
no reason to preserve the honor of a man who was nothing to him.... "I
should perhaps have done the same thing in his place," thought Pierre.
"It's even certain that I should have done the same, then why this duel,
this murder? Either I shall kill him, or he will hit me in the head, or
elbow, or knee. Can't I go away from here, run away, bury myself
somewhere?" passed through his mind. But just at moments when such
thoughts occurred to him, he would ask in a particularly calm and
absent-minded way, which inspired the respect of the onlookers, "Will it
be long? Are things ready?"

When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the barriers,
and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went up to Pierre.

"I should not be doing my duty, Count," he said in timid tones, "and
should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in
choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment I
did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no sufficient ground
for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it.... You were not right,
not quite in the right, you were impetuous..."

"Oh yes, it is horribly stupid," said Pierre.

"Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your opponent will
accept them," said Nesvitski (who like the others concerned in the
affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not yet believe that the
affair had come to an actual duel). "You know, Count, it is much more
honorable to admit one's mistake than to let matters become irreparable.
There was no insult on either side. Allow me to convey...."

"No! What is there to talk about?" said Pierre. "It's all the same....
Is everything ready?" he added. "Only tell me where to go and where to
shoot," he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.

He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of the
trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand--a fact that he
did not wish to confess.

"Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot," said he.

"No apologies, none whatever," said Dolokhov to Denisov (who on his side
had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to the
appointed place.

The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road, where
the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine forest
covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up during the
last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at the farther
edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces, left tracks in
the deep wet snow between the place where they had been standing and
Nesvitski's and Dolokhov's sabers, which were stuck into the ground ten
paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and misty; at forty
paces' distance nothing could be seen. For three minutes all had been
ready, but they still delayed and all were silent.




CHAPTER V

"Well begin!" said Dolokhov.

"All right," said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling of
dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly begun
could no longer be averted but was taking its course independently of
men's will.

Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: "As the adve'sawies
have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols, and at
the word thwee begin to advance.

"O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!" he shouted angrily and stepped aside.

The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and nearer to
one another, beginning to see one another through the mist. They had the
right to fire when they liked as they approached the barrier. Dolokhov
walked slowly without raising his pistol, looking intently with his
bright, sparkling blue eyes into his antagonist's face. His mouth wore
its usual semblance of a smile.

"So I can fire when I like!" said Pierre, and at the word "three," he
went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and stepping into the
deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at arm's length,
apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left hand he held
carefully back, because he wished to support his right hand with it and
knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed off the
track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then quickly
glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he had been shown, fired.
Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre shuddered at the sound and
then, smiling at his own sensations, stood still. The smoke, rendered
denser by the mist, prevented him from seeing anything for an instant,
but there was no second report as he had expected. He only heard
Dolokhov's hurried steps, and his figure came in view through the smoke.
He was pressing one hand to his left side, while the other clutched his
drooping pistol. His face was pale. Rostov ran toward him and said
something.

"No-o-o!" muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, "no, it's not over." And
after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the saber, he sank on
the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he wiped it on his coat
and supported himself with it. His frowning face was pallid and
quivered.

"Plea..." began Dolokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word.

"Please," he uttered with an effort.

Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov and
was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dolokhov cried:

"To your barrier!" and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by his
saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to the
snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself, drew
in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked and
swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but his eyes, still smiling,
glittered with effort and exasperation as he mustered his remaining
strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.

"Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!" ejaculated Nesvitski.

"Cover yourself!" even Denisov cried to his adversary.

Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs
helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing
Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitski
closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report and
Dolokhov's angry cry.

"Missed!" shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards on the
snow.

Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,
trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:

"Folly... folly! Death... lies..." he repeated, puckering his face.

Nesvitski stopped him and took him home.

Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.

The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not answer
a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering Moscow he
suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort, took Rostov, who
was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostov was struck by the totally
altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression on Dolokhov's
face.

"Well? How do you feel?" he asked.

"Bad! But it's not that, my friend-" said Dolokhov with a gasping voice.
"Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have killed her,
killed... She won't get over it! She won't survive...."

"Who?" asked Rostov.

"My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother," and Dolokhov
pressed Rostov's hand and burst into tears.

When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostov that he was
living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not survive it.
He implored Rostov to go on and prepare her.

Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise
learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow
with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate
of sons and brothers.




CHAPTER VI

Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg and in
Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after the duel
he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained in his
father's room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.

He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that had
happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,
thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not fall
asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace the
room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early days of
their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid, passionate look on
her face, and then immediately he saw beside her Dolokhov's handsome,
insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen it at the banquet, and
then that same face pale, quivering, and suffering, as it had been when
he reeled and sank on the snow.

"What has happened?" he asked himself. "I have killed her lover, yes,
killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come to do
it?"--"Because you married her," answered an inner voice.

"But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her without loving
her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalled that moment
after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those words he had found
so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes from that! Even then
I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was not so, that I had no
right to do it. And so it turns out."

He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.
Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection of
how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into his
study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his head
steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and at his
dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing respectful
understanding of his employer's happiness.

"But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic beauty
and social tact," thought he; "been proud of my house, in which she
received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and beauty. So
this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I did not understand
her. How often when considering her character I have told myself that I
was to blame for not understanding her, for not understanding that
constant composure and complacency and lack of all interests or desires,
and the whole secret lies in the terrible truth that she is a depraved
woman. Now I have spoken that terrible word to myself all has become
clear.

"Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss her
naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself be
kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she replied
with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous: 'Let him
do what he pleases,' she used to say of me. One day I asked her if she
felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed contemptuously and said she
was not a fool to want to have children, and that she was not going to
have any children by me."

Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and the
vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had
been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.

"I'm not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous promener," *
she used to say. Often seeing the success she had with young and old men
and women Pierre could not understand why he did not love her.


* "You clear out of this."

"Yes, I never loved her," said he to himself; "I knew she was a depraved
woman," he repeated, "but dared not admit it to myself. And now there's
Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and perhaps dying,
while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!"

Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of what is
called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their troubles. He
digested his sufferings alone.

"It is all, all her fault," he said to himself; "but what of that? Why
did I bind myself to her? Why did I say 'Je vous aime' * to her, which
was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must endure... what? A
slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that's nonsense," he
thought. "The slur on my name and honor--that's all apart from myself."


* I love you.

"Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a
criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view they
were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a martyr's
death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a despot.
Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive--live:
tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth
tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in comparison
with eternity?"

But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such reflections,
she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments when he had
most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he felt the
blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move about and break
and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tell her that 'Je vous
aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when he had said it for the
tenth time, Moliere's words: "Mais que diable allait-il faire dans cette
galere?"* occurred to him, and he began to laugh at himself.


* "But what the devil was he doing in that galley?"

In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to
Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He
resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his
intention to part from her forever.

Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee, Pierre
was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.

He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled expression,
unable to realize where he was.

"The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at home,"
said the valet.

But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the countess
herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with silver and with
simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round her lovely head like
a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic, except that there was a
wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent marble brow. With her
imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in front of the valet. She
knew of the duel and had come to speak about it. She waited till the
valet had set down the coffee things and left the room. Pierre looked at
her timidly over his spectacles, and like a hare surrounded by hounds
who lays back her ears and continues to crouch motionless before her
enemies, he tried to continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless
and impossible, he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down
but looked at him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to
go.

"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should like to
know?" she asked sternly.

"I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre.

"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel about? What
is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."

Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth, but
could not reply.

"If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe
everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that Dolokhov
was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness of speech,
uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and you believed
it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel prove? That you're a
fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew that. What will be the
result? That I shall be the laughingstock of all Moscow, that everyone
will say that you, drunk and not knowing what you were about, challenged
a man you are jealous of without cause." Helene raised her voice and
became more and more excited, "A man who's a better man than you in
every way..."

"Hm... Hm...!" growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her, and not
moving a muscle.

"And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like his
company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should prefer
yours."

"Don't speak to me... I beg you," muttered Pierre hoarsely.

"Why shouldn't I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you plainly
that there are not many wives with husbands such as you who would not
have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so," said she.

Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose strange
expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He was suffering
physically at that moment, there was a weight on his chest and he could
not breathe. He knew that he must do something to put an end to this
suffering, but what he wanted to do was too terrible.

"We had better separate," he muttered in a broken voice.

"Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," said Helene.
"Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!"

Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.

"I'll kill you!" he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table with
a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her
brandishing the slab.

Helene's face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His
father's nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and
delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down
on her with outstretched hands shouted, "Get out!" in such a terrible
voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows what he would
have done at that moment had Helene not fled from the room.

A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his estates
in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property, and left
for Petersburg alone.




CHAPTER VII

Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz and
the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite of the
letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his body had
not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What was worst of
all for his relations was the fact that there was still a possibility of
his having been picked up on the battlefield by the people of the place
and that he might now be lying, recovering or dying, alone among
strangers and unable to send news of himself. The gazettes from which
the old prince first heard of the defeat at Austerlitz stated, as usual
very briefly and vaguely, that after brilliant engagements the Russians
had had to retreat and had made their withdrawal in perfect order. The
old prince understood from this official report that our army had been
defeated. A week after the gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz
came a letter from Kutuzov informing the prince of the fate that had
befallen his son.

"Your son," wrote Kutuzov, "fell before my eyes, a standard in his hand
and at the head of a regiment--he fell as a hero, worthy of his father
and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the whole army
it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort myself and
you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise he would have
been mentioned among the officers found on the field of battle, a list
of whom has been sent me under flag of truce."

After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone in his
study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next morning, but he
was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the architect, and though
he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone.

When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at his
lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her.

"Ah, Princess Mary!" he said suddenly in an unnatural voice, throwing
down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own impetus, and
Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that wheel, which
merged in her memory with what followed.)

She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her. Her
eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father's face, not sad, not
crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging over
her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the worst in
life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and incomprehensible-
-the death of one she loved.

"Father! Andrew!"--said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such an
indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her father
could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.

"Bad news! He's not among the prisoners nor among the killed! Kutuzov
writes..." and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to drive the
princess away by that scream... "Killed!"

The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but on
hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in her
beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy--a supreme joy apart from the
joys and sorrows of this world--overflowed the great grief within her.
She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took his hand, and
drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy neck.

"Father," she said, "do not turn away from me, let us weep together."

"Scoundrels! Blackguards!" shrieked the old man, turning his face away
from her. "Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why? Go, go and
tell Lise."

The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father and
wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he took
leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw him tender
and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. "Did he believe?
Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There in the realms
of eternal peace and blessedness?" she thought.

"Father, tell me how it happened," she asked through her tears.

"Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and Russia's
glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell Lise. I
will follow."

When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat
working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy calm
peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did not see
Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at something
joyful and mysterious taking place within her.

"Mary," she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying back,
"give me your hand." She took her sister-in-law's hand and held it below
her waist.

Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained
lifted in childlike happiness.

Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of her
sister-in-law's dress.

"There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know, Mary,
I am going to love him very much," said Lise, looking with bright and
happy eyes at her sister-in-law.

Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.

"What is the matter, Mary?"

"Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew," she said, wiping away
her tears on her sister-in-law's knee.

Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began trying to
prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry. Unobservant as
was the little princess, these tears, the cause of which she did not
understand, agitated her. She said nothing but looked about uneasily as
if in search of something. Before dinner the old prince, of whom she was
always afraid, came into her room with a peculiarly restless and malign
expression and went out again without saying a word. She looked at
Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a while with that expression of
attention to something within her that is only seen in pregnant women,
and suddenly began to cry.

"Has anything come from Andrew?" she asked.

"No, you know it's too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I
feel afraid."

"So there's nothing?"

"Nothing," answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant eyes
at her sister-in-law.

She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to hide the
terrible news from her till after her confinement, which was expected
within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince each bore and hid
their grief in their own way. The old prince would not cherish any hope:
he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had been killed, and though he
sent an official to Austria to seek for traces of his son, he ordered a
monument from Moscow which he intended to erect in his own garden to his
memory, and he told everybody that his son had been killed. He tried not
to change his former way of life, but his strength failed him. He walked
less, ate less, slept less, and became weaker every day. Princess Mary
hoped. She prayed for her brother as living and was always awaiting news
of his return.




CHAPTER VIII

"Dearest," said the little princess after breakfast on the morning of
the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit, but
as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word, and even
every footstep in that house since the terrible news had come, so now
the smile of the little princess--influenced by the general mood though
without knowing its cause--was such as to remind one still more of the
general sorrow.

"Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique *--as Foka the cook
calls it--has disagreed with me."


* Fruhstuck: breakfast.

"What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you are
very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft,
ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.

"Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said one of
the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife from the
neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last fortnight.)

"Oh yes," assented Princess Mary, "perhaps that's it. I'll go. Courage,
my angel." She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.

"Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on the
little princess' face, an expression of childish fear of inevitable pain
showed itself.

"No, it's only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion, say so, Mary!
Say..." And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a
suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some
affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary Bogdanovna.

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left the room.

The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small, plump
white hands with an air of calm importance.

"Mary Bogdanovna, I think it's beginning!" said Princess Mary looking at
the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.

"Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary Bogdanovna, not
hastening her steps. "You young ladies should not know anything about
it."

"But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?" said the
princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's wishes they had
sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at any
moment.)

"No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary Bogdanovna. "We'll
manage very well without a doctor."

Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy
being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the
large leather sofa from Prince Andrew's study into the bedroom. On their
faces was a quiet and solemn look.

Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the
house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and watching
what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with quiet steps in
and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and turned away. She did
not venture to ask any questions, and shut the door again, now sitting
down in her easy chair, now taking her prayer book, now kneeling before
the icon stand. To her surprise and distress she found that her prayers
did not calm her excitement. Suddenly her door opened softly and her old
nurse, Praskovya Savishna, who hardly ever came to that room as the old
prince had forbidden it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round
her head.

"I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the nurse, "and here I've
brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his saint, my
angel," she said with a sigh.

"Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!"

"God is merciful, birdie."

The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by the door
with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began reading. Only
when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one another, the
princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging. Everyone in the
house was dominated by the same feeling that Princess Mary experienced
as she sat in her room. But owing to the superstition that the fewer the
people who know of it the less a woman in travail suffers, everyone
tried to pretend not to know; no one spoke of it, but apart from the
ordinary staid and respectful good manners habitual in the prince's
household, a common anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a
consciousness that something great and mysterious was being accomplished
at that moment made itself felt.

There was no laughter in the maids' large hall. In the men servants'
hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs'
quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old
prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent
Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.--"Say only that 'the prince
told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer."

"Inform the prince that labor has begun," said Mary Bogdanovna, giving
the messenger a significant look.

Tikhon went and told the prince.

"Very good!" said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tikhon did
not hear the slightest sound from the study after that.

After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and, seeing
the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his perturbed
face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed him on the
shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles or saying why he
had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world continued its course.
Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of suspense and softening of
heart in the presence of the unfathomable did not lessen but increased.
No one slept.

It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume its
sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A relay
of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German doctor from
Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback with lanterns
were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the country road with its
hollows and snow-covered pools of water.

Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her
luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line of which
she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from under the
kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.

Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely
hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds of
times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess Mary in
Kishenev with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead of a
midwife.

"God is merciful, doctors are never needed," she said.

Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the
window, from which the double frame had been removed (by order of the
prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the larks
returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the damask
curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its chill, snowy draft.
Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the stocking she was
knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to catch the open
casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her kerchief and her loose
locks of gray hair.

"Princess, my dear, there's someone driving up the avenue!" she said,
holding the casement and not closing it. "With lanterns. Most likely the
doctor."

"Oh, my God! thank God!" said Princess Mary. "I must go and meet him, he
does not know Russian."

Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the newcomer.
As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the window a carriage
with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went out on the stairs. On
a banister post stood a tallow candle which guttered in the draft. On
the landing below, Philip, the footman, stood looking scared and holding
another candle. Still lower, beyond the turn of the staircase, one could
hear the footstep of someone in thick felt boots, and a voice that
seemed familiar to Princess Mary was saying something.

"Thank God!" said the voice. "And Father?"

"Gone to bed," replied the voice of Demyan the house steward, who was
downstairs.

Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied, and the steps in the
felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more rapidly.

"It's Andrew!" thought Princess Mary. "No it can't be, that would be too
extraordinary," and at the very moment she thought this, the face and
figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of which covered
with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman stood with the
candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed and strangely
softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up the stairs and
embraced his sister.

"You did not get my letter?" he asked, and not waiting for a reply--
which he would not have received, for the princess was unable to speak--
he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the doctor who had
entered the hall after him (they had met at the last post station), and
again embraced his sister.

"What a strange fate, Masha darling!" And having taken off his cloak and
felt boots, he went to the little princess' apartment.




CHAPTER IX

The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on her
head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair lay round
her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy mouth with its
downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince Andrew entered
and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on which she was lying.
Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear and excitement, rested
on him without changing their expression. "I love you all and have done
no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so? Help me!" her look seemed to
say. She saw her husband, but did not realize the significance of his
appearance before her now. Prince Andrew went round the sofa and kissed
her forehead.

"My darling!" he said--a word he had never used to her before. "God is
merciful...."

She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.

"I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!" said
her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not realize
that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with her sufferings or
with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary Bogdanovna advised
Prince Andrew to leave the room.

The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess Mary,
again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk broke
off at every moment. They waited and listened.

"Go, dear," said Princess Mary.

Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room next to
hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and became
confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with his hands
and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless, animal moans came
through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to the door, and tried to
open it. Someone was holding it shut.

"You can't come in! You can't!" said a terrified voice from within.

He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more seconds
went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek--it could not be hers, she
could not scream like that--came from the bedroom. Prince Andrew ran to
the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of an infant.

"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought Prince Andrew in the
first second. "A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or is
the baby born?"

Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail; tears
choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill be began to cry,
sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his shirt sleeves
tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling jaw, came out of
the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor gave him a
bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman rushed out and
seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the threshold. He went into
his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the same position he had seen
her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed eyes and the pallor of
the cheeks, the same expression was on her charming childlike face with
its upper lip covered with tiny black hair.

"I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done
to me?"--said her charming, pathetic, dead face.

In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and squealed
in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands.

Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his father's
room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing close to the
door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed like a vise
round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob like a child.

Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew went
up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss.
And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah,
what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrew
felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin
he could neither remedy nor forget. He could not weep. The old man too
came up and kissed the waxen little hands that lay quietly crossed one
on the other on her breast, and to him, too, her face seemed to say:
"Ah, what have you done to me, and why?" And at the sight the old man
turned angrily away.

Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas Andreevich
was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her chin, while
the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's little red and
wrinkled soles and palms.

His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of dropping
him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and handed him over
to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat in another room,
faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in the font, and awaited
the termination of the ceremony. He looked up joyfully at the baby when
the nurse brought it to him and nodded approval when she told him that
the wax with the baby's hair had not sunk in the font but had floated.




CHAPTER X

Rostov's share in Dolokhov's duel with Bezukhov was hushed up by the
efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks as
he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of
Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of the
family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties. Dolokhov
recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with him during his
convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother's who loved him
passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond of
Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him about her
son.

"Yes, Count," she would say, "he is too noble and pure-souled for our
present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like a
reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it
honorable, of Bezukhov? And Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him and
even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg when
they played some tricks on a policeman, didn't they do it together? And
there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while Fedya had to bear the whole
burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go through! It's true he
has been reinstated, but how could they fail to do that? I think there
were not many such gallant sons of the fatherland out there as he. And
now--this duel! Have these people no feeling, or honor? Knowing him to
be an only son, to challenge him and shoot so straight! It's well God
had mercy on us. And what was it for? Who doesn't have intrigues
nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I see things he should have
shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for months. And then to call him
out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting because he owed him money! What
baseness! What meanness! I know you understand Fedya, my dear count;
that, believe me, is why I am so fond of you. Few people do understand
him. He is such a lofty, heavenly soul!"

Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostov in a way no
one would have expected of him.

"I know people consider me a bad man!" he said. "Let them! I don't care
a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love so that
I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle if they stood
in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two or three
friends--you among them--and as for the rest I only care about them in
so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them are harmful,
especially the women. Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I have met loving,
noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any women--countesses or
cooks--who were not venal. I have not yet met that divine purity and
devotion I look for in women. If I found such a one I'd give my life for
her! But those!..." and he made a gesture of contempt. "And believe me,
if I still value my life it is only because I still hope to meet such a
divine creature, who will regenerate, purify, and elevate me. But you
don't understand it."

"Oh, yes, I quite understand," answered Rostov, who was under his new
friend's influence.

In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter
Denisov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the
winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of the
happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas brought
many young men to his parents' house. Vera was a handsome girl of
twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening flower;
Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly amusing, now
girlishly enchanting.

At that time in the Rostovs' house there prevailed an amorous atmosphere
characteristic of homes where there are very young and very charming
girls. Every young man who came to the house--seeing those
impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own
happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the fitful
bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly prattle of
young girls ready for anything and full of hope--experienced the same
feeling; sharing with the young folk of the Rostovs' household a
readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness.

Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of the first was Dolokhov,
whom everyone in the house liked except Natasha. She almost quarreled
with her brother about him. She insisted that he was a bad man, and that
in the duel with Bezukhov, Pierre was right and Dolokhov wrong, and
further that he was disagreeable and unnatural.

"There's nothing for me to understand," she cried out with resolute
self-will, "he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denisov
though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so you see I do
understand. I don't know how to put it... with this one everything is
calculated, and I don't like that. But Denisov..."

"Oh, Denisov is quite different," replied Nicholas, implying that even
Denisov was nothing compared to Dolokhov--"you must understand what a
soul there is in Dolokhov, you should see him with his mother. What a
heart!"

"Well, I don't know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And do
you know he has fallen in love with Sonya?"

"What nonsense..."

"I'm certain of it; you'll see."

Natasha's prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did not usually care for
the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the
question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon
settled. He came because of Sonya. And Sonya, though she would never
have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time Dolokhov
appeared.

Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs', never missed a performance at
which they were present, and went to Iogel's balls for young people
which the Rostovs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sonya
and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his
glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natasha blushed
when they saw his looks.

It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the irresistible
influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.

Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov's relations with Sonya, but he
did not explain to himself what these new relations were. "They're
always in love with someone," he thought of Sonya and Natasha. But he
was not as much at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as before and was less
frequently at home.

In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war with
Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders were
given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the regular army,
and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the militia. Everywhere
Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow nothing but the coming war was
talked of. For the Rostov family the whole interest of these
preparations for war lay in the fact that Nicholas would not hear of
remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the termination of Denisov's
furlough after Christmas to return with him to their regiment. His
approaching departure did not prevent his amusing himself, but rather
gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the greater part of his time away
from home, at dinners, parties, and balls.




CHAPTER XI

On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing he had
rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he and Denisov
were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany. About twenty people
were present, including Dolokhov and Denisov.

Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous
atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as at this
holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That
is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing
we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place.

Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without
visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been invited,
returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he noticed and
felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also noticed a
curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sonya, Dolokhov, and
the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a lesser degree
Natasha. Nicholas understood that something must have happened between
Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly sensitiveness
natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both at dinner. On
that same evening there was to be one of the balls that Iogel (the
dancing master) gave for his pupils during the holidays.

"Nicholas, will you come to Iogel's? Please do!" said Natasha. "He asked
you, and Vasili Dmitrich * is also going."


* Denisov.

"Where would I not go at the countess' command!" said Denisov, who at
the Rostovs' had jocularly assumed the role of Natasha's knight. "I'm
even weady to dance the pas de chale."

"If I have time," answered Nicholas. "But I promised the Arkharovs; they
have a party."

"And you?" he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had asked the question
he noticed that it should not have been put.

"Perhaps," coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov, glancing at Sonya, and,
scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given Pierre at
the club dinner.

"There is something up," thought Nicholas, and he was further confirmed
in this conclusion by the fact that Dolokhov left immediately after
dinner. He called Natasha and asked her what was the matter.

"And I was looking for you," said Natasha running out to him. "I told
you, but you would not believe it," she said triumphantly. "He has
proposed to Sonya!"

Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of late, something
seemed to give way within him at this news. Dolokhov was a suitable and
in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless, orphan girl. From
the point of view of the old countess and of society it was out of the
question for her to refuse him. And therefore Nicholas' first feeling on
hearing the news was one of anger with Sonya.... He tried to say,
"That's capital; of course she'll forget her childish promises and
accept the offer," but before he had time to say it Natasha began again.

"And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!" adding, after a pause,
"she told him she loved another."

"Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!" thought Nicholas.

"Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won't change
once she has said..."

"And Mamma pressed her!" said Nicholas reproachfully.

"Yes," said Natasha. "Do you know, Nicholas--don't be angry--but I know
you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but I know for certain
that you won't marry her."

"Now you don't know that at all!" said Nicholas. "But I must talk to
her. What a darling Sonya is!" he added with a smile.

"Ah, she is indeed a darling! I'll send her to you."

And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away.

A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared look.
Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the first time
since his return that they had talked alone and about their love.

"Sophie," he began, timidly at first and then more and more boldly, "if
you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and advantageous
match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend..."

Sonya interrupted him.

"I have already refused," she said hurriedly.

"If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..."

Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.

"Nicholas, don't tell me that!" she said.

"No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to say
it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole truth. I
love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else...."

"That is enough for me," said Sonya, blushing.

"No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in love
again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship,
confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does not
wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider
Dolokhov's offer," he said, articulating his friend's name with
difficulty.

"Don't say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and
always shall, and I want nothing more."

"You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of misleading
you."

And Nicholas again kissed her hand.




CHAPTER XII

Iogel's were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers as
they watched their young people executing their newly learned steps, and
so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced till they were
ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and women who came to
these balls with an air of condescension and found them most enjoyable.
That year two marriages had come of these balls. The two pretty young
Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and were married and so further
increased the fame of these dances. What distinguished them from others
was the absence of host or hostess and the presence of the good-natured
Iogel, flying about like a feather and bowing according to the rules of
his art, as he collected the tickets from all his visitors. There was
the fact that only those came who wished to dance and amuse themselves
as girls of thirteen and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for
the first time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were, or seemed to
be, pretty--so rapturous were their smiles and so sparkling their eyes.
Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom Natasha, who was exceptionally
graceful, was first, even danced the pas de chale, but at this last ball
only the ecossaise, the anglaise, and the mazurka, which was just coming
into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a ballroom in Bezukhov's
house, and the ball, as everyone said, was a great success. There were
many pretty girls and the Rostov girls were among the prettiest. They
were both particularly happy and gay. That evening, proud of Dolokhov's
proposal, her refusal, and her explanation with Nicholas, Sonya twirled
about before she left home so that the maid could hardly get her hair
plaited, and she was transparently radiant with impulsive joy.

Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real
ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with pink
ribbons.

Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She was
not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever
person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.

"Oh, how delightful it is!" she kept saying, running up to Sonya.

Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down, looking with kindly
patronage at the dancers.

"How sweet she is--she will be a weal beauty!" said Denisov.

"Who?"

"Countess Natasha," answered Denisov.

"And how she dances! What gwace!" he said again after a pause.

"Who are you talking about?"

"About your sister," ejaculated Denisov testily.

Rostov smiled.

"My dear count, you were one of my best pupils--you must dance," said
little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. "Look how many charming young
ladies-" He turned with the same request to Denisov who was also a
former pupil of his.

"No, my dear fellow, I'll be a wallflower," said Denisov. "Don't you
wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?"


"Oh no!" said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. "You were only
inattentive, but you had talent--oh yes, you had talent!"

The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not
refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance. Denisov sat down by the old
ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot, told
them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the young
people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best pupil, were
the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with his little feet
in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with Natasha, who, though
shy, went on carefully executing her steps. Denisov did not take his
eyes off her and beat time with his saber in a way that clearly
indicated that if he was not dancing it was because he would not and not
because he could not. In the middle of a figure he beckoned to Rostov
who was passing:

"This is not at all the thing," he said. "What sort of Polish mazuwka is
this? But she does dance splendidly."

Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland for the masterly
way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to Natasha:

"Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!" he said.

When it came to Natasha's turn to choose a partner, she rose and,
tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran
timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was
looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing
though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.

"Please, Vasili Dmitrich," Natasha was saying, "do come!"

"Oh no, let me off, Countess," Denisov replied.

"Now then, Vaska," said Nicholas.

"They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!" said Denisov jokingly.

"I'll sing for you a whole evening," said Natasha.

"Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!" said Denisov, and he
unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his
partner's hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot,
waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was
Denisov's short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow he
felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked sideways at
his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly stamped with one
foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew round the room taking
his partner with him. He glided silently on one foot half across the
room, and seeming not to notice the chairs was dashing straight at them,
when suddenly, clinking his spurs and spreading out his legs, he stopped
short on his heels, stood so a second, stamped on the spot clanking his
spurs, whirled rapidly round, and, striking his left heel against his
right, flew round again in a circle. Natasha guessed what he meant to
do, and abandoning herself to him followed his lead hardly knowing how.
First he spun her round, holding her now with his left, now with his
right hand, then falling on one knee he twirled her round him, and again
jumping up, dashed so impetuously forward that it seemed as if he would
rush through the whole suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then
he suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When at
last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her chair, he drew
up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not even make
him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement, smiling as if she
did not recognize him.

"What does this mean?" she brought out.

Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka, everyone
was delighted with Denisov's skill, he was asked again and again as a
partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about Poland and the
good old days. Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and mopping himself
with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and did not leave her for the
rest of the evening.




CHAPTER XIII

For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at his own or at
Dolokhov's home: on the third day he received a note from him:

As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know of,
and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell supper
tonight to my friends--come to the English Hotel.

About ten o'clock Rostov went to the English Hotel straight from the
theater, where he had been with his family and Denisov. He was at once
shown to the best room, which Dolokhov had taken for that evening. Some
twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dolokhov sat between two
candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper money, and he was
keeping the bank. Rostov had not seen him since his proposal and Sonya's
refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought of how they would meet.

Dolokhov's clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as he entered the door,
as though he had long expected him.

"It's a long time since we met," he said. "Thanks for coming. I'll just
finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will come with his chorus."

"I called once or twice at your house," said Rostov, reddening.

Dolokhov made no reply.

"You may punt," he said.

Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once had
with Dolokhov. "None but fools trust to luck in play," Dolokhov had then
said.

"Or are you afraid to play with me?" Dolokhov now asked as if guessing
Rostov's thought.

Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had shown at the club
dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he had felt
a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually cruel, action.

Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke with
which to reply to Dolokhov's words. But before he had thought of
anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and
deliberately so that everyone could hear:

"Do you remember we had a talk about cards... 'He's a fool who trusts to
luck, one should make certain,' and I want to try."

"To try his luck or the certainty?" Rostov asked himself.

"Well, you'd better not play," Dolokhov added, and springing a new pack
of cards said: "Bank, gentlemen!"

Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostov sat down by his
side and at first did not play. Dolokhov kept glancing at him.

"Why don't you play?" he asked.

And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up a
card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.

"I have no money with me," he said.

"I'll trust you."

Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and again
lost. Dolokhov "killed," that is, beat, ten cards of Rostov's running.

"Gentlemen," said Dolokhov after he had dealt for some time. "Please
place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the reckoning."

One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.

"Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I ask
you to put the money on your cards," replied Dolokhov. "Don't stint
yourself, we'll settle afterwards," he added, turning to Rostov.

The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.

All Rostov's cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles scored up
against him. He wrote "800 rubles" on a card, but while the waiter
filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to his usual stake
of twenty rubles.

"Leave it," said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking at
Rostov, "you'll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the others but win
from you. Or are you afraid of me?" he asked again.

Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a seven
of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the floor. He
well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the seven of hearts,
on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written "800 rubles" in clear
upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm champagne that was handed
him, smiled at Dolokhov's words, and with a sinking heart, waiting for a
seven to turn up, gazed at Dolokhov's hands which held the pack. Much
depended on Rostov's winning or losing on that seven of hearts. On the
previous Sunday the old count had given his son two thousand rubles, and
though he always disliked speaking of money difficulties had told
Nicholas that this was all he could let him have till May, and asked him
to be more economical this time. Nicholas had replied that it would be
more than enough for him and that he gave his word of honor not to take
anything more till the spring. Now only twelve hundred rubles was left
of that money, so that this seven of hearts meant for him not only the
loss of sixteen hundred rubles, but the necessity of going back on his
word. With a sinking heart he watched Dolokhov's hands and thought, "Now
then, make haste and let me have this card and I'll take my cap and
drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will
certainly never touch a card again." At that moment his home life, jokes
with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with his
father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the Povarskaya rose
before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm that it seemed as
if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss, long past. He could not
conceive that a stupid chance, letting the seven be dealt to the right
rather than to the left, might deprive him of all this happiness, newly
appreciated and newly illumined, and plunge him into the depths of
unknown and undefined misery. That could not be, yet he awaited with a
sinking heart the movement of Dolokhov's hands. Those broad, reddish
hands, with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt cuffs, laid down
the pack and took up a glass and a pipe that were handed him.

"So you are not afraid to play with me?" repeated Dolokhov, and as if
about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in his
chair, and began deliberately with a smile:

"Yes, gentlemen, I've been told there's a rumor going about Moscow that
I'm a sharper, so I advise you to be careful."

"Come now, deal!" exclaimed Rostov.

"Oh, those Moscow gossips!" said Dolokhov, and he took up the cards with
a smile.

"Aah!" Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The seven
he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He had lost
more than he could pay.

"Still, don't ruin yourself!" said Dolokhov with a side glance at Rostov
as he continued to deal.




CHAPTER XIV

An hour and a half later most of the players were but little interested
in their own play.

The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen
hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him, which
he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he vaguely
supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it already
exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer listening to
stories or telling them, but followed every movement of Rostov's hands
and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against him. He had decided
to play until that score reached forty-three thousand. He had fixed on
that number because forty-three was the sum of his and Sonya's joint
ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both hands, sat at the table which was
scrawled over with figures, wet with spilled wine, and littered with
cards. One tormenting impression did not leave him: that those broad-
boned reddish hands with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt
sleeves, those hands which he loved and hated, held him in their power.

"Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's
impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or
quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov
pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to
accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him, and at
one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at the bridge
over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came first to hand
from the crumpled heap under the table would save him, now counted the
cords on his coat and took a card with that number and tried staking the
total of his losses on it, then he looked round for aid from the other
players, or peered at the now cold face of Dolokhov and tried to read
what was passing in his mind.

"He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can't want my ruin.
Wasn't he my friend? Wasn't I fond of him? But it's not his fault.
What's he to do if he has such luck?... And it's not my fault either,"
he thought to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Have I killed anyone,
or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a terrible misfortune?
And when did it begin? Such a little while ago I came to this table with
the thought of winning a hundred rubles to buy that casket for Mamma's
name day and then going home. I was so happy, so free, so lighthearted!
And I did not realize how happy I was! When did that end and when did
this new, terrible state of things begin? What marked the change? I sat
all the time in this same place at this table, chose and placed cards,
and watched those broad-boned agile hands in the same way. When did it
happen and what has happened? I am well and strong and still the same
and in the same place. No, it can't be! Surely it will all end in
nothing!"

He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not hot.
His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its helpless
efforts to seem calm.

The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three thousand.
Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of which he meant
to double the three thousand just put down to his score, when Dolokhov,
slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside and began rapidly adding
up the total of Rostov's debt, breaking the chalk as he marked the
figures in his clear, bold hand.

"Supper, it's time for supper! And here are the gypsies!"

Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold outside
and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas understood that it
was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:

"Well, won't you go on? I had a splendid card all ready," as if it were
the fun of the game which interested him most.

"It's all up! I'm lost!" thought he. "Now a bullet through my brain--
that's all that's left me!" And at the same time he said in a cheerful
voice:

"Come now, just this one more little card!"

"All right!" said Dolokhov, having finished the addition. "All right!
Twenty-one rubles," he said, pointing to the figure twenty-one by which
the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three thousand; and taking up
a pack he prepared to deal. Rostov submissively unbent the corner of his
card and, instead of the six thousand he had intended, carefully wrote
twenty-one.

"It's all the same to me," he said. "I only want to see whether you will
let me win this ten, or beat it."

Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov detested at that moment
those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy wrists, which
held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.

"You owe forty-three thousand, Count," said Dolokhov, and stretching
himself he rose from the table. "One does get tired sitting so long," he
added.

"Yes, I'm tired too," said Rostov.

Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for him to
jest.

"When am I to receive the money, Count?"

Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room.

"I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?" he said.

"I say, Rostov," said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas
straight in the eyes, "you know the saying, 'Lucky in love, unlucky at
cards.' Your cousin is in love with you, I know."

"Oh, it's terrible to feel oneself so in this man's power," thought
Rostov. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father and mother
by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be to escape it
all, and felt that Dolokhov knew that he could save him from all this
shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a cat does with a
mouse.

"Your cousin..." Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted him.

"My cousin has nothing to do with this and it's not necessary to mention
her!" he exclaimed fiercely.

"Then when am I to have it?"

"Tomorrow," replied Rostov and left the room.




CHAPTER XV

To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult, but to
go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father, confess and
ask for money he had no right to after giving his word of honor, was
terrible.

At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after returning
from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round the clavichord.
As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that poetic atmosphere
of love which pervaded the Rostov household that winter and, now after
Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed to have grown thicker round
Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a thunderstorm. Sonya and
Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had worn at the theater, looking
pretty and conscious of it, were standing by the clavichord, happy and
smiling. Vera was playing chess with Shinshin in the drawing room. The
old countess, waiting for the return of her husband and son, sat playing
patience with the old gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov,
with sparkling eyes and ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking
chords with his short fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling
as he sang, with his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called
"Enchantress," which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit
music:


Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre What magic power is this recalls
me still? What spark has set my inmost soul on fire, What is this bliss
that makes my fingers thrill?

He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with his sparkling black-
agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha.

"Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another verse," she said,
without noticing Nicholas.

"Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas, glancing into
the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother with the old lady.

"Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running up to him.

"Is Papa at home?" he asked.

"I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without answering him. "We are
enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my sake!
Did you know?"

"No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya.

"Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called the old countess from
the drawing room.

Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently at her
table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the dancing
room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to persuade
Natasha to sing.

"All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's no good making excuses
now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla--I entweat you!"

The countess glanced at her silent son.

"What is the matter?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually asked the same
question. "Will Papa be back soon?"

"I expect so."

"Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it! Where am I
to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing room where the
clavichord stood.

Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to Denisov's
favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing. Denisov was looking
at her with enraptured eyes.

Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.

"Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's nothing to
be happy about!" thought he.

Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.

"My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my brain is
the only thing left me--not singing!" his thoughts ran on. "Go away? But
where to? It's one--let them sing!"

He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov and the girls
and avoiding their eyes.

"Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed on him seemed to
ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.

Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick instinct, had
instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed it,
she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from sorrow,
sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself as young
people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my enjoyment by
sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to herself: "No,
I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as I am."

"Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle of the room, where she
considered the resonance was best.

Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as ballet
dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her toes,
stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.

"Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with which
Denisov followed her.

"And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas, looking at his
sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?"

Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her
eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her
surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may
produce at the same intervals and hold for the same time, but which
leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill
you and make you weep.

Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously,
mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She no longer sang
as a child, there was no longer in her singing that comical, childish,
painstaking effect that had been in it before; but she did not yet sing
well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her said: "It is not trained,
but it is a beautiful voice that must be trained." Only they generally
said this some time after she had finished singing. While that untrained
voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions, was
sounding, even the connoisseurs said nothing, but only delighted in it
and wished to hear it again. In her voice there was a virginal
freshness, an unconsciousness of her own powers, and an as yet untrained
velvety softness, which so mingled with her lack of art in singing that
it seemed as if nothing in that voice could be altered without spoiling
it.

"What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely opened
eyes. "What has happened to her? How she is singing today!" And suddenly
the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the next note, the
next phrase, and everything in the world was divided into three beats:
"Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one, two, three...
One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... One. "Oh, this
senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas. "All this misery, and money,
and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor--it's all nonsense... but this is
real.... Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest! Now then, darling! How
will she take that si? She's taken it! Thank God!" And without noticing
that he was singing, to strengthen the si he sung a second, a third
below the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did I really take it? How
fortunate!" he thought.

Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was finest
in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from everything else in
the world and above everything in the world. "What were losses, and
Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob
and yet be happy..."




CHAPTER XVI

It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from music as he did
that day. But no sooner had Natasha finished her barcarolle than reality
again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and went
downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old count
came in from his club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing him
drive up, went to meet him.

"Well--had a good time?" said the old count, smiling gaily and proudly
at his son.

Nicholas tried to say "Yes," but could not: and he nearly burst into
sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son's
condition.

"Ah, it can't be avoided!" thought Nicholas, for the first and last
time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him feel ashamed
of himself, he said, as if merely asking his father to let him have the
carriage to drive to town:

"Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting. I
need some money."

"Dear me!" said his father, who was in a specially good humor. "I told
you it would not be enough. How much?"

"Very much," said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless smile,
for which he was long unable to forgive himself, "I have lost a little,
I mean a good deal, a great deal--forty three thousand."

"What! To whom?... Nonsense!" cried the count, suddenly reddening with
an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.

"I promised to pay tomorrow," said Nicholas.

"Well!..." said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking
helplessly on the sofa.

"It can't be helped It happens to everyone!" said the son, with a bold,
free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as a
worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his crime. He
longed to kiss his father's hands and kneel to beg his forgiveness, but
said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it happens to everyone!

The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son's words and began
bustlingly searching for something.

"Yes, yes," he muttered, "it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to
raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?"

And with a furtive glance at his son's face, the count went out of the
room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at all
expected this.

"Papa! Pa-pa!" he called after him, sobbing, "forgive me!" And seizing
his father's hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into tears.

While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and
daughter were having one not less important. Natasha came running to her
mother, quite excited.

"Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..."

"Made what?"

"Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!" she exclaimed.

The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To whom? To
this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so long ago was playing with dolls
and who was still having lessons.

"Don't, Natasha! What nonsense!" she said, hoping it was a joke.

"Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact," said Natasha indignantly.
"I come to ask you what to do, and you call it 'nonsense!'"

The countess shrugged her shoulders.

"If it is true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a proposal, tell him
he is a fool, that's all!"

"No, he's not a fool!" replied Natasha indignantly and seriously.

"Well then, what do you want? You're all in love nowadays. Well, if you
are in love, marry him!" said the countess, with a laugh of annoyance.
"Good luck to you!"

"No, Mamma, I'm not in love with him, I suppose I'm not in love with
him."

"Well then, tell him so."

"Mamma, are you cross? Don't be cross, dear! Is it my fault?"

"No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?" said
the countess smiling.

"No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It's all very well
for you," said Natasha, with a responsive smile. "You should have seen
how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came out
accidently."

"Well, all the same, you must refuse him."

"No, I mustn't. I am so sorry for him! He's so nice."

"Well then, accept his offer. It's high time for you to be married,"
answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.

"No, Mamma, but I'm so sorry for him. I don't know how I'm to say it."

"And there's nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself," said
the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this little
Natasha as grown up.

"No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you'll listen at
the door," and Natasha ran across the drawing room to the dancing hall,
where Denisov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord with his
face in his hands.

He jumped up at the sound of her light step.

"Nataly," he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, "decide my fate.
It is in your hands."

"Vasili Dmitrich, I'm so sorry for you!... No, but you are so nice...
but it won't do...not that... but as a friend, I shall always love you."

Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did not
understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this instant, they
heard the quick rustle of the countess' dress. She came up to them.

"Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor," she said, with an
embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denisov--"but my daughter
is so young, and I thought that, as my son's friend, you would have
addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would not have obliged
me to give this refusal."

"Countess..." said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He
tried to say more, but faltered.

Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She began to
sob aloud.

"Countess, I have done w'ong," Denisov went on in an unsteady voice,
"but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I
would give my life twice over..." He looked at the countess, and seeing
her severe face said: "Well, good-by, Countess," and kissing her hand,
he left the room with quick resolute strides, without looking at
Natasha.

Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He did not wish to stay another day in
Moscow. All Denisov's Moscow friends gave him a farewell entertainment
at the gypsies', with the result that he had no recollection of how he
was put in the sleigh or of the first three stages of his journey.

After Denisov's departure, Rostov spent another fortnight in Moscow,
without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could
not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls' room.

Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she
wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her
love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of
her.

He filled the girls' albums with verses and music, and having at last
sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and received his
receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking leave of any of
his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which was already in Poland.

BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07




CHAPTER I

After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the
Torzhok post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster
would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,
he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big
feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.

"Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and
tea?" asked his valet.

Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had
begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same
question--one so important that he took no notice of what went on around
him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to Petersburg
earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at this station,
but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it was a matter of
indifference whether he remained there for a few hours or for the rest
of his life.

The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling Torzhok
embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without changing
his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his spectacles unable
to understand what they wanted or how they could go on living without
having solved the problems that so absorbed him. He had been engrossed
by the same thoughts ever since the day he returned from Sokolniki after
the duel and had spent that first agonizing, sleepless night. But now,
in the solitude of the journey, they seized him with special force. No
matter what he thought about, he always returned to these same questions
which he could not solve and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was
as if the thread of the chief screw which held his life together were
stripped, so that the screw could not get in or out, but went on turning
uselessly in the same place.

The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his excellency to
wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let his excellency
have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying and only wanted
to get more money from the traveler.

"Is this good or bad?" Pierre asked himself. "It is good for me, bad for
another traveler, and for himself it's unavoidable, because he needs
money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a thrashing
for letting a private traveler have the courier horses. But the officer
thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as possible. And I,"
continued Pierre, "shot Dolokhov because I considered myself injured,
and Louis XVI was executed because they considered him a criminal, and a
year later they executed those who executed him--also for some reason.
What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate? What does
one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What power
governs all?"

There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not
a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: "You'll
die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease asking." But
dying was also dreadful.

The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering her
wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of
rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered
cloak looking timidly at me," he thought. "And what does she want the
money for? As if that money could add a hair's breadth to happiness or
peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me less a prey to
evil and death?--death which ends all and must come today or tomorrow--
at any rate, in an instant as compared with eternity." And again he
twisted the screw with the stripped thread, and again it turned
uselessly in the same place.

His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters, by
Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous
struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. "And why did she resist her
seducer when she loved him?" he thought. "God could not have put into
her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife--as she once
was--did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has been found
out, nothing discovered," Pierre again said to himself. "All we can know
is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom."

Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and
repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre
found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.

"I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this
gentleman," said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another
traveler, also detained for lack of horses.

The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old man,
with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite
grayish color.

Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a bed that
had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the newcomer, who,
with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off his wraps with the
aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With a pair of felt boots
on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn, nankeen-covered, sheepskin
coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa, leaned back his big head with
its broad temples and close-cropped hair, and looked at Bezukhov. The
stern, shrewd, and penetrating expression of that look struck Pierre. He
felt a wish to speak to the stranger, but by the time he had made up his
mind to ask him a question about the roads, the traveler had closed his
eyes. His shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of
them Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a
death's head. The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as
it seemed to Pierre, sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant
was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache,
evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never grown.
This active old servant was unpacking the traveler's canteen and
preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything was
ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled a
tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to whom
he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the need,
even the inevitability, of entering into conversation with this
stranger.

The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down, * with an
unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be
wanted.


* To indicate he did not want more tea.

"No. Give me the book," said the stranger.

The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional work,
and the traveler became absorbed in it. Pierre looked at him. All at
once the stranger closed the book, putting in a marker, and again,
leaning with his arms on the back of the sofa, sat in his former
position with his eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not time to
turn away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady and
severe gaze straight on Pierre's face.

Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but the bright old
eyes attracted him irresistibly.




CHAPTER II

"I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I am not
mistaken," said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice.

Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles.

"I have heard of you, my dear sir," continued the stranger, "and of your
misfortune." He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to say--"Yes,
misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what happened to you in
Moscow was a misfortune."--"I regret it very much, my dear sir."

Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed, bent
forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile.

"I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but for
greater reasons."

He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa by way
of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt reluctant
to enter into conversation with this old man, but, submitting to him
involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him.

"You are unhappy, my dear sir," the stranger continued. "You are young
and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my power."

"Oh, yes!" said Pierre, with a forced smile. "I am very grateful to you.
Where are you traveling from?"

The stranger's face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but in
spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were
irresistibly attractive to Pierre.

"But if for reason you don't feel inclined to talk to me," said the old
man, "say so, my dear sir." And he suddenly smiled, in an unexpected and
tenderly paternal way.

"Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to make your
acquaintance," said Pierre. And again, glancing at the stranger's hands,
he looked more closely at the ring, with its skull--a masonic sign.

"Allow me to ask," he said, "are you a Mason?"

"Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons," said the stranger,
looking deeper and deeper into Pierre's eyes. "And in their name and my
own I hold out a brotherly hand to you."

"I am afraid," said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between the confidence
the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his own habit of
ridiculing the masonic beliefs--"I am afraid I am very far from
understanding--how am I to put it?--I am afraid my way of looking at the
world is so opposed to yours that we shall not understand one another."

"I know your outlook," said the Mason, "and the view of life you
mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts,
is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit
of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if I
had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of life is a
regrettable delusion."

"Just as I may suppose you to be deluded," said Pierre, with a faint
smile.

"I should never dare to say that I know the truth," said the Mason,
whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision and firmness.
"No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone
with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our
forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a
worthy dwelling place of the Great God," he added, and closed his eyes.

"I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe in God,"
said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it essential to
speak the whole truth.

The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with
millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he, poor
man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy.

"Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir," said the Mason. "You cannot
know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy."

"Yes, yes, I am unhappy," assented Pierre. "But what am I to do?"

"You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You do not
know Him, but He is here, He is in me, He is in my words, He is in thee,
and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just uttered!" pronounced
the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice.

He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself.

"If He were not," he said quietly, "you and I would not be speaking of
Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we speaking? Whom hast thou
denied?" he suddenly asked with exulting austerity and authority in his
voice. "Who invented Him, if He did not exist? Whence came thy
conception of the existence of such an incomprehensible Being? didst
thou, and why did the whole world, conceive the idea of the existence of
such an incomprehensible Being, a Being all-powerful, eternal, and
infinite in all His attributes?..."

He stopped and remained silent for a long time.

Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.

"He exists, but to understand Him is hard," the Mason began again,
looking not at Pierre but straight before him, and turning the leaves of
his book with his old hands which from excitement he could not keep
still. "If it were a man whose existence thou didst doubt I could bring
him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to thee. But how
can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence, His infinity, and
all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts his eyes that he may not
see or understand Him and may not see or understand his own vileness and
sinfulness?" He paused again. "Who art thou? Thou dreamest that thou art
wise because thou couldst utter those blasphemous words," he went on,
with a somber and scornful smile. "And thou art more foolish and
unreasonable than a little child, who, playing with the parts of a
skillfully made watch, dares to say that, as he does not understand its
use, he does not believe in the master who made it. To know Him is
hard.... For ages, from our forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to
attain that knowledge and are still infinitely far from our aim; but in
our lack of understanding we see only our weakness and His
greatness...."

Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason's face with
shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning him, but believing with
his whole soul what the stranger said. Whether he accepted the wise
reasoning contained in the Mason's words, or believed as a child
believes, in the speaker's tone of conviction and earnestness, or the
tremor of the speaker's voice--which sometimes almost broke--or those
brilliant aged eyes grown old in this conviction, or the calm firmness
and certainty of his vocation, which radiated from his whole being (and
which struck Pierre especially by contrast with his own dejection and
hopelessness)--at any rate, Pierre longed with his whole soul to believe
and he did believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort, regeneration,
and return to life.

"He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life," said the Mason.

"I do not understand," said Pierre, feeling with dismay doubts
reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness, in
the Mason's arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him. "I
don't understand," he said, "how it is that the mind of man cannot
attain the knowledge of which you speak."

The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile.

"The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish to
imbibe," he said. "Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure vessel
and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of myself can I
retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive."

"Yes, yes, that is so," said Pierre joyfully.

"The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those worldly
sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into which
intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one. The
highest wisdom has but one science--the science of the whole--the
science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it. To receive
that science it is necessary to purify and renew one's inner self, and
so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to perfect one's
self. And to attain this end, we have the light called conscience that
God has implanted in our souls."

"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.

"Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask
thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained
relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich, you
are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all these
good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?"

"No, I hate my life," Pierre muttered, wincing.

"Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as thou art
purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir. How
have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving
everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have become
the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you done for
your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of thousands of
slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally? No! You have
profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is what you have
done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of service to your
neighbor? No! You have spent your life in idleness. Then you married, my
dear sir--took on yourself responsibility for the guidance of a young
woman; and what have you done? You have not helped her to find the way
of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an abyss of deceit and
misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and you say you do not know
God and hate your life. There is nothing strange in that, my dear sir!"

After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse, again
leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Pierre
looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face and moved
his lips without uttering a sound. He wished to say, "Yes, a vile, idle,
vicious life!" but dared not break the silence.

The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called his
servant.

"How about the horses?" he asked, without looking at Pierre.

"The exchange horses have just come," answered the servant. "Will you
not rest here?"

"No, tell them to harness."

"Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me
all, and without promising to help me?" thought Pierre, rising with
downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at
the Mason. "Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a contemptible
and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not want to,"
thought Pierre. "But this man knows the truth and, if he wished to,
could disclose it to me."

Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The
traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began
fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezukhov, and
said in a tone of indifferent politeness:

"Where are you going to now, my dear sir?"

"I?... I'm going to Petersburg," answered Pierre, in a childlike,
hesitating voice. "I thank you. I agree with all you have said. But do
not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole soul I wish to be what you
would have me be, but I have never had help from anyone.... But it is I,
above all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me, and
perhaps I may..."

Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.

The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently considering.

"Help comes from God alone," he said, "but such measure of help as our
Order can bestow it will render you, my dear sir. You are going to
Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski" (he took out his notebook and
wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four). "Allow me
to give you a piece of advice. When you reach the capital, first of all
devote some time to solitude and self-examination and do not resume your
former way of life. And now I wish you a good journey, my dear sir," he
added, seeing that his servant had entered... "and success."

The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre saw from the
postmaster's book. Bazdeev had been one of the best-known Freemasons and
Martinists, even in Novikov's time. For a long while after he had gone,
Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and down the room,
pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous sense of beginning
anew pictured to himself the blissful, irreproachable, virtuous future
that seemed to him so easy. It seemed to him that he had been vicious
only because he had somehow forgotten how good it is to be virtuous. Not
a trace of his former doubts remained in his soul. He firmly believed in
the possibility of the brotherhood of men united in the aim of
supporting one another in the path of virtue, and that is how
Freemasonry presented itself to him.




CHAPTER III

On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his arrival, he
went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas a Kempis, whose book
had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing he continually realized
as he read that book: the joy, hitherto unknown to him, of believing in
the possibility of attaining perfection, and in the possibility of
active brotherly love among men, which Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to
him. A week after his arrival, the young Polish count, Willarski, whom
Pierre had known slightly in Petersburg society, came into his room one
evening in the official and ceremonious manner in which Dolokhov's
second had called on him, and, having closed the door behind him and
satisfied himself that there was nobody else in the room, addressed
Pierre.

"I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count," he said without
sitting down. "A person of very high standing in our Brotherhood has
made application for you to be received into our Order before the usual
term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I consider it a sacred
duty to fulfill that person's wishes. Do you wish to enter the
Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?"

The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always before met
at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most brilliant women,
surprised Pierre.

"Yes, I do wish it," said he.

Willarski bowed his head.

"One more question, Count," he said, "which I beg you to answer in all
sincerity--not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you
renounced your former convictions--do you believe in God?"

Pierre considered.

"Yes... yes, I believe in God," he said.

"In that case..." began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him.

"Yes, I do believe in God," he repeated.

"In that case we can go," said Willarski. "My carriage is at your
service."

Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre's inquiries as to
what he must do and how he should answer, Willarski only replied that
brothers more worthy than he would test him and that Pierre had only to
tell the truth.

Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the Lodge had its
headquarters, and having ascended a dark staircase, they entered a small
well-lit anteroom where they took off their cloaks without the aid of a
servant. From there they passed into another room. A man in strange
attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him, said
something to him in French in an undertone and then went up to a small
wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments such as he had never seen
before. Having taken a kerchief from the cupboard, Willarski bound
Pierre's eyes with it and tied it in a knot behind, catching some hairs
painfully in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed him, and
taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in the knot hurt
Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face and a shamefaced smile.
His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a puckered, though
smiling face, moved after Willarski with uncertain, timid steps.

Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped.

"Whatever happens to you," he said, "you must bear it all manfully if
you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood." (Pierre nodded
affirmatively.) "When you hear a knock at the door, you will uncover
your eyes," added Willarski. "I wish you courage and success," and,
pressing Pierre's hand, he went out.

Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice he
shrugged his shoulders and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if
wishing to take it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent
with his eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb, his
legs almost gave way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He
experienced a variety of most complex sensations. He felt afraid of what
would happen to him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He felt
curious to know what was going to happen and what would be revealed to
him; but most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had come when he
would at last start on that path of regeneration and on the actively
virtuous life of which he had been dreaming since he met Joseph
Alexeevich. Loud knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took the bandage
off his eyes and glanced around him. The room was in black darkness,
only a small lamp was burning inside something white. Pierre went nearer
and saw that the lamp stood on a black table on which lay an open book.
The book was the Gospel, and the white thing with the lamp inside was a
human skull with its cavities and teeth. After reading the first words
of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with
God," Pierre went round the table and saw a large open box filled with
something. It was a coffin with bones inside. He was not at all
surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter on an entirely new life quite
unlike the old one, he expected everything to be unusual, even more
unusual than what he was seeing. A skull, a coffin, the Gospel--it
seemed to him that he had expected all this and even more. Trying to
stimulate his emotions he looked around. "God, death, love, the
brotherhood of man," he kept saying to himself, associating these words
with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened and someone came in.

By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed, he saw
a rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the
darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the
table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.

This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his chest and
part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which rose a high
white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit up from
below.

"For what have you come hither?" asked the newcomer, turning in Pierre's
direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. "Why have you, who do
not believe in the truth of the light and who have not seen the light,
come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue, enlightenment?"

At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre felt a
sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his boyhood at
confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially a complete
stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man. With bated
breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by which name the
brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the Brotherhood was
known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor a man he knew,
Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think that the newcomer was an
acquaintance--he wished him simply a brother and a virtuous instructor.
For a long time he could not utter a word, so that the Rhetor had to
repeat his question.

"Yes... I... I... desire regeneration," Pierre uttered with difficulty.

"Very well," said Smolyaninov, and went on at once: "Have you any idea
of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach your aim?"
said he quietly and quickly.

"I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration," said Pierre,
with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his
excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in
Russian.

"What is your conception of Freemasonry?"

"I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men who
have virtuous aims," said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the inadequacy of
his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he spoke. "I imagine..."

"Good!" said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with this answer.
"Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in religion?"

"No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it," said Pierre, so
softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him what he was
saying. "I have been an atheist," answered Pierre.

"You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in your life,
therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not so?" said the Rhetor,
after a moment's pause.

"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.

The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his breast,
and began to speak.

"Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order," he said, "and
if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood with
profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation on which
it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the preservation and
handing on to posterity of a certain important mystery... which has come
down to us from the remotest ages, even from the first man--a mystery on
which perhaps the fate of mankind depends. But since this mystery is of
such a nature that nobody can know or use it unless he be prepared by
long and diligent self-purification, not everyone can hope to attain it
quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim, that of preparing our members as
much as possible to reform their hearts, to purify and enlighten their
minds, by means handed on to us by tradition from those who have striven
to attain this mystery, and thereby to render them capable of receiving
it.

"By purifying and regenerating our members we try, thirdly, to improve
the whole human race, offering it in our members an example of piety and
virtue, and thereby try with all our might to combat the evil which
sways the world. Think this over and I will come to you again."

"To combat the evil which sways the world..." Pierre repeated, and a
mental image of his future activity in this direction rose in his mind.
He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and he
addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself
vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and deed,
imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the three objects
mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving mankind,
especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery mentioned by the
Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem to him essential,
and the second aim, that of purifying and regenerating himself, did not
much interest him because at that moment he felt with delight that he
was already perfectly cured of his former faults and was ready for all
that was good.

Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of the
seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon's temple,
which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These virtues were:
1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order. 2. Obedience to
those of higher ranks in the Order. 3. Morality. 4. Love of mankind. 5.
Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death.

"In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death," the
Rhetor said, "to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but
as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue from
this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense and
peace."

"Yes, that must be so," thought Pierre, when after these words the
Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. "It must be so,
but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which is only
now gradually opening before me." But five of the other virtues which
Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt already in his
soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind, and especially
obedience--which did not even seem to him a virtue, but a joy. (He now
felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to submit his will
to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot what the seventh
virtue was and could not recall it.

The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and asked Pierre
whether he was still firm in his intention and determined to submit to
all that would be required of him.

"I am ready for everything," said Pierre.

"I must also inform you," said the Rhetor, "that our Order delivers its
teaching not in words only but also by other means, which may perhaps
have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after wisdom and virtue
than mere words. This chamber with what you see therein should already
have suggested to your heart, if it is sincere, more than words could
do. You will perhaps also see in your further initiation a like method
of enlightenment. Our Order imitates the ancient societies that
explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A hieroglyph," said the
Rhetor, "is an emblem of something not cognizable by the senses but
which possesses qualities resembling those of the symbol."

Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared not speak. He
listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from all he said that his
ordeal was about to begin.

"If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation," said the Rhetor
coming closer to Pierre. "In token of generosity I ask you to give me
all your valuables."

"But I have nothing here," replied Pierre, supposing that he was asked
to give up all he possessed.

"What you have with you: watch, money, rings...."

Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could not manage for
some time to get the wedding ring off his fat finger. When that had been
done, the Rhetor said:

"In token of obedience, I ask you to undress."

Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to the
Rhetor's instructions. The Mason drew the shirt back from Pierre's left
breast, and stooping down pulled up the left leg of his trousers to
above the knee. Pierre hurriedly began taking off his right boot also
and was going to tuck up the other trouser leg to save this stranger the
trouble, but the Mason told him that was not necessary and gave him a
slipper for his left foot. With a childlike smile of embarrassment,
doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on his face against his will,
Pierre stood with his arms hanging down and legs apart, before his
brother Rhetor, and awaited his further commands.

"And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me your chief
passion," said the latter.

"My passion! I have had so many," replied Pierre.

"That passion which more than all others caused you to waver on the path
of virtue," said the Mason.

Pierre paused, seeking a reply.

"Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger? Women?" He
went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to give
the pre-eminence.

"Women," he said in a low, scarcely audible voice.

The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing after this
answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking the kerchief that lay
on the table, again bound his eyes.

"For the last time I say to you--turn all your attention upon yourself,
put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness, not in passion but in
your own heart. The source of blessedness is not without us but
within...."

Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing source
of blessedness which now flooded his heart with glad emotion.




CHAPTER IV

Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre, not
the Rhetor but Pierre's sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized by his
voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his resolution Pierre
replied: "Yes, yes, I agree," and with a beaming, childlike smile, his
fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and timidly in one slippered and
one booted foot, he advanced, while Willarski held a sword to his bare
chest. He was conducted from that room along passages that turned
backwards and forwards and was at last brought to the doors of the
Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was answered by the masonic knock with
mallets, the doors opened before them. A bass voice (Pierre was still
blindfolded) questioned him as to who he was, when and where he was
born, and so on. Then he was again led somewhere still blindfolded, and
as they went along he was told allegories of the toils of his
pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of the Eternal Architect of the
universe, and of the courage with which he should endure toils and
dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre noticed that he was spoken of
now as the "Seeker," now as the "Sufferer," and now as the "Postulant,"
to the accompaniment of various knockings with mallets and swords. As he
was being led up to some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty
among his conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers
and one of them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet.
After that they took his right hand, placed it on something, and told
him to hold a pair of compasses to his left breast with the other hand
and to repeat after someone who read aloud an oath of fidelity to the
laws of the Order. The candles were then extinguished and some spirit
lighted, as Pierre knew by the smell, and he was told that he would now
see the lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes and, by the
faint light of the burning spirit, Pierre, as in a dream, saw several
men standing before him, wearing aprons like the Rhetor's and holding
swords in their hands pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man
whose white shirt was stained with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved
forward with his breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce it.
But the swords were drawn back from him and he was at once blindfolded
again.

"Now thou hast seen the lesser light," uttered a voice. Then the candles
were relit and he was told that he would see the full light; the bandage
was again removed and more than ten voices said together: "Sic transit
gloria mundi."

Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the room
and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black sat some
twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some of them
Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President's chair sat a
young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from his neck.
On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had met at Anna Pavlovna's
two years before. There were also present a very distinguished dignitary
and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the Kuragins'. All maintained
a solemn silence, listening to the words of the President, who held a
mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was a star-shaped light. At one
side of the table was a small carpet with various figures worked upon
it, at the other was something resembling an altar on which lay a
Testament and a skull. Round it stood seven large candlesticks like
those used in churches. Two of the brothers led Pierre up to the altar,
placed his feet at right angles, and bade him lie down, saying that he
must prostrate himself at the Gates of the Temple.

"He must first receive the trowel," whispered one of the brothers.

"Oh, hush, please!" said another.

Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted eyes without
obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his mind. "Where am I? What am I
doing? Aren't they laughing at me? Shan't I be ashamed to remember
this?" But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at the
serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone
through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast at
his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling,
prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the
feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before. When
he had lain there some time, he was told to get up, and a white leather
apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a trowel
and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand Master addressed him. He
told him that he should try to do nothing to stain the whiteness of that
apron, which symbolized strength and purity; then of the unexplained
trowel, he told him to toil with it to cleanse his own heart from vice,
and indulgently to smooth with it the heart of his neighbor. As to the
first pair of gloves, a man's, he said that Pierre could not know their
meaning but must keep them. The second pair of man's gloves he was to
wear at the meetings, and finally of the third, a pair of women's
gloves, he said: "Dear brother, these woman's gloves are intended for
you too. Give them to the woman whom you shall honor most of all. This
gift will be a pledge of your purity of heart to her whom you select to
be your worthy helpmeet in Masonry." And after a pause, he added: "But
beware, dear brother, that these gloves do not deck hands that are
unclean." While the Grand Master said these last words it seemed to
Pierre that he grew embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still more
confused, blushed like a child till tears came to his eyes, began
looking about him uneasily, and an awkward pause followed.

This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to the
rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation of
all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a
trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows, and
so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs of
the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit down. The
Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very long, and
Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a state to
understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the last words
of the statutes and these remained in his mind.

"In our temples we recognize no other distinctions," read the Grand
Master, "but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any
distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother's aid whoever
he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that falleth, never
bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and courteous.
Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy happiness with thy
neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that bliss. Forgive thy
enemy, do not avenge thyself except by doing him good. Thus fulfilling
the highest law thou shalt regain traces of the ancient dignity which
thou hast lost."

He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre, who, with tears
of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not knowing how to answer the
congratulations and greetings from acquaintances that met him on all
sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all these men only
brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work with them.

The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down in
their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the necessity of
humility.

The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be performed, and
the distinguished dignitary who bore the title of "Collector of Alms"
went round to all the brothers. Pierre would have liked to subscribe all
he had, but fearing that it might look like pride subscribed the same
amount as the others.

The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre felt as if he had
returned from a long journey on which he had spent dozens of years, had
become completely changed, and had quite left behind his former habits
and way of life.




CHAPTER V

The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was sitting at
home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance of the Square,
one side of which symbolized God, another moral things, a third physical
things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now and then his
attention wandered from the book and the Square and he formed in
imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at the Lodge, he
had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the Emperor and that it
would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre proposed going to his
estates in the south and there attending to the welfare of his serfs. He
was joyfully planning this new life, when Prince Vasili suddenly entered
the room.

"My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you
quarreled with Helene, mon cher? You are under a delusion," said Prince
Vasili, as he entered. "I know all about it, and I can tell you
positively that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was before
the Jews."

Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted him.

"And why didn't you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I know
all about it and understand it all," he said. "You behaved as becomes a
man who values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won't go into
that. But consider the position in which you are placing her and me in
the eyes of society, and even of the court," he added, lowering his
voice. "She is living in Moscow and you are here. Remember, dear boy,"
and he drew Pierre's arm downwards, "it is simply a misunderstanding. I
expect you feel it so yourself. Let us write her a letter at once, and
she'll come here and all will be explained, or else, my dear boy, let me
tell you it's quite likely you'll have to suffer for it."

Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look.

"I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a keen
interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to Helene."

Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasili did
not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to speak
in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he had firmly
resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words of the masonic
statutes, "be kindly and courteous," recurred to him. He blinked, went
red, got up and sat down again, struggling with himself to do what was
for him the most difficult thing in life--to say an unpleasant thing to
a man's face, to say what the other, whoever he might be, did not
expect. He was so used to submitting to Prince Vasili's tone of careless
self-assurance that he felt he would be unable to withstand it now, but
he also felt that on what he said now his future depended--whether he
would follow the same old road, or that new path so attractively shown
him by the Masons, on which he firmly believed he would be reborn to a
new life.

"Now, dear boy," said Prince Vasili playfully, "say 'yes,' and I'll
write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf."

But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful speech, Pierre,
without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his
father, muttered in a whisper:

"Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!" And he jumped up and
opened the door for him.

"Go!" he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of
confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasili's face.

"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"

"Go!" the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili had to go without
receiving any explanation.

A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the Masons,
and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went away to his
estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and Odessa Masons
and promised to write to him and guide him in his new activity.




CHAPTER VI

The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and, in spite of the
Emperor's severity regarding duels at that time, neither the principals
nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the duel, confirmed
by Pierre's rupture with his wife, was the talk of society. Pierre who
had been regarded with patronizing condescension when he was an
illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was the best match in
Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society after his marriage--
when the marriageable daughters and their mothers had nothing to hope
from him--especially as he did not know how, and did not wish, to court
society's favor. Now he alone was blamed for what had happened, he was
said to be insanely jealous and subject like his father to fits of
bloodthirsty rage. And when after Pierre's departure Helene returned to
Petersburg, she was received by all her acquaintances not only
cordially, but even with a shade of deference due to her misfortune.
When conversation turned on her husband Helene assumed a dignified
expression, which with characteristic tact she had acquired though she
did not understand its significance. This expression suggested that she
had resolved to endure her troubles uncomplainingly and that her husband
was a cross laid upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his opinion
more openly. He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was mentioned and,
pointing to his forehead, remarked:

"A bit touched--I always said so."

"I said from the first," declared Anna Pavlovna referring to Pierre, "I
said at the time and before anyone else" (she insisted on her priority)
"that that senseless young man was spoiled by the depraved ideas of
these days. I said so even at the time when everybody was in raptures
about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and when, if you
remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my soirees. And how has
it ended? I was against this marriage even then and foretold all that
has happened."

Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of
soirees as before--such as she alone had the gift of arranging--at which
was to be found "the cream of really good society, the bloom of the
intellectual essence of Petersburg," as she herself put it. Besides this
refined selection of society Anna Pavlovna's receptions were also
distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new and
interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the state
of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court society so
dearly and distinctly indicated.

Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon's
destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstadt and the surrender
of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when our troops
had already entered Prussia and our second war with Napoleon was
beginning, Anna Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The "cream of really
good society" consisted of the fascinating Helene, forsaken by her
husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte who had just
returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a young man
referred to in that drawing room as "a man of great merit" (un homme de
beaucoup de merite), a newly appointed maid of honor and her mother, and
several other less noteworthy persons.

The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her guests that evening was
Boris Drubetskoy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from the
Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.

The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company that
evening was this:

"Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to countenance
Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance and
mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not cease
to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say to the
King of Prussia and others: 'So much the worse for you. Tu l'as voulu,
George Dandin,' that's all we have to say about it!"

When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the drawing
room, almost all the company had assembled, and the conversation, guided
by Anna Pavlovna, was about our diplomatic relations with Austria and
the hope of an alliance with her.

Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and self-possessed,
entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the uniform of an aide-de-
camp and was duly conducted to pay his respects to the aunt and then
brought back to the general circle.

Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him to
several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered description
of each.

"Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, M. Krug, the charge d'affaires from
Copenhagen--a profound intellect," and simply, "Mr. Shitov--a man of
great merit"--this of the man usually so described.

Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna's efforts, his own tastes, and the
peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had managed during his
service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a
very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to
Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He had
become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which he had
been so pleased at Olmutz and according to which an ensign might rank
incomparably higher than a general, and according to which what was
needed for success in the service was not effort or work, or courage, or
perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to get on with those who can
grant rewards, and he was himself often surprised at the rapidity of his
success and at the inability of others to understand these things. In
consequence of this discovery his whole manner of life, all his
relations with old friends, all his plans for his future, were
completely altered. He was not rich, but would spend his last groat to
be better dressed than others, and would rather deprive himself of many
pleasures than allow himself to be seen in a shabby equipage or appear
in the streets of Petersburg in an old uniform. He made friends with and
sought the acquaintance of only those above him in position and who
could therefore be of use to him. He liked Petersburg and despised
Moscow. The remembrance of the Rostovs' house and of his childish love
for Natasha was unpleasant to him and he had not once been to see the
Rostovs since the day of his departure for the army. To be in Anna
Pavlovna's drawing room he considered an important step up in the
service, and he at once understood his role, letting his hostess make
use of whatever interest he had to offer. He himself carefully scanned
each face, appraising the possibilities of establishing intimacy with
each of those present, and the advantages that might accrue. He took the
seat indicated to him beside the fair Helene and listened to the general
conversation.

"Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable that
not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure them, and
she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the actual phrase
used by the Vienna cabinet," said the Danish charge d'affaires.

"The doubt is flattering," said "the man of profound intellect," with a
subtle smile.

"We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of
Austria," said Mortemart. "The Emperor of Austria can never have thought
of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it."

"Ah, my dear vicomte," put in Anna Pavlovna, "L'Urope" (for some reason
she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined French
pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing with a
Frenchman), "L'Urope ne sera jamais notre alliee sincere." *


* "Europe will never be our sincere ally."

After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the King
of Prussia, in order to draw Boris into the conversation.

Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his turn,
but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his neighbor, the
beautiful Helene, whose eyes several times met those of the handsome
young aide-de-camp with a smile.

Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna very naturally asked
Boris to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state he
found the Prussian army. Boris, speaking with deliberation, told them in
pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies and the
court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of his own about
the facts he was recounting. For some time he engrossed the general
attention, and Anna Pavlovna felt that the novelty she had served up was
received with pleasure by all her visitors. The greatest attention of
all to Boris' narrative was shown by Helene. She asked him several
questions about his journey and seemed greatly interested in the state
of the Prussian army. As soon as he had finished she turned to him with
her usual smile.

"You absolutely must come and see me," she said in a tone that implied
that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this was
absolutely necessary.

"On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure."

Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a conversation
with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him away on the pretext that her
aunt wished to hear him.

"You know her husband, of course?" said Anna Pavlovna, closing her eyes
and indicating Helene with a sorrowful gesture. "Ah, she is such an
unfortunate and charming woman! Don't mention him before her--please
don't! It is too painful for her!"




CHAPTER VII

When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte had
the ear of the company.

Bending forward in his armchair he said: "Le Roi de Prusse!" and having
said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.

"Le Roi de Prusse?" Hippolyte said interrogatively, again laughing, and
then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna Pavlovna waited
for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to say no more she
began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the
sword of Frederick the Great.

"It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I..." she began, but
Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: "Le Roi de Prusse..." and
again, as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and said no
more.

Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte's friend, addressed him
firmly.

"Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?"

Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.

"Oh, it's nothing. I only wished to say..." (he wanted to repeat a joke
he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that evening to
get in) "I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight pour le Roi de
Prusse!"

Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or
appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody
laughed.

"Your joke is too bad, it's witty but unjust," said Anna Pavlovna,
shaking her little shriveled finger at him.

"We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right principles.
Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!" she said.

The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on the
political news. It became particularly animated toward the end of the
evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were mentioned.

"You know N-- N-- received a snuffbox with the portrait last year?" said
"the man of profound intellect." "Why shouldn't S-- S-- get the same
distinction?"

"Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor's portrait is a reward but not a
distinction," said the diplomatist--"a gift, rather."

"There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg."

"It's impossible," replied another.

"Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter...."

When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken very little all the
evening again turned to Boris, asking him in a tone of caressing
significant command to come to her on Tuesday.

"It is of great importance to me," she said, turning with a smile toward
Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the same sad smile with which she
spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Helene's wish.

It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that evening about the
Prussian army, Helene had suddenly found it necessary to see him. She
seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he came on
Tuesday.

But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene's splendid salon, Boris
received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for him to
come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to him, and
only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said unexpectedly and in a
whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face: "Come to dinner tomorrow... in
the evening. You must come.... Come!"

During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate in the
countess' house.




CHAPTER VIII

The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier. Everywhere one
heard curses on Bonaparte, "the enemy of mankind." Militiamen and
recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and from the seat of war
came contradictory news, false as usual and therefore variously
interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski, Prince Andrew, and
Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.

In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief
then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout Russia.
Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly noticeable
since the time when he thought his son had been killed, he did not think
it right to refuse a duty to which he had been appointed by the Emperor
himself, and this fresh opportunity for action gave him new energy and
strength. He was continually traveling through the three provinces
entrusted to him, was pedantic in the fulfillment of his duties, severe
to cruel with his subordinates, and went into everything down to the
minutest details himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in
mathematics from her father, and when the old prince was at home went to
his study with the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his
grandfather called him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet
nurse and nurse Savishna in the late princess' rooms and Princess Mary
spent most of the day in the nursery, taking a mother's place to her
little nephew as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed
passionately fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often deprived herself
to give her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel--as she
called her nephew--and playing with him.

Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over the
tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble monument
brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread wings ready to
fly upwards. The angel's upper lip was slightly raised as though about
to smile, and once on coming out of the chapel Prince Andrew and
Princess Mary admitted to one another that the angel's face reminded
them strangely of the little princess. But what was still stranger,
though of this Prince Andrew said nothing to his sister, was that in the
expression the sculptor had happened to give the angel's face, Prince
Andrew read the same mild reproach he had read on the face of his dead
wife: "Ah, why have you done this to me?"

Soon after Prince Andrew's return the old prince made over to him a
large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald Hills.
Partly because of the depressing memories associated with Bald Hills,
partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal to bearing with
his father's peculiarities, and partly because he needed solitude,
Prince Andrew made use of Bogucharovo, began building and spent most of
his time there.

After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved not to
continue his military service, and when the war recommenced and
everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the
recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his son
seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old man,
roused by activity, expected the best results from the new campaign,
while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the war and
secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.

On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.
Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father's
absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman who
had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and letters
for Prince Andrew.

Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the
letters to Princess Mary's apartments, but did not find him there. He
was told that the prince had gone to the nursery.

"If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought some papers," said
one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting on a child's
little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he poured drops
from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of water.

"What is it?" he said crossly, and, his hand shaking unintentionally, he
poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the mixture onto the
floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought it.

There were in the room a child's cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a table,
a child's table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew was
sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was burning on the
table, screened by a bound music book so that the light did not fall on
the cot.

"My dear," said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside the
cot where she was standing, "better wait a bit... later..."

"Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things off--
and this is what comes of it!" said Prince Andrew in an exasperated
whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.

"My dear, really... it's better not to wake him... he's asleep," said
the princess in a tone of entreaty.

Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed, wineglass
in hand.

"Perhaps we'd really better not wake him," he said hesitating.

"As you please... really... I think so... but as you please," said
Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had
prevailed. She drew her brother's attention to the maid who was calling
him in a whisper.

It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the boy
who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their household
doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town, they had
been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by sleeplessness
and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one another and
reproached and disputed with each other.

"Petrusha has come with papers from your father," whispered the maid.

Prince Andrew went out.

"Devil take them!" he muttered, and after listening to the verbal
instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his
father's letter, he returned to the nursery.

"Well?" he asked.

"Still the same. Wait, for heaven's sake. Karl Ivanich always says that
sleep is more important than anything," whispered Princess Mary with a
sigh.

Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.

"Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!" He took the glass with the drops
and again went up to the cot.

"Andrew, don't!" said Princess Mary.

But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his eyes,
and stooped glass in hand over the infant.

"But I wish it," he said. "I beg you--give it him!"

Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively and
calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed
hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and sat
down on a sofa in the next room.

He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them mechanically he
began reading. The old prince, now and then using abbreviations, wrote
in his large elongated hand on blue paper as follows:

Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful news--if
it's not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete victory over
Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing, and the
rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a German--I
congratulate him! I can't make out what the commander at Korchevo--a
certain Khandrikov--is up to; till now the additional men and provisions
have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say I'll have his head
off if everything is not here in a week. Have received another letter
about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from Petenka--he took part in it--and
it's all true. When mischief-makers don't meddle even a German beats
Buonaparte. He is said to be fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop
off to Korchevo without delay and carry out instructions!

Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It was a
closely written letter of two sheets from Bilibin. He folded it up
without reading it and reread his father's letter, ending with the
words: "Gallop off to Korchevo and carry out instructions!"

"No, pardon me, I won't go now till the child is better," thought he,
going to the door and looking into the nursery.

Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the baby.

"Ah yes, and what else did he say that's unpleasant?" thought Prince
Andrew, recalling his father's letter. "Yes, we have gained a victory
over Bonaparte, just when I'm not serving. Yes, yes, he's always poking
fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!" And he began reading Bilibin's letter
which was written in French. He read without understanding half of it,
read only to forget, if but for a moment, what he had too long been
thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of all else.




CHAPTER IX

Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and
though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms, he
described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and self-
derision genuinely Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation of
diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in Prince
Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the bile he
had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the army. The
letter was old, having been written before the battle at Preussisch-
Eylau.

"Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz," wrote Bilibin,
"as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I have
certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for me; what
I have seen during these last three months is incredible.

"I begin ab ovo. 'The enemy of the human race,' as you know, attacks the
Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only betrayed
us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but it turns out
that 'the enemy of the human race' pays no heed to our fine speeches and
in his rude and savage way throws himself on the Prussians without
giving them time to finish the parade they had begun, and in two twists
of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and installs himself in the
palace at Potsdam.

"'I most ardently desire,' writes the King of Prussia to Bonaparte,
'that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my palace in a
manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as circumstances allowed, I
have hastened to take all steps to that end. May I have succeeded!' The
Prussian generals pride themselves on being polite to the French and lay
down their arms at the first demand.

"The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the
King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender.... All
this is absolutely true.

"In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude, it
turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more, in war
on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have
everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely, a
commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success
might have been more decisive had the commander-in-chief not been so
young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozorovski and
Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us, Suvorov-
like, in a kibitka, and is received with acclamations of joy and
triumph.

"On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails are
taken to the field marshal's room, for he likes to do everything
himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those meant
for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters addressed to
him. We search, but none are to be found. The field marshal grows
impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters from the Emperor to
Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts into one of his wild
furies and rages at everyone and everything, seizes the letters, opens
them, and reads those from the Emperor addressed to others. 'Ah! So
that's the way they treat me! No confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep
an eye on me! Very well then! Get along with you!' So he writes the
famous order of the day to General Bennigsen:

'I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the army.
You have brought your army corps to Pultusk, routed: here it is exposed,
and without fuel or forage, so something must be done, and, as you
yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must think of
retreating to our frontier--which do today.'

"'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a saddle
sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite prevents my
riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on the command
to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden, having sent him my
whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising him if there is a lack
of bread, to move farther into the interior of Prussia, for only one
day's ration of bread remains, and in some regiments none at all, as
reported by the division commanders, Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all
that the peasants had has been eaten up. I myself will remain in
hospital at Ostrolenka till I recover. In regard to which I humbly
submit my report, with the information that if the army remains in its
present bivouac another fortnight there will not be a healthy man left
in it by spring.

"'Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is already
in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great and glorious
task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most gracious
permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play the part of a
secretary rather than commander in the army. My removal from the army
does not produce the slightest stir--a blind man has left it. There are
thousands such as I in Russia.'

"The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all,
isn't it logical?

"This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly
interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal's departure it
appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle.
Buxhowden is commander-in-chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen does
not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who are
within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the opportunity to
fight a battle 'on his own hand' as the Germans say. He does so. This is
the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great victory but in my
opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as you know, have a very
bad way of deciding whether a battle was won or lost. Those who retreat
after a battle have lost it is what we say; and according to that it is
we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In short, we retreat after the battle
but send a courier to Petersburg with news of a victory, and General
Bennigsen, hoping to receive from Petersburg the post of commander in
chief as a reward for his victory, does not give up the command of the
army to General Buxhowden. During this interregnum we begin a very
original and interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as
it should be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to avoid General
Buxhowden who by right of seniority should be our chief. So
energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an unfordable
river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our enemy, who at
the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden. General Buxhowden was all but
attacked and captured by a superior enemy force as a result of one of
these maneuvers that enabled us to escape him. Buxhowden pursues us--we
scuttle. He hardly crosses the river to our side before we recross to
the other. At last our enemy, Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both
generals are angry, and the result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part
and an epileptic fit on Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the
courier who carried the news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg
returns bringing our appointment as commander-in-chief, and our first
foe, Buxhowden, is vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the
second, Bonaparte. But as it turns out, just at that moment a third
enemy rises before us--namely the Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly
demanding bread, meat, biscuits, fodder, and whatnot! The stores are
empty, the roads impassable. The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of
which our last campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form
bands and scour the countryside and put everything to fire and sword.
The inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with sick,
and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our
headquarters, and the commander-in-chief has to ask for a battalion to
disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off my empty
portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give all
commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much fear
this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other."

At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while, in
spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust
Bilibin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When he
had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away. It was
not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life out
there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his eyes,
rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what he had
read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly he
thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized with
alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he was
reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and opened it.

Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from him
with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the cot.

"My dear," he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind
him.

As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was
seized by an unreasoning panic--it occurred to him that the child was
dead. All that he saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror.

"All is over," he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find it empty and
that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the curtain aside
and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could not find the baby.
At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about till he lay across the
bed with his head lower than the pillow, and was smacking his lips in
his sleep and breathing evenly.

Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had
already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught him,
tried with his lips whether the child was still feverish. The soft
forehead was moist. Prince Andrew touched the head with his hand; even
the hair was wet, so profusely had the child perspired. He was not dead,
but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent. Prince Andrew
longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his heart, this helpless
little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him, gazing at his
head and at the little arms and legs which showed under the blanket. He
heard a rustle behind him and a shadow appeared under the curtain of the
cot. He did not look round, but still gazing at the infant's face
listened to his regular breathing. The dark shadow was Princess Mary,
who had come up to the cot with noiseless steps, lifted the curtain, and
dropped it again behind her. Prince Andrew recognized her without
looking and held out his hand to her. She pressed it.

"He has perspired," said Prince Andrew.

"I was coming to tell you so."

The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his forehead
against the pillow.

Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain her
luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy that
were in them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him, slightly
catching the curtain of the cot. Each made the other a warning gesture
and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain as if not wishing
to leave that seclusion where they three were shut off from all the
world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away, ruffling his hair
against the muslin of the curtain.

"Yes, this is the one thing left me now," he said with a sigh.




CHAPTER X

Soon after his admission to the masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went to the
Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs, taking with
him full directions which he had written down for his own guidance as to
what he should do on his estates.

When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office and
explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that steps
would be taken immediately to free his serfs--and that till then they
were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their babies
were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to the serfs,
punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and hospitals,
asylums, and schools were to be established on all the estates. Some of
the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among them) listened with
alarm, supposing these words to mean that the young count was displeased
with their management and embezzlement of money, some after their first
fright were amused by Pierre's lisp and the new words they had not heard
before, others simply enjoyed hearing how the master talked, while the
cleverest among them, including the chief steward, understood from this
speech how they could best handle the master for their own ends.

The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre's intentions, but
remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go into the
general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.

Despite Count Bezukhov's enormous wealth, since he had come into an
income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a year,
Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him an
allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the
following budget:

About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank, about
30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town house,
and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was given in
pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was sent to
the countess; about 70,000 went for interest on debts. The building of a
new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in each of the last
two years, and he did not know how the rest, about 100,000 rubles, was
spent, and almost every year he was obliged to borrow. Besides this the
chief steward wrote every year telling him of fires and bad harvests, or
of the necessity of rebuilding factories and workshops. So the first
task Pierre had to face was one for which he had very little aptitude or
inclination--practical business.

He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he
felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these
consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with
them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the state
of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the necessity of
paying off the debts and undertaking new activities with serf labor, to
which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand, Pierre demanded that
steps should be taken to liberate the serfs, which the steward met by
showing the necessity of first paying off the loans from the Land Bank,
and the consequent impossibility of a speedy emancipation.

The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested selling
the forests in the province of Kostroma, the land lower down the river,
and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all of which
operations according to him were connected with such complicated
measures--the removal of injunctions, petitions, permits, and so on--
that Pierre became quite bewildered and only replied:

"Yes, yes, do so."

Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled him
to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only tried
to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The steward for
his part tried to pretend to the count that he considered these
consultations very valuable for the proprietor and troublesome to
himself.

In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened to make
his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer, the largest
landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre's greatest weakness--
the one to which he had confessed when admitted to the Lodge--were so
strong that he could not resist them. Again whole days, weeks, and
months of his life passed in as great a rush and were as much occupied
with evening parties, dinners, lunches, and balls, giving him no time
for reflection, as in Petersburg. Instead of the new life he had hoped
to lead he still lived the old life, only in new surroundings.

Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not
fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of moral
life, and that of the seven virtues he lacked two--morality and the love
of death. He consoled himself with the thought that he fulfilled another
of the precepts--that of reforming the human race--and had other
virtues--love of his neighbor, and especially generosity.

In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way he
intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his orders
had been carried out and in what state were the serfs whom God had
entrusted to his care and whom he intended to benefit.

The chief steward, who considered the young count's attempts almost
insane--unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the serfs--made
some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation of the serfs as
impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large buildings--schools,
hospitals, and asylums--on all the estates before the master arrived.
Everywhere preparations were made not for ceremonious welcomes (which he
knew Pierre would not like), but for just such gratefully religious
ones, with offerings of icons and the bread and salt of hospitality, as,
according to his understanding of his master, would touch and delude
him.

The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna
carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on
Pierre. The estates he had not before visited were each more picturesque
than the other; the serfs everywhere seemed thriving and touchingly
grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere were receptions,
which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a joyful feeling in the
depth of his heart. In one place the peasants presented him with bread
and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, asking permission,
as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits he had conferred on them,
to build a new chantry to the church at their own expense in honor of
Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In another place the women with
infants in arms met him to thank him for releasing them from hard work.
On a third estate the priest, bearing a cross, came to meet him
surrounded by children whom, by the count's generosity, he was
instructing in reading, writing, and religion. On all his estates Pierre
saw with his own eyes brick buildings erected or in course of erection,
all on one plan, for hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were soon
to be opened. Everywhere he saw the stewards' accounts, according to
which the serfs' manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the
touching thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue
coats.

What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him
with bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter and
Paul was a market village where a fair was held on St. Peter's day, and
that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had begun the
chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in that
villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did not know that
since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his land, they
did still harder work on their own land. He did not know that the priest
who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by his exactions, and
that the pupils' parents wept at having to let him take their children
and secured their release by heavy payments. He did not know that the
brick buildings, built to plan, were being built by serfs whose manorial
labor was thus increased, though lessened on paper. He did not know that
where the steward had shown him in the accounts that the serfs' payments
had been diminished by a third, their obligatory manorial work had been
increased by a half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit to his
estates and quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which he had left
Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic letters to his "brother-instructor"
as he called the Grand Master.

"How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,"
thought Pierre, "and how little attention we pay to it!"

He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at
receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do
for these simple, kindly people.

The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly
through the naive and intelligent count and played with him as with a
toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre,
pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above all
the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it was.

Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be
difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would
happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though reluctantly,
on what he thought right. The steward promised to do all in his power to
carry out the count's wishes, seeing clearly that not only would the
count never be able to find out whether all measures had been taken for
the sale of the land and forests and to release them from the Land Bank,
but would probably never even inquire and would never know that the
newly erected buildings were standing empty and that the serfs continued
to give in money and work all that other people's serfs gave--that is to
say, all that could be got out of them.




CHAPTER XI

Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest state of
mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of visiting his
friend Bolkonski, whom he had not seen for two years.

Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among fields
and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The house lay
behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and with banks
still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that stretched along
the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which were a few fir
trees.

The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables, a
bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular facade
still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly laid
out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps and a water
cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were straight, the
bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore an impress of
tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre met, in reply
to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a small newly
built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man who had looked after Prince
Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage, said that the
prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little anteroom.

Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house after
the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend in
Petersburg.

He quickly entered the small reception room with its still-unplastered
wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone farther, but Anton
ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.

"Well, what is it?" came a sharp, unpleasant voice.

"A visitor," answered Anton.

"Ask him to wait," and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed back.

Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to face
with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre
embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek
and looked at him closely.

"Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad," said Prince Andrew.

Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with surprise. He
was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly and there was a
smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and lifeless and in
spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give them a joyous and
glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner, paler, and more manly-
looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre till he got used to it
were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow indicating prolonged
concentration on some one thought.

As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged separation,
it was long before their conversation could settle on anything. They put
questions and gave brief replies about things they knew ought to be
talked over at length. At last the conversation gradually settled on
some of the topics at first lightly touched on: their past life, plans
for the future, Pierre's journeys and occupations, the war, and so on.
The preoccupation and despondency which Pierre had noticed in his
friend's look was now still more clearly expressed in the smile with
which he listened to Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful
animation of the past or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would
have liked to sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The
latter began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his
enthusiasms, dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince
Andrew's presence. He was ashamed to express his new masonic views,
which had been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour.
He checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible
desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a quite
different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.

"I can't tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly
know myself again."

"Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then," said Prince Andrew.

"Well, and you? What are your plans?"

"Plans!" repeated Prince Andrew ironically. "My plans?" he said, as if
astonished at the word. "Well, you see, I'm building. I mean to settle
here altogether next year...."

Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew's face, which
had grown much older.

"No, I meant to ask..." Pierre began, but Prince Andrew interrupted him.

"But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your travels and
all you have been doing on your estates."

Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as far
as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had been
made. Prince Andrew several times prompted Pierre's story of what he had
been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he listened not
only without interest but even as if ashamed of what Pierre was telling
him.

Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend's company and
at last became silent.

"I'll tell you what, my dear fellow," said Prince Andrew, who evidently
also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, "I am only
bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am going back to my
sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of course you know her
already," he said, evidently trying to entertain a visitor with whom he
now found nothing in common. "We will go after dinner. And would you now
like to look round my place?"

They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the political
news and common acquaintances like people who do not know each other
intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and interest only of
the new homestead he was constructing and its buildings, but even here,
while on the scaffolding, in the midst of a talk explaining the future
arrangements of the house, he interrupted himself:

"However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and then
we'll set off."

At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre's marriage.

"I was very much surprised when I heard of it," said Prince Andrew.

Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said
hurriedly: "I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you know
it is all over, and forever."

"Forever?" said Prince Andrew. "Nothing's forever."

"But you know how it all ended, don't you? You heard of the duel?"

"And so you had to go through that too!"

"One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man," said
Pierre.

"Why so?" asked Prince Andrew. "To kill a vicious dog is a very good
thing really."

"No, to kill a man is bad--wrong."

"Why is it wrong?" urged Prince Andrew. "It is not given to man to know
what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will err, and
in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong."

"What does harm to another is wrong," said Pierre, feeling with pleasure
that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was roused, had
begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought him to his present
state.

"And who has told you what is bad for another man?" he asked.

"Bad! Bad!" exclaimed Pierre. "We all know what is bad for ourselves."

"Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is
something I cannot inflict on others," said Prince Andrew, growing more
and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new outlook to
Pierre. He spoke in French. "I only know two very real evils in life:
remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of those evils. To
live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole philosophy now."

"And love of one's neighbor, and self-sacrifice?" began Pierre. "No, I
can't agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and not to have
to repent is not enough. I lived like that, I lived for myself and
ruined my life. And only now when I am living, or at least trying"
(Pierre's modesty made him correct himself) "to live for others, only
now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I shall not agree
with you, and you do not really believe what you are saying." Prince
Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile.

"When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you'll get on with her," he
said. "Perhaps you are right for yourself," he added after a short
pause, "but everyone lives in his own way. You lived for yourself and
say you nearly ruined your life and only found happiness when you began
living for others. I experienced just the reverse. I lived for glory.--
And after all what is glory? The same love of others, a desire to do
something for them, a desire for their approval.--So I lived for others,
and not almost, but quite, ruined my life. And I have become calmer
since I began to live only for myself."

"But what do you mean by living only for yourself?" asked Pierre,
growing excited. "What about your son, your sister, and your father?"

"But that's just the same as myself--they are not others," explained
Prince Andrew. "The others, one's neighbors, le prochain, as you and
Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and evil. Le
prochain--your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good."

And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He
evidently wished to draw him on.

"You are joking," replied Pierre, growing more and more excited. "What
error or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even doing a
little--though I did very little and did it very badly? What evil can
there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people like ourselves,
were growing up and dying with no idea of God and truth beyond
ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed in a
comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and
consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying
of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be
rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum
for the aged? And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a
peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give
them rest and leisure?" said Pierre, hurrying and lisping. "And I have
done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have done something
toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a good action, and
more than that, you can't make me believe that you do not think so
yourself. And the main thing is," he continued, "that I know, and know
for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is the only sure
happiness in life."

"Yes, if you put it like that it's quite a different matter," said
Prince Andrew. "I build a house and lay out a garden, and you build
hospitals. The one and the other may serve as a pastime. But what's
right and what's good must be judged by one who knows all, but not by
us. Well, you want an argument," he added, "come on then."

They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which served
as a veranda.

"Come, let's argue then," said Prince Andrew, "You talk of schools," he
went on, crooking a finger, "education and so forth; that is, you want
to raise him" (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his
cap) "from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while
it seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible, and
that is just what you want to deprive him of. I envy him, but you want
to make him what I am, without giving him my means. Then you say,
'lighten his toil.' But as I see it, physical labor is as essential to
him, as much a condition of his existence, as mental activity is to you
or me. You can't help thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning,
thoughts come and I can't sleep but toss about till dawn, because I
think and can't help thinking, just as he can't help plowing and mowing;
if he didn't, he would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could
not stand his terrible physical labor but should die of it in a week, so
he could not stand my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die. The
third thing--what else was it you talked about?" and Prince Andrew
crooked a third finger. "Ah, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit, he
is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him up. He will drag
about as a cripple, a burden to everybody, for another ten years. It
would be far easier and simpler for him to die. Others are being born
and there are plenty of them as it is. It would be different if you
grudged losing a laborer--that's how I regard him--but you want to cure
him from love of him. And he does not want that. And besides, what a
notion that medicine ever cured anyone! Killed them, yes!" said he,
frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre.

Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that it was
evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he spoke
readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long time. His
glance became more animated as his conclusions became more hopeless.

"Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!" said Pierre. "I don't understand how
one can live with such ideas. I had such moments myself not long ago, in
Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I collapsed so that I don't
live at all--everything seems hateful to me... myself most of all. Then
I don't eat, don't wash... and how is it with you?..."

"Why not wash? That is not cleanly," said Prince Andrew; "on the
contrary one must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm
alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best I can
without hurting others."

"But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would sit
without moving, undertaking nothing...."

"Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do nothing,
but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me the honor to
choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to get out of it.
They could not understand that I have not the necessary qualifications
for it--the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness necessary for the
position. Then there's this house, which must be built in order to have
a nook of one's own in which to be quiet. And now there's this
recruiting."

"Why aren't you serving in the army?"

"After Austerlitz!" said Prince Andrew gloomily. "No, thank you very
much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active Russian
army. And I won't--not even if Bonaparte were here at Smolensk
threatening Bald Hills--even then I wouldn't serve in the Russian army!
Well, as I was saying," he continued, recovering his composure, "now
there's this recruiting. My father is chief in command of the Third
District, and my only way of avoiding active service is to serve under
him."

"Then you are serving?"

"I am."

He paused a little while.

"And why do you serve?"

"Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men of
his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he has too
energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited power that he is
terrible, and now he has this authority of a commander-in-chief of the
recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had been two hours late a
fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster's clerk at Yukhnovna
hanged," said Prince Andrew with a smile. "So I am serving because I
alone have any influence with my father, and now and then can save him
from actions which would torment him afterwards."

"Well, there you see!"

"Yes, but it is not as you imagine," Prince Andrew continued. "I did
not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk who
had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been very
glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father--that again is for
myself."

Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered feverishly
while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there was no
desire to do good to his neighbor.

"There now, you wish to liberate your serfs," he continued; "that is a
very good thing, but not for you--I don't suppose you ever had anyone
flogged or sent to Siberia--and still less for your serfs. If they are
beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don't suppose they are any the
worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and the stripes on
their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it is a good thing
for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon themselves,
stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being able to
inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people I pity, and
for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You may not have
seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those traditions of
unlimited power, in time when they grow more irritable, become cruel and
harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot restrain themselves and grow more
and more miserable."

Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking
that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his father's
case.

He did not reply.

"So that's what I'm sorry for--human dignity, peace of mind, purity, and
not the serfs' backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave as you may,
always remain the same backs and foreheads."

"No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you," said
Pierre.




CHAPTER XII

In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and drove to
Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the silence now and
then with remarks which showed that he was in a good temper.

Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making in
his husbandry.

Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and
apparently immersed in his own thoughts.

He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did not
see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid, enlighten, and
raise him. But as soon as he thought of what he should say, he felt that
Prince Andrew with one word, one argument, would upset all his teaching,
and he shrank from beginning, afraid of exposing to possible ridicule
what to him was precious and sacred.

"No, but why do you think so?" Pierre suddenly began, lowering his head
and looking like a bull about to charge, "why do you think so? You
should not think so."

"Think? What about?" asked Prince Andrew with surprise.

"About life, about man's destiny. It can't be so. I myself thought like
that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don't smile.
Freemasonry is not a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought it was:
Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal, aspects of
humanity."

And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince
Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed
from the bonds of State and Church, a teaching of equality, brotherhood,
and love.

"Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the rest is
a dream," said Pierre. "Understand, my dear fellow, that outside this
union all is filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree with you that
nothing is left for an intelligent and good man but to live out his
life, like you, merely trying not to harm others. But make our
fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood, give yourself up
to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once feel yourself, as I
have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible chain the beginning of
which is hidden in heaven," said Pierre.

Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence to
Pierre's words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels prevented
his catching what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it, and by the
peculiar glow that came into Prince Andrew's eyes and by his silence,
Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and that Prince Andrew would
not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.

They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they had to
cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed on it,
they also stepped on the raft.

Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed silently at
the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.

"Well, what do you think about it?" Pierre asked. "Why are you silent?"

"What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It's all very well....
You say: join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of life, the
destiny of man, and the laws which govern the world. But who are we?
Men. How is it you know everything? Why do I alone not see what you see?
You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I don't see it."

Pierre interrupted him.

"Do you believe in a future life?" he asked.

"A future life?" Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no time
to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as he knew
Prince Andrew's former atheistic convictions.

"You say you can't see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor could
I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the end of
everything. On earth, here on this earth" (Pierre pointed to the
fields), "there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the universe,
in the whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we who are now
the children of earth are--eternally--children of the whole universe.
Don't I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast harmonious whole?
Don't I feel that I form one link, one step, between the lower and
higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of beings in whom the
Deity--the Supreme Power if you prefer the term--is manifest? If I see,
clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to man, why should I suppose
it breaks off at me and does not go farther and farther? I feel that I
cannot vanish, since nothing vanishes in this world, but that I shall
always exist and always have existed. I feel that beyond me and above me
there are spirits, and that in this world there is truth."

"Yes, that is Herder's theory," said Prince Andrew, "but it is not that
which can convince me, dear friend--life and death are what convince.
What convinces is when one sees a being dear to one, bound up with one's
own life, before whom one was to blame and had hoped to make it right"
(Prince Andrew's voice trembled and he turned away), "and suddenly that
being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to exist.... Why? It
cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe there is.... That's
what convinces, that is what has convinced me," said Prince Andrew.

"Yes, yes, of course," said Pierre, "isn't that what I'm saying?"

"No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the
necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with
someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere, and
you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have looked
in...."

"Well, that's it then! You know that there is a there and there is a
Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is--God."

Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long since been
taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The sun had sunk half
below the horizon and an evening frost was starring the puddles near the
ferry, but Pierre and Andrew, to the astonishment of the footmen,
coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on the raft and talked.

"If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's
highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we
must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap
of earth, but have lived and shall live forever, there, in the Whole,"
said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.

Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening to
Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of the
sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was perfect stillness. Pierre
became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the waves of the
current beat softly against it below. Prince Andrew felt as if the sound
of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre's words, whispering:

"It is true, believe it."

He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at
Pierre's face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his superior
friend.

"Yes, if it only were so!" said Prince Andrew. "However, it is time to
get on," he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at the sky
to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since Austerlitz saw
that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on that battlefield;
and something that had long been slumbering, something that was best
within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and youthful, in his soul. It
vanished as soon as he returned to the customary conditions of his life,
but he knew that this feeling which he did not know how to develop
existed within him. His meeting with Pierre formed an epoch in Prince
Andrew's life. Though outwardly he continued to live in the same old
way, inwardly he began a new life.




CHAPTER XIII

It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the front
entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the house,
Prince Andrew with a smile drew Pierre's attention to a commotion going
on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a wallet on her back,
and a short, long-haired, young man in a black garment had rushed back
to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up. Two women ran out after
them, and all four, looking round at the carriage, ran in dismay up the
steps of the back porch.

"Those are Mary's 'God's folk,'" said Prince Andrew. "They have mistaken
us for my father. This is the one matter in which she disobeys him. He
orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she receives them."

"But what are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.

Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet them,
and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was expected back
soon.

The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any minute.

Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always kept
in perfect order and readiness for him in his father's house; he himself
went to the nursery.

"Let us go and see my sister," he said to Pierre when he returned. "I
have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her 'God's
folk.' It will serve her right, she will be confused, but you will see
her 'God's folk.' It's really very curious."

"What are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.

"Come, and you'll see for yourself."

Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her face
when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before the icon
stand, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing a monk's
cassock, sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near them, in an
armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek expression on
her childlike face.

"Andrew, why didn't you warn me?" said the princess, with mild reproach,
as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her chickens.

"Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous voir," * she said
to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child, and now
his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife, and above all
his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward him. She looked at
him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to say, "I like you very
much, but please don't laugh at my people." After exchanging the first
greetings, they sat down.


* "Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you."

"Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!" said Prince Andrew, glancing with a
smile at the young pilgrim.

"Andrew!" said Princess Mary, imploringly. "Il faut que vous sachiez que
c'est une femme," * said Prince Andrew to Pierre.

"Andrew, au nom de Dieu!" *(2) Princess Mary repeated.


* "You must know that this is a woman."

* (2) "For heaven's sake."

It was evident that Prince Andrew's ironical tone toward the pilgrims
and Princess Mary's helpless attempts to protect them were their
customary long-established relations on the matter.

"Mais, ma bonne amie," said Prince Andrew, "vous devriez au contraire
m'être reconnaissante de ce que j'explique a Pierre votre intimité avec
ce jeune homme." *


* "But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to me for
explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young man."

"Really?" said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and
seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him) into
Ivanushka's face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about, looked
round at them all with crafty eyes.

Princess Mary's embarrassment on her people's account was quite
unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman, lowering
her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had turned her cup
upside down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside it, and sat quietly
in her armchair, though hoping to be offered another cup of tea.
Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked with sly womanish eyes from
under her brows at the young men.

"Where have you been? To Kiev?" Prince Andrew asked the old woman.

"I have, good sir," she answered garrulously. "Just at Christmastime I
was deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly sacrament at the
shrine of the saint. And now I'm from Kolyazin, master, where a great
and wonderful blessing has been revealed."

"And was Ivanushka with you?"

"I go by myself, benefactor," said Ivanushka, trying to speak in a bass
voice. "I only came across Pelageya in Yukhnovo..."

Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell what
she had seen.

"In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed."

"What is it? Some new relics?" asked Prince Andrew.

"Andrew, do leave off," said Princess Mary. "Don't tell him, Pelageya."

"No... why not, my dear, why shouldn't I? I like him. He is kind, he is
one of God's chosen, he's a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles, I
remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he's one of God's
own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, 'Why are you not
going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a wonder-working icon of
the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.' On hearing those words I said
good-by to the holy folk and went."

All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones,
drawing in her breath.

"So I come, master, and the people say to me: 'A great blessing has been
revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed Mother, the
Holy Virgin Mother of God'...."

"All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards," said Princess Mary,
flushing.

"Let me ask her," said Pierre. "Did you see it yourselves?" he inquired.

"Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the face like
the light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother's cheek it drops and
drops...."

"But, dear me, that must be a fraud!" said Pierre, naively, who had
listened attentively to the pilgrim.

"Oh, master, what are you saying?" exclaimed the horrified Pelageya,
turning to Princess Mary for support.

"They impose on the people," he repeated.

"Lord Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing herself. "Oh,
don't speak so, master! There was a general who did not believe, and
said, 'The monks cheat,' and as soon as he'd said it he went blind. And
he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the Kiev catacombs came to him
and said, 'Believe in me and I will make you whole.' So he begged: 'Take
me to her, take me to her.' It's the real truth I'm telling you, I saw
it myself. So he was brought, quite blind, straight to her, and he goes
up to her and falls down and says, 'Make me whole,' says he, 'and I'll
give thee what the Tsar bestowed on me.' I saw it myself, master, the
star is fixed into the icon. Well, and what do you think? He received
his sight! It's a sin to speak so. God will punish you," she said
admonishingly, turning to Pierre.

"How did the star get into the icon?" Pierre asked.

"And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?" said Prince
Andrew, with a smile.

Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands.

"Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!" she began, her
pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. "Master, what have you said? God
forgive you!" And she crossed herself. "Lord forgive him! My dear, what
does it mean?..." she asked, turning to Princess Mary. She got up and,
almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She evidently felt
frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a house where such
things could be said, and was at the same time sorry to have now to
forgo the charity of this house.

"Now, why need you do it?" said Princess Mary. "Why did you come to
me?..."

"Come, Pelageya, I was joking," said Pierre. "Princesse, ma parole, je
n'ai pas voulu l'offenser. * I did not mean anything, I was only
joking," he said, smiling shyly and trying to efface his offense. "It
was all my fault, and Andrew was only joking."


* "Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her."

Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre's face there was such a look
of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now at her and
now at Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.




CHAPTER XIV

The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a
long account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his
hands smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks
she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking
some dried bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with the
saints. "I'd pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to another.
I'd sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and there was
such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don't want to come
out, even into the light of heaven again."

Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince Andrew went out
of the room, and then, leaving "God's folk" to finish their tea,
Princess Mary took Pierre into the drawing room.

"You are very kind," she said to him.

"Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them so
well and have the greatest respect for them."

Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately.

"I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of you as of a
brother," she said. "How do you find Andrew?" she added hurriedly, not
giving him time to reply to her affectionate words. "I am very anxious
about him. His health was better in the winter, but last spring his
wound reopened and the doctor said he ought to go away for a cure. And I
am also very much afraid for him spiritually. He has not a character
like us women who, when we suffer, can weep away our sorrows. He keeps
it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in good spirits, but that is
the effect of your visit--he is not often like that. If you could
persuade him to go abroad. He needs activity, and this quiet regular
life is very bad for him. Others don't notice it, but I see it."

Toward ten o'clock the men servants rushed to the front door, hearing
the bells of the old prince's carriage approaching. Prince Andrew and
Pierre also went out into the porch.

"Who's that?" asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he got out of the
carriage.

"Ah! Very glad! Kiss me," he said, having learned who the young stranger
was.

The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious to Pierre.

Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father's study, found
him disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining that a time
would come when there would be no more wars. The old prince disputed it
chaffingly, but without getting angry.

"Drain the blood from men's veins and put in water instead, then there
will be no more war! Old women's nonsense--old women's nonsense!" he
repeated, but still he patted Pierre affectionately on the shoulder, and
then went up to the table where Prince Andrew, evidently not wishing to
join in the conversation, was looking over the papers his father had
brought from town. The old prince went up to him and began to talk
business.

"The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn't sent half his contingent. He came
to town and wanted to invite me to dinner--I gave him a pretty
dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well, my boy," the old prince
went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. "A fine
fellow--your friend--I like him! He stirs me up. Another says clever
things and one doesn't care to listen, but this one talks rubbish yet
stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps I'll come and sit
with you at supper. We'll have another dispute. Make friends with my
little fool, Princess Mary," he shouted after Pierre, through the door.

Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the
strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm was
not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his family
and with the household. With the stern old prince and the gentle, timid
Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre at once felt
like an old friend. They were all fond of him already. Not only Princess
Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the pilgrims, gave him her
most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old "Prince Nicholas" (as his
grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and let himself be taken in his
arms, and Michael Ivanovich and Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at him
with pleasant smiles when he talked to the old prince.

The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre's
account. And during the two days of the young man's visit he was
extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again.

When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met together, they
began to express their opinions of him as people always do after a new
acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one said anything but
what was good of him.




CHAPTER XV

When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first time, how
close was the bond that united him to Denisov and the whole regiment.

On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when approaching his home
in Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned uniform of
his regiment, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and saw the picket
ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully shouted to his
master, "The count has come!" and Denisov, who had been asleep on his
bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace him, and the
officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostov experienced
the same feeling as when his mother, his father, and his sister had
embraced him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could not speak.
The regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and precious as
his parents' house.

When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and had
been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had gone
out foraging, when he had again entered into all the little interests of
the regiment and felt himself deprived of liberty and bound in one
narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense of peace, of
moral support, and the same sense of being at home here in his own
place, as he had felt under the parental roof. But here was none of all
that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not know his right
place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya with whom he ought,
or ought not, to have an explanation; here was no possibility of going
there or not going there; here there were not twenty-four hours in the
day which could be spent in such a variety of ways; there was not that
innumerable crowd of people of whom not one was nearer to him or farther
from him than another; there were none of those uncertain and undefined
money relations with his father, and nothing to recall that terrible
loss to Dolokhov. Here, in the regiment, all was clear and simple. The
whole world was divided into two unequal parts: one, our Pavlograd
regiment; the other, all the rest. And the rest was no concern of his.
In the regiment, everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who
captain, who was a good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was
a comrade. The canteenkeeper gave one credit, one's pay came every four
months, there was nothing to think out or decide, you had only to do
nothing that was considered bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when
given an order, to do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely
ordered--and all would be well.

Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this regimental
life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on lying down to
rest. Life in the regiment, during this campaign, was all the pleasanter
for him, because, after his loss to Dolokhov (for which, in spite of all
his family's efforts to console him, he could not forgive himself), he
had made up his mind to atone for his fault by serving, not as he had
done before, but really well, and by being a perfectly first-rate
comrade and officer--in a word, a splendid man altogether, a thing which
seemed so difficult out in the world, but so possible in the regiment.

After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his parents
in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now resolved
to take only two thousand and leave the rest to repay the debt to his
parents.

Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at Pultusk
and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It was awaiting
the Emperor's arrival and the beginning of a new campaign.

The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had
served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in
Russia, and arrived too late to take part in the first actions of the
campaign. It had been neither at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau and,
when it joined the army in the field in the second half of the campaign,
was attached to Platov's division.

Platov's division was acting independently of the main army. Several
times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the
enemy, had taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal Oudinot's
carriages. In April the Pavlograds were stationed immovably for some
weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German village.

A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river broke,
and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions for the men
nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no transports could
arrive, the men dispersed about the abandoned and deserted villages,
searching for potatoes, but found few even of these.

Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled--if any
remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be taken
from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead of taking
anything from them, often gave them the last of their rations.

The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but had
lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the hospitals,
death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or the swelling
that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and hardly able to
drag their legs went to the front rather than to the hospitals. When
spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just showing out of the
ground that looked like asparagus, which, for some reason, they called
"Mashka's sweet root." It was very bitter, but they wandered about the
fields seeking it and dug it out with their sabers and ate it, though
they were ordered not to do so, as it was a noxious plant. That spring a
new disease broke out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs,
and face, which the doctors attributed to eating this root. But in spite
of all this, the soldiers of Denisov's squadron fed chiefly on "Mashka's
sweet root," because it was the second week that the last of the
biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a pound a man and the
last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.

The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the thatched
roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with tufts of
felty winter hair.

Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living just
as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms, the
hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed their
horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the thatched roofs in
place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the caldrons from which they
rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food and their hunger. As
usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires, steamed themselves before
them naked; smoked, picked out and baked sprouting rotten potatoes, told
and listened to stories of Potemkin's and Suvorov's campaigns, or to
legends of Alesha the Sly, or the priest's laborer Mikolka.

The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless, half-
ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes and, in
general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied themselves as
before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money, though there was
no food), some with more innocent games, such as quoits and skittles.
The general trend of the campaign was rarely spoken of, partly because
nothing certain was known about it, partly because there was a vague
feeling that in the main it was going badly.

Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their furlough they had
become more friendly than ever. Denisov never spoke of Rostov's family,
but by the tender friendship his commander showed him, Rostov felt that
the elder hussar's luckless love for Natasha played a part in
strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried to expose Rostov
to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action greeted his safe
return with evident joy. On one of his foraging expeditions, in a
deserted and ruined village to which he had come in search of
provisions, Rostov found a family consisting of an old Pole and his
daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad, hungry, too weak
to get away on foot and had no means of obtaining a conveyance. Rostov
brought them to his quarters, placed them in his own lodging, and kept
them for some weeks while the old man was recovering. One of his
comrades, talking of women, began chaffing Rostov, saying that he was
more wily than any of them and that it would not be a bad thing if he
introduced to them the pretty Polish girl he had saved. Rostov took the
joke as an insult, flared up, and said such unpleasant things to the
officer that it was all Denisov could do to prevent a duel. When the
officer had gone away, Denisov, who did not himself know what Rostov's
relations with the Polish girl might be, began to upbraid him for his
quickness of temper, and Rostov replied:

"Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can't tell you
how it offended me... because... well, for that reason...."

Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room
without looking at Rostov, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.

"Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!" he muttered, and Rostov noticed
tears in his eyes.




CHAPTER XVI

In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor's arrival, but
Rostov had no chance of being present at the review he held at
Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that
place.

They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were living in an earth hut,
dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and turf. The
hut was made in the following manner, which had then come into vogue. A
trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet eight inches deep,
and eight feet long. At one end of the trench, steps were cut out and
these formed the entrance and vestibule. The trench itself was the room,
in which the lucky ones, such as the squadron commander, had a board,
lying on piles at the end opposite the entrance, to serve as a table. On
each side of the trench, the earth was cut out to a breadth of about two
and a half feet, and this did duty for bedsteads and couches. The roof
was so constructed that one could stand up in the middle of the trench
and could even sit up on the beds if one drew close to the table.
Denisov, who was living luxuriously because the soldiers of his squadron
liked him, had also a board in the roof at the farther end, with a piece
of (broken but mended) glass in it for a window. When it was very cold,
embers from the soldiers' campfire were placed on a bent sheet of iron
on the steps in the "reception room"--as Denisov called that part of the
hut--and it was then so warm that the officers, of whom there were
always some with Denisov and Rostov, sat in their shirt sleeves.

In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and
eight, returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers, changed
his rain-soaked underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got warm,
then tidied up the things on the table and in his own corner, and, his
face glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on but his
shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under his head. He was
pleasantly considering the probability of being promoted in a few days
for his last reconnoitering expedition, and was awaiting Denisov, who
had gone out somewhere and with whom he wanted a talk.

Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the hut,
evidently much excited. Rostov moved to the window to see whom he was
speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topcheenko.

"I ordered you not to let them eat that Mashka woot stuff!" Denisov was
shouting. "And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchuk bwought some fwom
the fields."

"I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they don't
obey," answered the quartermaster.

Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: "Let him fuss
and bustle now, my job's done and I'm lying down--capitally!" He could
hear that Lavrushka--that sly, bold orderly of Denisov's--was talking,
as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was saying something about
loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when he had gone out for
provisions.

Then Denisov's voice was heard shouting farther and farther away.
"Saddle! Second platoon!"

"Where are they off to now?" thought Rostov.

Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed with muddy boots
on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things about, took his
leaded whip, buckled on his saber, and went out again. In answer to
Rostov's inquiry where he was going, he answered vaguely and crossly
that he had some business.

"Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!" said Denisov going
out, and Rostov heard the hoofs of several horses splashing through the
mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denisov had gone. Having
got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not leave the hut till
toward evening. Denisov had not yet returned. The weather had cleared
up, and near the next hut two officers and a cadet were playing svayka,
laughing as they threw their missiles which buried themselves in the
soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle of the game, the officers
saw some wagons approaching with fifteen hussars on their skinny horses
behind them. The wagons escorted by the hussars drew up to the picket
ropes and a crowd of hussars surrounded them.

"There now, Denisov has been worrying," said Rostov, "and here are the
provisions."

"So they are!" said the officers. "Won't the soldiers be glad!"

A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied by two infantry
officers with whom he was talking.

Rostov went to meet them.

"I warn you, Captain," one of the officers, a short thin man, evidently
very angry, was saying.

"Haven't I told you I won't give them up?" replied Denisov.

"You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny--seizing the transport of
one's own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two days."

"And mine have had nothing for two weeks," said Denisov.

"It is robbery! You'll answer for it, sir!" said the infantry officer,
raising his voice.

"Now, what are you pestewing me for?" cried Denisov, suddenly losing his
temper. "I shall answer for it and not you, and you'd better not buzz
about here till you get hurt. Be off! Go!" he shouted at the officers.

"Very well, then!" shouted the little officer, undaunted and not riding
away. "If you are determined to rob, I'll..."

"Go to the devil! quick ma'ch, while you're safe and sound!" and Denisov
turned his horse on the officer.

"Very well, very well!" muttered the officer, threateningly, and turning
his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.

"A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!" shouted Denisov
after him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a
mounted infantryman) and riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing.

"I've taken twansports from the infantwy by force!" he said. "After all,
can't let our men starve."

The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an
infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrushka that the transport was
unescorted, Denisov with his hussars had seized it by force. The
soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared
them with the other squadrons.

The next day the regimental commander sent for Denisov, and holding his
fingers spread out before his eyes said:

"This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and won't
begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff and settle
the business there in the commissariat department and if possible sign a
receipt for such and such stores received. If not, as the demand was
booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a row and the affair
may end badly."

From the regimental commander's, Denisov rode straight to the staff with
a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he came back to
his dugout in a state such as Rostov had never yet seen him in. Denisov
could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostov asked what was the
matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and threats in a hoarse,
feeble voice.

Alarmed at Denisov's condition, Rostov suggested that he should undress,
drink some water, and send for the doctor.

"Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but I'll
always thwash scoundwels... and I'll tell the Empewo'... Ice..." he
muttered.

The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely necessary to
bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken from his hairy arm
and only then was he able to relate what had happened to him.

"I get there," began Denisov. "'Now then, where's your chief's
quarters?' They were pointed out. 'Please to wait.' 'I've widden twenty
miles and have duties to attend to and no time to wait. Announce me.'
Vewy well, so out comes their head chief--also took it into his head to
lecture me: 'It's wobbewy!'--'Wobbewy,' I say, 'is not done by man who
seizes pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him who takes them to
fill his own pockets!' 'Will you please be silent?' 'Vewy good!' Then he
says: 'Go and give a weceipt to the commissioner, but your affair will
be passed on to headquarters.' I go to the commissioner. I enter, and at
the table... who do you think? No, but wait a bit!... Who is it that's
starving us?" shouted Denisov, hitting the table with the fist of his
newly bled arm so violently that the table nearly broke down and the
tumblers on it jumped about. "Telyanin! 'What? So it's you who's
starving us to death! Is it? Take this and this!' and I hit him so pat,
stwaight on his snout... 'Ah, what a... what a...!' and I sta'ted
fwashing him... Well, I've had a bit of fun I can tell you!" cried
Denisov, gleeful and yet angry, his white teeth showing under his black
mustache. "I'd have killed him if they hadn't taken him away!"

"But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself," said Rostov. "You've set
your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again."

Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke calm and
cheerful.

But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov's and
Denisov's dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully showed
them a paper addressed to Major Denisov from the regimental commander in
which inquiries were made about yesterday's occurrence. The adjutant
told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad turn: that a
court-martial had been appointed, and that in view of the severity with
which marauding and insubordination were now regarded, degradation to
the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.

The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after
seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being drunk, went to the chief
quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief, threatened
to strike him, and on being led out had rushed into the office and given
two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm of one of them.

In answer to Rostov's renewed questions, Denisov said, laughing, that he
thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed up in it, but
that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not in the least fear
any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels dared attack him he
would give them an answer that they would not easily forget.

Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostov knew him
too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart he
feared a court-martial and was worried over the affair, which was
evidently taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices
from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov was ordered to
hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and appear before the
staff of his division to explain his violence at the commissariat
office. On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two Cossack
regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denisov, as was his wont, rode
out in front of the outposts, parading his courage. A bullet fired by a
French sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of his leg. Perhaps at
another time Denisov would not have left the regiment for so slight a
wound, but now he took advantage of it to excuse himself from appearing
at the staff and went into hospital.




CHAPTER XVII

In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the Pavlograds did
not take part, and after that an armistice was proclaimed. Rostov, who
felt his friend's absence very much, having no news of him since he left
and feeling very anxious about his wound and the progress of his
affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get leave to visit Denisov
in hospital.

The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice devastated
by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when it is so
beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented a particularly
dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its foul streets,
tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken soldiers wandering about.

The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window frames and
panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a wooden fence
that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged soldiers, with pale
swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in the sunshine in the
yard.

Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of
putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army
doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian assistant.

"I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was saying. "Come to Makar
Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there."

The assistant asked some further questions.

"Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?" The doctor noticed
Rostov coming upstairs.

"What do you want, sir?" said the doctor. "What do you want? The bullets
having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a pesthouse, sir."

"How so?" asked Rostov.

"Typhus, sir. It's death to go in. Only we two, Makeev and I" (he
pointed to the assistant), "keep on here. Some five of us doctors have
died in this place.... When a new one comes he is done for in a week,"
said the doctor with evident satisfaction. "Prussian doctors have been
invited here, but our allies don't like it at all."

Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars, who
was wounded.

"I don't know. I can't tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in charge
of three hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It's well that
the charitable Prussian ladies send us two pounds of coffee and some
lint each month or we should be lost!" he laughed. "Four hundred, sir,
and they're always sending me fresh ones. There are four hundred? Eh?"
he asked, turning to the assistant.

The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and impatient
for the talkative doctor to go.

"Major Denisov," Rostov said again. "He was wounded at Molliten."

"Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?" queried the doctor, in a tone of
indifference.

The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor's words.

"Is he tall and with reddish hair?" asked the doctor.

Rostov described Denisov's appearance.

"There was one like that," said the doctor, as if pleased. "That one is
dead, I fancy. However, I'll look up our list. We had a list. Have you
got it, Makeev?"

"Makar Alexeevich has the list," answered the assistant. "But if you'll
step into the officers' wards you'll see for yourself," he added,
turning to Rostov.

"Ah, you'd better not go, sir," said the doctor, "or you may have to
stay here yourself."

But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the assistant to
show him the way.

"Only don't blame me!" the doctor shouted up after him.

Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell was so
strong there that Rostov held his nose and had to pause and collect his
strength before he could go on. A door opened to the right, and an
emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in underclothing, limped
out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked with glittering envious
eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at the door, Rostov saw that
the sick and wounded were lying on the floor on straw and overcoats.

"May I go in and look?"

"What is there to see?" said the assistant.

But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in,
Rostov entered the soldiers' ward. The foul air, to which he had already
begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It was a
little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where it
originated.

In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large windows,
the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to the walls, and
leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were unconscious and paid
no attention to the newcomers. Those who were conscious raised
themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all looked intently at
Rostov with the same expression of hope, of relief, reproach, and envy
of another's health. Rostov went to the middle of the room and looking
through the open doors into the two adjoining rooms saw the same thing
there. He stood still, looking silently around. He had not at all
expected such a sight. Just before him, almost across the middle of the
passage on the bare floor, lay a sick man, probably a Cossack to judge
by the cut of his hair. The man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs
outstretched. His face was purple, his eyes were rolled back so that
only the whites were seen, and on his bare legs and arms which were
still red, the veins stood out like cords. He was knocking the back of
his head against the floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he kept
repeating. Rostov listened and made out the word. It was "drink, drink,
a drink!" Rostov glanced round, looking for someone who would put this
man back in his place and bring him water.

"Who looks after the sick here?" he asked the assistant.

Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from the
next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostov.

"Good day, your honor!" he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostov and
evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.

"Get him to his place and give him some water," said Rostov, pointing to
the Cossack.

"Yes, your honor," the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his
eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not
move.

"No, it's impossible to do anything here," thought Rostov, lowering his
eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an intense look fixed on
him on his right, and he turned. Close to the corner, on an overcoat,
sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier as thin as a skeleton, with a
stern sallow face and eyes intently fixed on Rostov. The man's neighbor
on one side whispered something to him, pointing at Rostov, who noticed
that the old man wanted to speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the
old man had only one leg bent under him, the other had been amputated
above the knee. His neighbor on the other side, who lay motionless some
distance from him with his head thrown back, was a young soldier with a
snub nose. His pale waxen face was still freckled and his eyes were
rolled back. Rostov looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran
down his back.

"Why, this one seems..." he began, turning to the assistant.

"And how we've been begging, your honor," said the old soldier, his jaw
quivering. "He's been dead since morning. After all we're men, not
dogs."

"I'll send someone at once. He shall be taken away--taken away at once,"
said the assistant hurriedly. "Let us go, your honor."

"Yes, yes, let us go," said Rostov hastily, and lowering his eyes and
shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of reproachful
envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the room.




CHAPTER XVIII

Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to the officers'
wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood open. There
were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers were lying or
sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in hospital dressing
gowns. The first person Rostov met in the officers' ward was a thin
little man with one arm, who was walking about the first room in a
nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with a pipe between his teeth.
Rostov looked at him, trying to remember where he had seen him before.

"See where we've met again!" said the little man. "Tushin, Tushin, don't
you remember, who gave you a lift at Schon Grabern? And I've had a bit
cut off, you see..." he went on with a smile, pointing to the empty
sleeve of his dressing gown. "Looking for Vasili Dmitrich Denisov? My
neighbor," he added, when he heard who Rostov wanted. "Here, here," and
Tushin led him into the next room, from whence came sounds of several
laughing voices.

"How can they laugh, or even live at all here?" thought Rostov, still
aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong in the
soldiers' ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those envious
looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face of that
young soldier with eyes rolled back.

Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket, though it
was nearly noon.

"Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?" he called out, still in the same
voice as in the regiment, but Rostov noticed sadly that under this
habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling showed
itself in the expression of Denisov's face and the intonations of his
voice.

His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six weeks
after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as the faces
of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that struck Rostov.
What struck him was that Denisov did not seem glad to see him, and
smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the regiment, nor about
the general state of affairs, and when Rostov spoke of these matters did
not listen.

Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be reminded of the
regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on
outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and was
only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On
Rostov's inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced from
under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission and the
rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he began
reading his paper and specially drew Rostov's attention to the stinging
rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions, who had
gathered round Rostov--a fresh arrival from the world outside--gradually
began to disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his answer. Rostov
noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had already heard that
story more than once and were tired of it. Only the man who had the next
bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his bed, gloomily frowning and
smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tushin still listened, shaking his
head disapprovingly. In the middle of the reading, the Uhlan interrupted
Denisov.

"But what I say is," he said, turning to Rostov, "it would be best
simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards will
now be distributed, and surely a pardon would be granted...."

"Me petition the Empewo'!" exclaimed Denisov, in a voice to which he
tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like an
expression of irritable impotence. "What for? If I were a wobber I would
ask mercy, but I'm being court-martialed for bwinging wobbers to book.
Let them twy me, I'm not afwaid of anyone. I've served the Tsar and my
countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I to be degwaded?...
Listen, I'm w'iting to them stwaight. This is what I say: 'If I had
wobbed the Tweasuwy...'"

"It's certainly well written," said Tushin, "but that's not the point,
Vasili Dmitrich," and he also turned to Rostov. "One has to submit, and
Vasili Dmitrich doesn't want to. You know the auditor told you it was a
bad business."

"Well, let it be bad," said Denisov.

"The auditor wrote out a petition for you," continued Tushin, "and you
ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he"
(indicating Rostov) "has connections on the staff. You won't find a
better opportunity."

"Haven't I said I'm not going to gwovel?" Denisov interrupted him, went
on reading his paper.

Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov, though he instinctively
felt that the way advised by Tushin and the other officers was the
safest, and though he would have been glad to be of service to Denisov.
He knew his stubborn will and straightforward hasty temper.

When the reading of Denisov's virulent reply, which took more than an
hour, was over, Rostov said nothing, and he spent the rest of the day in
a most dejected state of mind amid Denisov's hospital comrades, who had
gathered round him, telling them what he knew and listening to their
stories. Denisov was moodily silent all the evening.

Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave, he asked Denisov
whether he had no commission for him.

"Yes, wait a bit," said Denisov, glancing round at the officers, and
taking his papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where he
had an inkpot, and sat down to write.

"It seems it's no use knocking one's head against a wall!" he said,
coming from the window and giving Rostov a large envelope. In it was the
petition to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which Denisov,
without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat officials, simply
asked for pardon.

"Hand it in. It seems..."

He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.




CHAPTER XIX

Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state of
Denisov's affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit with the letter to the Emperor.

On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in
Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the important personage on whom he
was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the stay at
Tilsit.

"I should like to see the great man," he said, alluding to Napoleon,
whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte.

"You are speaking of Buonaparte?" asked the general, smiling.

Boris looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that he was
being tested.

"I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon," he replied. The
general patted him on the shoulder, with a smile.

"You will go far," he said, and took him to Tilsit with him.

Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two
Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw Napoleon
pass before the French Guards on the farther bank of the river, saw the
pensive face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in silence in a tavern
on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon's arrival, saw both Emperors
get into boats, and saw how Napoleon--reaching the raft first--stepped
quickly forward to meet Alexander and held out his hand to him, and how
they both retired into the pavilion. Since he had begun to move in the
highest circles Boris had made it his habit to watch attentively all
that went on around him and to note it down. At the time of the meeting
at Tilsit he asked the names of those who had come with Napoleon and
about the uniforms they wore, and listened attentively to words spoken
by important personages. At the moment the Emperors went into the
pavilion he looked at his watch, and did not forget to look at it again
when Alexander came out. The interview had lasted an hour and fifty-
three minutes. He noted this down that same evening, among other facts
he felt to be of historic importance. As the Emperor's suite was a very
small one, it was a matter of great importance, for a man who valued his
success in the service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of this
interview between the two Emperors, and having succeeded in this, Boris
felt that henceforth his position was fully assured. He had not only
become known, but people had grown accustomed to him and accepted him.
Twice he had executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so that the
latter knew his face, and all those at court, far from cold-shouldering
him as at first when they considered him a newcomer, would now have been
surprised had he been absent.

Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilinski.
Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately fond
of the French, and almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French
officers of the Guard and from French headquarters were dining and
lunching with him and Boris.

On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilinski arranged a
supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an aide-de-camp of
Napoleon's, there were also several French officers of the Guard, and a
page of Napoleon's, a young lad of an old aristocratic French family.
That same day, Rostov, profiting by the darkness to avoid being
recognized in civilian dress, came to Tilsit and went to the lodging
occupied by Boris and Zhilinski.

Rostov, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far from
having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and the French-
-who from being foes had suddenly become friends--that had taken place
at headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte and the French were
still regarded with mingled feelings of anger, contempt, and fear. Only
recently, talking with one of Platov's Cossack officers, Rostov had
argued that if Napoleon were taken prisoner he would be treated not as a
sovereign, but as a criminal. Quite lately, happening to meet a wounded
French colonel on the road, Rostov had maintained with heat that peace
was impossible between a legitimate sovereign and the criminal
Bonaparte. Rostov was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of
French officers in Boris' lodging, dressed in uniforms he had been
accustomed to see from quite a different point of view from the outposts
of the flank. As soon as he noticed a French officer, who thrust his
head out of the door, that warlike feeling of hostility which he always
experienced at the sight of the enemy suddenly seized him. He stopped at
the threshold and asked in Russian whether Drubetskoy lived there.
Boris, hearing a strange voice in the anteroom, came out to meet him. An
expression of annoyance showed itself for a moment on his face on first
recognizing Rostov.

"Ah, it's you? Very glad, very glad to see you," he said, however,
coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov had noticed his first
impulse.

"I've come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have
business," he said coldly.

"No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment. Dans
un moment je suis a vous," * he said, answering someone who called him.


* "In a minute I shall be at your disposal."

"I see I'm intruding," Rostov repeated.

The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Boris' face: having
evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly took both
Rostov's hands and led him into the next room. His eyes, looking
serenely and steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by something, as if
screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it seemed to Rostov.

"Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!" said Boris, and he
led him into the room where the supper table was laid and introduced him
to his guests, explaining that he was not a civilian, but an hussar
officer, and an old friend of his.

"Count Zhilinski--le Comte N. N.--le Capitaine S. S.," said he, naming
his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed
reluctantly, and remained silent.

Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very
willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostov. Boris did not
appear to notice the constraint the newcomer produced and, with the same
pleasant composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with which he
had met Rostov, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the Frenchmen,
with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen, addressed the
obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter had probably come to
Tilsit to see the Emperor.

"No, I came on business," replied Rostov, briefly.

Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look of
dissatisfaction on Boris' face, and as always happens to those in a bad
humor, it seemed to him that everyone regarded him with aversion and
that he was in everybody's way. He really was in their way, for he alone
took no part in the conversation which again became general. The looks
the visitors cast on him seemed to say: "And what is he sitting here
for?" He rose and went up to Boris.

"Anyhow, I'm in your way," he said in a low tone. "Come and talk over my
business and I'll go away."

"Oh, no, not at all," said Boris. "But if you are tired, come and lie
down in my room and have a rest."

"Yes, really..."

They went into the little room where Boris slept. Rostov, without
sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Boris were to blame in
some way) telling him about Denisov's affair, asking him whether,
through his general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor on
Denisov's behalf and get Denisov's petition handed in. When he and Boris
were alone, Rostov felt for the first time that he could not look Boris
in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one leg crossed
over the other and stroking his left hand with the slender fingers of
his right, listened to Rostov as a general listens to the report of a
subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight into Rostov's
eyes with the same veiled look. Each time this happened Rostov felt
uncomfortable and cast down his eyes.

"I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty is very severe in
such affairs. I think it would be best not to bring it before the
Emperor, but to apply to the commander of the corps.... But in general,
I think..."

"So you don't want to do anything? Well then, say so!" Rostov almost
shouted, not looking Boris in the face.

Boris smiled.

"On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..."

At that moment Zhilinski's voice was heard calling Boris.

"Well then, go, go, go..." said Rostov, and refusing supper and
remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and down for a long
time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room.




CHAPTER XX

Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on
Denisov's behalf. He could not himself go to the general in attendance
as he was in mufti and had come to Tilsit without permission to do so,
and Boris, even had he wished to, could not have done so on the
following day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were
signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received the Cross
of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order of St. Andrew of the First
Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening, given by a
battalion of the French Guards to the Preobrazhensk battalion. The
Emperors were to be present at that banquet.

Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris that, when the
latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and early next
morning went away, avoiding Boris. In his civilian clothes and a round
hat, he wandered about the town, staring at the French and their
uniforms and at the streets and houses where the Russian and French
Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables being set up and
preparations made for the dinner; he saw the Russian and French colors
draped from side to side of the streets, with huge monograms A and N. In
the windows of the houses also flags and bunting were displayed.

"Boris doesn't want to help me and I don't want to ask him. That's
settled," thought Nicholas. "All is over between us, but I won't leave
here without having done all I can for Denisov and certainly not without
getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is here!" thought
Rostov, who had unconsciously returned to the house where Alexander
lodged.

Saddled horses were standing before the house and the suite were
assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor to come out.

"I may see him at any moment," thought Rostov. "If only I were to hand
the letter direct to him and tell him all... could they really arrest me
for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He would understand on whose side
justice lies. He understands everything, knows everything. Who can be
more just, more magnanimous than he? And even if they did arrest me for
being here, what would it matter?" thought he, looking at an officer who
was entering the house the Emperor occupied. "After all, people do go
in.... It's all nonsense! I'll go in and hand the letter to the Emperor
myself so much the worse for Drubetskoy who drives me to it!" And
suddenly with a determination he himself did not expect, Rostov felt for
the letter in his pocket and went straight to the house.

"No, I won't miss my opportunity now, as I did after Austerlitz," he
thought, expecting every moment to meet the monarch, and conscious of
the blood that rushed to his heart at the thought. "I will fall at his
feet and beseech him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will even
thank me. 'I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice is the
greatest happiness,'" Rostov fancied the sovereign saying. And passing
people who looked after him with curiosity, he entered the porch of the
Emperor's house.

A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to the right he
saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase, was a door leading to the
lower floor.

"Whom do you want?" someone inquired.

"To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty," said Nicholas, with a
tremor in his voice.

"A petition? This way, to the officer on duty" (he was shown the door
leading downstairs), "only it won't be accepted."

On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew frightened at what he was
doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so
fascinating and consequently so alarming that he was ready to run away,
but the official who had questioned him opened the door, and Rostov
entered.

A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and high boots and
a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just put on, standing in that
room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of his breeches a new
pair of handsome silk-embroidered braces that, for some reason,
attracted Rostov's attention. This man was speaking to someone in the
adjoining room.

"A good figure and in her first bloom," he was saying, but on seeing
Rostov, he stopped short and frowned.

"What is it? A petition?"

"What is it?" asked the person in the other room.

"Another petitioner," answered the man with the braces.

"Tell him to come later. He'll be coming out directly, we must go."

"Later... later! Tomorrow. It's too late..."

Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the braces stopped
him.

"Whom have you come from? Who are you?"

"I come from Major Denisov," answered Rostov.

"Are you an officer?"

"Lieutenant Count Rostov."

"What audacity! Hand it in through your commander. And go along with
you... go," and he continued to put on the uniform the valet handed him.

Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the porch there were
many officers and generals in full parade uniform, whom he had to pass.

Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of finding
himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to
shame and arrested in his presence, fully alive now to the impropriety
of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes, was
making his way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a
familiar voice called him and a hand detained him.

"What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?" asked a deep voice.

It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor's special favor
during this campaign, and who had formerly commanded the division in
which Rostov was serving.

Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing the kindly,
jocular face of the general, he took him aside and in an excited voice
told him the whole affair, asking him to intercede for Denisov, whom the
general knew. Having heard Rostov to the end, the general shook his head
gravely.

"I'm sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter."

Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished explaining
Denisov's case, when hasty steps and the jingling of spurs were heard on
the stairs, and the general, leaving him, went to the porch. The
gentlemen of the Emperor's suite ran down the stairs and went to their
horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at Austerlitz, led up the
Emperor's horse, and the faint creak of a footstep Rostov knew at once
was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the danger of being recognized,
Rostov went close to the porch, together with some inquisitive
civilians, and again, after two years, saw those features he adored:
that same face and same look and step, and the same union of majesty and
mildness.... And the feeling of enthusiasm and love for his sovereign
rose again in Rostov's soul in all its old force. In the uniform of the
Preobrazhensk regiment--white chamois-leather breeches and high boots--
and wearing a star Rostov did not know (it was that of the Legion
d'honneur), the monarch came out into the porch, putting on his gloves
and carrying his hat under his arm. He stopped and looked about him,
brightening everything around by his glance. He spoke a few words to
some of the generals, and, recognizing the former commander of Rostov's
division, smiled and beckoned to him.

All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general talking for some time
to the Emperor.

The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step toward his horse.
Again the crowd of members of the suite and street gazers (among whom
was Rostov) moved nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside his horse, with
his hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the cavalry general and
said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be heard by all:

"I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is stronger than I,"
and he raised his foot to the stirrup.

The general bowed his head respectfully, and the monarch mounted and
rode down the street at a gallop. Beside himself with enthusiasm, Rostov
ran after him with the crowd.




CHAPTER XXI

The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a battalion of
the Preobrazhensk regiment stood on the right and a battalion of the
French Guards in their bearskin caps on the left.

As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which presented
arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the opposite flank, and
at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon. It could be no one else.
He came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue uniform open over a
white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over his shoulder. He was riding a
very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse with a crimson gold-embroidered
saddlecloth. On approaching Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did
so, Rostov, with his cavalryman's eye, could not help noticing that
Napoleon did not sit well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions
shouted "Hurrah!" and "Vive l'Empereur!" Napoleon said something to
Alexander, and both Emperors dismounted and took each other's hands.
Napoleon's face wore an unpleasant and artificial smile. Alexander was
saying something affable to him.

In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes' horses, which were
pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept his eyes on every movement of
Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck him as a surprise that Alexander
treated Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease with
the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday matter
to him.

Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their suites, approached
the right flank of the Preobrazhensk battalion and came straight up to
the crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly found itself so close
to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in the front row, was afraid he
might be recognized.

"Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the
bravest of your soldiers," said a sharp, precise voice, articulating
every letter.

This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into
Alexander's eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to him
and, bending his head, smiled pleasantly.

"To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last war," added
Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with a composure and assurance
exasperating to Rostov, he ran his eyes over the Russian ranks drawn up
before him, who all presented arms with their eyes fixed on their
Emperor.

"Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?" said Alexander and
took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlovski, the commander of the
battalion.

Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his small white hand,
tore it in doing so, and threw it away. An aide-de-camp behind him
rushed forward and picked it up.

"To whom shall it be given?" the Emperor Alexander asked Koslovski, in
Russian in a low voice.

"To whomever Your Majesty commands."

The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and, glancing back,
remarked:

"But we must give him an answer."

Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostov in his
scrutiny.

"Can it be me?" thought Rostov.

"Lazarev!" the colonel called, with a frown, and Lazarev, the first
soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.

"Where are you off to? Stop here!" voices whispered to Lazarev who did
not know where to go. Lazarev stopped, casting a sidelong look at his
colonel in alarm. His face twitched, as often happens to soldiers called
before the ranks.

Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump little hand out
behind him as if to take something. The members of his suite, guessing
at once what he wanted, moved about and whispered as they passed
something from one to another, and a page--the same one Rostov had seen
the previous evening at Boris'--ran forward and, bowing respectfully
over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a moment, laid in
it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without looking, pressed two
fingers together and the badge was between them. Then he approached
Lazarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently gazed at his own monarch),
looked round at the Emperor Alexander to imply that what he was now
doing was done for the sake of his ally, and the small white hand
holding the Order touched one of Lazarev's buttons. It was as if
Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his hand to deign to touch
that soldier's breast for the soldier to be forever happy, rewarded, and
distinguished from everyone else in the world. Napoleon merely laid the
cross on Lazarev's breast and, dropping his hand, turned toward
Alexander as though sure that the cross would adhere there. And it
really did.

Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized the cross and
fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced morosely at the little man
with white hands who was doing something to him and, still standing
motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into Alexander's eyes,
as if asking whether he should stand there, or go away, or do something
else. But receiving no orders, he remained for some time in that rigid
position.

The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensk battalion,
breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the tables
prepared for them.

Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers embraced
him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of officers and
civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of Russian and French
voices and laughter filled the air round the tables in the square. Two
officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and happy, passed by
Rostov.

"What d'you think of the treat? All on silver plate," one of them was
saying. "Have you seen Lazarev?"

"I have."

"Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them a dinner."

"Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs' pension for
life."

"Here's a cap, lads!" shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier, donning a shaggy
French cap.

"It's a fine thing! First-rate!"

"Have you heard the password?" asked one Guards' officer of another.
"The day before yesterday it was 'Napoleon, France, bravoure';
yesterday, 'Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.' One day our Emperor gives it
and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George's
Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He must
respond in kind."

Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the Preobrazhensk
banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostov standing by the corner of a
house.

"Rostov! How d'you do? We missed one another," he said, and could not
refrain from asking what was the matter, so strangely dismal and
troubled was Rostov's face.

"Nothing, nothing," replied Rostov.

"You'll call round?"

"Yes, I will."

Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from a
distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on which he could not
bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in his soul. Now he
remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his submission, and the
whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and its dirt and disease. So
vividly did he recall that hospital stench of dead flesh that he looked
round to see where the smell came from. Next he thought of that self-
satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white hand, who was now an Emperor,
liked and respected by Alexander. Then why those severed arms and legs
and those dead men?... Then again he thought of Lazarev rewarded and
Denisov punished and unpardoned. He caught himself harboring such
strange thoughts that he was frightened.

The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating and a sense of
hunger recalled him from these reflections; he had to get something to
eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had noticed that morning.
There he found so many people, among them officers who, like himself,
had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in getting a
dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The conversation
naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his comrades, like most of
the army, were dissatisfied with the peace concluded after the battle of
Friedland. They said that had we held out a little longer Napoleon would
have been done for, as his troops had neither provisions nor ammunition.
Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly the latter) in silence. He finished a
couple of bottles of wine by himself. The process in his mind went on
tormenting him without reaching a conclusion. He feared to give way to
his thoughts, yet could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the
officers' saying that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov
began shouting with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore much to the
surprise of the officers:

"How can you judge what's best?" he cried, the blood suddenly rushing to
his face. "How can you judge the Emperor's actions? What right have we
to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor's aims or his
actions!"

"But I never said a word about the Emperor!" said the officer,
justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostov's outburst, except
on the supposition that he was drunk.

But Rostov did not listen to him.

"We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more," he
went on. "If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we're punished, it
means that we have deserved it, it's not for us to judge. If the Emperor
pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an alliance
with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If once we begin
judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred will be left! That
way we shall be saying there is no God--nothing!" shouted Nicholas,
banging the table--very little to the point as it seemed to his
listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own thoughts.

"Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That's
all...." said he.

"And to drink," said one of the officers, not wishing to quarrel.

"Yes, and to drink," assented Nicholas. "Hullo there! Another bottle!"
he shouted.

In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a fresh interview with
the Emperor Napoleon, and in the upper circles of Petersburg there was
much talk of the grandeur of this important meeting.




CHAPTER XXII

In 1809 the intimacy between "the world's two arbiters," as Napoleon and
Alexander were called, was such that when Napoleon declared war on
Austria a Russian corps crossed the frontier to co-operate with our old
enemy Bonaparte against our old ally the Emperor of Austria, and in
court circles the possibility of marriage between Napoleon and one of
Alexander's sisters was spoken of. But besides considerations of foreign
policy, the attention of Russian society was at that time keenly
directed on the internal changes that were being undertaken in all the
departments of government.

Life meanwhile--real life, with its essential interests of health and
sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought,
science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and passions--went on
as usual, independently of and apart from political friendship or enmity
with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all the schemes of reconstruction.

BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10




CHAPTER I

Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country.

All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates--and constantly
changing from one thing to another had never accomplished--were carried
out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible difficulty.

He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre lacked,
and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going.

On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and became
free agricultural laborers--this being one of the first examples of the
kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs' compulsory labor was
commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for Bogucharovo
at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and writing to
the children of the peasants and household serfs.

Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father and his
son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he spent in
"Bogucharovo Cloister," as his father called Prince Andrew's estate.
Despite the indifference to the affairs of the world he had expressed to
Pierre, he diligently followed all that went on, received many books,
and to his surprise noticed that when he or his father had visitors from
Petersburg, the very vortex of life, these people lagged behind himself-
-who never left the country--in knowledge of what was happening in home
and foreign affairs.

Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great variety of
books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a critical survey of our
last two unfortunate campaigns, and with drawing up a proposal for a
reform of the army rules and regulations.

In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan estates which had been
inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.

Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche looking at the new
grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of white
spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not thinking of
anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from side to side.

They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year before.
They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and green
fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near the bridge,
uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past strips of
stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there, and into a
birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the forest it was
almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with their sticky green
leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers and the first blades
of green grass were pushing up and lifting last year's leaves. The
coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees scattered here and there
among the birches was an unpleasant reminder of winter. On entering the
forest the horses began to snort and sweated visibly.

Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter assented.
But apparently the coachman's sympathy was not enough for Peter, and he
turned on the box toward his master.

"How pleasant it is, your excellency!" he said with a respectful smile.

"What?"

"It's pleasant, your excellency!"


"What is he talking about?" thought Prince Andrew. "Oh, the spring, I
suppose," he thought as he turned round. "Yes, really everything is
green already.... How early! The birches and cherry and alders too are
coming out.... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah, here is one oak!"

At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of the
birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and twice as
tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as great as a man
could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its branches had been
broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge ungainly limbs sprawling
unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and fingers, it stood an aged,
stern, and scornful monster among the smiling birch trees. Only the
dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about in the forest, and this oak,
refused to yield to the charm of spring or notice either the spring or
the sunshine.

"Spring, love, happiness!" this oak seemed to say. "Are you not weary of
that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and
always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! Look at those
cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, sticking out my broken
and barked fingers just where they have grown, whether from my back or
my sides: as they have grown so I stand, and I do not believe in your
hopes and your lies."

As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times to
look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak, too,
were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling, rigid,
misshapen, and grim as ever.

"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince Andrew.
"Let others--the young--yield afresh to that fraud, but we know life,
our life is finished!"

A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully pleasant, rose
in his soul in connection with that tree. During this journey he, as it
were, considered his life afresh and arrived at his old conclusion,
restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for him to begin anything
anew--but that he must live out his life, content to do no harm, and not
disturbing himself or desiring anything.




CHAPTER II

Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the district in
connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of which he was
trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya Rostov, and in the middle of May
Prince Andrew went to visit him.

It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already clothed in
green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water one longed to
bathe.

Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about which
he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the grounds
of the Rostovs' house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish cries behind
some trees on the right and saw a group of girls running to cross the
path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran a dark-
haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz dress, with a
white handkerchief on her head from under which loose locks of hair
escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing that he was a
stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.

Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so beautiful,
the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that slim pretty girl
did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and was contented and
cheerful in her own separate--probably foolish--but bright and happy
life. "What is she so glad about? What is she thinking of? Not of the
military regulations or of the arrangement of the Ryazan serfs'
quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so happy?" Prince Andrew
asked himself with instinctive curiosity.

In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just as he had done in
former years, that is, entertaining almost the whole province with
hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. He was glad to see Prince
Andrew, as he was to see any new visitor, and insisted on his staying
the night.

During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by his
elderly hosts and by the more important of the visitors (the old count's
house was crowded on account of an approaching name day), Prince Andrew
repeatedly glanced at Natasha, gay and laughing among the younger
members of the company, and asked himself each time, "What is she
thinking about? Why is she so glad?"

That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to sleep. He
read awhile and then put out his candle, but relit it. It was hot in the
room, the inside shutters of which were closed. He was cross with the
stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had made him stay by assuring
him that some necessary documents had not yet arrived from town, and he
was vexed with himself for having stayed.

He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened the
shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been watching for this, burst
into the room. He opened the casement. The night was fresh, bright, and
very still. Just before the window was a row of pollard trees, looking
black on one side and with a silvery light on the other. Beneath the
trees grew some kind of lush, wet, bushy vegetation with silver-lit
leaves and stems here and there. Farther back beyond the dark trees a
roof glittered with dew, to the right was a leafy tree with brilliantly
white trunk and branches, and above it shone the moon, nearly at its
full, in a pale, almost starless, spring sky. Prince Andrew leaned his
elbows on the window ledge and his eyes rested on that sky.

His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were also
awake. He heard female voices overhead.

"Just once more," said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew
recognized at once.

"But when are you coming to bed?" replied another voice.

"I won't, I can't sleep, what's the use? Come now for the last time."


Two girlish voices sang a musical passage--the end of some song.

"Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there's an end of it."

"You go to sleep, but I can't," said the first voice, coming nearer to
the window. She was evidently leaning right out, for the rustle of her
dress and even her breathing could be heard. Everything was stone-still,
like the moon and its light and the shadows. Prince Andrew, too, dared
not stir, for fear of betraying his unintentional presence.

"Sonya! Sonya!" he again heard the first speaker. "Oh, how can you
sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up,
Sonya!" she said almost with tears in her voice. "There never, never was
such a lovely night before!"

Sonya made some reluctant reply.

"Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely! Come here....
Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like sitting down
on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this, straining tight,
as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this...."

"Take care, you'll fall out."

He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya's disapproving voice: "It's
past one o'clock."

"Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!"

Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was still sitting
there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle and at times a sigh.

"O God, O God! What does it mean?" she suddenly exclaimed. "To bed then,
if it must be!" and she slammed the casement.

"For her I might as well not exist!" thought Prince Andrew while he
listened to her voice, for some reason expecting yet fearing that she
might say something about him. "There she is again! As if it were on
purpose," thought he.

In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of youthful
thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his life, that unable
to explain his condition to himself he lay down and fell asleep at once.




CHAPTER III

Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the count, and not
waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home.

It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey he drove
into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made so strange and
memorable an impression on him. In the forest the harness bells sounded
yet more muffled than they had done six weeks before, for now all was
thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs dotted about in the forest
did not jar on the general beauty but, lending themselves to the mood
around, were delicately green with fluffy young shoots.

The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering, but only a
small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling the road
and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in the shade,
the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and scarcely
swayed by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the nightingales
trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now far away.

"Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed," thought
Prince Andrew. "But where is it?" he again wondered, gazing at the left
side of the road, and without recognizing it he looked with admiration
at the very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured, spreading
out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and slightly
trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled fingers nor
old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in evidence now.
Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were no twigs,
leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old veteran
could have produced.

"Yes, it is the same oak," thought Prince Andrew, and all at once he was
seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal. All the
best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory. Austerlitz with
the lofty heavens, his wife's dead reproachful face, Pierre at the
ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night
itself and the moon, and.... all this rushed suddenly to his mind.

"No, life is not over at thirty-one!" Prince Andrew suddenly decided
finally and decisively. "It is not enough for me to know what I have in
me--everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted to fly
away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may not be
lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it, but so that
it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live in harmony!"

On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that autumn
and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole series of
sensible and logical considerations showing it to be essential for him
to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the service, kept springing up
in his mind. He could not now understand how he could ever even have
doubted the necessity of taking an active share in life, just as a month
before he had not understood how the idea of leaving the quiet country
could ever enter his head. It now seemed clear to him that all his
experience of life must be senselessly wasted unless he applied it to
some kind of work and again played an active part in life. He did not
even remember how formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical
arguments, it had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if
he now, after the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe
in the possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness
or love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey to
Ryazan he found the country dull; his former pursuits no longer
interested him, and often when sitting alone in his study he got up,
went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then he would
turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who with hair curled a la
grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame. She did
not now say those former terrible words to him, but looked simply,
merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing his arms
behind him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling, as he
reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as a
crime, which altered his whole life and were connected with Pierre, with
fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman's beauty and love.
And if anyone came into his room at such moments he was particularly
cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.

"My dear," Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say, "little
Nicholas can't go out today, it's very cold."

"If it were hot," Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly to
his sister, "he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he must
wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That is what
follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child who needs
fresh air should remain at home," he would add with extreme logic, as if
punishing someone for those secret illogical emotions that stirred
within him.

At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work dries
men up.




CHAPTER IV

Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809. It was the time
when the youthful Speranski was at the zenith of his fame and his
reforms were being pushed forward with the greatest energy. That same
August the Emperor was thrown from his caleche, injured his leg, and
remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speranski every day and no
one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being prepared that
so agitated society--abolishing court ranks and introducing examinations
to qualify for the grades of Collegiate Assessor and State Councilor--
and not merely these but a whole state constitution, intended to change
the existing order of government in Russia: legal, administrative, and
financial, from the Council of State down to the district tribunals. Now
those vague liberal dreams with which the Emperor Alexander had ascended
the throne, and which he had tried to put into effect with the aid of
his associates, Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and Strogonov--whom
he himself in jest had called his Comite de salut public--were taking
shape and being realized.

Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the civil side, and
Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his arrival Prince Andrew, as a
gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a levee. The
Emperor, though he met him twice, did not favor him with a single word.
It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he was antipathetic to
the Emperor and that the latter disliked his face and personality
generally, and in the cold, repellent glance the Emperor gave him, he
now found further confirmation of this surmise. The courtiers explained
the Emperor's neglect of him by His Majesty's displeasure at Bolkonski's
not having served since 1805.

"I know myself that one cannot help one's sympathies and antipathies,"
thought Prince Andrew, "so it will not do to present my proposal for the
reform of the army regulations to the Emperor personally, but the
project will speak for itself."

He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend of
his father's. The field marshal made an appointment to see him, received
him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few days later
Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see the Minister of
War, Count Arakcheev.

On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakcheev's waiting
room at nine in the morning.

He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen him, and all he had
heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.

"He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not
concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been commissioned to
consider my project, so he alone can get it adopted," thought Prince
Andrew as he waited among a number of important and unimportant people
in Count Arakcheev's waiting room.

During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen the
anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such rooms
were well known to him. Count Arakcheev's anteroom had quite a special
character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting their turn for
an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the faces of those of
higher rank expressed a common feeling of awkwardness, covered by a mask
of unconcern and ridicule of themselves, their situation, and the person
for whom they were waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down, others
whispered and laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname "Sila
Andreevich" and the words, "Uncle will give it to us hot," in reference
to Count Arakcheev. One general (an important personage), evidently
feeling offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and uncrossing
his legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.

But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all faces--
that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the adjutant on
duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look and was told
that his turn would come in due course. After some others had been shown
in and out of the minister's room by the adjutant on duty, an officer
who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and frightened air was
admitted at that terrible door. This officer's audience lasted a long
time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a harsh voice was heard from
the other side of the door, and the officer--with pale face and
trembling lips--came out and passed through the waiting room, clutching
his head.

After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer on
duty said in a whisper, "To the right, at the window."

Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man of
forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep wrinkles,
scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an overhanging red
nose. Arakcheev turned his head toward him without looking at him.

"What is your petition?" asked Arakcheev.

"I am not petitioning, your excellency," returned Prince Andrew quietly.

Arakcheev's eyes turned toward him.

"Sit down," said he. "Prince Bolkonski?"

"I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has
deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me..."

"You see, my dear sir, I have read your project," interrupted Arakcheev,
uttering only the first words amiably and then--again without looking at
Prince Andrew--relapsing gradually into a tone of grumbling contempt.
"You are proposing new military laws? There are many laws but no one to
carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody designs laws, it is easier
writing than doing."

"I came at His Majesty the Emperor's wish to learn from your excellency
how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have presented," said
Prince Andrew politely.

"I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to the
committee. I do not approve of it," said Arakcheev, rising and taking a
paper from his writing table. "Here!" and he handed it to Prince Andrew.

Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters,
misspelled, and without punctuation: "Unsoundly constructed because
resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the Articles
of War needlessly deviating."

"To what committee has the memorandum been referred?" inquired Prince
Andrew.

"To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that your
honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary."

Prince Andrew smiled.

"I don't want one."

"A member without salary," repeated Arakcheev. "I have the honor... Eh!
Call the next one! Who else is there?" he shouted, bowing to Prince
Andrew.




CHAPTER V

While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the committee
Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances, particularly those he
knew to be in power and whose aid he might need. In Petersburg he now
experienced the same feeling he had had on the eve of a battle, when
troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly attracted to the ruling
circles where the future, on which the fate of millions depended, was
being shaped. From the irritation of the older men, the curiosity of the
uninitiated, the reserve of the initiated, the hurry and preoccupation
of everyone, and the innumerable committees and commissions of whose
existence he learned every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in
Petersburg a vast civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in
chief of which was a mysterious person he did not know, but who was
supposed to be a man of genius--Speranski. And this movement of
reconstruction of which Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski
its chief promoter, began to interest him so keenly that the question of
the army regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his
consciousness.

Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception in the
highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The reforming
party cordially welcomed and courted him, in the first place because he
was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly because by
liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of being a liberal.
The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured the innovations,
turned to him expecting his sympathy in their disapproval of the
reforms, simply because he was the son of his father. The feminine
society world welcomed him gladly, because he was rich, distinguished, a
good match, and almost a newcomer, with a halo of romance on account of
his supposed death and the tragic loss of his wife. Besides this the
general opinion of all who had known him previously was that he had
greatly improved during these last five years, having softened and grown
more manly, lost his former affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony,
and acquired the serenity that comes with years. People talked about
him, were interested in him, and wanted to meet him.

The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrew spent
the evening at Count Kochubey's. He told the count of his interview with
Sila Andreevich (Kochubey spoke of Arakcheev by that nickname with the
same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the Minister of War's
anteroom).

"Mon cher, even in this case you can't do without Michael Mikhaylovich
Speranski. He manages everything. I'll speak to him. He has promised to
come this evening."

"What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?" asked Prince
Andrew.

Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkonski's
simplicity.

"We were talking to him about you a few days ago," Kochubey continued,
"and about your freed plowmen."

"Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?" said an old man of
Catherine's day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkonski.

"It was a small estate that brought in no profit," replied Prince
Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old man
uselessly.

"Afraid of being late..." said the old man, looking at Kochubey.

"There's one thing I don't understand," he continued. "Who will plow the
land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but difficult to
rule.... Just the same as now--I ask you, Count--who will be heads of
the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?"

"Those who pass the examinations, I suppose," replied Kochubey, crossing
his legs and glancing round.

"Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a
priceless man, but he's sixty. Is he to go up for examination?"

"Yes, that's a difficulty, as education is not at all general, but..."

Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the arm,
and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a large open
forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness, who was just
entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with a cross
suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It was Speranski.
Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a throb within him, as
happens at critical moments of life. Whether it was from respect, envy,
or anticipation, he did not know. Speranski's whole figure was of a
peculiar type that made him easily recognizable. In the society in which
Prince Andrew lived he had never seen anyone who together with awkward
and clumsy gestures possessed such calmness and self-assurance; he had
never seen so resolute yet gentle an expression as that in those half-
closed, rather humid eyes, or so firm a smile that expressed nothing;
nor had he heard such a refined, smooth, soft voice; above all he had
never seen such delicate whiteness of face or hands--hands which were
broad, but very plump, soft, and white. Such whiteness and softness
Prince Andrew had only seen on the faces of soldiers who had been long
in hospital. This was Speranski, Secretary of State, reporter to the
Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he had more than once met and
talked with Napoleon.

Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as people
involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no hurry to
speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be listened to, and
he looked only at the person with whom he was conversing.

Prince Andrew followed Speranski's every word and movement with
particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men who
judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting anyone new--
especially anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputation--expected
to discover in him the perfection of human qualities.

Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been unable to come sooner
as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that the Emperor
had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation of modesty.
When Kochubey introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly turned his eyes
to Bolkonski with his customary smile and looked at him in silence.

"I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as
everyone has," he said after a pause.

Kochubey said a few words about the reception Arakcheev had given
Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more markedly.

"The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend
Monsieur Magnitski," he said, fully articulating every word and
syllable, "and if you like I can put you in touch with him." He paused
at the full stop. "I hope you will find him sympathetic and ready to co-
operate in promoting all that is reasonable."

A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man who had talked
about his subordinate Pryanichnikov addressed a question to him.

Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every movement
of Speranski's: this man, not long since an insignificant divinity
student, who now, Bolkonski thought, held in his hands--those plump
white hands--the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the
extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speranski answered the
old man. He appeared to address condescending words to him from an
immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud, Speranski
smiled and said he could not judge of the advantage or disadvantage of
what pleased the sovereign.

Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speranski rose
and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along to the other end of the
room. It was clear that he thought it necessary to interest himself in
Bolkonski.

"I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the animated
conversation in which that venerable gentleman involved me," he said
with a mildly contemptuous smile, as if intimating by that smile that he
and Prince Andrew understood the insignificance of the people with whom
he had just been talking. This flattered Prince Andrew. "I have known of
you for a long time: first from your action with regard to your serfs, a
first example, of which it is very desirable that there should be more
imitators; and secondly because you are one of those gentlemen of the
chamber who have not considered themselves offended by the new decree
concerning the ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing so much
gossip and tittle-tattle."

"No," said Prince Andrew, "my father did not wish me to take advantage
of the privilege. I began the service from the lower grade."

"Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands above our
contemporaries who so condemn this measure which merely reestablishes
natural justice."

"I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground," returned
Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speranski's influence, of which he began
to be conscious. He did not like to agree with him in everything and
felt a wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke easily and well, he
felt a difficulty in expressing himself now while talking with
Speranski. He was too much absorbed in observing the famous man's
personality.

"Grounds of personal ambition maybe," Speranski put in quietly.

"And of state interest to some extent," said Prince Andrew.

"What do you mean?" asked Speranski quietly, lowering his eyes.

"I am an admirer of Montesquieu," replied Prince Andrew, "and his idea
that le principe des monarchies est l'honneur me parait incontestable.
Certains droits et privileges de la noblesse me paraissent etre des
moyens de soutenir ce sentiment." *


* "The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me incontestable.
Certain rights and privileges for the aristocracy appear to me a means
of maintaining that sentiment."

The smile vanished from Speranski's white face, which was much improved
by the change. Probably Prince Andrew's thought interested him.

"Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue," * he began,
pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and speaking even slower
than in Russian but quite calmly.


* "If you regard the question from that point of view."

Speranski went on to say that honor, l'honneur, cannot be upheld by
privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l'honneur, is either a
negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a source of
emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which recognize it.
His arguments were concise, simple, and clear.

"An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one similar
to the Legion d'honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not harmful but
helpful to the success of the service, but not a class or court
privilege."

"I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court privileges
have attained the same end," returned Prince Andrew. "Every courtier
considers himself bound to maintain his position worthily."

"Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege, Prince," said
Speranski, indicating by a smile that he wished to finish amiably an
argument which was embarrassing for his companion. "If you will do me
the honor of calling on me on Wednesday," he added, "I will, after
talking with Magnitski, let you know what may interest you, and shall
also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you."

Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without taking leave, and
trying to attract as little attention as possible, he left the room.




CHAPTER VI

During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew felt the
whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of seclusion quite
overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed him in that city.

On returning home in the evening he would jot down in his notebook four
or five necessary calls or appointments for certain hours. The mechanism
of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be in time everywhere,
absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did nothing, did not
even think or find time to think, but only talked, and talked
successfully, of what he had thought while in the country.

He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the same
remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy for
whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was thinking
of nothing.

As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey's, Speranski produced
a strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when he received
him tête-à-tête at his own house and talked to him long and
confidentially.

To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and insignificant
creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the living ideal of that
perfection toward which he strove, that he readily believed that in
Speranski he had found this ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous
man. Had Speranski sprung from the same class as himself and possessed
the same breeding and traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered
his weak, human, unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and
logical turn of mind inspired him with respect all the more because he
did not quite understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either because he
appreciated the other's capacity or because he considered it necessary
to win him to his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness
before Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which
goes hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption
that one's companion is the only man besides oneself capable of
understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the reasonableness
and profundity of one's own ideas.

During their long conversation on Wednesday evening, Speranski more than
once remarked: "We regard everything that is above the common level of
rooted custom..." or, with a smile: "But we want the wolves to be fed
and the sheep to be safe..." or: "They cannot understand this..." and
all in a way that seemed to say: "We, you and I, understand what they
are and who we are."

This first long conversation with Speranski only strengthened in Prince
Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first meeting.
He saw in him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast intellect who by
his energy and persistence had attained power, which he was using solely
for the welfare of Russia. In Prince Andrew's eyes Speranski was the man
he would himself have wished to be--one who explained all the facts of
life reasonably, considered important only what was rational, and was
capable of applying the standard of reason to everything. Everything
seemed so simple and clear in Speranski's exposition that Prince Andrew
involuntarily agreed with him about everything. If he replied and
argued, it was only because he wished to maintain his independence and
not submit to Speranski's opinions entirely. Everything was right and
everything was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince
Andrew. This was Speranski's cold, mirrorlike look, which did not allow
one to penetrate to his soul, and his delicate white hands, which Prince
Andrew involuntarily watched as one does watch the hands of those who
possess power. This mirrorlike gaze and those delicate hands irritated
Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was unpleasantly struck, too, by the
excessive contempt for others that he observed in Speranski, and by the
diversity of lines of argument he used to support his opinions. He made
use of every kind of mental device, except analogy, and passed too
boldly, it seemed to Prince Andrew, from one to another. Now he would
take up the position of a practical man and condemn dreamers; now that
of a satirist, and laugh ironically at his opponents; now grow severely
logical, or suddenly rise to the realm of metaphysics. (This last
resource was one he very frequently employed.) He would transfer a
question to metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space, time,
and thought, and, having deduced the refutation he needed, would again
descend to the level of the original discussion.

In general the trait of Speranski's mentality which struck Prince Andrew
most was his absolute and unshakable belief in the power and authority
of reason. It was evident that the thought could never occur to him
which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that it is after all
impossible to express all one thinks; and that he had never felt the
doubt, "Is not all I think and believe nonsense?" And it was just this
peculiarity of Speranski's mind that particularly attracted Prince
Andrew.

During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a
passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt for
Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village priest, and
that stupid people might meanly despise him on account of his humble
origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to cherish his
sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to strengthen it.

On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having mentioned the
Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speranski told him
sarcastically that the Commission had existed for a hundred and fifty
years, had cost millions, and had done nothing except that Rosenkampf
had stuck labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the different codes.

"And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent," said he.
"We want to give the Senate new juridical powers, but we have no laws.
That is why it is a sin for men like you, Prince, not to serve in these
times!"

Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in jurisprudence was
needed which he did not possess.

"But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a vicious circle
from which we must break a way out."

A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army
Regulations and--what he had not at all expected--was chairman of a
section of the committee for the revision of the laws. At Speranski's
request he took the first part of the Civil Code that was being drawn up
and, with the aid of the Code Napoleon and the Institutes of Justinian,
he worked at formulating the section on Personal Rights.




CHAPTER VII

Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to Petersburg
after visiting his estates had involuntarily found himself in a leading
position among the Petersburg Freemasons. He arranged dining and funeral
lodge meetings, enrolled new members, and busied himself uniting various
lodges and acquiring authentic charters. He gave money for the erection
of temples and supplemented as far as he could the collection of alms,
in regard to which the majority of members were stingy and irregular. He
supported almost singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded in
Petersburg.

His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations and
dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he considered
it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations of the
bachelor circles in which he moved.

Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre at
the end of a year began to feel that the more firmly he tried to rest
upon it, the more masonic ground on which he stood gave way under him.
At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under him the
closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had joined
the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who confidently
steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his foot down it
sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness of the ground, he put his
other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in it, and
involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog.

Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg--he had of late stood aside from
the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost entirely in
Moscow. All the members of the lodges were men Pierre knew in ordinary
life, and it was difficult for him to regard them merely as Brothers in
Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D., whom he knew in
society mostly as weak and insignificant men. Under the masonic aprons
and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at which they aimed in
ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and reckoning up twenty to
thirty rubles received for the most part in promises from a dozen
members, of whom half were as well able to pay as himself, Pierre
remembered the masonic vow in which each Brother promised to devote all
his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on which he tried not to
dwell arose in his soul.

He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In the first he
put those who did not take an active part in the affairs of the lodges
or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the mystical
science of the order: with questions of the threefold designation of
God, the three primordial elements--sulphur, mercury, and salt--or the
meaning of the square and all the various figures of the temple of
Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to which the elder ones
chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought, Joseph Alexeevich himself,
but he did not share their interests. His heart was not in the mystical
aspect of Freemasonry.

In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like him,
seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a straight
and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so.

In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority) who saw
nothing in Freemasonry but the external forms and ceremonies, and prized
the strict performance of these forms without troubling about their
purport or significance. Such were Willarski and even the Grand Master
of the principal lodge.

Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged,
particularly those who had lately joined. These according to Pierre's
observations were men who had no belief in anything, nor desire for
anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate with the wealthy
young Brothers who were influential through their connections or rank,
and of whom there were very many in the lodge.

Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing. Freemasonry,
at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes seemed to him based merely on
externals. He did not think of doubting Freemasonry itself, but
suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path and deviated from
its original principles. And so toward the end of the year he went
abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the order.

In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. Our Freemasons knew
from correspondence with those abroad that Bezukhov had obtained the
confidence of many highly placed persons, had been initiated into many
mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade, and was bringing back with
him much that might conduce to the advantage of the masonic cause in
Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons all came to see him, tried to
ingratiate themselves with him, and it seemed to them all that he was
preparing something for them and concealing it.

A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was convened, at
which Pierre promised to communicate to the Petersburg Brothers what he
had to deliver to them from the highest leaders of their order. The
meeting was a full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre rose and began
his address.

"Dear Brothers," he began, blushing and stammering, with a written
speech in his hand, "it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries in
the seclusion of our lodge--we must act--act! We are drowsing, but we
must act." Pierre raised his notebook and began to read.

"For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the triumph of
virtue," he read, "we must cleanse men from prejudice, diffuse
principles in harmony with the spirit of the times, undertake the
education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the
wisest men, boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity, and
folly, and form of those devoted to us a body linked together by unity
of purpose and possessed of authority and power.

"To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of virtue over vice
and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this world,
receive a lasting reward for his virtue. But in these great endeavors we
are gravely hampered by the political institutions of today. What is to
be done in these circumstances? To favor revolutions, overthrow
everything, repel force by force?... No! We are very far from that.
Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil
while men remain what they are, and also because wisdom needs no
violence.

"The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of preparing
men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of conviction--aiming
at the punishment of vice and folly, and patronizing talent and virtue:
raising worthy men from the dust and attaching them to our Brotherhood.
Only then will our order have the power unobtrusively to bind the hands
of the protectors of disorder and to control them without their being
aware of it. In a word, we must found a form of government holding
universal sway, which should be diffused over the whole world without
destroying the bonds of citizenship, and beside which all other
governments can continue in their customary course and do everything
except what impedes the great aim of our order, which is to obtain for
virtue the victory over vice. This aim was that of Christianity itself.
It taught men to be wise and good and for their own benefit to follow
the example and instruction of the best and wisest men.

"At that time, when everything was plunged in darkness, preaching alone
was of course sufficient. The novelty of Truth endowed her with special
strength, but now we need much more powerful methods. It is now
necessary that man, governed by his senses, should find in virtue a
charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to eradicate the
passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble aim, and it is
therefore necessary that everyone should be able to satisfy his passions
within the limits of virtue. Our order should provide means to that end.

"As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in every state, each
of them again training two others and all being closely united,
everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret
accomplished much for the welfare of mankind."

This speech not only made a strong impression, but created excitement in
the lodge. The majority of the Brothers, seeing in it dangerous designs
of Illuminism, * met it with a coldness that surprised Pierre. The Grand
Master began answering him, and Pierre began developing his views with
more and more warmth. It was long since there had been so stormy a
meeting. Parties were formed, some accusing Pierre of Illuminism, others
supporting him. At that meeting he was struck for the first time by the
endless variety of men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever
presenting itself identically to two persons. Even those members who
seemed to be on his side understood him in their own way with
limitations and alterations he could not agree to, as what he always
wanted most was to convey his thought to others just as he himself
understood it.


* The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for monarchical
institutions.

At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will
reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue
alone, but also a love of strife that had moved him in the dispute.
Pierre did not answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would
be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without waiting for the
usual formalities he left the lodge and went home.




CHAPTER VIII

Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For three
days after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a sofa at
home receiving no one and going nowhere.

It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who implored
him to see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and how she
wished to devote her whole life to him.

At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she would
return to Petersburg from abroad.

Following this letter one of the masonic Brothers whom Pierre respected
less than the others forced his way in to see him and, turning the
conversation upon Pierre's matrimonial affairs, by way of fraternal
advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his wife was wrong and
that he was neglecting one of the first rules of Freemasonry by not
forgiving the penitent.

At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili's wife, sent to him
imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a most
important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy against him and
that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and in the mood he then
was, this was not even unpleasant to him. Nothing mattered to him.
Nothing in life seemed to him of much importance, and under the
influence of the depression that possessed him he valued neither his
liberty nor his resolution to punish his wife.

"No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to blame," he
thought.

If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife, it
was only because in his state of depression he did not feel able to take
any step. Had his wife come to him, he would not have turned her away.
Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of indifference
whether he lived with his wife or not?

Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre late
one night prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see Joseph
Alexeevich. This is what he noted in his diary:

Moscow, 17th November

I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down what I
have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich is living poorly and has for three
years been suffering from a painful disease of the bladder. No one has
ever heard him utter a groan or a word of complaint. From morning till
late at night, except when he eats his very plain food, he is working at
science. He received me graciously and made me sit down on the bed on
which he lay. I made the sign of the Knights of the East and of
Jerusalem, and he responded in the same manner, asking me with a mild
smile what I had learned and gained in the Prussian and Scottish lodges.
I told him everything as best I could, and told him what I had proposed
to our Petersburg lodge, of the bad reception I had encountered, and of
my rupture with the Brothers. Joseph Alexeevich, having remained silent
and thoughtful for a good while, told me his view of the matter, which
at once lit up for me my whole past and the future path I should follow.
He surprised me by asking whether I remembered the threefold aim of the
order: (1) The preservation and study of the mystery. (2) The
purification and reformation of oneself for its reception, and (3) The
improvement of the human race by striving for such purification. Which
is the principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation and
self-purification. Only to this aim can we always strive independently
of circumstances. But at the same time just this aim demands the
greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by pride, losing sight of
this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the mystery which in our
impurity we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of the
human race while ourselves setting an example of baseness and
profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine, just because it is
attracted by social activity and puffed up by pride. On this ground
Joseph Alexeevich condemned my speech and my whole activity, and in the
depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of my family affairs he said
to me, "the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told you, lies in
perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the difficulties
of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on the contrary, my
dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares that we can attain
our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge--for man can only know himself
by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can only be attained by
conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief virtue--love of death.
Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its vanity and develop our
innate love of death or of rebirth to a new life." These words are all
the more remarkable because, in spite of his great physical sufferings,
Joseph Alexeevich is never weary of life though he loves death, for
which--in spite of the purity and loftiness of his inner man--he does
not yet feel himself sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained
to me fully the meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out
to me that the numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He
advised me not to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to
take up only second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while diverting
the Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the true path self-
knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for myself
personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that end he
gave me a notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which I will in
future note down all my actions.

Petersburg, 23rd November

I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears and
said that Helene was here and that she implored me to hear her; that she
was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I knew that if
I once let myself see her I should not have strength to go on refusing
what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know whose aid and advice to
seek. Had my benefactor been here he would have told me what to do. I
went to my room and reread Joseph Alexeevich's letters and recalled my
conversations with him, and deduced from it all that I ought not to
refuse a supplicant, and ought to reach a helping hand to everyone--
especially to one so closely bound to me--and that I must bear my cross.
But if I forgive her for the sake of doing right, then let union with
her have only a spiritual aim. That is what I decided, and what I wrote
to Joseph Alexeevich. I told my wife that I begged her to forget the
past, to forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her, and that I had
nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She need not know
how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled on the upper
floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy feeling of
regeneration.




CHAPTER IX

At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at court
and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each with its
own particular tone. The largest of these was the French circle of the
Napoleonic alliance, the circle of Count Rumyantsev and Caulaincourt. In
this group Helene, as soon as she had settled in Petersburg with her
husband, took a very prominent place. She was visited by the members of
the French embassy and by many belonging to that circle and noted for
their intellect and polished manners.

Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the Emperors and
had brought from there these connections with the Napoleonic
notabilities. At Erfurt her success had been brilliant. Napoleon himself
had noticed her in the theater and said of her: "C'est un superbe
animal." * Her success as a beautiful and elegant woman did not surprise
Pierre, for she had become even handsomer than before. What did surprise
him was that during these last two years his wife had succeeded in
gaining the reputation "d' une femme charmante, aussi spirituelle que
belle." *(2) The distinguished Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page
letters. Bilibin saved up his epigrams to produce them in Countess
Bezukhova's presence. To be received in the Countess Bezukhova's salon
was regarded as a diploma of intellect. Young men read books before
attending Helene's evenings, to have something to say in her salon, and
secretaries of the embassy, and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic
secrets to her, so that in a way Helene was a power. Pierre, who knew
she was very stupid, sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of
perplexity and fear, her evenings and dinner parties, where politics,
poetry, and philosophy were discussed. At these parties his feelings
were like those of a conjuror who always expects his trick to be found
out at any moment. But whether because stupidity was just what was
needed to run such a salon, or because those who were deceived found
pleasure in the deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Helene
Bezukhova's reputation as a lovely and clever woman became so firmly
established that she could say the emptiest and stupidest things and
everybody would go into raptures over every word of hers and look for a
profound meaning in it of which she herself had no conception.


* "That's a superb animal."

* (2) "Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely."

Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He was
that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no one's
way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general impression of the
drawing room, he served, by the contrast he presented to her, as an
advantageous background to his elegant and tactful wife. Pierre during
the last two years, as a result of his continual absorption in abstract
interests and his sincere contempt for all else, had acquired in his
wife's circle, which did not interest him, that air of unconcern,
indifference, and benevolence toward all, which cannot be acquired
artificially and therefore inspires involuntary respect. He entered his
wife's drawing room as one enters a theater, was acquainted with
everybody, equally pleased to see everyone, and equally indifferent to
them all. Sometimes he joined in a conversation which interested him
and, regardless of whether any "gentlemen of the embassy" were present
or not, lispingly expressed his views, which were sometimes not at all
in accord with the accepted tone of the moment. But the general opinion
concerning the queer husband of "the most distinguished woman in
Petersburg" was so well established that no one took his freaks
seriously.

Among the many young men who frequented her house every day, Boris
Drubetskoy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was
the most intimate friend of the Bezukhov household since Helene's return
from Erfurt. Helene spoke of him as "mon page" and treated him like a
child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody, but sometimes
that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Boris behaved with a
particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade of deference also
disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so painfully three years before from
the mortification to which his wife had subjected him that he now
protected himself from the danger of its repetition, first by not being
a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing himself to suspect.

"No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally renounced
her former infatuations," he told himself. "There has never been an
instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs of the heart"--
a statement which, though gathered from an unknown source, he believed
implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris' presence in his wife's drawing
room (and he was almost always there) had a physical effect upon Pierre;
it constricted his limbs and destroyed the unconsciousness and freedom
of his movements.

"What a strange antipathy," thought Pierre, "yet I used to like him very
much."

In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the rather blind
and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a clever crank who did
nothing but harmed nobody and was a first-rate, good-natured fellow. But
a complex and difficult process of internal development was taking place
all this time in Pierre's soul, revealing much to him and causing him
many spiritual doubts and joys.




CHAPTER X

Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote in it during
that time:

24th November

Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. (By Joseph
Alexeevich's advice Pierre had entered the service of the state and
served on one of the committees.) Returned home for dinner and dined
alone--the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and drank
moderately and after dinner copied out some passages for the Brothers.
In the evening I went down to the countess and told a funny story about
B., and only remembered that I ought not to have done so when everybody
laughed loudly at it.

I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me to
walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and deliberation,
(2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion, (3) to withdraw
from worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the state, (b) family
duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the management of my affairs.

27th November

I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God,
help and strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the Scriptures,
but without proper feeling. Brother Urusov came and we talked about
worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor's new projects. I began to
criticize them, but remembered my rules and my benefactor's words--that
a true Freemason should be a zealous worker for the state when his aid
is required and a quiet onlooker when not called on to assist. My tongue
is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O. visited me and we had a preliminary
talk about the reception of a new Brother. They laid on me the duty of
Rhetor. I feel myself weak and unworthy. Then our talk turned to the
interpretation of the seven pillars and steps of the Temple, the seven
sciences, the seven virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the
Holy Spirit. Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the admission
took place. The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the
magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy who was admitted.
I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A strange feeling agitated me all
the time I was alone with him in the dark chamber. I caught myself
harboring a feeling of hatred toward him which I vainly tried to
overcome. That is why I should really like to save him from evil and
lead him into the path of truth, but evil thoughts of him did not leave
me. It seemed to me that his object in entering the Brotherhood was
merely to be intimate and in favor with members of our lodge. Apart from
the fact that he had asked me several times whether N. and S. were
members of our lodge (a question to which I could not reply) and that
according to my observation he is incapable of feeling respect for our
holy order and is too preoccupied and satisfied with the outer man to
desire spiritual improvement, I had no cause to doubt him, but he seemed
to me insincere, and all the time I stood alone with him in the dark
temple it seemed to me that he was smiling contemptuously at my words,
and I wished really to stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it.
I could not be eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to the
Brothers and to the Grand Master. Great Architect of Nature, help me to
find the true path out of the labyrinth of lies!


After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then the
following was written:

I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who
advised me to hold fast by Brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was
revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim
is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name unutterable
which means the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen, refresh, and
support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt has no place.
The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane science and our
sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human sciences dissect
everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to examine it. In the
holy science of our order all is one, all is known in its entirety and
life. The Trinity--the three elements of matter--are sulphur, mercury,
and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and fiery nature; in combination with
salt by its fiery nature it arouses a desire in the latter by means of
which it attracts mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination
produces other bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence.
Christ, the Holy Spirit, Him!...

3rd December

Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went and
paced up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but instead my
imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago, when Dolokhov,
meeting me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I was enjoying
perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife's absence. At the time I gave
him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that meeting and in my
mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter replies. I recollected
myself and drove away that thought only when I found myself glowing with
anger, but I did not sufficiently repent. Afterwards Boris Drubetskoy
came and began relating various adventures. His coming vexed me from the
first, and I said something disagreeable to him. He replied. I flared up
and said much that was unpleasant and even rude to him. He became
silent, and I recollected myself only when it was too late. My God, I
cannot get on with him at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set
myself above him and so become much worse than he, for he is lenient to
my rudeness while I on the contrary nourish contempt for him. O God,
grant that in his presence I may rather see my own vileness, and behave
so that he too may benefit. After dinner I fell asleep and as I was
drowsing off I clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear, "Thy day!"

I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded by
dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my left
thigh with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it with
my hands. Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger one, began
biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the bigger and
heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking my arm, led me
to a building to enter which we had to pass along a narrow plank. I
stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to clamber up a
fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After much effort I
dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one side and my body on
the other. I looked round and saw Brother A. standing on the fence and
pointing me to a broad avenue and garden, and in the garden was a large
and beautiful building. I woke up. O Lord, great Architect of Nature,
help me to tear from myself these dogs--my passions especially the last,
which unites in itself the strength of all the former ones, and aid me
to enter that temple of virtue to a vision of which I attained in my
dream.

7th December

I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my house, and that I was
very glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered
incessantly with other people and suddenly remembered that this could
not please him, and I wished to come close to him and embrace him. But
as soon as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and grown young,
and he was quietly telling me something about the teaching of our order,
but so softly that I could not hear it. Then it seemed that we all left
the room and something strange happened. We were sitting or lying on the
floor. He was telling me something, and I wished to show him my
sensibility, and not listening to what he was saying I began picturing
to myself the condition of my inner man and the grace of God sanctifying
me. And tears came into my eyes, and I was glad he noticed this. But he
looked at me with vexation and jumped up, breaking off his remarks. I
felt abashed and asked whether what he had been saying did not concern
me; but he did not reply, gave me a kind look, and then we suddenly
found ourselves in my bedroom where there is a double bed. He lay down
on the edge of it and I burned with longing to caress him and lie down
too. And he said, "Tell me frankly what is your chief temptation? Do you
know it? I think you know it already." Abashed by this question, I
replied that sloth was my chief temptation. He shook his head
incredulously; and even more abashed, I said that though I was living
with my wife as he advised, I was not living with her as her husband. To
this he replied that one should not deprive a wife of one's embraces and
gave me to understand that that was my duty. But I replied that I should
be ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I awoke and
found in my mind the text from the Gospel: "The life was the light of
men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it
not." Joseph Alexeevich's face had looked young and bright. That day I
received a letter from my benefactor in which he wrote about "conjugal
duties."

9th December

I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw that I
was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and Joseph
Alexeevich came in from the drawing room. I seemed to know at once that
the process of regeneration had already taken place in him, and I rushed
to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands, and he said, "Hast
thou noticed that my face is different?" I looked at him, still holding
him in my arms, and saw that his face was young, but that he had no hair
on his head and his features were quite changed. And I said, "I should
have known you had I met you by chance," and I thought to myself, "Am I
telling the truth?" And suddenly I saw him lying like a dead body; then
he gradually recovered and went with me into my study carrying a large
book of sheets of drawing paper; I said, "I drew that," and he answered
by bowing his head. I opened the book, and on all the pages there were
excellent drawings. And in my dream I knew that these drawings
represented the love adventures of the soul with its beloved. And on its
pages I saw a beautiful representation of a maiden in transparent
garments and with a transparent body, flying up to the clouds. And I
seemed to know that this maiden was nothing else than a representation
of the Song of Songs. And looking at those drawings I dreamed I felt
that I was doing wrong, but could not tear myself away from them. Lord,
help me! My God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing, Thy will be done; but
if I am myself the cause, teach me what I should do! I shall perish of
my debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me!




CHAPTER XI

The Rostovs' monetary affairs had not improved during the two years they
had spent in the country.

Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was still
serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending comparatively little,
the way of life at Otradnoe--Mitenka's management of affairs, in
particular--was such that the debts inevitably increased every year. The
only resource obviously presenting itself to the old count was to apply
for an official post, so he had come to Petersburg to look for one and
also, as he said, to let the lassies enjoy themselves for the last time.

Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Vera and was
accepted.

Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best society without
themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of
acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they were
provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow without
inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on them.

The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in Moscow,
and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country neighbors from
Otradnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters, Peronskaya a
maid of honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their district postmaster
who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the men who very soon
became frequent visitors at the Rostovs' house in Petersburg were Boris,
Pierre whom the count had met in the street and dragged home with him,
and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostovs' and paid the eldest
daughter, Countess Vera, the attentions a young man pays when he intends
to propose.

Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at
Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He
narrated that episode so persistently and with so important an air that
everyone believed in the merit and usefulness of his deed, and he had
obtained two decorations for Austerlitz.

In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had picked
up the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp standing near
the commander-in-chief and had taken it to his commander. Just as he had
done after Austerlitz, he related this occurrence at such length and so
insistently that everyone again believed it had been necessary to do
this, and he received two decorations for the Finnish war also. In 1809
he was a captain in the Guards, wore medals, and held some special
lucrative posts in Petersburg.

Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg's merits, it could not be
denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent terms
with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant career before
him and an assured position in society.

Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a Moscow
theater, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostova to him and had said in
German, "das soll mein Weib werden," * and from that moment had made up
his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered the Rostovs'
position and his own, he decided that the time had come to propose.


* "That girl shall be my wife."

Berg's proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not
flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an obscure
Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess Rostova; but
Berg's chief characteristic was such a naive and good natured egotism
that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it would be a good thing,
since he himself was so firmly convinced that it was good, indeed
excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs' affairs were seriously embarrassed, as
the suitor could not but know; and above all, Vera was twenty-four, had
been taken out everywhere, and though she was certainly good-looking and
sensible, no one up to now had proposed to her. So they gave their
consent.

"You see," said Berg to his comrade, whom he called "friend" only
because he knew that everyone has friends, "you see, I have considered
it all, and should not marry if I had not thought it all out or if it
were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and mamma are
now provided for--I have arranged that rent for them in the Baltic
Provinces--and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with her fortune
and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not marrying for
money--I consider that dishonorable--but a wife should bring her share
and a husband his. I have my position in the service, she has
connections and some means. In our times that is worth something, isn't
it? But above all, she is a handsome, estimable girl, and she loves
me..."

Berg blushed and smiled.

"And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good. Now
the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite different--
an unpleasant character and has not the same intelligence. She is so...
you know?... Unpleasant... But my fiancee!... Well, you will be coming,"
he was going to say, "to dine," but changed his mind and said "to take
tea with us," and quickly doubling up his tongue he blew a small round
ring of tobacco smoke, perfectly embodying his dream of happiness.

After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by Berg's
proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times took
possession of the family, but the rejoicing was external and insincere.
In the family's feeling toward this wedding a certain awkwardness and
constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not having loved Vera
sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off their hands. The old
count felt this most. He would probably have been unable to state the
cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from the state of his
affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what his debts amounted
to, or what dowry he could give Vera. When his daughters were born he
had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an estate with three
hundred serfs; but one of these estates had already been sold, and the
other was mortgaged and the interest so much in arrears that it would
have to be sold, so that it was impossible to give it to Vera. Nor had
he any money.

Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained before
the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own mind the
question of the dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At one time the
count thought of giving her the Ryazan estate or of selling a forest, at
another time of borrowing money on a note of hand. A few days before the
wedding Berg entered the count's study early one morning and, with a
pleasant smile, respectfully asked his future father-in-law to let him
know what Vera's dowry would be. The count was so disconcerted by this
long-foreseen inquiry that without consideration he gave the first reply
that came into his head. "I like your being businesslike about it.... I
like it. You shall be satisfied...."

And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the
conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did not
know for certain how much Vera would have and did not receive at least
part of the dowry in advance, he would have to break matters off.

"Because, consider, Count--if I allowed myself to marry now without
having definite means to maintain my wife, I should be acting badly...."

The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be generous and to
avoid further importunity, saying that he would give a note of hand for
eighty thousand rubles. Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on the
shoulder, and said that he was very grateful, but that it was impossible
for him to arrange his new life without receiving thirty thousand in
ready money. "Or at least twenty thousand, Count," he added, "and then a
note of hand for only sixty thousand."

"Yes, yes, all right!" said the count hurriedly. "Only excuse me, my
dear fellow, I'll give you twenty thousand and a note of hand for eighty
thousand as well. Yes, yes! Kiss me."




CHAPTER XII

Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which she
had counted on her fingers with Boris after they had kissed four years
ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sonya and her mother, if
Boris happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of that episode
as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not worth
mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question whether
her engagement to Boris was a jest or an important, binding promise
tormented her.

Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had not seen the
Rostovs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed near
Otradnoe, but had never been to see them.

Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he did not wish to see her, and
this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders spoke
of him.

"Nowadays old friends are not remembered," the countess would say when
Boris was mentioned.

Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently, seemed
to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke rapturously
and gratefully of the merits of her son and the brilliant career on
which he had entered. When the Rostovs came to Petersburg Boris called
on them.

He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natasha was his
most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of letting
her and her parents feel that the childish relations between himself and
Natasha could not be binding either on her or on him. He had a brilliant
position in society thanks to his intimacy with Countess Bezukhova, a
brilliant position in the service thanks to the patronage of an
important personage whose complete confidence he enjoyed, and he was
beginning to make plans for marrying one of the richest heiresses in
Petersburg, plans which might very easily be realized. When he entered
the Rostovs' drawing room Natasha was in her own room. When she heard of
his arrival she almost ran into the drawing room, flushed and beaming
with a more than cordial smile.

Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining from
under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had known her
four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a different
Natasha entered, and his face expressed rapturous astonishment. This
expression on his face pleased Natasha.

"Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?" asked the
countess.

Boris kissed Natasha's hand and said that he was astonished at the
change in her.

"How handsome you have grown!"

"I should think so!" replied Natasha's laughing eyes.

"And is Papa older?" she asked.

Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris' conversation with the
countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood's suitor. He felt
the weight of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced at her
occasionally.

Boris' uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were all
comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natasha noticed at once.
He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess, arranging
with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his left hand
like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined compression of his
lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg society, recalling
with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow acquaintances. It was not
accidentally, Natasha felt, that he alluded, when speaking of the
highest aristocracy, to an ambassador's ball he had attended, and to
invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.

All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him from under her
brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Boris more and more. He looked
round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he was saying.
He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and took his leave. The
same inquisitive, challenging, and rather mocking eyes still looked at
him. After his first visit Boris said to himself that Natasha attracted
him just as much as ever, but that he must not yield to that feeling,
because to marry her, a girl almost without fortune, would mean ruin to
his career, while to renew their former relations without intending to
marry her would be dishonorable. Boris made up his mind to avoid meeting
Natasha, but despite that resolution he called again a few days later
and began calling often and spending whole days at the Rostovs'. It
seemed to him that he ought to have an explanation with Natasha and tell
her that the old times must be forgotten, that in spite of everything...
she could not be his wife, that he had no means, and they would never
let her marry him. But he failed to do so and felt awkward about
entering on such an explanation. From day to day he became more and more
entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya that Natasha was in love
with Boris as of old. She sang him his favorite songs, showed him her
album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to the past,
letting it be understood how delightful was the present; and every day
he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant to, and not
knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how it would all end. He
left off visiting Helene and received reproachful notes from her every
day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with the Rostovs.




CHAPTER XIII

One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket,
without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing
under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and
bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also in a
dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in
curlpapers, ran in. The countess--her prayerful mood dispelled--looked
round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be that
this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager, seeing her
mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down, and
unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing that her
mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and, rapidly
slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her slippers and
jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might become her grave. This
couch was high, with a feather bed and five pillows each smaller than
the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank into the feather bed, rolled
over to the wall, and began snuggling up the bedclothes as she settled
down, raising her knees to her chin, kicking out and laughing almost
inaudibly, now covering herself up head and all, and now peeping at her
mother. The countess finished her prayers and came to the bed with a
stern face, but seeing, that Natasha's head was covered, she smiled in
her kind, weak way.

"Now then, now then!" said she.

"Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?" said Natasha. "Now, just one on your
throat and another... that'll do!" And seizing her mother round the
neck, she kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her mother
Natasha seemed rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that however
she clasped her mother she always managed to do it without hurting her
or making her feel uncomfortable or displeased.

"Well, what is it tonight?" said the mother, having arranged her pillows
and waited until Natasha, after turning over a couple of times, had
settled down beside her under the quilt, spread out her arms, and
assumed a serious expression.

These visits of Natasha's at night before the count returned from his
club were one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and daughter.

"What is it tonight?--But I have to tell you..."

Natasha put her hand on her mother's mouth.

"About Boris... I know," she said seriously; "that's what I have come
about. Don't say it--I know. No, do tell me!" and she removed her hand.
"Tell me, Mamma! He's nice?"

"Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say Boris is
nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what then?... What
are you thinking about? You have quite turned his head, I can see
that...."

As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter. Natasha was
lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the mahogany
sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the countess
only saw her daughter's face in profile. That face struck her by its
peculiarly serious and concentrated expression.

Natasha was listening and considering.

"Well, what then?" said she.

"You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him? You
know you can't marry him."

"Why not?" said Natasha, without changing her position.

"Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a relation...
and because you yourself don't love him."

"How do you know?"

"I know. It is not right, darling!"


"But if I want to..." said Natasha.

"Leave off talking nonsense," said the countess.

"But if I want to..."

"Natasha, I am in earnest..."

Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess' large hand to
her, kissed it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned it
over and began kissing first one knuckle, then the space between the
knuckles, then the next knuckle, whispering, "January, February, March,
April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don't you say anything? Speak!" said she,
turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at her daughter and in
that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she had wished to say.

"It won't do, my love! Not everyone will understand this friendship
dating from your childish days, and to see him so intimate with you may
injure you in the eyes of other young men who visit us, and above all it
torments him for nothing. He may already have found a suitable and
wealthy match, and now he's half crazy."

"Crazy?" repeated Natasha.

"I'll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin..."

"I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old."

"He was not always old. But this is what I'll do, Natasha, I'll have a
talk with Boris. He need not come so often...."

"Why not, if he likes to?"

"Because I know it will end in nothing...."

"How can you know? No, Mamma, don't speak to him! What nonsense!" said
Natasha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. "Well, I
won't marry, but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it." Natasha
smiled and looked at her mother. "Not to marry, but just so," she added.

"How so, my pet?"

"Just so. There's no need for me to marry him. But... just so."

"Just so, just so," repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she
went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh.

"Don't laugh, stop!" cried Natasha. "You're shaking the whole bed!
You're awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait..." and she
seized the countess' hands and kissed a knuckle of the little finger,
saying, "June," and continued, kissing, "July, August," on the other
hand. "But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think? Was
anybody ever so much in love with you? And he's very nice, very, very
nice. Only not quite my taste--he is so narrow, like the dining-room
clock.... Don't you understand? Narrow, you know--gray, light gray..."

"What rubbish you're talking!" said the countess.

Natasha continued: "Don't you really understand? Nicholas would
understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is
square."

"You flirt with him too," said the countess, laughing.

"No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue and
red.... How can I explain it to you?"

"Little countess!" the count's voice called from behind the door.
"You're not asleep?" Natasha jumped up, snatched up her slippers, and
ran barefoot to her own room.

It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no one
could understand all that she understood and all there was in her.

"Sonya?" she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little kitten
with her enormous plait of hair. "No, how could she? She's virtuous. She
fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know anything more. Even
Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how clever I am and how...
charming she is," she went on, speaking of herself in the third person,
and imagining it was some very wise man--the wisest and best of men--who
was saying it of her. "There is everything, everything in her,"
continued this man. "She is unusually intelligent, charming... and then
she is pretty, uncommonly pretty, and agile--she swims and rides
splendidly... and her voice! One can really say it's a wonderful voice!"

She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw herself
on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would immediately
fall asleep, called Dunyasha the maid to put out the candle, and before
Dunyasha had left the room had already passed into yet another happier
world of dreams, where everything was as light and beautiful as in
reality, and even more so because it was different.

Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk with him, after
which he ceased coming to the Rostovs'.




CHAPTER XIV

On the thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, 1809 - 10 an old
grandee of Catherine's day was giving a ball and midnight supper. The
diplomatic corps and the Emperor himself were to be present.

The grandee's well-known mansion on the English Quay glittered with
innumerable lights. Police were stationed at the brightly lit entrance
which was carpeted with red baize, and not only gendarmes but dozens of
police officers and even the police master himself stood at the porch.
Carriages kept driving away and fresh ones arriving, with red-liveried
footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the carriages emerged men
wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while ladies in satin and ermine
cautiously descended the carriage steps which were let down for them
with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly and noiselessly over the baize
at the entrance.

Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran through the
crowd and caps were doffed.

"The Emperor?... No, a minister.... prince... ambassador. Don't you see
the plumes?..." was whispered among the crowd.

One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know everyone and
mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of the day.

A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostovs, who were
to be present, were still hurrying to get dressed.

There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in the
Rostov family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive, that the
dresses would not be ready, or that something would not be arranged as
it should be.

Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at the
court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the
countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high society,
was to accompany them to the ball.

They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten
o'clock, but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were not
yet dressed.

Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight that
morning and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all day. All
her powers since morning had been concentrated on ensuring that they
all--she herself, Mamma, and Sonya--should be as well dressed as
possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in her hands. The
countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and the two girls
white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their bodices and their
hair dressed a la grecque.

Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks, and ears
washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the openwork silk
stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were already on; the
hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing dressing and so was
the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about helping them all, was
behindhand. She was still sitting before a looking-glass with a dressing
jacket thrown over her slender shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in
the middle of the room and, pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her
dainty finger, was fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went
through it.

"That's not the way, that's not the way, Sonya!" cried Natasha turning
her head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the maid who
was dressing it had not time to release. "That bow is not right. Come
here!"

Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on differently.

"Allow me, Miss! I can't do it like that," said the maid who was holding
Natasha's hair.

"Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That's right, Sonya."

"Aren't you ready? It is nearly ten," came the countess' voice.

"Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?"

"I have only my cap to pin on."

"Don't do it without me!" called Natasha. "You won't do it right."

"But it's already ten."

They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and Natasha had
still to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.

When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat from under which
her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother's dressing jacket, ran up to
Sonya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother. Turning her mother's
head this way and that, she fastened on the cap and, hurriedly kissing
her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were turning up the hem of her
skirt.

The cause of the delay was Natasha's skirt, which was too long. Two
maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of
thread. A third with pins in her mouth was running about between the
countess and Sonya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer garment
up high on one uplifted hand.

"Mavra, quicker, darling!"

"Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..."

"Whenever will you be ready?" asked the count coming to the door. "Here
is some scent. Peronskaya must be tired of waiting."

"It's ready, Miss," said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze dress
with two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as if by
this to express a consciousness of the airiness and purity of what she
held.

Natasha began putting on the dress.

"In a minute! In a minute! Don't come in, Papa!" she cried to her father
as he opened the door--speaking from under the filmy skirt which still
covered her whole face.

Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in. He was
wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and was perfumed
and his hair pomaded.

"Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!" cried Natasha, as she stood in
the middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze.

"If you please, Miss! allow me," said the maid, who on her knees was
pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of her
mouth to the other with her tongue.

"Say what you like," exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing voice as she
looked at Natasha, "say what you like, it's still too long."

Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress was
too long.

"Really, madam, it is not at all too long," said Mavra, crawling on her
knees after her young lady.

"Well, if it's too long we'll tack it up... we'll tack it up in one
minute," said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle that was stuck on
the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling on the floor, set to
work once more.

At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in her cap
and velvet gown.

"Oo-oo, my beauty!" exclaimed the count, "she looks better than any of
you!"

He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside fearing to
be rumpled.

"Mamma, your cap, more to this side," said Natasha. "I'll arrange it,"
and she rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking up her skirt
could not move fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn off.

"Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!"

"Never mind, I'll run it up, it won't show," said Dunyasha.

"What a beauty--a very queen!" said the nurse as she came to the door.
"And Sonya! They are lovely!"

At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and started.
But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.

Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she had
gone through the same process as the Rostovs, but with less flurry--for
to her it was a matter of routine. Her ugly old body was washed,
perfumed, and powdered in just the same way. She had washed behind her
ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing room in her
yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her old lady's maid
was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostovs' servants had been.

She praised the Rostovs' toilets. They praised her taste and toilet, and
at eleven o'clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they settled
themselves in their carriages and drove off.




CHAPTER XV

Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not once
had time to think of what lay before her.

In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage, she
for the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her there at
the ball, in those brightly lighted rooms--with music, flowers, dances,
the Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of Petersburg. The
prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it would come true, so
out of keeping was it with the chill darkness and closeness of the
carriage. She understood all that awaited her only when, after stepping
over the red baize at the entrance, she entered the hall, took off her
fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in front of her mother, mounted the
brightly illuminated stairs between the flowers. Only then did she
remember how she must behave at a ball, and tried to assume the majestic
air she considered indispensable for a girl on such an occasion. But,
fortunately for her, she felt her eyes growing misty, she saw nothing
clearly, her pulse beat a hundred to the minute, and the blood throbbed
at her heart. She could not assume that pose, which would have made her
ridiculous, and she moved on almost fainting from excitement and trying
with all her might to conceal it. And this was the very attitude that
became her best. Before and behind them other visitors were entering,
also talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the
landing reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with
diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms.

Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her reflection
from the others. All was blended into one brilliant procession. On
entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices, footsteps, and
greetings deafened Natasha, and the light and glitter dazzled her still
more. The host and hostess, who had already been standing at the door
for half an hour repeating the same words to the various arrivals,
"Charme de vous voir," * greeted the Rostovs and Peronskaya in the same
manner.


* "Delighted to see you."

The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her black
hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess' eye involuntarily
rested longer on the slim Natasha. She looked at her and gave her alone
a special smile in addition to her usual smile as hostess. Looking at
her she may have recalled the golden, irrecoverable days of her own
girlhood and her own first ball. The host also followed Natasha with his
eyes and asked the count which was his daughter.

"Charming!" said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.

In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting the
Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front rows of
that crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several people were asking about
her and looking at her. She realized that those noticing her liked her,
and this observation helped to calm her.

"There are some like ourselves and some worse," she thought.

Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important people at
the ball.

"That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man," she
said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray curly hair,
who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he said.

"Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhova," said
Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had just entered. "How lovely! She is
quite equal to Marya Antonovna. See how the men, young and old, pay
court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince--is quite mad
about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking, are even more
run after."

She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very plain
daughter.

"She is a splendid match, a millionairess," said Peronskaya. "And look,
here come her suitors."

"That is Bezukhova's brother, Anatole Kuragin," she said, indicating a
handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head erect,
looking at something over the heads of the ladies. "He's handsome, isn't
he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl. But your cousin,
Drubetskoy, is also very attentive to her. They say she has millions. Oh
yes, that's the French ambassador himself!" she replied to the countess'
inquiry about Caulaincourt. "Looks as if he were a king! All the same,
the French are charming, very charming. No one more charming in society.
Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still the most beautiful of them all, our
Marya Antonovna! And how simply she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout
one in spectacles is the universal Freemason," she went on, indicating
Pierre. "Put him beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!"

Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the crowd
and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly as if he
were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through, evidently
looking for someone.

Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, "the buffoon,"
as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for them, and for
her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and introduce
partners to her.

But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome, dark
man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a window
talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natasha at once
recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it was
Bolkonski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger, happier, and
better-looking.

"There's someone else we know--Bolkonski, do you see, Mamma?" said
Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew. "You remember, he stayed a night
with us at Otradnoe."

"Oh, you know him?" said Peronskaya. "I can't bear him. Il fait a
present la pluie et le beau temps. * He's too proud for anything. Takes
after his father. And he's hand in glove with Speranski, writing some
project or other. Just look how he treats the ladies! There's one
talking to him and he has turned away," she said, pointing at him. "I'd
give it to him if he treated me as he does those ladies."


* "He is all the rage just now."




CHAPTER XVI

Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and then
back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor entered to
the sounds of music that had immediately struck up. Behind him walked
his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing to right and left as
if anxious to get the first moments of the reception over. The band
played the polonaise in vogue at that time on account of the words that
had been set to it, beginning: "Alexander, Elisaveta, all our hearts you
ravish quite..." The Emperor passed on to the drawing room, the crowd
made a rush for the doors, and several persons with excited faces
hurried there and back again. Then the crowd hastily retired from the
drawing-room door, at which the Emperor reappeared talking to the
hostess. A young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the ladies,
asking them to move aside. Some ladies, with faces betraying complete
forgetfulness of all the rules of decorum, pushed forward to the
detriment of their toilets. The men began to choose partners and take
their places for the polonaise.

Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing
room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the music.
The host followed with Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came
ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya diligently
named. More than half the ladies already had partners and were taking
up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the polonaise. Natasha
felt that she would be left with her mother and Sonya among a minority
of women who crowded near the wall, not having been invited to dance.
She stood with her slender arms hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom
rising and falling regularly, and with bated breath and glittering,
frightened eyes gazed straight before her, evidently prepared for the
height of joy or misery. She was not concerned about the Emperor or any
of those great people whom Peronskaya was pointing out--she had but one
thought: "Is it possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among
the first to dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will
notice me? They do not even seem to see me, or if they do they look as
if they were saying, 'Ah, she's not the one I'm after, so it's not worth
looking at her!' No, it's impossible," she thought. "They must know how
I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would enjoy
dancing with me."

The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable
time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha's ears. She
wanted to cry. Peronskaya had left them. The count was at the other end
of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were standing by themselves
as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of strangers, with no one
interested in them and not wanted by anyone. Prince Andrew with a lady
passed by, evidently not recognizing them. The handsome Anatole was
smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and looked at Natasha as one
looks at a wall. Boris passed them twice and each time turned away. Berg
and his wife, who were not dancing, came up to them.

This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha--as if there were
nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did not
listen to or look at Vera, who was telling her something about her own
green dress.

At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced with
three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the
Rostovs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they
were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the
distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The Emperor
looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had yet begun
dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went up to Countess
Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly raised her hand and laid
it on his shoulder without looking at him. The aide-de-camp, an adept in
his art, grasping his partner firmly round her waist, with confident
deliberation started smoothly, gliding first round the edge of the
circle, then at the corner of the room he caught Helene's left hand and
turned her, the only sound audible, apart from the ever-quickening
music, being the rhythmic click of the spurs on his rapid, agile feet,
while at every third beat his partner's velvet dress spread out and
seemed to flash as she whirled round. Natasha gazed at them and was
ready to cry because it was not she who was dancing that first turn of
the waltz.

Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing
stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in the
front row of the circle not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff was
talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State to be
held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with Speranski
and participating in the work of the legislative commission, could give
reliable information about that sitting, concerning which various rumors
were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was saying, he was
gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men intending to dance who
had not yet gathered courage to enter the circle.

Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor's presence,
and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to dance.

Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.

"You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova, here. Ask her,"
he said.

"Where is she?" asked Bolkonski. "Excuse me!" he added, turning to the
baron, "we will finish this conversation elsewhere--at a ball one must
dance." He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated. The
despairing, dejected expression of Natasha's face caught his eye. He
recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her debut,
remembered her conversation at the window, and with an expression of
pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostova.

"Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said the countess, with
heightened color.

"I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess
remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite
belying Peronskaya's remarks about his rudeness, and approaching Natasha
he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed his
invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on
Natasha's face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly
brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.

"I have long been waiting for you," that frightened happy little girl
seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as she
raised her hand to Prince Andrew's shoulder. They were the second couple
to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best dancers of his
day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their white satin
dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly, and independently of
herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic happiness. Her slender bare
arms and neck were not beautiful--compared to Helene's her shoulders
looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But Helene seemed, as it were,
hardened by a varnish left by the thousands of looks that had scanned
her person, while Natasha was like a girl exposed for the first time,
who would have felt very much ashamed had she not been assured that this
was absolutely necessary.

Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as
possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed to
him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he disliked,
caused by the Emperor's presence, he danced, and had chosen Natasha
because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she was the first
pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he embraced that
slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close to him and smiling
so near him than the wine of her charm rose to his head, and he felt
himself revived and rejuvenated when after leaving her he stood
breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.




CHAPTER XVII

After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for a dance, and then
the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young men,
so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous partners to
Sonya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She noticed and saw
nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did she fail to notice
that the Emperor talked a long time with the French ambassador, and how
particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or that Prince So-and-so
and So-and-so did and said this and that, and that Helene had great
success and was honored by the special attention of So-and-so, but she
did not even see the Emperor, and only noticed that he had gone because
the ball became livelier after his departure. For one of the merry
cotillions before supper Prince Andrew was again her partner. He
reminded her of their first encounter in the Otradnoe avenue, and how
she had been unable to sleep that moonlight night, and told her how he
had involuntarily overheard her. Natasha blushed at that recollection
and tried to excuse herself, as if there had been something to be
ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had overheard.

Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked meeting
someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And such was
Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and even her
mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special care and
tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest and most
unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the middle of the
cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natasha, still out of
breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer chose her. She was
tired and panting and evidently thought of declining, but immediately
put her hand gaily on the man's shoulder, smiling at Prince Andrew.

"I'd be glad to sit beside you and rest: I'm tired; but you see how they
keep asking me, and I'm glad of it, I'm happy and I love everybody, and
you and I understand it all," and much, much more was said in her smile.
When her partner left her Natasha ran across the room to choose two
ladies for the figure.

"If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she will be
my wife," said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own surprise, as he
watched her. She did go first to her cousin.

"What rubbish sometimes enters one's head!" thought Prince Andrew, "but
what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original, that she
won't be dancing here a month before she will be married.... Such as she
are rare here," he thought, as Natasha, readjusting a rose that was
slipping on her bodice, settled herself beside him.

When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up to
the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and asked
his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natasha did not answer at
once but only looked up with a smile that said reproachfully: "How can
you ask such a question?"

"I have never enjoyed myself so much before!" she said, and Prince
Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her
father and instantly dropped again. Natasha was happier than she had
ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one becomes
completely kind and good and does not believe in the possibility of
evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.

At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the position
his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and absent-minded. A
deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing by a window he stared
over his spectacles seeing no one.

On her way to supper Natasha passed him.

Pierre's gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of him.
She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of her own
happiness.

"How delightful it is, Count!" said she. "Isn't it?"

Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.

"Yes, I am very glad," he said.

"How can people be dissatisfied with anything?" thought Natasha.
"Especially such a capital fellow as Bezukhov!" In Natasha's eyes all
the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid people,
loving one another; none of them capable of injuring another--and so
they ought all to be happy.




CHAPTER XVIII

Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not dwell
on it long. "Yes, it was a very brilliant ball," and then... "Yes, that
little Rostova is very charming. There's something fresh, original, un-
Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her." That was all he
thought about yesterday's ball, and after his morning tea he set to
work.

But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for work
and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work, as he
often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming.

The visitor was Bitski, who served on various committees, frequented all
the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new ideas
and of Speranski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger--one of those men
who choose their opinions like their clothes according to the fashion,
but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest partisans. Hardly
had he got rid of his hat before he ran into Prince Andrew's room with a
preoccupied air and at once began talking. He had just heard particulars
of that morning's sitting of the Council of State opened by the Emperor,
and he spoke of it enthusiastically. The Emperor's speech had been
extraordinary. It had been a speech such as only constitutional monarchs
deliver. "The Sovereign plainly said that the Council and Senate are
estates of the realm, he said that the government must rest not on
authority but on secure bases. The Emperor said that the fiscal system
must be reorganized and the accounts published," recounted Bitski,
emphasizing certain words and opening his eyes significantly.

"Ah, yes! Today's events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our
history," he concluded.

Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the Council of
State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which he had attached
such importance, and was surprised that this event, now that it had
taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite insignificant. He
listened with quiet irony to Bitski's enthusiastic account of it. A very
simple thought occurred to him: "What does it matter to me or to Bitski
what the Emperor was pleased to say at the Council? Can all that make me
any happier or better?"

And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest Prince
Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to dine that
evening at Speranski's, "with only a few friends," as the host had said
when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the intimate home
circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested Prince Andrew,
especially as he had not yet seen Speranski in his domestic
surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.

At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house Speranski
owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room this small
house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting that of a
monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the friendly
gathering of Speranski's intimate acquaintances already assembled at
five o'clock. There were no ladies present except Speranski's little
daughter (long-faced like her father) and her governess. The other
guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin. While still in the
anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato laugh--a
laugh such as one hears on the stage. Someone--it sounded like
Speranski--was distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never
before heard Speranski's famous laugh, and this ringing, high-pitched
laughter from a statesman made a strange impression on him.

He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing between two
windows at a small table laid with hors-d'oeuvres. Speranski, wearing a
gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast, and evidently still
the same waistcoat and high white stock he had worn at the meeting of
the Council of State, stood at the table with a beaming countenance. His
guests surrounded him. Magnitski, addressing himself to Speranski, was
relating an anecdote, and Speranski was laughing in advance at what
Magnitski was going to say. When Prince Andrew entered the room
Magnitski's words were again crowned by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep
bass guffaw as he munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed
softly with a hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-pitched staccato
manner.

Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand to Prince Andrew.

"Very pleased to see you, Prince," he said. "One moment..." he went on,
turning to Magnitski and interrupting his story. "We have agreed that
this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about business!" and
turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.

Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with astonishment,
regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not
Speranski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared
mysterious and fascinating in Speranski suddenly became plain and
unattractive.

At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed to
consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before Magnitski
had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate something
still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the state
service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in this
company the insignificance of those people was so definitely accepted
that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good humored
ridicule. Speranski related how at the Council that morning a deaf
dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so too.
Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable for the
stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering, broke into the
conversation and began excitedly talking of the abuses that existed
under the former order of things--threatening to give a serious turn to
the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing Stolypin about his
vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and the talk reverted to its
former lively tone.

Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and find amusement in
a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his wish, tried to
enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety seemed to Prince
Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speranski's high-pitched voice struck him
unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter grated on him like a false
note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and feared that he would be a damper
on the spirits of the company, but no one took any notice of his being
out of harmony with the general mood. They all seemed very gay.

He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his remarks were
tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the water, and he could
not jest with them.

There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was witty and
might have been funny, but it lacked just that something which is the
salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a thing existed.

After dinner Speranski's daughter and her governess rose. He patted the
little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that gesture, too,
seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.

The men remained at table over their port--English fashion. In the midst
of a conversation that was started about Napoleon's Spanish affairs,
which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to express a
contrary opinion. Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish to prevent
the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a story that had
no connection with the previous conversation. For a few moments all were
silent.

Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a bottle of wine and,
remarking, "Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair," passed it
to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk loudly went
into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier were handed to
Speranski and he took them to his study. As soon as he had left the room
the general merriment stopped and the guests began to converse sensibly
and quietly with one another.

"Now for the recitation!" said Speranski on returning from his study. "A
wonderful talent!" he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnitski immediately
assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous verses in French which
he had composed about various well-known Petersburg people. He was
interrupted several times by applause. When the verses were finished
Prince Andrew went up to Speranski and took his leave.

"Where are you off to so early?" asked Speranski.

"I promised to go to a reception."

They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those mirrorlike,
impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of him to have
expected anything from Speranski and from any of his own activities
connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance to what
Speranski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang in Prince
Andrew's ears long after he had left the house.

When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in
Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something new. He
recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of his project
of army reform, which had been accepted for consideration and which they
were trying to pass over in silence simply because another, a very poor
one, had already been prepared and submitted to the Emperor. He thought
of the meetings of a committee of which Berg was a member. He remembered
how carefully and at what length everything relating to form and
procedure was discussed at those meetings, and how sedulously and
promptly all that related to the gist of the business was evaded. He
recalled his labors on the Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had
translated the articles of the Roman and French codes into Russian, and
he felt ashamed of himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself
Bogucharovo, his occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan; he
remembered the peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally
applying to them the Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he
felt astonished that he could have spent so much time on such useless
work.




CHAPTER XIX

Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited before,
and among them at the Rostovs' with whom he had renewed acquaintance at
the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness which demanded the
call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl who had left such a
pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.

Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a dark-blue
house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier than in her
ball dress. She and all the Rostov family welcomed him as an old friend,
simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he had formerly judged
severely, now seemed to him to consist of excellent, simple, and kindly
people. The old count's hospitality and good nature, which struck one
especially in Petersburg as a pleasant surprise, were such that Prince
Andrew could not refuse to stay to dinner. "Yes," he thought, "they are
capital people, who of course have not the slightest idea what a
treasure they possess in Natasha; but they are kindly folk and form the
best possible setting for this strikingly poetic, charming girl,
overflowing with life!"

In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely
alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world, that
in the Otradnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night had
already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no
longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered it
found in it a new enjoyment.

After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew's request, went to the clavichord
and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window talking to the ladies
and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he ceased speaking and
suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had thought impossible for
him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and something new and joyful
stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the same time sad. He had
absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was ready to weep. What about?
His former love? The little princess? His disillusionments?... His hopes
for the future?... Yes and no. The chief reason was a sudden, vivid
sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great and
illimitable within him and that limited and material something that he,
and even she, was. This contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while
she sang.

As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him and asked how he
liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling that
she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and said he
liked her singing as he liked everything she did.

Prince Andrew left the Rostovs' late in the evening. He went to bed from
habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having lit his candle
he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again not at all troubled
by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and joyful as if he had
stepped out of a stuffy room into God's own fresh air. It did not enter
his head that he was in love with Natasha; he was not thinking about
her, but only picturing her to himself, and in consequence all life
appeared in a new light. "Why do I strive, why do I toil in this narrow,
confined frame, when life, all life with all its joys, is open to me?"
said he to himself. And for the first time for a very long while he
began making happy plans for the future. He decided that he must attend
to his son's education by finding a tutor and putting the boy in his
charge, then he ought to retire from the service and go abroad, and see
England, Switzerland and Italy. "I must use my freedom while I feel so
much strength and youth in me," he said to himself. "Pierre was right
when he said one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order
to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead,
but while one has life one must live and be happy!" thought he.




CHAPTER XX

One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in
Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an immaculate
brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed forward over his
temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.

"I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately she
could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more fortunate
with you," he said with a smile.

"What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service."

"I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count" (Berg said this with
perfect conviction that this information could not but be agreeable),
"and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own and my wife's
friends." (He smiled still more pleasantly.) "I wished to ask the
countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea and to supper."

Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such people as the
Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an invitation.
Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at his house a small
but select company, and why this would give him pleasure, and why though
he grudged spending money on cards or anything harmful, he was prepared
to run into some expense for the sake of good society--that Pierre could
not refuse, and promised to come.

"But don't be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten minutes to
eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is coming. He is
very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you will do me the
favor."

Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at the
Bergs' house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.

Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were ready
for their guests' arrival.

In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and pictures
and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely buttoned up in
his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to her that one always
could and should be acquainted with people above one, because only then
does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.

"You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I
managed from my first promotion." (Berg measured his life not by years
but by promotions.) "My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only
waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to
be your husband." (He rose and kissed Vera's hand, and on the way to her
straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) "And how have I
obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my aquaintances. It
goes without saying that one must be conscientious and methodical."

Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and
paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak
woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man's dignity,
what it was ein Mann zu sein. * Vera at the same time smiling with a
sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the
same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all men did. Berg,
judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Vera, judging
only by her husband and generalizing from that observation, supposed
that all men, though they understand nothing and are conceited and
selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.


* To be a man.

Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her lace
fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on the
lips.

"The only thing is, we mustn't have children too soon," he continued,
following an unconscious sequence of ideas.

"Yes," answered Vera, "I don't at all want that. We must live for
society."

"Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this," said Berg, pointing to
the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.

Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced at one
another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally claiming
the honor of this visit.

"This is what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances," thought Berg.
"This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself."

"But please don't interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests," said
Vera, "because I know what interests each of them and what to say to
different people."

Berg smiled again.

"It can't be helped: men must sometimes have masculine conversation,"
said he.

They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-room, where it was
impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry,
neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange that
Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an armchair
or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently painfully
undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor to settle
the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry by moving a
chair for himself, and Berg and Vera immediately began their evening
party, interrupting each other in their efforts to entertain their
guest.

Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be entertained
with conversation about the French embassy, at once began accordingly.
Berg, having decided that masculine conversation was required,
interrupted his wife's remarks and touched on the question of the war
with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the general subject to
personal considerations as to the proposals made him to take part in the
Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had declined them. Though the
conversation was very incoherent and Vera was angry at the intrusion of
the masculine element, both husband and wife felt with satisfaction
that, even if only one guest was present, their evening had begun very
well and was as like as two peas to every other evening party with its
talk, tea, and lighted candles.

Before long Boris, Berg's old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of
condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Vera. After
Boris came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the
Rostovs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other
evening parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of
satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing room, at
the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of dresses, and the
bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody always has it,
especially so the general, who admired the apartment, patted Berg on the
shoulder, and with parental authority superintended the setting out of
the table for boston. The general sat down by Count Ilya Rostov, who was
next to himself the most important guest. The old people sat with the
old, the young with the young, and the hostess at the tea table, on
which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a silver cake basket as
the Panins had at their party. Everything was just as it was everywhere
else.




CHAPTER XXI

Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston with
Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At the card table he
happened to be directly facing Natasha, and was struck by a curious
change that had come over her since the ball. She was silent, and not
only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from plainness by
her look of gentle indifference to everything around.

"What's the matter with her?" thought Pierre, glancing at her. She was
sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without looking
at him, made some reply to Boris who sat down beside her. After playing
out a whole suit and to his partner's delight taking five tricks,
Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who had entered the
room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again at Natasha.

"What has happened to her?" he asked himself with still greater
surprise.

Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her with a
look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was looking up
at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid breathing. And
the bright glow of some inner fire that had been suppressed was again
alight in her. She was completely transformed and from a plain girl had
again become what she had been at the ball.

Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and
youthful expression in his friend's face.

Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now with
his back to Natasha and now facing her, but during the whole of the six
rubbers he watched her and his friend.

"Something very important is happening between them," thought Pierre,
and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him and made him
neglect the game.

After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use playing
like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on one side was talking with
Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a subtle smile was saying something to
Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and, asking whether they
were talking secrets, sat down beside them. Vera, having noticed Prince
Andrew's attentions to Natasha, decided that at a party, a real evening
party, subtle allusions to the tender passion were absolutely necessary
and, seizing a moment when Prince Andrew was alone, began a conversation
with him about feelings in general and about her sister. With so
intellectual a guest as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she felt
that she had to employ her diplomatic tact.

When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was being carried away
by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed embarrassed, a
thing that rarely happened with him.

"What do you think?" Vera was saying with an arch smile. "You are so
discerning, Prince, and understand people's characters so well at a
glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her
attachments? Could she, like other women" (Vera meant herself), "love a
man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is what I consider
true love. What do you think, Prince?"

"I know your sister too little," replied Prince Andrew, with a sarcastic
smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, "to be able to
solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed that the less
attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to be," he added,
and looked up at Pierre who was just approaching them.

"Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera--mentioning
"our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing,
imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of
"our days" and that human characteristics change with the times--"in our
days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted often
stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that Natalie is
very susceptible." This return to the subject of Natalie caused Prince
Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about to rise, but Vera
continued with a still more subtle smile:

"I think no one has been more courted than she," she went on, "but till
quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you know, Count,"
she said to Pierre, "even our dear cousin Boris, who, between ourselves,
was very far gone in the land of tenderness..." (alluding to a map of
love much in vogue at that time).

Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.

"You are friendly with Boris, aren't you?" asked Vera.

"Yes, I know him..."

"I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natasha?"

"Oh, there was childish love?" suddenly asked Prince Andrew, blushing
unexpectedly.

"Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le
cousinage est un dangereux voisinage. * Don't you think so?"


* "Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood."

"Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural
liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very careful
with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of these
jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside.

"Well?" asked Pierre, seeing his friend's strange animation with
surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natasha as he rose.

"I must... I must have a talk with you," said Prince Andrew. "You know
that pair of women's gloves?" (He referred to the masonic gloves given
to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he loved.) "I...
but no, I will talk to you later on," and with a strange light in his
eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrew approached Natasha
and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince Andrew asked her
something and how she flushed as she replied.

But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he
should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on
the affairs in Spain.

Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his face.
The party was very successful and quite like other parties he had seen.
Everything was similar: the ladies' subtle talk, the cards, the general
raising his voice at the card table, and the samovar and the tea cakes;
only one thing was lacking that he had always seen at the evening
parties he wished to imitate. They had not yet had a loud conversation
among the men and a dispute about something important and clever. Now
the general had begun such a discussion and so Berg drew Pierre to it.




CHAPTER XXII

Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with the
Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there.

Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came, and
without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all day. Not only in
the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha, but in the
whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something important that was
bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and sternly serious eyes
at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha and timidly started some
artificial conversation about trifles as soon as he looked her way.
Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraid of being in the way when
she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in a panic of expectation, when
she remained alone with him for a moment. Prince Andrew surprised her by
his timidity. She felt that he wanted to say something to her but could
not bring himself to do so.

In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to
Natasha and whispered: "Well, what?"

"Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now! One can't talk
about that," said Natasha.

But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and now frightened,
lay a long time in her mother's bed gazing straight before her. She told
her how he had complimented her, how he told her he was going abroad,
asked her where they were going to spend the summer, and then how he had
asked her about Boris.

"But such a... such a... never happened to me before!" she said. "Only I
feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I'm with him. What
does that mean? Does it mean that it's the real thing? Yes? Mamma, are
you asleep?"

"No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered her mother. "Now go!"

"All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy! Mummy!
such a thing never happened to me before," she said, surprised and
alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. "And could we ever
have thought!..."

It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince Andrew
at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she feared
this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very man she had
then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and of finding
him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.

"And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg while
we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that ball. It
is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this! Already
then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar."

"What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..." said
her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince Andrew had
written in Natasha's album.

"Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?"

"Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven,'" said her
mother.

"Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!" cried Natasha, shedding
tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.

At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and telling him
of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make her his wife.

That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The French
ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of late
become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies and
gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the rooms and
struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and morose air.

Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous depression
and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the intimacy of his
wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly been made a
gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had begun to feel
oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark thoughts of the vanity
of all things human came to him oftener than before. At the same time
the feeling he had noticed between his protegee Natasha and Prince
Andrew accentuated his gloom by the contrast between his own position
and his friend's. He tried equally to avoid thinking about his wife, and
about Natasha and Prince Andrew; and again everything seemed to him
insignificant in comparison with eternity; again the question: for what?
presented itself; and he forced himself to work day and night at masonic
labors, hoping to drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward
midnight, after he had left the countess' apartments, he was sitting
upstairs in a shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction
of the Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy
with tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.

"Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air. "And
I, you see, am hard at it." He pointed to his manuscript book with that
air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy people look at
their work.

Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life on
his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,
smiled at him with the egotism of joy.

"Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell you about it yesterday
and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything like it
before. I am in love, my friend!"

Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person down on
the sofa beside Prince Andrew.

"With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he.

"Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it, but
the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and
suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in the
world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't live
without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why don't
you speak?"

"I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly, rising and beginning
to pace up and down the room. "I always thought it.... That girl is such
a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend, I entreat you,
don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry, marry.... And I am sure
there will not be a happier man than you."

"But what of her?"

"She loves you."

"Don't talk rubbish..." said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into
Pierre's eyes.

"She does, I know," Pierre cried fiercely.

"But do listen," returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. "Do you
know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone."

"Well, go on, go on. I am very glad," said Pierre, and his face really
changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to Prince
Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a different, quite a
new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for life, his
disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he made up his mind
to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in his soul. Now he
boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future, said he could not
sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice, and spoke of how he
would either make his father consent to this marriage and love her, or
would do without his consent; then he marveled at the feeling that had
mastered him as at something strange, apart from and independent of
himself.

"I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of
such love," said Prince Andrew. "It is not at all the same feeling that
I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into two
halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the other
half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom and
darkness...."

"Darkness and gloom," reiterated Pierre: "yes, yes, I understand that."

"I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very
happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake."

"Yes, yes," Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched and
sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew's lot appeared to
him, the gloomier seemed his own.




CHAPTER XXIII

Prince Andrew needed his father's consent to his marriage, and to obtain
this he started for the country next day.

His father received his son's communication with external composure, but
inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to alter his
life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life was already
ending. "If only they would let me end my days as I want to," thought
the old man, "then they might do as they please." With his son, however,
he employed the diplomacy he reserved for important occasions and,
adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole matter.

In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards
birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young
as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special stress
on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son whom it would
be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. "Fourthly and finally," the
father said, looking ironically at his son, "I beg you to put it off for
a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as you wanted to for a German
tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your love or passion or obstinacy--as
you please--is still as great, marry! And that's my last word on it.
Mind, the last..." concluded the prince, in a tone which showed that
nothing would make him alter his decision.

Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his feelings, or
his fiancee's, would not stand a year's test, or that he (the old prince
himself) would die before then, and he decided to conform to his
father's wish--to propose, and postpone the wedding for a year.

Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostovs, Prince
Andrew returned to Petersburg.

Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha expected Bolkonski all
day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the same.
Pierre did not come either and Natasha, not knowing that Prince Andrew
had gone to see his father, could not explain his absence to herself.

Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire to go out anywhere
and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and listless; she
wept secretly at night and did not go to her mother in the evenings. She
blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed to her that everybody
knew about her disappointment and was laughing at her and pitying her.
Strong as was her inward grief, this wound to her vanity intensified her
misery.

Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly began
to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not know why
it is being punished.

The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first listening to her
mother's words, suddenly interrupted her:

"Leave off, Mamma! I don't think, and don't want to think about it! He
just came and then left off, left off..."

Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and went
on quietly:

"And I don't at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I have
now become quite calm, quite calm."

The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old dress which she
knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the
mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she had
abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went to
the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud resonance, and
began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished her first exercise
she stood still in the middle of the room and sang a musical phrase that
particularly pleased her. She listened joyfully (as though she had not
expected it) to the charm of the notes reverberating, filling the whole
empty ballroom, and slowly dying away; and all at once she felt
cheerful. "What's the good of making so much of it? Things are nice as
it is," she said to herself, and she began walking up and down the room,
not stepping simply on the resounding parquet but treading with each
step from the heel to the toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of
shoes) and listening to the regular tap of the heel and creak of the toe
as gladly as she had to the sounds of her own voice. Passing a mirror
she glanced into it. "There, that's me!" the expression of her face
seemed to say as she caught sight of herself. "Well, and very nice too!
I need nobody."

A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room but she
would not let him, and having closed the door behind him continued her
walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite mood--love of, and
delight in, herself. "How charming that Natasha is!" she said again,
speaking as some third, collective, male person. "Pretty, a good voice,
young, and in nobody's way if only they leave her in peace." But however
much they left her in peace she could not now be at peace, and
immediately felt this.

In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, "At home?" and
then footsteps were heard. Natasha was looking at the mirror, but did
not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When she saw
herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for certain, though
she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.

Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.

"Mamma! Bolkonski has come!" she said. "Mamma, it is awful, it is
unbearable! I don't want... to be tormented? What am I to do?..."

Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room with an
agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natasha his face
brightened. He kissed the countess' hand and Natasha's, and sat down
beside the sofa.

"It is long since we had the pleasure..." began the countess, but Prince
Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question, obviously in
haste to say what he had to.

"I have not been to see you all this time because I have been at my
father's. I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I only
got back last night," he said glancing at Natasha; "I want to have a
talk with you, Countess," he added after a moment's pause.

The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.

"I am at your disposal," she murmured.

Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so:
something gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared
straight at Prince Andrew with wide-open eyes.

"At once? This instant!... No, it can't be!" she thought.

Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she was not
mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be decided.

"Go, Natasha! I will call you," said the countess in a whisper.

Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew and at
her mother and went out.

"I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter's hand," said Prince
Andrew.

The countess' face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.

"Your offer..." she began at last sedately. He remained silent, looking
into her eyes. "Your offer..." (she grew confused) "is agreeable to us,
and I accept your offer. I am glad. And my husband... I hope... but it
will depend on her...."

"I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it to me?"
said Prince Andrew.

"Yes," replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and with a
mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips to his
forehead as he stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him as a
son, but felt that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man. "I am
sure my husband will consent," said the countess, "but your father..."

"My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express
condition of his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a
year. And I wished to tell you of that," said Prince Andrew.

"It is true that Natasha is still young, but--so long as that?..."

"It is unavoidable," said Prince Andrew with a sigh.

"I will send her to you," said the countess, and left the room.

"Lord have mercy upon us!" she repeated while seeking her daughter.

Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha was sitting on the
bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering
something as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped
up and flew to her.

"Well, Mamma?... Well?..."

"Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand," said the countess, coldly
it seemed to Natasha. "Go... go," said the mother, sadly and
reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.

Natasha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When she came
in and saw him she paused. "Is it possible that this stranger has now
become everything to me?" she asked herself, and immediately answered,
"Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than everything in the
world." Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast eyes.

"I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?"

He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned expression of
her face. Her face said: "Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot but know?
Why speak, when words cannot express what one feels?"

She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.

"Do you love me?"

"Yes, yes!" Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed loudly
and, catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

"Oh, I am so happy!" she replied, smiled through her tears, bent over
closer to him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether she
might, and then kissed him.

Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find in
his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly
changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of
desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness, fear
at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful sense of
the duty that now bound him to her forever. The present feeling, though
not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger and more serious.

"Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?" asked Prince
Andrew, still looking into her eyes.

"Is it possible that I--the 'chit of a girl,' as everybody called me,"
thought Natasha--"is it possible that I am now to be the wife and the
equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom even my father looks up to?
Can it be true? Can it be true that there can be no more playing with
life, that now I am grown up, that on me now lies a responsibility for
my every word and deed? Yes, but what did he ask me?"

"No," she replied, but she had not understood his question.

"Forgive me!" he said. "But you are so young, and I have already been
through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know
yourself."

Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing to take
in the meaning of his words.

"Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be," continued Prince
Andrew, "it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask you to make
me happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall remain a
secret, and should you find that you do not love me, or should you come
to love..." said Prince Andrew with an unnatural smile.

"Why do you say that?" Natasha interrupted him. "You know that from the
very day you first came to Otradnoe I have loved you," she cried, quite
convinced that she spoke the truth.

"In a year you will learn to know yourself...."

"A whole year!" Natasha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that the
marriage was to be postponed for a year. "But why a year? Why a
year?..."

Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay.
Natasha did not hear him.

"And can't it be helped?" she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply, but
his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.

"It's awful! Oh, it's awful! awful!" Natasha suddenly cried, and again
burst into sobs. "I shall die, waiting a year: it's impossible, it's
awful!" She looked into her lover's face and saw in it a look of
commiseration and perplexity.

"No, no! I'll do anything!" she said, suddenly checking her tears. "I am
so happy."

The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed couple
their blessing.

From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostovs' as Natasha's
affianced lover.




CHAPTER XXIV

No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha's engagement to Bolkonski
was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said that as he
was responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole burden of it;
that he had given his word and bound himself forever, but that he did
not wish to bind Natasha and gave her perfect freedom. If after six
months she felt that she did not love him she would have full right to
reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor her parents wished to hear of
this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came every day to the Rostovs', but
did not behave to Natasha as an affianced lover: he did not use the
familiar thou, but said you to her, and kissed only her hand. After
their engagement, quite different, intimate, and natural relations
sprang up between them. It was as if they had not known each other till
now. Both liked to recall how they had regarded each other when as yet
they were nothing to one another; they felt themselves now quite
different beings: then they were artificial, now natural and sincere. At
first the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince Andrew;
he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time Natasha trained
the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all that he only
appeared to be different, but was really just like all of them, and that
she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to be. After a few days
they grew accustomed to him, and without restraint in his presence
pursued their usual way of life, in which he took his part. He could
talk about rural economy with the count, fashions with the countess and
Natasha, and about albums and fancywork with Sonya. Sometimes the
household both among themselves and in his presence expressed their
wonder at how it had all happened, and at the evident omens there had
been of it: Prince Andrew's coming to Otradnoe and their coming to
Petersburg, and the likeness between Natasha and Prince Andrew which her
nurse had noticed on his first visit, and Andrew's encounter with
Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents betokening that it had to be.

In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always
accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting
together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and go
away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely
spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to
speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did all his feelings, which she
constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his son. Prince
Andrew blushed, as he often did now--Natasha particularly liked it in
him--and said that his son would not live with them.

"Why not?" asked Natasha in a frightened tone.

"I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides..."

"How I should have loved him!" said Natasha, immediately guessing his
thought; "but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding fault
with us."

Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask his
advice about Petya's education or Nicholas' service. The old countess
sighed as she looked at them; Sonya was always getting frightened lest
she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for leaving them
alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew spoke (he
could tell a story very well), Natasha listened to him with pride; when
she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed attentively and
scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in perplexity: "What does he
look for in me? He is trying to discover something by looking at me!
What if what he seeks in me is not there?" Sometimes she fell into one
of the mad, merry moods characteristic of her, and then she particularly
loved to hear and see how Prince Andrew laughed. He seldom laughed, but
when he did he abandoned himself entirely to his laughter, and after
such a laugh she always felt nearer to him. Natasha would have been
completely happy if the thought of the separation awaiting her and
drawing near had not terrified her, just as the mere thought of it made
him turn pale and cold.

On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought with
him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostovs' once since the ball. Pierre
seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the countess, and
Natasha sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya, thereby
inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.

"You have known Bezukhov a long time?" he asked. "Do you like him?"

"Yes, he's a dear, but very absurd."

And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of his
absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.

"Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known him from
childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie," Prince Andrew
said with sudden seriousness--"I am going away and heaven knows what may
happen. You may cease to... all right, I know I am not to say that. Only
this, then: whatever may happen to you when I am not here..."

"What can happen?"

"Whatever trouble may come," Prince Andrew continued, "I beg you,
Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for
advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but he
has a heart of gold."

Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor Prince Andrew himself
could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would act on
Natasha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that day,
dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not understanding
what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking leave, he kissed
her hand for the last time. "Don't go!" she said in a tone that made him
wonder whether he really ought not to stay and which he remembered long
afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone; but for several days she
sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no interest in anything and only saying
now and then, "Oh, why did he go away?"

But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around
her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and became
her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy, as a
child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of face.




CHAPTER XXV

During that year after his son's departure, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's
health and temper became much worse. He grew still more irritable, and
it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of his frequent fits
of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out her tender spots so
as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible. Princess Mary had two
passions and consequently two joys--her nephew, little Nicholas, and
religion--and these were the favorite subjects of the prince's attacks
and ridicule. Whatever was spoken of he would bring round to the
superstitiousness of old maids, or the petting and spoiling of children.
"You want to make him"--little Nicholas--"into an old maid like
yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants a son and not an old maid," he
would say. Or, turning to Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in
Princess Mary's presence how she liked our village priests and icons and
would joke about them.

He continually hurt Princess Mary's feelings and tormented her, but it
cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame toward her, or
could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of it all, be unjust?
And what is justice? The princess never thought of that proud word
"justice." All the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear and
simple law--the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him who
lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to
do with the justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and
love, and that she did.

During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had been gay,
gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known him for a
long time past. She felt that something had happened to him, but he said
nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a long talk with
his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed that before his
departure they were dissatisfied with one another.

Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend
Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls dream)
of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in mourning for her
own brother, killed in Turkey.

Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.

Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a
special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and your
excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone, can--I
will not say comfort us--but save us from despair. Religion alone can
explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend: why, for what
cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in life--not merely
harming no one but necessary to the happiness of others--are called away
to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons, or such as are a burden
to themselves and to others, are left living. The first death I saw, and
one I shall never forget--that of my dear sister-in-law--left that
impression on me. Just as you ask destiny why your splendid brother had
to die, so I asked why that angel Lise, who not only never wronged
anyone, but in whose soul there were never any unkind thoughts, had to
die. And what do you think, dear friend? Five years have passed since
then, and already I, with my petty understanding, begin to see clearly
why she had to die, and in what way that death was but an expression of
the infinite goodness of the Creator, whose every action, though
generally incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite
love for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically
innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother's duties. As a
young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been so as
a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly Prince
Andrew, with the purest regrets and memories, but probably she will
there receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not to speak of
her alone, that early and terrible death has had the most beneficent
influence on me and on my brother in spite of all our grief. Then, at
the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not occur to me; I should
then have dismissed them with horror, but now they are very clear and
certain. I write all this to you, dear friend, only to convince you of
the Gospel truth which has become for me a principle of life: not a
single hair of our heads will fall without His will. And His will is
governed only by infinite love for us, and so whatever befalls us is for
our good.

You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my
wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You will be
surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte! The case is
this: my father's health is growing noticeably worse, he cannot stand
any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This irritability is, as
you know, chiefly directed to political questions. He cannot endure the
notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal terms with all the
sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own, the grandson of the
Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite indifferent to politics, but
from my father's remarks and his talks with Michael Ivanovich I know all
that goes on in the world and especially about the honors conferred on
Buonaparte, who only at Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is not
accepted as a great man, still less as Emperor of France. And my father
cannot stand this. It seems to me that it is chiefly because of his
political views that my father is reluctant to speak of going to Moscow;
for he foresees the encounters that would result from his way of
expressing his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might
derive from a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the
disputes about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In any case it will
be decided very shortly.

Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother Andrew's
absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much of late. After
his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his spirits. He has again
become as I used to know him when a child: kind, affectionate, with that
heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has realized, it seems to me,
that life is not over for him. But together with this mental change he
has grown physically much weaker. He has become thinner and more
nervous. I am anxious about him and glad he is taking this trip abroad
which the doctors recommended long ago. I hope it will cure him. You
write that in Petersburg he is spoken of as one of the most active,
cultivated, and capable of the young men. Forgive my vanity as a
relation, but I never doubted it. The good he has done to everybody
here, from his peasants up to the gentry, is incalculable. On his
arrival in Petersburg he received only his due. I always wonder at the
way rumors fly from Petersburg to Moscow, especially such false ones as
that you write about--I mean the report of my brother's betrothal to the
little Rostova. I do not think my brother will ever marry again, and
certainly not her; and this is why: first, I know that though he rarely
speaks about the wife he has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too
deep in his heart for him ever to decide to give her a successor and our
little angel a stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl
is not the kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew. I do not think
he would choose her for a wife, and frankly I do not wish it. But I am
running on too long and am at the end of my second sheet. Good-bye, my
dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and mighty care. My dear
friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.

MARY




CHAPTER XXVI

In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected letter
from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her strange and
surprising news. He informed her of his engagement to Natasha Rostova.
The whole letter breathed loving rapture for his betrothed and tender
and confiding affection for his sister. He wrote that he had never loved
as he did now and that only now did he understand and know what life
was. He asked his sister to forgive him for not having told her of his
resolve when he had last visited Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it
to his father. He had not done so for fear Princess Mary should ask her
father to give his consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt
of his displeasure without attaining her object. "Besides," he wrote,
"the matter was not then so definitely settled as it is now. My father
then insisted on a delay of a year and now already six months, half of
that period, have passed, and my resolution is firmer than ever. If the
doctors did not keep me here at the spas I should be back in Russia, but
as it is I have to postpone my return for three months. You know me and
my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have been and
always shall be independent; but to go against his will and arouse his
anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such a short time, would
destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him about the same
question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand him the letter and
to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and whether there is
hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four months."

After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave the
letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her quietly:

"Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won't be
long--I shall soon set him free."

The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her speak
and, raising his voice more and more, cried:

"Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich, eh?
Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell him
that he may marry tomorrow if he likes. She will be little Nicholas'
stepmother and I'll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He mustn't be
without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more women are wanted in
my house--let him marry and live by himself. Perhaps you will go and
live with him too?" he added, turning to Princess Mary. "Go in heaven's
name! Go out into the frost... the frost... the frost!"

After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the matter.
But repressed vexation at his son's poor-spirited behavior found
expression in his treatment of his daughter. To his former pretexts for
irony a fresh one was now added--allusions to stepmothers and
amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.

"Why shouldn't I marry her?" he asked his daughter. "She'll make a
splendid princess!"

And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary noticed
that her father was really associating more and more with the
Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his
letter, but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father to the
idea.

Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and religion were
Princess Mary's joys and consolations; but besides that, since everyone
must have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the profoundest depths of her
heart had a hidden dream and hope that supplied the chief consolation of
her life. This comforting dream and hope were given her by God's folk--
the half-witted and other pilgrims who visited her without the prince's
knowledge. The longer she lived, the more experience and observation she
had of life, the greater was her wonder at the short-sightedness of men
who seek enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering,
struggling, and harming one another, to obtain that impossible,
visionary, sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved his wife, she died,
but that was not enough: he wanted to bind his happiness to another
woman. Her father objected to this because he wanted a more
distinguished and wealthier match for Andrew. And they all struggled and
suffered and tormented one another and injured their souls, their
eternal souls, for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an
instant. Not only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the Son of God,
came down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment and is
a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it. "How
is it that no one realizes this?" thought Princess Mary. "No one except
these despised God's folk who, wallet on back, come to me by the back
door, afraid of being seen by the prince, not for fear of ill-usage by
him but for fear of causing him to sin. To leave family, home, and all
the cares of worldly welfare, in order without clinging to anything to
wander in hempen rags from place to place under an assumed name, doing
no one any harm but praying for all--for those who drive one away as
well as for those who protect one: higher than that life and truth there
is no life or truth!"

There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty called
Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot and worn
heavy chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her. Once, when in
a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia was talking of
her life, the thought that Theodosia alone had found the true path of
life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force that she resolved to
become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone to sleep Princess Mary
thought about this for a long time, and at last made up her mind that,
strange as it might seem, she must go on a pilgrimage. She disclosed
this thought to no one but to her confessor, Father Akinfi, the monk,
and he approved of her intention. Under guise of a present for the
pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim's complete costume for
herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough coat, and a black kerchief.
Often, approaching the chest of drawers containing this secret treasure,
Princess Mary paused, uncertain whether the time had not already come to
put her project into execution.

Often, listening to the pilgrims' tales, she was so stimulated by their
simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep meaning,
that several times she was on the point of abandoning everything and
running away from home. In imagination she already pictured herself by
Theodosia's side, dressed in coarse rags, walking with a staff, a wallet
on her back, along the dusty road, directing her wanderings from one
saint's shrine to another, free from envy, earthly love, or desire, and
reaching at last the place where there is no more sorrow or sighing, but
eternal joy and bliss.

"I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having time to get
used to it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on till
my legs fail, and I'll lie down and die somewhere, and shall at last
reach that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sorrow nor
sighing..." thought Princess Mary.

But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially little Koko
(Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that she
was a sinner who loved her father and little nephew more than God.

BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11




CHAPTER I

The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor--idleness--was a
condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man has
retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not only
because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but because
our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at ease. An
inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are idle. If man could
find a state in which he felt that though idle he was fulfilling his
duty, he would have found one of the conditions of man's primitive
blessedness. And such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness
is the lot of a whole class--the military. The chief attraction of
military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and
irreproachable idleness.

Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to the full when,
after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pavlograd regiment, in which he
already commanded the squadron he had taken over from Denisov.

Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow
acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked
and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was well
contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters from home
more frequent complaints from his mother that their affairs were falling
into greater and greater disorder, and that it was time for him to come
back to gladden and comfort his old parents.

Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to take
him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the
entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt that
sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life, with
its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its accounts with
stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society, and with Sonya's
love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully difficult and
complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold, formal letters in
French, beginning: "My dear Mamma," and ending: "Your obedient son,"
which said nothing of when he would return. In 1810 he received letters
from his parents, in which they told him of Natasha's engagement to
Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in a year's time because the
old prince made difficulties. This letter grieved and mortified
Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that Natasha, for whom he
cared more than for anyone else in the family, should be lost to the
home; and secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted not to
have been there to show that fellow Bolkonski that connection with him
was no such great honor after all, and that if he loved Natasha he might
dispense with permission from his dotard father. For a moment he
hesitated whether he should not apply for leave in order to see Natasha
before she was married, but then came the maneuvers, and considerations
about Sonya and about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas again
put it off. But in the spring of that year, he received a letter from
his mother, written without his father's knowledge, and that letter
persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and take
matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and they
would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and trusted Mitenka
so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody took advantage of him
and things were going from bad to worse. "For God's sake, I implore you,
come at once if you do not wish to make me and the whole family
wretched," wrote the countess.

This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a matter-of-
fact man which showed him what he ought to do.

The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any rate
to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but after his
after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious
gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and when he
returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka
(Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who
turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was going
home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he would
go away without having heard from the staff--and this interested him
extremely--whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive the
Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to think
that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the Polish
Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had betted
he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it seemed
that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish
Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the uhlans who had given
one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would take place
without him--he knew he must go away from this good, bright world to
somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week later he
obtained his leave. His hussar comrades--not only those of his own
regiment, but the whole brigade--gave Rostov a dinner to which the
subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were two
bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with Major
Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostov; the
soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted "hurrah!" and
then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as far as the first
post station.

During the first half of the journey--from Kremenchug to Kiev--all
Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with the
squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to forget his
three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder anxiously
how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would find there. Thoughts
of home grew stronger the nearer he approached it--far stronger, as
though this feeling of his was subject to the law by which the force of
attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. At
the last post station before Otradnoe he gave the driver a three-ruble
tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of
his home.

After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of unsatisfied
expectation--the feeling that "everything is just the same, so why did I
hurry?"--Nicholas began to settle down in his old home world. His father
and mother were much the same, only a little older. What was new in them
was a certain uneasiness and occasional discord, which there used not to
be, and which, as Nicholas soon found out, was due to the bad state of
their affairs. Sonya was nearly twenty; she had stopped growing prettier
and promised nothing more than she was already, but that was enough. She
exhaled happiness and love from the time Nicholas returned, and the
faithful, unalterable love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him.
Petya and Natasha surprised Nicholas most. Petya was a big handsome boy
of thirteen, merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was
already breaking. As for Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and
laughed whenever he looked at her.

"You're not the same at all," he said.

"How? Am I uglier?"

"On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!" he whispered to her.

"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natasha, joyfully.

She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit to
Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.

"Well, are you glad?" Natasha asked. "I am so tranquil and happy now."

"Very glad," answered Nicholas. "He is an excellent fellow.... And are
you very much in love?"

"How shall I put it?" replied Natasha. "I was in love with Boris, with
my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is quite different. I feel at
peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists, and I am
calm and contented now. Not at all as before."

Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the marriage
for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with exasperation, proving
to him that it could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad thing
to enter a family against the father's will, and that she herself wished
it so.

"You don't at all understand," she said.

Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.

Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem at all
like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. She was even-
tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This amazed Nicholas
and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship skeptically. He could not
believe that her fate was sealed, especially as he had not seen her with
Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him that there was something not
quite right about this intended marriage.

"Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought. Once, when he had
touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his surprise
and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her soul she too
had doubts about this marriage.

"You see he writes," said she, showing her son a letter of Prince
Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a
daughter's future married happiness, "he writes that he won't come
before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His health
is very delicate. Don't tell Natasha. And don't attach importance to her
being so bright: that's because she's living through the last days of
her girlhood, but I know what she is like every time we receive a letter
from him! However, God grant that everything turns out well!" (She
always ended with these words.) "He is an excellent man!"




CHAPTER II

After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull. He was
worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid business
matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw off this
burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his arrival he
went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as to where he
was going, to Mitenka's lodge and demanded an account of everything. But
what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew even less than the
frightened and bewildered Mitenka. The conversation and the examination
of the accounts with Mitenka did not last long. The village elder, a
peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were waiting in the
passage, heard with fear and delight first the young count's voice
roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and then words of
abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.

"Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I'll hack the dog to pieces! I'm not
my father!... Robbing us!..." and so on.

Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red in
the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mitenka out by the scruff of
the neck and applied his foot and knee to his behind with great agility
at convenient moments between the words, shouting, "Be off! Never let me
see your face here again, you villain!"

Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the
shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for culprits
at Otradnoe. Mitenka himself, returning tipsy from the town, used to
hide there, and many of the residents at Otradnoe, hiding from Mitenka,
knew of its protective qualities.)

Mitenka's wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and frightened
faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar was boiling and
where the steward's high bedstead stood with its patchwork quilt.

The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by
with resolute strides and went into the house.

The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened at the
lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would certainly
improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect this
excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his door on
tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.

Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed
smile, said to him:

"But you know, my dear boy, it's a pity you got excited! Mitenka has
told me all about it."

"I knew," thought Nicholas, "that I should never understand anything in
this crazy world."

"You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they were
carried forward--and you did not look at the other page."

"Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have
done, I have done; but, if you like, I won't speak to him again."

"No, my dear boy" (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he had
mismanaged his wife's property and was to blame toward his children, but
he did not know how to remedy it). "No, I beg you to attend to the
business. I am old. I..."

"No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I understand
it all less than you do."

"Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings forward
from page to page," he thought. "I used to understand what a 'corner'
and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to another page I
don't understand at all," said he to himself, and after that he did not
meddle in business affairs. But once the countess called her son and
informed him that she had a promissory note from Anna Mikhaylovna for
two thousand rubles, and asked him what he thought of doing with it.

"This," answered Nicholas. "You say it rests with me. Well, I don't like
Anna Mikhaylovna and I don't like Boris, but they were our friends and
poor. Well then, this!" and he tore up the note, and by so doing caused
the old countess to weep tears of joy. After that, young Rostov took no
further part in any business affairs, but devoted himself with
passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new pursuit--the chase--for
which his father kept a large establishment.




CHAPTER III

The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts congealed an
earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had thickened and its
bright green stood out sharply against the brownish strips of winter rye
trodden down by the cattle, and against the pale-yellow stubble of the
spring buckwheat. The wooded ravines and the copses, which at the end of
August had still been green islands amid black fields and stubble, had
become golden and bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The
hares had already half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were
beginning to scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was
the best time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young
sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but were
so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give them a
three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go on a
distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was an
undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.

All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the air was
sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began to thaw.
On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown, looked out of
the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for hunting: it was
as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth without any wind.
The only motion in the air was that of the dripping, microscopic
particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the garden were hung with
transparent drops which fell on the freshly fallen leaves. The earth in
the kitchen garden looked wet and black and glistened like poppy seed
and at a short distance merged into the dull, moist veil of mist.
Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell of
decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch
with prominent black eyes, got up on seeing her master, stretched her
hind legs, lay down like a hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked
him right on his nose and mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching
sight of his master from the garden path, arched his back and, rushing
headlong toward the porch with lifted tail, began rubbing himself
against his legs.

"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's call which
unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round the corner
came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray, wrinkled old
man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian fashion, a long
bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence and scorn of
everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his Circassian cap
to his master and looked at him scornfully. This scorn was not offensive
to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel, disdainful of everybody
and who considered himself above them, was all the same his serf and
huntsman.

"Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the weather,
the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away by that
irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget all his previous
resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his mistress.

"What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman in his deep bass, deep
as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing--and two flashing black
eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who was silent. "Can you
resist it?" those eyes seemed to be asking.

"It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?" asked Nicholas,
scratching Milka behind the ears.

Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.

"I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed out after a minute's
pause. "He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure. They were
howling there." (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom they both
knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small place a
mile and a half from the house.)

"We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas. "Come to me with
Uvarka."

"As you please."

"Then put off feeding them."

"Yes, sir."

Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas' big
study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was like
seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and
surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual stood
just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for fear of
breaking something in the master's apartment, and he hastened to say all
that was necessary so as to get from under that ceiling, out into the
open under the sky once more.

Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion that
the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting), Nicholas
ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was about to go
Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her hair or
finished dressing and with her old nurse's big shawl wrapped round her.
Petya ran in at the same time.

"You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you would! Sonya said you
wouldn't go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you couldn't
help going."

"Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as he
intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha and Petya.
"We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for you."

"You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha. "It's not fair; you
are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said nothing to
us about it."

"'No barrier bars a Russian's path'--we'll go!" shouted Petya.

"But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas to Natasha.

"Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha decisively. "Daniel,
tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my dogs," she
added to the huntsman.

It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but to
have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible. He cast
down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his business,
careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on the young
lady.




CHAPTER IV

The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting establishment
but had now handed it all completely over to his son's care, being in
very good spirits on this fifteenth of September, prepared to go out
with the others.

In an hour's time the whole hunting party was at the porch. Nicholas,
with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no time for
attending to trifles, went past Natasha and Petya who were trying to
tell him something. He had a look at all the details of the hunt, sent a
pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the quarry, mounted his
chestnut Donets, and whistling to his own leash of borzois, set off
across the threshing ground to a field leading to the Otradnoe wood. The
old count's horse, a sorrel gelding called Viflyanka, was led by the
groom in attendance on him, while the count himself was to drive in a
small trap straight to a spot reserved for him.

They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and
whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen and
more than forty borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash
belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and
thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.

Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his
business, his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the
fence they all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk,
along the road and field leading to the Otradnoe covert.

The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and then
splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky still
seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the air was
still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a huntsman, the
snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the whine of a straggling
hound could be heard.

When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders with dogs
appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostovs. In front rode a
fresh-looking, handsome old man with a large gray mustache.

"Good morning, Uncle!" said Nicholas, when the old man drew near.

"That's it. Come on!... I was sure of it," began "Uncle." (He was a
distant relative of the Rostovs', a man of small means, and their
neighbor.) "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist it and it's a good
thing you're going. That's it! Come on!" (This was "Uncle's" favorite
expression.) "Take the covert at once, for my Girchik says the Ilagins
are at Korniki with their hounds. That's it. Come on!... They'll take
the cubs from under your very nose."

"That's where I'm going. Shall we join up our packs?" asked Nicholas.

The hounds were joined into one pack, and "Uncle" and Nicholas rode on
side by side. Natasha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide her eager
face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed by Petya
who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and by a groom
appointed to look after her. Petya, who was laughing, whipped and pulled
at his horse. Natasha sat easily and confidently on her black Arabchik
and reined him in without effort with a firm hand.

"Uncle" looked round disapprovingly at Petya and Natasha. He did not
like to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.

"Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!" shouted Petya.

"Good morning, good morning! But don't go overriding the hounds," said
"Uncle" sternly.

"Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me," said Natasha,
referring to her favorite hound.

"In the first place, Trunila is not a 'dog,' but a harrier," thought
Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel the
distance that ought to separate them at that moment. Natasha understood
it.

"You mustn't think we'll be in anyone's way, Uncle," she said. "We'll go
to our places and won't budge."

"A good thing too, little countess," said "Uncle," "only mind you don't
fall off your horse," he added, "because--that's it, come on!--you've
nothing to hold on to."

The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards off,
the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov, having finally settled
with "Uncle" where they should set on the hounds, and having shown
Natasha where she was to stand--a spot where nothing could possibly run
out--went round above the ravine.

"Well, nephew, you're going for a big wolf," said "Uncle." "Mind and
don't let her slip!"

"That's as may happen," answered Rostov. "Karay, here!" he shouted,
answering "Uncle's" remark by this call to his borzoi. Karay was a
shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having tackled a big wolf
unaided. They all took up their places.

The old count, knowing his son's ardor in the hunt, hurried so as not to
be late, and the huntsmen had not yet reached their places when Count
Ilya Rostov, cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove up with
his black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for him,
where a wolf might come out. Having straightened his coat and fastened
on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek, well-fed,
and comfortable horse, Viflyanka, which was turning gray, like himself.
His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilya Rostov, though not at
heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well, and rode to the
bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged his reins,
settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was ready, looked
about with a smile.

Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal attendant, an old horseman
now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmar held in leash three formidable
wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master and his horse.
Two wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred paces farther along
the edge of the wood stood Mitka, the count's other groom, a daring
horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the hunt, by old custom, the
count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled brandy, taken a snack, and
washed it down with half a bottle of his favorite Bordeaux.

He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were
rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his saddle,
wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out for an
outing.

The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got everything ready, kept
glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of terms for
thirty years, and understanding the mood he was in expected a pleasant
chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through the wood (it was
plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped behind the count. This
person was a gray-bearded old man in a woman's cloak, with a tall peaked
cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who went by a woman's name,
Nastasya Ivanovna.

"Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!" whispered the count, winking at him. "If you
scare away the beast, Daniel'll give it you!"

"I know a thing or two myself!" said Nastasya Ivanovna.

"Hush!" whispered the count and turned to Simon. "Have you seen the
young countess?" he asked. "Where is she?"

"With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass," answered Simon,
smiling. "Though she's a lady, she's very fond of hunting."

"And you're surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?" said the count.
"She's as good as many a man!"

"Of course! It's marvelous. So bold, so easy!"

"And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland, isn't he?"

"Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so well
that Daniel and I are often quite astounded," said Simon, well knowing
what would please his master.

"Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?"

"A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the
Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight
when they rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand rubles
and the rider beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search far to
find another as smart."

"To search far..." repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not
said more. "To search far," he said, turning back the skirt of his coat
to get at his snuffbox.

"The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael
Sidorych..." Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had
distinctly caught the music of the hunt with only two or three hounds
giving tongue. He bent down his head and listened, shaking a warning
finger at his master. "They are on the scent of the cubs..." he
whispered, "straight to the Lyadov uplands."

The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked into
the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space, holding
the snuffbox in his hand but not taking any. After the cry of the hounds
came the deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel's hunting horn; the
pack joined the first three hounds and they could be heard in full cry,
with that peculiar lift in the note that indicates that they are after a
wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on the hounds, but changed to the
cry of ulyulyu, and above the others rose Daniel's voice, now a deep
bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice seemed to fill the whole wood and
carried far beyond out into the open field.

After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his attendant
convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into two packs: the
sound of the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue, began to die away in
the distance, the other pack rushed by the wood past the count, and it
was with this that Daniel's voice was heard calling ulyulyu. The sounds
of both packs mingled and broke apart again, but both were becoming more
distant.

Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi had
entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in his hand,
opened it and took a pinch. "Back!" cried Simon to a borzoi that was
pushing forward out of the wood. The count started and dropped the
snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up. The count and
Simon were looking at him.

Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly
approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were just
in front of them.

The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at him with eyes
starting out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to the
other side.

"Look out!" he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had long
fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he galloped
toward the count.

The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a
wolf which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet lope
farther to the left to the very place where they were standing. The
angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the
horses' feet at the wolf.

The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs awkwardly,
like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly swaying from
side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish of its tail
disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same instant, with a cry
like a wail, first one hound, then another, and then another, sprang
helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the whole pack rushed across
the field toward the very spot where the wolf had disappeared. The hazel
bushes parted behind the hounds and Daniel's chestnut horse appeared,
dark with sweat. On its long back sat Daniel, hunched forward, capless,
his disheveled gray hair hanging over his flushed, perspiring face.

"Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!..." he cried. When he caught sight of the count
his eyes flashed lightning.

"Blast you!" he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly at the count.

"You've let the wolf go!... What sportsmen!" and as if scorning to say
more to the frightened and shamefaced count, he lashed the heaving
flanks of his sweating chestnut gelding with all the anger the count had
aroused and flew off after the hounds. The count, like a punished
schoolboy, looked round, trying by a smile to win Simon's sympathy for
his plight. But Simon was no longer there. He was galloping round by the
bushes while the field was coming up on both sides, all trying to head
the wolf, but it vanished into the wood before they could do so.




CHAPTER V

Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the wolf. By
the way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of the dogs whose
notes were familiar to him, by the way the voices of the huntsmen
approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was happening at the
copse. He knew that young and old wolves were there, that the hounds had
separated into two packs, that somewhere a wolf was being chased, and
that something had gone wrong. He expected the wolf to come his way any
moment. He made thousands of different conjectures as to where and from
what side the beast would come and how he would set upon it. Hope
alternated with despair. Several times he addressed a prayer to God that
the wolf should come his way. He prayed with that passionate and
shamefaced feeling with which men pray at moments of great excitement
arising from trivial causes. "What would it be to Thee to do this for
me?" he said to God. "I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to ask
this of Thee, but for God's sake do let the old wolf come my way and let
Karay spring at it--in sight of 'Uncle' who is watching from over there-
-and seize it by the throat in a death grip!" A thousand times during
that half-hour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over the edge of
the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the aspen undergrowth
and the gully with its water-worn side and "Uncle's" cap just visible
above the bush on his right.

"No, I shan't have such luck," thought Rostov, "yet what wouldn't it be
worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in war, I am always
unlucky." Memories of Austerlitz and of Dolokhov flashed rapidly and
clearly through his mind. "Only once in my life to get an old wolf, I
want only that!" thought he, straining eyes and ears and looking to the
left and then to the right and listening to the slightest variation of
note in the cries of the dogs.

Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him across
the deserted field. "No, it can't be!" thought Rostov, taking a deep
breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped for. The
height of happiness was reached--and so simply, without warning, or
noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his eyes and remained
in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and jumped heavily over
a gully that lay in her path. She was an old animal with a gray back and
big reddish belly. She ran without hurry, evidently feeling sure that no
one saw her. Rostov, holding his breath, looked round at the borzois.
They stood or lay not seeing the wolf or understanding the situation.
Old Karay had turned his head and was angrily searching for fleas,
baring his yellow teeth and snapping at his hind legs.

"Ulyulyulyu!" whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped up,
jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karay finished
scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up with quivering
tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down.

"Shall I loose them or not?" Nicholas asked himself as the wolf
approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf's whole
physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never
seen before--human eyes fixed upon her--and turning her head a little
toward Rostov, she paused.

"Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward..." the wolf seemed to say to
herself, and she moved forward without again looking round and with a
quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope.

"Ulyulyu!" cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own accord
his good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies to head
off the wolf, and the borzois passed it, running faster still. Nicholas
did not hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping, nor see the
borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw only the wolf, who,
increasing her speed, bounded on in the same direction along the hollow.
The first to come into view was Milka, with her black markings and
powerful quarters, gaining upon the wolf. Nearer and nearer... now she
was ahead of it; but the wolf turned its head to face her, and instead
of putting on speed as she usually did Milka suddenly raised her tail
and stiffened her forelegs.

"Ulyulyulyulyu!" shouted Nicholas.

The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind Milka, sprang impetuously
at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but immediately jumped
aside in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her teeth, and again rose
and bounded forward, followed at the distance of a couple of feet by all
the borzois, who did not get any closer to her.

"She'll get away! No, it's impossible!" thought Nicholas, still shouting
with a hoarse voice.

"Karay, ulyulyu!..." he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi who
was now his only hope. Karay, with all the strength age had left him,
stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf, galloped heavily
aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the wolf's lope and the
borzoi's slower pace made it plain that Karay had miscalculated.
Nicholas could already see not far in front of him the wood where the
wolf would certainly escape should she reach it. But, coming toward him,
he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping almost straight at the wolf.
There was still hope. A long, yellowish young borzoi, one Nicholas did
not know, from another leash, rushed impetuously at the wolf from in
front and almost knocked her over. But the wolf jumped up more quickly
than anyone could have expected and, gnashing her teeth, flew at the
yellowish borzoi, which, with a piercing yelp, fell with its head on the
ground, bleeding from a gash in its side.

"Karay? Old fellow!..." wailed Nicholas.

Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf's path, the old
dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within five paces of
it. As if aware of her danger, the wolf turned her eyes on Karay, tucked
her tail yet further between her legs, and increased her speed. But here
Nicholas only saw that something happened to Karay--the borzoi was
suddenly on the wolf, and they rolled together down into a gully just in
front of them.

That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully with
the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and
outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears
laid back (Karay was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest moment
of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to dismount
and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head up from among that
mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on the edge of the gully. She
clicked her teeth (Karay no longer had her by the throat), leaped with a
movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and having disengaged
herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again, went forward. Karay,
his hair bristling, and probably bruised or wounded, climbed with
difficulty out of the gully.

"Oh my God! Why?" Nicholas cried in despair.

"Uncle's" huntsman was galloping from the other side across the wolf's
path and his borzois once more stopped the animal's advance. She was
again hemmed in.

Nicholas and his attendant, with "Uncle" and his huntsman, were all
riding round the wolf, crying "ulyulyu!" shouting and preparing to
dismount each moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward
again every time she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she
would be safe.

Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the ulyulyuing,
had rushed out from the wood. He saw Karay seize the wolf, and checked
his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he saw that the
horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself and ran for
safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf but straight
toward the wood, just as Karay had run to cut the animal off. As a
result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just when she had been
stopped a second time by "Uncle's" borzois.

Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand and
thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip as if
it were a flail.

Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut, breathing
heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body and saw Daniel
lying on the wolf's back among the dogs, trying to seize her by the
ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to the wolf herself
that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed back her ears and
tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her. Daniel rose a little, took
a step, and with his whole weight, as if lying down to rest, fell on the
wolf, seizing her by the ears. Nicholas was about to stab her, but
Daniel whispered, "Don't! We'll gag her!" and, changing his position,
set his foot on the wolf's neck. A stick was thrust between her jaws and
she was fastened with a leash, as if bridled, her legs were bound
together, and Daniel rolled her over once or twice from side to side.

With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a shying
and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her, took her
to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had killed two of
the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled with their booty
and their stories, and all came to look at the wolf, which, with her
broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten stick between her jaws,
gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd of dogs and men surrounding
her. When she was touched, she jerked her bound legs and looked wildly
yet simply at everybody. Old Count Rostov also rode up and touched the
wolf.

"Oh, what a formidable one!" said he. "A formidable one, eh?" he asked
Daniel, who was standing near.

"Yes, your excellency," answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.

The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with
Daniel.

"Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!" said the count.

For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable
smile.




CHAPTER VI

The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to return very
soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At midday they
put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with young trees.
Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his whips.

Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood alone
in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been loosed
before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at intervals;
other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving tongue. A
moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a fox had been
found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along the ravine
toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.

He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the
ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself
at any moment on the ryefield opposite.

The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois, and
Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going hard
across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew close to
the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and sharper
curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white borzoi dashed
in followed by a black one, and everything was in confusion; the borzois
formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying their bodies and with
tails turned away from the center of the group. Two huntsmen galloped up
to the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, in a green coat.

"What's this?" thought Nicholas. "Where's that huntsman from? He is not
'Uncle's' man."

The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without strapping
it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high saddles, stood
near them and there too the dogs were lying. The huntsmen waved their
arms and did something to the fox. Then from that spot came the sound of
a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of a fight.

"That's Ilagin's huntsman having a row with our Ivan," said Nicholas'
groom.

Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him, and rode at a
footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds together.
Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight was going on.

Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden up,
stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would end. Out of
the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and rode toward his
young master, with the fox tied to his crupper. While still at a
distance he took off his cap and tried to speak respectfully, but he was
pale and breathless and his face was angry. One of his eyes was black,
but he probably was not even aware of it.

"What has happened?" asked Nicholas.

"A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my gray
bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the fox! I
gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want a taste
of this?..." said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and probably
imagining himself still speaking to his foe.

Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and Petya to
wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy's, Ilagin's, hunting
party was.

The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,
surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.

The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a quarrel and were
at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the Rostovs, and
had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very woods the Rostovs
were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs had chased.

Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual absence of
moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his
arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe. He
rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and fully
prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish his
enemy.

Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman in a
beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black horse,
accompanied by two hunt servants.

Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and courteous
gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young count's
acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised his beaver cap
and said he much regretted what had occurred and would have the man
punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox hunted by someone else's
borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted with the count and invited
him to draw his covert.

Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had
followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging friendly
greetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver cap still
higher to Natasha and said, with a pleasant smile, that the young
countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as well as in her
beauty, of which he had heard much.

To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs to come to
an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for himself and
which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and the hunt, now
doubled, moved on.

The way to Iligin's upland was across the fields. The hunt servants fell
into line. The masters rode together. "Uncle," Rostov, and Ilagin kept
stealthily glancing at one another's dogs, trying not to be observed by
their companions and searching uneasily for rivals to their own borzois.

Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, pure-bred, red-
spotted bitch on Ilagin's leash, slender but with muscles like steel, a
delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He had heard of the swiftness
of Ilagin's borzois, and in that beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own
Milka.

In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin about the year's
harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.

"A fine little bitch, that!" said he in a careless tone. "Is she swift?"

"That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after," answered
Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza, for which, a year
before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. "So in
your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?" he went on,
continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering it polite to
return the young count's compliment, Ilagin looked at his borzois and
picked out Milka who attracted his attention by her breadth. "That
black-spotted one of yours is fine--well shaped!" said he.

"Yes, she's fast enough," replied Nicholas, and thought: "If only a
full-grown hare would cross the field now I'd show you what sort of
borzoi she is," and turning to his groom, he said he would give a ruble
to anyone who found a hare.

"I don't understand," continued Ilagin, "how some sportsmen can be so
jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I enjoy
riding in company such as this... what could be better?" (he again
raised his cap to Natasha) "but as for counting skins and what one
takes, I don't care about that."

"Of course not!"

"Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not mine catches
something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not so,
Count? For I consider that..."

"A-tu!" came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in, who
had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip aloft,
and again repeated his long-drawn cry, "A-tu!" (This call and the
uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)

"Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly. "Yes, we must
ride up.... Shall we both course it?" answered Nicholas, seeing in Erza
and "Uncle's" red Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a chance of
pitting against his own borzois. "And suppose they outdo my Milka at
once!" he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin toward the hare.

"A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached the whip who had
sighted the hare--and not without agitation he looked round and whistled
to Erza.

"And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing "Uncle."

The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.

"How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each of your
borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours
against one another, you two, and I'll look on!"

"Rugay, hey, hey!" he shouted. "Rugayushka!" he added, involuntarily by
this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on this
red borzoi. Natasha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly men and
her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by it.

The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and the
gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were far off on
the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but not the
gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and sedately.

"How is it pointing?" asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces toward the
whip who had sighted the hare.

But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming
next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash rushed
downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the borzois that
were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare. All the hunt,
who had been moving slowly, shouted, "Stop!" calling in the hounds,
while the borzoi whips, with a cry of "A-tu!" galloped across the field
setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin, Nicholas, Natasha,
and "Uncle" flew, reckless of where and how they went, seeing only the
borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose sight even for an instant
of the chase. The hare they had started was a strong and swift one. When
he jumped up he did not run at once, but pricked his ears listening to
the shouting and trampling that resounded from all sides at once. He
took a dozen bounds, not very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him,
and, finally having chosen his direction and realized his danger, laid
back his ears and rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble,
but in front of him was the autumn sowing where the ground was soft. The
two borzois of the huntsman who had sighted him, having been the
nearest, were the first to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far
before Ilagin's red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew
at the hare with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking
she had seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back
and bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed the broad-
haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the hare.

"Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry. It looked as if Milka
would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and flew
past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached him, but
when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the distance, so as
not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind leg.

"Erza, darling!" Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did not
hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have seized her
prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between the winter rye
and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast, running like a pair
of carriage horses, and began to overtake the hare, but it was easier
for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois did not overtake him so
quickly.

"Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a third voice just then,
and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught up with
the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of the
terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off the balk
onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously, sinking to
his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was how, muddying
his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of borzois surrounded
him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the crowd of dogs. Only
the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a pad, shaking the hare
for the blood to drip off, and anxiously glancing round with restless
eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He spoke without himself knowing
whom to or what about. "That's it, come on! That's a dog!... There, it
has beaten them all, the thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble
borzois. That's it, come on!" said he, panting and looking wrathfully
around as if he were abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies
and had insulted him, and only now had he at last succeeded in
justifying himself. "There are your thousand-ruble ones.... That's it,
come on!..."

"Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing down the hare's muddy
pad. "You've deserved it, that's it, come on!"

"She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times by herself,"
said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of whether he
were heard or not.

"But what is there in running across it like that?" said Ilagin's groom.

"Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take it,"
Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop and his
excitement. At the same moment Natasha, without drawing breath, screamed
joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set everyone's ear
tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the others expressed by all
talking at once, and it was so strange that she must herself have been
ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone else would have been amazed at it
at any other time. "Uncle" himself twisted up the hare, threw it neatly
and smartly across his horse's back as if by that gesture he meant to
rebuke everybody, and, with an air of not wishing to speak to anyone,
mounted his bay and rode off. The others all followed, dispirited and
shamefaced, and only much later were they able to regain their former
affectation of indifference. For a long time they continued to look at
red Rugay who, his arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring
of his leash, walked along just behind "Uncle's" horse with the serene
air of a conqueror.

"Well, I am like any other dog as long as it's not a question of
coursing. But when it is, then look out!" his appearance seemed to
Nicholas to be saying.

When, much later, "Uncle" rode up to Nicholas and began talking to him,
he felt flattered that, after what had happened, "Uncle" deigned to
speak to him.




CHAPTER VII

Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they were
so far from home that he accepted "Uncle's" offer that the hunting party
should spend the night in his little village of Mikhaylovna.

"And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That's it,
come on!" said "Uncle." "You see it's damp weather, and you could rest,
and the little countess could be driven home in a trap."

"Uncle's" offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for a
trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and Petya to "Uncle's" house.

Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the front
porch to meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and young, as
well as children, popped out from the back entrance to have a look at
the hunters who were arriving. The presence of Natasha--a woman, a lady,
and on horseback--raised the curiosity of the serfs to such a degree
that many of them came up to her, stared her in the face, and unabashed
by her presence made remarks about her as though she were some prodigy
on show and not a human being able to hear or understand what was said
about her.

"Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt
dangles.... See, she's got a little hunting horn!"

"Goodness gracious! See her knife?..."

"Isn't she a Tartar!"

"How is it you didn't go head over heels?" asked the boldest of all,
addressing Natasha directly.

"Uncle" dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which stood
in the midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his
retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should take
themselves off and that all necessary preparations should be made to
receive the guests and the visitors.

The serfs all dispersed. "Uncle" lifted Natasha off her horse and taking
her hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch. The house,
with its bare, unplastered log walls, was not overclean--it did not seem
that those living in it aimed at keeping it spotless--but neither was it
noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of fresh apples,
and wolf and fox skins hung about.

"Uncle" led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with a
folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a round
birchwood table and a sofa, and finally into his private room where
there was a tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of Suvorov, of
the host's father and mother, and of himself in military uniform. The
study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. "Uncle" asked his visitors to
sit down and make themselves at home, and then went out of the room.
Rugay, his back still muddy, came into the room and lay down on the
sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth. Leading from the study
was a passage in which a partition with ragged curtains could be seen.
From behind this came women's laughter and whispers. Natasha, Nicholas,
and Petya took off their wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya, leaning
on his elbow, fell asleep at once. Natasha and Nicholas were silent.
Their faces glowed, they were hungry and very cheerful. They looked at
one another (now that the hunt was over and they were in the house,
Nicholas no longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority
over his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long
from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a
pretext ready to account for it.

After a while "Uncle" came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and
small top boots. And Natasha felt that this costume, the very one she
had regarded with surprise and amusement at Otradnoe, was just the right
thing and not at all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat. "Uncle"
too was in high spirits and far from being offended by the brother's and
sister's laughter (it could never enter his head that they might be
laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the merriment.

"That's right, young countess, that's it, come on! I never saw anyone
like her!" said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem and, with
a practiced motion of three fingers, taking down another that had been
cut short. "She's ridden all day like a man, and is as fresh as ever!"

Soon after "Uncle's" reappearance the door was opened, evidently from
the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking woman of
about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, entered carrying a
large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality in her glance
and in every motion, she looked at the visitors and, with a pleasant
smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional stoutness, which
caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and throw back her head,
this woman (who was "Uncle's" housekeeper) trod very lightly. She went
to the table, set down the tray, and with her plump white hands deftly
took from it the bottles and various hors d'oeuvres and dishes and
arranged them on the table. When she had finished, she stepped aside and
stopped at the door with a smile on her face. "Here I am. I am she! Now
do you understand 'Uncle'?" her expression said to Rostov. How could one
help understanding? Not only Nicholas, but even Natasha understood the
meaning of his puckered brow and the happy complacent smile that
slightly puckered his lips when Anisya Fedorovna entered. On the tray
was a bottle of herb wine, different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms,
rye cakes made with buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and
sparkling mead, apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey
sweets. Afterwards she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves
made with honey, and preserves made with sugar.

All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna's housekeeping, gathered and
prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a smack of Anisya
Fedorovna herself: a savor of juiciness, cleanliness, whiteness, and
pleasant smiles.

"Take this, little Lady-Countess!" she kept saying, as she offered
Natasha first one thing and then another.

Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten such
buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets, or such
a chicken anywhere. Anisya Fedorovna left the room.

After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and "Uncle" talked of
past and future hunts, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs, while Natasha sat
upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried several
times to wake Petya that he might eat something, but he only muttered
incoherent words without waking up. Natasha felt so lighthearted and
happy in these novel surroundings that she only feared the trap would
come for her too soon. After a casual pause, such as often occurs when
receiving friends for the first time in one's own house, "Uncle,"
answering a thought that was in his visitors' minds, said:

"This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come. That's
it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?"

"Uncle's" face was very significant and even handsome as he said this.
Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good he had heard about him from
his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province "Uncle" had
the reputation of being the most honorable and disinterested of cranks.
They called him in to decide family disputes, chose him as executor,
confided secrets to him, elected him to be a justice and to other posts;
but he always persistently refused public appointments, passing the
autumn and spring in the fields on his bay gelding, sitting at home in
winter, and lying in his overgrown garden in summer.

"Why don't you enter the service, Uncle?"

"I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That's it, come on! I
can't make head or tail of it. That's for you--I haven't brains enough.
Now, hunting is another matter--that's it, come on! Open the door,
there!" he shouted. "Why have you shut it?"

The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen's room, as they
called the room for the hunt servants.

There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the
door into the huntsmen's room, from which came the clear sounds of a
balalayka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was
playing. Natasha had been listening to those strains for some time and
now went out into the passage to hear better.

"That's Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balalayka. I'm fond
of it," said "Uncle."

It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the huntsmen's room
when "Uncle" returned from the chase. "Uncle" was fond of such music.

"How good! Really very good!" said Nicholas with some unintentional
superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the sounds pleased him
very much.

"Very good?" said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her brother's tone.
"Not 'very good' it's simply delicious!"

Just as "Uncle's" pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had seemed
to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that moment, seemed
to her the acme of musical delight.

"More, please, more!" cried Natasha at the door as soon as the balalayka
ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the balalayka
to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. "Uncle" sat
listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air was
repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several times and
the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did not grow weary
of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anisya Fedorovna came in
and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.

"You like listening?" she said to Natasha, with a smile extremely like
"Uncle's." "That's a good player of ours," she added.

"He doesn't play that part right!" said "Uncle" suddenly, with an
energetic gesture. "Here he ought to burst out--that's it, come on!--
ought to burst out."

"Do you play then?" asked Natasha.

"Uncle" did not answer, but smiled.

"Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I haven't
touched it for a long time. That's it--come on! I've given it up."

Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her
errand and brought back the guitar.

Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping the
case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself in his
armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard, arching his
left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a wink at
Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous, and then
quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow time, not
My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the street. The
tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to thrill in the
hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the same kind of sober
mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole being. Anisya Fedorovna
flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her face went laughing out of the
room. "Uncle" continued to play correctly, carefully, with energetic
firmness, looking with a changed and inspired expression at the spot
where Anisya Fedorovna had just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a
little on one side of his face under his gray mustaches, especially as
the song grew brisker and the time quicker and when, here and there, as
he ran his fingers over the strings, something seemed to snap.

"Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!" shouted Natasha as soon as he had
finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. "Nicholas, Nicholas!"
she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: "What is it moves me
so?"

Nicholas too was greatly pleased by "Uncle's" playing, and "Uncle"
played the piece over again. Anisya Fedorovna's smiling face reappeared
in the doorway and behind hers other faces...


Fetching water clear and sweet, Stop, dear maiden, I entreat--

played "Uncle" once more, running his fingers skillfully over the
strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders.

"Go on, Uncle dear," Natasha wailed in an imploring tone as if her life
depended on it.

"Uncle" rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of them
smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow struck a
naive and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.

"Now then, niece!" he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the hand that had
just struck a chord.

Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to face
"Uncle," and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with her
shoulders and struck an attitude.

Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree
French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that spirit
and obtained that manner which the pas de chale * would, one would have
supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the movements were
those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that "Uncle" had expected
of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and smiled triumphantly,
proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that had at first seized
Nicholas and the others that she might not do the right thing was at an
end, and they were already admiring her.


* The French shawl dance.

She did the right thing with such precision, such complete precision,
that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once handed her the handkerchief she
needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she
watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in silks and velvets and so
different from herself, who yet was able to understand all that was in
Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother and aunt, and in every Russian
man and woman.

"Well, little countess; that's it--come on!" cried "Uncle," with a
joyous laugh, having finished the dance. "Well done, niece! Now a fine
young fellow must be found as husband for you. That's it--come on!"

"He's chosen already," said Nicholas smiling.

"Oh?" said "Uncle" in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha, who
nodded her head with a happy smile.

"And such a one!" she said. But as soon as she had said it a new train
of thoughts and feelings arose in her. "What did Nicholas' smile mean
when he said 'chosen already'? Is he glad of it or not? It is as if he
thought my Bolkonski would not approve of or understand our gaiety. But
he would understand it all. Where is he now?" she thought, and her face
suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second. "Don't dare to
think about it," she said to herself, and sat down again smilingly
beside "Uncle," begging him to play something more.

"Uncle" played another song and a valse; then after a pause he cleared
his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:


As 'twas growing dark last night Fell the snow so soft and light...

"Uncle" sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that the
whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune comes of
itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which exists
only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the unconsidered
tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily good. Natasha was in
ecstasies over "Uncle's" singing. She resolved to give up learning the
harp and to play only the guitar. She asked "Uncle" for his guitar and
at once found the chords of the song.

After nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been sent to
look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count and
countess did not know where they were and were very anxious, said one of
the men.

Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two
traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. "Uncle" wrapped Natasha
up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness. He
accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be crossed,
so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent huntsmen to ride
in front with lanterns.

"Good-bye, dear niece," his voice called out of the darkness--not the
voice Natasha had known previously, but the one that had sung As 'twas
growing dark last night.

In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a
cheerful smell of smoke.

"What a darling Uncle is!" said Natasha, when they had come out onto the
highroad.

"Yes," returned Nicholas. "You're not cold?"

"No. I'm quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!" answered
Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long
while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but
only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.

What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly caught
and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did they all
find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were nearing home she
suddenly struck up the air of As 'twas growing dark last night--the tune
of which she had all the way been trying to get and had at last caught.

"Got it?" said Nicholas.

"What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?" inquired Natasha.

They were fond of asking one another that question.

"I?" said Nicholas, trying to remember. "Well, you see, first I thought
that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were a man he
would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then for his
manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?... Well, and
you?"

"I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving along
and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows where we are
really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive and suddenly find
that we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And then I thought... No,
nothing else."

"I know, I expect you thought of him," said Nicholas, smiling as Natasha
knew by the sound of his voice.

"No," said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about Prince
Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would have liked
"Uncle." "And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How well Anisya
carried herself, how well!'" And Nicholas heard her spontaneous, happy,
ringing laughter. "And do you know," she suddenly said, "I know that I
shall never again be as happy and tranquil as I am now."

"Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!" exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought: "How
charming this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her and
never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive about
together!"

"What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!" thought Natasha.

"Ah, there are still lights in the drawing-room!" she said, pointing to
the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the moist velvety
darkness of the night.




CHAPTER VIII

Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility
because it involved him in too much expense, but still his affairs did
not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their parents conferring
together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of selling the
fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near Moscow. It was not necessary
to entertain so freely as when the count had been Marshal, and life at
Otradnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the enormous house
and its lodges were full of people and more than twenty sat down to
table every day. These were all their own people who had settled down in
the house almost as members of the family, or persons who were, it
seemed, obliged to live in the count's house. Such were Dimmler the
musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova,
an old maiden lady, an inmate of the house, and many others such as
Petya's tutors, the girls' former governess, and other people who simply
found it preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house
than at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old
habits of life without which the count and countess could not conceive
of existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting
establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty horses
and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive presents and
dinner parties to the whole district on name days; there were still the
count's games of whist and boston, at which--spreading out his cards so
that everybody could see them--he let himself be plundered of hundreds
of rubles every day by his neighbors, who looked upon an opportunity to
play a rubber with Count Rostov as a most profitable source of income.

The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe
that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and
feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and
patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt
that her children were being ruined, that it was not the count's fault
for he could not help being what he was--that (though he tried to hide
it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of his own and his
children's ruin, and she tried to find means of remedying the position.
From her feminine point of view she could see only one solution, namely,
for Nicholas to marry a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last
hope and that if Nicholas refused the match she had found for him, she
would have to abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This match
was with Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents,
a girl the Rostovs had known from childhood, and who had now become a
wealthy heiress through the death of the last of her brothers.

The countess had written direct to Julie's mother in Moscow suggesting a
marriage between their children and had received a favorable answer from
her. Karagina had replied that for her part she was agreeable, and
everything depend on her daughter's inclination. She invited Nicholas to
come to Moscow.

Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son that
now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him
married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that
were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid girl
and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.

At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to Moscow
during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his mother's
remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations induced
her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of getting
their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie Karagina.

"But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you expect
me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of money?" he
asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question and only
wishing to show his noble-mindedness.

"No, you have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how to
justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your
happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an
untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.

"Mamma, don't cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I will
give my life, anything, to put you at ease," said Nicholas. "I would
sacrifice anything for you--even my feelings."

But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did not
want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a sacrifice
for him.

"No, you have not understood me, don't let us talk about it," she
replied, wiping away her tears.

"Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to
sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he thought,
"must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should certainly
be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can always
sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to himself, "but
I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is for me
stronger and higher than all else."

Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and sometimes
with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and
the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself for it, she could not
refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya, often pulling her up
without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my dear," and using the
formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in speaking to her. The
kindhearted countess was the more vexed with Sonya because that poor,
dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, so devotedly grateful to
her benefactors, and so faithfully, unchangingly, and unselfishly in
love with Nicholas, that there were no grounds for finding fault with
her.

Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter had
come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he would have
been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound unexpectedly
reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to defer his return till
the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still as much in love with
her betrothed, found the same comfort in that love, and was still as
ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life as before; but at
the end of the fourth month of their separation she began to have fits
of depression which she could not master. She felt sorry for herself:
sorry that she was being wasted all this time and of no use to anyone--
while she felt herself so capable of loving and being loved.

Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home.




CHAPTER IX

Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and
wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and the
new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities, though
the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine by day,
and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some special
celebration of the season.

On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the
inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest time
of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that morning,
was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was resting in his
study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round table, copying a
design for embroidery. The countess was playing patience. Nastasya
Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the window with two old
ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to Sonya, glanced at what
she was doing, and then went up to her mother and stood without
speaking.

"Why are you wandering about like an outcast?" asked her mother. "What
do you want?"

"Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!" said Natasha, with
glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.

The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.

"Don't look at me, Mamma! Don't look; I shall cry directly."

"Sit down with me a little," said the countess.

"Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?"

Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned quickly to
hide them and left the room.

She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and then
went into the maids' room. There an old maidservant was grumbling at a
young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold from
the serfs' quarters.

"Stop playing--there's a time for everything," said the old woman.

"Let her alone, Kondratevna," said Natasha. "Go, Mavrushka, go."

Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and went to
the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing
cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.

"What can I do with them?" thought Natasha.

"Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the yard
and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some oats."

"Just a few oats?" said Misha, cheerfully and readily.

"Go, go quickly," the old man urged him.

"And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk."

On her way past the butler's pantry she told them to set a samovar,
though it was not at all the time for tea.

Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house. Natasha
liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order and asked
whether the samovar was really wanted.

"Oh dear, what a young lady!" said Foka, pretending to frown at Natasha.

No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble as
Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to send
them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of them would
get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one's orders so
readily as they did hers. "What can I do, where can I go?" thought she,
as she went slowly along the passage.

"Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she asked the
buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman's jacket.

"Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers," answered the buffoon.

"O Lord, O Lord, it's always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am I
to do with myself?" And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly upstairs
to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.

Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which were
plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were discussing
whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha sat down,
listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and then got
up again.

"The island of Madagascar," she said, "Ma-da-gas-car," she repeated,
articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame
Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.

Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him he
was preparing fireworks to let off that night.

"Petya! Petya!" she called to him. "Carry me downstairs."

Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her
arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.

"No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping off his
back she went downstairs.

Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made sure
that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was dull, Natasha
betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down in a dark
corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her fingers over the strings
in the bass, picking out a passage she recalled from an opera she had
heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew. What she drew from the guitar
would have had no meaning for other listeners, but in her imagination a
whole series of reminiscences arose from those sounds. She sat behind
the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of light escaping from the
pantry door and listened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for
brooding on the past.

Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced at
her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she
remembered the light falling through that crack once before and Sonya
passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly the same," thought
Natasha.

"Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string.

"Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near and
listened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid of being
wrong.

"There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smiling
timidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and in just
the same way I thought there was something lacking in her."

"No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen!" and Natasha sang
the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Where were you
going?" she asked.

"To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design."

"You always find something to do, but I can't," said Natasha. "And
where's Nicholas?"

"Asleep, I think."

"Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to come and
sing."

She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened
before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all regretting
not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time when she was
with him and he was looking at her with a lover's eyes.

"Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be!
And, worst of all, I am growing old--that's the thing! There won't then
be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, will come
immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing room.
Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it." She rose, put down
the guitar, and went to the drawing room.

All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were already
at the tea table. The servants stood round the table--but Prince Andrew
was not there and life was going on as before.

"Ah, here she is!" said the old count, when he saw Natasha enter. "Well,
sit down by me." But Natasha stayed by her mother and glanced round as
if looking for something.

"Mamma!" she muttered, "give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,
quickly!" and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.

She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between the
elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. "My God, my God!
The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the
same way!" thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion
rising up in her for the whole household, because they were always the
same.

After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to
their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.




CHAPTER X

"Does it ever happen to you," said Natasha to her brother, when they
settled down in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you to feel as
if there were nothing more to come--nothing; that everything good is
past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?"

"I should think so!" he replied. "I have felt like that when everything
was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has come into my
mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must all die. Once
in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where there was
music... and suddenly I felt so depressed..."

"Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!" Natasha interrupted him. "When I was
quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I was
punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat sobbing
in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and sorry for
everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was innocent--that was the
chief thing," said Natasha. "Do you remember?"

"I remember," answered Nicholas. "I remember that I came to you
afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt ashamed
to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and wanted to give
it to you. Do you remember?"

"And do you remember," Natasha asked with a pensive smile, "how once,
long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us into the
study--that was in the old house--and it was dark--we went in and
suddenly there stood..."

"A Negro," chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. "Of course I
remember. Even now I don't know whether there really was a Negro, or if
we only dreamed it or were told about him."

"He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and looked at
us..."

"Sonya, do you remember?" asked Nicholas.

"Yes, yes, I do remember something too," Sonya answered timidly.

"You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro," said Natasha,
"and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you remember!"

"Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them."

"How strange it is! It's as if it were a dream! I like that."

"And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom, and
suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was that real
or not? Do you remember what fun it was?"

"Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun in the
porch?"

So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not the sad
memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones--those impressions of
one's most distant past in which dreams and realities blend--and they
laughed with quiet enjoyment.

Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they shared
the same reminiscences.

Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she
recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced. She
simply enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.

She only really took part when they recalled Sonya's first arrival. She
told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because he had on a corded
jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too, would be sewn up with
cords.

"And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a
cabbage," said Natasha, "and I remember that I dared not disbelieve it
then, but knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable."

While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other door of
the sitting room.

"They have brought the cock, Miss," she said in a whisper.

"It isn't wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away," replied Natasha.

In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and
went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its cloth
covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound.

"Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field," came the old
countess' voice from the drawing room.

Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nicholas, and Sonya,
remarked: "How quiet you young people are!"

"Yes, we're philosophizing," said Natasha, glancing round for a moment
and then continuing the conversation. They were now discussing dreams.

Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the table,
took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself quietly
in her former place. It was dark in the room especially where they were
sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the silvery light of
the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished the piece but
still sat softly running his fingers over the strings, evidently
uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.

"Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas and
Sonya, "that when one goes on and on recalling memories, one at last
begins to remember what happened before one was in the world..."

"That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well, and
remembered everything. "The Egyptians believed that our souls have lived
in animals, and will go back into animals again."

"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still in a
whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we were
angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we
remember...."

"May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat down
by them.

"If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas. "No,
that can't be!"

"Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was before?"
Natasha rejoined with conviction. "The soul is immortal--well then, if I
shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity."

"Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity," remarked Dimmler, who
had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending smile but now
spoke as quietly and seriously as they.

"Why is it hard to imagine eternity?" said Natasha. "It is now today,
and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday, and the
day before..."

"Natasha! Now it's your turn. Sing me something," they heard the
countess say. "Why are you sitting there like conspirators?"

"Mamma, I don't at all want to," replied Natasha, but all the same she
rose.

None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off
their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but Natasha
got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as usual in the
middle of the hall and choosing the place where the resonance was best,
Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song.

She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had
sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The
count, from his study where he was talking to Mitenka, heard her and,
like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in his talk
while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped, while Mitenka
stood in front of him also listening and smiling. Nicholas did not take
his eyes off his sister and drew breath in time with her. Sonya, as she
listened, thought of the immense difference there was between herself
and her friend, and how impossible it was for her to be anything like as
bewitching as her cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad
smile and with tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She
thought of Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something
unnatural and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natasha and Prince
Andrew.

Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with
closed eyes.

"Ah, Countess," he said at last, "that's a European talent, she has
nothing to learn--what softness, tenderness, and strength...."

"Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!" said the countess, not
realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her that
Natasha had too much of something, and that because of this she would
not be happy. Before Natasha had finished singing, fourteen-year-old
Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some mummers had arrived.

Natasha stopped abruptly.

"Idiot!" she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair, threw
herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop for a long
time.

"It's nothing, Mamma, really it's nothing; only Petya startled me," she
said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs still choked
her.

The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,
innkeepers, and ladies--frightening and funny--bringing in with them the
cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first timidly,
into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed into the
ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily and
heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas games.
The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their
costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom,
smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had
disappeared.

Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the
ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt--this was Nicholas. A Turkish
girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a
Circassian was Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.

After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from those
who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided that their
costumes were so good that they ought to be shown elsewhere.

Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to take
them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them about a
dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's."

"No, why disturb the old fellow?" said the countess. "Besides, you
wouldn't have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the
Melyukovs'."

Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and
governesses, lived three miles from the Rostovs.

"That's right, my dear," chimed in the old count, thoroughly aroused.
"I'll dress up at once and go with them. I'll make Pashette open her
eyes."

But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad leg all
these last days. It was decided that the count must not go, but that if
Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies
might go to the Melyukovs', Sonya, generally so timid and shy, more
urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.

Sonya's costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows were
extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very handsome,
and she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with her. Some
inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be decided, and in
her male attire she seemed quite a different person. Louisa Ivanovna
consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka sleighs with large and
small bells, their runners squeaking and whistling over the frozen snow,
drove up to the porch.

Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing
from one to another, grew stronger and reached its climax when they all
came out into the frost and got into the sleighs, talking, calling to
one another, laughing, and shouting.

Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was the
old count's with a trotter from the Orlov stud as shaft horse, the
fourth was Nicholas' own with a short shaggy black shaft horse.
Nicholas, in his old lady's dress over which he had belted his hussar
overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.

It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the metal
harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked round in alarm
at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.

Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas' sleigh;
Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the rest of the
mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.

"You go ahead, Zakhar!" shouted Nicholas to his father's coachman,
wishing for a chance to race past him.

The old count's troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,
squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its deep-toned
bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts of the
middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered like sugar,
and threw it up.

Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the others
moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove at a steady
trot along the narrow road. While they drove past the garden the shadows
of the bare trees often fell across the road and hid the brilliant
moonlight, but as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain
bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out before them glittering
like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows. Bang, bang! went the
first sleigh over a cradle hole in the snow of the road, and each of the
other sleighs jolted in the same way, and rudely breaking the frost-
bound stillness, the troykas began to speed along the road, one after
the other.

"A hare's track, a lot of tracks!" rang out Natasha's voice through the
frost-bound air.

"How light it is, Nicholas!" came Sonya's voice.

Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see her face closer.
Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches peeped up at
him from her sable furs--so close and yet so distant--in the moonlight.

"That used to be Sonya," thought he, and looked at her closer and
smiled.

"What is it, Nicholas?"

"Nothing," said he and turned again to the horses.

When they came out onto the beaten highroad--polished by sleigh runners
and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were visible in the
moonlight--the horses began to tug at the reins of their own accord and
increased their pace. The near side horse, arching his head and breaking
into a short canter, tugged at his traces. The shaft horse swayed from
side to side, moving his ears as if asking: "Isn't it time to begin
now?" In front, already far ahead the deep bell of the sleigh ringing
farther and farther off, the black horses driven by Zakhar could be
clearly seen against the white snow. From that sleigh one could hear the
shouts, laughter, and voices of the mummers.

"Gee up, my darlings!" shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one side
and flourishing the whip.

It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given by the
side horses who pulled harder--ever increasing their gallop--that one
noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back. With
screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft horses
to gallop--the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung steadily
beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of slackening pace and
ready to put on speed when required.

Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and
coming out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.

"Where are we?" thought he. "It's the Kosoy meadow, I suppose. But no--
this is something new I've never seen before. This isn't the Kosoy
meadow nor the Demkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is! It is
something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be..." And shouting
to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.

Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which was already
covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.

Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar, stretching out his arms,
clucked his tongue and let his horses go.

"Now, look out, master!" he cried.

Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the
feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead. Zakhar,
while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with the reins.

"No you won't, master!" he shouted.

Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhar. The horses
showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh--beside
them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused glimpses of
swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they were passing. The
whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the voices of girls
shrieking were heard from different sides.

Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were still
surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled with
stars.

"Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the
left?" thought Nicholas. "Are we getting to the Melyukovs'? Is this
Melyukovka? Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows what
is happening to us--but it is very strange and pleasant whatever it is."
And he looked round in the sleigh.

"Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!" said one of the
strange, pretty, unfamiliar people--the one with fine eyebrows and
mustache.

"I think this used to be Natasha," thought Nicholas, "and that was
Madame Schoss, but perhaps it's not, and this Circassian with the
mustache I don't know, but I love her."

"Aren't you cold?" he asked.

They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh behind
shouted something--probably something funny--but they could not make out
what he said.

"Yes, yes!" some voices answered, laughing.

"But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a glitter of
diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver roofs of fairy
buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And if this is really
Melyukovka, it is still stranger that we drove heaven knows where and
have come to Melyukovka," thought Nicholas.

It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with merry faces came
running, out to the porch carrying candles.

"Who is it?" asked someone in the porch.

"The mummers from the count's. I know by the horses," replied some
voices.




CHAPTER XI

Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman wearing
spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress, surrounded by her
daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling dull. They were
quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at the shadows the wax
figures would throw on the wall, when they heard the steps and voices of
new arrivals in the vestibule.

Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their
throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule, came
into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The clown--
Dimmler--and the lady--Nicholas--started a dance. Surrounded by the
screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and disguising
their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged themselves about the
room.

"Dear me! there's no recognizing them! And Natasha! See whom she looks
like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler--isn't he
good! I didn't know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there's a
Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonya. And who is that?
Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and Vanya--clear away the tables!
And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar!
Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can't look at him..." different
voices were saying.

Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them into the
back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male garments
were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish arms from
behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young Melyukovs joined the
mummers.

Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the
visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,
went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles, peering
into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to recognize any of
them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she failed to recognize,
she did not even recognize her own daughters, or her late husband's,
dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put on.

"And who is this?" she asked her governess, peering into the face of her
own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar. "I suppose it is one of the
Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve in?" she asked
Natasha. "Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she ordered the
butler who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden by his law."

Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by the
dancers, who--having decided once for all that being disguised, no one
would recognize them--were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna hid her
face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook with
irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.

"My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said.

After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna made
the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a string, and a
silver ruble were fetched and they all played games together.

In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The corked
eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring, flushed, and
merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the mummers, admired
their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly how they suited the
young ladies, and she thanked them all for having entertained her so
well. The visitors were invited to supper in the drawing room, and the
serfs had something served to them in the ballroom.

"Now to tell one's fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!" said
an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs, during supper.

"Why?" said the eldest Melyukov girl.

"You wouldn't go, it takes courage..."

"I'll go," said Sonya.

"Tell what happened to the young lady!" said the second Melyukov girl.

"Well," began the old maid, "a young lady once went out, took a cock,
laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After sitting a
while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh drives up with
harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in, just in the shape of a
man, like an officer--comes in and sits down to table with her."

"Ah! ah!" screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.

"Yes? And how... did he speak?"

"Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began persuading
her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow, but she got
frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her hands. Then he
caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just then..."

"Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna.

"Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself..." said her daughter.

"And how does one do it in a barn?" inquired Sonya.

"Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on what
you hear; hammering and knocking--that's bad; but a sound of shifting
grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too."

"Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn."

Pelageya Danilovna smiled.

"Oh, I've forgotten..." she replied. "But none of you would go?"

"Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I'll go," said Sonya.

"Well, why not, if you're not afraid?"

"Louisa Ivanovna, may I?" asked Sonya.

Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game or
talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya's side, and gazed at her
with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today, thanks to
that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to know her. And
really, that evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated, and prettier
than Nicholas had ever seen her before.

"So that's what she is like; what a fool I have been!" he thought gazing
at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous smile
dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.

"I'm not afraid of anything," said Sonya. "May I go at once?" She got
up.

They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and listen,
and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her head and
shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.

"What a darling that girl is!" thought he. "And what have I been
thinking of till now?"

Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went hastily
to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of people really
had made the house stuffy.

Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but even
brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow sparkled with
so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the sky and the real
stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary, while the earth was
gay.

"I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?" thought Nicholas,
and running out from the porch he went round the corner of the house and
along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sonya would pass that
way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood and across and
along them a network of shadows from the bare old lime trees fell on the
snow and on the path. This path led to the barn. The log walls of the
barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked as if hewn out of some
precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A tree in the garden snapped
with the frost, and then all was again perfectly silent. His bosom
seemed to inhale not air but the strength of eternal youth and gladness.

From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the
bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he heard
the voice of an old maidservant saying, "Straight, straight, along the
path, Miss. Only, don't look back."

"I am not afraid," answered Sonya's voice, and along the path toward
Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sonya's feet in her thin
shoes.

Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of paces
away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas she had
known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman's dress, with
tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly toward him.

"Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas, looking at her
face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the cloak
that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and kissed her
on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt cork. Sonya
kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little hands pressed
them to his cheeks.

"Sonya!... Nicholas!"... was all they said. They ran to the barn and
then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back porch.




CHAPTER XII

When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna's, Natasha, who always
saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss should
go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and the
maids.

On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing and
kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sonya's face
and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and his
present Sonya from whom he had resolved never to be parted again. He
looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new Sonya, and being
reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the sensation of her kiss,
inhaled the frosty air with a full breast and, looking at the ground
flying beneath him and at the sparkling sky, felt himself again in
fairyland.

"Sonya, is it well with thee?" he asked from time to time.

"Yes!" she replied. "And with thee?"

When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and ran for
a moment to Natasha's sleigh and stood on its wing.

"Natasha!" he whispered in French, "do you know I have made up my mind
about Sonya?"

"Have you told her?" asked Natasha, suddenly beaming all over with joy.

"Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!...
Natasha--are you glad?"

"I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I did not
tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart she has,
Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be happy while
Sonya was not," continued Natasha. "Now I am so glad! Well, run back to
her."

"No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!" cried Nicholas, peering
into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual, and
bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before. "Natasha, it's
magical, isn't it?"

"Yes," she replied. "You have done splendidly."

"Had I seen her before as she is now," thought Nicholas, "I should long
ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me, and
all would have been well."

"So you are glad and I have done right?"

"Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it.
Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing! I
nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of
Sonya, for there is nothing but good in her."

"Then it's all right?" said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the expression
of his sister's face to see if she was in earnest. Then he jumped down
and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his sleigh. The same
happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and beaming eyes looking up
from under a sable hood, was still sitting there, and that Circassian
was Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his future happy and loving
wife.

When they reached home and had told their mother how they had spent the
evening at the Melyukovs', the girls went to their bedroom. When they
had undressed, but without washing off the cork mustaches, they sat a
long time talking of their happiness. They talked of how they would live
when they were married, how their husbands would be friends, and how
happy they would be. On Natasha's table stood two looking glasses which
Dunyasha had prepared beforehand.

"Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too
good!" said Natasha, rising and going to the looking glasses.

"Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you'll see him," said Sonya.

Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking glasses,
and sat down.

"I see someone with a mustache," said Natasha, seeing her own face.

"You mustn't laugh, Miss," said Dunyasha.

With Sonya's help and the maid's, Natasha got the glass she held into
the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious
expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the
receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting (from
tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew, in that
last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was to take the
smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin, she saw nothing.
She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the looking glasses.

"Why is it others see things and I don't?" she said. "You sit down now,
Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I feel so
frightened!"

Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began
looking.

"Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something," whispered Dunyasha; "while
you do nothing but laugh."

Sonya heard this and Natasha's whisper:

"I know she will. She saw something last year."

For about three minutes all were silent.

"Of course she will!" whispered Natasha, but did not finish... suddenly
Sonya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her eyes with
her hand.

"Oh, Natasha!" she cried.

"Did you see? Did you? What was it?" exclaimed Natasha, holding up the
looking glass.

Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to get up
when she heard Natasha say, "Of course she will!" She did not wish to
disappoint either Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard to sit still. She
did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped her when she
covered her eyes.

"You saw him?" urged Natasha, seizing her hand.

"Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him," Sonya could not help saying, not yet
knowing whom Natasha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.

"But why shouldn't I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who can
tell whether I saw anything or not?" flashed through Sonya's mind.

"Yes, I saw him," she said.

"How? Standing or lying?"

"No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying down."

"Andrew lying? Is he ill?" asked Natasha, her frightened eyes fixed on
her friend.

"No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he
turned to me." And when saying this she herself fancied she had really
seen what she described.

"Well, and then, Sonya?..."

"After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and
red..."

"Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how afraid
I am for him and for myself and about everything!..." Natasha began, and
without replying to Sonya's words of comfort she got into bed, and long
after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless, gazing at the
moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.




CHAPTER XIII

Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his love
for Sonya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who had
long noticed what was going on between them and was expecting this
declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that he
might marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father would
give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for the first time,
felt that his mother was displeased with him and that, despite her love
for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without looking at her son, she
sent for her husband and, when he came, tried briefly and coldly to
inform him of the facts, in her son's presence, but unable to restrain
herself she burst into tears of vexation and left the room. The old
count began irresolutely to admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon his
purpose. Nicholas replied that he could not go back on his word, and his
father, sighing and evidently disconcerted, very soon became silent and
went in to the countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count
was always conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the
family fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for refusing to
marry an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sonya. On this occasion, he
was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had not
been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sonya could have been
wished for, and that no one but himself with his Mitenka and his
uncomfortable habits was to blame for the condition of the family
finances.

The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son again,
but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya and, with a cruelty
neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to catch
Nicholas and for ingratitude. Sonya listened silently with downcast eyes
to the countess' cruel words, without understanding what was required of
her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her benefactors. Self-
sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this case she could not see
what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She could not help loving the
countess and the whole Rostov family, but neither could she help loving
Nicholas and knowing that his happiness depended on that love. She was
silent and sad and did not reply. Nicholas felt the situation to be
intolerable and went to have an explanation with his mother. He first
implored her to forgive him and Sonya and consent to their marriage,
then he threatened that if she molested Sonya he would at once marry her
secretly.

The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her before,
replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying without his
father's consent, and he could do the same, but that she would never
receive that intriguer as her daughter.

Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told his
mother he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his
feelings, but if that were so, he would say for the last time.... But he
had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression of his face
caused his mother to await with terror, and which would perhaps have
forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He had not time to say it,
for Natasha, with a pale and set face, entered the room from the door at
which she had been listening.

"Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I
tell you!..." she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice.

"Mamma darling, it's not at all so... my poor, sweet darling," she said
to her mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of a
rupture gazed at her son with terror, but in the obstinacy and
excitement of the conflict could not and would not give way.

"Nicholas, I'll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling," said
Natasha.

Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which she
was aiming.

The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter's breast,
while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.

Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded
that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not
be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything
without his parents' knowledge.

Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment, to
retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious,
sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him,
passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his
regiment.

After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household were more
depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.

Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more so on
account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting toward
her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of his
affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house and
estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they had to
go to Moscow. But the countess' health obliged them to delay their
departure from day to day.

Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation from her betrothed
lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and impatient every
day. The thought that her best days, which she would have employed in
loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no advantage to anyone,
tormented her incessantly. His letters for the most part irritated her.
It hurt her to think that while she lived only in the thought of him, he
was living a real life, seeing new places and new people that interested
him. The more interesting his letters were the more vexed she felt. Her
letters to him, far from giving her any comfort, seemed to her a
wearisome and artificial obligation. She could not write, because she
could not conceive the possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter
even a thousandth part of what she expressed by voice, smile, and
glance. She wrote to him formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which
she attached no importance herself, and in the rough copies of which the
countess corrected her mistakes in spelling.

There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was
impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's
trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince Andrew
was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending the
winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.

So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sonya and
Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.

BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12




CHAPTER I

After Prince Andrew's engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any apparent
cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as before. Firmly
convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by his benefactor, and
happy as he had been in perfecting his inner man, to which he had
devoted himself with such ardor--all the zest of such a life vanished
after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and the death of Joseph
Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost at the same time. Only
the skeleton of life remained: his house, a brilliant wife who now
enjoyed the favors of a very important personage, acquaintance with all
Petersburg, and his court service with its dull formalities. And this
life suddenly seemed to Pierre unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping
a diary, avoided the company of the Brothers, began going to the club
again, drank a great deal, and came once more in touch with the bachelor
sets, leading such a life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary
to speak severely to him about it. Pierre felt that she was right, and
to avoid compromising her went away to Moscow.

In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded and
fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as soon as,
driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with innumerable
tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons, the Kremlin Square
with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh drivers and hovels of
the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who desired nothing, hurried
nowhere, and were ending their days leisurely; when he saw those old
Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls, and the English Club, he felt himself
at home in a quiet haven. In Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and
dirty as in an old dressing gown.

Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received Pierre
like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready awaiting him.
For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest, most intellectual,
merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a heedless, genial nobleman of
the old Russian type. His purse was always empty because it was open to
everyone.

Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent societies,
gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees, Freemasons,
churches, and books--no one and nothing met with a refusal from him, and
had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large sums from him and
taken him under their protection, he would have given everything away.
There was never a dinner or soiree at the club without him. As soon as
he sank into his place on the sofa after two bottles of Margaux he was
surrounded, and talking, disputing, and joking began. When there were
quarrels, his kindly smile and well-timed jests reconciled the
antagonists. The masonic dinners were dull and dreary when he was not
there.

When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly smile,
yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive off somewhere
with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the young men. At
balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies, married and
unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of them, he was
equally amiable to all, especially after supper. "Il est charmant; il
n'a pas de sexe," * they said of him.


* "He is charming; he has no sex."

Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of whom there were
hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow.

How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first
arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him to
seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally
predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in his
position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one time
longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then
himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a
strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the
possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the sinful
human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of perfection?
Had he not established schools and hospitals and liberated his serfs?

But instead of all that--here he was, the wealthy husband of an
unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and
drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the government
a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal favorite in
Moscow society. For a long time he could not reconcile himself to the
idea that he was one of those same retired Moscow gentlemen-in-waiting
he had so despised seven years before.

Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only living
this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought of how
many, like himself, had entered that life and that club temporarily,
with all their teeth and hair, and had only left it when not a single
tooth or hair remained.

In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it seemed to him
that he was quite different and distinct from those other retired
gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were empty, stupid,
contented fellows, satisfied with their position, "while I am still
discontented and want to do something for mankind. But perhaps all these
comrades of mine struggled just like me and sought something new, a path
in life of their own, and like me were brought by force of
circumstances, society, and race--by that elemental force against which
man is powerless--to the condition I am in," said he to himself in
moments of humility; and after living some time in Moscow he no longer
despised, but began to grow fond of, to respect, and to pity his
comrades in destiny, as he pitied himself.

Pierre no longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust
with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such
acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment. "What
for? Why? What is going on in the world?" he would ask himself in
perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to reflect anew
on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by experience that
there were no answers to these questions he made haste to turn away from
them, and took up a book, or hurried off to the club or to Apollon
Nikolaevich's, to exchange the gossip of the town.

"Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own body and is one of
the stupidest women in the world," thought Pierre, "is regarded by
people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay homage
to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he was great,
but now that he has become a wretched comedian the Emperor Francis wants
to offer him his daughter in an illegal marriage. The Spaniards, through
the Catholic clergy, offer praise to God for their victory over the
French on the fourteenth of June, and the French, also through the
Catholic clergy, offer praise because on that same fourteenth of June
they defeated the Spaniards. My brother Masons swear by the blood that
they are ready to sacrifice everything for their neighbor, but they do
not give a ruble each to the collections for the poor, and they
intrigue, the Astraea Lodge against the Manna Seekers, and fuss about an
authentic Scotch carpet and a charter that nobody needs, and the meaning
of which the very man who wrote it does not understand. We all profess
the Christian law of forgiveness of injuries and love of our neighbors,
the law in honor of which we have built in Moscow forty times forty
churches--but yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and a minister
of that same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a
cross to kiss before his execution." So thought Pierre, and the whole of
this general deception which everyone accepts, accustomed as he was to
it, astonished him each time as if it were something new. "I understand
the deception and confusion," he thought, "but how am I to tell them all
that I see? I have tried, and have always found that they too in the
depths of their souls understand it as I do, and only try not to see it.
So it appears that it must be so! But I--what is to become of me?"
thought he. He had the unfortunate capacity many men, especially
Russians, have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness
and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to
be able to take a serious part in it. Every sphere of work was
connected, in his eyes, with evil and deception. Whatever he tried to
be, whatever he engaged in, the evil and falsehood of it repulsed him
and blocked every path of activity. Yet he had to live and to find
occupation. It was too dreadful to be under the burden of these
insoluble problems, so he abandoned himself to any distraction in order
to forget them. He frequented every kind of society, drank much, bought
pictures, engaged in building, and above all--read.

He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home, while
his valets were still taking off his things, he picked up a book and
began to read. From reading he passed to sleeping, from sleeping to
gossip in drawing rooms of the club, from gossip to carousals and women;
from carousals back to gossip, reading, and wine. Drinking became more
and more a physical and also a moral necessity. Though the doctors
warned him that with his corpulence wine was dangerous for him, he drank
a great deal. He was only quite at ease when having poured several
glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth he felt a pleasant
warmth in his body, an amiability toward all his fellows, and a
readiness to respond superficially to every idea without probing it
deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did he feel dimly that the
terribly tangled skein of life which previously had terrified him was
not as dreadful as he had thought. He was always conscious of some
aspect of that skein, as with a buzzing in his head after dinner or
supper he chatted or listened to conversation or read. But under the
influence of wine he said to himself: "It doesn't matter. I'll get it
unraveled. I have a solution ready, but have no time now--I'll think it
all out later on!" But the later on never came.

In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old questions appeared as
insoluble and terrible as ever, and Pierre hastily picked up a book, and
if anyone came to see him he was glad.

Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when
entrenched under the enemy's fire, if they have nothing to do, try hard
to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To Pierre
all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in
ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in
toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and
some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is trivial, and nothing is
important, it's all the same--only to save oneself from it as best one
can," thought Pierre. "Only not to see it, that dreadful it!"




CHAPTER II

At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski and his daughter
moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor Alexander's
regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French tendency prevailed
there, and this, together with his past and his intellect and his
originality, at once made Prince Nicholas Bolkonski an object of
particular respect to the Moscovites and the center of the Moscow
opposition to the government.

The prince had aged very much that year. He showed marked signs of
senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent
events, remembrance of remote ones, and the childish vanity with which
he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of this
the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of respectful
veneration--especially of an evening when he came in to tea in his old-
fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone, told his abrupt
stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and scathing criticisms
of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned house with its gigantic
mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered footmen, and the stern
shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past century) with his gentle
daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who were reverently devoted to him
presented a majestic and agreeable spectacle. But the visitors did not
reflect that besides the couple of hours during which they saw their
host, there were also twenty-two hours in the day during which the
private and intimate life of the house continued.

Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary.
There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest pleasures--talks with
the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hills--and she
had none of the advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not go
out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her go
anywhere without him, and his failing health prevented his going out
himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening parties. She
had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She saw the coldness
and malevolence with which the old prince received and dismissed the
young men, possible suitors, who sometimes appeared at their house. She
had no friends: during this visit to Moscow she had been disappointed in
the two who had been nearest to her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom
she had never been able to be quite frank, had now become unpleasant to
her, and for various reasons Princess Mary avoided her. Julie, with whom
she had corresponded for the last five years, was in Moscow, but proved
to be quite alien to her when they met. Just then Julie, who by the
death of her brothers had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow,
was in the full whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young
men who, she fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth.
Julie was at that stage in the life of a society woman when she feels
that her last chance of marrying has come and that her fate must be
decided now or never. On Thursdays Princess Mary remembered with a
mournful smile that she now had no one to write to, since Julie--whose
presence gave her no pleasure was here and they met every week. Like the
old emigre who declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent his
evenings for years, she regretted Julie's presence and having no one to
write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had no one to talk to, no one to whom
to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow fell to her lot just then. The
time for Prince Andrew's return and marriage was approaching, but his
request to her to prepare his father for it had not been carried out; in
fact, it seemed as if matters were quite hopeless, for at every mention
of the young Countess Rostova the old prince (who apart from that was
usually in a bad temper) lost control of himself. Another lately added
sorrow arose from the lessons she gave her six year-old nephew. To her
consternation she detected in herself in relation to little Nicholas
some symptoms of her father's irritability. However often she told
herself that she must not get irritable when teaching her nephew, almost
every time that, pointer in hand, she sat down to show him the French
alphabet, she so longed to pour her own knowledge quickly and easily
into the child--who was already afraid that Auntie might at any moment
get angry--that at his slightest inattention she trembled, became
flustered and heated, raised her voice, and sometimes pulled him by the
arm and put him in the corner. Having put him in the corner she would
herself begin to cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas,
following her example, would sob, and without permission would leave his
corner, come to her, pull her wet hands from her face, and comfort her.
But what distressed the princess most of all was her father's
irritability, which was always directed against her and had of late
amounted to cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate herself to the
ground all night, had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water, it
would never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but this
loving despot--the more cruel because he loved her and for that reason
tormented himself and her--knew how not merely to hurt and humiliate her
deliberately, but to show her that she was always to blame for
everything. Of late he had exhibited a new trait that tormented Princess
Mary more than anything else; this was his ever-increasing intimacy with
Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at the first moment of receiving
the news of his son's intentions had occurred to him in jest--that if
Andrew got married he himself would marry Bourienne--had evidently
pleased him, and latterly he had persistently, and as it seemed to
Princess Mary merely to offend her, shown special endearments to the
companion and expressed his dissatisfaction with his daughter by
demonstrations of love of Bourienne.

One day in Moscow in Princess Mary's presence (she thought her father
did it purposely when she was there) the old prince kissed Mademoiselle
Bourienne's hand and, drawing her to him, embraced her affectionately.
Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few minutes later
Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary's room smiling and making
cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess Mary hastily wiped
away her tears, went resolutely up to Mademoiselle Bourienne, and
evidently unconscious of what she was doing began shouting in angry
haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice breaking: "It's horrible, vile,
inhuman, to take advantage of the weakness..." She did not finish.
"Leave my room," she exclaimed, and burst into sobs.

Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter, but she noticed
that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne should be
served first. After dinner, when the footman handed coffee and from
habit began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew furious, threw
his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to have him
conscripted for the army.

"He doesn't obey... I said it twice... and he doesn't obey! She is the
first person in this house; she's my best friend," cried the prince.
"And if you allow yourself," he screamed in a fury, addressing Princess
Mary for the first time, "to forget yourself again before her as you
dared to do yesterday, I will show you who is master in this house. Go!
Don't let me set eyes on you; beg her pardon!"

Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne's pardon, and also her
father's pardon for herself and for Philip the footman, who had begged
for her intervention.

At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice gathered in her
soul. And suddenly that father whom she had judged would look for his
spectacles in her presence, fumbling near them and not seeing them, or
would forget something that had just occurred, or take a false step with
his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had noticed his feebleness,
or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no visitors to excite him
would suddenly fall asleep, letting his napkin drop and his shaking head
sink over his plate. "He is old and feeble, and I dare to condemn him!"
she thought at such moments, with a feeling of revulsion against
herself.




CHAPTER III

In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor--Metivier--who had
rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously tall, handsome, amiable as
Frenchmen are, and was, as all Moscow said, an extraordinarily clever
doctor. He was received in the best houses not merely as a doctor, but
as an equal.

Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on
Mademoiselle Bourienne's advice had allowed this doctor to visit him and
had grown accustomed to him. Metivier came to see the prince about twice
a week.

On December 6--St. Nicholas' Day and the prince's name day--all Moscow
came to the prince's front door but he gave orders to admit no one and
to invite to dinner only a small number, a list of whom he gave to
Princess Mary.

Metivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered it
proper in his quality of doctor de forcer la consigne, * as he told
Princess Mary, and went in to see the prince. It happened that on that
morning of his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods. He had
been going about the house all the morning finding fault with everyone
and pretending not to understand what was said to him and not to be
understood himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet absorbed
querulousness, which generally culminated in a burst of rage, and she
went about all that morning as though facing a cocked and loaded gun and
awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor's arrival the morning
had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor, Princess Mary sat
down with a book in the drawing room near the door through which she
could hear all that passed in the study.


* To force the guard.

At first she heard only Metivier's voice, then her father's, then both
voices began speaking at the same time, the door was flung open, and on
the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the terrified Metivier
with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his dressing gown and
fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils of his eyes rolled
downwards.

"You don't understand?" shouted the prince, "but I do! French spy, slave
of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell you..."

Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne who
at the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room.

"The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head. Keep
calm, I will call again tomorrow," said Metivier; and putting his
fingers to his lips he hastened away.

Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry:
"Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment's peace in my own
house!"

After Metivier's departure the old prince called his daughter in, and
the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a spy
had been admitted. Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a list,
and not to admit anyone who was not on that list? Then why was that
scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her, he said, he
could not have a moment's peace and could not die quietly.

"No, ma'am! We must part, we must part! Understand that, understand it!
I cannot endure any more," he said, and left the room. Then, as if
afraid she might find some means of consolation, he returned and trying
to appear calm added: "And don't imagine I have said this in a moment of
anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and it will be carried out--we
must part; so find some place for yourself...." But he could not
restrain himself and with the virulence of which only one who loves is
capable, evidently suffering himself, he shook his fists at her and
screamed:

"If only some fool would marry her!" Then he slammed the door, sent for
Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.

At two o'clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.

These guests--the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince Lopukhin with his
nephew, General Chatrov an old war comrade of the prince's, and of the
younger generation Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy--awaited the prince in
the drawing room.

Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been
anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, and had contrived
to ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his case made an
exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his house.

The prince's house did not belong to what is known as fashionable
society, but his little circle--though not much talked about in town--
was one it was more flattering to be received in than any other. Boris
had realized this the week before when the commander-in-chief in his
presence invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas' Day, and
Rostopchin had replied that he could not come:

"On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski."

"Oh, yes, yes!" replied the commander-in-chief. "How is he?..."

The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty old-fashioned
drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn gathering of a
court of justice. All were silent or talked in low tones. Prince
Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary seemed even quieter
and more diffident than usual. The guests were reluctant to address her,
feeling that she was in no mood for their conversation. Count Rostopchin
alone kept the conversation going, now relating the latest town news,
and now the latest political gossip.

Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in the conversation.
Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding judge receives a report, only
now and then, silently or by a brief word, showing that he took heed of
what was being reported to him. The tone of the conversation was such as
indicated that no one approved of what was being done in the political
world. Incidents were related evidently confirming the opinion that
everything was going from bad to worse, but whether telling a story or
giving an opinion the speaker always stopped, or was stopped, at the
point beyond which his criticism might touch the sovereign himself.

At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon's
seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and the Russian Note,
hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent to all the European courts.

"Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel," said Count
Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times before. "One
only wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the crowned heads.
Now the Pope's turn has come and Bonaparte doesn't scruple to depose the
head of the Catholic Church--yet all keep silent! Our sovereign alone
has protested against the seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory,
and even..." Count Rostopchin paused, feeling that he had reached the
limit beyond which censure was impossible.

"Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of
Oldenburg," said Prince Bolkonski. "He shifts the Dukes about as I might
move my serfs from Bald Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan estates."

"The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength of
character and resignation," remarked Boris, joining in respectfully.

He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the honor
of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkonski glanced at the young
man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his mind,
evidently considering him too young.

"I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was surprised
how badly the Note was worded," remarked Count Rostopchin in the casual
tone of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.

Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment, not understanding
why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the Note.

"Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded," he asked, "so long as
its substance is forcible?"

"My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should be easy
to have a good style," returned Count Rostopchin.

Pierre now understood the count's dissatisfaction with the wording of
the Note.

"One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up," remarked
the old prince. "There in Petersburg they are always writing--not notes
only but even new laws. My Andrew there has written a whole volume of
laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!" and he laughed
unnaturally.

There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general cleared
his throat to draw attention.

"Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The figure
cut by the new French ambassador."

"Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His Majesty's
presence."

"His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the march
past," continued the general, "and it seems the ambassador took no
notice and allowed himself to reply that: 'We in France pay no attention
to such trifles!' The Emperor did not condescend to reply. At the next
review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to address him."

All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it was
impossible to pass any judgment.

"Impudent fellows!" said the prince. "You know Metivier? I turned him
out of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him in spite of
my request that they should let no one in," he went on, glancing angrily
at his daughter.

And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and the
reasons that convinced him that Metivier was a spy. Though these reasons
were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.

After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to congratulate
the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him.

He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled, clean-
shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told her that he
had not forgotten the morning's talk, that his decision remained in
force, and only the presence of visitors hindered his speaking of it to
her now.

When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the old
men sat together.

Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the
impending war.

He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long as we
sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into European
affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit. "We ought
not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political interests are
all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only thing is to have an
armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will never dare to cross the
Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!"

"How can we fight the French, Prince?" said Count Rostopchin. "Can we
arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our youths,
look at our ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our Kingdom of
Heaven."

He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.

"French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you turned
Metivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a Frenchman and a
scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their knees. I went to a
party last night, and there out of five ladies three were Roman
Catholics and had the Pope's indulgence for doing woolwork on Sundays.
And they themselves sit there nearly naked, like the signboards at our
Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when one looks at our young people,
Prince, one would like to take Peter the Great's old cudgel out of the
museum and belabor them in the Russian way till all the nonsense jumps
out of them."

All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin with a smile and
wagged his head approvingly.

"Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!" said Rostopchin, getting up
with characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to the prince.

"Good-bye, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of
hearing him!" said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and offering
his cheek to be kissed.

Following Rostopchin's example the others also rose.




CHAPTER IV

Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men's talk and
faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard; she only wondered
whether the guests had all observed her father's hostile attitude toward
her. She did not even notice the special attentions and amiabilities
shown her during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who was visiting them for
the third time already.

Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to Pierre, who
hat in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of the guests to
approach her after the old prince had gone out and they were left alone
in the drawing room.

"May I stay a little longer?" he said, letting his stout body sink into
an armchair beside her.

"Oh yes," she answered. "You noticed nothing?" her look asked.

Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight before
him and smiled quietly.

"Have you known that young man long, Princess?" he asked.

"Who?"

"Drubetskoy."

"No, not long..."

"Do you like him?"

"Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?" said
Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning's conversation with her
father.

"Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from
Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an
heiress."

"You have observed that?" said Princess Mary.

"Yes," returned Pierre with a smile, "and this young man now manages
matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I can
read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay siege to--
you or Mademoiselle Julie Karagina. He is very attentive to her."

"He visits them?"

"Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?" said Pierre
with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good humored
raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his diary.

"No," replied Princess Mary.

"To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is very
melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagina," said Pierre.

"Really?" asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre's kindly face and
still thinking of her own sorrow. "It would be a relief," thought she,
"if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should like to
tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would be a
relief. He would give me advice."

"Would you marry him?"

"Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!" she
cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice. "Ah, how
bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel that..." she went
on in a trembling voice, "that you can do nothing for him but grieve
him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then there is only one
thing left--to go away, but where could I go?"

"What is wrong? What is it, Princess?"

But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Mary burst into
tears.

"I don't know what is the matter with me today. Don't take any notice--
forget what I have said!"

Pierre's gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the
princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him; but
she only repeated that she begged him to forget what she had said, that
she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no trouble
except the one he knew of--that Prince Andrew's marriage threatened to
cause a rupture between father and son.

"Have you any news of the Rostovs?" she asked, to change the subject. "I
was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting Andrew any day. I
should like them to meet here."

"And how does he now regard the matter?" asked Pierre, referring to the
old prince.

Princess Mary shook her head.

"What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The thing is
impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first moments. I
wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her. You have
known them a long time," said Princess Mary. "Tell me honestly the whole
truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you think of her?--The real
truth, because you know Andrew is risking so much doing this against his
father's will that I should like to know..."

An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and repeated
requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on the princess'
part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that he should
disapprove of Andrew's choice; but in reply he said what he felt rather
than what he thought.

"I don't know how to answer your question," he said, blushing without
knowing why. "I really don't know what sort of girl she is; I can't
analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I don't
know. That is all one can say about her."

Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face said: "Yes, that's
what I expected and feared."

"Is she clever?" she asked.

Pierre considered.

"I think not," he said, "and yet--yes. She does not deign to be
clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all."

Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.

"Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do."

"I hear they are expected very soon," said Pierre.

Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her future
sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived and to try to accustom the
old prince to her.




CHAPTER V

Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg, so with
the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered between the
two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though Princess Mary
despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than Julie, he,
without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to her. When they
had last met on the old prince's name day, she had answered at random
all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently not listening to what
he was saying.

Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a
manner peculiar to herself.

She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become
very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself not
merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She was
confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a very
wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew the less
dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could associate
with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and the animated
company that assembled at her house, without incurring any obligation. A
man who would have been afraid ten years before of going every day to
the house when there was a girl of seventeen there, for fear of
compromising her and committing himself, would now go boldly every day
and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a sexless acquaintance.

That winter the Karagins' house was the most agreeable and hospitable in
Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner parties, a large
company, chiefly of men, gathered there every day, supping at midnight
and staying till three in the morning. Julie never missed a ball, a
promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of the latest fashion. But
in spite of that she seemed to be disillusioned about everything and
told everyone that she did not believe either in friendship or in love,
or any of the joys of life, and expected peace only "yonder." She
adopted the tone of one who has suffered a great disappointment, like a
girl who has either lost the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by
him. Though nothing of the kind had happened to her she was regarded in
that light, and had even herself come to believe that she had suffered
much in life. This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing
herself, did not hinder the young people who came to her house from
passing the time pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid
his tribute to the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused
himself with society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and bouts
rimes, which were in vogue at the Karagins'. Only a few of these young
men, among them Boris, entered more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and
with these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of
all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled with
mournful sketches, maxims, and verses.

To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early
disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship as
she who had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him her
album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote: "Rustic trees,
your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."

On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:


La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille. Ah! contre les
douleurs il n'y a pas d'autre asile. *


* Death gives relief and death is peaceful.

Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.

Julie said this was charming

"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she said
to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a book.
"It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and
despair, showing the possibility of consolation."

In reply Boris wrote these lines:


Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible, Toi, sans qui le bonheur me
serait impossible, Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler, Viens
calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite, Et mele une douceur secrete
A ces pleurs que je sens couler. *


*Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul, Thou, without whom
happiness would for me be impossible, Tender melancholy, ah, come to
console me, Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat, And mingle a
secret sweetness With these tears that I feel to be flowing.

For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris read
'Poor Liza' aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the reading
because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large gatherings
Julie and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who understood
one another in a world of indifferent people.

Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins, while playing cards
with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie's dowry (she was to
have two estates in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests). Anna Mikhaylovna
regarded the refined sadness that united her son to the wealthy Julie
with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.

"You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie," she said to the
daughter. "Boris says his soul finds repose at your house. He has
suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive," said she to the
mother. "Ah, my dear, I can't tell you how fond I have grown of Julie
latterly," she said to her son. "But who could help loving her? She is
an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!"--she paused. "And how I pity her
mother," she went on; "today she showed me her accounts and letters from
Penza (they have enormous estates there), and she, poor thing, has no
one to help her, and they do cheat her so!"

Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother. He
laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had to
say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and
Nizhegorod estates.

Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy adorer and
was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of repulsion for her,
for her passionate desire to get married, for her artificiality, and a
feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility of real love still
restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He spent every day and whole
days at the Karagins', and every day on thinking the matter over told
himself that he would propose tomorrow. But in Julie's presence, looking
at her red face and chin (nearly always powdered), her moist eyes, and
her expression of continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy to
an unnatural rapture of married bliss, Boris could not utter the
decisive words, though in imagination he had long regarded himself as
the possessor of those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had apportioned
the use of the income from them. Julie saw Boris' indecision, and
sometimes the thought occurred to her that she was repulsive to him, but
her feminine self-deception immediately supplied her with consolation,
and she told herself that he was only shy from love. Her melancholy,
however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before Boris'
departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just as Boris' leave of
absence was expiring, Anatole Kuragin made his appearance in Moscow, and
of course in the Karagins' drawing room, and Julie, suddenly abandoning
her melancholy, became cheerful and very attentive to Kuragin.

"My dear," said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, "I know from a reliable
source that Prince Vasili has sent his son to Moscow to get him married
to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for her. What do
you think of it, my dear?"

The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that whole
month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing all the
revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally apportioned
and put to proper use fall into the hands of another, and especially
into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris. He drove to the
Karagins' with the firm intention of proposing. Julie met him in a gay,
careless manner, spoke casually of how she had enjoyed yesterday's ball,
and asked when he was leaving. Though Boris had come intentionally to
speak of his love and therefore meant to be tender, he began speaking
irritably of feminine inconstancy, of how easily women can turn from
sadness to joy, and how their moods depend solely on who happens to be
paying court to them. Julie was offended and replied that it was true
that a woman needs variety, and the same thing over and over again would
weary anyone.

"Then I should advise you..." Boris began, wishing to sting her; but at
that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might have to
leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly wasted
his efforts--which was a thing he never allowed to happen.

He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes to
avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and said:

"I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary..."

He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability had
suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were fixed on
him with greedy expectation. "I can always arrange so as not to see her
often," thought Boris. "The affair has been begun and must be finished!"
He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and said:

"You know my feelings for you!"

There was no need to say more: Julie's face shone with triumph and self-
satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all that is said on such
occasions--that he loved her and had never loved any other woman more
than her. She knew that for the Penza estates and Nizhegorod forests she
could demand this, and she received what she demanded.

The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom and
melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house in
Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant wedding.




CHAPTER VI

At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow with Natasha and
Sonya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it was
impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in
Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near
Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his
future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkonski while he was in Moscow
could not be missed. The Rostovs' Moscow house had not been heated that
winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the countess was
not with them, the count decided to stay with Marya Dmitrievna
Akhrosimova, who had long been pressing her hospitality on them.

Late one evening the Rostovs' four sleighs drove into Marya Dmitrievna's
courtyard in the old Konyusheny street. Marya Dmitrievna lived alone.
She had already married off her daughter, and her sons were all in the
service.

She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly,
loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach to
others for any weakness, passion, or temptation--the possibility of
which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing
jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out:
on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on
affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after
dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there
were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing meal
at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she played
a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a new book read
to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception and went out to
pay visits, and then only to the most important persons in the town.

She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived and the pulley of
the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the Rostovs and their
servants. Marya Dmitrievna, with her spectacles hanging down on her nose
and her head flung back, stood in the hall doorway looking with a stern,
grim face at the new arrivals. One might have thought she was angry with
the travelers and would immediately turn them out, had she not at the
same time been giving careful instructions to the servants for the
accommodation of the visitors and their belongings.

"The count's things? Bring them here," she said, pointing to the
portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. "The young ladies'? There to the
left. Now what are you dawdling for?" she cried to the maids. "Get the
samovar ready!... You've grown plumper and prettier," she remarked,
drawing Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold) to her by the
hood. "Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things, quick!" she shouted
to the count who was going to kiss her hand. "You're half frozen, I'm
sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sonya dear!" she added,
turning to Sonya and indicating by this French greeting her slightly
contemptuous though affectionate attitude toward her.

When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things and
tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya Dmitrievna kissed them
all in due order.

"I'm heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was high
time," she said, giving Natasha a significant look. "The old man is here
and his son's expected any day. You'll have to make his acquaintance.
But we'll speak of that later on," she added, glancing at Sonya with a
look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her presence. "Now
listen," she said to the count. "What do you want tomorrow? Whom will
you send for? Shinshin?" she crooked one of her fingers. "The sniveling
Anna Mikhaylovna? That's two. She's here with her son. The son is
getting married! Then Bezukhov, eh? He is here too, with his wife. He
ran away from her and she came galloping after him. He dined with me on
Wednesday. As for them"--and she pointed to the girls--"tomorrow I'll
take them first to the Iberian shrine of the Mother of God, and then
we'll drive to the Super-Rogue's. I suppose you'll have everything new.
Don't judge by me: sleeves nowadays are this size! The other day young
Princess Irina Vasilevna came to see me; she was an awful sight--looked
as if she had put two barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes now
without some new fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?" she
asked the count sternly.

"One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a
purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If you
will be so kind, I'll fix a time and go down to the estate just for a
day, and leave my lassies with you."

"All right. All right. They'll be safe with me, as safe as in Chancery!
I'll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet them a
bit," said Marya Dmitrievna, touching her goddaughter and favorite,
Natasha, on the cheek with her large hand.

Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian
shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so
afraid of Marya Dmitrievna that she always let her have costumes at a
loss merely to get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the whole
trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out of the room
except Natasha, and then called her pet to her armchair.

"Well, now we'll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed. You've
hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I've known him since
he was so high." She held her hand a couple of feet from the ground.
Natasha blushed happily. "I like him and all his family. Now listen! You
know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son's marrying. The old
fellow's crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a child and can shift
without him, but it's not nice to enter a family against a father's
will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly. You're a clever girl
and you'll know how to manage. Be kind, and use your wits. Then all will
be well."

Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya Dmitrievna supposed, but
really because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her love
of Prince Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human affairs
that no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince Andrew, he
loved her only, and was to come one of these days and take her. She
wanted nothing more.

"You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your
future sister-in-law. 'Husbands' sisters bring up blisters,' but this
one wouldn't hurt a fly. She has asked me to bring you two together.
Tomorrow you'll go with your father to see her. Be very nice and
affectionate to her: you're younger than she. When he comes, he'll find
you already know his sister and father and are liked by them. Am I right
or not? Won't that be best?"

"Yes, it will," Natasha answered reluctantly.




CHAPTER VII

Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna's advice, Count Rostov took Natasha to
call on Prince Nicholas Bolkonski. The count did not set out cheerfully
on this visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well remembered the last
interview he had had with the old prince at the time of the enrollment,
when in reply to an invitation to dinner he had had to listen to an
angry reprimand for not having provided his full quota of men. Natasha,
on the other hand, having put on her best gown, was in the highest
spirits. "They can't help liking me," she thought. "Everybody always has
liked me, and I am so willing to do anything they wish, so ready to be
fond of him--for being his father--and of her--for being his sister--
that there is no reason for them not to like me..."

They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvizhenka and entered
the vestibule.

"Well, the Lord have mercy on us!" said the count, half in jest, half in
earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father was flurried on entering
the anteroom and inquired timidly and softly whether the prince and
princess were at home.

When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the
servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by
another in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a
maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning
the princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced
to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the princess
begged them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the visitors
was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and daughter with
special politeness and showed them to the princess' room. The princess,
looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in patches, ran in to meet
the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly trying to appear cordial and
at ease. From the first glance Princess Mary did not like Natasha. She
thought her too fashionably dressed, frivolously gay and vain. She did
not at all realize that before having seen her future sister-in-law she
was prejudiced against her by involuntary envy of her beauty, youth, and
happiness, as well as by jealousy of her brother's love for her. Apart
from this insuperable antipathy to her, Princess Mary was agitated just
then because on the Rostovs' being announced, the old prince had shouted
that he did not wish to see them, that Princess Mary might do so if she
chose, but they were not to be admitted to him. She had decided to
receive them, but feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in
some freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostovs' visit.

"There, my dear princess, I've brought you my songstress," said the
count, bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old prince
might appear. "I am so glad you should get to know one another... very
sorry the prince is still ailing," and after a few more commonplace
remarks he rose. "If you'll allow me to leave my Natasha in your hands
for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I'll drive round to see Anna
Semenovna, it's quite near in the Dogs' Square, and then I'll come back
for her."

The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told his
daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk to
one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of
encountering the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention
this to his daughter, but Natasha noticed her father's nervousness and
anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew still
angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess with a bold and
defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of anybody. The
princess told the count that she would be delighted, and only begged him
to stay longer at Anna Semenovna's, and he departed.

Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary--who wished to
have a tête-à-tête with Natasha--Mademoiselle Bourienne remained in the
room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements and theaters.
Natasha felt offended by the hesitation she had noticed in the anteroom,
by her father's nervousness, and by the unnatural manner of the princess
who--she thought--was making a favor of receiving her, and so everything
displeased her. She did not like Princess Mary, whom she thought very
plain, affected, and dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into herself and
involuntarily assumed an offhand air which alienated Princess Mary still
more. After five minutes of irksome, constrained conversation, they
heard the sound of slippered feet rapidly approaching. Princess Mary
looked frightened.

The door opened and the old prince, in a dressing gown and a white
nightcap, came in.

"Ah, madam!" he began. "Madam, Countess... Countess Rostova, if I am not
mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not know,
madam. God is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with a
visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg you
to excuse me... God is my witness, I didn't know-" he repeated,
stressing the word "God" so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that
Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look either at her
father or at Natasha.

Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do.
Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.

"I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not know,"
muttered the old man, and after looking Natasha over from head to foot
he went out.

Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this
apparition and began speaking about the prince's indisposition. Natasha
and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the longer they
did so without saying what they wanted to say, the greater grew their
antipathy to one another.

When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely pleased and hastened to
get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who
could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an
hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. "I couldn't begin
talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman," thought Natasha.
The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary. She knew what
she ought to have said to Natasha, but she had been unable to say it
because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and because, without
knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of the marriage. When
the count was already leaving the room, Princess Mary went up hurriedly
to Natasha, took her by the hand, and said with a deep sigh:

"Wait, I must..."

Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.

"Dear Natalie," said Princess Mary, "I want you to know that I am glad
my brother has found happiness...."

She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natasha noticed
this and guessed its reason.

"I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now," she said
with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears choking
her.

"What have I said and what have I done?" thought she, as soon as she was
out of the room.

They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner that day. She sat
in her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing. Sonya
stood beside her, kissing her hair.

"Natasha, what is it about?" she asked. "What do they matter to you? It
will all pass, Natasha."

"But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..."

"Don't talk about it, Natasha. It wasn't your fault so why should you
mind? Kiss me," said Sonya.

Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed her
wet face against her.

"I can't tell you, I don't know. No one's to blame," said Natasha--"It's
my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn't he come?..."

She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew how the
prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how upset
Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the count and
the other guests.




CHAPTER VIII

That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya Dmitrievna
had taken a box.

Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya Dmitrievna's kind
offer which was intended expressly for her. When she came ready dressed
into the ballroom to await her father, and looking in the large mirror
there saw that she was pretty, very pretty, she felt even more sad, but
it was a sweet, tender sadness.

"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those searching
inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me, and then I would
make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes--how I see those eyes!"
thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister matter to me? I love
him alone, him, him, with that face and those eyes, with his smile,
manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not think of him; not think
of him but forget him, quite forget him for the present. I can't bear
this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!" and she turned away from the
glass, making an effort not to cry. "And how can Sonya love Nicholas so
calmly and quietly and wait so long and so patiently?" thought she,
looking at Sonya, who also came in quite ready, with a fan in her hand.
"No, she's altogether different. I can't!"

Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words of
love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside her
father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps flickering on
the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in love, and forgot
where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into the line of
carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the theater, its wheels
squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya, holding up their dresses,
jumped out quickly. The count got out helped by the footmen, and,
passing among men and women who were entering and the program sellers,
they all three went along the corridor to the first row of boxes.
Through the closed doors the music was already audible.

"Natasha, your hair!..." whispered Sonya.

An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and
opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the
door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and
shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered before
their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of feminine envy
at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the overture was being
played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with Sonya and sat down,
scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite. A sensation she had not
experienced for a long time--that of hundreds of eyes looking at her
bare arms and neck--suddenly affected her both agreeably and
disagreeably and called up a whole crowd of memories, desires and
emotions associated with that feeling.

The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count Rostov
who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted general
attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natasha's engagement to
Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in the country ever
since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who was making one of
the best matches in Russia.

Natasha's looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the country, and
that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly pretty. She
struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and beauty, combined
with her indifference to everything about her. Her black eyes looked at
the crowd without seeking anyone, and her delicate arm, bare to above
the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the box, while, evidently
unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in time to the music,
crumpling her program. "Look, there's Alenina," said Sonya, "with her
mother, isn't it?"

"Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!" remarked the
count.

"Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna--what a headdress she has on!"

"The Karagins, Julie--and Boris with them. One can see at once that
they're engaged...."

"Drubetskoy has proposed?"

"Oh yes, I heard it today," said Shinshin, coming into the Rostovs' box.

Natasha looked in the direction in which her father's eyes were turned
and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on her face
and a string of pearls round her thick red neck--which Natasha knew was
covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and leaning over with
an ear to Julie's mouth, was Boris' handsome smoothly brushed head. He
looked at the Rostovs from under his brows and said something, smiling,
to his betrothed.

"They are talking about us, about me and him!" thought Natasha. "And he
no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn't trouble themselves!
If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of them."

Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green headdress and with a
happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their box was
pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which Natasha knew so
well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly remembered all that
had been so humiliating in her morning's visit.

"What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh, better
not think of it--not till he comes back!" she told herself, and began
looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in the stalls. In
the front, in the very center, leaning back against the orchestra rail,
stood Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair brushed up into a huge
shock. He stood in full view of the audience, well aware that he was
attracting everyone's attention, yet as much at ease as though he were
in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow's most brilliant young men,
whom he evidently dominated.

The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and pointed to her former
adorer.

"Do you recognize him?" said he. "And where has he sprung from?" he
asked, turning to Shinshin. "Didn't he vanish somewhere?"

"He did," replied Shinshin. "He was in the Caucasus and ran away from
there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling prince in
Persia, where he killed the Shah's brother. Now all the Moscow ladies
are mad about him! It's 'Dolokhov the Persian' that does it! We never
hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear by him, they offer him
to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dolokhov and Anatole
Kuragin have turned all our ladies' heads."

A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed
plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string of
large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk dress
and took a long time settling into her place.

Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and pearls
and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the pearls.
While Natasha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time the lady
looked round and, meeting the count's eyes, nodded to him and smiled.
She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre's wife, and the count, who knew
everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.

"Have you been here long, Countess?" he inquired. "I'll call, I'll call
to kiss your hand. I'm here on business and have brought my girls with
me. They say Semenova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used to
forget us. Is he here?"

"Yes, he meant to look in," answered Helene, and glanced attentively at
Natasha.

Count Rostov resumed his seat.

"Handsome, isn't she?" he whispered to Natasha.

"Wonderful!" answered Natasha. "She's a woman one could easily fall in
love with."

Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the conductor
tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in the stalls,
and the curtain rose.

As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent, and
all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and all the
women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole attention with
eager curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look at it.




CHAPTER IX

The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides was some
painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a cloth
stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls in red
bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk dress sat
apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of green cardboard
was glued. They all sang something. When they had finished their song
the girl in white went up to the prompter's box and a man with tight
silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding a plume and a dagger,
went up to her and began singing, waving his arms about.

First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang, then they
both paused while the orchestra played and the man fingered the hand of
the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to start singing with
her. They sang together and everyone in the theater began clapping and
shouting, while the man and woman on the stage--who represented lovers--
began smiling, spreading out their arms, and bowing.

After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood, all this
seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow the opera
nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted cardboard and the
queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke, and sang so strangely in
that brilliant light. She knew what it was all meant to represent, but
it was so pretentiously false and unnatural that she first felt ashamed
for the actors and then amused at them. She looked at the faces of the
audience, seeking in them the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she
herself experienced, but they all seemed attentive to what was happening
on the stage, and expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. "I
suppose it has to be like this!" she thought. She kept looking round in
turn at the rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the seminude
women in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box, who--
apparently quite unclothed--sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not taking
her eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded the
whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natasha little by
little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not
experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she was,
nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought, the
strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through her
mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box and
singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to touch with
her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then to lean over to
Helene and tickle her.

At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song, a door
leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs' box creaked, and
the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There's Kuragin!" whispered
Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the newcomer, and
Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an exceptionally
handsome adjutant approaching their box with a self-assured yet
courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom she had seen and
noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was now in an adjutant's
uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot. He moved with a restrained
swagger which would have been ridiculous had he not been so good-looking
and had his handsome face not worn such an expression of good-humored
complacency and gaiety. Though the performance was proceeding, he walked
deliberately down the carpeted gangway, his sword and spurs slightly
jingling and his handsome perfumed head held high. Having looked at
Natasha he approached his sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge
of her box, nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a
motion toward Natasha.

"Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did not
exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of his
lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and sat down
beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and offhand way
that Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He winked at him gaily,
smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra screen.

"How like the brother is to the sister," remarked the count. "And how
handsome they both are!"

Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some intrigue
of Kuragin's in Moscow, and Natasha tried to overhear it just because he
had said she was "charmante."

The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about, going
out and coming in.

Boris came to the Rostovs' box, received their congratulations very
simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile conveyed to
Natasha and Sonya his fiancee's invitation to her wedding, and went
away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and
congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom she
had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in,
everything seemed simple and natural.

The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same way, and Natasha
gave Boris a similar smile.

Helene's box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most
distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another
in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her.

During the whole of that entr'acte Kuragin stood with Dolokhov in front
of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostovs' box. Natasha knew he
was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure. She even turned so
that he should see her profile in what she thought was its most becoming
aspect. Before the beginning of the second act Pierre appeared in the
stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him since their arrival. His face
looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since Natasha last saw him.
He passed up to the front rows, not noticing anyone. Anatole went up to
him and began speaking to him, looking at and indicating the Rostovs'
box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew animated and, hastily passing between
the rows, came toward their box. When he got there he leaned on his
elbows and, smiling, talked to her for a long time. While conversing
with Pierre, Natasha heard a man's voice in Countess Bezukhova's box and
something told her it was Kuragin. She turned and their eyes met. Almost
smiling, he gazed straight into her eyes with such an enraptured
caressing look that it seemed strange to be so near him, to look at him
like that, to be so sure he admired her, and not to be acquainted with
him.

In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there was a
round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were raised over
the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep notes while many
people appeared from right and left wearing black cloaks and holding
things like daggers in their hands. They began waving their arms. Then
some other people ran in and began dragging away the maiden who had been
in white and was now in light blue. They did not drag her away at once,
but sang with her for a long time and then at last dragged her off, and
behind the scenes something metallic was struck three times and everyone
knelt down and sang a prayer. All these things were repeatedly
interrupted by the enthusiastic shouts of the audience.

During this act every time Natasha looked toward the stalls she saw
Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair, staring
at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her and it did
not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it.

When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to the
Rostovs' box--her whole bosom completely exposed--beckoned the old count
with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had entered
her box began talking to him with an amiable smile.

"Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," said she. "The
whole town is singing their praises and I don't even know them!"

Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so pleased
by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with pleasure.

"I want to become a Moscovite too, now," said Helene. "How is it you're
not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?"

Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a fascinating
woman. She could say what she did not think--especially what was
flattering--quite simply and naturally.

"Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I am not
staying here long this time--nor are you--I will try to amuse them. I
have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get to know
you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely smile. "I had
heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard he is getting
married? And also from my husband's friend Bolkonski, Prince Andrew
Bolkonski," she went on with special emphasis, implying that she knew of
his relation to Natasha. To get better acquainted she asked that one of
the young ladies should come into her box for the rest of the
performance, and Natasha moved over to it.

The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many candles
were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on the
walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a queen. The
king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang something badly
and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had been first in white
and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and stood beside the
throne with her hair down. She sang something mournfully, addressing the
queen, but the king waved his arm severely, and men and women with bare
legs came in from both sides and began dancing all together. Then the
violins played very shrilly and merrily and one of the women with thick
bare legs and thin arms, separating from the others, went behind the
wings, adjusted her bodice, returned to the middle of the stage, and
began jumping and striking one foot rapidly against the other. In the
stalls everyone clapped and shouted "bravo!" Then one of the men went
into a corner of the stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra
struck up more loudly, and this man with bare legs jumped very high and
waved his feet about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty
thousand rubles a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes,
and galleries began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the
man stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men
and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the
sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm came
on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the
orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number away,
and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise and
clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone began
shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!" Natasha no longer thought this
strange. She looked about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.

"Isn't Duport delightful?" Helene asked her.

"Oh, yes," replied Natasha.




CHAPTER X

During the entr'acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene's box, the
door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush
against anyone.

"Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes shifting
uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.

Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young officer
and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was as handsome
at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her and told her he
had long wished to have this happiness--ever since the Naryshkins' ball
in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered pleasure of seeing her.
Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with women than among men. He
talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha was strangely and agreeably
struck by the fact that there was nothing formidable in this man about
whom there was so much talk, but that on the contrary his smile was most
naive, cheerful, and good-natured.

Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage.

"And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as an old,
familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume tournament; you
ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We shall all meet at the
Karagins'! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said he.

While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face, her
neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was enraptured
by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel constrained and
oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt that he was looking
at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his eye so that he should
look into hers rather than this. But looking into his eyes she was
frightened, realizing that there was not that barrier of modesty she had
always felt between herself and other men. She did not know how it was
that within five minutes she had come to feel herself terribly near to
this man. When she turned away she feared he might seize her from behind
by her bare arm and kiss her on the neck. They spoke of most ordinary
things, yet she felt that they were closer to one another than she had
ever been to any man. Natasha kept turning to Helene and to her father,
as if asking what it all meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation
with a general and did not answer her look, and her father's eyes said
nothing but what they always said: "Having a good time? Well, I'm glad
of it!"

During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole's prominent
eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to break the
silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the question and
blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she was doing
something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage her.

"At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant ce
sont les jolies femmes, * isn't that so? But now I like it very much
indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You'll come to the
costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his hand to her
bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the prettiest
there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as a pledge!"


* Are the pretty women.

Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did
himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an improper
intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if she had
not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she felt that
he was there, behind, so close behind her.

"How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she asked
herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked
straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the good-
natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just as he
was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt with horror
that no barrier lay between him and her.

The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay. Natasha
went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive to the
world she found herself in. All that was going on before her now seemed
quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous thoughts of her
betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country did not once
recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote past.

In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his arm
about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he disappeared
down below. That was the only part of the fourth act that Natasha saw.
She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of this was Kuragin whom
she could not help watching. As they were leaving the theater Anatole
came up to them, called their carriage, and helped them in. As he was
putting Natasha in he pressed her arm above the elbow. Agitated and
flushed she turned round. He was looking at her with glittering eyes,
smiling tenderly.

Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think over
what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince Andrew she was
horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after the opera, she
gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the room.

"O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?" She sat
for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to realize
what had happened to her, but was unable either to understand what had
happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark, obscure, and
terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater where the bare-
legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped about to the music
on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the nearly naked Helene
with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried "bravo!"--there in the
presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear and simple; but now,
alone by herself, it was incomprehensible. "What is it? What was that
terror I felt of him? What is this gnawing of conscience I am feeling
now?" she thought.

Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all she
was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple views would
either not understand it at all or would be horrified at such a
confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by herself.

"Am I spoiled for Andrew's love or not?" she asked herself, and with
soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen
to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn't lead him on at all. Nobody
will know and I shall never see him again," she told herself. "So it is
plain that nothing has happened and there is nothing to repent of, and
Andrew can love me still. But why 'still?' O God, why isn't he here?"
Natasha quieted herself for a moment, but again some instinct told her
that though all this was true, and though nothing had happened, yet the
former purity of her love for Prince Andrew had perished. And again in
imagination she went over her whole conversation with Kuragin, and again
saw the face, gestures, and tender smile of that bold handsome man when
he pressed her arm.




CHAPTER XI

Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent him
away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand rubles
a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more, which his
creditors demanded from his father.

His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for the
last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as adjutant to
the commander-in-chief--a post his father had procured for him--and
would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to him
Princess Mary and Julie Karagina.

Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre's house.
Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him after a
while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and gave him
money under the guise of loans.

As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had
turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that he
slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French
actresses--with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to
be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at Danilov's or
other Moscow revelers', drank whole nights through, outvying everyone
else, and was at all the balls and parties of the best society. There
was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies, and he flirted with a
few of them at the balls. But he did not run after the unmarried girls,
especially the rich heiresses who were most of them plain. There was a
special reason for this, as he had got married two years before--a fact
known only to his most intimate friends. At that time while with his
regiment in Poland, a Polish landowner of small means had forced him to
marry his daughter. Anatole had very soon abandoned his wife and, for a
payment which he agreed to send to his father-in-law, had arranged to be
free to pass himself off as a bachelor.

Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with
others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that it was
impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had
never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of considering
how his actions might affect others or what the consequences of this or
that action of his might be. He was convinced that, as a duck is so made
that it must live in water, so God had made him such that he must spend
thirty thousand rubles a year and always occupy a prominent position in
society. He believed this so firmly that others, looking at him, were
persuaded of it too and did not refuse him either a leading place in
society or money, which he borrowed from anyone and everyone and
evidently would not repay.

He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning. He was
not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still less could
he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed his father by
spoiling his own career, and he laughed at distinctions of all kinds. He
was not mean, and did not refuse anyone who asked of him. All he cared
about was gaiety and women, and as according to his ideas there was
nothing dishonorable in these tastes, and he was incapable of
considering what the gratification of his tastes entailed for others, he
honestly considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues
and bad people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.

Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence similar
to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope of
forgiveness. "All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all will
be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much."

Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and his
Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling, and
dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin and made
use of him for his own ends.

Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and audacity.
Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and connections
as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set, made use of him
and amused himself at his expense without letting the other feel it.
Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole, the very process of
dominating another's will was in itself a pleasure, a habit, and a
necessity to Dolokhov.

Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At supper after the
opera he described to Dolokhov with the air of a connoisseur the
attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his
intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was incapable
of considering what might come of such love-making, as he never had any
notion of the outcome of any of his actions.

"She's first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us," replied Dolokhov.

"I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner," said Anatole. "Eh?"

"You'd better wait till she's married...."

"You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once," pursued
Anatole.

"You have been caught once already by a 'little girl,'" said Dolokhov
who knew of Kuragin's marriage. "Take care!"

"Well, that can't happen twice! Eh?" said Anatole, with a good-humored
laugh.




CHAPTER XII

The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and nobody came to see
them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the count about something which they
concealed from Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking about the old
prince and planning something, and this disquieted and offended her. She
was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice that day sent a
manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he had come. He had
not arrived. She suffered more now than during her first days in Moscow.
To her impatience and pining for him were now added the unpleasant
recollection of her interview with Princess Mary and the old prince, and
a fear and anxiety of which she did not understand the cause. She
continually fancied that either he would never come or that something
would happen to her before he came. She could no longer think of him by
herself calmly and continuously as she had done before. As soon as she
began to think of him, the recollection of the old prince, of Princess
Mary, of the theater, and of Kuragin mingled with her thoughts. The
question again presented itself whether she was not guilty, whether she
had not already broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found
herself recalling to the minutest detail every word, every gesture, and
every shade in the play of expression on the face of the man who had
been able to arouse in her such an incomprehensible and terrifying
feeling. To the family Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was
far less tranquil and happy than before.

On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at her
parish church--the Church of the Assumption built over the graves of
victims of the plague.

"I don't like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently priding
herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same everywhere. We
have an excellent priest, he conducts the service decently and with
dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there in giving
concerts in the choir? I don't like it, it's just self-indulgence!"

Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her whole
house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the
servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church. At
her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had vodka
and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was the
holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna's broad, stern face, which
on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.

After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room where
the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a servant
announced that the carriage was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna rose with a
stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid calls, and
announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas Bolkonski to have an
explanation with him about Natasha.

After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited on
the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad of this diversion, having shut
herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied herself trying
on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice without sleeves and
only tacked together, and was turning her head to see in the glass how
the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room the animated sounds of
her father's voice and another's--a woman's--that made her flush. It was
Helene. Natasha had not time to take off the bodice before the door
opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a purple velvet gown with a
high collar, came into the room beaming with good-humored amiable
smiles.

"Oh, my enchantress!" she cried to the blushing Natasha. "Charming! No,
this is really beyond anything, my dear count," said she to Count Rostov
who had followed her in. "How can you live in Moscow and go nowhere? No,
I won't let you off! Mademoiselle George will recite at my house tonight
and there'll be some people, and if you don't bring your lovely girls--
who are prettier than Mademoiselle George--I won't know you! My husband
is away in Tver or I would send him to fetch you. You must come. You
positively must! Between eight and nine."

She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied
respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the
looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely. She
did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually praising
Natasha's beauty. She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised them, as
well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze," which she had
received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one like it.

"But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked.

A smile of pleasure never left Natasha's face. She felt happy and as if
she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess Bezukhova who
had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and important and was now
so kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt almost in love with this
woman, who was so beautiful and so kind. Helene for her part was
sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to give her a good time.
Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha together, and she was
calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The idea of throwing her
brother and Natasha together amused her.

Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natasha for
drawing Boris away, she did not think of that now, and in her own way
heartily wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs she called
her protegee aside.

"My brother dined with me yesterday--we nearly died of laughter--he ate
nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly, quite madly,
in love with you, my dear."

Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.

"How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" said Helene. "You must
certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a reason
to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your fiance
would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to death."

"So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre--that good
Pierre--have talked and laughed about this. So it's all right." And
again, under Helene's influence, what had seemed terrible now seemed
simple and natural. "And she is such a grande dame, so kind, and
evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?" thought Natasha,
gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes.

Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having
evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince's. She was still too
agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly. In
answer to the count's inquiries she replied that things were all right
and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of Countess
Bezukhova's visit and the invitation for that evening, Marya Dmitrievna
remarked:

"I don't care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and don't advise you
to; however, if you've promised--go. It will divert your thoughts," she
added, addressing Natasha.




CHAPTER XIII

Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova's. There were a good
many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count Rostov was
displeased to see that the company consisted almost entirely of men and
women known for the freedom of their conduct. Mademoiselle George was
standing in a corner of the drawing room surrounded by young men. There
were several Frenchmen present, among them Metivier who from the time
Helene reached Moscow had been an intimate in her house. The count
decided not to sit down to cards or let his girls out of his sight and
to get away as soon as Mademoiselle George's performance was over.

Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostovs.
Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natasha and followed
her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same feeling she had
had at the opera--gratified vanity at his admiration of her and fear at
the absence of a moral barrier between them.

Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in admiration of her
beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George went
out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people began
arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a chair for
Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count, who never
lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down behind her.

Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red shawl
draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for her, and
assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was audible.

Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience and
began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for her
son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered,
lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse
sounds, rolling her eyes.

"Adorable! divine! delicious!" was heard from every side.

Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor
understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt herself
again completely borne away into this strange senseless world--so remote
from her old world--a world in which it was impossible to know what was
good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat Anatole, and
conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened sense of
expectancy.

After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded
Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.

"How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had also
risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.

"I don't think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following Natasha.
He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him. "You are
enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never ceased..."

"Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his
daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything
stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring
eyes.

After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and Countess
Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.

The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil her
improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked Natasha for a
valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand and told her she
was bewitching and that he loved her. During the ecossaise, which she
also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when they happened to be by
themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha lifted her frightened eyes
to him, but there was such confident tenderness in his affectionate look
and smile that she could not, whilst looking at him, say what she had to
say. She lowered her eyes.

"Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another," she said
rapidly.... She glanced at him.

Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.

"Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell you I am
madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are
enchanting?... It's our turn to begin."

Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open
frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly
anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and the
Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to remain.
Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt his eyes
upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her father to let her
go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that Helene had followed
her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love, and that she again met
Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene had disappeared leaving them
alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and said in a tender voice:

"I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never see
you? I love you madly. Can I never...?" and, blocking her path, he
brought his face close to hers.

His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she saw
nothing but them.

"Natalie?" he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being
painfully pressed. "Natalie?"

"I don't understand. I have nothing to say," her eyes replied.

Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she felt
herself released, and Helene's footsteps and the rustle of her dress
were heard in the room. Natasha looked round at her, and then, red and
trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and moved
toward the door.

"One word, just one, for God's sake!" cried Anatole.

She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to her what
had happened and to which she could find no answer.

"Natalie, just a word, only one!" he kept repeating, evidently not
knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene came up to them.

Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The Rostovs went away
without staying for supper.

After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She was tormented
by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or Prince Andrew.
She loved Prince Andrew--she remembered distinctly how deeply she loved
him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there was no doubt. "Else how
could all this have happened?" thought she. "If, after that, I could
return his smile when saying good-by, if I was able to let it come to
that, it means that I loved him from the first. It means that he is
kind, noble, and splendid, and I could not help loving him. What am I to
do if I love him and the other one too?" she asked herself, unable to
find an answer to these terrible questions.




CHAPTER XIV

Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to
move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna appeared,
and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking uneasily at
everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept every glance
directed toward her, and tried to appear the same as usual.

After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat down in
her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her.

"Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is my
advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince
Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to
begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had
to say!"

"Well, and he?" asked the count.

"He? He's crazy... he did not want to listen. But what's the use of
talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out," said Marya
Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business and go back home
to Otradnoe... and wait there."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha.

"Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and wait there. If your
betrothed comes here now--there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but alone
with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to you."

Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its
reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better to
visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the wedding,
against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe.

"That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took her,"
said the old count.

"No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But if he
won't--that's his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for something
in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau is ready, so there is nothing
to wait for; and what is not ready I'll send after you. Though I don't
like letting you go, it is the best way. So go, with God's blessing!"

Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed it to
Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.

"She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She's
afraid you might think that she does not like you."

"But she doesn't like me," said Natasha.

"Don't talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna.

"I shan't believe anyone, I know she doesn't like me," replied Natasha
boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold and angry
resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look at her more intently and
to frown.

"Don't answer like that, my good girl!" she said. "What I say is true!
Write an answer!" Natasha did not reply and went to her own room to read
Princess Mary's letter.

Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the misunderstanding that
had occurred between them. Whatever her father's feelings might be, she
begged Natasha to believe that she could not help loving her as the one
chosen by her brother, for whose happiness she was ready to sacrifice
everything.

"Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my father is ill-disposed
toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be forgiven; but he
is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes his son happy."
Princess Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time when she could see
her again.

After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table to answer
it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly and mechanically, and
then paused. What more could she write after all that had happened the
evening before? "Yes, yes! All that has happened, and now all is
changed," she thought as she sat with the letter she had begun before
her. "Must I break off with him? Must I really? That's awful..." and to
escape from these dreadful thoughts she went to Sonya and began sorting
patterns with her.

After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess Mary's
letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought. "Can it be that
all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all that went
before?" She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its former
strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She vividly
pictured herself as Prince Andrew's wife, and the scenes of happiness
with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and at the same
time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of yesterday's
interview with Anatole.

"Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked herself in complete
bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I have to
choose, and I can't be happy without either of them. Only," she thought,
"to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide it from him are both
equally impossible. But with that one nothing is spoiled. But am I
really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew's love, in which I
have lived so long?"

"Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious
air. "A man told me to give you this-" and she handed Natasha a letter.

"Only, for Christ's sake..." the girl went on, as Natasha, without
thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter from
Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only that it
was a letter from him--from the man she loved. Yes, she loved him, or
else how could that have happened which had happened? And how could she
have a love letter from him in her hand?

With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter which
Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she found in it an
echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.

"Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you or
to die. There is no other way for me," the letter began. Then he went on
to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him--for this
there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her--but that if she
loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power could
hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her away and
carry her off to the ends of the earth.

"Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading the letter for the
twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each word of
it.

That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs' and proposed to
take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache, remained at home.




CHAPTER XV

On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha's room, and to
her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open on the
table, beside her lay Anatole's letter. Sonya picked it up and read it.

As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying to find in her
face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find it. Her
face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep herself
from choking, Sonya, pale and trembling with fear and agitation, sat
down in an armchair and burst into tears.

"How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she have left
off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kuragin go to such
lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that's plain! What will
Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is the
meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before
yesterday, yesterday, and today," thought Sonya. "But it can't be that
she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who it was
from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a thing!"

Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha, again scanning her
face.

"Natasha!" she said, just audibly.

Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.

"Ah, you're back?"

And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment of
awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya's look of
embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.

"Sonya, you've read that letter?" she demanded.

"Yes," answered Sonya softly.

Natasha smiled rapturously.

"No, Sonya, I can't any longer!" she said. "I can't hide it from you any
longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya, darling, he writes...
Sonya..."

Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her ears.

"And Bolkonski?" she asked.

"Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!" cried Natasha. "You don't
know what love is...."

"But, Natasha, can that be all over?"

Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she could not grasp
the question.

"Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?" said Sonya.

"Oh, you don't understand anything! Don't talk nonsense, just listen!"
said Natasha, with momentary vexation.

"But I can't believe it," insisted Sonya. "I don't understand. How is it
you have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you have only
seen him three times! Natasha, I don't believe you, you're joking! In
three days to forget everything and so..."

"Three days?" said Natasha. "It seems to me I've loved him a hundred
years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can't
understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit here," and Natasha embraced and
kissed her.

"I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it too,
but it's only now that I feel such love. It's not the same as before. As
soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his slave, and that I
could not help loving him. Yes, his slave! Whatever he orders I shall
do. You don't understand that. What can I do? What can I do, Sonya?"
cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened expression.

"But think what you are doing," cried Sonya. "I can't leave it like
this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so far?"
she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.

"I told you that I have no will," Natasha replied. "Why can't you
understand? I love him!"

"Then I won't let it come to that... I shall tell!" cried Sonya,
bursting into tears.

"What do you mean? For God's sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!"
declared Natasha. "You want me to be miserable, you want us to be
separated...."

When she saw Natasha's fright, Sonya shed tears of shame and pity for
her friend.

"But what has happened between you?" she asked. "What has he said to
you? Why doesn't he come to the house?"

Natasha did not answer her questions.

"For God's sake, Sonya, don't tell anyone, don't torture me," Natasha
entreated. "Remember no one ought to interfere in such matters! I have
confided in you...."

"But why this secrecy? Why doesn't he come to the house?" asked Sonya.
"Why doesn't he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince Andrew gave
you complete freedom--if it is really so; but I don't believe it!
Natasha, have you considered what these secret reasons can be?"

Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently this question
presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know how
to answer it.

"I don't know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!"

Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously.

"If there were reasons..." she began.

But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.

"Sonya, one can't doubt him! One can't, one can't! Don't you
understand?" she cried.

"Does he love you?"

"Does he love me?" Natasha repeated with a smile of pity at her friend's
lack of comprehension. "Why, you have read his letter and you have seen
him."

"But if he is dishonorable?"

"He! dishonorable? If you only knew!" exclaimed Natasha.

"If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions or
cease seeing you; and if you won't do this, I will. I will write to him,
and I will tell Papa!" said Sonya resolutely.

"But I can't live without him!" cried Natasha.

"Natasha, I don't understand you. And what are you saying! Think of your
father and of Nicholas."

"I don't want anyone, I don't love anyone but him. How dare you say he
is dishonorable? Don't you know that I love him?" screamed Natasha. "Go
away, Sonya! I don't want to quarrel with you, but go, for God's sake
go! You see how I am suffering!" Natasha cried angrily, in a voice of
despair and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into sobs and ran from the
room.

Natasha went to the table and without a moment's reflection wrote that
answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all the
morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their
misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the
magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her
freedom, she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her
if she had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his wife.
At that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to Natasha.

On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but on Wednesday
the count went with the prospective purchaser to his estate near Moscow.

On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big
dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there. At
that party Natasha again met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she spoke
to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through dinner she was
more agitated than ever. When they got home Natasha was the first to
begin the explanation Sonya expected.

"There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,"
Natasha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to be
praised. "We have had an explanation today."

"Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how glad I am you're not
angry with me! Tell me everything--the whole truth. What did he say?"

Natasha became thoughtful.

"Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I had
promised Bolkonski. He was glad I was free to refuse him."

Sonya sighed sorrowfully.

"But you haven't refused Bolkonski?" said she.

"Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkonski. Why do
you think so badly of me?"

"I don't think anything, only I don't understand this..."

"Wait a bit, Sonya, you'll understand everything. You'll see what a man
he is! Now don't think badly of me or of him. I don't think badly of
anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?"

Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used toward her. The
more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natasha's face became,
the more serious and stern grew Sonya's.

"Natasha," said she, "you asked me not to speak to you, and I haven't
spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don't trust him, Natasha. Why
this secrecy?"

"Again, again!" interrupted Natasha.

"Natasha, I am afraid for you!"

"Afraid of what?"

"I am afraid you're going to your ruin," said Sonya resolutely, and was
herself horrified at what she had said.

Anger again showed in Natasha's face.

"And I'll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It's not your
business! It won't be you, but I, who'll suffer. Leave me alone, leave
me alone! I hate you!"

"Natasha!" moaned Sonya, aghast.

"I hate you, I hate you! You're my enemy forever!" And Natasha ran out
of the room.

Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her. With the same
expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the house,
taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once abandoning them.

Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and did not let her out
of her sight.

The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed that Natasha sat
by the drawing-room window all the morning as if expecting something and
that she made a sign to an officer who drove past, whom Sonya took to be
Anatole.

Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed that
at dinner and all that evening Natasha was in a strange and unnatural
state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she did not
finish, and laughed at everything.

After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha's door timidly waiting to
let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at the door
learned that another letter had been delivered.

Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha had some dreadful
plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her door. Natasha did not let
her in.

"She will run away with him!" thought Sonya. "She is capable of
anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in her
face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle," Sonya remembered.
"Yes, that's it, she means to elope with him, but what am I to do?"
thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly indicated that Natasha
had some terrible intention. "The count is away. What am I to do? Write
to Kuragin demanding an explanation? But what is there to oblige him to
reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrew asked me to in case of some
misfortune?... But perhaps she really has already refused Bolkonski--she
sent a letter to Princess Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away...." To tell
Marya Dmitrievna who had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya terrible.
"Well, anyway," thought Sonya as she stood in the dark passage, "now or
never I must prove that I remember the family's goodness to me and that
I love Nicholas. Yes! If I don't sleep for three nights I'll not leave
this passage and will hold her back by force and will and not let the
family be disgraced," thought she.




CHAPTER XVI

Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov's. The plan for Natalie Rostova's
abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by Dolokhov a few
days before, and on the day that Sonya, after listening at Natasha's
door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been put into execution.
Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin at the back porch at ten
that evening. Kuragin was to put her into a troyka he would have ready
and to drive her forty miles to the village of Kamenka, where an
unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a marriage ceremony over
them. At Kamenka a relay of horses was to wait which would take them to
the Warsaw highroad, and from there they would hasten abroad with post
horses.

Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand rubles he
had taken from his sister and another ten thousand borrowed with
Dolokhov's help.

Two witnesses for the mock marriage--Khvostikov, a retired petty
official whom Dolokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and
Makarin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an unbounded
affection for Kuragin--were sitting at tea in Dolokhov's front room.

In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with
Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dolokhov in a traveling cloak
and high boots, at an open desk on which lay an abacus and some bundles of
paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to and fro from
the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the study to the room
behind, where his French valet and others were packing the last of his
things. Dolokhov was counting the money and noting something down.

"Well," he said, "Khvostikov must have two thousand."

"Give it to him, then," said Anatole.

"Makarka" (their name for Makarin) "will go through fire and water for
you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled," said Dolokhov,
showing him the memorandum. "Is that right?"

"Yes, of course," returned Anatole, evidently not listening to Dolokhov
and looking straight before him with a smile that did not leave his
face.

Dolokhov banged down the lid of his desk and turned to Anatole with an
ironic smile:

"Do you know? You'd really better drop it all. There's still time!"

"Fool," retorted Anatole. "Don't talk nonsense! If you only knew... it's
the devil knows what!"

"No, really, give it up!" said Dolokhov. "I am speaking seriously. It's
no joke, this plot you've hatched."

"What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?" said Anatole, making a
grimace. "Really it's no time for your stupid jokes," and he left the
room.

Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole had gone
out.

"You wait a bit," he called after him. "I'm not joking, I'm talking
sense. Come here, come here!"

Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to give him his
attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily.

"Now listen to me. I'm telling you this for the last time. Why should I
joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything for you? Who
found the priest and got the passport? Who raised the money? I did it
all."

"Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?" And Anatole
sighed and embraced Dolokhov.

"I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a
dangerous business, and if you think about it--a stupid business. Well,
you'll carry her off--all right! Will they let it stop at that? It will
come out that you're already married. Why, they'll have you in the
criminal court...."

"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" Anatole ejaculated and again made a grimace.
"Didn't I explain to you? What?" And Anatole, with the partiality dull-
witted people have for any conclusion they have reached by their own
reasoning, repeated the argument he had already put to Dolokhov a
hundred times. "Didn't I explain to you that I have come to this
conclusion: if this marriage is invalid," he went on, crooking one
finger, "then I have nothing to answer for; but if it is valid, no
matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it. Isn't that so? And
don't talk to me, don't, don't."

"Seriously, you'd better drop it! You'll only get yourself into a mess!"

"Go to the devil!" cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the room,
but returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of Dolokhov
with his feet turned under him. "It's the very devil! What? Feel how it
beats!" He took Dolokhov's hand and put it on his heart. "What a foot,
my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!" he added in French. "What?"

Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes
looked at him--evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of him.

"Well and when the money's gone, what then?"

"What then? Eh?" repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a thought of
the future. "What then?... Then, I don't know.... But why talk
nonsense!" He glanced at his watch. "It's time!"

Anatole went into the back room.

"Now then! Nearly ready? You're dawdling!" he shouted to the servants.

Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to bring
something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went into
the room where Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting.

Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and smiling
pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to himself.

"Come and eat something. Have a drink!" Dolokhov shouted to him from the
other room.

"I don't want to," answered Anatole continuing to smile.

"Come! Balaga is here."

Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga was a famous troyka
driver who had known Dolokhov and Anatole some six years and had given
them good service with his troykas. More than once when Anatole's
regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in the
evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back again
the next night. More than once he had enabled Dolokhov to escape when
pursued. More than once he had driven them through the town with gypsies
and "ladykins" as he called the cocottes. More than once in their
service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles in the streets of
Moscow and had always been protected from the consequences by "my
gentlemen" as he called them. He had ruined more than one horse in their
service. More than once they had beaten him, and more than once they had
made him drunk on champagne and Madeira, which he loved; and he knew
more than one thing about each of them which would long ago have sent an
ordinary man to Siberia. They often called Balaga into their orgies and
made him drink and dance at the gypsies', and more than one thousand
rubles of their money had passed through his hands. In their service he
risked his skin and his life twenty times a year, and in their service
had lost more horses than the money he had from them would buy. But he
liked them; liked that mad driving at twelve miles an hour, liked
upsetting a driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full
gallop through the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild, tipsy
shouts behind him: "Get on! Get on!" when it was impossible to go any
faster. He liked giving a painful lash on the neck to some peasant who,
more dead than alive, was already hurrying out of his way. "Real
gentlemen!" he considered them.

Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his masterly driving and
because he liked the things they liked. With others Balaga bargained,
charging twenty-five rubles for a two hours' drive, and rarely drove
himself, generally letting his young men do so. But with "his gentlemen"
he always drove himself and never demanded anything for his work. Only a
couple of times a year--when he knew from their valets that they had
money in hand--he would turn up of a morning quite sober and with a deep
bow would ask them to help him. The gentlemen always made him sit down.

"Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir," or "your excellency," he would
say. "I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to go to the
fair."

And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money, would give him a thousand
or a couple of thousand rubles.

Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about twenty-
seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck, glittering little
eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine, dark-blue, silk-lined cloth
coat over a sheepskin.

On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the front
corner of the room, and went up to Dolokhov, holding out a small, black
hand.

"Theodore Ivanych!" he said, bowing.

"How d'you do, friend? Well, here he is!"

"Good day, your excellency!" he said, again holding out his hand to
Anatole who had just come in.

"I say, Balaga," said Anatole, putting his hands on the man's shoulders,
"do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service.... What horses
have you come with? Eh?"

"As your messenger ordered, your special beasts," replied Balaga.

"Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get me there in
three hours. Eh?"

"When they are dead, what shall I drive?" said Balaga with a wink.

"Mind, I'll smash your face in! Don't make jokes!" cried Anatole,
suddenly rolling his eyes.

"Why joke?" said the driver, laughing. "As if I'd grudge my gentlemen
anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast we'll go!"

"Ah!" said Anatole. "Well, sit down."

"Yes, sit down!" said Dolokhov.

"I'll stand, Theodore Ivanych."

"Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!" said Anatole, and filled a large
glass of Madeira for him.

The driver's eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After refusing it
for manners' sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with a red silk
handkerchief he took out of his cap.

"And when are we to start, your excellency?"

"Well..." Anatole looked at his watch. "We'll start at once. Mind,
Balaga! You'll get there in time? Eh?"

"That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn't we be there in
time?" replied Balaga. "Didn't we get you to Tver in seven hours? I
think you remember that, your excellency?"

"Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver," said Anatole, smilingly
at the recollection and turning to Makarin who gazed rapturously at him
with wide-open eyes. "Will you believe it, Makarka, it took one's breath
away, the rate we flew. We came across a train of loaded sleighs and
drove right over two of them. Eh?"

"Those were horses!" Balaga continued the tale. "That time I'd harnessed
two young side horses with the bay in the shafts," he went on, turning
to Dolokhov. "Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those animals flew
forty miles? I couldn't hold them in, my hands grew numb in the sharp
frost so that I threw down the reins--'Catch hold yourself, your
excellency!' says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom of the sleigh and
sprawled there. It wasn't a case of urging them on, there was no holding
them in till we reached the place. The devils took us there in three
hours! Only the near one died of it."




CHAPTER XVII

Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later wearing a
fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily set on one
side and very becoming to his handsome face. Having looked in a mirror,
and standing before Dolokhov in the same pose he had assumed before it,
he lifted a glass of wine.

"Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!" said
Anatole. "Well, comrades and friends..." he considered for a moment
"...of my youth, farewell!" he said, turning to Makarin and the others.

Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to make
something touching and solemn out of this address to his comrades. He
spoke slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest slightly swayed
one leg.

"All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and friends of my
youth, we've had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when
shall we meet again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time--now
farewell, lads! To our health! Hurrah!..." he cried, and emptying his
glass flung it on the floor.

"To your health!" said Balaga who also emptied his glass, and wiped his
mouth with his handkerchief.

Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.

"Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!

"Let's go. Let's go!" cried Anatole.

Balaga was about to leave the room.

"No, stop!" said Anatole. "Shut the door; we have first to sit down.
That's the way."

They shut the door and all sat down.

"Now, quick march, lads!" said Anatole, rising.

Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all
went out into the vestibule.

"And where's the fur cloak?" asked Dolokhov. "Hey, Ignatka! Go to
Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what
elopements are like," continued Dolokhov with a wink. "Why, she'll rush
out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if you delay
at all there'll be tears and 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and she's frozen in a
minute and must go back--but you wrap the fur cloak round her first
thing and carry her to the sleigh."

The valet brought a woman's fox-lined cloak.

"Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the sable!" he shouted so
that his voice rang far through the rooms.

A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black eyes
and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a sable
mantle on her arm.

"Here, I don't grudge it--take it!" she said, evidently afraid of her
master and yet regretful of her cloak.

Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over Matrena, and
wrapped her up in it.

"That's the way," said Dolokhov, "and then so!" and he turned the collar
up round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered. "And
then so, do you see?" and he pushed Anatole's head forward to meet the
gap left by the collar, through which Matrena's brilliant smile was
seen.

"Well, good-by, Matrena," said Anatole, kissing her. "Ah, my revels here
are over. Remember me to Steshka. There, good-by! Good-bye, Matrena,
wish me luck!"

"Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!" said Matrena in her gypsy
accent.

Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers were
holding the horses. Balaga took his seat in the front one and holding
his elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and Dolokhov
got in with him. Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated themselves in
the other sleigh.

"Well, are you ready?" asked Balaga.

"Go!" he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka tore
down the Nikitski Boulevard.

"Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!..." The shouting of Balaga and
of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could be
heard. On the Arbat Square the troyka caught against a carriage;
something cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the
Arbat Street.

After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard, Balaga began to
rein in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old Konyusheny
Street.

The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and Anatole
and Dolokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the gate
Dolokhov whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant ran out.

"Come into the courtyard or you'll be seen; she'll come out directly,"
said she.

Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the
courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the porch.

He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna's gigantic footman.

"Come to the mistress, please," said the footman in his deep bass,
intercepting any retreat.

"To what Mistress? Who are you?" asked Anatole in a breathless whisper.

"Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in."

"Kuragin! Come back!" shouted Dolokhov. "Betrayed! Back!"

Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and was
struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With a last
desperate effort Dolokhov pushed the porter aside, and when Anatole ran
back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket, and ran back
with him to the troyka.




CHAPTER XVIII

Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the corridor, made her
confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natasha she read it and
went into Natasha's room with it in her hand.

"You shameless good-for-nothing!" said she. "I won't hear a word."

Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with astonished but tearless
eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders to the yard porter to
admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but not to let them
out again, and having told the footman to bring them up to her, she
seated herself in the drawing room to await the abductors.

When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run away
again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced
through the rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward
midnight she went to Natasha's room fingering the key in her pocket.
Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor. "Marya Dmitrievna, for God's
sake let me in to her!" she pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna unlocked the
door and went in without giving her an answer.... "Disgusting,
abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I'm only sorry for her
father!" thought she, trying to restrain her wrath. "Hard as it may be,
I'll tell them all to hold their tongues and will hide it from the
count." She entered the room with resolute steps. Natasha lying on the
sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and she did not stir. She was in
just the same position in which Marya Dmitrievna had left her.

"A nice girl! Very nice!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "Arranging meetings
with lovers in my house! It's no use pretending: you listen when I speak
to you!" And Marya Dmitrievna touched her arm. "Listen when I speak!
You've disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I'd treat you
differently, but I'm sorry for your father, so I will conceal it."

Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved with
noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Marya Dmitrievna glanced
round at Sonya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha.

"It's lucky for him that he escaped me; but I'll find him!" she said in
her rough voice. "Do you hear what I am saying or not?" she added.

She put her large hand under Natasha's face and turned it toward her.
Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were amazed when they saw how Natasha
looked. Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed, her
cheeks sunken.

"Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!" she muttered,
wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna's hands with a vicious effort
and sinking down again into her former position.

"Natalie!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "I wish for your good. Lie still, stay
like that then, I won't touch you. But listen. I won't tell you how
guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your father comes back
tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?"

Again Natasha's body shook with sobs.

"Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?"

"I have no betrothed: I have refused him!" cried Natasha.

"That's all the same," continued Marya Dmitrievna. "If they hear of
this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he
challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?"

"Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who asked you
to?" shouted Natasha, raising herself on the sofa and looking
malignantly at Marya Dmitrievna.

"But what did you want?" cried Marya Dmitrievna, growing angry again.
"Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to the house?
Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing girl?... Well, if he
had carried you off... do you think they wouldn't have found him? Your
father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he's a scoundrel, a wretch--
that's a fact!"

"He is better than any of you!" exclaimed Natasha getting up. "If you
hadn't interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it? Sonya,
why?... Go away!"

And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which people
bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned. Marya
Dmitrievna was to speak again but Natasha cried out:

"Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!" and she threw herself
back on the sofa.

Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on her
that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that nobody
would know anything about it if only Natasha herself would undertake to
forget it all and not let anyone see that something had happened.
Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she grew cold and
had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow under her head,
covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some lime-flower
water, but Natasha did not respond to her.

"Well, let her sleep," said Marya Dmitrievna as she went out of the room
supposing Natasha to be asleep.

But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open eyes she
looked straight before her. All that night she did not sleep or weep and
did not speak to Sonya who got up and went to her several times.

Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near Moscow in time for
lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the affair with
the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was nothing to keep
him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess whom he missed. Marya
Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had been very unwell the
day before and that they had sent for the doctor, but that she was
better now. Natasha had not left her room that morning. With compressed
and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she sat at the window, uneasily
watching the people who drove past and hurriedly glancing round at
anyone who entered the room. She was evidently expecting news of him and
that he would come or would write to her.

When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the sound
of a man's footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and malevolent
expression. She did not even get up to greet him. "What is the matter
with you, my angel? Are you ill?" asked the count.

After a moment's silence Natasha answered: "Yes, ill."

In reply to the count's anxious inquiries as to why she was so dejected
and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she assured him that
nothing had happened and asked him not to worry. Marya Dmitrievna
confirmed Natasha's assurances that nothing had happened. From the
pretense of illness, from his daughter's distress, and by the
embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya Dmitrievna, the count saw clearly
that something had gone wrong during his absence, but it was so terrible
for him to think that anything disgraceful had happened to his beloved
daughter, and he so prized his own cheerful tranquillity, that he
avoided inquiries and tried to assure himself that nothing particularly
had happened; and he was only dissatisfied that her indisposition
delayed their return to the country.




CHAPTER XIX

From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to go
away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostovs came to
Moscow the effect Natasha had on him made him hasten to carry out his
intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich's widow, who had
long since promised to hand over to him some papers of her deceased
husband's.

When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Marya
Dmitrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great
importance relating to Andrew Bolkonski and his betrothed. Pierre had
been avoiding Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling for her
was stronger than a married man's should be for his friend's fiancee.
Yet some fate constantly threw them together.

"What can have happened? And what can they want with me?" thought he as
he dressed to go to Marya Dmitrievna's. "If only Prince Andrew would
hurry up and come and marry her!" thought he on his way to the house.

On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.

"Pierre! Been back long?" someone shouted. Pierre raised his head. In a
sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering the
dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makarin dashed
past. Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of military
dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver collar and his
head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his white-plumed hat,
tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded hair besprinkled
with powdery snow.

"Yes, indeed, that's a true sage," thought Pierre. "He sees nothing
beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so he is
always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What wouldn't I give to be like
him!" he thought enviously.

In Marya Dmitrievna's anteroom the footman who helped him off with his
fur coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom.

When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha sitting at the
window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at him,
frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity.

"What has happened?" asked Pierre, entering Marya Dmitrievna's room.

"Fine doings!" answered Dmitrievna. "For fifty-eight years have I lived
in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!"

And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him,
Marya Dmitrievna informed him that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew
without her parents' knowledge and that the cause of this was Anatole
Kuragin into whose society Pierre's wife had thrown her and with whom
Natasha had tried to elope during her father's absence, in order to be
married secretly.

Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was told
him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince Andrew's deeply
loved affianced wife--the same Natasha Rostova who used to be so
charming--should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole who was already
secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in love with him as
to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre could not conceive
and could not imagine.

He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha, whom
he had known from a child, with this new conception of her baseness,
folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. "They are all alike!" he
said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man unfortunate
enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied Prince Andrew to
the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded pride, and the more
he pitied his friend the more did he think with contempt and even with
disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him in the ballroom with
such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that Natasha's soul was
overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation, and that it was not
her fault that her face happened to assume an expression of calm dignity
and severity.

"But how get married?" said Pierre, in answer to Marya Dmitrievna. "He
could not marry--he is married!"

"Things get worse from hour to hour!" ejaculated Marya Dmitrievna. "A
nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she's expecting him--expecting him
since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won't go on
expecting him."

After hearing the details of Anatole's marriage from Pierre, and giving
vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Marya Dmitrievna
told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that the count or
Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew of this affair
(which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge Anatole to a duel,
and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his brother-in-law in her name to
leave Moscow and not dare to let her set eyes on him again. Pierre--only
now realizing the danger to the old count, Nicholas, and Prince Andrew--
promised to do as she wished. Having briefly and exactly explained her
wishes to him, she let him go to the drawing room.

"Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing either,"
she said. "And I will go and tell her it is no use expecting him! And
stay to dinner if you care to!" she called after Pierre.

Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning
Natasha had told him that she had rejected Bolkonski.

"Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!" he said to Pierre. "What troubles
one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret having
come here.... I will be frank with you. Have you heard she has broken
off her engagement without consulting anybody? It's true this engagement
never was much to my liking. Of course he is an excellent man, but
still, with his father's disapproval they wouldn't have been happy, and
Natasha won't lack suitors. Still, it has been going on so long, and to
take such a step without father's or mother's consent! And now she's
ill, and God knows what! It's hard, Count, hard to manage daughters in
their mother's absence...."

Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the
subject, but the count returned to his troubles.

Sonya entered the room with an agitated face.

"Natasha is not quite well; she's in her room and would like to see you.
Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too asks you to come."

"Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski's, no doubt she wants to send
him a message," said the count. "Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it all
was!"

And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the
room.

When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole was married, Natasha did
not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by Pierre
himself. Sonya told Pierre this as she led him along the corridor to
Natasha's room.

Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitrievna, and her
eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look the
moment he entered. She did not smile or nod, but only gazed fixedly at
him, and her look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or like the
others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he evidently did
not exist for her.

"He knows all about it," said Marya Dmitrievna pointing to Pierre and
addressing Natasha. "Let him tell you whether I have told the truth."

Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded animal
looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.

"Natalya Ilynichna," Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a feeling of
pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to do, "whether it is
true or not should make no difference to you, because..."

"Then it is not true that he's married!"

"Yes, it is true."

"Has he been married long?" she asked. "On your honor?..."

Pierre gave his word of honor.

"Is he still here?" she asked, quickly.

"Yes, I have just seen him."

She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands that
they should leave her alone.




CHAPTER XX

Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at once.
He drove through the town seeking Anatole Kuragin, at the thought of
whom now the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a difficulty in
breathing. He was not at the ice hills, nor at the gypsies', nor at
Komoneno's. Pierre drove to the club. In the club all was going on as
usual. The members who were assembling for dinner were sitting about in
groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town news. The footman
having greeted him, knowing his habits and his acquaintances, told him
there was a place left for him in the small dining room and that Prince
Michael Zakharych was in the library, but Paul Timofeevich had not yet
arrived. One of Pierre's acquaintances, while they were talking about
the weather, asked if he had heard of Kuragin's abduction of Rostova
which was talked of in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and
said it was nonsense for he had just come from the Rostovs'. He asked
everyone about Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and
another that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see this
calm, indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was going on in his
soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come, and
as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but drove home.

Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with Dolokhov,
consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate affair. It seemed to
him essential to see Natasha. In the evening he drove to his sister's to
discuss with her how to arrange a meeting. When Pierre returned home
after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his valet informed him that Prince
Anatole was with the countess. The countess' drawing room was full of
guests.

Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his return--
at that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever--entered the
drawing room and seeing Anatole went up to him.

"Ah, Pierre," said the countess going up to her husband. "You don't know
what a plight our Anatole..."

She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband's head, in his
glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of that
rage and strength which she knew and had herself experienced after his
duel with Dolokhov.

"Where you are, there is vice and evil!" said Pierre to his wife.
"Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you," he added in French.

Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready to
follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward himself
and was leading him from the room.

"If you allow yourself in my drawing room..." whispered Helene, but
Pierre did not reply and went out of the room.

Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face betrayed
anxiety.

Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed Anatole
without looking at him.

"You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and were about to elope with
her, is that so?"

"Mon cher," answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in French),
"I don't consider myself bound to answer questions put to me in that
tone."

Pierre's face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized Anatole
by the collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him from side
to side till Anatole's face showed a sufficient degree of terror.

"When I tell you that I must talk to you!..." repeated Pierre.

"Come now, this is stupid. What?" said Anatole, fingering a button of
his collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth.

"You're a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don't know what deprives me
from the pleasure of smashing your head with this!" said Pierre,
expressing himself so artificially because he was talking French.

He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly, but at once put
it back in its place.

"Did you promise to marry her?"

"I... I didn't think of it. I never promised, because..."

Pierre interrupted him.

"Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?" he said, moving toward
Anatole.

Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his pocket
and drew out his pocketbook.

Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table
that stood in his way, threw himself on the sofa.

"I shan't be violent, don't be afraid!" said Pierre in answer to a
frightened gesture of Anatole's. "First, the letters," said he, as if
repeating a lesson to himself. "Secondly," he continued after a short
pause, again rising and again pacing the room, "tomorrow you must get
out of Moscow."

"But how can I?..."

"Thirdly," Pierre continued without listening to him, "you must never
breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess Rostova. I
know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark of
conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times in silence.

Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.

"After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there is such
a thing as other people's happiness and peace, and that you are ruining
a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse yourself with women
like my wife--with them you are within your rights, for they know what
you want of them. They are armed against you by the same experience of
debauchery; but to promise a maid to marry her... to deceive, to
kidnap.... Don't you understand that it is as mean as beating an old man
or a child?..."

Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with a
questioning look.

"I don't know about that, eh?" said Anatole, growing more confident as
Pierre mastered his wrath. "I don't know that and don't want to," he
said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of his lower jaw,
"but you have used such words to me--'mean' and so on--which as a man of
honor I can't allow anyone to use."

Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he
wanted.

"Though it was tête-à-tête," Anatole continued, "still I can't..."

"Is it satisfaction you want?" said Pierre ironically.

"You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do as
you wish, eh?"

"I take them back, I take them back!" said Pierre, "and I ask you to
forgive me." Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. "And if
you require money for your journey..."

Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile, which
Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.

"Oh, vile and heartless brood!" he exclaimed, and left the room.

Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.




CHAPTER XXI

Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna's to tell her of the fulfillment of her
wish that Kuragin should be banished from Moscow. The whole house was in
a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill, having, as Marya
Dmitrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the night after she had
been told that Anatole was married, with some arsenic she had stealthily
procured. After swallowing a little she had been so frightened that she
woke Sonya and told her what she had done. The necessary antidotes had
been administered in time and she was now out of danger, though still so
weak that it was out of the question to move her to the country, and so
the countess had been sent for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and
Sonya, who had a tear-stained face, but he could not see Natasha.

Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip about
the attempted abduction of Rostova. He resolutely denied these rumors,
assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his brother-in-
law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to Pierre that it
was his duty to conceal the whole affair and re-establish Natasha's
reputation.

He was awaiting Prince Andrew's return with dread and went every day to
the old prince's for news of him.

Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in the town from
Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which
Natasha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits than
usual and awaited his son with great impatience.

Some days after Anatole's departure Pierre received a note from Prince
Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come to see him.

As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his father
Natasha's note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement
(Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and given it
to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of Natasha's
elopement, with additions.

Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see him next
morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost the same state
as Natasha and was therefore surprised on entering the drawing room to
hear him in the study talking in a loud animated voice about some
intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince's voice and another now
and then interrupted him. Princess Mary came out to meet Pierre. She
sighed, looking toward the door of the room where Prince Andrew was,
evidently intending to express her sympathy with his sorrow, but Pierre
saw by her face that she was glad both at what had happened and at the
way her brother had taken the news of Natasha's faithlessness.

"He says he expected it," she remarked. "I know his pride will not let
him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far better,
than I expected. Evidently it had to be...."

"But is it possible that all is really ended?" asked Pierre.

Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not understand
how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the study. Prince
Andrew, greatly changed and plainly in better health, but with a fresh
horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in civilian dress facing his
father and Prince Meshcherski, warmly disputing and vigorously
gesticulating. The conversation was about Speranski--the news of whose
sudden exile and alleged treachery had just reached Moscow.

"Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about him a
month ago," Prince Andrew was saying, "and by those who were unable to
understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and to throw on
him all the blame of other men's mistakes is very easy, but I maintain
that if anything good has been accomplished in this reign it was done by
him, by him alone."

He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and immediately
assumed a vindictive expression.

"Posterity will do him justice," he concluded, and at once turned to
Pierre.

"Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?" he said with animation, but
the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened. "Yes, I am well," he said in
answer to Pierre's question, and smiled.

To Pierre that smile said plainly: "I am well, but my health is now of
no use to anyone."

After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish
frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre, and
about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his son's
tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation about
Speranski which was still going on between the two old men.

"If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon,
they would have been made public," he said with warmth and haste. "I do
not, and never did, like Speranski personally, but I like justice!"

Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only too
familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous matters
in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too intimate.
When Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took Pierre's arm and
asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A bed had been made
up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks stood about. Prince
Andrew went to one and took out a small casket, from which he drew a
packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently and very quickly. He
stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his lips compressed.

"Forgive me for troubling you..."

Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natasha, and his
broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated Prince
Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he continued:

"I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and have heard reports
of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of that
kind. Is that true?"

"Both true and untrue," Pierre began; but Prince Andrew interrupted him.

"Here are her letters and her portrait," said he.

He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.

"Give this to the countess... if you see her."

"She is very ill," said Pierre.

"Then she is here still?" said Prince Andrew. "And Prince Kuragin?" he
added quickly.

"He left long ago. She has been at death's door."

"I much regret her illness," said Prince Andrew; and he smiled like his
father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.

"So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his hand?"
said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.

"He could not marry, for he was married already," said Pierre.

Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his father.

"And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?" he said.

"He has gone to Peters... But I don't know," said Pierre.

"Well, it doesn't matter," said Prince Andrew. "Tell Countess Rostova
that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all that is
good."

Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember whether
he had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre would say
anything, looked fixedly at him.

"I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?" asked Pierre,
"about..."

"Yes," returned Prince Andrew hastily. "I said that a fallen woman
should be forgiven, but I didn't say I could forgive her. I can't."

"But can this be compared...?" said Pierre.

Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: "Yes, ask her hand
again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very noble, but
I am unable to follow in that gentleman's footsteps. If you wish to be
my friend never speak to me of that... of all that! Well, good-by. So
you'll give her the packet?"

Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.

The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same as
always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed her
satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at them
Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the
Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to mention
the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone else.

At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was becoming
evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with his father,
now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an unnatural animation,
the cause of which Pierre so well understood.




CHAPTER XXII

That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs' to fulfill the commission
entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the count at the club, and Pierre,
after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya Dmitrievna who was
interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken the news. Ten minutes
later Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna.

"Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich," said she.

"But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not been
tidied up."

"No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room," said Sonya.

Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.

"When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind, don't
tell her everything!" said she to Pierre. "One hasn't the heart to scold
her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be pitied."

Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated, with
a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected to find
her. When he appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently undecided
whether to go to meet him or to wait till he came up.

Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as usual;
but she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her arms
hanging lifelessly just in the pose she used to stand in when she went
to the middle of the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different
expression of face.

"Peter Kirilovich," she began rapidly, "Prince Bolkonski was your
friend--is your friend," she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that
everything that had once been must now be different.) "He told me once
to apply to you..."

Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then he had
reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he now felt so
sorry for her that there was no room in his soul for reproach.

"He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!" She stopped and
breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears.

"Yes... I will tell him," answered Pierre; "but..."

He did not know what to say.

Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think she
had meant.

"No, I know all is over," she said hurriedly. "No, that can never be.
I'm only tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only that I
beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything...."

She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.

A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre's heart.

"I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more," said Pierre.
"But... I should like to know one thing...."

"Know what?" Natasha's eyes asked.

"I should like to know, did you love..." Pierre did not know how to
refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of him--"did you love that
bad man?"

"Don't call him bad!" said Natasha. "But I don't know, don't know at
all...."

She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness, and love
welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his spectacles and
hoped they would not be noticed.

"We won't speak of it any more, my dear," said Pierre, and his gentle,
cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natasha.

"We won't speak of it, my dear--I'll tell him everything; but one thing
I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you want help, advice, or
simply to open your heart to someone--not now, but when your mind is
clearer think of me!" He took her hand and kissed it. "I shall be happy
if it's in my power..."

Pierre grew confused.

"Don't speak to me like that. I am not worth it!" exclaimed Natasha and
turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand.

He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it he was
amazed at his own words.

"Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you," said he to her.


"Before me? No! All is over for me," she replied with shame and self-
abasement.

"All over?" he repeated. "If I were not myself, but the handsomest,
cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment
ask on my knees for your hand and your love!"

For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of gratitude and
tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room.

Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom, restraining
tears of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without finding the
sleeves of his fur cloak threw it on and got into his sleigh.

"Where to now, your excellency?" asked the coachman.

"Where to?" Pierre asked himself. "Where can I go now? Surely not to the
club or to pay calls?" All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in comparison
with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in comparison
with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him through her
tears.

"Home!" said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost Fahrenheit
he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and inhaled the
air with joy.

It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the
black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky
did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane
things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised.
At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark starry
sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the
Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars
but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white
light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant
comet of 1812--the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and
the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long
luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed
joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having
traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable
space, seemed suddenly--like an arrow piercing the earth--to remain
fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and
displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It
seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in
his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.

BOOK NINE: 1812




CHAPTER I

From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating of
the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces--millions
of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army--moved from
the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which since 1811
Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth of June, 1812,
the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began,
that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human
nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable
crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money,
burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not
recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which
those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.

What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The
historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the wrongs
inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental
System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the
mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich,
Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to have
taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to
have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I consent to restore
the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"--and there would have been no war.

We can understand that the matter seemed like that to contemporaries. It
naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England's
intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It naturally
seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war
was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the
war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the
war was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals
and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of
giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the
need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of
that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between
Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed from
Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. It is
natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other
reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points of
view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to
posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and
perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient.
To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and
tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander
was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of
Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances
have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the
Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed
and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried
away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event with
unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present
themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of
them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears
to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance
compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its impotence--apart
from the cooperation of all the other coincident causes--to occasion the
event. To us, the wish or objection of this or that French corporal to
serve a second term appears as much a cause as Napoleon's refusal to
withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of
Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and had a second, a third,
and a thousandth corporal and private also refused, there would have
been so many less men in Napoleon's army and the war could not have
occurred.

Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw
beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would
have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a second
term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there have been a
war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of Oldenburg, and
had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been an autocratic
government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a subsequent
dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced the French
Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing could have
happened. So all these causes--myriads of causes--coincided to bring it
about. And so there was no one cause for that occurrence, but it had to
occur because it had to. Millions of men, renouncing their human
feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows,
just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east
to the west, slaying their fellows.

The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed
to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was
drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be
otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom
the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of
innumerable circumstances was needed without any one of which the event
could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men in
whose hands lay the real power--the soldiers who fired, or transported
provisions and guns--should consent to carry out the will of these weak
individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number
of diverse and complex causes.

We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational
events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not
understand). The more we try to explain such events in history
reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to
us.

Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal
aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from
doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action
performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to
history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which
is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive
life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in
the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done
is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of
millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man
stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and
the more power he has over others, the more evident is the
predestination and inevitability of his every action.

"The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord."

A king is history's slave.

History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind, uses
every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.

Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that
it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples *--
as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him--he had never
been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while
thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for the hive
life--that is to say, for history--whatever had to be performed.


* "To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples."

The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and by
the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and co-
ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the
nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's wrongs,
the movement of troops into Prussia--undertaken (as it seemed to
Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace, the French
Emperor's love and habit of war coinciding with his people's
inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations, and the
expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining advantages
to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors he received
in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the opinion of
contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to attain peace,
but which only wounded the self-love of both sides, and millions of
other causes that adapted themselves to the event that was happening or
coincided with it.

When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its
attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried
by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or
because the boy standing below wants to eat it?

Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in
which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist who
finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so
forth is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says
the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. Equally
right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he
wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired his destruction, and
he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because
the last navvy struck it for the last time with his mattock. In historic
events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and
like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.

Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is
in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of
history and predestined from eternity.




CHAPTER II

On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent
three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings,
and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the
emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings
and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and diamonds
of his own--that is, which he had taken from other kings--to the Empress
of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us, tenderly embraced the
Empress Marie Louise--who regarded him as her husband, though he had
left another wife in Paris--left her grieved by the parting which she
seemed hardly able to bear. Though the diplomatists still firmly
believed in the possibility of peace and worked zealously to that end,
and though the Emperor Napoleon himself wrote a letter to Alexander,
calling him Monsieur mon frere, and sincerely assured him that he did
not want war and would always love and honor him--yet he set off to join
his army, and at every station gave fresh orders to accelerate the
movement of his troops from west to east. He went in a traveling coach
with six horses, surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp, and an escort,
along the road to Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg. At each of these
towns thousands of people met him with excitement and enthusiasm.

The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses carried
him in the same direction. On the tenth of June, * coming up with the
army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on the estate of
a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest.


* Old style.

Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the Niemen, and,
changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank in order to
select a place for the crossing.

Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the wide-
spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of Moscow
(Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the Scythia
into which Alexander the Great had marched--Napoleon unexpectedly, and
contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic considerations, ordered an
advance, and the next day his army began to cross the Niemen.

Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent,
which was pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and
looked through a spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out of
the Vilkavisski forest and flowing over the three bridges thrown across
the river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor's presence, were on the
lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in an overcoat
and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in front of his tent on
the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: "Vive l'Empereur!" and
one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of the vast forest
that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and on by the three
bridges to the other side.

"Now we'll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself, things
get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l'Empereur! So these are
the steppes of Asia! It's a nasty country all the same. Au revoir,
Beauche; I'll keep the best palace in Moscow for you! Au revoir. Good
luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l'Empereur!... preur!--If they
make me Governor of India, Gerard, I'll make you Minister of Kashmir--
that's settled. Vive l'Empereur! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! The Cossacks--
those rascals--see how they run! Vive l'Empereur! There he is, do you
see him? I've seen him twice, as I see you now. The little corporal... I
saw him give the cross to one of the veterans.... Vive l'Empereur!" came
the voices of men, old and young, of most diverse characters and social
positions. On the faces of all was one common expression of joy at the
commencement of the long-expected campaign and of rapture and devotion
to the man in the gray coat who was standing on the hill.

On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse was
brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one of the
bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant and rapturous
acclamations which he evidently endured only because it was impossible
to forbid the soldiers to express their love of him by such shouting,
but the shouting which accompanied him everywhere disturbed him and
distracted him from the military cares that had occupied him from the
time he joined the army. He rode across one of the swaying pontoon
bridges to the farther side, turned sharply to the left, and galloped in
the direction of Kovno, preceded by enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the
Guard who, breathless with delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for
him through the troops. On reaching the broad river Viliya, he stopped
near a regiment of Polish uhlans stationed by the river.

"Vivat!" shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and
pressing against one another to see him.

Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a log
that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was handed
him which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run up to him,
and he gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became absorbed in a map laid
out on the logs. Without lifting his head he said something, and two of
his aides-de-camp galloped off to the Polish uhlans.

"What? What did he say?" was heard in the ranks of the Polish uhlans
when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them.

The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel of the
Polish uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his speech
from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be permitted to
swim the river with his uhlans instead of seeking a ford. In evident
fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on a horse, he
begged to be allowed to swim across the river before the Emperor's eyes.
The aide-de-camp replied that probably the Emperor would not be
displeased at this excess of zeal.

As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached officer,
with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted "Vivat!"
and, commanding the uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse and galloped
into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse, which had grown
restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading for the deepest
part where the current was swift. Hundreds of uhlans galloped in after
him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in the middle of the
stream, and the uhlans caught hold of one another as they fell off their
horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some of the men; the others
tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some clinging to their horses'
manes. They tried to make their way forward to the opposite bank and,
though there was a ford one third of a mile away, were proud that they
were swimming and drowning in this river under the eyes of the man who
sat on the log and was not even looking at what they were doing. When
the aide-de-camp, having returned and choosing an opportune moment,
ventured to draw the Emperor's attention to the devotion of the Poles to
his person, the little man in the gray overcoat got up and, having
summoned Berthier, began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving
him instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly at the
drowning uhlans who distracted his attention.

For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of the
world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to
dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called for
his horse and rode to his quarters.

Some forty uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were sent to
their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from which
they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and with
difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they had
got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted "Vivat!"
and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been but where he
no longer was and at that moment considered themselves happy.

That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian paper
money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as quickly as
possible and another that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a letter
containing information about the orders to the French army had been
found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish colonel who had
needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled in the Legion
d'honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head.

Quos vult perdere dementat. *


* Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.




CHAPTER III

The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna for more than a
month, reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for the
war that everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor had come
from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The vacillation
between the various plans that were proposed had even increased after
the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month. Each of the three
armies had its own commander-in-chief, but there was no supreme
commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not assume that
responsibility himself.

The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less did everybody--tired
of waiting--prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who surrounded
the sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend his time
pleasantly and forget that war was impending.

In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by the
courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the Polish
aides-de-camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be given for
the Emperor by his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly received. The
Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected money by
subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to the
Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a
landowner in the Vilna province, offered his country house for the fete,
and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner, regatta, and
fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen's country seat.

The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and his
vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian frontier,
Alexander spent the evening at the entertainment given by his aides-de-
camp at Bennigsen's country house.

It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters declared
that rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one place.
Countess Bezukhova was present among other Russian ladies who had
followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the refined
Polish ladies by her massive, so-called Russian type of beauty. The
Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance.

Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the
present en garcon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not an
aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Boris was
now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no longer sought
patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those of his
own age. He was meeting Helene in Vilna after not having seen her for a
long time and did not recall the past, but as Helene was enjoying the
favors of a very important personage and Boris had only recently
married, they met as good friends of long standing.

At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not having a suitable
partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Boris. They were the
third couple. Boris, coolly looking at Helene's dazzling bare shoulders
which emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze gown, talked to her
of old acquaintances and at the same time, unaware of it himself and
unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased to observe the Emperor
who was in the same room. The Emperor was not dancing, he stood in the
doorway, stopping now one pair and now another with gracious words which
he alone knew how to utter.

As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant General Balashev, one of
those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him and contrary
to court etiquette stood near him while he was talking to a Polish lady.
Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked inquiringly at
Balashev and, evidently understanding that he only acted thus because
there were important reasons for so doing, nodded slightly to the lady
and turned to him. Hardly had Balashev begun to speak before a look of
amazement appeared on the Emperor's face. He took Balashev by the arm
and crossed the room with him, unconsciously clearing a path seven yards
wide as the people on both sides made way for him. Boris noticed
Arakcheev's excited face when the sovereign went out with Balashev.
Arakcheev looked at the Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with
his red nose, stepped forward from the crowd as if expecting the Emperor
to address him. (Boris understood that Arakcheev envied Balashev and was
displeased that evidently important news had reached the Emperor
otherwise than through himself.)

But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the illuminated garden
without noticing Arakcheev who, holding his sword and glancing
wrathfully around, followed some twenty paces behind them.

All the time Boris was going through the figures of the mazurka, he was
worried by the question of what news Balashev had brought and how he
could find it out before others. In the figure in which he had to choose
two ladies, he whispered to Helene that he meant to choose Countess
Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the veranda, and glided over
the parquet to the door opening into the garden, where, seeing Balashev
and the Emperor returning to the veranda, he stood still. They were
moving toward the door. Boris, fluttering as if he had not had time to
withdraw, respectfully pressed close to the doorpost with bowed head.

The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally
affronted, was finishing with these words:

"To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as long as
a single armed enemy remains in my country!" It seemed to Boris that it
gave the Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was satisfied with
the form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but displeased that
Boris had overheard it.

"Let no one know of it!" the Emperor added with a frown.

Boris understood that this was meant for him and, closing his eyes,
slightly bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and
remained there about another half-hour.

Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the French army had
crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain
important personages that much that was concealed from others was
usually known to him, and by this means he rose higher in their
estimation.

The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was
particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations, and at
a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of indignation
and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased him, fully
expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On returning home
at two o'clock that night he sent for his secretary, Shishkov, and told
him to write an order to the troops and a rescript to Field Marshal
Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the words being inserted that
he would not make peace so long as a single armed Frenchman remained on
Russian soil.

Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:

Monsieur mon frere,

Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty with which I have kept my
engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian
frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in
which Count Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression, that
Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with me
from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his passports. The reasons on
which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him would
never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a pretext for
aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has declared, was
never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I was informed of
it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and ordered him to remain
at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend to shed the blood of our
peoples for such a misunderstanding, and consents to withdraw your
troops from Russian territory, I will regard what has passed as not
having occurred and an understanding between us will be possible. In the
contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see myself forced to repel an
attack that nothing on my part has provoked. It still depends on Your
Majesty to preserve humanity from the calamity of another war. I am,
etc.,

(signed) Alexander.




CHAPTER IV

At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having
sent for Balashev and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him to
take it and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When dispatching
Balashev, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he would not make
peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on Russian soil and told
him to transmit those words to Napoleon. Alexander did not insert them
in his letter to Napoleon, because with his characteristic tact he felt
it would be injudicious to use them at a moment when a last attempt at
reconciliation was being made, but he definitely instructed Balashev to
repeat them personally to Napoleon.

Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied by a
bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev reached the French outposts at the
village of Rykonty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn. There he
was stopped by French cavalry sentinels.

A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform and a
shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashev to halt. Balashev did
not do so at once, but continued to advance along the road at a walking
pace.

The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse,
advanced his horse's chest against Balashev, put his hand to his saber,
and shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he deaf that he
did not do as he was told? Balashev mentioned who he was. The
noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about regimental
matters without looking at the Russian general.

After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after
conversing with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in general
being accustomed to the respect due to his rank in the service, Balashev
found it very strange here on Russian soil to encounter this hostile,
and still more this disrespectful, application of brute force to
himself.

The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air was
fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road from
the village, and over the fields the larks rose trilling, one after
another, like bubbles rising in water.

Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer from the
village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French hussars looked
silently at one another from time to time.

A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed, came
riding from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse, accompanied by
two hussars. The officer, the soldiers, and their horses all looked
smart and well kept.

It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full
trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of
martial swagger in their clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit
of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign.

The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was polite and
evidently understood Balashev's importance. He led him past his soldiers
and behind the outposts and told him that his wish to be presented to
the Emperor would most likely be satisfied immediately, as the Emperor's
quarters were, he believed, not far off.

They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered French hussar
horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and stared with
curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the other end of the
village. The colonel said that the commander of the division was a mile
and a quarter away and would receive Balashev and conduct him to his
destination.

The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure.

They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a group
of horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a black horse
with trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall man with plumes in
his hat and black hair curling down to his shoulders. He wore a red
mantle, and stretched his long legs forward in French fashion. This man
rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his plumes flowing and his gems and
gold lace glittering in the bright June sunshine.

Balashev was only two horses' length from the equestrian with the
bracelets, plumes, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was galloping
toward him with a theatrically solemn countenance, when Julner, the
French colonel, whispered respectfully: "The King of Naples!" It was, in
fact, Murat, now called "King of Naples." Though it was quite
incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he was called so, and
was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore assumed a more
solemn and important air than formerly. He was so sure that he really
was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of his departure from that
city, while walking through the streets with his wife, some Italians
called out to him: "Viva il re!" * he turned to his wife with a pensive
smile and said: "Poor fellows, they don't know that I am leaving them
tomorrow!"


* "Long live the king."

But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and pitied
the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly, after he had
been ordered to return to military service--and especially since his
last interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when his august brother-in-law
had told him: "I made you King that you should reign in my way, but not
in yours!"--he had cheerfully taken up his familiar business, and--like
a well-fed but not overfat horse that feels himself in harness and grows
skittish between the shafts--he dressed up in clothes as variegated and
expensive as possible, and gaily and contentedly galloped along the
roads of Poland, without himself knowing why or whither.

On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its long hair
curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner, and looked
inquiringly at the French colonel. The colonel respectfully informed His
Majesty of Balashev's mission, whose name he could not pronounce.

"De Bal-macheve!" said the King (overcoming by his assurance the
difficulty that had presented itself to the colonel). "Charmed to make
your acquaintance, General!" he added, with a gesture of kingly
condescension.

As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity
instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his
natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the
withers of Balashev's horse and said:

"Well, General, it all looks like war," as if regretting a circumstance
of which he was unable to judge.

"Your Majesty," replied Balashev, "my master, the Emperor, does not
desire war and as Your Majesty sees..." said Balashev, using the words
Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation unavoidable in
frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a novelty.

Murat's face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to "Monsieur
de Bal-macheve." But royaute oblige! * and he felt it incumbent on him,
as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs with Alexander's
envoy. He dismounted, took Balashev's arm, and moving a few steps away
from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to pace up and down
with him, trying to speak significantly. He referred to the fact that
the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand that he should withdraw his
troops from Prussia, especially when that demand became generally known
and the dignity of France was thereby offended.


* "Royalty has its obligations."

Balashev replied that there was "nothing offensive in the demand,
because..." but Murat interrupted him.

"Then you don't consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?" he asked
unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile.

Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of the
war.

"Oh, my dear general!" Murat again interrupted him, "with all my heart I
wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and that the war
begun by no wish of mine may finish as quickly as possible!" said he, in
the tone of a servant who wants to remain good friends with another
despite a quarrel between their masters.

And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of his
health, and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had spent
with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal dignity,
Murat solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which he had stood
at his coronation, and, waving his right arm, said:

"I won't detain you longer, General. I wish success to your mission,"
and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers, and his
glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite who were respectfully
awaiting him.

Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat's words that he would very soon
be brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the next
village the sentinels of Davout's infantry corps detained him as the
pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the corps
commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to Marshal
Davout.




CHAPTER V

Davout was to Napoleon what Arakcheev was to Alexander--though not a
coward like Arakcheev, he was as precise, as cruel, and as unable to
express his devotion to his monarch except by cruelty.

In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are
necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always
appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and their
proximity to the head of the government may be. This inevitability alone
can explain how the cruel Arakcheev, who tore out a grenadier's mustache
with his own hands, whose weak nerves rendered him unable to face
danger, and who was neither an educated man nor a courtier, was able to
maintain his powerful position with Alexander, whose own character was
chivalrous, noble, and gentle.

Balashev found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a peasant's hut,
writing--he was auditing accounts. Better quarters could have been found
him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who purposely put
themselves in most depressing conditions to have a justification for
being gloomy. For the same reason they are always hard at work and in a
hurry. "How can I think of the bright side of life when, as you see, I
am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty shed?" the expression of
his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure and necessity of such men,
when they encounter anyone who shows animation, is to flaunt their own
dreary, persistent activity. Davout allowed himself that pleasure when
Balashev was brought in. He became still more absorbed in his task when
the Russian general entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at
Balashev's face, which was animated by the beauty of the morning and by
his talk with Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still
more and sneered malevolently.

When he noticed in Balashev's face the disagreeable impression this
reception produced, Davout raised his head and coldly asked what he
wanted.

Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because
Davout did not know that he was adjutant general to the Emperor
Alexander and even his envoy to Napoleon, Balashev hastened to inform
him of his rank and mission. Contrary to his expectation, Davout, after
hearing him, became still surlier and ruder.

"Where is your dispatch?" he inquired. "Give it to me. I will send it to
the Emperor."

Balashev replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to the
Emperor.

"Your Emperor's orders are obeyed in your army, but here," said Davout,
"you must do as you're told."

And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his
dependence on brute force, Davout sent an adjutant to call the officer
on duty.

Balashev took out the packet containing the Emperor's letter and laid it
on the table (made of a door with its hinges still hanging on it, laid
across two barrels). Davout took the packet and read the inscription.

"You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or not,"
protested Balashev, "but permit me to observe that I have the honor to
be adjutant general to His Majesty...."

Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived pleasure from the
signs of agitation and confusion which appeared on Balashev's face.

"You will be treated as is fitting," said he and, putting the packet in
his pocket, left the shed.

A minute later the marshal's adjutant, de Castres, came in and conducted
Balashev to the quarters assigned him.

That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board on the barrels.

Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking Balashev to come to
him, peremptorily requested him to remain there, to move on with the
baggage train should orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one
except Monsieur de Castres.

After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness of his impotence
and insignificance--particularly acute by contrast with the sphere of
power in which he had so lately moved--and after several marches with
the marshal's baggage and the French army, which occupied the whole
district, Balashev was brought to Vilna--now occupied by the French--
through the very gate by which he had left it four days previously.

Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte de Turenne, came
to Balashev and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon's wish to honor him
with an audience.

Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhensk regiment had stood in
front of the house to which Balashev was conducted, and now two French
grenadiers stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front and with
shaggy caps on their heads, and an escort of hussars and uhlans and a
brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and generals, who were waiting
for Napoleon to come out, were standing at the porch, round his saddle
horse and his Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon received Balashev in the very
house in Vilna from which Alexander had dispatched him on his mission.




CHAPTER VI

Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the luxury
and magnificence of Napoleon's court.

The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many
generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates--several of whom
Balashev had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia--were waiting.
Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before going
for his ride.

After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came into
the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashev to follow
him.

Balashev went into a small reception room, one door of which led into a
study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had dispatched him on
his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He heard hurried
footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened rapidly; all
was silent and then from the study the sound was heard of other steps,
firm and resolute--they were those of Napoleon. He had just finished
dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform, opening in front over a
white waistcoat so long that it covered his rotund stomach, white
leather breeches tightly fitting the fat thighs of his short legs, and
Hessian boots. His short hair had evidently just been brushed, but one
lock hung down in the middle of his broad forehead. His plump white neck
stood out sharply above the black collar of his uniform, and he smelled
of Eau de Cologne. His full face, rather young-looking, with its
prominent chin, wore a gracious and majestic expression of imperial
welcome.

He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head slightly
thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad thick
shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding, had that
imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live in
comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits that
day.

He nodded in answer to Balashav's low and respectful bow, and coming up
to him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of his
time and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but is sure
he will always say the right thing and say it well.

"Good day, General!" said he. "I have received the letter you brought
from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you." He glanced with
his large eyes into Balashav's face and immediately looked past him.

It was plain that Balashev's personality did not interest him at all.
Evidently only what took place within his own mind interested him.
Nothing outside himself had any significance for him, because everything
in the world, it seemed to him, depended entirely on his will.

"I do not, and did not, desire war," he continued, "but it has been
forced on me. Even now" (he emphasized the word) "I am ready to receive
any explanations you can give me."

And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons for
dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by the calmly
moderate and amicable tone in which the French Emperor spoke, Balashev
was firmly persuaded that he wished for peace and intended to enter into
negotiations.

When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the
Russian envoy, Balashev began a speech he had prepared long before:
"Sire! The Emperor, my master..." but the sight of the Emperor's eyes
bent on him confused him. "You are flurried--compose yourself!" Napoleon
seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked at
Balashev's uniform and sword.

Balashev recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the Emperor
Alexander did not consider Kurakin's demand for his passports a
sufficient cause for war; that Kurakin had acted on his own initiative
and without his sovereign's assent, that the Emperor Alexander did not
desire war, and had no relations with England.

"Not yet!" interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give vent to his
feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as a sign that Balashev might
proceed.

After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashev added that the
Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter into
negotiations except on condition that... Here Balashev hesitated: he
remembered the words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his
letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykov and had
told Balashev to repeat to Napoleon. Balashev remembered these words,
"So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian soil," but some
complex feeling restrained him. He could not utter them, though he
wished to do so. He grew confused and said: "On condition that the
French army retires beyond the Niemen."

Napoleon noticed Balashev's embarrassment when uttering these last
words; his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began to quiver
rhythmically. Without moving from where he stood he began speaking in a
louder tone and more hurriedly than before. During the speech that
followed, Balashev, who more than once lowered his eyes, involuntarily
noticed the quivering of Napoleon's left leg which increased the more
Napoleon raised his voice.

"I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander," he began. "Have I
not for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it? I have
waited eighteen months for explanations. But in order to begin
negotiations, what is demanded of me?" he said, frowning and making an
energetic gesture of inquiry with his small white plump hand.

"The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire," replied Balashev.

"The Niemen?" repeated Napoleon. "So now you want me to retire beyond
the Niemen--only the Niemen?" repeated Napoleon, looking straight at
Balashev.

The latter bowed his head respectfully.

Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from Pomerania,
only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded. Napoleon turned
quickly and began to pace the room.

"You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen
before commencing negotiations, but in just the same way two months ago
the demand was that I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the Oder,
and yet you are willing to negotiate."

He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other and again
stopped in front of Balashev. Balashev noticed that his left leg was
quivering faster than before and his face seemed petrified in its stern
expression. This quivering of his left leg was a thing Napoleon was
conscious of. "The vibration of my left calf is a great sign with me,"
he remarked at a later date.

"Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder may be made to a
Prince of Baden, but not to me!" Napoleon almost screamed, quite to his
own surprise. "If you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I could not accept
such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But who first joined his
army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer me negotiations when I
have expended millions, when you are in alliance with England, and when
your position is a bad one. You offer me negotiations! But what is the
aim of your alliance with England? What has she given you?" he continued
hurriedly, evidently no longer trying to show the advantages of peace
and discuss its possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and
power and Alexander's errors and duplicity.

The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with the
intention of demonstrating the advantages of his position and showing
that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had begun talking,
and the more he talked the less could he control his words.

The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt himself and
insult Alexander--just what he had least desired at the commencement of
the interview.

"I hear you have made peace with Turkey?"

Balashev bowed his head affirmatively.

"Peace has been concluded..." he began.

But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all the
talking himself, and continued to talk with the sort of eloquence and
unrestrained irritability to which spoiled people are so prone.

"Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining
Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign those
provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes," he went on, "I promised and would
have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now he
won't have those splendid provinces. Yet he might have united them to
his empire and in a single reign would have extended Russia from the
Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the Great could
not have done more," said Napoleon, growing more and more excited as he
paced up and down the room, repeating to Balashev almost the very words
he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. "All that, he would have
owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!" he repeated several
times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold snuffbox, lifted it to
his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.

"What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander's might have been!"

He looked compassionately at Balashev, and as soon as the latter tried
to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted him.

"What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained through
my friendship?" demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders in
perplexity. "But no, he has preferred to surround himself with my
enemies, and with whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and
Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country;
Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French
subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but all
the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807 and who
should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander's mind....
Granted that were they competent they might be made use of," continued
Napoleon--hardly able to keep pace in words with the rush of thoughts
that incessantly sprang up, proving how right and strong he was (in his
perception the two were one and the same)--"but they are not even that!
They are neither fit for war nor peace! Barclay is said to be the most
capable of them all, but I cannot say so, judging by his first
movements. And what are they doing, all these courtiers? Pfuel proposes,
Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and Barclay, called on to act,
does not know what to decide on, and time passes bringing no result.
Bagration alone is a military man. He's stupid, but he has experience, a
quick eye, and resolution.... And what role is your young monarch
playing in that monstrous crowd? They compromise him and throw on him
the responsibility for all that happens. A sovereign should not be with
the army unless he is a general!" said Napoleon, evidently uttering
these words as a direct challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander
desired to be a military commander.

"The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven't even been able to
defend Vilna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of the Polish
provinces. Your army is grumbling."

"On the contrary, Your Majesty," said Balashev, hardly able to remember
what had been said to him and following these verbal fireworks with
difficulty, "the troops are burning with eagerness..."

"I know everything!" Napoleon interrupted him. "I know everything. I
know the number of your battalions as exactly as I know my own. You have
not two hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number. I give
you my word of honor," said Napoleon, forgetting that his word of honor
could carry no weight--"I give you my word of honor that I have five
hundred and thirty thousand men this side of the Vistula. The Turks will
be of no use to you; they are worth nothing and have shown it by making
peace with you. As for the Swedes--it is their fate to be governed by
mad kings. Their king was insane and they changed him for another--
Bernadotte, who promptly went mad--for no Swede would ally himself with
Russia unless he were mad."

Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox to his nose.

Balashev knew how to reply to each of Napoleon's remarks, and would have
done so; he continually made the gesture of a man wishing to say
something, but Napoleon always interrupted him. To the alleged insanity
of the Swedes, Balashev wished to reply that when Russia is on her side
Sweden is practically an island: but Napoleon gave an angry exclamation
to drown his voice. Napoleon was in that state of irritability in which
a man has to talk, talk, and talk, merely to convince himself that he is
in the right. Balashev began to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared
to demean his dignity and felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man,
he shrank before the transport of groundless wrath that had evidently
seized Napoleon. He knew that none of the words now uttered by Napoleon
had any significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them
when he came to his senses. Balashev stood with downcast eyes, looking
at the movements of Napoleon's stout legs and trying to avoid meeting
his eyes.

"But what do I care about your allies?" said Napoleon. "I have allies--
the Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and they fight like lions.
And there will be two hundred thousand of them."

And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had uttered this
obvious falsehood, and that Balashev still stood silently before him in
the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon abruptly turned round,
drew close to Balashev's face, and, gesticulating rapidly and
energetically with his white hands, almost shouted:

"Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I'll wipe it off the map
of Europe!" he declared, his face pale and distorted by anger, and he
struck one of his small hands energetically with the other. "Yes, I will
throw you back beyond the Dvina and beyond the Dnieper, and will re-
erect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind of Europe
to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is what will happen to you. That is
what you have gained by alienating me!" And he walked silently several
times up and down the room, his fat shoulders twitching.

He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again, lifted
it several times to his nose, and stopped in front of Balashev. He
paused, looked ironically straight into Balashev's eyes, and said in a
quiet voice:

"And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had!"

Balashev, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that from the
Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy a light. Napoleon was
silent, still looking derisively at him and evidently not listening to
him. Balashev said that in Russia the best results were expected from
the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as if to say, "I know it's
your duty to say that, but you don't believe it yourself. I have
convinced you."

When Balashev had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox, sniffed
at it, and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal. The door
opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully, handed the Emperor
his hat and gloves; another brought him a pocket handkerchief. Napoleon,
without giving them a glance, turned to Balashev:

"Assure the Emperor Alexander from me," said he, taking his hat, "that I
am as devoted to him as before: I know him thoroughly and very highly
esteem his lofty qualities. I will detain you no longer, General; you
shall receive my letter to the Emperor."

And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the reception room
rushed forward and descended the staircase.




CHAPTER VII

After all that Napoleon had said to him--those bursts of anger and the
last dryly spoken words: "I will detain you no longer, General; you
shall receive my letter," Balashev felt convinced that Napoleon would
not wish to see him, and would even avoid another meeting with him--an
insulted envoy--especially as he had witnessed his unseemly anger. But,
to his surprise, Balashev received, through Duroc, an invitation to dine
with the Emperor that day.

Bessieres, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at that dinner.

Napoleon met Balashev cheerfully and amiably. He not only showed no sign
of constraint or self-reproach on account of his outburst that morning,
but, on the contrary, tried to reassure Balashev. It was evident that he
had long been convinced that it was impossible for him to make a
mistake, and that in his perception whatever he did was right, not
because it harmonized with any idea of right and wrong, but because he
did it.

The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride through Vilna, where
crowds of people had rapturously greeted and followed him. From all the
windows of the streets through which he rode, rugs, flags, and his
monogram were displayed, and the Polish ladies, welcoming him, waved
their handkerchiefs to him.

At dinner, having placed Balashev beside him, Napoleon not only treated
him amiably but behaved as if Balashev were one of his own courtiers,
one of those who sympathized with his plans and ought to rejoice at his
success. In the course of conversation he mentioned Moscow and
questioned Balashev about the Russian capital, not merely as an
interested traveler asks about a new city he intends to visit, but as if
convinced that Balashev, as a Russian, must be flattered by his
curiosity.

"How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How many houses? Is it true
that Moscow is called 'Holy Moscow'? How many churches are there in
Moscow?" he asked.

And receiving the reply that there were more than two hundred churches,
he remarked:

"Why such a quantity of churches?"

"The Russians are very devout," replied Balashev.

"But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign of the
backwardness of a people," said Napoleon, turning to Caulaincourt for
appreciation of this remark.

Balashev respectfully ventured to disagree with the French Emperor.

"Every country has its own character," said he.

"But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that," said Napoleon.

"I beg your Majesty's pardon," returned Balashev, "besides Russia there
is Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries."

This reply of Balashev's, which hinted at the recent defeats of the
French in Spain, was much appreciated when he related it at Alexander's
court, but it was not much appreciated at Napoleon's dinner, where it
passed unnoticed.

The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals showed that they
were puzzled as to what Balashev's tone suggested. "If there is a point
we don't see it, or it is not at all witty," their expressions seemed to
say. So little was his rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon did not
notice it at all and naively asked Balashev through what towns the
direct road from there to Moscow passed. Balashev, who was on the alert
all through the dinner, replied that just as "all roads lead to Rome,"
so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and "among them the
road through Poltava, which Charles XII chose." Balashev involuntarily
flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this reply, but hardly had he
uttered the word Poltava before Caulaincourt began speaking of the
badness of the road from Petersburg to Moscow and of his Petersburg
reminiscences.

After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon's study, which four
days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander. Napoleon sat
down, toying with his Sevres coffee cup, and motioned Balashev to a
chair beside him.

Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than any
reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to
consider everyone his friend. It seemed to him that he was surrounded by
men who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after his dinner,
Balashev too was his friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned to him with a
pleasant, though slightly ironic, smile.

"They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander occupied? Strange,
isn't it, General?" he said, evidently not doubting that this remark
would be agreeable to his hearer since it went to prove his, Napoleon's,
superiority to Alexander.

Balashev made no reply and bowed his head in silence.

"Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were
deliberating," continued Napoleon with the same derisive and self-
confident smile. "What I can't understand," he went on, "is that the
Emperor Alexander has surrounded himself with my personal enemies. That
I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may do the same?" and
he turned inquiringly to Balashev, and evidently this thought turned him
back on to the track of his morning's anger, which was still fresh in
him.

"And let him know that I will do so!" said Napoleon, rising and pushing
his cup away with his hand. "I'll drive all his Wurttemberg, Baden, and
Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I'll drive them out. Let him
prepare an asylum for them in Russia!"

Balashev bowed his head with an air indicating that he would like to
make his bow and leave, and only listened because he could not help
hearing what was said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression;
he treated Balashev not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man now
fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his former master's
humiliation.

"And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of the armies? What is
the good of that? War is my profession, but his business is to reign and
not to command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a
responsibility?"

Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several times up and down
the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, went up to
Balashev and with a slight smile, as confidently, quickly, and simply as
if he were doing something not merely important but pleasing to
Balashev, he raised his hand to the forty-year-old Russian general's
face and, taking him by the ear, pulled it gently, smiling with his lips
only.

To have one's ear pulled by the Emperor was considered the greatest
honor and mark of favor at the French court.

"Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander, why don't you say
anything?" said he, as if it was ridiculous, in his presence, to be the
adorer and courtier of anyone but himself, Napoleon. "Are the horses
ready for the general?" he added, with a slight inclination of his head
in reply to Balashev's bow. "Let him have mine, he has a long way to
go!"

The letter taken by Balashev was the last Napoleon sent to Alexander.
Every detail of the interview was communicated to the Russian monarch,
and the war began...




CHAPTER VIII

After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to
Petersburg, on business as he told his family, but really to meet
Anatole Kuragin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching
Petersburg he inquired for Kuragin but the latter had already left the
city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on his
track. Anatole Kuragin promptly obtained an appointment from the
Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in
Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutuzov, his former commander who was
always well disposed toward him, and Kutuzov suggested that he should
accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general had been
appointed commander-in-chief. So Prince Andrew, having received an
appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.

Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge Kuragin. He
thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause it might
compromise the young Countess Rostova and so he wanted to meet Kuragin
personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel. But he again
failed to meet Kuragin in Turkey, for soon after Prince Andrew arrived,
the latter returned to Russia. In a new country, amid new conditions,
Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. After his betrothed had broken
faith with him--which he felt the more acutely the more he tried to
conceal its effects--the surroundings in which he had been happy became
trying to him, and the freedom and independence he had once prized so
highly were still more so. Not only could he no longer think the
thoughts that had first come to him as he lay gazing at the sky on the
field of Austerlitz and had later enlarged upon with Pierre, and which
had filled his solitude at Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome,
but he even dreaded to recall them and the bright and boundless horizons
they had revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical
matters unrelated to his past interests, and he seized on these the more
eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if
that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above him
had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed him down, in
which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.

Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army service was the
simplest and most familiar. As a general on duty on Kutuzov's staff, he
applied himself to business with zeal and perseverance and surprised
Kutuzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not having found
Kuragin in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not think it necessary to rush back
to Russia after him, but all the same he knew that however long it might
be before he met Kuragin, despite his contempt for him and despite all
the proofs he deduced to convince himself that it was not worth stooping
to a conflict with him--he knew that when he did meet him he would not
be able to resist calling him out, any more than a ravenous man can help
snatching at food. And the consciousness that the insult was not yet
avenged, that his rancor was still unspent, weighed on his heart and
poisoned the artificial tranquillity which he managed to obtain in
Turkey by means of restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and
ambitious activity.

In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached Bucharest--
where Kutuzov had been living for two months, passing his days and
nights with a Wallachian woman--Prince Andrew asked Kutuzov to transfer
him to the Western Army. Kutuzov, who was already weary of Bolkonski's
activity which seemed to reproach his own idleness, very readily let him
go and gave him a mission to Barclay de Tolly.

Before joining the Western Army which was then, in May, encamped at
Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills which was directly on his way,
being only two miles off the Smolensk highroad. During the last three
years there had been so many changes in his life, he had thought, felt,
and seen so much (having traveled both in the east and the west), that
on reaching Bald Hills it struck him as strange and unexpected to find
the way of life there unchanged and still the same in every detail. He
entered through the gates with their stone pillars and drove up the
avenue leading to the house as if he were entering an enchanted,
sleeping castle. The same old stateliness, the same cleanliness, the
same stillness reigned there, and inside there was the same furniture,
the same walls, sounds, and smell, and the same timid faces, only
somewhat older. Princess Mary was still the same timid, plain maiden
getting on in years, uselessly and joylessly passing the best years of
her life in fear and constant suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was the
same coquettish, self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of her
existence and full of joyous hopes for the future. She had merely become
more self-confident, Prince Andrew thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had
brought from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and talking
broken Russian to the servants, but was still the same narrowly
intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic preceptor. The old prince had
changed in appearance only by the loss of a tooth, which left a
noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character he was the same as
ever, only showing still more irritability and skepticism as to what was
happening in the world. Little Nicholas alone had changed. He had grown,
become rosier, had curly dark hair, and, when merry and laughing, quite
unconsciously lifted the upper lip of his pretty little mouth just as
the little princess used to do. He alone did not obey the law of
immutability in the enchanted, sleeping castle. But though externally
all remained as of old, the inner relations of all these people had
changed since Prince Andrew had seen them last. The household was
divided into two alien and hostile camps, who changed their habits for
his sake and only met because he was there. To the one camp belonged the
old prince, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the other
Princess Mary, Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and
maids.

During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but they
were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for whose
sake an exception was being made and that his presence made them all
feel awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first day, he
was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also became morosely dumb
and retired to his apartments directly after dinner. In the evening,
when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying to rouse him, began to tell
him of the young Count Kamensky's campaign, the old prince began
unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming her for her
superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he said,
was the only person really attached to him.

The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because of Princess
Mary: that she purposely worried and irritated him, and that by
indulgence and silly talk she was spoiling little Prince Nicholas. The
old prince knew very well that he tormented his daughter and that her
life was very hard, but he also knew that he could not help tormenting
her and that she deserved it. "Why does Prince Andrew, who sees this,
say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me a scoundrel, or an
old fool who, without any reason, keeps his own daughter at a distance
and attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He doesn't understand, so I
must explain it, and he must hear me out," thought the old prince. And
he began explaining why he could not put up with his daughter's
unreasonable character.

"If you ask me," said Prince Andrew, without looking up (he was
censuring his father for the first time in his life), "I did not wish to
speak about it, but as you ask me I will give you my frank opinion. If
there is any misunderstanding and discord between you and Mary, I can't
blame her for it at all. I know how she loves and respects you. Since
you ask me," continued Prince Andrew, becoming irritable--as he was
always liable to do of late--"I can only say that if there are any
misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless woman, who is not
fit to be my sister's companion."

The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural smile
disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andrew could
not get accustomed.

"What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You've already been talking it over!
Eh?"

"Father, I did not want to judge," said Prince Andrew, in a hard and
bitter tone, "but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall
say, that Mary is not to blame, but those to blame--the one to blame--is
that Frenchwoman."

"Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!" said the old man in a
low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some embarrassment,
but then he suddenly jumped up and cried: "Be off, be off! Let not a
trace of you remain here!..."

Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess Mary persuaded him
to stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did not
leave his room and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne and
Tikhon, but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next day,
before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son's rooms. The boy, curly-
headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee, and
Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell into a
reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this pretty
child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He sought in
himself either remorse for having angered his father or regret at
leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms with him, and
was horrified to find neither. What meant still more to him was that he
sought and did not find in himself the former tenderness for his son
which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing the boy and taking him on
his knee.

"Well, go on!" said his son.

Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from his knee and went out
of the room.

As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily occupations, and
especially on returning to the old conditions of life amid which he had
been happy, weariness of life overcame him with its former intensity,
and he hastened to escape from these memories and to find some work as
soon as possible.

"So you've decided to go, Andrew?" asked his sister.

"Thank God that I can," replied Prince Andrew. "I am very sorry you
can't."

"Why do you say that?" replied Princess Mary. "Why do you say that, when
you are going to this terrible war, and he is so old? Mademoiselle
Bourienne says he has been asking about you...."

As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled and her tears
began to fall. Prince Andrew turned away and began pacing the room.

"Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and what--what trash--can cause
people misery!" he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess Mary.

She understood that when speaking of "trash" he referred not only to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man who
had ruined his own happiness.

"Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!" she said, touching his
elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears. "I
understand you" (she looked down). "Don't imagine that sorrow is the
work of men. Men are His tools." She looked a little above Prince
Andrew's head with the confident, accustomed look with which one looks
at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. "Sorrow is sent by Him,
not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not to blame. If you think
someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We have no right to
punish. And then you will know the happiness of forgiving."

"If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman's virtue. But a
man should not and cannot forgive and forget," he replied, and though
till that moment he had not been thinking of Kuragin, all his unexpended
anger suddenly swelled up in his heart.

"If Mary is already persuading me to forgive, it means that I ought long
ago to have punished him," he thought. And giving her no further reply,
he began thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he would meet
Kuragin who he knew was now in the army.

Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying that she knew how
unhappy her father would be if Andrew left without being reconciled to
him, but Prince Andrew replied that he would probably soon be back again
from the army and would certainly write to his father, but that the
longer he stayed now the more embittered their differences would become.

"Good-bye, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come from God, and men are
never to blame," were the last words he heard from his sister when he
took leave of her.

"Then it must be so!" thought Prince Andrew as he drove out of the
avenue from the house at Bald Hills. "She, poor innocent creature, is
left to be victimized by an old man who has outlived his wits. The old
man feels he is guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is growing up
and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he will deceive or be
deceived. And I am off to the army. Why? I myself don't know. I want to
meet that man whom I despise, so as to give him a chance to kill and
laugh at me!"

These conditions of life had been the same before, but then they were
all connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only senseless
things, lacking coherence, presented themselves one after another to
Prince Andrew's mind.




CHAPTER IX

Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the army at the end of
June. The first army, with which was the Emperor, occupied the fortified
camp at Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying to effect a
junction with the first one from which it was said to be cut off by
large French forces. Everyone was dissatisfied with the general course
of affairs in the Russian army, but no one anticipated any danger of
invasion of the Russian provinces, and no one thought the war would
extend farther than the western, the Polish, provinces.

Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had been assigned, on
the bank of the Drissa. As there was not a single town or large village
in the vicinity of the camp, the immense number of generals and
courtiers accompanying the army were living in the best houses of the
villages on both sides of the river, over a radius of six miles. Barclay
de Tolly was quartered nearly three miles from the Emperor. He received
Bolkonski stiffly and coldly and told him in his foreign accent that he
would mention him to the Emperor for a decision as to his employment,
but asked him meanwhile to remain on his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom
Prince Andrew had hoped to find with the army, was not there. He had
gone to Petersburg, but Prince Andrew was glad to hear this. His mind
was occupied by the interests of the center that was conducting a
gigantic war, and he was glad to be free for a while from the
distraction caused by the thought of Kuragin. During the first four
days, while no duties were required of him, Prince Andrew rode round the
whole fortified camp and, by the aid of his own knowledge and by talks
with experts, tried to form a definite opinion about it. But the
question whether the camp was advantageous or disadvantageous remained
for him undecided. Already from his military experience and what he had
seen in the Austrian campaign, he had come to the conclusion that in war
the most deeply considered plans have no significance and that all
depends on the way unexpected movements of the enemy--that cannot be
foreseen--are met, and on how and by whom the whole matter is handled.
To clear up this last point for himself, Prince Andrew, utilizing his
position and acquaintances, tried to fathom the character of the control
of the army and of the men and parties engaged in it, and he deduced for
himself the following of the state of affairs.

While the Emperor had still been at Vilna, the forces had been divided
into three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly, secondly, the
army under Bagration, and thirdly, the one commanded by Tormasov. The
Emperor was with the first army, but not as commander-in-chief. In the
orders issued it was stated, not that the Emperor would take command,
but only that he would be with the army. The Emperor, moreover, had with
him not a commander-in-chief's staff but the imperial headquarters
staff. In attendance on him was the head of the imperial staff,
Quartermaster General Prince Volkonski, as well as generals, imperial
aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials, and a large number of foreigners,
but not the army staff. Besides these, there were in attendance on the
Emperor without any definite appointments: Arakcheev, the ex-Minister of
War; Count Bennigsen, the senior general in rank; the Grand Duke
Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich; Count Rumyantsev, the Chancellor;
Stein, a former Prussian minister; Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel,
the chief author of the plan of campaign; Paulucci, an adjutant general
and Sardinian emigre; Wolzogen--and many others. Though these men had no
military appointment in the army, their position gave them influence,
and often a corps commander, or even the commander-in-chief, did not
know in what capacity he was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand Duke,
Arakcheev, or Prince Volkonski, or was given this or that advice and did
not know whether a certain order received in the form of advice emanated
from the man who gave it or from the Emperor and whether it had to be
executed or not. But this was only the external condition; the essential
significance of the presence of the Emperor and of all these people,
from a courtier's point of view (and in an Emperor's vicinity all became
courtiers), was clear to everyone. It was this: the Emperor did not
assume the title of commander-in-chief, but disposed of all the armies;
the men around him were his assistants. Arakcheev was a faithful
custodian to enforce order and acted as the sovereign's bodyguard.
Bennigsen was a landlord in the Vilna province who appeared to be doing
the honors of the district, but was in reality a good general, useful as
an adviser and ready at hand to replace Barclay. The Grand Duke was
there because it suited him to be. The ex-Minister Stein was there
because his advice was useful and the Emperor Alexander held him in high
esteem personally. Armfeldt virulently hated Napoleon and was a general
full of self-confidence, a quality that always influenced Alexander.
Paulucci was there because he was bold and decided in speech. The
adjutants general were there because they always accompanied the
Emperor, and lastly and chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn up
the plan of campaign against Napoleon and, having induced Alexander to
believe in the efficacy of that plan, was directing the whole business
of the war. With Pfuel was Wolzogen, who expressed Pfuel's thoughts in a
more comprehensible way than Pfuel himself (who was a harsh, bookish
theorist, self-confident to the point of despising everyone else) was
able to do.

Besides these Russians and foreigners who propounded new and unexpected
ideas every day--especially the foreigners, who did so with a boldness
characteristic of people employed in a country not their own--there were
many secondary personages accompanying the army because their principals
were there.

Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless, brilliant, and
proud sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the following sharply defined
subdivisions of tendencies and parties:

The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents--military theorists
who believed in a science of war with immutable laws--laws of oblique
movements, outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his adherents demanded
a retirement into the depths of the country in accordance with precise
laws defined by a pseudo-theory of war, and they saw only barbarism,
ignorance, or evil intention in every deviation from that theory. To
this party belonged the foreign nobles, Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and
others, chiefly Germans.

The second party was directly opposed to the first; one extreme, as
always happens, was met by representatives of the other. The members of
this party were those who had demanded an advance from Vilna into Poland
and freedom from all prearranged plans. Besides being advocates of bold
action, this section also represented nationalism, which made them still
more one-sided in the dispute. They were Russians: Bagration, Ermolov
(who was beginning to come to the front), and others. At that time a
famous joke of Ermolov's was being circulated, that as a great favor he
had petitioned the Emperor to make him a German. The men of that party,
remembering Suvorov, said that what one had to do was not to reason, or
stick pins into maps, but to fight, beat the enemy, keep him out of
Russia, and not let the army get discouraged.

To the third party--in which the Emperor had most confidence--belonged
the courtiers who tried to arrange compromises between the other two.
The members of this party, chiefly civilians and to whom Arakcheev
belonged, thought and said what men who have no convictions but wish to
seem to have some generally say. They said that undoubtedly war,
particularly against such a genius as Bonaparte (they called him
Bonaparte now), needs most deeply devised plans and profound scientific
knowledge and in that respect Pfuel was a genius, but at the same time
it had to be acknowledged that the theorists are often one-sided, and
therefore one should not trust them absolutely, but should also listen
to what Pfuel's opponents and practical men of experience in warfare had
to say, and then choose a middle course. They insisted on the retention
of the camp at Drissa, according to Pfuel's plan, but on changing the
movements of the other armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim
nor the other could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents of
this third party.

Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous representative was the
Tsarevich, who could not forget his disillusionment at Austerlitz, where
he had ridden out at the head of the Guards, in his casque and cavalry
uniform as to a review, expecting to crush the French gallantly; but
unexpectedly finding himself in the front line had narrowly escaped amid
the general confusion. The men of this party had both the quality and
the defect of frankness in their opinions. They feared Napoleon,
recognized his strength and their own weakness, and frankly said so.
They said: "Nothing but sorrow, shame, and ruin will come of all this!
We have abandoned Vilna and Vitebsk and shall abandon Drissa. The only
reasonable thing left to do is to conclude peace as soon as possible,
before we are turned out of Petersburg."

This view was very general in the upper army circles and found support
also in Petersburg and from the chancellor, Rumyantsev, who, for other
reasons of state, was in favor of peace.

The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents of Barclay de
Tolly, not so much as a man but as minister of war and commander-in-
chief. "Be he what he may" (they always began like that), "he is an
honest, practical man and we have nobody better. Give him real power,
for war cannot be conducted successfully without unity of command, and
he will show what he can do, as he did in Finland. If our army is well
organized and strong and has withdrawn to Drissa without suffering any
defeats, we owe this entirely to Barclay. If Barclay is now to be
superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for Bennigsen showed his
incapacity already in 1807."

The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the contrary, that at any
rate there was no one more active and experienced than Bennigsen: "and
twist about as you may, you will have to come to Bennigsen eventually.
Let the others make mistakes now!" said they, arguing that our
retirement to Drissa was a most shameful reverse and an unbroken series
of blunders. "The more mistakes that are made the better. It will at any
rate be understood all the sooner that things cannot go on like this.
What is wanted is not some Barclay or other, but a man like Bennigsen,
who made his mark in 1807, and to whom Napoleon himself did justice--a
man whose authority would be willingly recognized, and Bennigsen is the
only such man."

The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who are always to be
found, especially around young sovereigns, and of whom there were
particularly many round Alexander--generals and imperial aides-de-camp
passionately devoted to the Emperor, not merely as a monarch but as a
man, adoring him sincerely and disinterestedly, as Rostov had done in
1805, and who saw in him not only all the virtues but all human
capabilities as well. These men, though enchanted with the sovereign for
refusing the command of the army, yet blamed him for such excessive
modesty, and only desired and insisted that their adored sovereign
should abandon his diffidence and openly announce that he would place
himself at the head of the army, gather round him a commander-in-chief's
staff, and, consulting experienced theoreticians and practical men where
necessary, would himself lead the troops, whose spirits would thereby be
raised to the highest pitch.

The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to the
others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither peace
nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa or
anywhere else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor
Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing--as much advantage and
pleasure for themselves as possible. In the troubled waters of
conflicting and intersecting intrigues that eddied about the Emperor's
headquarters, it was possible to succeed in many ways unthinkable at
other times. A man who simply wished to retain his lucrative post would
today agree with Pfuel, tomorrow with his opponent, and the day after,
merely to avoid responsibility or to please the Emperor, would declare
that he had no opinion at all on the matter. Another who wished to gain
some advantage would attract the Emperor's attention by loudly
advocating the very thing the Emperor had hinted at the day before, and
would dispute and shout at the council, beating his breast and
challenging those who did not agree with him to duels, thereby proving
that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the common good. A third,
in the absence of opponents, between two councils would simply solicit a
special gratuity for his faithful services, well knowing that at that
moment people would be too busy to refuse him. A fourth while seemingly
overwhelmed with work would often come accidentally under the Emperor's
eye. A fifth, to achieve his long-cherished aim of dining with the
Emperor, would stubbornly insist on the correctness or falsity of some
newly emerging opinion and for this object would produce arguments more
or less forcible and correct.

All the men of this party were fishing for rubles, decorations, and
promotions, and in this pursuit watched only the weathercock of imperial
favor, and directly they noticed it turning in any direction, this whole
drone population of the army began blowing hard that way, so that it was
all the harder for the Emperor to turn it elsewhere. Amid the
uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious danger giving
a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid this vortex of
intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings, and the diversity of
race among these people--this eighth and largest party of those
preoccupied with personal interests imparted great confusion and
obscurity to the common task. Whatever question arose, a swarm of these
drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew
over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of
those who were disputing honestly.

From among all these parties, just at the time Prince Andrew reached the
army, another, a ninth party, was being formed and was beginning to
raise its voice. This was the party of the elders, reasonable men
experienced and capable in state affairs, who, without sharing any of
those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached view of what
was going on at the staff at headquarters and to consider means of
escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, and weakness.

The men of this party said and thought that what was wrong resulted
chiefly from the Emperor's presence in the army with his military court
and from the consequent presence there of an indefinite, conditional,
and unsteady fluctuation of relations, which is in place at court but
harmful in an army; that a sovereign should reign but not command the
army, and that the only way out of the position would be for the Emperor
and his court to leave the army; that the mere presence of the Emperor
paralyzed the action of fifty thousand men required to secure his
personal safety, and that the worst commander-in-chief, if independent,
would be better than the very best one trammeled by the presence and
authority of the monarch.

Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at Drissa,
Shishkov, the Secretary of State and one of the chief representatives of
this party, wrote a letter to the Emperor which Arakcheev and Balashev
agreed to sign. In this letter, availing himself of permission given him
by the Emperor to discuss the general course of affairs, he respectfully
suggested--on the plea that it was necessary for the sovereign to arouse
a warlike spirit in the people of the capital--that the Emperor should
leave the army.

That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to them to
defend their country--the very incitement which was the chief cause of
Russia's triumph in so far as it was produced by the Tsar's personal
presence in Moscow--was suggested to the Emperor, and accepted by him,
as a pretext for quitting the army.




CHAPTER X

This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor when Barclay, one
day at dinner, informed Bolkonski that the sovereign wished to see him
personally, to question him about Turkey, and that Prince Andrew was to
present himself at Bennigsen's quarters at six that evening.

News was received at the Emperor's quarters that very day of a fresh
movement by Napoleon which might endanger the army--news subsequently
found to be false. And that morning Colonel Michaud had ridden round the
Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had pointed out to him that
this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel, and till then considered a
chef-d'oeuvre of tactical science which would ensure Napoleon's
destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the destruction of the
Russian army.

Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen's quarters--a country gentleman's
house of moderate size, situated on the very banks of the river. Neither
Bennigsen nor the Emperor was there, but Chernyshev, the Emperor's aide-
de-camp, received Bolkonski and informed him that the Emperor,
accompanied by General Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci, had gone a second
time that day to inspect the fortifications of the Drissa camp, of the
suitability of which serious doubts were beginning to be felt.

Chernyshev was sitting at a window in the first room with a French novel
in his hand. This room had probably been a music room; there was still
an organ in it on which some rugs were piled, and in one corner stood
the folding bedstead of Bennigsen's adjutant. This adjutant was also
there and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding, evidently exhausted by
work or by feasting. Two doors led from the room, one straight on into
what had been the drawing room, and another, on the right, to the study.
Through the first door came the sound of voices conversing in German and
occasionally in French. In that drawing room were gathered, by the
Emperor's wish, not a military council (the Emperor preferred
indefiniteness), but certain persons whose opinions he wished to know in
view of the impending difficulties. It was not a council of war, but, as
it were, a council to elucidate certain questions for the Emperor
personally. To this semicouncil had been invited the Swedish General
Armfeldt, Adjutant General Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had
referred to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein
who was not a military man at all, and Pfuel himself, who, as Prince
Andrew had heard, was the mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew
had an opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel arrived soon
after himself and, in passing through to the drawing room, stopped a
minute to speak to Chernyshev.

At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a Russian general,
which fitted him badly like a fancy costume, seemed familiar to Prince
Andrew, though he saw him now for the first time. There was about him
something of Weyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German
theorist-generals whom Prince Andrew had seen in 1805, but he was more
typical than any of them. Prince Andrew had never yet seen a German
theorist in whom all the characteristics of those others were united to
such an extent.

Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of coarse, robust build,
broad in the hips, and with prominent shoulder blades. His face was much
wrinkled and his eyes deep set. His hair had evidently been hastily
brushed smooth in front of the temples, but stuck up behind in quaint
little tufts. He entered the room, looking restlessly and angrily
around, as if afraid of everything in that large apartment. Awkwardly
holding up his sword, he addressed Chernyshev and asked in German where
the Emperor was. One could see that he wished to pass through the rooms
as quickly as possible, finish with the bows and greetings, and sit down
to business in front of a map, where he would feel at home. He nodded
hurriedly in reply to Chernyshev, and smiled ironically on hearing that
the sovereign was inspecting the fortifications that he, Pfuel, had
planned in accord with his theory. He muttered something to himself
abruptly and in a bass voice, as self-assured Germans do--it might have
been "stupid fellow"... or "the whole affair will be ruined," or
"something absurd will come of it."... Prince Andrew did not catch what
he said and would have passed on, but Chernyshev introduced him to
Pfuel, remarking that Prince Andrew was just back from Turkey where the
war had terminated so fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced--not so much at
Prince Andrew as past him--and said, with a laugh: "That must have been
a fine tactical war"; and, laughing contemptuously, went on into the
room from which the sound of voices was heard.

Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly
disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that they had dared to inspect
and criticize his camp in his absence. From this short interview with
Pfuel, Prince Andrew, thanks to his Austerlitz experiences, was able to
form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel was one of those hopelessly
and immutably self-confident men, self-confident to the point of
martyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans are self-confident
on the basis of an abstract notion--science, that is, the supposed
knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he
regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly
attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a
citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an
Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as
an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because
he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian
is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know
anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The
German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive
than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth--science--
which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.

Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a science--the theory of
oblique movements deduced by him from the history of Frederick the
Great's wars, and all he came across in the history of more recent
warfare seemed to him absurd and barbarous--monstrous collisions in
which so many blunders were committed by both sides that these wars
could not be called wars, they did not accord with the theory, and
therefore could not serve as material for science.

In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the plan of
campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstadt, but he did not see the least
proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of that war. On
the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were, in his opinion,
the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with characteristically
gleeful sarcasm he would remark, "There, I said the whole affair would
go to the devil!" Pfuel was one of those theoreticians who so love their
theory that they lose sight of the theory's object--its practical
application. His love of theory made him hate everything practical, and
he would not listen to it. He was even pleased by failures, for failures
resulting from deviations in practice from the theory only proved to him
the accuracy of his theory.

He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernyshev about the present
war, with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all will go wrong,
and who is not displeased that it should be so. The unbrushed tufts of
hair sticking up behind and the hastily brushed hair on his temples
expressed this most eloquently.

He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous sounds of his
voice were at once heard from there.




CHAPTER XI

Prince Andrew's eyes were still following Pfuel out of the room when
Count Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and nodding to Bolkonski, but not
pausing, went into the study, giving instructions to his adjutant as he
went. The Emperor was following him, and Bennigsen had hastened on to
make some preparations and to be ready to receive the sovereign.
Chernyshev and Prince Andrew went out into the porch, where the Emperor,
who looked fatigued, was dismounting. Marquis Paulucci was talking to
him with particular warmth and the Emperor, with his head bent to the
left, was listening with a dissatisfied air. The Emperor moved forward
evidently wishing to end the conversation, but the flushed and excited
Italian, oblivious of decorum, followed him and continued to speak.

"And as for the man who advised forming this camp--the Drissa camp,"
said Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince
Andrew scanned his unfamiliar face, "as to that person, sire..."
continued Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain himself,
"the man who advised the Drissa camp--I see no alternative but the
lunatic asylum or the gallows!"

Without heeding the end of the Italian's remarks, and as though not
hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing Bolkonski, addressed him
graciously.

"I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are meeting, and wait
for me."

The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by Prince Peter
Mikhaylovich Volkonski and Baron Stein, and the door closed behind them.
Prince Andrew, taking advantage of the Emperor's permission, accompanied
Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the drawing room where the
council was assembled.

Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski occupied the position, as it were,
of chief of the Emperor's staff. He came out of the study into the
drawing room with some maps which he spread on a table, and put
questions on which he wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen
present. What had happened was that news (which afterwards proved to be
false) had been received during the night of a movement by the French to
outflank the Drissa camp.

The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet the difficulty that
presented itself, unexpectedly proposed a perfectly new position away
from the Petersburg and Moscow roads. The reason for this was
inexplicable (unless he wished to show that he, too, could have an
opinion), but he urged that at this point the army should unite and
there await the enemy. It was plain that Armfeldt had thought out that
plan long ago and now expounded it not so much to answer the questions
put--which, in fact, his plan did not answer--as to avail himself of the
opportunity to air it. It was one of the millions of proposals, one as
good as another, that could be made as long as it was quite unknown what
character the war would take. Some disputed his arguments, others
defended them. Young Count Toll objected to the Swedish general's views
more warmly than anyone else, and in the course of the dispute drew from
his side pocket a well-filled notebook, which he asked permission to
read to them. In these voluminous notes Toll suggested another scheme,
totally different from Armfeldt's or Pfuel's plan of campaign. In answer
to Toll, Paulucci suggested an advance and an attack, which, he urged,
could alone extricate us from the present uncertainty and from the trap
(as he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated.

During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter, Wolzogen (his
"bridge" in court relations), were silent. Pfuel only snorted
contemptuously and turned away, to show that he would never demean
himself by replying to such nonsense as he was now hearing. So when
Prince Volkonski, who was in the chair, called on him to give his
opinion, he merely said:

"Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a splendid position with an
exposed rear, or why not this Italian gentleman's attack--very fine, or
a retreat, also good! Why ask me?" said he. "Why, you yourselves know
everything better than I do."

But when Volkonski said, with a frown, that it was in the Emperor's name
that he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose and, suddenly growing animated,
began to speak:

"Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled, everybody thought they
knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How mend matters? There
is nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me must be strictly
adhered to," said he, drumming on the table with his bony fingers. "What
is the difficulty? Nonsense, childishness!"

He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began proving that no
eventuality could alter the efficiency of the Drissa camp, that
everything had been foreseen, and that if the enemy were really going to
outflank it, the enemy would inevitably be destroyed.

Paulucci, who did not know German, began questioning him in French.
Wolzogen came to the assistance of his chief, who spoke French badly,
and began translating for him, hardly able to keep pace with Pfuel, who
was rapidly demonstrating that not only all that had happened, but all
that could happen, had been foreseen in his scheme, and that if there
were now any difficulties the whole fault lay in the fact that his plan
had not been precisely executed. He kept laughing sarcastically, he
demonstrated, and at last contemptuously ceased to demonstrate, like a
mathematician who ceases to prove in various ways the accuracy of a
problem that has already been proved. Wolzogen took his place and
continued to explain his views in French, every now and then turning to
Pfuel and saying, "Is it not so, your excellency?" But Pfuel, like a man
heated in a fight who strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at
his own supporter, Wolzogen:

"Well, of course, what more is there to explain?"

Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in French.
Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to Volkonski in
Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence.

Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most with Pfuel, angry,
determined, and absurdly self-confident as he was. Of all those present,
evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself, nursed no
hatred against anyone, and only desired that the plan, formed on a
theory arrived at by years of toil, should be carried out. He was
ridiculous, and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet he inspired involuntary
respect by his boundless devotion to an idea. Besides this, the remarks
of all except Pfuel had one common trait that had not been noticeable at
the council of war in 1805: there was now a panic fear of Napoleon's
genius, which, though concealed, was noticeable in every rejoinder.
Everything was assumed to be possible for Napoleon, they expected him
from every side, and invoked his terrible name to shatter each other's
proposals. Pfuel alone seemed to consider Napoleon a barbarian like
everyone else who opposed his theory. But besides this feeling of
respect, Pfuel evoked pity in Prince Andrew. From the tone in which the
courtiers addressed him and the way Paulucci had allowed himself to
speak of him to the Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation in
Pfuel's own expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel
himself felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence
and grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly
brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he
concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was
evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his
theory by a huge experiment and proving its soundness to the whole world
was slipping away from him.

The discussions continued a long time, and the longer they lasted the
more heated became the disputes, culminating in shouts and
personalities, and the less was it possible to arrive at any general
conclusion from all that had been said. Prince Andrew, listening to this
polyglot talk and to these surmises, plans, refutations, and shouts,
felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A thought that had
long since and often occurred to him during his military activities--the
idea that there is not and cannot be any science of war, and that
therefore there can be no such thing as a military genius--now appeared
to him an obvious truth. "What theory and science is possible about a
matter the conditions and circumstances of which are unknown and cannot
be defined, especially when the strength of the acting forces cannot be
ascertained? No one was or is able to foresee in what condition our or
the enemy's armies will be in a day's time, and no one can gauge the
force of this or that detachment. Sometimes--when there is not a coward
at the front to shout, 'We are cut off!' and start running, but a brave
and jolly lad who shouts, 'Hurrah!'--a detachment of five thousand is
worth thirty thousand, as at Schon Grabern, while at times fifty
thousand run from eight thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can
there be in a matter in which, as in all practical matters, nothing can
be defined and everything depends on innumerable conditions, the
significance of which is determined at a particular moment which arrives
no one knows when? Armfeldt says our army is cut in half, and Paulucci
says we have got the French army between two fires; Michaud says that
the worthlessness of the Drissa camp lies in having the river behind it,
and Pfuel says that is what constitutes its strength; Toll proposes one
plan, Armfeldt another, and they are all good and all bad, and the
advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at the moment of trial.
And why do they all speak of a 'military genius'? Is a man a genius who
can order bread to be brought up at the right time and say who is to go
to the right and who to the left? It is only because military men are
invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants flatter power,
attributing to it qualities of genius it does not possess. The best
generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid or absent-minded
men. Bagration was the best, Napoleon himself admitted that. And of
Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied face on the
field of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander not need any
special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest
and best human attributes--love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic
inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is
doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient
patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he
should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and
unjust. It is understandable that a theory of their 'genius' was
invented for them long ago because they have power! The success of a
military action depends not on them, but on the man in the ranks who
shouts, 'We are lost!' or who shouts, 'Hurrah!' And only in the ranks
can one serve with assurance of being useful."

So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking, and he roused
himself only when Paulucci called him and everyone was leaving.

At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince Andrew where he would
like to serve, and Prince Andrew lost his standing in court circles
forever by not asking to remain attached to the sovereign's person, but
for permission to serve in the army.




CHAPTER XII

Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostov had received a letter from
his parents in which they told him briefly of Natasha's illness and the
breaking off of her engagement to Prince Andrew (which they explained by
Natasha's having rejected him) and again asked Nicholas to retire from
the army and return home. On receiving this letter, Nicholas did not
even make any attempt to get leave of absence or to retire from the
army, but wrote to his parents that he was sorry Natasha was ill and her
engagement broken off, and that he would do all he could to meet their
wishes. To Sonya he wrote separately.

"Adored friend of my soul!" he wrote. "Nothing but honor could keep me
from returning to the country. But now, at the commencement of the
campaign, I should feel dishonored, not only in my comrades' eyes but in
my own, if I preferred my own happiness to my love and duty to the
Fatherland. But this shall be our last separation. Believe me, directly
the war is over, if I am still alive and still loved by you, I will
throw up everything and fly to you, to press you forever to my ardent
breast."

It was, in fact, only the commencement of the campaign that prevented
Rostov from returning home as he had promised and marrying Sonya. The
autumn in Otradnoe with the hunting, and the winter with the Christmas
holidays and Sonya's love, had opened out to him a vista of tranquil
rural joys and peace such as he had never known before, and which now
allured him. "A splendid wife, children, a good pack of hounds, a dozen
leashes of smart borzois, agriculture, neighbors, service by
election..." thought he. But now the campaign was beginning, and he had
to remain with his regiment. And since it had to be so, Nicholas Rostov,
as was natural to him, felt contented with the life he led in the
regiment and was able to find pleasure in that life.

On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been joyfully welcomed
by his comrades, was sent to obtain remounts and brought back from the
Ukraine excellent horses which pleased him and earned him commendation
from his commanders. During his absence he had been promoted captain,
and when the regiment was put on war footing with an increase in
numbers, he was again allotted his old squadron.

The campaign began, the regiment was moved into Poland on double pay,
new officers arrived, new men and horses, and above all everybody was
infected with the merrily excited mood that goes with the commencement
of a war, and Rostov, conscious of his advantageous position in the
regiment, devoted himself entirely to the pleasures and interests of
military service, though he knew that sooner or later he would have to
relinquish them.

The troops retired from Vilna for various complicated reasons of state,
political and strategic. Each step of the retreat was accompanied by a
complicated interplay of interests, arguments, and passions at
headquarters. For the Pavlograd hussars, however, the whole of this
retreat during the finest period of summer and with sufficient supplies
was a very simple and agreeable business.

It was only at headquarters that there was depression, uneasiness, and
intriguing; in the body of the army they did not ask themselves where
they were going or why. If they regretted having to retreat, it was only
because they had to leave billets they had grown accustomed to, or some
pretty young Polish lady. If the thought that things looked bad chanced
to enter anyone's head, he tried to be as cheerful as befits a good
soldier and not to think of the general trend of affairs, but only of
the task nearest to hand. First they camped gaily before Vilna, making
acquaintance with the Polish landowners, preparing for reviews and being
reviewed by the Emperor and other high commanders. Then came an order to
retreat to Sventsyani and destroy any provisions they could not carry
away with them. Sventsyani was remembered by the hussars only as the
drunken camp, a name the whole army gave to their encampment there, and
because many complaints were made against the troops, who, taking
advantage of the order to collect provisions, took also horses,
carriages, and carpets from the Polish proprietors. Rostov remembered
Sventsyani, because on the first day of their arrival at that small town
he changed his sergeant major and was unable to manage all the drunken
men of his squadron who, unknown to him, had appropriated five barrels
of old beer. From Sventsyani they retired farther and farther to Drissa,
and thence again beyond Drissa, drawing near to the frontier of Russia
proper.

On the thirteenth of July the Pavlograds took part in a serious action
for the first time.

On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there was a heavy
storm of rain and hail. In general, the summer of 1812 was remarkable
for its storms.

The two Pavlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a field of rye, which
was already in ear but had been completely trodden down by cattle and
horses. The rain was descending in torrents, and Rostov, with a young
officer named Ilyin, his protege, was sitting in a hastily constructed
shelter. An officer of their regiment, with long mustaches extending
onto his cheeks, who after riding to the staff had been overtaken by the
rain, entered Rostov's shelter.

"I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of Raevski's
exploit?"

And the officer gave them details of the Saltanov battle, which he had
heard at the staff.

Rostov, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as the water
trickled down his neck, listened inattentively, with an occasional
glance at Ilyin, who was pressing close to him. This officer, a lad of
sixteen who had recently joined the regiment, was now in the same
relation to Nicholas that Nicholas had been to Denisov seven years
before. Ilyin tried to imitate Rostov in everything and adored him as a
girl might have done.

Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke grandiloquently of
the Saltanov dam being "a Russian Thermopylae," and of how a deed worthy
of antiquity had been performed by General Raevski. He recounted how
Raevski had led his two sons onto the dam under terrific fire and had
charged with them beside him. Rostov heard the story and not only said
nothing to encourage Zdrzhinski's enthusiasm but, on the contrary,
looked like a man ashamed of what he was hearing, though with no
intention of contradicting it. Since the campaigns of Austerlitz and of
1807 Rostov knew by experience that men always lie when describing
military exploits, as he himself had done when recounting them; besides
that, he had experience enough to know that nothing happens in war at
all as we can imagine or relate it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski's
tale, nor did he like Zdrzhinski himself who, with his mustaches
extending over his cheeks, bent low over the face of his hearer, as was
his habit, and crowded Rostov in the narrow shanty. Rostov looked at him
in silence. "In the first place, there must have been such a confusion
and crowding on the dam that was being attacked that if Raevski did lead
his sons there, it could have had no effect except perhaps on some dozen
men nearest to him," thought he, "the rest could not have seen how or
with whom Raevski came onto the dam. And even those who did see it would
not have been much stimulated by it, for what had they to do with
Raevski's tender paternal feelings when their own skins were in danger?
And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did not depend on whether they
took the Saltanov dam or not, as we are told was the case at
Thermopylae. So why should he have made such a sacrifice? And why expose
his own children in the battle? I would not have taken my brother Petya
there, or even Ilyin, who's a stranger to me but a nice lad, but would
have tried to put them somewhere under cover," Nicholas continued to
think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But he did not express his
thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had gained experience. He knew
that this tale redounded to the glory of our arms and so one had to
pretend not to doubt it. And he acted accordingly.

"I can't stand this any more," said Ilyin, noticing that Rostov did not
relish Zdrzhinski's conversation. "My stockings and shirt... and the
water is running on my seat! I'll go and look for shelter. The rain
seems less heavy."

Ilyin went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.

Five minutes later Ilyin, splashing through the mud, came running back
to the shanty.

"Hurrah! Rostov, come quick! I've found it! About two hundred yards away
there's a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can at least get
dry there, and Mary Hendrikhovna's there."

Mary Hendrikhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty young
German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether from lack of
means or because he did not like to part from his young wife in the
early days of their marriage, took her about with him wherever the
hussar regiment went and his jealousy had become a standing joke among
the hussar officers.

Rostov threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrushka to
follow with the things, and--now slipping in the mud, now splashing
right through it--set off with Ilyin in the lessening rain and the
darkness that was occasionally rent by distant lightning.

"Rostov, where are you?"

"Here. What lightning!" they called to one another.




CHAPTER XIII

In the tavern, before which stood the doctor's covered cart, there were
already some five officers. Mary Hendrikhovna, a plump little blonde
German, in a dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a broad bench
in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep behind her.
Rostov and Ilyin, on entering the room, were welcomed with merry shouts
and laughter.

"Dear me, how jolly we are!" said Rostov laughing.

"And why do you stand there gaping?"

"What swells they are! Why, the water streams from them! Don't make our
drawing room so wet."

"Don't mess Mary Hendrikhovna's dress!" cried other voices.

Rostov and Ilyin hastened to find a corner where they could change into
dry clothes without offending Mary Hendrikhovna's modesty. They were
going into a tiny recess behind a partition to change, but found it
completely filled by three officers who sat playing cards by the light
of a solitary candle on an empty box, and these officers would on no
account yield their position. Mary Hendrikhovna obliged them with the
loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and behind that screen
Rostov and Ilyin, helped by Lavrushka who had brought their kits,
changed their wet things for dry ones.

A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was found,
fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small samovar was
produced and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and having asked Mary
Hendrikhovna to preside, they all crowded round her. One offered her a
clean handkerchief to wipe her charming hands, another spread a jacket
under her little feet to keep them from the damp, another hung his coat
over the window to keep out the draft, and yet another waved the flies
off her husband's face, lest he should wake up.

"Leave him alone," said Mary Hendrikhovna, smiling timidly and happily.
"He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night."

"Oh, no, Mary Hendrikhovna," replied the officer, "one must look after
the doctor. Perhaps he'll take pity on me someday, when it comes to
cutting off a leg or an arm for me."

There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy that one could
not make out whether the tea was strong or weak, and the samovar held
only six tumblers of water, but this made it all the pleasanter to take
turns in order of seniority to receive one's tumbler from Mary
Hendrikhovna's plump little hands with their short and not overclean
nails. All the officers appeared to be, and really were, in love with
her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the partition soon
left their game and came over to the samovar, yielding to the general
mood of courting Mary Hendrikhovna. She, seeing herself surrounded by
such brilliant and polite young men, beamed with satisfaction, try as
she might to hide it, and perturbed as she evidently was each time her
husband moved in his sleep behind her.

There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful than anything else,
but it took too long to dissolve, so it was decided that Mary
Hendrikhovna should stir the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostov received
his tumbler, and adding some rum to it asked Mary Hendrikhovna to stir
it.

"But you take it without sugar?" she said, smiling all the time, as if
everything she said and everything the others said was very amusing and
had a double meaning.

"It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand should stir
my tea."

Mary Hendrikhovna assented and began looking for the spoon which someone
meanwhile had pounced on.

"Use your finger, Mary Hendrikhovna, it will be still nicer," said
Rostov.

"Too hot!" she replied, blushing with pleasure.

Ilyin put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and brought it to
Mary Hendrikhovna, asking her to stir it with her finger.

"This is my cup," said he. "Only dip your finger in it and I'll drink it
all up."

When they had emptied the samovar, Rostov took a pack of cards and
proposed that they should play "Kings" with Mary Hendrikhovna. They drew
lots to settle who should make up her set. At Rostov's suggestion it was
agreed that whoever became "King" should have the right to kiss Mary
Hendrikhovna's hand, and that the "Booby" should go to refill and reheat
the samovar for the doctor when the latter awoke.

"Well, but supposing Mary Hendrikhovna is 'King'?" asked Ilyin.

"As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!"

They had hardly begun to play before the doctor's disheveled head
suddenly appeared from behind Mary Hendrikhovna. He had been awake for
some time, listening to what was being said, and evidently found nothing
entertaining or amusing in what was going on. His face was sad and
depressed. Without greeting the officers, he scratched himself and asked
to be allowed to pass as they were blocking the way. As soon as he had
left the room all the officers burst into loud laughter and Mary
Hendrikhovna blushed till her eyes filled with tears and thereby became
still more attractive to them. Returning from the yard, the doctor told
his wife (who had ceased to smile so happily, and looked at him in
alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had ceased and they must go
to sleep in their covered cart, or everything in it would be stolen.

"But I'll send an orderly.... Two of them!" said Rostov. "What an idea,
doctor!"

"I'll stand guard on it myself!" said Ilyin.

"No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have not slept for two
nights," replied the doctor, and he sat down morosely beside his wife,
waiting for the game to end.

Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers grew
still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from laughter, for
which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts. When he had gone, taking
his wife with him, and had settled down with her in their covered cart,
the officers lay down in the tavern, covering themselves with their wet
cloaks, but they did not sleep for a long time; now they exchanged
remarks, recalling the doctor's uneasiness and his wife's delight, now
they ran out into the porch and reported what was taking place in the
covered trap. Several times Rostov, covering his head, tried to go to
sleep, but some remark would arouse him and conversation would be
resumed, to the accompaniment of unreasoning, merry, childlike laughter.




CHAPTER XIV

It was nearly three o'clock but no one was yet asleep, when the
quartermaster appeared with an order to move on to the little town of
Ostrovna. Still laughing and talking, the officers began hurriedly
getting ready and again boiled some muddy water in the samovar. But
Rostov went off to his squadron without waiting for tea. Day was
breaking, the rain had ceased, and the clouds were dispersing. It felt
damp and cold, especially in clothes that were still moist. As they left
the tavern in the twilight of the dawn, Rostov and Ilyin both glanced
under the wet and glistening leather hood of the doctor's cart, from
under the apron of which his feet were sticking out, and in the middle
of which his wife's nightcap was visible and her sleepy breathing
audible.

"She really is a dear little thing," said Rostov to Ilyin, who was
following him.

"A charming woman!" said Ilyin, with all the gravity of a boy of
sixteen.

Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the road. The command
was heard to "mount" and the soldiers crossed themselves and mounted.
Rostov riding in front gave the order "Forward!" and the hussars, with
clanking sabers and subdued talk, their horses' hoofs splashing in the
mud, defiled in fours and moved along the broad road planted with birch
trees on each side, following the infantry and a battery that had gone
on in front.

Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east, were scudding
before the wind. It was growing lighter and lighter. That curly grass
which always grows by country roadsides became clearly visible, still
wet with the night's rain; the drooping branches of the birches, also
wet, swayed in the wind and flung down bright drops of water to one
side. The soldiers' faces were more and more clearly visible. Rostov,
always closely followed by Ilyin, rode along the side of the road
between two rows of birch trees.

When campaigning, Rostov allowed himself the indulgence of riding not a
regimental but a Cossack horse. A judge of horses and a sportsman, he
had lately procured himself a large, fine, mettlesome, Donets horse,
dun-colored, with light mane and tail, and when he rode it no one could
outgallop him. To ride this horse was a pleasure to him, and he thought
of the horse, of the morning, of the doctor's wife, but not once of the
impending danger.

Formerly, when going into action, Rostov had felt afraid; now he had not
the least feeling of fear. He was fearless, not because he had grown
used to being under fire (one cannot grow used to danger), but because
he had learned how to manage his thoughts when in danger. He had grown
accustomed when going into action to think about anything but what would
seem most likely to interest him--the impending danger. During the first
period of his service, hard as he tried and much as he reproached
himself with cowardice, he had not been able to do this, but with time
it had come of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyin under the birch trees,
occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met his hand, sometimes
touching his horse's side with his foot, or, without turning round,
handing a pipe he had finished to an hussar riding behind him, with as
calm and careless an air as though he were merely out for a ride. He
glanced with pity at the excited face of Ilyin, who talked much and in
great agitation. He knew from experience the tormenting expectation of
terror and death the cornet was suffering and knew that only time could
help him.

As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky beneath the clouds,
the wind fell, as if it dared not spoil the beauty of the summer morning
after the storm; drops still continued to fall, but vertically now, and
all was still. The whole sun appeared on the horizon and disappeared
behind a long narrow cloud that hung above it. A few minutes later it
reappeared brighter still from behind the top of the cloud, tearing its
edge. Everything grew bright and glittered. And with that light, and as
if in reply to it, came the sound of guns ahead of them.

Before Rostov had had time to consider and determine the distance of
that firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstoy's adjutant came galloping from
Vitebsk with orders to advance at a trot along the road.

The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and the battery--which had
also quickened their pace--rode down a hill, and passing through an
empty and deserted village again ascended. The horses began to lather
and the men to flush.

"Halt! Dress your ranks!" the order of the regimental commander was
heard ahead. "Forward by the left. Walk, march!" came the order from in
front.

And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the left flank of
our position, halted behind our uhlans who were in the front line. To
the right stood our infantry in a dense column: they were the reserve.
Higher up the hill, on the very horizon, our guns were visible through
the wonderfully clear air, brightly illuminated by slanting morning
sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could be seen the enemy's
columns and guns. Our advanced line, already in action, could be heard
briskly exchanging shots with the enemy in the dale.

At these sounds, long unheard, Rostov's spirits rose, as at the strains
of the merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap! cracked the shots, now together,
now several quickly one after another. Again all was silent and then
again it sounded as if someone were walking on detonators and exploding
them.

The hussars remained in the same place for about an hour. A cannonade
began. Count Ostermann with his suite rode up behind the squadron,
halted, spoke to the commander of the regiment, and rode up the hill to
the guns.

After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the uhlans.

"Form column! Prepare to charge!"

The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the cavalry
to pass. The uhlans started, the streamers on their spears fluttering,
and trotted downhill toward the French cavalry which was seen below to
the left.

As soon as the uhlans descended the hill, the hussars were ordered up
the hill to support the battery. As they took the places vacated by the
uhlans, bullets came from the front, whining and whistling, but fell
spent without taking effect.

The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an even more
pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostov than the previous sounds
of firing. Drawing himself up, he viewed the field of battle opening out
before him from the hill, and with his whole soul followed the movement
of the uhlans. They swooped down close to the French dragoons, something
confused happened there amid the smoke, and five minutes later our
uhlans were galloping back, not to the place they had occupied but more
to the left, and among the orange-colored uhlans on chestnut horses and
behind them, in a large group, blue French dragoons on gray horses could
be seen.




CHAPTER XV

Rostov, with his keen sportsman's eye, was one of the first to catch
sight of these blue French dragoons pursuing our uhlans. Nearer and
nearer in disorderly crowds came the uhlans and the French dragoons
pursuing them. He could already see how these men, who looked so small
at the foot of the hill, jostled and overtook one another, waving their
arms and their sabers in the air.

Rostov gazed at what was happening before him as at a hunt. He felt
instinctively that if the hussars struck at the French dragoons now, the
latter could not withstand them, but if a charge was to be made it must
be done now, at that very moment, or it would be too late. He looked
around. A captain, standing beside him, was gazing like himself with
eyes fixed on the cavalry below them.

"Andrew Sevastyanych!" said Rostov. "You know, we could crush them...."

"A fine thing too!" replied the captain, "and really..."

Rostov, without waiting to hear him out, touched his horse, galloped to
the front of his squadron, and before he had time to finish giving the
word of command, the whole squadron, sharing his feeling, was following
him. Rostov himself did not know how or why he did it. He acted as he
did when hunting, without reflecting or considering. He saw the dragoons
near and that they were galloping in disorder; he knew they could not
withstand an attack--knew there was only that moment and that if he let
it slip it would not return. The bullets were whining and whistling so
stimulatingly around him and his horse was so eager to go that he could
not restrain himself. He touched his horse, gave the word of command,
and immediately, hearing behind him the tramp of the horses of his
deployed squadron, rode at full trot downhill toward the dragoons.
Hardly had they reached the bottom of the hill before their pace
instinctively changed to a gallop, which grew faster and faster as they
drew nearer to our uhlans and the French dragoons who galloped after
them. The dragoons were now close at hand. On seeing the hussars, the
foremost began to turn, while those behind began to halt. With the same
feeling with which he had galloped across the path of a wolf, Rostov
gave rein to his Donets horse and galloped to intersect the path of the
dragoons' disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped, another who was on foot
flung himself to the ground to avoid being knocked over, and a riderless
horse fell in among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were
galloping back. Rostov, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed after
him. On the way he came upon a bush, his gallant horse cleared it, and
almost before he had righted himself in his saddle he saw that he would
immediately overtake the enemy he had selected. That Frenchman, by his
uniform an officer, was going at a gallop, crouching on his gray horse
and urging it on with his saber. In another moment Rostov's horse dashed
its breast against the hindquarters of the officer's horse, almost
knocking it over, and at the same instant Rostov, without knowing why,
raised his saber and struck the Frenchman with it.

The instant he had done this, all Rostov's animation vanished. The
officer fell, not so much from the blow--which had but slightly cut his
arm above the elbow--as from the shock to his horse and from fright.
Rostov reined in his horse, and his eyes sought his foe to see whom he
had vanquished. The French dragoon officer was hopping with one foot on
the ground, the other being caught in the stirrup. His eyes, screwed up
with fear as if he every moment expected another blow, gazed up at
Rostov with shrinking terror. His pale and mud-stained face--fair and
young, with a dimple in the chin and light-blue eyes--was not an enemy's
face at all suited to a battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face.
Before Rostov had decided what to do with him, the officer cried, "I
surrender!" He hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the
stirrup and did not remove his frightened blue eyes from Rostov's face.
Some hussars who galloped up disengaged his foot and helped him into the
saddle. On all sides, the hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was
wounded, but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up his
horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with his arms round him;
a third was being helped by an hussar to mount his horse. In front, the
French infantry were firing as they ran. The hussars galloped hastily
back with their prisoners. Rostov galloped back with the rest, aware of
an unpleasant feeling of depression in his heart. Something vague and
confused, which he could not at all account for, had come over him with
the capture of that officer and the blow he had dealt him.

Count Ostermann-Tolstoy met the returning hussars, sent for Rostov,
thanked him, and said he would report his gallant deed to the Emperor
and would recommend him for a St. George's Cross. When sent for by Count
Ostermann, Rostov, remembering that he had charged without orders, felt
sure his commander was sending for him to punish him for breach of
discipline. Ostermann's flattering words and promise of a reward should
therefore have struck him all the more pleasantly, but he still felt
that same vaguely disagreeable feeling of moral nausea. "But what on
earth is worrying me?" he asked himself as he rode back from the
general. "Ilyin? No, he's safe. Have I disgraced myself in any way? No,
that's not it." Something else, resembling remorse, tormented him. "Yes,
oh yes, that French officer with the dimple. And I remember how my arm
paused when I raised it."

Rostov saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to have
a look at his Frenchman with the dimple on his chin. He was sitting in
his foreign uniform on an hussar packhorse and looked anxiously about
him; The sword cut on his arm could scarcely be called a wound. He
glanced at Rostov with a feigned smile and waved his hand in greeting.
Rostov still had the same indefinite feeling, as of shame.

All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that Rostov,
without being dull or angry, was silent, thoughtful, and preoccupied. He
drank reluctantly, tried to remain alone, and kept turning something
over in his mind.

Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his, which to
his amazement had gained him the St. George's Cross and even given him a
reputation for bravery, and there was something he could not at all
understand. "So others are even more afraid than I am!" he thought. "So
that's all there is in what is called heroism! And did I do it for my
country's sake? And how was he to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes?
And how frightened he was! He thought that I should kill him. Why should
I kill him? My hand trembled. And they have given me a St. George's
Cross.... I can't make it out at all."

But while Nicholas was considering these questions and still could reach
no clear solution of what puzzled him so, the wheel of fortune in the
service, as often happens, turned in his favor. After the affair at
Ostrovna he was brought into notice, received command of an hussar
battalion, and when a brave officer was needed he was chosen.




CHAPTER XVI

On receiving news of Natasha's illness, the countess, though not quite
well yet and still weak, went to Moscow with Petya and the rest of the
household, and the whole family moved from Marya Dmitrievna's house to
their own and settled down in town.

Natasha's illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and for her
parents, the consideration of all that had caused the illness, her
conduct and the breaking off of her engagement, receded into the
background. She was so ill that it was impossible for them to consider
in how far she was to blame for what had happened. She could not eat or
sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made them
feel, was in danger. They could not think of anything but how to help
her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in
French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great
variety of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple
idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease
Natasha was suffering from, as no disease suffered by a live man can be
known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has
his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to
medicine--not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so
on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the
innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs. This simple
thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard
that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of their
lives was to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best
years of their lives on that business. But, above all, that thought was
kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they were really
useful, as in fact they were to the whole Rostov family. Their
usefulness did not depend on making the patient swallow substances for
the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible, as they were
given in small doses), but they were useful, necessary, and
indispensable because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and of
those who loved her--and that is why there are, and always will be,
pseudo-healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied
that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that
something should be done, which is felt by those who are suffering. They
satisfied the need seen in its most elementary form in a child, when it
wants to have a place rubbed that has been hurt. A child knocks itself
and runs at once to the arms of its mother or nurse to have the aching
spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better when this is done. The child
cannot believe that the strongest and wisest of its people have no
remedy for its pain, and the hope of relief and the expression of its
mother's sympathy while she rubs the bump comforts it. The doctors were
of use to Natasha because they kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her
that it would soon pass if only the coachman went to the chemist's in
the Arbat and got a powder and some pills in a pretty box for a ruble
and seventy kopeks, and if she took those powders in boiled water at
intervals of precisely two hours, neither more nor less.

What would Sonya and the count and countess have done, how would they
have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not been those pills
to give by the clock, the warm drinks, the chicken cutlets, and all the
other details of life ordered by the doctors, the carrying out of which
supplied an occupation and consolation to the family circle? How would
the count have borne his dearly loved daughter's illness had he not
known that it was costing him a thousand rubles, and that he would not
grudge thousands more to benefit her, or had he not known that if her
illness continued he would not grudge yet other thousands and would take
her abroad for consultations there, and had he not been able to explain
the details of how Metivier and Feller had not understood the symptoms,
but Frise had, and Mudrov had diagnosed them even better? What would the
countess have done had she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid
for not strictly obeying the doctor's orders?

"You'll never get well like that," she would say, forgetting her grief
in her vexation, "if you won't obey the doctor and take your medicine at
the right time! You mustn't trifle with it, you know, or it may turn to
pneumonia," she would go on, deriving much comfort from the utterance of
that foreign word, incomprehensible to others as well as to herself.

What would Sonya have done without the glad consciousness that she had
not undressed during the first three nights, in order to be ready to
carry out all the doctor's injunctions with precision, and that she
still kept awake at night so as not to miss the proper time when the
slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be administered?
Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to see that so many sacrifices
were being made for her sake, and to know that she had to take medicine
at certain hours, though she declared that no medicine would cure her
and that it was all nonsense. And it was even pleasant to be able to
show, by disregarding the orders, that she did not believe in medical
treatment and did not value her life.

The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and
regardless of her grief-stricken face joked with her. But when he had
gone into another room, to which the countess hurriedly followed him, he
assumed a grave air and thoughtfully shaking his head said that though
there was danger, he had hopes of the effect of this last medicine and
one must wait and see, that the malady was chiefly mental, but... And
the countess, trying to conceal the action from herself and from him,
slipped a gold coin into his hand and always returned to the patient
with a more tranquil mind.

The symptoms of Natasha's illness were that she ate little, slept
little, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said that she
could not get on without medical treatment, so they kept her in the
stifling atmosphere of the town, and the Rostovs did not move to the
country that summer of 1812.

In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders out
of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who was fond of
such things made a large collection, and in spite of being deprived of
the country life to which she was accustomed, youth prevailed. Natasha's
grief began to be overlaid by the impressions of daily life, it ceased
to press so painfully on her heart, it gradually faded into the past,
and she began to recover physically.




CHAPTER XVII

Natasha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all external
forms of pleasure--balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters--but she
never laughed without a sound of tears in her laughter. She could not
sing. As soon as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by herself, tears
choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection of those pure
times which could never return, tears of vexation that she should so
uselessly have ruined her young life which might have been so happy.
Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a blasphemy, in
face of her sorrow. Without any need of self-restraint, no wish to
coquet ever entered her head. She said and felt at that time that no man
was more to her than Nastasya Ivanovna, the buffoon. Something stood
sentinel within her and forbade her every joy. Besides, she had lost all
the old interests of her carefree girlish life that had been so full of
hope. The previous autumn, the hunting, "Uncle," and the Christmas
holidays spent with Nicholas at Otradnoe were what she recalled oftenest
and most painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even a
single day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at
the time had not deceived her--that that state of freedom and readiness
for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live
on.

It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had formerly
imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the world. But
this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself, "What next?" But
there was nothing to come. There was no joy in life, yet life was
passing. Natasha apparently tried not to be a burden or a hindrance to
anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She kept away from everyone in
the house and felt at ease only with her brother Petya. She liked to be
with him better than with the others, and when alone with him she
sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left the house and of those who came
to see them was glad to see only one person, Pierre. It would have been
impossible to treat her with more delicacy, greater care, and at the
same time more seriously than did Count Bezukhov. Natasha unconsciously
felt this delicacy and so found great pleasure in his society. But she
was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part
seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind
to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natasha
noticed embarrassment and awkwardness on his part in her presence,
especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared that
something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her. She
noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and shyness,
which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was to her.
After those involuntary words--that if he were free he would have asked
on his knees for her hand and her love--uttered at a moment when she was
so strongly agitated, Pierre never spoke to Natasha of his feelings; and
it seemed plain to her that those words, which had then so comforted
her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words are spoken to comfort
a crying child. It was not because Pierre was a married man, but because
Natasha felt very strongly with him that moral barrier the absence of
which she had experienced with Kuragin that it never entered her head
that the relations between him and herself could lead to love on her
part, still less on his, or even to the kind of tender, self-conscious,
romantic friendship between a man and a woman of which she had known
several instances.

Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agrafena Ivanovna Belova, a
country neighbor of the Rostovs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions at
the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natasha should fast
and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natasha gladly welcomed the idea.
Despite the doctor's orders that she should not go out early in the
morning, Natasha insisted on fasting and preparing for the sacrament,
not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostov family by attending
three services in their own house, but as Agrafena Ivanovna did, by
going to church every day for a week and not once missing Vespers,
Matins, or Mass.

The countess was pleased with Natasha's zeal; after the poor results of
the medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that prayer
might help her daughter more than medicines and, though not without fear
and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to Natasha's wish and
entrusted her to Belova. Agrafena Ivanovna used to come to wake Natasha
at three in the morning, but generally found her already awake. She was
afraid of being late for Matins. Hastily washing, and meekly putting on
her shabbiest dress and an old mantilla, Natasha, shivering in the fresh
air, went out into the deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn.
By Agrafena Ivanovna's advice Natasha prepared herself not in their own
parish, but at a church where, according to the devout Agrafena
Ivanovna, the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were
never many people in the church; Natasha always stood beside Belova in
the customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the
screen before the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her, of
humility before something great and incomprehensible, seized her when at
that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the Virgin
illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the morning light
falling from the window, she listened to the words of the service which
she tried to follow with understanding. When she understood them her
personal feeling became interwoven in the prayers with shades of its
own. When she did not understand, it was sweeter still to think that the
wish to understand everything is pride, that it is impossible to
understand all, that it is only necessary to believe and to commit
oneself to God, whom she felt guiding her soul at those moments. She
crossed herself, bowed low, and when she did not understand, in horror
at her own vileness, simply asked God to forgive her everything,
everything, to have mercy upon her. The prayers to which she surrendered
herself most of all were those of repentance. On her way home at an
early hour when she met no one but bricklayers going to work or men
sweeping the street, and everybody within the houses was still asleep,
Natasha experienced a feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility of
correcting her faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of
happiness.

During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every
day. And the happiness of taking communion, or "communing" as Agrafena
Ivanovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natasha
so great that she felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday.

But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when, dressed in
white muslin, she returned home after communion, for the first time for
many months she felt calm and not oppressed by the thought of the life
that lay before her.

The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to continue the
powders he had prescribed a fortnight previously.

"She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening," said he,
evidently sincerely satisfied with his success. "Only, please be
particular about it.

"Be quite easy," he continued playfully, as he adroitly took the gold
coin in his palm. "She will soon be singing and frolicking about. The
last medicine has done her a very great deal of good. She has freshened
up very much."

The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face, looked down at her
nails and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing room.




CHAPTER XVIII

At the beginning of July more and more disquieting reports about the war
began to spread in Moscow; people spoke of an appeal by the Emperor to
the people, and of his coming himself from the army to Moscow. And as up
to the eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had been received,
exaggerated reports became current about them and about the position of
Russia. It was said that the Emperor was leaving the army because it was
in danger, it was said that Smolensk had surrendered, that Napoleon had
an army of a million and only a miracle could save Russia.

On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the manifesto was received
but was not yet in print, and Pierre, who was at the Rostovs', promised
to come to dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a copy of the manifesto
and appeal, which he would obtain from Count Rostopchin.

That Sunday, the Rostovs went to Mass at the Razumovskis' private chapel
as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o'clock, when the Rostovs
got out of their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air, the shouts of
hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the crowd, the dusty leaves
of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of the band and the white
trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the rattling of wheels on
the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot sunshine were all full of that
summer languor, that content and discontent with the present, which is
most strongly felt on a bright, hot day in town. All the Moscow
notabilities, all the Rostovs' acquaintances, were at the Razumovskis'
chapel, for, as if expecting something to happen, many wealthy families
who usually left town for their country estates had not gone away that
summer. As Natasha, at her mother's side, passed through the crowd
behind a liveried footman who cleared the way for them, she heard a
young man speaking about her in too loud a whisper.

"That's Rostova, the one who..."

"She's much thinner, but all the same she's pretty!"

She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kuragin and Bolkonski. But
she was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that everyone who
looked at her was thinking only of what had happened to her. With a
sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she found herself in
a crowd, Natasha in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace walked-
-as women can walk--with the more repose and stateliness the greater the
pain and shame in her soul. She knew for certain that she was pretty,
but this no longer gave her satisfaction as it used to. On the contrary
it tormented her more than anything else of late, and particularly so on
this bright, hot summer day in town. "It's Sunday again--another week
past," she thought, recalling that she had been here the Sunday before,
"and always the same life that is no life, and the same surroundings in
which it used to be so easy to live. I'm pretty, I'm young, and I know
that now I am good. I used to be bad, but now I know I am good," she
thought, "but yet my best years are slipping by and are no good to
anyone." She stood by her mother's side and exchanged nods with
acquaintances near her. From habit she scrutinized the ladies' dresses,
condemned the bearing of a lady standing close by who was not crossing
herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she thought with
vexation that she was herself being judged and was judging others, and
suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt horrified at her own
vileness, horrified that the former purity of her soul was again lost to
her.

A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the service with that
mild solemnity which has so elevating and soothing an effect on the
souls of the worshipers. The gates of the sanctuary screen were closed,
the curtain was slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft mysterious voice
pronounced some words. Tears, the cause of which she herself did not
understand, made Natasha's breast heave, and a joyous but oppressive
feeling agitated her.

"Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I may grow good
forever, forever!" she pleaded.

The deacon came out onto the raised space before the altar screen and,
holding his thumb extended, drew his long hair from under his dalmatic
and, making the sign of the cross on his breast, began in a loud and
solemn voice to recite the words of the prayer...

"In peace let us pray unto the Lord."

"As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity, united
by brotherly love--let us pray!" thought Natasha.

"For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our souls."

"For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell above us," prayed
Natasha.

When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her brother and
Denisov. When they prayed for all traveling by land and sea, she
remembered Prince Andrew, prayed for him, and asked God to forgive her
all the wrongs she had done him. When they prayed for those who love us,
she prayed for the members of her own family, her father and mother and
Sonya, realizing for the first time how wrongly she had acted toward
them, and feeling all the strength of her love for them. When they
prayed for those who hate us, she tried to think of her enemies and
people who hated her, in order to pray for them. She included among her
enemies the creditors and all who had business dealings with her father,
and always at the thought of enemies and those who hated her she
remembered Anatole who had done her so much harm--and though he did not
hate her she gladly prayed for him as for an enemy. Only at prayer did
she feel able to think clearly and calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole,
as men for whom her feelings were as nothing compared with her awe and
devotion to God. When they prayed for the Imperial family and the Synod,
she bowed very low and made the sign of the cross, saying to herself
that even if she did not understand, still she could not doubt, and at
any rate loved the governing Synod and prayed for it.

When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over his
breast and said, "Let us commit ourselves and our whole lives to Christ
the Lord!"

"Commit ourselves to God," Natasha inwardly repeated. "Lord God, I
submit myself to Thy will!" she thought. "I want nothing, wish for
nothing; teach me what to do and how to use my will! Take me, take me!"
prayed Natasha, with impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing
herself but letting her slender arms hang down as if expecting some
invisible power at any moment to take her and deliver her from herself,
from her regrets, desires, remorse, hopes, and sins.

The countess looked round several times at her daughter's softened face
and shining eyes and prayed God to help her.

Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in the usual order
Natasha knew so well, the deacon brought out a small stool, the one he
knelt on when praying on Trinity Sunday, and placed it before the doors
of the sanctuary screen. The priest came out with his purple velvet
biretta on his head, adjusted his hair, and knelt down with an effort.
Everybody followed his example and they looked at one another in
surprise. Then came the prayer just received from the Synod--a prayer
for the deliverance of Russia from hostile invasion.

"Lord God of might, God of our salvation!" began the priest in that
voice, clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in which only the Slav clergy
read and which acts so irresistibly on a Russian heart.

"Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this day in mercy and
blessing on Thy humble people, and graciously hear us, spare us, and
have mercy upon us! This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay waste
the whole world, rises against us; these lawless men are gathered
together to overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear Jerusalem, Thy
beloved Russia; to defile Thy temples, to overthrow Thine altars, and to
desecrate our holy shrines. How long, O Lord, how long shall the wicked
triumph? How long shall they wield unlawful power?

"Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen with Thy might our
most gracious sovereign lord, the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich; be
mindful of his uprightness and meekness, reward him according to his
righteousness, and let it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel! Bless his
counsels, his undertakings, and his work; strengthen his kingdom by
Thine almighty hand, and give him victory over his enemy, even as Thou
gavest Moses the victory over Amalek, Gideon over Midian, and David over
Goliath. Preserve his army, put a bow of brass in the hands of those who
have armed themselves in Thy Name, and gird their loins with strength
for the fight. Take up the spear and shield and arise to help us;
confound and put to shame those who have devised evil against us, may
they be before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust before the
wind, and may Thy mighty Angel confound them and put them to flight; may
they be ensnared when they know it not, and may the plots they have laid
in secret be turned against them; let them fall before Thy servants'
feet and be laid low by our hosts! Lord, Thou art able to save both
great and small; Thou art God, and man cannot prevail against Thee!

"God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy and loving-kindness
which are from of old; turn not Thy face from us, but be gracious to our
unworthiness, and in Thy great goodness and Thy many mercies regard not
our transgressions and iniquities! Create in us a clean heart and renew
a right spirit within us, strengthen us all in Thy faith, fortify our
hope, inspire us with true love one for another, arm us with unity of
spirit in the righteous defense of the heritage Thou gavest to us and to
our fathers, and let not the scepter of the wicked be exalted against
the destiny of those Thou hast sanctified.

"O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom we put our trust, let us
not be confounded in our hope of Thy mercy, and give us a token of Thy
blessing, that those who hate us and our Orthodox faith may see it and
be put to shame and perish, and may all the nations know that Thou art
the Lord and we are Thy people. Show Thy mercy upon us this day, O Lord,
and grant us Thy salvation; make the hearts of Thy servants to rejoice
in Thy mercy; smite down our enemies and destroy them swiftly beneath
the feet of Thy faithful servants! For Thou art the defense, the succor,
and the victory of them that put their trust in Thee, and to Thee be all
glory, to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, now and forever, world without
end. Amen."

In Natasha's receptive condition of soul this prayer affected her
strongly. She listened to every word about the victory of Moses over
Amalek, of Gideon over Midian, and of David over Goliath, and about the
destruction of "Thy Jerusalem," and she prayed to God with the
tenderness and emotion with which her heart was overflowing, but without
fully understanding what she was asking of God in that prayer. She
shared with all her heart in the prayer for the spirit of righteousness,
for the strengthening of the heart by faith and hope, and its animation
by love. But she could not pray that her enemies might be trampled under
foot when but a few minutes before she had been wishing she had more of
them that she might pray for them. But neither could she doubt the
righteousness of the prayer that was being read on bended knees. She
felt in her heart a devout and tremulous awe at the thought of the
punishment that overtakes men for their sins, and especially of her own
sins, and she prayed to God to forgive them all, and her too, and to
give them all, and her too, peace and happiness. And it seemed to her
that God heard her prayer.




CHAPTER XIX

From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with Natasha's
grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that seemed to
be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was appearing on his own
horizon--from that day the problem of the vanity and uselessness of all
earthly things, that had incessantly tormented him, no longer presented
itself. That terrible question "Why?" "Wherefore?" which had come to him
amid every occupation, was now replaced, not by another question or by a
reply to the former question, but by her image. When he listened to, or
himself took part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of
human baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did not
ask himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so
transient and incomprehensible--but he remembered her as he had last
seen her, and all his doubts vanished--not because she had answered the
questions that had haunted him, but because his conception of her
transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of spiritual
activity in which no one could be justified or guilty--a realm of beauty
and love which it was worth living for. Whatever worldly baseness
presented itself to him, he said to himself:

"Well, supposing N. N. swindled the country and the Tsar, and the
country and the Tsar confer honors upon him, what does that matter? She
smiled at me yesterday and asked me to come again, and I love her, and
no one will ever know it." And his soul felt calm and peaceful.

Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the same idle and
dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the Rostovs'
there were other hours he had to spend somehow, and the habits and
acquaintances he had made in Moscow formed a current that bore him along
irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more disquieting reports came
from the seat of war and Natasha's health began to improve and she no
longer aroused in him the former feeling of careful pity, an ever-
increasing restlessness, which he could not explain, took possession of
him. He felt that the condition he was in could not continue long, that
a catastrophe was coming which would change his whole life, and he
impatiently sought everywhere for signs of that approaching catastrophe.
One of his brother Masons had revealed to Pierre the following prophecy
concerning Napoleon, drawn from the Revelation of St. John.

In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said:

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the
beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred
threescore and six.

And in the fifth verse of the same chapter:

And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and
blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two
months.

The French alphabet, written out with the same numerical values as the
Hebrew, in which the first nine letters denote units and the others
tens, will have the following significance:


a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   i   k 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9
10 l    m    n    o    p    q    r    s 20   30   40   50   60   70   80
90 t    u    v    w    x    y 100  110  120  130  140  150 z 160

Writing the words L'Empereur Napoleon in numbers, it appears that the
sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon was therefore the beast foretold
in the Apocalypse. Moreover, by applying the same system to the words
quarante-deux, * which was the term allowed to the beast that "spoke
great things and blasphemies," the same number 666 was obtained; from
which it followed that the limit fixed for Napoleon's power had come in
the year 1812 when the French emperor was forty-two. This prophecy
pleased Pierre very much and he often asked himself what would put an
end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon, and tried by the
same system of using letters as numbers and adding them up, to find an
answer to the question that engrossed him. He wrote the words L'Empereur
Alexandre, La nation russe and added up their numbers, but the sums were
either more or less than 666. Once when making such calculations he
wrote down his own name in French, Comte Pierre Besouhoff, but the sum
of the numbers did not come right. Then he changed the spelling,
substituting a z for the s and adding de and the article le, still
without obtaining the desired result. Then it occurred to him: if the
answer to the question were contained in his name, his nationality would
also be given in the answer. So he wrote Le russe Besuhof and adding up
the numbers got 671. This was only five too much, and five was
represented by e, the very letter elided from the article le before the
word Empereur. By omitting the e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the
answer he sought. L'russe Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited him.
How, or by what means, he was connected with the great event foretold in
the Apocalypse he did not know, but he did not doubt that connection for
a moment. His love for Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the
comet, 666, L'Empereur Napoleon, and L'russe Besuhof--all this had to
mature and culminate, to lift him out of that spellbound, petty sphere
of Moscow habits in which he felt himself held captive and lead him to a
great achievement and great happiness.


* Forty-two.

On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was read, Pierre had
promised the Rostovs to bring them, from Count Rostopchin whom he knew
well, both the appeal to the people and the news from the army. In the
morning, when he went to call at Rostopchin's he met there a courier
fresh from the army, an acquaintance of his own, who often danced at
Moscow balls.

"Do, please, for heaven's sake, relieve me of something!" said the
courier. "I have a sackful of letters to parents."

Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostov to his father. Pierre
took that letter, and Rostopchin also gave him the Emperor's appeal to
Moscow, which had just been printed, the last army orders, and his own
most recent bulletin. Glancing through the army orders, Pierre found in
one of them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and rewarded, the name of
Nicholas Rostov, awarded a St. George's Cross of the Fourth Class for
courage shown in the Ostrovna affair, and in the same order the name of
Prince Andrew Bolkonski, appointed to the command of a regiment of
Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind the Rostovs of Bolkonski,
Pierre could not refrain from making them happy by the news of their
son's having received a decoration, so he sent that printed army order
and Nicholas' letter to the Rostovs, keeping the appeal, the bulletin,
and the other orders to take with him when he went to dinner.

His conversation with Count Rostopchin and the latter's tone of anxious
hurry, the meeting with the courier who talked casually of how badly
things were going in the army, the rumors of the discovery of spies in
Moscow and of a leaflet in circulation stating that Napoleon promised to
be in both the Russian capitals by the autumn, and the talk of the
Emperor's being expected to arrive next day--all aroused with fresh
force that feeling of agitation and expectation in Pierre which he had
been conscious of ever since the appearance of the comet, and especially
since the beginning of the war.

He had long been thinking of entering the army and would have done so
had he not been hindered, first, by his membership of the Society of
Freemasons to which he was bound by oath and which preached perpetual
peace and the abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact that when he
saw the great mass of Muscovites who had donned uniform and were talking
patriotism, he somehow felt ashamed to take the step. But the chief
reason for not carrying out his intention to enter the army lay in the
vague idea that he was L'russe Besuhof who had the number of the beast,
666; that his part in the great affair of setting a limit to the power
of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous things had been
predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought not to undertake
anything, but wait for what was bound to come to pass.




CHAPTER XX

A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostovs that day, as usual
on Sundays.

Pierre came early so as to find them alone.

He had grown so stout this year that he would have been abnormal had he
not been so tall, so broad of limb, and so strong that he carried his
bulk with evident ease.

He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something. His coachman did
not even ask whether he was to wait. He knew that when his master was at
the Rostovs' he stayed till midnight. The Rostovs' footman rushed
eagerly forward to help him off with his cloak and take his hat and
stick. Pierre, from club habit, always left both hat and stick in the
anteroom.

The first person he saw in the house was Natasha. Even before he saw
her, while taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practicing solfa
exercises in the music room. He knew that she had not sung since her
illness, and so the sound of her voice surprised and delighted him. He
opened the door softly and saw her, in the lilac dress she had worn at
church, walking about the room singing. She had her back to him when he
opened the door, but when, turning quickly, she saw his broad, surprised
face, she blushed and came rapidly up to him.

"I want to try to sing again," she said, adding as if by way of excuse,
"it is, at least, something to do."

"That's capital!"

"How glad I am you've come! I am so happy today," she said, with the old
animation Pierre had not seen in her for a long time. "You know Nicholas
has received a St. George's Cross? I am so proud of him."

"Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don't want to interrupt you,"
he added, and was about to go to the drawing room.

Natasha stopped him.

"Count, is it wrong of me to sing?" she said blushing, and fixing her
eyes inquiringly on him.

"No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do you ask me?"

"I don't know myself," Natasha answered quickly, "but I should not like
to do anything you disapproved of. I believe in you completely. You
don't know how important you are to me, how much you've done for me...."
She spoke rapidly and did not notice how Pierre flushed at her words. "I
saw in that same army order that he, Bolkonski" (she whispered the name
hastily), "is in Russia, and in the army again. What do you think?"--she
was speaking hurriedly, evidently afraid her strength might fail her--
"Will he ever forgive me? Will he not always have a bitter feeling
toward me? What do you think? What do you think?"

"I think..." Pierre replied, "that he has nothing to forgive.... If I
were in his place..."

By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried back to the day
when, trying to comfort her, he had said that if he were not himself but
the best man in the world and free, he would ask on his knees for her
hand; and the same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love took possession
of him and the same words rose to his lips. But she did not give him
time to say them.

"Yes, you... you..." she said, uttering the word you rapturously--
"that's a different thing. I know no one kinder, more generous, or
better than you; nobody could be! Had you not been there then, and now
too, I don't know what would have become of me, because..."

Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted her music
before her eyes, began singing again, and again began walking up and
down the room.

Just then Petya came running in from the drawing room.

Petya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips and
resembled Natasha. He was preparing to enter the university, but he and
his friend Obolenski had lately, in secret, agreed to join the hussars.

Petya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake about this affair. He
had asked Pierre to find out whether he would be accepted in the
hussars.

Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not listening to what Petya
was saying.

Petya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.

"Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirilych, for heaven's sake! You are my
only hope," said Petya.

"Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I'll mention it, I'll bring it
all up today."

"Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?" asked the old count. "The
countess has been to Mass at the Razumovskis' and heard the new prayer.
She says it's very fine."

"Yes, I've got it," said Pierre. "The Emperor is to be here tomorrow...
there's to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the nobility, and they are
talking of a levy of ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me congratulate
you!"

"Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the army?"

"We are again retreating. They say we're already near Smolensk," replied
Pierre.

"O Lord, O Lord!" exclaimed the count. "Where is the manifesto?"

"The Emperor's appeal? Oh yes!"

Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but could not find
them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the hand of the countess who
entered the room and glanced uneasily around, evidently expecting
Natasha, who had left off singing but had not yet come into the drawing
room.

"On my word, I don't know what I've done with it," he said.

"There he is, always losing everything!" remarked the countess.

Natasha entered with a softened and agitated expression of face and sat
down looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered, Pierre's
features, which had been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and while still
searching for the papers he glanced at her several times.

"No, really! I'll drive home, I must have left them there. I'll
certainly..."

"But you'll be late for dinner."

"Oh! And my coachman has gone."

But Sonya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom, had
found them in Pierre's hat, where he had carefully tucked them under the
lining. Pierre was about to begin reading.

"No, after dinner," said the old count, evidently expecting much
enjoyment from that reading.

At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health of the new
chevalier of St. George, Shinshin told them the town news, of the
illness of the old Georgian princess, of Metivier's disappearance from
Moscow, and of how some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchin and
accused of being a French "spyer" (so Count Rostopchin had told the
story), and how Rostopchin let him go and assured the people that he was
"not a spire at all, but only an old German ruin."

"People are being arrested..." said the count. "I've told the countess
she should not speak French so much. It's not the time for it now."

"And have you heard?" Shinshin asked. "Prince Golitsyn has engaged a
master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak French in
the streets."

"And how about you, Count Peter Kirilych? If they call up the militia,
you too will have to mount a horse," remarked the old count, addressing
Pierre.

Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming not
to grasp what was said. He looked at the count.

"Oh yes, the war," he said. "No! What sort of warrior should I make? And
yet everything is so strange, so strange! I can't make it out. I don't
know, I am very far from having military tastes, but in these times no
one can answer for himself."

After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an easy chair and
with a serious face asked Sonya, who was considered an excellent reader,
to read the appeal.

"To Moscow, our ancient Capital!

"The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He
comes to despoil our beloved country."

Sonya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count listened
with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.

Natasha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father and
now at Pierre.

Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The countess
shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn expression in
the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that the danger
threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshin, with a sarcastic
smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make fun of anything that
gave him the opportunity: Sonya's reading, any remark of the count's, or
even the manifesto itself should no better pretext present itself.

After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes the
Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious nobility,
Sonya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the attention that was
being paid to her, read the last words:

"We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that Capital
and in other parts of our realm for consultation, and for the direction
of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy's path and those
freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the ruin he
hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may Europe delivered
from bondage glorify the name of Russia!"

"Yes, that's it!" cried the count, opening his moist eyes and sniffing
repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his nose; and he
added, "Let the Emperor but say the word and we'll sacrifice everything
and begrudge nothing."

Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on the
count's patriotism, Natasha jumped up from her place and ran to her
father.

"What a darling our Papa is!" she cried, kissing him, and she again
looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned to her
with her better spirits.

"There! Here's a patriot for you!" said Shinshin.

"Not a patriot at all, but simply..." Natasha replied in an injured
tone. "Everything seems funny to you, but this isn't at all a joke...."

"A joke indeed!" put in the count. "Let him but say the word and we'll
all go.... We're not Germans!"

"But did you notice, it says, 'for consultation'?" said Pierre.

"Never mind what it's for...."

At this moment, Petya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came up
to his father with a very flushed face and said in his breaking voice
that was now deep and now shrill:

"Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it's as you please,
but I say definitely that you must let me enter the army, because I
can't... that's all...."

The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped her hands, and
turned angrily to her husband.

"That comes of your talking!" said she.

But the count had already recovered from his excitement.

"Come, come!" said he. "Here's a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You must
study."

"It's not nonsense, Papa. Fedya Obolenski is younger than I, and he's
going too. Besides, all the same I can't study now when..." Petya
stopped short, flushed till he perspired, but still got out the words,
"when our Fatherland is in danger."

"That'll do, that'll do--nonsense...."

"But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything."

"Petya! Be quiet, I tell you!" cried the count, with a glance at his
wife, who had turned pale and was staring fixedly at her son.

"And I tell you--Peter Kirilych here will also tell you..."

"Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother's milk has hardly dried on your lips
and you want to go into the army! There, there, I tell you," and the
count moved to go out of the room, taking the papers, probably to reread
them in his study before having a nap.

"Well, Peter Kirilych, let's go and have a smoke," he said.

Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natasha's unwontedly brilliant eyes,
continually glancing at him with a more than cordial look, had reduced
him to this condition.

"No, I think I'll go home."

"Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us.... You don't often
come nowadays as it is, and this girl of mine," said the count good-
naturedly, pointing to Natasha, "only brightens up when you're here."

"Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business..." said
Pierre hurriedly.

"Well, then, au revoir!" said the count, and went out of the room.

"Why are you going? Why are you upset?" asked Natasha, and she looked
challengingly into Pierre's eyes.

"Because I love you!" was what he wanted to say, but he did not say it,
and only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes.

"Because it is better for me to come less often... because... No, simply
I have business...."

"Why? No, tell me!" Natasha began resolutely and suddenly stopped.

They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He tried
to smile but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he silently
kissed her hand and went out.

Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostovs' any more.




CHAPTER XXI

After the definite refusal he had received, Petya went to his room and
there locked himself in and wept bitterly. When he came in to tea,
silent, morose, and with tear-stained face, everybody pretended not to
notice anything.

Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several of the Rostovs'
domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him. That
morning Petya was a long time dressing and arranging his hair and collar
to look like a grown-up man. He frowned before his looking glass,
gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without saying a word
to anyone, took his cap and left the house by the back door, trying to
avoid notice. Petya decided to go straight to where the Emperor was and
to explain frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting (he imagined the Emperor
to be always surrounded by gentlemen-in-waiting) that he, Count Rostov,
in spite of his youth wished to serve his country; that youth could be
no hindrance to loyalty, and that he was ready to... While dressing,
Petya had prepared many fine things he meant to say to the gentleman-in-
waiting.

It was on the very fact of being so young that Petya counted for success
in reaching the Emperor--he even thought how surprised everyone would be
at his youthfulness--and yet in the arrangement of his collar and hair
and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to appear a grown-up man.
But the farther he went and the more his attention was diverted by the
ever-increasing crowds moving toward the Kremlin, the less he remembered
to walk with the sedateness and deliberation of a man. As he approached
the Kremlin he even began to avoid being crushed and resolutely stuck
out his elbows in a menacing way. But within the Trinity Gateway he was
so pressed to the wall by people who probably were unaware of the
patriotic intentions with which he had come that in spite of all his
determination he had to give in, and stop while carriages passed in,
rumbling beneath the archway. Beside Petya stood a peasant woman, a
footman, two tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing some
time in the gateway, Petya tried to move forward in front of the others
without waiting for all the carriages to pass, and he began resolutely
working his way with his elbows, but the woman just in front of him, who
was the first against whom he directed his efforts, angrily shouted at
him:

"What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don't you see we're all
standing still? Then why push?"

"Anybody can shove," said the footman, and also began working his elbows
to such effect that he pushed Petya into a very filthy corner of the
gateway.

Petya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and pulled up the damp
collar which he had arranged so well at home to seem like a man's.

He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared that if he were
now to approach the gentlemen-in-waiting in that plight he would not be
admitted to the Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten oneself up or
move to another place, because of the crowd. One of the generals who
drove past was an acquaintance of the Rostovs', and Petya thought of
asking his help, but came to the conclusion that that would not be a
manly thing to do. When the carriages had all passed in, the crowd,
carrying Petya with it, streamed forward into the Kremlin Square which
was already full of people. There were people not only in the square,
but everywhere--on the slopes and on the roofs. As soon as Petya found
himself in the square he clearly heard the sound of bells and the joyous
voices of the crowd that filled the whole Kremlin.

For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all heads were bared,
and everyone rushed forward in one direction. Petya was being pressed so
that he could scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted, "Hurrah! hurrah!
hurrah!" Petya stood on tiptoe and pushed and pinched, but could see
nothing except the people about him.

All the faces bore the same expression of excitement and enthusiasm. A
tradesman's wife standing beside Petya sobbed, and the tears ran down
her cheeks.

"Father! Angel! Dear one!" she kept repeating, wiping away her tears
with her fingers.

"Hurrah!" was heard on all sides.

For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made another rush
forward.

Quite beside himself, Petya, clinching his teeth and rolling his eyes
ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his way and shouting "hurrah!" as
if he were prepared that instant to kill himself and everyone else, but
on both sides of him other people with similarly ferocious faces pushed
forward and everybody shouted "hurrah!"

"So this is what the Emperor is!" thought Petya. "No, I can't petition
him myself--that would be too bold." But in spite of this he continued
to struggle desperately forward, and from between the backs of those in
front he caught glimpses of an open space with a strip of red cloth
spread out on it; but just then the crowd swayed back--the police in
front were pushing back those who had pressed too close to the
procession: the Emperor was passing from the palace to the Cathedral of
the Assumption--and Petya unexpectedly received such a blow on his side
and ribs and was squeezed so hard that suddenly everything grew dim
before his eyes and he lost consciousness. When he came to himself, a
man of clerical appearance with a tuft of gray hair at the back of his
head and wearing a shabby blue cassock--probably a church clerk and
chanter--was holding him under the arm with one hand while warding off
the pressure of the crowd with the other.

"You've crushed the young gentleman!" said the clerk. "What are you up
to? Gently!... They've crushed him, crushed him!"

The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd spread
out again more evenly, and the clerk led Petya--pale and breathless--to
the Tsar-cannon. Several people were sorry for Petya, and suddenly a
crowd turned toward him and pressed round him. Those who stood nearest
him attended to him, unbuttoned his coat, seated him on the raised
platform of the cannon, and reproached those others (whoever they might
be) who had crushed him.

"One might easily get killed that way! What do they mean by it? Killing
people! Poor dear, he's as white as a sheet!"--various voices were heard
saying.

Petya soon came to himself, the color returned to his face, the pain had
passed, and at the cost of that temporary unpleasantness he had obtained
a place by the cannon from where he hoped to see the Emperor who would
be returning that way. Petya no longer thought of presenting his
petition. If he could only see the Emperor he would be happy!

While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of the Assumption--it
was a combined service of prayer on the occasion of the Emperor's
arrival and of thanksgiving for the conclusion of peace with the Turks--
the crowd outside spread out and hawkers appeared, selling kvas,
gingerbread, and poppyseed sweets (of which Petya was particularly
fond), and ordinary conversation could again be heard. A tradesman's
wife was showing a rent in her shawl and telling how much the shawl had
cost; another was saying that all silk goods had now got dear. The clerk
who had rescued Petya was talking to a functionary about the priests who
were officiating that day with the bishop. The clerk several times used
the word "plenary" (of the service), a word Petya did not understand.
Two young citizens were joking with some serf girls who were cracking
nuts. All these conversations, especially the joking with the girls,
were such as might have had a particular charm for Petya at his age, but
they did not interest him now. He sat on his elevation--the pedestal of
the cannon--still agitated as before by the thought of the Emperor and
by his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he had experienced
when he was being crushed, together with that of rapture, still further
intensified his sense of the importance of the occasion.

Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard from the embankment,
to celebrate the signing of peace with the Turks, and the crowd rushed
impetuously toward the embankment to watch the firing. Petya too would
have run there, but the clerk who had taken the young gentleman under
his protection stopped him. The firing was still proceeding when
officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-waiting came running out of the
cathedral, and after them others in a more leisurely manner: caps were
again raised, and those who had run to look at the cannon ran back
again. At last four men in uniforms and sashes emerged from the
cathedral doors. "Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the crowd again.

"Which is he? Which?" asked Petya in a tearful voice, of those around
him, but no one answered him, everybody was too excited; and Petya,
fixing on one of those four men, whom he could not clearly see for the
tears of joy that filled his eyes, concentrated all his enthusiasm on
him--though it happened not to be the Emperor--frantically shouted
"Hurrah!" and resolved that tomorrow, come what might, he would join the
army.

The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the palace, and began
to disperse. It was already late, and Petya had not eaten anything and
was drenched with perspiration, yet he did not go home but stood with
that diminishing, but still considerable, crowd before the palace while
the Emperor dined--looking in at the palace windows, expecting he knew
not what, and envying alike the notables he saw arriving at the entrance
to dine with the Emperor and the court footmen who served at table,
glimpses of whom could be seen through the windows.

While the Emperor was dining, Valuev, looking out of the window, said:

"The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty again."

The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor, munching a biscuit, rose
and went out onto the balcony. The people, with Petya among them, rushed
toward the balcony.

"Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!..." cried the crowd, and Petya with
it, and again the women and men of weaker mold, Petya among them, wept
with joy.

A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding in his hand broke
off, fell on the balcony parapet, and then to the ground. A coachman in
a jerkin, who stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched it up. Several
people in the crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this the Emperor had
a plateful of biscuits brought him and began throwing them down from the
balcony. Petya's eyes grew bloodshot, and still more excited by the
danger of being crushed, he rushed at the biscuits. He did not know why,
but he had to have a biscuit from the Tsar's hand and he felt that he
must not give way. He sprang forward and upset an old woman who was
catching at a biscuit; the old woman did not consider herself defeated
though she was lying on the ground--she grabbed at some biscuits but her
hand did not reach them. Petya pushed her hand away with his knee,
seized a biscuit, and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted
"Hurrah!" with a voice already hoarse.

The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of the crowd began
to disperse.

"There! I said if only we waited--and so it was!" was being joyfully
said by various people.

Happy as Petya was, he felt sad at having to go home knowing that all
the enjoyment of that day was over. He did not go straight home from the
Kremlin, but called on his friend Obolenski, who was fifteen and was
also entering the regiment. On returning home Petya announced resolutely
and firmly that if he was not allowed to enter the service he would run
away. And next day, Count Ilya Rostov--though he had not yet quite
yielded--went to inquire how he could arrange for Petya to serve where
there would be least danger.




CHAPTER XXII

Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense number of carriages
were standing outside the Sloboda Palace.

The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility and gentry in
their uniforms, in the second bearded merchants in full-skirted coats of
blue cloth and wearing medals. In the noblemen's hall there was an
incessant movement and buzz of voices. The chief magnates sat on high-
backed chairs at a large table under the portrait of the Emperor, but
most of the gentry were strolling about the room.

All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the club or in their own
houses, were in uniform--some in that of Catherine's day, others in that
of Emperor Paul, others again in the new uniforms of Alexander's time or
the ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the general characteristic of
being in uniform imparted something strange and fantastic to these
diverse and familiar personalities, both old and young. The old men,
dim-eyed, toothless, bald, sallow, and bloated, or gaunt and wrinkled,
were especially striking. For the most part they sat quietly in their
places and were silent, or, if they walked about and talked, attached
themselves to someone younger. On all these faces, as on the faces of
the crowd Petya had seen in the Square, there was a striking
contradiction: the general expectation of a solemn event, and at the
same time the everyday interests in a boston card party, Peter the cook,
Zinaida Dmitrievna's health, and so on.

Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning in a nobleman's
uniform that had become too tight for him. He was agitated; this
extraordinary gathering not only of nobles but also of the merchant-
class--les etats generaux (States-General)--evoked in him a whole series
of ideas he had long laid aside but which were deeply graven in his
soul: thoughts of the Contrat Social and the French Revolution. The
words that had struck him in the Emperor's appeal--that the sovereign
was coming to the capital for consultation with his people--strengthened
this idea. And imagining that in this direction something important
which he had long awaited was drawing near, he strolled about watching
and listening to conversations, but nowhere finding any confirmation of
the ideas that occupied him.

The Emperor's manifesto was read, evoking enthusiasm, and then all moved
about discussing it. Besides the ordinary topics of conversation, Pierre
heard questions of where the marshals of the nobility were to stand when
the Emperor entered, when a ball should be given in the Emperor's honor,
whether they should group themselves by districts or by whole
provinces... and so on; but as soon as the war was touched on, or what
the nobility had been convened for, the talk became undecided and
indefinite. Then all preferred listening to speaking.

A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a retired
naval officer, was speaking in one of the rooms, and a small crowd was
pressing round him. Pierre went up to the circle that had formed round
the speaker and listened. Count Ilya Rostov, in a military uniform of
Catherine's time, was sauntering with a pleasant smile among the crowd,
with all of whom he was acquainted. He too approached that group and
listened with a kindly smile and nods of approval, as he always did, to
what the speaker was saying. The retired naval man was speaking very
boldly, as was evident from the expression on the faces of the listeners
and from the fact that some people Pierre knew as the meekest and
quietest of men walked away disapprovingly or expressed disagreement
with him. Pierre pushed his way into the middle of the group, listened,
and convinced himself that the man was indeed a liberal, but of views
quite different from his own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly
sonorous, musical, and aristocratic baritone voice, pleasantly
swallowing his r's and generally slurring his consonants: the voice of a
man calling out to his servant, "Heah! Bwing me my pipe!" It was
indicative of dissipation and the exercise of authority.

"What if the Smolensk people have offahd to waise militia for the
Empewah? Ah we to take Smolensk as our patte'n? If the noble awistocwacy
of the pwovince of Moscow thinks fit, it can show its loyalty to our
sov'weign the Empewah in other ways. Have we fo'gotten the waising of
the militia in the yeah 'seven? All that did was to enwich the pwiests'
sons and thieves and wobbahs...."

Count Ilya Rostov smiled blandly and nodded approval.

"And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at all! It only wuined
our farming! Bettah have another conscwiption... o' ou' men will wetu'n
neithah soldiers no' peasants, and we'll get only depwavity fwom them.
The nobility don't gwudge theah lives--evewy one of us will go and bwing
in more wecwuits, and the sov'weign" (that was the way he referred to
the Emperor) "need only say the word and we'll all die fo' him!" added
the orator with animation.

Count Rostov's mouth watered with pleasure and he nudged Pierre, but
Pierre wanted to speak himself. He pushed forward, feeling stirred, but
not yet sure what stirred him or what he would say. Scarcely had he
opened his mouth when one of the senators, a man without a tooth in his
head, with a shrewd though angry expression, standing near the first
speaker, interrupted him. Evidently accustomed to managing debates and
to maintaining an argument, he began in low but distinct tones:

"I imagine, sir," said he, mumbling with his toothless mouth, "that we
have been summoned here not to discuss whether it's best for the empire
at the present moment to adopt conscription or to call out the militia.
We have been summoned to reply to the appeal with which our sovereign
the Emperor has honored us. But to judge what is best--conscription or
the militia--we can leave to the supreme authority...."

Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He hardened his heart
against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow attitude
into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped forward and
interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would say, but he
began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French or expressing
himself in bookish Russian.

"Excuse me, your excellency," he began. (He was well acquainted with the
senator, but thought it necessary on this occasion to address him
formally.) "Though I don't agree with the gentleman..." (he hesitated:
he wished to say, "Mon tres honorable preopinant"--"My very honorable
opponent") "with the gentleman... whom I have not the honor of knowing,
I suppose that the nobility have been summoned not merely to express
their sympathy and enthusiasm but also to consider the means by which we
can assist our Fatherland! I imagine," he went on, warming to his
subject, "that the Emperor himself would not be satisfied to find in us
merely owners of serfs whom we are willing to devote to his service, and
chair a canon * we are ready to make of ourselves--and not to obtain
from us any co-co-counsel."


* "Food for cannon."

Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the senator's sarcastic
smile and the freedom of Pierre's remarks. Only Count Rostov was pleased
with them as he had been pleased with those of the naval officer, the
senator, and in general with whatever speech he had last heard.

"I think that before discussing these questions," Pierre continued, "we
should ask the Emperor--most respectfully ask His Majesty--to let us
know the number of our troops and the position in which our army and our
forces now are, and then..."

But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he was attacked from
three sides. The most vigorous attack came from an old acquaintance, a
boston player who had always been well disposed toward him, Stepan
Stepanovich Adraksin. Adraksin was in uniform, and whether as a result
of the uniform or from some other cause Pierre saw before him quite a
different man. With a sudden expression of malevolence on his aged face,
Adraksin shouted at Pierre:

"In the first place, I tell you we have no right to question the Emperor
about that, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had that right, the
Emperor could not answer such a question. The troops are moved according
to the enemy's movements and the number of men increases and
decreases..."

Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height and about forty years
of age, whom Pierre had formerly met at the gypsies' and knew as a bad
cardplayer, and who, also transformed by his uniform, came up to Pierre,
interrupted Adraksin.

"Yes, and this is not a time for discussing," he continued, "but for
acting: there is war in Russia! The enemy is advancing to destroy
Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers, to carry off our wives
and children." The nobleman smote his breast. "We will all arise, every
one of us will go, for our father the Tsar!" he shouted, rolling his
bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were heard in the crowd. "We
are Russians and will not grudge our blood in defense of our faith, the
throne, and the Fatherland! We must cease raving if we are sons of our
Fatherland! We will show Europe how Russia rises to the defense of
Russia!"

Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He felt that his
words, apart from what meaning they conveyed, were less audible than the
sound of his opponent's voice.

Count Rostov at the back of the crowd was expressing approval; several
persons, briskly turning a shoulder to the orator at the end of a
phrase, said:

"That's right, quite right! Just so!"

Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his money, his
serfs, or himself, only one ought to know the state of affairs in order
to be able to improve it, but he was unable to speak. Many voices
shouted and talked at the same time, so that Count Rostov had not time
to signify his approval of them all, and the group increased, dispersed,
re-formed, and then moved with a hum of talk into the largest hall and
to the big table. Not only was Pierre's attempt to speak unsuccessful,
but he was rudely interrupted, pushed aside, and people turned away from
him as from a common enemy. This happened not because they were
displeased by the substance of his speech, which had even been forgotten
after the many subsequent speeches, but to animate it the crowd needed a
tangible object to love and a tangible object to hate. Pierre became the
latter. Many other orators spoke after the excited nobleman, and all in
the same tone. Many spoke eloquently and with originality.

Glinka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was recognized (cries
of "author! author!" were heard in the crowd), said that "hell must be
repulsed by hell," and that he had seen a child smiling at lightning
flashes and thunderclaps, but "we will not be that child."

"Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!" was repeated approvingly in the back rows
of the crowd.

The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat gray-haired or bald
seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and besashed almost all of whom
Pierre had seen in their own homes with their buffoons, or playing
boston at the clubs. With an incessant hum of voices the crowd advanced
to the table. Pressed by the throng against the high backs of the
chairs, the orators spoke one after another and sometimes two together.
Those standing behind noticed what a speaker omitted to say and hastened
to supply it. Others in that heat and crush racked their brains to find
some thought and hastened to utter it. The old magnates, whom Pierre
knew, sat and turned to look first at one and then at another, and their
faces for the most part only expressed the fact that they found it very
hot. Pierre, however, felt excited, and the general desire to show that
they were ready to go to all lengths--which found expression in the
tones and looks more than in the substance of the speeches--infected him
too. He did not renounce his opinions, but felt himself in some way to
blame and wished to justify himself.

"I only said that it would be more to the purpose to make sacrifices
when we know what is needed!" said he, trying to be heard above the
other voices.

One of the old men nearest to him looked round, but his attention was
immediately diverted by an exclamation at the other side of the table.

"Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our expiation!" shouted
one man.

"He is the enemy of mankind!" cried another. "Allow me to speak...."
"Gentlemen, you are crushing me!..."




CHAPTER XXIII

At that moment Count Rostopchin with his protruding chin and alert eyes,
wearing the uniform of a general with sash over his shoulder, entered
the room, stepping briskly to the front of the crowd of gentry.

"Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment," said Rostopchin.
"I am straight from the palace. Seeing the position we are in, I think
there is little need for discussion. The Emperor has deigned to summon
us and the merchants. Millions will pour forth from there"--he pointed
to the merchants' hall--"but our business is to supply men and not spare
ourselves... That is the least we can do!"

A conference took place confined to the magnates sitting at the table.
The whole consultation passed more than quietly. After all the preceding
noise the sound of their old voices saying one after another, "I agree,"
or for variety, "I too am of that opinion," and so on had even a
mournful effect.

The secretary was told to write down the resolution of the Moscow
nobility and gentry, that they would furnish ten men, fully equipped,
out of every thousand serfs, as the Smolensk gentry had done. Their
chairs made a scraping noise as the gentlemen who had conferred rose
with apparent relief, and began walking up and down, arm in arm, to
stretch their legs and converse in couples.

"The Emperor! The Emperor!" a sudden cry resounded through the halls and
the whole throng hurried to the entrance.

The Emperor entered the hall through a broad path between two lines of
nobles. Every face expressed respectful, awe-struck curiosity. Pierre
stood rather far off and could not hear all that the Emperor said. From
what he did hear he understood that the Emperor spoke of the danger
threatening the empire and of the hopes he placed on the Moscow
nobility. He was answered by a voice which informed him of the
resolution just arrived at.

"Gentlemen!" said the Emperor with a quivering voice.

There was a rustling among the crowd and it again subsided, so that
Pierre distinctly heard the pleasantly human voice of the Emperor saying
with emotion:

"I never doubted the devotion of the Russian nobles, but today it has
surpassed my expectations. I thank you in the name of the Fatherland!
Gentlemen, let us act! Time is most precious..."

The Emperor ceased speaking, the crowd began pressing round him, and
rapturous exclamations were heard from all sides.

"Yes, most precious... a royal word," said Count Rostov, with a sob. He
stood at the back, and, though he had heard hardly anything, understood
everything in his own way.

From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that of the merchants.
There he remained about ten minutes. Pierre was among those who saw him
come out from the merchants' hall with tears of emotion in his eyes. As
became known later, he had scarcely begun to address the merchants
before tears gushed from his eyes and he concluded in a trembling voice.
When Pierre saw the Emperor he was coming out accompanied by two
merchants, one of whom Pierre knew, a fat otkupshchik. The other was the
mayor, a man with a thin sallow face and narrow beard. Both were
weeping. Tears filled the thin man's eyes, and the fat otkupshchik
sobbed outright like a child and kept repeating:

"Our lives and property--take them, Your Majesty!"

Pierre's one feeling at the moment was a desire to show that he was
ready to go all lengths and was prepared to sacrifice everything. He now
felt ashamed of his speech with its constitutional tendency and sought
an opportunity of effacing it. Having heard that Count Mamonov was
furnishing a regiment, Bezukhov at once informed Rostopchin that he
would give a thousand men and their maintenance.

Old Rostov could not tell his wife of what had passed without tears, and
at once consented to Petya's request and went himself to enter his name.

Next day the Emperor left Moscow. The assembled nobles all took off
their uniforms and settled down again in their homes and clubs, and not
without some groans gave orders to their stewards about the enrollment,
feeling amazed themselves at what they had done.

BOOK TEN: 1812




CHAPTER I

Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could not resist going to
Dresden, could not help having his head turned by the homage he
received, could not help donning a Polish uniform and yielding to the
stimulating influence of a June morning, and could not refrain from
bursts of anger in the presence of Kurakin and then of Balashev.

Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself to be personally
insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to command the army in the best way,
because he wished to fulfill his duty and earn fame as a great
commander. Rostov charged the French because he could not restrain his
wish for a gallop across a level field; and in the same way the
innumerable people who took part in the war acted in accord with their
personal characteristics, habits, circumstances, and aims. They were
moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining
that they knew what they were doing and did it of their own free will,
but they all were involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work
concealed from them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable
fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy
the less are they free.

The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their personal
interests have vanished leaving no trace, and nothing remains of that
time but its historic results.

Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain personal aims, to
further the accomplishment of a stupendous result no one of them at all
expected--neither Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor still less any of those
who did the actual fighting.

The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812 is clear to us
now. No one will deny that that cause was, on the one hand, its advance
into the heart of Russia late in the season without any preparation for
a winter campaign and, on the other, the character given to the war by
the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the foe this aroused
among the Russian people. But no one at the time foresaw (what now seems
so evident) that this was the only way an army of eight hundred thousand
men--the best in the world and led by the best general--could be
destroyed in conflict with a raw army of half its numerical strength,
and led by inexperienced commanders as the Russian army was. Not only
did no one see this, but on the Russian side every effort was made to
hinder the only thing that could save Russia, while on the French side,
despite Napoleon's experience and so-called military genius, every
effort was directed to pushing on to Moscow at the end of the summer,
that is, to doing the very thing that was bound to lead to destruction.

In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are very fond of
saying that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he
sought a battle and that his marshals advised him to stop at Smolensk,
and of making similar statements to show that the danger of the campaign
was even then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of telling us
that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war plan was
adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and this plan some
of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain Frenchman, others to
Toll, and others again to Alexander himself--pointing to notes,
projects, and letters which contain hints of such a line of action. But
all these hints at what happened, both from the French side and the
Russian, are advanced only because they fit in with the event. Had that
event not occurred these hints would have been forgotten, as we have
forgotten the thousands and millions of hints and expectations to the
contrary which were current then but have now been forgotten because the
event falsified them. There are always so many conjectures as to the
issue of any event that however it may end there will always be people
to say: "I said then that it would be so," quite forgetting that amid
their innumerable conjectures many were to quite the contrary effect.

Conjectures as to Napoleon's awareness of the danger of extending his
line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the depths
of Russia, are evidently of that kind, and only by much straining can
historians attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and his marshals, or
such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts are in flat
contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period of the war
not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw the French into
the heart of the country, but from their first entry into Russia
everything was done to stop them. And not only was Napoleon not afraid
to extend his line, but he welcomed every step forward as a triumph and
did not seek battle as eagerly as in former campaigns, but very lazily.

At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our sole
aim was to unite them, though uniting the armies was no advantage if we
meant to retire and lure the enemy into the depths of the country. Our
Emperor joined the army to encourage it to defend every inch of Russian
soil and not to retreat. The enormous Drissa camp was formed on Pfuel's
plan, and there was no intention of retiring farther. The Emperor
reproached the commanders in chief for every step they retired. He could
not bear the idea of letting the enemy even reach Smolensk, still less
could he contemplate the burning of Moscow, and when our armies did
unite he was displeased that Smolensk was abandoned and burned without a
general engagement having been fought under its walls.

So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders and people were still
more provoked at the thought that our forces were retreating into the
depths of the country.

Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far into the country and
missed several chances of forcing an engagement. In August he was at
Smolensk and thought only of how to advance farther, though as we now
see that advance was evidently ruinous to him.

The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee the danger of the
advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian commanders then
think of luring Napoleon on, but quite the contrary. The luring of
Napoleon into the depths of the country was not the result of any plan,
for no one believed it to be possible; it resulted from a most complex
interplay of intrigues, aims, and wishes among those who took part in
the war and had no perception whatever of the inevitable, or of the one
way of saving Russia. Everything came about fortuitously. The armies
were divided at the commencement of the campaign. We tried to unite
them, with the evident intention of giving battle and checking the
enemy's advance, and by this effort to unite them while avoiding battle
with a much stronger enemy, and necessarily withdrawing the armies at an
acute angle--we led the French on to Smolensk. But we withdrew at an
acute angle not only because the French advanced between our two armies;
the angle became still more acute and we withdrew still farther, because
Barclay de Tolly was an unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagration (who
would come under his command), and Bagration--being in command of the
second army--tried to postpone joining up and coming under Barclay's
command as long as he could. Bagration was slow in effecting the
junction--though that was the chief aim of all at headquarters--because,
as he alleged, he exposed his army to danger on this march, and it was
best for him to retire more to the left and more to the south, worrying
the enemy from flank and rear and securing from the Ukraine recruits for
his army; and it looks as if he planned this in order not to come under
the command of the detested foreigner Barclay, whose rank was inferior
to his own.

The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but his presence and
ignorance of what steps to take, and the enormous number of advisers and
plans, destroyed the first army's energy and it retired.

The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp, but Paulucci,
aiming at becoming commander-in-chief, unexpectedly employed his energy
to influence Alexander, and Pfuel's whole plan was abandoned and the
command entrusted to Barclay. But as Barclay did not inspire confidence
his power was limited. The armies were divided, there was no unity of
command, and Barclay was unpopular; but from this confusion, division,
and the unpopularity of the foreign commander-in-chief, there resulted
on the one hand indecision and the avoidance of a battle (which we could
not have refrained from had the armies been united and had someone else,
instead of Barclay, been in command) and on the other an ever-increasing
indignation against the foreigners and an increase in patriotic zeal.

At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and indeed
the only pretext for his departure it was decided that it was necessary
for him to inspire the people in the capitals and arouse the nation in
general to a patriotic war. And by this visit of the Emperor to Moscow
the strength of the Russian army was trebled.

He left in order not to obstruct the commander-in-chief's undivided
control of the army, and hoping that more decisive action would then be
taken, but the command of the armies became still more confused and
enfeebled. Bennigsen, the Tsarevich, and a swarm of adjutants general
remained with the army to keep the commander-in-chief under observation
and arouse his energy, and Barclay, feeling less free than ever under
the observation of all these "eyes of the Emperor," became still more
cautious of undertaking any decisive action and avoided giving battle.

Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarevich hinted at treachery and
demanded a general engagement. Lubomirski, Bronnitski, Wlocki, and the
others of that group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under
pretext of sending papers to the Emperor, dispatched these Polish
adjutants general to Petersburg and plunged into an open struggle with
Bennigsen and the Tsarevich.

At Smolensk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagration disliked it.

Bagration drove up in a carriage to the house occupied by Barclay.
Barclay donned his sash and came out to meet and report to his senior
officer Bagration.

Despite his seniority in rank Bagration, in this contest of magnanimity,
took his orders from Barclay, but, having submitted, agreed with him
less than ever. By the Emperor's orders Bagration reported direct to
him. He wrote to Arakcheev, the Emperor's confidant: "It must be as my
sovereign pleases, but I cannot work with the Minister (meaning
Barclay). For God's sake send me somewhere else if only in command of a
regiment. I cannot stand it here. Headquarters are so full of Germans
that a Russian cannot exist and there is no sense in anything. I thought
I was really serving my sovereign and the Fatherland, but it turns out
that I am serving Barclay. I confess I do not want to."

The swarm of Bronnitskis and Wintzingerodes and their like still further
embittered the relations between the commanders in chief, and even less
unity resulted. Preparations were made to fight the French before
Smolensk. A general was sent to survey the position. This general,
hating Barclay, rode to visit a friend of his own, a corps commander,
and, having spent the day with him, returned to Barclay and condemned,
as unsuitable from every point of view, the battleground he had not
seen.

While disputes and intrigues were going on about the future field of
battle, and while we were looking for the French--having lost touch with
them--the French stumbled upon Neverovski's division and reached the
walls of Smolensk.

It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolensk to save our
lines of communication. The battle was fought and thousands were killed
on both sides.

Smolensk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the Emperor and of the
whole people. But Smolensk was burned by its own inhabitants-who had
been misled by their governor. And these ruined inhabitants, setting an
example to other Russians, went to Moscow thinking only of their own
losses but kindling hatred of the foe. Napoleon advanced farther and we
retired, thus arriving at the very result which caused his destruction.




CHAPTER II

The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for Princess Mary
to come to his study.

"Well? Are you satisfied now?" said he. "You've made me quarrel with my
son! Satisfied, are you? That's all you wanted! Satisfied?... It hurts
me, it hurts. I'm old and weak and this is what you wanted. Well then,
gloat over it! Gloat over it!"

After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a whole week. He was
ill and did not leave his study.

Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this illness the old
prince not only excluded her from his room, but did not admit
Mademoiselle Bourienne either. Tikhon alone attended him.

At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his former way
of life, devoting himself with special activity to building operations
and the arrangement of the gardens and completely breaking off his
relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks and cold tone to his
daughter seemed to say: "There, you see? You plotted against me, you
lied to Prince Andrew about my relations with that Frenchwoman and made
me quarrel with him, but you see I need neither her nor you!"

Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas, watching his
lessons, teaching him Russian and music herself, and talking to
Dessalles; the rest of the day she spent over her books, with her old
nurse, or with "God's folk" who sometimes came by the back door to see
her.

Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think about wars. She
feared for her brother who was in it, was horrified by and amazed at the
strange cruelty that impels men to kill one another, but she did not
understand the significance of this war, which seemed to her like all
previous wars. She did not realize the significance of this war, though
Dessalles with whom she constantly conversed was passionately interested
in its progress and tried to explain his own conception of it to her,
and though the "God's folk" who came to see her reported, in their own
way, the rumors current among the people of an invasion by Antichrist,
and though Julie (now Princess Drubetskaya), who had resumed
correspondence with her, wrote patriotic letters from Moscow.

"I write you in Russian, my good friend," wrote Julie in her Frenchified
Russian, "because I have a detestation for all the French, and the same
for their language which I cannot support to hear spoken.... We in
Moscow are elated by enthusiasm for our adored Emperor.

"My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but the
news which I have inspires me yet more.

"You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raevski, embracing his two
sons and saying: 'I will perish with them but we will not be shaken!'
And truly though the enemy was twice stronger than we, we were
unshakable. We pass the time as we can, but in war as in war! The
princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days with me, and we, unhappy
widows of live men, make beautiful conversations over our 'charpie',
only you, my friend, are missing..." and so on.

The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full significance of
this war was that the old prince never spoke of it, did not recognize
it, and laughed at Dessalles when he mentioned it at dinner. The
prince's tone was so calm and confident that Princess Mary
unhesitatingly believed him.

All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and even animated.
He planned another garden and began a new building for the domestic
serfs. The only thing that made Princess Mary anxious about him was that
he slept very little and, instead of sleeping in his study as usual,
changed his sleeping place every day. One day he would order his camp
bed to be set up in the glass gallery, another day he remained on the
couch or on the lounge chair in the drawing room and dozed there without
undressing, while--instead of Mademoiselle Bourienne--a serf boy read to
him. Then again he would spend a night in the dining room.

On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrew. In his
first letter which came soon after he had left home, Prince Andrew had
dutifully asked his father's forgiveness for what he had allowed himself
to say and begged to be restored to his favor. To this letter the old
prince had replied affectionately, and from that time had kept the
Frenchwoman at a distance. Prince Andrew's second letter, written near
Vitebsk after the French had occupied that town, gave a brief account of
the whole campaign, enclosed for them a plan he had drawn and forecasts
as to the further progress of the war. In this letter Prince Andrew
pointed out to his father the danger of staying at Bald Hills, so near
the theater of war and on the army's direct line of march, and advised
him to move to Moscow.

At dinner that day, on Dessalles' mentioning that the French were said
to have already entered Vitebsk, the old prince remembered his son's
letter.

"There was a letter from Prince Andrew today," he said to Princess Mary-
-"Haven't you read it?"

"No, Father," she replied in a frightened voice.

She could not have read the letter as she did not even know it had
arrived.

"He writes about this war," said the prince, with the ironic smile that
had become habitual to him in speaking of the present war.

"That must be very interesting," said Dessalles. "Prince Andrew is in a
position to know..."

"Oh, very interesting!" said Mademoiselle Bourienne.

"Go and get it for me," said the old prince to Mademoiselle Bourienne.
"You know--under the paperweight on the little table."

Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.

"No, don't!" he exclaimed with a frown. "You go, Michael Ivanovich."

Michael Ivanovich rose and went to the study. But as soon as he had left
the room the old prince, looking uneasily round, threw down his napkin
and went himself.

"They can't do anything... always make some muddle," he muttered.

While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and
even little Nicholas exchanged looks in silence. The old prince returned
with quick steps, accompanied by Michael Ivanovich, bringing the letter
and a plan. These he put down beside him--not letting anyone read them
at dinner.

On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to Princess Mary and,
spreading out before him the plan of the new building and fixing his
eyes upon it, told her to read the letter aloud. When she had done so
Princess Mary looked inquiringly at her father. He was examining the
plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas.

"What do you think of it, Prince?" Dessalles ventured to ask.

"I? I?..." said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened, and not taking
his eyes from the plan of the building.

"Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to us that..."

"Ha ha ha! The theater of war!" said the prince. "I have said and still
say that the theater of war is Poland and the enemy will never get
beyond the Niemen."

Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was talking of the
Niemen when the enemy was already at the Dnieper, but Princess Mary,
forgetting the geographical position of the Niemen, thought that what
her father was saying was correct.

"When the snow melts they'll sink in the Polish swamps. Only they could
fail to see it," the prince continued, evidently thinking of the
campaign of 1807 which seemed to him so recent. "Bennigsen should have
advanced into Prussia sooner, then things would have taken a different
turn..."

"But, Prince," Dessalles began timidly, "the letter mentions
Vitebsk...."

"Ah, the letter? Yes..." replied the prince peevishly. "Yes... yes..."
His face suddenly took on a morose expression. He paused. "Yes, he
writes that the French were beaten at... at... what river is it?"

Dessalles dropped his eyes.

"The prince says nothing about that," he remarked gently.

"Doesn't he? But I didn't invent it myself."

No one spoke for a long time.

"Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivanovich," he suddenly went on, raising
his head and pointing to the plan of the building, "tell me how you mean
to alter it...."

Michael Ivanovich went up to the plan, and the prince after speaking to
him about the building looked angrily at Princess Mary and Dessalles and
went to his own room.

Princess Mary saw Dessalles' embarrassed and astonished look fixed on
her father, noticed his silence, and was struck by the fact that her
father had forgotten his son's letter on the drawing-room table; but she
was not only afraid to speak of it and ask Dessalles the reason of his
confusion and silence, but was afraid even to think about it.

In the evening Michael Ivanovich, sent by the prince, came to Princess
Mary for Prince Andrew's letter which had been forgotten in the drawing
room. She gave it to him and, unpleasant as it was to her to do so,
ventured to ask him what her father was doing.

"Always busy," replied Michael Ivanovich with a respectfully ironic
smile which caused Princess Mary to turn pale. "He's worrying very much
about the new building. He has been reading a little, but now"--Michael
Ivanovich went on, lowering his voice--"now he's at his desk, busy with
his will, I expect." (One of the prince's favorite occupations of late
had been the preparation of some papers he meant to leave at his death
and which he called his "will.")

"And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?" asked Princess Mary.

"Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time."




CHAPTER III

When Michael Ivanovich returned to the study with the letter, the old
prince, with spectacles on and a shade over his eyes, was sitting at his
open bureau with screened candles, holding a paper in his outstretched
hand, and in a somewhat dramatic attitude was reading his manuscript--
his "Remarks" as he termed it--which was to be transmitted to the
Emperor after his death.

When Michael Ivanovich went in there were tears in the prince's eyes
evoked by the memory of the time when the paper he was now reading had
been written. He took the letter from Michael Ivanovich's hand, put it
in his pocket, folded up his papers, and called in Alpatych who had long
been waiting.

The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolensk and, walking up
and down the room past Alpatych who stood by the door, he gave his
instructions.

"First, notepaper--do you hear? Eight quires, like this sample, gilt-
edged... it must be exactly like the sample. Varnish, sealing wax, as in
Michael Ivanovich's list."

He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his notes.

"Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the deed."

Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were wanted and had to be
of a special shape the prince had himself designed, and a leather case
had to be ordered to keep the "will" in.

The instructions to Alpatych took over two hours and still the prince
did not let him go. He sat down, sank into thought, closed his eyes, and
dozed off. Alpatych made a slight movement.

"Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I'll send after you."

Alpatych went out. The prince again went to his bureau, glanced into it,
fingered his papers, closed the bureau again, and sat down at the table
to write to the governor.

It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter. He wished to
sleep, but he knew he would not be able to and that most depressing
thoughts came to him in bed. So he called Tikhon and went through the
rooms with him to show him where to set up the bed for that night.

He went about looking at every corner. Every place seemed
unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study.
That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive
thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory everywhere,
but the corner behind the piano in the sitting room was better than
other places: he had never slept there yet.

With the help of a footman Tikhon brought in the bedstead and began
putting it up.

"That's not right! That's not right!" cried the prince, and himself
pushed it a few inches from the corner and then closer in again.

"Well, at last I've finished, now I'll rest," thought the prince, and
let Tikhon undress him.

Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to divest himself of his
coat and trousers, the prince undressed, sat down heavily on the bed,
and appeared to be meditating as he looked contemptuously at his
withered yellow legs. He was not meditating, but only deferring the
moment of making the effort to lift those legs up and turn over on the
bed. "Ugh, how hard it is! Oh, that this toil might end and you would
release me!" thought he. Pressing his lips together he made that effort
for the twenty-thousandth time and lay down. But hardly had he done so
before he felt the bed rocking backwards and forwards beneath him as if
it were breathing heavily and jolting. This happened to him almost every
night. He opened his eyes as they were closing.

"No peace, damn them!" he muttered, angry he knew not with whom. "Ah
yes, there was something else important, very important, that I was
keeping till I should be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them.
No, it was something, something in the drawing room. Princess Mary
talked some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said something. Something in
my pocket--can't remember..."

"Tikhon, what did we talk about at dinner?"

"About Prince Michael..."

"Be quiet, quiet!" The prince slapped his hand on the table. "Yes, I
know, Prince Andrew's letter! Princess Mary read it. Dessalles said
something about Vitebsk. Now I'll read it."

He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table--on which stood a
glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candle--moved close to the bed, and
putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only now in the stillness of
the night, reading it by the faint light under the green shade, did he
grasp its meaning for a moment.

"The French at Vitebsk, in four days' march they may be at Smolensk;
perhaps are already there! Tikhon!" Tikhon jumped up. "No, no, I don't
want anything!" he shouted.

He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And there
rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian camp,
and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face,
vigorous and alert, entering Potemkin's gaily colored tent, and a
burning sense of jealousy of "the favorite" agitated him now as strongly
as it had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that first
meeting with Potemkin. And he saw before him a plump, rather sallow-
faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile and her
words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that same face on
the catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zubov over her coffin
about his right to kiss her hand.

"Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with all
the present! Quicker, quicker--and that they should leave me in peace!"




CHAPTER IV

Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's estate, lay forty miles east
from Smolensk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.

The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to Alpatych,
Dessalles, having asked to see Princess Mary, told her that, as the
prince was not very well and was taking no steps to secure his safety,
though from Prince Andrew's letter it was evident that to remain at Bald
Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully advised her to send a letter
by Alpatych to the Provincial Governor at Smolensk, asking him to let
her know the state of affairs and the extent of the danger to which Bald
Hills was exposed. Dessalles wrote this letter to the Governor for
Princess Mary, she signed it, and it was given to Alpatych with
instructions to hand it to the Governor and to come back as quickly as
possible if there was danger.

Having received all his orders Alpatych, wearing a white beaver hat--a
present from the prince--and carrying a stick as the prince did, went
out accompanied by his family. Three well-fed roans stood ready
harnessed to a small conveyance with a leather hood.

The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness stuffed
with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald Hills to drive with
ringing bells; but on a long journey Alpatych liked to have them. His
satellites--the senior clerk, a countinghouse clerk, a scullery maid, a
cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and various
domestic serfs--were seeing him off.

His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for him to sit on and
behind his back. His old sister-in-law popped in a small bundle, and one
of the coachmen helped him into the vehicle.

"There! There! Women's fuss! Women, women!" said Alpatych, puffing and
speaking rapidly just as the prince did, and he climbed into the trap.

After giving the clerk orders about the work to be done, Alpatych, not
trying to imitate the prince now, lifted the hat from his bald head and
crossed himself three times.

"If there is anything... come back, Yakov Alpatych! For Christ's sake
think of us!" cried his wife, referring to the rumors of war and the
enemy.

"Women, women! Women's fuss!" muttered Alpatych to himself and started
on his journey, looking round at the fields of yellow rye and the still-
green, thickly growing oats, and at other quite black fields just being
plowed a second time.

As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year's splendid crop of
corn, scrutinized the strips of ryefield which here and there were
already being reaped, made his calculations as to the sowing and the
harvest, and asked himself whether he had not forgotten any of the
prince's orders.

Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived at the town toward
evening on the fourth of August.

Alpatych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains and troops on the
road. As he approached Smolensk he heard the sounds of distant firing,
but these did not impress him. What struck him most was the sight of a
splendid field of oats in which a camp had been pitched and which was
being mown down by the soldiers, evidently for fodder. This fact
impressed Alpatych, but in thinking about his own business he soon
forgot it.

All the interests of his life for more than thirty years had been
bounded by the will of the prince, and he never went beyond that limit.
Everything not connected with the execution of the prince's orders did
not interest and did not even exist for Alpatych.

On reaching Smolensk on the evening of the fourth of August he put up in
the Gachina suburb across the Dnieper, at the inn kept by Ferapontov,
where he had been in the habit of putting up for the last thirty years.
Some thirty years ago Ferapontov, by Alpatych's advice, had bought a
wood from the prince, had begun to trade, and now had a house, an inn,
and a corn dealer's shop in that province. He was a stout, dark, red-
faced peasant in the forties, with thick lips, a broad knob of a nose,
similar knobs over his black frowning brows, and a round belly.

Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapontov was standing
before his shop which opened onto the street. On seeing Alpatych he went
up to him.

"You're welcome, Yakov Alpatych. Folks are leaving the town, but you
have come to it," said he.

"Why are they leaving the town?" asked Alpatych.

"That's what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the French."

"Women's fuss, women's fuss!" said Alpatych.

"Just what I think, Yakov Alpatych. What I say is: orders have been
given not to let them in, so that must be right. And the peasants are
asking three rubles for carting--it isn't Christian!"

Yakov Alpatych heard without heeding. He asked for a samovar and for hay
for his horses, and when he had had his tea he went to bed.

All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next morning Alpatych
donned a jacket he wore only in town and went out on business. It was a
sunny morning and by eight o'clock it was already hot. "A good day for
harvesting," thought Alpatych.

From beyond the town firing had been heard since early morning. At eight
o'clock the booming of cannon was added to the sound of musketry. Many
people were hurrying through the streets and there were many soldiers,
but cabs were still driving about, tradesmen stood at their shops, and
service was being held in the churches as usual. Alpatych went to the
shops, to government offices, to the post office, and to the Governor's.
In the offices and shops and at the post office everyone was talking
about the army and about the enemy who was already attacking the town,
everybody was asking what should be done, and all were trying to calm
one another.

In front of the Governor's house Alpatych found a large number of
people, Cossacks, and a traveling carriage of the Governor's. At the
porch he met two of the landed gentry, one of whom he knew. This man, an
ex-captain of police, was saying angrily:

"It's no joke, you know! It's all very well if you're single. 'One man
though undone is but one,' as the proverb says, but with thirteen in
your family and all the property... They've brought us to utter ruin!
What sort of governors are they to do that? They ought to be hanged--the
brigands!..."

"Oh come, that's enough!" said the other.

"What do I care? Let him hear! We're not dogs," said the ex-captain of
police, and looking round he noticed Alpatych.

"Oh, Yakov Alpatych! What have you come for?"

"To see the Governor by his excellency's order," answered Alpatych,
lifting his head and proudly thrusting his hand into the bosom of his
coat as he always did when he mentioned the prince.... "He has ordered
me to inquire into the position of affairs," he added.

"Yes, go and find out!" shouted the angry gentleman. "They've brought
things to such a pass that there are no carts or anything!... There it
is again, do you hear?" said he, pointing in the direction whence came
the sounds of firing.

"They've brought us all to ruin... the brigands!" he repeated, and
descended the porch steps.

Alpatych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the waiting room were
tradesmen, women, and officials, looking silently at one another. The
door of the Governor's room opened and they all rose and moved forward.
An official ran out, said some words to a merchant, called a stout
official with a cross hanging on his neck to follow him, and vanished
again, evidently wishing to avoid the inquiring looks and questions
addressed to him. Alpatych moved forward and next time the official came
out addressed him, one hand placed in the breast of his buttoned coat,
and handed him two letters.

"To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief Prince Bolkonski," he
announced with such solemnity and significance that the official turned
to him and took the letters.

A few minutes later the Governor received Alpatych and hurriedly said to
him:

"Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I acted on the
highest instructions--here..." and he handed a paper to Alpatych.
"Still, as the prince is unwell my advice is that they should go to
Moscow. I am just starting myself. Inform them..."

But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring officer ran into the
room and began to say something in French. The Governor's face expressed
terror.

"Go," he said, nodding his head to Alpatych, and began questioning the
officer.

Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on Alpatych when he came
out of the Governor's room. Involuntarily listening now to the firing,
which had drawn nearer and was increasing in strength, Alpatych hurried
to his inn. The paper handed to him by the Governor said this:

"I assure you that the town of Smolensk is not in the slightest danger
as yet and it is unlikely that it will be threatened with any. I from
the one side and Prince Bagration from the other are marching to unite
our forces before Smolensk, which junction will be effected on the 22nd
instant, and both armies with their united forces will defend our
compatriots of the province entrusted to your care till our efforts
shall have beaten back the enemies of our Fatherland, or till the last
warrior in our valiant ranks has perished. From this you will see that
you have a perfect right to reassure the inhabitants of Smolensk, for
those defended by two such brave armies may feel assured of victory."
(Instructions from Barclay de Tolly to Baron Asch, the civil governor of
Smolensk, 1812.)

People were anxiously roaming about the streets.

Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and cupboards kept
emerging from the gates of the yards and moving along the streets.
Loaded carts stood at the house next to Ferapontov's and women were
wailing and lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran round
barking in front of the harnessed horses.

Alpatych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than usual and went
straight to the shed where his horses and trap were. The coachman was
asleep. He woke him up, told him to harness, and went into the passage.
From the host's room came the sounds of a child crying, the despairing
sobs of a woman, and the hoarse angry shouting of Ferapontov. The cook
began running hither and thither in the passage like a frightened hen,
just as Alpatych entered.

"He's done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her... dragged her
about so!..."

"What for?" asked Alpatych.

"She kept begging to go away. She's a woman! 'Take me away,' says she,
'don't let me perish with my little children! Folks,' she says, 'are all
gone, so why,' she says, 'don't we go?' And he began beating and pulling
her about so!"

At these words Alpatych nodded as if in approval, and not wishing to
hear more went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper's, where
he had left his purchases.

"You brute, you murderer!" screamed a thin, pale woman who, with a baby
in her arms and her kerchief torn from her head, burst through the door
at that moment and down the steps into the yard.

Ferapontov came out after her, but on seeing Alpatych adjusted his
waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpatych into the
opposite room.

"Going already?" said he.

Alpatych, without answering or looking at his host, sorted his packages
and asked how much he owed.

"We'll reckon up! Well, have you been to the Governor's?" asked
Ferapontov. "What has been decided?"

Alpatych replied that the Governor had not told him anything definite.

"With our business, how can we get away?" said Ferapontov. "We'd have to
pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobuzh and I tell them they're not
Christians to ask it! Selivanov, now, did a good stroke last Thursday--
sold flour to the army at nine rubles a sack. Will you have some tea?"
he added.

While the horses were being harnessed Alpatych and Ferapontov over their
tea talked of the price of corn, the crops, and the good weather for
harvesting.

"Well, it seems to be getting quieter," remarked Ferapontov, finishing
his third cup of tea and getting up. "Ours must have got the best of it.
The orders were not to let them in. So we're in force, it seems.... They
say the other day Matthew Ivanych Platov drove them into the river
Marina and drowned some eighteen thousand in one day."

Alpatych collected his parcels, handed them to the coachman who had come
in, and settled up with the innkeeper. The noise of wheels, hoofs, and
bells was heard from the gateway as a little trap passed out.

It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was in shadow, the
other half brightly lit by the sun. Alpatych looked out of the window
and went to the door. Suddenly the strange sound of a far-off whistling
and thud was heard, followed by a boom of cannon blending into a dull
roar that set the windows rattling.

He went out into the street: two men were running past toward the
bridge. From different sides came whistling sounds and the thud of
cannon balls and bursting shells falling on the town. But these sounds
were hardly heard in comparison with the noise of the firing outside the
town and attracted little attention from the inhabitants. The town was
being bombarded by a hundred and thirty guns which Napoleon had ordered
up after four o'clock. The people did not at once realize the meaning of
this bombardment.

At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only aroused
curiosity. Ferapontov's wife, who till then had not ceased wailing under
the shed, became quiet and with the baby in her arms went to the gate,
listening to the sounds and looking in silence at the people.

The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With lively curiosity
everyone tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they flew over
their heads. Several people came round the corner talking eagerly.

"What force!" remarked one. "Knocked the roof and ceiling all to
splinters!"

"Routed up the earth like a pig," said another.

"That's grand, it bucks one up!" laughed the first. "Lucky you jumped
aside, or it would have wiped you out!"

Others joined those men and stopped and told how cannon balls had fallen
on a house close to them. Meanwhile still more projectiles, now with the
swift sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the agreeable
intermittent whistle of a shell, flew over people's heads incessantly,
but not one fell close by, they all flew over. Alpatych was getting into
his trap. The innkeeper stood at the gate.

"What are you staring at?" he shouted to the cook, who in her red skirt,
with sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare elbows, had stepped to the
corner to listen to what was being said.

"What marvels!" she exclaimed, but hearing her master's voice she turned
back, pulling down her tucked-up skirt.

Once more something whistled, but this time quite close, swooping
downwards like a little bird; a flame flashed in the middle of the
street, something exploded, and the street was shrouded in smoke.

"Scoundrel, what are you doing?" shouted the innkeeper, rushing to the
cook.

At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was heard from different
sides, the frightened baby began to cry, and people crowded silently
with pale faces round the cook. The loudest sound in that crowd was her
wailing.

"Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don't let me die! My good
souls!..."

Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The cook, with her
thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been carried into the kitchen.
Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov's wife and children and the house
porter were all sitting in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns, the
whistling of projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the cook, which
rose above the other sounds, did not cease for a moment. The mistress
rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone came into the cellar asked in
a pathetic whisper what had become of her husband who had remained in
the street. A shopman who entered told her that her husband had gone
with others to the cathedral, whence they were fetching the wonder-
working icon of Smolensk.

Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatych left the cellar and
stopped in the doorway. The evening sky that had been so clear was
clouded with smoke, through which, high up, the sickle of the new moon
shone strangely. Now that the terrible din of the guns had ceased a hush
seemed to reign over the town, broken only by the rustle of footsteps,
the moaning, the distant cries, and the crackle of fires which seemed
widespread everywhere. The cook's moans had now subsided. On two sides
black curling clouds of smoke rose and spread from the fires. Through
the streets soldiers in various uniforms walked or ran confusedly in
different directions like ants from a ruined ant-hill. Several of them
ran into Ferapontov's yard before Alpatych's eyes. Alpatych went out to
the gate. A retreating regiment, thronging and hurrying, blocked the
street.

Noticing him, an officer said: "The town is being abandoned. Get away,
get away!" and then, turning to the soldiers, shouted:

"I'll teach you to run into the yards!"

Alpatych went back to the house, called the coachman, and told him to
set off. Ferapontov's whole household came out too, following Alpatych
and the coachman. The women, who had been silent till then, suddenly
began to wail as they looked at the fires--the smoke and even the flames
of which could be seen in the failing twilight--and as if in reply the
same kind of lamentation was heard from other parts of the street.
Inside the shed Alpatych and the coachman arranged the tangled reins and
traces of their horses with trembling hands.

As Alpatych was driving out of the gate he saw some ten soldiers in
Ferapontov's open shop, talking loudly and filling their bags and
knapsacks with flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapontov returned
and entered his shop. On seeing the soldiers he was about to shout at
them, but suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair, burst into sobs
and laughter:

"Loot everything, lads! Don't let those devils get it!" he cried, taking
some bags of flour himself and throwing them into the street.

Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away, others went on
filling their bags. On seeing Alpatych, Ferapontov turned to him:

"Russia is done for!" he cried. "Alpatych, I'll set the place on fire
myself. We're done for!..." and Ferapontov ran into the yard.

Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the street blocking it
completely, so that Alpatych could not pass out and had to wait.
Ferapontov's wife and children were also sitting in a cart waiting till
it was possible to drive out.

Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the new moon shone out
amid the smoke that screened it. On the sloping descent to the Dnieper
Alpatych's cart and that of the innkeeper's wife, which were slowly
moving amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had to stop. In
a side street near the crossroads where the vehicles had stopped, a
house and some shops were on fire. This fire was already burning itself
out. The flames now died down and were lost in the black smoke, now
suddenly flared up again brightly, lighting up with strange distinctness
the faces of the people crowding at the crossroads. Black figures
flitted about before the fire, and through the incessant crackling of
the flames talking and shouting could be heard. Seeing that his trap
would not be able to move on for some time, Alpatych got down and turned
into the side street to look at the fire. Soldiers were continually
rushing backwards and forwards near it, and he saw two of them and a man
in a frieze coat dragging burning beams into another yard across the
street, while others carried bundles of hay.

Alpatych went up to a large crowd standing before a high barn which was
blazing briskly. The walls were all on fire and the back wall had fallen
in, the wooden roof was collapsing, and the rafters were alight. The
crowd was evidently watching for the roof to fall in, and Alpatych
watched for it too.

"Alpatych!" a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man.

"Mercy on us! Your excellency!" answered Alpatych, immediately
recognizing the voice of his young prince.

Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black horse, was looking
at Alpatych from the back of the crowd.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"Your... your excellency," stammered Alpatych and broke into sobs. "Are
we really lost? Master!..."

"Why are you here?" Prince Andrew repeated.

At that moment the flames flared up and showed his young master's pale
worn face. Alpatych told how he had been sent there and how difficult it
was to get away.

"Are we really quite lost, your excellency?" he asked again.

Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook and raising his knee
began writing in pencil on a page he tore out. He wrote to his sister:

"Smolensk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be occupied by the enemy
within a week. Set off immediately for Moscow. Let me know at once when
you will start. Send by special messenger to Usvyazh."

Having written this and given the paper to Alpatych, he told him how to
arrange for departure of the prince, the princess, his son, and the
boy's tutor, and how and where to let him know immediately. Before he
had had time to finish giving these instructions, a chief of staff
followed by a suite galloped up to him.

"You are a colonel?" shouted the chief of staff with a German accent, in
a voice familiar to Prince Andrew. "Houses are set on fire in your
presence and you stand by! What does this mean? You will answer for it!"
shouted Berg, who was now assistant to the chief of staff of the
commander of the left flank of the infantry of the first army, a place,
as Berg said, "very agreeable and well en evidence."

Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went on speaking to
Alpatych.

"So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and if by the
tenth I don't receive news that they have all got away I shall have to
throw up everything and come myself to Bald Hills."

"Prince," said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrew, "I only spoke because I
have to obey orders, because I always do obey exactly.... You must
please excuse me," he went on apologetically.

Something cracked in the flames. The fire died down for a moment and
wreaths of black smoke rolled from under the roof. There was another
terrible crash and something huge collapsed.

"Ou-rou-rou!" yelled the crowd, echoing the crash of the collapsing roof
of the barn, the burning grain in which diffused a cakelike aroma all
around. The flames flared up again, lighting the animated, delighted,
exhausted faces of the spectators.

The man in the frieze coat raised his arms and shouted:

"It's fine, lads! Now it's raging... It's fine!"

"That's the owner himself," cried several voices.

"Well then," continued Prince Andrew to Alpatych, "report to them as I
have told you"; and not replying a word to Berg who was now mute beside
him, he touched his horse and rode down the side street.




CHAPTER V

From Smolensk the troops continued to retreat, followed by the enemy. On
the tenth of August the regiment Prince Andrew commanded was marching
along the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills. Heat and
drought had continued for more than three weeks. Each day fleecy clouds
floated across the sky and occasionally veiled the sun, but toward
evening the sky cleared again and the sun set in reddish-brown mist.
Heavy night dews alone refreshed the earth. The unreaped corn was
scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried up. The cattle lowed from
hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched meadows. Only at night and in
the forests while the dew lasted was there any freshness. But on the
road, the highroad along which the troops marched, there was no such
freshness even at night or when the road passed through the forest; the
dew was imperceptible on the sandy dust churned up more than six inches
deep. As soon as day dawned the march began. The artillery and baggage
wagons moved noiselessly through the deep dust that rose to the very
hubs of the wheels, and the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft,
choking, hot dust that never cooled even at night. Some of this dust was
kneaded by the feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a
cloud over the troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and nostrils, and
worst of all in the lungs of the men and beasts as they moved along that
road. The higher the sun rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and
through the screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked
eye at the sun, which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded
sky. There was no wind, and the men choked in that motionless
atmosphere. They marched with handkerchiefs tied over their noses and
mouths. When they passed through a village they all rushed to the wells
and fought for the water and drank it down to the mud.

Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the management of that
regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving and
giving orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolensk and its
abandonment made an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger against
the foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely devoted to the
affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind to his men and
officers. In the regiment they called him "our prince," were proud of
him and loved him. But he was kind and gentle only to those of his
regiment, to Timokhin and the like--people quite new to him, belonging
to a different world and who could not know and understand his past. As
soon as he came across a former acquaintance or anyone from the staff,
he bristled up immediately and grew spiteful, ironical, and
contemptuous. Everything that reminded him of his past was repugnant to
him, and so in his relations with that former circle he confined himself
to trying to do his duty and not to be unfair.

In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy light to
Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolensk on the sixth
of August (he considered that it could and should have been defended)
and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow, abandoning to
pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built and peopled.
But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew had something to
think about entirely apart from general questions. Two days previously
he had received news that his father, son, and sister had left for
Moscow; and though there was nothing for him to do at Bald Hills, Prince
Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment his own grief decided that
he must ride there.

He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on the
march, rode to his father's estate where he had been born and spent his
childhood. Riding past the pond where there used always to be dozens of
women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it with wooden
beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul about and that
the little washing wharf, torn from its place and half submerged, was
floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He rode to the keeper's
lodge. No one at the stone entrance gates of the drive and the door
stood open. Grass had already begun to grow on the garden paths, and
horses and calves were straying in the English park. Prince Andrew rode
up to the hothouse; some of the glass panes were broken, and of the
trees in tubs some were overturned and others dried up. He called for
Taras the gardener, but no one replied. Having gone round the corner of
the hothouse to the ornamental garden, he saw that the carved garden
fence was broken and branches of the plum trees had been torn off with
the fruit. An old peasant whom Prince Andrew in his childhood had often
seen at the gate was sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a bast
shoe.

He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting on
the seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him strips of
bast were hanging on the broken and withered branch of a magnolia.

Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old garden had
been cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were wandering in front of
the house among the rosebushes. The shutters were all closed, except at
one window which was open. A little serf boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran
into the house. Alpatych, having sent his family away, was alone at Bald
Hills and was sitting indoors reading the Lives of the Saints. On
hearing that Prince Andrew had come, he went out with his spectacles on
his nose, buttoning his coat, and, hastily stepping up, without a word
began weeping and kissing Prince Andrew's knee.

Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to report on
the position of affairs. Everything precious and valuable had been
removed to Bogucharovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also been carted
away. The hay and the spring corn, of which Alpatych said there had been
a remarkable crop that year, had been commandeered by the troops and
mown down while still green. The peasants were ruined; some of them too
had gone to Bogucharovo, only a few remained.

Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:

"When did my father and sister leave?" meaning when did they leave for
Moscow.

Alpatych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for
Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on the seventh and again went
into details concerning the estate management, asking for instructions.

"Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for them?
We have still six hundred quarters left," he inquired.

"What am I to say to him?" thought Prince Andrew, looking down on the
old man's bald head shining in the sun and seeing by the expression on
his face that the old man himself understood how untimely such questions
were and only asked them to allay his grief.

"Yes, let them have it," replied Prince Andrew.

"If you noticed some disorder in the garden," said Alpatych, "it was
impossible to prevent it. Three regiments have been here and spent the
night, dragoons mostly. I took down the name and rank of their
commanding officer, to hand in a complaint about it."

"Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if the enemy
occupies the place?" asked Prince Andrew.

Alpatych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at him, and suddenly
with a solemn gesture raised his arm.

"He is my refuge! His will be done!" he exclaimed.

A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across the meadow toward
the prince.

"Well, good-by!" said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpatych. "You must
go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go to the
Ryazan estate or to the one near Moscow."

Alpatych clung to Prince Andrew's leg and burst into sobs. Gently
disengaging himself, the prince spurred his horse and rode down the
avenue at a gallop.

The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly
impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead, tapping the last on
which he was making the bast shoe, and two little girls, running out
from the hot house carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked from
the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young master,
the elder one with frightened look clutched her younger companion by the
hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick up some
green plums they had dropped.

Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them see
that they had been observed. He was sorry for the pretty frightened
little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt an irresistible
desire to do so. A new sensation of comfort and relief came over him
when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of other human
interests entirely aloof from his own and just as legitimate as those
that occupied him. Evidently these girls passionately desired one thing-
-to carry away and eat those green plums without being caught--and
Prince Andrew shared their wish for the success of their enterprise. He
could not resist looking at them once more. Believing their danger past,
they sprang from their ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill
little voices and holding up their skirts, their bare little sunburned
feet scampered merrily and quickly across the meadow grass.

Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the dusty
highroad along which the troops were moving. But not far from Bald Hills
he again came out on the road and overtook his regiment at its halting
place by the dam of a small pond. It was past one o'clock. The sun, a
red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his back intolerably
through his black coat. The dust always hung motionless above the buzz
of talk that came from the resting troops. There was no wind. As he
crossed the dam Prince Andrew smelled the ooze and freshness of the
pond. He longed to get into that water, however dirty it might be, and
he glanced round at the pool from whence came sounds of shrieks and
laughter. The small, muddy, green pond had risen visibly more than a
foot, flooding the dam, because it was full of the naked white bodies of
soldiers with brick-red hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing
about in it. All this naked white human flesh, laughing and shrieking,
floundered about in that dirty pool like carp stuffed into a watering
can, and the suggestion of merriment in that floundering mass rendered
it specially pathetic.

One fair-haired young soldier of the third company, whom Prince Andrew
knew and who had a strap round the calf of one leg, crossed himself,
stepped back to get a good run, and plunged into the water; another, a
dark noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood up to his
waist in the water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure and snorted
with satisfaction as he poured the water over his head with hands
blackened to the wrists. There were sounds of men slapping one another,
yelling, and puffing.

Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond, there was healthy,
white, muscular flesh. The officer, Timokhin, with his red little nose,
standing on the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt confused at seeing
the prince, but made up his mind to address him nevertheless.

"It's very nice, your excellency! Wouldn't you like to?" said he.

"It's dirty," replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.

"We'll clear it out for you in a minute," said Timokhin, and, still
undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the pond.

"The prince wants to bathe."

"What prince? Ours?" said many voices, and the men were in such haste to
clear out that the prince could hardly stop them. He decided that he
would rather wash himself with water in the barn.

"Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!" he thought, and he looked at his own
naked body and shuddered, not from cold but from a sense of disgust and
horror he did not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that
immense number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.

On the seventh of August Prince Bagration wrote as follows from his
quarters at Mikhaylovna on the Smolensk road:

Dear Count Alexis Andreevich--(He was writing to Arakcheev but knew that
his letter would be read by the Emperor, and therefore weighed every
word in it to the best of his ability.)

I expect the Minister (Barclay de Tolly) has already reported the
abandonment of Smolensk to the enemy. It is pitiable and sad, and the
whole army is in despair that this most important place has been
wantonly abandoned. I, for my part, begged him personally most urgently
and finally wrote him, but nothing would induce him to consent. I swear
to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a fix as never before and
might have lost half his army but could not have taken Smolensk. Our
troops fought, and are fighting, as never before. With fifteen thousand
men I held the enemy at bay for thirty-five hours and beat him; but he
would not hold out even for fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain
on our army, and as for him, he ought, it seems to me, not to live. If
he reports that our losses were great, it is not true; perhaps about
four thousand, not more, and not even that; but even were they ten
thousand, that's war! But the enemy has lost masses...

What would it have cost him to hold out for another two days? They would
have had to retire of their own accord, for they had no water for men or
horses. He gave me his word he would not retreat, but suddenly sent
instructions that he was retiring that night. We cannot fight in this
way, or we may soon bring the enemy to Moscow...

There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you
should make peace after all our sacrifices and such insane retreats! You
would set all Russia against you and every one of us would feel ashamed
to wear the uniform. If it has come to this--we must fight as long as
Russia can and as long as there are men able to stand...

One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may perhaps
be good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad but
execrable, yet to him is entrusted the fate of our whole country.... I
am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing boldly. It is clear
that the man who advocates the conclusion of a peace, and that the
Minister should command the army, does not love our sovereign and
desires the ruin of us all. So I write you frankly: call out the
militia. For the Minister is leading these visitors after him to Moscow
in a most masterly way. The whole army feels great suspicion of the
Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is said to be more Napoleon's man
than ours, and he is always advising the Minister. I am not merely civil
to him but obey him like a corporal, though I am his senior. This is
painful, but, loving my benefactor and sovereign, I submit. Only I am
sorry for the Emperor that he entrusts our fine army to such as he.
Consider that on our retreat we have lost by fatigue and left in the
hospital more than fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would
not have happened. Tell me, for God's sake, what will Russia, our mother
Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning our
good and gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings of
hatred and shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and of whom
are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is vacillating, a
coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The whole army
bewails it and calls down curses upon him...




CHAPTER VI

Among the innumerable categories applicable to the phenomena of human
life one may discriminate between those in which substance prevails and
those in which form prevails. To the latter--as distinguished from
village, country, provincial, or even Moscow life--we may allot
Petersburg life, and especially the life of its salons. That life of the
salons is unchanging. Since the year 1805 we had made peace and had
again quarreled with Bonaparte and had made constitutions and unmade
them again, but the salons of Anna Pavlovna and Helene remained just as
they had been--the one seven and the other five years before. At Anna
Pavlovna's they talked with perplexity of Bonaparte's successes just as
before and saw in them and in the subservience shown to him by the
European sovereigns a malicious conspiracy, the sole object of which was
to cause unpleasantness and anxiety to the court circle of which Anna
Pavlovna was the representative. And in Helene's salon, which Rumyantsev
himself honored with his visits, regarding Helene as a remarkably
intelligent woman, they talked with the same ecstasy in 1812 as in 1808
of the "great nation" and the "great man," and regretted our rupture
with France, a rupture which, according to them, ought to be promptly
terminated by peace.

Of late, since the Emperor's return from the army, there had been some
excitement in these conflicting salon circles and some demonstrations of
hostility to one another, but each camp retained its own tendency. In
Anna Pavlovna's circle only those Frenchmen were admitted who were deep-
rooted legitimists, and patriotic views were expressed to the effect
that one ought not to go to the French theater and that to maintain the
French troupe was costing the government as much as a whole army corps.
The progress of the war was eagerly followed, and only the reports most
flattering to our army were circulated. In the French circle of Helene
and Rumyantsev the reports of the cruelty of the enemy and of the war
were contradicted and all Napoleon's attempts at conciliation were
discussed. In that circle they discountenanced those who advised hurried
preparations for a removal to Kazan of the court and the girls'
educational establishments under the patronage of the Dowager Empress.
In Helene's circle the war in general was regarded as a series of formal
demonstrations which would very soon end in peace, and the view
prevailed expressed by Bilibin--who now in Petersburg was quite at home
in Helene's house, which every clever man was obliged to visit--that not
by gunpowder but by those who invented it would matters be settled. In
that circle the Moscow enthusiasm--news of which had reached Petersburg
simultaneously with the Emperor's return--was ridiculed sarcastically
and very cleverly, though with much caution.

Anna Pavlovna's circle on the contrary was enraptured by this enthusiasm
and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the ancients. Prince
Vasili, who still occupied his former important posts, formed a
connecting link between these two circles. He visited his "good friend
Anna Pavlovna" as well as his daughter's "diplomatic salon," and often
in his constant comings and goings between the two camps became confused
and said at Helene's what he should have said at Anna Pavlovna's and
vice versa.

Soon after the Emperor's return Prince Vasili in a conversation about
the war at Anna Pavlovna's severely condemned Barclay de Tolly, but was
undecided as to who ought to be appointed commander-in-chief. One of the
visitors, usually spoken of as "a man of great merit," having described
how he had that day seen Kutuzov, the newly chosen chief of the
Petersburg militia, presiding over the enrollment of recruits at the
Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest that Kutuzov would be the man
to satisfy all requirements.

Anna Pavlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutuzov had done
nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.

"I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility," Prince
Vasili interrupted, "but they did not listen to me. I told them his
election as chief of the militia would not please the Emperor. They did
not listen to me.

"It's all this mania for opposition," he went on. "And who for? It is
all because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm of those Muscovites,"
Prince Vasili continued, forgetting for a moment that though at Helene's
one had to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at Anna Pavlovna's one had to
be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved his mistake at once. "Now, is it
suitable that Count Kutuzov, the oldest general in Russia, should
preside at that tribunal? He will get nothing for his pains! How could
they make a man commander-in-chief who cannot mount a horse, who drops
asleep at a council, and has the very worst morals! A good reputation he
made for himself at Bucharest! I don't speak of his capacity as a
general, but at a time like this how they appoint a decrepit, blind old
man, positively blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can't see
anything. To play blindman's bluff? He can't see at all!"

No one replied to his remarks.

This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July. But on the twenty-
ninth of July Kutuzov received the title of Prince. This might indicate
a wish to get rid of him, and therefore Prince Vasili's opinion
continued to be correct though he was not now in any hurry to express
it. But on the eighth of August a committee, consisting of Field Marshal
Saltykov, Arakcheev, Vyazmitinov, Lopukhin, and Kochubey met to consider
the progress of the war. This committee came to the conclusion that our
failures were due to a want of unity in the command and though the
members of the committee were aware of the Emperor's dislike of Kutuzov,
after a short deliberation they agreed to advise his appointment as
commander in chief. That same day Kutuzov was appointed commander-in-
chief with full powers over the armies and over the whole region
occupied by them.

On the ninth of August Prince Vasili at Anna Pavlovna's again met the
"man of great merit." The latter was very attentive to Anna Pavlovna
because he wanted to be appointed director of one of the educational
establishments for young ladies. Prince Vasili entered the room with the
air of a happy conqueror who has attained the object of his desires.

"Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutuzov is field marshal!
All dissensions are at an end! I am so glad, so delighted! At last we
have a man!" said he, glancing sternly and significantly round at
everyone in the drawing room.

The "man of great merit," despite his desire to obtain the post of
director, could not refrain from reminding Prince Vasili of his former
opinion. Though this was impolite to Prince Vasili in Anna Pavlovna's
drawing room, and also to Anna Pavlovna herself who had received the
news with delight, he could not resist the temptation.

"But, Prince, they say he is blind!" said he, reminding Prince Vasili of
his own words.

"Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough," said Prince Vasili rapidly, in a
deep voice and with a slight cough--the voice and cough with which he
was wont to dispose of all difficulties.

"He sees well enough," he added. "And what I am so pleased about," he
went on, "is that our sovereign has given him full powers over all the
armies and the whole region--powers no commander-in-chief ever had
before. He is a second autocrat," he concluded with a victorious smile.

"God grant it! God grant it!" said Anna Pavlovna.

The "man of great merit," who was still a novice in court circles,
wishing to flatter Anna Pavlovna by defending her former position on
this question, observed:

"It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutuzov those powers.
They say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read, when he said to
Kutuzov: 'Your Emperor and the Fatherland award you this honor.'"

"Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech," said Anna Pavlovna.

"Oh, no, no!" warmly rejoined Prince Vasili, who would not now yield
Kutuzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutuzov was not only admirable
himself, but was adored by everybody. "No, that's impossible," said he,
"for our sovereign appreciated him so highly before."

"God grant only that Prince Kutuzov assumes real power and does not
allow anyone to put a spoke in his wheel," observed Anna Pavlovna.

Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince Vasili said in a
whisper:

"I know for a fact that Kutuzov made it an absolute condition that the
Tsarevich should not be with the army. Do you know what he said to the
Emperor?"

And Prince Vasili repeated the words supposed to have been spoken by
Kutuzov to the Emperor. "I can neither punish him if he does wrong nor
reward him if he does right."

"Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutuzov! I have known him a long time!"

"They even say," remarked the "man of great merit" who did not yet
possess courtly tact, "that his excellency made it an express condition
that the sovereign himself should not be with the army."

As soon as he said this both Prince Vasili and Anna Pavlovna turned away
from him and glanced sadly at one another with a sigh at his naivete.




CHAPTER VII

While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already passed
Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow. Napoleon's
historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to justify his
hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against his will. He
is as right as other historians who look for the explanation of historic
events in the will of one man; he is as right as the Russian historians
who maintain that Napoleon was drawn to Moscow by the skill of the
Russian commanders. Here besides the law of retrospection, which regards
all the past as a preparation for events that subsequently occur, the
law of reciprocity comes in, confusing the whole matter. A good
chessplayer having lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss
resulted from a mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the
opening, but forgets that at each stage of the game there were similar
mistakes and that none of his moves were perfect. He only notices the
mistake to which he pays attention, because his opponent took advantage
of it. How much more complex than this is the game of war, which occurs
under certain limits of time, and where it is not one will that
manipulates lifeless objects, but everything results from innumerable
conflicts of various wills!

After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobuzh at Vyazma, and
then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but it happened that owing to a conjunction
of innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give battle till
they reached Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow. From Vyazma Napoleon
ordered a direct advance on Moscow.

Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacree des
peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises en forme de
pagodes chinoises, * this Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination no rest. On
the march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his light bay
bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his pages,
and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind to
question a Russian prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by
Lelorgne d'Ideville, an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a gallop
and reined in his horse with an amused expression.


* "Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the sacred city of
Alexander's people, Moscow with its innumerable churches shaped like
Chinese pagodas."

"Well?" asked Napoleon.

"One of Platov's Cossacks says that Platov's corps is joining up with
the main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed commander-in-chief. He
is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow."

Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and bring the
man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several adjutants galloped
off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf Denisov had handed over to
Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly's jacket and on a French
cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face. Napoleon told him to ride
by his side and began questioning him.

"You are a Cossack?"

"Yes, a Cossack, your Honor."

"The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon's plain
appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental mind
the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the
incidents of the war," says Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality
Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before and left his master
dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of
chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him prisoner.
Lavrushka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who have seen all
sorts of things, consider it necessary to do everything in a mean and
cunning way, are ready to render any sort of service to their master,
and are keen at guessing their master's baser impulses, especially those
prompted by vanity and pettiness.

Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had easily
and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the least abashed but merely
did his utmost to gain his new master's favor.

He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon's presence could
no more intimidate him than Rostov's, or a sergeant major's with the
rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant major
or Napoleon could deprive him of.

So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the
orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the
Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed up
his eyes and considered.

In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see cunning
in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.

"It's like this," he said thoughtfully, "if there's a battle soon, yours
will win. That's right. But if three days pass, then after that, well,
then that same battle will not soon be over."

Lelorgne d'Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon thus:
"If a battle takes place within the next three days the French will win,
but if later, God knows what will happen." Napoleon did not smile,
though he was evidently in high good humor, and he ordered these words
to be repeated.

Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending not to
know who Napoleon was, added:

"We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in the
world, but we are a different matter..."--without knowing why or how
this bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.

The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase, and
Bonaparte smiled. "The young Cossack made his mighty interlocutor
smile," says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence, Napoleon
turned to Berthier and said he wished to see how the news that he was
talking to the Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who had written his
immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would affect this enfant du
Don. *


* "Child of the Don."

The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.

Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and that
Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new masters
promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his eyes
wide, and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken to be
whipped. "As soon as Napoleon's interpreter had spoken," says Thiers,
"the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another word, but rode
on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached him across
the steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly arrested and
replaced by a naive and silent feeling of admiration. Napoleon, after
making the Cossack a present, had him set free like a bird restored to
its native fields."

Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his
imagination, and "the bird restored to its native fields" galloped to
our outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but that
he meant to relate to his comrades. What had really taken place he did
not wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth telling. He found
the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating with Platov's
detachment and by evening found his master, Nicholas Rostov, quartered
at Yankovo. Rostov was just mounting to go for a ride round the
neighboring villages with Ilyin; he let Lavrushka have another horse and
took him along with him.




CHAPTER VIII

Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as Prince Andrew
supposed.

After the return of Alpatych from Smolensk the old prince suddenly
seemed to awake as from a dream. He ordered the militiamen to be called
up from the villages and armed, and wrote a letter to the commander-in-
chief informing him that he had resolved to remain at Bald Hills to the
last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the commander-in-chief's
discretion to take measures or not for the defense of Bald Hills, where
one of Russia's oldest generals would be captured or killed, and he
announced to his household that he would remain at Bald Hills.

But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for the departure of
the princess and Dessalles with the little prince to Bogucharovo and
thence to Moscow. Princess Mary, alarmed by her father's feverish and
sleepless activity after his previous apathy, could not bring herself to
leave him alone and for the first time in her life ventured to disobey
him. She refused to go away and her father's fury broke over her in a
terrible storm. He repeated every injustice he had ever inflicted on
her. Trying to convict her, he told her she had worn him out, had caused
his quarrel with his son, had harbored nasty suspicions of him, making
it the object of her life to poison his existence, and he drove her from
his study telling her that if she did not go away it was all the same to
him. He declared that he did not wish to remember her existence and
warned her not to dare to let him see her. The fact that he did not, as
she had feared, order her to be carried away by force but only told her
not to let him see her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof
that in the depth of his soul he was glad she was remaining at home and
had not gone away.

The morning after little Nicholas had left, the old prince donned his
full uniform and prepared to visit the commander-in-chief. His caleche
was already at the door. Princess Mary saw him walk out of the house in
his uniform wearing all his orders and go down the garden to review his
armed peasants and domestic serfs. She sat by the window listening to
his voice which reached her from the garden. Suddenly several men came
running up the avenue with frightened faces.

Princess Mary ran out to the porch, down the flower-bordered path, and
into the avenue. A large crowd of militiamen and domestics were moving
toward her, and in their midst several men were supporting by the
armpits and dragging along a little old man in a uniform and
decorations. She ran up to him and, in the play of the sunlight that
fell in small round spots through the shade of the lime-tree avenue,
could not be sure what change there was in his face. All she could see
was that his former stern and determined expression had altered to one
of timidity and submission. On seeing his daughter he moved his helpless
lips and made a hoarse sound. It was impossible to make out what he
wanted. He was lifted up, carried to his study, and laid on the very
couch he had so feared of late.

The doctor, who was fetched that same night, bled him and said that the
prince had had a seizure paralyzing his right side.

It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain at Bald Hills, and
next day they moved the prince to Bogucharovo, the doctor accompanying
him.

By the time they reached Bogucharovo, Dessalles and the little prince
had already left for Moscow.

For three weeks the old prince lay stricken by paralysis in the new
house Prince Andrew had built at Bogucharovo, ever in the same state,
getting neither better nor worse. He was unconscious and lay like a
distorted corpse. He muttered unceasingly, his eyebrows and lips
twitching, and it was impossible to tell whether he understood what was
going on around him or not. One thing was certain--that he was suffering
and wished to say something. But what it was, no one could tell: it
might be some caprice of a sick and half-crazy man, or it might relate
to public affairs, or possibly to family concerns.

The doctor said this restlessness did not mean anything and was due to
physical causes; but Princess Mary thought he wished to tell her
something, and the fact that her presence always increased his
restlessness confirmed her opinion.

He was evidently suffering both physically and mentally. There was no
hope of recovery. It was impossible for him to travel, it would not do
to let him die on the road. "Would it not be better if the end did come,
the very end?" Princess Mary sometimes thought. Night and day, hardly
sleeping at all, she watched him and, terrible to say, often watched him
not with hope of finding signs of improvement but wishing to find
symptoms of the approach of the end.

Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in herself, yet
there it was. And what seemed still more terrible to her was that since
her father's illness began (perhaps even sooner, when she stayed with
him expecting something to happen), all the personal desires and hopes
that had been forgotten or sleeping within her had awakened. Thoughts
that had not entered her mind for years--thoughts of a life free from
the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love and of family
happiness--floated continually in her imagination like temptations of
the devil. Thrust them aside as she would, questions continually
recurred to her as to how she would order her life now, after that.
These were temptations of the devil and Princess Mary knew it. She knew
that the sole weapon against him was prayer, and she tried to pray. She
assumed an attitude of prayer, looked at the icons, repeated the words
of a prayer, but she could not pray. She felt that a different world had
now taken possession of her--the life of a world of strenuous and free
activity, quite opposed to the spiritual world in which till now she had
been confined and in which her greatest comfort had been prayer. She
could not pray, could not weep, and worldly cares took possession of
her.

It was becoming dangerous to remain in Bogucharovo. News of the approach
of the French came from all sides, and in one village, ten miles from
Bogucharovo, a homestead had been looted by French marauders.

The doctor insisted on the necessity of moving the prince; the
provincial Marshal of the Nobility sent an official to Princess Mary to
persuade her to get away as quickly as possible, and the head of the
rural police having come to Bogucharovo urged the same thing, saying
that the French were only some twenty-five miles away, that French
proclamations were circulating in the villages, and that if the princess
did not take her father away before the fifteenth, he could not answer
for the consequences.

The princess decided to leave on the fifteenth. The cares of preparation
and giving orders, for which everyone came to her, occupied her all day.
She spent the night of the fourteenth as usual, without undressing, in
the room next to the one where the prince lay. Several times, waking up,
she heard his groans and muttering, the creak of his bed, and the steps
of Tikhon and the doctor when they turned him over. Several times she
listened at the door, and it seemed to her that his mutterings were
louder than usual and that they turned him over oftener. She could not
sleep and several times went to the door and listened, wishing to enter
but not deciding to do so. Though he did not speak, Princess Mary saw
and knew how unpleasant every sign of anxiety on his account was to him.
She had noticed with what dissatisfaction he turned from the look she
sometimes involuntarily fixed on him. She knew that her going in during
the night at an unusual hour would irritate him.

But never had she felt so grieved for him or so much afraid of losing
him. She recalled all her life with him and in every word and act of his
found an expression of his love of her. Occasionally amid these memories
temptations of the devil would surge into her imagination: thoughts of
how things would be after his death, and how her new, liberated life
would be ordered. But she drove these thoughts away with disgust. Toward
morning he became quiet and she fell asleep.

She woke late. That sincerity which often comes with waking showed her
clearly what chiefly concerned her about her father's illness. On waking
she listened to what was going on behind the door and, hearing him
groan, said to herself with a sigh that things were still the same.

"But what could have happened? What did I want? I want his death!" she
cried with a feeling of loathing for herself.

She washed, dressed, said her prayers, and went out to the porch. In
front of it stood carriages without horses and things were being packed
into the vehicles.

It was a warm, gray morning. Princess Mary stopped at the porch, still
horrified by her spiritual baseness and trying to arrange her thoughts
before going to her father. The doctor came downstairs and went out to
her.

"He is a little better today," said he. "I was looking for you. One can
make out something of what he is saying. His head is clearer. Come in,
he is asking for you..."

Princess Mary's heart beat so violently at this news that she grew pale
and leaned against the wall to keep from falling. To see him, talk to
him, feel his eyes on her now that her whole soul was overflowing with
those dreadful, wicked temptations, was a torment of joy and terror.

"Come," said the doctor.

Princess Mary entered her father's room and went up to his bed. He was
lying on his back propped up high, and his small bony hands with their
knotted purple veins were lying on the quilt; his left eye gazed
straight before him, his right eye was awry, and his brows and lips
motionless. He seemed altogether so thin, small, and pathetic. His face
seemed to have shriveled or melted; his features had grown smaller.
Princess Mary went up and kissed his hand. His left hand pressed hers so
that she understood that he had long been waiting for her to come. He
twitched her hand, and his brows and lips quivered angrily.

She looked at him in dismay trying to guess what he wanted of her. When
she changed her position so that his left eye could see her face he
calmed down, not taking his eyes off her for some seconds. Then his lips
and tongue moved, sounds came, and he began to speak, gazing timidly and
imploringly at her, evidently afraid that she might not understand.

Straining all her faculties Princess Mary looked at him. The comic
efforts with which he moved his tongue made her drop her eyes and with
difficulty repress the sobs that rose to her throat. He said something,
repeating the same words several times. She could not understand them,
but tried to guess what he was saying and inquiringly repeated the words
he uttered.

"Mmm...ar...ate...ate..." he repeated several times.

It was quite impossible to understand these sounds. The doctor thought
he had guessed them, and inquiringly repeated: "Mary, are you afraid?"
The prince shook his head, again repeated the same sounds.

"My mind, my mind aches?" questioned Princess Mary.

He made a mumbling sound in confirmation of this, took her hand, and
began pressing it to different parts of his breast as if trying to find
the right place for it.

"Always thoughts... about you... thoughts..." he then uttered much more
clearly than he had done before, now that he was sure of being
understood.

Princess Mary pressed her head against his hand, trying to hide her sobs
and tears.

He moved his hand over her hair.

"I have been calling you all night..." he brought out.

"If only I had known..." she said through her tears. "I was afraid to
come in."

He pressed her hand.

"Weren't you asleep?"

"No, I did not sleep," said Princess Mary, shaking her head.

Unconsciously imitating her father, she now tried to express herself as
he did, as much as possible by signs, and her tongue too seemed to move
with difficulty.

"Dear one... Dearest..." Princess Mary could not quite make out what he
had said, but from his look it was clear that he had uttered a tender
caressing word such as he had never used to her before. "Why didn't you
come in?"

"And I was wishing for his death!" thought Princess Mary.

He was silent awhile.

"Thank you... daughter dear!... for all, for all... forgive!... thank
you!... forgive!... thank you!..." and tears began to flow from his
eyes. "Call Andrew!" he said suddenly, and a childish, timid expression
of doubt showed itself on his face as he spoke.

He himself seemed aware that his demand was meaningless. So at least it
seemed to Princess Mary.

"I have a letter from him," she replied.

He glanced at her with timid surprise.

"Where is he?"

"He's with the army, Father, at Smolensk."

He closed his eyes and remained silent a long time. Then as if in answer
to his doubts and to confirm the fact that now he understood and
remembered everything, he nodded his head and reopened his eyes.

"Yes," he said, softly and distinctly. "Russia has perished. They've
destroyed her."

And he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his eyes. Princess Mary
could no longer restrain herself and wept while she gazed at his face.

Again he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed to his eyes, and
Tikhon, understanding him, wiped away the tears.

Then he again opened his eyes and said something none of them could
understand for a long time, till at last Tikhon understood and repeated
it. Princess Mary had sought the meaning of his words in the mood in
which he had just been speaking. She thought he was speaking of Russia,
or Prince Andrew, of herself, of his grandson, or of his own death, and
so she could not guess his words.

"Put on your white dress. I like it," was what he said.

Having understood this Princess Mary sobbed still louder, and the doctor
taking her arm led her out to the veranda, soothing her and trying to
persuade her to prepare for her journey. When she had left the room the
prince again began speaking about his son, about the war, and about the
Emperor, angrily twitching his brows and raising his hoarse voice, and
then he had a second and final stroke.

Princess Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had cleared, it was hot and
sunny. She could understand nothing, think of nothing and feel nothing,
except passionate love for her father, love such as she thought she had
never felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing into the garden and as
far as the pond, along the avenues of young lime trees Prince Andrew had
planted.

"Yes... I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to end
quicker.... I wished to be at peace.... And what will become of me? What
use will peace be when he is no longer here?" Princess Mary murmured,
pacing the garden with hurried steps and pressing her hands to her bosom
which heaved with convulsive sobs.

When she had completed the tour of the garden, which brought her again
to the house, she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne--who had remained at
Bogucharovo and did not wish to leave it--coming toward her with a
stranger. This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district, who had
come personally to point out to the princess the necessity for her
prompt departure. Princess Mary listened without understanding him; she
led him to the house, offered him lunch, and sat down with him. Then,
excusing herself, she went to the door of the old prince's room. The
doctor came out with an agitated face and said she could not enter.

"Go away, Princess! Go away... go away!"

She returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at the foot of the
slope by the pond, where no one could see her. She did not know how long
she had been there when she was aroused by the sound of a woman's
footsteps running along the path. She rose and saw Dunyasha her maid,
who was evidently looking for her, and who stopped suddenly as if in
alarm on seeing her mistress.

"Please come, Princess... The Prince," said Dunyasha in a breaking
voice.

"Immediately, I'm coming, I'm coming!" replied the princess hurriedly,
not giving Dunyasha time to finish what she was saying, and trying to
avoid seeing the girl she ran toward the house.

"Princess, it's God's will! You must be prepared for everything," said
the Marshal, meeting her at the house door.

"Let me alone; it's not true!" she cried angrily to him.

The doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and ran to her
father's door. "Why are these people with frightened faces stopping me?
I don't want any of them! And what are they doing here?" she thought.
She opened the door and the bright daylight in that previously darkened
room startled her. In the room were her nurse and other women. They all
drew back from the bed, making way for her. He was still lying on the
bed as before, but the stern expression of his quiet face made Princess
Mary stop short on the threshold.

"No, he's not dead--it's impossible!" she told herself and approached
him, and repressing the terror that seized her, she pressed her lips to
his cheek. But she stepped back immediately. All the force of the
tenderness she had been feeling for him vanished instantly and was
replaced by a feeling of horror at what lay there before her. "No, he is
no more! He is not, but here where he was is something unfamiliar and
hostile, some dreadful, terrifying, and repellent mystery!" And hiding
her face in her hands, Princess Mary sank into the arms of the doctor,
who held her up.

In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women washed what had been
the prince, tied his head up with a handkerchief that the mouth should
not stiffen while open, and with another handkerchief tied together the
legs that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed him in uniform
with his decorations and placed his shriveled little body on a table.
Heaven only knows who arranged all this and when, but it all got done as
if of its own accord. Toward night candles were burning round his
coffin, a pall was spread over it, the floor was strewn with sprays of
juniper, a printed band was tucked in under his shriveled head, and in a
corner of the room sat a chanter reading the psalms.

Just as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead horse, so the
inmates of the house and strangers crowded into the drawing room round
the coffin--the Marshal, the village Elder, peasant women--and all with
fixed and frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and kissed the old
prince's cold and stiffened hand.




CHAPTER IX

Until Prince Andrew settled in Bogucharovo its owners had always been
absentees, and its peasants were of quite a different character from
those of Bald Hills. They differed from them in speech, dress, and
disposition. They were called steppe peasants. The old prince used to
approve of them for their endurance at work when they came to Bald Hills
to help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches, but he disliked
them for their boorishness.

Prince Andrew's last stay at Bogucharovo, when he introduced hospitals
and schools and reduced the quitrent the peasants had to pay, had not
softened their disposition but had on the contrary strengthened in them
the traits of character the old prince called boorishness. Various
obscure rumors were always current among them: at one time a rumor that
they would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at another of a new religion to
which they were all to be converted; then of some proclamation of the
Tsar's and of an oath to the Tsar Paul in 1797 (in connection with which
it was rumored that freedom had been granted them but the landowners had
stopped it), then of Peter Fedorovich's return to the throne in seven
years' time, when everything would be made free and so "simple" that
there would be no restrictions. Rumors of the war with Bonaparte and his
invasion were connected in their minds with the same sort of vague
notions of Antichrist, the end of the world, and "pure freedom."

In the vicinity of Bogucharovo were large villages belonging to the
crown or to owners whose serfs paid quitrent and could work where they
pleased. There were very few resident landlords in the neighborhood and
also very few domestic or literate serfs, and in the lives of the
peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents in the life of the
Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are so baffling to
contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly noticeable than among
others. One instance, which had occurred some twenty years before, was a
movement among the peasants to emigrate to some unknown "warm rivers."
Hundreds of peasants, among them the Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began
selling their cattle and moving in whole families toward the southeast.
As birds migrate to somewhere beyond the sea, so these men with their
wives and children streamed to the southeast, to parts where none of
them had ever been. They set off in caravans, bought their freedom one
by one or ran away, and drove or walked toward the "warm rivers." Many
of them were punished, some sent to Siberia, many died of cold and
hunger on the road, many returned of their own accord, and the movement
died down of itself just as it had sprung up, without apparent reason.
But such undercurrents still existed among the people and gathered new
forces ready to manifest themselves just as strangely, unexpectedly, and
at the same time simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812, to anyone
living in close touch with these people it was apparent that these
undercurrents were acting strongly and nearing an eruption.

Alpatych, who had reached Bogucharovo shortly before the old prince's
death, noticed an agitation among the peasants, and that contrary to
what was happening in the Bald Hills district, where over a radius of
forty miles all the peasants were moving away and leaving their villages
to be devastated by the Cossacks, the peasants in the steppe region
round Bogucharovo were, it was rumored, in touch with the French,
received leaflets from them that passed from hand to hand, and did not
migrate. He learned from domestic serfs loyal to him that the peasant
Karp, who possessed great influence in the village commune and had
recently been away driving a government transport, had returned with
news that the Cossacks were destroying deserted villages, but that the
French did not harm them. Alpatych also knew that on the previous day
another peasant had even brought from the village of Visloukhovo, which
was occupied by the French, a proclamation by a French general that no
harm would be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained they would
be paid for anything taken from them. As proof of this the peasant had
brought from Visloukhovo a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that
they were false) paid to him in advance for hay.

More important still, Alpatych learned that on the morning of the very
day he gave the village Elder orders to collect carts to move the
princess' luggage from Bogucharovo, there had been a village meeting at
which it had been decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was no time
to waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old prince's death, the
Marshal had insisted on Princess Mary's leaving at once, as it was
becoming dangerous. He had told her that after the sixteenth he could
not be responsible for what might happen. On the evening of the day the
old prince died the Marshal went away, promising to return next day for
the funeral. But this he was unable to do, for he received tidings that
the French had unexpectedly advanced, and had barely time to remove his
own family and valuables from his estate.

For some thirty years Bogucharovo had been managed by the village Elder,
Dron, whom the old prince called by the diminutive "Dronushka."

Dron was one of those physically and mentally vigorous peasants who grow
big beards as soon as they are of age and go on unchanged till they are
sixty or seventy, without a gray hair or the loss of a tooth, as
straight and strong at sixty as at thirty.

Soon after the migration to the "warm rivers," in which he had taken
part like the rest, Dron was made village Elder and overseer of
Bogucharovo, and had since filled that post irreproachably for twenty-
three years. The peasants feared him more than they did their master.
The masters, both the old prince and the young, and the steward
respected him and jestingly called him "the Minister." During the whole
time of his service Dron had never been drunk or ill, never after
sleepless nights or the hardest tasks had he shown the least fatigue,
and though he could not read he had never forgotten a single money
account or the number of quarters of flour in any of the endless
cartloads he sold for the prince, nor a single shock of the whole corn
crop on any single acre of the Bogucharovo fields.

Alpatych, arriving from the devastated Bald Hills estate, sent for his
Dron on the day of the prince's funeral and told him to have twelve
horses got ready for the princess' carriages and eighteen carts for the
things to be removed from Bogucharovo. Though the peasants paid
quitrent, Alpatych thought no difficulty would be made about complying
with this order, for there were two hundred and thirty households at
work in Bogucharovo and the peasants were well to do. But on hearing the
order Dron lowered his eyes and remained silent. Alpatych named certain
peasants he knew, from whom he told him to take the carts.

Dron replied that the horses of these peasants were away carting.
Alpatych named others, but they too, according to Dron, had no horses
available: some horses were carting for the government, others were too
weak, and others had died for want of fodder. It seemed that no horses
could be had even for the carriages, much less for the carting.

Alpatych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as Dron was a model
village Elder, so Alpatych had not managed the prince's estates for
twenty years in vain. He was a model steward, possessing in the highest
degree the faculty of divining the needs and instincts of those he dealt
with. Having glanced at Dron he at once understood that his answers did
not express his personal views but the general mood of the Bogucharovo
commune, by which the Elder had already been carried away. But he also
knew that Dron, who had acquired property and was hated by the commune,
must be hesitating between the two camps: the masters' and the serfs'.
He noticed this hesitation in Dron's look and therefore frowned and
moved closer up to him.

"Now just listen, Dronushka," said he. "Don't talk nonsense to me. His
excellency Prince Andrew himself gave me orders to move all the people
away and not leave them with the enemy, and there is an order from the
Tsar about it too. Anyone who stays is a traitor to the Tsar. Do you
hear?"

"I hear," Dron answered without lifting his eyes.

Alpatych was not satisfied with this reply.

"Eh, Dron, it will turn out badly!" he said, shaking his head.

"The power is in your hands," Dron rejoined sadly.

"Eh, Dron, drop it!" Alpatych repeated, withdrawing his hand from his
bosom and solemnly pointing to the floor at Dron's feet. "I can see
through you and three yards into the ground under you," he continued,
gazing at the floor in front of Dron.

Dron was disconcerted, glanced furtively at Alpatych and again lowered
his eyes.

"You drop this nonsense and tell the people to get ready to leave their
homes and go to Moscow and to get carts ready for tomorrow morning for
the princess' things. And don't go to any meeting yourself, do you
hear?"

Dron suddenly fell on his knees.

"Yakov Alpatych, discharge me! Take the keys from me and discharge me,
for Christ's sake!"

"Stop that!" cried Alpatych sternly. "I see through you and three yards
under you," he repeated, knowing that his skill in beekeeping, his
knowledge of the right time to sow the oats, and the fact that he had
been able to retain the old prince's favor for twenty years had long
since gained him the reputation of being a wizard, and that the power of
seeing three yards under a man is considered an attribute of wizards.

Dron got up and was about to say something, but Alpatych interrupted
him.

"What is it you have got into your heads, eh?... What are you thinking
of, eh?"

"What am I to do with the people?" said Dron. "They're quite beside
themselves; I have already told them..."

"'Told them,' I dare say!" said Alpatych. "Are they drinking?" he asked
abruptly.

"Quite beside themselves, Yakov Alpatych; they've fetched another
barrel."

"Well, then, listen! I'll go to the police officer, and you tell them
so, and that they must stop this and the carts must be got ready."

"I understand."

Alpatych did not insist further. He had managed people for a long time
and knew that the chief way to make them obey is to show no suspicion
that they can possibly disobey. Having wrung a submissive "I understand"
from Dron, Alpatych contented himself with that, though he not only
doubted but felt almost certain that without the help of troops the
carts would not be forthcoming.

And so it was, for when evening came no carts had been provided. In the
village, outside the drink shop, another meeting was being held, which
decided that the horses should be driven out into the woods and the
carts should not be provided. Without saying anything of this to the
princess, Alpatych had his own belongings taken out of the carts which
had arrived from Bald Hills and had those horses got ready for the
princess' carriages. Meanwhile he went himself to the police
authorities.




CHAPTER X

After her father's funeral Princess Mary shut herself up in her room and
did not admit anyone. A maid came to the door to say that Alpatych was
asking for orders about their departure. (This was before his talk with
Dron.) Princess Mary raised herself on the sofa on which she had been
lying and replied through the closed door that she did not mean to go
away and begged to be left in peace.

The windows of the room in which she was lying looked westward. She lay
on the sofa with her face to the wall, fingering the buttons of the
leather cushion and seeing nothing but that cushion, and her confused
thoughts were centered on one subject--the irrevocability of death and
her own spiritual baseness, which she had not suspected, but which had
shown itself during her father's illness. She wished to pray but did not
dare to, dared not in her present state of mind address herself to God.
She lay for a long time in that position.

The sun had reached the other side of the house, and its slanting rays
shone into the open window, lighting up the room and part of the morocco
cushion at which Princess Mary was looking. The flow of her thoughts
suddenly stopped. Unconsciously she sat up, smoothed her hair, got up,
and went to the window, involuntarily inhaling the freshness of the
clear but windy evening.

"Yes, you can well enjoy the evening now! He is gone and no one will
hinder you," she said to herself, and sinking into a chair she let her
head fall on the window sill.

Someone spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from the garden and
kissed her head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a black
dress and weepers. She softly approached Princess Mary, sighed, kissed
her, and immediately began to cry. The princess looked up at her. All
their former disharmony and her own jealousy recurred to her mind. But
she remembered too how he had changed of late toward Mademoiselle
Bourienne and could not bear to see her, thereby showing how unjust were
the reproaches Princess Mary had mentally addressed to her. "Besides, is
it for me, for me who desired his death, to condemn anyone?" she
thought.

Princess Mary vividly pictured to herself the position of Mademoiselle
Bourienne, whom she had of late kept at a distance, but who yet was
dependent on her and living in her house. She felt sorry for her and
held out her hand with a glance of gentle inquiry. Mademoiselle
Bourienne at once began crying again and kissed that hand, speaking of
the princess' sorrow and making herself a partner in it. She said her
only consolation was the fact that the princess allowed her to share her
sorrow, that all the old misunderstandings should sink into nothing but
this great grief; that she felt herself blameless in regard to everyone,
and that he, from above, saw her affection and gratitude. The princess
heard her, not heeding her words but occasionally looking up at her and
listening to the sound of her voice.

"Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess," said Mademoiselle
Bourienne after a pause. "I understand that you could not, and cannot,
think of yourself, but with my love for you I must do so.... Has
Alpatych been to you? Has he spoken to you of going away?" she asked.

Princess Mary did not answer. She did not understand who was to go or
where to. "Is it possible to plan or think of anything now? Is it not
all the same?" she thought, and did not reply.

"You know, chere Marie," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "that we are in
danger--are surrounded by the French. It would be dangerous to move now.
If we go we are almost sure to be taken prisoners, and God knows..."

Princess Mary looked at her companion without understanding what she was
talking about.

"Oh, if anyone knew how little anything matters to me now," she said.
"Of course I would on no account wish to go away from him.... Alpatych
did say something about going.... Speak to him; I can do nothing,
nothing, and don't want to...."

"I've spoken to him. He hopes we should be in time to get away tomorrow,
but I think it would now be better to stay here," said Mademoiselle
Bourienne. "Because, you will agree, chere Marie, to fall into the hands
of the soldiers or of riotous peasants would be terrible."

Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a proclamation (not
printed on ordinary Russian paper) of General Rameau's, telling people
not to leave their homes and that the French authorities would afford
them proper protection. She handed this to the princess.

"I think it would be best to appeal to that general," she continued,
"and I am sure that all due respect would be shown you."

Princess Mary read the paper, and her face began to quiver with stifled
sobs.

"From whom did you get this?" she asked.

"They probably recognized that I am French, by my name," replied
Mademoiselle Bourienne blushing.

Princess Mary, with the paper in her hand, rose from the window and with
a pale face went out of the room and into what had been Prince Andrew's
study.

"Dunyasha, send Alpatych, or Dronushka, or somebody to me!" she said,
"and tell Mademoiselle Bourienne not to come to me," she added, hearing
Mademoiselle Bourienne's voice. "We must go at once, at once!" she said,
appalled at the thought of being left in the hands of the French.

"If Prince Andrew heard that I was in the power of the French! That I,
the daughter of Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, asked General Rameau for
protection and accepted his favor!" This idea horrified her, made her
shudder, blush, and feel such a rush of anger and pride as she had never
experienced before. All that was distressing, and especially all that
was humiliating, in her position rose vividly to her mind. "They, the
French, would settle in this house: M. le General Rameau would occupy
Prince Andrew's study and amuse himself by looking through and reading
his letters and papers. Mademoiselle Bourienne would do the honors of
Bogucharovo for him. I should be given a small room as a favor, the
soldiers would violate my father's newly dug grave to steal his crosses
and stars, they would tell me of their victories over the Russians, and
would pretend to sympathize with my sorrow..." thought Princess Mary,
not thinking her own thoughts but feeling bound to think like her father
and her brother. For herself she did not care where she remained or what
happened to her, but she felt herself the representative of her dead
father and of Prince Andrew. Involuntarily she thought their thoughts
and felt their feelings. What they would have said and what they would
have done she felt bound to say and do. She went into Prince Andrew's
study, trying to enter completely into his ideas, and considered her
position.

The demands of life, which had seemed to her annihilated by her father's
death, all at once rose before her with a new, previously unknown force
and took possession of her.

Agitated and flushed she paced the room, sending now for Michael
Ivanovich and now for Tikhon or Dron. Dunyasha, the nurse, and the other
maids could not say in how far Mademoiselle Bourienne's statement was
correct. Alpatych was not at home, he had gone to the police. Neither
could the architect Michael Ivanovich, who on being sent for came in
with sleepy eyes, tell Princess Mary anything. With just the same smile
of agreement with which for fifteen years he had been accustomed to
answer the old prince without expressing views of his own, he now
replied to Princess Mary, so that nothing definite could be got from his
answers. The old valet Tikhon, with sunken, emaciated face that bore the
stamp of inconsolable grief, replied: "Yes, Princess" to all Princess
Mary's questions and hardly refrained from sobbing as he looked at her.

At length Dron, the village Elder, entered the room and with a deep bow
to Princess Mary came to a halt by the doorpost.

Princess Mary walked up and down the room and stopped in front of him.

"Dronushka," she said, regarding as a sure friend this Dronushka who
always used to bring a special kind of gingerbread from his visit to the
fair at Vyazma every year and smilingly offer it to her, "Dronushka, now
since our misfortune..." she began, but could not go on.

"We are all in God's hands," said he, with a sigh.

They were silent for a while.

"Dronushka, Alpatych has gone off somewhere and I have no one to turn
to. Is it true, as they tell me, that I can't even go away?"

"Why shouldn't you go away, your excellency? You can go," said Dron.

"I was told it would be dangerous because of the enemy. Dear friend, I
can do nothing. I understand nothing. I have nobody! I want to go away
tonight or early tomorrow morning."

Dron paused. He looked askance at Princess Mary and said: "There are no
horses; I told Yakov Alpatych so."

"Why are there none?" asked the princess.

"It's all God's scourge," said Dron. "What horses we had have been taken
for the army or have died--this is such a year! It's not a case of
feeding horses--we may die of hunger ourselves! As it is, some go three
days without eating. We've nothing, we've been ruined."

Princess Mary listened attentively to what he told her.

"The peasants are ruined? They have no bread?" she asked.

"They're dying of hunger," said Dron. "It's not a case of carting."

"But why didn't you tell me, Dronushka? Isn't it possible to help them?
I'll do all I can...."

To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment when such sorrow
was filling her soul, there could be rich people and poor, and the rich
could refrain from helping the poor. She had heard vaguely that there
was such a thing as "landlord's corn" which was sometimes given to the
peasants. She also knew that neither her father nor her brother would
refuse to help the peasants in need, she only feared to make some
mistake in speaking about the distribution of the grain she wished to
give. She was glad such cares presented themselves, enabling her without
scruple to forget her own grief. She began asking Dron about the
peasants' needs and what there was in Bogucharovo that belonged to the
landlord.

"But we have grain belonging to my brother?" she said.

"The landlord's grain is all safe," replied Dron proudly. "Our prince
did not order it to be sold."

"Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I give you leave
in my brother's name," said she.

Dron made no answer but sighed deeply.

"Give them that corn if there is enough of it. Distribute it all. I give
this order in my brother's name; and tell them that what is ours is
theirs. We do not grudge them anything. Tell them so."

Dron looked intently at the princess while she was speaking.

"Discharge me, little mother, for God's sake! Order the keys to be taken
from me," said he. "I have served twenty-three years and have done no
wrong. Discharge me, for God's sake!"

Princess Mary did not understand what he wanted of her or why he was
asking to be discharged. She replied that she had never doubted his
devotion and that she was ready to do anything for him and for the
peasants.




CHAPTER XI

An hour later Dunyasha came to tell the princess that Dron had come, and
all the peasants had assembled at the barn by the princess' order and
wished to have word with their mistress.

"But I never told them to come," said Princess Mary. "I only told Dron
to let them have the grain."

"Only, for God's sake, Princess dear, have them sent away and don't go
out to them. It's all a trick," said Dunyasha, "and when Yakov Alpatych
returns let us get away... and please don't..."

"What is a trick?" asked Princess Mary in surprise.

"I know it is, only listen to me for God's sake! Ask nurse too. They say
they don't agree to leave Bogucharovo as you ordered."

"You're making some mistake. I never ordered them to go away," said
Princess Mary. "Call Dronushka."

Dron came and confirmed Dunyasha's words; the peasants had come by the
princess' order.

"But I never sent for them," declared the princess. "You must have given
my message wrong. I only said that you were to give them the grain."

Dron only sighed in reply.

"If you order it they will go away," said he.

"No, no. I'll go out to them," said Princess Mary, and in spite of the
nurse's and Dunyasha's protests she went out into the porch; Dron,
Dunyasha, the nurse, and Michael Ivanovich following her.

"They probably think I am offering them the grain to bribe them to
remain here, while I myself go away leaving them to the mercy of the
French," thought Princess Mary. "I will offer them monthly rations and
housing at our Moscow estate. I am sure Andrew would do even more in my
place," she thought as she went out in the twilight toward the crowd
standing on the pasture by the barn.

The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly took off their
hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and, tripping over her skirt, came
close up to them. So many different eyes, old and young, were fixed on
her, and there were so many different faces, that she could not
distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak to them all at
once, did not know how to do it. But again the sense that she
represented her father and her brother gave her courage, and she boldly
began her speech.

"I am very glad you have come," she said without raising her eyes, and
feeling her heart beating quickly and violently. "Dronushka tells me
that the war has ruined you. That is our common misfortune, and I shall
grudge nothing to help you. I am myself going away because it is
dangerous here... the enemy is near... because... I am giving you
everything, my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all our grain,
so that you may not suffer want! And if you have been told that I am
giving you the grain to keep you here--that is not true. On the
contrary, I ask you to go with all your belongings to our estate near
Moscow, and I promise you I will see to it that there you shall want for
nothing. You shall be given food and lodging."

The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard in the crowd.

"I am not doing this on my own account," she continued, "I do it in the
name of my dead father, who was a good master to you, and of my brother
and his son."

Again she paused. No one broke the silence.

"Ours is a common misfortune and we will share it together. All that is
mine is yours," she concluded, scanning the faces before her.

All eyes were gazing at her with one and the same expression. She could
not fathom whether it was curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or
apprehension and distrust--but the expression on all the faces was
identical.

"We are all very thankful for your bounty, but it won't do for us to
take the landlord's grain," said a voice at the back of the crowd.

"But why not?" asked the princess.

No one replied and Princess Mary, looking round at the crowd, found that
every eye she met now was immediately dropped.

"But why don't you want to take it?" she asked again.

No one answered.

The silence began to oppress the princess and she tried to catch
someone's eye.

"Why don't you speak?" she inquired of a very old man who stood just in
front of her leaning on his stick. "If you think something more is
wanted, tell me! I will do anything," said she, catching his eye.

But as if this angered him, he bent his head quite low and muttered:

"Why should we agree? We don't want the grain."

"Why should we give up everything? We don't agree. Don't agree.... We
are sorry for you, but we're not willing. Go away yourself, alone..."
came from various sides of the crowd.

And again all the faces in that crowd bore an identical expression,
though now it was certainly not an expression of curiosity or gratitude,
but of angry resolve.

"But you can't have understood me," said Princess Mary with a sad smile.
"Why don't you want to go? I promise to house and feed you, while here
the enemy would ruin you..."

But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd.

"We're not willing. Let them ruin us! We won't take your grain. We don't
agree."

Again Princess Mary tried to catch someone's eye, but not a single eye
in the crowd was turned to her; evidently they were all trying to avoid
her look. She felt strange and awkward.

"Oh yes, an artful tale! Follow her into slavery! Pull down your houses
and go into bondage! I dare say! 'I'll give you grain, indeed!' she
says," voices in the crowd were heard saying.

With drooping head Princess Mary left the crowd and went back to the
house. Having repeated her order to Dron to have horses ready for her
departure next morning, she went to her room and remained alone with her
own thoughts.




CHAPTER XII

For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window of her
room hearing the sound of the peasants' voices that reached her from the
village, but it was not of them she was thinking. She felt that she
could not understand them however much she might think about them. She
thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which, after the break caused by
cares for the present, seemed already to belong to the past. Now she
could remember it and weep or pray.

After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh. Toward
midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full moon began
to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist began to
rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.

Pictures of the near past--her father's illness and last moments--rose
one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now lingered
over these images, repelling with horror only the last one, the picture
of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate even in
imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And these pictures
presented themselves to her so clearly and in such detail that they
seemed now present, now past, and now future.

She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke and was
being dragged along by his armpits through the garden at Bald Hills,
muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray
eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her.

"Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day he died," she
thought. "He had always thought what he said then." And she recalled in
all its detail the night at Bald Hills before he had the last stroke,
when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at home against his
will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs on tiptoe, and going
to the door of the conservatory where he slept that night had listened
at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he was saying something to
Tikhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm nights and of the Empress.
Evidently he had wanted to talk. "And why didn't he call me? Why didn't
he let me be there instead of Tikhon?" Princess Mary had thought and
thought again now. "Now he will never tell anyone what he had in his
soul. Never will that moment return for him or for me when he might have
said all he longed to say, and not Tikhon but I might have heard and
understood him. Why didn't I enter the room?" she thought. "Perhaps he
would then have said to me what he said the day he died. While talking
to Tikhon he asked about me twice. He wanted to see me, and I was
standing close by, outside the door. It was sad and painful for him to
talk to Tikhon who did not understand him. I remember how he began
speaking to him about Lise as if she were alive--he had forgotten she
was dead--and Tikhon reminded him that she was no more, and he shouted,
'Fool!' He was greatly depressed. From behind the door I heard how he
lay down on his bed groaning and loudly exclaimed, 'My God!' Why didn't
I go in then? What could he have done to me? What could I have lost? And
perhaps he would then have been comforted and would have said that word
to me." And Princess Mary uttered aloud the caressing word he had said
to her on the day of his death. "Dear-est!" she repeated, and began
sobbing, with tears that relieved her soul. She now saw his face before
her. And not the face she had known ever since she could remember and
had always seen at a distance, but the timid, feeble face she had seen
for the first time quite closely, with all its wrinkles and details,
when she stooped near to his mouth to catch what he said.

"Dear-est!" she repeated again.

"What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What is he thinking
now?" This question suddenly presented itself to her, and in answer she
saw him before her with the expression that was on his face as he lay in
his coffin with his chin bound up with a white handkerchief. And the
horror that had seized her when she touched him and convinced herself
that that was not he, but something mysterious and horrible, seized her
again. She tried to think of something else and to pray, but could do
neither. With wide-open eyes she gazed at the moonlight and the shadows,
expecting every moment to see his dead face, and she felt that the
silence brooding over the house and within it held her fast.

"Dunyasha," she whispered. "Dunyasha!" she screamed wildly, and tearing
herself out of this silence she ran to the servants' quarters to meet
her old nurse and the maidservants who came running toward her.




CHAPTER XIII

On the seventeenth of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by Lavrushka
who had just returned from captivity and by an hussar orderly, left
their quarters at Yankovo, ten miles from Bogucharovo, and went for a
ride--to try a new horse Ilyin had bought and to find out whether there
was any hay to be had in the villages.

For the last three days Bogucharovo had lain between the two hostile
armies, so that it was as easy for the Russian rearguard to get to it as
for the French vanguard; Rostov, as a careful squadron commander, wished
to take such provisions as remained at Bogucharovo before the French
could get them.

Rostov and Ilyin were in the merriest of moods. On the way to
Bogucharovo, a princely estate with a dwelling house and farm where they
hoped to find many domestic serfs and pretty girls, they questioned
Lavrushka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and raced one
another to try Ilyin's horse.

Rostov had no idea that the village he was entering was the property of
that very Bolkonski who had been engaged to his sister.

Rostov and Ilyin gave rein to their horses for a last race along the
incline before reaching Bogucharovo, and Rostov, outstripping Ilyin, was
the first to gallop into the village street.

"You're first!" cried Ilyin, flushed.

"Yes, always first both on the grassland and here," answered Rostov,
stroking his heated Donets horse.

"And I'd have won on my Frenchy, your excellency," said Lavrushka from
behind, alluding to his shabby cart horse, "only I didn't wish to
mortify you."

They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large crowd of peasants was
standing.

Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the new arrivals
without doffing their caps. Two tall old peasants with wrinkled faces
and scanty beards emerged from the tavern, smiling, staggering, and
singing some incoherent song, and approached the officers.

"Fine fellows!" said Rostov laughing. "Is there any hay here?"

"And how like one another," said Ilyin.

"A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!" sang one of the peasants with a
blissful smile.

One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to Rostov.

"Who do you belong to?" he asked.

"The French," replied Ilyin jestingly, "and here is Napoleon himself"--
and he pointed to Lavrushka.

"Then you are Russians?" the peasant asked again.

"And is there a large force of you here?" said another, a short man,
coming up.

"Very large," answered Rostov. "But why have you collected here?" he
added. "Is it a holiday?"

"The old men have met to talk over the business of the commune," replied
the peasant, moving away.

At that moment, on the road leading from the big house, two women and a
man in a white hat were seen coming toward the officers.

"The one in pink is mine, so keep off!" said Ilyin on seeing Dunyasha
running resolutely toward him.

"She'll be ours!" said Lavrushka to Ilyin, winking.

"What do you want, my pretty?" said Ilyin with a smile.

"The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your name."

"This is Count Rostov, squadron commander, and I am your humble
servant."

"Co-o-om-pa-ny!" roared the tipsy peasant with a beatific smile as he
looked at Ilyin talking to the girl. Following Dunyasha, Alpatych
advanced to Rostov, having bared his head while still at a distance.

"May I make bold to trouble your honor?" said he respectfully, but with
a shade of contempt for the youthfulness of this officer and with a hand
thrust into his bosom. "My mistress, daughter of General in Chief Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski who died on the fifteenth of this month, finding
herself in difficulties owing to the boorishness of these people"--he
pointed to the peasants--"asks you to come up to the house.... Won't
you, please, ride on a little farther," said Alpatych with a melancholy
smile, "as it is not convenient in the presence of...?" He pointed to
the two peasants who kept as close to him as horseflies to a horse.

"Ah!... Alpatych... Ah, Yakov Alpatych... Grand! Forgive us for Christ's
sake, eh?" said the peasants, smiling joyfully at him.

Rostov looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.

"Or perhaps they amuse your honor?" remarked Alpatych with a staid air,
as he pointed at the old men with his free hand.

"No, there's not much to be amused at here," said Rostov, and rode on a
little way. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"I make bold to inform your honor that the rude peasants here don't wish
to let the mistress leave the estate, and threaten to unharness her
horses, so that though everything has been packed up since morning, her
excellency cannot get away."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Rostov.

"I have the honor to report to you the actual truth," said Alpatych.

Rostov dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and followed Alpatych
to the house, questioning him as to the state of affairs. It appeared
that the princess' offer of corn to the peasants the previous day, and
her talk with Dron and at the meeting, had actually had so bad an effect
that Dron had finally given up the keys and joined the peasants and had
not appeared when Alpatych sent for him; and that in the morning when
the princess gave orders to harness for her journey, the peasants had
come in a large crowd to the barn and sent word that they would not let
her leave the village: that there was an order not to move, and that
they would unharness the horses. Alpatych had gone out to admonish them,
but was told (it was chiefly Karp who did the talking, Dron not showing
himself in the crowd) that they could not let the princess go, that
there was an order to the contrary, but that if she stayed they would
serve her as before and obey her in everything.

At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping along the road,
Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpatych, her nurse, and the
maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the
cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran
away, and the women in the house began to wail.

"Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!" exclaimed deeply moved voices as
Rostov passed through the anteroom.

Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large sitting
room, when Rostov was shown in. She could not grasp who he was and why
he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his Russian
face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered recognized him as a
man of her own class, she glanced at him with her deep radiant look and
began speaking in a voice that faltered and trembled with emotion. This
meeting immediately struck Rostov as a romantic event. "A helpless girl
overwhelmed with grief, left to the mercy of coarse, rioting peasants!
And what a strange fate sent me here! What gentleness and nobility there
are in her features and expression!" thought he as he looked at her and
listened to her timid story.

When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day after her
father's funeral, her voice trembled. She turned away, and then, as if
fearing he might take her words as meant to move him to pity, looked at
him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There were tears in Rostov's
eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced gratefully at him with that
radiant look which caused the plainness of her face to be forgotten.

"I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride here
and am able to show my readiness to serve you," said Rostov, rising. "Go
when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no one shall dare
to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act as your escort."
And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal blood, he moved toward
the door.

Rostov's deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would
consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to
take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.

Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.

"I am very, very grateful to you," she said in French, "but I hope it
was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to blame for it." She
suddenly began to cry.

"Excuse me!" she said.

Rostov, knitting his brows, left the room with another low bow.




CHAPTER XIV

"Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend--my pink one is delicious; her name is
Dunyasha...."

But on glancing at Rostov's face Ilyin stopped short. He saw that his
hero and commander was following quite a different train of thought.

Rostov glanced angrily at Ilyin and without replying strode off with
rapid steps to the village.

"I'll show them; I'll give it to them, the brigands!" said he to
himself.

Alpatych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run, kept up with
him with difficulty.

"What decision have you been pleased to come to?" said he.

Rostov stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned on
Alpatych.

"Decision? What decision? Old dotard!..." cried he. "What have you been
about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you can't manage them? You're a
traitor yourself! I know you. I'll flay you all alive!..." And as if
afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alpatych and went rapidly
forward. Alpatych, mastering his offended feelings, kept pace with
Rostov at a gliding gait and continued to impart his views. He said the
peasants were obdurate and that at the present moment it would be
imprudent to "overresist" them without an armed force, and would it not
be better first to send for the military?

"I'll give them armed force... I'll 'overresist' them!" uttered Rostov
meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal fury and the need to
vent it.

Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with quick,
resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he drew to it the more
Alpatych felt that this unreasonable action might produce good results.
The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed when they saw
Rostov's rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.

After the hussars had come to the village and Rostov had gone to see the
princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among the crowd.
Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were Russians and
might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained. Dron was of
this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and others attacked
their ex-Elder.

"How many years have you been fattening on the commune?" Karp shouted at
him. "It's all one to you! You'll dig up your pot of money and take it
away with you.... What does it matter to you whether our homes are
ruined or not?"

"We've been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave their homes
or take away a single grain, and that's all about it!" cried another.

"It was your son's turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You begrudged
your lump of a son," a little old man suddenly began attacking Dron--
"and so they took my Vanka to be shaved for a soldier! But we all have
to die."

"To be sure, we all have to die. I'm not against the commune," said
Dron.

"That's it--not against it! You've filled your belly...."

The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostov, followed by
Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to the crowd, Karp, thrusting
his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked to the front.
Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew closer
together.

"Who is your Elder here? Hey?" shouted Rostov, coming up to the crowd
with quick steps.

"The Elder? What do you want with him?..." asked Karp.

But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew off and a
fierce blow jerked his head to one side.

"Caps off, traitors!" shouted Rostov in a wrathful voice. "Where's the
Elder?" he cried furiously.

"The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakharych, you!" meek and
flustered voices here and there were heard calling and caps began to
come off their heads.

"We don't riot, we're following the orders," declared Karp, and at that
moment several voices began speaking together.

"It's as the old men have decided--there's too many of you giving
orders."

"Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!" cried Rostov unmeaningly in a
voice not his own, gripping Karp by the collar. "Bind him, bind him!" he
shouted, though there was no one to bind him but Lavrushka and Alpatych.

Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by the arms from
behind.

"Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?" he called out.

Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them by name to come
and bind Karp. The men obediently came out of the crowd and began taking
off their belts.

"Where's the Elder?" demanded Rostov in a loud voice.

With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the crowd.

"Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrushka!" shouted Rostov, as if that
order, too, could not possibly meet with any opposition.

And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron, who took off his own
belt and handed it to them, as if to aid them.

"And you all listen to me!" said Rostov to the peasants. "Be off to your
houses at once, and don't let one of your voices be heard!"

"Why, we've not done any harm! We did it just out of foolishness. It's
all nonsense... I said then that it was not in order," voices were heard
bickering with one another.


"There! What did I say?" said Alpatych, coming into his own again. "It's
wrong, lads!"

"All our stupidity, Yakov Alpatych," came the answers, and the crowd
began at once to disperse through the village.

The two bound men were led off to the master's house. The two drunken
peasants followed them.

"Aye, when I look at you!..." said one of them to Karp.

"How can one talk to the masters like that? What were you thinking of,
you fool?" added the other--"A real fool!"

Two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard of the
Bogucharovo house. The peasants were briskly carrying out the
proprietor's goods and packing them on the carts, and Dron, liberated at
Princess Mary's wish from the cupboard where he had been confined, was
standing in the yard directing the men.

"Don't put it in so carelessly," said one of the peasants, a man with a
round smiling face, taking a casket from a housemaid. "You know it has
cost money! How can you chuck it in like that or shove it under the cord
where it'll get rubbed? I don't like that way of doing things. Let it
all be done properly, according to rule. Look here, put it under the
bast matting and cover it with hay--that's the way!"

"Eh, books, books!" said another peasant, bringing out Prince Andrew's
library cupboards. "Don't catch up against it! It's heavy, lads--solid
books."

"Yes, they worked all day and didn't play!" remarked the tall, round-
faced peasant gravely, pointing with a significant wink at the
dictionaries that were on the top.

Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostov did not go back to
the house but remained in the village awaiting her departure. When her
carriage drove out of the house, he mounted and accompanied her eight
miles from Bogucharovo to where the road was occupied by our troops. At
the inn at Yankovo he respectfully took leave of her, for the first time
permitting himself to kiss her hand.

"How can you speak so!" he blushingly replied to Princess Mary's
expressions of gratitude for her deliverance, as she termed what had
occurred. "Any police officer would have done as much! If we had had
only peasants to fight, we should not have let the enemy come so far,"
said he with a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject. "I am
only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance.
Good-bye, Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope to
meet you again in happier circumstances. If you don't want to make me
blush, please don't thank me!"

But the princess, if she did not again thank him in words, thanked him
with the whole expression of her face, radiant with gratitude and
tenderness. She could not believe that there was nothing to thank him
for. On the contrary, it seemed to her certain that had he not been
there she would have perished at the hands of the mutineers and of the
French, and that he had exposed himself to terrible and obvious danger
to save her, and even more certain was it that he was a man of lofty and
noble soul, able to understand her position and her sorrow. His kind,
honest eyes, with the tears rising in them when she herself had begun to
cry as she spoke of her loss, did not leave her memory.

When she had taken leave of him and remained alone she suddenly felt her
eyes filling with tears, and then not for the first time the strange
question presented itself to her: did she love him?

On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess' position was not
a cheerful one, Dunyasha, who went with her in the carriage, more than
once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window and smiled at
something with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow.

"Well, supposing I do love him?" thought Princess Mary.

Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that she had fallen in
love with a man who would perhaps never love her, she comforted herself
with the thought that no one would ever know it and that she would not
be to blame if, without ever speaking of it to anyone, she continued to
the end of her life to love the man with whom she had fallen in love for
the first and last time in her life.

Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy, and his words,
happiness did not appear impossible to her. It was at those moments that
Dunyasha noticed her smiling as she looked out of the carriage window.

"Was it not fate that brought him to Bogucharovo, and at that very
moment?" thought Princess Mary. "And that caused his sister to refuse my
brother?" And in all this Princess Mary saw the hand of Providence.

The impression the princess made on Rostov was a very agreeable one. To
remember her gave him pleasure, and when his comrades, hearing of his
adventure at Bogucharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for hay and
having picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in Russia, he grew
angry. It made him angry just because the idea of marrying the gentle
Princess Mary, who was attractive to him and had an enormous fortune,
had against his will more than once entered his head. For himself
personally Nicholas could not wish for a better wife: by marrying her he
would make the countess his mother happy, would be able to put his
father's affairs in order, and would even--he felt it--ensure Princess
Mary's happiness.

But Sonya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostov grew angry when he
was rallied about Princess Bolkonskaya.




CHAPTER XV

On receiving command of the armies Kutuzov remembered Prince Andrew and
sent an order for him to report at headquarters.

Prince Andrew arrived at Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the very day and at the
very hour that Kutuzov was reviewing the troops for the first time. He
stopped in the village at the priest's house in front of which stood the
commander-in-chief's carriage, and he sat down on the bench at the gate
awaiting his Serene Highness, as everyone now called Kutuzov. From the
field beyond the village came now sounds of regimental music and now the
roar of many voices shouting "Hurrah!" to the new commander-in-chief.
Two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo, stood near by, some ten paces
from Prince Andrew, availing themselves of Kutuzov's absence and of the
fine weather. A short, swarthy lieutenant colonel of hussars with thick
mustaches and whiskers rode up to the gate and, glancing at Prince
Andrew, inquired whether his Serene Highness was putting up there and
whether he would soon be back.

Prince Andrew replied that he was not on his Serene Highness' staff but
was himself a new arrival. The lieutenant colonel turned to a smart
orderly, who, with the peculiar contempt with which a commander-in-
chief's orderly speaks to officers, replied:

"What? His Serene Highness? I expect he'll be here soon. What do you
want?"

The lieutenant colonel of hussars smiled beneath his mustache at the
orderly's tone, dismounted, gave his horse to a dispatch runner, and
approached Bolkonski with a slight bow. Bolkonski made room for him on
the bench and the lieutenant colonel sat down beside him.

"You're also waiting for the commander-in-chief?" said he. "They say he
weceives evewyone, thank God!... It's awful with those sausage eaters!
Ermolov had weason to ask to be pwomoted to be a German! Now p'waps
Wussians will get a look in. As it was, devil only knows what was
happening. We kept wetweating and wetweating. Did you take part in the
campaign?" he asked.

"I had the pleasure," replied Prince Andrew, "not only of taking part in
the retreat but of losing in that retreat all I held dear--not to
mention the estate and home of my birth--my father, who died of grief. I
belong to the province of Smolensk."

"Ah? You're Pwince Bolkonski? Vewy glad to make your acquaintance! I'm
Lieutenant Colonel Denisov, better known as 'Vaska,'" said Denisov,
pressing Prince Andrew's hand and looking into his face with a
particularly kindly attention. "Yes, I heard," said he sympathetically,
and after a short pause added: "Yes, it's Scythian warfare. It's all
vewy well--only not for those who get it in the neck. So you are Pwince
Andwew Bolkonski?" He swayed his head. "Vewy pleased, Pwince, to make
your acquaintance!" he repeated again, smiling sadly, and he again
pressed Prince Andrew's hand.

Prince Andrew knew Denisov from what Natasha had told him of her first
suitor. This memory carried him sadly and sweetly back to those painful
feelings of which he had not thought lately, but which still found place
in his soul. Of late he had received so many new and very serious
impressions--such as the retreat from Smolensk, his visit to Bald Hills,
and the recent news of his father's death--and had experienced so many
emotions, that for a long time past those memories had not entered his
mind, and now that they did, they did not act on him with nearly their
former strength. For Denisov, too, the memories awakened by the name of
Bolkonski belonged to a distant, romantic past, when after supper and
after Natasha's singing he had proposed to a little girl of fifteen
without realizing what he was doing. He smiled at the recollection of
that time and of his love for Natasha, and passed at once to what now
interested him passionately and exclusively. This was a plan of campaign
he had devised while serving at the outposts during the retreat. He had
proposed that plan to Barclay de Tolly and now wished to propose it to
Kutuzov. The plan was based on the fact that the French line of
operation was too extended, and it proposed that instead of, or
concurrently with, action on the front to bar the advance of the French,
we should attack their line of communication. He began explaining his
plan to Prince Andrew.

"They can't hold all that line. It's impossible. I will undertake to
bweak thwough. Give me five hundwed men and I will bweak the line,
that's certain! There's only one way--guewilla warfare!"

Denisov rose and began gesticulating as he explained his plan to
Bolkonski. In the midst of his explanation shouts were heard from the
army, growing more incoherent and more diffused, mingling with music and
songs and coming from the field where the review was held. Sounds of
hoofs and shouts were nearing the village.

"He's coming! He's coming!" shouted a Cossack standing at the gate.

Bolkonski and Denisov moved to the gate, at which a knot of soldiers (a
guard of honor) was standing, and they saw Kutuzov coming down the
street mounted on a rather small sorrel horse. A huge suite of generals
rode behind him. Barclay was riding almost beside him, and a crowd of
officers ran after and around them shouting, "Hurrah!"

His adjutants galloped into the yard before him. Kutuzov was impatiently
urging on his horse, which ambled smoothly under his weight, and he
raised his hand to his white Horse Guard's cap with a red band and no
peak, nodding his head continually. When he came up to the guard of
honor, a fine set of Grenadiers mostly wearing decorations, who were
giving him the salute, he looked at them silently and attentively for
nearly a minute with the steady gaze of a commander and then turned to
the crowd of generals and officers surrounding him. Suddenly his face
assumed a subtle expression, he shrugged his shoulders with an air of
perplexity.

"And with such fine fellows to retreat and retreat! Well, good-by,
General," he added, and rode into the yard past Prince Andrew and
Denisov.

"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" shouted those behind him.

Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutuzov had grown still more
corpulent, flaccid, and fat. But the bleached eyeball, the scar, and the
familiar weariness of his expression were still the same. He was wearing
the white Horse Guard's cap and a military overcoat with a whip hanging
over his shoulder by a thin strap. He sat heavily and swayed limply on
his brisk little horse.

"Whew... whew... whew!" he whistled just audibly as he rode into the
yard. His face expressed the relief of relaxed strain felt by a man who
means to rest after a ceremony. He drew his left foot out of the stirrup
and, lurching with his whole body and puckering his face with the
effort, raised it with difficulty onto the saddle, leaned on his knee,
groaned, and slipped down into the arms of the Cossacks and adjutants
who stood ready to assist him.

He pulled himself together, looked round, screwing up his eyes, glanced
at Prince Andrew, and, evidently not recognizing him, moved with his
waddling gait to the porch. "Whew... whew... whew!" he whistled, and
again glanced at Prince Andrew. As often occurs with old men, it was
only after some seconds that the impression produced by Prince Andrew's
face linked itself up with Kutuzov's remembrance of his personality.

"Ah, how do you do, my dear prince? How do you do, my dear boy? Come
along..." said he, glancing wearily round, and he stepped onto the porch
which creaked under his weight.

He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the porch.

"And how's your father?"

"I received news of his death, yesterday," replied Prince Andrew
abruptly.

Kutuzov looked at him with eyes wide open with dismay and then took off
his cap and crossed himself:

"May the kingdom of Heaven be his! God's will be done to us all!" He
sighed deeply, his whole chest heaving, and was silent for a while. "I
loved him and respected him, and sympathize with you with all my heart."

He embraced Prince Andrew, pressing him to his fat breast, and for some
time did not let him go. When he released him Prince Andrew saw that
Kutuzov's flabby lips were trembling and that tears were in his eyes. He
sighed and pressed on the bench with both hands to raise himself.

"Come! Come with me, we'll have a talk," said he.

But at that moment Denisov, no more intimidated by his superiors than by
the enemy, came with jingling spurs up the steps of the porch, despite
the angry whispers of the adjutants who tried to stop him. Kutuzov, his
hands still pressed on the seat, glanced at him glumly. Denisov, having
given his name, announced that he had to communicate to his Serene
Highness a matter of great importance for their country's welfare.
Kutuzov looked wearily at him and, lifting his hands with a gesture of
annoyance, folded them across his stomach, repeating the words: "For our
country's welfare? Well, what is it? Speak!" Denisov blushed like a girl
(it was strange to see the color rise in that shaggy, bibulous, time-
worn face) and boldly began to expound his plan of cutting the enemy's
lines of communication between Smolensk and Vyazma. Denisov came from
those parts and knew the country well. His plan seemed decidedly a good
one, especially from the strength of conviction with which he spoke.
Kutuzov looked down at his own legs, occasionally glancing at the door
of the adjoining hut as if expecting something unpleasant to emerge from
it. And from that hut, while Denisov was speaking, a general with a
portfolio under his arm really did appear.

"What?" said Kutuzov, in the midst of Denisov's explanations, "are you
ready so soon?"

"Ready, your Serene Highness," replied the general.

Kutuzov swayed his head, as much as to say: "How is one man to deal with
it all?" and again listened to Denisov.

"I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer," said Denisov, "that I
can bweak Napoleon's line of communication!"

"What relation are you to Intendant General Kiril Andreevich Denisov?"
asked Kutuzov, interrupting him.

"He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness."

"Ah, we were friends," said Kutuzov cheerfully. "All right, all right,
friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow we'll have a talk."

With a nod to Denisov he turned away and put out his hand for the papers
Konovnitsyn had brought him.

"Would not your Serene Highness like to come inside?" said the general
on duty in a discontented voice, "the plans must be examined and several
papers have to be signed."

An adjutant came out and announced that everything was in readiness
within. But Kutuzov evidently did not wish to enter that room till he
was disengaged. He made a grimace...

"No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear boy. I'll look
at them here," said he. "Don't go away," he added, turning to Prince
Andrew, who remained in the porch and listened to the general's report.

While this was being given, Prince Andrew heard the whisper of a woman's
voice and the rustle of a silk dress behind the door. Several times on
glancing that way he noticed behind that door a plump, rosy, handsome
woman in a pink dress with a lilac silk kerchief on her head, holding a
dish and evidently awaiting the entrance of the commander-in-chief.
Kutuzov's adjutant whispered to Prince Andrew that this was the wife of
the priest whose home it was, and that she intended to offer his Serene
Highness bread and salt. "Her husband has welcomed his Serene Highness
with the cross at the church, and she intends to welcome him in the
house.... She's very pretty," added the adjutant with a smile. At those
words Kutuzov looked round. He was listening to the general's report--
which consisted chiefly of a criticism of the position at Tsarevo-
Zaymishche--as he had listened to Denisov, and seven years previously
had listened to the discussion at the Austerlitz council of war. He
evidently listened only because he had ears which, though there was a
piece of tow in one of them, could not help hearing; but it was evident
that nothing the general could say would surprise or even interest him,
that he knew all that would be said beforehand, and heard it all only
because he had to, as one has to listen to the chanting of a service of
prayer. All that Denisov had said was clever and to the point. What the
general was saying was even more clever and to the point, but it was
evident that Kutuzov despised knowledge and cleverness, and knew of
something else that would decide the matter--something independent of
cleverness and knowledge. Prince Andrew watched the commander-in-chief's
face attentively, and the only expression he could see there was one of
boredom, curiosity as to the meaning of the feminine whispering behind
the door, and a desire to observe propriety. It was evident that Kutuzov
despised cleverness and learning and even the patriotic feeling shown by
Denisov, but despised them not because of his own intellect, feelings,
or knowledge--he did not try to display any of these--but because of
something else. He despised them because of his old age and experience
of life. The only instruction Kutuzov gave of his own accord during that
report referred to looting by the Russian troops. At the end of the
report the general put before him for signature a paper relating to the
recovery of payment from army commanders for green oats mown down by the
soldiers, when landowners lodged petitions for compensation.

After hearing the matter, Kutuzov smacked his lips together and shook
his head.

"Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for all, my
dear fellow," said he, "into the fire with all such things! Let them cut
the crops and burn wood to their hearts' content. I don't order it or
allow it, but I don't exact compensation either. One can't get on
without it. 'When wood is chopped the chips will fly.'" He looked at the
paper again. "Oh, this German precision!" he muttered, shaking his head.




CHAPTER XVI

"Well, that's all!" said Kutuzov as he signed the last of the documents,
and rising heavily and smoothing out the folds in his fat white neck he
moved toward the door with a more cheerful expression.

The priest's wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish she had after
all not managed to present at the right moment, though she had so long
been preparing for it, and with a low bow offered it to Kutuzov.

He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his hand, and said:

"Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!"

He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and put them on the
dish for her. "Well, my dear, and how are we getting on?" he asked,
moving to the door of the room assigned to him. The priest's wife
smiled, and with dimples in her rosy cheeks followed him into the room.
The adjutant came out to the porch and asked Prince Andrew to lunch with
him. Half an hour later Prince Andrew was again called to Kutuzov. He
found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same unbuttoned
overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he closed as Prince
Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife. Prince Andrew saw by the
cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.

"Well, sit down, sit down here. Let's have a talk," said Kutuzov. "It's
sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that I am a father to you,
a second father...."

Prince Andrew told Kutuzov all he knew of his father's death, and what
he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed through it.

"What... what they have brought us to!" Kutuzov suddenly cried in an
agitated voice, evidently picturing vividly to himself from Prince
Andrew's story the condition Russia was in. "But give me time, give me
time!" he said with a grim look, evidently not wishing to continue this
agitating conversation, and added: "I sent for you to keep you with me."

"I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am no longer fit for the
staff," replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutuzov noticed.

Kutuzov glanced inquiringly at him.

"But above all," added Prince Andrew, "I have grown used to my regiment,
am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I should be
sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of being with you,
believe me..."

A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up Kutuzov's podgy
face. He cut Bolkonski short.

"I am sorry, for I need you. But you're right, you're right! It's not
here that men are needed. Advisers are always plentiful, but men are
not. The regiments would not be what they are if the would-be advisers
served there as you do. I remember you at Austerlitz.... I remember,
yes, I remember you with the standard!" said Kutuzov, and a flush of
pleasure suffused Prince Andrew's face at this recollection.

Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutuzov offered his cheek to
be kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man's eyes.
Though Prince Andrew knew that Kutuzov's tears came easily, and that he
was particularly tender to and considerate of him from a wish to show
sympathy with his loss, yet this reminder of Austerlitz was both
pleasant and flattering to him.

"Go your way and God be with you. I know your path is the path of
honor!" He paused. "I missed you at Bucharest, but I needed someone to
send." And changing the subject, Kutuzov began to speak of the Turkish
war and the peace that had been concluded. "Yes, I have been much
blamed," he said, "both for that war and the peace... but everything
came at the right time. Tout vient a point a celui qui sait attendre. *
And there were as many advisers there as here..." he went on, returning
to the subject of "advisers" which evidently occupied him. "Ah, those
advisers!" said he. "If we had listened to them all we should not have
made peace with Turkey and should not have been through with that war.
Everything in haste, but more haste, less speed. Kamenski would have
been lost if he had not died. He stormed fortresses with thirty thousand
men. It is not difficult to capture a fortress but it is difficult to
win a campaign. For that, not storming and attacking but patience and
time are wanted. Kamenski sent soldiers to Rustchuk, but I only employed
these two things and took more fortresses than Kamenski and made them
Turks eat horseflesh!" He swayed his head. "And the French shall too,
believe me," he went on, growing warmer and beating his chest, "I'll
make them eat horseflesh!" And tears again dimmed his eyes.


* "Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait."

"But shan't we have to accept battle?" remarked Prince Andrew.

"We shall if everybody wants it; it can't be helped.... But believe me,
my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and
time, they will do it all. But the advisers n'entendent pas de cette
oreille, voila le mal. * Some want a thing--others don't. What's one to
do?" he asked, evidently expecting an answer. "Well, what do you want us
to do?" he repeated and his eye shone with a deep, shrewd look. "I'll
tell you what to do," he continued, as Prince Andrew still did not
reply: "I will tell you what to do, and what I do. Dans le doute, mon
cher," he paused, "abstiens-toi" *(2)--he articulated the French proverb
deliberately.


* "Don't see it that way, that's the trouble."

* (2) "When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing."

"Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with all my heart I share
your sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor a prince,
nor a commander-in-chief, but a father! If you want anything come
straight to me. Good-bye, my dear boy."

Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter had
left the room Kutuzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his
unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.

Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it was, but after that
interview with Kutuzov he went back to his regiment reassured as to the
general course of affairs and as to the man to whom it had been
entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all personal motive in
that old man--in whom there seemed to remain only the habit of passions,
and in place of an intellect (grouping events and drawing conclusions)
only the capacity calmly to contemplate the course of events--the more
reassured he was that everything would be as it should. "He will not
bring in any plan of his own. He will not devise or undertake anything,"
thought Prince Andrew, "but he will hear everything, remember
everything, and put everything in its place. He will not hinder anything
useful nor allow anything harmful. He understands that there is
something stronger and more important than his own will--the inevitable
course of events, and he can see them and grasp their significance, and
seeing that significance can refrain from meddling and renounce his
personal wish directed to something else. And above all," thought Prince
Andrew, "one believes in him because he's Russian, despite the novel by
Genlis and the French proverbs, and because his voice shook when he
said: 'What they have brought us to!' and had a sob in it when he said
he would 'make them eat horseflesh!'"

On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the unanimity and
general approval were founded with which, despite court influences, the
popular choice of Kutuzov as commander-in-chief was received.




CHAPTER XVII

After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there in its usual
course, and its course was so very usual that it was difficult to
remember the recent days of patriotic elation and ardor, hard to believe
that Russia was really in danger and that the members of the English
Club were also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice everything for
it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor everyone had
displayed during the Emperor's stay was the call for contributions of
men and money, a necessity that as soon as the promises had been made
assumed a legal, official form and became unavoidable.

With the enemy's approach to Moscow, the Moscovites' view of their
situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even more
frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger
approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices that
speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a
man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it;
the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and
painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man's power to
foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is
therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to
think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the
first voice, but in society to the second. So it was now with the
inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people had been as gay in
Moscow as that year.

Rostopchin's broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a potman,
and a Moscow burgher called Karpushka Chigirin, "who--having been a
militiaman and having had rather too much at the pub--heard that
Napoleon wished to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the French in very
bad language, came out of the drink shop, and, under the sign of the
eagle, began to address the assembled people," were read and discussed,
together with the latest of Vasili Lvovich Pushkin's bouts rimes.

In the corner room at the club, members gathered to read these
broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpushka jeered at the French,
saying: "They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our
buckwheat porridge, and choke themselves with cabbage soup. They are all
dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of them with a hayfork."
Others did not like that tone and said it was stupid and vulgar. It was
said that Rostopchin had expelled all Frenchmen and even all foreigners
from Moscow, and that there had been some spies and agents of Napoleon
among them; but this was told chiefly to introduce Rostopchin's witty
remark on that occasion. The foreigners were deported to Nizhni by boat,
and Rostopchin had said to them in French: "Rentrez en vousmemes; entrez
dans la barque, et n'en faites pas une barque de Charon." * There was
talk of all the government offices having been already removed from
Moscow, and to this Shinshin's witticism was added--that for that alone
Moscow ought to be grateful to Napoleon. It was said that Mamonov's
regiment would cost him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezukhov
had spent even more on his, but that the best thing about Bezukhov's
action was that he himself was going to don a uniform and ride at the
head of his regiment without charging anything for the show.


* "Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not to make it a
barque of Charon."

"You don't spare anyone," said Julie Drubetskaya as she collected and
pressed together a bunch of raveled lint with her thin, beringed
fingers.

Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was giving a farewell
soiree.

"Bezukhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-natured. What
pleasure is there to be so caustique?"

"A forfeit!" cried a young man in militia uniform whom Julie called "mon
chevalier," and who was going with her to Nizhni.

In Julie's set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it had been agreed
that they would speak nothing but Russian and that those who made a slip
and spoke French should pay fines to the Committee of Voluntary
Contributions.

"Another forfeit for a Gallicism," said a Russian writer who was
present. "'What pleasure is there to be' is not Russian!"

"You spare no one," continued Julie to the young man without heeding the
author's remark.

"For caustique--I am guilty and will pay, and I am prepared to pay again
for the pleasure of telling you the truth. For Gallicisms I won't be
responsible," she remarked, turning to the author: "I have neither the
money nor the time, like Prince Galitsyn, to engage a master to teach me
Russian!"

"Ah, here he is!" she added. "Quand on... No, no," she said to the
militia officer, "you won't catch me. Speak of the sun and you see its
rays!" and she smiled amiably at Pierre. "We were just talking of you,"
she said with the facility in lying natural to a society woman. "We were
saying that your regiment would be sure to be better than Mamonov's."

"Oh, don't talk to me of my regiment," replied Pierre, kissing his
hostess' hand and taking a seat beside her. "I am so sick of it."

"You will, of course, command it yourself?" said Julie, directing a sly,
sarcastic glance toward the militia officer.

The latter in Pierre's presence had ceased to be caustic, and his face
expressed perplexity as to what Julie's smile might mean. In spite of
his absent-mindedness and good nature, Pierre's personality immediately
checked any attempt to ridicule him to his face.

"No," said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big, stout body. "I
should make too good a target for the French, besides I am afraid I
should hardly be able to climb onto a horse."

Among those whom Julie's guests happened to choose to gossip about were
the Rostovs.

"I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way," said Julie. "And he
is so unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The Razumovskis wanted to
buy his house and his estate near Moscow, but it drags on and on. He
asks too much."

"No, I think the sale will come off in a few days," said someone.
"Though it is madness to buy anything in Moscow now."

"Why?" asked Julie. "You don't think Moscow is in danger?"

"Then why are you leaving?"

"I? What a question! I am going because... well, because everyone is
going: and besides--I am not Joan of Arc or an Amazon."

"Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more strips of linen."

"If he manages the business properly he will be able to pay off all his
debts," said the militia officer, speaking of Rostov.

"A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do they stay on so long in
Moscow? They meant to leave for the country long ago. Natalie is quite
well again now, isn't she?" Julie asked Pierre with a knowing smile.

"They are waiting for their younger son," Pierre replied. "He joined
Obolenski's Cossacks and went to Belaya Tserkov where the regiment is
being formed. But now they have had him transferred to my regiment and
are expecting him every day. The count wanted to leave long ago, but the
countess won't on any account leave Moscow till her son returns."

"I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs'. Natalie has
recovered her looks and is brighter. She sang a song. How easily some
people get over everything!"

"Get over what?" inquired Pierre, looking displeased.

Julie smiled.

"You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de
Souza's novels."

"What knights? What do you mean?" demanded Pierre, blushing.

"Oh, come, my dear count! C'est la fable de tout Moscou. Je vous admire,
ma parole d'honneur!" *


* "It is the talk of all Moscow. My word, I admire you!"

"Forfeit, forfeit!" cried the militia officer.

"All right, one can't talk--how tiresome!"

"What is 'the talk of all Moscow'?" Pierre asked angrily, rising to his
feet.

"Come now, Count, you know!"

"I don't know anything about it," said Pierre.

"I know you were friendly with Natalie, and so... but I was always more
friendly with Vera--that dear Vera."

"No, madame!" Pierre continued in a tone of displeasure, "I have not
taken on myself the role of Natalie Rostova's knight at all, and have
not been to their house for nearly a month. But I cannot understand the
cruelty..."

"Qui s'excuse s'accuse," * said Julie, smiling and waving the lint
triumphantly, and to have the last word she promptly changed the
subject. "Do you know what I heard today? Poor Mary Bolkonskaya arrived
in Moscow yesterday. Do you know that she has lost her father?"


* "Who excuses himself, accuses himself."

"Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see her," said Pierre.

"I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to their estate
near Moscow either today or tomorrow morning, with her nephew."

"Well, and how is she?" asked Pierre.

"She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued her? It is quite a
romance. Nicholas Rostov! She was surrounded, and they wanted to kill
her and had wounded some of her people. He rushed in and saved her...."

"Another romance," said the militia officer. "Really, this general
flight has been arranged to get all the old maids married off. Catiche
is one and Princess Bolkonskaya another."

"Do you know, I really believe she is un petit peu amoureuse du jeune
homme." *


* "A little bit in love with the young man."

"Forfeit, forfeit, forfeit!"

"But how could one say that in Russian?"




CHAPTER XVIII

When Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchin's broadsheets
that had been brought that day.

The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchin had forbidden
people to leave Moscow was false; on the contrary he was glad that
ladies and tradesmen's wives were leaving the city. "There will be less
panic and less gossip," ran the broadsheet "but I will stake my life on
it that scoundrel will not enter Moscow." These words showed Pierre
clearly for the first time that the French would enter Moscow. The
second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at Vyazma, that
Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that as many of the
inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons were ready for them at
the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and muskets which could be had at a low
price. The tone of the proclamation was not as jocose as in the former
Chigirin talks. Pierre pondered over these broadsheets. Evidently the
terrible stormcloud he had desired with the whole strength of his soul
but which yet aroused involuntary horror in him was drawing near.

"Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?" he asked himself
for the hundredth time. He took a pack of cards that lay on the table
and began to lay them out for a game of patience.

"If this patience comes out," he said to himself after shuffling the
cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his head, "if it comes out,
it means... what does it mean?"

He had not decided what it should mean when he heard the voice of the
eldest princess at the door asking whether she might come in.

"Then it will mean that I must go to the army," said Pierre to himself.
"Come in, come in!" he added to the princess.

Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face and long waist,
was still living in Pierre's house. The two younger ones had both
married.

"Excuse my coming to you, cousin," she said in a reproachful and
agitated voice. "You know some decision must be come to. What is going
to happen? Everyone has left Moscow and the people are rioting. How is
it that we are staying on?"

"On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma cousine," said Pierre in
the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her, always feeling
uncomfortable in the role of her benefactor.

"Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara Ivanovna told me today
how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It certainly does them
credit! And the people too are quite mutinous--they no longer obey, even
my maid has taken to being rude. At this rate they will soon begin
beating us. One can't walk in the streets. But, above all, the French
will be here any day now, so what are we waiting for? I ask just one
thing of you, cousin," she went on, "arrange for me to be taken to
Petersburg. Whatever I may be, I can't live under Bonaparte's rule."

"Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your information from? On the
contrary..."

"I won't submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they please.... If you
don't want to do this..."

"But I will, I'll give the order at once."

The princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone to be angry with.
Muttering to herself, she sat down on a chair.

"But you have been misinformed," said Pierre. "Everything is quiet in
the city and there is not the slightest danger. See! I've just been
reading..." He showed her the broadsheet. "Count Rostopchin writes that
he will stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter Moscow."

"Oh, that count of yours!" said the princess malevolently. "He is a
hypocrite, a rascal who has himself roused the people to riot. Didn't he
write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone, 'whoever it might be,
should be dragged to the lockup by his hair'? (How silly!) 'And honor
and glory to whoever captures him,' he says. This is what his cajolery
has brought us to! Barbara Ivanovna told me the mob near killed her
because she said something in French."

"Oh, but it's so... You take everything so to heart," said Pierre, and
began laying out his cards for patience.

Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not join the army, but
remained in deserted Moscow ever in the same state of agitation,
irresolution, and alarm, yet at the same time joyfully expecting
something terrible.

Next day toward evening the princess set off, and Pierre's head steward
came to inform him that the money needed for the equipment of his
regiment could not be found without selling one of the estates. In
general the head steward made out to Pierre that his project of raising
a regiment would ruin him. Pierre listened to him, scarcely able to
repress a smile.

"Well then, sell it," said he. "What's to be done? I can't draw back
now!"

The worse everything became, especially his own affairs, the better was
Pierre pleased and the more evident was it that the catastrophe he
expected was approaching. Hardly anyone he knew was left in town. Julie
had gone, and so had Princess Mary. Of his intimate friends only the
Rostovs remained, but he did not go to see them.

To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of Vorontsovo
to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to destroy the foe,
and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The balloon was not yet
ready, but Pierre learned that it was being constructed by the Emperor's
desire. The Emperor had written to Count Rostopchin as follows:

As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of reliable and
intelligent men for his car and send a courier to General Kutuzov to let
him know. I have informed him of the matter.

Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where he descends for the
first time, that he may not make a mistake and fall into the enemy's
hands. It is essential for him to combine his movements with those of
the commander-in-chief.

On his way home from Vorontsovo, as he was passing the Bolotnoe Place
Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lobnoe Place, stopped and got out
of his trap. A French cook accused of being a spy was being flogged. The
flogging was only just over, and the executioner was releasing from the
flogging bench a stout man with red whiskers, in blue stockings and a
green jacket, who was moaning piteously. Another criminal, thin and
pale, stood near. Judging by their faces they were both Frenchmen. With
a frightened and suffering look resembling that on the thin Frenchman's
face, Pierre pushed his way in through the crowd.

"What is it? Who is it? What is it for?" he kept asking.

But the attention of the crowd--officials, burghers, shopkeepers,
peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisses--was so eagerly centered
on what was passing in Lobnoe Place that no one answered him. The stout
man rose, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and evidently trying to
appear firm began to pull on his jacket without looking about him, but
suddenly his lips trembled and he began to cry, in the way full-blooded
grown-up men cry, though angry with himself for doing so. In the crowd
people began talking loudly, to stifle their feelings of pity as it
seemed to Pierre.

"He's cook to some prince."

"Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a Frenchman... sets his
teeth on edge!" said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind Pierre,
when the Frenchman began to cry.

The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke would be
appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others continued to watch in
dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man.

Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily away, went back
to his trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took his
seat. As they drove along he shuddered and exclaimed several times so
audibly that the coachman asked him:

"What is your pleasure?"

"Where are you going?" shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to
Lubyanka Street.

"To the Governor's, as you ordered," answered the coachman.

"Fool! Idiot!" shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman--a thing he rarely
did. "Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!" "I must get away
this very day," he murmured to himself.

At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the
Lobnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he could no
longer remain in Moscow and would leave for the army that very day that
it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman this or that the
man ought to have known it for himself.

On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstafey--his head coachman who
knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow--that he
would leave that night for the army at Mozhaysk, and that his saddle
horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged that day, so
on Evstafey's representation Pierre had to put off his departure till
next day to allow time for the relay horses to be sent on in advance.

On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain, and
after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night in
Perkhushkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that
evening. (This was the battle of Shevardino.) He was told that there in
Perkhushkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could answer
his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was approaching
Mozhaysk.

Every house in Mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the hostel
where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no room to be
had. It was full of officers.

Everywhere in Mozhaysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on the
march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and cannon
were everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and the
farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into that sea of
troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation and a new and
joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a feeling akin to
what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the Emperor's visit--a
sense of the necessity of undertaking something and sacrificing
something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that everything that
constitutes men's happiness--the comforts of life, wealth, even life
itself--is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away, compared with
something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did not try to
determine for whom and for what he felt such particular delight in
sacrificing everything. He was not occupied with the question of what to
sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself afforded him a new and
joyous sensation.




CHAPTER XIX

On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevardino Redoubt was
fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either side, and on
the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodino itself took place.

Why and how were the battles of Shevardino and Borodino given and
accepted? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? There was not the least
sense in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate result
for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were brought nearer
to the destruction of Moscow--which we feared more than anything in the
world; and for the French its immediate result was that they were
brought nearer to the destruction of their whole army--which they feared
more than anything in the world. What the result must be was quite
obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov accepted that battle.

If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that it must
have been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen hundred miles
and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarter of his army, he
was advancing to certain destruction, and it must have been equally
clear to Kutuzov that by accepting battle and risking the loss of a
quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. For Kutuzov this was
mathematically clear, as it is that if when playing draughts I have one
man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainly lose, and therefore
should not exchange. When my opponent has sixteen men and I have
fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than he, but when I have exchanged
thirteen more men he will be three times as strong as I am.

Before the battle of Borodino our strength in proportion to the French
was about as five to six, but after that battle it was little more than
one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against a hundred and
twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty thousand against a
hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experienced Kutuzov accepted the
battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be a commander of genius, gave
it, losing a quarter of his army and lengthening his lines of
communication still more. If it is said that he expected to end the
campaign by occupying Moscow as he had ended a previous campaign by
occupying Vienna, there is much evidence to the contrary. Napoleon's
historians themselves tell us that from Smolensk onwards he wished to
stop, knew the danger of his extended position, and knew that the
occupation of Moscow would not be the end of the campaign, for he had
seen at Smolensk the state in which Russian towns were left to him, and
had not received a single reply to his repeated announcements of his
wish to negotiate.

In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov acted involuntarily
and irrationally. But later on, to fit what had occurred, the historians
provided cunningly devised evidence of the foresight and genius of the
generals who, of all the blind tools of history were the most enslaved
and involuntary.

The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes furnish
the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to accustom
ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that kind are
meaningless.

On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and the preceding
battle of Shevardino were fought, there also exists a definite and well-
known, but quite false, conception. All the historians describe the
affair as follows:

The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk sought out for
itself the best position for a general engagement and found such a
position at Borodino.

The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the left
of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolensk) and almost at a right angle to
it, from Borodino to Utitsa, at the very place where the battle was
fought.

In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set up on
the Shevardino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth, we are
told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on the
twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which was in position on
the field of Borodino.

So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who cares to
look into the matter can easily convince himself.

The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on the contrary,
during the retreat passed many positions better than Borodino. They did
not stop at any one of these positions because Kutuzov did not wish to
occupy a position he had not himself chosen, because the popular demand
for a battle had not yet expressed itself strongly enough, and because
Miloradovich had not yet arrived with the militia, and for many other
reasons. The fact is that other positions they had passed were stronger,
and that the position at Borodino (the one where the battle was fought),
far from being strong, was no more a position than any other spot one
might find in the Russian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at
hazard.

Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field of
Borodino to the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (that is,
the position on which the battle took place), but never till the twenty-
fifth of August, 1812, did they think that a battle might be fought
there. This was shown first by the fact that there were no entrenchments
there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the twenty-fifth and
twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by the position of the
Shevardino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senseless in front of the
position where the battle was accepted. Why was it more strongly
fortified than any other post? And why were all efforts exhausted and
six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till late at night on the
twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would have sufficed to observe the
enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position on which the battle was
fought had not been foreseen and that the Shevardino Redoubt was not an
advanced post of that position, we have the fact that up to the twenty-
fifth, Barclay de Tolly and Bagration were convinced that the Shevardino
Redoubt was the left flank of the position, and that Kutuzov himself in
his report, written in hot haste after the battle, speaks of the
Shevardino Redoubt as the left flank of the position. It was much later,
when reports on the battle of Borodino were written at leisure, that the
incorrect and extraordinary statement was invented (probably to justify
the mistakes of a commander-in-chief who had to be represented as
infallible) that the Shevardino Redoubt was an advanced post--whereas in
reality it was simply a fortified point on the left flank--and that the
battle of Borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position previously
selected, where as it was fought on a quite unexpected spot which was
almost unentrenched.

The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river
Kolocha--which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an acute
angle--so that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right flank near
the village of Novoe, and the center at Borodino at the confluence of
the rivers Kolocha and Voyna.

To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without thinking of how the
battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the river
Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was to
prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow.

Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as the
history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utitsa to
Borodino (he could not have seen that position because it did not
exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while
pursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the
Russian position--at the Shevardino Redoubt--and unexpectedly for the
Russians moved his army across the Kolocha. And the Russians, not having
time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left wing from the
position they had intended to occupy and took up a new position which
had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By crossing to the other
side of the Kolocha to the left of the highroad, Napoleon shifted the
whole forthcoming battle from right to left (looking from the Russian
side) and transferred it to the plain between Utitsa, Semenovsk, and
Borodino--a plain no more advantageous as a position than any other
plain in Russia--and there the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of
August took place.

Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to the
Kolocha, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the redoubt
but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have doubted that
the Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our position, and the
battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that case we
should probably have defended the Shevardino Redoubt--our left flank--
still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in the center
or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place on the
twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But as the
attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the retreat of
our rear guard (that is, immediately after the fight at Gridneva), and
as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not in time, to begin a
general engagement then on the evening of the twenty-fourth, the first
and chief action of the battle of Borodino was already lost on the
twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss of the one fought on the
twenty-sixth.

After the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, we found ourselves on the
morning of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank, and
were forced to bend it back and hastily entrench it where it chanced to
be.

Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended by weak,
unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that position was
increased by the fact that the Russian commanders--not having fully
realized what had happened, namely the loss of our position on the left
flank and the shifting of the whole field of the forthcoming battle from
right to left--maintained their extended position from the village of
Novoe to Utitsa, and consequently had to move their forces from right to
left during the battle. So it happened that throughout the whole battle
the Russians opposed the entire French army launched against our left
flank with but half as many men. (Poniatowski's action against Utitsa,
and Uvarov's on the right flank against the French, were actions
distinct from the main course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodino
did not take place at all as (in an effort to conceal our commanders'
mistakes even at the cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian
army and people) it has been described. The battle of Borodino was not
fought on a chosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly
weaker than those of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss of the
Shevardino Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle of Borodino on an
open and almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous
as the French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not
merely unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive
result, but unthinkable to keep an army even from complete
disintegration and flight.




CHAPTER XX

On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving Mozhaysk. At the
descent of the high steep hill, down which a winding road led out of the
town past the cathedral on the right, where a service was being held and
the bells were ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle and proceeded on
foot. Behind him a cavalry regiment was coming down the hill preceded by
its singers. Coming up toward him was a train of carts carrying men who
had been wounded in the engagement the day before. The peasant drivers,
shouting and lashing their horses, kept crossing from side to side. The
carts, in each of which three or four wounded soldiers were lying or
sitting, jolted over the stones that had been thrown on the steep
incline to make it something like a road. The wounded, bandaged with
rags, with pale cheeks, compressed lips, and knitted brows, held on to
the sides of the carts as they were jolted against one another. Almost
all of them stared with naive, childlike curiosity at Pierre's white hat
and green swallow-tail coat.

Pierre's coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of wounded to keep to
one side of the road. The cavalry regiment, as it descended the hill
with its singers, surrounded Pierre's carriage and blocked the road.
Pierre stopped, being pressed against the side of the cutting in which
the road ran. The sunshine from behind the hill did not penetrate into
the cutting and there it was cold and damp, but above Pierre's head was
the bright August sunshine and the bells sounded merrily. One of the
carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road close to Pierre. The
driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it, placed a stone under one
of its tireless hind wheels, and began arranging the breech-band on his
little horse.

One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged arm who was following
the cart on foot, caught hold of it with his sound hand and turned to
look at Pierre.

"I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here or take us on to
Moscow?" he asked.

Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the question. He was
looking now at the cavalry regiment that had met the convoy of wounded,
now at the cart by which he was standing, in which two wounded men were
sitting and one was lying. One of those sitting up in the cart had
probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was wrapped in rags
and one cheek was swollen to the size of a baby's head. His nose and
mouth were twisted to one side. This soldier was looking at the
cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a young lad, a fair-haired
recruit as white as though there was no blood in his thin face, looked
at Pierre kindly, with a fixed smile. The third lay prone so that his
face was not visible. The cavalry singers were passing close by:


Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen, Living in a foreign land.

they sang their soldiers' dance song.

As if responding to them but with a different sort of merriment, the
metallic sound of the bells reverberated high above and the hot rays of
the sun bathed the top of the opposite slope with yet another sort of
merriment. But beneath the slope, by the cart with the wounded near the
panting little nag where Pierre stood, it was damp, somber, and sad.

The soldier with the swollen cheek looked angrily at the cavalry
singers.

"Oh, the coxcombs!" he muttered reproachfully.

"It's not the soldiers only, but I've seen peasants today, too.... The
peasants--even they have to go," said the soldier behind the cart,
addressing Pierre with a sad smile. "No distinctions made nowadays....
They want the whole nation to fall on them--in a word, it's Moscow! They
want to make an end of it."

In spite of the obscurity of the soldier's words Pierre understood what
he wanted to say and nodded approval.

The road was clear again; Pierre descended the hill and drove on.

He kept looking to either side of the road for familiar faces, but only
saw everywhere the unfamiliar faces of various military men of different
branches of the service, who all looked with astonishment at his white
hat and green tail coat.

Having gone nearly three miles he at last met an acquaintance and
eagerly addressed him. This was one of the head army doctors. He was
driving toward Pierre in a covered gig, sitting beside a young surgeon,
and on recognizing Pierre he told the Cossack who occupied the driver's
seat to pull up.

"Count! Your excellency, how come you to be here?" asked the doctor.

"Well, you know, I wanted to see..."

"Yes, yes, there will be something to see...."

Pierre got out and talked to the doctor, explaining his intention of
taking part in a battle.

The doctor advised him to apply direct to Kutuzov.

"Why should you be God knows where out of sight, during the battle?" he
said, exchanging glances with his young companion. "Anyhow his Serene
Highness knows you and will receive you graciously. That's what you must
do."

The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry.

"You think so?... Ah, I also wanted to ask you where our position is
exactly?" said Pierre.

"The position?" repeated the doctor. "Well, that's not my line. Drive
past Tatarinova, a lot of digging is going on there. Go up the hillock
and you'll see."

"Can one see from there?... If you would..."

But the doctor interrupted him and moved toward his gig.

"I would go with you but on my honor I'm up to here"--and he pointed to
his throat. "I'm galloping to the commander of the corps. How do matters
stand?... You know, Count, there'll be a battle tomorrow. Out of an army
of a hundred thousand we must expect at least twenty thousand wounded,
and we haven't stretchers, or bunks, or dressers, or doctors enough for
six thousand. We have ten thousand carts, but we need other things as
well--we must manage as best we can!"

The strange thought that of the thousands of men, young and old, who had
stared with merry surprise at his hat (perhaps the very men he had
noticed), twenty thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death
amazed Pierre.

"They may die tomorrow; why are they thinking of anything but death?"
And by some latent sequence of thought the descent of the Mozhaysk hill,
the carts with the wounded, the ringing bells, the slanting rays of the
sun, and the songs of the cavalrymen vividly recurred to his mind.

"The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and do not for a moment
think of what awaits them, but pass by, winking at the wounded. Yet from
among these men twenty thousand are doomed to die, and they wonder at my
hat! Strange!" thought Pierre, continuing his way to Tatarinova.

In front of a landowner's house to the left of the road stood carriages,
wagons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels. The commander-in-chief
was putting up there, but just when Pierre arrived he was not in and
hardly any of the staff were there--they had gone to the church service.
Pierre drove on toward Gorki.

When he had ascended the hill and reached the little village street, he
saw for the first time peasant militiamen in their white shirts and with
crosses on their caps, who, talking and laughing loudly, animated and
perspiring, were at work on a huge knoll overgrown with grass to the
right of the road.

Some of them were digging, others were wheeling barrowloads of earth
along planks, while others stood about doing nothing.

Two officers were standing on the knoll, directing the men. On seeing
these peasants, who were evidently still amused by the novelty of their
position as soldiers, Pierre once more thought of the wounded men at
Mozhaysk and understood what the soldier had meant when he said: "They
want the whole nation to fall on them." The sight of these bearded
peasants at work on the battlefield, with their queer, clumsy boots and
perspiring necks, and their shirts opening from the left toward the
middle, unfastened, exposing their sunburned collarbones, impressed
Pierre more strongly with the solemnity and importance of the moment
than anything he had yet seen or heard.




CHAPTER XXI

Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the toiling militiamen,
ascended the knoll from which, according to the doctor, the battlefield
could be seen.

It was about eleven o'clock. The sun shone somewhat to the left and
behind him and brightly lit up the enormous panorama which, rising like
an amphitheater, extended before him in the clear rarefied atmosphere.

From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater, wound the Smolensk
highroad, passing through a village with a white church some five
hundred paces in front of the knoll and below it. This was Borodino.
Below the village the road crossed the river by a bridge and, winding
down and up, rose higher and higher to the village of Valuevo visible
about four miles away, where Napoleon was then stationed. Beyond Valuevo
the road disappeared into a yellowing forest on the horizon. Far in the
distance in that birch and fir forest to the right of the road, the
cross and belfry of the Kolocha Monastery gleamed in the sun. Here and
there over the whole of that blue expanse, to right and left of the
forest and the road, smoking campfires could be seen and indefinite
masses of troops--ours and the enemy's. The ground to the right--along
the course of the Kolocha and Moskva rivers--was broken and hilly.
Between the hollows the villages of Bezubova and Zakharino showed in the
distance. On the left the ground was more level; there were fields of
grain, and the smoking ruins of Semenovsk, which had been burned down,
could be seen.

All that Pierre saw was so indefinite that neither the left nor the
right side of the field fully satisfied his expectations. Nowhere could
he see the battlefield he had expected to find, but only fields,
meadows, troops, woods, the smoke of campfires, villages, mounds, and
streams; and try as he would he could descry no military "position" in
this place which teemed with life, nor could he even distinguish our
troops from the enemy's.

"I must ask someone who knows," he thought, and addressed an officer who
was looking with curiosity at his huge unmilitary figure.

"May I ask you," said Pierre, "what village that is in front?"

"Burdino, isn't it?" said the officer, turning to his companion.

"Borodino," the other corrected him.

The officer, evidently glad of an opportunity for a talk, moved up to
Pierre.

"Are those our men there?" Pierre inquired.

"Yes, and there, further on, are the French," said the officer. "There
they are, there... you can see them."

"Where? Where?" asked Pierre.

"One can see them with the naked eye... Why, there!"

The officer pointed with his hand to the smoke visible on the left
beyond the river, and the same stern and serious expression that Pierre
had noticed on many of the faces he had met came into his face.

"Ah, those are the French! And over there?..." Pierre pointed to a knoll
on the left, near which some troops could be seen.

"Those are ours."

"Ah, ours! And there?..." Pierre pointed to another knoll in the
distance with a big tree on it, near a village that lay in a hollow
where also some campfires were smoking and something black was visible.

"That's his again," said the officer. (It was the Shevardino Redoubt.)
"It was ours yesterday, but now it is his."

"Then how about our position?"

"Our position?" replied the officer with a smile of satisfaction. "I can
tell you quite clearly, because I constructed nearly all our
entrenchments. There, you see? There's our center, at Borodino, just
there," and he pointed to the village in front of them with the white
church. "That's where one crosses the Kolocha. You see down there where
the rows of hay are lying in the hollow, there's the bridge. That's our
center. Our right flank is over there"--he pointed sharply to the right,
far away in the broken ground--"That's where the Moskva River is, and we
have thrown up three redoubts there, very strong ones. The left
flank..." here the officer paused. "Well, you see, that's difficult to
explain.... Yesterday our left flank was there at Shevardino, you see,
where the oak is, but now we have withdrawn our left wing--now it is
over there, do you see that village and the smoke? That's Semenovsk,
yes, there," he pointed to Raevski's knoll. "But the battle will hardly
be there. His having moved his troops there is only a ruse; he will
probably pass round to the right of the Moskva. But wherever it may be,
many a man will be missing tomorrow!" he remarked.

An elderly sergeant who had approached the officer while he was giving
these explanations had waited in silence for him to finish speaking, but
at this point, evidently not liking the officer's remark, interrupted
him.

"Gabions must be sent for," said he sternly.

The officer appeared abashed, as though he understood that one might
think of how many men would be missing tomorrow but ought not to speak
of it.

"Well, send number three company again," the officer replied hurriedly.

"And you, are you one of the doctors?"

"No, I've come on my own," answered Pierre, and he went down the hill
again, passing the militiamen.

"Oh, those damned fellows!" muttered the officer who followed him,
holding his nose as he ran past the men at work.

"There they are... bringing her, coming... There they are... They'll be
here in a minute..." voices were suddenly heard saying; and officers,
soldiers, and militiamen began running forward along the road.

A church procession was coming up the hill from Borodino. First along
the dusty road came the infantry in ranks, bareheaded and with arms
reversed. From behind them came the sound of church singing.

Soldiers and militiamen ran bareheaded past Pierre toward the
procession.

"They are bringing her, our Protectress!... The Iberian Mother of God!"
someone cried.

"The Smolensk Mother of God," another corrected him.

The militiamen, both those who had been in the village and those who had
been at work on the battery, threw down their spades and ran to meet the
church procession. Following the battalion that marched along the dusty
road came priests in their vestments--one little old man in a hood with
attendants and singers. Behind them soldiers and officers bore a large,
dark-faced icon with an embossed metal cover. This was the icon that had
been brought from Smolensk and had since accompanied the army. Behind,
before, and on both sides, crowds of militiamen with bared heads walked,
ran, and bowed to the ground.

At the summit of the hill they stopped with the icon; the men who had
been holding it up by the linen bands attached to it were relieved by
others, the chanters relit their censers, and service began. The hot
rays of the sun beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind played with
the hair of the bared heads and with the ribbons decorating the icon.
The singing did not sound loud under the open sky. An immense crowd of
bareheaded officers, soldiers, and militiamen surrounded the icon.
Behind the priest and a chanter stood the notabilities on a spot
reserved for them. A bald general with a St. George's Cross on his neck
stood just behind the priest's back, and without crossing himself (he
was evidently a German) patiently awaited the end of the service, which
he considered it necessary to hear to the end, probably to arouse the
patriotism of the Russian people. Another general stood in a martial
pose, crossing himself by shaking his hand in front of his chest while
looking about him. Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre
recognized several acquaintances among these notables, but did not look
at them--his whole attention was absorbed in watching the serious
expression on the faces of the crowd of soldiers and militiamen who were
all gazing eagerly at the icon. As soon as the tired chanters, who were
singing the service for the twentieth time that day, began lazily and
mechanically to sing: "Save from calamity Thy servants, O Mother of
God," and the priest and deacon chimed in: "For to Thee under God we all
flee as to an inviolable bulwark and protection," there again kindled in
all those faces the same expression of consciousness of the solemnity of
the impending moment that Pierre had seen on the faces at the foot of
the hill at Mozhaysk and momentarily on many and many faces he had met
that morning; and heads were bowed more frequently and hair tossed back,
and sighs and the sound men made as they crossed themselves were heard.

The crowd round the icon suddenly parted and pressed against Pierre.
Someone, a very important personage judging by the haste with which way
was made for him, was approaching the icon.

It was Kutuzov, who had been riding round the position and on his way
back to Tatarinova had stopped where the service was being held. Pierre
recognized him at once by his peculiar figure, which distinguished him
from everybody else.

With a long overcoat on his exceedingly stout, round-shouldered body,
with uncovered white head and puffy face showing the white ball of the
eye he had lost, Kutuzov walked with plunging, swaying gait into the
crowd and stopped behind the priest. He crossed himself with an
accustomed movement, bent till he touched the ground with his hand, and
bowed his white head with a deep sigh. Behind Kutuzov was Bennigsen and
the suite. Despite the presence of the commander-in-chief, who attracted
the attention of all the superior officers, the militiamen and soldiers
continued their prayers without looking at him.

When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the icon, sank heavily
to his knees, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried vainly to
rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and weight. His
white head twitched with the effort. At last he rose, kissed the icon as
a child does with naively pouting lips, and again bowed till he touched
the ground with his hand. The other generals followed his example, then
the officers, and after them with excited faces, pressing on one
another, crowding, panting, and pushing, scrambled the soldiers and
militiamen.




CHAPTER XXII

Staggering amid the crush, Pierre looked about him.

"Count Peter Kirilovich! How did you get here?" said a voice.

Pierre looked round. Boris Drubetskoy, brushing his knees with his hand
(he had probably soiled them when he, too, had knelt before the icon),
came up to him smiling. Boris was elegantly dressed, with a slightly
martial touch appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long coat and like
Kutuzov had a whip slung across his shoulder.

Meanwhile Kutuzov had reached the village and seated himself in the
shade of the nearest house, on a bench which one Cossack had run to
fetch and another had hastily covered with a rug. An immense and
brilliant suite surrounded him.

The icon was carried further, accompanied by the throng. Pierre stopped
some thirty paces from Kutuzov, talking to Boris.

He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to see the
position.

"This is what you must do," said Boris. "I will do the honors of the
camp to you. You will see everything best from where Count Bennigsen
will be. I am in attendance on him, you know; I'll mention it to him.
But if you want to ride round the position, come along with us. We are
just going to the left flank. Then when we get back, do spend the night
with me and we'll arrange a game of cards. Of course you know Dmitri
Sergeevich? Those are his quarters," and he pointed to the third house
in the village of Gorki.

"But I should like to see the right flank. They say it's very strong,"
said Pierre. "I should like to start from the Moskva River and ride
round the whole position."

"Well, you can do that later, but the chief thing is the left flank."

"Yes, yes. But where is Prince Bolkonski's regiment? Can you point it
out to me?"

"Prince Andrew's? We shall pass it and I'll take you to him."

"What about the left flank?" asked Pierre

"To tell you the truth, between ourselves, God only knows what state our
left flank is in," said Boris confidentially lowering his voice. "It is
not at all what Count Bennigsen intended. He meant to fortify that knoll
quite differently, but..." Boris shrugged his shoulders, "his Serene
Highness would not have it, or someone persuaded him. You see..." but
Boris did not finish, for at that moment Kaysarov, Kutuzov's adjutant,
came up to Pierre. "Ah, Kaysarov!" said Boris, addressing him with an
unembarrassed smile, "I was just trying to explain our position to the
count. It is amazing how his Serene Highness could so foresee the
intentions of the French!"

"You mean the left flank?" asked Kaysarov.

"Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong."

Though Kutuzov had dismissed all unnecessary men from the staff, Boris
had contrived to remain at headquarters after the changes. He had
established himself with Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom Boris
had been in attendance, considered young Prince Drubetskoy an invaluable
man.

In the higher command there were two sharply defined parties: Kutuzov's
party and that of Bennigsen, the chief of staff. Boris belonged to the
latter and no one else, while showing servile respect to Kutuzov, could
so create an impression that the old fellow was not much good and that
Bennigsen managed everything. Now the decisive moment of battle had come
when Kutuzov would be destroyed and the power pass to Bennigsen, or even
if Kutuzov won the battle it would be felt that everything was done by
Bennigsen. In any case many great rewards would have to be given for
tomorrow's action, and new men would come to the front. So Boris was
full of nervous vivacity all day.

After Kaysarov, others whom Pierre knew came up to him, and he had not
time to reply to all the questions about Moscow that were showered upon
him, or to listen to all that was told him. The faces all expressed
animation and apprehension, but it seemed to Pierre that the cause of
the excitement shown in some of these faces lay chiefly in questions of
personal success; his mind, however, was occupied by the different
expression he saw on other faces--an expression that spoke not of
personal matters but of the universal questions of life and death.
Kutuzov noticed Pierre's figure and the group gathered round him.

"Call him to me," said Kutuzov.

An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness' wish, and Pierre went
toward Kutuzov's bench. But a militiaman got there before him. It was
Dolokhov.

"How did that fellow get here?" asked Pierre.

"He's a creature that wriggles in anywhere!" was the answer. "He has
been degraded, you know. Now he wants to bob up again. He's been
proposing some scheme or other and has crawled into the enemy's picket
line at night.... He's a brave fellow."

Pierre took off his hat and bowed respectfully to Kutuzov.

"I concluded that if I reported to your Serene Highness you might send
me away or say that you knew what I was reporting, but then I shouldn't
lose anything..." Dolokhov was saying.

"Yes, yes."

"But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to my Fatherland
for which I am ready to die."

"Yes, yes."

"And should your Serene Highness require a man who will not spare his
skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I may prove useful to your Serene
Highness."

"Yes... Yes..." Kutuzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more and
more as he looked at Pierre.

Just then Boris, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped up to
Pierre's side near Kutuzov and in a most natural manner, without raising
his voice, said to Pierre, as though continuing an interrupted
conversation:

"The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready to die. What
heroism, Count!"

Boris evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by his
Serene Highness. He knew Kutuzov's attention would be caught by those
words, and so it was.

"What are you saying about the militia?" he asked Boris.

"Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness--for death--they have put
on clean shirts."

"Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!" said Kutuzov; and he closed his
eyes and swayed his head. "A matchless people!" he repeated with a sigh.

"So you want to smell gunpowder?" he said to Pierre. "Yes, it's a
pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of your wife's adorers. Is
she well? My quarters are at your service."

And as often happens with old people, Kutuzov began looking about
absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he wanted to say or do.

Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he beckoned to Andrew
Kaysarov, his adjutant's brother.

"Those verses... those verses of Marin's... how do they go, eh? Those he
wrote about Gerakov: 'Lectures for the corps inditing'... Recite them,
recite them!" said he, evidently preparing to laugh.

Kaysarov recited.... Kutuzov smilingly nodded his head to the rhythm of
the verses.

When Pierre had left Kutuzov, Dolokhov came up to him and took his hand.

"I am very glad to meet you here, Count," he said aloud, regardless of
the presence of strangers and in a particularly resolute and solemn
tone. "On the eve of a day when God alone knows who of us is fated to
survive, I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that I regret the
misunderstandings that occurred between us and should wish you not to
have any ill feeling for me. I beg you to forgive me."

Pierre looked at Dolokhov with a smile, not knowing what to say to him.
With tears in his eyes Dolokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him.

Boris said a few words to his general, and Count Bennigsen turned to
Pierre and proposed that he should ride with him along the line.

"It will interest you," said he.

"Yes, very much," replied Pierre.

Half an hour later Kutuzov left for Tatarinova, and Bennigsen and his
suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the line.




CHAPTER XXIII

From Gorki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the bridge which, when
they had looked at it from the hill, the officer had pointed out as
being the center of our position and where rows of fragrant new-mown hay
lay by the riverside. They rode across that bridge into the village of
Borodino and thence turned to the left, passing an enormous number of
troops and guns, and came to a high knoll where militiamen were digging.
This was the redoubt, as yet unnamed, which afterwards became known as
the Raevski Redoubt, or the Knoll Battery, but Pierre paid no special
attention to it. He did not know that it would become more memorable to
him than any other spot on the plain of Borodino.

They then crossed the hollow to Semenovsk, where the soldiers were
dragging away the last logs from the huts and barns. Then they rode
downhill and uphill, across a ryefield trodden and beaten down as if by
hail, following a track freshly made by the artillery over the furrows
of the plowed land, and reached some fleches * which were still being
dug.


* A kind of entrenchment.

At the fleches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the Shevardino
Redoubt opposite, which had been ours the day before and where several
horsemen could be descried. The officers said that either Napoleon or
Murat was there, and they all gazed eagerly at this little group of
horsemen. Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess which of the
scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon. At last those mounted men
rode away from the mound and disappeared.

Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him, and began explaining
the whole position of our troops. Pierre listened to him, straining each
faculty to understand the essential points of the impending battle, but
was mortified to feel that his mental capacity was inadequate for the
task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen stopped speaking and,
noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly said to him:

"I don't think this interests you?"

"On the contrary it's very interesting!" replied Pierre not quite
truthfully.

From the fleches they rode still farther to the left, along a road
winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood. In the middle of the
wood a brown hare with white feet sprang out and, scared by the tramp of
the many horses, grew so confused that it leaped along the road in front
of them for some time, arousing general attention and laughter, and only
when several voices shouted at it did it dart to one side and disappear
in the thicket. After going through the wood for about a mile and a half
they came out on a glade where troops of Tuchkov's corps were stationed
to defend the left flank.

Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a great deal and with
much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre, gave orders of great military
importance. In front of Tuchkov's troops was some high ground not
occupied by troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake, saying
that it was madness to leave a height which commanded the country around
unoccupied and to place troops below it. Some of the generals expressed
the same opinion. One in particular declared with martial heat that they
were put there to be slaughtered. Bennigsen on his own authority ordered
the troops to occupy the high ground. This disposition on the left flank
increased Pierre's doubt of his own capacity to understand military
matters. Listening to Bennigsen and the generals criticizing the
position of the troops behind the hill, he quite understood them and
shared their opinion, but for that very reason he could not understand
how the man who put them there behind the hill could have made so gross
and palpable a blunder.

Pierre did not know that these troops were not, as Bennigsen supposed,
put there to defend the position, but were in a concealed position as an
ambush, that they should not be seen and might be able to strike an
approaching enemy unexpectedly. Bennigsen did not know this and moved
the troops forward according to his own ideas without mentioning the
matter to the commander-in-chief.




CHAPTER XXIV

On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lay leaning on his
elbow in a broken-down shed in the village of Knyazkovo at the further
end of his regiment's encampment. Through a gap in the broken wall he
could see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty year-old birches
with their lower branches lopped off, a field on which shocks of oats
were standing, and some bushes near which rose the smoke of campfires--
the soldiers' kitchens.

Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life now seemed to
him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt agitated and irritable as
he had done seven years before at Austerlitz.

He had received and given the orders for next day's battle and had
nothing more to do. But his thoughts--the simplest, clearest, and
therefore most terrible thoughts--would give him no peace. He knew that
tomorrow's battle would be the most terrible of all he had taken part
in, and for the first time in his life the possibility of death
presented itself to him--not in relation to any worldly matter or with
reference to its effect on others, but simply in relation to himself, to
his own soul--vividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as a certainty. And
from the height of this perception all that had previously tormented and
preoccupied him suddenly became illumined by a cold white light without
shadows, without perspective, without distinction of outline. All life
appeared to him like magic-lantern pictures at which he had long been
gazing by artificial light through a glass. Now he suddenly saw those
badly daubed pictures in clear daylight and without a glass. "Yes, yes!
There they are, those false images that agitated, enraptured, and
tormented me," said he to himself, passing in review the principal
pictures of the magic lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold
white daylight of his clear perception of death. "There they are, those
rudely painted figures that once seemed splendid and mysterious. Glory,
the good of society, love of a woman, the Fatherland itself--how
important these pictures appeared to me, with what profound meaning they
seemed to be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the
cold white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for me." The
three great sorrows of his life held his attention in particular: his
love for a woman, his father's death, and the French invasion which had
overrun half Russia. "Love... that little girl who seemed to me brimming
over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved her. I made romantic plans
of love and happiness with her! Oh, what a boy I was!" he said aloud
bitterly. "Ah me! I believed in some ideal love which was to keep her
faithful to me for the whole year of my absence! Like the gentle dove in
the fable she was to pine apart from me.... But it was much simpler
really.... It was all very simple and horrible."

"When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place was his: his land,
his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came and swept him aside,
unconscious of his existence, as he might brush a chip from his path,
and his Bald Hills and his whole life fell to pieces. Princess Mary says
it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, when he is not
here and will never return? He is not here! For whom then is the trial
intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And tomorrow I
shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one of our own
men, by a soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as one of them
did yesterday, and the French will come and take me by head and heels
and fling me into a hole that I may not stink under their noses, and new
conditions of life will arise, which will seem quite ordinary to others
and about which I shall know nothing. I shall not exist..."

He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine, with their
motionless green and yellow foliage and white bark. "To die... to be
killed tomorrow... That I should not exist... That all this should still
be, but no me...."

And the birches with their light and shade, the curly clouds, the smoke
of the campfires, and all that was around him changed and seemed
terrible and menacing. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose
quickly, went out of the shed, and began to walk about.

After he had returned, voices were heard outside the shed. "Who's that?"
he cried.

The red-nosed Captain Timokhin, formerly Dolokhov's squadron commander,
but now from lack of officers a battalion commander, shyly entered the
shed followed by an adjutant and the regimental paymaster.

Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business they had come
about, gave them some further instructions, and was about to dismiss
them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.

"Devil take it!" said the voice of a man stumbling over something.

Prince Andrew looked out of the shed and saw Pierre, who had tripped
over a pole on the ground and had nearly fallen, coming his way. It was
unpleasant to Prince Andrew to meet people of his own set in general,
and Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful moments of
his last visit to Moscow.

"You? What a surprise!" said he. "What brings you here? This is
unexpected!"

As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than coldness--they
expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached the
shed full of animation, but on seeing Prince Andrew's face he felt
constrained and ill at ease.

"I have come... simply... you know... come... it interests me," said
Pierre, who had so often that day senselessly repeated that word
"interesting." "I wish to see the battle."

"Oh yes, and what do the masonic brothers say about war? How would they
stop it?" said Prince Andrew sarcastically. "Well, and how's Moscow? And
my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?" he asked seriously.

"Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskaya told me so. I went to see them, but
missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow."




CHAPTER XXV

The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andrew, apparently
reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked them to stay and have
tea. Seats were brought in and so was the tea. The officers gazed with
surprise at Pierre's huge stout figure and listened to his talk of
Moscow and the position of our army, round which he had ridden. Prince
Andrew remained silent, and his expression was so forbidding that Pierre
addressed his remarks chiefly to the good-natured battalion commander.

"So you understand the whole position of our troops?" Prince Andrew
interrupted him.

"Yes--that is, how do you mean?" said Pierre. "Not being a military man
I can't say I have understood it fully, but I understand the general
position."

"Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it who it may," said
Prince Andrew.

"Oh!" said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in perplexity at Prince
Andrew. "Well, and what do you think of Kutuzov's appointment?" he
asked.

"I was very glad of his appointment, that's all I know," replied Prince
Andrew.

"And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow they are saying
heaven knows what about him.... What do you think of him?"

"Ask them," replied Prince Andrew, indicating the officers.

Pierre looked at Timokhin with the condescendingly interrogative smile
with which everybody involuntarily addressed that officer.

"We see light again, since his Serenity has been appointed, your
excellency," said Timokhin timidly, and continually turning to glance at
his colonel.

"Why so?" asked Pierre.

"Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me inform you. Why, when
we were retreating from Sventsyani we dare not touch a stick or a wisp
of hay or anything. You see, we were going away, so he would get it all;
wasn't it so, your excellency?" and again Timokhin turned to the prince.
"But we daren't. In our regiment two officers were court-martialed for
that kind of thing. But when his Serenity took command everything became
straight forward. Now we see light..."

"Then why was it forbidden?"

Timokhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what or how to answer
such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andrew.

"Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the
enemy," said Prince Andrew with venomous irony. "It is very sound: one
can't permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to
marauding. At Smolensk too he judged correctly that the French might
outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could not understand
this," cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice that seemed to escape him
involuntarily: "he could not understand that there, for the first time,
we were fighting for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit in the
men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the French for two
days, and that that success had increased our strength tenfold. He
ordered us to retreat, and all our efforts and losses went for nothing.
He had no thought of betraying us, he tried to do the best he could, he
thought out everything, and that is why he is unsuitable. He is
unsuitable now, just because he plans out everything very thoroughly and
accurately as every German has to. How can I explain?... Well, say your
father has a German valet, and he is a splendid valet and satisfies your
father's requirements better than you could, then it's all right to let
him serve. But if your father is mortally sick you'll send the valet
away and attend to your father with your own unpracticed, awkward hands,
and will soothe him better than a skilled man who is a stranger could.
So it has been with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could
serve her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is in danger
she needs one of her own kin. But in your club they have been making him
out a traitor! They slander him as a traitor, and the only result will
be that afterwards, ashamed of their false accusations, they will make
him out a hero or a genius instead of a traitor, and that will be still
more unjust. He is an honest and very punctilious German."

"And they say he's a skillful commander," rejoined Pierre.

"I don't understand what is meant by 'a skillful commander,'" replied
Prince Andrew ironically.

"A skillful commander?" replied Pierre. "Why, one who foresees all
contingencies... and foresees the adversary's intentions."

"But that's impossible," said Prince Andrew as if it were a matter
settled long ago.

Pierre looked at him in surprise.

"And yet they say that war is like a game of chess?" he remarked.

"Yes," replied Prince Andrew, "but with this little difference, that in
chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are not
limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is always
stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one, while
in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes
weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies of troops can
never be known to anyone. Believe me," he went on, "if things depended
on arrangements made by the staff, I should be there making
arrangements, but instead of that I have the honor to serve here in the
regiment with these gentlemen, and I consider that on us tomorrow's
battle will depend and not on those others.... Success never depends,
and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or even on numbers,
and least of all on position."

"But on what then?"

"On the feeling that is in me and in him," he pointed to Timokhin, "and
in each soldier."

Prince Andrew glanced at Timokhin, who looked at his commander in alarm
and bewilderment. In contrast to his former reticent taciturnity Prince
Andrew now seemed excited. He could apparently not refrain from
expressing the thoughts that had suddenly occurred to him.

"A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it! Why did we lose
the battle at Austerlitz? The French losses were almost equal to ours,
but very early we said to ourselves that we were losing the battle, and
we did lose it. And we said so because we had nothing to fight for
there, we wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon as we could.
'We've lost, so let us run,' and we ran. If we had not said that till
the evening, heaven knows what might not have happened. But tomorrow we
shan't say it! You talk about our position, the left flank weak and the
right flank too extended," he went on. "That's all nonsense, there's
nothing of the kind. But what awaits us tomorrow? A hundred million most
diverse chances which will be decided on the instant by the fact that
our men or theirs run or do not run, and that this man or that man is
killed, but all that is being done at present is only play. The fact is
that those men with whom you have ridden round the position not only do
not help matters, but hinder. They are only concerned with their own
petty interests."

"At such a moment?" said Pierre reproachfully.

"At such a moment!" Prince Andrew repeated. "To them it is only a moment
affording opportunities to undermine a rival and obtain an extra cross
or ribbon. For me tomorrow means this: a Russian army of a hundred
thousand and a French army of a hundred thousand have met to fight, and
the thing is that these two hundred thousand men will fight and the side
that fights more fiercely and spares itself least will win. And if you
like I will tell you that whatever happens and whatever muddles those at
the top may make, we shall win tomorrow's battle. Tomorrow, happen what
may, we shall win!"

"There now, your excellency! That's the truth, the real truth," said
Timokhin. "Who would spare himself now? The soldiers in my battalion,
believe me, wouldn't drink their vodka! 'It's not the day for that!'
they say."

All were silent. The officers rose. Prince Andrew went out of the shed
with them, giving final orders to the adjutant. After they had gone
Pierre approached Prince Andrew and was about to start a conversation
when they heard the clatter of three horses' hoofs on the road not far
from the shed, and looking in that direction Prince Andrew recognized
Wolzogen and Clausewitz accompanied by a Cossack. They rode close by
continuing to converse, and Prince Andrew involuntarily heard these
words:

"Der Krieg muss in Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht kann ich nicht genug
Preis geben," * said one of them.


* "The war must be extended widely. I cannot sufficiently commend that
view."

"Oh, ja," said the other, "der Zweck ist nur den Feind zu schwächen, so
kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der Privat-Personen in Achtung
nehmen." *


* "Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of course one cannot
take into account the loss of private individuals."

"Oh, no," agreed the other.

"Extend widely!" said Prince Andrew with an angry snort, when they had
ridden past. "In that 'extend' were my father, son, and sister, at Bald
Hills. That's all the same to him! That's what I was saying to you--
those German gentlemen won't win the battle tomorrow but will only make
all the mess they can, because they have nothing in their German heads
but theories not worth an empty eggshell and haven't in their hearts the
one thing needed tomorrow--that which Timokhin has. They have yielded up
all Europe to him, and have now come to teach us. Fine teachers!" and
again his voice grew shrill.

"So you think we shall win tomorrow's battle?" asked Pierre.

"Yes, yes," answered Prince Andrew absently. "One thing I would do if I
had the power," he began again, "I would not take prisoners. Why take
prisoners? It's chivalry! The French have destroyed my home and are on
their way to destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are outraging me
every moment. They are my enemies. In my opinion they are all criminals.
And so thinks Timokhin and the whole army. They should be executed!
Since they are my foes they cannot be my friends, whatever may have been
said at Tilsit."

"Yes, yes," muttered Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince Andrew.
"I quite agree with you!"

The question that had perturbed Pierre on the Mozhaysk hill and all that
day now seemed to him quite clear and completely solved. He now
understood the whole meaning and importance of this war and of the
impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the significant and
stern expressions on the faces he had seen in passing, were lit up for
him by a new light. He understood that latent heat (as they say in
physics) of patriotism which was present in all these men he had seen,
and this explained to him why they all prepared for death calmly, and as
it were lightheartedly.

"Not take prisoners," Prince Andrew continued: "That by itself would
quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have
played at war--that's what's vile! We play at magnanimity and all that
stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and
sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she
is so kindhearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating the
calf served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of
chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on. It's
all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they humbugged
us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people's houses, issue
false paper money, and worst of all they kill my children and my father,
and then talk of rules of war and magnanimity to foes! Take no
prisoners, but kill and be killed! He who has come to this as I have
through the same sufferings..."

Prince Andrew, who had thought it was all the same to him whether or not
Moscow was taken as Smolensk had been, was suddenly checked in his
speech by an unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a few
times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips
quivered as he began speaking.

"If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should go to war only
when it was worth while going to certain death, as now. Then there would
not be war because Paul Ivanovich had offended Michael Ivanovich. And
when there was a war, like this one, it would be war! And then the
determination of the troops would be quite different. Then all these
Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon is leading would not follow him
into Russia, and we should not go to fight in Austria and Prussia
without knowing why. War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in
life; and we ought to understand that and not play at war. We ought to
accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in
that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is
now, war is the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous. The military
calling is the most highly honored.

"But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are the
habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war are
spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a country's
inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud
and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military class
are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance,
cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in spite of all this it is the
highest class, respected by everyone. All the kings, except the Chinese,
wear military uniforms, and he who kills most people receives the
highest rewards.

"They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill
and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for
having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they
announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed the
greater their achievement. How does God above look at them and hear
them?" exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill, piercing voice. "Ah, my
friend, it has of late become hard for me to live. I see that I have
begun to understand too much. And it doesn't do for man to taste of the
tree of knowledge of good and evil.... Ah, well, it's not for long!" he
added.

"However, you're sleepy, and it's time for me to sleep. Go back to
Gorki!" said Prince Andrew suddenly.

"Oh no!" Pierre replied, looking at Prince Andrew with frightened,
compassionate eyes.

"Go, go! Before a battle one must have one's sleep out," repeated Prince
Andrew.

He came quickly up to Pierre and embraced and kissed him. "Good-bye, be
off!" he shouted. "Whether we meet again or not..." and turning away
hurriedly he entered the shed.

It was already dark, and Pierre could not make out whether the
expression of Prince Andrew's face was angry or tender.

For some time he stood in silence considering whether he should follow
him or go away. "No, he does not want it!" Pierre concluded. "And I know
that this is our last meeting!" He sighed deeply and rode back to Gorki.

On re-entering the shed Prince Andrew lay down on a rug, but he could
not sleep.

He closed his eyes. One picture succeeded another in his imagination. On
one of them he dwelt long and joyfully. He vividly recalled an evening
in Petersburg. Natasha with animated and excited face was telling him
how she had gone to look for mushrooms the previous summer and had lost
her way in the big forest. She incoherently described the depths of the
forest, her feelings, and a talk with a beekeeper she met, and
constantly interrupted her story to say: "No, I can't! I'm not telling
it right; no, you don't understand," though he encouraged her by saying
that he did understand, and he really had understood all she wanted to
say. But Natasha was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that
they did not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced
that day and wished to convey. "He was such a delightful old man, and it
was so dark in the forest... and he had such kind... No, I can't
describe it," she had said, flushed and excited. Prince Andrew smiled
now the same happy smile as then when he had looked into her eyes. "I
understood her," he thought. "I not only understood her, but it was just
that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity, that frankness of soul--
that very soul of hers which seemed to be fettered by her body--it was
that soul I loved in her... loved so strongly and happily..." and
suddenly he remembered how his love had ended. "He did not need anything
of that kind. He neither saw nor understood anything of the sort. He
only saw in her a pretty and fresh young girl, with whom he did not
deign to unite his fate. And I?... and he is still alive and gay!"

Prince Andrew jumped up as if someone had burned him, and again began
pacing up and down in front of the shed.




CHAPTER XXVI

On August 25, the eve of the battle of Borodino, M. de Beausset, prefect
of the French Emperor's palace, arrived at Napoleon's quarters at
Valuevo with Colonel Fabvier, the former from Paris and the latter from
Madrid.

Donning his court uniform, M. de Beausset ordered a box he had brought
for the Emperor to be carried before him and entered the first
compartment of Napoleon's tent, where he began opening the box while
conversing with Napoleon's aides-de-camp who surrounded him.

Fabvier, not entering the tent, remained at the entrance talking to some
generals of his acquaintance.

The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom and was finishing his
toilet. Slightly snorting and grunting, he presented now his back and
now his plump hairy chest to the brush with which his valet was rubbing
him down. Another valet, with his finger over the mouth of a bottle, was
sprinkling Eau de Cologne on the Emperor's pampered body with an
expression which seemed to say that he alone knew where and how much Eau
de Cologne should be sprinkled. Napoleon's short hair was wet and matted
on the forehead, but his face, though puffy and yellow, expressed
physical satisfaction. "Go on, harder, go on!" he muttered to the valet
who was rubbing him, slightly twitching and grunting. An aide-de-camp,
who had entered the bedroom to report to the Emperor the number of
prisoners taken in yesterday's action, was standing by the door after
delivering his message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon,
frowning, looked at him from under his brows.

"No prisoners!" said he, repeating the aide-de-camp's words. "They are
forcing us to exterminate them. So much the worse for the Russian
army.... Go on... harder, harder!" he muttered, hunching his back and
presenting his fat shoulders.

"All right. Let Monsieur de Beausset enter, and Fabvier too," he said,
nodding to the aide-de-camp.

"Yes, sire," and the aide-de-camp disappeared through the door of the
tent.

Two valets rapidly dressed His Majesty, and wearing the blue uniform of
the Guards he went with firm quick steps to the reception room.

De Beausset's hands meanwhile were busily engaged arranging the present
he had brought from the Empress, on two chairs directly in front of the
entrance. But Napoleon had dressed and come out with such unexpected
rapidity that he had not time to finish arranging the surprise.

Napoleon noticed at once what they were about and guessed that they were
not ready. He did not wish to deprive them of the pleasure of giving him
a surprise, so he pretended not to see de Beausset and called Fabvier to
him, listening silently and with a stern frown to what Fabvier told him
of the heroism and devotion of his troops fighting at Salamanca, at the
other end of Europe, with but one thought--to be worthy of their
Emperor--and but one fear--to fail to please him. The result of that
battle had been deplorable. Napoleon made ironic remarks during
Fabvier's account, as if he had not expected that matters could go
otherwise in his absence.

"I must make up for that in Moscow," said Napoleon. "I'll see you
later," he added, and summoned de Beausset, who by that time had
prepared the surprise, having placed something on the chairs and covered
it with a cloth.

De Beausset bowed low, with that courtly French bow which only the old
retainers of the Bourbons knew how to make, and approached him,
presenting an envelope.

Napoleon turned to him gaily and pulled his ear.

"You have hurried here. I am very glad. Well, what is Paris saying?" he
asked, suddenly changing his former stern expression for a most cordial
tone.

"Sire, all Paris regrets your absence," replied de Beausset as was
proper.

But though Napoleon knew that de Beausset had to say something of this
kind, and though in his lucid moments he knew it was untrue, he was
pleased to hear it from him. Again he honored him by touching his ear.

"I am very sorry to have made you travel so far," said he.

"Sire, I expected nothing less than to find you at the gates of Moscow,"
replied de Beausset.

Napoleon smiled and, lifting his head absent-mindedly, glanced to the
right. An aide-de-camp approached with gliding steps and offered him a
gold snuffbox, which he took.

"Yes, it has happened luckily for you," he said, raising the open
snuffbox to his nose. "You are fond of travel, and in three days you
will see Moscow. You surely did not expect to see that Asiatic capital.
You will have a pleasant journey."

De Beausset bowed gratefully at this regard for his taste for travel (of
which he had not till then been aware).

"Ha, what's this?" asked Napoleon, noticing that all the courtiers were
looking at something concealed under a cloth.

With courtly adroitness de Beausset half turned and without turning his
back to the Emperor retired two steps, twitching off the cloth at the
same time, and said:

"A present to Your Majesty from the Empress."

It was a portrait, painted in bright colors by Gerard, of the son borne
to Napoleon by the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, the boy whom for
some reason everyone called "The King of Rome."

A very pretty curly-headed boy with a look of the Christ in the Sistine
Madonna was depicted playing at stick and ball. The ball represented the
terrestrial globe and the stick in his other hand a scepter.

Though it was not clear what the artist meant to express by depicting
the so-called King of Rome spiking the earth with a stick, the allegory
apparently seemed to Napoleon, as it had done to all who had seen it in
Paris, quite clear and very pleasing.

"The King of Rome!" he said, pointing to the portrait with a graceful
gesture. "Admirable!"

With the natural capacity of an Italian for changing the expression of
his face at will, he drew nearer to the portrait and assumed a look of
pensive tenderness. He felt that what he now said and did would be
historical, and it seemed to him that it would now be best for him--
whose grandeur enabled his son to play stick and ball with the
terrestrial globe--to show, in contrast to that grandeur, the simplest
paternal tenderness. His eyes grew dim, he moved forward, glanced round
at a chair (which seemed to place itself under him), and sat down on it
before the portrait. At a single gesture from him everyone went out on
tiptoe, leaving the great man to himself and his emotion.

Having sat still for a while he touched--himself not knowing why--the
thick spot of paint representing the highest light in the portrait,
rose, and recalled de Beausset and the officer on duty. He ordered the
portrait to be carried outside his tent, that the Old Guard, stationed
round it, might not be deprived of the pleasure of seeing the King of
Rome, the son and heir of their adored monarch.

And while he was doing M. de Beausset the honor of breakfasting with
him, they heard, as Napoleon had anticipated, the rapturous cries of the
officers and men of the Old Guard who had run up to see the portrait.

"Vive l'Empereur! Vive le roi de Rome! Vive l'Empereur!" came those
ecstatic cries.

After breakfast Napoleon in de Beausset's presence dictated his order of
the day to the army.

"Short and energetic!" he remarked when he had read over the
proclamation which he had dictated straight off without corrections. It
ran:

Soldiers! This is the battle you have so longed for. Victory depends on
you. It is essential for us; it will give us all we need: comfortable
quarters and a speedy return to our country. Behave as you did at
Austerlitz, Friedland, Vitebsk, and Smolensk. Let our remotest posterity
recall your achievements this day with pride. Let it be said of each of
you: "He was in the great battle before Moscow!"

"Before Moscow!" repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de Beausset, who was
so fond of travel, to accompany him on his ride, he went out of the tent
to where the horses stood saddled.

"Your Majesty is too kind!" replied de Beausset to the invitation to
accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep, did not know how to ride and
was afraid of doing so.

But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset had to mount. When
Napoleon came out of the tent the shouting of the Guards before his
son's portrait grew still louder. Napoleon frowned.

"Take him away!" he said, pointing with a gracefully majestic gesture to
the portrait. "It is too soon for him to see a field of battle."

De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and sighed deeply, to
indicate how profoundly he valued and comprehended the Emperor's words.




CHAPTER XXVII

On the twenty-fifth of August, so his historians tell us, Napoleon spent
the whole day on horseback inspecting the locality, considering plans
submitted to him by his marshals, and personally giving commands to his
generals.

The original line of the Russian forces along the river Kolocha had been
dislocated by the capture of the Shevardino Redoubt on the twenty-
fourth, and part of the line--the left flank--had been drawn back. That
part of the line was not entrenched and in front of it the ground was
more open and level than elsewhere. It was evident to anyone, military
or not, that it was here the French should attack. It would seem that
not much consideration was needed to reach this conclusion, nor any
particular care or trouble on the part of the Emperor and his marshals,
nor was there any need of that special and supreme quality called genius
that people are so apt to ascribe to Napoleon; yet the historians who
described the event later and the men who then surrounded Napoleon, and
he himself, thought otherwise.

Napoleon rode over the plain and surveyed the locality with a profound
air and in silence, nodded with approval or shook his head dubiously,
and without communicating to the generals around him the profound course
of ideas which guided his decisions merely gave them his final
conclusions in the form of commands. Having listened to a suggestion
from Davout, who was now called Prince d'Eckmuhl, to turn the Russian
left wing, Napoleon said it should not be done, without explaining why
not. To a proposal made by General Campan (who was to attack the
fleches) to lead his division through the woods, Napoleon agreed, though
the so-called Duke of Elchingen (Ney) ventured to remark that a movement
through the woods was dangerous and might disorder the division.

Having inspected the country opposite the Shevardino Redoubt, Napoleon
pondered a little in silence and then indicated the spots where two
batteries should be set up by the morrow to act against the Russian
entrenchments, and the places where, in line with them, the field
artillery should be placed.

After giving these and other commands he returned to his tent, and the
dispositions for the battle were written down from his dictation.

These dispositions, of which the French historians write with enthusiasm
and other historians with profound respect, were as follows:

At dawn the two new batteries established during the night on the plain
occupied by the Prince d'Eckmuhl will open fire on the opposing
batteries of the enemy.

At the same time the commander of the artillery of the 1st Corps,
General Pernetti, with thirty cannon of Campan's division and all the
howitzers of Dessaix's and Friant's divisions, will move forward, open
fire, and overwhelm with shellfire the enemy's battery, against which
will operate:


24 guns of the artillery of the Guards 30 guns of Campan's division

and     8 guns of Friant's and Dessaix's divisions --

in all 62 guns.

The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, General Fouche, will
place the howitzers of the 3rd and 8th Corps, sixteen in all, on the
flanks of the battery that is to bombard the entrenchment on the left,
which will have forty guns in all directed against it.

General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all the
howitzers of the Guard's artillery against either one or other of the
entrenchments.

During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance through the wood
on the village and turn the enemy's position.

General Campan will move through the wood to seize the first
fortification.

After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will be given in
accordance with the enemy's movements.

The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as the guns of the
right wing are heard. The sharpshooters of Morand's division and of the
vice-King's division will open a heavy fire on seeing the attack
commence on the right wing.

The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its three bridges,
advancing to the same heights as Morand's and Gibrard's divisions, which
under his leadership will be directed against the redoubt and come into
line with the rest of the forces.

All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera avec ordre et
methode) as far as possible retaining troops in reserve.

The Imperial Camp near Mozhaysk,

September, 6, 1812.

These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused if one allows
oneself to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his genius,
related to Napoleon's orders to deal with four points--four different
orders. Not one of these was, or could be, carried out.

In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed on the
spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouche; which
were to come in line with them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and
shower shells on the Russian fleches and redoubts. This could not be
done, as from the spots selected by Napoleon the projectiles did not
carry to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot into the air until
the nearest commander, contrary to Napoleon's instructions, moved them
forward.

The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the village through the
wood, should turn the Russian left flank. This could not be done and was
not done, because Poniatowski, advancing on the village through the
wood, met Tuchkov there barring his way, and could not and did not turn
the Russian position.

The third order was: General Campan will move through the wood to seize
the first fortification. General Campan's division did not seize the
first fortification but was driven back, for on emerging from the wood
it had to reform under grapeshot, of which Napoleon was unaware.

The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the village (Borodino)
and cross by its three bridges, advancing to the same heights as
Morand's and Gibrard's divisions (for whose movements no directions are
given), which under his leadership will be directed against the redoubt
and come into line with the rest of the forces.

As far as one can make out, not so much from this unintelligible
sentence as from the attempts the vice-King made to execute the orders
given him, he was to advance from the left through Borodino to the
redoubt while the divisions of Morand and Gerard were to advance
simultaneously from the front.

All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not and could not
be executed. After passing through Borodino the vice-King was driven
back to the Kolocha and could get no farther; while the divisions of
Morand and Gerard did not take the redoubt but were driven back, and the
redoubt was only taken at the end of the battle by the cavalry (a thing
probably unforeseen and not heard of by Napoleon). So not one of the
orders in the disposition was, or could be, executed. But in the
disposition it is said that, after the fight has commenced in this
manner, orders will be given in accordance with the enemy's movements,
and so it might be supposed that all necessary arrangements would be
made by Napoleon during the battle. But this was not and could not be
done, for during the whole battle Napoleon was so far away that, as
appeared later, he could not know the course of the battle and not one
of his orders during the fight could be executed.




CHAPTER XXVIII

Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of Borodino
because Napoleon had a cold, and that if he had not had a cold the
orders he gave before and during the battle would have been still more
full of genius and Russia would have been lost and the face of the world
have been changed. To historians who believe that Russia was shaped by
the will of one man--Peter the Great--and that France from a republic
became an empire and French armies went to Russia at the will of one
man--Napoleon--to say that Russia remained a power because Napoleon had
a bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August may seem logical and
convincing.

If it had depended on Napoleon's will to fight or not to fight the
battle of Borodino, and if this or that other arrangement depended on
his will, then evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of his will
might have saved Russia, and consequently the valet who omitted to bring
Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth would have been the
savior of Russia. Along that line of thought such a deduction is
indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction Voltaire made in jest
(without knowing what he was jesting at) when he saw that the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX's stomach being deranged. But
to men who do not admit that Russia was formed by the will of one man,
Peter I, or that the French Empire was formed and the war with Russia
begun by the will of one man, Napoleon, that argument seems not merely
untrue and irrational, but contrary to all human reality. To the
question of what causes historic events another answer presents itself,
namely, that the course of human events is predetermined from on high--
depends on the coincidence of the wills of all who take part in the
events, and that a Napoleon's influence on the course of these events is
purely external and fictitious.

Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX's will, though he gave the
order for it and thought it was done as a result of that order; and
strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of eighty thousand
men at Borodino was not due to Napoleon's will, though he ordered the
commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it was done because
he ordered it; strange as these suppositions appear, yet human dignity--
which tells me that each of us is, if not more at least not less a man
than the great Napoleon--demands the acceptance of that solution of the
question, and historic investigation abundantly confirms it.

At the battle of Borodino Napoleon shot at no one and killed no one.
That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore it was not he who killed
people.

The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of Borodino
not because of Napoleon's orders but by their own volition. The whole
army--French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch--hungry, ragged, and
weary of the campaign, felt at the sight of an army blocking their road
to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be drunk. Had Napoleon then
forbidden them to fight the Russians, they would have killed him and
have proceeded to fight the Russians because it was inevitable.

When they heard Napoleon's proclamation offering them, as compensation
for mutilation and death, the words of posterity about their having been
in the battle before Moscow, they cried "Vive l'Empereur!" just as they
had cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at the sight of the portrait of the boy
piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy stick, and just as they would
have cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at any nonsense that might be told them.
There was nothing left for them to do but cry "Vive l'Empereur!" and go
to fight, in order to get food and rest as conquerors in Moscow. So it
was not because of Napoleon's commands that they killed their fellow
men.

And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for none
of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know what
was going on before him. So the way in which these people killed one
another was not decided by Napoleon's will but occurred independently of
him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands of people who took
part in the common action. It only seemed to Napoleon that it all took
place by his will. And so the question whether he had or had not a cold
has no more historic interest than the cold of the least of the
transport soldiers.

Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was the
cause of his dispositions not being as well-planned as on former
occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as
previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon's cold on
the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.

The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even better,
than previous dispositions by which he had won victories. His pseudo-
orders during the battle were also no worse than formerly, but much the
same as usual. These dispositions and orders only seem worse than
previous ones because the battle of Borodino was the first Napoleon did
not win. The profoundest and most excellent dispositions and orders seem
very bad, and every learned militarist criticizes them with looks of
importance, when they relate to a battle that has been lost, and the
very worst dispositions and orders seem very good, and serious people
fill whole volumes to demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a
battle that has been won.

The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of Austerlitz were
a model of perfection for that kind of composition, but still they were
criticized--criticized for their very perfection, for their excessive
minuteness.

Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office as
representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other
battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he
inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he made no confusion, did not
contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the field of
battle, but with his great tact and military experience carried out his
role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.




CHAPTER XXIX

On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon remarked:

"The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!"

Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to him
about Paris and about some changes he meant to make in the Empress'
household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details
relating to the court.

He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset's love of
travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon who
knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on his apron
while a patient is being strapped to the operating table. "The matter is
in my hands and is clear and definite in my head. When the time comes to
set to work I shall do it as no one else could, but now I can jest, and
the more I jest and the calmer I am the more tranquil and confident you
ought to be, and the more amazed at my genius."

Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon went to rest before
the serious business which, he considered, awaited him next day. He was
so much interested in that task that he was unable to sleep, and in
spite of his cold which had grown worse from the dampness of the
evening, he went into the large division of the tent at three o'clock in
the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He asked whether the Russians had
not withdrawn, and was told that the enemy's fires were still in the
same places. He nodded approval.

The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.

"Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?" Napoleon
asked him.

"Without doubt, sire," replied Rapp.

Napoleon looked at him.

"Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to say at Smolensk?"
continued Rapp. "The wine is drawn and must be drunk."

Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning his head on his
hand.

"This poor army!" he suddenly remarked. "It has diminished greatly since
Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always said so
and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the Guards
are intact?" he remarked interrogatively.

"Yes, sire," replied Rapp.

Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced at his watch.
He was not sleepy and it was still not nearly morning. It was impossible
to give further orders for the sake of killing time, for the orders had
all been given and were now being executed.

"Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of the
Guards?" asked Napoleon sternly.

"Yes, sire."

"The rice too?"

Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor's order about the rice, but
Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as if not believing that his
order had been executed. An attendant came in with punch. Napoleon
ordered another glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently sipped his
own.

"I have neither taste nor smell," he remarked, sniffing at his glass.
"This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicine--what is the good of
medicine when it can't cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these lozenges but
they don't help at all. What can doctors cure? One can't cure anything.
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its
nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it
will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.
Our body is like a perfect watch that should go for a certain time; the
watchmaker cannot open it, he can only adjust it by fumbling, and that
blindfold.... Yes, our body is just a machine for living, that is all."

And having entered on the path of definition, of which he was fond,
Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a new one.

"Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?" asked he. "It is the art of
being stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That's all."

Rapp made no reply.

"Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutuzov!" said Napoleon. "We shall
see! Do you remember at Braunau he commanded an army for three weeks and
did not once mount a horse to inspect his entrenchments.... We shall
see!"

He looked at his watch. It was still only four o'clock. He did not feel
sleepy. The punch was finished and there was still nothing to do. He
rose, walked to and fro, put on a warm overcoat and a hat, and went out
of the tent. The night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible
moisture was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were dimly
burning among the French Guards, and in the distance those of the
Russian line shone through the smoke. The weather was calm, and the
rustle and tramp of the French troops already beginning to move to take
up their positions were clearly audible.

Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the fires and
listened to these sounds, and as he was passing a tall guardsman in a
shaggy cap, who was standing sentinel before his tent and had drawn
himself up like a black pillar at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon stopped
in front of him.

"What year did you enter the service?" he asked with that affectation of
military bluntness and geniality with which he always addressed the
soldiers.

The man answered the question.

"Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its rice?"

"It has, Your Majesty."

Napoleon nodded and walked away.

At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of Shevardino.

It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a single cloud lay in
the east. The abandoned campfires were burning themselves out in the
faint morning light.

On the right a single deep report of a cannon resounded and died away in
the prevailing silence. Some minutes passed. A second and a third report
shook the air, then a fourth and a fifth boomed solemnly near by on the
right.

The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before others rang out
and yet more were heard mingling with and overtaking one another.

Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino Redoubt where he
dismounted. The game had begun.




CHAPTER XXX

On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre ordered
his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early in the morning,
and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a corner Boris
had given up to him.

Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had already left
the hut. The panes were rattling in the little windows and his groom was
shaking him.

"Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!" he kept repeating
pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the shoulder without looking at
him, having apparently lost hope of getting him to wake up.

"What? Has it begun? Is it time?" Pierre asked, waking up.

"Hear the firing," said the groom, a discharged soldier. "All the
gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene Highness himself rode past long
ago."

Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was bright,
fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting forth from behind a
cloud that had concealed it, was shining, with rays still half broken by
the clouds, over the roofs of the street opposite, on the dew-
besprinkled dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on the
windows, the fence, and on Pierre's horses standing before the hut. The
roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant accompanied by a
Cossack passed by at a sharp trot.

"It's time, Count; it's time!" cried the adjutant.

Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went down the
street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field of battle the
day before. A crowd of military men was assembled there, members of the
staff could be heard conversing in French, and Kutuzov's gray head in a
white cap with a red band was visible, his gray nape sunk between his
shoulders. He was looking through a field glass down the highroad before
him.

Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene before him,
spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama he had admired from that
spot the day before, but now the whole place was full of troops and
covered by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting rays of the
bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre, cast upon it
through the clear morning air penetrating streaks of rosy, golden-tinted
light and long dark shadows. The forest at the farthest extremity of the
panorama seemed carved in some precious stone of a yellowish-green
color; its undulating outline was silhouetted against the horizon and
was pierced beyond Valuevo by the Smolensk highroad crowded with troops.
Nearer at hand glittered golden cornfields interspersed with copses.
There were troops to be seen everywhere, in front and to the right and
left. All this was vivid, majestic, and unexpected; but what impressed
Pierre most of all was the view of the battlefield itself, of Borodino
and the hollows on both sides of the Kolocha.

Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of it, especially to
the left where the Voyna flowing between its marshy banks falls into the
Kolocha, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve, and to
become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and magically colored
and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns mingled with this mist,
and over the whole expanse and through that mist the rays of the morning
sun were reflected, flashing back like lightning from the water, from
the dew, and from the bayonets of the troops crowded together by the
riverbanks and in Borodino. A white church could be seen through the
mist, and here and there the roofs of huts in Borodino as well as dense
masses of soldiers, or green ammunition chests and ordnance. And all
this moved, or seemed to move, as the smoke and mist spread out over the
whole space. Just as in the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so
along the entire line outside and above it and especially in the woods
and fields to the left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high
ground, clouds of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of
nothing, now singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others
dense, which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over
the whole expanse.

These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of the firing
produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.

"Puff!"--suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging from
violet into gray and milky white, and "boom!" came the report a second
later.

"Puff! puff!"--and two clouds arose pushing one another and blending
together; and "boom, boom!" came the sounds confirming what the eye had
seen.

Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen as a round
compact ball, and in its place already were balloons of smoke floating
to one side, and--"puff" (with a pause)--"puff, puff!" three and then
four more appeared and then from each, with the same interval--"boom--
boom, boom!" came the fine, firm, precise sounds in reply. It seemed as
if those smoke clouds sometimes ran and sometimes stood still while
woods, fields, and glittering bayonets ran past them. From the left,
over fields and bushes, those large balls of smoke were continually
appearing followed by their solemn reports, while nearer still, in the
hollows and woods, there burst from the muskets small cloudlets that had
no time to become balls, but had their little echoes in just the same
way. "Trakh-ta-ta-takh!" came the frequent crackle of musketry, but it
was irregular and feeble in comparison with the reports of the cannon.

Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets, that
movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and his suite,
to compare his impressions with those of others. They were all looking
at the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed to him, with the
same feelings. All their faces were now shining with that latent warmth
of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before and had fully understood
after his talk with Prince Andrew.

"Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!" Kutuzov was saying
to a general who stood beside him, not taking his eye from the
battlefield.

Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on his way down
the knoll.

"To the crossing!" said the general coldly and sternly in reply to one
of the staff who asked where he was going.

"I'll go there too, I too!" thought Pierre, and followed the general.

The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre went to
his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the quietest,
clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and turning out his toes
pressed his heels against its sides and, feeling that his spectacles
were slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and reins, he
galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to smile as they
watched him from the knoll.




CHAPTER XXXI

Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was galloping
turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him, galloped in
among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He tried to pass
either in front of them or to the right or left, but there were soldiers
everywhere, all with the same preoccupied expression and busy with some
unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same
dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white hat,
who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under his horse's
hoofs.

"Why ride into the middle of the battalion?" one of them shouted at him.

Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre,
bending over his saddlebow and hardly able to control his shying horse,
galloped ahead of the soldiers where there was a free space.

There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers stood firing.
Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware of it he had come to the
bridge across the Kolocha between Gorki and Borodino, which the French
(having occupied Borodino) were attacking in the first phase of the
battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front of him and that
soldiers were doing something on both sides of it and in the meadow,
among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken no notice of amid the
smoke of the campfires the day before; but despite the incessant firing
going on there he had no idea that this was the field of battle. He did
not notice the sound of the bullets whistling from every side, or the
projectiles that flew over him, did not see the enemy on the other side
of the river, and for a long time did not notice the killed and wounded,
though many fell near him. He looked about him with a smile which did
not leave his face.

"Why's that fellow in front of the line?" shouted somebody at him again.

"To the left!... Keep to the right!" the men shouted to him.

Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered one of Raevski's
adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant looked angrily at him, evidently
also intending to shout at him, but on recognizing him he nodded.

"How have you got here?" he said, and galloped on.

Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do, and afraid of
getting in someone's way again, galloped after the adjutant.

"What's happening here? May I come with you?" he asked.

"One moment, one moment!" replied the adjutant, and riding up to a stout
colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message and
then addressed Pierre.

"Why have you come here, Count?" he asked with a smile. "Still
inquisitive?"

"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.

But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.

"Here it's tolerable," said he, "but with Bagration on the left flank
they're getting it frightfully hot."

"Really?" said Pierre. "Where is that?"

"Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and in
our battery it is still bearable," said the adjutant. "Will you come?"

"Yes, I'll come with you," replied Pierre, looking round for his groom.

It was only now that he noticed wounded men staggering along or being
carried on stretchers. On that very meadow he had ridden over the day
before, a soldier was lying athwart the rows of scented hay, with his
head thrown awkwardly back and his shako off.

"Why haven't they carried him away?" Pierre was about to ask, but seeing
the stern expression of the adjutant who was also looking that way, he
checked himself.

Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow with the
adjutant to Raevski's Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the adjutant's
and jolted him at every step.

"You don't seem to be used to riding, Count?" remarked the adjutant.

"No it's not that, but her action seems so jerky," said Pierre in a
puzzled tone.

"Why... she's wounded!" said the adjutant. "In the off foreleg above the
knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you, Count, on your baptism of
fire!"

Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind the artillery
which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening them with the
noise of firing, they came to a small wood. There it was cool and quiet,
with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant dismounted and walked up
the hill on foot.

"Is the general here?" asked the adjutant on reaching the knoll.

"He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way," someone told him,
pointing to the right.

The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do with him now.

"Don't trouble about me," said Pierre. "I'll go up onto the knoll if I
may?"

"Yes, do. You'll see everything from there and it's less dangerous, and
I'll come for you."

Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They did not meet
again, and only much later did Pierre learn that he lost an arm that
day.

The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one afterwards known
to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or Raevski's Redoubt, and to the
French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du centre,
around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French regarded as
the key to the whole position.

This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which trenches had
been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that were being fired
through openings in the earthwork.

In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns which also fired
incessantly. A little behind the guns stood infantry. When ascending
that knoll Pierre had no notion that this spot, on which small trenches
had been dug and from which a few guns were firing, was the most
important point of the battle.

On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he thought it one
of the least significant parts of the field.

Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end of a trench
surrounding the battery and gazed at what was going on around him with
an unconsciously happy smile. Occasionally he rose and walked about the
battery still with that same smile, trying not to obstruct the soldiers
who were loading, hauling the guns, and continually running past him
with bags and charges. The guns of that battery were being fired
continually one after another with a deafening roar, enveloping the
whole neighborhood in powder smoke.

In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed in support,
here in the battery where a small number of men busy at their work were
separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced a common and
as it were family feeling of animation.

The intrusion of Pierre's nonmilitary figure in a white hat made an
unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at him with
surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior artillery
officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over to Pierre as if
to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at him with curiosity.

A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only just
out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two guns
entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.

"Sir," he said, "permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not be
here."

The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at Pierre.
But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the white hat
was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of the trench
with a shy smile or, politely making way for the soldiers, paced up and
down the battery under fire as calmly as if he were on a boulevard,
their feeling of hostile distrust gradually began to change into a
kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers feel for their dogs,
cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that live with the
regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their family, adopted him,
gave him a nickname ("our gentleman"), and made kindly fun of him among
themselves.

A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around
with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown up.

"And how's it you're not afraid, sir, really now?" a red-faced, broad-
shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a set of
sound, white teeth.

"Are you afraid, then?" said Pierre.

"What else do you expect?" answered the soldier. "She has no mercy, you
know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards. One can't
help being afraid," he said laughing.

Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre.
They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and the
discovery that he did so delighted them.

"It's the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it's wonderful!
There's a gentleman for you!"

"To your places!" cried the young officer to the men gathered round
Pierre.

The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the first or
second time and therefore treated both his superiors and the men with
great precision and formality.

The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing more
intense over the whole field, especially to the left where Bagration's
fleches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing made it
almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole attention
was engrossed by watching the family circle--separated from all else--
formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious feeling of
joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the battlefield
was now replaced by another, especially since he had seen that soldier
lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the slope of the trench, he
observed the faces of those around him.

By ten o'clock some twenty men had already been carried away from the
battery; two guns were smashed and cannon balls fell more and more
frequently on the battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled around.
But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and merry voices
and jokes were heard on all sides.

"A live one!" shouted a man as a whistling shell approached.

"Not this way! To the infantry!" added another with loud laughter,
seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of the supports.

"Are you bowing to a friend, eh?" remarked another, chaffing a peasant
who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over.

Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out to see
what was happening in front.

"They've withdrawn the front line, it has retired," said they, pointing
over the earthwork.

"Mind your own business," an old sergeant shouted at them. "If they've
retired it's because there's work for them to do farther back."

And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a
shove with his knee. This was followed by a burst of laughter.

"To the fifth gun, wheel it up!" came shouts from one side.

"Now then, all together, like bargees!" rose the merry voices of those
who were moving the gun.

"Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman's hat off!" cried the red-faced
humorist, showing his teeth chaffing Pierre. "Awkward baggage!" he added
reproachfully to a cannon ball that struck a cannon wheel and a man's
leg.

"Now then, you foxes!" said another, laughing at some militiamen who,
stooping low, entered the battery to carry away the wounded man.

"So this gruel isn't to your taste? Oh, you crows! You're scared!" they
shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man whose leg
had been torn off.

"There, lads... oh, oh!" they mimicked the peasants, "they don't like it
at all!"

Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt, and after
every loss, the liveliness increased more and more.

As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly and
rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in opposition to
what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire growing more and
more intense glowed in the faces of these men.

Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not concerned to know
what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching this fire
which burned ever more brightly and which he felt was flaming up in the
same way in his own soul.

At ten o'clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in front of
the battery and along the Kamenka streamlet retreated. From the battery
they could be seen running back past it carrying their wounded on their
muskets. A general with his suite came to the battery, and after
speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look and went away again
having ordered the infantry supports behind the battery to lie down, so
as to be less exposed to fire. After this from amid the ranks of
infantry to the right of the battery came the sound of a drum and shouts
of command, and from the battery one saw how those ranks of infantry
moved forward.

Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly struck by
a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was walking
backwards and kept glancing uneasily around.

The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke but their long-
drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could still be heard. A few
minutes later crowds of wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back from
that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently in the
battery. Several men were lying about who had not been removed. Around
the cannon the men moved still more briskly and busily. No one any
longer took notice of Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted at for being
in the way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid strides from one
gun to another with a frowning face. The young officer, with his face
still more flushed, commanded the men more scrupulously than ever. The
soldiers handed up the charges, turned, loaded, and did their business
with strained smartness. They gave little jumps as they walked, as
though they were on springs.

The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face the fire which
Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly. Pierre standing beside the
commanding officer. The young officer, his hand to his shako, ran up to
his superior.

"I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are left. Are
we to continue firing?" he asked.

"Grapeshot!" the senior shouted, without answering the question, looking
over the wall of the trench.

Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave a gasp and bending
double sat down on the ground like a bird shot on the wing. Everything
became strange, confused, and misty in Pierre's eyes.

One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck the earthwork, a
soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these sounds before, now
heard nothing else. On the right of the battery soldiers shouting
"Hurrah!" were running not forwards but backwards, it seemed to Pierre.

A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by which he was
standing, crumbling down the earth; a black ball flashed before his eyes
and at the same instant plumped into something. Some militiamen who were
entering the battery ran back.

"All with grapeshot!" shouted the officer.

The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened whisper informed
him (as a butler at dinner informs his master that there is no more of
some wine asked for) that there were no more charges.

"The scoundrels! What are they doing?" shouted the officer, turning to
Pierre.

The officer's face was red and perspiring and his eyes glittered under
his frowning brow.

"Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition boxes!" he yelled,
angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes and speaking to his men.

"I'll go," said Pierre.

The officer, without answering him, strode across to the opposite side.

"Don't fire.... Wait!" he shouted.

The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition stumbled against
Pierre.

"Eh, sir, this is no place for you," said he, and ran down the slope.

Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young officer was
sitting.

One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him, falling in front,
beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down the slope. "Where am I going?"
he suddenly asked himself when he was already near the green ammunition
wagons. He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to return or go on.
Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him backwards to the ground. At the
same instant he was dazzled by a great flash of flame, and immediately a
deafening roar, crackling, and whistling made his ears tingle.

When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground leaning on his
hands; the ammunition wagons he had been approaching no longer existed,
only charred green boards and rags littered the scorched grass, and a
horse, dangling fragments of its shaft behind it, galloped past, while
another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground, uttering prolonged and
piercing cries.




CHAPTER XXXII

Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran back to the battery,
as to the only refuge from the horrors that surrounded him.

On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were men doing something
there but that no shots were being fired from the battery. He had no
time to realize who these men were. He saw the senior officer lying on
the earth wall with his back turned as if he were examining something
down below and that one of the soldiers he had noticed before was
struggling forward shouting "Brothers!" and trying to free himself from
some men who were holding him by the arm. He also saw something else
that was strange.

But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been killed, that
the soldier shouting "Brothers!" was a prisoner, and that another man
had been bayoneted in the back before his eyes, for hardly had he run
into the redoubt before a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in a blue
uniform rushed on him sword in hand, shouting something. Instinctively
guarding against the shock--for they had been running together at full
speed before they saw one another--Pierre put out his hands and seized
the man (a French officer) by the shoulder with one hand and by the
throat with the other. The officer, dropping his sword, seized Pierre by
his collar.

For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one another's
unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what they had done and what
they were to do next. "Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him
prisoner?" each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently more
inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre's strong
hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever tighter and
tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when just above their
heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled, and it seemed to Pierre
that the French officer's head had been torn off, so swiftly had he
ducked it.

Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without further thought
as to who had taken whom prisoner, the Frenchman ran back to the battery
and Pierre ran down the slope stumbling over the dead and wounded who,
it seemed to him, caught at his feet. But before he reached the foot of
the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of Russian soldiers who,
stumbling, tripping up, and shouting, ran merrily and wildly toward the
battery. (This was the attack for which Ermolov claimed the credit,
declaring that only his courage and good luck made such a feat possible:
it was the attack in which he was said to have thrown some St. George's
Crosses he had in his pocket into the battery for the first soldiers to
take who got there.)

The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our troops shouting
"Hurrah!" pursued them so far beyond the battery that it was difficult
to call them back.

The prisoners were brought down from the battery and among them was a
wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded. Crowds of wounded-
-some known to Pierre and some unknown--Russians and French, with faces
distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were carried on stretchers
from the battery. Pierre again went up onto the knoll where he had spent
over an hour, and of that family circle which had received him as a
member he did not find a single one. There were many dead whom he did
not know, but some he recognized. The young officer still sat in the
same way, bent double, in a pool of blood at the edge of the earth wall.
The red-faced man was still twitching, but they did not carry him away.

Pierre ran down the slope once more.

"Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have
done!" he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd of stretcher bearers
moving from the battlefield.

But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and in front and
especially to the left, near Semenovsk, something seemed to be seething
in the smoke, and the roar of cannon and musketry did not diminish, but
even increased to desperation like a man who, straining himself, shrieks
with all his remaining strength.




CHAPTER XXXIII

The chief action of the battle of Borodino was fought within the seven
thousand feet between Borodino and Bagration's fleches. Beyond that
space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the Russians
with Uvarov's cavalry at midday, and on the other side, beyond Utitsa,
Poniatowski's collision with Tuchkov; but these two were detached and
feeble actions in comparison with what took place in the center of the
battlefield. On the field between Borodino and the fleches, beside the
wood, the chief action of the day took place on an open space visible
from both sides and was fought in the simplest and most artless way.

The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from several hundred
guns.

Then when the whole field was covered with smoke, two divisions,
Campan's and Dessaix's, advanced from the French right, while Murat's
troops advanced on Borodino from their left.

From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the fleches were
two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as the crow flies
to Borodino, so that Napoleon could not see what was happening there,
especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid the whole locality.
The soldiers of Dessaix's division advancing against the fleches could
only be seen till they had entered the hollow that lay between them and
the fleches. As soon as they had descended into that hollow, the smoke
of the guns and musketry on the fleches grew so dense that it covered
the whole approach on that side of it. Through the smoke glimpses could
be caught of something black--probably men--and at times the glint of
bayonets. But whether they were moving or stationary, whether they were
French or Russian, could not be discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt.

The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck straight into
Napoleon's face as, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked at the
fleches. The smoke spread out before them, and at times it looked as if
the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved. Sometimes shouts
were heard through the firing, but it was impossible to tell what was
being done there.

Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field glass, and in
its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and sometimes
Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he could not tell
where what he had seen was.

He descended the knoll and began walking up and down before it.

Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed intently at
the battlefield.

But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from where
he was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which some of his
generals had taken their stand, but even from the fleches themselves--in
which by this time there were now Russian and now French soldiers,
alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive, frightened, or maddened--
even at those fleches themselves it was impossible to make out what was
taking place. There for several hours amid incessant cannon and musketry
fire, now Russians were seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now infantry,
and now cavalry: they appeared, fired, fell, collided, not knowing what
to do with one another, screamed, and ran back again.

From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from his
marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the progress of
the action, but all these reports were false, both because it was
impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening at any given
moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the actual place
of conflict but reported what they had heard from others; and also
because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to Napoleon
circumstances changed and the news he brought was already becoming
false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings that
Borodino had been occupied and the bridge over the Kolocha was in the
hands of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished the
troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should form up
on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given--almost as
soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino--the bridge had been
retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at which Pierre
had been present at the beginning of the battle.

An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale and frightened face
and reported to Napoleon that their attack had been repulsed, Campan
wounded, and Davout killed; yet at the very time the adjutant had been
told that the French had been repulsed, the fleches had in fact been
recaptured by other French troops, and Davout was alive and only
slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily untrustworthy
reports Napoleon gave his orders, which had either been executed before
he gave them or could not be and were not executed.

The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle but,
like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and only
occasionally went within musket range, made their own arrangements
without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in what direction to
fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry should run. But even
their orders, like Napoleon's, were seldom carried out, and then but
partially. For the most part things happened contrary to their orders.
Soldiers ordered to advance ran back on meeting grapeshot; soldiers
ordered to remain where they were, suddenly, seeing Russians
unexpectedly before them, sometimes rushed back and sometimes forward,
and the cavalry dashed without orders in pursuit of the flying Russians.
In this way two cavalry regiments galloped through the Semenovsk hollow
and as soon as they reached the top of the incline turned round and
galloped full speed back again. The infantry moved in the same way,
sometimes running to quite other places than those they were ordered to
go to. All orders as to where and when to move the guns, when to send
infantry to shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantry--all
such orders were given by the officers on the spot nearest to the units
concerned, without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less
Napoleon. They did not fear getting into trouble for not fulfilling
orders or for acting on their own initiative, for in battle what is at
stake is what is dearest to man--his own life--and it sometimes seems
that safety lies in running back, sometimes in running forward; and
these men who were right in the heat of the battle acted according to
the mood of the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward
and backward did not improve or alter the position of the troops. All
their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the harm of
disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets that flew over
the fields on which these men were floundering about. As soon as they
left the place where the balls and bullets were flying about, their
superiors, located in the background, re-formed them and brought them
under discipline and under the influence of that discipline led them
back to the zone of fire, where under the influence of fear of death
they lost their discipline and rushed about according to the chance
promptings of the throng.




CHAPTER XXXIV

Napoleon's generals--Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near that region
of fire and sometimes even entered it--repeatedly led into it huge
masses of well-ordered troops. But contrary to what had always happened
in their former battles, instead of the news they expected of the
enemy's flight, these orderly masses returned thence as disorganized and
terrified mobs. The generals re-formed them, but their numbers
constantly decreased. In the middle of the day Murat sent his adjutant
to Napoleon to demand reinforcements.

Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch, when Murat's
adjutant galloped up with an assurance that the Russians would be routed
if His Majesty would let him have another division.

"Reinforcements?" said Napoleon in a tone of stern surprise, looking at
the adjutant--a handsome lad with long black curls arranged like Murat's
own--as though he did not understand his words.

"Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon to himself. "How can they need
reinforcements when they already have half the army directed against a
weak, unentrenched Russian wing?"

"Tell the King of Naples," said he sternly, "that it is not noon yet,
and I don't yet see my chessboard clearly. Go!..."

The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed deeply without
removing his hand from his hat and galloped back to where men were being
slaughtered.

Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier began
talking to them about matters unconnected with the battle.

In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning to interest
Napoleon, Berthier's eyes turned to look at a general with a suite, who
was galloping toward the knoll on a lathering horse. It was Belliard.
Having dismounted he went up to the Emperor with rapid strides and in a
loud voice began boldly demonstrating the necessity of sending
reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the Russians were lost if the
Emperor would give another division.

Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace up and down
without replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly to the
generals of the suite around him.

"You are very fiery, Belliard," said Napoleon, when he again came up to
the general. "In the heat of a battle it is easy to make a mistake. Go
and have another look and then come back to me."

Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another part of the
battlefield galloped up.

"Now then, what do you want?" asked Napoleon in the tone of a man
irritated at being continually disturbed.

"Sire, the prince..." began the adjutant.

"Asks for reinforcements?" said Napoleon with an angry gesture.

The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report, but the
Emperor turned from him, took a couple of steps, stopped, came back, and
called Berthier.

"We must give reserves," he said, moving his arms slightly apart. "Who
do you think should be sent there?" he asked of Berthier (whom he
subsequently termed "that gosling I have made an eagle").

"Send Claparede's division, sire," replied Berthier, who knew all the
division's regiments, and battalions by heart.

Napoleon nodded assent.

The adjutant galloped to Claparede's division and a few minutes later
the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward. Napoleon
gazed silently in that direction.

"No!" he suddenly said to Berthier. "I can't send Claparede. Send
Friant's division."

Though there was no advantage in sending Friant's division instead of
Claparede's, and even an obvious inconvenience and delay in stopping
Claparede and sending Friant now, the order was carried out exactly.
Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he was playing the
part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines--a role he so justly
understood and condemned.

Friant's division disappeared as the others had done into the smoke of
the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued to arrive at a
gallop and as if by agreement all said the same thing. They all asked
for reinforcements and all said that the Russians were holding their
positions and maintaining a hellish fire under which the French army was
melting away.

Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.

M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since morning,
came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest lunch to His
Majesty.

"I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?" said he.

Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming the negation to
refer only to the victory and not to the lunch, M. de Beausset ventured
with respectful jocularity to remark that there is no reason for not
having lunch when one can get it.

"Go away..." exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely, and turned aside.

A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy beamed on M. de
Beausset's face and he glided away to the other generals.

Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an ever-
lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money about and always
winning, suddenly just when he has calculated all the chances of the
game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely he
loses.

His troops were the same, his generals the same, the same preparations
had been made, the same dispositions, and the same proclamation courte
et energique, he himself was still the same: he knew that and knew that
he was now even more experienced and skillful than before. Even the
enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and Friedland--yet the terrible
stroke of his arm had supernaturally become impotent.

All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned with success: the
concentration of batteries on one point, an attack by reserves to break
the enemy's line, and a cavalry attack by "the men of iron," all these
methods had already been employed, yet not only was there no victory,
but from all sides came the same news of generals killed and wounded, of
reinforcements needed, of the impossibility of driving back the
Russians, and of disorganization among his own troops.

Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered a few
phrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up with
congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, the
corps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannon and
stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry to gather
in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola, Jena,
Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something strange was happening
to his troops.

Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that this was
not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in his former
battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all the men about
him experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked dejected, and
they all shunned one another's eyes--only a de Beausset could fail to
grasp the meaning of what was happening.

But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaning of a
battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after all
efforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle and that
the least accident might now--with the fight balanced on such a strained
center--destroy him and his army.

When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian campaign in
which not one battle had been won, and in which not a flag, or cannon,
or army corps had been captured in two months, when he looked at the
concealed depression on the faces around him and heard reports of the
Russians still holding their ground--a terrible feeling like a nightmare
took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents that might destroy
him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall on his left wing,
might break through his center, he himself might be killed by a stray
cannon ball. All this was possible. In former battles he had only
considered the possibilities of success, but now innumerable unlucky
chances presented themselves, and he expected them all. Yes, it was like
a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is coming to attack him,
and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a terrible blow which he knows
should annihilate him, but then feels that his arm drops powerless and
limp like a rag, and the horror of unavoidable destruction seizes him in
his helplessness.

The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of the French
army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat silently on a campstool
below the knoll, with head bowed and elbows on his knees. Berthier
approached and suggested that they should ride along the line to
ascertain the position of affairs.

"What? What do you say?" asked Napoleon. "Yes, tell them to bring me my
horse."

He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk.

Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the whole space through
which Napoleon rode, horses and men were lying in pools of blood, singly
or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals had ever before
seen such horrors or so many slain in such a small area. The roar of
guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the ear and gave a
peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does to tableaux
vivants. Napoleon rode up the high ground at Semenovsk, and through the
smoke saw ranks of men in uniforms of a color unfamiliar to him. They
were Russians.

The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk village and its
knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly along their line and sent forth
clouds of smoke. It was no longer a battle: it was a continuous
slaughter which could be of no avail either to the French or the
Russians. Napoleon stopped his horse and again fell into the reverie
from which Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop what was going on
before him and around him and was supposed to be directed by him and to
depend on him, and from its lack of success this affair, for the first
time, seemed to him unnecessary and horrible.

One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured to offer to lead
the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier, standing near Napoleon,
exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at this general's senseless
offer.

Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long time.

"At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have my Guard
destroyed!" he said, and turning his horse rode back to Shevardino.




CHAPTER XXXV

On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in the morning sat
Kutuzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy body relaxed. He gave no
orders, but only assented to or dissented from what others suggested.

"Yes, yes, do that," he replied to various proposals. "Yes, yes: go,
dear boy, and have a look," he would say to one or another of those
about him; or, "No, don't, we'd better wait!" He listened to the reports
that were brought him and gave directions when his subordinates demanded
that of him; but when listening to the reports it seemed as if he were
not interested in the import of the words spoken, but rather in
something else--in the expression of face and tone of voice of those who
were reporting. By long years of military experience he knew, and with
the wisdom of age understood, that it is impossible for one man to
direct hundreds of thousands of others struggling with death, and he
knew that the result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a
commander-in-chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by
the number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that intangible force
called the spirit of the army, and he watched this force and guided it
in as far as that was in his power.

Kutuzov's general expression was one of concentrated quiet attention,
and his face wore a strained look as if he found it difficult to master
the fatigue of his old and feeble body.

At eleven o'clock they brought him news that the fleches captured by the
French had been retaken, but that Prince Bagration was wounded. Kutuzov
groaned and swayed his head.

"Ride over to Prince Peter Ivanovich and find out about it exactly," he
said to one of his adjutants, and then turned to the Duke of Wurttemberg
who was standing behind him.

"Will Your Highness please take command of the first army?"

Soon after the duke's departure--before he could possibly have reached
Semenovsk--his adjutant came back from him and told Kutuzov that the
duke asked for more troops.

Kutuzov made a grimace and sent an order to Dokhturov to take over the
command of the first army, and a request to the duke--whom he said he
could not spare at such an important moment--to return to him. When they
brought him news that Murat had been taken prisoner, and the staff
officers congratulated him, Kutuzov smiled.

"Wait a little, gentlemen," said he. "The battle is won, and there is
nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat. Still, it is better to
wait before we rejoice."

But he sent an adjutant to take the news round the army.

When Scherbinin came galloping from the left flank with news that the
French had captured the fleches and the village of Semenovsk, Kutuzov,
guessing by the sounds of the battle and by Scherbinin's looks that the
news was bad, rose as if to stretch his legs and, taking Scherbinin's
arm, led him aside.

"Go, my dear fellow," he said to Ermolov, "and see whether something
can't be done."

Kutuzov was in Gorki, near the center of the Russian position. The
attack directed by Napoleon against our left flank had been several
times repulsed. In the center the French had not got beyond Borodino,
and on their left flank Uvarov's cavalry had put the French to flight.

Toward three o'clock the French attacks ceased. On the faces of all who
came from the field of battle, and of those who stood around him,
Kutuzov noticed an expression of extreme tension. He was satisfied with
the day's success--a success exceeding his expectations, but the old
man's strength was failing him. Several times his head dropped low as if
it were falling and he dozed off. Dinner was brought him.

Adjutant General Wolzogen, the man who when riding past Prince Andrew
had said, "the war should be extended widely," and whom Bagration so
detested, rode up while Kutuzov was at dinner. Wolzogen had come from
Barclay de Tolly to report on the progress of affairs on the left flank.
The sagacious Barclay de Tolly, seeing crowds of wounded men running
back and the disordered rear of the army, weighed all the circumstances,
concluded that the battle was lost, and sent his favorite officer to the
commander in chief with that news.

Kutuzov was chewing a piece of roast chicken with difficulty and glanced
at Wolzogen with eyes that brightened under their puckering lids.

Wolzogen, nonchalantly stretching his legs, approached Kutuzov with a
half-contemptuous smile on his lips, scarcely touching the peak of his
cap.

He treated his Serene Highness with a somewhat affected nonchalance
intended to show that, as a highly trained military man, he left it to
Russians to make an idol of this useless old man, but that he knew whom
he was dealing with. "Der alte Herr" (as in their own set the Germans
called Kutuzov) "is making himself very comfortable," thought Wolzogen,
and looking severely at the dishes in front of Kutuzov he began to
report to "the old gentleman" the position of affairs on the left flank
as Barclay had ordered him to and as he himself had seen and understood
it.

"All the points of our position are in the enemy's hands and we cannot
dislodge them for lack of troops, the men are running away and it is
impossible to stop them," he reported.

Kutuzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze on Wolzogen, as if
not understanding what was said to him. Wolzogen, noticing "the old
gentleman's" agitation, said with a smile:

"I have not considered it right to conceal from your Serene Highness
what I have seen. The troops are in complete disorder..."

"You have seen? You have seen?..." Kutuzov shouted. Frowning and rising
quickly, he went up to Wolzogen.

"How... how dare you!..." he shouted, choking and making a threatening
gesture with his trembling arms: "How dare you, sir, say that to me? You
know nothing about it. Tell General Barclay from me that his information
is incorrect and that the real course of the battle is better known to
me, the commander-in-chief, than to him."

Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutuzov interrupted him.

"The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated on the right
flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not allow yourself to say what
you don't know! Be so good as to ride to General Barclay and inform him
of my firm intention to attack the enemy tomorrow," said Kutuzov
sternly.

All were silent, and the only sound audible was the heavy breathing of
the panting old general.

"They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God and our brave army!
The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow we shall drive him from the sacred
soil of Russia," said Kutuzov crossing himself, and he suddenly sobbed
as his eyes filled with tears.

Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his lips, stepped silently
aside, marveling at "the old gentleman's" conceited stupidity.

"Ah, here he is, my hero!" said Kutuzov to a portly, handsome, dark-
haired general who was just ascending the knoll.

This was Raevski, who had spent the whole day at the most important part
of the field of Borodino.

Raevski reported that the troops were firmly holding their ground and
that the French no longer ventured to attack.

After hearing him, Kutuzov said in French:

"Then you do not think, like some others, that we must retreat?"

"On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions it is always the
most stubborn who remain victors," replied Raevski, "and in my
opinion..."

"Kaysarov!" Kutuzov called to his adjutant. "Sit down and write out the
order of the day for tomorrow. And you," he continued, addressing
another, "ride along the line and announce that tomorrow we attack."

While Kutuzov was talking to Raevski and dictating the order of the day,
Wolzogen returned from Barclay and said that General Barclay wished to
have written confirmation of the order the field marshal had given.

Kutuzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave directions for the order to
be written out which the former commander-in-chief, to avoid personal
responsibility, very judiciously wished to receive.

And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond which maintains
throughout an army one and the same temper, known as "the spirit of the
army," and which constitutes the sinew of war, Kutuzov's words, his
order for a battle next day, immediately became known from one end of
the army to the other.

It was far from being the same words or the same order that reached the
farthest links of that chain. The tales passing from mouth to mouth at
different ends of the army did not even resemble what Kutuzov had said,
but the sense of his words spread everywhere because what he said was
not the outcome of cunning calculations, but of a feeling that lay in
the commander-in-chief's soul as in that of every Russian.

And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the enemy, and hearing
from the highest quarters a confirmation of what they wanted to believe,
the exhausted, wavering men felt comforted and inspirited.




CHAPTER XXXVI

Prince Andrew's regiment was among the reserves which till after one
o'clock were stationed inactive behind Semenovsk, under heavy artillery
fire. Toward two o'clock the regiment, having already lost more than two
hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled oatfield in the gap
between Semenovsk and the Knoll Battery, where thousands of men perished
that day and on which an intense, concentrated fire from several hundred
enemy guns was directed between one and two o'clock.

Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot the regiment here
lost another third of its men. From in front and especially from the
right, in the unlifting smoke the guns boomed, and out of the mysterious
domain of smoke that overlay the whole space in front, quick hissing
cannon balls and slow whistling shells flew unceasingly. At times, as if
to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour passed during which the
cannon balls and shells all flew overhead, but sometimes several men
were torn from the regiment in a minute and the slain were continually
being dragged away and the wounded carried off.

With each fresh blow less and less chance of life remained for those not
yet killed. The regiment stood in columns of battalion, three hundred
paces apart, but nevertheless the men were always in one and the same
mood. All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely heard in the
ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the thud of a successful shot
and the cry of "stretchers!" was heard. Most of the time, by their
officers' order, the men sat on the ground. One, having taken off his
shako, carefully loosened the gathers of its lining and drew them tight
again; another, rubbing some dry clay between his palms, polished his
bayonet; another fingered the strap and pulled the buckle of his
bandolier, while another smoothed and refolded his leg bands and put his
boots on again. Some built little houses of the tufts in the plowed
ground, or plaited baskets from the straw in the cornfield. All seemed
fully absorbed in these pursuits. When men were killed or wounded, when
rows of stretchers went past, when some troops retreated, and when great
masses of the enemy came into view through the smoke, no one paid any
attention to these things. But when our artillery or cavalry advanced or
some of our infantry were seen to move forward, words of approval were
heard on all sides. But the liveliest attention was attracted by
occurrences quite apart from, and unconnected with, the battle. It was
as if the minds of these morally exhausted men found relief in everyday,
commonplace occurrences. A battery of artillery was passing in front of
the regiment. The horse of an ammunition cart put its leg over a trace.
"Hey, look at the trace horse!... Get her leg out! She'll fall.... Ah,
they don't see it!" came identical shouts from the ranks all along the
regiment. Another time, general attention was attracted by a small brown
dog, coming heaven knows whence, which trotted in a preoccupied manner
in front of the ranks with tail stiffly erect till suddenly a shell fell
close by, when it yelped, tucked its tail between its legs, and darted
aside. Yells and shrieks of laughter rose from the whole regiment. But
such distractions lasted only a moment, and for eight hours the men had
been inactive, without food, in constant fear of death, and their pale
and gloomy faces grew ever paler and gloomier.

Prince Andrew, pale and gloomy like everyone in the regiment, paced up
and down from the border of one patch to another, at the edge of the
meadow beside an oatfield, with head bowed and arms behind his back.
There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be given. Everything
went on of itself. The killed were dragged from the front, the wounded
carried away, and the ranks closed up. If any soldiers ran to the rear
they returned immediately and hastily. At first Prince Andrew,
considering it his duty to rouse the courage of the men and to set them
an example, walked about among the ranks, but he soon became convinced
that this was unnecessary and that there was nothing he could teach
them. All the powers of his soul, as of every soldier there, were
unconsciously bent on avoiding the contemplation of the horrors of their
situation. He walked along the meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the
grass, and gazing at the dust that covered his boots; now he took big
strides trying to keep to the footprints left on the meadow by the
mowers, then he counted his steps, calculating how often he must walk
from one strip to another to walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers
from the wormwood that grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his
palms, and smelled their pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained
of the previous day's thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened with
weary ears to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle of
flying projectiles from the booming of the reports, glanced at the
tiresomely familiar faces of the men of the first battalion, and waited.
"Here it comes... this one is coming our way again!" he thought,
listening to an approaching whistle in the hidden region of smoke. "One,
another! Again! It has hit...." He stopped and looked at the ranks. "No,
it has gone over. But this one has hit!" And again he started trying to
reach the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud! Five
paces from him, a cannon ball tore up the dry earth and disappeared. A
chill ran down his back. Again he glanced at the ranks. Probably many
had been hit--a large crowd had gathered near the second battalion.

"Adjutant!" he shouted. "Order them not to crowd together."

The adjutant, having obeyed this instruction, approached Prince Andrew.
From the other side a battalion commander rode up.

"Look out!" came a frightened cry from a soldier and, like a bird
whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell dropped
with little noise within two steps of Prince Andrew and close to the
battalion commander's horse. The horse first, regardless of whether it
was right or wrong to show fear, snorted, reared almost throwing the
major, and galloped aside. The horse's terror infected the men.

"Lie down!" cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on the ground.

Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a top between him
and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the field and
the meadow.

"Can this be death?" thought Prince Andrew, looking with a quite new,
envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of smoke
that curled up from the rotating black ball. "I cannot, I do not wish to
die. I love life--I love this grass, this earth, this air...." He
thought this, and at the same time remembered that people were looking
at him.

"It's shameful, sir!" he said to the adjutant. "What..."

He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment came the sound of
an explosion, a whistle of splinters as from a breaking window frame, a
suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started to one side,
raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several officers ran up to him.
From the right side of his abdomen, blood was welling out making a large
stain on the grass.

The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood behind the
officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest with his face in the grass,
breathing heavily and noisily.

"What are you waiting for? Come along!"

The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and legs, but he
moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they set him down again.

"Pick him up, lift him, it's all the same!" cried someone.

They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on the stretcher.

"Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That means death! My God!"--
voices among the officers were heard saying.

"It flew a hair's breadth past my ear," said the adjutant.

The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders, started
hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to the dressing station.

"Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!" shouted an officer, seizing by
their shoulders and checking the peasants, who were walking unevenly and
jolting the stretcher.

"Get into step, Fedor... I say, Fedor!" said the foremost peasant.

"Now that's right!" said the one behind joyfully, when he had got into
step.

"Your excellency! Eh, Prince!" said the trembling voice of Timokhin, who
had run up and was looking down on the stretcher.

Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker from the
stretcher into which his head had sunk deep and again his eyelids
drooped.

The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to the dressing station by the
wood, where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of
three tents with flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch wood.
In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were eating
oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and pecked the
grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew among the birch trees
cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over more than five acres,
bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay. Around the wounded
stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with dismal and attentive
faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in vain to drive from the
spot. Disregarding the officers' orders, the soldiers stood leaning
against their stretchers and gazing intently, as if trying to comprehend
the difficult problem of what was taking place before them. From the
tents came now loud angry cries and now plaintive groans. Occasionally
dressers ran out to fetch water, or to point out those who were to be
brought in next. The wounded men awaiting their turn outside the tents
groaned, sighed, wept, screamed, swore, or asked for vodka. Some were
delirious. Prince Andrew's bearers, stepping over the wounded who had
not yet been bandaged, took him, as a regimental commander, close up to
one of the tents and there stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince Andrew
opened his eyes and for a long time could not make out what was going on
around him. He remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the
whirling black ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life. Two
steps from him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and
attracting general attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired
noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He had been wounded in the
head and leg by bullets. Around him, eagerly listening to his talk, a
crowd of wounded and stretcher-bearers was gathered.

"We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we grabbed
the King himself!" cried he, looking around him with eyes that glittered
with fever. "If only reserves had come up just then, lads, there
wouldn't have been nothing left of him! I tell you surely..."

Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew looked at him with
shining eyes and experienced a sense of comfort. "But isn't it all the
same now?" thought he. "And what will be there, and what has there been
here? Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was something in
this life I did not and do not understand."




CHAPTER XXXVII

One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron, holding
a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his small
bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it. He raised his head and looked
about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He evidently wanted a
little respite. After turning his head from right to left for some time,
he sighed and looked down.

"All right, immediately," he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince
Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.

Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.

"It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are to have a
chance!" remarked one.

Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that had only just been
cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince Andrew could not
make out distinctly what was in that tent. The pitiful groans from all
sides and the torturing pain in his thigh, stomach, and back distracted
him. All he saw about him merged into a general impression of naked,
bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill the whole of the low tent, as
a few weeks previously, on that hot August day, such bodies had filled
the dirty pond beside the Smolensk road. Yes, it was the same flesh, the
same chair a canon, the sight of which had even then filled him with
horror, as by a presentiment.

There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were occupied, and on
the third they placed Prince Andrew. For a little while he was left
alone and involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on the other two
tables. On the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a Cossack, judging by
the uniform thrown down beside him. Four soldiers were holding him, and
a spectacled doctor was cutting into his muscular brown back.

"Ooh, ooh, ooh!" grunted the Tartar, and suddenly lifting up his swarthy
snub-nosed face with its high cheekbones, and baring his white teeth, he
began to wriggle and twitch his body and utter piercing, ringing, and
prolonged yells. On the other table, round which many people were
crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on his back with his head thrown back.
His curly hair, its color, and the shape of his head seemed strangely
familiar to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were pressing on his chest
to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg twitched rapidly all the
time with a feverish tremor. The man was sobbing and choking
convulsively. Two doctors--one of whom was pale and trembling--were
silently doing something to this man's other, gory leg. When he had
finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an overcoat, the
spectacled doctor came up to Prince Andrew, wiping his hands.

He glanced at Prince Andrew's face and quickly turned away.

"Undress him! What are you waiting for?" he cried angrily to the
dressers.

His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came back to Prince
Andrew's mind when the dresser with sleeves rolled up began hastily to
undo the buttons of his clothes and undressed him. The doctor bent down
over the wound, felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he made a sign to
someone, and the torturing pain in his abdomen caused Prince Andrew to
lose consciousness. When he came to himself the splintered portions of
his thighbone had been extracted, the torn flesh cut away, and the wound
bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on his face. As soon as Prince
Andrew opened his eyes, the doctor bent over, kissed him silently on the
lips, and hurried away.

After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrew enjoyed a
blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All the
best and happiest moments of his life--especially his earliest
childhood, when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when leaning
over him his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his head in the
pillow, felt happy in the mere consciousness of life--returned to his
memory, not merely as something past but as something present.

The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of whose
head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew: they were lifting him up and
trying to quiet him.

"Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!" his frightened moans could
be heard, subdued by suffering and broken by sobs.

Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted to weep. Whether because he was
dying without glory, or because he was sorry to part with life, or
because of those memories of a childhood that could not return, or
because he was suffering and others were suffering and that man near him
was groaning so piteously--he felt like weeping childlike, kindly, and
almost happy tears.

The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted blood
and with the boot still on.

"Oh! Oh, ooh!" he sobbed, like a woman.

The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince Andrew
from seeing his face, moved away.

"My God! What is this? Why is he here?" said Prince Andrew to himself.

In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been
amputated, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. Men were supporting him in
their arms and offering him a glass of water, but his trembling, swollen
lips could not grasp its rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully. "Yes, it is
he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully connected with me,"
thought Prince Andrew, not yet clearly grasping what he saw before him.
"What is the connection of that man with my childhood and life?" he
asked himself without finding an answer. And suddenly a new unexpected
memory from that realm of pure and loving childhood presented itself to
him. He remembered Natasha as he had seen her for the first time at the
ball in 1810, with her slender neck and arms and with a frightened happy
face ready for rapture, and love and tenderness for her, stronger and
more vivid than ever, awoke in his soul. He now remembered the
connection that existed between himself and this man who was dimly
gazing at him through tears that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered
everything, and ecstatic pity and love for that man overflowed his happy
heart.

Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender loving
tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and their errors.

"Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us and for those
who hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love which God preached on
earth and which Princess Mary taught me and I did not understand--that
is what made me sorry to part with life, that is what remained for me
had I lived. But now it is too late. I know it!"




CHAPTER XXXVIII

The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with dead and wounded,
together with the heaviness of his head and the news that some twenty
generals he knew personally had been killed or wounded, and the
consciousness of the impotence of his once mighty arm, produced an
unexpected impression on Napoleon who usually liked to look at the
killed and wounded, thereby, he considered, testing his strength of
mind. This day the horrible appearance of the battlefield overcame that
strength of mind which he thought constituted his merit and his
greatness. He rode hurriedly from the battlefield and returned to the
Shevardino knoll, where he sat on his campstool, his sallow face swollen
and heavy, his eyes dim, his nose red, and his voice hoarse,
involuntarily listening, with downcast eyes, to the sounds of firing.
With painful dejection he awaited the end of this action, in which he
regarded himself as a participant and which he was unable to arrest. A
personal, human feeling for a brief moment got the better of the
artificial phantasm of life he had served so long. He felt in his own
person the sufferings and death he had witnessed on the battlefield. The
heaviness of his head and chest reminded him of the possibility of
suffering and death for himself. At that moment he did not desire
Moscow, or victory, or glory (what need had he for any more glory?). The
one thing he wished for was rest, tranquillity, and freedom. But when he
had been on the Semenovsk heights the artillery commander had proposed
to him to bring several batteries of artillery up to those heights to
strengthen the fire on the Russian troops crowded in front of Knyazkovo.
Napoleon had assented and had given orders that news should be brought
to him of the effect those batteries produced.

An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of two hundred guns had
been concentrated on the Russians, as he had ordered, but that they
still held their ground.

"Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they hold on," said the
adjutant.

"They want more!..." said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.

"Sire?" asked the adjutant who had not heard the remark.

"They want more!" croaked Napoleon frowning. "Let them have it!"

Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and for
which he gave the order only because he thought it was expected of him,
was being done. And he fell back into that artificial realm of imaginary
greatness, and again--as a horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing
something for itself--he submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy,
and inhuman role predestined for him.

And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and conscience
darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening
lay more than on all the others who took part in it. Never to the end of
his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the
significance of his actions which were too contrary to goodness and
truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able to
grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as they
were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth, goodness, and
all humanity.

Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield strewn with men
killed and maimed (by his will as he believed), did he reckon as he
looked at them how many Russians there were for each Frenchman and,
deceiving himself, find reason for rejoicing in the calculation that
there were five Russians for every Frenchman. Not on that day alone did
he write in a letter to Paris that "the battle field was superb,"
because fifty thousand corpses lay there, but even on the island of St.
Helena in the peaceful solitude where he said he intended to devote his
leisure to an account of the great deeds he had done, he wrote:

The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern times:
it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the tranquillity and
security of all; it was purely pacific and conservative.

It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the
beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening out,
full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system was
already founded; all that remained was to organize it.

Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I too
should have had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. Those ideas were
stolen from me. In that reunion of great sovereigns we should have
discussed our interests like one family, and have rendered account to
the peoples as clerk to master.

Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people, and
anyone who traveled anywhere would have found himself always in the
common fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all navigable
rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all, and that
the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to mere guards
for the sovereigns.

On returning to France, to the bosom of the great, strong, magnificent,
peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I should have proclaimed her
frontiers immutable; all future wars purely defensive, all
aggrandizement antinational. I should have associated my son in the
Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and his constitutional
reign would have begun.

Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the envy
of the nations!

My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company
with the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to
leisurely visiting, with our own horses and like a true country couple,
every corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing wrongs, and
scattering public buildings and benefactions on all sides and
everywhere.

Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of executioner
of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his actions had been the
peoples' welfare and that he could control the fate of millions and by
the employment of power confer benefactions.

"Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula," he wrote further of
the Russian war, "half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles,
Bavarians, Wurttembergers, Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and
Neapolitans. The Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third
composed of Dutch, Belgians, men from the borders of the Rhine,
Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans, Romans, inhabitants of the
Thirty-second Military Division, of Bremen, of Hamburg, and so on: it
included scarcely a hundred and forty thousand who spoke French. The
Russian expedition actually cost France less than fifty thousand men;
the Russian army in its retreat from Vilna to Moscow lost in the various
battles four times more men than the French army; the burning of Moscow
cost the lives of a hundred thousand Russians who died of cold and want
in the woods; finally, in its march from Moscow to the Oder the Russian
army also suffered from the severity of the season; so that by the time
it reached Vilna it numbered only fifty thousand, and at Kalisch less
than eighteen thousand."

He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his will, and the
horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul. He boldly took the whole
responsibility for what happened, and his darkened mind found
justification in the belief that among the hundreds of thousands who
perished there were fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and Bavarians.




CHAPTER XXXIX

Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures and
various uniforms on the fields and meadows belonging to the Davydov
family and to the crown serfs--those fields and meadows where for
hundreds of years the peasants of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, and
Semenovsk had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. At the
dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood for a space
of some three acres around. Crowds of men of various arms, wounded and
unwounded, with frightened faces, dragged themselves back to Mozhaysk
from the one army and back to Valuevo from the other. Other crowds,
exhausted and hungry, went forward led by their officers. Others held
their ground and continued to fire.

Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitter of
bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now spread a
mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell of saltpeter and blood.
Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fall on the dead and wounded,
on the frightened, exhausted, and hesitating men, as if to say: "Enough,
men! Enough! Cease... bethink yourselves! What are you doing?"

To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest, it
began equally to appear doubtful whether they should continue to
slaughter one another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and the
question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be
killed?... You may go and kill whom you please, but I don't want to do
so anymore!" By evening this thought had ripened in every soul. At any
moment these men might have been seized with horror at what they were
doing and might have thrown up everything and run away anywhere.

But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all the horror of
what they were doing, though they would have been glad to leave off,
some incomprehensible, mysterious power continued to control them, and
they still brought up the charges, loaded, aimed, and applied the match,
though only one artilleryman survived out of every three, and though
they stumbled and panted with fatigue, perspiring and stained with blood
and powder. The cannon balls flew just as swiftly and cruelly from both
sides, crushing human bodies, and that terrible work which was not done
by the will of a man but at the will of Him who governs men and worlds
continued.

Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army would have
said that, if only the French made one more slight effort, it would
disappear; and anyone looking at the rear of the French army would have
said that the Russians need only make one more slight effort and the
French would be destroyed. But neither the French nor the Russians made
that effort, and the flame of battle burned slowly out.

The Russians did not make that effort because they were not attacking
the French. At the beginning of the battle they stood blocking the way
to Moscow and they still did so at the end of the battle as at the
beginning. But even had the aim of the Russians been to drive the French
from their positions, they could not have made this last effort, for all
the Russian troops had been broken up, there was no part of the Russian
army that had not suffered in the battle, and though still holding their
positions they had lost ONE HALF of their army.

The French, with the memory of all their former victories during fifteen
years, with the assurance of Napoleon's invincibility, with the
consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield and had
lost only a quarter of their men and still had their Guards intact,
twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that effort. The French
who had attacked the Russian army in order to drive it from its position
ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians continued to
block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the French had not been
attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain. But the French
did not make that effort. Some historians say that Napoleon need only
have used his Old Guards, who were intact, and the battle would have
been won. To speak of what would have happened had Napoleon sent his
Guards is like talking of what would happen if autumn became spring. It
could not be. Napoleon did not give his Guards, not because he did not
want to, but because it could not be done. All the generals, officers,
and soldiers of the French army knew it could not be done, because the
flagging spirit of the troops would not permit it.

It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling of
the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and
soldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the battle or not,
after all their experience of previous battles--when after one tenth of
such efforts the enemy had fled--experienced a similar feeling of terror
before an enemy who, after losing HALF his men, stood as threateningly
at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The moral force of the
attacking French army was exhausted. Not that sort of victory which is
defined by the capture of pieces of material fastened to sticks, called
standards, and of the ground on which the troops had stood and were
standing, but a moral victory that convinces the enemy of the moral
superiority of his opponent and of his own impotence was gained by the
Russians at Borodino. The French invaders, like an infuriated animal
that has in its onslaught received a mortal wound, felt that they were
perishing, but could not stop, any more than the Russian army, weaker by
one half, could help swerving. By impetus gained, the French army was
still able to roll forward to Moscow, but there, without further effort
on the part of the Russians, it had to perish, bleeding from the mortal
wound it had received at Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle
of Borodino was Napoleon's senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat
along the old Smolensk road, the destruction of the invading army of
five hundred thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on
which at Borodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger
spirit had been laid.

BOOK ELEVEN: 1812




CHAPTER I

Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human mind.
Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only when he
examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but at the same
time, a large proportion of human error comes from the arbitrary
division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements. There is a
well known, so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in this, that
Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was following, in spite
of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast as the tortoise. By the
time Achilles has covered the distance that separated him from the
tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of that distance ahead of
him: when Achilles has covered that tenth, the tortoise has covered
another one hundredth, and so on forever. This problem seemed to the
ancients insoluble. The absurd answer (that Achilles could never
overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that motion was arbitrarily
divided into discontinuous elements, whereas the motion both of Achilles
and of the tortoise was continuous.

By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we only approach a
solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only when we have admitted
the conception of the infinitely small, and the resulting geometrical
progression with a common ratio of one tenth, and have found the sum of
this progression to infinity, do we reach a solution of the problem.

A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing with
the infinitely small can now yield solutions in other more complex
problems of motion which used to appear insoluble.

This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when dealing
with problems of motion admits the conception of the infinitely small,
and so conforms to the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity)
and thereby corrects the inevitable error which the human mind cannot
avoid when it deals with separate elements of motion instead of
examining continuous motion.

In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens.
The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable arbitrary
human wills, is continuous.

To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of
history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting from the sum of all
those human wills, man's mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected
units. The first method of history is to take an arbitrarily selected
series of continuous events and examine it apart from others, though
there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event always
flows uninterruptedly from another.

The second method is to consider the actions of some one man--a king or
a commander--as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills; whereas
the sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity of a
single historic personage.

Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth continually
takes smaller and smaller units for examination. But however small the
units it takes, we feel that to take any unit disconnected from others,
or to assume a beginning of any phenomenon, or to say that the will of
many men is expressed by the actions of any one historic personage, is
in itself false.

It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any deductions
drawn from history. It is merely necessary to select some larger or
smaller unit as the subject of observation--as criticism has every right
to do, seeing that whatever unit history observes must always be
arbitrarily selected.

Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the
differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and
attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of
these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.

The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe present an
extraordinary movement of millions of people. Men leave their customary
pursuits, hasten from one side of Europe to the other, plunder and
slaughter one another, triumph and are plunged in despair, and for some
years the whole course of life is altered and presents an intensive
movement which first increases and then slackens. What was the cause of
this movement, by what laws was it governed? asks the mind of man.

The historians, replying to this question, lay before us the sayings and
doings of a few dozen men in a building in the city of Paris, calling
these sayings and doings "the Revolution"; then they give a detailed
biography of Napoleon and of certain people favorable or hostile to him;
tell of the influence some of these people had on others, and say: that
is why this movement took place and those are its laws.

But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this explanation, but
plainly says that this method of explanation is fallacious, because in
it a weaker phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger. The sum of
human wills produced the Revolution and Napoleon, and only the sum of
those wills first tolerated and then destroyed them.

"But every time there have been conquests there have been conquerors;
every time there has been a revolution in any state there have been
great men," says history. And, indeed, human reason replies: every time
conquerors appear there have been wars, but this does not prove that the
conquerors caused the wars and that it is possible to find the laws of a
war in the personal activity of a single man. Whenever I look at my
watch and its hands point to ten, I hear the bells of the neighboring
church; but because the bells begin to ring when the hands of the clock
reach ten, I have no right to assume that the movement of the bells is
caused by the position of the hands of the watch.

Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear the whistle and see
the valves opening and wheels turning; but I have no right to conclude
that the whistling and the turning of wheels are the cause of the
movement of the engine.

The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the oaks
are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when the oak is
budding. But though I do not know what causes the cold winds to blow
when the oak buds unfold, I cannot agree with the peasants that the
unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold wind, for the force
of the wind is beyond the influence of the buds. I see only a
coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all the phenomena of
life, and I see that however much and however carefully I observe the
hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the engine, and the
oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells ringing, the engine
moving, or of the winds of spring. To that I must entirely change my
point of view and study the laws of the movement of steam, of the bells,
and of the wind. History must do the same. And attempts in this
direction have already been made.

To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of
our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and
study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are
moved. No one can say in how far it is possible for man to advance in
this way toward an understanding of the laws of history; but it is
evident that only along that path does the possibility of discovering
the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a millionth part as much
mental effort has been applied in this direction by historians as has
been devoted to describing the actions of various kings, commanders, and
ministers and propounding the historians' own reflections concerning
these actions.




CHAPTER II

The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The Russian
army and people avoided a collision till Smolensk was reached, and again
from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army pushed on to Moscow, its
goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim, just as the
velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches the earth. Behind
it were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken, hostile country; ahead
were a few dozen miles separating it from its goal. Every soldier in
Napoleon's army felt this and the invasion moved on by its own momentum.

The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of hatred
of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army increased and
consolidated. At Borodino a collision took place. Neither army was
broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately after the
collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding with another
having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability the ball of
invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on for some
distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its force.

The Russians retreated eighty miles--to beyond Moscow--and the French
reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks after that
there was not a single battle. The French did not move. As a bleeding,
mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained inert in Moscow
for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh reason, fled back: they
made a dash for the Kaluga road, and (after a victory--for at Malo-
Yaroslavets the field of conflict again remained theirs) without
undertaking a single serious battle, they fled still more rapidly back
to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond the Berezina, beyond Vilna, and
farther still.

On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutuzov and the whole
Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodino was a victory.
Kutuzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare for a
fresh conflict to finish the enemy and did this not to deceive anyone,
but because he knew that the enemy was beaten, as everyone who had taken
part in the battle knew it.

But all that evening and next day reports came in one after another of
unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and a fresh battle
proved physically impossible.

It was impossible to give battle before information had been collected,
the wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition replenished, the
slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to replace those who had been
killed, and before the men had had food and sleep. And meanwhile, the
very next morning after the battle, the French army advanced of itself
upon the Russians, carried forward by the force of its own momentum now
seemingly increased in inverse proportion to the square of the distance
from its aim. Kutuzov's wish was to attack next day, and the whole army
desired to do so. But to make an attack the wish to do so is not
sufficient, there must also be a possibility of doing it, and that
possibility did not exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day's
march, and then in the same way it was impossible not to retreat another
and a third day's march, and at last, on the first of September when the
army drew near Moscow--despite the strength of the feeling that had
arisen in all ranks--the force of circumstances compelled it to retire
beyond Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last, day's march, and
abandoned Moscow to the enemy.

For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles are
made by generals--as any one of us sitting over a map in his study may
imagine how he would have arranged things in this or that battle--the
questions present themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the retreat not do
this or that? Why did he not take up a position before reaching Fili?
Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga road, abandoning Moscow? and
so on. People accustomed to think in that way forget, or do not know,
the inevitable conditions which always limit the activities of any
commander in chief. The activity of a commander-in-chief does not at all
resemble the activity we imagine to ourselves when we sit at ease in our
studies examining some campaign on the map, with a certain number of
troops on this and that side in a certain known locality, and begin our
plans from some given moment. A commander-in-chief is never dealing with
the beginning of any event--the position from which we always
contemplate it. The commander-in-chief is always in the midst of a
series of shifting events and so he never can at any moment consider the
whole import of an event that is occurring. Moment by moment the event
is imperceptibly shaping itself, and at every moment of this continuous,
uninterrupted shaping of events the commander-in-chief is in the midst
of a most complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies,
authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is
continually obliged to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him,
which constantly conflict with one another.

Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that Kutuzov should
have moved his army to the Kaluga road long before reaching Fili, and
that somebody actually submitted such a proposal to him. But a commander
in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always before him not
one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these proposals, based
on strategics and tactics, contradict each other.

A commander-in-chief's business, it would seem, is simply to choose one
of these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events and time do not
wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested to him to cross
to the Kaluga road, but just then an adjutant gallops up from
Miloradovich asking whether he is to engage the French or retire. An
order must be given him at once, that instant. And the order to retreat
carries us past the turn to the Kaluga road. And after the adjutant
comes the commissary general asking where the stores are to be taken,
and the chief of the hospitals asks where the wounded are to go, and a
courier from Petersburg brings a letter from the sovereign which does
not admit of the possibility of abandoning Moscow, and the commander-in-
chief's rival, the man who is undermining him (and there are always not
merely one but several such), presents a new project diametrically
opposed to that of turning to the Kaluga road, and the commander-in-
chief himself needs sleep and refreshment to maintain his energy and a
respectable general who has been overlooked in the distribution of
rewards comes to complain, and the inhabitants of the district pray to
be defended, and an officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and
gives a report quite contrary to what was said by the officer previously
sent; and a spy, a prisoner, and a general who has been on
reconnaissance, all describe the position of the enemy's army
differently. People accustomed to misunderstand or to forget these
inevitable conditions of a commander-in-chief's actions describe to us,
for instance, the position of the army at Fili and assume that the
commander-in-chief could, on the first of September, quite freely decide
whether to abandon Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army
less than four miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had
that question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolensk and most palpably
of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevardino and on the twenty-
sixth at Borodino, and each day and hour and minute of the retreat from
Borodino to Fili.




CHAPTER III

When Ermolov, having been sent by Kutuzov to inspect the position, told
the field marshal that it was impossible to fight there before Moscow
and that they must retreat, Kutuzov looked at him in silence.

"Give me your hand," said he and, turning it over so as to feel the
pulse, added: "You are not well, my dear fellow. Think what you are
saying!"

Kutuzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond Moscow
without a battle.

On the Poklonny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomilov gate of Moscow,
Kutuzov got out of his carriage and sat down on a bench by the roadside.
A great crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count Rostopchin, who
had come out from Moscow, joined them. This brilliant company separated
into several groups who all discussed the advantages and disadvantages
of the position, the state of the army, the plans suggested, the
situation of Moscow, and military questions generally. Though they had
not been summoned for the purpose, and though it was not so called, they
all felt that this was really a council of war. The conversations all
dealt with public questions. If anyone gave or asked for personal news,
it was done in a whisper and they immediately reverted to general
matters. No jokes, or laughter, or smiles even, were seen among all
these men. They evidently all made an effort to hold themselves at the
height the situation demanded. And all these groups, while talking among
themselves, tried to keep near the commander-in-chief (whose bench
formed the center of the gathering) and to speak so that he might
overhear them. The commander in chief listened to what was being said
and sometimes asked them to repeat their remarks, but did not himself
take part in the conversations or express any opinion. After hearing
what was being said by one or other of these groups he generally turned
away with an air of disappointment, as though they were not speaking of
anything he wished to hear. Some discussed the position that had been
chosen, criticizing not the position itself so much as the mental
capacity of those who had chosen it. Others argued that a mistake had
been made earlier and that a battle should have been fought two days
before. Others again spoke of the battle of Salamanca, which was
described by Crosart, a newly arrived Frenchman in a Spanish uniform.
(This Frenchman and one of the German princes serving with the Russian
army were discussing the siege of Saragossa and considering the
possibility of defending Moscow in a similar manner.) Count Rostopchin
was telling a fourth group that he was prepared to die with the city
train bands under the walls of the capital, but that he still could not
help regretting having been left in ignorance of what was happening, and
that had he known it sooner things would have been different.... A fifth
group, displaying the profundity of their strategic perceptions,
discussed the direction the troops would now have to take. A sixth group
was talking absolute nonsense. Kutuzov's expression grew more and more
preoccupied and gloomy. From all this talk he saw only one thing: that
to defend Moscow was a physical impossibility in the full meaning of
those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if any senseless
commander were to give orders to fight, confusion would result but the
battle would still not take place. It would not take place because the
commanders not merely all recognized the position to be impossible, but
in their conversations were only discussing what would happen after its
inevitable abandonment. How could the commanders lead their troops to a
field of battle they considered impossible to hold? The lower-grade
officers and even the soldiers (who too reason) also considered the
position impossible and therefore could not go to fight, fully convinced
as they were of defeat. If Bennigsen insisted on the position being
defended and others still discussed it, the question was no longer
important in itself but only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue.
This Kutuzov knew well.

Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian
patriotism (Kutuzov could not listen to this without wincing) by
insisting that Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as daylight
to Kutuzov: if the defense failed, to throw the blame on Kutuzov who had
brought the army as far as the Sparrow Hills without giving battle; if
it succeeded, to claim the success as his own; or if battle were not
given, to clear himself of the crime of abandoning Moscow. But this
intrigue did not now occupy the old man's mind. One terrible question
absorbed him and to that question he heard no reply from anyone. The
question for him now was: "Have I really allowed Napoleon to reach
Moscow, and when did I do so? When was it decided? Can it have been
yesterday when I ordered Platov to retreat, or was it the evening
before, when I had a nap and told Bennigsen to issue orders? Or was it
earlier still?... When, when was this terrible affair decided? Moscow
must be abandoned. The army must retreat and the order to do so must be
given." To give that terrible order seemed to him equivalent to
resigning the command of the army. And not only did he love power to
which he was accustomed (the honours awarded to Prince Prozorovski,
under whom he had served in Turkey, galled him), but he was convinced
that he was destined to save Russia and that that was why, against the
Emperor's wish and by the will of the people, he had been chosen
commander-in-chief. He was convinced that he alone could maintain
command of the army in these difficult circumstances, and that in all
the world he alone could encounter the invincible Napoleon without fear,
and he was horrified at the thought of the order he had to issue. But
something had to be decided, and these conversations around him which
were assuming too free a character must be stopped.

He called the most important generals to him.

"My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself," said he, rising
from the bench, and he rode to Fili where his carriages were waiting.




CHAPTER IV

The Council of War began to assemble at two in the afternoon in the
better and roomier part of Andrew Savostyanov's hut. The men, women, and
children of the large peasant family crowded into the back room across
the passage. Only Malasha, Andrew's six-year-old granddaughter whom his
Serene Highness had petted and to whom he had given a lump of sugar
while drinking his tea, remained on the top of the brick oven in the
larger room. Malasha looked down from the oven with shy delight at the
faces, uniforms, and decorations of the generals, who one after another
came into the room and sat down on the broad benches in the corner under
the icons. "Granddad" himself, as Malasha in her own mind called
Kutuzov, sat apart in a dark corner behind the oven. He sat, sunk deep
in a folding armchair, and continually cleared his throat and pulled at
the collar of his coat which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed to
pinch his neck. Those who entered went up one by one to the field
marshal; he pressed the hands of some and nodded to others. His adjutant
Kaysarov was about to draw back the curtain of the window facing
Kutuzov, but the latter moved his hand angrily and Kaysarov understood
that his Serene Highness did not wish his face to be seen.

Round the peasant's deal table, on which lay maps, plans, pencils, and
papers, so many people gathered that the orderlies brought in another
bench and put it beside the table. Ermolov, Kaysarov, and Toll, who had
just arrived, sat down on this bench. In the foremost place, immediately
under the icons, sat Barclay de Tolly, his high forehead merging into
his bald crown. He had a St. George's Cross round his neck and looked
pale and ill. He had been feverish for two days and was now shivering
and in pain. Beside him sat Uvarov, who with rapid gesticulations was
giving him some information, speaking in low tones as they all did.
Chubby little Dokhturov was listening attentively with eyebrows raised
and arms folded on his stomach. On the other side sat Count Ostermann-
Tolstoy, seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts. His broad head with its
bold features and glittering eyes was resting on his hand. Raevski,
twitching forward the black hair on his temples as was his habit,
glanced now at Kutuzov and now at the door with a look of impatience.
Konovnitsyn's firm, handsome, and kindly face was lit up by a tender,
sly smile. His glance met Malasha's, and the expression of his eyes
caused the little girl to smile.

They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext of inspecting
the position was finishing his savory dinner. They waited for him from
four till six o'clock and did not begin their deliberations all that
time but talked in low tones of other matters.

Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutuzov leave his corner and
draw toward the table, but not near enough for the candles that had been
placed there to light up his face.

Bennigsen opened the council with the question: "Are we to abandon
Russia's ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or are we to
defend it?" A prolonged and general silence followed. There was a frown
on every face and only Kutuzov's angry grunts and occasional cough broke
the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malasha too looked at
"Granddad." She was nearest to him and saw how his face puckered; he
seemed about to cry, but this did not last long.

"Russia's ancient and sacred capital!" he suddenly said, repeating
Bennigsen's words in an angry voice and thereby drawing attention to the
false note in them. "Allow me to tell you, your excellency, that that
question has no meaning for a Russian." (He lurched his heavy body
forward.) "Such a question cannot be put; it is senseless! The question
I have asked these gentlemen to meet to discuss is a military one. The
question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to give up Moscow
without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the army as well
as Moscow? That is the question on which I want your opinion," and he
sank back in his chair.

The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider his game lost.
Admitting the view of Barclay and others that a defensive battle at Fili
was impossible, but imbued with Russian patriotism and the love of
Moscow, he proposed to move troops from the right to the left flank
during the night and attack the French right flank the following day.
Opinions were divided, and arguments were advanced for and against that
project. Ermolov, Dokhturov, and Raevski agreed with Bennigsen. Whether
feeling it necessary to make a sacrifice before abandoning the capital
or guided by other, personal considerations, these generals seemed not
to understand that this council could not alter the inevitable course of
events and that Moscow was in effect already abandoned. The other
generals, however, understood it and, leaving aside the question of
Moscow, spoke of the direction the army should take in its retreat.
Malasha, who kept her eyes fixed on what was going on before her,
understood the meaning of the council differently. It seemed to her that
it was only a personal struggle between "Granddad" and "Long-coat" as
she termed Bennigsen. She saw that they grew spiteful when they spoke to
one another, and in her heart she sided with "Granddad." In the midst of
the conversation she noticed "Granddad" give Bennigsen a quick, subtle
glance, and then to her joys she saw that "Granddad" said something to
"Long-coat" which settled him. Bennigsen suddenly reddened and paced
angrily up and down the room. What so affected him was Kutuzov's calm
and quiet comment on the advantage or disadvantage of Bennigsen's
proposal to move troops by night from the right to the left flank to
attack the French right wing.

"Gentlemen," said Kutuzov, "I cannot approve of the count's plan. Moving
troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous, and military
history supports that view. For instance..." Kutuzov seemed to reflect,
searching for an example, then with a clear, naive look at Bennigsen he
added: "Oh yes; take the battle of Friedland, which I think the count
well remembers, and which was... not fully successful, only because our
troops were rearranged too near the enemy..."

There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very long to them all.

The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently occurred and they all
felt that there was no more to be said.

During one of these pauses Kutuzov heaved a deep sigh as if preparing to
speak. They all looked at him.

"Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the broken
crockery," said he, and rising slowly he moved to the table. "Gentlemen,
I have heard your views. Some of you will not agree with me. But I," he
paused, "by the authority entrusted to me by my Sovereign and country,
order a retreat."

After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and
circumspect silence of people who are leaving, after a funeral.

Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very different from
the way they had spoken during the council, communicated something to
their commander-in-chief.

Malasha, who had long been expected for supper, climbed carefully
backwards down from the oven, her bare little feet catching at its
projections, and slipping between the legs of the generals she darted
out of the room.

When he had dismissed the generals Kutuzov sat a long time with his
elbows on the table, thinking always of the same terrible question:
"When, when did the abandonment of Moscow become inevitable? When was
that done which settled the matter? And who was to blame for it?"

"I did not expect this," said he to his adjutant Schneider when the
latter came in late that night. "I did not expect this! I did not think
this would happen."

"You should take some rest, your Serene Highness," replied Schneider.

"But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!" exclaimed
Kutuzov without replying, striking the table with his podgy fist. "They
shall too, if only..."




CHAPTER V

At that very time, in circumstances even more important than retreating
without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of Moscow,
Rostopchin, who is usually represented as being the instigator of that
event, acted in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov.

After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscow was
as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow without fighting.

Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the
feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.

The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all the towns
and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk, without the
participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. The people
awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited or tear
anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it the strength to
find what it should do at that most difficult moment. And as soon as the
enemy drew near the wealthy classes went away abandoning their property,
while the poorer remained and burned and destroyed what was left.

The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was and
is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness of this,
and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present in Russian
Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already in July and
at the beginning of August showed that they expected this. Those who
went away, taking what they could and abandoning their houses and half
their belongings, did so from the latent patriotism which expresses
itself not by phrases or by giving one's children to save the fatherland
and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively, simply, organically,
and therefore in the way that always produces the most powerful results.

"It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running
away from Moscow," they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchin
impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed
to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing it
had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose that
Rostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had
committed in conquered countries. The first people to go away were the
rich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had
remained intact and that during Napoleon's occupation the inhabitants
had spent their time pleasantly in the company of the charming Frenchmen
whom the Russians, and especially the Russian ladies, then liked so
much.

They went away because for Russians there could be no question as to
whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It was
out of the question to be under French rule, it would be the worst thing
that could happen. They went away even before the battle of Borodino and
still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin's calls to defend Moscow
or the announcement of his intention to take the wonder-working icon of
the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, or of the balloons that were
to destroy the French, and despite all the nonsense Rostopchin wrote in
his broadsheets. They knew that it was for the army to fight, and that
if it could not succeed it would not do to take young ladies and house
serfs to the Three Hills quarter of Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that
they must go away, sorry as they were to abandon their property to
destruction. They went away without thinking of the tremendous
significance of that immense and wealthy city being given over to
destruction, for a great city with wooden buildings was certain when
abandoned by its inhabitants to be burned. They went away each on his
own account, and yet it was only in consequence of their going away that
the momentous event was accomplished that will always remain the
greatest glory of the Russian people. The lady who, afraid of being
stopped by Count Rostopchin's orders, had already in June moved with her
Negroes and her women jesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with a
vague consciousness that she was not Bonaparte's servant, was really,
simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia. But
Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now had the
government offices removed; now distributed quite useless weapons to the
drunken rabble; now had processions displaying the icons, and now
forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics of saints; now
seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one hundred and thirty-six
of them removed the balloon that was being constructed by Leppich; now
hinted that he would burn Moscow and related how he had set fire to his
own house; now wrote a proclamation to the French solemnly upbraiding
them for having destroyed his Orphanage; now claimed the glory of having
hinted that he would burn Moscow and now repudiated the deed; now
ordered the people to catch all spies and bring them to him, and now
reproached them for doing so; now expelled all the French residents from
Moscow, and now allowed Madame Aubert-Chalme (the center of the whole
French colony in Moscow) to remain, but ordered the venerable old
postmaster Klyucharev to be arrested and exiled for no particular
offense; now assembled the people at the Three Hills to fight the French
and now, to get rid of them, handed over to them a man to be killed and
himself drove away by a back gate; now declared that he would not
survive the fall of Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums
concerning his share in the affair--this man did not understand the
meaning of what was happening but merely wanted to do something himself
that would astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat;
and like a child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable event--
the abandonment and burning of Moscow--and tried with his puny hand now
to speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him along
with it.




CHAPTER VI

Helene, having returned with the court from Vilna to Petersburg, found
herself in a difficult position.

In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a grandee who
occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire. In Vilna she had formed
an intimacy with a young foreign prince. When she returned to Petersburg
both the magnate and the prince were there, and both claimed their
rights. Helene was faced by a new problem--how to preserve her intimacy
with both without offending either.

What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to another woman did
not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezukhova, who evidently
deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman. Had she attempted
concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her awkward position by
cunning, she would have spoiled her case by acknowledging herself
guilty. But Helene, like a really great man who can do whatever he
pleases, at once assumed her own position to be correct, as she
sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone else was to blame.

The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach her, she
lifted her beautiful head and, half turning to him, said firmly: "That's
just like a man--selfish and cruel! I expected nothing else. A woman
sacrifices herself for you, she suffers, and this is her reward! What
right have you, monseigneur, to demand an account of my attachments and
friendships? He is a man who has been more than a father to me!" The
prince was about to say something, but Helene interrupted him.

"Well, yes," said she, "it may be that he has other sentiments for me
than those of a father, but that is not a reason for me to shut my door
on him. I am not a man, that I should repay kindness with ingratitude!
Know, monseigneur, that in all that relates to my intimate feelings I
render account only to God and to my conscience," she concluded, laying
her hand on her beautiful, fully expanded bosom and looking up to
heaven.

"But for heaven's sake listen to me!"

"Marry me, and I will be your slave!"

"But that's impossible."

"You won't deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you..." said Helene,
beginning to cry.

The prince tried to comfort her, but Helene, as if quite distraught,
said through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying,
that there were precedents (there were up to that time very few, but she
mentioned Napoleon and some other exalted personages), that she had
never been her husband's wife, and that she had been sacrificed.

"But the law, religion..." said the prince, already yielding.

"The law, religion... What have they been invented for if they can't
arrange that?" said Helene.

The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred to him,
and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the Society of Jesus,
with whom he was on intimate terms.

A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which Helene gave at
her country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur de Jobert,
a man no longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant black eyes, a
Jesuit a robe courte * was presented to her, and in the garden by the
light of the illuminations and to the sound of music talked to her for a
long time of the love of God, of Christ, of the Sacred Heart, and of the
consolations the one true Catholic religion affords in this world and
the next. Helene was touched, and more than once tears rose to her eyes
and to those of Monsieur de Jobert and their voices trembled. A dance,
for which her partner came to seek her, put an end to her discourse with
her future directeur de conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de
Jobert came to see Helene when she was alone, and after that often came
again.


* Lay member of the Society of Jesus.

One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church, where she knelt
down before the altar to which she was led. The enchanting, middle-aged
Frenchman laid his hands on her head and, as she herself afterward
described it, she felt something like a fresh breeze wafted into her
soul. It was explained to her that this was la grace.

After that a long-frocked abbe was brought to her. She confessed to him,
and he absolved her from her sins. Next day she received a box
containing the Sacred Host, which was left at her house for her to
partake of. A few days later Helene learned with pleasure that she had
now been admitted to the true Catholic Church and that in a few days the
Pope himself would hear of her and would send her a certain document.

All that was done around her and to her at this time, all the attention
devoted to her by so many clever men and expressed in such pleasant,
refined ways, and the state of dove-like purity she was now in (she wore
only white dresses and white ribbons all that time) gave her pleasure,
but her pleasure did not cause her for a moment to forget her aim. And
as it always happens in contests of cunning that a stupid person gets
the better of cleverer ones, Helene--having realized that the main
object of all these words and all this trouble was, after converting her
to Catholicism, to obtain money from her for Jesuit institutions (as to
which she received indications)-before parting with her money insisted
that the various operations necessary to free her from her husband
should be performed. In her view the aim of every religion was merely to
preserve certain proprieties while affording satisfaction to human
desires. And with this aim, in one of her talks with her Father
Confessor, she insisted on an answer to the question, in how far was she
bound by her marriage?

They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing room. The
scent of flowers came in at the window. Helene was wearing a white
dress, transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbe, a well-fed
man with a plump, clean-shaven chin, a pleasant firm mouth, and white
hands meekly folded on his knees, sat close to Helene and, with a subtle
smile on his lips and a peaceful look of delight at her beauty,
occasionally glanced at her face as he explained his opinion on the
subject. Helene with an uneasy smile looked at his curly hair and his
plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every moment expected the
conversation to take a fresh turn. But the abbe, though he evidently
enjoyed the beauty of his companion, was absorbed in his mastery of the
matter.

The course of the Father Confessor's arguments ran as follows: "Ignorant
of the import of what you were undertaking, you made a vow of conjugal
fidelity to a man who on his part, by entering the married state without
faith in the religious significance of marriage, committed an act of
sacrilege. That marriage lacked the dual significance it should have
had. Yet in spite of this your vow was binding. You swerved from it.
What did you commit by so acting? A venial, or a mortal, sin? A venial
sin, for you acted without evil intention. If now you married again with
the object of bearing children, your sin might be forgiven. But the
question is again a twofold one: firstly..."

But suddenly Helene, who was getting bored, said with one of her
bewitching smiles: "But I think that having espoused the true religion I
cannot be bound by what a false religion laid upon me."

The director of her conscience was astounded at having the case
presented to him thus with the simplicity of Columbus' egg. He was
delighted at the unexpected rapidity of his pupil's progress, but could
not abandon the edifice of argument he had laboriously constructed.

"Let us understand one another, Countess," said he with a smile, and
began refuting his spiritual daughter's arguments.




CHAPTER VII

Helene understood that the question was very simple and easy from the
ecclesiastical point of view, and that her directors were making
difficulties only because they were apprehensive as to how the matter
would be regarded by the secular authorities.

So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion of society.
She provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate and told him what she
had told her other suitor; that is, she put the matter so that the only
way for him to obtain a right over her was to marry her. The elderly
magnate was at first as much taken aback by this suggestion of marriage
with a woman whose husband was alive, as the younger man had been, but
Helene's imperturbable conviction that it was as simple and natural as
marrying a maiden had its effect on him too. Had Helene herself shown
the least sign of hesitation, shame, or secrecy, her cause would
certainly have been lost; but not only did she show no signs of secrecy
or shame, on the contrary, with good-natured naivete she told her
intimate friends (and these were all Petersburg) that both the prince
and the magnate had proposed to her and that she loved both and was
afraid of grieving either.

A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Helene wanted to be
divorced from her husband (had such a report spread many would have
opposed so illegal an intention) but simply that the unfortunate and
interesting Helene was in doubt which of the two men she should marry.
The question was no longer whether this was possible, but only which was
the better match and how the matter would be regarded at court. There
were, it is true, some rigid individuals unable to rise to the height of
such a question, who saw in the project a desecration of the sacrament
of marriage, but there were not many such and they remained silent,
while the majority were interested in Helene's good fortune and in the
question which match would be the more advantageous. Whether it was
right or wrong to remarry while one had a husband living they did not
discuss, for that question had evidently been settled by people "wiser
than you or me," as they said, and to doubt the correctness of that
decision would be to risk exposing one's stupidity and incapacity to
live in society.

Only Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, who had come to Petersburg that
summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express an
opinion contrary to the general one. Meeting Helene at a ball she
stopped her in the middle of the room and, amid general silence, said in
her gruff voice: "So wives of living men have started marrying again!
Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been
forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all the
brothels," and with these words Marya Dmitrievna, turning up her wide
sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly round,
moved across the room.

Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitrievna she was regarded in
Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only noticed,
and repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had used, supposing
the whole sting of her remark to lie in that word.

Prince Vasili, who of late very often forgot what he had said and
repeated one and the same thing a hundred times, remarked to his
daughter whenever he chanced to see her:

"Helene, I have a word to say to you," and he would lead her aside,
drawing her hand downward. "I have heard of certain projects
concerning... you know. Well my dear child, you know how your father's
heart rejoices to know that you... You have suffered so much.... But, my
dear child, consult only your own heart. That is all I have to say," and
concealing his unvarying emotion he would press his cheek against his
daughter's and move away.

Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever man,
and who was one of the disinterested friends so brilliant a woman as
Helene always has--men friends who can never change into lovers--once
gave her his view of the matter at a small and intimate gathering.

"Listen, Bilibin," said Helene (she always called friends of that sort
by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her white,
beringed fingers. "Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought to do.
Which of the two?"

Bilibin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with a
smile on his lips.

"You are not taking me unawares, you know," said he. "As a true friend,
I have thought and thought again about your affair. You see, if you
marry the prince"--he meant the younger man--and he crooked one finger,
"you forever lose the chance of marrying the other, and you will
displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind of
connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last days
happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would no longer be making
a mesalliance by marrying you," and Bilibin smoothed out his forehead.

"That's a true friend!" said Helene beaming, and again touching
Bilibin's sleeve. "But I love them, you know, and don't want to distress
either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of them both."

Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he could
help in that difficulty.

"Une maitresse-femme! * That's what is called putting things squarely.
She would like to be married to all three at the same time," thought he.


* A masterly woman.

"But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?" Bilibin asked,
his reputation being so well established that he did not fear to ask so
naive a question. "Will he agree?"

"Oh, he loves me so!" said Helene, who for some reason imagined that
Pierre too loved her. "He will do anything for me."

Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.

"Even divorce you?" said he.

Helene laughed.

Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed
marriage was Helene's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was continually
tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned a
subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the
idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of divorce
and remarriage during a husband's lifetime, and the priest told her that
it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a text in the Gospel
which (as it seemed to him) plainly forbids remarriage while the husband
is alive.

Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable, she
drove to her daughter's early one morning so as to find her alone.

Having listened to her mother's objections, Helene smiled blandly and
ironically.

"But it says plainly: 'Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced...'"
said the old princess.

"Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rien. Dans ma
position j'ai des devoirs," * said Helene changing from Russian, in
which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite clear,
into French which suited it better.


* "Oh, Mamma, don't talk nonsense! You don't understand anything. In my
position I have obligations."

"But, my dear...."

"Oh, Mamma, how is it you don't understand that the Holy Father, who has
the right to grant dispensations..."

Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene came in to announce
that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.

"Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre
lui, parce qu'il m'a manque parole." *


* "No, tell him I don't wish to see him, I am furious with him for not
keeping his word to me."

"Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde," * said a fair-haired young man
with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.


* "Countess, there is mercy for every sin."

The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who had
entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter and
sidled out of the room.

"Yes, she is right," thought the old princess, all her convictions
dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. "She is right, but how is
it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so
simple," she thought as she got into her carriage.

By the beginning of August Helene's affairs were clearly defined and she
wrote a letter to her husband--who, as she imagined, loved her very
much--informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her having
embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all the
formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to him by
the bearer of the letter.

And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful
keeping--Your friend Helene.

This letter was brought to Pierre's house when he was on the field of
Borodino.




CHAPTER VIII

Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre, having run down from
Raevski's battery a second time, made his way through a gully to
Knyazkovo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station, and
seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still entangled in
the crowds of soldiers.

The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away quickly
from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that day and return
to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a room in his own
bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of life would he be
able to understand himself and all he had seen and felt. But such
ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.

Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along which he
was going, still on all sides there was what there had been on the field
of battle. There were still the same suffering, exhausted, and sometimes
strangely indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldiers'
overcoats, the same sounds of firing which, though distant now, still
aroused terror, and besides this there were the foul air and the dust.

Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk road, Pierre sat down
by the roadside.

Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay leaning on
his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved past him in
the darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon ball was flying
toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he shuddered and sat up. He
had no idea how long he had been there. In the middle of the night three
soldiers, having brought some firewood, settled down near him and began
lighting a fire.

The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got the fire to burn
and placed an iron pot on it into which they broke some dried bread and
put a little dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy viands mingled with
the smell of smoke. Pierre sat up and sighed. The three soldiers were
eating and talking among themselves, taking no notice of him.

"And who may you be?" one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently
meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: "If you want to eat
we'll give you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest
man."

"I, I..." said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his social
position as much as possible so as to be nearer to the soldiers and
better understood by them. "By rights I am a militia officer, but my men
are not here. I came to the battle and have lost them."

"There now!" said one of the soldiers.

Another shook his head.

"Would you like a little mash?" the first soldier asked, and handed
Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.

Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they called
the food in the cauldron, and he thought it more delicious than any food
he had ever tasted. As he sat bending greedily over it, helping himself
to large spoonfuls and chewing one after another, his face was lit up by
the fire and the soldiers looked at him in silence.

"Where have you to go to? Tell us!" said one of them.

"To Mozhaysk."

"You're a gentleman, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"And what's your name?"

"Peter Kirilych."

"Well then, Peter Kirilych, come along with us, we'll take you there."

In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozhaysk.

By the time they got near Mozhaysk and began ascending the steep hill
into the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on with the
soldiers, quite forgetting that his inn was at the bottom of the hill
and that he had already passed it. He would not soon have remembered
this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had he not halfway up the
hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to look for him in the town
and was returning to the inn. The groom recognized Pierre in the
darkness by his white hat.

"Your excellency!" he said. "Why, we were beginning to despair! How is
it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?"

"Oh, yes!" said Pierre.

The soldiers stopped.

"So you've found your folk?" said one of them. "Well, good-by, Peter
Kirilych--isn't it?"

"Good-bye, Peter Kirilych!" Pierre heard the other voices repeat.

"Good-bye!" he said and turned with his groom toward the inn.

"I ought to give them something!" he thought, and felt in his pocket.
"No, better not!" said another, inner voice.

There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied.
Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all, lay
down in his carriage.




CHAPTER IX

Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt himself
falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness of reality,
he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of projectiles, groans
and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a feeling of horror and
dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he opened his eyes and
lifted his head from under his cloak. All was tranquil in the yard. Only
someone's orderly passed through the gateway, splashing through the mud,
and talked to the innkeeper. Above Pierre's head some pigeons, disturbed
by the movement he had made in sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof
of the penthouse. The whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful
smell of stable yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see
the clear starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.

"Thank God, there is no more of that!" he thought, covering up his head
again. "Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I yielded
to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time, to the
end..." thought he.

They, in Pierre's mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the
battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before
the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood out
clearly and sharply from everyone else.

"To be a soldier, just a soldier!" thought Pierre as he fell asleep, "to
enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them what
they are. But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my
outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could have run
away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been sent to serve
as a soldier after the duel with Dolokhov." And the memory of the dinner
at the English Club when he had challenged Dolokhov flashed through
Pierre's mind, and then he remembered his benefactor at Torzhok. And now
a picture of a solemn meeting of the lodge presented itself to his mind.
It was taking place at the English Club and someone near and dear to him
sat at the end of the table. "Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor. But
he died!" thought Pierre. "Yes, he died, and I did not know he was
alive. How sorry I am that he died, and how glad I am that he is alive
again!" On one side of the table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitski,
Denisov, and others like them (in his dream the category to which these
men belonged was as clearly defined in his mind as the category of those
he termed they), and he heard those people, Anatole and Dolokhov,
shouting and singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his
benefactor was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words
was as weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but
pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor
was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite
distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the
possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind,
firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they were
kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him. Wishing to
speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at that moment his
legs grew cold and bare.

He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his cloak
had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his cloak Pierre
opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs, posts, and yard, but
now they were all bluish, lit up, and glittering with frost or dew.

"It is dawn," thought Pierre. "But that's not what I want. I want to
hear and understand my benefactor's words." Again he covered himself up
with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was there.
There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts that
someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating.

Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that
someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of that
day had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to think
and express his thoughts like that when awake.

"To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man's freedom to
the law of God," the voice had said. "Simplicity is submission to the
will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they are simple. They do
not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but the unspoken is golden.
Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not
fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know
his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing (Pierre went
on thinking, or hearing, in his dream) is to be able in your soul to
unite the meaning of all. To unite all?" he asked himself. "No, not to
unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts
together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness
them!" he repeated to himself with inward rapture, feeling that these
words and they alone expressed what he wanted to say and solved the
question that tormented him.

"Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness."

"Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your excellency!"
some voice was repeating. "We must harness, it is time to harness...."

It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone
straight into Pierre's face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the
middle of which soldiers were watering their lean horses at the pump
while carts were passing out of the gate. Pierre turned away with
repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back on the carriage seat.
"No, I don't want that, I don't want to see and understand that. I want
to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream. One second
more and I should have understood it all! But what am I to do? Harness,
but how can I harness everything?" and Pierre felt with horror that the
meaning of all he had seen and thought in the dream had been destroyed.

The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an officer
had come with news that the French were already near Mozhaysk and that
our men were leaving it.

Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him, went on
foot through the town.

The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind
them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses, and
the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts that
were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and blows could
be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which had overtaken
him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove with him to Moscow. On the
way Pierre was told of the death of his brother-in-law Anatole and of
that of Prince Andrew.




CHAPTER X

On the thirteenth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the gates of
the city he was met by Count Rostopchin's adjutant.

"We have been looking for you everywhere," said the adjutant. "The count
wants to see you particularly. He asks you to come to him at once on a
very important matter."

Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see the Moscow
commander-in-chief.

Count Rostopchin had only that morning returned to town from his summer
villa at Sokolniki. The anteroom and reception room of his house were
full of officials who had been summoned or had come for orders.
Vasilchikov and Platov had already seen the count and explained to him
that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it would have to be
surrendered. Though this news was being concealed from the inhabitants,
the officials--the heads of the various government departments--knew
that Moscow would soon be in the enemy's hands, just as Count Rostopchin
himself knew it, and to escape personal responsibility they had all come
to the governor to ask how they were to deal with their various
departments.

As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from the army came
out of Rostopchin's private room.

In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the courier made a
despairing gesture with his hand and passed through the room.

While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary eyes watched the
various officials, old and young, military and civilian, who were there.
They all seemed dissatisfied and uneasy. Pierre went up to a group of
men, one of whom he knew. After greeting Pierre they continued their
conversation.

"If they're sent out and brought back again later on it will do no harm,
but as things are now one can't answer for anything."

"But you see what he writes..." said another, pointing to a printed
sheet he held in his hand.

"That's another matter. That's necessary for the people," said the
first.

"What is it?" asked Pierre.

"Oh, it's a fresh broadsheet."

Pierre took it and began reading.

His Serene Highness has passed through Mozhaysk in order to join up with
the troops moving toward him and has taken up a strong position where
the enemy will not soon attack him. Forty eight guns with ammunition
have been sent him from here, and his Serene Highness says he will
defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is even ready to fight in
the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that the law courts are closed;
things have to be put in order, and we will deal with villains in our
own way! When the time comes I shall want both town and peasant lads and
will raise the cry a day or two beforehand, but they are not wanted yet
so I hold my peace. An ax will be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a
three-pronged fork will be best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a
sheaf of rye. Tomorrow after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the
Mother of God to the wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will
have some water blessed. That will help them to get well quicker. I,
too, am well now: one of my eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout
with both.

"But military men have told me that it is impossible to fight in the
town," said Pierre, "and that the position..."

"Well, of course! That's what we were saying," replied the first
speaker.

"And what does he mean by 'One of my eyes was sore but now I am on the
lookout with both'?" asked Pierre.

"The count had a sty," replied the adjutant smiling, "and was very much
upset when I told him people had come to ask what was the matter with
him. By the by, Count," he added suddenly, addressing Pierre with a
smile, "we heard that you have family troubles and that the countess,
your wife..."

"I have heard nothing," Pierre replied unconcernedly. "But what have you
heard?"

"Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only say what I
heard."

"But what did you hear?"

"Well, they say," continued the adjutant with the same smile, "that the
countess, your wife, is preparing to go abroad. I expect it's
nonsense...."

"Possibly," remarked Pierre, looking about him absent-mindedly. "And who
is that?" he asked, indicating a short old man in a clean blue peasant
overcoat, with a big snow-white beard and eyebrows and a ruddy face.

"He? That's a tradesman, that is to say, he's the restaurant keeper,
Vereshchagin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair with the
proclamation."

"Oh, so that is Vereshchagin!" said Pierre, looking at the firm, calm
face of the old man and seeking any indication of his being a traitor.

"That's not he himself, that's the father of the fellow who wrote the
proclamation," said the adjutant. "The young man is in prison and I
expect it will go hard with him."

An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a German wearing a
cross round his neck, approached the speaker.


"It's a complicated story, you know," said the adjutant. "That
proclamation appeared about two months ago. The count was informed of
it. He gave orders to investigate the matter. Gabriel Ivanovich here
made the inquiries. The proclamation had passed through exactly sixty-
three hands. He asked one, 'From whom did you get it?' 'From so-and-so.'
He went to the next one. 'From whom did you get it?' and so on till he
reached Vereshchagin, a half educated tradesman, you know, 'a pet of a
trader,'" said the adjutant smiling. "They asked him, 'Who gave it you?'
And the point is that we knew whom he had it from. He could only have
had it from the Postmaster. But evidently they had come to some
understanding. He replied: 'From no one; I made it up myself.' They
threatened and questioned him, but he stuck to that: 'I made it up
myself.' And so it was reported to the count, who sent for the man.
'From whom did you get the proclamation?' 'I wrote it myself.' Well, you
know the count," said the adjutant cheerfully, with a smile of pride,
"he flared up dreadfully--and just think of the fellow's audacity,
lying, and obstinacy!"

"And the count wanted him to say it was from Klyucharev? I understand!"
said Pierre.

"Not at all," rejoined the adjutant in dismay. "Klyucharev had his own
sins to answer for without that and that is why he has been banished.
But the point is that the count was much annoyed. 'How could you have
written it yourself?' said he, and he took up the Hamburg Gazette that
was lying on the table. 'Here it is! You did not write it yourself but
translated it, and translated it abominably, because you don't even know
French, you fool.' And what do you think? 'No,' said he, 'I have not
read any papers, I made it up myself.' 'If that's so, you're a traitor
and I'll have you tried, and you'll be hanged! Say from whom you had
it.' 'I have seen no papers, I made it up myself.' And that was the end
of it. The count had the father fetched, but the fellow stuck to it. He
was sent for trial and condemned to hard labor, I believe. Now the
father has come to intercede for him. But he's a good-for-nothing lad!
You know that sort of tradesman's son, a dandy and lady-killer. He
attended some lectures somewhere and imagines that the devil is no match
for him. That's the sort of fellow he is. His father keeps a cookshop
here by the Stone Bridge, and you know there was a large icon of God
Almighty painted with a scepter in one hand and an orb in the other.
Well, he took that icon home with him for a few days and what did he do?
He found some scoundrel of a painter..."




CHAPTER XI

In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to the commander in
chief.

When he entered the private room Count Rostopchin, puckering his face,
was rubbing his forehead and eyes with his hand. A short man was saying
something, but when Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went out.

"Ah, how do you do, great warrior?" said Rostopchin as soon as the short
man had left the room. "We have heard of your prowess. But that's not
the point. Between ourselves, mon cher, do you belong to the Masons?" he
went on severely, as though there were something wrong about it which he
nevertheless intended to pardon. Pierre remained silent. "I am well
informed, my friend, but I am aware that there are Masons and I hope
that you are not one of those who on pretense of saving mankind wish to
ruin Russia."

"Yes, I am a Mason," Pierre replied.

"There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that Messrs. Speranski and
Magnitski have been deported to their proper place. Mr. Klyucharev has
been treated in the same way, and so have others who on the plea of
building up the temple of Solomon have tried to destroy the temple of
their fatherland. You can understand that there are reasons for this and
that I could not have exiled the Postmaster had he not been a harmful
person. It has now come to my knowledge that you lent him your carriage
for his removal from town, and that you have even accepted papers from
him for safe custody. I like you and don't wish you any harm and--as you
are only half my age--I advise you, as a father would, to cease all
communication with men of that stamp and to leave here as soon as
possible."

"But what did Klyucharev do wrong, Count?" asked Pierre.

"That is for me to know, but not for you to ask," shouted Rostopchin.

"If he is accused of circulating Napoleon's proclamation it is not
proved that he did so," said Pierre without looking at Rostopchin, "and
Vereshchagin..."

"There we are!" Rostopchin shouted at Pierre louder than before,
frowning suddenly. "Vereshchagin is a renegade and a traitor who will be
punished as he deserves," said he with the vindictive heat with which
people speak when recalling an insult. "But I did not summon you to
discuss my actions, but to give you advice--or an order if you prefer
it. I beg you to leave the town and break off all communication with
such men as Klyucharev. And I will knock the nonsense out of anybody"--
but probably realizing that he was shouting at Bezukhov who so far was
not guilty of anything, he added, taking Pierre's hand in a friendly
manner, "We are on the eve of a public disaster and I haven't time to be
polite to everybody who has business with me. My head is sometimes in a
whirl. Well, mon cher, what are you doing personally?"

"Why, nothing," answered Pierre without raising his eyes or changing the
thoughtful expression of his face.

The count frowned.

"A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon as you can, that's
all I have to tell you. Happy he who has ears to hear. Good-bye, my dear
fellow. Oh, by the by!" he shouted through the doorway after Pierre, "is
it true that the countess has fallen into the clutches of the holy
fathers of the Society of Jesus?"

Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchin's room more sullen and angry
than he had ever before shown himself.

When he reached home it was already getting dark. Some eight people had
come to see him that evening: the secretary of a committee, the colonel
of his battalion, his steward, his major-domo, and various petitioners.
They all had business with Pierre and wanted decisions from him. Pierre
did not understand and was not interested in any of these questions and
only answered them in order to get rid of these people. When left alone
at last he opened and read his wife's letter.

"They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew killed... that old
man... Simplicity is submission to God. Suffering is necessary... the
meaning of all... one must harness... my wife is getting married... One
must forget and understand..." And going to his bed he threw himself on
it without undressing and immediately fell asleep.

When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to inform him that a
special messenger, a police officer, had come from Count Rostopchin to
know whether Count Bezukhov had left or was leaving the town.

A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were awaiting him in the
drawing room. Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to see
them, went to the back porch and out through the gate.

From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow no one of
Bezukhov's household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre again
or knew where he was.




CHAPTER XII

The Rostovs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is,
till the eve of the enemy's entry into the city.

After Petya had joined Obolenski's regiment of Cossacks and left for
Belaya Tserkov where that regiment was forming, the countess was seized
with terror. The thought that both her sons were at the war, had both
gone from under her wing, that today or tomorrow either or both of them
might be killed like the three sons of one of her acquaintances, struck
her that summer for the first time with cruel clearness. She tried to
get Nicholas back and wished to go herself to join Petya, or to get him
an appointment somewhere in Petersburg, but neither of these proved
possible. Petya could not return unless his regiment did so or unless he
was transferred to another regiment on active service. Nicholas was
somewhere with the army and had not sent a word since his last letter,
in which he had given a detailed account of his meeting with Princess
Mary. The countess did not sleep at night, or when she did fall asleep
dreamed that she saw her sons lying dead. After many consultations and
conversations, the count at last devised means to tranquillize her. He
got Petya transferred from Obolenski's regiment to Bezukhov's, which was
in training near Moscow. Though Petya would remain in the service, this
transfer would give the countess the consolation of seeing at least one
of her sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters for her
Petya so as not to let him go again, but always get him appointed to
places where he could not possibly take part in a battle. As long as
Nicholas alone was in danger the countess imagined that she loved her
first-born more than all her other children and even reproached herself
for it; but when her youngest: the scapegrace who had been bad at
lessons, was always breaking things in the house and making himself a
nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Petya with his merry black eyes
and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was just beginning to show--when
he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men who were fighting
somewhere about something and apparently finding pleasure in it--then
his mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all her other
children. The nearer the time came for Petya to return, the more uneasy
grew the countess. She began to think she would never live to see such
happiness. The presence of Sonya, of her beloved Natasha, or even of her
husband irritated her. "What do I want with them? I want no one but
Petya," she thought.

At the end of August the Rostovs received another letter from Nicholas.
He wrote from the province of Voronezh where he had been sent to procure
remounts, but that letter did not set the countess at ease. Knowing that
one son was out of danger she became the more anxious about Petya.

Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostovs' acquaintances
had left Moscow, and though everybody tried to persuade the countess to
get away as quickly as possible, she would not hear of leaving before
her treasure, her adored Petya, returned. On the twenty-eighth of August
he arrived. The passionate tenderness with which his mother received him
did not please the sixteen-year-old officer. Though she concealed from
him her intention of keeping him under her wing, Petya guessed her
designs, and instinctively fearing that he might give way to emotion
when with her--might "become womanish" as he termed it to himself--he
treated her coldly, avoided her, and during his stay in Moscow attached
himself exclusively to Natasha for whom he had always had a particularly
brotherly tenderness, almost lover-like.

Owing to the count's customary carelessness nothing was ready for their
departure by the twenty-eighth of August and the carts that were to come
from their Ryazan and Moscow estates to remove their household
belongings did not arrive till the thirtieth.

From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow was in a bustle
and commotion. Every day thousands of men wounded at Borodino were
brought in by the Dorogomilov gate and taken to various parts of Moscow,
and thousands of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their possessions
out by the other gates. In spite of Rostopchin's broadsheets, or because
of them or independently of them, the strangest and most contradictory
rumors were current in the town. Some said that no one was to be allowed
to leave the city, others on the contrary said that all the icons had
been taken out of the churches and everybody was to be ordered to leave.
Some said there had been another battle after Borodino at which the
French had been routed, while others on the contrary reported that the
Russian army had been destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia
which, preceded by the clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others
whispered that Augustin had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had
been seized, that the peasants were rioting and robbing people on their
way from Moscow, and so on. But all this was only talk; in reality
(though the Council of Fili, at which it was decided to abandon Moscow,
had not yet been held) both those who went away and those who remained
behind felt, though they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly be
abandoned, and that they ought to get away as quickly as possible and
save their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly break
up and change, but up to the first of September nothing had done so. As
a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die
immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is
awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life,
though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the
conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would
be completely upset.

During the three days preceding the occupation of Moscow the whole
Rostov family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the
family, Count Ilya Rostov, continually drove about the city collecting
the current rumors from all sides and gave superficial and hasty orders
at home about the preparations for their departure.

The countess watched the things being packed, was dissatisfied with
everything, was constantly in pursuit of Petya who was always running
away from her, and was jealous of Natasha with whom he spent all his
time. Sonya alone directed the practical side of matters by getting
things packed. But of late Sonya had been particularly sad and silent.
Nicholas' letter in which he mentioned Princess Mary had elicited, in
her presence, joyous comments from the countess, who saw an intervention
of Providence in this meeting of the princess and Nicholas.

"I was never pleased at Bolkonski's engagement to Natasha," said the
countess, "but I always wanted Nicholas to marry the princess, and had a
presentiment that it would happen. What a good thing it would be!"

Sonya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of retrieving
the Rostovs' affairs was by Nicholas marrying a rich woman, and that the
princess was a good match. It was very bitter for her. But despite her
grief, or perhaps just because of it, she took on herself all the
difficult work of directing the storing and packing of their things and
was busy for whole days. The count and countess turned to her when they
had any orders to give. Petya and Natasha on the contrary, far from
helping their parents, were generally a nuisance and a hindrance to
everyone. Almost all day long the house resounded with their running
feet, their cries, and their spontaneous laughter. They laughed and were
gay not because there was any reason to laugh, but because gaiety and
mirth were in their hearts and so everything that happened was a cause
for gaiety and laughter to them. Petya was in high spirits because
having left home a boy he had returned (as everybody told him) a fine
young man, because he was at home, because he had left Belaya Tserkov
where there was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and had come to
Moscow where there was to be fighting in a few days, and chiefly because
Natasha, whose lead he always followed, was in high spirits. Natasha was
gay because she had been sad too long and now nothing reminded her of
the cause of her sadness, and because she was feeling well. She was also
happy because she had someone to adore her: the adoration of others was
a lubricant the wheels of her machine needed to make them run freely--
and Petya adored her. Above all, they were gay because there was a war
near Moscow, there would be fighting at the town gates, arms were being
given out, everybody was escaping--going away somewhere, and in general
something extraordinary was happening, and that is always exciting,
especially to the young.




CHAPTER XIII

On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in the Rostovs'
house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was
being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been
taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and
ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house serfs carrying out
the things were treading heavily on the parquet floors. The yard was
crowded with peasant carts, some loaded high and already corded up,
others still empty.

The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of the peasants who
had come with the carts resounded as they shouted to one another in the
yard and in the house. The count had been out since morning. The
countess had a headache brought on by all the noise and turmoil and was
lying down in the new sitting room with a vinegar compress on her head.
Petya was not at home, he had gone to visit a friend with whom he meant
to obtain a transfer from the militia to the active army. Sonya was in
the ballroom looking after the packing of the glass and china. Natasha
was sitting on the floor of her dismantled room with dresses, ribbons,
and scarves strewn all about her, gazing fixedly at the floor and
holding in her hands the old ball dress (already out of fashion) which
she had worn at her first Petersburg ball.

Natasha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone else was so busy, and
several times that morning had tried to set to work, but her heart was
not in it, and she could not and did not know how to do anything except
with all her heart and all her might. For a while she had stood beside
Sonya while the china was being packed and tried to help, but soon gave
it up and went to her room to pack her own things. At first she found it
amusing to give away dresses and ribbons to the maids, but when that was
done and what was left had still to be packed, she found it dull.

"Dunyasha, you pack! You will, won't you, dear?" And when Dunyasha
willingly promised to do it all for her, Natasha sat down on the floor,
took her old ball dress, and fell into a reverie quite unrelated to what
ought to have occupied her thoughts now. She was roused from her reverie
by the talk of the maids in the next room (which was theirs) and by the
sound of their hurried footsteps going to the back porch. Natasha got up
and looked out of the window. An enormously long row of carts full of
wounded men had stopped in the street.

The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen, maids, footmen,
postilions, and scullions stood at the gate, staring at the wounded.

Natasha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over her hair and holding
an end of it in each hand, went out into the street.

The former housekeeper, old Mavra Kuzminichna, had stepped out of the
crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart with a hood constructed of bast
mats, and was speaking to a pale young officer who lay inside. Natasha
moved a few steps forward and stopped shyly, still holding her
handkerchief, and listened to what the housekeeper was saying.

"Then you have nobody in Moscow?" she was saying. "You would be more
comfortable somewhere in a house... in ours, for instance... the family
are leaving."

"I don't know if it would be allowed," replied the officer in a weak
voice. "Here is our commanding officer... ask him," and he pointed to a
stout major who was walking back along the street past the row of carts.

Natasha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the wounded officer
and at once went to meet the major.

"May the wounded men stay in our house?" she asked.

The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile.

"Which one do you want, Ma'am'selle?" said he, screwing up his eyes and
smiling.

Natasha quietly repeated her question, and her face and whole manner
were so serious, though she was still holding the ends of her
handkerchief, that the major ceased smiling and after some reflection--
as if considering in how far the thing was possible--replied in the
affirmative.

"Oh yes, why not? They may," he said.

With a slight inclination of her head, Natasha stepped back quickly to
Mavra Kuzminichna, who stood talking compassionately to the officer.

"They may. He says they may!" whispered Natasha.

The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostovs' yard, and
dozens of carts with wounded men began at the invitation of the
townsfolk to turn into the yards and to draw up at the entrances of the
houses in Povarskaya Street. Natasha was evidently pleased to be dealing
with new people outside the ordinary routine of her life. She and Mavra
Kuzminichna tried to get as many of the wounded as possible into their
yard.

"Your Papa must be told, though," said Mavra Kuzminichna.

"Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one day we can move
into the drawing room. They can have all our half of the house."

"There now, young lady, you do take things into your head! Even if we
put them into the wing, the men's room, or the nurse's room, we must ask
permission."

"Well, I'll ask."

Natasha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through the half-open door
into the sitting room, where there was a smell of vinegar and Hoffman's
drops.

"Are you asleep, Mamma?"

"Oh, what sleep-?" said the countess, waking up just as she was dropping
into a doze.

"Mamma darling!" said Natasha, kneeling by her mother and bringing her
face close to her mother's, "I am sorry, forgive me, I'll never do it
again; I woke you up! Mavra Kuzminichna has sent me: they have brought
some wounded here--officers. Will you let them come? They have nowhere
to go. I knew you'd let them come!" she said quickly all in one breath.

"What officers? Whom have they brought? I don't understand anything
about it," said the countess.

Natasha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.

"I knew you'd give permission... so I'll tell them," and, having kissed
her mother, Natasha got up and went to the door.

In the hall she met her father, who had returned with bad news.

"We've stayed too long!" said the count with involuntary vexation. "The
club is closed and the police are leaving."

"Papa, is it all right--I've invited some of the wounded into the
house?" said Natasha.

"Of course it is," he answered absently. "That's not the point. I beg
you not to indulge in trifles now, but to help to pack, and tomorrow we
must go, go, go!...."

And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo and the servants.

At dinner Petya having returned home told them the news he had heard. He
said the people had been getting arms in the Kremlin, and that though
Rostopchin's broadsheet had said that he would sound a call two or three
days in advance, the order had certainly already been given for everyone
to go armed to the Three Hills tomorrow, and that there would be a big
battle there.

The countess looked with timid horror at her son's eager, excited face
as he said this. She realized that if she said a word about his not
going to the battle (she knew he enjoyed the thought of the impending
engagement) he would say something about men, honor, and the fatherland-
-something senseless, masculine, and obstinate which there would be no
contradicting, and her plans would be spoiled; and so, hoping to arrange
to leave before then and take Petya with her as their protector and
defender, she did not answer him, but after dinner called the count
aside and implored him with tears to take her away quickly, that very
night if possible. With a woman's involuntary loving cunning she, who
till then had not shown any alarm, said that she would die of fright if
they did not leave that very night. Without any pretense she was now
afraid of everything.




CHAPTER XIV

Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter, increased the
countess' fears still more by telling what she had seen at a spirit
dealer's in Myasnitski Street. When returning by that street she had
been unable to pass because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of the
shop. She had taken a cab and driven home by a side street and the
cabman had told her that the people were breaking open the barrels at
the drink store, having received orders to do so.

After dinner the whole Rostov household set to work with enthusiastic
haste packing their belongings and preparing for their departure. The
old count, suddenly setting to work, kept passing from the yard to the
house and back again, shouting confused instructions to the hurrying
people, and flurrying them still more. Petya directed things in the
yard. Sonya, owing to the count's contradictory orders, lost her head
and did not know what to do. The servants ran noisily about the house
and yard, shouting and disputing. Natasha, with the ardor characteristic
of all she did suddenly set to work too. At first her intervention in
the business of packing was received skeptically. Everybody expected
some prank from her and did not wish to obey her; but she resolutely and
passionately demanded obedience, grew angry and nearly cried because
they did not heed her, and at last succeeded in making them believe her.
Her first exploit, which cost her immense effort and established her
authority, was the packing of the carpets. The count had valuable
Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the house. When Natasha set to
work two cases were standing open in the ballroom, one almost full up
with crockery, the other with carpets. There was also much china
standing on the tables, and still more was being brought in from the
storeroom. A third case was needed and servants had gone to fetch it.

"Sonya, wait a bit--we'll pack everything into these," said Natasha.

"You can't, Miss, we have tried to," said the butler's assistant.

"No, wait a minute, please."

And Natasha began rapidly taking out of the case dishes and plates
wrapped in paper.

"The dishes must go in here among the carpets," said she.

"Why, it's a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into three cases,"
said the butler's assistant.

"Oh, wait, please!" And Natasha began rapidly and deftly sorting out the
things. "These aren't needed," said she, putting aside some plates of
Kiev ware. "These--yes, these must go among the carpets," she said,
referring to the Saxony china dishes.

"Don't, Natasha! Leave it alone! We'll get it all packed," urged Sonya
reproachfully.

"What a young lady she is!" remarked the major-domo.

But Natasha would not give in. She turned everything out and began
quickly repacking, deciding that the inferior Russian carpets and
unnecessary crockery should not be taken at all. When everything had
been taken out of the cases, they recommenced packing, and it turned out
that when the cheaper things not worth taking had nearly all been
rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into the two cases. Only
the lid of the case containing the carpets would not shut down. A few
more things might have been taken out, but Natasha insisted on having
her own way. She packed, repacked, pressed, made the butler's assistant
and Petya--whom she had drawn into the business of packing--press on the
lid, and made desperate efforts herself.

"That's enough, Natasha," said Sonya. "I see you were right, but just
take out the top one."

"I won't!" cried Natasha, with one hand holding back the hair that hung
over her perspiring face, while with the other she pressed down the
carpets. "Now press, Petya! Press, Vasilich, press hard!" she cried.

The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natasha, clapping her hands,
screamed with delight and tears fell from her eyes. But this only lasted
a moment. She at once set to work afresh and they now trusted her
completely. The count was not angry even when they told him that Natasha
had countermanded an order of his, and the servants now came to her to
ask whether a cart was sufficiently loaded, and whether it might be
corded up. Thanks to Natasha's directions the work now went on
expeditiously, unnecessary things were left, and the most valuable
packed as compactly as possible.

But hard as they all worked till quite late that night, they could not
get everything packed. The countess had fallen asleep and the count,
having put off their departure till next morning, went to bed.

Sonya and Natasha slept in the sitting room without undressing.

That night another wounded man was driven down the Povarskaya, and Mavra
Kuzminichna, who was standing at the gate, had him brought into the
Rostovs' yard. Mavra Kuzminichna concluded that he was a very important
man. He was being conveyed in a caleche with a raised hood, and was
quite covered by an apron. On the box beside the driver sat a venerable
old attendant. A doctor and two soldiers followed the carriage in a
cart.

"Please come in here. The masters are going away and the whole house
will be empty," said the old woman to the old attendant.

"Well, perhaps," said he with a sigh. "We don't expect to get him home
alive! We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it's a long way from
here, and there's nobody living in it."

"Do us the honor to come in, there's plenty of everything in the
master's house. Come in," said Mavra Kuzminichna. "Is he very ill?" she
asked.

The attendant made a hopeless gesture.

"We don't expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor."

And the old servant got down from the box and went up to the cart.

"All right!" said the doctor.

The old servant returned to the caleche, looked into it, shook his head
disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and stopped
beside Mavra Kuzminichna.

"O, Lord Jesus Christ!" she murmured.

She invited them to take the wounded man into the house.

"The masters won't object..." she said.

But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so they took him
into the wing and put him in the room that had been Madame Schoss'.

This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkonski.




CHAPTER XV

Moscow's last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn day, a Sunday.
The church bells everywhere were ringing for service, just as usual on
Sundays. Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the city.

Only two things indicated the social condition of Moscow--the rabble,
that is the poor people, and the price of commodities. An enormous crowd
of factory hands, house serfs, and peasants, with whom some officials,
seminarists, and gentry were mingled, had gone early that morning to the
Three Hills. Having waited there for Rostopchin who did not turn up,
they became convinced that Moscow would be surrendered, and then
dispersed all about the town to the public houses and cookshops. Prices
too that day indicated the state of affairs. The price of weapons, of
gold, of carts and horses, kept rising, but the value of paper money and
city articles kept falling, so that by midday there were instances of
carters removing valuable goods, such as cloth, and receiving in payment
a half of what they carted, while peasant horses were fetching five
hundred rubles each, and furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being
given away for nothing.

In the Rostovs' staid old-fashioned house the dissolution of former
conditions of life was but little noticeable. As to the serfs the only
indication was that three out of their huge retinue disappeared during
the night, but nothing was stolen; and as to the value of their
possessions, the thirty peasant carts that had come in from their
estates and which many people envied proved to be extremely valuable and
they were offered enormous sums of money for them. Not only were huge
sums offered for the horses and carts, but on the previous evening and
early in the morning of the first of September, orderlies and servants
sent by wounded officers came to the Rostovs' and wounded men dragged
themselves there from the Rostovs' and from neighboring houses where
they were accommodated, entreating the servants to try to get them a
lift out of Moscow. The major-domo to whom these entreaties were
addressed, though he was sorry for the wounded, resolutely refused,
saying that he dare not even mention the matter to the count. Pity these
wounded men as one might, it was evident that if they were given one
cart there would be no reason to refuse another, or all the carts and
one's own carriages as well. Thirty carts could not save all the wounded
and in the general catastrophe one could not disregard oneself and one's
own family. So thought the major-domo on his master's behalf.

On waking up that morning Count Ilya Rostov left his bedroom softly, so
as not to wake the countess who had fallen asleep only toward morning,
and came out to the porch in his lilac silk dressing gown. In the yard
stood the carts ready corded. The carriages were at the front porch. The
major-domo stood at the porch talking to an elderly orderly and to a
pale young officer with a bandaged arm. On seeing the count the major-
domo made a significant and stern gesture to them both to go away.

"Well, Vasilich, is everything ready?" asked the count, and stroking his
bald head he looked good-naturedly at the officer and the orderly and
nodded to them. (He liked to see new faces.)

"We can harness at once, your excellency."

"Well, that's right. As soon as the countess wakes we'll be off, God
willing! What is it, gentlemen?" he added, turning to the officer. "Are
you staying in my house?"

The officer came nearer and suddenly his face flushed crimson.

"Count, be so good as to allow me... for God's sake, to get into some
corner of one of your carts! I have nothing here with me.... I shall be
all right on a loaded cart..."

Before the officer had finished speaking the orderly made the same
request on behalf of his master.

"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" said the count hastily. "I shall be very pleased,
very pleased. Vasilich, you'll see to it. Just unload one or two carts.
Well, what of it... do what's necessary..." said the count, muttering
some indefinite order.

But at the same moment an expression of warm gratitude on the officer's
face had already sealed the order. The count looked around him. In the
yard, at the gates, at the window of the wings, wounded officers and
their orderlies were to be seen. They were all looking at the count and
moving toward the porch.

"Please step into the gallery, your excellency," said the major-domo.
"What are your orders about the pictures?"

The count went into the house with him, repeating his order not to
refuse the wounded who asked for a lift.

"Well, never mind, some of the things can be unloaded," he added in a
soft, confidential voice, as though afraid of being overheard.

At nine o'clock the countess woke up, and Matrena Timofeevna, who had
been her lady's maid before her marriage and now performed a sort of
chief gendarme's duty for her, came to say that Madame Schoss was much
offended and the young ladies' summer dresses could not be left behind.
On inquiry, the countess learned that Madame Schoss was offended because
her trunk had been taken down from its cart, and all the loads were
being uncorded and the luggage taken out of the carts to make room for
wounded men whom the count in the simplicity of his heart had ordered
that they should take with them. The countess sent for her husband.

"What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being unloaded."

"You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess dear... an officer
came to me to ask for a few carts for the wounded. After all, ours are
things that can be bought but think what being left behind means to
them!... Really now, in our own yard--we asked them in ourselves and
there are officers among them.... You know, I think, my dear... let them
be taken... where's the hurry?"

The count spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money matters.
The countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of news of
something detrimental to the children's interests, such as the building
of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a private theater
or an orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose anything announced
in that timid tone and considered it her duty to do so.

She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said to her husband:
"Listen to me, Count, you have managed matters so that we are getting
nothing for the house, and now you wish to throw away all our--all the
children's property! You said yourself that we have a hundred thousand
rubles' worth of things in the house. I don't consent, my dear, I don't!
Do as you please! It's the government's business to look after the
wounded; they know that. Look at the Lopukhins opposite, they cleared
out everything two days ago. That's what other people do. It's only we
who are such fools. If you have no pity on me, have some for the
children."

Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room without
replying.

"Papa, what are you doing that for?" asked Natasha, who had followed him
into her mother's room.

"Nothing! What business is it of yours?" muttered the count angrily.

"But I heard," said Natasha. "Why does Mamma object?"

"What business is it of yours?" cried the count.

Natasha stepped up to the window and pondered.

"Papa! Here's Berg coming to see us," said she, looking out of the
window.




CHAPTER XVI

Berg, the Rostovs' son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the orders
of Vladimir and Anna, and he still filled the quiet and agreeable post
of assistant to the head of the staff of the assistant commander of the
first division of the Second Army.

On the first of September he had come to Moscow from the army.

He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed that everyone in the
army was asking for leave to visit Moscow and had something to do there.
So he considered it necessary to ask for leave of absence for family and
domestic reasons.

Berg drove up to his father-in-law's house in his spruce little trap
with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like those of a certain prince. He
looked attentively at the carts in the yard and while going up to the
porch took out a clean pocket handkerchief and tied a knot in it.

From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though impatient steps into the
drawing room, where he embraced the count, kissed the hands of Natasha
and Sonya, and hastened to inquire after "Mamma's" health.

"Health, at a time like this?" said the count. "Come, tell us the news!
Is the army retreating or will there be another battle?"

"God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our fatherland, Papa," said
Berg. "The army is burning with a spirit of heroism and the leaders, so
to say, have now assembled in council. No one knows what is coming. But
in general I can tell you, Papa, that such a heroic spirit, the truly
antique valor of the Russian army, which they--which it" (he corrected
himself) "has shown or displayed in the battle of the twenty-sixth--
there are no words worthy to do it justice! I tell you, Papa" (he smote
himself on the breast as a general he had heard speaking had done, but
Berg did it a trifle late for he should have struck his breast at the
words "Russian army"), "I tell you frankly that we, the commanders, far
from having to urge the men on or anything of that kind, could hardly
restrain those... those... yes, those exploits of antique valor," he
went on rapidly. "General Barclay de Tolly risked his life everywhere at
the head of the troops, I can assure you. Our corps was stationed on a
hillside. You can imagine!"

And Berg related all that he remembered of the various tales he had
heard those days. Natasha watched him with an intent gaze that confused
him, as if she were trying to find in his face the answer to some
question.

"Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the Russian warriors cannot
be imagined or adequately praised!" said Berg, glancing round at
Natasha, and as if anxious to conciliate her, replying to her intent
look with a smile. "'Russia is not in Moscow, she lives in the hearts of
her sons!' Isn't it so, Papa?" said he.

Just then the countess came in from the sitting room with a weary and
dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly jumped up, kissed her hand,
asked about her health, and, swaying his head from side to side to
express sympathy, remained standing beside her.

"Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard and sad times for
every Russian. But why are you so anxious? You have still time to get
away...."

"I can't think what the servants are about," said the countess, turning
to her husband. "I have just been told that nothing is ready yet.
Somebody after all must see to things. One misses Mitenka at such times.
There won't be any end to it."

The count was about to say something, but evidently restrained himself.
He got up from his chair and went to the door.

At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to blow his nose
and, seeing the knot in it, pondered, shaking his head sadly and
significantly.

"And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa," said he.

"Hm..." said the count, and stopped.

"I was driving past Yusupov's house just now," said Berg with a laugh,
"when the steward, a man I know, ran out and asked me whether I wouldn't
buy something. I went in out of curiosity, you know, and there is a
small chiffonier and a dressing table. You know how dear Vera wanted a
chiffonier like that and how we had a dispute about it." (At the mention
of the chiffonier and dressing table Berg involuntarily changed his tone
to one of pleasure at his admirable domestic arrangements.) "And it's
such a beauty! It pulls out and has a secret English drawer, you know!
And dear Vera has long wanted one. I wish to give her a surprise, you
see. I saw so many of those peasant carts in your yard. Please let me
have one, I will pay the man well, and..."

The count frowned and coughed.

"Ask the countess, I don't give orders."

"If it's inconvenient, please don't," said Berg. "Only I so wanted it,
for dear Vera's sake."

"Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the devil..."
cried the old count. "My head's in a whirl!"

And he left the room. The countess began to cry.

"Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!" said Berg.

Natasha left the room with her father and, as if finding it difficult to
reach some decision, first followed him and then ran downstairs.

Petya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the servants
who were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still standing in the
yard. Two of them had been uncorded and a wounded officer was climbing
into one of them helped by an orderly.

"Do you know what it's about?" Petya asked Natasha.

She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling about.
She did not answer.

"It's because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the wounded," said
Petya. "Vasilich told me. I consider..."

"I consider," Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry face to
Petya, "I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I don't know what.
Are we despicable Germans?"

Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening and
letting the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed
headlong up the stairs.

Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the respectful
attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was pacing up and down
the room, when Natasha, her face distorted by anger, burst in like a
tempest and approached her mother with rapid steps.

"It's horrid! It's abominable!" she screamed. "You can't possibly have
ordered it!"

Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The count
stood still at the window and listened.

"Mamma, it's impossible: see what is going on in the yard!" she cried.
"They will be left!..."

"What's the matter with you? Who are 'they'? What do you want?"

"Why, the wounded! It's impossible, Mamma. It's monstrous!... No, Mamma
darling, it's not the thing. Please forgive me, darling.... Mamma, what
does it matter what we take away? Only look what is going on in the
yard... Mamma!... It's impossible!"

The count stood by the window and listened without turning round.
Suddenly he sniffed and put his face closer to the window.

The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full of shame for her
mother, saw her agitation, and understood why her husband did not turn
to look at her now, and she glanced round quite disconcerted.

"Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?" she said, not surrendering
at once.

"Mamma, darling, forgive me!"

But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up to her husband.

"My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don't understand about
it," said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly.

"The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen," muttered the count through
tears of joy, and he embraced his wife who was glad to hide her look of
shame on his breast.

"Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?..." asked Natasha. "We will still
take all the most necessary things."

The count nodded affirmatively, and Natasha, at the rapid pace at which
she used to run when playing at tag, ran through the ballroom to the
anteroom and downstairs into the yard.

The servants gathered round Natasha, but could not believe the strange
order she brought them until the count himself, in his wife's name,
confirmed the order to give up all the carts to the wounded and take the
trunks to the storerooms. When they understood that order the servants
set to work at this new task with pleasure and zeal. It no longer seemed
strange to them but on the contrary it seemed the only thing that could
be done, just as a quarter of an hour before it had not seemed strange
to anyone that the wounded should be left behind and the goods carted
away but that had seemed the only thing to do.

The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner, set
eagerly to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the carts. The
wounded dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood with pale but
happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to be had spread
to the neighboring houses, from which wounded men began to come into the
Rostovs' yard. Many of the wounded asked them not to unload the carts
but only to let them sit on the top of the things. But the work of
unloading, once started, could not be arrested. It seemed not to matter
whether all or only half the things were left behind. Cases full of
china, bronzes, pictures, and mirrors that had been so carefully packed
the night before now lay about the yard, and still they went on
searching for and finding possibilities of unloading this or that and
letting the wounded have another and yet another cart.

"We can take four more men," said the steward. "They can have my trap,
or else what is to become of them?"

"Let them have my wardrobe cart," said the countess. "Dunyasha can go
with me in the carriage."

They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take wounded men from a
house two doors off. The whole household, servants included, was bright
and animated. Natasha was in a state of rapturous excitement such as she
had not known for a long time.

"What could we fasten this onto?" asked the servants, trying to fix a
trunk on the narrow footboard behind a carriage. "We must keep at least
one cart."

"What's in it?" asked Natasha.

"The count's books."

"Leave it, Vasilich will put it away. It's not wanted."

The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt as to where Count
Peter could sit.

"On the box. You'll sit on the box, won't you, Petya?" cried Natasha.

Sonya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was quite
different from Natasha's. She was putting away the things that had to be
left behind and making a list of them as the countess wished, and she
tried to get as much taken away with them as possible.




CHAPTER XVII

Before two o'clock in the afternoon the Rostovs' four carriages, packed
full and with the horses harnessed, stood at the front door. One by one
the carts with the wounded had moved out of the yard.

The caleche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sonya's
attention as it passed the front porch. With the help of a maid she was
arranging a seat for the countess in the huge high coach that stood at
the entrance.

"Whose caleche is that?" she inquired, leaning out of the carriage
window.

"Why, didn't you know, Miss?" replied the maid. "The wounded prince: he
spent the night in our house and is going with us."

"But who is it? What's his name?"

"It's our intended that was--Prince Bolkonski himself! They say he is
dying," replied the maid with a sigh.

Sonya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess. The countess,
tired out and already dressed in shawl and bonnet for her journey, was
pacing up and down the drawing room, waiting for the household to
assemble for the usual silent prayer with closed doors before starting.
Natasha was not in the room.

"Mamma," said Sonya, "Prince Andrew is here, mortally wounded. He is
going with us."

The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sonya's arm, glanced
around.

"Natasha?" she murmured.

At that moment this news had only one significance for both of them.
They knew their Natasha, and alarm as to what would happen if she heard
this news stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked.

"Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us," said Sonya.

"You say he is dying?"

Sonya nodded.

The countess put her arms around Sonya and began to cry.

"The ways of God are past finding out!" she thought, feeling that the
Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was becoming manifest in all that was
now taking place.

"Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What's the matter?" asked Natasha, as
with animated face she ran into the room.

"Nothing," answered the countess. "If everything is ready let us start."

And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face. Sonya
embraced Natasha and kissed her.

Natasha looked at her inquiringly.

"What is it? What has happened?"

"Nothing... No..."

"Is it something very bad for me? What is it?" persisted Natasha with
her quick intuition.

Sonya sighed and made no reply. The count, Petya, Madame Schoss, Mavra
Kuzminichna, and Vasilich came into the drawing room and, having closed
the doors, they all sat down and remained for some moments silently
seated without looking at one another.

The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh crossed himself
before the icon. All the others did the same. Then the count embraced
Mavra Kuzminichna and Vasilich, who were to remain in Moscow, and while
they caught at his hand and kissed his shoulder he patted their backs
lightly with some vaguely affectionate and comforting words. The
countess went into the oratory and there Sonya found her on her knees
before the icons that had been left here and there hanging on the wall.
(The most precious ones, with which some family tradition was connected,
were being taken with them.)

In the porch and in the yard the men whom Petya had armed with swords
and daggers, with trousers tucked inside their high boots and with belts
and girdles tightened, were taking leave of those remaining behind.

As is always the case at a departure, much had been forgotten or put in
the wrong place, and for a long time two menservants stood one on each
side of the open door and the carriage steps waiting to help the
countess in, while maids rushed with cushions and bundles from the house
to the carriages, the caleche, the phaeton, and back again.

"They always will forget everything!" said the countess. "Don't you know
I can't sit like that?"

And Dunyasha, with clenched teeth, without replying but with an
aggrieved look on her face, hastily got into the coach to rearrange the
seat.

"Oh, those servants!" said the count, swaying his head.

Efim, the old coachman, who was the only one the countess trusted to
drive her, sat perched up high on the box and did not so much as glance
round at what was going on behind him. From thirty years' experience he
knew it would be some time yet before the order, "Be off, in God's
name!" would be given him: and he knew that even when it was said he
would be stopped once or twice more while they sent back to fetch
something that had been forgotten, and even after that he would again be
stopped and the countess herself would lean out of the window and beg
him for the love of heaven to drive carefully down the hill. He knew all
this and therefore waited calmly for what would happen, with more
patience than the horses, especially the near one, the chestnut Falcon,
who was pawing the ground and champing his bit. At last all were seated,
the carriage steps were folded and pulled up, the door was shut,
somebody was sent for a traveling case, and the countess leaned out and
said what she had to say. Then Efim deliberately doffed his hat and
began crossing himself. The postilion and all the other servants did the
same. "Off, in God's name!" said Efim, putting on his hat. "Start!" The
postilion started the horses, the off pole horse tugged at his collar,
the high springs creaked, and the body of the coach swayed. The footman
sprang onto the box of the moving coach which jolted as it passed out of
the yard onto the uneven roadway; the other vehicles jolted in their
turn, and the procession of carriages moved up the street. In the
carriages, the caleche, and the phaeton, all crossed themselves as they
passed the church opposite the house. Those who were to remain in Moscow
walked on either side of the vehicles seeing the travelers off.

Rarely had Natasha experienced so joyful a feeling as now, sitting in
the carriage beside the countess and gazing at the slowly receding walls
of forsaken, agitated Moscow. Occasionally she leaned out of the
carriage window and looked back and then forward at the long train of
wounded in front of them. Almost at the head of the line she could see
the raised hood of Prince Andrew's caleche. She did not know who was in
it, but each time she looked at the procession her eyes sought that
caleche. She knew it was right in front.

In Kudrino, from the Nikitski, Presnya, and Podnovinsk Streets came
several other trains of vehicles similar to the Rostovs', and as they
passed along the Sadovaya Street the carriages and carts formed two rows
abreast.

As they were going round the Sukharev water tower Natasha, who was
inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the people driving or walking
past, suddenly cried out in joyful surprise:

"Dear me! Mamma, Sonya, look, it's he!"

"Who? Who?"

"Look! Yes, on my word, it's Bezukhov!" said Natasha, putting her head
out of the carriage and staring at a tall, stout man in a coachman's
long coat, who from his manner of walking and moving was evidently a
gentleman in disguise, and who was passing under the arch of the
Sukharev tower accompanied by a small, sallow-faced, beardless old man
in a frieze coat.

"Yes, it really is Bezukhov in a coachman's coat, with a queer-looking
old boy. Really," said Natasha, "look, look!"

"No, it's not he. How can you talk such nonsense?"

"Mamma," screamed Natasha, "I'll stake my head it's he! I assure you!
Stop, stop!" she cried to the coachman.

But the coachman could not stop, for from the Meshchanski Street came
more carts and carriages, and the Rostovs were being shouted at to move
on and not block the way.

In fact, however, though now much farther off than before, the Rostovs
all saw Pierre--or someone extraordinarily like him--in a coachman's
coat, going down the street with head bent and a serious face beside a
small, beardless old man who looked like a footman. That old man noticed
a face thrust out of the carriage window gazing at them, and
respectfully touching Pierre's elbow said something to him and pointed
to the carriage. Pierre, evidently engrossed in thought, could not at
first understand him. At length when he had understood and looked in the
direction the old man indicated, he recognized Natasha, and following
his first impulse stepped instantly and rapidly toward the coach. But
having taken a dozen steps he seemed to remember something and stopped.

Natasha's face, leaning out of the window, beamed with quizzical
kindliness.

"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you! This is
wonderful!" she cried, holding out her hand to him. "What are you doing?
Why are you like this?"

Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it awkwardly as he walked
along beside her while the coach still moved on.

"What is the matter, Count?" asked the countess in a surprised and
commiserating tone.

"What? What? Why? Don't ask me," said Pierre, and looked round at
Natasha whose radiant, happy expression--of which he was conscious
without looking at her--filled him with enchantment.

"Are you remaining in Moscow, then?"

Pierre hesitated.

"In Moscow?" he said in a questioning tone. "Yes, in Moscow. Good-bye!"

"Ah, if only I were a man! I'd certainly stay with you. How splendid!"
said Natasha. "Mamma, if you'll let me, I'll stay!"

Pierre glanced absently at Natasha and was about to say something, but
the countess interrupted him.

"You were at the battle, we heard."

"Yes, I was," Pierre answered. "There will be another battle
tomorrow..." he began, but Natasha interrupted him.

"But what is the matter with you, Count? You are not like yourself...."

"Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me! I don't know myself. Tomorrow... But
no! Good-bye, good-by!" he muttered. "It's an awful time!" and dropping
behind the carriage he stepped onto the pavement.

Natasha continued to lean out of the window for a long time, beaming at
him with her kindly, slightly quizzical, happy smile.




CHAPTER XVIII

For the last two days, ever since leaving home, Pierre had been living
in the empty house of his deceased benefactor, Bazdeev. This is how it
happened.

When he woke up on the morning after his return to Moscow and his
interview with Count Rostopchin, he could not for some time make out
where he was and what was expected of him. When he was informed that
among others awaiting him in his reception room there was a Frenchman
who had brought a letter from his wife, the Countess Helene, he felt
suddenly overcome by that sense of confusion and hopelessness to which
he was apt to succumb. He felt that everything was now at an end, all
was in confusion and crumbling to pieces, that nobody was right or
wrong, the future held nothing, and there was no escape from this
position. Smiling unnaturally and muttering to himself, he first sat
down on the sofa in an attitude of despair, then rose, went to the door
of the reception room and peeped through the crack, returned flourishing
his arms, and took up a book. His major-domo came in a second time to
say that the Frenchman who had brought the letter from the countess was
very anxious to see him if only for a minute, and that someone from
Bazdeev's widow had called to ask Pierre to take charge of her husband's
books, as she herself was leaving for the country.

"Oh, yes, in a minute; wait... or no! No, of course... go and say I will
come directly," Pierre replied to the major-domo.

But as soon as the man had left the room Pierre took up his hat which
was lying on the table and went out of his study by the other door.
There was no one in the passage. He went along the whole length of this
passage to the stairs and, frowning and rubbing his forehead with both
hands, went down as far as the first landing. The hall porter was
standing at the front door. From the landing where Pierre stood there
was a second staircase leading to the back entrance. He went down that
staircase and out into the yard. No one had seen him. But there were
some carriages waiting, and as soon as Pierre stepped out of the gate
the coachmen and the yard porter noticed him and raised their caps to
him. When he felt he was being looked at he behaved like an ostrich
which hides its head in a bush in order not to be seen: he hung his head
and quickening his pace went down the street.

Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of Joseph
Bazdeev's books and papers appeared to him the most necessary.

He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go to the
Patriarch's Ponds, where the widow Bazdeev's house was.

Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded carts that were
making their way from all sides out of Moscow, and balancing his bulky
body so as not to slip out of the ramshackle old vehicle, Pierre,
experiencing the joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school, began to
talk to his driver.

The man told him that arms were being distributed today at the Kremlin
and that tomorrow everyone would be sent out beyond the Three Hills
gates and a great battle would be fought there.

Having reached the Patriarch's Ponds Pierre found the Bazdeevs' house,
where he had not been for a long time past. He went up to the gate.
Gerasim, that sallow beardless old man Pierre had seen at Torzhok five
years before with Joseph Bazdeev, came out in answer to his knock.

"At home?" asked Pierre.

"Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danilovna has gone to the
Torzhok estate with the children, your excellency."

"I will come in all the same, I have to look through the books," said
Pierre.

"Be so good as to step in. Makar Alexeevich, the brother of my late
master--may the kingdom of heaven be his--has remained here, but he is
in a weak state as you know," said the old servant.

Pierre knew that Makar Alexeevich was Joseph Bazdeev's half-insane
brother and a hard drinker.

"Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in..." said Pierre and entered the house.

A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a dressing gown and
with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in the anteroom. On seeing Pierre
he muttered something angrily and went away along the passage.

"He was a very clever man but has now grown quite feeble, as your honor
sees," said Gerasim. "Will you step into the study?" Pierre nodded. "As
it was sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia Danilovna gave orders
that if anyone should come from you they were to have the books."

Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had entered with such
trepidation in his benefactor's lifetime. The room, dusty and untouched
since the death of Joseph Bazdeev was now even gloomier.

Gerasim opened one of the shutters and left the room on tiptoe. Pierre
went round the study, approached the cupboard in which the manuscripts
were kept, and took out what had once been one of the most important,
the holy of holies of the order. This was the authentic Scotch Acts with
Bazdeev's notes and explanations. He sat down at the dusty writing
table, and, having laid the manuscripts before him, opened them out,
closed them, finally pushed them away, and resting his head on his hand
sank into meditation.

Gerasim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw Pierre
always sitting in the same attitude.

More than two hours passed and Gerasim took the liberty of making a
slight noise at the door to attract his attention, but Pierre did not
hear him.

"Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?"

"Oh yes!" said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly. "Look
here," he added, taking Gerasim by a button of his coat and looking down
at the old man with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, "I say, do you
know that there is going to be a battle tomorrow?"

"We heard so," replied the man.

"I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you."

"Yes, your excellency," replied Gerasim. "Will you have something to
eat?"

"No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a pistol,"
said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.

"Yes, your excellency," said Gerasim after thinking for a moment.

All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor's study,
and Gerasim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to another and
talking to himself. And he spent the night on a bed made up for him
there.

Gerasim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange things,
accepted Pierre's taking up his residence in the house without surprise,
and seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same evening--
without even asking himself what they were wanted for--he procured a
coachman's coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him the pistol
next day. Makar Alexeevich came twice that evening shuffling along in
his galoshes as far as the door and stopped and looked ingratiatingly at
Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward him he wrapped his dressing
gown around him with a shamefaced and angry look and hurried away. It
was when Pierre (wearing the coachman's coat which Gerasim had procured
for him and had disinfected by steam) was on his way with the old man to
buy the pistol at the Sukharev market that he met the Rostovs.




CHAPTER XIX

Kutuzov's order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road was issued
at night on the first of September.

The first troops started at once, and during the night they marched
slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those nearing
the town at the Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of them masses of soldiers
crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the opposite side
and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless masses of troops were
bearing down on them from behind, and an unreasoning hurry and alarm
overcame them. They all rushed forward to the bridge, onto it, and to
the fords and the boats. Kutuzov himself had driven round by side
streets to the other side of Moscow.

By ten o'clock in the morning of the second of September, only the rear
guard remained in the Dorogomilov suburb, where they had ample room. The
main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.

At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September,
Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklonny Hill looking at
the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August to
the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodino to the
entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating,
memorable week, there had been the extraordinary autumn weather that
always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat
than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear
atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and
refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights are
warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and
delight us continually by falling from the sky.

At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather still
held.

The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the Poklonny
Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens, and her
churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her cupolas
glittering like stars in the sunlight.

The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as he
had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious and
uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that has
no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full force
of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a distance,
distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the Poklonny
Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as it were, the
breathing of that great and beautiful body.

Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every
foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the
mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.

"Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises, Moscou la sainte. La
voila done enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il etait temps," * said he, and
dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before him, and
summoned Lelorgne d'Ideville, the interpreter.


* "That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy Moscow! Here it
is then at last, that famous city. It was high time."

"A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her honor,"
thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at Smolensk). From that point of
view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen before. It seemed
strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had seemed unattainable,
had at last been realized. In the clear morning light he gazed now at
the city and now at the plan, considering its details, and the assurance
of possessing it agitated and awed him.

"But could it be otherwise?" he thought. "Here is this capital at my
feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange,
beautiful, and majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In what
light must I appear to them!" thought he, thinking of his troops. "Here
she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men," he reflected,
glancing at those near him and at the troops who were approaching and
forming up. "One word from me, one movement of my hand, and that ancient
capital of the Tsars would perish. But my clemency is always ready to
descend upon the vanquished. I must be magnanimous and truly great. But
no, it can't be true that I am in Moscow," he suddenly thought. "Yet
here she is lying at my feet, with her golden domes and crosses
scintillating and twinkling in the sunshine. But I shall spare her. On
the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great
words of justice and mercy.... It is just this which Alexander will feel
most painfully, I know him." (It seemed to Napoleon that the chief
import of what was taking place lay in the personal struggle between
himself and Alexander.) "From the height of the Kremlin--yes, there is
the Kremlin, yes--I will give them just laws; I will teach them the
meaning of true civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember
their conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not,
and do not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false
policy of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and that in
Moscow I will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people. I
do not wish to utilize the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored
monarch. 'Boyars,' I will say to them, 'I do not desire war, I desire
the peace and welfare of all my subjects.' However, I know their
presence will inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do:
clearly, impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in
Moscow? Yes, there she lies."

"Qu'on m'amene les boyars," * said he to his suite.


* "Bring the boyars to me."

A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch the
boyars.

Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing in the
same place on the Poklonny Hill awaiting the deputation. His speech to
the boyars had already taken definite shape in his imagination. That
speech was full of dignity and greatness as Napoleon understood it.

He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended to
adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed days for assemblies
at the palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and his own would
mingle. He mentally appointed a governor, one who would win the hearts
of the people. Having learned that there were many charitable
institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that he would shower favors
on them all. He thought that, as in Africa he had to put on a burnoose
and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must be beneficent like the Tsars.
And in order finally to touch the hearts of the Russians--and being like
all Frenchmen unable to imagine anything sentimental without a reference
to ma chere, ma tendre, ma pauvre mere * --he decided that he would
place an inscription on all these establishments in large letters: "This
establishment is dedicated to my dear mother." Or no, it should be
simply: Maison de ma Mere, *(2) he concluded. "But am I really in
Moscow? Yes, here it lies before me, but why is the deputation from the
city so long in appearing?" he wondered.


* "My dear, my tender, my poor mother."

* (2) "House of my Mother."

Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried on in whispers
among his generals and marshals at the rear of his suite. Those sent to
fetch the deputation had returned with the news that Moscow was empty,
that everyone had left it. The faces of those who were not conferring
together were pale and perturbed. They were not alarmed by the fact that
Moscow had been abandoned by its inhabitants (grave as that fact
seemed), but by the question how to tell the Emperor--without putting
him in the terrible position of appearing ridiculous--that he had been
awaiting the boyars so long in vain: that there were drunken mobs left
in Moscow but no one else. Some said that a deputation of some sort must
be scraped together, others disputed that opinion and maintained that
the Emperor should first be carefully and skillfully prepared, and then
told the truth.

"He will have to be told, all the same," said some gentlemen of the
suite. "But, gentlemen..."

The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating upon
his magnanimous plans, was pacing patiently up and down before the
outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from under
his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.

"But it's impossible..." declared the gentlemen of the suite, shrugging
their shoulders but not venturing to utter the implied word--le
ridicule...

At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor's instinct
suggesting to him that the sublime moment having been too long drawn out
was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a sign with his hand. A single
report of a signaling gun followed, and the troops, who were already
spread out on different sides of Moscow, moved into the city through
Tver, Kaluga, and Dorogomilov gates. Faster and faster, vying with one
another, they moved at the double or at a trot, vanishing amid the
clouds of dust they raised and making the air ring with a deafening roar
of mingling shouts.

Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode with them as far as
the Dorogomilov gate, but there again stopped and, dismounting from his
horse, paced for a long time by the Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting
the deputation.




CHAPTER XX

Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a
fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was empty.
It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.

In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance it
seems as much alive as other hives.

The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the midday
sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it smells of
honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same way. But one
has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no longer any
life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the smell and the sound
that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the beekeeper's tap on the
wall of the sick hive, instead of the former instant unanimous humming
of tens of thousands of bees with their abdomens threateningly
compressed, and producing by the rapid vibration of their wings an
aerial living sound, the only reply is a disconnected buzzing from
different parts of the deserted hive. From the alighting board, instead
of the former spirituous fragrant smell of honey and venom, and the warm
whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor of emptiness and decay mingling
with the smell of honey. There are no longer sentinels sounding the
alarm with their abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense of the
hive. There is no longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing activity,
like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant sounds of
disorder. In and out of the hive long black robber bees smeared with
honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do not sting, but crawl away from
danger. Formerly only bees laden with honey flew into the hive, and they
flew out empty; now they fly out laden. The beekeeper opens the lower
part of the hive and peers in. Instead of black, glossy bees--tamed by
toil, clinging to one another's legs and drawing out the wax, with a
ceaseless hum of labor--that used to hang in long clusters down to the
floor of the hive, drowsy shriveled bees crawl about separately in
various directions on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a
neatly glued floor, swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings,
there is a floor littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees
scarcely moving their legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared
away.

The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the super.
Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up every gap in the combs and
keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex structures of the
combs, but no longer in their former state of purity. All is neglected
and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and stealthily prowling about
the combs, and the short home bees, shriveled and listless as if they
were old, creep slowly about without trying to hinder the robbers,
having lost all motive and all sense of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps,
and butterflies knock awkwardly against the walls of the hive in their
flight. Here and there among the cells containing dead brood and honey
an angry buzzing can sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of
bees, by force of habit and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with
efforts beyond their strength laboriously drag away a dead bee or
bumblebee without knowing why they do it. In another corner two old bees
are languidly fighting, or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another,
without themselves knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile
intent. In a third place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack
some victim and fight and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or
killed, drops from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap
of corpses. The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine the
brood cells. In place of the former close dark circles formed by
thousands of bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery of
generation, he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of
bees. They have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they
had guarded and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death. Only
a few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the enemy's
hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are dead and fall
as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the hive, chalks a mark
on it, and when he has time tears out its contents and burns it clean.

So in the same way Moscow was empty when Napoleon, weary, uneasy, and
morose, paced up and down in front of the Kammer-Kollezski rampart,
awaiting what to his mind was a necessary, if but formal, observance of
the proprieties--a deputation.

In various corners of Moscow there still remained a few people aimlessly
moving about, following their old habits and hardly aware of what they
were doing.

When with due circumspection Napoleon was informed that Moscow was
empty, he looked angrily at his informant, turned away, and silently
continued to walk to and fro.

"My carriage!" he said.

He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into the
suburb. "Moscow deserted!" he said to himself. "What an incredible
event!"

He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in the Dorogomilov
suburb.

The coup de theatre had not come off.




CHAPTER XXI

The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o'clock at night
till two in the afternoon and bore away with them the wounded and the
last of the inhabitants who were leaving.

The greatest crush during the movement of the troops took place at the
Stone, Moskva, and Yauza bridges.

While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around the
Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the Stone bridges, a great many
soldiers, taking advantage of the stoppage and congestion, turned back
from the bridges and slipped stealthily and silently past the church of
Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski gate, back up the hill to
the Red Square where some instinct told them they could easily take
things not belonging to them. Crowds of the kind seen at cheap sales
filled all the passages and alleys of the Bazaar. But there were no
dealers with voices of ingratiating affability inviting customers to
enter; there were no hawkers, nor the usual motley crowd of female
purchasers--but only soldiers, in uniforms and overcoats though without
muskets, entering the Bazaar empty-handed and silently making their way
out through its passages with bundles. Tradesmen and their assistants
(of whom there were but few) moved about among the soldiers quite
bewildered. They unlocked their shops and locked them up again, and
themselves carried goods away with the help of their assistants. On the
square in front of the Bazaar were drummers beating the muster call. But
the roll of the drums did not make the looting soldiers run in the
direction of the drum as formerly, but made them, on the contrary, run
farther away. Among the soldiers in the shops and passages some men were
to be seen in gray coats, with closely shaven heads. Two officers, one
with a scarf over his uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse,
the other in an overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyinka
Street, talking. A third officer galloped up to them.

"The general orders them all to be driven out at once, without fail.
This is outrageous! Half the men have dispersed."

"Where are you off to?... Where?..." he shouted to three infantrymen
without muskets who, holding up the skirts of their overcoats, were
slipping past him into the Bazaar passage. "Stop, you rascals!"

"But how are you going to stop them?" replied another officer. "There is
no getting them together. The army should push on before the rest bolt,
that's all!"

"How can one push on? They are stuck there, wedged on the bridge, and
don't move. Shouldn't we put a cordon round to prevent the rest from
running away?"

"Come, go in there and drive them out!" shouted the senior officer.

The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer, and went with
him into the arcade. Some soldiers started running away in a group. A
shopkeeper with red pimples on his cheeks near the nose, and a calm,
persistent, calculating expression on his plump face, hurriedly and
ostentatiously approached the officer, swinging his arms.

"Your honor!" said he. "Be so good as to protect us! We won't grudge
trifles, you are welcome to anything--we shall be delighted! Pray!...
I'll fetch a piece of cloth at once for such an honorable gentleman, or
even two pieces with pleasure. For we feel how it is; but what's all
this--sheer robbery! If you please, could not guards be placed if only
to let us close the shop...."

Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.

"Eh, what twaddle!" said one of them, a thin, stern-looking man. "When
one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's hair! Take what any of you
like!" And flourishing his arm energetically he turned sideways to the
officer.

"It's all very well for you, Ivan Sidorych, to talk," said the first
tradesman angrily. "Please step inside, your honor!"

"Talk indeed!" cried the thin one. "In my three shops here I have a
hundred thousand rubles' worth of goods. Can they be saved when the army
has gone? Eh, what people! 'Against God's might our hands can't fight.'"

"Come inside, your honor!" repeated the tradesman, bowing.

The officer stood perplexed and his face showed indecision.

"It's not my business!" he exclaimed, and strode on quickly down one of
the passages.

From one open shop came the sound of blows and vituperation, and just as
the officer came up to it a man in a gray coat with a shaven head was
flung out violently.

This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and the officer. The
officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shops, but at that
moment fearful screams reached them from the huge crowd on the Moskva
bridge and the officer ran out into the square.

"What is it? What is it?" he asked, but his comrade was already
galloping off past Vasili the Beatified in the direction from which the
screams came.

The officer mounted his horse and rode after him. When he reached the
bridge he saw two unlimbered guns, the infantry crossing the bridge,
several overturned carts, and frightened and laughing faces among the
troops. Beside the cannon a cart was standing to which two horses were
harnessed. Four borzois with collars were pressing close to the wheels.
The cart was loaded high, and at the very top, beside a child's chair
with its legs in the air, sat a peasant woman uttering piercing and
desperate shrieks. He was told by his fellow officers that the screams
of the crowd and the shrieks of the woman were due to the fact that
General Ermolov, coming up to the crowd and learning that soldiers were
dispersing among the shops while crowds of civilians blocked the bridge,
had ordered two guns to be unlimbered and made a show of firing at the
bridge. The crowd, crushing one another, upsetting carts, and shouting
and squeezing desperately, had cleared off the bridge and the troops
were now moving forward.




CHAPTER XXII

Meanwhile, the city itself was deserted. There was hardly anyone in the
streets. The gates and shops were all closed, only here and there round
the taverns solitary shouts or drunken songs could be heard. Nobody
drove through the streets and footsteps were rarely heard. The
Povarskaya was quite still and deserted. The huge courtyard of the
Rostovs' house was littered with wisps of hay and with dung from the
horses, and not a soul was to be seen there. In the great drawing room
of the house, which had been left with all it contained, were two
people. They were the yard porter Ignat, and the page boy Mishka,
Vasilich's grandson who had stayed in Moscow with his grandfather.
Mishka had opened the clavichord and was strumming on it with one
finger. The yard porter, his arms akimbo, stood smiling with
satisfaction before the large mirror.

"Isn't it fine, eh, Uncle Ignat?" said the boy, suddenly beginning to
strike the keyboard with both hands.

"Only fancy!" answered Ignat, surprised at the broadening grin on his
face in the mirror.

"Impudence! Impudence!" they heard behind them the voice of Mavra
Kuzminichna who had entered silently. "How he's grinning, the fat mug!
Is that what you're here for? Nothing's cleared away down there and
Vasilich is worn out. Just you wait a bit!"

Ignat left off smiling, adjusted his belt, and went out of the room with
meekly downcast eyes.

"Aunt, I did it gently," said the boy.

"I'll give you something gently, you monkey you!" cried Mavra
Kuzminichna, raising her arm threateningly. "Go and get the samovar to
boil for your grandfather."

Mavra Kuzminichna flicked the dust off the clavichord and closed it, and
with a deep sigh left the drawing room and locked its main door.

Going out into the yard she paused to consider where she should go next-
-to drink tea in the servants' wing with Vasilich, or into the storeroom
to put away what still lay about.

She heard the sound of quick footsteps in the quiet street. Someone
stopped at the gate, and the latch rattled as someone tried to open it.
Mavra Kuzminichna went to the gate.

"Who do you want?"

"The count--Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov."

"And who are you?"

"An officer, I have to see him," came the reply in a pleasant, well-bred
Russian voice.

Mavra Kuzminichna opened the gate and an officer of eighteen, with the
round face of a Rostov, entered the yard.

"They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at vespertime," said
Mavra Kuzminichna cordially.

The young officer standing in the gateway, as if hesitating whether to
enter or not, clicked his tongue.

"Ah, how annoying!" he muttered. "I should have come yesterday.... Ah,
what a pity."

Meanwhile, Mavra Kuzminichna was attentively and sympathetically
examining the familiar Rostov features of the young man's face, his
tattered coat and trodden-down boots.

"What did you want to see the count for?" she asked.

"Oh well... it can't be helped!" said he in a tone of vexation and
placed his hand on the gate as if to leave.

He again paused in indecision.

"You see," he suddenly said, "I am a kinsman of the count's and he has
been very kind to me. As you see" (he glanced with an amused air and
good-natured smile at his coat and boots) "my things are worn out and I
have no money, so I was going to ask the count..."

Mavra Kuzminichna did not let him finish.

"Just wait a minute, sir. One little moment," said she.

And as soon as the officer let go of the gate handle she turned and,
hurrying away on her old legs, went through the back yard to the
servants' quarters.

While Mavra Kuzminichna was running to her room the officer walked about
the yard gazing at his worn-out boots with lowered head and a faint
smile on his lips. "What a pity I've missed Uncle! What a nice old
woman! Where has she run off to? And how am I to find the nearest way to
overtake my regiment, which must by now be getting near the Rogozhski
gate?" thought he. Just then Mavra Kuzminichna appeared from behind the
corner of the house with a frightened yet resolute look, carrying a
rolled-up check kerchief in her hand. While still a few steps from the
officer she unfolded the kerchief and took out of it a white twenty-
five-ruble assignat and hastily handed it to him.

"If his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he would of course...
but as it is..."

Mavra Kuzminichna grew abashed and confused. The officer did not
decline, but took the note quietly and thanked her.

"If the count had been at home..." Mavra Kuzminichna went on
apologetically. "Christ be with you, sir! May God preserve you!" said
she, bowing as she saw him out.

Swaying his head and smiling as if amused at himself, the officer ran
almost at a trot through the deserted streets toward the Yauza bridge to
overtake his regiment.

But Mavra Kuzminichna stood at the closed gate for some time with moist
eyes, pensively swaying her head and feeling an unexpected flow of
motherly tenderness and pity for the unknown young officer.




CHAPTER XXIII

From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground floor of which was
a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches round the tables
in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands. Tipsy and perspiring,
with dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they were all laboriously singing
some song or other. They were singing discordantly, arduously, and with
great effort, evidently not because they wished to sing, but because
they wanted to show they were drunk and on a spree. One, a tall, fair-
haired lad in a clean blue coat, was standing over the others. His face
with its fine straight nose would have been handsome had it not been for
his thin, compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed eyes.
Evidently possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were singing,
and solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads his white arm with
the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread out his
dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he always
carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it were most
important that the sinewy white arm he was flourishing should be bare.
In the midst of the song cries were heard, and fighting and blows in the
passage and porch. The tall lad waved his arm.

"Stop it!" he exclaimed peremptorily. "There's a fight, lads!" And,
still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the porch.

The factory hands followed him. These men, who under the leadership of
the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop that morning, had brought the
publican some skins from the factory and for this had had drink served
them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring smithy, hearing the sounds of
revelry in the tavern and supposing it to have been broken into, wished
to force their way in too and a fight in the porch had resulted.

The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door, and when the
workmen came out the smith, wrenching himself free from the tavern
keeper, fell face downward on the pavement.

Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing against the publican
with his chest.

The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a blow in the face and
cried wildly: "They're fighting us, lads!"

At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching his bruised face
to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful voice: "Police! Murder!...
They've killed a man, lads!"

"Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to death--killed!..." screamed a woman
coming out of a gate close by.

A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith.

"Haven't you robbed people enough--taking their last shirts?" said a
voice addressing the publican. "What have you killed a man for, you
thief?"

The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared eyes from the
publican to the smith and back again as if considering whom he ought to
fight now.

"Murderer!" he shouted suddenly to the publican. "Bind him, lads!"

"I daresay you would like to bind me!" shouted the publican, pushing
away the men advancing on him, and snatching his cap from his head he
flung it on the ground.

As if this action had some mysterious and menacing significance, the
workmen surrounding the publican paused in indecision.

"I know the law very well, mates! I'll take the matter to the captain of
police. You think I won't get to him? Robbery is not permitted to
anybody now a days!" shouted the publican, picking up his cap.

"Come along then! Come along then!" the publican and the tall young
fellow repeated one after the other, and they moved up the street
together.

The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory hands and others
followed behind, talking and shouting.

At the corner of the Moroseyka, opposite a large house with closed
shutters and bearing a bootmaker's signboard, stood a score of thin,
worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers, wearing overalls and long tattered
coats.

"He should pay folks off properly," a thin workingman, with frowning
brows and a straggly beard, was saying.

"But he's sucked our blood and now he thinks he's quit of us. He's been
misleading us all the week and now that he's brought us to this pass
he's made off."

On seeing the crowd and the bloodstained man the workman ceased
speaking, and with eager curiosity all the bootmakers joined the moving
crowd.

"Where are all the folks going?"

"Why, to the police, of course!"

"I say, is it true that we have been beaten?" "And what did you think?
Look what folks are saying."

Questions and answers were heard. The publican, taking advantage of the
increased crowd, dropped behind and returned to his tavern.

The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his foe, waved his
bare arm and went on talking incessantly, attracting general attention
to himself. It was around him that the people chiefly crowded, expecting
answers from him to the questions that occupied all their minds.

"He must keep order, keep the law, that's what the government is there
for. Am I not right, good Christians?" said the tall youth, with a
scarcely perceptible smile. "He thinks there's no government! How can
one do without government? Or else there would be plenty who'd rob us."

"Why talk nonsense?" rejoined voices in the crowd. "Will they give up
Moscow like this? They told you that for fun, and you believed it!
Aren't there plenty of troops on the march? Let him in, indeed! That's
what the government is for. You'd better listen to what people are
saying," said some of the mob pointing to the tall youth.

By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people were gathered round
a man in a frieze coat who held a paper in his hand.

"An ukase, they are reading an ukase! Reading an ukase!" cried voices in
the crowd, and the people rushed toward the reader.

The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet of August 31. When
the crowd collected round him he seemed confused, but at the demand of
the tall lad who had pushed his way up to him, he began in a rather
tremulous voice to read the sheet from the beginning.

"Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness," he read ("Sirin
Highness," said the tall fellow with a triumphant smile on his lips and
a frown on his brow), "to consult with him to act, and to aid the army
to exterminate these scoundrels. We too will take part..." the reader
went on, and then paused ("Do you see," shouted the youth victoriously,
"he's going to clear up the whole affair for you...."), "in destroying
them, and will send these visitors to the devil. I will come back to
dinner, and we'll set to work. We will do, completely do, and undo these
scoundrels."

The last words were read out in the midst of complete silence. The tall
lad hung his head gloomily. It was evident that no one had understood
the last part. In particular, the words "I will come back to dinner,"
evidently displeased both reader and audience. The people's minds were
tuned to a high pitch and this was too simple and needlessly
comprehensible--it was what any one of them might have said and
therefore was what an ukase emanating from the highest authority should
not say.

They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth moved his lips and
swayed from side to side.

"We should ask him... that's he himself?"... "Yes, ask him indeed!...
Why not? He'll explain"... voices in the rear of the crowd were suddenly
heard saying, and the general attention turned to the police
superintendent's trap which drove into the square attended by two
mounted dragoons.

The superintendent of police, who had gone that morning by Count
Rostopchin's orders to burn the barges and had in connection with that
matter acquired a large sum of money which was at that moment in his
pocket, on seeing a crowd bearing down upon him told his coachman to
stop.

"What people are these?" he shouted to the men, who were moving singly
and timidly in the direction of his trap.

"What people are these?" he shouted again, receiving no answer.

"Your honor..." replied the shopman in the frieze coat, "your honor, in
accord with the proclamation of his highest excellency the count, they
desire to serve, not sparing their lives, and it is not any kind of
riot, but as his highest excellence said..."

"The count has not left, he is here, and an order will be issued
concerning you," said the superintendent of police. "Go on!" he ordered
his coachman.

The crowd halted, pressing around those who had heard what the
superintendent had said, and looking at the departing trap.

The superintendent of police turned round at that moment with a scared
look, said something to his coachman, and his horses increased their
speed.

"It's a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!" shouted the tall
youth. "Don't let him go, lads! Let him answer us! Keep him!" shouted
different people and the people dashed in pursuit of the trap.

Following the superintendent of police and talking loudly the crowd went
in the direction of the Lubyanka Street.

"There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away and left us to
perish. Do they think we're dogs?" voices in the crowd were heard saying
more and more frequently.




CHAPTER XXIV

On the evening of the first of September, after his interview with
Kutuzov, Count Rostopchin had returned to Moscow mortified and offended
because he had not been invited to attend the council of war, and
because Kutuzov had paid no attention to his offer to take part in the
defense of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook revealed to him at
the camp, which treated the tranquillity of the capital and its
patriotic fervor as not merely secondary but quite irrelevant and
unimportant matters. Distressed, offended, and surprised by all this,
Rostopchin had returned to Moscow. After supper he lay down on a sofa
without undressing, and was awakened soon after midnight by a courier
bringing him a letter from Kutuzov. This letter requested the count to
send police officers to guide the troops through the town, as the army
was retreating to the Ryazan road beyond Moscow. This was not news to
Rostopchin. He had known that Moscow would be abandoned not merely since
his interview the previous day with Kutuzov on the Poklonny Hill but
ever since the battle of Borodino, for all the generals who came to
Moscow after that battle had said unanimously that it was impossible to
fight another battle, and since then the government property had been
removed every night, and half the inhabitants had left the city with
Rostopchin's own permission. Yet all the same this information
astonished and irritated the count, coming as it did in the form of a
simple note with an order from Kutuzov, and received at night, breaking
in on his beauty sleep.

When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchin explained his actions at
this time, he repeatedly says that he was then actuated by two important
considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow and expedite the
departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this twofold aim all
Rostopchin's actions appear irreproachable. "Why were the holy relics,
the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores of corn not removed? Why
were thousands of inhabitants deceived into believing that Moscow would
not be given up--and thereby ruined?" "To preserve the tranquillity of
the city," explains Count Rostopchin. "Why were bundles of useless
papers from the government offices, and Leppich's balloon and other
articles removed?" "To leave the town empty," explains Count Rostopchin.
One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action
finds a justification.

All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude for
public tranquillity.

On what, then, was Count Rostopchin's fear for the tranquillity of
Moscow based in 1812? What reason was there for assuming any probability
of an uprising in the city? The inhabitants were leaving it and the
retreating troops were filling it. Why should that cause the masses to
riot?

Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did anything resembling an
insurrection ever occur when the enemy entered a town. More than ten
thousand people were still in Moscow on the first and second of
September, and except for a mob in the governor's courtyard, assembled
there at his bidding, nothing happened. It is obvious that there would
have been even less reason to expect a disturbance among the people if
after the battle of Borodino, when the surrender of Moscow became
certain or at least probable, Rostopchin instead of exciting the people
by distributing arms and broadsheets had taken steps to remove all the
holy relics, the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and had told the
population plainly that the town would be abandoned.

Rostopchin, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a sanguine and
impulsive man who had always moved in the highest administrative circles
and had no understanding at all of the people he supposed himself to be
guiding. Ever since the enemy's entry into Smolensk he had in
imagination been playing the role of director of the popular feeling of
"the heart of Russia." Not only did it seem to him (as to all
administrators) that he controlled the external actions of Moscow's
inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental attitude by
means of his broadsheets and posters, written in a coarse tone which the
people despise in their own class and do not understand from those in
authority. Rostopchin was so pleased with the fine role of leader of
popular feeling, and had grown so used to it, that the necessity of
relinquishing that role and abandoning Moscow without any heroic display
took him unawares and he suddenly felt the ground slip away from under
his feet, so that he positively did not know what to do. Though he knew
it was coming, he did not till the last moment wholeheartedly believe
that Moscow would be abandoned, and did not prepare for it. The
inhabitants left against his wishes. If the government offices were
removed, this was only done on the demand of officials to whom the count
yielded reluctantly. He was absorbed in the role he had created for
himself. As is often the case with those gifted with an ardent
imagination, though he had long known that Moscow would be abandoned he
knew it only with his intellect, he did not believe it in his heart and
did not adapt himself mentally to this new position of affairs.

All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far it was useful and
had any effect on the people is another question) had been simply
directed toward arousing in the masses his own feeling of patriotic
hatred of the French.

But when events assumed their true historical character, when expressing
hatred for the French in words proved insufficient, when it was not even
possible to express that hatred by fighting a battle, when self-
confidence was of no avail in relation to the one question before
Moscow, when the whole population streamed out of Moscow as one man,
abandoning their belongings and proving by that negative action all the
depth of their national feeling, then the role chosen by Rostopchin
suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt himself ridiculous,
weak, and alone, with no ground to stand on.

When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold, peremptory note
from Kutuzov, he felt the more irritated the more he felt himself to
blame. All that he had been specially put in charge of, the state
property which he should have removed, was still in Moscow and it was no
longer possible to take the whole of it away.

"Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to such a pass?" he
ruminated. "Not I, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow
firmly in hand. And this is what they have let it come to! Villains!
Traitors!" he thought, without clearly defining who the villains and
traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever
they might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous position in
which he found himself.

All that night Count Rostopchin issued orders, for which people came to
him from all parts of Moscow. Those about him had never seen the count
so morose and irritable.

"Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar's Department has sent
for instructions... From the Consistory, from the Senate, from the
University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent...
asking for information.... What are your orders about the Fire Brigade?
From the governor of the prison... from the superintendent of the
lunatic asylum..." All night long such announcements were continually
being received by the count.

To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating that
orders from him were not now needed, that the whole affair, carefully
prepared by him, had now been ruined by somebody, and that that somebody
would have to bear the whole responsibility for all that might happen.

"Oh, tell that blockhead," he said in reply to the question from the
Registrar's Department, "that he should remain to guard his documents.
Now why are you asking silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They have
horses, let them be off to Vladimir, and not leave them to the French."

"Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come:
what are your commands?"

"My commands? Let them go away, that's all.... And let the lunatics out
into the town. When lunatics command our armies God evidently means
these other madmen to be free."

In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison, Count
Rostopchin shouted angrily at the governor:

"Do you expect me to give you two battalions--which we have not got--for
a convoy? Release them, that's all about it!"

"Your excellency, there are some political prisoners, Meshkov,
Vereshchagin..."

"Vereshchagin! Hasn't he been hanged yet?" shouted Rostopchin. "Bring
him to me!"




CHAPTER XXV

Toward nine o'clock in the morning, when the troops were already moving
through Moscow, nobody came to the count any more for instructions.
Those who were able to get away were going of their own accord, those
who remained behind decided for themselves what they must do.

The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokolniki, and sat
in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is
only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept
going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every
administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the
sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark,
holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself
moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding
on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the
ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves
independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer
reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of
appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant,
useless, feeble man.

Rostopchin felt this, and it was this which exasperated him.

The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had stopped, went in to see
him at the same time as an adjutant who informed the count that the
horses were harnessed. They were both pale, and the superintendent of
police, after reporting that he had executed the instructions he had
received, informed the count that an immense crowd had collected in the
courtyard and wished to see him.

Without saying a word Rostopchin rose and walked hastily to his light,
luxurious drawing room, went to the balcony door, took hold of the
handle, let it go again, and went to the window from which he had a
better view of the whole crowd. The tall lad was standing in front,
flourishing his arm and saying something with a stern look. The blood-
stained smith stood beside him with a gloomy face. A drone of voices was
audible through the closed window.

"Is my carriage ready?" asked Rostopchin, stepping back from the window.

"It is, your excellency," replied the adjutant.

Rostopchin went again to the balcony door.

"But what do they want?" he asked the superintendent of police.

"Your excellency, they say they have got ready, according to your
orders, to go against the French, and they shouted something about
treachery. But it is a turbulent crowd, your excellency--I hardly
managed to get away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest..."

"You may go. I don't need you to tell me what to do!" exclaimed
Rostopchin angrily.

He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd.

"This is what they have done with Russia! This is what they have done
with me!" thought he, full of an irrepressible fury that welled up
within him against the someone to whom what was happening might be
attributed. As often happens with passionate people, he was mastered by
anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it. "Here is that
mob, the dregs of the people," he thought as he gazed at the crowd:
"this rabble they have roused by their folly! They want a victim," he
thought as he looked at the tall lad flourishing his arm. And this
thought occurred to him just because he himself desired a victim,
something on which to vent his rage.

"Is the carriage ready?" he asked again.

"Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about Vereshchagin? He is
waiting at the porch," said the adjutant.

"Ah!" exclaimed Rostopchin, as if struck by an unexpected recollection.

And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out onto the balcony.
The talking instantly ceased, hats and caps were doffed, and all eyes
were raised to the count.

"Good morning, lads!" said the count briskly and loudly. "Thank you for
coming. I'll come out to you in a moment, but we must first settle with
the villain. We must punish the villain who has caused the ruin of
Moscow. Wait for me!"

And the count stepped as briskly back into the room and slammed the door
behind him.

A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through the crowd. "He'll
settle with all the villains, you'll see! And you said the French...
He'll show you what law is!" the mob were saying as if reproving one
another for their lack of confidence.

A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the front door,
gave an order, and the dragoons formed up in line. The crowd moved
eagerly from the balcony toward the porch. Rostopchin, coming out there
with quick angry steps, looked hastily around as if seeking someone.

"Where is he?" he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a young man coming
round the corner of the house between two dragoons. He had a long thin
neck, and his head, that had been half shaved, was again covered by
short hair. This young man was dressed in a threadbare blue cloth coat
lined with fox fur, that had once been smart, and dirty hempen convict
trousers, over which were pulled his thin, dirty, trodden-down boots. On
his thin, weak legs were heavy chains which hampered his irresolute
movements.

"Ah!" said Rostopchin, hurriedly turning away his eyes from the young
man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to the bottom step of the porch.
"Put him there."

The young man in his clattering chains stepped clumsily to the spot
indicated, holding away with one finger the coat collar which chafed his
neck, turned his long neck twice this way and that, sighed, and
submissively folded before him his thin hands, unused to work.

For several seconds while the young man was taking his place on the step
the silence continued. Only among the back rows of the people, who were
all pressing toward the one spot, could sighs, groans, and the shuffling
of feet be heard.

While waiting for the young man to take his place on the step Rostopchin
stood frowning and rubbing his face with his hand.

"Lads!" said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. "This man,
Vereshchagin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing."

The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little, stood in a
submissive attitude, his fingers clasped before him. His emaciated young
face, disfigured by the half-shaven head, hung down hopelessly. At the
count's first words he raised it slowly and looked up at him as if
wishing to say something or at least to meet his eye. But Rostopchin did
not look at him. A vein in the young man's long thin neck swelled like a
cord and went blue behind the ear, and suddenly his face flushed.

All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd, and rendered more
hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled sadly
and timidly, and lowering his head shifted his feet on the step.

"He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he has gone over to
Bonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has disgraced the Russian name,
he has caused Moscow to perish," said Rostopchin in a sharp, even voice,
but suddenly he glanced down at Vereshchagin who continued to stand in
the same submissive attitude. As if inflamed by the sight, he raised his
arm and addressed the people, almost shouting:

"Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you."

The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and closer to one
another. To keep one another back, to breathe in that stifling
atmosphere, to be unable to stir, and to await something unknown,
uncomprehended, and terrible, was becoming unbearable. Those standing in
front, who had seen and heard what had taken place before them, all
stood with wide-open eyes and mouths, straining with all their strength,
and held back the crowd that was pushing behind them.

"Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the Russian name!"
shouted Rostopchin. "Cut him down. I command it."

Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchin's voice,
the crowd moaned and heaved forward, but again paused.

"Count!" exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of Vereshchagin in the
midst of the momentary silence that ensued, "Count! One God is above us
both...." He lifted his head and again the thick vein in his thin neck
filled with blood and the color rapidly came and went in his face.

He did not finish what he wished to say.

"Cut him down! I command it..." shouted Rostopchin, suddenly growing
pale like Vereshchagin.

"Draw sabers!" cried the dragoon officer, drawing his own.

Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd and reaching the
front ranks carried it swaying to the very steps of the porch. The tall
youth, with a stony look on his face, and rigid and uplifted arm, stood
beside Vereshchagin.

"Saber him!" the dragoon officer almost whispered.

And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury,
struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side of his saber.

"Ah!" cried Vereshchagin in meek surprise, looking round with a
frightened glance as if not understanding why this was done to him. A
similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd. "O Lord!"
exclaimed a sorrowful voice.

But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped from Vereshchagin
he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and that cry was fatal. The barrier
of human feeling, strained to the utmost, that had held the crowd in
check suddenly broke. The crime had begun and must now be completed. The
plaintive moan of reproach was drowned by the threatening and angry roar
of the crowd. Like the seventh and last wave that shatters a ship, that
last irresistible wave burst from the rear and reached the front ranks,
carrying them off their feet and engulfing them all. The dragoon was
about to repeat his blow. Vereshchagin with a cry of horror, covering
his head with his hands, rushed toward the crowd. The tall youth,
against whom he stumbled, seized his thin neck with his hands and,
yelling wildly, fell with him under the feet of the pressing, struggling
crowd.

Some beat and tore at Vereshchagin, others at the tall youth. And the
screams of those that were being trampled on and of those who tried to
rescue the tall lad only increased the fury of the crowd. It was a long
time before the dragoons could extricate the bleeding youth, beaten
almost to death. And for a long time, despite the feverish haste with
which the mob tried to end the work that had been begun, those who were
hitting, throttling, and tearing at Vereshchagin were unable to kill
him, for the crowd pressed from all sides, swaying as one mass with them
in the center and rendering it impossible for them either to kill him or
let him go.

"Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he sold Christ....
Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Torture serves a thief
right. Use the hatchet!... What--still alive?"

Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries changed to a long-
drawn, measured death rattle did the crowd around his prostrate,
bleeding corpse begin rapidly to change places. Each one came up,
glanced at what had been done, and with horror, reproach, and
astonishment pushed back again.

"O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could he be alive?" voices
in the crowd could be heard saying. "Quite a young fellow too... must
have been a merchant's son. What men!... and they say he's not the right
one.... How not the right one?... O Lord! And there's another has been
beaten too--they say he's nearly done for.... Oh, the people... Aren't
they afraid of sinning?..." said the same mob now, looking with pained
distress at the dead body with its long, thin, half-severed neck and its
livid face stained with blood and dust.

A painstaking police officer, considering the presence of a corpse in
his excellency's courtyard unseemly, told the dragoons to take it away.
Two dragoons took it by its distorted legs and dragged it along the
ground. The gory, dust-stained, half-shaven head with its long neck
trailed twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back from it.

At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd closed in with savage
yells and swayed about him, Rostopchin suddenly turned pale and, instead
of going to the back entrance where his carriage awaited him, went with
hurried steps and bent head, not knowing where and why, along the
passage leading to the rooms on the ground floor. The count's face was
white and he could not control the feverish twitching of his lower jaw.

"This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This way,
please..." said a trembling, frightened voice behind him.

Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went in
the direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his caleche. The
distant roar of the yelling crowd was audible even there. He hastily
took his seat and told the coachman to drive him to his country house in
Sokolniki.

When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no longer hear the
shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with
dissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before his
subordinates. "The mob is terrible--disgusting," he said to himself in
French. "They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease."
"Count! One God is above us both!"--Vereshchagin's words suddenly
recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this
was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchin smiled disdainfully at
himself. "I had other duties," thought he. "The people had to be
appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing for the
public good"--and he began thinking of his social duties to his family
and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself--not himself as
Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that Theodore Vasilyevich
Rostopchin was sacrificing himself for the public good) but himself as
governor, the representative of authority and of the Tsar. "Had I been
simply Theodore Vasilyevich my course of action would have been quite
different, but it was my duty to safeguard my life and dignity as
commander-in-chief."

Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and no longer
hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grew physically
calm and, as always happens, as soon as he became physically tranquil
his mind devised reasons why he should be mentally tranquil too. The
thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new one. Since the
world began and men have killed one another no one has ever committed
such a crime against his fellow man without comforting himself with this
same idea. This idea is le bien public, the hypothetical welfare of
other people.

To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but he who
commits such a crime always knows just where that welfare lies. And
Rostopchin now knew it.

Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he had done, but he
even found cause for self-satisfaction in having so successfully
contrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish a
criminal and at the same time pacify the mob.

"Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death," thought Rostopchin
(though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin to hard labor), "he
was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him go unpunished and so I have
killed two birds with one stone: to appease the mob I gave them a victim
and at the same time punished a miscreant."

Having reached his country house and begun to give orders about domestic
arrangements, the count grew quite tranquil.

Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses across the
Sokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred but considering
what was to come. He was driving to the Yauza bridge where he had heard
that Kutuzov was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparing the angry and
stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutuzov for his deception. He
would make that foxy old courtier feel that the responsibility for all
the calamities that would follow the abandonment of the city and the
ruin of Russia (as Rostopchin regarded it) would fall upon his doting
old head. Planning beforehand what he would say to Kutuzov, Rostopchin
turned angrily in his caleche and gazed sternly from side to side.

The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it, in front of the
almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people in white and
others like them walking singly across the field shouting and
gesticulating.

One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchin's
carriage, and the count himself, his coachman, and his dragoons looked
with vague horror and curiosity at these released lunatics and
especially at the one running toward them.

Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his fluttering
dressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed on
Rostopchin, shouting something in a hoarse voice and making signs to him
to stop. The lunatic's solemn, gloomy face was thin and yellow, with its
beard growing in uneven tufts. His black, agate pupils with saffron-
yellow whites moved restlessly near the lower eyelids.

"Stop! Pull up, I tell you!" he cried in a piercing voice, and again
shouted something breathlessly with emphatic intonations and gestures.

Coming abreast of the caleche he ran beside it.

"Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the dead. They
stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall rise... shall rise.
They have torn my body. The kingdom of God will be overthrown... Thrice
will I overthrow it and thrice re-establish it!" he cried, raising his
voice higher and higher.

Count Rostopchin suddenly grew pale as he had done when the crowd closed
in on Vereshchagin. He turned away. "Go fas... faster!" he cried in a
trembling voice to his coachman. The caleche flew over the ground as
fast as the horses could draw it, but for a long time Count Rostopchin
still heard the insane despairing screams growing fainter in the
distance, while his eyes saw nothing but the astonished, frightened,
bloodstained face of "the traitor" in the fur-lined coat.

Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchin already felt that it had
cut deep into his heart and drawn blood. Even now he felt clearly that
the gory trace of that recollection would not pass with time, but that
the terrible memory would, on the contrary, dwell in his heart ever more
cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. He seemed still to hear
the sound of his own words: "Cut him down! I command it...."

"Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I said them.... I
need not have said them," he thought. "And then nothing would have
happened." He saw the frightened and then infuriated face of the dragoon
who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid reproach that boy in the
fur-lined coat had turned upon him. "But I did not do it for my own
sake. I was bound to act that way.... The mob, the traitor... the public
welfare," thought he.

Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was hot. Kutuzov,
dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his whip
in the sand when a caleche dashed up noisily. A man in a general's
uniform with plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and said something in
French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told Kutuzov that he had come
because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the army remained.

"Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not told
me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle; all this
would not have happened," he said.

Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what was said to him,
he was trying to read something peculiar written at that moment on the
face of the man addressing him. Rostopchin grew confused and became
silent. Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking his penetrating
gaze from Rostopchin's face muttered softly:

"No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!"

Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely different when he
spoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be
meaningless, at any rate Rostopchin made no reply and hastily left him.
And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count Rostopchin,
took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where he began with shouts
to drive on the carts that blocked the way.




CHAPTER XXVI

Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Murat's troops were entering
Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind
them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.

About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of the Miraculous
Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the advanced
detachment as to the condition in which they had found the citadel, le
Kremlin.

Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow. They
all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired commander
dressed up in feathers and gold.

"Is that their Tsar himself? He's not bad!" low voices could be heard
saying.

An interpreter rode up to the group.

"Take off your cap... your caps!" These words went from one to another
in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and asked if it
was far to the Kremlin. The porter, listening in perplexity to the
unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that the interpreter was
speaking Russian, did not understand what was being said to him and
slipped behind the others.

Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the Russian
army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and several
voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French officer,
returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat and reported
that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and that there was
probably an ambuscade there.

"Good!" said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his suite,
ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the gates.

The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat and advanced
up the Arbat. When they reached the end of the Vozdvizhenka Street they
halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers superintended the
placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlin through field glasses.

The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound
troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few
infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had been
put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate as soon as
an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was standing by
the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and the latter
ran back again with his men.

The sound of three more shots came from the gate.

One shot struck a French soldier's foot, and from behind the screens
came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a word
of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of the
French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined
concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from the
marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka,
Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar in
Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove sanguinary.
And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the gates ceased. The
guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash off their linstocks,
and an officer gave the word "Fire!" This was followed by two whistling
sounds of canister shot, one after another. The shot rattled against the
stone of the gate and upon the wooden beams and screens, and two
wavering clouds of smoke rose over the Square.

A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the stone-
built Kremlin had died away the French heard a strange sound above their
head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and circled in the air,
cawing and noisily flapping their wings. Together with that sound came a
solitary human cry from the gateway and amid the smoke appeared the
figure of a bareheaded man in a peasant's coat. He grasped a musket and
took aim at the French. "Fire!" repeated the officer once more, and the
reports of a musket and of two cannon shots were heard simultaneously.
The gate was again hidden by smoke.

Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry soldiers
and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three wounded and
four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot of the wall,
toward the Znamenka.

"Clear that away!" said the officer, pointing to the beams and the
corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw
the corpses over the parapet.

Who these men were nobody knew. "Clear that away!" was all that was said
of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed later on that
they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few eloquent lines to
their memory: "These wretches had occupied the sacred citadel, having
supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal, and fired" (the
wretches) "at the French. Some of them were sabered and the Kremlin was
purged of their presence."

Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French entered the
gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out of the
windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the Square
for fuel and kindled fires there.

Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped along the
Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka Streets. Others quartered
themselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy
Streets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French were
not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in it as
in a camp.

Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their
original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order. It
was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army. But it
remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into their
different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various regiments began to
disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the army was lost
forever and there came into being something nondescript, neither
citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When five weeks
later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed an army. They
were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of articles which
seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man when he left
Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but merely to keep
what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its paw into the narrow
neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts will not open its
fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore perishes, the
French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish because they
carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they had stolen was as
impossible for them as it is for the monkey to open its paw and let go
of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment had entered a Moscow
district, not a soldier or officer was left. Men in military uniforms
and Hessian boots could be seen through the windows, laughing and
walking through the rooms. In cellars and storerooms similar men were
busy among the provisions, and in the yards unlocking or breaking open
coach house and stable doors, lighting fires in kitchens and kneading
and baking bread with rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening,
amusing, or caressing women and children. There were many such men both
in the shops and houses--but there was no army.

Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day
forbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding any
violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a roll call
for that very evening. But despite all these measures the men, who had
till then constituted an army, flowed all over the wealthy, deserted
city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. As a hungry herd of
cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren field, but gets out of
hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as soon as it reaches rich
pastures, so did the army disperse all over the wealthy city.

No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers--like water
percolating through sand--spread irresistibly through the city in all
directions from the Kremlin into which they had first marched. The
cavalry, on entering a merchant's house that had been abandoned and
finding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on,
all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of
them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and
quarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before they had
had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the streets to see
the city and, hearing that everything had been abandoned, rushed to
places where valuables were to be had for the taking. The officers
followed to check the soldiers and were involuntarily drawn into doing
the same. In Carriage Row carriages had been left in the shops, and
generals flocked there to select caleches and coaches for themselves.
The few inhabitants who had remained invited commanding officers to
their houses, hoping thereby to secure themselves from being plundered.
There were masses of wealth and there seemed no end to it. All around
the quarters occupied by the French were other regions still unexplored
and unoccupied where, they thought, yet greater riches might be found.
And Moscow engulfed the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is
spilled on dry ground both the dry ground and the water disappear and
mud results; and in the same way the entry of the famished army into the
rich and deserted city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction
of both the army and the wealthy city.

The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de
Rostopchine, * the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,
however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning
of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people, responsible
for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a position in which
any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite apart from whether it
had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior fire engines. Deserted
Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of shavings has to burn on
which sparks continually fall for several days. A town built of wood,
where scarcely a day passes without conflagrations when the house owners
are in residence and a police force is present, cannot help burning when
its inhabitants have left it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke
pipes, make campfires of the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and
cook themselves meals twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to
billet troops in the villages of any district and the number of fires in
that district immediately increases. How much then must the probability
of fire be increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops
are quartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity
of the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire by
the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the carelessness of
enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even if there was any
arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any reason to burn the
houses--in any case a troublesome and dangerous thing to do), arson
cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same thing would have happened
without any incendiarism.


* To Rostopchin's ferocious patriotism.

However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchin's
ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later on
to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is
impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of the
fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house must
burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are allowed to
live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its inhabitants, it
is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not by those who remained
in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not remain intact like
Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its inhabitants
abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and salt, nor
bring them the keys of the city.




CHAPTER XXVII

The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it did,
only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the evening of the
second of September.

After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances,
Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely obsessed
by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this thought had
taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of the past,
understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and heard appeared to
him like a dream.

He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of life's demands
that enmeshed him, and which in his present condition he was unable to
unravel. He had gone to Joseph Alexeevich's house, on the plea of
sorting the deceased's books and papers, only in search of rest from
life's turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph Alexeevich was
connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm thoughts, quite
contrary to the restless confusion into which he felt himself being
drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph Alexeevich's study he
really found it. When he sat with his elbows on the dusty writing table
in the deathlike stillness of the study, calm and significant memories
of the last few days rose one after another in his imagination,
particularly of the battle of Borodino and of that vague sense of his
own insignificance and insincerity compared with the truth, simplicity,
and strength of the class of men he mentally classed as they. When
Gerasim roused him from his reverie the idea occurred to him of taking
part in the popular defense of Moscow which he knew was projected. And
with that object he had asked Gerasim to get him a peasant's coat and a
pistol, confiding to him his intentions of remaining in Joseph
Alexeevich's house and keeping his name secret. Then during the first
day spent in inaction and solitude (he tried several times to fix his
attention on the masonic manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea
that had previously occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of
his name in connection with Bonaparte's more than once vaguely presented
itself. But the idea that he, L'russe Besuhof, was destined to set a
limit to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that
often passed through his mind and left no trace behind.

When, having bought the coat merely with the object of taking part among
the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the Rostovs and
Natasha had said to him: "Are you remaining in Moscow?... How splendid!"
the thought flashed into his mind that it really would be a good thing,
even if Moscow were taken, for him to remain there and do what he was
predestined to do.

Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not lagging in
any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate. But when he
returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be defended, he
suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely a possibility
had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He must remain in
Moscow, concealing his name, and must meet Napoleon and kill him, and
either perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe--which it seemed
to him was solely due to Napoleon.

Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte's life in 1809
by a German student in Vienna, and knew that the student had been shot.
And the risk to which he would expose his life by carrying out his
design excited him still more.

Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to this purpose.
The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and suffering in
view of the common calamity, the same feeling that had caused him to go
to Mozhaysk on the twenty-fifth and to make his way to the very thick of
the battle and had now caused him to run away from his home and, in
place of the luxury and comfort to which he was accustomed, to sleep on
a hard sofa without undressing and eat the same food as Gerasim. The
other was that vague and quite Russian feeling of contempt for
everything conventional, artificial, and human--for everything the
majority of men regard as the greatest good in the world. Pierre had
first experienced this strange and fascinating feeling at the Sloboda
Palace, when he had suddenly felt that wealth, power, and life--all that
men so painstakingly acquire and guard--if it has any worth has so only
by reason of the joy with which it can all be renounced.

It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend his last
penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for no
apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money he
possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions which from
an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it were, his personal
power and strength, affirming the existence of a higher, nonhuman
criterion of life.

From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for the first time
at the Sloboda Palace he had been continuously under its influence, but
only now found full satisfaction for it. Moreover, at this moment Pierre
was supported in his design and prevented from renouncing it by what he
had already done in that direction. If he were now to leave Moscow like
everyone else, his flight from home, the peasant coat, the pistol, and
his announcement to the Rostovs that he would remain in Moscow would all
become not merely meaningless but contemptible and ridiculous, and to
this Pierre was very sensitive.

Pierre's physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded to his
mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he drank during
those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty unchanged linen,
two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa without bedding--all
this kept him in a state of excitement bordering on insanity.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The French had already entered
Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of acting he only thought about
his undertaking, going over its minutest details in his mind. In his
fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either the striking of the
blow or the death of Napoleon, but with extraordinary vividness and
melancholy enjoyment imagined his own destruction and heroic endurance.

"Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!" he thought.
"Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with pistol or dagger? But
that is all the same! 'It is not I but the hand of Providence that
punishes thee,' I shall say," thought he, imagining what he would say
when killing Napoleon. "Well then, take me and execute me!" he went on,
speaking to himself and bowing his head with a sad but firm expression.

While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to himself
in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold appeared the
figure of Makar Alexeevich, always so timid before but now quite
transformed.

His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He was
obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew confused at first, but
noticing embarrassment on Pierre's face immediately grew bold and,
staggering on his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room.

"They're frightened," he said confidentially in a hoarse voice. "I say I
won't surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?"

He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the table seized it
with unexpected rapidity and ran out into the corridor.

Gerasim and the porter, who had followed Makar Alexeevich, stopped him
in the vestibule and tried to take the pistol from him. Pierre, coming
out into the corridor, looked with pity and repulsion at the half-crazy
old man. Makar Alexeevich, frowning with exertion, held on to the pistol
and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic fancy in his head.

"To arms! Board them! No, you shan't get it," he yelled.

"That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness--please, sir, to
let go! Please, sir..." pleaded Gerasim, trying carefully to steer Makar
Alexeevich by the elbows back to the door.

"Who are you? Bonaparte!..." shouted Makar Alexeevich.

"That's not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and rest. Allow me to
have the pistol."

"Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?" shouted Makar
Alexeevich, brandishing the pistol. "Board them!"

"Catch hold!" whispered Gerasim to the porter.

They seized Makar Alexeevich by the arms and dragged him to the door.

The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of a struggle and of
a tipsy, hoarse voice.

Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream, reverberated from
the porch and the cook came running into the vestibule.

"It's them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them, horsemen!" she
cried.

Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and in the now silent
corridor the sound of several hands knocking at the front door could be
heard.




CHAPTER XXVIII

Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his design he would
disclose neither his identity nor his knowledge of French, stood at the
half-open door of the corridor, intending to conceal himself as soon as
the French entered. But the French entered and still Pierre did not
retire--an irresistible curiosity kept him there.

There were two of them. One was an officer--a tall, soldierly, handsome
man--the other evidently a private or an orderly, sunburned, short, and
thin, with sunken cheeks and a dull expression. The officer walked in
front, leaning on a stick and slightly limping. When he had advanced a
few steps he stopped, having apparently decided that these were good
quarters, turned round to the soldiers standing at the entrance, and in
a loud voice of command ordered them to put up the horses. Having done
that, the officer, lifting his elbow with a smart gesture, stroked his
mustache and lightly touched his hat.

"Bonjour, la compagnie!" * said he gaily, smiling and looking about him.


* "Good day, everybody!"

No one gave any reply.

"Vous etes le bourgeois?" * the officer asked Gerasim.


* "Are you the master here?"

Gerasim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and inquiring look.

"Quartier, quartier, logement!" said the officer, looking down at the
little man with a condescending and good-natured smile. "Les francais
sont de bons enfants. Que diable! Voyons! Ne nous fachons pas, mon
vieux!" * added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerasim on the
shoulder. "Well, does no one speak French in this establishment?" he
asked again in French, looking around and meeting Pierre's eyes. Pierre
moved away from the door.


* "Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good fellows. What the
devil! There, don't let us be cross, old fellow!"

Again the officer turned to Gerasim and asked him to show him the rooms
in the house.

"Master, not here--don't understand... me, you..." said Gerasim, trying
to render his words more comprehensible by contorting them.

Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before Gerasim's
nose, intimating that he did not understand him either, and moved,
limping, to the door at which Pierre was standing. Pierre wished to go
away and conceal himself, but at that moment he saw Makar Alexeevich
appearing at the open kitchen door with the pistol in his hand. With a
madman's cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman, raised his
pistol, and took aim.

"Board them!" yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger. Hearing
the yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment Pierre threw
himself on the drunkard. Just when Pierre snatched at and struck up the
pistol Makar Alexeevich at last got his fingers on the trigger, there
was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a cloud of smoke. The
Frenchman turned pale and rushed to the door.

Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French, Pierre,
snatching away the pistol and throwing it down, ran up to the officer
and addressed him in French.

"You are not wounded?" he asked.

"I think not," answered the Frenchman, feeling himself over. "But I have
had a lucky escape this time," he added, pointing to the damaged plaster
of the wall. "Who is that man?" said he, looking sternly at Pierre.

"Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred," said Pierre rapidly,
quite forgetting the part he had intended to play. "He is an unfortunate
madman who did not know what he was doing."

The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him by the collar.

Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about to
fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall.

"Brigand! You shall pay for this," said the Frenchman, letting go of
him. "We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon
traitors," he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine energetic
gesture.

Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold that
drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence with the
same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with a smile. For
a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome face assumed a
melodramatically gentle expression and he held out his hand.

"You have saved my life. You are French," said he.

For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman could
perform a great deed, and to save his life--the life of M. Ramballe,
captain of the 13th Light Regiment--was undoubtedly a very great deed.

But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer's conviction
based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.

"I am Russian," he said quickly.

"Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others," said the officer, waving his
finger before his nose and smiling. "You shall tell me all about that
presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot. Well, and what are we to
do with this man?" he added, addressing himself to Pierre as to a
brother.

Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that loftiest
of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the officer's look
and tone. In reply to his last question Pierre again explained who Makar
Alexeevich was and how just before their arrival that drunken imbecile
had seized the loaded pistol which they had not had time to recover from
him, and begged the officer to let the deed go unpunished.

The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with his
arm.

"You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant it
you. Lead that man away!" said he quickly and energetically, and taking
the arm of Pierre whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for saving his
life, he went with him into the room.

The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the passage asking
what had happened, and expressed their readiness to punish the culprits,
but the officer sternly checked them.

"You will be called in when you are wanted," he said.

The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had meanwhile had time
to visit the kitchen, came up to his officer.

"Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen," said he.
"Shall I serve them up?"

"Yes, and some wine," answered the captain.




CHAPTER XXIX

When the French officer went into the room with Pierre the latter again
thought it his duty to assure him that he was not French and wished to
go away, but the officer would not hear of it. He was so very polite,
amiable, good-natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre for saving his
life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat down with him in
the parlor--the first room they entered. To Pierre's assurances that he
was not a Frenchman, the captain, evidently not understanding how anyone
could decline so flattering an appellation, shrugged his shoulders and
said that if Pierre absolutely insisted on passing for a Russian let it
be so, but for all that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude
for saving his life.

Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving the
feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre's feelings
were, the latter would probably have left him, but the man's animated
obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed Pierre.

"A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito," said the officer, looking
at Pierre's fine though dirty linen and at the ring on his finger. "I
owe my life to you and offer you my friendship. A Frenchman never
forgets either an insult or a service. I offer you my friendship. That
is all I can say."

There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of the
word) in the officer's voice, in the expression of his face and in his
gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the
Frenchman's smile, pressed the hand held out to him.

"Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the Legion
of Honor for the affair on the seventh of September," he introduced
himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his lips under
his mustache. "Will you now be so good as to tell me with whom I have
the honor of conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in the ambulance
with that maniac's bullet in my body?"

Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing, began
to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason for
concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him.

"Oh, please!" said he. "I understand your reasons. You are an officer...
a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us. That's not
my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am quite at
your service. You belong to the gentry?" he concluded with a shade of
inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. "Your baptismal name, if you
please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you say.... That's all I
want to know."

When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and vodka
brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a Russian cellar
and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share his dinner, and
himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a healthy and hungry man,
munching his food rapidly with his strong teeth, continually smacking
his lips, and repeating--"Excellent! Delicious!" His face grew red and
was covered with perspiration. Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner
with pleasure. Morel, the orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan
and placed a bottle of claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass,
taken from the kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known
to the French and had been given a special name. They called it limonade
de cochon (pig's lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de
cochon he had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they
had taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and
applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up to
its neck in a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for
Pierre. The satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered the captain
still more lively and he chatted incessantly all through dinner.

"Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for saving
me from that maniac.... You see, I have bullets enough in my body
already. Here is one I got at Wagram" (he touched his side) "and a
second at Smolensk"--he showed a scar on his cheek--"and this leg which
as you see does not want to march, I got that on the seventh at the
great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It was splendid! That deluge of
fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us there, my word! You
may be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of the cough I caught
there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity those who did not see
it."

"I was there," said Pierre.

"Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave foes. The
great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!" continued the Frenchman. "And
you made us pay dear for it. I was at it three times--sure as I sit
here. Three times we reached the guns and three times we were thrown
back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur Pierre! Your
grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw them close up their ranks six
times in succession and march as if on parade. Fine fellows! Our King of
Naples, who knows what's what, cried 'Bravo!' Ha, ha! So you are one of
us soldiers!" he added, smiling, after a momentary pause. "So much the
better, so much the better, Monsieur Pierre! Terrible in battle...
gallant... with the fair" (he winked and smiled), "that's what the
French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren't they?"

The captain was so naively and good-humoredly gay, so real, and so
pleased with himself that Pierre almost winked back as he looked merrily
at him. Probably the word "gallant" turned the captain's thoughts to the
state of Moscow.

"Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have all left
Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be afraid of?"

"Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians entered it?"
asked Pierre.

"Ha, ha, ha!" The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine chuckle, patting
Pierre on the shoulder. "What a thing to say!" he exclaimed. "Paris?...
But Paris, Paris..."

"Paris--the capital of the world," Pierre finished his remark for him.

The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping short in the
middle of his talk and gazing intently with his laughing, kindly eyes.

"Well, if you hadn't told me you were Russian, I should have wagered
that you were Parisian! You have that... I don't know what, that..." and
having uttered this compliment, he again gazed at him in silence.

"I have been in Paris. I spent years there," said Pierre.

"Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn't know Paris
is a savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues off. Paris is Talma, la
Duchenois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards," and noticing that his
conclusion was weaker than what had gone before, he added quickly:
"There is only one Paris in the world. You have been to Paris and have
remained Russian. Well, I don't esteem you the less for it."

Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after the days he had
spent alone with his depressing thoughts, Pierre involuntarily enjoyed
talking with this cheerful and good-natured man.

"To return to your ladies--I hear they are lovely. What a wretched idea
to go and bury themselves in the steppes when the French army is in
Moscow. What a chance those girls have missed! Your peasants, now--
that's another thing; but you civilized people, you ought to know us
better than that. We took Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome, Warsaw,
all the world's capitals.... We are feared, but we are loved. We are
nice to know. And then the Emperor..." he began, but Pierre interrupted
him.

"The Emperor," Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly became sad and
embarrassed, "is the Emperor...?"

"The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius--that's
what the Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who tell you so.... I assure you
I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an emigrant count.... But
that man has vanquished me. He has taken hold of me. I could not resist
the sight of the grandeur and glory with which he has covered France.
When I understood what he wanted--when I saw that he was preparing a bed
of laurels for us, you know, I said to myself: 'That is a monarch,' and
I devoted myself to him! So there! Oh yes, mon cher, he is the greatest
man of the ages past or future."

"Is he in Moscow?" Pierre stammered with a guilty look.

The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.

"No, he will make his entry tomorrow," he replied, and continued his
talk.

Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at the
gate and by Morel, who came to say that some Wurttemberg hussars had
come and wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the captain's
horses were. This difficulty had arisen chiefly because the hussars did
not understand what was said to them in French.

The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a stern voice
asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding officer,
and by what right he allowed himself to claim quarters that were already
occupied. The German who knew little French, answered the two first
questions by giving the names of his regiment and of his commanding
officer, but in reply to the third question which he did not understand
said, introducing broken French into his own German, that he was the
quartermaster of the regiment and his commander had ordered him to
occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who knew German,
translated what the German said to the captain and gave the captain's
reply to the Wurttemberg hussar in German. When he had understood what
was said to him, the German submitted and took his men elsewhere. The
captain went out into the porch and gave some orders in a loud voice.

When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the same place as
before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He
really was suffering at that moment. When the captain went out and he
was left alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the position he
was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken or that the happy
conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing him. Painful as that
was it was not that which tormented Pierre at the moment. He was
tormented by the consciousness of his own weakness. The few glasses of
wine he had drunk and the conversation with this good-natured man had
destroyed the mood of concentrated gloom in which he had spent the last
few days and which was essential for the execution of his design. The
pistol, dagger, and peasant coat were ready. Napoleon was to enter the
town next day. Pierre still considered that it would be a useful and
worthy action to slay the evildoer, but now he felt that he would not do
it. He did not know why, but he felt a foreboding that he would not
carry out his intention. He struggled against the confession of his
weakness but dimly felt that he could not overcome it and that his
former gloomy frame of mind, concerning vengeance, killing, and self-
sacrifice, had been dispersed like dust by contact with the first man he
met.

The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and whistling a tune.

The Frenchman's chatter which had previously amused Pierre now repelled
him. The tune he was whistling, his gait, and the gesture with which he
twirled his mustache, all now seemed offensive. "I will go away
immediately. I won't say another word to him," thought Pierre. He
thought this, but still sat in the same place. A strange feeling of
weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go away, but
could not do so.

The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful. He paced up and
down the room twice. His eyes shone and his mustache twitched as if he
were smiling to himself at some amusing thought.

"The colonel of those Wurttembergers is delightful," he suddenly said.
"He's a German, but a nice fellow all the same.... But he's a German."
He sat down facing Pierre. "By the way, you know German, then?"

Pierre looked at him in silence.

"What is the German for 'shelter'?"

"Shelter?" Pierre repeated. "The German for shelter is Unterkunft."

"How do you say it?" the captain asked quickly and doubtfully.

"Unterkunft," Pierre repeated.

"Onterkoff," said the captain and looked at Pierre for some seconds with
laughing eyes. "These Germans are first-rate fools, don't you think so,
Monsieur Pierre?" he concluded.

"Well, let's have another bottle of this Moscow Bordeaux, shall we?
Morel will warm us up another little bottle. Morel!" he called out
gaily.

Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at Pierre
by the candlelight and was evidently struck by the troubled expression
on his companion's face. Ramballe, with genuine distress and sympathy in
his face, went up to Pierre and bent over him.

"There now, we're sad," said he, touching Pierre's hand. "Have I upset
you? No, really, have you anything against me?" he asked Pierre.
"Perhaps it's the state of affairs?"

Pierre did not answer, but looked cordially into the Frenchman's eyes
whose expression of sympathy was pleasing to him.

"Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel friendship for
you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and death.
I say it with my hand on my heart!" said he, striking his chest.

"Thank you," said Pierre.

The captain gazed intently at him as he had done when he learned that
"shelter" was Unterkunft in German, and his face suddenly brightened.

"Well, in that case, I drink to our friendship!" he cried gaily, filling
two glasses with wine.

Pierre took one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe emptied his too,
again pressed Pierre's hand, and leaned his elbows on the table in a
pensive attitude.

"Yes, my dear friend," he began, "such is fortune's caprice. Who would
have said that I should be a soldier and a captain of dragoons in the
service of Bonaparte, as we used to call him? Yet here I am in Moscow
with him. I must tell you, mon cher," he continued in the sad and
measured tones of a man who intends to tell a long story, "that our name
is one of the most ancient in France."

And with a Frenchman's easy and naive frankness the captain told Pierre
the story of his ancestors, his childhood, youth, and manhood, and all
about his relations and his financial and family affairs, "ma pauvre
mere" playing of course an important part in the story.

"But all that is only life's setting, the real thing is love--love! Am I
not right, Monsieur Pierre?" said he, growing animated. "Another glass?"

Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a third.

"Oh, women, women!" and the captain, looking with glistening eyes at
Pierre, began talking of love and of his love affairs.

There were very many of these, as one could easily believe, looking at
the officer's handsome, self-satisfied face, and noting the eager
enthusiasm with which he spoke of women. Though all Ramballe's love
stories had the sensual character which Frenchmen regard as the special
charm and poetry of love, yet he told his story with such sincere
conviction that he alone had experienced and known all the charm of love
and he described women so alluringly that Pierre listened to him with
curiosity.

It was plain that l'amour which the Frenchman was so fond of was not
that low and simple kind that Pierre had once felt for his wife, nor was
it the romantic love stimulated by himself that he experienced for
Natasha. (Ramballe despised both these kinds of love equally: the one he
considered the "love of clodhoppers" and the other the "love of
simpletons.") L'amour which the Frenchman worshiped consisted
principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to the woman and in a
combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling.

Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his love for a
fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the same time for a charming,
innocent child of seventeen, daughter of the bewitching marquise. The
conflict of magnanimity between the mother and the daughter, ending in
the mother's sacrificing herself and offering her daughter in marriage
to her lover, even now agitated the captain, though it was the memory of
a distant past. Then he recounted an episode in which the husband played
the part of the lover, and he--the lover--assumed the role of the
husband, as well as several droll incidents from his recollections of
Germany, where "shelter" is called Unterkunft and where the husbands eat
sauerkraut and the young girls are "too blonde."

Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the captain's
memory, and which he narrated with rapid gestures and glowing face, was
of how he had saved the life of a Pole (in general, the saving of life
continually occurred in the captain's stories) and the Pole had
entrusted to him his enchanting wife (parisienne de coeur) while himself
entering the French service. The captain was happy, the enchanting
Polish lady wished to elope with him, but, prompted by magnanimity, the
captain restored the wife to the husband, saying as he did so: "I have
saved your life, and I save your honor!" Having repeated these words the
captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a shake, as if driving away the
weakness which assailed him at this touching recollection.

Listening to the captain's tales, Pierre--as often happens late in the
evening and under the influence of wine--followed all that was told him,
understood it all, and at the same time followed a train of personal
memories which, he knew not why, suddenly arose in his mind. While
listening to these love stories his own love for Natasha unexpectedly
rose to his mind, and going over the pictures of that love in his
imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe's tales. Listening
to the story of the struggle between love and duty, Pierre saw before
his eyes every minutest detail of his last meeting with the object of
his love at the Sukharev water tower. At the time of that meeting it had
not produced an effect upon him--he had not even once recalled it. But
now it seemed to him that that meeting had had in it something very
important and poetic.

"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you," he now seemed to
hear the words she had uttered and to see before him her eyes, her
smile, her traveling hood, and a stray lock of her hair... and there
seemed to him something pathetic and touching in all this.

Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish lady, the captain
asked Pierre if he had ever experienced a similar impulse to sacrifice
himself for love and a feeling of envy of the legitimate husband.

Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and felt a need to
express the thoughts that filled his mind. He began to explain that he
understood love for a women somewhat differently. He said that in all
his life he had loved and still loved only one woman, and that she could
never be his.

"Tiens!" said the captain.

Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman from his earliest
years, but that he had not dared to think of her because she was too
young, and because he had been an illegitimate son without a name.
Afterwards when he had received a name and wealth he dared not think of
her because he loved her too well, placing her far above everything in
the world, and especially therefore above himself.

When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the captain whether he
understood that.

The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did not understand
it he begged Pierre to continue.

"Platonic love, clouds..." he muttered.

Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse of frankness, or the
thought that this man did not, and never would, know any of those who
played a part in his story, or whether it was all these things together,
something loosened Pierre's tongue. Speaking thickly and with a faraway
look in his shining eyes, he told the whole story of his life: his
marriage, Natasha's love for his best friend, her betrayal of him, and
all his own simple relations with her. Urged on by Ramballe's questions
he also told what he had at first concealed--his own position and even
his name.

More than anything else in Pierre's story the captain was impressed by
the fact that Pierre was very rich, had two mansions in Moscow, and that
he had abandoned everything and not left the city, but remained there
concealing his name and station.

When it was late at night they went out together into the street. The
night was warm and light. To the left of the house on the Pokrovka a
fire glowed--the first of those that were beginning in Moscow. To the
right and high up in the sky was the sickle of the waning moon and
opposite to it hung that bright comet which was connected in Pierre's
heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerasim, the cook, and two
Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible remarks in
two languages could be heard. They were looking at the glow seen in the
town.

There was nothing terrible in the one small, distant fire in the immense
city.

Gazing at the high starry sky, at the moon, at the comet, and at the
glow from the fire, Pierre experienced a joyful emotion. "There now, how
good it is, what more does one need?" thought he. And suddenly
remembering his intention he grew dizzy and felt so faint that he leaned
against the fence to save himself from falling.

Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the gate with
unsteady steps and returning to his room lay down on the sofa and
immediately fell asleep.




CHAPTER XXX

The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was
watched from the various roads by the fugitive Muscovites and by the
retreating troops, with many different feelings.

The Rostov party spent the night at Mytishchi, fourteen miles from
Moscow. They had started so late on the first of September, the road had
been so blocked by vehicles and troops, so many things had been
forgotten for which servants were sent back, that they had decided to
spend that night at a place three miles out of Moscow. The next morning
they woke late and were again delayed so often that they only got as far
as Great Mytishchi. At ten o'clock that evening the Rostov family and
the wounded traveling with them were all distributed in the yards and
huts of that large village. The Rostovs' servants and coachmen and the
orderlies of the wounded officers, after attending to their masters, had
supper, fed the horses, and came out into the porches.

In a neighboring hut lay Raevski's adjutant with a fractured wrist. The
awful pain he suffered made him moan incessantly and piteously, and his
moaning sounded terrible in the darkness of the autumn night. He had
spent the first night in the same yard as the Rostovs. The countess said
she had been unable to close her eyes on account of his moaning, and at
Mytishchi she moved into a worse hut simply to be farther away from the
wounded man.

In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed, above the high
body of a coach standing before the porch, the small glow of another
fire. One glow had long been visible and everybody knew that it was
Little Mytishchi burning--set on fire by Mamonov's Cossacks.

"But look here, brothers, there's another fire!" remarked an orderly.

All turned their attention to the glow.

"But they told us Little Mytishchi had been set on fire by Mamonov's
Cossacks."

"But that's not Mytishchi, it's farther away."

"Look, it must be in Moscow!"

Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the coach and sat down
on its steps.

"It's more to the left, why, Little Mytishchi is over there, and this is
right on the other side."

Several men joined the first two.

"See how it's flaring," said one. "That's a fire in Moscow: either in
the Sushchevski or the Rogozhski quarter."

No one replied to this remark and for some time they all gazed silently
at the spreading flames of the second fire in the distance.

Old Daniel Terentich, the count's valet (as he was called), came up to
the group and shouted at Mishka.

"What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The count will be
calling and there's nobody there; go and gather the clothes together."

"I only ran out to get some water," said Mishka.

"But what do you think, Daniel Terentich? Doesn't it look as if that
glow were in Moscow?" remarked one of the footmen.

Daniel Terentich made no reply, and again for a long time they were all
silent. The glow spread, rising and falling, farther and farther still.

"God have mercy.... It's windy and dry..." said another voice.

"Just look! See what it's doing now. O Lord! You can even see the crows
flying. Lord have mercy on us sinners!"

"They'll put it out, no fear!"

"Who's to put it out?" Daniel Terentich, who had hitherto been silent,
was heard to say. His voice was calm and deliberate. "Moscow it is,
brothers," said he. "Mother Moscow, the white..." his voice faltered,
and he gave way to an old man's sob.

And it was as if they had all only waited for this to realize the
significance for them of the glow they were watching. Sighs were heard,
words of prayer, and the sobbing of the count's old valet.




CHAPTER XXXI

The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that Moscow was
burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to look. Sonya
and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out with him. Only
Natasha and the countess remained in the room. Petya was no longer with
the family, he had gone on with his regiment which was making for
Troitsa.

The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry. Natasha,
pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the icons just
where she had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to her father's
words. She was listening to the ceaseless moaning of the adjutant, three
houses off.

"Oh, how terrible," said Sonya returning from the yard chilled and
frightened. "I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there's an awful
glow! Natasha, do look! You can see it from the window," she said to her
cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind.

But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to her
and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had been in
this condition of stupor since the morning, when Sonya, to the surprise
and annoyance of the countess, had for some unaccountable reason found
it necessary to tell Natasha of Prince Andrew's wound and of his being
with their party. The countess had seldom been so angry with anyone as
she was with Sonya. Sonya had cried and begged to be forgiven and now,
as if trying to atone for her fault, paid unceasing attention to her
cousin.

"Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!" said she.

"What's burning?" asked Natasha. "Oh, yes, Moscow."

And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of her, she turned
her face to the window, looked out in such a way that it was evident
that she could not see anything, and again settled down in her former
attitude.

"But you didn't see it!"

"Yes, really I did," Natasha replied in a voice that pleaded to be left
in peace.

Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither Moscow
nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of importance to
Natasha.

The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess went
up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand as she
was wont to do when Natasha was ill, then touched her forehead with her
lips as if to feel whether she was feverish, and finally kissed her.

"You are cold. You are trembling all over. You'd better lie down," said
the countess.

"Lie down? All right, I will. I'll lie down at once," said Natasha.

When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was seriously
wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first asked many
questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it serious? And
could she see him? But after she had been told that she could not see
him, that he was seriously wounded but that his life was not in danger,
she ceased to ask questions or to speak at all, evidently disbelieving
what they told her, and convinced that say what she might she would
still be told the same. All the way she had sat motionless in a corner
of the coach with wide open eyes, and the expression in them which the
countess knew so well and feared so much, and now she sat in the same
way on the bench where she had seated herself on arriving. She was
planning something and either deciding or had already decided something
in her mind. The countess knew this, but what it might be she did not
know, and this alarmed and tormented her.

"Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed."

A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame Schoss
and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor.

"No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor," Natasha replied
irritably and she went to the window and opened it. Through the open
window the moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She put
her head out into the damp night air, and the countess saw her slim neck
shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame. Natasha knew
it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning. She knew Prince Andrew was in
the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut across the passage;
but this dreadful incessant moaning made her sob. The countess exchanged
a look with Sonya.

"Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet," said the countess, softly
touching Natasha's shoulders. "Come, lie down."

"Oh, yes... I'll lie down at once," said Natasha, and began hurriedly
undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.

When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket, she sat
down with her foot under her on the bed that had been made up on the
floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the front, and
began replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers rapidly
unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved from side to
side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked fixedly before
her. When her toilet for the night was finished she sank gently onto the
sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the door.

"Natasha, you'd better lie in the middle," said Sonya.

"I'll stay here," muttered Natasha. "Do lie down," she added crossly,
and buried her face in the pillow.

The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed hastily and lay down.
The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left in the
room. But in the yard there was a light from the fire at Little
Mytishchi a mile and a half away, and through the night came the noise
of people shouting at a tavern Mamonov's Cossacks had set up across the
street, and the adjutant's unceasing moans could still be heard.

For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the sounds that reached
her from inside and outside the room and did not move. First she heard
her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed under her,
then Madame Schoss' familiar whistling snore and Sonya's gentle
breathing. Then the countess called to Natasha. Natasha did not answer.

"I think she's asleep, Mamma," said Sonya softly.

After a short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one
replied.

Soon after that Natasha heard her mother's even breathing. Natasha did
not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the quilt,
was growing cold on the bare floor.

As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in a
crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near by.
The shouting in the tavern had died down; only the moaning of the
adjutant was heard. Natasha sat up.

"Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?" she whispered.

No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully, crossed herself, and
stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her slim, supple,
bare feet. The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping cautiously from one
foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few steps to the door and
grasped the cold door handle.

It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically against
all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking with alarm and
terror and overflowing with love.

She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the cold,
damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed her. With
her bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over him, and opened
the door into the part of the hut where Prince Andrew lay. It was dark
in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench beside a bed on which
something was lying, stood a tallow candle with a long, thick, and
smoldering wick.

From the moment she had been told that morning of Prince Andrew's wound
and his presence there, Natasha had resolved to see him. She did not
know why she had to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt the
more convinced that it was necessary.

All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now
that the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might
see. How was he maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that incessant
moaning of the adjutant's? Yes, he was altogether like that. In her
imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When she saw an
indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees raised under the
quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body there, and stood
still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her forward. She
cautiously took one step and then another, and found herself in the
middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man--Timokhin--was
lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons, and two others--the
doctor and a valet--lay on the floor.

The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake by the
pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange
apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and nightcap.
The valet's sleepy, frightened exclamation, "What do you want? What's
the matter?" made Natasha approach more swiftly to what was lying in the
corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body looked, she must see him. She
passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle wick, and she saw
Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the quilt, and such as she
had always seen him.

He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his
glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially his neck,
delicate as a child's, revealed by the turn-down collar of his shirt,
gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had never
seen on him before. She went up to him and with a swift, flexible,
youthful movement dropped on her knees.

He smiled and held out his hand to her.




CHAPTER XXXII

Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the ambulance
station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state and the
inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor's
opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with
pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that his
temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning. The
first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had
remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself asked
to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his removal into
the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose consciousness. When he
had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with
closed eyes. Then he opened them and whispered softly: "And the tea?"
His remembering such a small detail of everyday life astonished the
doctor. He felt Prince Andrew's pulse, and to his surprise and
dissatisfaction found it had improved. He was dissatisfied because he
knew by experience that if his patient did not die now, he would do so a
little later with greater suffering. Timokhin, the red-nosed major of
Prince Andrew's regiment, had joined him in Moscow and was being taken
along with him, having been wounded in the leg at the battle of
Borodino. They were accompanied by a doctor, Prince Andrew's valet, his
coachman, and two orderlies.

They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking with
feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to understand and
remember something.

"I don't want any more. Is Timokhin here?" he asked.

Timokhin crept along the bench to him.

"I am here, your excellency."

"How's your wound?"

"Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?"

Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.

"Couldn't one get a book?" he asked.

"What book?"

"The Gospels. I haven't one."

The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he was
feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but
reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was
uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak
with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of
mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began examining that dreadful
place. The doctor was very much displeased about something and made a
change in the dressings, turning the wounded man over so that he groaned
again and grew unconscious and delirious from the agony. He kept asking
them to get him the book and put it under him.

"What trouble would it be to you?" he said. "I have not got one. Please
get it for me and put it under for a moment," he pleaded in a piteous
voice.

The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.

"You fellows have no conscience," said he to the valet who was pouring
water over his hands. "For just one moment I didn't look after you...
It's such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it."

"By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under him!"
said the valet.

The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was the
matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he asked
to be carried into the hut after his caleche had stopped at Mytishchi.
After growing confused from pain while being carried into the hut he
again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once more recalled
all that had happened to him, and above all vividly remembered the
moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of the sufferings of
a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to him which promised him
happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague and indefinite, again
possessed his soul. He remembered that he had now a new source of
happiness and that this happiness had something to do with the Gospels.
That was why he asked for a copy of them. The uncomfortable position in
which they had put him and turned him over again confused his thoughts,
and when he came to himself a third time it was in the complete
stillness of the night. Everybody near him was sleeping. A cricket
chirped from across the passage; someone was shouting and singing in the
street; cockroaches rustled on the table, on the icons, and on the
walls, and a big fly flopped at the head of the bed and around the
candle beside him, the wick of which was charred and had shaped itself
like a mushroom.

His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,
feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the
power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which to
fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from the
deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in and can
then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew's mind was not
in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of his mind were more
active and clearer than ever, but they acted apart from his will. Most
diverse thoughts and images occupied him simultaneously. At times his
brain suddenly began to work with a vigor, clearness, and depth it had
never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in the midst of its
work it would turn to some unexpected idea and he had not the strength
to turn it back again.

"Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be
deprived," he thought as he lay in the semidarkness of the quiet hut,
gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. "A happiness
lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act
on man--a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving. Every
man can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was possible
only for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was the Son...?"

And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince Andrew
heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality) a soft
whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating "piti-piti-
piti," and then "titi," and then again "piti-piti-piti," and "ti-ti"
once more. At the same time he felt that above his face, above the very
middle of it, some strange airy structure was being erected out of
slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this whispered music. He
felt that he had to balance carefully (though it was difficult) so that
this airy structure should not collapse; but nevertheless it kept
collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound of whispered rhythmic
music--"it stretches, stretches, spreading out and stretching," said
Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to this whispering and feeling
the sensation of this drawing out and the construction of this edifice
of needles, he also saw by glimpses a red halo round the candle, and
heard the rustle of the cockroaches and the buzzing of the fly that
flopped against his pillow and his face. Each time the fly touched his
face it gave him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did not
destroy the structure, though it knocked against the very region of his
face where it was rising. But besides this there was something else of
importance. It was something white by the door--the statue of a sphinx,
which also oppressed him.

"But perhaps that's my shirt on the table," he thought, "and that's my
legs, and that is the door, but why is it always stretching and drawing
itself out, and 'piti-piti-piti' and 'ti-ti' and 'piti-piti-piti'...?
That's enough, please leave off!" Prince Andrew painfully entreated
someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings again swam to the surface of
his mind with peculiar clearness and force.

"Yes--love," he thought again quite clearly. "But not love which loves
for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason,
but the love which I--while dying--first experienced when I saw my enemy
and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very
essence of the soul and does not require an object. Now again I feel
that bliss. To love one's neighbors, to love one's enemies, to love
everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to
love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved
by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that I
loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?...

"When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but
divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can
destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people have
I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as I did
her." And he vividly pictured to himself Natasha, not as he had done in
the past with nothing but her charms which gave him delight, but for the
first time picturing to himself her soul. And he understood her
feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now understood for the
first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her, the cruelty of his
rupture with her. "If only it were possible for me to see her once more!
Just once, looking into those eyes to say..."

"Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!" flopped the fly...
And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a world of
reality and delirium in which something particular was happening. In
that world some structure was still being erected and did not fall,
something was still stretching out, and the candle with its red halo was
still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay near the door; but
besides all this something creaked, there was a whiff of fresh air, and
a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the door. And that sphinx had
the pale face and shining eyes of the very Natasha of whom he had just
been thinking.

"Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is," thought Prince Andrew,
trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face remained
before him with the force of reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew
wished to return to that former world of pure thought, but he could not,
and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft whispering voice
continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed him and stretched
out, and the strange face was before him. Prince Andrew collected all
his strength in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a little, and
suddenly there was a ringing in his ears, a dimness in his eyes, and
like a man plunged into water he lost consciousness. When he came to
himself, Natasha, that same living Natasha whom of all people he most
longed to love with this new pure divine love that had been revealed to
him, was kneeling before him. He realized that it was the real living
Natasha, and he was not surprised but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless
on her knees (she was unable to stir), with frightened eyes riveted on
him, was restraining her sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the
lower part of it something quivered.

Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.

"You?" he said. "How fortunate!"

With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer to him on her
knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and began
kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.

"Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.
"Forgive me!"

"I love you," said Prince Andrew.

"Forgive...!"

"Forgive what?" he asked.

"Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha in a scarcely
audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more rapidly, just
touching it with her lips.

"I love you more, better than before," said Prince Andrew, lifting her
face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.

Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha's thin pale face, with
its swollen lips, was more than plain--it was dreadful. But Prince
Andrew did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were beautiful.
They heard the sound of voices behind them.

Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.
Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had
long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his bare
body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.

"What's this?" said the doctor, rising from his bed. "Please go away,
madam!"

At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her
daughter's absence, knocked at the door.

Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out of the room
and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.

From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs' journey, at every
halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natasha never left the
wounded Bolkonski, and the doctor had to admit that he had not expected
from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in nursing a
wounded man.

Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew die
in her daughter's arms during the journey--as, judging by what the
doctor said, it seemed might easily happen--she could not oppose
Natasha. Though with the intimacy now established between the wounded
man and Natasha the thought occurred that should he recover their former
engagement would be renewed, no one--least of all Natasha and Prince
Andrew--spoke of this: the unsettled question of life and death, which
hung not only over Bolkonski but over all Russia, shut out all other
considerations.




CHAPTER XXXIII

On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching, the
clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt uncomfortable on
his body, and his mind had a dim consciousness of something shameful he
had done the day before. That something shameful was his yesterday's
conversation with Captain Ramballe.

It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of doors.
Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an engraved
stock which Gerasim had replaced on the writing table, he remembered
where he was and what lay before him that very day.

"Am I not too late?" he thought. "No, probably he won't make his entry
into Moscow before noon."

Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him, but
hastened to act.

After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to go out.
But it then occurred to him for the first time that he certainly could
not carry the weapon in his hand through the streets. It was difficult
to hide such a big pistol even under his wide coat. He could not carry
it unnoticed in his belt or under his arm. Besides, it had been
discharged, and he had not had time to reload it. "No matter, dagger
will do," he said to himself, though when planning his design he had
more than once come to the conclusion that the chief mistake made by the
student in 1809 had been to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as
his chief aim consisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving
to himself that he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he
could to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a
green sheath which he had bought at the Sukharev market with the pistol,
and hid it under his waistcoat.

Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his head,
Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or meeting
the captain, and passed out into the street.

The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much indifference the
evening before, had greatly increased during the night. Moscow was on
fire in several places. The buildings in Carriage Row, across the river,
in the Bazaar and the Povarskoy, as well as the barges on the Moskva
River and the timber yards by the Dorogomilov Bridge, were all ablaze.

Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and from there to
the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where he had long before
decided that the deed should be done. The gates of most of the houses
were locked and the shutters up. The streets and lanes were deserted.
The air was full of smoke and the smell of burning. Now and then he met
Russians with anxious and timid faces, and Frenchmen with an air not of
the city but of the camp, walking in the middle of the streets. Both the
Russians and the French looked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his
height and stoutness, and the strange morose look of suffering in his
face and whole figure, the Russians stared at Pierre because they could
not make out to what class he could belong. The French followed him with
astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the other
Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid no
attention to them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who were
explaining something to some Russians who did not understand them,
stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.

Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel
standing beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the shout
was threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man's musket as
he raised it did Pierre understand that he had to pass on the other side
of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of what went on around
him. He carried his resolution within himself in terror and haste, like
something dreadful and alien to him, for, after the previous night's
experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he was not destined to bring
his mood safely to his destination. And even had he not been hindered by
anything on the way, his intention could not now have been carried out,
for Napoleon had passed the Arbat more than four hours previously on his
way from the Dorogomilov suburb to the Kremlin, and was now sitting in a
very gloomy frame of mind in a royal study in the Kremlin, giving
detailed and exact orders as to measures to be taken immediately to
extinguish the fire, to prevent looting, and to reassure the
inhabitants. But Pierre did not know this; he was entirely absorbed in
what lay before him, and was tortured--as those are who obstinately
undertake a task that is impossible for them not because of its
difficulty but because of its incompatibility with their natures--by the
fear of weakening at the decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.

Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by instinct
and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the Povarskoy.

As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser--he
even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame rose
from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the streets
and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that something
unusual was happening around him, did not realize that he was
approaching the fire. As he was going along a foot path across a wide-
open space adjoining the Povarskoy on one side and the gardens of Prince
Gruzinski's house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the desperate
weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if awakening from a dream
and lifted his head.

By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of household
goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and trunks. On the
ground, beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longer young, with long,
prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak and cap. This woman,
swaying to and fro and muttering something, was choking with sobs. Two
girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in dirty short frocks and cloaks,
were staring at their mother with a look of stupefaction on their pale
frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy of about seven, who wore an
overcoat and an immense cap evidently not his own, was crying in his old
nurse's arms. A dirty, barefooted maid was sitting on a trunk, and,
having undone her pale-colored plait, was pulling it straight and
sniffing at her singed hair. The woman's husband, a short, round-
shouldered man in the undress uniform of a civilian official, with
sausage-shaped whiskers and showing under his square-set cap the hair
smoothly brushed forward over his temples, with expressionless face was
moving the trunks, which were placed one on another, and was dragging
some garments from under them.

As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his feet.

"Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends... help
us, somebody," she muttered between her sobs. "My girl... My daughter!
My youngest daughter is left behind. She's burned! Ooh! Was it for this
I nursed you.... Ooh!"

"Don't, Mary Nikolievna!" said her husband to her in a low voice,
evidently only to justify himself before the stranger. "Sister must have
taken her, or else where can she be?" he added.

"Monster! Villain!" shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing to weep.
"You have no heart, you don't feel for your own child! Another man would
have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and neither a man
nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man," she went on,
addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. "The fire broke out
alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out 'Fire!' and we rushed
to collect our things. We ran out just as we were.... This is what we
have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all the rest is lost.
We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O Lord!..." and again she
began to sob. "My child, my dear one! Burned, burned!"

"But where was she left?" asked Pierre.

From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man
might help her.

"Oh, dear sir!" she cried, seizing him by the legs. "My benefactor, set
my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid girl, show him the way!" she
cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and still farther exposing
her long teeth.

"Show me the way, show me, I... I'll do it," gasped Pierre rapidly.

The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her plait,
sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre felt as
if he had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held his head
higher, his eyes shone with the light of life, and with swift steps he
followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on the Povarskoy. The
whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues of flame here
and there broke through that cloud. A great number of people crowded in
front of the conflagration. In the middle of the street stood a French
general saying something to those around him. Pierre, accompanied by the
maid, was advancing to the spot where the general stood, but the French
soldiers stopped him.

"On ne passe pas!" * cried a voice.


* "You can't pass!"

"This way, uncle," cried the girl. "We'll pass through the side street,
by the Nikulins'!"

Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with her.
She ran across the street, turned down a side street to the left, and,
passing three houses, turned into a yard on the right.

"It's here, close by," said she and, running across the yard, opened a
gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small wooden
wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One of its
sides had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames issued from
the openings of the windows and from under the roof.

As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air and
involuntarily stopped.

"Which is it? Which is your house?" he asked.

"Ooh!" wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. "That's it, that was our
lodging. You've burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my precious little
missy! Ooh!" lamented Aniska, who at the sight of the fire felt that she
too must give expression to her feelings.

Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he
involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large house that
was as yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, and around
which swarmed a crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not realize what
these men, who were dragging something out, were about; but seeing
before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saber and trying
to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely understood that looting was
going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that idea.

The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings, the
whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the people, and
the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick black clouds
and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with here and there dense
sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish scales creeping along
the walls), and the heat and smoke and rapidity of motion, produced on
Pierre the usual animating effects of a conflagration. It had a
peculiarly strong effect on him because at the sight of the fire he felt
himself suddenly freed from the ideas that had weighed him down. He felt
young, bright, adroit, and resolute. He ran round to the other side of
the lodge and was about to dash into that part of it which was still
standing, when just above his head he heard several voices shouting and
then a cracking sound and the ring of something heavy falling close
beside him.

Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some Frenchmen
who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with metal
articles. Other French soldiers standing below went up to the drawer.

"What does this fellow want?" shouted one of them referring to Pierre.

"There's a child in that house. Haven't you seen a child?" cried Pierre.

"What's he talking about? Get along!" said several voices, and one of
the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take from them
some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved
threateningly toward him.

"A child?" shouted a Frenchman from above. "I did hear something
squealing in the garden. Perhaps it's his brat that the fellow is
looking for. After all, one must be human, you know...."

"Where is it? Where?" said Pierre.

"There! There!" shouted the Frenchman at the window, pointing to the
garden at the back of the house. "Wait a bit--I'm coming down."

And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with a spot
on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window on the
ground floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with him into the
garden.

"Hurry up, you others!" he called out to his comrades. "It's getting
hot."

When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman pulled
Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space where a three-
year-old girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat.

"There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!" said the
Frenchman. "Good-bye, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you
know!" and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his
comrades.

Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going to take
her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly, scrofulous-looking
child, unattractively like her mother, began to yell and run away.
Pierre, however, seized her and lifted her in his arms. She screamed
desperately and angrily and tried with her little hands to pull Pierre's
hands away and to bite them with her slobbering mouth. Pierre was seized
by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he had experienced when
touching some nasty little animal. But he made an effort not to throw
the child down and ran with her to the large house. It was now, however,
impossible to get back the way he had come; the maid, Aniska, was no
longer there, and Pierre with a feeling of pity and disgust pressed the
wet, painfully sobbing child to himself as tenderly as he could and ran
with her through the garden seeking another way out.




CHAPTER XXXIV

Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back
with his little burden to the Gruzinski garden at the corner of the
Povarskoy. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had set
out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and goods
that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian families who
had taken refuge here from the fire with their belongings, there were
several French soldiers in a variety of clothing. Pierre took no notice
of them. He hurried to find the family of that civil servant in order to
restore the daughter to her mother and go to save someone else. Pierre
felt that he had still much to do and to do quickly. Glowing with the
heat and from running, he felt at that moment more strongly than ever
the sense of youth, animation, and determination that had come on him
when he ran to save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging
with her little hands to Pierre's coat, sat on his arm gazing about her
like some little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a
slight smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that
frightened, sickly little face.

He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left them. He
walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various faces he
met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family consisting
of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new, cloth-
covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar type, and
a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the perfection of
Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched, black eyebrows and
the extraordinarily soft, bright color of her long, beautiful,
expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the crowd on the
open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright lilac shawl on
her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown out onto the snow.
She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the old woman, and
looked from under her long lashes with motionless, large, almond-shaped
eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she was aware of her beauty and
fearful because of it. Her face struck Pierre and, hurrying along by the
fence, he turned several times to look at her. When he had reached the
fence, still without finding those he sought, he stopped and looked
about him.

With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous than
before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered about him.

"Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You're of the gentry yourself,
aren't you? Whose child is it?" they asked him.

Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat who
had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked whether
anyone knew where she had gone.

"Why, that must be the Anferovs," said an old deacon, addressing a
pockmarked peasant woman. "Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!" he added
in his customary bass.

"The Anferovs? No," said the woman. "They left in the morning. That must
be either Mary Nikolievna's or the Ivanovs'!"

"He says 'a woman,' and Mary Nikolievna is a lady," remarked a house
serf.

"Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth," said Pierre.

"That's Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden when these wolves
swooped down," said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers.

"O Lord, have mercy!" added the deacon.

"Go over that way, they're there. It's she! She kept on lamenting and
crying," continued the woman. "It's she. Here, this way!"

But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds been
intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was looking at
the Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone up to them.
One of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat tied round
the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his head and his feet were
bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck Pierre, was a
long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in his movements and
with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a woman's loose gown of
frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian boots. The little
barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the Armenians and,
saying something, immediately seized the old man by his legs and the old
man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in the frieze gown
stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and with his hands in
his pockets stood staring at her, motionless and silent.

"Here, take the child!" said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly to the
woman, handing the little girl to her. "Give her back to them, give her
back!" he almost shouted, putting the child, who began screaming, on the
ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the Armenian family.

The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had
secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other. The
old man was saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre
caught but a glimpse of this, his whole attention was directed to the
Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile, swaying slowly from side to
side, had drawn nearer to the young woman and taking his hands from his
pockets had seized her by the neck.

The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same attitude,
with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or feel what the
soldier was doing to her.

While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the
Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing from
her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the young
woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.

"Let that woman alone!" exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious voice,
seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him aside.

The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing down
the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward Pierre.

"Voyons, Pas de betises!" * he cried.


* "Look here, no nonsense!"

Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing and
his strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted Frenchman
and, before the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked him off his
feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval were heard from
the crowd around, and at the same moment a mounted patrol of French
uhlans appeared from round the corner. The uhlans came up at a trot to
Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them. Pierre remembered nothing
of what happened after that. He only remembered beating someone and
being beaten and finally feeling that his hands were bound and that a
crowd of French soldiers stood around him and were searching him.

"Lieutenant, he has a dagger," were the first words Pierre understood.

"Ah, a weapon?" said the officer and turned to the barefooted soldier
who had been arrested with Pierre. "All right, you can tell all about it
at the court-martial." Then he turned to Pierre. "Do you speak French?"

Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply. His face
probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something in a
whisper and four more uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves on
both sides of Pierre.

"Do you speak French?" the officer asked again, keeping at a distance
from Pierre. "Call the interpreter."

A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks, and by
his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to be a
French salesman from one of the Moscow shops.

"He does not look like a common man," said the interpreter, after a
searching look at Pierre.

"Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary," remarked the officer. "And
ask him who he is," he added.

"Who are you?" asked the interpreter in poor Russian. "You must answer
the chief."

"I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner--take me!" Pierre
suddenly replied in French.

"Ah, ah!" muttered the officer with a frown. "Well then, march!"

A crowd had collected round the uhlans. Nearest to Pierre stood the
pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when the patrol
started she moved forward.

"Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?" said she. "And the little
girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she's not theirs?"
said the woman.

"What does that woman want?" asked the officer.

Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight of the
little girl he had saved.

"What does she want?" he murmured. "She is bringing me my daughter whom
I have just saved from the flames," said he. "Good-bye!" And without
knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along with
resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers.

The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various streets
of Moscow by Durosnel's order to put a stop to the pillage, and
especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the general
opinion which had that day originated among the higher French officers,
were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching through a number of
streets the patrol arrested five more Russian suspects: a small
shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant, and a house serf, besides
several looters. But of all these various suspected characters, Pierre
was considered to be the most suspicious of all. When they had all been
brought for the night to a large house on the Zubov Rampart that was
being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed apart under strict guard.

BOOK TWELVE: 1812




CHAPTER I

In Petersburg at that time a complicated struggle was being carried on
with greater heat than ever in the highest circles, between the parties
of Rumyantsev, the French, Marya Fedorovna, the Tsarevich, and others,
drowned as usual by the buzzing of the court drones. But the calm,
luxurious life of Petersburg, concerned only about phantoms and
reflections of real life, went on in its old way and made it hard,
except by a great effort, to realize the danger and the difficult
position of the Russian people. There were the same receptions and
balls, the same French theater, the same court interests and service
interests and intrigues as usual. Only in the very highest circles were
attempts made to keep in mind the difficulties of the actual position.
Stories were whispered of how differently the two Empresses behaved in
these difficult circumstances. The Empress Marya, concerned for the
welfare of the charitable and educational institutions under her
patronage, had given directions that they should all be removed to
Kazan, and the things belonging to these institutions had already been
packed up. The Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions
she would be pleased to give--with her characteristic Russian patriotism
had replied that she could give no directions about state institutions
for that was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally
was concerned she would be the last to quit Petersburg.

At Anna Pavlovna's on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of the
battle of Borodino, there was a soiree, the chief feature of which was
to be the reading of a letter from His Lordship the Bishop when sending
the Emperor an icon of the Venerable Sergius. It was regarded as a model
of ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince Vasili himself, famed for
his elocution, was to read it. (He used to read at the Empress'.) The
art of his reading was supposed to lie in rolling out the words, quite
independently of their meaning, in a loud and singsong voice alternating
between a despairing wail and a tender murmur, so that the wail fell
quite at random on one word and the murmur on another. This reading, as
was always the case at Anna Pavlovna's soirees, had a political
significance. That evening she expected several important personages who
had to be made ashamed of their visits to the French theater and aroused
to a patriotic temper. A good many people had already arrived, but Anna
Pavlovna, not yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room,
did not let the reading begin but wound up the springs of a general
conversation.

The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess Bezukhova.
She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously, had missed
several gatherings of which she was usually ornament, and was said to be
receiving no one, and instead of the celebrated Petersburg doctors who
usually attended her had entrusted herself to some Italian doctor who
was treating her in some new and unusual way.

They all knew very well that the enchanting countess' illness arose from
an inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at the same time,
and that the Italian's cure consisted in removing such inconvenience;
but in Anna Pavlovna's presence no one dared to think of this or even
appear to know it.

"They say the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says it is angina
pectoris."

"Angina? Oh, that's a terrible illness!"

"They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the angina..." and
the word angina was repeated with great satisfaction.

"The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child when the doctor
told him the case was dangerous."

"Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting woman."

"You are speaking of the poor countess?" said Anna Pavlovna, coming up
just then. "I sent to ask for news, and hear that she is a little
better. Oh, she is certainly the most charming woman in the world," she
went on, with a smile at her own enthusiasm. "We belong to different
camps, but that does not prevent my esteeming her as she deserves. She
is very unfortunate!" added Anna Pavlovna.

Supposing that by these words Anna Pavlovna was somewhat lifting the
veil from the secret of the countess' malady, an unwary young man
ventured to express surprise that well known doctors had not been called
in and that the countess was being attended by a charlatan who might
employ dangerous remedies.

"Your information may be better than mine," Anna Pavlovna suddenly and
venomously retorted on the inexperienced young man, "but I know on good
authority that this doctor is a very learned and able man. He is private
physician to the Queen of Spain."

And having thus demolished the young man, Anna Pavlovna turned to
another group where Bilibin was talking about the Austrians: having
wrinkled up his face he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again
and utter one of his mots.

"I think it is delightful," he said, referring to a diplomatic note that
had been sent to Vienna with some Austrian banners captured from the
French by Wittgenstein, "the hero of Petropol" as he was then called in
Petersburg.

"What? What's that?" asked Anna Pavlovna, securing silence for the mot,
which she had heard before.

And Bilibin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic dispatch, which
he had himself composed.

"The Emperor returns these Austrian banners," said Bilibin, "friendly
banners gone astray and found on a wrong path," and his brow became
smooth again.

"Charming, charming!" observed Prince Vasili.

"The path to Warsaw, perhaps," Prince Hippolyte remarked loudly and
unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him, understanding what he meant.
Prince Hippolyte himself glanced around with amused surprise. He knew no
more than the others what his words meant. During his diplomatic career
he had more than once noticed that such utterances were received as very
witty, and at every opportunity he uttered in that way the first words
that entered his head. "It may turn out very well," he thought, "but if
not, they'll know how to arrange matters." And really, during the
awkward silence that ensued, that insufficiently patriotic person
entered whom Anna Pavlovna had been waiting for and wished to convert,
and she, smiling and shaking a finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince
Vasili to the table and bringing him two candles and the manuscript
begged him to begin. Everyone became silent.

"Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor!" Prince Vasili sternly declaimed,
looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether anyone had
anything to say to the contrary. But no one said anything. "Moscow, our
ancient capital, the New Jerusalem, receives her Christ"--he placed a
sudden emphasis on the word her--"as a mother receives her zealous sons
into her arms, and through the gathering mists, foreseeing the brilliant
glory of thy rule, sings in exultation, 'Hosanna, blessed is he that
cometh!'"

Prince Vasili pronounced these last words in a tearful voice.

Bilibin attentively examined his nails, and many of those present
appeared intimidated, as if asking in what they were to blame. Anna
Pavlovna whispered the next words in advance, like an old woman
muttering the prayer at Communion: "Let the bold and insolent
Goliath..." she whispered.

Prince Vasili continued.

"Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of France encompass
the realms of Russia with death-bearing terrors; humble Faith, the sling
of the Russian David, shall suddenly smite his head in his bloodthirsty
pride. This icon of the Venerable Sergius, the servant of God and
zealous champion of old of our country's weal, is offered to Your
Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning strength prevents rejoicing in
the sight of your most gracious presence. I raise fervent prayers to
Heaven that the Almighty may exalt the race of the just, and mercifully
fulfill the desires of Your Majesty."

"What force! What a style!" was uttered in approval both of reader and
of author.

Animated by that address Anna Pavlovna's guests talked for a long time
of the state of the fatherland and offered various conjectures as to the
result of the battle to be fought in a few days.

"You will see," said Anna Pavlovna, "that tomorrow, on the Emperor's
birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!"




CHAPTER II

Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was in fact fulfilled. Next day during the
service at the palace church in honor of the Emperor's birthday, Prince
Volkonski was called out of the church and received a dispatch from
Prince Kutuzov. It was Kutuzov's report, written from Tatarinova on the
day of the battle. Kutuzov wrote that the Russians had not retreated a
step, that the French losses were much heavier than ours, and that he
was writing in haste from the field of battle before collecting full
information. It followed that there must have been a victory. And at
once, without leaving the church, thanks were rendered to the Creator
for His help and for the victory.

Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was justified, and all that morning a
joyously festive mood reigned in the city. Everyone believed the victory
to have been complete, and some even spoke of Napoleon's having been
captured, of his deposition, and of the choice of a new ruler for
France.

It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real strength
and completeness amid the conditions of court life and far from the
scene of action. General events involuntarily group themselves around
some particular incident. So now the courtiers' pleasure was based as
much on the fact that the news had arrived on the Emperor's birthday as
on the fact of the victory itself. It was like a successfully arranged
surprise. Mention was made in Kutuzov's report of the Russian losses,
among which figured the names of Tuchkov, Bagration, and Kutaysov. In
the Petersburg world this sad side of the affair again involuntarily
centered round a single incident: Kutaysov's death. Everybody knew him,
the Emperor liked him, and he was young and interesting. That day
everyone met with the words:

"What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the service. But what a loss
Kutaysov is! How sorry I am!"

"What did I tell about Kutuzov?" Prince Vasili now said with a prophet's
pride. "I always said he was the only man capable of defeating
Napoleon."

But next day no news arrived from the army and the public mood grew
anxious. The courtiers suffered because of the suffering the suspense
occasioned the Emperor.

"Fancy the Emperor's position!" said they, and instead of extolling
Kutuzov as they had done the day before, they condemned him as the cause
of the Emperor's anxiety. That day Prince Vasili no longer boasted of
his protege Kutuzov, but remained silent when the commander-in-chief was
mentioned. Moreover, toward evening, as if everything conspired to make
Petersburg society anxious and uneasy, a terrible piece of news was
added. Countess Helene Bezukhova had suddenly died of that terrible
malady it had been so agreeable to mention. Officially, at large
gatherings, everyone said that Countess Bezukhova had died of a terrible
attack of angina pectoris, but in intimate circles details were
mentioned of how the private physician of the Queen of Spain had
prescribed small doses of a certain drug to produce a certain effect;
but Helene, tortured by the fact that the old count suspected her and
that her husband to whom she had written (that wretched, profligate
Pierre) had not replied, had suddenly taken a very large dose of the
drug, and had died in agony before assistance could be rendered her. It
was said that Prince Vasili and the old count had turned upon the
Italian, but the latter had produced such letters from the unfortunate
deceased that they had immediately let the matter drop.

Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts: the Emperor's
lack of news, the loss of Kutaysov, and the death of Helene.

On the third day after Kutuzov's report a country gentleman arrived from
Moscow, and news of the surrender of Moscow to the French spread through
the whole town. This was terrible! What a position for the Emperor to be
in! Kutuzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasili during the visits of
condolence paid to him on the occasion of his daughter's death said of
Kutuzov, whom he had formerly praised (it was excusable for him in his
grief to forget what he had said), that it was impossible to expect
anything else from a blind and depraved old man.

"I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been entrusted to such
a man."

As long as this news remained unofficial it was possible to doubt it,
but the next day the following communication was received from Count
Rostopchin:

Prince Kutuzov's adjutant has brought me a letter in which he demands
police officers to guide the army to the Ryazan road. He writes that he
is regretfully abandoning Moscow. Sire! Kutuzov's action decides the
fate of the capital and of your empire! Russia will shudder to learn of
the abandonment of the city in which her greatness is centered and in
which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I shall follow the army. I have
had everything removed, and it only remains for me to weep over the fate
of my fatherland.

On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince Volkonski to Kutuzov
with the following rescript:

Prince Michael Ilarionovich! Since the twenty-ninth of August I have
received no communication from you, yet on the first of September I
received from the commander-in-chief of Moscow, via Yaroslavl, the sad
news that you, with the army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You can
yourself imagine the effect this news has had on me, and your silence
increases my astonishment. I am sending this by Adjutant-General Prince
Volkonski, to hear from you the situation of the army and the reasons
that have induced you to take this melancholy decision.




CHAPTER III

Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a messenger from Kutuzov
reached Petersburg with the official announcement of that event. This
messenger was Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know Russian, but who was
quoique etranger, russe de coeur et d'ame, * as he said of himself.


* Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul.

The Emperor at once received this messenger in his study at the palace
on Stone Island. Michaud, who had never seen Moscow before the campaign
and who did not know Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as he wrote) when
he appeared before notre tres gracieux souverain * with the news of the
burning of Moscow, dont les flammes eclairaient sa route. *(2)


* Our most gracious sovereign.

* (2) Whose flames illumined his route.

Though the source of M. Michaud's chagrin must have been different from
that which caused Russians to grieve, he had such a sad face when shown
into the Emperor's study that the latter at once asked:

"Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?"

"Very sad, sire," replied Michaud, lowering his eyes with a sigh. "The
abandonment of Moscow."

"Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a battle?" asked the
Emperor quickly, his face suddenly flushing.

Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutuzov had entrusted to him,
which was that it had been impossible to fight before Moscow, and that
as the only remaining choice was between losing the army as well as
Moscow, or losing Moscow alone, the field marshal had to choose the
latter.

The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at Michaud.

"Has the enemy entered the city?" he asked.

"Yes, sire, and Moscow is now in ashes. I left it all in flames,"
replied Michaud in a decided tone, but glancing at the Emperor he was
frightened by what he had done.

The Emperor began to breathe heavily and rapidly, his lower lip
trembled, and tears instantly appeared in his fine blue eyes.

But this lasted only a moment. He suddenly frowned, as if blaming
himself for his weakness, and raising his head addressed Michaud in a
firm voice:

"I see, Colonel, from all that is happening, that Providence requires
great sacrifices of us... I am ready to submit myself in all things to
His will; but tell me, Michaud, how did you leave the army when it saw
my ancient capital abandoned without a battle? Did you not notice
discouragement?..."

Seeing that his most gracious ruler was calm once more, Michaud also
grew calm, but was not immediately ready to reply to the Emperor's
direct and relevant question which required a direct answer.

"Sire, will you allow me to speak frankly as befits a loyal soldier?" he
asked to gain time.

"Colonel, I always require it," replied the Emperor. "Conceal nothing
from me, I wish to know absolutely how things are."

"Sire!" said Michaud with a subtle, scarcely perceptible smile on his
lips, having now prepared a well-phrased reply, "sire, I left the whole
army, from its chiefs to the lowest soldier, without exception in
desperate and agonized terror..."

"How is that?" the Emperor interrupted him, frowning sternly. "Would
misfortune make my Russians lose heart?... Never!"

Michaud had only waited for this to bring out the phrase he had
prepared.

"Sire," he said, with respectful playfulness, "they are only afraid lest
Your Majesty, in the goodness of your heart, should allow yourself to be
persuaded to make peace. They are burning for the combat," declared this
representative of the Russian nation, "and to prove to Your Majesty by
the sacrifice of their lives how devoted they are...."

"Ah!" said the Emperor reassured, and with a kindly gleam in his eyes,
he patted Michaud on the shoulder. "You set me at ease, Colonel."

He bent his head and was silent for some time.

"Well, then, go back to the army," he said, drawing himself up to his
full height and addressing Michaud with a gracious and majestic gesture,
"and tell our brave men and all my good subjects wherever you go that
when I have not a soldier left I shall put myself at the head of my
beloved nobility and my good peasants and so use the last resources of
my empire. It still offers me more than my enemies suppose," said the
Emperor growing more and more animated; "but should it ever be ordained
by Divine Providence," he continued, raising to heaven his fine eyes
shining with emotion, "that my dynasty should cease to reign on the
throne of my ancestors, then after exhausting all the means at my
command, I shall let my beard grow to here" (he pointed halfway down his
chest) "and go and eat potatoes with the meanest of my peasants, rather
than sign the disgrace of my country and of my beloved people whose
sacrifices I know how to appreciate."

Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the Emperor suddenly
turned away as if to hide from Michaud the tears that rose to his eyes,
and went to the further end of his study. Having stood there a few
moments, he strode back to Michaud and pressed his arm below the elbow
with a vigorous movement. The Emperor's mild and handsome face was
flushed and his eyes gleamed with resolution and anger.

"Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here, perhaps we may
recall it with pleasure someday... Napoleon or I," said the Emperor,
touching his breast. "We can no longer both reign together. I have
learned to know him, and he will not deceive me any more...."

And the Emperor paused, with a frown.

When he heard these words and saw the expression of firm resolution in
the Emperor's eyes, Michaud--quoique etranger, russe de coeur et d'ame--
at that solemn moment felt himself enraptured by all that he had heard
(as he used afterwards to say), and gave expression to his own feelings
and those of the Russian people whose representative he considered
himself to be, in the following words:

"Sire!" said he, "Your Majesty is at this moment signing the glory of
the nation and the salvation of Europe!"

With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed him.




CHAPTER IV

It is natural for us who were not living in those days to imagine that
when half Russia had been conquered and the inhabitants were fleeing to
distant provinces, and one levy after another was being raised for the
defense of the fatherland, all Russians from the greatest to the least
were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves, saving their fatherland,
or weeping over its downfall. The tales and descriptions of that time
without exception speak only of the self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion,
despair, grief, and the heroism of the Russians. But it was not really
so. It appears so to us because we see only the general historic
interest of that time and do not see all the personal human interests
that people had. Yet in reality those personal interests of the moment
so much transcend the general interests that they always prevent the
public interest from being felt or even noticed. Most of the people at
that time paid no attention to the general progress of events but were
guided only by their private interests, and they were the very people
whose activities at that period were most useful.

Those who tried to understand the general course of events and to take
part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless members
of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they did for the
common good turned out to be useless and foolish--like Pierre's and
Mamonov's regiments which looted Russian villages, and the lint the
young ladies prepared and that never reached the wounded, and so on.
Even those, fond of intellectual talk and of expressing their feelings,
who discussed Russia's position at the time involuntarily introduced
into their conversation either a shade of pretense and falsehood or
useless condemnation and anger directed against people accused of
actions no one could possibly be guilty of. In historic events the rule
forbidding us to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is specially
applicable. Only unconscious action bears fruit, and he who plays a part
in an historic event never understands its significance. If he tries to
realize it his efforts are fruitless.

The more closely a man was engaged in the events then taking place in
Russia the less did he realize their significance. In Petersburg and in
the provinces at a distance from Moscow, ladies, and gentlemen in
militia uniforms, wept for Russia and its ancient capital and talked of
self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army which retired beyond Moscow
there was little talk or thought of Moscow, and when they caught sight
of its burned ruins no one swore to be avenged on the French, but they
thought about their next pay, their next quarters, of Matreshka the
vivandiere, and like matters.

As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostov took a close
and prolonged part in the defense of his country, but did so casually,
without any aim at self-sacrifice, and he therefore looked at what was
going on in Russia without despair and without dismally racking his
brains over it. Had he been asked what he thought of the state of
Russia, he would have said that it was not his business to think about
it, that Kutuzov and others were there for that purpose, but that he had
heard that the regiments were to be made up to their full strength, that
fighting would probably go on for a long time yet, and that things being
so it was quite likely he might be in command of a regiment in a couple
of years' time.

As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that he was being
sent to Voronezh to buy remounts for his division, not only without
regret at being prevented from taking part in the coming battle, but
with the greatest pleasure--which he did not conceal and which his
comrades fully understood.

A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nicholas received the
necessary money and warrants, and having sent some hussars on in
advance, he set out with post horses for Voronezh.

Only a man who has experienced it--that is, has passed some months
continuously in an atmosphere of campaigning and war--can understand the
delight Nicholas felt when he escaped from the region covered by the
army's foraging operations, provision trains, and hospitals. When--free
from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp--he saw villages
with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen's country houses, fields
where cattle were grazing, posthouses with stationmasters asleep in
them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this for the first time. What for
a long while specially surprised and delighted him were the women, young
and healthy, without a dozen officers making up to each of them; women,
too, who were pleased and flattered that a passing officer should joke
with them.

In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a hotel in Voronezh,
ordered things he had long been deprived of in camp, and next day, very
clean-shaven and in a full-dress uniform he had not worn for a long
time, went to present himself to the authorities.

The commander of the militia was a civilian general, an old man who was
evidently pleased with his military designation and rank. He received
Nicholas brusquely (imagining this to be characteristically military)
and questioned him with an important air, as if considering the general
progress of affairs and approving and disapproving with full right to do
so. Nicholas was in such good spirits that this merely amused him.

From the commander of the militia he drove to the governor. The governor
was a brisk little man, very simple and affable. He indicated the stud
farms at which Nicholas might procure horses, recommended to him a horse
dealer in the town and a landowner fourteen miles out of town who had
the best horses, and promised to assist him in every way.

"You are Count Ilya Rostov's son? My wife was a great friend of your
mother's. We are at home on Thursdays--today is Thursday, so please come
and see us quite informally," said the governor, taking leave of him.

Immediately on leaving the governor's, Nicholas hired post horses and,
taking his squadron quartermaster with him, drove at a gallop to the
landowner, fourteen miles away, who had the stud. Everything seemed to
him pleasant and easy during that first part of his stay in Voronezh
and, as usually happens when a man is in a pleasant state of mind,
everything went well and easily.

The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a bachelor, an old cavalryman, a
horse fancier, a sportsman, the possessor of some century-old brandy and
some old Hungarian wine, who had a snuggery where he smoked, and who
owned some splendid horses.

In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six
thousand rubles--to serve, as he said, as samples of his remounts. After
dining and taking rather too much of the Hungarian wine, Nicholas--
having exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was already on
the friendliest terms--galloped back over abominable roads, in the
brightest frame of mind, continually urging on the driver so as to be in
time for the governor's party.

When he had changed, poured water over his head, and scented himself,
Nicholas arrived at the governor's rather late, but with the phrase
"better late than never" on his lips.

It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but everyone knew
that Catherine Petrovna would play valses and the ecossaise on the
clavichord and that there would be dancing, and so everyone had come as
to a ball.

Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but with this
difference, that it was livelier in the towns in consequence of the
arrival of many wealthy families from Moscow, and as in everything that
went on in Russia at that time a special recklessness was noticeable, an
"in for a penny, in for a pound--who cares?" spirit, and the inevitable
small talk, instead of turning on the weather and mutual acquaintances,
now turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon.

The society gathered together at the governor's was the best in
Voronezh.

There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas' Moscow
acquaintances, but there were no men who could at all vie with the
cavalier of St. George, the hussar remount officer, the good-natured and
well-bred Count Rostov. Among the men was an Italian prisoner, an
officer of the French army; and Nicholas felt that the presence of that
prisoner enhanced his own importance as a Russian hero. The Italian was,
as it were, a war trophy. Nicholas felt this, it seemed to him that
everyone regarded the Italian in the same light, and he treated him
cordially though with dignity and restraint.

As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing around him
a fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the words "better late
than never" and heard them repeated several times by others, people
clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he felt at once that
he had entered into his proper position in the province--that of a
universal favorite: a very pleasant position, and intoxicatingly so
after his long privations. At posting stations, at inns, and in the
landowner's snuggery, maidservants had been flattered by his notice, and
here too at the governor's party there were (as it seemed to Nicholas)
an inexhaustible number of pretty young women, married and unmarried,
impatiently awaiting his notice. The women and girls flirted with him
and, from the first day, the people concerned themselves to get this
fine young daredevil of an hussar married and settled down. Among these
was the governor's wife herself, who welcomed Rostov as a near relative
and called him "Nicholas."

Catherine Petrovna did actually play valses and the ecossaise, and
dancing began in which Nicholas still further captivated the provincial
society by his agility. His particularly free manner of dancing even
surprised them all. Nicholas was himself rather surprised at the way he
danced that evening. He had never danced like that in Moscow and would
even have considered such a very free and easy manner improper and in
bad form, but here he felt it incumbent on him to astonish them all by
something unusual, something they would have to accept as the regular
thing in the capital though new to them in the provinces.

All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed, plump and
pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials.
With the naive conviction of young men in a merry mood that other men's
wives were created for them, Rostov did not leave the lady's side and
treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style, as if,
without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and the lady
would get on together. The husband, however, did not seem to share that
conviction and tried to behave morosely with Rostov. But the latter's
good-natured naivete was so boundless that sometimes even he
involuntarily yielded to Nicholas' good humor. Toward the end of the
evening, however, as the wife's face grew more flushed and animated, the
husband's became more and more melancholy and solemn, as though there
were but a given amount of animation between them and as the wife's
share increased the husband's diminished.




CHAPTER V

Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair, bending closely
over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments with a
smile that never left his face. Jauntily shifting the position of his
legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor of perfume, and
admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines of his legs in
their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the blonde lady that he
wished to run away with a certain lady here in Voronezh.

"Which lady?"

"A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes" (Nicholas looked at his
partner) "are blue, her mouth coral and ivory; her figure" (he glanced
at her shoulders) "like Diana's...."

The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what she was talking
about.

"Ah, Nikita Ivanych!" cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if wishing
Nikita Ivanych to share his joke, he began to tell him of his intention
to elope with a blonde lady.

The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The governor's good-natured
wife came up with a look of disapproval.

"Anna Ignatyevna wants to see you, Nicholas," said she, pronouncing the
name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna Ignatyevna was a very
important person. "Come, Nicholas! You know you let me call you so?"

"Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?"

"Anna Ignatyevna Malvintseva. She has heard from her niece how you
rescued her... Can you guess?"

"I rescued such a lot of them!" said Nicholas.

"Her niece, Princess Bolkonskaya. She is here in Voronezh with her aunt.
Oho! How you blush. Why, are...?"

"Not a bit! Please don't, Aunt!"

"Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!"

The governor's wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady with a
blue headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with the most
important personages of the town. This was Malvintseva, Princess Mary's
aunt on her mother's side, a rich, childless widow who always lived in
Voronezh. When Rostov approached her she was standing settling up for
the game. She looked at him and, screwing up her eyes sternly, continued
to upbraid the general who had won from her.

"Very pleased, mon cher," she then said, holding out her hand to
Nicholas. "Pray come and see me."

After a few words about Princess Mary and her late father, whom
Malvintseva had evidently not liked, and having asked what Nicholas knew
of Prince Andrew, who also was evidently no favorite of hers, the
important old lady dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation to
come to see her.

Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he bowed. At the mention
of Princess Mary he experienced a feeling of shyness and even of fear,
which he himself did not understand.

When he had parted from Malvintseva Nicholas wished to return to the
dancing, but the governor's little wife placed her plump hand on his
sleeve and, saying that she wanted to have a talk with him, led him to
her sitting room, from which those who were there immediately withdrew
so as not to be in her way.

"Do you know, dear boy," began the governor's wife with a serious
expression on her kind little face, "that really would be the match for
you: would you like me to arrange it?"

"Whom do you mean, Aunt?" asked Nicholas.

"I will make a match for you with the princess. Catherine Petrovna
speaks of Lily, but I say, no--the princess! Do you want me to do it? I
am sure your mother will be grateful to me. What a charming girl she is,
really! And she is not at all so plain, either."

"Not at all," replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea. "As befits a
soldier, Aunt, I don't force myself on anyone or refuse anything," he
said before he had time to consider what he was saying.

"Well then, remember, this is not a joke!"

"Of course not!"

"Yes, yes," the governor's wife said as if talking to herself. "But, my
dear boy, among other things you are too attentive to the other, the
blonde. One is sorry for the husband, really...."

"Oh no, we are good friends with him," said Nicholas in the simplicity
of his heart; it did not enter his head that a pastime so pleasant to
himself might not be pleasant to someone else.

"But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor's wife!" thought
Nicholas suddenly at supper. "She will really begin to arrange a
match... and Sonya...?" And on taking leave of the governor's wife, when
she again smilingly said to him, "Well then, remember!" he drew her
aside.

"But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt..."

"What is it, my dear? Come, let's sit down here," said she.

Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most intimate
thoughts (which he would not have told to his mother, his sister, or his
friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he afterwards
recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable frankness which
had very important results for him, it seemed to him--as it seems to
everyone in such cases--that it was merely some silly whim that seized
him: yet that burst of frankness, together with other trifling events,
had immense consequences for him and for all his family.

"You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an heiress, but the
very idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me."

"Oh yes, I understand," said the governor's wife.

"But Princess Bolkonskaya--that's another matter. I will tell you the
truth. In the first place I like her very much, I feel drawn to her; and
then, after I met her under such circumstances--so strangely, the idea
often occurred to me: 'This is fate.' Especially if you remember that
Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I had never happened to meet her
before, somehow it had always happened that we did not meet. And as long
as my sister Natasha was engaged to her brother it was of course out of
the question for me to think of marrying her. And it must needs happen
that I should meet her just when Natasha's engagement had been broken
off... and then everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone
and never will, only to you."

The governor's wife pressed his elbow gratefully.

"You know Sonya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to marry her, and
will do so.... So you see there can be no question about-" said Nicholas
incoherently and blushing.

"My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know Sonya has nothing and
you yourself say your Papa's affairs are in a very bad way. And what
about your mother? It would kill her, that's one thing. And what sort of
life would it be for Sonya--if she's a girl with a heart? Your mother in
despair, and you all ruined.... No, my dear, you and Sonya ought to
understand that."

Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear these arguments.

"All the same, Aunt, it is impossible," he rejoined with a sigh, after a
short pause. "Besides, would the princess have me? And besides, she is
now in mourning. How can one think of it!"

"But you don't suppose I'm going to get you married at once? There is
always a right way of doing things," replied the governor's wife.

"What a matchmaker you are, Aunt..." said Nicholas, kissing her plump
little hand.




CHAPTER VI

On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostov, Princess Mary had
found her nephew there with his tutor, and a letter from Prince Andrew
giving her instructions how to get to her Aunt Malvintseva at Voronezh.
That feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her during her
father's illness, since his death, and especially since her meeting with
Rostov was smothered by arrangements for the journey, anxiety about her
brother, settling in a new house, meeting new people, and attending to
her nephew's education. She was sad. Now, after a month passed in quiet
surroundings, she felt more and more deeply the loss of her father which
was associated in her mind with the ruin of Russia. She was agitated and
incessantly tortured by the thought of the dangers to which her brother,
the only intimate person now remaining to her, was exposed. She was
worried too about her nephew's education for which she had always felt
herself incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt at peace--a
peace arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal dreams
and hopes that had been on the point of awakening within her and were
related to her meeting with Rostov.

The day after her party the governor's wife came to see Malvintseva and,
after discussing her plan with the aunt, remarked that though under
present circumstances a formal betrothal was, of course, not to be
thought of, all the same the young people might be brought together and
could get to know one another. Malvintseva expressed approval, and the
governor's wife began to speak of Rostov in Mary's presence, praising
him and telling how he had blushed when Princess Mary's name was
mentioned. But Princess Mary experienced a painful rather than a joyful
feeling--her mental tranquillity was destroyed, and desires, doubts,
self-reproach, and hopes reawoke.

During the two days that elapsed before Rostov called, Princess Mary
continually thought of how she ought to behave to him. First she decided
not to come to the drawing room when he called to see her aunt--that it
would not be proper for her, in her deep mourning, to receive visitors;
then she thought this would be rude after what he had done for her; then
it occurred to her that her aunt and the governor's wife had intentions
concerning herself and Rostov--their looks and words at times seemed to
confirm this supposition--then she told herself that only she, with her
sinful nature, could think this of them: they could not forget that
situated as she was, while still wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking
would be an insult to her and to her father's memory. Assuming that she
did go down to see him, Princess Mary imagined the words he would say to
her and what she would say to him, and these words sometimes seemed
undeservedly cold and then to mean too much. More than anything she
feared lest the confusion she felt might overwhelm her and betray her as
soon as she saw him.

But when on Sunday after church the footman announced in the drawing
room that Count Rostov had called, the princess showed no confusion,
only a slight blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new
and radiant light.

"You have met him, Aunt?" said she in a calm voice, unable herself to
understand that she could be outwardly so calm and natural.

When Rostov entered the room, the princess dropped her eyes for an
instant, as if to give the visitor time to greet her aunt, and then just
as Nicholas turned to her she raised her head and met his look with
shining eyes. With a movement full of dignity and grace she half rose
with a smile of pleasure, held out her slender, delicate hand to him,
and began to speak in a voice in which for the first time new deep
womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who was in the drawing
room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise. Herself a
consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered better on meeting a
man she wished to attract.

"Either black is particularly becoming to her or she really has greatly
improved without my having noticed it. And above all, what tact and
grace!" thought Mademoiselle Bourienne.

Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that moment, she would
have been more surprised than Mademoiselle Bourienne at the change that
had taken place in herself. From the moment she recognized that dear,
loved face, a new life force took possession of her and compelled her to
speak and act apart from her own will. From the time Rostov entered, her
face became suddenly transformed. It was as if a light had been kindled
in a carved and painted lantern and the intricate, skillful, artistic
work on its sides, that previously seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless,
was suddenly shown up in unexpected and striking beauty. For the first
time all that pure, spiritual, inward travail through which she had
lived appeared on the surface. All her inward labor, her dissatisfaction
with herself, her sufferings, her strivings after goodness, her
meekness, love, and self-sacrifice--all this now shone in those radiant
eyes, in her delicate smile, and in every trait of her gentle face.

Rostov saw all this as clearly as if he had known her whole life. He
felt that the being before him was quite different from, and better
than, anyone he had met before, and above all better than himself.

Their conversation was very simple and unimportant. They spoke of the
war, and like everyone else unconsciously exaggerated their sorrow about
it; they spoke of their last meeting--Nicholas trying to change the
subject--they talked of the governor's kind wife, of Nicholas'
relations, and of Princess Mary's.

She did not talk about her brother, diverting the conversation as soon
as her aunt mentioned Andrew. Evidently she could speak of Russia's
misfortunes with a certain artificiality, but her brother was too near
her heart and she neither could nor would speak lightly of him. Nicholas
noticed this, as he noticed every shade of Princess Mary's character
with an observation unusual to him, and everything confirmed his
conviction that she was a quite unusual and extraordinary being.
Nicholas blushed and was confused when people spoke to him about the
princess (as she did when he was mentioned) and even when he thought of
her, but in her presence he felt quite at ease, and said not at all what
he had prepared, but what, quite appropriately, occurred to him at the
moment.

When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas, as is usual when
there are children, turned to Prince Andrew's little son, caressing him
and asking whether he would like to be an hussar. He took the boy on his
knee, played with him, and looked round at Princess Mary. With a
softened, happy, timid look she watched the boy she loved in the arms of
the man she loved. Nicholas also noticed that look and, as if
understanding it, flushed with pleasure and began to kiss the boy with
good natured playfulness.

As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out into society, and
Nicholas did not think it the proper thing to visit her again; but all
the same the governor's wife went on with her matchmaking, passing on to
Nicholas the flattering things Princess Mary said of him and vice versa,
and insisting on his declaring himself to Princess Mary. For this
purpose she arranged a meeting between the young people at the bishop's
house before Mass.

Though Rostov told the governor's wife that he would not make any
declaration to Princess Mary, he promised to go.

As at Tilsit Rostov had not allowed himself to doubt that what everybody
considered right was right, so now, after a short but sincere struggle
between his effort to arrange his life by his own sense of justice, and
in obedient submission to circumstances, he chose the latter and yielded
to the power he felt irresistibly carrying him he knew not where. He
knew that after his promise to Sonya it would be what he deemed base to
declare his feelings to Princess Mary. And he knew that he would never
act basely. But he also knew (or rather felt at the bottom of his heart)
that by resigning himself now to the force of circumstances and to those
who were guiding him, he was not only doing nothing wrong, but was doing
something very important--more important than anything he had ever done
in his life.

After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his life went on
externally as before, all his former amusements lost their charm for him
and he often thought about her. But he never thought about her as he had
thought of all the young ladies without exception whom he had met in
society, nor as he had for a long time, and at one time rapturously,
thought about Sonya. He had pictured each of those young ladies as
almost all honest-hearted young men do, that is, as a possible wife,
adapting her in his imagination to all the conditions of married life: a
white dressing gown, his wife at the tea table, his wife's carriage,
little ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to her, and so on--and
these pictures of the future had given him pleasure. But with Princess
Mary, to whom they were trying to get him engaged, he could never
picture anything of future married life. If he tried, his pictures
seemed incongruous and false. It made him afraid.




CHAPTER VII

The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed and
wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow reached
Voronezh in the middle of September. Princess Mary, having learned of
her brother's wound only from the Gazette and having no definite news of
him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her again himself) to
set off in search of Prince Andrew.

When he received the news of the battle of Borodino and the abandonment
of Moscow, Rostov was not seized with despair, anger, the desire for
vengeance, or any feeling of that kind, but everything in Voronezh
suddenly seemed to him dull and tiresome, and he experienced an
indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The conversations he heard
seemed to him insincere; he did not know how to judge all these affairs
and felt that only in the regiment would everything again become clear
to him. He made haste to finish buying the horses, and often became
unreasonably angry with his servant and squadron quartermaster.

A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving, at which
Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral for the Russian victory.
He stood a little behind the governor and held himself with military
decorum through the service, meditating on a great variety of subjects.
When the service was over the governor's wife beckoned him to her.

"Have you seen the princess?" she asked, indicating with a movement of
her head a lady standing on the opposite side, beyond the choir.

Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so much by the profile
he saw under her bonnet as by the feeling of solicitude, timidity, and
pity that immediately overcame him. Princess Mary, evidently engrossed
by her thoughts, was crossing herself for the last time before leaving
the church.

Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same face he had
seen before, there was the same general expression of refined, inner,
spiritual labor, but now it was quite differently lit up. There was a
pathetic expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had occurred
before when she was present, Nicholas went up to her without waiting to
be prompted by the governor's wife and not asking himself whether or not
it was right and proper to address her here in church, and told her he
had heard of her trouble and sympathized with his whole soul. As soon as
she heard his voice a vivid glow kindled in her face, lighting up both
her sorrow and her joy.

"There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess," said Rostov. "It is
that if your brother, Prince Andrew Nikolievich, were not living, it
would have been at once announced in the Gazette, as he is a colonel."

The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was saying, but cheered
by the expression of regretful sympathy on his face.

"And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound" (the Gazette said
it was a shell) "either proving fatal at once or being very slight,"
continued Nicholas. "We must hope for the best, and I am sure..."

Princess Mary interrupted him.

"Oh, that would be so dread..." she began and, prevented by agitation
from finishing, she bent her head with a movement as graceful as
everything she did in his presence and, looking up at him gratefully,
went out, following her aunt.

That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at home to settle some
accounts with the horse dealers. When he had finished that business it
was already too late to go anywhere but still too early to go to bed,
and for a long time he paced up and down the room, reflecting on his
life, a thing he rarely did.

Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on him when he had met
her in Smolensk province. His having encountered her in such exceptional
circumstances, and his mother having at one time mentioned her to him as
a good match, had drawn his particular attention to her. When he met her
again in Voronezh the impression she made on him was not merely pleasing
but powerful. Nicholas had been struck by the peculiar moral beauty he
observed in her at this time. He was, however, preparing to go away and
it had not entered his head to regret that he was thus depriving himself
of chances of meeting her. But that day's encounter in church had, he
felt, sunk deeper than was desirable for his peace of mind. That pale,
sad, refined face, that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures,
and especially the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her features
agitated him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostov could not bear to
see the expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not
like Prince Andrew) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy
and dreaminess, but in Princess Mary that very sorrow which revealed the
depth of a whole spiritual world foreign to him was an irresistible
attraction.

"She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!" he said to himself. "Why
am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sonya?" And he
involuntarily compared the two: the lack of spirituality in the one and
the abundance of it in the other--a spirituality he himself lacked and
therefore valued most highly. He tried to picture what would happen were
he free. How he would propose to her and how she would become his wife.
But no, he could not imagine that. He felt awed, and no clear picture
presented itself to his mind. He had long ago pictured to himself a
future with Sonya, and that was all clear and simple just because it had
all been thought out and he knew all there was in Sonya, but it was
impossible to picture a future with Princess Mary, because he did not
understand her but simply loved her.

Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and playful in them, but to
dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little frightening.

"How she prayed!" he thought. "It was plain that her whole soul was in
her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves mountains, and I am sure
her prayer will be answered. Why don't I pray for what I want?" he
suddenly thought. "What do I want? To be free, released from Sonya...
She was right," he thought, remembering what the governor's wife had
said: "Nothing but misfortune can come of marrying Sonya. Muddles, grief
for Mamma... business difficulties... muddles, terrible muddles!
Besides, I don't love her--not as I should. O, God! release me from this
dreadful, inextricable position!" he suddenly began to pray. "Yes,
prayer can move mountains, but one must have faith and not pray as
Natasha and I used to as children, that the snow might turn into sugar--
and then run out into the yard to see whether it had done so. No, but I
am not praying for trifles now," he thought as he put his pipe down in a
corner, and folding his hands placed himself before the icon. Softened
by memories of Princess Mary he began to pray as he had not done for a
long time. Tears were in his eyes and in his throat when the door opened
and Lavrushka came in with some papers.

"Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?" cried Nicholas,
quickly changing his attitude.

"From the governor," said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice. "A courier has
arrived and there's a letter for you."

"Well, all right, thanks. You can go!"

Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from his mother and the
other from Sonya. He recognized them by the handwriting and opened
Sonya's first. He had read only a few lines when he turned pale and his
eyes opened wide with fear and joy.

"No, it's not possible!" he cried aloud.

Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room holding the letter and
reading it. He glanced through it, then read it again, and then again,
and standing still in the middle of the room he raised his shoulders,
stretching out his hands, with his mouth wide open and his eyes fixed.
What he had just been praying for with confidence that God would hear
him had come to pass; but Nicholas was as much astonished as if it were
something extraordinary and unexpected, and as if the very fact that it
had happened so quickly proved that it had not come from God to whom he
had prayed, but by some ordinary coincidence.

This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite voluntary letter
from Sonya freed him from the knot that fettered him and from which
there had seemed no escape. She wrote that the last unfortunate events--
the loss of almost the whole of the Rostovs' Moscow property--and the
countess' repeatedly expressed wish that Nicholas should marry Princess
Bolkonskaya, together with his silence and coldness of late, had all
combined to make her decide to release him from his promise and set him
completely free.

It would be too painful to me to think that I might be a cause of sorrow
or discord in the family that has been so good to me (she wrote), and my
love has no aim but the happiness of those I love; so, Nicholas, I beg
you to consider yourself free, and to be assured that, in spite of
everything, no one can love you more than does

Your Sonya

Both letters were written from Troitsa. The other, from the countess,
described their last days in Moscow, their departure, the fire, and the
destruction of all their property. In this letter the countess also
mentioned that Prince Andrew was among the wounded traveling with them;
his state was very critical, but the doctor said there was now more
hope. Sonya and Natasha were nursing him.

Next day Nicholas took his mother's letter and went to see Princess
Mary. Neither he nor she said a word about what "Natasha nursing him"
might mean, but thanks to this letter Nicholas suddenly became almost as
intimate with the princess as if they were relations.

The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her journey to Yaroslavl,
and a few days later left to rejoin his regiment.




CHAPTER VIII

Sonya's letter written from Troitsa, which had come as an answer to
Nicholas' prayer, was prompted by this: the thought of getting Nicholas
married to an heiress occupied the old countess' mind more and more. She
knew that Sonya was the chief obstacle to this happening, and Sonya's
life in the countess' house had grown harder and harder, especially
after they had received a letter from Nicholas telling of his meeting
with Princess Mary in Bogucharovo. The countess let no occasion slip of
making humiliating or cruel allusions to Sonya.

But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all that
was going on, she called Sonya to her and, instead of reproaching and
making demands on her, tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself and
repay all that the family had done for her by breaking off her
engagement with Nicholas.

"I shall not be at peace till you promise me this."

Sonya burst into hysterical tears and replied through her sobs that she
would do anything and was prepared for anything, but gave no actual
promise and could not bring herself to decide to do what was demanded of
her. She must sacrifice herself for the family that had reared and
brought her up. To sacrifice herself for others was Sonya's habit. Her
position in the house was such that only by sacrifice could she show her
worth, and she was accustomed to this and loved doing it. But in all her
former acts of self-sacrifice she had been happily conscious that they
raised her in her own esteem and in that of others, and so made her more
worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more than anything in the world. But
now they wanted her to sacrifice the very thing that constituted the
whole reward for her self-sacrifice and the whole meaning of her life.
And for the first time she felt bitterness against those who had been
her benefactors only to torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous
of Natasha who had never experienced anything of this sort, had never
needed to sacrifice herself, but made others sacrifice themselves for
her and yet was beloved by everybody. And for the first time Sonya felt
that out of her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate feeling was
beginning to grow up which was stronger than principle, virtue, or
religion. Under the influence of this feeling Sonya, whose life of
dependence had taught her involuntarily to be secretive, having answered
the countess in vague general terms, avoided talking with her and
resolved to wait till she should see Nicholas, not in order to set him
free but on the contrary at that meeting to bind him to her forever.

The bustle and terror of the Rostovs' last days in Moscow stifled the
gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sonya. She was glad to find escape from
them in practical activity. But when she heard of Prince Andrew's
presence in their house, despite her sincere pity for him and for
Natasha, she was seized by a joyful and superstitious feeling that God
did not intend her to be separated from Nicholas. She knew that Natasha
loved no one but Prince Andrew and had never ceased to love him. She
knew that being thrown together again under such terrible circumstances
they would again fall in love with one another, and that Nicholas would
then not be able to marry Princess Mary as they would be within the
prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror of what had
happened during those last days and during the first days of their
journey, this feeling that Providence was intervening in her personal
affairs cheered Sonya.

At the Troitsa monastery the Rostovs first broke their journey for a
whole day.

Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry, one
of which was occupied by Prince Andrew. The wounded man was much better
that day and Natasha was sitting with him. In the next room sat the
count and countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was
calling on them as old acquaintances and benefactors of the monastery.
Sonya was there too, tormented by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew and
Natasha were talking about. She heard the sound of their voices through
the door. That door opened and Natasha came out, looking excited. Not
noticing the monk, who had risen to greet her and was drawing back the
wide sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sonya and took her hand.

"Natasha, what are you about? Come here!" said the countess.

Natasha went up to the monk for his blessing, and he advised her to pray
for aid to God and His saint.

As soon as the prior withdrew, Natasha took her friend by the hand and
went with her into the unoccupied room.

"Sonya, will he live?" she asked. "Sonya, how happy I am, and how
unhappy!... Sonya, dovey, everything is as it used to be. If only he
lives! He cannot... because... because... of" and Natasha burst into
tears.

"Yes! I knew it! Thank God!" murmured Sonya. "He will live."

Sonya was not less agitated than her friend by the latter's fear and
grief and by her own personal feelings which she shared with no one.
Sobbing, she kissed and comforted Natasha. "If only he lives!" she
thought. Having wept, talked, and wiped away their tears, the two
friends went together to Prince Andrew's door. Natasha opened it
cautiously and glanced into the room, Sonya standing beside her at the
half-open door.

Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows. His pale face was
calm, his eyes closed, and they could see his regular breathing.

"O, Natasha!" Sonya suddenly almost screamed, catching her companion's
arm and stepping back from the door.

"What? What is it?" asked Natasha.

"It's that, that..." said Sonya, with a white face and trembling lips.

Natasha softly closed the door and went with Sonya to the window, not
yet understanding what the latter was telling her.

"You remember," said Sonya with a solemn and frightened expression. "You
remember when I looked in the mirror for you... at Otradnoe at
Christmas? Do you remember what I saw?"

"Yes, yes!" cried Natasha opening her eyes wide, and vaguely recalling
that Sonya had told her something about Prince Andrew whom she had seen
lying down.

"You remember?" Sonya went on. "I saw it then and told everybody, you
and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a bed," said she, making a gesture with
her hand and a lifted finger at each detail, "and that he had his eyes
closed and was covered just with a pink quilt, and that his hands were
folded," she concluded, convincing herself that the details she had just
seen were exactly what she had seen in the mirror.

She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned the first thing that
came into her head, but what she had invented then seemed to her now as
real as any other recollection. She not only remembered what she had
then said--that he turned to look at her and smiled and was covered with
something red--but was firmly convinced that she had then seen and said
that he was covered with a pink quilt and that his eyes were closed.

"Yes, yes, it really was pink!" cried Natasha, who now thought she too
remembered the word pink being used, and saw in this the most
extraordinary and mysterious part of the prediction.

"But what does it mean?" she added meditatively.

"Oh, I don't know, it is all so strange," replied Sonya, clutching at
her head.

A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natasha went to him, but
Sonya, feeling unusually excited and touched, remained at the window
thinking about the strangeness of what had occurred.

They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the army, and the
countess was writing to her son.

"Sonya!" said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as her
niece passed, "Sonya, won't you write to Nicholas?" She spoke in a soft,
tremulous voice, and in the weary eyes that looked over her spectacles
Sonya read all that the countess meant to convey with these words. Those
eyes expressed entreaty, shame at having to ask, fear of a refusal, and
readiness for relentless hatred in case of such refusal.

Sonya went up to the countess and, kneeling down, kissed her hand.

"Yes, Mamma, I will write," said she.

Sonya was softened, excited, and touched by all that had occurred that
day, especially by the mysterious fulfillment she had just seen of her
vision. Now that she knew that the renewal of Natasha's relations with
Prince Andrew would prevent Nicholas from marrying Princess Mary, she
was joyfully conscious of a return of that self-sacrificing spirit in
which she was accustomed to live and loved to live. So with a joyful
consciousness of performing a magnanimous deed--interrupted several
times by the tears that dimmed her velvety black eyes--she wrote that
touching letter the arrival of which had so amazed Nicholas.




CHAPTER IX

The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated him with
hostility but yet with respect, in the guardhouse to which he was taken.
In their attitude toward him could still be felt both uncertainty as to
who he might be--perhaps a very important person--and hostility as a
result of their recent personal conflict with him.

But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre felt that for the
new guard--both officers and men--he was not as interesting as he had
been to his captors; and in fact the guard of the second day did not
recognize in this big, stout man in a peasant coat the vigorous person
who had fought so desperately with the marauder and the convoy and had
uttered those solemn words about saving a child; they saw in him only
No. 17 of the captured Russians, arrested and detained for some reason
by order of the Higher Command. If they noticed anything remarkable
about Pierre, it was only his unabashed, meditative concentration and
thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke French, which struck them as
surprisingly good. In spite of this he was placed that day with the
other arrested suspects, as the separate room he had occupied was
required by an officer.

All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the lowest class and,
recognizing him as a gentleman, they all avoided him, more especially as
he spoke French. Pierre felt sad at hearing them making fun of him.

That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably, among
them) were to be tried for incendiarism. On the third day he was taken
with the others to a house where a French general with a white mustache
sat with two colonels and other Frenchmen with scarves on their arms.
With the precision and definiteness customary in addressing prisoners,
and which is supposed to preclude human frailty, Pierre like the others
was questioned as to who he was, where he had been, with what object,
and so on.

These questions, like questions put at trials generally, left the
essence of the matter aside, shut out the possibility of that essence's
being revealed, and were designed only to form a channel through which
the judges wished the answers of the accused to flow so as to lead to
the desired result, namely a conviction. As soon as Pierre began to say
anything that did not fit in with that aim, the channel was removed and
the water could flow to waste. Pierre felt, moreover, what the accused
always feel at their trial, perplexity as to why these questions were
put to him. He had a feeling that it was only out of condescension or a
kind of civility that this device of placing a channel was employed. He
knew he was in these men's power, that only by force had they brought
him there, that force alone gave them the right to demand answers to
their questions, and that the sole object of that assembly was to
inculpate him. And so, as they had the power and wish to inculpate him,
this expedient of an inquiry and trial seemed unnecessary. It was
evident that any answer would lead to conviction. When asked what he was
doing when he was arrested, Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner
that he was restoring to its parents a child he had saved from the
flames. Why had he fought the marauder? Pierre answered that he "was
protecting a woman," and that "to protect a woman who was being insulted
was the duty of every man; that..." They interrupted him, for this was
not to the point. Why was he in the yard of a burning house where
witnesses had seen him? He replied that he had gone out to see what was
happening in Moscow. Again they interrupted him: they had not asked
where he was going, but why he was found near the fire? Who was he? they
asked, repeating their first question, which he had declined to answer.
Again he replied that he could not answer it.

"Put that down, that's bad... very bad," sternly remarked the general
with the white mustache and red flushed face.

On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovski rampart.

Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach house of a merchant's
house near the Crimean bridge. On his way through the streets Pierre
felt stifled by the smoke which seemed to hang over the whole city.
Fires were visible on all sides. He did not then realize the
significance of the burning of Moscow, and looked at the fires with
horror.

He passed four days in the coach house near the Crimean bridge and
during that time learned, from the talk of the French soldiers, that all
those confined there were awaiting a decision which might come any day
from the marshal. What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn from the
soldiers. Evidently for them "the marshal" represented a very high and
rather mysterious power.

These first days, before the eighth of September when the prisoners were
had up for a second examination, were the hardest of all for Pierre.




CHAPTER X

On the eighth of September an officer--a very important one judging by
the respect the guards showed him--entered the coach house where the
prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on the staff, was holding
a paper in his hand, and called over all the Russians there, naming
Pierre as "the man who does not give his name." Glancing indolently and
indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered the officer in charge to
have them decently dressed and tidied up before taking them to the
marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers arrived and Pierre with
thirteen others was led to the Virgin's Field. It was a fine day, sunny
after rain, and the air was unusually pure. The smoke did not hang low
as on the day when Pierre had been taken from the guardhouse on the
Zubovski rampart, but rose through the pure air in columns. No flames
were seen, but columns of smoke rose on all sides, and all Moscow as far
as Pierre could see was one vast charred ruin. On all sides there were
waste spaces with only stoves and chimney stacks still standing, and
here and there the blackened walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed at
the ruins and did not recognize districts he had known well. Here and
there he could see churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which
was not destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the
belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin
glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly.
These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the
Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate this
holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to be
seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when they saw
the French.

It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but in
place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed, Pierre
unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order had been
established over this ruined nest. He felt this in the looks of the
soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly and gaily, were
escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the looks of an
important French official in a carriage and pair driven by a soldier,
whom they met on the way. He felt it in the merry sounds of regimental
music he heard from the left side of the field, and felt and realized it
especially from the list of prisoners the French officer had read out
when he came that morning. Pierre had been taken by one set of soldiers
and led first to one and then to another place with dozens of other men,
and it seemed that they might have forgotten him, or confused him with
the others. But no: the answers he had given when questioned had come
back to him in his designation as "the man who does not give his name,"
and under that appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were
now leading him somewhere with unhesitating assurance on their faces
that he and all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted
and that they were being taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself
to be an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose
action he did not understand but which was working well.

He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of the Virgin's
Field, to a large white house with an immense garden not far from the
convent. This was Prince Shcherbitov's house, where Pierre had often
been in other days, and which, as he learned from the talk of the
soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke of Eckmuhl (Davout).

They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one by one.
Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through a glass gallery,
an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar to him, into a long low
study at the door of which stood an adjutant.

Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further end of
the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently consulting
a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without raising his eyes,
he said in a low voice:

"Who are you?"

Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word. To him
Davout was not merely a French general, but a man notorious for his
cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as he sat like a stern schoolmaster
who was prepared to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre felt that every
instant of delay might cost him his life; but he did not know what to
say. He did not venture to repeat what he had said at his first
examination, yet to disclose his rank and position was dangerous and
embarrassing. So he was silent. But before he had decided what to do,
Davout raised his head, pushed his spectacles back on his forehead,
screwed up his eyes, and looked intently at him.

"I know that man," he said in a cold, measured tone, evidently
calculated to frighten Pierre.

The chill that had been running down Pierre's back now seized his head
as in a vise.

"You cannot know me, General, I have never seen you..."

"He is a Russian spy," Davout interrupted, addressing another general
who was present, but whom Pierre had not noticed.

Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation in his voice Pierre
rapidly began:

"No, monseigneur," he said, suddenly remembering that Davout was a duke.
"No, monseigneur, you cannot have known me. I am a militia officer and
have not quitted Moscow."

"Your name?" asked Davout.

"Bezukhov."

"What proof have I that you are not lying?"

"Monseigneur!" exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended but in a pleading
voice.

Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked
at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war
and law, that look established human relations between the two men. At
that moment an immense number of things passed dimly through both their
minds, and they realized that they were both children of humanity and
were brothers.

At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head from the
papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by numbers, Pierre
was merely a circumstance, and Davout could have shot him without
burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a
human being. He reflected for a moment.

"How can you show me that you are telling the truth?" said Davout
coldly.

Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his regiment and the
street where the house was.

"You are not what you say," returned Davout.

In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing proofs of the
truth of his statements.

But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported something to Davout.

Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought, and began
buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had quite forgotten Pierre.

When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he jerked his head in
Pierre's direction with a frown and ordered him to be led away. But
where they were to take him Pierre did not know: back to the coach house
or to the place of execution his companions had pointed out to him as
they crossed the Virgin's Field.

He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was putting another
question to Davout.

"Yes, of course!" replied Davout, but what this "yes" meant, Pierre did
not know.

Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went, whether it was far, or
in which direction. His faculties were quite numbed, he was stupefied,
and noticing nothing around him went on moving his legs as the others
did till they all stopped and he stopped too. The only thought in his
mind at that time was: who was it that had really sentenced him to
death? Not the men on the commission that had first examined him--not
one of them wished to or, evidently, could have done it. It was not
Davout, who had looked at him in so human a way. In another moment
Davout would have realized that he was doing wrong, but just then the
adjutant had come in and interrupted him. The adjutant, also, had
evidently had no evil intent though he might have refrained from coming
in. Then who was executing him, killing him, depriving him of life--him,
Pierre, with all his memories, aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was
doing this? And Pierre felt that it was no one.

It was a system--a concurrence of circumstances.

A system of some sort was killing him--Pierre--depriving him of life, of
everything, annihilating him.




CHAPTER XI

From Prince Shcherbatov's house the prisoners were led straight down the
Virgin's Field, to the left of the nunnery, as far as a kitchen garden
in which a post had been set up. Beyond that post a fresh pit had been
dug in the ground, and near the post and the pit a large crowd stood in
a semicircle. The crowd consisted of a few Russians and many of
Napoleon's soldiers who were not on duty--Germans, Italians, and
Frenchmen, in a variety of uniforms. To the right and left of the post
stood rows of French troops in blue uniforms with red epaulets and high
boots and shakos.

The prisoners were placed in a certain order, according to the list
(Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post. Several drums suddenly
began to beat on both sides of them, and at that sound Pierre felt as if
part of his soul had been torn away. He lost the power of thinking or
understanding. He could only hear and see. And he had only one wish--
that the frightful thing that had to happen should happen quickly.
Pierre looked round at his fellow prisoners and scrutinized them.

The two first were convicts with shaven heads. One was tall and thin,
the other dark, shaggy, and sinewy, with a flat nose. The third was a
domestic serf, about forty-five years old, with grizzled hair and a
plump, well-nourished body. The fourth was a peasant, a very handsome
man with a broad, light-brown beard and black eyes. The fifth was a
factory hand, a thin, sallow-faced lad of eighteen in a loose coat.

Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot them separately or
two at a time. "In couples," replied the officer in command in a calm
voice. There was a stir in the ranks of the soldiers and it was evident
that they were all hurrying--not as men hurry to do something they
understand, but as people hurry to finish a necessary but unpleasant and
incomprehensible task.

A French official wearing a scarf came up to the right of the row of
prisoners and read out the sentence in Russian and in French.

Then two pairs of Frenchmen approached the criminals and at the
officer's command took the two convicts who stood first in the row. The
convicts stopped when they reached the post and, while sacks were being
brought, looked dumbly around as a wounded beast looks at an approaching
huntsman. One crossed himself continually, the other scratched his back
and made a movement of the lips resembling a smile. With hurried hands
the soldiers blindfolded them, drawing the sacks over their heads, and
bound them to the post.

Twelve sharpshooters with muskets stepped out of the ranks with a firm
regular tread and halted eight paces from the post. Pierre turned away
to avoid seeing what was going to happen. Suddenly a crackling, rolling
noise was heard which seemed to him louder than the most terrific
thunder, and he looked round. There was some smoke, and the Frenchmen
were doing something near the pit, with pale faces and trembling hands.
Two more prisoners were led up. In the same way and with similar looks,
these two glanced vainly at the onlookers with only a silent appeal for
protection in their eyes, evidently unable to understand or believe what
was going to happen to them. They could not believe it because they
alone knew what their life meant to them, and so they neither understood
nor believed that it could be taken from them.

Again Pierre did not wish to look and again turned away; but again the
sound as of a frightful explosion struck his ear, and at the same moment
he saw smoke, blood, and the pale, scared faces of the Frenchmen who
were again doing something by the post, their trembling hands impeding
one another. Pierre, breathing heavily, looked around as if asking what
it meant. The same question was expressed in all the looks that met his.

On the faces of all the Russians and of the French soldiers and officers
without exception, he read the same dismay, horror, and conflict that
were in his own heart. "But who, after all, is doing this? They are all
suffering as I am. Who then is it? Who?" flashed for an instant through
his mind.

"Sharpshooters of the 86th, forward!" shouted someone. The fifth
prisoner, the one next to Pierre, was led away--alone. Pierre did not
understand that he was saved, that he and the rest had been brought
there only to witness the execution. With ever-growing horror, and no
sense of joy or relief, he gazed at what was taking place. The fifth man
was the factory lad in the loose cloak. The moment they laid hands on
him he sprang aside in terror and clutched at Pierre. (Pierre shuddered
and shook himself free.) The lad was unable to walk. They dragged him
along, holding him up under the arms, and he screamed. When they got him
to the post he grew quiet, as if he suddenly understood something.
Whether he understood that screaming was useless or whether he thought
it incredible that men should kill him, at any rate he took his stand at
the post, waiting to be blindfolded like the others, and like a wounded
animal looked around him with glittering eyes.

Pierre was no longer able to turn away and close his eyes. His curiosity
and agitation, like that of the whole crowd, reached the highest pitch
at this fifth murder. Like the others this fifth man seemed calm; he
wrapped his loose cloak closer and rubbed one bare foot with the other.

When they began to blindfold him he himself adjusted the knot which hurt
the back of his head; then when they propped him against the
bloodstained post, he leaned back and, not being comfortable in that
position, straightened himself, adjusted his feet, and leaned back again
more comfortably. Pierre did not take his eyes from him and did not miss
his slightest movement.

Probably a word of command was given and was followed by the reports of
eight muskets; but try as he would Pierre could not afterwards remember
having heard the slightest sound of the shots. He only saw how the
workman suddenly sank down on the cords that held him, how blood showed
itself in two places, how the ropes slackened under the weight of the
hanging body, and how the workman sat down, his head hanging unnaturally
and one leg bent under him. Pierre ran up to the post. No one hindered
him. Pale, frightened people were doing something around the workman.
The lower jaw of an old Frenchman with a thick mustache trembled as he
untied the ropes. The body collapsed. The soldiers dragged it awkwardly
from the post and began pushing it into the pit.

They all plainly and certainly knew that they were criminals who must
hide the traces of their guilt as quickly as possible.

Pierre glanced into the pit and saw that the factory lad was lying with
his knees close up to his head and one shoulder higher than the other.
That shoulder rose and fell rhythmically and convulsively, but spadefuls
of earth were already being thrown over the whole body. One of the
soldiers, evidently suffering, shouted gruffly and angrily at Pierre to
go back. But Pierre did not understand him and remained near the post,
and no one drove him away.

When the pit had been filled up a command was given. Pierre was taken
back to his place, and the rows of troops on both sides of the post made
a half turn and went past it at a measured pace. The twenty-four
sharpshooters with discharged muskets, standing in the center of the
circle, ran back to their places as the companies passed by.

Pierre gazed now with dazed eyes at these sharpshooters who ran in
couples out of the circle. All but one rejoined their companies. This
one, a young soldier, his face deadly pale, his shako pushed back, and
his musket resting on the ground, still stood near the pit at the spot
from which he had fired. He swayed like a drunken man, taking some steps
forward and back to save himself from falling. An old, noncommissioned
officer ran out of the ranks and taking him by the elbow dragged him to
his company. The crowd of Russians and Frenchmen began to disperse. They
all went away silently and with drooping heads.

"That will teach them to start fires," said one of the Frenchmen.

Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was a soldier who
was trying to find some relief after what had been done, but was not
able to do so. Without finishing what he had begun to say he made a
hopeless movement with his arm and went away.




CHAPTER XII

After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest of the prisoners
and placed alone in a small, ruined, and befouled church.

Toward evening a noncommissioned officer entered with two soldiers and
told him that he had been pardoned and would now go to the barracks for
the prisoners of war. Without understanding what was said to him, Pierre
got up and went with the soldiers. They took him to the upper end of the
field, where there were some sheds built of charred planks, beams, and
battens, and led him into one of them. In the darkness some twenty
different men surrounded Pierre. He looked at them without understanding
who they were, why they were there, or what they wanted of him. He heard
what they said, but did not understand the meaning of the words and made
no kind of deduction from or application of them. He replied to
questions they put to him, but did not consider who was listening to his
replies, nor how they would understand them. He looked at their faces
and figures, but they all seemed to him equally meaningless.

From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible murders committed by
men who did not wish to commit them, it was as if the mainspring of his
life, on which everything depended and which made everything appear
alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything had collapsed into
a heap of meaningless rubbish. Though he did not acknowledge it to
himself, his faith in the right ordering of the universe, in humanity,
in his own soul, and in God, had been destroyed. He had experienced this
before, but never so strongly as now. When similar doubts had assailed
him before, they had been the result of his own wrongdoing, and at the
bottom of his heart he had felt that relief from his despair and from
those doubts was to be found within himself. But now he felt that the
universe had crumbled before his eyes and only meaningless ruins
remained, and this not by any fault of his own. He felt that it was not
in his power to regain faith in the meaning of life.

Around him in the darkness men were standing and evidently something
about him interested them greatly. They were telling him something and
asking him something. Then they led him away somewhere, and at last he
found himself in a corner of the shed among men who were laughing and
talking on all sides.

"Well, then, mates... that very prince who..." some voice at the other
end of the shed was saying, with a strong emphasis on the word who.

Sitting silent and motionless on a heap of straw against the wall,
Pierre sometimes opened and sometimes closed his eyes. But as soon as he
closed them he saw before him the dreadful face of the factory lad--
especially dreadful because of its simplicity--and the faces of the
murderers, even more dreadful because of their disquiet. And he opened
his eyes again and stared vacantly into the darkness around him.

Beside him in a stooping position sat a small man of whose presence he
was first made aware by a strong smell of perspiration which came from
him every time he moved. This man was doing something to his legs in the
darkness, and though Pierre could not see his face he felt that the man
continually glanced at him. On growing used to the darkness Pierre saw
that the man was taking off his leg bands, and the way he did it aroused
Pierre's interest.

Having unwound the string that tied the band on one leg, he carefully
coiled it up and immediately set to work on the other leg, glancing up
at Pierre. While one hand hung up the first string the other was already
unwinding the band on the second leg. In this way, having carefully
removed the leg bands by deft circular motions of his arm following one
another uninterruptedly, the man hung the leg bands up on some pegs
fixed above his head. Then he took out a knife, cut something, closed
the knife, placed it under the head of his bed, and, seating himself
comfortably, clasped his arms round his lifted knees and fixed his eyes
on Pierre. The latter was conscious of something pleasant, comforting,
and well-rounded in these deft movements, in the man's well-ordered
arrangements in his corner, and even in his very smell, and he looked at
the man without taking his eyes from him.

"You've seen a lot of trouble, sir, eh?" the little man suddenly said.

And there was so much kindliness and simplicity in his singsong voice
that Pierre tried to reply, but his jaw trembled and he felt tears
rising to his eyes. The little fellow, giving Pierre no time to betray
his confusion, instantly continued in the same pleasant tones:

"Eh, lad, don't fret!" said he, in the tender singsong caressing voice
old Russian peasant women employ. "Don't fret, friend--'suffer an hour,
live for an age!' that's how it is, my dear fellow. And here we live,
thank heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too, there are good men
as well as bad," said he, and still speaking, he turned on his knees
with a supple movement, got up, coughed, and went off to another part of
the shed.

"Eh, you rascal!" Pierre heard the same kind voice saying at the other
end of the shed. "So you've come, you rascal? She remembers... Now, now,
that'll do!"

And the soldier, pushing away a little dog that was jumping up at him,
returned to his place and sat down. In his hands he had something
wrapped in a rag.

"Here, eat a bit, sir," said he, resuming his former respectful tone as
he unwrapped and offered Pierre some baked potatoes. "We had soup for
dinner and the potatoes are grand!"

Pierre had not eaten all day and the smell of the potatoes seemed
extremely pleasant to him. He thanked the soldier and began to eat.

"Well, are they all right?" said the soldier with a smile. "You should
do like this."

He took a potato, drew out his clasp knife, cut the potato into two
equal halves on the palm of his hand, sprinkled some salt on it from the
rag, and handed it to Pierre.

"The potatoes are grand!" he said once more. "Eat some like that!"

Pierre thought he had never eaten anything that tasted better.

"Oh, I'm all right," said he, "but why did they shoot those poor
fellows? The last one was hardly twenty."

"Tss, tt...!" said the little man. "Ah, what a sin... what a sin!" he
added quickly, and as if his words were always waiting ready in his
mouth and flew out involuntarily he went on: "How was it, sir, that you
stayed in Moscow?"

"I didn't think they would come so soon. I stayed accidentally," replied
Pierre.

"And how did they arrest you, dear lad? At your house?"

"No, I went to look at the fire, and they arrested me there, and tried
me as an incendiary."

"Where there's law there's injustice," put in the little man.

"And have you been here long?" Pierre asked as he munched the last of
the potato.

"I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in Moscow."

"Why, are you a soldier then?"

"Yes, we are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of fever. We
weren't told anything. There were some twenty of us lying there. We had
no idea, never guessed at all."

"And do you feel sad here?" Pierre inquired.

"How can one help it, lad? My name is Platon, and the surname is
Karataev," he added, evidently wishing to make it easier for Pierre to
address him. "They call me 'little falcon' in the regiment. How is one
to help feeling sad? Moscow--she's the mother of cities. How can one see
all this and not feel sad? But 'the maggot gnaws the cabbage, yet dies
first'; that's what the old folks used to tell us," he added rapidly.

"What? What did you say?" asked Pierre.

"Who? I?" said Karataev. "I say things happen not as we plan but as God
judges," he replied, thinking that he was repeating what he had said
before, and immediately continued:

"Well, and you, have you a family estate, sir? And a house? So you have
abundance, then? And a housewife? And your old parents, are they still
living?" he asked.

And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt that a suppressed
smile of kindliness puckered the soldier's lips as he put these
questions. He seemed grieved that Pierre had no parents, especially that
he had no mother.

"A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but there's none as
dear as one's own mother!" said he. "Well, and have you little ones?" he
went on asking.

Again Pierre's negative answer seemed to distress him, and he hastened
to add:

"Never mind! You're young folks yet, and please God may still have some.
The great thing is to live in harmony...."

"But it's all the same now," Pierre could not help saying.

"Ah, my dear fellow!" rejoined Karataev, "never decline a prison or a
beggar's sack!"

He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently preparing to
tell a long story.

"Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home," he began. "We had a
well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants lived well and our
house was one to thank God for. When Father and we went out mowing there
were seven of us. We lived well. We were real peasants. It so
happened..."

And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had gone into someone's
copse to take wood, how he had been caught by the keeper, had been
tried, flogged, and sent to serve as a soldier.

"Well, lad," and a smile changed the tone of his voice "we thought it
was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If it had not been for my
sin, my brother would have had to go as a soldier. But he, my younger
brother, had five little ones, while I, you see, only left a wife
behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I went as a
soldier. I come home on leave and I'll tell you how it was, I look and
see that they are living better than before. The yard full of cattle,
the women at home, two brothers away earning wages, and only Michael the
youngest, at home. Father, he says, 'All my children are the same to me:
it hurts the same whichever finger gets bitten. But if Platon hadn't
been shaved for a soldier, Michael would have had to go.' called us all
to him and, will you believe it, placed us in front of the icons.
'Michael,' he says, 'come here and bow down to his feet; and you, young
woman, you bow down too; and you, grandchildren, also bow down before
him! Do you understand?' he says. That's how it is, dear fellow. Fate
looks for a head. But we are always judging, 'that's not well--that's
not right!' Our luck is like water in a dragnet: you pull at it and it
bulges, but when you've drawn it out it's empty! That's how it is."

And Platon shifted his seat on the straw.

After a short silence he rose.

"Well, I think you must be sleepy," said he, and began rapidly crossing
himself and repeating:

"Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus
Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus Christ, have
mercy on us and save us!" he concluded, then bowed to the ground, got
up, sighed, and sat down again on his heap of straw. "That's the way.
Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf," he
muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him.

"What prayer was that you were saying?" asked Pierre.

"Eh?" murmured Platon, who had almost fallen asleep. "What was I saying?
I was praying. Don't you pray?"

"Yes, I do," said Pierre. "But what was that you said: Frola and Lavra?"

"Well, of course," replied Platon quickly, "the horses' saints. One must
pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now you've curled up and got warm,
you daughter of a bitch!" said Karataev, touching the dog that lay at
his feet, and again turning over he fell asleep immediately.

Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere in the distance
outside, and flames were visible through the cracks of the shed, but
inside it was quiet and dark. For a long time Pierre did not sleep, but
lay with eyes open in the darkness, listening to the regular snoring of
Platon who lay beside him, and he felt that the world that had been
shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a new beauty and on
new and unshakable foundations.




CHAPTER XIII

Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were confined
in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where he remained for
four weeks.

When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty figures to
him except Platon Karataev, who always remained in his mind a most vivid
and precious memory and the personification of everything Russian,
kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next morning at dawn the
first impression of him, as of something round, was fully confirmed:
Platon's whole figure--in a French overcoat girdled with a cord, a
soldier's cap, and bast shoes--was round. His head was quite round, his
back, chest, shoulders, and even his arms, which he held as if ever
ready to embrace something, were rounded, his pleasant smile and his
large, gentle brown eyes were also round.

Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of
campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier. He did not himself
know his age and was quite unable to determine it. But his brilliantly
white, strong teeth which showed in two unbroken semicircles when he
laughed--as he often did--were all sound and good, there was not a gray
hair in his beard or on his head, and his whole body gave an impression
of suppleness and especially of firmness and endurance.

His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of
innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant and musical. But the chief
peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness. It was
evident that he never considered what he had said or was going to say,
and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation had an
irresistible persuasiveness.

His physical strength and agility during the first days of his
imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know what fatigue and
sickness meant. Every night before lying down, he said: "Lord, lay me
down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!" and every morning on getting
up, he said: "I lay down and curled up, I get up and shake myself." And
indeed he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a stone, and he only
had to shake himself, to be ready without a moment's delay for some
work, just as children are ready to play directly they awake. He could
do everything, not very well but not badly. He baked, cooked, sewed,
planed, and mended boots. He was always busy, and only at night allowed
himself conversation--of which he was fond--and songs. He did not sing
like a trained singer who knows he is listened to, but like the birds,
evidently giving vent to the sounds in the same way that one stretches
oneself or walks about to get rid of stiffness, and the sounds were
always high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his
face at such times was very serious.

Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to grow, he seemed to
have thrown off all that had been forced upon him--everything military
and alien to himself--and had returned to his former peasant habits.

"A soldier on leave--a shirt outside breeches," he would say.

He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though he did not
complain, and often mentioned that he had not been flogged once during
the whole of his army service. When he related anything it was generally
some old and evidently precious memory of his "Christian" life, as he
called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of which his talk was full,
were for the most part not the coarse and indecent saws soldiers employ,
but those folk sayings which taken without a context seem so
insignificant, but when used appositely suddenly acquire a significance
of profound wisdom.

He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a previous
occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he talked well,
adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with folk sayings which
Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief charm of his talk lay
in the fact that the commonest events--sometimes just such as Pierre had
witnessed without taking notice of them--assumed in Karataev's a
character of solemn fitness. He liked to hear the folk tales one of the
soldiers used to tell of an evening (they were always the same), but
most of all he liked to hear stories of real life. He would smile
joyfully when listening to such stories, now and then putting in a word
or asking a question to make the moral beauty of what he was told clear
to himself. Karataev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre
understood them, but loved and lived affectionately with everything life
brought him in contact with, particularly with man--not any particular
man, but those with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his
comrades, the French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt
that in spite of Karataev's affectionate tenderness for him (by which he
unconsciously gave Pierre's spiritual life its due) he would not have
grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to feel in
the same way toward Karataev.

To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most ordinary
soldier. They called him "little falcon" or "Platosha," chaffed him
good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always
remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable, rounded,
eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth.

Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he began
to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude.

Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask him to
repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he had said a moment
before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of his
favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred in
it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of it. He
did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their
context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an
activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he
regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only as
part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and actions
flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as fragrance
exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value or significance
of any word or deed taken separately.




CHAPTER XIV

When Princess Mary heard from Nicholas that her brother was with the
Rostovs at Yaroslavl she at once prepared to go there, in spite of her
aunt's efforts to dissuade her--and not merely to go herself but to take
her nephew with her. Whether it were difficult or easy, possible or
impossible, she did not ask and did not want to know: it was her duty,
not only to herself, to be near her brother who was perhaps dying, but
to do everything possible to take his son to him, and so she prepared to
set off. That she had not heard from Prince Andrew himself, Princess
Mary attributed to his being too weak to write or to his considering the
long journey too hard and too dangerous for her and his son.

In a few days Princess Mary was ready to start. Her equipages were the
huge family coach in which she had traveled to Voronezh, a semiopen
trap, and a baggage cart. With her traveled Mademoiselle Bourienne,
little Nicholas and his tutor, her old nurse, three maids, Tikhon, and a
young footman and courier her aunt had sent to accompany her.

The usual route through Moscow could not be thought of, and the
roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lipetsk,
Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was very long and, as post horses were not
everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the French
were said to have shown themselves was even dangerous.

During this difficult journey Mademoiselle Bourienne, Dessalles, and
Princess Mary's servants were astonished at her energy and firmness of
spirit. She went to bed later and rose earlier than any of them, and no
difficulties daunted her. Thanks to her activity and energy, which
infected her fellow travelers, they approached Yaroslavl by the end of
the second week.

The last days of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest of her life.
Her love for Rostov no longer tormented or agitated her. It filled her
whole soul, had become an integral part of herself, and she no longer
struggled against it. Latterly she had become convinced that she loved
and was beloved, though she never said this definitely to herself in
words. She had become convinced of it at her last interview with
Nicholas, when he had come to tell her that her brother was with the
Rostovs. Not by a single word had Nicholas alluded to the fact that
Prince Andrew's relations with Natasha might, if he recovered, be
renewed, but Princess Mary saw by his face that he knew and thought of
this.

Yet in spite of that, his relation to her--considerate, delicate, and
loving--not only remained unchanged, but it sometimes seemed to Princess
Mary that he was even glad that the family connection between them
allowed him to express his friendship more freely. She knew that she
loved for the first and only time in her life and felt that she was
beloved, and was happy in regard to it.

But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature did not prevent
her feeling grief for her brother with full force; on the contrary, that
spiritual tranquility on the one side made it the more possible for her
to give full play to her feeling for her brother. That feeling was so
strong at the moment of leaving Voronezh that those who saw her off, as
they looked at her careworn, despairing face, felt sure she would fall
ill on the journey. But the very difficulties and preoccupations of the
journey, which she took so actively in hand, saved her for a while from
her grief and gave her strength.

As always happens when traveling, Princess Mary thought only of the
journey itself, forgetting its object. But as she approached Yaroslavl
the thought of what might await her there--not after many days, but that
very evening--again presented itself to her and her agitation increased
to its utmost limit.

The courier who had been sent on in advance to find out where the
Rostovs were staying in Yaroslavl, and in what condition Prince Andrew
was, when he met the big coach just entering the town gates was appalled
by the terrible pallor of the princess' face that looked out at him from
the window.

"I have found out everything, your excellency: the Rostovs are staying
at the merchant Bronnikov's house, in the Square not far from here,
right above the Volga," said the courier.

Princess Mary looked at him with frightened inquiry, not understanding
why he did not reply to what she chiefly wanted to know: how was her
brother? Mademoiselle Bourienne put that question for her.

"How is the prince?" she asked.

"His excellency is staying in the same house with them."

"Then he is alive," thought Princess Mary, and asked in a low voice:
"How is he?"

"The servants say he is still the same."

What "still the same" might mean Princess Mary did not ask, but with an
unnoticed glance at little seven-year-old Nicholas, who was sitting in
front of her looking with pleasure at the town, she bowed her head and
did not raise it again till the heavy coach, rumbling, shaking and
swaying, came to a stop. The carriage steps clattered as they were let
down.

The carriage door was opened. On the left there was water--a great
river--and on the right a porch. There were people at the entrance:
servants, and a rosy girl with a large plait of black hair, smiling as
it seemed to Princess Mary in an unpleasantly affected way. (This was
Sonya.) Princess Mary ran up the steps. "This way, this way!" said the
girl, with the same artificial smile, and the princess found herself in
the hall facing an elderly woman of Oriental type, who came rapidly to
meet her with a look of emotion. This was the countess. She embraced
Princess Mary and kissed her.

"Mon enfant!" she muttered, "je vous aime et vous connais depuis
longtemps." *


* "My child! I love you and have known you a long time."


Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that this was the
countess and that it was necessary to say something to her. Hardly
knowing how she did it, she contrived to utter a few polite phrases in
French in the same tone as those that had been addressed to her, and
asked: "How is he?"

"The doctor says that he is not in danger," said the countess, but as
she spoke she raised her eyes with a sigh, and her gesture conveyed a
contradiction of her words.

"Where is he? Can I see him--can I?" asked the princess.

"One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this his son?" said the
countess, turning to little Nicholas who was coming in with Dessalles.
"There will be room for everybody, this is a big house. Oh, what a
lovely boy!"

The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing room, where Sonya was
talking to Mademoiselle Bourienne. The countess caressed the boy, and
the old count came in and welcomed the princess. He had changed very
much since Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had been a brisk,
cheerful, self-assured old man; now he seemed a pitiful, bewildered
person. While talking to Princess Mary he continually looked round as if
asking everyone whether he was doing the right thing. After the
destruction of Moscow and of his property, thrown out of his accustomed
groove he seemed to have lost the sense of his own significance and to
feel that there was no longer a place for him in life.

In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as possible, and
her vexation that at the moment when all she wanted was to see him they
should be trying to entertain her and pretending to admire her nephew,
the princess noticed all that was going on around her and felt the
necessity of submitting, for a time, to this new order of things which
she had entered. She knew it to be necessary, and though it was hard for
her she was not vexed with these people.

"This is my niece," said the count, introducing Sonya--"You don't know
her, Princess?"

Princess Mary turned to Sonya and, trying to stifle the hostile feeling
that arose in her toward the girl, she kissed her. But she felt
oppressed by the fact that the mood of everyone around her was so far
from what was in her own heart.

"Where is he?" she asked again, addressing them all.

"He is downstairs. Natasha is with him," answered Sonya, flushing. "We
have sent to ask. I think you must be tired, Princess."

Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess Mary's eyes. She turned
away and was about to ask the countess again how to go to him, when
light, impetuous, and seemingly buoyant steps were heard at the door.
The princess looked round and saw Natasha coming in, almost running--
that Natasha whom she had liked so little at their meeting in Moscow
long since.

But hardly had the princess looked at Natasha's face before she realized
that here was a real comrade in her grief, and consequently a friend.
She ran to meet her, embraced her, and began to cry on her shoulder.

As soon as Natasha, sitting at the head of Prince Andrew's bed, heard of
Princess Mary's arrival, she softly left his room and hastened to her
with those swift steps that had sounded buoyant to Princess Mary.

There was only one expression on her agitated face when she ran into the
drawing room--that of love--boundless love for him, for her, and for all
that was near to the man she loved; and of pity, suffering for others,
and passionate desire to give herself entirely to helping them. It was
plain that at that moment there was in Natasha's heart no thought of
herself or of her own relations with Prince Andrew.

Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood all this at the
first glance at Natasha's face, and wept on her shoulder with sorrowful
pleasure.

"Come, come to him, Mary," said Natasha, leading her into the other
room.

Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and turned to Natasha.
She felt that from her she would be able to understand and learn
everything.

"How..." she began her question but stopped short.

She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in words.
Natasha's face and eyes would have to tell her all more clearly and
profoundly.

Natasha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in doubt whether to say
all she knew or not; she seemed to feel that before those luminous eyes
which penetrated into the very depths of her heart, it was impossible
not to tell the whole truth which she saw. And suddenly, Natasha's lips
twitched, ugly wrinkles gathered round her mouth, and covering her face
with her hands she burst into sobs.

Princess Mary understood.

But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did not trust:

"But how is his wound? What is his general condition?"

"You, you... will see," was all Natasha could say.

They sat a little while downstairs near his room till they had left off
crying and were able to go to him with calm faces.

"How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he grew worse? When
did this happen?" Princess Mary inquired.

Natasha told her that at first there had been danger from his feverish
condition and the pain he suffered, but at Troitsa that had passed and
the doctor had only been afraid of gangrene. That danger had also
passed. When they reached Yaroslavl the wound had begun to fester
(Natasha knew all about such things as festering) and the doctor had
said that the festering might take a normal course. Then fever set in,
but the doctor had said the fever was not very serious.

"But two days ago this suddenly happened," said Natasha, struggling with
her sobs. "I don't know why, but you will see what he is like."

"Is he weaker? Thinner?" asked the princess.

"No, it's not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he is too good, he
cannot, cannot live, because..."




CHAPTER XV

When Natasha opened Prince Andrew's door with a familiar movement and
let Princess Mary pass into the room before her, the princess felt the
sobs in her throat. Hard as she had tried to prepare herself, and now
tried to remain tranquil, she knew that she would be unable to look at
him without tears.

The princess understood what Natasha had meant by the words: "two days
ago this suddenly happened." She understood those words to mean that he
had suddenly softened and that this softening and gentleness were signs
of approaching death. As she stepped to the door she already saw in
imagination Andrew's face as she remembered it in childhood, a gentle,
mild, sympathetic face which he had rarely shown, and which therefore
affected her very strongly. She was sure he would speak soft, tender
words to her such as her father had uttered before his death, and that
she would not be able to bear it and would burst into sobs in his
presence. Yet sooner or later it had to be, and she went in. The sobs
rose higher and higher in her throat as she more and more clearly
distinguished his form and her shortsighted eyes tried to make out his
features, and then she saw his face and met his gaze.

He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan, surrounded by
pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin, translucently white hand he
held a handkerchief, while with the other he stroked the delicate
mustache he had grown, moving his fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them
as they entered.

On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary's pace suddenly
slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her sobs ceased. She suddenly
felt guilty and grew timid on catching the expression of his face and
eyes.

"But in what am I to blame?" she asked herself. And his cold, stern look
replied: "Because you are alive and thinking of the living, while I..."

In the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but inwards there was
an almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded his sister and
Natasha.

He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont.

"How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?" said he in a voice
as calm and aloof as his look.

Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have struck such horror
into Princess Mary's heart as the tone of his voice.

"And have you brought little Nicholas?" he asked in the same slow, quiet
manner and with an obvious effort to remember.

"How are you now?" said Princess Mary, herself surprised at what she was
saying.

"That, my dear, you must ask the doctor," he replied, and again making
an evident effort to be affectionate, he said with his lips only (his
words clearly did not correspond to his thoughts):

"Merci, chere amie, d'etre venue." *


* "Thank you for coming, my dear."

Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him wince just
perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She now
understood what had happened to him two days before. In his words, his
tone, and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look could be
felt an estrangement from everything belonging to this world, terrible
in one who is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he understand
anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to understand, not
because he lacked the power to do so but because he understood something
else--something the living did not and could not understand--and which
wholly occupied his mind.

"There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together," said he,
breaking the silence and pointing to Natasha. "She looks after me all
the time."

Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how he could say such a
thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince Andrew, how could he say that,
before her whom he loved and who loved him? Had he expected to live he
could not have said those words in that offensively cold tone. If he had
not known that he was dying, how could he have failed to pity her and
how could he speak like that in her presence? The only explanation was
that he was indifferent, because something else, much more important,
had been revealed to him.

The conversation was cold and disconnected and continually broke off.

"Mary came by way of Ryazan," said Natasha.

Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary, and only
after calling her so in his presence did Natasha notice it herself.

"Really?" he asked.

"They told her that all Moscow has been burned down, and that..."

Natasha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain that he was
making an effort to listen, but could not do so.

"Yes, they say it's burned," he said. "It's a great pity," and he gazed
straight before him, absently stroking his mustache with his fingers.

"And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?" Prince Andrew suddenly said,
evidently wishing to speak pleasantly to them. "He wrote here that he
took a great liking to you," he went on simply and calmly, evidently
unable to understand all the complex significance his words had for
living people. "If you liked him too, it would be a good thing for you
to get married," he added rather more quickly, as if pleased at having
found words he had long been seeking.

Princess Mary heard his words but they had no meaning for her, except as
a proof of how far away he now was from everything living.

"Why talk of me?" she said quietly and glanced at Natasha.

Natasha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All three were again
silent.

"Andrew, would you like..." Princess Mary suddenly said in a trembling
voice, "would you like to see little Nicholas? He is always talking
about you!"

Prince Andrew smiled just perceptibly and for the first time, but
Princess Mary, who knew his face so well, saw with horror that he did
not smile with pleasure or affection for his son, but with quiet, gentle
irony because he thought she was trying what she believed to be the last
means of arousing him.

"Yes, I shall be very glad to see him. Is he quite well?"

When little Nicholas was brought into Prince Andrew's room he looked at
his father with frightened eyes, but did not cry, because no one else
was crying. Prince Andrew kissed him and evidently did not know what to
say to him.

When Nicholas had been led away, Princess Mary again went up to her
brother, kissed him, and unable to restrain her tears any longer began
to cry.

He looked at her attentively.

"Is it about Nicholas?" he asked.

Princess Mary nodded her head, weeping.

"Mary, you know the Gosp..." but he broke off.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. You mustn't cry here," he said, looking at her with the same
cold expression.

When Princess Mary began to cry, he understood that she was crying at
the thought that little Nicholas would be left without a father. With a
great effort he tried to return to life and to see things from their
point of view.

"Yes, to them it must seem sad!" he thought. "But how simple it is.

"The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Father
feedeth them," he said to himself and wished to say to Princess Mary;
"but no, they will take it their own way, they won't understand! They
can't understand that all those feelings they prize so--all our
feelings, all those ideas that seem so important to us, are unnecessary.
We cannot understand one another," and he remained silent.

Prince Andrew's little son was seven. He could scarcely read, and knew
nothing. After that day he lived through many things, gaining knowledge,
observation, and experience, but had he possessed all the faculties he
afterwards acquired, he could not have had a better or more profound
understanding of the meaning of the scene he had witnessed between his
father, Mary, and Natasha, than he had then. He understood it
completely, and, leaving the room without crying, went silently up to
Natasha who had come out with him and looked shyly at her with his
beautiful, thoughtful eyes, then his uplifted, rosy upper lip trembled
and leaning his head against her he began to cry.

After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him and
either sat alone or came timidly to Princess Mary, or to Natasha of whom
he seemed even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them quietly and
shyly.

When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully understood what
Natasha's face had told her. She did not speak any more to Natasha of
hopes of saving his life. She took turns with her beside his sofa, and
did not cry any more, but prayed continually, turning in soul to that
Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the dying man was now so
evident.




CHAPTER XVI

Not only did Prince Andrew know he would die, but he felt that he was
dying and was already half dead. He was conscious of an aloofness from
everything earthly and a strange and joyous lightness of existence.
Without haste or agitation he awaited what was coming. That inexorable,
eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of which he had felt
continually all his life--was now near to him and, by the strange
lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible and palpable...


Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice experienced that terribly
tormenting fear of death--the end--but now he no longer understood that
fear.

He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like a top before
him, and he looked at the fallow field, the bushes, and the sky, and
knew that he was face to face with death. When he came to himself after
being wounded and the flower of eternal, unfettered love had instantly
unfolded itself in his soul as if freed from the bondage of life that
had restrained it, he no longer feared death and ceased to think about
it.

During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he spent
after he was wounded, the more deeply he penetrated into the new
principle of eternal love revealed to him, the more he unconsciously
detached himself from earthly life. To love everything and everybody and
always to sacrifice oneself for love meant not to love anyone, not to
live this earthly life. And the more imbued he became with that
principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more completely he
destroyed that dreadful barrier which--in the absence of such love--
stands between life and death. When during those first days he
remembered that he would have to die, he said to himself: "Well, what of
it? So much the better!"

But after the night in Mytishchi when, half delirious, he had seen her
for whom he longed appear before him and, having pressed her hand to his
lips, had shed gentle, happy tears, love for a particular woman again
crept unobserved into his heart and once more bound him to life. And
joyful and agitating thoughts began to occupy his mind. Recalling the
moment at the ambulance station when he had seen Kuragin, he could not
now regain the feeling he then had, but was tormented by the question
whether Kuragin was alive. And he dared not inquire.

His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what Natasha
referred to when she said: "This suddenly happened," had occurred two
days before Princess Mary arrived. It was the last spiritual struggle
between life and death, in which death gained the victory. It was the
unexpected realization of the fact that he still valued life as
presented to him in the form of his love for Natasha, and a last, though
ultimately vanquished, attack of terror before the unknown.

It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish, and his
thoughts were preternaturally clear. Sonya was sitting by the table. He
began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized him.

"Ah, she has come!" thought he.

And so it was: in Sonya's place sat Natasha who had just come in
noiselessly.

Since she had begun looking after him, he had always experienced this
physical consciousness of her nearness. She was sitting in an armchair
placed sideways, screening the light of the candle from him, and was
knitting a stocking. She had learned to knit stockings since Prince
Andrew had casually mentioned that no one nursed the sick so well as old
nurses who knit stockings, and that there is something soothing in the
knitting of stockings. The needles clicked lightly in her slender,
rapidly moving hands, and he could clearly see the thoughtful profile of
her drooping face. She moved, and the ball rolled off her knees. She
started, glanced round at him, and screening the candle with her hand
stooped carefully with a supple and exact movement, picked up the ball,
and regained her former position.

He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a deep
breath after stooping, but refrained from doing so and breathed
cautiously.

At the Troitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had told
her that if he lived he would always thank God for his wound which had
brought them together again, but after that they never spoke of the
future.

"Can it or can it not be?" he now thought as he looked at her and
listened to the light click of the steel needles. "Can fate have brought
me to her so strangely only for me to die?... Is it possible that the
truth of life has been revealed to me only to show me that I have spent
my life in falsity? I love her more than anything in the world! But what
am I to do if I love her?" he thought, and he involuntarily groaned,
from a habit acquired during his sufferings.

On hearing that sound Natasha put down the stocking, leaned nearer to
him, and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, stepped lightly up to him
and bent over him.

"You are not asleep?"

"No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you come in. No one
else gives me that sense of soft tranquillity that you do... that light.
I want to weep for joy."

Natasha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.

"Natasha, I love you too much! More than anything in the world."

"And I!"--She turned away for an instant. "Why too much?" she asked.

"Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in your soul, your
whole soul--shall I live? What do you think?"

"I am sure of it, sure!" Natasha almost shouted, taking hold of both his
hands with a passionate movement.

He remained silent awhile.

"How good it would be!" and taking her hand he kissed it.

Natasha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered that this would
not do and that he had to be quiet.

"But you have not slept," she said, repressing her joy. "Try to sleep...
please!"

He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back to the candle and
sat down again in her former position. Twice she turned and looked at
him, and her eyes met his beaming at her. She set herself a task on her
stocking and resolved not to turn round till it was finished.

Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. He did not sleep long and
suddenly awoke with a start and in a cold perspiration.

As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject that now
always occupied his mind--about life and death, and chiefly about death.
He felt himself nearer to it.

"Love? What is love?" he thought.

"Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I
understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only
because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to
die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and
eternal source." These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But they were
only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they
were too one-sidedly personal and brain-spun. And there was the former
agitation and obscurity. He fell asleep.

He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was in, but that he
was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and
insignificant people appeared before him. He talked to them and
discussed something trivial. They were preparing to go away somewhere.
Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had
more important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising them by
empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons began to
disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded all
else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything
depended on whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went, and
tried to hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he would not be
in time to lock the door though he painfully strained all his powers. He
was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was the fear of death. It
stood behind the door. But just when he was clumsily creeping toward the
door, that dreadful something on the other side was already pressing
against it and forcing its way in. Something not human--death--was
breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out. He seized the
door, making a final effort to hold it back--to lock it was no longer
possible--but his efforts were weak and clumsy and the door, pushed from
behind by that terror, opened and closed again.

Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts were vain
and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It entered, and it was
death, and Prince Andrew died.

But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was asleep,
and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he awoke.

"Yes, it was death! I died--and woke up. Yes, death is an awakening!"
And all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil that had till
then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt
as if powers till then confined within him had been liberated, and that
strange lightness did not again leave him.

When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan, Natasha went
up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer and looked at
her strangely, not understanding.

That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary's
arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting fever
assumed a malignant character, but what the doctor said did not interest
Natasha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to her were more
convincing.

From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew together with
his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration of life it did
not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep compared to the
duration of a dream.

There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow
awakening.

His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. Both
Princess Mary and Natasha, who did not leave him, felt this. They did
not weep or shudder and during these last days they themselves felt that
they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he had left
them) but on what reminded them most closely of him--his body. Both felt
this so strongly that the outward and terrible side of death did not
affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment their grief.
Neither in his presence nor out of it did they weep, nor did they ever
talk to one another about him. They felt that they could not express in
words what they understood.

They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and deeper,
away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so and that it
was right.

He confessed, and received communion: everyone came to take leave of
him. When they brought his son to him, he pressed his lips to the boy's
and turned away, not because he felt it hard and sad (Princess Mary and
Natasha understood that) but simply because he thought it was all that
was required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy, he did
what was demanded and looked round as if asking whether there was
anything else he should do.

When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving,
occurred, Princess Mary and Natasha were present.

"Is it over?" said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes
lain motionless, growing cold before them. Natasha went up, looked at
the dead eyes, and hastened to close them. She closed them but did not
kiss them, but clung to that which reminded her most nearly of him--his
body.

"Where has he gone? Where is he now?..."

When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table,
everyone came to take leave of him and they all wept.

Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful perplexity.
The countess and Sonya cried from pity for Natasha and because he was no
more. The old count cried because he felt that before long, he, too,
must take the same terrible step.

Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their own
personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion which
had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of the simple
and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in their
presence.

BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812




CHAPTER I

Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but
the desire to find those causes is implanted in man's soul. And without
considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of
which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the
first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and says:
"This is the cause!" In historical events (where the actions of men are
the subject of observation) the first and most primitive approximation
to present itself was the will of the gods and, after that, the will of
those who stood in the most prominent position--the heroes of history.
But we need only penetrate to the essence of any historic event--which
lies in the activity of the general mass of men who take part in it--to
be convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the
actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may seem to
be a matter of indifference whether we understand the meaning of
historical events this way or that; yet there is the same difference
between a man who says that the people of the West moved on the East
because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this happened because
it had to happen, as there is between those who declared that the earth
was stationary and that the planets moved round it and those who
admitted that they did not know what upheld the earth, but knew there
were laws directing its movement and that of the other planets. There
is, and can be, no cause of an historical event except the one cause of
all causes. But there are laws directing events, and some of these laws
are known to us while we are conscious of others we cannot comprehend.
The discovery of these laws is only possible when we have quite
abandoned the attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man,
just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was
possible only when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the
earth.

The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the
occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the most
important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the Russian
army from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino camp--the
so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River. They ascribe the
glory of that achievement of genius to different men and dispute as to
whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians, including the French,
acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders when they speak of that
flank march. But it is hard to understand why military writers, and
following them others, consider this flank march to be the profound
conception of some one man who saved Russia and destroyed Napoleon. In
the first place it is hard to understand where the profundity and genius
of this movement lay, for not much mental effort was needed to see that
the best position for an army when it is not being attacked is where
there are most provisions; and even a dull boy of thirteen could have
guessed that the best position for an army after its retreat from Moscow
in 1812 was on the Kaluga road. So it is impossible to understand by
what reasoning the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver
was a profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why
they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and destroy
the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded, accompanied, or
followed by other circumstances, might have proved ruinous to the
Russians and salutary for the French. If the position of the Russian
army really began to improve from the time of that march, it does not at
all follow that the march was the cause of it.

That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to the
Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its
destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If
Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained
inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given battle as
Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French
attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhra? What
would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had attacked
the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when he
attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the French moved
on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank march that
brought salvation might have proved disastrous.

The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying
history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be
attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in
reality, like the retreat from Fili, it did not suggest itself to anyone
in its entirety, but resulted--moment by moment, step by step, event by
event--from an endless number of most diverse circumstances and was only
seen in its entirety when it had been accomplished and belonged to the
past.

At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds of the
Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely, a
direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In proof of this there is the fact
that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and above all
there is the well-known conversation after the council, between the
commander in chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of the commissariat
department. Lanskoy informed the commander-in-chief that the army
supplies were for the most part stored along the Oka in the Tula and
Ryazan provinces, and that if they retreated on Nizhni the army would be
separated from its supplies by the broad river Oka, which cannot be
crossed early in winter. This was the first indication of the necessity
of deviating from what had previously seemed the most natural course--a
direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod. The army turned more to the south,
along the Ryazan road and nearer to its supplies. Subsequently the
inactivity of the French (who even lost sight of the Russian army),
concern for the safety of the arsenal at Tula, and especially the
advantages of drawing nearer to its supplies caused the army to turn
still further south to the Tula road. Having crossed over, by a forced
march, to the Tula road beyond the Pakhra, the Russian commanders
intended to remain at Podolsk and had no thought of the Tarutino
position; but innumerable circumstances and the reappearance of French
troops who had for a time lost touch with the Russians, and projects of
giving battle, and above all the abundance of provisions in Kaluga
province, obliged our army to turn still more to the south and to cross
from the Tula to the Kaluga road and go to Tarutino, which was between
the roads along which those supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to
say when it was decided to abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say
precisely when, or by whom, it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only
when the army had got there, as the result of innumerable and varying
forces, did people begin to assure themselves that they had desired this
movement and long ago foreseen its result.




CHAPTER II

The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the advance of
the French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been continually
retreating straight back from the invaders, deviated from that direct
course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally drawn toward the
district where supplies were abundant.

If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading the
Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could not
have done anything but make a return movement toward Moscow, describing
an arc in the direction where most provisions were to be found and where
the country was richest.

That movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula, and Kaluga roads was
so natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that direction, and
demands were sent from Petersburg for Kutuzov to take his army that way.
At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a reprimand from the
Emperor for having moved his army along the Ryazan road, and the
Emperor's letter indicated to him the very position he had already
occupied near Kaluga.

Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by the
whole campaign and by the battle of Borodino, the Russian army--when the
strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push was received--
assumed the position natural to it.

Kutuzov's merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as it is
called, but in the fact that he alone understood the significance of
what had happened. He alone then understood the meaning of the French
army's inactivity, he alone continued to assert that the battle of
Borodino had been a victory, he alone--who as commander-in-chief might
have been expected to be eager to attack--employed his whole strength to
restrain the Russian army from useless engagements.

The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the fleeing hunter had
left him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and
merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was heard
to moan.

The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed its
calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutuzov's camp with
overtures for peace.

Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head was
right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words that occurred to him, though
they were meaningless.

MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am sending one of my adjutants-general
to discuss several interesting questions with you. I beg your Highness
to credit what he says to you, especially when he expresses the
sentiment of esteem and special regard I have long entertained for your
person. This letter having no other object, I pray God, monsieur le
Prince Koutouzov, to keep you in His holy and gracious protection!

NAPOLEON MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812

Kutuzov replied: "I should be cursed by posterity were I looked on as
the initiator of a settlement of any sort. Such is the present spirit of
my nation." But he continued to exert all his powers to restrain his
troops from attacking.

During the month that the French troops were pillaging in Moscow and the
Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarutino, a change had taken
place in the relative strength of the two armies--both in spirit and in
number--as a result of which the superiority had passed to the Russian
side. Though the condition and numbers of the French army were unknown
to the Russians, as soon as that change occurred the need of attacking
at once showed itself by countless signs. These signs were: Lauriston's
mission; the abundance of provisions at Tarutino; the reports coming in
from all sides of the inactivity and disorder of the French; the flow of
recruits to our regiments; the fine weather; the long rest the Russian
soldiers had enjoyed, and the impatience to do what they had been
assembled for, which usually shows itself in an army that has been
resting; curiosity as to what the French army, so long lost sight of,
was doing; the boldness with which our outposts now scouted close up to
the French stationed at Tarutino; the news of easy successes gained by
peasants and guerrilla troops over the French, the envy aroused by this;
the desire for revenge that lay in the heart of every Russian as long as
the French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every
soldier's mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed and
that the advantage was now on our side. There was a substantial change
in the relative strength, and an advance had become inevitable. And at
once, as a clock begins to strike and chime as soon as the minute hand
has completed a full circle, this change was shown by an increased
activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres.




CHAPTER III

The Russian army was commanded by Kutuzov and his staff, and also by the
Emperor from Petersburg. Before the news of the abandonment of Moscow
had been received in Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole campaign
had been drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his guidance. Though this plan
had been drawn up on the supposition that Moscow was still in our hands,
it was approved by the staff and accepted as a basis for action. Kutuzov
only replied that movements arranged from a distance were always
difficult to execute. So fresh instructions were sent for the solution
of difficulties that might be encountered, as well as fresh people who
were to watch Kutuzov's actions and report upon them.

Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now reorganized.
The posts left vacant by Bagration, who had been killed, and by Barclay,
who had gone away in dudgeon, had to be filled. Very serious
consideration was given to the question whether it would be better to
put A in B's place and B in D's, or on the contrary to put D in A's
place, and so on--as if anything more than A's or B's satisfaction
depended on this.

As a result of the hostility between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, his Chief of
Staff, the presence of confidential representatives of the Emperor, and
these transfers, a more than usually complicated play of parties was
going on among the staff of the army. A was undermining B, D was
undermining C, and so on in all possible combinations and permutations.
In all these plottings the subject of intrigue was generally the conduct
of the war, which all these men believed they were directing; but this
affair of the war went on independently of them, as it had to go: that
is, never in the way people devised, but flowing always from the
essential attitude of the masses. Only in the highest spheres did all
these schemes, crossings, and interminglings appear to be a true
reflection of what had to happen.

Prince Michael Ilarionovich! (wrote the Emperor on the second of October
in a letter that reached Kutuzov after the battle at Tarutino) Since
September 2 Moscow has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last reports
were written on the twentieth, and during all this time not only has no
action been taken against the enemy or for the relief of the ancient
capital, but according to your last report you have even retreated
farther. Serpukhov is already occupied by an enemy detachment and Tula
with its famous arsenal so indispensable to the army, is in danger. From
General Wintzingerode's reports, I see that an enemy corps of ten
thousand men is moving on the Petersburg road. Another corps of several
thousand men is moving on Dmitrov. A third has advanced along the
Vladimir road, and a fourth, rather considerable detachment is stationed
between Ruza and Mozhaysk. Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as the
twenty-fifth. In view of all this information, when the enemy has
scattered his forces in large detachments, and with Napoleon and his
Guards in Moscow, is it possible that the enemy's forces confronting you
are so considerable as not to allow of your taking the offensive? On the
contrary, he is probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most with
an army corps much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem
that, availing yourself of these circumstances, you might advantageously
attack a weaker one and annihilate him, or at least oblige him to
retreat, retaining in our hands an important part of the provinces now
occupied by the enemy, and thereby averting danger from Tula and other
towns in the interior. You will be responsible if the enemy is able to
direct a force of any size against Petersburg to threaten this capital
in which it has not been possible to retain many troops; for with the
army entrusted to you, and acting with resolution and energy, you have
ample means to avert this fresh calamity. Remember that you have still
to answer to our offended country for the loss of Moscow. You have
experienced my readiness to reward you. That readiness will not weaken
in me, but I and Russia have a right to expect from you all the zeal,
firmness, and success which your intellect, military talent, and the
courage of the troops you command justify us in expecting.

But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation of the
forces had already made itself felt in Petersburg, was dispatched,
Kutuzov had found himself unable any longer to restrain the army he
commanded from attacking and a battle had taken place.

On the second of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who was out scouting,
killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded hare he made
his way far into the forest and came upon the left flank of Murat's
army, encamped there without any precautions. The Cossack laughingly
told his comrades how he had almost fallen into the hands of the French.
A cornet, hearing the story, informed his commander.

The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack officers wished to
take advantage of this chance to capture some horses, but one of the
superior officers, who was acquainted with the higher authorities,
reported the incident to a general on the staff. The state of things on
the staff had of late been exceedingly strained. Ermolov had been to see
Bennigsen a few days previously and had entreated him to use his
influence with the commander-in-chief to induce him to take the
offensive.

"If I did not know you I should think you did not want what you are
asking for. I need only advise anything and his Highness is sure to do
the opposite," replied Bennigsen.

The Cossack's report, confirmed by horse patrols who were sent out, was
the final proof that events had matured. The tightly coiled spring was
released, the clock began to whirr and the chimes to play. Despite all
his supposed power, his intellect, his experience, and his knowledge of
men, Kutuzov--having taken into consideration the Cossack's report, a
note from Bennigsen who sent personal reports to the Emperor, the wishes
he supposed the Emperor to hold, and the fact that all the generals
expressed the same wish--could no longer check the inevitable movement,
and gave the order to do what he regarded as useless and harmful--gave
his approval, that is, to the accomplished fact.




CHAPTER IV

Bennigsen's note and the Cossack's information that the left flank of
the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it was
necessary to order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of October.

On the morning of the fourth of October Kutuzov signed the dispositions.
Toll read them to Ermolov, asking him to attend to the further
arrangements.

"All right--all right. I haven't time just now," replied Ermolov, and
left the hut.

The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the Austerlitz
dispositions, it was written--though not in German this time:

"The First Column will march here and here," "the Second Column will
march there and there," and so on; and on paper, all these columns
arrived at their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy.
Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions,
and as is always the case, not a single column reached its place at the
appointed time.

When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been
prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to Ermolov to
deal with. A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutuzov's orderly,
pleased at the importance of the mission entrusted to him, went to
Ermolov's quarters.

"Gone away," said Ermolov's orderly.

The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom Ermolov was
often to be found.

"No, and the general's out too."

The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.

"No, he's gone out."

"If only they don't make me responsible for this delay! What a nuisance
it is!" thought the officer, and he rode round the whole camp. One man
said he had seen Ermolov ride past with some other generals, others said
he must have returned home. The officer searched till six o'clock in the
evening without even stopping to eat. Ermolov was nowhere to be found
and no one knew where he was. The officer snatched a little food at a
comrade's, and rode again to the vanguard to find Miloradovich.
Miloradovich too was away, but here he was told that he had gone to a
ball at General Kikin's and that Ermolov was probably there too.

"But where is it?"

"Why, there, over at Echkino," said a Cossack officer, pointing to a
country house in the far distance.

"What, outside our line?"

"They've put two regiments as outposts, and they're having such a spree
there, it's awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!"

The officer rode out beyond our lines to Echkino. While still at a
distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier's dance song
proceeding from the house.

"In the meadows... in the meadows!" he heard, accompanied by whistling
and the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by shouts. These
sounds made his spirits rise, but at the same time he was afraid that he
would be blamed for not having executed sooner the important order
entrusted to him. It was already past eight o'clock. He dismounted and
went up into the porch of a large country house which had remained
intact between the Russian and French forces. In the refreshment room
and the hall, footmen were bustling about with wine and viands. Groups
of singers stood outside the windows. The officer was admitted and
immediately saw all the chief generals of the army together, and among
them Ermolov's big imposing figure. They all had their coats unbuttoned
and were standing in a semicircle with flushed and animated faces,
laughing loudly. In the middle of the room a short handsome general with
a red face was dancing the trepak with much spirit and agility.

"Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Ivanych! Ha, ha, ha!"

The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a moment
he was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait; but one of
the generals espied him and, hearing what he had come about, informed
Ermolov.

Ermolov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what the
officer had to say, took the papers from him without a word.

"You think he went off just by chance?" said a comrade, who was on the
staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards, referring to
Ermolov. "It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get Konovnitsyn into
trouble. You'll see what a mess there'll be tomorrow."




CHAPTER V

Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to be called early,
said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant consciousness of
having to direct a battle he did not approve of, got into his caleche
and drove from Letashovka (a village three and a half miles from
Tarutino) to the place where the attacking columns were to meet. He sat
in the caleche, dozing and waking up by turns, and listening for any
sound of firing on the right as an indication that the action had begun.
But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn morning was just dawning. On
approaching Tarutino Kutuzov noticed cavalrymen leading their horses to
water across the road along which he was driving. Kutuzov looked at them
searchingly, stopped his carriage, and inquired what regiment they
belonged to. They belonged to a column that should have been far in
front and in ambush long before then. "It may be a mistake," thought the
old commander-in-chief. But a little further on he saw infantry
regiments with their arms piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed,
eating their rye porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The
officer reported that no order to advance had been received.

"How! Not rec..." Kutuzov began, but checked himself immediately and
sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his caleche, he waited with
drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down. When
Eykhen, the officer of the general staff whom he had summoned, appeared,
Kutuzov went purple in the face, not because that officer was to blame
for the mistake, but because he was an object of sufficient importance
for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and panting the old man fell
into that state of fury in which he sometimes used to roll on the
ground, and he fell upon Eykhen, threatening him with his hands,
shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another man, Captain Brozin,
who happened to turn up and who was not at all to blame, suffered the
same fate.

"What sort of another blackguard are you? I'll have you shot!
Scoundrels!" yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and
reeling.

He was suffering physically. He, the commander-in-chief, a Serene
Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever had
in Russia, to be placed in this position--made the laughingstock of the
whole army! "I needn't have been in such a hurry to pray about today, or
have kept awake thinking everything over all night," thought he to
himself. "When I was a chit of an officer no one would have dared to
mock me so... and now!" He was in a state of physical suffering as if
from corporal punishment, and could not avoid expressing it by cries of
anger and distress. But his strength soon began to fail him, and looking
about him, conscious of having said much that was amiss, he again got
into his caleche and drove back in silence.

His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he
listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermolov did not come to see
him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen, Konovnitsyn,
and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should be executed next
day. And once more Kutuzov had to consent.




CHAPTER VI

Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the evening
and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with dark purple
clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops
advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the artillery
could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk out loud, to
smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried to prevent their
horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking heightened its charm and
they marched gaily. Some columns, supposing they had reached their
destination, halted, piled arms, and settled down on the cold ground,
but the majority marched all night and arrived at places where they
evidently should not have been.

Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the least important
detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time. This
detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path leading from
the village of Stromilova to Dmitrovsk.

Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed off, was awakened by a
deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a Polish
sergeant of Poniatowski's corps, who explained in Polish that he had
come over because he had been slighted in the service: that he ought
long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver than any of
them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them out. He said that
Murat was spending the night less than a mile from where they were, and
that if they would let him have a convoy of a hundred men he would
capture him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov consulted his fellow officers.

The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go and
everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and arguing,
Major-General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided to go with the
Polish sergeant.

"Now, remember," said Count Orlov-Denisov to the sergeant at parting,
"if you have been lying I'll have you hanged like a dog; but if it's
true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!"

Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and rode
away with Grekov whose men had quickly assembled. They disappeared into
the forest, and Count Orlov-Denisov, having seen Grekov off, returned,
shivering from the freshness of the early dawn and excited by what he
had undertaken on his own responsibility, and began looking at the enemy
camp, now just visible in the deceptive light of dawn and the dying
campfires. Our columns ought to have begun to appear on an open
declivity to his right. He looked in that direction, but though the
columns would have been visible quite far off, they were not to be seen.
It seemed to the count that things were beginning to stir in the French
camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this.

"Oh, it is really too late," said Count Orlov, looking at the camp.

As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before our
eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the
sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian
attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which he
would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a
commander-in-chief from among such a mass of troops!

"I am sure that rascal was lying," said the count.

"They can still be called back," said one of his suite, who like Count
Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the enemy's
camp.

"Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?"

"Will you have them fetched back?"

"Fetch them back, fetch them back!" said Count Orlov with sudden
determination, looking at his watch. "It will be too late. It is quite
light."

And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grekov. When Grekov
returned, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited both by the abandoned attempt and
by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not appear, as
well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance. All his men
felt the same excitement.

"Mount!" he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and
crossed themselves.... "Forward, with God's aid!"

"Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack companies,
trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if poured out
of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.

One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw the
Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just waking
up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.

Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind and
around them, they would have captured Murat and everything there. That
was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to make the
Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners. None of them
listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and thirty-eight guns were
taken on the spot, besides standards and (what seemed most important to
the Cossacks) horses, saddles, horsecloths, and the like. All this had
to be dealt with, the prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided--not
without some shouting and even a little fighting among themselves--and
it was on this that the Cossacks all busied themselves.

The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover themselves: they
formed into detachments and began firing. Orlov-Denisov, still waiting
for the other columns to arrive, advanced no further.

Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that "the First
Column will march" and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,
commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due order
and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their appointed
places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully, began to halt;
murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and finally a
backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about, shouted, grew
angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and were late, gave
vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and went forward,
simply to get somewhere. "We shall get somewhere or other!" And they did
indeed get somewhere, though not to their right places; a few eventually
even got to their right place, but too late to be of any use and only in
time to be fired at. Toll, who in this battle played the part of
Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped assiduously from place to place,
finding everything upside down everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut's
corps in a wood when it was already broad daylight, though the corps
should long before have joined Orlov-Denisov. Excited and vexed by the
failure and supposing that someone must be responsible for it, Toll
galloped up to the commander of the corps and began upbraiding him
severely, saying that he ought to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting
old soldier of placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay,
confusion, and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody's surprise
and quite contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things
to Toll.

"I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men as
well as anybody," he said, and advanced with a single division.

Coming out onto a field under the enemy's fire, this brave general went
straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering in his
agitation whether going into action now, with a single division, would
be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets were just what he
needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets killed him, and other
bullets killed many of his men. And his division remained under fire for
some time quite uselessly.




CHAPTER VII

Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the front,
but Kutuzov accompanied that column. He well knew that nothing but
confusion would come of this battle undertaken against his will, and as
far as was in his power held the troops back. He did not advance.

He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering
suggestions that they should attack.

"The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don't see that we are
unable to execute complicated maneuvers," said he to Miloradovich who
asked permission to advance.

"We couldn't take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in
time, and nothing can be done now!" he replied to someone else.

When Kutuzov was informed that at the French rear--where according to
the reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody--there were
now two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov who
was behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous day.

"You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds, but
as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy,
forewarned, takes measures accordingly."

Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these words.
He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that Kutuzov
would content himself with that hint.

"He's having a little fun at my expense," said Ermolov softly, nudging
with his knee Raevski who was at his side.

Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and respectfully remarked:

"It is not too late yet, your Highness--the enemy has not gone away--if
you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as see
a little smoke."

Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat's troops
were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every hundred paces he
halted for three quarters of an hour.

The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov's Cossacks had done:
the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.

In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a diamond decoration, and
Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also
received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various grades,
and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.

"That's how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the
Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be
understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that we
ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today. But
people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking about
or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle--Tarutino, Borodino, or
Austerlitz--takes place as those who planned it anticipated. That is an
essential condition.

A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than during
a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence the course
taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in advance and
never coincides with the direction of any one force.

If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a given
body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one of those
forces, but will always be a mean--what in mechanics is represented by
the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces.

If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French ones, we
find their wars and battles carried out in accordance with previously
formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those descriptions
are false.

The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had in
view--to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the
dispositions; nor that which Count Orlov-Denisov may have had in view--
to take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying the
whole corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor the
aim of the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish himself;
nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got, and so on.
But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and what all the
Russians of that day desired--to drive the French out of Russia and
destroy their army--it is quite clear that the battle of Tarutino, just
because of its incongruities, was exactly what was wanted at that stage
of the campaign. It would be difficult and even impossible to imagine
any result more opportune than the actual outcome of this battle. With a
minimum of effort and insignificant losses, despite the greatest
confusion, the most important results of the whole campaign were
attained: the transition from retreat to advance, an exposure of the
weakness of the French, and the administration of that shock which
Napoleon's army had only awaited to begin its flight.




CHAPTER VIII

Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa; there
can be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in the
hands of the French. The Russians retreat and abandon their ancient
capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and
incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon's hands. The Russian army, only half
the strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to attack for
a whole month. Napoleon's position is most brilliant. He can either fall
on the Russian army with double its strength and destroy it; negotiate
an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal make a menacing move on
Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse, return to Smolensk or
Vilna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special genius would seem to be
required to retain the brilliant position the French held at that time.
For that, only very simple and easy steps were necessary: not to allow
the troops to loot, to prepare winter clothing--of which there was
sufficient in Moscow for the whole army--and methodically to collect the
provisions, of which (according to the French historians) there were
enough in Moscow to supply the whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon,
that greatest of all geniuses, who the historians declare had control of
the army, took none of these steps.

He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used his
power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses open to
him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in Moscow,
advancing on Petersburg or on Nizhni-Novgorod, or retiring by a more
northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutuzov afterwards
took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be imagined than what he
actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting the troops
plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a garrison behind
him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutuzov without joining battle,
turned to the right and reached Malo-Yaroslavets, again without
attempting to break through and take the road Kutuzov took, but retiring
instead to Mozhaysk along the devastated Smolensk road. Nothing more
stupid than that could have been devised, or more disastrous for the
army, as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon's aim been to destroy his army,
the most skillful strategist could hardly have devised any series of
actions that would so completely have accomplished that purpose,
independently of anything the Russian army might do.

Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his
army because he wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as
unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to Moscow because he
wished to and because he was very clever and a genius.

In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the
personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws that
guided the event.

The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon's faculties as having
weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did not justify
his actions. He employed all his ability and strength to do the best he
could for himself and his army, as he had done previously and as he did
subsequently in 1813. His activity at that time was no less astounding
than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in Austria, and in Prussia. We do not
know for certain in how far his genius was genuine in Egypt--where forty
centuries looked down upon his grandeur--for his great exploits there
are all told us by Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius
in Austria or Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French
or German sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps
without fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans
to recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on in
Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius in
order to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at the
matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon that right.

His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as
elsewhere. Order after order and plan after plan were issued by him from
the time he entered Moscow till the time he left it. The absence of
citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of Moscow, did not
disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the welfare of his army
or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare of the people of
Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or of diplomatic
considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated peace.




CHAPTER IX

With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry into
Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the movements of
the Russian army, sent army corps out along the different roads, and
charged Murat to find Kutuzov. Then he gave careful directions about the
fortification of the Kremlin, and drew up a brilliant plan for a future
campaign over the whole map of Russia.

With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain Yakovlev,
who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how to get out of
Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and his magnanimity,
and having written a letter to the Emperor Alexander in which he
considered it his duty to inform his Friend and Brother that Rostopchin
had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he dispatched Yakovlev to
Petersburg.

Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to Tutolmin, he
dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate.

With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave orders
to find and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel Rostopchin was
punished by an order to burn down his houses.

With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a
constitution. A municipality was established and the following
announcement issued:

INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!

Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King desires
to arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you how he
punishes disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been taken to put
an end to disorder and to re-establish public security. A paternal
administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form your
municipality or city government. It will take care of you, of your
needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be distinguished by a red
ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city will wear a
white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only wear a red
ribbon round the left arm.

The city police is established on its former footing, and better order
already prevails in consequence of its activity. The government has
appointed two commissaries general, or chiefs of police, and twenty
commissaries or captains of wards have been appointed to the different
wards of the city. You will recognize them by the white ribbon they will
wear on the left arm. Several churches of different denominations are
open, and divine service is performed in them unhindered. Your fellow
citizens are returning every day to their homes and orders have been
given that they should find in them the help and protection due to their
misfortunes. These are the measures the government has adopted to re-
establish order and relieve your condition. But to achieve this aim it
is necessary that you should add your efforts and should, if possible,
forget the misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain the hope of a
less cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death
awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or on what remains of
your property, and finally that you should not doubt that these will be
safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest and most just of
monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you may be, re-
establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of a state, live
like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to another, unite to
defeat the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the military and civil
authorities, and your tears will soon cease to flow!

With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all the
troops in turn should enter Moscow a la maraude * to obtain provisions
for themselves, so that the army might have its future provided for.


* As looters.

With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be brought back
and services to be again performed in the churches.

With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the following was
placarded everywhere:

PROCLAMATION!

You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom
misfortune has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of the
soil, still kept out in the fields by groundless fear, listen!
Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order is being restored in
it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from their hiding places
on finding that they are respected. Any violence to them or to their
property is promptly punished. His Majesty the Emperor and King protects
them, and considers no one among you his enemy except those who disobey
his orders. He desires to end your misfortunes and restore you to your
homes and families. Respond, therefore, to his benevolent intentions and
come to us without fear. Inhabitants, return with confidence to your
abodes! You will soon find means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen and
industrious artisans, return to your work, your houses, your shops,
where the protection of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay
for your work. And lastly you too, peasants, come from the forests where
you are hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full
assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in the
city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the products of
the soil. The government has taken the following steps to ensure freedom
of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants, husbandmen, and those living
in the neighborhood of Moscow may without any danger bring their
supplies of all kinds to two appointed markets, of which one is on the
Mokhovaya Street and the other at the Provision Market. (2) Such
supplies will be bought from them at such prices as seller and buyer may
agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a fair price he will be
free to take his goods back to his village and no one may hinder him
under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday of each week are appointed
as the chief market days and to that end a sufficient number of troops
will be stationed along the highroads on Tuesdays and Saturdays at such
distances from the town as to protect the carts. (4) Similar measures
will be taken that peasants with their carts and horses may meet with no
hindrance on their return journey. (5) Steps will immediately be taken
to re-establish ordinary trading.

Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and artisans,
to whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry out the
paternal intentions of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to co-
operate with him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and confidence
at his feet and do not delay to unite with us!

With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the people,
reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The Emperor rode
through the streets to comfort the inhabitants, and, despite his
preoccupation with state affairs, himself visited the theaters that were
established by his order.

In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads,
Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma
Mere to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining
tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He
visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by him to
kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutolmin. Then, as
Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in forged
Russian money which he had prepared: "Raising the use of these means by
an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let relief be
distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food was too
precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part enemies,
Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to purchase food
from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them."

With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being issued
to inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military duties
and to suppress robbery.




CHAPTER X

But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans--which were
not at all worse than others issued in similar circumstances--did not
affect the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock detached
from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless way without
engaging the cogwheels.

With reference to the military side--the plan of campaign--that work of
genius of which Thiers remarks that, "His genius never devised anything
more profound, more skillful, or more admirable," and enters into a
polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius must be referred
not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October--that plan never was
or could be executed, for it was quite out of touch with the facts of
the case. The fortifying of the Kremlin, for which la Mosquee (as
Napoleon termed the church of Basil the Beatified) was to have been
razed to the ground, proved quite useless. The mining of the Kremlin
only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon's wish that it should be blown up
when he left Moscow--as a child wants the floor on which he has hurt
himself to be beaten. The pursuit of the Russian army, about which
Napoleon was so concerned, produced an unheard-of result. The French
generals lost touch with the Russian army of sixty thousand men, and
according to Thiers it was only eventually found, like a lost pin, by
the skill--and apparently the genius--of Murat.

With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon's arguments as to his
magnanimity and justice, both to Tutolmin and to Yakovlev (whose chief
concern was to obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless;
Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their
embassage.

With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed
incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.

With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a
municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain
people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of
preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from being
looted.

With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so easily been
settled by Napoleon's visit to a mosque, no results were achieved. Two
or three priests who were found in Moscow did try to carry out
Napoleon's wish, but one of them was slapped in the face by a French
soldier while conducting service, and a French official reported of
another that: "The priest whom I found and invited to say Mass cleaned
and locked up the church. That night the doors were again broken open,
the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and other disorders
perpetrated."

With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious workmen and
to peasants evoked no response. There were no industrious workmen, and
the peasants caught the commissaries who ventured too far out of town
with the proclamation and killed them.

As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the troops,
these did not meet with success either. The theaters set up in the
Kremlin and in Posnyakov's house were closed again at once because the
actors and actresses were robbed.

Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as well
as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The
French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the paper
money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to the
unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.

But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders given
by the authorities at that time was Napoleon's attempt to stop the
looting and re-establish discipline.

This is what the army authorities were reporting:

"Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against it. Order is
not yet restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade in a
lawful manner. The sutlers alone venture to trade, and they sell stolen
goods."

"The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of the
3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate
inhabitants hiding in the cellars the little they have left, even have
the ferocity to wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly
witnessed."

"Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and pillaging--
October 9."

"Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of thieves in our
district who ought to be arrested by a strong force--October 11."

"The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict orders to
stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually seen returning
to the Kremlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and pillage were renewed
more violently than ever yesterday evening, last night, and today. The
Emperor sees with regret that the picked soldiers appointed to guard his
person, who should set an example of discipline, carry disobedience to
such a point that they break into the cellars and stores containing army
supplies. Others have disgraced themselves to the extent of disobeying
sentinels and officers, and have abused and beaten them."

"The Grand Marshal of the palace," wrote the governor, "complains
bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to
commit nuisances in all the courtyards and even under the very windows
of the Emperor."

That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot the
provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated and
perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it did not
go away.

It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused by the
capture of transport trains on the Smolensk road, and by the battle of
Tarutino. The news of that battle of Tarutino, unexpectedly received by
Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a desire to punish the Russians
(Thiers says), and he issued the order for departure which the whole
army was demanding.

Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they had
stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal tresor, but on
seeing the baggage trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers says)
horror-struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not order all
the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with those of a
certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed at the caleches and
carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked that it was a very
good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry provisions, the
sick, and the wounded.

The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal which
feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To study the
skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from the time it
entered Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying the dying leaps
and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very often a wounded animal,
hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the hunter's gun, runs forward and
back again, and hastens its own end. Napoleon, under pressure from his
whole army, did the same thing. The rustle of the battle of Tarutino
frightened the beast, and it rushed forward onto the hunter's gun,
reached him, turned back, and finally--like any wild beast--ran back
along the most disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent
was familiar.

During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have been
the leader of all these movements--as the figurehead of a ship may seem
to a savage to guide the vessel--acted like a child who, holding a
couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving it.




CHAPTER XI

Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of the
shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little blue-
gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped about him.
This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside Karataev at night;
it sometimes made excursions into the town but always returned again.
Probably it had never had an owner, and it still belonged to nobody and
had no name. The French called it Azor; the soldier who told stories
called it Femgalka; Karataev and others called it Gray, or sometimes
Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name, or even of a breed or any definite
color did not seem to trouble the blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry
tail stood up firm and round as a plume, its bandy legs served it so
well that it would often gracefully lift a hind leg and run very easily
and quickly on three legs, as if disdaining to use all four. Everything
pleased it. Now it would roll on its back, yelping with delight, now
bask in the sun with a thoughtful air of importance, and now frolic
about playing with a chip of wood or a straw.

Pierre's attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only remnant
of his former clothing), a pair of soldier's trousers which by
Karataev's advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and a
peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this time.
He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of
solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache
covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested with
lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes was
resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The former
slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now replaced by an
energetic readiness for action and resistance. His feet were bare.

Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and horsemen
were passing that morning, then into the distance across the river, then
at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about biting him, and
then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in various
positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he looked at his
bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction flitted across his face.
The sight of them reminded him of all he had experienced and learned
during these weeks and this recollection was pleasant to him.

For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts in
the mornings--what is called an "old wives' summer."

In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly
pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in
the air.

On everything--far and near--lay the magic crystal glitter seen only at
that time of autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance,
with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare trees,
the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green church spire,
and the corners of the white house in the distance, all stood out in the
transparent air in most delicate outline and with unnatural clearness.
Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a half-burned mansion
occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still showing dark green
beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled house--which in dull
weather was repulsively ugly--seemed quietly beautiful now, in the
clear, motionless brilliance.

A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a skullcap on
his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from behind a corner of
the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly wink.

"What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!" (Their name for Pierre.) "Eh? Just like
spring!"

And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his pipe,
though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.

"To be on the march in such weather..." he began.

Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the corporal told
him that nearly all the troops were starting and there ought to be an
order about the prisoners that day. Sokolov, one of the soldiers in the
shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the corporal that something
should be done about him. The corporal replied that Pierre need not
worry about that as they had an ambulance and a permanent hospital and
arrangements would be made for the sick, and that in general everything
that could happen had been foreseen by the authorities.

"Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the captain,
you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to the captain
when he makes his round, he will do anything for you."

(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with Pierre
and showed him all sorts of favors.)

"'You see, St. Thomas,' he said to me the other day. 'Monsieur Kiril is
a man of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who has
had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what's what.... If he wants
anything and asks me, he won't get a refusal. When one has studied, you
see, one likes education and well-bred people.' It is for your sake I
mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not been for you
that affair would have ended ill."

And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The affair
he had alluded to had happened a few days before--a fight between the
prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had succeeded in
pacifying his comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had heard Pierre
talking to the corporal immediately asked what the Frenchman had said.
While Pierre was repeating what he had been told about the army leaving
Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier came up to the door of
the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his fingers to his forehead by way
of greeting, he asked Pierre whether the soldier Platoche to whom he had
given a shirt to sew was in that shed.

A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to them,
which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into boots and
shirts for them.

"Ready, ready, dear fellow!" said Karataev, coming out with a neatly
folded shirt.

Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at work,
was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot. His
hair was bound round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree bast,
and his round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.

"A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here it is,
ready," said Platon, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had sewn.

The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his
hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had a
long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin bare
body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking on
would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly. None
of the prisoners said a word.

"See, it fits well!" Platon kept repeating, pulling the shirt straight.

The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without raising
his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.

"You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper
tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse," said
Platon with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his work.

"It's good, quite good, thank you," said the Frenchman, in French, "but
there must be some linen left over."

"It will fit better still when it sets to your body," said Karataev,
still admiring his handiwork. "You'll be nice and comfortable...."

"Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?" said the
Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note and
gave it to Karataev. "But give me the pieces that are over."

Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what the Frenchman was
saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karataev thanked the
Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The Frenchman
insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over and asked
Pierre to translate what he said.

"What does he want the bits for?" said Karataev. "They'd make fine leg
bands for us. Well, never mind."

And Karataev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression, took a
small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the
Frenchman without looking at him. "Oh dear!" muttered Karataev and went
away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment, then
looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre's look had told him
something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice:

"Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!" And handing back the odd
bits he turned and went out.

"There, look at that," said Karataev, swaying his head. "People said
they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It's what the old
folk used to say: 'A sweating hand's an open hand, a dry hand's close.'
He's naked, but yet he's given it back."

Karataev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the
pieces.

"But they'll make grand leg bands, dear friend," he said, and went back
into the shed.




CHAPTER XII

Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and though
the French had offered to move him from the men's to the officers' shed,
he had stayed in the shed where he was first put.

In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the extreme
limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his physical
strength and health, of which he had till then been unconscious, and
thanks especially to the fact that the privations came so gradually that
it was impossible to say when they began, he endured his position not
only lightly but joyfully. And just at this time he obtained the
tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly striven in vain to reach.
He had long sought in different ways that tranquillity of mind, that
inner harmony which had so impressed him in the soldiers at the battle
of Borodino. He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the
dissipations of town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice,
and in romantic love for Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning--and all
these quests and experiments had failed him. And now without thinking
about it he had found that peace and inner harmony only through the
horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in
Karataev.

Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as it
were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the agitating
thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important. It did not
now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or politics, or
Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things were no business of
his, and that he was not called on to judge concerning them and
therefore could not do so. "Russia and summer weather are not bound
together," he thought, repeating words of Karataev's which he found
strangely consoling. His intention of killing Napoleon and his
calculations of the cabalistic number of the beast of the Apocalypse now
seemed to him meaningless and even ridiculous. His anger with his wife
and anxiety that his name should not be smirched now seemed not merely
trivial but even amusing. What concern was it of his that somewhere or
other that woman was leading the life she preferred? What did it matter
to anybody, and especially to him, whether or not they found out that
their prisoner's name was Count Bezukhov?

He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and quite
agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew's thoughts somewhat
differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that happiness could
only be negative, but had said it with a shade of bitterness and irony
as though he was really saying that all desire for positive happiness is
implanted in us merely to torment us and never be satisfied. But Pierre
believed it without any mental reservation. The absence of suffering,
the satisfaction of one's needs and consequent freedom in the choice of
one's occupation, that is, of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to
be indubitably man's highest happiness. Here and now for the first time
he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat,
drinking when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of
warmth when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to
talk and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one's needs--good
food, cleanliness, and freedom--now that he was deprived of all this,
seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of
occupation, that is, of his way of life--now that that was so
restricted--seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a
superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one's
needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation--such freedom as
his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his
own life--is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly
difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of having an
occupation.

All Pierre's daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free. Yet
subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke with
enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable, strong,
joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind and inner
freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.

When on the first day he got up early, went out of the shed at dawn, and
saw the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still dark
at first, the hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills, and the
wooded banks above the winding river vanishing in the purple distance,
when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the noise of the
crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when afterwards light
gleamed from the east and the sun's rim appeared solemnly from behind a
cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the hoarfrost, the distance and the
river, all began to sparkle in the glad light--Pierre felt a new joy and
strength in life such as he had never before known. And this not only
stayed with him during the whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in
strength as the hardships of his position increased.

That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still
further strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners
formed of him soon after his arrival at the shed. With his knowledge of
languages, the respect shown him by the French, his simplicity, his
readiness to give anything asked of him (he received the allowance of
three rubles a week made to officers); with his strength, which he
showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the hut; his
gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting still and
thinking without doing anything (which seemed to them incomprehensible),
he appeared to them a rather mysterious and superior being. The very
qualities that had been a hindrance, if not actually harmful, to him in
the world he had lived in--his strength, his disdain for the comforts of
life, his absent-mindedness and simplicity--here among these people gave
him almost the status of a hero. And Pierre felt that their opinion
placed responsibilities upon him.




CHAPTER XIII

The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and seventh
of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts loaded, and troops
and baggage trains started.

At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing shakos
and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in front of
the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses sounded all
along the lines.

In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only awaited
the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolov, pale and thin with dark
shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot and not dressed.
His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his face, gazed inquiringly
at his comrades who were paying no attention to him, and he moaned
regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so much his sufferings that
caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as his fear and grief at being
left alone.

Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes Karataev had
made for him from some leather a French soldier had torn off a tea chest
and brought to have his boots mended with, went up to the sick man and
squatted down beside him.

"You know, Sokolov, they are not all going away! They have a hospital
here. You may be better off than we others," said Pierre.

"O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!" moaned the man in a
louder voice.

"I'll go and ask them again directly," said Pierre, rising and going to
the door of the shed.

Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him a pipe
the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal and
soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had metal
straps, and these changed their familiar faces.

The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The prisoners
had to be counted before being let out.

"Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?..." Pierre began.

But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal he
knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that
moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of drums
was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre's
words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door. The shed
became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two sides drowned
the sick man's groans.

"There it is!... It again!..." said Pierre to himself, and an
involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal's changed face,
in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise of the
drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which compelled
people against their will to kill their fellow men--that force the
effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear or to
try to escape that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those
who served as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew this now. One had to
wait and endure. He did not again go to the sick man, nor turn to look
at him, but stood frowning by the door of the hut.

When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one
another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed his
way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal had
assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also in
marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which Pierre
had recognized in the corporal's words and in the roll of the drums.

"Pass on, pass on!" the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and
looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.

Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.

"What now?" the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing
Pierre.

Pierre told him about the sick man.

"He'll manage to walk, devil take him!" said the captain. "Pass on, pass
on!" he continued without looking at Pierre.

"But he is dying," Pierre again began.

"Be so good..." shouted the captain, frowning angrily.

"Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam..." rattled the drums, and Pierre understood
that this mysterious force completely controlled these men and that it
was now useless to say any more.

The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to march
in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among them, and
about three hundred men.

The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all strangers to
Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at him and at his
shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him walked a fat major
with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing a Kazan dressing
gown tied round with a towel, and who evidently enjoyed the respect of
his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in which he clasped his tobacco
pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing gown and held the stem of his
pipe firmly with the other. Panting and puffing, the major grumbled and
growled at everybody because he thought he was being pushed and that
they were all hurrying when they had nowhere to hurry to and were all
surprised at something when there was nothing to be surprised at.
Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing
where they were now being taken and how far they would get that day. An
official in felt boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from
side to side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his
observations as to what had been burned down and what this or that part
of the city was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent
was a Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was
mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.

"What are you disputing about?" said the major angrily. "What does it
matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it's burned
down, and there's an end of it.... What are you pushing for? Isn't the
road wide enough?" said he, turning to a man behind him who was not
pushing him at all.

"Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?" the prisoners on one side and another
were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. "All beyond the
river, and Zubova, and in the Kremlin.... Just look! There's not half of
it left. Yes, I told you--the whole quarter beyond the river, and so it
is."

"Well, you know it's burned, so what's the use of talking?" said the
major.

As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one of the few unburned
quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly started to one
side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.

"Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And
smeared with something!"

Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked these
exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the palings
surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw better
than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set upright
against the palings with its face smeared with soot.

"Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!..." the convoy
guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh virulence,
drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at
the dead man.




CHAPTER XIV

Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter the prisoners
marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons
belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they
came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with
private vehicles.

At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get across.
From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving baggage
trains before and behind them. To the right, where the Kaluga road turns
near Neskuchny, endless rows of troops and carts stretched away into the
distance. These were troops of Beauharnais' corps which had started
before any of the others. Behind, along the riverside and across the
Stone Bridge, were Ney's troops and transport.

Davout's troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing the
Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kaluga road.
But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais'
train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kaluga road when the
vanguard of Ney's army was already emerging from the Great Ordynka
Street.

When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few steps
forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles and men
crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few hundred paces
that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking more than an hour
to do so, and came out upon the square where the streets of the
Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and the prisoners jammed
close together had to stand for some hours at that crossway. From all
sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard the rattle of wheels, the
tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger and abuse. Pierre stood
pressed against the wall of a charred house, listening to that noise
which mingled in his imagination with the roll of the drums.

To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the wall of
the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.

"What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They've loaded goods even on
the cannon! Look there, those are furs!" they exclaimed. "Just see what
the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one has behind in
the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some icons, by
heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has loaded himself
up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they've even grabbed those
chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks.... Heavens!
They're fighting."

"That's right, hit him on the snout--on his snout! Like this, we shan't
get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be
Napoleon's own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown! It's
like a portable house.... That fellow's dropped his sack and doesn't see
it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not bad-looking either!
Yes, I dare say, that's the way they'll let you pass... Just look,
there's no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, so they are! In
carriages--see how comfortably they've settled themselves!"

Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of general curiosity bore
all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to his
stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted their
curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts, closely
squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in glaring
colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.

From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the mysterious
force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful: neither the corpse
smeared with soot for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the burned
ruins of Moscow. All that he now witnessed scarcely made an impression
on him--as if his soul, making ready for a hard struggle, refused to
receive impressions that might weaken it.

The women's vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts, soldiers,
wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers, ammunition carts,
more soldiers, and now and then women.

Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.

All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some invisible
power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came flowing from
the different streets with one and the same desire to get on quickly;
they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to fight, white
teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of abuse flew from
side to side, and all the faces bore the same swaggeringly resolute and
coldly cruel expression that had struck Pierre that morning on the
corporal's face when the drums were beating.

It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the escort
collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way in among
the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged
onto the Kaluga road.

They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the sun
began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men began
to prepare for their night's rest. They all appeared angry and
dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could
be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran into
one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole. Several
soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat the
carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others fought among
themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly wounded on the head
by a sword.

It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid fields in
the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same
feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and eagerness to push on
that had seized them at the start. Once at a standstill they all seemed
to understand that they did not yet know where they were going, and that
much that was painful and difficult awaited them on this journey.

During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than they
had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the first time
received horseflesh for their meat ration.

From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what seemed like
personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to
their former friendly relations.

This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of
prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one Russian
soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had escaped. Pierre saw
a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for straying too far from the
road, and heard his friend the captain reprimand and threaten to court-
martial a noncommissioned officer on account of the escape of the
Russian. To the noncommissioned officer's excuse that the prisoner was
ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the order was to shoot
those who lagged behind. Pierre felt that that fatal force which had
crushed him during the executions, but which he had not felt during his
imprisonment, now again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but
he felt that in proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush
him, there grew and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent
of it.

He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with his
comrades.

Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen in
Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of the
order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in reaction
against the worsening of their position they were all particularly
animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences, of amusing
scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and avoided all talk of
their present situation.

The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in the
sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon from the
rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely in the gray
haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night had not yet
come. Pierre got up and left his new companions, crossing between the
campfires to the other side of the road where he had been told the
common soldier prisoners were stationed. He wanted to talk to them. On
the road he was stopped by a French sentinel who ordered him back.

Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an
unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him and
dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of the
cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. Suddenly he
burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured laughter, so loud that
men from various sides turned with surprise to see what this strange and
evidently solitary laughter could mean.

"Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: "The soldier
did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me captive.
What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!..." and he laughed
till tears started to his eyes.

A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing at
all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther away from
the inquisitive man, and looked around him.

The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the
crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the
red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the light
sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen
before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond
those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance
lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling
stars in its faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that is within me,
and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all that and put it
into a shed boarded up with planks!" He smiled, and went and lay down to
sleep beside his companions.




CHAPTER XV

In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutuzov with a letter
from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow, though
Napoleon was already not far from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga road.
Kutuzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one formerly
brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no question of peace.

Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov's guerrilla
detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that troops of Broussier's
division had been seen at Forminsk and that being separated from the
rest of the French army they might easily be destroyed. The soldiers and
officers again demanded action. Generals on the staff, excited by the
memory of the easy victory at Tarutino, urged Kutuzov to carry out
Dorokhov's suggestion. Kutuzov did not consider any offensive necessary.
The result was a compromise which was inevitable: a small detachment was
sent to Forminsk to attack Broussier.

By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most
difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhturov--that same
modest little Dokhturov whom no one had described to us as drawing up
plans of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering crosses
on batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was spoken of as
undecided and undiscerning--but whom we find commanding wherever the
position was most difficult all through the Russo-French wars from
Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he remained last at the
Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what was possible when all
were flying and perishing and not a single general was left in the rear
guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk with twenty thousand men to
defend the town against Napoleon's whole army. In Smolensk, at the
Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in a paroxysm of fever before he
was awakened by the bombardment of the town--and Smolensk held out all
day long. At the battle of Borodino, when Bagration was killed and nine
tenths of the men of our left flank had fallen and the full force of the
French artillery fire was directed against it, the man sent there was
this same irresolute and undiscerning Dokhturov--Kutuzov hastening to
rectify a mistake he had made by sending someone else there first. And
the quiet little Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became the
greatest glory of the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to
us in verse and prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has been said.

It was Dokhturov again whom they sent to Forminsk and from there to
Malo-Yaroslavets, the place where the last battle with the French was
fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army began;
and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of the
campaign, but of Dokhturov nothing or very little is said and that
dubiously. And this silence about Dokhturov is the clearest testimony to
his merit.

It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a
machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance and
is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most
important part. The man who does not understand the construction of the
machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which
revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine, and
not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.

On the tenth of October when Dokhturov had gone halfway to Forminsk and
stopped at the village of Aristovo, preparing faithfully to execute the
orders he had received, the whole French army having, in its convulsive
movement, reached Murat's position apparently in order to give battle--
suddenly without any reason turned off to the left onto the new Kaluga
road and began to enter Forminsk, where only Broussier had been till
then. At that time Dokhturov had under his command, besides Dorokhov's
detachment, the two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and Seslavin.

On the evening of October 11 Seslavin came to the Aristovo headquarters
with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner said that the
troops that had entered Forminsk that day were the vanguard of the whole
army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army had left Moscow four
days previously. That same evening a house serf who had come from
Borovsk said he had seen an immense army entering the town. Some
Cossacks of Dokhturov's detachment reported having sighted the French
Guards marching along the road to Borovsk. From all these reports it was
evident that where they had expected to meet a single division there was
now the whole French army marching from Moscow in an unexpected
direction--along the Kaluga road. Dokhturov was unwilling to undertake
any action, as it was not clear to him now what he ought to do. He had
been ordered to attack Forminsk. But only Broussier had been there at
that time and now the whole French army was there. Ermolov wished to act
on his own judgment, but Dokhturov insisted that he must have Kutuzov's
instructions. So it was decided to send a dispatch to the staff.

For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovitinov, was chosen, who was
to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering a
written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovitinov, having received the
dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff
accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.




CHAPTER XVI

It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four days.
Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour and a
half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka after
one o'clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle fence
hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he entered
a dark passage.

"The general on duty, quick! It's very important!" said he to someone
who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.

"He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third night
he has not slept," said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper. "You should
wake the captain first."

"But this is very important, from General Dokhturov," said
Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in
the dark.

The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.

"Your honor, your honor! A courier."

"What? What's that? From whom?" came a sleepy voice.

"From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich. Napoleon is at Forminsk,"
said Bolkhovitinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but
guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnitsyn.

The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.

"I don't like waking him," he said, fumbling for something. "He is very
ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor."

"Here is the dispatch," said Bolkhovitinov. "My orders are to give it at
once to the general on duty."

"Wait a moment, I'll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you
always hide it?" said the voice of the man who was stretching himself,
to the orderly. (This was Shcherbinin, Konovnitsyn's adjutant.) "I've
found it, I've found it!" he added.

The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was fumbling for
something on the candlestick.

"Oh, the nasty beasts!" said he with disgust.

By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw Shcherbinin's youthful face
as he held the candle, and the face of another man who was still asleep.
This was Konovnitsyn.

When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned up,
first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow candle, from the
candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were
running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was bespattered
all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it with his sleeve.

"Who gave the report?" inquired Shcherbinin, taking the envelope.

"The news is reliable," said Bolkhovitinov. "Prisoners, Cossacks, and
the scouts all say the same thing."

"There's nothing to be done, we'll have to wake him," said Shcherbinin,
rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay covered by a
greatcoat. "Peter Petrovich!" said he. (Konovnitsyn did not stir.) "To
the General Staff!" he said with a smile, knowing that those words would
be sure to arouse him.

And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On
Konovnitsyn's handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,
there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote
from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face assumed
its habitual calm and firm appearance.

"Well, what is it? From whom?" he asked immediately but without hurry,
blinking at the light.

While listening to the officer's report Konovnitsyn broke the seal and
read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his legs in
their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began putting on his
boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair over his temples,
and donned his cap.

"Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness."

Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of great
importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or ask
himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest him. He
regarded the whole business of the war not with his intelligence or his
reason but by something else. There was within him a deep unexpressed
conviction that all would be well, but that one must not trust to this
and still less speak about it, but must only attend to one's own work.
And he did his work, giving his whole strength to the task.

Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to have been included
merely for propriety's sake in the list of the so-called heroes of 1812-
-the Barclays, Raevskis, Ermolovs, Platovs, and Miloradoviches. Like
Dokhturov he had the reputation of being a man of very limited capacity
and information, and like Dokhturov he never made plans of battle but
was always found where the situation was most difficult. Since his
appointment as general on duty he had always slept with his door open,
giving orders that every messenger should be allowed to wake him up. In
battle he was always under fire, so that Kutuzov reproved him for it and
feared to send him to the front, and like Dokhturov he was one of those
unnoticed cogwheels that, without clatter or noise, constitute the most
essential part of the machine.

Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnitsyn frowned--
partly from an increased pain in his head and partly at the unpleasant
thought that occurred to him, of how all that nest of influential men on
the staff would be stirred up by this news, especially Bennigsen, who
ever since Tarutino had been at daggers drawn with Kutuzov; and how they
would make suggestions, quarrel, issue orders, and rescind them. And
this premonition was disagreeable to him though he knew it could not be
helped.

And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news, immediately
began to expound his plans to a general sharing his quarters, until
Konovnitsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded him that they must
go to see his Highness.




CHAPTER XVII

Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often fell
asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his bed
without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.

So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred head on
his plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and peering into the
darkness.

Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more
influence than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him, Kutuzov
was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his troops being
obliged to take part in useless aggressive movements. The lesson of the
Tarutino battle and of the day before it, which Kutuzov remembered with
pain, must, he thought, have some effect on others too.

"They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive.
Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutuzov. He
knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall
of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree
is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an experienced sportsman
he knew that the beast was wounded, and wounded as only the whole
strength of Russia could have wounded it, but whether it was mortally
wounded or not was still an undecided question. Now by the fact of
Lauriston and Barthelemi having been sent, and by the reports of the
guerrillas, Kutuzov was almost sure that the wound was mortal. But he
needed further proofs and it was necessary to wait.

"They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall
see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!" thought he. "What for?
Only to distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are like
children from whom one can't get any sensible account of what has
happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But
that's not what is needed now.

"And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to them
that when they have thought of two or three contingencies" (he
remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) "they have
foreseen everything. But the contingencies are endless."

The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodino was
mortal or not had hung over Kutuzov's head for a whole month. On the one
hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutuzov felt assured
with all his being that the terrible blow into which he and all the
Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal. But in any
case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for them and grew
more impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed during those
sleepless nights he did just what he reproached those younger generals
for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible contingencies, just like
the younger men, but with this difference, that he saw thousands of
contingencies instead of two or three and based nothing on them. The
longer he thought the more contingencies presented themselves. He
imagined all sorts of movements of the Napoleonic army as a whole or in
sections--against Petersburg, or against him, or to outflank him. He
thought too of the possibility (which he feared most of all) that
Napoleon might fight him with his own weapon and remain in Moscow
awaiting him. Kutuzov even imagined that Napoleon's army might turn back
through Medyn and Yukhnov, but the one thing he could not foresee was
what happened--the insane, convulsive stampede of Napoleon's army during
its first eleven days after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made
possible what Kutuzov had not yet even dared to think of--the complete
extermination of the French. Dorokhov's report about Broussier's
division, the guerrillas' reports of distress in Napoleon's army, rumors
of preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that
the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were only
suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not to
Kutuzov. With his sixty years' experience he knew what value to attach
to rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to group all news
so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew how readily
in such cases they omit all that makes for the contrary. And the more he
desired it the less he allowed himself to believe it. This question
absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to him only life's
customary routine. To such customary routine belonged his conversations
with the staff, the letters he wrote from Tarutino to Madame de Stael,
the reading of novels, the distribution of awards, his correspondence
with Petersburg, and so on. But the destruction of the French, which he
alone foresaw, was his heart's one desire.

On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm and
thinking of that.

There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll,
Konovnitsyn, and Bolkhovitinov.

"Eh, who's there? Come in, come in! What news?" the field marshal called
out to them.

While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the substance
of the news.

"Who brought it?" asked Kutuzov with a look which, when the candle was
lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.

"There can be no doubt about it, your Highness."

"Call him in, call him here."

Kutuzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big paunch
resting against the other which was doubled under him. He screwed up his
seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more carefully, as if wishing to
read in his face what preoccupied his own mind.

"Tell me, tell me, friend," said he to Bolkhovitinov in his low, aged
voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his chest,
"come nearer--nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That Napoleon
has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?"

Bolkhovitinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he had
been told to report.

"Speak quicker, quicker! Don't torture me!" Kutuzov interrupted him.

Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting
instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutuzov checked
him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered and
wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side of
the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.

"O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer..." said he in a
tremulous voice with folded hands. "Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O
Lord!" and he wept.




CHAPTER XVIII

From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all
Kutuzov's activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by
authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers,
or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhturov went to Malo-
Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov lingered with the main army and gave orders for
the evacuation of Kaluga--a retreat beyond which town seemed to him
quite possible.

Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for his
retreat fled in the opposite direction.

Napoleon's historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at Tarutino
and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as to what would have
happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich southern
provinces.

But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from advancing
into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did not bar his
way), the historians forget that nothing could have saved his army, for
then already it bore within itself the germs of inevitable ruin. How
could that army--which had found abundant supplies in Moscow and had
trampled them underfoot instead of keeping them, and on arriving at
Smolensk had looted provisions instead of storing them--how could that
army recuperate in Kaluga province, which was inhabited by Russians such
as those who lived in Moscow, and where fire had the same property of
consuming what was set ablaze?

That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodino and
the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were, the
chemical elements of dissolution.

The members of what had once been an army--Napoleon himself and all his
soldiers fled--without knowing whither, each concerned only to make his
escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the hopelessness of
which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.

So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaroslavets, when the
generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all
mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier
Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing
needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even
Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all
recognized.

But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away, there
still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must flee. An
external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this shock came in
due time. It was what the French called "le hourra de l'Empereur."

The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out early in
the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of marshals and an
escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and the scene of the
previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks on the prowl for
booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly captured him. If the
Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what saved him was the very
thing that was destroying the French army, the booty on which the
Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they went after plunder, leaving the
men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed after the plunder and Napoleon
managed to escape.

When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor himself
in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was nothing for it but
to fly as fast as possible along the nearest, familiar road. Napoleon
with his forty-year-old stomach understood that hint, not feeling his
former agility and boldness, and under the influence of the fright the
Cossacks had given him he at once agreed with Mouton and issued orders--
as the historians tell us--to retreat by the Smolensk road.

That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated, does not
prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces which
influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozhaysk (that is,
the Smolensk) road acted simultaneously on him also.




CHAPTER XIX

A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to go
a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the
end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a promised
land to have the strength to move.

The promised land for the French during their advance had been Moscow,
during their retreat it was their native land. But that native land was
too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is absolutely
necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to himself: "Today I
shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I shall rest and spend
the night," and during the first day's journey that resting place
eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his hopes and desires. And
the impulses felt by a single person are always magnified in a crowd.

For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the final goal--
their native land--was too remote, and their immediate goal was
Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously
intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that
much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they were
told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon himself,
knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this alone could
give them strength to move on and endure their present privations. So
both those who knew and those who did not know deceived themselves, and
pushed on to Smolensk as to a promised land.

Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising energy and
unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on. Besides the
common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French into one mass and
supplied them with a certain energy, there was another cause binding
them together--their great numbers. As with the physical law of gravity,
their enormous mass drew the individual human atoms to itself. In their
hundreds of thousands they moved like a whole nation.

Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner
to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force
of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew each of them in
the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender
to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every
convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the
slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur. Their very
numbers and their crowded and swift movement deprived them of that
possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the
Russians to stop this movement, to which the French were directing all
their energies. Beyond a certain limit no mechanical disruption of the
body could hasten the process of decomposition.

A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a certain
limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt the snow. On
the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the remaining snow
becomes.

Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this. When the flight
of the French army along the Smolensk road became well defined, what
Konovnitsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of October began
to occur. The superior officers all wanted to distinguish themselves, to
cut off, to seize, to capture, and to overthrow the French, and all
clamored for action.

Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited in the
case of any commander-in-chief) to prevent an attack.

He could not tell them what we say now: "Why fight, why block the road,
losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate wretches? What
is the use of that, when a third of their army has melted away on the
road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?" But drawing from his
aged wisdom what they could understand, he told them of the golden
bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him, flinging themselves on,
rending and exulting over the dying beast.

Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in proximity to the French
near Vyazma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up two
French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov they
sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.

And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,
trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to the
attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost thousands
of men.

But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,
closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily melting
away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolensk.

BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812




CHAPTER I

The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow that followed it
and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is one of the
most instructive phenomena in history.

All historians agree that the external activity of states and nations in
their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars, and that as a
direct result of greater or less success in war the political strength
of states and nations increases or decreases.

Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or emperor,
having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his enemy's
army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten thousand men, and
subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several millions, all the
facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm the truth of the
statement that the greater or lesser success of one army against another
is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of an increase or
decrease in the strength of the nation--even though it is unintelligible
why the defeat of an army--a hundredth part of a nation--should oblige
that whole nation to submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the
rights of the conquering nation have increased to the detriment of the
defeated. An army has suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its
rights in proportion to the severity of the reverse, and if its army
suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated.

So according to history it has been found from the most ancient times,
and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon's wars serve to confirm this
rule. In proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army Austria loses its
rights, and the rights and the strength of France increase. The
victories of the French at Jena and Auerstadt destroy the independent
existence of Prussia.

But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow is
taken and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia that
ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and then
Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of
history: to say that the field of battle at Borodino remained in the
hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were other battles
that destroyed Napoleon's army, is impossible.

After the French victory at Borodino there was no general engagement nor
any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist. What
does this mean? If it were an example taken from the history of China,
we might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is the
historians' usual expedient when anything does not fit their standards);
if the matter concerned some brief conflict in which only a small number
of troops took part, we might treat it as an exception; but this event
occurred before our fathers' eyes, and for them it was a question of the
life or death of their fatherland, and it happened in the greatest of
all known wars.

The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodino to the
expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does not
produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of conquest;
it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples lies not in
the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in something else.

The French historians, describing the condition of the French army
before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army,
except the cavalry, the artillery, and the transport--there was no
forage for the horses or the cattle. That was a misfortune no one could
remedy, for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather than
let the French have it.

The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the peasants
Karp and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow drove in their
carts to pillage the town, and in general personally failed to manifest
any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable multitude of such
peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for the high price offered
them, but burned it instead.

Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with rapiers
according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The fencing has gone
on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants, feeling himself
wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke but concerns his
life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first cudgel that comes to
hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine that the combatant who
so sensibly employed the best and simplest means to attain his end was
at the same time influenced by traditions of chivalry and, desiring to
conceal the facts of the case, insisted that he had gained his victory
with the rapier according to all the rules of art. One can imagine what
confusion and obscurity would result from such an account of the duel.

The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of fencing was
the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier and snatched up
the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to explain the matter
according to the rules of fencing are the historians who have described
the event.

After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did not follow any
previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the
retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodino and the renewed
retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the seizure of
transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures from the rules.

Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing
attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent's rapier saw a cudgel
raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutuzov and to
the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to all
the rules--as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite of
the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the rules, in
spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it seemed rather
disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to assume a pose en
quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and to make an adroit
thrust en prime, and so on--the cudgel of the people's war was lifted
with all its menacing and majestic strength, and without consulting
anyone's tastes or rules and regardless of anything else, it rose and
fell with stupid simplicity, but consistently, and belabored the French
till the whole invasion had perished.

And it is well for a people who do not--as the French did in 1813--
salute according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt of
their rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their magnanimous
conqueror, but at the moment of trial, without asking what rules others
have adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick up the first
cudgel that comes to hand and strike with it till the feeling of
resentment and revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of contempt and
compassion.




CHAPTER II

One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the so-called
laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men pressed
together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that take on a
national character. In such actions, instead of two crowds opposing each
other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when attacked by
stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers. This was done
by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in the Caucasus, and
by the Russians in 1812.

People have called this kind of war "guerrilla warfare" and assume that
by so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a war does
not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a well-known rule
of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That rule says that an
attacker should concentrate his forces in order to be stronger than his
opponent at the moment of conflict.

Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly infringes
that rule.

This contradiction arises from the fact that military science assumes
the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers. Military
science says that the more troops the greater the strength. Les gros
bataillons ont toujours raison. *


* Large battalions are always victorious.

For military science to say this is like defining momentum in mechanics
by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are equal or unequal
to each other simply because the masses involved are equal or unequal.

Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.

In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass
and some unknown x.

Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact
that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and that
small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence of
this unknown factor and tries to discover it--now in a geometric
formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most usually, in the
genius of the commanders. But the assignment of these various meanings
to the factor does not yield results which accord with the historic
facts.

Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to gratify
the "heroes") of the efficacy of the directions issued in wartime by
commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.

That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the
greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the men
composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are not,
fighting under the command of a genius, in two--or three-line formation,
with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a minute. Men who
want to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous
conditions for fighting.

The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass gives
the resulting force. To define and express the significance of this
unknown factor--the spirit of an army--is a problem for science.

This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to substitute for
the unknown x itself the conditions under which that force becomes
apparent--such as the commands of the general, the equipment employed,
and so on--mistaking these for the real significance of the factor, and
if we recognize this unknown quantity in its entirety as being the
greater or lesser desire to fight and to face danger. Only then,
expressing known historic facts by equations and comparing the relative
significance of this factor, can we hope to define the unknown.

Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions, or
divisions, conquer--that is, kill or take captive--all the others, while
themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and on the other
fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to the fifteen, and
therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This equation does not give
us the value of the unknown factor but gives us a ratio between two
unknowns. And by bringing variously selected historic units (battles,
campaigns, periods of war) into such equations, a series of numbers
could be obtained in which certain laws should exist and might be
discovered.

The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when attacking, and
in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms the truth that the
strength of an army depends on its spirit. To lead men forward under
fire more discipline (obtainable only by movement in masses) is needed
than is needed to resist attacks. But this rule which leaves out of
account the spirit of the army continually proves incorrect and is in
particularly striking contrast to the facts when some strong rise or
fall in the spirit of the troops occurs, as in all national wars.

The French, retreating in 1812--though according to tactics they should
have separated into detachments to defend themselves--congregated into a
mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen that only the mass
held the army together. The Russians, on the contrary, ought according
to tactics to have attacked in mass, but in fact they split up into
small units, because their spirit had so risen that separate
individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the French without needing
any compulsion to induce them to expose themselves to hardships and
dangers.




CHAPTER III

The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into
Smolensk.

Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the
government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had
been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off as
instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denis Davydov,
with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the value of this
terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of military science
destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit for taking the first
step toward regularizing this method of warfare.

On August 24 Davydov's first partisan detachment was formed and then
others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more
numerous these detachments became.

The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the
fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree--the
French army--and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October, when the
French were fleeing toward Smolensk, there were hundreds of such
companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some that adopted
all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, and the
comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack cavalry. There were
also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and groups of peasants and
landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party which
captured several hundred prisoners in the course of a month; and there
was Vasilisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew hundreds of the
French.

The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of
October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves,
amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded and
captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling,
hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the end
of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had become
clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what could
not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and moving
according to rules at a distance from the French, still regarded many
things as impossible. The small bands that had started their activities
long before and had already observed the French closely considered
things possible which the commanders of the big detachments did not dare
to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who crept in among the French
now considered everything possible.

On October 22, Denisov (who was one of the irregulars) was with his
group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early morning he
and his party had been on the move. All day long he had been watching
from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French convoy of
cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the rest of the
army, which--as was learned from spies and prisoners--was moving under a
strong escort to Smolensk. Besides Denisov and Dolokhov (who also led a
small party and moved in Denisov's vicinity), the commanders of some
large divisions with staffs also knew of this convoy and, as Denisov
expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for it. Two of the commanders
of large parties--one a Pole and the other a German--sent invitations to
Denisov almost simultaneously, requesting him to join up with their
divisions to attack the convoy.

"No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself," said Denisov on reading
these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite his heartfelt
desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general, he had to forgo
that pleasure because he was already under the command of the Polish
general. To the Polish general he replied to the same effect, informing
him that he was already under the command of the German.

Having arranged matters thus, Denisov and Dolokhov intended, without
reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that convoy
with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from the
village of Mikulino to that of Shamshevo. To the left of the road
between Mikulino and Shamshevo there were large forests, extending in
some places up to the road itself though in others a mile or more back
from it. Through these forests Denisov and his party rode all day,
sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to the very
edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That morning,
Cossacks of Denisov's party had seized and carried off into the forest
two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck in the mud not
far from Mikulino where the forest ran close to the road. Since then,
and until evening, the party had watched the movements of the French
without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach Shamshevo
quietly without alarming them and then, after joining Dolokhov who was
to come that evening to a consultation at a watchman's hut in the forest
less than a mile from Shamshevo, to surprise the French at dawn, falling
like an avalanche on their heads from two sides, and rout and capture
them all at one blow.

In their rear, more than a mile from Mikulino where the forest came
right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any fresh
columns of French should show themselves.

Beyond Shamshevo, Dolokhov was to observe the road in the same way, to
find out at what distance there were other French troops. They reckoned
that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denisov had two hundred, and
Dolokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of numbers did not
deter Denisov. All that he now wanted to know was what troops these were
and to learn that he had to capture a "tongue"--that is, a man from the
enemy column. That morning's attack on the wagons had been made so
hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all been killed; only a
little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he was a straggler he
could tell them nothing definite about the troops in that column.

Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear of
putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tikhon Shcherbaty, a
peasant of his party, to Shamshevo to try and seize at least one of the
French quartermasters who had been sent on in advance.




CHAPTER IV

It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both the
color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and then
suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.

Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain ran down
was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides. Like his horse,
which turned its head and laid its ears back, he shrank from the driving
rain and gazed anxiously before him. His thin face with its short, thick
black beard looked angry.

Beside Denisov rode an esaul, * Denisov's fellow worker, also in felt
cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.


* A captain of Cossacks.

Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow, pale-
faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm self-
satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to say in
what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first glance at
the esaul and Denisov one saw that the latter was wet and uncomfortable
and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the esaul one saw
that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always and that he was
not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was one with his horse,
a being consequently possessed of twofold strength.

A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and
wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.

A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount with an enormous
tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a blue
French overcoat.

Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform and
blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on to the
hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed about him
with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that morning.

Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars in
threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in French
greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The horses,
being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether chestnut or bay.
Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes, looked strangely
thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles, reins, were all wet,
slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the fallen leaves that strewed
the road. The men sat huddled up trying not to stir, so as to warm the
water that had trickled to their bodies and not admit the fresh cold
water that was leaking in under their seats, their knees, and at the
back of their necks. In the midst of the outspread line of Cossacks two
wagons, drawn by French horses and by saddled Cossack horses that had
been hitched on in front, rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and
splashed through the water that lay in the ruts.

Denisov's horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and bumped
his rider's knee against a tree.

"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed Denisov angrily, and showing his teeth he
struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and his
comrades with mud.

Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from hunger
(none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more because he
still had no news from Dolokhov and the man sent to capture a "tongue"
had not returned.

"There'll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as today.
It's too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it off till
another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will snatch the prey
from under our noses," thought Denisov, continually peering forward,
hoping to see a messenger from Dolokhov.

On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to the
right, Denisov stopped.

"There's someone coming," said he.

The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated.

"There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not presupposable
that it is the lieutenant colonel himself," said the esaul, who was fond
of using words the Cossacks did not know.

The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer
visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary
gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and
drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him,
standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young
lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Denisov
and handed him a sodden envelope.

"From the general," said the officer. "Please excuse its not being quite
dry."

Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.

"There, they kept telling us: 'It's dangerous, it's dangerous,'" said
the officer, addressing the esaul while Denisov was reading the
dispatch. "But Komarov and I"--he pointed to the Cossack--"were
prepared. We have each of us two pistols.... But what's this?" he asked,
noticing the French drummer boy. "A prisoner? You've already been in
action? May I speak to him?"

"Wostov! Petya!" exclaimed Denisov, having run through the dispatch.
"Why didn't you say who you were?" and turning with a smile he held out
his hand to the lad.

The officer was Petya Rostov.

All the way Petya had been preparing himself to behave with Denisov as
befitted a grownup man and an officer--without hinting at their previous
acquaintance. But as soon as Denisov smiled at him Petya brightened up,
blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner he had been
rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already been in a battle
near Vyazma and how a certain hussar had distinguished himself there.

"Well, I am glad to see you," Denisov interrupted him, and his face
again assumed its anxious expression.

"Michael Feoklitych," said he to the esaul, "this is again fwom that
German, you know. He"--he indicated Petya--"is serving under him."

And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a
repetition of the German general's demand that he should join forces
with him for an attack on the transport.

"If we don't take it tomowwow, he'll snatch it fwom under our noses," he
added.

While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya--abashed by Denisov's cold
tone and supposing that it was due to the condition of his trousers--
furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat so that no one
should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air as possible.

"Will there be any orders, your honor?" he asked Denisov, holding his
hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general for
which he had prepared himself, "or shall I remain with your honor?"

"Orders?" Denisov repeated thoughtfully. "But can you stay till
tomowwow?"

"Oh, please... May I stay with you?" cried Petya.

"But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?" asked
Denisov.

Petya blushed.

"He gave me no instructions. I think I could?" he returned, inquiringly.

"Well, all wight," said Denisov.

And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting place
arranged near the watchman's hut in the forest, and told the officer on
the Kirghiz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant) to go and
find out where Dolokhov was and whether he would come that evening.
Denisov himself intended going with the esaul and Petya to the edge of
the forest where it reached out to Shamshevo, to have a look at the part
of the French bivouac they were to attack next day.

"Well, old fellow," said he to the peasant guide, "lead us to
Shamshevo."

Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and the
hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to the
edge of the forest.




CHAPTER V

The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from the
trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode silently, following the
peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes and
moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves,
silently led them to the edge of the forest.

He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to where
the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree that
had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to
them with his hand.

Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant was
standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest, on a
downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a steep
ravine, was a small village and a landowner's house with a broken roof.
In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well, by the pond,
over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill from the
bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred yards away,
crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist. Their un-
Russian shouting at their horses which were straining uphill with the
carts, and their calls to one another, could be clearly heard.

"Bwing the prisoner here," said Denisov in a low voice, not taking his
eyes off the French.

A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to Denisov.
Pointing to the French troops, Denisov asked him what these and those of
them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and
lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denisov in affright, but in spite of an
evident desire to say all he knew gave confused answers, merely
assenting to everything Denisov asked him. Denisov turned away from him
frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his own conjectures to him.

Petya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now at
Denisov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village and
along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.

"Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?" said Denisov with
a merry sparkle in his eyes.

"It is a very suitable spot," said the esaul.

"We'll send the infantwy down by the swamps," Denisov continued.
"They'll cweep up to the garden; you'll wide up fwom there with the
Cossacks"--he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village--"and I
with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot..."

"The hollow is impassable--there's a swamp there," said the esaul. "The
horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left...."

While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded from
the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared, then
another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French voices
shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment Denisov and the
esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought they were the cause
of the firing and shouting. But the firing and shouting did not relate
to them. Down below, a man wearing something red was running through the
marsh. The French were evidently firing and shouting at him.

"Why, that's our Tikhon," said the esaul.

"So it is! It is!"

"The wascal!" said Denisov.

"He'll get away!" said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.

The man whom they called Tikhon, having run to the stream, plunged in so
that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared for an
instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet, and ran on.
The French who had been pursuing him stopped.

"Smart, that!" said the esaul.

"What a beast!" said Denisov with his former look of vexation. "What has
he been doing all this time?"

"Who is he?" asked Petya.

"He's our plastun. I sent him to capture a 'tongue.'"

"Oh, yes," said Petya, nodding at the first words Denisov uttered as if
he understood it all, though he really did not understand anything of
it.

Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most indispensable men in their band.
He was a peasant from Pokrovsk, near the river Gzhat. When Denisov had
come to Pokrovsk at the beginning of his operations and had as usual
summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew about the French,
the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied, as all village
elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything of them. But
when Denisov explained that his purpose was to kill the French, and
asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied that some
"more-orderers" had really been at their village, but that Tikhon
Shcherbaty was the only man who dealt with such matters. Denisov had
Tikhon called and, having praised him for his activity, said a few words
in the elder's presence about loyalty to the Tsar and the country and
the hatred of the French that all sons of the fatherland should cherish.

"We don't do the French any harm," said Tikhon, evidently frightened by
Denisov's words. "We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you know!
We killed a score or so of 'more-orderers,' but we did no harm else..."

Next day when Denisov had left Pokrovsk, having quite forgotten about
this peasant, it was reported to him that Tikhon had attached himself to
their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it. Denisov gave
orders to let him do so.

Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching water,
flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking and aptitude
for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for booty and always
brought back French clothing and weapons, and when told to would bring
in French captives also. Denisov then relieved him from drudgery and
began taking him with him when he went out on expeditions and had him
enrolled among the Cossacks.

Tikhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging
behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried
rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf uses
its teeth, with equal ease picking fleas out of its fur or crunching
thick bones. Tikhon with equal accuracy would split logs with blows at
arm's length, or holding the head of the ax would cut thin little pegs
or carve spoons. In Denisov's party he held a peculiar and exceptional
position. When anything particularly difficult or nasty had to be done--
to push a cart out of the mud with one's shoulders, pull a horse out of
a swamp by its tail, skin it, slink in among the French, or walk more
than thirty miles in a day--everybody pointed laughingly at Tikhon.

"It won't hurt that devil--he's as strong as a horse!" they said of him.

Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at him and
shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which Tikhon
treated only with internal and external applications of vodka) was the
subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment--jokes in which
Tikhon readily joined.

"Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?" the Cossacks would banter
him. And Tikhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended to be
angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only effect
of this incident on Tikhon was that after being wounded he seldom
brought in prisoners.

He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found more
opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more Frenchmen,
and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars
and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been sent by Denisov
overnight to Shamshevo to capture a "tongue." But whether because he had
not been content to take only one Frenchman or because he had slept
through the night, he had crept by day into some bushes right among the
French and, as Denisov had witnessed from above, had been detected by
them.




CHAPTER VI

After talking for some time with the esaul about next day's attack,
which now, seeing how near they were to the French, he seemed to have
definitely decided on, Denisov turned his horse and rode back.

"Now, my lad, we'll go and get dwy," he said to Petya.

As they approached the watchhouse Denisov stopped, peering into the
forest. Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging arms,
wearing a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazan hat, was approaching
with long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his shoulder and an ax
stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denisov he hastily threw something
into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its floppy brim, and
approached his commander. It was Tikhon. His wrinkled and pockmarked
face and narrow little eyes beamed with self-satisfied merriment. He
lifted his head high and gazed at Denisov as if repressing a laugh.

"Well, where did you disappear to?" inquired Denisov.

"Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen," answered Tikhon
boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.

"Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well, why
haven't you taken one?"

"Oh, I took one all right," said Tikhon.

"Where is he?"

"You see, I took him first thing at dawn," Tikhon continued, spreading
out his flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes. "I took him
into the forest. Then I see he's no good and think I'll go and fetch a
likelier one."

"You see?... What a wogue--it's just as I thought," said Denisov to the
esaul. "Why didn't you bwing that one?"

"What was the good of bringing him?" Tikhon interrupted hastily and
angrily--"that one wouldn't have done for you. As if I don't know what
sort you want!"

"What a bwute you are!... Well?"

"I went for another one," Tikhon continued, "and I crept like this
through the wood and lay down." (He suddenly lay down on his stomach
with a supple movement to show how he had done it.) "One turned up and I
grabbed him, like this." (He jumped up quickly and lightly.) "'Come
along to the colonel,' I said. He starts yelling, and suddenly there
were four of them. They rushed at me with their little swords. So I went
for them with my ax, this way: 'What are you up to?' says I. 'Christ be
with you!'" shouted Tikhon, waving his arms with an angry scowl and
throwing out his chest.

"Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the
puddles!" said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.

Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained from
laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tikhon's face to the esaul's
and Denisov's, unable to make out what it all meant.

"Don't play the fool!" said Denisov, coughing angrily. "Why didn't you
bwing the first one?"

Tikhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other,
then suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin,
disclosing a gap where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called
Shcherbaty--the gap-toothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a
peal of merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined.

"Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing," said Tikhon. "The clothes
on him--poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your honor! Why,
he says: 'I'm a general's son myself, I won't go!' he says."

"You are a bwute!" said Denisov. "I wanted to question..."

"But I questioned him," said Tikhon. "He said he didn't know much.
'There are a lot of us,' he says, 'but all poor stuff--only soldiers in
name,' he says. 'Shout loud at them,' he says, 'and you'll take them
all,'" Tikhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into
Denisov's eyes.

"I'll give you a hundwed sharp lashes--that'll teach you to play the
fool!" said Denisov severely.

"But why are you angry?" remonstrated Tikhon, "just as if I'd never seen
your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I'll fetch you any of
them you want--three if you like."

"Well, let's go," said Denisov, and rode all the way to the watchhouse
in silence and frowning angrily.

Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks laughing with him
and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the bushes.

When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tikhon's words and smile
had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon had killed a
man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive drummer boy and felt
a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted only a moment. He felt
it necessary to hold his head higher, to brace himself, and to question
the esaul with an air of importance about tomorrow's undertaking, that
he might not be unworthy of the company in which he found himself.

The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov on the way with the
news that Dolokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.

Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him, said: "Well, tell
me about yourself."




CHAPTER VII

Petya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow, joined
his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general commanding a
large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his commission,
and especially since he had joined the active army and taken part in the
battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state of blissful
excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic hurry not to
miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was highly delighted
with what he saw and experienced in the army, but at the same time it
always seemed to him that the really heroic exploits were being
performed just where he did not happen to be. And he was always in a
hurry to get where he was not.

When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish to send
somebody to Denisov's detachment, Petya begged so piteously to be sent
that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he recalled
Petya's mad action at the battle of Vyazma, where instead of riding by
the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had galloped to the
advanced line under the fire of the French and had there twice fired his
pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade his taking part in any
action whatever of Denisov's. That was why Petya had blushed and grown
confused when Denisov asked him whether he could stay. Before they had
ridden to the outskirts of the forest Petya had considered he must carry
out his instructions strictly and return at once. But when he saw the
French and saw Tikhon and learned that there would certainly be an
attack that night, he decided, with the rapidity with which young people
change their views, that the general, whom he had greatly respected till
then, was a rubbishy German, that Denisov was a hero, the esaul a hero,
and Tikhon a hero too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave
them at a moment of difficulty.

It was already growing dusk when Denisov, Petya, and the esaul rode up
to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be seen, and
Cossacks and hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the glade and
were kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest where the French
could not see the smoke. In the passage of the small watchhouse a
Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some mutton. In the room
three officers of Denisov's band were converting a door into a tabletop.
Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to be dried, and at once began
helping the officers to fix up the dinner table.

In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the
table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt.

Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton
with his hands, down which the grease trickled, Petya was in an ecstatic
childish state of love for all men, and consequently of confidence that
others loved him in the same way.

"So then what do you think, Vasili Dmitrich?" said he to Denisov. "It's
all right my staying a day with you?" And not waiting for a reply he
answered his own question: "You see I was told to find out--well, I am
finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into the chief... I
don't want a reward... But I want..."

Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head and
flourishing his arms.

"Into the vewy chief..." Denisov repeated with a smile.

"Only, please let me command something, so that I may really command..."
Petya went on. "What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a knife?" he
said, turning to an officer who wished to cut himself a piece of mutton.

And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired it.

"Please keep it. I have several like it," said Petya, blushing.
"Heavens! I was quite forgetting!" he suddenly cried. "I have some
raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless ones. We have a new sutler and he
has such capital things. I bought ten pounds. I am used to something
sweet. Would you like some?..." and Petya ran out into the passage to
his Cossack and brought back some bags which contained about five pounds
of raisins. "Have some, gentlemen, have some!"

"You want a coffeepot, don't you?" he asked the esaul. "I bought a
capital one from our sutler! He has splendid things. And he's very
honest, that's the chief thing. I'll be sure to send it to you. Or
perhaps your flints are giving out, or are worn out--that happens
sometimes, you know. I have brought some with me, here they are"--and he
showed a bag--"a hundred flints. I bought them very cheap. Please take
as many as you want, or all if you like...."

Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, Petya stopped and
blushed.

He tried to remember whether he had not done anything else that was
foolish. And running over the events of the day he remembered the French
drummer boy. "It's capital for us here, but what of him? Where have they
put him? Have they fed him? Haven't they hurt his feelings?" he thought.
But having caught himself saying too much about the flints, he was now
afraid to speak out.

"I might ask," he thought, "but they'll say: 'He's a boy himself and so
he pities the boy.' I'll show them tomorrow whether I'm a boy. Will it
seem odd if I ask?" Petya thought. "Well, never mind!" and immediately,
blushing and looking anxiously at the officers to see if they appeared
ironical, he said:

"May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give him something to
eat?... Perhaps..."

"Yes, he's a poor little fellow," said Denisov, who evidently saw
nothing shameful in this reminder. "Call him in. His name is Vincent
Bosse. Have him fetched."

"I'll call him," said Petya.

"Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow," Denisov repeated.

Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this. He slipped in
between the officers, came close to Denisov, and said:

"Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!"

And having kissed Denisov he ran out of the hut.

"Bosse! Vincent!" Petya cried, stopping outside the door.

"Who do you want, sir?" asked a voice in the darkness.

Petya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured that
day.

"Ah, Vesenny?" said a Cossack.

Vincent, the boy's name, had already been changed by the Cossacks into
Vesenny (vernal) and into Vesenya by the peasants and soldiers. In both
these adaptations the reference to spring (vesna) matched the impression
made by the young lad.

"He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesenya! Vesenya!--
Vesenny!" laughing voices were heard calling to one another in the
darkness.

"He's a smart lad," said an hussar standing near Petya. "We gave him
something to eat a while ago. He was awfully hungry!"

The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was heard in the
darkness, and the drummer boy came to the door.

"Ah, c'est vous!" said Petya. "Voulez-vous manger? N'ayez pas peur, on
ne vous fera pas de mal," * he added shyly and affectionately, touching
the boy's hand. "Entrez, entrez." *(2)


* "Ah, it's you! Do you want something to eat? Don't be afraid, they
won't hurt you."

* (2) "Come in, come in."

"Merci, monsieur," * said the drummer boy in a trembling almost childish
voice, and he began scraping his dirty feet on the threshold.


* "Thank you, sir."

There were many things Petya wanted to say to the drummer boy, but did
not dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then in
the darkness he took the boy's hand and pressed it.

"Come in, come in!" he repeated in a gentle whisper. "Oh, what can I do
for him?" he thought, and opening the door he let the boy pass in first.

When the boy had entered the hut, Petya sat down at a distance from him,
considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention to him. But he
fingered the money in his pocket and wondered whether it would seem
ridiculous to give some to the drummer boy.




CHAPTER VIII

The arrival of Dolokhov diverted Petya's attention from the drummer boy,
to whom Denisov had had some mutton and vodka given, and whom he had had
dressed in a Russian coat so that he might be kept with their band and
not sent away with the other prisoners. Petya had heard in the army many
stories of Dolokhov's extraordinary bravery and of his cruelty to the
French, so from the moment he entered the hut Petya did not take his
eyes from him, but braced himself up more and more and held his head
high, that he might not be unworthy even of such company.

Dolokhov's appearance amazed Petya by its simplicity.

Denisov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of Nicholas the
Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of speaking and everything he
did indicated his unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in Moscow had worn
a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most correct officer of
the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a Guardsman's padded coat with
an Order of St. George at his buttonhole and a plain forage cap set
straight on his head. He took off his wet felt cloak in a corner of the
room, and without greeting anyone went up to Denisov and began
questioning him about the matter in hand. Denisov told him of the
designs the large detachments had on the transport, of the message Petya
had brought, and his own replies to both generals. Then he told him all
he knew of the French detachment.

"That's so. But we must know what troops they are and their numbers,"
said Dolokhov. "It will be necessary to go there. We can't start the
affair without knowing for certain how many there are. I like to work
accurately. Here now--wouldn't one of these gentlemen like to ride over
to the French camp with me? I have brought a spare uniform."

"I, I... I'll go with you!" cried Petya.

"There's no need for you to go at all," said Denisov, addressing
Dolokhov, "and as for him, I won't let him go on any account."

"I like that!" exclaimed Petya. "Why shouldn't I go?"

"Because it's useless."

"Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall go, and that's
all. You'll take me, won't you?" he said, turning to Dolokhov.

"Why not?" Dolokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of the
French drummer boy. "Have you had that youngster with you long?" he
asked Denisov.

"He was taken today but he knows nothing. I'm keeping him with me."

"Yes, and where do you put the others?" inquired Dolokhov.

"Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them," shouted Denisov,
suddenly flushing. "And I say boldly that I have not a single man's life
on my conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send thirty or thwee
hundwed men to town under escort, instead of staining--I speak bluntly--
staining the honor of a soldier?"

"That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this young count of
sixteen," said Dolokhov with cold irony, "but it's time for you to drop
it."

"Why, I've not said anything! I only say that I'll certainly go with
you," said Petya shyly.

"But for you and me, old fellow, it's time to drop these amenities,"
continued Dolokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking of
this subject which irritated Denisov. "Now, why have you kept this lad?"
he went on, swaying his head. "Because you are sorry for him! Don't we
know those 'receipts' of yours? You send a hundred men away, and thirty
get there. The rest either starve or get killed. So isn't it all the
same not to send them?"

The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.

"That's not the point. I'm not going to discuss the matter. I do not
wish to take it on my conscience. You say they'll die. All wight. Only
not by my fault!"

Dolokhov began laughing.

"Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if
they did catch me they'd string me up to an aspen tree, and with all
your chivalry just the same." He paused. "However, we must get to work.
Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms in it.
Well, are you coming with me?" he asked Petya.

"I? Yes, yes, certainly!" cried Petya, blushing almost to tears and
glancing at Denisov.

While Dolokhov had been disputing with Denisov what should be done with
prisoners, Petya had once more felt awkward and restless; but again he
had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about. "If grown-up,
distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and right," thought he.
"But above all Denisov must not dare to imagine that I'll obey him and
that he can order me about. I will certainly go to the French camp with
Dolokhov. If he can, so can I!"

And to all Denisov's persuasions, Petya replied that he too was
accustomed to do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that he
never considered personal danger.

"For you'll admit that if we don't know for sure how many of them there
are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are only two of
us. Besides, I want to go very much and certainly will go, so don't
hinder me," said he. "It will only make things worse..."




CHAPTER IX

Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov rode to
the clearing from which Denisov had reconnoitered the French camp, and
emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended into the
hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks accompanying
him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot along the road to the
bridge. Petya, his heart in his mouth with excitement, rode by his side.

"If we're caught, I won't be taken alive! I have a pistol," whispered
he.

"Don't talk Russian," said Dolokhov in a hurried whisper, and at that
very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: "Qui vive?" *
and the click of a musket.


* "Who goes there?"

The blood rushed to Petya's face and he grasped his pistol.

"Lanciers du 6-me," * replied Dolokhov, neither hastening nor slackening
his horse's pace.


* "Lancers of the 6th Regiment."

The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.

"Mot d'ordre." *


* "Password."

Dolokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.

"Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici?" * he asked.


* "Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?"

"Mot d'ordre," repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not replying.

"Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas le
mot d'ordre..." cried Dolokhov suddenly flaring up and riding straight
at the sentinel. "Je vous demande si le colonel est ici." *


* "When an officer is making his round, sentinels don't ask him for the
password.... I am asking you if the colonel is here."

And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped
aside, Dolokhov rode up the incline at a walk.

Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dolokhov stopped
him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The man, a
soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up to
Dolokhov's horse, touched it with his hand, and explained simply and in
a friendly way that the commander and the officers were higher up the
hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm, as he called the
landowner's house.

Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk could be
heard around the campfires, Dolokhov turned into the courtyard of the
landowner's house. Having ridden in, he dismounted and approached a big
blazing campfire, around which sat several men talking noisily.
Something was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge of the fire and a
soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by the fire, was
kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.

"Oh, he's a hard nut to crack," said one of the officers who was sitting
in the shadow at the other side of the fire.

"He'll make them get a move on, those fellows!" said another, laughing.

Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of
Dolokhov's and Petya's steps as they advanced to the fire leading their
horses.

"Bonjour, messieurs!" * said Dolokhov loudly and clearly.


* "Good day, gentlemen."

There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire, and
one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up to
Dolokhov.

"Is that you, Clement?" he asked. "Where the devil...?" But, noticing
his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dolokhov as a
stranger, asking what he could do for him.

Dolokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake their
regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether they knew
anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything, and Petya
thought the officers were beginning to look at him and Dolokhov with
hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were silent.

"If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too late," said
a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.

Dolokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on farther that
night.

He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot and
squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the long
neck. That officer did not take his eyes from Dolokhov and again asked
to what regiment he belonged. Dolokhov, as if he had not heard the
question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe which he took
from his pocket began asking the officer in how far the road before them
was safe from Cossacks.

"Those brigands are everywhere," replied an officer from behind the
fire.

Dolokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers
such as his companion and himself, "but probably they would not dare to
attack large detachments?" he added inquiringly. No one replied.

"Well, now he'll come away," Petya thought every moment as he stood by
the campfire listening to the talk.

But Dolokhov restarted the conversation which had dropped and began
putting direct questions as to how many men there were in the battalion,
how many battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about the Russian
prisoners with that detachment, Dolokhov said:

"A horrid business dragging these corpses about with one! It would be
better to shoot such rabble," and burst into loud laughter, so strange
that Petya thought the French would immediately detect their disguise,
and involuntarily took a step back from the campfire.

No one replied a word to Dolokhov's laughter, and a French officer whom
they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and whispered
something to a companion. Dolokhov got up and called to the soldier who
was holding their horses.

"Will they bring our horses or not?" thought Petya, instinctively
drawing nearer to Dolokhov.

The horses were brought.

"Good evening, gentlemen," said Dolokhov.

Petya wished to say "Good night" but could not utter a word. The
officers were whispering together. Dolokhov was a long time mounting his
horse which would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at a
footpace. Petya rode beside him, longing to look round to see whether or
not the French were running after them, but not daring to.

Coming out onto the road Dolokhov did not ride back across the open
country, but through the village. At one spot he stopped and listened.
"Do you hear?" he asked. Petya recognized the sound of Russian voices
and saw the dark figures of Russian prisoners round their campfires.
When they had descended to the bridge Petya and Dolokhov rode past the
sentinel, who without saying a word paced morosely up and down it, then
they descended into the hollow where the Cossacks awaited them.

"Well now, good-by. Tell Denisov, 'at the first shot at daybreak,'" said
Dolokhov and was about to ride away, but Petya seized hold of him.

"Really!" he cried, "you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how splendid!
How I love you!"

"All right, all right!" said Dolokhov. But Petya did not let go of him
and Dolokhov saw through the gloom that Petya was bending toward him and
wanted to kiss him. Dolokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his horse, and
vanished into the darkness.




CHAPTER X

Having returned to the watchman's hut, Petya found Denisov in the
passage. He was awaiting Petya's return in a state of agitation,
anxiety, and self-reproach for having let him go.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Yes, thank God!" he repeated, listening to
Petya's rapturous account. "But, devil take you, I haven't slept because
of you! Well, thank God. Now lie down. We can still get a nap before
morning."

"But... no," said Petya, "I don't want to sleep yet. Besides I know
myself, if I fall asleep it's finished. And then I am used to not
sleeping before a battle."

He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of his
expedition and vividly picturing to himself what would happen next day.

Then, noticing that Denisov was asleep, he rose and went out of doors.

It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but drops were still
falling from the trees. Near the watchman's hut the black shapes of the
Cossacks' shanties and of horses tethered together could be seen. Behind
the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with their horses beside them
were discernible, and in the hollow the dying campfire gleamed red. Not
all the Cossacks and hussars were asleep; here and there, amid the
sounds of falling drops and the munching of the horses near by, could be
heard low voices which seemed to be whispering.

Petya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to the wagons.
Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses
munching their oats. In the dark Petya recognized his own horse, which
he called "Karabakh" though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to it.

"Well, Karabakh! We'll do some service tomorrow," said he, sniffing its
nostrils and kissing it.

"Why aren't you asleep, sir?" said a Cossack who was sitting under a
wagon.

"No, ah... Likhachev--isn't that your name? Do you know I have only just
come back! We've been into the French camp."

And Petya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only of his ride but
also of his object, and why he considered it better to risk his life
than to act "just anyhow."

"Well, you should get some sleep now," said the Cossack.

"No, I am used to this," said Petya. "I say, aren't the flints in your
pistols worn out? I brought some with me. Don't you want any? You can
have some."

The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get a closer look at
Petya.

"Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately," said Petya.
"Some fellows do things just anyhow, without preparation, and then
they're sorry for it afterwards. I don't like that."

"Just so," said the Cossack.

"Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you sharpen my
saber for me? It's got bl..." (Petya feared to tell a lie, and the saber
never had been sharpened.) "Can you do it?"

"Of course I can."

Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the warlike
sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat on its
edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon.

"I say! Are the lads asleep?" asked Petya.

"Some are, and some aren't--like us."

"Well, and that boy?"

"Vesenny? Oh, he's thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast asleep
after his fright. He was that glad!"

After that Petya remained silent for a long time, listening to the
sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness and a black figure appeared.

"What are you sharpening?" asked a man coming up to the wagon.

"Why, this gentleman's saber."

"That's right," said the man, whom Petya took to be an hussar. "Was the
cup left here?"

"There, by the wheel!"

The hussar took the cup.

"It must be daylight soon," said he, yawning, and went away.

Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denisov's
guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon
captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under
it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark
blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below to
the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had come
for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew nor
waited to know anything of all this. He was in a fairy kingdom where
nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be the
watchman's hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very depths of the
earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be the eye of an
enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a wagon, but it might
very well be that he was not sitting on a wagon but on a terribly high
tower from which, if he fell, he would have to fall for a whole day or a
whole month, or go on falling and never reach the bottom. Perhaps it was
just the Cossack, Likhachev, who was sitting under the wagon, but it
might be the kindest, bravest, most wonderful, most splendid man in the
world, whom no one knew of. It might really have been that the hussar
came for water and went back into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply
vanished--disappeared altogether and dissolved into nothingness.

Nothing Petya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was in a
fairy kingdom where everything was possible.

He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth.
It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly
sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if the clouds
were passing, and a clear black sky appeared. Sometimes it seemed as if
the black spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed to be rising
high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink so low that one could
touch it with one's hand.

Petya's eyes began to close and he swayed a little.

The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The horses neighed and
jostled one another. Someone snored.

"Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg..." hissed the saber against the whetstone, and
suddenly Petya heard an harmonious orchestra playing some unknown,
sweetly solemn hymn. Petya was as musical as Natasha and more so than
Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about it, and so the
melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him particularly
fresh and attractive. The music became more and more audible. The melody
grew and passed from one instrument to another. And what was played was
a fugue--though Petya had not the least conception of what a fugue is.
Each instrument--now resembling a violin and now a horn, but better and
clearer than violin or horn--played its own part, and before it had
finished the melody merged with another instrument that began almost the
same air, and then with a third and a fourth; and they all blended into
one and again became separate and again blended, now into solemn church
music, now into something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant.

"Oh--why, that was in a dream!" Petya said to himself, as he lurched
forward. "It's in my ears. But perhaps it's music of my own. Well, go
on, my music! Now!..."

He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance, sounds
fluttered, grew into harmonies, separated, blended, and again all
mingled into the same sweet and solemn hymn. "Oh, this is delightful! As
much as I like and as I like!" said Petya to himself. He tried to
conduct that enormous orchestra.

"Now softly, softly die away!" and the sounds obeyed him. "Now fuller,
more joyful. Still more and more joyful!" And from an unknown depth rose
increasingly triumphant sounds. "Now voices join in!" ordered Petya. And
at first from afar he heard men's voices and then women's. The voices
grew in harmonious triumphant strength, and Petya listened to their
surpassing beauty in awe and joy.

With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song, the drip from the
trees, and the hissing of the saber, "Ozheg-zheg-zheg..." and again the
horses jostled one another and neighed, not disturbing the choir but
joining in it.

Petya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all the
time, wondered at his enjoyment and regretted that there was no one to
share it. He was awakened by Likhachev's kindly voice.

"It's ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!"

Petya woke up.

"It's getting light, it's really getting light!" he exclaimed.

The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to their
very tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare branches.
Petya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket and gave it
to Likhachev; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and sheathed it.
The Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening their saddle
girths.

"And here's the commander," said Likhachev.

Denisov came out of the watchman's hut and, having called Petya, gave
orders to get ready.




CHAPTER XI

The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness, tightened
their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denisov stood by the
watchman's hut giving final orders. The infantry of the detachment
passed along the road and quickly disappeared amid the trees in the mist
of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing through the mud. The esaul
gave some orders to his men. Petya held his horse by the bridle,
impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face, having been bathed in
cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were particularly brilliant.
Cold shivers ran down his spine and his whole body pulsed rhythmically.

"Well, is ev'wything weady?" asked Denisov. "Bwing the horses."

The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the Cossack because the
saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted. Petya put his
foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to nip his leg, but
Petya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of his own weight and,
turning to look at the hussars starting in the darkness behind him, rode
up to Denisov.

"Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for God's
sake...!" said he.

Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya's very existence. He turned to
glance at him.

"I ask one thing of you," he said sternly, "to obey me and not shove
yourself forward anywhere."

He did not say another word to Petya but rode in silence all the way.
When they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably growing
light over the field. Denisov talked in whispers with the esaul and the
Cossacks rode past Petya and Denisov. When they had all ridden by,
Denisov touched his horse and rode down the hill. Slipping onto their
haunches and sliding, the horses descended with their riders into the
ravine. Petya rode beside Denisov, the pulsation of his body constantly
increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter, but the mist still hid
distant objects. Having reached the valley, Denisov looked back and
nodded to a Cossack beside him.

"The signal!" said he.

The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the tramp
of horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from various sides,
and then more shots.

At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Petya lashed his
horse and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denisov who
shouted at him. It seemed to Petya that at the moment the shot was fired
it suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge.
Cossacks were galloping along the road in front of him. On the bridge he
collided with a Cossack who had fallen behind, but he galloped on. In
front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were running from right to
left across the road. One of them fell in the mud under his horse's
feet.

Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the midst
of that crowd terrible screams arose. Petya galloped up, and the first
thing he saw was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman,
clutching the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.

"Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!" shouted Petya, and giving rein to his
excited horse he galloped forward along the village street.

He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged
Russian prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road,
were shouting something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking
Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red face,
had been defending himself against the hussars. When Petya galloped up
the Frenchman had already fallen. "Too late again!" flashed through
Petya's mind and he galloped on to the place from which the rapid firing
could be heard. The shots came from the yard of the landowner's house he
had visited the night before with Dolokhov. The French were making a
stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden thickly overgrown with
bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who crowded at the gateway.
Through the smoke, as he approached the gate, Petya saw Dolokhov, whose
face was of a pale-greenish tint, shouting to his men. "Go round! Wait
for the infantry!" he exclaimed as Petya rode up to him.

"Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!" shouted Petya, and without pausing a moment
galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the
smoke was thickest.

A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others plashed
against something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped after Petya into
the gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke some of the
French threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes to meet the
Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the pond. Petya was
galloping along the courtyard, but instead of holding the reins he waved
both his arms about rapidly and strangely, slipping farther and farther
to one side in his saddle. His horse, having galloped up to a campfire
that was smoldering in the morning light, stopped suddenly, and Petya
fell heavily on to the wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and
legs jerked rapidly though his head was quite motionless. A bullet had
pierced his skull.

After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the house
with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that they
surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted and went up to Petya, who lay
motionless with outstretched arms.

"Done for!" he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet Denisov
who was riding toward him.

"Killed?" cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance the unmistakably
lifeless attitude--very familiar to him--in which Petya's body was
lying.

"Done for!" repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of these words
afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who were
surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. "We won't take them!" he
called out to Denisov.

Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and with
trembling hands turned toward himself the bloodstained, mud-bespattered
face which had already gone white.

"I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take them all!" he
recalled Petya's words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise at the
sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denisov turned away, walked to
the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.

Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and Dolokhov was Pierre
Bezukhov.




CHAPTER XII

During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been
issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners among
whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party was no
longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it had left
Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled the first
stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other half had gone
on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had marched in
front of the prisoners was left; they had all disappeared. The artillery
the prisoners had seen in front of them during the first days was now
replaced by Marshal Junot's enormous baggage train, convoyed by
Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a cavalry baggage train.

From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in three
columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder that Pierre
had noticed at their first halting place after leaving Moscow had now
reached the utmost limit.

The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead
horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments
continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again
lagging behind it.

Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the
soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run
headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and
abused each other for their causeless panic.

These three groups traveling together--the cavalry stores, the convoy of
prisoners, and Junot's baggage train--still constituted a separate and
united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly melting away.

Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred and
twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been
captured or left behind. Some of Junot's wagons also had been captured
or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers from
Davout's corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned that a
larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to the
prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had been
shot by the marshal's own order because a silver spoon belonging to the
marshal had been found in his possession.

The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three hundred
and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a hundred now
remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort than even the
cavalry saddles or Junot's baggage. They understood that the saddles and
Junot's spoon might be of some use, but that cold and hungry soldiers
should have to stand and guard equally cold and hungry Russians who
froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case the order was to
shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but revolting. And the
escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves were in,
of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and so rendering
their own plight still worse, treated them with particular moroseness
and severity.

At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the
prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores, several
of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away, but were
recaptured by the French and shot.

The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer prisoners
should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been abandoned.
All who could walk went together, and after the third stage Pierre had
rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that had chosen
Karataev for its master.

On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again fell ill with the
fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he grew
gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know why, but
since Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an effort to go
near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning with which
Karataev generally lay down at the halting places, and when he smelled
the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than before, Pierre
moved farther away and did not think about him.

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect
but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for
happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple
human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from
superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had
learned still another new, consolatory truth--that nothing in this world
is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man
can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he
need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom
have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the
person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as
he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled
while the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing
shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet
that were covered with sores--his footgear having long since fallen to
pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife--of his own free
will as it had seemed to him--he had been no more free than now when
they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself
subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely
felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw, and scab-covered feet.
(The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of
the gunpowder they used instead of salt was even pleasant; there was no
great cold, it was always warm walking in the daytime, and at night
there were the campfires; the lice that devoured him warmed his body.)
The one thing that was at first hard to bear was his feet.

After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet by the
campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when
everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,
walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more
terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,
but thought of other things.

Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the
saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to
another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows
superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain limit.

He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who lagged
behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did not
think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently would soon
have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The
harder his position became and the more terrible the future, the more
independent of that position in which he found himself were the joyful
and comforting thoughts, memories, and imaginings that came to him.




CHAPTER XIII

At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going uphill along
the muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the roughness of
the way. Occasionally he glanced at the familiar crowd around him and
then again at his feet. The former and the latter were alike familiar
and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran merrily along the side
of the road, sometimes in proof of its agility and self-satisfaction
lifting one hind leg and hopping along on three, and then again going on
all four and rushing to bark at the crows that sat on the carrion. The
dog was merrier and sleeker than it had been in Moscow. All around lay
the flesh of different animals--from men to horses--in various stages of
decomposition; and as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the
dog could eat all it wanted.

It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment it
might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began raining
harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed the water,
which ran along the ruts in streams.

Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps in
threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally addressing the
rain, he repeated: "Now then, now then, go on! Pelt harder!"

It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and deep
within him his soul was occupied with something important and
comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction from a
conversation with Karataev the day before.

At their yesterday's halting place, feeling chilly by a dying campfire,
Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was burning better.
There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up--head and all--with his
greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers in his
effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre knew. It
was already past midnight, the hour when Karataev was usually free of
his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the fire and
heard Platon's voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his pathetic face
brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at his heart. His
feeling of pity for this man frightened him and he wished to go away,
but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down, trying not to look at
Platon.

"Well, how are you?" he asked.

"How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant us death," replied
Platon, and at once resumed the story he had begun.

"And so, brother," he continued, with a smile on his pale emaciated face
and a particularly happy light in his eyes, "you see, brother..."

Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev had told it to
him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially joyful
emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to that tale as to
something new, and the quiet rapture Karataev evidently felt as he told
it communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was of an old merchant
who lived a good and God-fearing life with his family, and who went once
to the Nizhni fair with a companion--a rich merchant.

Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning his
companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained knife
was found under the old merchant's pillow. He was tried, knouted, and
his nostrils having been torn off, "all in due form" as Karataev put it,
he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.

"And so, brother" (it was at this point that Pierre came up), "ten years
or more passed by. The old man was living as a convict, submitting as he
should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God for death. Well, one
night the convicts were gathered just as we are, with the old man among
them. And they began telling what each was suffering for, and how they
had sinned against God. One told how he had taken a life, another had
taken two, a third had set a house on fire, while another had simply
been a vagrant and had done nothing. So they asked the old man: 'What
are you being punished for, Daddy?'--'I, my dear brothers,' said he, 'am
being punished for my own and other men's sins. But I have not killed
anyone or taken anything that was not mine, but have only helped my
poorer brothers. I was a merchant, my dear brothers, and had much
property. 'And he went on to tell them all about it in due order. 'I
don't grieve for myself,' he says, 'God, it seems, has chastened me.
Only I am sorry for my old wife and the children,' and the old man began
to weep. Now it happened that in the group was the very man who had
killed the other merchant. 'Where did it happen, Daddy?' he said. 'When,
and in what month?' He asked all about it and his heart began to ache.
So he comes up to the old man like this, and falls down at his feet!
'You are perishing because of me, Daddy,' he says. 'It's quite true,
lads, that this man,' he says, 'is being tortured innocently and for
nothing! I,' he says, 'did that deed, and I put the knife under your
head while you were asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,' he says, 'for Christ's
sake!'"

Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and he drew
the logs together.

"And the old man said, 'God will forgive you, we are all sinners in His
sight. I suffer for my own sins,' and he wept bitter tears. Well, and
what do you think, dear friends?" Karataev continued, his face
brightening more and more with a rapturous smile as if what he now had
to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his story:
"What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed to the
authorities. 'I have taken six lives,' he says (he was a great sinner),
'but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don't let him suffer
because of me.' So he confessed and it was all written down and the
papers sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and while
they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in the
papers all in due form--the authorities I mean--time passed. The affair
reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar's decree came: to set the
merchant free and give him a compensation that had been awarded. The
paper arrived and they began to look for the old man. 'Where is the old
man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A paper has come from
the Tsar!' so they began looking for him," here Karataev's lower jaw
trembled, "but God had already forgiven him--he was dead! That's how it
was, dear fellows!" Karataev concluded and sat for a long time silent,
gazing before him with a smile.

And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story itself
but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that lit up
Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic significance of that joy.




CHAPTER XIV

"A vos places!" * suddenly cried a voice.


* "To your places."

A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something joyful
and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the
prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left came
smartly dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the prisoners at a
trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension people feel at the
approach of those in authority. The prisoners thronged together and were
pushed off the road. The convoy formed up.

"The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!" and hardly had the
sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage drawn by six gray horses rattled
by. Pierre caught a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat with a
tranquil look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of the
marshals. His eye fell on Pierre's large and striking figure, and in the
expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre thought he
detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that sympathy.

The general in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with a
red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several officers
formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their faces all
looked excited and worried.

"What did he say? What did he say?" Pierre heard them ask.

While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in a
crowd, and Pierre saw Karataev whom he had not yet seen that morning. He
sat in his short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On his face,
besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday while telling
the tale of the merchant who suffered innocently, there was now an
expression of quiet solemnity.

Karataev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes now filled with
tears, evidently wishing him to come near that he might say something to
him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself. He made as if he
did not notice that look and moved hastily away.

When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked round. Karataev was
still sitting at the side of the road under the birch tree and two
Frenchmen were talking over his head. Pierre did not look round again
but went limping up the hill.

From behind, where Karataev had been sitting, came the sound of a shot.
Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment he remembered that he had
not yet finished reckoning up how many stages still remained to
Smolensk--a calculation he had begun before the marshal went by. And he
again started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one of
whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both looked pale, and in
the expression on their faces--one of them glanced timidly at Pierre--
there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of the young
soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and remembered
that, two days before, that man had burned his shirt while drying it at
the fire and how they had laughed at him.

Behind him, where Karataev had been sitting, the dog began to howl.
"What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?" thought Pierre.

His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him, avoided looking
back at the place where the shot had been fired and the dog was howling,
just as Pierre did, but there was a set look on all their faces.




CHAPTER XV

The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal's baggage train stopped at
the village of Shamshevo. The men crowded together round the campfires.
Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh, lay down with his
back to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He again slept as he had
done at Mozhaysk after the battle of Borodino.

Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or another,
gave expression to his thoughts, and even to the same thoughts that had
been expressed in his dream at Mozhaysk.

"Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that
movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness
of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than
all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in innocent
sufferings."

"Karataev!" came to Pierre's mind.

And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly old man
who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. "Wait a bit," said
the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was alive--a
vibrating ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface consisted of
drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved and changed
places, sometimes several of them merging into one, sometimes one
dividing into many. Each drop tried to spread out and occupy as much
space as possible, but others striving to do the same compressed it,
sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.

"That is life," said the old teacher.

"How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "How is it I did not know
it before?"

"God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect Him
to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from the
surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now, Karataev has
spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?" said the
teacher.

"Do you understand, damn you?" shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.

He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a Russian
soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting a piece of
meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and his sinewy,
hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned the ramrod. His
brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly visible by the glow of
the charcoal.

"It's all the same to him," he muttered, turning quickly to a soldier
who stood behind him. "Brigand! Get away!"

And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned away
and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier the
Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting something
with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the blue-gray dog,
sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.

"Ah, he's come?" said Pierre. "And Plat-" he began, but did not finish.

Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his fancy--of
the look Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of the shot
heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty faces of the two
Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and smoking gun, and of
Karataev's absence at this halt--and he was on the point of realizing
that Karataev had been killed, but just at that instant, he knew not
why, the recollection came to his mind of a summer evening he had spent
with a beautiful Polish lady on the veranda of his house in Kiev. And
without linking up the events of the day or drawing a conclusion from
them, Pierre closed his eyes, seeing a vision of the country in
summertime mingled with memories of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating
globe, and he sank into water so that it closed over his head.

Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid firing.
French soldiers were running past him.

"The Cossacks!" one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of
Russians surrounded Pierre.

For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him. All
around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy.

"Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!" old soldiers exclaimed, weeping, as
they embraced Cossacks and hussars.

The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered them
clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he sat among
them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier who
approached him, and kissed him, weeping.

Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd of
disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had
happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed
Dolokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched them
with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent. On the
opposite side stood Dolokhov's Cossack, counting the prisoners and
marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.

"How many?" Dolokhov asked the Cossack.

"The second hundred," replied the Cossack.

"Filez, filez!" * Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted this expression
from the French, and when his eyes met those of the prisoners they
flashed with a cruel light.


* "Get along, get along!"

Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some Cossacks
who were carrying the body of Petya Rostov to a hole that had been dug
in the garden.




CHAPTER XVI

After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight of
the French assumed a still more tragic character, with men freezing, or
roasting themselves to death at the campfires, while carriages with
people dressed in furs continued to drive past, carrying away the
property that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings, and dukes; but the
process of the flight and disintegration of the French army went on
essentially as before.

From Moscow to Vyazma the French army of seventy-three thousand men not
reckoning the Guards (who did nothing during the whole war but pillage)
was reduced to thirty-six thousand, though not more than five thousand
had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding terms of the
progression could be determined mathematically. The French army melted
away and perished at the same rate from Moscow to Vyazma, from Vyazma to
Smolensk, from Smolensk to the Berezina, and from the Berezina to Vilna-
-independently of the greater or lesser intensity of the cold, the
pursuit, the barring of the way, or any other particular conditions.
Beyond Vyazma the French army instead of moving in three columns huddled
together into one mass, and so went on to the end. Berthier wrote to his
Emperor (we know how far commanding officers allow themselves to diverge
from the truth in describing the condition of an army) and this is what
he said:

I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition of the various
corps I have had occasion to observe during different stages of the last
two or three days' march. They are almost disbanded. Scarcely a quarter
of the soldiers remain with the standards of their regiments, the others
go off by themselves in different directions hoping to find food and
escape discipline. In general they regard Smolensk as the place where
they hope to recover. During the last few days many of the men have been
seen to throw away their cartridges and their arms. In such a state of
affairs, whatever your ultimate plans may be, the interest of Your
Majesty's service demands that the army should be rallied at Smolensk
and should first of all be freed from ineffectives, such as dismounted
cavalry, unnecessary baggage, and artillery material that is no longer
in proportion to the present forces. The soldiers, who are worn out with
hunger and fatigue, need these supplies as well as a few days' rest.
Many have died these last days on the road or at the bivouacs. This
state of things is continually becoming worse and makes one fear that
unless a prompt remedy is applied the troops will no longer be under
control in case of an engagement.

November 9: twenty miles from Smolensk.

After staggering into Smolensk which seemed to them a promised land, the
French, searching for food, killed one another, sacked their own stores,
and when everything had been plundered fled farther.

They all went without knowing whither or why they were going. Still less
did that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no one issued any orders to him.
But still he and those about him retained their old habits: wrote
commands, letters, reports, and orders of the day; called one another
sire, mon cousin, prince d'Eckmuhl, roi de Naples, and so on. But these
orders and reports were only on paper, nothing in them was acted upon
for they could not be carried out, and though they entitled one another
Majesties, Highnesses, or Cousins, they all felt that they were
miserable wretches who had done much evil for which they had now to pay.
And though they pretended to be concerned about the army, each was
thinking only of himself and of how to get away quickly and save
himself.




CHAPTER XVII

The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign from
Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian
blindman's bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of them
occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his
whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into a
tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to
escape runs straight into his opponent's arms.

At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga road, Napoleon's
armies made their presence known, but later when they reached the
Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell tight--and
often thinking they were escaping ran right into the Russians.

Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit and
the consequent exhaustion of the horses, the chief means of
approximately ascertaining the enemy's position--by cavalry scouting--
was not available. Besides, as a result of the frequent and rapid change
of position by each army, even what information was obtained could not
be delivered in time. If news was received one day that the enemy had
been in a certain position the day before, by the third day when
something could have been done, that army was already two days' march
farther on and in quite another position.

One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolensk there were several
different roads available for the French, and one would have thought
that during their stay of four days they might have learned where the
enemy was, might have arranged some more advantageous plan and
undertaken something new. But after a four days' halt the mob, with no
maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten track, neither
to the right nor to the left but along the old--the worst--road, through
Krasnoe and Orsha.

Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French separated
in their flight and spread out over a distance of twenty-four hours. In
front of them all fled the Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes. The
Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take the road to the right beyond
the Dnieper--which was the only reasonable thing for him to do--
themselves turned to the right and came out onto the highroad at
Krasnoe. And here as in a game of blindman's buff the French ran into
our vanguard. Seeing their enemy unexpectedly the French fell into
confusion and stopped short from the sudden fright, but then they
resumed their flight, abandoning their comrades who were farther behind.
Then for three days separate portions of the French army--first Murat's
(the vice-king's), then Davout's, and then Ney's--ran, as it were, the
gauntlet of the Russian army. They abandoned one another, abandoned all
their heavy baggage, their artillery, and half their men, and fled,
getting past the Russians by night by making semicircles to the right.

Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of
Smolensk which were in nobody's way, because despite the unfortunate
plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor
against which they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of ten
thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha with only one thousand men left,
having abandoned all the rest and all his cannon, and having crossed the
Dnieper at night by stealth at a wooded spot.

From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna, still playing at
blindman's buff with the pursuing army. At the Berezina they again
became disorganized, many were drowned and many surrendered, but those
who got across the river fled farther. Their supreme chief donned a fur
coat and, having seated himself in a sleigh, galloped on alone,
abandoning his companions. The others who could do so drove away too,
leaving those who could not to surrender or die.




CHAPTER XVIII

This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which they did
all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they turned onto the
Kaluga road to the day their leader fled from the army, none of the
movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might have thought that
regarding this period of the campaign the historians, who attributed the
actions of the mass to the will of one man, would have found it
impossible to make the story of the retreat fit their theory. But no!
Mountains of books have been written by the historians about this
campaign, and everywhere are described Napoleon's arrangements, the
maneuvers, and his profound plans which guided the army, as well as the
military genius shown by his marshals.

The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free road into a well-
supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along which
Kutuzov afterwards pursued him--this unnecessary retreat along a
devastated road--is explained to us as being due to profound
considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for his
retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is
described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle
and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick
and said:

"J'ai assez fait l'empereur; il est temps de faire le general," * but
nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the
scattered fragments of the army he left behind.


* "I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act the general."

Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals, especially of
Ney--a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he made his way by
night around through the forest and across the Dnieper and escaped to
Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths of his men.

And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic
army is presented to us by the historians as something great and
characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in
ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child is
taught to be ashamed of--even that act finds justification in the
historians' language.

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical
ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that
humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving
conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems, excludes the standards
of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing is wrong, there is no
atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed.

"C'est grand!" * say the historians, and there no longer exists either
good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good, not grand
is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of some
special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm
fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his comrades
but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que c'est
grand, *(2) and his soul is tranquil.


* "It is great."

* (2) That it is great.

"Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n'y a
qu'un pas," * said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been
repeating: "Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule
il n'y a qu'un pas.


* "From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."

And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with
the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one's own nothingness
and immeasurable meanness.

For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human
actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity,
goodness, and truth are absent.




CHAPTER XIX

What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign of
1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret,
dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is
that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three armies
surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered French, hungry
and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the historians relate)
the aim of the Russians was to stop the French, to cut them off, and
capture them all?

How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than the
French had given battle at Borodino, did not achieve its purpose when it
had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim was to capture
them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us that when we had
surrounded them with superior forces we could not beat them? How could
that happen?

History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions
says that this occurred because Kutuzov and Tormasov and Chichagov, and
this man and that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers...

But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were
guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried and
punished? But even if we admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and others
were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still incomprehensible
why, the position of the Russian army being what it was at Krasnoe and
at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior forces), the French army
with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not captured, if that was what
the Russians aimed at.

The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military
historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an attack) is unfounded,
for we know that he could not restrain the troops from attacking at
Vyazma and Tarutino.

Why was the Russian army--which with inferior forces had withstood the
enemy in full strength at Borodino--defeated at Krasnoe and the Berezina
by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was numerically
superior?

If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing
Napoleon and his marshals--and that aim was not merely frustrated but
all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled--then this last
period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the French to be a
series of victories, and quite wrongly considered victorious by Russian
historians.

The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims of
logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical
rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit
that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for
Napoleon and defeats for Kutuzov.

But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a
conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French
victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series of
Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the
liberation of their country.

The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the historians
studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns and the generals,
from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth, have attributed to this
last period of the war of 1812 an aim that never existed, namely that of
cutting off and capturing Napoleon with his marshals and his army.

There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have been
senseless and its attainment quite impossible.

It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon's disorganized army
was flying from Russia with all possible speed, that is to say, was
doing just what every Russian desired. So what was the use of performing
various operations on the French who were running away as fast as they
possibly could?

Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men whose
whole energy was directed to flight.

Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one's own troops in
order to destroy the French army, which without external interference
was destroying itself at such a rate that, though its path was not
blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more than it actually
did in December, namely a hundredth part of the original army.

Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the
Emperor, kings, and dukes--whose capture would have been in the highest
degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit diplomatists of
the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized. Still more senseless
would have been the wish to capture army corps of the French, when our
own army had melted away to half before reaching Krasnoe and a whole
division would have been needed to convoy the corps of prisoners, and
when our men were not always getting full rations and the prisoners
already taken were perishing of hunger.

All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon and his
army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving out of
his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had planted, should
run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The only thing to be said
in excuse of that gardener would be that he was very angry. But not even
that could be said for those who drew up this project, for it was not
they who had suffered from the trampled beds.

But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would have
been senseless, it was impossible.

It was impossible first because--as experience shows that a three-mile
movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with the plans--the
probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein effecting a junction
on time at an appointed place was so remote as to be tantamount to
impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who when he received the plan
remarked that diversions planned over great distances do not yield the
desired results.

Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with which
Napoleon's army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than the
Russians possessed would have been required.

Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term "to cut off" has no
meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army. To cut off
an army--to bar its road--is quite impossible, for there is always
plenty of room to avoid capture and there is the night when nothing can
be seen, as the military scientists might convince themselves by the
example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only possible to capture
prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it is only possible to
catch a swallow if it settles on one's hand. Men can only be taken
prisoners if they surrender according to the rules of strategy and
tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops quite rightly did not
consider that this suited them, since death by hunger and cold awaited
them in flight or captivity alike.

Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the world
began has a war been fought under such conditions as those that obtained
in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the French strained its
strength to the utmost and could not have done more without destroying
itself.

During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe it lost
fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to the
population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of the army
without a battle.

And it is of this period of the campaign--when the army lacked boots and
sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and was
camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees of
frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and the
rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be
maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where
discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for
months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and
cold, when half the army perished in a single month--it is of this
period of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich
should have made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormasov to
another place, and Chichagov should have crossed (more than knee-deep in
snow) to somewhere else, and how so-and-so "routed" and "cut off" the
French and so on and so on.

The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should have been
done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not to blame
because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed that they should
do what was impossible.

All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between the
facts and the historical accounts only arises because the historians
dealing with the matter have written the history of the beautiful words
and sentiments of various generals, and not the history of the events.

To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do their
surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but the question
of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals and in graves
does not even interest them, for it does not come within the range of
their investigation.

Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans and
consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who took a
direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed insoluble
easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.

The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in the
imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it was
senseless and unattainable.

The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion. That aim
was attained in the first place of itself, as the French ran away, and
so it was only necessary not to stop their flight. Secondly it was
attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying the French, and
thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was following the French,
ready to use its strength in case their movement stopped.

The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the
experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a
menace than to strike the running animal on the head.

BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13




CHAPTER I

When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror: substance
similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it is a
beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this horror at
the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual wound, which
like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes heals, but always
aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.

After Prince Andrew's death Natasha and Princess Mary alike felt this.
Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing cloud of
death that overhung them, they dared not look life in the face. They
carefully guarded their open wounds from any rough and painful contact.
Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street, a summons to
dinner, the maid's inquiry what dress to prepare, or worse still any
word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an insult, painfully
irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary quiet in which they
both tried to listen to the stern and dreadful choir that still
resounded in their imagination, and hindered their gazing into those
mysterious limitless vistas that for an instant had opened out before
them.

Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and pain. They
spoke little even to one another, and when they did it was of very
unimportant matters.

Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility of a
future seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did
they avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them that
what they had lived through and experienced could not be expressed in
words, and that any reference to the details of his life infringed the
majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been accomplished before
their eyes.

Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of everything
that might lead up to the subject--this halting on all sides at the
boundary of what they might not mention--brought before their minds with
still greater purity and clearness what they were both feeling.

But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independent arbiter of
her own fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, was the first to
be called back to life from that realm of sorrow in which she had dwelt
for the first fortnight. She received letters from her relations to
which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholas had been put
was damp and he began to cough; Alpatych came to Yaroslavl with reports
on the state of their affairs and with advice and suggestions that they
should return to Moscow to the house on the Vozdvizhenka Street, which
had remained uninjured and needed only slight repairs. Life did not
stand still and it was necessary to live. Hard as it was for Princess
Mary to emerge from the realm of secluded contemplation in which she had
lived till then, and sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave
Natasha alone, yet the cares of life demanded her attention and she
involuntarily yielded to them. She went through the accounts with
Alpatych, conferred with Dessalles about her nephew, and gave orders and
made preparations for the journey to Moscow.

Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began making
preparations for departure, held aloof from her too.

Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go with her to Moscow,
and both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they saw their daughter
losing strength every day and thought that a change of scene and the
advice of Moscow doctors would be good for her.

"I am not going anywhere," Natasha replied when this was proposed to
her. "Do please just leave me alone!" And she ran out of the room, with
difficulty refraining from tears of vexation and irritation rather than
of sorrow.

After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in her grief,
Natasha spent most of the time in her room by herself, sitting huddled
up feet and all in the corner of the sofa, tearing and twisting
something with her slender nervous fingers and gazing intently and
fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This solitude exhausted
and tormented her but she was in absolute need of it. As soon as anyone
entered she got up quickly, changed her position and expression, and
picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting impatiently for the
intruder to go.

She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that on
which--with a terrible questioning too great for her strength--her
spiritual gaze was fixed.

One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and thin, dressed in a
black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a knot, was
crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervously crumpling and
smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at a corner of the
door.

She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone--to the other side
of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never before
thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and improbable,
was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible than this side of
life, where everything was either emptiness and desolation or suffering
and indignity.

She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imagine him
otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as he had been
at Mytishchi, at Troitsa, and at Yaroslavl.

She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own, and
sometimes devised other words they might have spoken.

There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaning his
head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his
shoulders raised. His lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and a
wrinkle comes and goes on his pale forehead. One of his legs twitches
just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natasha knows that he is struggling with
terrible pain. "What is that pain like? Why does he have that pain? What
does he feel? How does it hurt him?" thought Natasha. He noticed her
watching him, raised his eyes, and began to speak seriously:

"One thing would be terrible," said he: "to bind oneself forever to a
suffering man. It would be continual torture." And he looked searchingly
at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time to think what she
would say. She said: "This can't go on--it won't. You will get well--
quite well."

She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived what she
had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look at those words
and understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair in that protracted
gaze.

"I agreed," Natasha now said to herself, "that it would be dreadful if
he always continued to suffer. I said it then only because it would have
been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently. He thought it
would be dreadful for me. He then still wished to live and feared death.
And I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not say what I meant. I
thought quite differently. Had I said what I thought, I should have
said: even if he had to go on dying, to die continually before my eyes,
I should have been happy compared with what I am now. Now there is
nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No, he did not and never will know
it. And now it will never, never be possible to put it right." And now
he again seemed to be saying the same words to her, only in her
imagination Natasha this time gave him a different answer. She stopped
him and said: "Terrible for you, but not for me! You know that for me
there is nothing in life but you, and to suffer with you is the greatest
happiness for me," and he took her hand and pressed it as he had pressed
it that terrible evening four days before his death. And in her
imagination she said other tender and loving words which she might have
said then but only spoke now: "I love thee!... thee! I love, love..."
she said, convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a
desperate effort...

She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in her
eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this. Again
everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again with a
strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And now, now it
seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at the instant
when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing itself to her a
loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her ears. Dunyasha,
her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a frightened look
on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.

"Come to your Papa at once, please!" said she with a strange, excited
look. "A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich... a letter," she finished
with a sob.




CHAPTER II

Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha was feeling a
special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of them--
her father, mother, and Sonya--were so near to her, so familiar, so
commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult to the
world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not merely
indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard
Dunyasha's words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but did not grasp
them.

"What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live
their own old, quiet, and commonplace life," thought Natasha.

As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of her
mother's room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He had
evidently run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were
choking him. When he saw Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and
burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round face.

"Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling..." and weeping like a child
and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost fell into
it, covering his face with his hands.

Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natasha's whole being.
Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache as if
something was being torn inside her and she were dying. But the pain was
immediately followed by a feeling of release from the oppressive
constraint that had prevented her taking part in life. The sight of her
father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that she heard through the
door, made her immediately forget herself and her own grief.

She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm, pointing to her
mother's door. Princess Mary, pale and with quivering chin, came out
from that room and taking Natasha by the arm said something to her.
Natasha neither saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid steps, pausing
at the door for an instant as if struggling with herself, and then ran
to her mother.

The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and awkward position,
stretching out and beating her head against the wall. Sonya and the
maids were holding her arms.

"Natasha! Natasha!..." cried the countess. "It's not true... it's not
true... He's lying... Natasha!" she shrieked, pushing those around her
away. "Go away, all of you; it's not true! Killed!... ha, ha, ha!...
It's not true!"

Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her mother, embraced
her, and with unexpected strength raised her, turned her face toward
herself, and clung to her.

"Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy," she kept on
whispering, not pausing an instant.

She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly with her,
demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened and tore open her
mother's dress.

"My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!..." she whispered
incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling her own
irrepressible and streaming tears tickling her nose and cheeks.

The countess pressed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes, and became
quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up with unaccustomed swiftness,
glanced vacantly around her, and seeing Natasha began to press her
daughter's head with all her strength. Then she turned toward her
daughter's face which was wincing with pain and gazed long at it.

"Natasha, you love me?" she said in a soft trustful whisper. "Natasha,
you would not deceive me? You'll tell me the whole truth?"

Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look there was
nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.

"My darling Mummy!" she repeated, straining all the power of her love to
find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that crushed her
mother.

And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing to
believe that she could live when her beloved boy was killed in the bloom
of life, escaped from reality into a world of delirium.

Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the
next day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother. Her
persevering and patient love seemed completely to surround the countess
every moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling her to life.

During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few minutes,
and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her chair and closed her eyes,
but opened them again on hearing the bedstead creak. The countess was
sitting up in bed and speaking softly.

"How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won't you have some tea?"
Natasha went up to her. "You have improved in looks and grown more
manly," continued the countess, taking her daughter's hand.

"Mamma! What are you saying..."

"Natasha, he is no more, no more!"

And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first
time.




CHAPTER III

Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the count tried to
replace Natasha but could not. They saw that she alone was able to
restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natasha
remained constantly at her mother's side, sleeping on a lounge chair in
her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her incessantly
because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones soothed her
mother.

The mother's wounded spirit could not heal. Petya's death had torn from
her half her life. When the news of Petya's death had come she had been
a fresh and vigorous woman of fifty, but a month later she left her room
a listless old woman taking no interest in life. But the same blow that
almost killed the countess, this second blow, restored Natasha to life.

A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is like a
physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep wound may
heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike can yet
heal completely only as the result of a vital force from within.

Natasha's wound healed in that way. She thought her life was ended, but
her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the essence of
life--love--was still active within her. Love awoke and so did life.

Prince Andrew's last days had bound Princess Mary and Natasha together;
this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another. Princess Mary
put off her departure, and for three weeks looked after Natasha as if
she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed in her mother's bedroom
had strained Natasha's physical strength.

One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever, Princess Mary took
her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natasha lay down,
but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away she
called her back.

"I don't want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little."

"You are tired--try to sleep."

"No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me."

"She is much better. She spoke so well today," said Princess Mary.

Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned
Princess Mary's face.

"Is she like him?" thought Natasha. "Yes, like and yet not like. But she
is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me. What is
in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind like? What
does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!"

"Mary," she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary's hand to herself,
"Mary, you mustn't think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love you!
Let us be quite, quite friends."

And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making
Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her feelings.

From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only
between women was established between Princess Mary and Natasha. They
were continually kissing and saying tender things to one another and
spent most of their time together. When one went out the other became
restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt more in harmony
with one another than either of them felt with herself when alone. A
feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them; an exclusive
feeling of life being possible only in each other's presence.

Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were already
in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They spoke most
of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her childhood, of her
mother, her father, and her daydreams; and Natasha, who with a passive
lack of understanding had formerly turned away from that life of
devotion, submission, and the poetry of Christian self-sacrifice, now
feeling herself bound to Princess Mary by affection, learned to love her
past too and to understand a side of life previously incomprehensible to
her. She did not think of applying submission and self-abnegation to her
own life, for she was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood
and loved in another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For
Princess Mary, listening to Natasha's tales of childhood and early
youth, there also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of
life: belief in life and its enjoyment.

Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they
thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him had
the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without being
conscious of it.

Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all
talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was
suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness,
and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm
carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her
drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed to
her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.

One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.
Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and
then, testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result.

Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice trembled, so she called
again--though she could hear Dunyasha coming--called her in the deep
chest tones in which she had been wont to sing, and listened attentively
to herself.

She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the layer
of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable, delicate
young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking root would so
cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed her down that it
would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound had begun to heal
from within.

At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count
insisted on Natasha's going with her to consult the doctors.




CHAPTER IV

After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable to hold
back his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy and
so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the Russians
who pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a battle. The
flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing the French could not
keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke down, and the
information received of the movements of the French was never reliable.

The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous marching
at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could not go any
faster.

To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is only
necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while not
losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarutino and
less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that place a
hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty thousand.

The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our army
as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference was that
the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of destruction
as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen were left behind in
enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind were among their own
people. The chief cause of the wastage of Napoleon's army was the
rapidity of its movement, and a convincing proof of this is the
corresponding decrease of the Russian army.

Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the
movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian
army generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done at
Tarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of our
army.

But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of the
army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident, another
reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itself to Kutuzov.
The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French. The road the
French would take was unknown, and so the closer our troops trod on
their heels the greater distance they had to cover. Only by following at
some distance could one cut across the zigzag path of the French. All
the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals meant fresh movements of
the army and a lengthening of its marches, whereas the only reasonable
aim was to shorten those marches. To that end Kutuzov's activity was
directed during the whole campaign from Moscow to Vilna--not casually or
intermittently but so consistently that he never once deviated from it.

Kutuzov felt and knew--not by reasoning or science but with the whole of
his Russian being--what every Russian soldier felt: that the French were
beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be driven out; but at the
same time he like the soldiers realized all the hardship of this march,
the rapidity of which was unparalleled for such a time of the year.

But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian army,
who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody, and for some
reason to capture a king or a duke--it seemed that now--when any battle
must be horrible and senseless--was the very time to fight and conquer
somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when one after another
they presented projects of maneuvers to be made with those soldiers--
ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved--who within a month and
without fighting a battle had dwindled to half their number, and who at
the best if the flight continued would have to go a greater distance
than they had already traversed, before they reached the frontier.

This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow, and
to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians stumbled on
the French army.

So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the three
French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen
thousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous
encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob of
French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three
days.

Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so and so,"
etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the disposition.
Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from a hill over the French crowds
that were running past, and demanded reinforcements which did not
arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and hid themselves
in the forest by night, making their way round as best they could, and
continued their flight.

Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the
commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found when he
was wanted--that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche * as he styled
himself--who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys demanding
their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was ordered to do.


* Knight without fear and without reproach.

"I give you that column, lads," he said, riding up to the troops and
pointing out the French to the cavalry.

And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could
scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented to them-
-that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold, frost-bitten,
and starving--and the column that had been presented to them threw down
its arms and surrendered as it had long been anxious to do.

At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several hundred
cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff," and disputed as to who
had distinguished himself and were pleased with their achievement--
though they much regretted not having taken Napoleon, or at least a
marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one another and
especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.

These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of the
most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes and
imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable deed.
They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of the
campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought of
nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from the Linen
Factories because he was comfortable there, that at Krasnoe he checked
the advance because on learning that Napoleon was there he had quite
lost his head, and that it was probable that he had an understanding
with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so on, and so on.

Not only did his contemporaries, carried away by their passions, talk in
this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as grand,
while Kutuzov is described by foreigners as a crafty, dissolute, weak
old courtier, and by Russians as something indefinite--a sort of puppet
useful only because he had a Russian name.




CHAPTER V

In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The Emperor
was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written by order of
the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a cunning court
liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by his blunders at
Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian army of the glory of
complete victory over the French. *


* History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and reflections on
the unsatisfactory results of the battles at Krasnoe, by Bogdanovich.

Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian mind
does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary individuals
who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their personal will to
it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish such men for discerning
the higher laws.

For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon--that most
insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in exile, showed
human dignity--Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm; he is
grand. But Kutuzov--the man who from the beginning to the end of his
activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or deed from Borodino to
Vilna, presented an example exceptional in history of self-sacrifice and
a present consciousness of the future importance of what was happening--
Kutuzov seems to them something indefinite and pitiful, and when
speaking of him and of the year 1812 they always seem a little ashamed.

And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose
activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be
difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the will
of the whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find an
instance in history of the aim of an historical personage being so
completely accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov's efforts were
directed in 1812.

Kutuzov never talked of "forty centuries looking down from the
Pyramids," of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what
he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he said
nothing about himself, adopted no pose, always appeared to be the
simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most
ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de
Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with
generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who tried
to prove anything to him. When Count Rostopchin at the Yauza bridge
galloped up to Kutuzov with personal reproaches for having caused the
destruction of Moscow, and said: "How was it you promised not to abandon
Moscow without a battle?" Kutuzov replied: "And I shall not abandon
Moscow without a battle," though Moscow was then already abandoned. When
Arakcheev, coming to him from the Emperor, said that Ermolov ought to be
appointed chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied: "Yes, I was just
saying so myself," though a moment before he had said quite the
contrary. What did it matter to him--who then alone amid a senseless
crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what was
happening--what did it matter to him whether Rostopchin attributed the
calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it matter to
him who was appointed chief of the artillery.

Not merely in these cases but continually did that old man--who by
experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the
words serving as their expression are not what move people--use quite
meaningless words that happened to enter his head.

But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the whole
time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single aim
toward which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite of
himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his real
thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be understood.
Beginning with the battle of Borodino, from which time his disagreement
with those about him began, he alone said that the battle of Borodino
was a victory, and repeated this both verbally and in his dispatches and
reports up to the time of his death. He alone said that the loss of
Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to Lauriston's proposal of
peace, he said: There can be no peace, for such is the people's will. He
alone during the retreat of the French said that all our maneuvers are
useless, everything is being accomplished of itself better than we could
desire; that the enemy must be offered "a golden bridge"; that neither
the Tarutino, the Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that
we must keep some force to reach the frontier with, and that he would
not sacrifice a single Russian for ten Frenchmen.

And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakcheev to
please the Emperor, he alone--incurring thereby the Emperor's
displeasure--said in Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier is
useless and harmful.

Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of the
events. His actions--without the smallest deviation--were all directed
to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his strength for
conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3) to drive them out
of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the sufferings of our people
and of our army.

This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was "Patience and Time," this
enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodino, investing the
preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutuzov who before
the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be lost, he alone, in
contradiction to everyone else, declared till his death that Borodino
was a victory, despite the assurance of generals that the battle was
lost and despite the fact that for an army to have to retire after
winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during the whole retreat
insisted that battles, which were useless then, should not be fought,
and that a new war should not be begun nor the frontiers of Russia
crossed.

It is easy now to understand the significance of these events--if only
we abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that
existed only in the heads of a dozen individuals--for the events and
results now lie before us.

But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general opinion,
so truly discern the importance of the people's view of the events that
in all his activity he was never once untrue to it?

The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of the
events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he possessed in
full purity and strength.

Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling caused
the people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar's wish, to
select him--an old man in disfavor--to be their representative in the
national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest human
pedestal from which he, the commander-in-chief, devoted all his powers
not to slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing pity on
them.

That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not be cast
in the false mold of a European hero--the supposed ruler of men--that
history has invented.

To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception of
greatness.




CHAPTER VI

The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle of
Krasnoe. Toward evening--after much disputing and many mistakes made by
generals who did not go to their proper places, and after adjutants had
been sent about with counterorders--when it had become plain that the
enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and would be no
battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither his headquarters
had that day been transferred.

The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on his plump little
white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented generals who
whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the road groups of
French prisoners captured that day (there were seven thousand of them)
were crowding to warm themselves at campfires. Near Dobroe an immense
crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with talk and wrapped and bandaged
in anything they had been able to get hold of, were standing in the road
beside a long row of unharnessed French guns. At the approach of the
commander-in-chief the buzz of talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on
Kutuzov who, wearing a white cap with a red band and a padded overcoat
that bulged on his round shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his
white horse. One of the generals was reporting to him where the guns and
prisoners had been captured.

Kutuzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general was
saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he gazed
attentively and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a specially
wretched appearance. Most of them were disfigured by frost-bitten noses
and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and festering eyes.

One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them, one of
whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of raw flesh
with their hands. There was something horrible and bestial in the
fleeting glance they threw at the riders and in the malevolent
expression with which, after a glance at Kutuzov, the soldier with the
sores immediately turned away and went on with what he was doing.

Kutuzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He puckered his
face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head. At another
spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a Frenchman on the
shoulder, saying something to him in a friendly manner, and Kutuzov with
the same expression on his face again swayed his head.

"What were you saying?" he asked the general, who continuing his report
directed the commander-in-chief's attention to some standards captured
from the French and standing in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment.

"Ah, the standards!" said Kutuzov, evidently detaching himself with
difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied him.

He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at him from
all sides awaiting a word from him.

He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment, sighed deeply, and
closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers carrying the
standards to advance and surround the commander-in-chief with them.
Kutuzov was silent for a few seconds and then, submitting with evident
reluctance to the duty imposed by his position, raised his head and
began to speak. A throng of officers surrounded him. He looked
attentively around at the circle of officers, recognizing several of
them.

"I thank you all!" he said, addressing the soldiers and then again the
officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words were
distinctly heard. "I thank you all for your hard and faithful service.
The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor to you
forever."

He paused and looked around.

"Lower its head, lower it!" he said to a soldier who had accidentally
lowered the French eagle he was holding before the Preobrazhensk
standards. "Lower, lower, that's it. Hurrah lads!" he added, addressing
the men with a rapid movement of his chin.

"Hur-r-rah!" roared thousands of voices.

While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned forward in his saddle
and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and apparently ironic
gleam.

"You see, brothers..." said he when the shouts had ceased... and all at
once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no longer
the commander-in-chief speaking but an ordinary old man who wanted to
tell his comrades something very important.

There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of the
soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was going to
say.

"You see, brothers, I know it's hard for you, but it can't be helped!
Bear up; it won't be for long now! We'll see our visitors off and then
we'll rest. The Tsar won't forget your service. It is hard for you, but
still you are at home while they--you see what they have come to," said
he, pointing to the prisoners. "Worse off than our poorest beggars.
While they were strong we didn't spare ourselves, but now we may even
pity them. They are human beings too. Isn't it so, lads?"

He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze fixed
upon him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew brighter
and brighter with an old man's mild smile, which drew the corners of his
lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased speaking and bowed
his head as if in perplexity.

"But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody
bastards!" he cried, suddenly lifting his head.

And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first time
during the whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the soldiers
laughing joyfully and shouting "Hurrah!"

Kutuzov's words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could have
repeated the field marshal's address, begun solemnly and then changing
into an old man's simplehearted talk; but the hearty sincerity of that
speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined with pity for the foe
and consciousness of the justice of our cause, exactly expressed by that
old man's good-natured expletives, was not merely understood but lay in
the soul of every soldier and found expression in their joyous and long-
sustained shouts. Afterwards when one of the generals addressed Kutuzov
asking whether he wished his caleche to be sent for, Kutuzov in
answering unexpectedly gave a sob, being evidently greatly moved.




CHAPTER VII

When the troops reached their night's halting place on the eighth of
November, the last day of the Krasnoe battles, it was already growing
dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional lightly
falling snow and toward evening it began to clear. Through the falling
snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost grew
keener.

An infantry regiment which had left Tarutino three thousand strong but
now numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that night
at its halting place--a village on the highroad. The quartermasters who
met the regiment announced that all the huts were full of sick and dead
Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff. There was only one hut
available for the regimental commander.

The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the
village and stacked its arms in front of the last huts.

Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its
lair and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep through
the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village, and
immediately the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of branches, and
merry voices could be heard from there. Another section amid the
regimental wagons and horses which were standing in a group was busy
getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding the horses. A third
section scattered through the village arranging quarters for the staff
officers, carrying out the French corpses that were in the huts, and
dragging away boards, dry wood, and thatch from the roofs, for the
campfires, or wattle fences to serve for shelter.

Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle
wall of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed.

"Now then, all together--shove!" cried the voices, and the huge surface
of the wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking with frost, was seen
swaying in the gloom of the night. The lower stakes cracked more and
more and at last the wall fell, and with it the men who had been pushing
it. Loud, coarse laughter and joyous shouts ensued.

"Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever! That's it... Where are
you shoving to?"

"Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a song!"

All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice began to sing. At
the end of the third verse as the last note died away, twenty voices
roared out at once: "Oo-oo-oo-oo! That's it. All together! Heave away,
boys!..." but despite their united efforts the wattle hardly moved, and
in the silence that followed the heavy breathing of the men was audible.

"Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are! Lend a hand...
will you? You may want us one of these days."

Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on their way into the
village joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, which was about thirty-
five feet long and seven feet high, moved forward along the village
street, swaying, pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of the gasping
men.

"Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There now..."

Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.

"What are you up to?" suddenly came the authoritative voice of a
sergeant major who came upon the men who were hauling their burden.
"There are gentry here; the general himself is in that hut, and you
foul-mouthed devils, you brutes, I'll give it to you!" shouted he,
hitting the first man who came in his way a swinging blow on the back.
"Can't you make less noise?"

The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck groaned and wiped
his face, which had been scratched till it bled by his falling against
the wattle.

"There, how that devil hits out! He's made my face all bloody," said he
in a frightened whisper when the sergeant major had passed on.

"Don't you like it?" said a laughing voice, and moderating their tones
the men moved forward.

When they were out of the village they began talking again as loud as
before, interlarding their talk with the same aimless expletives.

In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers had gathered and
were in animated talk over their tea about the events of the day and the
maneuvers suggested for tomorrow. It was proposed to make a flank march
to the left, cut off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture him.

By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence to its place the
campfires were blazing on all sides ready for cooking, the wood
crackled, the snow was melting, and black shadows of soldiers flitted to
and fro all over the occupied space where the snow had been trodden
down.

Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything was done without any
orders being given. Stores of wood were brought for the night, shelters
were rigged up for the officers, caldrons were being boiled, and muskets
and accouterments put in order.

The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a semicircle by the
Eighth Company as a shelter from the north, propped up by musket rests,
and a campfire was built before it. They beat the tattoo, called the
roll, had supper, and settled down round the fires for the night--some
repairing their footgear, some smoking pipes, and some stripping
themselves naked to steam the lice out of their shirts.




CHAPTER VIII

One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched
conditions the Russian soldiers were in at that time--lacking warm boots
and sheepskin coats, without a roof over their heads, in the snow with
eighteen degrees of frost, and without even full rations (the
commissariat did not always keep up with the troops)--they would have
presented a very sad and depressing spectacle.

On the contrary, the army had never under the best material conditions
presented a more cheerful and animated aspect. This was because all who
began to grow depressed or who lost strength were sifted out of the army
day by day. All the physically or morally weak had long since been left
behind and only the flower of the army--physically and mentally--
remained.

More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth Company than
anywhere else. Two sergeants major were sitting with them and their
campfire blazed brighter than others. For leave to sit by their wattle
they demanded contributions of fuel.

"Eh, Makeev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you lost or
have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a red-haired
and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking because of the
smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you, Jackdaw, go and fetch
some wood!" said he to another soldier.

This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being
robust he ordered about those weaker than himself. The soldier they
called "Jackdaw," a thin little fellow with a sharp nose, rose
obediently and was about to go but at that instant there came into the
light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier
carrying a load of wood.

"Bring it here--that's fine!"

They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire, blew at it with
their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their greatcoats, making
the flames hiss and crackle. The men drew nearer and lit their pipes.
The handsome young soldier who had brought the wood, setting his arms
akimbo, began stamping his cold feet rapidly and deftly on the spot
where he stood.

"Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It's well that I'm a
musketeer..." he sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable.

"Look out, your soles will fly off!" shouted the red-haired man,
noticing that the sole of the dancer's boot was hanging loose. "What a
fellow you are for dancing!"

The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather, and threw it
on the fire.

"Right enough, friend," said he, and, having sat down, took out of his
knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his foot.
"It's the steam that spoils them," he added, stretching out his feet
toward the fire.

"They'll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we've finished
hammering them, we're to receive double kits!"

"And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after all, it seems,"
said one sergeant major.

"I've had an eye on him this long while," said the other.

"Well, he's a poor sort of soldier..."

"But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday."

"Yes, it's all very well, but when a man's feet are frozen how can he
walk?"

"Eh? Don't talk nonsense!" said a sergeant major.

"Do you want to be doing the same?" said an old soldier, turning
reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet.

"Well, you know," said the sharp-nosed man they called Jackdaw in a
squeaky and unsteady voice, raising himself at the other side of the
fire, "a plump man gets thin, but for a thin one it's death. Take me,
now! I've got no strength left," he added, with sudden resolution
turning to the sergeant major. "Tell them to send me to hospital; I'm
aching all over; anyway I shan't be able to keep up."

"That'll do, that'll do!" replied the sergeant major quietly.

The soldier said no more and the talk went on.

"What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the fact is that
not one of them had what you might call real boots on," said a soldier,
starting a new theme. "They were no more than make-believes."

"The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were clearing the hut for the
colonel and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, boys," put in
the dancer. "As they turned them over one seemed still alive and, would
you believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo."

"But they're a clean folk, lads," the first man went on; "he was white--
as white as birchbark--and some of them are such fine fellows, you might
think they were nobles."

"Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there."

"But they don't understand our talk at all," said the dancer with a
puzzled smile. "I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in his
own way. A queer lot!"

"But it's strange, friends," continued the man who had wondered at their
whiteness, "the peasants at Mozhaysk were saying that when they began
burying the dead--where the battle was you know--well, those dead had
been lying there for nearly a month, and says the peasant, 'they lie as
white as paper, clean, and not as much smell as a puff of powder
smoke.'"

"Was it from the cold?" asked someone.

"You're a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If it
had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. 'But,' he
says, 'go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,' he says,
'we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as we drag
them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,' he says, 'are white as paper
and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.'"

All were silent.

"It must be from their food," said the sergeant major. "They used to
gobble the same food as the gentry."

No one contradicted him.

"That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said the men were all
called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days and
still didn't finish carting the dead away. And as for the wolves, he
says..."

"That was a real battle," said an old soldier. "It's the only one worth
remembering; but since that... it's only been tormenting folk."

"And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them and, my
word, they didn't let us get near before they just threw down their
muskets and went on their knees. 'Pardon!' they say. That's only one
case. They say Platov took 'Poleon himself twice. But he didn't know the
right charm. He catches him and catches him--no good! He turns into a
bird in his hands and flies away. And there's no way of killing him
either."

"You're a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look at you!"

"Liar, indeed! It's the real truth."

"If he fell into my hands, when I'd caught him I'd bury him in the
ground with an aspen stake to fix him down. What a lot of men he's
ruined!"

"Well, anyhow we're going to end it. He won't come here again," remarked
the old soldier, yawning.

The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began settling down to sleep.

"Look at the stars. It's wonderful how they shine! You would think the
women had spread out their linen," said one of the men, gazing with
admiration at the Milky Way.

"That's a sign of a good harvest next year."

"We shall want some more wood."

"You warm your back and your belly gets frozen. That's queer."

"O Lord!"

"What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you? Look how he's
sprawling!"

In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who had fallen asleep
could be heard. Others turned over and warmed themselves, now and again
exchanging a few words. From a campfire a hundred paces off came a sound
of general, merry laughter.

"Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!" said one of the
soldiers, "and what a lot of them there are!"

One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth Company.

"They're having such fun," said he, coming back. "Two Frenchies have
turned up. One's quite frozen and the other's an awful swaggerer. He's
singing songs...."

"Oh, I'll go across and have a look...."

And several of the men went over to the Fifth Company.




CHAPTER IX

The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge of the forest. A huge
campfire was blazing brightly in the midst of the snow, lighting up the
branches of trees heavy with hoarfrost.

About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the snow of the forest,
and the crackling of dry branches.

"A bear, lads," said one of the men.

They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the forest into the
bright firelight stepped two strangely clad human figures clinging to
one another.

These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the forest. They came up
to the fire, hoarsely uttering something in a language our soldiers did
not understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an officer's hat
and seemed quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he had been going to
sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy soldier with a shawl tied
round his head, was stronger. He raised his companion and said
something, pointing to his mouth. The soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen,
spread a greatcoat on the ground for the sick man, and brought some
buckwheat porridge and vodka for both of them.

The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man with his head
wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly.

When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his bowl of porridge he
suddenly became unnaturally merry and chattered incessantly to the
soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and
resting his head on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire, looking at
the Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes. Occasionally he emitted a
long-drawn groan and then again became silent. Morel, pointing to his
shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers the fact that Ramballe was
an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer who had come up to
the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he would not take a French
officer into his hut to warm him, and when the messenger returned and
said that the colonel wished the officer to be brought to him, Ramballe
was told to go. He rose and tried to walk, but staggered and would have
fallen had not a soldier standing by held him up.

"You won't do it again, eh?" said one of the soldiers, winking and
turning mockingly to Ramballe.

"Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are--a real peasant!"
came rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.

They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed arms of two
soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe put his arms around their
necks while they carried him and began wailing plaintively:

"Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh, my
brave, kind friends," and he leaned his head against the shoulder of one
of the men like a child.

Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire, surrounded by
the soldiers.

Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes, was
wearing a woman's cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round his
head over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a French song
in a hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the nearest soldier.
The soldiers simply held their sides as they watched him.

"Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I'll soon pick it up. How is
it?" said the man--a singer and a wag--whom Morel was embracing.

"Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!" sang Morel, winking. "Ce
diable a quatre..." *


* "Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That rowdy devil."

"Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!" repeated the soldier, flourishing
his arm and really catching the tune.

"Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!" rose their rough, joyous laughter from all sides.

Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.

"Well, go on, go on!"


"Qui eut le triple talent, De boire, de battre, Et d'etre un vert
galant." *


* Who had a triple talent For drinking, for fighting, And for being a
gallant old boy...

"It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletaev!"

"Ke..." Zaletaev, brought out with effort: "ke-e-e-e," he drawled,
laboriously pursing his lips, "le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-de-ba, e de-tra-va-
ga-la" he sang.

"Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want some more to eat?"

"Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled up after
starving."

They gave him some more porridge and Morel with a laugh set to work on
his third bowl. All the young soldiers smiled gaily as they watched him.
The older men, who thought it undignified to amuse themselves with such
nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side of the fire, but one
would occasionally raise himself on an elbow and glance at Morel with a
smile.

"They are men too," said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his
coat. "Even wormwood grows on its own root."

"O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That means a hard
frost...."

They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one was looking
at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now flaring up,
now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering something
gladsome and mysterious to one another.




CHAPTER X

The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical
progression; and that crossing of the Berezina about which so much has
been written was only one intermediate stage in its destruction, and not
at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been and
still is written about the Berezina, on the French side this is only
because at the broken bridge across that river the calamities their army
had been previously enduring were suddenly concentrated at one moment
into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory, and on the
Russian side merely because in Petersburg--far from the seat of war--a
plan (again one of Pfuel's) had been devised to catch Napoleon in a
strategic trap at the Berezina River. Everyone assured himself that all
would happen according to plan, and therefore insisted that it was just
the crossing of the Berezina that destroyed the French army. In reality
the results of the crossing were much less disastrous to the French--in
guns and men lost--than Krasnoe had been, as the figures show.

The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina lies in the fact
that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans for
cutting off the enemy's retreat and the soundness of the only possible
line of action--the one Kutuzov and the general mass of the army
demanded--namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd fled
at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed to
reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was impossible
to block its path. This was shown not so much by the arrangements it
made for crossing as by what took place at the bridges. When the bridges
broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from Moscow and women with children
who were with the French transport, all--carried on by vis inertiae--
pressed forward into boats and into the ice-covered water and did not,
surrender.

That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of pursuers
was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own people each
might hope for help from his fellows and the definite place he held
among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining in the same
pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share in the
necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed of the fact
that half the prisoners--with whom the Russians did not know what to do-
-perished of cold and hunger despite their captors' desire to save them;
they felt that it could not be otherwise. The most compassionate Russian
commanders, those favorable to the French--and even the Frenchmen in the
Russian service--could do nothing for the prisoners. The French perished
from the conditions to which the Russian army was itself exposed. It was
impossible to take bread and clothes from our hungry and indispensable
soldiers to give to the French who, though not harmful, or hated, or
guilty, were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did that, but they
were exceptions.

Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was hope.
Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in collective
flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was concentrated.

The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the
remnant, especially after the Berezina, on which (in consequence of the
Petersburg plan) special hopes had been placed by the Russians, and the
keener grew the passions of the Russian commanders, who blamed one
another and Kutuzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of the
Petersburg Berezina plan would be attributed to Kutuzov led to
dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and more strongly
expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of course expressed in a
respectful form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was to
blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when reporting to him or
asking for his sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable
formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead him at
every turn.

Because they could not understand him all these people assumed that it
was useless to talk to the old man; that he would never grasp the
profundity of their plans, that he would answer with his phrases (which
they thought were mere phrases) about a "golden bridge," about the
impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd of tatterdemalions,
and so forth. They had heard all that before. And all he said--that it
was necessary to await provisions, or that the men had no boots--was so
simple, while what they proposed was so complicated and clever, that it
was evident that he was old and stupid and that they, though not in
power, were commanders of genius.

After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and Petersburg
hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff reached their
maximum. Kutuzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
Only once, after the affair of the Berezina, did he get angry and write
to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the Emperor) the following
letter:

"On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency please be
so good as to set off for Kaluga on receipt of this, and there await
further commands and appointments from His Imperial Majesty."

But after Bennigsen's departure, the Grand Duke Tsarevich Constantine
Pavlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the beginning of the
campaign but had subsequently been removed from the army by Kutuzov. Now
having come to the army, he informed Kutuzov of the Emperor's
displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the slowness of their
advance. The Emperor intended to join the army personally in a few days'
time.

The old man, experienced in court as well as in military affairs--this
same Kutuzov who in August had been chosen commander-in-chief against
the sovereign's wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke and heir--
apparent from the army--who on his own authority and contrary to the
Emperor's will had decided on the abandonment of Moscow, now realized at
once that his day was over, that his part was played, and that the power
he was supposed to hold was no longer his. And he understood this not
merely from the attitude of the court. He saw on the one hand that the
military business in which he had played his part was ended and felt
that his mission was accomplished; and at the same time he began to be
conscious of the physical weariness of his aged body and of the
necessity of physical rest.

On the twenty-ninth of November Kutuzov entered Vilna--his "dear Vilna"
as he called it. Twice during his career Kutuzov had been governor of
Vilna. In that wealthy town, which had not been injured, he found old
friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of which he had
so long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the cares of army and
state and, as far as the passions that seethed around him allowed,
immersed himself in the quiet life to which he had formerly been
accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that had still to be
done in the realm of history did not concern him at all.

Chichagov, one of the most zealous "cutters-off" and "breakers-up," who
had first wanted to effect a diversion in Greece and then in Warsaw but
never wished to go where he was sent: Chichagov, noted for the boldness
with which he spoke to the Emperor, and who considered Kutuzov to be
under an obligation to him because when he was sent to make peace with
Turkey in 1811 independently of Kutuzov, and found that peace had
already been concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of
securing that peace was really Kutuzov's; this Chichagov was the first
to meet Kutuzov at the castle where the latter was to stay. In undress
naval uniform, with a dirk, and holding his cap under his arm, he handed
Kutuzov a garrison report and the keys of the town. The contemptuously
respectful attitude of the younger men to the old man in his dotage was
expressed in the highest degree by the behavior of Chichagov, who knew
of the accusations that were being directed against Kutuzov.

When speaking to Chichagov, Kutuzov incidentally mentioned that the
vehicles packed with china that had been captured from him at Borisov
had been recovered and would be restored to him.

"You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of.... On the
contrary, I can supply you with everything even if you want to give
dinner parties," warmly replied Chichagov, who tried by every word he
spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov to be
animated by the same desire.

Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle penetrating
smile: "I meant merely to say what I said."

Contrary to the Emperor's wish Kutuzov detained the greater part of the
army at Vilna. Those about him said that he became extraordinarily slack
and physically feeble during his stay in that town. He attended to army
affairs reluctantly, left everything to his generals, and while awaiting
the Emperor's arrival led a dissipated life.

Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with his suite--Count
Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski, Arakcheev, and others--the Emperor reached
Vilna on the eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh drove straight to the
castle. In spite of the severe frost some hundred generals and staff
officers in full parade uniform stood in front of the castle, as well as
a guard of honor of the Semenov regiment.

A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with three
foam-flecked horses, shouted "Coming!" and Konovnitsyn rushed into the
vestibule to inform Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall porter's little
lodge.

A minute later the old man's large stout figure in full-dress uniform,
his chest covered with orders and a scarf drawn round his stomach,
waddled out into the porch. He put on his hat with its peaks to the
sides and, holding his gloves in his hand and walking with an effort
sideways down the steps to the level of the street, took in his hand the
report he had prepared for the Emperor.

There was running to and fro and whispering; another troyka flew
furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh in
which the figures of the Emperor and Volkonski could already be
descried.

From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating effect
on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt himself all over,
readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up and, at
the very moment when the Emperor, having alighted from the sleigh,
lifted his eyes to him, handed him the report and began speaking in his
smooth, ingratiating voice.

The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from head to foot,
frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to the
old man, extended his arms and embraced him. And this embrace too, owing
to a long-standing impression related to his innermost feelings, had its
usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave a sob.

The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenov guard, and again
pressing the old man's hand went with him into the castle.

When alone with the field marshal the Emperor expressed his
dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit and at the mistakes made
at Krasnoe and the Berezina, and informed him of his intentions for a
future campaign abroad. Kutuzov made no rejoinder or remark. The same
submissive, expressionless look with which he had listened to the
Emperor's commands on the field of Austerlitz seven years before settled
on his face now.

When Kutuzov came out of the study and with lowered head was crossing
the ballroom with his heavy waddling gait, he was arrested by someone's
voice saying:

"Your Serene Highness!"

Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long while into the eyes of
Count Tolstoy, who stood before him holding a silver salver on which lay
a small object. Kutuzov seemed not to understand what was expected of
him.

Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely perceptible smile flashed
across his puffy face, and bowing low and respectfully he took the
object that lay on the salver. It was the Order of St. George of the
First Class.




CHAPTER XI

Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball which the Emperor
honored by his presence. Kutuzov had received the Order of St. George of
the First Class and the Emperor showed him the highest honors, but
everyone knew of the imperial dissatisfaction with him. The proprieties
were observed and the Emperor was the first to set that example, but
everybody understood that the old man was blameworthy and good-for-
nothing. When Kutuzov, conforming to a custom of Catherine's day,
ordered the standards that had been captured to be lowered at the
Emperor's feet on his entering the ballroom, the Emperor made a wry face
and muttered something in which some people caught the words, "the old
comedian."

The Emperor's displeasure with Kutuzov was specially increased at Vilna
by the fact that Kutuzov evidently could not or would not understand the
importance of the coming campaign.

When on the following morning the Emperor said to the officers assembled
about him: "You have not only saved Russia, you have saved Europe!" they
all understood that the war was not ended.

Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly expressed his opinion that
no fresh war could improve the position or add to the glory of Russia,
but could only spoil and lower the glorious position that Russia had
gained. He tried to prove to the Emperor the impossibility of levying
fresh troops, spoke of the hardships already endured by the people, of
the possibility of failure and so forth.

This being the field marshal's frame of mind he was naturally regarded
as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the impending war.

To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the natural method was
to do what had been done with him at Austerlitz and with Barclay at the
beginning of the Russian campaign--to transfer the authority to the
Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under the commander in
chief's feet without upsetting the old man by informing him of the
change.

With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed and its real
strength removed and transferred to the Emperor. Toll, Konovnitsyn, and
Ermolov received fresh appointments. Everyone spoke loudly of the field
marshal's great weakness and failing health.

His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away and given to
another. And in fact his health was poor.

So naturally, simply, and gradually--just as he had come from Turkey to
the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the militia, and then to the army
when he was needed there--now when his part was played out, Kutuzov's
place was taken by a new and necessary performer.

The war of 1812, besides its national significance dear to every Russian
heart, was now to assume another, a European, significance.

The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a
movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war another
leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing from
Kutuzov's and animated by different motives.

Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the peoples from east
to west and for the refixing of national frontiers as Kutuzov had been
for the salvation and glory of Russia.

Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, the balance of power, or
Napoleon meant. He could not understand it. For the representative of
the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia had
been liberated and raised to the summit of her glory, there was nothing
left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the representative of the
national war but to die, and Kutuzov died.




CHAPTER XII

As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the
physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until after
they were over. After his liberation he reached Orel, and on the third
day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was laid up for
three months. He had what the doctors termed "bilious fever." But
despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him
medicines to drink, he recovered.

Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre's mind by all that happened
to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He remembered only
the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy, internal physical
distress, and pains in his feet and side. He remembered a general
impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of people and of being
worried by the curiosity of officers and generals who questioned him, he
also remembered his difficulty in procuring a conveyance and horses, and
above all he remembered his incapacity to think and feel all that time.
On the day of his rescue he had seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same
day he had learned that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of
Borodino for more than a month had recently died in the Rostovs' house
at Yaroslavl, and Denisov who told him this news also mentioned Helene's
death, supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before. All this at
the time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its
significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as quickly as
possible from places where people were killing one another, to some
peaceful refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over all
the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orel he
immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw
in attendance on him two of his servants, Terenty and Vaska, who had
come from Moscow; and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had been
living on his estate at Elets and hearing of his rescue and illness had
come to look after him.

It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre lost the
impressions he had become accustomed to during the last few months and
got used to the idea that no one would oblige him to go anywhere
tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he
would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long time in
his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of captivity. In the
same way little by little he came to understand the news he had been
told after his rescue, about the death of Prince Andrew, the death of
his wife, and the destruction of the French.

A joyous feeling of freedom--that complete inalienable freedom natural
to man which he had first experienced at the first halt outside Moscow--
filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence. He was surprised to find
that this inner freedom, which was independent of external conditions,
now had as it were an additional setting of external liberty. He was
alone in a strange town, without acquaintances. No one demanded anything
of him or sent him anywhere. He had all he wanted: the thought of his
wife which had been a continual torment to him was no longer there,
since she was no more.

"Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself when a cleanly laid
table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down for
the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the French had
gone and that his wife was no more. "Oh, how good, how splendid!"

And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well, and what then?
What am I going to do?" And he immediately gave himself the answer:
"Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!"

The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he had
continually sought to find--the aim of life--no longer existed for him
now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared
temporarily--he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not
present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the
complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at
this time.

He could not see an aim, for he now had faith--not faith in any kind of
rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living, ever-manifest
God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set himself. That search for
an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity
he had learned not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling what his
nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere. In his
captivity he had learned that in Karataev God was greater, more infinite
and unfathomable than in the Architect of the Universe recognized by the
Freemasons. He felt like a man who after straining his eyes to see into
the far distance finds what he sought at his very feet. All his life he
had looked over the heads of the men around him, when he should have
merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes.

In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable
infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and
had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had only
what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had equipped
himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space, where
petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to him
great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And such had
European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy
seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted
them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen
the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he had
learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and
therefore--to see it and enjoy its contemplation--he naturally threw
away the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men's heads,
and gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable,
and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil
and happy he became. That dreadful question, "What for?" which had
formerly destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him.
To that question, "What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in
his soul: "Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one
hair falls from a man's head."




CHAPTER XIII

In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance he was
just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and seemed
occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something special of
his own. The difference between his former and present self was that
formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was said to him,
he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly seeking to
distinguish something at a distance. At present he still forgot what was
said to him and still did not see what was before his eyes, but he now
looked with a scarcely perceptible and seemingly ironic smile at what
was before him and listened to what was said, though evidently seeing
and hearing something quite different. Formerly he had appeared to be a
kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people had been inclined to avoid
him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played round his lips, and
sympathy for others, shone in his eyes with a questioning look as to
whether they were as contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his
presence.

Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he talked, and
seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in conversation and knew
how to listen so that people readily told him their most intimate
secrets.

The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been particularly
hostile to him since she had felt herself under obligations to him after
the old count's death, now after staying a short time in Orel--where she
had come intending to show Pierre that in spite of his ingratitude she
considered it her duty to nurse him--felt to her surprise and vexation
that she had become fond of him. Pierre did not in any way seek her
approval, he merely studied her with interest. Formerly she had felt
that he regarded her with indifference and irony, and so had shrunk into
herself as she did with others and had shown him only the combative side
of her nature; but now he seemed to be trying to understand the most
intimate places of her heart, and, mistrustfully at first but afterwards
gratefully, she let him see the hidden, kindly sides of her character.

The most cunning man could not have crept into her confidence more
successfully, evoking memories of the best times of her youth and
showing sympathy with them. Yet Pierre's cunning consisted simply in
finding pleasure in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered,
hard, and (in her own way) proud princess.

"Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under the influence of
bad people but of people such as myself," thought she.

His servants too--Terenty and Vaska--in their own way noticed the change
that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had become much
"simpler." Terenty, when he had helped him undress and wished him good
night, often lingered with his master's boots in his hands and clothes
over his arm, to see whether he would not start a talk. And Pierre,
noticing that Terenty wanted a chat, generally kept him there.

"Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?" he would ask.

And Terenty would begin talking of the destruction of Moscow, and of the
old count, and would stand for a long time holding the clothes and
talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre's stories, and then would go
out into the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master and
affection for him.

The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every day, though he
considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a man whose every moment
was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with Pierre
telling him his favorite anecdotes and his observations on the
characters of his patients in general, and especially of the ladies.

"It's a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our
provincials," he would say.

There were several prisoners from the French army in Orel, and the
doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre.

This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to make fun of
the tenderness the Italian expressed for him.

The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to see Pierre, talk
with him, tell him about his past, his life at home, and his love, and
pour out to him his indignation against the French and especially
against Napoleon.

"If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to fight
such a nation," he said to Pierre. "You, who have suffered so from the
French, do not even feel animosity toward them."

Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian merely by
evoking the best side of his nature and taking a pleasure in so doing.

During the last days of Pierre's stay in Orel his old masonic
acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced him to the lodge in
1807, came to see him. Willarski was married to a Russian heiress who
had a large estate in Orel province, and he occupied a temporary post in
the commissariat department in that town.

Hearing that Bezukhov was in Orel, Willarski, though they had never been
intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship and intimacy
that people who meet in a desert generally express for one another.
Willarski felt dull in Orel and was pleased to meet a man of his own
circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests.

But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre had lagged much
behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself, into
apathy and egotism.

"You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow," he said.

But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it had been
formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him every day. To Pierre as
he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to think that
he had been like that himself but a short time before.

Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with his family affairs,
his wife's affairs, and his official duties. He regarded all these
occupations as hindrances to life, and considered that they were all
contemptible because their aim was the welfare of himself and his
family. Military, administrative, political, and masonic interests
continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre, without trying to change
the other's views and without condemning him, but with the quiet,
joyful, and amused smile now habitual to him, was interested in this
strange though very familiar phenomenon.

There was a new feature in Pierre's relations with Willarski, with the
princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met, which
gained for him the general good will. This was his acknowledgment of the
impossibility of changing a man's convictions by words, and his
recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing
things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of
each individual which used to excite and irritate Pierre now became a
basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other
people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between
men's opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased
him and drew from him an amused and gentle smile.

In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a center of
gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly all pecuniary questions,
especially requests for money to which, as an extremely wealthy man, he
was very exposed, produced in him a state of hopeless agitation and
perplexity. "To give or not to give?" he had asked himself. "I have it
and he needs it. But someone else needs it still more. Who needs it
most? And perhaps they are both impostors?" In the old days he had been
unable to find a way out of all these surmises and had given to all who
asked as long as he had anything to give. Formerly he had been in a
similar state of perplexity with regard to every question concerning his
property, when one person advised one thing and another something else.

Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either doubt or
perplexity about these questions. There was now within him a judge who
by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should not be done.

He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but now he felt
certain of what ought and what ought not to be done. The first time he
had recourse to his new judge was when a French prisoner, a colonel,
came to him and, after talking a great deal about his exploits,
concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre should give
him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children. Pierre
refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was afterwards
surprised how simple and easy had been what used to appear so
insurmountably difficult. At the same time that he refused the colonel's
demand he made up his mind that he must have recourse to artifice when
leaving Orel, to induce the Italian officer to accept some money of
which he was evidently in need. A further proof to Pierre of his own
more settled outlook on practical matters was furnished by his decision
with regard to his wife's debts and to the rebuilding of his houses in
and near Moscow.

His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre reckoned up with him his
diminished income. The burning of Moscow had cost him, according to the
head steward's calculation, about two million rubles.

To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave him an estimate
showing that despite these losses his income would not be diminished but
would even be increased if he refused to pay his wife's debts which he
was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild his Moscow house
and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had cost him eighty
thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing.

"Yes, of course that's true," said Pierre with a cheerful smile. "I
don't need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much richer."

But in January Savelich came from Moscow and gave him an account of the
state of things there, and spoke of the estimate an architect had made
of the cost of rebuilding the town and country houses, speaking of this
as of a settled matter. About the same time he received letters from
Prince Vasili and other Petersburg acquaintances speaking of his wife's
debts. And Pierre decided that the steward's proposals which had so
pleased him were wrong and that he must go to Petersburg and settle his
wife's affairs and must rebuild in Moscow. Why this was necessary he did
not know, but he knew for certain that it was necessary. His income
would be reduced by three fourths, but he felt it must be done.

Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to travel together.

During the whole time of his convalescence in Orel Pierre had
experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life; but when during his
journey he found himself in the open world and saw hundreds of new
faces, that feeling was intensified. Throughout his journey he felt like
a schoolboy on holiday. Everyone--the stagecoach driver, the post-house
overseers, the peasants on the roads and in the villages--had a new
significance for him. The presence and remarks of Willarski who
continually deplored the ignorance and poverty of Russia and its
backwardness compared with Europe only heightened Pierre's pleasure.
Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary strength and
vitality--the strength which in that vast space amid the snows
maintained the life of this original, peculiar, and unique people. He
did not contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree with him--an
apparent agreement being the simplest way to avoid discussions that
could lead to nothing--and he smiled joyfully as he listened to him.




CHAPTER XIV

It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap has
been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of
rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they
jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally
difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of the
French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But when we
watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity, energy, and
immense number of the delving insects prove that despite the destruction
of the heap, something indestructible, which though intangible is the
real strength of the colony, still exists; and similarly, though in
Moscow in the month of October there was no government and no churches,
shrines, riches, or houses--it was still the Moscow it had been in
August. All was destroyed, except something intangible yet powerful and
indestructible.

The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after it had
been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and at first
for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all had in
common: a desire to get to the place that had been called Moscow, to
apply their activities there.

Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in a
fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn of 1813 the
number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in
1812.

The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of Wintzingerode's
detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and residents who had
fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its vicinity. The Russians who
entered Moscow, finding it plundered, plundered it in their turn. They
continued what the French had begun. Trains of peasant carts came to
Moscow to carry off to the villages what had been abandoned in the
ruined houses and the streets. The Cossacks carried off what they could
to their camps, and the householders seized all they could find in other
houses and moved it to their own, pretending that it was their property.

But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third
contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more and more
difficult and assumed more definite forms.

The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations of
regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and craftsmanship, with
luxury, and governmental and religious institutions. These forms were
lifeless but still existed. There were bazaars, shops, warehouses,
market stalls, granaries--for the most part still stocked with goods--
and there were factories and workshops, palaces and wealthy houses
filled with luxuries, hospitals, prisons, government offices, churches,
and cathedrals. The longer the French remained the more these forms of
town life perished, until finally all was merged into one confused,
lifeless scene of plunder.

The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the
wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed. But
plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city
began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the greater
the number of people taking part in it the more rapidly was the wealth
of the city and its regular life restored.

Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by curiosity,
some by official duties, some by self-interest--house owners, clergy,
officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and peasants--streamed into
Moscow as blood flows to the heart.

Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry off
plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the corpses out
of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their comrades'
discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat down
one another's prices to below what they had been in former days. Gangs
of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in Moscow every day, and on
all sides logs were being hewn, new houses built, and old, charred ones
repaired. Tradesmen began trading in booths. Cookshops and taverns were
opened in partially burned houses. The clergy resumed the services in
many churches that had not been burned. Donors contributed Church
property that had been stolen. Government clerks set up their baize-
covered tables and their pigeonholes of documents in small rooms. The
higher authorities and the police organized the distribution of goods
left behind by the French. The owners of houses in which much property
had been left, brought there from other houses, complained of the
injustice of taking everything to the Faceted Palace in the Kremlin;
others insisted that as the French had gathered things from different
houses into this or that house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to
keep all that was found there. They abused the police and bribed them,
made out estimates at ten times their value for government stores that
had perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin
wrote proclamations.




CHAPTER XV

At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex of
his house which had not been burned. He called on Count Rostopchin and
on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he intended to leave
for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was celebrating the victory,
everything was bubbling with life in the ruined but reviving city.
Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone wished to meet him, and
everyone questioned him about what he had seen. Pierre felt particularly
well disposed toward them all, but was now instinctively on his guard
for fear of binding himself in any way. To all questions put to him--
whether important or quite trifling--such as: Where would he live? Was
he going to rebuild? When was he going to Petersburg and would he mind
taking a parcel for someone?--he replied: "Yes, perhaps," or, "I think
so," and so on.

He had heard that the Rostovs were at Kostroma but the thought of
Natasha seldom occurred to him. If it did it was only as a pleasant
memory of the distant past. He felt himself not only free from social
obligations but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him, he had
aroused in himself.

On the third day after his arrival he heard from the Drubetskoys that
Princess Mary was in Moscow. The death, sufferings, and last days of
Prince Andrew had often occupied Pierre's thoughts and now recurred to
him with fresh vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess Mary was
in Moscow and living in her house--which had not been burned--in
Vozdvizhenka Street, he drove that same evening to see her.

On his way to the house Pierre kept thinking of Prince Andrew, of their
friendship, of his various meetings with him, and especially of the last
one at Borodino.

"Is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind he was then in?
Is it possible that the meaning of life was not disclosed to him before
he died?" thought Pierre. He recalled Karataev and his death and
involuntarily began to compare these two men, so different, and yet so
similar in that they had both lived and both died and in the love he
felt for both of them.

Pierre drove up to the house of the old prince in a most serious mood.
The house had escaped the fire; it showed signs of damage but its
general aspect was unchanged. The old footman, who met Pierre with a
stern face as if wishing to make the visitor feel that the absence of
the old prince had not disturbed the order of things in the house,
informed him that the princess had gone to her own apartments, and that
she received on Sundays.

"Announce me. Perhaps she will see me," said Pierre.

"Yes, sir," said the man. "Please step into the portrait gallery."

A few minutes later the footman returned with Dessalles, who brought
word from the princess that she would be very glad to see Pierre if he
would excuse her want of ceremony and come upstairs to her apartment.

In a rather low room lit by one candle sat the princess and with her
another person dressed in black. Pierre remembered that the princess
always had lady companions, but who they were and what they were like he
never knew or remembered. "This must be one of her companions," he
thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress.

The princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her hand.

"Yes," she said, looking at his altered face after he had kissed her
hand, "so this is how we meet again. He spoke of you even at the very
last," she went on, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion with a
shyness that surprised him for an instant.

"I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the first piece of good
news we had received for a long time."

Again the princess glanced round at her companion with even more
uneasiness in her manner and was about to add something, but Pierre
interrupted her.

"Just imagine--I knew nothing about him!" said he. "I thought he had
been killed. All I know I heard at second hand from others. I only know
that he fell in with the Rostovs.... What a strange coincidence!"

Pierre spoke rapidly and with animation. He glanced once at the
companion's face, saw her attentive and kindly gaze fixed on him, and,
as often happens when one is talking, felt somehow that this companion
in the black dress was a good, kind, excellent creature who would not
hinder his conversing freely with Princess Mary.

But when he mentioned the Rostovs, Princess Mary's face expressed still
greater embarrassment. She again glanced rapidly from Pierre's face to
that of the lady in the black dress and said:

"Do you really not recognize her?"

Pierre looked again at the companion's pale, delicate face with its
black eyes and peculiar mouth, and something near to him, long forgotten
and more than sweet, looked at him from those attentive eyes.

"But no, it can't be!" he thought. "This stern, thin, pale face that
looks so much older! It cannot be she. It merely reminds me of her." But
at that moment Princess Mary said, "Natasha!" And with difficulty,
effort, and stress, like the opening of a door grown rusty on its
hinges, a smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes, and from
that opening door came a breath of fragrance which suffused Pierre with
a happiness he had long forgotten and of which he had not even been
thinking--especially at that moment. It suffused him, seized him, and
enveloped him completely. When she smiled doubt was no longer possible,
it was Natasha and he loved her.

At that moment Pierre involuntarily betrayed to her, to Princess Mary,
and above all to himself, a secret of which he himself had been unaware.
He flushed joyfully yet with painful distress. He tried to hide his
agitation. But the more he tried to hide it the more clearly--clearer
than any words could have done--did he betray to himself, to her, and to
Princess Mary that he loved her.

"No, it's only the unexpectedness of it," thought Pierre. But as soon as
he tried to continue the conversation he had begun with Princess Mary he
again glanced at Natasha, and a still-deeper flush suffused his face and
a still-stronger agitation of mingled joy and fear seized his soul. He
became confused in his speech and stopped in the middle of what he was
saying.

Pierre had failed to notice Natasha because he did not at all expect to
see her there, but he had failed to recognize her because the change in
her since he last saw her was immense. She had grown thin and pale, but
that was not what made her unrecognizable; she was unrecognizable at the
moment he entered because on that face whose eyes had always shone with
a suppressed smile of the joy of life, now when he first entered and
glanced at her there was not the least shadow of a smile: only her eyes
were kindly attentive and sadly interrogative.

Pierre's confusion was not reflected by any confusion on Natasha's part,
but only by the pleasure that just perceptibly lit up her whole face.




CHAPTER XVI

"She has come to stay with me," said Princess Mary. "The count and
countess will be here in a few days. The countess is in a dreadful
state; but it was necessary for Natasha herself to see a doctor. They
insisted on her coming with me."

"Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?" said Pierre, addressing
Natasha. "You know it happened the very day we were rescued. I saw him.
What a delightful boy he was!"

Natasha looked at him, and by way of answer to his words her eyes
widened and lit up.

"What can one say or think of as a consolation?" said Pierre. "Nothing!
Why had such a splendid boy, so full of life, to die?"

"Yes, in these days it would be hard to live without faith..." remarked
Princess Mary.

"Yes, yes, that is really true," Pierre hastily interrupted her.

"Why is it true?" Natasha asked, looking attentively into Pierre's eyes.

"How can you ask why?" said Princess Mary. "The thought alone of what
awaits..."

Natasha without waiting for Princess Mary to finish again looked
inquiringly at Pierre.

"And because," Pierre continued, "only one who believes that there is a
God ruling us can bear a loss such as hers and... yours."

Natasha had already opened her mouth to speak but suddenly stopped.
Pierre hurriedly turned away from her and again addressed Princess Mary,
asking about his friend's last days.

Pierre's confusion had now almost vanished, but at the same time he felt
that his freedom had also completely gone. He felt that there was now a
judge of his every word and action whose judgment mattered more to him
than that of all the rest of the world. As he spoke now he was
considering what impression his words would make on Natasha. He did not
purposely say things to please her, but whatever he was saying he
regarded from her standpoint.

Princess Mary--reluctantly as is usual in such cases--began telling of
the condition in which she had found Prince Andrew. But Pierre's face
quivering with emotion, his questions and his eager restless expression,
gradually compelled her to go into details which she feared to recall
for her own sake.

"Yes, yes, and so...?" Pierre kept saying as he leaned toward her with
his whole body and eagerly listened to her story. "Yes, yes... so he
grew tranquil and softened? With all his soul he had always sought one
thing--to be perfectly good--so he could not be afraid of death. The
faults he had--if he had any--were not of his making. So he did
soften?... What a happy thing that he saw you again," he added, suddenly
turning to Natasha and looking at her with eyes full of tears.

Natasha's face twitched. She frowned and lowered her eyes for a moment.
She hesitated for an instant whether to speak or not.

"Yes, that was happiness," she then said in her quiet voice with its
deep chest notes. "For me it certainly was happiness." She paused. "And
he... he... he said he was wishing for it at the very moment I entered
the room...."

Natasha's voice broke. She blushed, pressed her clasped hands on her
knees, and then controlling herself with an evident effort lifted her
head and began to speak rapidly.

"We knew nothing of it when we started from Moscow. I did not dare to
ask about him. Then suddenly Sonya told me he was traveling with us. I
had no idea and could not imagine what state he was in, all I wanted was
to see him and be with him," she said, trembling, and breathing quickly.

And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell what she had
never yet mentioned to anyone--all she had lived through during those
three weeks of their journey and life at Yaroslavl.

Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed upon her full of
tears. As he listened he did not think of Prince Andrew, nor of death,
nor of what she was telling. He listened to her and felt only pity for
her, for what she was suffering now while she was speaking.

Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her tears, sat beside
Natasha, and heard for the first time the story of those last days of
her brother's and Natasha's love.

Evidently Natasha needed to tell that painful yet joyful tale.

She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate secrets of
her soul, and it seemed as if she could never finish. Several times she
repeated the same thing twice.

Dessalles' voice was heard outside the door asking whether little
Nicholas might come in to say good night.

"Well, that's all--everything," said Natasha.

She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran to the door
which was hidden by curtains, struck her head against it, and rushed
from the room with a moan either of pain or sorrow.

Pierre gazed at the door through which she had disappeared and did not
understand why he suddenly felt all alone in the world.

Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by drawing his attention
to her nephew who had entered the room.

At that moment of emotional tenderness young Nicholas' face, which
resembled his father's, affected Pierre so much that when he had kissed
the boy he got up quickly, took out his handkerchief, and went to the
window. He wished to take leave of Princess Mary, but she would not let
him go.

"No, Natasha and I sometimes don't go to sleep till after two, so please
don't go. I will order supper. Go downstairs, we will come immediately."

Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him: "This is the first
time she has talked of him like that."




CHAPTER XVII

Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining room; a few minutes
later he heard footsteps and Princess Mary entered with Natasha. Natasha
was calm, though a severe and grave expression had again settled on her
face. They all three of them now experienced that feeling of awkwardness
which usually follows after a serious and heartfelt talk. It is
impossible to go back to the same conversation, to talk of trifles is
awkward, and yet the desire to speak is there and silence seems like
affectation. They went silently to table. The footmen drew back the
chairs and pushed them up again. Pierre unfolded his cold table napkin
and, resolving to break the silence, looked at Natasha and at Princess
Mary. They had evidently both formed the same resolution; the eyes of
both shone with satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life
also has joy.

"Do you take vodka, Count?" asked Princess Mary, and those words
suddenly banished the shadows of the past. "Now tell us about yourself,"
said she. "One hears such improbable wonders about you."

"Yes," replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to him.
"They even tell me wonders I myself never dreamed of! Mary Abramovna
invited me to her house and kept telling me what had happened, or ought
to have happened, to me. Stepan Stepanych also instructed me how I ought
to tell of my experiences. In general I have noticed that it is very
easy to be an interesting man (I am an interesting man now); people
invite me out and tell me all about myself."

Natasha smiled and was on the point of speaking.

"We have been told," Princess Mary interrupted her, "that you lost two
millions in Moscow. Is that true?"

"But I am three times as rich as before," returned Pierre.

Though the position was now altered by his decision to pay his wife's
debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still maintained that he had
become three times as rich as before.

"What I have certainly gained is freedom," he began seriously, but did
not continue, noticing that this theme was too egotistic.

"And are you building?"

"Yes. Savelich says I must!"

"Tell me, you did not know of the countess' death when you decided to
remain in Moscow?" asked Princess Mary and immediately blushed, noticing
that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed to his
words a meaning he had perhaps not intended.

"No," answered Pierre, evidently not considering awkward the meaning
Princess Mary had given to his words. "I heard of it in Orel and you
cannot imagine how it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple," he
added quickly, glancing at Natasha and noticing on her face curiosity as
to how he would speak of his wife, "but her death shocked me terribly.
When two people quarrel they are always both in fault, and one's own
guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other is no longer
alive. And then such a death... without friends and without consolation!
I am very, very sorry for her," he concluded, and was pleased to notice
a look of glad approval on Natasha's face.

"Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor," said Princess
Mary.

Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time tried not to look at
Natasha. When he ventured to glance her way again her face was cold,
stern, and he fancied even contemptuous.

"And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we have been told?"
said Princess Mary.

Pierre laughed.

"No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being taken prisoner
means being Napoleon's guest. Not only did I never see him but I heard
nothing about him--I was in much lower company!"

Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak about his
captivity was gradually led on to do so.

"But it's true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?" Natasha
asked with a slight smile. "I guessed it then when we met at the
Sukharev tower, do you remember?"

Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by
Princess Mary's questions and especially by Natasha's into giving a
detailed account of his adventures.

At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary with him
toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he came to
describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was
unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed
emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he
has lived through.

Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre and now at
Natasha. In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his goodness.
Natasha, leaning on her elbow, the expression of her face constantly
changing with the narrative, watched Pierre with an attention that never
wandered--evidently herself experiencing all that he described. Not only
her look, but her exclamations and the brief questions she put, showed
Pierre that she understood just what he wished to convey. It was clear
that she understood not only what he said but also what he wished to,
but could not, express in words. The account Pierre gave of the incident
with the child and the woman for protecting whom he was arrested was
this: "It was an awful sight--children abandoned, some in the flames...
One was snatched out before my eyes... and there were women who had
their things snatched off and their earrings torn out..." he flushed and
grew confused. "Then a patrol arrived and all the men--all those who
were not looting, that is--were arrested, and I among them."

"I am sure you're not telling us everything; I am sure you did
something..." said Natasha and pausing added, "something fine?"

Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he wanted to pass over
the horrible details, but Natasha insisted that he should not omit
anything.

Pierre began to tell about Karataev, but paused. By this time he had
risen from the table and was pacing the room, Natasha following him with
her eyes. Then he added:

"No, you can't understand what I learned from that illiterate man--that
simple fellow."

"Yes, yes, go on!" said Natasha. "Where is he?"

"They killed him almost before my eyes."

And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to tell of the last
days of their retreat, of Karataev's illness and his death.

He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled them. He now, as
it were, saw a new meaning in all he had gone through. Now that he was
telling it all to Natasha he experienced that pleasure which a man has
when women listen to him--not clever women who when listening either try
to remember what they hear to enrich their minds and when opportunity
offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt it to some thought of their
own and promptly contribute their own clever comments prepared in their
little mental workshop--but the pleasure given by real women gifted with
a capacity to select and absorb the very best a man shows of himself.
Natasha without knowing it was all attention: she did not lose a word,
no single quiver in Pierre's voice, no look, no twitch of a muscle in
his face, nor a single gesture. She caught the unfinished word in its
flight and took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret
meaning of all Pierre's mental travail.

Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized with him, but she now
saw something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw the
possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre, and the
first thought of this filled her heart with gladness.

It was three o'clock in the morning. The footmen came in with sad and
stern faces to change the candles, but no one noticed them.

Pierre finished his story. Natasha continued to look at him intently
with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as if trying to understand
something more which he had perhaps left untold. Pierre in shamefaced
and happy confusion glanced occasionally at her, and tried to think what
to say next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess Mary was silent. It
occurred to none of them that it was three o'clock and time to go to
bed.

"People speak of misfortunes and sufferings," remarked Pierre, "but if
at this moment I were asked: 'Would you rather be what you were before
you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?' then for
heaven's sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh! We imagine
that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is
only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is
happiness. There is much, much before us. I say this to you," he added,
turning to Natasha.

"Yes, yes," she said, answering something quite different. "I too should
wish nothing but to relive it all from the beginning."

Pierre looked intently at her.

"Yes, and nothing more," said Natasha.

"It's not true, not true!" cried Pierre. "I am not to blame for being
alive and wishing to live--nor you either."

Suddenly Natasha bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and
began to cry.

"What is it, Natasha?" said Princess Mary.

"Nothing, nothing." She smiled at Pierre through her tears. "Good night!
It is time for bed."

Pierre rose and took his leave.

Princess Mary and Natasha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked of
what Pierre had told them. Princess Mary did not express her opinion of
Pierre nor did Natasha speak of him.

"Well, good night, Mary!" said Natasha. "Do you know, I am often afraid
that by not speaking of him" (she meant Prince Andrew) "for fear of not
doing justice to our feelings, we forget him."

Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged the justice of
Natasha's remark, but she did not express agreement in words.

"Is it possible to forget?" said she.

"It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was hard and
painful, but good, very good!" said Natasha. "I am sure he really loved
him. That is why I told him... Was it all right?" she added, suddenly
blushing.

"To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!" said Princess
Mary.

"Do you know, Mary..." Natasha suddenly said with a mischievous smile
such as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long time, "he has
somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh--as if he had just come out of
a Russian bath; do you understand? Out of a moral bath. Isn't it true?"

"Yes," replied Princess Mary. "He has greatly improved."

"With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well, just as if he
had come straight from the bath... Papa used to..."

"I understand why he" (Prince Andrew) "liked no one so much as him,"
said Princess Mary.

"Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are friends when they
are quite different. That must be true. Really he is quite unlike him--
in everything."

"Yes, but he's wonderful."

"Well, good night," said Natasha.

And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her face as
if it had been forgotten there.




CHAPTER XVIII

It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night. He paced
up and down his room, now turning his thoughts on a difficult problem
and frowning, now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and wincing, and now
smiling happily.

He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natasha, and of their love, at one
moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that feeling.
It was already six in the morning and he still paced up and down the
room.

"Well, what's to be done if it cannot be avoided? What's to be done?
Evidently it has to be so," said he to himself, and hastily undressing
he got into bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or
indecision.

"Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must do everything
that she and I may be man and wife," he told himself.

A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on the
Friday. When he awoke on the Thursday, Savelich came to ask him about
packing for the journey.

"What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there in Petersburg?"
he asked involuntarily, though only to himself. "Oh, yes, long ago
before this happened I did for some reason mean to go to Petersburg," he
reflected. "Why? But perhaps I shall go. What a good fellow he is and
how attentive, and how he remembers everything," he thought, looking at
Savelich's old face, "and what a pleasant smile he has!"

"Well, Savelich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?" Pierre
asked him.

"What's the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We lived under the
late count--the kingdom of heaven be his!--and we have lived under you
too, without ever being wronged."

"And your children?"

"The children will live just the same. With such masters one can live."

"But what about my heirs?" said Pierre. "Supposing I suddenly marry...
it might happen," he added with an involuntary smile.

"If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a good thing."

"How easy he thinks it," thought Pierre. "He doesn't know how terrible
it is and how dangerous. Too soon or too late... it is terrible!"

"So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?" asked Savelich.

"No, I'll put it off for a bit. I'll tell you later. You must forgive
the trouble I have put you to," said Pierre, and seeing Savelich smile,
he thought: "But how strange it is that he should not know that now
there is no Petersburg for me, and that that must be settled first of
all! But probably he knows it well enough and is only pretending. Shall
I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?" Pierre reflected. "No,
another time."

At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he had been to
see Princess Mary the day before and had there met--"Whom do you think?
Natasha Rostova!"

The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than if he
had seen Anna Semenovna.

"Do you know her?" asked Pierre.

"I have seen the princess," she replied. "I heard that they were
arranging a match for her with young Rostov. It would be a very good
thing for the Rostovs, they are said to be utterly ruined."

"No; I mean do you know Natasha Rostova?"

"I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a great pity."

"No, she either doesn't understand or is pretending," thought Pierre.
"Better not say anything to her either."

The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre's journey.

"How kind they all are," thought Pierre. "What is surprising is that
they should trouble about these things now when it can no longer be of
interest to them. And all for me!"

On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre, inviting him to send
a representative to the Faceted Palace to recover things that were to be
returned to their owners that day.

"And this man too," thought Pierre, looking into the face of the Chief
of Police. "What a fine, good-looking officer and how kind. Fancy
bothering about such trifles now! And they actually say he is not honest
and takes bribes. What nonsense! Besides, why shouldn't he take bribes?
That's the way he was brought up, and everybody does it. But what a
kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at me."

Pierre went to Princess Mary's to dinner.

As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned
down, he was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The picturesqueness
of the chimney stacks and tumble-down walls of the burned-out quarters
of the town, stretching out and concealing one another, reminded him of
the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he met and their passengers, the
carpenters cutting the timber for new houses with axes, the women
hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked at him with cheerful beaming
eyes that seemed to say: "Ah, there he is! Let's see what will come of
it!"

At the entrance to Princess Mary's house Pierre felt doubtful whether he
had really been there the night before and really seen Natasha and
talked to her. "Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall go in and find no
one there." But he had hardly entered the room before he felt her
presence with his whole being by the loss of his sense of freedom. She
was in the same black dress with soft folds and her hair was done the
same way as the day before, yet she was quite different. Had she been
like this when he entered the day before he could not for a moment have
failed to recognize her.

She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince
Andrew's fiancee. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on
her face was a friendly and strangely roguish expression.

Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there, but
Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house with her.

Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening. Though
Princess Mary and Natasha were evidently glad to see their visitor and
though all Pierre's interest was now centered in that house, by the
evening they had talked over everything and the conversation passed from
one trivial topic to another and repeatedly broke off. He stayed so long
that Princess Mary and Natasha exchanged glances, evidently wondering
when he would go. Pierre noticed this but could not go. He felt uneasy
and embarrassed, but sat on because he simply could not get up and take
his leave.

Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and complaining of
a headache began to say good night.

"So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?" she asked.

"No, I am not going," Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone and as
though offended. "Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow--but I won't say
good-by yet. I will call round in case you have any commissions for me,"
said he, standing before Princess Mary and turning red, but not taking
his departure.

Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other hand
instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly and
intently at him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she had
plainly shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and long-
drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.

When Natasha left the room Pierre's confusion and awkwardness
immediately vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly
moved an armchair toward Princess Mary.

"Yes, I wanted to tell you," said he, answering her look as if she had
spoken. "Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess, my
dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of her, I
know it's impossible to speak of it now. But I want to be a brother to
her. No, not that, I don't, I can't..."

He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.

"Well," he went on with an evident effort at self-control and coherence.
"I don't know when I began to love her, but I have loved her and her
alone all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine life without
her. I cannot propose to her at present, but the thought that perhaps
she might someday be my wife and that I may be missing that
possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell me, can I hope?
Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!" he added after a pause, and
touched her hand as she did not reply.

"I am thinking of what you have told me," answered Princess Mary. "This
is what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love at
present..."

Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love was
impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden change in
Natasha two days before that she would not only not be hurt if Pierre
spoke of his love, but that it was the very thing she wished for.

"To speak to her now wouldn't do," said the princess all the same.

"But what am I to do?"

"Leave it to me," said Princess Mary. "I know..."

Pierre was looking into Princess Mary's eyes.

"Well?... Well?..." he said.

"I know that she loves... will love you," Princess Mary corrected
herself.

Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and with a frightened
expression seized Princess Mary's hand.

"What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think...?"

"Yes, I think so," said Princess Mary with a smile. "Write to her
parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it to
happen and my heart tells me it will."

"No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can't be.... How happy I am!
No, it can't be!" Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess Mary's hands.

"Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you," she
said.

"To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I'll go. But I may come again
tomorrow?"

Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less animated than she
had been the day before; but that day as he looked at her Pierre
sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor she
existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness. "Is it possible?
No, it can't be," he told himself at every look, gesture, and word that
filled his soul with joy.

When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand, he could not help
holding it a little longer in his own.

"Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this treasure
of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that it will one
day be mine forever, as familiar to me as I am to myself?... No, that's
impossible!..."

"Good-bye, Count," she said aloud. "I shall look forward very much to
your return," she added in a whisper.

And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face which
accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of inexhaustible
memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for Pierre. "'I shall
look forward very much to your return....' Yes, yes, how did she say it?
Yes, 'I shall look forward very much to your return.' Oh, how happy I
am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!" said Pierre to himself.




CHAPTER XIX

There was nothing in Pierre's soul now at all like what had troubled it
during his courtship of Helene.

He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the words
he had spoken, or say: "Oh, why did I not say that?" and, "Whatever made
me say 'Je vous aime'?" On the contrary, he now repeated in imagination
every word that he or Natasha had spoken and pictured every detail of
her face and smile, and did not wish to diminish or add anything, but
only to repeat it again and again. There was now not a shadow of doubt
in his mind as to whether what he had undertaken was right or wrong.
Only one terrible doubt sometimes crossed his mind: "Wasn't it all a
dream? Isn't Princess Mary mistaken? Am I not too conceited and self-
confident? I believe all this--and suddenly Princess Mary will tell her,
and she will be sure to smile and say: 'How strange! He must be deluding
himself. Doesn't he know that he is a man, just a man, while I...? I am
something altogether different and higher.'"

That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now make any
plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable that if only
he could attain it, it would be the end of all things. Everything ended
with that.

A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself incapable,
possessed him. The whole meaning of life--not for him alone but for the
whole world--seemed to him centered in his love and the possibility of
being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to be occupied with
one thing only--his future happiness. Sometimes it seemed to him that
other people were all as pleased as he was himself and merely tried to
hide that pleasure by pretending to be busy with other interests. In
every word and gesture he saw allusions to his happiness. He often
surprised those he met by his significantly happy looks and smiles which
seemed to express a secret understanding between him and them. And when
he realized that people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied
them with his whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them
that all that occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of
attention.

When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service, or
when the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the
assumption that everybody's welfare depended on this or that issue of
events, he would listen with a mild and pitying smile and surprise
people by his strange comments. But at this time he saw everybody--both
those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning of life (that is,
what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who evidently did not
understand it--in the bright light of the emotion that shone within
himself, and at once without any effort saw in everyone he met
everything that was good and worthy of being loved.

When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her memory
aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the bliss he
now knew. Prince Vasili, who having obtained a new post and some fresh
decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed to him a
pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.

Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity. All
the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained true
for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently, but when
he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the views he had
held at this time of his madness and they always proved correct.

"I may have appeared strange and queer then," he thought, "but I was not
so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had more
insight than at any other time, and understood all that is worth
understanding in life, because... because I was happy."

Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to
discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in people
before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by
loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving
them.




CHAPTER XX

After Pierre's departure that first evening, when Natasha had said to
Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: "He looks just, yes, just as
if he had come out of a Russian bath--in a short coat and with his hair
cropped," something hidden and unknown to herself, but irrepressible,
awoke in Natasha's soul.

Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered. To
her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to the
surface and demanded satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to have
forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer complained of her
position, did not say a word about the past, and no longer feared to
make happy plans for the future. She spoke little of Pierre, but when
Princess Mary mentioned him a long-extinguished light once more kindled
in her eyes and her lips curved with a strange smile.


The change that took place in Natasha at first surprised Princess Mary;
but when she understood its meaning it grieved her. "Can she have loved
my brother so little as to be able to forget him so soon?" she thought
when she reflected on the change. But when she was with Natasha she was
not vexed with her and did not reproach her. The reawakened power of
life that had seized Natasha was so evidently irrepressible and
unexpected by her that in her presence Princess Mary felt that she had
no right to reproach her even in her heart.

Natasha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new feeling that
she did not try to hide the fact that she was no longer sad, but bright
and cheerful.

When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk with
Pierre, Natasha met her on the threshold.

"He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?" she repeated.

And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to beg forgiveness for
her joy settled on Natasha's face.

"I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me."

Understandable and touching as the look with which Natasha gazed at her
seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry as she was to see her agitation,
these words pained her for a moment. She remembered her brother and his
love.

"But what's to be done? She can't help it," thought the princess.

And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natasha all that Pierre
had said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natasha was
astounded.

"To Petersburg!" she repeated as if unable to understand.

But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary's face she guessed
the reason of that sadness and suddenly began to cry.

"Mary," said she, "tell me what I should do! I am afraid of being bad.
Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me...."

"You love him?"

"Yes," whispered Natasha.

"Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake," said Princess Mary,
who because of those tears quite forgave Natasha's joy.

"It won't be just yet--someday. Think what fun it will be when I am his
wife and you marry Nicholas!"

"Natasha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about you."

They were silent awhile.

"But why go to Petersburg?" Natasha suddenly asked, and hastily replied
to her own question. "But no, no, he must... Yes, Mary, He must...."

FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20




CHAPTER I

Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had
subsided within its shores and seemed to have become calm. But the
mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of
their motion are unknown to us) continued to operate.

Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the movement
of humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time. Various groups
of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation and dissolution of
kingdoms and displacement of peoples was in course of preparation.

The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to shore as
previously. It was seething in its depths. Historic figures were not
borne by the waves from one shore to another as before. They now seemed
to rotate on one spot. The historical figures at the head of armies, who
formerly reflected the movement of the masses by ordering wars,
campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless movement by political
and diplomatic combinations, laws, and treaties.

The historians call this activity of the historical figures "the
reaction."

In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical
personages who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the
reaction. All the well-known people of that period, from Alexander and
Napoleon to Madame de Stael, Photius, Schelling, Fichte, Chateaubriand,
and the rest, pass before their stern judgment seat and are acquitted or
condemned according to whether they conduced to progress or to reaction.

According to their accounts a reaction took place at that time in Russia
also, and the chief culprit was Alexander I, the same man who according
to them was the chief cause of the liberal movement at the commencement
of his reign, being the savior of Russia.

There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist to
learned historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander for
things he did wrong at this period of his reign.

"He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In this case he did
well and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning of
his reign and during 1812, but acted badly by giving a constitution to
Poland, forming the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakcheev,
favoring Golitsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkov and Photius. He
also acted badly by concerning himself with the active army and
disbanding the Semenov regiment."

It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the
historians address to him, based on their knowledge of what is good for
humanity.

What do these reproaches mean?

Do not the very actions for which the historians praise Alexander I (the
liberal attempts at the beginning of his reign, his struggle with
Napoleon, the firmness he displayed in 1812 and the campaign of 1813)
flow from the same sources--the circumstances of his birth, education,
and life--that made his personality what it was and from which the
actions for which they blame him (the Holy Alliance, the restoration of
Poland, and the reaction of 1820 and later) also flowed?

In what does the substance of those reproaches lie?

It lies in the fact that an historic character like Alexander I,
standing on the highest possible pinnacle of human power with the
blinding light of history focused upon him; a character exposed to those
strongest of all influences: the intrigues, flattery, and self-deception
inseparable from power; a character who at every moment of his life felt
a responsibility for all that was happening in Europe; and not a
fictitious but a live character who like every man had his personal
habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth--that
this character--though not lacking in virtue (the historians do not
accuse him of that)--had not the same conception of the welfare of
humanity fifty years ago as a present-day professor who from his youth
upwards has been occupied with learning: that is, with books and
lectures and with taking notes from them.

But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I was mistaken in
his view of what was good for the people, we must inevitably assume that
the historian who judges Alexander will also after the lapse of some
time turn out to be mistaken in his view of what is good for humanity.
This assumption is all the more natural and inevitable because, watching
the movement of history, we see that every year and with each new
writer, opinion as to what is good for mankind changes; so that what
once seemed good, ten years later seems bad, and vice versa. And what is
more, we find at one and the same time quite contradictory views as to
what is bad and what is good in history: some people regard giving a
constitution to Poland and forming the Holy Alliance as praiseworthy in
Alexander, while others regard it as blameworthy.

The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be called useful or
harmful, for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or harmful.
If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it does not
agree with his limited understanding of what is good. Whether the
preservation of my father's house in Moscow, or the glory of the Russian
arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg and other universities, or the
freedom of Poland or the greatness of Russia, or the balance of power in
Europe, or a certain kind of European culture called "progress" appear
to me to be good or bad, I must admit that besides these things the
action of every historic character has other more general purposes
inaccessible to me.

But let us assume that what is called science can harmonize all
contradictions and possesses an unchanging standard of good and bad by
which to try historic characters and events; let us say that Alexander
could have done everything differently; let us say that with guidance
from those who blame him and who profess to know the ultimate aim of the
movement of humanity, he might have arranged matters according to the
program his present accusers would have given him--of nationality,
freedom, equality, and progress (these, I think, cover the ground). Let
us assume that this program was possible and had then been formulated,
and that Alexander had acted on it. What would then have become of the
activity of all those who opposed the tendency that then prevailed in
the government--an activity that in the opinion of the historians was
good and beneficent? Their activity would not have existed: there would
have been no life, there would have been nothing.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of
life is destroyed.




CHAPTER II

If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to the
attainment of certain ends--the greatness of Russia or of France, the
balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas of the
Revolution, general progress, or anything else--then it is impossible to
explain the facts of history without introducing the conceptions of
chance and genius.

If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth
century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have been
accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the invasion. If
the aim was the aggrandizement of France, that might have been attained
without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the aim was the
dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have accomplished that
much better than warfare. If the aim was the progress of civilization,
it is easy to see that there are other ways of diffusing civilization
more expedient than by the destruction of wealth and of human lives.

Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?

Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation; genius utilized
it," says history.

But what is chance? What is genius?

The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing thing and
therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a certain stage of
understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a certain event occurs; I
think that I cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I talk about
chance. I see a force producing effects beyond the scope of ordinary
human agencies; I do not understand why this occurs and I talk of
genius.

To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a
special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the others
must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing conjunction
of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances that this ram,
who instead of getting into the general fold every evening goes into a
special enclosure where there are oats--that this very ram, swelling
with fat, is killed for meat.

But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to them
happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they need only
admit that what happens to them may also have purposes beyond their ken,
and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence in what happened to
the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not know for what purpose
they are fattened, they will at least know that all that happened to the
ram did not happen accidentally, and will no longer need the conceptions
of chance or genius.

Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately
intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond our
ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of historic
characters and perceive the cause of the effect they produce
(incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and then the words
chance and genius become superfluous.

We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the European
convulsions and that we know only the facts--that is, the murders, first
in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria, in Spain,
and in Russia--and that the movements from the west to the east and from
the east to the west form the essence and purpose of these events, and
not only shall we have no need to see exceptional ability and genius in
Napoleon and Alexander, but we shall be unable to consider them to be
anything but like other men, and we shall not be obliged to have
recourse to chance for an explanation of those small events which made
these people what they were, but it will be clear that all those small
events were inevitable.

By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose, we shall
clearly perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom or seed for
any single plant better suited to it than those it produces, so it is
impossible to imagine any two people more completely adapted down to the
smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill, than Napoleon and
Alexander with all their antecedents.




CHAPTER III

The fundamental and essential significance of the European events of the
beginning of the nineteenth century lies in the movement of the mass of
the European peoples from west to east and afterwards from east to west.
The commencement of that movement was the movement from west to east.
For the peoples of the west to be able to make their warlike movement to
Moscow it was necessary: (1) that they should form themselves into a
military group of a size able to endure a collision with the warlike
military group of the east, (2) that they should abandon all established
traditions and customs, and (3) that during their military movement they
should have at their head a man who could justify to himself and to them
the deceptions, robberies, and murders which would have to be committed
during that movement.

And beginning with the French Revolution the old inadequately large
group was destroyed, as well as the old habits and traditions, and step
by step a group was formed of larger dimensions with new customs and
traditions, and a man was produced who would stand at the head of the
coming movement and bear the responsibility for all that had to be done.

A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions, without a
name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges--by what seem the strangest
chances--from among all the seething French parties, and without joining
any one of them is borne forward to a prominent position.

The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance of his
opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling and self-
confident limitations of this man raise him to the head of the army. The
brilliant qualities of the soldiers of the army sent to Italy, his
opponents' reluctance to fight, and his own childish audacity and self-
confidence secure him military fame. Innumerable so-called chances
accompany him everywhere. The disfavor into which he falls with the
rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts to avoid his
predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not received into the Russian
service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes to nothing. During
the war in Italy he is several times on the verge of destruction and
each time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing to various diplomatic
considerations the Russian armies--just those which might have destroyed
his prestige--do not appear upon the scene till he is no longer there.

On his return from Italy he finds the government in Paris in a process
of dissolution in which all those who are in it are inevitably wiped out
and destroyed. And by chance an escape from this dangerous position
presents itself in the form of an aimless and senseless expedition to
Africa. Again so-called chance accompanies him. Impregnable Malta
surrenders without a shot; his most reckless schemes are crowned with
success. The enemy's fleet, which subsequently did not let a single boat
pass, allows his entire army to elude it. In Africa a whole series of
outrages are committed against the almost unarmed inhabitants. And the
men who commit these crimes, especially their leader, assure themselves
that this is admirable, this is glory--it resembles Caesar and Alexander
the Great and is therefore good.

This ideal of glory and grandeur--which consists not merely in
considering nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on every
crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible supernatural
significance--that ideal, destined to guide this man and his associates,
had scope for its development in Africa. Whatever he does succeeds. The
plague does not touch him. The cruelty of murdering prisoners is not
imputed to him as a fault. His childishly rash, uncalled-for, and
ignoble departure from Africa, leaving his comrades in distress, is set
down to his credit, and again the enemy's fleet twice lets him slip
past. When, intoxicated by the crimes he has committed so successfully,
he reaches Paris, the dissolution of the republican government, which a
year earlier might have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and
his presence there now as a newcomer free from party entanglements can
only serve to exalt him--and though he himself has no plan, he is quite
ready for his new role.

He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties snatched at
him and demanded his participation.

He alone--with his ideal of glory and grandeur developed in Italy and
Egypt, his insane self-adulation, his boldness in crime and frankness in
lying--he alone could justify what had to be done.

He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost apart from his
will and despite his indecision, his lack of a plan, and all his
mistakes, he is drawn into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power and
the conspiracy is crowned with success.

He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm he wishes to
flee, considering himself lost. He pretends to fall into a swoon and
says senseless things that should have ruined him. But the once proud
and shrewd rulers of France, feeling that their part is played out, are
even more bewildered than he, and do not say the words they should have
said to destroy him and retain their power.

Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all men as if by
agreement co-operate to confirm that power. Chance forms the characters
of the rulers of France, who submit to him; chance forms the character
of Paul I of Russia who recognizes his government; chance contrives a
plot against him which not only fails to harm him but confirms his
power. Chance puts the Duc d'Enghien in his hands and unexpectedly
causes him to kill him--thereby convincing the mob more forcibly than in
any other way that he had the right, since he had the might. Chance
contrives that though he directs all his efforts to prepare an
expedition against England (which would inevitably have ruined him) he
never carries out that intention, but unexpectedly falls upon Mack and
the Austrians, who surrender without a battle. Chance and genius give
him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance all men, not only the
French but all Europe--except England which does not take part in the
events about to happen--despite their former horror and detestation of
his crimes, now recognize his authority, the title he has given himself,
and his ideal of grandeur and glory, which seems excellent and
reasonable to them all.

As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming movement, the
western forces push toward the east several times in 1805, 1806, 1807,
and 1809, gaining strength and growing. In 1811 the group of people that
had formed in France unites into one group with the peoples of Central
Europe. The strength of the justification of the man who stands at the
head of the movement grows with the increased size of the group. During
the ten-year preparatory period this man had formed relations with all
the crowned heads of Europe. The discredited rulers of the world can
oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate Napoleonic ideal of glory
and grandeur. One after another they hasten to display their
insignificance before him. The King of Prussia sends his wife to seek
the great man's mercy; the Emperor of Austria considers it a favor that
this man receives a daughter of the Caesars into his bed; the Pope, the
guardian of all that the nations hold sacred, utilizes religion for the
aggrandizement of the great man. It is not Napoleon who prepares himself
for the accomplishment of his role, so much as all those round him who
prepare him to take on himself the whole responsibility for what is
happening and has to happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud
he commits, which in the mouths of those around him is not at once
represented as a great deed. The most suitable fete the Germans can
devise for him is a celebration of Jena and Auerstadt. Not only is he
great, but so are his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his
brothers-in-law. Everything is done to deprive him of the remains of his
reason and to prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so
too are the forces.

The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goal--Moscow. That
city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than the opposing
armies had suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to Wagram. But
suddenly instead of those chances and that genius which hitherto had so
consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of successes to the
predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of inverse chances occur--from
the cold in his head at Borodino to the sparks which set Moscow on fire,
and the frosts--and instead of genius, stupidity and immeasurable
baseness become evident.

The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are now
not for Napoleon but always against him.

A countermovement is then accomplished from east to west with a
remarkable resemblance to the preceding movement from west to east.
Attempted drives from east to west--similar to the contrary movements of
1805, 1807, and 1809--precede the great westward movement; there is the
same coalescence into a group of enormous dimensions; the same adhesion
of the people of Central Europe to the movement; the same hesitation
midway, and the same increasing rapidity as the goal is approached.

Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government and army
are destroyed. Napoleon himself is no longer of any account; all his
actions are evidently pitiful and mean, but again an inexplicable chance
occurs. The allies detest Napoleon whom they regard as the cause of
their sufferings. Deprived of power and authority, his crimes and his
craft exposed, he should have appeared to them what he appeared ten
years previously and one year later--an outlawed brigand. But by some
strange chance no one perceives this. His part is not yet ended. The man
who ten years before and a year later was considered an outlawed brigand
is sent to an island two days' sail from France, which for some reason
is presented to him as his dominion, and guards are given to him and
millions of money are paid him.




CHAPTER IV

The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. The
waves of the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddies are
formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have
caused the floods to abate.

But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. The diplomatists
think that their disagreements are the cause of this fresh pressure of
natural forces; they anticipate war between their sovereigns; the
position seems to them insoluble. But the wave they feel to be rising
does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises again from the same
point as before--Paris. The last backwash of the movement from the west
occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the apparently insuperable
diplomatic difficulties and ends the military movement of that period of
history.

The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, without any
conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but by
strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man they
cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.

This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.

That act is performed.

The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off his
powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more.

And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to himself in
solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues and lies
when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to the whole
world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as long as an
unseen hand directed his actions.

The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the actor
shows him to us.

"See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was not he
but I who moved you?"

But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people
understood this.

Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life of
Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from
east to west.

What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the head of
that movement from east to west?

What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with European
affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests; a moral
superiority over those sovereigns of the day who co-operated with him; a
mild and attractive personality; and a personal grievance against
Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I; all this had been
prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life: his education,
his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded him, and by
Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.

During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed. But
as soon as the necessity for a general European war presented itself he
appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting the nations of
Europe, led them to the goal.

The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possesses all
possible power. How does he use it?

Alexander I--the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early years
had striven only for his people's welfare, the originator of the liberal
innovations in his fatherland--now that he seemed to possess the utmost
power and therefore to have the possibility of bringing about the
welfare of his peoples--at the time when Napoleon in exile was drawing
up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made mankind happy
had he retained power--Alexander I, having fulfilled his mission and
feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizes the insignificance
of that supposed power, turns away from it, and gives it into the hands
of contemptible men whom he despises, saying only:

"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man like the
rest of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and of God."

As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, and
yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to
comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet
has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.

A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid of
bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the
bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the
fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from
flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey.
Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely says
that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees and rear a
queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices
that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil
fertilizes the latter, and sees in this the purpose of the bee's
existence. Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the
bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the
bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first,
the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The
higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the
more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our
comprehension.

All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to
other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic
characters and nations.




CHAPTER V

Natasha's wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in 1813, was the last
happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov died
that same year and, as always happens, after the father's death the
family group broke up.

The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow and the flight
from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natasha's despair, Petya's death,
and the old countess' grief fell blow after blow on the old count's
head. He seemed to be unable to understand the meaning of all these
events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual sense as if expecting and
inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed now frightened
and distraught and now unnaturally animated and enterprising.

The arrangements for Natasha's marriage occupied him for a while. He
ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful, but
his cheerfulness was not infectious as it used to be: on the contrary it
evoked the compassion of those who knew and liked him.

When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet and began to
complain of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his
bed. He realized from the first that he would not get up again, despite
the doctor's encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in an
armchair by his pillow without undressing. Every time she gave him his
medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his last day,
sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for having
dissipated their property--that being the chief fault of which he was
conscious. After receiving communion and unction he quietly died; and
next day a throng of acquaintances who came to pay their last respects
to the deceased filled the house rented by the Rostovs. All these
acquaintances, who had so often dined and danced at his house and had so
often laughed at him, now said, with a common feeling of self-reproach
and emotion, as if justifying themselves: "Well, whatever he may have
been he was a most worthy man. You don't meet such men nowadays.... And
which of us has not weaknesses of his own?"

It was just when the count's affairs had become so involved that it was
impossible to say what would happen if he lived another year that he
unexpectedly died.

Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the news of his
father's death reached him. He at once resigned his commission, and
without waiting for it to be accepted took leave of absence and went to
Moscow. The state of the count's affairs became quite obvious a month
after his death, surprising everyone by the immense total of small debts
the existence of which no one had suspected. The debts amounted to
double the value of the property.

Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance. But
he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father's memory, which he
held sacred, and therefore would not hear of refusing and accepted the
inheritance together with the obligation to pay the debts.

The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by a vague but
powerful influence exerted on them while he lived by the count's
careless good nature, all proceeded to enforce their claims at once. As
always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should get
paid first, and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given them
as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors. Nicholas was
allowed no respite and no peace, and those who had seemed to pity the
old man--the cause of their losses (if they were losses)--now
remorselessly pursued the young heir who had voluntarily undertaken the
debts and was obviously not guilty of contracting them.

Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate was sold by
auction for half its value, and half the debts still remained unpaid.
Nicholas accepted thirty thousand rubles offered him by his brother-in-
law Bezukhov to pay off debts he regarded as genuinely due for value
received. And to avoid being imprisoned for the remainder, as the
creditors threatened, he re-entered the government service.

He could not rejoin the army where he would have been made colonel at
the next vacancy, for his mother now clung to him as her one hold on
life; and so despite his reluctance to remain in Moscow among people who
had known him before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil service,
he accepted a post in Moscow in that service, doffed the uniform of
which he was so fond, and moved with his mother and Sonya to a small
house on the Sivtsev Vrazhek.

Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had no
clear idea of Nicholas' circumstances. Having borrowed money from his
brother-in-law, Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from him.
His position was the more difficult because with his salary of twelve
hundred rubles he had not only to keep himself, his mother, and Sonya,
but had to shield his mother from knowledge of their poverty. The
countess could not conceive of life without the luxurious conditions she
had been used to from childhood and, unable to realize how hard it was
for her son, kept demanding now a carriage (which they did not keep) to
send for a friend, now some expensive article of food for herself, or
wine for her son, or money to buy a present as a surprise for Natasha or
Sonya, or for Nicholas himself.

Sonya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put up with her
whims and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their poverty
from the old countess. Nicholas felt himself irredeemably indebted to
Sonya for all she was doing for his mother and greatly admired her
patience and devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her.

He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and
because there was nothing to reproach her with. She had all that people
are valued for, but little that could have made him love her. He felt
that the more he valued her the less he loved her. He had taken her at
her word when she wrote giving him his freedom and now behaved as if all
that had passed between them had been long forgotten and could never in
any case be renewed.

Nicholas' position became worse and worse. The idea of putting something
aside out of his salary proved a dream. Not only did he not save
anything, but to comply with his mother's demands he even incurred some
small debts. He could see no way out of this situation. The idea of
marrying some rich woman, which was suggested to him by his female
relations, was repugnant to him. The other way out--his mother's death--
never entered his head. He wished for nothing and hoped for nothing, and
deep in his heart experienced a gloomy and stern satisfaction in an
uncomplaining endurance of his position. He tried to avoid his old
acquaintances with their commiseration and offensive offers of
assistance; he avoided all distraction and recreation, and even at home
did nothing but play cards with his mother, pace silently up and down
the room, and smoke one pipe after another. He seemed carefully to
cherish within himself the gloomy mood which alone enabled him to endure
his position.




CHAPTER VI

At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From reports
current in town she learned how the Rostovs were situated, and how "the
son has sacrificed himself for his mother," as people were saying.

"I never expected anything else of him," said Princess Mary to herself,
feeling a joyous sense of her love for him. Remembering her friendly
relations with all the Rostovs which had made her almost a member of the
family, she thought it her duty to go to see them. But remembering her
relations with Nicholas in Voronezh she was shy about doing so. Making a
great effort she did however go to call on them a few weeks after her
arrival in Moscow.

Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess' room could only be
reached through his. But instead of being greeted with pleasure as she
had expected, at his first glance at her his face assumed a cold, stiff,
proud expression she had not seen on it before. He inquired about her
health, led the way to his mother, and having sat there for five minutes
left the room.

When the princess came out of the countess' room Nicholas met her again,
and with marked solemnity and stiffness accompanied her to the anteroom.
To her remarks about his mother's health he made no reply. "What's that
to you? Leave me in peace," his looks seemed to say.

"Why does she come prowling here? What does she want? I can't bear these
ladies and all these civilities!" said he aloud in Sonya's presence,
evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the princess' carriage
had disappeared.

"Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?" cried Sonya, hardly able to
conceal her delight. "She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!"

Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the princess any
more. But after her visit the old countess spoke of her several times a
day.

She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on her, expressed
a wish to see her often, but yet always became ill-humored when she
began to talk about her.

Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of the princess,
but his silence irritated her.

"She is a very admirable and excellent young woman," said she, "and you
must go and call on her. You would at least be seeing somebody, and I
think it must be dull for you only seeing us."

"But I don't in the least want to, Mamma."

"You used to want to, and now you don't. Really I don't understand you,
my dear. One day you are dull, and the next you refuse to see anyone."

"But I never said I was dull."

"Why, you said yourself you don't want even to see her. She is a very
admirable young woman and you always liked her, but now suddenly you
have got some notion or other in your head. You hide everything from
me."

"Not at all, Mamma."

"If I were asking you to do something disagreeable now--but I only ask
you to return a call. One would think mere politeness required it....
Well, I have asked you, and now I won't interfere any more since you
have secrets from your mother."

"Well, then, I'll go if you wish it."

"It doesn't matter to me. I only wish it for your sake."

Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the cards for a
patience, trying to divert his mother's attention to another topic.

The same conversation was repeated next day and the day after, and the
day after that.

After her visit to the Rostovs and her unexpectedly chilly reception by
Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself that she had been right in
not wishing to be the first to call.

"I expected nothing else," she told herself, calling her pride to her
aid. "I have nothing to do with him and I only wanted to see the old
lady, who was always kind to me and to whom I am under many
obligations."

But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a feeling akin
to remorse troubled her when she thought of her visit. Though she had
firmly resolved not to call on the Rostovs again and to forget the whole
matter, she felt herself all the time in an awkward position. And when
she asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit that it was her
relation to Rostov. His cold, polite manner did not express his feeling
for her (she knew that) but it concealed something, and until she could
discover what that something was, she felt that she could not be at
ease.

One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her
nephew's lessons, she was informed that Rostov had called. With a firm
resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she sent
for Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room.

Her first glance at Nicholas' face told her that he had only come to
fulfill the demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain
the tone in which he addressed her.

They spoke of the countess' health, of their mutual friends, of the
latest war news, and when the ten minutes required by propriety had
elapsed after which a visitor may rise, Nicholas got up to say good-by.

With Mademoiselle Bourienne's help the princess had maintained the
conversation very well, but at the very last moment, just when he rose,
she was so tired of talking of what did not interest her, and her mind
was so full of the question why she alone was granted so little
happiness in life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat still, her
luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not noticing that he had risen.

Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to notice her
abstraction, made some remark to Mademoiselle Bourienne and then again
looked at the princess. She still sat motionless with a look of
suffering on her gentle face. He suddenly felt sorry for her and was
vaguely conscious that he might be the cause of the sadness her face
expressed. He wished to help her and say something pleasant, but could
think of nothing to say.

"Good-bye, Princess!" said he.

She started, flushed, and sighed deeply.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said as if waking up. "Are you going
already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the cushion for the
countess!"

"Wait a moment, I'll fetch it," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she
left the room.

They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.

"Yes, Princess," said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, "it doesn't
seem long ago since we first met at Bogucharovo, but how much water has
flowed since then! In what distress we all seemed to be then, yet I
would give much to bring back that time... but there's no bringing it
back."

Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous ones as
he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden meaning of
his words which would explain his feeling for her.

"Yes, yes," said she, "but you have no reason to regret the past, Count.
As I understand your present life, I think you will always recall it
with satisfaction, because the self-sacrifice that fills it now..."

"I cannot accept your praise," he interrupted her hurriedly. "On the
contrary I continually reproach myself.... But this is not at all an
interesting or cheerful subject."

His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the
princess had caught a glimpse of the man she had known and loved, and it
was to him that she now spoke.

"I thought you would allow me to tell you this," she said. "I had come
so near to you... and to all your family that I thought you would not
consider my sympathy misplaced, but I was mistaken," and suddenly her
voice trembled. "I don't know why," she continued, recovering herself,
"but you used to be different, and..."

"There are a thousand reasons why," laying special emphasis on the why.
"Thank you, Princess," he added softly. "Sometimes it is hard."

"So that's why! That's why!" a voice whispered in Princess Mary's soul.
"No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only that
handsome exterior, that I loved in him. I divined his noble, resolute,
self-sacrificing spirit too," she said to herself. "Yes, he is poor now
and I am rich.... Yes, that's the only reason.... Yes, were it not for
that..." And remembering his former tenderness, and looking now at his
kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood the cause of his coldness.

"But why, Count, why?" she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer to
him. "Why? Tell me. You must tell me!"

He was silent.

"I don't understand your why, Count," she continued, "but it's hard for
me... I confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of our former
friendship. And that hurts me." There were tears in her eyes and in her
voice. "I have had so little happiness in life that every loss is hard
for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-by!" and suddenly she began to cry
and was hurrying from the room.

"Princess, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, trying to stop her.
"Princess!"

She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one
another's eyes--and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly
became possible, inevitable, and very near.




CHAPTER VII

In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to Bald
Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya.

Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without
selling any of his wife's property, and having received a small
inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as well.

In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs that he
was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was negotiating
to buy back Otradnoe--that being his pet dream.

Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it
that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas was
a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the English ones
then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical treatises on estate
management, disliked factories, the raising of expensive products, and
the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not make a hobby of any
particular part of the work on his estate. He always had before his
mind's eye the estate as a whole and not any particular part of it. The
chief thing in his eyes was not the nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen
in the air, nor manures, nor special plows, but that most important
agent by which nitrogen, oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective--
the peasant laborer. When Nicholas first began farming and began to
understand its different branches, it was the serf who especially
attracted his attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely a tool,
but also a judge of farming and an end in himself. At first he watched
the serfs, trying to understand their aims and what they considered good
and bad, and only pretended to direct them and give orders while in
reality learning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and
their judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he had understood the
peasants' tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their language, to
grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to them did he
begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform toward them the
duties demanded of him. And Nicholas' management produced very brilliant
results.

Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the
estates he at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, and
delegate, the very men the serfs would themselves have chosen had they
had the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands. Before
analyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the debit and
credit (as he ironically called it), he found out how many cattle the
peasants had and increased the number by all possible means. He kept the
peasant families together in the largest groups possible, not allowing
the family groups to divide into separate households. He was hard alike
on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to get them expelled
from the commune.

He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants' hay and
corn as of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown and
harvested so early and so well, or got so good a return, as did
Nicholas.

He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs--the "drones"
as he called them--and everyone said he spoiled them by his laxity. When
a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf, especially if one
had to be punished, he always felt undecided and consulted everybody in
the house; but when it was possible to have a domestic serf conscripted
instead of a land worker he did so without the least hesitation. He
never felt any hesitation in dealing with the peasants. He knew that his
every decision would be approved by them all with very few exceptions.

He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to
make things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclined
to do so. He could not have said by what standard he judged what he
should or should not do, but the standard was quite firm and definite in
his own mind.

Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he would
say: "What can one do with our Russian peasants?" and imagined that he
could not bear them.

Yet he loved "our Russian peasants" and their way of life with his whole
soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilated the one
way and manner of farming which produced good results.

Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband's and regretted
that she could not share it; but she could not understand the joys and
vexations he derived from that world, to her so remote and alien. She
could not understand why he was so particularly animated and happy when,
after getting up at daybreak and spending the whole morning in the
fields or on the threshing floor, he returned from the sowing or mowing
or reaping to have tea with her. She did not understand why he spoke
with such admiration and delight of the farming of the thrifty and well-
to-do peasant Matthew Ermishin, who with his family had carted corn all
night; or of the fact that his (Nicholas') sheaves were already stacked
before anyone else had his harvest in. She did not understand why he
stepped out from the window to the veranda and smiled under his mustache
and winked so joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry
and thirsty shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind carried away
a threatening cloud during the hay harvest he would return from the
barn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of wormwood and
gentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would say: "Well,
one more day and my grain and the peasants' will all be under cover."

Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready to
anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when she brought
him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed to her to
be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should obstinately
refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in what was not her
business. She felt he had a world apart, which he loved passionately and
which had laws she had not fathomed.

Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good work he
was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: "Not in the least;
it never entered my head and I wouldn't do that for their good! That's
all poetry and old wives' talk--all that doing good to one's neighbor!
What I want is that our children should not have to go begging. I must
put our affairs in order while I am alive, that's all. And to do that,
order and strictness are essential.... That's all about it!" said he,
clenching his vigorous fist. "And fairness, of course," he added, "for
if the peasant is naked and hungry and has only one miserable horse, he
can do no good either for himself or for me."

And all Nicholas did was fruitful--probably just because he refused to
allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for virtue's
sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring estates came
to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the memory of his
administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs. "He was a
master... the peasants' affairs first and then his own. Of course he was
not to be trifled with either--in a word, he was a real master!"




CHAPTER VIII

One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nicholas, and
that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of making
free use of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in this,
but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form of
punishment suddenly changed.

Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Bogucharovo, a man
who had succeeded to the post when Dron died and who was accused of
dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the porch
to question him, and immediately after the elder had given a few replies
the sound of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch Nicholas
went up to his wife, who sat with her head bent low over her embroidery
frame, and as usual began to tell her what he had been doing that
morning. Among other things he spoke of the Bogucharovo elder. Countess
Mary turned red and then pale, but continued to sit with head bowed and
lips compressed and gave her husband no reply.

"Such an insolent scoundrel!" he cried, growing hot again at the mere
recollection of him. "If he had told me he was drunk and did not see...
But what is the matter with you, Mary?" he suddenly asked.

Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but hastily looked
down again and her lips puckered.

"Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?"

The looks of the plain Countess Mary always improved when she was in
tears. She never cried from pain or vexation, but always from sorrow or
pity, and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible charm.

The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain herself
and began to cry.

"Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you... Nicholas!" and
she covered her face with her hands.

Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side, and paced up
and down the room. He understood what she was weeping about, but could
not in his heart at once agree with her that what he had regarded from
childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong. "Is it just
sentimentality, old wives' tales, or is she right?" he asked himself.
Before he had solved that point he glanced again at her face filled with
love and pain, and he suddenly realized that she was right and that he
had long been sinning against himself.

"Mary," he said softly, going up to her, "it will never happen again; I
give you my word. Never," he repeated in a trembling voice like a boy
asking for forgiveness.

The tears flowed faster still from the countess' eyes. She took his hand
and kissed it.

"Nicholas, when did you break your cameo?" she asked to change the
subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with a cameo of
Laocoon's head.

"Today--it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don't remind me of it!" and
again he flushed. "I give you my word of honor it shan't occur again,
and let this always be a reminder to me," and he pointed to the broken
ring.

After that, when in discussions with his village elders or stewards the
blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench, Nicholas would
turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his eyes before the
man who was making him angry. But he did forget himself once or twice
within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and confess to his wife, and
would again promise that this should really be the very last time.

"Mary, you must despise me!" he would say. "I deserve it."

"You should go, go away at once, if you don't feel strong enough to
control yourself," she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her husband.

Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not liked.
He did not concern himself with the interests of his own class, and
consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid. The
whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with the work
on his farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the same
business-like seriousness--leaving home for a month, or even two, with
his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his time
reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on these he
spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as he said, a serious
library, and he made it a rule to read through all the books he bought.
He would sit in his study with a grave air, reading--a task he first
imposed upon himself as a duty, but which afterwards became a habit
affording him a special kind of pleasure and a consciousness of being
occupied with serious matters. In winter, except for business
excursions, he spent most of his time at home making himself one with
his family and entering into all the details of his children's relations
with their mother. The harmony between him and his wife grew closer and
closer and he daily discovered fresh spiritual treasures in her.

From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before that,
Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself and
Sonya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess Mary to
be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized the wrong he
had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and imagined that her
wealth had influenced Nicholas' choice. She could not find fault with
Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her, but often felt ill-will
toward her which she could not overcome.

Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about her
own injustice toward her.

"You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great deal--there
is a passage in them that just fits Sonya."

"What?" asked Countess Mary, surprised.

"'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be
taken away.' You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I don't know.
Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is taken away, and
everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am dreadfully sorry for her.
Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to marry her, but I always had a
sort of presentiment that it would not come off. She is a sterile
flower, you know--like some strawberry blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry
for her, and sometimes I think she doesn't feel it as you or I would."

Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in the Gospel must be
understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with Natasha's
explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her position
trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower.
She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of the family as a
whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the people but to the
home. She waited on the old countess, petted and spoiled the children,
was always ready to render the small services for which she had a gift,
and all this was unconsciously accepted from her with insufficient
gratitude.

The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the same
scale as under the old prince.

The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more than
simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of wood,
plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished with
very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by their own
serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was spacious and
had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for visitors. Whole
families of the Rostovs' and Bolkonskis' relations sometimes came to
Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of servants and stayed for
months. Besides that, four times a year, on the name days and birthdays
of the hosts, as many as a hundred visitors would gather there for a day
or two. The rest of the year life pursued its unbroken routine with its
ordinary occupations, and its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers,
provided out of the produce of the estate.




CHAPTER IX

It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natasha had
been staying at her brother's with her husband and children since early
autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his own for three
weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven weeks and was
expected back every minute.

Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas' old friend the retired General
Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the Rostovs this fifth of
December.

On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of
visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for a
tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to the
new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would come to
congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about the elections
of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to spend the eve of
that day in his usual way. He examined the bailiff's accounts of the
village in Ryazan which belonged to his wife's nephew, wrote two
business letters, and walked over to the granaries, cattle yards and
stables before dinner. Having taken precautions against the general
drunkenness to be expected on the morrow because it was a great saint's
day, he returned to dinner, and without having time for a private talk
with his wife sat down at the long table laid for twenty persons, at
which the whole household had assembled. At that table were his mother,
his mother's old lady companion Belova, his wife, their three children
with their governess and tutor, his wife's nephew with his tutor, Sonya,
Denisov, Natasha, her three children, their governess, and old Michael
Ivanovich, the late prince's architect, who was living on in retirement
at Bald Hills.

Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband took
his place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after taking up
his table napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass standing
before him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the case when he
came in to dinner straight from the farm--especially before the soup.
Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and when she herself was in a
good frame of mind quietly waited till he had had his soup and then
began to talk to him and make him admit that there was no cause for his
ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and was hurt that he should
be angry with her without any reason, and she felt unhappy. She asked
him where he had been. He replied. She again inquired whether everything
was going well on the farm. Her unnatural tone made him wince
unpleasantly and he replied hastily.

"Then I'm not mistaken," thought Countess Mary. "Why is he cross with
me?" She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and wished
to end the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded unnatural, but
could not refrain from asking some more questions.

Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon became general and
lively, and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the table
and went as usual to thank the old countess, Countess Mary held out her
hand and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was angry with her.

"You always have such strange fancies! I didn't even think of being
angry," he replied.

But the word always seemed to her to imply: "Yes, I am angry but I won't
tell you why."

Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sonya and the
old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to disagree,
could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they had their
moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always just after they
had been happiest together, they suddenly had a feeling of estrangement
and hostility, which occurred most frequently during Countess Mary's
pregnancies, and this was such a time.

"Well, messieurs et mesdames," said Nicholas loudly and with apparent
cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on purpose to
vex her), "I have been on my feet since six this morning. Tomorrow I
shall have to suffer, so today I'll go and rest."

And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room and
lay down on the sofa.

"That's always the way," thought Countess Mary. "He talks to everyone
except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him, especially when I
am in this condition." She looked down at her expanded figure and in the
glass at her pale, sallow, emaciated face in which her eyes now looked
larger than ever.

And everything annoyed her--Denisov's shouting and laughter, Natasha's
talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her.

Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling
irritated.

Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything of
what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the nursery.

The children were playing at "going to Moscow" in a carriage made of
chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with
them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable
crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with
difficulty, went to the small sitting room.

"Perhaps he is not asleep; I'll have an explanation with him," she said
to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his mother,
followed her on tiptoe. She did not notice him.

"Mary, dear, I think he is asleep--he was so tired," said Sonya, meeting
her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that she
crossed her path everywhere). "Andrew may wake him."

Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt that
Sonya was right, and for that very reason flushed and with evident
difficulty refrained from saying something harsh. She made no reply, but
to avoid obeying Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow her quietly and went
to the door. Sonya went away by another door. From the room in which
Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his even breathing, every
slightest tone of which was familiar to his wife. As she listened to it
she saw before her his smooth handsome forehead, his mustache, and his
whole face, as she had so often seen it in the stillness of the night
when he slept. Nicholas suddenly moved and cleared his throat. And at
that moment little Andrew shouted from outside the door: "Papa! Mamma's
standing here!" Countess Mary turned pale with fright and made signs to
the boy. He grew silent, and quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to
Countess Mary. She knew how Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through
the door she heard Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and
his voice said crossly:

"I can't get a moment's peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you bring
him here?"

"I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me..."

Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the
door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little
black-eyed three-year-old Natasha, her father's pet, having learned from
her brother that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting room, ran
to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little girl boldly
opened the creaking door, went up to the sofa with energetic steps of
her sturdy little legs, and having examined the position of her father,
who was asleep with his back to her, rose on tiptoe and kissed the hand
which lay under his head. Nicholas turned with a tender smile on his
face.

"Natasha, Natasha!" came Countess Mary's frightened whisper from the
door. "Papa wants to sleep."

"No, Mamma, he doesn't want to sleep," said little Natasha with
conviction. "He's laughing."

Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms.

"Come in, Mary," he said to his wife.

She went in and sat down by her husband.

"I did not notice him following me," she said timidly. "I just looked
in."

Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife and,
seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and kissed
her hair.

"May I kiss Mamma?" he asked Natasha.

Natasha smiled bashfully.

"Again!" she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the spot
where Nicholas had placed the kiss.

"I don't know why you think I am cross," said Nicholas, replying to the
question he knew was in his wife's mind.

"You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are like
that. It always seems to me..."

"Mary, don't talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he
said gaily.

"It seems to be that you can't love me, that I am so plain... always...
and now... in this cond..."

"Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it's love that
makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and women of that kind who are
loved for their beauty. But do I love my wife? I don't love her, but...
I don't know how to put it. Without you, or when something comes between
us like this, I seem lost and can't do anything. Now do I love my
finger? I don't love it, but just try to cut it off!"

"I'm not like that myself, but I understand. So you're not angry with
me?"

"Awfully angry!" he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing his hair
he began to pace the room.

"Do you know, Mary, what I've been thinking?" he began, immediately
thinking aloud in his wife's presence now that they had made it up.

He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A
thought had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he told
her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till spring.

Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and in
her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the children.

"You can see the woman in her already," she said in French, pointing to
little Natasha. "You reproach us women with being illogical. Here is our
logic. I say: 'Papa wants to sleep!' but she says, 'No, he's laughing.'
And she was right," said Countess Mary with a happy smile.

"Yes, yes." And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong hand,
lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the legs, and
paced the room with her. There was an expression of carefree happiness
on the faces of both father and daughter.

"But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one," his wife
whispered in French.

"Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show..."

At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley and footsteps in
the hall and anteroom, as if someone had arrived.

"Somebody has come."

"I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see," said Countess Mary and left
the room.

In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little daughter a
gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took the laughing child quickly
from his shoulder and pressed her to his heart. His capers reminded him
of dancing, and looking at the child's round happy little face he
thought of what she would be like when he was an old man, taking her
into society and dancing the mazurka with her as his old father had
danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.

"It is he, it is he, Nicholas!" said Countess Mary, re-entering the room
a few minutes later. "Now our Natasha has come to life. You should have
seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed away so long.
Well, come along now, quick, quick! It's time you two were parted," she
added, looking smilingly at the little girl who clung to her father.

Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.

Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.

"I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy," she
whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time she
sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though she felt,
through her happiness, that there is another sort of happiness
unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily thought at that
instant.




CHAPTER X

Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already had
three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she was
now nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was difficult
to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively Natasha of
former days. Her features were more defined and had a calm, soft, and
serene expression. In her face there was none of the ever-glowing
animation that had formerly burned there and constituted its charm. Now
her face and body were often all that one saw, and her soul was not
visible at all. All that struck the eye was a strong, handsome, and
fertile woman. The old fire very rarely kindled in her face now. That
happened only when, as was the case that day, her husband returned home,
or a sick child was convalescent, or when she and Countess Mary spoke of
Prince Andrew (she never mentioned him to her husband, who she imagined
was jealous of Prince Andrew's memory), or on the rare occasions when
something happened to induce her to sing, a practice she had quite
abandoned since her marriage. At the rare moments when the old fire did
kindle in her handsome, fully developed body she was even more
attractive than in former days.

Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in
Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is to
say, in Nicholas' house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often seen
in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her and
found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha liked
solitude--she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even thought
that she did not--but with her pregnancies, her confinements, the
nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of her husband's life,
she had demands on her time which could be satisfied only by renouncing
society. All who had known Natasha before her marriage wondered at the
change in her as at something extraordinary. Only the old countess with
her maternal instinct had realized that all Natasha's outbursts had been
due to her need of children and a husband--as she herself had once
exclaimed at Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest--and her mother
was now surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never
understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that
Natasha would make an exemplary wife and mother.

"Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all
bounds," said the countess, "so that it even becomes absurd."

Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk,
especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let herself
go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments, should be
even more careful of her appearance than when she was unmarried, and
should fascinate her husband as much as she did before he became her
husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once abandoned all her witchery,
of which her singing had been an unusually powerful part. She gave it up
just because it was so powerfully seductive. She took no pains with her
manners or with delicacy of speech, or with her toilet, or to show
herself to her husband in her most becoming attitudes, or to avoid
inconveniencing him by being too exacting. She acted in contradiction to
all those rules. She felt that the allurements instinct had formerly
taught her to use would now be merely ridiculous in the eyes of her
husband, to whom she had from the first moment given herself up
entirely--that is, with her whole soul, leaving no corner of it hidden
from him. She felt that her unity with her husband was not maintained by
the poetic feelings that had attracted him to her, but by something
else--indefinite but firm as the bond between her own body and soul.

To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing romantic
songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange as to adorn
herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others might perhaps
have been agreeable--she did not know--but she had no time at all for
it. The chief reason for devoting no time either to singing, to dress,
or to choosing her words was that she really had no time to spare for
these things.

We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a
subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so
trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's entire
attention is devoted to it.

The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha's attention was her family:
that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should belong
entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she had to bear,
bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.

And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her whole
soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the larger
did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did her powers
appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one thing and yet
was unable to accomplish all that she considered necessary.

There were then as now conversations and discussions about women's
rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and rights,
though these themes were not yet termed questions as they are now; but
these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha, she positively
did not understand them.

These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing in
marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that is,
only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance, which
lies in the family.

Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the question of
how to get the greatest gratification from one's dinner, did not then
and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of a dinner is the
nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is the family.

If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats two
dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain his
purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners.

If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to have
many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in that
case will not have a family.

If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is the
family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more than one
can digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are needed for
the family--that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha needed a husband.
A husband was given her and he gave her a family. And she not only saw
no need of any other or better husband, but as all the powers of her
soul were intent on serving that husband and family, she could not
imagine and saw no interest in imagining how it would be if things were
different.

Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the
society of her relatives--Countess Mary, and her brother, her mother,
and Sonya. She valued the company of those to whom she could come
striding disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and with
joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby's napkin, and
from whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect that baby was
much better.

To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the way she dressed
and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy--she was
jealous of Sonya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty or plain-
-were habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The general opinion
was that Pierre was under his wife's thumb, which was really true. From
the very first days of their married life Natasha had announced her
demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his wife's view, to him a
perfectly novel one, that every moment of his life belonged to her and
to the family. His wife's demands astonished him, but they also
flattered him, and he submitted to them.

Pierre's subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not
flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman; did
not dare dine at the club as a pastime, did not dare spend money on a
whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except on
business--in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits, which
she did not in the least understand but to which she attributed great
importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had the right to
regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as he chose. At
home Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to her husband,
and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was occupied--that is,
was reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but to show a partiality
for anything to get just what he liked done always. He had only to
express a wish and Natasha would jump up and run to fulfill it.

The entire household was governed according to Pierre's supposed orders,
that is, by his wishes which Natasha tried to guess. Their way of life
and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties, Natasha's
occupations, the children's upbringing, were all selected not merely
with regard to Pierre's expressed wishes, but to what Natasha from the
thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his wishes to be. And she
deduced the essentials of his wishes quite correctly, and having once
arrived at them clung to them tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to
change his mind she would fight him with his own weapons.

Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of their
first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet nurse
three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day told her
of Rousseau's view, with which he quite agreed, that to have a wet nurse
is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was born, despite the
opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of her husband himself--
who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing her baby herself, a thing
then unheard of and considered injurious--she insisted on having her own
way, and after that nursed all her babies herself.

It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and wife
would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his surprise and
delight would find in his wife's ideas and actions the very thought
against which she had argued, but divested of everything superfluous
that in the excitement of the dispute he had added when expressing his
opinion.

After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm
consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he saw
himself reflected in his wife. He felt the good and bad within himself
inextricably mingled and overlapping. But only what was really good in
him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was rejected.
And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a direct and
mysterious reflection.




CHAPTER XI

Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the Rostovs
he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to come to
Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were being
discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the principal
founders.

On reading that letter (she always read her husband's letters) Natasha
herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though she would feel
his absence very acutely. She attributed immense importance to all her
husband's intellectual and abstract interests though she did not
understand them, and she always dreaded being a hindrance to him in such
matters. To Pierre's timid look of inquiry after reading the letter she
replied by asking him to go, but to fix a definite date for his return.
He was given four weeks' leave of absence.

Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a fortnight
before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm, depression, and
irritability.

Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied with
the present state of affairs, had arrived during that fortnight. He
looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad likeness of a
person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies, and talk about
the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former enchantress.

Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her mother,
her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to console her
tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay in returning.

"It's all nonsense, all rubbish--those discussions which lead to nothing
and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very affairs
in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.

And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one
else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this
little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she was
conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his little
nose. That creature said: "You are angry, you are jealous, you would
like to pay him out, you are afraid--but here am I! And I am he..." and
that was unanswerable. It was more than true.

During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the baby for
comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him and
he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was just
what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety about her
husband more easily.

She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre's sleigh was heard at
the front door, and the old nurse--knowing how to please her mistress--
entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a beaming face.

"Has he come?" Natasha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move lest
she should rouse the dozing baby.

"He's come, ma'am," whispered the nurse.

The blood rushed to Natasha's face and her feet involuntarily moved, but
she could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his eyes and
looked at her. "You're here?" he seemed to be saying, and again lazily
smacked his lips.

Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked him a little, handed
him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door. But at the
door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for having in her
joy left the child too soon, and she glanced round. The nurse with
raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of his cot.

"Go, ma'am! Don't worry, go!" she whispered, smiling, with the kind of
familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress.

Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.

Denisov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with his
pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natasha. A flood of
brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face.

"He's come!" she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denisov felt that he too
was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had returned.

On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a fur coat
unwinding his scarf. "It's he! It's really he! He has come!" she said to
herself, and rushing at him embraced him, pressed his head to her
breast, and then pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy, happy face,
covered with hoarfrost. "Yes, it is he, happy and contented..."

Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had
experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her face
vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of
reproaches and angry words.

"Yes, it's all very well for you. You are pleased, you've had a good
time.... But what about me? You might at least have shown consideration
for the children. I am nursing and my milk was spoiled.... Petya was at
death's door. But you were enjoying yourself. Yes, enjoying..."

Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come sooner; he
knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a minute or two;
above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy. He wanted to
smile but dared not even think of doing so. He made a piteous,
frightened face and bent down.

"I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?"

"All right now. Come along! I wonder you're not ashamed! If only you
could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!"

"You are well?"

"Come, come!" she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went to
their rooms.

When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the nursery
holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right palm and
dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby's broad face
with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since over and there
was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha's face as she gazed tenderly at
her husband and child.

"And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?" she
asked.

"Yes, capitally."

"You see, he holds it up." (She meant the baby's head.) "But how he did
frighten me... You've seen the princess? Is it true she's in love with
that..."

"Yes, just fancy..."

At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the baby
on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries. But in
spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the baby
with the little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all his
attention.

"How sweet!" said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the baby.
"Now, Nicholas," she added, turning to her husband, "I can't understand
how it is you don't see the charm of these delicious marvels."

"I don't and can't," replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby. "A
lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!"

"And yet he's such an affectionate father," said Countess Mary,
vindicating her husband, "but only after they are a year old or so..."

"Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly," said Natasha. "He says his hand is
just made for a baby's seat. Just look!"

"Only not for this..." Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and
shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.




CHAPTER XII

As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several perfectly
distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole, though each
retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the others. Every
event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house was important to all
these worlds, but each had its own special reasons to rejoice or grieve
over that occurrence independently of the others.

For instance, Pierre's return was a joyful and important event and they
all felt it to be so.

The servants--the most reliable judges of their masters because they
judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their
acts and way of life--were glad of Pierre's return because they knew
that when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day to
attend to the estate, and would be in better spirits and temper, and
also because they would all receive handsome presents for the holidays.

The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre's return because
no one else drew them into the social life of the household as he did.
He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only piece) to
which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced, and they felt
sure he had brought presents for them all.

Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent,
with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted because
Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his rapturous and
passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this love for Pierre
whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had brought him up had
done her utmost to make him love her husband as she loved him, and
little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him with just a shade of
contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did not want to be an hussar or
a Knight of St. George like his uncle Nicholas; he wanted to be learned,
wise, and kind like Pierre. In Pierre's presence his face always shone
with pleasure and he flushed and was breathless when Pierre spoke to
him. He did not miss a single word he uttered, and would afterwards,
with Dessalles or by himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of
everything Pierre had said. Pierre's past life and his unhappiness prior
to 1812 (of which young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from
some words he had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity,
Platon Karataev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha
(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially Pierre's
friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not remember--all this
made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.

From broken remarks about Natasha and his father, from the emotion with
which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful, reverent
tenderness with which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who was only just
beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that his father had
loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his friend. But the father
whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a divinity who could not
be pictured, and of whom he never thought without a swelling heart and
tears of sadness and rapture. So the boy also was happy that Pierre had
arrived.

The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and unite
any company he was in.

The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were
pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more smoothly
and peacefully.

The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and
especially that Natasha would now be herself again.

Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and made
haste to satisfy all their expectations.

Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the aid
of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not forgetting
his mother--and brother-in-law's commissions, nor the dress material for
a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife's nephews. In the early days
of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that his wife should expect
him not to forget to procure all the things he undertook to buy, and he
had been taken aback by her serious annoyance when on his first trip he
forgot everything. But in time he grew used to this demand. Knowing that
Natasha asked nothing for herself, and gave him commissions for others
only when he himself had offered to undertake them, he now found an
unexpected and childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for
everyone in the house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred
Natasha's censure it was only for buying too many and too expensive
things. To her other defects (as most people thought them, but which to
Pierre were qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now
added stinginess.

From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing
entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he
spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs--which had been
in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife's debts--had
begun to improve.

Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive
luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no
longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had now
been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not in
his power, and so that way of life proved economical.

With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.

"What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff like a
shopman.

Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on her
lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the things he
showed her.

"That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the material.
"It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?"

Pierre told her the price.

"Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be and
Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added, unable to
suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb set with pearls,
of a kind then just coming into fashion.

"Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned Pierre.

"When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair. "When
I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be fashionable again
by then. Well, let's go now."

And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and then to
the old countess' rooms.

The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing grand-
patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing room
with parcels under their arms.

The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with a
frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper lip
had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.

After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession, she
felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left
without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or kept
awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She wanted
nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity only death
could give her. But until death came she had to go on living, that is,
to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in very young children
and very old people was particularly evident in her. Her life had no
external aims--only a need to exercise her various functions and
inclinations was apparent. She had to eat, sleep, think, speak, weep,
work, give vent to her anger, and so on, merely because she had a
stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a liver. She did these things not
under any external impulse as people in the full vigor of life do, when
behind the purpose for which they strive that of exercising their
functions remains unnoticed. She talked only because she physically
needed to exercise her tongue and lungs. She cried as a child does,
because her nose had to be cleared, and so on. What for people in their
full vigor is an aim was for her evidently merely a pretext.

Thus in the morning--especially if she had eaten anything rich the day
before--she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the handiest
pretext Belova's deafness.

She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other end
of the room.

"It seems a little warmer today, my dear," she would murmur.

And when Belova replied: "Oh yes, they've come," she would mutter
angrily: "O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!"

Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or too damp
or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability her face
would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible symptoms when Belova
would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the countess' face yellow. Just
as she needed to work off her spleen so she had sometimes to exercise
her still-existing faculty of thinking--and the pretext for that was a
game of patience. When she needed to cry, the deceased count would be
the pretext. When she wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health
would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the
pretext would be Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise,
which was usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner
rest in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same
stories over and over again to the same audience.

The old lady's condition was understood by the whole household though no
one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible effort to satisfy
her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a sad smile between
Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the common
understanding of her condition expressed.

But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had
played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole self,
that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to yield to
her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being formerly as
full of life as themselves, but now so much to be pitied. "Memento
mori," said these glances.

Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and the
little children failed to understand this and avoided her.




CHAPTER XIII

When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was in
one of her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion of
playing patience, and so--though by force of habit she greeted him with
the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned after an
absence: "High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of waiting
for you. Well, thank God!" and received her presents with another
customary remark: "It's not the gift that's precious, my dear, but that
you give it to me, an old woman..."--yet it was evident that she was not
pleased by Pierre's arrival at that moment when it diverted her
attention from the unfinished game.

She finished her game of patience and only then examined the presents.
They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid workmanship, a bright-
blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses depicted on it and with a lid,
and a gold snuffbox with the count's portrait on the lid which Pierre
had had done by a miniaturist in Petersburg. The countess had long
wished for such a box, but as she did not want to cry just then she
glanced indifferently at the portrait and gave her attention chiefly to
the box for cards.

"Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up," said she as she always
did. "But best of all you have brought yourself back--for I never saw
anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are we to
do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away. Doesn't see
anything, doesn't remember anything," she went on, repeating her usual
phrases. "Look, Anna Timofeevna," she added to her companion, "see what
a box for cards my son has brought us!"

Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her dress material.

Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denisov had much to
talk about that they could not discuss before the old countess--not that
anything was hidden from her, but because she had dropped so far
behindhand in many things that had they begun to converse in her
presence they would have had to answer inopportune questions and to
repeat what they had already told her many times: that so-and-so was
dead and so-and-so was married, which she would again be unable to
remember--yet they sat at tea round the samovar in the drawing room from
habit, and Pierre answered the countess' questions as to whether Prince
Vasili had aged and whether Countess Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings
and still thought of them, and other matters that interested no one and
to which she herself was indifferent.

Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable,
continued all through teatime. All the grown-up members of the family
were assembled near the round tea table at which Sonya presided beside
the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had had tea
and their voices were audible from the next room. At tea all sat in
their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small table
where his tea was handed to him; Milka, the old gray borzoi bitch
(daughter of the first Milka), with a quite gray face and large black
eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the armchair beside
him; Denisov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers had turned half
gray, sat beside countess Mary with his general's tunic unbuttoned;
Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He spoke of what he
knew might interest the old lady and that she could understand. He told
her of external social events and of the people who had formed the
circle of her contemporaries and had once been a real, living, and
distinct group, but who were now for the most part scattered about the
world and like herself were garnering the last ears of the harvests they
had sown in earlier years. But to the old countess those contemporaries
of hers seemed to be the only serious and real society. Natasha saw by
Pierre's animation that his visit had been interesting and that he had
much to tell them but dare not say it before the old countess. Denisov,
not being a member of the family, did not understand Pierre's caution
and being, as a malcontent, much interested in what was occurring in
Petersburg, kept urging Pierre to tell them about what had happened in
the Semenovsk regiment, then about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible
Society. Once or twice Pierre was carried away and began to speak of
these things, but Nicholas and Natasha always brought him back to the
health of Prince Ivan and Countess Mary Alexeevna.

"Well, and all this idiocy--Gossner and Tatawinova?" Denisov asked. "Is
that weally still going on?"


"Going on?" Pierre exclaimed. "Why more than ever! The Bible Society is
the whole government now!"

"What is that, mon cher ami?" asked the countess, who had finished her
tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry after her meal. "What
are you saying about the government? I don't understand."

"Well, you know, Maman," Nicholas interposed, knowing how to translate
things into his mother's language, "Prince Alexander Golitsyn has
founded a society and in consequence has great influence, they say."

"Arakcheev and Golitsyn," incautiously remarked Pierre, "are now the
whole government! And what a government! They see treason everywhere and
are afraid of everything."

"Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a most estimable man.
I used to meet him at Mary Antonovna's," said the countess in an
offended tone; and still more offended that they all remained silent,
she went on: "Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel Society! Well, and
what harm is there in that?" and she rose (everybody else got up too)
and with a severe expression sailed back to her table in the sitting
room.

The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the sounds of the
children's voices and laughter from the next room. Evidently some jolly
excitement was going on there.

"Finished, finished!" little Natasha's gleeful yell rose above them all.

Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natasha he
never lost sight of) and smiled happily.

"That's delightful music!" said he.

"It means that Anna Makarovna has finished her stocking," said Countess
Mary.

"Oh, I'll go and see," said Pierre, jumping up. "You know," he added,
stopping at the door, "why I'm especially fond of that music? It is
always the first thing that tells me all is well. When I was driving
here today, the nearer I got to the house the more anxious I grew. As I
entered the anteroom I heard Andrusha's peals of laughter and that meant
that all was well."

"I know! I know that feeling," said Nicholas. "But I mustn't go there--
those stockings are to be a surprise for me."

Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew still
louder.

"Come, Anna Makarovna," Pierre's voice was heard saying, "come here into
the middle of the room and at the word of command, 'One, two,' and when
I say 'three'... You stand here, and you in my arms--well now! One,
two!..." said Pierre, and a silence followed: "three!" and a rapturously
breathless cry of children's voices filled the room. "Two, two!" they
shouted.

This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to
herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the same time on the same
needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly drew,
one out of the other, in the children's presence.




CHAPTER XIV

Soon after this the children came in to say good night. They kissed
everyone, the tutors and governesses made their bows, and they went out.
Only young Nicholas and his tutor remained. Dessalles whispered to the
boy to come downstairs.

"No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay," replied
Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper.

"Ma tante, please let me stay," said he, going up to his aunt.

His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary
glanced at him and turned to Pierre.

"When you are here he can't tear himself away," she said.

"I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good night!" said
Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned to young
Nicholas with a smile. "You and I haven't seen anything of one another
yet... How like he is growing, Mary!" he added, addressing Countess
Mary.

"Like my father?" asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up at
Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.

Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the
children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork; Natasha
did not take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denisov rose, asked
for their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from Sonya--who sat
weary but resolute at the samovar--and questioned Pierre. The curly-
headed, delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed in a corner,
starting every now and then and muttering something to himself, and
evidently experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he turned his curly
head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down collar, toward the
place where Pierre sat.

The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in power,
in which most people see the chief interest of home politics. Denisov,
dissatisfied with the government on account of his own disappointments
in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done in Petersburg
which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and sharp comments on what
Pierre told them.

"One used to have to be a German--now one must dance with Tatawinova and
Madame Kwudener, and wead Ecka'tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they
should let that fine fellow Bonaparte loose--he'd knock all this
nonsense out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semenov wegiment
to a fellow like that Schwa'tz!" he cried.

Nicholas, though free from Denisov's readiness to find fault with
everything, also thought that discussion of the government was a very
serious and weighty matter, and the fact that A had been appointed
Minister of This and B Governor General of That, and that the Emperor
had said so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed to him very
important. And so he thought it necessary to take an interest in these
things and to question Pierre. The questions put by these two kept the
conversation from changing its ordinary character of gossip about the
higher government circles.

But Natasha, knowing all her husband's ways and ideas, saw that he had
long been wishing but had been unable to divert the conversation to
another channel and express his own deeply felt idea for the sake of
which he had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend Prince
Theodore, and she helped him by asking how his affairs with Prince
Theodore had gone.

"What was it about?" asked Nicholas.

"Always the same thing," said Pierre, looking round at his listeners.
"Everybody sees that things are going so badly that they cannot be
allowed to go on so and that it is the duty of all decent men to
counteract it as far as they can."

"What can decent men do?" Nicholas inquired, frowning slightly. "What
can be done?"

"Why, this..."

"Come into my study," said Nicholas.

Natasha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse her baby, now
heard the nurse calling her and went to the nursery. Countess Mary
followed her. The men went into the study and little Nicholas Bolkonski
followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the writing table
in a shady corner by the window.

"Well, what would you do?" asked Denisov.

"Always some fantastic schemes," said Nicholas.

"Why this," began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the room,
sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: "the position in
Petersburg is this: the Emperor does not look into anything. He has
abandoned himself altogether to this mysticism" (Pierre could not
tolerate mysticism in anyone now). "He seeks only for peace, and only
these people sans foi ni loi * can give it him--people who recklessly
hack at and strangle everything--Magnitski, Arakcheev, and tutti
quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after your estates
yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your steward was the
more readily your object might be attained," he said to Nicholas.


* Without faith or law.

"Well, what does that lead up to?" said Nicholas.

"Well, everything is going to ruin! Robbery in the law courts, in the
army nothing but flogging, drilling, and Military Settlements; the
people are tortured, enlightenment is suppressed. All that is young and
honest is crushed! Everyone sees that this cannot go on. Everything is
strained to such a degree that it will certainly break," said Pierre (as
those who examine the actions of any government have always said since
governments began). "I told them just one thing in Petersburg."

"Told whom?"

"Well, you know whom," said Pierre, with a meaning glance from under his
brows. "Prince Theodore and all those. To encourage culture and
philanthropy is all very well of course. The aim is excellent but in the
present circumstances something else is needed."

At that moment Nicholas noticed the presence of his nephew. His face
darkened and he went up to the boy.

"Why are you here?"

"Why? Let him be," said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the arm and
continuing. "That is not enough, I told them. Something else is needed.
When you stand expecting the overstrained string to snap at any moment,
when everyone is expecting the inevitable catastrophe, as many as
possible must join hands as closely as they can to withstand the general
calamity. Everything that is young and strong is being enticed away and
depraved. One is lured by women, another by honors, a third by ambition
or money, and they go over to that camp. No independent men, such as you
or I, are left. What I say is widen the scope of our society, let the
mot d'ordre be not virtue alone but independence and action as well!"

Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up an armchair, sat
down in it, and listened to Pierre, coughing discontentedly and frowning
more and more.

"But action with what aim?" he cried. "And what position will you adopt
toward the government?"

"Why, the position of assistants. The society need not be secret if the
government allows it. Not merely is it not hostile to government, but it
is a society of true conservatives--a society of gentlemen in the full
meaning of that word. It is only to prevent some Pugachev or other from
killing my children and yours, and Arakcheev from sending me off to some
Military Settlement. We join hands only for the public welfare and the
general safety."

"Yes, but it's a secret society and therefore a hostile and harmful one
which can only cause harm."

"Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe" (they did not then venture
to suggest that Russia had saved Europe) "do any harm? The Tugendbund is
an alliance of virtue: it is love, mutual help... it is what Christ
preached on the Cross."

Natasha, who had come in during the conversation, looked joyfully at her
husband. It was not what he was saying that pleased her--that did not
even interest her, for it seemed to her that was all extremely simple
and that she had known it a long time (it seemed so to her because she
knew that it sprang from Pierre's whole soul), but it was his animated
and enthusiastic appearance that made her glad.

The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the turn-down collar--
whom everyone had forgotten--gazed at Pierre with even greater and more
rapturous joy. Every word of Pierre's burned into his heart, and with a
nervous movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke the sealing wax
and quill pens his hands came upon on his uncle's table.

"It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the German
Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing."

"No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for the sausage eaters,
but I don't understand it and can't even pwonounce it," interposed
Denisov in a loud and resolute voice. "I agwee that evewything here is
wotten and howwible, but the Tugendbund I don't understand. If we're not
satisfied, let us have a bunt of our own. That's all wight. Je suis
vot'e homme!" *


* "I'm your man."

Pierre smiled, Natasha began to laugh, but Nicholas knitted his brows
still more and began proving to Pierre that there was no prospect of any
great change and that all the danger he spoke of existed only in his
imagination. Pierre maintained the contrary, and as his mental faculties
were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas felt himself cornered. This
made him still angrier, for he was fully convinced, not by reasoning but
by something within him stronger than reason, of the justice of his
opinion.

"I will tell you this," he said, rising and trying with nervously
twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but finally
abandoning the attempt. "I can't prove it to you. You say that
everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is coming: I don't see
it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional
matter, and to that I reply: 'You are my best friend, as you know, but
if you formed a secret society and began working against the government-
-be it what it may--I know it is my duty to obey the government. And if
Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you and cut you down, I
should not hesitate an instant, but should do it.' And you may argue
about that as you like!"

An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha was the first to speak,
defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense was weak
and inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was resumed, and
no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas' last remark.

When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolkonski went
up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.

"Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree with
you?" he asked.

And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex, and
powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in this
boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said he
regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had, however, to give
him an answer.

"Yes, I think so," he said reluctantly, and left the study.

The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time to notice what he
had done to the things on the table. He flushed and went up to Nicholas.

"Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally," he said, pointing to
the broken sealing wax and pens.

Nicholas started angrily.

"All right, all right," he said, throwing the bits under the table.

And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned away
from the boy.

"You ought not to have been here at all," he said.




CHAPTER XV

The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies, but
turned on the subject Nicholas liked best--recollections of 1812.
Denisov started these and Pierre was particularly agreeable and amusing
about them. The family separated on the most friendly terms.

After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given
instructions to the steward who had been waiting for him, went to the
bedroom in his dressing gown, where he found his wife still at her
table, writing.

"What are you writing, Mary?" Nicholas asked.

Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing would
not be understood or approved by her husband.

She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at the same
time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would now have to
tell him.

"A diary, Nicholas," she replied, handing him a blue exercise book
filled with her firm, bold writing.

"A diary?" Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up the
book.

It was in French.

December 4. Today when Andrusha (her eldest boy) woke up he did not wish
to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was naughty and
obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then I took the
matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse's help to get the
other children up, telling him that I did not love him. For a long time
he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped out of bed, ran to me in
his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not calm him for a long time. It
was plain that what troubled him most was that he had grieved me.
Afterwards in the evening when I gave him his ticket, he again began
crying piteously and kissing me. One can do anything with him by
tenderness.

"What is a 'ticket'?" Nicholas inquired.

"I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening, showing how
they have behaved."

Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing at him, and
continued to turn over the pages and read. In the diary was set down
everything in the children's lives that seemed noteworthy to their
mother as showing their characters or suggesting general reflections on
educational methods. They were for the most part quite insignificant
trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the father either, now
that he read this diary about his children for the first time.

Under the date "5" was entered:

Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding. He had
none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others while they were
eating! I think that punishment by depriving children of sweets only
develops their greediness. Must tell Nicholas this.

Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant eyes
gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her diary?
There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of his
admiration for his wife.

Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or even
done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of which the
sole aim was the children's moral welfare delighted him. Had Nicholas
been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that his steady,
tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling of wonder at
her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost beyond his reach,
in which she had her being.

He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own
insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the
more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part of
himself.

"I quite, quite approve, my dearest!" said he with a significant look,
and after a short pause he added: "And I behaved badly today. You
weren't in the study. We began disputing--Pierre and I--and I lost my
temper. But he is impossible: such a child! I don't know what would
become of him if Natasha didn't keep him in hand.... Have you any idea
why he went to Petersburg? They have formed..."

"Yes, I know," said Countess Mary. "Natasha told me."

"Well, then, you know," Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere
recollection of their discussion, "he wanted to convince me that it is
every honest man's duty to go against the government, and that the oath
of allegiance and duty... I am sorry you weren't there. They all fell on
me--Denisov and Natasha... Natasha is absurd. How she rules over him!
And yet there need only be a discussion and she has no words of her own
but only repeats his sayings..." added Nicholas, yielding to that
irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge those nearest and
dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying about Natasha could
have been applied word for word to himself in relation to his wife.

"Yes, I have noticed that," said Countess Mary.

"When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he
started proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there--what
would you have said?"

"As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natasha so. Pierre says
everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that it is
our duty to help our neighbor. Of course he is right there," said
Countess Mary, "but he forgets that we have other duties nearer to us,
duties indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might expose
ourselves to risks we must not risk our children."

"Yes, that's it! That's just what I said to him," put in Nicholas, who
fancied he really had said it. "But they insisted on their own view:
love of one's neighbor and Christianity--and all this in the presence of
young Nicholas, who had gone into my study and broke all my things."

"Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about little Nicholas,"
said Countess Mary. "He is such an exceptional boy. I am afraid I
neglect him in favor of my own: we all have children and relations while
he has no one. He is constantly alone with his thoughts."

"Well, I don't think you need reproach yourself on his account. All that
the fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are doing for
him, and of course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine lad! This
evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and fancy--as we were
going in to supper I looked and he had broken everything on my table to
bits, and he told me of it himself at once! I never knew him to tell an
untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!" repeated Nicholas, who at heart was
not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but was always anxious to recognize that
he was a fine lad.

"Still, I am not the same as his own mother," said Countess Mary. "I
feel I am not the same and it troubles me. A wonderful boy, but I am
dreadfully afraid for him. It would be good for him to have companions."

"Well it won't be for long. Next summer I'll take him to Petersburg,"
said Nicholas. "Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and always will be," he
continued, returning to the talk in the study which had evidently
disturbed him. "Well, what business is it of mine what goes on there--
whether Arakcheev is bad, and all that? What business was it of mine
when I married and was so deep in debt that I was threatened with
prison, and had a mother who could not see or understand it? And then
there are you and the children and our affairs. Is it for my own
pleasure that I am at the farm or in the office from morning to night?
No, but I know I must work to comfort my mother, to repay you, and not
to leave the children such beggars as I was."

Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live by bread alone
and that he attached too much importance to these matters. But she knew
she must not say this and that it would be useless to do so. She only
took his hand and kissed it. He took this as a sign of approval and a
confirmation of his thoughts, and after a few minutes' reflection
continued to think aloud.

"You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofanych" (this was his overseer) "came
back from the Tambov estate and told me they are already offering eighty
thousand rubles for the forest."

And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the possibility of
repurchasing Otradnoe before long, and added: "Another ten years of life
and I shall leave the children... in an excellent position."

Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood all that he told
her. She knew that when he thought aloud in this way he would sometimes
ask her what he had been saying, and be vexed if he noticed that she had
been thinking about something else. But she had to force herself to
attend, for what he was saying did not interest her at all. She looked
at him and did not think, but felt, about something different. She felt
a submissive tender love for this man who would never understand all
that she understood, and this seemed to make her love for him still
stronger and added a touch of passionate tenderness. Besides this
feeling which absorbed her altogether and hindered her from following
the details of her husband's plans, thoughts that had no connection with
what he was saying flitted through her mind. She thought of her nephew.
Her husband's account of the boy's agitation while Pierre was speaking
struck her forcibly, and various traits of his gentle, sensitive
character recurred to her mind; and while thinking of her nephew she
thought also of her own children. She did not compare them with him, but
compared her feeling for them with her feeling for him, and felt with
regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for young
Nicholas.

Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose from the
difference in their ages, but she felt herself to blame toward him and
promised in her heart to do better and to accomplish the impossible--in
this life to love her husband, her children, little Nicholas, and all
her neighbors, as Christ loved mankind. Countess Mary's soul always
strove toward the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute, and could
therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of the lofty, secret
suffering of a soul burdened by the body appeared on her face. Nicholas
gazed at her. "O God! What will become of us if she dies, as I always
fear when her face is like that?" thought he, and placing himself before
the icon he began to say his evening prayers.




CHAPTER XVI

Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband and
wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity,
understanding and expressing each other's thoughts in ways contrary to
all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions, and in
a quite peculiar way. Natasha was so used to this kind of talk with her
husband that for her it was the surest sign of something being wrong
between them if Pierre followed a line of logical reasoning. When he
began proving anything, or talking argumentatively and calmly and she,
led on by his example, began to do the same, she knew that they were on
the verge of a quarrel.

From the moment they were alone and Natasha came up to him with wide-
open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his head pressed it to her bosom,
saying: "Now you are all mine, mine! You won't escape!"--from that
moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic and
contrary to them because quite different subjects were talked about at
one and the same time. This simultaneous discussion of many topics did
not prevent a clear understanding but on the contrary was the surest
sign that they fully understood one another.

Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and
contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this
intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the words themselves were
not consecutive and clear but only the feeling that prompted them.

Natasha spoke to Pierre about her brother's life and doings, of how she
had suffered and lacked life during his own absence, and of how she was
fonder than ever of Mary, and how Mary was in every way better than
herself. In saying this Natasha was sincere in acknowledging Mary's
superiority, but at the same time by saying it she made a demand on
Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her to Mary and to all other
women, and that now, especially after having seen many women in
Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh.

Pierre, answering Natasha's words, told her how intolerable it had been
for him to meet ladies at dinners and balls in Petersburg.

"I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies," he said. "It was
simply dull. Besides, I was very busy."

Natasha looked intently at him and went on:

"Mary is so splendid," she said. "How she understands children! It is as
if she saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance, Mitya was
naughty..."

"How like his father he is," Pierre interjected.

Natasha knew why he mentioned Mitya's likeness to Nicholas: the
recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and
he wanted to know what Natasha thought of it.

"Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not generally
accepted. But I understand that you value what opens up a fresh line,"
said she, repeating words Pierre had once uttered.

"No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are an
amusement--almost a pastime," said Pierre. "For instance, he is
collecting a library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book till
he has read what he had already bought--Sismondi and Rousseau and
Montesquieu," he added with a smile. "You know how much I..." he began
to soften down what he had said; but Natasha interrupted him to show
that this was unnecessary.

"So you say ideas are an amusement to him...."

"Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in Petersburg I
saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all else is
mere amusement."

"Ah, I'm so sorry I wasn't there when you met the children," said
Natasha. "Which was most delighted? Lisa, I'm sure."

"Yes," Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind. "Nicholas
says we ought not to think. But I can't help it. Besides, when I was in
Petersburg I felt (I can say this to you) that the whole affair would go
to pieces without me--everyone was pulling his own way. But I succeeded
in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear and simple. You see, I
don't say that we ought to oppose this and that. We may be mistaken.
What I say is: 'Join hands, you who love the right, and let there be but
one banner--that of active virtue.' Prince Sergey is a fine fellow and
clever."

Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre's idea,
but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man so important and necessary to
society be also my husband? How did this happen?" She wished to express
this doubt to him. "Now who could decide whether he is really cleverer
than all the others?" she asked herself, and passed in review all those
whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what he had said there was no one
he had respected so highly as Platon Karataev.

"Do you know what I am thinking about?" she asked. "About Platon
Karataev. Would he have approved of you now, do you think?"

Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood his
wife's line of thought.

"Platon Karataev?" he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely trying
to imagine Karataev's opinion on the subject. "He would not have
understood... yet perhaps he would."

"I love you awfully!" Natasha suddenly said. "Awfully, awfully!"

"No, he would not have approved," said Pierre, after reflection. "What
he would have approved of is our family life. He was always so anxious
to find seemliness, happiness, and peace in everything, and I should
have been proud to let him see us. There now--you talk of my absence,
but you wouldn't believe what a special feeling I have for you after a
separation...."

"Yes, I should think..." Natasha began.

"No, it's not that. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn't love
more, but this is something special.... Yes, of course-" he did not
finish because their eyes meeting said the rest.

"What nonsense it is," Natasha suddenly exclaimed, "about honeymoons,
and that the greatest happiness is at first! On the contrary, now is the
best of all. If only you did not go away! Do you remember how we
quarreled? And it was always my fault. Always mine. And what we
quarreled about--I don't even remember!"

"Always about the same thing," said Pierre with a smile. "Jealo..."

"Don't say it! I can't bear it!" Natasha cried, and her eyes glittered
coldly and vindictively. "Did you see her?" she added, after a pause.

"No, and if I had I shouldn't have recognized her."

They were silent for a while.

"Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study I was looking at
you," Natasha began, evidently anxious to disperse the cloud that had
come over them. "You are as like him as two peas--like the boy." (She
meant her little son.) "Oh, it's time to go to him.... The milk's
come.... But I'm sorry to leave you."

They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one another
at the same time they both began to speak. Pierre began with self-
satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natasha with a quiet, happy smile. Having
interrupted one another they both stopped to let the other continue.

"No. What did you say? Go on, go on."

"No, you go on, I was talking nonsense," said Natasha.

Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to his complacent
reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment it seemed to
him that he was chosen to give a new direction to the whole of Russian
society and to the whole world.

"I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are always
simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious people are united and
constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now that's simple
enough."

"Yes."

"And what were you going to say?"

"I? Only nonsense."

"But all the same?"

"Oh nothing, only a trifle," said Natasha, smilingly still more
brightly. "I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today nurse was coming
to take him from me, and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung to me. I'm
sure he thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now he's crying.
Well, good-by!" and she left the room.

Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski's bedroom a little lamp
was burning as usual. (The boy was afraid of the dark and they could not
cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four pillows and his
Roman nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring. Little Nicholas, who had
just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat up in bed and gazed before him
with wide-open eyes. He had awaked from a terrible dream. He had dreamed
that he and Uncle Pierre, wearing helmets such as were depicted in his
Plutarch, were leading a huge army. The army was made up of white
slanting lines that filled the air like the cobwebs that float about in
autumn and which Dessalles called les fils de la Vierge. In front was
Glory, which was similar to those threads but rather thicker. He and
Pierre were borne along lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their
goal. Suddenly the threads that moved them began to slacken and become
entangled and it grew difficult to move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before
them in a stern and threatening attitude.

"Have you done this?" he said, pointing to some broken sealing wax and
pens. "I loved you, but I have orders from Arakcheev and will kill the
first of you who moves forward." Little Nicholas turned to look at
Pierre but Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his father--
Prince Andrew--and his father had neither shape nor form, but he
existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with love:
he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father caressed and
pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer and nearer to them. Terror
seized young Nicholas and he awoke.

"My father!" he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of Prince
Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human form.) "My
father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of me and of Uncle
Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it. Mucius Scaevola burned
his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing happen to me? I know
they want me to learn. And I will learn. But someday I shall have
finished learning, and then I will do something. I only pray God that
something may happen to me such as happened to Plutarch's men, and I
will act as they did. I will do better. Everyone shall know me, love me,
and be delighted with me!" And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and
he began to cry.

"Are you ill?" he heard Dessalles' voice asking.

"No," answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.

"He is good and kind and I am fond of him!" he thought of Dessalles.
"But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father? Oh,
Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he would be
satisfied...."

SECOND EPILOGUE




CHAPTER I

History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into
words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single
nation, appears impossible.

The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to describe
and seize the apparently elusive--the life of a people. They described
the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and regarded the
activity of those men as representing the activity of the whole nation.

The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished and by
what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the ancients
met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations to the will of
a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so as to accomplish
ends that were predestined.

For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the direct
participation of the Deity in human affairs.

Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.

It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in man's
subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward which nations
are led, modern history should study not the manifestations of power but
the causes that produce it. But modern history has not done this. Having
in theory rejected the view held by the ancients, it still follows them
in practice.

Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided by the
will of God, modern history has given us either heroes endowed with
extraordinary, superhuman capacities, or simply men of very various
kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses. Instead of the
former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations,
which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of
humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims--the welfare of the
French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the
welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually
meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a
large continent.

Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without
replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has
obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the divine
authority of the kings and the "fate" of the ancients, to reach the same
conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations guided by
individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to which these
nations and humanity at large are tending.

At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon to
Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent novelty of
their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.

In the first place the historian describes the activity of individuals
who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian considers only
monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men, while another
includes also orators, learned men, reformers, philosophers, and poets).
Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward which humanity is being led
is known to the historians: to one of them this goal is the greatness of
the Roman, Spanish, or French realm; to another it is liberty, equality,
and a certain kind of civilization of a small corner of the world called
Europe.

In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is expressed
by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it moves
eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east westward. In
1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable
symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, attracting to it,
as the first movement had done, the nations of middle Europe. The
counter movement reaches the starting point of the first movement in the
west--Paris--and subsides.

During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions of
men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions of
Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
another.

What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people burn
houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these events?
What force made men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and most
legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it encounters the
monuments and tradition of that period.

For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns to the
science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity to know
themselves.

If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have
said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and
directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that reply
would have been clear and complete. One might believe or disbelieve in
the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone believing in it
there would have been nothing unintelligible in the history of that
period, nor would there have been any contradictions.

But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit the
conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the Deity
in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other answers.

Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know what
this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced these
events? Then listen:

"Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such and such
mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France badly. His
descendants were weak men and they too ruled France badly. And they had
such and such favorites and such and such mistresses. Moreover, certain
men wrote some books at that time. At the end of the eighteenth century
there were a couple of dozen men in Paris who began to talk about all
men being free and equal. This caused people all over France to begin to
slash at and drown one another. They killed the king and many other
people. At that time there was in France a man of genius--Napoleon. He
conquered everybody everywhere--that is, he killed many people because
he was a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and
killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he returned to
France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all obeyed him. Having
become an Emperor he again went out to kill people in Italy, Austria,
and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. In Russia there was
an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and
therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly made friends with
him, but in 1811 they again quarreled and again began killing many
people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand men into Russia and captured
Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and the Emperor
Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to
arm against the disturber of its peace. All Napoleon's allies suddenly
became his enemies and their forces advanced against the fresh forces he
raised. The Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to
abdicate, and sent him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the
title of Emperor and showing him every respect, though five years before
and one year later they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand.
Then Louis XVIII, who till then had been the laughingstock both of the
French and the Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears
before his Old Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then
the skillful statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who
managed to sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and thereby
extended the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by these
conversations made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the
diplomatists and monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of
again ordering their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon
arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating
him, immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were
angry at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated
the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent him
to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the beloved
France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that rock and
bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a reaction
occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress their
subjects."

It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic--a caricature of the
historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild expression of the
contradictory replies, not meeting the questions, which all the
historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the histories of
separate states to the writers of general histories and the new
histories of the culture of that period.

The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact that
modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.

If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of
humanity and of the peoples, the first question--in the absence of a
reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible--is: what is the
power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies
either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very
proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.

All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not
what was asked. All that would be interesting if we recognized a divine
power based on itself and always consistently directing its nations
through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we do not acknowledge such
a power, and therefore before speaking about Napoleons, Louis-es, and
authors, we ought to be shown the connection existing between these men
and the movement of the nations.

If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it should be
explained in what this new force consists, for the whole interest of
history lies precisely in that force.

History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to
everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone
reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new
force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really
quite well known to everybody.




CHAPTER II

What force moves the nations?

Biographical historians and historians of separate nations understand
this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers. In their narration
events occur solely by the will of a Napoleon, and Alexander, or in
general of the persons they describe. The answers given by this kind of
historian to the question of what force causes events to happen are
satisfactory only as long as there is but one historian to each event.
As soon as historians of different nationalities and tendencies begin to
describe the same event, the replies they give immediately lose all
meaning, for this force is understood by them all not only differently
but often in quite contradictory ways. One historian says that an event
was produced by Napoleon's power, another that it was produced by
Alexander's, a third that it was due to the power of some other person.
Besides this, historians of that kind contradict each other even in
their statement as to the force on which the authority of some
particular person was based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon's
power was based on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it
was based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the historians
of this class, by mutually destroying one another's positions, destroy
the understanding of the force which produces events, and furnish no
reply to history's essential question.

Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to
recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians' view of the force
which produces events. They do not recognize it as a power inherent in
heroes and rulers, but as the resultant of a multiplicity of variously
directed forces. In describing a war or the subjugation of a people, a
general historian looks for the cause of the event not in the power of
one man, but in the interaction of many persons connected with the
event.

According to this view the power of historical personages, represented
as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would seem, be regarded
as a force that itself produces events. Yet in most cases universal
historians still employ the conception of power as a force that itself
produces events, and treat it as their cause. In their exposition, an
historic character is first the product of his time, and his power only
the resultant of various forces, and then his power is itself a force
producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and others, for instance, at one
time prove Napoleon to be a product of the Revolution, of the ideas of
1789 and so forth, and at another plainly say that the campaign of 1812
and other things they do not like were simply the product of Napoleon's
misdirected will, and that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in their
development by Napoleon's caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the
general temper of the age produced Napoleon's power. But Napoleon's
power suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of
the age.

This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only does it occur at
every step, but the universal historians' accounts are all made up of a
chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs because after
entering the field of analysis the universal historians stop halfway.

To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant force, the
sum of the components must equal the resultant. This condition is never
observed by the universal historians, and so to explain the resultant
forces they are obliged to admit, in addition to the insufficient
components, another unexplained force affecting the resultant action.

Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813 or the restoration
of the Bourbons plainly assert that these events were produced by the
will of Alexander. But the universal historian Gervinus, refuting this
opinion of the specialist historian, tries to prove that the campaign of
1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons were due to other things beside
Alexander's will--such as the activity of Stein, Metternich, Madame de
Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte, Chateaubriand, and others. The historian
evidently decomposes Alexander's power into the components: Talleyrand,
Chateaubriand, and the rest--but the sum of the components, that is, the
interactions of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the
others, evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of
millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That Chateaubriand,
Madame de Stael, and others spoke certain words to one another only
affected their mutual relations but does not account for the submission
of millions. And therefore to explain how from these relations of theirs
the submission of millions of people resulted--that is, how component
forces equal to one A gave a resultant equal to a thousand times A--the
historian is again obliged to fall back on power--the force he had
denied--and to recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is, he
has to admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is
just what the universal historians do, and consequently they not only
contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves.

Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according to
whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the clouds
away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the same way the
universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them and fits in with
their theory, say that power is the result of events, and sometimes,
when they want to prove something else, say that power produces events.

A third class of historians--the so-called historians of culture--
following the path laid down by the universal historians who sometimes
accept writers and ladies as forces producing events--again take that
force to be something quite different. They see it in what is called
culture--in mental activity.

The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their
progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical
events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one
another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that
such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense number of
indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these historians select
the indication of intellectual activity and say that this indication is
the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove that the cause of events
lies in intellectual activity, only by a great stretch can one admit
that there is any connection between intellectual activity and the
movement of peoples, and in no case can one admit that intellectual
activity controls people's actions, for that view is not confirmed by
such facts as the very cruel murders of the French Revolution resulting
from the doctrine of the equality of man, or the very cruel wars and
executions resulting from the preaching of love.

But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised arguments with
which these histories are filled--admitting that nations are governed by
some undefined force called an idea--history's essential question still
remains unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs and to the
influence of advisers and other people introduced by the universal
historians, another, newer force--the idea--is added, the connection of
which with the masses needs explanation. It is possible to understand
that Napoleon had power and so events occurred; with some effort one may
even conceive that Napoleon together with other influences was the cause
of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat Social, had the effect of making
Frenchmen begin to drown one another cannot be understood without an
explanation of the causal nexus of this new force with the event.

Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live contemporaneously,
and so it is possible to find some connection between the intellectual
activity of men and their historical movements, just as such a
connection may be found between the movements of humanity and commerce,
handicraft, gardening, or anything else you please. But why intellectual
activity is considered by the historians of culture to be the cause or
expression of the whole historical movement is hard to understand. Only
the following considerations can have led the historians to such a
conclusion: (1) that history is written by learned men, and so it is
natural and agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class
supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity, just as a similar
belief is natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists, and soldiers
(if they do not express it, that is merely because traders and soldiers
do not write history), and (2) that spiritual activity, enlightenment,
civilization, culture, ideas, are all indistinct, indefinite conceptions
under whose banner it is very easy to use words having a still less
definite meaning, and which can therefore be readily introduced into any
theory.

But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this kind
(which may possibly even be of use to someone for something) the
histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and more
to approximate, are significant from the fact that after seriously and
minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and political
doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to describe an
actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for instance, they
involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise of power--and
say plainly that that was the result of Napoleon's will. Speaking so,
the historians of culture involuntarily contradict themselves, and show
that the new force they have devised does not account for what happens
in history, and that history can only be explained by introducing a
power which they apparently do not recognize.




CHAPTER III

A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?" A peasant says
the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because its
wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement lies in
the smoke which the wind carries away.

The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation. To
refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no devil, or
another peasant would have to explain to him that it is not the devil
but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as a result of the
contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong. But the man who
says that the movement of the wheels is the cause refutes himself, for
having once begun to analyze he ought to go on and explain further why
the wheels go round; and till he has reached the ultimate cause of the
movement of the locomotive in the pressure of steam in the boiler, he
has no right to stop in his search for the cause. The man who explains
the movement of the locomotive by the smoke that is carried back has
noticed that the wheels do not supply an explanation and has taken the
first sign that occurs to him and in his turn has offered that as an
explanation.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the locomotive is
that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples is that
of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the peoples.

Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces of
different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement
observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the
peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force resulting
from several other forces, like the movement of the wheels; others again
as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that is blown away.

So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether
Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories of
all, absolutely all those who take part in an event, it is quite
impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception
of a force compelling men to direct their activity toward a certain end.
And the only such conception known to historians is that of power.

This conception is the one handle by means of which the material of
history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone who
breaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some other method
of treating historical material, merely deprives himself of the one
possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the conception of
power as an explanation of historical events is best demonstrated by the
universal historians and historians of culture themselves, for they
professedly reject that conception but inevitably have recourse to it at
every step.

In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history up to now is
like money in circulation--paper money and coin. The biographies and
special national histories are like paper money. They can be used and
can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to anyone and even
advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the security behind them.
You need only forget to ask how the will of heroes produces events, and
such histories as Thiers' will be interesting and instructive and may
perhaps even possess a tinge of poetry. But just as doubts of the real
value of paper money arise either because, being easy to make, too much
of it gets made or because people try to exchange it for gold, so also
doubts concerning the real value of such histories arise either because
too many of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart
someone inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?--that is, wants to
exchange the current paper money for the real gold of actual
comprehension.

The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture are
like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to
substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific gravity
of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more than
that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is deceived by
tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle. As gold is
gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange but also for use,
so universal historians will be valuable only when they can reply to
history's essential question: what is power? The universal historians
give contradictory replies to that question, while the historians of
culture evade it and answer something quite different. And as counters
of imitation gold can be used only among a group of people who agree to
accept them as gold, or among those who do not know the nature of gold,
so universal historians and historians of culture, not answering
humanity's essential question, serve as currency for some purposes of
their own, only in universities and among the mass of readers who have a
taste for what they call "serious reading."




CHAPTER IV

Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divine
subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and the subjection
of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot without contradictions
take a single step till it has chosen one of two things: either a return
to the former belief in the direct intervention of the Deity in human
affairs or a definite explanation of the meaning of the force producing
historical events and termed "power."

A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been destroyed; and
so it is essential to explain what is meant by power.

Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so
accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that the question:
why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleon uttered
certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power and so what he
ordered was done.

This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was given
him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes essential to
determine what is this power of one man over others.

It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak one--
a domination based on the application or threat of physical force, like
the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect of moral force,
as in their simplicity some historians think who say that the leading
figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted with a special
strength of soul and mind called genius. This power cannot be based on
the predominance of moral strength, for, not to mention heroes such as
Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions differ widely, history
shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a Metternich, who ruled over
millions of people, had any particular moral qualities, but on the
contrary were generally morally weaker than any of the millions they
ruled over.

If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral
qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for
elsewhere--in the relation to the people of the man who wields the
power.

And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence,
that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history's
understanding of power for true gold.

Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed or
tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.

In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of how a
state and power might be arranged were it possible for all that to be
arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied to history that
definition of power needs explanation.

The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as the ancients
regarded fire--namely, as something existing absolutely. But for
history, the state and power are merely phenomena, just as for modern
physics fire is not an element but a phenomenon.

From this fundamental difference between the view held by history and
that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tell
minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and what power--
existing immutably outside time--is, but to history's questions about
the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answer nothing.

If power be the collective will of the people transferred to their
ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the people? If not,
then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when he was
taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were those criminals whom
he arrested?

Do palace revolutions--in which sometimes only two or three people take
part--transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? In international
relations, is the will of the people also transferred to their
conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine transferred to
Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people transferred to
Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the French went to
fight the Austrians?

To these questions three answers are possible:

Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always
unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen, and
that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle against
the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded as an
infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the people is
transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite and known
conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, and even
destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers of the
conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or (3) that
the will of the people is delegated to the rulers conditionally, but
that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, and that the appearance
of several authorities, their struggles and their falls, result solely
from the greater or lesser fulfillment by the rulers of these unknown
conditions on which the will of the people is transferred from some
people to others.

And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain the
relation of the people to their rulers.

Some historians--those biographical and specialist historians already
referred to--in their simplicity failing to understand the question of
the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collective will of the
people is unconditionally transferred to historical persons, and
therefore when describing some single state they assume that particular
power to be the one absolute and real power, and that any other force
opposing this is not a power but a violation of power--mere violence.

Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods of history,
has the inconvenience--in application to complex and stormy periods in
the life of nations during which various powers arise simultaneously and
struggle with one another--that a Legitimist historian will prove that
the National Convention, the Directory, and Bonaparte were mere
infringers of the true power, while a Republican and a Bonapartist will
prove: the one that the Convention and the other that the Empire was the
real power, and that all the others were violations of power. Evidently
the explanations furnished by these historians being mutually
contradictory can only satisfy young children.

Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of
historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the will
of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have power
only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will of the
people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this program
consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they continually
contradict one another.

Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation's
progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth, freedom,
or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country. But not to
mention the historians' contradictions as to the nature of this program-
-or even admitting that some one general program of these conditions
exists--the facts of history almost always contradict that theory. If
the conditions under which power is entrusted consist in the wealth,
freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how is it that Louis XIV and
Ivan the Terrible end their reigns tranquilly, while Louis XVI and
Charles I are executed by their people? To this question historians
reply that Louis XIV's activity, contrary to the program, reacted on
Louis XVI. But why did it not react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV--why
should it react just on Louis XVI? And what is the time limit for such
reactions? To these questions there are and can be no answers. Equally
little does this view explain why for several centuries the collective
will is not withdrawn from certain rulers and their heirs, and then
suddenly during a period of fifty years is transferred to the
Convention, to the Directory, to Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII,
to Napoleon again, to Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican
government, and to Napoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers
of the people's will from one individual to another, especially in view
of international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians are
obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normal delegations
of the people's will but are accidents dependent on cunning, on
mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a ruler, or a
party leader. So that the greater part of the events of history--civil
wars, revolutions, and conquests--are presented by these historians not
as the results of free transferences of the people's will, but as
results of the ill-directed will of one or more individuals, that is,
once again, as usurpations of power. And so these historians also see
and admit historical events which are exceptions to the theory.

These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that some
plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist that all
that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and that the palm, the
mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full growth and no longer
resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory.

Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people is
transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the
conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages have
power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has been
delegated to them.

But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in the
historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance have
those leaders?

The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of the people:
the activity of the leaders represents the activity of the people.

But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of the
leaders serves as an expression of the people's will or only some part
of it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves as the expression of
the people's will, as some historians suppose, then all the details of
the court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon or a
Catherine serve to express the life of the nation, which is evident
nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of the activity of an
historical leader which serves to express the people's life, as other
so-called "philosophical" historians believe, then to determine which
side of the activity of a leader expresses the nation's life, we have
first of all to know in what the nation's life consists.

Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most
obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all
conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of
humanity's movement. The most usual generalizations adopted by almost
all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment, progress,
civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization as the goal
of the movement of humanity, the historians study the men of whom the
greatest number of monuments have remained: kings, ministers, generals,
authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to the extent to which in
their opinion these persons have promoted or hindered that abstraction.
But as it is in no way proved that the aim of humanity does consist in
freedom, equality, enlightenment, or civilization, and as the connection
of the people with the rulers and enlighteners of humanity is only based
on the arbitrary assumption that the collective will of the people is
always transferred to the men whom we have noticed, it happens that the
activity of the millions who migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture,
and destroy one another never is expressed in the account of the
activity of some dozen people who did not burn houses, practice
agriculture, or slay their fellow creatures.

History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoples of the
west at the end of the eighteenth century and their drive eastward
explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, their mistresses
and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau, Diderot,
Beaumarchais, and others?

Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and Siberia
expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan the Terrible and by
his correspondence with Kurbski?

Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained by
the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and their ladies?
For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, without leaders,
with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit, remains
incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the cessation of that
movement when a rational and sacred aim for the Crusade--the deliverance
of Jerusalem--had been clearly defined by historic leaders. Popes,
kings, and knights incited the peoples to free the Holy Land; but the
people did not go, for the unknown cause which had previously impelled
them to go no longer existed. The history of the Godfreys and the
Minnesingers can evidently not cover the life of the peoples. And the
history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers has remained the history of
Godfreys and Minnesingers, but the history of the life of the peoples
and their impulses has remained unknown.

Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us the
life of the peoples.

The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions of
life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had a
hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was
suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why after
the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor why during the
French Revolution they guillotined one another.

If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the newest
historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but not
the history of the life of the peoples.




CHAPTER V

The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a few men, for
the connection between those men and the nations has not been found. The
theory that this connection is based on the transference of the
collective will of a people to certain historical personages is an
hypothesis unconfirmed by the experience of history.

The theory of the transference of the collective will of the people to
historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of jurisprudence
and be essential for its purposes, but in its application to history, as
soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil wars occur--that is, as soon as
history begins--that theory explains nothing.

The theory seems irrefutable just because the act of transference of the
people's will cannot be verified, for it never occurred.

Whatever happens and whoever may stand at the head of affairs, the
theory can always say that such and such a person took the lead because
the collective will was transferred to him.

The replies this theory gives to historical questions are like the
replies of a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and
paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in different
parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman, should attribute
the direction the herd takes to what animal happens to be at its head.

"The herd goes in that direction because the animal in front leads it
and the collective will of all the other animals is vested in that
leader." This is what historians of the first class say--those who
assume the unconditional transference of the people's will.

"If the animals leading the herd change, this happens because the
collective will of all the animals is transferred from one leader to
another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them in
the direction selected by the whole herd." Such is the reply historians
who assume that the collective will of the people is delegated to rulers
under conditions which they regard as known. (With this method of
observation it often happens that the observer, influenced by the
direction he himself prefers, regards those as leaders who, owing to the
people's change of direction, are no longer in front, but on one side,
or even in the rear.)

"If the animals in front are continually changing and the direction of
the whole herd is constantly altered, this is because in order to follow
a given direction the animals transfer their will to the animals that
have attracted our attention, and to study the movements of the herd we
must watch the movements of all the prominent animals moving on all
sides of the herd." So say the third class of historians who regard all
historical persons, from monarchs to journalists, as the expression of
their age.

The theory of the transference of the will of the people to historic
persons is merely a paraphrase--a restatement of the question in other
words.

What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the
collective will of the people transferred to one person. Under what
condition is the will of the people delegated to one person? On
condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people. That
is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning of which
we do not understand.

If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning,
then having subjected to criticism the explanation of "power" that
juridical science gives us, humanity would conclude that power is merely
a word and has no real existence. But to understand phenomena man has,
besides abstract reasoning, experience by which he verifies his
reflections. And experience tells us that power is not merely a word but
an actually existing phenomenon.

Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective activity
of men can do without the conception of power, the existence of power is
proved both by history and by observing contemporary events.

Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men appear, by whose will the
event seems to have taken place. Napoleon III issues a decree and the
French go to Mexico. The King of Prussia and Bismarck issue decrees and
an army enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree and an army enters
Russia. Alexander I gives a command and the French submit to the
Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever event occurs it is always
related to the will of one or of several men who have decreed it.

The historians, in accord with the old habit of acknowledging divine
intervention in human affairs, want to see the cause of events in the
expression of the will of someone endowed with power, but that
supposition is not confirmed either by reason or by experience.

On the one side reflection shows that the expression of a man's will--
his words--are only part of the general activity expressed in an event,
as for instance in a war or a revolution, and so without assuming an
incomprehensible, supernatural force--a miracle--one cannot admit that
words can be the immediate cause of the movements of millions of men. On
the other hand, even if we admitted that words could be the cause of
events, history shows that the expression of the will of historical
personages does not in most cases produce any effect, that is to say,
their commands are often not executed, and sometimes the very opposite
of what they order occurs.

Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of humanity we
cannot regard "power" as the cause of events.

Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation that
exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution of
that will by others.

To explain the conditions of that relationship we must first establish a
conception of the expression of will, referring it to man and not to the
Deity.

If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as ancient history
tells us, the expression of that will is independent of time and is not
caused by anything, for the Divinity is not controlled by an event. But
speaking of commands that are the expression of the will of men acting
in time and in relation to one another, to explain the connection of
commands with events we must restore: (1) the condition of all that
takes place: the continuity of movement in time both of the events and
of the person who commands, and (2) the inevitability of the connection
between the person commanding and those who execute his command.




CHAPTER VI

Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time, can
relate to a whole series of events occurring over a period of years or
centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can by His
sole will determine the direction of humanity's movement; but man acts
in time and himself takes part in what occurs.

Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we see that no
command can be executed without some preceding order having been given
rendering the execution of the last command possible.

No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole series
of occurrences; but each command follows from another, and never refers
to a whole series of events but always to one moment only of an event.

When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies to go to war, we
combine in one simultaneous expression a whole series of consecutive
commands dependent one on another. Napoleon could not have commanded an
invasion of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered such and such
papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to Petersburg; tomorrow
such and such decrees and orders to the army, the fleet, the
commissariat, and so on and so on--millions of commands, which formed a
whole series corresponding to a series of events which brought the
French armies into Russia.

If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an invasion of
England and expended on no other undertaking so much time and effort,
and yet during his whole reign never once attempted to execute that
design but undertook an expedition into Russia, with which country he
considered it desirable to be in alliance (a conviction he repeatedly
expressed)--this came about because his commands did not correspond to
the course of events in the first case, but did so correspond in the
latter.

For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that a man should
order what can be executed. But to know what can and what cannot be
executed is impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon's invasion of
Russia in which millions participated, but even in the simplest event,
for in either case millions of obstacles may arise to prevent its
execution. Every order executed is always one of an immense number
unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with the course of
events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones get linked up with a
consecutive series of commands corresponding to a series of events, and
are executed.

Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which precedes
it is due to the fact that when the event has taken place and out of
thousands of others those few commands which were consistent with that
event have been executed, we forget about the others that were not
executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the chief source of
our error in this matter is due to the fact that in the historical
accounts a whole series of innumerable, diverse, and petty events, such
for instance as all those which led the French armies to Russia, is
generalized into one event in accord with the result produced by that
series of events, and corresponding with this generalization the whole
series of commands is also generalized into a single expression of will.

We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In reality
in all Napoleon's activity we never find anything resembling an
expression of that wish, but find a series of orders, or expressions of
his will, very variously and indefinitely directed. Amid a long series
of unexecuted orders of Napoleon's one series, for the campaign of 1812,
was carried out--not because those orders differed in any way from the
other, unexecuted orders but because they coincided with the course of
events that led the French army into Russia; just as in stencil work
this or that figure comes out not because the color was laid on from
this side or in that way, but because it was laid on from all sides over
the figure cut in the stencil.

So that examining the relation in time of the commands to the events, we
find that a command can never be the cause of the event, but that a
certain definite dependence exists between the two.

To understand in what this dependence consists it is necessary to
reinstate another omitted condition of every command proceeding not from
the Deity but from a man, which is, that the man who gives the command
himself takes part in the event.

This relation of the commander to those he commands is just what is
called power. This relation consists in the following:

For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in which
regardless of the difference of the aims set for the common action, the
relation between those taking part in it is always the same.

Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations toward
one another that the larger number take a more direct share, and the
smaller number a less direct share, in the collective action for which
they have combined.

Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one of
the most striking and definite examples is an army.

Every army is composed of lower grades of the service--the rank and
file--of whom there are always the greatest number; of the next higher
military rank--corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom there are
fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are still fewer, and
so on to the highest military command which is concentrated in one
person.

A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone, of
which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and file;
the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of the next
higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point of which
will represent the commander-in-chief.

The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section of the
cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing, hacking,
burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for these actions
from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The noncommissioned
officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the action itself less
frequently than the soldiers, but they already give commands. An officer
still less often acts directly himself, but commands still more
frequently. A general does nothing but command the troops, indicates the
objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon himself. The commander-in-chief
never takes direct part in the action itself, but only gives general
orders concerning the movement of the mass of the troops. A similar
relation of people to one another is seen in every combination of men
for common activity--in agriculture, trade, and every administration.

And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of a
cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in any
administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to the
highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action, combine
in such relations that the more directly they participate in performing
the action the less they can command and the more numerous they are,
while the less their direct participation in the action itself, the more
they command and the fewer of them there are; rising in this way from
the lowest ranks to the man at the top, who takes the least direct share
in the action and directs his activity chiefly to commanding.

This relation of the men who command to those they command is what
constitutes the essence of the conception called power.

Having restored the condition of time under which all events occur, we
find that a command is executed only when it is related to a
corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of
relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that
by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest part
in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively directed to
commanding.




CHAPTER VII

When an event is taking place people express their opinions and wishes
about it, and as the event results from the collective activity of many
people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure to be
fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions expressed is
fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event as a command
preceding it.

Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as to how and
where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens that this is
done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we have command and power
in their primary form. The man who worked most with his hands could not
think so much about what he was doing, or reflect on or command what
would result from the common activity; while the man who commanded more
would evidently work less with his hands on account of his greater
verbal activity.

When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a common aim
there is a yet sharper division of those who, because their activity is
given to directing and commanding, take less part in the direct work.

When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflections which
as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his present
activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Just the same is
done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do not take a direct
part in the activity to devise considerations, justifications, and
surmises concerning their collective activity.

For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and kill
one another. And corresponding to the event its justification appears in
people's belief that this was necessary for the welfare of France, for
liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill one another, and this
event was accompanied by its justification in the necessity for a
centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and so on. Men went from
the west to the east killing their fellow men, and the event was
accompanied by phrases about the glory of France, the baseness of
England, and so on. History shows us that these justifications of the
events have no common sense and are all contradictory, as in the case of
killing a man as the result of recognizing his rights, and the killing
of millions in Russia for the humiliation of England. But these
justifications have a very necessary significance in their own day.

These justifications release those who produce the events from moral
responsibility. These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in front
of a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: they clear
men's moral responsibilities from their path.

Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplest
question that presents itself when examining each historical event. How
is it that millions of men commit collective crimes--make war, commit
murder, and so on?

With the present complex forms of political and social life in Europe
can any event that is not prescribed, decreed, or ordered by monarchs,
ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Is there any
collective action which cannot find its justification in political
unity, in patriotism, in the balance of power, or in civilization? So
that every event that occurs inevitably coincides with some expressed
wish and, receiving a justification, presents itself as the result of
the will of one man or of several men.

In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cuts will
always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the ship the
movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion.

Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of that flow and
comparing it with the movement of the ship do we convince ourselves that
every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement of the ship, and
that we were led into error by the fact that we ourselves were
imperceptibly moving.

We see the same if we watch moment by moment the movement of historical
characters (that is, re-establish the inevitable condition of all that
occurs--the continuity of movement in time) and do not lose sight of the
essential connection of historical persons with the masses.

When the ship moves in one direction there is one and the same wave
ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave ahead of it also turns
frequently. But wherever it may turn there always will be the wave
anticipating its movement.

Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseen and
decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the rush of water which neither
directs nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at a distance
seems to us not merely to move of itself but to govern the ship's
movement also.

Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons
which, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumed that
the events depended on those commands. But examining the events
themselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood to
the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent on
events. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that, however many
commands were issued, the event does not take place unless there are
other causes for it, but as soon as an event occurs--be it what it may--
then out of all the continually expressed wishes of different people
some will always be found which by their meaning and their time of
utterance are related as commands to the events.

Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and positively to
these two essential questions of history:

(1) What is power?

(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?

(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals, in
which the more this person expresses opinions, predictions, and
justifications of the collective action that is performed, the less is
his participation in that action.

(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor by intellectual
activity, nor even by a combination of the two as historians have
supposed, but by the activity of all the people who participate in the
events, and who always combine in such a way that those taking the
largest direct share in the event take on themselves the least
responsibility and vice versa.

Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event; physically it
is those who submit to the power. But as the moral activity is
inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event is neither in
the one nor in the other but in the union of the two.

Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to the
phenomena we are examining.

In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity--that final limit
to which in every domain of thought man's reason arrives if it is not
playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heat produces
electricity. Atoms attract each other and atoms repel one another.

Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, we
cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it is
inconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law. The
same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur we do
not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action,
people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, and
we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in other
words that it is a law.




CHAPTER VIII

If history dealt only with external phenomena, the establishment of this
simple and obvious law would suffice and we should have finished our
argument. But the law of history relates to man. A particle of matter
cannot tell us that it does not feel the law of attraction or repulsion
and that that law is untrue, but man, who is the subject of history,
says plainly: I am free and am therefore not subject to the law.

The presence of the problem of man's free will, though unexpressed, is
felt at every step of history.

All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered this
question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and the
false path historical science has followed are due solely to the lack of
a solution of that question.

If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act as he
pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected incidents.

If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely, that
is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that man's in
violation of the laws governing human action would destroy the
possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of humanity.

If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will cannot
exist, for then man's will is subject to that law.

In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which from most
ancient times has occupied the best human minds and from most ancient
times has been presented in its whole tremendous significance.

The problem is that regarding man as a subject of observation from
whatever point of view--theological, historical, ethical, or
philosophic--we find a general law of necessity to which he (like all
that exists) is subject. But regarding him from within ourselves as what
we are conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free.

This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite apart from and
independent of reason. Through his reason man observes himself, but only
through consciousness does he know himself.

Apart from consciousness of self no observation or application of reason
is conceivable.

To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man must first of all be
conscious of himself as living. A man is only conscious of himself as a
living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is conscious of his
volition. But his will--which forms the essence of his life--man
recognizes (and can but recognize) as free.

If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed by one
and the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking food,
using his brain, or anything else) he cannot recognize this never-
varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation of it. Were
it not free it could not be limited. A man's will seems to him to be
limited just because he is not conscious of it except as free.

You say: I am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let it fall.
Everyone understands that this illogical reply is an irrefutable
demonstration of freedom.

That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not subject to
reason.

If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and independent
source of self-consciousness it would be subject to reasoning and to
experience, but in fact such subjection does not exist and is
inconceivable.

A series of experiments and arguments proves to every man that he, as an
object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and man submits to
them and never resists the laws of gravity or impermeability once he has
become acquainted with them. But the same series of experiments and
arguments proves to him that the complete freedom of which he is
conscious in himself is impossible, and that his every action depends on
his organization, his character, and the motives acting upon him; yet
man never submits to the deductions of these experiments and arguments.
Having learned from experiment and argument that a stone falls
downwards, a man indubitably believes this and always expects the law
that he has learned to be fulfilled.

But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws, he does
not and cannot believe this.

However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the
same conditions and with the same character he will do the same thing as
before, yet when under the same conditions and with the same character
he approaches for the thousandth time the action that always ends in the
same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before the experiment that
he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or sage, however
incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him that it is
impossible to imagine two different courses of action in precisely the
same conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which
constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels
that however impossible it may be, it is so, for without this conception
of freedom not only would he be unable to understand life, but he would
be unable to live for a single moment.

He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to life,
are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and
obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and
disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger,
virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom.

A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of
life.

If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a senseless
contradiction like the possibility of performing two actions at one and
the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that only
proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.

This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom, uncontrolled by
experiment or argument, recognized by all thinkers and felt by everyone
without exception, this consciousness without which no conception of man
is possible constitutes the other side of the question.

Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-seeing God.
What is sin, the conception of which arises from the consciousness of
man's freedom? That is a question for theology.

The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws expressed in
statistics. What is man's responsibility to society, the conception of
which results from the conception of freedom? That is a question for
jurisprudence.

Man's actions proceed from his innate character and the motives acting
upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and wrong in
actions that follows from the consciousness of freedom? That is a
question for ethics.

Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears subject to
laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from that
connection appears to be free. How should the past life of nations and
of humanity be regarded--as the result of the free, or as the result of
the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for history.

Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of knowledge--
thanks to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the diffusion of
printed matter--has the question of the freedom of will been put on a
level on which the question itself cannot exist. In our time the
majority of so-called advanced people--that is, the crowd of
ignoramuses--have taken the work of the naturalists who deal with one
side of the question for a solution of the whole problem.

They say and write and print that the soul and freedom do not exist, for
the life of man is expressed by muscular movements and muscular
movements are conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul and
free will do not exist because at an unknown period of time we sprang
from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that thousands of
years ago that same law of necessity which with such ardor they are now
trying to prove by physiology and comparative zoology was not merely
acknowledged by all the religions and all the thinkers, but has never
been denied. They do not see that the role of the natural sciences in
this matter is merely to serve as an instrument for the illumination of
one side of it. For the fact that, from the point of view of
observation, reason and the will are merely secretions of the brain, and
that man following the general law may have developed from lower animals
at some unknown period of time, only explains from a fresh side the
truth admitted thousands of years ago by all the religious and
philosophic theories--that from the point of view of reason man is
subject to the law of necessity; but it does not advance by a hair's
breadth the solution of the question, which has another, opposite, side,
based on the consciousness of freedom.

If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is as
comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at a
certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is the
time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of how
man's consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of
necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative
physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or an ape, we can
observe only the muscular nervous activity, but in man we observe
consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity.

The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this
question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls of a
church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief
superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over the
windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should be
delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything is now
so smooth and regular.




CHAPTER IX

For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability, history
has this advantage over other branches of knowledge in which the
question is dealt with, that for history this question does not refer to
the essence of man's free will but its manifestation in the past and
under certain conditions.

In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences as
experimental science stands to abstract science.

The subject for history is not man's will itself but our presentation of
it.

And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by the
incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist as it does
for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History surveys a presentation of
man's life in which the union of these two contradictions has already
taken place.

In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very clearly
and definitely understood without any sense of contradiction, although
each event presents itself as partly free and partly compulsory.

To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are combined and what
constitutes the essence of these two conceptions, the philosophy of
history can and should follow a path contrary to that taken by other
sciences. Instead of first defining the conceptions of freedom and
inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the phenomena of life
under those definitions, history should deduce a definition of the
conception of freedom and inevitability themselves from the immense
quantity of phenomena of which it is cognizant and that always appear
dependent on these two elements.

Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of an individual we
may consider, we always regard it as the result partly of man's free
will and partly of the law of inevitability.

Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and the incursions of
the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of someone's
action an hour ago in choosing one direction out of several for his
walk, we are unconscious of any contradiction. The degree of freedom and
inevitability governing the actions of these people is clearly defined
for us.

Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to
differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but
every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom and
inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure of
freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more
freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive, and
the more inevitability the less freedom.

The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases
according to the point of view from which the action is regarded, but
their relation is always one of inverse proportion.

A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry mother
exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man trained to
discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a defenseless man--
seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject to the law of
necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which these people were
placed, and more free to one who does not know that the man was himself
drowning, that the mother was hungry, that the soldier was in the ranks,
and so on. Similarly a man who committed a murder twenty years ago and
has since lived peaceably and harmlessly in society seems less guilty
and his action more due to the law of inevitability, to someone who
considers his action after twenty years have elapsed than to one who
examined it the day after it was committed. And in the same way every
action of an insane, intoxicated, or highly excited man appears less
free and more inevitable to one who knows the mental condition of him
who committed the action, and seems more free and less inevitable to one
who does not know it. In all these cases the conception of freedom is
increased or diminished and the conception of compulsion is
correspondingly decreased or increased, according to the point of view
from which the action is regarded. So that the greater the conception of
necessity the smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa.

Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence, and
history itself understand alike this relation between necessity and
freedom.

All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and
necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations:

(1) The relation to the external world of the man who commits the deeds.

(2) His relation to time.

(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.

The first consideration is the clearness of our perception of the man's
relation to the external world and the greater or lesser clearness of
our understanding of the definite position occupied by the man in
relation to everything coexisting with him. This is what makes it
evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject to necessity
than one standing on dry ground, and that makes the actions of a man
closely connected with others in a thickly populated district, or of one
bound by family, official, or business duties, seem certainly less free
and more subject to necessity than those of a man living in solitude and
seclusion.

If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything around
him, each action of his seems to us free. But if we see his relation to
anything around him, if we see his connection with anything whatever--
with a man who speaks to him, a book he reads, the work on which he is
engaged, even with the air he breathes or the light that falls on the
things about him--we see that each of these circumstances has an
influence on him and controls at least some side of his activity. And
the more we perceive of these influences the more our conception of his
freedom diminishes and the more our conception of the necessity that
weighs on him increases.

The second consideration is the more or less evident time relation of
the man to the world and the clearness of our perception of the place
the man's action occupies in time. That is the ground which makes the
fall of the first man, resulting in the production of the human race,
appear evidently less free than a man's entry into marriage today. It is
the reason why the life and activity of people who lived centuries ago
and are connected with me in time cannot seem to me as free as the life
of a contemporary, the consequences of which are still unknown to me.

The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends in this
respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the performance
of the action and our judgment of it.

If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the same
circumstances as those I am in now, my action appears to me undoubtedly
free. But if I examine an act performed a month ago, then being in
different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing that if that act had
not been committed much that resulted from it--good, agreeable, and even
essential--would not have taken place. If I reflect on an action still
more remote, ten years ago or more, then the consequences of my action
are still plainer to me and I find it hard to imagine what would have
happened had that action not been performed. The farther I go back in
memory, or what is the same thing the farther I go forward in my
judgment, the more doubtful becomes my belief in the freedom of my
action.

In history we find a very similar progress of conviction concerning the
part played by free will in the general affairs of humanity. A
contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing of all the
known participants, but with a more remote event we already see its
inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else possible.
And the farther we go back in examining events the less arbitrary do
they appear.

The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of the
crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still seem to
us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their heroes'
will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying its definite
place in history and without which we cannot imagine the modern history
of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the Crusades that event appeared
as merely due to the will of certain people. In regard to the migration
of the peoples it does not enter anyone's head today to suppose that the
renovation of the European world depended on Attila's caprice. The
farther back in history the object of our observation lies, the more
doubtful does the free will of those concerned in the event become and
the more manifest the law of inevitability.

The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that endless
chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which each
phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man's every action, must have its
definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a cause of
what will follow.

The better we are acquainted with the physiological, psychological, and
historical laws deduced by observation and by which man is controlled,
and the more correctly we perceive the physiological, psychological, and
historical causes of the action, and the simpler the action we are
observing and the less complex the character and mind of the man in
question, the more subject to inevitability and the less free do our
actions and those of others appear.

When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a
crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we ascribe a
greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we most urgently
demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of a virtuous act we
rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case we recognize in it
more individuality, originality, and independence. But if even one of
the innumerable causes of the act is known to us we recognize a certain
element of necessity and are less insistent on punishment for the crime,
or the acknowledgment of the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom
of the apparently original action. That a criminal was reared among male
factors mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father
or mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more
comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems less
deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The founder of a
sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when we know how or by
what the way was prepared for his activity. If we have a large range of
examples, if our observation is constantly directed to seeking the
correlation of cause and effect in people's actions, their actions
appear to us more under compulsion and less free the more correctly we
connect the effects with the causes. If we examined simple actions and
had a vast number of such actions under observation, our conception of
their inevitability would be still greater. The dishonest conduct of the
son of a dishonest father, the misconduct of a woman who had fallen into
bad company, a drunkard's relapse into drunkenness, and so on are
actions that seem to us less free the better we understand their cause.
If the man whose actions we are considering is on a very low stage of
mental development, like a child, a madman, or a simpleton--then,
knowing the causes of the act and the simplicity of the character and
intelligence in question, we see so large an element of necessity and so
little free will that as soon as we know the cause prompting the action
we can foretell the result.

On these three considerations alone is based the conception of
irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted
by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less
according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in
which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according to
the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of the
action and its investigation, and according to the greater or lesser
understanding of the causes that led to the action.




CHAPTER X

Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually diminishes
or increases according to the greater or lesser connection with the
external world, the greater or lesser remoteness of time, and the
greater or lesser dependence on the causes in relation to which we
contemplate a man's life.

So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the
external world is well known, where the time between the action and its
examination is great, and where the causes of the action are most
accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability and a
minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on external
conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the causes of
whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of a minimum of
inevitability and a maximum of freedom.

In neither case--however we may change our point of view, however plain
we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and the external
world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long or short the
period of time, however intelligible or incomprehensible the causes of
the action may be--can we ever conceive either complete freedom or
complete necessity.

(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the
influence of the external world, we never get a conception of freedom in
space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds
him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My action seems
to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my arm in every
direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in which there was
least obstruction to that action either from things around me or from
the construction of my own body. I chose one out of all the possible
directions because in it there were fewest obstacles. For my action to
be free it was necessary that it should encounter no obstacles. To
conceive of a man being free we must imagine him outside space, which is
evidently impossible.

(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time of the
deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I examine an
action committed a second ago I must still recognize it as not being
free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which it was
committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself: could I have
abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has already passed? To
convince myself of this I do not lift it the next moment. But I am not
now abstaining from doing so at the first moment when I asked the
question. Time has gone by which I could not detain, the arm I then
lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now refrain from lifting, nor
is the air in which I lifted it the same that now surrounds me. The
moment in which the first movement was made is irrevocable, and at that
moment I could make only one movement, and whatever movement I made
would be the only one. That I did not lift my arm a moment later does
not prove that I could have abstained from lifting it then. And since I
could make only one movement at that single moment of time, it could not
have been any other. To imagine it as free, it is necessary to imagine
it in the present, on the boundary between the past and the future--that
is, outside time, which is impossible.

(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be
increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is, an
absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of the
expression of will in any action, our own or another's, the first demand
of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause, for without a
cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to perform an action
independently of any cause, but my wish to perform an action without a
cause is the cause of my action.

But even if--imagining a man quite exempt from all influences, examining
only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any cause--we were
to admit so infinitely small a remainder of inevitability as equaled
zero, we should even then not have arrived at the conception of complete
freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by the external world, standing
outside of time and independent of cause, is no longer a man.

In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite devoid of
freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.

(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space in
which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for the
number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of space. And
therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men are defined,
there is no complete inevitability but a certain measure of freedom
remains.

(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action we are
examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite, while
time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never be absolute
inevitability.

(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any action, we
shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and so again we
never reach absolute inevitability.

But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of freedom to
equal zero, we assumed in some given case--as for instance in that of a
dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot--complete absence of freedom, by
so doing we should destroy the very conception of man in the case we are
examining, for as soon as there is no freedom there is also no man. And
so the conception of the action of a man subject solely to the law of
inevitability without any element of freedom is just as impossible as
the conception of a man's completely free action.

And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of
inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of an
infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of time,
and an infinite series of causes.

To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of
inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond time,
and free from dependence on cause.

In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom we
should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of
inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.

In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability we
should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time, and
cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and unlimited would
be nothing, or mere content without form.

We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man's
whole outlook on the universe is constructed--the incomprehensible
essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.

Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it
visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time is
infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable otherwise.
(3) The connection between cause and effect has no beginning and can
have no end.

Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me,
consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the fixed
moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as living,
consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I feel myself
to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.

Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability. Consciousness
gives expression to the essence of freedom.

Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man's
consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason in its
three forms.

Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines. Freedom
is the content. Inevitability is the form.

Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one another
as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and separately
incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.

Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life.

Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define one
another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.

All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation of free
will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws of reason.

All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain
relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence of
life to the laws of reason.

The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious of
them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity, animal
force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life in man and
we call that freedom.

But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but
felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which we
know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the first
knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton's law), so too the
force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which everyone is
conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know the laws of
inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that every man dies,
up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and historic laws).

All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the
laws of reason.

Man's free will differs from every other force in that man is directly
conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way differs from any
other force. The forces of gravitation, electricity, or chemical
affinity are only distinguished from one another in that they are
differently defined by reason. Just so the force of man's free will is
distinguished by reason from the other forces of nature only by the
definition reason gives it. Freedom, apart from necessity, that is,
apart from the laws of reason that define it, differs in no way from
gravitation, or heat, or the force that makes things grow; for reason,
it is only a momentary undefinable sensation of life.

And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly bodies,
the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity, or of
chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of
astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the
same way does the force of free will form the content of history. But
just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of this
unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the
subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free will
in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause forms the
subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of
metaphysics.

In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of
inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital force is
only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above what we know
of the essence of life.

So also in history what is known to us we call laws of inevitability,
what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for history only an
expression for the unknown remainder of what we know about the laws of
human life.




CHAPTER XI

History examines the manifestations of man's free will in connection
with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is, it
defines this freedom by the laws of reason, and so history is a science
only in so far as this free will is defined by those laws.

The recognition of man's free will as something capable of influencing
historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the same for
history as the recognition of a free force moving the heavenly bodies
would be for astronomy.

That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of laws,
that is, of any science whatever. If there is even a single body moving
freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton are negatived and no
conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists. If
any single action is due to free will, then not a single historical law
can exist, nor any conception of historical events.

For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills, one end of
which is hidden in the unknown but at the other end of which a
consciousness of man's will in the present moves in space, time, and
dependence on cause.

The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes, the more
evident are the laws of that movement. To discover and define those laws
is the problem of history.

From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards its
subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events in
man's freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is impossible,
for however man's free will may be restricted, as soon as we recognize
it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law becomes
impossible.

Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal, that
is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we convince
ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes, and then
instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of laws as
its problem.

The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of
thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously
with the self-destruction toward which--ever dissecting and dissecting
the causes of phenomena--the old method of history is moving.

All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at
infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons the
process of analysis and enters on the new process of the integration of
unknown, infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the conception of
cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property common to all
unknown, infinitely small, elements.

In another form but along the same path of reflection the other sciences
have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity he did not say
that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction; he said that all
bodies from the largest to the smallest have the property of attracting
one another, that is, leaving aside the question of the cause of the
movement of the bodies, he expressed the property common to all bodies
from the infinitely large to the infinitely small. The same is done by
the natural sciences: leaving aside the question of cause, they seek for
laws. History stands on the same path. And if history has for its object
the study of the movement of the nations and of humanity and not the
narration of episodes in the lives of individuals, it too, setting aside
the conception of cause, should seek the laws common to all the
inseparably interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will.




CHAPTER XII

From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the mere
recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth that moves
sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the ancients. By disproving
that law it might have been possible to retain the old conception of the
movements of the bodies, but without disproving it, it would seem
impossible to continue studying the Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the
discovery of the law of Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still
studied for a long time.

From the time the first person said and proved that the number of births
or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this or that mode
of government is determined by certain geographical and economic
conditions, and that certain relations of population to soil produce
migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history had been built
were destroyed in their essence.

By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have been
retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to continue
studying historic events as the results of man's free will. For if a
certain mode of government was established or certain migrations of
peoples took place in consequence of such and such geographic,
ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will of those
individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of government
or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as the cause.

And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with the
laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative philology,
and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.

The struggle between the old views and the new was long and stubbornly
fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on guard for the old
views and accused the new of violating revelation. But when truth
conquered, theology established itself just as firmly on the new
foundation.

Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding between
the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the same way
stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of subverting
revelation.

In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes
passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret for
the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the other
is the passion for destruction.

To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical philosophy,
it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would destroy faith in
God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the miracle of Joshua the
son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of Copernicus and Newton, to
Voltaire for example, it seemed that the laws of astronomy destroyed
religion, and he utilized the law of gravitation as a weapon against
religion.

Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of
inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and evil,
and all the institutions of state and church that have been built up on
those conceptions.

So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of
inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion, though
the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus in
astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation on which
the institutions of state and church are erected.

As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of history now,
the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition or
nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the measure of visible
phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of the earth, in history
it is the independence of personality--free will.

As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth
lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's fixity and of
the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing
the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause lies
in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one's own
personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: "It is true that we
do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility
we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not
feel) we arrive at laws," so also in history the new view says: "It is
true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our
free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on
the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."

In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an
unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in
the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that
does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not
conscious.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus

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Title: Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Release date: October 1, 1993 [eBook #84]
                Most recently updated: December 2, 2022

Language: English

Credits: Judith Boss, Christy Phillips, Lynn Hanninen and David Meltzer. HTML version by Al Haines.
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANKENSTEIN; OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS ***




Frankenstein;

or, the Modern Prometheus

by Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley


 CONTENTS

 Letter 1
 Letter 2
 Letter 3
 Letter 4
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24




Letter 1

_To Mrs. Saville, England._


St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17—.


You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the
commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil
forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure
my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success
of my undertaking.

I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of
Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which
braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this
feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards
which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes.
Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent
and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of
frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the
region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever
visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a
perpetual splendour. There—for with your leave, my sister, I will put
some trust in preceding navigators—there snow and frost are banished;
and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in
wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable
globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the
phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered
solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I
may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may
regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this
voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I
shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world
never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by
the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to
conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this
laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little
boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his
native river. But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you
cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all
mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole
to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are
requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at
all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.

These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my
letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me
to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as
a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual
eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I
have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have
been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean
through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember that a
history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the
whole of our good Uncle Thomas’ library. My education was neglected,
yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study
day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which
I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father’s dying injunction
had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.

These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets
whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. I also
became a poet and for one year lived in a paradise of my own creation;
I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the
names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well
acquainted with my failure and how heavily I bore the disappointment.
But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my
thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.

Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I
can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this
great enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I
accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea;
I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often
worked harder than the common sailors during the day and devoted my
nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those
branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive
the greatest practical advantage. Twice I actually hired myself as an
under-mate in a Greenland whaler, and acquitted myself to admiration. I
must own I felt a little proud when my captain offered me the second
dignity in the vessel and entreated me to remain with the greatest
earnestness, so valuable did he consider my services.

And now, dear Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose?
My life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to
every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging
voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is
firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am
about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which
will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits
of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.

This is the most favourable period for travelling in Russia. They fly
quickly over the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in
my opinion, far more agreeable than that of an English stagecoach. The
cold is not excessive, if you are wrapped in furs—a dress which I have
already adopted, for there is a great difference between walking the
deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise
prevents the blood from actually freezing in your veins. I have no
ambition to lose my life on the post-road between St. Petersburgh and
Archangel.

I shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three weeks; and my
intention is to hire a ship there, which can easily be done by paying the
insurance for the owner, and to engage as many sailors as I think necessary
among those who are accustomed to the whale-fishing. I do not intend to
sail until the month of June; and when shall I return? Ah, dear sister, how
can I answer this question? If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years,
will pass before you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon,
or never.

Farewell, my dear, excellent Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on you,
and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for all your
love and kindness.

Your affectionate brother,

R. Walton




Letter 2

_To Mrs. Saville, England._

Archangel, 28th March, 17—.


How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow!
Yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a
vessel and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have
already engaged appear to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly
possessed of dauntless courage.

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the
absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil, I have no
friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there
will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no
one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts
to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of
feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me, whose
eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I
bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet
courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose
tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a
friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution
and too impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me
that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild
on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas’ books of voyages.
At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own
country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its
most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the
necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native
country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many
schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more and that my
daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters
call it) _keeping;_ and I greatly need a friend who would have sense
enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to
endeavour to regulate my mind.

Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on the
wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen. Yet
some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these
rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful courage
and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory, or rather, to word my phrase
more characteristically, of advancement in his profession. He is an
Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices,
unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of
humanity. I first became acquainted with him on board a whale vessel;
finding that he was unemployed in this city, I easily engaged him to assist
in my enterprise.

The master is a person of an excellent disposition and is remarkable in the
ship for his gentleness and the mildness of his discipline. This
circumstance, added to his well-known integrity and dauntless courage, made
me very desirous to engage him. A youth passed in solitude, my best years
spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the
groundwork of my character that I cannot overcome an intense distaste to
the usual brutality exercised on board ship: I have never believed it to be
necessary, and when I heard of a mariner equally noted for his kindliness
of heart and the respect and obedience paid to him by his crew, I felt
myself peculiarly fortunate in being able to secure his services. I heard
of him first in rather a romantic manner, from a lady who owes to him the
happiness of her life. This, briefly, is his story. Some years ago he loved
a young Russian lady of moderate fortune, and having amassed a considerable
sum in prize-money, the father of the girl consented to the match. He saw
his mistress once before the destined ceremony; but she was bathed in
tears, and throwing herself at his feet, entreated him to spare her,
confessing at the same time that she loved another, but that he was poor,
and that her father would never consent to the union. My generous friend
reassured the suppliant, and on being informed of the name of her lover,
instantly abandoned his pursuit. He had already bought a farm with his
money, on which he had designed to pass the remainder of his life; but he
bestowed the whole on his rival, together with the remains of his
prize-money to purchase stock, and then himself solicited the young
woman’s father to consent to her marriage with her lover. But the old
man decidedly refused, thinking himself bound in honour to my friend, who,
when he found the father inexorable, quitted his country, nor returned
until he heard that his former mistress was married according to her
inclinations. “What a noble fellow!” you will exclaim. He is
so; but then he is wholly uneducated: he is as silent as a Turk, and a kind
of ignorant carelessness attends him, which, while it renders his conduct
the more astonishing, detracts from the interest and sympathy which
otherwise he would command.

Yet do not suppose, because I complain a little or because I can
conceive a consolation for my toils which I may never know, that I am
wavering in my resolutions. Those are as fixed as fate, and my voyage
is only now delayed until the weather shall permit my embarkation. The
winter has been dreadfully severe, but the spring promises well, and it
is considered as a remarkably early season, so that perhaps I may sail
sooner than I expected. I shall do nothing rashly: you know me
sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness whenever the
safety of others is committed to my care.

I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of my
undertaking. It is impossible to communicate to you a conception of
the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which
I am preparing to depart. I am going to unexplored regions, to “the
land of mist and snow,” but I shall kill no albatross; therefore do not
be alarmed for my safety or if I should come back to you as worn and
woeful as the “Ancient Mariner.” You will smile at my allusion, but I
will disclose a secret. I have often attributed my attachment to, my
passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean to that
production of the most imaginative of modern poets. There is something
at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically
industrious—painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and
labour—but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief
in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out
of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited
regions I am about to explore.

But to return to dearer considerations. Shall I meet you again, after
having traversed immense seas, and returned by the most southern cape of
Africa or America? I dare not expect such success, yet I cannot bear to
look on the reverse of the picture. Continue for the present to write to
me by every opportunity: I may receive your letters on some occasions when
I need them most to support my spirits. I love you very tenderly.
Remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again.

Your affectionate brother,
 Robert Walton




Letter 3

_To Mrs. Saville, England._

July 7th, 17—.


My dear Sister,

I write a few lines in haste to say that I am safe—and well advanced
on my voyage. This letter will reach England by a merchantman now on
its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not
see my native land, perhaps, for many years. I am, however, in good
spirits: my men are bold and apparently firm of purpose, nor do the
floating sheets of ice that continually pass us, indicating the dangers
of the region towards which we are advancing, appear to dismay them. We
have already reached a very high latitude; but it is the height of
summer, and although not so warm as in England, the southern gales,
which blow us speedily towards those shores which I so ardently desire
to attain, breathe a degree of renovating warmth which I had not
expected.

No incidents have hitherto befallen us that would make a figure in a
letter. One or two stiff gales and the springing of a leak are
accidents which experienced navigators scarcely remember to record, and
I shall be well content if nothing worse happen to us during our voyage.

Adieu, my dear Margaret. Be assured that for my own sake, as well as
yours, I will not rashly encounter danger. I will be cool,
persevering, and prudent.

But success _shall_ crown my endeavours. Wherefore not? Thus far I
have gone, tracing a secure way over the pathless seas, the very stars
themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph. Why not
still proceed over the untamed yet obedient element? What can stop the
determined heart and resolved will of man?

My swelling heart involuntarily pours itself out thus. But I must
finish. Heaven bless my beloved sister!

R.W.




Letter 4


_To Mrs. Saville, England._

August 5th, 17—.

So strange an accident has happened to us that I cannot forbear
recording it, although it is very probable that you will see me before
these papers can come into your possession.

Last Monday (July 31st) we were nearly surrounded by ice, which closed
in the ship on all sides, scarcely leaving her the sea-room in which
she floated. Our situation was somewhat dangerous, especially as we
were compassed round by a very thick fog. We accordingly lay to,
hoping that some change would take place in the atmosphere and weather.

About two o’clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretched out
in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to
have no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to
grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly
attracted our attention and diverted our solicitude from our own
situation. We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by
dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile; a
being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature,
sat in the sledge and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress
of the traveller with our telescopes until he was lost among the
distant inequalities of the ice.

This appearance excited our unqualified wonder. We were, as we believed,
many hundred miles from any land; but this apparition seemed to denote that
it was not, in reality, so distant as we had supposed. Shut in, however, by
ice, it was impossible to follow his track, which we had observed with the
greatest attention.

About two hours after this occurrence we heard the ground sea, and before
night the ice broke and freed our ship. We, however, lay to until the
morning, fearing to encounter in the dark those large loose masses which
float about after the breaking up of the ice. I profited of this time to
rest for a few hours.

In the morning, however, as soon as it was light, I went upon deck and
found all the sailors busy on one side of the vessel, apparently
talking to someone in the sea. It was, in fact, a sledge, like that we
had seen before, which had drifted towards us in the night on a large
fragment of ice. Only one dog remained alive; but there was a human
being within it whom the sailors were persuading to enter the vessel.
He was not, as the other traveller seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of
some undiscovered island, but a European. When I appeared on deck the
master said, “Here is our captain, and he will not allow you to perish
on the open sea.”

On perceiving me, the stranger addressed me in English, although with a
foreign accent. “Before I come on board your vessel,” said he,
“will you have the kindness to inform me whither you are bound?”

You may conceive my astonishment on hearing such a question addressed
to me from a man on the brink of destruction and to whom I should have
supposed that my vessel would have been a resource which he would not
have exchanged for the most precious wealth the earth can afford. I
replied, however, that we were on a voyage of discovery towards the
northern pole.

Upon hearing this he appeared satisfied and consented to come on board.
Good God! Margaret, if you had seen the man who thus capitulated for
his safety, your surprise would have been boundless. His limbs were
nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and
suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition. We attempted
to carry him into the cabin, but as soon as he had quitted the fresh
air he fainted. We accordingly brought him back to the deck and
restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy and forcing him to
swallow a small quantity. As soon as he showed signs of life we
wrapped him up in blankets and placed him near the chimney of the
kitchen stove. By slow degrees he recovered and ate a little soup,
which restored him wonderfully.

Two days passed in this manner before he was able to speak, and I often
feared that his sufferings had deprived him of understanding. When he
had in some measure recovered, I removed him to my own cabin and
attended on him as much as my duty would permit. I never saw a more
interesting creature: his eyes have generally an expression of
wildness, and even madness, but there are moments when, if anyone
performs an act of kindness towards him or does him any the most
trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with
a beam of benevolence and sweetness that I never saw equalled. But he
is generally melancholy and despairing, and sometimes he gnashes his
teeth, as if impatient of the weight of woes that oppresses him.

When my guest was a little recovered I had great trouble to keep off
the men, who wished to ask him a thousand questions; but I would not
allow him to be tormented by their idle curiosity, in a state of body
and mind whose restoration evidently depended upon entire repose.
Once, however, the lieutenant asked why he had come so far upon the ice
in so strange a vehicle.

His countenance instantly assumed an aspect of the deepest gloom, and
he replied, “To seek one who fled from me.”

“And did the man whom you pursued travel in the same fashion?”

“Yes.”

“Then I fancy we have seen him, for the day before we picked you up we
saw some dogs drawing a sledge, with a man in it, across the ice.”

This aroused the stranger’s attention, and he asked a multitude of
questions concerning the route which the dæmon, as he called him, had
pursued. Soon after, when he was alone with me, he said, “I have,
doubtless, excited your curiosity, as well as that of these good
people; but you are too considerate to make inquiries.”

“Certainly; it would indeed be very impertinent and inhuman in me to
trouble you with any inquisitiveness of mine.”

“And yet you rescued me from a strange and perilous situation; you have
benevolently restored me to life.”

Soon after this he inquired if I thought that the breaking up of the
ice had destroyed the other sledge. I replied that I could not answer
with any degree of certainty, for the ice had not broken until near
midnight, and the traveller might have arrived at a place of safety
before that time; but of this I could not judge.

From this time a new spirit of life animated the decaying frame of the
stranger. He manifested the greatest eagerness to be upon deck to watch for
the sledge which had before appeared; but I have persuaded him to remain in
the cabin, for he is far too weak to sustain the rawness of the atmosphere.
I have promised that someone should watch for him and give him instant
notice if any new object should appear in sight.

Such is my journal of what relates to this strange occurrence up to the
present day. The stranger has gradually improved in health but is very
silent and appears uneasy when anyone except myself enters his cabin.
Yet his manners are so conciliating and gentle that the sailors are all
interested in him, although they have had very little communication
with him. For my own part, I begin to love him as a brother, and his
constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must
have been a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck
so attractive and amiable.

I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no friend
on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit had been
broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother
of my heart.

I shall continue my journal concerning the stranger at intervals,
should I have any fresh incidents to record.




August 13th, 17—.


My affection for my guest increases every day. He excites at once my
admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree. How can I see so
noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant
grief? He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated, and
when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art,
yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence.

He is now much recovered from his illness and is continually on the deck,
apparently watching for the sledge that preceded his own. Yet, although
unhappy, he is not so utterly occupied by his own misery but that he
interests himself deeply in the projects of others. He has frequently
conversed with me on mine, which I have communicated to him without
disguise. He entered attentively into all my arguments in favour of my
eventual success and into every minute detail of the measures I had taken
to secure it. I was easily led by the sympathy which he evinced to use the
language of my heart, to give utterance to the burning ardour of my soul
and to say, with all the fervour that warmed me, how gladly I would
sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my
enterprise. One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for
the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should
acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race. As I spoke, a
dark gloom spread over my listener’s countenance. At first I
perceived that he tried to suppress his emotion; he placed his hands before
his eyes, and my voice quivered and failed me as I beheld tears trickle
fast from between his fingers; a groan burst from his heaving breast. I
paused; at length he spoke, in broken accents: “Unhappy man! Do you
share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me;
let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!”

Such words, you may imagine, strongly excited my curiosity; but the
paroxysm of grief that had seized the stranger overcame his weakened
powers, and many hours of repose and tranquil conversation were
necessary to restore his composure.

Having conquered the violence of his feelings, he appeared to despise
himself for being the slave of passion; and quelling the dark tyranny of
despair, he led me again to converse concerning myself personally. He asked
me the history of my earlier years. The tale was quickly told, but it
awakened various trains of reflection. I spoke of my desire of finding a
friend, of my thirst for a more intimate sympathy with a fellow mind than
had ever fallen to my lot, and expressed my conviction that a man could
boast of little happiness who did not enjoy this blessing.

“I agree with you,” replied the stranger; “we are
unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than
ourselves—such a friend ought to be—do not lend his aid to
perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. I once had a friend, the most
noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting
friendship. You have hope, and the world before you, and have no cause for
despair. But I—I have lost everything and cannot begin life
anew.”

As he said this his countenance became expressive of a calm, settled
grief that touched me to the heart. But he was silent and presently
retired to his cabin.

Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he
does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight
afforded by these wonderful regions seem still to have the power of
elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he
may suffer misery and be overwhelmed by disappointments, yet when he
has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a
halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.

Will you smile at the enthusiasm I express concerning this divine
wanderer? You would not if you saw him. You have been tutored and
refined by books and retirement from the world, and you are therefore
somewhat fastidious; but this only renders you the more fit to
appreciate the extraordinary merits of this wonderful man. Sometimes I
have endeavoured to discover what quality it is which he possesses that
elevates him so immeasurably above any other person I ever knew. I
believe it to be an intuitive discernment, a quick but never-failing
power of judgment, a penetration into the causes of things, unequalled
for clearness and precision; add to this a facility of expression and a
voice whose varied intonations are soul-subduing music.




August 19th, 17—.


Yesterday the stranger said to me, “You may easily perceive, Captain
Walton, that I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes. I had
determined at one time that the memory of these evils should die with
me, but you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for
knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the
gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine
has been. I do not know that the relation of my disasters will be
useful to you; yet, when I reflect that you are pursuing the same
course, exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me
what I am, I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale, one
that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking and console you
in case of failure. Prepare to hear of occurrences which are usually
deemed marvellous. Were we among the tamer scenes of nature I might
fear to encounter your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule; but many things
will appear possible in these wild and mysterious regions which would
provoke the laughter of those unacquainted with the ever-varied powers
of nature; nor can I doubt but that my tale conveys in its series
internal evidence of the truth of the events of which it is composed.”

You may easily imagine that I was much gratified by the offered
communication, yet I could not endure that he should renew his grief by
a recital of his misfortunes. I felt the greatest eagerness to hear
the promised narrative, partly from curiosity and partly from a strong
desire to ameliorate his fate if it were in my power. I expressed
these feelings in my answer.

“I thank you,” he replied, “for your sympathy, but it is
useless; my fate is nearly fulfilled. I wait but for one event, and then I
shall repose in peace. I understand your feeling,” continued he,
perceiving that I wished to interrupt him; “but you are mistaken, my
friend, if thus you will allow me to name you; nothing can alter my
destiny; listen to my history, and you will perceive how irrevocably it is
determined.”

He then told me that he would commence his narrative the next day when I
should be at leisure. This promise drew from me the warmest thanks. I have
resolved every night, when I am not imperatively occupied by my duties, to
record, as nearly as possible in his own words, what he has related during
the day. If I should be engaged, I will at least make notes. This
manuscript will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure; but to me, who
know him, and who hear it from his own lips—with what interest and
sympathy shall I read it in some future day! Even now, as I commence my
task, his full-toned voice swells in my ears; his lustrous eyes dwell on me
with all their melancholy sweetness; I see his thin hand raised in
animation, while the lineaments of his face are irradiated by the soul
within. Strange and harrowing must be his story, frightful the storm which
embraced the gallant vessel on its course and wrecked it—thus!




Chapter 1


I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most
distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years
counsellors and syndics, and my father had filled several public
situations with honour and reputation. He was respected by all who
knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public
business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the
affairs of his country; a variety of circumstances had prevented his
marrying early, nor was it until the decline of life that he became a
husband and the father of a family.

As the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, I cannot
refrain from relating them. One of his most intimate friends was a
merchant who, from a flourishing state, fell, through numerous
mischances, into poverty. This man, whose name was Beaufort, was of a
proud and unbending disposition and could not bear to live in poverty
and oblivion in the same country where he had formerly been
distinguished for his rank and magnificence. Having paid his debts,
therefore, in the most honourable manner, he retreated with his
daughter to the town of Lucerne, where he lived unknown and in
wretchedness. My father loved Beaufort with the truest friendship and
was deeply grieved by his retreat in these unfortunate circumstances.
He bitterly deplored the false pride which led his friend to a conduct
so little worthy of the affection that united them. He lost no time in
endeavouring to seek him out, with the hope of persuading him to begin
the world again through his credit and assistance.

Beaufort had taken effectual measures to conceal himself, and it was ten
months before my father discovered his abode. Overjoyed at this discovery,
he hastened to the house, which was situated in a mean street near the
Reuss. But when he entered, misery and despair alone welcomed him. Beaufort
had saved but a very small sum of money from the wreck of his fortunes, but
it was sufficient to provide him with sustenance for some months, and in
the meantime he hoped to procure some respectable employment in a
merchant’s house. The interval was, consequently, spent in inaction;
his grief only became more deep and rankling when he had leisure for
reflection, and at length it took so fast hold of his mind that at the end
of three months he lay on a bed of sickness, incapable of any exertion.

His daughter attended him with the greatest tenderness, but she saw
with despair that their little fund was rapidly decreasing and that
there was no other prospect of support. But Caroline Beaufort
possessed a mind of an uncommon mould, and her courage rose to support
her in her adversity. She procured plain work; she plaited straw and
by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to
support life.

Several months passed in this manner. Her father grew worse; her time
was more entirely occupied in attending him; her means of subsistence
decreased; and in the tenth month her father died in her arms, leaving
her an orphan and a beggar. This last blow overcame her, and she knelt
by Beaufort’s coffin weeping bitterly, when my father entered the
chamber. He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who
committed herself to his care; and after the interment of his friend he
conducted her to Geneva and placed her under the protection of a
relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife.

There was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents, but
this circumstance seemed to unite them only closer in bonds of devoted
affection. There was a sense of justice in my father’s upright mind
which rendered it necessary that he should approve highly to love
strongly. Perhaps during former years he had suffered from the
late-discovered unworthiness of one beloved and so was disposed to set
a greater value on tried worth. There was a show of gratitude and
worship in his attachment to my mother, differing wholly from the
doting fondness of age, for it was inspired by reverence for her
virtues and a desire to be the means of, in some degree, recompensing
her for the sorrows she had endured, but which gave inexpressible grace
to his behaviour to her. Everything was made to yield to her wishes
and her convenience. He strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic is
sheltered by the gardener, from every rougher wind and to surround her
with all that could tend to excite pleasurable emotion in her soft and
benevolent mind. Her health, and even the tranquillity of her hitherto
constant spirit, had been shaken by what she had gone through. During
the two years that had elapsed previous to their marriage my father had
gradually relinquished all his public functions; and immediately after
their union they sought the pleasant climate of Italy, and the change
of scene and interest attendant on a tour through that land of wonders,
as a restorative for her weakened frame.

From Italy they visited Germany and France. I, their eldest child, was born
at Naples, and as an infant accompanied them in their rambles. I remained
for several years their only child. Much as they were attached to each
other, they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very
mine of love to bestow them upon me. My mother’s tender caresses and
my father’s smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me are my
first recollections. I was their plaything and their idol, and something
better—their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on
them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in
their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled
their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed
towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit
of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during
every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity,
and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but
one train of enjoyment to me.

For a long time I was their only care. My mother had much desired to have a
daughter, but I continued their single offspring. When I was about five
years old, while making an excursion beyond the frontiers of Italy, they
passed a week on the shores of the Lake of Como. Their benevolent
disposition often made them enter the cottages of the poor. This, to my
mother, was more than a duty; it was a necessity, a
passion—remembering what she had suffered, and how she had been
relieved—for her to act in her turn the guardian angel to the
afflicted. During one of their walks a poor cot in the foldings of a vale
attracted their notice as being singularly disconsolate, while the number
of half-clothed children gathered about it spoke of penury in its worst
shape. One day, when my father had gone by himself to Milan, my mother,
accompanied by me, visited this abode. She found a peasant and his wife,
hard working, bent down by care and labour, distributing a scanty meal to
five hungry babes. Among these there was one which attracted my mother far
above all the rest. She appeared of a different stock. The four others were
dark-eyed, hardy little vagrants; this child was thin and very fair. Her
hair was the brightest living gold, and despite the poverty of her
clothing, seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head. Her brow was
clear and ample, her blue eyes cloudless, and her lips and the moulding of
her face so expressive of sensibility and sweetness that none could behold
her without looking on her as of a distinct species, a being heaven-sent,
and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features.

The peasant woman, perceiving that my mother fixed eyes of wonder and
admiration on this lovely girl, eagerly communicated her history. She was
not her child, but the daughter of a Milanese nobleman. Her mother was a
German and had died on giving her birth. The infant had been placed with
these good people to nurse: they were better off then. They had not been
long married, and their eldest child was but just born. The father of their
charge was one of those Italians nursed in the memory of the antique glory
of Italy—one among the _schiavi ognor frementi,_ who exerted
himself to obtain the liberty of his country. He became the victim of its
weakness. Whether he had died or still lingered in the dungeons of Austria
was not known. His property was confiscated; his child became an orphan and
a beggar. She continued with her foster parents and bloomed in their rude
abode, fairer than a garden rose among dark-leaved brambles.

When my father returned from Milan, he found playing with me in the hall of
our villa a child fairer than pictured cherub—a creature who seemed
to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter
than the chamois of the hills. The apparition was soon explained. With his
permission my mother prevailed on her rustic guardians to yield their
charge to her. They were fond of the sweet orphan. Her presence had seemed
a blessing to them, but it would be unfair to her to keep her in poverty
and want when Providence afforded her such powerful protection. They
consulted their village priest, and the result was that Elizabeth Lavenza
became the inmate of my parents’ house—my more than
sister—the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and
my pleasures.

Everyone loved Elizabeth. The passionate and almost reverential
attachment with which all regarded her became, while I shared it, my
pride and my delight. On the evening previous to her being brought to
my home, my mother had said playfully, “I have a pretty present for my
Victor—tomorrow he shall have it.” And when, on the morrow, she
presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish
seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Elizabeth
as mine—mine to protect, love, and cherish. All praises bestowed on
her I received as made to a possession of my own. We called each other
familiarly by the name of cousin. No word, no expression could body
forth the kind of relation in which she stood to me—my more than
sister, since till death she was to be mine only.




Chapter 2


We were brought up together; there was not quite a year difference in
our ages. I need not say that we were strangers to any species of
disunion or dispute. Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and
the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us
nearer together. Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated
disposition; but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense
application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge.
She busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets;
and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss
home —the sublime shapes of the mountains, the changes of the seasons,
tempest and calm, the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of
our Alpine summers—she found ample scope for admiration and delight.
While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the
magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their
causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.
Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature,
gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the
earliest sensations I can remember.

On the birth of a second son, my junior by seven years, my parents gave
up entirely their wandering life and fixed themselves in their native
country. We possessed a house in Geneva, and a _campagne_ on Belrive,
the eastern shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a
league from the city. We resided principally in the latter, and the
lives of my parents were passed in considerable seclusion. It was my
temper to avoid a crowd and to attach myself fervently to a few. I was
indifferent, therefore, to my school-fellows in general; but I united
myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them. Henry
Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was a boy of singular
talent and fancy. He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger for
its own sake. He was deeply read in books of chivalry and romance. He
composed heroic songs and began to write many a tale of enchantment and
knightly adventure. He tried to make us act plays and to enter into
masquerades, in which the characters were drawn from the heroes of
Roncesvalles, of the Round Table of King Arthur, and the chivalrous
train who shed their blood to redeem the holy sepulchre from the hands
of the infidels.

No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My
parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence.
We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to
their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights
which we enjoyed. When I mingled with other families I distinctly
discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted
the development of filial love.

My temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement; but by some
law in my temperature they were turned not towards childish pursuits
but to an eager desire to learn, and not to learn all things
indiscriminately. I confess that neither the structure of languages,
nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states
possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth
that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of
things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man
that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical,
or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.

Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral
relations of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes,
and the actions of men were his theme; and his hope and his dream was
to become one among those whose names are recorded in story as the
gallant and adventurous benefactors of our species. The saintly soul
of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home.
Her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance of
her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and animate us. She was
the living spirit of love to soften and attract; I might have become
sullen in my study, rough through the ardour of my nature, but that
she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness. And
Clerval—could aught ill entrench on the noble spirit of Clerval? Yet
he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his
generosity, so full of kindness and tenderness amidst his passion for
adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to him the real loveliness of
beneficence and made the doing good the end and aim of his soaring
ambition.

I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood,
before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of
extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. Besides,
in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record those events which
led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery, for when I would
account to myself for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my
destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost
forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent
which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.

Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire,
therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my
predilection for that science. When I was thirteen years of age we all went
on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the
weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this house I
chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it
with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate and the wonderful
facts which he relates soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new
light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my
discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my
book and said, “Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste
your time upon this; it is sad trash.”

If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me
that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern
system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers
than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while
those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I
should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my
imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my
former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never
have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance
my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was
acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest
avidity.

When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this
author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and
studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me
treasures known to few besides myself. I have described myself as always
having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of
nature. In spite of the intense labour and wonderful discoveries of modern
philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied.
Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking
up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth. Those of his
successors in each branch of natural philosophy with whom I was acquainted
appeared even to my boy’s apprehensions as tyros engaged in the same
pursuit.

The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted
with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little
more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal
lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect,
anatomise, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes
in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I
had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep
human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and
ignorantly I had repined.

But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew
more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their
disciple. It may appear strange that such should arise in the eighteenth
century; but while I followed the routine of education in the schools of
Geneva, I was, to a great degree, self-taught with regard to my favourite
studies. My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a
child’s blindness, added to a student’s thirst for knowledge.
Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest
diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir
of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention. Wealth was an
inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I could
banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but
a violent death!

Nor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils was a
promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfilment of which
I most eagerly sought; and if my incantations were always unsuccessful, I
attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a
want of skill or fidelity in my instructors. And thus for a time I was
occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand
contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of
multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish
reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas.

When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near
Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It
advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once
with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained,
while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight.
As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an
old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so
soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing
remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it the next morning, we found
the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not splintered by the
shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood. I never beheld
anything so utterly destroyed.

Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of
electricity. On this occasion a man of great research in natural
philosophy was with us, and excited by this catastrophe, he entered on
the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of
electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to me.
All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius Agrippa,
Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of my imagination; but by
some fatality the overthrow of these men disinclined me to pursue my
accustomed studies. It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever
be known. All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew
despicable. By one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps
most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up my former
occupations, set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed
and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest disdain for a
would-be science which could never even step within the threshold of
real knowledge. In this mood of mind I betook myself to the
mathematics and the branches of study appertaining to that science as
being built upon secure foundations, and so worthy of my consideration.

Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity or ruin. When I look back, it seems to me
as if this almost miraculous change of inclination and will was the
immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my life—the last effort
made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even
then hanging in the stars and ready to envelop me. Her victory was
announced by an unusual tranquillity and gladness of soul which
followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting
studies. It was thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with
their prosecution, happiness with their disregard.

It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual.
Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and
terrible destruction.




Chapter 3


When I had attained the age of seventeen my parents resolved that I
should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt. I had
hitherto attended the schools of Geneva, but my father thought it
necessary for the completion of my education that I should be made
acquainted with other customs than those of my native country. My
departure was therefore fixed at an early date, but before the day
resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life
occurred—an omen, as it were, of my future misery.

Elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever; her illness was severe, and she was
in the greatest danger. During her illness many arguments had been urged to
persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her. She had at first
yielded to our entreaties, but when she heard that the life of her
favourite was menaced, she could no longer control her anxiety. She
attended her sickbed; her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity
of the distemper—Elizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this
imprudence were fatal to her preserver. On the third day my mother
sickened; her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the
looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event. On her
deathbed the fortitude and benignity of this best of women did not desert
her. She joined the hands of Elizabeth and myself. “My
children,” she said, “my firmest hopes of future happiness were
placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the
consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to
my younger children. Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy
and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are
not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to
death and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.”

She died calmly, and her countenance expressed affection even in death.
I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent
by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the
soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so
long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day
and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed
for ever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been
extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear
can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of
the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the
evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has
not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I
describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at
length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and
the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a
sacrilege, is not banished. My mother was dead, but we had still
duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the
rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst one remains whom the
spoiler has not seized.

My departure for Ingolstadt, which had been deferred by these events,
was now again determined upon. I obtained from my father a respite of
some weeks. It appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose,
akin to death, of the house of mourning and to rush into the thick of
life. I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me. I was
unwilling to quit the sight of those that remained to me, and above
all, I desired to see my sweet Elizabeth in some degree consoled.

She indeed veiled her grief and strove to act the comforter to us all.
She looked steadily on life and assumed its duties with courage and
zeal. She devoted herself to those whom she had been taught to call
her uncle and cousins. Never was she so enchanting as at this time,
when she recalled the sunshine of her smiles and spent them upon us.
She forgot even her own regret in her endeavours to make us forget.

The day of my departure at length arrived. Clerval spent the last
evening with us. He had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit
him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His
father was a narrow-minded trader and saw idleness and ruin in the
aspirations and ambition of his son. Henry deeply felt the misfortune
of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when
he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a
restrained but firm resolve not to be chained to the miserable details
of commerce.

We sat late. We could not tear ourselves away from each other nor
persuade ourselves to say the word “Farewell!” It was said, and we
retired under the pretence of seeking repose, each fancying that the
other was deceived; but when at morning’s dawn I descended to the
carriage which was to convey me away, they were all there—my father
again to bless me, Clerval to press my hand once more, my Elizabeth to
renew her entreaties that I would write often and to bestow the last
feminine attentions on her playmate and friend.

I threw myself into the chaise that was to convey me away and indulged in
the most melancholy reflections. I, who had ever been surrounded by
amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavouring to bestow mutual
pleasure—I was now alone. In the university whither I was going I
must form my own friends and be my own protector. My life had hitherto
been remarkably secluded and domestic, and this had given me invincible
repugnance to new countenances. I loved my brothers, Elizabeth, and
Clerval; these were “old familiar faces,” but I believed myself
totally unfitted for the company of strangers. Such were my reflections as
I commenced my journey; but as I proceeded, my spirits and hopes rose. I
ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge. I had often, when at home,
thought it hard to remain during my youth cooped up in one place and had
longed to enter the world and take my station among other human beings.
Now my desires were complied with, and it would, indeed, have been folly to
repent.

I had sufficient leisure for these and many other reflections during my
journey to Ingolstadt, which was long and fatiguing. At length the
high white steeple of the town met my eyes. I alighted and was
conducted to my solitary apartment to spend the evening as I pleased.

The next morning I delivered my letters of introduction and paid a visit to
some of the principal professors. Chance—or rather the evil
influence, the Angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me
from the moment I turned my reluctant steps from my father’s
door—led me first to M. Krempe, professor of natural philosophy. He
was an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science. He
asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different branches
of science appertaining to natural philosophy. I replied carelessly, and
partly in contempt, mentioned the names of my alchemists as the principal
authors I had studied. The professor stared. “Have you,” he
said, “really spent your time in studying such nonsense?”

I replied in the affirmative. “Every minute,” continued M. Krempe with
warmth, “every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly
and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems
and useless names. Good God! In what desert land have you lived,
where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you
have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they
are ancient? I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific
age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear
sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew.”

So saying, he stepped aside and wrote down a list of several books
treating of natural philosophy which he desired me to procure, and
dismissed me after mentioning that in the beginning of the following
week he intended to commence a course of lectures upon natural
philosophy in its general relations, and that M. Waldman, a fellow
professor, would lecture upon chemistry the alternate days that he
omitted.

I returned home not disappointed, for I have said that I had long
considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated; but I
returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any
shape. M. Krempe was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a
repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in
favour of his pursuits. In rather a too philosophical and connected a
strain, perhaps, I have given an account of the conclusions I had come
to concerning them in my early years. As a child I had not been
content with the results promised by the modern professors of natural
science. With a confusion of ideas only to be accounted for by my
extreme youth and my want of a guide on such matters, I had retrod the
steps of knowledge along the paths of time and exchanged the
discoveries of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists.
Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy.
It was very different when the masters of the science sought
immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand; but now
the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit
itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in
science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of
boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.

Such were my reflections during the first two or three days of my
residence at Ingolstadt, which were chiefly spent in becoming
acquainted with the localities and the principal residents in my new
abode. But as the ensuing week commenced, I thought of the information
which M. Krempe had given me concerning the lectures. And although I
could not consent to go and hear that little conceited fellow deliver
sentences out of a pulpit, I recollected what he had said of M.
Waldman, whom I had never seen, as he had hitherto been out of town.

Partly from curiosity and partly from idleness, I went into the lecturing
room, which M. Waldman entered shortly after. This professor was very
unlike his colleague. He appeared about fifty years of age, but with an
aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence; a few grey hairs covered his
temples, but those at the back of his head were nearly black. His person
was short but remarkably erect and his voice the sweetest I had ever heard.
He began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry and
the various improvements made by different men of learning, pronouncing
with fervour the names of the most distinguished discoverers. He then took
a cursory view of the present state of the science and explained many of
its elementary terms. After having made a few preparatory experiments, he
concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I
shall never forget:

“The ancient teachers of this science,” said he,
“promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters
promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that
the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem
only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or
crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses
of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the
heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of
the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers;
they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even
mock the invisible world with its own shadows.”

Such were the professor’s words—rather let me say such the words of
the fate—enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul
were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were
touched which formed the mechanism of my being; chord after chord was
sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception,
one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of
Frankenstein—more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps
already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and
unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

I closed not my eyes that night. My internal being was in a state of
insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I
had no power to produce it. By degrees, after the morning’s dawn,
sleep came. I awoke, and my yesternight’s thoughts were as a dream.
There only remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies and to
devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a
natural talent. On the same day I paid M. Waldman a visit. His
manners in private were even more mild and attractive than in public,
for there was a certain dignity in his mien during his lecture which in
his own house was replaced by the greatest affability and kindness. I
gave him pretty nearly the same account of my former pursuits as I had
given to his fellow professor. He heard with attention the little
narration concerning my studies and smiled at the names of Cornelius
Agrippa and Paracelsus, but without the contempt that M. Krempe had
exhibited. He said that “These were men to whose indefatigable zeal
modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their
knowledge. They had left to us, as an easier task, to give new names
and arrange in connected classifications the facts which they in a
great degree had been the instruments of bringing to light. The
labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever
fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.” I
listened to his statement, which was delivered without any presumption
or affectation, and then added that his lecture had removed my
prejudices against modern chemists; I expressed myself in measured
terms, with the modesty and deference due from a youth to his
instructor, without letting escape (inexperience in life would have
made me ashamed) any of the enthusiasm which stimulated my intended
labours. I requested his advice concerning the books I ought to
procure.

“I am happy,” said M. Waldman, “to have gained a
disciple; and if your application equals your ability, I have no doubt of
your success. Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the
greatest improvements have been and may be made; it is on that account that
I have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time, I have not
neglected the other branches of science. A man would make but a very sorry
chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. If your
wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty
experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural
philosophy, including mathematics.”

He then took me into his laboratory and explained to me the uses of his
various machines, instructing me as to what I ought to procure and
promising me the use of his own when I should have advanced far enough in
the science not to derange their mechanism. He also gave me the list of
books which I had requested, and I took my leave.

Thus ended a day memorable to me; it decided my future destiny.




Chapter 4


From this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the
most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation.
I read with ardour those works, so full of genius and discrimination,
which modern inquirers have written on these subjects. I attended the
lectures and cultivated the acquaintance of the men of science of the
university, and I found even in M. Krempe a great deal of sound sense
and real information, combined, it is true, with a repulsive
physiognomy and manners, but not on that account the less valuable. In
M. Waldman I found a true friend. His gentleness was never tinged by
dogmatism, and his instructions were given with an air of frankness and
good nature that banished every idea of pedantry. In a thousand ways
he smoothed for me the path of knowledge and made the most abstruse
inquiries clear and facile to my apprehension. My application was at
first fluctuating and uncertain; it gained strength as I proceeded and
soon became so ardent and eager that the stars often disappeared in the
light of morning whilst I was yet engaged in my laboratory.

As I applied so closely, it may be easily conceived that my progress
was rapid. My ardour was indeed the astonishment of the students, and
my proficiency that of the masters. Professor Krempe often asked me,
with a sly smile, how Cornelius Agrippa went on, whilst M. Waldman
expressed the most heartfelt exultation in my progress. Two years
passed in this manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was
engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries which I
hoped to make. None but those who have experienced them can conceive
of the enticements of science. In other studies you go as far as
others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in
a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.
A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must
infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study; and I, who
continually sought the attainment of one object of pursuit and was
solely wrapped up in this, improved so rapidly that at the end of two
years I made some discoveries in the improvement of some chemical
instruments, which procured me great esteem and admiration at the
university. When I had arrived at this point and had become as well
acquainted with the theory and practice of natural philosophy as
depended on the lessons of any of the professors at Ingolstadt, my
residence there being no longer conducive to my improvements, I thought
of returning to my friends and my native town, when an incident
happened that protracted my stay.

One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was
the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with
life. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed?
It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a
mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming
acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our
inquiries. I revolved these circumstances in my mind and determined
thenceforth to apply myself more particularly to those branches of
natural philosophy which relate to physiology. Unless I had been
animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this
study would have been irksome and almost intolerable. To examine the
causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became
acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I
must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body.
In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my
mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever
remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition or to have feared
the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and
a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of
life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become
food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of
this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and
charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most
insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the
fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of
death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm
inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused, examining and
analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change
from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this
darkness a sudden light broke in upon me—a light so brilliant and
wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity
of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so
many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same
science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a
secret.

Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not
more certainly shine in the heavens than that which I now affirm is
true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the
discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of
incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of
generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing
animation upon lifeless matter.

The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery
soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in
painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the
most gratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so
great and overwhelming that all the steps by which I had been
progressively led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result.
What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation
of the world was now within my grasp. Not that, like a magic scene, it
all opened upon me at once: the information I had obtained was of a
nature rather to direct my endeavours so soon as I should point them
towards the object of my search than to exhibit that object already
accomplished. I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead
and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering and seemingly
ineffectual light.

I see by your eagerness and the wonder and hope which your eyes
express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with
which I am acquainted; that cannot be; listen patiently until the end
of my story, and you will easily perceive why I am reserved upon that
subject. I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was,
to your destruction and infallible misery. Learn from me, if not by my
precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of
knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town
to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature
will allow.

When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated
a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it.
Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to
prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of
fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable
difficulty and labour. I doubted at first whether I should attempt the
creation of a being like myself, or one of simpler organization; but my
imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to
doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful
as man. The materials at present within my command hardly appeared
adequate to so arduous an undertaking, but I doubted not that I should
ultimately succeed. I prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my
operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be
imperfect, yet when I considered the improvement which every day takes
place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present
attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. Nor
could I consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any
argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I
began the creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts
formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first
intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature, that is to say,
about eight feet in height, and proportionably large. After having
formed this determination and having spent some months in successfully
collecting and arranging my materials, I began.

No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like
a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death
appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and
pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless
me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would
owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his
child so completely as I should deserve theirs. Pursuing these
reflections, I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless
matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible)
renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.

These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking
with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my
person had become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very
brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the
next day or the next hour might realise. One secret which I alone
possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon
gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless
eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive
the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps
of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless
clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but
then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed
to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. It was
indeed but a passing trance, that only made me feel with renewed
acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I had
returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses and
disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human
frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house,
and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase,
I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from
their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The
dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials;
and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation,
whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I
brought my work near to a conclusion.

The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in
one pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields
bestow a more plentiful harvest or the vines yield a more luxuriant
vintage, but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the
same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also
to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had
not seen for so long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them, and I
well remembered the words of my father: “I know that while you are
pleased with yourself you will think of us with affection, and we shall
hear regularly from you. You must pardon me if I regard any
interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties
are equally neglected.”

I knew well therefore what would be my father’s feelings, but I could
not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which
had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it
were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection
until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature,
should be completed.

I then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect
to vice or faultiness on my part, but I am now convinced that he was
justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from
blame. A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and
peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to
disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge
is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself
has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for
those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that
study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human
mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit
whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic
affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Cæsar would have spared his
country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the
empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.

But I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my
tale, and your looks remind me to proceed.

My father made no reproach in his letters and only took notice of my
silence by inquiring into my occupations more particularly than before.
Winter, spring, and summer passed away during my labours; but I did not
watch the blossom or the expanding leaves—sights which before always
yielded me supreme delight—so deeply was I engrossed in my
occupation. The leaves of that year had withered before my work drew near
to a close, and now every day showed me more plainly how well I had
succeeded. But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared
rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other
unwholesome trade than an artist occupied by his favourite employment.
Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most
painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow
creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime. Sometimes I grew alarmed at
the wreck I perceived that I had become; the energy of my purpose alone
sustained me: my labours would soon end, and I believed that exercise and
amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I promised myself
both of these when my creation should be complete.




Chapter 5


It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment
of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I
collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a
spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was
already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the
panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the
half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature
open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate
the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to
form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as
beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered
the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous
black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these
luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes,
that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which
they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings
of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole
purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had
deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour
that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty
of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my
heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I
rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my
bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude
succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the
bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness.
But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest
dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in
the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her,
but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with
the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I
held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her
form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.
I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my
teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and
yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window
shutters, I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had
created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they
may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some
inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have
spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to
detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the
courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained
during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest
agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if
it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I
had so miserably given life.

Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy
again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I
had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those
muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing
such as even Dante could not have conceived.

I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and
hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly
sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with
this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had
been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a
hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!

Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned and discovered to my
sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple
and clock, which indicated the sixth hour. The porter opened the gates
of the court, which had that night been my asylum, and I issued into
the streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid the
wretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my
view. I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but
felt impelled to hurry on, although drenched by the rain which poured
from a black and comfortless sky.

I continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring by
bodily exercise to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. I
traversed the streets without any clear conception of where I was or
what I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear, and I
hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me:

 Like one who, on a lonely road,
 Doth walk in fear and dread,
 And, having once turned round, walks on,
 And turns no more his head;
 Because he knows a frightful fiend
 Doth close behind him tread.

 [Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner.”]



Continuing thus, I came at length opposite to the inn at which the various
diligences and carriages usually stopped. Here I paused, I knew not why;
but I remained some minutes with my eyes fixed on a coach that was coming
towards me from the other end of the street. As it drew nearer I observed
that it was the Swiss diligence; it stopped just where I was standing, and
on the door being opened, I perceived Henry Clerval, who, on seeing me,
instantly sprung out. “My dear Frankenstein,” exclaimed he,
“how glad I am to see you! How fortunate that you should be here at
the very moment of my alighting!”

Nothing could equal my delight on seeing Clerval; his presence brought back
to my thoughts my father, Elizabeth, and all those scenes of home so dear
to my recollection. I grasped his hand, and in a moment forgot my horror
and misfortune; I felt suddenly, and for the first time during many months,
calm and serene joy. I welcomed my friend, therefore, in the most cordial
manner, and we walked towards my college. Clerval continued talking for
some time about our mutual friends and his own good fortune in being
permitted to come to Ingolstadt. “You may easily believe,” said
he, “how great was the difficulty to persuade my father that all
necessary knowledge was not comprised in the noble art of book-keeping;
and, indeed, I believe I left him incredulous to the last, for his constant
answer to my unwearied entreaties was the same as that of the Dutch
schoolmaster in The Vicar of Wakefield: ‘I have ten thousand florins
a year without Greek, I eat heartily without Greek.’ But his
affection for me at length overcame his dislike of learning, and he has
permitted me to undertake a voyage of discovery to the land of
knowledge.”

“It gives me the greatest delight to see you; but tell me how you left
my father, brothers, and Elizabeth.”

“Very well, and very happy, only a little uneasy that they hear from
you so seldom. By the by, I mean to lecture you a little upon their
account myself. But, my dear Frankenstein,” continued he, stopping
short and gazing full in my face, “I did not before remark how very ill
you appear; so thin and pale; you look as if you had been watching for
several nights.”

“You have guessed right; I have lately been so deeply engaged in one
occupation that I have not allowed myself sufficient rest, as you see;
but I hope, I sincerely hope, that all these employments are now at an
end and that I am at length free.”

I trembled excessively; I could not endure to think of, and far less to
allude to, the occurrences of the preceding night. I walked with a
quick pace, and we soon arrived at my college. I then reflected, and
the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my
apartment might still be there, alive and walking about. I dreaded to
behold this monster, but I feared still more that Henry should see him.
Entreating him, therefore, to remain a few minutes at the bottom of the
stairs, I darted up towards my own room. My hand was already on the
lock of the door before I recollected myself. I then paused, and a
cold shivering came over me. I threw the door forcibly open, as
children are accustomed to do when they expect a spectre to stand in
waiting for them on the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped
fearfully in: the apartment was empty, and my bedroom was also freed
from its hideous guest. I could hardly believe that so great a good
fortune could have befallen me, but when I became assured that my enemy
had indeed fled, I clapped my hands for joy and ran down to Clerval.

We ascended into my room, and the servant presently brought breakfast;
but I was unable to contain myself. It was not joy only that possessed
me; I felt my flesh tingle with excess of sensitiveness, and my pulse
beat rapidly. I was unable to remain for a single instant in the same
place; I jumped over the chairs, clapped my hands, and laughed aloud.
Clerval at first attributed my unusual spirits to joy on his arrival,
but when he observed me more attentively, he saw a wildness in my eyes
for which he could not account, and my loud, unrestrained, heartless
laughter frightened and astonished him.

“My dear Victor,” cried he, “what, for God’s sake,
is the matter? Do not laugh in that manner. How ill you are! What is the
cause of all this?”

“Do not ask me,” cried I, putting my hands before my eyes, for I
thought I saw the dreaded spectre glide into the room; “_he_ can
tell. Oh, save me! Save me!” I imagined that the monster seized me;
I struggled furiously and fell down in a fit.

Poor Clerval! What must have been his feelings? A meeting, which he
anticipated with such joy, so strangely turned to bitterness. But I
was not the witness of his grief, for I was lifeless and did not
recover my senses for a long, long time.

This was the commencement of a nervous fever which confined me for
several months. During all that time Henry was my only nurse. I
afterwards learned that, knowing my father’s advanced age and unfitness
for so long a journey, and how wretched my sickness would make
Elizabeth, he spared them this grief by concealing the extent of my
disorder. He knew that I could not have a more kind and attentive
nurse than himself; and, firm in the hope he felt of my recovery, he
did not doubt that, instead of doing harm, he performed the kindest
action that he could towards them.

But I was in reality very ill, and surely nothing but the unbounded and
unremitting attentions of my friend could have restored me to life.
The form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was for ever
before my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him. Doubtless my
words surprised Henry; he at first believed them to be the wanderings
of my disturbed imagination, but the pertinacity with which I
continually recurred to the same subject persuaded him that my disorder
indeed owed its origin to some uncommon and terrible event.

By very slow degrees, and with frequent relapses that alarmed and
grieved my friend, I recovered. I remember the first time I became
capable of observing outward objects with any kind of pleasure, I
perceived that the fallen leaves had disappeared and that the young
buds were shooting forth from the trees that shaded my window. It was
a divine spring, and the season contributed greatly to my
convalescence. I felt also sentiments of joy and affection revive in
my bosom; my gloom disappeared, and in a short time I became as
cheerful as before I was attacked by the fatal passion.

“Dearest Clerval,” exclaimed I, “how kind, how very good
you are to me. This whole winter, instead of being spent in study, as you
promised yourself, has been consumed in my sick room. How shall I ever
repay you? I feel the greatest remorse for the disappointment of which I
have been the occasion, but you will forgive me.”

“You will repay me entirely if you do not discompose yourself, but get
well as fast as you can; and since you appear in such good spirits, I
may speak to you on one subject, may I not?”

I trembled. One subject! What could it be? Could he allude to an object on
whom I dared not even think?

“Compose yourself,” said Clerval, who observed my change of
colour, “I will not mention it if it agitates you; but your father
and cousin would be very happy if they received a letter from you in your
own handwriting. They hardly know how ill you have been and are uneasy at
your long silence.”

“Is that all, my dear Henry? How could you suppose that my first
thought would not fly towards those dear, dear friends whom I love and
who are so deserving of my love?”

“If this is your present temper, my friend, you will perhaps be glad
to see a letter that has been lying here some days for you; it is from
your cousin, I believe.”




Chapter 6


Clerval then put the following letter into my hands. It was from my
own Elizabeth:

“My dearest Cousin,

“You have been ill, very ill, and even the constant letters of dear
kind Henry are not sufficient to reassure me on your account. You are
forbidden to write—to hold a pen; yet one word from you, dear Victor,
is necessary to calm our apprehensions. For a long time I have thought
that each post would bring this line, and my persuasions have
restrained my uncle from undertaking a journey to Ingolstadt. I have
prevented his encountering the inconveniences and perhaps dangers of so
long a journey, yet how often have I regretted not being able to
perform it myself! I figure to myself that the task of attending on
your sickbed has devolved on some mercenary old nurse, who could never
guess your wishes nor minister to them with the care and affection of
your poor cousin. Yet that is over now: Clerval writes that indeed
you are getting better. I eagerly hope that you will confirm this
intelligence soon in your own handwriting.

“Get well—and return to us. You will find a happy, cheerful home and
friends who love you dearly. Your father’s health is vigorous, and he
asks but to see you, but to be assured that you are well; and not a
care will ever cloud his benevolent countenance. How pleased you would
be to remark the improvement of our Ernest! He is now sixteen and full
of activity and spirit. He is desirous to be a true Swiss and to enter
into foreign service, but we cannot part with him, at least until his
elder brother returns to us. My uncle is not pleased with the idea of
a military career in a distant country, but Ernest never had your
powers of application. He looks upon study as an odious fetter; his
time is spent in the open air, climbing the hills or rowing on the
lake. I fear that he will become an idler unless we yield the point
and permit him to enter on the profession which he has selected.

“Little alteration, except the growth of our dear children, has taken
place since you left us. The blue lake and snow-clad mountains—they
never change; and I think our placid home and our contented hearts are
regulated by the same immutable laws. My trifling occupations take up
my time and amuse me, and I am rewarded for any exertions by seeing
none but happy, kind faces around me. Since you left us, but one
change has taken place in our little household. Do you remember on
what occasion Justine Moritz entered our family? Probably you do not;
I will relate her history, therefore in a few words. Madame Moritz,
her mother, was a widow with four children, of whom Justine was the
third. This girl had always been the favourite of her father, but
through a strange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and
after the death of M. Moritz, treated her very ill. My aunt observed
this, and when Justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother
to allow her to live at our house. The republican institutions of our
country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which
prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. Hence there is less
distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the
lower orders, being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are
more refined and moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same
thing as a servant in France and England. Justine, thus received in
our family, learned the duties of a servant, a condition which, in our
fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance and a
sacrifice of the dignity of a human being.

“Justine, you may remember, was a great favourite of yours; and I
recollect you once remarked that if you were in an ill humour, one
glance from Justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that
Ariosto gives concerning the beauty of Angelica—she looked so
frank-hearted and happy. My aunt conceived a great attachment for her,
by which she was induced to give her an education superior to that
which she had at first intended. This benefit was fully repaid;
Justine was the most grateful little creature in the world: I do not
mean that she made any professions I never heard one pass her lips, but
you could see by her eyes that she almost adored her protectress.
Although her disposition was gay and in many respects inconsiderate,
yet she paid the greatest attention to every gesture of my aunt. She
thought her the model of all excellence and endeavoured to imitate her
phraseology and manners, so that even now she often reminds me of her.

“When my dearest aunt died every one was too much occupied in their own
grief to notice poor Justine, who had attended her during her illness
with the most anxious affection. Poor Justine was very ill; but other
trials were reserved for her.

“One by one, her brothers and sister died; and her mother, with the
exception of her neglected daughter, was left childless. The
conscience of the woman was troubled; she began to think that the
deaths of her favourites was a judgement from heaven to chastise her
partiality. She was a Roman Catholic; and I believe her confessor
confirmed the idea which she had conceived. Accordingly, a few months
after your departure for Ingolstadt, Justine was called home by her
repentant mother. Poor girl! She wept when she quitted our house; she
was much altered since the death of my aunt; grief had given softness
and a winning mildness to her manners, which had before been remarkable
for vivacity. Nor was her residence at her mother’s house of a nature
to restore her gaiety. The poor woman was very vacillating in her
repentance. She sometimes begged Justine to forgive her unkindness,
but much oftener accused her of having caused the deaths of her
brothers and sister. Perpetual fretting at length threw Madame Moritz
into a decline, which at first increased her irritability, but she is
now at peace for ever. She died on the first approach of cold weather,
at the beginning of this last winter. Justine has just returned to us;
and I assure you I love her tenderly. She is very clever and gentle,
and extremely pretty; as I mentioned before, her mien and her
expression continually remind me of my dear aunt.

“I must say also a few words to you, my dear cousin, of little darling
William. I wish you could see him; he is very tall of his age, with
sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eyelashes, and curling hair. When he
smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with
health. He has already had one or two little _wives,_ but Louisa Biron
is his favourite, a pretty little girl of five years of age.

“Now, dear Victor, I dare say you wish to be indulged in a little
gossip concerning the good people of Geneva. The pretty Miss Mansfield
has already received the congratulatory visits on her approaching
marriage with a young Englishman, John Melbourne, Esq. Her ugly
sister, Manon, married M. Duvillard, the rich banker, last autumn. Your
favourite schoolfellow, Louis Manoir, has suffered several misfortunes
since the departure of Clerval from Geneva. But he has already
recovered his spirits, and is reported to be on the point of marrying a
lively pretty Frenchwoman, Madame Tavernier. She is a widow, and much
older than Manoir; but she is very much admired, and a favourite with
everybody.

“I have written myself into better spirits, dear cousin; but my anxiety
returns upon me as I conclude. Write, dearest Victor,—one line—one
word will be a blessing to us. Ten thousand thanks to Henry for his
kindness, his affection, and his many letters; we are sincerely
grateful. Adieu! my cousin; take care of yourself; and, I entreat
you, write!

“Elizabeth Lavenza.


“Geneva, March 18th, 17—.”



“Dear, dear Elizabeth!” I exclaimed, when I had read her
letter: “I will write instantly and relieve them from the anxiety
they must feel.” I wrote, and this exertion greatly fatigued me; but
my convalescence had commenced, and proceeded regularly. In another
fortnight I was able to leave my chamber.

One of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce Clerval to the
several professors of the university. In doing this, I underwent a
kind of rough usage, ill befitting the wounds that my mind had
sustained. Ever since the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the
beginning of my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even
to the name of natural philosophy. When I was otherwise quite restored
to health, the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony
of my nervous symptoms. Henry saw this, and had removed all my
apparatus from my view. He had also changed my apartment; for he
perceived that I had acquired a dislike for the room which had
previously been my laboratory. But these cares of Clerval were made of
no avail when I visited the professors. M. Waldman inflicted torture
when he praised, with kindness and warmth, the astonishing progress I
had made in the sciences. He soon perceived that I disliked the
subject; but not guessing the real cause, he attributed my feelings to
modesty, and changed the subject from my improvement, to the science
itself, with a desire, as I evidently saw, of drawing me out. What
could I do? He meant to please, and he tormented me. I felt as if he
had placed carefully, one by one, in my view those instruments which
were to be afterwards used in putting me to a slow and cruel death. I
writhed under his words, yet dared not exhibit the pain I felt.
Clerval, whose eyes and feelings were always quick in discerning the
sensations of others, declined the subject, alleging, in excuse, his
total ignorance; and the conversation took a more general turn. I
thanked my friend from my heart, but I did not speak. I saw plainly
that he was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from
me; and although I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence
that knew no bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide in
him that event which was so often present to my recollection, but which
I feared the detail to another would only impress more deeply.

M. Krempe was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time, of
almost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh blunt encomiums gave me even
more pain than the benevolent approbation of M. Waldman. “D—n
the fellow!” cried he; “why, M. Clerval, I assure you he has
outstript us all. Ay, stare if you please; but it is nevertheless true. A
youngster who, but a few years ago, believed in Cornelius Agrippa as firmly
as in the gospel, has now set himself at the head of the university; and if
he is not soon pulled down, we shall all be out of countenance.—Ay,
ay,” continued he, observing my face expressive of suffering,
“M. Frankenstein is modest; an excellent quality in a young man.
Young men should be diffident of themselves, you know, M. Clerval: I was
myself when young; but that wears out in a very short time.”

M. Krempe had now commenced an eulogy on himself, which happily turned
the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me.

Clerval had never sympathised in my tastes for natural science; and his
literary pursuits differed wholly from those which had occupied me. He
came to the university with the design of making himself complete
master of the oriental languages, and thus he should open a field for
the plan of life he had marked out for himself. Resolved to pursue no
inglorious career, he turned his eyes toward the East, as affording
scope for his spirit of enterprise. The Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit
languages engaged his attention, and I was easily induced to enter on
the same studies. Idleness had ever been irksome to me, and now that I
wished to fly from reflection, and hated my former studies, I felt
great relief in being the fellow-pupil with my friend, and found not
only instruction but consolation in the works of the orientalists. I
did not, like him, attempt a critical knowledge of their dialects, for
I did not contemplate making any other use of them than temporary
amusement. I read merely to understand their meaning, and they well
repaid my labours. Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy
elevating, to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of
any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to
consist in a warm sun and a garden of roses,—in the smiles and frowns
of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart. How
different from the manly and heroical poetry of Greece and Rome!

Summer passed away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was
fixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several
accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable,
and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. I felt this
delay very bitterly; for I longed to see my native town and my beloved
friends. My return had only been delayed so long, from an
unwillingness to leave Clerval in a strange place, before he had become
acquainted with any of its inhabitants. The winter, however, was spent
cheerfully; and although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came
its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness.

The month of May had already commenced, and I expected the letter daily
which was to fix the date of my departure, when Henry proposed a
pedestrian tour in the environs of Ingolstadt, that I might bid a
personal farewell to the country I had so long inhabited. I acceded
with pleasure to this proposition: I was fond of exercise, and Clerval
had always been my favourite companion in the ramble of this nature
that I had taken among the scenes of my native country.

We passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits
had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the
salubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress, and
the conversation of my friend. Study had before secluded me from the
intercourse of my fellow-creatures, and rendered me unsocial; but
Clerval called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught
me to love the aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children.
Excellent friend! how sincerely you did love me, and endeavour to
elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own. A selfish
pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and
affection warmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature
who, a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care.
When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most
delightful sensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with
ecstasy. The present season was indeed divine; the flowers of spring
bloomed in the hedges, while those of summer were already in bud. I
was undisturbed by thoughts which during the preceding year had pressed
upon me, notwithstanding my endeavours to throw them off, with an
invincible burden.

Henry rejoiced in my gaiety, and sincerely sympathised in my feelings: he
exerted himself to amuse me, while he expressed the sensations that filled
his soul. The resources of his mind on this occasion were truly
astonishing: his conversation was full of imagination; and very often, in
imitation of the Persian and Arabic writers, he invented tales of wonderful
fancy and passion. At other times he repeated my favourite poems, or drew
me out into arguments, which he supported with great ingenuity.

We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were
dancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits were
high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity.




Chapter 7


On my return, I found the following letter from my father:—

“My dear Victor,

“You have probably waited impatiently for a letter to fix the date of
your return to us; and I was at first tempted to write only a few
lines, merely mentioning the day on which I should expect you. But
that would be a cruel kindness, and I dare not do it. What would be
your surprise, my son, when you expected a happy and glad welcome, to
behold, on the contrary, tears and wretchedness? And how, Victor, can
I relate our misfortune? Absence cannot have rendered you callous to
our joys and griefs; and how shall I inflict pain on my long absent
son? I wish to prepare you for the woeful news, but I know it is
impossible; even now your eye skims over the page to seek the words
which are to convey to you the horrible tidings.

“William is dead!—that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed
my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! Victor, he is murdered!

“I will not attempt to console you; but will simply relate the
circumstances of the transaction.

“Last Thursday (May 7th), I, my niece, and your two brothers, went to
walk in Plainpalais. The evening was warm and serene, and we prolonged
our walk farther than usual. It was already dusk before we thought of
returning; and then we discovered that William and Ernest, who had gone
on before, were not to be found. We accordingly rested on a seat until
they should return. Presently Ernest came, and enquired if we had seen
his brother; he said, that he had been playing with him, that William
had run away to hide himself, and that he vainly sought for him, and
afterwards waited for a long time, but that he did not return.

“This account rather alarmed us, and we continued to search for him
until night fell, when Elizabeth conjectured that he might have
returned to the house. He was not there. We returned again, with
torches; for I could not rest, when I thought that my sweet boy had
lost himself, and was exposed to all the damps and dews of night;
Elizabeth also suffered extreme anguish. About five in the morning I
discovered my lovely boy, whom the night before I had seen blooming and
active in health, stretched on the grass livid and motionless; the
print of the murder’s finger was on his neck.

“He was conveyed home, and the anguish that was visible in my
countenance betrayed the secret to Elizabeth. She was very earnest to
see the corpse. At first I attempted to prevent her but she persisted,
and entering the room where it lay, hastily examined the neck of the
victim, and clasping her hands exclaimed, ‘O God! I have murdered my
darling child!’

“She fainted, and was restored with extreme difficulty. When she again
lived, it was only to weep and sigh. She told me, that that same
evening William had teased her to let him wear a very valuable
miniature that she possessed of your mother. This picture is gone, and
was doubtless the temptation which urged the murderer to the deed. We
have no trace of him at present, although our exertions to discover him
are unremitted; but they will not restore my beloved William!

“Come, dearest Victor; you alone can console Elizabeth. She weeps
continually, and accuses herself unjustly as the cause of his death;
her words pierce my heart. We are all unhappy; but will not that be an
additional motive for you, my son, to return and be our comforter?
Your dear mother! Alas, Victor! I now say, Thank God she did not live
to witness the cruel, miserable death of her youngest darling!

“Come, Victor; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin,
but with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of
festering, the wounds of our minds. Enter the house of mourning, my
friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not
with hatred for your enemies.

“Your affectionate and afflicted father,

“Alphonse Frankenstein.



“Geneva, May 12th, 17—.”



Clerval, who had watched my countenance as I read this letter, was
surprised to observe the despair that succeeded the joy I at first
expressed on receiving new from my friends. I threw the letter on the
table, and covered my face with my hands.

“My dear Frankenstein,” exclaimed Henry, when he perceived me
weep with bitterness, “are you always to be unhappy? My dear friend,
what has happened?”

I motioned him to take up the letter, while I walked up and down the
room in the extremest agitation. Tears also gushed from the eyes of
Clerval, as he read the account of my misfortune.

“I can offer you no consolation, my friend,” said he;
“your disaster is irreparable. What do you intend to do?”

“To go instantly to Geneva: come with me, Henry, to order the horses.”

During our walk, Clerval endeavoured to say a few words of consolation;
he could only express his heartfelt sympathy. “Poor William!” said he,
“dear lovely child, he now sleeps with his angel mother! Who that had
seen him bright and joyous in his young beauty, but must weep over his
untimely loss! To die so miserably; to feel the murderer’s grasp! How
much more a murdered that could destroy radiant innocence! Poor little
fellow! one only consolation have we; his friends mourn and weep, but
he is at rest. The pang is over, his sufferings are at an end for ever.
A sod covers his gentle form, and he knows no pain. He can no longer
be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable
survivors.”

Clerval spoke thus as we hurried through the streets; the words
impressed themselves on my mind and I remembered them afterwards in
solitude. But now, as soon as the horses arrived, I hurried into a
cabriolet, and bade farewell to my friend.

My journey was very melancholy. At first I wished to hurry on, for I longed
to console and sympathise with my loved and sorrowing friends; but when I
drew near my native town, I slackened my progress. I could hardly sustain
the multitude of feelings that crowded into my mind. I passed through
scenes familiar to my youth, but which I had not seen for nearly six years.
How altered every thing might be during that time! One sudden and
desolating change had taken place; but a thousand little circumstances
might have by degrees worked other alterations, which, although they were
done more tranquilly, might not be the less decisive. Fear overcame me; I
dared no advance, dreading a thousand nameless evils that made me tremble,
although I was unable to define them.

I remained two days at Lausanne, in this painful state of mind. I
contemplated the lake: the waters were placid; all around was calm; and the
snowy mountains, “the palaces of nature,” were not changed. By
degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me, and I continued my journey
towards Geneva.

The road ran by the side of the lake, which became narrower as I
approached my native town. I discovered more distinctly the black
sides of Jura, and the bright summit of Mont Blanc. I wept like a
child. “Dear mountains! my own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your
wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and
placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?”

I fear, my friend, that I shall render myself tedious by dwelling on
these preliminary circumstances; but they were days of comparative
happiness, and I think of them with pleasure. My country, my beloved
country! who but a native can tell the delight I took in again
beholding thy streams, thy mountains, and, more than all, thy lovely
lake!

Yet, as I drew nearer home, grief and fear again overcame me. Night also
closed around; and when I could hardly see the dark mountains, I felt still
more gloomily. The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil, and I
foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human
beings. Alas! I prophesied truly, and failed only in one single
circumstance, that in all the misery I imagined and dreaded, I did not
conceive the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure.

It was completely dark when I arrived in the environs of Geneva; the gates
of the town were already shut; and I was obliged to pass the night at
Secheron, a village at the distance of half a league from the city. The sky
was serene; and, as I was unable to rest, I resolved to visit the spot
where my poor William had been murdered. As I could not pass through the
town, I was obliged to cross the lake in a boat to arrive at Plainpalais.
During this short voyage I saw the lightning playing on the summit of Mont
Blanc in the most beautiful figures. The storm appeared to approach
rapidly, and, on landing, I ascended a low hill, that I might observe its
progress. It advanced; the heavens were clouded, and I soon felt the rain
coming slowly in large drops, but its violence quickly increased.

I quitted my seat, and walked on, although the darkness and storm
increased every minute, and the thunder burst with a terrific crash
over my head. It was echoed from Salêve, the Juras, and the Alps of
Savoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the
lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant
every thing seemed of a pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered itself
from the preceding flash. The storm, as is often the case in
Switzerland, appeared at once in various parts of the heavens. The
most violent storm hung exactly north of the town, over the part of the
lake which lies between the promontory of Belrive and the village of
Copêt. Another storm enlightened Jura with faint flashes; and another
darkened and sometimes disclosed the Môle, a peaked mountain to the
east of the lake.

While I watched the tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with
a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped my
hands, and exclaimed aloud, “William, dear angel! this is thy
funeral, this thy dirge!” As I said these words, I perceived in the
gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood
fixed, gazing intently: I could not be mistaken. A flash of lightning
illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its
gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect more hideous than belongs
to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy
dæmon, to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I
shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did that
idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth; my teeth
chattered, and I was forced to lean against a tree for support. The figure
passed me quickly, and I lost it in the gloom. Nothing in human shape could
have destroyed the fair child. _He_ was the murderer! I could not
doubt it. The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the
fact. I thought of pursuing the devil; but it would have been in vain, for
another flash discovered him to me hanging among the rocks of the nearly
perpendicular ascent of Mont Salêve, a hill that bounds Plainpalais on the
south. He soon reached the summit, and disappeared.

I remained motionless. The thunder ceased; but the rain still
continued, and the scene was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness. I
revolved in my mind the events which I had until now sought to forget:
the whole train of my progress toward the creation; the appearance of
the works of my own hands at my bedside; its departure. Two years had
now nearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and
was this his first crime? Alas! I had turned loose into the world a
depraved wretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not
murdered my brother?

No one can conceive the anguish I suffered during the remainder of the
night, which I spent, cold and wet, in the open air. But I did not
feel the inconvenience of the weather; my imagination was busy in
scenes of evil and despair. I considered the being whom I had cast
among mankind, and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes
of horror, such as the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light
of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced
to destroy all that was dear to me.

Day dawned; and I directed my steps towards the town. The gates were
open, and I hastened to my father’s house. My first thought was to
discover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant pursuit to be
made. But I paused when I reflected on the story that I had to tell. A
being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at
midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I
remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at
the time that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of
delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that
if any other had communicated such a relation to me, I should have
looked upon it as the ravings of insanity. Besides, the strange nature
of the animal would elude all pursuit, even if I were so far credited
as to persuade my relatives to commence it. And then of what use would
be pursuit? Who could arrest a creature capable of scaling the
overhanging sides of Mont Salêve? These reflections determined me, and
I resolved to remain silent.

It was about five in the morning when I entered my father’s house. I
told the servants not to disturb the family, and went into the library
to attend their usual hour of rising.

Six years had elapsed, passed in a dream but for one indelible trace, and I
stood in the same place where I had last embraced my father before my
departure for Ingolstadt. Beloved and venerable parent! He still remained
to me. I gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over the
mantel-piece. It was an historical subject, painted at my father’s
desire, and represented Caroline Beaufort in an agony of despair, kneeling
by the coffin of her dead father. Her garb was rustic, and her cheek pale;
but there was an air of dignity and beauty, that hardly permitted the
sentiment of pity. Below this picture was a miniature of William; and my
tears flowed when I looked upon it. While I was thus engaged, Ernest
entered: he had heard me arrive, and hastened to welcome me:
“Welcome, my dearest Victor,” said he. “Ah! I wish you
had come three months ago, and then you would have found us all joyous and
delighted. You come to us now to share a misery which nothing can
alleviate; yet your presence will, I hope, revive our father, who seems
sinking under his misfortune; and your persuasions will induce poor
Elizabeth to cease her vain and tormenting self-accusations.—Poor
William! he was our darling and our pride!”

Tears, unrestrained, fell from my brother’s eyes; a sense of mortal
agony crept over my frame. Before, I had only imagined the
wretchedness of my desolated home; the reality came on me as a new, and
a not less terrible, disaster. I tried to calm Ernest; I enquired more
minutely concerning my father, and here I named my cousin.

“She most of all,” said Ernest, “requires consolation; she accused
herself of having caused the death of my brother, and that made her
very wretched. But since the murderer has been discovered—”

“The murderer discovered! Good God! how can that be? who could attempt
to pursue him? It is impossible; one might as well try to overtake the
winds, or confine a mountain-stream with a straw. I saw him too; he
was free last night!”

“I do not know what you mean,” replied my brother, in accents of
wonder, “but to us the discovery we have made completes our misery. No
one would believe it at first; and even now Elizabeth will not be
convinced, notwithstanding all the evidence. Indeed, who would credit
that Justine Moritz, who was so amiable, and fond of all the family,
could suddenly become so capable of so frightful, so appalling a crime?”

“Justine Moritz! Poor, poor girl, is she the accused? But it is
wrongfully; every one knows that; no one believes it, surely, Ernest?”

“No one did at first; but several circumstances came out, that have
almost forced conviction upon us; and her own behaviour has been so
confused, as to add to the evidence of facts a weight that, I fear,
leaves no hope for doubt. But she will be tried today, and you will
then hear all.”

He then related that, the morning on which the murder of poor William
had been discovered, Justine had been taken ill, and confined to her
bed for several days. During this interval, one of the servants,
happening to examine the apparel she had worn on the night of the
murder, had discovered in her pocket the picture of my mother, which
had been judged to be the temptation of the murderer. The servant
instantly showed it to one of the others, who, without saying a word to
any of the family, went to a magistrate; and, upon their deposition,
Justine was apprehended. On being charged with the fact, the poor girl
confirmed the suspicion in a great measure by her extreme confusion of
manner.

This was a strange tale, but it did not shake my faith; and I replied
earnestly, “You are all mistaken; I know the murderer. Justine, poor,
good Justine, is innocent.”

At that instant my father entered. I saw unhappiness deeply impressed
on his countenance, but he endeavoured to welcome me cheerfully; and,
after we had exchanged our mournful greeting, would have introduced
some other topic than that of our disaster, had not Ernest exclaimed,
“Good God, papa! Victor says that he knows who was the murderer of
poor William.”

“We do also, unfortunately,” replied my father, “for indeed I had
rather have been for ever ignorant than have discovered so much
depravity and ungratitude in one I valued so highly.”

“My dear father, you are mistaken; Justine is innocent.”

“If she is, God forbid that she should suffer as guilty. She is to be
tried today, and I hope, I sincerely hope, that she will be acquitted.”

This speech calmed me. I was firmly convinced in my own mind that
Justine, and indeed every human being, was guiltless of this murder. I
had no fear, therefore, that any circumstantial evidence could be
brought forward strong enough to convict her. My tale was not one to
announce publicly; its astounding horror would be looked upon as
madness by the vulgar. Did any one indeed exist, except I, the
creator, who would believe, unless his senses convinced him, in the
existence of the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance
which I had let loose upon the world?

We were soon joined by Elizabeth. Time had altered her since I last
beheld her; it had endowed her with loveliness surpassing the beauty of
her childish years. There was the same candour, the same vivacity, but
it was allied to an expression more full of sensibility and intellect.
She welcomed me with the greatest affection. “Your arrival, my dear
cousin,” said she, “fills me with hope. You perhaps will find some
means to justify my poor guiltless Justine. Alas! who is safe, if she
be convicted of crime? I rely on her innocence as certainly as I do
upon my own. Our misfortune is doubly hard to us; we have not only
lost that lovely darling boy, but this poor girl, whom I sincerely
love, is to be torn away by even a worse fate. If she is condemned, I
never shall know joy more. But she will not, I am sure she will not;
and then I shall be happy again, even after the sad death of my little
William.”

“She is innocent, my Elizabeth,” said I, “and that shall
be proved; fear nothing, but let your spirits be cheered by the assurance
of her acquittal.”

“How kind and generous you are! every one else believes in her guilt,
and that made me wretched, for I knew that it was impossible: and to
see every one else prejudiced in so deadly a manner rendered me
hopeless and despairing.” She wept.

“Dearest niece,” said my father, “dry your tears. If she
is, as you believe, innocent, rely on the justice of our laws, and the
activity with which I shall prevent the slightest shadow of
partiality.”




Chapter 8


We passed a few sad hours until eleven o’clock, when the trial was to
commence. My father and the rest of the family being obliged to attend
as witnesses, I accompanied them to the court. During the whole of
this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture. It was to
be decided whether the result of my curiosity and lawless devices would
cause the death of two of my fellow beings: one a smiling babe full of
innocence and joy, the other far more dreadfully murdered, with every
aggravation of infamy that could make the murder memorable in horror.
Justine also was a girl of merit and possessed qualities which promised
to render her life happy; now all was to be obliterated in an
ignominious grave, and I the cause! A thousand times rather would I
have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine, but I
was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have
been considered as the ravings of a madman and would not have
exculpated her who suffered through me.

The appearance of Justine was calm. She was dressed in mourning, and
her countenance, always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her
feelings, exquisitely beautiful. Yet she appeared confident in
innocence and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by
thousands, for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have
excited was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the
imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed. She
was tranquil, yet her tranquillity was evidently constrained; and as
her confusion had before been adduced as a proof of her guilt, she
worked up her mind to an appearance of courage. When she entered the
court she threw her eyes round it and quickly discovered where we were
seated. A tear seemed to dim her eye when she saw us, but she quickly
recovered herself, and a look of sorrowful affection seemed to attest
her utter guiltlessness.

The trial began, and after the advocate against her had stated the
charge, several witnesses were called. Several strange facts combined
against her, which might have staggered anyone who had not such proof
of her innocence as I had. She had been out the whole of the night on
which the murder had been committed and towards morning had been
perceived by a market-woman not far from the spot where the body of the
murdered child had been afterwards found. The woman asked her what she
did there, but she looked very strangely and only returned a confused
and unintelligible answer. She returned to the house about eight
o’clock, and when one inquired where she had passed the night, she
replied that she had been looking for the child and demanded earnestly
if anything had been heard concerning him. When shown the body, she
fell into violent hysterics and kept her bed for several days. The
picture was then produced which the servant had found in her pocket;
and when Elizabeth, in a faltering voice, proved that it was the same
which, an hour before the child had been missed, she had placed round
his neck, a murmur of horror and indignation filled the court.

Justine was called on for her defence. As the trial had proceeded, her
countenance had altered. Surprise, horror, and misery were strongly
expressed. Sometimes she struggled with her tears, but when she was
desired to plead, she collected her powers and spoke in an audible
although variable voice.

“God knows,” she said, “how entirely I am innocent. But I
do not pretend that my protestations should acquit me; I rest my innocence
on a plain and simple explanation of the facts which have been adduced
against me, and I hope the character I have always borne will incline my
judges to a favourable interpretation where any circumstance appears
doubtful or suspicious.”

She then related that, by the permission of Elizabeth, she had passed
the evening of the night on which the murder had been committed at the
house of an aunt at Chêne, a village situated at about a league from
Geneva. On her return, at about nine o’clock, she met a man who asked
her if she had seen anything of the child who was lost. She was
alarmed by this account and passed several hours in looking for him,
when the gates of Geneva were shut, and she was forced to remain
several hours of the night in a barn belonging to a cottage, being
unwilling to call up the inhabitants, to whom she was well known. Most
of the night she spent here watching; towards morning she believed that
she slept for a few minutes; some steps disturbed her, and she awoke.
It was dawn, and she quitted her asylum, that she might again endeavour
to find my brother. If she had gone near the spot where his body lay,
it was without her knowledge. That she had been bewildered when
questioned by the market-woman was not surprising, since she had passed
a sleepless night and the fate of poor William was yet uncertain.
Concerning the picture she could give no account.

“I know,” continued the unhappy victim, “how heavily and
fatally this one circumstance weighs against me, but I have no power of
explaining it; and when I have expressed my utter ignorance, I am only left
to conjecture concerning the probabilities by which it might have been
placed in my pocket. But here also I am checked. I believe that I have no
enemy on earth, and none surely would have been so wicked as to destroy me
wantonly. Did the murderer place it there? I know of no opportunity
afforded him for so doing; or, if I had, why should he have stolen the
jewel, to part with it again so soon?

“I commit my cause to the justice of my judges, yet I see no room for
hope. I beg permission to have a few witnesses examined concerning my
character, and if their testimony shall not overweigh my supposed
guilt, I must be condemned, although I would pledge my salvation on my
innocence.”

Several witnesses were called who had known her for many years, and
they spoke well of her; but fear and hatred of the crime of which they
supposed her guilty rendered them timorous and unwilling to come
forward. Elizabeth saw even this last resource, her excellent
dispositions and irreproachable conduct, about to fail the accused,
when, although violently agitated, she desired permission to address
the court.

“I am,” said she, “the cousin of the unhappy child who
was murdered, or rather his sister, for I was educated by and have lived
with his parents ever since and even long before his birth. It may
therefore be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion, but
when I see a fellow creature about to perish through the cowardice of her
pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I
know of her character. I am well acquainted with the accused. I have lived
in the same house with her, at one time for five and at another for nearly
two years. During all that period she appeared to me the most amiable and
benevolent of human creatures. She nursed Madame Frankenstein, my aunt, in
her last illness, with the greatest affection and care and afterwards
attended her own mother during a tedious illness, in a manner that excited
the admiration of all who knew her, after which she again lived in my
uncle’s house, where she was beloved by all the family. She was
warmly attached to the child who is now dead and acted towards him like a
most affectionate mother. For my own part, I do not hesitate to say that,
notwithstanding all the evidence produced against her, I believe and rely
on her perfect innocence. She had no temptation for such an action; as to
the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she had earnestly desired it,
I should have willingly given it to her, so much do I esteem and value
her.”

A murmur of approbation followed Elizabeth’s simple and powerful
appeal, but it was excited by her generous interference, and not in
favour of poor Justine, on whom the public indignation was turned with
renewed violence, charging her with the blackest ingratitude. She
herself wept as Elizabeth spoke, but she did not answer. My own
agitation and anguish was extreme during the whole trial. I believed
in her innocence; I knew it. Could the dæmon who had (I did not for a
minute doubt) murdered my brother also in his hellish sport have
betrayed the innocent to death and ignominy? I could not sustain the
horror of my situation, and when I perceived that the popular voice and
the countenances of the judges had already condemned my unhappy victim,
I rushed out of the court in agony. The tortures of the accused did
not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of
remorse tore my bosom and would not forgo their hold.

I passed a night of unmingled wretchedness. In the morning I went to
the court; my lips and throat were parched. I dared not ask the fatal
question, but I was known, and the officer guessed the cause of my
visit. The ballots had been thrown; they were all black, and Justine
was condemned.

I cannot pretend to describe what I then felt. I had before
experienced sensations of horror, and I have endeavoured to bestow upon
them adequate expressions, but words cannot convey an idea of the
heart-sickening despair that I then endured. The person to whom I
addressed myself added that Justine had already confessed her guilt.
“That evidence,” he observed, “was hardly required in so glaring a
case, but I am glad of it, and, indeed, none of our judges like to
condemn a criminal upon circumstantial evidence, be it ever so
decisive.”

This was strange and unexpected intelligence; what could it mean? Had
my eyes deceived me? And was I really as mad as the whole world would
believe me to be if I disclosed the object of my suspicions? I
hastened to return home, and Elizabeth eagerly demanded the result.

“My cousin,” replied I, “it is decided as you may have expected; all
judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty
should escape. But she has confessed.”

This was a dire blow to poor Elizabeth, who had relied with firmness upon
Justine’s innocence. “Alas!” said she. “How shall I
ever again believe in human goodness? Justine, whom I loved and esteemed as
my sister, how could she put on those smiles of innocence only to betray?
Her mild eyes seemed incapable of any severity or guile, and yet she has
committed a murder.”

Soon after we heard that the poor victim had expressed a desire to see my
cousin. My father wished her not to go but said that he left it to her own
judgment and feelings to decide. “Yes,” said Elizabeth,
“I will go, although she is guilty; and you, Victor, shall accompany
me; I cannot go alone.” The idea of this visit was torture to me, yet
I could not refuse.

We entered the gloomy prison chamber and beheld Justine sitting on some
straw at the farther end; her hands were manacled, and her head rested on
her knees. She rose on seeing us enter, and when we were left alone with
her, she threw herself at the feet of Elizabeth, weeping bitterly. My
cousin wept also.

“Oh, Justine!” said she. “Why did you rob me of my last consolation?
I relied on your innocence, and although I was then very wretched, I
was not so miserable as I am now.”

“And do you also believe that I am so very, very wicked? Do you also
join with my enemies to crush me, to condemn me as a murderer?” Her
voice was suffocated with sobs.

“Rise, my poor girl,” said Elizabeth; “why do you kneel,
if you are innocent? I am not one of your enemies, I believed you
guiltless, notwithstanding every evidence, until I heard that you had
yourself declared your guilt. That report, you say, is false; and be
assured, dear Justine, that nothing can shake my confidence in you for a
moment, but your own confession.”

“I did confess, but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might
obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than
all my other sins. The God of heaven forgive me! Ever since I was
condemned, my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced,
until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I
was. He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments if
I continued obdurate. Dear lady, I had none to support me; all looked
on me as a wretch doomed to ignominy and perdition. What could I do?
In an evil hour I subscribed to a lie; and now only am I truly
miserable.”

She paused, weeping, and then continued, “I thought with horror, my
sweet lady, that you should believe your Justine, whom your blessed
aunt had so highly honoured, and whom you loved, was a creature capable
of a crime which none but the devil himself could have perpetrated.
Dear William! dearest blessed child! I soon shall see you again in
heaven, where we shall all be happy; and that consoles me, going as I
am to suffer ignominy and death.”

“Oh, Justine! Forgive me for having for one moment distrusted you.
Why did you confess? But do not mourn, dear girl. Do not fear. I
will proclaim, I will prove your innocence. I will melt the stony
hearts of your enemies by my tears and prayers. You shall not die!
You, my playfellow, my companion, my sister, perish on the scaffold!
No! No! I never could survive so horrible a misfortune.”

Justine shook her head mournfully. “I do not fear to die,” she said;
“that pang is past. God raises my weakness and gives me courage to
endure the worst. I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember
me and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the
fate awaiting me. Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to
the will of heaven!”

During this conversation I had retired to a corner of the prison room,
where I could conceal the horrid anguish that possessed me. Despair!
Who dared talk of that? The poor victim, who on the morrow was to pass
the awful boundary between life and death, felt not, as I did, such
deep and bitter agony. I gnashed my teeth and ground them together,
uttering a groan that came from my inmost soul. Justine started. When
she saw who it was, she approached me and said, “Dear sir, you are very
kind to visit me; you, I hope, do not believe that I am guilty?”

I could not answer. “No, Justine,” said Elizabeth; “he is more
convinced of your innocence than I was, for even when he heard that you
had confessed, he did not credit it.”

“I truly thank him. In these last moments I feel the sincerest
gratitude towards those who think of me with kindness. How sweet is
the affection of others to such a wretch as I am! It removes more than
half my misfortune, and I feel as if I could die in peace now that my
innocence is acknowledged by you, dear lady, and your cousin.”

Thus the poor sufferer tried to comfort others and herself. She indeed
gained the resignation she desired. But I, the true murderer, felt the
never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or
consolation. Elizabeth also wept and was unhappy, but hers also was
the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair
moon, for a while hides but cannot tarnish its brightness. Anguish and
despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within
me which nothing could extinguish. We stayed several hours with
Justine, and it was with great difficulty that Elizabeth could tear
herself away. “I wish,” cried she, “that I were to die with you; I
cannot live in this world of misery.”

Justine assumed an air of cheerfulness, while she with difficulty
repressed her bitter tears. She embraced Elizabeth and said in a voice
of half-suppressed emotion, “Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Elizabeth,
my beloved and only friend; may heaven, in its bounty, bless and
preserve you; may this be the last misfortune that you will ever
suffer! Live, and be happy, and make others so.”

And on the morrow Justine died. Elizabeth’s heart-rending eloquence
failed to move the judges from their settled conviction in the
criminality of the saintly sufferer. My passionate and indignant
appeals were lost upon them. And when I received their cold answers
and heard the harsh, unfeeling reasoning of these men, my purposed
avowal died away on my lips. Thus I might proclaim myself a madman,
but not revoke the sentence passed upon my wretched victim. She
perished on the scaffold as a murderess!

From the tortures of my own heart, I turned to contemplate the deep and
voiceless grief of my Elizabeth. This also was my doing! And my
father’s woe, and the desolation of that late so smiling home all was
the work of my thrice-accursed hands! Ye weep, unhappy ones, but these
are not your last tears! Again shall you raise the funeral wail, and
the sound of your lamentations shall again and again be heard!
Frankenstein, your son, your kinsman, your early, much-loved friend; he
who would spend each vital drop of blood for your sakes, who has no
thought nor sense of joy except as it is mirrored also in your dear
countenances, who would fill the air with blessings and spend his life
in serving you—he bids you weep, to shed countless tears; happy beyond
his hopes, if thus inexorable fate be satisfied, and if the destruction
pause before the peace of the grave have succeeded to your sad torments!

Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse, horror, and despair,
I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and
Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.




Chapter 9


Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have
been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of
inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope
and fear. Justine died, she rested, and I was alive. The blood flowed
freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my
heart which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered
like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond
description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself) was yet
behind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness and the love of virtue.
I had begun life with benevolent intentions and thirsted for the moment
when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my fellow
beings. Now all was blasted; instead of that serenity of conscience
which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and
from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and
the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures
such as no language can describe.

This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had perhaps never
entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained. I shunned
the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me;
solitude was my only consolation—deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

My father observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my disposition
and habits and endeavoured by arguments deduced from the feelings of his
serene conscience and guiltless life to inspire me with fortitude and
awaken in me the courage to dispel the dark cloud which brooded over me.
“Do you think, Victor,” said he, “that I do not suffer
also? No one could love a child more than I loved your
brother”—tears came into his eyes as he spoke—“but
is it not a duty to the survivors that we should refrain from augmenting
their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty
owed to yourself, for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment,
or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for
society.”

This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case; I
should have been the first to hide my grief and console my friends if
remorse had not mingled its bitterness, and terror its alarm, with my
other sensations. Now I could only answer my father with a look of
despair and endeavour to hide myself from his view.

About this time we retired to our house at Belrive. This change was
particularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the gates regularly at
ten o’clock and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that
hour had rendered our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome
to me. I was now free. Often, after the rest of the family had
retired for the night, I took the boat and passed many hours upon the
water. Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and
sometimes, after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to
pursue its own course and gave way to my own miserable reflections. I
was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only
unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and
heavenly—if I except some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and
interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the shore—often,
I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters
might close over me and my calamities for ever. But I was restrained,
when I thought of the heroic and suffering Elizabeth, whom I tenderly
loved, and whose existence was bound up in mine. I thought also of my
father and surviving brother; should I by my base desertion leave them
exposed and unprotected to the malice of the fiend whom I had let loose
among them?

At these moments I wept bitterly and wished that peace would revisit my
mind only that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But that
could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of
unalterable evils, and I lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I had
created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure feeling
that all was not over and that he would still commit some signal crime,
which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past.
There was always scope for fear so long as anything I loved remained
behind. My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived. When I thought of
him I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to
extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed. When I
reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds
of moderation. I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the
Andes, could I, when there, have precipitated him to their base. I wished
to see him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent of abhorrence on his
head and avenge the deaths of William and Justine.

Our house was the house of mourning. My father’s health was deeply
shaken by the horror of the recent events. Elizabeth was sad and
desponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all
pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears she
then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so blasted
and destroyed. She was no longer that happy creature who in earlier youth
wandered with me on the banks of the lake and talked with ecstasy of our
future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from
the earth had visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest
smiles.

“When I reflect, my dear cousin,” said she, “on the miserable death of
Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world and its works as they before
appeared to me. Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and
injustice that I read in books or heard from others as tales of ancient
days or imaginary evils; at least they were remote and more familiar to
reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come home, and men
appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood. Yet I am
certainly unjust. Everybody believed that poor girl to be guilty; and
if she could have committed the crime for which she suffered, assuredly
she would have been the most depraved of human creatures. For the sake
of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her benefactor and friend,
a child whom she had nursed from its birth, and appeared to love as if
it had been her own! I could not consent to the death of any human
being, but certainly I should have thought such a creature unfit to
remain in the society of men. But she was innocent. I know, I feel
she was innocent; you are of the same opinion, and that confirms me.
Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can
assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were walking on
the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding and
endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. William and Justine were
assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the world free,
and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to suffer on the
scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places with such a
wretch.”

I listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. I, not in deed,
but in effect, was the true murderer. Elizabeth read my anguish in my
countenance, and kindly taking my hand, said, “My dearest friend, you
must calm yourself. These events have affected me, God knows how
deeply; but I am not so wretched as you are. There is an expression of
despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance that makes me
tremble. Dear Victor, banish these dark passions. Remember the
friends around you, who centre all their hopes in you. Have we lost
the power of rendering you happy? Ah! While we love, while we are
true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty, your native
country, we may reap every tranquil blessing—what can disturb our
peace?”

And could not such words from her whom I fondly prized before every
other gift of fortune suffice to chase away the fiend that lurked in my
heart? Even as she spoke I drew near to her, as if in terror, lest at
that very moment the destroyer had been near to rob me of her.

Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of
heaven, could redeem my soul from woe; the very accents of love were
ineffectual. I was encompassed by a cloud which no beneficial
influence could penetrate. The wounded deer dragging its fainting
limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had
pierced it, and to die, was but a type of me.

Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me, but
sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily
exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable
sensations. It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left
my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought
in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and
my ephemeral, because human, sorrows. My wanderings were directed
towards the valley of Chamounix. I had visited it frequently during my
boyhood. Six years had passed since then: _I_ was a wreck, but nought
had changed in those savage and enduring scenes.

I performed the first part of my journey on horseback. I afterwards
hired a mule, as the more sure-footed and least liable to receive
injury on these rugged roads. The weather was fine; it was about the
middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of
Justine, that miserable epoch from which I dated all my woe. The
weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper in
the ravine of Arve. The immense mountains and precipices that overhung
me on every side, the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and
the dashing of the waterfalls around spoke of a power mighty as
Omnipotence—and I ceased to fear or to bend before any being less
almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements, here
displayed in their most terrific guise. Still, as I ascended higher,
the valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character.
Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains, the
impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from
among the trees formed a scene of singular beauty. But it was
augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and
shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another
earth, the habitations of another race of beings.

I passed the bridge of Pélissier, where the ravine, which the river
forms, opened before me, and I began to ascend the mountain that
overhangs it. Soon after, I entered the valley of Chamounix. This
valley is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and
picturesque as that of Servox, through which I had just passed. The
high and snowy mountains were its immediate boundaries, but I saw no
more ruined castles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached
the road; I heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche and
marked the smoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and
magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding _aiguilles_,
and its tremendous _dôme_ overlooked the valley.

A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came across me during this
journey. Some turn in the road, some new object suddenly perceived and
recognised, reminded me of days gone by, and were associated with the
lighthearted gaiety of boyhood. The very winds whispered in soothing
accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more. Then again the
kindly influence ceased to act—I found myself fettered again to grief
and indulging in all the misery of reflection. Then I spurred on my
animal, striving so to forget the world, my fears, and more than all,
myself—or, in a more desperate fashion, I alighted and threw myself on
the grass, weighed down by horror and despair.

At length I arrived at the village of Chamounix. Exhaustion succeeded
to the extreme fatigue both of body and of mind which I had endured.
For a short space of time I remained at the window watching the pallid
lightnings that played above Mont Blanc and listening to the rushing of
the Arve, which pursued its noisy way beneath. The same lulling sounds
acted as a lullaby to my too keen sensations; when I placed my head
upon my pillow, sleep crept over me; I felt it as it came and blessed
the giver of oblivion.




Chapter 10


I spent the following day roaming through the valley. I stood beside
the sources of the Arveiron, which take their rise in a glacier, that
with slow pace is advancing down from the summit of the hills to
barricade the valley. The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before
me; the icy wall of the glacier overhung me; a few shattered pines were
scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious
presence-chamber of imperial Nature was broken only by the brawling
waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the
avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along the mountains, of the
accumulated ice, which, through the silent working of immutable laws,
was ever and anon rent and torn, as if it had been but a plaything in
their hands. These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the
greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving. They elevated me
from all littleness of feeling, and although they did not remove my
grief, they subdued and tranquillised it. In some degree, also, they
diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded for the
last month. I retired to rest at night; my slumbers, as it were,
waited on and ministered to by the assemblance of grand shapes which I
had contemplated during the day. They congregated round me; the
unstained snowy mountain-top, the glittering pinnacle, the pine woods,
and ragged bare ravine, the eagle, soaring amidst the clouds—they all
gathered round me and bade me be at peace.

Where had they fled when the next morning I awoke? All of
soul-inspiriting fled with sleep, and dark melancholy clouded every
thought. The rain was pouring in torrents, and thick mists hid the
summits of the mountains, so that I even saw not the faces of those
mighty friends. Still I would penetrate their misty veil and seek them
in their cloudy retreats. What were rain and storm to me? My mule was
brought to the door, and I resolved to ascend to the summit of
Montanvert. I remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous
and ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when I first saw it.
It had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the
soul and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy.
The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the
effect of solemnising my mind and causing me to forget the passing
cares of life. I determined to go without a guide, for I was well
acquainted with the path, and the presence of another would destroy the
solitary grandeur of the scene.

The ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short
windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the
mountain. It is a scene terrifically desolate. In a thousand spots
the traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie
broken and strewed on the ground, some entirely destroyed, others bent,
leaning upon the jutting rocks of the mountain or transversely upon
other trees. The path, as you ascend higher, is intersected by ravines
of snow, down which stones continually roll from above; one of them is
particularly dangerous, as the slightest sound, such as even speaking
in a loud voice, produces a concussion of air sufficient to draw
destruction upon the head of the speaker. The pines are not tall or
luxuriant, but they are sombre and add an air of severity to the scene.
I looked on the valley beneath; vast mists were rising from the rivers
which ran through it and curling in thick wreaths around the opposite
mountains, whose summits were hid in the uniform clouds, while rain
poured from the dark sky and added to the melancholy impression I
received from the objects around me. Alas! Why does man boast of
sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders
them more necessary beings. If our impulses were confined to hunger,
thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by
every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may
convey to us.

  We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.
     We rise; one wand’ring thought pollutes the day.
  We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,
     Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;
  It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,
     The path of its departure still is free.
  Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
     Nought may endure but mutability!


It was nearly noon when I arrived at the top of the ascent. For some
time I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice. A mist covered
both that and the surrounding mountains. Presently a breeze dissipated
the cloud, and I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very
uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and
interspersed by rifts that sink deep. The field of ice is almost a
league in width, but I spent nearly two hours in crossing it. The
opposite mountain is a bare perpendicular rock. From the side where I
now stood Montanvert was exactly opposite, at the distance of a league;
and above it rose Mont Blanc, in awful majesty. I remained in a recess
of the rock, gazing on this wonderful and stupendous scene. The sea,
or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains,
whose aerial summits hung over its recesses. Their icy and glittering
peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds. My heart, which was
before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed,
“Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow
beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion,
away from the joys of life.”

As I said this I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance,
advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the
crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his
stature, also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of man. I was
troubled; a mist came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me,
but I was quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains. I
perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!)
that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled with rage and
horror, resolving to wait his approach and then close with him in
mortal combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish,
combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness
rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely
observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance,
and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious
detestation and contempt.

“Devil,” I exclaimed, “do you dare approach me? And do
not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head?
Begone, vile insect! Or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust! And,
oh! That I could, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore
those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!”

“I expected this reception,” said the dæmon. “All men hate the
wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all
living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature,
to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of
one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life?
Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of
mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and
you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it
be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.”

“Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too
mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! You reproach me with
your creation, come on, then, that I may extinguish the spark which I
so negligently bestowed.”

My rage was without bounds; I sprang on him, impelled by all the
feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another.

He easily eluded me and said,

“Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your hatred
on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to
increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of
anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made
me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine, my
joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in
opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and
docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part,
the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every
other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy
clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature;
I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou
drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I
alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made
me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”

“Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you
and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight,
in which one must fall.”

“How can I move thee? Will no entreaties cause thee to turn a
favourable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and
compassion? Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed
with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my
creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures,
who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me. The desert mountains and
dreary glaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the
caves of ice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the
only one which man does not grudge. These bleak skies I hail, for they
are kinder to me than your fellow beings. If the multitude of mankind
knew of my existence, they would do as you do, and arm themselves for
my destruction. Shall I not then hate them who abhor me? I will keep
no terms with my enemies. I am miserable, and they shall share my
wretchedness. Yet it is in your power to recompense me, and deliver
them from an evil which it only remains for you to make so great, that
not only you and your family, but thousands of others, shall be
swallowed up in the whirlwinds of its rage. Let your compassion be
moved, and do not disdain me. Listen to my tale; when you have heard
that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve.
But hear me. The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they
are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. Listen
to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with
a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the
eternal justice of man! Yet I ask you not to spare me; listen to me,
and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands.”

“Why do you call to my remembrance,” I rejoined, “circumstances of
which I shudder to reflect, that I have been the miserable origin and
author? Cursed be the day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw
light! Cursed (although I curse myself) be the hands that formed you!
You have made me wretched beyond expression. You have left me no power
to consider whether I am just to you or not. Begone! Relieve me from
the sight of your detested form.”

“Thus I relieve thee, my creator,” he said, and placed his hated hands
before my eyes, which I flung from me with violence; “thus I take from
thee a sight which you abhor. Still thou canst listen to me and grant
me thy compassion. By the virtues that I once possessed, I demand this
from you. Hear my tale; it is long and strange, and the temperature of
this place is not fitting to your fine sensations; come to the hut upon
the mountain. The sun is yet high in the heavens; before it descends
to hide itself behind your snowy precipices and illuminate another
world, you will have heard my story and can decide. On you it rests,
whether I quit for ever the neighbourhood of man and lead a harmless
life, or become the scourge of your fellow creatures and the author of
your own speedy ruin.”

As he said this he led the way across the ice; I followed. My heart
was full, and I did not answer him, but as I proceeded, I weighed the
various arguments that he had used and determined at least to listen to
his tale. I was partly urged by curiosity, and compassion confirmed my
resolution. I had hitherto supposed him to be the murderer of my
brother, and I eagerly sought a confirmation or denial of this opinion.
For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards
his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I
complained of his wickedness. These motives urged me to comply with
his demand. We crossed the ice, therefore, and ascended the opposite
rock. The air was cold, and the rain again began to descend; we
entered the hut, the fiend with an air of exultation, I with a heavy
heart and depressed spirits. But I consented to listen, and seating
myself by the fire which my odious companion had lighted, he thus began
his tale.




Chapter 11


“It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of
my being; all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct.
A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard,
and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I
learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. By
degrees, I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I
was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me and troubled
me, but hardly had I felt this when, by opening my eyes, as I now
suppose, the light poured in upon me again. I walked and, I believe,
descended, but I presently found a great alteration in my sensations.
Before, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my
touch or sight; but I now found that I could wander on at liberty, with
no obstacles which I could not either surmount or avoid. The light
became more and more oppressive to me, and the heat wearying me as I
walked, I sought a place where I could receive shade. This was the
forest near Ingolstadt; and here I lay by the side of a brook resting
from my fatigue, until I felt tormented by hunger and thirst. This
roused me from my nearly dormant state, and I ate some berries which I
found hanging on the trees or lying on the ground. I slaked my thirst
at the brook, and then lying down, was overcome by sleep.

“It was dark when I awoke; I felt cold also, and half frightened, as it
were, instinctively, finding myself so desolate. Before I had quitted
your apartment, on a sensation of cold, I had covered myself with some
clothes, but these were insufficient to secure me from the dews of
night. I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could
distinguish, nothing; but feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat
down and wept.

“Soon a gentle light stole over the heavens and gave me a sensation of
pleasure. I started up and beheld a radiant form rise from among the
trees. [The moon] I gazed with a kind of wonder. It moved slowly,
but it enlightened my path, and I again went out in search of berries.
I was still cold when under one of the trees I found a huge cloak, with
which I covered myself, and sat down upon the ground. No distinct
ideas occupied my mind; all was confused. I felt light, and hunger,
and thirst, and darkness; innumerable sounds rang in my ears, and on
all sides various scents saluted me; the only object that I could
distinguish was the bright moon, and I fixed my eyes on that with
pleasure.

“Several changes of day and night passed, and the orb of night had
greatly lessened, when I began to distinguish my sensations from each
other. I gradually saw plainly the clear stream that supplied me with
drink and the trees that shaded me with their foliage. I was delighted
when I first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my
ears, proceeded from the throats of the little winged animals who had
often intercepted the light from my eyes. I began also to observe,
with greater accuracy, the forms that surrounded me and to perceive the
boundaries of the radiant roof of light which canopied me. Sometimes I
tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds but was unable.
Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the
uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into
silence again.

“The moon had disappeared from the night, and again, with a lessened
form, showed itself, while I still remained in the forest. My
sensations had by this time become distinct, and my mind received every
day additional ideas. My eyes became accustomed to the light and to
perceive objects in their right forms; I distinguished the insect from
the herb, and by degrees, one herb from another. I found that the
sparrow uttered none but harsh notes, whilst those of the blackbird and
thrush were sweet and enticing.

“One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been
left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the
warmth I experienced from it. In my joy I thrust my hand into the live
embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain. How strange,
I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects! I
examined the materials of the fire, and to my joy found it to be
composed of wood. I quickly collected some branches, but they were wet
and would not burn. I was pained at this and sat still watching the
operation of the fire. The wet wood which I had placed near the heat
dried and itself became inflamed. I reflected on this, and by touching
the various branches, I discovered the cause and busied myself in
collecting a great quantity of wood, that I might dry it and have a
plentiful supply of fire. When night came on and brought sleep with
it, I was in the greatest fear lest my fire should be extinguished. I
covered it carefully with dry wood and leaves and placed wet branches
upon it; and then, spreading my cloak, I lay on the ground and sank
into sleep.

“It was morning when I awoke, and my first care was to visit the fire.
I uncovered it, and a gentle breeze quickly fanned it into a flame. I
observed this also and contrived a fan of branches, which roused the
embers when they were nearly extinguished. When night came again I
found, with pleasure, that the fire gave light as well as heat and that
the discovery of this element was useful to me in my food, for I found
some of the offals that the travellers had left had been roasted, and
tasted much more savoury than the berries I gathered from the trees. I
tried, therefore, to dress my food in the same manner, placing it on
the live embers. I found that the berries were spoiled by this
operation, and the nuts and roots much improved.

“Food, however, became scarce, and I often spent the whole day
searching in vain for a few acorns to assuage the pangs of hunger. When
I found this, I resolved to quit the place that I had hitherto
inhabited, to seek for one where the few wants I experienced would be
more easily satisfied. In this emigration I exceedingly lamented the
loss of the fire which I had obtained through accident and knew not how
to reproduce it. I gave several hours to the serious consideration of
this difficulty, but I was obliged to relinquish all attempt to supply
it, and wrapping myself up in my cloak, I struck across the wood
towards the setting sun. I passed three days in these rambles and at
length discovered the open country. A great fall of snow had taken
place the night before, and the fields were of one uniform white; the
appearance was disconsolate, and I found my feet chilled by the cold
damp substance that covered the ground.

“It was about seven in the morning, and I longed to obtain food and
shelter; at length I perceived a small hut, on a rising ground, which
had doubtless been built for the convenience of some shepherd. This
was a new sight to me, and I examined the structure with great
curiosity. Finding the door open, I entered. An old man sat in it,
near a fire, over which he was preparing his breakfast. He turned on
hearing a noise, and perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and quitting the
hut, ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form
hardly appeared capable. His appearance, different from any I had ever
before seen, and his flight somewhat surprised me. But I was enchanted
by the appearance of the hut; here the snow and rain could not
penetrate; the ground was dry; and it presented to me then as exquisite
and divine a retreat as Pandæmonium appeared to the dæmons of hell
after their sufferings in the lake of fire. I greedily devoured the
remnants of the shepherd’s breakfast, which consisted of bread, cheese,
milk, and wine; the latter, however, I did not like. Then, overcome by
fatigue, I lay down among some straw and fell asleep.

“It was noon when I awoke, and allured by the warmth of the sun, which
shone brightly on the white ground, I determined to recommence my
travels; and, depositing the remains of the peasant’s breakfast in a
wallet I found, I proceeded across the fields for several hours, until
at sunset I arrived at a village. How miraculous did this appear! The
huts, the neater cottages, and stately houses engaged my admiration by
turns. The vegetables in the gardens, the milk and cheese that I saw
placed at the windows of some of the cottages, allured my appetite. One
of the best of these I entered, but I had hardly placed my foot within
the door before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted.
The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until,
grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I
escaped to the open country and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel,
quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had
beheld in the village. This hovel however, joined a cottage of a neat
and pleasant appearance, but after my late dearly bought experience, I
dared not enter it. My place of refuge was constructed of wood, but so
low that I could with difficulty sit upright in it. No wood, however,
was placed on the earth, which formed the floor, but it was dry; and
although the wind entered it by innumerable chinks, I found it an
agreeable asylum from the snow and rain.

“Here, then, I retreated and lay down happy to have found a shelter,
however miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more
from the barbarity of man. As soon as morning dawned I crept from my
kennel, that I might view the adjacent cottage and discover if I could
remain in the habitation I had found. It was situated against the back
of the cottage and surrounded on the sides which were exposed by a pig
sty and a clear pool of water. One part was open, and by that I had
crept in; but now I covered every crevice by which I might be perceived
with stones and wood, yet in such a manner that I might move them on
occasion to pass out; all the light I enjoyed came through the sty, and
that was sufficient for me.

“Having thus arranged my dwelling and carpeted it with clean straw, I
retired, for I saw the figure of a man at a distance, and I remembered
too well my treatment the night before to trust myself in his power. I
had first, however, provided for my sustenance for that day by a loaf
of coarse bread, which I purloined, and a cup with which I could drink
more conveniently than from my hand of the pure water which flowed by
my retreat. The floor was a little raised, so that it was kept
perfectly dry, and by its vicinity to the chimney of the cottage it was
tolerably warm.

“Being thus provided, I resolved to reside in this hovel until
something should occur which might alter my determination. It was
indeed a paradise compared to the bleak forest, my former residence,
the rain-dropping branches, and dank earth. I ate my breakfast with
pleasure and was about to remove a plank to procure myself a little
water when I heard a step, and looking through a small chink, I beheld
a young creature, with a pail on her head, passing before my hovel. The
girl was young and of gentle demeanour, unlike what I have since found
cottagers and farmhouse servants to be. Yet she was meanly dressed, a
coarse blue petticoat and a linen jacket being her only garb; her fair
hair was plaited but not adorned: she looked patient yet sad. I lost
sight of her, and in about a quarter of an hour she returned bearing
the pail, which was now partly filled with milk. As she walked along,
seemingly incommoded by the burden, a young man met her, whose
countenance expressed a deeper despondence. Uttering a few sounds with
an air of melancholy, he took the pail from her head and bore it to the
cottage himself. She followed, and they disappeared. Presently I saw
the young man again, with some tools in his hand, cross the field
behind the cottage; and the girl was also busied, sometimes in the
house and sometimes in the yard.

“On examining my dwelling, I found that one of the windows of the
cottage had formerly occupied a part of it, but the panes had been
filled up with wood. In one of these was a small and almost
imperceptible chink through which the eye could just penetrate.
Through this crevice a small room was visible, whitewashed and clean
but very bare of furniture. In one corner, near a small fire, sat an
old man, leaning his head on his hands in a disconsolate attitude. The
young girl was occupied in arranging the cottage; but presently she
took something out of a drawer, which employed her hands, and she sat
down beside the old man, who, taking up an instrument, began to play
and to produce sounds sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the
nightingale. It was a lovely sight, even to me, poor wretch who had
never beheld aught beautiful before. The silver hair and benevolent
countenance of the aged cottager won my reverence, while the gentle
manners of the girl enticed my love. He played a sweet mournful air
which I perceived drew tears from the eyes of his amiable companion, of
which the old man took no notice, until she sobbed audibly; he then
pronounced a few sounds, and the fair creature, leaving her work, knelt
at his feet. He raised her and smiled with such kindness and affection
that I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature; they were
a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced,
either from hunger or cold, warmth or food; and I withdrew from the
window, unable to bear these emotions.

“Soon after this the young man returned, bearing on his shoulders a
load of wood. The girl met him at the door, helped to relieve him of
his burden, and taking some of the fuel into the cottage, placed it on
the fire; then she and the youth went apart into a nook of the cottage,
and he showed her a large loaf and a piece of cheese. She seemed
pleased and went into the garden for some roots and plants, which she
placed in water, and then upon the fire. She afterwards continued her
work, whilst the young man went into the garden and appeared busily
employed in digging and pulling up roots. After he had been employed
thus about an hour, the young woman joined him and they entered the
cottage together.

“The old man had, in the meantime, been pensive, but on the appearance
of his companions he assumed a more cheerful air, and they sat down to
eat. The meal was quickly dispatched. The young woman was again
occupied in arranging the cottage, the old man walked before the
cottage in the sun for a few minutes, leaning on the arm of the youth.
Nothing could exceed in beauty the contrast between these two excellent
creatures. One was old, with silver hairs and a countenance beaming
with benevolence and love; the younger was slight and graceful in his
figure, and his features were moulded with the finest symmetry, yet his
eyes and attitude expressed the utmost sadness and despondency. The
old man returned to the cottage, and the youth, with tools different
from those he had used in the morning, directed his steps across the
fields.

“Night quickly shut in, but to my extreme wonder, I found that the
cottagers had a means of prolonging light by the use of tapers, and was
delighted to find that the setting of the sun did not put an end to the
pleasure I experienced in watching my human neighbours. In the evening
the young girl and her companion were employed in various occupations
which I did not understand; and the old man again took up the
instrument which produced the divine sounds that had enchanted me in
the morning. So soon as he had finished, the youth began, not to play,
but to utter sounds that were monotonous, and neither resembling the
harmony of the old man’s instrument nor the songs of the birds; I since
found that he read aloud, but at that time I knew nothing of the
science of words or letters.

“The family, after having been thus occupied for a short time,
extinguished their lights and retired, as I conjectured, to rest.”




Chapter 12


“I lay on my straw, but I could not sleep. I thought of the
occurrences of the day. What chiefly struck me was the gentle manners
of these people, and I longed to join them, but dared not. I
remembered too well the treatment I had suffered the night before from
the barbarous villagers, and resolved, whatever course of conduct I
might hereafter think it right to pursue, that for the present I would
remain quietly in my hovel, watching and endeavouring to discover the
motives which influenced their actions.

“The cottagers arose the next morning before the sun. The young woman
arranged the cottage and prepared the food, and the youth departed
after the first meal.

“This day was passed in the same routine as that which preceded it.
The young man was constantly employed out of doors, and the girl in
various laborious occupations within. The old man, whom I soon
perceived to be blind, employed his leisure hours on his instrument or
in contemplation. Nothing could exceed the love and respect which the
younger cottagers exhibited towards their venerable companion. They
performed towards him every little office of affection and duty with
gentleness, and he rewarded them by his benevolent smiles.

“They were not entirely happy. The young man and his companion often
went apart and appeared to weep. I saw no cause for their unhappiness,
but I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were
miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being,
should be wretched. Yet why were these gentle beings unhappy? They
possessed a delightful house (for such it was in my eyes) and every
luxury; they had a fire to warm them when chill and delicious viands
when hungry; they were dressed in excellent clothes; and, still more,
they enjoyed one another’s company and speech, interchanging each day
looks of affection and kindness. What did their tears imply? Did they
really express pain? I was at first unable to solve these questions,
but perpetual attention and time explained to me many appearances which
were at first enigmatic.

“A considerable period elapsed before I discovered one of the causes of
the uneasiness of this amiable family: it was poverty, and they
suffered that evil in a very distressing degree. Their nourishment
consisted entirely of the vegetables of their garden and the milk of
one cow, which gave very little during the winter, when its masters
could scarcely procure food to support it. They often, I believe,
suffered the pangs of hunger very poignantly, especially the two
younger cottagers, for several times they placed food before the old
man when they reserved none for themselves.

“This trait of kindness moved me sensibly. I had been accustomed,
during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own
consumption, but when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on
the cottagers, I abstained and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and
roots which I gathered from a neighbouring wood.

“I discovered also another means through which I was enabled to assist
their labours. I found that the youth spent a great part of each day
in collecting wood for the family fire, and during the night I often
took his tools, the use of which I quickly discovered, and brought home
firing sufficient for the consumption of several days.

“I remember, the first time that I did this, the young woman, when she
opened the door in the morning, appeared greatly astonished on seeing a great
pile of wood on the outside. She uttered some words in a loud voice, and the
youth joined her, who also expressed surprise. I observed, with pleasure,
that he did not go to the forest that day, but spent it in repairing the
cottage and cultivating the garden.

“By degrees I made a discovery of still greater moment. I found that
these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and
feelings to one another by articulate sounds. I perceived that the words
they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the
minds and countenances of the hearers. This was indeed a godlike science,
and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it. But I was baffled in
every attempt I made for this purpose. Their pronunciation was quick, and
the words they uttered, not having any apparent connection with visible
objects, I was unable to discover any clue by which I could unravel the
mystery of their reference. By great application, however, and after having
remained during the space of several revolutions of the moon in my hovel, I
discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of
discourse; I learned and applied the words, _fire, milk, bread,_ and
_wood._ I learned also the names of the cottagers themselves. The youth
and his companion had each of them several names, but the old man had only
one, which was _father._ The girl was called _sister_ or
_Agatha,_ and the youth _Felix, brother,_ or _son_. I cannot
describe the delight I felt when I learned the ideas appropriated to each of
these sounds and was able to pronounce them. I distinguished several other
words without being able as yet to understand or apply them, such as _good,
dearest, unhappy._

“I spent the winter in this manner. The gentle manners and beauty of
the cottagers greatly endeared them to me; when they were unhappy, I
felt depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathised in their joys. I saw
few human beings besides them, and if any other happened to enter the
cottage, their harsh manners and rude gait only enhanced to me the
superior accomplishments of my friends. The old man, I could perceive,
often endeavoured to encourage his children, as sometimes I found that
he called them, to cast off their melancholy. He would talk in a
cheerful accent, with an expression of goodness that bestowed pleasure
even upon me. Agatha listened with respect, her eyes sometimes filled
with tears, which she endeavoured to wipe away unperceived; but I
generally found that her countenance and tone were more cheerful after
having listened to the exhortations of her father. It was not thus
with Felix. He was always the saddest of the group, and even to my
unpractised senses, he appeared to have suffered more deeply than his
friends. But if his countenance was more sorrowful, his voice was more
cheerful than that of his sister, especially when he addressed the old
man.

“I could mention innumerable instances which, although slight, marked
the dispositions of these amiable cottagers. In the midst of poverty
and want, Felix carried with pleasure to his sister the first little
white flower that peeped out from beneath the snowy ground. Early in
the morning, before she had risen, he cleared away the snow that
obstructed her path to the milk-house, drew water from the well, and
brought the wood from the outhouse, where, to his perpetual
astonishment, he found his store always replenished by an invisible
hand. In the day, I believe, he worked sometimes for a neighbouring
farmer, because he often went forth and did not return until dinner,
yet brought no wood with him. At other times he worked in the garden,
but as there was little to do in the frosty season, he read to the old
man and Agatha.

“This reading had puzzled me extremely at first, but by degrees I
discovered that he uttered many of the same sounds when he read as when
he talked. I conjectured, therefore, that he found on the paper signs
for speech which he understood, and I ardently longed to comprehend
these also; but how was that possible when I did not even understand
the sounds for which they stood as signs? I improved, however,
sensibly in this science, but not sufficiently to follow up any kind of
conversation, although I applied my whole mind to the endeavour, for I
easily perceived that, although I eagerly longed to discover myself to
the cottagers, I ought not to make the attempt until I had first become
master of their language, which knowledge might enable me to make them
overlook the deformity of my figure, for with this also the contrast
perpetually presented to my eyes had made me acquainted.

“I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers—their grace, beauty,
and delicate complexions; but how was I terrified when I viewed myself
in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that
it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became
fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was
filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification.
Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable
deformity.

“As the sun became warmer and the light of day longer, the snow
vanished, and I beheld the bare trees and the black earth. From this
time Felix was more employed, and the heart-moving indications of
impending famine disappeared. Their food, as I afterwards found, was
coarse, but it was wholesome; and they procured a sufficiency of it.
Several new kinds of plants sprang up in the garden, which they
dressed; and these signs of comfort increased daily as the season
advanced.

“The old man, leaning on his son, walked each day at noon, when it did
not rain, as I found it was called when the heavens poured forth its
waters. This frequently took place, but a high wind quickly dried the
earth, and the season became far more pleasant than it had been.

“My mode of life in my hovel was uniform. During the morning I
attended the motions of the cottagers, and when they were dispersed in
various occupations, I slept; the remainder of the day was spent in
observing my friends. When they had retired to rest, if there was any
moon or the night was star-light, I went into the woods and collected
my own food and fuel for the cottage. When I returned, as often as it
was necessary, I cleared their path from the snow and performed those
offices that I had seen done by Felix. I afterwards found that these
labours, performed by an invisible hand, greatly astonished them; and
once or twice I heard them, on these occasions, utter the words _good
spirit, wonderful_; but I did not then understand the signification
of these terms.

“My thoughts now became more active, and I longed to discover the
motives and feelings of these lovely creatures; I was inquisitive to
know why Felix appeared so miserable and Agatha so sad. I thought
(foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore happiness to
these deserving people. When I slept or was absent, the forms of the
venerable blind father, the gentle Agatha, and the excellent Felix
flitted before me. I looked upon them as superior beings who would be
the arbiters of my future destiny. I formed in my imagination a
thousand pictures of presenting myself to them, and their reception of
me. I imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle
demeanour and conciliating words, I should first win their favour and
afterwards their love.

“These thoughts exhilarated me and led me to apply with fresh ardour to
the acquiring the art of language. My organs were indeed harsh, but
supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their
tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease.
It was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass whose
intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved
better treatment than blows and execration.

“The pleasant showers and genial warmth of spring greatly altered the
aspect of the earth. Men who before this change seemed to have been
hid in caves dispersed themselves and were employed in various arts of
cultivation. The birds sang in more cheerful notes, and the leaves
began to bud forth on the trees. Happy, happy earth! Fit habitation
for gods, which, so short a time before, was bleak, damp, and
unwholesome. My spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of
nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil,
and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy.”




Chapter 13


“I now hasten to the more moving part of my story. I shall relate
events that impressed me with feelings which, from what I had been,
have made me what I am.

“Spring advanced rapidly; the weather became fine and the skies
cloudless. It surprised me that what before was desert and gloomy
should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure. My
senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight and
a thousand sights of beauty.

“It was on one of these days, when my cottagers periodically rested
from labour—the old man played on his guitar, and the children
listened to him—that I observed the countenance of Felix was
melancholy beyond expression; he sighed frequently, and once his father
paused in his music, and I conjectured by his manner that he inquired
the cause of his son’s sorrow. Felix replied in a cheerful accent, and
the old man was recommencing his music when someone tapped at the door.

“It was a lady on horseback, accompanied by a country-man as a guide.
The lady was dressed in a dark suit and covered with a thick black
veil. Agatha asked a question, to which the stranger only replied by
pronouncing, in a sweet accent, the name of Felix. Her voice was
musical but unlike that of either of my friends. On hearing this word,
Felix came up hastily to the lady, who, when she saw him, threw up her
veil, and I beheld a countenance of angelic beauty and expression. Her
hair of a shining raven black, and curiously braided; her eyes were
dark, but gentle, although animated; her features of a regular
proportion, and her complexion wondrously fair, each cheek tinged with
a lovely pink.

“Felix seemed ravished with delight when he saw her, every trait of
sorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly expressed a degree of
ecstatic joy, of which I could hardly have believed it capable; his
eyes sparkled, as his cheek flushed with pleasure; and at that moment I
thought him as beautiful as the stranger. She appeared affected by
different feelings; wiping a few tears from her lovely eyes, she held
out her hand to Felix, who kissed it rapturously and called her, as
well as I could distinguish, his sweet Arabian. She did not appear to
understand him, but smiled. He assisted her to dismount, and
dismissing her guide, conducted her into the cottage. Some
conversation took place between him and his father, and the young
stranger knelt at the old man’s feet and would have kissed his hand,
but he raised her and embraced her affectionately.

“I soon perceived that although the stranger uttered articulate sounds
and appeared to have a language of her own, she was neither understood
by nor herself understood the cottagers. They made many signs which I
did not comprehend, but I saw that her presence diffused gladness
through the cottage, dispelling their sorrow as the sun dissipates the
morning mists. Felix seemed peculiarly happy and with smiles of
delight welcomed his Arabian. Agatha, the ever-gentle Agatha, kissed
the hands of the lovely stranger, and pointing to her brother, made
signs which appeared to me to mean that he had been sorrowful until she
came. Some hours passed thus, while they, by their countenances,
expressed joy, the cause of which I did not comprehend. Presently I
found, by the frequent recurrence of some sound which the stranger
repeated after them, that she was endeavouring to learn their language;
and the idea instantly occurred to me that I should make use of the
same instructions to the same end. The stranger learned about twenty
words at the first lesson; most of them, indeed, were those which I had
before understood, but I profited by the others.

“As night came on, Agatha and the Arabian retired early. When they
separated Felix kissed the hand of the stranger and said, ‘Good night
sweet Safie.’ He sat up much longer, conversing with his father, and
by the frequent repetition of her name I conjectured that their lovely
guest was the subject of their conversation. I ardently desired to
understand them, and bent every faculty towards that purpose, but found
it utterly impossible.

“The next morning Felix went out to his work, and after the usual
occupations of Agatha were finished, the Arabian sat at the feet of the
old man, and taking his guitar, played some airs so entrancingly
beautiful that they at once drew tears of sorrow and delight from my
eyes. She sang, and her voice flowed in a rich cadence, swelling or
dying away like a nightingale of the woods.

“When she had finished, she gave the guitar to Agatha, who at first
declined it. She played a simple air, and her voice accompanied it in
sweet accents, but unlike the wondrous strain of the stranger. The old
man appeared enraptured and said some words which Agatha endeavoured to
explain to Safie, and by which he appeared to wish to express that she
bestowed on him the greatest delight by her music.

“The days now passed as peaceably as before, with the sole alteration
that joy had taken place of sadness in the countenances of my friends.
Safie was always gay and happy; she and I improved rapidly in the
knowledge of language, so that in two months I began to comprehend most
of the words uttered by my protectors.

“In the meanwhile also the black ground was covered with herbage, and
the green banks interspersed with innumerable flowers, sweet to the
scent and the eyes, stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods;
the sun became warmer, the nights clear and balmy; and my nocturnal
rambles were an extreme pleasure to me, although they were considerably
shortened by the late setting and early rising of the sun, for I never
ventured abroad during daylight, fearful of meeting with the same
treatment I had formerly endured in the first village which I entered.

“My days were spent in close attention, that I might more speedily
master the language; and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than
the Arabian, who understood very little and conversed in broken
accents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that
was spoken.

“While I improved in speech, I also learned the science of letters as
it was taught to the stranger, and this opened before me a wide field
for wonder and delight.

“The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney’s _Ruins
of Empires_. I should not have understood the purport of this book had not
Felix, in reading it, given very minute explanations. He had chosen this
work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of the
Eastern authors. Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of history
and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave
me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different
nations of the earth. I heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous
genius and mental activity of the Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue
of the early Romans—of their subsequent degenerating—of the
decline of that mighty empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard
of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the
hapless fate of its original inhabitants.

“These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was
man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so
vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil
principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and
godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour
that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on
record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more
abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I
could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or
even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of
vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and
loathing.

“Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me.
While I listened to the instructions which Felix bestowed upon the
Arabian, the strange system of human society was explained to me. I
heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid
poverty, of rank, descent, and noble blood.

“The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the
possessions most esteemed by your fellow creatures were high and
unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with
only one of these advantages, but without either he was considered,
except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to
waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few! And what was I? Of
my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I
possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides,
endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even
of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could
subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with
less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked
around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot
upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?

“I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted
upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with
knowledge. Oh, that I had for ever remained in my native wood, nor
known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!

“Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it
has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to
shake off all thought and feeling, but I learned that there was but one
means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death—a state
which I feared yet did not understand. I admired virtue and good
feelings and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my
cottagers, but I was shut out from intercourse with them, except
through means which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and
unknown, and which rather increased than satisfied the desire I had of
becoming one among my fellows. The gentle words of Agatha and the
animated smiles of the charming Arabian were not for me. The mild
exhortations of the old man and the lively conversation of the loved
Felix were not for me. Miserable, unhappy wretch!

“Other lessons were impressed upon me even more deeply. I heard of the
difference of sexes, and the birth and growth of children, how the
father doted on the smiles of the infant, and the lively sallies of the
older child, how all the life and cares of the mother were wrapped up
in the precious charge, how the mind of youth expanded and gained
knowledge, of brother, sister, and all the various relationships which
bind one human being to another in mutual bonds.

“But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my
infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if
they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I
distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I
then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being
resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The
question again recurred, to be answered only with groans.

“I will soon explain to what these feelings tended, but allow me now to
return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various
feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated
in additional love and reverence for my protectors (for so I loved, in
an innocent, half-painful self-deceit, to call them).”




Chapter 14


“Some time elapsed before I learned the history of my friends. It was
one which could not fail to impress itself deeply on my mind, unfolding
as it did a number of circumstances, each interesting and wonderful to
one so utterly inexperienced as I was.

“The name of the old man was De Lacey. He was descended from a good
family in France, where he had lived for many years in affluence,
respected by his superiors and beloved by his equals. His son was bred
in the service of his country, and Agatha had ranked with ladies of the
highest distinction. A few months before my arrival they had lived in
a large and luxurious city called Paris, surrounded by friends and
possessed of every enjoyment which virtue, refinement of intellect, or
taste, accompanied by a moderate fortune, could afford.

“The father of Safie had been the cause of their ruin. He was a
Turkish merchant and had inhabited Paris for many years, when, for some
reason which I could not learn, he became obnoxious to the government.
He was seized and cast into prison the very day that Safie arrived from
Constantinople to join him. He was tried and condemned to death. The
injustice of his sentence was very flagrant; all Paris was indignant;
and it was judged that his religion and wealth rather than the crime
alleged against him had been the cause of his condemnation.

“Felix had accidentally been present at the trial; his horror and
indignation were uncontrollable when he heard the decision of the
court. He made, at that moment, a solemn vow to deliver him and then
looked around for the means. After many fruitless attempts to gain
admittance to the prison, he found a strongly grated window in an
unguarded part of the building, which lighted the dungeon of the
unfortunate Muhammadan, who, loaded with chains, waited in despair the
execution of the barbarous sentence. Felix visited the grate at night
and made known to the prisoner his intentions in his favour. The Turk,
amazed and delighted, endeavoured to kindle the zeal of his deliverer
by promises of reward and wealth. Felix rejected his offers with
contempt, yet when he saw the lovely Safie, who was allowed to visit
her father and who by her gestures expressed her lively gratitude, the
youth could not help owning to his own mind that the captive possessed
a treasure which would fully reward his toil and hazard.

“The Turk quickly perceived the impression that his daughter had made
on the heart of Felix and endeavoured to secure him more entirely in
his interests by the promise of her hand in marriage so soon as he
should be conveyed to a place of safety. Felix was too delicate to
accept this offer, yet he looked forward to the probability of the
event as to the consummation of his happiness.

“During the ensuing days, while the preparations were going forward for
the escape of the merchant, the zeal of Felix was warmed by several
letters that he received from this lovely girl, who found means to
express her thoughts in the language of her lover by the aid of an old
man, a servant of her father who understood French. She thanked him in
the most ardent terms for his intended services towards her parent, and
at the same time she gently deplored her own fate.

“I have copies of these letters, for I found means, during my residence
in the hovel, to procure the implements of writing; and the letters
were often in the hands of Felix or Agatha. Before I depart I will
give them to you; they will prove the truth of my tale; but at present,
as the sun is already far declined, I shall only have time to repeat
the substance of them to you.

“Safie related that her mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a
slave by the Turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of
the father of Safie, who married her. The young girl spoke in high and
enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom, spurned the
bondage to which she was now reduced. She instructed her daughter in
the tenets of her religion and taught her to aspire to higher powers of
intellect and an independence of spirit forbidden to the female
followers of Muhammad. This lady died, but her lessons were indelibly
impressed on the mind of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again
returning to Asia and being immured within the walls of a harem,
allowed only to occupy herself with infantile amusements, ill-suited to
the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble
emulation for virtue. The prospect of marrying a Christian and
remaining in a country where women were allowed to take a rank in
society was enchanting to her.

“The day for the execution of the Turk was fixed, but on the night
previous to it he quitted his prison and before morning was distant
many leagues from Paris. Felix had procured passports in the name of
his father, sister, and himself. He had previously communicated his
plan to the former, who aided the deceit by quitting his house, under
the pretence of a journey and concealed himself, with his daughter, in
an obscure part of Paris.

“Felix conducted the fugitives through France to Lyons and across Mont
Cenis to Leghorn, where the merchant had decided to wait a favourable
opportunity of passing into some part of the Turkish dominions.

“Safie resolved to remain with her father until the moment of his
departure, before which time the Turk renewed his promise that she
should be united to his deliverer; and Felix remained with them in
expectation of that event; and in the meantime he enjoyed the society
of the Arabian, who exhibited towards him the simplest and tenderest
affection. They conversed with one another through the means of an
interpreter, and sometimes with the interpretation of looks; and Safie
sang to him the divine airs of her native country.

“The Turk allowed this intimacy to take place and encouraged the hopes
of the youthful lovers, while in his heart he had formed far other
plans. He loathed the idea that his daughter should be united to a
Christian, but he feared the resentment of Felix if he should appear
lukewarm, for he knew that he was still in the power of his deliverer
if he should choose to betray him to the Italian state which they
inhabited. He revolved a thousand plans by which he should be enabled
to prolong the deceit until it might be no longer necessary, and
secretly to take his daughter with him when he departed. His plans
were facilitated by the news which arrived from Paris.

“The government of France were greatly enraged at the escape of their
victim and spared no pains to detect and punish his deliverer. The
plot of Felix was quickly discovered, and De Lacey and Agatha were
thrown into prison. The news reached Felix and roused him from his
dream of pleasure. His blind and aged father and his gentle sister lay
in a noisome dungeon while he enjoyed the free air and the society of
her whom he loved. This idea was torture to him. He quickly arranged
with the Turk that if the latter should find a favourable opportunity
for escape before Felix could return to Italy, Safie should remain as a
boarder at a convent at Leghorn; and then, quitting the lovely Arabian,
he hastened to Paris and delivered himself up to the vengeance of the
law, hoping to free De Lacey and Agatha by this proceeding.

“He did not succeed. They remained confined for five months before the
trial took place, the result of which deprived them of their fortune
and condemned them to a perpetual exile from their native country.

“They found a miserable asylum in the cottage in Germany, where I
discovered them. Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for
whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on
discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and ruin,
became a traitor to good feeling and honour and had quitted Italy with
his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him,
as he said, in some plan of future maintenance.

“Such were the events that preyed on the heart of Felix and rendered
him, when I first saw him, the most miserable of his family. He could
have endured poverty, and while this distress had been the meed of his
virtue, he gloried in it; but the ingratitude of the Turk and the loss
of his beloved Safie were misfortunes more bitter and irreparable. The
arrival of the Arabian now infused new life into his soul.

“When the news reached Leghorn that Felix was deprived of his wealth
and rank, the merchant commanded his daughter to think no more of her
lover, but to prepare to return to her native country. The generous
nature of Safie was outraged by this command; she attempted to
expostulate with her father, but he left her angrily, reiterating his
tyrannical mandate.

“A few days after, the Turk entered his daughter’s apartment and told
her hastily that he had reason to believe that his residence at Leghorn
had been divulged and that he should speedily be delivered up to the
French government; he had consequently hired a vessel to convey him to
Constantinople, for which city he should sail in a few hours. He
intended to leave his daughter under the care of a confidential
servant, to follow at her leisure with the greater part of his
property, which had not yet arrived at Leghorn.

“When alone, Safie resolved in her own mind the plan of conduct that it
would become her to pursue in this emergency. A residence in Turkey
was abhorrent to her; her religion and her feelings were alike averse
to it. By some papers of her father which fell into her hands she
heard of the exile of her lover and learnt the name of the spot where
he then resided. She hesitated some time, but at length she formed her
determination. Taking with her some jewels that belonged to her and a
sum of money, she quitted Italy with an attendant, a native of Leghorn,
but who understood the common language of Turkey, and departed for
Germany.

“She arrived in safety at a town about twenty leagues from the cottage
of De Lacey, when her attendant fell dangerously ill. Safie nursed her
with the most devoted affection, but the poor girl died, and the
Arabian was left alone, unacquainted with the language of the country
and utterly ignorant of the customs of the world. She fell, however,
into good hands. The Italian had mentioned the name of the spot for
which they were bound, and after her death the woman of the house in
which they had lived took care that Safie should arrive in safety at
the cottage of her lover.”




Chapter 15


“Such was the history of my beloved cottagers. It impressed me deeply.
I learned, from the views of social life which it developed, to admire
their virtues and to deprecate the vices of mankind.

“As yet I looked upon crime as a distant evil, benevolence and
generosity were ever present before me, inciting within me a desire to
become an actor in the busy scene where so many admirable qualities
were called forth and displayed. But in giving an account of the
progress of my intellect, I must not omit a circumstance which occurred
in the beginning of the month of August of the same year.

“One night during my accustomed visit to the neighbouring wood where I
collected my own food and brought home firing for my protectors, I found on
the ground a leathern portmanteau containing several articles of dress and
some books. I eagerly seized the prize and returned with it to my hovel.
Fortunately the books were written in the language, the elements of which I
had acquired at the cottage; they consisted of _Paradise Lost_, a volume
of _Plutarch’s Lives_, and the _Sorrows of Werter_. The
possession of these treasures gave me extreme delight; I now continually
studied and exercised my mind upon these histories, whilst my friends were
employed in their ordinary occupations.

“I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced
in me an infinity of new images and feelings, that sometimes raised me
to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection. In
the _Sorrows of Werter_, besides the interest of its simple and affecting
story, so many opinions are canvassed and so many lights thrown upon
what had hitherto been to me obscure subjects that I found in it a
never-ending source of speculation and astonishment. The gentle and
domestic manners it described, combined with lofty sentiments and
feelings, which had for their object something out of self, accorded
well with my experience among my protectors and with the wants which
were for ever alive in my own bosom. But I thought Werter himself a
more divine being than I had ever beheld or imagined; his character
contained no pretension, but it sank deep. The disquisitions upon
death and suicide were calculated to fill me with wonder. I did not
pretend to enter into the merits of the case, yet I inclined towards
the opinions of the hero, whose extinction I wept, without precisely
understanding it.

“As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and
condition. I found myself similar yet at the same time strangely
unlike to the beings concerning whom I read and to whose conversation I
was a listener. I sympathised with and partly understood them, but I
was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none and related to none.
‘The path of my departure was free,’ and there was none to lament my
annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did
this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my
destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to
solve them.

“The volume of _Plutarch’s Lives_ which I possessed contained the
histories of the first founders of the ancient republics. This book
had a far different effect upon me from the _Sorrows of Werter_. I
learned from Werter’s imaginations despondency and gloom, but Plutarch
taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my
own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many
things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very
confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers,
and boundless seas. But I was perfectly unacquainted with towns and
large assemblages of men. The cottage of my protectors had been the
only school in which I had studied human nature, but this book
developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned
in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the
greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as
far as I understood the signification of those terms, relative as they
were, as I applied them, to pleasure and pain alone. Induced by these
feelings, I was of course led to admire peaceable lawgivers, Numa,
Solon, and Lycurgus, in preference to Romulus and Theseus. The
patriarchal lives of my protectors caused these impressions to take a
firm hold on my mind; perhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had
been made by a young soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should
have been imbued with different sensations.

“But _Paradise Lost_ excited different and far deeper emotions. I read
it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as
a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the
picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of
exciting. I often referred the several situations, as their similarity
struck me, to my own. Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to
any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine
in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a
perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of
his Creator; he was allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from
beings of a superior nature, but I was wretched, helpless, and alone.
Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for
often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter
gall of envy rose within me.

“Another circumstance strengthened and confirmed these feelings. Soon
after my arrival in the hovel I discovered some papers in the pocket of
the dress which I had taken from your laboratory. At first I had
neglected them, but now that I was able to decipher the characters in
which they were written, I began to study them with diligence. It was
your journal of the four months that preceded my creation. You
minutely described in these papers every step you took in the progress
of your work; this history was mingled with accounts of domestic
occurrences. You doubtless recollect these papers. Here they are.
Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed
origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances
which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious
and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own
horrors and rendered mine indelible. I sickened as I read. ‘Hateful
day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ‘Accursed creator!
Why did you form a monster so hideous that even _you_ turned from me in
disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own
image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the
very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire
and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.’

“These were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude;
but when I contemplated the virtues of the cottagers, their amiable and
benevolent dispositions, I persuaded myself that when they should
become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues they would
compassionate me and overlook my personal deformity. Could they turn
from their door one, however monstrous, who solicited their compassion
and friendship? I resolved, at least, not to despair, but in every way
to fit myself for an interview with them which would decide my fate. I
postponed this attempt for some months longer, for the importance
attached to its success inspired me with a dread lest I should fail.
Besides, I found that my understanding improved so much with every
day’s experience that I was unwilling to commence this undertaking
until a few more months should have added to my sagacity.

“Several changes, in the meantime, took place in the cottage. The
presence of Safie diffused happiness among its inhabitants, and I also
found that a greater degree of plenty reigned there. Felix and Agatha
spent more time in amusement and conversation, and were assisted in
their labours by servants. They did not appear rich, but they were
contented and happy; their feelings were serene and peaceful, while
mine became every day more tumultuous. Increase of knowledge only
discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was. I
cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when I beheld my person
reflected in water or my shadow in the moonshine, even as that frail
image and that inconstant shade.

“I endeavoured to crush these fears and to fortify myself for the trial
which in a few months I resolved to undergo; and sometimes I allowed my
thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and
dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathising with my
feelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic countenances breathed
smiles of consolation. But it was all a dream; no Eve soothed my
sorrows nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam’s
supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me,
and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him.

“Autumn passed thus. I saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay
and fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it
had worn when I first beheld the woods and the lovely moon. Yet I did
not heed the bleakness of the weather; I was better fitted by my
conformation for the endurance of cold than heat. But my chief
delights were the sight of the flowers, the birds, and all the gay
apparel of summer; when those deserted me, I turned with more attention
towards the cottagers. Their happiness was not decreased by the
absence of summer. They loved and sympathised with one another; and
their joys, depending on each other, were not interrupted by the
casualties that took place around them. The more I saw of them, the
greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my
heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures; to see
their sweet looks directed towards me with affection was the utmost
limit of my ambition. I dared not think that they would turn them from
me with disdain and horror. The poor that stopped at their door were
never driven away. I asked, it is true, for greater treasures than a
little food or rest: I required kindness and sympathy; but I did not
believe myself utterly unworthy of it.

“The winter advanced, and an entire revolution of the seasons had taken
place since I awoke into life. My attention at this time was solely
directed towards my plan of introducing myself into the cottage of my
protectors. I revolved many projects, but that on which I finally
fixed was to enter the dwelling when the blind old man should be alone.
I had sagacity enough to discover that the unnatural hideousness of my
person was the chief object of horror with those who had formerly
beheld me. My voice, although harsh, had nothing terrible in it; I
thought, therefore, that if in the absence of his children I could gain
the good will and mediation of the old De Lacey, I might by his means
be tolerated by my younger protectors.

“One day, when the sun shone on the red leaves that strewed the ground
and diffused cheerfulness, although it denied warmth, Safie, Agatha,
and Felix departed on a long country walk, and the old man, at his own
desire, was left alone in the cottage. When his children had departed,
he took up his guitar and played several mournful but sweet airs, more
sweet and mournful than I had ever heard him play before. At first his
countenance was illuminated with pleasure, but as he continued,
thoughtfulness and sadness succeeded; at length, laying aside the
instrument, he sat absorbed in reflection.

“My heart beat quick; this was the hour and moment of trial, which
would decide my hopes or realise my fears. The servants were gone to a
neighbouring fair. All was silent in and around the cottage; it was an
excellent opportunity; yet, when I proceeded to execute my plan, my
limbs failed me and I sank to the ground. Again I rose, and exerting
all the firmness of which I was master, removed the planks which I had
placed before my hovel to conceal my retreat. The fresh air revived
me, and with renewed determination I approached the door of their
cottage.

“I knocked. ‘Who is there?’ said the old man. ‘Come in.’

“I entered. ‘Pardon this intrusion,’ said I; ‘I am
a traveller in want of a little rest; you would greatly oblige me if you
would allow me to remain a few minutes before the fire.’

“‘Enter,’ said De Lacey, ‘and I will try in what
manner I can to relieve your wants; but, unfortunately, my children are
from home, and as I am blind, I am afraid I shall find it difficult to
procure food for you.’

“‘Do not trouble yourself, my kind host; I have food; it is
warmth and rest only that I need.’

“I sat down, and a silence ensued. I knew that every minute was
precious to me, yet I remained irresolute in what manner to commence
the interview, when the old man addressed me.

‘By your language, stranger, I suppose you are my countryman; are you
French?’

“‘No; but I was educated by a French family and understand that
language only. I am now going to claim the protection of some friends,
whom I sincerely love, and of whose favour I have some hopes.’

“‘Are they Germans?’

“‘No, they are French. But let us change the subject. I am an
unfortunate and deserted creature, I look around and I have no relation
or friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never
seen me and know little of me. I am full of fears, for if I fail
there, I am an outcast in the world for ever.’

“‘Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but
the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are
full of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes;
and if these friends are good and amiable, do not despair.’

“‘They are kind—they are the most excellent creatures in the world;
but, unfortunately, they are prejudiced against me. I have good
dispositions; my life has been hitherto harmless and in some degree
beneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they
ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable
monster.’

“‘That is indeed unfortunate; but if you are really blameless, cannot
you undeceive them?’

“‘I am about to undertake that task; and it is on that account that I
feel so many overwhelming terrors. I tenderly love these friends; I
have, unknown to them, been for many months in the habits of daily
kindness towards them; but they believe that I wish to injure them, and
it is that prejudice which I wish to overcome.’

“‘Where do these friends reside?’

“‘Near this spot.’

“The old man paused and then continued, ‘If you will unreservedly
confide to me the particulars of your tale, I perhaps may be of use in
undeceiving them. I am blind and cannot judge of your countenance, but
there is something in your words which persuades me that you are
sincere. I am poor and an exile, but it will afford me true pleasure
to be in any way serviceable to a human creature.’

“‘Excellent man! I thank you and accept your generous offer. You
raise me from the dust by this kindness; and I trust that, by your aid,
I shall not be driven from the society and sympathy of your fellow
creatures.’

“‘Heaven forbid! Even if you were really criminal, for that can only
drive you to desperation, and not instigate you to virtue. I also am
unfortunate; I and my family have been condemned, although innocent;
judge, therefore, if I do not feel for your misfortunes.’

“‘How can I thank you, my best and only benefactor? From your lips
first have I heard the voice of kindness directed towards me; I shall
be for ever grateful; and your present humanity assures me of success
with those friends whom I am on the point of meeting.’

“‘May I know the names and residence of those friends?’

“I paused. This, I thought, was the moment of decision, which was to
rob me of or bestow happiness on me for ever. I struggled vainly for
firmness sufficient to answer him, but the effort destroyed all my
remaining strength; I sank on the chair and sobbed aloud. At that
moment I heard the steps of my younger protectors. I had not a moment
to lose, but seizing the hand of the old man, I cried, ‘Now is the
time! Save and protect me! You and your family are the friends whom I
seek. Do not you desert me in the hour of trial!’

“‘Great God!’ exclaimed the old man. ‘Who are you?’

“At that instant the cottage door was opened, and Felix, Safie, and
Agatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on
beholding me? Agatha fainted, and Safie, unable to attend to her
friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with
supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung, in
a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently
with a stick. I could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends
the antelope. But my heart sank within me as with bitter sickness, and
I refrained. I saw him on the point of repeating his blow, when,
overcome by pain and anguish, I quitted the cottage, and in the general
tumult escaped unperceived to my hovel.”




Chapter 16


“Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I
not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly
bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my
feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have
destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with
their shrieks and misery.

“When night came I quitted my retreat and wandered in the wood; and
now, no longer restrained by the fear of discovery, I gave vent to my
anguish in fearful howlings. I was like a wild beast that had broken
the toils, destroying the objects that obstructed me and ranging
through the wood with a stag-like swiftness. Oh! What a miserable
night I passed! The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees
waved their branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird
burst forth amidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest
or in enjoyment; I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me, and
finding myself unsympathised with, wished to tear up the trees, spread
havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed
the ruin.

“But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; I became
fatigued with excess of bodily exertion and sank on the damp grass in
the sick impotence of despair. There was none among the myriads of men
that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness
towards my enemies? No; from that moment I declared everlasting war
against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me
and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.

“The sun rose; I heard the voices of men and knew that it was
impossible to return to my retreat during that day. Accordingly I hid
myself in some thick underwood, determining to devote the ensuing hours
to reflection on my situation.

“The pleasant sunshine and the pure air of day restored me to some
degree of tranquillity; and when I considered what had passed at the
cottage, I could not help believing that I had been too hasty in my
conclusions. I had certainly acted imprudently. It was apparent that
my conversation had interested the father in my behalf, and I was a
fool in having exposed my person to the horror of his children. I
ought to have familiarised the old De Lacey to me, and by degrees to
have discovered myself to the rest of his family, when they should have
been prepared for my approach. But I did not believe my errors to be
irretrievable, and after much consideration I resolved to return to the
cottage, seek the old man, and by my representations win him to my
party.

“These thoughts calmed me, and in the afternoon I sank into a profound
sleep; but the fever of my blood did not allow me to be visited by
peaceful dreams. The horrible scene of the preceding day was for ever
acting before my eyes; the females were flying and the enraged Felix
tearing me from his father’s feet. I awoke exhausted, and finding that
it was already night, I crept forth from my hiding-place, and went in
search of food.

“When my hunger was appeased, I directed my steps towards the
well-known path that conducted to the cottage. All there was at peace.
I crept into my hovel and remained in silent expectation of the
accustomed hour when the family arose. That hour passed, the sun
mounted high in the heavens, but the cottagers did not appear. I
trembled violently, apprehending some dreadful misfortune. The inside
of the cottage was dark, and I heard no motion; I cannot describe the
agony of this suspense.

“Presently two countrymen passed by, but pausing near the cottage, they
entered into conversation, using violent gesticulations; but I did not
understand what they said, as they spoke the language of the country,
which differed from that of my protectors. Soon after, however, Felix
approached with another man; I was surprised, as I knew that he had not
quitted the cottage that morning, and waited anxiously to discover from
his discourse the meaning of these unusual appearances.

“‘Do you consider,’ said his companion to him,
‘that you will be obliged to pay three months’ rent and to lose
the produce of your garden? I do not wish to take any unfair advantage, and
I beg therefore that you will take some days to consider of your
determination.’

“‘It is utterly useless,’ replied Felix; ‘we can
never again inhabit your cottage. The life of my father is in the greatest
danger, owing to the dreadful circumstance that I have related. My wife and
my sister will never recover from their horror. I entreat you not to reason
with me any more. Take possession of your tenement and let me fly from this
place.’

“Felix trembled violently as he said this. He and his companion
entered the cottage, in which they remained for a few minutes, and then
departed. I never saw any of the family of De Lacey more.

“I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of
utter and stupid despair. My protectors had departed and had broken
the only link that held me to the world. For the first time the
feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to
control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I
bent my mind towards injury and death. When I thought of my friends,
of the mild voice of De Lacey, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the
exquisite beauty of the Arabian, these thoughts vanished and a gush of
tears somewhat soothed me. But again when I reflected that they had
spurned and deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger, and unable to
injure anything human, I turned my fury towards inanimate objects. As
night advanced, I placed a variety of combustibles around the cottage,
and after having destroyed every vestige of cultivation in the garden,
I waited with forced impatience until the moon had sunk to commence my
operations.

“As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods and quickly
dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens; the blast tore
along like a mighty avalanche and produced a kind of insanity in my
spirits that burst all bounds of reason and reflection. I lighted the
dry branch of a tree and danced with fury around the devoted cottage,
my eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon
nearly touched. A part of its orb was at length hid, and I waved my
brand; it sank, and with a loud scream I fired the straw, and heath,
and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the
cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it and
licked it with their forked and destroying tongues.

“As soon as I was convinced that no assistance could save any part of
the habitation, I quitted the scene and sought for refuge in the woods.

“And now, with the world before me, whither should I bend my steps? I
resolved to fly far from the scene of my misfortunes; but to me, hated
and despised, every country must be equally horrible. At length the
thought of you crossed my mind. I learned from your papers that you
were my father, my creator; and to whom could I apply with more fitness
than to him who had given me life? Among the lessons that Felix had
bestowed upon Safie, geography had not been omitted; I had learned from
these the relative situations of the different countries of the earth.
You had mentioned Geneva as the name of your native town, and towards
this place I resolved to proceed.

“But how was I to direct myself? I knew that I must travel in a
southwesterly direction to reach my destination, but the sun was my
only guide. I did not know the names of the towns that I was to pass
through, nor could I ask information from a single human being; but I
did not despair. From you only could I hope for succour, although
towards you I felt no sentiment but that of hatred. Unfeeling,
heartless creator! You had endowed me with perceptions and passions
and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind.
But on you only had I any claim for pity and redress, and from you I
determined to seek that justice which I vainly attempted to gain from
any other being that wore the human form.

“My travels were long and the sufferings I endured intense. It was
late in autumn when I quitted the district where I had so long resided.
I travelled only at night, fearful of encountering the visage of a
human being. Nature decayed around me, and the sun became heatless;
rain and snow poured around me; mighty rivers were frozen; the surface
of the earth was hard and chill, and bare, and I found no shelter. Oh,
earth! How often did I imprecate curses on the cause of my being! The
mildness of my nature had fled, and all within me was turned to gall
and bitterness. The nearer I approached to your habitation, the more
deeply did I feel the spirit of revenge enkindled in my heart. Snow
fell, and the waters were hardened, but I rested not. A few incidents
now and then directed me, and I possessed a map of the country; but I
often wandered wide from my path. The agony of my feelings allowed me
no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could
not extract its food; but a circumstance that happened when I arrived
on the confines of Switzerland, when the sun had recovered its warmth
and the earth again began to look green, confirmed in an especial
manner the bitterness and horror of my feelings.

“I generally rested during the day and travelled only when I was
secured by night from the view of man. One morning, however, finding
that my path lay through a deep wood, I ventured to continue my journey
after the sun had risen; the day, which was one of the first of spring,
cheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of
the air. I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long
appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of
these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and
forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. Soft tears
again bedewed my cheeks, and I even raised my humid eyes with
thankfulness towards the blessed sun, which bestowed such joy upon me.

“I continued to wind among the paths of the wood, until I came to its
boundary, which was skirted by a deep and rapid river, into which many
of the trees bent their branches, now budding with the fresh spring.
Here I paused, not exactly knowing what path to pursue, when I heard
the sound of voices, that induced me to conceal myself under the shade
of a cypress. I was scarcely hid when a young girl came running
towards the spot where I was concealed, laughing, as if she ran from
someone in sport. She continued her course along the precipitous sides
of the river, when suddenly her foot slipped, and she fell into the
rapid stream. I rushed from my hiding-place and with extreme labour,
from the force of the current, saved her and dragged her to shore. She
was senseless, and I endeavoured by every means in my power to restore
animation, when I was suddenly interrupted by the approach of a rustic,
who was probably the person from whom she had playfully fled. On
seeing me, he darted towards me, and tearing the girl from my arms,
hastened towards the deeper parts of the wood. I followed speedily, I
hardly knew why; but when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun,
which he carried, at my body and fired. I sank to the ground, and my
injurer, with increased swiftness, escaped into the wood.

“This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being
from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable
pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of
kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments
before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by
pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. But the
agony of my wound overcame me; my pulses paused, and I fainted.

“For some weeks I led a miserable life in the woods, endeavouring to
cure the wound which I had received. The ball had entered my shoulder,
and I knew not whether it had remained there or passed through; at any
rate I had no means of extracting it. My sufferings were augmented
also by the oppressive sense of the injustice and ingratitude of their
infliction. My daily vows rose for revenge—a deep and deadly revenge,
such as would alone compensate for the outrages and anguish I had
endured.

“After some weeks my wound healed, and I continued my journey. The
labours I endured were no longer to be alleviated by the bright sun or
gentle breezes of spring; all joy was but a mockery which insulted my
desolate state and made me feel more painfully that I was not made for
the enjoyment of pleasure.

“But my toils now drew near a close, and in two months from this time I
reached the environs of Geneva.

“It was evening when I arrived, and I retired to a hiding-place among
the fields that surround it to meditate in what manner I should apply
to you. I was oppressed by fatigue and hunger and far too unhappy to
enjoy the gentle breezes of evening or the prospect of the sun setting
behind the stupendous mountains of Jura.

“At this time a slight sleep relieved me from the pain of reflection,
which was disturbed by the approach of a beautiful child, who came
running into the recess I had chosen, with all the sportiveness of
infancy. Suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me that this
little creature was unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have
imbibed a horror of deformity. If, therefore, I could seize him and
educate him as my companion and friend, I should not be so desolate in
this peopled earth.

“Urged by this impulse, I seized on the boy as he passed and drew him
towards me. As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before
his eyes and uttered a shrill scream; I drew his hand forcibly from his
face and said, ‘Child, what is the meaning of this? I do not intend to
hurt you; listen to me.’

“He struggled violently. ‘Let me go,’ he cried;
‘monster! Ugly wretch! You wish to eat me and tear me to pieces. You
are an ogre. Let me go, or I will tell my papa.’

“‘Boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me.’

“‘Hideous monster! Let me go. My papa is a syndic—he is M.
Frankenstein—he will punish you. You dare not keep me.’

“‘Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy—to him towards whom I have
sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.’

“The child still struggled and loaded me with epithets which carried
despair to my heart; I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a
moment he lay dead at my feet.

“I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish
triumph; clapping my hands, I exclaimed, ‘I too can create desolation;
my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and
a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.’

“As I fixed my eyes on the child, I saw something glittering on his
breast. I took it; it was a portrait of a most lovely woman. In spite
of my malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I
gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her
lovely lips; but presently my rage returned; I remembered that I was
for ever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could
bestow and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in
regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one
expressive of disgust and affright.

“Can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage? I only
wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in
exclamations and agony, I did not rush among mankind and perish in the
attempt to destroy them.

“While I was overcome by these feelings, I left the spot where I had
committed the murder, and seeking a more secluded hiding-place, I
entered a barn which had appeared to me to be empty. A woman was
sleeping on some straw; she was young, not indeed so beautiful as her
whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect and blooming in the
loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one of those whose
joy-imparting smiles are bestowed on all but me. And then I bent over
her and whispered, ‘Awake, fairest, thy lover is near—he who would
give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes; my
beloved, awake!’

“The sleeper stirred; a thrill of terror ran through me. Should she
indeed awake, and see me, and curse me, and denounce the murderer? Thus
would she assuredly act if her darkened eyes opened and she beheld me.
The thought was madness; it stirred the fiend within me—not I, but
she, shall suffer; the murder I have committed because I am for ever
robbed of all that she could give me, she shall atone. The crime had
its source in her; be hers the punishment! Thanks to the lessons of
Felix and the sanguinary laws of man, I had learned now to work
mischief. I bent over her and placed the portrait securely in one of
the folds of her dress. She moved again, and I fled.

“For some days I haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place,
sometimes wishing to see you, sometimes resolved to quit the world and
its miseries for ever. At length I wandered towards these mountains,
and have ranged through their immense recesses, consumed by a burning
passion which you alone can gratify. We may not part until you have
promised to comply with my requisition. I am alone and miserable; man
will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself
would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species
and have the same defects. This being you must create.”




Chapter 17


The being finished speaking and fixed his looks upon me in the
expectation of a reply. But I was bewildered, perplexed, and unable to
arrange my ideas sufficiently to understand the full extent of his
proposition. He continued,

“You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the
interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone
can do, and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to
concede.”

The latter part of his tale had kindled anew in me the anger that had
died away while he narrated his peaceful life among the cottagers, and
as he said this I could no longer suppress the rage that burned within
me.

“I do refuse it,” I replied; “and no torture shall ever extort a
consent from me. You may render me the most miserable of men, but you
shall never make me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another like
yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world. Begone! I
have answered you; you may torture me, but I will never consent.”

“You are in the wrong,” replied the fiend; “and instead
of threatening, I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I
am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator,
would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I
should pity man more than he pities me? You would not call it murder if you
could precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts and destroy my frame, the
work of your own hands. Shall I respect man when he condemns me? Let him
live with me in the interchange of kindness, and instead of injury I would
bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance.
But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our
union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will
revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and
chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear
inextinguishable hatred. Have a care; I will work at your destruction, nor
finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of
your birth.”

A fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled
into contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold; but presently
he calmed himself and proceeded—

“I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me, for you do
not reflect that _you_ are the cause of its excess. If any being felt
emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them a hundred and a
hundredfold; for that one creature’s sake I would make peace with the
whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be realised.
What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of
another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it
is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be
monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more
attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be
harmless and free from the misery I now feel. Oh! My creator, make me
happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I
excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my
request!”

I was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences
of my consent, but I felt that there was some justice in his argument.
His tale and the feelings he now expressed proved him to be a creature
of fine sensations, and did I not as his maker owe him all the portion
of happiness that it was in my power to bestow? He saw my change of
feeling and continued,

“If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see
us again; I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not
that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite;
acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will
be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same fare.
We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on
man and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful
and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the
wantonness of power and cruelty. Pitiless as you have been towards me,
I now see compassion in your eyes; let me seize the favourable moment
and persuade you to promise what I so ardently desire.”

“You propose,” replied I, “to fly from the habitations of
man, to dwell in those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your
only companions. How can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man,
persevere in this exile? You will return and again seek their kindness, and
you will meet with their detestation; your evil passions will be renewed,
and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of destruction.
This may not be; cease to argue the point, for I cannot consent.”

“How inconstant are your feelings! But a moment ago you were moved by
my representations, and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints?
I swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me, that
with the companion you bestow, I will quit the neighbourhood of man and
dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil passions
will have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy! My life will flow quietly
away, and in my dying moments I shall not curse my maker.”

His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him and
sometimes felt a wish to console him, but when I looked upon him, when
I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened and my
feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. I tried to stifle
these sensations; I thought that as I could not sympathise with him, I
had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which
was yet in my power to bestow.

“You swear,” I said, “to be harmless; but have you not
already shown a degree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust
you? May not even this be a feint that will increase your triumph by
affording a wider scope for your revenge?”

“How is this? I must not be trifled with, and I demand an answer. If
I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion;
the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall
become a thing of whose existence everyone will be ignorant. My vices
are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will
necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel
the affections of a sensitive being and become linked to the chain of
existence and events from which I am now excluded.”

I paused some time to reflect on all he had related and the various
arguments which he had employed. I thought of the promise of virtues which
he had displayed on the opening of his existence and the subsequent blight
of all kindly feeling by the loathing and scorn which his protectors had
manifested towards him. His power and threats were not omitted in my
calculations; a creature who could exist in the ice-caves of the glaciers
and hide himself from pursuit among the ridges of inaccessible precipices
was a being possessing faculties it would be vain to cope with. After a
long pause of reflection I concluded that the justice due both to him and
my fellow creatures demanded of me that I should comply with his request.
Turning to him, therefore, I said,

“I consent to your demand, on your solemn oath to quit Europe for ever,
and every other place in the neighbourhood of man, as soon as I shall
deliver into your hands a female who will accompany you in your exile.”

“I swear,” he cried, “by the sun, and by the blue sky of
heaven, and by the fire of love that burns my heart, that if you grant my
prayer, while they exist you shall never behold me again. Depart to your
home and commence your labours; I shall watch their progress with
unutterable anxiety; and fear not but that when you are ready I shall
appear.”

Saying this, he suddenly quitted me, fearful, perhaps, of any change in
my sentiments. I saw him descend the mountain with greater speed than
the flight of an eagle, and quickly lost among the undulations of the
sea of ice.

His tale had occupied the whole day, and the sun was upon the verge of
the horizon when he departed. I knew that I ought to hasten my descent
towards the valley, as I should soon be encompassed in darkness; but my
heart was heavy, and my steps slow. The labour of winding among the
little paths of the mountain and fixing my feet firmly as I advanced
perplexed me, occupied as I was by the emotions which the occurrences
of the day had produced. Night was far advanced when I came to the
halfway resting-place and seated myself beside the fountain. The stars
shone at intervals as the clouds passed from over them; the dark pines
rose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the
ground; it was a scene of wonderful solemnity and stirred strange
thoughts within me. I wept bitterly, and clasping my hands in agony, I
exclaimed, “Oh! stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock
me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as
nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.”

These were wild and miserable thoughts, but I cannot describe to you
how the eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me and how I
listened to every blast of wind as if it were a dull ugly siroc on its
way to consume me.

Morning dawned before I arrived at the village of Chamounix; I took no
rest, but returned immediately to Geneva. Even in my own heart I could
give no expression to my sensations—they weighed on me with a
mountain’s weight and their excess destroyed my agony beneath them.
Thus I returned home, and entering the house, presented myself to the
family. My haggard and wild appearance awoke intense alarm, but I
answered no question, scarcely did I speak. I felt as if I were placed
under a ban—as if I had no right to claim their sympathies—as if
never more might I enjoy companionship with them. Yet even thus I
loved them to adoration; and to save them, I resolved to dedicate
myself to my most abhorred task. The prospect of such an occupation
made every other circumstance of existence pass before me like a dream,
and that thought only had to me the reality of life.




Chapter 18


Day after day, week after week, passed away on my return to Geneva; and
I could not collect the courage to recommence my work. I feared the
vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my
repugnance to the task which was enjoined me. I found that I could not
compose a female without again devoting several months to profound
study and laborious disquisition. I had heard of some discoveries
having been made by an English philosopher, the knowledge of which was
material to my success, and I sometimes thought of obtaining my
father’s consent to visit England for this purpose; but I clung to
every pretence of delay and shrank from taking the first step in an
undertaking whose immediate necessity began to appear less absolute to
me. A change indeed had taken place in me; my health, which had
hitherto declined, was now much restored; and my spirits, when
unchecked by the memory of my unhappy promise, rose proportionably. My
father saw this change with pleasure, and he turned his thoughts
towards the best method of eradicating the remains of my melancholy,
which every now and then would return by fits, and with a devouring
blackness overcast the approaching sunshine. At these moments I took
refuge in the most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake
alone in a little boat, watching the clouds and listening to the
rippling of the waves, silent and listless. But the fresh air and
bright sun seldom failed to restore me to some degree of composure, and
on my return I met the salutations of my friends with a readier smile
and a more cheerful heart.

It was after my return from one of these rambles that my father,
calling me aside, thus addressed me,

“I am happy to remark, my dear son, that you have resumed your former
pleasures and seem to be returning to yourself. And yet you are still
unhappy and still avoid our society. For some time I was lost in
conjecture as to the cause of this, but yesterday an idea struck me,
and if it is well founded, I conjure you to avow it. Reserve on such a
point would be not only useless, but draw down treble misery on us all.”

I trembled violently at his exordium, and my father continued—

“I confess, my son, that I have always looked forward to your
marriage with our dear Elizabeth as the tie of our domestic comfort and the
stay of my declining years. You were attached to each other from your
earliest infancy; you studied together, and appeared, in dispositions and
tastes, entirely suited to one another. But so blind is the experience of
man that what I conceived to be the best assistants to my plan may have
entirely destroyed it. You, perhaps, regard her as your sister, without any
wish that she might become your wife. Nay, you may have met with another
whom you may love; and considering yourself as bound in honour to
Elizabeth, this struggle may occasion the poignant misery which you appear
to feel.”

“My dear father, reassure yourself. I love my cousin tenderly and
sincerely. I never saw any woman who excited, as Elizabeth does, my
warmest admiration and affection. My future hopes and prospects are
entirely bound up in the expectation of our union.”

“The expression of your sentiments of this subject, my dear Victor,
gives me more pleasure than I have for some time experienced. If you
feel thus, we shall assuredly be happy, however present events may cast
a gloom over us. But it is this gloom which appears to have taken so
strong a hold of your mind that I wish to dissipate. Tell me,
therefore, whether you object to an immediate solemnisation of the
marriage. We have been unfortunate, and recent events have drawn us
from that everyday tranquillity befitting my years and infirmities. You
are younger; yet I do not suppose, possessed as you are of a competent
fortune, that an early marriage would at all interfere with any future
plans of honour and utility that you may have formed. Do not suppose,
however, that I wish to dictate happiness to you or that a delay on
your part would cause me any serious uneasiness. Interpret my words
with candour and answer me, I conjure you, with confidence and
sincerity.”

I listened to my father in silence and remained for some time incapable
of offering any reply. I revolved rapidly in my mind a multitude of
thoughts and endeavoured to arrive at some conclusion. Alas! To me
the idea of an immediate union with my Elizabeth was one of horror and
dismay. I was bound by a solemn promise which I had not yet fulfilled
and dared not break, or if I did, what manifold miseries might not
impend over me and my devoted family! Could I enter into a festival
with this deadly weight yet hanging round my neck and bowing me to the
ground? I must perform my engagement and let the monster depart with
his mate before I allowed myself to enjoy the delight of a union from
which I expected peace.

I remembered also the necessity imposed upon me of either journeying to
England or entering into a long correspondence with those philosophers
of that country whose knowledge and discoveries were of indispensable
use to me in my present undertaking. The latter method of obtaining
the desired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory; besides, I
had an insurmountable aversion to the idea of engaging myself in my
loathsome task in my father’s house while in habits of familiar
intercourse with those I loved. I knew that a thousand fearful
accidents might occur, the slightest of which would disclose a tale to
thrill all connected with me with horror. I was aware also that I
should often lose all self-command, all capacity of hiding the
harrowing sensations that would possess me during the progress of my
unearthly occupation. I must absent myself from all I loved while thus
employed. Once commenced, it would quickly be achieved, and I might be
restored to my family in peace and happiness. My promise fulfilled,
the monster would depart for ever. Or (so my fond fancy imaged) some
accident might meanwhile occur to destroy him and put an end to my
slavery for ever.

These feelings dictated my answer to my father. I expressed a wish to
visit England, but concealing the true reasons of this request, I
clothed my desires under a guise which excited no suspicion, while I
urged my desire with an earnestness that easily induced my father to
comply. After so long a period of an absorbing melancholy that
resembled madness in its intensity and effects, he was glad to find
that I was capable of taking pleasure in the idea of such a journey,
and he hoped that change of scene and varied amusement would, before my
return, have restored me entirely to myself.

The duration of my absence was left to my own choice; a few months, or
at most a year, was the period contemplated. One paternal kind
precaution he had taken to ensure my having a companion. Without
previously communicating with me, he had, in concert with Elizabeth,
arranged that Clerval should join me at Strasburgh. This interfered
with the solitude I coveted for the prosecution of my task; yet at the
commencement of my journey the presence of my friend could in no way be
an impediment, and truly I rejoiced that thus I should be saved many
hours of lonely, maddening reflection. Nay, Henry might stand between
me and the intrusion of my foe. If I were alone, would he not at times
force his abhorred presence on me to remind me of my task or to
contemplate its progress?

To England, therefore, I was bound, and it was understood that my union
with Elizabeth should take place immediately on my return. My father’s
age rendered him extremely averse to delay. For myself, there was one
reward I promised myself from my detested toils—one consolation for my
unparalleled sufferings; it was the prospect of that day when,
enfranchised from my miserable slavery, I might claim Elizabeth and
forget the past in my union with her.

I now made arrangements for my journey, but one feeling haunted me
which filled me with fear and agitation. During my absence I should
leave my friends unconscious of the existence of their enemy and
unprotected from his attacks, exasperated as he might be by my
departure. But he had promised to follow me wherever I might go, and
would he not accompany me to England? This imagination was dreadful in
itself, but soothing inasmuch as it supposed the safety of my friends.
I was agonised with the idea of the possibility that the reverse of
this might happen. But through the whole period during which I was the
slave of my creature I allowed myself to be governed by the impulses of
the moment; and my present sensations strongly intimated that the fiend
would follow me and exempt my family from the danger of his
machinations.

It was in the latter end of September that I again quitted my native
country. My journey had been my own suggestion, and Elizabeth
therefore acquiesced, but she was filled with disquiet at the idea of
my suffering, away from her, the inroads of misery and grief. It had
been her care which provided me a companion in Clerval—and yet a man
is blind to a thousand minute circumstances which call forth a woman’s
sedulous attention. She longed to bid me hasten my return; a thousand
conflicting emotions rendered her mute as she bade me a tearful, silent
farewell.

I threw myself into the carriage that was to convey me away, hardly
knowing whither I was going, and careless of what was passing around.
I remembered only, and it was with a bitter anguish that I reflected on
it, to order that my chemical instruments should be packed to go with
me. Filled with dreary imaginations, I passed through many beautiful
and majestic scenes, but my eyes were fixed and unobserving. I could
only think of the bourne of my travels and the work which was to occupy
me whilst they endured.

After some days spent in listless indolence, during which I traversed
many leagues, I arrived at Strasburgh, where I waited two days for
Clerval. He came. Alas, how great was the contrast between us! He
was alive to every new scene, joyful when he saw the beauties of the
setting sun, and more happy when he beheld it rise and recommence a new
day. He pointed out to me the shifting colours of the landscape and
the appearances of the sky. “This is what it is to live,” he cried;
“now I enjoy existence! But you, my dear Frankenstein, wherefore are
you desponding and sorrowful!” In truth, I was occupied by gloomy
thoughts and neither saw the descent of the evening star nor the golden
sunrise reflected in the Rhine. And you, my friend, would be far more
amused with the journal of Clerval, who observed the scenery with an
eye of feeling and delight, than in listening to my reflections. I, a
miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to
enjoyment.

We had agreed to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasburgh to
Rotterdam, whence we might take shipping for London. During this
voyage we passed many willowy islands and saw several beautiful towns.
We stayed a day at Mannheim, and on the fifth from our departure from
Strasburgh, arrived at Mainz. The course of the Rhine below Mainz
becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds
between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw
many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by
black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed,
presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view
rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with
the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and on the sudden turn of a promontory,
flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river
and populous towns occupy the scene.

We travelled at the time of the vintage and heard the song of the labourers
as we glided down the stream. Even I, depressed in mind, and my spirits
continually agitated by gloomy feelings, even I was pleased. I lay at the
bottom of the boat, and as I gazed on the cloudless blue sky, I seemed to
drink in a tranquillity to which I had long been a stranger. And if these
were my sensations, who can describe those of Henry? He felt as if he had
been transported to Fairy-land and enjoyed a happiness seldom tasted by
man. “I have seen,” he said, “the most beautiful scenes
of my own country; I have visited the lakes of Lucerne and Uri, where the
snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water, casting black
and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance
were it not for the most verdant islands that relieve the eye by their gay
appearance; I have seen this lake agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore
up whirlwinds of water and gave you an idea of what the water-spout must be
on the great ocean; and the waves dash with fury the base of the mountain,
where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche and
where their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the
nightly wind; I have seen the mountains of La Valais, and the Pays de Vaud;
but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. The
mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange, but there is a
charm in the banks of this divine river that I never before saw equalled.
Look at that castle which overhangs yon precipice; and that also on the
island, almost concealed amongst the foliage of those lovely trees; and now
that group of labourers coming from among their vines; and that village
half hid in the recess of the mountain. Oh, surely the spirit that inhabits
and guards this place has a soul more in harmony with man than those who
pile the glacier or retire to the inaccessible peaks of the mountains of
our own country.”

Clerval! Beloved friend! Even now it delights me to record your words and
to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently deserving. He was a
being formed in the “very poetry of nature.” His wild and
enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His
soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that
devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to look for only
in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to
satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard
only with admiration, he loved with ardour:—

    ——The sounding cataract
    Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock,
    The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
    Their colours and their forms, were then to him
    An appetite; a feeling, and a love,
    That had no need of a remoter charm,
    By thought supplied, or any interest
    Unborrow’d from the eye.

          [Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”.]

And where does he now exist? Is this gentle and lovely being lost
for ever? Has this mind, so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful
and magnificent, which formed a world, whose existence depended on the
life of its creator;—has this mind perished? Does it now only exist
in my memory? No, it is not thus; your form so divinely wrought, and
beaming with beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and
consoles your unhappy friend.

Pardon this gush of sorrow; these ineffectual words are but a slight
tribute to the unexampled worth of Henry, but they soothe my heart,
overflowing with the anguish which his remembrance creates. I will
proceed with my tale.

Beyond Cologne we descended to the plains of Holland; and we resolved to
post the remainder of our way, for the wind was contrary and the stream of
the river was too gentle to aid us.

Our journey here lost the interest arising from beautiful scenery, but we
arrived in a few days at Rotterdam, whence we proceeded by sea to England.
It was on a clear morning, in the latter days of December, that I first saw
the white cliffs of Britain. The banks of the Thames presented a new scene;
they were flat but fertile, and almost every town was marked by the
remembrance of some story. We saw Tilbury Fort and remembered the Spanish
Armada, Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich—places which I had heard
of even in my country.

At length we saw the numerous steeples of London, St. Paul’s towering
above all, and the Tower famed in English history.




Chapter 19


London was our present point of rest; we determined to remain several
months in this wonderful and celebrated city. Clerval desired the
intercourse of the men of genius and talent who flourished at this
time, but this was with me a secondary object; I was principally
occupied with the means of obtaining the information necessary for the
completion of my promise and quickly availed myself of the letters of
introduction that I had brought with me, addressed to the most
distinguished natural philosophers.

If this journey had taken place during my days of study and happiness,
it would have afforded me inexpressible pleasure. But a blight had
come over my existence, and I only visited these people for the sake of
the information they might give me on the subject in which my interest
was so terribly profound. Company was irksome to me; when alone, I
could fill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth; the voice of
Henry soothed me, and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory
peace. But busy, uninteresting, joyous faces brought back despair to
my heart. I saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my
fellow men; this barrier was sealed with the blood of William and
Justine, and to reflect on the events connected with those names filled
my soul with anguish.

But in Clerval I saw the image of my former self; he was inquisitive
and anxious to gain experience and instruction. The difference of
manners which he observed was to him an inexhaustible source of
instruction and amusement. He was also pursuing an object he had long
had in view. His design was to visit India, in the belief that he had
in his knowledge of its various languages, and in the views he had
taken of its society, the means of materially assisting the progress of
European colonization and trade. In Britain only could he further the
execution of his plan. He was for ever busy, and the only check to his
enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mind. I tried to conceal this
as much as possible, that I might not debar him from the pleasures
natural to one who was entering on a new scene of life, undisturbed by
any care or bitter recollection. I often refused to accompany him,
alleging another engagement, that I might remain alone. I now also
began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this
was to me like the torture of single drops of water continually falling
on the head. Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme
anguish, and every word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lips
to quiver, and my heart to palpitate.

After passing some months in London, we received a letter from a person in
Scotland who had formerly been our visitor at Geneva. He mentioned the
beauties of his native country and asked us if those were not sufficient
allurements to induce us to prolong our journey as far north as Perth,
where he resided. Clerval eagerly desired to accept this invitation, and I,
although I abhorred society, wished to view again mountains and streams and
all the wondrous works with which Nature adorns her chosen dwelling-places.

We had arrived in England at the beginning of October, and it was now
February. We accordingly determined to commence our journey towards the
north at the expiration of another month. In this expedition we did not
intend to follow the great road to Edinburgh, but to visit Windsor, Oxford,
Matlock, and the Cumberland lakes, resolving to arrive at the completion of
this tour about the end of July. I packed up my chemical instruments and
the materials I had collected, resolving to finish my labours in some
obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland.

We quitted London on the 27th of March and remained a few days at
Windsor, rambling in its beautiful forest. This was a new scene to us
mountaineers; the majestic oaks, the quantity of game, and the herds of
stately deer were all novelties to us.

From thence we proceeded to Oxford. As we entered this city, our minds
were filled with the remembrance of the events that had been transacted
there more than a century and a half before. It was here that Charles
I. had collected his forces. This city had remained faithful to him,
after the whole nation had forsaken his cause to join the standard of
Parliament and liberty. The memory of that unfortunate king and his
companions, the amiable Falkland, the insolent Goring, his queen, and
son, gave a peculiar interest to every part of the city which they
might be supposed to have inhabited. The spirit of elder days found a
dwelling here, and we delighted to trace its footsteps. If these
feelings had not found an imaginary gratification, the appearance of
the city had yet in itself sufficient beauty to obtain our admiration.
The colleges are ancient and picturesque; the streets are almost
magnificent; and the lovely Isis, which flows beside it through meadows
of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters,
which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and
domes, embosomed among aged trees.

I enjoyed this scene, and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the
memory of the past and the anticipation of the future. I was formed
for peaceful happiness. During my youthful days discontent never
visited my mind, and if I was ever overcome by _ennui_, the sight of what
is beautiful in nature or the study of what is excellent and sublime in
the productions of man could always interest my heart and communicate
elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has
entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what
I shall soon cease to be—a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity,
pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.

We passed a considerable period at Oxford, rambling among its environs
and endeavouring to identify every spot which might relate to the most
animating epoch of English history. Our little voyages of discovery
were often prolonged by the successive objects that presented
themselves. We visited the tomb of the illustrious Hampden and the
field on which that patriot fell. For a moment my soul was elevated
from its debasing and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas
of liberty and self-sacrifice of which these sights were the monuments
and the remembrancers. For an instant I dared to shake off my chains
and look around me with a free and lofty spirit, but the iron had eaten
into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my
miserable self.

We left Oxford with regret and proceeded to Matlock, which was our next
place of rest. The country in the neighbourhood of this village
resembled, to a greater degree, the scenery of Switzerland; but
everything is on a lower scale, and the green hills want the crown of
distant white Alps which always attend on the piny mountains of my
native country. We visited the wondrous cave and the little cabinets
of natural history, where the curiosities are disposed in the same
manner as in the collections at Servox and Chamounix. The latter name
made me tremble when pronounced by Henry, and I hastened to quit
Matlock, with which that terrible scene was thus associated.

From Derby, still journeying northwards, we passed two months in
Cumberland and Westmorland. I could now almost fancy myself among the
Swiss mountains. The little patches of snow which yet lingered on the
northern sides of the mountains, the lakes, and the dashing of the
rocky streams were all familiar and dear sights to me. Here also we
made some acquaintances, who almost contrived to cheat me into
happiness. The delight of Clerval was proportionably greater than
mine; his mind expanded in the company of men of talent, and he found
in his own nature greater capacities and resources than he could have
imagined himself to have possessed while he associated with his
inferiors. “I could pass my life here,” said he to me; “and among
these mountains I should scarcely regret Switzerland and the Rhine.”

But he found that a traveller’s life is one that includes much pain
amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are for ever on the stretch; and
when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit
that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again
engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties.

We had scarcely visited the various lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland
and conceived an affection for some of the inhabitants when the period
of our appointment with our Scotch friend approached, and we left them
to travel on. For my own part I was not sorry. I had now neglected my
promise for some time, and I feared the effects of the dæmon’s
disappointment. He might remain in Switzerland and wreak his vengeance
on my relatives. This idea pursued me and tormented me at every moment
from which I might otherwise have snatched repose and peace. I waited
for my letters with feverish impatience; if they were delayed I was
miserable and overcome by a thousand fears; and when they arrived and I
saw the superscription of Elizabeth or my father, I hardly dared to
read and ascertain my fate. Sometimes I thought that the fiend
followed me and might expedite my remissness by murdering my companion.
When these thoughts possessed me, I would not quit Henry for a moment,
but followed him as his shadow, to protect him from the fancied rage of
his destroyer. I felt as if I had committed some great crime, the
consciousness of which haunted me. I was guiltless, but I had indeed
drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of crime.

I visited Edinburgh with languid eyes and mind; and yet that city might
have interested the most unfortunate being. Clerval did not like it so well
as Oxford, for the antiquity of the latter city was more pleasing to him.
But the beauty and regularity of the new town of Edinburgh, its romantic
castle and its environs, the most delightful in the world, Arthur’s
Seat, St. Bernard’s Well, and the Pentland Hills, compensated him for
the change and filled him with cheerfulness and admiration. But I was
impatient to arrive at the termination of my journey.

We left Edinburgh in a week, passing through Coupar, St. Andrew’s, and
along the banks of the Tay, to Perth, where our friend expected us.
But I was in no mood to laugh and talk with strangers or enter into
their feelings or plans with the good humour expected from a guest; and
accordingly I told Clerval that I wished to make the tour of Scotland
alone. “Do you,” said I, “enjoy yourself, and let this be our
rendezvous. I may be absent a month or two; but do not interfere with
my motions, I entreat you; leave me to peace and solitude for a short
time; and when I return, I hope it will be with a lighter heart, more
congenial to your own temper.”

Henry wished to dissuade me, but seeing me bent on this plan, ceased to
remonstrate. He entreated me to write often. “I had rather be with
you,” he said, “in your solitary rambles, than with these Scotch
people, whom I do not know; hasten, then, my dear friend, to return,
that I may again feel myself somewhat at home, which I cannot do in
your absence.”

Having parted from my friend, I determined to visit some remote spot of
Scotland and finish my work in solitude. I did not doubt but that the
monster followed me and would discover himself to me when I should have
finished, that he might receive his companion.

With this resolution I traversed the northern highlands and fixed on one of
the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene of my labours. It was a place
fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock whose high sides were
continually beaten upon by the waves. The soil was barren, scarcely
affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its
inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy limbs
gave tokens of their miserable fare. Vegetables and bread, when they
indulged in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be procured from
the mainland, which was about five miles distant.

On the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of
these was vacant when I arrived. This I hired. It contained but two
rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable
penury. The thatch had fallen in, the walls were unplastered, and the
door was off its hinges. I ordered it to be repaired, bought some
furniture, and took possession, an incident which would doubtless have
occasioned some surprise had not all the senses of the cottagers been
benumbed by want and squalid poverty. As it was, I lived ungazed at
and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes
which I gave, so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations
of men.

In this retreat I devoted the morning to labour; but in the evening,
when the weather permitted, I walked on the stony beach of the sea to
listen to the waves as they roared and dashed at my feet. It was a
monotonous yet ever-changing scene. I thought of Switzerland; it was
far different from this desolate and appalling landscape. Its hills
are covered with vines, and its cottages are scattered thickly in the
plains. Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky, and when
troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively
infant when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.

In this manner I distributed my occupations when I first arrived, but
as I proceeded in my labour, it became every day more horrible and
irksome to me. Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter my
laboratory for several days, and at other times I toiled day and night
in order to complete my work. It was, indeed, a filthy process in
which I was engaged. During my first experiment, a kind of
enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment; my
mind was intently fixed on the consummation of my labour, and my eyes
were shut to the horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in
cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands.

Thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation, immersed in
a solitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from
the actual scene in which I was engaged, my spirits became unequal; I
grew restless and nervous. Every moment I feared to meet my
persecutor. Sometimes I sat with my eyes fixed on the ground, fearing
to raise them lest they should encounter the object which I so much
dreaded to behold. I feared to wander from the sight of my fellow
creatures lest when alone he should come to claim his companion.

In the mean time I worked on, and my labour was already considerably
advanced. I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager
hope, which I dared not trust myself to question but which was
intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil that made my heart sicken
in my bosom.




Chapter 20


I sat one evening in my laboratory; the sun had set, and the moon was just
rising from the sea; I had not sufficient light for my employment, and I
remained idle, in a pause of consideration of whether I should leave my
labour for the night or hasten its conclusion by an unremitting attention
to it. As I sat, a train of reflection occurred to me which led me to
consider the effects of what I was now doing. Three years before, I was
engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled
barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it for ever with the bitterest
remorse. I was now about to form another being of whose dispositions I was
alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her
mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. He had
sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man and hide himself in deserts, but she
had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and
reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her
creation. They might even hate each other; the creature who already lived
loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence
for it when it came before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn
with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him,
and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being
deserted by one of his own species.

Even if they were to leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the new world,
yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the dæmon
thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon
the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a
condition precarious and full of terror. Had I right, for my own benefit,
to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? I had before been moved
by the sophisms of the being I had created; I had been struck senseless by
his fiendish threats; but now, for the first time, the wickedness of my
promise burst upon me; I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me
as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at
the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race.

I trembled and my heart failed within me, when, on looking up, I saw by
the light of the moon the dæmon at the casement. A ghastly grin
wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task
which he had allotted to me. Yes, he had followed me in my travels; he
had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide
and desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress and claim the
fulfilment of my promise.

As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of
malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my
promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion,
tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me
destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for
happiness, and with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew.

I left the room, and locking the door, made a solemn vow in my own
heart never to resume my labours; and then, with trembling steps, I
sought my own apartment. I was alone; none were near me to dissipate
the gloom and relieve me from the sickening oppression of the most
terrible reveries.

Several hours passed, and I remained near my window gazing on the sea;
it was almost motionless, for the winds were hushed, and all nature
reposed under the eye of the quiet moon. A few fishing vessels alone
specked the water, and now and then the gentle breeze wafted the sound
of voices as the fishermen called to one another. I felt the silence,
although I was hardly conscious of its extreme profundity, until my ear
was suddenly arrested by the paddling of oars near the shore, and a
person landed close to my house.

In a few minutes after, I heard the creaking of my door, as if some one
endeavoured to open it softly. I trembled from head to foot; I felt a
presentiment of who it was and wished to rouse one of the peasants who
dwelt in a cottage not far from mine; but I was overcome by the sensation
of helplessness, so often felt in frightful dreams, when you in vain
endeavour to fly from an impending danger, and was rooted to the spot.

Presently I heard the sound of footsteps along the passage; the door
opened, and the wretch whom I dreaded appeared. Shutting the door, he
approached me and said in a smothered voice,

“You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you
intend? Do you dare to break your promise? I have endured toil and misery;
I left Switzerland with you; I crept along the shores of the Rhine, among
its willow islands and over the summits of its hills. I have dwelt many
months in the heaths of England and among the deserts of Scotland. I have
endured incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger; do you dare destroy my
hopes?”

“Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like
yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness.”

“Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself
unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you believe
yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of
day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master;
obey!”

“The hour of my irresolution is past, and the period of your power is
arrived. Your threats cannot move me to do an act of wickedness; but
they confirm me in a determination of not creating you a companion in
vice. Shall I, in cool blood, set loose upon the earth a dæmon whose
delight is in death and wretchedness? Begone! I am firm, and your
words will only exasperate my rage.”

The monster saw my determination in my face and gnashed his teeth in the
impotence of anger. “Shall each man,” cried he, “find a
wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had
feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn.
Man! You may hate, but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery,
and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness for
ever. Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my
wretchedness? You can blast my other passions, but revenge
remains—revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! I may die, but
first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your
misery. Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. I will watch with
the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall
repent of the injuries you inflict.”

“Devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice.
I have declared my resolution to you, and I am no coward to bend
beneath words. Leave me; I am inexorable.”

“It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your
wedding-night.”

I started forward and exclaimed, “Villain! Before you sign my
death-warrant, be sure that you are yourself safe.”

I would have seized him, but he eluded me and quitted the house with
precipitation. In a few moments I saw him in his boat, which shot
across the waters with an arrowy swiftness and was soon lost amidst the
waves.

All was again silent, but his words rang in my ears. I burned with rage to
pursue the murderer of my peace and precipitate him into the ocean. I
walked up and down my room hastily and perturbed, while my imagination
conjured up a thousand images to torment and sting me. Why had I not
followed him and closed with him in mortal strife? But I had suffered him
to depart, and he had directed his course towards the mainland. I shuddered
to think who might be the next victim sacrificed to his insatiate revenge.
And then I thought again of his words—“_I will be with you on
your wedding-night._” That, then, was the period fixed for the
fulfilment of my destiny. In that hour I should die and at once satisfy and
extinguish his malice. The prospect did not move me to fear; yet when I
thought of my beloved Elizabeth, of her tears and endless sorrow, when she
should find her lover so barbarously snatched from her, tears, the first I
had shed for many months, streamed from my eyes, and I resolved not to fall
before my enemy without a bitter struggle.

The night passed away, and the sun rose from the ocean; my feelings became
calmer, if it may be called calmness when the violence of rage sinks into
the depths of despair. I left the house, the horrid scene of the last
night’s contention, and walked on the beach of the sea, which I
almost regarded as an insuperable barrier between me and my fellow
creatures; nay, a wish that such should prove the fact stole across me. I
desired that I might pass my life on that barren rock, wearily, it is true,
but uninterrupted by any sudden shock of misery. If I returned, it was to
be sacrificed or to see those whom I most loved die under the grasp of a
dæmon whom I had myself created.

I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it
loved and miserable in the separation. When it became noon, and the
sun rose higher, I lay down on the grass and was overpowered by a deep
sleep. I had been awake the whole of the preceding night, my nerves
were agitated, and my eyes inflamed by watching and misery. The sleep
into which I now sank refreshed me; and when I awoke, I again felt as
if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself, and I began to
reflect upon what had passed with greater composure; yet still the
words of the fiend rang in my ears like a death-knell; they appeared
like a dream, yet distinct and oppressive as a reality.

The sun had far descended, and I still sat on the shore, satisfying my
appetite, which had become ravenous, with an oaten cake, when I saw a
fishing-boat land close to me, and one of the men brought me a packet;
it contained letters from Geneva, and one from Clerval entreating me to
join him. He said that he was wearing away his time fruitlessly where
he was, that letters from the friends he had formed in London desired
his return to complete the negotiation they had entered into for his
Indian enterprise. He could not any longer delay his departure; but as
his journey to London might be followed, even sooner than he now
conjectured, by his longer voyage, he entreated me to bestow as much of
my society on him as I could spare. He besought me, therefore, to
leave my solitary isle and to meet him at Perth, that we might proceed
southwards together. This letter in a degree recalled me to life, and
I determined to quit my island at the expiration of two days.

Yet, before I departed, there was a task to perform, on which I shuddered
to reflect; I must pack up my chemical instruments, and for that purpose I
must enter the room which had been the scene of my odious work, and I must
handle those utensils the sight of which was sickening to me. The next
morning, at daybreak, I summoned sufficient courage and unlocked the door
of my laboratory. The remains of the half-finished creature, whom I had
destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and I almost felt as if I had
mangled the living flesh of a human being. I paused to collect myself and
then entered the chamber. With trembling hand I conveyed the instruments
out of the room, but I reflected that I ought not to leave the relics of my
work to excite the horror and suspicion of the peasants; and I accordingly
put them into a basket, with a great quantity of stones, and laying them
up, determined to throw them into the sea that very night; and in the
meantime I sat upon the beach, employed in cleaning and arranging my
chemical apparatus.

Nothing could be more complete than the alteration that had taken place
in my feelings since the night of the appearance of the dæmon. I had
before regarded my promise with a gloomy despair as a thing that, with
whatever consequences, must be fulfilled; but I now felt as if a film
had been taken from before my eyes and that I for the first time saw
clearly. The idea of renewing my labours did not for one instant occur
to me; the threat I had heard weighed on my thoughts, but I did not
reflect that a voluntary act of mine could avert it. I had resolved in
my own mind that to create another like the fiend I had first made
would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness, and I
banished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different
conclusion.

Between two and three in the morning the moon rose; and I then, putting my
basket aboard a little skiff, sailed out about four miles from the shore.
The scene was perfectly solitary; a few boats were returning towards land,
but I sailed away from them. I felt as if I was about the commission of a
dreadful crime and avoided with shuddering anxiety any encounter with my
fellow creatures. At one time the moon, which had before been clear, was
suddenly overspread by a thick cloud, and I took advantage of the moment of
darkness and cast my basket into the sea; I listened to the gurgling sound
as it sank and then sailed away from the spot. The sky became clouded, but
the air was pure, although chilled by the northeast breeze that was then
rising. But it refreshed me and filled me with such agreeable sensations
that I resolved to prolong my stay on the water, and fixing the rudder in a
direct position, stretched myself at the bottom of the boat. Clouds hid the
moon, everything was obscure, and I heard only the sound of the boat as its
keel cut through the waves; the murmur lulled me, and in a short time I
slept soundly.

I do not know how long I remained in this situation, but when I awoke I
found that the sun had already mounted considerably. The wind was high, and
the waves continually threatened the safety of my little skiff. I found
that the wind was northeast and must have driven me far from the coast from
which I had embarked. I endeavoured to change my course but quickly found
that if I again made the attempt the boat would be instantly filled with
water. Thus situated, my only resource was to drive before the wind. I
confess that I felt a few sensations of terror. I had no compass with me
and was so slenderly acquainted with the geography of this part of the
world that the sun was of little benefit to me. I might be driven into the
wide Atlantic and feel all the tortures of starvation or be swallowed up in
the immeasurable waters that roared and buffeted around me. I had already
been out many hours and felt the torment of a burning thirst, a prelude to
my other sufferings. I looked on the heavens, which were covered by clouds
that flew before the wind, only to be replaced by others; I looked upon the
sea; it was to be my grave. “Fiend,” I exclaimed, “your
task is already fulfilled!” I thought of Elizabeth, of my father, and
of Clerval—all left behind, on whom the monster might satisfy his
sanguinary and merciless passions. This idea plunged me into a reverie so
despairing and frightful that even now, when the scene is on the point of
closing before me for ever, I shudder to reflect on it.

Some hours passed thus; but by degrees, as the sun declined towards the
horizon, the wind died away into a gentle breeze and the sea became
free from breakers. But these gave place to a heavy swell; I felt sick
and hardly able to hold the rudder, when suddenly I saw a line of high
land towards the south.

Almost spent, as I was, by fatigue and the dreadful suspense I endured
for several hours, this sudden certainty of life rushed like a flood of
warm joy to my heart, and tears gushed from my eyes.

How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have
of life even in the excess of misery! I constructed another sail with a
part of my dress and eagerly steered my course towards the land. It had a
wild and rocky appearance, but as I approached nearer I easily perceived
the traces of cultivation. I saw vessels near the shore and found myself
suddenly transported back to the neighbourhood of civilised man. I
carefully traced the windings of the land and hailed a steeple which I at
length saw issuing from behind a small promontory. As I was in a state of
extreme debility, I resolved to sail directly towards the town, as a place
where I could most easily procure nourishment. Fortunately I had money with
me. As I turned the promontory I perceived a small neat town and a good
harbour, which I entered, my heart bounding with joy at my unexpected
escape.

As I was occupied in fixing the boat and arranging the sails, several
people crowded towards the spot. They seemed much surprised at my
appearance, but instead of offering me any assistance, whispered
together with gestures that at any other time might have produced in me
a slight sensation of alarm. As it was, I merely remarked that they
spoke English, and I therefore addressed them in that language. “My
good friends,” said I, “will you be so kind as to tell me the name of
this town and inform me where I am?”

“You will know that soon enough,” replied a man with a hoarse voice.
“Maybe you are come to a place that will not prove much to your taste,
but you will not be consulted as to your quarters, I promise you.”

I was exceedingly surprised on receiving so rude an answer from a
stranger, and I was also disconcerted on perceiving the frowning and
angry countenances of his companions. “Why do you answer me so
roughly?” I replied. “Surely it is not the custom of Englishmen to
receive strangers so inhospitably.”

“I do not know,” said the man, “what the custom of the
English may be, but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains.”

While this strange dialogue continued, I perceived the crowd rapidly
increase. Their faces expressed a mixture of curiosity and anger, which
annoyed and in some degree alarmed me. I inquired the way to the inn, but
no one replied. I then moved forward, and a murmuring sound arose from the
crowd as they followed and surrounded me, when an ill-looking man
approaching tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Come, sir, you must
follow me to Mr. Kirwin’s to give an account of yourself.”

“Who is Mr. Kirwin? Why am I to give an account of myself? Is not
this a free country?”

“Ay, sir, free enough for honest folks. Mr. Kirwin is a magistrate,
and you are to give an account of the death of a gentleman who was
found murdered here last night.”

This answer startled me, but I presently recovered myself. I was innocent;
that could easily be proved; accordingly I followed my conductor in silence
and was led to one of the best houses in the town. I was ready to sink from
fatigue and hunger, but being surrounded by a crowd, I thought it politic
to rouse all my strength, that no physical debility might be construed into
apprehension or conscious guilt. Little did I then expect the calamity that
was in a few moments to overwhelm me and extinguish in horror and despair
all fear of ignominy or death.

I must pause here, for it requires all my fortitude to recall the memory of
the frightful events which I am about to relate, in proper detail, to my
recollection.




Chapter 21


I was soon introduced into the presence of the magistrate, an old
benevolent man with calm and mild manners. He looked upon me, however,
with some degree of severity, and then, turning towards my conductors,
he asked who appeared as witnesses on this occasion.

About half a dozen men came forward; and, one being selected by the
magistrate, he deposed that he had been out fishing the night before with
his son and brother-in-law, Daniel Nugent, when, about ten o’clock,
they observed a strong northerly blast rising, and they accordingly put in
for port. It was a very dark night, as the moon had not yet risen; they did
not land at the harbour, but, as they had been accustomed, at a creek about
two miles below. He walked on first, carrying a part of the fishing tackle,
and his companions followed him at some distance. As he was proceeding
along the sands, he struck his foot against something and fell at his
length on the ground. His companions came up to assist him, and by the
light of their lantern they found that he had fallen on the body of a man,
who was to all appearance dead. Their first supposition was that it was the
corpse of some person who had been drowned and was thrown on shore by the
waves, but on examination they found that the clothes were not wet and even
that the body was not then cold. They instantly carried it to the cottage
of an old woman near the spot and endeavoured, but in vain, to restore it
to life. It appeared to be a handsome young man, about five and twenty
years of age. He had apparently been strangled, for there was no sign of
any violence except the black mark of fingers on his neck.

The first part of this deposition did not in the least interest me, but
when the mark of the fingers was mentioned I remembered the murder of
my brother and felt myself extremely agitated; my limbs trembled, and a
mist came over my eyes, which obliged me to lean on a chair for
support. The magistrate observed me with a keen eye and of course drew
an unfavourable augury from my manner.

The son confirmed his father’s account, but when Daniel Nugent was
called he swore positively that just before the fall of his companion, he
saw a boat, with a single man in it, at a short distance from the shore;
and as far as he could judge by the light of a few stars, it was the same
boat in which I had just landed.

A woman deposed that she lived near the beach and was standing at the door
of her cottage, waiting for the return of the fishermen, about an hour
before she heard of the discovery of the body, when she saw a boat with
only one man in it push off from that part of the shore where the corpse
was afterwards found.

Another woman confirmed the account of the fishermen having brought the
body into her house; it was not cold. They put it into a bed and
rubbed it, and Daniel went to the town for an apothecary, but life was
quite gone.

Several other men were examined concerning my landing, and they agreed
that, with the strong north wind that had arisen during the night, it
was very probable that I had beaten about for many hours and had been
obliged to return nearly to the same spot from which I had departed.
Besides, they observed that it appeared that I had brought the body
from another place, and it was likely that as I did not appear to know
the shore, I might have put into the harbour ignorant of the distance
of the town of —— from the place where I had deposited the corpse.

Mr. Kirwin, on hearing this evidence, desired that I should be taken into
the room where the body lay for interment, that it might be observed what
effect the sight of it would produce upon me. This idea was probably
suggested by the extreme agitation I had exhibited when the mode of the
murder had been described. I was accordingly conducted, by the magistrate
and several other persons, to the inn. I could not help being struck by the
strange coincidences that had taken place during this eventful night; but,
knowing that I had been conversing with several persons in the island I had
inhabited about the time that the body had been found, I was perfectly
tranquil as to the consequences of the affair.

I entered the room where the corpse lay and was led up to the coffin. How
can I describe my sensations on beholding it? I feel yet parched with
horror, nor can I reflect on that terrible moment without shuddering and
agony. The examination, the presence of the magistrate and witnesses,
passed like a dream from my memory when I saw the lifeless form of Henry
Clerval stretched before me. I gasped for breath, and throwing myself on
the body, I exclaimed, “Have my murderous machinations deprived you
also, my dearest Henry, of life? Two I have already destroyed; other
victims await their destiny; but you, Clerval, my friend, my
benefactor—”

The human frame could no longer support the agonies that I endured, and
I was carried out of the room in strong convulsions.

A fever succeeded to this. I lay for two months on the point of death; my
ravings, as I afterwards heard, were frightful; I called myself the
murderer of William, of Justine, and of Clerval. Sometimes I entreated my
attendants to assist me in the destruction of the fiend by whom I was
tormented; and at others I felt the fingers of the monster already grasping
my neck, and screamed aloud with agony and terror. Fortunately, as I spoke
my native language, Mr. Kirwin alone understood me; but my gestures and
bitter cries were sufficient to affright the other witnesses.

Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not
sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming
children, the only hopes of their doting parents; how many brides and
youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the
next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials was I
made that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of
the wheel, continually renewed the torture?

But I was doomed to live and in two months found myself as awaking from
a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed, surrounded by
gaolers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon.
It was morning, I remember, when I thus awoke to understanding; I had
forgotten the particulars of what had happened and only felt as if some
great misfortune had suddenly overwhelmed me; but when I looked around
and saw the barred windows and the squalidness of the room in which I
was, all flashed across my memory and I groaned bitterly.

This sound disturbed an old woman who was sleeping in a chair beside
me. She was a hired nurse, the wife of one of the turnkeys, and her
countenance expressed all those bad qualities which often characterise
that class. The lines of her face were hard and rude, like that of
persons accustomed to see without sympathising in sights of misery. Her
tone expressed her entire indifference; she addressed me in English,
and the voice struck me as one that I had heard during my sufferings.

“Are you better now, sir?” said she.

I replied in the same language, with a feeble voice, “I believe I am;
but if it be all true, if indeed I did not dream, I am sorry that I am
still alive to feel this misery and horror.”

“For that matter,” replied the old woman, “if you mean about the
gentleman you murdered, I believe that it were better for you if you
were dead, for I fancy it will go hard with you! However, that’s none
of my business; I am sent to nurse you and get you well; I do my duty
with a safe conscience; it were well if everybody did the same.”

I turned with loathing from the woman who could utter so unfeeling a
speech to a person just saved, on the very edge of death; but I felt
languid and unable to reflect on all that had passed. The whole series
of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it
were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force
of reality.

As the images that floated before me became more distinct, I grew
feverish; a darkness pressed around me; no one was near me who soothed
me with the gentle voice of love; no dear hand supported me. The
physician came and prescribed medicines, and the old woman prepared
them for me; but utter carelessness was visible in the first, and the
expression of brutality was strongly marked in the visage of the
second. Who could be interested in the fate of a murderer but the
hangman who would gain his fee?

These were my first reflections, but I soon learned that Mr. Kirwin had
shown me extreme kindness. He had caused the best room in the prison
to be prepared for me (wretched indeed was the best); and it was he who
had provided a physician and a nurse. It is true, he seldom came to
see me, for although he ardently desired to relieve the sufferings of
every human creature, he did not wish to be present at the agonies and
miserable ravings of a murderer. He came, therefore, sometimes to see
that I was not neglected, but his visits were short and with long
intervals.

One day, while I was gradually recovering, I was seated in a chair, my eyes
half open and my cheeks livid like those in death. I was overcome by gloom
and misery and often reflected I had better seek death than desire to
remain in a world which to me was replete with wretchedness. At one time I
considered whether I should not declare myself guilty and suffer the
penalty of the law, less innocent than poor Justine had been. Such were my
thoughts when the door of my apartment was opened and Mr. Kirwin entered.
His countenance expressed sympathy and compassion; he drew a chair close to
mine and addressed me in French,

“I fear that this place is very shocking to you; can I do anything to
make you more comfortable?”

“I thank you, but all that you mention is nothing to me; on the whole
earth there is no comfort which I am capable of receiving.”

“I know that the sympathy of a stranger can be but of little relief to
one borne down as you are by so strange a misfortune. But you will, I
hope, soon quit this melancholy abode, for doubtless evidence can
easily be brought to free you from the criminal charge.”

“That is my least concern; I am, by a course of strange events, become
the most miserable of mortals. Persecuted and tortured as I am and
have been, can death be any evil to me?”

“Nothing indeed could be more unfortunate and agonising than the
strange chances that have lately occurred. You were thrown, by some
surprising accident, on this shore, renowned for its hospitality,
seized immediately, and charged with murder. The first sight that was
presented to your eyes was the body of your friend, murdered in so
unaccountable a manner and placed, as it were, by some fiend across
your path.”

As Mr. Kirwin said this, notwithstanding the agitation I endured on
this retrospect of my sufferings, I also felt considerable surprise at
the knowledge he seemed to possess concerning me. I suppose some
astonishment was exhibited in my countenance, for Mr. Kirwin hastened
to say,

“Immediately upon your being taken ill, all the papers that were on
your person were brought me, and I examined them that I might discover some
trace by which I could send to your relations an account of your misfortune
and illness. I found several letters, and, among others, one which I
discovered from its commencement to be from your father. I instantly wrote
to Geneva; nearly two months have elapsed since the departure of my letter.
But you are ill; even now you tremble; you are unfit for agitation of any
kind.”

“This suspense is a thousand times worse than the most horrible event;
tell me what new scene of death has been acted, and whose murder I am
now to lament?”

“Your family is perfectly well,” said Mr. Kirwin with
gentleness; “and someone, a friend, is come to visit you.”

I know not by what chain of thought the idea presented itself, but it
instantly darted into my mind that the murderer had come to mock at my
misery and taunt me with the death of Clerval, as a new incitement for
me to comply with his hellish desires. I put my hand before my eyes,
and cried out in agony,

“Oh! Take him away! I cannot see him; for God’s sake, do not
let him enter!”

Mr. Kirwin regarded me with a troubled countenance. He could not help
regarding my exclamation as a presumption of my guilt and said in
rather a severe tone,

“I should have thought, young man, that the presence of your father
would have been welcome instead of inspiring such violent repugnance.”

“My father!” cried I, while every feature and every muscle was relaxed
from anguish to pleasure. “Is my father indeed come? How kind, how
very kind! But where is he, why does he not hasten to me?”

My change of manner surprised and pleased the magistrate; perhaps he
thought that my former exclamation was a momentary return of delirium,
and now he instantly resumed his former benevolence. He rose and
quitted the room with my nurse, and in a moment my father entered it.

Nothing, at this moment, could have given me greater pleasure than the
arrival of my father. I stretched out my hand to him and cried,

“Are you then safe—and Elizabeth—and Ernest?”

My father calmed me with assurances of their welfare and endeavoured, by
dwelling on these subjects so interesting to my heart, to raise my
desponding spirits; but he soon felt that a prison cannot be the abode of
cheerfulness. “What a place is this that you inhabit, my son!”
said he, looking mournfully at the barred windows and wretched appearance
of the room. “You travelled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems
to pursue you. And poor Clerval—”

The name of my unfortunate and murdered friend was an agitation too
great to be endured in my weak state; I shed tears.

“Alas! Yes, my father,” replied I; “some destiny of the
most horrible kind hangs over me, and I must live to fulfil it, or surely I
should have died on the coffin of Henry.”

We were not allowed to converse for any length of time, for the
precarious state of my health rendered every precaution necessary that
could ensure tranquillity. Mr. Kirwin came in and insisted that my
strength should not be exhausted by too much exertion. But the
appearance of my father was to me like that of my good angel, and I
gradually recovered my health.

As my sickness quitted me, I was absorbed by a gloomy and black
melancholy that nothing could dissipate. The image of Clerval was
for ever before me, ghastly and murdered. More than once the agitation
into which these reflections threw me made my friends dread a dangerous
relapse. Alas! Why did they preserve so miserable and detested a
life? It was surely that I might fulfil my destiny, which is now
drawing to a close. Soon, oh, very soon, will death extinguish these
throbbings and relieve me from the mighty weight of anguish that bears
me to the dust; and, in executing the award of justice, I shall also
sink to rest. Then the appearance of death was distant, although the
wish was ever present to my thoughts; and I often sat for hours
motionless and speechless, wishing for some mighty revolution that
might bury me and my destroyer in its ruins.

The season of the assizes approached. I had already been three months
in prison, and although I was still weak and in continual danger of a
relapse, I was obliged to travel nearly a hundred miles to the country
town where the court was held. Mr. Kirwin charged himself with every
care of collecting witnesses and arranging my defence. I was spared
the disgrace of appearing publicly as a criminal, as the case was not
brought before the court that decides on life and death. The grand
jury rejected the bill, on its being proved that I was on the Orkney
Islands at the hour the body of my friend was found; and a fortnight
after my removal I was liberated from prison.

My father was enraptured on finding me freed from the vexations of a
criminal charge, that I was again allowed to breathe the fresh
atmosphere and permitted to return to my native country. I did not
participate in these feelings, for to me the walls of a dungeon or a
palace were alike hateful. The cup of life was poisoned for ever, and
although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I
saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by
no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me. Sometimes
they were the expressive eyes of Henry, languishing in death, the dark
orbs nearly covered by the lids and the long black lashes that fringed
them; sometimes it was the watery, clouded eyes of the monster, as I
first saw them in my chamber at Ingolstadt.

My father tried to awaken in me the feelings of affection. He talked
of Geneva, which I should soon visit, of Elizabeth and Ernest; but
these words only drew deep groans from me. Sometimes, indeed, I felt a
wish for happiness and thought with melancholy delight of my beloved
cousin or longed, with a devouring _maladie du pays_, to see once more
the blue lake and rapid Rhone, that had been so dear to me in early
childhood; but my general state of feeling was a torpor in which a
prison was as welcome a residence as the divinest scene in nature; and
these fits were seldom interrupted but by paroxysms of anguish and
despair. At these moments I often endeavoured to put an end to the
existence I loathed, and it required unceasing attendance and vigilance
to restrain me from committing some dreadful act of violence.

Yet one duty remained to me, the recollection of which finally
triumphed over my selfish despair. It was necessary that I should
return without delay to Geneva, there to watch over the lives of those
I so fondly loved and to lie in wait for the murderer, that if any
chance led me to the place of his concealment, or if he dared again to
blast me by his presence, I might, with unfailing aim, put an end to
the existence of the monstrous image which I had endued with the
mockery of a soul still more monstrous. My father still desired to
delay our departure, fearful that I could not sustain the fatigues of a
journey, for I was a shattered wreck—the shadow of a human being. My
strength was gone. I was a mere skeleton, and fever night and day
preyed upon my wasted frame.

Still, as I urged our leaving Ireland with such inquietude and impatience,
my father thought it best to yield. We took our passage on board a vessel
bound for Havre-de-Grace and sailed with a fair wind from the Irish shores.
It was midnight. I lay on the deck looking at the stars and listening to
the dashing of the waves. I hailed the darkness that shut Ireland from my
sight, and my pulse beat with a feverish joy when I reflected that I should
soon see Geneva. The past appeared to me in the light of a frightful dream;
yet the vessel in which I was, the wind that blew me from the detested
shore of Ireland, and the sea which surrounded me, told me too forcibly
that I was deceived by no vision and that Clerval, my friend and dearest
companion, had fallen a victim to me and the monster of my creation. I
repassed, in my memory, my whole life; my quiet happiness while residing
with my family in Geneva, the death of my mother, and my departure for
Ingolstadt. I remembered, shuddering, the mad enthusiasm that hurried me on
to the creation of my hideous enemy, and I called to mind the night in
which he first lived. I was unable to pursue the train of thought; a
thousand feelings pressed upon me, and I wept bitterly.

Ever since my recovery from the fever, I had been in the custom of taking
every night a small quantity of laudanum, for it was by means of this drug
only that I was enabled to gain the rest necessary for the preservation of
life. Oppressed by the recollection of my various misfortunes, I now
swallowed double my usual quantity and soon slept profoundly. But sleep did
not afford me respite from thought and misery; my dreams presented a
thousand objects that scared me. Towards morning I was possessed by a kind
of nightmare; I felt the fiend’s grasp in my neck and could not free
myself from it; groans and cries rang in my ears. My father, who was
watching over me, perceiving my restlessness, awoke me; the dashing waves
were around, the cloudy sky above, the fiend was not here: a sense of
security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour
and the irresistible, disastrous future imparted to me a kind of calm
forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly
susceptible.




Chapter 22


The voyage came to an end. We landed, and proceeded to Paris. I soon
found that I had overtaxed my strength and that I must repose before I
could continue my journey. My father’s care and attentions were
indefatigable, but he did not know the origin of my sufferings and
sought erroneous methods to remedy the incurable ill. He wished me to
seek amusement in society. I abhorred the face of man. Oh, not
abhorred! They were my brethren, my fellow beings, and I felt
attracted even to the most repulsive among them, as to creatures of an
angelic nature and celestial mechanism. But I felt that I had no right
to share their intercourse. I had unchained an enemy among them whose
joy it was to shed their blood and to revel in their groans. How they
would, each and all, abhor me and hunt me from the world, did they know
my unhallowed acts and the crimes which had their source in me!

My father yielded at length to my desire to avoid society and strove by
various arguments to banish my despair. Sometimes he thought that I
felt deeply the degradation of being obliged to answer a charge of
murder, and he endeavoured to prove to me the futility of pride.

“Alas! My father,” said I, “how little do you know me.
Human beings, their feelings and passions, would indeed be degraded if such
a wretch as I felt pride. Justine, poor unhappy Justine, was as innocent
as I, and she suffered the same charge; she died for it; and I am the cause
of this—I murdered her. William, Justine, and Henry—they all
died by my hands.”

My father had often, during my imprisonment, heard me make the same
assertion; when I thus accused myself, he sometimes seemed to desire an
explanation, and at others he appeared to consider it as the offspring of
delirium, and that, during my illness, some idea of this kind had presented
itself to my imagination, the remembrance of which I preserved in my
convalescence. I avoided explanation and maintained a continual silence
concerning the wretch I had created. I had a persuasion that I should be
supposed mad, and this in itself would for ever have chained my tongue. But,
besides, I could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my
hearer with consternation and make fear and unnatural horror the inmates of
his breast. I checked, therefore, my impatient thirst for sympathy and was
silent when I would have given the world to have confided the fatal secret.
Yet, still, words like those I have recorded would burst uncontrollably
from me. I could offer no explanation of them, but their truth in part
relieved the burden of my mysterious woe.

Upon this occasion my father said, with an expression of unbounded wonder,
“My dearest Victor, what infatuation is this? My dear son, I entreat
you never to make such an assertion again.”

“I am not mad,” I cried energetically; “the sun and the heavens, who
have viewed my operations, can bear witness of my truth. I am the
assassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my machinations.
A thousand times would I have shed my own blood, drop by drop, to have
saved their lives; but I could not, my father, indeed I could not
sacrifice the whole human race.”

The conclusion of this speech convinced my father that my ideas were
deranged, and he instantly changed the subject of our conversation and
endeavoured to alter the course of my thoughts. He wished as much as
possible to obliterate the memory of the scenes that had taken place in
Ireland and never alluded to them or suffered me to speak of my
misfortunes.

As time passed away I became more calm; misery had her dwelling in my
heart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own
crimes; sufficient for me was the consciousness of them. By the utmost
self-violence I curbed the imperious voice of wretchedness, which
sometimes desired to declare itself to the whole world, and my manners
were calmer and more composed than they had ever been since my journey
to the sea of ice.

A few days before we left Paris on our way to Switzerland, I received the
following letter from Elizabeth:

“My dear Friend,

“It gave me the greatest pleasure to receive a letter from my uncle
dated at Paris; you are no longer at a formidable distance, and I may
hope to see you in less than a fortnight. My poor cousin, how much you
must have suffered! I expect to see you looking even more ill than
when you quitted Geneva. This winter has been passed most miserably,
tortured as I have been by anxious suspense; yet I hope to see peace in
your countenance and to find that your heart is not totally void of
comfort and tranquillity.

“Yet I fear that the same feelings now exist that made you so miserable
a year ago, even perhaps augmented by time. I would not disturb you at
this period, when so many misfortunes weigh upon you, but a
conversation that I had with my uncle previous to his departure renders
some explanation necessary before we meet.

Explanation! You may possibly say, What can Elizabeth have to explain? If
you really say this, my questions are answered and all my doubts satisfied.
But you are distant from me, and it is possible that you may dread and yet
be pleased with this explanation; and in a probability of this being the
case, I dare not any longer postpone writing what, during your absence, I
have often wished to express to you but have never had the courage to begin.

“You well know, Victor, that our union had been the favourite plan of
your parents ever since our infancy. We were told this when young, and
taught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take
place. We were affectionate playfellows during childhood, and, I
believe, dear and valued friends to one another as we grew older. But
as brother and sister often entertain a lively affection towards each
other without desiring a more intimate union, may not such also be our
case? Tell me, dearest Victor. Answer me, I conjure you by our mutual
happiness, with simple truth—Do you not love another?

“You have travelled; you have spent several years of your life at
Ingolstadt; and I confess to you, my friend, that when I saw you last
autumn so unhappy, flying to solitude from the society of every
creature, I could not help supposing that you might regret our
connection and believe yourself bound in honour to fulfil the wishes of
your parents, although they opposed themselves to your inclinations.
But this is false reasoning. I confess to you, my friend, that I love
you and that in my airy dreams of futurity you have been my constant
friend and companion. But it is your happiness I desire as well as my
own when I declare to you that our marriage would render me eternally
miserable unless it were the dictate of your own free choice. Even now
I weep to think that, borne down as you are by the cruellest
misfortunes, you may stifle, by the word _honour_, all hope of that
love and happiness which would alone restore you to yourself. I, who
have so disinterested an affection for you, may increase your miseries
tenfold by being an obstacle to your wishes. Ah! Victor, be assured
that your cousin and playmate has too sincere a love for you not to be
made miserable by this supposition. Be happy, my friend; and if you
obey me in this one request, remain satisfied that nothing on earth
will have the power to interrupt my tranquillity.

“Do not let this letter disturb you; do not answer tomorrow, or the
next day, or even until you come, if it will give you pain. My uncle
will send me news of your health, and if I see but one smile on your
lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I
shall need no other happiness.

“Elizabeth Lavenza.



“Geneva, May 18th, 17—”



This letter revived in my memory what I had before forgotten, the threat of
the fiend—“_I will be with you on your
wedding-night!_” Such was my sentence, and on that night would the
dæmon employ every art to destroy me and tear me from the glimpse of
happiness which promised partly to console my sufferings. On that night he
had determined to consummate his crimes by my death. Well, be it so; a
deadly struggle would then assuredly take place, in which if he were
victorious I should be at peace and his power over me be at an end. If he
were vanquished, I should be a free man. Alas! What freedom? Such as the
peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his
cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless,
penniless, and alone, but free. Such would be my liberty except that in my
Elizabeth I possessed a treasure, alas, balanced by those horrors of
remorse and guilt which would pursue me until death.

Sweet and beloved Elizabeth! I read and reread her letter, and some
softened feelings stole into my heart and dared to whisper paradisiacal
dreams of love and joy; but the apple was already eaten, and the
angel’s arm bared to drive me from all hope. Yet I would die to make
her happy. If the monster executed his threat, death was inevitable; yet,
again, I considered whether my marriage would hasten my fate. My
destruction might indeed arrive a few months sooner, but if my torturer
should suspect that I postponed it, influenced by his menaces, he would
surely find other and perhaps more dreadful means of revenge. He had vowed
_to be with me on my wedding-night_, yet he did not consider that
threat as binding him to peace in the meantime, for as if to show me that
he was not yet satiated with blood, he had murdered Clerval immediately
after the enunciation of his threats. I resolved, therefore, that if my
immediate union with my cousin would conduce either to hers or my
father’s happiness, my adversary’s designs against my life
should not retard it a single hour.

In this state of mind I wrote to Elizabeth. My letter was calm and
affectionate. “I fear, my beloved girl,” I said, “little happiness
remains for us on earth; yet all that I may one day enjoy is centred in
you. Chase away your idle fears; to you alone do I consecrate my life
and my endeavours for contentment. I have one secret, Elizabeth, a
dreadful one; when revealed to you, it will chill your frame with
horror, and then, far from being surprised at my misery, you will only
wonder that I survive what I have endured. I will confide this tale of
misery and terror to you the day after our marriage shall take place,
for, my sweet cousin, there must be perfect confidence between us. But
until then, I conjure you, do not mention or allude to it. This I most
earnestly entreat, and I know you will comply.”

In about a week after the arrival of Elizabeth’s letter we returned
to Geneva. The sweet girl welcomed me with warm affection, yet tears were
in her eyes as she beheld my emaciated frame and feverish cheeks. I saw a
change in her also. She was thinner and had lost much of that heavenly
vivacity that had before charmed me; but her gentleness and soft looks of
compassion made her a more fit companion for one blasted and miserable as I
was.

The tranquillity which I now enjoyed did not endure. Memory brought madness
with it, and when I thought of what had passed, a real insanity possessed
me; sometimes I was furious and burnt with rage, sometimes low and
despondent. I neither spoke nor looked at anyone, but sat motionless,
bewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me.

Elizabeth alone had the power to draw me from these fits; her gentle voice
would soothe me when transported by passion and inspire me with human
feelings when sunk in torpor. She wept with me and for me. When reason
returned, she would remonstrate and endeavour to inspire me with
resignation. Ah! It is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the
guilty there is no peace. The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is
otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief.

Soon after my arrival my father spoke of my immediate marriage with
Elizabeth. I remained silent.

“Have you, then, some other attachment?”

“None on earth. I love Elizabeth and look forward to our union with
delight. Let the day therefore be fixed; and on it I will consecrate
myself, in life or death, to the happiness of my cousin.”

“My dear Victor, do not speak thus. Heavy misfortunes have befallen
us, but let us only cling closer to what remains and transfer our love
for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be
small but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune.
And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of
care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly
deprived.”

Such were the lessons of my father. But to me the remembrance of the
threat returned; nor can you wonder that, omnipotent as the fiend had
yet been in his deeds of blood, I should almost regard him as
invincible, and that when he had pronounced the words “_I shall be with
you on your wedding-night_,” I should regard the threatened fate as
unavoidable. But death was no evil to me if the loss of Elizabeth were
balanced with it, and I therefore, with a contented and even cheerful
countenance, agreed with my father that if my cousin would consent, the
ceremony should take place in ten days, and thus put, as I imagined,
the seal to my fate.

Great God! If for one instant I had thought what might be the hellish
intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself
for ever from my native country and wandered a friendless outcast over
the earth than have consented to this miserable marriage. But, as if
possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real
intentions; and when I thought that I had prepared only my own death, I
hastened that of a far dearer victim.

As the period fixed for our marriage drew nearer, whether from cowardice or
a prophetic feeling, I felt my heart sink within me. But I concealed my
feelings by an appearance of hilarity that brought smiles and joy to the
countenance of my father, but hardly deceived the ever-watchful and nicer
eye of Elizabeth. She looked forward to our union with placid contentment,
not unmingled with a little fear, which past misfortunes had impressed,
that what now appeared certain and tangible happiness might soon dissipate
into an airy dream and leave no trace but deep and everlasting regret.

Preparations were made for the event, congratulatory visits were received,
and all wore a smiling appearance. I shut up, as well as I could, in my own
heart the anxiety that preyed there and entered with seeming earnestness
into the plans of my father, although they might only serve as the
decorations of my tragedy. Through my father’s exertions a part of
the inheritance of Elizabeth had been restored to her by the Austrian
government. A small possession on the shores of Como belonged to her. It
was agreed that, immediately after our union, we should proceed to Villa
Lavenza and spend our first days of happiness beside the beautiful lake
near which it stood.

In the meantime I took every precaution to defend my person in case the
fiend should openly attack me. I carried pistols and a dagger
constantly about me and was ever on the watch to prevent artifice, and
by these means gained a greater degree of tranquillity. Indeed, as the
period approached, the threat appeared more as a delusion, not to be
regarded as worthy to disturb my peace, while the happiness I hoped for
in my marriage wore a greater appearance of certainty as the day fixed
for its solemnisation drew nearer and I heard it continually spoken of
as an occurrence which no accident could possibly prevent.

Elizabeth seemed happy; my tranquil demeanour contributed greatly to
calm her mind. But on the day that was to fulfil my wishes and my
destiny, she was melancholy, and a presentiment of evil pervaded her;
and perhaps also she thought of the dreadful secret which I had
promised to reveal to her on the following day. My father was in the
meantime overjoyed, and, in the bustle of preparation, only recognised in
the melancholy of his niece the diffidence of a bride.

After the ceremony was performed a large party assembled at my
father’s, but it was agreed that Elizabeth and I should commence our
journey by water, sleeping that night at Evian and continuing our
voyage on the following day. The day was fair, the wind favourable;
all smiled on our nuptial embarkation.

Those were the last moments of my life during which I enjoyed the
feeling of happiness. We passed rapidly along; the sun was hot, but we
were sheltered from its rays by a kind of canopy while we enjoyed the
beauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw
Mont Salêve, the pleasant banks of Montalègre, and at a distance,
surmounting all, the beautiful Mont Blanc, and the assemblage of snowy
mountains that in vain endeavour to emulate her; sometimes coasting the
opposite banks, we saw the mighty Jura opposing its dark side to the
ambition that would quit its native country, and an almost
insurmountable barrier to the invader who should wish to enslave it.

I took the hand of Elizabeth. “You are sorrowful, my love. Ah! If
you knew what I have suffered and what I may yet endure, you would
endeavour to let me taste the quiet and freedom from despair that this
one day at least permits me to enjoy.”

“Be happy, my dear Victor,” replied Elizabeth; “there is, I hope,
nothing to distress you; and be assured that if a lively joy is not
painted in my face, my heart is contented. Something whispers to me
not to depend too much on the prospect that is opened before us, but I
will not listen to such a sinister voice. Observe how fast we move
along and how the clouds, which sometimes obscure and sometimes rise
above the dome of Mont Blanc, render this scene of beauty still more
interesting. Look also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in
the clear waters, where we can distinguish every pebble that lies at
the bottom. What a divine day! How happy and serene all nature
appears!”

Thus Elizabeth endeavoured to divert her thoughts and mine from all
reflection upon melancholy subjects. But her temper was fluctuating;
joy for a few instants shone in her eyes, but it continually gave place
to distraction and reverie.

The sun sank lower in the heavens; we passed the river Drance and
observed its path through the chasms of the higher and the glens of the
lower hills. The Alps here come closer to the lake, and we approached
the amphitheatre of mountains which forms its eastern boundary. The
spire of Evian shone under the woods that surrounded it and the range
of mountain above mountain by which it was overhung.

The wind, which had hitherto carried us along with amazing rapidity,
sank at sunset to a light breeze; the soft air just ruffled the water
and caused a pleasant motion among the trees as we approached the
shore, from which it wafted the most delightful scent of flowers and
hay. The sun sank beneath the horizon as we landed, and as I touched
the shore I felt those cares and fears revive which soon were to clasp
me and cling to me for ever.




Chapter 23


It was eight o’clock when we landed; we walked for a short time on the
shore, enjoying the transitory light, and then retired to the inn and
contemplated the lovely scene of waters, woods, and mountains, obscured
in darkness, yet still displaying their black outlines.

The wind, which had fallen in the south, now rose with great violence
in the west. The moon had reached her summit in the heavens and was
beginning to descend; the clouds swept across it swifter than the
flight of the vulture and dimmed her rays, while the lake reflected the
scene of the busy heavens, rendered still busier by the restless waves
that were beginning to rise. Suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended.

I had been calm during the day, but so soon as night obscured the
shapes of objects, a thousand fears arose in my mind. I was anxious
and watchful, while my right hand grasped a pistol which was hidden in
my bosom; every sound terrified me, but I resolved that I would sell my
life dearly and not shrink from the conflict until my own life or that
of my adversary was extinguished.

Elizabeth observed my agitation for some time in timid and fearful silence,
but there was something in my glance which communicated terror to her, and
trembling, she asked, “What is it that agitates you, my dear Victor?
What is it you fear?”

“Oh! Peace, peace, my love,” replied I; “this night, and
all will be safe; but this night is dreadful, very dreadful.”

I passed an hour in this state of mind, when suddenly I reflected how
fearful the combat which I momentarily expected would be to my wife,
and I earnestly entreated her to retire, resolving not to join her
until I had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy.

She left me, and I continued some time walking up and down the passages
of the house and inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to
my adversary. But I discovered no trace of him and was beginning to
conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the
execution of his menaces when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful
scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired. As I
heard it, the whole truth rushed into my mind, my arms dropped, the
motion of every muscle and fibre was suspended; I could feel the blood
trickling in my veins and tingling in the extremities of my limbs. This
state lasted but for an instant; the scream was repeated, and I rushed
into the room.

Great God! Why did I not then expire! Why am I here to relate the
destruction of the best hope and the purest creature on earth? She was
there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down
and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair. Everywhere I
turn I see the same figure—her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung
by the murderer on its bridal bier. Could I behold this and live? Alas!
Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. For a moment
only did I lose recollection; I fell senseless on the ground.

When I recovered I found myself surrounded by the people of the inn; their
countenances expressed a breathless terror, but the horror of others
appeared only as a mockery, a shadow of the feelings that oppressed me. I
escaped from them to the room where lay the body of Elizabeth, my love, my
wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy. She had been moved from the
posture in which I had first beheld her, and now, as she lay, her head upon
her arm and a handkerchief thrown across her face and neck, I might have
supposed her asleep. I rushed towards her and embraced her with ardour, but
the deadly languor and coldness of the limbs told me that what I now held
in my arms had ceased to be the Elizabeth whom I had loved and cherished.
The murderous mark of the fiend’s grasp was on her neck, and the
breath had ceased to issue from her lips.

While I still hung over her in the agony of despair, I happened to look up.
The windows of the room had before been darkened, and I felt a kind of
panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the chamber.
The shutters had been thrown back, and with a sensation of horror not to be
described, I saw at the open window a figure the most hideous and abhorred.
A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer, as with his
fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife. I rushed towards
the window, and drawing a pistol from my bosom, fired; but he eluded me,
leaped from his station, and running with the swiftness of lightning,
plunged into the lake.

The report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room. I pointed to
the spot where he had disappeared, and we followed the track with
boats; nets were cast, but in vain. After passing several hours, we
returned hopeless, most of my companions believing it to have been a
form conjured up by my fancy. After having landed, they proceeded to
search the country, parties going in different directions among the
woods and vines.

I attempted to accompany them and proceeded a short distance from the
house, but my head whirled round, my steps were like those of a drunken
man, I fell at last in a state of utter exhaustion; a film covered my
eyes, and my skin was parched with the heat of fever. In this state I
was carried back and placed on a bed, hardly conscious of what had
happened; my eyes wandered round the room as if to seek something that
I had lost.

After an interval I arose, and as if by instinct, crawled into the room
where the corpse of my beloved lay. There were women weeping around; I
hung over it and joined my sad tears to theirs; all this time no
distinct idea presented itself to my mind, but my thoughts rambled to
various subjects, reflecting confusedly on my misfortunes and their
cause. I was bewildered, in a cloud of wonder and horror. The death
of William, the execution of Justine, the murder of Clerval, and lastly
of my wife; even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining
friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend; my father even now
might be writhing under his grasp, and Ernest might be dead at his
feet. This idea made me shudder and recalled me to action. I started
up and resolved to return to Geneva with all possible speed.

There were no horses to be procured, and I must return by the lake; but the
wind was unfavourable, and the rain fell in torrents. However, it was
hardly morning, and I might reasonably hope to arrive by night. I hired men
to row and took an oar myself, for I had always experienced relief from
mental torment in bodily exercise. But the overflowing misery I now felt,
and the excess of agitation that I endured rendered me incapable of any
exertion. I threw down the oar, and leaning my head upon my hands, gave way
to every gloomy idea that arose. If I looked up, I saw scenes which were
familiar to me in my happier time and which I had contemplated but the day
before in the company of her who was now but a shadow and a recollection.
Tears streamed from my eyes. The rain had ceased for a moment, and I saw
the fish play in the waters as they had done a few hours before; they had
then been observed by Elizabeth. Nothing is so painful to the human mind as
a great and sudden change. The sun might shine or the clouds might lower,
but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had
snatched from me every hope of future happiness; no creature had ever been
so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the history of
man.

But why should I dwell upon the incidents that followed this last
overwhelming event? Mine has been a tale of horrors; I have reached their
_acme_, and what I must now relate can but be tedious to you. Know
that, one by one, my friends were snatched away; I was left desolate. My
own strength is exhausted, and I must tell, in a few words, what remains of
my hideous narration.

I arrived at Geneva. My father and Ernest yet lived, but the former sunk
under the tidings that I bore. I see him now, excellent and venerable old
man! His eyes wandered in vacancy, for they had lost their charm and their
delight—his Elizabeth, his more than daughter, whom he doted on with
all that affection which a man feels, who in the decline of life, having
few affections, clings more earnestly to those that remain. Cursed, cursed
be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs and doomed him to waste
in wretchedness! He could not live under the horrors that were accumulated
around him; the springs of existence suddenly gave way; he was unable to
rise from his bed, and in a few days he died in my arms.

What then became of me? I know not; I lost sensation, and chains and
darkness were the only objects that pressed upon me. Sometimes,
indeed, I dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales
with the friends of my youth, but I awoke and found myself in a
dungeon. Melancholy followed, but by degrees I gained a clear
conception of my miseries and situation and was then released from my
prison. For they had called me mad, and during many months, as I
understood, a solitary cell had been my habitation.

Liberty, however, had been a useless gift to me, had I not, as I
awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge. As the
memory of past misfortunes pressed upon me, I began to reflect on their
cause—the monster whom I had created, the miserable dæmon whom I had
sent abroad into the world for my destruction. I was possessed by a
maddening rage when I thought of him, and desired and ardently prayed
that I might have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal
revenge on his cursed head.

Nor did my hate long confine itself to useless wishes; I began to
reflect on the best means of securing him; and for this purpose, about
a month after my release, I repaired to a criminal judge in the town
and told him that I had an accusation to make, that I knew the
destroyer of my family, and that I required him to exert his whole
authority for the apprehension of the murderer.

The magistrate listened to me with attention and kindness. “Be
assured, sir,” said he, “no pains or exertions on my part shall
be spared to discover the villain.”

“I thank you,” replied I; “listen, therefore, to the
deposition that I have to make. It is indeed a tale so strange that I
should fear you would not credit it were there not something in truth
which, however wonderful, forces conviction. The story is too connected to
be mistaken for a dream, and I have no motive for falsehood.” My
manner as I thus addressed him was impressive but calm; I had formed in my
own heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death, and this purpose
quieted my agony and for an interval reconciled me to life. I now related
my history briefly but with firmness and precision, marking the dates with
accuracy and never deviating into invective or exclamation.

The magistrate appeared at first perfectly incredulous, but as I continued
he became more attentive and interested; I saw him sometimes shudder with
horror; at others a lively surprise, unmingled with disbelief, was painted
on his countenance.

When I had concluded my narration, I said, “This is the being whom I
accuse and for whose seizure and punishment I call upon you to exert your
whole power. It is your duty as a magistrate, and I believe and hope that
your feelings as a man will not revolt from the execution of those
functions on this occasion.”

This address caused a considerable change in the physiognomy of my own
auditor. He had heard my story with that half kind of belief that is given
to a tale of spirits and supernatural events; but when he was called upon
to act officially in consequence, the whole tide of his incredulity
returned. He, however, answered mildly, “I would willingly afford you
every aid in your pursuit, but the creature of whom you speak appears to
have powers which would put all my exertions to defiance. Who can follow an
animal which can traverse the sea of ice and inhabit caves and dens where
no man would venture to intrude? Besides, some months have elapsed since
the commission of his crimes, and no one can conjecture to what place he
has wandered or what region he may now inhabit.”

“I do not doubt that he hovers near the spot which I inhabit, and if
he has indeed taken refuge in the Alps, he may be hunted like the chamois
and destroyed as a beast of prey. But I perceive your thoughts; you do not
credit my narrative and do not intend to pursue my enemy with the
punishment which is his desert.”

As I spoke, rage sparkled in my eyes; the magistrate was intimidated.
“You are mistaken,” said he. “I will exert myself, and if
it is in my power to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer
punishment proportionate to his crimes. But I fear, from what you have
yourself described to be his properties, that this will prove
impracticable; and thus, while every proper measure is pursued, you should
make up your mind to disappointment.”

“That cannot be; but all that I can say will be of little avail. My
revenge is of no moment to you; yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I
confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. My rage
is unspeakable when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned
loose upon society, still exists. You refuse my just demand; I have
but one resource, and I devote myself, either in my life or death, to
his destruction.”

I trembled with excess of agitation as I said this; there was a frenzy
in my manner, and something, I doubt not, of that haughty fierceness
which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. But to a Genevan
magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of
devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of
madness. He endeavoured to soothe me as a nurse does a child and
reverted to my tale as the effects of delirium.

“Man,” I cried, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride of
wisdom! Cease; you know not what it is you say.”

I broke from the house angry and disturbed and retired to meditate on
some other mode of action.




Chapter 24


My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was
swallowed up and lost. I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone
endowed me with strength and composure; it moulded my feelings and
allowed me to be calculating and calm at periods when otherwise
delirium or death would have been my portion.

My first resolution was to quit Geneva for ever; my country, which, when I
was happy and beloved, was dear to me, now, in my adversity, became
hateful. I provided myself with a sum of money, together with a few jewels
which had belonged to my mother, and departed.

And now my wanderings began which are to cease but with life. I have
traversed a vast portion of the earth and have endured all the hardships
which travellers in deserts and barbarous countries are wont to meet. How I
have lived I hardly know; many times have I stretched my failing limbs upon
the sandy plain and prayed for death. But revenge kept me alive; I dared
not die and leave my adversary in being.

When I quitted Geneva my first labour was to gain some clue by which I
might trace the steps of my fiendish enemy. But my plan was unsettled,
and I wandered many hours round the confines of the town, uncertain
what path I should pursue. As night approached I found myself at the
entrance of the cemetery where William, Elizabeth, and my father
reposed. I entered it and approached the tomb which marked their
graves. Everything was silent except the leaves of the trees, which
were gently agitated by the wind; the night was nearly dark, and the
scene would have been solemn and affecting even to an uninterested
observer. The spirits of the departed seemed to flit around and to
cast a shadow, which was felt but not seen, around the head of the
mourner.

The deep grief which this scene had at first excited quickly gave way to
rage and despair. They were dead, and I lived; their murderer also lived,
and to destroy him I must drag out my weary existence. I knelt on the grass
and kissed the earth and with quivering lips exclaimed, “By the
sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by the
deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night, and the
spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the dæmon who caused this misery,
until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict. For this purpose I will
preserve my life; to execute this dear revenge will I again behold the sun
and tread the green herbage of earth, which otherwise should vanish from my
eyes for ever. And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering
ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed
and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now
torments me.”

I had begun my adjuration with solemnity and an awe which almost assured me
that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my devotion, but
the furies possessed me as I concluded, and rage choked my utterance.

I was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish
laugh. It rang on my ears long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed
it, and I felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter.
Surely in that moment I should have been possessed by frenzy and have
destroyed my miserable existence but that my vow was heard and that I
was reserved for vengeance. The laughter died away, when a well-known
and abhorred voice, apparently close to my ear, addressed me in an
audible whisper, “I am satisfied, miserable wretch! You have
determined to live, and I am satisfied.”

I darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded, but the devil
eluded my grasp. Suddenly the broad disk of the moon arose and shone
full upon his ghastly and distorted shape as he fled with more than
mortal speed.

I pursued him, and for many months this has been my task. Guided by a
slight clue, I followed the windings of the Rhone, but vainly. The
blue Mediterranean appeared, and by a strange chance, I saw the fiend
enter by night and hide himself in a vessel bound for the Black Sea. I
took my passage in the same ship, but he escaped, I know not how.

Amidst the wilds of Tartary and Russia, although he still evaded me, I
have ever followed in his track. Sometimes the peasants, scared by
this horrid apparition, informed me of his path; sometimes he himself,
who feared that if I lost all trace of him I should despair and die,
left some mark to guide me. The snows descended on my head, and I saw
the print of his huge step on the white plain. To you first entering
on life, to whom care is new and agony unknown, how can you understand
what I have felt and still feel? Cold, want, and fatigue were the
least pains which I was destined to endure; I was cursed by some devil
and carried about with me my eternal hell; yet still a spirit of good
followed and directed my steps and when I most murmured would suddenly
extricate me from seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Sometimes,
when nature, overcome by hunger, sank under the exhaustion, a repast
was prepared for me in the desert that restored and inspirited me. The
fare was, indeed, coarse, such as the peasants of the country ate, but
I will not doubt that it was set there by the spirits that I had
invoked to aid me. Often, when all was dry, the heavens cloudless, and
I was parched by thirst, a slight cloud would bedim the sky, shed the
few drops that revived me, and vanish.

I followed, when I could, the courses of the rivers; but the dæmon
generally avoided these, as it was here that the population of the
country chiefly collected. In other places human beings were seldom
seen, and I generally subsisted on the wild animals that crossed my
path. I had money with me and gained the friendship of the villagers
by distributing it; or I brought with me some food that I had killed,
which, after taking a small part, I always presented to those who had
provided me with fire and utensils for cooking.

My life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during
sleep alone that I could taste joy. O blessed sleep! Often, when most
miserable, I sank to repose, and my dreams lulled me even to rapture. The
spirits that guarded me had provided these moments, or rather hours, of
happiness that I might retain strength to fulfil my pilgrimage. Deprived of
this respite, I should have sunk under my hardships. During the day I was
sustained and inspirited by the hope of night, for in sleep I saw my
friends, my wife, and my beloved country; again I saw the benevolent
countenance of my father, heard the silver tones of my Elizabeth’s
voice, and beheld Clerval enjoying health and youth. Often, when wearied by
a toilsome march, I persuaded myself that I was dreaming until night should
come and that I should then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest
friends. What agonising fondness did I feel for them! How did I cling to
their dear forms, as sometimes they haunted even my waking hours, and
persuade myself that they still lived! At such moments vengeance, that
burned within me, died in my heart, and I pursued my path towards the
destruction of the dæmon more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the
mechanical impulse of some power of which I was unconscious, than as the
ardent desire of my soul.

What his feelings were whom I pursued I cannot know. Sometimes, indeed, he
left marks in writing on the barks of the trees or cut in stone that guided
me and instigated my fury. “My reign is not yet
over”—these words were legible in one of these
inscriptions—“you live, and my power is complete. Follow me; I
seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of
cold and frost, to which I am impassive. You will find near this place, if
you follow not too tardily, a dead hare; eat and be refreshed. Come on, my
enemy; we have yet to wrestle for our lives, but many hard and miserable
hours must you endure until that period shall arrive.”

Scoffing devil! Again do I vow vengeance; again do I devote thee,
miserable fiend, to torture and death. Never will I give up my search
until he or I perish; and then with what ecstasy shall I join my
Elizabeth and my departed friends, who even now prepare for me the
reward of my tedious toil and horrible pilgrimage!

As I still pursued my journey to the northward, the snows thickened and the
cold increased in a degree almost too severe to support. The peasants were
shut up in their hovels, and only a few of the most hardy ventured forth to
seize the animals whom starvation had forced from their hiding-places to
seek for prey. The rivers were covered with ice, and no fish could be
procured; and thus I was cut off from my chief article of maintenance.

The triumph of my enemy increased with the difficulty of my labours. One
inscription that he left was in these words: “Prepare! Your toils
only begin; wrap yourself in furs and provide food, for we shall soon enter
upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting
hatred.”

My courage and perseverance were invigorated by these scoffing words; I
resolved not to fail in my purpose, and calling on Heaven to support
me, I continued with unabated fervour to traverse immense deserts,
until the ocean appeared at a distance and formed the utmost boundary
of the horizon. Oh! How unlike it was to the blue seasons of the
south! Covered with ice, it was only to be distinguished from land by
its superior wildness and ruggedness. The Greeks wept for joy when
they beheld the Mediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with
rapture the boundary of their toils. I did not weep, but I knelt down
and with a full heart thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in
safety to the place where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversary’s gibe,
to meet and grapple with him.

Some weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs and thus
traversed the snows with inconceivable speed. I know not whether the
fiend possessed the same advantages, but I found that, as before I had
daily lost ground in the pursuit, I now gained on him, so much so that
when I first saw the ocean he was but one day’s journey in advance, and
I hoped to intercept him before he should reach the beach. With new
courage, therefore, I pressed on, and in two days arrived at a wretched
hamlet on the seashore. I inquired of the inhabitants concerning the
fiend and gained accurate information. A gigantic monster, they said,
had arrived the night before, armed with a gun and many pistols,
putting to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage through fear of
his terrific appearance. He had carried off their store of winter
food, and placing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a
numerous drove of trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same
night, to the joy of the horror-struck villagers, had pursued his
journey across the sea in a direction that led to no land; and they
conjectured that he must speedily be destroyed by the breaking of the
ice or frozen by the eternal frosts.

On hearing this information I suffered a temporary access of despair.
He had escaped me, and I must commence a destructive and almost endless
journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean, amidst cold that few
of the inhabitants could long endure and which I, the native of a
genial and sunny climate, could not hope to survive. Yet at the idea
that the fiend should live and be triumphant, my rage and vengeance
returned, and like a mighty tide, overwhelmed every other feeling.
After a slight repose, during which the spirits of the dead hovered
round and instigated me to toil and revenge, I prepared for my journey.

I exchanged my land-sledge for one fashioned for the inequalities of
the Frozen Ocean, and purchasing a plentiful stock of provisions, I
departed from land.

I cannot guess how many days have passed since then, but I have endured
misery which nothing but the eternal sentiment of a just retribution
burning within my heart could have enabled me to support. Immense and
rugged mountains of ice often barred up my passage, and I often heard
the thunder of the ground sea, which threatened my destruction. But
again the frost came and made the paths of the sea secure.

By the quantity of provision which I had consumed, I should guess that
I had passed three weeks in this journey; and the continual protraction
of hope, returning back upon the heart, often wrung bitter drops of
despondency and grief from my eyes. Despair had indeed almost secured
her prey, and I should soon have sunk beneath this misery. Once, after
the poor animals that conveyed me had with incredible toil gained the
summit of a sloping ice mountain, and one, sinking under his fatigue,
died, I viewed the expanse before me with anguish, when suddenly my eye
caught a dark speck upon the dusky plain. I strained my sight to
discover what it could be and uttered a wild cry of ecstasy when I
distinguished a sledge and the distorted proportions of a well-known
form within. Oh! With what a burning gush did hope revisit my heart!
Warm tears filled my eyes, which I hastily wiped away, that they might
not intercept the view I had of the dæmon; but still my sight was
dimmed by the burning drops, until, giving way to the emotions that
oppressed me, I wept aloud.

But this was not the time for delay; I disencumbered the dogs of their
dead companion, gave them a plentiful portion of food, and after an
hour’s rest, which was absolutely necessary, and yet which was bitterly
irksome to me, I continued my route. The sledge was still visible, nor
did I again lose sight of it except at the moments when for a short
time some ice-rock concealed it with its intervening crags. I indeed
perceptibly gained on it, and when, after nearly two days’ journey, I
beheld my enemy at no more than a mile distant, my heart bounded within
me.

But now, when I appeared almost within grasp of my foe, my hopes were
suddenly extinguished, and I lost all trace of him more utterly than I had
ever done before. A ground sea was heard; the thunder of its progress, as
the waters rolled and swelled beneath me, became every moment more ominous
and terrific. I pressed on, but in vain. The wind arose; the sea roared;
and, as with the mighty shock of an earthquake, it split and cracked with a
tremendous and overwhelming sound. The work was soon finished; in a few
minutes a tumultuous sea rolled between me and my enemy, and I was left
drifting on a scattered piece of ice that was continually lessening and
thus preparing for me a hideous death.

In this manner many appalling hours passed; several of my dogs died, and I
myself was about to sink under the accumulation of distress when I saw your
vessel riding at anchor and holding forth to me hopes of succour and life.
I had no conception that vessels ever came so far north and was astounded
at the sight. I quickly destroyed part of my sledge to construct oars, and
by these means was enabled, with infinite fatigue, to move my ice raft in
the direction of your ship. I had determined, if you were going southwards,
still to trust myself to the mercy of the seas rather than abandon my
purpose. I hoped to induce you to grant me a boat with which I could pursue
my enemy. But your direction was northwards. You took me on board when my
vigour was exhausted, and I should soon have sunk under my multiplied
hardships into a death which I still dread, for my task is unfulfilled.

Oh! When will my guiding spirit, in conducting me to the dæmon, allow
me the rest I so much desire; or must I die, and he yet live? If I do,
swear to me, Walton, that he shall not escape, that you will seek him
and satisfy my vengeance in his death. And do I dare to ask of you to
undertake my pilgrimage, to endure the hardships that I have undergone?
No; I am not so selfish. Yet, when I am dead, if he should appear, if
the ministers of vengeance should conduct him to you, swear that he
shall not live—swear that he shall not triumph over my accumulated
woes and survive to add to the list of his dark crimes. He is eloquent
and persuasive, and once his words had even power over my heart; but
trust him not. His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery
and fiend-like malice. Hear him not; call on the names of William,
Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, my father, and of the wretched Victor, and
thrust your sword into his heart. I will hover near and direct the
steel aright.

Walton, _in continuation._


August 26th, 17—.


You have read this strange and terrific story, Margaret; and do you not
feel your blood congeal with horror, like that which even now curdles
mine? Sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he could not continue his
tale; at others, his voice broken, yet piercing, uttered with
difficulty the words so replete with anguish. His fine and lovely eyes
were now lighted up with indignation, now subdued to downcast sorrow
and quenched in infinite wretchedness. Sometimes he commanded his
countenance and tones and related the most horrible incidents with a
tranquil voice, suppressing every mark of agitation; then, like a
volcano bursting forth, his face would suddenly change to an expression
of the wildest rage as he shrieked out imprecations on his persecutor.

His tale is connected and told with an appearance of the simplest truth,
yet I own to you that the letters of Felix and Safie, which he showed me,
and the apparition of the monster seen from our ship, brought to me a
greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations,
however earnest and connected. Such a monster has, then, really existence!
I cannot doubt it, yet I am lost in surprise and admiration. Sometimes I
endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his
creature’s formation, but on this point he was impenetrable.

“Are you mad, my friend?” said he. “Or whither does your
senseless curiosity lead you? Would you also create for yourself and the
world a demoniacal enemy? Peace, peace! Learn my miseries and do not seek
to increase your own.”

Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history; he asked
to see them and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places,
but principally in giving the life and spirit to the conversations he held
with his enemy. “Since you have preserved my narration,” said
he, “I would not that a mutilated one should go down to
posterity.”

Thus has a week passed away, while I have listened to the strangest
tale that ever imagination formed. My thoughts and every feeling of my
soul have been drunk up by the interest for my guest which this tale
and his own elevated and gentle manners have created. I wish to soothe
him, yet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of
every hope of consolation, to live? Oh, no! The only joy that he can
now know will be when he composes his shattered spirit to peace and
death. Yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and
delirium; he believes that when in dreams he holds converse with his
friends and derives from that communion consolation for his miseries or
excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his
fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the regions of a
remote world. This faith gives a solemnity to his reveries that render
them to me almost as imposing and interesting as truth.

Our conversations are not always confined to his own history and
misfortunes. On every point of general literature he displays
unbounded knowledge and a quick and piercing apprehension. His
eloquence is forcible and touching; nor can I hear him, when he relates
a pathetic incident or endeavours to move the passions of pity or love,
without tears. What a glorious creature must he have been in the days
of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin! He seems
to feel his own worth and the greatness of his fall.

“When younger,” said he, “I believed myself destined for
some great enterprise. My feelings are profound, but I possessed a coolness
of judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of
the worth of my nature supported me when others would have been oppressed,
for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that
might be useful to my fellow creatures. When I reflected on the work I had
completed, no less a one than the creation of a sensitive and rational
animal, I could not rank myself with the herd of common projectors. But
this thought, which supported me in the commencement of my career, now
serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. All my speculations and hopes
are as nothing, and like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am
chained in an eternal hell. My imagination was vivid, yet my powers of
analysis and application were intense; by the union of these qualities I
conceived the idea and executed the creation of a man. Even now I cannot
recollect without passion my reveries while the work was incomplete. I trod
heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea
of their effects. From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty
ambition; but how am I sunk! Oh! My friend, if you had known me as I once
was, you would not recognise me in this state of degradation. Despondency
rarely visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me on, until I fell,
never, never again to rise.”

Must I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend; I have
sought one who would sympathise with and love me. Behold, on these desert
seas I have found such a one, but I fear I have gained him only to know his
value and lose him. I would reconcile him to life, but he repulses the idea.

“I thank you, Walton,” he said, “for your kind intentions towards so
miserable a wretch; but when you speak of new ties and fresh
affections, think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any
man be to me as Clerval was, or any woman another Elizabeth? Even
where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence,
the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our
minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our
infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified,
are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more
certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives. A sister or a
brother can never, unless indeed such symptoms have been shown early,
suspect the other of fraud or false dealing, when another friend,
however strongly he may be attached, may, in spite of himself, be
contemplated with suspicion. But I enjoyed friends, dear not only
through habit and association, but from their own merits; and wherever
I am, the soothing voice of my Elizabeth and the conversation of
Clerval will be ever whispered in my ear. They are dead, and but one
feeling in such a solitude can persuade me to preserve my life. If I
were engaged in any high undertaking or design, fraught with extensive
utility to my fellow creatures, then could I live to fulfil it. But
such is not my destiny; I must pursue and destroy the being to whom I
gave existence; then my lot on earth will be fulfilled and I may die.”

My beloved Sister,

September 2d.


I write to you, encompassed by peril and ignorant whether I am ever
doomed to see again dear England and the dearer friends that inhabit
it. I am surrounded by mountains of ice which admit of no escape and
threaten every moment to crush my vessel. The brave fellows whom I
have persuaded to be my companions look towards me for aid, but I have
none to bestow. There is something terribly appalling in our
situation, yet my courage and hopes do not desert me. Yet it is
terrible to reflect that the lives of all these men are endangered
through me. If we are lost, my mad schemes are the cause.

And what, Margaret, will be the state of your mind? You will not hear of my
destruction, and you will anxiously await my return. Years will pass, and
you will have visitings of despair and yet be tortured by hope. Oh! My
beloved sister, the sickening failing of your heart-felt expectations is,
in prospect, more terrible to me than my own death. But you have a husband
and lovely children; you may be happy. Heaven bless you and make you so!

My unfortunate guest regards me with the tenderest compassion. He
endeavours to fill me with hope and talks as if life were a possession
which he valued. He reminds me how often the same accidents have
happened to other navigators who have attempted this sea, and in spite
of myself, he fills me with cheerful auguries. Even the sailors feel
the power of his eloquence; when he speaks, they no longer despair; he
rouses their energies, and while they hear his voice they believe these
vast mountains of ice are mole-hills which will vanish before the
resolutions of man. These feelings are transitory; each day of
expectation delayed fills them with fear, and I almost dread a mutiny
caused by this despair.

September 5th.


A scene has just passed of such uncommon interest that, although it is
highly probable that these papers may never reach you, yet I cannot
forbear recording it.

We are still surrounded by mountains of ice, still in imminent danger
of being crushed in their conflict. The cold is excessive, and many of
my unfortunate comrades have already found a grave amidst this scene of
desolation. Frankenstein has daily declined in health; a feverish fire
still glimmers in his eyes, but he is exhausted, and when suddenly
roused to any exertion, he speedily sinks again into apparent
lifelessness.

I mentioned in my last letter the fears I entertained of a mutiny.
This morning, as I sat watching the wan countenance of my friend—his
eyes half closed and his limbs hanging listlessly—I was roused by half
a dozen of the sailors, who demanded admission into the cabin. They
entered, and their leader addressed me. He told me that he and his
companions had been chosen by the other sailors to come in deputation
to me to make me a requisition which, in justice, I could not refuse.
We were immured in ice and should probably never escape, but they
feared that if, as was possible, the ice should dissipate and a free
passage be opened, I should be rash enough to continue my voyage and
lead them into fresh dangers, after they might happily have surmounted
this. They insisted, therefore, that I should engage with a solemn
promise that if the vessel should be freed I would instantly direct my
course southwards.

This speech troubled me. I had not despaired, nor had I yet conceived
the idea of returning if set free. Yet could I, in justice, or even in
possibility, refuse this demand? I hesitated before I answered, when
Frankenstein, who had at first been silent, and indeed appeared hardly
to have force enough to attend, now roused himself; his eyes sparkled,
and his cheeks flushed with momentary vigour. Turning towards the men,
he said,

“What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain? Are you, then,
so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious
expedition? “And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was
smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and
terror, because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth
and your courage exhibited, because danger and death surrounded it, and
these you were to brave and overcome. For this was it a glorious, for this
was it an honourable undertaking. You were hereafter to be hailed as the
benefactors of your species, your names adored as belonging to brave men
who encountered death for honour and the benefit of mankind. And now,
behold, with the first imagination of danger, or, if you will, the first
mighty and terrific trial of your courage, you shrink away and are content
to be handed down as men who had not strength enough to endure cold and
peril; and so, poor souls, they were chilly and returned to their warm
firesides. Why, that requires not this preparation; ye need not have come
thus far and dragged your captain to the shame of a defeat merely to prove
yourselves cowards. Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your
purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your
hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it
shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace
marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered and
who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.”

He spoke this with a voice so modulated to the different feelings expressed
in his speech, with an eye so full of lofty design and heroism, that can
you wonder that these men were moved? They looked at one another and were
unable to reply. I spoke; I told them to retire and consider of what had
been said, that I would not lead them farther north if they strenuously
desired the contrary, but that I hoped that, with reflection, their courage
would return.

They retired and I turned towards my friend, but he was sunk in languor and
almost deprived of life.

How all this will terminate, I know not, but I had rather die than
return shamefully, my purpose unfulfilled. Yet I fear such will be my
fate; the men, unsupported by ideas of glory and honour, can never
willingly continue to endure their present hardships.

September 7th.


The die is cast; I have consented to return if we are not destroyed.
Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back
ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess
to bear this injustice with patience.

September 12th.


It is past; I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility
and glory; I have lost my friend. But I will endeavour to detail these
bitter circumstances to you, my dear sister; and while I am wafted
towards England and towards you, I will not despond.

September 9th, the ice began to move, and roarings like thunder were heard
at a distance as the islands split and cracked in every direction. We were
in the most imminent peril, but as we could only remain passive, my chief
attention was occupied by my unfortunate guest whose illness increased in
such a degree that he was entirely confined to his bed. The ice cracked
behind us and was driven with force towards the north; a breeze sprang from
the west, and on the 11th the passage towards the south became perfectly
free. When the sailors saw this and that their return to their native
country was apparently assured, a shout of tumultuous joy broke from them,
loud and long-continued. Frankenstein, who was dozing, awoke and asked the
cause of the tumult. “They shout,” I said, “because they
will soon return to England.”

“Do you, then, really return?”

“Alas! Yes; I cannot withstand their demands. I cannot lead them
unwillingly to danger, and I must return.”

“Do so, if you will; but I will not. You may give up your purpose, but
mine is assigned to me by Heaven, and I dare not. I am weak, but
surely the spirits who assist my vengeance will endow me with
sufficient strength.” Saying this, he endeavoured to spring from the
bed, but the exertion was too great for him; he fell back and fainted.

It was long before he was restored, and I often thought that life was
entirely extinct. At length he opened his eyes; he breathed with
difficulty and was unable to speak. The surgeon gave him a composing
draught and ordered us to leave him undisturbed. In the meantime he
told me that my friend had certainly not many hours to live.

His sentence was pronounced, and I could only grieve and be patient. I sat
by his bed, watching him; his eyes were closed, and I thought he slept; but
presently he called to me in a feeble voice, and bidding me come near,
said, “Alas! The strength I relied on is gone; I feel that I shall
soon die, and he, my enemy and persecutor, may still be in being. Think
not, Walton, that in the last moments of my existence I feel that burning
hatred and ardent desire of revenge I once expressed; but I feel myself
justified in desiring the death of my adversary. During these last days I
have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it blamable.
In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature and was
bound towards him to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and
well-being. This was my duty, but there was another still paramount to
that. My duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to
my attention because they included a greater proportion of happiness or
misery. Urged by this view, I refused, and I did right in refusing, to
create a companion for the first creature. He showed unparalleled malignity
and selfishness in evil; he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction
beings who possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I
know where this thirst for vengeance may end. Miserable himself that he may
render no other wretched, he ought to die. The task of his destruction was
mine, but I have failed. When actuated by selfish and vicious motives, I
asked you to undertake my unfinished work, and I renew this request now,
when I am only induced by reason and virtue.

“Yet I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends to fulfil
this task; and now that you are returning to England, you will have
little chance of meeting with him. But the consideration of these
points, and the well balancing of what you may esteem your duties, I
leave to you; my judgment and ideas are already disturbed by the near
approach of death. I dare not ask you to do what I think right, for I
may still be misled by passion.

“That he should live to be an instrument of mischief disturbs me; in
other respects, this hour, when I momentarily expect my release, is the
only happy one which I have enjoyed for several years. The forms of
the beloved dead flit before me, and I hasten to their arms. Farewell,
Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it
be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in
science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been
blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.”

His voice became fainter as he spoke, and at length, exhausted by his
effort, he sank into silence. About half an hour afterwards he
attempted again to speak but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and
his eyes closed for ever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed
away from his lips.

Margaret, what comment can I make on the untimely extinction of this
glorious spirit? What can I say that will enable you to understand the
depth of my sorrow? All that I should express would be inadequate and
feeble. My tears flow; my mind is overshadowed by a cloud of
disappointment. But I journey towards England, and I may there find
consolation.

I am interrupted. What do these sounds portend? It is midnight; the
breeze blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. Again there
is a sound as of a human voice, but hoarser; it comes from the cabin
where the remains of Frankenstein still lie. I must arise and examine.
Good night, my sister.

Great God! what a scene has just taken place! I am yet dizzy with the
remembrance of it. I hardly know whether I shall have the power to detail
it; yet the tale which I have recorded would be incomplete without this
final and wonderful catastrophe.

I entered the cabin where lay the remains of my ill-fated and admirable
friend. Over him hung a form which I cannot find words to
describe—gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its
proportions. As he hung over the coffin, his face was concealed by long
locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and
apparent texture like that of a mummy. When he heard the sound of my
approach, he ceased to utter exclamations of grief and horror and sprung
towards the window. Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of
such loathsome yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes involuntarily and
endeavoured to recollect what were my duties with regard to this destroyer.
I called on him to stay.

He paused, looking on me with wonder, and again turning towards the
lifeless form of his creator, he seemed to forget my presence, and
every feature and gesture seemed instigated by the wildest rage of some
uncontrollable passion.

“That is also my victim!” he exclaimed. “In his murder my
crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its
close! Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it
avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee
by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer
me.”

His voice seemed suffocated, and my first impulses, which had suggested to
me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend in destroying his
enemy, were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion. I
approached this tremendous being; I dared not again raise my eyes to his
face, there was something so scaring and unearthly in his ugliness. I
attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. The monster
continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At length I
gathered resolution to address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion.

“Your repentance,” I said, “is now superfluous. If you
had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse
before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity,
Frankenstein would yet have lived.”

“And do you dream?” said the dæmon. “Do you think that I was then
dead to agony and remorse? He,” he continued, pointing to the corpse,
“he suffered not in the consummation of the deed. Oh! Not the
ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the
lingering detail of its execution. A frightful selfishness hurried me
on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse. Think you that the
groans of Clerval were music to my ears? My heart was fashioned to be
susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice
and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without
torture such as you cannot even imagine.

“After the murder of Clerval I returned to Switzerland, heart-broken
and overcome. I pitied Frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror; I
abhorred myself. But when I discovered that he, the author at once of
my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for
happiness, that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me
he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the
indulgence of which I was for ever barred, then impotent envy and bitter
indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. I
recollected my threat and resolved that it should be accomplished. I
knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the
slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not
disobey. Yet when she died! Nay, then I was not miserable. I had
cast off all feeling, subdued all anguish, to riot in the excess of my
despair. Evil thenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no
choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly
chosen. The completion of my demoniacal design became an insatiable
passion. And now it is ended; there is my last victim!”

I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when I called
to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and
persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my
friend, indignation was rekindled within me. “Wretch!” I said.
“It is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you
have made. You throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are
consumed, you sit among the ruins and lament the fall. Hypocritical fiend!
If he whom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would
he become the prey, of your accursed vengeance. It is not pity that you
feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn
from your power.”

“Oh, it is not thus—not thus,” interrupted the being.
“Yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to
be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery.
No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of
virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being
overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has
become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into
bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am
content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am
well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once
my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once
I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would
love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was
nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has
degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no
malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the
frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same
creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent
visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the
fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man
had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

“You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my
crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them
he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured
wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did
not satisfy my own desires. They were for ever ardent and craving; still
I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no
injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all
humankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his
friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic
who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? Nay, these are virtuous
and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an
abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my
blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.

“But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and
the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to
death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have
devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and
admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that
irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but
your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the
hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the
imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands
will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.

“Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work
is nearly complete. Neither yours nor any man’s death is needed to
consummate the series of my being and accomplish that which must be done,
but it requires my own. Do not think that I shall be slow to perform this
sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the ice raft which brought me
thither and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall
collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its
remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would
create such another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the
agonies which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet
unquenched. He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no
more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no
longer see the sun or stars or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light,
feeling, and sense will pass away; and in this condition must I find my
happiness. Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first
opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the
rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to
me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by
crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in
death?

“Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these
eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive
and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better
satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou
didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness;
and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hadst not ceased to think
and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than
that which I feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to
thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my
wounds until death shall close them for ever.

“But soon,” he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, “I
shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning
miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and
exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration
will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit
will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus.
Farewell.”

He sprang from the cabin-window as he said this, upon the ice raft
which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and
lost in darkness and distance.






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The Project Gutenberg eBook, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, by Jules Verne,
Translated by Frederick Paul Walter, Illustrated by Milo Winter


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Title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas
       An Underwater Tour of the World

Author: Jules Verne

Translator: F. P. Walter

Release Date: January, 2001  [eBook #2488]
       [ Most recently updated: January 4, 2019 ]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEAS***


Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
An Underwater Tour of the World

JULES VERNE


Translated from the Original French by F. P. Walter

Copyright (C) 1999, Frederick Paul Walter.


A complete, unabridged translation of Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
by Jules Verne, based on the original French texts published in Paris
by J. Hetzel et Cie. over the period 1869-71.

The paintings of Illinois watercolorist Milo Winter (1888-1956) first
appeared in a 1922 juvenile edition published by Rand McNally &
Company.


VERNE’S TITLE

The French title of this novel is Vingt mille lieues sous les
mers. This is accurately translated as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under
the SEAS—rather than the SEA, as with many English editions. Verne’s
novel features a tour of the major oceans, and the term Leagues in its
title is used as a measure not of depth but distance. Ed.


Contents

Introduction
Units of Measure

FIRST PART

1. A Runaway Reef
2. The Pros and Cons
3. As Master Wishes
4. Ned Land
5. At Random!
6. At Full Steam
7. A Whale of Unknown Species
8. “Mobilis in Mobili”
9. The Tantrums of Ned Land
10. The Man of the Waters
11. The Nautilus
12. Everything through Electricity
13. Some Figures
14. The Black Current
15. An Invitation in Writing
16. Strolling the Plains
17. An Underwater Forest
18. Four Thousand Leagues Under the Pacific
19. Vanikoro
20. The Torres Strait
21. Some Days Ashore
22. The Lightning Bolts of Captain Nemo
23. “Aegri Somnia”
24. The Coral Realm

SECOND PART

1. The Indian Ocean
2. A New Proposition from Captain Nemo
3. A Pearl Worth Ten Million
4. The Red Sea
5. Arabian Tunnel
6. The Greek Islands
7. The Mediterranean in Forty-Eight Hours
8. The Bay of Vigo
9. A Lost Continent
10. The Underwater Coalfields
11. The Sargasso Sea
12. Sperm Whales and Baleen Whales
13. The Ice Bank
14. The South Pole
15. Accident or Incident?
16. Shortage of Air
17. From Cape Horn to the Amazon
18. The Devilfish
19. The Gulf Stream
20. In Latitude 47° 24’ and Longitude 17° 28’
21. A Mass Execution
22. The Last Words of Captain Nemo
23. Conclusion


Introduction

“The deepest parts of the ocean are totally unknown to us,” admits
Professor Aronnax early in this novel. “What goes on in those distant
depths? What creatures inhabit, or could inhabit, those regions twelve
or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the water? It’s almost beyond
conjecture.”

Jules Verne (1828-1905) published the French equivalents of these
words in 1869, and little has changed since. 126 years later, a Time
cover story on deep-sea exploration made much the same admission: “We
know more about Mars than we know about the oceans.” This reality
begins to explain the dark power and otherworldly fascination of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.

Born in the French river town of Nantes, Verne had a lifelong passion
for the sea. First as a Paris stockbroker, later as a celebrated
author and yachtsman, he went on frequent voyages—to Britain, America,
the Mediterranean. But the specific stimulus for this novel was an
1865 fan letter from a fellow writer, Madame George Sand. She praised
Verne’s two early novels Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) and Journey to
the Center of the Earth (1864), then added: “Soon I hope you’ll take
us into the ocean depths, your characters traveling in diving
equipment perfected by your science and your imagination.” Thus
inspired, Verne created one of literature’s great rebels, a freedom
fighter who plunged beneath the waves to wage a unique form of
guerilla warfare.

Initially, Verne’s narrative was influenced by the 1863 uprising of
Poland against Tsarist Russia. The Poles were quashed with a violence
that appalled not only Verne but all Europe. As originally conceived,
Verne’s Captain Nemo was a Polish nobleman whose entire family had
been slaughtered by Russian troops. Nemo builds a fabulous futuristic
submarine, the Nautilus, then conducts an underwater campaign of
vengeance against his imperialist oppressor.

But in the 1860s France had to treat the Tsar as an ally, and Verne’s
publisher Pierre Hetzel pronounced the book unprintable. Verne
reworked its political content, devising new nationalities for Nemo
and his great enemy—information revealed only in a later novel, The
Mysterious Island (1875); in the present work Nemo’s background
remains a dark secret. In all, the novel had a difficult
gestation. Verne and Hetzel were in constant conflict and the book
went through multiple drafts, struggles reflected in its several
working titles over the period 1865-69: early on, it was variously
called Voyage Under the Waters, Twenty-five Thousand Leagues Under the
Waters, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Waters, and A Thousand
Leagues Under the Oceans.

Verne is often dubbed, in Isaac Asimov’s phrase, “the world’s first
science-fiction writer.” And it’s true, many of his sixty-odd books do
anticipate future events and technologies: From the Earth to the Moon
(1865) and Hector Servadac (1877) deal in space travel, while Journey
to the Center of the Earth features travel to the earth’s core. But
with Verne the operative word is “travel,” and some of his best-known
titles don’t really qualify as sci-fi: Around the World in Eighty Days
(1872) and Michael Strogoff (1876) are closer to “travelogs”—adventure
yarns in far-away places.

These observations partly apply here. The subtitle of the present book
is An Underwater Tour of the World, so in good travelog style, the
Nautilus’s exploits supply an episodic story line. Shark attacks,
giant squid, cannibals, hurricanes, whale hunts, and other rip-roaring
adventures erupt almost at random. Yet this loose structure gives the
novel an air of documentary realism. What’s more, Verne adds backbone
to the action by developing three recurring motifs: the deepening
mystery of Nemo’s past life and future intentions, the mounting
tension between Nemo and hot-tempered harpooner Ned Land, and Ned’s
ongoing schemes to escape from the Nautilus. These unifying threads
tighten the narrative and accelerate its momentum.

Other subtleties occur inside each episode, the textures sparkling
with wit, information, and insight. Verne regards the sea from many
angles: in the domain of marine biology, he gives us thumbnail
sketches of fish, seashells, coral, sometimes in great catalogs that
swirl past like musical cascades; in the realm of geology, he studies
volcanoes literally inside and out; in the world of commerce, he
celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cable or
dig the Suez Canal. And Verne’s marine engineering proves especially
authoritative. His specifications for an open-sea submarine and a
self-contained diving suit were decades before their time, yet modern
technology bears them out triumphantly.

True, today’s scientists know a few things he didn’t: the South Pole
isn’t at the water’s edge but far inland; sharks don’t flip over
before attacking; giant squid sport ten tentacles not eight; sperm
whales don’t prey on their whalebone cousins. This notwithstanding,
Verne furnishes the most evocative portrayal of the ocean depths
before the arrival of Jacques Cousteau and technicolor film.

Lastly the book has stature as a novel of character. Even the
supporting cast is shrewdly drawn: Professor Aronnax, the career
scientist caught in an ethical conflict; Conseil, the compulsive
classifier who supplies humorous tag lines for Verne’s fast facts; the
harpooner Ned Land, a creature of constant appetites, man as heroic
animal.

But much of the novel’s brooding power comes from Captain
Nemo. Inventor, musician, Renaissance genius, he’s a trail-blazing
creation, the prototype not only for countless renegade scientists in
popular fiction, but even for such varied figures as Sherlock Holmes
or Wolf Larsen. However, Verne gives his hero’s brilliance and
benevolence a dark underside—the man’s obsessive hate for his old
enemy. This compulsion leads Nemo into ugly contradictions: he’s a
fighter for freedom, yet all who board his ship are imprisoned there
for good; he works to save lives, both human and animal, yet he
himself creates a holocaust; he detests imperialism, yet he lays
personal claim to the South Pole. And in this last action he falls
into the classic sin of Pride. He’s swiftly punished. The Nautilus
nearly perishes in the Antarctic and Nemo sinks into a growing
depression.

Like Shakespeare’s King Lear he courts death and madness in a great
storm, then commits mass murder, collapses in catatonic paralysis, and
suicidally runs his ship into the ocean’s most dangerous
whirlpool. Hate swallows him whole.

For many, then, this book has been a source of fascination, surely one
of the most influential novels ever written, an inspiration for such
scientists and discoverers as engineer Simon Lake, oceanographer
William Beebe, polar traveler Sir Ernest Shackleton. Likewise
Dr. Robert D. Ballard, finder of the sunken Titanic, confesses that
this was his favorite book as a teenager, and Cousteau himself, most
renowned of marine explorers, called it his shipboard bible.

The present translation is a faithful yet communicative rendering of
the original French texts published in Paris by J. Hetzel et Cie.—the
hardcover first edition issued in the autumn of 1871, collated with
the softcover editions of the First and Second Parts issued separately
in the autumn of 1869 and the summer of 1870. Although prior English
versions have often been heavily abridged, this new translation is
complete to the smallest substantive detail.

Because, as that Time cover story suggests, we still haven’t caught up
with Verne. Even in our era of satellite dishes and video games, the
seas keep their secrets. We’ve seen progress in sonar, torpedoes, and
other belligerent machinery, but sailors and scientists—to say nothing
of tourists—have yet to voyage in a submarine with the luxury and
efficiency of the Nautilus.

F. P. WALTER University of Houston


Units of Measure

CABLE LENGTH In Verne’s context, 600 feet

CENTIGRADE 0 degrees centigrade = freezing water

37 degrees centigrade = human body temperature

100 degrees centigrade = boiling water

FATHOM 6 feet

GRAM Roughly 1/28 of an ounce

- MILLIGRAM Roughly 1/28,000 of an ounce

- KILOGRAM (KILO) Roughly 2.2 pounds

HECTARE Roughly 2.5 acres

KNOT 1.15 miles per hour

LEAGUE In Verne’s context, 2.16 miles

LITER Roughly 1 quart

METER Roughly 1 yard, 3 inches

- MILLIMETER Roughly 1/25 of an inch

- CENTIMETER Roughly 2/5 of an inch

- DECIMETER Roughly 4 inches

- KILOMETER Roughly 6/10 of a mile

- MYRIAMETER Roughly 6.2 miles

TON, METRIC Roughly 2,200 pounds viii



FIRST PART


CHAPTER 1

A Runaway Reef


THE YEAR 1866 was marked by a bizarre development, an unexplained and
downright inexplicable phenomenon that surely no one has
forgotten. Without getting into those rumors that upset civilians in
the seaports and deranged the public mind even far inland, it must be
said that professional seamen were especially alarmed. Traders,
shipowners, captains of vessels, skippers, and master mariners from
Europe and America, naval officers from every country, and at their
heels the various national governments on these two continents, were
all extremely disturbed by the business.

In essence, over a period of time several ships had encountered “an
enormous thing” at sea, a long spindle-shaped object, sometimes giving
off a phosphorescent glow, infinitely bigger and faster than any
whale.

The relevant data on this apparition, as recorded in various logbooks,
agreed pretty closely as to the structure of the object or creature in
question, its unprecedented speed of movement, its startling
locomotive power, and the unique vitality with which it seemed to be
gifted. If it was a cetacean, it exceeded in bulk any whale previously
classified by science. No naturalist, neither Cuvier nor Lacépède,
neither Professor Dumeril nor Professor de Quatrefages, would have
accepted the existence of such a monster sight unseen—specifically,
unseen by their own scientific eyes.

Striking an average of observations taken at different times—rejecting
those timid estimates that gave the object a length of 200 feet, and
ignoring those exaggerated views that saw it as a mile wide and three
long—you could still assert that this phenomenal creature greatly
exceeded the dimensions of anything then known to ichthyologists, if
it existed at all.

Now then, it did exist, this was an undeniable fact; and since the
human mind dotes on objects of wonder, you can understand the
worldwide excitement caused by this unearthly apparition. As for
relegating it to the realm of fiction, that charge had to be dropped.

In essence, on July 20, 1866, the steamer Governor Higginson, from the
Calcutta & Burnach Steam Navigation Co., encountered this moving mass
five miles off the eastern shores of Australia.

Captain Baker at first thought he was in the presence of an unknown
reef; he was even about to fix its exact position when two waterspouts
shot out of this inexplicable object and sprang hissing into the air
some 150 feet. So, unless this reef was subject to the intermittent
eruptions of a geyser, the Governor Higginson had fair and honest
dealings with some aquatic mammal, until then unknown, that could
spurt from its blowholes waterspouts mixed with air and steam.

Similar events were likewise observed in Pacific seas, on July 23 of
the same year, by the Christopher Columbus from the West India &
Pacific Steam Navigation Co. Consequently, this extraordinary cetacean
could transfer itself from one locality to another with startling
swiftness, since within an interval of just three days, the Governor
Higginson and the Christopher Columbus had observed it at two
positions on the charts separated by a distance of more than 700
nautical leagues.

Fifteen days later and 2,000 leagues farther, the Helvetia from the
Compagnie Nationale and the Shannon from the Royal Mail line, running
on opposite tacks in that part of the Atlantic lying between the
United States and Europe, respectively signaled each other that the
monster had been sighted in latitude 42 degrees 15’ north and
longitude 60 degrees 35’ west of the meridian of Greenwich. From their
simultaneous observations, they were able to estimate the mammal’s
minimum length at more than 350 English feet;* this was because both
the Shannon and the Helvetia were of smaller dimensions, although each
measured 100 meters stem to stern. Now then, the biggest whales, those
rorqual whales that frequent the waterways of the Aleutian Islands,
have never exceeded a length of 56 meters—if they reach even that.

*Author’s Note: About 106 meters. An English foot is only 30.4
 centimeters.

One after another, reports arrived that would profoundly affect public
opinion: new observations taken by the transatlantic liner Pereire,
the Inman line’s Etna running afoul of the monster, an official report
drawn up by officers on the French frigate Normandy, dead-earnest
reckonings obtained by the general staff of Commodore Fitz-James
aboard the Lord Clyde. In lighthearted countries, people joked about
this phenomenon, but such serious, practical countries as England,
America, and Germany were deeply concerned.

In every big city the monster was the latest rage; they sang about it
in the coffee houses, they ridiculed it in the newspapers, they
dramatized it in the theaters. The tabloids found it a fine
opportunity for hatching all sorts of hoaxes. In those newspapers
short of copy, you saw the reappearance of every gigantic imaginary
creature, from “Moby Dick,” that dreadful white whale from the High
Arctic regions, to the stupendous kraken whose tentacles could entwine
a 500-ton craft and drag it into the ocean depths. They even reprinted
reports from ancient times: the views of Aristotle and Pliny accepting
the existence of such monsters, then the Norwegian stories of Bishop
Pontoppidan, the narratives of Paul Egede, and finally the reports of
Captain Harrington—whose good faith is above suspicion—in which he
claims he saw, while aboard the Castilian in 1857, one of those
enormous serpents that, until then, had frequented only the seas of
France’s old extremist newspaper, The Constitutionalist.

An interminable debate then broke out between believers and skeptics
in the scholarly societies and scientific journals. The “monster
question” inflamed all minds. During this memorable campaign,
journalists making a profession of science battled with those making a
profession of wit, spilling waves of ink and some of them even two or
three drops of blood, since they went from sea serpents to the most
offensive personal remarks.

For six months the war seesawed. With inexhaustible zest, the popular
press took potshots at feature articles from the Geographic Institute
of Brazil, the Royal Academy of Science in Berlin, the British
Association, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., at
discussions in The Indian Archipelago, in Cosmos published by Father
Moigno, in Petermann’s Mittheilungen,* and at scientific chronicles in
the great French and foreign newspapers. When the monster’s detractors
cited a saying by the botanist Linnaeus that “nature doesn’t make
leaps,” witty writers in the popular periodicals parodied it,
maintaining in essence that “nature doesn’t make lunatics,” and
ordering their contemporaries never to give the lie to nature by
believing in krakens, sea serpents, “Moby Dicks,” and other all-out
efforts from drunken seamen. Finally, in a much-feared satirical
journal, an article by its most popular columnist finished off the
monster for good, spurning it in the style of Hippolytus repulsing the
amorous advances of his stepmother Phaedra, and giving the creature
its quietus amid a universal burst of laughter. Wit had defeated
science.

*German: “Bulletin.” Ed.

During the first months of the year 1867, the question seemed to be
buried, and it didn’t seem due for resurrection, when new facts were
brought to the public’s attention. But now it was no longer an issue
of a scientific problem to be solved, but a quite real and serious
danger to be avoided. The question took an entirely new turn. The
monster again became an islet, rock, or reef, but a runaway reef,
unfixed and elusive.

On March 5, 1867, the Moravian from the Montreal Ocean Co., lying
during the night in latitude 27 degrees 30’ and longitude 72 degrees
15’, ran its starboard quarter afoul of a rock marked on no charts of
these waterways. Under the combined efforts of wind and 400-horsepower
steam, it was traveling at a speed of thirteen knots. Without the high
quality of its hull, the Moravian would surely have split open from
this collision and gone down together with those 237 passengers it was
bringing back from Canada.

This accident happened around five o’clock in the morning, just as day
was beginning to break. The officers on watch rushed to the craft’s
stern. They examined the ocean with the most scrupulous care. They saw
nothing except a strong eddy breaking three cable lengths out, as if
those sheets of water had been violently churned. The site’s exact
bearings were taken, and the Moravian continued on course apparently
undamaged. Had it run afoul of an underwater rock or the wreckage of
some enormous derelict ship? They were unable to say. But when they
examined its undersides in the service yard, they discovered that part
of its keel had been smashed.

This occurrence, extremely serious in itself, might perhaps have been
forgotten like so many others, if three weeks later it hadn’t been
reenacted under identical conditions. Only, thanks to the nationality
of the ship victimized by this new ramming, and thanks to the
reputation of the company to which this ship belonged, the event
caused an immense uproar.

No one is unaware of the name of that famous English shipowner,
Cunard. In 1840 this shrewd industrialist founded a postal service
between Liverpool and Halifax, featuring three wooden ships with
400-horsepower paddle wheels and a burden of 1,162 metric tons. Eight
years later, the company’s assets were increased by four
650-horsepower ships at 1,820 metric tons, and in two more years, by
two other vessels of still greater power and tonnage. In 1853 the
Cunard Co., whose mail-carrying charter had just been renewed,
successively added to its assets the Arabia, the Persia, the China,
the Scotia, the Java, and the Russia, all ships of top speed and,
after the Great Eastern, the biggest ever to plow the seas. So in 1867
this company owned twelve ships, eight with paddle wheels and four
with propellers.

If I give these highly condensed details, it is so everyone can fully
understand the importance of this maritime transportation company,
known the world over for its shrewd management. No transoceanic
navigational undertaking has been conducted with more ability, no
business dealings have been crowned with greater success. In
twenty-six years Cunard ships have made 2,000 Atlantic crossings
without so much as a voyage canceled, a delay recorded, a man, a
craft, or even a letter lost. Accordingly, despite strong competition
from France, passengers still choose the Cunard line in preference to
all others, as can be seen in a recent survey of official
documents. Given this, no one will be astonished at the uproar
provoked by this accident involving one of its finest steamers.

On April 13, 1867, with a smooth sea and a moderate breeze, the Scotia
lay in longitude 15 degrees 12’ and latitude 45 degrees 37’. It was
traveling at a speed of 13.43 knots under the thrust of its
1,000-horsepower engines. Its paddle wheels were churning the sea with
perfect steadiness. It was then drawing 6.7 meters of water and
displacing 6,624 cubic meters.

At 4:17 in the afternoon, during a high tea for passengers gathered in
the main lounge, a collision occurred, scarcely noticeable on the
whole, affecting the Scotia’s hull in that quarter a little astern of
its port paddle wheel.

The Scotia hadn’t run afoul of something, it had been fouled, and by a
cutting or perforating instrument rather than a blunt one. This
encounter seemed so minor that nobody on board would have been
disturbed by it, had it not been for the shouts of crewmen in the
hold, who climbed on deck yelling:

“We’re sinking! We’re sinking!”

At first the passengers were quite frightened, but Captain Anderson
hastened to reassure them. In fact, there could be no immediate
danger. Divided into seven compartments by watertight bulkheads, the
Scotia could brave any leak with impunity.

Captain Anderson immediately made his way into the hold. He discovered
that the fifth compartment had been invaded by the sea, and the speed
of this invasion proved that the leak was considerable. Fortunately
this compartment didn’t contain the boilers, because their furnaces
would have been abruptly extinguished.

Captain Anderson called an immediate halt, and one of his sailors
dived down to assess the damage. Within moments they had located a
hole two meters in width on the steamer’s underside. Such a leak could
not be patched, and with its paddle wheels half swamped, the Scotia
had no choice but to continue its voyage. By then it lay 300 miles
from Cape Clear, and after three days of delay that filled Liverpool
with acute anxiety, it entered the company docks.

The engineers then proceeded to inspect the Scotia, which had been put
in dry dock. They couldn’t believe their eyes. Two and a half meters
below its waterline, there gaped a symmetrical gash in the shape of an
isosceles triangle. This breach in the sheet iron was so perfectly
formed, no punch could have done a cleaner job of it. Consequently, it
must have been produced by a perforating tool of uncommon
toughness—plus, after being launched with prodigious power and then
piercing four centimeters of sheet iron, this tool had needed to
withdraw itself by a backward motion truly inexplicable.

This was the last straw, and it resulted in arousing public passions
all over again. Indeed, from this moment on, any maritime casualty
without an established cause was charged to the monster’s
account. This outrageous animal had to shoulder responsibility for all
derelict vessels, whose numbers are unfortunately considerable, since
out of those 3,000 ships whose losses are recorded annually at the
marine insurance bureau, the figure for steam or sailing ships
supposedly lost with all hands, in the absence of any news, amounts to
at least 200!

Now then, justly or unjustly, it was the “monster” who stood accused
of their disappearance; and since, thanks to it, travel between the
various continents had become more and more dangerous, the public
spoke up and demanded straight out that, at all cost, the seas be
purged of this fearsome cetacean.


CHAPTER 2

The Pros and Cons


DURING THE PERIOD in which these developments were occurring, I had
returned from a scientific undertaking organized to explore the
Nebraska badlands in the United States. In my capacity as Assistant
Professor at the Paris Museum of Natural History, I had been attached
to this expedition by the French government. After spending six months
in Nebraska, I arrived in New York laden with valuable collections
near the end of March. My departure for France was set for early
May. In the meantime, then, I was busy classifying my mineralogical,
botanical, and zoological treasures when that incident took place with
the Scotia.

I was perfectly abreast of this question, which was the big news of
the day, and how could I not have been? I had read and reread every
American and European newspaper without being any farther along. This
mystery puzzled me. Finding it impossible to form any views, I drifted
from one extreme to the other. Something was out there, that much was
certain, and any doubting Thomas was invited to place his finger on
the Scotia’s wound.

When I arrived in New York, the question was at the boiling point. The
hypothesis of a drifting islet or an elusive reef, put forward by
people not quite in their right minds, was completely eliminated. And
indeed, unless this reef had an engine in its belly, how could it move
about with such prodigious speed?

Also discredited was the idea of a floating hull or some other
enormous wreckage, and again because of this speed of movement.

So only two possible solutions to the question were left, creating two
very distinct groups of supporters: on one side, those favoring a
monster of colossal strength; on the other, those favoring an
“underwater boat” of tremendous motor power.

Now then, although the latter hypothesis was completely admissible, it
couldn’t stand up to inquiries conducted in both the New World and the
Old. That a private individual had such a mechanism at his disposal
was less than probable. Where and when had he built it, and how could
he have built it in secret?

Only some government could own such an engine of destruction, and in
these disaster-filled times, when men tax their ingenuity to build
increasingly powerful aggressive weapons, it was possible that,
unknown to the rest of the world, some nation could have been testing
such a fearsome machine. The Chassepot rifle led to the torpedo, and
the torpedo has led to this underwater battering ram, which in turn
will lead to the world putting its foot down. At least I hope it will.

But this hypothesis of a war machine collapsed in the face of formal
denials from the various governments. Since the public interest was at
stake and transoceanic travel was suffering, the sincerity of these
governments could not be doubted. Besides, how could the assembly of
this underwater boat have escaped public notice? Keeping a secret
under such circumstances would be difficult enough for an individual,
and certainly impossible for a nation whose every move is under
constant surveillance by rival powers.

So, after inquiries conducted in England, France, Russia, Prussia,
Spain, Italy, America, and even Turkey, the hypothesis of an
underwater Monitor was ultimately rejected.

And so the monster surfaced again, despite the endless witticisms
heaped on it by the popular press, and the human imagination soon got
caught up in the most ridiculous ichthyological fantasies.

After I arrived in New York, several people did me the honor of
consulting me on the phenomenon in question. In France I had published
a two-volume work, in quarto, entitled The Mysteries of the Great
Ocean Depths. Well received in scholarly circles, this book had
established me as a specialist in this pretty obscure field of natural
history. My views were in demand. As long as I could deny the reality
of the business, I confined myself to a flat “no comment.” But soon,
pinned to the wall, I had to explain myself straight out. And in this
vein, “the honorable Pierre Aronnax, Professor at the Paris Museum,”
was summoned by The New York Herald to formulate his views no matter
what.

I complied. Since I could no longer hold my tongue, I let it wag. I
discussed the question in its every aspect, both political and
scientific, and this is an excerpt from the well-padded article I
published in the issue of April 30.

“Therefore,” I wrote, “after examining these different hypotheses one
by one, we are forced, every other supposition having been refuted, to
accept the existence of an extremely powerful marine animal.

“The deepest parts of the ocean are totally unknown to us. No
soundings have been able to reach them. What goes on in those distant
depths? What creatures inhabit, or could inhabit, those regions twelve
or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the water? What is the
constitution of these animals? It’s almost beyond conjecture.

“However, the solution to this problem submitted to me can take the
form of a choice between two alternatives.

“Either we know every variety of creature populating our planet, or we
do not.

“If we do not know every one of them, if nature still keeps
ichthyological secrets from us, nothing is more admissible than to
accept the existence of fish or cetaceans of new species or even new
genera, animals with a basically ‘cast-iron’ constitution that inhabit
strata beyond the reach of our soundings, and which some development
or other, an urge or a whim if you prefer, can bring to the upper
level of the ocean for long intervals.

“If, on the other hand, we do know every living species, we must look
for the animal in question among those marine creatures already
cataloged, and in this event I would be inclined to accept the
existence of a giant narwhale.

“The common narwhale, or sea unicorn, often reaches a length of sixty
feet. Increase its dimensions fivefold or even tenfold, then give this
cetacean a strength in proportion to its size while enlarging its
offensive weapons, and you have the animal we’re looking for. It would
have the proportions determined by the officers of the Shannon, the
instrument needed to perforate the Scotia, and the power to pierce a
steamer’s hull.

“In essence, the narwhale is armed with a sort of ivory sword, or
lance, as certain naturalists have expressed it. It’s a king-sized
tooth as hard as steel. Some of these teeth have been found buried in
the bodies of baleen whales, which the narwhale attacks with
invariable success. Others have been wrenched, not without difficulty,
from the undersides of vessels that narwhales have pierced clean
through, as a gimlet pierces a wine barrel. The museum at the Faculty
of Medicine in Paris owns one of these tusks with a length of 2.25
meters and a width at its base of forty-eight centimeters!

“All right then! Imagine this weapon to be ten times stronger and the
animal ten times more powerful, launch it at a speed of twenty miles
per hour, multiply its mass times its velocity, and you get just the
collision we need to cause the specified catastrophe.

“So, until information becomes more abundant, I plump for a sea
unicorn of colossal dimensions, no longer armed with a mere lance but
with an actual spur, like ironclad frigates or those warships called
‘rams,’ whose mass and motor power it would possess simultaneously.

“This inexplicable phenomenon is thus explained away—unless it’s
something else entirely, which, despite everything that has been
sighted, studied, explored and experienced, is still possible!”

These last words were cowardly of me; but as far as I could, I wanted
to protect my professorial dignity and not lay myself open to laughter
from the Americans, who when they do laugh, laugh raucously. I had
left myself a loophole. Yet deep down, I had accepted the existence of
“the monster.”

My article was hotly debated, causing a fine old uproar. It rallied a
number of supporters. Moreover, the solution it proposed allowed for
free play of the imagination. The human mind enjoys impressive visions
of unearthly creatures. Now then, the sea is precisely their best
medium, the only setting suitable for the breeding and growing of such
giants—next to which such land animals as elephants or rhinoceroses
are mere dwarves. The liquid masses support the largest known species
of mammals and perhaps conceal mollusks of incomparable size or
crustaceans too frightful to contemplate, such as 100-meter lobsters
or crabs weighing 200 metric tons! Why not? Formerly, in prehistoric
days, land animals (quadrupeds, apes, reptiles, birds) were built on a
gigantic scale. Our Creator cast them using a colossal mold that time
has gradually made smaller. With its untold depths, couldn’t the sea
keep alive such huge specimens of life from another age, this sea that
never changes while the land masses undergo almost continuous
alteration? Couldn’t the heart of the ocean hide the last-remaining
varieties of these titanic species, for whom years are centuries and
centuries millennia?

But I mustn’t let these fantasies run away with me! Enough of these
fairy tales that time has changed for me into harsh realities. I
repeat: opinion had crystallized as to the nature of this phenomenon,
and the public accepted without argument the existence of a prodigious
creature that had nothing in common with the fabled sea serpent.

Yet if some saw it purely as a scientific problem to be solved, more
practical people, especially in America and England, were determined
to purge the ocean of this daunting monster, to insure the safety of
transoceanic travel. The industrial and commercial newspapers dealt
with the question chiefly from this viewpoint. The Shipping &
Mercantile Gazette, the Lloyd’s List, France’s Packetboat and Maritime
& Colonial Review, all the rags devoted to insurance companies—who
threatened to raise their premium rates—were unanimous on this point.

Public opinion being pronounced, the States of the Union were the
first in the field. In New York preparations were under way for an
expedition designed to chase this narwhale. A high-speed frigate, the
Abraham Lincoln, was fitted out for putting to sea as soon as
possible. The naval arsenals were unlocked for Commander Farragut, who
pressed energetically forward with the arming of his frigate.

But, as it always happens, just when a decision had been made to chase
the monster, the monster put in no further appearances. For two months
nobody heard a word about it. Not a single ship encountered
it. Apparently the unicorn had gotten wise to these plots being woven
around it. People were constantly babbling about the creature, even
via the Atlantic Cable! Accordingly, the wags claimed that this
slippery rascal had waylaid some passing telegram and was making the
most of it.

So the frigate was equipped for a far-off voyage and armed with
fearsome fishing gear, but nobody knew where to steer it. And
impatience grew until, on June 2, word came that the Tampico, a
steamer on the San Francisco line sailing from California to Shanghai,
had sighted the animal again, three weeks before in the northerly seas
of the Pacific.

This news caused intense excitement. Not even a 24-hour breather was
granted to Commander Farragut. His provisions were loaded on
board. His coal bunkers were overflowing. Not a crewman was missing
from his post. To cast off, he needed only to fire and stoke his
furnaces! Half a day’s delay would have been unforgivable! But
Commander Farragut wanted nothing more than to go forth.

I received a letter three hours before the Abraham Lincoln left its
Brooklyn pier;* the letter read as follows:

*Author’s Note: A pier is a type of wharf expressly set aside for an
 individual vessel.

  Pierre Aronnax
  Professor at the Paris Museum
  Fifth Avenue Hotel
  New York

  Sir:

  If you would like to join the expedition on the Abraham Lincoln, the
  government of the Union will be pleased to regard you as France’s
  representative in this undertaking. Commander Farragut has a cabin at
  your disposal.

  Very cordially yours,

  J. B. HOBSON,
  Secretary of the Navy.


CHAPTER 3

As Master Wishes


THREE SECONDS before the arrival of J. B. Hobson’s letter, I no more
dreamed of chasing the unicorn than of trying for the Northwest
Passage. Three seconds after reading this letter from the honorable
Secretary of the Navy, I understood at last that my true vocation, my
sole purpose in life, was to hunt down this disturbing monster and rid
the world of it.

Even so, I had just returned from an arduous journey, exhausted and
badly needing a rest. I wanted nothing more than to see my country
again, my friends, my modest quarters by the Botanical Gardens, my
dearly beloved collections! But now nothing could hold me back. I
forgot everything else, and without another thought of exhaustion,
friends, or collections, I accepted the American government’s offer.

“Besides,” I mused, “all roads lead home to Europe, and our unicorn
may be gracious enough to take me toward the coast of France! That
fine animal may even let itself be captured in European seas—as a
personal favor to me—and I’ll bring back to the Museum of Natural
History at least half a meter of its ivory lance!”

But in the meantime I would have to look for this narwhale in the
northern Pacific Ocean; which meant returning to France by way of the
Antipodes.

“Conseil!” I called in an impatient voice.

Conseil was my manservant. A devoted lad who went with me on all my
journeys; a gallant Flemish boy whom I genuinely liked and who
returned the compliment; a born stoic, punctilious on principle,
habitually hardworking, rarely startled by life’s surprises, very
skillful with his hands, efficient in his every duty, and despite his
having a name that means “counsel,” never giving advice—not even the
unsolicited kind!

From rubbing shoulders with scientists in our little universe by the
Botanical Gardens, the boy had come to know a thing or two. In Conseil
I had a seasoned specialist in biological classification, an
enthusiast who could run with acrobatic agility up and down the whole
ladder of branches, groups, classes, subclasses, orders, families,
genera, subgenera, species, and varieties. But there his science came
to a halt. Classifying was everything to him, so he knew nothing
else. Well versed in the theory of classification, he was poorly
versed in its practical application, and I doubt that he could tell a
sperm whale from a baleen whale! And yet, what a fine, gallant lad!

For the past ten years, Conseil had gone with me wherever science
beckoned. Not once did he comment on the length or the hardships of a
journey. Never did he object to buckling up his suitcase for any
country whatever, China or the Congo, no matter how far off it was. He
went here, there, and everywhere in perfect contentment. Moreover, he
enjoyed excellent health that defied all ailments, owned solid
muscles, but hadn’t a nerve in him, not a sign of nerves—the mental
type, I mean.

The lad was thirty years old, and his age to that of his employer was
as fifteen is to twenty. Please forgive me for this underhanded way of
admitting I had turned forty.

But Conseil had one flaw. He was a fanatic on formality, and he only
addressed me in the third person—to the point where it got tiresome.

“Conseil!” I repeated, while feverishly beginning my preparations for
departure.

To be sure, I had confidence in this devoted lad. Ordinarily, I never
asked whether or not it suited him to go with me on my journeys; but
this time an expedition was at issue that could drag on indefinitely,
a hazardous undertaking whose purpose was to hunt an animal that could
sink a frigate as easily as a walnut shell! There was good reason to
stop and think, even for the world’s most emotionless man. What would
Conseil say?

“Conseil!” I called a third time.

Conseil appeared.

“Did master summon me?” he said, entering.

“Yes, my boy. Get my things ready, get yours ready. We’re departing in
two hours.”

“As master wishes,” Conseil replied serenely.

“We haven’t a moment to lose. Pack as much into my trunk as you can,
my traveling kit, my suits, shirts, and socks, don’t bother counting,
just squeeze it all in—and hurry!”

“What about master’s collections?” Conseil ventured to observe.

“We’ll deal with them later.”

“What! The archaeotherium, hyracotherium, oreodonts, cheiropotamus,
and master’s other fossil skeletons?”

“The hotel will keep them for us.”

“What about master’s live babirusa?”

“They’ll feed it during our absence. Anyhow, we’ll leave instructions
to ship the whole menagerie to France.”

“Then we aren’t returning to Paris?” Conseil asked.

“Yes, we are . . . certainly . . . ,” I replied evasively, “but after
we make a detour.”

“Whatever detour master wishes.”

“Oh, it’s nothing really! A route slightly less direct, that’s
all. We’re leaving on the Abraham Lincoln.”

“As master thinks best,” Conseil replied placidly.

“You see, my friend, it’s an issue of the monster, the notorious
narwhale. We’re going to rid the seas of it! The author of a
two-volume work, in quarto, on The Mysteries of the Great Ocean Depths
has no excuse for not setting sail with Commander Farragut. It’s a
glorious mission but also a dangerous one! We don’t know where it will
take us! These beasts can be quite unpredictable! But we’re going just
the same! We have a commander who’s game for anything!”

“What master does, I’ll do,” Conseil replied.

“But think it over, because I don’t want to hide anything from
you. This is one of those voyages from which people don’t always come
back!”

“As master wishes.”

A quarter of an hour later, our trunks were ready. Conseil did them in
a flash, and I was sure the lad hadn’t missed a thing, because he
classified shirts and suits as expertly as birds and mammals.

The hotel elevator dropped us off in the main vestibule on the
mezzanine. I went down a short stair leading to the ground floor. I
settled my bill at that huge counter that was always under siege by a
considerable crowd. I left instructions for shipping my containers of
stuffed animals and dried plants to Paris, France. I opened a line of
credit sufficient to cover the babirusa and, Conseil at my heels, I
jumped into a carriage.

For a fare of twenty francs, the vehicle went down Broadway to Union
Square, took Fourth Ave. to its junction with Bowery St., turned into
Katrin St. and halted at Pier 34. There the Katrin ferry transferred
men, horses, and carriage to Brooklyn, that great New York annex
located on the left bank of the East River, and in a few minutes we
arrived at the wharf next to which the Abraham Lincoln was vomiting
torrents of black smoke from its two funnels.

Our baggage was immediately carried to the deck of the frigate. I
rushed aboard. I asked for Commander Farragut. One of the sailors led
me to the afterdeck, where I stood in the presence of a smart-looking
officer who extended his hand to me.

“Professor Pierre Aronnax?” he said to me.

“The same,” I replied. “Commander Farragut?”

“In person. Welcome aboard, professor. Your cabin is waiting for you.”

I bowed, and letting the commander attend to getting under way, I was
taken to the cabin that had been set aside for me.

The Abraham Lincoln had been perfectly chosen and fitted out for its
new assignment. It was a high-speed frigate furnished with
superheating equipment that allowed the tension of its steam to build
to seven atmospheres. Under this pressure the Abraham Lincoln reached
an average speed of 18.3 miles per hour, a considerable speed but
still not enough to cope with our gigantic cetacean.

The frigate’s interior accommodations complemented its nautical
virtues. I was well satisfied with my cabin, which was located in the
stern and opened into the officers’ mess.

“We’ll be quite comfortable here,” I told Conseil.

“With all due respect to master,” Conseil replied, “as comfortable as
a hermit crab inside the shell of a whelk.”

I left Conseil to the proper stowing of our luggage and climbed on
deck to watch the preparations for getting under way.

Just then Commander Farragut was giving orders to cast off the last
moorings holding the Abraham Lincoln to its Brooklyn pier. And so if
I’d been delayed by a quarter of an hour or even less, the frigate
would have gone without me, and I would have missed out on this
unearthly, extraordinary, and inconceivable expedition, whose true
story might well meet with some skepticism.

But Commander Farragut didn’t want to waste a single day, or even a
single hour, in making for those seas where the animal had just been
sighted. He summoned his engineer.

“Are we up to pressure?” he asked the man.

“Aye, sir,” the engineer replied.

“Go ahead, then!” Commander Farragut called.

At this order, which was relayed to the engine by means of a
compressed-air device, the mechanics activated the start-up
wheel. Steam rushed whistling into the gaping valves. Long horizontal
pistons groaned and pushed the tie rods of the drive shaft. The blades
of the propeller churned the waves with increasing speed, and the
Abraham Lincoln moved out majestically amid a spectator-laden escort
of some 100 ferries and tenders.*

*Author’s Note: Tenders are small steamboats that assist the big
 liners.

The wharves of Brooklyn, and every part of New York bordering the East
River, were crowded with curiosity seekers. Departing from 500,000
throats, three cheers burst forth in succession. Thousands of
handkerchiefs were waving above these tightly packed masses, hailing
the Abraham

Lincoln until it reached the waters of the Hudson River, at the tip of
the long peninsula that forms New York City.

The frigate then went along the New Jersey coast—the wonderful right
bank of this river, all loaded down with country homes—and passed by
the forts to salutes from their biggest cannons. The Abraham Lincoln
replied by three times lowering and hoisting the American flag, whose
thirty-nine stars gleamed from the gaff of the mizzen sail; then,
changing speed to take the buoy-marked channel that curved into the
inner bay formed by the spit of Sandy Hook, it hugged this
sand-covered strip of land where thousands of spectators acclaimed us
one more time.

The escort of boats and tenders still followed the frigate and only
left us when we came abreast of the lightship, whose two signal lights
mark the entrance of the narrows to Upper New York Bay.

Three o’clock then sounded. The harbor pilot went down into his dinghy
and rejoined a little schooner waiting for him to leeward. The
furnaces were stoked; the propeller churned the waves more swiftly;
the frigate skirted the flat, yellow coast of Long Island; and at
eight o’clock in the evening, after the lights of Fire Island had
vanished into the northwest, we ran at full steam onto the dark waters
of the Atlantic.


CHAPTER 4

Ned Land


COMMANDER FARRAGUT was a good seaman, worthy of the frigate he
commanded. His ship and he were one. He was its very soul. On the
cetacean question no doubts arose in his mind, and he didn’t allow the
animal’s existence to be disputed aboard his vessel. He believed in it
as certain pious women believe in the leviathan from the Book of
Job—out of faith, not reason. The monster existed, and he had vowed to
rid the seas of it. The man was a sort of Knight of Rhodes, a
latter-day Sir Dieudonné of Gozo, on his way to fight an encounter
with the dragon devastating the island. Either Commander Farragut
would slay the narwhale, or the narwhale would slay Commander
Farragut. No middle of the road for these two.

The ship’s officers shared the views of their leader. They could be
heard chatting, discussing, arguing, calculating the different chances
of an encounter, and observing the vast expanse of the
ocean. Voluntary watches from the crosstrees of the topgallant sail
were self-imposed by more than one who would have cursed such toil
under any other circumstances. As often as the sun swept over its
daily arc, the masts were populated with sailors whose feet itched and
couldn’t hold still on the planking of the deck below! And the Abraham
Lincoln’s stempost hadn’t even cut the suspected waters of the
Pacific.

As for the crew, they only wanted to encounter the unicorn, harpoon
it, haul it on board, and carve it up. They surveyed the sea with
scrupulous care. Besides, Commander Farragut had mentioned that a
certain sum of $2,000.00 was waiting for the man who first sighted the
animal, be he cabin boy or sailor, mate or officer. I’ll let the
reader decide whether eyes got proper exercise aboard the Abraham
Lincoln.

As for me, I didn’t lag behind the others and I yielded to no one my
share in these daily observations. Our frigate would have had
fivescore good reasons for renaming itself the Argus, after that
mythological beast with 100 eyes! The lone rebel among us was Conseil,
who seemed utterly uninterested in the question exciting us and was
out of step with the general enthusiasm on board.

As I said, Commander Farragut had carefully equipped his ship with all
the gear needed to fish for a gigantic cetacean. No whaling vessel
could have been better armed. We had every known mechanism, from the
hand-hurled harpoon, to the blunderbuss firing barbed arrows, to the
duck gun with exploding bullets. On the forecastle was mounted the
latest model breech-loading cannon, very heavy of barrel and narrow of
bore, a weapon that would figure in the Universal Exhibition of
1867. Made in America, this valuable instrument could fire a
four-kilogram conical projectile an average distance of sixteen
kilometers without the least bother.

So the Abraham Lincoln wasn’t lacking in means of destruction. But it
had better still. It had Ned Land, the King of Harpooners.

Gifted with uncommon manual ability, Ned Land was a Canadian who had
no equal in his dangerous trade. Dexterity, coolness, bravery, and
cunning were virtues he possessed to a high degree, and it took a
truly crafty baleen whale or an exceptionally astute sperm whale to
elude the thrusts of his harpoon.

Ned Land was about forty years old. A man of great height—over six
English feet—he was powerfully built, serious in manner, not very
sociable, sometimes headstrong, and quite ill-tempered when
crossed. His looks caught the attention, and above all the strength of
his gaze, which gave a unique emphasis to his facial appearance.

Commander Farragut, to my thinking, had made a wise move in hiring on
this man. With his eye and his throwing arm, he was worth the whole
crew all by himself. I can do no better than to compare him with a
powerful telescope that could double as a cannon always ready to fire.

To say Canadian is to say French, and as unsociable as Ned Land was, I
must admit he took a definite liking to me. No doubt it was my
nationality that attracted him. It was an opportunity for him to
speak, and for me to hear, that old Rabelaisian dialect still used in
some Canadian provinces. The harpooner’s family originated in Quebec,
and they were already a line of bold fishermen back in the days when
this town still belonged to France.

Little by little Ned developed a taste for chatting, and I loved
hearing the tales of his adventures in the polar seas. He described
his fishing trips and his battles with great natural lyricism. His
tales took on the form of an epic poem, and I felt I was hearing some
Canadian Homer reciting his Iliad of the High Arctic regions.

I’m writing of this bold companion as I currently know him. Because
we’ve become old friends, united in that permanent comradeship born
and cemented during only the most frightful crises! Ah, my gallant
Ned! I ask only to live 100 years more, the longer to remember you!

And now, what were Ned Land’s views on this question of a marine
monster? I must admit that he flatly didn’t believe in the unicorn,
and alone on board, he didn’t share the general conviction. He avoided
even dealing with the subject, for which one day I felt compelled to
take him to task.

During the magnificent evening of June 25—in other words, three weeks
after our departure—the frigate lay abreast of Cabo Blanco, thirty
miles to leeward of the coast of Patagonia. We had crossed the Tropic
of Capricorn, and the Strait of Magellan opened less than 700 miles to
the south. Before eight days were out, the Abraham Lincoln would plow
the waves of the Pacific.

Seated on the afterdeck, Ned Land and I chatted about one thing and
another, staring at that mysterious sea whose depths to this day are
beyond the reach of human eyes. Quite naturally, I led our
conversation around to the giant unicorn, and I weighed our
expedition’s various chances for success or failure. Then, seeing that
Ned just let me talk without saying much himself, I pressed him more
closely.

“Ned,” I asked him, “how can you still doubt the reality of this
cetacean we’re after? Do you have any particular reasons for being so
skeptical?”

The harpooner stared at me awhile before replying, slapped his broad
forehead in one of his standard gestures, closed his eyes as if to
collect himself, and finally said:

“Just maybe, Professor Aronnax.”

“But Ned, you’re a professional whaler, a man familiar with all the
great marine mammals—your mind should easily accept this hypothesis of
an enormous cetacean, and you ought to be the last one to doubt it
under these circumstances!”

“That’s just where you’re mistaken, professor,” Ned replied. “The
common man may still believe in fabulous comets crossing outer space,
or in prehistoric monsters living at the earth’s core, but astronomers
and geologists don’t swallow such fairy tales. It’s the same with
whalers. I’ve chased plenty of cetaceans, I’ve harpooned a good
number, I’ve killed several. But no matter how powerful and well armed
they were, neither their tails or their tusks could puncture the
sheet-iron plates of a steamer.”

“Even so, Ned, people mention vessels that narwhale tusks have run
clean through.”

“Wooden ships maybe,” the Canadian replied. “But I’ve never seen the
like. So till I have proof to the contrary, I’ll deny that baleen
whales, sperm whales, or unicorns can do any such thing.”

“Listen to me, Ned—”

“No, no, professor. I’ll go along with anything you want except
that. Some gigantic devilfish maybe . . . ?”

“Even less likely, Ned. The devilfish is merely a mollusk, and even
this name hints at its semiliquid flesh, because it’s Latin meaning
soft one. The devilfish doesn’t belong to the vertebrate branch, and
even if it were 500 feet long, it would still be utterly harmless to
ships like the Scotia or the Abraham Lincoln. Consequently, the feats
of krakens or other monsters of that ilk must be relegated to the
realm of fiction.”

“So, Mr. Naturalist,” Ned Land continued in a bantering tone, “you’ll
just keep on believing in the existence of some enormous cetacean
. . . ?”

“Yes, Ned, I repeat it with a conviction backed by factual logic. I
believe in the existence of a mammal with a powerful constitution,
belonging to the vertebrate branch like baleen whales, sperm whales,
or dolphins, and armed with a tusk made of horn that has tremendous
penetrating power.”

“Humph!” the harpooner put in, shaking his head with the attitude of a
man who doesn’t want to be convinced.

“Note well, my fine Canadian,” I went on, “if such an animal exists,
if it lives deep in the ocean, if it frequents the liquid strata
located miles beneath the surface of the water, it needs to have a
constitution so solid, it defies all comparison.”

“And why this powerful constitution?” Ned asked.

“Because it takes incalculable strength just to live in those deep
strata and withstand their pressure.”

“Oh really?” Ned said, tipping me a wink.

“Oh really, and I can prove it to you with a few simple figures.”

“Bosh!” Ned replied. “You can make figures do anything you want!”

“In business, Ned, but not in mathematics. Listen to me. Let’s accept
that the pressure of one atmosphere is represented by the pressure of
a column of water thirty-two feet high. In reality, such a column of
water wouldn’t be quite so high because here we’re dealing with salt
water, which is denser than fresh water. Well then, when you dive
under the waves, Ned, for every thirty-two feet of water above you,
your body is tolerating the pressure of one more atmosphere, in other
words, one more kilogram per each square centimeter on your body’s
surface. So it follows that at 320 feet down, this pressure is equal
to ten atmospheres, to 100 atmospheres at 3,200 feet, and to 1,000
atmospheres at 32,000 feet, that is, at about two and a half vertical
leagues down. Which is tantamount to saying that if you could reach
such a depth in the ocean, each square centimeter on your body’s
surface would be experiencing 1,000 kilograms of pressure. Now, my
gallant Ned, do you know how many square centimeters you have on your
bodily surface?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion, Professor Aronnax.”

“About 17,000.”

“As many as that?”

“Yes, and since the atmosphere’s pressure actually weighs slightly
more than one kilogram per square centimeter, your 17,000 square
centimeters are tolerating 17,568 kilograms at this very moment.”

“Without my noticing it?”

“Without your noticing it. And if you aren’t crushed by so much
pressure, it’s because the air penetrates the interior of your body
with equal pressure. When the inside and outside pressures are in
perfect balance, they neutralize each other and allow you to tolerate
them without discomfort. But in the water it’s another story.”

“Yes, I see,” Ned replied, growing more interested. “Because the water
surrounds me but doesn’t penetrate me.”

“Precisely, Ned. So at thirty-two feet beneath the surface of the sea,
you’ll undergo a pressure of 17,568 kilograms; at 320 feet, or ten
times greater pressure, it’s 175,680 kilograms; at 3,200 feet, or 100
times greater pressure, it’s 1,756,800 kilograms; finally, at 32,000
feet, or 1,000 times greater pressure, it’s 17,568,000 kilograms; in
other words, you’d be squashed as flat as if you’d just been yanked
from between the plates of a hydraulic press!”

“Fire and brimstone!” Ned put in.

“All right then, my fine harpooner, if vertebrates several hundred
meters long and proportionate in bulk live at such depths, their
surface areas make up millions of square centimeters, and the pressure
they undergo must be assessed in billions of kilograms. Calculate,
then, how much resistance of bone structure and strength of
constitution they’d need in order to withstand such pressures!”

“They’d need to be manufactured,” Ned Land replied, “from sheet-iron
plates eight inches thick, like ironclad frigates.”

“Right, Ned, and then picture the damage such a mass could inflict if
it were launched with the speed of an express train against a ship’s
hull.”

“Yes . . . indeed . . . maybe,” the Canadian replied, staggered by
these figures but still not willing to give in.

“Well, have I convinced you?”

“You’ve convinced me of one thing, Mr. Naturalist. That deep in the
sea, such animals would need to be just as strong as you say—if they
exist.”

“But if they don’t exist, my stubborn harpooner, how do you explain
the accident that happened to the Scotia?”

“It’s maybe . . . ,” Ned said, hesitating.

“Go on!”

“Because . . . it just couldn’t be true!” the Canadian replied,
unconsciously echoing a famous catchphrase of the scientist Arago.

But this reply proved nothing, other than how bullheaded the harpooner
could be. That day I pressed him no further. The Scotia’s accident was
undeniable. Its hole was real enough that it had to be plugged up, and
I don’t think a hole’s existence can be more emphatically proven. Now
then, this hole didn’t make itself, and since it hadn’t resulted from
underwater rocks or underwater machines, it must have been caused by
the perforating tool of some animal.

Now, for all the reasons put forward to this point, I believed that
this animal was a member of the branch Vertebrata, class Mammalia,
group Pisciforma, and finally, order Cetacea. As for the family in
which it would be placed (baleen whale, sperm whale, or dolphin), the
genus to which it belonged, and the species in which it would find its
proper home, these questions had to be left for later. To answer them
called for dissecting this unknown monster; to dissect it called for
catching it; to catch it called for harpooning it—which was Ned Land’s
business; to harpoon it called for sighting it—which was the crew’s
business; and to sight it called for encountering it—which was a
chancy business.


CHAPTER 5

At Random!


FOR SOME WHILE the voyage of the Abraham Lincoln was marked by no
incident. But one circumstance arose that displayed Ned Land’s
marvelous skills and showed just how much confidence we could place in
him.

Off the Falkland Islands on June 30, the frigate came in contact with
a fleet of American whalers, and we learned that they hadn’t seen the
narwhale. But one of them, the captain of the Monroe, knew that Ned
Land had shipped aboard the Abraham Lincoln and asked his help in
hunting a baleen whale that was in sight. Anxious to see Ned Land at
work, Commander Farragut authorized him to make his way aboard the
Monroe. And the Canadian had such good luck that with a right-and-left
shot, he harpooned not one whale but two, striking the first straight
to the heart and catching the other after a few minutes’ chase!

Assuredly, if the monster ever had to deal with Ned Land’s harpoon, I
wouldn’t bet on the monster.

The frigate sailed along the east coast of South America with
prodigious speed. By July 3 we were at the entrance to the Strait of
Magellan, abreast of Cabo de las Virgenes. But Commander Farragut was
unwilling to attempt this tortuous passageway and maneuvered instead
to double Cape Horn.

The crew sided with him unanimously. Indeed, were we likely to
encounter the narwhale in such a cramped strait? Many of our sailors
swore that the monster couldn’t negotiate this passageway simply
because “he’s too big for it!”

Near three o’clock in the afternoon on July 6, fifteen miles south of
shore, the Abraham Lincoln doubled that solitary islet at the tip of
the South American continent, that stray rock Dutch seamen had named
Cape Horn after their hometown of Hoorn. Our course was set for the
northwest, and the next day our frigate’s propeller finally churned
the waters of the Pacific.

“Open your eyes! Open your eyes!” repeated the sailors of the Abraham
Lincoln.

And they opened amazingly wide. Eyes and spyglasses (a bit dazzled, it
is true, by the vista of $2,000.00) didn’t remain at rest for an
instant. Day and night we observed the surface of the ocean, and those
with nyctalopic eyes, whose ability to see in the dark increased their
chances by fifty percent, had an excellent shot at winning the prize.

As for me, I was hardly drawn by the lure of money and yet was far
from the least attentive on board. Snatching only a few minutes for
meals and a few hours for sleep, come rain or come shine, I no longer
left the ship’s deck. Sometimes bending over the forecastle railings,
sometimes leaning against the sternrail, I eagerly scoured that
cotton-colored wake that whitened the ocean as far as the eye could
see! And how many times I shared the excitement of general staff and
crew when some unpredictable whale lifted its blackish back above the
waves. In an instant the frigate’s deck would become densely
populated. The cowls over the companionways would vomit a torrent of
sailors and officers. With panting chests and anxious eyes, we each
would observe the cetacean’s movements. I stared; I stared until I
nearly went blind from a worn-out retina, while Conseil, as stoic as
ever, kept repeating to me in a calm tone:

“If master’s eyes would kindly stop bulging, master will see farther!”

But what a waste of energy! The Abraham Lincoln would change course
and race after the animal sighted, only to find an ordinary baleen
whale or a common sperm whale that soon disappeared amid a chorus of
curses!

However, the weather held good. Our voyage was proceeding under the
most favorable conditions. By then it was the bad season in these
southernmost regions, because July in this zone corresponds to our
January in Europe; but the sea remained smooth and easily visible over
a vast perimeter.

Ned Land still kept up the most tenacious skepticism; beyond his
spells on watch, he pretended that he never even looked at the surface
of the waves, at least while no whales were in sight. And yet the
marvelous power of his vision could have performed yeoman service. But
this stubborn Canadian spent eight hours out of every twelve reading
or sleeping in his cabin. A hundred times I chided him for his
unconcern.

“Bah!” he replied. “Nothing’s out there, Professor Aronnax, and if
there is some animal, what chance would we have of spotting it? Can’t
you see we’re just wandering around at random? People say they’ve
sighted this slippery beast again in the Pacific high seas—I’m truly
willing to believe it, but two months have already gone by since then,
and judging by your narwhale’s personality, it hates growing moldy
from hanging out too long in the same waterways! It’s blessed with a
terrific gift for getting around. Now, professor, you know even better
than I that nature doesn’t violate good sense, and she wouldn’t give
some naturally slow animal the ability to move swiftly if it hadn’t a
need to use that talent. So if the beast does exist, it’s already long
gone!”

I had no reply to this. Obviously we were just groping blindly. But
how else could we go about it? All the same, our chances were
automatically pretty limited. Yet everyone still felt confident of
success, and not a sailor on board would have bet against the narwhale
appearing, and soon.

On July 20 we cut the Tropic of Capricorn at longitude 105 degrees,
and by the 27th of the same month, we had cleared the equator on the
110th meridian. These bearings determined, the frigate took a more
decisive westward heading and tackled the seas of the central
Pacific. Commander Farragut felt, and with good reason, that it was
best to stay in deep waters and keep his distance from continents or
islands, whose neighborhoods the animal always seemed to avoid—“No
doubt,” our bosun said, “because there isn’t enough water for him!” So
the frigate kept well out when passing the Tuamotu, Marquesas, and
Hawaiian Islands, then cut the Tropic of Cancer at longitude 132
degrees and headed for the seas of China.

We were finally in the area of the monster’s latest antics! And in all
honesty, shipboard conditions became life-threatening. Hearts were
pounding hideously, gearing up for futures full of incurable
aneurysms. The entire crew suffered from a nervous excitement that
it’s beyond me to describe. Nobody ate, nobody slept. Twenty times a
day some error in perception, or the optical illusions of some sailor
perched in the crosstrees, would cause intolerable anguish, and this
emotion, repeated twenty times over, kept us in a state of
irritability so intense that a reaction was bound to follow.

And this reaction wasn’t long in coming. For three months, during
which each day seemed like a century, the Abraham Lincoln plowed all
the northerly seas of the Pacific, racing after whales sighted,
abruptly veering off course, swerving sharply from one tack to
another, stopping suddenly, putting on steam and reversing engines in
quick succession, at the risk of stripping its gears, and it didn’t
leave a single point unexplored from the beaches of Japan to the
coasts of America. And we found nothing! Nothing except an immenseness
of deserted waves! Nothing remotely resembling a gigantic narwhale, or
an underwater islet, or a derelict shipwreck, or a runaway reef, or
anything the least bit unearthly!

So the reaction set in. At first, discouragement took hold of people’s
minds, opening the door to disbelief. A new feeling appeared on board,
made up of three-tenths shame and seven-tenths fury. The crew called
themselves “out-and-out fools” for being hoodwinked by a fairy tale,
then grew steadily more furious! The mountains of arguments amassed
over a year collapsed all at once, and each man now wanted only to
catch up on his eating and sleeping, to make up for the time he had so
stupidly sacrificed.

With typical human fickleness, they jumped from one extreme to the
other. Inevitably, the most enthusiastic supporters of the undertaking
became its most energetic opponents. This reaction mounted upward from
the bowels of the ship, from the quarters of the bunker hands to the
messroom of the general staff; and for certain, if it hadn’t been for
Commander Farragut’s characteristic stubbornness, the frigate would
ultimately have put back to that cape in the south.

But this futile search couldn’t drag on much longer. The Abraham
Lincoln had done everything it could to succeed and had no reason to
blame itself. Never had the crew of an American naval craft shown more
patience and zeal; they weren’t responsible for this failure; there
was nothing to do but go home.

A request to this effect was presented to the commander. The commander
stood his ground. His sailors couldn’t hide their discontent, and
their work suffered because of it. I’m unwilling to say that there was
mutiny on board, but after a reasonable period of intransigence,
Commander Farragut, like Christopher Columbus before him, asked for a
grace period of just three days more. After this three-day delay, if
the monster hadn’t appeared, our helmsman would give three turns of
the wheel, and the Abraham Lincoln would chart a course toward
European seas.

This promise was given on November 2. It had the immediate effect of
reviving the crew’s failing spirits. The ocean was observed with
renewed care. Each man wanted one last look with which to sum up his
experience. Spyglasses functioned with feverish energy. A supreme
challenge had been issued to the giant narwhale, and the latter had no
acceptable excuse for ignoring this Summons to Appear!

Two days passed. The Abraham Lincoln stayed at half steam. On the
offchance that the animal might be found in these waterways, a
thousand methods were used to spark its interest or rouse it from its
apathy. Enormous sides of bacon were trailed in our wake, to the great
satisfaction, I must say, of assorted sharks. While the Abraham
Lincoln heaved to, its longboats radiated in every direction around it
and didn’t leave a single point of the sea unexplored. But the evening
of November 4 arrived with this underwater mystery still unsolved.

At noon the next day, November 5, the agreed-upon delay expired. After
a position fix, true to his promise, Commander Farragut would have to
set his course for the southeast and leave the northerly regions of
the Pacific decisively behind.

By then the frigate lay in latitude 31 degrees 15’ north and longitude
136 degrees 42’ east. The shores of Japan were less than 200 miles to
our leeward. Night was coming on. Eight o’clock had just struck. Huge
clouds covered the moon’s disk, then in its first quarter. The sea
undulated placidly beneath the frigate’s stempost.

Just then I was in the bow, leaning over the starboard rail. Conseil,
stationed beside me, stared straight ahead. Roosting in the shrouds,
the crew examined the horizon, which shrank and darkened little by
little. Officers were probing the increasing gloom with their night
glasses. Sometimes the murky ocean sparkled beneath moonbeams that
darted between the fringes of two clouds. Then all traces of light
vanished into the darkness.

Observing Conseil, I discovered that, just barely, the gallant lad had
fallen under the general influence. At least so I thought. Perhaps his
nerves were twitching with curiosity for the first time in history.

“Come on, Conseil!” I told him. “Here’s your last chance to pocket
that $2,000.00!”

“If master will permit my saying so,” Conseil replied, “I never
expected to win that prize, and the Union government could have
promised $100,000.00 and been none the poorer.”

“You’re right, Conseil, it turned out to be a foolish business after
all, and we jumped into it too hastily. What a waste of time, what a
futile expense of emotion! Six months ago we could have been back in
France—”

“In master’s little apartment,” Conseil answered. “In master’s museum!
And by now I would have classified master’s fossils. And master’s
babirusa would be ensconced in its cage at the zoo in the Botanical
Gardens, and it would have attracted every curiosity seeker in town!”

“Quite so, Conseil, and what’s more, I imagine that people will soon
be poking fun at us!”

“To be sure,” Conseil replied serenely, “I do think they’ll have fun
at master’s expense. And must it be said . . . ?”

“It must be said, Conseil.”

“Well then, it will serve master right!”

“How true!”

“When one has the honor of being an expert as master is, one mustn’t
lay himself open to—”

Conseil didn’t have time to complete the compliment. In the midst of
the general silence, a voice became audible. It was Ned Land’s voice,
and it shouted:

“Ahoy! There’s the thing in question, abreast of us to leeward!”


CHAPTER 6

At Full Steam


AT THIS SHOUT the entire crew rushed toward the harpooner—commander,
officers, mates, sailors, cabin boys, down to engineers leaving their
machinery and stokers neglecting their furnaces. The order was given
to stop, and the frigate merely coasted.

By then the darkness was profound, and as good as the Canadian’s eyes
were, I still wondered how he could see—and what he had seen. My heart
was pounding fit to burst.

But Ned Land was not mistaken, and we all spotted the object his hand
was indicating.

Two cable lengths off the Abraham Lincoln’s starboard quarter, the sea
seemed to be lit up from underneath. This was no mere phosphorescent
phenomenon, that much was unmistakable. Submerged some fathoms below
the surface of the water, the monster gave off that very intense but
inexplicable glow that several captains had mentioned in their
reports. This magnificent radiance had to come from some force with a
great illuminating capacity. The edge of its light swept over the sea
in an immense, highly elongated oval, condensing at the center into a
blazing core whose unbearable glow diminished by degrees outward.

“It’s only a cluster of phosphorescent particles!” exclaimed one of
the officers.

“No, sir,” I answered with conviction. “Not even angel-wing clams or
salps have ever given off such a powerful light. That glow is
basically electric in nature. Besides . . . look, look! It’s shifting!
It’s moving back and forth! It’s darting at us!”

A universal shout went up from the frigate.

“Quiet!” Commander Farragut said. “Helm hard to leeward! Reverse
engines!”

Sailors rushed to the helm, engineers to their machinery. Under
reverse steam immediately, the Abraham Lincoln beat to port, sweeping
in a semicircle.

“Right your helm! Engines forward!” Commander Farragut called.

These orders were executed, and the frigate swiftly retreated from
this core of light.

My mistake. It wanted to retreat, but the unearthly animal came at us
with a speed double our own.

We gasped. More stunned than afraid, we stood mute and motionless. The
animal caught up with us, played with us. It made a full circle around
the frigate—then doing fourteen knots—and wrapped us in sheets of
electricity that were like luminous dust. Then it retreated two or
three miles, leaving a phosphorescent trail comparable to those swirls
of steam that shoot behind the locomotive of an express
train. Suddenly, all the way from the dark horizon where it had gone
to gather momentum, the monster abruptly dashed toward the Abraham
Lincoln with frightening speed, stopped sharply twenty feet from our
side plates, and died out—not by diving under the water, since its
glow did not recede gradually—but all at once, as if the source of
this brilliant emanation had suddenly dried up. Then it reappeared on
the other side of the ship, either by circling around us or by gliding
under our hull. At any instant a collision could have occurred that
would have been fatal to us.

Meanwhile I was astonished at the frigate’s maneuvers. It was fleeing,
not fighting. Built to pursue, it was being pursued, and I commented
on this to Commander Farragut. His face, ordinarily so emotionless,
was stamped with indescribable astonishment.

“Professor Aronnax,” he answered me, “I don’t know what kind of
fearsome creature I’m up against, and I don’t want my frigate running
foolish risks in all this darkness. Besides, how should we attack this
unknown creature, how should we defend ourselves against it? Let’s
wait for daylight, and then we’ll play a different role.”

“You’ve no further doubts, commander, as to the nature of this
animal?”

“No, sir, it’s apparently a gigantic narwhale, and an electric one to
boot.”

“Maybe,” I added, “it’s no more approachable than an electric eel or
an electric ray!”

“Right,” the commander replied. “And if it has their power to
electrocute, it’s surely the most dreadful animal ever conceived by
our Creator. That’s why I’ll keep on my guard, sir.”

The whole crew stayed on their feet all night long. No one even
thought of sleeping. Unable to compete with the monster’s speed, the
Abraham Lincoln slowed down and stayed at half steam. For its part,
the narwhale mimicked the frigate, simply rode with the waves, and
seemed determined not to forsake the field of battle.

However, near midnight it disappeared, or to use a more appropriate
expression, “it went out,” like a huge glowworm. Had it fled from us?
We were duty bound to fear so rather than hope so. But at 12:53 in the
morning, a deafening hiss became audible, resembling the sound made by
a waterspout expelled with tremendous intensity.

By then Commander Farragut, Ned Land, and I were on the afterdeck,
peering eagerly into the profound gloom.

“Ned Land,” the commander asked, “you’ve often heard whales
bellowing?”

“Often, sir, but never a whale like this, whose sighting earned me
$2,000.00.”

“Correct, the prize is rightfully yours. But tell me, isn’t that the
noise cetaceans make when they spurt water from their blowholes?”

“The very noise, sir, but this one’s way louder. So there can be no
mistake. There’s definitely a whale lurking in our waters. With your
permission, sir,” the harpooner added, “tomorrow at daybreak we’ll
have words with it.”

“If it’s in a mood to listen to you, Mr. Land,” I replied in a tone
far from convinced.

“Let me get within four harpoon lengths of it,” the Canadian shot
back, “and it had better listen!”

“But to get near it,” the commander went on, “I’d have to put a
whaleboat at your disposal?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“That would be gambling with the lives of my men.”

“And with my own!” the harpooner replied simply.

Near two o’clock in the morning, the core of light reappeared, no less
intense, five miles to windward of the Abraham Lincoln. Despite the
distance, despite the noise of wind and sea, we could distinctly hear
the fearsome thrashings of the animal’s tail, and even its panting
breath. Seemingly, the moment this enormous narwhale came up to
breathe at the surface of the ocean, air was sucked into its lungs
like steam into the huge cylinders of a 2,000-horsepower engine.

“Hmm!” I said to myself. “A cetacean as powerful as a whole cavalry
regiment—now that’s a whale of a whale!”

We stayed on the alert until daylight, getting ready for
action. Whaling gear was set up along the railings. Our chief officer
loaded the blunderbusses, which can launch harpoons as far as a mile,
and long duck guns with exploding bullets that can mortally wound even
the most powerful animals. Ned Land was content to sharpen his
harpoon, a dreadful weapon in his hands.

At six o’clock day began to break, and with the dawn’s early light,
the narwhale’s electric glow disappeared. At seven o’clock the day was
well along, but a very dense morning mist shrank the horizon, and our
best spyglasses were unable to pierce it. The outcome: disappointment
and anger.

I hoisted myself up to the crosstrees of the mizzen sail. Some
officers were already perched on the mastheads.

At eight o’clock the mist rolled ponderously over the waves, and its
huge curls were lifting little by little. The horizon grew wider and
clearer all at once.

Suddenly, just as on the previous evening, Ned Land’s voice was
audible.

“There’s the thing in question, astern to port!” the harpooner
shouted.

Every eye looked toward the point indicated.

There, a mile and a half from the frigate, a long blackish body
emerged a meter above the waves. Quivering violently, its tail was
creating a considerable eddy. Never had caudal equipment thrashed the
sea with such power. An immense wake of glowing whiteness marked the
animal’s track, sweeping in a long curve.

Our frigate drew nearer to the cetacean. I examined it with a
completely open mind. Those reports from the Shannon and the Helvetia
had slightly exaggerated its dimensions, and I put its length at only
250 feet. Its girth was more difficult to judge, but all in all, the
animal seemed to be wonderfully proportioned in all three dimensions.

While I was observing this phenomenal creature, two jets of steam and
water sprang from its blowholes and rose to an altitude of forty
meters, which settled for me its mode of breathing. From this I
finally concluded that it belonged to the branch Vertebrata, class
Mammalia, subclass Monodelphia, group Pisciforma, order Cetacea,
family . . . but here I couldn’t make up my mind. The order Cetacea
consists of three families, baleen whales, sperm whales, dolphins, and
it’s in this last group that narwhales are placed. Each of these
families is divided into several genera, each genus into species, each
species into varieties. So I was still missing variety, species,
genus, and family, but no doubt I would complete my classifying with
the aid of Heaven and Commander Farragut.

The crew were waiting impatiently for orders from their leader. The
latter, after carefully observing the animal, called for his
engineer. The engineer raced over.

“Sir,” the commander said, “are you up to pressure?”

“Aye, sir,” the engineer replied.

“Fine. Stoke your furnaces and clap on full steam!”

Three cheers greeted this order. The hour of battle had sounded. A few
moments later, the frigate’s two funnels vomited torrents of black
smoke, and its deck quaked from the trembling of its boilers.

Driven forward by its powerful propeller, the Abraham Lincoln headed
straight for the animal. Unconcerned, the latter let us come within
half a cable length; then, not bothering to dive, it got up a little
speed, retreated, and was content to keep its distance.

This chase dragged on for about three-quarters of an hour without the
frigate gaining two fathoms on the cetacean. At this rate, it was
obvious that we would never catch up with it.

Infuriated, Commander Farragut kept twisting the thick tuft of hair
that flourished below his chin.

“Ned Land!” he called.

The Canadian reported at once.

“Well, Mr. Land,” the commander asked, “do you still advise putting my
longboats to sea?”

“No, sir,” Ned Land replied, “because that beast won’t be caught
against its will.”

“Then what should we do?”

“Stoke up more steam, sir, if you can. As for me, with your permission
I’ll go perch on the bobstays under the bowsprit, and if we can get
within a harpoon length, I’ll harpoon the brute.”

“Go to it, Ned,” Commander Farragut replied. “Engineer,” he called,
“keep the pressure mounting!”

Ned Land made his way to his post. The furnaces were urged into
greater activity; our propeller did forty-three revolutions per
minute, and steam shot from the valves. Heaving the log, we verified
that the Abraham Lincoln was going at the rate of 18.5 miles per hour.

But that damned animal also did a speed of 18.5.

For the next hour our frigate kept up this pace without gaining a
fathom! This was humiliating for one of the fastest racers in the
American navy. The crew were working up into a blind rage. Sailor
after sailor heaved insults at the monster, which couldn’t be bothered
with answering back. Commander Farragut was no longer content simply
to twist his goatee; he chewed on it.

The engineer was summoned once again.

“You’re up to maximum pressure?” the commander asked him.

“Aye, sir,” the engineer replied.

“And your valves are charged to . . . ?”

“To six and a half atmospheres.”

“Charge them to ten atmospheres.”

A typical American order if I ever heard one. It would have sounded
just fine during some Mississippi paddle-wheeler race, to “outstrip
the competition!”

“Conseil,” I said to my gallant servant, now at my side, “you realize
that we’ll probably blow ourselves skyhigh?”

“As master wishes!” Conseil replied.

All right, I admit it: I did wish to run this risk!

The valves were charged. More coal was swallowed by the
furnaces. Ventilators shot torrents of air over the braziers. The
Abraham Lincoln’s speed increased. Its masts trembled down to their
blocks, and swirls of smoke could barely squeeze through the narrow
funnels.

We heaved the log a second time.

“Well, helmsman?” Commander Farragut asked.

“19.3 miles per hour, sir.”

“Keep stoking the furnaces.”

The engineer did so. The pressure gauge marked ten atmospheres. But no
doubt the cetacean itself had “warmed up,” because without the least
trouble, it also did 19.3.

What a chase! No, I can’t describe the excitement that shook my very
being. Ned Land stayed at his post, harpoon in hand. Several times the
animal let us approach.

“We’re overhauling it!” the Canadian would shout.

Then, just as he was about to strike, the cetacean would steal off
with a swiftness I could estimate at no less than thirty miles per
hour. And even at our maximum speed, it took the liberty of thumbing
its nose at the frigate by running a full circle around us! A howl of
fury burst from every throat!

By noon we were no farther along than at eight o’clock in the morning.

Commander Farragut then decided to use more direct methods.

“Bah!” he said. “So that animal is faster than the Abraham
Lincoln. All right, we’ll see if it can outrun our conical shells!
Mate, man the gun in the bow!”

Our forecastle cannon was immediately loaded and leveled. The
cannoneer fired a shot, but his shell passed some feet above the
cetacean, which stayed half a mile off.

“Over to somebody with better aim!” the commander shouted. “And
$500.00 to the man who can pierce that infernal beast!”

Calm of eye, cool of feature, an old gray-bearded gunner—I can see him
to this day—approached the cannon, put it in position, and took aim
for a good while. There was a mighty explosion, mingled with cheers
from the crew.

The shell reached its target; it hit the animal, but not in the usual
fashion—it bounced off that rounded surface and vanished into the sea
two miles out.

“Oh drat!” said the old gunner in his anger. “That rascal must be
covered with six-inch armor plate!”

“Curse the beast!” Commander Farragut shouted.

The hunt was on again, and Commander Farragut leaned over to me,
saying:

“I’ll chase that animal till my frigate explodes!”

“Yes,” I replied, “and nobody would blame you!”

We could still hope that the animal would tire out and not be as
insensitive to exhaustion as our steam engines. But no such luck. Hour
after hour went by without it showing the least sign of weariness.

However, to the Abraham Lincoln’s credit, it must be said that we
struggled on with tireless persistence. I estimate that we covered a
distance of at least 500 kilometers during this ill-fated day of
November 6. But night fell and wrapped the surging ocean in its
shadows.

By then I thought our expedition had come to an end, that we would
never see this fantastic animal again. I was mistaken.

At 10:50 in the evening, that electric light reappeared three miles to
windward of the frigate, just as clear and intense as the night
before.

The narwhale seemed motionless. Was it asleep perhaps, weary from its
workday, just riding with the waves? This was our chance, and
Commander Farragut was determined to take full advantage of it.

He gave his orders. The Abraham Lincoln stayed at half steam,
advancing cautiously so as not to awaken its adversary. In midocean
it’s not unusual to encounter whales so sound asleep they can
successfully be attacked, and Ned Land had harpooned more than one in
its slumber. The Canadian went to resume his post on the bobstays
under the bowsprit.

The frigate approached without making a sound, stopped two cable
lengths from the animal and coasted. Not a soul breathed on board. A
profound silence reigned over the deck. We were not 100 feet from the
blazing core of light, whose glow grew stronger and dazzled the eyes.

Just then, leaning over the forecastle railing, I saw Ned Land below
me, one hand grasping the martingale, the other brandishing his
dreadful harpoon. Barely twenty feet separated him from the motionless
animal.

All at once his arm shot forward and the harpoon was launched. I heard
the weapon collide resonantly, as if it had hit some hard substance.

The electric light suddenly went out, and two enormous waterspouts
crashed onto the deck of the frigate, racing like a torrent from stem
to stern, toppling crewmen, breaking spare masts and yardarms from
their lashings.

A hideous collision occurred, and thrown over the rail with no time to
catch hold of it, I was hurled into the sea.


CHAPTER 7

A Whale of Unknown Species


ALTHOUGH I WAS startled by this unexpected descent, I at least have a
very clear recollection of my sensations during it.

At first I was dragged about twenty feet under. I’m a good swimmer,
without claiming to equal such other authors as Byron and Edgar Allan
Poe, who were master divers, and I didn’t lose my head on the way
down. With two vigorous kicks of the heel, I came back to the surface
of the sea.

My first concern was to look for the frigate. Had the crew seen me go
overboard? Was the Abraham Lincoln tacking about? Would Commander
Farragut put a longboat to sea? Could I hope to be rescued?

The gloom was profound. I glimpsed a black mass disappearing eastward,
where its running lights were fading out in the distance. It was the
frigate. I felt I was done for.

“Help! Help!” I shouted, swimming desperately toward the Abraham
Lincoln.

My clothes were weighing me down. The water glued them to my body,
they were paralyzing my movements. I was sinking! I was suffocating
. . . !

“Help!”

This was the last shout I gave. My mouth was filling with water. I
struggled against being dragged into the depths. . . .

Suddenly my clothes were seized by energetic hands, I felt myself
pulled abruptly back to the surface of the sea, and yes, I heard these
words pronounced in my ear:

“If master would oblige me by leaning on my shoulder, master will swim
with much greater ease.”

With one hand I seized the arm of my loyal Conseil.

“You!” I said. “You!”

“Myself,” Conseil replied, “and at master’s command.”

“That collision threw you overboard along with me?”

“Not at all. But being in master’s employ, I followed master.”

The fine lad thought this only natural!

“What about the frigate?” I asked.

“The frigate?” Conseil replied, rolling over on his back. “I think
master had best not depend on it to any great extent!”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that just as I jumped overboard, I heard the men at the
helm shout, ‘Our propeller and rudder are smashed!’ ”

“Smashed?”

“Yes, smashed by the monster’s tusk! I believe it’s the sole injury
the Abraham Lincoln has sustained. But most inconveniently for us, the
ship can no longer steer.”

“Then we’re done for!”

“Perhaps,” Conseil replied serenely. “However, we still have a few
hours before us, and in a few hours one can do a great many things!”

Conseil’s unflappable composure cheered me up. I swam more vigorously,
but hampered by clothes that were as restricting as a cloak made of
lead, I was managing with only the greatest difficulty. Conseil
noticed as much.

“Master will allow me to make an incision,” he said.

And he slipped an open clasp knife under my clothes, slitting them
from top to bottom with one swift stroke. Then he briskly undressed me
while I swam for us both.

I then did Conseil the same favor, and we continued to “navigate” side
by side.

But our circumstances were no less dreadful. Perhaps they hadn’t seen
us go overboard; and even if they had, the frigate—being undone by its
rudder—couldn’t return to leeward after us. So we could count only on
its longboats.

Conseil had coolly reasoned out this hypothesis and laid his plans
accordingly. An amazing character, this boy; in midocean, this stoic
lad seemed right at home!

So, having concluded that our sole chance for salvation lay in being
picked up by the Abraham Lincoln’s longboats, we had to take steps to
wait for them as long as possible. Consequently, I decided to divide
our energies so we wouldn’t both be worn out at the same time, and
this was the arrangement: while one of us lay on his back, staying
motionless with arms crossed and legs outstretched, the other would
swim and propel his partner forward. This towing role was to last no
longer than ten minutes, and by relieving each other in this way, we
could stay afloat for hours, perhaps even until daybreak.

Slim chance, but hope springs eternal in the human breast! Besides,
there were two of us. Lastly, I can vouch—as improbable as it
seems—that even if I had wanted to destroy all my illusions, even if I
had been willing to “give in to despair,” I could not have done so!

The cetacean had rammed our frigate at about eleven o’clock in the
evening. I therefore calculated on eight hours of swimming until
sunrise. A strenuous task, but feasible, thanks to our relieving each
other. The sea was pretty smooth and barely tired us. Sometimes I
tried to peer through the dense gloom, which was broken only by the
phosphorescent flickers coming from our movements. I stared at the
luminous ripples breaking over my hands, shimmering sheets spattered
with blotches of bluish gray. It seemed as if we’d plunged into a pool
of quicksilver.

Near one o’clock in the morning, I was overcome with tremendous
exhaustion. My limbs stiffened in the grip of intense cramps. Conseil
had to keep me going, and attending to our self-preservation became
his sole responsibility. I soon heard the poor lad gasping; his
breathing became shallow and quick. I didn’t think he could stand such
exertions for much longer.

“Go on! Go on!” I told him.

“Leave master behind?” he replied. “Never! I’ll drown before he does!”

Just then, past the fringes of a large cloud that the wind was driving
eastward, the moon appeared. The surface of the sea glistened under
its rays. That kindly light rekindled our strength. I held up my head
again. My eyes darted to every point of the horizon. I spotted the
frigate. It was five miles from us and formed no more than a dark,
barely perceptible mass. But as for longboats, not a one in sight!

I tried to call out. What was the use at such a distance! My swollen
lips wouldn’t let a single sound through. Conseil could still
articulate a few words, and I heard him repeat at intervals:

“Help! Help!”

Ceasing all movement for an instant, we listened. And it may have been
a ringing in my ear, from this organ filling with impeded blood, but
it seemed to me that Conseil’s shout had received an answer back.

“Did you hear that?” I muttered.

“Yes, yes!”

And Conseil hurled another desperate plea into space.

This time there could be no mistake! A human voice had answered us!
Was it the voice of some poor devil left behind in midocean, some
other victim of that collision suffered by our ship? Or was it one of
the frigate’s longboats, hailing us out of the gloom?

Conseil made one final effort, and bracing his hands on my shoulders,
while I offered resistance with one supreme exertion, he raised
himself half out of the water, then fell back exhausted.

“What did you see?”

“I saw . . . ,” he muttered, “I saw . . . but we mustn’t talk
. . . save our strength . . . !”

What had he seen? Then, lord knows why, the thought of the monster
came into my head for the first time . . . ! But even so, that voice
. . . ? Gone are the days when Jonahs took refuge in the bellies of
whales!

Nevertheless, Conseil kept towing me. Sometimes he looked up, stared
straight ahead, and shouted a request for directions, which was
answered by a voice that was getting closer and closer. I could barely
hear it. I was at the end of my strength; my fingers gave out; my
hands were no help to me; my mouth opened convulsively, filling with
brine; its coldness ran through me; I raised my head one last time,
then I collapsed. . . .

Just then something hard banged against me. I clung to it. Then I felt
myself being pulled upward, back to the surface of the water; my chest
caved in, and I fainted. . . .

For certain, I came to quickly, because someone was massaging me so
vigorously it left furrows in my flesh. I half opened my eyes. . . .

“Conseil!” I muttered.

“Did master ring for me?” Conseil replied.

Just then, in the last light of a moon settling on the horizon, I
spotted a face that wasn’t Conseil’s but which I recognized at once.

“Ned!” I exclaimed.

“In person, sir, and still after his prize!” the Canadian replied.

“You were thrown overboard after the frigate’s collision?”

“Yes, professor, but I was luckier than you, and right away I was able
to set foot on this floating islet.”

“Islet?”

“Or in other words, on our gigantic narwhale.”

“Explain yourself, Ned.”

“It’s just that I soon realized why my harpoon got blunted and
couldn’t puncture its hide.”

“Why, Ned, why?”

“Because, professor, this beast is made of boilerplate steel!”

At this point in my story, I need to get a grip on myself, reconstruct
exactly what I experienced, and make doubly sure of everything I
write.

The Canadian’s last words caused a sudden upheaval in my brain. I
swiftly hoisted myself to the summit of this half-submerged creature
or object that was serving as our refuge. I tested it with my
foot. Obviously it was some hard, impenetrable substance, not the soft
matter that makes up the bodies of our big marine mammals.

But this hard substance could have been a bony carapace, like those
that covered some prehistoric animals, and I might have left it at
that and classified this monster among such amphibious reptiles as
turtles or alligators.

Well, no. The blackish back supporting me was smooth and polished with
no overlapping scales. On impact, it gave off a metallic sonority, and
as incredible as this sounds, it seemed, I swear, to be made of
riveted plates.

No doubts were possible! This animal, this monster, this natural
phenomenon that had puzzled the whole scientific world, that had
muddled and misled the minds of seamen in both hemispheres, was, there
could be no escaping it, an even more astonishing phenomenon—a
phenomenon made by the hand of man.

Even if I had discovered that some fabulous, mythological creature
really existed, it wouldn’t have given me such a terrific mental
jolt. It’s easy enough to accept that prodigious things can come from
our Creator. But to find, all at once, right before your eyes, that
the impossible had been mysteriously achieved by man himself: this
staggers the mind!

But there was no question now. We were stretched out on the back of
some kind of underwater boat that, as far as I could judge, boasted
the shape of an immense steel fish. Ned Land had clear views on the
issue. Conseil and I could only line up behind him.

“But then,” I said, “does this contraption contain some sort of
locomotive mechanism, and a crew to run it?”

“Apparently,” the harpooner replied. “And yet for the three hours I’ve
lived on this floating island, it hasn’t shown a sign of life.”

“This boat hasn’t moved at all?”

“No, Professor Aronnax. It just rides with the waves, but otherwise it
hasn’t stirred.”

“But we know that it’s certainly gifted with great speed. Now then,
since an engine is needed to generate that speed, and a mechanic to
run that engine, I conclude: we’re saved.”

“Humph!” Ned Land put in, his tone denoting reservations.

Just then, as if to take my side in the argument, a bubbling began
astern of this strange submersible—whose drive mechanism was obviously
a propeller—and the boat started to move. We barely had time to hang
on to its topside, which emerged about eighty centimeters above
water. Fortunately its speed was not excessive.

“So long as it navigates horizontally,” Ned Land muttered, “I’ve no
complaints. But if it gets the urge to dive, I wouldn’t give $2.00 for
my hide!”

The Canadian might have quoted a much lower price. So it was
imperative to make contact with whatever beings were confined inside
the plating of this machine. I searched its surface for an opening or
a hatch, a “manhole,” to use the official term; but the lines of
rivets had been firmly driven into the sheet-iron joins and were
straight and uniform.

Moreover, the moon then disappeared and left us in profound
darkness. We had to wait for daylight to find some way of getting
inside this underwater boat.

So our salvation lay totally in the hands of the mysterious helmsmen
steering this submersible, and if it made a dive, we were done for!
But aside from this occurring, I didn’t doubt the possibility of our
making contact with them. In fact, if they didn’t produce their own
air, they inevitably had to make periodic visits to the surface of the
ocean to replenish their oxygen supply. Hence the need for some
opening that put the boat’s interior in contact with the atmosphere.

As for any hope of being rescued by Commander Farragut, that had to be
renounced completely. We were being swept westward, and I estimate
that our comparatively moderate speed reached twelve miles per
hour. The propeller churned the waves with mathematical regularity,
sometimes emerging above the surface and throwing phosphorescent spray
to great heights.

Near four o’clock in the morning, the submersible picked up speed. We
could barely cope with this dizzying rush, and the waves battered us
at close range. Fortunately Ned’s hands came across a big mooring ring
fastened to the topside of this sheet-iron back, and we all held on
for dear life.

Finally this long night was over. My imperfect memories won’t let me
recall my every impression of it. A single detail comes back to
me. Several times, during various lulls of wind and sea, I thought I
heard indistinct sounds, a sort of elusive harmony produced by distant
musical chords. What was the secret behind this underwater navigating,
whose explanation the whole world had sought in vain? What beings
lived inside this strange boat? What mechanical force allowed it to
move about with such prodigious speed?

Daylight appeared. The morning mists surrounded us, but they soon
broke up. I was about to proceed with a careful examination of the
hull, whose topside formed a sort of horizontal platform, when I felt
it sinking little by little.

“Oh, damnation!” Ned Land shouted, stamping his foot on the resonant
sheet iron. “Open up there, you antisocial navigators!”

But it was difficult to make yourself heard above the deafening beats
of the propeller. Fortunately this submerging movement stopped.

From inside the boat, there suddenly came noises of iron fastenings
pushed roughly aside. One of the steel plates flew up, a man appeared,
gave a bizarre yell, and instantly disappeared.

A few moments later, eight strapping fellows appeared silently, their
faces like masks, and dragged us down into their fearsome machine.


CHAPTER 8

“Mobilis in Mobili”


THIS BRUTALLY EXECUTED capture was carried out with lightning
speed. My companions and I had no time to collect ourselves. I don’t
know how they felt about being shoved inside this aquatic prison, but
as for me, I was shivering all over. With whom were we dealing? Surely
with some new breed of pirates, exploiting the sea after their own
fashion.

The narrow hatch had barely closed over me when I was surrounded by
profound darkness. Saturated with the outside light, my eyes couldn’t
make out a thing. I felt my naked feet clinging to the steps of an
iron ladder. Forcibly seized, Ned Land and Conseil were behind me. At
the foot of the ladder, a door opened and instantly closed behind us
with a loud clang.

We were alone. Where? I couldn’t say, could barely even imagine. All
was darkness, but such utter darkness that after several minutes, my
eyes were still unable to catch a single one of those hazy gleams that
drift through even the blackest nights.

Meanwhile, furious at these goings on, Ned Land gave free rein to his
indignation.

“Damnation!” he exclaimed. “These people are about as hospitable as
the savages of New Caledonia! All that’s lacking is for them to be
cannibals! I wouldn’t be surprised if they were, but believe you me,
they won’t eat me without my kicking up a protest!”

“Calm yourself, Ned my friend,” Conseil replied serenely. “Don’t flare
up so quickly! We aren’t in a kettle yet!”

“In a kettle, no,” the Canadian shot back, “but in an oven for
sure. It’s dark enough for one. Luckily my Bowie knife hasn’t left me,
and I can still see well enough to put it to use.* The first one of
these bandits who lays a hand on me—”

*Author’s Note: A Bowie knife is a wide-bladed dagger that Americans
 are forever carrying around.

“Don’t be so irritable, Ned,” I then told the harpooner, “and don’t
ruin things for us with pointless violence. Who knows whether they
might be listening to us? Instead, let’s try to find out where we
are!”

I started moving, groping my way. After five steps I encountered an
iron wall made of riveted boilerplate. Then, turning around, I bumped
into a wooden table next to which several stools had been set. The
floor of this prison lay hidden beneath thick, hempen matting that
deadened the sound of footsteps. Its naked walls didn’t reveal any
trace of a door or window. Going around the opposite way, Conseil met
up with me, and we returned to the middle of this cabin, which had to
be twenty feet long by ten wide. As for its height, not even Ned Land,
with his great stature, was able to determine it.

Half an hour had already gone by without our situation changing, when
our eyes were suddenly spirited from utter darkness into blinding
light. Our prison lit up all at once; in other words, it filled with
luminescent matter so intense that at first I couldn’t stand the
brightness of it. From its glare and whiteness, I recognized the
electric glow that had played around this underwater boat like some
magnificent phosphorescent phenomenon. After involuntarily closing my
eyes, I reopened them and saw that this luminous force came from a
frosted half globe curving out of the cabin’s ceiling.

“Finally! It’s light enough to see!” Ned Land exclaimed, knife in
hand, staying on the defensive.

“Yes,” I replied, then ventured the opposite view. “But as for our
situation, we’re still in the dark.”

“Master must learn patience,” said the emotionless Conseil.

This sudden illumination of our cabin enabled me to examine its
tiniest details. It contained only a table and five stools. Its
invisible door must have been hermetically sealed. Not a sound reached
our ears. Everything seemed dead inside this boat. Was it in motion,
or stationary on the surface of the ocean, or sinking into the depths?
I couldn’t tell.

But this luminous globe hadn’t been turned on without good
reason. Consequently, I hoped that some crewmen would soon make an
appearance. If you want to consign people to oblivion, you don’t light
up their dungeons.

I was not mistaken. Unlocking noises became audible, a door opened,
and two men appeared.

One was short and stocky, powerfully muscled, broad shouldered, robust
of limbs, the head squat, the hair black and luxuriant, the mustache
heavy, the eyes bright and penetrating, and his whole personality
stamped with that southern-blooded zest that, in France, typifies the
people of Provence. The philosopher Diderot has very aptly claimed
that a man’s bearing is the clue to his character, and this stocky
little man was certainly a living proof of this claim. You could sense
that his everyday conversation must have been packed with such vivid
figures of speech as personification, symbolism, and misplaced
modifiers. But I was never in a position to verify this because,
around me, he used only an odd and utterly incomprehensible dialect.

The second stranger deserves a more detailed description. A disciple
of such character-judging anatomists as Gratiolet or Engel could have
read this man’s features like an open book. Without hesitation, I
identified his dominant qualities—self-confidence, since his head
reared like a nobleman’s above the arc formed by the lines of his
shoulders, and his black eyes gazed with icy assurance; calmness,
since his skin, pale rather than ruddy, indicated tranquility of
blood; energy, shown by the swiftly knitting muscles of his brow; and
finally courage, since his deep breathing denoted tremendous reserves
of vitality.

I might add that this was a man of great pride, that his calm, firm
gaze seemed to reflect thinking on an elevated plane, and that the
harmony of his facial expressions and bodily movements resulted in an
overall effect of unquestionable candor—according to the findings of
physiognomists, those analysts of facial character.

I felt “involuntarily reassured” in his presence, and this boded well
for our interview.

Whether this individual was thirty-five or fifty years of age, I could
not precisely state. He was tall, his forehead broad, his nose
straight, his mouth clearly etched, his teeth magnificent, his hands
refined, tapered, and to use a word from palmistry, highly “psychic,”
in other words, worthy of serving a lofty and passionate spirit. This
man was certainly the most wonderful physical specimen I had ever
encountered. One unusual detail: his eyes were spaced a little far
from each other and could instantly take in nearly a quarter of the
horizon. This ability—as I later verified—was strengthened by a range
of vision even greater than Ned Land’s. When this stranger focused his
gaze on an object, his eyebrow lines gathered into a frown, his heavy
eyelids closed around his pupils to contract his huge field of vision,
and he looked! What a look—as if he could magnify objects shrinking
into the distance; as if he could probe your very soul; as if he could
pierce those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes and scan the
deepest seas . . . !

Wearing caps made of sea-otter fur, and shod in sealskin fishing
boots, these two strangers were dressed in clothing made from some
unique fabric that flattered the figure and allowed great freedom of
movement.

The taller of the two—apparently the leader on board—examined us with
the greatest care but without pronouncing a word. Then, turning to his
companion, he conversed with him in a language I didn’t recognize. It
was a sonorous, harmonious, flexible dialect whose vowels seemed to
undergo a highly varied accentuation.

The other replied with a shake of the head and added two or three
utterly incomprehensible words. Then he seemed to question me directly
with a long stare.

I replied in clear French that I wasn’t familiar with his language;
but he didn’t seem to understand me, and the situation grew rather
baffling.

“Still, master should tell our story,” Conseil said to me. “Perhaps
these gentlemen will grasp a few words of it!”

I tried again, telling the tale of our adventures, clearly
articulating my every syllable, and not leaving out a single detail. I
stated our names and titles; then, in order, I introduced Professor
Aronnax, his manservant Conseil, and Mr. Ned Land, harpooner.

The man with calm, gentle eyes listened to me serenely, even
courteously, and paid remarkable attention. But nothing in his facial
expression indicated that he understood my story. When I finished, he
didn’t pronounce a single word.

One resource still left was to speak English. Perhaps they would be
familiar with this nearly universal language. But I only knew it, as I
did the German language, well enough to read it fluently, not well
enough to speak it correctly. Here, however, our overriding need was
to make ourselves understood.

“Come on, it’s your turn,” I told the harpooner. “Over to you,
Mr. Land. Pull out of your bag of tricks the best English ever spoken
by an Anglo-Saxon, and try for a more favorable result than mine.”

Ned needed no persuading and started our story all over again, most of
which I could follow. Its content was the same, but the form
differed. Carried away by his volatile temperament, the Canadian put
great animation into it. He complained vehemently about being
imprisoned in defiance of his civil rights, asked by virtue of which
law he was hereby detained, invoked writs of habeas corpus, threatened
to press charges against anyone holding him in illegal custody,
ranted, gesticulated, shouted, and finally conveyed by an expressive
gesture that we were dying of hunger.

This was perfectly true, but we had nearly forgotten the fact.

Much to his amazement, the harpooner seemed no more intelligible than
I had been. Our visitors didn’t bat an eye. Apparently they were
engineers who understood the languages of neither the French physicist
Arago nor the English physicist Faraday.

Thoroughly baffled after vainly exhausting our philological resources,
I no longer knew what tactic to pursue, when Conseil told me:

“If master will authorize me, I’ll tell the whole business in German.”

“What! You know German?” I exclaimed.

“Like most Flemish people, with all due respect to master.”

“On the contrary, my respect is due you. Go to it, my boy.”

And Conseil, in his serene voice, described for the third time the
various vicissitudes of our story. But despite our narrator’s fine
accent and stylish turns of phrase, the German language met with no
success.

Finally, as a last resort, I hauled out everything I could remember
from my early schooldays, and I tried to narrate our adventures in
Latin. Cicero would have plugged his ears and sent me to the scullery,
but somehow I managed to pull through. With the same negative result.

This last attempt ultimately misfiring, the two strangers exchanged a
few words in their incomprehensible language and withdrew, not even
favoring us with one of those encouraging gestures that are used in
every country in the world. The door closed again.

“This is outrageous!” Ned Land shouted, exploding for the twentieth
time. “I ask you! We speak French, English, German, and Latin to these
rogues, and neither of them has the decency to even answer back!”

“Calm down, Ned,” I told the seething harpooner. “Anger won’t get us
anywhere.”

“But professor,” our irascible companion went on, “can’t you see that
we could die of hunger in this iron cage?”

“Bah!” Conseil put in philosophically. “We can hold out a good while
yet!”

“My friends,” I said, “we mustn’t despair. We’ve gotten out of tighter
spots. So please do me the favor of waiting a bit before you form your
views on the commander and crew of this boat.”

“My views are fully formed,” Ned Land shot back. “They’re rogues!”

“Oh good! And from what country?”

“Roguedom!”

“My gallant Ned, as yet that country isn’t clearly marked on maps of
the world, but I admit that the nationality of these two strangers is
hard to make out! Neither English, French, nor German, that’s all we
can say. But I’m tempted to think that the commander and his chief
officer were born in the low latitudes. There must be southern blood
in them. But as to whether they’re Spaniards, Turks, Arabs, or East
Indians, their physical characteristics don’t give me enough to go
on. And as for their speech, it’s utterly incomprehensible.”

“That’s the nuisance in not knowing every language,” Conseil replied,
“or the drawback in not having one universal language!”

“Which would all go out the window!” Ned Land replied. “Don’t you see,
these people have a language all to themselves, a language they’ve
invented just to cause despair in decent people who ask for a little
dinner! Why, in every country on earth, when you open your mouth, snap
your jaws, smack your lips and teeth, isn’t that the world’s most
understandable message? From Quebec to the Tuamotu Islands, from Paris
to the Antipodes, doesn’t it mean: I’m hungry, give me a bite to eat!”

“Oh,” Conseil put in, “there are some people so unintelligent by
nature . . .”

As he was saying these words, the door opened. A steward entered.* He
brought us some clothes, jackets and sailor’s pants, made out of a
fabric whose nature I didn’t recognize. I hurried to change into them,
and my companions followed suit.

*Author’s Note: A steward is a waiter on board a steamer.

Meanwhile our silent steward, perhaps a deaf-mute, set the table and
laid three place settings.

“There’s something serious afoot,” Conseil said, “and it bodes well.”

“Bah!” replied the rancorous harpooner. “What the devil do you suppose
they eat around here? Turtle livers, loin of shark, dogfish steaks?”

“We’ll soon find out!” Conseil said.

Overlaid with silver dish covers, various platters had been neatly
positioned on the table cloth, and we sat down to eat. Assuredly, we
were dealing with civilized people, and if it hadn’t been for this
electric light flooding over us, I would have thought we were in the
dining room of the Hotel Adelphi in Liverpool, or the Grand Hotel in
Paris. However, I feel compelled to mention that bread and wine were
totally absent. The water was fresh and clear, but it was still
water—which wasn’t what Ned Land had in mind. Among the foods we were
served, I was able to identify various daintily dressed fish; but I
couldn’t make up my mind about certain otherwise excellent dishes, and
I couldn’t even tell whether their contents belonged to the vegetable
or the animal kingdom. As for the tableware, it was elegant and in
perfect taste. Each utensil, spoon, fork, knife, and plate, bore on
its reverse a letter encircled by a Latin motto, and here is its exact
duplicate:

  MOBILIS IN MOBILI
  N

Moving within the moving element! It was a highly appropriate motto
for this underwater machine, so long as the preposition in is
translated as within and not upon. The letter N was no doubt the
initial of the name of that mystifying individual in command beneath
the seas!

Ned and Conseil had no time for such musings. They were wolfing down
their food, and without further ado I did the same. By now I felt
reassured about our fate, and it seemed obvious that our hosts didn’t
intend to let us die of starvation.

But all earthly things come to an end, all things must pass, even the
hunger of people who haven’t eaten for fifteen hours. Our appetites
appeased, we felt an urgent need for sleep. A natural reaction after
that interminable night of fighting for our lives.

“Ye gods, I’ll sleep soundly,” Conseil said.

“Me, I’m out like a light!” Ned Land replied.

My two companions lay down on the cabin’s carpeting and were soon deep
in slumber.

As for me, I gave in less readily to this intense need for sleep. Too
many thoughts had piled up in my mind, too many insoluble questions
had arisen, too many images were keeping my eyelids open! Where were
we? What strange power was carrying us along? I felt—or at least I
thought I did—the submersible sinking toward the sea’s lower
strata. Intense nightmares besieged me. In these mysterious marine
sanctuaries, I envisioned hosts of unknown animals, and this
underwater boat seemed to be a blood relation of theirs: living,
breathing, just as fearsome . . . ! Then my mind grew calmer, my
imagination melted into hazy drowsiness, and I soon fell into an
uneasy slumber.


CHAPTER 9

The Tantrums of Ned Land


I HAVE NO IDEA how long this slumber lasted; but it must have been a
good while, since we were completely over our exhaustion. I was the
first one to wake up. My companions weren’t yet stirring and still lay
in their corners like inanimate objects.

I had barely gotten up from my passably hard mattress when I felt my
mind clear, my brain go on the alert. So I began a careful
reexamination of our cell.

Nothing had changed in its interior arrangements. The prison was still
a prison and its prisoners still prisoners. But, taking advantage of
our slumber, the steward had cleared the table. Consequently, nothing
indicated any forthcoming improvement in our situation, and I
seriously wondered if we were doomed to spend the rest of our lives in
this cage.

This prospect seemed increasingly painful to me because, even though
my brain was clear of its obsessions from the night before, I was
feeling an odd short-windedness in my chest. It was becoming hard for
me to breathe. The heavy air was no longer sufficient for the full
play of my lungs. Although our cell was large, we obviously had used
up most of the oxygen it contained. In essence, over an hour’s time a
single human being consumes all the oxygen found in 100 liters of air,
at which point that air has become charged with a nearly equal amount
of carbon dioxide and is no longer fit for breathing.

So it was now urgent to renew the air in our prison, and no doubt the
air in this whole underwater boat as well.

Here a question popped into my head. How did the commander of this
aquatic residence go about it? Did he obtain air using chemical
methods, releasing the oxygen contained in potassium chlorate by
heating it, meanwhile absorbing the carbon dioxide with potassium
hydroxide? If so, he would have to keep up some kind of relationship
with the shore, to come by the materials needed for such an
operation. Did he simply limit himself to storing the air in
high-pressure tanks and then dispense it according to his crew’s
needs? Perhaps. Or, proceeding in a more convenient, more economical,
and consequently more probable fashion, was he satisfied with merely
returning to breathe at the surface of the water like a cetacean,
renewing his oxygen supply every twenty-four hours? In any event,
whatever his method was, it seemed prudent to me that he use this
method without delay.

In fact, I had already resorted to speeding up my inhalations in order
to extract from the cell what little oxygen it contained, when
suddenly I was refreshed by a current of clean air, scented with a
salty aroma. It had to be a sea breeze, life-giving and charged with
iodine! I opened my mouth wide, and my lungs glutted themselves on the
fresh particles. At the same time, I felt a swaying, a rolling of
moderate magnitude but definitely noticeable. This boat, this
sheet-iron monster, had obviously just risen to the surface of the
ocean, there to breathe in good whale fashion. So the ship’s mode of
ventilation was finally established.

When I had absorbed a chestful of this clean air, I looked for the
conduit—the “air carrier,” if you prefer—that allowed this beneficial
influx to reach us, and I soon found it. Above the door opened an air
vent that let in a fresh current of oxygen, renewing the thin air in
our cell.

I had gotten to this point in my observations when Ned and Conseil
woke up almost simultaneously, under the influence of this reviving
air purification. They rubbed their eyes, stretched their arms, and
sprang to their feet.

“Did master sleep well?” Conseil asked me with his perennial good
manners.

“Extremely well, my gallant lad,” I replied. “And how about you,
Mr. Ned Land?”

“Like a log, professor. But I must be imagining things, because it
seems like I’m breathing a sea breeze!”

A seaman couldn’t be wrong on this topic, and I told the Canadian what
had gone on while he slept.

“Good!” he said. “That explains perfectly all that bellowing we heard,
when our so-called narwhale lay in sight of the Abraham Lincoln.”

“Perfectly, Mr. Land. It was catching its breath!”

“Only I’ve no idea what time it is, Professor Aronnax, unless maybe
it’s dinnertime?”

“Dinnertime, my fine harpooner? I’d say at least breakfast time,
because we’ve certainly woken up to a new day.”

“Which indicates,” Conseil replied, “that we’ve spent twenty-four
hours in slumber.”

“That’s my assessment,” I replied.

“I won’t argue with you,” Ned Land answered. “But dinner or breakfast,
that steward will be plenty welcome whether he brings the one or the
other.”

“The one and the other,” Conseil said.

“Well put,” the Canadian replied. “We deserve two meals, and speaking
for myself, I’ll do justice to them both.”

“All right, Ned, let’s wait and see!” I replied. “It’s clear that
these strangers don’t intend to let us die of hunger, otherwise last
evening’s dinner wouldn’t make any sense.”

“Unless they’re fattening us up!” Ned shot back.

“I object,” I replied. “We have not fallen into the hands of
cannibals.”

“Just because they don’t make a habit of it,” the Canadian replied in
all seriousness, “doesn’t mean they don’t indulge from time to
time. Who knows? Maybe these people have gone without fresh meat for a
long while, and in that case three healthy, well-built specimens like
the professor, his manservant, and me —-”

“Get rid of those ideas, Mr. Land,” I answered the harpooner. “And
above all, don’t let them lead you to flare up against our hosts,
which would only make our situation worse.”

“Anyhow,” the harpooner said, “I’m as hungry as all Hades, and dinner
or breakfast, not one puny meal has arrived!”

“Mr. Land,” I answered, “we have to adapt to the schedule on board,
and I imagine our stomachs are running ahead of the chief cook’s
dinner bell.”

“Well then, we’ll adjust our stomachs to the chef’s timetable!”
Conseil replied serenely.

“There you go again, Conseil my friend!” the impatient Canadian shot
back. “You never allow yourself any displays of bile or attacks of
nerves! You’re everlastingly calm! You’d say your after-meal grace
even if you didn’t get any food for your before-meal blessing—and
you’d starve to death rather than complain!”

“What good would it do?” Conseil asked.

“Complaining doesn’t have to do good, it just feels good! And if these
pirates—I say pirates out of consideration for the professor’s
feelings, since he doesn’t want us to call them cannibals—if these
pirates think they’re going to smother me in this cage without hearing
what cusswords spice up my outbursts, they’ve got another think
coming! Look here, Professor Aronnax, speak frankly. How long do you
figure they’ll keep us in this iron box?”

“To tell the truth, friend Land, I know little more about it than you
do.”

“But in a nutshell, what do you suppose is going on?”

“My supposition is that sheer chance has made us privy to an important
secret. Now then, if the crew of this underwater boat have a personal
interest in keeping that secret, and if their personal interest is
more important than the lives of three men, I believe that our very
existence is in jeopardy. If such is not the case, then at the first
available opportunity, this monster that has swallowed us will return
us to the world inhabited by our own kind.”

“Unless they recruit us to serve on the crew,” Conseil said, “and keep
us here—”

“Till the moment,” Ned Land answered, “when some frigate that’s faster
or smarter than the Abraham Lincoln captures this den of buccaneers,
then hangs all of us by the neck from the tip of a mainmast yardarm!”

“Well thought out, Mr. Land,” I replied. “But as yet, I don’t believe
we’ve been tendered any enlistment offers. Consequently, it’s
pointless to argue about what tactics we should pursue in such a
case. I repeat: let’s wait, let’s be guided by events, and let’s do
nothing, since right now there’s nothing we can do.”

“On the contrary, professor,” the harpooner replied, not wanting to
give in. “There is something we can do.”

“Oh? And what, Mr. Land?”

“Break out of here!”

“Breaking out of a prison on shore is difficult enough, but with an
underwater prison, it strikes me as completely unworkable.”

“Come now, Ned my friend,” Conseil asked, “how would you answer
master’s objection? I refuse to believe that an American is at the end
of his tether.”

Visibly baffled, the harpooner said nothing. Under the conditions in
which fate had left us, it was absolutely impossible to escape. But a
Canadian’s wit is half French, and Mr. Ned Land made this clear in his
reply.

“So, Professor Aronnax,” he went on after thinking for a few moments,
“you haven’t figured out what people do when they can’t escape from
their prison?”

“No, my friend.”

“Easy. They fix things so they stay there.”

“Of course!” Conseil put in. “Since we’re deep in the ocean, being
inside this boat is vastly preferable to being above it or below it!”

“But we fix things by kicking out all the jailers, guards, and
wardens,” Ned Land added.

“What’s this, Ned?” I asked. “You’d seriously consider taking over
this craft?”

“Very seriously,” the Canadian replied.

“It’s impossible.”

“And why is that, sir? Some promising opportunity might come up, and I
don’t see what could stop us from taking advantage of it. If there are
only about twenty men on board this machine, I don’t think they can
stave off two Frenchmen and a Canadian!”

It seemed wiser to accept the harpooner’s proposition than to debate
it. Accordingly, I was content to reply:

“Let such circumstances come, Mr. Land, and we’ll see. But until then,
I beg you to control your impatience. We need to act shrewdly, and
your flare-ups won’t give rise to any promising opportunities. So
swear to me that you’ll accept our situation without throwing a
tantrum over it.”

“I give you my word, professor,” Ned Land replied in an unenthusiastic
tone. “No vehement phrases will leave my mouth, no vicious gestures
will give my feelings away, not even when they don’t feed us on time.”

“I have your word, Ned,” I answered the Canadian.

Then our conversation petered out, and each of us withdrew into his
own thoughts. For my part, despite the harpooner’s confident talk, I
admit that I entertained no illusions. I had no faith in those
promising opportunities that Ned Land mentioned. To operate with such
efficiency, this underwater boat had to have a sizeable crew, so if it
came to a physical contest, we would be facing an overwhelming
opponent. Besides, before we could do anything, we had to be free, and
that we definitely were not. I didn’t see any way out of this
sheet-iron, hermetically sealed cell. And if the strange commander of
this boat did have a secret to keep—which seemed rather likely—he
would never give us freedom of movement aboard his vessel. Now then,
would he resort to violence in order to be rid of us, or would he drop
us off one day on some remote coast? There lay the unknown. All these
hypotheses seemed extremely plausible to me, and to hope for freedom
through use of force, you had to be a harpooner.

I realized, moreover, that Ned Land’s brooding was getting him madder
by the minute. Little by little, I heard those aforesaid cusswords
welling up in the depths of his gullet, and I saw his movements turn
threatening again. He stood up, pacing in circles like a wild beast in
a cage, striking the walls with his foot and fist. Meanwhile the hours
passed, our hunger nagged unmercifully, and this time the steward did
not appear. Which amounted to forgetting our castaway status for much
too long, if they really had good intentions toward us.

Tortured by the growling of his well-built stomach, Ned Land was
getting more and more riled, and despite his word of honor, I was in
real dread of an explosion when he stood in the presence of one of the
men on board.

For two more hours Ned Land’s rage increased. The Canadian shouted and
pleaded, but to no avail. The sheet-iron walls were deaf. I didn’t
hear a single sound inside this dead-seeming boat. The vessel hadn’t
stirred, because I obviously would have felt its hull vibrating under
the influence of the propeller. It had undoubtedly sunk into the
watery deep and no longer belonged to the outside world. All this
dismal silence was terrifying.

As for our neglect, our isolation in the depths of this cell, I was
afraid to guess at how long it might last. Little by little, hopes I
had entertained after our interview with the ship’s commander were
fading away. The gentleness of the man’s gaze, the generosity
expressed in his facial features, the nobility of his bearing, all
vanished from my memory. I saw this mystifying individual anew for
what he inevitably must be: cruel and merciless. I viewed him as
outside humanity, beyond all feelings of compassion, the implacable
foe of his fellow man, toward whom he must have sworn an undying hate!

But even so, was the man going to let us die of starvation, locked up
in this cramped prison, exposed to those horrible temptations to which
people are driven by extreme hunger? This grim possibility took on a
dreadful intensity in my mind, and fired by my imagination, I felt an
unreasoning terror run through me. Conseil stayed calm. Ned Land
bellowed.

Just then a noise was audible outside. Footsteps rang on the metal
tiling. The locks were turned, the door opened, the steward appeared.

Before I could make a single movement to prevent him, the Canadian
rushed at the poor man, threw him down, held him by the throat. The
steward was choking in the grip of those powerful hands.

Conseil was already trying to loosen the harpooner’s hands from his
half-suffocated victim, and I had gone to join in the rescue, when I
was abruptly nailed to the spot by these words pronounced in French:

“Calm down, Mr. Land! And you, professor, kindly listen to me!”


CHAPTER 10

The Man of the Waters


IT WAS THE ship’s commander who had just spoken.

At these words Ned Land stood up quickly. Nearly strangled, the
steward staggered out at a signal from his superior; but such was the
commander’s authority aboard his vessel, not one gesture gave away the
resentment that this man must have felt toward the Canadian. In
silence we waited for the outcome of this scene; Conseil, in spite of
himself, seemed almost fascinated, I was stunned.

Arms crossed, leaning against a corner of the table, the commander
studied us with great care. Was he reluctant to speak further? Did he
regret those words he had just pronounced in French? You would have
thought so.

After a few moments of silence, which none of us would have dreamed of
interrupting:

“Gentlemen,” he said in a calm, penetrating voice, “I speak French,
English, German, and Latin with equal fluency. Hence I could have
answered you as early as our initial interview, but first I wanted to
make your acquaintance and then think things over. Your four versions
of the same narrative, perfectly consistent by and large, established
your personal identities for me. I now know that sheer chance has
placed in my presence Professor Pierre Aronnax, specialist in natural
history at the Paris Museum and entrusted with a scientific mission
abroad, his manservant Conseil, and Ned Land, a harpooner of Canadian
origin aboard the Abraham Lincoln, a frigate in the national navy of
the United States of America.”

I bowed in agreement. The commander hadn’t put a question to me. So no
answer was called for. This man expressed himself with perfect ease
and without a trace of an accent. His phrasing was clear, his words
well chosen, his facility in elocution remarkable. And yet, to me, he
didn’t have “the feel” of a fellow countryman.

He went on with the conversation as follows:

“No doubt, sir, you’ve felt that I waited rather too long before
paying you this second visit. After discovering your identities, I
wanted to weigh carefully what policy to pursue toward you. I had
great difficulty deciding. Some extremely inconvenient circumstances
have brought you into the presence of a man who has cut himself off
from humanity. Your coming has disrupted my whole existence.”

“Unintentionally,” I said.

“Unintentionally?” the stranger replied, raising his voice a
little. “Was it unintentionally that the Abraham Lincoln hunted me on
every sea? Was it unintentionally that you traveled aboard that
frigate? Was it unintentionally that your shells bounced off my ship’s
hull? Was it unintentionally that Mr. Ned Land hit me with his
harpoon?”

I detected a controlled irritation in these words. But there was a
perfectly natural reply to these charges, and I made it.

“Sir,” I said, “you’re surely unaware of the discussions that have
taken place in Europe and America with yourself as the subject. You
don’t realize that various accidents, caused by collisions with your
underwater machine, have aroused public passions on those two
continents. I’ll spare you the innumerable hypotheses with which we’ve
tried to explain this inexplicable phenomenon, whose secret is yours
alone. But please understand that the Abraham Lincoln chased you over
the Pacific high seas in the belief it was hunting some powerful
marine monster, which had to be purged from the ocean at all cost.”

A half smile curled the commander’s lips; then, in a calmer tone:

“Professor Aronnax,” he replied, “do you dare claim that your frigate
wouldn’t have chased and cannonaded an underwater boat as readily as a
monster?”

This question baffled me, since Commander Farragut would certainly
have shown no such hesitation. He would have seen it as his sworn duty
to destroy a contrivance of this kind just as promptly as a gigantic
narwhale.

“So you understand, sir,” the stranger went on, “that I have a right
to treat you as my enemy.”

I kept quiet, with good reason. What was the use of debating such a
proposition, when superior force can wipe out the best arguments?

“It took me a good while to decide,” the commander went on. “Nothing
obliged me to grant you hospitality. If I were to part company with
you, I’d have no personal interest in ever seeing you again. I could
put you back on the platform of this ship that has served as your
refuge. I could sink under the sea, and I could forget you ever
existed. Wouldn’t that be my right?”

“Perhaps it would be the right of a savage,” I replied. “But not that
of a civilized man.”

“Professor,” the commander replied swiftly, “I’m not what you term a
civilized man! I’ve severed all ties with society, for reasons that I
alone have the right to appreciate. Therefore I obey none of its
regulations, and I insist that you never invoke them in front of me!”

This was plain speaking. A flash of anger and scorn lit up the
stranger’s eyes, and I glimpsed a fearsome past in this man’s
life. Not only had he placed himself beyond human laws, he had
rendered himself independent, out of all reach, free in the strictest
sense of the word! For who would dare chase him to the depths of the
sea when he thwarted all attacks on the surface? What ship could
withstand a collision with his underwater Monitor? What armor plate,
no matter how heavy, could bear the thrusts of his spur? No man among
men could call him to account for his actions. God, if he believed in
Him, his conscience if he had one—these were the only judges to whom
he was answerable.

These thoughts swiftly crossed my mind while this strange individual
fell silent, like someone completely self-absorbed. I regarded him
with a mixture of fear and fascination, in the same way, no doubt,
that Oedipus regarded the Sphinx.

After a fairly long silence, the commander went on with our
conversation.

“So I had difficulty deciding,” he said. “But I concluded that my
personal interests could be reconciled with that natural compassion to
which every human being has a right. Since fate has brought you here,
you’ll stay aboard my vessel. You’ll be free here, and in exchange for
that freedom, moreover totally related to it, I’ll lay on you just one
condition. Your word that you’ll submit to it will be sufficient.”

“Go on, sir,” I replied. “I assume this condition is one an honest man
can accept?”

“Yes, sir. Just this. It’s possible that certain unforeseen events may
force me to confine you to your cabins for some hours, or even for
some days as the case may be. Since I prefer never to use violence, I
expect from you in such a case, even more than in any other, your
unquestioning obedience. By acting in this way, I shield you from
complicity, I absolve you of all responsibility, since I myself make
it impossible for you to see what you aren’t meant to see. Do you
accept this condition?”

So things happened on board that were quite odd to say the least,
things never to be seen by people not placing themselves beyond
society’s laws! Among all the surprises the future had in store for
me, this would not be the mildest.

“We accept,” I replied. “Only, I’ll ask your permission, sir, to
address a question to you, just one.”

“Go ahead, sir.”

“You said we’d be free aboard your vessel?”

“Completely.”

“Then I would ask what you mean by this freedom.”

“Why, the freedom to come, go, see, and even closely observe
everything happening here—except under certain rare circumstances—in
short, the freedom we ourselves enjoy, my companions and I.”

It was obvious that we did not understand each other.

“Pardon me, sir,” I went on, “but that’s merely the freedom that every
prisoner has, the freedom to pace his cell! That’s not enough for us.”

“Nevertheless, it will have to do!”

“What! We must give up seeing our homeland, friends, and relatives
ever again?”

“Yes, sir. But giving up that intolerable earthly yoke that some men
call freedom is perhaps less painful than you think!”

“By thunder!” Ned Land shouted. “I’ll never promise I won’t try
getting out of here!”

“I didn’t ask for such a promise, Mr. Land,” the commander replied
coldly.

“Sir,” I replied, flaring up in spite of myself, “you’re taking unfair
advantage of us! This is sheer cruelty!”

“No, sir, it’s an act of mercy! You’re my prisoners of war! I’ve cared
for you when, with a single word, I could plunge you back into the
ocean depths! You attacked me! You’ve just stumbled on a secret no
living man must probe, the secret of my entire existence! Do you think
I’ll send you back to a world that must know nothing more of me?
Never! By keeping you on board, it isn’t you whom I care for, it’s
me!”

These words indicated that the commander pursued a policy impervious
to arguments.

“Then, sir,” I went on, “you give us, quite simply, a choice between
life and death?”

“Quite simply.”

“My friends,” I said, “to a question couched in these terms, our
answer can be taken for granted. But no solemn promises bind us to the
commander of this vessel.”

“None, sir,” the stranger replied.

Then, in a gentler voice, he went on:

“Now, allow me to finish what I have to tell you. I’ve heard of you,
Professor Aronnax. You, if not your companions, won’t perhaps complain
too much about the stroke of fate that has brought us together. Among
the books that make up my favorite reading, you’ll find the work
you’ve published on the great ocean depths. I’ve pored over it. You’ve
taken your studies as far as terrestrial science can go. But you don’t
know everything because you haven’t seen everything. Let me tell you,
professor, you won’t regret the time you spend aboard my
vessel. You’re going to voyage through a land of wonders. Stunned
amazement will probably be your habitual state of mind. It will be a
long while before you tire of the sights constantly before your
eyes. I’m going to make another underwater tour of the world—perhaps
my last, who knows?—and I’ll review everything I’ve studied in the
depths of these seas that I’ve crossed so often, and you can be my
fellow student. Starting this very day, you’ll enter a new element,
you’ll see what no human being has ever seen before—since my men and I
no longer count—and thanks to me, you’re going to learn the ultimate
secrets of our planet.”

I can’t deny it; the commander’s words had a tremendous effect on
me. He had caught me on my weak side, and I momentarily forgot that
not even this sublime experience was worth the loss of my
freedom. Besides, I counted on the future to resolve this important
question. So I was content to reply:

“Sir, even though you’ve cut yourself off from humanity, I can see
that you haven’t disowned all human feeling. We’re castaways whom
you’ve charitably taken aboard, we’ll never forget that. Speaking for
myself, I don’t rule out that the interests of science could override
even the need for freedom, which promises me that, in exchange, our
encounter will provide great rewards.”

I thought the commander would offer me his hand, to seal our
agreement. He did nothing of the sort. I regretted that.

“One last question,” I said, just as this inexplicable being seemed
ready to withdraw.

“Ask it, professor.”

“By what name am I to call you?”

“Sir,” the commander replied, “to you, I’m simply Captain Nemo;* to
me, you and your companions are simply passengers on the Nautilus.”

*Latin: nemo means “no one.” Ed.

Captain Nemo called out. A steward appeared. The captain gave him his
orders in that strange language I couldn’t even identify. Then,
turning to the Canadian and Conseil:

“A meal is waiting for you in your cabin,” he told them. “Kindly
follow this man.”

“That’s an offer I can’t refuse!” the harpooner replied.

After being confined for over thirty hours, he and Conseil were
finally out of this cell.

“And now, Professor Aronnax, our own breakfast is ready. Allow me to
lead the way.”

“Yours to command, captain.”

I followed Captain Nemo, and as soon as I passed through the doorway,
I went down a kind of electrically lit passageway that resembled a
gangway on a ship. After a stretch of some ten meters, a second door
opened before me.

I then entered a dining room, decorated and furnished in austere good
taste. Inlaid with ebony trim, tall oaken sideboards stood at both
ends of this room, and sparkling on their shelves were staggered rows
of earthenware, porcelain, and glass of incalculable value. There
silver-plated dinnerware gleamed under rays pouring from light
fixtures in the ceiling, whose glare was softened and tempered by
delicately painted designs.

In the center of this room stood a table, richly spread. Captain Nemo
indicated the place I was to occupy.

“Be seated,” he told me, “and eat like the famished man you must be.”

Our breakfast consisted of several dishes whose contents were all
supplied by the sea, and some foods whose nature and derivation were
unknown to me. They were good, I admit, but with a peculiar flavor to
which I would soon grow accustomed. These various food items seemed to
be rich in phosphorous, and I thought that they, too, must have been
of marine origin.

Captain Nemo stared at me. I had asked him nothing, but he read my
thoughts, and on his own he answered the questions I was itching to
address him.

“Most of these dishes are new to you,” he told me. “But you can
consume them without fear. They’re healthy and nourishing. I renounced
terrestrial foods long ago, and I’m none the worse for it. My crew are
strong and full of energy, and they eat what I eat.”

“So,” I said, “all these foods are products of the sea?”

“Yes, professor, the sea supplies all my needs. Sometimes I cast my
nets in our wake, and I pull them up ready to burst. Sometimes I go
hunting right in the midst of this element that has long seemed so far
out of man’s reach, and I corner the game that dwells in my underwater
forests. Like the flocks of old Proteus, King Neptune’s shepherd, my
herds graze without fear on the ocean’s immense prairies. There I own
vast properties that I harvest myself, and which are forever sown by
the hand of the Creator of All Things.”

I stared at Captain Nemo in definite astonishment, and I answered him:

“Sir, I understand perfectly how your nets can furnish excellent fish
for your table; I understand less how you can chase aquatic game in
your underwater forests; but how a piece of red meat, no matter how
small, can figure in your menu, that I don’t understand at all.”

“Nor I, sir,” Captain Nemo answered me. “I never touch the flesh of
land animals.”

“Nevertheless, this . . . ,” I went on, pointing to a dish where some
slices of loin were still left.

“What you believe to be red meat, professor, is nothing other than
loin of sea turtle. Similarly, here are some dolphin livers you might
mistake for stewed pork. My chef is a skillful food processor who
excels at pickling and preserving these various exhibits from the
ocean. Feel free to sample all of these foods. Here are some preserves
of sea cucumber that a Malaysian would declare to be unrivaled in the
entire world, here’s cream from milk furnished by the udders of
cetaceans, and sugar from the huge fucus plants in the North Sea; and
finally, allow me to offer you some marmalade of sea anemone, equal to
that from the tastiest fruits.”

So I sampled away, more as a curiosity seeker than an epicure, while
Captain Nemo delighted me with his incredible anecdotes.

“But this sea, Professor Aronnax,” he told me, “this prodigious,
inexhaustible wet nurse of a sea not only feeds me, she dresses me as
well. That fabric covering you was woven from the masses of filaments
that anchor certain seashells; as the ancients were wont to do, it was
dyed with purple ink from the murex snail and shaded with violet tints
that I extract from a marine slug, the Mediterranean sea hare. The
perfumes you’ll find on the washstand in your cabin were produced from
the oozings of marine plants. Your mattress was made from the ocean’s
softest eelgrass. Your quill pen will be whalebone, your ink a juice
secreted by cuttlefish or squid. Everything comes to me from the sea,
just as someday everything will return to it!”

“You love the sea, captain.”

“Yes, I love it! The sea is the be all and end all! It covers
seven-tenths of the planet earth. Its breath is clean and
healthy. It’s an immense wilderness where a man is never lonely,
because he feels life astir on every side. The sea is simply the
vehicle for a prodigious, unearthly mode of existence; it’s simply
movement and love; it’s living infinity, as one of your poets put
it. And in essence, professor, nature is here made manifest by all
three of her kingdoms, mineral, vegetable, and animal. The last of
these is amply represented by the four zoophyte groups, three classes
of articulates, five classes of mollusks, and three vertebrate
classes: mammals, reptiles, and those countless legions of fish, an
infinite order of animals totaling more than 13,000 species, of which
only one-tenth belong to fresh water. The sea is a vast pool of
nature. Our globe began with the sea, so to speak, and who can say we
won’t end with it! Here lies supreme tranquility. The sea doesn’t
belong to tyrants. On its surface they can still exercise their
iniquitous claims, battle each other, devour each other, haul every
earthly horror. But thirty feet below sea level, their dominion
ceases, their influence fades, their power vanishes! Ah, sir, live!
Live in the heart of the seas! Here alone lies independence! Here I
recognize no superiors! Here I’m free!”

Captain Nemo suddenly fell silent in the midst of this enthusiastic
outpouring. Had he let himself get carried away, past the bounds of
his habitual reserve? Had he said too much? For a few moments he
strolled up and down, all aquiver. Then his nerves grew calmer, his
facial features recovered their usual icy composure, and turning to
me:

“Now, professor,” he said, “if you’d like to inspect the Nautilus, I’m
yours to command.”


CHAPTER 11

The Nautilus


CAPTAIN NEMO stood up. I followed him. Contrived at the rear of the
dining room, a double door opened, and I entered a room whose
dimensions equaled the one I had just left.

It was a library. Tall, black-rosewood bookcases, inlaid with
copperwork, held on their wide shelves a large number of uniformly
bound books. These furnishings followed the contours of the room,
their lower parts leading to huge couches upholstered in maroon
leather and curved for maximum comfort. Light, movable reading stands,
which could be pushed away or pulled near as desired, allowed books to
be positioned on them for easy study. In the center stood a huge table
covered with pamphlets, among which some newspapers, long out of date,
were visible. Electric light flooded this whole harmonious totality,
falling from four frosted half globes set in the scrollwork of the
ceiling. I stared in genuine wonderment at this room so ingeniously
laid out, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Captain Nemo,” I told my host, who had just stretched out on a couch,
“this is a library that would do credit to more than one continental
palace, and I truly marvel to think it can go with you into the
deepest seas.”

“Where could one find greater silence or solitude, professor?” Captain
Nemo replied. “Did your study at the museum afford you such a perfect
retreat?”

“No, sir, and I might add that it’s quite a humble one next to
yours. You own 6,000 or 7,000 volumes here . . .”

“12,000, Professor Aronnax. They’re my sole remaining ties with dry
land. But I was done with the shore the day my Nautilus submerged for
the first time under the waters. That day I purchased my last volumes,
my last pamphlets, my last newspapers, and ever since I’ve chosen to
believe that humanity no longer thinks or writes. In any event,
professor, these books are at your disposal, and you may use them
freely.”

I thanked Captain Nemo and approached the shelves of this
library. Written in every language, books on science, ethics, and
literature were there in abundance, but I didn’t see a single work on
economics—they seemed to be strictly banned on board. One odd detail:
all these books were shelved indiscriminately without regard to the
language in which they were written, and this jumble proved that the
Nautilus’s captain could read fluently whatever volumes he chanced to
pick up.

Among these books I noted masterpieces by the greats of ancient and
modern times, in other words, all of humanity’s finest achievements in
history, poetry, fiction, and science, from Homer to Victor Hugo, from
Xenophon to Michelet, from Rabelais to Madame George Sand. But
science, in particular, represented the major investment of this
library: books on mechanics, ballistics, hydrography, meteorology,
geography, geology, etc., held a place there no less important than
works on natural history, and I realized that they made up the
captain’s chief reading. There I saw the complete works of Humboldt,
the complete Arago, as well as works by Foucault, Henri Sainte-Claire
Deville, Chasles, Milne-Edwards, Quatrefages, John Tyndall, Faraday,
Berthelot, Father Secchi, Petermann, Commander Maury, Louis Agassiz,
etc., plus the transactions of France’s Academy of Sciences, bulletins
from the various geographical societies, etc., and in a prime
location, those two volumes on the great ocean depths that had perhaps
earned me this comparatively charitable welcome from Captain
Nemo. Among the works of Joseph Bertrand, his book entitled The
Founders of Astronomy even gave me a definite date; and since I knew
it had appeared in the course of 1865, I concluded that the fitting
out of the Nautilus hadn’t taken place before then. Accordingly, three
years ago at the most, Captain Nemo had begun his underwater
existence. Moreover, I hoped some books even more recent would permit
me to pinpoint the date precisely; but I had plenty of time to look
for them, and I didn’t want to put off any longer our stroll through
the wonders of the Nautilus.

“Sir,” I told the captain, “thank you for placing this library at my
disposal. There are scientific treasures here, and I’ll take advantage
of them.”

“This room isn’t only a library,” Captain Nemo said, “it’s also a
smoking room.”

“A smoking room?” I exclaimed. “Then one may smoke on board?”

“Surely.”

“In that case, sir, I’m forced to believe that you’ve kept up
relations with Havana.”

“None whatever,” the captain replied. “Try this cigar, Professor
Aronnax, and even though it doesn’t come from Havana, it will satisfy
you if you’re a connoisseur.”

I took the cigar offered me, whose shape recalled those from Cuba; but
it seemed to be made of gold leaf. I lit it at a small brazier
supported by an elegant bronze stand, and I inhaled my first whiffs
with the relish of a smoker who hasn’t had a puff in days.

“It’s excellent,” I said, “but it’s not from the tobacco plant.”

“Right,” the captain replied, “this tobacco comes from neither Havana
nor the Orient. It’s a kind of nicotine-rich seaweed that the ocean
supplies me, albeit sparingly. Do you still miss your Cubans, sir?”

“Captain, I scorn them from this day forward.”

“Then smoke these cigars whenever you like, without debating their
origin. They bear no government seal of approval, but I imagine
they’re none the worse for it.”

“On the contrary.”

Just then Captain Nemo opened a door facing the one by which I had
entered the library, and I passed into an immense, splendidly lit
lounge.

It was a huge quadrilateral with canted corners, ten meters long, six
wide, five high. A luminous ceiling, decorated with delicate
arabesques, distributed a soft, clear daylight over all the wonders
gathered in this museum. For a museum it truly was, in which clever
hands had spared no expense to amass every natural and artistic
treasure, displaying them with the helter-skelter picturesqueness that
distinguishes a painter’s studio.

Some thirty pictures by the masters, uniformly framed and separated by
gleaming panoplies of arms, adorned walls on which were stretched
tapestries of austere design. There I saw canvases of the highest
value, the likes of which I had marveled at in private European
collections and art exhibitions. The various schools of the old
masters were represented by a Raphael Madonna, a Virgin by Leonardo da
Vinci, a nymph by Correggio, a woman by Titian, an adoration of the
Magi by Veronese, an assumption of the Virgin by Murillo, a Holbein
portrait, a monk by Velazquez, a martyr by Ribera, a village fair by
Rubens, two Flemish landscapes by Teniers, three little genre
paintings by Gerard Dow, Metsu, and Paul Potter, two canvases by
Gericault and Prud’hon, plus seascapes by Backhuysen and Vernet. Among
the works of modern art were pictures signed by Delacroix, Ingres,
Decamps, Troyon, Meissonier, Daubigny, etc., and some wonderful
miniature statues in marble or bronze, modeled after antiquity’s
finest originals, stood on their pedestals in the corners of this
magnificent museum. As the Nautilus’s commander had predicted, my mind
was already starting to fall into that promised state of stunned
amazement.

“Professor,” this strange man then said, “you must excuse the
informality with which I receive you, and the disorder reigning in
this lounge.”

“Sir,” I replied, “without prying into who you are, might I venture to
identify you as an artist?”

“A collector, sir, nothing more. Formerly I loved acquiring these
beautiful works created by the hand of man. I sought them greedily,
ferreted them out tirelessly, and I’ve been able to gather some
objects of great value. They’re my last mementos of those shores that
are now dead for me. In my eyes, your modern artists are already as
old as the ancients. They’ve existed for 2,000 or 3,000 years, and I
mix them up in my mind. The masters are ageless.”

“What about these composers?” I said, pointing to sheet music by
Weber, Rossini, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Hérold, Wagner,
Auber, Gounod, Victor Massé, and a number of others scattered over a
full size piano-organ, which occupied one of the wall panels in this
lounge.

“These composers,” Captain Nemo answered me, “are the contemporaries
of Orpheus, because in the annals of the dead, all chronological
differences fade; and I’m dead, professor, quite as dead as those
friends of yours sleeping six feet under!”

Captain Nemo fell silent and seemed lost in reverie. I regarded him
with intense excitement, silently analyzing his strange facial
expression. Leaning his elbow on the corner of a valuable mosaic
table, he no longer saw me, he had forgotten my very presence.

I didn’t disturb his meditations but continued to pass in review the
curiosities that enriched this lounge.

After the works of art, natural rarities predominated. They consisted
chiefly of plants, shells, and other exhibits from the ocean that must
have been Captain Nemo’s own personal finds. In the middle of the
lounge, a jet of water, electrically lit, fell back into a basin made
from a single giant clam. The delicately festooned rim of this shell,
supplied by the biggest mollusk in the class Acephala, measured about
six meters in circumference; so it was even bigger than those fine
giant clams given to King Franτois I by the Republic of Venice, and
which the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris has made into two gigantic
holy-water fonts.

Around this basin, inside elegant glass cases fastened with copper
bands, there were classified and labeled the most valuable marine
exhibits ever put before the eyes of a naturalist. My professorial
glee may easily be imagined.

The zoophyte branch offered some very unusual specimens from its two
groups, the polyps and the echinoderms. In the first group: organ-pipe
coral, gorgonian coral arranged into fan shapes, soft sponges from
Syria, isis coral from the Molucca Islands, sea-pen coral, wonderful
coral of the genus Virgularia from the waters of Norway, various coral
of the genus Umbellularia, alcyonarian coral, then a whole series of
those madrepores that my mentor Professor Milne-Edwards has so
shrewdly classified into divisions and among which I noted the
wonderful genus Flabellina as well as the genus Oculina from RΘunion
Island, plus a “Neptune’s chariot” from the Caribbean Sea—every superb
variety of coral, and in short, every species of these unusual
polyparies that congregate to form entire islands that will one day
turn into continents. Among the echinoderms, notable for being covered
with spines: starfish, feather stars, sea lilies, free-swimming
crinoids, brittle stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, etc., represented
a complete collection of the individuals in this group.

An excitable conchologist would surely have fainted dead away before
other, more numerous glass cases in which were classified specimens
from the mollusk branch. There I saw a collection of incalculable
value that I haven’t time to describe completely. Among these exhibits
I’ll mention, just for the record: an elegant royal hammer shell from
the Indian Ocean, whose evenly spaced white spots stood out sharply
against a base of red and brown; an imperial spiny oyster, brightly
colored, bristling with thorns, a specimen rare to European museums,
whose value I estimated at 20,000 francs; a common hammer shell from
the seas near Queensland, very hard to come by; exotic cockles from
Senegal, fragile white bivalve shells that a single breath could pop
like a soap bubble; several varieties of watering-pot shell from Java,
a sort of limestone tube fringed with leafy folds and much fought over
by collectors; a whole series of top-shell snails—greenish yellow ones
fished up from American seas, others colored reddish brown that
patronize the waters off Queensland, the former coming from the Gulf
of Mexico and notable for their overlapping shells, the latter some
sun-carrier shells found in the southernmost seas, finally and rarest
of all, the magnificent spurred-star shell from New Zealand; then some
wonderful peppery-furrow shells; several valuable species of cythera
clams and venus clams; the trellis wentletrap snail from Tranquebar on
India’s eastern shore; a marbled turban snail gleaming with
mother-of-pearl; green parrot shells from the seas of China; the
virtually unknown cone snail from the genus Coenodullus; every variety
of cowry used as money in India and Africa; a “glory-of-the-seas,” the
most valuable shell in the East Indies; finally, common periwinkles,
delphinula snails, turret snails, violet snails, European cowries,
volute snails, olive shells, miter shells, helmet shells, murex
snails, whelks, harp shells, spiky periwinkles, triton snails, horn
shells, spindle shells, conch shells, spider conchs, limpets, glass
snails, sea butterflies—every kind of delicate, fragile seashell that
science has baptized with its most delightful names.

Aside and in special compartments, strings of supremely beautiful
pearls were spread out, the electric light flecking them with little
fiery sparks: pink pearls pulled from saltwater fan shells in the Red
Sea; green pearls from the rainbow abalone; yellow, blue, and black
pearls, the unusual handiwork of various mollusks from every ocean and
of certain mussels from rivers up north; in short, several specimens
of incalculable worth that had been oozed by the rarest of
shellfish. Some of these pearls were bigger than a pigeon egg; they
more than equaled the one that the explorer Tavernier sold the Shah of
Persia for 3,000,000 francs, and they surpassed that other pearl owned
by the Imam of Muscat, which I had believed to be unrivaled in the
entire world.

Consequently, to calculate the value of this collection was, I should
say, impossible. Captain Nemo must have spent millions in acquiring
these different specimens, and I was wondering what financial
resources he tapped to satisfy his collector’s fancies, when these
words interrupted me:

“You’re examining my shells, professor? They’re indeed able to
fascinate a naturalist; but for me they have an added charm, since
I’ve collected every one of them with my own two hands, and not a sea
on the globe has escaped my investigations.”

“I understand, captain, I understand your delight at strolling in the
midst of this wealth. You’re a man who gathers his treasure in
person. No museum in Europe owns such a collection of exhibits from
the ocean. But if I exhaust all my wonderment on them, I’ll have
nothing left for the ship that carries them! I have absolutely no wish
to probe those secrets of yours! But I confess that my curiosity is
aroused to the limit by this Nautilus, the motor power it contains,
the equipment enabling it to operate, the ultra powerful force that
brings it to life. I see some instruments hanging on the walls of this
lounge whose purposes are unknown to me. May I learn—”

“Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo answered me, “I’ve said you’d be
free aboard my vessel, so no part of the Nautilus is off-limits to
you. You may inspect it in detail, and I’ll be delighted to act as
your guide.”

“I don’t know how to thank you, sir, but I won’t abuse your good
nature. I would only ask you about the uses intended for these
instruments of physical measure—”

“Professor, these same instruments are found in my stateroom, where
I’ll have the pleasure of explaining their functions to you. But
beforehand, come inspect the cabin set aside for you. You need to
learn how you’ll be lodged aboard the Nautilus.”

I followed Captain Nemo, who, via one of the doors cut into the
lounge’s canted corners, led me back down the ship’s gangways. He took
me to the bow, and there I found not just a cabin but an elegant
stateroom with a bed, a washstand, and various other furnishings.

I could only thank my host.

“Your stateroom adjoins mine,” he told me, opening a door, “and mine
leads into that lounge we’ve just left.”

I entered the captain’s stateroom. It had an austere, almost monastic
appearance. An iron bedstead, a worktable, some washstand
fixtures. Subdued lighting. No luxuries. Just the bare necessities.

Captain Nemo showed me to a bench.

“Kindly be seated,” he told me.

I sat, and he began speaking as follows:


CHAPTER 12

Everything through Electricity


“SIR,” CAPTAIN NEMO SAID, showing me the instruments hanging on the
walls of his stateroom, “these are the devices needed to navigate the
Nautilus. Here, as in the lounge, I always have them before my eyes,
and they indicate my position and exact heading in the midst of the
ocean. You’re familiar with some of them, such as the thermometer,
which gives the temperature inside the Nautilus; the barometer, which
measures the heaviness of the outside air and forecasts changes in the
weather; the humidistat, which indicates the degree of dryness in the
atmosphere; the storm glass, whose mixture decomposes to foretell the
arrival of tempests; the compass, which steers my course; the sextant,
which takes the sun’s altitude and tells me my latitude; chronometers,
which allow me to calculate my longitude; and finally, spyglasses for
both day and night, enabling me to scrutinize every point of the
horizon once the Nautilus has risen to the surface of the waves.”

“These are the normal navigational instruments,” I replied, “and I’m
familiar with their uses. But no doubt these others answer pressing
needs unique to the Nautilus. That dial I see there, with the needle
moving across it—isn’t it a pressure gauge?”

“It is indeed a pressure gauge. It’s placed in contact with the water,
and it indicates the outside pressure on our hull, which in turn gives
me the depth at which my submersible is sitting.”

“And these are some new breed of sounding line?”

“They’re thermometric sounding lines that report water temperatures in
the different strata.”

“And these other instruments, whose functions I can’t even guess?”

“Here, professor, I need to give you some background information,”
Captain Nemo said. “So kindly hear me out.”

He fell silent for some moments, then he said:

“There’s a powerful, obedient, swift, and effortless force that can be
bent to any use and which reigns supreme aboard my vessel. It does
everything. It lights me, it warms me, it’s the soul of my mechanical
equipment. This force is electricity.”

“Electricity!” I exclaimed in some surprise.

“Yes, sir.”

“But, captain, you have a tremendous speed of movement that doesn’t
square with the strength of electricity. Until now, its dynamic
potential has remained quite limited, capable of producing only small
amounts of power!”

“Professor,” Captain Nemo replied, “my electricity isn’t the
run-of-the-mill variety, and with your permission, I’ll leave it at
that.”

“I won’t insist, sir, and I’ll rest content with simply being
flabbergasted at your results. I would ask one question, however,
which you needn’t answer if it’s indiscreet. The electric cells you
use to generate this marvelous force must be depleted very
quickly. Their zinc component, for example: how do you replace it,
since you no longer stay in contact with the shore?”

“That question deserves an answer,” Captain Nemo replied. “First off,
I’ll mention that at the bottom of the sea there exist veins of zinc,
iron, silver, and gold whose mining would quite certainly be
feasible. But I’ve tapped none of these land-based metals, and I
wanted to make demands only on the sea itself for the sources of my
electricity.”

“The sea itself?”

“Yes, professor, and there was no shortage of such sources. In fact,
by establishing a circuit between two wires immersed to different
depths, I’d be able to obtain electricity through the diverging
temperatures they experience; but I preferred to use a more practical
procedure.”

“And that is?”

“You’re familiar with the composition of salt water. In 1,000 grams
one finds 96.5% water and about 2.66% sodium chloride; then small
quantities of magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium
bromide, sulfate of magnesia, calcium sulfate, and calcium
carbonate. Hence you observe that sodium chloride is encountered there
in significant proportions. Now then, it’s this sodium that I extract
from salt water and with which I compose my electric cells.”

“Sodium?”

“Yes, sir. Mixed with mercury, it forms an amalgam that takes the
place of zinc in Bunsen cells. The mercury is never depleted. Only the
sodium is consumed, and the sea itself gives me that. Beyond this,
I’ll mention that sodium batteries have been found to generate the
greater energy, and their electro-motor strength is twice that of zinc
batteries.”

“Captain, I fully understand the excellence of sodium under the
conditions in which you’re placed. The sea contains it. Fine. But it
still has to be produced, in short, extracted. And how do you
accomplish this? Obviously your batteries could do the extracting; but
if I’m not mistaken, the consumption of sodium needed by your electric
equipment would be greater than the quantity you’d extract. It would
come about, then, that in the process of producing your sodium, you’d
use up more than you’d make!”

“Accordingly, professor, I don’t extract it with batteries; quite
simply, I utilize the heat of coal from the earth.”

“From the earth?” I said, my voice going up on the word.

“We’ll say coal from the seafloor, if you prefer,” Captain Nemo
replied.

“And you can mine these veins of underwater coal?”

“You’ll watch me work them, Professor Aronnax. I ask only a little
patience of you, since you’ll have ample time to be patient. Just
remember one thing: I owe everything to the ocean; it generates
electricity, and electricity gives the Nautilus heat, light, motion,
and, in a word, life itself.”

“But not the air you breathe?”

“Oh, I could produce the air needed on board, but it would be
pointless, since I can rise to the surface of the sea whenever I
like. However, even though electricity doesn’t supply me with
breathable air, it at least operates the powerful pumps that store it
under pressure in special tanks; which, if need be, allows me to
extend my stay in the lower strata for as long as I want.”

“Captain,” I replied, “I’ll rest content with marveling. You’ve
obviously found what all mankind will surely find one day, the true
dynamic power of electricity.”

“I’m not so certain they’ll find it,” Captain Nemo replied icily. “But
be that as it may, you’re already familiar with the first use I’ve
found for this valuable force. It lights us, and with a uniformity and
continuity not even possessed by sunlight. Now, look at that clock:
it’s electric, it runs with an accuracy rivaling the finest
chronometers. I’ve had it divided into twenty-four hours like Italian
clocks, since neither day nor night, sun nor moon, exist for me, but
only this artificial light that I import into the depths of the seas!
See, right now it’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

“That’s perfect.”

“Another use for electricity: that dial hanging before our eyes
indicates how fast the Nautilus is going. An electric wire puts it in
contact with the patent log; this needle shows me the actual speed of
my submersible. And . . . hold on . . . just now we’re proceeding at
the moderate pace of fifteen miles per hour.”

“It’s marvelous,” I replied, “and I truly see, captain, how right you
are to use this force; it’s sure to take the place of wind, water, and
steam.”

“But that’s not all, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo said, standing
up. “And if you’d care to follow me, we’ll inspect the Nautilus’s
stern.”

In essence, I was already familiar with the whole forward part of this
underwater boat, and here are its exact subdivisions going from
amidships to its spur: the dining room, 5 meters long and separated
from the library by a watertight bulkhead, in other words, it couldn’t
be penetrated by the sea; the library, 5 meters long; the main lounge,
10 meters long, separated from the captain’s stateroom by a second
watertight bulkhead; the aforesaid stateroom, 5 meters long; mine, 2.5
meters long; and finally, air tanks 7.5 meters long and extending to
the stempost. Total: a length of 35 meters. Doors were cut into the
watertight bulkheads and were shut hermetically by means of
india-rubber seals, which insured complete safety aboard the Nautilus
in the event of a leak in any one section.

I followed Captain Nemo down gangways located for easy transit, and I
arrived amidships. There I found a sort of shaft heading upward
between two watertight bulkheads. An iron ladder, clamped to the wall,
led to the shaft’s upper end. I asked the captain what this ladder was
for.

“It goes to the skiff,” he replied.

“What! You have a skiff?” I replied in some astonishment.

“Surely. An excellent longboat, light and unsinkable, which is used
for excursions and fishing trips.”

“But when you want to set out, don’t you have to return to the surface
of the sea?”

“By no means. The skiff is attached to the topside of the Nautilus’s
hull and is set in a cavity expressly designed to receive it. It’s
completely decked over, absolutely watertight, and held solidly in
place by bolts. This ladder leads to a manhole cut into the Nautilus’s
hull and corresponding to a comparable hole cut into the side of the
skiff. I insert myself through this double opening into the
longboat. My crew close up the hole belonging to the Nautilus; I close
up the one belonging to the skiff, simply by screwing it into place. I
undo the bolts holding the skiff to the submersible, and the longboat
rises with prodigious speed to the surface of the sea. I then open the
deck paneling, carefully closed until that point; I up mast and hoist
sail—or I take out my oars—and I go for a spin.”

“But how do you return to the ship?”

“I don’t, Professor Aronnax; the Nautilus returns to me.”

“At your command?”

“At my command. An electric wire connects me to the ship. I fire off a
telegram, and that’s that.”

“Right,” I said, tipsy from all these wonders, “nothing to it!”

After passing the well of the companionway that led to the platform, I
saw a cabin 2 meters long in which Conseil and Ned Land, enraptured
with their meal, were busy devouring it to the last crumb. Then a door
opened into the galley, 3 meters long and located between the vessel’s
huge storage lockers.

There, even more powerful and obedient than gas, electricity did most
of the cooking. Arriving under the stoves, wires transmitted to
platinum griddles a heat that was distributed and sustained with
perfect consistency. It also heated a distilling mechanism that, via
evaporation, supplied excellent drinking water. Next to this galley
was a bathroom, conveniently laid out, with faucets supplying hot or
cold water at will.

After the galley came the crew’s quarters, 5 meters long. But the door
was closed and I couldn’t see its accommodations, which might have
told me the number of men it took to operate the Nautilus.

At the far end stood a fourth watertight bulkhead, separating the
crew’s quarters from the engine room. A door opened, and I stood in
the compartment where Captain Nemo, indisputably a world-class
engineer, had set up his locomotive equipment.

Brightly lit, the engine room measured at least 20 meters in
length. It was divided, by function, into two parts: the first
contained the cells for generating electricity, the second that
mechanism transmitting movement to the propeller.

Right off, I detected an odor permeating the compartment that was sui
generis.* Captain Nemo noticed the negative impression it made on me.

*Latin: “in a class by itself.” Ed.

“That,” he told me, “is a gaseous discharge caused by our use of
sodium, but it’s only a mild inconvenience. In any event, every
morning we sanitize the ship by ventilating it in the open air.”

Meanwhile I examined the Nautilus’s engine with a fascination easy to
imagine.

“You observe,” Captain Nemo told me, “that I use Bunsen cells, not
Ruhmkorff cells. The latter would be ineffectual. One uses fewer
Bunsen cells, but they’re big and strong, and experience has proven
their superiority. The electricity generated here makes its way to the
stern, where electromagnets of huge size activate a special system of
levers and gears that transmit movement to the propeller’s shaft. The
latter has a diameter of 6 meters, a pitch of 7.5 meters, and can do
up to 120 revolutions per minute.”

“And that gives you?”

“A speed of fifty miles per hour.”

There lay a mystery, but I didn’t insist on exploring it. How could
electricity work with such power? Where did this nearly unlimited
energy originate? Was it in the extraordinary voltage obtained from
some new kind of induction coil? Could its transmission have been
immeasurably increased by some unknown system of levers?** This was
the point I couldn’t grasp.

**Author’s Note: And sure enough, there’s now talk of such a
  discovery, in which a new set of levers generates considerable
  power. Did its inventor meet up with Captain Nemo?

“Captain Nemo,” I said, “I’ll vouch for the results and not try to
explain them. I’ve seen the Nautilus at work out in front of the
Abraham Lincoln, and I know where I stand on its speed. But it isn’t
enough just to move, we have to see where we’re going! We must be able
to steer right or left, up or down! How do you reach the lower depths,
where you meet an increasing resistance that’s assessed in hundreds of
atmospheres? How do you rise back to the surface of the ocean?
Finally, how do you keep your ship at whatever level suits you? Am I
indiscreet in asking you all these things?”

“Not at all, professor,” the captain answered me after a slight
hesitation, “since you’ll never leave this underwater boat. Come into
the lounge. It’s actually our work room, and there you’ll learn the
full story about the Nautilus!”


CHAPTER 13

Some Figures


A MOMENT LATER we were seated on a couch in the lounge, cigars between
our lips. The captain placed before my eyes a working drawing that
gave the ground plan, cross section, and side view of the
Nautilus. Then he began his description as follows:

“Here, Professor Aronnax, are the different dimensions of this boat
now transporting you. It’s a very long cylinder with conical ends. It
noticeably takes the shape of a cigar, a shape already adopted in
London for several projects of the same kind. The length of this
cylinder from end to end is exactly seventy meters, and its maximum
breadth of beam is eight meters. So it isn’t quite built on the
ten-to-one ratio of your high-speed steamers; but its lines are
sufficiently long, and their tapering gradual enough, so that the
displaced water easily slips past and poses no obstacle to the ship’s
movements.

“These two dimensions allow you to obtain, via a simple calculation,
the surface area and volume of the Nautilus. Its surface area totals
1,011.45 square meters, its volume 1,507.2 cubic meters—which is
tantamount to saying that when it’s completely submerged, it displaces
1,500 cubic meters of water, or weighs 1,500 metric tons.

“In drawing up plans for a ship meant to navigate underwater, I wanted
it, when floating on the waves, to lie nine-tenths below the surface
and to emerge only one-tenth. Consequently, under these conditions it
needed to displace only nine-tenths of its volume, hence 1,356.48
cubic meters; in other words, it was to weigh only that same number of
metric tons. So I was obliged not to exceed this weight while building
it to the aforesaid dimensions.

“The Nautilus is made up of two hulls, one inside the other; between
them, joining them together, are iron T-bars that give this ship the
utmost rigidity. In fact, thanks to this cellular arrangement, it has
the resistance of a stone block, as if it were completely solid. Its
plating can’t give way; it’s self-adhering and not dependent on the
tightness of its rivets; and due to the perfect union of its
materials, the solidarity of its construction allows it to defy the
most violent seas.

“The two hulls are manufactured from boilerplate steel, whose relative
density is 7.8 times that of water. The first hull has a thickness of
no less than five centimeters and weighs 394.96 metric tons. My second
hull, the outer cover, includes a keel fifty centimeters high by
twenty-five wide, which by itself weighs 62 metric tons; this hull,
the engine, the ballast, the various accessories and accommodations,
plus the bulkheads and interior braces, have a combined weight of
961.52 metric tons, which when added to 394.96 metric tons, gives us
the desired total of 1,356.48 metric tons. Clear?”

“Clear,” I replied.

“So,” the captain went on, “when the Nautilus lies on the waves under
these conditions, one-tenth of it does emerge above water. Now then,
if I provide some ballast tanks equal in capacity to that one-tenth,
hence able to hold 150.72 metric tons, and if I fill them with water,
the boat then displaces 1,507.2 metric tons—or it weighs that much—and
it would be completely submerged. That’s what comes about,
professor. These ballast tanks exist within easy access in the lower
reaches of the Nautilus. I open some stopcocks, the tanks fill, the
boat sinks, and it’s exactly flush with the surface of the water.”

“Fine, captain, but now we come to a genuine difficulty. You’re able
to lie flush with the surface of the ocean, that I understand. But
lower down, while diving beneath that surface, isn’t your submersible
going to encounter a pressure, and consequently undergo an upward
thrust, that must be assessed at one atmosphere per every thirty feet
of water, hence at about one kilogram per each square centimeter?”

“Precisely, sir.”

“Then unless you fill up the whole Nautilus, I don’t see how you can
force it down into the heart of these liquid masses.”

“Professor,” Captain Nemo replied, “static objects mustn’t be confused
with dynamic ones, or we’ll be open to serious error. Comparatively
little effort is spent in reaching the ocean’s lower regions, because
all objects have a tendency to become ‘sinkers.’ Follow my logic
here.”

“I’m all ears, captain.”

“When I wanted to determine what increase in weight the Nautilus
needed to be given in order to submerge, I had only to take note of
the proportionate reduction in volume that salt water experiences in
deeper and deeper strata.”

“That’s obvious,” I replied.

“Now then, if water isn’t absolutely incompressible, at least it
compresses very little. In fact, according to the most recent
calculations, this reduction is only .0000436 per atmosphere, or per
every thirty feet of depth. For instance, to go 1,000 meters down, I
must take into account the reduction in volume that occurs under a
pressure equivalent to that from a 1,000-meter column of water, in
other words, under a pressure of 100 atmospheres. In this instance the
reduction would be .00436. Consequently, I’d have to increase my
weight from 1,507.2 metric tons to 1,513.77. So the added weight would
only be 6.57 metric tons.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all, Professor Aronnax, and the calculation is easy to
check. Now then, I have supplementary ballast tanks capable of
shipping 100 metric tons of water. So I can descend to considerable
depths. When I want to rise again and lie flush with the surface, all
I have to do is expel that water; and if I desire that the Nautilus
emerge above the waves to one-tenth of its total capacity, I empty all
the ballast tanks completely.”

This logic, backed up by figures, left me without a single objection.

“I accept your calculations, captain,” I replied, “and I’d be
ill-mannered to dispute them, since your daily experience bears them
out. But at this juncture, I have a hunch that we’re still left with
one real difficulty.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“When you’re at a depth of 1,000 meters, the Nautilus’s plating bears
a pressure of 100 atmospheres. If at this point you want to empty the
supplementary ballast tanks in order to lighten your boat and rise to
the surface, your pumps must overcome that pressure of 100
atmospheres, which is 100 kilograms per each square centimeter. This
demands a strength—”

“That electricity alone can give me,” Captain Nemo said swiftly. “Sir,
I repeat: the dynamic power of my engines is nearly infinite. The
Nautilus’s pumps have prodigious strength, as you must have noticed
when their waterspouts swept like a torrent over the Abraham
Lincoln. Besides, I use my supplementary ballast tanks only to reach
an average depth of 1,500 to 2,000 meters, and that with a view to
conserving my machinery. Accordingly, when I have a mind to visit the
ocean depths two or three vertical leagues beneath the surface, I use
maneuvers that are more time-consuming but no less infallible.”

“What are they, captain?” I asked.

“Here I’m naturally led into telling you how the Nautilus is
maneuvered.”

“I can’t wait to find out.”

“In order to steer this boat to port or starboard, in short, to make
turns on a horizontal plane, I use an ordinary, wide-bladed rudder
that’s fastened to the rear of the sternpost and worked by a wheel and
tackle. But I can also move the Nautilus upward and downward on a
vertical plane by the simple method of slanting its two fins, which
are attached to its sides at its center of flotation; these fins are
flexible, able to assume any position, and can be operated from inside
by means of powerful levers. If these fins stay parallel with the
boat, the latter moves horizontally. If they slant, the Nautilus
follows the angle of that slant and, under its propeller’s thrust,
either sinks on a diagonal as steep as it suits me, or rises on that
diagonal. And similarly, if I want to return more swiftly to the
surface, I throw the propeller in gear, and the water’s pressure makes
the Nautilus rise vertically, as an air balloon inflated with hydrogen
lifts swiftly into the skies.”

“Bravo, captain!” I exclaimed. “But in the midst of the waters, how
can your helmsman follow the course you’ve given him?”

“My helmsman is stationed behind the windows of a pilothouse, which
protrudes from the topside of the Nautilus’s hull and is fitted with
biconvex glass.”

“Is glass capable of resisting such pressures?”

“Perfectly capable. Though fragile on impact, crystal can still offer
considerable resistance. In 1864, during experiments on fishing by
electric light in the middle of the North Sea, glass panes less than
seven millimeters thick were seen to resist a pressure of sixteen
atmospheres, all the while letting through strong, heat-generating
rays whose warmth was unevenly distributed. Now then, I use glass
windows measuring no less than twenty-one centimeters at their
centers; in other words, they’ve thirty times the thickness.”

“Fair enough, captain, but if we’re going to see, we need light to
drive away the dark, and in the midst of the murky waters, I wonder
how your helmsman can—”

“Set astern of the pilothouse is a powerful electric reflector whose
rays light up the sea for a distance of half a mile.”

“Oh, bravo! Bravo three times over, captain! That explains the
phosphorescent glow from this so-called narwhale that so puzzled us
scientists! Pertinent to this, I’ll ask you if the Nautilus’s running
afoul of the Scotia, which caused such a great uproar, was the result
of an accidental encounter?”

“Entirely accidental, sir. I was navigating two meters beneath the
surface of the water when the collision occurred. However, I could see
that it had no dire consequences.”

“None, sir. But as for your encounter with the Abraham Lincoln
. . . ?”

“Professor, that troubled me, because it’s one of the best ships in
the gallant American navy, but they attacked me and I had to defend
myself! All the same, I was content simply to put the frigate in a
condition where it could do me no harm; it won’t have any difficulty
getting repairs at the nearest port.”

“Ah, commander,” I exclaimed with conviction, “your Nautilus is truly
a marvelous boat!”

“Yes, professor,” Captain Nemo replied with genuine excitement, “and I
love it as if it were my own flesh and blood! Aboard a conventional
ship, facing the ocean’s perils, danger lurks everywhere; on the
surface of the sea, your chief sensation is the constant feeling of an
underlying chasm, as the Dutchman Jansen so aptly put it; but below
the waves aboard the Nautilus, your heart never fails you! There are
no structural deformities to worry about, because the double hull of
this boat has the rigidity of iron; no rigging to be worn out by
rolling and pitching on the waves; no sails for the wind to carry off;
no boilers for steam to burst open; no fires to fear, because this
submersible is made of sheet iron not wood; no coal to run out of,
since electricity is its mechanical force; no collisions to fear,
because it navigates the watery deep all by itself; no storms to
brave, because just a few meters beneath the waves, it finds absolute
tranquility! There, sir. There’s the ideal ship! And if it’s true that
the engineer has more confidence in a craft than the builder, and the
builder more than the captain himself, you can understand the utter
abandon with which I place my trust in this Nautilus, since I’m its
captain, builder, and engineer all in one!”

Captain Nemo spoke with winning eloquence. The fire in his eyes and
the passion in his gestures transfigured him. Yes, he loved his ship
the same way a father loves his child!

But one question, perhaps indiscreet, naturally popped up, and I
couldn’t resist asking it.

“You’re an engineer, then, Captain Nemo?”

“Yes, professor,” he answered me. “I studied in London, Paris, and New
York back in the days when I was a resident of the earth’s
continents.”

“But how were you able to build this wonderful Nautilus in secret?”

“Each part of it, Professor Aronnax, came from a different spot on the
globe and reached me at a cover address. Its keel was forged by
Creusot in France, its propeller shaft by Pen & Co. in London, the
sheet-iron plates for its hull by Laird’s in Liverpool, its propeller
by Scott’s in Glasgow. Its tanks were manufactured by Cail & Co. in
Paris, its engine by Krupp in Prussia, its spur by the Motala
workshops in Sweden, its precision instruments by Hart Bros. in New
York, etc.; and each of these suppliers received my specifications
under a different name.”

“But,” I went on, “once these parts were manufactured, didn’t they
have to be mounted and adjusted?”

“Professor, I set up my workshops on a deserted islet in
midocean. There our Nautilus was completed by me and my workmen, in
other words, by my gallant companions whom I’ve molded and
educated. Then, when the operation was over, we burned every trace of
our stay on that islet, which if I could have, I’d have blown up.”

“From all this, may I assume that such a boat costs a fortune?”

“An iron ship, Professor Aronnax, runs 1,125 francs per metric
ton. Now then, the Nautilus has a burden of 1,500 metric
tons. Consequently, it cost 1,687,000 francs, hence 2,000,000 francs
including its accommodations, and 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 with all the
collections and works of art it contains.”

“One last question, Captain Nemo.”

“Ask, professor.”

“You’re rich, then?”

“Infinitely rich, sir, and without any trouble, I could pay off the
ten-billion-franc French national debt!”

I gaped at the bizarre individual who had just spoken these words. Was
he playing on my credulity? Time would tell.


CHAPTER 14

The Black Current


THE PART OF THE planet earth that the seas occupy has been assessed at
3,832,558 square myriameters, hence more than 38,000,000,000
hectares. This liquid mass totals 2,250,000,000 cubic miles and could
form a sphere with a diameter of sixty leagues, whose weight would be
three quintillion metric tons. To appreciate such a number, we should
remember that a quintillion is to a billion what a billion is to one,
in other words, there are as many billions in a quintillion as ones in
a billion! Now then, this liquid mass nearly equals the total amount
of water that has poured through all the earth’s rivers for the past
40,000 years!

During prehistoric times, an era of fire was followed by an era of
water. At first there was ocean everywhere. Then, during the Silurian
period, the tops of mountains gradually appeared above the waves,
islands emerged, disappeared beneath temporary floods, rose again,
were fused to form continents, and finally the earth’s geography
settled into what we have today. Solid matter had wrested from liquid
matter some 37,657,000 square miles, hence 12,916,000,000 hectares.

The outlines of the continents allow the seas to be divided into five
major parts: the frozen Arctic and Antarctic oceans, the Indian Ocean,
the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific Ocean extends north to south between the two polar circles
and east to west between America and Asia over an expanse of 145
degrees of longitude. It’s the most tranquil of the seas; its currents
are wide and slow-moving, its tides moderate, its rainfall
abundant. And this was the ocean that I was first destined to cross
under these strangest of auspices.

“If you don’t mind, professor,” Captain Nemo told me, “we’ll determine
our exact position and fix the starting point of our voyage. It’s
fifteen minutes before noon. I’m going to rise to the surface of the
water.”

The captain pressed an electric bell three times. The pumps began to
expel water from the ballast tanks; on the pressure gauge, a needle
marked the decreasing pressures that indicated the Nautilus’s upward
progress; then the needle stopped.

“Here we are,” the captain said.

I made my way to the central companionway, which led to the
platform. I climbed its metal steps, passed through the open hatches,
and arrived topside on the Nautilus.

The platform emerged only eighty centimeters above the waves. The
Nautilus’s bow and stern boasted that spindle-shaped outline that had
caused the ship to be compared appropriately to a long cigar. I noted
the slight overlap of its sheet-iron plates, which resembled the
scales covering the bodies of our big land reptiles. So I had a
perfectly natural explanation for why, despite the best spyglasses,
this boat had always been mistaken for a marine animal.

Near the middle of the platform, the skiff was half set in the ship’s
hull, making a slight bulge. Fore and aft stood two cupolas of
moderate height, their sides slanting and partly inset with heavy
biconvex glass, one reserved for the helmsman steering the Nautilus,
the other for the brilliance of the powerful electric beacon lighting
his way.

The sea was magnificent, the skies clear. This long aquatic vehicle
could barely feel the broad undulations of the ocean. A mild breeze
out of the east rippled the surface of the water. Free of all mist,
the horizon was ideal for taking sights.

There was nothing to be seen. Not a reef, not an islet. No more
Abraham Lincoln. A deserted immenseness.

Raising his sextant, Captain Nemo took the altitude of the sun, which
would give him his latitude. He waited for a few minutes until the orb
touched the rim of the horizon. While he was taking his sights, he
didn’t move a muscle, and the instrument couldn’t have been steadier
in hands made out of marble.

“Noon,” he said. “Professor, whenever you’re ready. . . .”

I took one last look at the sea, a little yellowish near the landing
places of Japan, and I went below again to the main lounge.

There the captain fixed his position and used a chronometer to
calculate his longitude, which he double-checked against his previous
observations of hour angles. Then he told me:

“Professor Aronnax, we’re in longitude 137 degrees 15’ west—”

“West of which meridian?” I asked quickly, hoping the captain’s reply
might give me a clue to his nationality.

“Sir,” he answered me, “I have chronometers variously set to the
meridians of Paris, Greenwich, and Washington, D.C. But in your honor,
I’ll use the one for Paris.”

This reply told me nothing. I bowed, and the commander went on:

“We’re in longitude 137 degrees 15’ west of the meridian of Paris, and
latitude 30 degrees 7’ north, in other words, about 300 miles from the
shores of Japan. At noon on this day of November 8, we hereby begin
our voyage of exploration under the waters.”

“May God be with us!” I replied.

“And now, professor,” the captain added, “I’ll leave you to your
intellectual pursuits. I’ve set our course east-northeast at a depth
of fifty meters. Here are some large-scale charts on which you’ll be
able to follow that course. The lounge is at your disposal, and with
your permission, I’ll take my leave.”

Captain Nemo bowed. I was left to myself, lost in my thoughts. They
all centered on the Nautilus’s commander. Would I ever learn the
nationality of this eccentric man who had boasted of having none? His
sworn hate for humanity, a hate that perhaps was bent on some dreadful
revenge—what had provoked it? Was he one of those unappreciated
scholars, one of those geniuses “embittered by the world,” as Conseil
expressed it, a latter-day Galileo, or maybe one of those men of
science, like America’s Commander Maury, whose careers were ruined by
political revolutions? I couldn’t say yet. As for me, whom fate had
just brought aboard his vessel, whose life he had held in the balance:
he had received me coolly but hospitably. Only, he never took the hand
I extended to him. He never extended his own.

For an entire hour I was deep in these musings, trying to probe this
mystery that fascinated me so. Then my eyes focused on a huge world
map displayed on the table, and I put my finger on the very spot where
our just-determined longitude and latitude intersected.

Like the continents, the sea has its rivers. These are exclusive
currents that can be identified by their temperature and color, the
most remarkable being the one called the Gulf Stream. Science has
defined the global paths of five chief currents: one in the north
Atlantic, a second in the south Atlantic, a third in the north
Pacific, a fourth in the south Pacific, and a fifth in the southern
Indian Ocean. Also it’s likely that a sixth current used to exist in
the northern Indian Ocean, when the Caspian and Aral Seas joined up
with certain large Asian lakes to form a single uniform expanse of
water.

Now then, at the spot indicated on the world map, one of these
seagoing rivers was rolling by, the Kuroshio of the Japanese, the
Black Current: heated by perpendicular rays from the tropical sun, it
leaves the Bay of Bengal, crosses the Strait of Malacca, goes up the
shores of Asia, and curves into the north Pacific as far as the
Aleutian Islands, carrying along trunks of camphor trees and other
local items, the pure indigo of its warm waters sharply contrasting
with the ocean’s waves. It was this current the Nautilus was about to
cross. I watched it on the map with my eyes, I saw it lose itself in
the immenseness of the Pacific, and I felt myself swept along with it,
when Ned Land and Conseil appeared in the lounge doorway.

My two gallant companions stood petrified at the sight of the wonders
on display.

“Where are we?” the Canadian exclaimed. “In the Quebec Museum?”

“Begging master’s pardon,” Conseil answered, “but this seems more like
the Sommerard artifacts exhibition!”

“My friends,” I replied, signaling them to enter, “you’re in neither
Canada nor France, but securely aboard the Nautilus, fifty meters
below sea level.”

“If master says so, then so be it,” Conseil answered. “But in all
honesty, this lounge is enough to astonish even someone Flemish like
myself.”

“Indulge your astonishment, my friend, and have a look, because
there’s plenty of work here for a classifier of your talents.”

Conseil needed no encouraging. Bending over the glass cases, the
gallant lad was already muttering choice words from the naturalist’s
vocabulary: class Gastropoda, family Buccinoidea, genus cowry, species
Cypraea madagascariensis, etc.

Meanwhile Ned Land, less dedicated to conchology, questioned me about
my interview with Captain Nemo. Had I discovered who he was, where he
came from, where he was heading, how deep he was taking us? In short,
a thousand questions I had no time to answer.

I told him everything I knew—or, rather, everything I didn’t know—and
I asked him what he had seen or heard on his part.

“Haven’t seen or heard a thing!” the Canadian replied. “I haven’t even
spotted the crew of this boat. By any chance, could they be electric
too?”

“Electric?”

“Oh ye gods, I’m half tempted to believe it! But back to you,
Professor Aronnax,” Ned Land said, still hanging on to his
ideas. “Can’t you tell me how many men are on board? Ten, twenty,
fifty, a hundred?”

“I’m unable to answer you, Mr. Land. And trust me on this: for the
time being, get rid of these notions of taking over the Nautilus or
escaping from it. This boat is a masterpiece of modern technology, and
I’d be sorry to have missed it! Many people would welcome the
circumstances that have been handed us, just to walk in the midst of
these wonders. So keep calm, and let’s see what’s happening around
us.”

“See!” the harpooner exclaimed. “There’s nothing to see, nothing we’ll
ever see from this sheet-iron prison! We’re simply running around
blindfolded—”

Ned Land was just pronouncing these last words when we were suddenly
plunged into darkness, utter darkness. The ceiling lights went out so
quickly, my eyes literally ached, just as if we had experienced the
opposite sensation of going from the deepest gloom to the brightest
sunlight.

We stood stock-still, not knowing what surprise was waiting for us,
whether pleasant or unpleasant. But a sliding sound became
audible. You could tell that some panels were shifting over the
Nautilus’s sides.

“It’s the beginning of the end!” Ned Land said.

“. . . order Hydromedusa,” Conseil muttered.

Suddenly, through two oblong openings, daylight appeared on both sides
of the lounge. The liquid masses came into view, brightly lit by the
ship’s electric outpourings. We were separated from the sea by two
panes of glass. Initially I shuddered at the thought that these
fragile partitions could break; but strong copper bands secured them,
giving them nearly infinite resistance.

The sea was clearly visible for a one-mile radius around the
Nautilus. What a sight! What pen could describe it? Who could portray
the effects of this light through these translucent sheets of water,
the subtlety of its progressive shadings into the ocean’s upper and
lower strata?

The transparency of salt water has long been recognized. Its clarity
is believed to exceed that of spring water. The mineral and organic
substances it holds in suspension actually increase its
translucency. In certain parts of the Caribbean Sea, you can see the
sandy bottom with startling distinctness as deep as 145 meters down,
and the penetrating power of the sun’s rays seems to give out only at
a depth of 300 meters. But in this fluid setting traveled by the
Nautilus, our electric glow was being generated in the very heart of
the waves. It was no longer illuminated water, it was liquid light.

If we accept the hypotheses of the microbiologist Ehrenberg—who
believes that these underwater depths are lit up by phosphorescent
organisms—nature has certainly saved one of her most prodigious sights
for residents of the sea, and I could judge for myself from the
thousandfold play of the light. On both sides I had windows opening
over these unexplored depths. The darkness in the lounge enhanced the
brightness outside, and we stared as if this clear glass were the
window of an immense aquarium.

The Nautilus seemed to be standing still. This was due to the lack of
landmarks. But streaks of water, parted by the ship’s spur, sometimes
threaded before our eyes with extraordinary speed.

In wonderment, we leaned on our elbows before these show windows, and
our stunned silence remained unbroken until Conseil said:

“You wanted to see something, Ned my friend; well, now you have
something to see!”

“How unusual!” the Canadian put in, setting aside his tantrums and
getaway schemes while submitting to this irresistible allure. “A man
would go an even greater distance just to stare at such a sight!”

“Ah!” I exclaimed. “I see our captain’s way of life! He’s found
himself a separate world that saves its most astonishing wonders just
for him!”

“But where are the fish?” the Canadian ventured to observe. “I don’t
see any fish!”

“Why would you care, Ned my friend?” Conseil replied. “Since you have
no knowledge of them.”

“Me? A fisherman!” Ned Land exclaimed.

And on this subject a dispute arose between the two friends, since
both were knowledgeable about fish, but from totally different
standpoints.

Everyone knows that fish make up the fourth and last class in the
vertebrate branch. They have been quite aptly defined as:
“cold-blooded vertebrates with a double circulatory system, breathing
through gills, and designed to live in water.” They consist of two
distinct series: the series of bony fish, in other words, those whose
spines have vertebrae made of bone; and cartilaginous fish, in other
words, those whose spines have vertebrae made of cartilage.

Possibly the Canadian was familiar with this distinction, but Conseil
knew far more about it; and since he and Ned were now fast friends, he
just had to show off. So he told the harpooner:

“Ned my friend, you’re a slayer of fish, a highly skilled
fisherman. You’ve caught a large number of these fascinating
animals. But I’ll bet you don’t know how they’re classified.”

“Sure I do,” the harpooner replied in all seriousness. “They’re
classified into fish we eat and fish we don’t eat!”

“Spoken like a true glutton,” Conseil replied. “But tell me, are you
familiar with the differences between bony fish and cartilaginous
fish?”

“Just maybe, Conseil.”

“And how about the subdivisions of these two large classes?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion,” the Canadian replied.

“All right, listen and learn, Ned my friend! Bony fish are subdivided
into six orders. Primo, the acanthopterygians, whose upper jaw is
fully formed and free-moving, and whose gills take the shape of a
comb. This order consists of fifteen families, in other words,
three-quarters of all known fish. Example: the common perch.”

“Pretty fair eating,” Ned Land replied.

“Secundo,” Conseil went on, “the abdominals, whose pelvic fins hang
under the abdomen to the rear of the pectorals but aren’t attached to
the shoulder bone, an order that’s divided into five families and
makes up the great majority of freshwater fish. Examples: carp, pike.”

“Ugh!” the Canadian put in with distinct scorn. “You can keep the
freshwater fish!”

“Tertio,” Conseil said, “the subbrachians, whose pelvic fins are
attached under the pectorals and hang directly from the shoulder
bone. This order contains four families. Examples: flatfish such as
sole, turbot, dab, plaice, brill, etc.”

“Excellent, really excellent!” the harpooner exclaimed, interested in
fish only from an edible viewpoint.

“Quarto,” Conseil went on, unabashed, “the apods, with long bodies
that lack pelvic fins and are covered by a heavy, often glutinous
skin, an order consisting of only one family. Examples: common eels
and electric eels.”

“So-so, just so-so!” Ned Land replied.

“Quinto,” Conseil said, “the lophobranchians, which have fully formed,
free-moving jaws but whose gills consist of little tufts arranged in
pairs along their gill arches. This order includes only one
family. Examples: seahorses and dragonfish.”

“Bad, very bad!” the harpooner replied.

“Sexto and last,” Conseil said, “the plectognaths, whose maxillary
bone is firmly attached to the side of the intermaxillary that forms
the jaw, and whose palate arch is locked to the skull by sutures that
render the jaw immovable, an order lacking true pelvic fins and which
consists of two families. Examples: puffers and moonfish.”

“They’re an insult to a frying pan!” the Canadian exclaimed.

“Are you grasping all this, Ned my friend?” asked the scholarly
Conseil.

“Not a lick of it, Conseil my friend,” the harpooner replied. “But
keep going, because you fill me with fascination.”

“As for cartilaginous fish,” Conseil went on unflappably, “they
consist of only three orders.”

“Good news,” Ned put in.

“Primo, the cyclostomes, whose jaws are fused into a flexible ring and
whose gill openings are simply a large number of holes, an order
consisting of only one family. Example: the lamprey.”

“An acquired taste,” Ned Land replied.

“Secundo, the selacians, with gills resembling those of the
cyclostomes but whose lower jaw is free-moving. This order, which is
the most important in the class, consists of two families. Examples:
the ray and the shark.”

“What!” Ned Land exclaimed. “Rays and man-eaters in the same order?
Well, Conseil my friend, on behalf of the rays, I wouldn’t advise you
to put them in the same fish tank!”

“Tertio,” Conseil replied, “The sturionians, whose gill opening is the
usual single slit adorned with a gill cover, an order consisting of
four genera. Example: the sturgeon.”

“Ah, Conseil my friend, you saved the best for last, in my opinion
anyhow! And that’s all of ‘em?”

“Yes, my gallant Ned,” Conseil replied. “And note well, even when one
has grasped all this, one still knows next to nothing, because these
families are subdivided into genera, subgenera, species, varieties—”

“All right, Conseil my friend,” the harpooner said, leaning toward the
glass panel, “here come a couple of your varieties now!”

“Yes! Fish!” Conseil exclaimed. “One would think he was in front of an
aquarium!”

“No,” I replied, “because an aquarium is nothing more than a cage, and
these fish are as free as birds in the air!”

“Well, Conseil my friend, identify them! Start naming them!” Ned Land
exclaimed.

“Me?” Conseil replied. “I’m unable to! That’s my employer’s
bailiwick!”

And in truth, although the fine lad was a classifying maniac, he was
no naturalist, and I doubt that he could tell a bonito from a tuna. In
short, he was the exact opposite of the Canadian, who knew nothing
about classification but could instantly put a name to any fish.

“A triggerfish,” I said.

“It’s a Chinese triggerfish,” Ned Land replied.

“Genus Balistes, family Scleroderma, order Plectognatha,” Conseil
muttered.

Assuredly, Ned and Conseil in combination added up to one outstanding
naturalist.

The Canadian was not mistaken. Cavorting around the Nautilus was a
school of triggerfish with flat bodies, grainy skins, armed with
stings on their dorsal fins, and with four prickly rows of quills
quivering on both sides of their tails. Nothing could have been more
wonderful than the skin covering them: white underneath, gray above,
with spots of gold sparkling in the dark eddies of the waves. Around
them, rays were undulating like sheets flapping in the wind, and among
these I spotted, much to my glee, a Chinese ray, yellowish on its
topside, a dainty pink on its belly, and armed with three stings
behind its eyes; a rare species whose very existence was still doubted
in Lacépède’s day, since that pioneering classifier of fish had seen
one only in a portfolio of Japanese drawings.

For two hours a whole aquatic army escorted the Nautilus. In the midst
of their leaping and cavorting, while they competed with each other in
beauty, radiance, and speed, I could distinguish some green wrasse,
bewhiskered mullet marked with pairs of black lines, white gobies from
the genus Eleotris with curved caudal fins and violet spots on the
back, wonderful Japanese mackerel from the genus Scomber with blue
bodies and silver heads, glittering azure goldfish whose name by
itself gives their full description, several varieties of porgy or
gilthead (some banded gilthead with fins variously blue and yellow,
some with horizontal heraldic bars and enhanced by a black strip
around their caudal area, some with color zones and elegantly corseted
in their six waistbands), trumpetfish with flutelike beaks that looked
like genuine seafaring woodcocks and were sometimes a meter long,
Japanese salamanders, serpentine moray eels from the genus Echidna
that were six feet long with sharp little eyes and a huge mouth
bristling with teeth; etc.

Our wonderment stayed at an all-time fever pitch. Our exclamations
were endless. Ned identified the fish, Conseil classified them, and as
for me, I was in ecstasy over the verve of their movements and the
beauty of their forms. Never before had I been given the chance to
glimpse these animals alive and at large in their native element.

Given such a complete collection from the seas of Japan and China, I
won’t mention every variety that passed before our dazzled eyes. More
numerous than birds in the air, these fish raced right up to us, no
doubt attracted by the brilliant glow of our electric beacon.

Suddenly daylight appeared in the lounge. The sheet-iron panels slid
shut. The magical vision disappeared. But for a good while I kept
dreaming away, until the moment my eyes focused on the instruments
hanging on the wall. The compass still showed our heading as
east-northeast, the pressure gauge indicated a pressure of five
atmospheres (corresponding to a depth of fifty meters), and the
electric log gave our speed as fifteen miles per hour.

I waited for Captain Nemo. But he didn’t appear. The clock marked the
hour of five.

Ned Land and Conseil returned to their cabin. As for me, I repaired to
my stateroom. There I found dinner ready for me. It consisted of
turtle soup made from the daintiest hawksbill, a red mullet with
white, slightly flaky flesh, whose liver, when separately prepared,
makes delicious eating, plus loin of imperial angelfish, whose flavor
struck me as even better than salmon.

I spent the evening in reading, writing, and thinking. Then drowsiness
overtook me, I stretched out on my eelgrass mattress, and I fell into
a deep slumber, while the Nautilus glided through the swiftly flowing
Black Current.


CHAPTER 15

An Invitation in Writing


THE NEXT DAY, November 9, I woke up only after a long, twelve-hour
slumber. Conseil, a creature of habit, came to ask “how master’s night
went,” and to offer his services. He had left his Canadian friend
sleeping like a man who had never done anything else.

I let the gallant lad babble as he pleased, without giving him much in
the way of a reply. I was concerned about Captain Nemo’s absence
during our session the previous afternoon, and I hoped to see him
again today.

Soon I had put on my clothes, which were woven from strands of
seashell tissue. More than once their composition provoked comments
from Conseil. I informed him that they were made from the smooth,
silken filaments with which the fan mussel, a type of seashell quite
abundant along Mediterranean beaches, attaches itself to rocks. In
olden times, fine fabrics, stockings, and gloves were made from such
filaments, because they were both very soft and very warm. So the
Nautilus’s crew could dress themselves at little cost, without needing
a thing from cotton growers, sheep, or silkworms on shore.

As soon as I was dressed, I made my way to the main lounge. It was
deserted.

I dove into studying the conchological treasures amassed inside the
glass cases. I also investigated the huge plant albums that were
filled with the rarest marine herbs, which, although they were pressed
and dried, still kept their wonderful colors. Among these valuable
water plants, I noted various seaweed: some Cladostephus
verticillatus, peacock’s tails, fig-leafed caulerpa, grain-bearing
beauty bushes, delicate rosetangle tinted scarlet, sea colander
arranged into fan shapes, mermaid’s cups that looked like the caps of
squat mushrooms and for years had been classified among the zoophytes;
in short, a complete series of algae.

The entire day passed without my being honored by a visit from Captain
Nemo. The panels in the lounge didn’t open. Perhaps they didn’t want
us to get tired of these beautiful things.

The Nautilus kept to an east-northeasterly heading, a speed of twelve
miles per hour, and a depth between fifty and sixty meters.

Next day, November 10: the same neglect, the same solitude. I didn’t
see a soul from the crew. Ned and Conseil spent the better part of the
day with me. They were astonished at the captain’s inexplicable
absence. Was this eccentric man ill? Did he want to change his plans
concerning us?

But after all, as Conseil noted, we enjoyed complete freedom, we were
daintily and abundantly fed. Our host had kept to the terms of his
agreement. We couldn’t complain, and moreover the very uniqueness of
our situation had such generous rewards in store for us, we had no
grounds for criticism.

That day I started my diary of these adventures, which has enabled me
to narrate them with the most scrupulous accuracy; and one odd detail:
I wrote it on paper manufactured from marine eelgrass.

Early in the morning on November 11, fresh air poured through the
Nautilus’s interior, informing me that we had returned to the surface
of the ocean to renew our oxygen supply. I headed for the central
companionway and climbed onto the platform.

It was six o’clock. I found the weather overcast, the sea gray but
calm. Hardly a billow. I hoped to encounter Captain Nemo there—would
he come? I saw only the helmsman imprisoned in his glass-windowed
pilothouse. Seated on the ledge furnished by the hull of the skiff, I
inhaled the sea’s salty aroma with great pleasure.

Little by little, the mists were dispersed under the action of the
sun’s rays. The radiant orb cleared the eastern horizon. Under its
gaze, the sea caught on fire like a trail of gunpowder. Scattered on
high, the clouds were colored in bright, wonderfully shaded hues, and
numerous “ladyfingers” warned of daylong winds.*

*Author’s Note: “Ladyfingers” are small, thin, white clouds with
 ragged edges.

But what were mere winds to this Nautilus, which no storms could
intimidate!

So I was marveling at this delightful sunrise, so life-giving and
cheerful, when I heard someone climbing onto the platform.

I was prepared to greet Captain Nemo, but it was his chief officer who
appeared—whom I had already met during our first visit with the
captain. He advanced over the platform, not seeming to notice my
presence. A powerful spyglass to his eye, he scrutinized every point
of the horizon with the utmost care. Then, his examination over, he
approached the hatch and pronounced a phrase whose exact wording
follows below. I remember it because, every morning, it was repeated
under the same circumstances. It ran like this:

“Nautron respoc lorni virch.”

What it meant I was unable to say.

These words pronounced, the chief officer went below again. I thought
the Nautilus was about to resume its underwater navigating. So I went
down the hatch and back through the gangways to my stateroom.

Five days passed in this way with no change in our situation. Every
morning I climbed onto the platform. The same phrase was pronounced by
the same individual. Captain Nemo did not appear.

I was pursuing the policy that we had seen the last of him, when on
November 16, while reentering my stateroom with Ned and Conseil, I
found a note addressed to me on the table.

I opened it impatiently. It was written in a script that was clear and
neat but a bit “Old English” in style, its characters reminding me of
German calligraphy.

The note was worded as follows:

  Professor Aronnax
  Aboard the Nautilus
  November 16, 1867

  Captain Nemo invites Professor Aronnax on a hunting trip that will
  take place tomorrow morning in his Crespo Island forests. He hopes
  nothing will prevent the professor from attending, and he looks
  forward with pleasure to the professor’s companions joining him.

  CAPTAIN NEMO,
  Commander of the Nautilus.

“A hunting trip!” Ned exclaimed.

“And in his forests on Crespo Island!” Conseil added.

“But does this mean the old boy goes ashore?” Ned Land went on.

“That seems to be the gist of it,” I said, rereading the letter.

“Well, we’ve got to accept!” the Canadian answered. “Once we’re on
solid ground, we’ll figure out a course of action. Besides, it
wouldn’t pain me to eat a couple slices of fresh venison!”

Without trying to reconcile the contradictions between Captain Nemo’s
professed horror of continents or islands and his invitation to go
hunting in a forest, I was content to reply:

“First let’s look into this Crespo Island.”

I consulted the world map; and in latitude 32 degrees 40’ north and
longitude 167 degrees 50’ west, I found an islet that had been
discovered in 1801 by Captain Crespo, which old Spanish charts called
Rocca de la Plata, in other words, “Silver Rock.” So we were about
1,800 miles from our starting point, and by a slight change of
heading, the Nautilus was bringing us back toward the southeast.

I showed my companions this small, stray rock in the middle of the
north Pacific.

“If Captain Nemo does sometimes go ashore,” I told them, “at least he
only picks desert islands!”

Ned Land shook his head without replying; then he and Conseil left
me. After supper was served me by the mute and emotionless steward, I
fell asleep; but not without some anxieties.

When I woke up the next day, November 17, I sensed that the Nautilus
was completely motionless. I dressed hurriedly and entered the main
lounge.

Captain Nemo was there waiting for me. He stood up, bowed, and asked
if it suited me to come along.

Since he made no allusion to his absence the past eight days, I also
refrained from mentioning it, and I simply answered that my companions
and I were ready to go with him.

“Only, sir,” I added, “I’ll take the liberty of addressing a question
to you.”

“Address away, Professor Aronnax, and if I’m able to answer, I will.”

“Well then, captain, how is it that you’ve severed all ties with the
shore, yet you own forests on Crespo Island?”

“Professor,” the captain answered me, “these forests of mine don’t
bask in the heat and light of the sun. They aren’t frequented by
lions, tigers, panthers, or other quadrupeds. They’re known only to
me. They grow only for me. These forests aren’t on land, they’re
actual underwater forests.”

“Underwater forests!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, professor.”

“And you’re offering to take me to them?”

“Precisely.”

“On foot?”

“Without getting your feet wet.”

“While hunting?”

“While hunting.”

“Rifles in hand?”

“Rifles in hand.”

I stared at the Nautilus’s commander with an air anything but
flattering to the man.

“Assuredly,” I said to myself, “he’s contracted some mental
illness. He’s had a fit that’s lasted eight days and isn’t over even
yet. What a shame! I liked him better eccentric than insane!”

These thoughts were clearly readable on my face; but Captain Nemo
remained content with inviting me to follow him, and I did so like a
man resigned to the worst.

We arrived at the dining room, where we found breakfast served.

“Professor Aronnax,” the captain told me, “I beg you to share my
breakfast without formality. We can chat while we eat. Because,
although I promised you a stroll in my forests, I made no pledge to
arrange for your encountering a restaurant there. Accordingly, eat
your breakfast like a man who’ll probably eat dinner only when it’s
extremely late.”

I did justice to this meal. It was made up of various fish and some
slices of sea cucumber, that praiseworthy zoophyte, all garnished with
such highly appetizing seaweed as the Porphyra laciniata and the
Laurencia primafetida. Our beverage consisted of clear water to which,
following the captain’s example, I added some drops of a fermented
liquor extracted by the Kamchatka process from the seaweed known by
name as Rhodymenia palmata.

At first Captain Nemo ate without pronouncing a single word. Then he
told me:

“Professor, when I proposed that you go hunting in my Crespo forests,
you thought I was contradicting myself. When I informed you that it
was an issue of underwater forests, you thought I’d gone
insane. Professor, you must never make snap judgments about your
fellow man.”

“But, captain, believe me—”

“Kindly listen to me, and you’ll see if you have grounds for accusing
me of insanity or self-contradiction.”

“I’m all attention.”

“Professor, you know as well as I do that a man can live underwater so
long as he carries with him his own supply of breathable air. For
underwater work projects, the workman wears a waterproof suit with his
head imprisoned in a metal capsule, while he receives air from above
by means of force pumps and flow regulators.”

“That’s the standard equipment for a diving suit,” I said.

“Correct, but under such conditions the man has no freedom. He’s
attached to a pump that sends him air through an india-rubber hose;
it’s an actual chain that fetters him to the shore, and if we were to
be bound in this way to the Nautilus, we couldn’t go far either.”

“Then how do you break free?” I asked.

“We use the Rouquayrol-Denayrouze device, invented by two of your
fellow countrymen but refined by me for my own special uses, thereby
enabling you to risk these new physiological conditions without
suffering any organic disorders. It consists of a tank built from
heavy sheet iron in which I store air under a pressure of fifty
atmospheres. This tank is fastened to the back by means of straps,
like a soldier’s knapsack. Its top part forms a box where the air is
regulated by a bellows mechanism and can be released only at its
proper tension. In the Rouquayrol device that has been in general use,
two india-rubber hoses leave this box and feed to a kind of tent that
imprisons the operator’s nose and mouth; one hose is for the entrance
of air to be inhaled, the other for the exit of air to be exhaled, and
the tongue closes off the former or the latter depending on the
breather’s needs. But in my case, since I face considerable pressures
at the bottom of the sea, I needed to enclose my head in a copper
sphere, like those found on standard diving suits, and the two hoses
for inhalation and exhalation now feed to that sphere.”

“That’s perfect, Captain Nemo, but the air you carry must be quickly
depleted; and once it contains no more than 15% oxygen, it becomes
unfit for breathing.”

“Surely, but as I told you, Professor Aronnax, the Nautilus’s pumps
enable me to store air under considerable pressure, and given this
circumstance, the tank on my diving equipment can supply breathable
air for nine or ten hours.”

“I’ve no more objections to raise,” I replied. “I’ll only ask you,
captain: how can you light your way at the bottom of the ocean?”

“With the Ruhmkorff device, Professor Aronnax. If the first is carried
on the back, the second is fastened to the belt. It consists of a
Bunsen battery that I activate not with potassium dichromate but with
sodium. An induction coil gathers the electricity generated and
directs it to a specially designed lantern. In this lantern one finds
a glass spiral that contains only a residue of carbon dioxide
gas. When the device is operating, this gas becomes luminous and gives
off a continuous whitish light. Thus provided for, I breathe and I
see.”

“Captain Nemo, to my every objection you give such crushing answers,
I’m afraid to entertain a single doubt. However, though I have no
choice but to accept both the Rouquayrol and Ruhmkorff devices, I’d
like to register some reservations about the rifle with which you’ll
equip me.”

“But it isn’t a rifle that uses gunpowder,” the captain replied.

“Then it’s an air gun?”

“Surely. How can I make gunpowder on my ship when I have no saltpeter,
sulfur, or charcoal?”

“Even so,” I replied, “to fire underwater in a medium that’s 855 times
denser than air, you’d have to overcome considerable resistance.”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow. There are certain Fulton-style guns
perfected by the Englishmen Philippe-Coles and Burley, the Frenchman
Furcy, and the Italian Landi; they’re equipped with a special system
of airtight fastenings and can fire in underwater conditions. But I
repeat: having no gunpowder, I’ve replaced it with air at high
pressure, which is abundantly supplied me by the Nautilus’s pumps.”

“But this air must be swiftly depleted.”

“Well, in a pinch can’t my Rouquayrol tank supply me with more? All I
have to do is draw it from an ad hoc spigot.* Besides, Professor
Aronnax, you’ll see for yourself that during these underwater hunting
trips, we make no great expenditure of either air or bullets.”

*Latin: a spigot “just for that purpose.” Ed.

“But it seems to me that in this semidarkness, amid this liquid that’s
so dense in comparison to the atmosphere, a gunshot couldn’t carry far
and would prove fatal only with difficulty!”

“On the contrary, sir, with this rifle every shot is fatal; and as
soon as the animal is hit, no matter how lightly, it falls as if
struck by lightning.”

“Why?”

“Because this rifle doesn’t shoot ordinary bullets but little glass
capsules invented by the Austrian chemist Leniebroek, and I have a
considerable supply of them. These glass capsules are covered with a
strip of steel and weighted with a lead base; they’re genuine little
Leyden jars charged with high-voltage electricity. They go off at the
slightest impact, and the animal, no matter how strong, drops dead. I
might add that these capsules are no bigger than number 4 shot, and
the chamber of any ordinary rifle could hold ten of them.”

“I’ll quit debating,” I replied, getting up from the table. “And all
that’s left is for me to shoulder my rifle. So where you go, I’ll go.”

Captain Nemo led me to the Nautilus’s stern, and passing by Ned and
Conseil’s cabin, I summoned my two companions, who instantly followed
us.

Then we arrived at a cell located within easy access of the engine
room; in this cell we were to get dressed for our stroll.


CHAPTER 16

Strolling the Plains


THIS CELL, properly speaking, was the Nautilus’s arsenal and
wardrobe. Hanging from its walls, a dozen diving outfits were waiting
for anybody who wanted to take a stroll.

After seeing these, Ned Land exhibited an obvious distaste for the
idea of putting one on.

“But my gallant Ned,” I told him, “the forests of Crespo Island are
simply underwater forests!”

“Oh great!” put in the disappointed harpooner, watching his dreams of
fresh meat fade away. “And you, Professor Aronnax, are you going to
stick yourself inside these clothes?”

“It has to be, Mr. Ned.”

“Have it your way, sir,” the harpooner replied, shrugging his
shoulders. “But speaking for myself, I’ll never get into those things
unless they force me!”

“No one will force you, Mr. Land,” Captain Nemo said.

“And is Conseil going to risk it?” Ned asked.

“Where master goes, I go,” Conseil replied.

At the captain’s summons, two crewmen came to help us put on these
heavy, waterproof clothes, made from seamless India rubber and
expressly designed to bear considerable pressures. They were like
suits of armor that were both yielding and resistant, you might
say. These clothes consisted of jacket and pants. The pants ended in
bulky footwear adorned with heavy lead soles. The fabric of the jacket
was reinforced with copper mail that shielded the chest, protected it
from the water’s pressure, and allowed the lungs to function freely;
the sleeves ended in supple gloves that didn’t impede hand movements.

These perfected diving suits, it was easy to see, were a far cry from
such misshapen costumes as the cork breastplates, leather jumpers,
seagoing tunics, barrel helmets, etc., invented and acclaimed in the
18th century.

Conseil and I were soon dressed in these diving suits, as were Captain
Nemo and one of his companions—a herculean type who must have been
prodigiously strong. All that remained was to encase one’s head in its
metal sphere. But before proceeding with this operation, I asked the
captain for permission to examine the rifles set aside for us.

One of the Nautilus’s men presented me with a streamlined rifle whose
butt was boilerplate steel, hollow inside, and of fairly large
dimensions. This served as a tank for the compressed air, which a
trigger-operated valve could release into the metal chamber. In a
groove where the butt was heaviest, a cartridge clip held some twenty
electric bullets that, by means of a spring, automatically took their
places in the barrel of the rifle. As soon as one shot had been fired,
another was ready to go off.

“Captain Nemo,” I said, “this is an ideal, easy-to-use weapon. I ask
only to put it to the test. But how will we reach the bottom of the
sea?”

“Right now, professor, the Nautilus is aground in ten meters of water,
and we’ve only to depart.”

“But how will we set out?”

“You’ll see.”

Captain Nemo inserted his cranium into its spherical headgear. Conseil
and I did the same, but not without hearing the Canadian toss us a
sarcastic “happy hunting.” On top, the suit ended in a collar of
threaded copper onto which the metal helmet was screwed. Three holes,
protected by heavy glass, allowed us to see in any direction with
simply a turn of the head inside the sphere. Placed on our backs, the
Rouquayrol device went into operation as soon as it was in position,
and for my part, I could breathe with ease.

The Ruhmkorff lamp hanging from my belt, my rifle in hand, I was ready
to go forth. But in all honesty, while imprisoned in these heavy
clothes and nailed to the deck by my lead soles, it was impossible for
me to take a single step.

But this circumstance had been foreseen, because I felt myself
propelled into a little room adjoining the wardrobe. Towed in the same
way, my companions went with me. I heard a door with watertight seals
close after us, and we were surrounded by profound darkness.

After some minutes a sharp hissing reached my ears. I felt a distinct
sensation of cold rising from my feet to my chest. Apparently a
stopcock inside the boat was letting in water from outside, which
overran us and soon filled up the room. Contrived in the Nautilus’s
side, a second door then opened. We were lit by a subdued light. An
instant later our feet were treading the bottom of the sea.

And now, how can I convey the impressions left on me by this stroll
under the waters. Words are powerless to describe such wonders! When
even the painter’s brush can’t depict the effects unique to the liquid
element, how can the writer’s pen hope to reproduce them?

Captain Nemo walked in front, and his companion followed us a few
steps to the rear. Conseil and I stayed next to each other, as if
daydreaming that through our metal carapaces, a little polite
conversation might still be possible! Already I no longer felt the
bulkiness of my clothes, footwear, and air tank, nor the weight of the
heavy sphere inside which my head was rattling like an almond in its
shell. Once immersed in water, all these objects lost a part of their
weight equal to the weight of the liquid they displaced, and thanks to
this law of physics discovered by Archimedes, I did just fine. I was
no longer an inert mass, and I had, comparatively speaking, great
freedom of movement.

Lighting up the seafloor even thirty feet beneath the surface of the
ocean, the sun astonished me with its power. The solar rays easily
crossed this aqueous mass and dispersed its dark colors. I could
easily distinguish objects 100 meters away. Farther on, the bottom was
tinted with fine shades of ultramarine; then, off in the distance, it
turned blue and faded in the midst of a hazy darkness. Truly, this
water surrounding me was just a kind of air, denser than the
atmosphere on land but almost as transparent. Above me I could see the
calm surface of the ocean.

We were walking on sand that was fine-grained and smooth, not wrinkled
like beach sand, which preserves the impressions left by the
waves. This dazzling carpet was a real mirror, throwing back the sun’s
rays with startling intensity. The outcome: an immense vista of
reflections that penetrated every liquid molecule. Will anyone believe
me if I assert that at this thirty-foot depth, I could see as if it
was broad daylight?

For a quarter of an hour, I trod this blazing sand, which was strewn
with tiny crumbs of seashell. Looming like a long reef, the Nautilus’s
hull disappeared little by little, but when night fell in the midst of
the waters, the ship’s beacon would surely facilitate our return on
board, since its rays carried with perfect distinctness. This effect
is difficult to understand for anyone who has never seen light beams
so sharply defined on shore. There the dust that saturates the air
gives such rays the appearance of a luminous fog; but above water as
well as underwater, shafts of electric light are transmitted with
incomparable clarity.

Meanwhile we went ever onward, and these vast plains of sand seemed
endless. My hands parted liquid curtains that closed again behind me,
and my footprints faded swiftly under the water’s pressure.

Soon, scarcely blurred by their distance from us, the forms of some
objects took shape before my eyes. I recognized the lower slopes of
some magnificent rocks carpeted by the finest zoophyte specimens, and
right off, I was struck by an effect unique to this medium.

By then it was ten o’clock in the morning. The sun’s rays hit the
surface of the waves at a fairly oblique angle, decomposing by
refraction as though passing through a prism; and when this light came
in contact with flowers, rocks, buds, seashells, and polyps, the edges
of these objects were shaded with all seven hues of the solar
spectrum. This riot of rainbow tints was a wonder, a feast for the
eyes: a genuine kaleidoscope of red, green, yellow, orange, violet,
indigo, and blue; in short, the whole palette of a color-happy
painter! If only I had been able to share with Conseil the intense
sensations rising in my brain, competing with him in exclamations of
wonderment! If only I had known, like Captain Nemo and his companion,
how to exchange thoughts by means of prearranged signals! So, for lack
of anything better, I talked to myself: I declaimed inside this copper
box that topped my head, spending more air on empty words than was
perhaps advisable.

Conseil, like me, had stopped before this splendid sight. Obviously,
in the presence of these zoophyte and mollusk specimens, the fine lad
was classifying his head off. Polyps and echinoderms abounded on the
seafloor: various isis coral, cornularian coral living in isolation,
tufts of virginal genus Oculina formerly known by the name “white
coral,” prickly fungus coral in the shape of mushrooms, sea anemone
holding on by their muscular disks, providing a literal flowerbed
adorned by jellyfish from the genus Porpita wearing collars of azure
tentacles, and starfish that spangled the sand, including veinlike
feather stars from the genus Asterophyton that were like fine lace
embroidered by the hands of water nymphs, their festoons swaying to
the faint undulations caused by our walking. It filled me with real
chagrin to crush underfoot the gleaming mollusk samples that littered
the seafloor by the thousands: concentric comb shells, hammer shells,
coquina (seashells that actually hop around), top-shell snails, red
helmet shells, angel-wing conchs, sea hares, and so many other
exhibits from this inexhaustible ocean. But we had to keep walking,
and we went forward while overhead there scudded schools of Portuguese
men-of-war that let their ultramarine tentacles drift in their wakes,
medusas whose milky white or dainty pink parasols were festooned with
azure tassels and shaded us from the sun’s rays, plus jellyfish of the
species Pelagia panopyra that, in the dark, would have strewn our path
with phosphorescent glimmers!

All these wonders I glimpsed in the space of a quarter of a mile,
barely pausing, following Captain Nemo whose gestures kept beckoning
me onward. Soon the nature of the seafloor changed. The plains of sand
were followed by a bed of that viscous slime Americans call “ooze,”
which is composed exclusively of seashells rich in limestone or
silica. Then we crossed a prairie of algae, open-sea plants that the
waters hadn’t yet torn loose, whose vegetation grew in wild
profusion. Soft to the foot, these densely textured lawns would have
rivaled the most luxuriant carpets woven by the hand of man. But while
this greenery was sprawling under our steps, it didn’t neglect us
overhead. The surface of the water was crisscrossed by a floating
arbor of marine plants belonging to that superabundant algae family
that numbers more than 2,000 known species. I saw long ribbons of
fucus drifting above me, some globular, others tubular: Laurencia,
Cladostephus with the slenderest foliage, Rhodymenia palmata
resembling the fan shapes of cactus. I observed that green-colored
plants kept closer to the surface of the sea, while reds occupied a
medium depth, which left blacks and browns in charge of designing
gardens and flowerbeds in the ocean’s lower strata.

These algae are a genuine prodigy of creation, one of the wonders of
world flora. This family produces both the biggest and smallest
vegetables in the world. Because, just as 40,000 near-invisible buds
have been counted in one five-square-millimeter space, so also have
fucus plants been gathered that were over 500 meters long!

We had been gone from the Nautilus for about an hour and a half. It
was almost noon. I spotted this fact in the perpendicularity of the
sun’s rays, which were no longer refracted. The magic of these solar
colors disappeared little by little, with emerald and sapphire shades
vanishing from our surroundings altogether. We walked with steady
steps that rang on the seafloor with astonishing intensity. The
tiniest sounds were transmitted with a speed to which the ear is
unaccustomed on shore. In fact, water is a better conductor of sound
than air, and under the waves noises carry four times as fast.

Just then the seafloor began to slope sharply downward. The light took
on a uniform hue. We reached a depth of 100 meters, by which point we
were undergoing a pressure of ten atmospheres. But my diving clothes
were built along such lines that I never suffered from this
pressure. I felt only a certain tightness in the joints of my fingers,
and even this discomfort soon disappeared. As for the exhaustion bound
to accompany a two-hour stroll in such unfamiliar trappings—it was
nil. Helped by the water, my movements were executed with startling
ease.

Arriving at this 300-foot depth, I still detected the sun’s rays, but
just barely. Their intense brilliance had been followed by a reddish
twilight, a midpoint between day and night. But we could see well
enough to find our way, and it still wasn’t necessary to activate the
Ruhmkorff device.

Just then Captain Nemo stopped. He waited until I joined him, then he
pointed a finger at some dark masses outlined in the shadows a short
distance away.

“It’s the forest of Crespo Island,” I thought; and I was not mistaken.


CHAPTER 17

An Underwater Forest


WE HAD FINALLY arrived on the outskirts of this forest, surely one of
the finest in Captain Nemo’s immense domains. He regarded it as his
own and had laid the same claim to it that, in the first days of the
world, the first men had to their forests on land. Besides, who else
could dispute his ownership of this underwater property? What other,
bolder pioneer would come, ax in hand, to clear away its dark
underbrush?

This forest was made up of big treelike plants, and when we entered
beneath their huge arches, my eyes were instantly struck by the unique
arrangement of their branches—an arrangement that I had never before
encountered.

None of the weeds carpeting the seafloor, none of the branches
bristling from the shrubbery, crept, or leaned, or stretched on a
horizontal plane. They all rose right up toward the surface of the
ocean. Every filament or ribbon, no matter how thin, stood ramrod
straight. Fucus plants and creepers were growing in stiff
perpendicular lines, governed by the density of the element that
generated them. After I parted them with my hands, these otherwise
motionless plants would shoot right back to their original
positions. It was the regime of verticality.

I soon grew accustomed to this bizarre arrangement, likewise to the
comparative darkness surrounding us. The seafloor in this forest was
strewn with sharp chunks of stone that were hard to avoid. Here the
range of underwater flora seemed pretty comprehensive to me, as well
as more abundant than it might have been in the arctic or tropical
zones, where such exhibits are less common. But for a few minutes I
kept accidentally confusing the two kingdoms, mistaking zoophytes for
water plants, animals for vegetables. And who hasn’t made the same
blunder? Flora and fauna are so closely associated in the underwater
world!

I observed that all these exhibits from the vegetable kingdom were
attached to the seafloor by only the most makeshift methods. They had
no roots and didn’t care which solid objects secured them, sand,
shells, husks, or pebbles; they didn’t ask their hosts for sustenance,
just a point of purchase. These plants are entirely self-propagating,
and the principle of their existence lies in the water that sustains
and nourishes them. In place of leaves, most of them sprouted blades
of unpredictable shape, which were confined to a narrow gamut of
colors consisting only of pink, crimson, green, olive, tan, and
brown. There I saw again, but not yet pressed and dried like the
Nautilus’s specimens, some peacock’s tails spread open like fans to
stir up a cooling breeze, scarlet rosetangle, sea tangle stretching
out their young and edible shoots, twisting strings of kelp from the
genus Nereocystis that bloomed to a height of fifteen meters, bouquets
of mermaid’s cups whose stems grew wider at the top, and a number of
other open-sea plants, all without flowers. “It’s an odd anomaly in
this bizarre element!” as one witty naturalist puts it. “The animal
kingdom blossoms, and the vegetable kingdom doesn’t!”

These various types of shrubbery were as big as trees in the temperate
zones; in the damp shade between them, there were clustered actual
bushes of moving flowers, hedges of zoophytes in which there grew
stony coral striped with twisting furrows, yellowish sea anemone from
the genus Caryophylia with translucent tentacles, plus anemone with
grassy tufts from the genus Zoantharia; and to complete the illusion,
minnows flitted from branch to branch like a swarm of hummingbirds,
while there rose underfoot, like a covey of snipe, yellow fish from
the genus Lepisocanthus with bristling jaws and sharp scales, flying
gurnards, and pinecone fish.

Near one o’clock, Captain Nemo gave the signal to halt. Speaking for
myself, I was glad to oblige, and we stretched out beneath an arbor of
winged kelp, whose long thin tendrils stood up like arrows.

This short break was a delight. It lacked only the charm of
conversation. But it was impossible to speak, impossible to reply. I
simply nudged my big copper headpiece against Conseil’s headpiece. I
saw a happy gleam in the gallant lad’s eyes, and to communicate his
pleasure, he jiggled around inside his carapace in the world’s
silliest way.

After four hours of strolling, I was quite astonished not to feel any
intense hunger. What kept my stomach in such a good mood I’m unable to
say. But, in exchange, I experienced that irresistible desire for
sleep that comes over every diver. Accordingly, my eyes soon closed
behind their heavy glass windows and I fell into an uncontrollable
doze, which until then I had been able to fight off only through the
movements of our walking. Captain Nemo and his muscular companion were
already stretched out in this clear crystal, setting us a fine naptime
example.

How long I was sunk in this torpor I cannot estimate; but when I
awoke, it seemed as if the sun were settling toward the
horizon. Captain Nemo was already up, and I had started to stretch my
limbs, when an unexpected apparition brought me sharply to my feet.

A few paces away, a monstrous, meter-high sea spider was staring at me
with beady eyes, poised to spring at me. Although my diving suit was
heavy enough to protect me from this animal’s bites, I couldn’t keep
back a shudder of horror. Just then Conseil woke up, together with the
Nautilus’s sailor. Captain Nemo alerted his companion to this hideous
crustacean, which a swing of the rifle butt quickly brought down, and
I watched the monster’s horrible legs writhing in dreadful
convulsions.

This encounter reminded me that other, more daunting animals must be
lurking in these dark reaches, and my diving suit might not be
adequate protection against their attacks. Such thoughts hadn’t
previously crossed my mind, and I was determined to keep on my
guard. Meanwhile I had assumed this rest period would be the turning
point in our stroll, but I was mistaken; and instead of heading back
to the Nautilus, Captain Nemo continued his daring excursion.

The seafloor kept sinking, and its significantly steeper slope took us
to greater depths. It must have been nearly three o’clock when we
reached a narrow valley gouged between high, vertical walls and
located 150 meters down. Thanks to the perfection of our equipment, we
had thus gone ninety meters below the limit that nature had, until
then, set on man’s underwater excursions.

I say 150 meters, although I had no instruments for estimating this
distance. But I knew that the sun’s rays, even in the clearest seas,
could reach no deeper. So at precisely this point the darkness became
profound. Not a single object was visible past ten
paces. Consequently, I had begun to grope my way when suddenly I saw
the glow of an intense white light. Captain Nemo had just activated
his electric device. His companion did likewise. Conseil and I
followed suit. By turning a switch, I established contact between the
induction coil and the glass spiral, and the sea, lit up by our four
lanterns, was illuminated for a radius of twenty-five meters.

Captain Nemo continued to plummet into the dark depths of this forest,
whose shrubbery grew ever more sparse. I observed that vegetable life
was disappearing more quickly than animal life. The open-sea plants
had already left behind the increasingly arid seafloor, where a
prodigious number of animals were still swarming: zoophytes,
articulates, mollusks, and fish.

While we were walking, I thought the lights of our Ruhmkorff devices
would automatically attract some inhabitants of these dark strata. But
if they did approach us, at least they kept at a distance regrettable
from the hunter’s standpoint. Several times I saw Captain Nemo stop
and take aim with his rifle; then, after sighting down its barrel for
a few seconds, he would straighten up and resume his walk.

Finally, at around four o’clock, this marvelous excursion came to an
end. A wall of superb rocks stood before us, imposing in its sheer
mass: a pile of gigantic stone blocks, an enormous granite cliffside
pitted with dark caves but not offering a single gradient we could
climb up. This was the underpinning of Crespo Island. This was land.

The captain stopped suddenly. A gesture from him brought us to a halt,
and however much I wanted to clear this wall, I had to stop. Here
ended the domains of Captain Nemo. He had no desire to pass beyond
them. Farther on lay a part of the globe he would no longer tread
underfoot.

Our return journey began. Captain Nemo resumed the lead in our little
band, always heading forward without hesitation. I noted that we
didn’t follow the same path in returning to the Nautilus. This new
route, very steep and hence very arduous, quickly took us close to the
surface of the sea. But this return to the upper strata wasn’t so
sudden that decompression took place too quickly, which could have led
to serious organic disorders and given us those internal injuries so
fatal to divers. With great promptness, the light reappeared and grew
stronger; and the refraction of the sun, already low on the horizon,
again ringed the edges of various objects with the entire color
spectrum.

At a depth of ten meters, we walked amid a swarm of small fish from
every species, more numerous than birds in the air, more agile too;
but no aquatic game worthy of a gunshot had yet been offered to our
eyes.

Just then I saw the captain’s weapon spring to his shoulder and track
a moving object through the bushes. A shot went off, I heard a faint
hissing, and an animal dropped a few paces away, literally struck by
lightning.

It was a magnificent sea otter from the genus Enhydra, the only
exclusively marine quadruped. One and a half meters long, this otter
had to be worth a good high price. Its coat, chestnut brown above and
silver below, would have made one of those wonderful fur pieces so
much in demand in the Russian and Chinese markets; the fineness and
luster of its pelt guaranteed that it would go for at least 2,000
francs. I was full of wonderment at this unusual mammal, with its
circular head adorned by short ears, its round eyes, its white
whiskers like those on a cat, its webbed and clawed feet, its bushy
tail. Hunted and trapped by fishermen, this valuable carnivore has
become extremely rare, and it takes refuge chiefly in the northernmost
parts of the Pacific, where in all likelihood its species will soon be
facing extinction.

Captain Nemo’s companion picked up the animal, loaded it on his
shoulder, and we took to the trail again.

For an hour plains of sand unrolled before our steps. Often the
seafloor rose to within two meters of the surface of the water. I
could then see our images clearly mirrored on the underside of the
waves, but reflected upside down: above us there appeared an identical
band that duplicated our every movement and gesture; in short, a
perfect likeness of the quartet near which it walked, but with heads
down and feet in the air.

Another unusual effect. Heavy clouds passed above us, forming and
fading swiftly. But after thinking it over, I realized that these
so-called clouds were caused simply by the changing densities of the
long ground swells, and I even spotted the foaming “white caps” that
their breaking crests were proliferating over the surface of the
water. Lastly, I couldn’t help seeing the actual shadows of large
birds passing over our heads, swiftly skimming the surface of the sea.

On this occasion I witnessed one of the finest gunshots ever to thrill
the marrow of a hunter. A large bird with a wide wingspan, quite
clearly visible, approached and hovered over us. When it was just a
few meters above the waves, Captain Nemo’s companion took aim and
fired. The animal dropped, electrocuted, and its descent brought it
within reach of our adroit hunter, who promptly took possession of
it. It was an albatross of the finest species, a wonderful specimen of
these open-sea fowl.

This incident did not interrupt our walk. For two hours we were
sometimes led over plains of sand, sometimes over prairies of seaweed
that were quite arduous to cross. In all honesty, I was dead tired by
the time I spotted a hazy glow half a mile away, cutting through the
darkness of the waters. It was the Nautilus’s beacon. Within twenty
minutes we would be on board, and there I could breathe easy
again—because my tank’s current air supply seemed to be quite low in
oxygen. But I was reckoning without an encounter that slightly delayed
our arrival.

I was lagging behind some twenty paces when I saw Captain Nemo
suddenly come back toward me. With his powerful hands he sent me
buckling to the ground, while his companion did the same to
Conseil. At first I didn’t know what to make of this sudden assault,
but I was reassured to observe the captain lying motionless beside me.

I was stretched out on the seafloor directly beneath some bushes of
algae, when I raised my head and spied two enormous masses hurtling
by, throwing off phosphorescent glimmers.

My blood turned cold in my veins! I saw that we were under threat from
a fearsome pair of sharks. They were blue sharks, dreadful man-eaters
with enormous tails, dull, glassy stares, and phosphorescent matter
oozing from holes around their snouts. They were like monstrous
fireflies that could thoroughly pulverize a man in their iron jaws! I
don’t know if Conseil was busy with their classification, but as for
me, I looked at their silver bellies, their fearsome mouths bristling
with teeth, from a viewpoint less than scientific—more as a victim
than as a professor of natural history.

Luckily these voracious animals have poor eyesight. They went by
without noticing us, grazing us with their brownish fins; and
miraculously, we escaped a danger greater than encountering a tiger
deep in the jungle.

Half an hour later, guided by its electric trail, we reached the
Nautilus. The outside door had been left open, and Captain Nemo closed
it after we reentered the first cell. Then he pressed a button. I
heard pumps operating within the ship, I felt the water lowering
around me, and in a few moments the cell was completely empty. The
inside door opened, and we passed into the wardrobe.

There our diving suits were removed, not without difficulty; and
utterly exhausted, faint from lack of food and rest, I repaired to my
stateroom, full of wonder at this startling excursion on the bottom of
the sea.


CHAPTER 18

Four Thousand Leagues Under the Pacific


BY THE NEXT MORNING, November 18, I was fully recovered from my
exhaustion of the day before, and I climbed onto the platform just as
the Nautilus’s chief officer was pronouncing his daily phrase. It then
occurred to me that these words either referred to the state of the
sea, or that they meant: “There’s nothing in sight.”

And in truth, the ocean was deserted. Not a sail on the horizon. The
tips of Crespo Island had disappeared during the night. The sea,
absorbing every color of the prism except its blue rays, reflected the
latter in every direction and sported a wonderful indigo tint. The
undulating waves regularly took on the appearance of watered silk with
wide stripes.

I was marveling at this magnificent ocean view when Captain Nemo
appeared. He didn’t seem to notice my presence and began a series of
astronomical observations. Then, his operations finished, he went and
leaned his elbows on the beacon housing, his eyes straying over the
surface of the ocean.

Meanwhile some twenty of the Nautilus’s sailors—all energetic,
well-built fellows—climbed onto the platform. They had come to pull up
the nets left in our wake during the night. These seamen obviously
belonged to different nationalities, although indications of European
physical traits could be seen in them all. If I’m not mistaken, I
recognized some Irishmen, some Frenchmen, a few Slavs, and a native of
either Greece or Crete. Even so, these men were frugal of speech and
used among themselves only that bizarre dialect whose origin I
couldn’t even guess. So I had to give up any notions of questioning
them.

The nets were hauled on board. They were a breed of trawl resembling
those used off the Normandy coast, huge pouches held half open by a
floating pole and a chain laced through the lower meshes. Trailing in
this way from these iron glove makers, the resulting receptacles
scoured the ocean floor and collected every marine exhibit in their
path. That day they gathered up some unusual specimens from these
fish-filled waterways: anglerfish whose comical movements qualify them
for the epithet “clowns,” black Commerson anglers equipped with their
antennas, undulating triggerfish encircled by little red bands,
bloated puffers whose venom is extremely insidious, some olive-hued
lampreys, snipefish covered with silver scales, cutlass fish whose
electrocuting power equals that of the electric eel and the electric
ray, scaly featherbacks with brown crosswise bands, greenish codfish,
several varieties of goby, etc.; finally, some fish of larger
proportions: a one-meter jack with a prominent head, several fine
bonito from the genus Scomber decked out in the colors blue and
silver, and three magnificent tuna whose high speeds couldn’t save
them from our trawl.

I estimate that this cast of the net brought in more than 1,000 pounds
of fish. It was a fine catch but not surprising. In essence, these
nets stayed in our wake for several hours, incarcerating an entire
aquatic world in prisons made of thread. So we were never lacking in
provisions of the highest quality, which the Nautilus’s speed and the
allure of its electric light could continually replenish.

These various exhibits from the sea were immediately lowered down the
hatch in the direction of the storage lockers, some to be eaten fresh,
others to be preserved.

After its fishing was finished and its air supply renewed, I thought
the Nautilus would resume its underwater excursion, and I was getting
ready to return to my stateroom, when Captain Nemo turned to me and
said without further preamble:

“Look at this ocean, professor! Doesn’t it have the actual gift of
life? Doesn’t it experience both anger and affection? Last evening it
went to sleep just as we did, and there it is, waking up after a
peaceful night!”

No hellos or good mornings for this gent! You would have thought this
eccentric individual was simply continuing a conversation we’d already
started!

“See!” he went on. “It’s waking up under the sun’s caresses! It’s
going to relive its daily existence! What a fascinating field of study
lies in watching the play of its organism. It owns a pulse and
arteries, it has spasms, and I side with the scholarly Commander
Maury, who discovered that it has a circulation as real as the
circulation of blood in animals.”

I’m sure that Captain Nemo expected no replies from me, and it seemed
pointless to pitch in with “Ah yes,” “Exactly,” or “How right you
are!” Rather, he was simply talking to himself, with long pauses
between sentences. He was meditating out loud.

“Yes,” he said, “the ocean owns a genuine circulation, and to start it
going, the Creator of All Things has only to increase its heat, salt,
and microscopic animal life. In essence, heat creates the different
densities that lead to currents and countercurrents. Evaporation,
which is nil in the High Arctic regions and very active in equatorial
zones, brings about a constant interchange of tropical and polar
waters. What’s more, I’ve detected those falling and rising currents
that make up the ocean’s true breathing. I’ve seen a molecule of salt
water heat up at the surface, sink into the depths, reach maximum
density at -2 degrees centigrade, then cool off, grow lighter, and
rise again. At the poles you’ll see the consequences of this
phenomenon, and through this law of farseeing nature, you’ll
understand why water can freeze only at the surface!”

As the captain was finishing his sentence, I said to myself: “The
pole! Is this brazen individual claiming he’ll take us even to that
location?”

Meanwhile the captain fell silent and stared at the element he had
studied so thoroughly and unceasingly. Then, going on:

“Salts,” he said, “fill the sea in considerable quantities, professor,
and if you removed all its dissolved saline content, you’d create a
mass measuring 4,500,000 cubic leagues, which if it were spread all
over the globe, would form a layer more than ten meters high. And
don’t think that the presence of these salts is due merely to some
whim of nature. No. They make ocean water less open to evaporation and
prevent winds from carrying off excessive amounts of steam, which,
when condensing, would submerge the temperate zones. Salts play a
leading role, the role of stabilizer for the general ecology of the
globe!”

Captain Nemo stopped, straightened up, took a few steps along the
platform, and returned to me:

“As for those billions of tiny animals,” he went on, “those infusoria
that live by the millions in one droplet of water, 800,000 of which
are needed to weigh one milligram, their role is no less
important. They absorb the marine salts, they assimilate the solid
elements in the water, and since they create coral and madrepores,
they’re the true builders of limestone continents! And so, after
they’ve finished depriving our water drop of its mineral nutrients,
the droplet gets lighter, rises to the surface, there absorbs more
salts left behind through evaporation, gets heavier, sinks again, and
brings those tiny animals new elements to absorb. The outcome: a
double current, rising and falling, constant movement, constant life!
More intense than on land, more abundant, more infinite, such life
blooms in every part of this ocean, an element fatal to man, they say,
but vital to myriads of animals—and to me!”

When Captain Nemo spoke in this way, he was transfigured, and he
filled me with extraordinary excitement.

“There,” he added, “out there lies true existence! And I can imagine
the founding of nautical towns, clusters of underwater households
that, like the Nautilus, would return to the surface of the sea to
breathe each morning, free towns if ever there were, independent
cities! Then again, who knows whether some tyrant . . .”

Captain Nemo finished his sentence with a vehement gesture. Then,
addressing me directly, as if to drive away an ugly thought:

“Professor Aronnax,” he asked me, “do you know the depth of the ocean
floor?”

“At least, captain, I know what the major soundings tell us.”

“Could you quote them to me, so I can double-check them as the need
arises?”

“Here,” I replied, “are a few of them that stick in my memory. If I’m
not mistaken, an average depth of 8,200 meters was found in the north
Atlantic, and 2,500 meters in the Mediterranean. The most remarkable
soundings were taken in the south Atlantic near the 35th parallel, and
they gave 12,000 meters, 14,091 meters, and 15,149 meters. All in all,
it’s estimated that if the sea bottom were made level, its average
depth would be about seven kilometers.”

“Well, professor,” Captain Nemo replied, “we’ll show you better than
that, I hope. As for the average depth of this part of the Pacific,
I’ll inform you that it’s a mere 4,000 meters.”

This said, Captain Nemo headed to the hatch and disappeared down the
ladder. I followed him and went back to the main lounge. The propeller
was instantly set in motion, and the log gave our speed as twenty
miles per hour.

Over the ensuing days and weeks, Captain Nemo was very frugal with his
visits. I saw him only at rare intervals. His chief officer regularly
fixed the positions I found reported on the chart, and in such a way
that I could exactly plot the Nautilus’s course.

Conseil and Land spent the long hours with me. Conseil had told his
friend about the wonders of our undersea stroll, and the Canadian was
sorry he hadn’t gone along. But I hoped an opportunity would arise for
a visit to the forests of Oceania.

Almost every day the panels in the lounge were open for some hours,
and our eyes never tired of probing the mysteries of the underwater
world.

The Nautilus’s general heading was southeast, and it stayed at a depth
between 100 and 150 meters. However, from lord-knows-what whim, one
day it did a diagonal dive by means of its slanting fins, reaching
strata located 2,000 meters underwater. The thermometer indicated a
temperature of 4.25 degrees centigrade, which at this depth seemed to
be a temperature common to all latitudes.

On November 26, at three o’clock in the morning, the Nautilus cleared
the Tropic of Cancer at longitude 172 degrees. On the 27th it passed
in sight of the Hawaiian Islands, where the famous Captain Cook met
his death on February 14, 1779. By then we had fared 4,860 leagues
from our starting point. When I arrived on the platform that morning,
I saw the Island of Hawaii two miles to leeward, the largest of the
seven islands making up this group. I could clearly distinguish the
tilled soil on its outskirts, the various mountain chains running
parallel with its coastline, and its volcanoes, crowned by Mauna Kea,
whose elevation is 5,000 meters above sea level. Among other specimens
from these waterways, our nets brought up some peacock-tailed
flabellarian coral, polyps flattened into stylish shapes and unique to
this part of the ocean.

The Nautilus kept to its southeasterly heading. On December 1 it cut
the equator at longitude 142 degrees, and on the 4th of the same
month, after a quick crossing marked by no incident, we raised the
Marquesas Islands. Three miles off, in latitude 8 degrees 57’ south
and longitude 139 degrees 32’ west, I spotted Martin Point on Nuku
Hiva, chief member of this island group that belongs to France. I
could make out only its wooded mountains on the horizon, because
Captain Nemo hated to hug shore. There our nets brought up some fine
fish samples: dolphinfish with azure fins, gold tails, and flesh
that’s unrivaled in the entire world, wrasse from the genus
Hologymnosus that were nearly denuded of scales but exquisite in
flavor, knifejaws with bony beaks, yellowish albacore that were as
tasty as bonito, all fish worth classifying in the ship’s pantry.

After leaving these delightful islands to the protection of the French
flag, the Nautilus covered about 2,000 miles from December 4 to the
11th. Its navigating was marked by an encounter with an immense school
of squid, unusual mollusks that are near neighbors of the
cuttlefish. French fishermen give them the name “cuckoldfish,” and
they belong to the class Cephalopoda, family Dibranchiata, consisting
of themselves together with cuttlefish and argonauts. The naturalists
of antiquity made a special study of them, and these animals furnished
many ribald figures of speech for soapbox orators in the Greek
marketplace, as well as excellent dishes for the tables of rich
citizens, if we’re to believe Athenaeus, a Greek physician predating
Galen.

It was during the night of December 9-10 that the Nautilus encountered
this army of distinctly nocturnal mollusks. They numbered in the
millions. They were migrating from the temperate zones toward zones
still warmer, following the itineraries of herring and sardines. We
stared at them through our thick glass windows: they swam backward
with tremendous speed, moving by means of their locomotive tubes,
chasing fish and mollusks, eating the little ones, eaten by the big
ones, and tossing in indescribable confusion the ten feet that nature
has rooted in their heads like a hairpiece of pneumatic
snakes. Despite its speed, the Nautilus navigated for several hours in
the midst of this school of animals, and its nets brought up an
incalculable number, among which I recognized all nine species that
Professor Orbigny has classified as native to the Pacific Ocean.

During this crossing, the sea continually lavished us with the most
marvelous sights. Its variety was infinite. It changed its setting and
decor for the mere pleasure of our eyes, and we were called upon not
simply to contemplate the works of our Creator in the midst of the
liquid element, but also to probe the ocean’s most daunting mysteries.

During the day of December 11, I was busy reading in the main
lounge. Ned Land and Conseil were observing the luminous waters
through the gaping panels. The Nautilus was motionless. Its ballast
tanks full, it was sitting at a depth of 1,000 meters in a
comparatively unpopulated region of the ocean where only larger fish
put in occasional appearances.

Just then I was studying a delightful book by Jean MacΘ, The Servants
of the Stomach, and savoring its ingenious teachings, when Conseil
interrupted my reading.

“Would master kindly come here for an instant?” he said to me in an
odd voice.

“What is it, Conseil?”

“It’s something that master should see.”

I stood up, went, leaned on my elbows before the window, and I saw it.

In the broad electric daylight, an enormous black mass, quite
motionless, hung suspended in the midst of the waters. I observed it
carefully, trying to find out the nature of this gigantic
cetacean. Then a sudden thought crossed my mind.

“A ship!” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” the Canadian replied, “a disabled craft that’s sinking straight
down!”

Ned Land was not mistaken. We were in the presence of a ship whose
severed shrouds still hung from their clasps. Its hull looked in good
condition, and it must have gone under only a few hours before. The
stumps of three masts, chopped off two feet above the deck, indicated
a flooding ship that had been forced to sacrifice its masting. But it
had heeled sideways, filling completely, and it was listing to port
even yet. A sorry sight, this carcass lost under the waves, but
sorrier still was the sight on its deck, where, lashed with ropes to
prevent their being washed overboard, some human corpses still lay! I
counted four of them—four men, one still standing at the helm—then a
woman, halfway out of a skylight on the afterdeck, holding a child in
her arms. This woman was young. Under the brilliant lighting of the
Nautilus’s rays, I could make out her features, which the water hadn’t
yet decomposed. With a supreme effort, she had lifted her child above
her head, and the poor little creature’s arms were still twined around
its mother’s neck! The postures of the four seamen seemed ghastly to
me, twisted from convulsive movements, as if making a last effort to
break loose from the ropes that bound them to their ship. And the
helmsman, standing alone, calmer, his face smooth and serious, his
grizzled hair plastered to his brow, his hands clutching the wheel,
seemed even yet to be guiding his wrecked three-master through the
ocean depths!

What a scene! We stood dumbstruck, hearts pounding, before this
shipwreck caught in the act, as if it had been photographed in its
final moments, so to speak! And already I could see enormous sharks
moving in, eyes ablaze, drawn by the lure of human flesh!

Meanwhile, turning, the Nautilus made a circle around the sinking
ship, and for an instant I could read the board on its stern:

The Florida Sunderland, England


CHAPTER 19

Vanikoro


THIS DREADFUL SIGHT was the first of a whole series of maritime
catastrophes that the Nautilus would encounter on its run. When it
plied more heavily traveled seas, we often saw wrecked hulls rotting
in midwater, and farther down, cannons, shells, anchors, chains, and a
thousand other iron objects rusting away.

Meanwhile, continuously swept along by the Nautilus, where we lived in
near isolation, we raised the Tuamotu Islands on December 11, that old
“dangerous group” associated with the French global navigator
Commander Bougainville; it stretches from Ducie Island to Lazareff
Island over an area of 500 leagues from the east-southeast to the
west-northwest, between latitude 13 degrees 30’ and 23 degrees 50’
south, and between longitude 125 degrees 30’ and 151 degrees 30’
west. This island group covers a surface area of 370 square leagues,
and it’s made up of some sixty subgroups, among which we noted the
Gambier group, which is a French protectorate. These islands are coral
formations. Thanks to the work of polyps, a slow but steady upheaval
will someday connect these islands to each other. Later on, this new
island will be fused to its neighboring island groups, and a fifth
continent will stretch from New Zealand and New Caledonia as far as
the Marquesas Islands.

The day I expounded this theory to Captain Nemo, he answered me
coldly:

“The earth doesn’t need new continents, but new men!”

Sailors’ luck led the Nautilus straight to Reao Island, one of the
most unusual in this group, which was discovered in 1822 by Captain
Bell aboard the Minerva. So I was able to study the madreporic process
that has created the islands in this ocean.

Madrepores, which one must guard against confusing with precious
coral, clothe their tissue in a limestone crust, and their variations
in structure have led my famous mentor Professor Milne-Edwards to
classify them into five divisions. The tiny microscopic animals that
secrete this polypary live by the billions in the depths of their
cells. Their limestone deposits build up into rocks, reefs, islets,
islands. In some places, they form atolls, a circular ring surrounding
a lagoon or small inner lake that gaps place in contact with the
sea. Elsewhere, they take the shape of barrier reefs, such as those
that exist along the coasts of New Caledonia and several of the
Tuamotu Islands. In still other localities, such as RΘunion Island and
the island of Mauritius, they build fringing reefs, high, straight
walls next to which the ocean’s depth is considerable.

While cruising along only a few cable lengths from the underpinning of
Reao Island, I marveled at the gigantic piece of work accomplished by
these microscopic laborers. These walls were the express achievements
of madrepores known by the names fire coral, finger coral, star coral,
and stony coral. These polyps grow exclusively in the agitated strata
at the surface of the sea, and so it’s in the upper reaches that they
begin these substructures, which sink little by little together with
the secreted rubble binding them. This, at least, is the theory of
Mr. Charles Darwin, who thus explains the formation of atolls—a theory
superior, in my view, to the one that says these madreporic edifices
sit on the summits of mountains or volcanoes submerged a few feet
below sea level.

I could observe these strange walls quite closely: our sounding lines
indicated that they dropped perpendicularly for more than 300 meters,
and our electric beams made the bright limestone positively sparkle.

In reply to a question Conseil asked me about the growth rate of these
colossal barriers, I thoroughly amazed him by saying that scientists
put it at an eighth of an inch per biennium.

“Therefore,” he said to me, “to build these walls, it took . . . ?”

“192,000 years, my gallant Conseil, which significantly extends the
biblical Days of Creation. What’s more, the formation of coal—in other
words, the petrification of forests swallowed by floods—and the
cooling of basaltic rocks likewise call for a much longer period of
time. I might add that those ‘days’ in the Bible must represent whole
epochs and not literally the lapse of time between two sunrises,
because according to the Bible itself, the sun doesn’t date from the
first day of Creation.”

When the Nautilus returned to the surface of the ocean, I could take
in Reao Island over its whole flat, wooded expanse. Obviously its
madreporic rocks had been made fertile by tornadoes and
thunderstorms. One day, carried off by a hurricane from neighboring
shores, some seed fell onto these limestone beds, mixing with
decomposed particles of fish and marine plants to form vegetable
humus. Propelled by the waves, a coconut arrived on this new
coast. Its germ took root. Its tree grew tall, catching steam off the
water. A brook was born. Little by little, vegetation spread. Tiny
animals—worms, insects—rode ashore on tree trunks snatched from
islands to windward. Turtles came to lay their eggs. Birds nested in
the young trees. In this way animal life developed, and drawn by the
greenery and fertile soil, man appeared. And that’s how these islands
were formed, the immense achievement of microscopic animals.

Near evening Reao Island melted into the distance, and the Nautilus
noticeably changed course. After touching the Tropic of Capricorn at
longitude 135 degrees, it headed west-northwest, going back up the
whole intertropical zone. Although the summer sun lavished its rays on
us, we never suffered from the heat, because thirty or forty meters
underwater, the temperature didn’t go over 10 degrees to 12 degrees
centigrade.

By December 15 we had left the alluring Society Islands in the west,
likewise elegant Tahiti, queen of the Pacific. In the morning I
spotted this island’s lofty summits a few miles to leeward. Its waters
supplied excellent fish for the tables on board: mackerel, bonito,
albacore, and a few varieties of that sea serpent named the moray eel.

The Nautilus had cleared 8,100 miles. We logged 9,720 miles when we
passed between the Tonga Islands, where crews from the Argo,
Port-au-Prince, and Duke of Portland had perished, and the island
group of Samoa, scene of the slaying of Captain de Langle, friend of
that long-lost navigator, the Count de La PΘrouse. Then we raised the
Fiji Islands, where savages slaughtered sailors from the Union, as
well as Captain Bureau, commander of the Darling Josephine out of
Nantes, France.

Extending over an expanse of 100 leagues north to south, and over 90
leagues east to west, this island group lies between latitude 2
degrees and 6 degrees south, and between longitude 174 degrees and 179
degrees west. It consists of a number of islands, islets, and reefs,
among which we noted the islands of Viti Levu, Vanua Levu, and Kadavu.

It was the Dutch navigator Tasman who discovered this group in 1643,
the same year the Italian physicist Torricelli invented the barometer
and King Louis XIV ascended the French throne. I’ll let the reader
decide which of these deeds was more beneficial to humanity. Coming
later, Captain Cook in 1774, Rear Admiral d’Entrecasteaux in 1793, and
finally Captain Dumont d’Urville in 1827, untangled the whole chaotic
geography of this island group. The Nautilus drew near Wailea Bay, an
unlucky place for England’s Captain Dillon, who was the first to shed
light on the longstanding mystery surrounding the disappearance of
ships under the Count de La PΘrouse.

This bay, repeatedly dredged, furnished a huge supply of excellent
oysters. As the Roman playwright Seneca recommended, we opened them
right at our table, then stuffed ourselves. These mollusks belonged to
the species known by name as Ostrea lamellosa, whose members are quite
common off Corsica. This Wailea oysterbank must have been extensive,
and for certain, if they hadn’t been controlled by numerous natural
checks, these clusters of shellfish would have ended up jam-packing
the bay, since as many as 2,000,000 eggs have been counted in a single
individual.

And if Mr. Ned Land did not repent of his gluttony at our oyster fest,
it’s because oysters are the only dish that never causes
indigestion. In fact, it takes no less than sixteen dozen of these
headless mollusks to supply the 315 grams that satisfy one man’s
minimum daily requirement for nitrogen.

On December 25 the Nautilus navigated amid the island group of the New
Hebrides, which the Portuguese seafarer Queir≤s discovered in 1606,
which Commander Bougainville explored in 1768, and to which Captain
Cook gave its current name in 1773. This group is chiefly made up of
nine large islands and forms a 120-league strip from the
north-northwest to the south-southeast, lying between latitude 2
degrees and 15 degrees south, and between longitude 164 degrees and
168 degrees. At the moment of our noon sights, we passed fairly close
to the island of Aurou, which looked to me like a mass of green woods
crowned by a peak of great height.

That day it was yuletide, and it struck me that Ned Land badly missed
celebrating “Christmas,” that genuine family holiday where Protestants
are such zealots.

I hadn’t seen Captain Nemo for over a week, when, on the morning of
the 27th, he entered the main lounge, as usual acting as if he’d been
gone for just five minutes. I was busy tracing the Nautilus’s course
on the world map. The captain approached, placed a finger over a
position on the chart, and pronounced just one word:

“Vanikoro.”

This name was magic! It was the name of those islets where vessels
under the Count de La PΘrouse had miscarried. I straightened suddenly.

“The Nautilus is bringing us to Vanikoro?” I asked.

“Yes, professor,” the captain replied.

“And I’ll be able to visit those famous islands where the Compass and
the Astrolabe came to grief?”

“If you like, professor.”

“When will we reach Vanikoro?”

“We already have, professor.”

Followed by Captain Nemo, I climbed onto the platform, and from there
my eyes eagerly scanned the horizon.

In the northeast there emerged two volcanic islands of unequal size,
surrounded by a coral reef whose circuit measured forty miles. We were
facing the island of Vanikoro proper, to which Captain Dumont
d’Urville had given the name “Island of the Search”; we lay right in
front of the little harbor of Vana, located in latitude 16 degrees 4’
south and longitude 164 degrees 32’ east. Its shores seemed covered
with greenery from its beaches to its summits inland, crowned by
Mt. Kapogo, which is 476 fathoms high.

After clearing the outer belt of rocks via a narrow passageway, the
Nautilus lay inside the breakers where the sea had a depth of thirty
to forty fathoms. Under the green shade of some tropical evergreens, I
spotted a few savages who looked extremely startled at our
approach. In this long, blackish object advancing flush with the
water, didn’t they see some fearsome cetacean that they were obliged
to view with distrust?

Just then Captain Nemo asked me what I knew about the shipwreck of the
Count de La PΘrouse.

“What everybody knows, captain,” I answered him.

“And could you kindly tell me what everybody knows?” he asked me in a
gently ironic tone.

“Very easily.”

I related to him what the final deeds of Captain Dumont d’Urville had
brought to light, deeds described here in this heavily condensed
summary of the whole matter.

In 1785 the Count de La PΘrouse and his subordinate, Captain de
Langle, were sent by King Louis XVI of France on a voyage to
circumnavigate the globe. They boarded two sloops of war, the Compass
and the Astrolabe, which were never seen again.

In 1791, justly concerned about the fate of these two sloops of war,
the French government fitted out two large cargo boats, the Search and
the Hope, which left Brest on September 28 under orders from Rear
Admiral Bruni d’Entrecasteaux. Two months later, testimony from a
certain Commander Bowen, aboard the Albemarle, alleged that rubble
from shipwrecked vessels had been seen on the coast of New
Georgia. But d’Entrecasteaux was unaware of this news—which seemed a
bit dubious anyhow—and headed toward the Admiralty Islands, which had
been named in a report by one Captain Hunter as the site of the Count
de La PΘrouse’s shipwreck.

They looked in vain. The Hope and the Search passed right by Vanikoro
without stopping there; and overall, this voyage was plagued by
misfortune, ultimately costing the lives of Rear Admiral
d’Entrecasteaux, two of his subordinate officers, and several seamen
from his crew.

It was an old hand at the Pacific, the English adventurer Captain
Peter Dillon, who was the first to pick up the trail left by castaways
from the wrecked vessels. On May 15, 1824, his ship, the St. Patrick,
passed by Tikopia Island, one of the New Hebrides. There a native
boatman pulled alongside in a dugout canoe and sold Dillon a silver
sword hilt bearing the imprint of characters engraved with a cutting
tool known as a burin. Furthermore, this native boatman claimed that
during a stay in Vanikoro six years earlier, he had seen two Europeans
belonging to ships that had run aground on the island’s reefs many
years before.

Dillon guessed that the ships at issue were those under the Count de
La PΘrouse, ships whose disappearance had shaken the entire world. He
tried to reach Vanikoro, where, according to the native boatman, a
good deal of rubble from the shipwreck could still be found, but winds
and currents prevented his doing so.

Dillon returned to Calcutta. There he was able to interest the Asiatic
Society and the East India Company in his discovery. A ship named
after the Search was placed at his disposal, and he departed on
January 23, 1827, accompanied by a French deputy.

This new Search, after putting in at several stops over the Pacific,
dropped anchor before Vanikoro on July 7, 1827, in the same harbor of
Vana where the Nautilus was currently floating.

There Dillon collected many relics of the shipwreck: iron utensils,
anchors, eyelets from pulleys, swivel guns, an eighteen-pound shell,
the remains of some astronomical instruments, a piece of sternrail,
and a bronze bell bearing the inscription “Made by Bazin,” the foundry
mark at Brest Arsenal around 1785. There could no longer be any doubt.

Finishing his investigations, Dillon stayed at the site of the
casualty until the month of October. Then he left Vanikoro, headed
toward New Zealand, dropped anchor at Calcutta on April 7, 1828, and
returned to France, where he received a very cordial welcome from King
Charles X.

But just then the renowned French explorer Captain Dumont d’Urville,
unaware of Dillon’s activities, had already set sail to search
elsewhere for the site of the shipwreck. In essence, a whaling vessel
had reported that some medals and a Cross of St. Louis had been found
in the hands of savages in the Louisiade Islands and New Caledonia.

So Captain Dumont d’Urville had put to sea in command of a vessel
named after the Astrolabe, and just two months after Dillon had left
Vanikoro, Dumont d’Urville dropped anchor before Hobart. There he
heard about Dillon’s findings, and he further learned that a certain
James Hobbs, chief officer on the Union out of Calcutta, had put to
shore on an island located in latitude 8 degrees 18’ south and
longitude 156 degrees 30’ east, and had noted the natives of those
waterways making use of iron bars and red fabrics.

Pretty perplexed, Dumont d’Urville didn’t know if he should give
credence to these reports, which had been carried in some of the less
reliable newspapers; nevertheless, he decided to start on Dillon’s
trail.

On February 10, 1828, the new Astrolabe hove before Tikopia Island,
took on a guide and interpreter in the person of a deserter who had
settled there, plied a course toward Vanikoro, raised it on February
12, sailed along its reefs until the 14th, and only on the 20th
dropped anchor inside its barrier in the harbor of Vana.

On the 23rd, several officers circled the island and brought back some
rubble of little importance. The natives, adopting a system of denial
and evasion, refused to guide them to the site of the casualty. This
rather shady conduct aroused the suspicion that the natives had
mistreated the castaways; and in truth, the natives seemed afraid that
Dumont d’Urville had come to avenge the Count de La PΘrouse and his
unfortunate companions.

But on the 26th, appeased with gifts and seeing that they didn’t need
to fear any reprisals, the natives led the chief officer,
Mr. Jacquinot, to the site of the shipwreck.

At this location, in three or four fathoms of water between the Paeu
and Vana reefs, there lay some anchors, cannons, and ingots of iron
and lead, all caked with limestone concretions. A launch and whaleboat
from the new Astrolabe were steered to this locality, and after going
to exhausting lengths, their crews managed to dredge up an anchor
weighing 1,800 pounds, a cast-iron eight-pounder cannon, a lead ingot,
and two copper swivel guns.

Questioning the natives, Captain Dumont d’Urville also learned that
after La PΘrouse’s two ships had miscarried on the island’s reefs, the
count had built a smaller craft, only to go off and miscarry a second
time. Where? Nobody knew.

The commander of the new Astrolabe then had a monument erected under a
tuft of mangrove, in memory of the famous navigator and his
companions. It was a simple quadrangular pyramid, set on a coral base,
with no ironwork to tempt the natives’ avarice.

Then Dumont d’Urville tried to depart; but his crews were run down
from the fevers raging on these unsanitary shores, and quite ill
himself, he was unable to weigh anchor until March 17.

Meanwhile, fearing that Dumont d’Urville wasn’t abreast of Dillon’s
activities, the French government sent a sloop of war to Vanikoro, the
Bayonnaise under Commander Legoarant de Tromelin, who had been
stationed on the American west coast. Dropping anchor before Vanikoro
a few months after the new Astrolabe’s departure, the Bayonnaise
didn’t find any additional evidence but verified that the savages
hadn’t disturbed the memorial honoring the Count de La PΘrouse.

This is the substance of the account I gave Captain Nemo.

“So,” he said to me, “the castaways built a third ship on Vanikoro
Island, and to this day, nobody knows where it went and perished?”

“Nobody knows.”

Captain Nemo didn’t reply but signaled me to follow him to the main
lounge. The Nautilus sank a few meters beneath the waves, and the
panels opened.

I rushed to the window and saw crusts of coral: fungus coral,
siphonula coral, alcyon coral, sea anemone from the genus Caryophylia,
plus myriads of charming fish including greenfish, damselfish,
sweepers, snappers, and squirrelfish; underneath this coral covering I
detected some rubble the old dredges hadn’t been able to tear
free—iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, shells, tackle from a capstan, a
stempost, all objects hailing from the wrecked ships and now carpeted
in moving flowers.

And as I stared at this desolate wreckage, Captain Nemo told me in a
solemn voice:

“Commander La PΘrouse set out on December 7, 1785, with his ships, the
Compass and the Astrolabe. He dropped anchor first at Botany Bay,
visited the Tonga Islands and New Caledonia, headed toward the Santa
Cruz Islands, and put in at Nomuka, one of the islands in the Ha’apai
group. Then his ships arrived at the unknown reefs of
Vanikoro. Traveling in the lead, the Compass ran afoul of breakers on
the southerly coast. The Astrolabe went to its rescue and also ran
aground. The first ship was destroyed almost immediately. The second,
stranded to leeward, held up for some days. The natives gave the
castaways a fair enough welcome. The latter took up residence on the
island and built a smaller craft with rubble from the two large
ones. A few seamen stayed voluntarily in Vanikoro. The others, weak
and ailing, set sail with the Count de La PΘrouse. They headed to the
Solomon Islands, and they perished with all hands on the westerly
coast of the chief island in that group, between Cape Deception and
Cape Satisfaction!”

“And how do you know all this?” I exclaimed.

“Here’s what I found at the very site of that final shipwreck!”

Captain Nemo showed me a tin box, stamped with the coat of arms of
France and all corroded by salt water. He opened it and I saw a bundle
of papers, yellowed but still legible.

They were the actual military orders given by France’s Minister of the
Navy to Commander La PΘrouse, with notes along the margin in the
handwriting of King Louis XVI!

“Ah, what a splendid death for a seaman!” Captain Nemo then said. “A
coral grave is a tranquil grave, and may Heaven grant that my
companions and I rest in no other!”


CHAPTER 20

The Torres Strait


DURING THE NIGHT of December 27-28, the Nautilus left the waterways of
Vanikoro behind with extraordinary speed. Its heading was
southwesterly, and in three days it had cleared the 750 leagues that
separated La PΘrouse’s islands from the southeastern tip of Papua.

On January 1, 1868, bright and early, Conseil joined me on the
platform.

“Will master,” the gallant lad said to me, “allow me to wish him a
happy new year?”

“Good heavens, Conseil, it’s just like old times in my office at the
Botanical Gardens in Paris! I accept your kind wishes and I thank you
for them. Only, I’d like to know what you mean by a ‘happy year’ under
the circumstances in which we’re placed. Is it a year that will bring
our imprisonment to an end, or a year that will see this strange
voyage continue?”

“Ye gods,” Conseil replied, “I hardly know what to tell master. We’re
certainly seeing some unusual things, and for two months we’ve had no
time for boredom. The latest wonder is always the most astonishing,
and if this progression keeps up, I can’t imagine what its climax will
be. In my opinion, we’ll never again have such an opportunity.”

“Never, Conseil.”

“Besides, Mr. Nemo really lives up to his Latin name, since he
couldn’t be less in the way if he didn’t exist.”

“True enough, Conseil.”

“Therefore, with all due respect to master, I think a ‘happy year’
would be a year that lets us see everything—”

“Everything, Conseil? No year could be that long. But what does Ned
Land think about all this?”

“Ned Land’s thoughts are exactly the opposite of mine,” Conseil
replied. “He has a practical mind and a demanding stomach. He’s tired
of staring at fish and eating them day in and day out. This shortage
of wine, bread, and meat isn’t suitable for an upstanding Anglo-Saxon,
a man accustomed to beefsteak and unfazed by regular doses of brandy
or gin!”

“For my part, Conseil, that doesn’t bother me in the least, and I’ve
adjusted very nicely to the diet on board.”

“So have I,” Conseil replied. “Accordingly, I think as much about
staying as Mr. Land about making his escape. Thus, if this new year
isn’t a happy one for me, it will be for him, and vice versa. No
matter what happens, one of us will be pleased. So, in conclusion, I
wish master to have whatever his heart desires.”

“Thank you, Conseil. Only I must ask you to postpone the question of
new year’s gifts, and temporarily accept a hearty handshake in their
place. That’s all I have on me.”

“Master has never been more generous,” Conseil replied.

And with that, the gallant lad went away.

By January 2 we had fared 11,340 miles, hence 5,250 leagues, from our
starting point in the seas of Japan. Before the Nautilus’s spur there
stretched the dangerous waterways of the Coral Sea, off the northeast
coast of Australia. Our boat cruised along a few miles away from that
daunting shoal where Captain Cook’s ships wellnigh miscarried on June
10, 1770. The craft that Cook was aboard charged into some coral rock,
and if his vessel didn’t go down, it was thanks to the circumstance
that a piece of coral broke off in the collision and plugged the very
hole it had made in the hull.

I would have been deeply interested in visiting this long, 360-league
reef, against which the ever-surging sea broke with the fearsome
intensity of thunderclaps. But just then the Nautilus’s slanting fins
took us to great depths, and I could see nothing of those high coral
walls. I had to rest content with the various specimens of fish
brought up by our nets. Among others I noted some long-finned
albacore, a species in the genus Scomber, as big as tuna, bluish on
the flanks, and streaked with crosswise stripes that disappear when
the animal dies. These fish followed us in schools and supplied our
table with very dainty flesh. We also caught a large number of
yellow-green gilthead, half a decimeter long and tasting like dorado,
plus some flying gurnards, authentic underwater swallows that, on dark
nights, alternately streak air and water with their phosphorescent
glimmers. Among mollusks and zoophytes, I found in our trawl’s meshes
various species of alcyonarian coral, sea urchins, hammer shells,
spurred-star shells, wentletrap snails, horn shells, glass snails. The
local flora was represented by fine floating algae: sea tangle, and
kelp from the genus Macrocystis, saturated with the mucilage their
pores perspire, from which I selected a wonderful Nemastoma
geliniaroidea, classifying it with the natural curiosities in the
museum.

On January 4, two days after crossing the Coral Sea, we raised the
coast of Papua. On this occasion Captain Nemo told me that he intended
to reach the Indian Ocean via the Torres Strait. This was the extent
of his remarks. Ned saw with pleasure that this course would bring us,
once again, closer to European seas.

The Torres Strait is regarded as no less dangerous for its bristling
reefs than for the savage inhabitants of its coasts. It separates
Queensland from the huge island of Papua, also called New Guinea.

Papua is 400 leagues long by 130 leagues wide, with a surface area of
40,000 geographic leagues. It’s located between latitude 0 degrees 19’
and 10 degrees 2’ south, and between longitude 128 degrees 23’ and 146
degrees 15’. At noon, while the chief officer was taking the sun’s
altitude, I spotted the summits of the Arfak Mountains, rising in
terraces and ending in sharp peaks.

Discovered in 1511 by the Portuguese Francisco Serrano, these shores
were successively visited by Don Jorge de Meneses in 1526, by Juan de
Grijalva in 1527, by the Spanish general Alvaro de Saavedra in 1528,
by Inigo Ortiz in 1545, by the Dutchman Schouten in 1616, by Nicolas
Sruick in 1753, by Tasman, Dampier, Fumel, Carteret, Edwards,
Bougainville, Cook, McClure, and Thomas Forrest, by Rear Admiral
d’Entrecasteaux in 1792, by Louis-Isidore Duperrey in 1823, and by
Captain Dumont d’Urville in 1827. “It’s the heartland of the blacks
who occupy all Malaysia,” Mr. de Rienzi has said; and I hadn’t the
foggiest inkling that sailors’ luck was about to bring me face to face
with these daunting Andaman aborigines.

So the Nautilus hove before the entrance to the world’s most dangerous
strait, a passageway that even the boldest navigators hesitated to
clear: the strait that Luis Vaez de Torres faced on returning from the
South Seas in Melanesia, the strait in which sloops of war under
Captain Dumont d’Urville ran aground in 1840 and nearly miscarried
with all hands. And even the Nautilus, rising superior to every danger
in the sea, was about to become intimate with its coral reefs.

The Torres Strait is about thirty-four leagues wide, but it’s
obstructed by an incalculable number of islands, islets, breakers, and
rocks that make it nearly impossible to navigate. Consequently,
Captain Nemo took every desired precaution in crossing it. Floating
flush with the water, the Nautilus moved ahead at a moderate
pace. Like a cetacean’s tail, its propeller churned the waves slowly.

Taking advantage of this situation, my two companions and I found
seats on the ever-deserted platform. In front of us stood the
pilothouse, and unless I’m extremely mistaken, Captain Nemo must have
been inside, steering his Nautilus himself.

Under my eyes I had the excellent charts of the Torres Strait that had
been surveyed and drawn up by the hydrographic engineer Vincendon
Dumoulin and Sublieutenant (now Admiral) Coupvent-Desbois, who were
part of Dumont d’Urville’s general staff during his final voyage to
circumnavigate the globe. These, along with the efforts of Captain
King, are the best charts for untangling the snarl of this narrow
passageway, and I consulted them with scrupulous care.

Around the Nautilus the sea was boiling furiously. A stream of waves,
bearing from southeast to northwest at a speed of two and a half miles
per hour, broke over heads of coral emerging here and there.

“That’s one rough sea!” Ned Land told me.

“Abominable indeed,” I replied, “and hardly suitable for a craft like
the Nautilus.”

“That damned captain,” the Canadian went on, “must really be sure of
his course, because if these clumps of coral so much as brush us,
they’ll rip our hull into a thousand pieces!”

The situation was indeed dangerous, but as if by magic, the Nautilus
seemed to glide right down the middle of these rampaging reefs. It
didn’t follow the exact course of the Zealous and the new Astrolabe,
which had proved so ill-fated for Captain Dumont d’Urville. It went
more to the north, hugged the Murray Islands, and returned to the
southwest near Cumberland Passage. I thought it was about to charge
wholeheartedly into this opening, but it went up to the northwest,
through a large number of little-known islands and islets, and steered
toward Tound Island and the Bad Channel.

I was already wondering if Captain Nemo, rash to the point of sheer
insanity, wanted his ship to tackle the narrows where Dumont
d’Urville’s two sloops of war had gone aground, when he changed
direction a second time and cut straight to the west, heading toward
Gueboroa Island.

By then it was three o’clock in the afternoon. The current was
slacking off, it was almost full tide. The Nautilus drew near this
island, which I can see to this day with its remarkable fringe of
screw pines. We hugged it from less than two miles out.

A sudden jolt threw me down. The Nautilus had just struck a reef, and
it remained motionless, listing slightly to port.

When I stood up, I saw Captain Nemo and his chief officer on the
platform. They were examining the ship’s circumstances, exchanging a
few words in their incomprehensible dialect.

Here is what those circumstances entailed. Two miles to starboard lay
Gueboroa Island, its coastline curving north to west like an immense
arm. To the south and east, heads of coral were already on display,
left uncovered by the ebbing waters. We had run aground at full tide
and in one of those seas whose tides are moderate, an inconvenient
state of affairs for floating the Nautilus off. However, the ship
hadn’t suffered in any way, so solidly joined was its hull. But
although it could neither sink nor split open, it was in serious
danger of being permanently attached to these reefs, and that would
have been the finish of Captain Nemo’s submersible.

I was mulling this over when the captain approached, cool and calm,
forever in control of himself, looking neither alarmed nor annoyed.

“An accident?” I said to him.

“No, an incident,” he answered me.

“But an incident,” I replied, “that may oblige you to become a
resident again of these shores you avoid!”

Captain Nemo gave me an odd look and gestured no. Which told me pretty
clearly that nothing would ever force him to set foot on a land mass
again. Then he said:

“No, Professor Aronnax, the Nautilus isn’t consigned to perdition. It
will still carry you through the midst of the ocean’s wonders. Our
voyage is just beginning, and I’ve no desire to deprive myself so soon
of the pleasure of your company.”

“Even so, Captain Nemo,” I went on, ignoring his ironic turn of
phrase, “the Nautilus has run aground at a moment when the sea is
full. Now then, the tides aren’t strong in the Pacific, and if you
can’t unballast the Nautilus, which seems impossible to me, I don’t
see how it will float off.”

“You’re right, professor, the Pacific tides aren’t strong,” Captain
Nemo replied. “But in the Torres Strait, one still finds a
meter-and-a-half difference in level between high and low seas. Today
is January 4, and in five days the moon will be full. Now then, I’ll
be quite astonished if that good-natured satellite doesn’t
sufficiently raise these masses of water and do me a favor for which
I’ll be forever grateful.”

This said, Captain Nemo went below again to the Nautilus’s interior,
followed by his chief officer. As for our craft, it no longer stirred,
staying as motionless as if these coral polyps had already walled it
in with their indestructible cement.

“Well, sir?” Ned Land said to me, coming up after the captain’s
departure.

“Well, Ned my friend, we’ll serenely wait for the tide on the 9th,
because it seems the moon will have the good nature to float us away!”

“As simple as that?”

“As simple as that.”

“So our captain isn’t going to drop his anchors, put his engines on
the chains, and do anything to haul us off?”

“Since the tide will be sufficient,” Conseil replied simply.

The Canadian stared at Conseil, then he shrugged his shoulders. The
seaman in him was talking now.

“Sir,” he answered, “you can trust me when I say this hunk of iron
will never navigate again, on the seas or under them. It’s only fit to
be sold for its weight. So I think it’s time we gave Captain Nemo the
slip.”

“Ned my friend,” I replied, “unlike you, I haven’t given up on our
valiant Nautilus, and in four days we’ll know where we stand on these
Pacific tides. Besides, an escape attempt might be timely if we were
in sight of the coasts of England or Provence, but in the waterways of
Papua it’s another story. And we’ll always have that as a last resort
if the Nautilus doesn’t right itself, which I’d regard as a real
calamity.”

“But couldn’t we at least get the lay of the land?” Ned went
on. “Here’s an island. On this island there are trees. Under those
trees land animals loaded with cutlets and roast beef, which I’d be
happy to sink my teeth into.”

“In this instance our friend Ned is right,” Conseil said, “and I side
with his views. Couldn’t master persuade his friend Captain Nemo to
send the three of us ashore, if only so our feet don’t lose the knack
of treading on the solid parts of our planet?”

“I can ask him,” I replied, “but he’ll refuse.”

“Let master take the risk,” Conseil said, “and we’ll know where we
stand on the captain’s affability.”

Much to my surprise, Captain Nemo gave me the permission I asked for,
and he did so with grace and alacrity, not even exacting my promise to
return on board. But fleeing across the New Guinea territories would
be extremely dangerous, and I wouldn’t have advised Ned Land to try
it. Better to be prisoners aboard the Nautilus than to fall into the
hands of Papuan natives.

The skiff was put at our disposal for the next morning. I hardly
needed to ask whether Captain Nemo would be coming along. I likewise
assumed that no crewmen would be assigned to us, that Ned Land would
be in sole charge of piloting the longboat. Besides, the shore lay no
more than two miles off, and it would be child’s play for the Canadian
to guide that nimble skiff through those rows of reefs so ill-fated
for big ships.

The next day, January 5, after its deck paneling was opened, the skiff
was wrenched from its socket and launched to sea from the top of the
platform. Two men were sufficient for this operation. The oars were
inside the longboat and we had only to take our seats.

At eight o’clock, armed with rifles and axes, we pulled clear of the
Nautilus. The sea was fairly calm. A mild breeze blew from shore. In
place by the oars, Conseil and I rowed vigorously, and Ned steered us
into the narrow lanes between the breakers. The skiff handled easily
and sped swiftly.

Ned Land couldn’t conceal his glee. He was a prisoner escaping from
prison and never dreaming he would need to reenter it.

“Meat!” he kept repeating. “Now we’ll eat red meat! Actual game! A
real mess call, by thunder! I’m not saying fish aren’t good for you,
but we mustn’t overdo ‘em, and a slice of fresh venison grilled over
live coals will be a nice change from our standard fare.”

“You glutton,” Conseil replied, “you’re making my mouth water!”

“It remains to be seen,” I said, “whether these forests do contain
game, and if the types of game aren’t of such size that they can hunt
the hunter.”

“Fine, Professor Aronnax!” replied the Canadian, whose teeth seemed to
be as honed as the edge of an ax. “But if there’s no other quadruped
on this island, I’ll eat tiger—tiger sirloin.”

“Our friend Ned grows disturbing,” Conseil replied.

“Whatever it is,” Ned Land went on, “any animal having four feet
without feathers, or two feet with feathers, will be greeted by my
very own one-gun salute.”

“Oh good!” I replied. “The reckless Mr. Land is at it again!”

“Don’t worry, Professor Aronnax, just keep rowing!” the Canadian
replied. “I only need twenty-five minutes to serve you one of my own
special creations.”

By 8:30 the Nautilus’s skiff had just run gently aground on a sandy
strand, after successfully clearing the ring of coral that surrounds
Gueboroa Island.


CHAPTER 21

Some Days Ashore


STEPPING ASHORE had an exhilarating effect on me. Ned Land tested the
soil with his foot, as if he were laying claim to it. Yet it had been
only two months since we had become, as Captain Nemo expressed it,
“passengers on the Nautilus,” in other words, the literal prisoners of
its commander.

In a few minutes we were a gunshot away from the coast. The soil was
almost entirely madreporic, but certain dry stream beds were strewn
with granite rubble, proving that this island was of primordial
origin. The entire horizon was hidden behind a curtain of wonderful
forests. Enormous trees, sometimes as high as 200 feet, were linked to
each other by garlands of tropical creepers, genuine natural hammocks
that swayed in a mild breeze. There were mimosas, banyan trees,
beefwood, teakwood, hibiscus, screw pines, palm trees, all mingling in
wild profusion; and beneath the shade of their green canopies, at the
feet of their gigantic trunks, there grew orchids, leguminous plants,
and ferns.

Meanwhile, ignoring all these fine specimens of Papuan flora, the
Canadian passed up the decorative in favor of the functional. He
spotted a coconut palm, beat down some of its fruit, broke them open,
and we drank their milk and ate their meat with a pleasure that was a
protest against our standard fare on the Nautilus.

“Excellent!” Ned Land said.



“Exquisite!” Conseil replied.

“And I don’t think,” the Canadian said, “that your Nemo would object
to us stashing a cargo of coconuts aboard his vessel?”

“I imagine not,” I replied, “but he won’t want to sample them.”

“Too bad for him!” Conseil said.

“And plenty good for us!” Ned Land shot back. “There’ll be more left
over!”

“A word of caution, Mr. Land,” I told the harpooner, who was about to
ravage another coconut palm. “Coconuts are admirable things, but
before we stuff the skiff with them, it would be wise to find out
whether this island offers other substances just as useful. Some fresh
vegetables would be well received in the Nautilus’s pantry.”

“Master is right,” Conseil replied, “and I propose that we set aside
three places in our longboat: one for fruit, another for vegetables,
and a third for venison, of which I still haven’t glimpsed the tiniest
specimen.”

“Don’t give up so easily, Conseil,” the Canadian replied.

“So let’s continue our excursion,” I went on, “but keep a sharp
lookout. This island seems uninhabited, but it still might harbor
certain individuals who aren’t so finicky about the sort of game they
eat!”

“Hee hee!” Ned put in, with a meaningful movement of his jaws.

“Ned! Oh horrors!” Conseil exclaimed.

“Ye gods,” the Canadian shot back, “I’m starting to appreciate the
charms of cannibalism!”

“Ned, Ned! Don’t say that!” Conseil answered. “You a cannibal? Why,
I’ll no longer be safe next to you, I who share your cabin! Does this
mean I’ll wake up half devoured one fine day?”

“I’m awfully fond of you, Conseil my friend, but not enough to eat you
when there’s better food around.”

“Then I daren’t delay,” Conseil replied. “The hunt is on! We
absolutely must bag some game to placate this man-eater, or one of
these mornings master won’t find enough pieces of his manservant to
serve him.”

While exchanging this chitchat, we entered beneath the dark canopies
of the forest, and for two hours we explored it in every direction.

We couldn’t have been luckier in our search for edible vegetation, and
some of the most useful produce in the tropical zones supplied us with
a valuable foodstuff missing on board.

I mean the breadfruit tree, which is quite abundant on Gueboroa
Island, and there I chiefly noted the seedless variety that in
Malaysia is called “rima.”

This tree is distinguished from other trees by a straight trunk forty
feet high. To the naturalist’s eye, its gracefully rounded crown,
formed of big multilobed leaves, was enough to denote the artocarpus
that has been so successfully transplanted to the Mascarene Islands
east of

Madagascar. From its mass of greenery, huge globular fruit stood out,
a decimeter wide and furnished on the outside with creases that
assumed a hexangular pattern. It’s a handy plant that nature gives to
regions lacking in wheat; without needing to be cultivated, it bears
fruit eight months out of the year.

Ned Land was on familiar terms with this fruit. He had already eaten
it on his many voyages and knew how to cook its edible substance. So
the very sight of it aroused his appetite, and he couldn’t control
himself.

“Sir,” he told me, “I’ll die if I don’t sample a little breadfruit
pasta!”

“Sample some, Ned my friend, sample all you like. We’re here to
conduct experiments, let’s conduct them.”

“It won’t take a minute,” the Canadian replied.

Equipped with a magnifying glass, he lit a fire of deadwood that was
soon crackling merrily. Meanwhile Conseil and I selected the finest
artocarpus fruit. Some still weren’t ripe enough, and their thick
skins covered white, slightly fibrous pulps. But a great many others
were yellowish and gelatinous, just begging to be picked.

This fruit contained no pits. Conseil brought a dozen of them to Ned
Land, who cut them into thick slices and placed them over a fire of
live coals, all the while repeating:

“You’ll see, sir, how tasty this bread is!”

“Especially since we’ve gone without baked goods for so long,” Conseil
said.

“It’s more than just bread,” the Canadian added. “It’s a dainty
pastry. You’ve never eaten any, sir?”

“No, Ned.”

“All right, get ready for something downright delectable! If you don’t
come back for seconds, I’m no longer the King of Harpooners!”

After a few minutes, the parts of the fruit exposed to the fire were
completely toasted. On the inside there appeared some white pasta, a
sort of soft bread center whose flavor reminded me of artichoke.

This bread was excellent, I must admit, and I ate it with great
pleasure.

“Unfortunately,” I said, “this pasta won’t stay fresh, so it seems
pointless to make a supply for on board.”

“By thunder, sir!” Ned Land exclaimed. “There you go, talking like a
naturalist, but meantime I’ll be acting like a baker! Conseil, harvest
some of this fruit to take with us when we go back.”

“And how will you prepare it?” I asked the Canadian.

“I’ll make a fermented batter from its pulp that’ll keep indefinitely
without spoiling. When I want some, I’ll just cook it in the galley on
board—it’ll have a slightly tart flavor, but you’ll find it
excellent.”

“So, Mr. Ned, I see that this bread is all we need—”

“Not quite, professor,” the Canadian replied. “We need some fruit to
go with it, or at least some vegetables.”

“Then let’s look for fruit and vegetables.”

When our breadfruit harvesting was done, we took to the trail to
complete this “dry-land dinner.”

We didn’t search in vain, and near noontime we had an ample supply of
bananas. This delicious produce from the Torrid Zones ripens all year
round, and Malaysians, who give them the name “pisang,” eat them
without bothering to cook them. In addition to bananas, we gathered
some enormous jackfruit with a very tangy flavor, some tasty mangoes,
and some pineapples of unbelievable size. But this foraging took up a
good deal of our time, which, even so, we had no cause to regret.

Conseil kept Ned under observation. The harpooner walked in the lead,
and during his stroll through this forest, he gathered with sure hands
some excellent fruit that should have completed his provisions.

“So,” Conseil asked, “you have everything you need, Ned my friend?”

“Humph!” the Canadian put in.

“What! You’re complaining?”

“All this vegetation doesn’t make a meal,” Ned replied. “Just side
dishes, dessert. But where’s the soup course? Where’s the roast?”

“Right,” I said. “Ned promised us cutlets, which seems highly
questionable to me.”

“Sir,” the Canadian replied, “our hunting not only isn’t over, it
hasn’t even started. Patience! We’re sure to end up bumping into some
animal with either feathers or fur, if not in this locality, then in
another.”

“And if not today, then tomorrow, because we mustn’t wander too far
off,” Conseil added. “That’s why I propose that we return to the
skiff.”

“What! Already!” Ned exclaimed.

“We ought to be back before nightfall,” I said.

“But what hour is it, then?” the Canadian asked.

“Two o’clock at least,” Conseil replied.

“How time flies on solid ground!” exclaimed Mr. Ned Land with a sigh
of regret.

“Off we go!” Conseil replied.

So we returned through the forest, and we completed our harvest by
making a clean sweep of some palm cabbages that had to be picked from
the crowns of their trees, some small beans that I recognized as the
“abrou” of the Malaysians, and some high-quality yams.

We were overloaded when we arrived at the skiff. However, Ned Land
still found these provisions inadequate. But fortune smiled on
him. Just as we were boarding, he spotted several trees twenty-five to
thirty feet high, belonging to the palm species. As valuable as the
artocarpus, these trees are justly ranked among the most useful
produce in Malaysia.

They were sago palms, vegetation that grows without being cultivated;
like mulberry trees, they reproduce by means of shoots and seeds.

Ned Land knew how to handle these trees. Taking his ax and wielding it
with great vigor, he soon stretched out on the ground two or three
sago palms, whose maturity was revealed by the white dust sprinkled
over their palm fronds.

I watched him more as a naturalist than as a man in hunger. He began
by removing from each trunk an inch-thick strip of bark that covered a
network of long, hopelessly tangled fibers that were puttied with a
sort of gummy flour. This flour was the starch-like sago, an edible
substance chiefly consumed by the Melanesian peoples.

For the time being, Ned Land was content to chop these trunks into
pieces, as if he were making firewood; later he would extract the
flour by sifting it through cloth to separate it from its fibrous
ligaments, let it dry out in the sun, and leave it to harden inside
molds.

Finally, at five o’clock in the afternoon, laden with all our
treasures, we left the island beach and half an hour later pulled
alongside the Nautilus. Nobody appeared on our arrival. The enormous
sheet-iron cylinder seemed deserted. Our provisions loaded on board, I
went below to my stateroom. There I found my supper ready. I ate and
then fell asleep.

The next day, January 6: nothing new on board. Not a sound inside, not
a sign of life. The skiff stayed alongside in the same place we had
left it. We decided to return to Gueboroa Island. Ned Land hoped for
better luck in his hunting than on the day before, and he wanted to
visit a different part of the forest.

By sunrise we were off. Carried by an inbound current, the longboat
reached the island in a matter of moments.

We disembarked, and thinking it best to abide by the Canadian’s
instincts, we followed Ned Land, whose long legs threatened to outpace
us.

Ned Land went westward up the coast; then, fording some stream beds,
he reached open plains that were bordered by wonderful forests. Some
kingfishers lurked along the watercourses, but they didn’t let us
approach. Their cautious behavior proved to me that these winged
creatures knew where they stood on bipeds of our species, and I
concluded that if this island wasn’t inhabited, at least human beings
paid it frequent visits.

After crossing a pretty lush prairie, we arrived on the outskirts of a
small wood, enlivened by the singing and soaring of a large number of
birds.

“Still, they’re merely birds,” Conseil said.

“But some are edible,” the harpooner replied.

“Wrong, Ned my friend,” Conseil answered, “because I see only ordinary
parrots here.”

“Conseil my friend,” Ned replied in all seriousness, “parrots are like
pheasant to people with nothing else on their plates.”

“And I might add,” I said, “that when these birds are properly cooked,
they’re at least worth a stab of the fork.”

Indeed, under the dense foliage of this wood, a whole host of parrots
fluttered from branch to branch, needing only the proper upbringing to
speak human dialects. At present they were cackling in chorus with
parakeets of every color, with solemn cockatoos that seemed to be
pondering some philosophical problem, while bright red lories passed
by like pieces of bunting borne on the breeze, in the midst of kalao
parrots raucously on the wing, Papuan lories painted the subtlest
shades of azure, and a whole variety of delightful winged creatures,
none terribly edible.

However, one bird unique to these shores, which never passes beyond
the boundaries of the Aru and Papuan Islands, was missing from this
collection. But I was given a chance to marvel at it soon enough.

After crossing through a moderately dense thicket, we again found some
plains obstructed by bushes. There I saw some magnificent birds
soaring aloft, the arrangement of their long feathers causing them to
head into the wind. Their undulating flight, the grace of their aerial
curves, and the play of their colors allured and delighted the eye. I
had no trouble identifying them.

“Birds of paradise!” I exclaimed.

“Order Passeriforma, division Clystomora,” Conseil replied.

“Partridge family?” Ned Land asked.

“I doubt it, Mr. Land. Nevertheless, I’m counting on your dexterity to
catch me one of these delightful representatives of tropical nature!”

“I’ll give it a try, professor, though I’m handier with a harpoon than
a rifle.”

Malaysians, who do a booming business in these birds with the Chinese,
have various methods for catching them that we couldn’t use. Sometimes
they set snares on the tops of the tall trees that the bird of
paradise prefers to inhabit. At other times they capture it with a
tenacious glue that paralyzes its movements. They will even go so far
as to poison the springs where these fowl habitually drink. But in our
case, all we could do was fire at them on the wing, which left us
little chance of getting one. And in truth, we used up a good part of
our ammunition in vain.

Near eleven o’clock in the morning, we cleared the lower slopes of the
mountains that form the island’s center, and we still hadn’t bagged a
thing. Hunger spurred us on. The hunters had counted on consuming the
proceeds of their hunting, and they had miscalculated. Luckily, and
much to his surprise, Conseil pulled off a right-and-left shot and
insured our breakfast. He brought down a white pigeon and a ringdove,
which were briskly plucked, hung from a spit, and roasted over a
blazing fire of deadwood. While these fascinating animals were
cooking, Ned prepared some bread from the artocarpus. Then the pigeon
and ringdove were devoured to the bones and declared
excellent. Nutmeg, on which these birds habitually gorge themselves,
sweetens their flesh and makes it delicious eating.

“They taste like chicken stuffed with truffles,” Conseil said.

“All right, Ned,” I asked the Canadian, “now what do you need?”

“Game with four paws, Professor Aronnax,” Ned Land replied. “All these
pigeons are only appetizers, snacks. So till I’ve bagged an animal
with cutlets, I won’t be happy!”

“Nor I, Ned, until I’ve caught a bird of paradise.”

“Then let’s keep hunting,” Conseil replied, “but while heading back to
the sea. We’ve arrived at the foothills of these mountains, and I
think we’ll do better if we return to the forest regions.”

It was good advice and we took it. After an hour’s walk we reached a
genuine sago palm forest. A few harmless snakes fled underfoot. Birds
of paradise stole off at our approach, and I was in real despair of
catching one when Conseil, walking in the lead, stooped suddenly, gave
a triumphant shout, and came back to me, carrying a magnificent bird
of paradise.

“Oh bravo, Conseil!” I exclaimed.

“Master is too kind,” Conseil replied.

“Not at all, my boy. That was a stroke of genius, catching one of
these live birds with your bare hands!”

“If master will examine it closely, he’ll see that I deserve no great
praise.”

“And why not, Conseil?”

“Because this bird is as drunk as a lord.”

“Drunk?”

“Yes, master, drunk from the nutmegs it was devouring under that
nutmeg tree where I caught it. See, Ned my friend, see the monstrous
results of intemperance!”

“Damnation!” the Canadian shot back. “Considering the amount of gin
I’ve had these past two months, you’ve got nothing to complain about!”

Meanwhile I was examining this unusual bird. Conseil was not
mistaken. Tipsy from that potent juice, our bird of paradise had been
reduced to helplessness. It was unable to fly. It was barely able to
walk. But this didn’t alarm me, and I just let it sleep off its
nutmeg.

This bird belonged to the finest of the eight species credited to
Papua and its neighboring islands. It was a “great emerald,” one of
the rarest birds of paradise. It measured three decimeters long. Its
head was comparatively small, and its eyes, placed near the opening of
its beak, were also small. But it offered a wonderful mixture of hues:
a yellow beak, brown feet and claws, hazel wings with purple tips,
pale yellow head and scruff of the neck, emerald throat, the belly and
chest maroon to brown. Two strands, made of a horn substance covered
with down, rose over its tail, which was lengthened by long, very
light feathers of wonderful fineness, and they completed the costume
of this marvelous bird that the islanders have poetically named “the
sun bird.”

How I wished I could take this superb bird of paradise back to Paris,
to make a gift of it to the zoo at the Botanical Gardens, which
doesn’t own a single live specimen.

“So it must be a rarity or something?” the Canadian asked, in the tone
of a hunter who, from the viewpoint of his art, gives the game a
pretty low rating.

“A great rarity, my gallant comrade, and above all very hard to
capture alive. And even after they’re dead, there’s still a major
market for these birds. So the natives have figured out how to create
fake ones, like people create fake pearls or diamonds.”

“What!” Conseil exclaimed. “They make counterfeit birds of paradise?”

“Yes, Conseil.”

“And is master familiar with how the islanders go about it?”

“Perfectly familiar. During the easterly monsoon season, birds of
paradise lose the magnificent feathers around their tails that
naturalists call ‘below-the-wing’ feathers. These feathers are
gathered by the fowl forgers and skillfully fitted onto some poor
previously mutilated parakeet. Then they paint over the suture,
varnish the bird, and ship the fruits of their unique labors to
museums and collectors in Europe.”

“Good enough!” Ned Land put in. “If it isn’t the right bird, it’s
still the right feathers, and so long as the merchandise isn’t meant
to be eaten, I see no great harm!”

But if my desires were fulfilled by the capture of this bird of
paradise, those of our Canadian huntsman remained
unsatisfied. Luckily, near two o’clock Ned Land brought down a
magnificent wild pig of the type the natives call “bari-outang.” This
animal came in the nick of time for us to bag some real quadruped
meat, and it was warmly welcomed. Ned Land proved himself quite
gloriously with his gunshot. Hit by an electric bullet, the pig
dropped dead on the spot.

The Canadian properly skinned and cleaned it, after removing half a
dozen cutlets destined to serve as the grilled meat course of our
evening meal. Then the hunt was on again, and once more would be
marked by the exploits of Ned and Conseil.

In essence, beating the bushes, the two friends flushed a herd of
kangaroos that fled by bounding away on their elastic paws. But these
animals didn’t flee so swiftly that our electric capsules couldn’t
catch up with them.

“Oh, professor!” shouted Ned Land, whose hunting fever had gone to his
brain. “What excellent game, especially in a stew! What a supply for
the Nautilus! Two, three, five down! And just think how we’ll devour
all this meat ourselves, while those numbskulls on board won’t get a
shred!”

In his uncontrollable glee, I think the Canadian might have
slaughtered the whole horde, if he hadn’t been so busy talking! But he
was content with a dozen of these fascinating marsupials, which make
up the first order of aplacental mammals, as Conseil just had to tell
us.

These animals were small in stature. They were a species of those
“rabbit kangaroos” that usually dwell in the hollows of trees and are
tremendously fast; but although of moderate dimensions, they at least
furnish a meat that’s highly prized.

We were thoroughly satisfied with the results of our hunting. A
gleeful Ned proposed that we return the next day to this magic island,
which he planned to depopulate of its every edible quadruped. But he
was reckoning without events.

By six o’clock in the evening, we were back on the beach. The skiff
was aground in its usual place. The Nautilus, looking like a long
reef, emerged from the waves two miles offshore.

Without further ado, Ned Land got down to the important business of
dinner. He came wonderfully to terms with its entire cooking. Grilling
over the coals, those cutlets from the “bari-outang” soon gave off a
succulent aroma that perfumed the air.

But I catch myself following in the Canadian’s footsteps. Look at
me—in ecstasy over freshly grilled pork! Please grant me a pardon as
I’ve already granted one to Mr. Land, and on the same grounds!

In short, dinner was excellent. Two ringdoves rounded out this
extraordinary menu. Sago pasta, bread from the artocarpus, mangoes,
half a dozen pineapples, and the fermented liquor from certain
coconuts heightened our glee. I suspect that my two fine companions
weren’t quite as clearheaded as one could wish.

“What if we don’t return to the Nautilus this evening?” Conseil said.

“What if we never return to it?” Ned Land added.

Just then a stone whizzed toward us, landed at our feet, and cut short
the harpooner’s proposition.


CHAPTER 22

The Lightning Bolts of Captain Nemo


WITHOUT STANDING UP, we stared in the direction of the forest, my hand
stopping halfway to my mouth, Ned Land’s completing its assignment.

“Stones don’t fall from the sky,” Conseil said, “or else they deserve
to be called meteorites.”

A second well-polished stone removed a tasty ringdove leg from
Conseil’s hand, giving still greater relevance to his observation.

We all three stood up, rifles to our shoulders, ready to answer any
attack.

“Apes maybe?” Ned Land exclaimed.

“Nearly,” Conseil replied. “Savages.”

“Head for the skiff!” I said, moving toward the sea.

Indeed, it was essential to beat a retreat because some twenty
natives, armed with bows and slings, appeared barely a hundred paces
off, on the outskirts of a thicket that masked the horizon to our
right.

The skiff was aground ten fathoms away from us.

The savages approached without running, but they favored us with a
show of the greatest hostility. It was raining stones and arrows.

Ned Land was unwilling to leave his provisions behind, and despite the
impending danger, he clutched his pig on one side, his kangaroos on
the other, and scampered off with respectable speed.

In two minutes we were on the strand. Loading provisions and weapons
into the skiff, pushing it to sea, and positioning its two oars were
the work of an instant. We hadn’t gone two cable lengths when a
hundred savages, howling and gesticulating, entered the water up to
their waists. I looked to see if their appearance might draw some of
the Nautilus’s men onto the platform. But no. Lying well out, that
enormous machine still seemed completely deserted.

Twenty minutes later we boarded ship. The hatches were open. After
mooring the skiff, we reentered the Nautilus’s interior.

I went below to the lounge, from which some chords were
wafting. Captain Nemo was there, leaning over the organ, deep in a
musical trance.

“Captain!” I said to him.

He didn’t hear me.

“Captain!” I went on, touching him with my hand.

He trembled, and turning around:

“Ah, it’s you, professor!” he said to me. “Well, did you have a happy
hunt? Was your herb gathering a success?”

“Yes, captain,” I replied, “but unfortunately we’ve brought back a
horde of bipeds whose proximity worries me.”

“What sort of bipeds?”

“Savages.”

“Savages!” Captain Nemo replied in an ironic tone. “You set foot on
one of the shores of this globe, professor, and you’re surprised to
find savages there? Where aren’t there savages? And besides, are they
any worse than men elsewhere, these people you call savages?”

“But captain—”

“Speaking for myself, sir, I’ve encountered them everywhere.”

“Well then,” I replied, “if you don’t want to welcome them aboard the
Nautilus, you’d better take some precautions!”

“Easy, professor, no cause for alarm.”

“But there are a large number of these natives.”

“What’s your count?”

“At least a hundred.”

“Professor Aronnax,” replied Captain Nemo, whose fingers took their
places again on the organ keys, “if every islander in Papua were to
gather on that beach, the Nautilus would still have nothing to fear
from their attacks!”

The captain’s fingers then ran over the instrument’s keyboard, and I
noticed that he touched only its black keys, which gave his melodies a
basically Scottish color. Soon he had forgotten my presence and was
lost in a reverie that I no longer tried to dispel.

I climbed onto the platform. Night had already fallen, because in this
low latitude the sun sets quickly, without any twilight. I could see
Gueboroa Island only dimly. But numerous fires had been kindled on the
beach, attesting that the natives had no thoughts of leaving it.

For several hours I was left to myself, sometimes musing on the
islanders—but no longer fearing them because the captain’s unflappable
confidence had won me over—and sometimes forgetting them to marvel at
the splendors of this tropical night. My memories took wing toward
France, in the wake of those zodiacal stars due to twinkle over it in
a few hours. The moon shone in the midst of the constellations at
their zenith. I then remembered that this loyal, good-natured
satellite would return to this same place the day after tomorrow, to
raise the tide and tear the Nautilus from its coral bed. Near
midnight, seeing that all was quiet over the darkened waves as well as
under the waterside trees, I repaired to my cabin and fell into a
peaceful sleep.

The night passed without mishap. No doubt the Papuans had been
frightened off by the mere sight of this monster aground in the bay,
because our hatches stayed open, offering easy access to the
Nautilus’s interior.

At six o’clock in the morning, January 8, I climbed onto the
platform. The morning shadows were lifting. The island was soon on
view through the dissolving mists, first its beaches, then its
summits.

The islanders were still there, in greater numbers than on the day
before, perhaps 500 or 600 of them. Taking advantage of the low tide,
some of them had moved forward over the heads of coral to within two
cable lengths of the Nautilus. I could easily distinguish them. They
obviously were true Papuans, men of fine stock, athletic in build,
forehead high and broad, nose large but not flat, teeth white. Their
woolly, red-tinted hair was in sharp contrast to their bodies, which
were black and glistening like those of Nubians. Beneath their
pierced, distended earlobes there dangled strings of beads made from
bone. Generally these savages were naked. I noted some women among
them, dressed from hip to knee in grass skirts held up by belts made
of vegetation. Some of the chieftains adorned their necks with
crescents and with necklaces made from beads of red and white
glass. Armed with bows, arrows, and shields, nearly all of them
carried from their shoulders a sort of net, which held those polished
stones their slings hurl with such dexterity.

One of these chieftains came fairly close to the Nautilus, examining
it with care. He must have been a “mado” of high rank, because he
paraded in a mat of banana leaves that had ragged edges and was
accented with bright colors.

I could easily have picked off this islander, he stood at such close
range; but I thought it best to wait for an actual show of
hostility. Between Europeans and savages, it’s acceptable for
Europeans to shoot back but not to attack first.

During this whole time of low tide, the islanders lurked near the
Nautilus, but they weren’t boisterous. I often heard them repeat the
word “assai,” and from their gestures I understood they were inviting
me to go ashore, an invitation I felt obliged to decline.

So the skiff didn’t leave shipside that day, much to the displeasure
of Mr. Land who couldn’t complete his provisions. The adroit Canadian
spent his time preparing the meat and flour products he had brought
from Gueboroa Island. As for the savages, they went back to shore near
eleven o’clock in the morning, when the heads of coral began to
disappear under the waves of the rising tide. But I saw their numbers
swell considerably on the beach. It was likely that they had come from
neighboring islands or from the mainland of Papua proper. However, I
didn’t see one local dugout canoe.

Having nothing better to do, I decided to dredge these beautiful,
clear waters, which exhibited a profusion of shells, zoophytes, and
open-sea plants. Besides, it was the last day the Nautilus would spend
in these waterways, if, tomorrow, it still floated off to the open sea
as Captain Nemo had promised.

So I summoned Conseil, who brought me a small, light dragnet similar
to those used in oyster fishing.

“What about these savages?” Conseil asked me. “With all due respect to
master, they don’t strike me as very wicked!”

“They’re cannibals even so, my boy.”

“A person can be both a cannibal and a decent man,” Conseil replied,
“just as a person can be both gluttonous and honorable. The one
doesn’t exclude the other.”

“Fine, Conseil! And I agree that there are honorable cannibals who
decently devour their prisoners. However, I’m opposed to being
devoured, even in all decency, so I’ll keep on my guard, especially
since the Nautilus’s commander seems to be taking no precautions. And
now let’s get to work!”

For two hours our fishing proceeded energetically but without bringing
up any rarities. Our dragnet was filled with Midas abalone, harp
shells, obelisk snails, and especially the finest hammer shells I had
seen to that day. We also gathered in a few sea cucumbers, some pearl
oysters, and a dozen small turtles that we saved for the ship’s
pantry.

But just when I least expected it, I laid my hands on a wonder, a
natural deformity I’d have to call it, something very seldom
encountered. Conseil had just made a cast of the dragnet, and his gear
had come back up loaded with a variety of fairly ordinary seashells,
when suddenly he saw me plunge my arms swiftly into the net, pull out
a shelled animal, and give a conchological yell, in other words, the
most piercing yell a human throat can produce.

“Eh? What happened to master?” Conseil asked, very startled. “Did
master get bitten?”

“No, my boy, but I’d gladly have sacrificed a finger for such a find!”

“What find?”

“This shell,” I said, displaying the subject of my triumph.

“But that’s simply an olive shell of the ‘tent olive’ species, genus
Oliva, order Pectinibranchia, class Gastropoda, branch Mollusca—”

“Yes, yes, Conseil! But instead of coiling from right to left, this
olive shell rolls from left to right!”

“It can’t be!” Conseil exclaimed.

“Yes, my boy, it’s a left-handed shell!”

“A left-handed shell!” Conseil repeated, his heart pounding.

“Look at its spiral!”

“Oh, master can trust me on this,” Conseil said, taking the valuable
shell in trembling hands, “but never have I felt such excitement!”

And there was good reason to be excited! In fact, as naturalists have
ventured to observe, “dextrality” is a well-known law of nature. In
their rotational and orbital movements, stars and their satellites go
from right to left. Man uses his right hand more often than his left,
and consequently his various instruments and equipment (staircases,
locks, watch springs, etc.) are designed to be used in a right-to-left
manner. Now then, nature has generally obeyed this law in coiling her
shells. They’re right-handed with only rare exceptions, and when by
chance a shell’s spiral is left-handed, collectors will pay its weight
in gold for it.

So Conseil and I were deep in the contemplation of our treasure, and I
was solemnly promising myself to enrich the Paris Museum with it, when
an ill-timed stone, hurled by one of the islanders, whizzed over and
shattered the valuable object in Conseil’s hands.

I gave a yell of despair! Conseil pounced on his rifle and aimed at a
savage swinging a sling just ten meters away from him. I tried to stop
him, but his shot went off and shattered a bracelet of amulets
dangling from the islander’s arm.

“Conseil!” I shouted. “Conseil!”

“Eh? What? Didn’t master see that this man-eater initiated the
attack?”

“A shell isn’t worth a human life!” I told him.

“Oh, the rascal!” Conseil exclaimed. “I’d rather he cracked my
shoulder!”

Conseil was in dead earnest, but I didn’t subscribe to his
views. However, the situation had changed in only a short time and we
hadn’t noticed. Now some twenty dugout canoes were surrounding the
Nautilus. Hollowed from tree trunks, these dugouts were long, narrow,
and well designed for speed, keeping their balance by means of two
bamboo poles that floated on the surface of the water. They were
maneuvered by skillful, half-naked paddlers, and I viewed their
advance with definite alarm.

It was obvious these Papuans had already entered into relations with
Europeans and knew their ships. But this long, iron cylinder lying in
the bay, with no masts or funnels—what were they to make of it?
Nothing good, because at first they kept it at a respectful
distance. However, seeing that it stayed motionless, they regained
confidence little by little and tried to become more familiar with
it. Now then, it was precisely this familiarity that we needed to
prevent. Since our weapons made no sound when they went off, they
would have only a moderate effect on these islanders, who reputedly
respect nothing but noisy mechanisms. Without thunderclaps, lightning
bolts would be much less frightening, although the danger lies in the
flash, not the noise.

Just then the dugout canoes drew nearer to the Nautilus, and a cloud
of arrows burst over us.

“Fire and brimstone, it’s hailing!” Conseil said. “And poisoned hail
perhaps!”

“We’ve got to alert Captain Nemo,” I said, reentering the hatch.

I went below to the lounge. I found no one there. I ventured a knock
at the door opening into the captain’s stateroom.

The word “Enter!” answered me. I did so and found Captain Nemo busy
with calculations in which there was no shortage of X and other
algebraic signs.

“Am I disturbing you?” I said out of politeness.

“Correct, Professor Aronnax,” the captain answered me. “But I imagine
you have pressing reasons for looking me up?”

“Very pressing. Native dugout canoes are surrounding us, and in a few
minutes we’re sure to be assaulted by several hundred savages.”

“Ah!” Captain Nemo put in serenely. “They’ve come in their dugouts?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, sir, closing the hatches should do the trick.”

“Precisely, and that’s what I came to tell you—”

“Nothing easier,” Captain Nemo said.

And he pressed an electric button, transmitting an order to the crew’s
quarters.

“There, sir, all under control!” he told me after a few moments. “The
skiff is in place and the hatches are closed. I don’t imagine you’re
worried that these gentlemen will stave in walls that shells from your
frigate couldn’t breach?”

“No, captain, but one danger still remains.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Tomorrow at about this time, we’ll need to reopen the hatches to
renew the Nautilus’s air.”

“No argument, sir, since our craft breathes in the manner favored by
cetaceans.”

“But if these Papuans are occupying the platform at that moment, I
don’t see how you can prevent them from entering.”

“Then, sir, you assume they’ll board the ship?”

“I’m certain of it.”

“Well, sir, let them come aboard. I see no reason to prevent
them. Deep down they’re just poor devils, these Papuans, and I don’t
want my visit to Gueboroa Island to cost the life of a single one of
these unfortunate people!”

On this note I was about to withdraw; but Captain Nemo detained me and
invited me to take a seat next to him. He questioned me with interest
on our excursions ashore and on our hunting, but seemed not to
understand the Canadian’s passionate craving for red meat. Then our
conversation skimmed various subjects, and without being more
forthcoming, Captain Nemo proved more affable.

Among other things, we came to talk of the Nautilus’s circumstances,
aground in the same strait where Captain Dumont d’Urville had nearly
miscarried. Then, pertinent to this:

“He was one of your great seamen,” the captain told me, “one of your
shrewdest navigators, that d’Urville! He was the Frenchman’s Captain
Cook. A man wise but unlucky! Braving the ice banks of the South Pole,
the coral of Oceania, the cannibals of the Pacific, only to perish
wretchedly in a train wreck! If that energetic man was able to think
about his life in its last seconds, imagine what his final thoughts
must have been!”

As he spoke, Captain Nemo seemed deeply moved, an emotion I felt was
to his credit.

Then, chart in hand, we returned to the deeds of the French navigator:
his voyages to circumnavigate the globe, his double attempt at the
South Pole, which led to his discovery of the Adélie Coast and the
Louis-Philippe Peninsula, finally his hydrographic surveys of the
chief islands in Oceania.

“What your d’Urville did on the surface of the sea,” Captain Nemo told
me, “I’ve done in the ocean’s interior, but more easily, more
completely than he. Constantly tossed about by hurricanes, the Zealous
and the new Astrolabe couldn’t compare with the Nautilus, a quiet work
room truly at rest in the midst of the waters!”

“Even so, captain,” I said, “there is one major similarity between
Dumont d’Urville’s sloops of war and the Nautilus.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Like them, the Nautilus has run aground!”

“The Nautilus is not aground, sir,” Captain Nemo replied icily. “The
Nautilus was built to rest on the ocean floor, and I don’t need to
undertake the arduous labors, the maneuvers d’Urville had to attempt
in order to float off his sloops of war. The Zealous and the new
Astrolabe wellnigh perished, but my Nautilus is in no
danger. Tomorrow, on the day stated and at the hour stated, the tide
will peacefully lift it off, and it will resume its navigating through
the seas.”

“Captain,” I said, “I don’t doubt—”

“Tomorrow,” Captain Nemo added, standing up, “tomorrow at 2:40 in the
afternoon, the Nautilus will float off and exit the Torres Strait
undamaged.”

Pronouncing these words in an extremely sharp tone, Captain Nemo gave
me a curt bow. This was my dismissal, and I reentered my stateroom.

There I found Conseil, who wanted to know the upshot of my interview
with the captain.

“My boy,” I replied, “when I expressed the belief that these Papuan
natives were a threat to his Nautilus, the captain answered me with
great irony. So I’ve just one thing to say to you: have faith in him
and sleep in peace.”

“Master has no need for my services?”

“No, my friend. What’s Ned Land up to?”

“Begging master’s indulgence,” Conseil replied, “but our friend Ned is
concocting a kangaroo pie that will be the eighth wonder!”

I was left to myself; I went to bed but slept pretty poorly. I kept
hearing noises from the savages, who were stamping on the platform and
letting out deafening yells. The night passed in this way, without the
crew ever emerging from their usual inertia. They were no more
disturbed by the presence of these man-eaters than soldiers in an
armored fortress are troubled by ants running over the armor plate.

I got up at six o’clock in the morning. The hatches weren’t open. So
the air inside hadn’t been renewed; but the air tanks were kept full
for any eventuality and would function appropriately to shoot a few
cubic meters of oxygen into the Nautilus’s thin atmosphere.

I worked in my stateroom until noon without seeing Captain Nemo even
for an instant. Nobody on board seemed to be making any preparations
for departure.

I still waited for a while, then I made my way to the main lounge. Its
timepiece marked 2:30. In ten minutes the tide would reach its maximum
elevation, and if Captain Nemo hadn’t made a rash promise, the
Nautilus would immediately break free. If not, many months might pass
before it could leave its coral bed.

But some preliminary vibrations could soon be felt over the boat’s
hull. I heard its plating grind against the limestone roughness of
that coral base.

At 2:35 Captain Nemo appeared in the lounge.

“We’re about to depart,” he said.

“Ah!” I put in.

“I’ve given orders to open the hatches.”

“What about the Papuans?”

“What about them?” Captain Nemo replied, with a light shrug of his
shoulders.

“Won’t they come inside the Nautilus?”

“How will they manage that?”

“By jumping down the hatches you’re about to open.”

“Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo replied serenely, “the Nautilus’s
hatches aren’t to be entered in that fashion even when they’re open.”

I gaped at the captain.

“You don’t understand?” he said to me.

“Not in the least.”

“Well, come along and you’ll see!”

I headed to the central companionway. There, very puzzled, Ned Land
and Conseil watched the crewmen opening the hatches, while a frightful
clamor and furious shouts resounded outside.

The hatch lids fell back onto the outer plating. Twenty horrible faces
appeared. But when the first islander laid hands on the companionway
railing, he was flung backward by some invisible power, lord knows
what! He ran off, howling in terror and wildly prancing around.

Ten of his companions followed him. All ten met the same fate.

Conseil was in ecstasy. Carried away by his violent instincts, Ned
Land leaped up the companionway. But as soon as his hands seized the
railing, he was thrown backward in his turn.

“Damnation!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been struck by a lightning bolt!”

These words explained everything to me. It wasn’t just a railing that
led to the platform, it was a metal cable fully charged with the
ship’s electricity. Anyone who touched it got a fearsome shock—and
such a shock would have been fatal if Captain Nemo had thrown the full
current from his equipment into this conducting cable! It could
honestly be said that he had stretched between himself and his
assailants a network of electricity no one could clear with impunity.

Meanwhile, crazed with terror, the unhinged Papuans beat a retreat. As
for us, half laughing, we massaged and comforted poor Ned Land, who
was swearing like one possessed.

But just then, lifted off by the tide’s final undulations, the
Nautilus left its coral bed at exactly that fortieth minute pinpointed
by the captain. Its propeller churned the waves with lazy
majesty. Gathering speed little by little, the ship navigated on the
surface of the ocean, and safe and sound, it left behind the dangerous
narrows of the Torres Strait.


CHAPTER 23

“Aegri Somnia”*


*Latin: “troubled dreams.” Ed.

THE FOLLOWING DAY, January 10, the Nautilus resumed its travels in
midwater but at a remarkable speed that I estimated to be at least
thirty-five miles per hour. The propeller was going so fast I could
neither follow nor count its revolutions.

I thought about how this marvelous electric force not only gave
motion, heat, and light to the Nautilus but even protected it against
outside attack, transforming it into a sacred ark no profane hand
could touch without being blasted; my wonderment was boundless, and it
went from the submersible itself to the engineer who had created it.

We were traveling due west and on January 11 we doubled Cape Wessel,
located in longitude 135 degrees and latitude 10 degrees north, the
western tip of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Reefs were still numerous but
more widely scattered and were fixed on the chart with the greatest
accuracy. The Nautilus easily avoided the Money breakers to port and
the Victoria reefs to starboard, positioned at longitude 130 degrees
on the tenth parallel, which we went along rigorously.

On January 13, arriving in the Timor Sea, Captain Nemo raised the
island of that name at longitude 122 degrees. This island, whose
surface area measures 1,625 square leagues, is governed by
rajahs. These aristocrats deem themselves the sons of crocodiles, in
other words, descendants with the most exalted origins to which a
human being can lay claim. Accordingly, their scaly ancestors infest
the island’s rivers and are the subjects of special veneration. They
are sheltered, nurtured, flattered, pampered, and offered a ritual
diet of nubile maidens; and woe to the foreigner who lifts a finger
against these sacred saurians.

But the Nautilus wanted nothing to do with these nasty animals. Timor
Island was visible for barely an instant at noon while the chief
officer determined his position. I also caught only a glimpse of
little Roti Island, part of this same group, whose women have a
well-established reputation for beauty in the Malaysian marketplace.

After our position fix, the Nautilus’s latitude bearings were
modulated to the southwest. Our prow pointed to the Indian
Ocean. Where would Captain Nemo’s fancies take us? Would he head up to
the shores of Asia? Would he pull nearer to the beaches of Europe?
Unlikely choices for a man who avoided populated areas! So would he go
down south? Would he double the Cape of Good Hope, then Cape Horn, and
push on to the Antarctic pole? Finally, would he return to the seas of
the Pacific, where his Nautilus could navigate freely and easily? Time
would tell.

After cruising along the Cartier, Hibernia, Seringapatam, and Scott
reefs, the solid element’s last exertions against the liquid element,
we were beyond all sight of shore by January 14. The Nautilus slowed
down in an odd manner, and very unpredictable in its ways, it
sometimes swam in the midst of the waters, sometimes drifted on their
surface.

During this phase of our voyage, Captain Nemo conducted interesting
experiments on the different temperatures in various strata of the
sea. Under ordinary conditions, such readings are obtained using some
pretty complicated instruments whose findings are dubious to say the
least, whether they’re thermometric sounding lines, whose glass often
shatters under the water’s pressure, or those devices based on the
varying resistance of metals to electric currents. The results so
obtained can’t be adequately double-checked. By contrast, Captain Nemo
would seek the sea’s temperature by going himself into its depths, and
when he placed his thermometer in contact with the various layers of
liquid, he found the sought-for degree immediately and with certainty.

And so, by loading up its ballast tanks, or by sinking obliquely with
its slanting fins, the Nautilus successively reached depths of 3,000,
4,000, 5,000, 7,000, 9,000, and 10,000 meters, and the ultimate
conclusion from these experiments was that, in all latitudes, the sea
had a permanent temperature of 4.5 degrees centigrade at a depth of
1,000 meters.

I watched these experiments with the most intense fascination. Captain
Nemo brought a real passion to them. I often wondered why he took
these observations. Were they for the benefit of his fellow man? It
was unlikely, because sooner or later his work would perish with him
in some unknown sea! Unless he intended the results of his experiments
for me. But that meant this strange voyage of mine would come to an
end, and no such end was in sight.

Be that as it may, Captain Nemo also introduced me to the different
data he had obtained on the relative densities of the water in our
globe’s chief seas. From this news I derived some personal
enlightenment having nothing to do with science.

It happened the morning of January 15. The captain, with whom I was
strolling on the platform, asked me if I knew how salt water differs
in density from sea to sea. I said no, adding that there was a lack of
rigorous scientific observations on this subject.

“I’ve taken such observations,” he told me, “and I can vouch for their
reliability.”

“Fine,” I replied, “but the Nautilus lives in a separate world, and
the secrets of its scientists don’t make their way ashore.”

“You’re right, professor,” he told me after a few moments of
silence. “This is a separate world. It’s as alien to the earth as the
planets accompanying our globe around the sun, and we’ll never become
familiar with the work of scientists on Saturn or Jupiter. But since
fate has linked our two lives, I can reveal the results of my
observations to you.”

“I’m all attention, captain.”

“You’re aware, professor, that salt water is denser than fresh water,
but this density isn’t uniform. In essence, if I represent the density
of fresh water by 1.000, then I find 1.028 for the waters of the
Atlantic, 1.026 for the waters of the Pacific, 1.030 for the waters of
the Mediterranean—”

Aha, I thought, so he ventures into the Mediterranean?

“—1.018 for the waters of the Ionian Sea, and 1.029 for the waters of
the Adriatic.”

Assuredly, the Nautilus didn’t avoid the heavily traveled seas of
Europe, and from this insight I concluded that the ship would take us
back—perhaps very soon—to more civilized shores. I expected Ned Land
to greet this news with unfeigned satisfaction.

For several days our work hours were spent in all sorts of
experiments, on the degree of salinity in waters of different depths,
or on their electric properties, coloration, and transparency, and in
every instance Captain Nemo displayed an ingenuity equaled only by his
graciousness toward me. Then I saw no more of him for some days and
again lived on board in seclusion.

On January 16 the Nautilus seemed to have fallen asleep just a few
meters beneath the surface of the water. Its electric equipment had
been turned off, and the motionless propeller let it ride with the
waves. I assumed that the crew were busy with interior repairs,
required by the engine’s strenuous mechanical action.

My companions and I then witnessed an unusual sight. The panels in the
lounge were open, and since the Nautilus’s beacon was off, a hazy
darkness reigned in the midst of the waters. Covered with heavy
clouds, the stormy sky gave only the faintest light to the ocean’s
upper strata.

I was observing the state of the sea under these conditions, and even
the largest fish were nothing more than ill-defined shadows, when the
Nautilus was suddenly transferred into broad daylight. At first I
thought the beacon had gone back on and was casting its electric light
into the liquid mass. I was mistaken, and after a hasty examination I
discovered my error.

The Nautilus had drifted into the midst of some phosphorescent strata,
which, in this darkness, came off as positively dazzling. This effect
was caused by myriads of tiny, luminous animals whose brightness
increased when they glided over the metal hull of our submersible. In
the midst of these luminous sheets of water, I then glimpsed flashes
of light, like those seen inside a blazing furnace from streams of
molten lead or from masses of metal brought to a white heat—flashes so
intense that certain areas of the light became shadows by comparison,
in a fiery setting from which every shadow should seemingly have been
banished. No, this was no longer the calm emission of our usual
lighting! This light throbbed with unprecedented vigor and activity!
You sensed that it was alive!

In essence, it was a cluster of countless open-sea infusoria, of
noctiluca an eighth of an inch wide, actual globules of transparent
jelly equipped with a threadlike tentacle, up to 25,000 of which have
been counted in thirty cubic centimeters of water. And the power of
their light was increased by those glimmers unique to medusas,
starfish, common jellyfish, angel-wing clams, and other phosphorescent
zoophytes, which were saturated with grease from organic matter
decomposed by the sea, and perhaps with mucus secreted by fish.

For several hours the Nautilus drifted in this brilliant tide, and our
wonderment grew when we saw huge marine animals cavorting in it, like
the fire-dwelling salamanders of myth. In the midst of these flames
that didn’t burn, I could see swift, elegant porpoises, the tireless
pranksters of the seas, and sailfish three meters long, those shrewd
heralds of hurricanes, whose fearsome broadswords sometimes banged
against the lounge window. Then smaller fish appeared: miscellaneous
triggerfish, leather jacks, unicornfish, and a hundred others that
left stripes on this luminous atmosphere in their course.

Some magic lay behind this dazzling sight! Perhaps some atmospheric
condition had intensified this phenomenon? Perhaps a storm had been
unleashed on the surface of the waves? But only a few meters down, the
Nautilus felt no tempest’s fury, and the ship rocked peacefully in the
midst of the calm waters.

And so it went, some new wonder constantly delighting us. Conseil
observed and classified his zoophytes, articulates, mollusks, and
fish. The days passed quickly, and I no longer kept track of
them. Ned, as usual, kept looking for changes of pace from our
standard fare. Like actual snails, we were at home in our shell, and I
can vouch that it’s easy to turn into a full-fledged snail.

So this way of living began to seem simple and natural to us, and we
no longer envisioned a different lifestyle on the surface of the
planet earth, when something happened to remind us of our strange
circumstances.

On January 18 the Nautilus lay in longitude 105 degrees and latitude
15 degrees south. The weather was threatening, the sea rough and
billowy. The wind was blowing a strong gust from the east. The
barometer, which had been falling for some days, forecast an
approaching struggle of the elements.

I had climbed onto the platform just as the chief officer was taking
his readings of hour angles. Out of habit I waited for him to
pronounce his daily phrase. But that day it was replaced by a
different phrase, just as incomprehensible. Almost at once I saw
Captain Nemo appear, lift his spyglass, and inspect the horizon.

For some minutes the captain stood motionless, rooted to the spot
contained within the field of his lens. Then he lowered his spyglass
and exchanged about ten words with his chief officer. The latter
seemed to be in the grip of an excitement he tried in vain to
control. More in command of himself, Captain Nemo remained
cool. Furthermore, he seemed to be raising certain objections that his
chief officer kept answering with flat assurances. At least that’s
what I gathered from their differences in tone and gesture.

As for me, I stared industriously in the direction under observation
but without spotting a thing. Sky and water merged into a perfectly
clean horizon line.

Meanwhile Captain Nemo strolled from one end of the platform to the
other, not glancing at me, perhaps not even seeing me. His step was
firm but less regular than usual. Sometimes he would stop, cross his
arms over his chest, and observe the sea. What could he be looking for
over that immense expanse? By then the Nautilus lay hundreds of miles
from the nearest coast!

The chief officer kept lifting his spyglass and stubbornly examining
the horizon, walking up and down, stamping his foot, in his nervous
agitation a sharp contrast to his superior.

But this mystery would inevitably be cleared up, and soon, because
Captain Nemo gave orders to increase speed; at once the engine stepped
up its drive power, setting the propeller in swifter rotation.

Just then the chief officer drew the captain’s attention anew. The
latter interrupted his strolling and aimed his spyglass at the point
indicated. He observed it a good while. As for me, deeply puzzled, I
went below to the lounge and brought back an excellent long-range
telescope I habitually used. Leaning my elbows on the beacon housing,
which jutted from the stern of the platform, I got set to scour that
whole stretch of sky and sea.

But no sooner had I peered into the eyepiece than the instrument was
snatched from my hands.

I spun around. Captain Nemo was standing before me, but I almost
didn’t recognize him. His facial features were transfigured. Gleaming
with dark fire, his eyes had shrunk beneath his frowning brow. His
teeth were half bared. His rigid body, clenched fists, and head drawn
between his shoulders, all attested to a fierce hate breathing from
every pore. He didn’t move. My spyglass fell from his hand and rolled
at his feet.

Had I accidentally caused these symptoms of anger? Did this
incomprehensible individual think I had detected some secret forbidden
to guests on the Nautilus?

No! I wasn’t the subject of his hate because he wasn’t even looking at
me; his eyes stayed stubbornly focused on that inscrutable point of
the horizon.

Finally Captain Nemo regained his self-control. His facial appearance,
so profoundly changed, now resumed its usual calm. He addressed a few
words to his chief officer in their strange language, then he turned
to me:

“Professor Aronnax,” he told me in a tone of some urgency, “I ask that
you now honor one of the binding agreements between us.”

“Which one, captain?”

“You and your companions must be placed in confinement until I see fit
to set you free.”

“You’re in command,” I answered, gaping at him. “But may I address a
question to you?”

“You may not, sir.”

After that, I stopped objecting and started obeying, since resistance
was useless.

I went below to the cabin occupied by Ned Land and Conseil, and I
informed them of the captain’s decision. I’ll let the reader decide
how this news was received by the Canadian. In any case, there was no
time for explanations. Four crewmen were waiting at the door, and they
led us to the cell where we had spent our first night aboard the
Nautilus.

Ned Land tried to lodge a complaint, but the only answer he got was a
door shut in his face.

“Will master tell me what this means?” Conseil asked me.

I told my companions what had happened. They were as astonished as I
was, but no wiser.

Then I sank into deep speculation, and Captain Nemo’s strange facial
seizure kept haunting me. I was incapable of connecting two ideas in
logical order, and I had strayed into the most absurd hypotheses, when
I was snapped out of my mental struggles by these words from Ned Land:

“Well, look here! Lunch is served!”

Indeed, the table had been laid. Apparently Captain Nemo had given
this order at the same time he commanded the Nautilus to pick up
speed.

“Will master allow me to make him a recommendation?” Conseil asked me.

“Yes, my boy,” I replied.

“Well, master needs to eat his lunch! It’s prudent, because we have no
idea what the future holds.”

“You’re right, Conseil.”

“Unfortunately,” Ned Land said, “they’ve only given us the standard
menu.”

“Ned my friend,” Conseil answered, “what would you say if they’d given
us no lunch at all?”

This dose of sanity cut the harpooner’s complaints clean off.

We sat down at the table. Our meal proceeded pretty much in silence. I
ate very little. Conseil, everlastingly prudent, “force-fed” himself;
and despite the menu, Ned Land didn’t waste a bite. Then, lunch over,
each of us propped himself in a corner.

Just then the luminous globe lighting our cell went out, leaving us in
profound darkness. Ned Land soon dozed off, and to my astonishment,
Conseil also fell into a heavy slumber. I was wondering what could
have caused this urgent need for sleep, when I felt a dense torpor
saturate my brain. I tried to keep my eyes open, but they closed in
spite of me. I was in the grip of anguished hallucinations. Obviously
some sleep-inducing substance had been laced into the food we’d just
eaten! So imprisonment wasn’t enough to conceal Captain Nemo’s plans
from us—sleep was needed as well!

Then I heard the hatches close. The sea’s undulations, which had been
creating a gentle rocking motion, now ceased. Had the Nautilus left
the surface of the ocean? Was it reentering the motionless strata deep
in the sea?

I tried to fight off this drowsiness. It was impossible. My breathing
grew weaker. I felt a mortal chill freeze my dull, nearly paralyzed
limbs. Like little domes of lead, my lids fell over my eyes. I
couldn’t raise them. A morbid sleep, full of hallucinations, seized my
whole being. Then the visions disappeared and left me in utter
oblivion.


CHAPTER 24

The Coral Realm


THE NEXT DAY I woke up with my head unusually clear. Much to my
surprise, I was in my stateroom. No doubt my companions had been put
back in their cabin without noticing it any more than I had. Like me,
they would have no idea what took place during the night, and to
unravel this mystery I could count only on some future happenstance.

I then considered leaving my stateroom. Was I free or still a
prisoner? Perfectly free. I opened my door, headed down the gangways,
and climbed the central companionway. Hatches that had been closed the
day before were now open. I arrived on the platform.

Ned Land and Conseil were there waiting for me. I questioned
them. They knew nothing. Lost in a heavy sleep of which they had no
memory, they were quite startled to be back in their cabin.

As for the Nautilus, it seemed as tranquil and mysterious as ever. It
was cruising on the surface of the waves at a moderate speed. Nothing
seemed to have changed on board.

Ned Land observed the sea with his penetrating eyes. It was
deserted. The Canadian sighted nothing new on the horizon, neither
sail nor shore. A breeze was blowing noisily from the west, and
disheveled by the wind, long billows made the submersible roll very
noticeably.

After renewing its air, the Nautilus stayed at an average depth of
fifteen meters, enabling it to return quickly to the surface of the
waves. And, contrary to custom, it executed such a maneuver several
times during that day of January 19. The chief officer would then
climb onto the platform, and his usual phrase would ring through the
ship’s interior.

As for Captain Nemo, he didn’t appear. Of the other men on board, I
saw only my emotionless steward, who served me with his usual mute
efficiency.

Near two o’clock I was busy organizing my notes in the lounge, when
the captain opened the door and appeared. I bowed to him. He gave me
an almost imperceptible bow in return, without saying a word to me. I
resumed my work, hoping he might give me some explanation of the
previous afternoon’s events. He did nothing of the sort. I stared at
him. His face looked exhausted; his reddened eyes hadn’t been
refreshed by sleep; his facial features expressed profound sadness,
real chagrin. He walked up and down, sat and stood, picked up a book
at random, discarded it immediately, consulted his instruments without
taking his customary notes, and seemed unable to rest easy for an
instant.

Finally he came over to me and said:

“Are you a physician, Professor Aronnax?”

This inquiry was so unexpected that I stared at him a good while
without replying.

“Are you a physician?” he repeated. “Several of your scientific
colleagues took their degrees in medicine, such as Gratiolet,
Moquin-Tandon, and others.”

“That’s right,” I said, “I am a doctor, I used to be on call at the
hospitals. I was in practice for several years before joining the
museum.”

“Excellent, sir.”

My reply obviously pleased Captain Nemo. But not knowing what he was
driving at, I waited for further questions, ready to reply as
circumstances dictated.

“Professor Aronnax,” the captain said to me, “would you consent to
give your medical attentions to one of my men?”

“Someone is sick?”

“Yes.”

“I’m ready to go with you.”

“Come.”

I admit that my heart was pounding. Lord knows why, but I saw a
definite connection between this sick crewman and yesterday’s
happenings, and the mystery of those events concerned me at least as
much as the man’s sickness.

Captain Nemo led me to the Nautilus’s stern and invited me into a
cabin located next to the sailors’ quarters.

On a bed there lay a man some forty years old, with strongly molded
features, the very image of an Anglo-Saxon.

I bent over him. Not only was he sick, he was wounded. Swathed in
blood-soaked linen, his head was resting on a folded pillow. I undid
the linen bandages, while the wounded man gazed with great staring
eyes and let me proceed without making a single complaint.

It was a horrible wound. The cranium had been smashed open by some
blunt instrument, leaving the naked brains exposed, and the cerebral
matter had suffered deep abrasions. Blood clots had formed in this
dissolving mass, taking on the color of wine dregs. Both contusion and
concussion of the brain had occurred. The sick man’s breathing was
labored, and muscle spasms quivered in his face. Cerebral inflammation
was complete and had brought on a paralysis of movement and sensation.

I took the wounded man’s pulse. It was intermittent. The body’s
extremities were already growing cold, and I saw that death was
approaching without any possibility of my holding it in check. After
dressing the poor man’s wound, I redid the linen bandages around his
head, and I turned to Captain Nemo.

“How did he get this wound?” I asked him.

“That’s not important,” the captain replied evasively. “The Nautilus
suffered a collision that cracked one of the engine levers, and it
struck this man. My chief officer was standing beside him. This man
leaped forward to intercept the blow. A brother lays down his life for
his brother, a friend for his friend, what could be simpler? That’s
the law for everyone on board the Nautilus. But what’s your diagnosis
of his condition?”

I hesitated to speak my mind.

“You may talk freely,” the captain told me. “This man doesn’t
understand French.”

I took a last look at the wounded man, then I replied:

“This man will be dead in two hours.”

“Nothing can save him?”

“Nothing.”

Captain Nemo clenched his fists, and tears slid from his eyes, which I
had thought incapable of weeping.

For a few moments more I observed the dying man, whose life was ebbing
little by little. He grew still more pale under the electric light
that bathed his deathbed. I looked at his intelligent head, furrowed
with premature wrinkles that misfortune, perhaps misery, had etched
long before. I was hoping to detect the secret of his life in the last
words that might escape from his lips!

“You may go, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo told me.

I left the captain in the dying man’s cabin and I repaired to my
stateroom, very moved by this scene. All day long I was aquiver with
gruesome forebodings. That night I slept poorly, and between my fitful
dreams, I thought I heard a distant moaning, like a funeral dirge. Was
it a prayer for the dead, murmured in that language I couldn’t
understand?

The next morning I climbed on deck. Captain Nemo was already there. As
soon as he saw me, he came over.

“Professor,” he said to me, “would it be convenient for you to make an
underwater excursion today?”

“With my companions?” I asked.

“If they’re agreeable.”

“We’re yours to command, captain.”

“Then kindly put on your diving suits.”

As for the dead or dying man, he hadn’t come into the picture. I
rejoined Ned Land and Conseil. I informed them of Captain Nemo’s
proposition. Conseil was eager to accept, and this time the Canadian
proved perfectly amenable to going with us.

It was eight o’clock in the morning. By 8:30 we were suited up for
this new stroll and equipped with our two devices for lighting and
breathing. The double door opened, and accompanied by Captain Nemo
with a dozen crewmen following, we set foot on the firm seafloor where
the Nautilus was resting, ten meters down.

A gentle slope gravitated to an uneven bottom whose depth was about
fifteen fathoms. This bottom was completely different from the one I
had visited during my first excursion under the waters of the Pacific
Ocean. Here I saw no fine-grained sand, no underwater prairies, not
one open-sea forest. I immediately recognized the wondrous region in
which Captain Nemo did the honors that day. It was the coral realm.

In the zoophyte branch, class Alcyonaria, one finds the order
Gorgonaria, which contains three groups: sea fans, isidian polyps, and
coral polyps. It’s in this last that precious coral belongs, an
unusual substance that, at different times, has been classified in the
mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Medicine to the ancients,
jewelry to the moderns, it wasn’t decisively placed in the animal
kingdom until 1694, by Peysonnel of Marseilles.

A coral is a unit of tiny animals assembled over a polypary that’s
brittle and stony in nature. These polyps have a unique generating
mechanism that reproduces them via the budding process, and they have
an individual existence while also participating in a communal
life. Hence they embody a sort of natural socialism. I was familiar
with the latest research on this bizarre zoophyte—which turns to stone
while taking on a tree form, as some naturalists have very aptly
observed—and nothing could have been more fascinating to me than to
visit one of these petrified forests that nature has planted on the
bottom of the sea.

We turned on our Ruhmkorff devices and went along a coral shoal in the
process of forming, which, given time, will someday close off this
whole part of the Indian Ocean. Our path was bordered by hopelessly
tangled bushes, formed from snarls of shrubs all covered with little
star-shaped, white-streaked flowers. Only, contrary to plants on
shore, these tree forms become attached to rocks on the seafloor by
heading from top to bottom.

Our lights produced a thousand delightful effects while playing over
these brightly colored boughs. I fancied I saw these cylindrical,
membrane-filled tubes trembling beneath the water’s undulations. I was
tempted to gather their fresh petals, which were adorned with delicate
tentacles, some newly in bloom, others barely opened, while nimble
fish with fluttering fins brushed past them like flocks of birds. But
if my hands came near the moving flowers of these sensitive, lively
creatures, an alarm would instantly sound throughout the colony. The
white petals retracted into their red sheaths, the flowers vanished
before my eyes, and the bush changed into a chunk of stony nipples.

Sheer chance had placed me in the presence of the most valuable
specimens of this zoophyte. This coral was the equal of those fished
up from the Mediterranean off the Barbary Coast or the shores of
France and Italy. With its bright colors, it lived up to those poetic
names of blood flower and blood foam that the industry confers on its
finest exhibits. Coral sells for as much as 500 francs per kilogram,
and in this locality the liquid strata hid enough to make the fortunes
of a whole host of coral fishermen. This valuable substance often
merges with other polyparies, forming compact, hopelessly tangled
units known as “macciota,” and I noted some wonderful pink samples of
this coral.

But as the bushes shrank, the tree forms magnified. Actual petrified
thickets and long alcoves from some fantastic school of architecture
kept opening up before our steps. Captain Nemo entered beneath a dark
gallery whose gentle slope took us to a depth of 100 meters. The light
from our glass coils produced magical effects at times, lingering on
the wrinkled roughness of some natural arch, or some overhang
suspended like a chandelier, which our lamps flecked with fiery
sparks. Amid these shrubs of precious coral, I observed other polyps
no less unusual: melita coral, rainbow coral with jointed outgrowths,
then a few tufts of genus Corallina, some green and others red,
actually a type of seaweed encrusted with limestone salts, which,
after long disputes, naturalists have finally placed in the vegetable
kingdom. But as one intellectual has remarked, “Here, perhaps, is the
actual point where life rises humbly out of slumbering stone, but
without breaking away from its crude starting point.”

Finally, after two hours of walking, we reached a depth of about 300
meters, in other words, the lowermost limit at which coral can begin
to form. But here it was no longer some isolated bush or a modest
grove of low timber. It was an immense forest, huge mineral
vegetation, enormous petrified trees linked by garlands of elegant
hydras from the genus Plumularia, those tropical creepers of the sea,
all decked out in shades and gleams. We passed freely under their
lofty boughs, lost up in the shadows of the waves, while at our feet
organ-pipe coral, stony coral, star coral, fungus coral, and sea
anemone from the genus Caryophylia formed a carpet of flowers all
strewn with dazzling gems.

What an indescribable sight! Oh, if only we could share our feelings!
Why were we imprisoned behind these masks of metal and glass! Why were
we forbidden to talk with each other! At least let us lead the lives
of the fish that populate this liquid element, or better yet, the
lives of amphibians, which can spend long hours either at sea or on
shore, traveling through their double domain as their whims dictate!

Meanwhile Captain Nemo had called a halt. My companions and I stopped
walking, and turning around, I saw the crewmen form a semicircle
around their leader. Looking with greater care, I observed that four
of them were carrying on their shoulders an object that was oblong in
shape.

At this locality we stood in the center of a huge clearing surrounded
by the tall tree forms of this underwater forest. Our lamps cast a
sort of brilliant twilight over the area, making inordinately long
shadows on the seafloor. Past the boundaries of the clearing, the
darkness deepened again, relieved only by little sparkles given off by
the sharp crests of coral.

Ned Land and Conseil stood next to me. We stared, and it dawned on me
that I was about to witness a strange scene. Observing the seafloor, I
saw that it swelled at certain points from low bulges that were
encrusted with limestone deposits and arranged with a symmetry that
betrayed the hand of man.

In the middle of the clearing, on a pedestal of roughly piled rocks,
there stood a cross of coral, extending long arms you would have
thought were made of petrified blood.

At a signal from Captain Nemo, one of his men stepped forward and, a
few feet from this cross, detached a mattock from his belt and began
to dig a hole.

I finally understood! This clearing was a cemetery, this hole a grave,
that oblong object the body of the man who must have died during the
night! Captain Nemo and his men had come to bury their companion in
this communal resting place on the inaccessible ocean floor!

No! My mind was reeling as never before! Never had ideas of such
impact raced through my brain! I didn’t want to see what my eyes saw!

Meanwhile the grave digging went slowly. Fish fled here and there as
their retreat was disturbed. I heard the pick ringing on the limestone
soil, its iron tip sometimes giving off sparks when it hit a stray
piece of flint on the sea bottom. The hole grew longer, wider, and
soon was deep enough to receive the body.

Then the pallbearers approached. Wrapped in white fabric made from
filaments of the fan mussel, the body was lowered into its watery
grave. Captain Nemo, arms crossed over his chest, knelt in a posture
of prayer, as did all the friends of him who had loved them. . . . My
two companions and I bowed reverently.

The grave was then covered over with the rubble dug from the seafloor,
and it formed a low mound.

When this was done, Captain Nemo and his men stood up; then they all
approached the grave, sank again on bended knee, and extended their
hands in a sign of final farewell. . . .

Then the funeral party went back up the path to the Nautilus,
returning beneath the arches of the forest, through the thickets,
along the coral bushes, going steadily higher.

Finally the ship’s rays appeared. Their luminous trail guided us to
the Nautilus. By one o’clock we had returned.

After changing clothes, I climbed onto the platform, and in the grip
of dreadfully obsessive thoughts, I sat next to the beacon.

Captain Nemo rejoined me. I stood up and said to him:

“So, as I predicted, that man died during the night?”

“Yes, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo replied.

“And now he rests beside his companions in that coral cemetery?”

“Yes, forgotten by the world but not by us! We dig the graves, then
entrust the polyps with sealing away our dead for eternity!”

And with a sudden gesture, the captain hid his face in his clenched
fists, vainly trying to hold back a sob. Then he added:

“There lies our peaceful cemetery, hundreds of feet beneath the
surface of the waves!”

“At least, captain, your dead can sleep serenely there, out of the
reach of sharks!”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Nemo replied solemnly, “of sharks and men!”


END OF THE FIRST PART



SECOND PART


CHAPTER 1

The Indian Ocean


NOW WE BEGIN the second part of this voyage under the seas. The first
ended in that moving scene at the coral cemetery, which left a
profound impression on my mind. And so Captain Nemo would live out his
life entirely in the heart of this immense sea, and even his grave lay
ready in its impenetrable depths. There the last sleep of the
Nautilus’s occupants, friends bound together in death as in life,
would be disturbed by no monster of the deep! “No man either!” the
captain had added.

Always that same fierce, implacable defiance of human society!

As for me, I was no longer content with the hypotheses that satisfied
Conseil. That fine lad persisted in seeing the Nautilus’s commander as
merely one of those unappreciated scientists who repay humanity’s
indifference with contempt. For Conseil, the captain was still a
misunderstood genius who, tired of the world’s deceptions, had been
driven to take refuge in this inaccessible environment where he was
free to follow his instincts. But to my mind, this hypothesis
explained only one side of Captain Nemo.

In fact, the mystery of that last afternoon when we were locked in
prison and put to sleep, the captain’s violent precaution of snatching
from my grasp a spyglass poised to scour the horizon, and the fatal
wound given that man during some unexplained collision suffered by the
Nautilus, all led me down a plain trail. No! Captain Nemo wasn’t
content simply to avoid humanity! His fearsome submersible served not
only his quest for freedom, but also, perhaps, it was used in
lord-knows-what schemes of dreadful revenge.

Right now, nothing is clear to me, I still glimpse only glimmers in
the dark, and I must limit my pen, as it were, to taking dictation
from events.

But nothing binds us to Captain Nemo. He believes that escaping from
the Nautilus is impossible. We are not even constrained by our word of
honor. No promises fetter us. We’re simply captives, prisoners
masquerading under the name “guests” for the sake of everyday
courtesy. Even so, Ned Land hasn’t given up all hope of recovering his
freedom. He’s sure to take advantage of the first chance that comes
his way. No doubt I will do likewise. And yet I will feel some regret
at making off with the Nautilus’s secrets, so generously unveiled for
us by Captain Nemo! Because, ultimately, should we detest or admire
this man? Is he the persecutor or the persecuted? And in all honesty,
before I leave him forever, I want to finish this underwater tour of
the world, whose first stages have been so magnificent. I want to
observe the full series of these wonders gathered under the seas of
our globe. I want to see what no man has seen yet, even if I must pay
for this insatiable curiosity with my life! What are my discoveries to
date? Nothing, relatively speaking—since so far we’ve covered only
6,000 leagues across the Pacific!

Nevertheless, I’m well aware that the Nautilus is drawing near to
populated shores, and if some chance for salvation becomes available
to us, it would be sheer cruelty to sacrifice my companions to my
passion for the unknown. I must go with them, perhaps even guide
them. But will this opportunity ever arise? The human being, robbed of
his free will, craves such an opportunity; but the scientist, forever
inquisitive, dreads it.

That day, January 21, 1868, the chief officer went at noon to take the
sun’s altitude. I climbed onto the platform, lit a cigar, and watched
him at work. It seemed obvious to me that this man didn’t understand
French, because I made several remarks in a loud voice that were bound
to provoke him to some involuntary show of interest had he understood
them; but he remained mute and emotionless.

While he took his sights with his sextant, one of the Nautilus’s
sailors—that muscular man who had gone with us to Crespo Island during
our first underwater excursion—came up to clean the glass panes of the
beacon. I then examined the fittings of this mechanism, whose power
was increased a hundredfold by biconvex lenses that were designed like
those in a lighthouse and kept its rays productively focused. This
electric lamp was so constructed as to yield its maximum illuminating
power. In essence, its light was generated in a vacuum, insuring both
its steadiness and intensity. Such a vacuum also reduced wear on the
graphite points between which the luminous arc expanded. This was an
important savings for Captain Nemo, who couldn’t easily renew
them. But under these conditions, wear and tear were almost
nonexistent.

When the Nautilus was ready to resume its underwater travels, I went
below again to the lounge. The hatches closed once more, and our
course was set due west.

We then plowed the waves of the Indian Ocean, vast liquid plains with
an area of 550,000,000 hectares, whose waters are so transparent it
makes you dizzy to lean over their surface. There the Nautilus
generally drifted at a depth between 100 and 200 meters. It behaved in
this way for some days. To anyone without my grand passion for the
sea, these hours would surely have seemed long and monotonous; but my
daily strolls on the platform where I was revived by the life-giving
ocean air, the sights in the rich waters beyond the lounge windows,
the books to be read in the library, and the composition of my
memoirs, took up all my time and left me without a moment of weariness
or boredom.

All in all, we enjoyed a highly satisfactory state of health. The diet
on board agreed with us perfectly, and for my part, I could easily
have gone without those changes of pace that Ned Land, in a spirit of
protest, kept taxing his ingenuity to supply us. What’s more, in this
constant temperature we didn’t even have to worry about catching
colds. Besides, the ship had a good stock of the madrepore
Dendrophylia, known in Provence by the name sea fennel, and a poultice
made from the dissolved flesh of its polyps will furnish an excellent
cough medicine.

For some days we saw a large number of aquatic birds with webbed feet,
known as gulls or sea mews. Some were skillfully slain, and when
cooked in a certain fashion, they make a very acceptable platter of
water game. Among the great wind riders—carried over long distances
from every shore and resting on the waves from their exhausting
flights—I spotted some magnificent albatross, birds belonging to the
Longipennes (long-winged) family, whose discordant calls sound like
the braying of an ass. The Totipalmes (fully webbed) family was
represented by swift frigate birds, nimbly catching fish at the
surface, and by numerous tropic birds of the genus Phaeton, among
others the red-tailed tropic bird, the size of a pigeon, its white
plumage shaded with pink tints that contrasted with its dark-hued
wings.

The Nautilus’s nets hauled up several types of sea turtle from the
hawksbill genus with arching backs whose scales are highly
prized. Diving easily, these reptiles can remain a good while
underwater by closing the fleshy valves located at the external
openings of their nasal passages. When they were captured, some
hawksbills were still asleep inside their carapaces, a refuge from
other marine animals. The flesh of these turtles was nothing
memorable, but their eggs made an excellent feast.

As for fish, they always filled us with wonderment when, staring
through the open panels, we could unveil the secrets of their aquatic
lives. I noted several species I hadn’t previously been able to
observe.

I’ll mention chiefly some trunkfish unique to the Red Sea, the sea of
the East Indies, and that part of the ocean washing the coasts of
equinoctial America. Like turtles, armadillos, sea urchins, and
crustaceans, these fish are protected by armor plate that’s neither
chalky nor stony but actual bone. Sometimes this armor takes the shape
of a solid triangle, sometimes that of a solid quadrangle. Among the
triangular type, I noticed some half a decimeter long, with brown
tails, yellow fins, and wholesome, exquisitely tasty flesh; I even
recommend that they be acclimatized to fresh water, a change,
incidentally, that a number of saltwater fish can make with ease. I’ll
also mention some quadrangular trunkfish topped by four large
protuberances along the back; trunkfish sprinkled with white spots on
the underside of the body, which make good house pets like certain
birds; boxfish armed with stings formed by extensions of their bony
crusts, and whose odd grunting has earned them the nickname “sea
pigs”; then some trunkfish known as dromedaries, with tough, leathery
flesh and big conical humps.

From the daily notes kept by Mr. Conseil, I also retrieve certain fish
from the genus Tetradon unique to these seas: southern puffers with
red backs and white chests distinguished by three lengthwise rows of
filaments, and jugfish, seven inches long, decked out in the brightest
colors. Then, as specimens of other genera, blowfish resembling a dark
brown egg, furrowed with white bands, and lacking tails; globefish,
genuine porcupines of the sea, armed with stings and able to inflate
themselves until they look like a pin cushion bristling with needles;
seahorses common to every ocean; flying dragonfish with long snouts
and highly distended pectoral fins shaped like wings, which enable
them, if not to fly, at least to spring into the air; spatula-shaped
paddlefish whose tails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish
with long jaws, excellent animals twenty-five centimeters long and
gleaming with the most cheerful colors; bluish gray dragonets with
wrinkled heads; myriads of leaping blennies with black stripes and
long pectoral fins, gliding over the surface of the water with
prodigious speed; delicious sailfish that can hoist their fins in a
favorable current like so many unfurled sails; splendid nurseryfish on
which nature has lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; yellow
mackerel with wings made of filaments; bullheads forever spattered
with mud, which make distinct hissing sounds; sea robins whose livers
are thought to be poisonous; ladyfish that can flutter their eyelids;
finally, archerfish with long, tubular snouts, real oceangoing
flycatchers, armed with a rifle unforeseen by either Remington or
Chassepot: it slays insects by shooting them with a simple drop of
water.

From the eighty-ninth fish genus in Lacépède’s system of
classification, belonging to his second subclass of bony fish
(characterized by gill covers and a bronchial membrane), I noted some
scorpionfish whose heads are adorned with stings and which have only
one dorsal fin; these animals are covered with small scales, or have
none at all, depending on the subgenus to which they belong. The
second subgenus gave us some Didactylus specimens three to four
decimeters long, streaked with yellow, their heads having a
phantasmagoric appearance. As for the first subgenus, it furnished
several specimens of that bizarre fish aptly nicknamed “toadfish,”
whose big head is sometimes gouged with deep cavities, sometimes
swollen with protuberances; bristling with stings and strewn with
nodules, it sports hideously irregular horns; its body and tail are
adorned with callosities; its stings can inflict dangerous injuries;
it’s repulsive and horrible.

From January 21 to the 23rd, the Nautilus traveled at the rate of 250
leagues in twenty-four hours, hence 540 miles at twenty-two miles per
hour. If, during our trip, we were able to identify these different
varieties of fish, it’s because they were attracted by our electric
light and tried to follow alongside; but most of them were
outdistanced by our speed and soon fell behind; temporarily, however,
a few managed to keep pace in the Nautilus’s waters.

On the morning of the 24th, in latitude 12 degrees 5’ south and
longitude 94 degrees 33’, we raised Keeling Island, a madreporic
upheaving planted with magnificent coconut trees, which had been
visited by Mr. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy. The Nautilus cruised along
a short distance off the shore of this desert island. Our dragnets
brought up many specimens of polyps and echinoderms plus some unusual
shells from the branch Mollusca. Captain Nemo’s treasures were
enhanced by some valuable exhibits from the delphinula snail species,
to which I joined some pointed star coral, a sort of parasitic
polypary that often attaches itself to seashells.

Soon Keeling Island disappeared below the horizon, and our course was
set to the northwest, toward the tip of the Indian peninsula.

“Civilization!” Ned Land told me that day. “Much better than those
Papuan Islands where we ran into more savages than venison! On this
Indian shore, professor, there are roads and railways, English,
French, and Hindu villages. We wouldn’t go five miles without bumping
into a fellow countryman. Come on now, isn’t it time for our sudden
departure from Captain Nemo?”

“No, no, Ned,” I replied in a very firm tone. “Let’s ride it out, as
you seafaring fellows say. The Nautilus is approaching populated
areas. It’s going back toward Europe, let it take us there. After we
arrive in home waters, we can do as we see fit. Besides, I don’t
imagine Captain Nemo will let us go hunting on the coasts of Malabar
or Coromandel as he did in the forests of New Guinea.”

“Well, sir, can’t we manage without his permission?”

I didn’t answer the Canadian. I wanted no arguments. Deep down, I was
determined to fully exploit the good fortune that had put me on board
the Nautilus.

After leaving Keeling Island, our pace got generally slower. It also
got more unpredictable, often taking us to great depths. Several times
we used our slanting fins, which internal levers could set at an
oblique angle to our waterline. Thus we went as deep as two or three
kilometers down but without ever verifying the lowest depths of this
sea near India, which soundings of 13,000 meters have been unable to
reach. As for the temperature in these lower strata, the thermometer
always and invariably indicated 4 degrees centigrade. I merely
observed that in the upper layers, the water was always colder over
shallows than in the open sea.

On January 25, the ocean being completely deserted, the Nautilus spent
the day on the surface, churning the waves with its powerful propeller
and making them spurt to great heights. Under these conditions, who
wouldn’t have mistaken it for a gigantic cetacean? I spent
three-quarters of the day on the platform. I stared at the
sea. Nothing on the horizon, except near four o’clock in the afternoon
a long steamer to the west, running on our opposite tack. Its masting
was visible for an instant, but it couldn’t have seen the Nautilus
because we were lying too low in the water. I imagine that steamboat
belonged to the Peninsular & Oriental line, which provides service
from the island of Ceylon to Sidney, also calling at King George Sound
and Melbourne.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, just before that brief twilight that
links day with night in tropical zones, Conseil and I marveled at an
unusual sight.

It was a delightful animal whose discovery, according to the ancients,
is a sign of good luck. Aristotle, Athenaeus, Pliny, and Oppian
studied its habits and lavished on its behalf all the scientific
poetry of Greece and Italy. They called it “nautilus” and “pompilius.”
But modern science has not endorsed these designations, and this
mollusk is now known by the name argonaut.

Anyone consulting Conseil would soon learn from the gallant lad that
the branch Mollusca is divided into five classes; that the first class
features the Cephalopoda (whose members are sometimes naked, sometimes
covered with a shell), which consists of two families, the
Dibranchiata and the Tetrabranchiata, which are distinguished by their
number of gills; that the family Dibranchiata includes three genera,
the argonaut, the squid, and the cuttlefish, and that the family
Tetrabranchiata contains only one genus, the nautilus. After this
catalog, if some recalcitrant listener confuses the argonaut, which is
acetabuliferous (in other words, a bearer of suction tubes), with the
nautilus, which is tentaculiferous (a bearer of tentacles), it will be
simply unforgivable.

Now, it was a school of argonauts then voyaging on the surface of the
ocean. We could count several hundred of them. They belonged to that
species of argonaut covered with protuberances and exclusive to the
seas near India.

These graceful mollusks were swimming backward by means of their
locomotive tubes, sucking water into these tubes and then expelling
it. Six of their eight tentacles were long, thin, and floated on the
water, while the other two were rounded into palms and spread to the
wind like light sails. I could see perfectly their undulating,
spiral-shaped shells, which Cuvier aptly compared to an elegant
cockleboat. It’s an actual boat indeed. It transports the animal that
secretes it without the animal sticking to it.

“The argonaut is free to leave its shell,” I told Conseil, “but it
never does.”

“Not unlike Captain Nemo,” Conseil replied sagely. “Which is why he
should have christened his ship the Argonaut.”

For about an hour the Nautilus cruised in the midst of this school of
mollusks. Then, lord knows why, they were gripped with a sudden
fear. As if at a signal, every sail was abruptly lowered; arms folded,
bodies contracted, shells turned over by changing their center of
gravity, and the whole flotilla disappeared under the waves. It was
instantaneous, and no squadron of ships ever maneuvered with greater
togetherness.

Just then night fell suddenly, and the waves barely surged in the
breeze, spreading placidly around the Nautilus’s side plates.

The next day, January 26, we cut the equator on the 82nd meridian and
we reentered the northern hemisphere.

During that day a fearsome school of sharks provided us with an
escort. Dreadful animals that teem in these seas and make them
extremely dangerous. There were Port Jackson sharks with a brown back,
a whitish belly, and eleven rows of teeth, bigeye sharks with necks
marked by a large black spot encircled in white and resembling an eye,
and Isabella sharks whose rounded snouts were strewn with dark
speckles. Often these powerful animals rushed at the lounge window
with a violence less than comforting. By this point Ned Land had lost
all self-control. He wanted to rise to the surface of the waves and
harpoon the monsters, especially certain smooth-hound sharks whose
mouths were paved with teeth arranged like a mosaic, and some big
five-meter tiger sharks that insisted on personally provoking him. But
the Nautilus soon picked up speed and easily left astern the fastest
of these man-eaters.

On January 27, at the entrance to the huge Bay of Bengal, we
repeatedly encountered a gruesome sight: human corpses floating on the
surface of the waves! Carried by the Ganges to the high seas, these
were deceased Indian villagers who hadn’t been fully devoured by
vultures, the only morticians in these parts. But there was no
shortage of sharks to assist them with their undertaking chores.

Near seven o’clock in the evening, the Nautilus lay half submerged,
navigating in the midst of milky white waves. As far as the eye could
see, the ocean seemed lactified. Was it an effect of the moon’s rays?
No, because the new moon was barely two days old and was still lost
below the horizon in the sun’s rays. The entire sky, although lit up
by stellar radiation, seemed pitch-black in comparison with the
whiteness of these waters.

Conseil couldn’t believe his eyes, and he questioned me about the
causes of this odd phenomenon. Luckily I was in a position to answer
him.

“That’s called a milk sea,” I told him, “a vast expanse of white waves
often seen along the coasts of Amboina and in these waterways.”

“But,” Conseil asked, “could master tell me the cause of this effect,
because I presume this water hasn’t really changed into milk!”

“No, my boy, and this whiteness that amazes you is merely due to the
presence of myriads of tiny creatures called infusoria, a sort of
diminutive glowworm that’s colorless and gelatinous in appearance, as
thick as a strand of hair, and no longer than one-fifth of a
millimeter. Some of these tiny creatures stick together over an area
of several leagues.”

“Several leagues!” Conseil exclaimed.

“Yes, my boy, and don’t even try to compute the number of these
infusoria. You won’t pull it off, because if I’m not mistaken, certain
navigators have cruised through milk seas for more than forty miles.”

I’m not sure that Conseil heeded my recommendation, because he seemed
to be deep in thought, no doubt trying to calculate how many
one-fifths of a millimeter are found in forty square miles. As for me,
I continued to observe this phenomenon. For several hours the
Nautilus’s spur sliced through these whitish waves, and I watched it
glide noiselessly over this soapy water, as if it were cruising
through those foaming eddies that a bay’s currents and countercurrents
sometimes leave between each other.

Near midnight the sea suddenly resumed its usual hue, but behind us
all the way to the horizon, the skies kept mirroring the whiteness of
those waves and for a good while seemed imbued with the hazy glow of
an aurora borealis.


CHAPTER 2

A New Proposition from Captain Nemo


ON JANUARY 28, in latitude 9 degrees 4’ north, when the Nautilus
returned at noon to the surface of the sea, it lay in sight of land
some eight miles to the west. Right off, I observed a cluster of
mountains about 2,000 feet high, whose shapes were very whimsically
sculpted. After our position fix, I reentered the lounge, and when our
bearings were reported on the chart, I saw that we were off the island
of Ceylon, that pearl dangling from the lower lobe of the Indian
peninsula.

I went looking in the library for a book about this island, one of the
most fertile in the world. Sure enough, I found a volume entitled
Ceylon and the Singhalese by H. C. Sirr, Esq. Reentering the lounge, I
first noted the bearings of Ceylon, on which antiquity lavished so
many different names. It was located between latitude 5 degrees 55’
and 9 degrees 49’ north, and between longitude 79 degrees 42’ and 82
degrees 4’ east of the meridian of Greenwich; its length is 275 miles;
its maximum width, 150 miles; its circumference, 900 miles; its
surface area, 24,448 square miles, in other words, a little smaller
than that of Ireland.

Just then Captain Nemo and his chief officer appeared.

The captain glanced at the chart. Then, turning to me:

“The island of Ceylon,” he said, “is famous for its pearl
fisheries. Would you be interested, Professor Aronnax, in visiting one
of those fisheries?”

“Certainly, captain.”

“Fine. It’s easily done. Only, when we see the fisheries, we’ll see no
fishermen. The annual harvest hasn’t yet begun. No matter. I’ll give
orders to make for the Gulf of Mannar, and we’ll arrive there late
tonight.”

The captain said a few words to his chief officer who went out
immediately. Soon the Nautilus reentered its liquid element, and the
pressure gauge indicated that it was staying at a depth of thirty
feet.

With the chart under my eyes, I looked for the Gulf of Mannar. I found
it by the 9th parallel off the northwestern shores of Ceylon. It was
formed by the long curve of little Mannar Island. To reach it we had
to go all the way up Ceylon’s west coast.

“Professor,” Captain Nemo then told me, “there are pearl fisheries in
the Bay of Bengal, the seas of the East Indies, the seas of China and
Japan, plus those seas south of the United States, the Gulf of Panama
and the Gulf of California; but it’s off Ceylon that such fishing
reaps its richest rewards. No doubt we’ll be arriving a little
early. Fishermen gather in the Gulf of Mannar only during the month of
March, and for thirty days some 300 boats concentrate on the lucrative
harvest of these treasures from the sea. Each boat is manned by ten
oarsmen and ten fishermen. The latter divide into two groups, dive in
rotation, and descend to a depth of twelve meters with the help of a
heavy stone clutched between their feet and attached by a rope to
their boat.”

“You mean,” I said, “that such primitive methods are still all that
they use?”

“All,” Captain Nemo answered me, “although these fisheries belong to
the most industrialized people in the world, the English, to whom the
Treaty of Amiens granted them in 1802.”

“Yet it strikes me that diving suits like yours could perform yeoman
service in such work.”

“Yes, since those poor fishermen can’t stay long underwater. On his
voyage to Ceylon, the Englishman Percival made much of a Kaffir who
stayed under five minutes without coming up to the surface, but I find
that hard to believe. I know that some divers can last up to
fifty-seven seconds, and highly skillful ones to eighty-seven; but
such men are rare, and when the poor fellows climb back on board, the
water coming out of their noses and ears is tinted with blood. I
believe the average time underwater that these fishermen can tolerate
is thirty seconds, during which they hastily stuff their little nets
with all the pearl oysters they can tear loose. But these fishermen
generally don’t live to advanced age: their vision weakens, ulcers
break out on their eyes, sores form on their bodies, and some are even
stricken with apoplexy on the ocean floor.”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s a sad occupation, and one that exists only to
gratify the whims of fashion. But tell me, captain, how many oysters
can a boat fish up in a workday?”

“About 40,000 to 50,000. It’s even said that in 1814, when the English
government went fishing on its own behalf, its divers worked just
twenty days and brought up 76,000,000 oysters.”

“At least,” I asked, “the fishermen are well paid, aren’t they?”

“Hardly, professor. In Panama they make just $1.00 per week. In most
places they earn only a penny for each oyster that has a pearl, and
they bring up so many that have none!”

“Only one penny to those poor people who make their employers rich!
That’s atrocious!”

“On that note, professor,” Captain Nemo told me, “you and your
companions will visit the Mannar oysterbank, and if by chance some
eager fisherman arrives early, well, we can watch him at work.”

“That suits me, captain.”

“By the way, Professor Aronnax, you aren’t afraid of sharks, are you?”

“Sharks?” I exclaimed.

This struck me as a pretty needless question, to say the least.

“Well?” Captain Nemo went on.

“I admit, captain, I’m not yet on very familiar terms with that genus
of fish.”

“We’re used to them, the rest of us,” Captain Nemo answered. “And in
time you will be too. Anyhow, we’ll be armed, and on our way we might
hunt a man-eater or two. It’s a fascinating sport. So, professor, I’ll
see you tomorrow, bright and early.”

This said in a carefree tone, Captain Nemo left the lounge.

If you’re invited to hunt bears in the Swiss mountains, you might say:
“Oh good, I get to go bear hunting tomorrow!” If you’re invited to
hunt lions on the Atlas plains or tigers in the jungles of India, you
might say: “Ha! Now’s my chance to hunt lions and tigers!” But if
you’re invited to hunt sharks in their native element, you might want
to think it over before accepting.

As for me, I passed a hand over my brow, where beads of cold sweat
were busy forming.

“Let’s think this over,” I said to myself, “and let’s take our
time. Hunting otters in underwater forests, as we did in the forests
of Crespo Island, is an acceptable activity. But to roam the bottom of
the sea when you’re almost certain to meet man-eaters in the
neighborhood, that’s another story! I know that in certain countries,
particularly the Andaman Islands, Negroes don’t hesitate to attack
sharks, dagger in one hand and noose in the other; but I also know
that many who face those fearsome animals don’t come back
alive. Besides, I’m not a Negro, and even if I were a Negro, in this
instance I don’t think a little hesitation on my part would be out of
place.”

And there I was, fantasizing about sharks, envisioning huge jaws armed
with multiple rows of teeth and capable of cutting a man in half. I
could already feel a definite pain around my pelvic girdle. And how I
resented the offhand manner in which the captain had extended his
deplorable invitation! You would have thought it was an issue of going
into the woods on some harmless fox hunt!

“Thank heavens!” I said to myself. “Conseil will never want to come
along, and that’ll be my excuse for not going with the captain.”

As for Ned Land, I admit I felt less confident of his wisdom. Danger,
however great, held a perennial attraction for his aggressive nature.

I went back to reading Sirr’s book, but I leafed through it
mechanically. Between the lines I kept seeing fearsome, wide-open
jaws.

Just then Conseil and the Canadian entered with a calm, even gleeful
air. Little did they know what was waiting for them.

“Ye gods, sir!” Ned Land told me. “Your Captain Nemo—the devil take
him—has just made us a very pleasant proposition!”

“Oh!” I said “You know about—”

“With all due respect to master,” Conseil replied, “the Nautilus’s
commander has invited us, together with master, for a visit tomorrow
to Ceylon’s magnificent pearl fisheries. He did so in the most cordial
terms and conducted himself like a true gentleman.”

“He didn’t tell you anything else?”

“Nothing, sir,” the Canadian replied. “He said you’d already discussed
this little stroll.”

“Indeed,” I said. “But didn’t he give you any details on—”

“Not a one, Mr. Naturalist. You will be going with us, right?”

“Me? Why yes, certainly, of course! I can see that you like the idea,
Mr. Land.”

“Yes! It will be a really unusual experience!”

“And possibly dangerous!” I added in an insinuating tone.

“Dangerous?” Ned Land replied. “A simple trip to an oysterbank?”

Assuredly, Captain Nemo hadn’t seen fit to plant the idea of sharks in
the minds of my companions. For my part, I stared at them with anxious
eyes, as if they were already missing a limb or two. Should I alert
them? Yes, surely, but I hardly knew how to go about it.

“Would master,” Conseil said to me, “give us some background on pearl
fishing?”

“On the fishing itself?” I asked. “Or on the occupational hazards
that—”

“On the fishing,” the Canadian replied. “Before we tackle the terrain,
it helps to be familiar with it.”

“All right, sit down, my friends, and I’ll teach you everything I
myself have just been taught by the Englishman H. C. Sirr!”

Ned and Conseil took seats on a couch, and right off the Canadian said
to me:

“Sir, just what is a pearl exactly?”

“My gallant Ned,” I replied, “for poets a pearl is a tear from the
sea; for Orientals it’s a drop of solidified dew; for the ladies it’s
a jewel they can wear on their fingers, necks, and ears that’s oblong
in shape, glassy in luster, and formed from mother-of-pearl; for
chemists it’s a mixture of calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate
with a little gelatin protein; and finally, for naturalists it’s a
simple festering secretion from the organ that produces
mother-of-pearl in certain bivalves.”

“Branch Mollusca,” Conseil said, “class Acephala, order Testacea.”

“Correct, my scholarly Conseil. Now then, those Testacea capable of
producing pearls include rainbow abalone, turbo snails, giant clams,
and saltwater scallops—briefly, all those that secrete
mother-of-pearl, in other words, that blue, azure, violet, or white
substance lining the insides of their valves.”

“Are mussels included too?” the Canadian asked.

“Yes! The mussels of certain streams in Scotland, Wales, Ireland,
Saxony, Bohemia, and France.”

“Good!” the Canadian replied. “From now on we’ll pay closer attention
to ‘em.”

“But,” I went on, “for secreting pearls, the ideal mollusk is the
pearl oyster Meleagrina margaritifera, that valuable shellfish. Pearls
result simply from mother-of-pearl solidifying into a globular
shape. Either they stick to the oyster’s shell, or they become
embedded in the creature’s folds. On the valves a pearl sticks fast;
on the flesh it lies loose. But its nucleus is always some small, hard
object, say a sterile egg or a grain of sand, around which the
mother-of-pearl is deposited in thin, concentric layers over several
years in succession.”

“Can one find several pearls in the same oyster?” Conseil asked.

“Yes, my boy. There are some shellfish that turn into real jewel
coffers. They even mention one oyster, about which I remain dubious,
that supposedly contained at least 150 sharks.”

“150 sharks!” Ned Land yelped.

“Did I say sharks?” I exclaimed hastily. “I meant 150 pearls. Sharks
wouldn’t make sense.”

“Indeed,” Conseil said. “But will master now tell us how one goes
about extracting these pearls?”

“One proceeds in several ways, and often when pearls stick to the
valves, fishermen even pull them loose with pliers. But usually the
shellfish are spread out on mats made from the esparto grass that
covers the beaches. Thus they die in the open air, and by the end of
ten days they’ve rotted sufficiently. Next they’re immersed in huge
tanks of salt water, then they’re opened up and washed. At this point
the sorters begin their twofold task. First they remove the layers of
mother-of-pearl, which are known in the industry by the names
legitimate silver, bastard white, or bastard black, and these are
shipped out in cases weighing 125 to 150 kilograms. Then they remove
the oyster’s meaty tissue, boil it, and finally strain it, in order to
extract even the smallest pearls.”

“Do the prices of these pearls differ depending on their size?”
Conseil asked.

“Not only on their size,” I replied, “but also according to their
shape, their water—in other words, their color—and their orient—in
other words, that dappled, shimmering glow that makes them so
delightful to the eye. The finest pearls are called virgin pearls, or
paragons; they form in isolation within the mollusk’s tissue. They’re
white, often opaque but sometimes of opalescent transparency, and
usually spherical or pear-shaped. The spherical ones are made into
bracelets; the pear-shaped ones into earrings, and since they’re the
most valuable, they’re priced individually. The other pearls that
stick to the oyster’s shell are more erratically shaped and are priced
by weight. Finally, classed in the lowest order, the smallest pearls
are known by the name seed pearls; they’re priced by the measuring cup
and are used mainly in the creation of embroidery for church
vestments.”

“But it must be a long, hard job, sorting out these pearls by size,”
the Canadian said.

“No, my friend. That task is performed with eleven strainers, or
sieves, that are pierced with different numbers of holes. Those pearls
staying in the strainers with twenty to eighty holes are in the first
order. Those not slipping through the sieves pierced with 100 to 800
holes are in the second order. Finally, those pearls for which one
uses strainers pierced with 900 to 1,000 holes make up the seed
pearls.”

“How ingenious,” Conseil said, “to reduce dividing and classifying
pearls to a mechanical operation. And could master tell us the profits
brought in by harvesting these banks of pearl oysters?”

“According to Sirr’s book,” I replied, “these Ceylon fisheries are
farmed annually for a total profit of 3,000,000 man-eaters.”

“Francs!” Conseil rebuked.

“Yes, francs! 3,000,000 francs!” I went on. “But I don’t think these
fisheries bring in the returns they once did. Similarly, the Central
American fisheries used to make an annual profit of 4,000,000 francs
during the reign of King Charles V, but now they bring in only
two-thirds of that amount. All in all, it’s estimated that 9,000,000
francs is the current yearly return for the whole pearl-harvesting
industry.”

“But,” Conseil asked, “haven’t certain famous pearls been quoted at
extremely high prices?”

“Yes, my boy. They say Julius Caesar gave Servilia a pearl worth
120,000 francs in our currency.”

“I’ve even heard stories,” the Canadian said, “about some lady in
ancient times who drank pearls in vinegar.”

“Cleopatra,” Conseil shot back.

“It must have tasted pretty bad,” Ned Land added.

“Abominable, Ned my friend,” Conseil replied. “But when a little glass
of vinegar is worth 1,500,000 francs, its taste is a small price to
pay.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t marry the gal,” the Canadian said, throwing up his
hands with an air of discouragement.

“Ned Land married to Cleopatra?” Conseil exclaimed.

“But I was all set to tie the knot, Conseil,” the Canadian replied in
all seriousness, “and it wasn’t my fault the whole business fell
through. I even bought a pearl necklace for my fiancΘe, Kate Tender,
but she married somebody else instead. Well, that necklace cost me
only $1.50, but you can absolutely trust me on this, professor, its
pearls were so big, they wouldn’t have gone through that strainer with
twenty holes.”

“My gallant Ned,” I replied, laughing, “those were artificial pearls,
ordinary glass beads whose insides were coated with Essence of
Orient.”

“Wow!” the Canadian replied. “That Essence of Orient must sell for
quite a large sum.”

“As little as zero! It comes from the scales of a European carp, it’s
nothing more than a silver substance that collects in the water and is
preserved in ammonia. It’s worthless.”

“Maybe that’s why Kate Tender married somebody else,” replied Mr. Land
philosophically.

“But,” I said, “getting back to pearls of great value, I don’t think
any sovereign ever possessed one superior to the pearl owned by
Captain Nemo.”

“This one?” Conseil said, pointing to a magnificent jewel in its glass
case.

“Exactly. And I’m certainly not far off when I estimate its value at
2,000,000 . . . uh . . .”

“Francs!” Conseil said quickly.

“Yes,” I said, “2,000,000 francs, and no doubt all it cost our captain
was the effort to pick it up.”

“Ha!” Ned Land exclaimed. “During our stroll tomorrow, who says we
won’t run into one just like it?”

“Bah!” Conseil put in.

“And why not?”

“What good would a pearl worth millions do us here on the Nautilus?”

“Here, no,” Ned Land said. “But elsewhere. . . .”

“Oh! Elsewhere!” Conseil put in, shaking his head.

“In fact,” I said, “Mr. Land is right. And if we ever brought back to
Europe or America a pearl worth millions, it would make the story of
our adventures more authentic—and much more rewarding.”

“That’s how I see it,” the Canadian said.

“But,” said Conseil, who perpetually returned to the didactic side of
things, “is this pearl fishing ever dangerous?”

“No,” I replied quickly, “especially if one takes certain
precautions.”

“What risks would you run in a job like that?” Ned Land
said. “Swallowing a few gulps of salt water?”

“Whatever you say, Ned.” Then, trying to imitate Captain Nemo’s
carefree tone, I asked, “By the way, gallant Ned, are you afraid of
sharks?”

“Me?” the Canadian replied. “I’m a professional harpooner! It’s my job
to make a mockery of them!”

“It isn’t an issue,” I said, “of fishing for them with a swivel hook,
hoisting them onto the deck of a ship, chopping off the tail with a
sweep of the ax, opening the belly, ripping out the heart, and tossing
it into the sea.”

“So it’s an issue of . . . ?”

“Yes, precisely.”

“In the water?”

“In the water.”

“Ye gods, just give me a good harpoon! You see, sir, these sharks are
badly designed. They have to roll their bellies over to snap you up,
and in the meantime . . .”

Ned Land had a way of pronouncing the word “snap” that sent chills
down the spine.

“Well, how about you, Conseil? What are your feelings about these
man-eaters?”

“Me?” Conseil said. “I’m afraid I must be frank with master.”

Good for you, I thought.

“If master faces these sharks,” Conseil said, “I think his loyal
manservant should face them with him!”


CHAPTER 3

A Pearl Worth Ten Million


NIGHT FELL. I went to bed. I slept pretty poorly. Man-eaters played a
major role in my dreams. And I found it more or less appropriate that
the French word for shark, requin, has its linguistic roots in the
word requiem.

The next day at four o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by the
steward whom Captain Nemo had placed expressly at my service. I got up
quickly, dressed, and went into the lounge.

Captain Nemo was waiting for me.

“Professor Aronnax,” he said to me, “are you ready to start?”

“I’m ready.”

“Kindly follow me.”

“What about my companions, captain?”

“They’ve been alerted and are waiting for us.”

“Aren’t we going to put on our diving suits?” I asked.

“Not yet. I haven’t let the Nautilus pull too near the coast, and
we’re fairly well out from the Mannar oysterbank. But I have the skiff
ready, and it will take us to the exact spot where we’ll disembark,
which will save us a pretty long trek. It’s carrying our diving
equipment, and we’ll suit up just before we begin our underwater
exploring.”

Captain Nemo took me to the central companionway whose steps led to
the platform. Ned and Conseil were there, enraptured with the
“pleasure trip” getting under way. Oars in position, five of the
Nautilus’s sailors were waiting for us aboard the skiff, which was
moored alongside. The night was still dark. Layers of clouds cloaked
the sky and left only a few stars in view. My eyes flew to the side
where land lay, but I saw only a blurred line covering three-quarters
of the horizon from southwest to northwest. Going up Ceylon’s west
coast during the night, the Nautilus lay west of the bay, or rather
that gulf formed by the mainland and Mannar Island. Under these dark
waters there stretched the bank of shellfish, an inexhaustible field
of pearls more than twenty miles long.

Captain Nemo, Conseil, Ned Land, and I found seats in the stern of the
skiff. The longboat’s coxswain took the tiller; his four companions
leaned into their oars; the moorings were cast off and we pulled
clear.

The skiff headed southward. The oarsmen took their time. I watched
their strokes vigorously catch the water, and they always waited ten
seconds before rowing again, following the practice used in most
navies. While the longboat coasted, drops of liquid flicked from the
oars and hit the dark troughs of the waves, pitter-pattering like
splashes of molten lead. Coming from well out, a mild swell made the
skiff roll gently, and a few cresting billows lapped at its bow.

We were silent. What was Captain Nemo thinking? Perhaps that this
approaching shore was too close for comfort, contrary to the
Canadian’s views in which it still seemed too far away. As for
Conseil, he had come along out of simple curiosity.

Near 5:30 the first glimmers of light on the horizon defined the upper
lines of the coast with greater distinctness. Fairly flat to the east,
it swelled a little toward the south. Five miles still separated it
from us, and its beach merged with the misty waters. Between us and
the shore, the sea was deserted. Not a boat, not a diver. Profound
solitude reigned over this gathering place of pearl fishermen. As
Captain Nemo had commented, we were arriving in these waterways a
month too soon.

At six o’clock the day broke suddenly, with that speed unique to
tropical regions, which experience no real dawn or dusk. The sun’s
rays pierced the cloud curtain gathered on the easterly horizon, and
the radiant orb rose swiftly.

I could clearly see the shore, which featured a few sparse trees here
and there.

The skiff advanced toward Mannar Island, which curved to the
south. Captain Nemo stood up from his thwart and studied the sea.

At his signal the anchor was lowered, but its chain barely ran because
the bottom lay no more than a meter down, and this locality was one of
the shallowest spots near the bank of shellfish. Instantly the skiff
wheeled around under the ebb tide’s outbound thrust.

“Here we are, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo then said. “You observe
this confined bay? A month from now in this very place, the numerous
fishing boats of the harvesters will gather, and these are the waters
their divers will ransack so daringly. This bay is felicitously laid
out for their type of fishing. It’s sheltered from the strongest
winds, and the sea is never very turbulent here, highly favorable
conditions for diving work. Now let’s put on our underwater suits, and
we’ll begin our stroll.”

I didn’t reply, and while staring at these suspicious waves, I began
to put on my heavy aquatic clothes, helped by the longboat’s
sailors. Captain Nemo and my two companions suited up as well. None of
the Nautilus’s men were to go with us on this new excursion.

Soon we were imprisoned up to the neck in india-rubber clothing, and
straps fastened the air devices onto our backs. As for the Ruhmkorff
device, it didn’t seem to be in the picture. Before inserting my head
into its copper capsule, I commented on this to the captain.

“Our lighting equipment would be useless to us,” the captain answered
me. “We won’t be going very deep, and the sun’s rays will be
sufficient to light our way. Besides, it’s unwise to carry electric
lanterns under these waves. Their brightness might unexpectedly
attract certain dangerous occupants of these waterways.”

As Captain Nemo pronounced these words, I turned to Conseil and Ned
Land. But my two friends had already encased their craniums in their
metal headgear, and they could neither hear nor reply.

I had one question left to address to Captain Nemo.

“What about our weapons?” I asked him. “Our rifles?”

“Rifles! What for? Don’t your mountaineers attack bears dagger in
hand? And isn’t steel surer than lead? Here’s a sturdy blade. Slip it
under your belt and let’s be off.”

I stared at my companions. They were armed in the same fashion, and
Ned Land was also brandishing an enormous harpoon he had stowed in the
skiff before leaving the Nautilus.

Then, following the captain’s example, I let myself be crowned with my
heavy copper sphere, and our air tanks immediately went into action.

An instant later, the longboat’s sailors helped us overboard one after
the other, and we set foot on level sand in a meter and a half of
water. Captain Nemo gave us a hand signal. We followed him down a
gentle slope and disappeared under the waves.

There the obsessive fears in my brain left me. I became surprisingly
calm again. The ease with which I could move increased my confidence,
and the many strange sights captivated my imagination.

The sun was already sending sufficient light under these waves. The
tiniest objects remained visible. After ten minutes of walking, we
were in five meters of water, and the terrain had become almost flat.

Like a covey of snipe over a marsh, there rose underfoot schools of
unusual fish from the genus Monopterus, whose members have no fin but
their tail. I recognized the Javanese eel, a genuine eight-decimeter
serpent with a bluish gray belly, which, without the gold lines over
its flanks, could easily be confused with the conger eel. From the
butterfish genus, whose oval bodies are very flat, I observed several
adorned in brilliant colors and sporting a dorsal fin like a sickle,
edible fish that, when dried and marinated, make an excellent dish
known by the name “karawade”; then some sea poachers, fish belonging
to the genus Aspidophoroides, whose bodies are covered with scaly
armor divided into eight lengthwise sections.

Meanwhile, as the sun got progressively higher, it lit up the watery
mass more and more. The seafloor changed little by little. Its
fine-grained sand was followed by a genuine causeway of smooth crags
covered by a carpet of mollusks and zoophytes. Among other specimens
in these two branches, I noted some windowpane oysters with thin
valves of unequal size, a type of ostracod unique to the Red Sea and
the Indian Ocean, then orange-hued lucina with circular shells,
awl-shaped auger shells, some of those Persian murex snails that
supply the Nautilus with such wonderful dye, spiky periwinkles fifteen
centimeters long that rose under the waves like hands ready to grab
you, turban snails with shells made of horn and bristling all over
with spines, lamp shells, edible duck clams that feed the Hindu
marketplace, subtly luminous jellyfish of the species Pelagia
panopyra, and finally some wonderful Oculina flabelliforma,
magnificent sea fans that fashion one of the most luxuriant tree forms
in this ocean.

In the midst of this moving vegetation, under arbors of water plants,
there raced legions of clumsy articulates, in particular some fanged
frog crabs whose carapaces form a slightly rounded triangle, robber
crabs exclusive to these waterways, and horrible parthenope crabs
whose appearance was repulsive to the eye. One animal no less hideous,
which I encountered several times, was the enormous crab that
Mr. Darwin observed, to which nature has given the instinct and
requisite strength to eat coconuts; it scrambles up trees on the beach
and sends the coconuts tumbling; they fracture in their fall and are
opened by its powerful pincers. Here, under these clear waves, this
crab raced around with matchless agility, while green turtles from the
species frequenting the Malabar coast moved sluggishly among the
crumbling rocks.

Near seven o’clock we finally surveyed the bank of shellfish, where
pearl oysters reproduce by the millions. These valuable mollusks stick
to rocks, where they’re strongly attached by a mass of brown filaments
that forbids their moving about. In this respect oysters are inferior
even to mussels, to whom nature has not denied all talent for
locomotion.

The shellfish Meleagrina, that womb for pearls whose valves are nearly
equal in size, has the shape of a round shell with thick walls and a
very rough exterior. Some of these shells were furrowed with flaky,
greenish bands that radiated down from the top. These were the young
oysters. The others had rugged black surfaces, measured up to fifteen
centimeters in width, and were ten or more years old.

Captain Nemo pointed to this prodigious heap of shellfish, and I saw
that these mines were genuinely inexhaustible, since nature’s creative
powers are greater than man’s destructive instincts. True to those
instincts, Ned Land greedily stuffed the finest of these mollusks into
a net he carried at his side.

But we couldn’t stop. We had to follow the captain, who headed down
trails seemingly known only to himself. The seafloor rose noticeably,
and when I lifted my arms, sometimes they would pass above the surface
of the sea. Then the level of the oysterbank would lower
unpredictably. Often we went around tall, pointed rocks rising like
pyramids. In their dark crevices huge crustaceans, aiming their long
legs like heavy artillery, watched us with unblinking eyes, while
underfoot there crept millipedes, bloodworms, aricia worms, and
annelid worms, whose antennas and tubular tentacles were incredibly
long.

Just then a huge cave opened up in our path, hollowed from a
picturesque pile of rocks whose smooth heights were completely hung
with underwater flora. At first this cave looked pitch-black to
me. Inside, the sun’s rays seemed to diminish by degrees. Their hazy
transparency was nothing more than drowned light.

Captain Nemo went in. We followed him. My eyes soon grew accustomed to
this comparative gloom. I distinguished the unpredictably contoured
springings of a vault, supported by natural pillars firmly based on a
granite foundation, like the weighty columns of Tuscan
architecture. Why had our incomprehensible guide taken us into the
depths of this underwater crypt? I would soon find out.

After going down a fairly steep slope, our feet trod the floor of a
sort of circular pit. There Captain Nemo stopped, and his hand
indicated an object that I hadn’t yet noticed.

It was an oyster of extraordinary dimensions, a titanic giant clam, a
holy-water font that could have held a whole lake, a basin more than
two meters wide, hence even bigger than the one adorning the
Nautilus’s lounge.

I approached this phenomenal mollusk. Its mass of filaments attached
it to a table of granite, and there it grew by itself in the midst of
the cave’s calm waters. I estimated the weight of this giant clam at
300 kilograms. Hence such an oyster held fifteen kilos of meat, and
you’d need the stomach of King Gargantua to eat a couple dozen.

Captain Nemo was obviously familiar with this bivalve’s
existence. This wasn’t the first time he’d paid it a visit, and I
thought his sole reason for leading us to this locality was to show us
a natural curiosity. I was mistaken. Captain Nemo had an explicit
personal interest in checking on the current condition of this giant
clam.

The mollusk’s two valves were partly open. The captain approached and
stuck his dagger vertically between the shells to discourage any ideas
about closing; then with his hands he raised the fringed,
membrane-filled tunic that made up the animal’s mantle.

There, between its leaflike folds, I saw a loose pearl as big as a
coconut. Its globular shape, perfect clarity, and wonderful orient
made it a jewel of incalculable value. Carried away by curiosity, I
stretched out my hand to take it, weigh it, fondle it! But the captain
stopped me, signaled no, removed his dagger in one swift motion, and
let the two valves snap shut.

I then understood Captain Nemo’s intent. By leaving the pearl buried
beneath the giant clam’s mantle, he allowed it to grow
imperceptibly. With each passing year the mollusk’s secretions added
new concentric layers. The captain alone was familiar with the cave
where this wonderful fruit of nature was “ripening”; he alone reared
it, so to speak, in order to transfer it one day to his dearly beloved
museum. Perhaps, following the examples of oyster farmers in China and
India, he had even predetermined the creation of this pearl by
sticking under the mollusk’s folds some piece of glass or metal that
was gradually covered with mother-of-pearl. In any case, comparing
this pearl to others I already knew about, and to those shimmering in
the captain’s collection, I estimated that it was worth at least
10,000,000 francs. It was a superb natural curiosity rather than a
luxurious piece of jewelry, because I don’t know of any female ear
that could handle it.

Our visit to this opulent giant clam came to an end. Captain Nemo left
the cave, and we climbed back up the bank of shellfish in the midst of
these clear waters not yet disturbed by divers at work.

We walked by ourselves, genuine loiterers stopping or straying as our
fancies dictated. For my part, I was no longer worried about those
dangers my imagination had so ridiculously exaggerated. The shallows
drew noticeably closer to the surface of the sea, and soon, walking in
only a meter of water, my head passed well above the level of the
ocean. Conseil rejoined me, and gluing his huge copper capsule to
mine, his eyes gave me a friendly greeting. But this lofty plateau
measured only a few fathoms, and soon we reentered Our Element. I
think I’ve now earned the right to dub it that.

Ten minutes later, Captain Nemo stopped suddenly. I thought he’d
called a halt so that we could turn and start back. No. With a gesture
he ordered us to crouch beside him at the foot of a wide crevice. His
hand motioned toward a spot within the liquid mass, and I looked
carefully.

Five meters away a shadow appeared and dropped to the seafloor. The
alarming idea of sharks crossed my mind. But I was mistaken, and once
again we didn’t have to deal with monsters of the deep.

It was a man, a living man, a black Indian fisherman, a poor devil who
no doubt had come to gather what he could before harvest time. I saw
the bottom of his dinghy, moored a few feet above his head. He would
dive and go back up in quick succession. A stone cut in the shape of a
sugar loaf, which he gripped between his feet while a rope connected
it to his boat, served to lower him more quickly to the ocean
floor. This was the extent of his equipment. Arriving on the seafloor
at a depth of about five meters, he fell to his knees and stuffed his
sack with shellfish gathered at random. Then he went back up, emptied
his sack, pulled up his stone, and started all over again, the whole
process lasting only thirty seconds.

This diver didn’t see us. A shadow cast by our crag hid us from his
view. And besides, how could this poor Indian ever have guessed that
human beings, creatures like himself, were near him under the waters,
eavesdropping on his movements, not missing a single detail of his
fishing!

So he went up and down several times. He gathered only about ten
shellfish per dive, because he had to tear them from the banks where
each clung with its tough mass of filaments. And how many of these
oysters for which he risked his life would have no pearl in them!

I observed him with great care. His movements were systematically
executed, and for half an hour no danger seemed to threaten him. So I
had gotten used to the sight of this fascinating fishing when all at
once, just as the Indian was kneeling on the seafloor, I saw him make
a frightened gesture, stand, and gather himself to spring back to the
surface of the waves.

I understood his fear. A gigantic shadow appeared above the poor
diver. It was a shark of huge size, moving in diagonally, eyes ablaze,
jaws wide open!

I was speechless with horror, unable to make a single movement.

With one vigorous stroke of its fins, the voracious animal shot toward
the Indian, who jumped aside and avoided the shark’s bite but not the
thrashing of its tail, because that tail struck him across the chest
and stretched him out on the seafloor.

This scene lasted barely a few seconds. The shark returned, rolled
over on its back, and was getting ready to cut the Indian in half,
when Captain Nemo, who was stationed beside me, suddenly stood
up. Then he strode right toward the monster, dagger in hand, ready to
fight it at close quarters.

Just as it was about to snap up the poor fisherman, the man-eater saw
its new adversary, repositioned itself on its belly, and headed
swiftly toward him.

I can see Captain Nemo’s bearing to this day. Bracing himself, he
waited for the fearsome man-eater with wonderful composure, and when
the latter rushed at him, the captain leaped aside with prodigious
quickness, avoided a collision, and sank his dagger into its
belly. But that wasn’t the end of the story. A dreadful battle was
joined.

The shark bellowed, so to speak. Blood was pouring into the waves from
its wounds. The sea was dyed red, and through this opaque liquid I
could see nothing else.

Nothing else until the moment when, through a rift in the clouds, I
saw the daring captain clinging to one of the animal’s fins, fighting
the monster at close quarters, belaboring his enemy’s belly with stabs
of the dagger yet unable to deliver the deciding thrust, in other
words, a direct hit to the heart. In its struggles the man-eater
churned the watery mass so furiously, its eddies threatened to knock
me over.

I wanted to run to the captain’s rescue. But I was transfixed with
horror, unable to move.

I stared, wild-eyed. I saw the fight enter a new phase. The captain
fell to the seafloor, toppled by the enormous mass weighing him
down. Then the shark’s jaws opened astoundingly wide, like a pair of
industrial shears, and that would have been the finish of Captain Nemo
had not Ned Land, quick as thought, rushed forward with his harpoon
and driven its dreadful point into the shark’s underside.

The waves were saturated with masses of blood. The waters shook with
the movements of the man-eater, which thrashed about with
indescribable fury. Ned Land hadn’t missed his target. This was the
monster’s death rattle. Pierced to the heart, it was struggling with
dreadful spasms whose aftershocks knocked Conseil off his feet.

Meanwhile Ned Land pulled the captain clear. Uninjured, the latter
stood up, went right to the Indian, quickly cut the rope binding the
man to his stone, took the fellow in his arms, and with a vigorous
kick of the heel, rose to the surface of the sea.

The three of us followed him, and a few moments later, miraculously
safe, we reached the fisherman’s longboat.

Captain Nemo’s first concern was to revive this unfortunate man. I
wasn’t sure he would succeed. I hoped so, since the poor devil hadn’t
been under very long. But that stroke from the shark’s tail could have
been his deathblow.

Fortunately, after vigorous massaging by Conseil and the captain, I
saw the nearly drowned man regain consciousness little by little. He
opened his eyes. How startled he must have felt, how frightened even,
at seeing four huge, copper craniums leaning over him!

And above all, what must he have thought when Captain Nemo pulled a
bag of pearls from a pocket in his diving suit and placed it in the
fisherman’s hands? This magnificent benefaction from the Man of the
Waters to the poor Indian from Ceylon was accepted by the latter with
trembling hands. His bewildered eyes indicated that he didn’t know to
what superhuman creatures he owed both his life and his fortune.

At the captain’s signal we returned to the bank of shellfish, and
retracing our steps, we walked for half an hour until we encountered
the anchor connecting the seafloor with the Nautilus’s skiff.

Back on board, the sailors helped divest us of our heavy copper
carapaces.

Captain Nemo’s first words were spoken to the Canadian.

“Thank you, Mr. Land,” he told him.

“Tit for tat, captain,” Ned Land replied. “I owed it to you.”

The ghost of a smile glided across the captain’s lips, and that was
all.

“To the Nautilus,” he said.

The longboat flew over the waves. A few minutes later we encountered
the shark’s corpse again, floating.

From the black markings on the tips of its fins, I recognized the
dreadful Squalus melanopterus from the seas of the East Indies, a
variety in the species of sharks proper. It was more than twenty-five
feet long; its enormous mouth occupied a third of its body. It was an
adult, as could be seen from the six rows of teeth forming an
isosceles triangle in its upper jaw.

Conseil looked at it with purely scientific fascination, and I’m sure
he placed it, not without good reason, in the class of cartilaginous
fish, order Chondropterygia with fixed gills, family Selacia, genus
Squalus.

While I was contemplating this inert mass, suddenly a dozen of these
voracious melanoptera appeared around our longboat; but, paying no
attention to us, they pounced on the corpse and quarreled over every
scrap of it.

By 8:30 we were back on board the Nautilus.

There I fell to thinking about the incidents that marked our excursion
over the Mannar oysterbank. Two impressions inevitably stood out. One
concerned Captain Nemo’s matchless bravery, the other his devotion to
a human being, a representative of that race from which he had fled
beneath the seas. In spite of everything, this strange man hadn’t yet
succeeded in completely stifling his heart.

When I shared these impressions with him, he answered me in a tone
touched with emotion:

“That Indian, professor, lives in the land of the oppressed, and I am
to this day, and will be until my last breath, a native of that same
land!”


CHAPTER 4

The Red Sea


DURING THE DAY of January 29, the island of Ceylon disappeared below
the horizon, and at a speed of twenty miles per hour, the Nautilus
glided into the labyrinthine channels that separate the Maldive and
Laccadive Islands. It likewise hugged Kiltan Island, a shore of
madreporic origin discovered by Vasco da Gama in 1499 and one of
nineteen chief islands in the island group of the Laccadives, located
between latitude 10 degrees and 14 degrees 30’ north, and between
longitude 50 degrees 72’ and 69 degrees east.

By then we had fared 16,220 miles, or 7,500 leagues, from our starting
point in the seas of Japan.

The next day, January 30, when the Nautilus rose to the surface of the
ocean, there was no more land in sight. Setting its course to the
north-northwest, the ship headed toward the Gulf of Oman, carved out
between Arabia and the Indian peninsula and providing access to the
Persian Gulf.

This was obviously a blind alley with no possible outlet. So where was
Captain Nemo taking us? I was unable to say. Which didn’t satisfy the
Canadian, who that day asked me where we were going.

“We’re going, Mr. Ned, where the captain’s fancy takes us.”

“His fancy,” the Canadian replied, “won’t take us very far. The
Persian Gulf has no outlet, and if we enter those waters, it won’t be
long before we return in our tracks.”

“All right, we’ll return, Mr. Land, and after the Persian Gulf, if the
Nautilus wants to visit the Red Sea, the Strait of Bab el Mandeb is
still there to let us in!”

“I don’t have to tell you, sir,” Ned Land replied, “that the Red Sea
is just as landlocked as the gulf, since the Isthmus of Suez hasn’t
been cut all the way through yet; and even if it was, a boat as
secretive as ours wouldn’t risk a canal intersected with locks. So the
Red Sea won’t be our way back to Europe either.”

“But I didn’t say we’d return to Europe.”

“What do you figure, then?”

“I figure that after visiting these unusual waterways of Arabia and
Egypt, the Nautilus will go back down to the Indian Ocean, perhaps
through Mozambique Channel, perhaps off the Mascarene Islands, and
then make for the Cape of Good Hope.”

“And once we’re at the Cape of Good Hope?” the Canadian asked with
typical persistence.

“Well then, we’ll enter that Atlantic Ocean with which we aren’t yet
familiar. What’s wrong, Ned my friend? Are you tired of this voyage
under the seas? Are you bored with the constantly changing sight of
these underwater wonders? Speaking for myself, I’ll be extremely
distressed to see the end of a voyage so few men will ever have a
chance to make.”

“But don’t you realize, Professor Aronnax,” the Canadian replied,
“that soon we’ll have been imprisoned for three whole months aboard
this Nautilus?”

“No, Ned, I didn’t realize it, I don’t want to realize it, and I don’t
keep track of every day and every hour.”

“But when will it be over?”

“In its appointed time. Meanwhile there’s nothing we can do about it,
and our discussions are futile. My gallant Ned, if you come and tell
me, ‘A chance to escape is available to us,’ then I’ll discuss it with
you. But that isn’t the case, and in all honesty, I don’t think
Captain Nemo ever ventures into European seas.”

This short dialogue reveals that in my mania for the Nautilus, I was
turning into the spitting image of its commander.

As for Ned Land, he ended our talk in his best speechifying style:
“That’s all fine and dandy. But in my humble opinion, a life in jail
is a life without joy.”

For four days until February 3, the Nautilus inspected the Gulf of
Oman at various speeds and depths. It seemed to be traveling at
random, as if hesitating over which course to follow, but it never
crossed the Tropic of Cancer.

After leaving this gulf we raised Muscat for an instant, the most
important town in the country of Oman. I marveled at its strange
appearance in the midst of the black rocks surrounding it, against
which the white of its houses and forts stood out sharply. I spotted
the rounded domes of its mosques, the elegant tips of its minarets,
and its fresh, leafy terraces. But it was only a fleeting vision, and
the Nautilus soon sank beneath the dark waves of these waterways.

Then our ship went along at a distance of six miles from the Arabic
coasts of Mahra and Hadhramaut, their undulating lines of mountains
relieved by a few ancient ruins. On February 5 we finally put into the
Gulf of Aden, a genuine funnel stuck into the neck of Bab el Mandeb
and bottling these Indian waters in the Red Sea.

On February 6 the Nautilus cruised in sight of the city of Aden,
perched on a promontory connected to the continent by a narrow
isthmus, a sort of inaccessible Gibraltar whose fortifications the
English rebuilt after capturing it in 1839. I glimpsed the octagonal
minarets of this town, which used to be one of the wealthiest, busiest
commercial centers along this coast, as the Arab historian Idrisi
tells it.

I was convinced that when Captain Nemo reached this point, he would
back out again; but I was mistaken, and much to my surprise, he did
nothing of the sort.

The next day, February 7, we entered the Strait of Bab el Mandeb,
whose name means “Gate of Tears” in the Arabic language. Twenty miles
wide, it’s only fifty-two kilometers long, and with the Nautilus
launched at full speed, clearing it was the work of barely an
hour. But I didn’t see a thing, not even Perim Island where the
British government built fortifications to strengthen Aden’s
position. There were many English and French steamers plowing this
narrow passageway, liners going from Suez to Bombay, Calcutta,
Melbourne, RΘunion Island, and Mauritius; far too much traffic for the
Nautilus to make an appearance on the surface. So it wisely stayed in
midwater.

Finally, at noon, we were plowing the waves of the Red Sea.

The Red Sea: that great lake so famous in biblical traditions, seldom
replenished by rains, fed by no important rivers, continually drained
by a high rate of evaporation, its water level dropping a meter and a
half every year! If it were fully landlocked like a lake, this odd
gulf might dry up completely; on this score it’s inferior to its
neighbors, the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea, whose levels lower only
to the point where their evaporation exactly equals the amounts of
water they take to their hearts.

This Red Sea is 2,600 kilometers long with an average width of 240. In
the days of the

Ptolemies and the Roman emperors, it was a great commercial artery for
the world, and when its isthmus has been cut through, it will
completely regain that bygone importance that the Suez railways have
already brought back in part.

I would not even attempt to understand the whim that induced Captain
Nemo to take us into this gulf. But I wholeheartedly approved of the
Nautilus’s entering it. It adopted a medium pace, sometimes staying on
the surface, sometimes diving to avoid some ship, and so I could
observe both the inside and topside of this highly unusual sea.

On February 8, as early as the first hours of daylight, Mocha appeared
before us: a town now in ruins, whose walls would collapse at the mere
sound of a cannon, and which shelters a few leafy date trees here and
there. This once-important city used to contain six public
marketplaces plus twenty-six mosques, and its walls, protected by
fourteen forts, fashioned a three-kilometer girdle around it.

Then the Nautilus drew near the beaches of Africa, where the sea is
considerably deeper. There, through the open panels and in a midwater
of crystal clarity, our ship enabled us to study wonderful bushes of
shining coral and huge chunks of rock wrapped in splendid green furs
of algae and fucus. What an indescribable sight, and what a variety of
settings and scenery where these reefs and volcanic islands leveled
off by the Libyan coast! But soon the Nautilus hugged the eastern
shore where these tree forms appeared in all their glory. This was off
the coast of Tihama, and there such zoophyte displays not only
flourished below sea level but they also fashioned picturesque
networks that unreeled as high as ten fathoms above it; the latter
were more whimsical but less colorful than the former, which kept
their bloom thanks to the moist vitality of the waters.

How many delightful hours I spent in this way at the lounge window!
How many new specimens of underwater flora and fauna I marveled at
beneath the light of our electric beacon! Mushroom-shaped fungus
coral, some slate-colored sea anemone including the species
Thalassianthus aster among others, organ-pipe coral arranged like
flutes and just begging for a puff from the god Pan, shells unique to
this sea that dwell in madreporic cavities and whose bases are twisted
into squat spirals, and finally a thousand samples of a polypary I
hadn’t observed until then: the common sponge.

First division in the polyp group, the class Spongiaria has been
created by scientists precisely for this unusual exhibit whose
usefulness is beyond dispute. The sponge is definitely not a plant, as
some naturalists still believe, but an animal of the lowest order, a
polypary inferior even to coral. Its animal nature isn’t in doubt, and
we can’t accept even the views of the ancients, who regarded it as
halfway between plant and animal. But I must say that naturalists are
not in agreement on the structural mode of sponges. For some it’s a
polypary, and for others, such as Professor Milne-Edwards, it’s a
single, solitary individual.

The class Spongiaria contains about 300 species that are encountered
in a large number of seas and even in certain streams, where they’ve
been given the name freshwater sponges. But their waters of choice are
the Red Sea and the Mediterranean near the Greek Islands or the coast
of Syria. These waters witness the reproduction and growth of soft,
delicate bath sponges whose prices run as high as 150 francs apiece:
the yellow sponge from Syria, the horn sponge from Barbary, etc. But
since I had no hope of studying these zoophytes in the seaports of the
Levant, from which we were separated by the insuperable Isthmus of
Suez, I had to be content with observing them in the waters of the Red
Sea.

So I called Conseil to my side, while at an average depth of eight to
nine meters, the Nautilus slowly skimmed every beautiful rock on the
easterly coast.

There sponges grew in every shape, globular, stalklike, leaflike,
fingerlike. With reasonable accuracy, they lived up to their nicknames
of basket sponges, chalice sponges, distaff sponges, elkhorn sponges,
lion’s paws, peacock’s tails, and Neptune’s gloves—designations
bestowed on them by fishermen, more poetically inclined than
scientists. A gelatinous, semifluid substance coated the fibrous
tissue of these sponges, and from this tissue there escaped a steady
trickle of water that, after carrying sustenance to each cell, was
being expelled by a contracting movement. This jellylike substance
disappears when the polyp dies, emitting ammonia as it rots. Finally
nothing remains but the fibers, either gelatinous or made of horn,
that constitute your household sponge, which takes on a russet hue and
is used for various tasks depending on its degree of elasticity,
permeability, or resistance to saturation.

These polyparies were sticking to rocks, shells of mollusks, and even
the stalks of water plants. They adorned the smallest crevices, some
sprawling, others standing or hanging like coral outgrowths. I told
Conseil that sponges are fished up in two ways, either by dragnet or
by hand. The latter method calls for the services of a diver, but it’s
preferable because it spares the polypary’s tissue, leaving it with a
much higher market value.

Other zoophytes swarming near the sponges consisted chiefly of a very
elegant species of jellyfish; mollusks were represented by varieties
of squid that, according to Professor Orbigny, are unique to the Red
Sea; and reptiles by virgata turtles belonging to the genus Chelonia,
which furnished our table with a dainty but wholesome dish.

As for fish, they were numerous and often remarkable. Here are the
ones that the Nautilus’s nets most frequently hauled on board: rays,
including spotted rays that were oval in shape and brick red in color,
their bodies strewn with erratic blue speckles and identifiable by
their jagged double stings, silver-backed skates, common stingrays
with stippled tails, butterfly rays that looked like huge two-meter
cloaks flapping at middepth, toothless guitarfish that were a type of
cartilaginous fish closer to the shark, trunkfish known as dromedaries
that were one and a half feet long and had humps ending in
backward-curving stings, serpentine moray eels with silver tails and
bluish backs plus brown pectorals trimmed in gray piping, a species of
butterfish called the fiatola decked out in thin gold stripes and the
three colors of the French flag, Montague blennies four decimeters
long, superb jacks handsomely embellished by seven black crosswise
streaks with blue and yellow fins plus gold and silver scales, snooks,
standard mullet with yellow heads, parrotfish, wrasse, triggerfish,
gobies, etc., plus a thousand other fish common to the oceans we had
already crossed.

On February 9 the Nautilus cruised in the widest part of the Red Sea,
measuring 190 miles straight across from Suakin on the west coast to
Qunfidha on the east coast.

At noon that day after our position fix, Captain Nemo climbed onto the
platform, where I happened to be. I vowed not to let him go below
again without at least sounding him out on his future plans. As soon
as he saw me, he came over, graciously offered me a cigar, and said to
me:

“Well, professor, are you pleased with this Red Sea? Have you seen
enough of its hidden wonders, its fish and zoophytes, its gardens of
sponges and forests of coral? Have you glimpsed the towns built on its
shores?”

“Yes, Captain Nemo,” I replied, “and the Nautilus is wonderfully
suited to this whole survey. Ah, it’s a clever boat!”

“Yes, sir, clever, daring, and invulnerable! It fears neither the Red
Sea’s dreadful storms nor its currents and reefs.”

“Indeed,” I said, “this sea is mentioned as one of the worst, and in
the days of the ancients, if I’m not mistaken, it had an abominable
reputation.”

“Thoroughly abominable, Professor Aronnax. The Greek and Latin
historians can find nothing to say in its favor, and the Greek
geographer Strabo adds that it’s especially rough during the rainy
season and the period of summer prevailing winds. The Arab Idrisi,
referring to it by the name Gulf of Colzoum, relates that ships
perished in large numbers on its sandbanks and that no one risked
navigating it by night. This, he claims, is a sea subject to fearful
hurricanes, strewn with inhospitable islands, and ‘with nothing good
to offer,’ either on its surface or in its depths. As a matter of
fact, the same views can also be found in Arrian, Agatharchides, and
Artemidorus.”

“One can easily see,” I answered, “that those historians didn’t
navigate aboard the Nautilus.”

“Indeed,” the captain replied with a smile, “and in this respect, the
moderns aren’t much farther along than the ancients. It took many
centuries to discover the mechanical power of steam! Who knows whether
we’ll see a second Nautilus within the next 100 years! Progress is
slow, Professor Aronnax.”

“It’s true,” I replied. “Your ship is a century ahead of its time,
perhaps several centuries. It would be most unfortunate if such a
secret were to die with its inventor!”

Captain Nemo did not reply. After some minutes of silence:

“We were discussing,” he said, “the views of ancient historians on the
dangers of navigating this Red Sea?”

“True,” I replied. “But weren’t their fears exaggerated?”

“Yes and no, Professor Aronnax,” answered Captain Nemo, who seemed to
know “his Red Sea” by heart. “To a modern ship, well rigged, solidly
constructed, and in control of its course thanks to obedient steam,
some conditions are no longer hazardous that offered all sorts of
dangers to the vessels of the ancients. Picture those early navigators
venturing forth in sailboats built from planks lashed together with
palm-tree ropes, caulked with powdered resin, and coated with dogfish
grease. They didn’t even have instruments for taking their bearings,
they went by guesswork in the midst of currents they barely
knew. Under such conditions, shipwrecks had to be numerous. But
nowadays steamers providing service between Suez and the South Seas
have nothing to fear from the fury of this gulf, despite the contrary
winds of its monsoons. Their captains and passengers no longer prepare
for departure with sacrifices to placate the gods, and after
returning, they don’t traipse in wreaths and gold ribbons to say
thanks at the local temple.”

“Agreed,” I said. “And steam seems to have killed off all gratitude in
seamen’s hearts. But since you seem to have made a special study of
this sea, captain, can you tell me how it got its name?”

“Many explanations exist on the subject, Professor Aronnax. Would you
like to hear the views of one chronicler in the 14th century?”

“Gladly.”

“This fanciful fellow claims the sea was given its name after the
crossing of the Israelites, when the Pharaoh perished in those waves
that came together again at Moses’ command:

To mark that miraculous sequel, the sea turned a red without equal.

Thus no other course would do but to name it for its hue.”

“An artistic explanation, Captain Nemo,” I replied, “but I’m unable to
rest content with it. So I’ll ask you for your own personal views.”

“Here they come. To my thinking, Professor Aronnax, this ‘Red Sea’
designation must be regarded as a translation of the Hebrew word
‘Edrom,’ and if the ancients gave it that name, it was because of the
unique color of its waters.”

“Until now, however, I’ve seen only clear waves, without any unique
hue.”

“Surely, but as we move ahead to the far end of this gulf, you’ll note
its odd appearance. I recall seeing the bay of El Tur completely red,
like a lake of blood.”

“And you attribute this color to the presence of microscopic algae?”

“Yes. It’s a purplish, mucilaginous substance produced by those tiny
buds known by the name trichodesmia, 40,000 of which are needed to
occupy the space of one square millimeter. Perhaps you’ll encounter
them when we reach El Tur.”

“Hence, Captain Nemo, this isn’t the first time you’ve gone through
the Red Sea aboard the Nautilus?”

“No, sir.”

“Then, since you’ve already mentioned the crossing of the Israelites
and the catastrophe that befell the Egyptians, I would ask if you’ve
ever discovered any traces under the waters of that great historic
event?”

“No, professor, and for an excellent reason.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s because that same locality where Moses crossed with all his
people is now so clogged with sand, camels can barely get their legs
wet. You can understand that my Nautilus wouldn’t have enough water
for itself.”

“And that locality is . . . ?” I asked.

“That locality lies a little above Suez in a sound that used to form a
deep estuary when the Red Sea stretched as far as the Bitter
Lakes. Now, whether or not their crossing was literally miraculous,
the Israelites did cross there in returning to the Promised Land, and
the Pharaoh’s army did perish at precisely that locality. So I think
that excavating those sands would bring to light a great many weapons
and tools of Egyptian origin.”

“Obviously,” I replied. “And for the sake of archaeology, let’s hope
that sooner or later such excavations do take place, once new towns
are settled on the isthmus after the Suez Canal has been cut through—a
canal, by the way, of little use to a ship such as the Nautilus!”

“Surely, but of great use to the world at large,” Captain Nemo
said. “The ancients well understood the usefulness to commerce of
connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, but they never dreamed
of cutting a canal between the two, and instead they picked the Nile
as their link. If we can trust tradition, it was probably Egypt’s King
Sesostris who started digging the canal needed to join the Nile with
the Red Sea. What’s certain is that in 615 B.C. King Necho II was hard
at work on a canal that was fed by Nile water and ran through the
Egyptian plains opposite Arabia. This canal could be traveled in four
days, and it was so wide, two triple-tiered galleys could pass through
it abreast. Its construction was continued by Darius the Great, son of
Hystaspes, and probably completed by King Ptolemy II. Strabo saw it
used for shipping; but the weakness of its slope between its starting
point, near Bubastis, and the Red Sea left it navigable only a few
months out of the year. This canal served commerce until the century
of Rome’s Antonine emperors; it was then abandoned and covered with
sand, subsequently reinstated by Arabia’s Caliph Omar I, and finally
filled in for good in 761 or 762 A.D. by Caliph Al-Mansur, in an
effort to prevent supplies from reaching Mohammed ibn Abdullah, who
had rebelled against him. During his Egyptian campaign, your General
Napoleon Bonaparte discovered traces of this old canal in the Suez
desert, and when the tide caught him by surprise, he wellnigh perished
just a few hours before rejoining his regiment at Hadjaroth, the very
place where Moses had pitched camp 3,300 years before him.”

“Well, captain, what the ancients hesitated to undertake, Mr. de
Lesseps is now finishing up; his joining of these two seas will
shorten the route from Cadiz to the East Indies by 9,000 kilometers,
and he’ll soon change Africa into an immense island.”

“Yes, Professor Aronnax, and you have every right to be proud of your
fellow countryman. Such a man brings a nation more honor than the
greatest commanders! Like so many others, he began with difficulties
and setbacks, but he triumphed because he has the volunteer
spirit. And it’s sad to think that this deed, which should have been
an international deed, which would have insured that any
administration went down in history, will succeed only through the
efforts of one man. So all hail to Mr. de Lesseps!”

“Yes, all hail to that great French citizen,” I replied, quite
startled by how emphatically Captain Nemo had just spoken.

“Unfortunately,” he went on, “I can’t take you through that Suez
Canal, but the day after tomorrow, you’ll be able to see the long
jetties of Port Said when we’re in the Mediterranean.”

“In the Mediterranean!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, professor. Does that amaze you?”

“What amazes me is thinking we’ll be there the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, captain, although since I’ve been aboard your vessel, I should
have formed the habit of not being amazed by anything!”

“But what is it that startles you?”

“The thought of how hideously fast the Nautilus will need to go, if
it’s to double the Cape of Good Hope, circle around Africa, and lie in
the open Mediterranean by the day after tomorrow.”

“And who says it will circle Africa, professor? What’s this talk about
doubling the Cape of Good Hope?”

“But unless the Nautilus navigates on dry land and crosses over the
isthmus—”

“Or under it, Professor Aronnax.”

“Under it?”

“Surely,” Captain Nemo replied serenely. “Under that tongue of land,
nature long ago made what man today is making on its surface.”

“What! There’s a passageway?”

“Yes, an underground passageway that I’ve named the Arabian Tunnel. It
starts below Suez and leads to the Bay of Pelusium.”

“But isn’t that isthmus only composed of quicksand?”

“To a certain depth. But at merely fifty meters, one encounters a firm
foundation of rock.”

“And it’s by luck that you discovered this passageway?” I asked, more
and more startled.

“Luck plus logic, professor, and logic even more than luck.”

“Captain, I hear you, but I can’t believe my ears.”

“Oh, sir! The old saying still holds good: Aures habent et non
audient!* Not only does this passageway exist, but I’ve taken
advantage of it on several occasions. Without it, I wouldn’t have
ventured today into such a blind alley as the Red Sea.”

*Latin: “They have ears but hear not.” Ed.

“Is it indiscreet to ask how you discovered this tunnel?”

“Sir,” the captain answered me, “there can be no secrets between men
who will never leave each other.”

I ignored this innuendo and waited for Captain Nemo’s explanation.

“Professor,” he told me, “the simple logic of the naturalist led me to
discover this passageway, and I alone am familiar with it. I’d noted
that in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean there exist a number of
absolutely identical species of fish: eels, butterfish, greenfish,
bass, jewelfish, flying fish. Certain of this fact, I wondered if
there weren’t a connection between the two seas. If there were, its
underground current had to go from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean
simply because of their difference in level. So I caught a large
number of fish in the vicinity of Suez. I slipped copper rings around
their tails and tossed them back into the sea. A few months later off
the coast of Syria, I recaptured a few specimens of my fish, adorned
with their telltale rings. So this proved to me that some connection
existed between the two seas. I searched for it with my Nautilus, I
discovered it, I ventured into it; and soon, professor, you also will
have cleared my Arabic tunnel!”


CHAPTER 5

Arabian Tunnel


THE SAME DAY, I reported to Conseil and Ned Land that part of the
foregoing conversation directly concerning them. When I told them we
would be lying in Mediterranean waters within two days, Conseil
clapped his hands, but the Canadian shrugged his shoulders.

“An underwater tunnel!” he exclaimed. “A connection between two seas!
Who ever heard of such malarkey!”

“Ned my friend,” Conseil replied, “had you ever heard of the Nautilus?
No, yet here it is! So don’t shrug your shoulders so blithely, and
don’t discount something with the feeble excuse that you’ve never
heard of it.”

“We’ll soon see!” Ned Land shot back, shaking his head. “After all,
I’d like nothing better than to believe in your captain’s little
passageway, and may Heaven grant it really does take us to the
Mediterranean.”

The same evening, at latitude 21 degrees 30’ north, the Nautilus was
afloat on the surface of the sea and drawing nearer to the Arab
coast. I spotted Jidda, an important financial center for Egypt,
Syria, Turkey, and the East Indies. I could distinguish with
reasonable clarity the overall effect of its buildings, the ships made
fast along its wharves, and those bigger vessels whose draft of water
required them to drop anchor at the port’s offshore mooring. The sun,
fairly low on the horizon, struck full force on the houses in this
town, accenting their whiteness. Outside the city limits, some wood or
reed huts indicated the quarter where the bedouins lived.

Soon Jidda faded into the shadows of evening, and the Nautilus went
back beneath the mildly phosphorescent waters.

The next day, February 10, several ships appeared, running on our
opposite tack. The Nautilus resumed its underwater navigating; but at
the moment of our noon sights, the sea was deserted and the ship rose
again to its waterline.

With Ned and Conseil, I went to sit on the platform. The coast to the
east looked like a slightly blurred mass in a damp fog.

Leaning against the sides of the skiff, we were chatting of one thing
and another, when Ned Land stretched his hand toward a point in the
water, saying to me:

“See anything out there, professor?”

“No, Ned,” I replied, “but you know I don’t have your eyes.”

“Take a good look,” Ned went on. “There, ahead to starboard, almost
level with the beacon! Don’t you see a mass that seems to be moving
around?”

“Right,” I said after observing carefully, “I can make out something
like a long, blackish object on the surface of the water.”

“A second Nautilus?” Conseil said.

“No,” the Canadian replied, “unless I’m badly mistaken, that’s some
marine animal.”

“Are there whales in the Red Sea?” Conseil asked.

“Yes, my boy,” I replied, “they’re sometimes found here.”

“That’s no whale,” continued Ned Land, whose eyes never strayed from
the object they had sighted. “We’re old chums, whales and I, and I
couldn’t mistake their little ways.”

“Let’s wait and see,” Conseil said. “The Nautilus is heading that
direction, and we’ll soon know what we’re in for.”

In fact, that blackish object was soon only a mile away from us. It
looked like a huge reef stranded in midocean. What was it? I still
couldn’t make up my mind.

“Oh, it’s moving off! It’s diving!” Ned Land exclaimed. “Damnation!
What can that animal be? It doesn’t have a forked tail like baleen
whales or sperm whales, and its fins look like sawed-off limbs.”

“But in that case—” I put in.

“Good lord,” the Canadian went on, “it’s rolled over on its back, and
it’s raising its breasts in the air!”

“It’s a siren!” Conseil exclaimed. “With all due respect to master,
it’s an actual mermaid!”

That word “siren” put me back on track, and I realized that the animal
belonged to the order Sirenia: marine creatures that legends have
turned into mermaids, half woman, half fish.

“No,” I told Conseil, “that’s no mermaid, it’s an unusual creature of
which only a few specimens are left in the Red Sea. That’s a dugong.”

“Order Sirenia, group Pisciforma, subclass Monodelphia, class
Mammalia, branch Vertebrata,” Conseil replied.

And when Conseil has spoken, there’s nothing else to be said.

Meanwhile Ned Land kept staring. His eyes were gleaming with desire at
the sight of that animal. His hands were ready to hurl a harpoon. You
would have thought he was waiting for the right moment to jump
overboard and attack the creature in its own element.

“Oh, sir,” he told me in a voice trembling with excitement, “I’ve
never killed anything like that!”

His whole being was concentrated in this last word.

Just then Captain Nemo appeared on the platform. He spotted the
dugong. He understood the Canadian’s frame of mind and addressed him
directly:

“If you held a harpoon, Mr. Land, wouldn’t your hands be itching to
put it to work?”

“Positively, sir.”

“And just for one day, would it displease you to return to your
fisherman’s trade and add this cetacean to the list of those you’ve
already hunted down?”

“It wouldn’t displease me one bit.”

“All right, you can try your luck!”

“Thank you, sir,” Ned Land replied, his eyes ablaze.

“Only,” the captain went on, “I urge you to aim carefully at this
animal, in your own personal interest.”

“Is the dugong dangerous to attack?” I asked, despite the Canadian’s
shrug of the shoulders.

“Yes, sometimes,” the captain replied. “These animals have been known
to turn on their assailants and capsize their longboats. But with
Mr. Land that danger isn’t to be feared. His eye is sharp, his arm is
sure. If I recommend that he aim carefully at this dugong, it’s
because the animal is justly regarded as fine game, and I know
Mr. Land doesn’t despise a choice morsel.”

“Aha!” the Canadian put in. “This beast offers the added luxury of
being good to eat?”

“Yes, Mr. Land. Its flesh is actual red meat, highly prized, and set
aside throughout Malaysia for the tables of aristocrats. Accordingly,
this excellent animal has been hunted so bloodthirstily that, like its
manatee relatives, it has become more and more scarce.”

“In that case, captain,” Conseil said in all seriousness, “on the
offchance that this creature might be the last of its line, wouldn’t
it be advisable to spare its life, in the interests of science?”

“Maybe,” the Canadian answered, “it would be better to hunt it down,
in the interests of mealtime.”

“Then proceed, Mr. Land,” Captain Nemo replied.

Just then, as mute and emotionless as ever, seven crewmen climbed onto
the platform. One carried a harpoon and line similar to those used in
whale fishing. Its deck paneling opened, the skiff was wrenched from
its socket and launched to sea. Six rowers sat on the thwarts, and the
coxswain took the tiller. Ned, Conseil, and I found seats in the
stern.

“Aren’t you coming, captain?” I asked.

“No, sir, but I wish you happy hunting.”

The skiff pulled clear, and carried off by its six oars, it headed
swiftly toward the dugong, which by then was floating two miles from
the Nautilus.

Arriving within a few cable lengths of the cetacean, our longboat
slowed down, and the sculls dipped noiselessly into the tranquil
waters. Harpoon in hand, Ned Land went to take his stand in the
skiff’s bow. Harpoons used for hunting whales are usually attached to
a very long rope that pays out quickly when the wounded animal drags
it with him. But this rope measured no more than about ten fathoms,
and its end had simply been fastened to a small barrel that, while
floating, would indicate the dugong’s movements beneath the waters.

I stood up and could clearly observe the Canadian’s adversary. This
dugong—which also boasts the name halicore—closely resembled a
manatee. Its oblong body ended in a very long caudal fin and its
lateral fins in actual fingers. It differs from the manatee in that
its upper jaw is armed with two long, pointed teeth that form
diverging tusks on either side.

This dugong that Ned Land was preparing to attack was of colossal
dimensions, easily exceeding seven meters in length. It didn’t stir
and seemed to be sleeping on the surface of the waves, a circumstance
that should have made it easier to capture.

The skiff approached cautiously to within three fathoms of the
animal. The oars hung suspended above their rowlocks. I was
crouching. His body leaning slightly back, Ned Land brandished his
harpoon with expert hands.

Suddenly a hissing sound was audible, and the dugong
disappeared. Although the harpoon had been forcefully hurled, it
apparently had hit only water.

“Damnation!” exclaimed the furious Canadian. “I missed it!”

“No,” I said, “the animal’s wounded, there’s its blood; but your
weapon didn’t stick in its body.”

“My harpoon! Get my harpoon!” Ned Land exclaimed.

The sailors went back to their sculling, and the coxswain steered the
longboat toward the floating barrel. We fished up the harpoon, and the
skiff started off in pursuit of the animal.

The latter returned from time to time to breathe at the surface of the
sea. Its wound hadn’t weakened it because it went with tremendous
speed. Driven by energetic arms, the longboat flew on its
trail. Several times we got within a few fathoms of it, and the
Canadian hovered in readiness to strike; but then the dugong would
steal away with a sudden dive, and it proved impossible to overtake
the beast.

I’ll let you assess the degree of anger consuming our impatient Ned
Land. He hurled at the hapless animal the most potent swearwords in
the English language. For my part, I was simply distressed to see this
dugong outwit our every scheme.

We chased it unflaggingly for a full hour, and I’d begun to think it
would prove too difficult to capture, when the animal got the untimely
idea of taking revenge on us, a notion it would soon have cause to
regret. It wheeled on the skiff, to assault us in its turn.

This maneuver did not escape the Canadian.

“Watch out!” he said.

The coxswain pronounced a few words in his bizarre language, and no
doubt he alerted his men to keep on their guard.

Arriving within twenty feet of the skiff, the dugong stopped, sharply
sniffing the air with its huge nostrils, pierced not at the tip of its
muzzle but on its topside. Then it gathered itself and sprang at us.

The skiff couldn’t avoid the collision. Half overturned, it shipped a
ton or two of water that we had to bail out. But thanks to our
skillful coxswain, we were fouled on the bias rather than broadside,
so we didn’t capsize. Clinging to the stempost, Ned Land thrust his
harpoon again and again into the gigantic animal, which imbedded its
teeth in our gunwale and lifted the longboat out of the water as a
lion would lift a deer. We were thrown on top of each other, and I
have no idea how the venture would have ended had not the Canadian,
still thirsting for the beast’s blood, finally pierced it to the
heart.

I heard its teeth grind on sheet iron, and the dugong disappeared,
taking our harpoon along with it. But the barrel soon popped up on the
surface, and a few moments later the animal’s body appeared and rolled
over on its back. Our skiff rejoined it, took it in tow, and headed to
the Nautilus.

It took pulleys of great strength to hoist this dugong onto the
platform. The beast weighed 5,000 kilograms. It was carved up in sight
of the Canadian, who remained to watch every detail of the
operation. At dinner the same day, my steward served me some slices of
this flesh, skillfully dressed by the ship’s cook. I found it
excellent, even better than veal if not beef.

The next morning, February 11, the Nautilus’s pantry was enriched by
more dainty game. A covey of terns alighted on the Nautilus. They were
a species of Sterna nilotica unique to Egypt: beak black, head gray
and stippled, eyes surrounded by white dots, back, wings, and tail
grayish, belly and throat white, feet red. Also caught were a couple
dozen Nile duck, superior-tasting wildfowl whose neck and crown of the
head are white speckled with black.

By then the Nautilus had reduced speed. It moved ahead at a saunter,
so to speak. I observed that the Red Sea’s water was becoming less
salty the closer we got to Suez.

Near five o’clock in the afternoon, we sighted Cape Ras Mohammed to
the north. This cape forms the tip of Arabia Petraea, which lies
between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba.

The Nautilus entered the Strait of Jubal, which leads to the Gulf of
Suez. I could clearly make out a high mountain crowning Ras Mohammed
between the two gulfs. It was Mt. Horeb, that biblical Mt. Sinai on
whose summit Moses met God face to face, that summit the mind’s eye
always pictures as wreathed in lightning.

At six o’clock, sometimes afloat and sometimes submerged, the Nautilus
passed well out from El Tur, which sat at the far end of a bay whose
waters seemed to be dyed red, as Captain Nemo had already
mentioned. Then night fell in the midst of a heavy silence
occasionally broken by the calls of pelicans and nocturnal birds, by
the sound of surf chafing against rocks, or by the distant moan of a
steamer churning the waves of the gulf with noisy blades.

From eight to nine o’clock, the Nautilus stayed a few meters beneath
the waters. According to my calculations, we had to be quite close to
Suez. Through the panels in the lounge, I spotted rocky bottoms
brightly lit by our electric rays. It seemed to me that the strait was
getting narrower and narrower.

At 9:15 when our boat returned to the surface, I climbed onto the
platform. I was quite impatient to clear Captain Nemo’s tunnel,
couldn’t sit still, and wanted to breathe the fresh night air.

Soon, in the shadows, I spotted a pale signal light glimmering a mile
away, half discolored by mist.

“A floating lighthouse,” said someone next to me.

I turned and discovered the captain.

“That’s the floating signal light of Suez,” he went on. “It won’t be
long before we reach the entrance to the tunnel.”

“It can’t be very easy to enter it.”

“No, sir. Accordingly, I’m in the habit of staying in the pilothouse
and directing maneuvers myself. And now if you’ll kindly go below,
Professor Aronnax, the Nautilus is about to sink beneath the waves,
and it will only return to the surface after we’ve cleared the Arabian
Tunnel.”

I followed Captain Nemo. The hatch closed, the ballast tanks filled
with water, and the submersible sank some ten meters down.

Just as I was about to repair to my stateroom, the captain stopped me.

“Professor,” he said to me, “would you like to go with me to the
wheelhouse?”

“I was afraid to ask,” I replied.

“Come along, then. This way, you’ll learn the full story about this
combination underwater and underground navigating.”

Captain Nemo led me to the central companionway. In midstair he opened
a door, went along the upper gangways, and arrived at the wheelhouse,
which, as you know, stands at one end of the platform.

It was a cabin measuring six feet square and closely resembling those
occupied by the helmsmen of steamboats on the Mississippi or Hudson
rivers. In the center stood an upright wheel geared to rudder cables
running to the Nautilus’s stern. Set in the cabin’s walls were four
deadlights, windows of biconvex glass that enabled the man at the helm
to see in every direction.

The cabin was dark; but my eyes soon grew accustomed to its darkness
and I saw the pilot, a muscular man whose hands rested on the pegs of
the wheel. Outside, the sea was brightly lit by the beacon shining
behind the cabin at the other end of the platform.

“Now,” Captain Nemo said, “let’s look for our passageway.”

Electric wires linked the pilothouse with the engine room, and from
this cabin the captain could simultaneously signal heading and speed
to his Nautilus. He pressed a metal button and at once the propeller
slowed down significantly.

I stared in silence at the high, sheer wall we were skirting just
then, the firm base of the sandy mountains on the coast. For an hour
we went along it in this fashion, staying only a few meters
away. Captain Nemo never took his eyes off the two concentric circles
of the compass hanging in the cabin. At a mere gesture from him, the
helmsman would instantly change the Nautilus’s heading.

Standing by the port deadlight, I spotted magnificent coral
substructures, zoophytes, algae, and crustaceans with enormous
quivering claws that stretched forth from crevices in the rock.

At 10:15 Captain Nemo himself took the helm. Dark and deep, a wide
gallery opened ahead of us. The Nautilus was brazenly swallowed
up. Strange rumblings were audible along our sides. It was the water
of the Red Sea, hurled toward the Mediterranean by the tunnel’s
slope. Our engines tried to offer resistance by churning the waves
with propeller in reverse, but the Nautilus went with the torrent, as
swift as an arrow.

Along the narrow walls of this passageway, I saw only brilliant
streaks, hard lines, fiery furrows, all scrawled by our speeding
electric light. With my hand I tried to curb the pounding of my heart.

At 10:35 Captain Nemo left the steering wheel and turned to me:

“The Mediterranean,” he told me.

In less than twenty minutes, swept along by the torrent, the Nautilus
had just cleared the Isthmus of Suez.


CHAPTER 6

The Greek Islands


AT SUNRISE the next morning, February 12, the Nautilus rose to the
surface of the waves.

I rushed onto the platform. The hazy silhouette of Pelusium was
outlined three miles to the south. A torrent had carried us from one
sea to the other. But although that tunnel was easy to descend, going
back up must have been impossible.

Near seven o’clock Ned and Conseil joined me. Those two inseparable
companions had slept serenely, utterly unaware of the Nautilus’s feat.

“Well, Mr. Naturalist,” the Canadian asked in a gently mocking tone,
“and how about that Mediterranean?”

“We’re floating on its surface, Ned my friend.”

“What!” Conseil put in. “Last night . . . ?”

“Yes, last night, in a matter of minutes, we cleared that insuperable
isthmus.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” the Canadian replied.

“And you’re in the wrong, Mr. Land,” I went on. “That flat coastline
curving southward is the coast of Egypt.”

“Tell it to the marines, sir,” answered the stubborn Canadian.

“But if master says so,” Conseil told him, “then so be it.”

“What’s more, Ned,” I said, “Captain Nemo himself did the honors in
his tunnel, and I stood beside him in the pilothouse while he steered
the Nautilus through that narrow passageway.”

“You hear, Ned?” Conseil said.

“And you, Ned, who have such good eyes,” I added, “you can spot the
jetties of Port Said stretching out to sea.”

The Canadian looked carefully.

“Correct,” he said. “You’re right, professor, and your captain’s a
superman. We’re in the Mediterranean. Fine. So now let’s have a chat
about our little doings, if you please, but in such a way that nobody
overhears.”

I could easily see what the Canadian was driving at. In any event, I
thought it best to let him have his chat, and we all three went to sit
next to the beacon, where we were less exposed to the damp spray from
the billows.

“Now, Ned, we’re all ears,” I said. “What have you to tell us?”

“What I’ve got to tell you is very simple,” the Canadian
replied. “We’re in Europe, and before Captain Nemo’s whims take us
deep into the polar seas or back to Oceania, I say we should leave
this Nautilus.”

I confess that such discussions with the Canadian always baffled me. I
didn’t want to restrict my companions’ freedom in any way, and yet I
had no desire to leave Captain Nemo. Thanks to him and his
submersible, I was finishing my undersea research by the day, and I
was rewriting my book on the great ocean depths in the midst of its
very element. Would I ever again have such an opportunity to observe
the ocean’s wonders? Absolutely not! So I couldn’t entertain this idea
of leaving the Nautilus before completing our course of inquiry.

“Ned my friend,” I said, “answer me honestly. Are you bored with this
ship? Are you sorry that fate has cast you into Captain Nemo’s hands?”

The Canadian paused for a short while before replying. Then, crossing
his arms:

“Honestly,” he said, “I’m not sorry about this voyage under the
seas. I’ll be glad to have done it, but in order to have done it, it
has to finish. That’s my feeling.”

“It will finish, Ned.”

“Where and when?”

“Where? I don’t know. When? I can’t say. Or, rather, I suppose it will
be over when these seas have nothing more to teach us. Everything that
begins in this world must inevitably come to an end.”

“I think as master does,” Conseil replied, “and it’s extremely
possible that after crossing every sea on the globe, Captain Nemo will
bid the three of us a fond farewell.”

“Bid us a fond farewell?” the Canadian exclaimed. “You mean beat us to
a fare-thee-well!”

“Let’s not exaggerate, Mr. Land,” I went on. “We have nothing to fear
from the captain, but neither do I share Conseil’s views. We’re privy
to the Nautilus’s secrets, and I don’t expect that its commander, just
to set us free, will meekly stand by while we spread those secrets all
over the world.”

“But in that case what do you expect?” the Canadian asked.

“That we’ll encounter advantageous conditions for escaping just as
readily in six months as now.”

“Great Scott!” Ned Land put in. “And where, if you please, will we be
in six months, Mr. Naturalist?”

“Perhaps here, perhaps in China. You know how quickly the Nautilus
moves. It crosses oceans like swallows cross the air or express trains
continents. It doesn’t fear heavily traveled seas. Who can say it
won’t hug the coasts of France, England, or America, where an escape
attempt could be carried out just as effectively as here.”

“Professor Aronnax,” the Canadian replied, “your arguments are rotten
to the core. You talk way off in the future: ‘We’ll be here, we’ll be
there!’ Me, I’m talking about right now: we are here, and we must take
advantage of it!”

I was hard pressed by Ned Land’s common sense, and I felt myself
losing ground. I no longer knew what arguments to put forward on my
behalf.

“Sir,” Ned went on, “let’s suppose that by some impossibility, Captain
Nemo offered your freedom to you this very day. Would you accept?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“And suppose he adds that this offer he’s making you today won’t ever
be repeated, then would you accept?”

I did not reply.

“And what thinks our friend Conseil?” Ned Land asked.

“Your friend Conseil,” the fine lad replied serenely, “has nothing to
say for himself. He’s a completely disinterested party on this
question. Like his master, like his comrade Ned, he’s a
bachelor. Neither wife, parents, nor children are waiting for him back
home. He’s in master’s employ, he thinks like master, he speaks like
master, and much to his regret, he can’t be counted on to form a
majority. Only two persons face each other here: master on one side,
Ned Land on the other. That said, your friend Conseil is listening,
and he’s ready to keep score.”

I couldn’t help smiling as Conseil wiped himself out of
existence. Deep down, the Canadian must have been overjoyed at not
having to contend with him.

“Then, sir,” Ned Land said, “since Conseil is no more, we’ll have this
discussion between just the two of us. I’ve talked, you’ve
listened. What’s your reply?”

It was obvious that the matter had to be settled, and evasions were
distasteful to me.

“Ned my friend,” I said, “here’s my reply. You have right on your side
and my arguments can’t stand up to yours. It will never do to count on
Captain Nemo’s benevolence. The most ordinary good sense would forbid
him to set us free. On the other hand, good sense decrees that we take
advantage of our first opportunity to leave the Nautilus.”

“Fine, Professor Aronnax, that’s wisely said.”

“But one proviso,” I said, “just one. The opportunity must be the real
thing. Our first attempt to escape must succeed, because if it
misfires, we won’t get a second chance, and Captain Nemo will never
forgive us.”

“That’s also well put,” the Canadian replied. “But your proviso
applies to any escape attempt, whether it happens in two years or two
days. So this is still the question: if a promising opportunity comes
up, we have to grab it.”

“Agreed. And now, Ned, will you tell me what you mean by a promising
opportunity?”

“One that leads the Nautilus on a cloudy night within a short distance
of some European coast.”

“And you’ll try to get away by swimming?”

“Yes, if we’re close enough to shore and the ship’s afloat on the
surface. No, if we’re well out and the ship’s navigating under the
waters.”

“And in that event?”

“In that event I’ll try to get hold of the skiff. I know how to handle
it. We’ll stick ourselves inside, undo the bolts, and rise to the
surface, without the helmsman in the bow seeing a thing.”

“Fine, Ned. Stay on the lookout for such an opportunity, but don’t
forget, one slipup will finish us.”

“I won’t forget, sir.”

“And now, Ned, would you like to know my overall thinking on your
plan?”

“Gladly, Professor Aronnax.”

“Well then, I think—and I don’t mean ‘I hope’—that your promising
opportunity won’t ever arise.”

“Why not?”

“Because Captain Nemo recognizes that we haven’t given up all hope of
recovering our freedom, and he’ll keep on his guard, above all in seas
within sight of the coasts of Europe.”

“I’m of master’s opinion,” Conseil said.

“We’ll soon see,” Ned Land replied, shaking his head with a determined
expression.

“And now, Ned Land,” I added, “let’s leave it at that. Not another
word on any of this. The day you’re ready, alert us and we’re with
you. I turn it all over to you.”

That’s how we ended this conversation, which later was to have such
serious consequences. At first, I must say, events seemed to confirm
my forecasts, much to the Canadian’s despair. Did Captain Nemo view us
with distrust in these heavily traveled seas, or did he simply want to
hide from the sight of those ships of every nation that plowed the
Mediterranean? I have no idea, but usually he stayed in midwater and
well out from any coast. Either the Nautilus surfaced only enough to
let its pilothouse emerge, or it slipped away to the lower depths,
although, between the Greek Islands and Asia Minor, we didn’t find
bottom even at 2,000 meters down.

Accordingly, I became aware of the isle of Karpathos, one of the
Sporades Islands, only when Captain Nemo placed his finger over a spot
on the world map and quoted me this verse from Virgil:

Est in Carpathio Neptuni gurgite vates

Caeruleus Proteus . . .*

*Latin: “There in King Neptune’s domain by Karpathos, his spokesman /
 is azure-hued Proteus . . . ” Ed.

It was indeed that bygone abode of Proteus, the old shepherd of King
Neptune’s flocks: an island located between Rhodes and Crete, which
Greeks now call Karpathos, Italians Scarpanto. Through the lounge
window I could see only its granite bedrock.

The next day, February 14, I decided to spend a few hours studying the
fish of this island group; but for whatever reason, the panels
remained hermetically sealed. After determining the Nautilus’s
heading, I noted that it was proceeding toward the ancient island of
Crete, also called Candia. At the time I had shipped aboard the
Abraham Lincoln, this whole island was in rebellion against its
tyrannical rulers, the Ottoman Empire of Turkey. But since then I had
absolutely no idea what happened to this revolution, and Captain Nemo,
deprived of all contact with the shore, was hardly the man to keep me
informed.

So I didn’t allude to this event when, that evening, I chanced to be
alone with the captain in the lounge. Besides, he seemed silent and
preoccupied. Then, contrary to custom, he ordered that both panels in
the lounge be opened, and going from the one to the other, he
carefully observed the watery mass. For what purpose? I hadn’t a
guess, and for my part, I spent my time studying the fish that passed
before my eyes.

Among others I noted that sand goby mentioned by Aristotle and
commonly known by the name sea loach, which is encountered exclusively
in the salty waters next to the Nile Delta. Near them some
semiphosphorescent red porgy rolled by, a variety of gilthead that the
Egyptians ranked among their sacred animals, lauding them in religious
ceremonies when their arrival in the river’s waters announced the
fertile flood season. I also noticed some wrasse known as the tapiro,
three decimeters long, bony fish with transparent scales whose bluish
gray color is mixed with red spots; they’re enthusiastic eaters of
marine vegetables, which gives them an exquisite flavor; hence these
tapiro were much in demand by the epicures of ancient Rome, and their
entrails were dressed with brains of peacock, tongue of flamingo, and
testes of moray to make that divine platter that so enraptured the
Roman emperor Vitellius.

Another resident of these seas caught my attention and revived all my
memories of antiquity. This was the remora, which travels attached to
the bellies of sharks; as the ancients tell it, when these little fish
cling to the undersides of a ship, they can bring it to a halt, and by
so impeding

Mark Antony’s vessel during the Battle of Actium, one of them
facilitated the victory of Augustus Caesar. From such slender threads
hang the destinies of nations! I also observed some wonderful snappers
belonging to the order Lutianida, sacred fish for the Greeks, who
claimed they could drive off sea monsters from the waters they
frequent; their Greek name anthias means “flower,” and they live up to
it in the play of their colors and in those fleeting reflections that
turn their dorsal fins into watered silk; their hues are confined to a
gamut of reds, from the pallor of pink to the glow of ruby. I couldn’t
take my eyes off these marine wonders, when I was suddenly jolted by
an unexpected apparition.

In the midst of the waters, a man appeared, a diver carrying a little
leather bag at his belt. It was no corpse lost in the waves. It was a
living man, swimming vigorously, sometimes disappearing to breathe at
the surface, then instantly diving again.

I turned to Captain Nemo, and in an agitated voice:

“A man! A castaway!” I exclaimed. “We must rescue him at all cost!”

The captain didn’t reply but went to lean against the window.

The man drew near, and gluing his face to the panel, he stared at us.

To my deep astonishment, Captain Nemo gave him a signal. The diver
answered with his hand, immediately swam up to the surface of the sea,
and didn’t reappear.

“Don’t be alarmed,” the captain told me. “That’s Nicolas from Cape
Matapan, nicknamed ‘Il Pesce.’* He’s well known throughout the
Cyclades Islands. A bold diver! Water is his true element, and he
lives in the sea more than on shore, going constantly from one island
to another, even to Crete.”

*Italian: “The Fish.” Ed.

“You know him, captain?”

“Why not, Professor Aronnax?”

This said, Captain Nemo went to a cabinet standing near the lounge’s
left panel. Next to this cabinet I saw a chest bound with hoops of
iron, its lid bearing a copper plaque that displayed the Nautilus’s
monogram with its motto Mobilis in Mobili.

Just then, ignoring my presence, the captain opened this cabinet, a
sort of safe that contained a large number of ingots.

They were gold ingots. And they represented an enormous sum of
money. Where had this precious metal come from? How had the captain
amassed this gold, and what was he about to do with it?

I didn’t pronounce a word. I gaped. Captain Nemo took out the ingots
one by one and arranged them methodically inside the chest, filling it
to the top. At which point I estimate that it held more than 1,000
kilograms of gold, in other words, close to 5,000,000 francs.

After securely fastening the chest, Captain Nemo wrote an address on
its lid in characters that must have been modern Greek.

This done, the captain pressed a button whose wiring was in
communication with the crew’s quarters. Four men appeared and, not
without difficulty, pushed the chest out of the lounge. Then I heard
them hoist it up the iron companionway by means of pulleys.

Just then Captain Nemo turned to me:

“You were saying, professor?” he asked me.

“I wasn’t saying a thing, captain.”

“Then, sir, with your permission, I’ll bid you good evening.”

And with that, Captain Nemo left the lounge.

I reentered my stateroom, very puzzled, as you can imagine. I tried in
vain to fall asleep. I kept searching for a relationship between the
appearance of the diver and that chest filled with gold. Soon, from
certain rolling and pitching movements, I sensed that the Nautilus had
left the lower strata and was back on the surface of the water.

Then I heard the sound of footsteps on the platform. I realized that
the skiff was being detached and launched to sea. For an instant it
bumped the Nautilus’s side, then all sounds ceased.

Two hours later, the same noises, the same comings and goings, were
repeated. Hoisted on board, the longboat was readjusted into its
socket, and the Nautilus plunged back beneath the waves.

So those millions had been delivered to their address. At what spot on
the continent? Who was the recipient of Captain Nemo’s gold?

The next day I related the night’s events to Conseil and the Canadian,
events that had aroused my curiosity to a fever pitch. My companions
were as startled as I was.

“But where does he get those millions?” Ned Land asked.

To this no reply was possible. After breakfast I made my way to the
lounge and went about my work. I wrote up my notes until five o’clock
in the afternoon. Just then—was it due to some personal
indisposition?—I felt extremely hot and had to take off my jacket made
of fan mussel fabric. A perplexing circumstance because we weren’t in
the low latitudes, and besides, once the Nautilus was submerged, it
shouldn’t be subject to any rise in temperature. I looked at the
pressure gauge. It marked a depth of sixty feet, a depth beyond the
reach of atmospheric heat.

I kept on working, but the temperature rose to the point of becoming
unbearable.

“Could there be a fire on board?” I wondered.

I was about to leave the lounge when Captain Nemo entered. He
approached the thermometer, consulted it, and turned to me:

“42 degrees centigrade,” he said.

“I’ve detected as much, captain,” I replied, “and if it gets even
slightly hotter, we won’t be able to stand it.”

“Oh, professor, it won’t get any hotter unless we want it to!”

“You mean you can control this heat?”

“No, but I can back away from the fireplace producing it.”

“So it’s outside?”

“Surely. We’re cruising in a current of boiling water.”

“It can’t be!” I exclaimed.

“Look.”

The panels had opened, and I could see a completely white sea around
the Nautilus. Steaming sulfurous fumes uncoiled in the midst of waves
bubbling like water in a boiler. I leaned my hand against one of the
windows, but the heat was so great, I had to snatch it back.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Near the island of Santorini, professor,” the captain answered me,
“and right in the channel that separates the volcanic islets of Nea
Kameni and Palea Kameni. I wanted to offer you the unusual sight of an
underwater eruption.”

“I thought,” I said, “that the formation of such new islands had come
to an end.”

“Nothing ever comes to an end in these volcanic waterways,” Captain
Nemo replied, “and thanks to its underground fires, our globe is
continuously under construction in these regions. According to the
Latin historians Cassiodorus and Pliny, by the year 19 of the
Christian era, a new island, the divine Thera, had already appeared in
the very place these islets have more recently formed. Then Thera sank
under the waves, only to rise and sink once more in the year 69
A.D. From that day to this, such plutonic construction work has been
in abeyance. But on February 3, 1866, a new islet named George Island
emerged in the midst of sulfurous steam near Nea Kameni and was fused
to it on the 6th of the same month. Seven days later, on February 13,
the islet of Aphroessa appeared, leaving a ten-meter channel between
itself and Nea Kameni. I was in these seas when that phenomenon
occurred and I was able to observe its every phase. The islet of
Aphroessa was circular in shape, measuring 300 feet in diameter and
thirty feet in height. It was made of black, glassy lava mixed with
bits of feldspar. Finally, on March 10, a smaller islet called Reka
appeared next to Nea Kameni, and since then, these three islets have
fused to form one single, selfsame island.”

“What about this channel we’re in right now?” I asked.

“Here it is,” Captain Nemo replied, showing me a chart of the Greek
Islands. “You observe that I’ve entered the new islets in their
place.”

“But will this channel fill up one day?”

“Very likely, Professor Aronnax, because since 1866 eight little lava
islets have surged up in front of the port of St. Nicolas on Palea
Kameni. So it’s obvious that Nea and Palea will join in days to
come. In the middle of the Pacific, tiny infusoria build continents,
but here they’re built by volcanic phenomena. Look, sir! Look at the
construction work going on under these waves.”

I returned to the window. The Nautilus was no longer moving. The heat
had become unbearable. From the white it had recently been, the sea
was turning red, a coloration caused by the presence of iron
salts. Although the lounge was hermetically sealed, it was filling
with an intolerable stink of sulfur, and I could see scarlet flames of
such brightness, they overpowered our electric light.

I was swimming in perspiration, I was stifling, I was about to be
cooked. Yes, I felt myself cooking in actual fact!

“We can’t stay any longer in this boiling water,” I told the captain.

“No, it wouldn’t be advisable,” replied Nemo the Emotionless.

He gave an order. The Nautilus tacked about and retreated from this
furnace it couldn’t brave with impunity. A quarter of an hour later,
we were breathing fresh air on the surface of the waves.

It then occurred to me that if Ned had chosen these waterways for our
escape attempt, we wouldn’t have come out alive from this sea of fire.

The next day, February 16, we left this basin, which tallies depths of
3,000 meters between Rhodes and Alexandria, and passing well out from
Cerigo Island after doubling Cape Matapan, the Nautilus left the Greek
Islands behind.


CHAPTER 7

The Mediterranean in Forty-Eight Hours


THE MEDITERRANEAN, your ideal blue sea: to Greeks simply “the sea,” to
Hebrews “the great sea,” to Romans mare nostrum.* Bordered by orange
trees, aloes, cactus, and maritime pine trees, perfumed with the scent
of myrtle, framed by rugged mountains, saturated with clean,
transparent air but continuously under construction by fires in the
earth, this sea is a genuine battlefield where Neptune and Pluto still
struggle for world domination. Here on these beaches and waters, says
the French historian Michelet, a man is revived by one of the most
invigorating climates in the world.

*Latin: “our sea.” Ed.

But as beautiful as it was, I could get only a quick look at this
basin whose surface area comprises 2,000,000 square kilometers. Even
Captain Nemo’s personal insights were denied me, because that
mystifying individual didn’t appear one single time during our
high-speed crossing. I estimate that the Nautilus covered a track of
some 600 leagues under the waves of this sea, and this voyage was
accomplished in just twenty-four hours times two. Departing from the
waterways of Greece on the morning of February 16, we cleared the
Strait of Gibraltar by sunrise on the 18th.

It was obvious to me that this Mediterranean, pinned in the middle of
those shores he wanted to avoid, gave Captain Nemo no pleasure. Its
waves and breezes brought back too many memories, if not too many
regrets. Here he no longer had the ease of movement and freedom of
maneuver that the oceans allowed him, and his Nautilus felt cramped so
close to the coasts of both Africa and Europe.

Accordingly, our speed was twenty-five miles (that is, twelve
four-kilometer leagues) per hour. Needless to say, Ned Land had to
give up his escape plans, much to his distress. Swept along at the
rate of twelve to thirteen meters per second, he could hardly make use
of the skiff. Leaving the Nautilus under these conditions would have
been like jumping off a train racing at this speed, a rash move if
there ever was one. Moreover, to renew our air supply, the submersible
rose to the surface of the waves only at night, and relying solely on
compass and log, it steered by dead reckoning.

Inside the Mediterranean, then, I could catch no more of its
fast-passing scenery than a traveler might see from an express train;
in other words, I could view only the distant horizons because the
foregrounds flashed by like lightning. But Conseil and I were able to
observe those Mediterranean fish whose powerful fins kept pace for a
while in the Nautilus’s waters. We stayed on watch before the lounge
windows, and our notes enable me to reconstruct, in a few words, the
ichthyology of this sea.

Among the various fish inhabiting it, some I viewed, others I
glimpsed, and the rest I missed completely because of the Nautilus’s
speed. Kindly allow me to sort them out using this whimsical system of
classification. It will at least convey the quickness of my
observations.

In the midst of the watery mass, brightly lit by our electric beams,
there snaked past those one-meter lampreys that are common to nearly
every clime. A type of ray from the genus Oxyrhynchus, five feet wide,
had a white belly with a spotted, ash-gray back and was carried along
by the currents like a huge, wide-open shawl. Other rays passed by so
quickly I couldn’t tell if they deserved that name “eagle ray” coined
by the ancient Greeks, or those designations of “rat ray,” “bat ray,”
and “toad ray” that modern fishermen have inflicted on them. Dogfish
known as topes, twelve feet long and especially feared by divers, were
racing with each other. Looking like big bluish shadows, thresher
sharks went by, eight feet long and gifted with an extremely acute
sense of smell. Dorados from the genus Sparus, some measuring up to
thirteen decimeters, appeared in silver and azure costumes encircled
with ribbons, which contrasted with the dark color of their fins; fish
sacred to the goddess Venus, their eyes set in brows of gold; a
valuable species that patronizes all waters fresh or salt, equally at
home in rivers, lakes, and oceans, living in every clime, tolerating
any temperature, their line dating back to prehistoric times on this
earth yet preserving all its beauty from those far-off
days. Magnificent sturgeons, nine to ten meters long and extremely
fast, banged their powerful tails against the glass of our panels,
showing bluish backs with small brown spots; they resemble sharks,
without equaling their strength, and are encountered in every sea; in
the spring they delight in swimming up the great rivers, fighting the
currents of the Volga, Danube, Po, Rhine, Loire, and Oder, while
feeding on herring, mackerel, salmon, and codfish; although they
belong to the class of cartilaginous fish, they rate as a delicacy;
they’re eaten fresh, dried, marinated, or salt-preserved, and in olden
times they were borne in triumph to the table of the Roman epicure
Lucullus.

But whenever the Nautilus drew near the surface, those denizens of the
Mediterranean I could observe most productively belonged to the
sixty-third genus of bony fish. These were tuna from the genus
Scomber, blue-black on top, silver on the belly armor, their dorsal
stripes giving off a golden gleam. They are said to follow ships in
search of refreshing shade from the hot tropical sun, and they did
just that with the Nautilus, as they had once done with the vessels of
the Count de La PΘrouse. For long hours they competed in speed with
our submersible. I couldn’t stop marveling at these animals so
perfectly cut out for racing, their heads small, their bodies sleek,
spindle-shaped, and in some cases over three meters long, their
pectoral fins gifted with remarkable strength, their caudal fins
forked. Like certain flocks of birds, whose speed they equal, these
tuna swim in triangle formation, which prompted the ancients to say
they’d boned up on geometry and military strategy. And yet they can’t
escape the Provenτal fishermen, who prize them as highly as did the
ancient inhabitants of Turkey and Italy; and these valuable animals,
as oblivious as if they were deaf and blind, leap right into the
Marseilles tuna nets and perish by the thousands.

Just for the record, I’ll mention those Mediterranean fish that
Conseil and I barely glimpsed. There were whitish eels of the species
Gymnotus fasciatus that passed like elusive wisps of steam, conger
eels three to four meters long that were tricked out in green, blue,
and yellow, three-foot hake with a liver that makes a dainty morsel,
wormfish drifting like thin seaweed, sea robins that poets call
lyrefish and seamen pipers and whose snouts have two jagged triangular
plates shaped like old Homer’s lyre, swallowfish swimming as fast as
the bird they’re named after, redheaded groupers whose dorsal fins are
trimmed with filaments, some shad (spotted with black, gray, brown,
blue, yellow, and green) that actually respond to tinkling handbells,
splendid diamond-shaped turbot that were like aquatic pheasants with
yellowish fins stippled in brown and the left topside mostly marbled
in brown and yellow, finally schools of wonderful red mullet, real
oceanic birds of paradise that ancient Romans bought for as much as
10,000 sesterces apiece, and which they killed at the table, so they
could heartlessly watch it change color from cinnabar red when alive
to pallid white when dead.

And as for other fish common to the Atlantic and Mediterranean, I was
unable to observe miralets, triggerfish, puffers, seahorses,
jewelfish, trumpetfish, blennies, gray mullet, wrasse, smelt, flying
fish, anchovies, sea bream, porgies, garfish, or any of the chief
representatives of the order Pleuronecta, such as sole, flounder,
plaice, dab, and brill, simply because of the dizzying speed with
which the Nautilus hustled through these opulent waters.

As for marine mammals, on passing by the mouth of the Adriatic Sea, I
thought I recognized two or three sperm whales equipped with the
single dorsal fin denoting the genus Physeter, some pilot whales from
the genus Globicephalus exclusive to the Mediterranean, the forepart
of the head striped with small distinct lines, and also a dozen seals
with white bellies and black coats, known by the name monk seals and
just as solemn as if they were three-meter Dominicans.

For his part, Conseil thought he spotted a turtle six feet wide and
adorned with three protruding ridges that ran lengthwise. I was sorry
to miss this reptile, because from Conseil’s description, I believe I
recognized the leatherback turtle, a pretty rare species. For my part,
I noted only some loggerhead turtles with long carapaces.

As for zoophytes, for a few moments I was able to marvel at a
wonderful, orange-hued hydra from the genus Galeolaria that clung to
the glass of our port panel; it consisted of a long, lean filament
that spread out into countless branches and ended in the most delicate
lace ever spun by the followers of Arachne. Unfortunately I couldn’t
fish up this wonderful specimen, and surely no other Mediterranean
zoophytes would have been offered to my gaze, if, on the evening of
the 16th, the Nautilus hadn’t slowed down in an odd fashion. This was
the situation.

By then we were passing between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia. In
the cramped space between Cape Bon and the Strait of Messina, the sea
bottom rises almost all at once. It forms an actual ridge with only
seventeen meters of water remaining above it, while the depth on
either side is 170 meters. Consequently, the Nautilus had to maneuver
with caution so as not to bump into this underwater barrier.

I showed Conseil the position of this long reef on our chart of the
Mediterranean.

“But with all due respect to master,” Conseil ventured to observe,
“it’s like an actual isthmus connecting Europe to Africa.”

“Yes, my boy,” I replied, “it cuts across the whole Strait of Sicily,
and Smith’s soundings prove that in the past, these two continents
were genuinely connected between Cape Boeo and Cape Farina.”

“I can easily believe it,” Conseil said.

“I might add,” I went on, “that there’s a similar barrier between
Gibraltar and Ceuta, and in prehistoric times it closed off the
Mediterranean completely.”

“Gracious!” Conseil put in. “Suppose one day some volcanic upheaval
raises these two barriers back above the waves!”

“That’s most unlikely, Conseil.”

“If master will allow me to finish, I mean that if this phenomenon
occurs, it might prove distressing to Mr. de Lesseps, who has gone to
such pains to cut through his isthmus!”

“Agreed, but I repeat, Conseil: such a phenomenon won’t occur. The
intensity of these underground forces continues to diminish. Volcanoes
were quite numerous in the world’s early days, but they’re going
extinct one by one; the heat inside the earth is growing weaker, the
temperature in the globe’s lower strata is cooling appreciably every
century, and to our globe’s detriment, because its heat is its life.”

“But the sun—”

“The sun isn’t enough, Conseil. Can it restore heat to a corpse?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“Well, my friend, someday the earth will be just such a cold
corpse. Like the moon, which long ago lost its vital heat, our globe
will become lifeless and unlivable.”

“In how many centuries?” Conseil asked.

“In hundreds of thousands of years, my boy.”

“Then we have ample time to finish our voyage,” Conseil replied, “if
Ned Land doesn’t mess things up!”

Thus reassured, Conseil went back to studying the shallows that the
Nautilus was skimming at moderate speed.

On the rocky, volcanic seafloor, there bloomed quite a collection of
moving flora: sponges, sea cucumbers, jellyfish called sea
gooseberries that were adorned with reddish tendrils and gave off a
subtle phosphorescence, members of the genus Beroe that are commonly
known by the name melon jellyfish and are bathed in the shimmer of the
whole solar spectrum, free-swimming crinoids one meter wide that
reddened the waters with their crimson hue, treelike basket stars of
the greatest beauty, sea fans from the genus Pavonacea with long
stems, numerous edible sea urchins of various species, plus green sea
anemones with a grayish trunk and a brown disk lost beneath the
olive-colored tresses of their tentacles.

Conseil kept especially busy observing mollusks and articulates, and
although his catalog is a little dry, I wouldn’t want to wrong the
gallant lad by leaving out his personal observations.

From the branch Mollusca, he mentions numerous comb-shaped scallops,
hooflike spiny oysters piled on top of each other, triangular coquina,
three-pronged glass snails with yellow fins and transparent shells,
orange snails from the genus Pleurobranchus that looked like eggs
spotted or speckled with greenish dots, members of the genus Aplysia
also known by the name sea hares, other sea hares from the genus
Dolabella, plump paper-bubble shells, umbrella shells exclusive to the
Mediterranean, abalone whose shell produces a mother-of-pearl much in
demand, pilgrim scallops, saddle shells that diners in the French
province of Languedoc are said to like better than oysters, some of
those cockleshells so dear to the citizens of Marseilles, fat white
venus shells that are among the clams so abundant off the coasts of
North America and eaten in such quantities by New Yorkers, variously
colored comb shells with gill covers, burrowing date mussels with a
peppery flavor I relish, furrowed heart cockles whose shells have
riblike ridges on their arching summits, triton shells pocked with
scarlet bumps, carniaira snails with backward-curving tips that make
them resemble flimsy gondolas, crowned ferola snails, atlanta snails
with spiral shells, gray nudibranchs from the genus Tethys that were
spotted with white and covered by fringed mantles, nudibranchs from
the suborder Eolidea that looked like small slugs, sea butterflies
crawling on their backs, seashells from the genus Auricula including
the oval-shaped Auricula myosotis, tan wentletrap snails, common
periwinkles, violet snails, cineraira snails, rock borers, ear shells,
cabochon snails, pandora shells, etc.

As for the articulates, in his notes Conseil has very appropriately
divided them into six classes, three of which belong to the marine
world. These classes are the Crustacea, Cirripedia, and Annelida.

Crustaceans are subdivided into nine orders, and the first of these
consists of the decapods, in other words, animals whose head and
thorax are usually fused, whose cheek-and-mouth mechanism is made up
of several pairs of appendages, and whose thorax has four, five, or
six pairs of walking legs. Conseil used the methods of our mentor
Professor Milne-Edwards, who puts the decapods in three divisions:
Brachyura, Macrura, and Anomura. These names may look a tad fierce,
but they’re accurate and appropriate. Among the Brachyura, Conseil
mentions some amanthia crabs whose fronts were armed with two big
diverging tips, those inachus scorpions that—lord knows why—symbolized
wisdom to the ancient Greeks, spider crabs of the massena and
spinimane varieties that had probably gone astray in these shallows
because they usually live in the lower depths, xanthid crabs, pilumna
crabs, rhomboid crabs, granular box crabs (easy on the digestion, as
Conseil ventured to observe), toothless masked crabs, ebalia crabs,
cymopolia crabs, woolly-handed crabs, etc. Among the Macrura (which
are subdivided into five families: hardshells, burrowers, crayfish,
prawns, and ghost crabs) Conseil mentions some common spiny lobsters
whose females supply a meat highly prized, slipper lobsters or common
shrimp, waterside gebia shrimp, and all sorts of edible species, but
he says nothing of the crayfish subdivision that includes the true
lobster, because spiny lobsters are the only type in the
Mediterranean. Finally, among the Anomura, he saw common drocina crabs
dwelling inside whatever abandoned seashells they could take over,
homola crabs with spiny fronts, hermit crabs, hairy porcelain crabs,
etc.

There Conseil’s work came to a halt. He didn’t have time to finish off
the class Crustacea through an examination of its stomatopods,
amphipods, homopods, isopods, trilobites, branchiopods, ostracods, and
entomostraceans. And in order to complete his study of marine
articulates, he needed to mention the class Cirripedia, which contains
water fleas and carp lice, plus the class Annelida, which he would
have divided without fail into tubifex worms and dorsibranchian
worms. But having gone past the shallows of the Strait of Sicily, the
Nautilus resumed its usual deep-water speed. From then on, no more
mollusks, no more zoophytes, no more articulates. Just a few large
fish sweeping by like shadows.

During the night of February 16-17, we entered the second
Mediterranean basin, whose maximum depth we found at 3,000 meters. The
Nautilus, driven downward by its propeller and slanting fins,
descended to the lowest strata of this sea.

There, in place of natural wonders, the watery mass offered some
thrilling and dreadful scenes to my eyes. In essence, we were then
crossing that part of the whole Mediterranean so fertile in
casualties. From the coast of Algiers to the beaches of Provence, how
many ships have wrecked, how many vessels have vanished! Compared to
the vast liquid plains of the Pacific, the Mediterranean is a mere
lake, but it’s an unpredictable lake with fickle waves, today kindly
and affectionate to those frail single-masters drifting between a
double ultramarine of sky and water, tomorrow bad-tempered and
turbulent, agitated by the winds, demolishing the strongest ships
beneath sudden waves that smash down with a headlong wallop.

So, in our swift cruise through these deep strata, how many vessels I
saw lying on the seafloor, some already caked with coral, others clad
only in a layer of rust, plus anchors, cannons, shells, iron fittings,
propeller blades, parts of engines, cracked cylinders, staved-in
boilers, then hulls floating in midwater, here upright, there
overturned.

Some of these wrecked ships had perished in collisions, others from
hitting granite reefs. I saw a few that had sunk straight down, their
masting still upright, their rigging stiffened by the water. They
looked like they were at anchor by some immense, open, offshore
mooring where they were waiting for their departure time. When the
Nautilus passed between them, covering them with sheets of
electricity, they seemed ready to salute us with their colors and send
us their serial numbers! But no, nothing but silence and death filled
this field of catastrophes!

I observed that these Mediterranean depths became more and more
cluttered with such gruesome wreckage as the Nautilus drew nearer to
the Strait of Gibraltar. By then the shores of Africa and Europe were
converging, and in this narrow space collisions were
commonplace. There I saw numerous iron undersides, the phantasmagoric
ruins of steamers, some lying down, others rearing up like fearsome
animals. One of these boats made a dreadful first impression: sides
torn open, funnel bent, paddle wheels stripped to the mountings,
rudder separated from the sternpost and still hanging from an iron
chain, the board on its stern eaten away by marine salts! How many
lives were dashed in this shipwreck! How many victims were swept under
the waves! Had some sailor on board lived to tell the story of this
dreadful disaster, or do the waves still keep this casualty a secret?
It occurred to me, lord knows why, that this boat buried under the sea
might have been the Atlas, lost with all hands some twenty years ago
and never heard from again! Oh, what a gruesome tale these
Mediterranean depths could tell, this huge boneyard where so much
wealth has been lost, where so many victims have met their deaths!

Meanwhile, briskly unconcerned, the Nautilus ran at full propeller
through the midst of these ruins. On February 18, near three o’clock
in the morning, it hove before the entrance to the Strait of
Gibraltar.

There are two currents here: an upper current, long known to exist,
that carries the ocean’s waters into the Mediterranean basin; then a
lower countercurrent, the only present-day proof of its existence
being logic. In essence, the Mediterranean receives a continual influx
of water not only from the Atlantic but from rivers emptying into it;
since local evaporation isn’t enough to restore the balance, the total
amount of added water should make this sea’s level higher every
year. Yet this isn’t the case, and we’re naturally forced to believe
in the existence of some lower current that carries the
Mediterranean’s surplus through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the
Atlantic basin.

And so it turned out. The Nautilus took full advantage of this
countercurrent. It advanced swiftly through this narrow
passageway. For an instant I could glimpse the wonderful ruins of the
Temple of Hercules, buried undersea, as Pliny and Avianus have
mentioned, together with the flat island they stand on; and a few
minutes later, we were floating on the waves of the Atlantic.


CHAPTER 8

The Bay of Vigo


THE ATLANTIC! A vast expanse of water whose surface area is 25,000,000
square miles, with a length of 9,000 miles and an average width of
2,700. A major sea nearly unknown to the ancients, except perhaps the
Carthaginians, those Dutchmen of antiquity who went along the west
coasts of Europe and Africa on their commercial junkets! An ocean
whose parallel winding shores form an immense perimeter fed by the
world’s greatest rivers: the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Amazon, Plata,
Orinoco, Niger, Senegal, Elbe, Loire, and Rhine, which bring it waters
from the most civilized countries as well as the most undeveloped
areas! A magnificent plain of waves plowed continuously by ships of
every nation, shaded by every flag in the world, and ending in those
two dreadful headlands so feared by navigators, Cape Horn and the Cape
of Tempests!

The Nautilus broke these waters with the edge of its spur after doing
nearly 10,000 leagues in three and a half months, a track longer than
a great circle of the earth. Where were we heading now, and what did
the future have in store for us?

Emerging from the Strait of Gibraltar, the Nautilus took to the high
seas. It returned to the surface of the waves, so our daily strolls on
the platform were restored to us.

I climbed onto it instantly, Ned Land and Conseil along with
me. Twelve miles away, Cape St. Vincent was hazily visible, the
southwestern tip of the Hispanic peninsula. The wind was blowing a
pretty strong gust from the south. The sea was swelling and
surging. Its waves made the Nautilus roll and jerk violently. It was
nearly impossible to stand up on the platform, which was continuously
buffeted by this enormously heavy sea. After inhaling a few breaths of
air, we went below once more.

I repaired to my stateroom. Conseil returned to his cabin; but the
Canadian, looking rather worried, followed me. Our quick trip through
the Mediterranean hadn’t allowed him to put his plans into execution,
and he could barely conceal his disappointment.

After the door to my stateroom was closed, he sat and stared at me
silently.

“Ned my friend,” I told him, “I know how you feel, but you mustn’t
blame yourself. Given the way the Nautilus was navigating, it would
have been sheer insanity to think of escaping!”

Ned Land didn’t reply. His pursed lips and frowning brow indicated
that he was in the grip of his monomania.

“Look here,” I went on, “as yet there’s no cause for despair. We’re
going up the coast of Portugal. France and England aren’t far off, and
there we’ll easily find refuge. Oh, I grant you, if the Nautilus had
emerged from the Strait of Gibraltar and made for that cape in the
south, if it were taking us toward those regions that have no
continents, then I’d share your alarm. But we now know that Captain
Nemo doesn’t avoid the seas of civilization, and in a few days I think
we can safely take action.”

Ned Land stared at me still more intently and finally unpursed his
lips:

“We’ll do it this evening,” he said.

I straightened suddenly. I admit that I was less than ready for this
announcement. I wanted to reply to the Canadian, but words failed me.

“We agreed to wait for the right circumstances,” Ned Land went
on. “Now we’ve got those circumstances. This evening we’ll be just a
few miles off the coast of Spain. It’ll be cloudy tonight. The wind’s
blowing toward shore. You gave me your promise, Professor Aronnax, and
I’m counting on you.”

Since I didn’t say anything, the Canadian stood up and approached me:

“We’ll do it this evening at nine o’clock,” he said. “I’ve alerted
Conseil. By that time Captain Nemo will be locked in his room and
probably in bed. Neither the mechanics or the crewmen will be able to
see us. Conseil and I will go to the central companionway. As for you,
Professor Aronnax, you’ll stay in the library two steps away and wait
for my signal. The oars, mast, and sail are in the skiff. I’ve even
managed to stow some provisions inside. I’ve gotten hold of a monkey
wrench to unscrew the nuts bolting the skiff to the Nautilus’s
hull. So everything’s ready. I’ll see you this evening.”

“The sea is rough,” I said.

“Admitted,” the Canadian replied, “but we’ve got to risk it. Freedom
is worth paying for. Besides, the longboat’s solidly built, and a few
miles with the wind behind us is no big deal. By tomorrow, who knows
if this ship won’t be 100 leagues out to sea? If circumstances are in
our favor, between ten and eleven this evening we’ll be landing on
some piece of solid ground, or we’ll be dead. So we’re in God’s hands,
and I’ll see you this evening!”

This said, the Canadian withdrew, leaving me close to dumbfounded. I
had imagined that if it came to this, I would have time to think about
it, to talk it over. My stubborn companion hadn’t granted me this
courtesy. But after all, what would I have said to him? Ned Land was
right a hundred times over. These were near-ideal circumstances, and
he was taking full advantage of them. In my selfish personal
interests, could I go back on my word and be responsible for ruining
the future lives of my companions? Tomorrow, might not Captain Nemo
take us far away from any shore?

Just then a fairly loud hissing told me that the ballast tanks were
filling, and the Nautilus sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic.

I stayed in my stateroom. I wanted to avoid the captain, to hide from
his eyes the agitation overwhelming me. What an agonizing day I spent,
torn between my desire to regain my free will and my regret at
abandoning this marvelous Nautilus, leaving my underwater research
incomplete! How could I relinquish this ocean—“my own Atlantic,” as I
liked to call it—without observing its lower strata, without wresting
from it the kinds of secrets that had been revealed to me by the seas
of the East Indies and the Pacific! I was putting down my novel half
read, I was waking up as my dream neared its climax! How painfully the
hours passed, as I sometimes envisioned myself safe on shore with my
companions, or, despite my better judgment, as I sometimes wished that
some unforeseen circumstances would prevent Ned Land from carrying out
his plans.

Twice I went to the lounge. I wanted to consult the compass. I wanted
to see if the Nautilus’s heading was actually taking us closer to the
coast or spiriting us farther away. But no. The Nautilus was still in
Portuguese waters. Heading north, it was cruising along the ocean’s
beaches.

So I had to resign myself to my fate and get ready to escape. My
baggage wasn’t heavy. My notes, nothing more.

As for Captain Nemo, I wondered what he would make of our escaping,
what concern or perhaps what distress it might cause him, and what he
would do in the twofold event of our attempt either failing or being
found out! Certainly I had no complaints to register with him, on the
contrary. Never was hospitality more wholehearted than his. Yet in
leaving him I couldn’t be accused of ingratitude. No solemn promises
bound us to him. In order to keep us captive, he had counted only on
the force of circumstances and not on our word of honor. But his
avowed intention to imprison us forever on his ship justified our
every effort.

I hadn’t seen the captain since our visit to the island of
Santorini. Would fate bring me into his presence before our departure?
I both desired and dreaded it. I listened for footsteps in the
stateroom adjoining mine. Not a sound reached my ear. His stateroom
had to be deserted.

Then I began to wonder if this eccentric individual was even on
board. Since that night when the skiff had left the Nautilus on some
mysterious mission, my ideas about him had subtly changed. In spite of
everything, I thought that Captain Nemo must have kept up some type of
relationship with the shore. Did he himself never leave the Nautilus?
Whole weeks had often gone by without my encountering him. What was he
doing all the while? During all those times I’d thought he was
convalescing in the grip of some misanthropic fit, was he instead far
away from the ship, involved in some secret activity whose nature
still eluded me?

All these ideas and a thousand others assaulted me at the same
time. In these strange circumstances the scope for conjecture was
unlimited. I felt an unbearable queasiness. This day of waiting seemed
endless. The hours struck too slowly to keep up with my impatience.

As usual, dinner was served me in my stateroom. Full of anxiety, I ate
little. I left the table at seven o’clock. 120 minutes—I was keeping
track of them—still separated me from the moment I was to rejoin Ned
Land. My agitation increased. My pulse was throbbing violently. I
couldn’t stand still. I walked up and down, hoping to calm my troubled
mind with movement. The possibility of perishing in our reckless
undertaking was the least of my worries; my heart was pounding at the
thought that our plans might be discovered before we had left the
Nautilus, at the thought of being hauled in front of Captain Nemo and
finding him angered, or worse, saddened by my deserting him.

I wanted to see the lounge one last time. I went down the gangways and
arrived at the museum where I had spent so many pleasant and
productive hours. I stared at all its wealth, all its treasures, like
a man on the eve of his eternal exile, a man departing to return no
more. For so many days now, these natural wonders and artistic
masterworks had been central to my life, and I was about to leave them
behind forever. I wanted to plunge my eyes through the lounge window
and into these Atlantic waters; but the panels were hermetically
sealed, and a mantle of sheet iron separated me from this ocean with
which I was still unfamiliar.

Crossing through the lounge, I arrived at the door, contrived in one
of the canted corners, that opened into the captain’s stateroom. Much
to my astonishment, this door was ajar. I instinctively recoiled. If
Captain Nemo was in his stateroom, he might see me. But, not hearing
any sounds, I approached. The stateroom was deserted. I pushed the
door open. I took a few steps inside. Still the same austere, monastic
appearance.

Just then my eye was caught by some etchings hanging on the wall,
which I hadn’t noticed during my first visit. They were portraits of
great men of history who had spent their lives in perpetual devotion
to a great human ideal: Thaddeus Kosciusko, the hero whose dying words
had been Finis Poloniae;* Markos Botzaris, for modern Greece the
reincarnation of Sparta’s King Leonidas; Daniel O’Connell, Ireland’s
defender; George Washington, founder of the American Union; Daniele
Manin, the Italian patriot; Abraham Lincoln, dead from the bullet of a
believer in slavery; and finally, that martyr for the redemption of
the black race, John Brown, hanging from his gallows as Victor Hugo’s
pencil has so terrifyingly depicted.

*Latin: “Save Poland’s borders.” Ed.

What was the bond between these heroic souls and the soul of Captain
Nemo? From this collection of portraits could I finally unravel the
mystery of his existence? Was he a fighter for oppressed peoples, a
liberator of enslaved races? Had he figured in the recent political or
social upheavals of this century? Was he a hero of that dreadful civil
war in America, a war lamentable yet forever glorious . . . ?

Suddenly the clock struck eight. The first stroke of its hammer on the
chime snapped me out of my musings. I shuddered as if some invisible
eye had plunged into my innermost thoughts, and I rushed outside the
stateroom.

There my eyes fell on the compass. Our heading was still
northerly. The log indicated a moderate speed, the pressure gauge a
depth of about sixty feet. So circumstances were in favor of the
Canadian’s plans.

I stayed in my stateroom. I dressed warmly: fishing boots, otter cap,
coat of fan-mussel fabric lined with sealskin. I was ready. I was
waiting. Only the propeller’s vibrations disturbed the deep silence
reigning on board. I cocked an ear and listened. Would a sudden
outburst of voices tell me that Ned Land’s escape plans had just been
detected? A ghastly uneasiness stole through me. I tried in vain to
recover my composure.

A few minutes before nine o’clock, I glued my ear to the captain’s
door. Not a sound. I left my stateroom and returned to the lounge,
which was deserted and plunged in near darkness.

I opened the door leading to the library. The same inadequate light,
the same solitude. I went to man my post near the door opening into
the well of the central companionway. I waited for Ned Land’s signal.

At this point the propeller’s vibrations slowed down appreciably, then
they died out altogether. Why was the Nautilus stopping? Whether this
layover would help or hinder Ned Land’s schemes I couldn’t have said.

The silence was further disturbed only by the pounding of my heart.

Suddenly I felt a mild jolt. I realized the Nautilus had come to rest
on the ocean floor. My alarm increased. The Canadian’s signal hadn’t
reached me. I longed to rejoin Ned Land and urge him to postpone his
attempt. I sensed that we were no longer navigating under normal
conditions.

Just then the door to the main lounge opened and Captain Nemo
appeared. He saw me, and without further preamble:

“Ah, professor,” he said in an affable tone, “I’ve been looking for
you. Do you know your Spanish history?”

Even if he knew it by heart, a man in my disturbed, befuddled
condition couldn’t have quoted a syllable of his own country’s
history.

“Well?” Captain Nemo went on. “Did you hear my question? Do you know
the history of Spain?”

“Very little of it,” I replied.

“The most learned men,” the captain said, “still have much to
learn. Have a seat,” he added, “and I’ll tell you about an unusual
episode in this body of history.”

The captain stretched out on a couch, and I mechanically took a seat
near him, but half in the shadows.

“Professor,” he said, “listen carefully. This piece of history
concerns you in one definite respect, because it will answer a
question you’ve no doubt been unable to resolve.”

“I’m listening, captain,” I said, not knowing what my partner in this
dialogue was driving at, and wondering if this incident related to our
escape plans.

“Professor,” Captain Nemo went on, “if you’re amenable, we’ll go back
in time to 1702. You’re aware of the fact that in those days your King
Louis XIV thought an imperial gesture would suffice to humble the
Pyrenees in the dust, so he inflicted his grandson, the Duke of Anjou,
on the Spaniards. Reigning more or less poorly under the name King
Philip V, this aristocrat had to deal with mighty opponents abroad.

“In essence, the year before, the royal houses of Holland, Austria,
and England had signed a treaty of alliance at The Hague, aiming to
wrest the Spanish crown from King Philip V and to place it on the head
of an archduke whom they prematurely dubbed King Charles III.

“Spain had to withstand these allies. But the country had practically
no army or navy. Yet it wasn’t short of money, provided that its
galleons, laden with gold and silver from America, could enter its
ports. Now then, late in 1702 Spain was expecting a rich convoy, which
France ventured to escort with a fleet of twenty-three vessels under
the command of Admiral de Chateau-Renault, because by that time the
allied navies were roving the Atlantic.

“This convoy was supposed to put into Cadiz, but after learning that
the English fleet lay across those waterways, the admiral decided to
make for a French port.

“The Spanish commanders in the convoy objected to this decision. They
wanted to be taken to a Spanish port, if not to Cadiz, then to the Bay
of Vigo, located on Spain’s northwest coast and not blockaded.

“Admiral de Chateau-Renault was so indecisive as to obey this
directive, and the galleons entered the Bay of Vigo.

“Unfortunately this bay forms an open, offshore mooring that’s
impossible to defend. So it was essential to hurry and empty the
galleons before the allied fleets arrived, and there would have been
ample time for this unloading, if a wretched question of trade
agreements hadn’t suddenly come up.

“Are you clear on the chain of events?” Captain Nemo asked me.

“Perfectly clear,” I said, not yet knowing why I was being given this
history lesson.

“Then I’ll continue. Here’s what came to pass. The tradesmen of Cadiz
had negotiated a charter whereby they were to receive all merchandise
coming from the West Indies. Now then, unloading the ingots from those
galleons at the port of Vigo would have been a violation of their
rights. So they lodged a complaint in Madrid, and they obtained an
order from the indecisive King Philip V: without unloading, the convoy
would stay in custody at the offshore mooring of Vigo until the enemy
fleets had retreated.

“Now then, just as this decision was being handed down, English
vessels arrived in the Bay of Vigo on October 22, 1702. Despite his
inferior forces, Admiral de Chateau-Renault fought courageously. But
when he saw that the convoy’s wealth was about to fall into enemy
hands, he burned and scuttled the galleons, which went to the bottom
with their immense treasures.”

Captain Nemo stopped. I admit it: I still couldn’t see how this piece
of history concerned me.

“Well?” I asked him.

“Well, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo answered me, “we’re actually
in that Bay of Vigo, and all that’s left is for you to probe the
mysteries of the place.”

The captain stood up and invited me to follow him. I’d had time to
collect myself. I did so. The lounge was dark, but the sea’s waves
sparkled through the transparent windows. I stared.

Around the Nautilus for a half-mile radius, the waters seemed
saturated with electric light. The sandy bottom was clear and
bright. Dressed in diving suits, crewmen were busy clearing away
half-rotted barrels and disemboweled trunks in the midst of the dingy
hulks of ships. Out of these trunks and kegs spilled ingots of gold
and silver, cascades of jewels, pieces of eight. The sand was heaped
with them. Then, laden with these valuable spoils, the men returned to
the Nautilus, dropped off their burdens inside, and went to resume
this inexhaustible fishing for silver and gold.

I understood. This was the setting of that battle on October 22,
1702. Here, in this very place, those galleons carrying treasure to
the Spanish government had gone to the bottom. Here, whenever he
needed, Captain Nemo came to withdraw these millions to ballast his
Nautilus. It was for him, for him alone, that America had yielded up
its precious metals. He was the direct, sole heir to these treasures
wrested from the Incas and those peoples conquered by Hernando Cortez!

“Did you know, professor,” he asked me with a smile, “that the sea
contained such wealth?”

“I know it’s estimated,” I replied, “that there are 2,000,000 metric
tons of silver held in suspension in seawater.”

“Surely, but in extracting that silver, your expenses would outweigh
your profits. Here, by contrast, I have only to pick up what other men
have lost, and not only in this Bay of Vigo but at a thousand other
sites where ships have gone down, whose positions are marked on my
underwater chart. Do you understand now that I’m rich to the tune of
billions?”

“I understand, captain. Nevertheless, allow me to inform you that by
harvesting this very Bay of Vigo, you’re simply forestalling the
efforts of a rival organization.”

“What organization?”

“A company chartered by the Spanish government to search for these
sunken galleons. The company’s investors were lured by the bait of
enormous gains, because this scuttled treasure is estimated to be
worth 500,000,000 francs.”

“It was 500,000,000 francs,” Captain Nemo replied, “but no more!”

“Right,” I said. “Hence a timely warning to those investors would be
an act of charity. Yet who knows if it would be well received? Usually
what gamblers regret the most isn’t the loss of their money so much as
the loss of their insane hopes. But ultimately I feel less sorry for
them than for the thousands of unfortunate people who would have
benefited from a fair distribution of this wealth, whereas now it will
be of no help to them!”

No sooner had I voiced this regret than I felt it must have wounded
Captain Nemo.

“No help!” he replied with growing animation. “Sir, what makes you
assume this wealth goes to waste when I’m the one amassing it? Do you
think I toil to gather this treasure out of selfishness? Who says I
don’t put it to good use? Do you think I’m unaware of the suffering
beings and oppressed races living on this earth, poor people to
comfort, victims to avenge? Don’t you understand . . . ?”

Captain Nemo stopped on these last words, perhaps sorry that he had
said too much. But I had guessed. Whatever motives had driven him to
seek independence under the seas, he remained a human being before all
else! His heart still throbbed for suffering humanity, and his immense
philanthropy went out both to downtrodden races and to individuals!

And now I knew where Captain Nemo had delivered those millions, when
the Nautilus navigated the waters where Crete was in rebellion against
the Ottoman Empire!


CHAPTER 9

A Lost Continent


THE NEXT MORNING, February 19, I beheld the Canadian entering my
stateroom. I was expecting this visit. He wore an expression of great
disappointment.

“Well, sir?” he said to me.

“Well, Ned, the fates were against us yesterday.”

“Yes! That damned captain had to call a halt just as we were going to
escape from his boat.”

“Yes, Ned, he had business with his bankers.”

“His bankers?”

“Or rather his bank vaults. By which I mean this ocean, where his
wealth is safer than in any national treasury.”

I then related the evening’s incidents to the Canadian, secretly
hoping he would come around to the idea of not deserting the captain;
but my narrative had no result other than Ned’s voicing deep regret
that he hadn’t strolled across the Vigo battlefield on his own behalf.

“Anyhow,” he said, “it’s not over yet! My first harpoon missed, that’s
all! We’ll succeed the next time, and as soon as this evening, if need
be . . .”

“What’s the Nautilus’s heading?” I asked.

“I’ve no idea,” Ned replied.

“All right, at noon we’ll find out what our position is!”

The Canadian returned to Conseil’s side. As soon as I was dressed, I
went into the lounge. The compass wasn’t encouraging. The Nautilus’s
course was south-southwest. We were turning our backs on Europe.

I could hardly wait until our position was reported on the chart. Near
11:30 the ballast tanks emptied, and the submersible rose to the
surface of the ocean. I leaped onto the platform. Ned Land was already
there.

No more shore in sight. Nothing but the immenseness of the sea. A few
sails were on the horizon, no doubt ships going as far as Cape São
Roque to find favorable winds for doubling the Cape of Good Hope. The
sky was overcast. A squall was on the way.

Furious, Ned tried to see through the mists on the horizon. He still
hoped that behind all that fog there lay those shores he longed for.

At noon the sun made a momentary appearance. Taking advantage of this
rift in the clouds, the chief officer took the orb’s altitude. Then
the sea grew turbulent, we went below again, and the hatch closed once
more.

When I consulted the chart an hour later, I saw that the Nautilus’s
position was marked at longitude 16 degrees 17’ and latitude 33
degrees 22’, a good 150 leagues from the nearest coast. It wouldn’t do
to even dream of escaping, and I’ll let the reader decide how promptly
the Canadian threw a tantrum when I ventured to tell him our
situation.

As for me, I wasn’t exactly grief-stricken. I felt as if a heavy
weight had been lifted from me, and I was able to resume my regular
tasks in a state of comparative calm.

Near eleven o’clock in the evening, I received a most unexpected visit
from Captain Nemo. He asked me very graciously if I felt exhausted
from our vigil the night before. I said no.

“Then, Professor Aronnax, I propose an unusual excursion.”

“Propose away, captain.”

“So far you’ve visited the ocean depths only by day and under
sunlight. Would you like to see these depths on a dark night?”

“Very much.”

“I warn you, this will be an exhausting stroll. We’ll need to walk
long hours and scale a mountain. The roads aren’t terribly well kept
up.”

“Everything you say, captain, just increases my curiosity. I’m ready
to go with you.”

“Then come along, professor, and we’ll go put on our diving suits.”

Arriving at the wardrobe, I saw that neither my companions nor any
crewmen would be coming with us on this excursion. Captain Nemo hadn’t
even suggested my fetching Ned or Conseil.

In a few moments we had put on our equipment. Air tanks, abundantly
charged, were placed on our backs, but the electric lamps were not in
readiness. I commented on this to the captain.

“They’ll be useless to us,” he replied.

I thought I hadn’t heard him right, but I couldn’t repeat my comment
because the captain’s head had already disappeared into its metal
covering. I finished harnessing myself, I felt an alpenstock being
placed in my hand, and a few minutes later, after the usual
procedures, we set foot on the floor of the Atlantic, 300 meters down.

Midnight was approaching. The waters were profoundly dark, but Captain
Nemo pointed to a reddish spot in the distance, a sort of wide glow
shimmering about two miles from the Nautilus. What this fire was, what
substances fed it, how and why it kept burning in the liquid mass, I
couldn’t say. Anyhow it lit our way, although hazily, but I soon grew
accustomed to this unique gloom, and in these circumstances I
understood the uselessness of the Ruhmkorff device.

Side by side, Captain Nemo and I walked directly toward this
conspicuous flame. The level seafloor rose imperceptibly. We took long
strides, helped by our alpenstocks; but in general our progress was
slow, because our feet kept sinking into a kind of slimy mud mixed
with seaweed and assorted flat stones.

As we moved forward, I heard a kind of pitter-patter above my
head. Sometimes this noise increased and became a continuous
crackle. I soon realized the cause. It was a heavy rainfall rattling
on the surface of the waves. Instinctively I worried that I might get
soaked! By water in the midst of water! I couldn’t help smiling at
this outlandish notion. But to tell the truth, wearing these heavy
diving suits, you no longer feel the liquid element, you simply think
you’re in the midst of air a little denser than air on land, that’s
all.

After half an hour of walking, the seafloor grew rocky. Jellyfish,
microscopic crustaceans, and sea-pen coral lit it faintly with their
phosphorescent glimmers. I glimpsed piles of stones covered by a
couple million zoophytes and tangles of algae. My feet often slipped
on this viscous seaweed carpet, and without my alpenstock I would have
fallen more than once. When I turned around, I could still see the
Nautilus’s whitish beacon, which was starting to grow pale in the
distance.

Those piles of stones just mentioned were laid out on the ocean floor
with a distinct but inexplicable symmetry. I spotted gigantic furrows
trailing off into the distant darkness, their length
incalculable. There also were other peculiarities I couldn’t make
sense of. It seemed to me that my heavy lead soles were crushing a
litter of bones that made a dry crackling noise. So what were these
vast plains we were now crossing? I wanted to ask the captain, but I
still didn’t grasp that sign language that allowed him to chat with
his companions when they went with him on his underwater excursions.

Meanwhile the reddish light guiding us had expanded and inflamed the
horizon. The presence of this furnace under the waters had me
extremely puzzled. Was it some sort of electrical discharge? Was I
approaching some natural phenomenon still unknown to scientists on
shore? Or, rather (and this thought did cross my mind), had the hand
of man intervened in that blaze? Had human beings fanned those flames?
In these deep strata would I meet up with more of Captain Nemo’s
companions, friends he was about to visit who led lives as strange as
his own? Would I find a whole colony of exiles down here, men tired of
the world’s woes, men who had sought and found independence in the
ocean’s lower depths? All these insane, inadmissible ideas dogged me,
and in this frame of mind, continually excited by the series of
wonders passing before my eyes, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find
on this sea bottom one of those underwater towns Captain Nemo dreamed
about!

Our path was getting brighter and brighter. The red glow had turned
white and was radiating from a mountain peak about 800 feet high. But
what I saw was simply a reflection produced by the crystal waters of
these strata. The furnace that was the source of this inexplicable
light occupied the far side of the mountain.

In the midst of the stone mazes furrowing this Atlantic seafloor,
Captain Nemo moved forward without hesitation. He knew this dark
path. No doubt he had often traveled it and was incapable of losing
his way. I followed him with unshakeable confidence. He seemed like
some Spirit of the Sea, and as he walked ahead of me, I marveled at
his tall figure, which stood out in black against the glowing
background of the horizon.

It was one o’clock in the morning. We arrived at the mountain’s lower
gradients. But in grappling with them, we had to venture up difficult
trails through a huge thicket.

Yes, a thicket of dead trees! Trees without leaves, without sap,
turned to stone by the action of the waters, and crowned here and
there by gigantic pines. It was like a still-erect coalfield, its
roots clutching broken soil, its boughs clearly outlined against the
ceiling of the waters like thin, black, paper cutouts. Picture a
forest clinging to the sides of a peak in the Harz Mountains, but a
submerged forest. The trails were cluttered with algae and fucus
plants, hosts of crustaceans swarming among them. I plunged on,
scaling rocks, straddling fallen tree trunks, snapping marine creepers
that swayed from one tree to another, startling the fish that flitted
from branch to branch. Carried away, I didn’t feel exhausted any
more. I followed a guide who was immune to exhaustion.

What a sight! How can I describe it! How can I portray these woods and
rocks in this liquid setting, their lower parts dark and sullen, their
upper parts tinted red in this light whose intensity was doubled by
the reflecting power of the waters! We scaled rocks that crumbled
behind us, collapsing in enormous sections with the hollow rumble of
an avalanche. To our right and left there were carved gloomy galleries
where the eye lost its way. Huge glades opened up, seemingly cleared
by the hand of man, and I sometimes wondered whether some residents of
these underwater regions would suddenly appear before me.

But Captain Nemo kept climbing. I didn’t want to fall behind. I
followed him boldly. My alpenstock was a great help. One wrong step
would have been disastrous on the narrow paths cut into the sides of
these chasms, but I walked along with a firm tread and without the
slightest feeling of dizziness. Sometimes I leaped over a crevasse
whose depth would have made me recoil had I been in the midst of
glaciers on shore; sometimes I ventured out on a wobbling tree trunk
fallen across a gorge, without looking down, having eyes only for
marveling at the wild scenery of this region. There, leaning on
erratically cut foundations, monumental rocks seemed to defy the laws
of balance. From between their stony knees, trees sprang up like jets
under fearsome pressure, supporting other trees that supported them in
turn. Next, natural towers with wide, steeply carved battlements
leaned at angles that, on dry land, the laws of gravity would never
have authorized.

And I too could feel the difference created by the water’s powerful
density—despite my heavy clothing, copper headpiece, and metal soles,
I climbed the most impossibly steep gradients with all the nimbleness,
I swear it, of a chamois or a Pyrenees mountain goat!

As for my account of this excursion under the waters, I’m well aware
that it sounds incredible! I’m the chronicler of deeds seemingly
impossible and yet incontestably real. This was no fantasy. This was
what I saw and felt!

Two hours after leaving the Nautilus, we had cleared the timberline,
and 100 feet above our heads stood the mountain peak, forming a dark
silhouette against the brilliant glare that came from its far
slope. Petrified shrubs rambled here and there in sprawling
zigzags. Fish rose in a body at our feet like birds startled in tall
grass. The rocky mass was gouged with impenetrable crevices, deep
caves, unfathomable holes at whose far ends I could hear fearsome
things moving around. My blood would curdle as I watched some enormous
antenna bar my path, or saw some frightful pincer snap shut in the
shadow of some cavity! A thousand specks of light glittered in the
midst of the gloom. They were the eyes of gigantic crustaceans
crouching in their lairs, giant lobsters rearing up like spear
carriers and moving their claws with a scrap-iron clanking, titanic
crabs aiming their bodies like cannons on their carriages, and hideous
devilfish intertwining their tentacles like bushes of writhing snakes.

What was this astounding world that I didn’t yet know? In what order
did these articulates belong, these creatures for which the rocks
provided a second carapace? Where had nature learned the secret of
their vegetating existence, and for how many centuries had they lived
in the ocean’s lower strata?

But I couldn’t linger. Captain Nemo, on familiar terms with these
dreadful animals, no longer minded them. We arrived at a preliminary
plateau where still other surprises were waiting for me. There
picturesque ruins took shape, betraying the hand of man, not our
Creator. They were huge stacks of stones in which you could
distinguish the indistinct forms of palaces and temples, now arrayed
in hosts of blossoming zoophytes, and over it all, not ivy but a heavy
mantle of algae and fucus plants.

But what part of the globe could this be, this land swallowed by
cataclysms? Who had set up these rocks and stones like the dolmens of
prehistoric times? Where was I, where had Captain Nemo’s fancies taken
me?

I wanted to ask him. Unable to, I stopped him. I seized his arm. But
he shook his head, pointed to the mountain’s topmost peak, and seemed
to tell me:

“Come on! Come with me! Come higher!”

I followed him with one last burst of energy, and in a few minutes I
had scaled the peak, which crowned the whole rocky mass by some ten
meters.

I looked back down the side we had just cleared. There the mountain
rose only 700 to 800 feet above the plains; but on its far slope it
crowned the receding bottom of this part of the Atlantic by a height
twice that. My eyes scanned the distance and took in a vast area lit
by intense flashes of light. In essence, this mountain was a
volcano. Fifty feet below its peak, amid a shower of stones and slag,
a wide crater vomited torrents of lava that were dispersed in fiery
cascades into the heart of the liquid mass. So situated, this volcano
was an immense torch that lit up the lower plains all the way to the
horizon.

As I said, this underwater crater spewed lava, but not flames. Flames
need oxygen from the air and are unable to spread underwater; but a
lava flow, which contains in itself the principle of its
incandescence, can rise to a white heat, overpower the liquid element,
and turn it into steam on contact. Swift currents swept away all this
diffuse gas, and torrents of lava slid to the foot of the mountain,
like the disgorgings of a Mt. Vesuvius over the city limits of a
second Torre del Greco.

In fact, there beneath my eyes was a town in ruins, demolished,
overwhelmed, laid low, its roofs caved in, its temples pulled down,
its arches dislocated, its columns stretching over the earth; in these
ruins you could still detect the solid proportions of a sort of Tuscan
architecture; farther off, the remains of a gigantic aqueduct; here,
the caked heights of an acropolis along with the fluid forms of a
Parthenon; there, the remnants of a wharf, as if some bygone port had
long ago harbored merchant vessels and triple-tiered war galleys on
the shores of some lost ocean; still farther off, long rows of
collapsing walls, deserted thoroughfares, a whole Pompeii buried under
the waters, which Captain Nemo had resurrected before my eyes!

Where was I? Where was I? I had to find out at all cost, I wanted to
speak, I wanted to rip off the copper sphere imprisoning my head.

But Captain Nemo came over and stopped me with a gesture. Then,
picking up a piece of chalky stone, he advanced to a black basaltic
rock and scrawled this one word:

ATLANTIS

What lightning flashed through my mind! Atlantis, that ancient land of
Meropis mentioned by the historian Theopompus; Plato’s Atlantis; the
continent whose very existence has been denied by such philosophers
and scientists as Origen, Porphyry, Iamblichus, d’Anville, Malte-Brun,
and Humboldt, who entered its disappearance in the ledger of myths and
folk tales; the country whose reality has nevertheless been accepted
by such other thinkers as Posidonius, Pliny, Ammianus Marcellinus,
Tertullian, Engel, Scherer, Tournefort, Buffon, and d’Avezac; I had
this land right under my eyes, furnishing its own unimpeachable
evidence of the catastrophe that had overtaken it! So this was the
submerged region that had existed outside Europe, Asia, and Libya,
beyond the Pillars of Hercules, home of those powerful Atlantean
people against whom ancient Greece had waged its earliest wars!

The writer whose narratives record the lofty deeds of those heroic
times is Plato himself. His dialogues Timaeus and Critias were drafted
with the poet and legislator Solon as their inspiration, as it were.

One day Solon was conversing with some elderly wise men in the
Egyptian capital of Sais, a town already 8,000 years of age, as
documented by the annals engraved on the sacred walls of its
temples. One of these elders related the history of another town 1,000
years older still. This original city of Athens, ninety centuries old,
had been invaded and partly destroyed by the Atlanteans. These
Atlanteans, he said, resided on an immense continent greater than
Africa and

Asia combined, taking in an area that lay between latitude 12 degrees
and 40 degrees north. Their dominion extended even to Egypt. They
tried to enforce their rule as far as Greece, but they had to retreat
before the indomitable resistance of the Hellenic people. Centuries
passed. A cataclysm occurred—floods, earthquakes. A single night and
day were enough to obliterate this Atlantis, whose highest peaks
(Madeira, the Azores, the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands) still
emerge above the waves.

These were the historical memories that Captain Nemo’s scrawl sent
rushing through my mind. Thus, led by the strangest of fates, I was
treading underfoot one of the mountains of that continent! My hands
were touching ruins many thousands of years old, contemporary with
prehistoric times! I was walking in the very place where
contemporaries of early man had walked! My heavy soles were crushing
the skeletons of animals from the age of fable, animals that used to
take cover in the shade of these trees now turned to stone!

Oh, why was I so short of time! I would have gone down the steep
slopes of this mountain, crossed this entire immense continent, which
surely connects Africa with America, and visited its great prehistoric
cities. Under my eyes there perhaps lay the warlike town of Makhimos
or the pious village of Eusebes, whose gigantic inhabitants lived for
whole centuries and had the strength to raise blocks of stone that
still withstood the action of the waters. One day perhaps, some
volcanic phenomenon will bring these sunken ruins back to the surface
of the waves! Numerous underwater volcanoes have been sighted in this
part of the ocean, and many ships have felt terrific tremors when
passing over these turbulent depths. A few have heard hollow noises
that announced some struggle of the elements far below, others have
hauled in volcanic ash hurled above the waves. As far as the equator
this whole seafloor is still under construction by plutonic
forces. And in some remote epoch, built up by volcanic disgorgings and
successive layers of lava, who knows whether the peaks of these
fire-belching mountains may reappear above the surface of the
Atlantic!

As I mused in this way, trying to establish in my memory every detail
of this impressive landscape, Captain Nemo was leaning his elbows on a
moss-covered monument, motionless as if petrified in some mute
trance. Was he dreaming of those lost generations, asking them for the
secret of human destiny? Was it here that this strange man came to
revive himself, basking in historical memories, reliving that bygone
life, he who had no desire for our modern one? I would have given
anything to know his thoughts, to share them, understand them!

We stayed in this place an entire hour, contemplating its vast plains
in the lava’s glow, which sometimes took on a startling
intensity. Inner boilings sent quick shivers running through the
mountain’s crust. Noises from deep underneath, clearly transmitted by
the liquid medium, reverberated with majestic amplitude.

Just then the moon appeared for an instant through the watery mass,
casting a few pale rays over this submerged continent. It was only a
fleeting glimmer, but its effect was indescribable. The captain stood
up and took one last look at these immense plains; then his hand
signaled me to follow him.

We went swiftly down the mountain. Once past the petrified forest, I
could see the Nautilus’s beacon twinkling like a star. The captain
walked straight toward it, and we were back on board just as the first
glimmers of dawn were whitening the surface of the ocean.


CHAPTER 10

The Underwater Coalfields


THE NEXT DAY, February 20, I overslept. I was so exhausted from the
night before, I didn’t get up until eleven o’clock. I dressed
quickly. I hurried to find out the Nautilus’s heading. The instruments
indicated that it was running southward at a speed of twenty miles per
hour and a depth of 100 meters.

Conseil entered. I described our nocturnal excursion to him, and since
the panels were open, he could still catch a glimpse of this submerged
continent.

In fact, the Nautilus was skimming only ten meters over the soil of
these Atlantis plains. The ship scudded along like an air balloon
borne by the wind over some prairie on land; but it would be more
accurate to say that we sat in the lounge as if we were riding in a
coach on an express train. As for the foregrounds passing before our
eyes, they were fantastically carved rocks, forests of trees that had
crossed over from the vegetable kingdom into the mineral kingdom,
their motionless silhouettes sprawling beneath the waves. There also
were stony masses buried beneath carpets of axidia and sea anemone,
bristling with long, vertical water plants, then strangely contoured
blocks of lava that testified to all the fury of those plutonic
developments.

While this bizarre scenery was glittering under our electric beams, I
told Conseil the story of the Atlanteans, who had inspired the old
French scientist Jean Bailly to write so many entertaining—albeit
utterly fictitious—pages.* I told the lad about the wars of these
heroic people. I discussed the question of Atlantis with the fervor of
a man who no longer had any doubts. But Conseil was so distracted he
barely heard me, and his lack of interest in any commentary on this
historical topic was soon explained.

*Bailly believed that Atlantis was located at the North Pole! Ed.

In essence, numerous fish had caught his eye, and when fish pass by,
Conseil vanishes into his world of classifying and leaves real life
behind. In which case I could only tag along and resume our
ichthyological research.

Even so, these Atlantic fish were not noticeably different from those
we had observed earlier. There were rays of gigantic size, five meters
long and with muscles so powerful they could leap above the waves,
sharks of various species including a fifteen-foot glaucous shark with
sharp triangular teeth and so transparent it was almost invisible amid
the waters, brown lantern sharks, prism-shaped humantin sharks armored
with protuberant hides, sturgeons resembling their relatives in the
Mediterranean, trumpet-snouted pipefish a foot and a half long,
yellowish brown with small gray fins and no teeth or tongue, unreeling
like slim, supple snakes.

Among bony fish, Conseil noticed some blackish marlin three meters
long with a sharp sword jutting from the upper jaw, bright-colored
weevers known in Aristotle’s day as sea dragons and whose dorsal
stingers make them quite dangerous to pick up, then dolphinfish with
brown backs striped in blue and edged in gold, handsome dorados,
moonlike opahs that look like azure disks but which the sun’s rays
turn into spots of silver, finally eight-meter swordfish from the
genus Xiphias, swimming in schools, sporting yellowish sickle-shaped
fins and six-foot broadswords, stalwart animals, plant eaters rather
than fish eaters, obeying the tiniest signals from their females like
henpecked husbands.

But while observing these different specimens of marine fauna, I
didn’t stop examining the long plains of Atlantis. Sometimes an
unpredictable irregularity in the seafloor would force the Nautilus to
slow down, and then it would glide into the narrow channels between
the hills with a cetacean’s dexterity. If the labyrinth became
hopelessly tangled, the submersible would rise above it like an
airship, and after clearing the obstacle, it would resume its speedy
course just a few meters above the ocean floor. It was an enjoyable
and impressive way of navigating that did indeed recall the maneuvers
of an airship ride, with the major difference that the Nautilus
faithfully obeyed the hands of its helmsman.

The terrain consisted mostly of thick slime mixed with petrified
branches, but it changed little by little near four o’clock in the
afternoon; it grew rockier and seemed to be strewn with pudding stones
and a basaltic gravel called “tuff,” together with bits of lava and
sulfurous obsidian. I expected these long plains to change into
mountain regions, and in fact, as the Nautilus was executing certain
turns, I noticed that the southerly horizon was blocked by a high wall
that seemed to close off every exit. Its summit obviously poked above
the level of the ocean. It had to be a continent or at least an
island, either one of the Canaries or one of the Cape Verde
Islands. Our bearings hadn’t been marked on the chart—perhaps
deliberately—and I had no idea what our position was. In any case this
wall seemed to signal the end of Atlantis, of which, all in all, we
had crossed only a small part.

Nightfall didn’t interrupt my observations. I was left to
myself. Conseil had repaired to his cabin. The Nautilus slowed down,
hovering above the muddled masses on the seafloor, sometimes grazing
them as if wanting to come to rest, sometimes rising unpredictably to
the surface of the waves. Then I glimpsed a few bright constellations
through the crystal waters, specifically five or six of those zodiacal
stars trailing from the tail end of Orion.

I would have stayed longer at my window, marveling at these beauties
of sea and sky, but the panels closed. Just then the Nautilus had
arrived at the perpendicular face of that high wall. How the ship
would maneuver I hadn’t a guess. I repaired to my stateroom. The
Nautilus did not stir. I fell asleep with the firm intention of waking
up in just a few hours.

But it was eight o’clock the next day when I returned to the lounge. I
stared at the pressure gauge. It told me that the Nautilus was afloat
on the surface of the ocean. Furthermore, I heard the sound of
footsteps on the platform. Yet there were no rolling movements to
indicate the presence of waves undulating above me.

I climbed as far as the hatch. It was open. But instead of the broad
daylight I was expecting, I found that I was surrounded by total
darkness. Where were we? Had I been mistaken? Was it still night? No!
Not one star was twinkling, and nighttime is never so utterly black.

I wasn’t sure what to think, when a voice said to me:

“Is that you, professor?”

“Ah, Captain Nemo!” I replied. “Where are we?”

“Underground, professor.”

“Underground!” I exclaimed. “And the Nautilus is still floating?”

“It always floats.”

“But I don’t understand!”

“Wait a little while. Our beacon is about to go on, and if you want
some light on the subject, you’ll be satisfied.”

I set foot on the platform and waited. The darkness was so profound I
couldn’t see even Captain Nemo. However, looking at the zenith
directly overhead, I thought I caught sight of a feeble glimmer, a
sort of twilight filtering through a circular hole. Just then the
beacon suddenly went on, and its intense brightness made that hazy
light vanish.

This stream of electricity dazzled my eyes, and after momentarily
shutting them, I looked around. The Nautilus was stationary. It was
floating next to an embankment shaped like a wharf. As for the water
now buoying the ship, it was a lake completely encircled by an inner
wall about two miles in diameter, hence six miles around. Its level—as
indicated by the pressure gauge—would be the same as the outside
level, because some connection had to exist between this lake and the
sea. Slanting inward over their base, these high walls converged to
form a vault shaped like an immense upside-down funnel that measured
500 or 600 meters in height. At its summit there gaped the circular
opening through which I had detected that faint glimmer, obviously
daylight.

Before more carefully examining the interior features of this enormous
cavern, and before deciding if it was the work of nature or humankind,
I went over to Captain Nemo.

“Where are we?” I said.

“In the very heart of an extinct volcano,” the captain answered me, “a
volcano whose interior was invaded by the sea after some convulsion in
the earth. While you were sleeping, professor, the Nautilus entered
this lagoon through a natural channel that opens ten meters below the
surface of the ocean. This is our home port, secure, convenient,
secret, and sheltered against winds from any direction! Along the
coasts of your continents or islands, show me any offshore mooring
that can equal this safe refuge for withstanding the fury of
hurricanes.”

“Indeed,” I replied, “here you’re in perfect safety, Captain Nemo. Who
could reach you in the heart of a volcano? But don’t I see an opening
at its summit?”

“Yes, its crater, a crater formerly filled with lava, steam, and
flames, but which now lets in this life-giving air we’re breathing.”

“But which volcanic mountain is this?” I asked.

“It’s one of the many islets with which this sea is strewn. For ships
a mere reef, for us an immense cavern. I discovered it by chance, and
chance served me well.”

“But couldn’t someone enter through the mouth of its crater?”

“No more than I could exit through it. You can climb about 100 feet up
the inner base of this mountain, but then the walls overhang, they
lean too far in to be scaled.”

“I can see, captain, that nature is your obedient servant, any time or
any place. You’re safe on this lake, and nobody else can visit its
waters. But what’s the purpose of this refuge? The Nautilus doesn’t
need a harbor.”

“No, professor, but it needs electricity to run, batteries to generate
its electricity, sodium to feed its batteries, coal to make its
sodium, and coalfields from which to dig its coal. Now then, right at
this spot the sea covers entire forests that sank underwater in
prehistoric times; today, turned to stone, transformed into carbon
fuel, they offer me inexhaustible coal mines.”

“So, captain, your men practice the trade of miners here?”

“Precisely. These mines extend under the waves like the coalfields at
Newcastle. Here, dressed in diving suits, pick and mattock in hand, my
men go out and dig this carbon fuel for which I don’t need a single
mine on land. When I burn this combustible to produce sodium, the
smoke escaping from the mountain’s crater gives it the appearance of a
still-active volcano.”

“And will we see your companions at work?”

“No, at least not this time, because I’m eager to continue our
underwater tour of the world. Accordingly, I’ll rest content with
drawing on my reserve stock of sodium. We’ll stay here long enough to
load it on board, in other words, a single workday, then we’ll resume
our voyage. So, Professor Aronnax, if you’d like to explore this
cavern and circle its lagoon, seize the day.”

I thanked the captain and went to look for my two companions, who
hadn’t yet left their cabin. I invited them to follow me, not telling
them where we were.

They climbed onto the platform. Conseil, whom nothing could startle,
saw it as a perfectly natural thing to fall asleep under the waves and
wake up under a mountain. But Ned Land had no idea in his head other
than to see if this cavern offered some way out.

After breakfast near ten o’clock, we went down onto the embankment.

“So here we are, back on shore,” Conseil said.

“I’d hardly call this shore,” the Canadian replied. “And besides, we
aren’t on it but under it.”

A sandy beach unfolded before us, measuring 500 feet at its widest
point between the waters of the lake and the foot of the mountain’s
walls. Via this strand you could easily circle the lake. But the base
of these high walls consisted of broken soil over which there lay
picturesque piles of volcanic blocks and enormous pumice stones. All
these crumbling masses were covered with an enamel polished by the
action of underground fires, and they glistened under the stream of
electric light from our beacon. Stirred up by our footsteps, the
mica-rich dust on this beach flew into the air like a cloud of sparks.

The ground rose appreciably as it moved away from the sand flats by
the waves, and we soon arrived at some long, winding gradients,
genuinely steep paths that allowed us to climb little by little; but
we had to tread cautiously in the midst of pudding stones that weren’t
cemented together, and our feet kept skidding on glassy trachyte, made
of feldspar and quartz crystals.

The volcanic nature of this enormous pit was apparent all around us. I
ventured to comment on it to my companions.

“Can you picture,” I asked them, “what this funnel must have been like
when it was filled with boiling lava, and the level of that
incandescent liquid rose right to the mountain’s mouth, like cast iron
up the insides of a furnace?”

“I can picture it perfectly,” Conseil replied. “But will master tell
me why this huge smelter suspended operations, and how it is that an
oven was replaced by the tranquil waters of a lake?”

“In all likelihood, Conseil, because some convulsion created an
opening below the surface of the ocean, the opening that serves as a
passageway for the Nautilus. Then the waters of the Atlantic rushed
inside the mountain. There ensued a dreadful struggle between the
elements of fire and water, a struggle ending in King Neptune’s
favor. But many centuries have passed since then, and this submerged
volcano has changed into a peaceful cavern.”

“That’s fine,” Ned Land answered. “I accept the explanation, but in
our personal interests, I’m sorry this opening the professor mentions
wasn’t made above sea level.”

“But Ned my friend,” Conseil answered, “if it weren’t an underwater
passageway, the Nautilus couldn’t enter it!”

“And I might add, Mr. Land,” I said, “that the waters wouldn’t have
rushed under the mountain, and the volcano would still be a
volcano. So you have nothing to be sorry about.”

Our climb continued. The gradients got steeper and narrower. Sometimes
they were cut across by deep pits that had to be cleared. Masses of
overhanging rock had to be gotten around. You slid on your knees, you
crept on your belly. But helped by the Canadian’s strength and
Conseil’s dexterity, we overcame every obstacle.

At an elevation of about thirty meters, the nature of the terrain
changed without becoming any easier. Pudding stones and trachyte gave
way to black basaltic rock: here, lying in slabs all swollen with
blisters; there, shaped like actual prisms and arranged into a series
of columns that supported the springings of this immense vault, a
wonderful sample of natural architecture. Then, among this basaltic
rock, there snaked long, hardened lava flows inlaid with veins of
bituminous coal and in places covered by wide carpets of sulfur. The
sunshine coming through the crater had grown stronger, shedding a hazy
light over all the volcanic waste forever buried in the heart of this
extinct mountain.

But when we had ascended to an elevation of about 250 feet, we were
stopped by insurmountable obstacles. The converging inside walls
changed into overhangs, and our climb into a circular stroll. At this
topmost level the vegetable kingdom began to challenge the mineral
kingdom. Shrubs, and even a few trees, emerged from crevices in the
walls. I recognized some spurges that let their caustic, purgative sap
trickle out. There were heliotropes, very remiss at living up to their
sun-worshipping reputations since no sunlight ever reached them; their
clusters of flowers drooped sadly, their colors and scents were
faded. Here and there chrysanthemums sprouted timidly at the feet of
aloes with long, sad, sickly leaves. But between these lava flows I
spotted little violets that still gave off a subtle fragrance, and I
confess that I inhaled it with delight. The soul of a flower is its
scent, and those splendid water plants, flowers of the sea, have no
souls!

We had arrived at the foot of a sturdy clump of dragon trees, which
were splitting the rocks with exertions of their muscular roots, when
Ned Land exclaimed:

“Oh, sir, a hive!”

“A hive?” I answered, with a gesture of utter disbelief.

“Yes, a hive,” the Canadian repeated, “with bees buzzing around!”

I went closer and was forced to recognize the obvious. At the mouth of
a hole cut in the trunk of a dragon tree, there swarmed thousands of
these ingenious insects so common to all the Canary Islands, where
their output is especially prized.

Naturally enough, the Canadian wanted to lay in a supply of honey, and
it would have been ill-mannered of me to say no. He mixed sulfur with
some dry leaves, set them on fire with a spark from his tinderbox, and
proceeded to smoke the bees out. Little by little the buzzing died
down and the disemboweled hive yielded several pounds of sweet
honey. Ned Land stuffed his haversack with it.

“When I’ve mixed this honey with our breadfruit batter,” he told us,
“I’ll be ready to serve you a delectable piece of cake.”

“But of course,” Conseil put in, “it will be gingerbread!”

“I’m all for gingerbread,” I said, “but let’s resume this fascinating
stroll.”

At certain turns in the trail we were going along, the lake appeared
in its full expanse. The ship’s beacon lit up that whole placid
surface, which experienced neither ripples nor undulations. The
Nautilus lay perfectly still. On its platform and on the embankment,
crewmen were bustling around, black shadows that stood out clearly in
the midst of the luminous air.

Just then we went around the highest ridge of these rocky foothills
that supported the vault. Then I saw that bees weren’t the animal
kingdom’s only representatives inside this volcano. Here and in the
shadows, birds of prey soared and whirled, flying away from nests
perched on tips of rock. There were sparrow hawks with white bellies,
and screeching kestrels. With all the speed their stiltlike legs could
muster, fine fat bustards scampered over the slopes. I’ll let the
reader decide whether the Canadian’s appetite was aroused by the sight
of this tasty game, and whether he regretted having no rifle in his
hands. He tried to make stones do the work of bullets, and after
several fruitless attempts, he managed to wound one of these
magnificent bustards. To say he risked his life twenty times in order
to capture this bird is simply the unadulterated truth; but he fared
so well, the animal went into his sack to join the honeycombs.

By then we were forced to go back down to the beach because the ridge
had become impossible. Above us, the yawning crater looked like the
wide mouth of a well. From where we stood, the sky was pretty easy to
see, and I watched clouds race by, disheveled by the west wind,
letting tatters of mist trail over the mountain’s summit. Proof
positive that those clouds kept at a moderate altitude, because this
volcano didn’t rise more than 1,800 feet above the level of the ocean.

Half an hour after the Canadian’s latest exploits, we were back on the
inner beach. There the local flora was represented by a wide carpet of
samphire, a small umbelliferous plant that keeps quite nicely, which
also boasts the names glasswort, saxifrage, and sea fennel. Conseil
picked a couple bunches. As for the local fauna, it included thousands
of crustaceans of every type: lobsters, hermit crabs, prawns, mysid
shrimps, daddy longlegs, rock crabs, and a prodigious number of
seashells, such as cowries, murex snails, and limpets.

In this locality there gaped the mouth of a magnificent cave. My
companions and I took great pleasure in stretching out on its
fine-grained sand. Fire had polished the sparkling enamel of its inner
walls, sprinkled all over with mica-rich dust. Ned Land tapped these
walls and tried to probe their thickness. I couldn’t help smiling. Our
conversation then turned to his everlasting escape plans, and without
going too far, I felt I could offer him this hope: Captain Nemo had
gone down south only to replenish his sodium supplies. So I hoped he
would now hug the coasts of Europe and America, which would allow the
Canadian to try again with a greater chance of success.

We were stretched out in this delightful cave for an hour. Our
conversation, lively at the outset, then languished. A definite
drowsiness overcame us. Since I saw no good reason to resist the call
of sleep, I fell into a heavy doze. I dreamed—one doesn’t choose his
dreams—that my life had been reduced to the vegetating existence of a
simple mollusk. It seemed to me that this cave made up my
double-valved shell. . . .

Suddenly Conseil’s voice startled me awake.

“Get up! Get up!” shouted the fine lad.

“What is it?” I asked, in a sitting position.

“The water’s coming up to us!”

I got back on my feet. Like a torrent the sea was rushing into our
retreat, and since we definitely were not mollusks, we had to clear
out.

In a few seconds we were safe on top of the cave.

“What happened?” Conseil asked. “Some new phenomenon?”

“Not quite, my friends!” I replied. “It was the tide, merely the tide,
which wellnigh caught us by surprise just as it did Sir Walter Scott’s
hero! The ocean outside is rising, and by a perfectly natural law of
balance, the level of this lake is also rising. We’ve gotten off with
a mild dunking. Let’s go change clothes on the Nautilus.”

Three-quarters of an hour later, we had completed our circular stroll
and were back on board. Just then the crewmen finished loading the
sodium supplies, and the Nautilus could have departed immediately.

But Captain Nemo gave no orders. Would he wait for nightfall and exit
through his underwater passageway in secrecy? Perhaps.

Be that as it may, by the next day the Nautilus had left its home port
and was navigating well out from any shore, a few meters beneath the
waves of the Atlantic.


CHAPTER 11

The Sargasso Sea


THE NAUTILUS didn’t change direction. For the time being, then, we had
to set aside any hope of returning to European seas. Captain Nemo kept
his prow pointing south. Where was he taking us? I was afraid to
guess.

That day the Nautilus crossed an odd part of the Atlantic Ocean. No
one is unaware of the existence of that great warm-water current known
by name as the Gulf Stream. After emerging from channels off Florida,
it heads toward Spitzbergen. But before entering the Gulf of Mexico
near latitude 44 degrees north, this current divides into two arms;
its chief arm makes for the shores of Ireland and Norway while the
second flexes southward at the level of the Azores; then it hits the
coast of Africa, sweeps in a long oval, and returns to the Caribbean
Sea.

Now then, this second arm—more accurately, a collar—forms a ring of
warm water around a section of cool, tranquil, motionless ocean called
the Sargasso Sea. This is an actual lake in the open Atlantic, and the
great current’s waters take at least three years to circle it.

Properly speaking, the Sargasso Sea covers every submerged part of
Atlantis. Certain authors have even held that the many weeds strewn
over this sea were torn loose from the prairies of that ancient
continent. But it’s more likely that these grasses, algae, and fucus
plants were carried off from the beaches of Europe and America, then
taken as far as this zone by the Gulf Stream. This is one of the
reasons why Christopher Columbus assumed the existence of a New
World. When the ships of that bold investigator arrived in the
Sargasso Sea, they had great difficulty navigating in the midst of
these weeds, which, much to their crews’ dismay, slowed them down to a
halt; and they wasted three long weeks crossing this sector.

Such was the region our Nautilus was visiting just then: a genuine
prairie, a tightly woven carpet of algae, gulfweed, and bladder wrack
so dense and compact a craft’s stempost couldn’t tear through it
without difficulty. Accordingly, not wanting to entangle his propeller
in this weed-choked mass, Captain Nemo stayed at a depth some meters
below the surface of the waves.

The name Sargasso comes from the Spanish word “sargazo,” meaning
gulfweed. This gulfweed, the swimming gulfweed or berry carrier, is
the chief substance making up this immense shoal. And here’s why these
water plants collect in this placid Atlantic basin, according to the
expert on the subject, Commander Maury, author of The Physical
Geography of the Sea.

The explanation he gives seems to entail a set of conditions that
everybody knows: “Now,” Maury says, “if bits of cork or chaff, or any
floating substance, be put into a basin, and a circular motion be
given to the water, all the light substances will be found crowding
together near the center of the pool, where there is the least
motion. Just such a basin is the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf Stream,
and the Sargasso Sea is the center of the whirl.”

I share Maury’s view, and I was able to study the phenomenon in this
exclusive setting where ships rarely go. Above us, huddled among the
brown weeds, there floated objects originating from all over: tree
trunks ripped from the Rocky Mountains or the Andes and sent floating
down the Amazon or the Mississippi, numerous pieces of wreckage,
remnants of keels or undersides, bulwarks staved in and so weighed
down with seashells and barnacles, they couldn’t rise to the surface
of the ocean. And the passing years will someday bear out Maury’s
other view that by collecting in this way over the centuries, these
substances will be turned to stone by the action of the waters and
will then form inexhaustible coalfields. Valuable reserves prepared by
farseeing nature for that time when man will have exhausted his mines
on the continents.

In the midst of this hopelessly tangled fabric of weeds and fucus
plants, I noted some delightful pink-colored, star-shaped alcyon
coral, sea anemone trailing the long tresses of their tentacles, some
green, red, and blue jellyfish, and especially those big rhizostome
jellyfish that Cuvier described, whose bluish parasols are trimmed
with violet festoons.

We spent the whole day of February 22 in the Sargasso Sea, where fish
that dote on marine plants and crustaceans find plenty to eat. The
next day the ocean resumed its usual appearance.

From this moment on, for nineteen days from February 23 to March 12,
the Nautilus stayed in the middle of the Atlantic, hustling us along
at a constant speed of 100 leagues every twenty-four hours. It was
obvious that Captain Nemo wanted to carry out his underwater program,
and I had no doubt that he intended, after doubling Cape Horn, to
return to the Pacific South Seas.

So Ned Land had good reason to worry. In these wide seas empty of
islands, it was no longer feasible to jump ship. Nor did we have any
way to counter Captain Nemo’s whims. We had no choice but to
acquiesce; but if we couldn’t attain our end through force or cunning,
I liked to think we might achieve it through persuasion. Once this
voyage was over, might not Captain Nemo consent to set us free in
return for our promise never to reveal his existence? Our word of
honor, which we sincerely would have kept. However, this delicate
question would have to be negotiated with the captain. But how would
he receive our demands for freedom? At the very outset and in no
uncertain terms, hadn’t he declared that the secret of his life
required that we be permanently imprisoned on board the Nautilus?
Wouldn’t he see my four-month silence as a tacit acceptance of this
situation? Would my returning to this subject arouse suspicions that
could jeopardize our escape plans, if we had promising circumstances
for trying again later on? I weighed all these considerations, turned
them over in my mind, submitted them to Conseil, but he was as baffled
as I was. In short, although I’m not easily discouraged, I realized
that my chances of ever seeing my fellow men again were shrinking by
the day, especially at a time when Captain Nemo was recklessly racing
toward the south Atlantic!

During those nineteen days just mentioned, no unique incidents
distinguished our voyage. I saw little of the captain. He was at
work. In the library I often found books he had left open, especially
books on natural history. He had thumbed through my work on the great
ocean depths, and the margins were covered with his notes, which
sometimes contradicted my theories and formulations. But the captain
remained content with this method of refining my work, and he rarely
discussed it with me. Sometimes I heard melancholy sounds
reverberating from the organ, which he played very expressively, but
only at night in the midst of the most secretive darkness, while the
Nautilus slumbered in the wilderness of the ocean.

During this part of our voyage, we navigated on the surface of the
waves for entire days. The sea was nearly deserted. A few sailing
ships, laden for the East Indies, were heading toward the Cape of Good
Hope. One day we were chased by the longboats of a whaling vessel,
which undoubtedly viewed us as some enormous baleen whale of great
value. But Captain Nemo didn’t want these gallant gentlemen wasting
their time and energy, so he ended the hunt by diving beneath the
waters. This incident seemed to fascinate Ned Land intensely. I’m sure
the Canadian was sorry that these fishermen couldn’t harpoon our
sheet-iron cetacean and mortally wound it.

During this period the fish Conseil and I observed differed little
from those we had already studied in other latitudes. Chief among them
were specimens of that dreadful cartilaginous genus that’s divided
into three subgenera numbering at least thirty-two species: striped
sharks five meters long, the head squat and wider than the body, the
caudal fin curved, the back with seven big, black, parallel lines
running lengthwise; then perlon sharks, ash gray, pierced with seven
gill openings, furnished with a single dorsal fin placed almost
exactly in the middle of the body.

Some big dogfish also passed by, a voracious species of shark if there
ever was one. With some justice, fishermen’s yarns aren’t to be
trusted, but here’s what a few of them relate. Inside the corpse of
one of these animals there were found a buffalo head and a whole calf;
in another, two tuna and a sailor in uniform; in yet another, a
soldier with his saber; in another, finally, a horse with its
rider. In candor, none of these sounds like divinely inspired
truth. But the fact remains that not a single dogfish let itself get
caught in the Nautilus’s nets, so I can’t vouch for their voracity.

Schools of elegant, playful dolphin swam alongside for entire
days. They went in groups of five or six, hunting in packs like wolves
over the countryside; moreover, they’re just as voracious as dogfish,
if I can believe a certain Copenhagen professor who says that from one
dolphin’s stomach, he removed thirteen porpoises and fifteen
seals. True, it was a killer whale, belonging to the biggest known
species, whose length sometimes exceeds twenty-four feet. The family
Delphinia numbers ten genera, and the dolphins I saw were akin to the
genus Delphinorhynchus, remarkable for an extremely narrow muzzle four
times as long as the cranium. Measuring three meters, their bodies
were black on top, underneath a pinkish white strewn with small, very
scattered spots.

From these seas I’ll also mention some unusual specimens of croakers,
fish from the order Acanthopterygia, family Scienidea. Some
authors—more artistic than scientific—claim that these fish are
melodious singers, that their voices in unison put on concerts
unmatched by human choristers. I don’t say nay, but to my regret these
croakers didn’t serenade us as we passed.

Finally, to conclude, Conseil classified a large number of flying
fish. Nothing could have made a more unusual sight than the marvelous
timing with which dolphins hunt these fish. Whatever the range of its
flight, however evasive its trajectory (even up and over the
Nautilus), the hapless flying fish always found a dolphin to welcome
it with open mouth. These were either flying gurnards or kitelike sea
robins, whose lips glowed in the dark, at night scrawling fiery
streaks in the air before plunging into the murky waters like so many
shooting stars.

Our navigating continued under these conditions until March 13. That
day the Nautilus was put to work in some depth-sounding experiments
that fascinated me deeply.

By then we had fared nearly 13,000 leagues from our starting point in
the Pacific high seas. Our position fix placed us in latitude 45
degrees 37’ south and longitude 37 degrees 53’ west. These were the
same waterways where Captain Denham, aboard the Herald, payed out
14,000 meters of sounding line without finding bottom. It was here too
that Lieutenant Parker, aboard the American frigate Congress, was
unable to reach the underwater soil at 15,149 meters.

Captain Nemo decided to take his Nautilus down to the lowest depths in
order to double-check these different soundings. I got ready to record
the results of this experiment. The panels in the lounge opened, and
maneuvers began for reaching those strata so prodigiously far removed.

It was apparently considered out of the question to dive by filling
the ballast tanks. Perhaps they wouldn’t sufficiently increase the
Nautilus’s specific gravity. Moreover, in order to come back up, it
would be necessary to expel the excess water, and our pumps might not
have been strong enough to overcome the outside pressure.

Captain Nemo decided to make for the ocean floor by submerging on an
appropriately gradual diagonal with the help of his side fins, which
were set at a 45 degrees angle to the Nautilus’s waterline. Then the
propeller was brought to its maximum speed, and its four blades
churned the waves with indescribable violence.

Under this powerful thrust the Nautilus’s hull quivered like a
resonating chord, and the ship sank steadily under the
waters. Stationed in the lounge, the captain and I watched the needle
swerving swiftly over the pressure gauge. Soon we had gone below the
livable zone where most fish reside. Some of these animals can thrive
only at the surface of seas or rivers, but a minority can dwell at
fairly great depths. Among the latter I observed a species of dogfish
called the cow shark that’s equipped with six respiratory slits, the
telescope fish with its enormous eyes, the armored gurnard with gray
thoracic fins plus black pectoral fins and a breastplate protected by
pale red slabs of bone, then finally the grenadier, living at a depth
of 1,200 meters, by that point tolerating a pressure of 120
atmospheres.

I asked Captain Nemo if he had observed any fish at more considerable
depths.

“Fish? Rarely!” he answered me. “But given the current state of marine
science, who are we to presume, what do we really know of these
depths?”

“Just this, captain. In going toward the ocean’s lower strata, we know
that vegetable life disappears more quickly than animal life. We know
that moving creatures can still be encountered where water plants no
longer grow. We know that oysters and pilgrim scallops live in 2,000
meters of water, and that Admiral McClintock, England’s hero of the
polar seas, pulled in a live sea star from a depth of 2,500 meters. We
know that the crew of the Royal Navy’s Bulldog fished up a starfish
from 2,620 fathoms, hence from a depth of more than one vertical
league. Would you still say, Captain Nemo, that we really know
nothing?”

“No, professor,” the captain replied, “I wouldn’t be so
discourteous. Yet I’ll ask you to explain how these creatures can live
at such depths?”

“I explain it on two grounds,” I replied. “In the first place, because
vertical currents, which are caused by differences in the water’s
salinity and density, can produce enough motion to sustain the
rudimentary lifestyles of sea lilies and starfish.”

“True,” the captain put in.

“In the second place, because oxygen is the basis of life, and we know
that the amount of oxygen dissolved in salt water increases rather
than decreases with depth, that the pressure in these lower strata
helps to concentrate their oxygen content.”

“Oho! We know that, do we?” Captain Nemo replied in a tone of mild
surprise. “Well, professor, we have good reason to know it because
it’s the truth. I might add, in fact, that the air bladders of fish
contain more nitrogen than oxygen when these animals are caught at the
surface of the water, and conversely, more oxygen than nitrogen when
they’re pulled up from the lower depths. Which bears out your
formulation. But let’s continue our observations.”

My eyes flew back to the pressure gauge. The instrument indicated a
depth of 6,000 meters. Our submergence had been going on for an
hour. The Nautilus slid downward on its slanting fins, still
sinking. These deserted waters were wonderfully clear, with a
transparency impossible to convey. An hour later we were at 13,000
meters—about three and a quarter vertical leagues—and the ocean floor
was nowhere in sight.

However, at 14,000 meters I saw blackish peaks rising in the midst of
the waters. But these summits could have belonged to mountains as high
or even higher than the Himalayas or Mt. Blanc, and the extent of
these depths remained incalculable.

Despite the powerful pressures it was undergoing, the Nautilus sank
still deeper. I could feel its sheet-iron plates trembling down to
their riveted joins; metal bars arched; bulkheads groaned; the lounge
windows seemed to be warping inward under the water’s pressure. And
this whole sturdy mechanism would surely have given way, if, as its
captain had said, it weren’t capable of resisting like a solid block.

While grazing these rocky slopes lost under the waters, I still
spotted some seashells, tube worms, lively annelid worms from the
genus Spirorbis, and certain starfish specimens.

But soon these last representatives of animal life vanished, and three
vertical leagues down, the Nautilus passed below the limits of
underwater existence just as an air balloon rises above the breathable
zones in the sky. We reached a depth of 16,000 meters—four vertical
leagues—and by then the Nautilus’s plating was tolerating a pressure
of 1,600 atmospheres, in other words, 1,600 kilograms per each square
centimeter on its surface!

“What an experience!” I exclaimed. “Traveling these deep regions where
no man has ever ventured before! Look, captain! Look at these
magnificent rocks, these uninhabited caves, these last global haunts
where life is no longer possible! What unheard-of scenery, and why are
we reduced to preserving it only as a memory?”

“Would you like,” Captain Nemo asked me, “to bring back more than just
a memory?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that nothing could be easier than taking a photograph of this
underwater region!”

Before I had time to express the surprise this new proposition caused
me, a camera was carried into the lounge at Captain Nemo’s
request. The liquid setting, electrically lit, unfolded with perfect
clarity through the wide-open panels. No shadows, no blurs, thanks to
our artificial light. Not even sunshine could have been better for our
purposes. With the thrust of its propeller curbed by the slant of its
fins, the Nautilus stood still. The camera was aimed at the scenery on
the ocean floor, and in a few seconds we had a perfect negative.

I attach a print of the positive. In it you can view these primordial
rocks that have never seen the light of day, this nether granite that
forms the powerful foundation of our globe, the deep caves cut into
the stony mass, the outlines of incomparable distinctness whose far
edges stand out in black as if from the brush of certain Flemish
painters. In the distance is a mountainous horizon, a wondrously
undulating line that makes up the background of this landscape. The
general effect of these smooth rocks is indescribable: black,
polished, without moss or other blemish, carved into strange shapes,
sitting firmly on a carpet of sand that sparkled beneath our streams
of electric light.

Meanwhile, his photographic operations over, Captain Nemo told me:

“Let’s go back up, professor. We mustn’t push our luck and expose the
Nautilus too long to these pressures.”

“Let’s go back up!” I replied.

“Hold on tight.”

Before I had time to realize why the captain made this recommendation,
I was hurled to the carpet.

Its fins set vertically, its propeller thrown in gear at the captain’s
signal, the Nautilus rose with lightning speed, shooting upward like
an air balloon into the sky. Vibrating resonantly, it knifed through
the watery mass. Not a single detail was visible. In four minutes it
had cleared the four vertical leagues separating it from the surface
of the ocean, and after emerging like a flying fish, it fell back into
the sea, making the waves leap to prodigious heights.


CHAPTER 12

Sperm Whales and Baleen Whales


DURING THE NIGHT of March 13-14, the Nautilus resumed its southward
heading. Once it was abreast of Cape Horn, I thought it would strike
west of the cape, make for Pacific seas, and complete its tour of the
world. It did nothing of the sort and kept moving toward the
southernmost regions. So where was it bound? The pole? That was
insanity. I was beginning to think that the captain’s recklessness
more than justified Ned Land’s worst fears.

For a good while the Canadian had said nothing more to me about his
escape plans. He had become less sociable, almost sullen. I could see
how heavily this protracted imprisonment was weighing on him. I could
feel the anger building in him. Whenever he encountered the captain,
his eyes would flicker with dark fire, and I was in constant dread
that his natural vehemence would cause him to do something rash.

That day, March 14, he and Conseil managed to find me in my
stateroom. I asked them the purpose of their visit.

“To put a simple question to you, sir,” the Canadian answered me.

“Go on, Ned.”

“How many men do you think are on board the Nautilus?”

“I’m unable to say, my friend.”

“It seems to me,” Ned Land went on, “that it wouldn’t take much of a
crew to run a ship like this one.”

“Correct,” I replied. “Under existing conditions some ten men at the
most should be enough to operate it.”

“All right,” the Canadian said, “then why should there be any more
than that?”

“Why?” I answered.

I stared at Ned Land, whose motives were easy to guess.

“Because,” I said, “if I can trust my hunches, if I truly understand
the captain’s way of life, his Nautilus isn’t simply a ship. It’s
meant to be a refuge for people like its commander, people who have
severed all ties with the shore.”

“Perhaps,” Conseil said, “but in a nutshell, the Nautilus can hold
only a certain number of men, so couldn’t master estimate their
maximum?”

“How, Conseil?”

“By calculating it. Master is familiar with the ship’s capacity, hence
the amount of air it contains; on the other hand, master knows how
much air each man consumes in the act of breathing, and he can compare
this data with the fact that the Nautilus must rise to the surface
every twenty-four hours . . .”

Conseil didn’t finish his sentence, but I could easily see what he was
driving at.

“I follow you,” I said. “But while they’re simple to do, such
calculations can give only a very uncertain figure.”

“No problem,” the Canadian went on insistently.

“Then here’s how to calculate it,” I replied. “In one hour each man
consumes the oxygen contained in 100 liters of air, hence during
twenty-four hours the oxygen contained in 2,400 liters. Therefore, we
must look for the multiple of 2,400 liters of air that gives us the
amount found in the Nautilus.”

“Precisely,” Conseil said.

“Now then,” I went on, “the Nautilus’s capacity is 1,500 metric tons,
and that of a ton is 1,000 liters, so the Nautilus holds 1,500,000
liters of air, which, divided by 2,400 . . .”

I did a quick pencil calculation.

“. . . gives us the quotient of 625. Which is tantamount to saying
that the air contained in the Nautilus would be exactly enough for 625
men over twenty-four hours.”

“625!” Ned repeated.

“But rest assured,” I added, “that between passengers, seamen, or
officers, we don’t total one-tenth of that figure.”

“Which is still too many for three men!” Conseil muttered.

“So, my poor Ned, I can only counsel patience.”

“And,” Conseil replied, “even more than patience, resignation.”

Conseil had said the true word.

“Even so,” he went on, “Captain Nemo can’t go south forever! He’ll
surely have to stop, if only at the Ice Bank, and he’ll return to the
seas of civilization! Then it will be time to resume Ned Land’s
plans.”

The Canadian shook his head, passed his hand over his brow, made no
reply, and left us.

“With master’s permission, I’ll make an observation to him,” Conseil
then told me. “Our poor Ned broods about all the things he can’t
have. He’s haunted by his former life. He seems to miss everything
that’s denied us. He’s obsessed by his old memories and it’s breaking
his heart. We must understand him. What does he have to occupy him
here? Nothing. He isn’t a scientist like master, and he doesn’t share
our enthusiasm for the sea’s wonders. He would risk anything just to
enter a tavern in his own country!”

To be sure, the monotony of life on board must have seemed unbearable
to the Canadian, who was accustomed to freedom and activity. It was a
rare event that could excite him. That day, however, a development
occurred that reminded him of his happy years as a harpooner.

Near eleven o’clock in the morning, while on the surface of the ocean,
the Nautilus fell in with a herd of baleen whales. This encounter
didn’t surprise me, because I knew these animals were being hunted so
relentlessly that they took refuge in the ocean basins of the high
latitudes.

In the maritime world and in the realm of geographic exploration,
whales have played a major role. This is the animal that first dragged
the Basques in its wake, then Asturian Spaniards, Englishmen, and
Dutchmen, emboldening them against the ocean’s perils, and leading
them to the ends of the earth. Baleen whales like to frequent the
southernmost and northernmost seas. Old legends even claim that these
cetaceans led fishermen to within a mere seven leagues of the North
Pole. Although this feat is fictitious, it will someday come true,
because it’s likely that by hunting whales in the Arctic or Antarctic
regions, man will finally reach this unknown spot on the globe.

We were seated on the platform next to a tranquil sea. The month of
March, since it’s the equivalent of October in these latitudes, was
giving us some fine autumn days. It was the Canadian—on this topic he
was never mistaken—who sighted a baleen whale on the eastern
horizon. If you looked carefully, you could see its blackish back
alternately rise and fall above the waves, five miles from the
Nautilus.

“Wow!” Ned Land exclaimed. “If I were on board a whaler, there’s an
encounter that would be great fun! That’s one big animal! Look how
high its blowholes are spouting all that air and steam! Damnation! Why
am I chained to this hunk of sheet iron!”

“Why, Ned!” I replied. “You still aren’t over your old fishing urges?”

“How could a whale fisherman forget his old trade, sir? Who could ever
get tired of such exciting hunting?”

“You’ve never fished these seas, Ned?”

“Never, sir. Just the northernmost seas, equally in the Bering Strait
and the Davis Strait.”

“So the southern right whale is still unknown to you. Until now it’s
the bowhead whale you’ve hunted, and it won’t risk going past the warm
waters of the equator.”

“Oh, professor, what are you feeding me?” the Canadian answered in a
tolerably skeptical tone.

“I’m feeding you the facts.”

“By thunder! In ’65, just two and a half years ago, I to whom you
speak, I myself stepped onto the carcass of a whale near Greenland,
and its flank still carried the marked harpoon of a whaling ship from
the Bering Sea. Now I ask you, after it had been wounded west of
America, how could this animal be killed in the east, unless it had
cleared the equator and doubled Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope?”

“I agree with our friend Ned,” Conseil said, “and I’m waiting to hear
how master will reply to him.”

“Master will reply, my friends, that baleen whales are localized,
according to species, within certain seas that they never leave. And
if one of these animals went from the Bering Strait to the Davis
Strait, it’s quite simply because there’s some passageway from the one
sea to the other, either along the coasts of Canada or Siberia.”

“You expect us to fall for that?” the Canadian asked, tipping me a
wink.

“If master says so,” Conseil replied.

“Which means,” the Canadian went on, “since I’ve never fished these
waterways, I don’t know the whales that frequent them?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you, Ned.”

“All the more reason to get to know them,” Conseil answered.

“Look! Look!” the Canadian exclaimed, his voice full of
excitement. “It’s approaching! It’s coming toward us! It’s thumbing
its nose at me! It knows I can’t do a blessed thing to it!”

Ned stamped his foot. Brandishing an imaginary harpoon, his hands
positively trembled.

“These cetaceans,” he asked, “are they as big as the ones in the
northernmost seas?”

“Pretty nearly, Ned.”

“Because I’ve seen big baleen whales, sir, whales measuring up to 100
feet long! I’ve even heard that those rorqual whales off the Aleutian
Islands sometimes get over 150 feet.”

“That strikes me as exaggerated,” I replied. “Those animals are only
members of the genus Balaenoptera furnished with dorsal fins, and like
sperm whales, they’re generally smaller than the bowhead whale.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the Canadian, whose eyes hadn’t left the ocean. “It’s
getting closer, it’s coming into the Nautilus’s waters!”

Then, going on with his conversation:

“You talk about sperm whales,” he said, “as if they were little
beasts! But there are stories of gigantic sperm whales. They’re shrewd
cetaceans. I hear that some will cover themselves with algae and fucus
plants. People mistake them for islets. They pitch camp on top, make
themselves at home, light a fire—”

“Build houses,” Conseil said.

“Yes, funny man,” Ned Land replied. “Then one fine day the animal
dives and drags all its occupants down into the depths.”

“Like in the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor,” I answered, laughing. “Oh,
Mr. Land, you’re addicted to tall tales! What sperm whales you’re
handing us! I hope you don’t really believe in them!”

“Mr. Naturalist,” the Canadian replied in all seriousness, “when it
comes to whales, you can believe anything! (Look at that one move!
Look at it stealing away!) People claim these animals can circle
around the world in just fifteen days.”

“I don’t say nay.”

“But what you undoubtedly don’t know, Professor Aronnax, is that at
the beginning of the world, whales traveled even quicker.”

“Oh really, Ned! And why so?”

“Because in those days their tails moved side to side, like those on
fish, in other words, their tails were straight up, thrashing the
water from left to right, right to left. But spotting that they swam
too fast, our Creator twisted their tails, and ever since they’ve been
thrashing the waves up and down, at the expense of their speed.”

“Fine, Ned,” I said, then resurrected one of the Canadian’s
expressions. “You expect us to fall for that?”

“Not too terribly,” Ned Land replied, “and no more than if I told you
there are whales that are 300 feet long and weigh 1,000,000 pounds.”

“That’s indeed considerable,” I said. “But you must admit that certain
cetaceans do grow to significant size, since they’re said to supply as
much as 120 metric tons of oil.”

“That I’ve seen,” the Canadian said.

“I can easily believe it, Ned, just as I can believe that certain
baleen whales equal 100 elephants in bulk. Imagine the impact of such
a mass if it were launched at full speed!”

“Is it true,” Conseil asked, “that they can sink ships?”

“Ships? I doubt it,” I replied. “However, they say that in 1820, right
in these southern seas, a baleen whale rushed at the Essex and pushed
it backward at a speed of four meters per second. Its stern was
flooded, and the Essex went down fast.”

Ned looked at me with a bantering expression.

“Speaking for myself,” he said, “I once got walloped by a whale’s
tail—in my longboat, needless to say. My companions and I were
launched to an altitude of six meters. But next to the professor’s
whale, mine was just a baby.”

“Do these animals live a long time?” Conseil asked.

“A thousand years,” the Canadian replied without hesitation.

“And how, Ned,” I asked, “do you know that’s so?”

“Because people say so.”

“And why do people say so?”

“Because people know so.”

“No, Ned! People don’t know so, they suppose so, and here’s the logic
with which they back up their beliefs. When fishermen first hunted
whales 400 years ago, these animals grew to bigger sizes than they do
today. Reasonably enough, it’s assumed that today’s whales are smaller
because they haven’t had time to reach their full growth. That’s why
the Count de Buffon’s encyclopedia says that cetaceans can live, and
even must live, for a thousand years. You understand?”

Ned Land didn’t understand. He no longer even heard me. That baleen
whale kept coming closer. His eyes devoured it.

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “It’s not just one whale, it’s ten, twenty, a
whole gam! And I can’t do a thing! I’m tied hand and foot!”

“But Ned my friend,” Conseil said, “why not ask Captain Nemo for
permission to hunt—”

Before Conseil could finish his sentence, Ned Land scooted down the
hatch and ran to look for the captain. A few moments later, the two of
them reappeared on the platform.

Captain Nemo observed the herd of cetaceans cavorting on the waters a
mile from the Nautilus.

“They’re southern right whales,” he said. “There goes the fortune of a
whole whaling fleet.”

“Well, sir,” the Canadian asked, “couldn’t I hunt them, just so I
don’t forget my old harpooning trade?”

“Hunt them? What for?” Captain Nemo replied. “Simply to destroy them?
We have no use for whale oil on this ship.”

“But, sir,” the Canadian went on, “in the Red Sea you authorized us to
chase a dugong!”

“There it was an issue of obtaining fresh meat for my crew. Here it
would be killing for the sake of killing. I’m well aware that’s a
privilege reserved for mankind, but I don’t allow such murderous
pastimes. When your peers, Mr. Land, destroy decent, harmless
creatures like the southern right whale or the bowhead whale, they
commit a reprehensible offense. Thus they’ve already depopulated all
of Baffin Bay, and they’ll wipe out a whole class of useful
animals. So leave these poor cetaceans alone. They have quite enough
natural enemies, such as sperm whales, swordfish, and sawfish, without
you meddling with them.”

I’ll let the reader decide what faces the Canadian made during this
lecture on hunting ethics. Furnishing such arguments to a professional
harpooner was a waste of words. Ned Land stared at Captain Nemo and
obviously missed his meaning. But the captain was right. Thanks to the
mindless, barbaric bloodthirstiness of fishermen, the last baleen
whale will someday disappear from the ocean.

Ned Land whistled “Yankee Doodle” between his teeth, stuffed his hands
in his pockets, and turned his back on us.

Meanwhile Captain Nemo studied the herd of cetaceans, then addressed
me:

“I was right to claim that baleen whales have enough natural enemies
without counting man. These specimens will soon have to deal with
mighty opponents. Eight miles to leeward, Professor Aronnax, can you
see those blackish specks moving about?”

“Yes, captain,” I replied.

“Those are sperm whales, dreadful animals that I’ve sometimes
encountered in herds of 200 or 300! As for them, they’re cruel,
destructive beasts, and they deserve to be exterminated.”

The Canadian turned swiftly at these last words.

“Well, captain,” I said, “on behalf of the baleen whales, there’s
still time—”

“It’s pointless to run any risks, professor. The Nautilus will suffice
to disperse these sperm whales. It’s armed with a steel spur quite
equal to Mr. Land’s harpoon, I imagine.”

The Canadian didn’t even bother shrugging his shoulders. Attacking
cetaceans with thrusts from a spur! Who ever heard of such malarkey!

“Wait and see, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo said. “We’ll show you
a style of hunting with which you aren’t yet familiar. We’ll take no
pity on these ferocious cetaceans. They’re merely mouth and teeth!”

Mouth and teeth! There’s no better way to describe the long-skulled
sperm whale, whose length sometimes exceeds twenty-five meters. The
enormous head of this cetacean occupies about a third of its
body. Better armed than a baleen whale, whose upper jaw is adorned
solely with whalebone, the sperm whale is equipped with twenty-five
huge teeth that are twenty centimeters high, have cylindrical, conical
summits, and weigh two pounds each. In the top part of this enormous
head, inside big cavities separated by cartilage, you’ll find 300 to
400 kilograms of that valuable oil called “spermaceti.” The sperm
whale is an awkward animal, more tadpole than fish, as Professor
FrΘdol has noted. It’s poorly constructed, being “defective,” so to
speak, over the whole left side of its frame, with good eyesight only
in its right eye.

Meanwhile that monstrous herd kept coming closer. It had seen the
baleen whales and was preparing to attack. You could tell in advance
that the sperm whales would be victorious, not only because they were
better built for fighting than their harmless adversaries, but also
because they could stay longer underwater before returning to breathe
at the surface.

There was just time to run to the rescue of the baleen whales. The
Nautilus proceeded to midwater. Conseil, Ned, and I sat in front of
the lounge windows. Captain Nemo made his way to the helmsman’s side
to operate his submersible as an engine of destruction. Soon I felt
the beats of our propeller getting faster, and we picked up speed.

The battle between sperm whales and baleen whales had already begun
when the Nautilus arrived. It maneuvered to cut into the herd of
long-skulled predators. At first the latter showed little concern at
the sight of this new monster meddling in the battle. But they soon
had to sidestep its thrusts.

What a struggle! Ned Land quickly grew enthusiastic and even ended up
applauding. Brandished in its captain’s hands, the Nautilus was simply
a fearsome harpoon. He hurled it at those fleshy masses and ran them
clean through, leaving behind two squirming animal halves. As for
those daunting strokes of the tail hitting our sides, the ship never
felt them. No more than the collisions it caused. One sperm whale
exterminated, it ran at another, tacked on the spot so as not to miss
its prey, went ahead or astern, obeyed its rudder, dived when the
cetacean sank to deeper strata, rose with it when it returned to the
surface, struck it head-on or slantwise, hacked at it or tore it, and
from every direction and at any speed, skewered it with its dreadful
spur.

What bloodshed! What a hubbub on the surface of the waves! What sharp
hisses and snorts unique to these frightened animals! Their tails
churned the normally peaceful strata into actual billows.

This Homeric slaughter dragged on for an hour, and the long-skulled
predators couldn’t get away. Several times ten or twelve of them
teamed up, trying to crush the Nautilus with their sheer mass. Through
the windows you could see their enormous mouths paved with teeth,
their fearsome eyes. Losing all self-control, Ned Land hurled threats
and insults at them. You could feel them clinging to the submersible
like hounds atop a wild boar in the underbrush. But by forcing the
pace of its propeller, the Nautilus carried them off, dragged them
under, or brought them back to the upper level of the waters,
untroubled by their enormous weight or their powerful grip.

Finally this mass of sperm whales thinned out. The waves grew tranquil
again. I felt us rising to the surface of the ocean. The hatch opened
and we rushed onto the platform.

The sea was covered with mutilated corpses. A fearsome explosion
couldn’t have slashed, torn, or shredded these fleshy masses with
greater violence. We were floating in the midst of gigantic bodies,
bluish on the back, whitish on the belly, and all deformed by enormous
protuberances. A few frightened sperm whales were fleeing toward the
horizon. The waves were dyed red over an area of several miles, and
the Nautilus was floating in the middle of a sea of blood.

Captain Nemo rejoined us.

“Well, Mr. Land?” he said.

“Well, sir,” replied the Canadian, whose enthusiasm had subsided,
“it’s a dreadful sight for sure. But I’m a hunter not a butcher, and
this is plain butchery.”

“It was a slaughter of destructive animals,” the captain replied, “and
the Nautilus is no butcher knife.”

“I prefer my harpoon,” the Canadian answered.

“To each his own,” the captain replied, staring intently at Ned Land.

I was in dread the latter would give way to some violent outburst that
might have had deplorable consequences. But his anger was diverted by
the sight of a baleen whale that the Nautilus had pulled alongside of
just then.

This animal had been unable to escape the teeth of those sperm
whales. I recognized the southern right whale, its head squat, its
body dark all over. Anatomically, it’s distinguished from the white
whale and the black right whale by the fusion of its seven cervical
vertebrae, and it numbers two more ribs than its relatives. Floating
on its side, its belly riddled with bites, the poor cetacean was
dead. Still hanging from the tip of its mutilated fin was a little
baby whale that it had been unable to rescue from the slaughter. Its
open mouth let water flow through its whalebone like a murmuring surf.

Captain Nemo guided the Nautilus next to the animal’s corpse. Two of
his men climbed onto the whale’s flank, and to my astonishment, I saw
them draw from its udders all the milk they held, in other words,
enough to fill two or three casks.

The captain offered me a cup of this still-warm milk. I couldn’t help
showing my distaste for such a beverage. He assured me that this milk
was excellent, no different from cow’s milk.

I sampled it and agreed. So this milk was a worthwhile reserve ration
for us, because in the form of salt butter or cheese, it would provide
a pleasant change of pace from our standard fare.

From that day on, I noted with some uneasiness that Ned Land’s
attitudes toward Captain Nemo grew worse and worse, and I decided to
keep a close watch on the Canadian’s movements and activities.


CHAPTER 13

The Ice Bank


THE NAUTILUS resumed its unruffled southbound heading. It went along
the 50th meridian with considerable speed. Would it go to the pole? I
didn’t think so, because every previous attempt to reach this spot on
the globe had failed. Besides, the season was already quite advanced,
since March 13 on Antarctic shores corresponds with September 13 in
the northernmost regions, which marks the beginning of the equinoctial
period.

On March 14 at latitude 55 degrees, I spotted floating ice, plain pale
bits of rubble twenty to twenty-five feet long, which formed reefs
over which the sea burst into foam. The Nautilus stayed on the surface
of the ocean. Having fished in the Arctic seas, Ned Land was already
familiar with the sight of icebergs. Conseil and I were marveling at
them for the first time.

In the sky toward the southern horizon, there stretched a dazzling
white band. English whalers have given this the name “ice blink.” No
matter how heavy the clouds may be, they can’t obscure this
phenomenon. It announces the presence of a pack, or shoal, of ice.

Indeed, larger blocks of ice soon appeared, their brilliance varying
at the whim of the mists. Some of these masses displayed green veins,
as if scrawled with undulating lines of copper sulfate. Others looked
like enormous amethysts, letting the light penetrate their
insides. The latter reflected the sun’s rays from the thousand facets
of their crystals. The former, tinted with a bright limestone sheen,
would have supplied enough building material to make a whole marble
town.

The farther down south we went, the more these floating islands grew
in numbers and prominence. Polar birds nested on them by the
thousands. These were petrels, cape pigeons, or puffins, and their
calls were deafening. Mistaking the Nautilus for the corpse of a
whale, some of them alighted on it and prodded its resonant sheet iron
with pecks of their beaks.

During this navigating in the midst of the ice, Captain Nemo often
stayed on the platform. He observed these deserted waterways
carefully. I saw his calm eyes sometimes perk up. In these polar seas
forbidden to man, did he feel right at home, the lord of these
unreachable regions? Perhaps. But he didn’t say. He stood still,
reviving only when his pilot’s instincts took over. Then, steering his
Nautilus with consummate dexterity, he skillfully dodged the masses of
ice, some of which measured several miles in length, their heights
varying from seventy to eighty meters. Often the horizon seemed
completely closed off. Abreast of latitude 60 degrees, every
passageway had disappeared. Searching with care, Captain Nemo soon
found a narrow opening into which he brazenly slipped, well aware,
however, that it would close behind him.

Guided by his skillful hands, the Nautilus passed by all these
different masses of ice, which are classified by size and shape with a
precision that enraptured Conseil: “icebergs,” or mountains; “ice
fields,” or smooth, limitless tracts; “drift ice,” or floating floes;
“packs,” or broken tracts, called “patches” when they’re circular and
“streams” when they form long strips.

The temperature was fairly low. Exposed to the outside air, the
thermometer marked -2 degrees to

-3 degrees centigrade. But we were warmly dressed in furs, for which
 seals and aquatic bears had paid the price. Evenly heated by all its
 electric equipment, the Nautilus’s interior defied the most intense
 cold. Moreover, to find a bearable temperature, the ship had only to
 sink just a few meters beneath the waves.

Two months earlier we would have enjoyed perpetual daylight in this
latitude; but night already fell for three or four hours, and later it
would cast six months of shadow over these circumpolar regions.

On March 15 we passed beyond the latitude of the South Shetland and
South Orkney Islands. The captain told me that many tribes of seals
used to inhabit these shores; but English and American whalers, in a
frenzy of destruction, slaughtered all the adults, including pregnant
females, and where life and activity once existed, those fishermen
left behind only silence and death.

Going along the 55th meridian, the Nautilus cut the Antarctic Circle
on March 16 near eight o’clock in the morning. Ice completely
surrounded us and closed off the horizon. Nevertheless, Captain Nemo
went from passageway to passageway, always proceeding south.

“But where’s he going?” I asked.

“Straight ahead,” Conseil replied. “Ultimately, when he can’t go any
farther, he’ll stop.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it!” I replied.

And in all honesty, I confess that this venturesome excursion was far
from displeasing to me. I can’t express the intensity of my amazement
at the beauties of these new regions. The ice struck superb
poses. Here, its general effect suggested an oriental town with
countless minarets and mosques. There, a city in ruins, flung to the
ground by convulsions in the earth. These views were varied
continuously by the sun’s oblique rays, or were completely swallowed
up by gray mists in the middle of blizzards. Then explosions,
cave-ins, and great iceberg somersaults would occur all around us,
altering the scenery like the changing landscape in a diorama.

If the Nautilus was submerged during these losses of balance, we heard
the resulting noises spread under the waters with frightful intensity,
and the collapse of these masses created daunting eddies down to the
ocean’s lower strata. The Nautilus then rolled and pitched like a ship
left to the fury of the elements.

Often, no longer seeing any way out, I thought we were imprisoned for
good, but Captain Nemo, guided by his instincts, discovered new
passageways from the tiniest indications. He was never wrong when he
observed slender threads of bluish water streaking through these ice
fields. Accordingly, I was sure that he had already risked his
Nautilus in the midst of the Antarctic seas.

However, during the day of March 16, these tracts of ice completely
barred our path. It wasn’t the Ice Bank as yet, just huge ice fields
cemented together by the cold. This obstacle couldn’t stop Captain
Nemo, and he launched his ship against the ice fields with hideous
violence. The Nautilus went into these brittle masses like a wedge,
splitting them with dreadful cracklings. It was an old-fashioned
battering ram propelled with infinite power. Hurled aloft, ice rubble
fell back around us like hail. Through brute force alone, the
submersible carved out a channel for itself. Carried away by its
momentum, the ship sometimes mounted on top of these tracts of ice and
crushed them with its weight, or at other times, when cooped up
beneath the ice fields, it split them with simple pitching movements,
creating wide punctures.

Violent squalls assaulted us during the daytime. Thanks to certain
heavy mists, we couldn’t see from one end of the platform to the
other. The wind shifted abruptly to every point on the compass. The
snow was piling up in such packed layers, it had to be chipped loose
with blows from picks. Even in a temperature of merely -5 degrees
centigrade, every outside part of the Nautilus was covered with ice. A
ship’s rigging would have been unusable, because all its tackle would
have jammed in the grooves of the pulleys. Only a craft without sails,
driven by an electric motor that needed no coal, could face such high
latitudes.

Under these conditions the barometer generally stayed quite low. It
fell as far as 73.5 centimeters. Our compass indications no longer
offered any guarantees. The deranged needles would mark contradictory
directions as we approached the southern magnetic pole, which doesn’t
coincide with the South Pole proper. In fact, according to the
astronomer Hansteen, this magnetic pole is located fairly close to
latitude 70 degrees and longitude 130 degrees, or abiding by the
observations of Louis-Isidore Duperrey, in longitude 135 degrees and
latitude 70 degrees 30’. Hence we had to transport compasses to
different parts of the ship, take many readings, and strike an
average. Often we could chart our course only by guesswork, a less
than satisfactory method in the midst of these winding passageways
whose landmarks change continuously.

At last on March 18, after twenty futile assaults, the Nautilus was
decisively held in check. No longer was it an ice stream, patch, or
field—it was an endless, immovable barrier formed by ice mountains
fused to each other.

“The Ice Bank!” the Canadian told me.

For Ned Land, as well as for every navigator before us, I knew that
this was the great insurmountable obstacle. When the sun appeared for
an instant near noon, Captain Nemo took a reasonably accurate sight
that gave our position as longitude 51 degrees 30’ and latitude 67
degrees 39’ south. This was a position already well along in these
Antarctic regions.

As for the liquid surface of the sea, there was no longer any
semblance of it before our eyes. Before the Nautilus’s spur there lay
vast broken plains, a tangle of confused chunks with all the
helter-skelter unpredictability typical of a river’s surface a short
while before its ice breakup; but in this case the proportions were
gigantic. Here and there stood sharp peaks, lean spires that rose as
high as 200 feet; farther off, a succession of steeply cut cliffs
sporting a grayish tint, huge mirrors that reflected the sparse rays
of a sun half drowned in mist. Beyond, a stark silence reigned in this
desolate natural setting, a silence barely broken by the flapping
wings of petrels or puffins. By this point everything was frozen, even
sound.

So the Nautilus had to halt in its venturesome course among these
tracts of ice.

“Sir,” Ned Land told me that day, “if your captain goes any farther
. . .”

“Yes?”

“He’ll be a superman.”

“How so, Ned?”

“Because nobody can clear the Ice Bank. Your captain’s a powerful man,
but damnation, he isn’t more powerful than nature. If she draws a
boundary line, there you stop, like it or not!”

“Correct, Ned Land, but I still want to know what’s behind this Ice
Bank! Behold my greatest source of irritation—a wall!”

“Master is right,” Conseil said. “Walls were invented simply to
frustrate scientists. All walls should be banned.”

“Fine!” the Canadian put in. “But we already know what’s behind this
Ice Bank.”

“What?” I asked.

“Ice, ice, and more ice.”

“You may be sure of that, Ned,” I answered, “but I’m not. That’s why I
want to see for myself.”

“Well, professor,” the Canadian replied, “you can just drop that idea!
You’ve made it to the Ice Bank, which is already far enough, but you
won’t get any farther, neither your Captain Nemo or his Nautilus. And
whether he wants to or not, we’ll head north again, in other words, to
the land of sensible people.”

I had to agree that Ned Land was right, and until ships are built to
navigate over tracts of ice, they’ll have to stop at the Ice Bank.

Indeed, despite its efforts, despite the powerful methods it used to
split this ice, the Nautilus was reduced to immobility. Ordinarily,
when someone can’t go any farther, he still has the option of
returning in his tracks. But here it was just as impossible to turn
back as to go forward, because every passageway had closed behind us,
and if our submersible remained even slightly stationary, it would be
frozen in without delay. Which is exactly what happened near two
o’clock in the afternoon, and fresh ice kept forming over the ship’s
sides with astonishing speed. I had to admit that Captain Nemo’s
leadership had been most injudicious.

Just then I was on the platform. Observing the situation for some
while, the captain said to me:

“Well, professor! What think you?”

“I think we’re trapped, captain.”

“Trapped! What do you mean?”

“I mean we can’t go forward, backward, or sideways. I think that’s the
standard definition of ‘trapped,’ at least in the civilized world.”

“So, Professor Aronnax, you think the Nautilus won’t be able to float
clear?”

“Only with the greatest difficulty, captain, since the season is
already too advanced for you to depend on an ice breakup.”

“Oh, professor,” Captain Nemo replied in an ironic tone, “you never
change! You see only impediments and obstacles! I promise you, not
only will the Nautilus float clear, it will go farther still!”

“Farther south?” I asked, gaping at the captain.

“Yes, sir, it will go to the pole.”

“To the pole!” I exclaimed, unable to keep back a movement of
disbelief.

“Yes,” the captain replied coolly, “the Antarctic pole, that unknown
spot crossed by every meridian on the globe. As you know, I do
whatever I like with my Nautilus.”

Yes, I did know that! I knew this man was daring to the point of being
foolhardy. But to overcome all the obstacles around the South
Pole—even more unattainable than the North Pole, which still hadn’t
been reached by the boldest navigators—wasn’t this an absolutely
insane undertaking, one that could occur only in the brain of a
madman?

It then dawned on me to ask Captain Nemo if he had already discovered
this pole, which no human being had ever trod underfoot.

“No, sir,” he answered me, “but we’ll discover it together. Where
others have failed, I’ll succeed. Never before has my Nautilus cruised
so far into these southernmost seas, but I repeat: it will go farther
still.”

“I’d like to believe you, captain,” I went on in a tone of some
sarcasm. “Oh I do believe you! Let’s forge ahead! There are no
obstacles for us! Let’s shatter this Ice Bank! Let’s blow it up, and
if it still resists, let’s put wings on the Nautilus and fly over it!”

“Over it, professor?” Captain Nemo replied serenely. “No, not over it,
but under it.”

“Under it!” I exclaimed.

A sudden insight into Captain Nemo’s plans had just flashed through my
mind. I understood. The marvelous talents of his Nautilus would be put
to work once again in this superhuman undertaking!

“I can see we’re starting to understand each other, professor,”
Captain Nemo told me with a half smile. “You already glimpse the
potential—myself, I’d say the success—of this attempt. Maneuvers that
aren’t feasible for an ordinary ship are easy for the Nautilus. If a
continent emerges at the pole, we’ll stop at that continent. But on
the other hand, if open sea washes the pole, we’ll go to that very
place!”

“Right,” I said, carried away by the captain’s logic. “Even though the
surface of the sea has solidified into ice, its lower strata are still
open, thanks to that divine justice that puts the maximum density of
salt water one degree above its freezing point. And if I’m not
mistaken, the submerged part of this Ice Bank is in a four-to-one
ratio to its emerging part.”

“Very nearly, professor. For each foot of iceberg above the sea, there
are three more below. Now then, since these ice mountains don’t exceed
a height of 100 meters, they sink only to a depth of 300 meters. And
what are 300 meters to the Nautilus?”

“A mere nothing, sir.”

“We could even go to greater depths and find that temperature layer
common to all ocean water, and there we’d brave with impunity the -30
degrees or -40 degrees cold on the surface.”

“True, sir, very true,” I replied with growing excitement.

“Our sole difficulty,” Captain Nemo went on, “lies in our staying
submerged for several days without renewing our air supply.”

“That’s all?” I answered. “The Nautilus has huge air tanks; we’ll fill
them up and they’ll supply all the oxygen we need.”

“Good thinking, Professor Aronnax,” the captain replied with a
smile. “But since I don’t want to be accused of foolhardiness, I’m
giving you all my objections in advance.”

“You have more?”

“Just one. If a sea exists at the South Pole, it’s possible this sea
may be completely frozen over, so we couldn’t come up to the surface!”

“My dear sir, have you forgotten that the Nautilus is armed with a
fearsome spur? Couldn’t it be launched diagonally against those tracts
of ice, which would break open from the impact?”

“Ah, professor, you’re full of ideas today!”

“Besides, captain,” I added with still greater enthusiasm, “why
wouldn’t we find open sea at the South Pole just as at the North Pole?
The cold-temperature poles and the geographical poles don’t coincide
in either the northern or southern hemispheres, and until proof to the
contrary, we can assume these two spots on the earth feature either a
continent or an ice-free ocean.”

“I think as you do, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo replied. “I’ll
only point out that after raising so many objections against my plan,
you’re now crushing me under arguments in its favor.”

Captain Nemo was right. I was outdoing him in daring! It was I who was
sweeping him to the pole. I was leading the way, I was out in front
. . . but no, you silly fool! Captain Nemo already knew the pros and
cons of this question, and it amused him to see you flying off into
impossible fantasies!

Nevertheless, he didn’t waste an instant. At his signal, the chief
officer appeared. The two men held a quick exchange in their
incomprehensible language, and either the chief officer had been
alerted previously or he found the plan feasible, because he showed no
surprise.

But as unemotional as he was, he couldn’t have been more impeccably
emotionless than Conseil when I told the fine lad our intention of
pushing on to the South Pole. He greeted my announcement with the
usual “As master wishes,” and I had to be content with that. As for
Ned Land, no human shoulders ever executed a higher shrug than the
pair belonging to our Canadian.

“Honestly, sir,” he told me. “You and your Captain Nemo, I pity you
both!”

“But we will go to the pole, Mr. Land.”

“Maybe, but you won’t come back!”

And Ned Land reentered his cabin, “to keep from doing something
desperate,” he said as he left me.

Meanwhile preparations for this daring attempt were getting under
way. The Nautilus’s powerful pumps forced air down into the tanks and
stored it under high pressure. Near four o’clock Captain Nemo informed
me that the platform hatches were about to be closed. I took a last
look at the dense Ice Bank we were going to conquer. The weather was
fair, the skies reasonably clear, the cold quite brisk, namely -12
degrees centigrade; but after the wind had lulled, this temperature
didn’t seem too unbearable.

Equipped with picks, some ten men climbed onto the Nautilus’s sides
and cracked loose the ice around the ship’s lower plating, which was
soon set free. This operation was swiftly executed because the fresh
ice was still thin. We all reentered the interior. The main ballast
tanks were filled with the water that hadn’t yet congealed at our line
of flotation. The Nautilus submerged without delay.

I took a seat in the lounge with Conseil. Through the open window we
stared at the lower strata of this southernmost ocean. The thermometer
rose again. The needle on the pressure gauge swerved over its dial.

About 300 meters down, just as Captain Nemo had predicted, we cruised
beneath the undulating surface of the Ice Bank. But the Nautilus sank
deeper still. It reached a depth of 800 meters. At the surface this
water gave a temperature of -12 degrees centigrade, but now it gave no
more than -10 degrees. Two degrees had already been gained. Thanks to
its heating equipment, the Nautilus’s temperature, needless to say,
stayed at a much higher degree. Every maneuver was accomplished with
extraordinary precision.

“With all due respect to master,” Conseil told me, “we’ll pass it by.”

“I fully expect to!” I replied in a tone of deep conviction.

Now in open water, the Nautilus took a direct course to the pole
without veering from the 52nd meridian. From 67 degrees 30’ to 90
degrees, twenty-two and a half degrees of latitude were left to cross,
in other words, slightly more than 500 leagues. The Nautilus adopted
an average speed of twenty-six miles per hour, the speed of an express
train. If it kept up this pace, forty hours would do it for reaching
the pole.

For part of the night, the novelty of our circumstances kept Conseil
and me at the lounge window. The sea was lit by our beacon’s electric
rays. But the depths were deserted. Fish didn’t linger in these
imprisoned waters. Here they found merely a passageway for going from
the Antarctic Ocean to open sea at the pole. Our progress was
swift. You could feel it in the vibrations of the long steel hull.

Near two o’clock in the morning, I went to snatch a few hours of
sleep. Conseil did likewise. I didn’t encounter Captain Nemo while
going down the gangways. I assumed that he was keeping to the
pilothouse.

The next day, March 19, at five o’clock in the morning, I was back at
my post in the lounge. The electric log indicated that the Nautilus
had reduced speed. By then it was rising to the surface, but
cautiously, while slowly emptying its ballast tanks.

My heart was pounding. Would we emerge into the open and find the
polar air again?

No. A jolt told me that the Nautilus had bumped the underbelly of the
Ice Bank, still quite thick to judge from the hollowness of the
accompanying noise. Indeed, we had “struck bottom,” to use nautical
terminology, but in the opposite direction and at a depth of 3,000
feet. That gave us 4,000 feet of ice overhead, of which 1,000 feet
emerged above water. So the Ice Bank was higher here than we had found
it on the outskirts. A circumstance less than encouraging.

Several times that day, the Nautilus repeated the same experiment and
always it bumped against this surface that formed a ceiling above
it. At certain moments the ship encountered ice at a depth of 900
meters, denoting a thickness of 1,200 meters, of which 300 meters rose
above the level of the ocean. This height had tripled since the moment
the Nautilus had dived beneath the waves.

I meticulously noted these different depths, obtaining the underwater
profile of this upside-down mountain chain that stretched beneath the
sea.

By evening there was still no improvement in our situation. The ice
stayed between 400 and 500 meters deep. It was obviously shrinking,
but what a barrier still lay between us and the surface of the ocean!

By then it was eight o’clock. The air inside the Nautilus should have
been renewed four hours earlier, following daily practice on
board. But I didn’t suffer very much, although Captain Nemo hadn’t yet
made demands on the supplementary oxygen in his air tanks.

That night my sleep was fitful. Hope and fear besieged me by turns. I
got up several times. The Nautilus continued groping. Near three
o’clock in the morning, I observed that we encountered the Ice Bank’s
underbelly at a depth of only fifty meters. So only 150 feet separated
us from the surface of the water. Little by little the Ice Bank was
turning into an ice field again. The mountains were changing back into
plains.

My eyes didn’t leave the pressure gauge. We kept rising on a diagonal,
going along this shiny surface that sparkled beneath our electric
rays. Above and below, the Ice Bank was subsiding in long
gradients. Mile after mile it was growing thinner.

Finally, at six o’clock in the morning on that memorable day of March
19, the lounge door opened. Captain Nemo appeared.

“Open sea!” he told me.


CHAPTER 14

The South Pole


I RUSHED UP onto the platform. Yes, open sea! Barely a few sparse
floes, some moving icebergs; a sea stretching into the distance; hosts
of birds in the air and myriads of fish under the waters, which varied
from intense blue to olive green depending on the depth. The
thermometer marked 3 degrees centigrade. It was as if a comparative
springtime had been locked up behind that Ice Bank, whose distant
masses were outlined on the northern horizon.

“Are we at the pole?” I asked the captain, my heart pounding.

“I’ve no idea,” he answered me. “At noon we’ll fix our position.”

“But will the sun show through this mist?” I said, staring at the
grayish sky.

“No matter how faintly it shines, it will be enough for me,” the
captain replied.

To the south, ten miles from the Nautilus, a solitary islet rose to a
height of 200 meters. We proceeded toward it, but cautiously, because
this sea could have been strewn with reefs.

In an hour we had reached the islet. Two hours later we had completed
a full circle around it. It measured four to five miles in
circumference. A narrow channel separated it from a considerable
shore, perhaps a continent whose limits we couldn’t see. The existence
of this shore seemed to bear out Commander Maury’s hypotheses. In
essence, this ingenious American has noted that between the South Pole
and the 60th parallel, the sea is covered with floating ice of
dimensions much greater than any found in the north Atlantic. From
this fact he drew the conclusion that the Antarctic Circle must
contain considerable shores, since icebergs can’t form on the high
seas but only along coastlines. According to his calculations, this
frozen mass enclosing the southernmost pole forms a vast ice cap whose
width must reach 4,000 kilometers.

Meanwhile, to avoid running aground, the Nautilus halted three cable
lengths from a strand crowned by superb piles of rocks. The skiff was
launched to sea. Two crewmen carrying instruments, the captain,
Conseil, and I were on board. It was ten o’clock in the morning. I
hadn’t seen Ned Land. No doubt, in the presence of the South Pole, the
Canadian hated having to eat his words.

A few strokes of the oar brought the skiff to the sand, where it ran
aground. Just as Conseil was about to jump ashore, I held him back.

“Sir,” I told Captain Nemo, “to you belongs the honor of first setting
foot on this shore.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain replied, “and if I have no hesitation in
treading this polar soil, it’s because no human being until now has
left a footprint here.”

So saying, he leaped lightly onto the sand. His heart must have been
throbbing with intense excitement. He scaled an overhanging rock that
ended in a small promontory and there, mute and motionless, with
crossed arms and blazing eyes, he seemed to be laying claim to these
southernmost regions. After spending five minutes in this trance, he
turned to us.

“Whenever you’re ready, sir,” he called to me.

I got out, Conseil at my heels, leaving the two men in the skiff.

Over an extensive area, the soil consisted of that igneous gravel
called “tuff,” reddish in color as if made from crushed bricks. The
ground was covered with slag, lava flows, and pumice stones. Its
volcanic origin was unmistakable. In certain localities thin smoke
holes gave off a sulfurous odor, showing that the inner fires still
kept their wide-ranging power. Nevertheless, when I scaled a high
escarpment, I could see no volcanoes within a radius of several
miles. In these Antarctic districts, as is well known, Sir James Clark
Ross had found the craters of Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror in fully
active condition on the 167th meridian at latitude 77 degrees 32’.

The vegetation on this desolate continent struck me as quite
limited. A few lichens of the species Usnea melanoxanthra sprawled
over the black rocks. The whole meager flora of this region consisted
of certain microscopic buds, rudimentary diatoms made up of a type of
cell positioned between two quartz-rich shells, plus long purple and
crimson fucus plants, buoyed by small air bladders and washed up on
the coast by the surf.

The beach was strewn with mollusks: small mussels, limpets, smooth
heart-shaped cockles, and especially some sea butterflies with oblong,
membrane-filled bodies whose heads are formed from two rounded
lobes. I also saw myriads of those northernmost sea butterflies three
centimeters long, which a baleen whale can swallow by the thousands in
one gulp. The open waters at the shoreline were alive with these
delightful pteropods, true butterflies of the sea.

Among other zoophytes present in these shallows, there were a few
coral tree forms that, according to Sir James Clark Ross, live in
these Antarctic seas at depths as great as 1,000 meters; then small
alcyon coral belonging to the species Procellaria pelagica, also a
large number of starfish unique to these climes, plus some feather
stars spangling the sand.

But it was in the air that life was superabundant. There various
species of birds flew and fluttered by the thousands, deafening us
with their calls. Crowding the rocks, other fowl watched without fear
as we passed and pressed familiarly against our feet. These were auks,
as agile and supple in water, where they are sometimes mistaken for
fast bonito, as they are clumsy and heavy on land. They uttered
outlandish calls and participated in numerous public assemblies that
featured much noise but little action.

Among other fowl I noted some sheathbills from the wading-bird family,
the size of pigeons, white in color, the beak short and conical, the
eyes framed by red circles. Conseil laid in a supply of them, because
when they’re properly cooked, these winged creatures make a pleasant
dish. In the air there passed sooty albatross with four-meter
wingspans, birds aptly dubbed “vultures of the ocean,” also gigantic
petrels including several with arching wings, enthusiastic eaters of
seal that are known as quebrantahuesos,* and cape pigeons, a sort of
small duck, the tops of their bodies black and white—in short, a whole
series of petrels, some whitish with wings trimmed in brown, others
blue and exclusive to these Antarctic seas, the former “so oily,” I
told Conseil, “that inhabitants of the Faroe Islands simply fit the
bird with a wick, then light it up.”

*Spanish: “ospreys.” Ed.

“With that minor addition,” Conseil replied, “these fowl would make
perfect lamps! After this, we should insist that nature equip them
with wicks in advance!”

Half a mile farther on, the ground was completely riddled with penguin
nests, egg-laying burrows from which numerous birds emerged. Later
Captain Nemo had hundreds of them hunted because their black flesh is
highly edible. They brayed like donkeys. The size of a goose with
slate-colored bodies, white undersides, and lemon-colored neck bands,
these animals let themselves be stoned to death without making any
effort to get away.

Meanwhile the mists didn’t clear, and by eleven o’clock the sun still
hadn’t made an appearance. Its absence disturbed me. Without it, no
sights were possible. Then how could we tell whether we had reached
the pole?

When I rejoined Captain Nemo, I found him leaning silently against a
piece of rock and staring at the sky. He seemed impatient,
baffled. But what could we do? This daring and powerful man couldn’t
control the sun as he did the sea.

Noon arrived without the orb of day appearing for a single
instant. You couldn’t even find its hiding place behind the curtain of
mist. And soon this mist began to condense into snow.

“Until tomorrow,” the captain said simply; and we went back to the
Nautilus, amid flurries in the air.

During our absence the nets had been spread, and I observed with
fascination the fish just hauled on board. The Antarctic seas serve as
a refuge for an extremely large number of migratory fish that flee
from storms in the subpolar zones, in truth only to slide down the
gullets of porpoises and seals. I noted some one-decimeter southern
bullhead, a species of whitish cartilaginous fish overrun with bluish
gray stripes and armed with stings, then some Antarctic rabbitfish
three feet long, the body very slender, the skin a smooth silver
white, the head rounded, the topside furnished with three fins, the
snout ending in a trunk that curved back toward the mouth. I sampled
its flesh but found it tasteless, despite Conseil’s views, which were
largely approving.

The blizzard lasted until the next day. It was impossible to stay on
the platform. From the lounge, where I was writing up the incidents of
this excursion to the polar continent, I could hear the calls of
petrel and albatross cavorting in the midst of the turmoil. The
Nautilus didn’t stay idle, and cruising along the coast, it advanced
some ten miles farther south amid the half light left by the sun as it
skimmed the edge of the horizon.

The next day, March 20, it stopped snowing. The cold was a little more
brisk. The thermometer marked -2 degrees centigrade. The mist had
cleared, and on that day I hoped our noon sights could be
accomplished.

Since Captain Nemo hadn’t yet appeared, only Conseil and I were taken
ashore by the skiff. The soil’s nature was still the same:
volcanic. Traces of lava, slag, and basaltic rock were everywhere, but
I couldn’t find the crater that had vomited them up. There as yonder,
myriads of birds enlivened this part of the polar continent. But they
had to share their dominion with huge herds of marine mammals that
looked at us with gentle eyes. These were seals of various species,
some stretched out on the ground, others lying on drifting ice floes,
several leaving or reentering the sea. Having never dealt with man,
they didn’t run off at our approach, and I counted enough of them
thereabouts to provision a couple hundred ships.

“Ye gods,” Conseil said, “it’s fortunate that Ned Land didn’t come
with us!”

“Why so, Conseil?”

“Because that madcap hunter would kill every animal here.”

“Every animal may be overstating it, but in truth I doubt we could
keep our Canadian friend from harpooning some of these magnificent
cetaceans. Which would be an affront to Captain Nemo, since he hates
to slay harmless beasts needlessly.”

“He’s right.”

“Certainly, Conseil. But tell me, haven’t you finished classifying
these superb specimens of marine fauna?”

“Master is well aware,” Conseil replied, “that I’m not seasoned in
practical application. When master has told me these animals’ names
. . .”

“They’re seals and walruses.”

“Two genera,” our scholarly Conseil hastened to say, “that belong to
the family Pinnipedia, order Carnivora, group Unguiculata, subclass
Monodelphia, class Mammalia, branch Vertebrata.”

“Very nice, Conseil,” I replied, “but these two genera of seals and
walruses are each divided into species, and if I’m not mistaken, we
now have a chance to actually look at them. Let’s.”

It was eight o’clock in the morning. We had four hours to ourselves
before the sun could be productively observed. I guided our steps
toward a huge bay that made a crescent-shaped incision in the granite
cliffs along the beach.

There, all about us, I swear that the shores and ice floes were
crowded with marine mammals as far as the eye could see, and I
involuntarily looked around for old Proteus, that mythological
shepherd who guarded King Neptune’s immense flocks. To be specific,
these were seals. They formed distinct male-and-female groups, the
father watching over his family, the mother suckling her little ones,
the stronger youngsters emancipated a few paces away. When these
mammals wanted to relocate, they moved in little jumps made by
contracting their bodies, clumsily helped by their imperfectly
developed flippers, which, as with their manatee relatives, form
actual forearms. In the water, their ideal element, I must say these
animals swim wonderfully thanks to their flexible backbones, narrow
pelvises, close-cropped hair, and webbed feet. Resting on shore, they
assumed extremely graceful positions. Consequently, their gentle
features, their sensitive expressions equal to those of the loveliest
women, their soft, limpid eyes, their charming poses, led the ancients
to glorify them by metamorphosing the males into sea gods and the
females into mermaids.

I drew Conseil’s attention to the considerable growth of the cerebral
lobes found in these intelligent cetaceans. No mammal except man has
more abundant cerebral matter. Accordingly, seals are quite capable of
being educated; they make good pets, and together with certain other
naturalists, I think these animals can be properly trained to perform
yeoman service as hunting dogs for fishermen.

Most of these seals were sleeping on the rocks or the sand. Among
those properly termed seals—which have no external ears, unlike sea
lions whose ears protrude—I observed several varieties of the species
stenorhynchus, three meters long, with white hair, bulldog heads, and
armed with ten teeth in each jaw: four incisors in both the upper and
lower, plus two big canines shaped like the fleur-de-lis. Among them
slithered some sea elephants, a type of seal with a short, flexible
trunk; these are the giants of the species, with a circumference of
twenty feet and a length of ten meters. They didn’t move as we
approached.

“Are these animals dangerous?” Conseil asked me.

“Only if they’re attacked,” I replied. “But when these giant seals
defend their little ones, their fury is dreadful, and it isn’t rare
for them to smash a fisherman’s longboat to bits.”

“They’re within their rights,” Conseil answered.

“I don’t say nay.”

Two miles farther on, we were stopped by a promontory that screened
the bay from southerly winds. It dropped straight down to the sea, and
surf foamed against it. From beyond this ridge there came fearsome
bellows, such as a herd of cattle might produce.

“Gracious,” Conseil put in, “a choir of bulls?”

“No,” I said, “a choir of walruses.”

“Are they fighting with each other?”

“Either fighting or playing.”

“With all due respect to master, this we must see.”

“Then see it we must, Conseil.”

And there we were, climbing these blackish rocks amid sudden
landslides and over stones slippery with ice. More than once I took a
tumble at the expense of my backside. Conseil, more cautious or more
stable, barely faltered and would help me up, saying:

“If master’s legs would kindly adopt a wider stance, master will keep
his balance.”

Arriving at the topmost ridge of this promontory, I could see vast
white plains covered with walruses. These animals were playing among
themselves. They were howling not in anger but in glee.

Walruses resemble seals in the shape of their bodies and the
arrangement of their limbs. But their lower jaws lack canines and
incisors, and as for their upper canines, they consist of two tusks
eighty centimeters long with a circumference of thirty-three
centimeters at the socket. Made of solid ivory, without striations,
harder than elephant tusks, and less prone to yellowing, these teeth
are in great demand. Accordingly, walruses are the victims of a
mindless hunting that soon will destroy them all, since their hunters
indiscriminately slaughter pregnant females and youngsters, and over
4,000 individuals are destroyed annually.

Passing near these unusual animals, I could examine them at my leisure
since they didn’t stir. Their hides were rough and heavy, a tan color
leaning toward a reddish brown; their coats were short and less than
abundant. Some were four meters long. More tranquil and less fearful
than their northern relatives, they posted no sentinels on guard duty
at the approaches to their campsite.

After examining this community of walruses, I decided to return in my
tracks. It was eleven o’clock, and if Captain Nemo found conditions
favorable for taking his sights, I wanted to be present at the
operation. But I held no hopes that the sun would make an appearance
that day. It was hidden from our eyes by clouds squeezed together on
the horizon. Apparently the jealous orb didn’t want to reveal this
inaccessible spot on the globe to any human being.

Yet I decided to return to the Nautilus. We went along a steep, narrow
path that ran over the cliff’s summit. By 11:30 we had arrived at our
landing place. The beached skiff had brought the captain ashore. I
spotted him standing on a chunk of basalt. His instruments were beside
him. His eyes were focused on the northern horizon, along which the
sun was sweeping in its extended arc.

I found a place near him and waited without speaking. Noon arrived,
and just as on the day before, the sun didn’t put in an appearance.

It was sheer bad luck. Our noon sights were still lacking. If we
couldn’t obtain them tomorrow, we would finally have to give up any
hope of fixing our position.

In essence, it was precisely March 20. Tomorrow, the 21st, was the day
of the equinox; the sun would disappear below the horizon for six
months not counting refraction, and after its disappearance the long
polar night would begin. Following the September equinox, the sun had
emerged above the northerly horizon, rising in long spirals until
December 21. At that time, the summer solstice of these southernmost
districts, the sun had started back down, and tomorrow it would cast
its last rays.

I shared my thoughts and fears with Captain Nemo.

“You’re right, Professor Aronnax,” he told me. “If I can’t take the
sun’s altitude tomorrow, I won’t be able to try again for another six
months. But precisely because sailors’ luck has led me into these seas
on March 21, it will be easy to get our bearings if the noonday sun
does appear before our eyes.”

“Why easy, captain?”

“Because when the orb of day sweeps in such long spirals, it’s
difficult to measure its exact altitude above the horizon, and our
instruments are open to committing serious errors.”

“Then what can you do?”

“I use only my chronometer,” Captain Nemo answered me. “At noon
tomorrow, March 21, if, after accounting for refraction, the sun’s
disk is cut exactly in half by the northern horizon, that will mean
I’m at the South Pole.”

“Right,” I said. “Nevertheless, it isn’t mathematically exact proof,
because the equinox needn’t fall precisely at noon.”

“No doubt, sir, but the error will be under 100 meters, and that’s
close enough for us. Until tomorrow then.”

Captain Nemo went back on board. Conseil and I stayed behind until
five o’clock, surveying the beach, observing and studying. The only
unusual object I picked up was an auk’s egg of remarkable size, for
which a collector would have paid more than 1,000 francs. Its
cream-colored tint, plus the streaks and markings that decorated it
like so many hieroglyphics, made it a rare trinket. I placed it in
Conseil’s hands, and holding it like precious porcelain from China,
that cautious, sure-footed lad got it back to the Nautilus in one
piece.

There I put this rare egg inside one of the glass cases in the
museum. I ate supper, feasting with appetite on an excellent piece of
seal liver whose flavor reminded me of pork. Then I went to bed; but
not without praying, like a good Hindu, for the favors of the radiant
orb.

The next day, March 21, bright and early at five o’clock in the
morning, I climbed onto the platform. I found Captain Nemo there.

“The weather is clearing a bit,” he told me. “I have high hopes. After
breakfast we’ll make our way ashore and choose an observation post.”

This issue settled, I went to find Ned Land. I wanted to take him with
me. The obstinate Canadian refused, and I could clearly see that his
tight-lipped mood and his bad temper were growing by the day. Under
the circumstances I ultimately wasn’t sorry that he refused. In truth,
there were too many seals ashore, and it would never do to expose this
impulsive fisherman to such temptations.

Breakfast over, I made my way ashore. The Nautilus had gone a few more
miles during the night. It lay well out, a good league from the coast,
which was crowned by a sharp peak 400 to 500 meters high. In addition
to me, the skiff carried Captain Nemo, two crewmen, and the
instruments—in other words, a chronometer, a spyglass, and a
barometer.

During our crossing I saw numerous baleen whales belonging to the
three species unique to these southernmost seas: the bowhead whale (or
“right whale,” according to the English), which has no dorsal fin; the
humpback whale from the genus Balaenoptera (in other words, “winged
whales”), beasts with wrinkled bellies and huge whitish fins that,
genus name regardless, do not yet form wings; and the finback whale,
yellowish brown, the swiftest of all cetaceans. This powerful animal
is audible from far away when it sends up towering spouts of air and
steam that resemble swirls of smoke. Herds of these different mammals
were playing about in the tranquil waters, and I could easily see that
this Antarctic polar basin now served as a refuge for those cetaceans
too relentlessly pursued by hunters.

I also noted long, whitish strings of salps, a type of mollusk found
in clusters, and some jellyfish of large size that swayed in the
eddies of the billows.

By nine o’clock we had pulled up to shore. The sky was growing
brighter. Clouds were fleeing to the south. Mists were rising from the
cold surface of the water. Captain Nemo headed toward the peak, which
he no doubt planned to make his observatory. It was an arduous climb
over sharp lava and pumice stones in the midst of air often reeking
with sulfurous fumes from the smoke holes. For a man out of practice
at treading land, the captain scaled the steepest slopes with a supple
agility I couldn’t equal, and which would have been envied by hunters
of Pyrenees mountain goats.

It took us two hours to reach the summit of this half-crystal,
half-basalt peak. From there our eyes scanned a vast sea, which
scrawled its boundary line firmly against the background of the
northern sky. At our feet: dazzling tracts of white. Over our heads: a
pale azure, clear of mists. North of us: the sun’s disk, like a ball
of fire already cut into by the edge of the horizon. From the heart of
the waters: jets of liquid rising like hundreds of magnificent
bouquets. Far off, like a sleeping cetacean: the Nautilus. Behind us
to the south and east: an immense shore, a chaotic heap of rocks and
ice whose limits we couldn’t see.

Arriving at the summit of this peak, Captain Nemo carefully determined
its elevation by means of his barometer, since he had to take this
factor into account in his noon sights.

At 11:45 the sun, by then seen only by refraction, looked like a
golden disk, dispersing its last rays over this deserted continent and
down to these seas not yet plowed by the ships of man.

Captain Nemo had brought a spyglass with a reticular eyepiece, which
corrected the sun’s refraction by means of a mirror, and he used it to
observe the orb sinking little by little along a very extended
diagonal that reached below the horizon. I held the chronometer. My
heart was pounding mightily. If the lower half of the sun’s disk
disappeared just as the chronometer said noon, we were right at the
pole.

“Noon!” I called.

“The South Pole!” Captain Nemo replied in a solemn voice, handing me
the spyglass, which showed the orb of day cut into two exactly equal
parts by the horizon.

I stared at the last rays wreathing this peak, while shadows were
gradually climbing its gradients.

Just then, resting his hand on my shoulder, Captain Nemo said to me:

“In 1600, sir, the Dutchman Gheritk was swept by storms and currents,
reaching latitude 64 degrees south and discovering the South Shetland
Islands. On January 17, 1773, the famous Captain Cook went along the
38th meridian, arriving at latitude 67 degrees 30’; and on January 30,
1774, along the 109th meridian, he reached latitude 71 degrees 15’. In
1819 the Russian Bellinghausen lay on the 69th parallel, and in 1821
on the 66th at longitude 111 degrees west. In 1820 the Englishman
Bransfield stopped at 65 degrees. That same year the American Morrel,
whose reports are dubious, went along the 42nd meridian, finding open
sea at latitude 70 degrees 14’. In 1825 the Englishman Powell was
unable to get beyond 62 degrees. That same year a humble seal
fisherman, the Englishman Weddell, went as far as latitude 72 degrees
14’ on the 35th meridian, and as far as 74 degrees 15’ on the 36th. In
1829 the Englishman Forster, commander of the Chanticleer, laid claim
to the Antarctic continent in latitude 63 degrees 26’ and longitude 66
degrees 26’. On February 1, 1831, the Englishman Biscoe discovered
Enderby Land at latitude 68 degrees 50’, Adelaide Land at latitude 67
degrees on February 5, 1832, and Graham Land at latitude 64 degrees
45’ on February 21. In 1838 the Frenchman Dumont d’Urville stopped at
the Ice Bank in latitude 62 degrees 57’, sighting the Louis-Philippe
Peninsula; on January 21 two years later, at a new southerly position
of 66 degrees 30’, he named the Adélie Coast and eight days later, the
Clarie Coast at 64 degrees 40’. In 1838 the American Wilkes advanced
as far as the 69th parallel on the 100th meridian. In 1839 the
Englishman Balleny discovered the Sabrina Coast at the edge of the
polar circle. Lastly, on January 12, 1842, with his ships, the Erebus
and the Terror, the Englishman Sir James Clark Ross found Victoria
Land in latitude 70 degrees 56’ and longitude 171 degrees 7’ east; on
the 23rd of that same month, he reached the 74th parallel, a position
denoting the Farthest South attained until then; on the 27th he lay at
76 degrees 8’; on the 28th at 77 degrees 32’; on February 2 at 78
degrees 4’; and late in 1842 he returned to 71 degrees but couldn’t
get beyond it. Well now! In 1868, on this 21st day of March, I myself,
Captain Nemo, have reached the South Pole at 90 degrees, and I hereby
claim this entire part of the globe, equal to one-sixth of the known
continents.”

“In the name of which sovereign, captain?”

“In my own name, sir!”

So saying, Captain Nemo unfurled a black flag bearing a gold “N” on
its quartered bunting. Then, turning toward the orb of day, whose last
rays were licking at the sea’s horizon:

“Farewell, O sun!” he called. “Disappear, O radiant orb! Retire
beneath this open sea, and let six months of night spread their
shadows over my new domains!”


CHAPTER 15

Accident or Incident?


THE NEXT DAY, March 22, at six o’clock in the morning, preparations
for departure began. The last gleams of twilight were melting into
night. The cold was brisk. The constellations were glittering with
startling intensity. The wonderful Southern Cross, polar star of the
Antarctic regions, twinkled at its zenith.

The thermometer marked -12 degrees centigrade, and a fresh breeze left
a sharp nip in the air. Ice floes were increasing over the open
water. The sea was starting to congeal everywhere. Numerous blackish
patches were spreading over its surface, announcing the imminent
formation of fresh ice. Obviously this southernmost basin froze over
during its six-month winter and became utterly inaccessible. What
happened to the whales during this period? No doubt they went beneath
the Ice Bank to find more feasible seas. As for seals and walruses,
they were accustomed to living in the harshest climates and stayed on
in these icy waterways. These animals know by instinct how to gouge
holes in the ice fields and keep them continually open; they go to
these holes to breathe. Once the birds have migrated northward to
escape the cold, these marine mammals remain as sole lords of the
polar continent.

Meanwhile the ballast tanks filled with water and the Nautilus sank
slowly. At a depth of 1,000 feet, it stopped. Its propeller churned
the waves and it headed due north at a speed of fifteen miles per
hour. Near the afternoon it was already cruising under the immense
frozen carapace of the Ice Bank.

As a precaution, the panels in the lounge stayed closed, because the
Nautilus’s hull could run afoul of some submerged block of ice. So I
spent the day putting my notes into final form. My mind was completely
wrapped up in my memories of the pole. We had reached that
inaccessible spot without facing exhaustion or danger, as if our
seagoing passenger carriage had glided there on railroad tracks. And
now we had actually started our return journey. Did it still have
comparable surprises in store for me? I felt sure it did, so
inexhaustible is this series of underwater wonders! As it was, in the
five and a half months since fate had brought us on board, we had
cleared 14,000 leagues, and over this track longer than the earth’s
equator, so many fascinating or frightening incidents had beguiled our
voyage: that hunting trip in the Crespo forests, our running aground
in the Torres Strait, the coral cemetery, the pearl fisheries of
Ceylon, the Arabic tunnel, the fires of Santorini, those millions in
the Bay of Vigo, Atlantis, the South Pole! During the night all these
memories crossed over from one dream to the next, not giving my brain
a moment’s rest.

At three o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by a violent
collision. I sat up in bed, listening in the darkness, and then was
suddenly hurled into the middle of my stateroom. Apparently the
Nautilus had gone aground, then heeled over sharply.

Leaning against the walls, I dragged myself down the gangways to the
lounge, whose ceiling lights were on. The furniture had been knocked
over. Fortunately the glass cases were solidly secured at the base and
had stood fast. Since we were no longer vertical, the starboard
pictures were glued to the tapestries, while those to port had their
lower edges hanging a foot away from the wall. So the Nautilus was
lying on its starboard side, completely stationary to boot.

In its interior I heard the sound of footsteps and muffled voices. But
Captain Nemo didn’t appear. Just as I was about to leave the lounge,
Ned Land and Conseil entered.

“What happened?” I instantly said to them.

“I came to ask master that,” Conseil replied.

“Damnation!” the Canadian exclaimed. “I know full well what happened!
The Nautilus has gone aground, and judging from the way it’s listing,
I don’t think it’ll pull through like that first time in the Torres
Strait.”

“But,” I asked, “are we at least back on the surface of the sea?”

“We have no idea,” Conseil replied.

“It’s easy to find out,” I answered.

I consulted the pressure gauge. Much to my surprise, it indicated a
depth of 360 meters.

“What’s the meaning of this?” I exclaimed.

“We must confer with Captain Nemo,” Conseil said.

“But where do we find him?” Ned Land asked.

“Follow me,” I told my two companions.

We left the lounge. Nobody in the library. Nobody by the central
companionway or the crew’s quarters. I assumed that Captain Nemo was
stationed in the pilothouse. Best to wait. The three of us returned to
the lounge.

I’ll skip over the Canadian’s complaints. He had good grounds for an
outburst. I didn’t answer him back, letting him blow off all the steam
he wanted.

We had been left to ourselves for twenty minutes, trying to detect the
tiniest noises inside the Nautilus, when Captain Nemo entered. He
didn’t seem to see us. His facial features, usually so emotionless,
revealed a certain uneasiness. He studied the compass and pressure
gauge in silence, then went and put his finger on the world map at a
spot in the sector depicting the southernmost seas.

I hesitated to interrupt him. But some moments later, when he turned
to me, I threw back at him a phrase he had used in the Torres Strait:

“An incident, captain?”

“No, sir,” he replied, “this time an accident.”

“Serious?”

“Perhaps.”

“Is there any immediate danger?”

“No.”

“The Nautilus has run aground?”

“Yes.”

“And this accident came about . . . ?”

“Through nature’s unpredictability not man’s incapacity. No errors
were committed in our maneuvers. Nevertheless, we can’t prevent a loss
of balance from taking its toll. One may defy human laws, but no one
can withstand the laws of nature.”

Captain Nemo had picked an odd time to philosophize. All in all, this
reply told me nothing.

“May I learn, sir,” I asked him, “what caused this accident?”

“An enormous block of ice, an entire mountain, has toppled over,” he
answered me. “When an iceberg is eroded at the base by warmer waters
or by repeated collisions, its center of gravity rises. Then it
somersaults, it turns completely upside down. That’s what happened
here. When it overturned, one of these blocks hit the Nautilus as it
was cruising under the waters. Sliding under our hull, this block then
raised us with irresistible power, lifting us into less congested
strata where we now lie on our side.”

“But can’t we float the Nautilus clear by emptying its ballast tanks,
to regain our balance?”

“That, sir, is being done right now. You can hear the pumps
working. Look at the needle on the pressure gauge. It indicates that
the Nautilus is rising, but this block of ice is rising with us, and
until some obstacle halts its upward movement, our position won’t
change.”

Indeed, the Nautilus kept the same heel to starboard. No doubt it
would straighten up once the block came to a halt. But before that
happened, who knew if we might not hit the underbelly of the Ice Bank
and be hideously squeezed between two frozen surfaces?

I mused on all the consequences of this situation. Captain Nemo didn’t
stop studying the pressure gauge. Since the toppling of this iceberg,
the Nautilus had risen about 150 feet, but it still stayed at the same
angle to the perpendicular.

Suddenly a slight movement could be felt over the hull. Obviously the
Nautilus was straightening a bit. Objects hanging in the lounge were
visibly returning to their normal positions. The walls were
approaching the vertical. Nobody said a word. Hearts pounding, we
could see and feel the ship righting itself. The floor was becoming
horizontal beneath our feet. Ten minutes went by.

“Finally, we’re upright!” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” Captain Nemo said, heading to the lounge door.

“But will we float off?” I asked him.

“Certainly,” he replied, “since the ballast tanks aren’t yet empty,
and when they are, the Nautilus must rise to the surface of the sea.”

The captain went out, and soon I saw that at his orders, the Nautilus
had halted its upward movement. In fact, it soon would have hit the
underbelly of the Ice Bank, but it had stopped in time and was
floating in midwater.

“That was a close call!” Conseil then said.

“Yes. We could have been crushed between these masses of ice, or at
least imprisoned between them. And then, with no way to renew our air
supply. . . . Yes, that was a close call!”

“If it’s over with!” Ned Land muttered.

I was unwilling to get into a pointless argument with the Canadian and
didn’t reply. Moreover, the panels opened just then, and the outside
light burst through the uncovered windows.

We were fully afloat, as I have said; but on both sides of the
Nautilus, about ten meters away, there rose dazzling walls of
ice. There also were walls above and below. Above, because the Ice
Bank’s underbelly spread over us like an immense ceiling. Below,
because the somersaulting block, shifting little by little, had found
points of purchase on both side walls and had gotten jammed between
them. The Nautilus was imprisoned in a genuine tunnel of ice about
twenty meters wide and filled with quiet water. So the ship could
easily exit by going either ahead or astern, sinking a few hundred
meters deeper, and then taking an open passageway beneath the Ice
Bank.

The ceiling lights were off, yet the lounge was still brightly
lit. This was due to the reflecting power of the walls of ice, which
threw the beams of our beacon right back at us. Words cannot describe
the effects produced by our galvanic rays on these huge, whimsically
sculpted blocks, whose every angle, ridge, and facet gave off a
different glow depending on the nature of the veins running inside the
ice. It was a dazzling mine of gems, in particular sapphires and
emeralds, whose jets of blue and green crisscrossed. Here and there,
opaline hues of infinite subtlety raced among sparks of light that
were like so many fiery diamonds, their brilliance more than any eye
could stand. The power of our beacon was increased a hundredfold, like
a lamp shining through the biconvex lenses of a world-class
lighthouse.

“How beautiful!” Conseil exclaimed.

“Yes,” I said, “it’s a wonderful sight! Isn’t it, Ned?”

“Oh damnation, yes!” Ned Land shot back. “It’s superb! I’m furious
that I have to admit it. Nobody has ever seen the like. But this sight
could cost us dearly. And in all honesty, I think we’re looking at
things God never intended for human eyes.”

Ned was right. It was too beautiful. All at once a yell from Conseil
made me turn around.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Master must close his eyes! Master mustn’t look!”

With that, Conseil clapped his hands over his eyes.

“But what’s wrong, my boy?”

“I’ve been dazzled, struck blind!”

Involuntarily my eyes flew to the window, but I couldn’t stand the
fire devouring it.

I realized what had happened. The Nautilus had just started off at
great speed. All the tranquil glimmers of the ice walls had then
changed into blazing streaks. The sparkles from these myriads of
diamonds were merging with each other. Swept along by its propeller,
the Nautilus was traveling through a sheath of flashing light.

Then the panels in the lounge closed. We kept our hands over our eyes,
which were utterly saturated with those concentric gleams that swirl
before the retina when sunlight strikes it too intensely. It took some
time to calm our troubled vision.

Finally we lowered our hands.

“Ye gods, I never would have believed it,” Conseil said.

“And I still don’t believe it!” the Canadian shot back.

“When we return to shore, jaded from all these natural wonders,”
Conseil added, “think how we’ll look down on those pitiful land
masses, those puny works of man! No, the civilized world won’t be good
enough for us!”

Such words from the lips of this emotionless Flemish boy showed that
our enthusiasm was near the boiling point. But the Canadian didn’t
fail to throw his dram of cold water over us.

“The civilized world!” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry,
Conseil my friend, we’re never going back to that world!”

By this point it was five o’clock in the morning. Just then there was
a collision in the Nautilus’s bow. I realized that its spur had just
bumped a block of ice. It must have been a faulty maneuver because
this underwater tunnel was obstructed by such blocks and didn’t make
for easy navigating. So I had assumed that Captain Nemo, in adjusting
his course, would go around each obstacle or would hug the walls and
follow the windings of the tunnel. In either case our forward motion
wouldn’t receive an absolute check. Nevertheless, contrary to my
expectations, the Nautilus definitely began to move backward.

“We’re going astern?” Conseil said.

“Yes,” I replied. “Apparently the tunnel has no way out at this end.”

“And so . . . ?”

“So,” I said, “our maneuvers are quite simple. We’ll return in our
tracks and go out the southern opening. That’s all.”

As I spoke, I tried to sound more confident than I really
felt. Meanwhile the Nautilus accelerated its backward movement, and
running with propeller in reverse, it swept us along at great speed.

“This’ll mean a delay,” Ned said.

“What are a few hours more or less, so long as we get out.”

“Yes,” Ned Land repeated, “so long as we get out!”

I strolled for a little while from the lounge into the library. My
companions kept their seats and didn’t move. Soon I threw myself down
on a couch and picked up a book, which my eyes skimmed mechanically.

A quarter of an hour later, Conseil approached me, saying:

“Is it deeply fascinating, this volume master is reading?”

“Tremendously fascinating,” I replied.

“I believe it. Master is reading his own book!”

“My own book?”

Indeed, my hands were holding my own work on the great ocean depths. I
hadn’t even suspected. I closed the book and resumed my strolling. Ned
and Conseil stood up to leave.

“Stay here, my friends,” I said, stopping them. “Let’s stay together
until we’re out of this blind alley.”

“As master wishes,” Conseil replied.

The hours passed. I often studied the instruments hanging on the
lounge wall. The pressure gauge indicated that the Nautilus stayed at
a constant depth of 300 meters, the compass that it kept heading
south, the log that it was traveling at a speed of twenty miles per
hour, an excessive speed in such a cramped area. But Captain Nemo knew
that by this point there was no such thing as too fast, since minutes
were now worth centuries.

At 8:25 a second collision took place. This time astern. I grew
pale. My companions came over. I clutched Conseil’s hand. Our eyes
questioned each other, and more directly than if our thoughts had been
translated into words.

Just then the captain entered the lounge. I went to him.

“Our path is barred to the south?” I asked him.

“Yes, sir. When it overturned, that iceberg closed off every exit.”

“We’re boxed in?”

“Yes.”


CHAPTER 16

Shortage of Air


CONSEQUENTLY, above, below, and around the Nautilus, there were
impenetrable frozen walls. We were the Ice Bank’s prisoners! The
Canadian banged a table with his fearsome fist. Conseil kept still. I
stared at the captain. His face had resumed its usual
emotionlessness. He crossed his arms. He pondered. The Nautilus did
not stir.

The captain then broke into speech:

“Gentlemen,” he said in a calm voice, “there are two ways of dying
under the conditions in which we’re placed.”

This inexplicable individual acted like a mathematics professor
working out a problem for his pupils.

“The first way,” he went on, “is death by crushing. The second is
death by asphyxiation. I don’t mention the possibility of death by
starvation because the Nautilus’s provisions will certainly last
longer than we will. Therefore, let’s concentrate on our chances of
being crushed or asphyxiated.”

“As for asphyxiation, captain,” I replied, “that isn’t a cause for
alarm, because the air tanks are full.”

“True,” Captain Nemo went on, “but they’ll supply air for only two
days. Now then, we’ve been buried beneath the waters for thirty-six
hours, and the Nautilus’s heavy atmosphere already needs renewing. In
another forty-eight hours, our reserve air will be used up.”

“Well then, captain, let’s free ourselves within forty-eight hours!”

“We’ll try to at least, by cutting through one of these walls
surrounding us.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“Borings will tell us that. I’m going to ground the Nautilus on the
lower shelf, then my men will put on their diving suits and attack the
thinnest of these ice walls.”

“Can the panels in the lounge be left open?”

“Without ill effect. We’re no longer in motion.”

Captain Nemo went out. Hissing sounds soon told me that water was
being admitted into the ballast tanks. The Nautilus slowly settled and
rested on the icy bottom at a depth of 350 meters, the depth at which
the lower shelf of ice lay submerged.

“My friends,” I said, “we’re in a serious predicament, but I’m
counting on your courage and energy.”

“Sir,” the Canadian replied, “this is no time to bore you with my
complaints. I’m ready to do anything I can for the common good.”

“Excellent, Ned,” I said, extending my hand to the Canadian.

“I might add,” he went on, “that I’m as handy with a pick as a
harpoon. If I can be helpful to the captain, he can use me any way he
wants.”

“He won’t turn down your assistance. Come along, Ned.”

I led the Canadian to the room where the Nautilus’s men were putting
on their diving suits. I informed the captain of Ned’s proposition,
which was promptly accepted. The Canadian got into his underwater
costume and was ready as soon as his fellow workers. Each of them
carried on his back a Rouquayrol device that the air tanks had
supplied with a generous allowance of fresh oxygen. A considerable but
necessary drain on the Nautilus’s reserves. As for the Ruhmkorff
lamps, they were unnecessary in the midst of these brilliant waters
saturated with our electric rays.

After Ned was dressed, I reentered the lounge, whose windows had been
uncovered; stationed next to Conseil, I examined the strata
surrounding and supporting the Nautilus.

Some moments later, we saw a dozen crewmen set foot on the shelf of
ice, among them Ned Land, easily recognized by his tall
figure. Captain Nemo was with them.

Before digging into the ice, the captain had to obtain borings, to
insure working in the best direction. Long bores were driven into the
side walls; but after fifteen meters, the instruments were still
impeded by the thickness of those walls. It was futile to attack the
ceiling since that surface was the Ice Bank itself, more than 400
meters high. Captain Nemo then bored into the lower surface. There we
were separated from the sea by a ten-meter barrier. That’s how thick
the iceberg was. From this point on, it was an issue of cutting out a
piece equal in surface area to the Nautilus’s waterline. This meant
detaching about 6,500 cubic meters, to dig a hole through which the
ship could descend below this tract of ice.

Work began immediately and was carried on with tireless
tenacity. Instead of digging all around the Nautilus, which would have
entailed even greater difficulties, Captain Nemo had an immense trench
outlined on the ice, eight meters from our port quarter. Then his men
simultaneously staked it off at several points around its
circumference. Soon their picks were vigorously attacking this compact
matter, and huge chunks were loosened from its mass. These chunks
weighed less than the water, and by an unusual effect of specific
gravity, each chunk took wing, as it were, to the roof of the tunnel,
which thickened above by as much as it diminished below. But this
hardly mattered so long as the lower surface kept growing thinner.

After two hours of energetic work, Ned Land reentered, exhausted. He
and his companions were replaced by new workmen, including Conseil and
me. The Nautilus’s chief officer supervised us.

The water struck me as unusually cold, but I warmed up promptly while
wielding my pick. My movements were quite free, although they were
executed under a pressure of thirty atmospheres.

After two hours of work, reentering to snatch some food and rest, I
found a noticeable difference between the clean elastic fluid supplied
me by the Rouquayrol device and the Nautilus’s atmosphere, which was
already charged with carbon dioxide. The air hadn’t been renewed in
forty-eight hours, and its life-giving qualities were considerably
weakened. Meanwhile, after twelve hours had gone by, we had removed
from the outlined surface area a slice of ice only one meter thick,
hence about 600 cubic meters. Assuming the same work would be
accomplished every twelve hours, it would still take five nights and
four days to see the undertaking through to completion.

“Five nights and four days!” I told my companions. “And we have oxygen
in the air tanks for only two days.”

“Without taking into account,” Ned answered, “that once we’re out of
this damned prison, we’ll still be cooped up beneath the Ice Bank,
without any possible contact with the open air!”

An apt remark. For who could predict the minimum time we would need to
free ourselves? Before the Nautilus could return to the surface of the
waves, couldn’t we all die of asphyxiation? Were this ship and
everyone on board doomed to perish in this tomb of ice? It was a
dreadful state of affairs. But we faced it head-on, each one of us
determined to do his duty to the end.

During the night, in line with my forecasts, a new one-meter slice was
removed from this immense socket. But in the morning, wearing my
diving suit, I was crossing through the liquid mass in a temperature
of -6 degrees to -7 degrees centigrade, when I noted that little by
little the side walls were closing in on each other. The liquid strata
farthest from the trench, not warmed by the movements of workmen and
tools, were showing a tendency to solidify. In the face of this
imminent new danger, what would happen to our chances for salvation,
and how could we prevent this liquid medium from solidifying, then
cracking the Nautilus’s hull like glass?

I didn’t tell my two companions about this new danger. There was no
point in dampening the energy they were putting into our arduous
rescue work. But when I returned on board, I mentioned this serious
complication to Captain Nemo.

“I know,” he told me in that calm tone the most dreadful outlook
couldn’t change. “It’s one more danger, but I don’t know any way of
warding it off. Our sole chance for salvation is to work faster than
the water solidifies. We’ve got to get there first, that’s all.”

Get there first! By then I should have been used to this type of talk!

For several hours that day, I wielded my pick doggedly. The work kept
me going. Besides, working meant leaving the Nautilus, which meant
breathing the clean oxygen drawn from the air tanks and supplied by
our equipment, which meant leaving the thin, foul air behind.

Near evening one more meter had been dug from the trench. When I
returned on board, I was wellnigh asphyxiated by the carbon dioxide
saturating the air. Oh, if only we had the chemical methods that would
enable us to drive out this noxious gas! There was no lack of
oxygen. All this water contained a considerable amount, and after it
was decomposed by our powerful batteries, this life-giving elastic
fluid could have been restored to us. I had thought it all out, but to
no avail because the carbon dioxide produced by our breathing
permeated every part of the ship. To absorb it, we would need to fill
containers with potassium hydroxide and shake them continually. But
this substance was missing on board and nothing else could replace it.

That evening Captain Nemo was forced to open the spigots of his air
tanks and shoot a few spouts of fresh oxygen through the Nautilus’s
interior. Without this precaution we wouldn’t have awakened the
following morning.

The next day, March 26, I returned to my miner’s trade, working to
remove the fifth meter. The Ice Bank’s side walls and underbelly had
visibly thickened. Obviously they would come together before the
Nautilus could break free. For an instant I was gripped by despair. My
pick nearly slipped from my hands. What was the point of this digging
if I was to die smothered and crushed by this water turning to stone,
a torture undreamed of by even the wildest savages! I felt like I was
lying in the jaws of a fearsome monster, jaws irresistibly closing.

Supervising our work, working himself, Captain Nemo passed near me
just then. I touched him with my hand and pointed to the walls of our
prison. The starboard wall had moved forward to a point less than four
meters from the Nautilus’s hull.

The captain understood and gave me a signal to follow him. We returned
on board. My diving suit removed, I went with him to the lounge.

“Professor Aronnax,” he told me, “this calls for heroic measures, or
we’ll be sealed up in this solidified water as if it were cement.”

“Yes!” I said. “But what can we do?”

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “if only my Nautilus were strong enough to stand
that much pressure without being crushed!”

“Well?” I asked, not catching the captain’s meaning.

“Don’t you understand,” he went on, “that the congealing of this water
could come to our rescue? Don’t you see that by solidifying, it could
burst these tracts of ice imprisoning us, just as its freezing can
burst the hardest stones? Aren’t you aware that this force could be
the instrument of our salvation rather than our destruction?”

“Yes, captain, maybe so. But whatever resistance to crushing the
Nautilus may have, it still couldn’t stand such dreadful pressures,
and it would be squashed as flat as a piece of sheet iron.”

“I know it, sir. So we can’t rely on nature to rescue us, only our own
efforts. We must counteract this solidification. We must hold it in
check. Not only are the side walls closing in, but there aren’t ten
feet of water ahead or astern of the Nautilus. All around us, this
freeze is gaining fast.”

“How long,” I asked, “will the oxygen in the air tanks enable us to
breathe on board?”

The captain looked me straight in the eye.

“After tomorrow,” he said, “the air tanks will be empty!”

I broke out in a cold sweat. But why should I have been startled by
this reply? On March 22 the Nautilus had dived under the open waters
at the pole. It was now the 26th. We had lived off the ship’s stores
for five days! And all remaining breathable air had to be saved for
the workmen. Even today as I write these lines, my sensations are so
intense that an involuntary terror sweeps over me, and my lungs still
seem short of air!

Meanwhile, motionless and silent, Captain Nemo stood lost in
thought. An idea visibly crossed his mind. But he seemed to brush it
aside. He told himself no. At last these words escaped his lips:

“Boiling water!” he muttered.

“Boiling water?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, sir. We’re shut up in a relatively confined area. If the
Nautilus’s pumps continually injected streams of boiling water into
this space, wouldn’t that raise its temperature and delay its
freezing?”

“It’s worth trying!” I said resolutely.

“So let’s try it, professor.”

By then the thermometer gave -7 degrees centigrade outside. Captain
Nemo led me to the galley where a huge distilling mechanism was at
work, supplying drinking water via evaporation. The mechanism was
loaded with water, and the full electric heat of our batteries was
thrown into coils awash in liquid. In a few minutes the water reached
100 degrees centigrade. It was sent to the pumps while new water
replaced it in the process. The heat generated by our batteries was so
intense that after simply going through the mechanism, water drawn
cold from the sea arrived boiling hot at the body of the pump.

The steaming water was injected into the icy water outside, and after
three hours had passed, the thermometer gave the exterior temperature
as -6 degrees centigrade. That was one degree gained. Two hours later
the thermometer gave only -4 degrees.

After I monitored the operation’s progress, double-checking it with
many inspections, I told the captain, “It’s working.”

“I think so,” he answered me. “We’ve escaped being crushed. Now we
have only asphyxiation to fear.”

During the night the water temperature rose to -1 degrees
centigrade. The injections couldn’t get it to go a single degree
higher. But since salt water freezes only at -2 degrees, I was finally
assured that there was no danger of it solidifying.

By the next day, March 27, six meters of ice had been torn from the
socket. Only four meters were left to be removed. That still meant
forty-eight hours of work. The air couldn’t be renewed in the
Nautilus’s interior. Accordingly, that day it kept getting worse.

An unbearable heaviness weighed me down. Near three o’clock in the
afternoon, this agonizing sensation affected me to an intense
degree. Yawns dislocated my jaws. My lungs were gasping in their quest
for that enkindling elastic fluid required for breathing, now growing
scarcer and scarcer. My mind was in a daze. I lay outstretched,
strength gone, nearly unconscious. My gallant Conseil felt the same
symptoms, suffered the same sufferings, yet never left my side. He
held my hand, he kept encouraging me, and I even heard him mutter:

“Oh, if only I didn’t have to breathe, to leave more air for master!”

It brought tears to my eyes to hear him say these words.

Since conditions inside were universally unbearable, how eagerly, how
happily, we put on our diving suits to take our turns working! Picks
rang out on that bed of ice. Arms grew weary, hands were rubbed raw,
but who cared about exhaustion, what difference were wounds?
Life-sustaining air reached our lungs! We could breathe! We could
breathe!

And yet nobody prolonged his underwater work beyond the time allotted
him. His shift over, each man surrendered to a gasping companion the
air tank that would revive him. Captain Nemo set the example and was
foremost in submitting to this strict discipline. When his time was
up, he yielded his equipment to another and reentered the foul air on
board, always calm, unflinching, and uncomplaining.

That day the usual work was accomplished with even greater
energy. Over the whole surface area, only two meters were left to be
removed. Only two meters separated us from the open sea. But the
ship’s air tanks were nearly empty. The little air that remained had
to be saved for the workmen. Not an atom for the Nautilus!

When I returned on board, I felt half suffocated. What a night! I’m
unable to depict it. Such sufferings are indescribable. The next day I
was short-winded. Headaches and staggering fits of dizziness made me
reel like a drunk. My companions were experiencing the same
symptoms. Some crewmen were at their last gasp.

That day, the sixth of our imprisonment, Captain Nemo concluded that
picks and mattocks were too slow to deal with the ice layer still
separating us from open water—and he decided to crush this layer. The
man had kept his energy and composure. He had subdued physical pain
with moral strength. He could still think, plan, and act.

At his orders the craft was eased off, in other words, it was raised
from its icy bed by a change in its specific gravity. When it was
afloat, the crew towed it, leading it right above the immense trench
outlined to match the ship’s waterline. Next the ballast tanks filled
with water, the boat sank, and was fitted into its socket.

Just then the whole crew returned on board, and the double outside
door was closed. By this point the Nautilus was resting on a bed of
ice only one meter thick and drilled by bores in a thousand places.

The stopcocks of the ballast tanks were then opened wide, and 100
cubic meters of water rushed in, increasing the Nautilus’s weight by
100,000 kilograms.

We waited, we listened, we forgot our sufferings, we hoped once
more. We had staked our salvation on this one last gamble.

Despite the buzzing in my head, I soon could hear vibrations under the
Nautilus’s hull. We tilted. The ice cracked with an odd ripping sound,
like paper tearing, and the Nautilus began settling downward.

“We’re going through!” Conseil muttered in my ear.

I couldn’t answer him. I clutched his hand. I squeezed it in an
involuntary convulsion.

All at once, carried away by its frightful excess load, the Nautilus
sank into the waters like a cannonball, in other words, dropping as if
in a vacuum!

Our full electric power was then put on the pumps, which instantly
began to expel water from the ballast tanks. After a few minutes we
had checked our fall. The pressure gauge soon indicated an ascending
movement. Brought to full speed, the propeller made the sheet-iron
hull tremble down to its rivets, and we sped northward.

But how long would it take to navigate under the Ice Bank to the open
sea? Another day? I would be dead first!

Half lying on a couch in the library, I was suffocating. My face was
purple, my lips blue, my faculties in abeyance. I could no longer see
or hear. I had lost all sense of time. My muscles had no power to
contract.

I’m unable to estimate the hours that passed in this way. But I was
aware that my death throes had begun. I realized that I was about to
die . . .

Suddenly I regained consciousness. A few whiffs of air had entered my
lungs. Had we risen to the surface of the waves? Had we cleared the
Ice Bank?

No! Ned and Conseil, my two gallant friends, were sacrificing
themselves to save me. A few atoms of air were still left in the
depths of one Rouquayrol device. Instead of breathing it themselves,
they had saved it for me, and while they were suffocating, they poured
life into me drop by drop! I tried to push the device away. They held
my hands, and for a few moments I could breathe luxuriously.

My eyes flew toward the clock. It was eleven in the morning. It had to
be March 28. The Nautilus was traveling at the frightful speed of
forty miles per hour. It was writhing in the waters.

Where was Captain Nemo? Had he perished? Had his companions died with
him?

Just then the pressure gauge indicated we were no more than twenty
feet from the surface. Separating us from the open air was a mere
tract of ice. Could we break through it?

Perhaps! In any event the Nautilus was going to try. In fact, I could
feel it assuming an oblique position, lowering its stern and raising
its spur. The admission of additional water was enough to shift its
balance. Then, driven by its powerful propeller, it attacked this ice
field from below like a fearsome battering ram. It split the barrier
little by little, backing up, then putting on full speed against the
punctured tract of ice; and finally, carried away by its supreme
momentum, it lunged through and onto this frozen surface, crushing the
ice beneath its weight.

The hatches were opened—or torn off, if you prefer—and waves of clean
air were admitted into every part of the Nautilus.


CHAPTER 17

From Cape Horn to the Amazon


HOW I GOT ONTO the platform I’m unable to say. Perhaps the Canadian
transferred me there. But I could breathe, I could inhale the
life-giving sea air. Next to me my two companions were getting tipsy
on the fresh oxygen particles. Poor souls who have suffered from long
starvation mustn’t pounce heedlessly on the first food given them. We,
on the other hand, didn’t have to practice such moderation: we could
suck the atoms from the air by the lungful, and it was the breeze, the
breeze itself, that poured into us this luxurious intoxication!

“Ahhh!” Conseil was putting in. “What fine oxygen! Let master have no
fears about breathing. There’s enough for everyone.”

As for Ned Land, he didn’t say a word, but his wide-open jaws would
have scared off a shark. And what powerful inhalations! The Canadian
“drew” like a furnace going full blast.

Our strength returned promptly, and when I looked around, I saw that
we were alone on the platform. No crewmen. Not even Captain
Nemo. Those strange seamen on the Nautilus were content with the
oxygen circulating inside. Not one of them had come up to enjoy the
open air.

The first words I pronounced were words of appreciation and gratitude
to my two companions. Ned and Conseil had kept me alive during the
final hours of our long death throes. But no expression of thanks
could repay them fully for such devotion.

“Good lord, professor,” Ned Land answered me, “don’t mention it! What
did we do that’s so praiseworthy? Not a thing. It was a question of
simple arithmetic. Your life is worth more than ours. So we had to
save it.”

“No, Ned,” I replied, “it isn’t worth more. Nobody could be better
than a kind and generous man like yourself!”

“All right, all right!” the Canadian repeated in embarrassment.

“And you, my gallant Conseil, you suffered a great deal.”

“Not too much, to be candid with master. I was lacking a few
throatfuls of air, but I would have gotten by. Besides, when I saw
master fainting, it left me without the slightest desire to
breathe. It took my breath away, in a manner of . . .”

Confounded by this lapse into banality, Conseil left his sentence
hanging.

“My friends,” I replied, very moved, “we’re bound to each other
forever, and I’m deeply indebted to you—”

“Which I’ll take advantage of,” the Canadian shot back.

“Eh?” Conseil put in.

“Yes,” Ned Land went on. “You can repay your debt by coming with me
when I leave this infernal Nautilus.”

“By the way,” Conseil said, “are we going in a favorable direction?”

“Yes,” I replied, “because we’re going in the direction of the sun,
and here the sun is due north.”

“Sure,” Ned Land went on, “but it remains to be seen whether we’ll
make for the Atlantic or the Pacific, in other words, whether we’ll
end up in well-traveled or deserted seas.”

I had no reply to this, and I feared that Captain Nemo wouldn’t take
us homeward but rather into that huge ocean washing the shores of both
Asia and America. In this way he would complete his underwater tour of
the world, going back to those seas where the Nautilus enjoyed the
greatest freedom. But if we returned to the Pacific, far from every
populated shore, what would happen to Ned Land’s plans?

We would soon settle this important point. The Nautilus traveled
swiftly. Soon we had cleared the Antarctic Circle plus the promontory
of Cape Horn. We were abreast of the tip of South America by March 31
at seven o’clock in the evening.

By then all our past sufferings were forgotten. The memory of that
imprisonment under the ice faded from our minds. We had thoughts only
of the future. Captain Nemo no longer appeared, neither in the lounge
nor on the platform. The positions reported each day on the world map
were put there by the chief officer, and they enabled me to determine
the Nautilus’s exact heading. Now then, that evening it became
obvious, much to my satisfaction, that we were returning north by the
Atlantic route.

I shared the results of my observations with the Canadian and Conseil.

“That’s good news,” the Canadian replied, “but where’s the Nautilus
going?”

“I’m unable to say, Ned.”

“After the South Pole, does our captain want to tackle the North Pole,
then go back to the Pacific by the notorious Northwest Passage?”

“I wouldn’t double dare him,” Conseil replied.

“Oh well,” the Canadian said, “we’ll give him the slip long before
then.”

“In any event,” Conseil added, “he’s a superman, that Captain Nemo,
and we’ll never regret having known him.”

“Especially once we’ve left him,” Ned Land shot back.

The next day, April 1, when the Nautilus rose to the surface of the
waves a few minutes before noon, we raised land to the west. It was
Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire, a name given it by early
navigators after they saw numerous curls of smoke rising from the
natives’ huts. This Land of Fire forms a huge cluster of islands over
thirty leagues long and eighty leagues wide, extending between
latitude 53 degrees and 56 degrees south, and between longitude 67
degrees 50’ and 77 degrees 15’ west. Its coastline looked flat, but
high mountains rose in the distance. I even thought I glimpsed
Mt. Sarmiento, whose elevation is 2,070 meters above sea level: a
pyramid-shaped block of shale with a very sharp summit, which,
depending on whether it’s clear or veiled in vapor, “predicts fair
weather or foul,” as Ned Land told me.

“A first-class barometer, my friend.”

“Yes, sir, a natural barometer that didn’t let me down when I
navigated the narrows of the Strait of Magellan.”

Just then its peak appeared before us, standing out distinctly against
the background of the skies. This forecast fair weather. And so it
proved.

Going back under the waters, the Nautilus drew near the coast,
cruising along it for only a few miles. Through the lounge windows I
could see long creepers and gigantic fucus plants, bulb-bearing
seaweed of which the open sea at the pole had revealed a few
specimens; with their smooth, viscous filaments, they measured as much
as 300 meters long; genuine cables more than an inch thick and very
tough, they’re often used as mooring lines for ships. Another weed,
known by the name velp and boasting four-foot leaves, was crammed into
the coral concretions and carpeted the ocean floor. It served as both
nest and nourishment for myriads of crustaceans and mollusks, for
crabs and cuttlefish. Here seals and otters could indulge in a
sumptuous meal, mixing meat from fish with vegetables from the sea,
like the English with their Irish stews.

The Nautilus passed over these lush, luxuriant depths with tremendous
speed. Near evening it approached the Falkland Islands, whose rugged
summits I recognized the next day. The sea was of moderate depth. So
not without good reason, I assumed that these two islands, plus the
many islets surrounding them, used to be part of the Magellan
coastline. The Falkland Islands were probably discovered by the famous
navigator John Davis, who gave them the name Davis Southern
Islands. Later Sir Richard Hawkins called them the Maidenland, after
the Blessed Virgin. Subsequently, at the beginning of the 18th
century, they were named the Malouines by fishermen from Saint-Malo in
Brittany, then finally dubbed the Falklands by the English, to whom
they belong today.

In these waterways our nets brought up fine samples of algae, in
particular certain fucus plants whose roots were laden with the
world’s best mussels. Geese and duck alighted by the dozens on the
platform and soon took their places in the ship’s pantry. As for fish,
I specifically observed some bony fish belonging to the goby genus,
especially some gudgeon two decimeters long, sprinkled with whitish
and yellow spots.

I likewise marveled at the numerous medusas, including the most
beautiful of their breed, the compass jellyfish, unique to the
Falkland seas. Some of these jellyfish were shaped like very smooth,
semispheric parasols with russet stripes and fringes of twelve neat
festoons. Others looked like upside-down baskets from which wide
leaves and long red twigs were gracefully trailing. They swam with
quiverings of their four leaflike arms, letting the opulent tresses of
their tentacles dangle in the drift. I wanted to preserve a few
specimens of these delicate zoophytes, but they were merely clouds,
shadows, illusions, melting and evaporating outside their native
element.

When the last tips of the Falkland Islands had disappeared below the
horizon, the Nautilus submerged to a depth between twenty and
twenty-five meters and went along the South American coast. Captain
Nemo didn’t put in an appearance.

We didn’t leave these Patagonian waterways until April 3, sometimes
cruising under the ocean, sometimes on its surface. The Nautilus
passed the wide estuary formed by the mouth of the Rio de la Plata,
and on April 4 we lay abreast of Uruguay, albeit fifty miles
out. Keeping to its northerly heading, it followed the long windings
of South America. By then we had fared 16,000 leagues since coming on
board in the seas of Japan.

Near eleven o’clock in the morning, we cut the Tropic of Capricorn on
the 37th meridian, passing well out from Cape Frio. Much to Ned Land’s
displeasure, Captain Nemo had no liking for the neighborhood of
Brazil’s populous shores, because he shot by with dizzying speed. Not
even the swiftest fish or birds could keep up with us, and the natural
curiosities in these seas completely eluded our observation.

This speed was maintained for several days, and on the evening of
April 9, we raised South America’s easternmost tip, Cape São
Roque. But then the Nautilus veered away again and went looking for
the lowest depths of an underwater valley gouged between this cape and
Sierra Leone on the coast of Africa. Abreast of the West Indies, this
valley forks into two arms, and to the north it ends in an enormous
depression 9,000 meters deep. From this locality to the Lesser
Antilles, the ocean’s geologic profile features a steeply cut cliff
six kilometers high, and abreast of the Cape Verde Islands, there’s
another wall just as imposing; together these two barricades confine
the whole submerged continent of Atlantis. The floor of this immense
valley is made picturesque by mountains that furnish these underwater
depths with scenic views. This description is based mostly on certain
hand-drawn charts kept in the Nautilus’s library, charts obviously
rendered by Captain Nemo himself from his own personal observations.

For two days we visited these deep and deserted waters by means of our
slanting fins. The Nautilus would do long, diagonal dives that took us
to every level. But on April 11 it rose suddenly, and the shore
reappeared at the mouth of the Amazon River, a huge estuary whose
outflow is so considerable, it desalts the sea over an area of several
leagues.

We cut the Equator. Twenty miles to the west lay Guiana, French
territory where we could easily have taken refuge. But the wind was
blowing a strong gust, and the furious billows would not allow us to
face them in a mere skiff. No doubt Ned Land understood this because
he said nothing to me. For my part, I made no allusion to his escape
plans because I didn’t want to push him into an attempt that was
certain to misfire.

I was readily compensated for this delay by fascinating
research. During those two days of April 11-12, the Nautilus didn’t
leave the surface of the sea, and its trawl brought up a simply
miraculous catch of zoophytes, fish, and reptiles.

Some zoophytes were dredged up by the chain of our trawl. Most were
lovely sea anemone belonging to the family Actinidia, including among
other species, the Phyctalis protexta, native to this part of the
ocean: a small cylindrical trunk adorned with vertical lines, mottled
with red spots, and crowned by a wondrous blossoming of tentacles. As
for mollusks, they consisted of exhibits I had already observed:
turret snails, olive shells of the “tent olive” species with neatly
intersecting lines and russet spots standing out sharply against a
flesh-colored background, fanciful spider conchs that looked like
petrified scorpions, transparent glass snails, argonauts, some highly
edible cuttlefish, and certain species of squid that the naturalists
of antiquity classified with the flying fish, which are used chiefly
as bait for catching cod.

As for the fish in these waterways, I noted various species that I
hadn’t yet had the opportunity to study. Among cartilaginous fish:
some brook lamprey, a type of eel fifteen inches long, head greenish,
fins violet, back bluish gray, belly a silvery brown strewn with
bright spots, iris of the eye encircled in gold, unusual animals that
the Amazon’s current must have swept out to sea because their natural
habitat is fresh water; sting rays, the snout pointed, the tail long,
slender, and armed with an extensive jagged sting; small one-meter
sharks with gray and whitish hides, their teeth arranged in several
backward-curving rows, fish commonly known by the name carpet shark;
batfish, a sort of reddish isosceles triangle half a meter long, whose
pectoral fins are attached by fleshy extensions that make these fish
look like bats, although an appendage made of horn, located near the
nostrils, earns them the nickname of sea unicorns; lastly, a couple
species of triggerfish, the cucuyo whose stippled flanks glitter with
a sparkling gold color, and the bright purple leatherjacket whose hues
glisten like a pigeon’s throat.

I’ll finish up this catalog, a little dry but quite accurate, with the
series of bony fish I observed: eels belonging to the genus
Apteronotus whose snow-white snout is very blunt, the body painted a
handsome black and armed with a very long, slender, fleshy whip; long
sardines from the genus Odontognathus, like three-decimeter pike,
shining with a bright silver glow; Guaranian mackerel furnished with
two anal fins; black-tinted rudderfish that you catch by using
torches, fish measuring two meters and boasting white, firm, plump
meat that, when fresh, tastes like eel, when dried, like smoked
salmon; semired wrasse sporting scales only at the bases of their
dorsal and anal fins; grunts on which gold and silver mingle their
luster with that of ruby and topaz; yellow-tailed gilthead whose flesh
is extremely dainty and whose phosphorescent properties give them away
in the midst of the waters; porgies tinted orange, with slender
tongues; croakers with gold caudal fins; black surgeonfish; four-eyed
fish from Surinam, etc.

This “et cetera” won’t keep me from mentioning one more fish that
Conseil, with good reason, will long remember.

One of our nets had hauled up a type of very flat ray that weighed
some twenty kilograms; with its tail cut off, it would have formed a
perfect disk. It was white underneath and reddish on top, with big
round spots of deep blue encircled in black, its hide quite smooth and
ending in a double-lobed fin. Laid out on the platform, it kept
struggling with convulsive movements, trying to turn over, making such
efforts that its final lunge was about to flip it into the sea. But
Conseil, being very possessive of his fish, rushed at it, and before I
could stop him, he seized it with both hands.

Instantly there he was, thrown on his back, legs in the air, his body
half paralyzed, and yelling:

“Oh, sir, sir! Will you help me!”

For once in his life, the poor lad didn’t address me “in the third
person.”

The Canadian and I sat him up; we massaged his contracted arms, and
when he regained his five senses, that eternal classifier mumbled in a
broken voice:

“Class of cartilaginous fish, order Chondropterygia with fixed gills,
suborder Selacia, family Rajiiforma, genus electric ray.”

“Yes, my friend,” I answered, “it was an electric ray that put you in
this deplorable state.”

“Oh, master can trust me on this,” Conseil shot back. “I’ll be
revenged on that animal!”

“How?”

“I’ll eat it.”

Which he did that same evening, but strictly as retaliation. Because,
frankly, it tasted like leather.

Poor Conseil had assaulted an electric ray of the most dangerous
species, the cumana. Living in a conducting medium such as water, this
bizarre animal can electrocute other fish from several meters away, so
great is the power of its electric organ, an organ whose two chief
surfaces measure at least twenty-seven square feet.

During the course of the next day, April 12, the Nautilus drew near
the coast of Dutch Guiana, by the mouth of the Maroni River. There
several groups of sea cows were living in family units. These were
manatees, which belong to the order Sirenia, like the dugong and
Steller’s sea cow. Harmless and unaggressive, these fine animals were
six to seven meters long and must have weighed at least 4,000
kilograms each. I told Ned Land and Conseil that farseeing nature had
given these mammals a major role to play. In essence, manatees, like
seals, are designed to graze the underwater prairies, destroying the
clusters of weeds that obstruct the mouths of tropical rivers.

“And do you know,” I added, “what happened since man has almost
completely wiped out these beneficial races? Rotting weeds have
poisoned the air, and this poisoned air causes the yellow fever that
devastates these wonderful countries. This toxic vegetation has
increased beneath the seas of the Torrid Zone, so the disease spreads
unchecked from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to Florida!”

And if Professor Toussenel is correct, this plague is nothing compared
to the scourge that will strike our descendants once the seas are
depopulated of whales and seals. By then, crowded with jellyfish,
squid, and other devilfish, the oceans will have become huge centers
of infection, because their waves will no longer possess “these huge
stomachs that God has entrusted with scouring the surface of the sea.”

Meanwhile, without scorning these theories, the Nautilus’s crew
captured half a dozen manatees. In essence, it was an issue of
stocking the larder with excellent red meat, even better than beef or
veal. Their hunting was not a fascinating sport. The manatees let
themselves be struck down without offering any resistance. Several
thousand kilos of meat were hauled below, to be dried and stored.

The same day an odd fishing practice further increased the Nautilus’s
stores, so full of game were these seas. Our trawl brought up in its
meshes a number of fish whose heads were topped by little oval slabs
with fleshy edges. These were suckerfish from the third family of the
subbrachian Malacopterygia. These flat disks on their heads consist of
crosswise plates of movable cartilage, between which the animals can
create a vacuum, enabling them to stick to objects like suction cups.

The remoras I had observed in the Mediterranean were related to this
species. But the creature at issue here was an Echeneis osteochara,
unique to this sea. Right after catching them, our seamen dropped them
in buckets of water.

Its fishing finished, the Nautilus drew nearer to the coast. In this
locality a number of sea turtles were sleeping on the surface of the
waves. It would have been difficult to capture these valuable
reptiles, because they wake up at the slightest sound, and their solid
carapaces are harpoon-proof. But our suckerfish would effect their
capture with extraordinary certainty and precision. In truth, this
animal is a living fishhook, promising wealth and happiness to the
greenest fisherman in the business.

The Nautilus’s men attached to each fish’s tail a ring that was big
enough not to hamper its movements, and to this ring a long rope whose
other end was moored on board.

Thrown into the sea, the suckerfish immediately began to play their
roles, going and fastening themselves onto the breastplates of the
turtles. Their tenacity was so great, they would rip apart rather than
let go. They were hauled in, still sticking to the turtles that came
aboard with them.

In this way we caught several loggerheads, reptiles a meter wide and
weighing 200 kilos. They’re extremely valuable because of their
carapaces, which are covered with big slabs of horn, thin, brown,
transparent, with white and yellow markings. Besides, they were
excellent from an edible viewpoint, with an exquisite flavor
comparable to the green turtle.

This fishing ended our stay in the waterways of the Amazon, and that
evening the Nautilus took to the high seas once more.


CHAPTER 18

The Devilfish


FOR SOME DAYS the Nautilus kept veering away from the American
coast. It obviously didn’t want to frequent the waves of the Gulf of
Mexico or the Caribbean Sea. Yet there was no shortage of water under
its keel, since the average depth of these seas is 1,800 meters; but
these waterways, strewn with islands and plowed by steamers, probably
didn’t agree with Captain Nemo.

On April 16 we raised Martinique and Guadalupe from a distance of
about thirty miles. For one instant I could see their lofty peaks.

The Canadian was quite disheartened, having counted on putting his
plans into execution in the gulf, either by reaching shore or by
pulling alongside one of the many boats plying a coastal trade from
one island to another. An escape attempt would have been quite
feasible, assuming Ned Land managed to seize the skiff without the
captain’s knowledge. But in midocean it was unthinkable.

The Canadian, Conseil, and I had a pretty long conversation on this
subject. For six months we had been prisoners aboard the Nautilus. We
had fared 17,000 leagues, and as Ned Land put it, there was no end in
sight. So he made me a proposition I hadn’t anticipated. We were to
ask Captain Nemo this question straight out: did the captain mean to
keep us on board his vessel permanently?

This measure was distasteful to me. To my mind it would lead
nowhere. We could hope for nothing from the Nautilus’s commander but
could depend only on ourselves. Besides, for some time now the man had
been gloomier, more withdrawn, less sociable. He seemed to be avoiding
me. I encountered him only at rare intervals. He used to take pleasure
in explaining the underwater wonders to me; now he left me to my
research and no longer entered the lounge.

What changes had come over him? From what cause? I had no reason to
blame myself. Was our presence on board perhaps a burden to him? Even
so, I cherished no hopes that the man would set us free.

So I begged Ned to let me think about it before taking action. If this
measure proved fruitless, it could arouse the captain’s suspicions,
make our circumstances even more arduous, and jeopardize the
Canadian’s plans. I might add that I could hardly use our state of
health as an argument. Except for that grueling ordeal under the Ice
Bank at the South Pole, we had never felt better, neither Ned,
Conseil, nor I. The nutritious food, life-giving air, regular routine,
and uniform temperature kept illness at bay; and for a man who didn’t
miss his past existence on land, for a Captain Nemo who was at home
here, who went where he wished, who took paths mysterious to others if
not himself in attaining his ends, I could understand such a life. But
we ourselves hadn’t severed all ties with humanity. For my part, I
didn’t want my new and unusual research to be buried with my bones. I
had now earned the right to pen the definitive book on the sea, and
sooner or later I wanted that book to see the light of day.

There once more, through the panels opening into these Caribbean
waters ten meters below the surface of the waves, I found so many
fascinating exhibits to describe in my daily notes! Among other
zoophytes there were Portuguese men-of-war known by the name Physalia
pelagica, like big, oblong bladders with a pearly sheen, spreading
their membranes to the wind, letting their blue tentacles drift like
silken threads; to the eye delightful jellyfish, to the touch actual
nettles that ooze a corrosive liquid. Among the articulates there were
annelid worms one and a half meters long, furnished with a pink
proboscis, equipped with 1,700 organs of locomotion, snaking through
the waters, and as they went, throwing off every gleam in the solar
spectrum. From the fish branch there were manta rays, enormous
cartilaginous fish ten feet long and weighing 600 pounds, their
pectoral fin triangular, their midback slightly arched, their eyes
attached to the edges of the face at the front of the head; they
floated like wreckage from a ship, sometimes fastening onto our
windows like opaque shutters. There were American triggerfish for
which nature has ground only black and white pigments, feather-shaped
gobies that were long and plump with yellow fins and jutting jaws,
sixteen-decimeter mackerel with short, sharp teeth, covered with small
scales, and related to the albacore species. Next came swarms of red
mullet corseted in gold stripes from head to tail, their shining fins
all aquiver, genuine masterpieces of jewelry, formerly sacred to the
goddess Diana, much in demand by rich Romans, and about which the old
saying goes: “He who catches them doesn’t eat them!” Finally, adorned
with emerald ribbons and dressed in velvet and silk, golden angelfish
passed before our eyes like courtiers in the paintings of Veronese;
spurred gilthead stole by with their swift thoracic fins; thread
herring fifteen inches long were wrapped in their phosphorescent
glimmers; gray mullet thrashed the sea with their big fleshy tails;
red salmon seemed to mow the waves with their slicing pectorals; and
silver moonfish, worthy of their name, rose on the horizon of the
waters like the whitish reflections of many moons.

How many other marvelous new specimens I still could have observed if,
little by little, the Nautilus hadn’t settled to the lower strata! Its
slanting fins drew it to depths of 2,000 and 3,500 meters. There
animal life was represented by nothing more than sea lilies, starfish,
delightful crinoids with bell-shaped heads like little chalices on
straight stems, top-shell snails, blood-red tooth shells, and
fissurella snails, a large species of coastal mollusk.

By April 20 we had risen to an average level of 1,500 meters. The
nearest land was the island group of the Bahamas, scattered like a
batch of cobblestones over the surface of the water. There high
underwater cliffs reared up, straight walls made of craggy chunks
arranged like big stone foundations, among which there gaped black
caves so deep our electric rays couldn’t light them to the far ends.

These rocks were hung with huge weeds, immense sea tangle, gigantic
fucus—a genuine trellis of water plants fit for a world of giants.

In discussing these colossal plants, Conseil, Ned, and I were
naturally led into mentioning the sea’s gigantic animals. The former
were obviously meant to feed the latter. However, through the windows
of our almost motionless Nautilus, I could see nothing among these
long filaments other than the chief articulates of the division
Brachyura: long-legged spider crabs, violet crabs, and sponge crabs
unique to the waters of the Caribbean.

It was about eleven o’clock when Ned Land drew my attention to a
fearsome commotion out in this huge seaweed.

“Well,” I said, “these are real devilfish caverns, and I wouldn’t be
surprised to see some of those monsters hereabouts.”

“What!” Conseil put in. “Squid, ordinary squid from the class
Cephalopoda?”

“No,” I said, “devilfish of large dimensions. But friend Land is no
doubt mistaken, because I don’t see a thing.”

“That’s regrettable,” Conseil answered. “I’d like to come face to face
with one of those devilfish I’ve heard so much about, which can drag
ships down into the depths. Those beasts go by the name of krake—”

“Fake is more like it,” the Canadian replied sarcastically.

“Krakens!” Conseil shot back, finishing his word without wincing at
his companion’s witticism.

“Nobody will ever make me believe,” Ned Land said, “that such animals
exist.”

“Why not?” Conseil replied. “We sincerely believed in master’s
narwhale.”

“We were wrong, Conseil.”

“No doubt, but there are others with no doubts who believe to this
day!”

“Probably, Conseil. But as for me, I’m bound and determined not to
accept the existence of any such monster till I’ve dissected it with
my own two hands.”

“Yet,” Conseil asked me, “doesn’t master believe in gigantic
devilfish?”

“Yikes! Who in Hades ever believed in them?” the Canadian exclaimed.

“Many people, Ned my friend,” I said.

“No fishermen. Scientists maybe!”

“Pardon me, Ned. Fishermen and scientists!”

“Why, I to whom you speak,” Conseil said with the world’s straightest
face, “I recall perfectly seeing a large boat dragged under the waves
by the arms of a cephalopod.”

“You saw that?” the Canadian asked.

“Yes, Ned.”

“With your own two eyes?”

“With my own two eyes.”

“Where, may I ask?”

“In Saint-Malo,” Conseil returned unflappably.

“In the harbor?” Ned Land said sarcastically.

“No, in a church,” Conseil replied.

“In a church!” the Canadian exclaimed.

“Yes, Ned my friend. It had a picture that portrayed the devilfish in
question.”

“Oh good!” Ned Land exclaimed with a burst of laughter. “Mr. Conseil
put one over on me!”

“Actually he’s right,” I said. “I’ve heard about that picture. But the
subject it portrays is taken from a legend, and you know how to rate
legends in matters of natural history! Besides, when it’s an issue of
monsters, the human imagination always tends to run wild. People not
only claimed these devilfish could drag ships under, but a certain
Olaus Magnus tells of a cephalopod a mile long that looked more like
an island than an animal. There’s also the story of how the Bishop of
Trondheim set up an altar one day on an immense rock. After he
finished saying mass, this rock started moving and went back into the
sea. The rock was a devilfish.”

“And that’s everything we know?” the Canadian asked.

“No,” I replied, “another bishop, Pontoppidan of Bergen, also tells of
a devilfish so large a whole cavalry regiment could maneuver on it.”

“They sure did go on, those oldtime bishops!” Ned Land said.

“Finally, the naturalists of antiquity mention some monsters with
mouths as big as a gulf, which were too huge to get through the Strait
of Gibraltar.”

“Good work, men!” the Canadian put in.

“But in all these stories, is there any truth?” Conseil asked.

“None at all, my friends, at least in those that go beyond the bounds
of credibility and fly off into fable or legend. Yet for the
imaginings of these storytellers there had to be, if not a cause, at
least an excuse. It can’t be denied that some species of squid and
other devilfish are quite large, though still smaller than
cetaceans. Aristotle put the dimensions of one squid at five cubits,
or 3.1 meters. Our fishermen frequently see specimens over 1.8 meters
long. The museums in Trieste and Montpellier have preserved some
devilfish carcasses measuring two meters. Besides, according to the
calculations of naturalists, one of these animals only six feet long
would have tentacles as long as twenty-seven. Which is enough to make
a fearsome monster.”

“Does anybody fish for ‘em nowadays?” the Canadian asked.

“If they don’t fish for them, sailors at least sight them. A friend of
mine, Captain Paul Bos of Le Havre, has often sworn to me that he
encountered one of these monsters of colossal size in the seas of the
East Indies. But the most astonishing event, which proves that these
gigantic animals undeniably exist, took place a few years ago in
1861.”

“What event was that?” Ned Land asked.

“Just this. In 1861, to the northeast of Tenerife and fairly near the
latitude where we are right now, the crew of the gunboat Alecto
spotted a monstrous squid swimming in their waters. Commander Bouguer
approached the animal and attacked it with blows from harpoons and
blasts from rifles, but without much success because bullets and
harpoons crossed its soft flesh as if it were semiliquid jelly. After
several fruitless attempts, the crew managed to slip a noose around
the mollusk’s body. This noose slid as far as the caudal fins and came
to a halt. Then they tried to haul the monster on board, but its
weight was so considerable that when they tugged on the rope, the
animal parted company with its tail; and deprived of this adornment,
it disappeared beneath the waters.”

“Finally, an actual event,” Ned Land said.

“An indisputable event, my gallant Ned. Accordingly, people have
proposed naming this devilfish Bouguer’s Squid.”

“And how long was it?” the Canadian asked.

“Didn’t it measure about six meters?” said Conseil, who was stationed
at the window and examining anew the crevices in the cliff.

“Precisely,” I replied.

“Wasn’t its head,” Conseil went on, “crowned by eight tentacles that
quivered in the water like a nest of snakes?”

“Precisely.”

“Weren’t its eyes prominently placed and considerably enlarged?”

“Yes, Conseil.”

“And wasn’t its mouth a real parrot’s beak but of fearsome size?”

“Correct, Conseil.”

“Well, with all due respect to master,” Conseil replied serenely, “if
this isn’t Bouguer’s Squid, it’s at least one of his close relatives!”

I stared at Conseil. Ned Land rushed to the window.

“What an awful animal!” he exclaimed.

I stared in my turn and couldn’t keep back a movement of
revulsion. Before my eyes there quivered a horrible monster worthy of
a place among the most farfetched teratological legends.

It was a squid of colossal dimensions, fully eight meters long. It was
traveling backward with tremendous speed in the same direction as the
Nautilus. It gazed with enormous, staring eyes that were tinted sea
green. Its eight arms (or more accurately, feet) were rooted in its
head, which has earned these animals the name cephalopod; its arms
stretched a distance twice the length of its body and were writhing
like the serpentine hair of the Furies. You could plainly see its 250
suckers, arranged over the inner sides of its tentacles and shaped
like semispheric capsules. Sometimes these suckers fastened onto the
lounge window by creating vacuums against it. The monster’s mouth—a
beak made of horn and shaped like that of a parrot—opened and closed
vertically. Its tongue, also of horn substance and armed with several
rows of sharp teeth, would flicker out from between these genuine
shears. What a freak of nature! A bird’s beak on a mollusk! Its body
was spindle-shaped and swollen in the middle, a fleshy mass that must
have weighed 20,000 to 25,000 kilograms. Its unstable color would
change with tremendous speed as the animal grew irritated, passing
successively from bluish gray to reddish brown.

What was irritating this mollusk? No doubt the presence of the
Nautilus, even more fearsome than itself, and which it couldn’t grip
with its mandibles or the suckers on its arms. And yet what monsters
these devilfish are, what vitality our Creator has given them, what
vigor in their movements, thanks to their owning a triple heart!

Sheer chance had placed us in the presence of this squid, and I didn’t
want to lose this opportunity to meticulously study such a cephalopod
specimen. I overcame the horror that its appearance inspired in me,
picked up a pencil, and began to sketch it.

“Perhaps this is the same as the Alecto’s,” Conseil said.

“Can’t be,” the Canadian replied, “because this one’s complete while
the other one lost its tail!”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow,” I said. “The arms and tails of
these animals grow back through regeneration, and in seven years the
tail on Bouguer’s Squid has surely had time to sprout again.”

“Anyhow,” Ned shot back, “if it isn’t this fellow, maybe it’s one of
those!”

Indeed, other devilfish had appeared at the starboard window. I
counted seven of them. They provided the Nautilus with an escort, and
I could hear their beaks gnashing on the sheet-iron hull. We couldn’t
have asked for a more devoted following.

I continued sketching. These monsters kept pace in our waters with
such precision, they seemed to be standing still, and I could have
traced their outlines in miniature on the window. But we were moving
at a moderate speed.

All at once the Nautilus stopped. A jolt made it tremble through its
entire framework.

“Did we strike bottom?” I asked.

“In any event we’re already clear,” the Canadian replied, “because
we’re afloat.”

The Nautilus was certainly afloat, but it was no longer in motion. The
blades of its propeller weren’t churning the waves. A minute
passed. Followed by his chief officer, Captain Nemo entered the
lounge.

I hadn’t seen him for a good while. He looked gloomy to me. Without
speaking to us, without even seeing us perhaps, he went to the panel,
stared at the devilfish, and said a few words to his chief officer.

The latter went out. Soon the panels closed. The ceiling lit up.

I went over to the captain.

“An unusual assortment of devilfish,” I told him, as carefree as a
collector in front of an aquarium.

“Correct, Mr. Naturalist,” he answered me, “and we’re going to fight
them at close quarters.”

I gaped at the captain. I thought my hearing had gone bad.

“At close quarters?” I repeated.

“Yes, sir. Our propeller is jammed. I think the horn-covered mandibles
of one of these squid are entangled in the blades. That’s why we
aren’t moving.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Rise to the surface and slaughter the vermin.”

“A difficult undertaking.”

“Correct. Our electric bullets are ineffective against such soft
flesh, where they don’t meet enough resistance to go off. But we’ll
attack the beasts with axes.”

“And harpoons, sir,” the Canadian said, “if you don’t turn down my
help.”

“I accept it, Mr. Land.”

“We’ll go with you,” I said. And we followed Captain Nemo, heading to
the central companionway.

There some ten men were standing by for the assault, armed with
boarding axes. Conseil and I picked up two more axes. Ned Land seized
a harpoon.

By then the Nautilus had returned to the surface of the
waves. Stationed on the top steps, one of the seamen undid the bolts
of the hatch. But he had scarcely unscrewed the nuts when the hatch
flew up with tremendous violence, obviously pulled open by the suckers
on a devilfish’s arm.

Instantly one of those long arms glided like a snake into the opening,
and twenty others were quivering above. With a sweep of the ax,
Captain Nemo chopped off this fearsome tentacle, which slid writhing
down the steps.

Just as we were crowding each other to reach the platform, two more
arms lashed the air, swooped on the seaman stationed in front of
Captain Nemo, and carried the fellow away with irresistible violence.

Captain Nemo gave a shout and leaped outside. We rushed after him.

What a scene! Seized by the tentacle and glued to its suckers, the
unfortunate man was swinging in the air at the mercy of this enormous
appendage. He gasped, he choked, he yelled: “Help! Help!” These words,
pronounced in French, left me deeply stunned! So I had a fellow
countryman on board, perhaps several! I’ll hear his harrowing plea the
rest of my life!

The poor fellow was done for. Who could tear him from such a powerful
grip? Even so, Captain Nemo rushed at the devilfish and with a sweep
of the ax hewed one more of its arms. His chief officer struggled
furiously with other monsters crawling up the Nautilus’s sides. The
crew battled with flailing axes. The Canadian, Conseil, and I sank our
weapons into these fleshy masses. An intense, musky odor filled the
air. It was horrible.

For an instant I thought the poor man entwined by the devilfish might
be torn loose from its powerful suction. Seven arms out of eight had
been chopped off. Brandishing its victim like a feather, one lone
tentacle was writhing in the air. But just as Captain Nemo and his
chief officer rushed at it, the animal shot off a spout of blackish
liquid, secreted by a pouch located in its abdomen. It blinded
us. When this cloud had dispersed, the squid was gone, and so was my
poor fellow countryman!

What rage then drove us against these monsters! We lost all
self-control. Ten or twelve devilfish had overrun the Nautilus’s
platform and sides. We piled helter-skelter into the thick of these
sawed-off snakes, which darted over the platform amid waves of blood
and sepia ink. It seemed as if these viscous tentacles grew back like
the many heads of Hydra. At every thrust Ned Land’s harpoon would
plunge into a squid’s sea-green eye and burst it. But my daring
companion was suddenly toppled by the tentacles of a monster he could
not avoid.

Oh, my heart nearly exploded with excitement and horror! The squid’s
fearsome beak was wide open over Ned Land. The poor man was about to
be cut in half. I ran to his rescue. But Captain Nemo got there
first. His ax disappeared between the two enormous mandibles, and the
Canadian, miraculously saved, stood and plunged his harpoon all the
way into the devilfish’s triple heart.

“Tit for tat,” Captain Nemo told the Canadian. “I owed it to myself!”

Ned bowed without answering him.

This struggle had lasted a quarter of an hour. Defeated, mutilated,
battered to death, the monsters finally yielded to us and disappeared
beneath the waves.

Red with blood, motionless by the beacon, Captain Nemo stared at the
sea that had swallowed one of his companions, and large tears streamed
from his eyes.


CHAPTER 19

The Gulf Stream


THIS DREADFUL SCENE on April 20 none of us will ever be able to
forget. I wrote it up in a state of intense excitement. Later I
reviewed my narrative. I read it to Conseil and the Canadian. They
found it accurate in detail but deficient in impact. To convey such
sights, it would take the pen of our most famous poet, Victor Hugo,
author of The Toilers of the Sea.

As I said, Captain Nemo wept while staring at the waves. His grief was
immense. This was the second companion he had lost since we had come
aboard. And what a way to die! Smashed, strangled, crushed by the
fearsome arms of a devilfish, ground between its iron mandibles, this
friend would never rest with his companions in the placid waters of
their coral cemetery!

As for me, what had harrowed my heart in the thick of this struggle
was the despairing yell given by this unfortunate man. Forgetting his
regulation language, this poor Frenchman had reverted to speaking his
own mother tongue to fling out one supreme plea! Among the Nautilus’s
crew, allied body and soul with Captain Nemo and likewise fleeing from
human contact, I had found a fellow countryman! Was he the only
representative of France in this mysterious alliance, obviously made
up of individuals from different nationalities? This was just one more
of those insoluble problems that kept welling up in my mind!

Captain Nemo reentered his stateroom, and I saw no more of him for a
good while. But how sad, despairing, and irresolute he must have felt,
to judge from this ship whose soul he was, which reflected his every
mood! The Nautilus no longer kept to a fixed heading. It drifted back
and forth, riding with the waves like a corpse. Its propeller had been
disentangled but was barely put to use. It was navigating at
random. It couldn’t tear itself away from the setting of this last
struggle, from this sea that had devoured one of its own!

Ten days went by in this way. It was only on May 1 that the Nautilus
openly resumed its northbound course, after raising the Bahamas at the
mouth of Old Bahama Channel. We then went with the current of the
sea’s greatest river, which has its own banks, fish, and
temperature. I mean the Gulf Stream.

It is indeed a river that runs independently through the middle of the
Atlantic, its waters never mixing with the ocean’s waters. It’s a
salty river, saltier than the sea surrounding it. Its average depth is
3,000 feet, its average width sixty miles. In certain localities its
current moves at a speed of four kilometers per hour. The unchanging
volume of its waters is greater than that of all the world’s rivers
combined.

As discovered by Commander Maury, the true source of the Gulf Stream,
its starting point, if you prefer, is located in the Bay of
Biscay. There its waters, still weak in temperature and color, begin
to form. It goes down south, skirts equatorial Africa, warms its waves
in the rays of the Torrid Zone, crosses the Atlantic, reaches Cape São
Roque on the coast of Brazil, and forks into two branches, one going
to the Caribbean Sea for further saturation with heat particles. Then,
entrusted with restoring the balance between hot and cold temperatures
and with mixing tropical and northern waters, the Gulf Stream begins
to play its stabilizing role. Attaining a white heat in the Gulf of
Mexico, it heads north up the American coast, advances as far as
Newfoundland, swerves away under the thrust of a cold current from the
Davis Strait, and resumes its ocean course by going along a great
circle of the earth on a rhumb line; it then divides into two arms
near the 43rd parallel; one, helped by the northeast trade winds,
returns to the Bay of Biscay and the Azores; the other washes the
shores of Ireland and Norway with lukewarm water, goes beyond
Spitzbergen, where its temperature falls to 4 degrees centigrade, and
fashions the open sea at the pole.

It was on this oceanic river that the Nautilus was then
navigating. Leaving Old Bahama Channel, which is fourteen leagues wide
by 350 meters deep, the Gulf Stream moves at the rate of eight
kilometers per hour. Its speed steadily decreases as it advances
northward, and we must pray that this steadiness continues, because,
as experts agree, if its speed and direction were to change, the
climates of Europe would undergo disturbances whose consequences are
incalculable.

Near noon I was on the platform with Conseil. I shared with him the
relevant details on the Gulf Stream. When my explanation was over, I
invited him to dip his hands into its current.

Conseil did so, and he was quite astonished to experience no sensation
of either hot or cold.

“That comes,” I told him, “from the water temperature of the Gulf
Stream, which, as it leaves the Gulf of Mexico, is barely different
from your blood temperature. This Gulf Stream is a huge heat generator
that enables the coasts of Europe to be decked in eternal
greenery. And if Commander Maury is correct, were one to harness the
full warmth of this current, it would supply enough heat to keep
molten a river of iron solder as big as the Amazon or the Missouri.”

Just then the Gulf Stream’s speed was 2.25 meters per second. So
distinct is its current from the surrounding sea, its confined waters
stand out against the ocean and operate on a different level from the
colder waters. Murky as well, and very rich in saline material, their
pure indigo contrasts with the green waves surrounding them. Moreover,
their line of demarcation is so clear that abreast of the Carolinas,
the Nautilus’s spur cut the waves of the Gulf Stream while its
propeller was still churning those belonging to the ocean.

This current swept along with it a whole host of moving
creatures. Argonauts, so common in the Mediterranean, voyaged here in
schools of large numbers. Among cartilaginous fish, the most
remarkable were rays whose ultra slender tails made up nearly a third
of the body, which was shaped like a huge diamond twenty-five feet
long; then little one-meter sharks, the head large, the snout short
and rounded, the teeth sharp and arranged in several rows, the body
seemingly covered with scales.

Among bony fish, I noted grizzled wrasse unique to these seas,
deep-water gilthead whose iris has a fiery gleam, one-meter croakers
whose large mouths bristle with small teeth and which let out thin
cries, black rudderfish like those I’ve already discussed, blue
dorados accented with gold and silver, rainbow-hued parrotfish that
can rival the loveliest tropical birds in coloring, banded blennies
with triangular heads, bluish flounder without scales, toadfish
covered with a crosswise yellow band in the shape of a Greek t, swarms
of little freckled gobies stippled with brown spots, lungfish with
silver heads and yellow tails, various specimens of salmon, mullet
with slim figures and a softly glowing radiance that Lacépède
dedicated to the memory of his wife, and finally the American cavalla,
a handsome fish decorated by every honorary order, bedizened with
their every ribbon, frequenting the shores of this great nation where
ribbons and orders are held in such low esteem.

I might add that during the night, the Gulf Stream’s phosphorescent
waters rivaled the electric glow of our beacon, especially in the
stormy weather that frequently threatened us.

On May 8, while abreast of North Carolina, we were across from Cape
Hatteras once more. There the Gulf Stream is seventy-five miles wide
and 210 meters deep. The Nautilus continued to wander at
random. Seemingly, all supervision had been jettisoned. Under these
conditions I admit that we could easily have gotten away. In fact, the
populous shores offered ready refuge everywhere. The sea was plowed
continuously by the many steamers providing service between the Gulf
of Mexico and New York or Boston, and it was crossed night and day by
little schooners engaged in coastal trade over various points on the
American shore. We could hope to be picked up. So it was a promising
opportunity, despite the thirty miles that separated the Nautilus from
these Union coasts.

But one distressing circumstance totally thwarted the Canadian’s
plans. The weather was thoroughly foul. We were approaching waterways
where storms are commonplace, the very homeland of tornadoes and
cyclones specifically engendered by the Gulf Stream’s current. To face
a frequently raging sea in a frail skiff was a race to certain
disaster. Ned Land conceded this himself. So he champed at the bit, in
the grip of an intense homesickness that could be cured only by our
escape.

“Sir,” he told me that day, “it’s got to stop. I want to get to the
bottom of this. Your Nemo’s veering away from shore and heading up
north. But believe you me, I had my fill at the South Pole and I’m not
going with him to the North Pole.”

“What can we do, Ned, since it isn’t feasible to escape right now?”

“I keep coming back to my idea. We’ve got to talk to the captain. When
we were in your own country’s seas, you didn’t say a word. Now that
we’re in mine, I intend to speak up. Before a few days are out, I
figure the Nautilus will lie abreast of Nova Scotia, and from there to
Newfoundland is the mouth of a large gulf, and the St. Lawrence
empties into that gulf, and the St. Lawrence is my own river, the
river running by Quebec, my hometown—and when I think about all this,
my gorge rises and my hair stands on end! Honestly, sir, I’d rather
jump overboard! I can’t stay here any longer! I’m suffocating!”

The Canadian was obviously at the end of his patience. His vigorous
nature couldn’t adapt to this protracted imprisonment. His facial
appearance was changing by the day. His moods grew gloomier and
gloomier. I had a sense of what he was suffering because I also was
gripped by homesickness. Nearly seven months had gone by without our
having any news from shore. Moreover, Captain Nemo’s reclusiveness,
his changed disposition, and especially his total silence since the
battle with the devilfish all made me see things in a different
light. I no longer felt the enthusiasm of our first days on board. You
needed to be Flemish like Conseil to accept these circumstances,
living in a habitat designed for cetaceans and other denizens of the
deep. Truly, if that gallant lad had owned gills instead of lungs, I
think he would have made an outstanding fish!

“Well, sir?” Ned Land went on, seeing that I hadn’t replied.

“Well, Ned, you want me to ask Captain Nemo what he intends to do with
us?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even though he has already made that clear?”

“Yes. I want it settled once and for all. Speak just for me, strictly
on my behalf, if you want.”

“But I rarely encounter him. He positively avoids me.”

“All the more reason you should go look him up.”

“I’ll confer with him, Ned.”

“When?” the Canadian asked insistently.

“When I encounter him.”

“Professor Aronnax, would you like me to go find him myself?”

“No, let me do it. Tomorrow—”

“Today,” Ned Land said.

“So be it. I’ll see him today,” I answered the Canadian, who, if he
took action himself, would certainly have ruined everything.

I was left to myself. His request granted, I decided to dispose of it
immediately. I like things over and done with.

I reentered my stateroom. From there I could hear movements inside
Captain Nemo’s quarters. I couldn’t pass up this chance for an
encounter. I knocked on his door. I received no reply. I knocked
again, then tried the knob. The door opened.

I entered. The captain was there. He was bending over his worktable
and hadn’t heard me. Determined not to leave without questioning him,
I drew closer. He looked up sharply, with a frowning brow, and said in
a pretty stern tone:

“Oh, it’s you! What do you want?”

“To speak with you, captain.”

“But I’m busy, sir, I’m at work. I give you the freedom to enjoy your
privacy, can’t I have the same for myself?”

This reception was less than encouraging. But I was determined to give
as good as I got.

“Sir,” I said coolly, “I need to speak with you on a matter that
simply can’t wait.”

“Whatever could that be, sir?” he replied sarcastically. “Have you
made some discovery that has escaped me? Has the sea yielded up some
novel secret to you?”

We were miles apart. But before I could reply, he showed me a
manuscript open on the table and told me in a more serious tone:

“Here, Professor Aronnax, is a manuscript written in several
languages. It contains a summary of my research under the sea, and God
willing, it won’t perish with me. Signed with my name, complete with
my life story, this manuscript will be enclosed in a small, unsinkable
contrivance. The last surviving man on the Nautilus will throw this
contrivance into the sea, and it will go wherever the waves carry it.”

The man’s name! His life story written by himself! So the secret of
his existence might someday be unveiled? But just then I saw this
announcement only as a lead-in to my topic.

“Captain,” I replied, “I’m all praise for this idea you’re putting
into effect. The fruits of your research must not be lost. But the
methods you’re using strike me as primitive. Who knows where the winds
will take that contrivance, into whose hands it may fall? Can’t you
find something better? Can’t you or one of your men—”

“Never, sir,” the captain said, swiftly interrupting me.

“But my companions and I would be willing to safeguard this
manuscript, and if you give us back our freedom—”

“Your freedom!” Captain Nemo put in, standing up.

“Yes, sir, and that’s the subject on which I wanted to confer with
you. For seven months we’ve been aboard your vessel, and I ask you
today, in the name of my companions as well as myself, if you intend
to keep us here forever.”

“Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo said, “I’ll answer you today just as
I did seven months ago: whoever boards the Nautilus must never leave
it.”

“What you’re inflicting on us is outright slavery!”

“Call it anything you like.”

“But every slave has the right to recover his freedom! By any
worthwhile, available means!”

“Who has denied you that right?” Captain Nemo replied. “Did I ever try
to bind you with your word of honor?”

The captain stared at me, crossing his arms.

“Sir,” I told him, “to take up this subject a second time would be
distasteful to both of us. So let’s finish what we’ve started. I
repeat: it isn’t just for myself that I raise this issue. To me,
research is a relief, a potent diversion, an enticement, a passion
that can make me forget everything else. Like you, I’m a man neglected
and unknown, living in the faint hope that someday I can pass on to
future generations the fruits of my labors—figuratively speaking, by
means of some contrivance left to the luck of winds and waves. In
short, I can admire you and comfortably go with you while playing a
role I only partly understand; but I still catch glimpses of other
aspects of your life that are surrounded by involvements and secrets
that, alone on board, my companions and I can’t share. And even when
our hearts could beat with yours, moved by some of your griefs or
stirred by your deeds of courage and genius, we’ve had to stifle even
the slightest token of that sympathy that arises at the sight of
something fine and good, whether it comes from friend or enemy. All
right then! It’s this feeling of being alien to your deepest concerns
that makes our situation unacceptable, impossible, even impossible for
me but especially for Ned Land. Every man, by virtue of his very
humanity, deserves fair treatment. Have you considered how a love of
freedom and hatred of slavery could lead to plans of vengeance in a
temperament like the Canadian’s, what he might think, attempt,
endeavor . . . ?”

I fell silent. Captain Nemo stood up.

“Ned Land can think, attempt, or endeavor anything he wants, what
difference is it to me? I didn’t go looking for him! I don’t keep him
on board for my pleasure! As for you, Professor Aronnax, you’re a man
able to understand anything, even silence. I have nothing more to say
to you. Let this first time you’ve come to discuss this subject also
be the last, because a second time I won’t even listen.”

I withdrew. From that day forward our position was very strained. I
reported this conversation to my two companions.

“Now we know,” Ned said, “that we can’t expect a thing from this
man. The Nautilus is nearing Long Island. We’ll escape, no matter what
the weather.”

But the skies became more and more threatening. There were conspicuous
signs of a hurricane on the way. The atmosphere was turning white and
milky. Slender sheaves of cirrus clouds were followed on the horizon
by layers of nimbocumulus. Other low clouds fled swiftly. The sea grew
towering, inflated by long swells. Every bird had disappeared except a
few petrels, friends of the storms. The barometer fell significantly,
indicating a tremendous tension in the surrounding haze. The mixture
in our stormglass decomposed under the influence of the electricity
charging the air. A struggle of the elements was approaching.

The storm burst during the daytime of May 13, just as the Nautilus was
cruising abreast of Long Island, a few miles from the narrows to Upper
New York Bay. I’m able to describe this struggle of the elements
because Captain Nemo didn’t flee into the ocean depths; instead, from
some inexplicable whim, he decided to brave it out on the surface.

The wind was blowing from the southwest, initially a stiff breeze, in
other words, with a speed of fifteen meters per second, which built to
twenty-five meters near three o’clock in the afternoon. This is the
figure for major storms.

Unshaken by these squalls, Captain Nemo stationed himself on the
platform. He was lashed around the waist to withstand the monstrous
breakers foaming over the deck. I hoisted and attached myself to the
same place, dividing my wonderment between the storm and this
incomparable man who faced it head-on.

The raging sea was swept with huge tattered clouds drenched by the
waves. I saw no more of the small intervening billows that form in the
troughs of the big crests. Just long, soot-colored undulations with
crests so compact they didn’t foam. They kept growing taller. They
were spurring each other on. The Nautilus, sometimes lying on its
side, sometimes standing on end like a mast, rolled and pitched
frightfully.

Near five o’clock a torrential rain fell, but it lulled neither wind
nor sea. The hurricane was unleashed at a speed of forty-five meters
per second, hence almost forty leagues per hour. Under these
conditions houses topple, roof tiles puncture doors, iron railings
snap in two, and twenty-four-pounder cannons relocate. And yet in the
midst of this turmoil, the Nautilus lived up to that saying of an
expert engineer: “A well-constructed hull can defy any sea!” This
submersible was no resisting rock that waves could demolish; it was a
steel spindle, obediently in motion, without rigging or masting, and
able to brave their fury with impunity.

Meanwhile I was carefully examining these unleashed breakers. They
measured up to fifteen meters in height over a length of 150 to 175
meters, and the speed of their propagation (half that of the wind) was
fifteen meters per second. Their volume and power increased with the
depth of the waters. I then understood the role played by these waves,
which trap air in their flanks and release it in the depths of the sea
where its oxygen brings life. Their utmost pressure—it has been
calculated—can build to 3,000 kilograms on every square foot of
surface they strike. It was such waves in the Hebrides that
repositioned a stone block weighing 84,000 pounds. It was their
relatives in the tidal wave on December 23, 1854, that toppled part of
the Japanese city of Tokyo, then went that same day at 700 kilometers
per hour to break on the beaches of America.

After nightfall the storm grew in intensity. As in the 1860 cyclone on
RΘunion Island, the barometer fell to 710 millimeters. At the close of
day, I saw a big ship passing on the horizon, struggling painfully. It
lay to at half steam in an effort to hold steady on the waves. It must
have been a steamer on one of those lines out of New York to Liverpool
or Le Havre. It soon vanished into the shadows.

At ten o’clock in the evening, the skies caught on fire. The air was
streaked with violent flashes of lightning. I couldn’t stand this
brightness, but Captain Nemo stared straight at it, as if to inhale
the spirit of the storm. A dreadful noise filled the air, a
complicated noise made up of the roar of crashing breakers, the howl
of the wind, claps of thunder. The wind shifted to every point of the
horizon, and the cyclone left the east to return there after passing
through north, west, and south, moving in the opposite direction of
revolving storms in the southern hemisphere.

Oh, that Gulf Stream! It truly lives up to its nickname, the Lord of
Storms! All by itself it creates these fearsome cyclones through the
difference in temperature between its currents and the superimposed
layers of air.

The rain was followed by a downpour of fire. Droplets of water changed
into exploding tufts. You would have thought Captain Nemo was courting
a death worthy of himself, seeking to be struck by lightning. In one
hideous pitching movement, the Nautilus reared its steel spur into the
air like a lightning rod, and I saw long sparks shoot down it.

Shattered, at the end of my strength, I slid flat on my belly to the
hatch. I opened it and went below to the lounge. By then the storm had
reached its maximum intensity. It was impossible to stand upright
inside the Nautilus.

Captain Nemo reentered near midnight. I could hear the ballast tanks
filling little by little, and the Nautilus sank gently beneath the
surface of the waves.

Through the lounge’s open windows, I saw large, frightened fish
passing like phantoms in the fiery waters. Some were struck by
lightning right before my eyes!

The Nautilus kept descending. I thought it would find calm again at
fifteen meters down. No. The upper strata were too violently
agitated. It needed to sink to fifty meters, searching for a resting
place in the bowels of the sea.

But once there, what tranquility we found, what silence, what peace
all around us! Who would have known that a dreadful hurricane was then
unleashed on the surface of this ocean?


CHAPTER 20

In Latitude 47° 24’ and Longitude 17° 28’


IN THE AFTERMATH of this storm, we were thrown back to the east. Away
went any hope of escaping to the landing places of New York or the
St. Lawrence. In despair, poor Ned went into seclusion like Captain
Nemo. Conseil and I no longer left each other.

As I said, the Nautilus veered to the east. To be more accurate, I
should have said to the northeast. Sometimes on the surface of the
waves, sometimes beneath them, the ship wandered for days amid these
mists so feared by navigators. These are caused chiefly by melting
ice, which keeps the air extremely damp. How many ships have perished
in these waterways as they tried to get directions from the hazy
lights on the coast! How many casualties have been caused by these
opaque mists! How many collisions have occurred with these reefs,
where the breaking surf is covered by the noise of the wind! How many
vessels have rammed each other, despite their running lights, despite
the warnings given by their bosun’s pipes and alarm bells!

So the floor of this sea had the appearance of a battlefield where
every ship defeated by the ocean still lay, some already old and
encrusted, others newer and reflecting our beacon light on their
ironwork and copper undersides. Among these vessels, how many went
down with all hands, with their crews and hosts of immigrants, at
these trouble spots so prominent in the statistics: Cape Race,
St. Paul Island, the Strait of Belle Isle, the St. Lawrence estuary!
And in only a few years, how many victims have been furnished to the
obituary notices by the Royal Mail, Inman, and Montreal lines; by
vessels named the Solway, the Isis, the Paramatta, the Hungarian, the
Canadian, the Anglo-Saxon, the Humboldt, and the United States, all
run aground; by the Arctic and the Lyonnais, sunk in collisions; by
the President, the Pacific, and the City of Glasgow, lost for reasons
unknown; in the midst of their gloomy rubble, the Nautilus navigated
as if passing the dead in review!

By May 15 we were off the southern tip of the Grand Banks of
Newfoundland. These banks are the result of marine sedimentation, an
extensive accumulation of organic waste brought either from the
equator by the Gulf Stream’s current, or from the North Pole by the
countercurrent of cold water that skirts the American coast. Here,
too, erratically drifting chunks collect from the ice breakup. Here a
huge boneyard forms from fish, mollusks, and zoophytes dying over it
by the billions.

The sea is of no great depth at the Grand Banks. A few hundred fathoms
at best. But to the south there is a deep, suddenly occurring
depression, a 3,000-meter pit. Here the Gulf Stream widens. Its waters
come to full bloom. It loses its speed and temperature, but it turns
into a sea.

Among the fish that the Nautilus startled on its way, I’ll mention a
one-meter lumpfish, blackish on top with orange on the belly and rare
among its brethren in that it practices monogamy, a good-sized
eelpout, a type of emerald moray whose flavor is excellent, wolffish
with big eyes in a head somewhat resembling a canine’s, viviparous
blennies whose eggs hatch inside their bodies like those of snakes,
bloated gobio (or black gudgeon) measuring two decimeters, grenadiers
with long tails and gleaming with a silvery glow, speedy fish
venturing far from their High Arctic seas.

Our nets also hauled in a bold, daring, vigorous, and muscular fish
armed with prickles on its head and stings on its fins, a real
scorpion measuring two to three meters, the ruthless enemy of cod,
blennies, and salmon; it was the bullhead of the northerly seas, a
fish with red fins and a brown body covered with nodules. The
Nautilus’s fishermen had some trouble getting a grip on this animal,
which, thanks to the formation of its gill covers, can protect its
respiratory organs from any parching contact with the air and can live
out of water for a good while.

And I’ll mention—for the record—some little banded blennies that
follow ships into the northernmost seas, sharp-snouted carp exclusive
to the north Atlantic, scorpionfish, and lastly the gadoid family,
chiefly the cod species, which I detected in their waters of choice
over these inexhaustible Grand Banks.

Because Newfoundland is simply an underwater peak, you could call
these cod mountain fish. While the Nautilus was clearing a path
through their tight ranks, Conseil couldn’t refrain from making this
comment:

“Mercy, look at these cod!” he said. “Why, I thought cod were flat,
like dab or sole!”

“Innocent boy!” I exclaimed. “Cod are flat only at the grocery store,
where they’re cut open and spread out on display. But in the water
they’re like mullet, spindle-shaped and perfectly built for speed.”

“I can easily believe master,” Conseil replied. “But what crowds of
them! What swarms!”

“Bah! My friend, there’d be many more without their enemies,
scorpionfish and human beings! Do you know how many eggs have been
counted in a single female?”

“I’ll go all out,” Conseil replied. “500,000.”

“11,000,000, my friend.”

“11,000,000! I refuse to accept that until I count them myself.”

“So count them, Conseil. But it would be less work to believe
me. Besides, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Danes, and Norwegians
catch these cod by the thousands. They’re eaten in prodigious
quantities, and without the astonishing fertility of these fish, the
seas would soon be depopulated of them. Accordingly, in England and
America alone, 5,000 ships manned by 75,000 seamen go after cod. Each
ship brings back an average catch of 4,400 fish, making
22,000,000. Off the coast of Norway, the total is the same.”

“Fine,” Conseil replied, “I’ll take master’s word for it. I won’t
count them.”

“Count what?”

“Those 11,000,000 eggs. But I’ll make one comment.”

“What’s that?”

“If all their eggs hatched, just four codfish could feed England,
America, and Norway.”

As we skimmed the depths of the Grand Banks, I could see perfectly
those long fishing lines, each armed with 200 hooks, that every boat
dangled by the dozens. The lower end of each line dragged the bottom
by means of a small grappling iron, and at the surface it was secured
to the buoy-rope of a cork float. The Nautilus had to maneuver
shrewdly in the midst of this underwater spiderweb.

But the ship didn’t stay long in these heavily traveled waterways. It
went up to about latitude 42 degrees. This brought it abreast of
St. John’s in Newfoundland and Heart’s Content, where the Atlantic
Cable reaches its end point.

Instead of continuing north, the Nautilus took an easterly heading, as
if to go along this plateau on which the telegraph cable rests, where
multiple soundings have given the contours of the terrain with the
utmost accuracy.

It was on May 17, about 500 miles from Heart’s Content and 2,800
meters down, that I spotted this cable lying on the seafloor. Conseil,
whom I hadn’t alerted, mistook it at first for a gigantic sea snake
and was gearing up to classify it in his best manner. But I
enlightened the fine lad and let him down gently by giving him various
details on the laying of this cable.

The first cable was put down during the years 1857-1858; but after
transmitting about 400 telegrams, it went dead. In 1863 engineers
built a new cable that measured 3,400 kilometers, weighed 4,500 metric
tons, and was shipped aboard the Great Eastern. This attempt also
failed.

Now then, on May 25 while submerged to a depth of 3,836 meters, the
Nautilus lay in precisely the locality where this second cable
suffered the rupture that ruined the undertaking. It happened 638
miles from the coast of Ireland. At around two o’clock in the
afternoon, all contact with Europe broke off. The electricians on
board decided to cut the cable before fishing it up, and by eleven
o’clock that evening they had retrieved the damaged part. They
repaired the joint and its splice; then the cable was resubmerged. But
a few days later it snapped again and couldn’t be recovered from the
ocean depths.

These Americans refused to give up. The daring Cyrus Field, who had
risked his whole fortune to promote this undertaking, called for a new
bond issue. It sold out immediately. Another cable was put down under
better conditions. Its sheaves of conducting wire were insulated
within a gutta-percha covering, which was protected by a padding of
textile material enclosed in a metal sheath. The Great Eastern put
back to sea on July 13, 1866.

The operation proceeded apace. Yet there was one hitch. As they
gradually unrolled this third cable, the electricians observed on
several occasions that someone had recently driven nails into it,
trying to damage its core. Captain Anderson, his officers, and the
engineers put their heads together, then posted a warning that if the
culprit were detected, he would be thrown overboard without a
trial. After that, these villainous attempts were not repeated.

By July 23 the Great Eastern was lying no farther than 800 kilometers
from Newfoundland when it received telegraphed news from Ireland of an
armistice signed between Prussia and Austria after the Battle of
Sadova. Through the mists on the 27th, it sighted the port of Heart’s
Content. The undertaking had ended happily, and in its first dispatch,
young America addressed old Europe with these wise words so rarely
understood: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of
good will.”

I didn’t expect to find this electric cable in mint condition, as it
looked on leaving its place of manufacture. The long snake was covered
with seashell rubble and bristling with foraminifera; a crust of caked
gravel protected it from any mollusks that might bore into it. It
rested serenely, sheltered from the sea’s motions, under a pressure
favorable to the transmission of that electric spark that goes from
America to Europe in 32/100 of a second. This cable will no doubt last
indefinitely because, as observers note, its gutta-percha casing is
improved by a stay in salt water.

Besides, on this well-chosen plateau, the cable never lies at depths
that could cause a break. The Nautilus followed it to its lowest
reaches, located 4,431 meters down, and even there it rested without
any stress or strain. Then we returned to the locality where the 1863
accident had taken place.

There the ocean floor formed a valley 120 kilometers wide, into which
you could fit Mt. Blanc without its summit poking above the surface of
the waves. This valley is closed off to the east by a sheer wall 2,000
meters high. We arrived there on May 28, and the Nautilus lay no
farther than 150 kilometers from Ireland.

Would Captain Nemo head up north and beach us on the British Isles?
No. Much to my surprise, he went back down south and returned to
European seas. As we swung around the Emerald Isle, I spotted Cape
Clear for an instant, plus the lighthouse on Fastnet Rock that guides
all those thousands of ships setting out from Glasgow or Liverpool.

An important question then popped into my head. Would the Nautilus
dare to tackle the English Channel? Ned Land (who promptly reappeared
after we hugged shore) never stopped questioning me. What could I
answer him? Captain Nemo remained invisible. After giving the Canadian
a glimpse of American shores, was he about to show me the coast of
France?

But the Nautilus kept gravitating southward. On May 30, in sight of
Land’s End, it passed between the lowermost tip of England and the
Scilly Islands, which it left behind to starboard.

If it was going to enter the English Channel, it clearly needed to
head east. It did not.

All day long on May 31, the Nautilus swept around the sea in a series
of circles that had me deeply puzzled. It seemed to be searching for a
locality that it had some trouble finding. At noon Captain Nemo
himself came to take our bearings. He didn’t address a word to me. He
looked gloomier than ever. What was filling him with such sadness? Was
it our proximity to these European shores? Was he reliving his
memories of that country he had left behind? If so, what did he feel?
Remorse or regret? For a good while these thoughts occupied my mind,
and I had a hunch that fate would soon give away the captain’s
secrets.

The next day, June 1, the Nautilus kept to the same tack. It was
obviously trying to locate some precise spot in the ocean. Just as on
the day before, Captain Nemo came to take the altitude of the sun. The
sea was smooth, the skies clear. Eight miles to the east, a big
steamship was visible on the horizon line. No flag was flapping from
the gaff of its fore-and-aft sail, and I couldn’t tell its
nationality.

A few minutes before the sun passed its zenith, Captain Nemo raised
his sextant and took his sights with the utmost precision. The
absolute calm of the waves facilitated this operation. The Nautilus
lay motionless, neither rolling nor pitching.

I was on the platform just then. After determining our position, the
captain pronounced only these words:

“It’s right here!”

He went down the hatch. Had he seen that vessel change course and
seemingly head toward us? I’m unable to say.

I returned to the lounge. The hatch closed, and I heard water hissing
in the ballast tanks. The Nautilus began to sink on a vertical line,
because its propeller was in check and no longer furnished any forward
motion.

Some minutes later it stopped at a depth of 833 meters and came to
rest on the seafloor.

The ceiling lights in the lounge then went out, the panels opened, and
through the windows I saw, for a half-mile radius, the sea brightly
lit by the beacon’s rays.

I looked to port and saw nothing but the immenseness of these tranquil
waters.

To starboard, a prominent bulge on the sea bottom caught my
attention. You would have thought it was some ruin enshrouded in a
crust of whitened seashells, as if under a mantle of snow. Carefully
examining this mass, I could identify the swollen outlines of a ship
shorn of its masts, which must have sunk bow first. This casualty
certainly dated from some far-off time. To be so caked with the
limestone of these waters, this wreckage must have spent many a year
on the ocean floor.

What ship was this? Why had the Nautilus come to visit its grave? Was
it something other than a maritime accident that had dragged this
craft under the waters?

I wasn’t sure what to think, but next to me I heard Captain Nemo’s
voice slowly say:

“Originally this ship was christened the Marseillais. It carried
seventy-four cannons and was launched in 1762. On August 13, 1778,
commanded by La Poype-Vertrieux, it fought valiantly against the
Preston. On July 4, 1779, as a member of the squadron under Admiral
d’Estaing, it assisted in the capture of the island of Grenada. On
September 5, 1781, under the Count de Grasse, it took part in the
Battle of Chesapeake Bay. In 1794 the new Republic of France changed
the name of this ship. On April 16 of that same year, it joined the
squadron at Brest under Rear Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse, who was
entrusted with escorting a convoy of wheat coming from America under
the command of Admiral Van Stabel. In this second year of the French
Revolutionary Calendar, on the 11th and 12th days in the Month of
Pasture, this squadron fought an encounter with English vessels. Sir,
today is June 1, 1868, or the 13th day in the Month of
Pasture. Seventy-four years ago to the day, at this very spot in
latitude 47 degrees 24’ and longitude 17 degrees 28’, this ship sank
after a heroic battle; its three masts gone, water in its hold, a
third of its crew out of action, it preferred to go to the bottom with
its 356 seamen rather than surrender; and with its flag nailed up on
the afterdeck, it disappeared beneath the waves to shouts of ‘Long
live the Republic!’”

“This is the Avenger!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, sir! The Avenger! A splendid name!” Captain Nemo murmured,
crossing his arms.


CHAPTER 21

A Mass Execution


THE WAY HE SAID THIS, the unexpectedness of this scene, first the
biography of this patriotic ship, then the excitement with which this
eccentric individual pronounced these last words—the name Avenger
whose significance could not escape me—all this, taken together, had a
profound impact on my mind. My eyes never left the captain. Hands
outstretched toward the sea, he contemplated the proud wreck with
blazing eyes. Perhaps I would never learn who he was, where he came
from or where he was heading, but more and more I could see a
distinction between the man and the scientist. It was no ordinary
misanthropy that kept Captain Nemo and his companions sequestered
inside the Nautilus’s plating, but a hate so monstrous or so sublime
that the passing years could never weaken it.

Did this hate also hunger for vengeance? Time would soon tell.

Meanwhile the Nautilus rose slowly to the surface of the sea, and I
watched the Avenger’s murky shape disappearing little by little. Soon
a gentle rolling told me that we were afloat in the open air.

Just then a hollow explosion was audible. I looked at the captain. The
captain did not stir.

“Captain?” I said.

He didn’t reply.

I left him and climbed onto the platform. Conseil and the Canadian
were already there.

“What caused that explosion?” I asked.

“A cannon going off,” Ned Land replied.

I stared in the direction of the ship I had spotted. It was heading
toward the Nautilus, and you could tell it had put on steam. Six miles
separated it from us.

“What sort of craft is it, Ned?”

“From its rigging and its low masts,” the Canadian replied, “I bet
it’s a warship. Here’s hoping it pulls up and sinks this damned
Nautilus!”

“Ned my friend,” Conseil replied, “what harm could it do the Nautilus?
Will it attack us under the waves? Will it cannonade us at the bottom
of the sea?”

“Tell me, Ned,” I asked, “can you make out the nationality of that
craft?”

Creasing his brow, lowering his lids, and puckering the corners of his
eyes, the Canadian focused the full power of his gaze on the ship for
a short while.

“No, sir,” he replied. “I can’t make out what nation it’s from. It’s
flying no flag. But I’ll swear it’s a warship, because there’s a long
pennant streaming from the peak of its mainmast.”

For a quarter of an hour, we continued to watch the craft bearing down
on us. But it was inconceivable to me that it had discovered the
Nautilus at such a distance, still less that it knew what this
underwater machine really was.

Soon the Canadian announced that the craft was a big battleship, a
double-decker ironclad complete with ram. Dark, dense smoke burst from
its two funnels. Its furled sails merged with the lines of its
yardarms. The gaff of its fore-and-aft sail flew no flag. Its distance
still kept us from distinguishing the colors of its pennant, which was
fluttering like a thin ribbon.

It was coming on fast. If Captain Nemo let it approach, a chance for
salvation might be available to us.

“Sir,” Ned Land told me, “if that boat gets within a mile of us, I’m
jumping overboard, and I suggest you follow suit.”

I didn’t reply to the Canadian’s proposition but kept watching the
ship, which was looming larger on the horizon. Whether it was English,
French, American, or Russian, it would surely welcome us aboard if we
could just get to it.

“Master may recall,” Conseil then said, “that we have some experience
with swimming. He can rely on me to tow him to that vessel, if he’s
agreeable to going with our friend Ned.”

Before I could reply, white smoke streamed from the battleship’s
bow. Then, a few seconds later, the waters splashed astern of the
Nautilus, disturbed by the fall of a heavy object. Soon after, an
explosion struck my ears.

“What’s this? They’re firing at us!” I exclaimed.

“Good lads!” the Canadian muttered.

“That means they don’t see us as castaways clinging to some wreckage!”

“With all due respect to master—gracious!” Conseil put in, shaking off
the water that had sprayed over him from another shell. “With all due
respect to master, they’ve discovered the narwhale and they’re
cannonading the same.”

“But it must be clear to them,” I exclaimed, “that they’re dealing
with human beings.”

“Maybe that’s why!” Ned Land replied, staring hard at me.

The full truth dawned on me. Undoubtedly people now knew where they
stood on the existence of this so-called monster. Undoubtedly the
latter’s encounter with the Abraham Lincoln, when the Canadian hit it
with his harpoon, had led Commander Farragut to recognize the narwhale
as actually an underwater boat, more dangerous than any unearthly
cetacean!

Yes, this had to be the case, and undoubtedly they were now chasing
this dreadful engine of destruction on every sea!

Dreadful indeed, if, as we could assume, Captain Nemo had been using
the Nautilus in works of vengeance! That night in the middle of the
Indian Ocean, when he imprisoned us in the cell, hadn’t he attacked
some ship? That man now buried in the coral cemetery, wasn’t he the
victim of some collision caused by the Nautilus? Yes, I repeat: this
had to be the case. One part of Captain Nemo’s secret life had been
unveiled. And now, even though his identity was still unknown, at
least the nations allied against him knew they were no longer hunting
some fairy-tale monster, but a man who had sworn an implacable hate
toward them!

This whole fearsome sequence of events appeared in my mind’s
eye. Instead of encountering friends on this approaching ship, we
would find only pitiless enemies.

Meanwhile shells fell around us in increasing numbers. Some, meeting
the liquid surface, would ricochet and vanish into the sea at
considerable distances. But none of them reached the Nautilus.

By then the ironclad was no more than three miles off. Despite its
violent cannonade, Captain Nemo hadn’t appeared on the platform. And
yet if one of those conical shells had scored a routine hit on the
Nautilus’s hull, it could have been fatal to him.

The Canadian then told me:

“Sir, we’ve got to do everything we can to get out of this jam! Let’s
signal them! Damnation! Maybe they’ll realize we’re decent people!”

Ned Land pulled out his handkerchief to wave it in the air. But he had
barely unfolded it when he was felled by an iron fist, and despite his
great strength, he tumbled to the deck.

“Scum!” the captain shouted. “Do you want to be nailed to the
Nautilus’s spur before it charges that ship?”

Dreadful to hear, Captain Nemo was even more dreadful to see. His face
was pale from some spasm of his heart, which must have stopped beating
for an instant. His pupils were hideously contracted. His voice was no
longer speaking, it was bellowing. Bending from the waist, he shook
the Canadian by the shoulders.

Then, dropping Ned and turning to the battleship, whose shells were
showering around him:

“O ship of an accursed nation, you know who I am!” he shouted in his
powerful voice. “And I don’t need your colors to recognize you! Look!
I’ll show you mine!”

And in the bow of the platform, Captain Nemo unfurled a black flag,
like the one he had left planted at the South Pole.

Just then a shell hit the Nautilus’s hull obliquely, failed to breach
it, ricocheted near the captain, and vanished into the sea.

Captain Nemo shrugged his shoulders. Then, addressing me:

“Go below!” he told me in a curt tone. “You and your companions, go
below!”

“Sir,” I exclaimed, “are you going to attack this ship?”

“Sir, I’m going to sink it.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I will,” Captain Nemo replied icily. “You’re ill-advised to pass
judgment on me, sir. Fate has shown you what you weren’t meant to
see. The attack has come. Our reply will be dreadful. Get back
inside!”

“From what country is that ship?”

“You don’t know? Fine, so much the better! At least its nationality
will remain a secret to you. Go below!”

The Canadian, Conseil, and I could only obey. Some fifteen of the
Nautilus’s seamen surrounded their captain and stared with a feeling
of implacable hate at the ship bearing down on them. You could feel
the same spirit of vengeance enkindling their every soul.

I went below just as another projectile scraped the Nautilus’s hull,
and I heard the captain exclaim:

“Shoot, you demented vessel! Shower your futile shells! You won’t
escape the Nautilus’s spur! But this isn’t the place where you’ll
perish! I don’t want your wreckage mingling with that of the Avenger!”

I repaired to my stateroom. The captain and his chief officer stayed
on the platform. The propeller was set in motion. The Nautilus swiftly
retreated, putting us outside the range of the vessel’s shells. But
the chase continued, and Captain Nemo was content to keep his
distance.

Near four o’clock in the afternoon, unable to control the impatience
and uneasiness devouring me, I went back to the central
companionway. The hatch was open. I ventured onto the platform. The
captain was still strolling there, his steps agitated. He stared at
the ship, which stayed to his leeward five or six miles off. He was
circling it like a wild beast, drawing it eastward, letting it chase
after him. Yet he didn’t attack. Was he, perhaps, still undecided?

I tried to intervene one last time. But I had barely queried Captain
Nemo when the latter silenced me:

“I’m the law, I’m the tribunal! I’m the oppressed, and there are my
oppressors! Thanks to them, I’ve witnessed the destruction of
everything I loved, cherished, and venerated—homeland, wife, children,
father, and mother! There lies everything I hate! Not another word out
of you!”

I took a last look at the battleship, which was putting on steam. Then
I rejoined Ned and Conseil.

“We’ll escape!” I exclaimed.

“Good,” Ned put in. “Where’s that ship from?”

“I’ve no idea. But wherever it’s from, it will sink before
nightfall. In any event, it’s better to perish with it than be
accomplices in some act of revenge whose merits we can’t gauge.”

“That’s my feeling,” Ned Land replied coolly. “Let’s wait for
nightfall.”

Night fell. A profound silence reigned on board. The compass indicated
that the Nautilus hadn’t changed direction. I could hear the beat of
its propeller, churning the waves with steady speed. Staying on the
surface of the water, it rolled gently, sometimes to one side,
sometimes to the other.

My companions and I had decided to escape as soon as the vessel came
close enough for us to be heard—or seen, because the moon would wax
full in three days and was shining brightly. Once we were aboard that
ship, if we couldn’t ward off the blow that threatened it, at least we
could do everything that circumstances permitted. Several times I
thought the Nautilus was about to attack. But it was content to let
its adversary approach, and then it would quickly resume its
retreating ways.

Part of the night passed without incident. We kept watch for an
opportunity to take action. We talked little, being too keyed up. Ned
Land was all for jumping overboard. I forced him to wait. As I saw it,
the Nautilus would attack the double-decker on the surface of the
waves, and then it would be not only possible but easy to escape.

At three o’clock in the morning, full of uneasiness, I climbed onto
the platform. Captain Nemo hadn’t left it. He stood in the bow next to
his flag, which a mild breeze was unfurling above his head. His eyes
never left that vessel. The extraordinary intensity of his gaze seemed
to attract it, beguile it, and draw it more surely than if he had it
in tow!

The moon then passed its zenith. Jupiter was rising in the east. In
the midst of this placid natural setting, sky and ocean competed with
each other in tranquility, and the sea offered the orb of night the
loveliest mirror ever to reflect its image.

And when I compared this deep calm of the elements with all the fury
seething inside the plating of this barely perceptible Nautilus, I
shivered all over.

The vessel was two miles off. It drew nearer, always moving toward the
phosphorescent glow that signaled the Nautilus’s presence. I saw its
green and red running lights, plus the white lantern hanging from the
large stay of its foremast. Hazy flickerings were reflected on its
rigging and indicated that its furnaces were pushed to the
limit. Showers of sparks and cinders of flaming coal escaped from its
funnels, spangling the air with stars.

I stood there until six o’clock in the morning, Captain Nemo never
seeming to notice me. The vessel lay a mile and a half off, and with
the first glimmers of daylight, it resumed its cannonade. The time
couldn’t be far away when the Nautilus would attack its adversary, and
my companions and I would leave forever this man I dared not judge.

I was about to go below to alert them, when the chief officer climbed
onto the platform. Several seamen were with him. Captain Nemo didn’t
see them, or didn’t want to see them. They carried out certain
procedures that, on the Nautilus, you could call “clearing the decks
for action.” They were quite simple. The manropes that formed a
handrail around the platform were lowered. Likewise the pilothouse and
the beacon housing were withdrawn into the hull until they lay exactly
flush with it. The surface of this long sheet-iron cigar no longer
offered a single protrusion that could hamper its maneuvers.

I returned to the lounge. The Nautilus still emerged above the
surface. A few morning gleams infiltrated the liquid strata. Beneath
the undulations of the billows, the windows were enlivened by the
blushing of the rising sun. That dreadful day of June 2 had dawned.

At seven o’clock the log told me that the Nautilus had reduced
speed. I realized that it was letting the warship approach. Moreover,
the explosions grew more intensely audible. Shells furrowed the water
around us, drilling through it with an odd hissing sound.

“My friends,” I said, “it’s time. Let’s shake hands, and may God be
with us!”

Ned Land was determined, Conseil calm, I myself nervous and barely in
control.

We went into the library. Just as I pushed open the door leading to
the well of the central companionway, I heard the hatch close sharply
overhead.

The Canadian leaped up the steps, but I stopped him. A well-known
hissing told me that water was entering the ship’s ballast
tanks. Indeed, in a few moments the Nautilus had submerged some meters
below the surface of the waves.

I understood this maneuver. It was too late to take action. The
Nautilus wasn’t going to strike the double-decker where it was clad in
impenetrable iron armor, but below its waterline, where the metal
carapace no longer protected its planking.

We were prisoners once more, unwilling spectators at the performance
of this gruesome drama. But we barely had time to think. Taking refuge
in my stateroom, we stared at each other without pronouncing a
word. My mind was in a total daze. My mental processes came to a dead
stop. I hovered in that painful state that predominates during the
period of anticipation before some frightful explosion. I waited, I
listened, I lived only through my sense of hearing!

Meanwhile the Nautilus’s speed had increased appreciably. So it was
gathering momentum. Its entire hull was vibrating.

Suddenly I let out a yell. There had been a collision, but it was
comparatively mild. I could feel the penetrating force of the steel
spur. I could hear scratchings and scrapings. Carried away with its
driving power, the Nautilus had passed through the vessel’s mass like
a sailmaker’s needle through canvas!

I couldn’t hold still. Frantic, going insane, I leaped out of my
stateroom and rushed into the lounge.

Captain Nemo was there. Mute, gloomy, implacable, he was staring
through the port panel.

An enormous mass was sinking beneath the waters, and the Nautilus,
missing none of its death throes, was descending into the depths with
it. Ten meters away, I could see its gaping hull, into which water was
rushing with a sound of thunder, then its double rows of cannons and
railings. Its deck was covered with dark, quivering shadows.

The water was rising. Those poor men leaped up into the shrouds, clung
to the masts, writhed beneath the waters. It was a human anthill that
an invading sea had caught by surprise!

Paralyzed, rigid with anguish, my hair standing on end, my eyes
popping out of my head, short of breath, suffocating, speechless, I
stared—I too! I was glued to the window by an irresistible allure!

The enormous vessel settled slowly. Following it down, the Nautilus
kept watch on its every movement. Suddenly there was an eruption. The
air compressed inside the craft sent its decks flying, as if the
powder stores had been ignited. The thrust of the waters was so great,
the Nautilus swerved away.

The poor ship then sank more swiftly. Its mastheads appeared, laden
with victims, then its crosstrees bending under clusters of men,
finally the peak of its mainmast. Then the dark mass disappeared, and
with it a crew of corpses dragged under by fearsome eddies. . . .

I turned to Captain Nemo. This dreadful executioner, this true
archangel of hate, was still staring. When it was all over, Captain
Nemo headed to the door of his stateroom, opened it, and entered. I
followed him with my eyes.

On the rear paneling, beneath the portraits of his heroes, I saw the
portrait of a still-youthful woman with two little children. Captain
Nemo stared at them for a few moments, stretched out his arms to them,
sank to his knees, and melted into sobs.


CHAPTER 22

The Last Words of Captain Nemo


THE PANELS CLOSED over this frightful view, but the lights didn’t go
on in the lounge. Inside the Nautilus all was gloom and silence. It
left this place of devastation with prodigious speed, 100 feet beneath
the waters. Where was it going? North or south? Where would the man
flee after this horrible act of revenge?

I reentered my stateroom, where Ned and Conseil were waiting
silently. Captain Nemo filled me with insurmountable horror. Whatever
he had once suffered at the hands of humanity, he had no right to mete
out such punishment. He had made me, if not an accomplice, at least an
eyewitness to his vengeance! Even this was intolerable.

At eleven o’clock the electric lights came back on. I went into the
lounge. It was deserted. I consulted the various instruments. The
Nautilus was fleeing northward at a speed of twenty-five miles per
hour, sometimes on the surface of the sea, sometimes thirty feet
beneath it.

After our position had been marked on the chart, I saw that we were
passing into the mouth of the English Channel, that our heading would
take us to the northernmost seas with incomparable speed.

I could barely glimpse the swift passing of longnose sharks,
hammerhead sharks, spotted dogfish that frequent these waters, big
eagle rays, swarms of seahorse looking like knights on a chessboard,
eels quivering like fireworks serpents, armies of crab that fled
obliquely by crossing their pincers over their carapaces, finally
schools of porpoise that held contests of speed with the Nautilus. But
by this point observing, studying, and classifying were out of the
question.

By evening we had cleared 200 leagues up the Atlantic. Shadows
gathered and gloom overran the sea until the moon came up.

I repaired to my stateroom. I couldn’t sleep. I was assaulted by
nightmares. That horrible scene of destruction kept repeating in my
mind’s eye.

From that day forward, who knows where the Nautilus took us in the
north Atlantic basin? Always at incalculable speed! Always amid the
High Arctic mists! Did it call at the capes of Spitzbergen or the
shores of Novaya Zemlya? Did it visit such uncharted seas as the White
Sea, the Kara Sea, the Gulf of Ob, the Lyakhov Islands, or those
unknown beaches on the Siberian coast? I’m unable to say. I lost track
of the passing hours. Time was in abeyance on the ship’s clocks. As
happens in the polar regions, it seemed that night and day no longer
followed their normal sequence. I felt myself being drawn into that
strange domain where the overwrought imagination of Edgar Allan Poe
was at home. Like his fabled Arthur Gordon Pym, I expected any moment
to see that “shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions
than any dweller among men,” thrown across the cataract that protects
the outskirts of the pole!

I estimate—but perhaps I’m mistaken—that the Nautilus’s haphazard
course continued for fifteen or twenty days, and I’m not sure how long
this would have gone on without the catastrophe that ended our
voyage. As for Captain Nemo, he was no longer in the picture. As for
his chief officer, the same applied. Not one crewman was visible for a
single instant. The Nautilus cruised beneath the waters almost
continuously. When it rose briefly to the surface to renew our air,
the hatches opened and closed as if automated. No more positions were
reported on the world map. I didn’t know where we were.

I’ll also mention that the Canadian, at the end of his strength and
patience, made no further appearances. Conseil couldn’t coax a single
word out of him and feared that, in a fit of delirium while under the
sway of a ghastly homesickness, Ned would kill himself. So he kept a
devoted watch on his friend every instant.

You can appreciate that under these conditions, our situation had
become untenable.

One morning—whose date I’m unable to specify—I was slumbering near the
first hours of daylight, a painful, sickly slumber. Waking up, I saw
Ned Land leaning over me, and I heard him tell me in a low voice:

“We’re going to escape!”

I sat up.

“When?” I asked.

“Tonight. There doesn’t seem to be any supervision left on the
Nautilus. You’d think a total daze was reigning on board. Will you be
ready, sir?”

“Yes. Where are we?”

“In sight of land. I saw it through the mists just this morning,
twenty miles to the east.”

“What land is it?”

“I’ve no idea, but whatever it is, there we’ll take refuge.”

“Yes, Ned! We’ll escape tonight even if the sea swallows us up!”

“The sea’s rough, the wind’s blowing hard, but a twenty-mile run in
the Nautilus’s nimble longboat doesn’t scare me. Unknown to the crew,
I’ve stowed some food and flasks of water inside.”

“I’m with you.”

“What’s more,” the Canadian added, “if they catch me, I’ll defend
myself, I’ll fight to the death.”

“Then we’ll die together, Ned my friend.”

My mind was made up. The Canadian left me. I went out on the platform,
where I could barely stand upright against the jolts of the
billows. The skies were threatening, but land lay inside those dense
mists, and we had to escape. Not a single day, or even a single hour,
could we afford to lose.

I returned to the lounge, dreading yet desiring an encounter with
Captain Nemo, wanting yet not wanting to see him. What would I say to
him? How could I hide the involuntary horror he inspired in me? No! It
was best not to meet him face to face! Best to try and forget him! And
yet . . . !

How long that day seemed, the last I would spend aboard the Nautilus!
I was left to myself. Ned Land and Conseil avoided speaking to me,
afraid they would give themselves away.

At six o’clock I ate supper, but I had no appetite. Despite my
revulsion, I forced it down, wanting to keep my strength up.

At 6:30 Ned Land entered my stateroom. He told me:

“We won’t see each other again before we go. At ten o’clock the moon
won’t be up yet. We’ll take advantage of the darkness. Come to the
skiff. Conseil and I will be inside waiting for you.”

The Canadian left without giving me time to answer him.

I wanted to verify the Nautilus’s heading. I made my way to the
lounge. We were racing north-northeast with frightful speed, fifty
meters down.

I took one last look at the natural wonders and artistic treasures
amassed in the museum, this unrivaled collection doomed to perish
someday in the depths of the seas, together with its curator. I wanted
to establish one supreme impression in my mind. I stayed there an
hour, basking in the aura of the ceiling lights, passing in review the
treasures shining in their glass cases. Then I returned to my
stateroom.

There I dressed in sturdy seafaring clothes. I gathered my notes and
packed them tenderly about my person. My heart was pounding
mightily. I couldn’t curb its pulsations. My anxiety and agitation
would certainly have given me away if Captain Nemo had seen me.

What was he doing just then? I listened at the door to his
stateroom. I heard the sound of footsteps. Captain Nemo was inside. He
hadn’t gone to bed. With his every movement I imagined he would appear
and ask me why I wanted to escape! I felt in a perpetual state of
alarm. My imagination magnified this sensation. The feeling became so
acute, I wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to enter the captain’s
stateroom, dare him face to face, brave it out with word and deed!

It was an insane idea. Fortunately I controlled myself and stretched
out on the bed to soothe my bodily agitation. My nerves calmed a
little, but with my brain so aroused, I did a swift review of my whole
existence aboard the Nautilus, every pleasant or unpleasant incident
that had crossed my path since I went overboard from the Abraham
Lincoln: the underwater hunting trip, the Torres Strait, our running
aground, the savages of Papua, the coral cemetery, the Suez
passageway, the island of Santorini, the Cretan diver, the Bay of
Vigo, Atlantis, the Ice Bank, the South Pole, our imprisonment in the
ice, the battle with the devilfish, the storm in the Gulf Stream, the
Avenger, and that horrible scene of the vessel sinking with its crew
. . . ! All these events passed before my eyes like backdrops
unrolling upstage in a theater. In this strange setting Captain Nemo
then grew fantastically. His features were accentuated, taking on
superhuman proportions. He was no longer my equal, he was the Man of
the Waters, the Spirit of the Seas.

By then it was 9:30. I held my head in both hands to keep it from
bursting. I closed my eyes. I no longer wanted to think. A half hour
still to wait! A half hour of nightmares that could drive me insane!

Just then I heard indistinct chords from the organ, melancholy
harmonies from some undefinable hymn, actual pleadings from a soul
trying to sever its earthly ties. I listened with all my senses at
once, barely breathing, immersed like Captain Nemo in this musical
trance that was drawing him beyond the bounds of this world.

Then a sudden thought terrified me. Captain Nemo had left his
stateroom. He was in the same lounge I had to cross in order to
escape. There I would encounter him one last time. He would see me,
perhaps speak to me! One gesture from him could obliterate me, a
single word shackle me to his vessel!

Even so, ten o’clock was about to strike. It was time to leave my
stateroom and rejoin my companions.

I dared not hesitate, even if Captain Nemo stood before me. I opened
the door cautiously, but as it swung on its hinges, it seemed to make
a frightful noise. This noise existed, perhaps, only in my
imagination!

I crept forward through the Nautilus’s dark gangways, pausing after
each step to curb the pounding of my heart.

I arrived at the corner door of the lounge. I opened it gently. The
lounge was plunged in profound darkness. Chords from the organ were
reverberating faintly. Captain Nemo was there. He didn’t see me. Even
in broad daylight I doubt that he would have noticed me, so completely
was he immersed in his trance.

I inched over the carpet, avoiding the tiniest bump whose noise might
give me away. It took me five minutes to reach the door at the far
end, which led into the library.

I was about to open it when a gasp from Captain Nemo nailed me to the
spot. I realized that he was standing up. I even got a glimpse of him
because some rays of light from the library had filtered into the
lounge. He was coming toward me, arms crossed, silent, not walking but
gliding like a ghost. His chest was heaving, swelling with sobs. And I
heard him murmur these words, the last of his to reach my ears:

“O almighty God! Enough! Enough!”

Was it a vow of repentance that had just escaped from this man’s
conscience . . . ?

Frantic, I rushed into the library. I climbed the central
companionway, and going along the upper gangway, I arrived at the
skiff. I went through the opening that had already given access to my
two companions.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” I exclaimed.

“Right away!” the Canadian replied.

First, Ned Land closed and bolted the opening cut into the Nautilus’s
sheet iron, using the monkey wrench he had with him. After likewise
closing the opening in the skiff, the Canadian began to unscrew the
nuts still bolting us to the underwater boat.

Suddenly a noise from the ship’s interior became audible. Voices were
answering each other hurriedly. What was it? Had they spotted our
escape? I felt Ned Land sliding a dagger into my hand.

“Yes,” I muttered, “we know how to die!”

The Canadian paused in his work. But one word twenty times repeated,
one dreadful word, told me the reason for the agitation spreading
aboard the Nautilus. We weren’t the cause of the crew’s concern.

“Maelstrom! Maelstrom!” they were shouting.

The Maelstrom! Could a more frightening name have rung in our ears
under more frightening circumstances? Were we lying in the dangerous
waterways off the Norwegian coast? Was the Nautilus being dragged into
this whirlpool just as the skiff was about to detach from its plating?

As you know, at the turn of the tide, the waters confined between the
Faroe and Lofoten Islands rush out with irresistible violence. They
form a vortex from which no ship has ever been able to
escape. Monstrous waves race together from every point of the
horizon. They form a whirlpool aptly called “the ocean’s navel,” whose
attracting power extends a distance of fifteen kilometers. It can suck
down not only ships but whales, and even polar bears from the
northernmost regions.

This was where the Nautilus had been sent accidentally—or perhaps
deliberately—by its captain. It was sweeping around in a spiral whose
radius kept growing smaller and smaller. The skiff, still attached to
the ship’s plating, was likewise carried around at dizzying speed. I
could feel us whirling. I was experiencing that accompanying nausea
that follows such continuous spinning motions. We were in dread, in
the last stages of sheer horror, our blood frozen in our veins, our
nerves numb, drenched in cold sweat as if from the throes of dying!
And what a noise around our frail skiff! What roars echoing from
several miles away! What crashes from the waters breaking against
sharp rocks on the seafloor, where the hardest objects are smashed,
where tree trunks are worn down and worked into “a shaggy fur,” as
Norwegians express it!

What a predicament! We were rocking frightfully. The Nautilus defended
itself like a human being. Its steel muscles were cracking. Sometimes
it stood on end, the three of us along with it!

“We’ve got to hold on tight,” Ned said, “and screw the nuts down
again! If we can stay attached to the Nautilus, we can still make it
. . . !”

He hadn’t finished speaking when a cracking sound occurred. The nuts
gave way, and ripped out of its socket, the skiff was hurled like a
stone from a sling into the midst of the vortex.

My head struck against an iron timber, and with this violent shock I
lost consciousness.


CHAPTER 23

Conclusion


WE COME TO the conclusion of this voyage under the seas. What happened
that night, how the skiff escaped from the Maelstrom’s fearsome
eddies, how Ned Land, Conseil, and I got out of that whirlpool, I’m
unable to say. But when I regained consciousness, I was lying in a
fisherman’s hut on one of the Lofoten Islands. My two companions, safe
and sound, were at my bedside clasping my hands. We embraced each
other heartily.

Just now we can’t even dream of returning to France. Travel between
upper Norway and the south is limited. So I have to wait for the
arrival of a steamboat that provides bimonthly service from North
Cape.

So it is here, among these gallant people who have taken us in, that
I’m reviewing my narrative of these adventures. It is accurate. Not a
fact has been omitted, not a detail has been exaggerated. It’s the
faithful record of this inconceivable expedition into an element now
beyond human reach, but where progress will someday make great
inroads.

Will anyone believe me? I don’t know. Ultimately it’s
unimportant. What I can now assert is that I’ve earned the right to
speak of these seas, beneath which in less than ten months, I’ve
cleared 20,000 leagues in this underwater tour of the world that has
shown me so many wonders across the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Red
Sea, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the southernmost and
northernmost seas!

But what happened to the Nautilus? Did it withstand the Maelstrom’s
clutches? Is Captain Nemo alive? Is he still under the ocean pursuing
his frightful program of revenge, or did he stop after that latest
mass execution? Will the waves someday deliver that manuscript that
contains his full life story? Will I finally learn the man’s name?
Will the nationality of the stricken warship tell us the nationality
of Captain Nemo?

I hope so. I likewise hope that his powerful submersible has defeated
the sea inside its most dreadful whirlpool, that the Nautilus has
survived where so many ships have perished! If this is the case and
Captain Nemo still inhabits the ocean—his adopted country—may the hate
be appeased in that fierce heart! May the contemplation of so many
wonders extinguish the spirit of vengeance in him! May the executioner
pass away, and the scientist continue his peaceful exploration of the
seas! If his destiny is strange, it’s also sublime. Haven’t I
encompassed it myself? Didn’t I lead ten months of this otherworldly
existence? Thus to that question asked 6,000 years ago in the Book of
Ecclesiastes—“Who can fathom the soundless depths?”—two men out of all
humanity have now earned the right to reply. Captain Nemo and I.


END OF THE SECOND PART



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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Emma, by Jane Austen

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: Emma

Author: Jane Austen

Release Date: August, 1994  [Etext #158]
Posting Date: January 21, 2010
Last Updated: March 10, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMMA ***




Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





EMMA

By Jane Austen




VOLUME I



CHAPTER I


Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home
and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of
existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very
little to distress or vex her.

She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate,
indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage, been
mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died
too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of
her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as
governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.

Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouse's family, less as a
governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly
of Emma. Between _them_ it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even before
Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the
mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint;
and the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they had been
living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and Emma
doing just what she liked; highly esteeming Miss Taylor's judgment, but
directed chiefly by her own.

The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having
rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too
well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to
her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived,
that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.

Sorrow came--a gentle sorrow--but not at all in the shape of any
disagreeable consciousness.--Miss Taylor married. It was Miss Taylor's
loss which first brought grief. It was on the wedding-day of this
beloved friend that Emma first sat in mournful thought of any
continuance. The wedding over, and the bride-people gone, her father and
herself were left to dine together, with no prospect of a third to cheer
a long evening. Her father composed himself to sleep after dinner, as
usual, and she had then only to sit and think of what she had lost.

The event had every promise of happiness for her friend. Mr. Weston
was a man of unexceptionable character, easy fortune, suitable age, and
pleasant manners; and there was some satisfaction in considering
with what self-denying, generous friendship she had always wished and
promoted the match; but it was a black morning's work for her. The want
of Miss Taylor would be felt every hour of every day. She recalled her
past kindness--the kindness, the affection of sixteen years--how she had
taught and how she had played with her from five years old--how she had
devoted all her powers to attach and amuse her in health--and how
nursed her through the various illnesses of childhood. A large debt of
gratitude was owing here; but the intercourse of the last seven
years, the equal footing and perfect unreserve which had soon followed
Isabella's marriage, on their being left to each other, was yet a
dearer, tenderer recollection. She had been a friend and companion such
as few possessed: intelligent, well-informed, useful, gentle, knowing
all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and
peculiarly interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of
hers--one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and who had
such an affection for her as could never find fault.

How was she to bear the change?--It was true that her friend was going
only half a mile from them; but Emma was aware that great must be the
difference between a Mrs. Weston, only half a mile from them, and a Miss
Taylor in the house; and with all her advantages, natural and domestic,
she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual solitude. She
dearly loved her father, but he was no companion for her. He could not
meet her in conversation, rational or playful.

The evil of the actual disparity in their ages (and Mr. Woodhouse had
not married early) was much increased by his constitution and habits;
for having been a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of
mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though
everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable
temper, his talents could not have recommended him at any time.

Her sister, though comparatively but little removed by matrimony, being
settled in London, only sixteen miles off, was much beyond her daily
reach; and many a long October and November evening must be struggled
through at Hartfield, before Christmas brought the next visit from
Isabella and her husband, and their little children, to fill the house,
and give her pleasant society again.

Highbury, the large and populous village, almost amounting to a town,
to which Hartfield, in spite of its separate lawn, and shrubberies, and
name, did really belong, afforded her no equals. The Woodhouses
were first in consequence there. All looked up to them. She had many
acquaintance in the place, for her father was universally civil, but
not one among them who could be accepted in lieu of Miss Taylor for even
half a day. It was a melancholy change; and Emma could not but sigh over
it, and wish for impossible things, till her father awoke, and made it
necessary to be cheerful. His spirits required support. He was a nervous
man, easily depressed; fond of every body that he was used to, and
hating to part with them; hating change of every kind. Matrimony, as the
origin of change, was always disagreeable; and he was by no means yet
reconciled to his own daughter's marrying, nor could ever speak of her
but with compassion, though it had been entirely a match of affection,
when he was now obliged to part with Miss Taylor too; and from his
habits of gentle selfishness, and of being never able to suppose that
other people could feel differently from himself, he was very much
disposed to think Miss Taylor had done as sad a thing for herself as for
them, and would have been a great deal happier if she had spent all the
rest of her life at Hartfield. Emma smiled and chatted as cheerfully
as she could, to keep him from such thoughts; but when tea came, it was
impossible for him not to say exactly as he had said at dinner,

“Poor Miss Taylor!--I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that
Mr. Weston ever thought of her!”

“I cannot agree with you, papa; you know I cannot. Mr. Weston is such
a good-humoured, pleasant, excellent man, that he thoroughly deserves
a good wife;--and you would not have had Miss Taylor live with us for
ever, and bear all my odd humours, when she might have a house of her
own?”

“A house of her own!--But where is the advantage of a house of her own?
This is three times as large.--And you have never any odd humours, my
dear.”

“How often we shall be going to see them, and they coming to see us!--We
shall be always meeting! _We_ must begin; we must go and pay wedding
visit very soon.”

“My dear, how am I to get so far? Randalls is such a distance. I could
not walk half so far.”

“No, papa, nobody thought of your walking. We must go in the carriage,
to be sure.”

“The carriage! But James will not like to put the horses to for such a
little way;--and where are the poor horses to be while we are paying our
visit?”

“They are to be put into Mr. Weston's stable, papa. You know we have
settled all that already. We talked it all over with Mr. Weston last
night. And as for James, you may be very sure he will always like going
to Randalls, because of his daughter's being housemaid there. I only
doubt whether he will ever take us anywhere else. That was your doing,
papa. You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you
mentioned her--James is so obliged to you!”

“I am very glad I did think of her. It was very lucky, for I would not
have had poor James think himself slighted upon any account; and I am
sure she will make a very good servant: she is a civil, pretty-spoken
girl; I have a great opinion of her. Whenever I see her, she always
curtseys and asks me how I do, in a very pretty manner; and when you
have had her here to do needlework, I observe she always turns the lock
of the door the right way and never bangs it. I am sure she will be an
excellent servant; and it will be a great comfort to poor Miss Taylor
to have somebody about her that she is used to see. Whenever James goes
over to see his daughter, you know, she will be hearing of us. He will
be able to tell her how we all are.”

Emma spared no exertions to maintain this happier flow of ideas, and
hoped, by the help of backgammon, to get her father tolerably
through the evening, and be attacked by no regrets but her own. The
backgammon-table was placed; but a visitor immediately afterwards walked
in and made it unnecessary.

Mr. Knightley, a sensible man about seven or eight-and-thirty, was not
only a very old and intimate friend of the family, but particularly
connected with it, as the elder brother of Isabella's husband. He lived
about a mile from Highbury, was a frequent visitor, and always welcome,
and at this time more welcome than usual, as coming directly from their
mutual connexions in London. He had returned to a late dinner, after
some days' absence, and now walked up to Hartfield to say that all were
well in Brunswick Square. It was a happy circumstance, and animated
Mr. Woodhouse for some time. Mr. Knightley had a cheerful manner, which
always did him good; and his many inquiries after “poor Isabella” and
her children were answered most satisfactorily. When this was over, Mr.
Woodhouse gratefully observed, “It is very kind of you, Mr. Knightley,
to come out at this late hour to call upon us. I am afraid you must have
had a shocking walk.”

“Not at all, sir. It is a beautiful moonlight night; and so mild that I
must draw back from your great fire.”

“But you must have found it very damp and dirty. I wish you may not
catch cold.”

“Dirty, sir! Look at my shoes. Not a speck on them.”

“Well! that is quite surprising, for we have had a vast deal of rain
here. It rained dreadfully hard for half an hour while we were at
breakfast. I wanted them to put off the wedding.”

“By the bye--I have not wished you joy. Being pretty well aware of what
sort of joy you must both be feeling, I have been in no hurry with my
congratulations; but I hope it all went off tolerably well. How did you
all behave? Who cried most?”

“Ah! poor Miss Taylor! 'Tis a sad business.”

“Poor Mr. and Miss Woodhouse, if you please; but I cannot possibly say
'poor Miss Taylor.' I have a great regard for you and Emma; but when it
comes to the question of dependence or independence!--At any rate, it
must be better to have only one to please than two.”

“Especially when _one_ of those two is such a fanciful, troublesome
creature!” said Emma playfully. “That is what you have in your head, I
know--and what you would certainly say if my father were not by.”

“I believe it is very true, my dear, indeed,” said Mr. Woodhouse, with a
sigh. “I am afraid I am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome.”

“My dearest papa! You do not think I could mean _you_, or suppose Mr.
Knightley to mean _you_. What a horrible idea! Oh no! I meant only
myself. Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know--in a
joke--it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another.”

Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults
in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them: and
though this was not particularly agreeable to Emma herself, she knew
it would be so much less so to her father, that she would not have him
really suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by
every body.

“Emma knows I never flatter her,” said Mr. Knightley, “but I meant no
reflection on any body. Miss Taylor has been used to have two persons
to please; she will now have but one. The chances are that she must be a
gainer.”

“Well,” said Emma, willing to let it pass--“you want to hear about
the wedding; and I shall be happy to tell you, for we all behaved
charmingly. Every body was punctual, every body in their best looks: not
a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen. Oh no; we all felt that we
were going to be only half a mile apart, and were sure of meeting every
day.”

“Dear Emma bears every thing so well,” said her father. “But, Mr.
Knightley, she is really very sorry to lose poor Miss Taylor, and I am
sure she _will_ miss her more than she thinks for.”

Emma turned away her head, divided between tears and smiles. “It
is impossible that Emma should not miss such a companion,” said Mr.
Knightley. “We should not like her so well as we do, sir, if we could
suppose it; but she knows how much the marriage is to Miss Taylor's
advantage; she knows how very acceptable it must be, at Miss Taylor's
time of life, to be settled in a home of her own, and how important to
her to be secure of a comfortable provision, and therefore cannot allow
herself to feel so much pain as pleasure. Every friend of Miss Taylor
must be glad to have her so happily married.”

“And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me,” said Emma, “and a very
considerable one--that I made the match myself. I made the match, you
know, four years ago; and to have it take place, and be proved in the
right, when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again, may
comfort me for any thing.”

Mr. Knightley shook his head at her. Her father fondly replied, “Ah!
my dear, I wish you would not make matches and foretell things, for
whatever you say always comes to pass. Pray do not make any more
matches.”

“I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but I must, indeed, for
other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world! And after such
success, you know!--Every body said that Mr. Weston would never marry
again. Oh dear, no! Mr. Weston, who had been a widower so long, and who
seemed so perfectly comfortable without a wife, so constantly occupied
either in his business in town or among his friends here, always
acceptable wherever he went, always cheerful--Mr. Weston need not spend
a single evening in the year alone if he did not like it. Oh no! Mr.
Weston certainly would never marry again. Some people even talked of a
promise to his wife on her deathbed, and others of the son and the
uncle not letting him. All manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the
subject, but I believed none of it.

“Ever since the day--about four years ago--that Miss Taylor and I met
with him in Broadway Lane, when, because it began to drizzle, he darted
away with so much gallantry, and borrowed two umbrellas for us from
Farmer Mitchell's, I made up my mind on the subject. I planned the match
from that hour; and when such success has blessed me in this instance,
dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off match-making.”

“I do not understand what you mean by 'success,'” said Mr. Knightley.
“Success supposes endeavour. Your time has been properly and delicately
spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring
about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young lady's mind! But
if, which I rather imagine, your making the match, as you call it, means
only your planning it, your saying to yourself one idle day, 'I think it
would be a very good thing for Miss Taylor if Mr. Weston were to marry
her,' and saying it again to yourself every now and then afterwards, why
do you talk of success? Where is your merit? What are you proud of? You
made a lucky guess; and _that_ is all that can be said.”

“And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?--I
pity you.--I thought you cleverer--for, depend upon it a lucky guess is
never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. And as to my
poor word 'success,' which you quarrel with, I do not know that I am so
entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn two pretty pictures;
but I think there may be a third--a something between the do-nothing and
the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston's visits here, and given
many little encouragements, and smoothed many little matters, it might
not have come to any thing after all. I think you must know Hartfield
enough to comprehend that.”

“A straightforward, open-hearted man like Weston, and a rational,
unaffected woman like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their
own concerns. You are more likely to have done harm to yourself, than
good to them, by interference.”

“Emma never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others,” rejoined
Mr. Woodhouse, understanding but in part. “But, my dear, pray do not
make any more matches; they are silly things, and break up one's family
circle grievously.”

“Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton! You like Mr.
Elton, papa,--I must look about for a wife for him. There is nobody in
Highbury who deserves him--and he has been here a whole year, and has
fitted up his house so comfortably, that it would be a shame to have him
single any longer--and I thought when he was joining their hands to-day,
he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same kind office
done for him! I think very well of Mr. Elton, and this is the only way I
have of doing him a service.”

“Mr. Elton is a very pretty young man, to be sure, and a very good young
man, and I have a great regard for him. But if you want to shew him any
attention, my dear, ask him to come and dine with us some day. That will
be a much better thing. I dare say Mr. Knightley will be so kind as to
meet him.”

“With a great deal of pleasure, sir, at any time,” said Mr. Knightley,
laughing, “and I agree with you entirely, that it will be a much better
thing. Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish
and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife. Depend upon it, a
man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself.”



CHAPTER II


Mr. Weston was a native of Highbury, and born of a respectable family,
which for the last two or three generations had been rising into
gentility and property. He had received a good education, but, on
succeeding early in life to a small independence, had become indisposed
for any of the more homely pursuits in which his brothers were engaged,
and had satisfied an active, cheerful mind and social temper by entering
into the militia of his county, then embodied.

Captain Weston was a general favourite; and when the chances of his
military life had introduced him to Miss Churchill, of a great Yorkshire
family, and Miss Churchill fell in love with him, nobody was surprized,
except her brother and his wife, who had never seen him, and who were
full of pride and importance, which the connexion would offend.

Miss Churchill, however, being of age, and with the full command of her
fortune--though her fortune bore no proportion to the family-estate--was
not to be dissuaded from the marriage, and it took place, to the
infinite mortification of Mr. and Mrs. Churchill, who threw her off with
due decorum. It was an unsuitable connexion, and did not produce much
happiness. Mrs. Weston ought to have found more in it, for she had a
husband whose warm heart and sweet temper made him think every thing due
to her in return for the great goodness of being in love with him;
but though she had one sort of spirit, she had not the best. She had
resolution enough to pursue her own will in spite of her brother,
but not enough to refrain from unreasonable regrets at that brother's
unreasonable anger, nor from missing the luxuries of her former home.
They lived beyond their income, but still it was nothing in comparison
of Enscombe: she did not cease to love her husband, but she wanted at
once to be the wife of Captain Weston, and Miss Churchill of Enscombe.

Captain Weston, who had been considered, especially by the Churchills,
as making such an amazing match, was proved to have much the worst of
the bargain; for when his wife died, after a three years' marriage, he
was rather a poorer man than at first, and with a child to maintain.
From the expense of the child, however, he was soon relieved. The boy
had, with the additional softening claim of a lingering illness of his
mother's, been the means of a sort of reconciliation; and Mr. and Mrs.
Churchill, having no children of their own, nor any other young creature
of equal kindred to care for, offered to take the whole charge of the
little Frank soon after her decease. Some scruples and some reluctance
the widower-father may be supposed to have felt; but as they were
overcome by other considerations, the child was given up to the care and
the wealth of the Churchills, and he had only his own comfort to seek,
and his own situation to improve as he could.

A complete change of life became desirable. He quitted the militia and
engaged in trade, having brothers already established in a good way in
London, which afforded him a favourable opening. It was a concern which
brought just employment enough. He had still a small house in Highbury,
where most of his leisure days were spent; and between useful occupation
and the pleasures of society, the next eighteen or twenty years of his
life passed cheerfully away. He had, by that time, realised an easy
competence--enough to secure the purchase of a little estate adjoining
Highbury, which he had always longed for--enough to marry a woman as
portionless even as Miss Taylor, and to live according to the wishes of
his own friendly and social disposition.

It was now some time since Miss Taylor had begun to influence his
schemes; but as it was not the tyrannic influence of youth on youth,
it had not shaken his determination of never settling till he could
purchase Randalls, and the sale of Randalls was long looked forward to;
but he had gone steadily on, with these objects in view, till they were
accomplished. He had made his fortune, bought his house, and obtained
his wife; and was beginning a new period of existence, with every
probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through. He had
never been an unhappy man; his own temper had secured him from that,
even in his first marriage; but his second must shew him how delightful
a well-judging and truly amiable woman could be, and must give him the
pleasantest proof of its being a great deal better to choose than to be
chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it.

He had only himself to please in his choice: his fortune was his own;
for as to Frank, it was more than being tacitly brought up as his
uncle's heir, it had become so avowed an adoption as to have him assume
the name of Churchill on coming of age. It was most unlikely, therefore,
that he should ever want his father's assistance. His father had no
apprehension of it. The aunt was a capricious woman, and governed her
husband entirely; but it was not in Mr. Weston's nature to imagine that
any caprice could be strong enough to affect one so dear, and, as he
believed, so deservedly dear. He saw his son every year in London, and
was proud of him; and his fond report of him as a very fine young man
had made Highbury feel a sort of pride in him too. He was looked on as
sufficiently belonging to the place to make his merits and prospects a
kind of common concern.

Mr. Frank Churchill was one of the boasts of Highbury, and a lively
curiosity to see him prevailed, though the compliment was so little
returned that he had never been there in his life. His coming to visit
his father had been often talked of but never achieved.

Now, upon his father's marriage, it was very generally proposed, as a
most proper attention, that the visit should take place. There was not a
dissentient voice on the subject, either when Mrs. Perry drank tea with
Mrs. and Miss Bates, or when Mrs. and Miss Bates returned the visit. Now
was the time for Mr. Frank Churchill to come among them; and the hope
strengthened when it was understood that he had written to his new
mother on the occasion. For a few days, every morning visit in Highbury
included some mention of the handsome letter Mrs. Weston had received.
“I suppose you have heard of the handsome letter Mr. Frank Churchill
has written to Mrs. Weston? I understand it was a very handsome letter,
indeed. Mr. Woodhouse told me of it. Mr. Woodhouse saw the letter, and
he says he never saw such a handsome letter in his life.”

It was, indeed, a highly prized letter. Mrs. Weston had, of course,
formed a very favourable idea of the young man; and such a pleasing
attention was an irresistible proof of his great good sense, and a most
welcome addition to every source and every expression of congratulation
which her marriage had already secured. She felt herself a most
fortunate woman; and she had lived long enough to know how fortunate
she might well be thought, where the only regret was for a partial
separation from friends whose friendship for her had never cooled, and
who could ill bear to part with her.

She knew that at times she must be missed; and could not think, without
pain, of Emma's losing a single pleasure, or suffering an hour's ennui,
from the want of her companionableness: but dear Emma was of no feeble
character; she was more equal to her situation than most girls would
have been, and had sense, and energy, and spirits that might be hoped
would bear her well and happily through its little difficulties and
privations. And then there was such comfort in the very easy distance of
Randalls from Hartfield, so convenient for even solitary female walking,
and in Mr. Weston's disposition and circumstances, which would make the
approaching season no hindrance to their spending half the evenings in
the week together.

Her situation was altogether the subject of hours of gratitude to Mrs.
Weston, and of moments only of regret; and her satisfaction--her more
than satisfaction--her cheerful enjoyment, was so just and so apparent,
that Emma, well as she knew her father, was sometimes taken by surprize
at his being still able to pity 'poor Miss Taylor,' when they left her
at Randalls in the centre of every domestic comfort, or saw her go away
in the evening attended by her pleasant husband to a carriage of her
own. But never did she go without Mr. Woodhouse's giving a gentle sigh,
and saying, “Ah, poor Miss Taylor! She would be very glad to stay.”

There was no recovering Miss Taylor--nor much likelihood of ceasing to
pity her; but a few weeks brought some alleviation to Mr. Woodhouse.
The compliments of his neighbours were over; he was no longer teased by
being wished joy of so sorrowful an event; and the wedding-cake, which
had been a great distress to him, was all eat up. His own stomach
could bear nothing rich, and he could never believe other people to be
different from himself. What was unwholesome to him he regarded as unfit
for any body; and he had, therefore, earnestly tried to dissuade them
from having any wedding-cake at all, and when that proved vain, as
earnestly tried to prevent any body's eating it. He had been at the
pains of consulting Mr. Perry, the apothecary, on the subject. Mr. Perry
was an intelligent, gentlemanlike man, whose frequent visits were one
of the comforts of Mr. Woodhouse's life; and upon being applied to, he
could not but acknowledge (though it seemed rather against the bias
of inclination) that wedding-cake might certainly disagree with
many--perhaps with most people, unless taken moderately. With such an
opinion, in confirmation of his own, Mr. Woodhouse hoped to influence
every visitor of the newly married pair; but still the cake was eaten;
and there was no rest for his benevolent nerves till it was all gone.

There was a strange rumour in Highbury of all the little Perrys being
seen with a slice of Mrs. Weston's wedding-cake in their hands: but Mr.
Woodhouse would never believe it.



CHAPTER III


Mr. Woodhouse was fond of society in his own way. He liked very much to
have his friends come and see him; and from various united causes, from
his long residence at Hartfield, and his good nature, from his fortune,
his house, and his daughter, he could command the visits of his
own little circle, in a great measure, as he liked. He had not much
intercourse with any families beyond that circle; his horror of late
hours, and large dinner-parties, made him unfit for any acquaintance but
such as would visit him on his own terms. Fortunately for him, Highbury,
including Randalls in the same parish, and Donwell Abbey in the parish
adjoining, the seat of Mr. Knightley, comprehended many such. Not
unfrequently, through Emma's persuasion, he had some of the chosen and
the best to dine with him: but evening parties were what he preferred;
and, unless he fancied himself at any time unequal to company, there
was scarcely an evening in the week in which Emma could not make up a
card-table for him.

Real, long-standing regard brought the Westons and Mr. Knightley; and by
Mr. Elton, a young man living alone without liking it, the privilege
of exchanging any vacant evening of his own blank solitude for the
elegancies and society of Mr. Woodhouse's drawing-room, and the smiles
of his lovely daughter, was in no danger of being thrown away.

After these came a second set; among the most come-at-able of whom were
Mrs. and Miss Bates, and Mrs. Goddard, three ladies almost always at
the service of an invitation from Hartfield, and who were fetched and
carried home so often, that Mr. Woodhouse thought it no hardship for
either James or the horses. Had it taken place only once a year, it
would have been a grievance.

Mrs. Bates, the widow of a former vicar of Highbury, was a very old
lady, almost past every thing but tea and quadrille. She lived with her
single daughter in a very small way, and was considered with all the
regard and respect which a harmless old lady, under such untoward
circumstances, can excite. Her daughter enjoyed a most uncommon degree
of popularity for a woman neither young, handsome, rich, nor married.
Miss Bates stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having
much of the public favour; and she had no intellectual superiority to
make atonement to herself, or frighten those who might hate her into
outward respect. She had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her
youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted
to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a small
income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman
whom no one named without good-will. It was her own universal good-will
and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved every body,
was interested in every body's happiness, quicksighted to every body's
merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with
blessings in such an excellent mother, and so many good neighbours
and friends, and a home that wanted for nothing. The simplicity and
cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a
recommendation to every body, and a mine of felicity to herself. She was
a great talker upon little matters, which exactly suited Mr. Woodhouse,
full of trivial communications and harmless gossip.

Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a School--not of a seminary, or an
establishment, or any thing which professed, in long sentences of
refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality,
upon new principles and new systems--and where young ladies for enormous
pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity--but a real,
honest, old-fashioned Boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of
accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might
be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little
education, without any danger of coming back prodigies. Mrs. Goddard's
school was in high repute--and very deservedly; for Highbury was
reckoned a particularly healthy spot: she had an ample house and garden,
gave the children plenty of wholesome food, let them run about a great
deal in the summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains with her own
hands. It was no wonder that a train of twenty young couple now walked
after her to church. She was a plain, motherly kind of woman, who
had worked hard in her youth, and now thought herself entitled to the
occasional holiday of a tea-visit; and having formerly owed much to Mr.
Woodhouse's kindness, felt his particular claim on her to leave her neat
parlour, hung round with fancy-work, whenever she could, and win or lose
a few sixpences by his fireside.

These were the ladies whom Emma found herself very frequently able to
collect; and happy was she, for her father's sake, in the power; though,
as far as she was herself concerned, it was no remedy for the absence of
Mrs. Weston. She was delighted to see her father look comfortable, and
very much pleased with herself for contriving things so well; but the
quiet prosings of three such women made her feel that every evening so
spent was indeed one of the long evenings she had fearfully anticipated.

As she sat one morning, looking forward to exactly such a close of the
present day, a note was brought from Mrs. Goddard, requesting, in most
respectful terms, to be allowed to bring Miss Smith with her; a most
welcome request: for Miss Smith was a girl of seventeen, whom Emma knew
very well by sight, and had long felt an interest in, on account of
her beauty. A very gracious invitation was returned, and the evening no
longer dreaded by the fair mistress of the mansion.

Harriet Smith was the natural daughter of somebody. Somebody had placed
her, several years back, at Mrs. Goddard's school, and somebody
had lately raised her from the condition of scholar to that of
parlour-boarder. This was all that was generally known of her history.
She had no visible friends but what had been acquired at Highbury, and
was now just returned from a long visit in the country to some young
ladies who had been at school there with her.

She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort
which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a
fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great
sweetness, and, before the end of the evening, Emma was as much pleased
with her manners as her person, and quite determined to continue the
acquaintance.

She was not struck by any thing remarkably clever in Miss Smith's
conversation, but she found her altogether very engaging--not
inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk--and yet so far from pushing,
shewing so proper and becoming a deference, seeming so pleasantly
grateful for being admitted to Hartfield, and so artlessly impressed
by the appearance of every thing in so superior a style to what she had
been used to, that she must have good sense, and deserve encouragement.
Encouragement should be given. Those soft blue eyes, and all those
natural graces, should not be wasted on the inferior society of Highbury
and its connexions. The acquaintance she had already formed were
unworthy of her. The friends from whom she had just parted, though very
good sort of people, must be doing her harm. They were a family of the
name of Martin, whom Emma well knew by character, as renting a large
farm of Mr. Knightley, and residing in the parish of Donwell--very
creditably, she believed--she knew Mr. Knightley thought highly of
them--but they must be coarse and unpolished, and very unfit to be the
intimates of a girl who wanted only a little more knowledge and elegance
to be quite perfect. _She_ would notice her; she would improve her; she
would detach her from her bad acquaintance, and introduce her into good
society; she would form her opinions and her manners. It would be an
interesting, and certainly a very kind undertaking; highly becoming her
own situation in life, her leisure, and powers.

She was so busy in admiring those soft blue eyes, in talking and
listening, and forming all these schemes in the in-betweens, that the
evening flew away at a very unusual rate; and the supper-table, which
always closed such parties, and for which she had been used to sit and
watch the due time, was all set out and ready, and moved forwards to the
fire, before she was aware. With an alacrity beyond the common impulse
of a spirit which yet was never indifferent to the credit of doing every
thing well and attentively, with the real good-will of a mind delighted
with its own ideas, did she then do all the honours of the meal, and
help and recommend the minced chicken and scalloped oysters, with an
urgency which she knew would be acceptable to the early hours and civil
scruples of their guests.

Upon such occasions poor Mr. Woodhouse's feelings were in sad warfare.
He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his
youth, but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him
rather sorry to see any thing put on it; and while his hospitality would
have welcomed his visitors to every thing, his care for their health
made him grieve that they would eat.

Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could,
with thorough self-approbation, recommend; though he might constrain
himself, while the ladies were comfortably clearing the nicer things, to
say:

“Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg
boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg
better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body
else; but you need not be afraid, they are very small, you see--one of
our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma help you to a
_little_ bit of tart--a _very_ little bit. Ours are all apple-tarts. You
need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise the
custard. Mrs. Goddard, what say you to _half_ a glass of wine? A
_small_ half-glass, put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it could
disagree with you.”

Emma allowed her father to talk--but supplied her visitors in a much
more satisfactory style, and on the present evening had particular
pleasure in sending them away happy. The happiness of Miss Smith was
quite equal to her intentions. Miss Woodhouse was so great a personage
in Highbury, that the prospect of the introduction had given as much
panic as pleasure; but the humble, grateful little girl went off with
highly gratified feelings, delighted with the affability with which Miss
Woodhouse had treated her all the evening, and actually shaken hands
with her at last!



CHAPTER IV


Harriet Smith's intimacy at Hartfield was soon a settled thing. Quick
and decided in her ways, Emma lost no time in inviting, encouraging, and
telling her to come very often; and as their acquaintance increased, so
did their satisfaction in each other. As a walking companion, Emma had
very early foreseen how useful she might find her. In that respect
Mrs. Weston's loss had been important. Her father never went beyond the
shrubbery, where two divisions of the ground sufficed him for his long
walk, or his short, as the year varied; and since Mrs. Weston's marriage
her exercise had been too much confined. She had ventured once alone to
Randalls, but it was not pleasant; and a Harriet Smith, therefore,
one whom she could summon at any time to a walk, would be a valuable
addition to her privileges. But in every respect, as she saw more of
her, she approved her, and was confirmed in all her kind designs.

Harriet certainly was not clever, but she had a sweet, docile, grateful
disposition, was totally free from conceit, and only desiring to be
guided by any one she looked up to. Her early attachment to herself
was very amiable; and her inclination for good company, and power of
appreciating what was elegant and clever, shewed that there was no
want of taste, though strength of understanding must not be expected.
Altogether she was quite convinced of Harriet Smith's being exactly the
young friend she wanted--exactly the something which her home required.
Such a friend as Mrs. Weston was out of the question. Two such could
never be granted. Two such she did not want. It was quite a different
sort of thing, a sentiment distinct and independent. Mrs. Weston was the
object of a regard which had its basis in gratitude and esteem. Harriet
would be loved as one to whom she could be useful. For Mrs. Weston there
was nothing to be done; for Harriet every thing.

Her first attempts at usefulness were in an endeavour to find out who
were the parents, but Harriet could not tell. She was ready to tell
every thing in her power, but on this subject questions were vain. Emma
was obliged to fancy what she liked--but she could never believe that in
the same situation _she_ should not have discovered the truth. Harriet
had no penetration. She had been satisfied to hear and believe just what
Mrs. Goddard chose to tell her; and looked no farther.

Mrs. Goddard, and the teachers, and the girls and the affairs of
the school in general, formed naturally a great part of the
conversation--and but for her acquaintance with the Martins of
Abbey-Mill Farm, it must have been the whole. But the Martins occupied
her thoughts a good deal; she had spent two very happy months with them,
and now loved to talk of the pleasures of her visit, and describe
the many comforts and wonders of the place. Emma encouraged her
talkativeness--amused by such a picture of another set of beings,
and enjoying the youthful simplicity which could speak with so much
exultation of Mrs. Martin's having “_two_ parlours, two very good
parlours, indeed; one of them quite as large as Mrs. Goddard's
drawing-room; and of her having an upper maid who had lived
five-and-twenty years with her; and of their having eight cows, two of
them Alderneys, and one a little Welch cow, a very pretty little Welch
cow indeed; and of Mrs. Martin's saying as she was so fond of it,
it should be called _her_ cow; and of their having a very handsome
summer-house in their garden, where some day next year they were all to
drink tea:--a very handsome summer-house, large enough to hold a dozen
people.”

For some time she was amused, without thinking beyond the immediate
cause; but as she came to understand the family better, other feelings
arose. She had taken up a wrong idea, fancying it was a mother and
daughter, a son and son's wife, who all lived together; but when it
appeared that the Mr. Martin, who bore a part in the narrative, and was
always mentioned with approbation for his great good-nature in doing
something or other, was a single man; that there was no young Mrs.
Martin, no wife in the case; she did suspect danger to her poor little
friend from all this hospitality and kindness, and that, if she were not
taken care of, she might be required to sink herself forever.

With this inspiriting notion, her questions increased in number and
meaning; and she particularly led Harriet to talk more of Mr. Martin,
and there was evidently no dislike to it. Harriet was very ready to
speak of the share he had had in their moonlight walks and merry evening
games; and dwelt a good deal upon his being so very good-humoured and
obliging. He had gone three miles round one day in order to bring her
some walnuts, because she had said how fond she was of them, and in
every thing else he was so very obliging. He had his shepherd's son into
the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her. She was very fond
of singing. He could sing a little himself. She believed he was very
clever, and understood every thing. He had a very fine flock, and, while
she was with them, he had been bid more for his wool than any body in
the country. She believed every body spoke well of him. His mother and
sisters were very fond of him. Mrs. Martin had told her one day (and
there was a blush as she said it,) that it was impossible for any body
to be a better son, and therefore she was sure, whenever he married, he
would make a good husband. Not that she _wanted_ him to marry. She was
in no hurry at all.

“Well done, Mrs. Martin!” thought Emma. “You know what you are about.”

“And when she had come away, Mrs. Martin was so very kind as to send
Mrs. Goddard a beautiful goose--the finest goose Mrs. Goddard had ever
seen. Mrs. Goddard had dressed it on a Sunday, and asked all the three
teachers, Miss Nash, and Miss Prince, and Miss Richardson, to sup with
her.”

“Mr. Martin, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of
his own business? He does not read?”

“Oh yes!--that is, no--I do not know--but I believe he has read a
good deal--but not what you would think any thing of. He reads the
Agricultural Reports, and some other books that lay in one of the window
seats--but he reads all _them_ to himself. But sometimes of an evening,
before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of the
Elegant Extracts, very entertaining. And I know he has read the Vicar of
Wakefield. He never read the Romance of the Forest, nor The Children of
the Abbey. He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but
he is determined to get them now as soon as ever he can.”

The next question was--

“What sort of looking man is Mr. Martin?”

“Oh! not handsome--not at all handsome. I thought him very plain at
first, but I do not think him so plain now. One does not, you know,
after a time. But did you never see him? He is in Highbury every now and
then, and he is sure to ride through every week in his way to Kingston.
He has passed you very often.”

“That may be, and I may have seen him fifty times, but without having
any idea of his name. A young farmer, whether on horseback or on foot,
is the very last sort of person to raise my curiosity. The yeomanry are
precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do.
A degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance might interest me;
I might hope to be useful to their families in some way or other. But
a farmer can need none of my help, and is, therefore, in one sense, as
much above my notice as in every other he is below it.”

“To be sure. Oh yes! It is not likely you should ever have observed him;
but he knows you very well indeed--I mean by sight.”

“I have no doubt of his being a very respectable young man. I know,
indeed, that he is so, and, as such, wish him well. What do you imagine
his age to be?”

“He was four-and-twenty the 8th of last June, and my birthday is the
23rd just a fortnight and a day's difference--which is very odd.”

“Only four-and-twenty. That is too young to settle. His mother is
perfectly right not to be in a hurry. They seem very comfortable as they
are, and if she were to take any pains to marry him, she would probably
repent it. Six years hence, if he could meet with a good sort of young
woman in the same rank as his own, with a little money, it might be very
desirable.”

“Six years hence! Dear Miss Woodhouse, he would be thirty years old!”

“Well, and that is as early as most men can afford to marry, who are not
born to an independence. Mr. Martin, I imagine, has his fortune entirely
to make--cannot be at all beforehand with the world. Whatever money he
might come into when his father died, whatever his share of the family
property, it is, I dare say, all afloat, all employed in his stock, and
so forth; and though, with diligence and good luck, he may be rich in
time, it is next to impossible that he should have realised any thing
yet.”

“To be sure, so it is. But they live very comfortably. They have no
indoors man, else they do not want for any thing; and Mrs. Martin talks
of taking a boy another year.”

“I wish you may not get into a scrape, Harriet, whenever he does
marry;--I mean, as to being acquainted with his wife--for though his
sisters, from a superior education, are not to be altogether objected
to, it does not follow that he might marry any body at all fit for you
to notice. The misfortune of your birth ought to make you particularly
careful as to your associates. There can be no doubt of your being a
gentleman's daughter, and you must support your claim to that station by
every thing within your own power, or there will be plenty of people who
would take pleasure in degrading you.”

“Yes, to be sure, I suppose there are. But while I visit at Hartfield,
and you are so kind to me, Miss Woodhouse, I am not afraid of what any
body can do.”

“You understand the force of influence pretty well, Harriet; but I would
have you so firmly established in good society, as to be independent
even of Hartfield and Miss Woodhouse. I want to see you permanently
well connected, and to that end it will be advisable to have as few odd
acquaintance as may be; and, therefore, I say that if you should still
be in this country when Mr. Martin marries, I wish you may not be drawn
in by your intimacy with the sisters, to be acquainted with the wife,
who will probably be some mere farmer's daughter, without education.”

“To be sure. Yes. Not that I think Mr. Martin would ever marry any body
but what had had some education--and been very well brought up. However,
I do not mean to set up my opinion against yours--and I am sure I shall
not wish for the acquaintance of his wife. I shall always have a great
regard for the Miss Martins, especially Elizabeth, and should be very
sorry to give them up, for they are quite as well educated as me. But
if he marries a very ignorant, vulgar woman, certainly I had better not
visit her, if I can help it.”

Emma watched her through the fluctuations of this speech, and saw no
alarming symptoms of love. The young man had been the first admirer, but
she trusted there was no other hold, and that there would be no serious
difficulty, on Harriet's side, to oppose any friendly arrangement of her
own.

They met Mr. Martin the very next day, as they were walking on the
Donwell road. He was on foot, and after looking very respectfully at
her, looked with most unfeigned satisfaction at her companion. Emma was
not sorry to have such an opportunity of survey; and walking a few
yards forward, while they talked together, soon made her quick eye
sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Robert Martin. His appearance was very
neat, and he looked like a sensible young man, but his person had no
other advantage; and when he came to be contrasted with gentlemen,
she thought he must lose all the ground he had gained in Harriet's
inclination. Harriet was not insensible of manner; she had voluntarily
noticed her father's gentleness with admiration as well as wonder. Mr.
Martin looked as if he did not know what manner was.

They remained but a few minutes together, as Miss Woodhouse must not be
kept waiting; and Harriet then came running to her with a smiling face,
and in a flutter of spirits, which Miss Woodhouse hoped very soon to
compose.

“Only think of our happening to meet him!--How very odd! It was quite
a chance, he said, that he had not gone round by Randalls. He did not
think we ever walked this road. He thought we walked towards Randalls
most days. He has not been able to get the Romance of the Forest yet.
He was so busy the last time he was at Kingston that he quite forgot it,
but he goes again to-morrow. So very odd we should happen to meet! Well,
Miss Woodhouse, is he like what you expected? What do you think of him?
Do you think him so very plain?”

“He is very plain, undoubtedly--remarkably plain:--but that is nothing
compared with his entire want of gentility. I had no right to expect
much, and I did not expect much; but I had no idea that he could be so
very clownish, so totally without air. I had imagined him, I confess, a
degree or two nearer gentility.”

“To be sure,” said Harriet, in a mortified voice, “he is not so genteel
as real gentlemen.”

“I think, Harriet, since your acquaintance with us, you have been
repeatedly in the company of some such very real gentlemen, that you
must yourself be struck with the difference in Mr. Martin. At Hartfield,
you have had very good specimens of well educated, well bred men. I
should be surprized if, after seeing them, you could be in company
with Mr. Martin again without perceiving him to be a very inferior
creature--and rather wondering at yourself for having ever thought him
at all agreeable before. Do not you begin to feel that now? Were not
you struck? I am sure you must have been struck by his awkward look and
abrupt manner, and the uncouthness of a voice which I heard to be wholly
unmodulated as I stood here.”

“Certainly, he is not like Mr. Knightley. He has not such a fine air and
way of walking as Mr. Knightley. I see the difference plain enough. But
Mr. Knightley is so very fine a man!”

“Mr. Knightley's air is so remarkably good that it is not fair to
compare Mr. Martin with _him_. You might not see one in a hundred with
_gentleman_ so plainly written as in Mr. Knightley. But he is not the
only gentleman you have been lately used to. What say you to Mr. Weston
and Mr. Elton? Compare Mr. Martin with either of _them_. Compare their
manner of carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking; of being silent.
You must see the difference.”

“Oh yes!--there is a great difference. But Mr. Weston is almost an old
man. Mr. Weston must be between forty and fifty.”

“Which makes his good manners the more valuable. The older a person
grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not
be bad; the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or
awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth is detestable in later
age. Mr. Martin is now awkward and abrupt; what will he be at Mr.
Weston's time of life?”

“There is no saying, indeed,” replied Harriet rather solemnly.

“But there may be pretty good guessing. He will be a completely gross,
vulgar farmer, totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of
nothing but profit and loss.”

“Will he, indeed? That will be very bad.”

“How much his business engrosses him already is very plain from the
circumstance of his forgetting to inquire for the book you recommended.
He was a great deal too full of the market to think of any thing
else--which is just as it should be, for a thriving man. What has he to
do with books? And I have no doubt that he _will_ thrive, and be a very
rich man in time--and his being illiterate and coarse need not disturb
_us_.”

“I wonder he did not remember the book”--was all Harriet's answer, and
spoken with a degree of grave displeasure which Emma thought might be
safely left to itself. She, therefore, said no more for some time. Her
next beginning was,

“In one respect, perhaps, Mr. Elton's manners are superior to Mr.
Knightley's or Mr. Weston's. They have more gentleness. They might be
more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness,
almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body likes in _him_,
because there is so much good-humour with it--but that would not do to
be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley's downright, decided, commanding
sort of manner, though it suits _him_ very well; his figure, and look,
and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to set
about copying him, he would not be sufferable. On the contrary, I think
a young man might be very safely recommended to take Mr. Elton as a
model. Mr. Elton is good-humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle.
He seems to me to be grown particularly gentle of late. I do not know
whether he has any design of ingratiating himself with either of us,
Harriet, by additional softness, but it strikes me that his manners are
softer than they used to be. If he means any thing, it must be to please
you. Did not I tell you what he said of you the other day?”

She then repeated some warm personal praise which she had drawn from Mr.
Elton, and now did full justice to; and Harriet blushed and smiled, and
said she had always thought Mr. Elton very agreeable.

Mr. Elton was the very person fixed on by Emma for driving the young
farmer out of Harriet's head. She thought it would be an excellent
match; and only too palpably desirable, natural, and probable, for her
to have much merit in planning it. She feared it was what every body
else must think of and predict. It was not likely, however, that any
body should have equalled her in the date of the plan, as it had
entered her brain during the very first evening of Harriet's coming to
Hartfield. The longer she considered it, the greater was her sense
of its expediency. Mr. Elton's situation was most suitable, quite the
gentleman himself, and without low connexions; at the same time, not of
any family that could fairly object to the doubtful birth of Harriet.
He had a comfortable home for her, and Emma imagined a very sufficient
income; for though the vicarage of Highbury was not large, he was known
to have some independent property; and she thought very highly of him
as a good-humoured, well-meaning, respectable young man, without any
deficiency of useful understanding or knowledge of the world.

She had already satisfied herself that he thought Harriet a beautiful
girl, which she trusted, with such frequent meetings at Hartfield, was
foundation enough on his side; and on Harriet's there could be little
doubt that the idea of being preferred by him would have all the usual
weight and efficacy. And he was really a very pleasing young man, a
young man whom any woman not fastidious might like. He was reckoned very
handsome; his person much admired in general, though not by her,
there being a want of elegance of feature which she could not dispense
with:--but the girl who could be gratified by a Robert Martin's riding
about the country to get walnuts for her might very well be conquered by
Mr. Elton's admiration.



CHAPTER V


“I do not know what your opinion may be, Mrs. Weston,” said Mr.
Knightley, “of this great intimacy between Emma and Harriet Smith, but I
think it a bad thing.”

“A bad thing! Do you really think it a bad thing?--why so?”

“I think they will neither of them do the other any good.”

“You surprize me! Emma must do Harriet good: and by supplying her with a
new object of interest, Harriet may be said to do Emma good. I have been
seeing their intimacy with the greatest pleasure. How very differently
we feel!--Not think they will do each other any good! This will
certainly be the beginning of one of our quarrels about Emma, Mr.
Knightley.”

“Perhaps you think I am come on purpose to quarrel with you, knowing
Weston to be out, and that you must still fight your own battle.”

“Mr. Weston would undoubtedly support me, if he were here, for he thinks
exactly as I do on the subject. We were speaking of it only yesterday,
and agreeing how fortunate it was for Emma, that there should be such a
girl in Highbury for her to associate with. Mr. Knightley, I shall not
allow you to be a fair judge in this case. You are so much used to live
alone, that you do not know the value of a companion; and, perhaps no
man can be a good judge of the comfort a woman feels in the society of
one of her own sex, after being used to it all her life. I can imagine
your objection to Harriet Smith. She is not the superior young woman
which Emma's friend ought to be. But on the other hand, as Emma wants
to see her better informed, it will be an inducement to her to read more
herself. They will read together. She means it, I know.”

“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old.
I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of
books that she meant to read regularly through--and very good lists
they were--very well chosen, and very neatly arranged--sometimes
alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew
up when only fourteen--I remember thinking it did her judgment so much
credit, that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made
out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of
steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing
requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the
understanding. Where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate, I may safely
affirm that Harriet Smith will do nothing.--You never could persuade her
to read half so much as you wished.--You know you could not.”

“I dare say,” replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, “that I thought so
_then_;--but since we have parted, I can never remember Emma's omitting
to do any thing I wished.”

“There is hardly any desiring to refresh such a memory as _that_,”--said
Mr. Knightley, feelingly; and for a moment or two he had done. “But I,”
 he soon added, “who have had no such charm thrown over my senses, must
still see, hear, and remember. Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest
of her family. At ten years old, she had the misfortune of being able to
answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was always
quick and assured: Isabella slow and diffident. And ever since she
was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all. In her
mother she lost the only person able to cope with her. She inherits her
mother's talents, and must have been under subjection to her.”

“I should have been sorry, Mr. Knightley, to be dependent on _your_
recommendation, had I quitted Mr. Woodhouse's family and wanted another
situation; I do not think you would have spoken a good word for me to
any body. I am sure you always thought me unfit for the office I held.”

“Yes,” said he, smiling. “You are better placed _here_; very fit for a
wife, but not at all for a governess. But you were preparing yourself to
be an excellent wife all the time you were at Hartfield. You might
not give Emma such a complete education as your powers would seem to
promise; but you were receiving a very good education from _her_, on the
very material matrimonial point of submitting your own will, and doing
as you were bid; and if Weston had asked me to recommend him a wife, I
should certainly have named Miss Taylor.”

“Thank you. There will be very little merit in making a good wife to
such a man as Mr. Weston.”

“Why, to own the truth, I am afraid you are rather thrown away, and that
with every disposition to bear, there will be nothing to be borne. We
will not despair, however. Weston may grow cross from the wantonness of
comfort, or his son may plague him.”

“I hope not _that_.--It is not likely. No, Mr. Knightley, do not
foretell vexation from that quarter.”

“Not I, indeed. I only name possibilities. I do not pretend to Emma's
genius for foretelling and guessing. I hope, with all my heart, the
young man may be a Weston in merit, and a Churchill in fortune.--But
Harriet Smith--I have not half done about Harriet Smith. I think her the
very worst sort of companion that Emma could possibly have. She knows
nothing herself, and looks upon Emma as knowing every thing. She is a
flatterer in all her ways; and so much the worse, because undesigned.
Her ignorance is hourly flattery. How can Emma imagine she has any
thing to learn herself, while Harriet is presenting such a delightful
inferiority? And as for Harriet, I will venture to say that _she_ cannot
gain by the acquaintance. Hartfield will only put her out of conceit
with all the other places she belongs to. She will grow just refined
enough to be uncomfortable with those among whom birth and circumstances
have placed her home. I am much mistaken if Emma's doctrines give any
strength of mind, or tend at all to make a girl adapt herself rationally
to the varieties of her situation in life.--They only give a little
polish.”

“I either depend more upon Emma's good sense than you do, or am more
anxious for her present comfort; for I cannot lament the acquaintance.
How well she looked last night!”

“Oh! you would rather talk of her person than her mind, would you? Very
well; I shall not attempt to deny Emma's being pretty.”

“Pretty! say beautiful rather. Can you imagine any thing nearer perfect
beauty than Emma altogether--face and figure?”

“I do not know what I could imagine, but I confess that I have seldom
seen a face or figure more pleasing to me than hers. But I am a partial
old friend.”

“Such an eye!--the true hazle eye--and so brilliant! regular features,
open countenance, with a complexion! oh! what a bloom of full health,
and such a pretty height and size; such a firm and upright figure!
There is health, not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her head, her
glance. One hears sometimes of a child being 'the picture of health;'
now, Emma always gives me the idea of being the complete picture of
grown-up health. She is loveliness itself. Mr. Knightley, is not she?”

“I have not a fault to find with her person,” he replied. “I think her
all you describe. I love to look at her; and I will add this praise,
that I do not think her personally vain. Considering how very handsome
she is, she appears to be little occupied with it; her vanity lies
another way. Mrs. Weston, I am not to be talked out of my dislike of
Harriet Smith, or my dread of its doing them both harm.”

“And I, Mr. Knightley, am equally stout in my confidence of its not
doing them any harm. With all dear Emma's little faults, she is an
excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder
sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which may be
trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no
lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred
times.”

“Very well; I will not plague you any more. Emma shall be an angel, and
I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings John and Isabella.
John loves Emma with a reasonable and therefore not a blind affection,
and Isabella always thinks as he does; except when he is not quite
frightened enough about the children. I am sure of having their opinions
with me.”

“I know that you all love her really too well to be unjust or unkind;
but excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if I take the liberty (I consider myself,
you know, as having somewhat of the privilege of speech that Emma's
mother might have had) the liberty of hinting that I do not think any
possible good can arise from Harriet Smith's intimacy being made a
matter of much discussion among you. Pray excuse me; but supposing any
little inconvenience may be apprehended from the intimacy, it cannot be
expected that Emma, accountable to nobody but her father, who perfectly
approves the acquaintance, should put an end to it, so long as it is a
source of pleasure to herself. It has been so many years my province to
give advice, that you cannot be surprized, Mr. Knightley, at this little
remains of office.”

“Not at all,” cried he; “I am much obliged to you for it. It is very
good advice, and it shall have a better fate than your advice has often
found; for it shall be attended to.”

“Mrs. John Knightley is easily alarmed, and might be made unhappy about
her sister.”

“Be satisfied,” said he, “I will not raise any outcry. I will keep my
ill-humour to myself. I have a very sincere interest in Emma. Isabella
does not seem more my sister; has never excited a greater interest;
perhaps hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one
feels for Emma. I wonder what will become of her!”

“So do I,” said Mrs. Weston gently, “very much.”

“She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just
nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she
cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love
with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some
doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts
to attach her; and she goes so seldom from home.”

“There does, indeed, seem as little to tempt her to break her resolution
at present,” said Mrs. Weston, “as can well be; and while she is so
happy at Hartfield, I cannot wish her to be forming any attachment which
would be creating such difficulties on poor Mr. Woodhouse's account. I
do not recommend matrimony at present to Emma, though I mean no slight
to the state, I assure you.”

Part of her meaning was to conceal some favourite thoughts of her own
and Mr. Weston's on the subject, as much as possible. There were wishes
at Randalls respecting Emma's destiny, but it was not desirable to
have them suspected; and the quiet transition which Mr. Knightley soon
afterwards made to “What does Weston think of the weather; shall we have
rain?” convinced her that he had nothing more to say or surmise about
Hartfield.



CHAPTER VI


Emma could not feel a doubt of having given Harriet's fancy a proper
direction and raised the gratitude of her young vanity to a very good
purpose, for she found her decidedly more sensible than before of Mr.
Elton's being a remarkably handsome man, with most agreeable manners;
and as she had no hesitation in following up the assurance of his
admiration by agreeable hints, she was soon pretty confident of creating
as much liking on Harriet's side, as there could be any occasion for.
She was quite convinced of Mr. Elton's being in the fairest way of
falling in love, if not in love already. She had no scruple with regard
to him. He talked of Harriet, and praised her so warmly, that she could
not suppose any thing wanting which a little time would not add. His
perception of the striking improvement of Harriet's manner, since her
introduction at Hartfield, was not one of the least agreeable proofs of
his growing attachment.

“You have given Miss Smith all that she required,” said he; “you have
made her graceful and easy. She was a beautiful creature when she
came to you, but, in my opinion, the attractions you have added are
infinitely superior to what she received from nature.”

“I am glad you think I have been useful to her; but Harriet only wanted
drawing out, and receiving a few, very few hints. She had all the
natural grace of sweetness of temper and artlessness in herself. I have
done very little.”

“If it were admissible to contradict a lady,” said the gallant Mr.
Elton--

“I have perhaps given her a little more decision of character, have
taught her to think on points which had not fallen in her way before.”

“Exactly so; that is what principally strikes me. So much superadded
decision of character! Skilful has been the hand!”

“Great has been the pleasure, I am sure. I never met with a disposition
more truly amiable.”

“I have no doubt of it.” And it was spoken with a sort of sighing
animation, which had a vast deal of the lover. She was not less pleased
another day with the manner in which he seconded a sudden wish of hers,
to have Harriet's picture.

“Did you ever have your likeness taken, Harriet?” said she: “did you
ever sit for your picture?”

Harriet was on the point of leaving the room, and only stopt to say,
with a very interesting naivete,

“Oh! dear, no, never.”

No sooner was she out of sight, than Emma exclaimed,

“What an exquisite possession a good picture of her would be! I would
give any money for it. I almost long to attempt her likeness myself.
You do not know it I dare say, but two or three years ago I had a great
passion for taking likenesses, and attempted several of my friends, and
was thought to have a tolerable eye in general. But from one cause or
another, I gave it up in disgust. But really, I could almost venture,
if Harriet would sit to me. It would be such a delight to have her
picture!”

“Let me entreat you,” cried Mr. Elton; “it would indeed be a delight!
Let me entreat you, Miss Woodhouse, to exercise so charming a talent
in favour of your friend. I know what your drawings are. How could
you suppose me ignorant? Is not this room rich in specimens of your
landscapes and flowers; and has not Mrs. Weston some inimitable
figure-pieces in her drawing-room, at Randalls?”

Yes, good man!--thought Emma--but what has all that to do with taking
likenesses? You know nothing of drawing. Don't pretend to be in raptures
about mine. Keep your raptures for Harriet's face. “Well, if you give me
such kind encouragement, Mr. Elton, I believe I shall try what I can do.
Harriet's features are very delicate, which makes a likeness difficult;
and yet there is a peculiarity in the shape of the eye and the lines
about the mouth which one ought to catch.”

“Exactly so--The shape of the eye and the lines about the mouth--I have
not a doubt of your success. Pray, pray attempt it. As you will do it,
it will indeed, to use your own words, be an exquisite possession.”

“But I am afraid, Mr. Elton, Harriet will not like to sit. She thinks
so little of her own beauty. Did not you observe her manner of answering
me? How completely it meant, 'why should my picture be drawn?'”

“Oh! yes, I observed it, I assure you. It was not lost on me. But still
I cannot imagine she would not be persuaded.”

Harriet was soon back again, and the proposal almost immediately made;
and she had no scruples which could stand many minutes against the
earnest pressing of both the others. Emma wished to go to work directly,
and therefore produced the portfolio containing her various attempts at
portraits, for not one of them had ever been finished, that they might
decide together on the best size for Harriet. Her many beginnings were
displayed. Miniatures, half-lengths, whole-lengths, pencil, crayon, and
water-colours had been all tried in turn. She had always wanted to do
every thing, and had made more progress both in drawing and music than
many might have done with so little labour as she would ever submit to.
She played and sang;--and drew in almost every style; but steadiness
had always been wanting; and in nothing had she approached the degree of
excellence which she would have been glad to command, and ought not to
have failed of. She was not much deceived as to her own skill either
as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others
deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often
higher than it deserved.

There was merit in every drawing--in the least finished, perhaps the
most; her style was spirited; but had there been much less, or had there
been ten times more, the delight and admiration of her two companions
would have been the same. They were both in ecstasies. A likeness
pleases every body; and Miss Woodhouse's performances must be capital.

“No great variety of faces for you,” said Emma. “I had only my own
family to study from. There is my father--another of my father--but the
idea of sitting for his picture made him so nervous, that I could only
take him by stealth; neither of them very like therefore. Mrs. Weston
again, and again, and again, you see. Dear Mrs. Weston! always my
kindest friend on every occasion. She would sit whenever I asked her.
There is my sister; and really quite her own little elegant figure!--and
the face not unlike. I should have made a good likeness of her, if she
would have sat longer, but she was in such a hurry to have me draw
her four children that she would not be quiet. Then, here come all my
attempts at three of those four children;--there they are, Henry and
John and Bella, from one end of the sheet to the other, and any one of
them might do for any one of the rest. She was so eager to have them
drawn that I could not refuse; but there is no making children of three
or four years old stand still you know; nor can it be very easy to take
any likeness of them, beyond the air and complexion, unless they are
coarser featured than any of mama's children ever were. Here is my
sketch of the fourth, who was a baby. I took him as he was sleeping on
the sofa, and it is as strong a likeness of his cockade as you would
wish to see. He had nestled down his head most conveniently. That's very
like. I am rather proud of little George. The corner of the sofa is very
good. Then here is my last,”--unclosing a pretty sketch of a gentleman
in small size, whole-length--“my last and my best--my brother, Mr. John
Knightley.--This did not want much of being finished, when I put it away
in a pet, and vowed I would never take another likeness. I could not
help being provoked; for after all my pains, and when I had really made
a very good likeness of it--(Mrs. Weston and I were quite agreed in
thinking it _very_ like)--only too handsome--too flattering--but
that was a fault on the right side”--after all this, came poor dear
Isabella's cold approbation of--“Yes, it was a little like--but to be
sure it did not do him justice. We had had a great deal of trouble
in persuading him to sit at all. It was made a great favour of; and
altogether it was more than I could bear; and so I never would finish
it, to have it apologised over as an unfavourable likeness, to every
morning visitor in Brunswick Square;--and, as I said, I did then
forswear ever drawing any body again. But for Harriet's sake, or rather
for my own, and as there are no husbands and wives in the case _at_
_present_, I will break my resolution now.”

Mr. Elton seemed very properly struck and delighted by the idea, and was
repeating, “No husbands and wives in the case at present indeed, as
you observe. Exactly so. No husbands and wives,” with so interesting a
consciousness, that Emma began to consider whether she had not better
leave them together at once. But as she wanted to be drawing, the
declaration must wait a little longer.

She had soon fixed on the size and sort of portrait. It was to be
a whole-length in water-colours, like Mr. John Knightley's, and was
destined, if she could please herself, to hold a very honourable station
over the mantelpiece.

The sitting began; and Harriet, smiling and blushing, and afraid of not
keeping her attitude and countenance, presented a very sweet mixture of
youthful expression to the steady eyes of the artist. But there was no
doing any thing, with Mr. Elton fidgeting behind her and watching every
touch. She gave him credit for stationing himself where he might gaze
and gaze again without offence; but was really obliged to put an end to
it, and request him to place himself elsewhere. It then occurred to her
to employ him in reading.

“If he would be so good as to read to them, it would be a kindness
indeed! It would amuse away the difficulties of her part, and lessen the
irksomeness of Miss Smith's.”

Mr. Elton was only too happy. Harriet listened, and Emma drew in peace.
She must allow him to be still frequently coming to look; any thing less
would certainly have been too little in a lover; and he was ready at the
smallest intermission of the pencil, to jump up and see the progress,
and be charmed.--There was no being displeased with such an encourager,
for his admiration made him discern a likeness almost before it
was possible. She could not respect his eye, but his love and his
complaisance were unexceptionable.

The sitting was altogether very satisfactory; she was quite enough
pleased with the first day's sketch to wish to go on. There was no want
of likeness, she had been fortunate in the attitude, and as she meant
to throw in a little improvement to the figure, to give a little more
height, and considerably more elegance, she had great confidence of
its being in every way a pretty drawing at last, and of its filling
its destined place with credit to them both--a standing memorial of the
beauty of one, the skill of the other, and the friendship of both;
with as many other agreeable associations as Mr. Elton's very promising
attachment was likely to add.

Harriet was to sit again the next day; and Mr. Elton, just as he ought,
entreated for the permission of attending and reading to them again.

“By all means. We shall be most happy to consider you as one of the
party.”

The same civilities and courtesies, the same success and satisfaction,
took place on the morrow, and accompanied the whole progress of the
picture, which was rapid and happy. Every body who saw it was pleased,
but Mr. Elton was in continual raptures, and defended it through every
criticism.

“Miss Woodhouse has given her friend the only beauty she
wanted,”--observed Mrs. Weston to him--not in the least suspecting that
she was addressing a lover.--“The expression of the eye is most correct,
but Miss Smith has not those eyebrows and eyelashes. It is the fault of
her face that she has them not.”

“Do you think so?” replied he. “I cannot agree with you. It appears
to me a most perfect resemblance in every feature. I never saw such a
likeness in my life. We must allow for the effect of shade, you know.”

“You have made her too tall, Emma,” said Mr. Knightley.

Emma knew that she had, but would not own it; and Mr. Elton warmly
added,

“Oh no! certainly not too tall; not in the least too tall. Consider, she
is sitting down--which naturally presents a different--which in short
gives exactly the idea--and the proportions must be preserved, you know.
Proportions, fore-shortening.--Oh no! it gives one exactly the idea of
such a height as Miss Smith's. Exactly so indeed!”

“It is very pretty,” said Mr. Woodhouse. “So prettily done! Just as your
drawings always are, my dear. I do not know any body who draws so well
as you do. The only thing I do not thoroughly like is, that she seems
to be sitting out of doors, with only a little shawl over her
shoulders--and it makes one think she must catch cold.”

“But, my dear papa, it is supposed to be summer; a warm day in summer.
Look at the tree.”

“But it is never safe to sit out of doors, my dear.”

“You, sir, may say any thing,” cried Mr. Elton, “but I must confess that
I regard it as a most happy thought, the placing of Miss Smith out of
doors; and the tree is touched with such inimitable spirit! Any other
situation would have been much less in character. The naivete of Miss
Smith's manners--and altogether--Oh, it is most admirable! I cannot keep
my eyes from it. I never saw such a likeness.”

The next thing wanted was to get the picture framed; and here were a few
difficulties. It must be done directly; it must be done in London; the
order must go through the hands of some intelligent person whose taste
could be depended on; and Isabella, the usual doer of all commissions,
must not be applied to, because it was December, and Mr. Woodhouse
could not bear the idea of her stirring out of her house in the fogs of
December. But no sooner was the distress known to Mr. Elton, than it
was removed. His gallantry was always on the alert. “Might he be trusted
with the commission, what infinite pleasure should he have in executing
it! he could ride to London at any time. It was impossible to say how
much he should be gratified by being employed on such an errand.”

“He was too good!--she could not endure the thought!--she would not give
him such a troublesome office for the world,”--brought on the desired
repetition of entreaties and assurances,--and a very few minutes settled
the business.

Mr. Elton was to take the drawing to London, chuse the frame, and give
the directions; and Emma thought she could so pack it as to ensure its
safety without much incommoding him, while he seemed mostly fearful of
not being incommoded enough.

“What a precious deposit!” said he with a tender sigh, as he received
it.

“This man is almost too gallant to be in love,” thought Emma. “I should
say so, but that I suppose there may be a hundred different ways of
being in love. He is an excellent young man, and will suit Harriet
exactly; it will be an 'Exactly so,' as he says himself; but he does
sigh and languish, and study for compliments rather more than I could
endure as a principal. I come in for a pretty good share as a second.
But it is his gratitude on Harriet's account.”



CHAPTER VII


The very day of Mr. Elton's going to London produced a fresh occasion
for Emma's services towards her friend. Harriet had been at Hartfield,
as usual, soon after breakfast; and, after a time, had gone home to
return again to dinner: she returned, and sooner than had been
talked of, and with an agitated, hurried look, announcing something
extraordinary to have happened which she was longing to tell. Half a
minute brought it all out. She had heard, as soon as she got back to
Mrs. Goddard's, that Mr. Martin had been there an hour before, and
finding she was not at home, nor particularly expected, had left a
little parcel for her from one of his sisters, and gone away; and on
opening this parcel, she had actually found, besides the two songs which
she had lent Elizabeth to copy, a letter to herself; and this letter was
from him, from Mr. Martin, and contained a direct proposal of marriage.
“Who could have thought it? She was so surprized she did not know what
to do. Yes, quite a proposal of marriage; and a very good letter,
at least she thought so. And he wrote as if he really loved her very
much--but she did not know--and so, she was come as fast as she could to
ask Miss Woodhouse what she should do.--” Emma was half-ashamed of her
friend for seeming so pleased and so doubtful.

“Upon my word,” she cried, “the young man is determined not to lose any
thing for want of asking. He will connect himself well if he can.”

“Will you read the letter?” cried Harriet. “Pray do. I'd rather you
would.”

Emma was not sorry to be pressed. She read, and was surprized. The style
of the letter was much above her expectation. There were not merely no
grammatical errors, but as a composition it would not have disgraced a
gentleman; the language, though plain, was strong and unaffected, and
the sentiments it conveyed very much to the credit of the writer. It was
short, but expressed good sense, warm attachment, liberality, propriety,
even delicacy of feeling. She paused over it, while Harriet stood
anxiously watching for her opinion, with a “Well, well,” and was at last
forced to add, “Is it a good letter? or is it too short?”

“Yes, indeed, a very good letter,” replied Emma rather slowly--“so
good a letter, Harriet, that every thing considered, I think one of his
sisters must have helped him. I can hardly imagine the young man whom
I saw talking with you the other day could express himself so well, if
left quite to his own powers, and yet it is not the style of a woman;
no, certainly, it is too strong and concise; not diffuse enough for a
woman. No doubt he is a sensible man, and I suppose may have a natural
talent for--thinks strongly and clearly--and when he takes a pen in
hand, his thoughts naturally find proper words. It is so with some men.
Yes, I understand the sort of mind. Vigorous, decided, with sentiments
to a certain point, not coarse. A better written letter, Harriet
(returning it,) than I had expected.”

“Well,” said the still waiting Harriet;--“well--and--and what shall I
do?”

“What shall you do! In what respect? Do you mean with regard to this
letter?”

“Yes.”

“But what are you in doubt of? You must answer it of course--and
speedily.”

“Yes. But what shall I say? Dear Miss Woodhouse, do advise me.”

“Oh no, no! the letter had much better be all your own. You will express
yourself very properly, I am sure. There is no danger of your not
being intelligible, which is the first thing. Your meaning must be
unequivocal; no doubts or demurs: and such expressions of gratitude
and concern for the pain you are inflicting as propriety requires, will
present themselves unbidden to _your_ mind, I am persuaded. You need
not be prompted to write with the appearance of sorrow for his
disappointment.”

“You think I ought to refuse him then,” said Harriet, looking down.

“Ought to refuse him! My dear Harriet, what do you mean? Are you in any
doubt as to that? I thought--but I beg your pardon, perhaps I have been
under a mistake. I certainly have been misunderstanding you, if you feel
in doubt as to the _purport_ of your answer. I had imagined you were
consulting me only as to the wording of it.”

Harriet was silent. With a little reserve of manner, Emma continued:

“You mean to return a favourable answer, I collect.”

“No, I do not; that is, I do not mean--What shall I do? What would you
advise me to do? Pray, dear Miss Woodhouse, tell me what I ought to do.”

“I shall not give you any advice, Harriet. I will have nothing to do
with it. This is a point which you must settle with your feelings.”

“I had no notion that he liked me so very much,” said Harriet,
contemplating the letter. For a little while Emma persevered in her
silence; but beginning to apprehend the bewitching flattery of that
letter might be too powerful, she thought it best to say,

“I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman _doubts_ as
to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse
him. If she can hesitate as to 'Yes,' she ought to say 'No' directly.
It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with
half a heart. I thought it my duty as a friend, and older than yourself,
to say thus much to you. But do not imagine that I want to influence
you.”

“Oh! no, I am sure you are a great deal too kind to--but if you would
just advise me what I had best do--No, no, I do not mean that--As
you say, one's mind ought to be quite made up--One should not be
hesitating--It is a very serious thing.--It will be safer to say 'No,'
perhaps.--Do you think I had better say 'No?'”

“Not for the world,” said Emma, smiling graciously, “would I advise you
either way. You must be the best judge of your own happiness. If you
prefer Mr. Martin to every other person; if you think him the most
agreeable man you have ever been in company with, why should you
hesitate? You blush, Harriet.--Does any body else occur to you at
this moment under such a definition? Harriet, Harriet, do not deceive
yourself; do not be run away with by gratitude and compassion. At this
moment whom are you thinking of?”

The symptoms were favourable.--Instead of answering, Harriet turned away
confused, and stood thoughtfully by the fire; and though the letter was
still in her hand, it was now mechanically twisted about without regard.
Emma waited the result with impatience, but not without strong hopes. At
last, with some hesitation, Harriet said--

“Miss Woodhouse, as you will not give me your opinion, I must do as well
as I can by myself; and I have now quite determined, and really almost
made up my mind--to refuse Mr. Martin. Do you think I am right?”

“Perfectly, perfectly right, my dearest Harriet; you are doing just
what you ought. While you were at all in suspense I kept my feelings to
myself, but now that you are so completely decided I have no hesitation
in approving. Dear Harriet, I give myself joy of this. It would
have grieved me to lose your acquaintance, which must have been the
consequence of your marrying Mr. Martin. While you were in the smallest
degree wavering, I said nothing about it, because I would not influence;
but it would have been the loss of a friend to me. I could not have
visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey-Mill Farm. Now I am secure of you
for ever.”

Harriet had not surmised her own danger, but the idea of it struck her
forcibly.

“You could not have visited me!” she cried, looking aghast. “No, to be
sure you could not; but I never thought of that before. That would have
been too dreadful!--What an escape!--Dear Miss Woodhouse, I would not
give up the pleasure and honour of being intimate with you for any thing
in the world.”

“Indeed, Harriet, it would have been a severe pang to lose you; but it
must have been. You would have thrown yourself out of all good society.
I must have given you up.”

“Dear me!--How should I ever have borne it! It would have killed me
never to come to Hartfield any more!”

“Dear affectionate creature!--_You_ banished to Abbey-Mill Farm!--_You_
confined to the society of the illiterate and vulgar all your life! I
wonder how the young man could have the assurance to ask it. He must
have a pretty good opinion of himself.”

“I do not think he is conceited either, in general,” said Harriet, her
conscience opposing such censure; “at least, he is very good natured,
and I shall always feel much obliged to him, and have a great regard
for--but that is quite a different thing from--and you know, though
he may like me, it does not follow that I should--and certainly I must
confess that since my visiting here I have seen people--and if one comes
to compare them, person and manners, there is no comparison at all,
_one_ is so very handsome and agreeable. However, I do really think Mr.
Martin a very amiable young man, and have a great opinion of him; and
his being so much attached to me--and his writing such a letter--but as
to leaving you, it is what I would not do upon any consideration.”

“Thank you, thank you, my own sweet little friend. We will not be
parted. A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or
because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.”

“Oh no;--and it is but a short letter too.”

Emma felt the bad taste of her friend, but let it pass with a “very
true; and it would be a small consolation to her, for the clownish
manner which might be offending her every hour of the day, to know that
her husband could write a good letter.”

“Oh! yes, very. Nobody cares for a letter; the thing is, to be always
happy with pleasant companions. I am quite determined to refuse him. But
how shall I do? What shall I say?”

Emma assured her there would be no difficulty in the answer, and advised
its being written directly, which was agreed to, in the hope of her
assistance; and though Emma continued to protest against any assistance
being wanted, it was in fact given in the formation of every sentence.
The looking over his letter again, in replying to it, had such a
softening tendency, that it was particularly necessary to brace her up
with a few decisive expressions; and she was so very much concerned at
the idea of making him unhappy, and thought so much of what his mother
and sisters would think and say, and was so anxious that they should not
fancy her ungrateful, that Emma believed if the young man had come in
her way at that moment, he would have been accepted after all.

This letter, however, was written, and sealed, and sent. The business
was finished, and Harriet safe. She was rather low all the evening, but
Emma could allow for her amiable regrets, and sometimes relieved them by
speaking of her own affection, sometimes by bringing forward the idea of
Mr. Elton.

“I shall never be invited to Abbey-Mill again,” was said in rather a
sorrowful tone.

“Nor, if you were, could I ever bear to part with you, my Harriet. You
are a great deal too necessary at Hartfield to be spared to Abbey-Mill.”

“And I am sure I should never want to go there; for I am never happy but
at Hartfield.”

Some time afterwards it was, “I think Mrs. Goddard would be very much
surprized if she knew what had happened. I am sure Miss Nash would--for
Miss Nash thinks her own sister very well married, and it is only a
linen-draper.”

“One should be sorry to see greater pride or refinement in the teacher
of a school, Harriet. I dare say Miss Nash would envy you such an
opportunity as this of being married. Even this conquest would appear
valuable in her eyes. As to any thing superior for you, I suppose she
is quite in the dark. The attentions of a certain person can hardly be
among the tittle-tattle of Highbury yet. Hitherto I fancy you and I
are the only people to whom his looks and manners have explained
themselves.”

Harriet blushed and smiled, and said something about wondering that
people should like her so much. The idea of Mr. Elton was certainly
cheering; but still, after a time, she was tender-hearted again towards
the rejected Mr. Martin.

“Now he has got my letter,” said she softly. “I wonder what they are all
doing--whether his sisters know--if he is unhappy, they will be unhappy
too. I hope he will not mind it so very much.”

“Let us think of those among our absent friends who are more cheerfully
employed,” cried Emma. “At this moment, perhaps, Mr. Elton is shewing
your picture to his mother and sisters, telling how much more beautiful
is the original, and after being asked for it five or six times,
allowing them to hear your name, your own dear name.”

“My picture!--But he has left my picture in Bond-street.”

“Has he so!--Then I know nothing of Mr. Elton. No, my dear little modest
Harriet, depend upon it the picture will not be in Bond-street till
just before he mounts his horse to-morrow. It is his companion all this
evening, his solace, his delight. It opens his designs to his family,
it introduces you among them, it diffuses through the party those
pleasantest feelings of our nature, eager curiosity and warm
prepossession. How cheerful, how animated, how suspicious, how busy
their imaginations all are!”

Harriet smiled again, and her smiles grew stronger.



CHAPTER VIII


Harriet slept at Hartfield that night. For some weeks past she had been
spending more than half her time there, and gradually getting to have
a bed-room appropriated to herself; and Emma judged it best in every
respect, safest and kindest, to keep her with them as much as possible
just at present. She was obliged to go the next morning for an hour or
two to Mrs. Goddard's, but it was then to be settled that she should
return to Hartfield, to make a regular visit of some days.

While she was gone, Mr. Knightley called, and sat some time with Mr.
Woodhouse and Emma, till Mr. Woodhouse, who had previously made up his
mind to walk out, was persuaded by his daughter not to defer it, and was
induced by the entreaties of both, though against the scruples of his
own civility, to leave Mr. Knightley for that purpose. Mr. Knightley,
who had nothing of ceremony about him, was offering by his short,
decided answers, an amusing contrast to the protracted apologies and
civil hesitations of the other.

“Well, I believe, if you will excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if you will not
consider me as doing a very rude thing, I shall take Emma's advice and
go out for a quarter of an hour. As the sun is out, I believe I had
better take my three turns while I can. I treat you without ceremony,
Mr. Knightley. We invalids think we are privileged people.”

“My dear sir, do not make a stranger of me.”

“I leave an excellent substitute in my daughter. Emma will be happy to
entertain you. And therefore I think I will beg your excuse and take my
three turns--my winter walk.”

“You cannot do better, sir.”

“I would ask for the pleasure of your company, Mr. Knightley, but I am a
very slow walker, and my pace would be tedious to you; and, besides, you
have another long walk before you, to Donwell Abbey.”

“Thank you, sir, thank you; I am going this moment myself; and I think
the sooner _you_ go the better. I will fetch your greatcoat and open the
garden door for you.”

Mr. Woodhouse at last was off; but Mr. Knightley, instead of being
immediately off likewise, sat down again, seemingly inclined for more
chat. He began speaking of Harriet, and speaking of her with more
voluntary praise than Emma had ever heard before.

“I cannot rate her beauty as you do,” said he; “but she is a
pretty little creature, and I am inclined to think very well of her
disposition. Her character depends upon those she is with; but in good
hands she will turn out a valuable woman.”

“I am glad you think so; and the good hands, I hope, may not be
wanting.”

“Come,” said he, “you are anxious for a compliment, so I will tell you
that you have improved her. You have cured her of her school-girl's
giggle; she really does you credit.”

“Thank you. I should be mortified indeed if I did not believe I had been
of some use; but it is not every body who will bestow praise where they
may. _You_ do not often overpower me with it.”

“You are expecting her again, you say, this morning?”

“Almost every moment. She has been gone longer already than she
intended.”

“Something has happened to delay her; some visitors perhaps.”

“Highbury gossips!--Tiresome wretches!”

“Harriet may not consider every body tiresome that you would.”

Emma knew this was too true for contradiction, and therefore said
nothing. He presently added, with a smile,

“I do not pretend to fix on times or places, but I must tell you that
I have good reason to believe your little friend will soon hear of
something to her advantage.”

“Indeed! how so? of what sort?”

“A very serious sort, I assure you;” still smiling.

“Very serious! I can think of but one thing--Who is in love with her?
Who makes you their confidant?”

Emma was more than half in hopes of Mr. Elton's having dropt a hint.
Mr. Knightley was a sort of general friend and adviser, and she knew Mr.
Elton looked up to him.

“I have reason to think,” he replied, “that Harriet Smith will soon have
an offer of marriage, and from a most unexceptionable quarter:--Robert
Martin is the man. Her visit to Abbey-Mill, this summer, seems to have
done his business. He is desperately in love and means to marry her.”

“He is very obliging,” said Emma; “but is he sure that Harriet means to
marry him?”

“Well, well, means to make her an offer then. Will that do? He came to
the Abbey two evenings ago, on purpose to consult me about it. He knows
I have a thorough regard for him and all his family, and, I believe,
considers me as one of his best friends. He came to ask me whether
I thought it would be imprudent in him to settle so early; whether
I thought her too young: in short, whether I approved his choice
altogether; having some apprehension perhaps of her being considered
(especially since _your_ making so much of her) as in a line of society
above him. I was very much pleased with all that he said. I never hear
better sense from any one than Robert Martin. He always speaks to the
purpose; open, straightforward, and very well judging. He told me every
thing; his circumstances and plans, and what they all proposed doing in
the event of his marriage. He is an excellent young man, both as son and
brother. I had no hesitation in advising him to marry. He proved to me
that he could afford it; and that being the case, I was convinced he
could not do better. I praised the fair lady too, and altogether sent
him away very happy. If he had never esteemed my opinion before, he
would have thought highly of me then; and, I dare say, left the house
thinking me the best friend and counsellor man ever had. This happened
the night before last. Now, as we may fairly suppose, he would not allow
much time to pass before he spoke to the lady, and as he does not appear
to have spoken yesterday, it is not unlikely that he should be at Mrs.
Goddard's to-day; and she may be detained by a visitor, without thinking
him at all a tiresome wretch.”

“Pray, Mr. Knightley,” said Emma, who had been smiling to herself
through a great part of this speech, “how do you know that Mr. Martin
did not speak yesterday?”

“Certainly,” replied he, surprized, “I do not absolutely know it; but it
may be inferred. Was not she the whole day with you?”

“Come,” said she, “I will tell you something, in return for what
you have told me. He did speak yesterday--that is, he wrote, and was
refused.”

This was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr.
Knightley actually looked red with surprize and displeasure, as he stood
up, in tall indignation, and said,

“Then she is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the
foolish girl about?”

“Oh! to be sure,” cried Emma, “it is always incomprehensible to a man
that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always
imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her.”

“Nonsense! a man does not imagine any such thing. But what is the
meaning of this? Harriet Smith refuse Robert Martin? madness, if it is
so; but I hope you are mistaken.”

“I saw her answer!--nothing could be clearer.”

“You saw her answer!--you wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your
doing. You persuaded her to refuse him.”

“And if I did, (which, however, I am far from allowing) I should not
feel that I had done wrong. Mr. Martin is a very respectable young man,
but I cannot admit him to be Harriet's equal; and am rather surprized
indeed that he should have ventured to address her. By your account, he
does seem to have had some scruples. It is a pity that they were ever
got over.”

“Not Harriet's equal!” exclaimed Mr. Knightley loudly and warmly; and
with calmer asperity, added, a few moments afterwards, “No, he is
not her equal indeed, for he is as much her superior in sense as in
situation. Emma, your infatuation about that girl blinds you. What are
Harriet Smith's claims, either of birth, nature or education, to any
connexion higher than Robert Martin? She is the natural daughter of
nobody knows whom, with probably no settled provision at all, and
certainly no respectable relations. She is known only as parlour-boarder
at a common school. She is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any
information. She has been taught nothing useful, and is too young and
too simple to have acquired any thing herself. At her age she can have
no experience, and with her little wit, is not very likely ever to have
any that can avail her. She is pretty, and she is good tempered, and
that is all. My only scruple in advising the match was on his account,
as being beneath his deserts, and a bad connexion for him. I felt that,
as to fortune, in all probability he might do much better; and that as
to a rational companion or useful helpmate, he could not do worse. But I
could not reason so to a man in love, and was willing to trust to there
being no harm in her, to her having that sort of disposition, which, in
good hands, like his, might be easily led aright and turn out very well.
The advantage of the match I felt to be all on her side; and had not the
smallest doubt (nor have I now) that there would be a general cry-out
upon her extreme good luck. Even _your_ satisfaction I made sure of.
It crossed my mind immediately that you would not regret your friend's
leaving Highbury, for the sake of her being settled so well. I remember
saying to myself, 'Even Emma, with all her partiality for Harriet, will
think this a good match.'”

“I cannot help wondering at your knowing so little of Emma as to say any
such thing. What! think a farmer, (and with all his sense and all his
merit Mr. Martin is nothing more,) a good match for my intimate friend!
Not regret her leaving Highbury for the sake of marrying a man whom
I could never admit as an acquaintance of my own! I wonder you should
think it possible for me to have such feelings. I assure you mine are
very different. I must think your statement by no means fair. You are
not just to Harriet's claims. They would be estimated very differently
by others as well as myself; Mr. Martin may be the richest of the two,
but he is undoubtedly her inferior as to rank in society.--The sphere in
which she moves is much above his.--It would be a degradation.”

“A degradation to illegitimacy and ignorance, to be married to a
respectable, intelligent gentleman-farmer!”

“As to the circumstances of her birth, though in a legal sense she may
be called Nobody, it will not hold in common sense. She is not to pay
for the offence of others, by being held below the level of those with
whom she is brought up.--There can scarcely be a doubt that her father
is a gentleman--and a gentleman of fortune.--Her allowance is
very liberal; nothing has ever been grudged for her improvement or
comfort.--That she is a gentleman's daughter, is indubitable to me; that
she associates with gentlemen's daughters, no one, I apprehend, will
deny.--She is superior to Mr. Robert Martin.”

“Whoever might be her parents,” said Mr. Knightley, “whoever may have
had the charge of her, it does not appear to have been any part of
their plan to introduce her into what you would call good society. After
receiving a very indifferent education she is left in Mrs. Goddard's
hands to shift as she can;--to move, in short, in Mrs. Goddard's line,
to have Mrs. Goddard's acquaintance. Her friends evidently thought
this good enough for her; and it _was_ good enough. She desired nothing
better herself. Till you chose to turn her into a friend, her mind had
no distaste for her own set, nor any ambition beyond it. She was as
happy as possible with the Martins in the summer. She had no sense of
superiority then. If she has it now, you have given it. You have been no
friend to Harriet Smith, Emma. Robert Martin would never have proceeded
so far, if he had not felt persuaded of her not being disinclined to
him. I know him well. He has too much real feeling to address any
woman on the haphazard of selfish passion. And as to conceit, he is
the farthest from it of any man I know. Depend upon it he had
encouragement.”

It was most convenient to Emma not to make a direct reply to this
assertion; she chose rather to take up her own line of the subject
again.

“You are a very warm friend to Mr. Martin; but, as I said before,
are unjust to Harriet. Harriet's claims to marry well are not so
contemptible as you represent them. She is not a clever girl, but she
has better sense than you are aware of, and does not deserve to have her
understanding spoken of so slightingly. Waiving that point, however, and
supposing her to be, as you describe her, only pretty and good-natured,
let me tell you, that in the degree she possesses them, they are not
trivial recommendations to the world in general, for she is, in fact, a
beautiful girl, and must be thought so by ninety-nine people out of an
hundred; and till it appears that men are much more philosophic on the
subject of beauty than they are generally supposed; till they do fall
in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome faces, a girl, with
such loveliness as Harriet, has a certainty of being admired and sought
after, of having the power of chusing from among many, consequently a
claim to be nice. Her good-nature, too, is not so very slight a claim,
comprehending, as it does, real, thorough sweetness of temper and
manner, a very humble opinion of herself, and a great readiness to
be pleased with other people. I am very much mistaken if your sex in
general would not think such beauty, and such temper, the highest claims
a woman could possess.”

“Upon my word, Emma, to hear you abusing the reason you have, is almost
enough to make me think so too. Better be without sense, than misapply
it as you do.”

“To be sure!” cried she playfully. “I know _that_ is the feeling of
you all. I know that such a girl as Harriet is exactly what every
man delights in--what at once bewitches his senses and satisfies his
judgment. Oh! Harriet may pick and chuse. Were you, yourself, ever to
marry, she is the very woman for you. And is she, at seventeen, just
entering into life, just beginning to be known, to be wondered at
because she does not accept the first offer she receives? No--pray let
her have time to look about her.”

“I have always thought it a very foolish intimacy,” said Mr. Knightley
presently, “though I have kept my thoughts to myself; but I now perceive
that it will be a very unfortunate one for Harriet. You will puff her up
with such ideas of her own beauty, and of what she has a claim to, that,
in a little while, nobody within her reach will be good enough for her.
Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief. Nothing
so easy as for a young lady to raise her expectations too high. Miss
Harriet Smith may not find offers of marriage flow in so fast, though
she is a very pretty girl. Men of sense, whatever you may chuse to
say, do not want silly wives. Men of family would not be very fond of
connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity--and most prudent
men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they might be
involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be revealed. Let
her marry Robert Martin, and she is safe, respectable, and happy for
ever; but if you encourage her to expect to marry greatly, and teach her
to be satisfied with nothing less than a man of consequence and large
fortune, she may be a parlour-boarder at Mrs. Goddard's all the rest
of her life--or, at least, (for Harriet Smith is a girl who will marry
somebody or other,) till she grow desperate, and is glad to catch at the
old writing-master's son.”

“We think so very differently on this point, Mr. Knightley, that there
can be no use in canvassing it. We shall only be making each other more
angry. But as to my _letting_ her marry Robert Martin, it is impossible;
she has refused him, and so decidedly, I think, as must prevent any
second application. She must abide by the evil of having refused him,
whatever it may be; and as to the refusal itself, I will not pretend to
say that I might not influence her a little; but I assure you there
was very little for me or for any body to do. His appearance is so much
against him, and his manner so bad, that if she ever were disposed to
favour him, she is not now. I can imagine, that before she had seen
any body superior, she might tolerate him. He was the brother of her
friends, and he took pains to please her; and altogether, having seen
nobody better (that must have been his great assistant) she might not,
while she was at Abbey-Mill, find him disagreeable. But the case
is altered now. She knows now what gentlemen are; and nothing but a
gentleman in education and manner has any chance with Harriet.”

“Nonsense, errant nonsense, as ever was talked!” cried Mr.
Knightley.--“Robert Martin's manners have sense, sincerity, and
good-humour to recommend them; and his mind has more true gentility than
Harriet Smith could understand.”

Emma made no answer, and tried to look cheerfully unconcerned, but was
really feeling uncomfortable and wanting him very much to be gone. She
did not repent what she had done; she still thought herself a better
judge of such a point of female right and refinement than he could be;
but yet she had a sort of habitual respect for his judgment in general,
which made her dislike having it so loudly against her; and to have him
sitting just opposite to her in angry state, was very disagreeable.
Some minutes passed in this unpleasant silence, with only one attempt
on Emma's side to talk of the weather, but he made no answer. He was
thinking. The result of his thoughts appeared at last in these words.

“Robert Martin has no great loss--if he can but think so; and I hope it
will not be long before he does. Your views for Harriet are best known
to yourself; but as you make no secret of your love of match-making, it
is fair to suppose that views, and plans, and projects you have;--and as
a friend I shall just hint to you that if Elton is the man, I think it
will be all labour in vain.”

Emma laughed and disclaimed. He continued,

“Depend upon it, Elton will not do. Elton is a very good sort of man,
and a very respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make
an imprudent match. He knows the value of a good income as well as any
body. Elton may talk sentimentally, but he will act rationally. He is
as well acquainted with his own claims, as you can be with Harriet's.
He knows that he is a very handsome young man, and a great favourite
wherever he goes; and from his general way of talking in unreserved
moments, when there are only men present, I am convinced that he does
not mean to throw himself away. I have heard him speak with great
animation of a large family of young ladies that his sisters are
intimate with, who have all twenty thousand pounds apiece.”

“I am very much obliged to you,” said Emma, laughing again. “If I had
set my heart on Mr. Elton's marrying Harriet, it would have been very
kind to open my eyes; but at present I only want to keep Harriet to
myself. I have done with match-making indeed. I could never hope to
equal my own doings at Randalls. I shall leave off while I am well.”

“Good morning to you,”--said he, rising and walking off abruptly. He was
very much vexed. He felt the disappointment of the young man, and was
mortified to have been the means of promoting it, by the sanction he had
given; and the part which he was persuaded Emma had taken in the affair,
was provoking him exceedingly.

Emma remained in a state of vexation too; but there was more
indistinctness in the causes of her's, than in his. She did not always
feel so absolutely satisfied with herself, so entirely convinced that
her opinions were right and her adversary's wrong, as Mr. Knightley. He
walked off in more complete self-approbation than he left for her. She
was not so materially cast down, however, but that a little time and
the return of Harriet were very adequate restoratives. Harriet's staying
away so long was beginning to make her uneasy. The possibility of the
young man's coming to Mrs. Goddard's that morning, and meeting with
Harriet and pleading his own cause, gave alarming ideas. The dread
of such a failure after all became the prominent uneasiness; and when
Harriet appeared, and in very good spirits, and without having any
such reason to give for her long absence, she felt a satisfaction which
settled her with her own mind, and convinced her, that let Mr.
Knightley think or say what he would, she had done nothing which woman's
friendship and woman's feelings would not justify.

He had frightened her a little about Mr. Elton; but when she considered
that Mr. Knightley could not have observed him as she had done, neither
with the interest, nor (she must be allowed to tell herself, in spite of
Mr. Knightley's pretensions) with the skill of such an observer on such
a question as herself, that he had spoken it hastily and in anger, she
was able to believe, that he had rather said what he wished resentfully
to be true, than what he knew any thing about. He certainly might have
heard Mr. Elton speak with more unreserve than she had ever done, and
Mr. Elton might not be of an imprudent, inconsiderate disposition as to
money matters; he might naturally be rather attentive than otherwise
to them; but then, Mr. Knightley did not make due allowance for the
influence of a strong passion at war with all interested motives. Mr.
Knightley saw no such passion, and of course thought nothing of its
effects; but she saw too much of it to feel a doubt of its overcoming
any hesitations that a reasonable prudence might originally suggest; and
more than a reasonable, becoming degree of prudence, she was very sure
did not belong to Mr. Elton.

Harriet's cheerful look and manner established hers: she came back, not
to think of Mr. Martin, but to talk of Mr. Elton. Miss Nash had been
telling her something, which she repeated immediately with great
delight. Mr. Perry had been to Mrs. Goddard's to attend a sick child,
and Miss Nash had seen him, and he had told Miss Nash, that as he was
coming back yesterday from Clayton Park, he had met Mr. Elton, and
found to his great surprize, that Mr. Elton was actually on his road
to London, and not meaning to return till the morrow, though it was the
whist-club night, which he had been never known to miss before; and Mr.
Perry had remonstrated with him about it, and told him how shabby it
was in him, their best player, to absent himself, and tried very much to
persuade him to put off his journey only one day; but it would not
do; Mr. Elton had been determined to go on, and had said in a _very_
_particular_ way indeed, that he was going on business which he would
not put off for any inducement in the world; and something about a
very enviable commission, and being the bearer of something exceedingly
precious. Mr. Perry could not quite understand him, but he was very sure
there must be a _lady_ in the case, and he told him so; and Mr. Elton
only looked very conscious and smiling, and rode off in great spirits.
Miss Nash had told her all this, and had talked a great deal more about
Mr. Elton; and said, looking so very significantly at her, “that she did
not pretend to understand what his business might be, but she only
knew that any woman whom Mr. Elton could prefer, she should think the
luckiest woman in the world; for, beyond a doubt, Mr. Elton had not his
equal for beauty or agreeableness.”



CHAPTER IX


Mr. Knightley might quarrel with her, but Emma could not quarrel with
herself. He was so much displeased, that it was longer than usual before
he came to Hartfield again; and when they did meet, his grave looks
shewed that she was not forgiven. She was sorry, but could not repent.
On the contrary, her plans and proceedings were more and more justified
and endeared to her by the general appearances of the next few days.

The Picture, elegantly framed, came safely to hand soon after Mr.
Elton's return, and being hung over the mantelpiece of the common
sitting-room, he got up to look at it, and sighed out his half sentences
of admiration just as he ought; and as for Harriet's feelings, they were
visibly forming themselves into as strong and steady an attachment as
her youth and sort of mind admitted. Emma was soon perfectly satisfied
of Mr. Martin's being no otherwise remembered, than as he furnished a
contrast with Mr. Elton, of the utmost advantage to the latter.

Her views of improving her little friend's mind, by a great deal of
useful reading and conversation, had never yet led to more than a few
first chapters, and the intention of going on to-morrow. It was much
easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination
range and work at Harriet's fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge
her comprehension or exercise it on sober facts; and the only literary
pursuit which engaged Harriet at present, the only mental provision she
was making for the evening of life, was the collecting and transcribing
all the riddles of every sort that she could meet with, into a thin
quarto of hot-pressed paper, made up by her friend, and ornamented with
ciphers and trophies.

In this age of literature, such collections on a very grand scale are
not uncommon. Miss Nash, head-teacher at Mrs. Goddard's, had written out
at least three hundred; and Harriet, who had taken the first hint of it
from her, hoped, with Miss Woodhouse's help, to get a great many more.
Emma assisted with her invention, memory and taste; and as Harriet wrote
a very pretty hand, it was likely to be an arrangement of the first
order, in form as well as quantity.

Mr. Woodhouse was almost as much interested in the business as the
girls, and tried very often to recollect something worth their putting
in. “So many clever riddles as there used to be when he was young--he
wondered he could not remember them! but he hoped he should in time.”
 And it always ended in “Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.”

His good friend Perry, too, whom he had spoken to on the subject,
did not at present recollect any thing of the riddle kind; but he
had desired Perry to be upon the watch, and as he went about so much,
something, he thought, might come from that quarter.

It was by no means his daughter's wish that the intellects of Highbury
in general should be put under requisition. Mr. Elton was the only one
whose assistance she asked. He was invited to contribute any really good
enigmas, charades, or conundrums that he might recollect; and she had
the pleasure of seeing him most intently at work with his recollections;
and at the same time, as she could perceive, most earnestly careful that
nothing ungallant, nothing that did not breathe a compliment to the
sex should pass his lips. They owed to him their two or three politest
puzzles; and the joy and exultation with which at last he recalled, and
rather sentimentally recited, that well-known charade,

    My first doth affliction denote,
      Which my second is destin'd to feel
    And my whole is the best antidote
      That affliction to soften and heal.--

made her quite sorry to acknowledge that they had transcribed it some
pages ago already.

“Why will not you write one yourself for us, Mr. Elton?” said she; “that
is the only security for its freshness; and nothing could be easier to
you.”

“Oh no! he had never written, hardly ever, any thing of the kind in his
life. The stupidest fellow! He was afraid not even Miss Woodhouse”--he
stopt a moment--“or Miss Smith could inspire him.”

The very next day however produced some proof of inspiration. He
called for a few moments, just to leave a piece of paper on the table
containing, as he said, a charade, which a friend of his had addressed
to a young lady, the object of his admiration, but which, from his
manner, Emma was immediately convinced must be his own.

“I do not offer it for Miss Smith's collection,” said he. “Being my
friend's, I have no right to expose it in any degree to the public eye,
but perhaps you may not dislike looking at it.”

The speech was more to Emma than to Harriet, which Emma could
understand. There was deep consciousness about him, and he found
it easier to meet her eye than her friend's. He was gone the next
moment:--after another moment's pause,

“Take it,” said Emma, smiling, and pushing the paper towards
Harriet--“it is for you. Take your own.”

But Harriet was in a tremor, and could not touch it; and Emma, never
loth to be first, was obliged to examine it herself.

        To Miss--

          CHARADE.

    My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
      Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.
    Another view of man, my second brings,
      Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!

    But ah! united, what reverse we have!
      Man's boasted power and freedom, all are flown;
    Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,
      And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.

      Thy ready wit the word will soon supply,
      May its approval beam in that soft eye!

She cast her eye over it, pondered, caught the meaning, read it through
again to be quite certain, and quite mistress of the lines, and then
passing it to Harriet, sat happily smiling, and saying to herself, while
Harriet was puzzling over the paper in all the confusion of hope and
dulness, “Very well, Mr. Elton, very well indeed. I have read worse
charades. _Courtship_--a very good hint. I give you credit for it. This
is feeling your way. This is saying very plainly--'Pray, Miss Smith,
give me leave to pay my addresses to you. Approve my charade and my
intentions in the same glance.'

      May its approval beam in that soft eye!

Harriet exactly. Soft is the very word for her eye--of all epithets, the
justest that could be given.

      Thy ready wit the word will soon supply.

Humph--Harriet's ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in
love, indeed, to describe her so. Ah! Mr. Knightley, I wish you had the
benefit of this; I think this would convince you. For once in your life
you would be obliged to own yourself mistaken. An excellent charade
indeed! and very much to the purpose. Things must come to a crisis soon
now.”

She was obliged to break off from these very pleasant observations,
which were otherwise of a sort to run into great length, by the
eagerness of Harriet's wondering questions.

“What can it be, Miss Woodhouse?--what can it be? I have not an idea--I
cannot guess it in the least. What can it possibly be? Do try to find
it out, Miss Woodhouse. Do help me. I never saw any thing so hard. Is it
kingdom? I wonder who the friend was--and who could be the young lady.
Do you think it is a good one? Can it be woman?

      And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.

Can it be Neptune?

      Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!

Or a trident? or a mermaid? or a shark? Oh, no! shark is only one
syllable. It must be very clever, or he would not have brought it. Oh!
Miss Woodhouse, do you think we shall ever find it out?”

“Mermaids and sharks! Nonsense! My dear Harriet, what are you thinking
of? Where would be the use of his bringing us a charade made by a friend
upon a mermaid or a shark? Give me the paper and listen.

For Miss ------, read Miss Smith.

    My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
      Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.

That is _court_.

    Another view of man, my second brings;
      Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!

That is _ship_;--plain as it can be.--Now for the cream.

    But ah! united, (_courtship_, you know,) what reverse we have!
      Man's boasted power and freedom, all are flown.
    Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,
      And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.

A very proper compliment!--and then follows the application, which
I think, my dear Harriet, you cannot find much difficulty in
comprehending. Read it in comfort to yourself. There can be no doubt of
its being written for you and to you.”

Harriet could not long resist so delightful a persuasion. She read
the concluding lines, and was all flutter and happiness. She could not
speak. But she was not wanted to speak. It was enough for her to feel.
Emma spoke for her.

“There is so pointed, and so particular a meaning in this compliment,”
 said she, “that I cannot have a doubt as to Mr. Elton's intentions. You
are his object--and you will soon receive the completest proof of it. I
thought it must be so. I thought I could not be so deceived; but now, it
is clear; the state of his mind is as clear and decided, as my wishes on
the subject have been ever since I knew you. Yes, Harriet, just so long
have I been wanting the very circumstance to happen that has happened.
I could never tell whether an attachment between you and Mr. Elton were
most desirable or most natural. Its probability and its eligibility have
really so equalled each other! I am very happy. I congratulate you, my
dear Harriet, with all my heart. This is an attachment which a woman may
well feel pride in creating. This is a connexion which offers nothing
but good. It will give you every thing that you want--consideration,
independence, a proper home--it will fix you in the centre of all your
real friends, close to Hartfield and to me, and confirm our intimacy
for ever. This, Harriet, is an alliance which can never raise a blush in
either of us.”

“Dear Miss Woodhouse!”--and “Dear Miss Woodhouse,” was all that Harriet,
with many tender embraces could articulate at first; but when they did
arrive at something more like conversation, it was sufficiently clear to
her friend that she saw, felt, anticipated, and remembered just as she
ought. Mr. Elton's superiority had very ample acknowledgment.

“Whatever you say is always right,” cried Harriet, “and therefore I
suppose, and believe, and hope it must be so; but otherwise I could not
have imagined it. It is so much beyond any thing I deserve. Mr. Elton,
who might marry any body! There cannot be two opinions about _him_. He
is so very superior. Only think of those sweet verses--'To Miss ------.'
Dear me, how clever!--Could it really be meant for me?”

“I cannot make a question, or listen to a question about that. It is a
certainty. Receive it on my judgment. It is a sort of prologue to
the play, a motto to the chapter; and will be soon followed by
matter-of-fact prose.”

“It is a sort of thing which nobody could have expected. I am sure,
a month ago, I had no more idea myself!--The strangest things do take
place!”

“When Miss Smiths and Mr. Eltons get acquainted--they do indeed--and
really it is strange; it is out of the common course that what is so
evidently, so palpably desirable--what courts the pre-arrangement of
other people, should so immediately shape itself into the proper form.
You and Mr. Elton are by situation called together; you belong to one
another by every circumstance of your respective homes. Your marrying
will be equal to the match at Randalls. There does seem to be a
something in the air of Hartfield which gives love exactly the right
direction, and sends it into the very channel where it ought to flow.

      The course of true love never did run smooth--

A Hartfield edition of Shakespeare would have a long note on that
passage.”

“That Mr. Elton should really be in love with me,--me, of all people,
who did not know him, to speak to him, at Michaelmas! And he, the very
handsomest man that ever was, and a man that every body looks up to,
quite like Mr. Knightley! His company so sought after, that every body
says he need not eat a single meal by himself if he does not chuse it;
that he has more invitations than there are days in the week. And so
excellent in the Church! Miss Nash has put down all the texts he has
ever preached from since he came to Highbury. Dear me! When I look back
to the first time I saw him! How little did I think!--The two Abbots and
I ran into the front room and peeped through the blind when we heard he
was going by, and Miss Nash came and scolded us away, and staid to look
through herself; however, she called me back presently, and let me
look too, which was very good-natured. And how beautiful we thought he
looked! He was arm-in-arm with Mr. Cole.”

“This is an alliance which, whoever--whatever your friends may be, must
be agreeable to them, provided at least they have common sense; and we
are not to be addressing our conduct to fools. If they are anxious to
see you _happily_ married, here is a man whose amiable character gives
every assurance of it;--if they wish to have you settled in the same
country and circle which they have chosen to place you in, here it will
be accomplished; and if their only object is that you should, in the
common phrase, be _well_ married, here is the comfortable fortune, the
respectable establishment, the rise in the world which must satisfy
them.”

“Yes, very true. How nicely you talk; I love to hear you. You understand
every thing. You and Mr. Elton are one as clever as the other. This
charade!--If I had studied a twelvemonth, I could never have made any
thing like it.”

“I thought he meant to try his skill, by his manner of declining it
yesterday.”

“I do think it is, without exception, the best charade I ever read.”

“I never read one more to the purpose, certainly.”

“It is as long again as almost all we have had before.”

“I do not consider its length as particularly in its favour. Such things
in general cannot be too short.”

Harriet was too intent on the lines to hear. The most satisfactory
comparisons were rising in her mind.

“It is one thing,” said she, presently--her cheeks in a glow--“to have
very good sense in a common way, like every body else, and if there is
any thing to say, to sit down and write a letter, and say just what you
must, in a short way; and another, to write verses and charades like
this.”

Emma could not have desired a more spirited rejection of Mr. Martin's
prose.

“Such sweet lines!” continued Harriet--“these two last!--But how shall I
ever be able to return the paper, or say I have found it out?--Oh! Miss
Woodhouse, what can we do about that?”

“Leave it to me. You do nothing. He will be here this evening, I dare
say, and then I will give it him back, and some nonsense or other will
pass between us, and you shall not be committed.--Your soft eyes shall
chuse their own time for beaming. Trust to me.”

“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, what a pity that I must not write this beautiful
charade into my book! I am sure I have not got one half so good.”

“Leave out the two last lines, and there is no reason why you should not
write it into your book.”

“Oh! but those two lines are”--

--“The best of all. Granted;--for private enjoyment; and for private
enjoyment keep them. They are not at all the less written you know,
because you divide them. The couplet does not cease to be, nor does its
meaning change. But take it away, and all _appropriation_ ceases, and a
very pretty gallant charade remains, fit for any collection. Depend upon
it, he would not like to have his charade slighted, much better than his
passion. A poet in love must be encouraged in both capacities, or
neither. Give me the book, I will write it down, and then there can be
no possible reflection on you.”

Harriet submitted, though her mind could hardly separate the parts,
so as to feel quite sure that her friend were not writing down a
declaration of love. It seemed too precious an offering for any degree
of publicity.

“I shall never let that book go out of my own hands,” said she.

“Very well,” replied Emma; “a most natural feeling; and the longer it
lasts, the better I shall be pleased. But here is my father coming: you
will not object to my reading the charade to him. It will be giving him
so much pleasure! He loves any thing of the sort, and especially any
thing that pays woman a compliment. He has the tenderest spirit of
gallantry towards us all!--You must let me read it to him.”

Harriet looked grave.

“My dear Harriet, you must not refine too much upon this charade.--You
will betray your feelings improperly, if you are too conscious and too
quick, and appear to affix more meaning, or even quite all the meaning
which may be affixed to it. Do not be overpowered by such a little
tribute of admiration. If he had been anxious for secrecy, he would not
have left the paper while I was by; but he rather pushed it towards me
than towards you. Do not let us be too solemn on the business. He has
encouragement enough to proceed, without our sighing out our souls over
this charade.”

“Oh! no--I hope I shall not be ridiculous about it. Do as you please.”

Mr. Woodhouse came in, and very soon led to the subject again, by the
recurrence of his very frequent inquiry of “Well, my dears, how does
your book go on?--Have you got any thing fresh?”

“Yes, papa; we have something to read you, something quite fresh. A
piece of paper was found on the table this morning--(dropt, we suppose,
by a fairy)--containing a very pretty charade, and we have just copied
it in.”

She read it to him, just as he liked to have any thing read, slowly and
distinctly, and two or three times over, with explanations of every
part as she proceeded--and he was very much pleased, and, as she had
foreseen, especially struck with the complimentary conclusion.

“Aye, that's very just, indeed, that's very properly said. Very true.
'Woman, lovely woman.' It is such a pretty charade, my dear, that I
can easily guess what fairy brought it.--Nobody could have written so
prettily, but you, Emma.”

Emma only nodded, and smiled.--After a little thinking, and a very
tender sigh, he added,

“Ah! it is no difficulty to see who you take after! Your dear mother
was so clever at all those things! If I had but her memory! But I can
remember nothing;--not even that particular riddle which you have
heard me mention; I can only recollect the first stanza; and there are
several.

    Kitty, a fair but frozen maid,
      Kindled a flame I yet deplore,
    The hood-wink'd boy I called to aid,
    Though of his near approach afraid,
      So fatal to my suit before.

And that is all that I can recollect of it--but it is very clever all
the way through. But I think, my dear, you said you had got it.”

“Yes, papa, it is written out in our second page. We copied it from the
Elegant Extracts. It was Garrick's, you know.”

“Aye, very true.--I wish I could recollect more of it.

    Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.

The name makes me think of poor Isabella; for she was very near being
christened Catherine after her grandmama. I hope we shall have her here
next week. Have you thought, my dear, where you shall put her--and what
room there will be for the children?”

“Oh! yes--she will have her own room, of course; the room she always
has;--and there is the nursery for the children,--just as usual, you
know. Why should there be any change?”

“I do not know, my dear--but it is so long since she was here!--not
since last Easter, and then only for a few days.--Mr. John Knightley's
being a lawyer is very inconvenient.--Poor Isabella!--she is sadly taken
away from us all!--and how sorry she will be when she comes, not to see
Miss Taylor here!”

“She will not be surprized, papa, at least.”

“I do not know, my dear. I am sure I was very much surprized when I
first heard she was going to be married.”

“We must ask Mr. and Mrs. Weston to dine with us, while Isabella is
here.”

“Yes, my dear, if there is time.--But--(in a very depressed tone)--she
is coming for only one week. There will not be time for any thing.”

“It is unfortunate that they cannot stay longer--but it seems a case of
necessity. Mr. John Knightley must be in town again on the 28th, and we
ought to be thankful, papa, that we are to have the whole of the time
they can give to the country, that two or three days are not to be taken
out for the Abbey. Mr. Knightley promises to give up his claim this
Christmas--though you know it is longer since they were with him, than
with us.”

“It would be very hard, indeed, my dear, if poor Isabella were to be
anywhere but at Hartfield.”

Mr. Woodhouse could never allow for Mr. Knightley's claims on his
brother, or any body's claims on Isabella, except his own. He sat musing
a little while, and then said,

“But I do not see why poor Isabella should be obliged to go back so
soon, though he does. I think, Emma, I shall try and persuade her to
stay longer with us. She and the children might stay very well.”

“Ah! papa--that is what you never have been able to accomplish, and I
do not think you ever will. Isabella cannot bear to stay behind her
husband.”

This was too true for contradiction. Unwelcome as it was, Mr. Woodhouse
could only give a submissive sigh; and as Emma saw his spirits affected
by the idea of his daughter's attachment to her husband, she immediately
led to such a branch of the subject as must raise them.

“Harriet must give us as much of her company as she can while my brother
and sister are here. I am sure she will be pleased with the children.
We are very proud of the children, are not we, papa? I wonder which she
will think the handsomest, Henry or John?”

“Aye, I wonder which she will. Poor little dears, how glad they will be
to come. They are very fond of being at Hartfield, Harriet.”

“I dare say they are, sir. I am sure I do not know who is not.”

“Henry is a fine boy, but John is very like his mama. Henry is the
eldest, he was named after me, not after his father. John, the second,
is named after his father. Some people are surprized, I believe, that
the eldest was not, but Isabella would have him called Henry, which I
thought very pretty of her. And he is a very clever boy, indeed. They
are all remarkably clever; and they have so many pretty ways. They will
come and stand by my chair, and say, 'Grandpapa, can you give me a bit
of string?' and once Henry asked me for a knife, but I told him knives
were only made for grandpapas. I think their father is too rough with
them very often.”

“He appears rough to you,” said Emma, “because you are so very gentle
yourself; but if you could compare him with other papas, you would not
think him rough. He wishes his boys to be active and hardy; and if
they misbehave, can give them a sharp word now and then; but he is an
affectionate father--certainly Mr. John Knightley is an affectionate
father. The children are all fond of him.”

“And then their uncle comes in, and tosses them up to the ceiling in a
very frightful way!”

“But they like it, papa; there is nothing they like so much. It is such
enjoyment to them, that if their uncle did not lay down the rule of
their taking turns, whichever began would never give way to the other.”

“Well, I cannot understand it.”

“That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot
understand the pleasures of the other.”

Later in the morning, and just as the girls were going to separate
in preparation for the regular four o'clock dinner, the hero of this
inimitable charade walked in again. Harriet turned away; but Emma could
receive him with the usual smile, and her quick eye soon discerned in
his the consciousness of having made a push--of having thrown a die;
and she imagined he was come to see how it might turn up. His ostensible
reason, however, was to ask whether Mr. Woodhouse's party could be made
up in the evening without him, or whether he should be in the smallest
degree necessary at Hartfield. If he were, every thing else must give
way; but otherwise his friend Cole had been saying so much about his
dining with him--had made such a point of it, that he had promised him
conditionally to come.

Emma thanked him, but could not allow of his disappointing his friend
on their account; her father was sure of his rubber. He re-urged--she
re-declined; and he seemed then about to make his bow, when taking the
paper from the table, she returned it--

“Oh! here is the charade you were so obliging as to leave with us; thank
you for the sight of it. We admired it so much, that I have ventured
to write it into Miss Smith's collection. Your friend will not take it
amiss I hope. Of course I have not transcribed beyond the first eight
lines.”

Mr. Elton certainly did not very well know what to say. He looked rather
doubtingly--rather confused; said something about “honour,”--glanced at
Emma and at Harriet, and then seeing the book open on the table, took
it up, and examined it very attentively. With the view of passing off an
awkward moment, Emma smilingly said,

“You must make my apologies to your friend; but so good a charade
must not be confined to one or two. He may be sure of every woman's
approbation while he writes with such gallantry.”

“I have no hesitation in saying,” replied Mr. Elton, though hesitating
a good deal while he spoke; “I have no hesitation in saying--at least
if my friend feels at all as _I_ do--I have not the smallest doubt that,
could he see his little effusion honoured as _I_ see it, (looking at the
book again, and replacing it on the table), he would consider it as the
proudest moment of his life.”

After this speech he was gone as soon as possible. Emma could not think
it too soon; for with all his good and agreeable qualities, there was
a sort of parade in his speeches which was very apt to incline her to
laugh. She ran away to indulge the inclination, leaving the tender and
the sublime of pleasure to Harriet's share.



CHAPTER X


Though now the middle of December, there had yet been no weather to
prevent the young ladies from tolerably regular exercise; and on the
morrow, Emma had a charitable visit to pay to a poor sick family, who
lived a little way out of Highbury.

Their road to this detached cottage was down Vicarage Lane, a lane
leading at right angles from the broad, though irregular, main street of
the place; and, as may be inferred, containing the blessed abode of Mr.
Elton. A few inferior dwellings were first to be passed, and then, about
a quarter of a mile down the lane rose the Vicarage, an old and not
very good house, almost as close to the road as it could be. It had
no advantage of situation; but had been very much smartened up by the
present proprietor; and, such as it was, there could be no possibility
of the two friends passing it without a slackened pace and observing
eyes.--Emma's remark was--

“There it is. There go you and your riddle-book one of these
days.”--Harriet's was--

“Oh, what a sweet house!--How very beautiful!--There are the yellow
curtains that Miss Nash admires so much.”

“I do not often walk this way _now_,” said Emma, as they proceeded, “but
_then_ there will be an inducement, and I shall gradually get intimately
acquainted with all the hedges, gates, pools and pollards of this part
of Highbury.”

Harriet, she found, had never in her life been inside the Vicarage,
and her curiosity to see it was so extreme, that, considering exteriors
and probabilities, Emma could only class it, as a proof of love, with
Mr. Elton's seeing ready wit in her.

“I wish we could contrive it,” said she; “but I cannot think of any
tolerable pretence for going in;--no servant that I want to inquire
about of his housekeeper--no message from my father.”

She pondered, but could think of nothing. After a mutual silence of some
minutes, Harriet thus began again--

“I do so wonder, Miss Woodhouse, that you should not be married, or
going to be married! so charming as you are!”--

Emma laughed, and replied,

“My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry;
I must find other people charming--one other person at least. And I
am not only, not going to be married, at present, but have very little
intention of ever marrying at all.”

“Ah!--so you say; but I cannot believe it.”

“I must see somebody very superior to any one I have seen yet, to be
tempted; Mr. Elton, you know, (recollecting herself,) is out of the
question: and I do _not_ wish to see any such person. I would rather not
be tempted. I cannot really change for the better. If I were to marry, I
must expect to repent it.”

“Dear me!--it is so odd to hear a woman talk so!”--

“I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall
in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in
love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.
And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a
situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want;
consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much
mistress of their husband's house as I am of Hartfield; and never, never
could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and
always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.”

“But then, to be an old maid at last, like Miss Bates!”

“That is as formidable an image as you could present, Harriet; and if
I thought I should ever be like Miss Bates! so silly--so satisfied--so
smiling--so prosing--so undistinguishing and unfastidious--and so apt
to tell every thing relative to every body about me, I would marry
to-morrow. But between _us_, I am convinced there never can be any
likeness, except in being unmarried.”

“But still, you will be an old maid! and that's so dreadful!”

“Never mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty
only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single
woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old
maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good
fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant
as any body else. And the distinction is not quite so much against the
candour and common sense of the world as appears at first; for a very
narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper.
Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and
generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross. This
does not apply, however, to Miss Bates; she is only too good natured and
too silly to suit me; but, in general, she is very much to the taste
of every body, though single and though poor. Poverty certainly has not
contracted her mind: I really believe, if she had only a shilling in the
world, she would be very likely to give away sixpence of it; and nobody
is afraid of her: that is a great charm.”

“Dear me! but what shall you do? how shall you employ yourself when you
grow old?”

“If I know myself, Harriet, mine is an active, busy mind, with a great
many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more
in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty. Woman's
usual occupations of hand and mind will be as open to me then as they
are now; or with no important variation. If I draw less, I shall read
more; if I give up music, I shall take to carpet-work. And as for
objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is in truth the
great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil
to be avoided in _not_ marrying, I shall be very well off, with all the
children of a sister I love so much, to care about. There will be enough
of them, in all probability, to supply every sort of sensation that
declining life can need. There will be enough for every hope and every
fear; and though my attachment to none can equal that of a parent, it
suits my ideas of comfort better than what is warmer and blinder. My
nephews and nieces!--I shall often have a niece with me.”

“Do you know Miss Bates's niece? That is, I know you must have seen her
a hundred times--but are you acquainted?”

“Oh! yes; we are always forced to be acquainted whenever she comes to
Highbury. By the bye, _that_ is almost enough to put one out of conceit
with a niece. Heaven forbid! at least, that I should ever bore people
half so much about all the Knightleys together, as she does about Jane
Fairfax. One is sick of the very name of Jane Fairfax. Every letter from
her is read forty times over; her compliments to all friends go round
and round again; and if she does but send her aunt the pattern of a
stomacher, or knit a pair of garters for her grandmother, one hears of
nothing else for a month. I wish Jane Fairfax very well; but she tires
me to death.”

They were now approaching the cottage, and all idle topics were
superseded. Emma was very compassionate; and the distresses of the poor
were as sure of relief from her personal attention and kindness, her
counsel and her patience, as from her purse. She understood their ways,
could allow for their ignorance and their temptations, had no romantic
expectations of extraordinary virtue from those for whom education had
done so little; entered into their troubles with ready sympathy, and
always gave her assistance with as much intelligence as good-will. In
the present instance, it was sickness and poverty together which she
came to visit; and after remaining there as long as she could give
comfort or advice, she quitted the cottage with such an impression of
the scene as made her say to Harriet, as they walked away,

“These are the sights, Harriet, to do one good. How trifling they make
every thing else appear!--I feel now as if I could think of nothing but
these poor creatures all the rest of the day; and yet, who can say how
soon it may all vanish from my mind?”

“Very true,” said Harriet. “Poor creatures! one can think of nothing
else.”

“And really, I do not think the impression will soon be over,” said
Emma, as she crossed the low hedge, and tottering footstep which ended
the narrow, slippery path through the cottage garden, and brought them
into the lane again. “I do not think it will,” stopping to look once
more at all the outward wretchedness of the place, and recall the still
greater within.

“Oh! dear, no,” said her companion.

They walked on. The lane made a slight bend; and when that bend was
passed, Mr. Elton was immediately in sight; and so near as to give Emma
time only to say farther,

“Ah! Harriet, here comes a very sudden trial of our stability in good
thoughts. Well, (smiling,) I hope it may be allowed that if compassion
has produced exertion and relief to the sufferers, it has done all that
is truly important. If we feel for the wretched, enough to do all we can
for them, the rest is empty sympathy, only distressing to ourselves.”

Harriet could just answer, “Oh! dear, yes,” before the gentleman joined
them. The wants and sufferings of the poor family, however, were the
first subject on meeting. He had been going to call on them. His visit
he would now defer; but they had a very interesting parley about
what could be done and should be done. Mr. Elton then turned back to
accompany them.

“To fall in with each other on such an errand as this,” thought Emma;
“to meet in a charitable scheme; this will bring a great increase
of love on each side. I should not wonder if it were to bring on the
declaration. It must, if I were not here. I wish I were anywhere else.”

Anxious to separate herself from them as far as she could, she soon
afterwards took possession of a narrow footpath, a little raised on one
side of the lane, leaving them together in the main road. But she had
not been there two minutes when she found that Harriet's habits of
dependence and imitation were bringing her up too, and that, in short,
they would both be soon after her. This would not do; she immediately
stopped, under pretence of having some alteration to make in the lacing
of her half-boot, and stooping down in complete occupation of the
footpath, begged them to have the goodness to walk on, and she would
follow in half a minute. They did as they were desired; and by the time
she judged it reasonable to have done with her boot, she had the comfort
of farther delay in her power, being overtaken by a child from the
cottage, setting out, according to orders, with her pitcher, to fetch
broth from Hartfield. To walk by the side of this child, and talk to
and question her, was the most natural thing in the world, or would have
been the most natural, had she been acting just then without design;
and by this means the others were still able to keep ahead, without
any obligation of waiting for her. She gained on them, however,
involuntarily: the child's pace was quick, and theirs rather slow;
and she was the more concerned at it, from their being evidently in
a conversation which interested them. Mr. Elton was speaking with
animation, Harriet listening with a very pleased attention; and Emma,
having sent the child on, was beginning to think how she might draw back
a little more, when they both looked around, and she was obliged to join
them.

Mr. Elton was still talking, still engaged in some interesting detail;
and Emma experienced some disappointment when she found that he was only
giving his fair companion an account of the yesterday's party at his
friend Cole's, and that she was come in herself for the Stilton cheese,
the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root, and all the
dessert.

“This would soon have led to something better, of course,” was her
consoling reflection; “any thing interests between those who love; and
any thing will serve as introduction to what is near the heart. If I
could but have kept longer away!”

They now walked on together quietly, till within view of the vicarage
pales, when a sudden resolution, of at least getting Harriet into the
house, made her again find something very much amiss about her boot, and
fall behind to arrange it once more. She then broke the lace off short,
and dexterously throwing it into a ditch, was presently obliged to
entreat them to stop, and acknowledged her inability to put herself to
rights so as to be able to walk home in tolerable comfort.

“Part of my lace is gone,” said she, “and I do not know how I am to
contrive. I really am a most troublesome companion to you both, but I
hope I am not often so ill-equipped. Mr. Elton, I must beg leave to stop
at your house, and ask your housekeeper for a bit of ribband or string,
or any thing just to keep my boot on.”

Mr. Elton looked all happiness at this proposition; and nothing could
exceed his alertness and attention in conducting them into his house and
endeavouring to make every thing appear to advantage. The room they were
taken into was the one he chiefly occupied, and looking forwards; behind
it was another with which it immediately communicated; the door between
them was open, and Emma passed into it with the housekeeper to receive
her assistance in the most comfortable manner. She was obliged to leave
the door ajar as she found it; but she fully intended that Mr. Elton
should close it. It was not closed, however, it still remained ajar; but
by engaging the housekeeper in incessant conversation, she hoped to make
it practicable for him to chuse his own subject in the adjoining
room. For ten minutes she could hear nothing but herself. It could be
protracted no longer. She was then obliged to be finished, and make her
appearance.

The lovers were standing together at one of the windows. It had a most
favourable aspect; and, for half a minute, Emma felt the glory of having
schemed successfully. But it would not do; he had not come to the point.
He had been most agreeable, most delightful; he had told Harriet that
he had seen them go by, and had purposely followed them; other little
gallantries and allusions had been dropt, but nothing serious.

“Cautious, very cautious,” thought Emma; “he advances inch by inch, and
will hazard nothing till he believes himself secure.”

Still, however, though every thing had not been accomplished by her
ingenious device, she could not but flatter herself that it had been
the occasion of much present enjoyment to both, and must be leading them
forward to the great event.



CHAPTER XI


Mr. Elton must now be left to himself. It was no longer in Emma's power
to superintend his happiness or quicken his measures. The coming of her
sister's family was so very near at hand, that first in anticipation,
and then in reality, it became henceforth her prime object of interest;
and during the ten days of their stay at Hartfield it was not to be
expected--she did not herself expect--that any thing beyond occasional,
fortuitous assistance could be afforded by her to the lovers. They might
advance rapidly if they would, however; they must advance somehow or
other whether they would or no. She hardly wished to have more leisure
for them. There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they
will do for themselves.

Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley, from having been longer than usual absent
from Surry, were exciting of course rather more than the usual interest.
Till this year, every long vacation since their marriage had been
divided between Hartfield and Donwell Abbey; but all the holidays of
this autumn had been given to sea-bathing for the children, and it was
therefore many months since they had been seen in a regular way by their
Surry connexions, or seen at all by Mr. Woodhouse, who could not be
induced to get so far as London, even for poor Isabella's sake; and
who consequently was now most nervously and apprehensively happy in
forestalling this too short visit.

He thought much of the evils of the journey for her, and not a little
of the fatigues of his own horses and coachman who were to bring some
of the party the last half of the way; but his alarms were needless;
the sixteen miles being happily accomplished, and Mr. and Mrs. John
Knightley, their five children, and a competent number of nursery-maids,
all reaching Hartfield in safety. The bustle and joy of such an arrival,
the many to be talked to, welcomed, encouraged, and variously dispersed
and disposed of, produced a noise and confusion which his nerves could
not have borne under any other cause, nor have endured much longer even
for this; but the ways of Hartfield and the feelings of her father
were so respected by Mrs. John Knightley, that in spite of maternal
solicitude for the immediate enjoyment of her little ones, and for their
having instantly all the liberty and attendance, all the eating and
drinking, and sleeping and playing, which they could possibly wish for,
without the smallest delay, the children were never allowed to be long
a disturbance to him, either in themselves or in any restless attendance
on them.

Mrs. John Knightley was a pretty, elegant little woman, of gentle, quiet
manners, and a disposition remarkably amiable and affectionate; wrapt
up in her family; a devoted wife, a doating mother, and so tenderly
attached to her father and sister that, but for these higher ties, a
warmer love might have seemed impossible. She could never see a fault
in any of them. She was not a woman of strong understanding or any
quickness; and with this resemblance of her father, she inherited also
much of his constitution; was delicate in her own health, over-careful
of that of her children, had many fears and many nerves, and was as fond
of her own Mr. Wingfield in town as her father could be of Mr. Perry.
They were alike too, in a general benevolence of temper, and a strong
habit of regard for every old acquaintance.

Mr. John Knightley was a tall, gentleman-like, and very clever man;
rising in his profession, domestic, and respectable in his private
character; but with reserved manners which prevented his being generally
pleasing; and capable of being sometimes out of humour. He was not an
ill-tempered man, not so often unreasonably cross as to deserve such a
reproach; but his temper was not his great perfection; and, indeed, with
such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects
in it should not be increased. The extreme sweetness of her temper
must hurt his. He had all the clearness and quickness of mind which she
wanted, and he could sometimes act an ungracious, or say a severe thing.

He was not a great favourite with his fair sister-in-law. Nothing wrong
in him escaped her. She was quick in feeling the little injuries to
Isabella, which Isabella never felt herself. Perhaps she might have
passed over more had his manners been flattering to Isabella's sister,
but they were only those of a calmly kind brother and friend, without
praise and without blindness; but hardly any degree of personal
compliment could have made her regardless of that greatest fault of
all in her eyes which he sometimes fell into, the want of respectful
forbearance towards her father. There he had not always the patience
that could have been wished. Mr. Woodhouse's peculiarities and
fidgetiness were sometimes provoking him to a rational remonstrance or
sharp retort equally ill-bestowed. It did not often happen; for Mr. John
Knightley had really a great regard for his father-in-law, and generally
a strong sense of what was due to him; but it was too often for Emma's
charity, especially as there was all the pain of apprehension frequently
to be endured, though the offence came not. The beginning, however, of
every visit displayed none but the properest feelings, and this being of
necessity so short might be hoped to pass away in unsullied cordiality.
They had not been long seated and composed when Mr. Woodhouse, with a
melancholy shake of the head and a sigh, called his daughter's attention
to the sad change at Hartfield since she had been there last.

“Ah, my dear,” said he, “poor Miss Taylor--It is a grievous business.”

“Oh yes, sir,” cried she with ready sympathy, “how you must miss her!
And dear Emma, too!--What a dreadful loss to you both!--I have been so
grieved for you.--I could not imagine how you could possibly do without
her.--It is a sad change indeed.--But I hope she is pretty well, sir.”

“Pretty well, my dear--I hope--pretty well.--I do not know but that the
place agrees with her tolerably.”

Mr. John Knightley here asked Emma quietly whether there were any doubts
of the air of Randalls.

“Oh! no--none in the least. I never saw Mrs. Weston better in my
life--never looking so well. Papa is only speaking his own regret.”

“Very much to the honour of both,” was the handsome reply.

“And do you see her, sir, tolerably often?” asked Isabella in the
plaintive tone which just suited her father.

Mr. Woodhouse hesitated.--“Not near so often, my dear, as I could wish.”

“Oh! papa, we have missed seeing them but one entire day since they
married. Either in the morning or evening of every day, excepting one,
have we seen either Mr. Weston or Mrs. Weston, and generally both,
either at Randalls or here--and as you may suppose, Isabella, most
frequently here. They are very, very kind in their visits. Mr. Weston
is really as kind as herself. Papa, if you speak in that melancholy way,
you will be giving Isabella a false idea of us all. Every body must be
aware that Miss Taylor must be missed, but every body ought also to be
assured that Mr. and Mrs. Weston do really prevent our missing her by
any means to the extent we ourselves anticipated--which is the exact
truth.”

“Just as it should be,” said Mr. John Knightley, “and just as I hoped
it was from your letters. Her wish of shewing you attention could not be
doubted, and his being a disengaged and social man makes it all easy. I
have been always telling you, my love, that I had no idea of the change
being so very material to Hartfield as you apprehended; and now you have
Emma's account, I hope you will be satisfied.”

“Why, to be sure,” said Mr. Woodhouse--“yes, certainly--I cannot
deny that Mrs. Weston, poor Mrs. Weston, does come and see us pretty
often--but then--she is always obliged to go away again.”

“It would be very hard upon Mr. Weston if she did not, papa.--You quite
forget poor Mr. Weston.”

“I think, indeed,” said John Knightley pleasantly, “that Mr. Weston has
some little claim. You and I, Emma, will venture to take the part of the
poor husband. I, being a husband, and you not being a wife, the claims
of the man may very likely strike us with equal force. As for Isabella,
she has been married long enough to see the convenience of putting all
the Mr. Westons aside as much as she can.”

“Me, my love,” cried his wife, hearing and understanding only in part.--
“Are you talking about me?--I am sure nobody ought to be, or can be, a
greater advocate for matrimony than I am; and if it had not been for
the misery of her leaving Hartfield, I should never have thought of Miss
Taylor but as the most fortunate woman in the world; and as to slighting
Mr. Weston, that excellent Mr. Weston, I think there is nothing he does
not deserve. I believe he is one of the very best-tempered men that ever
existed. Excepting yourself and your brother, I do not know his equal
for temper. I shall never forget his flying Henry's kite for him that
very windy day last Easter--and ever since his particular kindness last
September twelvemonth in writing that note, at twelve o'clock at night,
on purpose to assure me that there was no scarlet fever at Cobham, I
have been convinced there could not be a more feeling heart nor a better
man in existence.--If any body can deserve him, it must be Miss Taylor.”

“Where is the young man?” said John Knightley. “Has he been here on this
occasion--or has he not?”

“He has not been here yet,” replied Emma. “There was a strong
expectation of his coming soon after the marriage, but it ended in
nothing; and I have not heard him mentioned lately.”

“But you should tell them of the letter, my dear,” said her father.
“He wrote a letter to poor Mrs. Weston, to congratulate her, and a very
proper, handsome letter it was. She shewed it to me. I thought it very
well done of him indeed. Whether it was his own idea you know, one
cannot tell. He is but young, and his uncle, perhaps--”

“My dear papa, he is three-and-twenty. You forget how time passes.”

“Three-and-twenty!--is he indeed?--Well, I could not have thought
it--and he was but two years old when he lost his poor mother! Well,
time does fly indeed!--and my memory is very bad. However, it was an
exceeding good, pretty letter, and gave Mr. and Mrs. Weston a great deal
of pleasure. I remember it was written from Weymouth, and dated Sept.
28th--and began, 'My dear Madam,' but I forget how it went on; and it
was signed 'F. C. Weston Churchill.'--I remember that perfectly.”

“How very pleasing and proper of him!” cried the good-hearted Mrs. John
Knightley. “I have no doubt of his being a most amiable young man. But
how sad it is that he should not live at home with his father! There is
something so shocking in a child's being taken away from his parents and
natural home! I never could comprehend how Mr. Weston could part with
him. To give up one's child! I really never could think well of any body
who proposed such a thing to any body else.”

“Nobody ever did think well of the Churchills, I fancy,” observed Mr.
John Knightley coolly. “But you need not imagine Mr. Weston to have felt
what you would feel in giving up Henry or John. Mr. Weston is rather
an easy, cheerful-tempered man, than a man of strong feelings; he takes
things as he finds them, and makes enjoyment of them somehow or other,
depending, I suspect, much more upon what is called society for his
comforts, that is, upon the power of eating and drinking, and playing
whist with his neighbours five times a week, than upon family affection,
or any thing that home affords.”

Emma could not like what bordered on a reflection on Mr. Weston, and had
half a mind to take it up; but she struggled, and let it pass. She
would keep the peace if possible; and there was something honourable and
valuable in the strong domestic habits, the all-sufficiency of home to
himself, whence resulted her brother's disposition to look down on
the common rate of social intercourse, and those to whom it was
important.--It had a high claim to forbearance.



CHAPTER XII


Mr. Knightley was to dine with them--rather against the inclination of
Mr. Woodhouse, who did not like that any one should share with him in
Isabella's first day. Emma's sense of right however had decided it;
and besides the consideration of what was due to each brother, she had
particular pleasure, from the circumstance of the late disagreement
between Mr. Knightley and herself, in procuring him the proper
invitation.

She hoped they might now become friends again. She thought it was time
to make up. Making-up indeed would not do. _She_ certainly had not been
in the wrong, and _he_ would never own that he had. Concession must be
out of the question; but it was time to appear to forget that they had
ever quarrelled; and she hoped it might rather assist the restoration of
friendship, that when he came into the room she had one of the children
with her--the youngest, a nice little girl about eight months old, who
was now making her first visit to Hartfield, and very happy to be danced
about in her aunt's arms. It did assist; for though he began with grave
looks and short questions, he was soon led on to talk of them all in
the usual way, and to take the child out of her arms with all the
unceremoniousness of perfect amity. Emma felt they were friends again;
and the conviction giving her at first great satisfaction, and then
a little sauciness, she could not help saying, as he was admiring the
baby,

“What a comfort it is, that we think alike about our nephews and nieces.
As to men and women, our opinions are sometimes very different; but with
regard to these children, I observe we never disagree.”

“If you were as much guided by nature in your estimate of men and women,
and as little under the power of fancy and whim in your dealings with
them, as you are where these children are concerned, we might always
think alike.”

“To be sure--our discordancies must always arise from my being in the
wrong.”

“Yes,” said he, smiling--“and reason good. I was sixteen years old when
you were born.”

“A material difference then,” she replied--“and no doubt you were much
my superior in judgment at that period of our lives; but does not the
lapse of one-and-twenty years bring our understandings a good deal
nearer?”

“Yes--a good deal _nearer_.”

“But still, not near enough to give me a chance of being right, if we
think differently.”

“I have still the advantage of you by sixteen years' experience, and by
not being a pretty young woman and a spoiled child. Come, my dear Emma,
let us be friends, and say no more about it. Tell your aunt, little
Emma, that she ought to set you a better example than to be renewing old
grievances, and that if she were not wrong before, she is now.”

“That's true,” she cried--“very true. Little Emma, grow up a better
woman than your aunt. Be infinitely cleverer and not half so conceited.
Now, Mr. Knightley, a word or two more, and I have done. As far as good
intentions went, we were _both_ right, and I must say that no effects on
my side of the argument have yet proved wrong. I only want to know that
Mr. Martin is not very, very bitterly disappointed.”

“A man cannot be more so,” was his short, full answer.

“Ah!--Indeed I am very sorry.--Come, shake hands with me.”

This had just taken place and with great cordiality, when John Knightley
made his appearance, and “How d'ye do, George?” and “John, how are
you?” succeeded in the true English style, burying under a calmness that
seemed all but indifference, the real attachment which would have led
either of them, if requisite, to do every thing for the good of the
other.

The evening was quiet and conversable, as Mr. Woodhouse declined cards
entirely for the sake of comfortable talk with his dear Isabella, and
the little party made two natural divisions; on one side he and his
daughter; on the other the two Mr. Knightleys; their subjects totally
distinct, or very rarely mixing--and Emma only occasionally joining in
one or the other.

The brothers talked of their own concerns and pursuits, but principally
of those of the elder, whose temper was by much the most communicative,
and who was always the greater talker. As a magistrate, he had generally
some point of law to consult John about, or, at least, some curious
anecdote to give; and as a farmer, as keeping in hand the home-farm at
Donwell, he had to tell what every field was to bear next year, and to
give all such local information as could not fail of being interesting
to a brother whose home it had equally been the longest part of his
life, and whose attachments were strong. The plan of a drain, the change
of a fence, the felling of a tree, and the destination of every acre for
wheat, turnips, or spring corn, was entered into with as much equality
of interest by John, as his cooler manners rendered possible; and if his
willing brother ever left him any thing to inquire about, his inquiries
even approached a tone of eagerness.

While they were thus comfortably occupied, Mr. Woodhouse was enjoying a
full flow of happy regrets and fearful affection with his daughter.

“My poor dear Isabella,” said he, fondly taking her hand, and
interrupting, for a few moments, her busy labours for some one of her
five children--“How long it is, how terribly long since you were here!
And how tired you must be after your journey! You must go to bed early,
my dear--and I recommend a little gruel to you before you go.--You and
I will have a nice basin of gruel together. My dear Emma, suppose we all
have a little gruel.”

Emma could not suppose any such thing, knowing as she did, that both the
Mr. Knightleys were as unpersuadable on that article as herself;--and
two basins only were ordered. After a little more discourse in praise of
gruel, with some wondering at its not being taken every evening by every
body, he proceeded to say, with an air of grave reflection,

“It was an awkward business, my dear, your spending the autumn at South
End instead of coming here. I never had much opinion of the sea air.”

“Mr. Wingfield most strenuously recommended it, sir--or we should not
have gone. He recommended it for all the children, but particularly for
the weakness in little Bella's throat,--both sea air and bathing.”

“Ah! my dear, but Perry had many doubts about the sea doing her any
good; and as to myself, I have been long perfectly convinced, though
perhaps I never told you so before, that the sea is very rarely of use
to any body. I am sure it almost killed me once.”

“Come, come,” cried Emma, feeling this to be an unsafe subject, “I must
beg you not to talk of the sea. It makes me envious and miserable;--I
who have never seen it! South End is prohibited, if you please. My dear
Isabella, I have not heard you make one inquiry about Mr. Perry yet; and
he never forgets you.”

“Oh! good Mr. Perry--how is he, sir?”

“Why, pretty well; but not quite well. Poor Perry is bilious, and he has
not time to take care of himself--he tells me he has not time to take
care of himself--which is very sad--but he is always wanted all round
the country. I suppose there is not a man in such practice anywhere. But
then there is not so clever a man any where.”

“And Mrs. Perry and the children, how are they? do the children grow?
I have a great regard for Mr. Perry. I hope he will be calling soon. He
will be so pleased to see my little ones.”

“I hope he will be here to-morrow, for I have a question or two to ask
him about myself of some consequence. And, my dear, whenever he comes,
you had better let him look at little Bella's throat.”

“Oh! my dear sir, her throat is so much better that I have hardly any
uneasiness about it. Either bathing has been of the greatest service to
her, or else it is to be attributed to an excellent embrocation of Mr.
Wingfield's, which we have been applying at times ever since August.”

“It is not very likely, my dear, that bathing should have been of use
to her--and if I had known you were wanting an embrocation, I would have
spoken to--

“You seem to me to have forgotten Mrs. and Miss Bates,” said Emma, “I
have not heard one inquiry after them.”

“Oh! the good Bateses--I am quite ashamed of myself--but you mention
them in most of your letters. I hope they are quite well. Good old Mrs.
Bates--I will call upon her to-morrow, and take my children.--They
are always so pleased to see my children.--And that excellent Miss
Bates!--such thorough worthy people!--How are they, sir?”

“Why, pretty well, my dear, upon the whole. But poor Mrs. Bates had a
bad cold about a month ago.”

“How sorry I am! But colds were never so prevalent as they have been
this autumn. Mr. Wingfield told me that he has never known them more
general or heavy--except when it has been quite an influenza.”

“That has been a good deal the case, my dear; but not to the degree you
mention. Perry says that colds have been very general, but not so heavy
as he has very often known them in November. Perry does not call it
altogether a sickly season.”

“No, I do not know that Mr. Wingfield considers it _very_ sickly
except--

“Ah! my poor dear child, the truth is, that in London it is always
a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. It is a
dreadful thing to have you forced to live there! so far off!--and the
air so bad!”

“No, indeed--_we_ are not at all in a bad air. Our part of London is
very superior to most others!--You must not confound us with London
in general, my dear sir. The neighbourhood of Brunswick Square is very
different from almost all the rest. We are so very airy! I should be
unwilling, I own, to live in any other part of the town;--there is
hardly any other that I could be satisfied to have my children in:
but _we_ are so remarkably airy!--Mr. Wingfield thinks the vicinity of
Brunswick Square decidedly the most favourable as to air.”

“Ah! my dear, it is not like Hartfield. You make the best of it--but
after you have been a week at Hartfield, you are all of you different
creatures; you do not look like the same. Now I cannot say, that I think
you are any of you looking well at present.”

“I am sorry to hear you say so, sir; but I assure you, excepting those
little nervous head-aches and palpitations which I am never entirely
free from anywhere, I am quite well myself; and if the children were
rather pale before they went to bed, it was only because they were a
little more tired than usual, from their journey and the happiness of
coming. I hope you will think better of their looks to-morrow; for I
assure you Mr. Wingfield told me, that he did not believe he had ever
sent us off altogether, in such good case. I trust, at least, that
you do not think Mr. Knightley looking ill,” turning her eyes with
affectionate anxiety towards her husband.

“Middling, my dear; I cannot compliment you. I think Mr. John Knightley
very far from looking well.”

“What is the matter, sir?--Did you speak to me?” cried Mr. John
Knightley, hearing his own name.

“I am sorry to find, my love, that my father does not think you looking
well--but I hope it is only from being a little fatigued. I could have
wished, however, as you know, that you had seen Mr. Wingfield before you
left home.”

“My dear Isabella,”--exclaimed he hastily--“pray do not concern yourself
about my looks. Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and
the children, and let me look as I chuse.”

“I did not thoroughly understand what you were telling your brother,”
 cried Emma, “about your friend Mr. Graham's intending to have a bailiff
from Scotland, to look after his new estate. What will it answer? Will
not the old prejudice be too strong?”

And she talked in this way so long and successfully that, when forced to
give her attention again to her father and sister, she had nothing
worse to hear than Isabella's kind inquiry after Jane Fairfax; and Jane
Fairfax, though no great favourite with her in general, she was at that
moment very happy to assist in praising.

“That sweet, amiable Jane Fairfax!” said Mrs. John Knightley.--“It
is so long since I have seen her, except now and then for a moment
accidentally in town! What happiness it must be to her good old
grandmother and excellent aunt, when she comes to visit them! I always
regret excessively on dear Emma's account that she cannot be more at
Highbury; but now their daughter is married, I suppose Colonel and Mrs.
Campbell will not be able to part with her at all. She would be such a
delightful companion for Emma.”

Mr. Woodhouse agreed to it all, but added,

“Our little friend Harriet Smith, however, is just such another pretty
kind of young person. You will like Harriet. Emma could not have a
better companion than Harriet.”

“I am most happy to hear it--but only Jane Fairfax one knows to be so
very accomplished and superior!--and exactly Emma's age.”

This topic was discussed very happily, and others succeeded of similar
moment, and passed away with similar harmony; but the evening did not
close without a little return of agitation. The gruel came and supplied
a great deal to be said--much praise and many comments--undoubting
decision of its wholesomeness for every constitution, and pretty
severe Philippics upon the many houses where it was never met with
tolerably;--but, unfortunately, among the failures which the daughter
had to instance, the most recent, and therefore most prominent, was in
her own cook at South End, a young woman hired for the time, who never
had been able to understand what she meant by a basin of nice smooth
gruel, thin, but not too thin. Often as she had wished for and ordered
it, she had never been able to get any thing tolerable. Here was a
dangerous opening.

“Ah!” said Mr. Woodhouse, shaking his head and fixing his eyes on her
with tender concern.--The ejaculation in Emma's ear expressed, “Ah!
there is no end of the sad consequences of your going to South End. It
does not bear talking of.” And for a little while she hoped he would not
talk of it, and that a silent rumination might suffice to restore him to
the relish of his own smooth gruel. After an interval of some minutes,
however, he began with,

“I shall always be very sorry that you went to the sea this autumn,
instead of coming here.”

“But why should you be sorry, sir?--I assure you, it did the children a
great deal of good.”

“And, moreover, if you must go to the sea, it had better not have been
to South End. South End is an unhealthy place. Perry was surprized to
hear you had fixed upon South End.”

“I know there is such an idea with many people, but indeed it is quite
a mistake, sir.--We all had our health perfectly well there, never
found the least inconvenience from the mud; and Mr. Wingfield says it is
entirely a mistake to suppose the place unhealthy; and I am sure he may
be depended on, for he thoroughly understands the nature of the air, and
his own brother and family have been there repeatedly.”

“You should have gone to Cromer, my dear, if you went anywhere.--Perry
was a week at Cromer once, and he holds it to be the best of all the
sea-bathing places. A fine open sea, he says, and very pure air. And, by
what I understand, you might have had lodgings there quite away from
the sea--a quarter of a mile off--very comfortable. You should have
consulted Perry.”

“But, my dear sir, the difference of the journey;--only consider how
great it would have been.--An hundred miles, perhaps, instead of forty.”

“Ah! my dear, as Perry says, where health is at stake, nothing else
should be considered; and if one is to travel, there is not much to
chuse between forty miles and an hundred.--Better not move at all,
better stay in London altogether than travel forty miles to get into
a worse air. This is just what Perry said. It seemed to him a very
ill-judged measure.”

Emma's attempts to stop her father had been vain; and when he
had reached such a point as this, she could not wonder at her
brother-in-law's breaking out.

“Mr. Perry,” said he, in a voice of very strong displeasure, “would do
as well to keep his opinion till it is asked for. Why does he make it
any business of his, to wonder at what I do?--at my taking my family to
one part of the coast or another?--I may be allowed, I hope, the use of
my judgment as well as Mr. Perry.--I want his directions no more than
his drugs.” He paused--and growing cooler in a moment, added, with only
sarcastic dryness, “If Mr. Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and
five children a distance of an hundred and thirty miles with no greater
expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty, I should be as
willing to prefer Cromer to South End as he could himself.”

“True, true,” cried Mr. Knightley, with most ready interposition--“very
true. That's a consideration indeed.--But John, as to what I was telling
you of my idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the
right that it may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot conceive
any difficulty. I should not attempt it, if it were to be the means of
inconvenience to the Highbury people, but if you call to mind exactly
the present line of the path.... The only way of proving it, however,
will be to turn to our maps. I shall see you at the Abbey to-morrow
morning I hope, and then we will look them over, and you shall give me
your opinion.”

Mr. Woodhouse was rather agitated by such harsh reflections on his
friend Perry, to whom he had, in fact, though unconsciously, been
attributing many of his own feelings and expressions;--but the soothing
attentions of his daughters gradually removed the present evil, and
the immediate alertness of one brother, and better recollections of the
other, prevented any renewal of it.



CHAPTER XIII


There could hardly be a happier creature in the world than Mrs. John
Knightley, in this short visit to Hartfield, going about every morning
among her old acquaintance with her five children, and talking over what
she had done every evening with her father and sister. She had nothing
to wish otherwise, but that the days did not pass so swiftly. It was a
delightful visit;--perfect, in being much too short.

In general their evenings were less engaged with friends than their
mornings; but one complete dinner engagement, and out of the house too,
there was no avoiding, though at Christmas. Mr. Weston would take no
denial; they must all dine at Randalls one day;--even Mr. Woodhouse was
persuaded to think it a possible thing in preference to a division of
the party.

How they were all to be conveyed, he would have made a difficulty if he
could, but as his son and daughter's carriage and horses were actually
at Hartfield, he was not able to make more than a simple question on
that head; it hardly amounted to a doubt; nor did it occupy Emma long
to convince him that they might in one of the carriages find room for
Harriet also.

Harriet, Mr. Elton, and Mr. Knightley, their own especial set, were the
only persons invited to meet them;--the hours were to be early, as
well as the numbers few; Mr. Woodhouse's habits and inclination being
consulted in every thing.

The evening before this great event (for it was a very great event that
Mr. Woodhouse should dine out, on the 24th of December) had been spent
by Harriet at Hartfield, and she had gone home so much indisposed with
a cold, that, but for her own earnest wish of being nursed by Mrs.
Goddard, Emma could not have allowed her to leave the house. Emma called
on her the next day, and found her doom already signed with regard to
Randalls. She was very feverish and had a bad sore throat: Mrs. Goddard
was full of care and affection, Mr. Perry was talked of, and Harriet
herself was too ill and low to resist the authority which excluded her
from this delightful engagement, though she could not speak of her loss
without many tears.

Emma sat with her as long as she could, to attend her in Mrs. Goddard's
unavoidable absences, and raise her spirits by representing how much Mr.
Elton's would be depressed when he knew her state; and left her at last
tolerably comfortable, in the sweet dependence of his having a most
comfortless visit, and of their all missing her very much. She had not
advanced many yards from Mrs. Goddard's door, when she was met by Mr.
Elton himself, evidently coming towards it, and as they walked on slowly
together in conversation about the invalid--of whom he, on the rumour
of considerable illness, had been going to inquire, that he might
carry some report of her to Hartfield--they were overtaken by Mr. John
Knightley returning from the daily visit to Donwell, with his two eldest
boys, whose healthy, glowing faces shewed all the benefit of a country
run, and seemed to ensure a quick despatch of the roast mutton and rice
pudding they were hastening home for. They joined company and
proceeded together. Emma was just describing the nature of her friend's
complaint;--“a throat very much inflamed, with a great deal of heat
about her, a quick, low pulse, &c. and she was sorry to find from Mrs.
Goddard that Harriet was liable to very bad sore-throats, and had often
alarmed her with them.” Mr. Elton looked all alarm on the occasion, as
he exclaimed,

“A sore-throat!--I hope not infectious. I hope not of a putrid
infectious sort. Has Perry seen her? Indeed you should take care of
yourself as well as of your friend. Let me entreat you to run no risks.
Why does not Perry see her?”

Emma, who was not really at all frightened herself, tranquillised this
excess of apprehension by assurances of Mrs. Goddard's experience and
care; but as there must still remain a degree of uneasiness which she
could not wish to reason away, which she would rather feed and assist
than not, she added soon afterwards--as if quite another subject,

“It is so cold, so very cold--and looks and feels so very much like
snow, that if it were to any other place or with any other party, I
should really try not to go out to-day--and dissuade my father from
venturing; but as he has made up his mind, and does not seem to feel the
cold himself, I do not like to interfere, as I know it would be so great
a disappointment to Mr. and Mrs. Weston. But, upon my word, Mr. Elton,
in your case, I should certainly excuse myself. You appear to me a
little hoarse already, and when you consider what demand of voice and
what fatigues to-morrow will bring, I think it would be no more than
common prudence to stay at home and take care of yourself to-night.”

Mr. Elton looked as if he did not very well know what answer to make;
which was exactly the case; for though very much gratified by the kind
care of such a fair lady, and not liking to resist any advice of her's,
he had not really the least inclination to give up the visit;--but Emma,
too eager and busy in her own previous conceptions and views to hear him
impartially, or see him with clear vision, was very well satisfied with
his muttering acknowledgment of its being “very cold, certainly very
cold,” and walked on, rejoicing in having extricated him from Randalls,
and secured him the power of sending to inquire after Harriet every hour
of the evening.

“You do quite right,” said she;--“we will make your apologies to Mr. and
Mrs. Weston.”

But hardly had she so spoken, when she found her brother was civilly
offering a seat in his carriage, if the weather were Mr. Elton's only
objection, and Mr. Elton actually accepting the offer with much prompt
satisfaction. It was a done thing; Mr. Elton was to go, and never had
his broad handsome face expressed more pleasure than at this moment;
never had his smile been stronger, nor his eyes more exulting than when
he next looked at her.

“Well,” said she to herself, “this is most strange!--After I had got
him off so well, to chuse to go into company, and leave Harriet ill
behind!--Most strange indeed!--But there is, I believe, in many men,
especially single men, such an inclination--such a passion for dining
out--a dinner engagement is so high in the class of their pleasures,
their employments, their dignities, almost their duties, that any
thing gives way to it--and this must be the case with Mr. Elton; a most
valuable, amiable, pleasing young man undoubtedly, and very much in love
with Harriet; but still, he cannot refuse an invitation, he must dine
out wherever he is asked. What a strange thing love is! he can see ready
wit in Harriet, but will not dine alone for her.”

Soon afterwards Mr. Elton quitted them, and she could not but do him
the justice of feeling that there was a great deal of sentiment in his
manner of naming Harriet at parting; in the tone of his voice while
assuring her that he should call at Mrs. Goddard's for news of her fair
friend, the last thing before he prepared for the happiness of meeting
her again, when he hoped to be able to give a better report; and
he sighed and smiled himself off in a way that left the balance of
approbation much in his favour.

After a few minutes of entire silence between them, John Knightley began
with--

“I never in my life saw a man more intent on being agreeable than Mr.
Elton. It is downright labour to him where ladies are concerned. With
men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please,
every feature works.”

“Mr. Elton's manners are not perfect,” replied Emma; “but where there is
a wish to please, one ought to overlook, and one does overlook a great
deal. Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will
have the advantage over negligent superiority. There is such perfect
good-temper and good-will in Mr. Elton as one cannot but value.”

“Yes,” said Mr. John Knightley presently, with some slyness, “he seems
to have a great deal of good-will towards you.”

“Me!” she replied with a smile of astonishment, “are you imagining me to
be Mr. Elton's object?”

“Such an imagination has crossed me, I own, Emma; and if it never
occurred to you before, you may as well take it into consideration now.”

“Mr. Elton in love with me!--What an idea!”

“I do not say it is so; but you will do well to consider whether it
is so or not, and to regulate your behaviour accordingly. I think your
manners to him encouraging. I speak as a friend, Emma. You had better
look about you, and ascertain what you do, and what you mean to do.”

“I thank you; but I assure you you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and
I are very good friends, and nothing more;” and she walked on, amusing
herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a
partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high
pretensions to judgment are for ever falling into; and not very well
pleased with her brother for imagining her blind and ignorant, and in
want of counsel. He said no more.

Mr. Woodhouse had so completely made up his mind to the visit, that in
spite of the increasing coldness, he seemed to have no idea of shrinking
from it, and set forward at last most punctually with his eldest
daughter in his own carriage, with less apparent consciousness of the
weather than either of the others; too full of the wonder of his own
going, and the pleasure it was to afford at Randalls to see that it was
cold, and too well wrapt up to feel it. The cold, however, was severe;
and by the time the second carriage was in motion, a few flakes of snow
were finding their way down, and the sky had the appearance of being so
overcharged as to want only a milder air to produce a very white world
in a very short time.

Emma soon saw that her companion was not in the happiest humour. The
preparing and the going abroad in such weather, with the sacrifice of
his children after dinner, were evils, were disagreeables at least,
which Mr. John Knightley did not by any means like; he anticipated
nothing in the visit that could be at all worth the purchase; and the
whole of their drive to the vicarage was spent by him in expressing his
discontent.

“A man,” said he, “must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks
people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as
this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most
agreeable fellow; I could not do such a thing. It is the greatest
absurdity--Actually snowing at this moment!--The folly of not allowing
people to be comfortable at home--and the folly of people's not staying
comfortably at home when they can! If we were obliged to go out such
an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we
should deem it;--and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing
than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of
the voice of nature, which tells man, in every thing given to his view
or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter
that he can;--here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in
another man's house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said
and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow.
Going in dismal weather, to return probably in worse;--four horses and
four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering
creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had
at home.”

Emma did not find herself equal to give the pleased assent, which no
doubt he was in the habit of receiving, to emulate the “Very true,
my love,” which must have been usually administered by his travelling
companion; but she had resolution enough to refrain from making
any answer at all. She could not be complying, she dreaded being
quarrelsome; her heroism reached only to silence. She allowed him to
talk, and arranged the glasses, and wrapped herself up, without opening
her lips.

They arrived, the carriage turned, the step was let down, and Mr. Elton,
spruce, black, and smiling, was with them instantly. Emma thought with
pleasure of some change of subject. Mr. Elton was all obligation and
cheerfulness; he was so very cheerful in his civilities indeed, that she
began to think he must have received a different account of Harriet from
what had reached her. She had sent while dressing, and the answer had
been, “Much the same--not better.”

“_My_ report from Mrs. Goddard's,” said she presently, “was not so
pleasant as I had hoped--'Not better' was _my_ answer.”

His face lengthened immediately; and his voice was the voice of
sentiment as he answered.

“Oh! no--I am grieved to find--I was on the point of telling you that
when I called at Mrs. Goddard's door, which I did the very last thing
before I returned to dress, I was told that Miss Smith was not better,
by no means better, rather worse. Very much grieved and concerned--I
had flattered myself that she must be better after such a cordial as I
knew had been given her in the morning.”

Emma smiled and answered--“My visit was of use to the nervous part of
her complaint, I hope; but not even I can charm away a sore throat;
it is a most severe cold indeed. Mr. Perry has been with her, as you
probably heard.”

“Yes--I imagined--that is--I did not--”

“He has been used to her in these complaints, and I hope to-morrow
morning will bring us both a more comfortable report. But it is
impossible not to feel uneasiness. Such a sad loss to our party to-day!”

“Dreadful!--Exactly so, indeed.--She will be missed every moment.”

This was very proper; the sigh which accompanied it was really
estimable; but it should have lasted longer. Emma was rather in dismay
when only half a minute afterwards he began to speak of other things,
and in a voice of the greatest alacrity and enjoyment.

“What an excellent device,” said he, “the use of a sheepskin for
carriages. How very comfortable they make it;--impossible to feel cold
with such precautions. The contrivances of modern days indeed have
rendered a gentleman's carriage perfectly complete. One is so fenced
and guarded from the weather, that not a breath of air can find its way
unpermitted. Weather becomes absolutely of no consequence. It is a very
cold afternoon--but in this carriage we know nothing of the matter.--Ha!
snows a little I see.”

“Yes,” said John Knightley, “and I think we shall have a good deal of
it.”

“Christmas weather,” observed Mr. Elton. “Quite seasonable; and
extremely fortunate we may think ourselves that it did not begin
yesterday, and prevent this day's party, which it might very possibly
have done, for Mr. Woodhouse would hardly have ventured had there been
much snow on the ground; but now it is of no consequence. This is quite
the season indeed for friendly meetings. At Christmas every body invites
their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst
weather. I was snowed up at a friend's house once for a week. Nothing
could be pleasanter. I went for only one night, and could not get away
till that very day se'nnight.”

Mr. John Knightley looked as if he did not comprehend the pleasure, but
said only, coolly,

“I cannot wish to be snowed up a week at Randalls.”

At another time Emma might have been amused, but she was too much
astonished now at Mr. Elton's spirits for other feelings. Harriet seemed
quite forgotten in the expectation of a pleasant party.

“We are sure of excellent fires,” continued he, “and every thing in the
greatest comfort. Charming people, Mr. and Mrs. Weston;--Mrs. Weston
indeed is much beyond praise, and he is exactly what one values, so
hospitable, and so fond of society;--it will be a small party, but where
small parties are select, they are perhaps the most agreeable of any.
Mr. Weston's dining-room does not accommodate more than ten comfortably;
and for my part, I would rather, under such circumstances, fall short by
two than exceed by two. I think you will agree with me, (turning with
a soft air to Emma,) I think I shall certainly have your approbation,
though Mr. Knightley perhaps, from being used to the large parties of
London, may not quite enter into our feelings.”

“I know nothing of the large parties of London, sir--I never dine with
any body.”

“Indeed! (in a tone of wonder and pity,) I had no idea that the law had
been so great a slavery. Well, sir, the time must come when you will
be paid for all this, when you will have little labour and great
enjoyment.”

“My first enjoyment,” replied John Knightley, as they passed through the
sweep-gate, “will be to find myself safe at Hartfield again.”



CHAPTER XIV


Some change of countenance was necessary for each gentleman as they
walked into Mrs. Weston's drawing-room;--Mr. Elton must compose his
joyous looks, and Mr. John Knightley disperse his ill-humour. Mr.
Elton must smile less, and Mr. John Knightley more, to fit them for the
place.--Emma only might be as nature prompted, and shew herself just as
happy as she was. To her it was real enjoyment to be with the Westons.
Mr. Weston was a great favourite, and there was not a creature in the
world to whom she spoke with such unreserve, as to his wife; not any
one, to whom she related with such conviction of being listened to and
understood, of being always interesting and always intelligible, the
little affairs, arrangements, perplexities, and pleasures of her father
and herself. She could tell nothing of Hartfield, in which Mrs. Weston
had not a lively concern; and half an hour's uninterrupted communication
of all those little matters on which the daily happiness of private life
depends, was one of the first gratifications of each.

This was a pleasure which perhaps the whole day's visit might not
afford, which certainly did not belong to the present half-hour; but the
very sight of Mrs. Weston, her smile, her touch, her voice was grateful
to Emma, and she determined to think as little as possible of Mr.
Elton's oddities, or of any thing else unpleasant, and enjoy all that
was enjoyable to the utmost.

The misfortune of Harriet's cold had been pretty well gone through
before her arrival. Mr. Woodhouse had been safely seated long enough
to give the history of it, besides all the history of his own and
Isabella's coming, and of Emma's being to follow, and had indeed just
got to the end of his satisfaction that James should come and see his
daughter, when the others appeared, and Mrs. Weston, who had been almost
wholly engrossed by her attentions to him, was able to turn away and
welcome her dear Emma.

Emma's project of forgetting Mr. Elton for a while made her rather sorry
to find, when they had all taken their places, that he was close to her.
The difficulty was great of driving his strange insensibility towards
Harriet, from her mind, while he not only sat at her elbow, but
was continually obtruding his happy countenance on her notice, and
solicitously addressing her upon every occasion. Instead of forgetting
him, his behaviour was such that she could not avoid the internal
suggestion of “Can it really be as my brother imagined? can it be
possible for this man to be beginning to transfer his affections from
Harriet to me?--Absurd and insufferable!”--Yet he would be so anxious
for her being perfectly warm, would be so interested about her father,
and so delighted with Mrs. Weston; and at last would begin admiring her
drawings with so much zeal and so little knowledge as seemed terribly
like a would-be lover, and made it some effort with her to preserve her
good manners. For her own sake she could not be rude; and for Harriet's,
in the hope that all would yet turn out right, she was even positively
civil; but it was an effort; especially as something was going on
amongst the others, in the most overpowering period of Mr. Elton's
nonsense, which she particularly wished to listen to. She heard enough
to know that Mr. Weston was giving some information about his son; she
heard the words “my son,” and “Frank,” and “my son,” repeated several
times over; and, from a few other half-syllables very much suspected
that he was announcing an early visit from his son; but before she could
quiet Mr. Elton, the subject was so completely past that any reviving
question from her would have been awkward.

Now, it so happened that in spite of Emma's resolution of never
marrying, there was something in the name, in the idea of Mr.
Frank Churchill, which always interested her. She had frequently
thought--especially since his father's marriage with Miss Taylor--that
if she _were_ to marry, he was the very person to suit her in age,
character and condition. He seemed by this connexion between the
families, quite to belong to her. She could not but suppose it to be
a match that every body who knew them must think of. That Mr. and Mrs.
Weston did think of it, she was very strongly persuaded; and though
not meaning to be induced by him, or by any body else, to give up a
situation which she believed more replete with good than any she could
change it for, she had a great curiosity to see him, a decided intention
of finding him pleasant, of being liked by him to a certain degree, and
a sort of pleasure in the idea of their being coupled in their friends'
imaginations.

With such sensations, Mr. Elton's civilities were dreadfully ill-timed;
but she had the comfort of appearing very polite, while feeling very
cross--and of thinking that the rest of the visit could not possibly
pass without bringing forward the same information again, or the
substance of it, from the open-hearted Mr. Weston.--So it proved;--for
when happily released from Mr. Elton, and seated by Mr. Weston,
at dinner, he made use of the very first interval in the cares of
hospitality, the very first leisure from the saddle of mutton, to say to
her,

“We want only two more to be just the right number. I should like to see
two more here,--your pretty little friend, Miss Smith, and my son--and
then I should say we were quite complete. I believe you did not hear me
telling the others in the drawing-room that we are expecting Frank.
I had a letter from him this morning, and he will be with us within a
fortnight.”

Emma spoke with a very proper degree of pleasure; and fully assented to
his proposition of Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Smith making their party
quite complete.

“He has been wanting to come to us,” continued Mr. Weston, “ever since
September: every letter has been full of it; but he cannot command his
own time. He has those to please who must be pleased, and who (between
ourselves) are sometimes to be pleased only by a good many sacrifices.
But now I have no doubt of seeing him here about the second week in
January.”

“What a very great pleasure it will be to you! and Mrs. Weston is so
anxious to be acquainted with him, that she must be almost as happy as
yourself.”

“Yes, she would be, but that she thinks there will be another put-off.
She does not depend upon his coming so much as I do: but she does not
know the parties so well as I do. The case, you see, is--(but this is
quite between ourselves: I did not mention a syllable of it in the other
room. There are secrets in all families, you know)--The case is, that a
party of friends are invited to pay a visit at Enscombe in January; and
that Frank's coming depends upon their being put off. If they are not
put off, he cannot stir. But I know they will, because it is a family
that a certain lady, of some consequence, at Enscombe, has a particular
dislike to: and though it is thought necessary to invite them once in
two or three years, they always are put off when it comes to the point.
I have not the smallest doubt of the issue. I am as confident of seeing
Frank here before the middle of January, as I am of being here myself:
but your good friend there (nodding towards the upper end of the table)
has so few vagaries herself, and has been so little used to them at
Hartfield, that she cannot calculate on their effects, as I have been
long in the practice of doing.”

“I am sorry there should be any thing like doubt in the case,” replied
Emma; “but am disposed to side with you, Mr. Weston. If you think he
will come, I shall think so too; for you know Enscombe.”

“Yes--I have some right to that knowledge; though I have never been at
the place in my life.--She is an odd woman!--But I never allow myself
to speak ill of her, on Frank's account; for I do believe her to be very
fond of him. I used to think she was not capable of being fond of
any body, except herself: but she has always been kind to him (in her
way--allowing for little whims and caprices, and expecting every thing
to be as she likes). And it is no small credit, in my opinion, to him,
that he should excite such an affection; for, though I would not say
it to any body else, she has no more heart than a stone to people in
general; and the devil of a temper.”

Emma liked the subject so well, that she began upon it, to Mrs. Weston,
very soon after their moving into the drawing-room: wishing her joy--yet
observing, that she knew the first meeting must be rather alarming.--
Mrs. Weston agreed to it; but added, that she should be very glad to be
secure of undergoing the anxiety of a first meeting at the time talked
of: “for I cannot depend upon his coming. I cannot be so sanguine as
Mr. Weston. I am very much afraid that it will all end in nothing. Mr.
Weston, I dare say, has been telling you exactly how the matter stands?”

“Yes--it seems to depend upon nothing but the ill-humour of Mrs.
Churchill, which I imagine to be the most certain thing in the world.”

“My Emma!” replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, “what is the certainty
of caprice?” Then turning to Isabella, who had not been attending
before--“You must know, my dear Mrs. Knightley, that we are by no means
so sure of seeing Mr. Frank Churchill, in my opinion, as his father
thinks. It depends entirely upon his aunt's spirits and pleasure; in
short, upon her temper. To you--to my two daughters--I may venture on
the truth. Mrs. Churchill rules at Enscombe, and is a very odd-tempered
woman; and his coming now, depends upon her being willing to spare him.”

“Oh, Mrs. Churchill; every body knows Mrs. Churchill,” replied Isabella:
“and I am sure I never think of that poor young man without the greatest
compassion. To be constantly living with an ill-tempered person, must
be dreadful. It is what we happily have never known any thing of; but
it must be a life of misery. What a blessing, that she never had any
children! Poor little creatures, how unhappy she would have made them!”

Emma wished she had been alone with Mrs. Weston. She should then have
heard more: Mrs. Weston would speak to her, with a degree of unreserve
which she would not hazard with Isabella; and, she really believed,
would scarcely try to conceal any thing relative to the Churchills
from her, excepting those views on the young man, of which her own
imagination had already given her such instinctive knowledge. But at
present there was nothing more to be said. Mr. Woodhouse very soon
followed them into the drawing-room. To be sitting long after
dinner, was a confinement that he could not endure. Neither wine nor
conversation was any thing to him; and gladly did he move to those with
whom he was always comfortable.

While he talked to Isabella, however, Emma found an opportunity of
saying,

“And so you do not consider this visit from your son as by any means
certain. I am sorry for it. The introduction must be unpleasant,
whenever it takes place; and the sooner it could be over, the better.”

“Yes; and every delay makes one more apprehensive of other delays. Even
if this family, the Braithwaites, are put off, I am still afraid that
some excuse may be found for disappointing us. I cannot bear to imagine
any reluctance on his side; but I am sure there is a great wish on
the Churchills' to keep him to themselves. There is jealousy. They
are jealous even of his regard for his father. In short, I can feel no
dependence on his coming, and I wish Mr. Weston were less sanguine.”

“He ought to come,” said Emma. “If he could stay only a couple of days,
he ought to come; and one can hardly conceive a young man's not having
it in his power to do as much as that. A young _woman_, if she fall into
bad hands, may be teased, and kept at a distance from those she wants
to be with; but one cannot comprehend a young _man_'s being under such
restraint, as not to be able to spend a week with his father, if he
likes it.”

“One ought to be at Enscombe, and know the ways of the family, before
one decides upon what he can do,” replied Mrs. Weston. “One ought to
use the same caution, perhaps, in judging of the conduct of any one
individual of any one family; but Enscombe, I believe, certainly must
not be judged by general rules: _she_ is so very unreasonable; and every
thing gives way to her.”

“But she is so fond of the nephew: he is so very great a favourite. Now,
according to my idea of Mrs. Churchill, it would be most natural, that
while she makes no sacrifice for the comfort of the husband, to whom she
owes every thing, while she exercises incessant caprice towards _him_,
she should frequently be governed by the nephew, to whom she owes
nothing at all.”

“My dearest Emma, do not pretend, with your sweet temper, to understand
a bad one, or to lay down rules for it: you must let it go its own way.
I have no doubt of his having, at times, considerable influence; but it
may be perfectly impossible for him to know beforehand _when_ it will
be.”

Emma listened, and then coolly said, “I shall not be satisfied, unless
he comes.”

“He may have a great deal of influence on some points,” continued Mrs.
Weston, “and on others, very little: and among those, on which she is
beyond his reach, it is but too likely, may be this very circumstance of
his coming away from them to visit us.”



CHAPTER XV


Mr. Woodhouse was soon ready for his tea; and when he had drank his
tea he was quite ready to go home; and it was as much as his three
companions could do, to entertain away his notice of the lateness of
the hour, before the other gentlemen appeared. Mr. Weston was chatty and
convivial, and no friend to early separations of any sort; but at last
the drawing-room party did receive an augmentation. Mr. Elton, in very
good spirits, was one of the first to walk in. Mrs. Weston and Emma
were sitting together on a sofa. He joined them immediately, and, with
scarcely an invitation, seated himself between them.

Emma, in good spirits too, from the amusement afforded her mind by
the expectation of Mr. Frank Churchill, was willing to forget his late
improprieties, and be as well satisfied with him as before, and on his
making Harriet his very first subject, was ready to listen with most
friendly smiles.

He professed himself extremely anxious about her fair friend--her fair,
lovely, amiable friend. “Did she know?--had she heard any thing about
her, since their being at Randalls?--he felt much anxiety--he must
confess that the nature of her complaint alarmed him considerably.”
 And in this style he talked on for some time very properly, not much
attending to any answer, but altogether sufficiently awake to the terror
of a bad sore throat; and Emma was quite in charity with him.

But at last there seemed a perverse turn; it seemed all at once as if he
were more afraid of its being a bad sore throat on her account, than on
Harriet's--more anxious that she should escape the infection, than
that there should be no infection in the complaint. He began with great
earnestness to entreat her to refrain from visiting the sick-chamber
again, for the present--to entreat her to _promise_ _him_ not to venture
into such hazard till he had seen Mr. Perry and learnt his opinion; and
though she tried to laugh it off and bring the subject back into its
proper course, there was no putting an end to his extreme solicitude
about her. She was vexed. It did appear--there was no concealing
it--exactly like the pretence of being in love with her, instead of
Harriet; an inconstancy, if real, the most contemptible and abominable!
and she had difficulty in behaving with temper. He turned to Mrs. Weston
to implore her assistance, “Would not she give him her support?--would
not she add her persuasions to his, to induce Miss Woodhouse not to go
to Mrs. Goddard's till it were certain that Miss Smith's disorder had
no infection? He could not be satisfied without a promise--would not she
give him her influence in procuring it?”

“So scrupulous for others,” he continued, “and yet so careless for
herself! She wanted me to nurse my cold by staying at home to-day, and
yet will not promise to avoid the danger of catching an ulcerated sore
throat herself. Is this fair, Mrs. Weston?--Judge between us. Have not I
some right to complain? I am sure of your kind support and aid.”

Emma saw Mrs. Weston's surprize, and felt that it must be great, at an
address which, in words and manner, was assuming to himself the right of
first interest in her; and as for herself, she was too much provoked and
offended to have the power of directly saying any thing to the purpose.
She could only give him a look; but it was such a look as she thought
must restore him to his senses, and then left the sofa, removing to a
seat by her sister, and giving her all her attention.

She had not time to know how Mr. Elton took the reproof, so rapidly did
another subject succeed; for Mr. John Knightley now came into the room
from examining the weather, and opened on them all with the information
of the ground being covered with snow, and of its still snowing
fast, with a strong drifting wind; concluding with these words to Mr.
Woodhouse:

“This will prove a spirited beginning of your winter engagements,
sir. Something new for your coachman and horses to be making their way
through a storm of snow.”

Poor Mr. Woodhouse was silent from consternation; but every body else
had something to say; every body was either surprized or not surprized,
and had some question to ask, or some comfort to offer. Mrs. Weston
and Emma tried earnestly to cheer him and turn his attention from his
son-in-law, who was pursuing his triumph rather unfeelingly.

“I admired your resolution very much, sir,” said he, “in venturing out
in such weather, for of course you saw there would be snow very soon.
Every body must have seen the snow coming on. I admired your spirit; and
I dare say we shall get home very well. Another hour or two's snow can
hardly make the road impassable; and we are two carriages; if one is
blown over in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other
at hand. I dare say we shall be all safe at Hartfield before midnight.”

Mr. Weston, with triumph of a different sort, was confessing that he
had known it to be snowing some time, but had not said a word, lest
it should make Mr. Woodhouse uncomfortable, and be an excuse for his
hurrying away. As to there being any quantity of snow fallen or likely
to fall to impede their return, that was a mere joke; he was afraid they
would find no difficulty. He wished the road might be impassable, that
he might be able to keep them all at Randalls; and with the utmost
good-will was sure that accommodation might be found for every body,
calling on his wife to agree with him, that with a little contrivance,
every body might be lodged, which she hardly knew how to do, from the
consciousness of there being but two spare rooms in the house.

“What is to be done, my dear Emma?--what is to be done?” was Mr.
Woodhouse's first exclamation, and all that he could say for some
time. To her he looked for comfort; and her assurances of safety, her
representation of the excellence of the horses, and of James, and of
their having so many friends about them, revived him a little.

His eldest daughter's alarm was equal to his own. The horror of being
blocked up at Randalls, while her children were at Hartfield, was full
in her imagination; and fancying the road to be now just passable for
adventurous people, but in a state that admitted no delay, she was eager
to have it settled, that her father and Emma should remain at Randalls,
while she and her husband set forward instantly through all the possible
accumulations of drifted snow that might impede them.

“You had better order the carriage directly, my love,” said she; “I dare
say we shall be able to get along, if we set off directly; and if we
do come to any thing very bad, I can get out and walk. I am not at all
afraid. I should not mind walking half the way. I could change my shoes,
you know, the moment I got home; and it is not the sort of thing that
gives me cold.”

“Indeed!” replied he. “Then, my dear Isabella, it is the most
extraordinary sort of thing in the world, for in general every thing
does give you cold. Walk home!--you are prettily shod for walking home,
I dare say. It will be bad enough for the horses.”

Isabella turned to Mrs. Weston for her approbation of the plan. Mrs.
Weston could only approve. Isabella then went to Emma; but Emma could
not so entirely give up the hope of their being all able to get away;
and they were still discussing the point, when Mr. Knightley, who had
left the room immediately after his brother's first report of the snow,
came back again, and told them that he had been out of doors to examine,
and could answer for there not being the smallest difficulty in their
getting home, whenever they liked it, either now or an hour hence. He
had gone beyond the sweep--some way along the Highbury road--the snow
was nowhere above half an inch deep--in many places hardly enough to
whiten the ground; a very few flakes were falling at present, but the
clouds were parting, and there was every appearance of its being soon
over. He had seen the coachmen, and they both agreed with him in there
being nothing to apprehend.

To Isabella, the relief of such tidings was very great, and they were
scarcely less acceptable to Emma on her father's account, who
was immediately set as much at ease on the subject as his nervous
constitution allowed; but the alarm that had been raised could not be
appeased so as to admit of any comfort for him while he continued at
Randalls. He was satisfied of there being no present danger in returning
home, but no assurances could convince him that it was safe to stay; and
while the others were variously urging and recommending, Mr. Knightley
and Emma settled it in a few brief sentences: thus--

“Your father will not be easy; why do not you go?”

“I am ready, if the others are.”

“Shall I ring the bell?”

“Yes, do.”

And the bell was rung, and the carriages spoken for. A few minutes more,
and Emma hoped to see one troublesome companion deposited in his own
house, to get sober and cool, and the other recover his temper and
happiness when this visit of hardship were over.

The carriage came: and Mr. Woodhouse, always the first object on such
occasions, was carefully attended to his own by Mr. Knightley and Mr.
Weston; but not all that either could say could prevent some renewal
of alarm at the sight of the snow which had actually fallen, and the
discovery of a much darker night than he had been prepared for. “He was
afraid they should have a very bad drive. He was afraid poor Isabella
would not like it. And there would be poor Emma in the carriage behind.
He did not know what they had best do. They must keep as much together
as they could;” and James was talked to, and given a charge to go very
slow and wait for the other carriage.

Isabella stept in after her father; John Knightley, forgetting that he
did not belong to their party, stept in after his wife very naturally;
so that Emma found, on being escorted and followed into the second
carriage by Mr. Elton, that the door was to be lawfully shut on them,
and that they were to have a tete-a-tete drive. It would not have been
the awkwardness of a moment, it would have been rather a pleasure,
previous to the suspicions of this very day; she could have talked to
him of Harriet, and the three-quarters of a mile would have seemed but
one. But now, she would rather it had not happened. She believed he had
been drinking too much of Mr. Weston's good wine, and felt sure that he
would want to be talking nonsense.

To restrain him as much as might be, by her own manners, she was
immediately preparing to speak with exquisite calmness and gravity of
the weather and the night; but scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they
passed the sweep-gate and joined the other carriage, than she found her
subject cut up--her hand seized--her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton
actually making violent love to her: availing himself of the precious
opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already well known,
hoping--fearing--adoring--ready to die if she refused him; but
flattering himself that his ardent attachment and unequalled love and
unexampled passion could not fail of having some effect, and in short,
very much resolved on being seriously accepted as soon as possible. It
really was so. Without scruple--without apology--without much apparent
diffidence, Mr. Elton, the lover of Harriet, was professing himself
_her_ lover. She tried to stop him; but vainly; he would go on, and say
it all. Angry as she was, the thought of the moment made her resolve to
restrain herself when she did speak. She felt that half this folly must
be drunkenness, and therefore could hope that it might belong only to
the passing hour. Accordingly, with a mixture of the serious and the
playful, which she hoped would best suit his half and half state, she
replied,

“I am very much astonished, Mr. Elton. This to _me_! you forget
yourself--you take me for my friend--any message to Miss Smith I shall
be happy to deliver; but no more of this to _me_, if you please.”

“Miss Smith!--message to Miss Smith!--What could she possibly
mean!”--And he repeated her words with such assurance of accent, such
boastful pretence of amazement, that she could not help replying with
quickness,

“Mr. Elton, this is the most extraordinary conduct! and I can account
for it only in one way; you are not yourself, or you could not speak
either to me, or of Harriet, in such a manner. Command yourself enough
to say no more, and I will endeavour to forget it.”

But Mr. Elton had only drunk wine enough to elevate his spirits, not at
all to confuse his intellects. He perfectly knew his own meaning; and
having warmly protested against her suspicion as most injurious, and
slightly touched upon his respect for Miss Smith as her friend,--but
acknowledging his wonder that Miss Smith should be mentioned at all,--he
resumed the subject of his own passion, and was very urgent for a
favourable answer.

As she thought less of his inebriety, she thought more of his
inconstancy and presumption; and with fewer struggles for politeness,
replied,

“It is impossible for me to doubt any longer. You have made yourself
too clear. Mr. Elton, my astonishment is much beyond any thing I can
express. After such behaviour, as I have witnessed during the last
month, to Miss Smith--such attentions as I have been in the daily
habit of observing--to be addressing me in this manner--this is an
unsteadiness of character, indeed, which I had not supposed possible!
Believe me, sir, I am far, very far, from gratified in being the object
of such professions.”

“Good Heaven!” cried Mr. Elton, “what can be the meaning of this?--Miss
Smith!--I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my
existence--never paid her any attentions, but as your friend: never
cared whether she were dead or alive, but as your friend. If she
has fancied otherwise, her own wishes have misled her, and I am very
sorry--extremely sorry--But, Miss Smith, indeed!--Oh! Miss Woodhouse!
who can think of Miss Smith, when Miss Woodhouse is near! No, upon my
honour, there is no unsteadiness of character. I have thought only of
you. I protest against having paid the smallest attention to any one
else. Every thing that I have said or done, for many weeks past, has
been with the sole view of marking my adoration of yourself. You
cannot really, seriously, doubt it. No!--(in an accent meant to be
insinuating)--I am sure you have seen and understood me.”

It would be impossible to say what Emma felt, on hearing this--which
of all her unpleasant sensations was uppermost. She was too completely
overpowered to be immediately able to reply: and two moments of silence
being ample encouragement for Mr. Elton's sanguine state of mind, he
tried to take her hand again, as he joyously exclaimed--

“Charming Miss Woodhouse! allow me to interpret this interesting
silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.”

“No, sir,” cried Emma, “it confesses no such thing. So far from having
long understood you, I have been in a most complete error with respect
to your views, till this moment. As to myself, I am very sorry that you
should have been giving way to any feelings--Nothing could be farther
from my wishes--your attachment to my friend Harriet--your pursuit of
her, (pursuit, it appeared,) gave me great pleasure, and I have been
very earnestly wishing you success: but had I supposed that she were not
your attraction to Hartfield, I should certainly have thought you judged
ill in making your visits so frequent. Am I to believe that you have
never sought to recommend yourself particularly to Miss Smith?--that you
have never thought seriously of her?”

“Never, madam,” cried he, affronted in his turn: “never, I assure you.
_I_ think seriously of Miss Smith!--Miss Smith is a very good sort of
girl; and I should be happy to see her respectably settled. I wish
her extremely well: and, no doubt, there are men who might not object
to--Every body has their level: but as for myself, I am not, I think,
quite so much at a loss. I need not so totally despair of an equal
alliance, as to be addressing myself to Miss Smith!--No, madam, my
visits to Hartfield have been for yourself only; and the encouragement I
received--”

“Encouragement!--I give you encouragement!--Sir, you have been entirely
mistaken in supposing it. I have seen you only as the admirer of my
friend. In no other light could you have been more to me than a common
acquaintance. I am exceedingly sorry: but it is well that the mistake
ends where it does. Had the same behaviour continued, Miss Smith might
have been led into a misconception of your views; not being aware,
probably, any more than myself, of the very great inequality which you
are so sensible of. But, as it is, the disappointment is single, and, I
trust, will not be lasting. I have no thoughts of matrimony at present.”

He was too angry to say another word; her manner too decided to invite
supplication; and in this state of swelling resentment, and mutually
deep mortification, they had to continue together a few minutes longer,
for the fears of Mr. Woodhouse had confined them to a foot-pace. If
there had not been so much anger, there would have been desperate
awkwardness; but their straightforward emotions left no room for the
little zigzags of embarrassment. Without knowing when the carriage
turned into Vicarage Lane, or when it stopped, they found themselves,
all at once, at the door of his house; and he was out before another
syllable passed.--Emma then felt it indispensable to wish him a good
night. The compliment was just returned, coldly and proudly; and, under
indescribable irritation of spirits, she was then conveyed to Hartfield.

There she was welcomed, with the utmost delight, by her father, who
had been trembling for the dangers of a solitary drive from Vicarage
Lane--turning a corner which he could never bear to think of--and in
strange hands--a mere common coachman--no James; and there it seemed as
if her return only were wanted to make every thing go well: for Mr.
John Knightley, ashamed of his ill-humour, was now all kindness and
attention; and so particularly solicitous for the comfort of her
father, as to seem--if not quite ready to join him in a basin of
gruel--perfectly sensible of its being exceedingly wholesome; and the
day was concluding in peace and comfort to all their little party,
except herself.--But her mind had never been in such perturbation; and
it needed a very strong effort to appear attentive and cheerful till the
usual hour of separating allowed her the relief of quiet reflection.



CHAPTER XVI


The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think
and be miserable.--It was a wretched business indeed!--Such an overthrow
of every thing she had been wishing for!--Such a development of every
thing most unwelcome!--Such a blow for Harriet!--that was the worst
of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation, of some sort or
other; but, compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light; and
she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken--more in
error--more disgraced by mis-judgment, than she actually was, could the
effects of her blunders have been confined to herself.

“If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have
borne any thing. He might have doubled his presumption to me--but poor
Harriet!”

How she could have been so deceived!--He protested that he had never
thought seriously of Harriet--never! She looked back as well as
she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she
supposed, and made every thing bend to it. His manners, however, must
have been unmarked, wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so
misled.

The picture!--How eager he had been about the picture!--and the
charade!--and an hundred other circumstances;--how clearly they had
seemed to point at Harriet. To be sure, the charade, with its “ready
wit”--but then the “soft eyes”--in fact it suited neither; it was
a jumble without taste or truth. Who could have seen through such
thick-headed nonsense?

Certainly she had often, especially of late, thought his manners to
herself unnecessarily gallant; but it had passed as his way, as a mere
error of judgment, of knowledge, of taste, as one proof among others
that he had not always lived in the best society, that with all the
gentleness of his address, true elegance was sometimes wanting; but,
till this very day, she had never, for an instant, suspected it to mean
any thing but grateful respect to her as Harriet's friend.

To Mr. John Knightley was she indebted for her first idea on the
subject, for the first start of its possibility. There was no denying
that those brothers had penetration. She remembered what Mr. Knightley
had once said to her about Mr. Elton, the caution he had given,
the conviction he had professed that Mr. Elton would never marry
indiscreetly; and blushed to think how much truer a knowledge of his
character had been there shewn than any she had reached herself. It
was dreadfully mortifying; but Mr. Elton was proving himself, in many
respects, the very reverse of what she had meant and believed him;
proud, assuming, conceited; very full of his own claims, and little
concerned about the feelings of others.

Contrary to the usual course of things, Mr. Elton's wanting to pay his
addresses to her had sunk him in her opinion. His professions and his
proposals did him no service. She thought nothing of his attachment,
and was insulted by his hopes. He wanted to marry well, and having the
arrogance to raise his eyes to her, pretended to be in love; but she was
perfectly easy as to his not suffering any disappointment that need be
cared for. There had been no real affection either in his language or
manners. Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance; but she could
hardly devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice, less
allied with real love. She need not trouble herself to pity him. He
only wanted to aggrandise and enrich himself; and if Miss Woodhouse
of Hartfield, the heiress of thirty thousand pounds, were not quite so
easily obtained as he had fancied, he would soon try for Miss Somebody
else with twenty, or with ten.

But--that he should talk of encouragement, should consider her as aware
of his views, accepting his attentions, meaning (in short), to marry
him!--should suppose himself her equal in connexion or mind!--look down
upon her friend, so well understanding the gradations of rank below
him, and be so blind to what rose above, as to fancy himself shewing no
presumption in addressing her!--It was most provoking.

Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to feel how very much he was her
inferior in talent, and all the elegancies of mind. The very want of
such equality might prevent his perception of it; but he must know that
in fortune and consequence she was greatly his superior. He must
know that the Woodhouses had been settled for several generations at
Hartfield, the younger branch of a very ancient family--and that the
Eltons were nobody. The landed property of Hartfield certainly was
inconsiderable, being but a sort of notch in the Donwell Abbey estate,
to which all the rest of Highbury belonged; but their fortune, from
other sources, was such as to make them scarcely secondary to Donwell
Abbey itself, in every other kind of consequence; and the Woodhouses had
long held a high place in the consideration of the neighbourhood which
Mr. Elton had first entered not two years ago, to make his way as he
could, without any alliances but in trade, or any thing to recommend him
to notice but his situation and his civility.--But he had fancied her
in love with him; that evidently must have been his dependence; and
after raving a little about the seeming incongruity of gentle manners
and a conceited head, Emma was obliged in common honesty to stop
and admit that her own behaviour to him had been so complaisant and
obliging, so full of courtesy and attention, as (supposing her real
motive unperceived) might warrant a man of ordinary observation and
delicacy, like Mr. Elton, in fancying himself a very decided favourite.
If _she_ had so misinterpreted his feelings, she had little right to
wonder that _he_, with self-interest to blind him, should have mistaken
hers.

The first error and the worst lay at her door. It was foolish, it was
wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It
was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what
ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite
concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more.

“Here have I,” said she, “actually talked poor Harriet into being very
much attached to this man. She might never have thought of him but for
me; and certainly never would have thought of him with hope, if I had
not assured her of his attachment, for she is as modest and humble as I
used to think him. Oh! that I had been satisfied with persuading her not
to accept young Martin. There I was quite right. That was well done
of me; but there I should have stopped, and left the rest to time and
chance. I was introducing her into good company, and giving her the
opportunity of pleasing some one worth having; I ought not to have
attempted more. But now, poor girl, her peace is cut up for some time.
I have been but half a friend to her; and if she were _not_ to feel this
disappointment so very much, I am sure I have not an idea of any body
else who would be at all desirable for her;--William Coxe--Oh! no, I
could not endure William Coxe--a pert young lawyer.”

She stopt to blush and laugh at her own relapse, and then resumed a more
serious, more dispiriting cogitation upon what had been, and might be,
and must be. The distressing explanation she had to make to Harriet, and
all that poor Harriet would be suffering, with the awkwardness of
future meetings, the difficulties of continuing or discontinuing the
acquaintance, of subduing feelings, concealing resentment, and avoiding
eclat, were enough to occupy her in most unmirthful reflections some
time longer, and she went to bed at last with nothing settled but the
conviction of her having blundered most dreadfully.

To youth and natural cheerfulness like Emma's, though under temporary
gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of
spirits. The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy,
and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough
to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of
softened pain and brighter hope.

Emma got up on the morrow more disposed for comfort than she had gone
to bed, more ready to see alleviations of the evil before her, and to
depend on getting tolerably out of it.

It was a great consolation that Mr. Elton should not be really in
love with her, or so particularly amiable as to make it shocking to
disappoint him--that Harriet's nature should not be of that superior
sort in which the feelings are most acute and retentive--and that there
could be no necessity for any body's knowing what had passed except the
three principals, and especially for her father's being given a moment's
uneasiness about it.

These were very cheering thoughts; and the sight of a great deal of snow
on the ground did her further service, for any thing was welcome that
might justify their all three being quite asunder at present.

The weather was most favourable for her; though Christmas Day, she
could not go to church. Mr. Woodhouse would have been miserable had his
daughter attempted it, and she was therefore safe from either exciting
or receiving unpleasant and most unsuitable ideas. The ground covered
with snow, and the atmosphere in that unsettled state between frost and
thaw, which is of all others the most unfriendly for exercise, every
morning beginning in rain or snow, and every evening setting in to
freeze, she was for many days a most honourable prisoner. No intercourse
with Harriet possible but by note; no church for her on Sunday any
more than on Christmas Day; and no need to find excuses for Mr. Elton's
absenting himself.

It was weather which might fairly confine every body at home; and though
she hoped and believed him to be really taking comfort in some society
or other, it was very pleasant to have her father so well satisfied with
his being all alone in his own house, too wise to stir out; and to
hear him say to Mr. Knightley, whom no weather could keep entirely from
them,--

“Ah! Mr. Knightley, why do not you stay at home like poor Mr. Elton?”

These days of confinement would have been, but for her private
perplexities, remarkably comfortable, as such seclusion exactly suited
her brother, whose feelings must always be of great importance to
his companions; and he had, besides, so thoroughly cleared off his
ill-humour at Randalls, that his amiableness never failed him during the
rest of his stay at Hartfield. He was always agreeable and obliging,
and speaking pleasantly of every body. But with all the hopes of
cheerfulness, and all the present comfort of delay, there was still such
an evil hanging over her in the hour of explanation with Harriet, as
made it impossible for Emma to be ever perfectly at ease.



CHAPTER XVII


Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley were not detained long at Hartfield. The
weather soon improved enough for those to move who must move; and Mr.
Woodhouse having, as usual, tried to persuade his daughter to stay
behind with all her children, was obliged to see the whole party
set off, and return to his lamentations over the destiny of poor
Isabella;--which poor Isabella, passing her life with those she doated
on, full of their merits, blind to their faults, and always innocently
busy, might have been a model of right feminine happiness.

The evening of the very day on which they went brought a note from Mr.
Elton to Mr. Woodhouse, a long, civil, ceremonious note, to say, with
Mr. Elton's best compliments, “that he was proposing to leave Highbury
the following morning in his way to Bath; where, in compliance with
the pressing entreaties of some friends, he had engaged to spend a few
weeks, and very much regretted the impossibility he was under, from
various circumstances of weather and business, of taking a personal
leave of Mr. Woodhouse, of whose friendly civilities he should ever
retain a grateful sense--and had Mr. Woodhouse any commands, should be
happy to attend to them.”

Emma was most agreeably surprized.--Mr. Elton's absence just at this
time was the very thing to be desired. She admired him for contriving
it, though not able to give him much credit for the manner in which it
was announced. Resentment could not have been more plainly spoken than
in a civility to her father, from which she was so pointedly excluded.
She had not even a share in his opening compliments.--Her name was not
mentioned;--and there was so striking a change in all this, and such an
ill-judged solemnity of leave-taking in his graceful acknowledgments, as
she thought, at first, could not escape her father's suspicion.

It did, however.--Her father was quite taken up with the surprize of so
sudden a journey, and his fears that Mr. Elton might never get safely to
the end of it, and saw nothing extraordinary in his language. It was a
very useful note, for it supplied them with fresh matter for thought
and conversation during the rest of their lonely evening. Mr. Woodhouse
talked over his alarms, and Emma was in spirits to persuade them away
with all her usual promptitude.

She now resolved to keep Harriet no longer in the dark. She had reason
to believe her nearly recovered from her cold, and it was desirable that
she should have as much time as possible for getting the better of
her other complaint before the gentleman's return. She went to Mrs.
Goddard's accordingly the very next day, to undergo the necessary
penance of communication; and a severe one it was.--She had to destroy
all the hopes which she had been so industriously feeding--to appear in
the ungracious character of the one preferred--and acknowledge herself
grossly mistaken and mis-judging in all her ideas on one subject, all
her observations, all her convictions, all her prophecies for the last
six weeks.

The confession completely renewed her first shame--and the sight of
Harriet's tears made her think that she should never be in charity with
herself again.

Harriet bore the intelligence very well--blaming nobody--and in every
thing testifying such an ingenuousness of disposition and lowly opinion
of herself, as must appear with particular advantage at that moment to
her friend.

Emma was in the humour to value simplicity and modesty to the utmost;
and all that was amiable, all that ought to be attaching, seemed on
Harriet's side, not her own. Harriet did not consider herself as having
any thing to complain of. The affection of such a man as Mr. Elton
would have been too great a distinction.--She never could have deserved
him--and nobody but so partial and kind a friend as Miss Woodhouse would
have thought it possible.

Her tears fell abundantly--but her grief was so truly artless, that
no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emma's eyes--and
she listened to her and tried to console her with all her heart and
understanding--really for the time convinced that Harriet was the
superior creature of the two--and that to resemble her would be more for
her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could
do.

It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and
ignorant; but she left her with every previous resolution confirmed of
being humble and discreet, and repressing imagination all the rest of
her life. Her second duty now, inferior only to her father's claims, was
to promote Harriet's comfort, and endeavour to prove her own affection
in some better method than by match-making. She got her to Hartfield,
and shewed her the most unvarying kindness, striving to occupy and
amuse her, and by books and conversation, to drive Mr. Elton from her
thoughts.

Time, she knew, must be allowed for this being thoroughly done; and
she could suppose herself but an indifferent judge of such matters in
general, and very inadequate to sympathise in an attachment to Mr. Elton
in particular; but it seemed to her reasonable that at Harriet's age,
and with the entire extinction of all hope, such a progress might be
made towards a state of composure by the time of Mr. Elton's return, as
to allow them all to meet again in the common routine of acquaintance,
without any danger of betraying sentiments or increasing them.

Harriet did think him all perfection, and maintained the non-existence
of any body equal to him in person or goodness--and did, in truth,
prove herself more resolutely in love than Emma had foreseen; but yet
it appeared to her so natural, so inevitable to strive against an
inclination of that sort _unrequited_, that she could not comprehend its
continuing very long in equal force.

If Mr. Elton, on his return, made his own indifference as evident and
indubitable as she could not doubt he would anxiously do, she could not
imagine Harriet's persisting to place her happiness in the sight or the
recollection of him.

Their being fixed, so absolutely fixed, in the same place, was bad for
each, for all three. Not one of them had the power of removal, or of
effecting any material change of society. They must encounter each
other, and make the best of it.

Harriet was farther unfortunate in the tone of her companions at Mrs.
Goddard's; Mr. Elton being the adoration of all the teachers and great
girls in the school; and it must be at Hartfield only that she could
have any chance of hearing him spoken of with cooling moderation or
repellent truth. Where the wound had been given, there must the cure be
found if anywhere; and Emma felt that, till she saw her in the way of
cure, there could be no true peace for herself.



CHAPTER XVIII


Mr. Frank Churchill did not come. When the time proposed drew near, Mrs.
Weston's fears were justified in the arrival of a letter of excuse. For
the present, he could not be spared, to his “very great mortification
and regret; but still he looked forward with the hope of coming to
Randalls at no distant period.”

Mrs. Weston was exceedingly disappointed--much more disappointed, in
fact, than her husband, though her dependence on seeing the young man
had been so much more sober: but a sanguine temper, though for ever
expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by
any proportionate depression. It soon flies over the present failure,
and begins to hope again. For half an hour Mr. Weston was surprized and
sorry; but then he began to perceive that Frank's coming two or three
months later would be a much better plan; better time of year;
better weather; and that he would be able, without any doubt, to stay
considerably longer with them than if he had come sooner.

These feelings rapidly restored his comfort, while Mrs. Weston, of
a more apprehensive disposition, foresaw nothing but a repetition of
excuses and delays; and after all her concern for what her husband was
to suffer, suffered a great deal more herself.

Emma was not at this time in a state of spirits to care really about Mr.
Frank Churchill's not coming, except as a disappointment at Randalls.
The acquaintance at present had no charm for her. She wanted, rather, to
be quiet, and out of temptation; but still, as it was desirable that she
should appear, in general, like her usual self, she took care to express
as much interest in the circumstance, and enter as warmly into Mr.
and Mrs. Weston's disappointment, as might naturally belong to their
friendship.

She was the first to announce it to Mr. Knightley; and exclaimed quite
as much as was necessary, (or, being acting a part, perhaps rather
more,) at the conduct of the Churchills, in keeping him away. She then
proceeded to say a good deal more than she felt, of the advantage of
such an addition to their confined society in Surry; the pleasure of
looking at somebody new; the gala-day to Highbury entire, which the
sight of him would have made; and ending with reflections on the
Churchills again, found herself directly involved in a disagreement
with Mr. Knightley; and, to her great amusement, perceived that she was
taking the other side of the question from her real opinion, and making
use of Mrs. Weston's arguments against herself.

“The Churchills are very likely in fault,” said Mr. Knightley, coolly;
“but I dare say he might come if he would.”

“I do not know why you should say so. He wishes exceedingly to come; but
his uncle and aunt will not spare him.”

“I cannot believe that he has not the power of coming, if he made a
point of it. It is too unlikely, for me to believe it without proof.”

“How odd you are! What has Mr. Frank Churchill done, to make you suppose
him such an unnatural creature?”

“I am not supposing him at all an unnatural creature, in suspecting that
he may have learnt to be above his connexions, and to care very little
for any thing but his own pleasure, from living with those who have
always set him the example of it. It is a great deal more natural than
one could wish, that a young man, brought up by those who are proud,
luxurious, and selfish, should be proud, luxurious, and selfish too. If
Frank Churchill had wanted to see his father, he would have contrived it
between September and January. A man at his age--what is he?--three or
four-and-twenty--cannot be without the means of doing as much as that.
It is impossible.”

“That's easily said, and easily felt by you, who have always been your
own master. You are the worst judge in the world, Mr. Knightley, of the
difficulties of dependence. You do not know what it is to have tempers
to manage.”

“It is not to be conceived that a man of three or four-and-twenty
should not have liberty of mind or limb to that amount. He cannot want
money--he cannot want leisure. We know, on the contrary, that he has so
much of both, that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in
the kingdom. We hear of him for ever at some watering-place or other. A
little while ago, he was at Weymouth. This proves that he can leave the
Churchills.”

“Yes, sometimes he can.”

“And those times are whenever he thinks it worth his while; whenever
there is any temptation of pleasure.”

“It is very unfair to judge of any body's conduct, without an intimate
knowledge of their situation. Nobody, who has not been in the interior
of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that
family may be. We ought to be acquainted with Enscombe, and with Mrs.
Churchill's temper, before we pretend to decide upon what her nephew
can do. He may, at times, be able to do a great deal more than he can at
others.”

“There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chuses, and
that is, his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and
resolution. It is Frank Churchill's duty to pay this attention to his
father. He knows it to be so, by his promises and messages; but if he
wished to do it, it might be done. A man who felt rightly would say at
once, simply and resolutely, to Mrs. Churchill--'Every sacrifice of
mere pleasure you will always find me ready to make to your convenience;
but I must go and see my father immediately. I know he would be hurt by
my failing in such a mark of respect to him on the present occasion.
I shall, therefore, set off to-morrow.'--If he would say so to her
at once, in the tone of decision becoming a man, there would be no
opposition made to his going.”

“No,” said Emma, laughing; “but perhaps there might be some made to his
coming back again. Such language for a young man entirely dependent, to
use!--Nobody but you, Mr. Knightley, would imagine it possible. But you
have not an idea of what is requisite in situations directly opposite to
your own. Mr. Frank Churchill to be making such a speech as that to
the uncle and aunt, who have brought him up, and are to provide for
him!--Standing up in the middle of the room, I suppose, and speaking as
loud as he could!--How can you imagine such conduct practicable?”

“Depend upon it, Emma, a sensible man would find no difficulty in it. He
would feel himself in the right; and the declaration--made, of course,
as a man of sense would make it, in a proper manner--would do him more
good, raise him higher, fix his interest stronger with the people he
depended on, than all that a line of shifts and expedients can ever do.
Respect would be added to affection. They would feel that they could
trust him; that the nephew who had done rightly by his father, would do
rightly by them; for they know, as well as he does, as well as all the
world must know, that he ought to pay this visit to his father; and
while meanly exerting their power to delay it, are in their hearts not
thinking the better of him for submitting to their whims. Respect for
right conduct is felt by every body. If he would act in this sort of
manner, on principle, consistently, regularly, their little minds would
bend to his.”

“I rather doubt that. You are very fond of bending little minds; but
where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have
a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great
ones. I can imagine, that if you, as you are, Mr. Knightley, were to be
transported and placed all at once in Mr. Frank Churchill's situation,
you would be able to say and do just what you have been recommending for
him; and it might have a very good effect. The Churchills might not have
a word to say in return; but then, you would have no habits of early
obedience and long observance to break through. To him who has, it might
not be so easy to burst forth at once into perfect independence, and set
all their claims on his gratitude and regard at nought. He may have as
strong a sense of what would be right, as you can have, without being so
equal, under particular circumstances, to act up to it.”

“Then it would not be so strong a sense. If it failed to produce equal
exertion, it could not be an equal conviction.”

“Oh, the difference of situation and habit! I wish you would try to
understand what an amiable young man may be likely to feel in directly
opposing those, whom as child and boy he has been looking up to all his
life.”

“Our amiable young man is a very weak young man, if this be the first
occasion of his carrying through a resolution to do right against the
will of others. It ought to have been a habit with him by this time, of
following his duty, instead of consulting expediency. I can allow for
the fears of the child, but not of the man. As he became rational, he
ought to have roused himself and shaken off all that was unworthy in
their authority. He ought to have opposed the first attempt on their
side to make him slight his father. Had he begun as he ought, there
would have been no difficulty now.”

“We shall never agree about him,” cried Emma; “but that is nothing
extraordinary. I have not the least idea of his being a weak young man:
I feel sure that he is not. Mr. Weston would not be blind to folly,
though in his own son; but he is very likely to have a more yielding,
complying, mild disposition than would suit your notions of man's
perfection. I dare say he has; and though it may cut him off from some
advantages, it will secure him many others.”

“Yes; all the advantages of sitting still when he ought to move, and
of leading a life of mere idle pleasure, and fancying himself extremely
expert in finding excuses for it. He can sit down and write a fine
flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods, and persuade
himself that he has hit upon the very best method in the world of
preserving peace at home and preventing his father's having any right to
complain. His letters disgust me.”

“Your feelings are singular. They seem to satisfy every body else.”

“I suspect they do not satisfy Mrs. Weston. They hardly can satisfy
a woman of her good sense and quick feelings: standing in a mother's
place, but without a mother's affection to blind her. It is on her
account that attention to Randalls is doubly due, and she must doubly
feel the omission. Had she been a person of consequence herself, he
would have come I dare say; and it would not have signified whether
he did or no. Can you think your friend behindhand in these sort of
considerations? Do you suppose she does not often say all this to
herself? No, Emma, your amiable young man can be amiable only in French,
not in English. He may be very 'amiable,' have very good manners, and be
very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings
of other people: nothing really amiable about him.”

“You seem determined to think ill of him.”

“Me!--not at all,” replied Mr. Knightley, rather displeased; “I do not
want to think ill of him. I should be as ready to acknowledge his merits
as any other man; but I hear of none, except what are merely personal;
that he is well-grown and good-looking, with smooth, plausible manners.”

“Well, if he have nothing else to recommend him, he will be a treasure
at Highbury. We do not often look upon fine young men, well-bred and
agreeable. We must not be nice and ask for all the virtues into the
bargain. Cannot you imagine, Mr. Knightley, what a _sensation_ his
coming will produce? There will be but one subject throughout the
parishes of Donwell and Highbury; but one interest--one object of
curiosity; it will be all Mr. Frank Churchill; we shall think and speak
of nobody else.”

“You will excuse my being so much over-powered. If I find him
conversable, I shall be glad of his acquaintance; but if he is only a
chattering coxcomb, he will not occupy much of my time or thoughts.”

“My idea of him is, that he can adapt his conversation to the taste of
every body, and has the power as well as the wish of being universally
agreeable. To you, he will talk of farming; to me, of drawing or music;
and so on to every body, having that general information on all subjects
which will enable him to follow the lead, or take the lead, just as
propriety may require, and to speak extremely well on each; that is my
idea of him.”

“And mine,” said Mr. Knightley warmly, “is, that if he turn out any
thing like it, he will be the most insufferable fellow breathing! What!
at three-and-twenty to be the king of his company--the great man--the
practised politician, who is to read every body's character, and make
every body's talents conduce to the display of his own superiority; to
be dispensing his flatteries around, that he may make all appear like
fools compared with himself! My dear Emma, your own good sense could not
endure such a puppy when it came to the point.”

“I will say no more about him,” cried Emma, “you turn every thing to
evil. We are both prejudiced; you against, I for him; and we have no
chance of agreeing till he is really here.”

“Prejudiced! I am not prejudiced.”

“But I am very much, and without being at all ashamed of it. My love for
Mr. and Mrs. Weston gives me a decided prejudice in his favour.”

“He is a person I never think of from one month's end to another,” said
Mr. Knightley, with a degree of vexation, which made Emma immediately
talk of something else, though she could not comprehend why he should be
angry.

To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be of a
different disposition from himself, was unworthy the real liberality of
mind which she was always used to acknowledge in him; for with all the
high opinion of himself, which she had often laid to his charge, she had
never before for a moment supposed it could make him unjust to the merit
of another.




VOLUME II



CHAPTER I


Emma and Harriet had been walking together one morning, and, in Emma's
opinion, had been talking enough of Mr. Elton for that day. She could
not think that Harriet's solace or her own sins required more; and
she was therefore industriously getting rid of the subject as they
returned;--but it burst out again when she thought she had succeeded,
and after speaking some time of what the poor must suffer in winter, and
receiving no other answer than a very plaintive--“Mr. Elton is so good
to the poor!” she found something else must be done.

They were just approaching the house where lived Mrs. and Miss Bates.
She determined to call upon them and seek safety in numbers. There was
always sufficient reason for such an attention; Mrs. and Miss Bates
loved to be called on, and she knew she was considered by the very few
who presumed ever to see imperfection in her, as rather negligent in
that respect, and as not contributing what she ought to the stock of
their scanty comforts.

She had had many a hint from Mr. Knightley and some from her own heart,
as to her deficiency--but none were equal to counteract the persuasion
of its being very disagreeable,--a waste of time--tiresome women--and
all the horror of being in danger of falling in with the second-rate and
third-rate of Highbury, who were calling on them for ever, and therefore
she seldom went near them. But now she made the sudden resolution of not
passing their door without going in--observing, as she proposed it to
Harriet, that, as well as she could calculate, they were just now quite
safe from any letter from Jane Fairfax.

The house belonged to people in business. Mrs. and Miss Bates occupied
the drawing-room floor; and there, in the very moderate-sized apartment,
which was every thing to them, the visitors were most cordially and even
gratefully welcomed; the quiet neat old lady, who with her knitting was
seated in the warmest corner, wanting even to give up her place to
Miss Woodhouse, and her more active, talking daughter, almost ready
to overpower them with care and kindness, thanks for their visit,
solicitude for their shoes, anxious inquiries after Mr. Woodhouse's
health, cheerful communications about her mother's, and sweet-cake from
the beaufet--“Mrs. Cole had just been there, just called in for ten
minutes, and had been so good as to sit an hour with them, and _she_ had
taken a piece of cake and been so kind as to say she liked it very much;
and, therefore, she hoped Miss Woodhouse and Miss Smith would do them
the favour to eat a piece too.”

The mention of the Coles was sure to be followed by that of Mr. Elton.
There was intimacy between them, and Mr. Cole had heard from Mr. Elton
since his going away. Emma knew what was coming; they must have the
letter over again, and settle how long he had been gone, and how much
he was engaged in company, and what a favourite he was wherever he went,
and how full the Master of the Ceremonies' ball had been; and she went
through it very well, with all the interest and all the commendation
that could be requisite, and always putting forward to prevent Harriet's
being obliged to say a word.

This she had been prepared for when she entered the house; but meant,
having once talked him handsomely over, to be no farther incommoded by
any troublesome topic, and to wander at large amongst all the Mistresses
and Misses of Highbury, and their card-parties. She had not been
prepared to have Jane Fairfax succeed Mr. Elton; but he was actually
hurried off by Miss Bates, she jumped away from him at last abruptly to
the Coles, to usher in a letter from her niece.

“Oh! yes--Mr. Elton, I understand--certainly as to dancing--Mrs. Cole
was telling me that dancing at the rooms at Bath was--Mrs. Cole was so
kind as to sit some time with us, talking of Jane; for as soon as
she came in, she began inquiring after her, Jane is so very great a
favourite there. Whenever she is with us, Mrs. Cole does not know how to
shew her kindness enough; and I must say that Jane deserves it as much
as any body can. And so she began inquiring after her directly, saying,
'I know you cannot have heard from Jane lately, because it is not her
time for writing;' and when I immediately said, 'But indeed we have, we
had a letter this very morning,' I do not know that I ever saw any body
more surprized. 'Have you, upon your honour?' said she; 'well, that is
quite unexpected. Do let me hear what she says.'”

Emma's politeness was at hand directly, to say, with smiling interest--

“Have you heard from Miss Fairfax so lately? I am extremely happy. I
hope she is well?”

“Thank you. You are so kind!” replied the happily deceived aunt, while
eagerly hunting for the letter.--“Oh! here it is. I was sure it could
not be far off; but I had put my huswife upon it, you see, without being
aware, and so it was quite hid, but I had it in my hand so very lately
that I was almost sure it must be on the table. I was reading it to Mrs.
Cole, and since she went away, I was reading it again to my mother, for
it is such a pleasure to her--a letter from Jane--that she can never
hear it often enough; so I knew it could not be far off, and here it is,
only just under my huswife--and since you are so kind as to wish to hear
what she says;--but, first of all, I really must, in justice to
Jane, apologise for her writing so short a letter--only two pages you
see--hardly two--and in general she fills the whole paper and crosses
half. My mother often wonders that I can make it out so well. She often
says, when the letter is first opened, 'Well, Hetty, now I think
you will be put to it to make out all that checker-work'--don't you,
ma'am?--And then I tell her, I am sure she would contrive to make it out
herself, if she had nobody to do it for her--every word of it--I am sure
she would pore over it till she had made out every word. And, indeed,
though my mother's eyes are not so good as they were, she can see
amazingly well still, thank God! with the help of spectacles. It is such
a blessing! My mother's are really very good indeed. Jane often says,
when she is here, 'I am sure, grandmama, you must have had very strong
eyes to see as you do--and so much fine work as you have done too!--I
only wish my eyes may last me as well.'”

All this spoken extremely fast obliged Miss Bates to stop for breath;
and Emma said something very civil about the excellence of Miss
Fairfax's handwriting.

“You are extremely kind,” replied Miss Bates, highly gratified; “you who
are such a judge, and write so beautifully yourself. I am sure there is
nobody's praise that could give us so much pleasure as Miss Woodhouse's.
My mother does not hear; she is a little deaf you know. Ma'am,”
 addressing her, “do you hear what Miss Woodhouse is so obliging to say
about Jane's handwriting?”

And Emma had the advantage of hearing her own silly compliment repeated
twice over before the good old lady could comprehend it. She was
pondering, in the meanwhile, upon the possibility, without seeming very
rude, of making her escape from Jane Fairfax's letter, and had almost
resolved on hurrying away directly under some slight excuse, when Miss
Bates turned to her again and seized her attention.

“My mother's deafness is very trifling you see--just nothing at all. By
only raising my voice, and saying any thing two or three times over,
she is sure to hear; but then she is used to my voice. But it is very
remarkable that she should always hear Jane better than she does me.
Jane speaks so distinct! However, she will not find her grandmama at all
deafer than she was two years ago; which is saying a great deal at my
mother's time of life--and it really is full two years, you know, since
she was here. We never were so long without seeing her before, and as
I was telling Mrs. Cole, we shall hardly know how to make enough of her
now.”

“Are you expecting Miss Fairfax here soon?”

“Oh yes; next week.”

“Indeed!--that must be a very great pleasure.”

“Thank you. You are very kind. Yes, next week. Every body is so
surprized; and every body says the same obliging things. I am sure she
will be as happy to see her friends at Highbury, as they can be to see
her. Yes, Friday or Saturday; she cannot say which, because Colonel
Campbell will be wanting the carriage himself one of those days. So very
good of them to send her the whole way! But they always do, you know. Oh
yes, Friday or Saturday next. That is what she writes about. That is
the reason of her writing out of rule, as we call it; for, in the
common course, we should not have heard from her before next Tuesday or
Wednesday.”

“Yes, so I imagined. I was afraid there could be little chance of my
hearing any thing of Miss Fairfax to-day.”

“So obliging of you! No, we should not have heard, if it had not been
for this particular circumstance, of her being to come here so soon. My
mother is so delighted!--for she is to be three months with us at
least. Three months, she says so, positively, as I am going to have the
pleasure of reading to you. The case is, you see, that the Campbells are
going to Ireland. Mrs. Dixon has persuaded her father and mother to come
over and see her directly. They had not intended to go over till the
summer, but she is so impatient to see them again--for till she married,
last October, she was never away from them so much as a week, which must
make it very strange to be in different kingdoms, I was going to say,
but however different countries, and so she wrote a very urgent letter
to her mother--or her father, I declare I do not know which it was, but
we shall see presently in Jane's letter--wrote in Mr. Dixon's name as
well as her own, to press their coming over directly, and they would
give them the meeting in Dublin, and take them back to their country
seat, Baly-craig, a beautiful place, I fancy. Jane has heard a great
deal of its beauty; from Mr. Dixon, I mean--I do not know that she ever
heard about it from any body else; but it was very natural, you know,
that he should like to speak of his own place while he was paying his
addresses--and as Jane used to be very often walking out with them--for
Colonel and Mrs. Campbell were very particular about their daughter's
not walking out often with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not at all
blame them; of course she heard every thing he might be telling Miss
Campbell about his own home in Ireland; and I think she wrote us word
that he had shewn them some drawings of the place, views that he had
taken himself. He is a most amiable, charming young man, I believe. Jane
was quite longing to go to Ireland, from his account of things.”

At this moment, an ingenious and animating suspicion entering Emma's
brain with regard to Jane Fairfax, this charming Mr. Dixon, and the
not going to Ireland, she said, with the insidious design of farther
discovery,

“You must feel it very fortunate that Miss Fairfax should be allowed to
come to you at such a time. Considering the very particular friendship
between her and Mrs. Dixon, you could hardly have expected her to be
excused from accompanying Colonel and Mrs. Campbell.”

“Very true, very true, indeed. The very thing that we have always been
rather afraid of; for we should not have liked to have her at such a
distance from us, for months together--not able to come if any thing was
to happen. But you see, every thing turns out for the best. They want
her (Mr. and Mrs. Dixon) excessively to come over with Colonel and Mrs.
Campbell; quite depend upon it; nothing can be more kind or pressing
than their _joint_ invitation, Jane says, as you will hear presently;
Mr. Dixon does not seem in the least backward in any attention. He is
a most charming young man. Ever since the service he rendered Jane at
Weymouth, when they were out in that party on the water, and she, by the
sudden whirling round of something or other among the sails, would have
been dashed into the sea at once, and actually was all but gone, if he
had not, with the greatest presence of mind, caught hold of her habit--
(I can never think of it without trembling!)--But ever since we had the
history of that day, I have been so fond of Mr. Dixon!”

“But, in spite of all her friends' urgency, and her own wish of seeing
Ireland, Miss Fairfax prefers devoting the time to you and Mrs. Bates?”

“Yes--entirely her own doing, entirely her own choice; and Colonel
and Mrs. Campbell think she does quite right, just what they should
recommend; and indeed they particularly _wish_ her to try her native
air, as she has not been quite so well as usual lately.”

“I am concerned to hear of it. I think they judge wisely. But Mrs.
Dixon must be very much disappointed. Mrs. Dixon, I understand, has
no remarkable degree of personal beauty; is not, by any means, to be
compared with Miss Fairfax.”

“Oh! no. You are very obliging to say such things--but certainly not.
There is no comparison between them. Miss Campbell always was absolutely
plain--but extremely elegant and amiable.”

“Yes, that of course.”

“Jane caught a bad cold, poor thing! so long ago as the 7th of November,
(as I am going to read to you,) and has never been well since. A long
time, is not it, for a cold to hang upon her? She never mentioned
it before, because she would not alarm us. Just like her! so
considerate!--But however, she is so far from well, that her kind
friends the Campbells think she had better come home, and try an air
that always agrees with her; and they have no doubt that three or four
months at Highbury will entirely cure her--and it is certainly a great
deal better that she should come here, than go to Ireland, if she is
unwell. Nobody could nurse her, as we should do.”

“It appears to me the most desirable arrangement in the world.”

“And so she is to come to us next Friday or Saturday, and the Campbells
leave town in their way to Holyhead the Monday following--as you will
find from Jane's letter. So sudden!--You may guess, dear Miss Woodhouse,
what a flurry it has thrown me in! If it was not for the drawback of
her illness--but I am afraid we must expect to see her grown thin, and
looking very poorly. I must tell you what an unlucky thing happened to
me, as to that. I always make a point of reading Jane's letters through
to myself first, before I read them aloud to my mother, you know, for
fear of there being any thing in them to distress her. Jane desired me
to do it, so I always do: and so I began to-day with my usual caution;
but no sooner did I come to the mention of her being unwell, than I
burst out, quite frightened, with 'Bless me! poor Jane is ill!'--which
my mother, being on the watch, heard distinctly, and was sadly alarmed
at. However, when I read on, I found it was not near so bad as I had
fancied at first; and I make so light of it now to her, that she does
not think much about it. But I cannot imagine how I could be so off my
guard. If Jane does not get well soon, we will call in Mr. Perry. The
expense shall not be thought of; and though he is so liberal, and so
fond of Jane that I dare say he would not mean to charge any thing for
attendance, we could not suffer it to be so, you know. He has a wife and
family to maintain, and is not to be giving away his time. Well, now I
have just given you a hint of what Jane writes about, we will turn to
her letter, and I am sure she tells her own story a great deal better
than I can tell it for her.”

“I am afraid we must be running away,” said Emma, glancing at Harriet,
and beginning to rise--“My father will be expecting us. I had no
intention, I thought I had no power of staying more than five minutes,
when I first entered the house. I merely called, because I would not
pass the door without inquiring after Mrs. Bates; but I have been so
pleasantly detained! Now, however, we must wish you and Mrs. Bates good
morning.”

And not all that could be urged to detain her succeeded. She regained
the street--happy in this, that though much had been forced on her
against her will, though she had in fact heard the whole substance of
Jane Fairfax's letter, she had been able to escape the letter itself.



CHAPTER II


Jane Fairfax was an orphan, the only child of Mrs. Bates's youngest
daughter.

The marriage of Lieut. Fairfax of the ----regiment of infantry,
and Miss Jane Bates, had had its day of fame and pleasure, hope
and interest; but nothing now remained of it, save the melancholy
remembrance of him dying in action abroad--of his widow sinking under
consumption and grief soon afterwards--and this girl.

By birth she belonged to Highbury: and when at three years old, on
losing her mother, she became the property, the charge, the consolation,
the foundling of her grandmother and aunt, there had seemed every
probability of her being permanently fixed there; of her being taught
only what very limited means could command, and growing up with no
advantages of connexion or improvement, to be engrafted on what
nature had given her in a pleasing person, good understanding, and
warm-hearted, well-meaning relations.

But the compassionate feelings of a friend of her father gave a change
to her destiny. This was Colonel Campbell, who had very highly regarded
Fairfax, as an excellent officer and most deserving young man; and
farther, had been indebted to him for such attentions, during a severe
camp-fever, as he believed had saved his life. These were claims which
he did not learn to overlook, though some years passed away from the
death of poor Fairfax, before his own return to England put any thing in
his power. When he did return, he sought out the child and took notice
of her. He was a married man, with only one living child, a girl, about
Jane's age: and Jane became their guest, paying them long visits and
growing a favourite with all; and before she was nine years old, his
daughter's great fondness for her, and his own wish of being a real
friend, united to produce an offer from Colonel Campbell of undertaking
the whole charge of her education. It was accepted; and from that period
Jane had belonged to Colonel Campbell's family, and had lived with them
entirely, only visiting her grandmother from time to time.

The plan was that she should be brought up for educating others; the
very few hundred pounds which she inherited from her father making
independence impossible. To provide for her otherwise was out of Colonel
Campbell's power; for though his income, by pay and appointments, was
handsome, his fortune was moderate and must be all his daughter's;
but, by giving her an education, he hoped to be supplying the means of
respectable subsistence hereafter.

Such was Jane Fairfax's history. She had fallen into good hands, known
nothing but kindness from the Campbells, and been given an excellent
education. Living constantly with right-minded and well-informed people,
her heart and understanding had received every advantage of discipline
and culture; and Colonel Campbell's residence being in London, every
lighter talent had been done full justice to, by the attendance of
first-rate masters. Her disposition and abilities were equally worthy
of all that friendship could do; and at eighteen or nineteen she was,
as far as such an early age can be qualified for the care of children,
fully competent to the office of instruction herself; but she was too
much beloved to be parted with. Neither father nor mother could promote,
and the daughter could not endure it. The evil day was put off. It was
easy to decide that she was still too young; and Jane remained with
them, sharing, as another daughter, in all the rational pleasures of
an elegant society, and a judicious mixture of home and amusement, with
only the drawback of the future, the sobering suggestions of her own
good understanding to remind her that all this might soon be over.

The affection of the whole family, the warm attachment of Miss
Campbell in particular, was the more honourable to each party from
the circumstance of Jane's decided superiority both in beauty and
acquirements. That nature had given it in feature could not be unseen
by the young woman, nor could her higher powers of mind be unfelt by the
parents. They continued together with unabated regard however, till the
marriage of Miss Campbell, who by that chance, that luck which so often
defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs, giving attraction to what is
moderate rather than to what is superior, engaged the affections of
Mr. Dixon, a young man, rich and agreeable, almost as soon as they were
acquainted; and was eligibly and happily settled, while Jane Fairfax had
yet her bread to earn.

This event had very lately taken place; too lately for any thing to be
yet attempted by her less fortunate friend towards entering on her path
of duty; though she had now reached the age which her own judgment had
fixed on for beginning. She had long resolved that one-and-twenty
should be the period. With the fortitude of a devoted novitiate, she had
resolved at one-and-twenty to complete the sacrifice, and retire from
all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace
and hope, to penance and mortification for ever.

The good sense of Colonel and Mrs. Campbell could not oppose such
a resolution, though their feelings did. As long as they lived, no
exertions would be necessary, their home might be hers for ever; and for
their own comfort they would have retained her wholly; but this would
be selfishness:--what must be at last, had better be soon. Perhaps they
began to feel it might have been kinder and wiser to have resisted the
temptation of any delay, and spared her from a taste of such enjoyments
of ease and leisure as must now be relinquished. Still, however,
affection was glad to catch at any reasonable excuse for not hurrying
on the wretched moment. She had never been quite well since the time of
their daughter's marriage; and till she should have completely recovered
her usual strength, they must forbid her engaging in duties, which, so
far from being compatible with a weakened frame and varying spirits,
seemed, under the most favourable circumstances, to require something
more than human perfection of body and mind to be discharged with
tolerable comfort.

With regard to her not accompanying them to Ireland, her account to her
aunt contained nothing but truth, though there might be some truths
not told. It was her own choice to give the time of their absence to
Highbury; to spend, perhaps, her last months of perfect liberty with
those kind relations to whom she was so very dear: and the Campbells,
whatever might be their motive or motives, whether single, or double, or
treble, gave the arrangement their ready sanction, and said, that they
depended more on a few months spent in her native air, for the recovery
of her health, than on any thing else. Certain it was that she was to
come; and that Highbury, instead of welcoming that perfect novelty which
had been so long promised it--Mr. Frank Churchill--must put up for the
present with Jane Fairfax, who could bring only the freshness of a two
years' absence.

Emma was sorry;--to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like
through three long months!--to be always doing more than she wished,
and less than she ought! Why she did not like Jane Fairfax might be a
difficult question to answer; Mr. Knightley had once told her it was
because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she
wanted to be thought herself; and though the accusation had been eagerly
refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which
her conscience could not quite acquit her. But “she could never get
acquainted with her: she did not know how it was, but there was such
coldness and reserve--such apparent indifference whether she pleased or
not--and then, her aunt was such an eternal talker!--and she was made
such a fuss with by every body!--and it had been always imagined that
they were to be so intimate--because their ages were the same, every
body had supposed they must be so fond of each other.” These were her
reasons--she had no better.

It was a dislike so little just--every imputed fault was so magnified
by fancy, that she never saw Jane Fairfax the first time after any
considerable absence, without feeling that she had injured her; and
now, when the due visit was paid, on her arrival, after a two years'
interval, she was particularly struck with the very appearance and
manners, which for those two whole years she had been depreciating. Jane
Fairfax was very elegant, remarkably elegant; and she had herself the
highest value for elegance. Her height was pretty, just such as almost
every body would think tall, and nobody could think very tall; her
figure particularly graceful; her size a most becoming medium, between
fat and thin, though a slight appearance of ill-health seemed to point
out the likeliest evil of the two. Emma could not but feel all this; and
then, her face--her features--there was more beauty in them altogether
than she had remembered; it was not regular, but it was very pleasing
beauty. Her eyes, a deep grey, with dark eye-lashes and eyebrows, had
never been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to
cavil at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really
needed no fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was
the reigning character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her
principles, admire it:--elegance, which, whether of person or of mind,
she saw so little in Highbury. There, not to be vulgar, was distinction,
and merit.

In short, she sat, during the first visit, looking at Jane Fairfax with
twofold complacency; the sense of pleasure and the sense of rendering
justice, and was determining that she would dislike her no longer. When
she took in her history, indeed, her situation, as well as her beauty;
when she considered what all this elegance was destined to, what she was
going to sink from, how she was going to live, it seemed impossible
to feel any thing but compassion and respect; especially, if to every
well-known particular entitling her to interest, were added the highly
probable circumstance of an attachment to Mr. Dixon, which she had
so naturally started to herself. In that case, nothing could be more
pitiable or more honourable than the sacrifices she had resolved on.
Emma was very willing now to acquit her of having seduced Mr. Dixon's
actions from his wife, or of any thing mischievous which her imagination
had suggested at first. If it were love, it might be simple, single,
successless love on her side alone. She might have been unconsciously
sucking in the sad poison, while a sharer of his conversation with her
friend; and from the best, the purest of motives, might now be
denying herself this visit to Ireland, and resolving to divide herself
effectually from him and his connexions by soon beginning her career of
laborious duty.

Upon the whole, Emma left her with such softened, charitable feelings,
as made her look around in walking home, and lament that Highbury
afforded no young man worthy of giving her independence; nobody that she
could wish to scheme about for her.

These were charming feelings--but not lasting. Before she had committed
herself by any public profession of eternal friendship for Jane Fairfax,
or done more towards a recantation of past prejudices and errors, than
saying to Mr. Knightley, “She certainly is handsome; she is better than
handsome!” Jane had spent an evening at Hartfield with her grandmother
and aunt, and every thing was relapsing much into its usual state.
Former provocations reappeared. The aunt was as tiresome as ever; more
tiresome, because anxiety for her health was now added to admiration
of her powers; and they had to listen to the description of exactly how
little bread and butter she ate for breakfast, and how small a slice
of mutton for dinner, as well as to see exhibitions of new caps and new
workbags for her mother and herself; and Jane's offences rose again.
They had music; Emma was obliged to play; and the thanks and praise
which necessarily followed appeared to her an affectation of candour, an
air of greatness, meaning only to shew off in higher style her own very
superior performance. She was, besides, which was the worst of all, so
cold, so cautious! There was no getting at her real opinion. Wrapt up in
a cloak of politeness, she seemed determined to hazard nothing. She was
disgustingly, was suspiciously reserved.

If any thing could be more, where all was most, she was more reserved on
the subject of Weymouth and the Dixons than any thing. She seemed bent
on giving no real insight into Mr. Dixon's character, or her own value
for his company, or opinion of the suitableness of the match. It was all
general approbation and smoothness; nothing delineated or distinguished.
It did her no service however. Her caution was thrown away. Emma saw
its artifice, and returned to her first surmises. There probably _was_
something more to conceal than her own preference; Mr. Dixon, perhaps,
had been very near changing one friend for the other, or been fixed only
to Miss Campbell, for the sake of the future twelve thousand pounds.

The like reserve prevailed on other topics. She and Mr. Frank Churchill
had been at Weymouth at the same time. It was known that they were a
little acquainted; but not a syllable of real information could Emma
procure as to what he truly was. “Was he handsome?”--“She believed
he was reckoned a very fine young man.” “Was he agreeable?”--“He was
generally thought so.” “Did he appear a sensible young man; a young
man of information?”--“At a watering-place, or in a common London
acquaintance, it was difficult to decide on such points. Manners were
all that could be safely judged of, under a much longer knowledge than
they had yet had of Mr. Churchill. She believed every body found his
manners pleasing.” Emma could not forgive her.



CHAPTER III


Emma could not forgive her;--but as neither provocation nor resentment
were discerned by Mr. Knightley, who had been of the party, and had
seen only proper attention and pleasing behaviour on each side, he was
expressing the next morning, being at Hartfield again on business with
Mr. Woodhouse, his approbation of the whole; not so openly as he might
have done had her father been out of the room, but speaking plain enough
to be very intelligible to Emma. He had been used to think her unjust to
Jane, and had now great pleasure in marking an improvement.

“A very pleasant evening,” he began, as soon as Mr. Woodhouse had been
talked into what was necessary, told that he understood, and the papers
swept away;--“particularly pleasant. You and Miss Fairfax gave us some
very good music. I do not know a more luxurious state, sir, than sitting
at one's ease to be entertained a whole evening by two such young women;
sometimes with music and sometimes with conversation. I am sure Miss
Fairfax must have found the evening pleasant, Emma. You left nothing
undone. I was glad you made her play so much, for having no instrument
at her grandmother's, it must have been a real indulgence.”

“I am happy you approved,” said Emma, smiling; “but I hope I am not
often deficient in what is due to guests at Hartfield.”

“No, my dear,” said her father instantly; “_that_ I am sure you are not.
There is nobody half so attentive and civil as you are. If any thing,
you are too attentive. The muffin last night--if it had been handed
round once, I think it would have been enough.”

“No,” said Mr. Knightley, nearly at the same time; “you are not often
deficient; not often deficient either in manner or comprehension. I
think you understand me, therefore.”

An arch look expressed--“I understand you well enough;” but she said
only, “Miss Fairfax is reserved.”

“I always told you she was--a little; but you will soon overcome all
that part of her reserve which ought to be overcome, all that has its
foundation in diffidence. What arises from discretion must be honoured.”

“You think her diffident. I do not see it.”

“My dear Emma,” said he, moving from his chair into one close by her,
“you are not going to tell me, I hope, that you had not a pleasant
evening.”

“Oh! no; I was pleased with my own perseverance in asking questions; and
amused to think how little information I obtained.”

“I am disappointed,” was his only answer.

“I hope every body had a pleasant evening,” said Mr. Woodhouse, in his
quiet way. “I had. Once, I felt the fire rather too much; but then I
moved back my chair a little, a very little, and it did not disturb me.
Miss Bates was very chatty and good-humoured, as she always is, though
she speaks rather too quick. However, she is very agreeable, and Mrs.
Bates too, in a different way. I like old friends; and Miss Jane
Fairfax is a very pretty sort of young lady, a very pretty and a
very well-behaved young lady indeed. She must have found the evening
agreeable, Mr. Knightley, because she had Emma.”

“True, sir; and Emma, because she had Miss Fairfax.”

Emma saw his anxiety, and wishing to appease it, at least for the
present, said, and with a sincerity which no one could question--

“She is a sort of elegant creature that one cannot keep one's eyes from.
I am always watching her to admire; and I do pity her from my heart.”

Mr. Knightley looked as if he were more gratified than he cared to
express; and before he could make any reply, Mr. Woodhouse, whose
thoughts were on the Bates's, said--

“It is a great pity that their circumstances should be so confined! a
great pity indeed! and I have often wished--but it is so little one can
venture to do--small, trifling presents, of any thing uncommon--Now we
have killed a porker, and Emma thinks of sending them a loin or a leg;
it is very small and delicate--Hartfield pork is not like any other
pork--but still it is pork--and, my dear Emma, unless one could be sure
of their making it into steaks, nicely fried, as ours are fried, without
the smallest grease, and not roast it, for no stomach can bear roast
pork--I think we had better send the leg--do not you think so, my dear?”

“My dear papa, I sent the whole hind-quarter. I knew you would wish it.
There will be the leg to be salted, you know, which is so very nice, and
the loin to be dressed directly in any manner they like.”

“That's right, my dear, very right. I had not thought of it before, but
that is the best way. They must not over-salt the leg; and then, if it
is not over-salted, and if it is very thoroughly boiled, just as Serle
boils ours, and eaten very moderately of, with a boiled turnip, and a
little carrot or parsnip, I do not consider it unwholesome.”

“Emma,” said Mr. Knightley presently, “I have a piece of news for you.
You like news--and I heard an article in my way hither that I think will
interest you.”

“News! Oh! yes, I always like news. What is it?--why do you smile
so?--where did you hear it?--at Randalls?”

He had time only to say,

“No, not at Randalls; I have not been near Randalls,” when the door was
thrown open, and Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax walked into the room. Full
of thanks, and full of news, Miss Bates knew not which to give quickest.
Mr. Knightley soon saw that he had lost his moment, and that not another
syllable of communication could rest with him.

“Oh! my dear sir, how are you this morning? My dear Miss Woodhouse--I
come quite over-powered. Such a beautiful hind-quarter of pork! You
are too bountiful! Have you heard the news? Mr. Elton is going to be
married.”

Emma had not had time even to think of Mr. Elton, and she was so
completely surprized that she could not avoid a little start, and a
little blush, at the sound.

“There is my news:--I thought it would interest you,” said Mr.
Knightley, with a smile which implied a conviction of some part of what
had passed between them.

“But where could _you_ hear it?” cried Miss Bates. “Where could you
possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley? For it is not five minutes since I
received Mrs. Cole's note--no, it cannot be more than five--or at least
ten--for I had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out--I
was only gone down to speak to Patty again about the pork--Jane was
standing in the passage--were not you, Jane?--for my mother was so
afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said I would
go down and see, and Jane said, 'Shall I go down instead? for I think
you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen.'--'Oh!
my dear,' said I--well, and just then came the note. A Miss
Hawkins--that's all I know. A Miss Hawkins of Bath. But, Mr. Knightley,
how could you possibly have heard it? for the very moment Mr. Cole told
Mrs. Cole of it, she sat down and wrote to me. A Miss Hawkins--”

“I was with Mr. Cole on business an hour and a half ago. He had just
read Elton's letter as I was shewn in, and handed it to me directly.”

“Well! that is quite--I suppose there never was a piece of news more
generally interesting. My dear sir, you really are too bountiful. My
mother desires her very best compliments and regards, and a thousand
thanks, and says you really quite oppress her.”

“We consider our Hartfield pork,” replied Mr. Woodhouse--“indeed it
certainly is, so very superior to all other pork, that Emma and I cannot
have a greater pleasure than--”

“Oh! my dear sir, as my mother says, our friends are only too good
to us. If ever there were people who, without having great wealth
themselves, had every thing they could wish for, I am sure it is us.
We may well say that 'our lot is cast in a goodly heritage.' Well, Mr.
Knightley, and so you actually saw the letter; well--”

“It was short--merely to announce--but cheerful, exulting, of course.”--
Here was a sly glance at Emma. “He had been so fortunate as to--I forget
the precise words--one has no business to remember them. The information
was, as you state, that he was going to be married to a Miss Hawkins. By
his style, I should imagine it just settled.”

“Mr. Elton going to be married!” said Emma, as soon as she could speak.
“He will have every body's wishes for his happiness.”

“He is very young to settle,” was Mr. Woodhouse's observation. “He had
better not be in a hurry. He seemed to me very well off as he was. We
were always glad to see him at Hartfield.”

“A new neighbour for us all, Miss Woodhouse!” said Miss Bates, joyfully;
“my mother is so pleased!--she says she cannot bear to have the poor old
Vicarage without a mistress. This is great news, indeed. Jane, you have
never seen Mr. Elton!--no wonder that you have such a curiosity to see
him.”

Jane's curiosity did not appear of that absorbing nature as wholly to
occupy her.

“No--I have never seen Mr. Elton,” she replied, starting on this appeal;
“is he--is he a tall man?”

“Who shall answer that question?” cried Emma. “My father would say
'yes,' Mr. Knightley 'no;' and Miss Bates and I that he is just the
happy medium. When you have been here a little longer, Miss Fairfax,
you will understand that Mr. Elton is the standard of perfection in
Highbury, both in person and mind.”

“Very true, Miss Woodhouse, so she will. He is the very best young
man--But, my dear Jane, if you remember, I told you yesterday he
was precisely the height of Mr. Perry. Miss Hawkins,--I dare say, an
excellent young woman. His extreme attention to my mother--wanting
her to sit in the vicarage pew, that she might hear the better, for my
mother is a little deaf, you know--it is not much, but she does not
hear quite quick. Jane says that Colonel Campbell is a little deaf. He
fancied bathing might be good for it--the warm bath--but she says it did
him no lasting benefit. Colonel Campbell, you know, is quite our angel.
And Mr. Dixon seems a very charming young man, quite worthy of him. It
is such a happiness when good people get together--and they always do.
Now, here will be Mr. Elton and Miss Hawkins; and there are the Coles,
such very good people; and the Perrys--I suppose there never was a
happier or a better couple than Mr. and Mrs. Perry. I say, sir,” turning
to Mr. Woodhouse, “I think there are few places with such society as
Highbury. I always say, we are quite blessed in our neighbours.--My dear
sir, if there is one thing my mother loves better than another, it is
pork--a roast loin of pork--”

“As to who, or what Miss Hawkins is, or how long he has been acquainted
with her,” said Emma, “nothing I suppose can be known. One feels that it
cannot be a very long acquaintance. He has been gone only four weeks.”

Nobody had any information to give; and, after a few more wonderings,
Emma said,

“You are silent, Miss Fairfax--but I hope you mean to take an interest
in this news. You, who have been hearing and seeing so much of late
on these subjects, who must have been so deep in the business on Miss
Campbell's account--we shall not excuse your being indifferent about Mr.
Elton and Miss Hawkins.”

“When I have seen Mr. Elton,” replied Jane, “I dare say I shall be
interested--but I believe it requires _that_ with me. And as it is some
months since Miss Campbell married, the impression may be a little worn
off.”

“Yes, he has been gone just four weeks, as you observe, Miss Woodhouse,”
 said Miss Bates, “four weeks yesterday.--A Miss Hawkins!--Well, I had
always rather fancied it would be some young lady hereabouts; not that
I ever--Mrs. Cole once whispered to me--but I immediately said, 'No, Mr.
Elton is a most worthy young man--but'--In short, I do not think I am
particularly quick at those sort of discoveries. I do not pretend to it.
What is before me, I see. At the same time, nobody could wonder if
Mr. Elton should have aspired--Miss Woodhouse lets me chatter on, so
good-humouredly. She knows I would not offend for the world. How does
Miss Smith do? She seems quite recovered now. Have you heard from Mrs.
John Knightley lately? Oh! those dear little children. Jane, do you
know I always fancy Mr. Dixon like Mr. John Knightley. I mean in
person--tall, and with that sort of look--and not very talkative.”

“Quite wrong, my dear aunt; there is no likeness at all.”

“Very odd! but one never does form a just idea of any body beforehand.
One takes up a notion, and runs away with it. Mr. Dixon, you say, is
not, strictly speaking, handsome?”

“Handsome! Oh! no--far from it--certainly plain. I told you he was
plain.”

“My dear, you said that Miss Campbell would not allow him to be plain,
and that you yourself--”

“Oh! as for me, my judgment is worth nothing. Where I have a regard,
I always think a person well-looking. But I gave what I believed the
general opinion, when I called him plain.”

“Well, my dear Jane, I believe we must be running away. The weather does
not look well, and grandmama will be uneasy. You are too obliging, my
dear Miss Woodhouse; but we really must take leave. This has been a most
agreeable piece of news indeed. I shall just go round by Mrs. Cole's;
but I shall not stop three minutes: and, Jane, you had better go home
directly--I would not have you out in a shower!--We think she is the
better for Highbury already. Thank you, we do indeed. I shall not
attempt calling on Mrs. Goddard, for I really do not think she cares for
any thing but _boiled_ pork: when we dress the leg it will be another
thing. Good morning to you, my dear sir. Oh! Mr. Knightley is coming
too. Well, that is so very!--I am sure if Jane is tired, you will be
so kind as to give her your arm.--Mr. Elton, and Miss Hawkins!--Good
morning to you.”

Emma, alone with her father, had half her attention wanted by him while
he lamented that young people would be in such a hurry to marry--and to
marry strangers too--and the other half she could give to her own view
of the subject. It was to herself an amusing and a very welcome piece
of news, as proving that Mr. Elton could not have suffered long; but she
was sorry for Harriet: Harriet must feel it--and all that she could hope
was, by giving the first information herself, to save her from hearing
it abruptly from others. It was now about the time that she was likely
to call. If she were to meet Miss Bates in her way!--and upon its
beginning to rain, Emma was obliged to expect that the weather would
be detaining her at Mrs. Goddard's, and that the intelligence would
undoubtedly rush upon her without preparation.

The shower was heavy, but short; and it had not been over five minutes,
when in came Harriet, with just the heated, agitated look which
hurrying thither with a full heart was likely to give; and the “Oh! Miss
Woodhouse, what do you think has happened!” which instantly burst forth,
had all the evidence of corresponding perturbation. As the blow was
given, Emma felt that she could not now shew greater kindness than in
listening; and Harriet, unchecked, ran eagerly through what she had to
tell. “She had set out from Mrs. Goddard's half an hour ago--she had
been afraid it would rain--she had been afraid it would pour down
every moment--but she thought she might get to Hartfield first--she
had hurried on as fast as possible; but then, as she was passing by the
house where a young woman was making up a gown for her, she thought she
would just step in and see how it went on; and though she did not seem
to stay half a moment there, soon after she came out it began to rain,
and she did not know what to do; so she ran on directly, as fast as
she could, and took shelter at Ford's.”--Ford's was the principal
woollen-draper, linen-draper, and haberdasher's shop united; the shop
first in size and fashion in the place.--“And so, there she had
set, without an idea of any thing in the world, full ten minutes,
perhaps--when, all of a sudden, who should come in--to be sure it was
so very odd!--but they always dealt at Ford's--who should come in, but
Elizabeth Martin and her brother!--Dear Miss Woodhouse! only think. I
thought I should have fainted. I did not know what to do. I was sitting
near the door--Elizabeth saw me directly; but he did not; he was busy
with the umbrella. I am sure she saw me, but she looked away directly,
and took no notice; and they both went to quite the farther end of the
shop; and I kept sitting near the door!--Oh! dear; I was so miserable!
I am sure I must have been as white as my gown. I could not go away
you know, because of the rain; but I did so wish myself anywhere in the
world but there.--Oh! dear, Miss Woodhouse--well, at last, I fancy, he
looked round and saw me; for instead of going on with her buyings, they
began whispering to one another. I am sure they were talking of me; and
I could not help thinking that he was persuading her to speak to me--(do
you think he was, Miss Woodhouse?)--for presently she came forward--came
quite up to me, and asked me how I did, and seemed ready to shake hands,
if I would. She did not do any of it in the same way that she used; I
could see she was altered; but, however, she seemed to _try_ to be very
friendly, and we shook hands, and stood talking some time; but I know no
more what I said--I was in such a tremble!--I remember she said she
was sorry we never met now; which I thought almost too kind! Dear, Miss
Woodhouse, I was absolutely miserable! By that time, it was beginning to
hold up, and I was determined that nothing should stop me from getting
away--and then--only think!--I found he was coming up towards me
too--slowly you know, and as if he did not quite know what to do; and
so he came and spoke, and I answered--and I stood for a minute, feeling
dreadfully, you know, one can't tell how; and then I took courage, and
said it did not rain, and I must go; and so off I set; and I had not got
three yards from the door, when he came after me, only to say, if I was
going to Hartfield, he thought I had much better go round by Mr. Cole's
stables, for I should find the near way quite floated by this rain. Oh!
dear, I thought it would have been the death of me! So I said, I was
very much obliged to him: you know I could not do less; and then he went
back to Elizabeth, and I came round by the stables--I believe I did--but
I hardly knew where I was, or any thing about it. Oh! Miss Woodhouse,
I would rather done any thing than have it happen: and yet, you know,
there was a sort of satisfaction in seeing him behave so pleasantly and
so kindly. And Elizabeth, too. Oh! Miss Woodhouse, do talk to me and
make me comfortable again.”

Very sincerely did Emma wish to do so; but it was not immediately in
her power. She was obliged to stop and think. She was not thoroughly
comfortable herself. The young man's conduct, and his sister's, seemed
the result of real feeling, and she could not but pity them. As Harriet
described it, there had been an interesting mixture of wounded affection
and genuine delicacy in their behaviour. But she had believed them to be
well-meaning, worthy people before; and what difference did this make
in the evils of the connexion? It was folly to be disturbed by it. Of
course, he must be sorry to lose her--they must be all sorry. Ambition,
as well as love, had probably been mortified. They might all have hoped
to rise by Harriet's acquaintance: and besides, what was the value of
Harriet's description?--So easily pleased--so little discerning;--what
signified her praise?

She exerted herself, and did try to make her comfortable, by considering
all that had passed as a mere trifle, and quite unworthy of being dwelt
on,

“It might be distressing, for the moment,” said she; “but you seem to
have behaved extremely well; and it is over--and may never--can never,
as a first meeting, occur again, and therefore you need not think about
it.”

Harriet said, “very true,” and she “would not think about it;” but still
she talked of it--still she could talk of nothing else; and Emma, at
last, in order to put the Martins out of her head, was obliged to hurry
on the news, which she had meant to give with so much tender caution;
hardly knowing herself whether to rejoice or be angry, ashamed or only
amused, at such a state of mind in poor Harriet--such a conclusion of
Mr. Elton's importance with her!

Mr. Elton's rights, however, gradually revived. Though she did not feel
the first intelligence as she might have done the day before, or an hour
before, its interest soon increased; and before their first conversation
was over, she had talked herself into all the sensations of curiosity,
wonder and regret, pain and pleasure, as to this fortunate Miss Hawkins,
which could conduce to place the Martins under proper subordination in
her fancy.

Emma learned to be rather glad that there had been such a meeting. It
had been serviceable in deadening the first shock, without retaining any
influence to alarm. As Harriet now lived, the Martins could not get
at her, without seeking her, where hitherto they had wanted either the
courage or the condescension to seek her; for since her refusal of the
brother, the sisters never had been at Mrs. Goddard's; and a twelvemonth
might pass without their being thrown together again, with any
necessity, or even any power of speech.



CHAPTER IV


Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting
situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of
being kindly spoken of.

A week had not passed since Miss Hawkins's name was first mentioned in
Highbury, before she was, by some means or other, discovered to have
every recommendation of person and mind; to be handsome, elegant, highly
accomplished, and perfectly amiable: and when Mr. Elton himself arrived
to triumph in his happy prospects, and circulate the fame of her merits,
there was very little more for him to do, than to tell her Christian
name, and say whose music she principally played.

Mr. Elton returned, a very happy man. He had gone away rejected and
mortified--disappointed in a very sanguine hope, after a series of what
appeared to him strong encouragement; and not only losing the right
lady, but finding himself debased to the level of a very wrong one. He
had gone away deeply offended--he came back engaged to another--and
to another as superior, of course, to the first, as under such
circumstances what is gained always is to what is lost. He came back gay
and self-satisfied, eager and busy, caring nothing for Miss Woodhouse,
and defying Miss Smith.

The charming Augusta Hawkins, in addition to all the usual advantages of
perfect beauty and merit, was in possession of an independent fortune,
of so many thousands as would always be called ten; a point of some
dignity, as well as some convenience: the story told well; he had not
thrown himself away--he had gained a woman of 10,000 l. or thereabouts;
and he had gained her with such delightful rapidity--the first hour of
introduction had been so very soon followed by distinguishing notice;
the history which he had to give Mrs. Cole of the rise and progress
of the affair was so glorious--the steps so quick, from the accidental
rencontre, to the dinner at Mr. Green's, and the party at Mrs.
Brown's--smiles and blushes rising in importance--with consciousness and
agitation richly scattered--the lady had been so easily impressed--so
sweetly disposed--had in short, to use a most intelligible phrase,
been so very ready to have him, that vanity and prudence were equally
contented.

He had caught both substance and shadow--both fortune and affection, and
was just the happy man he ought to be; talking only of himself and
his own concerns--expecting to be congratulated--ready to be laughed
at--and, with cordial, fearless smiles, now addressing all the young
ladies of the place, to whom, a few weeks ago, he would have been more
cautiously gallant.

The wedding was no distant event, as the parties had only themselves to
please, and nothing but the necessary preparations to wait for; and
when he set out for Bath again, there was a general expectation, which
a certain glance of Mrs. Cole's did not seem to contradict, that when he
next entered Highbury he would bring his bride.

During his present short stay, Emma had barely seen him; but just enough
to feel that the first meeting was over, and to give her the impression
of his not being improved by the mixture of pique and pretension, now
spread over his air. She was, in fact, beginning very much to wonder
that she had ever thought him pleasing at all; and his sight was so
inseparably connected with some very disagreeable feelings, that,
except in a moral light, as a penance, a lesson, a source of profitable
humiliation to her own mind, she would have been thankful to be assured
of never seeing him again. She wished him very well; but he gave
her pain, and his welfare twenty miles off would administer most
satisfaction.

The pain of his continued residence in Highbury, however, must
certainly be lessened by his marriage. Many vain solicitudes would be
prevented--many awkwardnesses smoothed by it. A _Mrs._ _Elton_ would
be an excuse for any change of intercourse; former intimacy might sink
without remark. It would be almost beginning their life of civility
again.

Of the lady, individually, Emma thought very little. She was good enough
for Mr. Elton, no doubt; accomplished enough for Highbury--handsome
enough--to look plain, probably, by Harriet's side. As to connexion,
there Emma was perfectly easy; persuaded, that after all his own vaunted
claims and disdain of Harriet, he had done nothing. On that article,
truth seemed attainable. _What_ she was, must be uncertain; but _who_
she was, might be found out; and setting aside the 10,000 l., it did not
appear that she was at all Harriet's superior. She brought no name, no
blood, no alliance. Miss Hawkins was the youngest of the two daughters
of a Bristol--merchant, of course, he must be called; but, as the whole
of the profits of his mercantile life appeared so very moderate, it
was not unfair to guess the dignity of his line of trade had been very
moderate also. Part of every winter she had been used to spend in Bath;
but Bristol was her home, the very heart of Bristol; for though the
father and mother had died some years ago, an uncle remained--in the law
line--nothing more distinctly honourable was hazarded of him, than
that he was in the law line; and with him the daughter had lived. Emma
guessed him to be the drudge of some attorney, and too stupid to rise.
And all the grandeur of the connexion seemed dependent on the elder
sister, who was _very_ _well_ _married_, to a gentleman in a _great_
_way_, near Bristol, who kept two carriages! That was the wind-up of the
history; that was the glory of Miss Hawkins.

Could she but have given Harriet her feelings about it all! She had
talked her into love; but, alas! she was not so easily to be talked out
of it. The charm of an object to occupy the many vacancies of Harriet's
mind was not to be talked away. He might be superseded by another; he
certainly would indeed; nothing could be clearer; even a Robert Martin
would have been sufficient; but nothing else, she feared, would cure
her. Harriet was one of those, who, having once begun, would be always
in love. And now, poor girl! she was considerably worse from this
reappearance of Mr. Elton. She was always having a glimpse of him
somewhere or other. Emma saw him only once; but two or three times every
day Harriet was sure _just_ to meet with him, or _just_ to miss him,
_just_ to hear his voice, or see his shoulder, _just_ to have something
occur to preserve him in her fancy, in all the favouring warmth of
surprize and conjecture. She was, moreover, perpetually hearing about
him; for, excepting when at Hartfield, she was always among those who
saw no fault in Mr. Elton, and found nothing so interesting as
the discussion of his concerns; and every report, therefore, every
guess--all that had already occurred, all that might occur in the
arrangement of his affairs, comprehending income, servants, and
furniture, was continually in agitation around her. Her regard was
receiving strength by invariable praise of him, and her regrets kept
alive, and feelings irritated by ceaseless repetitions of Miss
Hawkins's happiness, and continual observation of, how much he seemed
attached!--his air as he walked by the house--the very sitting of his
hat, being all in proof of how much he was in love!

Had it been allowable entertainment, had there been no pain to her
friend, or reproach to herself, in the waverings of Harriet's mind,
Emma would have been amused by its variations. Sometimes Mr. Elton
predominated, sometimes the Martins; and each was occasionally useful
as a check to the other. Mr. Elton's engagement had been the cure of
the agitation of meeting Mr. Martin. The unhappiness produced by the
knowledge of that engagement had been a little put aside by Elizabeth
Martin's calling at Mrs. Goddard's a few days afterwards. Harriet had
not been at home; but a note had been prepared and left for her, written
in the very style to touch; a small mixture of reproach, with a great
deal of kindness; and till Mr. Elton himself appeared, she had been much
occupied by it, continually pondering over what could be done in return,
and wishing to do more than she dared to confess. But Mr. Elton, in
person, had driven away all such cares. While he staid, the Martins were
forgotten; and on the very morning of his setting off for Bath again,
Emma, to dissipate some of the distress it occasioned, judged it best
for her to return Elizabeth Martin's visit.

How that visit was to be acknowledged--what would be necessary--and
what might be safest, had been a point of some doubtful consideration.
Absolute neglect of the mother and sisters, when invited to come, would
be ingratitude. It must not be: and yet the danger of a renewal of the
acquaintance--!

After much thinking, she could determine on nothing better, than
Harriet's returning the visit; but in a way that, if they had
understanding, should convince them that it was to be only a formal
acquaintance. She meant to take her in the carriage, leave her at the
Abbey Mill, while she drove a little farther, and call for her again
so soon, as to allow no time for insidious applications or dangerous
recurrences to the past, and give the most decided proof of what degree
of intimacy was chosen for the future.

She could think of nothing better: and though there was something in it
which her own heart could not approve--something of ingratitude, merely
glossed over--it must be done, or what would become of Harriet?



CHAPTER V


Small heart had Harriet for visiting. Only half an hour before her
friend called for her at Mrs. Goddard's, her evil stars had led her
to the very spot where, at that moment, a trunk, directed to _The Rev.
Philip Elton, White-Hart, Bath_, was to be seen under the operation of
being lifted into the butcher's cart, which was to convey it to where
the coaches past; and every thing in this world, excepting that trunk
and the direction, was consequently a blank.

She went, however; and when they reached the farm, and she was to be
put down, at the end of the broad, neat gravel walk, which led between
espalier apple-trees to the front door, the sight of every thing which
had given her so much pleasure the autumn before, was beginning to
revive a little local agitation; and when they parted, Emma observed her
to be looking around with a sort of fearful curiosity, which determined
her not to allow the visit to exceed the proposed quarter of an hour.
She went on herself, to give that portion of time to an old servant who
was married, and settled in Donwell.

The quarter of an hour brought her punctually to the white gate again;
and Miss Smith receiving her summons, was with her without delay, and
unattended by any alarming young man. She came solitarily down the
gravel walk--a Miss Martin just appearing at the door, and parting with
her seemingly with ceremonious civility.

Harriet could not very soon give an intelligible account. She was
feeling too much; but at last Emma collected from her enough to
understand the sort of meeting, and the sort of pain it was creating.
She had seen only Mrs. Martin and the two girls. They had received her
doubtingly, if not coolly; and nothing beyond the merest commonplace had
been talked almost all the time--till just at last, when Mrs. Martin's
saying, all of a sudden, that she thought Miss Smith was grown, had
brought on a more interesting subject, and a warmer manner. In that very
room she had been measured last September, with her two friends. There
were the pencilled marks and memorandums on the wainscot by the window.
_He_ had done it. They all seemed to remember the day, the hour,
the party, the occasion--to feel the same consciousness, the same
regrets--to be ready to return to the same good understanding; and they
were just growing again like themselves, (Harriet, as Emma must suspect,
as ready as the best of them to be cordial and happy,) when the carriage
reappeared, and all was over. The style of the visit, and the shortness
of it, were then felt to be decisive. Fourteen minutes to be given
to those with whom she had thankfully passed six weeks not six months
ago!--Emma could not but picture it all, and feel how justly they might
resent, how naturally Harriet must suffer. It was a bad business. She
would have given a great deal, or endured a great deal, to have had
the Martins in a higher rank of life. They were so deserving, that a
_little_ higher should have been enough: but as it was, how could she
have done otherwise?--Impossible!--She could not repent. They must be
separated; but there was a great deal of pain in the process--so much
to herself at this time, that she soon felt the necessity of a little
consolation, and resolved on going home by way of Randalls to
procure it. Her mind was quite sick of Mr. Elton and the Martins. The
refreshment of Randalls was absolutely necessary.

It was a good scheme; but on driving to the door they heard that neither
“master nor mistress was at home;” they had both been out some time; the
man believed they were gone to Hartfield.

“This is too bad,” cried Emma, as they turned away. “And now we shall
just miss them; too provoking!--I do not know when I have been so
disappointed.” And she leaned back in the corner, to indulge her
murmurs, or to reason them away; probably a little of both--such being
the commonest process of a not ill-disposed mind. Presently the carriage
stopt; she looked up; it was stopt by Mr. and Mrs. Weston, who were
standing to speak to her. There was instant pleasure in the sight of
them, and still greater pleasure was conveyed in sound--for Mr. Weston
immediately accosted her with,

“How d'ye do?--how d'ye do?--We have been sitting with your father--glad
to see him so well. Frank comes to-morrow--I had a letter this
morning--we see him to-morrow by dinner-time to a certainty--he is at
Oxford to-day, and he comes for a whole fortnight; I knew it would be
so. If he had come at Christmas he could not have staid three days; I
was always glad he did not come at Christmas; now we are going to have
just the right weather for him, fine, dry, settled weather. We shall
enjoy him completely; every thing has turned out exactly as we could
wish.”

There was no resisting such news, no possibility of avoiding the
influence of such a happy face as Mr. Weston's, confirmed as it all was
by the words and the countenance of his wife, fewer and quieter, but not
less to the purpose. To know that _she_ thought his coming certain was
enough to make Emma consider it so, and sincerely did she rejoice in
their joy. It was a most delightful reanimation of exhausted spirits.
The worn-out past was sunk in the freshness of what was coming; and in
the rapidity of half a moment's thought, she hoped Mr. Elton would now
be talked of no more.

Mr. Weston gave her the history of the engagements at Enscombe, which
allowed his son to answer for having an entire fortnight at his command,
as well as the route and the method of his journey; and she listened,
and smiled, and congratulated.

“I shall soon bring him over to Hartfield,” said he, at the conclusion.

Emma could imagine she saw a touch of the arm at this speech, from his
wife.

“We had better move on, Mr. Weston,” said she, “we are detaining the
girls.”

“Well, well, I am ready;”--and turning again to Emma, “but you must
not be expecting such a _very_ fine young man; you have only
had _my_ account you know; I dare say he is really nothing
extraordinary:”--though his own sparkling eyes at the moment were
speaking a very different conviction.

Emma could look perfectly unconscious and innocent, and answer in a
manner that appropriated nothing.

“Think of me to-morrow, my dear Emma, about four o'clock,” was Mrs.
Weston's parting injunction; spoken with some anxiety, and meant only
for her.

“Four o'clock!--depend upon it he will be here by three,” was Mr.
Weston's quick amendment; and so ended a most satisfactory meeting.
Emma's spirits were mounted quite up to happiness; every thing wore
a different air; James and his horses seemed not half so sluggish as
before. When she looked at the hedges, she thought the elder at least
must soon be coming out; and when she turned round to Harriet, she saw
something like a look of spring, a tender smile even there.

“Will Mr. Frank Churchill pass through Bath as well as Oxford?”--was a
question, however, which did not augur much.

But neither geography nor tranquillity could come all at once, and Emma
was now in a humour to resolve that they should both come in time.

The morning of the interesting day arrived, and Mrs. Weston's faithful
pupil did not forget either at ten, or eleven, or twelve o'clock, that
she was to think of her at four.

“My dear, dear anxious friend,”--said she, in mental soliloquy, while
walking downstairs from her own room, “always overcareful for every
body's comfort but your own; I see you now in all your little fidgets,
going again and again into his room, to be sure that all is right.”
 The clock struck twelve as she passed through the hall. “'Tis twelve;
I shall not forget to think of you four hours hence; and by this
time to-morrow, perhaps, or a little later, I may be thinking of the
possibility of their all calling here. I am sure they will bring him
soon.”

She opened the parlour door, and saw two gentlemen sitting with her
father--Mr. Weston and his son. They had been arrived only a few
minutes, and Mr. Weston had scarcely finished his explanation of Frank's
being a day before his time, and her father was yet in the midst of his
very civil welcome and congratulations, when she appeared, to have her
share of surprize, introduction, and pleasure.

The Frank Churchill so long talked of, so high in interest, was actually
before her--he was presented to her, and she did not think too much had
been said in his praise; he was a _very_ good looking young man; height,
air, address, all were unexceptionable, and his countenance had a great
deal of the spirit and liveliness of his father's; he looked quick and
sensible. She felt immediately that she should like him; and there was
a well-bred ease of manner, and a readiness to talk, which convinced her
that he came intending to be acquainted with her, and that acquainted
they soon must be.

He had reached Randalls the evening before. She was pleased with the
eagerness to arrive which had made him alter his plan, and travel
earlier, later, and quicker, that he might gain half a day.

“I told you yesterday,” cried Mr. Weston with exultation, “I told you
all that he would be here before the time named. I remembered what I
used to do myself. One cannot creep upon a journey; one cannot help
getting on faster than one has planned; and the pleasure of coming in
upon one's friends before the look-out begins, is worth a great deal
more than any little exertion it needs.”

“It is a great pleasure where one can indulge in it,” said the young
man, “though there are not many houses that I should presume on so far;
but in coming _home_ I felt I might do any thing.”

The word _home_ made his father look on him with fresh complacency.
Emma was directly sure that he knew how to make himself agreeable; the
conviction was strengthened by what followed. He was very much pleased
with Randalls, thought it a most admirably arranged house, would hardly
allow it even to be very small, admired the situation, the walk to
Highbury, Highbury itself, Hartfield still more, and professed himself
to have always felt the sort of interest in the country which none but
one's _own_ country gives, and the greatest curiosity to visit it. That
he should never have been able to indulge so amiable a feeling before,
passed suspiciously through Emma's brain; but still, if it were a
falsehood, it was a pleasant one, and pleasantly handled. His manner had
no air of study or exaggeration. He did really look and speak as if in a
state of no common enjoyment.

Their subjects in general were such as belong to an opening
acquaintance. On his side were the inquiries,--“Was she a
horsewoman?--Pleasant rides?--Pleasant walks?--Had they a large
neighbourhood?--Highbury, perhaps, afforded society enough?--There were
several very pretty houses in and about it.--Balls--had they balls?--Was
it a musical society?”

But when satisfied on all these points, and their acquaintance
proportionably advanced, he contrived to find an opportunity, while
their two fathers were engaged with each other, of introducing his
mother-in-law, and speaking of her with so much handsome praise, so much
warm admiration, so much gratitude for the happiness she secured to his
father, and her very kind reception of himself, as was an additional
proof of his knowing how to please--and of his certainly thinking it
worth while to try to please her. He did not advance a word of praise
beyond what she knew to be thoroughly deserved by Mrs. Weston; but,
undoubtedly he could know very little of the matter. He understood
what would be welcome; he could be sure of little else. “His father's
marriage,” he said, “had been the wisest measure, every friend must
rejoice in it; and the family from whom he had received such a blessing
must be ever considered as having conferred the highest obligation on
him.”

He got as near as he could to thanking her for Miss Taylor's merits,
without seeming quite to forget that in the common course of things it
was to be rather supposed that Miss Taylor had formed Miss Woodhouse's
character, than Miss Woodhouse Miss Taylor's. And at last, as if
resolved to qualify his opinion completely for travelling round to its
object, he wound it all up with astonishment at the youth and beauty of
her person.

“Elegant, agreeable manners, I was prepared for,” said he; “but I
confess that, considering every thing, I had not expected more than a
very tolerably well-looking woman of a certain age; I did not know that
I was to find a pretty young woman in Mrs. Weston.”

“You cannot see too much perfection in Mrs. Weston for my feelings,”
 said Emma; “were you to guess her to be _eighteen_, I should listen with
pleasure; but _she_ would be ready to quarrel with you for using such
words. Don't let her imagine that you have spoken of her as a pretty
young woman.”

“I hope I should know better,” he replied; “no, depend upon it, (with a
gallant bow,) that in addressing Mrs. Weston I should understand whom
I might praise without any danger of being thought extravagant in my
terms.”

Emma wondered whether the same suspicion of what might be expected from
their knowing each other, which had taken strong possession of her mind,
had ever crossed his; and whether his compliments were to be considered
as marks of acquiescence, or proofs of defiance. She must see more
of him to understand his ways; at present she only felt they were
agreeable.

She had no doubt of what Mr. Weston was often thinking about. His quick
eye she detected again and again glancing towards them with a happy
expression; and even, when he might have determined not to look, she was
confident that he was often listening.

Her own father's perfect exemption from any thought of the kind, the
entire deficiency in him of all such sort of penetration or suspicion,
was a most comfortable circumstance. Happily he was not farther from
approving matrimony than from foreseeing it.--Though always objecting
to every marriage that was arranged, he never suffered beforehand from
the apprehension of any; it seemed as if he could not think so ill of
any two persons' understanding as to suppose they meant to marry till it
were proved against them. She blessed the favouring blindness. He could
now, without the drawback of a single unpleasant surmise, without a
glance forward at any possible treachery in his guest, give way to all
his natural kind-hearted civility in solicitous inquiries after Mr.
Frank Churchill's accommodation on his journey, through the sad evils
of sleeping two nights on the road, and express very genuine unmixed
anxiety to know that he had certainly escaped catching cold--which,
however, he could not allow him to feel quite assured of himself till
after another night.

A reasonable visit paid, Mr. Weston began to move.--“He must be going.
He had business at the Crown about his hay, and a great many errands for
Mrs. Weston at Ford's, but he need not hurry any body else.” His son,
too well bred to hear the hint, rose immediately also, saying,

“As you are going farther on business, sir, I will take the opportunity
of paying a visit, which must be paid some day or other, and therefore
may as well be paid now. I have the honour of being acquainted with
a neighbour of yours, (turning to Emma,) a lady residing in or near
Highbury; a family of the name of Fairfax. I shall have no difficulty,
I suppose, in finding the house; though Fairfax, I believe, is not
the proper name--I should rather say Barnes, or Bates. Do you know any
family of that name?”

“To be sure we do,” cried his father; “Mrs. Bates--we passed her
house--I saw Miss Bates at the window. True, true, you are acquainted
with Miss Fairfax; I remember you knew her at Weymouth, and a fine girl
she is. Call upon her, by all means.”

“There is no necessity for my calling this morning,” said the young man;
“another day would do as well; but there was that degree of acquaintance
at Weymouth which--”

“Oh! go to-day, go to-day. Do not defer it. What is right to be done
cannot be done too soon. And, besides, I must give you a hint, Frank;
any want of attention to her _here_ should be carefully avoided. You saw
her with the Campbells, when she was the equal of every body she mixed
with, but here she is with a poor old grandmother, who has barely enough
to live on. If you do not call early it will be a slight.”

The son looked convinced.

“I have heard her speak of the acquaintance,” said Emma; “she is a very
elegant young woman.”

He agreed to it, but with so quiet a “Yes,” as inclined her almost to
doubt his real concurrence; and yet there must be a very distinct sort
of elegance for the fashionable world, if Jane Fairfax could be thought
only ordinarily gifted with it.

“If you were never particularly struck by her manners before,” said she,
“I think you will to-day. You will see her to advantage; see her and
hear her--no, I am afraid you will not hear her at all, for she has an
aunt who never holds her tongue.”

“You are acquainted with Miss Jane Fairfax, sir, are you?” said Mr.
Woodhouse, always the last to make his way in conversation; “then give
me leave to assure you that you will find her a very agreeable young
lady. She is staying here on a visit to her grandmama and aunt, very
worthy people; I have known them all my life. They will be extremely
glad to see you, I am sure; and one of my servants shall go with you to
shew you the way.”

“My dear sir, upon no account in the world; my father can direct me.”

“But your father is not going so far; he is only going to the Crown,
quite on the other side of the street, and there are a great many
houses; you might be very much at a loss, and it is a very dirty walk,
unless you keep on the footpath; but my coachman can tell you where you
had best cross the street.”

Mr. Frank Churchill still declined it, looking as serious as he could,
and his father gave his hearty support by calling out, “My good friend,
this is quite unnecessary; Frank knows a puddle of water when he sees
it, and as to Mrs. Bates's, he may get there from the Crown in a hop,
step, and jump.”

They were permitted to go alone; and with a cordial nod from one, and a
graceful bow from the other, the two gentlemen took leave. Emma remained
very well pleased with this beginning of the acquaintance, and could now
engage to think of them all at Randalls any hour of the day, with full
confidence in their comfort.



CHAPTER VI


The next morning brought Mr. Frank Churchill again. He came with Mrs.
Weston, to whom and to Highbury he seemed to take very cordially. He had
been sitting with her, it appeared, most companionably at home, till
her usual hour of exercise; and on being desired to chuse their walk,
immediately fixed on Highbury.--“He did not doubt there being very
pleasant walks in every direction, but if left to him, he should always
chuse the same. Highbury, that airy, cheerful, happy-looking Highbury,
would be his constant attraction.”--Highbury, with Mrs. Weston, stood
for Hartfield; and she trusted to its bearing the same construction with
him. They walked thither directly.

Emma had hardly expected them: for Mr. Weston, who had called in for
half a minute, in order to hear that his son was very handsome, knew
nothing of their plans; and it was an agreeable surprize to her,
therefore, to perceive them walking up to the house together, arm in
arm. She was wanting to see him again, and especially to see him in
company with Mrs. Weston, upon his behaviour to whom her opinion of him
was to depend. If he were deficient there, nothing should make amends
for it. But on seeing them together, she became perfectly satisfied. It
was not merely in fine words or hyperbolical compliment that he paid his
duty; nothing could be more proper or pleasing than his whole manner to
her--nothing could more agreeably denote his wish of considering her as
a friend and securing her affection. And there was time enough for Emma
to form a reasonable judgment, as their visit included all the rest of
the morning. They were all three walking about together for an hour
or two--first round the shrubberies of Hartfield, and afterwards
in Highbury. He was delighted with every thing; admired Hartfield
sufficiently for Mr. Woodhouse's ear; and when their going farther was
resolved on, confessed his wish to be made acquainted with the whole
village, and found matter of commendation and interest much oftener than
Emma could have supposed.

Some of the objects of his curiosity spoke very amiable feelings. He
begged to be shewn the house which his father had lived in so long, and
which had been the home of his father's father; and on recollecting that
an old woman who had nursed him was still living, walked in quest of
her cottage from one end of the street to the other; and though in
some points of pursuit or observation there was no positive merit, they
shewed, altogether, a good-will towards Highbury in general, which must
be very like a merit to those he was with.

Emma watched and decided, that with such feelings as were now shewn, it
could not be fairly supposed that he had been ever voluntarily absenting
himself; that he had not been acting a part, or making a parade of
insincere professions; and that Mr. Knightley certainly had not done him
justice.

Their first pause was at the Crown Inn, an inconsiderable house, though
the principal one of the sort, where a couple of pair of post-horses
were kept, more for the convenience of the neighbourhood than from any
run on the road; and his companions had not expected to be detained by
any interest excited there; but in passing it they gave the history of
the large room visibly added; it had been built many years ago for
a ball-room, and while the neighbourhood had been in a particularly
populous, dancing state, had been occasionally used as such;--but such
brilliant days had long passed away, and now the highest purpose for
which it was ever wanted was to accommodate a whist club established
among the gentlemen and half-gentlemen of the place. He was immediately
interested. Its character as a ball-room caught him; and instead of
passing on, he stopt for several minutes at the two superior sashed
windows which were open, to look in and contemplate its capabilities,
and lament that its original purpose should have ceased. He saw no fault
in the room, he would acknowledge none which they suggested. No, it
was long enough, broad enough, handsome enough. It would hold the
very number for comfort. They ought to have balls there at least every
fortnight through the winter. Why had not Miss Woodhouse revived
the former good old days of the room?--She who could do any thing in
Highbury! The want of proper families in the place, and the conviction
that none beyond the place and its immediate environs could be tempted
to attend, were mentioned; but he was not satisfied. He could not be
persuaded that so many good-looking houses as he saw around him, could
not furnish numbers enough for such a meeting; and even when particulars
were given and families described, he was still unwilling to admit that
the inconvenience of such a mixture would be any thing, or that there
would be the smallest difficulty in every body's returning into their
proper place the next morning. He argued like a young man very much bent
on dancing; and Emma was rather surprized to see the constitution of
the Weston prevail so decidedly against the habits of the Churchills.
He seemed to have all the life and spirit, cheerful feelings, and social
inclinations of his father, and nothing of the pride or reserve of
Enscombe. Of pride, indeed, there was, perhaps, scarcely enough; his
indifference to a confusion of rank, bordered too much on inelegance of
mind. He could be no judge, however, of the evil he was holding cheap.
It was but an effusion of lively spirits.

At last he was persuaded to move on from the front of the Crown;
and being now almost facing the house where the Bateses lodged, Emma
recollected his intended visit the day before, and asked him if he had
paid it.

“Yes, oh! yes”--he replied; “I was just going to mention it. A very
successful visit:--I saw all the three ladies; and felt very much
obliged to you for your preparatory hint. If the talking aunt had taken
me quite by surprize, it must have been the death of me. As it was, I
was only betrayed into paying a most unreasonable visit. Ten minutes
would have been all that was necessary, perhaps all that was proper; and
I had told my father I should certainly be at home before him--but there
was no getting away, no pause; and, to my utter astonishment, I found,
when he (finding me nowhere else) joined me there at last, that I had
been actually sitting with them very nearly three-quarters of an hour.
The good lady had not given me the possibility of escape before.”

“And how did you think Miss Fairfax looking?”

“Ill, very ill--that is, if a young lady can ever be allowed to look
ill. But the expression is hardly admissible, Mrs. Weston, is it? Ladies
can never look ill. And, seriously, Miss Fairfax is naturally so
pale, as almost always to give the appearance of ill health.--A most
deplorable want of complexion.”

Emma would not agree to this, and began a warm defence of Miss Fairfax's
complexion. “It was certainly never brilliant, but she would not
allow it to have a sickly hue in general; and there was a softness and
delicacy in her skin which gave peculiar elegance to the character of
her face.” He listened with all due deference; acknowledged that he had
heard many people say the same--but yet he must confess, that to him
nothing could make amends for the want of the fine glow of health. Where
features were indifferent, a fine complexion gave beauty to them all;
and where they were good, the effect was--fortunately he need not
attempt to describe what the effect was.

“Well,” said Emma, “there is no disputing about taste.--At least you
admire her except her complexion.”

He shook his head and laughed.--“I cannot separate Miss Fairfax and her
complexion.”

“Did you see her often at Weymouth? Were you often in the same society?”

At this moment they were approaching Ford's, and he hastily exclaimed,
“Ha! this must be the very shop that every body attends every day of
their lives, as my father informs me. He comes to Highbury himself, he
says, six days out of the seven, and has always business at Ford's.
If it be not inconvenient to you, pray let us go in, that I may prove
myself to belong to the place, to be a true citizen of Highbury. I must
buy something at Ford's. It will be taking out my freedom.--I dare say
they sell gloves.”

“Oh! yes, gloves and every thing. I do admire your patriotism. You will
be adored in Highbury. You were very popular before you came, because
you were Mr. Weston's son--but lay out half a guinea at Ford's, and your
popularity will stand upon your own virtues.”

They went in; and while the sleek, well-tied parcels of “Men's Beavers”
 and “York Tan” were bringing down and displaying on the counter, he
said--“But I beg your pardon, Miss Woodhouse, you were speaking to me,
you were saying something at the very moment of this burst of my _amor_
_patriae_. Do not let me lose it. I assure you the utmost stretch of
public fame would not make me amends for the loss of any happiness in
private life.”

“I merely asked, whether you had known much of Miss Fairfax and her
party at Weymouth.”

“And now that I understand your question, I must pronounce it to be a
very unfair one. It is always the lady's right to decide on the degree
of acquaintance. Miss Fairfax must already have given her account.--I
shall not commit myself by claiming more than she may chuse to allow.”

“Upon my word! you answer as discreetly as she could do herself. But
her account of every thing leaves so much to be guessed, she is so very
reserved, so very unwilling to give the least information about any
body, that I really think you may say what you like of your acquaintance
with her.”

“May I, indeed?--Then I will speak the truth, and nothing suits me so
well. I met her frequently at Weymouth. I had known the Campbells a
little in town; and at Weymouth we were very much in the same set.
Colonel Campbell is a very agreeable man, and Mrs. Campbell a friendly,
warm-hearted woman. I like them all.”

“You know Miss Fairfax's situation in life, I conclude; what she is
destined to be?”

“Yes--(rather hesitatingly)--I believe I do.”

“You get upon delicate subjects, Emma,” said Mrs. Weston smiling;
“remember that I am here.--Mr. Frank Churchill hardly knows what to say
when you speak of Miss Fairfax's situation in life. I will move a little
farther off.”

“I certainly do forget to think of _her_,” said Emma, “as having ever
been any thing but my friend and my dearest friend.”

He looked as if he fully understood and honoured such a sentiment.

When the gloves were bought, and they had quitted the shop again, “Did
you ever hear the young lady we were speaking of, play?” said Frank
Churchill.

“Ever hear her!” repeated Emma. “You forget how much she belongs to
Highbury. I have heard her every year of our lives since we both began.
She plays charmingly.”

“You think so, do you?--I wanted the opinion of some one who
could really judge. She appeared to me to play well, that is, with
considerable taste, but I know nothing of the matter myself.--I am
excessively fond of music, but without the smallest skill or right
of judging of any body's performance.--I have been used to hear her's
admired; and I remember one proof of her being thought to play well:--a
man, a very musical man, and in love with another woman--engaged to
her--on the point of marriage--would yet never ask that other woman
to sit down to the instrument, if the lady in question could sit down
instead--never seemed to like to hear one if he could hear the other.
That, I thought, in a man of known musical talent, was some proof.”

“Proof indeed!” said Emma, highly amused.--“Mr. Dixon is very musical,
is he? We shall know more about them all, in half an hour, from you,
than Miss Fairfax would have vouchsafed in half a year.”

“Yes, Mr. Dixon and Miss Campbell were the persons; and I thought it a
very strong proof.”

“Certainly--very strong it was; to own the truth, a great deal stronger
than, if _I_ had been Miss Campbell, would have been at all agreeable
to me. I could not excuse a man's having more music than love--more ear
than eye--a more acute sensibility to fine sounds than to my feelings.
How did Miss Campbell appear to like it?”

“It was her very particular friend, you know.”

“Poor comfort!” said Emma, laughing. “One would rather have a stranger
preferred than one's very particular friend--with a stranger it might
not recur again--but the misery of having a very particular friend
always at hand, to do every thing better than one does oneself!--Poor
Mrs. Dixon! Well, I am glad she is gone to settle in Ireland.”

“You are right. It was not very flattering to Miss Campbell; but she
really did not seem to feel it.”

“So much the better--or so much the worse:--I do not know which. But
be it sweetness or be it stupidity in her--quickness of friendship, or
dulness of feeling--there was one person, I think, who must have felt
it: Miss Fairfax herself. She must have felt the improper and dangerous
distinction.”

“As to that--I do not--”

“Oh! do not imagine that I expect an account of Miss Fairfax's
sensations from you, or from any body else. They are known to no human
being, I guess, but herself. But if she continued to play whenever she
was asked by Mr. Dixon, one may guess what one chuses.”

“There appeared such a perfectly good understanding among them all--”
 he began rather quickly, but checking himself, added, “however, it is
impossible for me to say on what terms they really were--how it might
all be behind the scenes. I can only say that there was smoothness
outwardly. But you, who have known Miss Fairfax from a child, must be
a better judge of her character, and of how she is likely to conduct
herself in critical situations, than I can be.”

“I have known her from a child, undoubtedly; we have been children
and women together; and it is natural to suppose that we should be
intimate,--that we should have taken to each other whenever she visited
her friends. But we never did. I hardly know how it has happened; a
little, perhaps, from that wickedness on my side which was prone to take
disgust towards a girl so idolized and so cried up as she always was,
by her aunt and grandmother, and all their set. And then, her reserve--I
never could attach myself to any one so completely reserved.”

“It is a most repulsive quality, indeed,” said he. “Oftentimes very
convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing. There is safety in reserve,
but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.”

“Not till the reserve ceases towards oneself; and then the attraction
may be the greater. But I must be more in want of a friend, or an
agreeable companion, than I have yet been, to take the trouble of
conquering any body's reserve to procure one. Intimacy between Miss
Fairfax and me is quite out of the question. I have no reason to think
ill of her--not the least--except that such extreme and perpetual
cautiousness of word and manner, such a dread of giving a distinct idea
about any body, is apt to suggest suspicions of there being something to
conceal.”

He perfectly agreed with her: and after walking together so long, and
thinking so much alike, Emma felt herself so well acquainted with him,
that she could hardly believe it to be only their second meeting. He was
not exactly what she had expected; less of the man of the world in some
of his notions, less of the spoiled child of fortune, therefore better
than she had expected. His ideas seemed more moderate--his feelings
warmer. She was particularly struck by his manner of considering Mr.
Elton's house, which, as well as the church, he would go and look at,
and would not join them in finding much fault with. No, he could not
believe it a bad house; not such a house as a man was to be pitied for
having. If it were to be shared with the woman he loved, he could not
think any man to be pitied for having that house. There must be ample
room in it for every real comfort. The man must be a blockhead who
wanted more.

Mrs. Weston laughed, and said he did not know what he was talking about.
Used only to a large house himself, and without ever thinking how many
advantages and accommodations were attached to its size, he could be no
judge of the privations inevitably belonging to a small one. But Emma,
in her own mind, determined that he _did_ know what he was talking
about, and that he shewed a very amiable inclination to settle early in
life, and to marry, from worthy motives. He might not be aware of the
inroads on domestic peace to be occasioned by no housekeeper's room, or
a bad butler's pantry, but no doubt he did perfectly feel that Enscombe
could not make him happy, and that whenever he were attached, he would
willingly give up much of wealth to be allowed an early establishment.



CHAPTER VII


Emma's very good opinion of Frank Churchill was a little shaken the
following day, by hearing that he was gone off to London, merely to have
his hair cut. A sudden freak seemed to have seized him at breakfast, and
he had sent for a chaise and set off, intending to return to dinner,
but with no more important view that appeared than having his hair cut.
There was certainly no harm in his travelling sixteen miles twice over
on such an errand; but there was an air of foppery and nonsense in it
which she could not approve. It did not accord with the rationality of
plan, the moderation in expense, or even the unselfish warmth of heart,
which she had believed herself to discern in him yesterday. Vanity,
extravagance, love of change, restlessness of temper, which must be
doing something, good or bad; heedlessness as to the pleasure of his
father and Mrs. Weston, indifferent as to how his conduct might appear
in general; he became liable to all these charges. His father only
called him a coxcomb, and thought it a very good story; but that Mrs.
Weston did not like it, was clear enough, by her passing it over as
quickly as possible, and making no other comment than that “all young
people would have their little whims.”

With the exception of this little blot, Emma found that his visit
hitherto had given her friend only good ideas of him. Mrs. Weston
was very ready to say how attentive and pleasant a companion he made
himself--how much she saw to like in his disposition altogether. He
appeared to have a very open temper--certainly a very cheerful and
lively one; she could observe nothing wrong in his notions, a great deal
decidedly right; he spoke of his uncle with warm regard, was fond of
talking of him--said he would be the best man in the world if he were
left to himself; and though there was no being attached to the aunt, he
acknowledged her kindness with gratitude, and seemed to mean always to
speak of her with respect. This was all very promising; and, but for
such an unfortunate fancy for having his hair cut, there was nothing to
denote him unworthy of the distinguished honour which her imagination
had given him; the honour, if not of being really in love with her,
of being at least very near it, and saved only by her own
indifference--(for still her resolution held of never marrying)--the
honour, in short, of being marked out for her by all their joint
acquaintance.

Mr. Weston, on his side, added a virtue to the account which must
have some weight. He gave her to understand that Frank admired her
extremely--thought her very beautiful and very charming; and with so
much to be said for him altogether, she found she must not judge him
harshly. As Mrs. Weston observed, “all young people would have their
little whims.”

There was one person among his new acquaintance in Surry, not so
leniently disposed. In general he was judged, throughout the parishes of
Donwell and Highbury, with great candour; liberal allowances were made
for the little excesses of such a handsome young man--one who smiled so
often and bowed so well; but there was one spirit among them not to be
softened, from its power of censure, by bows or smiles--Mr. Knightley.
The circumstance was told him at Hartfield; for the moment, he was
silent; but Emma heard him almost immediately afterwards say to himself,
over a newspaper he held in his hand, “Hum! just the trifling, silly
fellow I took him for.” She had half a mind to resent; but an instant's
observation convinced her that it was really said only to relieve his
own feelings, and not meant to provoke; and therefore she let it pass.

Although in one instance the bearers of not good tidings, Mr. and
Mrs. Weston's visit this morning was in another respect particularly
opportune. Something occurred while they were at Hartfield, to make Emma
want their advice; and, which was still more lucky, she wanted exactly
the advice they gave.

This was the occurrence:--The Coles had been settled some years in
Highbury, and were very good sort of people--friendly, liberal, and
unpretending; but, on the other hand, they were of low origin, in trade,
and only moderately genteel. On their first coming into the country,
they had lived in proportion to their income, quietly, keeping little
company, and that little unexpensively; but the last year or two had
brought them a considerable increase of means--the house in town had
yielded greater profits, and fortune in general had smiled on them. With
their wealth, their views increased; their want of a larger house, their
inclination for more company. They added to their house, to their number
of servants, to their expenses of every sort; and by this time were,
in fortune and style of living, second only to the family at Hartfield.
Their love of society, and their new dining-room, prepared every body
for their keeping dinner-company; and a few parties, chiefly among the
single men, had already taken place. The regular and best families Emma
could hardly suppose they would presume to invite--neither Donwell, nor
Hartfield, nor Randalls. Nothing should tempt _her_ to go, if they did;
and she regretted that her father's known habits would be giving
her refusal less meaning than she could wish. The Coles were very
respectable in their way, but they ought to be taught that it was not
for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit
them. This lesson, she very much feared, they would receive only from
herself; she had little hope of Mr. Knightley, none of Mr. Weston.

But she had made up her mind how to meet this presumption so many weeks
before it appeared, that when the insult came at last, it found her
very differently affected. Donwell and Randalls had received their
invitation, and none had come for her father and herself; and Mrs.
Weston's accounting for it with “I suppose they will not take the
liberty with you; they know you do not dine out,” was not quite
sufficient. She felt that she should like to have had the power of
refusal; and afterwards, as the idea of the party to be assembled there,
consisting precisely of those whose society was dearest to her, occurred
again and again, she did not know that she might not have been tempted
to accept. Harriet was to be there in the evening, and the Bateses. They
had been speaking of it as they walked about Highbury the day before,
and Frank Churchill had most earnestly lamented her absence. Might
not the evening end in a dance? had been a question of his. The bare
possibility of it acted as a farther irritation on her spirits; and
her being left in solitary grandeur, even supposing the omission to be
intended as a compliment, was but poor comfort.

It was the arrival of this very invitation while the Westons were at
Hartfield, which made their presence so acceptable; for though her first
remark, on reading it, was that “of course it must be declined,” she so
very soon proceeded to ask them what they advised her to do, that their
advice for her going was most prompt and successful.

She owned that, considering every thing, she was not absolutely
without inclination for the party. The Coles expressed themselves so
properly--there was so much real attention in the manner of it--so much
consideration for her father. “They would have solicited the honour
earlier, but had been waiting the arrival of a folding-screen from
London, which they hoped might keep Mr. Woodhouse from any draught of
air, and therefore induce him the more readily to give them the honour
of his company.” Upon the whole, she was very persuadable; and it being
briefly settled among themselves how it might be done without neglecting
his comfort--how certainly Mrs. Goddard, if not Mrs. Bates, might be
depended on for bearing him company--Mr. Woodhouse was to be talked
into an acquiescence of his daughter's going out to dinner on a day now
near at hand, and spending the whole evening away from him. As for _his_
going, Emma did not wish him to think it possible, the hours would be
too late, and the party too numerous. He was soon pretty well resigned.

“I am not fond of dinner-visiting,” said he--“I never was. No more is
Emma. Late hours do not agree with us. I am sorry Mr. and Mrs. Cole
should have done it. I think it would be much better if they would come
in one afternoon next summer, and take their tea with us--take us
in their afternoon walk; which they might do, as our hours are so
reasonable, and yet get home without being out in the damp of the
evening. The dews of a summer evening are what I would not expose any
body to. However, as they are so very desirous to have dear Emma dine
with them, and as you will both be there, and Mr. Knightley too, to take
care of her, I cannot wish to prevent it, provided the weather be what
it ought, neither damp, nor cold, nor windy.” Then turning to Mrs.
Weston, with a look of gentle reproach--“Ah! Miss Taylor, if you had not
married, you would have staid at home with me.”

“Well, sir,” cried Mr. Weston, “as I took Miss Taylor away, it is
incumbent on me to supply her place, if I can; and I will step to Mrs.
Goddard in a moment, if you wish it.”

But the idea of any thing to be done in a _moment_, was increasing,
not lessening, Mr. Woodhouse's agitation. The ladies knew better how
to allay it. Mr. Weston must be quiet, and every thing deliberately
arranged.

With this treatment, Mr. Woodhouse was soon composed enough for talking
as usual. “He should be happy to see Mrs. Goddard. He had a great regard
for Mrs. Goddard; and Emma should write a line, and invite her. James
could take the note. But first of all, there must be an answer written
to Mrs. Cole.”

“You will make my excuses, my dear, as civilly as possible. You will say
that I am quite an invalid, and go no where, and therefore must decline
their obliging invitation; beginning with my _compliments_, of course.
But you will do every thing right. I need not tell you what is to be
done. We must remember to let James know that the carriage will be
wanted on Tuesday. I shall have no fears for you with him. We have never
been there above once since the new approach was made; but still I have
no doubt that James will take you very safely. And when you get there,
you must tell him at what time you would have him come for you again;
and you had better name an early hour. You will not like staying late.
You will get very tired when tea is over.”

“But you would not wish me to come away before I am tired, papa?”

“Oh! no, my love; but you will soon be tired. There will be a great many
people talking at once. You will not like the noise.”

“But, my dear sir,” cried Mr. Weston, “if Emma comes away early, it will
be breaking up the party.”

“And no great harm if it does,” said Mr. Woodhouse. “The sooner every
party breaks up, the better.”

“But you do not consider how it may appear to the Coles. Emma's going
away directly after tea might be giving offence. They are good-natured
people, and think little of their own claims; but still they must
feel that any body's hurrying away is no great compliment; and Miss
Woodhouse's doing it would be more thought of than any other person's in
the room. You would not wish to disappoint and mortify the Coles, I am
sure, sir; friendly, good sort of people as ever lived, and who have
been your neighbours these _ten_ years.”

“No, upon no account in the world, Mr. Weston; I am much obliged to
you for reminding me. I should be extremely sorry to be giving them any
pain. I know what worthy people they are. Perry tells me that Mr. Cole
never touches malt liquor. You would not think it to look at him, but
he is bilious--Mr. Cole is very bilious. No, I would not be the means
of giving them any pain. My dear Emma, we must consider this. I am sure,
rather than run the risk of hurting Mr. and Mrs. Cole, you would stay a
little longer than you might wish. You will not regard being tired. You
will be perfectly safe, you know, among your friends.”

“Oh yes, papa. I have no fears at all for myself; and I should have no
scruples of staying as late as Mrs. Weston, but on your account. I am
only afraid of your sitting up for me. I am not afraid of your not being
exceedingly comfortable with Mrs. Goddard. She loves piquet, you
know; but when she is gone home, I am afraid you will be sitting up by
yourself, instead of going to bed at your usual time--and the idea of
that would entirely destroy my comfort. You must promise me not to sit
up.”

He did, on the condition of some promises on her side: such as that,
if she came home cold, she would be sure to warm herself thoroughly; if
hungry, that she would take something to eat; that her own maid should
sit up for her; and that Serle and the butler should see that every
thing were safe in the house, as usual.



CHAPTER VIII


Frank Churchill came back again; and if he kept his father's dinner
waiting, it was not known at Hartfield; for Mrs. Weston was too anxious
for his being a favourite with Mr. Woodhouse, to betray any imperfection
which could be concealed.

He came back, had had his hair cut, and laughed at himself with a very
good grace, but without seeming really at all ashamed of what he had
done. He had no reason to wish his hair longer, to conceal any confusion
of face; no reason to wish the money unspent, to improve his spirits.
He was quite as undaunted and as lively as ever; and, after seeing him,
Emma thus moralised to herself:--

“I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things
do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent
way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.--It
depends upon the character of those who handle it. Mr. Knightley, he is
_not_ a trifling, silly young man. If he were, he would have done this
differently. He would either have gloried in the achievement, or
been ashamed of it. There would have been either the ostentation of
a coxcomb, or the evasions of a mind too weak to defend its own
vanities.--No, I am perfectly sure that he is not trifling or silly.”

With Tuesday came the agreeable prospect of seeing him again, and for
a longer time than hitherto; of judging of his general manners, and by
inference, of the meaning of his manners towards herself; of guessing
how soon it might be necessary for her to throw coldness into her air;
and of fancying what the observations of all those might be, who were
now seeing them together for the first time.

She meant to be very happy, in spite of the scene being laid at Mr.
Cole's; and without being able to forget that among the failings of Mr.
Elton, even in the days of his favour, none had disturbed her more than
his propensity to dine with Mr. Cole.

Her father's comfort was amply secured, Mrs. Bates as well as Mrs.
Goddard being able to come; and her last pleasing duty, before she left
the house, was to pay her respects to them as they sat together after
dinner; and while her father was fondly noticing the beauty of her
dress, to make the two ladies all the amends in her power, by helping
them to large slices of cake and full glasses of wine, for whatever
unwilling self-denial his care of their constitution might have obliged
them to practise during the meal.--She had provided a plentiful dinner
for them; she wished she could know that they had been allowed to eat
it.

She followed another carriage to Mr. Cole's door; and was pleased to see
that it was Mr. Knightley's; for Mr. Knightley keeping no horses,
having little spare money and a great deal of health, activity, and
independence, was too apt, in Emma's opinion, to get about as he could,
and not use his carriage so often as became the owner of Donwell Abbey.
She had an opportunity now of speaking her approbation while warm from
her heart, for he stopped to hand her out.

“This is coming as you should do,” said she; “like a gentleman.--I am
quite glad to see you.”

He thanked her, observing, “How lucky that we should arrive at the same
moment! for, if we had met first in the drawing-room, I doubt whether
you would have discerned me to be more of a gentleman than usual.--You
might not have distinguished how I came, by my look or manner.”

“Yes I should, I am sure I should. There is always a look of
consciousness or bustle when people come in a way which they know to be
beneath them. You think you carry it off very well, I dare say, but
with you it is a sort of bravado, an air of affected unconcern; I always
observe it whenever I meet you under those circumstances. _Now_ you have
nothing to try for. You are not afraid of being supposed ashamed. You
are not striving to look taller than any body else. _Now_ I shall really
be very happy to walk into the same room with you.”

“Nonsensical girl!” was his reply, but not at all in anger.

Emma had as much reason to be satisfied with the rest of the party as
with Mr. Knightley. She was received with a cordial respect which could
not but please, and given all the consequence she could wish for.
When the Westons arrived, the kindest looks of love, the strongest of
admiration were for her, from both husband and wife; the son approached
her with a cheerful eagerness which marked her as his peculiar object,
and at dinner she found him seated by her--and, as she firmly believed,
not without some dexterity on his side.

The party was rather large, as it included one other family, a proper
unobjectionable country family, whom the Coles had the advantage of
naming among their acquaintance, and the male part of Mr. Cox's family,
the lawyer of Highbury. The less worthy females were to come in the
evening, with Miss Bates, Miss Fairfax, and Miss Smith; but already,
at dinner, they were too numerous for any subject of conversation to be
general; and, while politics and Mr. Elton were talked over, Emma could
fairly surrender all her attention to the pleasantness of her neighbour.
The first remote sound to which she felt herself obliged to attend, was
the name of Jane Fairfax. Mrs. Cole seemed to be relating something of
her that was expected to be very interesting. She listened, and found
it well worth listening to. That very dear part of Emma, her fancy,
received an amusing supply. Mrs. Cole was telling that she had been
calling on Miss Bates, and as soon as she entered the room had
been struck by the sight of a pianoforte--a very elegant looking
instrument--not a grand, but a large-sized square pianoforte; and the
substance of the story, the end of all the dialogue which ensued of
surprize, and inquiry, and congratulations on her side, and explanations
on Miss Bates's, was, that this pianoforte had arrived from
Broadwood's the day before, to the great astonishment of both aunt and
niece--entirely unexpected; that at first, by Miss Bates's account,
Jane herself was quite at a loss, quite bewildered to think who could
possibly have ordered it--but now, they were both perfectly satisfied
that it could be from only one quarter;--of course it must be from
Colonel Campbell.

“One can suppose nothing else,” added Mrs. Cole, “and I was only
surprized that there could ever have been a doubt. But Jane, it seems,
had a letter from them very lately, and not a word was said about it.
She knows their ways best; but I should not consider their silence as
any reason for their not meaning to make the present. They might chuse
to surprize her.”

Mrs. Cole had many to agree with her; every body who spoke on the
subject was equally convinced that it must come from Colonel Campbell,
and equally rejoiced that such a present had been made; and there were
enough ready to speak to allow Emma to think her own way, and still
listen to Mrs. Cole.

“I declare, I do not know when I have heard any thing that has given me
more satisfaction!--It always has quite hurt me that Jane Fairfax, who
plays so delightfully, should not have an instrument. It seemed quite
a shame, especially considering how many houses there are where fine
instruments are absolutely thrown away. This is like giving ourselves
a slap, to be sure! and it was but yesterday I was telling Mr. Cole,
I really was ashamed to look at our new grand pianoforte in the
drawing-room, while I do not know one note from another, and our little
girls, who are but just beginning, perhaps may never make any thing of
it; and there is poor Jane Fairfax, who is mistress of music, has not
any thing of the nature of an instrument, not even the pitifullest old
spinet in the world, to amuse herself with.--I was saying this to
Mr. Cole but yesterday, and he quite agreed with me; only he is so
particularly fond of music that he could not help indulging himself
in the purchase, hoping that some of our good neighbours might be so
obliging occasionally to put it to a better use than we can; and that
really is the reason why the instrument was bought--or else I am sure
we ought to be ashamed of it.--We are in great hopes that Miss Woodhouse
may be prevailed with to try it this evening.”

Miss Woodhouse made the proper acquiescence; and finding that nothing
more was to be entrapped from any communication of Mrs. Cole's, turned
to Frank Churchill.

“Why do you smile?” said she.

“Nay, why do you?”

“Me!--I suppose I smile for pleasure at Colonel Campbell's being so rich
and so liberal.--It is a handsome present.”

“Very.”

“I rather wonder that it was never made before.”

“Perhaps Miss Fairfax has never been staying here so long before.”

“Or that he did not give her the use of their own instrument--which must
now be shut up in London, untouched by any body.”

“That is a grand pianoforte, and he might think it too large for Mrs.
Bates's house.”

“You may _say_ what you chuse--but your countenance testifies that your
_thoughts_ on this subject are very much like mine.”

“I do not know. I rather believe you are giving me more credit for
acuteness than I deserve. I smile because you smile, and shall probably
suspect whatever I find you suspect; but at present I do not see what
there is to question. If Colonel Campbell is not the person, who can
be?”

“What do you say to Mrs. Dixon?”

“Mrs. Dixon! very true indeed. I had not thought of Mrs. Dixon. She must
know as well as her father, how acceptable an instrument would be; and
perhaps the mode of it, the mystery, the surprize, is more like a young
woman's scheme than an elderly man's. It is Mrs. Dixon, I dare say. I
told you that your suspicions would guide mine.”

“If so, you must extend your suspicions and comprehend _Mr_. Dixon in
them.”

“Mr. Dixon.--Very well. Yes, I immediately perceive that it must be the
joint present of Mr. and Mrs. Dixon. We were speaking the other day, you
know, of his being so warm an admirer of her performance.”

“Yes, and what you told me on that head, confirmed an idea which I had
entertained before.--I do not mean to reflect upon the good intentions
of either Mr. Dixon or Miss Fairfax, but I cannot help suspecting either
that, after making his proposals to her friend, he had the misfortune
to fall in love with _her_, or that he became conscious of a little
attachment on her side. One might guess twenty things without guessing
exactly the right; but I am sure there must be a particular cause for
her chusing to come to Highbury instead of going with the Campbells
to Ireland. Here, she must be leading a life of privation and penance;
there it would have been all enjoyment. As to the pretence of trying her
native air, I look upon that as a mere excuse.--In the summer it might
have passed; but what can any body's native air do for them in the
months of January, February, and March? Good fires and carriages would
be much more to the purpose in most cases of delicate health, and I dare
say in her's. I do not require you to adopt all my suspicions, though
you make so noble a profession of doing it, but I honestly tell you what
they are.”

“And, upon my word, they have an air of great probability. Mr. Dixon's
preference of her music to her friend's, I can answer for being very
decided.”

“And then, he saved her life. Did you ever hear of that?--A water
party; and by some accident she was falling overboard. He caught her.”

“He did. I was there--one of the party.”

“Were you really?--Well!--But you observed nothing of course, for it
seems to be a new idea to you.--If I had been there, I think I should
have made some discoveries.”

“I dare say you would; but I, simple I, saw nothing but the fact, that
Miss Fairfax was nearly dashed from the vessel and that Mr. Dixon caught
her.--It was the work of a moment. And though the consequent shock and
alarm was very great and much more durable--indeed I believe it was
half an hour before any of us were comfortable again--yet that was too
general a sensation for any thing of peculiar anxiety to be
observable. I do not mean to say, however, that you might not have made
discoveries.”

The conversation was here interrupted. They were called on to share
in the awkwardness of a rather long interval between the courses, and
obliged to be as formal and as orderly as the others; but when the table
was again safely covered, when every corner dish was placed exactly
right, and occupation and ease were generally restored, Emma said,

“The arrival of this pianoforte is decisive with me. I wanted to know
a little more, and this tells me quite enough. Depend upon it, we shall
soon hear that it is a present from Mr. and Mrs. Dixon.”

“And if the Dixons should absolutely deny all knowledge of it we must
conclude it to come from the Campbells.”

“No, I am sure it is not from the Campbells. Miss Fairfax knows it is
not from the Campbells, or they would have been guessed at first. She
would not have been puzzled, had she dared fix on them. I may not have
convinced you perhaps, but I am perfectly convinced myself that Mr.
Dixon is a principal in the business.”

“Indeed you injure me if you suppose me unconvinced. Your reasonings
carry my judgment along with them entirely. At first, while I supposed
you satisfied that Colonel Campbell was the giver, I saw it only as
paternal kindness, and thought it the most natural thing in the world.
But when you mentioned Mrs. Dixon, I felt how much more probable that it
should be the tribute of warm female friendship. And now I can see it in
no other light than as an offering of love.”

There was no occasion to press the matter farther. The conviction seemed
real; he looked as if he felt it. She said no more, other subjects
took their turn; and the rest of the dinner passed away; the dessert
succeeded, the children came in, and were talked to and admired amid the
usual rate of conversation; a few clever things said, a few downright
silly, but by much the larger proportion neither the one nor the
other--nothing worse than everyday remarks, dull repetitions, old news,
and heavy jokes.

The ladies had not been long in the drawing-room, before the other
ladies, in their different divisions, arrived. Emma watched the entree
of her own particular little friend; and if she could not exult in her
dignity and grace, she could not only love the blooming sweetness and
the artless manner, but could most heartily rejoice in that light,
cheerful, unsentimental disposition which allowed her so many
alleviations of pleasure, in the midst of the pangs of disappointed
affection. There she sat--and who would have guessed how many tears she
had been lately shedding? To be in company, nicely dressed herself and
seeing others nicely dressed, to sit and smile and look pretty, and say
nothing, was enough for the happiness of the present hour. Jane Fairfax
did look and move superior; but Emma suspected she might have been
glad to change feelings with Harriet, very glad to have purchased the
mortification of having loved--yes, of having loved even Mr. Elton in
vain--by the surrender of all the dangerous pleasure of knowing herself
beloved by the husband of her friend.

In so large a party it was not necessary that Emma should approach her.
She did not wish to speak of the pianoforte, she felt too much in the
secret herself, to think the appearance of curiosity or interest fair,
and therefore purposely kept at a distance; but by the others, the
subject was almost immediately introduced, and she saw the blush of
consciousness with which congratulations were received, the blush
of guilt which accompanied the name of “my excellent friend Colonel
Campbell.”

Mrs. Weston, kind-hearted and musical, was particularly interested
by the circumstance, and Emma could not help being amused at her
perseverance in dwelling on the subject; and having so much to ask and
to say as to tone, touch, and pedal, totally unsuspicious of that wish
of saying as little about it as possible, which she plainly read in the
fair heroine's countenance.

They were soon joined by some of the gentlemen; and the very first
of the early was Frank Churchill. In he walked, the first and the
handsomest; and after paying his compliments en passant to Miss Bates
and her niece, made his way directly to the opposite side of the circle,
where sat Miss Woodhouse; and till he could find a seat by her, would
not sit at all. Emma divined what every body present must be thinking.
She was his object, and every body must perceive it. She introduced him
to her friend, Miss Smith, and, at convenient moments afterwards, heard
what each thought of the other. “He had never seen so lovely a face, and
was delighted with her naivete.” And she, “Only to be sure it was paying
him too great a compliment, but she did think there were some looks a
little like Mr. Elton.” Emma restrained her indignation, and only turned
from her in silence.

Smiles of intelligence passed between her and the gentleman on first
glancing towards Miss Fairfax; but it was most prudent to avoid speech.
He told her that he had been impatient to leave the dining-room--hated
sitting long--was always the first to move when he could--that his
father, Mr. Knightley, Mr. Cox, and Mr. Cole, were left very busy over
parish business--that as long as he had staid, however, it had been
pleasant enough, as he had found them in general a set of gentlemanlike,
sensible men; and spoke so handsomely of Highbury altogether--thought it
so abundant in agreeable families--that Emma began to feel she had been
used to despise the place rather too much. She questioned him as to the
society in Yorkshire--the extent of the neighbourhood about Enscombe,
and the sort; and could make out from his answers that, as far as
Enscombe was concerned, there was very little going on, that their
visitings were among a range of great families, none very near; and
that even when days were fixed, and invitations accepted, it was an even
chance that Mrs. Churchill were not in health and spirits for going;
that they made a point of visiting no fresh person; and that, though
he had his separate engagements, it was not without difficulty, without
considerable address _at_ _times_, that he could get away, or introduce
an acquaintance for a night.

She saw that Enscombe could not satisfy, and that Highbury, taken at
its best, might reasonably please a young man who had more retirement at
home than he liked. His importance at Enscombe was very evident. He did
not boast, but it naturally betrayed itself, that he had persuaded his
aunt where his uncle could do nothing, and on her laughing and noticing
it, he owned that he believed (excepting one or two points) he could
_with_ _time_ persuade her to any thing. One of those points on which
his influence failed, he then mentioned. He had wanted very much to
go abroad--had been very eager indeed to be allowed to travel--but she
would not hear of it. This had happened the year before. _Now_, he said,
he was beginning to have no longer the same wish.

The unpersuadable point, which he did not mention, Emma guessed to be
good behaviour to his father.

“I have made a most wretched discovery,” said he, after a short pause.--
“I have been here a week to-morrow--half my time. I never knew days fly
so fast. A week to-morrow!--And I have hardly begun to enjoy myself.
But just got acquainted with Mrs. Weston, and others!--I hate the
recollection.”

“Perhaps you may now begin to regret that you spent one whole day, out
of so few, in having your hair cut.”

“No,” said he, smiling, “that is no subject of regret at all. I have
no pleasure in seeing my friends, unless I can believe myself fit to be
seen.”

The rest of the gentlemen being now in the room, Emma found herself
obliged to turn from him for a few minutes, and listen to Mr. Cole. When
Mr. Cole had moved away, and her attention could be restored as before,
she saw Frank Churchill looking intently across the room at Miss
Fairfax, who was sitting exactly opposite.

“What is the matter?” said she.

He started. “Thank you for rousing me,” he replied. “I believe I have
been very rude; but really Miss Fairfax has done her hair in so odd a
way--so very odd a way--that I cannot keep my eyes from her. I never saw
any thing so outree!--Those curls!--This must be a fancy of her own. I
see nobody else looking like her!--I must go and ask her whether it
is an Irish fashion. Shall I?--Yes, I will--I declare I will--and you
shall see how she takes it;--whether she colours.”

He was gone immediately; and Emma soon saw him standing before Miss
Fairfax, and talking to her; but as to its effect on the young lady,
as he had improvidently placed himself exactly between them, exactly in
front of Miss Fairfax, she could absolutely distinguish nothing.

Before he could return to his chair, it was taken by Mrs. Weston.

“This is the luxury of a large party,” said she:--“one can get near
every body, and say every thing. My dear Emma, I am longing to talk
to you. I have been making discoveries and forming plans, just like
yourself, and I must tell them while the idea is fresh. Do you know how
Miss Bates and her niece came here?”

“How?--They were invited, were not they?”

“Oh! yes--but how they were conveyed hither?--the manner of their
coming?”

“They walked, I conclude. How else could they come?”

“Very true.--Well, a little while ago it occurred to me how very sad
it would be to have Jane Fairfax walking home again, late at night, and
cold as the nights are now. And as I looked at her, though I never saw
her appear to more advantage, it struck me that she was heated, and
would therefore be particularly liable to take cold. Poor girl! I could
not bear the idea of it; so, as soon as Mr. Weston came into the room,
and I could get at him, I spoke to him about the carriage. You may guess
how readily he came into my wishes; and having his approbation, I made
my way directly to Miss Bates, to assure her that the carriage would be
at her service before it took us home; for I thought it would be making
her comfortable at once. Good soul! she was as grateful as possible, you
may be sure. 'Nobody was ever so fortunate as herself!'--but with many,
many thanks--'there was no occasion to trouble us, for Mr. Knightley's
carriage had brought, and was to take them home again.' I was quite
surprized;--very glad, I am sure; but really quite surprized. Such a
very kind attention--and so thoughtful an attention!--the sort of thing
that so few men would think of. And, in short, from knowing his
usual ways, I am very much inclined to think that it was for their
accommodation the carriage was used at all. I do suspect he would not
have had a pair of horses for himself, and that it was only as an excuse
for assisting them.”

“Very likely,” said Emma--“nothing more likely. I know no man more
likely than Mr. Knightley to do the sort of thing--to do any thing
really good-natured, useful, considerate, or benevolent. He is not a
gallant man, but he is a very humane one; and this, considering Jane
Fairfax's ill-health, would appear a case of humanity to him;--and for
an act of unostentatious kindness, there is nobody whom I would fix on
more than on Mr. Knightley. I know he had horses to-day--for we arrived
together; and I laughed at him about it, but he said not a word that
could betray.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Weston, smiling, “you give him credit for more simple,
disinterested benevolence in this instance than I do; for while Miss
Bates was speaking, a suspicion darted into my head, and I have never
been able to get it out again. The more I think of it, the more probable
it appears. In short, I have made a match between Mr. Knightley and Jane
Fairfax. See the consequence of keeping you company!--What do you say to
it?”

“Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax!” exclaimed Emma. “Dear Mrs. Weston, how
could you think of such a thing?--Mr. Knightley!--Mr. Knightley must not
marry!--You would not have little Henry cut out from Donwell?--Oh! no,
no, Henry must have Donwell. I cannot at all consent to Mr. Knightley's
marrying; and I am sure it is not at all likely. I am amazed that you
should think of such a thing.”

“My dear Emma, I have told you what led me to think of it. I do not want
the match--I do not want to injure dear little Henry--but the idea has
been given me by circumstances; and if Mr. Knightley really wished to
marry, you would not have him refrain on Henry's account, a boy of six
years old, who knows nothing of the matter?”

“Yes, I would. I could not bear to have Henry supplanted.--Mr.
Knightley marry!--No, I have never had such an idea, and I cannot adopt
it now. And Jane Fairfax, too, of all women!”

“Nay, she has always been a first favourite with him, as you very well
know.”

“But the imprudence of such a match!”

“I am not speaking of its prudence; merely its probability.”

“I see no probability in it, unless you have any better foundation than
what you mention. His good-nature, his humanity, as I tell you, would
be quite enough to account for the horses. He has a great regard for the
Bateses, you know, independent of Jane Fairfax--and is always glad to
shew them attention. My dear Mrs. Weston, do not take to match-making.
You do it very ill. Jane Fairfax mistress of the Abbey!--Oh! no,
no;--every feeling revolts. For his own sake, I would not have him do so
mad a thing.”

“Imprudent, if you please--but not mad. Excepting inequality of fortune,
and perhaps a little disparity of age, I can see nothing unsuitable.”

“But Mr. Knightley does not want to marry. I am sure he has not the
least idea of it. Do not put it into his head. Why should he marry?--He
is as happy as possible by himself; with his farm, and his sheep, and
his library, and all the parish to manage; and he is extremely fond of
his brother's children. He has no occasion to marry, either to fill up
his time or his heart.”

“My dear Emma, as long as he thinks so, it is so; but if he really loves
Jane Fairfax--”

“Nonsense! He does not care about Jane Fairfax. In the way of love, I am
sure he does not. He would do any good to her, or her family; but--”

“Well,” said Mrs. Weston, laughing, “perhaps the greatest good he could
do them, would be to give Jane such a respectable home.”

“If it would be good to her, I am sure it would be evil to himself; a
very shameful and degrading connexion. How would he bear to have Miss
Bates belonging to him?--To have her haunting the Abbey, and thanking
him all day long for his great kindness in marrying Jane?--'So very
kind and obliging!--But he always had been such a very kind neighbour!'
And then fly off, through half a sentence, to her mother's old
petticoat. 'Not that it was such a very old petticoat either--for still
it would last a great while--and, indeed, she must thankfully say that
their petticoats were all very strong.'”

“For shame, Emma! Do not mimic her. You divert me against my conscience.
And, upon my word, I do not think Mr. Knightley would be much disturbed
by Miss Bates. Little things do not irritate him. She might talk on; and
if he wanted to say any thing himself, he would only talk louder, and
drown her voice. But the question is not, whether it would be a bad
connexion for him, but whether he wishes it; and I think he does. I have
heard him speak, and so must you, so very highly of Jane Fairfax! The
interest he takes in her--his anxiety about her health--his concern that
she should have no happier prospect! I have heard him express himself
so warmly on those points!--Such an admirer of her performance on the
pianoforte, and of her voice! I have heard him say that he could listen
to her for ever. Oh! and I had almost forgotten one idea that occurred
to me--this pianoforte that has been sent here by somebody--though
we have all been so well satisfied to consider it a present from the
Campbells, may it not be from Mr. Knightley? I cannot help suspecting
him. I think he is just the person to do it, even without being in
love.”

“Then it can be no argument to prove that he is in love. But I do not
think it is at all a likely thing for him to do. Mr. Knightley does
nothing mysteriously.”

“I have heard him lamenting her having no instrument repeatedly; oftener
than I should suppose such a circumstance would, in the common course of
things, occur to him.”

“Very well; and if he had intended to give her one, he would have told
her so.”

“There might be scruples of delicacy, my dear Emma. I have a very strong
notion that it comes from him. I am sure he was particularly silent when
Mrs. Cole told us of it at dinner.”

“You take up an idea, Mrs. Weston, and run away with it; as you have
many a time reproached me with doing. I see no sign of attachment--I
believe nothing of the pianoforte--and proof only shall convince me that
Mr. Knightley has any thought of marrying Jane Fairfax.”

They combated the point some time longer in the same way; Emma rather
gaining ground over the mind of her friend; for Mrs. Weston was the most
used of the two to yield; till a little bustle in the room shewed them
that tea was over, and the instrument in preparation;--and at the same
moment Mr. Cole approaching to entreat Miss Woodhouse would do them the
honour of trying it. Frank Churchill, of whom, in the eagerness of her
conversation with Mrs. Weston, she had been seeing nothing, except that
he had found a seat by Miss Fairfax, followed Mr. Cole, to add his very
pressing entreaties; and as, in every respect, it suited Emma best to
lead, she gave a very proper compliance.

She knew the limitations of her own powers too well to attempt more than
she could perform with credit; she wanted neither taste nor spirit in
the little things which are generally acceptable, and could accompany
her own voice well. One accompaniment to her song took her agreeably by
surprize--a second, slightly but correctly taken by Frank Churchill. Her
pardon was duly begged at the close of the song, and every thing usual
followed. He was accused of having a delightful voice, and a perfect
knowledge of music; which was properly denied; and that he knew nothing
of the matter, and had no voice at all, roundly asserted. They sang
together once more; and Emma would then resign her place to Miss
Fairfax, whose performance, both vocal and instrumental, she never could
attempt to conceal from herself, was infinitely superior to her own.

With mixed feelings, she seated herself at a little distance from the
numbers round the instrument, to listen. Frank Churchill sang again.
They had sung together once or twice, it appeared, at Weymouth. But the
sight of Mr. Knightley among the most attentive, soon drew away half
Emma's mind; and she fell into a train of thinking on the subject of
Mrs. Weston's suspicions, to which the sweet sounds of the united voices
gave only momentary interruptions. Her objections to Mr. Knightley's
marrying did not in the least subside. She could see nothing but evil
in it. It would be a great disappointment to Mr. John Knightley;
consequently to Isabella. A real injury to the children--a most
mortifying change, and material loss to them all;--a very great
deduction from her father's daily comfort--and, as to herself, she could
not at all endure the idea of Jane Fairfax at Donwell Abbey. A Mrs.
Knightley for them all to give way to!--No--Mr. Knightley must never
marry. Little Henry must remain the heir of Donwell.

Presently Mr. Knightley looked back, and came and sat down by her. They
talked at first only of the performance. His admiration was certainly
very warm; yet she thought, but for Mrs. Weston, it would not have
struck her. As a sort of touchstone, however, she began to speak of his
kindness in conveying the aunt and niece; and though his answer was in
the spirit of cutting the matter short, she believed it to indicate only
his disinclination to dwell on any kindness of his own.

“I often feel concern,” said she, “that I dare not make our carriage
more useful on such occasions. It is not that I am without the wish; but
you know how impossible my father would deem it that James should put-to
for such a purpose.”

“Quite out of the question, quite out of the question,” he
replied;--“but you must often wish it, I am sure.” And he smiled with
such seeming pleasure at the conviction, that she must proceed another
step.

“This present from the Campbells,” said she--“this pianoforte is very
kindly given.”

“Yes,” he replied, and without the smallest apparent
embarrassment.--“But they would have done better had they given
her notice of it. Surprizes are foolish things. The pleasure is not
enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable. I should have
expected better judgment in Colonel Campbell.”

From that moment, Emma could have taken her oath that Mr. Knightley had
had no concern in giving the instrument. But whether he were
entirely free from peculiar attachment--whether there were no actual
preference--remained a little longer doubtful. Towards the end of Jane's
second song, her voice grew thick.

“That will do,” said he, when it was finished, thinking aloud--“you have
sung quite enough for one evening--now be quiet.”

Another song, however, was soon begged for. “One more;--they would not
fatigue Miss Fairfax on any account, and would only ask for one more.”
 And Frank Churchill was heard to say, “I think you could manage this
without effort; the first part is so very trifling. The strength of the
song falls on the second.”

Mr. Knightley grew angry.

“That fellow,” said he, indignantly, “thinks of nothing but shewing off
his own voice. This must not be.” And touching Miss Bates, who at that
moment passed near--“Miss Bates, are you mad, to let your niece sing
herself hoarse in this manner? Go, and interfere. They have no mercy on
her.”

Miss Bates, in her real anxiety for Jane, could hardly stay even to
be grateful, before she stept forward and put an end to all farther
singing. Here ceased the concert part of the evening, for Miss Woodhouse
and Miss Fairfax were the only young lady performers; but soon (within
five minutes) the proposal of dancing--originating nobody exactly knew
where--was so effectually promoted by Mr. and Mrs. Cole, that every
thing was rapidly clearing away, to give proper space. Mrs. Weston,
capital in her country-dances, was seated, and beginning an irresistible
waltz; and Frank Churchill, coming up with most becoming gallantry to
Emma, had secured her hand, and led her up to the top.

While waiting till the other young people could pair themselves off,
Emma found time, in spite of the compliments she was receiving on
her voice and her taste, to look about, and see what became of Mr.
Knightley. This would be a trial. He was no dancer in general. If he
were to be very alert in engaging Jane Fairfax now, it might augur
something. There was no immediate appearance. No; he was talking to Mrs.
Cole--he was looking on unconcerned; Jane was asked by somebody else,
and he was still talking to Mrs. Cole.

Emma had no longer an alarm for Henry; his interest was yet safe; and
she led off the dance with genuine spirit and enjoyment. Not more than
five couple could be mustered; but the rarity and the suddenness of
it made it very delightful, and she found herself well matched in a
partner. They were a couple worth looking at.

Two dances, unfortunately, were all that could be allowed. It was
growing late, and Miss Bates became anxious to get home, on her mother's
account. After some attempts, therefore, to be permitted to begin again,
they were obliged to thank Mrs. Weston, look sorrowful, and have done.

“Perhaps it is as well,” said Frank Churchill, as he attended Emma to
her carriage. “I must have asked Miss Fairfax, and her languid dancing
would not have agreed with me, after yours.”



CHAPTER IX


Emma did not repent her condescension in going to the Coles. The visit
afforded her many pleasant recollections the next day; and all that she
might be supposed to have lost on the side of dignified seclusion, must
be amply repaid in the splendour of popularity. She must have delighted
the Coles--worthy people, who deserved to be made happy!--And left a
name behind her that would not soon die away.

Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common; and there were two
points on which she was not quite easy. She doubted whether she had not
transgressed the duty of woman by woman, in betraying her suspicions of
Jane Fairfax's feelings to Frank Churchill. It was hardly right; but it
had been so strong an idea, that it would escape her, and his submission
to all that she told, was a compliment to her penetration, which made
it difficult for her to be quite certain that she ought to have held her
tongue.

The other circumstance of regret related also to Jane Fairfax; and
there she had no doubt. She did unfeignedly and unequivocally regret the
inferiority of her own playing and singing. She did most heartily
grieve over the idleness of her childhood--and sat down and practised
vigorously an hour and a half.

She was then interrupted by Harriet's coming in; and if Harriet's praise
could have satisfied her, she might soon have been comforted.

“Oh! if I could but play as well as you and Miss Fairfax!”

“Don't class us together, Harriet. My playing is no more like her's,
than a lamp is like sunshine.”

“Oh! dear--I think you play the best of the two. I think you play quite
as well as she does. I am sure I had much rather hear you. Every body
last night said how well you played.”

“Those who knew any thing about it, must have felt the difference. The
truth is, Harriet, that my playing is just good enough to be praised,
but Jane Fairfax's is much beyond it.”

“Well, I always shall think that you play quite as well as she does, or
that if there is any difference nobody would ever find it out. Mr. Cole
said how much taste you had; and Mr. Frank Churchill talked a great deal
about your taste, and that he valued taste much more than execution.”

“Ah! but Jane Fairfax has them both, Harriet.”

“Are you sure? I saw she had execution, but I did not know she had any
taste. Nobody talked about it. And I hate Italian singing.--There is no
understanding a word of it. Besides, if she does play so very well, you
know, it is no more than she is obliged to do, because she will have to
teach. The Coxes were wondering last night whether she would get into
any great family. How did you think the Coxes looked?”

“Just as they always do--very vulgar.”

“They told me something,” said Harriet rather hesitatingly; “but it is
nothing of any consequence.”

Emma was obliged to ask what they had told her, though fearful of its
producing Mr. Elton.

“They told me--that Mr. Martin dined with them last Saturday.”

“Oh!”

“He came to their father upon some business, and he asked him to stay to
dinner.”

“Oh!”

“They talked a great deal about him, especially Anne Cox. I do not know
what she meant, but she asked me if I thought I should go and stay there
again next summer.”

“She meant to be impertinently curious, just as such an Anne Cox should
be.”

“She said he was very agreeable the day he dined there. He sat by her at
dinner. Miss Nash thinks either of the Coxes would be very glad to marry
him.”

“Very likely.--I think they are, without exception, the most vulgar
girls in Highbury.”

Harriet had business at Ford's.--Emma thought it most prudent to go with
her. Another accidental meeting with the Martins was possible, and in
her present state, would be dangerous.

Harriet, tempted by every thing and swayed by half a word, was always
very long at a purchase; and while she was still hanging over muslins
and changing her mind, Emma went to the door for amusement.--Much could
not be hoped from the traffic of even the busiest part of Highbury;--Mr.
Perry walking hastily by, Mr. William Cox letting himself in at the
office-door, Mr. Cole's carriage-horses returning from exercise, or a
stray letter-boy on an obstinate mule, were the liveliest objects she
could presume to expect; and when her eyes fell only on the butcher with
his tray, a tidy old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full
basket, two curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling
children round the baker's little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread, she
knew she had no reason to complain, and was amused enough; quite enough
still to stand at the door. A mind lively and at ease, can do with
seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.

She looked down the Randalls road. The scene enlarged; two persons
appeared; Mrs. Weston and her son-in-law; they were walking into
Highbury;--to Hartfield of course. They were stopping, however, in the
first place at Mrs. Bates's; whose house was a little nearer
Randalls than Ford's; and had all but knocked, when Emma caught their
eye.--Immediately they crossed the road and came forward to her; and the
agreeableness of yesterday's engagement seemed to give fresh pleasure to
the present meeting. Mrs. Weston informed her that she was going to call
on the Bateses, in order to hear the new instrument.

“For my companion tells me,” said she, “that I absolutely promised Miss
Bates last night, that I would come this morning. I was not aware of it
myself. I did not know that I had fixed a day, but as he says I did, I
am going now.”

“And while Mrs. Weston pays her visit, I may be allowed, I hope,” said
Frank Churchill, “to join your party and wait for her at Hartfield--if
you are going home.”

Mrs. Weston was disappointed.

“I thought you meant to go with me. They would be very much pleased.”

“Me! I should be quite in the way. But, perhaps--I may be equally in the
way here. Miss Woodhouse looks as if she did not want me. My aunt always
sends me off when she is shopping. She says I fidget her to death; and
Miss Woodhouse looks as if she could almost say the same. What am I to
do?”

“I am here on no business of my own,” said Emma; “I am only waiting for
my friend. She will probably have soon done, and then we shall go home.
But you had better go with Mrs. Weston and hear the instrument.”

“Well--if you advise it.--But (with a smile) if Colonel Campbell should
have employed a careless friend, and if it should prove to have an
indifferent tone--what shall I say? I shall be no support to Mrs.
Weston. She might do very well by herself. A disagreeable truth would be
palatable through her lips, but I am the wretchedest being in the world
at a civil falsehood.”

“I do not believe any such thing,” replied Emma.--“I am persuaded that
you can be as insincere as your neighbours, when it is necessary; but
there is no reason to suppose the instrument is indifferent. Quite
otherwise indeed, if I understood Miss Fairfax's opinion last night.”

“Do come with me,” said Mrs. Weston, “if it be not very disagreeable to
you. It need not detain us long. We will go to Hartfield afterwards.
We will follow them to Hartfield. I really wish you to call with me. It
will be felt so great an attention! and I always thought you meant it.”

He could say no more; and with the hope of Hartfield to reward him,
returned with Mrs. Weston to Mrs. Bates's door. Emma watched them in,
and then joined Harriet at the interesting counter,--trying, with all
the force of her own mind, to convince her that if she wanted plain
muslin it was of no use to look at figured; and that a blue ribbon, be
it ever so beautiful, would still never match her yellow pattern. At
last it was all settled, even to the destination of the parcel.

“Should I send it to Mrs. Goddard's, ma'am?” asked Mrs.
Ford.--“Yes--no--yes, to Mrs. Goddard's. Only my pattern gown is at
Hartfield. No, you shall send it to Hartfield, if you please. But then,
Mrs. Goddard will want to see it.--And I could take the pattern gown
home any day. But I shall want the ribbon directly--so it had better go
to Hartfield--at least the ribbon. You could make it into two parcels,
Mrs. Ford, could not you?”

“It is not worth while, Harriet, to give Mrs. Ford the trouble of two
parcels.”

“No more it is.”

“No trouble in the world, ma'am,” said the obliging Mrs. Ford.

“Oh! but indeed I would much rather have it only in one. Then, if you
please, you shall send it all to Mrs. Goddard's--I do not know--No, I
think, Miss Woodhouse, I may just as well have it sent to Hartfield, and
take it home with me at night. What do you advise?”

“That you do not give another half-second to the subject. To Hartfield,
if you please, Mrs. Ford.”

“Aye, that will be much best,” said Harriet, quite satisfied, “I should
not at all like to have it sent to Mrs. Goddard's.”

Voices approached the shop--or rather one voice and two ladies: Mrs.
Weston and Miss Bates met them at the door.

“My dear Miss Woodhouse,” said the latter, “I am just run across to
entreat the favour of you to come and sit down with us a little while,
and give us your opinion of our new instrument; you and Miss Smith. How
do you do, Miss Smith?--Very well I thank you.--And I begged Mrs. Weston
to come with me, that I might be sure of succeeding.”

“I hope Mrs. Bates and Miss Fairfax are--”

“Very well, I am much obliged to you. My mother is delightfully well;
and Jane caught no cold last night. How is Mr. Woodhouse?--I am so glad
to hear such a good account. Mrs. Weston told me you were here.--Oh!
then, said I, I must run across, I am sure Miss Woodhouse will allow me
just to run across and entreat her to come in; my mother will be so
very happy to see her--and now we are such a nice party, she cannot
refuse.--'Aye, pray do,' said Mr. Frank Churchill, 'Miss Woodhouse's
opinion of the instrument will be worth having.'--But, said I, I shall
be more sure of succeeding if one of you will go with me.--'Oh,' said
he, 'wait half a minute, till I have finished my job;'--For, would you
believe it, Miss Woodhouse, there he is, in the most obliging manner in
the world, fastening in the rivet of my mother's spectacles.--The rivet
came out, you know, this morning.--So very obliging!--For my mother had
no use of her spectacles--could not put them on. And, by the bye, every
body ought to have two pair of spectacles; they should indeed. Jane said
so. I meant to take them over to John Saunders the first thing I did,
but something or other hindered me all the morning; first one thing,
then another, there is no saying what, you know. At one time Patty came
to say she thought the kitchen chimney wanted sweeping. Oh, said I,
Patty do not come with your bad news to me. Here is the rivet of your
mistress's spectacles out. Then the baked apples came home, Mrs. Wallis
sent them by her boy; they are extremely civil and obliging to us, the
Wallises, always--I have heard some people say that Mrs. Wallis can be
uncivil and give a very rude answer, but we have never known any thing
but the greatest attention from them. And it cannot be for the value
of our custom now, for what is our consumption of bread, you know?
Only three of us.--besides dear Jane at present--and she really eats
nothing--makes such a shocking breakfast, you would be quite frightened
if you saw it. I dare not let my mother know how little she eats--so I
say one thing and then I say another, and it passes off. But about the
middle of the day she gets hungry, and there is nothing she likes so
well as these baked apples, and they are extremely wholesome, for I took
the opportunity the other day of asking Mr. Perry; I happened to meet
him in the street. Not that I had any doubt before--I have so often
heard Mr. Woodhouse recommend a baked apple. I believe it is the only
way that Mr. Woodhouse thinks the fruit thoroughly wholesome. We
have apple-dumplings, however, very often. Patty makes an excellent
apple-dumpling. Well, Mrs. Weston, you have prevailed, I hope, and these
ladies will oblige us.”

Emma would be “very happy to wait on Mrs. Bates, &c.,” and they did at
last move out of the shop, with no farther delay from Miss Bates than,

“How do you do, Mrs. Ford? I beg your pardon. I did not see you before.
I hear you have a charming collection of new ribbons from town. Jane
came back delighted yesterday. Thank ye, the gloves do very well--only a
little too large about the wrist; but Jane is taking them in.”

“What was I talking of?” said she, beginning again when they were all in
the street.

Emma wondered on what, of all the medley, she would fix.

“I declare I cannot recollect what I was talking of.--Oh! my mother's
spectacles. So very obliging of Mr. Frank Churchill! 'Oh!' said he,
'I do think I can fasten the rivet; I like a job of this kind
excessively.'--Which you know shewed him to be so very.... Indeed I must
say that, much as I had heard of him before and much as I had expected,
he very far exceeds any thing.... I do congratulate you, Mrs. Weston,
most warmly. He seems every thing the fondest parent could....
'Oh!' said he, 'I can fasten the rivet. I like a job of that sort
excessively.' I never shall forget his manner. And when I brought out
the baked apples from the closet, and hoped our friends would be so very
obliging as to take some, 'Oh!' said he directly, 'there is nothing
in the way of fruit half so good, and these are the finest-looking
home-baked apples I ever saw in my life.' That, you know, was so
very.... And I am sure, by his manner, it was no compliment. Indeed they
are very delightful apples, and Mrs. Wallis does them full justice--only
we do not have them baked more than twice, and Mr. Woodhouse made us
promise to have them done three times--but Miss Woodhouse will be so
good as not to mention it. The apples themselves are the very finest
sort for baking, beyond a doubt; all from Donwell--some of Mr.
Knightley's most liberal supply. He sends us a sack every year; and
certainly there never was such a keeping apple anywhere as one of his
trees--I believe there is two of them. My mother says the orchard was
always famous in her younger days. But I was really quite shocked the
other day--for Mr. Knightley called one morning, and Jane was eating
these apples, and we talked about them and said how much she enjoyed
them, and he asked whether we were not got to the end of our stock. 'I
am sure you must be,' said he, 'and I will send you another supply; for
I have a great many more than I can ever use. William Larkins let me
keep a larger quantity than usual this year. I will send you some more,
before they get good for nothing.' So I begged he would not--for really
as to ours being gone, I could not absolutely say that we had a great
many left--it was but half a dozen indeed; but they should be all kept
for Jane; and I could not at all bear that he should be sending us more,
so liberal as he had been already; and Jane said the same. And when
he was gone, she almost quarrelled with me--No, I should not say
quarrelled, for we never had a quarrel in our lives; but she was quite
distressed that I had owned the apples were so nearly gone; she wished
I had made him believe we had a great many left. Oh, said I, my dear,
I did say as much as I could. However, the very same evening William
Larkins came over with a large basket of apples, the same sort of
apples, a bushel at least, and I was very much obliged, and went down
and spoke to William Larkins and said every thing, as you may suppose.
William Larkins is such an old acquaintance! I am always glad to see
him. But, however, I found afterwards from Patty, that William said it
was all the apples of _that_ sort his master had; he had brought them
all--and now his master had not one left to bake or boil. William did
not seem to mind it himself, he was so pleased to think his master had
sold so many; for William, you know, thinks more of his master's profit
than any thing; but Mrs. Hodges, he said, was quite displeased at their
being all sent away. She could not bear that her master should not be
able to have another apple-tart this spring. He told Patty this, but bid
her not mind it, and be sure not to say any thing to us about it, for
Mrs. Hodges _would_ be cross sometimes, and as long as so many sacks
were sold, it did not signify who ate the remainder. And so Patty told
me, and I was excessively shocked indeed! I would not have Mr. Knightley
know any thing about it for the world! He would be so very.... I wanted
to keep it from Jane's knowledge; but, unluckily, I had mentioned it
before I was aware.”

Miss Bates had just done as Patty opened the door; and her visitors
walked upstairs without having any regular narration to attend to,
pursued only by the sounds of her desultory good-will.

“Pray take care, Mrs. Weston, there is a step at the turning. Pray take
care, Miss Woodhouse, ours is rather a dark staircase--rather darker
and narrower than one could wish. Miss Smith, pray take care. Miss
Woodhouse, I am quite concerned, I am sure you hit your foot. Miss
Smith, the step at the turning.”



CHAPTER X


The appearance of the little sitting-room as they entered, was
tranquillity itself; Mrs. Bates, deprived of her usual employment,
slumbering on one side of the fire, Frank Churchill, at a table near
her, most deedily occupied about her spectacles, and Jane Fairfax,
standing with her back to them, intent on her pianoforte.

Busy as he was, however, the young man was yet able to shew a most happy
countenance on seeing Emma again.

“This is a pleasure,” said he, in rather a low voice, “coming at least
ten minutes earlier than I had calculated. You find me trying to be
useful; tell me if you think I shall succeed.”

“What!” said Mrs. Weston, “have not you finished it yet? you would not
earn a very good livelihood as a working silversmith at this rate.”

“I have not been working uninterruptedly,” he replied, “I have been
assisting Miss Fairfax in trying to make her instrument stand steadily,
it was not quite firm; an unevenness in the floor, I believe. You see
we have been wedging one leg with paper. This was very kind of you to be
persuaded to come. I was almost afraid you would be hurrying home.”

He contrived that she should be seated by him; and was sufficiently
employed in looking out the best baked apple for her, and trying to make
her help or advise him in his work, till Jane Fairfax was quite ready
to sit down to the pianoforte again. That she was not immediately ready,
Emma did suspect to arise from the state of her nerves; she had not yet
possessed the instrument long enough to touch it without emotion; she
must reason herself into the power of performance; and Emma could not
but pity such feelings, whatever their origin, and could not but resolve
never to expose them to her neighbour again.

At last Jane began, and though the first bars were feebly given, the
powers of the instrument were gradually done full justice to. Mrs.
Weston had been delighted before, and was delighted again; Emma
joined her in all her praise; and the pianoforte, with every proper
discrimination, was pronounced to be altogether of the highest promise.

“Whoever Colonel Campbell might employ,” said Frank Churchill, with a
smile at Emma, “the person has not chosen ill. I heard a good deal of
Colonel Campbell's taste at Weymouth; and the softness of the upper
notes I am sure is exactly what he and _all_ _that_ _party_ would
particularly prize. I dare say, Miss Fairfax, that he either gave his
friend very minute directions, or wrote to Broadwood himself. Do not you
think so?”

Jane did not look round. She was not obliged to hear. Mrs. Weston had
been speaking to her at the same moment.

“It is not fair,” said Emma, in a whisper; “mine was a random guess. Do
not distress her.”

He shook his head with a smile, and looked as if he had very little
doubt and very little mercy. Soon afterwards he began again,

“How much your friends in Ireland must be enjoying your pleasure on this
occasion, Miss Fairfax. I dare say they often think of you, and wonder
which will be the day, the precise day of the instrument's coming to
hand. Do you imagine Colonel Campbell knows the business to be going
forward just at this time?--Do you imagine it to be the consequence
of an immediate commission from him, or that he may have sent only
a general direction, an order indefinite as to time, to depend upon
contingencies and conveniences?”

He paused. She could not but hear; she could not avoid answering,

“Till I have a letter from Colonel Campbell,” said she, in a voice of
forced calmness, “I can imagine nothing with any confidence. It must be
all conjecture.”

“Conjecture--aye, sometimes one conjectures right, and sometimes one
conjectures wrong. I wish I could conjecture how soon I shall make this
rivet quite firm. What nonsense one talks, Miss Woodhouse, when hard
at work, if one talks at all;--your real workmen, I suppose, hold their
tongues; but we gentlemen labourers if we get hold of a word--Miss
Fairfax said something about conjecturing. There, it is done. I have the
pleasure, madam, (to Mrs. Bates,) of restoring your spectacles, healed
for the present.”

He was very warmly thanked both by mother and daughter; to escape a
little from the latter, he went to the pianoforte, and begged Miss
Fairfax, who was still sitting at it, to play something more.

“If you are very kind,” said he, “it will be one of the waltzes we
danced last night;--let me live them over again. You did not enjoy them
as I did; you appeared tired the whole time. I believe you were glad we
danced no longer; but I would have given worlds--all the worlds one ever
has to give--for another half-hour.”

She played.

“What felicity it is to hear a tune again which _has_ made one
happy!--If I mistake not that was danced at Weymouth.”

She looked up at him for a moment, coloured deeply, and played something
else. He took some music from a chair near the pianoforte, and turning
to Emma, said,

“Here is something quite new to me. Do you know it?--Cramer.--And here
are a new set of Irish melodies. That, from such a quarter, one might
expect. This was all sent with the instrument. Very thoughtful of
Colonel Campbell, was not it?--He knew Miss Fairfax could have no music
here. I honour that part of the attention particularly; it shews it to
have been so thoroughly from the heart. Nothing hastily done; nothing
incomplete. True affection only could have prompted it.”

Emma wished he would be less pointed, yet could not help being amused;
and when on glancing her eye towards Jane Fairfax she caught the remains
of a smile, when she saw that with all the deep blush of consciousness,
there had been a smile of secret delight, she had less scruple in the
amusement, and much less compunction with respect to her.--This
amiable, upright, perfect Jane Fairfax was apparently cherishing very
reprehensible feelings.

He brought all the music to her, and they looked it over together.--Emma
took the opportunity of whispering,

“You speak too plain. She must understand you.”

“I hope she does. I would have her understand me. I am not in the least
ashamed of my meaning.”

“But really, I am half ashamed, and wish I had never taken up the idea.”

“I am very glad you did, and that you communicated it to me. I have now
a key to all her odd looks and ways. Leave shame to her. If she does
wrong, she ought to feel it.”

“She is not entirely without it, I think.”

“I do not see much sign of it. She is playing _Robin_ _Adair_ at this
moment--_his_ favourite.”

Shortly afterwards Miss Bates, passing near the window, descried Mr.
Knightley on horse-back not far off.

“Mr. Knightley I declare!--I must speak to him if possible, just to
thank him. I will not open the window here; it would give you all cold;
but I can go into my mother's room you know. I dare say he will come
in when he knows who is here. Quite delightful to have you all meet
so!--Our little room so honoured!”

She was in the adjoining chamber while she still spoke, and opening the
casement there, immediately called Mr. Knightley's attention, and every
syllable of their conversation was as distinctly heard by the others, as
if it had passed within the same apartment.

“How d' ye do?--how d'ye do?--Very well, I thank you. So obliged to you
for the carriage last night. We were just in time; my mother just ready
for us. Pray come in; do come in. You will find some friends here.”

So began Miss Bates; and Mr. Knightley seemed determined to be heard in
his turn, for most resolutely and commandingly did he say,

“How is your niece, Miss Bates?--I want to inquire after you all, but
particularly your niece. How is Miss Fairfax?--I hope she caught no cold
last night. How is she to-day? Tell me how Miss Fairfax is.”

And Miss Bates was obliged to give a direct answer before he would hear
her in any thing else. The listeners were amused; and Mrs. Weston gave
Emma a look of particular meaning. But Emma still shook her head in
steady scepticism.

“So obliged to you!--so very much obliged to you for the carriage,”
 resumed Miss Bates.

He cut her short with,

“I am going to Kingston. Can I do any thing for you?”

“Oh! dear, Kingston--are you?--Mrs. Cole was saying the other day she
wanted something from Kingston.”

“Mrs. Cole has servants to send. Can I do any thing for _you_?”

“No, I thank you. But do come in. Who do you think is here?--Miss
Woodhouse and Miss Smith; so kind as to call to hear the new pianoforte.
Do put up your horse at the Crown, and come in.”

“Well,” said he, in a deliberating manner, “for five minutes, perhaps.”

“And here is Mrs. Weston and Mr. Frank Churchill too!--Quite delightful;
so many friends!”

“No, not now, I thank you. I could not stay two minutes. I must get on
to Kingston as fast as I can.”

“Oh! do come in. They will be so very happy to see you.”

“No, no; your room is full enough. I will call another day, and hear the
pianoforte.”

“Well, I am so sorry!--Oh! Mr. Knightley, what a delightful party last
night; how extremely pleasant.--Did you ever see such dancing?--Was not
it delightful?--Miss Woodhouse and Mr. Frank Churchill; I never saw any
thing equal to it.”

“Oh! very delightful indeed; I can say nothing less, for I suppose Miss
Woodhouse and Mr. Frank Churchill are hearing every thing that passes.
And (raising his voice still more) I do not see why Miss Fairfax should
not be mentioned too. I think Miss Fairfax dances very well; and Mrs.
Weston is the very best country-dance player, without exception,
in England. Now, if your friends have any gratitude, they will say
something pretty loud about you and me in return; but I cannot stay to
hear it.”

“Oh! Mr. Knightley, one moment more; something of consequence--so
shocked!--Jane and I are both so shocked about the apples!”

“What is the matter now?”

“To think of your sending us all your store apples. You said you had
a great many, and now you have not one left. We really are so shocked!
Mrs. Hodges may well be angry. William Larkins mentioned it here. You
should not have done it, indeed you should not. Ah! he is off. He never
can bear to be thanked. But I thought he would have staid now, and it
would have been a pity not to have mentioned.... Well, (returning to the
room,) I have not been able to succeed. Mr. Knightley cannot stop. He is
going to Kingston. He asked me if he could do any thing....”

“Yes,” said Jane, “we heard his kind offers, we heard every thing.”

“Oh! yes, my dear, I dare say you might, because you know, the door was
open, and the window was open, and Mr. Knightley spoke loud. You must
have heard every thing to be sure. 'Can I do any thing for you at
Kingston?' said he; so I just mentioned.... Oh! Miss Woodhouse, must you
be going?--You seem but just come--so very obliging of you.”

Emma found it really time to be at home; the visit had already lasted
long; and on examining watches, so much of the morning was perceived
to be gone, that Mrs. Weston and her companion taking leave also, could
allow themselves only to walk with the two young ladies to Hartfield
gates, before they set off for Randalls.



CHAPTER XI


It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been
known of young people passing many, many months successively, without
being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue
either to body or mind;--but when a beginning is made--when the
felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt--it
must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.

Frank Churchill had danced once at Highbury, and longed to dance again;
and the last half-hour of an evening which Mr. Woodhouse was persuaded
to spend with his daughter at Randalls, was passed by the two young
people in schemes on the subject. Frank's was the first idea; and his
the greatest zeal in pursuing it; for the lady was the best judge of the
difficulties, and the most solicitous for accommodation and appearance.
But still she had inclination enough for shewing people again how
delightfully Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Woodhouse danced--for
doing that in which she need not blush to compare herself with Jane
Fairfax--and even for simple dancing itself, without any of the wicked
aids of vanity--to assist him first in pacing out the room they were in
to see what it could be made to hold--and then in taking the dimensions
of the other parlour, in the hope of discovering, in spite of all that
Mr. Weston could say of their exactly equal size, that it was a little
the largest.

His first proposition and request, that the dance begun at Mr. Cole's
should be finished there--that the same party should be collected,
and the same musician engaged, met with the readiest acquiescence. Mr.
Weston entered into the idea with thorough enjoyment, and Mrs. Weston
most willingly undertook to play as long as they could wish to dance;
and the interesting employment had followed, of reckoning up exactly who
there would be, and portioning out the indispensable division of space
to every couple.

“You and Miss Smith, and Miss Fairfax, will be three, and the two Miss
Coxes five,” had been repeated many times over. “And there will be the
two Gilberts, young Cox, my father, and myself, besides Mr. Knightley.
Yes, that will be quite enough for pleasure. You and Miss Smith, and
Miss Fairfax, will be three, and the two Miss Coxes five; and for five
couple there will be plenty of room.”

But soon it came to be on one side,

“But will there be good room for five couple?--I really do not think
there will.”

On another,

“And after all, five couple are not enough to make it worth while to
stand up. Five couple are nothing, when one thinks seriously about it.
It will not do to _invite_ five couple. It can be allowable only as the
thought of the moment.”

Somebody said that _Miss_ Gilbert was expected at her brother's, and
must be invited with the rest. Somebody else believed _Mrs_. Gilbert
would have danced the other evening, if she had been asked. A word was
put in for a second young Cox; and at last, Mr. Weston naming one family
of cousins who must be included, and another of very old acquaintance
who could not be left out, it became a certainty that the five couple
would be at least ten, and a very interesting speculation in what
possible manner they could be disposed of.

The doors of the two rooms were just opposite each other. “Might not
they use both rooms, and dance across the passage?” It seemed the
best scheme; and yet it was not so good but that many of them wanted a
better. Emma said it would be awkward; Mrs. Weston was in distress about
the supper; and Mr. Woodhouse opposed it earnestly, on the score of
health. It made him so very unhappy, indeed, that it could not be
persevered in.

“Oh! no,” said he; “it would be the extreme of imprudence. I could not
bear it for Emma!--Emma is not strong. She would catch a dreadful cold.
So would poor little Harriet. So you would all. Mrs. Weston, you would
be quite laid up; do not let them talk of such a wild thing. Pray do
not let them talk of it. That young man (speaking lower) is very
thoughtless. Do not tell his father, but that young man is not quite
the thing. He has been opening the doors very often this evening,
and keeping them open very inconsiderately. He does not think of the
draught. I do not mean to set you against him, but indeed he is not
quite the thing!”

Mrs. Weston was sorry for such a charge. She knew the importance of
it, and said every thing in her power to do it away. Every door was now
closed, the passage plan given up, and the first scheme of dancing only
in the room they were in resorted to again; and with such good-will on
Frank Churchill's part, that the space which a quarter of an hour before
had been deemed barely sufficient for five couple, was now endeavoured
to be made out quite enough for ten.

“We were too magnificent,” said he. “We allowed unnecessary room. Ten
couple may stand here very well.”

Emma demurred. “It would be a crowd--a sad crowd; and what could be
worse than dancing without space to turn in?”

“Very true,” he gravely replied; “it was very bad.” But still he went on
measuring, and still he ended with,

“I think there will be very tolerable room for ten couple.”

“No, no,” said she, “you are quite unreasonable. It would be dreadful
to be standing so close! Nothing can be farther from pleasure than to be
dancing in a crowd--and a crowd in a little room!”

“There is no denying it,” he replied. “I agree with you exactly. A crowd
in a little room--Miss Woodhouse, you have the art of giving pictures
in a few words. Exquisite, quite exquisite!--Still, however, having
proceeded so far, one is unwilling to give the matter up. It would be
a disappointment to my father--and altogether--I do not know that--I am
rather of opinion that ten couple might stand here very well.”

Emma perceived that the nature of his gallantry was a little
self-willed, and that he would rather oppose than lose the pleasure of
dancing with her; but she took the compliment, and forgave the rest.
Had she intended ever to _marry_ him, it might have been worth while to
pause and consider, and try to understand the value of his preference,
and the character of his temper; but for all the purposes of their
acquaintance, he was quite amiable enough.

Before the middle of the next day, he was at Hartfield; and he entered
the room with such an agreeable smile as certified the continuance of
the scheme. It soon appeared that he came to announce an improvement.

“Well, Miss Woodhouse,” he almost immediately began, “your inclination
for dancing has not been quite frightened away, I hope, by the terrors
of my father's little rooms. I bring a new proposal on the subject:--a
thought of my father's, which waits only your approbation to be acted
upon. May I hope for the honour of your hand for the two first dances
of this little projected ball, to be given, not at Randalls, but at the
Crown Inn?”

“The Crown!”

“Yes; if you and Mr. Woodhouse see no objection, and I trust you cannot,
my father hopes his friends will be so kind as to visit him there.
Better accommodations, he can promise them, and not a less grateful
welcome than at Randalls. It is his own idea. Mrs. Weston sees no
objection to it, provided you are satisfied. This is what we all feel.
Oh! you were perfectly right! Ten couple, in either of the Randalls
rooms, would have been insufferable!--Dreadful!--I felt how right you
were the whole time, but was too anxious for securing _any_ _thing_
to like to yield. Is not it a good exchange?--You consent--I hope you
consent?”

“It appears to me a plan that nobody can object to, if Mr. and Mrs.
Weston do not. I think it admirable; and, as far as I can answer for
myself, shall be most happy--It seems the only improvement that could
be. Papa, do you not think it an excellent improvement?”

She was obliged to repeat and explain it, before it was fully
comprehended; and then, being quite new, farther representations were
necessary to make it acceptable.

“No; he thought it very far from an improvement--a very bad plan--much
worse than the other. A room at an inn was always damp and dangerous;
never properly aired, or fit to be inhabited. If they must dance, they
had better dance at Randalls. He had never been in the room at the Crown
in his life--did not know the people who kept it by sight.--Oh! no--a
very bad plan. They would catch worse colds at the Crown than anywhere.”

“I was going to observe, sir,” said Frank Churchill, “that one of the
great recommendations of this change would be the very little danger
of any body's catching cold--so much less danger at the Crown than at
Randalls! Mr. Perry might have reason to regret the alteration, but
nobody else could.”

“Sir,” said Mr. Woodhouse, rather warmly, “you are very much mistaken
if you suppose Mr. Perry to be that sort of character. Mr. Perry is
extremely concerned when any of us are ill. But I do not understand how
the room at the Crown can be safer for you than your father's house.”

“From the very circumstance of its being larger, sir. We shall have no
occasion to open the windows at all--not once the whole evening; and it
is that dreadful habit of opening the windows, letting in cold air upon
heated bodies, which (as you well know, sir) does the mischief.”

“Open the windows!--but surely, Mr. Churchill, nobody would think of
opening the windows at Randalls. Nobody could be so imprudent! I never
heard of such a thing. Dancing with open windows!--I am sure, neither
your father nor Mrs. Weston (poor Miss Taylor that was) would suffer
it.”

“Ah! sir--but a thoughtless young person will sometimes step behind a
window-curtain, and throw up a sash, without its being suspected. I have
often known it done myself.”

“Have you indeed, sir?--Bless me! I never could have supposed it. But I
live out of the world, and am often astonished at what I hear. However,
this does make a difference; and, perhaps, when we come to talk it
over--but these sort of things require a good deal of consideration. One
cannot resolve upon them in a hurry. If Mr. and Mrs. Weston will be so
obliging as to call here one morning, we may talk it over, and see what
can be done.”

“But, unfortunately, sir, my time is so limited--”

“Oh!” interrupted Emma, “there will be plenty of time for talking every
thing over. There is no hurry at all. If it can be contrived to be at
the Crown, papa, it will be very convenient for the horses. They will be
so near their own stable.”

“So they will, my dear. That is a great thing. Not that James ever
complains; but it is right to spare our horses when we can. If I could
be sure of the rooms being thoroughly aired--but is Mrs. Stokes to be
trusted? I doubt it. I do not know her, even by sight.”

“I can answer for every thing of that nature, sir, because it will be
under Mrs. Weston's care. Mrs. Weston undertakes to direct the whole.”

“There, papa!--Now you must be satisfied--Our own dear Mrs. Weston, who
is carefulness itself. Do not you remember what Mr. Perry said, so many
years ago, when I had the measles? 'If _Miss_ _Taylor_ undertakes to
wrap Miss Emma up, you need not have any fears, sir.' How often have I
heard you speak of it as such a compliment to her!”

“Aye, very true. Mr. Perry did say so. I shall never forget it. Poor
little Emma! You were very bad with the measles; that is, you would have
been very bad, but for Perry's great attention. He came four times a day
for a week. He said, from the first, it was a very good sort--which
was our great comfort; but the measles are a dreadful complaint. I hope
whenever poor Isabella's little ones have the measles, she will send for
Perry.”

“My father and Mrs. Weston are at the Crown at this moment,” said Frank
Churchill, “examining the capabilities of the house. I left them there
and came on to Hartfield, impatient for your opinion, and hoping you
might be persuaded to join them and give your advice on the spot. I was
desired to say so from both. It would be the greatest pleasure to
them, if you could allow me to attend you there. They can do nothing
satisfactorily without you.”

Emma was most happy to be called to such a council; and her father,
engaging to think it all over while she was gone, the two young people
set off together without delay for the Crown. There were Mr. and Mrs.
Weston; delighted to see her and receive her approbation, very busy and
very happy in their different way; she, in some little distress; and he,
finding every thing perfect.

“Emma,” said she, “this paper is worse than I expected. Look! in places
you see it is dreadfully dirty; and the wainscot is more yellow and
forlorn than any thing I could have imagined.”

“My dear, you are too particular,” said her husband. “What does all that
signify? You will see nothing of it by candlelight. It will be as
clean as Randalls by candlelight. We never see any thing of it on our
club-nights.”

The ladies here probably exchanged looks which meant, “Men never know
when things are dirty or not;” and the gentlemen perhaps thought each to
himself, “Women will have their little nonsenses and needless cares.”

One perplexity, however, arose, which the gentlemen did not disdain.
It regarded a supper-room. At the time of the ballroom's being built,
suppers had not been in question; and a small card-room adjoining, was
the only addition. What was to be done? This card-room would be wanted
as a card-room now; or, if cards were conveniently voted unnecessary
by their four selves, still was it not too small for any comfortable
supper? Another room of much better size might be secured for the
purpose; but it was at the other end of the house, and a long awkward
passage must be gone through to get at it. This made a difficulty. Mrs.
Weston was afraid of draughts for the young people in that passage;
and neither Emma nor the gentlemen could tolerate the prospect of being
miserably crowded at supper.

Mrs. Weston proposed having no regular supper; merely sandwiches,
&c., set out in the little room; but that was scouted as a wretched
suggestion. A private dance, without sitting down to supper, was
pronounced an infamous fraud upon the rights of men and women; and
Mrs. Weston must not speak of it again. She then took another line of
expediency, and looking into the doubtful room, observed,

“I do not think it _is_ so very small. We shall not be many, you know.”

And Mr. Weston at the same time, walking briskly with long steps through
the passage, was calling out,

“You talk a great deal of the length of this passage, my dear. It is a
mere nothing after all; and not the least draught from the stairs.”

“I wish,” said Mrs. Weston, “one could know which arrangement our guests
in general would like best. To do what would be most generally pleasing
must be our object--if one could but tell what that would be.”

“Yes, very true,” cried Frank, “very true. You want your neighbours'
opinions. I do not wonder at you. If one could ascertain what the chief
of them--the Coles, for instance. They are not far off. Shall I call
upon them? Or Miss Bates? She is still nearer.--And I do not know
whether Miss Bates is not as likely to understand the inclinations of
the rest of the people as any body. I think we do want a larger council.
Suppose I go and invite Miss Bates to join us?”

“Well--if you please,” said Mrs. Weston rather hesitating, “if you think
she will be of any use.”

“You will get nothing to the purpose from Miss Bates,” said Emma. “She
will be all delight and gratitude, but she will tell you nothing. She
will not even listen to your questions. I see no advantage in consulting
Miss Bates.”

“But she is so amusing, so extremely amusing! I am very fond of hearing
Miss Bates talk. And I need not bring the whole family, you know.”

Here Mr. Weston joined them, and on hearing what was proposed, gave it
his decided approbation.

“Aye, do, Frank.--Go and fetch Miss Bates, and let us end the matter at
once. She will enjoy the scheme, I am sure; and I do not know a properer
person for shewing us how to do away difficulties. Fetch Miss Bates.
We are growing a little too nice. She is a standing lesson of how to be
happy. But fetch them both. Invite them both.”

“Both sir! Can the old lady?”...

“The old lady! No, the young lady, to be sure. I shall think you a great
blockhead, Frank, if you bring the aunt without the niece.”

“Oh! I beg your pardon, sir. I did not immediately recollect.
Undoubtedly if you wish it, I will endeavour to persuade them both.” And
away he ran.

Long before he reappeared, attending the short, neat, brisk-moving aunt,
and her elegant niece,--Mrs. Weston, like a sweet-tempered woman and
a good wife, had examined the passage again, and found the evils of it
much less than she had supposed before--indeed very trifling; and here
ended the difficulties of decision. All the rest, in speculation at
least, was perfectly smooth. All the minor arrangements of table and
chair, lights and music, tea and supper, made themselves; or were left
as mere trifles to be settled at any time between Mrs. Weston and Mrs.
Stokes.--Every body invited, was certainly to come; Frank had already
written to Enscombe to propose staying a few days beyond his fortnight,
which could not possibly be refused. And a delightful dance it was to
be.

Most cordially, when Miss Bates arrived, did she agree that it must.
As a counsellor she was not wanted; but as an approver, (a much safer
character,) she was truly welcome. Her approbation, at once general
and minute, warm and incessant, could not but please; and for another
half-hour they were all walking to and fro, between the different rooms,
some suggesting, some attending, and all in happy enjoyment of the
future. The party did not break up without Emma's being positively
secured for the two first dances by the hero of the evening, nor without
her overhearing Mr. Weston whisper to his wife, “He has asked her, my
dear. That's right. I knew he would!”



CHAPTER XII


One thing only was wanting to make the prospect of the ball completely
satisfactory to Emma--its being fixed for a day within the granted
term of Frank Churchill's stay in Surry; for, in spite of Mr. Weston's
confidence, she could not think it so very impossible that the
Churchills might not allow their nephew to remain a day beyond his
fortnight. But this was not judged feasible. The preparations must take
their time, nothing could be properly ready till the third week were
entered on, and for a few days they must be planning, proceeding and
hoping in uncertainty--at the risk--in her opinion, the great risk, of
its being all in vain.

Enscombe however was gracious, gracious in fact, if not in word. His
wish of staying longer evidently did not please; but it was not opposed.
All was safe and prosperous; and as the removal of one solicitude
generally makes way for another, Emma, being now certain of her
ball, began to adopt as the next vexation Mr. Knightley's provoking
indifference about it. Either because he did not dance himself, or
because the plan had been formed without his being consulted, he
seemed resolved that it should not interest him, determined against its
exciting any present curiosity, or affording him any future amusement.
To her voluntary communications Emma could get no more approving reply,
than,

“Very well. If the Westons think it worth while to be at all this
trouble for a few hours of noisy entertainment, I have nothing to say
against it, but that they shall not chuse pleasures for me.--Oh! yes,
I must be there; I could not refuse; and I will keep as much awake as
I can; but I would rather be at home, looking over William Larkins's
week's account; much rather, I confess.--Pleasure in seeing
dancing!--not I, indeed--I never look at it--I do not know who
does.--Fine dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward.
Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very
different.”

This Emma felt was aimed at her; and it made her quite angry. It was not
in compliment to Jane Fairfax however that he was so indifferent, or so
indignant; he was not guided by _her_ feelings in reprobating the ball,
for _she_ enjoyed the thought of it to an extraordinary degree. It made
her animated--open hearted--she voluntarily said;--

“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, I hope nothing may happen to prevent the ball.
What a disappointment it would be! I do look forward to it, I own, with
_very_ great pleasure.”

It was not to oblige Jane Fairfax therefore that he would have preferred
the society of William Larkins. No!--she was more and more convinced
that Mrs. Weston was quite mistaken in that surmise. There was a great
deal of friendly and of compassionate attachment on his side--but no
love.

Alas! there was soon no leisure for quarrelling with Mr. Knightley. Two
days of joyful security were immediately followed by the over-throw of
every thing. A letter arrived from Mr. Churchill to urge his nephew's
instant return. Mrs. Churchill was unwell--far too unwell to do without
him; she had been in a very suffering state (so said her husband)
when writing to her nephew two days before, though from her usual
unwillingness to give pain, and constant habit of never thinking of
herself, she had not mentioned it; but now she was too ill to trifle,
and must entreat him to set off for Enscombe without delay.

The substance of this letter was forwarded to Emma, in a note from Mrs.
Weston, instantly. As to his going, it was inevitable. He must be gone
within a few hours, though without feeling any real alarm for his aunt,
to lessen his repugnance. He knew her illnesses; they never occurred but
for her own convenience.

Mrs. Weston added, “that he could only allow himself time to hurry to
Highbury, after breakfast, and take leave of the few friends there
whom he could suppose to feel any interest in him; and that he might be
expected at Hartfield very soon.”

This wretched note was the finale of Emma's breakfast. When once it had
been read, there was no doing any thing, but lament and exclaim. The
loss of the ball--the loss of the young man--and all that the young man
might be feeling!--It was too wretched!--Such a delightful evening as
it would have been!--Every body so happy! and she and her partner the
happiest!--“I said it would be so,” was the only consolation.

Her father's feelings were quite distinct. He thought principally of
Mrs. Churchill's illness, and wanted to know how she was treated; and as
for the ball, it was shocking to have dear Emma disappointed; but they
would all be safer at home.

Emma was ready for her visitor some time before he appeared; but if this
reflected at all upon his impatience, his sorrowful look and total want
of spirits when he did come might redeem him. He felt the going away
almost too much to speak of it. His dejection was most evident. He
sat really lost in thought for the first few minutes; and when rousing
himself, it was only to say,

“Of all horrid things, leave-taking is the worst.”

“But you will come again,” said Emma. “This will not be your only visit
to Randalls.”

“Ah!--(shaking his head)--the uncertainty of when I may be able to
return!--I shall try for it with a zeal!--It will be the object of
all my thoughts and cares!--and if my uncle and aunt go to town this
spring--but I am afraid--they did not stir last spring--I am afraid it
is a custom gone for ever.”

“Our poor ball must be quite given up.”

“Ah! that ball!--why did we wait for any thing?--why not seize the
pleasure at once?--How often is happiness destroyed by preparation,
foolish preparation!--You told us it would be so.--Oh! Miss Woodhouse,
why are you always so right?”

“Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much
rather have been merry than wise.”

“If I can come again, we are still to have our ball. My father depends
on it. Do not forget your engagement.”

Emma looked graciously.

“Such a fortnight as it has been!” he continued; “every day more
precious and more delightful than the day before!--every day making
me less fit to bear any other place. Happy those, who can remain at
Highbury!”

“As you do us such ample justice now,” said Emma, laughing, “I will
venture to ask, whether you did not come a little doubtfully at first?
Do not we rather surpass your expectations? I am sure we do. I am sure
you did not much expect to like us. You would not have been so long in
coming, if you had had a pleasant idea of Highbury.”

He laughed rather consciously; and though denying the sentiment, Emma
was convinced that it had been so.

“And you must be off this very morning?”

“Yes; my father is to join me here: we shall walk back together, and I
must be off immediately. I am almost afraid that every moment will bring
him.”

“Not five minutes to spare even for your friends Miss Fairfax and Miss
Bates? How unlucky! Miss Bates's powerful, argumentative mind might have
strengthened yours.”

“Yes--I _have_ called there; passing the door, I thought it better. It
was a right thing to do. I went in for three minutes, and was detained
by Miss Bates's being absent. She was out; and I felt it impossible not
to wait till she came in. She is a woman that one may, that one _must_
laugh at; but that one would not wish to slight. It was better to pay my
visit, then”--

He hesitated, got up, walked to a window.

“In short,” said he, “perhaps, Miss Woodhouse--I think you can hardly be
quite without suspicion”--

He looked at her, as if wanting to read her thoughts. She hardly knew
what to say. It seemed like the forerunner of something absolutely
serious, which she did not wish. Forcing herself to speak, therefore, in
the hope of putting it by, she calmly said,

“You are quite in the right; it was most natural to pay your visit,
then”--

He was silent. She believed he was looking at her; probably reflecting
on what she had said, and trying to understand the manner. She heard
him sigh. It was natural for him to feel that he had _cause_ to sigh.
He could not believe her to be encouraging him. A few awkward moments
passed, and he sat down again; and in a more determined manner said,

“It was something to feel that all the rest of my time might be given to
Hartfield. My regard for Hartfield is most warm”--

He stopt again, rose again, and seemed quite embarrassed.--He was more
in love with her than Emma had supposed; and who can say how it might
have ended, if his father had not made his appearance? Mr. Woodhouse
soon followed; and the necessity of exertion made him composed.

A very few minutes more, however, completed the present trial. Mr.
Weston, always alert when business was to be done, and as incapable of
procrastinating any evil that was inevitable, as of foreseeing any that
was doubtful, said, “It was time to go;” and the young man, though he
might and did sigh, could not but agree, to take leave.

“I shall hear about you all,” said he; “that is my chief consolation.
I shall hear of every thing that is going on among you. I have engaged
Mrs. Weston to correspond with me. She has been so kind as to promise
it. Oh! the blessing of a female correspondent, when one is really
interested in the absent!--she will tell me every thing. In her letters
I shall be at dear Highbury again.”

A very friendly shake of the hand, a very earnest “Good-bye,” closed the
speech, and the door had soon shut out Frank Churchill. Short had been
the notice--short their meeting; he was gone; and Emma felt so sorry
to part, and foresaw so great a loss to their little society from his
absence as to begin to be afraid of being too sorry, and feeling it too
much.

It was a sad change. They had been meeting almost every day since his
arrival. Certainly his being at Randalls had given great spirit to
the last two weeks--indescribable spirit; the idea, the expectation
of seeing him which every morning had brought, the assurance of his
attentions, his liveliness, his manners! It had been a very happy
fortnight, and forlorn must be the sinking from it into the common
course of Hartfield days. To complete every other recommendation, he had
_almost_ told her that he loved her. What strength, or what constancy of
affection he might be subject to, was another point; but at present
she could not doubt his having a decidedly warm admiration, a conscious
preference of herself; and this persuasion, joined to all the rest,
made her think that she _must_ be a little in love with him, in spite of
every previous determination against it.

“I certainly must,” said she. “This sensation of listlessness,
weariness, stupidity, this disinclination to sit down and employ myself,
this feeling of every thing's being dull and insipid about the house!--
I must be in love; I should be the oddest creature in the world if I
were not--for a few weeks at least. Well! evil to some is always good to
others. I shall have many fellow-mourners for the ball, if not for Frank
Churchill; but Mr. Knightley will be happy. He may spend the evening
with his dear William Larkins now if he likes.”

Mr. Knightley, however, shewed no triumphant happiness. He could not say
that he was sorry on his own account; his very cheerful look would have
contradicted him if he had; but he said, and very steadily, that he
was sorry for the disappointment of the others, and with considerable
kindness added,

“You, Emma, who have so few opportunities of dancing, you are really out
of luck; you are very much out of luck!”

It was some days before she saw Jane Fairfax, to judge of her honest
regret in this woeful change; but when they did meet, her composure
was odious. She had been particularly unwell, however, suffering from
headache to a degree, which made her aunt declare, that had the ball
taken place, she did not think Jane could have attended it; and it was
charity to impute some of her unbecoming indifference to the languor of
ill-health.



CHAPTER XIII


Emma continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love. Her ideas
only varied as to the how much. At first, she thought it was a good
deal; and afterwards, but little. She had great pleasure in hearing
Frank Churchill talked of; and, for his sake, greater pleasure than ever
in seeing Mr. and Mrs. Weston; she was very often thinking of him, and
quite impatient for a letter, that she might know how he was, how were
his spirits, how was his aunt, and what was the chance of his coming to
Randalls again this spring. But, on the other hand, she could not admit
herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed
for employment than usual; she was still busy and cheerful; and,
pleasing as he was, she could yet imagine him to have faults; and
farther, though thinking of him so much, and, as she sat drawing or
working, forming a thousand amusing schemes for the progress and close
of their attachment, fancying interesting dialogues, and inventing
elegant letters; the conclusion of every imaginary declaration on his
side was that she _refused_ _him_. Their affection was always to subside
into friendship. Every thing tender and charming was to mark their
parting; but still they were to part. When she became sensible of this,
it struck her that she could not be very much in love; for in spite of
her previous and fixed determination never to quit her father, never
to marry, a strong attachment certainly must produce more of a struggle
than she could foresee in her own feelings.

“I do not find myself making any use of the word _sacrifice_,” said
she.--“In not one of all my clever replies, my delicate negatives, is
there any allusion to making a sacrifice. I do suspect that he is not
really necessary to my happiness. So much the better. I certainly will
not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I
should be sorry to be more.”

Upon the whole, she was equally contented with her view of his feelings.

“_He_ is undoubtedly very much in love--every thing denotes it--very
much in love indeed!--and when he comes again, if his affection
continue, I must be on my guard not to encourage it.--It would be most
inexcusable to do otherwise, as my own mind is quite made up. Not that I
imagine he can think I have been encouraging him hitherto. No, if he
had believed me at all to share his feelings, he would not have been
so wretched. Could he have thought himself encouraged, his looks and
language at parting would have been different.--Still, however, I must
be on my guard. This is in the supposition of his attachment continuing
what it now is; but I do not know that I expect it will; I do not look
upon him to be quite the sort of man--I do not altogether build upon
his steadiness or constancy.--His feelings are warm, but I can imagine
them rather changeable.--Every consideration of the subject, in short,
makes me thankful that my happiness is not more deeply involved.--I
shall do very well again after a little while--and then, it will be a
good thing over; for they say every body is in love once in their lives,
and I shall have been let off easily.”

When his letter to Mrs. Weston arrived, Emma had the perusal of it; and
she read it with a degree of pleasure and admiration which made her
at first shake her head over her own sensations, and think she had
undervalued their strength. It was a long, well-written letter, giving
the particulars of his journey and of his feelings, expressing all the
affection, gratitude, and respect which was natural and honourable,
and describing every thing exterior and local that could be supposed
attractive, with spirit and precision. No suspicious flourishes now of
apology or concern; it was the language of real feeling towards Mrs.
Weston; and the transition from Highbury to Enscombe, the contrast
between the places in some of the first blessings of social life was
just enough touched on to shew how keenly it was felt, and how much more
might have been said but for the restraints of propriety.--The charm
of her own name was not wanting. _Miss_ _Woodhouse_ appeared more than
once, and never without a something of pleasing connexion, either a
compliment to her taste, or a remembrance of what she had said; and in
the very last time of its meeting her eye, unadorned as it was by any
such broad wreath of gallantry, she yet could discern the effect of
her influence and acknowledge the greatest compliment perhaps of all
conveyed. Compressed into the very lowest vacant corner were these
words--“I had not a spare moment on Tuesday, as you know, for Miss
Woodhouse's beautiful little friend. Pray make my excuses and adieus
to her.” This, Emma could not doubt, was all for herself. Harriet was
remembered only from being _her_ friend. His information and prospects
as to Enscombe were neither worse nor better than had been anticipated;
Mrs. Churchill was recovering, and he dared not yet, even in his own
imagination, fix a time for coming to Randalls again.

Gratifying, however, and stimulative as was the letter in the material
part, its sentiments, she yet found, when it was folded up and returned
to Mrs. Weston, that it had not added any lasting warmth, that she could
still do without the writer, and that he must learn to do without her.
Her intentions were unchanged. Her resolution of refusal only grew more
interesting by the addition of a scheme for his subsequent consolation
and happiness. His recollection of Harriet, and the words which
clothed it, the “beautiful little friend,” suggested to her the
idea of Harriet's succeeding her in his affections. Was it
impossible?--No.--Harriet undoubtedly was greatly his inferior in
understanding; but he had been very much struck with the loveliness
of her face and the warm simplicity of her manner; and all the
probabilities of circumstance and connexion were in her favour.--For
Harriet, it would be advantageous and delightful indeed.

“I must not dwell upon it,” said she.--“I must not think of it. I know
the danger of indulging such speculations. But stranger things have
happened; and when we cease to care for each other as we do now, it
will be the means of confirming us in that sort of true disinterested
friendship which I can already look forward to with pleasure.”

It was well to have a comfort in store on Harriet's behalf, though it
might be wise to let the fancy touch it seldom; for evil in that quarter
was at hand. As Frank Churchill's arrival had succeeded Mr. Elton's
engagement in the conversation of Highbury, as the latest interest
had entirely borne down the first, so now upon Frank Churchill's
disappearance, Mr. Elton's concerns were assuming the most irresistible
form.--His wedding-day was named. He would soon be among them again; Mr.
Elton and his bride. There was hardly time to talk over the first letter
from Enscombe before “Mr. Elton and his bride” was in every body's
mouth, and Frank Churchill was forgotten. Emma grew sick at the sound.
She had had three weeks of happy exemption from Mr. Elton; and Harriet's
mind, she had been willing to hope, had been lately gaining strength.
With Mr. Weston's ball in view at least, there had been a great deal of
insensibility to other things; but it was now too evident that she had
not attained such a state of composure as could stand against the actual
approach--new carriage, bell-ringing, and all.

Poor Harriet was in a flutter of spirits which required all the
reasonings and soothings and attentions of every kind that Emma could
give. Emma felt that she could not do too much for her, that Harriet had
a right to all her ingenuity and all her patience; but it was heavy work
to be for ever convincing without producing any effect, for ever agreed
to, without being able to make their opinions the same. Harriet listened
submissively, and said “it was very true--it was just as Miss Woodhouse
described--it was not worth while to think about them--and she would not
think about them any longer” but no change of subject could avail, and
the next half-hour saw her as anxious and restless about the Eltons as
before. At last Emma attacked her on another ground.

“Your allowing yourself to be so occupied and so unhappy about Mr.
Elton's marrying, Harriet, is the strongest reproach you can make _me_.
You could not give me a greater reproof for the mistake I fell into.
It was all my doing, I know. I have not forgotten it, I assure
you.--Deceived myself, I did very miserably deceive you--and it will
be a painful reflection to me for ever. Do not imagine me in danger of
forgetting it.”

Harriet felt this too much to utter more than a few words of eager
exclamation. Emma continued,

“I have not said, exert yourself Harriet for my sake; think less, talk
less of Mr. Elton for my sake; because for your own sake rather, I
would wish it to be done, for the sake of what is more important than my
comfort, a habit of self-command in you, a consideration of what is your
duty, an attention to propriety, an endeavour to avoid the suspicions of
others, to save your health and credit, and restore your tranquillity.
These are the motives which I have been pressing on you. They are very
important--and sorry I am that you cannot feel them sufficiently to act
upon them. My being saved from pain is a very secondary consideration.
I want you to save yourself from greater pain. Perhaps I may sometimes
have felt that Harriet would not forget what was due--or rather what
would be kind by me.”

This appeal to her affections did more than all the rest. The idea of
wanting gratitude and consideration for Miss Woodhouse, whom she really
loved extremely, made her wretched for a while, and when the violence
of grief was comforted away, still remained powerful enough to prompt to
what was right and support her in it very tolerably.

“You, who have been the best friend I ever had in my life--Want
gratitude to you!--Nobody is equal to you!--I care for nobody as I do
for you!--Oh! Miss Woodhouse, how ungrateful I have been!”

Such expressions, assisted as they were by every thing that look and
manner could do, made Emma feel that she had never loved Harriet so
well, nor valued her affection so highly before.

“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,” said she afterwards to
herself. “There is nothing to be compared to it. Warmth and tenderness
of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the
clearness of head in the world, for attraction, I am sure it will. It
is tenderness of heart which makes my dear father so generally
beloved--which gives Isabella all her popularity.--I have it not--but
I know how to prize and respect it.--Harriet is my superior in all the
charm and all the felicity it gives. Dear Harriet!--I would not change
you for the clearest-headed, longest-sighted, best-judging female
breathing. Oh! the coldness of a Jane Fairfax!--Harriet is worth a
hundred such--And for a wife--a sensible man's wife--it is invaluable. I
mention no names; but happy the man who changes Emma for Harriet!”



CHAPTER XIV


Mrs. Elton was first seen at church: but though devotion might be
interrupted, curiosity could not be satisfied by a bride in a pew, and
it must be left for the visits in form which were then to be paid, to
settle whether she were very pretty indeed, or only rather pretty, or
not pretty at all.

Emma had feelings, less of curiosity than of pride or propriety, to make
her resolve on not being the last to pay her respects; and she made a
point of Harriet's going with her, that the worst of the business might
be gone through as soon as possible.

She could not enter the house again, could not be in the same room to
which she had with such vain artifice retreated three months ago, to
lace up her boot, without _recollecting_. A thousand vexatious thoughts
would recur. Compliments, charades, and horrible blunders; and it was
not to be supposed that poor Harriet should not be recollecting too; but
she behaved very well, and was only rather pale and silent. The visit
was of course short; and there was so much embarrassment and occupation
of mind to shorten it, that Emma would not allow herself entirely to
form an opinion of the lady, and on no account to give one, beyond the
nothing-meaning terms of being “elegantly dressed, and very pleasing.”

She did not really like her. She would not be in a hurry to find fault,
but she suspected that there was no elegance;--ease, but not elegance.--
She was almost sure that for a young woman, a stranger, a bride, there
was too much ease. Her person was rather good; her face not unpretty;
but neither feature, nor air, nor voice, nor manner, were elegant. Emma
thought at least it would turn out so.

As for Mr. Elton, his manners did not appear--but no, she would not
permit a hasty or a witty word from herself about his manners. It was an
awkward ceremony at any time to be receiving wedding visits, and a man
had need be all grace to acquit himself well through it. The woman
was better off; she might have the assistance of fine clothes, and the
privilege of bashfulness, but the man had only his own good sense to
depend on; and when she considered how peculiarly unlucky poor Mr.
Elton was in being in the same room at once with the woman he had just
married, the woman he had wanted to marry, and the woman whom he had
been expected to marry, she must allow him to have the right to look as
little wise, and to be as much affectedly, and as little really easy as
could be.

“Well, Miss Woodhouse,” said Harriet, when they had quitted the
house, and after waiting in vain for her friend to begin; “Well, Miss
Woodhouse, (with a gentle sigh,) what do you think of her?--Is not she
very charming?”

There was a little hesitation in Emma's answer.

“Oh! yes--very--a very pleasing young woman.”

“I think her beautiful, quite beautiful.”

“Very nicely dressed, indeed; a remarkably elegant gown.”

“I am not at all surprized that he should have fallen in love.”

“Oh! no--there is nothing to surprize one at all.--A pretty fortune; and
she came in his way.”

“I dare say,” returned Harriet, sighing again, “I dare say she was very
much attached to him.”

“Perhaps she might; but it is not every man's fate to marry the woman
who loves him best. Miss Hawkins perhaps wanted a home, and thought this
the best offer she was likely to have.”

“Yes,” said Harriet earnestly, “and well she might, nobody could ever
have a better. Well, I wish them happy with all my heart. And now, Miss
Woodhouse, I do not think I shall mind seeing them again. He is just as
superior as ever;--but being married, you know, it is quite a different
thing. No, indeed, Miss Woodhouse, you need not be afraid; I can sit and
admire him now without any great misery. To know that he has not thrown
himself away, is such a comfort!--She does seem a charming young woman,
just what he deserves. Happy creature! He called her 'Augusta.' How
delightful!”

When the visit was returned, Emma made up her mind. She could then see
more and judge better. From Harriet's happening not to be at Hartfield,
and her father's being present to engage Mr. Elton, she had a quarter
of an hour of the lady's conversation to herself, and could composedly
attend to her; and the quarter of an hour quite convinced her that
Mrs. Elton was a vain woman, extremely well satisfied with herself, and
thinking much of her own importance; that she meant to shine and be very
superior, but with manners which had been formed in a bad school, pert
and familiar; that all her notions were drawn from one set of people,
and one style of living; that if not foolish she was ignorant, and that
her society would certainly do Mr. Elton no good.

Harriet would have been a better match. If not wise or refined herself,
she would have connected him with those who were; but Miss Hawkins, it
might be fairly supposed from her easy conceit, had been the best of
her own set. The rich brother-in-law near Bristol was the pride of the
alliance, and his place and his carriages were the pride of him.

The very first subject after being seated was Maple Grove, “My brother
Mr. Suckling's seat;”--a comparison of Hartfield to Maple Grove. The
grounds of Hartfield were small, but neat and pretty; and the house was
modern and well-built. Mrs. Elton seemed most favourably impressed
by the size of the room, the entrance, and all that she could see or
imagine. “Very like Maple Grove indeed!--She was quite struck by the
likeness!--That room was the very shape and size of the morning-room
at Maple Grove; her sister's favourite room.”--Mr. Elton was appealed
to.--“Was not it astonishingly like?--She could really almost fancy
herself at Maple Grove.”

“And the staircase--You know, as I came in, I observed how very like the
staircase was; placed exactly in the same part of the house. I really
could not help exclaiming! I assure you, Miss Woodhouse, it is very
delightful to me, to be reminded of a place I am so extremely partial to
as Maple Grove. I have spent so many happy months there! (with a little
sigh of sentiment). A charming place, undoubtedly. Every body who
sees it is struck by its beauty; but to me, it has been quite a home.
Whenever you are transplanted, like me, Miss Woodhouse, you will
understand how very delightful it is to meet with any thing at all like
what one has left behind. I always say this is quite one of the evils of
matrimony.”

Emma made as slight a reply as she could; but it was fully sufficient
for Mrs. Elton, who only wanted to be talking herself.

“So extremely like Maple Grove! And it is not merely the house--the
grounds, I assure you, as far as I could observe, are strikingly like.
The laurels at Maple Grove are in the same profusion as here, and stand
very much in the same way--just across the lawn; and I had a glimpse
of a fine large tree, with a bench round it, which put me so exactly in
mind! My brother and sister will be enchanted with this place. People
who have extensive grounds themselves are always pleased with any thing
in the same style.”

Emma doubted the truth of this sentiment. She had a great idea that
people who had extensive grounds themselves cared very little for the
extensive grounds of any body else; but it was not worth while to attack
an error so double-dyed, and therefore only said in reply,

“When you have seen more of this country, I am afraid you will think you
have overrated Hartfield. Surry is full of beauties.”

“Oh! yes, I am quite aware of that. It is the garden of England, you
know. Surry is the garden of England.”

“Yes; but we must not rest our claims on that distinction. Many
counties, I believe, are called the garden of England, as well as
Surry.”

“No, I fancy not,” replied Mrs. Elton, with a most satisfied smile.
“I never heard any county but Surry called so.”

Emma was silenced.

“My brother and sister have promised us a visit in the spring, or summer
at farthest,” continued Mrs. Elton; “and that will be our time for
exploring. While they are with us, we shall explore a great deal, I dare
say. They will have their barouche-landau, of course, which holds four
perfectly; and therefore, without saying any thing of _our_ carriage,
we should be able to explore the different beauties extremely well. They
would hardly come in their chaise, I think, at that season of the
year. Indeed, when the time draws on, I shall decidedly recommend their
bringing the barouche-landau; it will be so very much preferable.
When people come into a beautiful country of this sort, you know, Miss
Woodhouse, one naturally wishes them to see as much as possible; and Mr.
Suckling is extremely fond of exploring. We explored to King's-Weston
twice last summer, in that way, most delightfully, just after their
first having the barouche-landau. You have many parties of that kind
here, I suppose, Miss Woodhouse, every summer?”

“No; not immediately here. We are rather out of distance of the very
striking beauties which attract the sort of parties you speak of; and we
are a very quiet set of people, I believe; more disposed to stay at home
than engage in schemes of pleasure.”

“Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. Nobody can
be more devoted to home than I am. I was quite a proverb for it at Maple
Grove. Many a time has Selina said, when she has been going to Bristol,
'I really cannot get this girl to move from the house. I absolutely must
go in by myself, though I hate being stuck up in the barouche-landau
without a companion; but Augusta, I believe, with her own good-will,
would never stir beyond the park paling.' Many a time has she said so;
and yet I am no advocate for entire seclusion. I think, on the contrary,
when people shut themselves up entirely from society, it is a very
bad thing; and that it is much more advisable to mix in the world in
a proper degree, without living in it either too much or too little. I
perfectly understand your situation, however, Miss Woodhouse--(looking
towards Mr. Woodhouse), Your father's state of health must be a great
drawback. Why does not he try Bath?--Indeed he should. Let me recommend
Bath to you. I assure you I have no doubt of its doing Mr. Woodhouse
good.”

“My father tried it more than once, formerly; but without receiving any
benefit; and Mr. Perry, whose name, I dare say, is not unknown to you,
does not conceive it would be at all more likely to be useful now.”

“Ah! that's a great pity; for I assure you, Miss Woodhouse, where the
waters do agree, it is quite wonderful the relief they give. In my Bath
life, I have seen such instances of it! And it is so cheerful a place,
that it could not fail of being of use to Mr. Woodhouse's spirits,
which, I understand, are sometimes much depressed. And as to its
recommendations to _you_, I fancy I need not take much pains to dwell
on them. The advantages of Bath to the young are pretty generally
understood. It would be a charming introduction for you, who have lived
so secluded a life; and I could immediately secure you some of the best
society in the place. A line from me would bring you a little host of
acquaintance; and my particular friend, Mrs. Partridge, the lady I have
always resided with when in Bath, would be most happy to shew you any
attentions, and would be the very person for you to go into public
with.”

It was as much as Emma could bear, without being impolite. The idea
of her being indebted to Mrs. Elton for what was called an
_introduction_--of her going into public under the auspices of a friend
of Mrs. Elton's--probably some vulgar, dashing widow, who, with the
help of a boarder, just made a shift to live!--The dignity of Miss
Woodhouse, of Hartfield, was sunk indeed!

She restrained herself, however, from any of the reproofs she could have
given, and only thanked Mrs. Elton coolly; “but their going to Bath was
quite out of the question; and she was not perfectly convinced that
the place might suit her better than her father.” And then, to prevent
farther outrage and indignation, changed the subject directly.

“I do not ask whether you are musical, Mrs. Elton. Upon these occasions,
a lady's character generally precedes her; and Highbury has long known
that you are a superior performer.”

“Oh! no, indeed; I must protest against any such idea. A superior
performer!--very far from it, I assure you. Consider from how partial
a quarter your information came. I am doatingly fond of
music--passionately fond;--and my friends say I am not entirely devoid
of taste; but as to any thing else, upon my honour my performance is
_mediocre_ to the last degree. You, Miss Woodhouse, I well know, play
delightfully. I assure you it has been the greatest satisfaction,
comfort, and delight to me, to hear what a musical society I am got
into. I absolutely cannot do without music. It is a necessary of life to
me; and having always been used to a very musical society, both at
Maple Grove and in Bath, it would have been a most serious sacrifice. I
honestly said as much to Mr. E. when he was speaking of my future
home, and expressing his fears lest the retirement of it should be
disagreeable; and the inferiority of the house too--knowing what I had
been accustomed to--of course he was not wholly without apprehension.
When he was speaking of it in that way, I honestly said that _the_
_world_ I could give up--parties, balls, plays--for I had no fear of
retirement. Blessed with so many resources within myself, the world was
not necessary to _me_. I could do very well without it. To those who had
no resources it was a different thing; but my resources made me quite
independent. And as to smaller-sized rooms than I had been used to, I
really could not give it a thought. I hoped I was perfectly equal to any
sacrifice of that description. Certainly I had been accustomed to every
luxury at Maple Grove; but I did assure him that two carriages were not
necessary to my happiness, nor were spacious apartments. 'But,' said I,
'to be quite honest, I do not think I can live without something of a
musical society. I condition for nothing else; but without music, life
would be a blank to me.'”

“We cannot suppose,” said Emma, smiling, “that Mr. Elton would hesitate
to assure you of there being a _very_ musical society in Highbury; and
I hope you will not find he has outstepped the truth more than may be
pardoned, in consideration of the motive.”

“No, indeed, I have no doubts at all on that head. I am delighted to
find myself in such a circle. I hope we shall have many sweet little
concerts together. I think, Miss Woodhouse, you and I must establish a
musical club, and have regular weekly meetings at your house, or ours.
Will not it be a good plan? If _we_ exert ourselves, I think we shall
not be long in want of allies. Something of that nature would be
particularly desirable for _me_, as an inducement to keep me in
practice; for married women, you know--there is a sad story against
them, in general. They are but too apt to give up music.”

“But you, who are so extremely fond of it--there can be no danger,
surely?”

“I should hope not; but really when I look around among my acquaintance,
I tremble. Selina has entirely given up music--never touches the
instrument--though she played sweetly. And the same may be said of Mrs.
Jeffereys--Clara Partridge, that was--and of the two Milmans, now Mrs.
Bird and Mrs. James Cooper; and of more than I can enumerate. Upon my
word it is enough to put one in a fright. I used to be quite angry with
Selina; but really I begin now to comprehend that a married woman has
many things to call her attention. I believe I was half an hour this
morning shut up with my housekeeper.”

“But every thing of that kind,” said Emma, “will soon be in so regular a
train--”

“Well,” said Mrs. Elton, laughing, “we shall see.”

Emma, finding her so determined upon neglecting her music, had nothing
more to say; and, after a moment's pause, Mrs. Elton chose another
subject.

“We have been calling at Randalls,” said she, “and found them both at
home; and very pleasant people they seem to be. I like them extremely.
Mr. Weston seems an excellent creature--quite a first-rate favourite
with me already, I assure you. And _she_ appears so truly good--there is
something so motherly and kind-hearted about her, that it wins upon one
directly. She was your governess, I think?”

Emma was almost too much astonished to answer; but Mrs. Elton hardly
waited for the affirmative before she went on.

“Having understood as much, I was rather astonished to find her so very
lady-like! But she is really quite the gentlewoman.”

“Mrs. Weston's manners,” said Emma, “were always particularly good.
Their propriety, simplicity, and elegance, would make them the safest
model for any young woman.”

“And who do you think came in while we were there?”

Emma was quite at a loss. The tone implied some old acquaintance--and
how could she possibly guess?

“Knightley!” continued Mrs. Elton; “Knightley himself!--Was not it
lucky?--for, not being within when he called the other day, I had never
seen him before; and of course, as so particular a friend of Mr. E.'s,
I had a great curiosity. 'My friend Knightley' had been so often
mentioned, that I was really impatient to see him; and I must do my
caro sposo the justice to say that he need not be ashamed of his friend.
Knightley is quite the gentleman. I like him very much. Decidedly, I
think, a very gentleman-like man.”

Happily, it was now time to be gone. They were off; and Emma could
breathe.

“Insufferable woman!” was her immediate exclamation. “Worse than I had
supposed. Absolutely insufferable! Knightley!--I could not have
believed it. Knightley!--never seen him in her life before, and call
him Knightley!--and discover that he is a gentleman! A little upstart,
vulgar being, with her Mr. E., and her _caro_ _sposo_, and her
resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and underbred finery.
Actually to discover that Mr. Knightley is a gentleman! I doubt whether
he will return the compliment, and discover her to be a lady. I could
not have believed it! And to propose that she and I should unite to
form a musical club! One would fancy we were bosom friends! And Mrs.
Weston!--Astonished that the person who had brought me up should be a
gentlewoman! Worse and worse. I never met with her equal. Much beyond
my hopes. Harriet is disgraced by any comparison. Oh! what would Frank
Churchill say to her, if he were here? How angry and how diverted he
would be! Ah! there I am--thinking of him directly. Always the first
person to be thought of! How I catch myself out! Frank Churchill comes
as regularly into my mind!”--

All this ran so glibly through her thoughts, that by the time her father
had arranged himself, after the bustle of the Eltons' departure, and was
ready to speak, she was very tolerably capable of attending.

“Well, my dear,” he deliberately began, “considering we never saw her
before, she seems a very pretty sort of young lady; and I dare say she
was very much pleased with you. She speaks a little too quick. A little
quickness of voice there is which rather hurts the ear. But I believe
I am nice; I do not like strange voices; and nobody speaks like you and
poor Miss Taylor. However, she seems a very obliging, pretty-behaved
young lady, and no doubt will make him a very good wife. Though I think
he had better not have married. I made the best excuses I could for not
having been able to wait on him and Mrs. Elton on this happy occasion; I
said that I hoped I _should_ in the course of the summer. But I ought to
have gone before. Not to wait upon a bride is very remiss. Ah! it shews
what a sad invalid I am! But I do not like the corner into Vicarage
Lane.”

“I dare say your apologies were accepted, sir. Mr. Elton knows you.”

“Yes: but a young lady--a bride--I ought to have paid my respects to her
if possible. It was being very deficient.”

“But, my dear papa, you are no friend to matrimony; and therefore why
should you be so anxious to pay your respects to a _bride_? It ought to
be no recommendation to _you_. It is encouraging people to marry if you
make so much of them.”

“No, my dear, I never encouraged any body to marry, but I would always
wish to pay every proper attention to a lady--and a bride, especially,
is never to be neglected. More is avowedly due to _her_. A bride, you
know, my dear, is always the first in company, let the others be who
they may.”

“Well, papa, if this is not encouragement to marry, I do not know what
is. And I should never have expected you to be lending your sanction to
such vanity-baits for poor young ladies.”

“My dear, you do not understand me. This is a matter of mere
common politeness and good-breeding, and has nothing to do with any
encouragement to people to marry.”

Emma had done. Her father was growing nervous, and could not understand
_her_. Her mind returned to Mrs. Elton's offences, and long, very long,
did they occupy her.



CHAPTER XV


Emma was not required, by any subsequent discovery, to retract her ill
opinion of Mrs. Elton. Her observation had been pretty correct. Such as
Mrs. Elton appeared to her on this second interview, such she appeared
whenever they met again,--self-important, presuming, familiar, ignorant,
and ill-bred. She had a little beauty and a little accomplishment,
but so little judgment that she thought herself coming with superior
knowledge of the world, to enliven and improve a country neighbourhood;
and conceived Miss Hawkins to have held such a place in society as Mrs.
Elton's consequence only could surpass.

There was no reason to suppose Mr. Elton thought at all differently from
his wife. He seemed not merely happy with her, but proud. He had the air
of congratulating himself on having brought such a woman to Highbury,
as not even Miss Woodhouse could equal; and the greater part of her
new acquaintance, disposed to commend, or not in the habit of judging,
following the lead of Miss Bates's good-will, or taking it for granted
that the bride must be as clever and as agreeable as she professed
herself, were very well satisfied; so that Mrs. Elton's praise
passed from one mouth to another as it ought to do, unimpeded by Miss
Woodhouse, who readily continued her first contribution and talked with
a good grace of her being “very pleasant and very elegantly dressed.”

In one respect Mrs. Elton grew even worse than she had appeared at
first. Her feelings altered towards Emma.--Offended, probably, by the
little encouragement which her proposals of intimacy met with, she drew
back in her turn and gradually became much more cold and distant; and
though the effect was agreeable, the ill-will which produced it was
necessarily increasing Emma's dislike. Her manners, too--and Mr.
Elton's, were unpleasant towards Harriet. They were sneering and
negligent. Emma hoped it must rapidly work Harriet's cure; but the
sensations which could prompt such behaviour sunk them both very
much.--It was not to be doubted that poor Harriet's attachment had been
an offering to conjugal unreserve, and her own share in the story, under
a colouring the least favourable to her and the most soothing to him,
had in all likelihood been given also. She was, of course, the object
of their joint dislike.--When they had nothing else to say, it must be
always easy to begin abusing Miss Woodhouse; and the enmity which
they dared not shew in open disrespect to her, found a broader vent in
contemptuous treatment of Harriet.

Mrs. Elton took a great fancy to Jane Fairfax; and from the first. Not
merely when a state of warfare with one young lady might be supposed to
recommend the other, but from the very first; and she was not satisfied
with expressing a natural and reasonable admiration--but without
solicitation, or plea, or privilege, she must be wanting to assist and
befriend her.--Before Emma had forfeited her confidence, and about the
third time of their meeting, she heard all Mrs. Elton's knight-errantry
on the subject.--

“Jane Fairfax is absolutely charming, Miss Woodhouse.--I quite rave
about Jane Fairfax.--A sweet, interesting creature. So mild and
ladylike--and with such talents!--I assure you I think she has very
extraordinary talents. I do not scruple to say that she plays extremely
well. I know enough of music to speak decidedly on that point. Oh! she
is absolutely charming! You will laugh at my warmth--but, upon my word,
I talk of nothing but Jane Fairfax.--And her situation is so calculated
to affect one!--Miss Woodhouse, we must exert ourselves and endeavour
to do something for her. We must bring her forward. Such talent as hers
must not be suffered to remain unknown.--I dare say you have heard those
charming lines of the poet,

        'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
          'And waste its fragrance on the desert air.'

We must not allow them to be verified in sweet Jane Fairfax.”

“I cannot think there is any danger of it,” was Emma's calm answer--“and
when you are better acquainted with Miss Fairfax's situation and
understand what her home has been, with Colonel and Mrs. Campbell, I
have no idea that you will suppose her talents can be unknown.”

“Oh! but dear Miss Woodhouse, she is now in such retirement, such
obscurity, so thrown away.--Whatever advantages she may have enjoyed
with the Campbells are so palpably at an end! And I think she feels it.
I am sure she does. She is very timid and silent. One can see that she
feels the want of encouragement. I like her the better for it. I
must confess it is a recommendation to me. I am a great advocate for
timidity--and I am sure one does not often meet with it.--But in those
who are at all inferior, it is extremely prepossessing. Oh! I assure
you, Jane Fairfax is a very delightful character, and interests me more
than I can express.”

“You appear to feel a great deal--but I am not aware how you or any of
Miss Fairfax's acquaintance here, any of those who have known her longer
than yourself, can shew her any other attention than”--

“My dear Miss Woodhouse, a vast deal may be done by those who dare to
act. You and I need not be afraid. If _we_ set the example, many will
follow it as far as they can; though all have not our situations. _We_
have carriages to fetch and convey her home, and _we_ live in a style
which could not make the addition of Jane Fairfax, at any time, the
least inconvenient.--I should be extremely displeased if Wright were to
send us up such a dinner, as could make me regret having asked _more_
than Jane Fairfax to partake of it. I have no idea of that sort of
thing. It is not likely that I _should_, considering what I have been
used to. My greatest danger, perhaps, in housekeeping, may be quite the
other way, in doing too much, and being too careless of expense. Maple
Grove will probably be my model more than it ought to be--for we do not
at all affect to equal my brother, Mr. Suckling, in income.--However, my
resolution is taken as to noticing Jane Fairfax.--I shall certainly have
her very often at my house, shall introduce her wherever I can, shall
have musical parties to draw out her talents, and shall be constantly
on the watch for an eligible situation. My acquaintance is so very
extensive, that I have little doubt of hearing of something to suit
her shortly.--I shall introduce her, of course, very particularly to my
brother and sister when they come to us. I am sure they will like her
extremely; and when she gets a little acquainted with them, her fears
will completely wear off, for there really is nothing in the manners
of either but what is highly conciliating.--I shall have her very often
indeed while they are with me, and I dare say we shall sometimes find a
seat for her in the barouche-landau in some of our exploring parties.”

“Poor Jane Fairfax!”--thought Emma.--“You have not deserved this. You
may have done wrong with regard to Mr. Dixon, but this is a punishment
beyond what you can have merited!--The kindness and protection of Mrs.
Elton!--'Jane Fairfax and Jane Fairfax.' Heavens! Let me not suppose
that she dares go about, Emma Woodhouse-ing me!--But upon my honour,
there seems no limits to the licentiousness of that woman's tongue!”

Emma had not to listen to such paradings again--to any so exclusively
addressed to herself--so disgustingly decorated with a “dear Miss
Woodhouse.” The change on Mrs. Elton's side soon afterwards appeared,
and she was left in peace--neither forced to be the very particular
friend of Mrs. Elton, nor, under Mrs. Elton's guidance, the very active
patroness of Jane Fairfax, and only sharing with others in a general
way, in knowing what was felt, what was meditated, what was done.

She looked on with some amusement.--Miss Bates's gratitude for
Mrs. Elton's attentions to Jane was in the first style of guileless
simplicity and warmth. She was quite one of her worthies--the
most amiable, affable, delightful woman--just as accomplished and
condescending as Mrs. Elton meant to be considered. Emma's only surprize
was that Jane Fairfax should accept those attentions and tolerate Mrs.
Elton as she seemed to do. She heard of her walking with the Eltons,
sitting with the Eltons, spending a day with the Eltons! This was
astonishing!--She could not have believed it possible that the taste or
the pride of Miss Fairfax could endure such society and friendship as
the Vicarage had to offer.

“She is a riddle, quite a riddle!” said she.--“To chuse to remain here
month after month, under privations of every sort! And now to chuse the
mortification of Mrs. Elton's notice and the penury of her conversation,
rather than return to the superior companions who have always loved her
with such real, generous affection.”

Jane had come to Highbury professedly for three months; the Campbells
were gone to Ireland for three months; but now the Campbells had
promised their daughter to stay at least till Midsummer, and fresh
invitations had arrived for her to join them there. According to Miss
Bates--it all came from her--Mrs. Dixon had written most pressingly.
Would Jane but go, means were to be found, servants sent, friends
contrived--no travelling difficulty allowed to exist; but still she had
declined it!

“She must have some motive, more powerful than appears, for refusing
this invitation,” was Emma's conclusion. “She must be under some sort
of penance, inflicted either by the Campbells or herself. There is great
fear, great caution, great resolution somewhere.--She is _not_ to be
with the _Dixons_. The decree is issued by somebody. But why must she
consent to be with the Eltons?--Here is quite a separate puzzle.”

Upon her speaking her wonder aloud on that part of the subject, before
the few who knew her opinion of Mrs. Elton, Mrs. Weston ventured this
apology for Jane.

“We cannot suppose that she has any great enjoyment at the Vicarage,
my dear Emma--but it is better than being always at home. Her aunt is a
good creature, but, as a constant companion, must be very tiresome. We
must consider what Miss Fairfax quits, before we condemn her taste for
what she goes to.”

“You are right, Mrs. Weston,” said Mr. Knightley warmly, “Miss Fairfax
is as capable as any of us of forming a just opinion of Mrs. Elton.
Could she have chosen with whom to associate, she would not have chosen
her. But (with a reproachful smile at Emma) she receives attentions from
Mrs. Elton, which nobody else pays her.”

Emma felt that Mrs. Weston was giving her a momentary glance; and she
was herself struck by his warmth. With a faint blush, she presently
replied,

“Such attentions as Mrs. Elton's, I should have imagined, would rather
disgust than gratify Miss Fairfax. Mrs. Elton's invitations I should
have imagined any thing but inviting.”

“I should not wonder,” said Mrs. Weston, “if Miss Fairfax were to have
been drawn on beyond her own inclination, by her aunt's eagerness in
accepting Mrs. Elton's civilities for her. Poor Miss Bates may
very likely have committed her niece and hurried her into a greater
appearance of intimacy than her own good sense would have dictated, in
spite of the very natural wish of a little change.”

Both felt rather anxious to hear him speak again; and after a few
minutes silence, he said,

“Another thing must be taken into consideration too--Mrs. Elton does
not talk _to_ Miss Fairfax as she speaks _of_ her. We all know the
difference between the pronouns he or she and thou, the plainest spoken
amongst us; we all feel the influence of a something beyond common
civility in our personal intercourse with each other--a something more
early implanted. We cannot give any body the disagreeable hints that we
may have been very full of the hour before. We feel things differently.
And besides the operation of this, as a general principle, you may be
sure that Miss Fairfax awes Mrs. Elton by her superiority both of mind
and manner; and that, face to face, Mrs. Elton treats her with all the
respect which she has a claim to. Such a woman as Jane Fairfax probably
never fell in Mrs. Elton's way before--and no degree of vanity can
prevent her acknowledging her own comparative littleness in action, if
not in consciousness.”

“I know how highly you think of Jane Fairfax,” said Emma. Little Henry
was in her thoughts, and a mixture of alarm and delicacy made her
irresolute what else to say.

“Yes,” he replied, “any body may know how highly I think of her.”

“And yet,” said Emma, beginning hastily and with an arch look, but soon
stopping--it was better, however, to know the worst at once--she hurried
on--“And yet, perhaps, you may hardly be aware yourself how highly it
is. The extent of your admiration may take you by surprize some day or
other.”

Mr. Knightley was hard at work upon the lower buttons of his thick
leather gaiters, and either the exertion of getting them together, or
some other cause, brought the colour into his face, as he answered,

“Oh! are you there?--But you are miserably behindhand. Mr. Cole gave me
a hint of it six weeks ago.”

He stopped.--Emma felt her foot pressed by Mrs. Weston, and did not
herself know what to think. In a moment he went on--

“That will never be, however, I can assure you. Miss Fairfax, I dare
say, would not have me if I were to ask her--and I am very sure I shall
never ask her.”

Emma returned her friend's pressure with interest; and was pleased
enough to exclaim,

“You are not vain, Mr. Knightley. I will say that for you.”

He seemed hardly to hear her; he was thoughtful--and in a manner which
shewed him not pleased, soon afterwards said,

“So you have been settling that I should marry Jane Fairfax?”

“No indeed I have not. You have scolded me too much for match-making,
for me to presume to take such a liberty with you. What I said just now,
meant nothing. One says those sort of things, of course, without any
idea of a serious meaning. Oh! no, upon my word I have not the smallest
wish for your marrying Jane Fairfax or Jane any body. You would not come
in and sit with us in this comfortable way, if you were married.”

Mr. Knightley was thoughtful again. The result of his reverie was, “No,
Emma, I do not think the extent of my admiration for her will ever take
me by surprize.--I never had a thought of her in that way, I assure
you.” And soon afterwards, “Jane Fairfax is a very charming young
woman--but not even Jane Fairfax is perfect. She has a fault. She has
not the open temper which a man would wish for in a wife.”

Emma could not but rejoice to hear that she had a fault. “Well,” said
she, “and you soon silenced Mr. Cole, I suppose?”

“Yes, very soon. He gave me a quiet hint; I told him he was mistaken;
he asked my pardon and said no more. Cole does not want to be wiser or
wittier than his neighbours.”

“In that respect how unlike dear Mrs. Elton, who wants to be wiser and
wittier than all the world! I wonder how she speaks of the Coles--what
she calls them! How can she find any appellation for them, deep enough
in familiar vulgarity? She calls you, Knightley--what can she do for
Mr. Cole? And so I am not to be surprized that Jane Fairfax accepts
her civilities and consents to be with her. Mrs. Weston, your argument
weighs most with me. I can much more readily enter into the temptation
of getting away from Miss Bates, than I can believe in the triumph of
Miss Fairfax's mind over Mrs. Elton. I have no faith in Mrs. Elton's
acknowledging herself the inferior in thought, word, or deed; or in her
being under any restraint beyond her own scanty rule of good-breeding.
I cannot imagine that she will not be continually insulting her visitor
with praise, encouragement, and offers of service; that she will not be
continually detailing her magnificent intentions, from the procuring her
a permanent situation to the including her in those delightful exploring
parties which are to take place in the barouche-landau.”

“Jane Fairfax has feeling,” said Mr. Knightley--“I do not accuse her
of want of feeling. Her sensibilities, I suspect, are strong--and her
temper excellent in its power of forbearance, patience, self-control;
but it wants openness. She is reserved, more reserved, I think, than
she used to be--And I love an open temper. No--till Cole alluded to my
supposed attachment, it had never entered my head. I saw Jane Fairfax
and conversed with her, with admiration and pleasure always--but with no
thought beyond.”

“Well, Mrs. Weston,” said Emma triumphantly when he left them, “what do
you say now to Mr. Knightley's marrying Jane Fairfax?”

“Why, really, dear Emma, I say that he is so very much occupied by the
idea of _not_ being in love with her, that I should not wonder if it
were to end in his being so at last. Do not beat me.”



CHAPTER XVI


Every body in and about Highbury who had ever visited Mr. Elton, was
disposed to pay him attention on his marriage. Dinner-parties and
evening-parties were made for him and his lady; and invitations flowed
in so fast that she had soon the pleasure of apprehending they were
never to have a disengaged day.

“I see how it is,” said she. “I see what a life I am to lead among you.
Upon my word we shall be absolutely dissipated. We really seem quite
the fashion. If this is living in the country, it is nothing very
formidable. From Monday next to Saturday, I assure you we have not a
disengaged day!--A woman with fewer resources than I have, need not have
been at a loss.”

No invitation came amiss to her. Her Bath habits made evening-parties
perfectly natural to her, and Maple Grove had given her a taste for
dinners. She was a little shocked at the want of two drawing rooms, at
the poor attempt at rout-cakes, and there being no ice in the Highbury
card-parties. Mrs. Bates, Mrs. Perry, Mrs. Goddard and others, were a
good deal behind-hand in knowledge of the world, but she would soon shew
them how every thing ought to be arranged. In the course of the spring
she must return their civilities by one very superior party--in which
her card-tables should be set out with their separate candles and
unbroken packs in the true style--and more waiters engaged for the
evening than their own establishment could furnish, to carry round the
refreshments at exactly the proper hour, and in the proper order.

Emma, in the meanwhile, could not be satisfied without a dinner at
Hartfield for the Eltons. They must not do less than others, or she
should be exposed to odious suspicions, and imagined capable of pitiful
resentment. A dinner there must be. After Emma had talked about it for
ten minutes, Mr. Woodhouse felt no unwillingness, and only made the
usual stipulation of not sitting at the bottom of the table himself,
with the usual regular difficulty of deciding who should do it for him.

The persons to be invited, required little thought. Besides the
Eltons, it must be the Westons and Mr. Knightley; so far it was all of
course--and it was hardly less inevitable that poor little Harriet must
be asked to make the eighth:--but this invitation was not given with
equal satisfaction, and on many accounts Emma was particularly pleased
by Harriet's begging to be allowed to decline it. “She would rather not
be in his company more than she could help. She was not yet quite
able to see him and his charming happy wife together, without feeling
uncomfortable. If Miss Woodhouse would not be displeased, she would
rather stay at home.” It was precisely what Emma would have wished, had
she deemed it possible enough for wishing. She was delighted with the
fortitude of her little friend--for fortitude she knew it was in her to
give up being in company and stay at home; and she could now invite the
very person whom she really wanted to make the eighth, Jane Fairfax.--
Since her last conversation with Mrs. Weston and Mr. Knightley, she
was more conscience-stricken about Jane Fairfax than she had often
been.--Mr. Knightley's words dwelt with her. He had said that Jane
Fairfax received attentions from Mrs. Elton which nobody else paid her.

“This is very true,” said she, “at least as far as relates to me, which
was all that was meant--and it is very shameful.--Of the same age--and
always knowing her--I ought to have been more her friend.--She will
never like me now. I have neglected her too long. But I will shew her
greater attention than I have done.”

Every invitation was successful. They were all disengaged and all
happy.--The preparatory interest of this dinner, however, was not yet
over. A circumstance rather unlucky occurred. The two eldest little
Knightleys were engaged to pay their grandpapa and aunt a visit of some
weeks in the spring, and their papa now proposed bringing them, and
staying one whole day at Hartfield--which one day would be the very day
of this party.--His professional engagements did not allow of his being
put off, but both father and daughter were disturbed by its happening
so. Mr. Woodhouse considered eight persons at dinner together as the
utmost that his nerves could bear--and here would be a ninth--and Emma
apprehended that it would be a ninth very much out of humour at not
being able to come even to Hartfield for forty-eight hours without
falling in with a dinner-party.

She comforted her father better than she could comfort herself, by
representing that though he certainly would make them nine, yet
he always said so little, that the increase of noise would be very
immaterial. She thought it in reality a sad exchange for herself, to
have him with his grave looks and reluctant conversation opposed to her
instead of his brother.

The event was more favourable to Mr. Woodhouse than to Emma. John
Knightley came; but Mr. Weston was unexpectedly summoned to town and
must be absent on the very day. He might be able to join them in the
evening, but certainly not to dinner. Mr. Woodhouse was quite at ease;
and the seeing him so, with the arrival of the little boys and the
philosophic composure of her brother on hearing his fate, removed the
chief of even Emma's vexation.

The day came, the party were punctually assembled, and Mr. John
Knightley seemed early to devote himself to the business of being
agreeable. Instead of drawing his brother off to a window while they
waited for dinner, he was talking to Miss Fairfax. Mrs. Elton,
as elegant as lace and pearls could make her, he looked at in
silence--wanting only to observe enough for Isabella's information--but
Miss Fairfax was an old acquaintance and a quiet girl, and he could talk
to her. He had met her before breakfast as he was returning from a walk
with his little boys, when it had been just beginning to rain. It was
natural to have some civil hopes on the subject, and he said,

“I hope you did not venture far, Miss Fairfax, this morning, or I am
sure you must have been wet.--We scarcely got home in time. I hope you
turned directly.”

“I went only to the post-office,” said she, “and reached home before the
rain was much. It is my daily errand. I always fetch the letters when
I am here. It saves trouble, and is a something to get me out. A walk
before breakfast does me good.”

“Not a walk in the rain, I should imagine.”

“No, but it did not absolutely rain when I set out.”

Mr. John Knightley smiled, and replied,

“That is to say, you chose to have your walk, for you were not six yards
from your own door when I had the pleasure of meeting you; and Henry
and John had seen more drops than they could count long before. The
post-office has a great charm at one period of our lives. When you have
lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going
through the rain for.”

There was a little blush, and then this answer,

“I must not hope to be ever situated as you are, in the midst of every
dearest connexion, and therefore I cannot expect that simply growing
older should make me indifferent about letters.”

“Indifferent! Oh! no--I never conceived you could become indifferent.
Letters are no matter of indifference; they are generally a very
positive curse.”

“You are speaking of letters of business; mine are letters of
friendship.”

“I have often thought them the worst of the two,” replied he coolly.
“Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.”

“Ah! you are not serious now. I know Mr. John Knightley too well--I am
very sure he understands the value of friendship as well as any body. I
can easily believe that letters are very little to you, much less than
to me, but it is not your being ten years older than myself which
makes the difference, it is not age, but situation. You have every
body dearest to you always at hand, I, probably, never shall again;
and therefore till I have outlived all my affections, a post-office,
I think, must always have power to draw me out, in worse weather than
to-day.”

“When I talked of your being altered by time, by the progress of years,”
 said John Knightley, “I meant to imply the change of situation which
time usually brings. I consider one as including the other. Time will
generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily
circle--but that is not the change I had in view for you. As an old
friend, you will allow me to hope, Miss Fairfax, that ten years hence
you may have as many concentrated objects as I have.”

It was kindly said, and very far from giving offence. A pleasant “thank
you” seemed meant to laugh it off, but a blush, a quivering lip, a tear
in the eye, shewed that it was felt beyond a laugh. Her attention was
now claimed by Mr. Woodhouse, who being, according to his custom on such
occasions, making the circle of his guests, and paying his particular
compliments to the ladies, was ending with her--and with all his mildest
urbanity, said,

“I am very sorry to hear, Miss Fairfax, of your being out this morning
in the rain. Young ladies should take care of themselves.--Young ladies
are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their
complexion. My dear, did you change your stockings?”

“Yes, sir, I did indeed; and I am very much obliged by your kind
solicitude about me.”

“My dear Miss Fairfax, young ladies are very sure to be cared for.--I
hope your good grand-mama and aunt are well. They are some of my very
old friends. I wish my health allowed me to be a better neighbour. You
do us a great deal of honour to-day, I am sure. My daughter and I
are both highly sensible of your goodness, and have the greatest
satisfaction in seeing you at Hartfield.”

The kind-hearted, polite old man might then sit down and feel that he
had done his duty, and made every fair lady welcome and easy.

By this time, the walk in the rain had reached Mrs. Elton, and her
remonstrances now opened upon Jane.

“My dear Jane, what is this I hear?--Going to the post-office in the
rain!--This must not be, I assure you.--You sad girl, how could you do
such a thing?--It is a sign I was not there to take care of you.”

Jane very patiently assured her that she had not caught any cold.

“Oh! do not tell _me_. You really are a very sad girl, and do not know
how to take care of yourself.--To the post-office indeed! Mrs. Weston,
did you ever hear the like? You and I must positively exert our
authority.”

“My advice,” said Mrs. Weston kindly and persuasively, “I certainly do
feel tempted to give. Miss Fairfax, you must not run such risks.--Liable
as you have been to severe colds, indeed you ought to be particularly
careful, especially at this time of year. The spring I always think
requires more than common care. Better wait an hour or two, or even
half a day for your letters, than run the risk of bringing on your cough
again. Now do not you feel that you had? Yes, I am sure you are much too
reasonable. You look as if you would not do such a thing again.”

“Oh! she _shall_ _not_ do such a thing again,” eagerly rejoined Mrs.
Elton. “We will not allow her to do such a thing again:”--and nodding
significantly--“there must be some arrangement made, there must indeed.
I shall speak to Mr. E. The man who fetches our letters every morning
(one of our men, I forget his name) shall inquire for yours too and
bring them to you. That will obviate all difficulties you know; and from
_us_ I really think, my dear Jane, you can have no scruple to accept
such an accommodation.”

“You are extremely kind,” said Jane; “but I cannot give up my early
walk. I am advised to be out of doors as much as I can, I must walk
somewhere, and the post-office is an object; and upon my word, I have
scarcely ever had a bad morning before.”

“My dear Jane, say no more about it. The thing is determined, that is
(laughing affectedly) as far as I can presume to determine any thing
without the concurrence of my lord and master. You know, Mrs. Weston,
you and I must be cautious how we express ourselves. But I do flatter
myself, my dear Jane, that my influence is not entirely worn out. If I
meet with no insuperable difficulties therefore, consider that point as
settled.”

“Excuse me,” said Jane earnestly, “I cannot by any means consent to such
an arrangement, so needlessly troublesome to your servant. If the errand
were not a pleasure to me, it could be done, as it always is when I am
not here, by my grandmama's.”

“Oh! my dear; but so much as Patty has to do!--And it is a kindness to
employ our men.”

Jane looked as if she did not mean to be conquered; but instead of
answering, she began speaking again to Mr. John Knightley.

“The post-office is a wonderful establishment!” said she.--“The
regularity and despatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do,
and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!”

“It is certainly very well regulated.”

“So seldom that any negligence or blunder appears! So seldom that
a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the
kingdom, is even carried wrong--and not one in a million, I suppose,
actually lost! And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad
hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder.”

“The clerks grow expert from habit.--They must begin with some quickness
of sight and hand, and exercise improves them. If you want any farther
explanation,” continued he, smiling, “they are paid for it. That is
the key to a great deal of capacity. The public pays and must be served
well.”

The varieties of handwriting were farther talked of, and the usual
observations made.

“I have heard it asserted,” said John Knightley, “that the same sort
of handwriting often prevails in a family; and where the same master
teaches, it is natural enough. But for that reason, I should imagine
the likeness must be chiefly confined to the females, for boys have very
little teaching after an early age, and scramble into any hand they can
get. Isabella and Emma, I think, do write very much alike. I have not
always known their writing apart.”

“Yes,” said his brother hesitatingly, “there is a likeness. I know what
you mean--but Emma's hand is the strongest.”

“Isabella and Emma both write beautifully,” said Mr. Woodhouse; “and
always did. And so does poor Mrs. Weston”--with half a sigh and half a
smile at her.

“I never saw any gentleman's handwriting”--Emma began, looking also at
Mrs. Weston; but stopped, on perceiving that Mrs. Weston was attending
to some one else--and the pause gave her time to reflect, “Now, how am
I going to introduce him?--Am I unequal to speaking his name at once
before all these people? Is it necessary for me to use any roundabout
phrase?--Your Yorkshire friend--your correspondent in Yorkshire;--that
would be the way, I suppose, if I were very bad.--No, I can pronounce
his name without the smallest distress. I certainly get better and
better.--Now for it.”

Mrs. Weston was disengaged and Emma began again--“Mr. Frank Churchill
writes one of the best gentleman's hands I ever saw.”

“I do not admire it,” said Mr. Knightley. “It is too small--wants
strength. It is like a woman's writing.”

This was not submitted to by either lady. They vindicated him against
the base aspersion. “No, it by no means wanted strength--it was not a
large hand, but very clear and certainly strong. Had not Mrs. Weston any
letter about her to produce?” No, she had heard from him very lately,
but having answered the letter, had put it away.

“If we were in the other room,” said Emma, “if I had my writing-desk, I
am sure I could produce a specimen. I have a note of his.--Do not you
remember, Mrs. Weston, employing him to write for you one day?”

“He chose to say he was employed”--

“Well, well, I have that note; and can shew it after dinner to convince
Mr. Knightley.”

“Oh! when a gallant young man, like Mr. Frank Churchill,” said Mr.
Knightley dryly, “writes to a fair lady like Miss Woodhouse, he will, of
course, put forth his best.”

Dinner was on table.--Mrs. Elton, before she could be spoken to, was
ready; and before Mr. Woodhouse had reached her with his request to be
allowed to hand her into the dining-parlour, was saying--

“Must I go first? I really am ashamed of always leading the way.”

Jane's solicitude about fetching her own letters had not escaped Emma.
She had heard and seen it all; and felt some curiosity to know whether
the wet walk of this morning had produced any. She suspected that it
_had_; that it would not have been so resolutely encountered but in full
expectation of hearing from some one very dear, and that it had not been
in vain. She thought there was an air of greater happiness than usual--a
glow both of complexion and spirits.

She could have made an inquiry or two, as to the expedition and the
expense of the Irish mails;--it was at her tongue's end--but she
abstained. She was quite determined not to utter a word that should hurt
Jane Fairfax's feelings; and they followed the other ladies out of the
room, arm in arm, with an appearance of good-will highly becoming to the
beauty and grace of each.



CHAPTER XVII


When the ladies returned to the drawing-room after dinner, Emma found it
hardly possible to prevent their making two distinct parties;--with so
much perseverance in judging and behaving ill did Mrs. Elton engross
Jane Fairfax and slight herself. She and Mrs. Weston were obliged to
be almost always either talking together or silent together. Mrs. Elton
left them no choice. If Jane repressed her for a little time, she
soon began again; and though much that passed between them was in a
half-whisper, especially on Mrs. Elton's side, there was no avoiding
a knowledge of their principal subjects: The post-office--catching
cold--fetching letters--and friendship, were long under discussion;
and to them succeeded one, which must be at least equally unpleasant
to Jane--inquiries whether she had yet heard of any situation likely to
suit her, and professions of Mrs. Elton's meditated activity.

“Here is April come!” said she, “I get quite anxious about you. June
will soon be here.”

“But I have never fixed on June or any other month--merely looked
forward to the summer in general.”

“But have you really heard of nothing?”

“I have not even made any inquiry; I do not wish to make any yet.”

“Oh! my dear, we cannot begin too early; you are not aware of the
difficulty of procuring exactly the desirable thing.”

“I not aware!” said Jane, shaking her head; “dear Mrs. Elton, who can
have thought of it as I have done?”

“But you have not seen so much of the world as I have. You do not know
how many candidates there always are for the _first_ situations. I saw
a vast deal of that in the neighbourhood round Maple Grove. A cousin of
Mr. Suckling, Mrs. Bragge, had such an infinity of applications; every
body was anxious to be in her family, for she moves in the first circle.
Wax-candles in the schoolroom! You may imagine how desirable! Of all
houses in the kingdom Mrs. Bragge's is the one I would most wish to see
you in.”

“Colonel and Mrs. Campbell are to be in town again by midsummer,”
 said Jane. “I must spend some time with them; I am sure they will want
it;--afterwards I may probably be glad to dispose of myself. But I would
not wish you to take the trouble of making any inquiries at present.”

“Trouble! aye, I know your scruples. You are afraid of giving me
trouble; but I assure you, my dear Jane, the Campbells can hardly be
more interested about you than I am. I shall write to Mrs. Partridge in
a day or two, and shall give her a strict charge to be on the look-out
for any thing eligible.”

“Thank you, but I would rather you did not mention the subject to
her; till the time draws nearer, I do not wish to be giving any body
trouble.”

“But, my dear child, the time is drawing near; here is April, and June,
or say even July, is very near, with such business to accomplish before
us. Your inexperience really amuses me! A situation such as you deserve,
and your friends would require for you, is no everyday occurrence,
is not obtained at a moment's notice; indeed, indeed, we must begin
inquiring directly.”

“Excuse me, ma'am, but this is by no means my intention; I make no
inquiry myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends. When
I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being
long unemployed. There are places in town, offices, where inquiry
would soon produce something--Offices for the sale--not quite of human
flesh--but of human intellect.”

“Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at
the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to
the abolition.”

“I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade,” replied Jane;
“governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely
different certainly as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to
the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies. But
I only mean to say that there are advertising offices, and that by
applying to them I should have no doubt of very soon meeting with
something that would do.”

“Something that would do!” repeated Mrs. Elton. “Aye, _that_ may suit
your humble ideas of yourself;--I know what a modest creature you are;
but it will not satisfy your friends to have you taking up with any
thing that may offer, any inferior, commonplace situation, in a family
not moving in a certain circle, or able to command the elegancies of
life.”

“You are very obliging; but as to all that, I am very indifferent;
it would be no object to me to be with the rich; my mortifications, I
think, would only be the greater; I should suffer more from comparison.
A gentleman's family is all that I should condition for.”

“I know you, I know you; you would take up with any thing; but I shall
be a little more nice, and I am sure the good Campbells will be quite
on my side; with your superior talents, you have a right to move in the
first circle. Your musical knowledge alone would entitle you to name
your own terms, have as many rooms as you like, and mix in the family
as much as you chose;--that is--I do not know--if you knew the harp, you
might do all that, I am very sure; but you sing as well as play;--yes, I
really believe you might, even without the harp, stipulate for what
you chose;--and you must and shall be delightfully, honourably and
comfortably settled before the Campbells or I have any rest.”

“You may well class the delight, the honour, and the comfort of such
a situation together,” said Jane, “they are pretty sure to be equal;
however, I am very serious in not wishing any thing to be attempted
at present for me. I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mrs. Elton, I am
obliged to any body who feels for me, but I am quite serious in wishing
nothing to be done till the summer. For two or three months longer I
shall remain where I am, and as I am.”

“And I am quite serious too, I assure you,” replied Mrs. Elton gaily,
“in resolving to be always on the watch, and employing my friends to
watch also, that nothing really unexceptionable may pass us.”

In this style she ran on; never thoroughly stopped by any thing till Mr.
Woodhouse came into the room; her vanity had then a change of object,
and Emma heard her saying in the same half-whisper to Jane,

“Here comes this dear old beau of mine, I protest!--Only think of his
gallantry in coming away before the other men!--what a dear creature
he is;--I assure you I like him excessively. I admire all that quaint,
old-fashioned politeness; it is much more to my taste than modern ease;
modern ease often disgusts me. But this good old Mr. Woodhouse, I wish
you had heard his gallant speeches to me at dinner. Oh! I assure you I
began to think my caro sposo would be absolutely jealous. I fancy I
am rather a favourite; he took notice of my gown. How do you like
it?--Selina's choice--handsome, I think, but I do not know whether it
is not over-trimmed; I have the greatest dislike to the idea of being
over-trimmed--quite a horror of finery. I must put on a few ornaments
now, because it is expected of me. A bride, you know, must appear like
a bride, but my natural taste is all for simplicity; a simple style
of dress is so infinitely preferable to finery. But I am quite in the
minority, I believe; few people seem to value simplicity of dress,--show
and finery are every thing. I have some notion of putting such a
trimming as this to my white and silver poplin. Do you think it will
look well?”

The whole party were but just reassembled in the drawing-room when Mr.
Weston made his appearance among them. He had returned to a late dinner,
and walked to Hartfield as soon as it was over. He had been too much
expected by the best judges, for surprize--but there was great joy. Mr.
Woodhouse was almost as glad to see him now, as he would have been sorry
to see him before. John Knightley only was in mute astonishment.--That
a man who might have spent his evening quietly at home after a day
of business in London, should set off again, and walk half a mile
to another man's house, for the sake of being in mixed company till
bed-time, of finishing his day in the efforts of civility and the noise
of numbers, was a circumstance to strike him deeply. A man who had been
in motion since eight o'clock in the morning, and might now have been
still, who had been long talking, and might have been silent, who had
been in more than one crowd, and might have been alone!--Such a man, to
quit the tranquillity and independence of his own fireside, and on the
evening of a cold sleety April day rush out again into the world!--Could
he by a touch of his finger have instantly taken back his wife, there
would have been a motive; but his coming would probably prolong rather
than break up the party. John Knightley looked at him with amazement,
then shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I could not have believed it
even of _him_.”

Mr. Weston meanwhile, perfectly unsuspicious of the indignation he was
exciting, happy and cheerful as usual, and with all the right of being
principal talker, which a day spent anywhere from home confers, was
making himself agreeable among the rest; and having satisfied the
inquiries of his wife as to his dinner, convincing her that none of all
her careful directions to the servants had been forgotten, and spread
abroad what public news he had heard, was proceeding to a family
communication, which, though principally addressed to Mrs. Weston, he
had not the smallest doubt of being highly interesting to every body in
the room. He gave her a letter, it was from Frank, and to herself; he
had met with it in his way, and had taken the liberty of opening it.

“Read it, read it,” said he, “it will give you pleasure; only a few
lines--will not take you long; read it to Emma.”

The two ladies looked over it together; and he sat smiling and talking
to them the whole time, in a voice a little subdued, but very audible to
every body.

“Well, he is coming, you see; good news, I think. Well, what do you say
to it?--I always told you he would be here again soon, did not I?--Anne,
my dear, did not I always tell you so, and you would not believe me?--In
town next week, you see--at the latest, I dare say; for _she_ is as
impatient as the black gentleman when any thing is to be done; most
likely they will be there to-morrow or Saturday. As to her illness, all
nothing of course. But it is an excellent thing to have Frank among us
again, so near as town. They will stay a good while when they do come,
and he will be half his time with us. This is precisely what I wanted.
Well, pretty good news, is not it? Have you finished it? Has Emma read
it all? Put it up, put it up; we will have a good talk about it some
other time, but it will not do now. I shall only just mention the
circumstance to the others in a common way.”

Mrs. Weston was most comfortably pleased on the occasion. Her looks
and words had nothing to restrain them. She was happy, she knew she was
happy, and knew she ought to be happy. Her congratulations were warm and
open; but Emma could not speak so fluently. _She_ was a little occupied
in weighing her own feelings, and trying to understand the degree of her
agitation, which she rather thought was considerable.

Mr. Weston, however, too eager to be very observant, too communicative
to want others to talk, was very well satisfied with what she did say,
and soon moved away to make the rest of his friends happy by a partial
communication of what the whole room must have overheard already.

It was well that he took every body's joy for granted, or he might
not have thought either Mr. Woodhouse or Mr. Knightley particularly
delighted. They were the first entitled, after Mrs. Weston and Emma, to
be made happy;--from them he would have proceeded to Miss Fairfax, but
she was so deep in conversation with John Knightley, that it would have
been too positive an interruption; and finding himself close to Mrs.
Elton, and her attention disengaged, he necessarily began on the subject
with her.



CHAPTER XVIII


“I hope I shall soon have the pleasure of introducing my son to you,”
 said Mr. Weston.

Mrs. Elton, very willing to suppose a particular compliment intended her
by such a hope, smiled most graciously.

“You have heard of a certain Frank Churchill, I presume,” he
continued--“and know him to be my son, though he does not bear my name.”

“Oh! yes, and I shall be very happy in his acquaintance. I am sure Mr.
Elton will lose no time in calling on him; and we shall both have great
pleasure in seeing him at the Vicarage.”

“You are very obliging.--Frank will be extremely happy, I am sure.--
He is to be in town next week, if not sooner. We have notice of it in a
letter to-day. I met the letters in my way this morning, and seeing my
son's hand, presumed to open it--though it was not directed to me--it
was to Mrs. Weston. She is his principal correspondent, I assure you. I
hardly ever get a letter.”

“And so you absolutely opened what was directed to her! Oh! Mr.
Weston--(laughing affectedly) I must protest against that.--A most
dangerous precedent indeed!--I beg you will not let your neighbours
follow your example.--Upon my word, if this is what I am to expect, we
married women must begin to exert ourselves!--Oh! Mr. Weston, I could
not have believed it of you!”

“Aye, we men are sad fellows. You must take care of yourself, Mrs.
Elton.--This letter tells us--it is a short letter--written in a hurry,
merely to give us notice--it tells us that they are all coming up to
town directly, on Mrs. Churchill's account--she has not been well the
whole winter, and thinks Enscombe too cold for her--so they are all to
move southward without loss of time.”

“Indeed!--from Yorkshire, I think. Enscombe is in Yorkshire?”

“Yes, they are about one hundred and ninety miles from London, a
considerable journey.”

“Yes, upon my word, very considerable. Sixty-five miles farther than
from Maple Grove to London. But what is distance, Mr. Weston, to people
of large fortune?--You would be amazed to hear how my brother, Mr.
Suckling, sometimes flies about. You will hardly believe me--but twice
in one week he and Mr. Bragge went to London and back again with four
horses.”

“The evil of the distance from Enscombe,” said Mr. Weston, “is, that
Mrs. Churchill, _as_ _we_ _understand_, has not been able to leave the
sofa for a week together. In Frank's last letter she complained, he
said, of being too weak to get into her conservatory without having
both his arm and his uncle's! This, you know, speaks a great degree of
weakness--but now she is so impatient to be in town, that she means to
sleep only two nights on the road.--So Frank writes word. Certainly,
delicate ladies have very extraordinary constitutions, Mrs. Elton. You
must grant me that.”

“No, indeed, I shall grant you nothing. I always take the part of my
own sex. I do indeed. I give you notice--You will find me a formidable
antagonist on that point. I always stand up for women--and I assure you,
if you knew how Selina feels with respect to sleeping at an inn, you
would not wonder at Mrs. Churchill's making incredible exertions to
avoid it. Selina says it is quite horror to her--and I believe I have
caught a little of her nicety. She always travels with her own sheets;
an excellent precaution. Does Mrs. Churchill do the same?”

“Depend upon it, Mrs. Churchill does every thing that any other fine
lady ever did. Mrs. Churchill will not be second to any lady in the land
for”--

Mrs. Elton eagerly interposed with,

“Oh! Mr. Weston, do not mistake me. Selina is no fine lady, I assure
you. Do not run away with such an idea.”

“Is not she? Then she is no rule for Mrs. Churchill, who is as thorough
a fine lady as any body ever beheld.”

Mrs. Elton began to think she had been wrong in disclaiming so warmly.
It was by no means her object to have it believed that her sister was
_not_ a fine lady; perhaps there was want of spirit in the pretence of
it;--and she was considering in what way she had best retract, when Mr.
Weston went on.

“Mrs. Churchill is not much in my good graces, as you may suspect--but
this is quite between ourselves. She is very fond of Frank, and
therefore I would not speak ill of her. Besides, she is out of health
now; but _that_ indeed, by her own account, she has always been. I would
not say so to every body, Mrs. Elton, but I have not much faith in Mrs.
Churchill's illness.”

“If she is really ill, why not go to Bath, Mr. Weston?--To Bath, or to
Clifton?” “She has taken it into her head that Enscombe is too cold for
her. The fact is, I suppose, that she is tired of Enscombe. She has now
been a longer time stationary there, than she ever was before, and she
begins to want change. It is a retired place. A fine place, but very
retired.”

“Aye--like Maple Grove, I dare say. Nothing can stand more retired from
the road than Maple Grove. Such an immense plantation all round it! You
seem shut out from every thing--in the most complete retirement.--And
Mrs. Churchill probably has not health or spirits like Selina to enjoy
that sort of seclusion. Or, perhaps she may not have resources enough in
herself to be qualified for a country life. I always say a woman cannot
have too many resources--and I feel very thankful that I have so many
myself as to be quite independent of society.”

“Frank was here in February for a fortnight.”

“So I remember to have heard. He will find an _addition_ to the society
of Highbury when he comes again; that is, if I may presume to call
myself an addition. But perhaps he may never have heard of there being
such a creature in the world.”

This was too loud a call for a compliment to be passed by, and Mr.
Weston, with a very good grace, immediately exclaimed,

“My dear madam! Nobody but yourself could imagine such a thing possible.
Not heard of you!--I believe Mrs. Weston's letters lately have been full
of very little else than Mrs. Elton.”

He had done his duty and could return to his son.

“When Frank left us,” continued he, “it was quite uncertain when we
might see him again, which makes this day's news doubly welcome. It has
been completely unexpected. That is, _I_ always had a strong persuasion
he would be here again soon, I was sure something favourable would turn
up--but nobody believed me. He and Mrs. Weston were both dreadfully
desponding. 'How could he contrive to come? And how could it be supposed
that his uncle and aunt would spare him again?' and so forth--I always
felt that something would happen in our favour; and so it has, you see.
I have observed, Mrs. Elton, in the course of my life, that if things
are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.”

“Very true, Mr. Weston, perfectly true. It is just what I used to say to
a certain gentleman in company in the days of courtship, when, because
things did not go quite right, did not proceed with all the rapidity
which suited his feelings, he was apt to be in despair, and exclaim that
he was sure at this rate it would be _May_ before Hymen's saffron robe
would be put on for us. Oh! the pains I have been at to dispel those
gloomy ideas and give him cheerfuller views! The carriage--we had
disappointments about the carriage;--one morning, I remember, he came to
me quite in despair.”

She was stopped by a slight fit of coughing, and Mr. Weston instantly
seized the opportunity of going on.

“You were mentioning May. May is the very month which Mrs. Churchill
is ordered, or has ordered herself, to spend in some warmer place than
Enscombe--in short, to spend in London; so that we have the agreeable
prospect of frequent visits from Frank the whole spring--precisely the
season of the year which one should have chosen for it: days almost at
the longest; weather genial and pleasant, always inviting one out, and
never too hot for exercise. When he was here before, we made the best
of it; but there was a good deal of wet, damp, cheerless weather;
there always is in February, you know, and we could not do half that we
intended. Now will be the time. This will be complete enjoyment; and I
do not know, Mrs. Elton, whether the uncertainty of our meetings, the
sort of constant expectation there will be of his coming in to-day or
to-morrow, and at any hour, may not be more friendly to happiness than
having him actually in the house. I think it is so. I think it is the
state of mind which gives most spirit and delight. I hope you will be
pleased with my son; but you must not expect a prodigy. He is generally
thought a fine young man, but do not expect a prodigy. Mrs. Weston's
partiality for him is very great, and, as you may suppose, most
gratifying to me. She thinks nobody equal to him.”

“And I assure you, Mr. Weston, I have very little doubt that my opinion
will be decidedly in his favour. I have heard so much in praise of Mr.
Frank Churchill.--At the same time it is fair to observe, that I am one
of those who always judge for themselves, and are by no means implicitly
guided by others. I give you notice that as I find your son, so I shall
judge of him.--I am no flatterer.”

Mr. Weston was musing.

“I hope,” said he presently, “I have not been severe upon poor Mrs.
Churchill. If she is ill I should be sorry to do her injustice; but
there are some traits in her character which make it difficult for me to
speak of her with the forbearance I could wish. You cannot be ignorant,
Mrs. Elton, of my connexion with the family, nor of the treatment I have
met with; and, between ourselves, the whole blame of it is to be laid
to her. She was the instigator. Frank's mother would never have been
slighted as she was but for her. Mr. Churchill has pride; but his pride
is nothing to his wife's: his is a quiet, indolent, gentlemanlike sort
of pride that would harm nobody, and only make himself a little helpless
and tiresome; but her pride is arrogance and insolence! And what
inclines one less to bear, she has no fair pretence of family or blood.
She was nobody when he married her, barely the daughter of a gentleman;
but ever since her being turned into a Churchill she has out-Churchill'd
them all in high and mighty claims: but in herself, I assure you, she is
an upstart.”

“Only think! well, that must be infinitely provoking! I have quite
a horror of upstarts. Maple Grove has given me a thorough disgust to
people of that sort; for there is a family in that neighbourhood who
are such an annoyance to my brother and sister from the airs they give
themselves! Your description of Mrs. Churchill made me think of them
directly. People of the name of Tupman, very lately settled there, and
encumbered with many low connexions, but giving themselves immense airs,
and expecting to be on a footing with the old established families.
A year and a half is the very utmost that they can have lived at West
Hall; and how they got their fortune nobody knows. They came from
Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr. Weston.
One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something
direful in the sound: but nothing more is positively known of the
Tupmans, though a good many things I assure you are suspected; and
yet by their manners they evidently think themselves equal even to
my brother, Mr. Suckling, who happens to be one of their nearest
neighbours. It is infinitely too bad. Mr. Suckling, who has been eleven
years a resident at Maple Grove, and whose father had it before him--I
believe, at least--I am almost sure that old Mr. Suckling had completed
the purchase before his death.”

They were interrupted. Tea was carrying round, and Mr. Weston, having
said all that he wanted, soon took the opportunity of walking away.

After tea, Mr. and Mrs. Weston, and Mr. Elton sat down with Mr.
Woodhouse to cards. The remaining five were left to their own powers,
and Emma doubted their getting on very well; for Mr. Knightley seemed
little disposed for conversation; Mrs. Elton was wanting notice, which
nobody had inclination to pay, and she was herself in a worry of spirits
which would have made her prefer being silent.

Mr. John Knightley proved more talkative than his brother. He was to
leave them early the next day; and he soon began with--

“Well, Emma, I do not believe I have any thing more to say about the
boys; but you have your sister's letter, and every thing is down at full
length there we may be sure. My charge would be much more concise than
her's, and probably not much in the same spirit; all that I have to
recommend being comprised in, do not spoil them, and do not physic
them.”

“I rather hope to satisfy you both,” said Emma, “for I shall do all
in my power to make them happy, which will be enough for Isabella; and
happiness must preclude false indulgence and physic.”

“And if you find them troublesome, you must send them home again.”

“That is very likely. You think so, do not you?”

“I hope I am aware that they may be too noisy for your father--or even
may be some encumbrance to you, if your visiting engagements continue to
increase as much as they have done lately.”

“Increase!”

“Certainly; you must be sensible that the last half-year has made a
great difference in your way of life.”

“Difference! No indeed I am not.”

“There can be no doubt of your being much more engaged with company than
you used to be. Witness this very time. Here am I come down for only
one day, and you are engaged with a dinner-party!--When did it happen
before, or any thing like it? Your neighbourhood is increasing, and you
mix more with it. A little while ago, every letter to Isabella brought
an account of fresh gaieties; dinners at Mr. Cole's, or balls at the
Crown. The difference which Randalls, Randalls alone makes in your
goings-on, is very great.”

“Yes,” said his brother quickly, “it is Randalls that does it all.”

“Very well--and as Randalls, I suppose, is not likely to have less
influence than heretofore, it strikes me as a possible thing, Emma, that
Henry and John may be sometimes in the way. And if they are, I only beg
you to send them home.”

“No,” cried Mr. Knightley, “that need not be the consequence. Let them
be sent to Donwell. I shall certainly be at leisure.”

“Upon my word,” exclaimed Emma, “you amuse me! I should like to know how
many of all my numerous engagements take place without your being of
the party; and why I am to be supposed in danger of wanting leisure to
attend to the little boys. These amazing engagements of mine--what have
they been? Dining once with the Coles--and having a ball talked of,
which never took place. I can understand you--(nodding at Mr. John
Knightley)--your good fortune in meeting with so many of your friends at
once here, delights you too much to pass unnoticed. But you, (turning to
Mr. Knightley,) who know how very, very seldom I am ever two hours from
Hartfield, why you should foresee such a series of dissipation for me, I
cannot imagine. And as to my dear little boys, I must say, that if Aunt
Emma has not time for them, I do not think they would fare much better
with Uncle Knightley, who is absent from home about five hours where she
is absent one--and who, when he is at home, is either reading to himself
or settling his accounts.”

Mr. Knightley seemed to be trying not to smile; and succeeded without
difficulty, upon Mrs. Elton's beginning to talk to him.




VOLUME III



CHAPTER I


A very little quiet reflection was enough to satisfy Emma as to the
nature of her agitation on hearing this news of Frank Churchill. She
was soon convinced that it was not for herself she was feeling at all
apprehensive or embarrassed; it was for him. Her own attachment had
really subsided into a mere nothing; it was not worth thinking of;--but
if he, who had undoubtedly been always so much the most in love of the
two, were to be returning with the same warmth of sentiment which he had
taken away, it would be very distressing. If a separation of two
months should not have cooled him, there were dangers and evils before
her:--caution for him and for herself would be necessary. She did
not mean to have her own affections entangled again, and it would be
incumbent on her to avoid any encouragement of his.

She wished she might be able to keep him from an absolute declaration.
That would be so very painful a conclusion of their present
acquaintance! and yet, she could not help rather anticipating something
decisive. She felt as if the spring would not pass without bringing a
crisis, an event, a something to alter her present composed and tranquil
state.

It was not very long, though rather longer than Mr. Weston had foreseen,
before she had the power of forming some opinion of Frank Churchill's
feelings. The Enscombe family were not in town quite so soon as had been
imagined, but he was at Highbury very soon afterwards. He rode down
for a couple of hours; he could not yet do more; but as he came from
Randalls immediately to Hartfield, she could then exercise all her quick
observation, and speedily determine how he was influenced, and how she
must act. They met with the utmost friendliness. There could be no doubt
of his great pleasure in seeing her. But she had an almost instant doubt
of his caring for her as he had done, of his feeling the same tenderness
in the same degree. She watched him well. It was a clear thing he was
less in love than he had been. Absence, with the conviction probably
of her indifference, had produced this very natural and very desirable
effect.

He was in high spirits; as ready to talk and laugh as ever, and seemed
delighted to speak of his former visit, and recur to old stories: and he
was not without agitation. It was not in his calmness that she read
his comparative difference. He was not calm; his spirits were evidently
fluttered; there was restlessness about him. Lively as he was, it seemed
a liveliness that did not satisfy himself; but what decided her belief
on the subject, was his staying only a quarter of an hour, and hurrying
away to make other calls in Highbury. “He had seen a group of old
acquaintance in the street as he passed--he had not stopped, he would
not stop for more than a word--but he had the vanity to think they would
be disappointed if he did not call, and much as he wished to stay longer
at Hartfield, he must hurry off.” She had no doubt as to his being less
in love--but neither his agitated spirits, nor his hurrying away, seemed
like a perfect cure; and she was rather inclined to think it implied a
dread of her returning power, and a discreet resolution of not trusting
himself with her long.

This was the only visit from Frank Churchill in the course of ten days.
He was often hoping, intending to come--but was always prevented. His
aunt could not bear to have him leave her. Such was his own account at
Randall's. If he were quite sincere, if he really tried to come, it was
to be inferred that Mrs. Churchill's removal to London had been of no
service to the wilful or nervous part of her disorder. That she was
really ill was very certain; he had declared himself convinced of it, at
Randalls. Though much might be fancy, he could not doubt, when he looked
back, that she was in a weaker state of health than she had been half a
year ago. He did not believe it to proceed from any thing that care
and medicine might not remove, or at least that she might not have many
years of existence before her; but he could not be prevailed on, by all
his father's doubts, to say that her complaints were merely imaginary,
or that she was as strong as ever.

It soon appeared that London was not the place for her. She could
not endure its noise. Her nerves were under continual irritation and
suffering; and by the ten days' end, her nephew's letter to Randalls
communicated a change of plan. They were going to remove immediately to
Richmond. Mrs. Churchill had been recommended to the medical skill of
an eminent person there, and had otherwise a fancy for the place. A
ready-furnished house in a favourite spot was engaged, and much benefit
expected from the change.

Emma heard that Frank wrote in the highest spirits of this arrangement,
and seemed most fully to appreciate the blessing of having two months
before him of such near neighbourhood to many dear friends--for the
house was taken for May and June. She was told that now he wrote with
the greatest confidence of being often with them, almost as often as he
could even wish.

Emma saw how Mr. Weston understood these joyous prospects. He was
considering her as the source of all the happiness they offered. She
hoped it was not so. Two months must bring it to the proof.

Mr. Weston's own happiness was indisputable. He was quite delighted.
It was the very circumstance he could have wished for. Now, it would be
really having Frank in their neighbourhood. What were nine miles to
a young man?--An hour's ride. He would be always coming over. The
difference in that respect of Richmond and London was enough to make
the whole difference of seeing him always and seeing him never. Sixteen
miles--nay, eighteen--it must be full eighteen to Manchester-street--was
a serious obstacle. Were he ever able to get away, the day would be
spent in coming and returning. There was no comfort in having him in
London; he might as well be at Enscombe; but Richmond was the very
distance for easy intercourse. Better than nearer!

One good thing was immediately brought to a certainty by this
removal,--the ball at the Crown. It had not been forgotten before,
but it had been soon acknowledged vain to attempt to fix a day. Now,
however, it was absolutely to be; every preparation was resumed, and
very soon after the Churchills had removed to Richmond, a few lines from
Frank, to say that his aunt felt already much better for the change, and
that he had no doubt of being able to join them for twenty-four hours at
any given time, induced them to name as early a day as possible.

Mr. Weston's ball was to be a real thing. A very few to-morrows stood
between the young people of Highbury and happiness.

Mr. Woodhouse was resigned. The time of year lightened the evil to him.
May was better for every thing than February. Mrs. Bates was engaged to
spend the evening at Hartfield, James had due notice, and he sanguinely
hoped that neither dear little Henry nor dear little John would have any
thing the matter with them, while dear Emma were gone.



CHAPTER II


No misfortune occurred, again to prevent the ball. The day approached,
the day arrived; and after a morning of some anxious watching, Frank
Churchill, in all the certainty of his own self, reached Randalls before
dinner, and every thing was safe.

No second meeting had there yet been between him and Emma. The room
at the Crown was to witness it;--but it would be better than a
common meeting in a crowd. Mr. Weston had been so very earnest in his
entreaties for her arriving there as soon as possible after themselves,
for the purpose of taking her opinion as to the propriety and comfort of
the rooms before any other persons came, that she could not refuse him,
and must therefore spend some quiet interval in the young man's company.
She was to convey Harriet, and they drove to the Crown in good time, the
Randalls party just sufficiently before them.

Frank Churchill seemed to have been on the watch; and though he did not
say much, his eyes declared that he meant to have a delightful evening.
They all walked about together, to see that every thing was as it should
be; and within a few minutes were joined by the contents of another
carriage, which Emma could not hear the sound of at first, without great
surprize. “So unreasonably early!” she was going to exclaim; but she
presently found that it was a family of old friends, who were coming,
like herself, by particular desire, to help Mr. Weston's judgment; and
they were so very closely followed by another carriage of cousins,
who had been entreated to come early with the same distinguishing
earnestness, on the same errand, that it seemed as if half the company
might soon be collected together for the purpose of preparatory
inspection.

Emma perceived that her taste was not the only taste on which Mr. Weston
depended, and felt, that to be the favourite and intimate of a man
who had so many intimates and confidantes, was not the very first
distinction in the scale of vanity. She liked his open manners, but
a little less of open-heartedness would have made him a higher
character.--General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a
man what he ought to be.--She could fancy such a man. The whole party
walked about, and looked, and praised again; and then, having nothing
else to do, formed a sort of half-circle round the fire, to observe
in their various modes, till other subjects were started, that, though
_May_, a fire in the evening was still very pleasant.

Emma found that it was not Mr. Weston's fault that the number of privy
councillors was not yet larger. They had stopped at Mrs. Bates's door
to offer the use of their carriage, but the aunt and niece were to be
brought by the Eltons.

Frank was standing by her, but not steadily; there was a restlessness,
which shewed a mind not at ease. He was looking about, he was going to
the door, he was watching for the sound of other carriages,--impatient
to begin, or afraid of being always near her.

Mrs. Elton was spoken of. “I think she must be here soon,” said he. “I
have a great curiosity to see Mrs. Elton, I have heard so much of her.
It cannot be long, I think, before she comes.”

A carriage was heard. He was on the move immediately; but coming back,
said,

“I am forgetting that I am not acquainted with her. I have never seen
either Mr. or Mrs. Elton. I have no business to put myself forward.”

Mr. and Mrs. Elton appeared; and all the smiles and the proprieties
passed.

“But Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax!” said Mr. Weston, looking about. “We
thought you were to bring them.”

The mistake had been slight. The carriage was sent for them now. Emma
longed to know what Frank's first opinion of Mrs. Elton might be; how
he was affected by the studied elegance of her dress, and her smiles of
graciousness. He was immediately qualifying himself to form an opinion,
by giving her very proper attention, after the introduction had passed.

In a few minutes the carriage returned.--Somebody talked of rain.--“I
will see that there are umbrellas, sir,” said Frank to his father:
“Miss Bates must not be forgotten:” and away he went. Mr. Weston was
following; but Mrs. Elton detained him, to gratify him by her opinion
of his son; and so briskly did she begin, that the young man himself,
though by no means moving slowly, could hardly be out of hearing.

“A very fine young man indeed, Mr. Weston. You know I candidly told you
I should form my own opinion; and I am happy to say that I am extremely
pleased with him.--You may believe me. I never compliment. I think him
a very handsome young man, and his manners are precisely what I like and
approve--so truly the gentleman, without the least conceit or puppyism.
You must know I have a vast dislike to puppies--quite a horror of them.
They were never tolerated at Maple Grove. Neither Mr. Suckling nor
me had ever any patience with them; and we used sometimes to say very
cutting things! Selina, who is mild almost to a fault, bore with them
much better.”

While she talked of his son, Mr. Weston's attention was chained; but
when she got to Maple Grove, he could recollect that there were ladies
just arriving to be attended to, and with happy smiles must hurry away.

Mrs. Elton turned to Mrs. Weston. “I have no doubt of its being our
carriage with Miss Bates and Jane. Our coachman and horses are so
extremely expeditious!--I believe we drive faster than any body.--What
a pleasure it is to send one's carriage for a friend!--I understand you
were so kind as to offer, but another time it will be quite unnecessary.
You may be very sure I shall always take care of _them_.”

Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax, escorted by the two gentlemen, walked into
the room; and Mrs. Elton seemed to think it as much her duty as Mrs.
Weston's to receive them. Her gestures and movements might be understood
by any one who looked on like Emma; but her words, every body's words,
were soon lost under the incessant flow of Miss Bates, who came in
talking, and had not finished her speech under many minutes after her
being admitted into the circle at the fire. As the door opened she was
heard,

“So very obliging of you!--No rain at all. Nothing to signify. I do not
care for myself. Quite thick shoes. And Jane declares--Well!--(as soon
as she was within the door) Well! This is brilliant indeed!--This is
admirable!--Excellently contrived, upon my word. Nothing wanting. Could
not have imagined it.--So well lighted up!--Jane, Jane, look!--did you
ever see any thing? Oh! Mr. Weston, you must really have had Aladdin's
lamp. Good Mrs. Stokes would not know her own room again. I saw her as
I came in; she was standing in the entrance. 'Oh! Mrs. Stokes,' said
I--but I had not time for more.” She was now met by Mrs. Weston.--“Very
well, I thank you, ma'am. I hope you are quite well. Very happy to hear
it. So afraid you might have a headache!--seeing you pass by so often,
and knowing how much trouble you must have. Delighted to hear it indeed.
Ah! dear Mrs. Elton, so obliged to you for the carriage!--excellent
time. Jane and I quite ready. Did not keep the horses a moment. Most
comfortable carriage.--Oh! and I am sure our thanks are due to you,
Mrs. Weston, on that score. Mrs. Elton had most kindly sent Jane a note,
or we should have been.--But two such offers in one day!--Never were
such neighbours. I said to my mother, 'Upon my word, ma'am--.' Thank
you, my mother is remarkably well. Gone to Mr. Woodhouse's. I made her
take her shawl--for the evenings are not warm--her large new shawl--
Mrs. Dixon's wedding-present.--So kind of her to think of my mother!
Bought at Weymouth, you know--Mr. Dixon's choice. There were three
others, Jane says, which they hesitated about some time. Colonel
Campbell rather preferred an olive. My dear Jane, are you sure you did
not wet your feet?--It was but a drop or two, but I am so afraid:--but
Mr. Frank Churchill was so extremely--and there was a mat to step
upon--I shall never forget his extreme politeness.--Oh! Mr. Frank
Churchill, I must tell you my mother's spectacles have never been in
fault since; the rivet never came out again. My mother often talks of
your good-nature. Does not she, Jane?--Do not we often talk of Mr. Frank
Churchill?--Ah! here's Miss Woodhouse.--Dear Miss Woodhouse, how do
you do?--Very well I thank you, quite well. This is meeting quite
in fairy-land!--Such a transformation!--Must not compliment, I know
(eyeing Emma most complacently)--that would be rude--but upon my word,
Miss Woodhouse, you do look--how do you like Jane's hair?--You are
a judge.--She did it all herself. Quite wonderful how she does her
hair!--No hairdresser from London I think could.--Ah! Dr. Hughes I
declare--and Mrs. Hughes. Must go and speak to Dr. and Mrs. Hughes for a
moment.--How do you do? How do you do?--Very well, I thank you. This
is delightful, is not it?--Where's dear Mr. Richard?--Oh! there he is.
Don't disturb him. Much better employed talking to the young ladies. How
do you do, Mr. Richard?--I saw you the other day as you rode through
the town--Mrs. Otway, I protest!--and good Mr. Otway, and Miss Otway
and Miss Caroline.--Such a host of friends!--and Mr. George and Mr.
Arthur!--How do you do? How do you all do?--Quite well, I am much
obliged to you. Never better.--Don't I hear another carriage?--Who can
this be?--very likely the worthy Coles.--Upon my word, this is charming
to be standing about among such friends! And such a noble fire!--I am
quite roasted. No coffee, I thank you, for me--never take coffee.--A
little tea if you please, sir, by and bye,--no hurry--Oh! here it comes.
Every thing so good!”

Frank Churchill returned to his station by Emma; and as soon as Miss
Bates was quiet, she found herself necessarily overhearing the discourse
of Mrs. Elton and Miss Fairfax, who were standing a little way behind
her.--He was thoughtful. Whether he were overhearing too, she could not
determine. After a good many compliments to Jane on her dress and look,
compliments very quietly and properly taken, Mrs. Elton was evidently
wanting to be complimented herself--and it was, “How do you like
my gown?--How do you like my trimming?--How has Wright done my
hair?”--with many other relative questions, all answered with patient
politeness. Mrs. Elton then said, “Nobody can think less of dress in
general than I do--but upon such an occasion as this, when every body's
eyes are so much upon me, and in compliment to the Westons--who I have
no doubt are giving this ball chiefly to do me honour--I would not wish
to be inferior to others. And I see very few pearls in the room except
mine.--So Frank Churchill is a capital dancer, I understand.--We shall
see if our styles suit.--A fine young man certainly is Frank Churchill.
I like him very well.”

At this moment Frank began talking so vigorously, that Emma could not
but imagine he had overheard his own praises, and did not want to hear
more;--and the voices of the ladies were drowned for a while, till
another suspension brought Mrs. Elton's tones again distinctly
forward.--Mr. Elton had just joined them, and his wife was exclaiming,

“Oh! you have found us out at last, have you, in our seclusion?--I was
this moment telling Jane, I thought you would begin to be impatient for
tidings of us.”

“Jane!”--repeated Frank Churchill, with a look of surprize and
displeasure.--“That is easy--but Miss Fairfax does not disapprove it, I
suppose.”

“How do you like Mrs. Elton?” said Emma in a whisper.

“Not at all.”

“You are ungrateful.”

“Ungrateful!--What do you mean?” Then changing from a frown to a
smile--“No, do not tell me--I do not want to know what you mean.--Where
is my father?--When are we to begin dancing?”

Emma could hardly understand him; he seemed in an odd humour. He walked
off to find his father, but was quickly back again with both Mr. and
Mrs. Weston. He had met with them in a little perplexity, which must be
laid before Emma. It had just occurred to Mrs. Weston that Mrs. Elton
must be asked to begin the ball; that she would expect it; which
interfered with all their wishes of giving Emma that distinction.--Emma
heard the sad truth with fortitude.

“And what are we to do for a proper partner for her?” said Mr. Weston.
“She will think Frank ought to ask her.”

Frank turned instantly to Emma, to claim her former promise; and
boasted himself an engaged man, which his father looked his most perfect
approbation of--and it then appeared that Mrs. Weston was wanting _him_
to dance with Mrs. Elton himself, and that their business was to help to
persuade him into it, which was done pretty soon.--Mr. Weston and Mrs.
Elton led the way, Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Woodhouse followed.
Emma must submit to stand second to Mrs. Elton, though she had always
considered the ball as peculiarly for her. It was almost enough to make
her think of marrying. Mrs. Elton had undoubtedly the advantage, at this
time, in vanity completely gratified; for though she had intended to
begin with Frank Churchill, she could not lose by the change. Mr. Weston
might be his son's superior.--In spite of this little rub, however,
Emma was smiling with enjoyment, delighted to see the respectable length
of the set as it was forming, and to feel that she had so many hours
of unusual festivity before her.--She was more disturbed by Mr.
Knightley's not dancing than by any thing else.--There he was, among
the standers-by, where he ought not to be; he ought to be dancing,--not
classing himself with the husbands, and fathers, and whist-players, who
were pretending to feel an interest in the dance till their rubbers were
made up,--so young as he looked!--He could not have appeared to greater
advantage perhaps anywhere, than where he had placed himself. His tall,
firm, upright figure, among the bulky forms and stooping shoulders of
the elderly men, was such as Emma felt must draw every body's eyes;
and, excepting her own partner, there was not one among the whole row of
young men who could be compared with him.--He moved a few steps nearer,
and those few steps were enough to prove in how gentlemanlike a manner,
with what natural grace, he must have danced, would he but take the
trouble.--Whenever she caught his eye, she forced him to smile; but
in general he was looking grave. She wished he could love a ballroom
better, and could like Frank Churchill better.--He seemed often
observing her. She must not flatter herself that he thought of her
dancing, but if he were criticising her behaviour, she did not feel
afraid. There was nothing like flirtation between her and her partner.
They seemed more like cheerful, easy friends, than lovers. That Frank
Churchill thought less of her than he had done, was indubitable.

The ball proceeded pleasantly. The anxious cares, the incessant
attentions of Mrs. Weston, were not thrown away. Every body seemed
happy; and the praise of being a delightful ball, which is seldom
bestowed till after a ball has ceased to be, was repeatedly given in
the very beginning of the existence of this. Of very important, very
recordable events, it was not more productive than such meetings usually
are. There was one, however, which Emma thought something of.--The two
last dances before supper were begun, and Harriet had no partner;--the
only young lady sitting down;--and so equal had been hitherto the
number of dancers, that how there could be any one disengaged was the
wonder!--But Emma's wonder lessened soon afterwards, on seeing Mr. Elton
sauntering about. He would not ask Harriet to dance if it were possible
to be avoided: she was sure he would not--and she was expecting him
every moment to escape into the card-room.

Escape, however, was not his plan. He came to the part of the room where
the sitters-by were collected, spoke to some, and walked about in front
of them, as if to shew his liberty, and his resolution of maintaining
it. He did not omit being sometimes directly before Miss Smith, or
speaking to those who were close to her.--Emma saw it. She was not yet
dancing; she was working her way up from the bottom, and had therefore
leisure to look around, and by only turning her head a little she saw
it all. When she was half-way up the set, the whole group were exactly
behind her, and she would no longer allow her eyes to watch; but Mr.
Elton was so near, that she heard every syllable of a dialogue which
just then took place between him and Mrs. Weston; and she perceived that
his wife, who was standing immediately above her, was not only
listening also, but even encouraging him by significant glances.--The
kind-hearted, gentle Mrs. Weston had left her seat to join him and say,
“Do not you dance, Mr. Elton?” to which his prompt reply was, “Most
readily, Mrs. Weston, if you will dance with me.”

“Me!--oh! no--I would get you a better partner than myself. I am no
dancer.”

“If Mrs. Gilbert wishes to dance,” said he, “I shall have great
pleasure, I am sure--for, though beginning to feel myself rather an old
married man, and that my dancing days are over, it would give me very
great pleasure at any time to stand up with an old friend like Mrs.
Gilbert.”

“Mrs. Gilbert does not mean to dance, but there is a young lady
disengaged whom I should be very glad to see dancing--Miss Smith.” “Miss
Smith!--oh!--I had not observed.--You are extremely obliging--and if I
were not an old married man.--But my dancing days are over, Mrs. Weston.
You will excuse me. Any thing else I should be most happy to do, at your
command--but my dancing days are over.”

Mrs. Weston said no more; and Emma could imagine with what surprize and
mortification she must be returning to her seat. This was Mr. Elton! the
amiable, obliging, gentle Mr. Elton.--She looked round for a moment; he
had joined Mr. Knightley at a little distance, and was arranging himself
for settled conversation, while smiles of high glee passed between him
and his wife.

She would not look again. Her heart was in a glow, and she feared her
face might be as hot.

In another moment a happier sight caught her;--Mr. Knightley leading
Harriet to the set!--Never had she been more surprized, seldom more
delighted, than at that instant. She was all pleasure and gratitude,
both for Harriet and herself, and longed to be thanking him; and though
too distant for speech, her countenance said much, as soon as she could
catch his eye again.

His dancing proved to be just what she had believed it, extremely good;
and Harriet would have seemed almost too lucky, if it had not been for
the cruel state of things before, and for the very complete enjoyment
and very high sense of the distinction which her happy features
announced. It was not thrown away on her, she bounded higher than ever,
flew farther down the middle, and was in a continual course of smiles.

Mr. Elton had retreated into the card-room, looking (Emma trusted) very
foolish. She did not think he was quite so hardened as his wife, though
growing very like her;--_she_ spoke some of her feelings, by observing
audibly to her partner,

“Knightley has taken pity on poor little Miss Smith!--Very good-natured,
I declare.”

Supper was announced. The move began; and Miss Bates might be heard from
that moment, without interruption, till her being seated at table and
taking up her spoon.

“Jane, Jane, my dear Jane, where are you?--Here is your tippet. Mrs.
Weston begs you to put on your tippet. She says she is afraid there will
be draughts in the passage, though every thing has been done--One door
nailed up--Quantities of matting--My dear Jane, indeed you must.
Mr. Churchill, oh! you are too obliging! How well you put it on!--so
gratified! Excellent dancing indeed!--Yes, my dear, I ran home, as I
said I should, to help grandmama to bed, and got back again, and
nobody missed me.--I set off without saying a word, just as I told you.
Grandmama was quite well, had a charming evening with Mr. Woodhouse, a
vast deal of chat, and backgammon.--Tea was made downstairs, biscuits
and baked apples and wine before she came away: amazing luck in some
of her throws: and she inquired a great deal about you, how you were
amused, and who were your partners. 'Oh!' said I, 'I shall not forestall
Jane; I left her dancing with Mr. George Otway; she will love to tell
you all about it herself to-morrow: her first partner was Mr. Elton,
I do not know who will ask her next, perhaps Mr. William Cox.' My dear
sir, you are too obliging.--Is there nobody you would not rather?--I am
not helpless. Sir, you are most kind. Upon my word, Jane on one arm, and
me on the other!--Stop, stop, let us stand a little back, Mrs. Elton is
going; dear Mrs. Elton, how elegant she looks!--Beautiful lace!--Now we
all follow in her train. Quite the queen of the evening!--Well, here we
are at the passage. Two steps, Jane, take care of the two steps. Oh! no,
there is but one. Well, I was persuaded there were two. How very odd!
I was convinced there were two, and there is but one. I never saw any
thing equal to the comfort and style--Candles everywhere.--I was telling
you of your grandmama, Jane,--There was a little disappointment.--The
baked apples and biscuits, excellent in their way, you know; but there
was a delicate fricassee of sweetbread and some asparagus brought in at
first, and good Mr. Woodhouse, not thinking the asparagus quite boiled
enough, sent it all out again. Now there is nothing grandmama loves
better than sweetbread and asparagus--so she was rather disappointed,
but we agreed we would not speak of it to any body, for fear of
its getting round to dear Miss Woodhouse, who would be so very much
concerned!--Well, this is brilliant! I am all amazement! could not have
supposed any thing!--Such elegance and profusion!--I have seen nothing
like it since--Well, where shall we sit? where shall we sit? Anywhere,
so that Jane is not in a draught. Where _I_ sit is of no consequence.
Oh! do you recommend this side?--Well, I am sure, Mr. Churchill--only
it seems too good--but just as you please. What you direct in this house
cannot be wrong. Dear Jane, how shall we ever recollect half the dishes
for grandmama? Soup too! Bless me! I should not be helped so soon, but
it smells most excellent, and I cannot help beginning.”

Emma had no opportunity of speaking to Mr. Knightley till after supper;
but, when they were all in the ballroom again, her eyes invited
him irresistibly to come to her and be thanked. He was warm in his
reprobation of Mr. Elton's conduct; it had been unpardonable rudeness;
and Mrs. Elton's looks also received the due share of censure.

“They aimed at wounding more than Harriet,” said he. “Emma, why is it
that they are your enemies?”

He looked with smiling penetration; and, on receiving no answer, added,
“_She_ ought not to be angry with you, I suspect, whatever he may
be.--To that surmise, you say nothing, of course; but confess, Emma,
that you did want him to marry Harriet.”

“I did,” replied Emma, “and they cannot forgive me.”

He shook his head; but there was a smile of indulgence with it, and he
only said,

“I shall not scold you. I leave you to your own reflections.”

“Can you trust me with such flatterers?--Does my vain spirit ever tell
me I am wrong?”

“Not your vain spirit, but your serious spirit.--If one leads you wrong,
I am sure the other tells you of it.”

“I do own myself to have been completely mistaken in Mr. Elton. There is
a littleness about him which you discovered, and which I did not: and I
was fully convinced of his being in love with Harriet. It was through a
series of strange blunders!”

“And, in return for your acknowledging so much, I will do you the
justice to say, that you would have chosen for him better than he has
chosen for himself.--Harriet Smith has some first-rate qualities, which
Mrs. Elton is totally without. An unpretending, single-minded, artless
girl--infinitely to be preferred by any man of sense and taste to such a
woman as Mrs. Elton. I found Harriet more conversable than I expected.”

Emma was extremely gratified.--They were interrupted by the bustle of
Mr. Weston calling on every body to begin dancing again.

“Come Miss Woodhouse, Miss Otway, Miss Fairfax, what are you all
doing?--Come Emma, set your companions the example. Every body is lazy!
Every body is asleep!”

“I am ready,” said Emma, “whenever I am wanted.”

“Whom are you going to dance with?” asked Mr. Knightley.

She hesitated a moment, and then replied, “With you, if you will ask
me.”

“Will you?” said he, offering his hand.

“Indeed I will. You have shewn that you can dance, and you know we are
not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.”

“Brother and sister! no, indeed.”



CHAPTER III


This little explanation with Mr. Knightley gave Emma considerable
pleasure. It was one of the agreeable recollections of the ball, which
she walked about the lawn the next morning to enjoy.--She was extremely
glad that they had come to so good an understanding respecting the
Eltons, and that their opinions of both husband and wife were so much
alike; and his praise of Harriet, his concession in her favour, was
peculiarly gratifying. The impertinence of the Eltons, which for a few
minutes had threatened to ruin the rest of her evening, had been the
occasion of some of its highest satisfactions; and she looked forward
to another happy result--the cure of Harriet's infatuation.--From
Harriet's manner of speaking of the circumstance before they quitted the
ballroom, she had strong hopes. It seemed as if her eyes were suddenly
opened, and she were enabled to see that Mr. Elton was not the superior
creature she had believed him. The fever was over, and Emma could
harbour little fear of the pulse being quickened again by injurious
courtesy. She depended on the evil feelings of the Eltons for
supplying all the discipline of pointed neglect that could be farther
requisite.--Harriet rational, Frank Churchill not too much in love, and
Mr. Knightley not wanting to quarrel with her, how very happy a summer
must be before her!

She was not to see Frank Churchill this morning. He had told her that he
could not allow himself the pleasure of stopping at Hartfield, as he was
to be at home by the middle of the day. She did not regret it.

Having arranged all these matters, looked them through, and put them all
to rights, she was just turning to the house with spirits freshened up
for the demands of the two little boys, as well as of their grandpapa,
when the great iron sweep-gate opened, and two persons entered whom she
had never less expected to see together--Frank Churchill, with Harriet
leaning on his arm--actually Harriet!--A moment sufficed to convince
her that something extraordinary had happened. Harriet looked white
and frightened, and he was trying to cheer her.--The iron gates and the
front-door were not twenty yards asunder;--they were all three soon in
the hall, and Harriet immediately sinking into a chair fainted away.

A young lady who faints, must be recovered; questions must be answered,
and surprizes be explained. Such events are very interesting, but the
suspense of them cannot last long. A few minutes made Emma acquainted
with the whole.

Miss Smith, and Miss Bickerton, another parlour boarder at Mrs.
Goddard's, who had been also at the ball, had walked out together, and
taken a road, the Richmond road, which, though apparently public enough
for safety, had led them into alarm.--About half a mile beyond Highbury,
making a sudden turn, and deeply shaded by elms on each side, it became
for a considerable stretch very retired; and when the young ladies
had advanced some way into it, they had suddenly perceived at a small
distance before them, on a broader patch of greensward by the side, a
party of gipsies. A child on the watch, came towards them to beg; and
Miss Bickerton, excessively frightened, gave a great scream, and calling
on Harriet to follow her, ran up a steep bank, cleared a slight hedge at
the top, and made the best of her way by a short cut back to Highbury.
But poor Harriet could not follow. She had suffered very much from cramp
after dancing, and her first attempt to mount the bank brought on such
a return of it as made her absolutely powerless--and in this state, and
exceedingly terrified, she had been obliged to remain.

How the trampers might have behaved, had the young ladies been more
courageous, must be doubtful; but such an invitation for attack could
not be resisted; and Harriet was soon assailed by half a dozen children,
headed by a stout woman and a great boy, all clamorous, and impertinent
in look, though not absolutely in word.--More and more frightened, she
immediately promised them money, and taking out her purse, gave them a
shilling, and begged them not to want more, or to use her ill.--She
was then able to walk, though but slowly, and was moving away--but her
terror and her purse were too tempting, and she was followed, or rather
surrounded, by the whole gang, demanding more.

In this state Frank Churchill had found her, she trembling and
conditioning, they loud and insolent. By a most fortunate chance his
leaving Highbury had been delayed so as to bring him to her assistance
at this critical moment. The pleasantness of the morning had induced
him to walk forward, and leave his horses to meet him by another road,
a mile or two beyond Highbury--and happening to have borrowed a pair
of scissors the night before of Miss Bates, and to have forgotten to
restore them, he had been obliged to stop at her door, and go in for a
few minutes: he was therefore later than he had intended; and being
on foot, was unseen by the whole party till almost close to them. The
terror which the woman and boy had been creating in Harriet was then
their own portion. He had left them completely frightened; and Harriet
eagerly clinging to him, and hardly able to speak, had just strength
enough to reach Hartfield, before her spirits were quite overcome.
It was his idea to bring her to Hartfield: he had thought of no other
place.

This was the amount of the whole story,--of his communication and of
Harriet's as soon as she had recovered her senses and speech.--He dared
not stay longer than to see her well; these several delays left him
not another minute to lose; and Emma engaging to give assurance of her
safety to Mrs. Goddard, and notice of there being such a set of people
in the neighbourhood to Mr. Knightley, he set off, with all the grateful
blessings that she could utter for her friend and herself.

Such an adventure as this,--a fine young man and a lovely young woman
thrown together in such a way, could hardly fail of suggesting certain
ideas to the coldest heart and the steadiest brain. So Emma thought, at
least. Could a linguist, could a grammarian, could even a mathematician
have seen what she did, have witnessed their appearance together, and
heard their history of it, without feeling that circumstances had been
at work to make them peculiarly interesting to each other?--How much
more must an imaginist, like herself, be on fire with speculation and
foresight!--especially with such a groundwork of anticipation as her
mind had already made.

It was a very extraordinary thing! Nothing of the sort had ever
occurred before to any young ladies in the place, within her memory; no
rencontre, no alarm of the kind;--and now it had happened to the very
person, and at the very hour, when the other very person was chancing
to pass by to rescue her!--It certainly was very extraordinary!--And
knowing, as she did, the favourable state of mind of each at this
period, it struck her the more. He was wishing to get the better of his
attachment to herself, she just recovering from her mania for Mr. Elton.
It seemed as if every thing united to promise the most interesting
consequences. It was not possible that the occurrence should not be
strongly recommending each to the other.

In the few minutes' conversation which she had yet had with him, while
Harriet had been partially insensible, he had spoken of her terror,
her naivete, her fervour as she seized and clung to his arm, with a
sensibility amused and delighted; and just at last, after Harriet's
own account had been given, he had expressed his indignation at the
abominable folly of Miss Bickerton in the warmest terms. Every thing was
to take its natural course, however, neither impelled nor assisted.
She would not stir a step, nor drop a hint. No, she had had enough of
interference. There could be no harm in a scheme, a mere passive scheme.
It was no more than a wish. Beyond it she would on no account proceed.

Emma's first resolution was to keep her father from the knowledge of
what had passed,--aware of the anxiety and alarm it would occasion: but
she soon felt that concealment must be impossible. Within half an hour
it was known all over Highbury. It was the very event to engage those
who talk most, the young and the low; and all the youth and servants in
the place were soon in the happiness of frightful news. The last night's
ball seemed lost in the gipsies. Poor Mr. Woodhouse trembled as he sat,
and, as Emma had foreseen, would scarcely be satisfied without their
promising never to go beyond the shrubbery again. It was some comfort
to him that many inquiries after himself and Miss Woodhouse (for his
neighbours knew that he loved to be inquired after), as well as Miss
Smith, were coming in during the rest of the day; and he had
the pleasure of returning for answer, that they were all very
indifferent--which, though not exactly true, for she was perfectly well,
and Harriet not much otherwise, Emma would not interfere with. She had
an unhappy state of health in general for the child of such a man,
for she hardly knew what indisposition was; and if he did not invent
illnesses for her, she could make no figure in a message.

The gipsies did not wait for the operations of justice; they took
themselves off in a hurry. The young ladies of Highbury might have
walked again in safety before their panic began, and the whole history
dwindled soon into a matter of little importance but to Emma and her
nephews:--in her imagination it maintained its ground, and Henry and
John were still asking every day for the story of Harriet and the
gipsies, and still tenaciously setting her right if she varied in the
slightest particular from the original recital.



CHAPTER IV


A very few days had passed after this adventure, when Harriet came one
morning to Emma with a small parcel in her hand, and after sitting down
and hesitating, thus began:

“Miss Woodhouse--if you are at leisure--I have something that I should
like to tell you--a sort of confession to make--and then, you know, it
will be over.”

Emma was a good deal surprized; but begged her to speak. There was a
seriousness in Harriet's manner which prepared her, quite as much as her
words, for something more than ordinary.

“It is my duty, and I am sure it is my wish,” she continued, “to have
no reserves with you on this subject. As I am happily quite an altered
creature in _one_ _respect_, it is very fit that you should have
the satisfaction of knowing it. I do not want to say more than is
necessary--I am too much ashamed of having given way as I have done, and
I dare say you understand me.”

“Yes,” said Emma, “I hope I do.”

“How I could so long a time be fancying myself!...” cried Harriet,
warmly. “It seems like madness! I can see nothing at all extraordinary
in him now.--I do not care whether I meet him or not--except that of the
two I had rather not see him--and indeed I would go any distance round
to avoid him--but I do not envy his wife in the least; I neither admire
her nor envy her, as I have done: she is very charming, I dare say, and
all that, but I think her very ill-tempered and disagreeable--I shall
never forget her look the other night!--However, I assure you, Miss
Woodhouse, I wish her no evil.--No, let them be ever so happy together,
it will not give me another moment's pang: and to convince you that I
have been speaking truth, I am now going to destroy--what I ought to
have destroyed long ago--what I ought never to have kept--I know that
very well (blushing as she spoke).--However, now I will destroy it
all--and it is my particular wish to do it in your presence, that you
may see how rational I am grown. Cannot you guess what this parcel
holds?” said she, with a conscious look.

“Not the least in the world.--Did he ever give you any thing?”

“No--I cannot call them gifts; but they are things that I have valued
very much.”

She held the parcel towards her, and Emma read the words _Most_
_precious_ _treasures_ on the top. Her curiosity was greatly excited.
Harriet unfolded the parcel, and she looked on with impatience. Within
abundance of silver paper was a pretty little Tunbridge-ware box,
which Harriet opened: it was well lined with the softest cotton; but,
excepting the cotton, Emma saw only a small piece of court-plaister.

“Now,” said Harriet, “you _must_ recollect.”

“No, indeed I do not.”

“Dear me! I should not have thought it possible you could forget what
passed in this very room about court-plaister, one of the very last
times we ever met in it!--It was but a very few days before I had my
sore throat--just before Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley came--I think the
very evening.--Do not you remember his cutting his finger with your new
penknife, and your recommending court-plaister?--But, as you had none
about you, and knew I had, you desired me to supply him; and so I took
mine out and cut him a piece; but it was a great deal too large, and he
cut it smaller, and kept playing some time with what was left, before he
gave it back to me. And so then, in my nonsense, I could not help making
a treasure of it--so I put it by never to be used, and looked at it now
and then as a great treat.”

“My dearest Harriet!” cried Emma, putting her hand before her face,
and jumping up, “you make me more ashamed of myself than I can bear.
Remember it? Aye, I remember it all now; all, except your saving this
relic--I knew nothing of that till this moment--but the cutting the
finger, and my recommending court-plaister, and saying I had none
about me!--Oh! my sins, my sins!--And I had plenty all the while in my
pocket!--One of my senseless tricks!--I deserve to be under a continual
blush all the rest of my life.--Well--(sitting down again)--go on--what
else?”

“And had you really some at hand yourself? I am sure I never suspected
it, you did it so naturally.”

“And so you actually put this piece of court-plaister by for his sake!”
 said Emma, recovering from her state of shame and feeling divided
between wonder and amusement. And secretly she added to herself, “Lord
bless me! when should I ever have thought of putting by in cotton a
piece of court-plaister that Frank Churchill had been pulling about! I
never was equal to this.”

“Here,” resumed Harriet, turning to her box again, “here is something
still more valuable, I mean that _has_ _been_ more valuable, because
this is what did really once belong to him, which the court-plaister
never did.”

Emma was quite eager to see this superior treasure. It was the end of an
old pencil,--the part without any lead.

“This was really his,” said Harriet.--“Do not you remember one
morning?--no, I dare say you do not. But one morning--I forget exactly
the day--but perhaps it was the Tuesday or Wednesday before _that_
_evening_, he wanted to make a memorandum in his pocket-book; it was
about spruce-beer. Mr. Knightley had been telling him something about
brewing spruce-beer, and he wanted to put it down; but when he took out
his pencil, there was so little lead that he soon cut it all away, and
it would not do, so you lent him another, and this was left upon the
table as good for nothing. But I kept my eye on it; and, as soon as I
dared, caught it up, and never parted with it again from that moment.”

“I do remember it,” cried Emma; “I perfectly remember it.--Talking
about spruce-beer.--Oh! yes--Mr. Knightley and I both saying we
liked it, and Mr. Elton's seeming resolved to learn to like it too. I
perfectly remember it.--Stop; Mr. Knightley was standing just here, was
not he? I have an idea he was standing just here.”

“Ah! I do not know. I cannot recollect.--It is very odd, but I cannot
recollect.--Mr. Elton was sitting here, I remember, much about where I
am now.”--

“Well, go on.”

“Oh! that's all. I have nothing more to shew you, or to say--except that
I am now going to throw them both behind the fire, and I wish you to see
me do it.”

“My poor dear Harriet! and have you actually found happiness in
treasuring up these things?”

“Yes, simpleton as I was!--but I am quite ashamed of it now, and wish I
could forget as easily as I can burn them. It was very wrong of me, you
know, to keep any remembrances, after he was married. I knew it was--but
had not resolution enough to part with them.”

“But, Harriet, is it necessary to burn the court-plaister?--I have not
a word to say for the bit of old pencil, but the court-plaister might be
useful.”

“I shall be happier to burn it,” replied Harriet. “It has a disagreeable
look to me. I must get rid of every thing.--There it goes, and there is
an end, thank Heaven! of Mr. Elton.”

“And when,” thought Emma, “will there be a beginning of Mr. Churchill?”

She had soon afterwards reason to believe that the beginning was already
made, and could not but hope that the gipsy, though she had _told_ no
fortune, might be proved to have made Harriet's.--About a fortnight
after the alarm, they came to a sufficient explanation, and quite
undesignedly. Emma was not thinking of it at the moment, which made the
information she received more valuable. She merely said, in the course
of some trivial chat, “Well, Harriet, whenever you marry I would advise
you to do so and so”--and thought no more of it, till after a minute's
silence she heard Harriet say in a very serious tone, “I shall never
marry.”

Emma then looked up, and immediately saw how it was; and after a
moment's debate, as to whether it should pass unnoticed or not, replied,

“Never marry!--This is a new resolution.”

“It is one that I shall never change, however.”

After another short hesitation, “I hope it does not proceed from--I hope
it is not in compliment to Mr. Elton?”

“Mr. Elton indeed!” cried Harriet indignantly.--“Oh! no”--and Emma could
just catch the words, “so superior to Mr. Elton!”

She then took a longer time for consideration. Should she proceed no
farther?--should she let it pass, and seem to suspect nothing?--Perhaps
Harriet might think her cold or angry if she did; or perhaps if she were
totally silent, it might only drive Harriet into asking her to hear too
much; and against any thing like such an unreserve as had been, such
an open and frequent discussion of hopes and chances, she was perfectly
resolved.--She believed it would be wiser for her to say and know at
once, all that she meant to say and know. Plain dealing was always
best. She had previously determined how far she would proceed, on any
application of the sort; and it would be safer for both, to have the
judicious law of her own brain laid down with speed.--She was decided,
and thus spoke--

“Harriet, I will not affect to be in doubt of your meaning. Your
resolution, or rather your expectation of never marrying, results from
an idea that the person whom you might prefer, would be too greatly your
superior in situation to think of you. Is not it so?”

“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, believe me I have not the presumption to suppose--
Indeed I am not so mad.--But it is a pleasure to me to admire him at a
distance--and to think of his infinite superiority to all the rest of
the world, with the gratitude, wonder, and veneration, which are so
proper, in me especially.”

“I am not at all surprized at you, Harriet. The service he rendered you
was enough to warm your heart.”

“Service! oh! it was such an inexpressible obligation!--The very
recollection of it, and all that I felt at the time--when I saw him
coming--his noble look--and my wretchedness before. Such a change! In
one moment such a change! From perfect misery to perfect happiness!”

“It is very natural. It is natural, and it is honourable.--Yes,
honourable, I think, to chuse so well and so gratefully.--But that
it will be a fortunate preference is more than I can promise. I do not
advise you to give way to it, Harriet. I do not by any means engage
for its being returned. Consider what you are about. Perhaps it will be
wisest in you to check your feelings while you can: at any rate do not
let them carry you far, unless you are persuaded of his liking you. Be
observant of him. Let his behaviour be the guide of your sensations. I
give you this caution now, because I shall never speak to you again on
the subject. I am determined against all interference. Henceforward I
know nothing of the matter. Let no name ever pass our lips. We were very
wrong before; we will be cautious now.--He is your superior, no doubt,
and there do seem objections and obstacles of a very serious nature; but
yet, Harriet, more wonderful things have taken place, there have been
matches of greater disparity. But take care of yourself. I would not
have you too sanguine; though, however it may end, be assured your
raising your thoughts to _him_, is a mark of good taste which I shall
always know how to value.”

Harriet kissed her hand in silent and submissive gratitude. Emma was
very decided in thinking such an attachment no bad thing for her friend.
Its tendency would be to raise and refine her mind--and it must be
saving her from the danger of degradation.



CHAPTER V


In this state of schemes, and hopes, and connivance, June opened upon
Hartfield. To Highbury in general it brought no material change. The
Eltons were still talking of a visit from the Sucklings, and of the use
to be made of their barouche-landau; and Jane Fairfax was still at her
grandmother's; and as the return of the Campbells from Ireland was again
delayed, and August, instead of Midsummer, fixed for it, she was likely
to remain there full two months longer, provided at least she were able
to defeat Mrs. Elton's activity in her service, and save herself from
being hurried into a delightful situation against her will.

Mr. Knightley, who, for some reason best known to himself, had certainly
taken an early dislike to Frank Churchill, was only growing to dislike
him more. He began to suspect him of some double dealing in his pursuit
of Emma. That Emma was his object appeared indisputable. Every thing
declared it; his own attentions, his father's hints, his mother-in-law's
guarded silence; it was all in unison; words, conduct, discretion, and
indiscretion, told the same story. But while so many were devoting him
to Emma, and Emma herself making him over to Harriet, Mr. Knightley
began to suspect him of some inclination to trifle with Jane Fairfax. He
could not understand it; but there were symptoms of intelligence between
them--he thought so at least--symptoms of admiration on his side, which,
having once observed, he could not persuade himself to think entirely
void of meaning, however he might wish to escape any of Emma's errors
of imagination. _She_ was not present when the suspicion first arose.
He was dining with the Randalls family, and Jane, at the Eltons'; and he
had seen a look, more than a single look, at Miss Fairfax, which, from
the admirer of Miss Woodhouse, seemed somewhat out of place. When he was
again in their company, he could not help remembering what he had seen;
nor could he avoid observations which, unless it were like Cowper and
his fire at twilight,

“Myself creating what I saw,”

brought him yet stronger suspicion of there being a something of private
liking, of private understanding even, between Frank Churchill and Jane.

He had walked up one day after dinner, as he very often did, to spend
his evening at Hartfield. Emma and Harriet were going to walk; he joined
them; and, on returning, they fell in with a larger party, who, like
themselves, judged it wisest to take their exercise early, as the
weather threatened rain; Mr. and Mrs. Weston and their son, Miss Bates
and her niece, who had accidentally met. They all united; and, on
reaching Hartfield gates, Emma, who knew it was exactly the sort of
visiting that would be welcome to her father, pressed them all to go in
and drink tea with him. The Randalls party agreed to it immediately; and
after a pretty long speech from Miss Bates, which few persons listened
to, she also found it possible to accept dear Miss Woodhouse's most
obliging invitation.

As they were turning into the grounds, Mr. Perry passed by on horseback.
The gentlemen spoke of his horse.

“By the bye,” said Frank Churchill to Mrs. Weston presently, “what
became of Mr. Perry's plan of setting up his carriage?”

Mrs. Weston looked surprized, and said, “I did not know that he ever had
any such plan.”

“Nay, I had it from you. You wrote me word of it three months ago.”

“Me! impossible!”

“Indeed you did. I remember it perfectly. You mentioned it as what
was certainly to be very soon. Mrs. Perry had told somebody, and was
extremely happy about it. It was owing to _her_ persuasion, as she
thought his being out in bad weather did him a great deal of harm. You
must remember it now?”

“Upon my word I never heard of it till this moment.”

“Never! really, never!--Bless me! how could it be?--Then I must have
dreamt it--but I was completely persuaded--Miss Smith, you walk as if
you were tired. You will not be sorry to find yourself at home.”

“What is this?--What is this?” cried Mr. Weston, “about Perry and a
carriage? Is Perry going to set up his carriage, Frank? I am glad he can
afford it. You had it from himself, had you?”

“No, sir,” replied his son, laughing, “I seem to have had it from
nobody.--Very odd!--I really was persuaded of Mrs. Weston's having
mentioned it in one of her letters to Enscombe, many weeks ago, with all
these particulars--but as she declares she never heard a syllable of
it before, of course it must have been a dream. I am a great dreamer.
I dream of every body at Highbury when I am away--and when I have gone
through my particular friends, then I begin dreaming of Mr. and Mrs.
Perry.”

“It is odd though,” observed his father, “that you should have had such
a regular connected dream about people whom it was not very likely you
should be thinking of at Enscombe. Perry's setting up his carriage! and
his wife's persuading him to it, out of care for his health--just
what will happen, I have no doubt, some time or other; only a little
premature. What an air of probability sometimes runs through a dream!
And at others, what a heap of absurdities it is! Well, Frank, your dream
certainly shews that Highbury is in your thoughts when you are absent.
Emma, you are a great dreamer, I think?”

Emma was out of hearing. She had hurried on before her guests to
prepare her father for their appearance, and was beyond the reach of Mr.
Weston's hint.

“Why, to own the truth,” cried Miss Bates, who had been trying in vain
to be heard the last two minutes, “if I must speak on this subject,
there is no denying that Mr. Frank Churchill might have--I do not mean
to say that he did not dream it--I am sure I have sometimes the oddest
dreams in the world--but if I am questioned about it, I must acknowledge
that there was such an idea last spring; for Mrs. Perry herself
mentioned it to my mother, and the Coles knew of it as well as
ourselves--but it was quite a secret, known to nobody else, and only
thought of about three days. Mrs. Perry was very anxious that he should
have a carriage, and came to my mother in great spirits one morning
because she thought she had prevailed. Jane, don't you remember
grandmama's telling us of it when we got home? I forget where we
had been walking to--very likely to Randalls; yes, I think it was to
Randalls. Mrs. Perry was always particularly fond of my mother--indeed
I do not know who is not--and she had mentioned it to her in confidence;
she had no objection to her telling us, of course, but it was not to go
beyond: and, from that day to this, I never mentioned it to a soul that
I know of. At the same time, I will not positively answer for my having
never dropt a hint, because I know I do sometimes pop out a thing before
I am aware. I am a talker, you know; I am rather a talker; and now and
then I have let a thing escape me which I should not. I am not like
Jane; I wish I were. I will answer for it _she_ never betrayed the least
thing in the world. Where is she?--Oh! just behind. Perfectly remember
Mrs. Perry's coming.--Extraordinary dream, indeed!”

They were entering the hall. Mr. Knightley's eyes had preceded Miss
Bates's in a glance at Jane. From Frank Churchill's face, where
he thought he saw confusion suppressed or laughed away, he had
involuntarily turned to hers; but she was indeed behind, and too busy
with her shawl. Mr. Weston had walked in. The two other gentlemen waited
at the door to let her pass. Mr. Knightley suspected in Frank
Churchill the determination of catching her eye--he seemed watching her
intently--in vain, however, if it were so--Jane passed between them
into the hall, and looked at neither.

There was no time for farther remark or explanation. The dream must be
borne with, and Mr. Knightley must take his seat with the rest round the
large modern circular table which Emma had introduced at Hartfield, and
which none but Emma could have had power to place there and persuade her
father to use, instead of the small-sized Pembroke, on which two of his
daily meals had, for forty years been crowded. Tea passed pleasantly,
and nobody seemed in a hurry to move.

“Miss Woodhouse,” said Frank Churchill, after examining a table behind
him, which he could reach as he sat, “have your nephews taken away their
alphabets--their box of letters? It used to stand here. Where is it?
This is a sort of dull-looking evening, that ought to be treated rather
as winter than summer. We had great amusement with those letters one
morning. I want to puzzle you again.”

Emma was pleased with the thought; and producing the box, the table
was quickly scattered over with alphabets, which no one seemed so much
disposed to employ as their two selves. They were rapidly forming words
for each other, or for any body else who would be puzzled. The quietness
of the game made it particularly eligible for Mr. Woodhouse, who had
often been distressed by the more animated sort, which Mr. Weston had
occasionally introduced, and who now sat happily occupied in lamenting,
with tender melancholy, over the departure of the “poor little boys,”
 or in fondly pointing out, as he took up any stray letter near him, how
beautifully Emma had written it.

Frank Churchill placed a word before Miss Fairfax. She gave a slight
glance round the table, and applied herself to it. Frank was next to
Emma, Jane opposite to them--and Mr. Knightley so placed as to see them
all; and it was his object to see as much as he could, with as little
apparent observation. The word was discovered, and with a faint smile
pushed away. If meant to be immediately mixed with the others, and
buried from sight, she should have looked on the table instead of
looking just across, for it was not mixed; and Harriet, eager after
every fresh word, and finding out none, directly took it up, and fell to
work. She was sitting by Mr. Knightley, and turned to him for help. The
word was _blunder_; and as Harriet exultingly proclaimed it, there was a
blush on Jane's cheek which gave it a meaning not otherwise ostensible.
Mr. Knightley connected it with the dream; but how it could all be,
was beyond his comprehension. How the delicacy, the discretion of his
favourite could have been so lain asleep! He feared there must be some
decided involvement. Disingenuousness and double dealing seemed to meet
him at every turn. These letters were but the vehicle for gallantry and
trick. It was a child's play, chosen to conceal a deeper game on Frank
Churchill's part.

With great indignation did he continue to observe him; with great alarm
and distrust, to observe also his two blinded companions. He saw a short
word prepared for Emma, and given to her with a look sly and demure. He
saw that Emma had soon made it out, and found it highly entertaining,
though it was something which she judged it proper to appear to censure;
for she said, “Nonsense! for shame!” He heard Frank Churchill next say,
with a glance towards Jane, “I will give it to her--shall I?”--and as
clearly heard Emma opposing it with eager laughing warmth. “No, no, you
must not; you shall not, indeed.”

It was done however. This gallant young man, who seemed to love without
feeling, and to recommend himself without complaisance, directly handed
over the word to Miss Fairfax, and with a particular degree of sedate
civility entreated her to study it. Mr. Knightley's excessive curiosity
to know what this word might be, made him seize every possible moment
for darting his eye towards it, and it was not long before he saw it
to be _Dixon_. Jane Fairfax's perception seemed to accompany his;
her comprehension was certainly more equal to the covert meaning,
the superior intelligence, of those five letters so arranged. She was
evidently displeased; looked up, and seeing herself watched, blushed
more deeply than he had ever perceived her, and saying only, “I did not
know that proper names were allowed,” pushed away the letters with even
an angry spirit, and looked resolved to be engaged by no other word
that could be offered. Her face was averted from those who had made the
attack, and turned towards her aunt.

“Aye, very true, my dear,” cried the latter, though Jane had not spoken
a word--“I was just going to say the same thing. It is time for us to be
going indeed. The evening is closing in, and grandmama will be looking
for us. My dear sir, you are too obliging. We really must wish you good
night.”

Jane's alertness in moving, proved her as ready as her aunt had
preconceived. She was immediately up, and wanting to quit the table; but
so many were also moving, that she could not get away; and Mr. Knightley
thought he saw another collection of letters anxiously pushed towards
her, and resolutely swept away by her unexamined. She was afterwards
looking for her shawl--Frank Churchill was looking also--it was growing
dusk, and the room was in confusion; and how they parted, Mr. Knightley
could not tell.

He remained at Hartfield after all the rest, his thoughts full of
what he had seen; so full, that when the candles came to assist his
observations, he must--yes, he certainly must, as a friend--an anxious
friend--give Emma some hint, ask her some question. He could not see her
in a situation of such danger, without trying to preserve her. It was
his duty.

“Pray, Emma,” said he, “may I ask in what lay the great amusement, the
poignant sting of the last word given to you and Miss Fairfax? I saw the
word, and am curious to know how it could be so very entertaining to the
one, and so very distressing to the other.”

Emma was extremely confused. She could not endure to give him the true
explanation; for though her suspicions were by no means removed, she was
really ashamed of having ever imparted them.

“Oh!” she cried in evident embarrassment, “it all meant nothing; a mere
joke among ourselves.”

“The joke,” he replied gravely, “seemed confined to you and Mr.
Churchill.”

He had hoped she would speak again, but she did not. She would rather
busy herself about any thing than speak. He sat a little while in
doubt. A variety of evils crossed his mind. Interference--fruitless
interference. Emma's confusion, and the acknowledged intimacy, seemed to
declare her affection engaged. Yet he would speak. He owed it to her,
to risk any thing that might be involved in an unwelcome interference,
rather than her welfare; to encounter any thing, rather than the
remembrance of neglect in such a cause.

“My dear Emma,” said he at last, with earnest kindness, “do you
think you perfectly understand the degree of acquaintance between the
gentleman and lady we have been speaking of?”

“Between Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Fairfax? Oh! yes, perfectly.--Why
do you make a doubt of it?”

“Have you never at any time had reason to think that he admired her, or
that she admired him?”

“Never, never!” she cried with a most open eagerness--“Never, for the
twentieth part of a moment, did such an idea occur to me. And how could
it possibly come into your head?”

“I have lately imagined that I saw symptoms of attachment between
them--certain expressive looks, which I did not believe meant to be
public.”

“Oh! you amuse me excessively. I am delighted to find that you can
vouchsafe to let your imagination wander--but it will not do--very sorry
to check you in your first essay--but indeed it will not do. There is no
admiration between them, I do assure you; and the appearances which
have caught you, have arisen from some peculiar circumstances--feelings
rather of a totally different nature--it is impossible exactly to
explain:--there is a good deal of nonsense in it--but the part which is
capable of being communicated, which is sense, is, that they are as far
from any attachment or admiration for one another, as any two beings in
the world can be. That is, I _presume_ it to be so on her side, and I
can _answer_ for its being so on his. I will answer for the gentleman's
indifference.”

She spoke with a confidence which staggered, with a satisfaction
which silenced, Mr. Knightley. She was in gay spirits, and would have
prolonged the conversation, wanting to hear the particulars of his
suspicions, every look described, and all the wheres and hows of a
circumstance which highly entertained her: but his gaiety did not meet
hers. He found he could not be useful, and his feelings were too much
irritated for talking. That he might not be irritated into an absolute
fever, by the fire which Mr. Woodhouse's tender habits required almost
every evening throughout the year, he soon afterwards took a hasty
leave, and walked home to the coolness and solitude of Donwell Abbey.



CHAPTER VI


After being long fed with hopes of a speedy visit from Mr. and Mrs.
Suckling, the Highbury world were obliged to endure the mortification
of hearing that they could not possibly come till the autumn. No such
importation of novelties could enrich their intellectual stores at
present. In the daily interchange of news, they must be again restricted
to the other topics with which for a while the Sucklings' coming had
been united, such as the last accounts of Mrs. Churchill, whose health
seemed every day to supply a different report, and the situation of Mrs.
Weston, whose happiness it was to be hoped might eventually be as much
increased by the arrival of a child, as that of all her neighbours was
by the approach of it.

Mrs. Elton was very much disappointed. It was the delay of a great deal
of pleasure and parade. Her introductions and recommendations must all
wait, and every projected party be still only talked of. So she thought
at first;--but a little consideration convinced her that every thing
need not be put off. Why should not they explore to Box Hill though
the Sucklings did not come? They could go there again with them in the
autumn. It was settled that they should go to Box Hill. That there was
to be such a party had been long generally known: it had even given the
idea of another. Emma had never been to Box Hill; she wished to see what
every body found so well worth seeing, and she and Mr. Weston had agreed
to chuse some fine morning and drive thither. Two or three more of the
chosen only were to be admitted to join them, and it was to be done in a
quiet, unpretending, elegant way, infinitely superior to the bustle and
preparation, the regular eating and drinking, and picnic parade of the
Eltons and the Sucklings.

This was so very well understood between them, that Emma could not but
feel some surprise, and a little displeasure, on hearing from Mr. Weston
that he had been proposing to Mrs. Elton, as her brother and sister had
failed her, that the two parties should unite, and go together; and that
as Mrs. Elton had very readily acceded to it, so it was to be, if she
had no objection. Now, as her objection was nothing but her very great
dislike of Mrs. Elton, of which Mr. Weston must already be perfectly
aware, it was not worth bringing forward again:--it could not be done
without a reproof to him, which would be giving pain to his wife; and
she found herself therefore obliged to consent to an arrangement which
she would have done a great deal to avoid; an arrangement which would
probably expose her even to the degradation of being said to be of Mrs.
Elton's party! Every feeling was offended; and the forbearance of her
outward submission left a heavy arrear due of secret severity in her
reflections on the unmanageable goodwill of Mr. Weston's temper.

“I am glad you approve of what I have done,” said he very comfortably.
“But I thought you would. Such schemes as these are nothing without
numbers. One cannot have too large a party. A large party secures its
own amusement. And she is a good-natured woman after all. One could not
leave her out.”

Emma denied none of it aloud, and agreed to none of it in private.

It was now the middle of June, and the weather fine; and Mrs. Elton
was growing impatient to name the day, and settle with Mr. Weston as to
pigeon-pies and cold lamb, when a lame carriage-horse threw every thing
into sad uncertainty. It might be weeks, it might be only a few days,
before the horse were useable; but no preparations could be ventured
on, and it was all melancholy stagnation. Mrs. Elton's resources were
inadequate to such an attack.

“Is not this most vexatious, Knightley?” she cried.--“And such weather
for exploring!--These delays and disappointments are quite odious. What
are we to do?--The year will wear away at this rate, and nothing
done. Before this time last year I assure you we had had a delightful
exploring party from Maple Grove to Kings Weston.”

“You had better explore to Donwell,” replied Mr. Knightley. “That may
be done without horses. Come, and eat my strawberries. They are ripening
fast.”

If Mr. Knightley did not begin seriously, he was obliged to proceed so,
for his proposal was caught at with delight; and the “Oh! I should like
it of all things,” was not plainer in words than manner. Donwell was
famous for its strawberry-beds, which seemed a plea for the invitation:
but no plea was necessary; cabbage-beds would have been enough to tempt
the lady, who only wanted to be going somewhere. She promised him again
and again to come--much oftener than he doubted--and was extremely
gratified by such a proof of intimacy, such a distinguishing compliment
as she chose to consider it.

“You may depend upon me,” said she. “I certainly will come. Name your
day, and I will come. You will allow me to bring Jane Fairfax?”

“I cannot name a day,” said he, “till I have spoken to some others whom
I would wish to meet you.”

“Oh! leave all that to me. Only give me a carte-blanche.--I am Lady
Patroness, you know. It is my party. I will bring friends with me.”

“I hope you will bring Elton,” said he: “but I will not trouble you to
give any other invitations.”

“Oh! now you are looking very sly. But consider--you need not be afraid
of delegating power to _me_. I am no young lady on her preferment.
Married women, you know, may be safely authorised. It is my party. Leave
it all to me. I will invite your guests.”

“No,”--he calmly replied,--“there is but one married woman in the world
whom I can ever allow to invite what guests she pleases to Donwell, and
that one is--”

“--Mrs. Weston, I suppose,” interrupted Mrs. Elton, rather mortified.

“No--Mrs. Knightley;--and till she is in being, I will manage such
matters myself.”

“Ah! you are an odd creature!” she cried, satisfied to have no one
preferred to herself.--“You are a humourist, and may say what you
like. Quite a humourist. Well, I shall bring Jane with me--Jane and her
aunt.--The rest I leave to you. I have no objections at all to meeting
the Hartfield family. Don't scruple. I know you are attached to them.”

“You certainly will meet them if I can prevail; and I shall call on Miss
Bates in my way home.”

“That's quite unnecessary; I see Jane every day:--but as you like. It
is to be a morning scheme, you know, Knightley; quite a simple thing. I
shall wear a large bonnet, and bring one of my little baskets hanging
on my arm. Here,--probably this basket with pink ribbon. Nothing can be
more simple, you see. And Jane will have such another. There is to be
no form or parade--a sort of gipsy party. We are to walk about
your gardens, and gather the strawberries ourselves, and sit under
trees;--and whatever else you may like to provide, it is to be all out
of doors--a table spread in the shade, you know. Every thing as natural
and simple as possible. Is not that your idea?”

“Not quite. My idea of the simple and the natural will be to have
the table spread in the dining-room. The nature and the simplicity of
gentlemen and ladies, with their servants and furniture, I think is
best observed by meals within doors. When you are tired of eating
strawberries in the garden, there shall be cold meat in the house.”

“Well--as you please; only don't have a great set out. And, by the bye,
can I or my housekeeper be of any use to you with our opinion?--Pray be
sincere, Knightley. If you wish me to talk to Mrs. Hodges, or to inspect
anything--”

“I have not the least wish for it, I thank you.”

“Well--but if any difficulties should arise, my housekeeper is extremely
clever.”

“I will answer for it, that mine thinks herself full as clever, and
would spurn any body's assistance.”

“I wish we had a donkey. The thing would be for us all to come on
donkeys, Jane, Miss Bates, and me--and my caro sposo walking by. I
really must talk to him about purchasing a donkey. In a country life
I conceive it to be a sort of necessary; for, let a woman have ever
so many resources, it is not possible for her to be always shut up at
home;--and very long walks, you know--in summer there is dust, and in
winter there is dirt.”

“You will not find either, between Donwell and Highbury. Donwell Lane is
never dusty, and now it is perfectly dry. Come on a donkey, however, if
you prefer it. You can borrow Mrs. Cole's. I would wish every thing to
be as much to your taste as possible.”

“That I am sure you would. Indeed I do you justice, my good friend.
Under that peculiar sort of dry, blunt manner, I know you have the
warmest heart. As I tell Mr. E., you are a thorough humourist.--Yes,
believe me, Knightley, I am fully sensible of your attention to me in
the whole of this scheme. You have hit upon the very thing to please
me.”

Mr. Knightley had another reason for avoiding a table in the shade. He
wished to persuade Mr. Woodhouse, as well as Emma, to join the party;
and he knew that to have any of them sitting down out of doors to
eat would inevitably make him ill. Mr. Woodhouse must not, under the
specious pretence of a morning drive, and an hour or two spent at
Donwell, be tempted away to his misery.

He was invited on good faith. No lurking horrors were to upbraid him for
his easy credulity. He did consent. He had not been at Donwell for two
years. “Some very fine morning, he, and Emma, and Harriet, could go
very well; and he could sit still with Mrs. Weston, while the dear girls
walked about the gardens. He did not suppose they could be damp now,
in the middle of the day. He should like to see the old house again
exceedingly, and should be very happy to meet Mr. and Mrs. Elton, and
any other of his neighbours.--He could not see any objection at all to
his, and Emma's, and Harriet's going there some very fine morning. He
thought it very well done of Mr. Knightley to invite them--very kind
and sensible--much cleverer than dining out.--He was not fond of dining
out.”

Mr. Knightley was fortunate in every body's most ready concurrence. The
invitation was everywhere so well received, that it seemed as if, like
Mrs. Elton, they were all taking the scheme as a particular compliment
to themselves.--Emma and Harriet professed very high expectations of
pleasure from it; and Mr. Weston, unasked, promised to get Frank over to
join them, if possible; a proof of approbation and gratitude which could
have been dispensed with.--Mr. Knightley was then obliged to say that
he should be glad to see him; and Mr. Weston engaged to lose no time in
writing, and spare no arguments to induce him to come.

In the meanwhile the lame horse recovered so fast, that the party to
Box Hill was again under happy consideration; and at last Donwell was
settled for one day, and Box Hill for the next,--the weather appearing
exactly right.

Under a bright mid-day sun, at almost Midsummer, Mr. Woodhouse was
safely conveyed in his carriage, with one window down, to partake of
this al-fresco party; and in one of the most comfortable rooms in the
Abbey, especially prepared for him by a fire all the morning, he was
happily placed, quite at his ease, ready to talk with pleasure of what
had been achieved, and advise every body to come and sit down, and not
to heat themselves.--Mrs. Weston, who seemed to have walked there on
purpose to be tired, and sit all the time with him, remained, when
all the others were invited or persuaded out, his patient listener and
sympathiser.

It was so long since Emma had been at the Abbey, that as soon as she was
satisfied of her father's comfort, she was glad to leave him, and look
around her; eager to refresh and correct her memory with more particular
observation, more exact understanding of a house and grounds which must
ever be so interesting to her and all her family.

She felt all the honest pride and complacency which her alliance with
the present and future proprietor could fairly warrant, as she viewed
the respectable size and style of the building, its suitable, becoming,
characteristic situation, low and sheltered--its ample gardens
stretching down to meadows washed by a stream, of which the Abbey, with
all the old neglect of prospect, had scarcely a sight--and its abundance
of timber in rows and avenues, which neither fashion nor extravagance
had rooted up.--The house was larger than Hartfield, and totally unlike
it, covering a good deal of ground, rambling and irregular, with many
comfortable, and one or two handsome rooms.--It was just what it ought
to be, and it looked what it was--and Emma felt an increasing respect
for it, as the residence of a family of such true gentility, untainted
in blood and understanding.--Some faults of temper John Knightley had;
but Isabella had connected herself unexceptionably. She had given them
neither men, nor names, nor places, that could raise a blush. These were
pleasant feelings, and she walked about and indulged them till it
was necessary to do as the others did, and collect round the
strawberry-beds.--The whole party were assembled, excepting Frank
Churchill, who was expected every moment from Richmond; and Mrs. Elton,
in all her apparatus of happiness, her large bonnet and her basket,
was very ready to lead the way in gathering, accepting, or
talking--strawberries, and only strawberries, could now be thought or
spoken of.--“The best fruit in England--every body's favourite--always
wholesome.--These the finest beds and finest sorts.--Delightful to
gather for one's self--the only way of really enjoying them.--Morning
decidedly the best time--never tired--every sort good--hautboy
infinitely superior--no comparison--the others hardly eatable--hautboys
very scarce--Chili preferred--white wood finest flavour of all--price
of strawberries in London--abundance about Bristol--Maple
Grove--cultivation--beds when to be renewed--gardeners thinking exactly
different--no general rule--gardeners never to be put out of their
way--delicious fruit--only too rich to be eaten much of--inferior
to cherries--currants more refreshing--only objection to gathering
strawberries the stooping--glaring sun--tired to death--could bear it no
longer--must go and sit in the shade.”

Such, for half an hour, was the conversation--interrupted only once by
Mrs. Weston, who came out, in her solicitude after her son-in-law, to
inquire if he were come--and she was a little uneasy.--She had some
fears of his horse.

Seats tolerably in the shade were found; and now Emma was obliged
to overhear what Mrs. Elton and Jane Fairfax were talking of.--A
situation, a most desirable situation, was in question. Mrs. Elton had
received notice of it that morning, and was in raptures. It was not
with Mrs. Suckling, it was not with Mrs. Bragge, but in felicity and
splendour it fell short only of them: it was with a cousin of Mrs.
Bragge, an acquaintance of Mrs. Suckling, a lady known at Maple Grove.
Delightful, charming, superior, first circles, spheres, lines, ranks,
every thing--and Mrs. Elton was wild to have the offer closed with
immediately.--On her side, all was warmth, energy, and triumph--and she
positively refused to take her friend's negative, though Miss Fairfax
continued to assure her that she would not at present engage in any
thing, repeating the same motives which she had been heard to urge
before.--Still Mrs. Elton insisted on being authorised to write an
acquiescence by the morrow's post.--How Jane could bear it at all, was
astonishing to Emma.--She did look vexed, she did speak pointedly--and
at last, with a decision of action unusual to her, proposed a
removal.--“Should not they walk? Would not Mr. Knightley shew them the
gardens--all the gardens?--She wished to see the whole extent.”--The
pertinacity of her friend seemed more than she could bear.

It was hot; and after walking some time over the gardens in a scattered,
dispersed way, scarcely any three together, they insensibly followed one
another to the delicious shade of a broad short avenue of limes, which
stretching beyond the garden at an equal distance from the river, seemed
the finish of the pleasure grounds.--It led to nothing; nothing but a
view at the end over a low stone wall with high pillars, which seemed
intended, in their erection, to give the appearance of an approach to
the house, which never had been there. Disputable, however, as might be
the taste of such a termination, it was in itself a charming walk, and
the view which closed it extremely pretty.--The considerable slope, at
nearly the foot of which the Abbey stood, gradually acquired a steeper
form beyond its grounds; and at half a mile distant was a bank of
considerable abruptness and grandeur, well clothed with wood;--and at
the bottom of this bank, favourably placed and sheltered, rose the
Abbey Mill Farm, with meadows in front, and the river making a close and
handsome curve around it.

It was a sweet view--sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure,
English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being
oppressive.

In this walk Emma and Mr. Weston found all the others assembled; and
towards this view she immediately perceived Mr. Knightley and Harriet
distinct from the rest, quietly leading the way. Mr. Knightley and
Harriet!--It was an odd tete-a-tete; but she was glad to see it.--There
had been a time when he would have scorned her as a companion, and
turned from her with little ceremony. Now they seemed in pleasant
conversation. There had been a time also when Emma would have been sorry
to see Harriet in a spot so favourable for the Abbey Mill Farm; but now
she feared it not. It might be safely viewed with all its appendages of
prosperity and beauty, its rich pastures, spreading flocks, orchard in
blossom, and light column of smoke ascending.--She joined them at the
wall, and found them more engaged in talking than in looking around. He
was giving Harriet information as to modes of agriculture, etc. and Emma
received a smile which seemed to say, “These are my own concerns. I have
a right to talk on such subjects, without being suspected of
introducing Robert Martin.”--She did not suspect him. It was too old
a story.--Robert Martin had probably ceased to think of Harriet.--They
took a few turns together along the walk.--The shade was most
refreshing, and Emma found it the pleasantest part of the day.

The next remove was to the house; they must all go in and eat;--and they
were all seated and busy, and still Frank Churchill did not come. Mrs.
Weston looked, and looked in vain. His father would not own himself
uneasy, and laughed at her fears; but she could not be cured of wishing
that he would part with his black mare. He had expressed himself as to
coming, with more than common certainty. “His aunt was so much better,
that he had not a doubt of getting over to them.”--Mrs. Churchill's
state, however, as many were ready to remind her, was liable to such
sudden variation as might disappoint her nephew in the most reasonable
dependence--and Mrs. Weston was at last persuaded to believe, or to say,
that it must be by some attack of Mrs. Churchill that he was
prevented coming.--Emma looked at Harriet while the point was under
consideration; she behaved very well, and betrayed no emotion.

The cold repast was over, and the party were to go out once more to see
what had not yet been seen, the old Abbey fish-ponds; perhaps get as far
as the clover, which was to be begun cutting on the morrow, or, at
any rate, have the pleasure of being hot, and growing cool again.--Mr.
Woodhouse, who had already taken his little round in the highest part
of the gardens, where no damps from the river were imagined even by him,
stirred no more; and his daughter resolved to remain with him, that
Mrs. Weston might be persuaded away by her husband to the exercise and
variety which her spirits seemed to need.

Mr. Knightley had done all in his power for Mr. Woodhouse's
entertainment. Books of engravings, drawers of medals, cameos, corals,
shells, and every other family collection within his cabinets, had been
prepared for his old friend, to while away the morning; and the kindness
had perfectly answered. Mr. Woodhouse had been exceedingly well amused.
Mrs. Weston had been shewing them all to him, and now he would shew them
all to Emma;--fortunate in having no other resemblance to a child, than
in a total want of taste for what he saw, for he was slow, constant, and
methodical.--Before this second looking over was begun, however, Emma
walked into the hall for the sake of a few moments' free observation of
the entrance and ground-plot of the house--and was hardly there, when
Jane Fairfax appeared, coming quickly in from the garden, and with a
look of escape.--Little expecting to meet Miss Woodhouse so soon, there
was a start at first; but Miss Woodhouse was the very person she was in
quest of.

“Will you be so kind,” said she, “when I am missed, as to say that I am
gone home?--I am going this moment.--My aunt is not aware how late it
is, nor how long we have been absent--but I am sure we shall be wanted,
and I am determined to go directly.--I have said nothing about it to any
body. It would only be giving trouble and distress. Some are gone to the
ponds, and some to the lime walk. Till they all come in I shall not be
missed; and when they do, will you have the goodness to say that I am
gone?”

“Certainly, if you wish it;--but you are not going to walk to Highbury
alone?”

“Yes--what should hurt me?--I walk fast. I shall be at home in twenty
minutes.”

“But it is too far, indeed it is, to be walking quite alone. Let my
father's servant go with you.--Let me order the carriage. It can be
round in five minutes.”

“Thank you, thank you--but on no account.--I would rather walk.--And
for _me_ to be afraid of walking alone!--I, who may so soon have to
guard others!”

She spoke with great agitation; and Emma very feelingly replied, “That
can be no reason for your being exposed to danger now. I must order the
carriage. The heat even would be danger.--You are fatigued already.”

“I am,”--she answered--“I am fatigued; but it is not the sort of
fatigue--quick walking will refresh me.--Miss Woodhouse, we all know
at times what it is to be wearied in spirits. Mine, I confess, are
exhausted. The greatest kindness you can shew me, will be to let me have
my own way, and only say that I am gone when it is necessary.”

Emma had not another word to oppose. She saw it all; and entering into
her feelings, promoted her quitting the house immediately, and
watched her safely off with the zeal of a friend. Her parting look was
grateful--and her parting words, “Oh! Miss Woodhouse, the comfort of
being sometimes alone!”--seemed to burst from an overcharged heart, and
to describe somewhat of the continual endurance to be practised by her,
even towards some of those who loved her best.

“Such a home, indeed! such an aunt!” said Emma, as she turned back into
the hall again. “I do pity you. And the more sensibility you betray of
their just horrors, the more I shall like you.”

Jane had not been gone a quarter of an hour, and they had only
accomplished some views of St. Mark's Place, Venice, when Frank
Churchill entered the room. Emma had not been thinking of him, she had
forgotten to think of him--but she was very glad to see him. Mrs. Weston
would be at ease. The black mare was blameless; _they_ were right
who had named Mrs. Churchill as the cause. He had been detained by
a temporary increase of illness in her; a nervous seizure, which had
lasted some hours--and he had quite given up every thought of coming,
till very late;--and had he known how hot a ride he should have, and
how late, with all his hurry, he must be, he believed he should not have
come at all. The heat was excessive; he had never suffered any thing
like it--almost wished he had staid at home--nothing killed him
like heat--he could bear any degree of cold, etc., but heat was
intolerable--and he sat down, at the greatest possible distance from the
slight remains of Mr. Woodhouse's fire, looking very deplorable.

“You will soon be cooler, if you sit still,” said Emma.

“As soon as I am cooler I shall go back again. I could very ill be
spared--but such a point had been made of my coming! You will all be
going soon I suppose; the whole party breaking up. I met _one_ as I
came--Madness in such weather!--absolute madness!”

Emma listened, and looked, and soon perceived that Frank Churchill's
state might be best defined by the expressive phrase of being out of
humour. Some people were always cross when they were hot. Such might be
his constitution; and as she knew that eating and drinking were often
the cure of such incidental complaints, she recommended his taking
some refreshment; he would find abundance of every thing in the
dining-room--and she humanely pointed out the door.

“No--he should not eat. He was not hungry; it would only make him
hotter.” In two minutes, however, he relented in his own favour; and
muttering something about spruce-beer, walked off. Emma returned all her
attention to her father, saying in secret--

“I am glad I have done being in love with him. I should not like a man
who is so soon discomposed by a hot morning. Harriet's sweet easy temper
will not mind it.”

He was gone long enough to have had a very comfortable meal, and came
back all the better--grown quite cool--and, with good manners, like
himself--able to draw a chair close to them, take an interest in their
employment; and regret, in a reasonable way, that he should be so late.
He was not in his best spirits, but seemed trying to improve them; and,
at last, made himself talk nonsense very agreeably. They were looking
over views in Swisserland.

“As soon as my aunt gets well, I shall go abroad,” said he. “I shall
never be easy till I have seen some of these places. You will have my
sketches, some time or other, to look at--or my tour to read--or my
poem. I shall do something to expose myself.”

“That may be--but not by sketches in Swisserland. You will never go to
Swisserland. Your uncle and aunt will never allow you to leave England.”

“They may be induced to go too. A warm climate may be prescribed for
her. I have more than half an expectation of our all going abroad. I
assure you I have. I feel a strong persuasion, this morning, that I
shall soon be abroad. I ought to travel. I am tired of doing nothing. I
want a change. I am serious, Miss Woodhouse, whatever your penetrating
eyes may fancy--I am sick of England--and would leave it to-morrow, if
I could.”

“You are sick of prosperity and indulgence. Cannot you invent a few
hardships for yourself, and be contented to stay?”

“_I_ sick of prosperity and indulgence! You are quite mistaken. I do
not look upon myself as either prosperous or indulged. I am thwarted
in every thing material. I do not consider myself at all a fortunate
person.”

“You are not quite so miserable, though, as when you first came. Go and
eat and drink a little more, and you will do very well. Another slice of
cold meat, another draught of Madeira and water, will make you nearly on
a par with the rest of us.”

“No--I shall not stir. I shall sit by you. You are my best cure.”

“We are going to Box Hill to-morrow;--you will join us. It is not
Swisserland, but it will be something for a young man so much in want of
a change. You will stay, and go with us?”

“No, certainly not; I shall go home in the cool of the evening.”

“But you may come again in the cool of to-morrow morning.”

“No--It will not be worth while. If I come, I shall be cross.”

“Then pray stay at Richmond.”

“But if I do, I shall be crosser still. I can never bear to think of you
all there without me.”

“These are difficulties which you must settle for yourself. Chuse your
own degree of crossness. I shall press you no more.”

The rest of the party were now returning, and all were soon collected.
With some there was great joy at the sight of Frank Churchill; others
took it very composedly; but there was a very general distress and
disturbance on Miss Fairfax's disappearance being explained. That it was
time for every body to go, concluded the subject; and with a short final
arrangement for the next day's scheme, they parted. Frank Churchill's
little inclination to exclude himself increased so much, that his last
words to Emma were,

“Well;--if _you_ wish me to stay and join the party, I will.”

She smiled her acceptance; and nothing less than a summons from Richmond
was to take him back before the following evening.



CHAPTER VII


They had a very fine day for Box Hill; and all the other outward
circumstances of arrangement, accommodation, and punctuality, were in
favour of a pleasant party. Mr. Weston directed the whole, officiating
safely between Hartfield and the Vicarage, and every body was in good
time. Emma and Harriet went together; Miss Bates and her niece, with
the Eltons; the gentlemen on horseback. Mrs. Weston remained with Mr.
Woodhouse. Nothing was wanting but to be happy when they got there.
Seven miles were travelled in expectation of enjoyment, and every body
had a burst of admiration on first arriving; but in the general amount
of the day there was deficiency. There was a languor, a want of spirits,
a want of union, which could not be got over. They separated too much
into parties. The Eltons walked together; Mr. Knightley took charge of
Miss Bates and Jane; and Emma and Harriet belonged to Frank Churchill.
And Mr. Weston tried, in vain, to make them harmonise better. It seemed
at first an accidental division, but it never materially varied. Mr. and
Mrs. Elton, indeed, shewed no unwillingness to mix, and be as agreeable
as they could; but during the two whole hours that were spent on the
hill, there seemed a principle of separation, between the other parties,
too strong for any fine prospects, or any cold collation, or any
cheerful Mr. Weston, to remove.

At first it was downright dulness to Emma. She had never seen Frank
Churchill so silent and stupid. He said nothing worth hearing--looked
without seeing--admired without intelligence--listened without knowing
what she said. While he was so dull, it was no wonder that Harriet
should be dull likewise; and they were both insufferable.

When they all sat down it was better; to her taste a great deal better,
for Frank Churchill grew talkative and gay, making her his first object.
Every distinguishing attention that could be paid, was paid to her.
To amuse her, and be agreeable in her eyes, seemed all that he cared
for--and Emma, glad to be enlivened, not sorry to be flattered, was gay
and easy too, and gave him all the friendly encouragement, the admission
to be gallant, which she had ever given in the first and most animating
period of their acquaintance; but which now, in her own estimation,
meant nothing, though in the judgment of most people looking on it must
have had such an appearance as no English word but flirtation could very
well describe. “Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Woodhouse flirted together
excessively.” They were laying themselves open to that very phrase--and
to having it sent off in a letter to Maple Grove by one lady, to
Ireland by another. Not that Emma was gay and thoughtless from any
real felicity; it was rather because she felt less happy than she had
expected. She laughed because she was disappointed; and though she liked
him for his attentions, and thought them all, whether in friendship,
admiration, or playfulness, extremely judicious, they were not winning
back her heart. She still intended him for her friend.

“How much I am obliged to you,” said he, “for telling me to come
to-day!--If it had not been for you, I should certainly have lost all
the happiness of this party. I had quite determined to go away again.”

“Yes, you were very cross; and I do not know what about, except that you
were too late for the best strawberries. I was a kinder friend than you
deserved. But you were humble. You begged hard to be commanded to come.”

“Don't say I was cross. I was fatigued. The heat overcame me.”

“It is hotter to-day.”

“Not to my feelings. I am perfectly comfortable to-day.”

“You are comfortable because you are under command.”

“Your command?--Yes.”

“Perhaps I intended you to say so, but I meant self-command. You had,
somehow or other, broken bounds yesterday, and run away from your own
management; but to-day you are got back again--and as I cannot be always
with you, it is best to believe your temper under your own command
rather than mine.”

“It comes to the same thing. I can have no self-command without a
motive. You order me, whether you speak or not. And you can be always
with me. You are always with me.”

“Dating from three o'clock yesterday. My perpetual influence could not
begin earlier, or you would not have been so much out of humour before.”

“Three o'clock yesterday! That is your date. I thought I had seen you
first in February.”

“Your gallantry is really unanswerable. But (lowering her voice)--nobody
speaks except ourselves, and it is rather too much to be talking
nonsense for the entertainment of seven silent people.”

“I say nothing of which I am ashamed,” replied he, with lively
impudence. “I saw you first in February. Let every body on the Hill
hear me if they can. Let my accents swell to Mickleham on one side,
and Dorking on the other. I saw you first in February.” And then
whispering--“Our companions are excessively stupid. What shall we do
to rouse them? Any nonsense will serve. They _shall_ talk. Ladies
and gentlemen, I am ordered by Miss Woodhouse (who, wherever she is,
presides) to say, that she desires to know what you are all thinking
of?”

Some laughed, and answered good-humouredly. Miss Bates said a great
deal; Mrs. Elton swelled at the idea of Miss Woodhouse's presiding; Mr.
Knightley's answer was the most distinct.

“Is Miss Woodhouse sure that she would like to hear what we are all
thinking of?”

“Oh! no, no”--cried Emma, laughing as carelessly as she could--“Upon no
account in the world. It is the very last thing I would stand the brunt
of just now. Let me hear any thing rather than what you are all thinking
of. I will not say quite all. There are one or two, perhaps, (glancing
at Mr. Weston and Harriet,) whose thoughts I might not be afraid of
knowing.”

“It is a sort of thing,” cried Mrs. Elton emphatically, “which _I_
should not have thought myself privileged to inquire into. Though,
perhaps, as the _Chaperon_ of the party--_I_ never was in any
circle--exploring parties--young ladies--married women--”

Her mutterings were chiefly to her husband; and he murmured, in reply,

“Very true, my love, very true. Exactly so, indeed--quite unheard
of--but some ladies say any thing. Better pass it off as a joke. Every
body knows what is due to _you_.”

“It will not do,” whispered Frank to Emma; “they are most of them
affronted. I will attack them with more address. Ladies and gentlemen--I
am ordered by Miss Woodhouse to say, that she waives her right of
knowing exactly what you may all be thinking of, and only requires
something very entertaining from each of you, in a general way. Here
are seven of you, besides myself, (who, she is pleased to say, am very
entertaining already,) and she only demands from each of you either one
thing very clever, be it prose or verse, original or repeated--or two
things moderately clever--or three things very dull indeed, and she
engages to laugh heartily at them all.”

“Oh! very well,” exclaimed Miss Bates, “then I need not be uneasy.
'Three things very dull indeed.' That will just do for me, you know. I
shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth,
shan't I? (looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on every
body's assent)--Do not you all think I shall?”

Emma could not resist.

“Ah! ma'am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me--but you will be
limited as to number--only three at once.”

Miss Bates, deceived by the mock ceremony of her manner, did not
immediately catch her meaning; but, when it burst on her, it could not
anger, though a slight blush shewed that it could pain her.

“Ah!--well--to be sure. Yes, I see what she means, (turning to Mr.
Knightley,) and I will try to hold my tongue. I must make myself very
disagreeable, or she would not have said such a thing to an old friend.”

“I like your plan,” cried Mr. Weston. “Agreed, agreed. I will do my
best. I am making a conundrum. How will a conundrum reckon?”

“Low, I am afraid, sir, very low,” answered his son;--“but we shall be
indulgent--especially to any one who leads the way.”

“No, no,” said Emma, “it will not reckon low. A conundrum of Mr.
Weston's shall clear him and his next neighbour. Come, sir, pray let me
hear it.”

“I doubt its being very clever myself,” said Mr. Weston. “It is too much
a matter of fact, but here it is.--What two letters of the alphabet are
there, that express perfection?”

“What two letters!--express perfection! I am sure I do not know.”

“Ah! you will never guess. You, (to Emma), I am certain, will never
guess.--I will tell you.--M. and A.--Em-ma.--Do you understand?”

Understanding and gratification came together. It might be a very
indifferent piece of wit, but Emma found a great deal to laugh at and
enjoy in it--and so did Frank and Harriet.--It did not seem to touch
the rest of the party equally; some looked very stupid about it, and Mr.
Knightley gravely said,

“This explains the sort of clever thing that is wanted, and Mr. Weston
has done very well for himself; but he must have knocked up every body
else. _Perfection_ should not have come quite so soon.”

“Oh! for myself, I protest I must be excused,” said Mrs. Elton; “_I_
really cannot attempt--I am not at all fond of the sort of thing. I had
an acrostic once sent to me upon my own name, which I was not at all
pleased with. I knew who it came from. An abominable puppy!--You know
who I mean (nodding to her husband). These kind of things are very
well at Christmas, when one is sitting round the fire; but quite out of
place, in my opinion, when one is exploring about the country in summer.
Miss Woodhouse must excuse me. I am not one of those who have witty
things at every body's service. I do not pretend to be a wit. I have a
great deal of vivacity in my own way, but I really must be allowed to
judge when to speak and when to hold my tongue. Pass us, if you please,
Mr. Churchill. Pass Mr. E., Knightley, Jane, and myself. We have nothing
clever to say--not one of us.

“Yes, yes, pray pass _me_,” added her husband, with a sort of sneering
consciousness; “_I_ have nothing to say that can entertain Miss
Woodhouse, or any other young lady. An old married man--quite good for
nothing. Shall we walk, Augusta?”

“With all my heart. I am really tired of exploring so long on one spot.
Come, Jane, take my other arm.”

Jane declined it, however, and the husband and wife walked off.
“Happy couple!” said Frank Churchill, as soon as they were out of
hearing:--“How well they suit one another!--Very lucky--marrying as they
did, upon an acquaintance formed only in a public place!--They only knew
each other, I think, a few weeks in Bath! Peculiarly lucky!--for as to
any real knowledge of a person's disposition that Bath, or any public
place, can give--it is all nothing; there can be no knowledge. It is
only by seeing women in their own homes, among their own set, just as
they always are, that you can form any just judgment. Short of that, it
is all guess and luck--and will generally be ill-luck. How many a man
has committed himself on a short acquaintance, and rued it all the rest
of his life!”

Miss Fairfax, who had seldom spoken before, except among her own
confederates, spoke now.

“Such things do occur, undoubtedly.”--She was stopped by a cough. Frank
Churchill turned towards her to listen.

“You were speaking,” said he, gravely. She recovered her voice.

“I was only going to observe, that though such unfortunate circumstances
do sometimes occur both to men and women, I cannot imagine them to be
very frequent. A hasty and imprudent attachment may arise--but there is
generally time to recover from it afterwards. I would be understood to
mean, that it can be only weak, irresolute characters, (whose happiness
must be always at the mercy of chance,) who will suffer an unfortunate
acquaintance to be an inconvenience, an oppression for ever.”

He made no answer; merely looked, and bowed in submission; and soon
afterwards said, in a lively tone,

“Well, I have so little confidence in my own judgment, that whenever I
marry, I hope some body will chuse my wife for me. Will you? (turning to
Emma.) Will you chuse a wife for me?--I am sure I should like any body
fixed on by you. You provide for the family, you know, (with a smile at
his father). Find some body for me. I am in no hurry. Adopt her, educate
her.”

“And make her like myself.”

“By all means, if you can.”

“Very well. I undertake the commission. You shall have a charming wife.”

“She must be very lively, and have hazle eyes. I care for nothing else.
I shall go abroad for a couple of years--and when I return, I shall come
to you for my wife. Remember.”

Emma was in no danger of forgetting. It was a commission to touch every
favourite feeling. Would not Harriet be the very creature described?
Hazle eyes excepted, two years more might make her all that he wished.
He might even have Harriet in his thoughts at the moment; who could say?
Referring the education to her seemed to imply it.

“Now, ma'am,” said Jane to her aunt, “shall we join Mrs. Elton?”

“If you please, my dear. With all my heart. I am quite ready. I was
ready to have gone with her, but this will do just as well. We shall
soon overtake her. There she is--no, that's somebody else. That's one
of the ladies in the Irish car party, not at all like her.--Well, I
declare--”

They walked off, followed in half a minute by Mr. Knightley. Mr. Weston,
his son, Emma, and Harriet, only remained; and the young man's spirits
now rose to a pitch almost unpleasant. Even Emma grew tired at last of
flattery and merriment, and wished herself rather walking quietly about
with any of the others, or sitting almost alone, and quite unattended
to, in tranquil observation of the beautiful views beneath her. The
appearance of the servants looking out for them to give notice of the
carriages was a joyful sight; and even the bustle of collecting and
preparing to depart, and the solicitude of Mrs. Elton to have _her_
carriage first, were gladly endured, in the prospect of the quiet drive
home which was to close the very questionable enjoyments of this day of
pleasure. Such another scheme, composed of so many ill-assorted people,
she hoped never to be betrayed into again.

While waiting for the carriage, she found Mr. Knightley by her side. He
looked around, as if to see that no one were near, and then said,

“Emma, I must once more speak to you as I have been used to do: a
privilege rather endured than allowed, perhaps, but I must still use it.
I cannot see you acting wrong, without a remonstrance. How could you be
so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to
a woman of her character, age, and situation?--Emma, I had not thought
it possible.”

Emma recollected, blushed, was sorry, but tried to laugh it off.

“Nay, how could I help saying what I did?--Nobody could have helped it.
It was not so very bad. I dare say she did not understand me.”

“I assure you she did. She felt your full meaning. She has talked of
it since. I wish you could have heard how she talked of it--with what
candour and generosity. I wish you could have heard her honouring your
forbearance, in being able to pay her such attentions, as she was for
ever receiving from yourself and your father, when her society must be
so irksome.”

“Oh!” cried Emma, “I know there is not a better creature in the world:
but you must allow, that what is good and what is ridiculous are most
unfortunately blended in her.”

“They are blended,” said he, “I acknowledge; and, were she prosperous,
I could allow much for the occasional prevalence of the ridiculous over
the good. Were she a woman of fortune, I would leave every harmless
absurdity to take its chance, I would not quarrel with you for any
liberties of manner. Were she your equal in situation--but, Emma,
consider how far this is from being the case. She is poor; she has sunk
from the comforts she was born to; and, if she live to old age, must
probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion. It was
badly done, indeed! You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had
seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour, to have you
now, in thoughtless spirits, and the pride of the moment, laugh at her,
humble her--and before her niece, too--and before others, many of whom
(certainly _some_,) would be entirely guided by _your_ treatment
of her.--This is not pleasant to you, Emma--and it is very far from
pleasant to me; but I must, I will,--I will tell you truths while I can;
satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and
trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you
can do now.”

While they talked, they were advancing towards the carriage; it was
ready; and, before she could speak again, he had handed her in. He had
misinterpreted the feelings which had kept her face averted, and her
tongue motionless. They were combined only of anger against herself,
mortification, and deep concern. She had not been able to speak; and, on
entering the carriage, sunk back for a moment overcome--then reproaching
herself for having taken no leave, making no acknowledgment, parting in
apparent sullenness, she looked out with voice and hand eager to shew a
difference; but it was just too late. He had turned away, and the horses
were in motion. She continued to look back, but in vain; and soon, with
what appeared unusual speed, they were half way down the hill, and
every thing left far behind. She was vexed beyond what could have been
expressed--almost beyond what she could conceal. Never had she felt so
agitated, mortified, grieved, at any circumstance in her life. She was
most forcibly struck. The truth of this representation there was no
denying. She felt it at her heart. How could she have been so brutal,
so cruel to Miss Bates! How could she have exposed herself to such ill
opinion in any one she valued! And how suffer him to leave her without
saying one word of gratitude, of concurrence, of common kindness!

Time did not compose her. As she reflected more, she seemed but to feel
it more. She never had been so depressed. Happily it was not necessary
to speak. There was only Harriet, who seemed not in spirits herself,
fagged, and very willing to be silent; and Emma felt the tears running
down her cheeks almost all the way home, without being at any trouble to
check them, extraordinary as they were.



CHAPTER VIII


The wretchedness of a scheme to Box Hill was in Emma's thoughts all the
evening. How it might be considered by the rest of the party, she could
not tell. They, in their different homes, and their different ways,
might be looking back on it with pleasure; but in her view it was
a morning more completely misspent, more totally bare of rational
satisfaction at the time, and more to be abhorred in recollection, than
any she had ever passed. A whole evening of back-gammon with her father,
was felicity to it. _There_, indeed, lay real pleasure, for there she
was giving up the sweetest hours of the twenty-four to his comfort; and
feeling that, unmerited as might be the degree of his fond affection and
confiding esteem, she could not, in her general conduct, be open to any
severe reproach. As a daughter, she hoped she was not without a heart.
She hoped no one could have said to her, “How could you be so unfeeling
to your father?--I must, I will tell you truths while I can.” Miss
Bates should never again--no, never! If attention, in future, could do
away the past, she might hope to be forgiven. She had been often remiss,
her conscience told her so; remiss, perhaps, more in thought than fact;
scornful, ungracious. But it should be so no more. In the warmth of true
contrition, she would call upon her the very next morning, and it should
be the beginning, on her side, of a regular, equal, kindly intercourse.

She was just as determined when the morrow came, and went early, that
nothing might prevent her. It was not unlikely, she thought, that she
might see Mr. Knightley in her way; or, perhaps, he might come in
while she were paying her visit. She had no objection. She would not be
ashamed of the appearance of the penitence, so justly and truly hers.
Her eyes were towards Donwell as she walked, but she saw him not.

“The ladies were all at home.” She had never rejoiced at the sound
before, nor ever before entered the passage, nor walked up the stairs,
with any wish of giving pleasure, but in conferring obligation, or of
deriving it, except in subsequent ridicule.

There was a bustle on her approach; a good deal of moving and talking.
She heard Miss Bates's voice, something was to be done in a hurry; the
maid looked frightened and awkward; hoped she would be pleased to wait a
moment, and then ushered her in too soon. The aunt and niece seemed both
escaping into the adjoining room. Jane she had a distinct glimpse of,
looking extremely ill; and, before the door had shut them out, she heard
Miss Bates saying, “Well, my dear, I shall _say_ you are laid down upon
the bed, and I am sure you are ill enough.”

Poor old Mrs. Bates, civil and humble as usual, looked as if she did not
quite understand what was going on.

“I am afraid Jane is not very well,” said she, “but I do not know; they
_tell_ me she is well. I dare say my daughter will be here presently,
Miss Woodhouse. I hope you find a chair. I wish Hetty had not gone. I am
very little able--Have you a chair, ma'am? Do you sit where you like? I
am sure she will be here presently.”

Emma seriously hoped she would. She had a moment's fear of Miss Bates
keeping away from her. But Miss Bates soon came--“Very happy and
obliged”--but Emma's conscience told her that there was not the same
cheerful volubility as before--less ease of look and manner. A very
friendly inquiry after Miss Fairfax, she hoped, might lead the way to a
return of old feelings. The touch seemed immediate.

“Ah! Miss Woodhouse, how kind you are!--I suppose you have heard--and
are come to give us joy. This does not seem much like joy, indeed, in
me--(twinkling away a tear or two)--but it will be very trying for us
to part with her, after having had her so long, and she has a dreadful
headache just now, writing all the morning:--such long letters, you
know, to be written to Colonel Campbell, and Mrs. Dixon. 'My dear,' said
I, 'you will blind yourself'--for tears were in her eyes perpetually.
One cannot wonder, one cannot wonder. It is a great change; and though
she is amazingly fortunate--such a situation, I suppose, as no
young woman before ever met with on first going out--do not think us
ungrateful, Miss Woodhouse, for such surprising good fortune--(again
dispersing her tears)--but, poor dear soul! if you were to see what a
headache she has. When one is in great pain, you know one cannot feel
any blessing quite as it may deserve. She is as low as possible. To
look at her, nobody would think how delighted and happy she is to have
secured such a situation. You will excuse her not coming to you--she is
not able--she is gone into her own room--I want her to lie down upon the
bed. 'My dear,' said I, 'I shall say you are laid down upon the bed:'
but, however, she is not; she is walking about the room. But, now that
she has written her letters, she says she shall soon be well. She will
be extremely sorry to miss seeing you, Miss Woodhouse, but your
kindness will excuse her. You were kept waiting at the door--I was quite
ashamed--but somehow there was a little bustle--for it so happened that
we had not heard the knock, and till you were on the stairs, we did not
know any body was coming. 'It is only Mrs. Cole,' said I, 'depend upon
it. Nobody else would come so early.' 'Well,' said she, 'it must be
borne some time or other, and it may as well be now.' But then Patty
came in, and said it was you. 'Oh!' said I, 'it is Miss Woodhouse: I am
sure you will like to see her.'--'I can see nobody,' said she; and
up she got, and would go away; and that was what made us keep you
waiting--and extremely sorry and ashamed we were. 'If you must go, my
dear,' said I, 'you must, and I will say you are laid down upon the
bed.'”

Emma was most sincerely interested. Her heart had been long growing
kinder towards Jane; and this picture of her present sufferings acted
as a cure of every former ungenerous suspicion, and left her nothing but
pity; and the remembrance of the less just and less gentle sensations of
the past, obliged her to admit that Jane might very naturally resolve on
seeing Mrs. Cole or any other steady friend, when she might not bear
to see herself. She spoke as she felt, with earnest regret and
solicitude--sincerely wishing that the circumstances which she collected
from Miss Bates to be now actually determined on, might be as much for
Miss Fairfax's advantage and comfort as possible. “It must be a severe
trial to them all. She had understood it was to be delayed till Colonel
Campbell's return.”

“So very kind!” replied Miss Bates. “But you are always kind.”

There was no bearing such an “always;” and to break through her dreadful
gratitude, Emma made the direct inquiry of--

“Where--may I ask?--is Miss Fairfax going?”

“To a Mrs. Smallridge--charming woman--most superior--to have the charge
of her three little girls--delightful children. Impossible that any
situation could be more replete with comfort; if we except, perhaps,
Mrs. Suckling's own family, and Mrs. Bragge's; but Mrs. Smallridge is
intimate with both, and in the very same neighbourhood:--lives only four
miles from Maple Grove. Jane will be only four miles from Maple Grove.”

“Mrs. Elton, I suppose, has been the person to whom Miss Fairfax owes--”

“Yes, our good Mrs. Elton. The most indefatigable, true friend. She
would not take a denial. She would not let Jane say, 'No;' for when Jane
first heard of it, (it was the day before yesterday, the very morning
we were at Donwell,) when Jane first heard of it, she was quite decided
against accepting the offer, and for the reasons you mention; exactly
as you say, she had made up her mind to close with nothing till Colonel
Campbell's return, and nothing should induce her to enter into any
engagement at present--and so she told Mrs. Elton over and over
again--and I am sure I had no more idea that she would change her
mind!--but that good Mrs. Elton, whose judgment never fails her, saw
farther than I did. It is not every body that would have stood out in
such a kind way as she did, and refuse to take Jane's answer; but she
positively declared she would _not_ write any such denial yesterday, as
Jane wished her; she would wait--and, sure enough, yesterday evening it
was all settled that Jane should go. Quite a surprize to me! I had not
the least idea!--Jane took Mrs. Elton aside, and told her at once, that
upon thinking over the advantages of Mrs. Smallridge's situation, she
had come to the resolution of accepting it.--I did not know a word of it
till it was all settled.”

“You spent the evening with Mrs. Elton?”

“Yes, all of us; Mrs. Elton would have us come. It was settled so, upon
the hill, while we were walking about with Mr. Knightley. 'You _must_
_all_ spend your evening with us,' said she--'I positively must have you
_all_ come.'”

“Mr. Knightley was there too, was he?”

“No, not Mr. Knightley; he declined it from the first; and though I
thought he would come, because Mrs. Elton declared she would not let him
off, he did not;--but my mother, and Jane, and I, were all there, and
a very agreeable evening we had. Such kind friends, you know, Miss
Woodhouse, one must always find agreeable, though every body seemed
rather fagged after the morning's party. Even pleasure, you know, is
fatiguing--and I cannot say that any of them seemed very much to have
enjoyed it. However, _I_ shall always think it a very pleasant party,
and feel extremely obliged to the kind friends who included me in it.”

“Miss Fairfax, I suppose, though you were not aware of it, had been
making up her mind the whole day?”

“I dare say she had.”

“Whenever the time may come, it must be unwelcome to her and all her
friends--but I hope her engagement will have every alleviation that is
possible--I mean, as to the character and manners of the family.”

“Thank you, dear Miss Woodhouse. Yes, indeed, there is every thing
in the world that can make her happy in it. Except the Sucklings and
Bragges, there is not such another nursery establishment, so liberal
and elegant, in all Mrs. Elton's acquaintance. Mrs. Smallridge, a most
delightful woman!--A style of living almost equal to Maple Grove--and as
to the children, except the little Sucklings and little Bragges, there
are not such elegant sweet children anywhere. Jane will be treated with
such regard and kindness!--It will be nothing but pleasure, a life of
pleasure.--And her salary!--I really cannot venture to name her salary
to you, Miss Woodhouse. Even you, used as you are to great sums, would
hardly believe that so much could be given to a young person like Jane.”

“Ah! madam,” cried Emma, “if other children are at all like what I
remember to have been myself, I should think five times the amount of
what I have ever yet heard named as a salary on such occasions, dearly
earned.”

“You are so noble in your ideas!”

“And when is Miss Fairfax to leave you?”

“Very soon, very soon, indeed; that's the worst of it. Within a
fortnight. Mrs. Smallridge is in a great hurry. My poor mother does not
know how to bear it. So then, I try to put it out of her thoughts, and
say, Come ma'am, do not let us think about it any more.”

“Her friends must all be sorry to lose her; and will not Colonel and
Mrs. Campbell be sorry to find that she has engaged herself before their
return?”

“Yes; Jane says she is sure they will; but yet, this is such a situation
as she cannot feel herself justified in declining. I was so astonished
when she first told me what she had been saying to Mrs. Elton, and when
Mrs. Elton at the same moment came congratulating me upon it! It was
before tea--stay--no, it could not be before tea, because we were
just going to cards--and yet it was before tea, because I remember
thinking--Oh! no, now I recollect, now I have it; something happened
before tea, but not that. Mr. Elton was called out of the room before
tea, old John Abdy's son wanted to speak with him. Poor old John, I
have a great regard for him; he was clerk to my poor father twenty-seven
years; and now, poor old man, he is bed-ridden, and very poorly with the
rheumatic gout in his joints--I must go and see him to-day; and so will
Jane, I am sure, if she gets out at all. And poor John's son came to
talk to Mr. Elton about relief from the parish; he is very well to do
himself, you know, being head man at the Crown, ostler, and every thing
of that sort, but still he cannot keep his father without some help;
and so, when Mr. Elton came back, he told us what John ostler had been
telling him, and then it came out about the chaise having been sent to
Randalls to take Mr. Frank Churchill to Richmond. That was what happened
before tea. It was after tea that Jane spoke to Mrs. Elton.”

Miss Bates would hardly give Emma time to say how perfectly new this
circumstance was to her; but as without supposing it possible that she
could be ignorant of any of the particulars of Mr. Frank Churchill's
going, she proceeded to give them all, it was of no consequence.

What Mr. Elton had learned from the ostler on the subject, being the
accumulation of the ostler's own knowledge, and the knowledge of the
servants at Randalls, was, that a messenger had come over from Richmond
soon after the return of the party from Box Hill--which messenger,
however, had been no more than was expected; and that Mr. Churchill had
sent his nephew a few lines, containing, upon the whole, a tolerable
account of Mrs. Churchill, and only wishing him not to delay coming
back beyond the next morning early; but that Mr. Frank Churchill having
resolved to go home directly, without waiting at all, and his horse
seeming to have got a cold, Tom had been sent off immediately for the
Crown chaise, and the ostler had stood out and seen it pass by, the boy
going a good pace, and driving very steady.

There was nothing in all this either to astonish or interest, and it
caught Emma's attention only as it united with the subject which already
engaged her mind. The contrast between Mrs. Churchill's importance in
the world, and Jane Fairfax's, struck her; one was every thing, the
other nothing--and she sat musing on the difference of woman's destiny,
and quite unconscious on what her eyes were fixed, till roused by Miss
Bates's saying,

“Aye, I see what you are thinking of, the pianoforte. What is to become
of that?--Very true. Poor dear Jane was talking of it just now.--'You
must go,' said she. 'You and I must part. You will have no business
here.--Let it stay, however,' said she; 'give it houseroom till Colonel
Campbell comes back. I shall talk about it to him; he will settle for
me; he will help me out of all my difficulties.'--And to this day, I do
believe, she knows not whether it was his present or his daughter's.”

Now Emma was obliged to think of the pianoforte; and the remembrance of
all her former fanciful and unfair conjectures was so little pleasing,
that she soon allowed herself to believe her visit had been long enough;
and, with a repetition of every thing that she could venture to say of
the good wishes which she really felt, took leave.



CHAPTER IX


Emma's pensive meditations, as she walked home, were not interrupted;
but on entering the parlour, she found those who must rouse her. Mr.
Knightley and Harriet had arrived during her absence, and were sitting
with her father.--Mr. Knightley immediately got up, and in a manner
decidedly graver than usual, said,

“I would not go away without seeing you, but I have no time to spare,
and therefore must now be gone directly. I am going to London, to spend
a few days with John and Isabella. Have you any thing to send or say,
besides the 'love,' which nobody carries?”

“Nothing at all. But is not this a sudden scheme?”

“Yes--rather--I have been thinking of it some little time.”

Emma was sure he had not forgiven her; he looked unlike himself. Time,
however, she thought, would tell him that they ought to be friends
again. While he stood, as if meaning to go, but not going--her father
began his inquiries.

“Well, my dear, and did you get there safely?--And how did you find my
worthy old friend and her daughter?--I dare say they must have been very
much obliged to you for coming. Dear Emma has been to call on Mrs.
and Miss Bates, Mr. Knightley, as I told you before. She is always so
attentive to them!”

Emma's colour was heightened by this unjust praise; and with a
smile, and shake of the head, which spoke much, she looked at Mr.
Knightley.--It seemed as if there were an instantaneous impression in
her favour, as if his eyes received the truth from hers, and all that
had passed of good in her feelings were at once caught and honoured.--
He looked at her with a glow of regard. She was warmly gratified--and in
another moment still more so, by a little movement of more than common
friendliness on his part.--He took her hand;--whether she had not
herself made the first motion, she could not say--she might, perhaps,
have rather offered it--but he took her hand, pressed it, and certainly
was on the point of carrying it to his lips--when, from some fancy or
other, he suddenly let it go.--Why he should feel such a scruple, why
he should change his mind when it was all but done, she could not
perceive.--He would have judged better, she thought, if he had not
stopped.--The intention, however, was indubitable; and whether it was
that his manners had in general so little gallantry, or however else it
happened, but she thought nothing became him more.--It was with him,
of so simple, yet so dignified a nature.--She could not but recall the
attempt with great satisfaction. It spoke such perfect amity.--He left
them immediately afterwards--gone in a moment. He always moved with the
alertness of a mind which could neither be undecided nor dilatory, but
now he seemed more sudden than usual in his disappearance.

Emma could not regret her having gone to Miss Bates, but she wished she
had left her ten minutes earlier;--it would have been a great pleasure
to talk over Jane Fairfax's situation with Mr. Knightley.--Neither
would she regret that he should be going to Brunswick Square, for she
knew how much his visit would be enjoyed--but it might have happened
at a better time--and to have had longer notice of it, would have been
pleasanter.--They parted thorough friends, however; she could not
be deceived as to the meaning of his countenance, and his unfinished
gallantry;--it was all done to assure her that she had fully recovered
his good opinion.--He had been sitting with them half an hour, she
found. It was a pity that she had not come back earlier!

In the hope of diverting her father's thoughts from the disagreeableness
of Mr. Knightley's going to London; and going so suddenly; and going on
horseback, which she knew would be all very bad; Emma communicated her
news of Jane Fairfax, and her dependence on the effect was justified;
it supplied a very useful check,--interested, without disturbing him. He
had long made up his mind to Jane Fairfax's going out as governess, and
could talk of it cheerfully, but Mr. Knightley's going to London had
been an unexpected blow.

“I am very glad, indeed, my dear, to hear she is to be so comfortably
settled. Mrs. Elton is very good-natured and agreeable, and I dare say
her acquaintance are just what they ought to be. I hope it is a dry
situation, and that her health will be taken good care of. It ought to
be a first object, as I am sure poor Miss Taylor's always was with me.
You know, my dear, she is going to be to this new lady what Miss Taylor
was to us. And I hope she will be better off in one respect, and not be
induced to go away after it has been her home so long.”

The following day brought news from Richmond to throw every thing else
into the background. An express arrived at Randalls to announce the
death of Mrs. Churchill! Though her nephew had had no particular reason
to hasten back on her account, she had not lived above six-and-thirty
hours after his return. A sudden seizure of a different nature from any
thing foreboded by her general state, had carried her off after a short
struggle. The great Mrs. Churchill was no more.

It was felt as such things must be felt. Every body had a degree of
gravity and sorrow; tenderness towards the departed, solicitude for the
surviving friends; and, in a reasonable time, curiosity to know where
she would be buried. Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops
to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be
disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame.
Mrs. Churchill, after being disliked at least twenty-five years, was
now spoken of with compassionate allowances. In one point she was fully
justified. She had never been admitted before to be seriously ill. The
event acquitted her of all the fancifulness, and all the selfishness of
imaginary complaints.

“Poor Mrs. Churchill! no doubt she had been suffering a great deal:
more than any body had ever supposed--and continual pain would try the
temper. It was a sad event--a great shock--with all her faults, what
would Mr. Churchill do without her? Mr. Churchill's loss would be
dreadful indeed. Mr. Churchill would never get over it.”--Even Mr.
Weston shook his head, and looked solemn, and said, “Ah! poor woman,
who would have thought it!” and resolved, that his mourning should be as
handsome as possible; and his wife sat sighing and moralising over her
broad hems with a commiseration and good sense, true and steady. How it
would affect Frank was among the earliest thoughts of both. It was also
a very early speculation with Emma. The character of Mrs. Churchill,
the grief of her husband--her mind glanced over them both with awe and
compassion--and then rested with lightened feelings on how Frank might
be affected by the event, how benefited, how freed. She saw in a moment
all the possible good. Now, an attachment to Harriet Smith would have
nothing to encounter. Mr. Churchill, independent of his wife, was feared
by nobody; an easy, guidable man, to be persuaded into any thing by his
nephew. All that remained to be wished was, that the nephew should form
the attachment, as, with all her goodwill in the cause, Emma could feel
no certainty of its being already formed.

Harriet behaved extremely well on the occasion, with great self-command.
What ever she might feel of brighter hope, she betrayed nothing. Emma
was gratified, to observe such a proof in her of strengthened character,
and refrained from any allusion that might endanger its maintenance.
They spoke, therefore, of Mrs. Churchill's death with mutual
forbearance.

Short letters from Frank were received at Randalls, communicating all
that was immediately important of their state and plans. Mr. Churchill
was better than could be expected; and their first removal, on the
departure of the funeral for Yorkshire, was to be to the house of a very
old friend in Windsor, to whom Mr. Churchill had been promising a
visit the last ten years. At present, there was nothing to be done for
Harriet; good wishes for the future were all that could yet be possible
on Emma's side.

It was a more pressing concern to shew attention to Jane Fairfax, whose
prospects were closing, while Harriet's opened, and whose engagements
now allowed of no delay in any one at Highbury, who wished to shew her
kindness--and with Emma it was grown into a first wish. She had scarcely
a stronger regret than for her past coldness; and the person, whom she
had been so many months neglecting, was now the very one on whom she
would have lavished every distinction of regard or sympathy. She wanted
to be of use to her; wanted to shew a value for her society, and testify
respect and consideration. She resolved to prevail on her to spend a day
at Hartfield. A note was written to urge it. The invitation was refused,
and by a verbal message. “Miss Fairfax was not well enough to write;”
 and when Mr. Perry called at Hartfield, the same morning, it appeared
that she was so much indisposed as to have been visited, though against
her own consent, by himself, and that she was suffering under severe
headaches, and a nervous fever to a degree, which made him doubt the
possibility of her going to Mrs. Smallridge's at the time proposed.
Her health seemed for the moment completely deranged--appetite quite
gone--and though there were no absolutely alarming symptoms, nothing
touching the pulmonary complaint, which was the standing apprehension
of the family, Mr. Perry was uneasy about her. He thought she had
undertaken more than she was equal to, and that she felt it so herself,
though she would not own it. Her spirits seemed overcome. Her
present home, he could not but observe, was unfavourable to a nervous
disorder:--confined always to one room;--he could have wished it
otherwise--and her good aunt, though his very old friend, he must
acknowledge to be not the best companion for an invalid of that
description. Her care and attention could not be questioned; they were,
in fact, only too great. He very much feared that Miss Fairfax derived
more evil than good from them. Emma listened with the warmest concern;
grieved for her more and more, and looked around eager to discover some
way of being useful. To take her--be it only an hour or two--from
her aunt, to give her change of air and scene, and quiet rational
conversation, even for an hour or two, might do her good; and the
following morning she wrote again to say, in the most feeling language
she could command, that she would call for her in the carriage at any
hour that Jane would name--mentioning that she had Mr. Perry's decided
opinion, in favour of such exercise for his patient. The answer was only
in this short note:

“Miss Fairfax's compliments and thanks, but is quite unequal to any
exercise.”

Emma felt that her own note had deserved something better; but it was
impossible to quarrel with words, whose tremulous inequality shewed
indisposition so plainly, and she thought only of how she might best
counteract this unwillingness to be seen or assisted. In spite of the
answer, therefore, she ordered the carriage, and drove to Mrs. Bates's,
in the hope that Jane would be induced to join her--but it would not
do;--Miss Bates came to the carriage door, all gratitude, and agreeing
with her most earnestly in thinking an airing might be of the greatest
service--and every thing that message could do was tried--but all in
vain. Miss Bates was obliged to return without success; Jane was
quite unpersuadable; the mere proposal of going out seemed to make her
worse.--Emma wished she could have seen her, and tried her own powers;
but, almost before she could hint the wish, Miss Bates made it appear
that she had promised her niece on no account to let Miss Woodhouse in.
“Indeed, the truth was, that poor dear Jane could not bear to see any
body--any body at all--Mrs. Elton, indeed, could not be denied--and
Mrs. Cole had made such a point--and Mrs. Perry had said so much--but,
except them, Jane would really see nobody.”

Emma did not want to be classed with the Mrs. Eltons, the Mrs. Perrys,
and the Mrs. Coles, who would force themselves anywhere; neither could
she feel any right of preference herself--she submitted, therefore, and
only questioned Miss Bates farther as to her niece's appetite and diet,
which she longed to be able to assist. On that subject poor Miss Bates
was very unhappy, and very communicative; Jane would hardly eat any
thing:--Mr. Perry recommended nourishing food; but every thing
they could command (and never had any body such good neighbours) was
distasteful.

Emma, on reaching home, called the housekeeper directly, to an
examination of her stores; and some arrowroot of very superior quality
was speedily despatched to Miss Bates with a most friendly note. In half
an hour the arrowroot was returned, with a thousand thanks from Miss
Bates, but “dear Jane would not be satisfied without its being sent
back; it was a thing she could not take--and, moreover, she insisted on
her saying, that she was not at all in want of any thing.”

When Emma afterwards heard that Jane Fairfax had been seen wandering
about the meadows, at some distance from Highbury, on the afternoon of
the very day on which she had, under the plea of being unequal to any
exercise, so peremptorily refused to go out with her in the carriage,
she could have no doubt--putting every thing together--that Jane was
resolved to receive no kindness from _her_. She was sorry, very sorry.
Her heart was grieved for a state which seemed but the more pitiable
from this sort of irritation of spirits, inconsistency of action, and
inequality of powers; and it mortified her that she was given so little
credit for proper feeling, or esteemed so little worthy as a friend: but
she had the consolation of knowing that her intentions were good, and of
being able to say to herself, that could Mr. Knightley have been privy
to all her attempts of assisting Jane Fairfax, could he even have seen
into her heart, he would not, on this occasion, have found any thing to
reprove.



CHAPTER X


One morning, about ten days after Mrs. Churchill's decease, Emma was
called downstairs to Mr. Weston, who “could not stay five minutes,
and wanted particularly to speak with her.”--He met her at the
parlour-door, and hardly asking her how she did, in the natural key of
his voice, sunk it immediately, to say, unheard by her father,

“Can you come to Randalls at any time this morning?--Do, if it be
possible. Mrs. Weston wants to see you. She must see you.”

“Is she unwell?”

“No, no, not at all--only a little agitated. She would have ordered the
carriage, and come to you, but she must see you _alone_, and that you
know--(nodding towards her father)--Humph!--Can you come?”

“Certainly. This moment, if you please. It is impossible to refuse what
you ask in such a way. But what can be the matter?--Is she really not
ill?”

“Depend upon me--but ask no more questions. You will know it all in
time. The most unaccountable business! But hush, hush!”

To guess what all this meant, was impossible even for Emma. Something
really important seemed announced by his looks; but, as her friend was
well, she endeavoured not to be uneasy, and settling it with her father,
that she would take her walk now, she and Mr. Weston were soon out of
the house together and on their way at a quick pace for Randalls.

“Now,”--said Emma, when they were fairly beyond the sweep gates,--“now
Mr. Weston, do let me know what has happened.”

“No, no,”--he gravely replied.--“Don't ask me. I promised my wife to
leave it all to her. She will break it to you better than I can. Do not
be impatient, Emma; it will all come out too soon.”

“Break it to me,” cried Emma, standing still with terror.--“Good
God!--Mr. Weston, tell me at once.--Something has happened in Brunswick
Square. I know it has. Tell me, I charge you tell me this moment what it
is.”

“No, indeed you are mistaken.”--

“Mr. Weston do not trifle with me.--Consider how many of my dearest
friends are now in Brunswick Square. Which of them is it?--I charge you
by all that is sacred, not to attempt concealment.”

“Upon my word, Emma.”--

“Your word!--why not your honour!--why not say upon your honour, that
it has nothing to do with any of them? Good Heavens!--What can be to be
_broke_ to me, that does not relate to one of that family?”

“Upon my honour,” said he very seriously, “it does not. It is not in
the smallest degree connected with any human being of the name of
Knightley.”

Emma's courage returned, and she walked on.

“I was wrong,” he continued, “in talking of its being _broke_ to you.
I should not have used the expression. In fact, it does not concern
you--it concerns only myself,--that is, we hope.--Humph!--In short, my
dear Emma, there is no occasion to be so uneasy about it. I don't
say that it is not a disagreeable business--but things might be much
worse.--If we walk fast, we shall soon be at Randalls.”

Emma found that she must wait; and now it required little effort. She
asked no more questions therefore, merely employed her own fancy, and
that soon pointed out to her the probability of its being some money
concern--something just come to light, of a disagreeable nature in the
circumstances of the family,--something which the late event at Richmond
had brought forward. Her fancy was very active. Half a dozen natural
children, perhaps--and poor Frank cut off!--This, though very
undesirable, would be no matter of agony to her. It inspired little more
than an animating curiosity.

“Who is that gentleman on horseback?” said she, as they
proceeded--speaking more to assist Mr. Weston in keeping his secret,
than with any other view.

“I do not know.--One of the Otways.--Not Frank;--it is not Frank, I
assure you. You will not see him. He is half way to Windsor by this
time.”

“Has your son been with you, then?”

“Oh! yes--did not you know?--Well, well, never mind.”

For a moment he was silent; and then added, in a tone much more guarded
and demure,

“Yes, Frank came over this morning, just to ask us how we did.”

They hurried on, and were speedily at Randalls.--“Well, my dear,” said
he, as they entered the room--“I have brought her, and now I hope you
will soon be better. I shall leave you together. There is no use in
delay. I shall not be far off, if you want me.”--And Emma distinctly
heard him add, in a lower tone, before he quitted the room,--“I have
been as good as my word. She has not the least idea.”

Mrs. Weston was looking so ill, and had an air of so much perturbation,
that Emma's uneasiness increased; and the moment they were alone, she
eagerly said,

“What is it my dear friend? Something of a very unpleasant nature, I
find, has occurred;--do let me know directly what it is. I have been
walking all this way in complete suspense. We both abhor suspense.
Do not let mine continue longer. It will do you good to speak of your
distress, whatever it may be.”

“Have you indeed no idea?” said Mrs. Weston in a trembling voice.
“Cannot you, my dear Emma--cannot you form a guess as to what you are to
hear?”

“So far as that it relates to Mr. Frank Churchill, I do guess.”

“You are right. It does relate to him, and I will tell you directly;”
 (resuming her work, and seeming resolved against looking up.) “He has
been here this very morning, on a most extraordinary errand. It is
impossible to express our surprize. He came to speak to his father on a
subject,--to announce an attachment--”

She stopped to breathe. Emma thought first of herself, and then of
Harriet.

“More than an attachment, indeed,” resumed Mrs. Weston; “an
engagement--a positive engagement.--What will you say, Emma--what will
any body say, when it is known that Frank Churchill and Miss Fairfax are
engaged;--nay, that they have been long engaged!”

Emma even jumped with surprize;--and, horror-struck, exclaimed,

“Jane Fairfax!--Good God! You are not serious? You do not mean it?”

“You may well be amazed,” returned Mrs. Weston, still averting her eyes,
and talking on with eagerness, that Emma might have time to recover--
“You may well be amazed. But it is even so. There has been a solemn
engagement between them ever since October--formed at Weymouth, and
kept a secret from every body. Not a creature knowing it but
themselves--neither the Campbells, nor her family, nor his.--It is so
wonderful, that though perfectly convinced of the fact, it is yet almost
incredible to myself. I can hardly believe it.--I thought I knew him.”

Emma scarcely heard what was said.--Her mind was divided between two
ideas--her own former conversations with him about Miss Fairfax; and
poor Harriet;--and for some time she could only exclaim, and require
confirmation, repeated confirmation.

“Well,” said she at last, trying to recover herself; “this is a
circumstance which I must think of at least half a day, before I can at
all comprehend it. What!--engaged to her all the winter--before either
of them came to Highbury?”

“Engaged since October,--secretly engaged.--It has hurt me, Emma, very
much. It has hurt his father equally. _Some_ _part_ of his conduct we
cannot excuse.”

Emma pondered a moment, and then replied, “I will not pretend _not_ to
understand you; and to give you all the relief in my power, be assured
that no such effect has followed his attentions to me, as you are
apprehensive of.”

Mrs. Weston looked up, afraid to believe; but Emma's countenance was as
steady as her words.

“That you may have less difficulty in believing this boast, of my
present perfect indifference,” she continued, “I will farther tell you,
that there was a period in the early part of our acquaintance, when I
did like him, when I was very much disposed to be attached to him--nay,
was attached--and how it came to cease, is perhaps the wonder.
Fortunately, however, it did cease. I have really for some time past,
for at least these three months, cared nothing about him. You may
believe me, Mrs. Weston. This is the simple truth.”

Mrs. Weston kissed her with tears of joy; and when she could find
utterance, assured her, that this protestation had done her more good
than any thing else in the world could do.

“Mr. Weston will be almost as much relieved as myself,” said she. “On
this point we have been wretched. It was our darling wish that you
might be attached to each other--and we were persuaded that it was so.--
Imagine what we have been feeling on your account.”

“I have escaped; and that I should escape, may be a matter of grateful
wonder to you and myself. But this does not acquit _him_, Mrs. Weston;
and I must say, that I think him greatly to blame. What right had he
to come among us with affection and faith engaged, and with manners
so _very_ disengaged? What right had he to endeavour to please, as
he certainly did--to distinguish any one young woman with persevering
attention, as he certainly did--while he really belonged to
another?--How could he tell what mischief he might be doing?--How could
he tell that he might not be making me in love with him?--very wrong,
very wrong indeed.”

“From something that he said, my dear Emma, I rather imagine--”

“And how could _she_ bear such behaviour! Composure with a witness!
to look on, while repeated attentions were offering to another woman,
before her face, and not resent it.--That is a degree of placidity,
which I can neither comprehend nor respect.”

“There were misunderstandings between them, Emma; he said so expressly.
He had not time to enter into much explanation. He was here only a
quarter of an hour, and in a state of agitation which did not allow
the full use even of the time he could stay--but that there had been
misunderstandings he decidedly said. The present crisis, indeed,
seemed to be brought on by them; and those misunderstandings might very
possibly arise from the impropriety of his conduct.”

“Impropriety! Oh! Mrs. Weston--it is too calm a censure. Much, much
beyond impropriety!--It has sunk him, I cannot say how it has sunk him
in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!--None of that upright
integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of
trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of
his life.”

“Nay, dear Emma, now I must take his part; for though he has been wrong
in this instance, I have known him long enough to answer for his having
many, very many, good qualities; and--”

“Good God!” cried Emma, not attending to her.--“Mrs. Smallridge, too!
Jane actually on the point of going as governess! What could he mean by
such horrible indelicacy? To suffer her to engage herself--to suffer her
even to think of such a measure!”

“He knew nothing about it, Emma. On this article I can fully acquit
him. It was a private resolution of hers, not communicated to him--or at
least not communicated in a way to carry conviction.--Till yesterday, I
know he said he was in the dark as to her plans. They burst on him, I do
not know how, but by some letter or message--and it was the discovery of
what she was doing, of this very project of hers, which determined him
to come forward at once, own it all to his uncle, throw himself on
his kindness, and, in short, put an end to the miserable state of
concealment that had been carrying on so long.”

Emma began to listen better.

“I am to hear from him soon,” continued Mrs. Weston. “He told me at
parting, that he should soon write; and he spoke in a manner which
seemed to promise me many particulars that could not be given now. Let
us wait, therefore, for this letter. It may bring many extenuations. It
may make many things intelligible and excusable which now are not to
be understood. Don't let us be severe, don't let us be in a hurry to
condemn him. Let us have patience. I must love him; and now that I am
satisfied on one point, the one material point, I am sincerely anxious
for its all turning out well, and ready to hope that it may. They must
both have suffered a great deal under such a system of secresy and
concealment.”

“_His_ sufferings,” replied Emma dryly, “do not appear to have done him
much harm. Well, and how did Mr. Churchill take it?”

“Most favourably for his nephew--gave his consent with scarcely a
difficulty. Conceive what the events of a week have done in that family!
While poor Mrs. Churchill lived, I suppose there could not have been a
hope, a chance, a possibility;--but scarcely are her remains at rest in
the family vault, than her husband is persuaded to act exactly opposite
to what she would have required. What a blessing it is, when undue
influence does not survive the grave!--He gave his consent with very
little persuasion.”

“Ah!” thought Emma, “he would have done as much for Harriet.”

“This was settled last night, and Frank was off with the light this
morning. He stopped at Highbury, at the Bates's, I fancy, some time--and
then came on hither; but was in such a hurry to get back to his uncle,
to whom he is just now more necessary than ever, that, as I tell you,
he could stay with us but a quarter of an hour.--He was very much
agitated--very much, indeed--to a degree that made him appear quite
a different creature from any thing I had ever seen him before.--In
addition to all the rest, there had been the shock of finding her so
very unwell, which he had had no previous suspicion of--and there was
every appearance of his having been feeling a great deal.”

“And do you really believe the affair to have been carrying on with such
perfect secresy?--The Campbells, the Dixons, did none of them know of
the engagement?”

Emma could not speak the name of Dixon without a little blush.

“None; not one. He positively said that it had been known to no being in
the world but their two selves.”

“Well,” said Emma, “I suppose we shall gradually grow reconciled to the
idea, and I wish them very happy. But I shall always think it a
very abominable sort of proceeding. What has it been but a system of
hypocrisy and deceit,--espionage, and treachery?--To come among us with
professions of openness and simplicity; and such a league in secret
to judge us all!--Here have we been, the whole winter and spring,
completely duped, fancying ourselves all on an equal footing of truth
and honour, with two people in the midst of us who may have been
carrying round, comparing and sitting in judgment on sentiments and
words that were never meant for both to hear.--They must take the
consequence, if they have heard each other spoken of in a way not
perfectly agreeable!”

“I am quite easy on that head,” replied Mrs. Weston. “I am very sure
that I never said any thing of either to the other, which both might not
have heard.”

“You are in luck.--Your only blunder was confined to my ear, when you
imagined a certain friend of ours in love with the lady.”

“True. But as I have always had a thoroughly good opinion of Miss
Fairfax, I never could, under any blunder, have spoken ill of her; and
as to speaking ill of him, there I must have been safe.”

At this moment Mr. Weston appeared at a little distance from the window,
evidently on the watch. His wife gave him a look which invited him
in; and, while he was coming round, added, “Now, dearest Emma, let me
intreat you to say and look every thing that may set his heart at ease,
and incline him to be satisfied with the match. Let us make the best of
it--and, indeed, almost every thing may be fairly said in her favour. It
is not a connexion to gratify; but if Mr. Churchill does not feel that,
why should we? and it may be a very fortunate circumstance for him, for
Frank, I mean, that he should have attached himself to a girl of such
steadiness of character and good judgment as I have always given her
credit for--and still am disposed to give her credit for, in spite of
this one great deviation from the strict rule of right. And how much may
be said in her situation for even that error!”

“Much, indeed!” cried Emma feelingly. “If a woman can ever be
excused for thinking only of herself, it is in a situation like Jane
Fairfax's.--Of such, one may almost say, that 'the world is not their's,
nor the world's law.'”

She met Mr. Weston on his entrance, with a smiling countenance,
exclaiming,

“A very pretty trick you have been playing me, upon my word! This was a
device, I suppose, to sport with my curiosity, and exercise my talent of
guessing. But you really frightened me. I thought you had lost half
your property, at least. And here, instead of its being a matter of
condolence, it turns out to be one of congratulation.--I congratulate
you, Mr. Weston, with all my heart, on the prospect of having one of the
most lovely and accomplished young women in England for your daughter.”

A glance or two between him and his wife, convinced him that all was as
right as this speech proclaimed; and its happy effect on his spirits was
immediate. His air and voice recovered their usual briskness: he shook
her heartily and gratefully by the hand, and entered on the subject in
a manner to prove, that he now only wanted time and persuasion to think
the engagement no very bad thing. His companions suggested only what
could palliate imprudence, or smooth objections; and by the time they
had talked it all over together, and he had talked it all over again
with Emma, in their walk back to Hartfield, he was become perfectly
reconciled, and not far from thinking it the very best thing that Frank
could possibly have done.



CHAPTER XI


“Harriet, poor Harriet!”--Those were the words; in them lay the
tormenting ideas which Emma could not get rid of, and which constituted
the real misery of the business to her. Frank Churchill had behaved very
ill by herself--very ill in many ways,--but it was not so much _his_
behaviour as her _own_, which made her so angry with him. It was the
scrape which he had drawn her into on Harriet's account, that gave the
deepest hue to his offence.--Poor Harriet! to be a second time the
dupe of her misconceptions and flattery. Mr. Knightley had spoken
prophetically, when he once said, “Emma, you have been no friend
to Harriet Smith.”--She was afraid she had done her nothing but
disservice.--It was true that she had not to charge herself, in this
instance as in the former, with being the sole and original author of
the mischief; with having suggested such feelings as might otherwise
never have entered Harriet's imagination; for Harriet had acknowledged
her admiration and preference of Frank Churchill before she had ever
given her a hint on the subject; but she felt completely guilty
of having encouraged what she might have repressed. She might have
prevented the indulgence and increase of such sentiments. Her influence
would have been enough. And now she was very conscious that she ought
to have prevented them.--She felt that she had been risking her friend's
happiness on most insufficient grounds. Common sense would have directed
her to tell Harriet, that she must not allow herself to think of him,
and that there were five hundred chances to one against his ever caring
for her.--“But, with common sense,” she added, “I am afraid I have had
little to do.”

She was extremely angry with herself. If she could not have been angry
with Frank Churchill too, it would have been dreadful.--As for Jane
Fairfax, she might at least relieve her feelings from any present
solicitude on her account. Harriet would be anxiety enough; she need
no longer be unhappy about Jane, whose troubles and whose ill-health
having, of course, the same origin, must be equally under cure.--Her
days of insignificance and evil were over.--She would soon be well, and
happy, and prosperous.--Emma could now imagine why her own attentions
had been slighted. This discovery laid many smaller matters open. No
doubt it had been from jealousy.--In Jane's eyes she had been a rival;
and well might any thing she could offer of assistance or regard be
repulsed. An airing in the Hartfield carriage would have been the rack,
and arrowroot from the Hartfield storeroom must have been poison. She
understood it all; and as far as her mind could disengage itself from
the injustice and selfishness of angry feelings, she acknowledged that
Jane Fairfax would have neither elevation nor happiness beyond her
desert. But poor Harriet was such an engrossing charge! There was little
sympathy to be spared for any body else. Emma was sadly fearful
that this second disappointment would be more severe than the first.
Considering the very superior claims of the object, it ought; and
judging by its apparently stronger effect on Harriet's mind, producing
reserve and self-command, it would.--She must communicate the painful
truth, however, and as soon as possible. An injunction of secresy had
been among Mr. Weston's parting words. “For the present, the whole
affair was to be completely a secret. Mr. Churchill had made a point of
it, as a token of respect to the wife he had so very recently lost;
and every body admitted it to be no more than due decorum.”--Emma had
promised; but still Harriet must be excepted. It was her superior duty.

In spite of her vexation, she could not help feeling it almost
ridiculous, that she should have the very same distressing and delicate
office to perform by Harriet, which Mrs. Weston had just gone through by
herself. The intelligence, which had been so anxiously announced to her,
she was now to be anxiously announcing to another. Her heart beat quick
on hearing Harriet's footstep and voice; so, she supposed, had poor Mrs.
Weston felt when _she_ was approaching Randalls. Could the event of
the disclosure bear an equal resemblance!--But of that, unfortunately,
there could be no chance.

“Well, Miss Woodhouse!” cried Harriet, coming eagerly into the room--“is
not this the oddest news that ever was?”

“What news do you mean?” replied Emma, unable to guess, by look or
voice, whether Harriet could indeed have received any hint.

“About Jane Fairfax. Did you ever hear any thing so strange? Oh!--you
need not be afraid of owning it to me, for Mr. Weston has told me
himself. I met him just now. He told me it was to be a great secret;
and, therefore, I should not think of mentioning it to any body but you,
but he said you knew it.”

“What did Mr. Weston tell you?”--said Emma, still perplexed.

“Oh! he told me all about it; that Jane Fairfax and Mr. Frank Churchill
are to be married, and that they have been privately engaged to one
another this long while. How very odd!”

It was, indeed, so odd; Harriet's behaviour was so extremely odd,
that Emma did not know how to understand it. Her character appeared
absolutely changed. She seemed to propose shewing no agitation, or
disappointment, or peculiar concern in the discovery. Emma looked at
her, quite unable to speak.

“Had you any idea,” cried Harriet, “of his being in love with her?--You,
perhaps, might.--You (blushing as she spoke) who can see into every
body's heart; but nobody else--”

“Upon my word,” said Emma, “I begin to doubt my having any such talent.
Can you seriously ask me, Harriet, whether I imagined him attached
to another woman at the very time that I was--tacitly, if not
openly--encouraging you to give way to your own feelings?--I never
had the slightest suspicion, till within the last hour, of Mr. Frank
Churchill's having the least regard for Jane Fairfax. You may be very
sure that if I had, I should have cautioned you accordingly.”

“Me!” cried Harriet, colouring, and astonished. “Why should you caution
me?--You do not think I care about Mr. Frank Churchill.”

“I am delighted to hear you speak so stoutly on the subject,” replied
Emma, smiling; “but you do not mean to deny that there was a time--and
not very distant either--when you gave me reason to understand that you
did care about him?”

“Him!--never, never. Dear Miss Woodhouse, how could you so mistake me?”
 turning away distressed.

“Harriet!” cried Emma, after a moment's pause--“What do you mean?--Good
Heaven! what do you mean?--Mistake you!--Am I to suppose then?--”

She could not speak another word.--Her voice was lost; and she sat down,
waiting in great terror till Harriet should answer.

Harriet, who was standing at some distance, and with face turned from
her, did not immediately say any thing; and when she did speak, it was
in a voice nearly as agitated as Emma's.

“I should not have thought it possible,” she began, “that you could have
misunderstood me! I know we agreed never to name him--but considering
how infinitely superior he is to every body else, I should not have
thought it possible that I could be supposed to mean any other person.
Mr. Frank Churchill, indeed! I do not know who would ever look at him in
the company of the other. I hope I have a better taste than to think of
Mr. Frank Churchill, who is like nobody by his side. And that you should
have been so mistaken, is amazing!--I am sure, but for believing that
you entirely approved and meant to encourage me in my attachment, I
should have considered it at first too great a presumption almost,
to dare to think of him. At first, if you had not told me that more
wonderful things had happened; that there had been matches of greater
disparity (those were your very words);--I should not have dared to
give way to--I should not have thought it possible--But if _you_, who
had been always acquainted with him--”

“Harriet!” cried Emma, collecting herself resolutely--“Let us understand
each other now, without the possibility of farther mistake. Are you
speaking of--Mr. Knightley?”

“To be sure I am. I never could have an idea of any body else--and so
I thought you knew. When we talked about him, it was as clear as
possible.”

“Not quite,” returned Emma, with forced calmness, “for all that you then
said, appeared to me to relate to a different person. I could almost
assert that you had _named_ Mr. Frank Churchill. I am sure the service
Mr. Frank Churchill had rendered you, in protecting you from the
gipsies, was spoken of.”

“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, how you do forget!”

“My dear Harriet, I perfectly remember the substance of what I said on
the occasion. I told you that I did not wonder at your attachment;
that considering the service he had rendered you, it was extremely
natural:--and you agreed to it, expressing yourself very warmly as to
your sense of that service, and mentioning even what your sensations had
been in seeing him come forward to your rescue.--The impression of it is
strong on my memory.”

“Oh, dear,” cried Harriet, “now I recollect what you mean; but I
was thinking of something very different at the time. It was not the
gipsies--it was not Mr. Frank Churchill that I meant. No! (with some
elevation) I was thinking of a much more precious circumstance--of Mr.
Knightley's coming and asking me to dance, when Mr. Elton would not
stand up with me; and when there was no other partner in the room. That
was the kind action; that was the noble benevolence and generosity; that
was the service which made me begin to feel how superior he was to every
other being upon earth.”

“Good God!” cried Emma, “this has been a most unfortunate--most
deplorable mistake!--What is to be done?”

“You would not have encouraged me, then, if you had understood me? At
least, however, I cannot be worse off than I should have been, if the
other had been the person; and now--it _is_ possible--”

She paused a few moments. Emma could not speak.

“I do not wonder, Miss Woodhouse,” she resumed, “that you should feel a
great difference between the two, as to me or as to any body. You must
think one five hundred million times more above me than the other. But
I hope, Miss Woodhouse, that supposing--that if--strange as it may
appear--. But you know they were your own words, that _more_ wonderful
things had happened, matches of _greater_ disparity had taken place than
between Mr. Frank Churchill and me; and, therefore, it seems as if such
a thing even as this, may have occurred before--and if I should be so
fortunate, beyond expression, as to--if Mr. Knightley should really--if
_he_ does not mind the disparity, I hope, dear Miss Woodhouse, you will
not set yourself against it, and try to put difficulties in the way. But
you are too good for that, I am sure.”

Harriet was standing at one of the windows. Emma turned round to look at
her in consternation, and hastily said,

“Have you any idea of Mr. Knightley's returning your affection?”

“Yes,” replied Harriet modestly, but not fearfully--“I must say that I
have.”

Emma's eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating,
in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient
for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers,
once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched--she
admitted--she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse
that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley, than with Frank
Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet's having
some hope of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an
arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!

Her own conduct, as well as her own heart, was before her in the same
few minutes. She saw it all with a clearness which had never blessed
her before. How improperly had she been acting by Harriet! How
inconsiderate, how indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been
her conduct! What blindness, what madness, had led her on! It struck her
with dreadful force, and she was ready to give it every bad name in the
world. Some portion of respect for herself, however, in spite of all
these demerits--some concern for her own appearance, and a strong sense
of justice by Harriet--(there would be no need of _compassion_ to the
girl who believed herself loved by Mr. Knightley--but justice required
that she should not be made unhappy by any coldness now,) gave Emma the
resolution to sit and endure farther with calmness, with even apparent
kindness.--For her own advantage indeed, it was fit that the utmost
extent of Harriet's hopes should be enquired into; and Harriet had done
nothing to forfeit the regard and interest which had been so voluntarily
formed and maintained--or to deserve to be slighted by the person, whose
counsels had never led her right.--Rousing from reflection, therefore,
and subduing her emotion, she turned to Harriet again, and, in a more
inviting accent, renewed the conversation; for as to the subject which
had first introduced it, the wonderful story of Jane Fairfax, that was
quite sunk and lost.--Neither of them thought but of Mr. Knightley and
themselves.

Harriet, who had been standing in no unhappy reverie, was yet very glad
to be called from it, by the now encouraging manner of such a judge, and
such a friend as Miss Woodhouse, and only wanted invitation, to give
the history of her hopes with great, though trembling delight.--Emma's
tremblings as she asked, and as she listened, were better concealed than
Harriet's, but they were not less. Her voice was not unsteady; but her
mind was in all the perturbation that such a development of self, such
a burst of threatening evil, such a confusion of sudden and perplexing
emotions, must create.--She listened with much inward suffering, but
with great outward patience, to Harriet's detail.--Methodical, or well
arranged, or very well delivered, it could not be expected to be; but it
contained, when separated from all the feebleness and tautology of
the narration, a substance to sink her spirit--especially with the
corroborating circumstances, which her own memory brought in favour of
Mr. Knightley's most improved opinion of Harriet.

Harriet had been conscious of a difference in his behaviour ever since
those two decisive dances.--Emma knew that he had, on that occasion,
found her much superior to his expectation. From that evening, or at
least from the time of Miss Woodhouse's encouraging her to think of him,
Harriet had begun to be sensible of his talking to her much more than he
had been used to do, and of his having indeed quite a different manner
towards her; a manner of kindness and sweetness!--Latterly she had been
more and more aware of it. When they had been all walking together,
he had so often come and walked by her, and talked so very
delightfully!--He seemed to want to be acquainted with her. Emma knew it
to have been very much the case. She had often observed the change, to
almost the same extent.--Harriet repeated expressions of approbation
and praise from him--and Emma felt them to be in the closest agreement
with what she had known of his opinion of Harriet. He praised her for
being without art or affectation, for having simple, honest, generous,
feelings.--She knew that he saw such recommendations in Harriet; he
had dwelt on them to her more than once.--Much that lived in Harriet's
memory, many little particulars of the notice she had received from
him, a look, a speech, a removal from one chair to another, a compliment
implied, a preference inferred, had been unnoticed, because unsuspected,
by Emma. Circumstances that might swell to half an hour's relation,
and contained multiplied proofs to her who had seen them, had passed
undiscerned by her who now heard them; but the two latest occurrences to
be mentioned, the two of strongest promise to Harriet, were not without
some degree of witness from Emma herself.--The first, was his walking
with her apart from the others, in the lime-walk at Donwell, where they
had been walking some time before Emma came, and he had taken pains (as
she was convinced) to draw her from the rest to himself--and at first,
he had talked to her in a more particular way than he had ever done
before, in a very particular way indeed!--(Harriet could not recall
it without a blush.) He seemed to be almost asking her, whether her
affections were engaged.--But as soon as she (Miss Woodhouse) appeared
likely to join them, he changed the subject, and began talking about
farming:--The second, was his having sat talking with her nearly half
an hour before Emma came back from her visit, the very last morning of
his being at Hartfield--though, when he first came in, he had said that
he could not stay five minutes--and his having told her, during their
conversation, that though he must go to London, it was very much against
his inclination that he left home at all, which was much more (as
Emma felt) than he had acknowledged to _her_. The superior degree of
confidence towards Harriet, which this one article marked, gave her
severe pain.

On the subject of the first of the two circumstances, she did, after a
little reflection, venture the following question. “Might he not?--Is
not it possible, that when enquiring, as you thought, into the state of
your affections, he might be alluding to Mr. Martin--he might have
Mr. Martin's interest in view? But Harriet rejected the suspicion with
spirit.

“Mr. Martin! No indeed!--There was not a hint of Mr. Martin. I hope I
know better now, than to care for Mr. Martin, or to be suspected of it.”

When Harriet had closed her evidence, she appealed to her dear Miss
Woodhouse, to say whether she had not good ground for hope.

“I never should have presumed to think of it at first,” said she, “but
for you. You told me to observe him carefully, and let his behaviour
be the rule of mine--and so I have. But now I seem to feel that I may
deserve him; and that if he does chuse me, it will not be any thing so
very wonderful.”

The bitter feelings occasioned by this speech, the many bitter feelings,
made the utmost exertion necessary on Emma's side, to enable her to say
on reply,

“Harriet, I will only venture to declare, that Mr. Knightley is the last
man in the world, who would intentionally give any woman the idea of his
feeling for her more than he really does.”

Harriet seemed ready to worship her friend for a sentence so
satisfactory; and Emma was only saved from raptures and fondness, which
at that moment would have been dreadful penance, by the sound of her
father's footsteps. He was coming through the hall. Harriet was too
much agitated to encounter him. “She could not compose herself--
Mr. Woodhouse would be alarmed--she had better go;”--with most ready
encouragement from her friend, therefore, she passed off through another
door--and the moment she was gone, this was the spontaneous burst of
Emma's feelings: “Oh God! that I had never seen her!”

The rest of the day, the following night, were hardly enough for her
thoughts.--She was bewildered amidst the confusion of all that had
rushed on her within the last few hours. Every moment had brought a
fresh surprize; and every surprize must be matter of humiliation to
her.--How to understand it all! How to understand the deceptions she had
been thus practising on herself, and living under!--The blunders, the
blindness of her own head and heart!--she sat still, she walked about,
she tried her own room, she tried the shrubbery--in every place, every
posture, she perceived that she had acted most weakly; that she had
been imposed on by others in a most mortifying degree; that she had
been imposing on herself in a degree yet more mortifying; that she
was wretched, and should probably find this day but the beginning of
wretchedness.

To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart, was the first
endeavour. To that point went every leisure moment which her father's
claims on her allowed, and every moment of involuntary absence of mind.

How long had Mr. Knightley been so dear to her, as every feeling
declared him now to be? When had his influence, such influence begun?--
When had he succeeded to that place in her affection, which Frank
Churchill had once, for a short period, occupied?--She looked back;
she compared the two--compared them, as they had always stood in her
estimation, from the time of the latter's becoming known to her--and as
they must at any time have been compared by her, had it--oh! had it, by
any blessed felicity, occurred to her, to institute the comparison.--She
saw that there never had been a time when she did not consider Mr.
Knightley as infinitely the superior, or when his regard for her had not
been infinitely the most dear. She saw, that in persuading herself,
in fancying, in acting to the contrary, she had been entirely under a
delusion, totally ignorant of her own heart--and, in short, that she had
never really cared for Frank Churchill at all!

This was the conclusion of the first series of reflection. This was
the knowledge of herself, on the first question of inquiry, which
she reached; and without being long in reaching it.--She was most
sorrowfully indignant; ashamed of every sensation but the one revealed
to her--her affection for Mr. Knightley.--Every other part of her mind
was disgusting.

With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of every
body's feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange every
body's destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken; and
she had not quite done nothing--for she had done mischief. She had
brought evil on Harriet, on herself, and she too much feared, on Mr.
Knightley.--Were this most unequal of all connexions to take place, on
her must rest all the reproach of having given it a beginning; for his
attachment, she must believe to be produced only by a consciousness of
Harriet's;--and even were this not the case, he would never have known
Harriet at all but for her folly.

Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith!--It was a union to distance every
wonder of the kind.--The attachment of Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax
became commonplace, threadbare, stale in the comparison, exciting no
surprize, presenting no disparity, affording nothing to be said or
thought.--Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith!--Such an elevation on her
side! Such a debasement on his! It was horrible to Emma to think how it
must sink him in the general opinion, to foresee the smiles, the sneers,
the merriment it would prompt at his expense; the mortification and
disdain of his brother, the thousand inconveniences to himself.--Could
it be?--No; it was impossible. And yet it was far, very far, from
impossible.--Was it a new circumstance for a man of first-rate abilities
to be captivated by very inferior powers? Was it new for one, perhaps
too busy to seek, to be the prize of a girl who would seek him?--Was
it new for any thing in this world to be unequal, inconsistent,
incongruous--or for chance and circumstance (as second causes) to direct
the human fate?

Oh! had she never brought Harriet forward! Had she left her where she
ought, and where he had told her she ought!--Had she not, with a
folly which no tongue could express, prevented her marrying the
unexceptionable young man who would have made her happy and respectable
in the line of life to which she ought to belong--all would have been
safe; none of this dreadful sequel would have been.

How Harriet could ever have had the presumption to raise her thoughts to
Mr. Knightley!--How she could dare to fancy herself the chosen of such
a man till actually assured of it!--But Harriet was less humble, had
fewer scruples than formerly.--Her inferiority, whether of mind or
situation, seemed little felt.--She had seemed more sensible of Mr.
Elton's being to stoop in marrying her, than she now seemed of Mr.
Knightley's.--Alas! was not that her own doing too? Who had been at
pains to give Harriet notions of self-consequence but herself?--Who but
herself had taught her, that she was to elevate herself if possible,
and that her claims were great to a high worldly establishment?--If
Harriet, from being humble, were grown vain, it was her doing too.



CHAPTER XII


Till now that she was threatened with its loss, Emma had never known
how much of her happiness depended on being _first_ with Mr. Knightley,
first in interest and affection.--Satisfied that it was so, and feeling
it her due, she had enjoyed it without reflection; and only in the
dread of being supplanted, found how inexpressibly important it had
been.--Long, very long, she felt she had been first; for, having no
female connexions of his own, there had been only Isabella whose claims
could be compared with hers, and she had always known exactly how far
he loved and esteemed Isabella. She had herself been first with him for
many years past. She had not deserved it; she had often been negligent
or perverse, slighting his advice, or even wilfully opposing him,
insensible of half his merits, and quarrelling with him because he would
not acknowledge her false and insolent estimate of her own--but still,
from family attachment and habit, and thorough excellence of mind, he
had loved her, and watched over her from a girl, with an endeavour to
improve her, and an anxiety for her doing right, which no other creature
had at all shared. In spite of all her faults, she knew she was dear
to him; might she not say, very dear?--When the suggestions of hope,
however, which must follow here, presented themselves, she could not
presume to indulge them. Harriet Smith might think herself not unworthy
of being peculiarly, exclusively, passionately loved by Mr. Knightley.
_She_ could not. She could not flatter herself with any idea of
blindness in his attachment to _her_. She had received a very recent
proof of its impartiality.--How shocked had he been by her behaviour to
Miss Bates! How directly, how strongly had he expressed himself to her
on the subject!--Not too strongly for the offence--but far, far too
strongly to issue from any feeling softer than upright justice and
clear-sighted goodwill.--She had no hope, nothing to deserve the name
of hope, that he could have that sort of affection for herself which was
now in question; but there was a hope (at times a slight one, at
times much stronger,) that Harriet might have deceived herself, and be
overrating his regard for _her_.--Wish it she must, for his sake--be the
consequence nothing to herself, but his remaining single all his life.
Could she be secure of that, indeed, of his never marrying at all, she
believed she should be perfectly satisfied.--Let him but continue the
same Mr. Knightley to her and her father, the same Mr. Knightley to
all the world; let Donwell and Hartfield lose none of their precious
intercourse of friendship and confidence, and her peace would be
fully secured.--Marriage, in fact, would not do for her. It would be
incompatible with what she owed to her father, and with what she felt
for him. Nothing should separate her from her father. She would not
marry, even if she were asked by Mr. Knightley.

It must be her ardent wish that Harriet might be disappointed; and she
hoped, that when able to see them together again, she might at least
be able to ascertain what the chances for it were.--She should see them
henceforward with the closest observance; and wretchedly as she had
hitherto misunderstood even those she was watching, she did not know how
to admit that she could be blinded here.--He was expected back every
day. The power of observation would be soon given--frightfully soon it
appeared when her thoughts were in one course. In the meanwhile, she
resolved against seeing Harriet.--It would do neither of them good,
it would do the subject no good, to be talking of it farther.--She was
resolved not to be convinced, as long as she could doubt, and yet had
no authority for opposing Harriet's confidence. To talk would be only to
irritate.--She wrote to her, therefore, kindly, but decisively, to beg
that she would not, at present, come to Hartfield; acknowledging it to
be her conviction, that all farther confidential discussion of _one_
topic had better be avoided; and hoping, that if a few days were allowed
to pass before they met again, except in the company of others--she
objected only to a tete-a-tete--they might be able to act as if they
had forgotten the conversation of yesterday.--Harriet submitted, and
approved, and was grateful.

This point was just arranged, when a visitor arrived to tear Emma's
thoughts a little from the one subject which had engrossed them,
sleeping or waking, the last twenty-four hours--Mrs. Weston, who had
been calling on her daughter-in-law elect, and took Hartfield in her
way home, almost as much in duty to Emma as in pleasure to herself, to
relate all the particulars of so interesting an interview.

Mr. Weston had accompanied her to Mrs. Bates's, and gone through his
share of this essential attention most handsomely; but she having then
induced Miss Fairfax to join her in an airing, was now returned with
much more to say, and much more to say with satisfaction, than a quarter
of an hour spent in Mrs. Bates's parlour, with all the encumbrance of
awkward feelings, could have afforded.

A little curiosity Emma had; and she made the most of it while her
friend related. Mrs. Weston had set off to pay the visit in a good deal
of agitation herself; and in the first place had wished not to go at all
at present, to be allowed merely to write to Miss Fairfax instead, and
to defer this ceremonious call till a little time had passed, and Mr.
Churchill could be reconciled to the engagement's becoming known; as,
considering every thing, she thought such a visit could not be paid
without leading to reports:--but Mr. Weston had thought differently; he
was extremely anxious to shew his approbation to Miss Fairfax and her
family, and did not conceive that any suspicion could be excited by it;
or if it were, that it would be of any consequence; for “such things,”
 he observed, “always got about.” Emma smiled, and felt that Mr. Weston
had very good reason for saying so. They had gone, in short--and very
great had been the evident distress and confusion of the lady. She had
hardly been able to speak a word, and every look and action had shewn
how deeply she was suffering from consciousness. The quiet, heart-felt
satisfaction of the old lady, and the rapturous delight of her
daughter--who proved even too joyous to talk as usual, had been a
gratifying, yet almost an affecting, scene. They were both so truly
respectable in their happiness, so disinterested in every sensation;
thought so much of Jane; so much of every body, and so little of
themselves, that every kindly feeling was at work for them. Miss
Fairfax's recent illness had offered a fair plea for Mrs. Weston to
invite her to an airing; she had drawn back and declined at first, but,
on being pressed had yielded; and, in the course of their drive,
Mrs. Weston had, by gentle encouragement, overcome so much of her
embarrassment, as to bring her to converse on the important subject.
Apologies for her seemingly ungracious silence in their first reception,
and the warmest expressions of the gratitude she was always feeling
towards herself and Mr. Weston, must necessarily open the cause; but
when these effusions were put by, they had talked a good deal of the
present and of the future state of the engagement. Mrs. Weston was
convinced that such conversation must be the greatest relief to her
companion, pent up within her own mind as every thing had so long been,
and was very much pleased with all that she had said on the subject.

“On the misery of what she had suffered, during the concealment of so
many months,” continued Mrs. Weston, “she was energetic. This was one
of her expressions. 'I will not say, that since I entered into the
engagement I have not had some happy moments; but I can say, that I have
never known the blessing of one tranquil hour:'--and the quivering lip,
Emma, which uttered it, was an attestation that I felt at my heart.”

“Poor girl!” said Emma. “She thinks herself wrong, then, for having
consented to a private engagement?”

“Wrong! No one, I believe, can blame her more than she is disposed
to blame herself. 'The consequence,' said she, 'has been a state of
perpetual suffering to me; and so it ought. But after all the punishment
that misconduct can bring, it is still not less misconduct. Pain is no
expiation. I never can be blameless. I have been acting contrary to all
my sense of right; and the fortunate turn that every thing has taken,
and the kindness I am now receiving, is what my conscience tells me
ought not to be.' 'Do not imagine, madam,' she continued, 'that I was
taught wrong. Do not let any reflection fall on the principles or the
care of the friends who brought me up. The error has been all my own;
and I do assure you that, with all the excuse that present circumstances
may appear to give, I shall yet dread making the story known to Colonel
Campbell.'”

“Poor girl!” said Emma again. “She loves him then excessively, I
suppose. It must have been from attachment only, that she could be
led to form the engagement. Her affection must have overpowered her
judgment.”

“Yes, I have no doubt of her being extremely attached to him.”

“I am afraid,” returned Emma, sighing, “that I must often have
contributed to make her unhappy.”

“On your side, my love, it was very innocently done. But she
probably had something of that in her thoughts, when alluding to the
misunderstandings which he had given us hints of before. One natural
consequence of the evil she had involved herself in,” she said, “was
that of making her _unreasonable_. The consciousness of having done
amiss, had exposed her to a thousand inquietudes, and made her captious
and irritable to a degree that must have been--that had been--hard for
him to bear. 'I did not make the allowances,' said she, 'which I ought
to have done, for his temper and spirits--his delightful spirits, and
that gaiety, that playfulness of disposition, which, under any other
circumstances, would, I am sure, have been as constantly bewitching to
me, as they were at first.' She then began to speak of you, and of the
great kindness you had shewn her during her illness; and with a blush
which shewed me how it was all connected, desired me, whenever I had
an opportunity, to thank you--I could not thank you too much--for every
wish and every endeavour to do her good. She was sensible that you had
never received any proper acknowledgment from herself.”

“If I did not know her to be happy now,” said Emma, seriously, “which,
in spite of every little drawback from her scrupulous conscience, she
must be, I could not bear these thanks;--for, oh! Mrs. Weston, if there
were an account drawn up of the evil and the good I have done Miss
Fairfax!--Well (checking herself, and trying to be more lively), this
is all to be forgotten. You are very kind to bring me these interesting
particulars. They shew her to the greatest advantage. I am sure she is
very good--I hope she will be very happy. It is fit that the fortune
should be on his side, for I think the merit will be all on hers.”

Such a conclusion could not pass unanswered by Mrs. Weston. She thought
well of Frank in almost every respect; and, what was more, she loved him
very much, and her defence was, therefore, earnest. She talked with a
great deal of reason, and at least equal affection--but she had too much
to urge for Emma's attention; it was soon gone to Brunswick Square or
to Donwell; she forgot to attempt to listen; and when Mrs. Weston ended
with, “We have not yet had the letter we are so anxious for, you know,
but I hope it will soon come,” she was obliged to pause before she
answered, and at last obliged to answer at random, before she could at
all recollect what letter it was which they were so anxious for.

“Are you well, my Emma?” was Mrs. Weston's parting question.

“Oh! perfectly. I am always well, you know. Be sure to give me
intelligence of the letter as soon as possible.”

Mrs. Weston's communications furnished Emma with more food for
unpleasant reflection, by increasing her esteem and compassion, and her
sense of past injustice towards Miss Fairfax. She bitterly regretted
not having sought a closer acquaintance with her, and blushed for the
envious feelings which had certainly been, in some measure, the cause.
Had she followed Mr. Knightley's known wishes, in paying that attention
to Miss Fairfax, which was every way her due; had she tried to know her
better; had she done her part towards intimacy; had she endeavoured
to find a friend there instead of in Harriet Smith; she must, in all
probability, have been spared from every pain which pressed on her
now.--Birth, abilities, and education, had been equally marking one as
an associate for her, to be received with gratitude; and the other--what
was she?--Supposing even that they had never become intimate friends;
that she had never been admitted into Miss Fairfax's confidence on this
important matter--which was most probable--still, in knowing her as
she ought, and as she might, she must have been preserved from the
abominable suspicions of an improper attachment to Mr. Dixon, which she
had not only so foolishly fashioned and harboured herself, but had so
unpardonably imparted; an idea which she greatly feared had been made a
subject of material distress to the delicacy of Jane's feelings, by the
levity or carelessness of Frank Churchill's. Of all the sources of evil
surrounding the former, since her coming to Highbury, she was persuaded
that she must herself have been the worst. She must have been a
perpetual enemy. They never could have been all three together, without
her having stabbed Jane Fairfax's peace in a thousand instances; and on
Box Hill, perhaps, it had been the agony of a mind that would bear no
more.

The evening of this day was very long, and melancholy, at Hartfield.
The weather added what it could of gloom. A cold stormy rain set in, and
nothing of July appeared but in the trees and shrubs, which the wind was
despoiling, and the length of the day, which only made such cruel sights
the longer visible.

The weather affected Mr. Woodhouse, and he could only be kept tolerably
comfortable by almost ceaseless attention on his daughter's side, and by
exertions which had never cost her half so much before. It reminded
her of their first forlorn tete-a-tete, on the evening of Mrs. Weston's
wedding-day; but Mr. Knightley had walked in then, soon after tea,
and dissipated every melancholy fancy. Alas! such delightful proofs of
Hartfield's attraction, as those sort of visits conveyed, might shortly
be over. The picture which she had then drawn of the privations of the
approaching winter, had proved erroneous; no friends had deserted them,
no pleasures had been lost.--But her present forebodings she feared
would experience no similar contradiction. The prospect before her now,
was threatening to a degree that could not be entirely dispelled--that
might not be even partially brightened. If all took place that
might take place among the circle of her friends, Hartfield must be
comparatively deserted; and she left to cheer her father with the
spirits only of ruined happiness.

The child to be born at Randalls must be a tie there even dearer than
herself; and Mrs. Weston's heart and time would be occupied by it.
They should lose her; and, probably, in great measure, her husband
also.--Frank Churchill would return among them no more; and Miss
Fairfax, it was reasonable to suppose, would soon cease to belong to
Highbury. They would be married, and settled either at or near Enscombe.
All that were good would be withdrawn; and if to these losses, the
loss of Donwell were to be added, what would remain of cheerful or
of rational society within their reach? Mr. Knightley to be no longer
coming there for his evening comfort!--No longer walking in at all
hours, as if ever willing to change his own home for their's!--How was
it to be endured? And if he were to be lost to them for Harriet's sake;
if he were to be thought of hereafter, as finding in Harriet's society
all that he wanted; if Harriet were to be the chosen, the first,
the dearest, the friend, the wife to whom he looked for all the best
blessings of existence; what could be increasing Emma's wretchedness but
the reflection never far distant from her mind, that it had been all her
own work?

When it came to such a pitch as this, she was not able to refrain from
a start, or a heavy sigh, or even from walking about the room for a
few seconds--and the only source whence any thing like consolation
or composure could be drawn, was in the resolution of her own better
conduct, and the hope that, however inferior in spirit and gaiety might
be the following and every future winter of her life to the past, it
would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and
leave her less to regret when it were gone.



CHAPTER XIII


The weather continued much the same all the following morning; and
the same loneliness, and the same melancholy, seemed to reign at
Hartfield--but in the afternoon it cleared; the wind changed into a
softer quarter; the clouds were carried off; the sun appeared; it was
summer again. With all the eagerness which such a transition gives, Emma
resolved to be out of doors as soon as possible. Never had the exquisite
sight, smell, sensation of nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after
a storm, been more attractive to her. She longed for the serenity they
might gradually introduce; and on Mr. Perry's coming in soon after
dinner, with a disengaged hour to give her father, she lost no time
in hurrying into the shrubbery.--There, with spirits freshened, and
thoughts a little relieved, she had taken a few turns, when she saw Mr.
Knightley passing through the garden door, and coming towards her.--It
was the first intimation of his being returned from London. She had
been thinking of him the moment before, as unquestionably sixteen miles
distant.--There was time only for the quickest arrangement of mind. She
must be collected and calm. In half a minute they were together. The
“How d'ye do's” were quiet and constrained on each side. She asked after
their mutual friends; they were all well.--When had he left them?--Only
that morning. He must have had a wet ride.--Yes.--He meant to walk with
her, she found. “He had just looked into the dining-room, and as he was
not wanted there, preferred being out of doors.”--She thought he neither
looked nor spoke cheerfully; and the first possible cause for it,
suggested by her fears, was, that he had perhaps been communicating his
plans to his brother, and was pained by the manner in which they had
been received.

They walked together. He was silent. She thought he was often looking
at her, and trying for a fuller view of her face than it suited her to
give. And this belief produced another dread. Perhaps he wanted to
speak to her, of his attachment to Harriet; he might be watching for
encouragement to begin.--She did not, could not, feel equal to lead the
way to any such subject. He must do it all himself. Yet she could
not bear this silence. With him it was most unnatural. She
considered--resolved--and, trying to smile, began--

“You have some news to hear, now you are come back, that will rather
surprize you.”

“Have I?” said he quietly, and looking at her; “of what nature?”

“Oh! the best nature in the world--a wedding.”

After waiting a moment, as if to be sure she intended to say no more, he
replied,

“If you mean Miss Fairfax and Frank Churchill, I have heard that
already.”

“How is it possible?” cried Emma, turning her glowing cheeks towards
him; for, while she spoke, it occurred to her that he might have called
at Mrs. Goddard's in his way.

“I had a few lines on parish business from Mr. Weston this morning, and
at the end of them he gave me a brief account of what had happened.”

Emma was quite relieved, and could presently say, with a little more
composure,

“_You_ probably have been less surprized than any of us, for you have
had your suspicions.--I have not forgotten that you once tried to give
me a caution.--I wish I had attended to it--but--(with a sinking voice
and a heavy sigh) I seem to have been doomed to blindness.”

For a moment or two nothing was said, and she was unsuspicious of having
excited any particular interest, till she found her arm drawn within
his, and pressed against his heart, and heard him thus saying, in a tone
of great sensibility, speaking low,

“Time, my dearest Emma, time will heal the wound.--Your own excellent
sense--your exertions for your father's sake--I know you will not allow
yourself--.” Her arm was pressed again, as he added, in a more
broken and subdued accent, “The feelings of the warmest
friendship--Indignation--Abominable scoundrel!”--And in a louder,
steadier tone, he concluded with, “He will soon be gone. They will soon
be in Yorkshire. I am sorry for _her_. She deserves a better fate.”

Emma understood him; and as soon as she could recover from the flutter
of pleasure, excited by such tender consideration, replied,

“You are very kind--but you are mistaken--and I must set you right.--
I am not in want of that sort of compassion. My blindness to what was
going on, led me to act by them in a way that I must always be ashamed
of, and I was very foolishly tempted to say and do many things which may
well lay me open to unpleasant conjectures, but I have no other reason
to regret that I was not in the secret earlier.”

“Emma!” cried he, looking eagerly at her, “are you, indeed?”--but
checking himself--“No, no, I understand you--forgive me--I am pleased
that you can say even so much.--He is no object of regret, indeed! and
it will not be very long, I hope, before that becomes the acknowledgment
of more than your reason.--Fortunate that your affections were not
farther entangled!--I could never, I confess, from your manners, assure
myself as to the degree of what you felt--I could only be certain that
there was a preference--and a preference which I never believed him to
deserve.--He is a disgrace to the name of man.--And is he to be rewarded
with that sweet young woman?--Jane, Jane, you will be a miserable
creature.”

“Mr. Knightley,” said Emma, trying to be lively, but really confused--“I
am in a very extraordinary situation. I cannot let you continue in your
error; and yet, perhaps, since my manners gave such an impression, I
have as much reason to be ashamed of confessing that I never have been
at all attached to the person we are speaking of, as it might be natural
for a woman to feel in confessing exactly the reverse.--But I never
have.”

He listened in perfect silence. She wished him to speak, but he would
not. She supposed she must say more before she were entitled to his
clemency; but it was a hard case to be obliged still to lower herself in
his opinion. She went on, however.

“I have very little to say for my own conduct.--I was tempted by his
attentions, and allowed myself to appear pleased.--An old story,
probably--a common case--and no more than has happened to hundreds of my
sex before; and yet it may not be the more excusable in one who sets up
as I do for Understanding. Many circumstances assisted the temptation.
He was the son of Mr. Weston--he was continually here--I always found
him very pleasant--and, in short, for (with a sigh) let me swell out the
causes ever so ingeniously, they all centre in this at last--my vanity
was flattered, and I allowed his attentions. Latterly, however--for some
time, indeed--I have had no idea of their meaning any thing.--I thought
them a habit, a trick, nothing that called for seriousness on my side.
He has imposed on me, but he has not injured me. I have never been
attached to him. And now I can tolerably comprehend his behaviour. He
never wished to attach me. It was merely a blind to conceal his real
situation with another.--It was his object to blind all about him; and
no one, I am sure, could be more effectually blinded than myself--except
that I was _not_ blinded--that it was my good fortune--that, in short, I
was somehow or other safe from him.”

She had hoped for an answer here--for a few words to say that her
conduct was at least intelligible; but he was silent; and, as far as she
could judge, deep in thought. At last, and tolerably in his usual tone,
he said,

“I have never had a high opinion of Frank Churchill.--I can suppose,
however, that I may have underrated him. My acquaintance with him has
been but trifling.--And even if I have not underrated him hitherto, he
may yet turn out well.--With such a woman he has a chance.--I have no
motive for wishing him ill--and for her sake, whose happiness will be
involved in his good character and conduct, I shall certainly wish him
well.”

“I have no doubt of their being happy together,” said Emma; “I believe
them to be very mutually and very sincerely attached.”

“He is a most fortunate man!” returned Mr. Knightley, with energy. “So
early in life--at three-and-twenty--a period when, if a man chuses a
wife, he generally chuses ill. At three-and-twenty to have drawn such
a prize! What years of felicity that man, in all human calculation,
has before him!--Assured of the love of such a woman--the disinterested
love, for Jane Fairfax's character vouches for her disinterestedness;
every thing in his favour,--equality of situation--I mean, as far as
regards society, and all the habits and manners that are important;
equality in every point but one--and that one, since the purity of her
heart is not to be doubted, such as must increase his felicity, for it
will be his to bestow the only advantages she wants.--A man would always
wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from;
and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of _her_ regard, must,
I think, be the happiest of mortals.--Frank Churchill is, indeed, the
favourite of fortune. Every thing turns out for his good.--He meets
with a young woman at a watering-place, gains her affection, cannot even
weary her by negligent treatment--and had he and all his family sought
round the world for a perfect wife for him, they could not have found
her superior.--His aunt is in the way.--His aunt dies.--He has only to
speak.--His friends are eager to promote his happiness.--He had used
every body ill--and they are all delighted to forgive him.--He is a
fortunate man indeed!”

“You speak as if you envied him.”

“And I do envy him, Emma. In one respect he is the object of my envy.”

Emma could say no more. They seemed to be within half a sentence
of Harriet, and her immediate feeling was to avert the subject, if
possible. She made her plan; she would speak of something totally
different--the children in Brunswick Square; and she only waited for
breath to begin, when Mr. Knightley startled her, by saying,

“You will not ask me what is the point of envy.--You are determined, I
see, to have no curiosity.--You are wise--but _I_ cannot be wise. Emma,
I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the
next moment.”

“Oh! then, don't speak it, don't speak it,” she eagerly cried. “Take a
little time, consider, do not commit yourself.”

“Thank you,” said he, in an accent of deep mortification, and not
another syllable followed.

Emma could not bear to give him pain. He was wishing to confide in
her--perhaps to consult her;--cost her what it would, she would listen.
She might assist his resolution, or reconcile him to it; she might give
just praise to Harriet, or, by representing to him his own independence,
relieve him from that state of indecision, which must be more
intolerable than any alternative to such a mind as his.--They had
reached the house.

“You are going in, I suppose?” said he.

“No,”--replied Emma--quite confirmed by the depressed manner in which
he still spoke--“I should like to take another turn. Mr. Perry is not
gone.” And, after proceeding a few steps, she added--“I stopped you
ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you
pain.--But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or
to ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation--as
a friend, indeed, you may command me.--I will hear whatever you like. I
will tell you exactly what I think.”

“As a friend!”--repeated Mr. Knightley.--“Emma, that I fear is a
word--No, I have no wish--Stay, yes, why should I hesitate?--I
have gone too far already for concealment.--Emma, I accept your
offer--Extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to
you as a friend.--Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?”

He stopped in his earnestness to look the question, and the expression
of his eyes overpowered her.

“My dearest Emma,” said he, “for dearest you will always be, whatever
the event of this hour's conversation, my dearest, most beloved
Emma--tell me at once. Say 'No,' if it is to be said.”--She could
really say nothing.--“You are silent,” he cried, with great animation;
“absolutely silent! at present I ask no more.”

Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The
dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most
prominent feeling.

“I cannot make speeches, Emma:” he soon resumed; and in a tone of
such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably
convincing.--“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it
more. But you know what I am.--You hear nothing but truth from me.--I
have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other
woman in England would have borne it.--Bear with the truths I would
tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The
manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have
been a very indifferent lover.--But you understand me.--Yes, you see,
you understand my feelings--and will return them if you can. At present,
I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.”

While he spoke, Emma's mind was most busy, and, with all the wonderful
velocity of thought, had been able--and yet without losing a word--to
catch and comprehend the exact truth of the whole; to see that Harriet's
hopes had been entirely groundless, a mistake, a delusion, as complete a
delusion as any of her own--that Harriet was nothing; that she was every
thing herself; that what she had been saying relative to Harriet
had been all taken as the language of her own feelings; and that her
agitation, her doubts, her reluctance, her discouragement, had been all
received as discouragement from herself.--And not only was there time
for these convictions, with all their glow of attendant happiness; there
was time also to rejoice that Harriet's secret had not escaped her, and
to resolve that it need not, and should not.--It was all the service
she could now render her poor friend; for as to any of that heroism of
sentiment which might have prompted her to entreat him to transfer his
affection from herself to Harriet, as infinitely the most worthy of the
two--or even the more simple sublimity of resolving to refuse him at
once and for ever, without vouchsafing any motive, because he could not
marry them both, Emma had it not. She felt for Harriet, with pain and
with contrition; but no flight of generosity run mad, opposing all that
could be probable or reasonable, entered her brain. She had led her
friend astray, and it would be a reproach to her for ever; but her
judgment was as strong as her feelings, and as strong as it had ever
been before, in reprobating any such alliance for him, as most unequal
and degrading. Her way was clear, though not quite smooth.--She spoke
then, on being so entreated.--What did she say?--Just what she ought,
of course. A lady always does.--She said enough to shew there need not
be despair--and to invite him to say more himself. He _had_ despaired at
one period; he had received such an injunction to caution and silence,
as for the time crushed every hope;--she had begun by refusing to hear
him.--The change had perhaps been somewhat sudden;--her proposal of
taking another turn, her renewing the conversation which she had
just put an end to, might be a little extraordinary!--She felt its
inconsistency; but Mr. Knightley was so obliging as to put up with it,
and seek no farther explanation.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure;
seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a
little mistaken; but where, as in this case, though the conduct is
mistaken, the feelings are not, it may not be very material.--Mr.
Knightley could not impute to Emma a more relenting heart than she
possessed, or a heart more disposed to accept of his.

He had, in fact, been wholly unsuspicious of his own influence. He had
followed her into the shrubbery with no idea of trying it. He had come,
in his anxiety to see how she bore Frank Churchill's engagement, with no
selfish view, no view at all, but of endeavouring, if she allowed him an
opening, to soothe or to counsel her.--The rest had been the work of
the moment, the immediate effect of what he heard, on his feelings. The
delightful assurance of her total indifference towards Frank Churchill,
of her having a heart completely disengaged from him, had given birth
to the hope, that, in time, he might gain her affection himself;--but
it had been no present hope--he had only, in the momentary conquest of
eagerness over judgment, aspired to be told that she did not forbid his
attempt to attach her.--The superior hopes which gradually opened were
so much the more enchanting.--The affection, which he had been asking
to be allowed to create, if he could, was already his!--Within half
an hour, he had passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind, to
something so like perfect happiness, that it could bear no other name.

_Her_ change was equal.--This one half-hour had given to each the same
precious certainty of being beloved, had cleared from each the same
degree of ignorance, jealousy, or distrust.--On his side, there had been
a long-standing jealousy, old as the arrival, or even the expectation,
of Frank Churchill.--He had been in love with Emma, and jealous of Frank
Churchill, from about the same period, one sentiment having probably
enlightened him as to the other. It was his jealousy of Frank Churchill
that had taken him from the country.--The Box Hill party had decided
him on going away. He would save himself from witnessing again
such permitted, encouraged attentions.--He had gone to learn to be
indifferent.--But he had gone to a wrong place. There was too much
domestic happiness in his brother's house; woman wore too amiable a form
in it; Isabella was too much like Emma--differing only in those striking
inferiorities, which always brought the other in brilliancy before
him, for much to have been done, even had his time been longer.--He had
stayed on, however, vigorously, day after day--till this very morning's
post had conveyed the history of Jane Fairfax.--Then, with the gladness
which must be felt, nay, which he did not scruple to feel, having never
believed Frank Churchill to be at all deserving Emma, was there so much
fond solicitude, so much keen anxiety for her, that he could stay no
longer. He had ridden home through the rain; and had walked up directly
after dinner, to see how this sweetest and best of all creatures,
faultless in spite of all her faults, bore the discovery.

He had found her agitated and low.--Frank Churchill was a villain.--
He heard her declare that she had never loved him. Frank Churchill's
character was not desperate.--She was his own Emma, by hand and word,
when they returned into the house; and if he could have thought of Frank
Churchill then, he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow.



CHAPTER XIV


What totally different feelings did Emma take back into the house from
what she had brought out!--she had then been only daring to hope for
a little respite of suffering;--she was now in an exquisite flutter of
happiness, and such happiness moreover as she believed must still be
greater when the flutter should have passed away.

They sat down to tea--the same party round the same table--how often
it had been collected!--and how often had her eyes fallen on the same
shrubs in the lawn, and observed the same beautiful effect of the
western sun!--But never in such a state of spirits, never in any thing
like it; and it was with difficulty that she could summon enough of her
usual self to be the attentive lady of the house, or even the attentive
daughter.

Poor Mr. Woodhouse little suspected what was plotting against him in the
breast of that man whom he was so cordially welcoming, and so anxiously
hoping might not have taken cold from his ride.--Could he have seen the
heart, he would have cared very little for the lungs; but without the
most distant imagination of the impending evil, without the slightest
perception of any thing extraordinary in the looks or ways of either,
he repeated to them very comfortably all the articles of news he had
received from Mr. Perry, and talked on with much self-contentment,
totally unsuspicious of what they could have told him in return.

As long as Mr. Knightley remained with them, Emma's fever continued;
but when he was gone, she began to be a little tranquillised and
subdued--and in the course of the sleepless night, which was the tax
for such an evening, she found one or two such very serious points
to consider, as made her feel, that even her happiness must have some
alloy. Her father--and Harriet. She could not be alone without feeling
the full weight of their separate claims; and how to guard the comfort
of both to the utmost, was the question. With respect to her father,
it was a question soon answered. She hardly knew yet what Mr. Knightley
would ask; but a very short parley with her own heart produced the most
solemn resolution of never quitting her father.--She even wept over
the idea of it, as a sin of thought. While he lived, it must be only an
engagement; but she flattered herself, that if divested of the danger of
drawing her away, it might become an increase of comfort to him.--How
to do her best by Harriet, was of more difficult decision;--how to spare
her from any unnecessary pain; how to make her any possible atonement;
how to appear least her enemy?--On these subjects, her perplexity
and distress were very great--and her mind had to pass again and
again through every bitter reproach and sorrowful regret that had ever
surrounded it.--She could only resolve at last, that she would still
avoid a meeting with her, and communicate all that need be told by
letter; that it would be inexpressibly desirable to have her removed
just now for a time from Highbury, and--indulging in one scheme
more--nearly resolve, that it might be practicable to get an invitation
for her to Brunswick Square.--Isabella had been pleased with Harriet;
and a few weeks spent in London must give her some amusement.--She did
not think it in Harriet's nature to escape being benefited by novelty
and variety, by the streets, the shops, and the children.--At any rate,
it would be a proof of attention and kindness in herself, from whom
every thing was due; a separation for the present; an averting of the
evil day, when they must all be together again.

She rose early, and wrote her letter to Harriet; an employment which
left her so very serious, so nearly sad, that Mr. Knightley, in walking
up to Hartfield to breakfast, did not arrive at all too soon; and half
an hour stolen afterwards to go over the same ground again with him,
literally and figuratively, was quite necessary to reinstate her in a
proper share of the happiness of the evening before.

He had not left her long, by no means long enough for her to have the
slightest inclination for thinking of any body else, when a letter was
brought her from Randalls--a very thick letter;--she guessed what it
must contain, and deprecated the necessity of reading it.--She was now
in perfect charity with Frank Churchill; she wanted no explanations, she
wanted only to have her thoughts to herself--and as for understanding
any thing he wrote, she was sure she was incapable of it.--It must be
waded through, however. She opened the packet; it was too surely so;--a
note from Mrs. Weston to herself, ushered in the letter from Frank to
Mrs. Weston.

“I have the greatest pleasure, my dear Emma, in forwarding to you the
enclosed. I know what thorough justice you will do it, and have scarcely
a doubt of its happy effect.--I think we shall never materially disagree
about the writer again; but I will not delay you by a long preface.--We
are quite well.--This letter has been the cure of all the little
nervousness I have been feeling lately.--I did not quite like your looks
on Tuesday, but it was an ungenial morning; and though you will never
own being affected by weather, I think every body feels a north-east
wind.--I felt for your dear father very much in the storm of Tuesday
afternoon and yesterday morning, but had the comfort of hearing last
night, by Mr. Perry, that it had not made him ill.

                              “Yours ever,
                                                       “A. W.”

                       [To Mrs. Weston.]


                                                       WINDSOR-JULY.
MY DEAR MADAM,

“If I made myself intelligible yesterday, this letter will be
expected; but expected or not, I know it will be read with candour and
indulgence.--You are all goodness, and I believe there will be need of
even all your goodness to allow for some parts of my past conduct.--But
I have been forgiven by one who had still more to resent. My courage
rises while I write. It is very difficult for the prosperous to be
humble. I have already met with such success in two applications for
pardon, that I may be in danger of thinking myself too sure of yours,
and of those among your friends who have had any ground of offence.--You
must all endeavour to comprehend the exact nature of my situation when I
first arrived at Randalls; you must consider me as having a secret which
was to be kept at all hazards. This was the fact. My right to place
myself in a situation requiring such concealment, is another question.
I shall not discuss it here. For my temptation to _think_ it a right,
I refer every caviller to a brick house, sashed windows below, and
casements above, in Highbury. I dared not address her openly; my
difficulties in the then state of Enscombe must be too well known to
require definition; and I was fortunate enough to prevail, before we
parted at Weymouth, and to induce the most upright female mind in the
creation to stoop in charity to a secret engagement.--Had she refused, I
should have gone mad.--But you will be ready to say, what was your
hope in doing this?--What did you look forward to?--To any thing, every
thing--to time, chance, circumstance, slow effects, sudden bursts,
perseverance and weariness, health and sickness. Every possibility of
good was before me, and the first of blessings secured, in obtaining her
promises of faith and correspondence. If you need farther explanation,
I have the honour, my dear madam, of being your husband's son, and
the advantage of inheriting a disposition to hope for good, which no
inheritance of houses or lands can ever equal the value of.--See
me, then, under these circumstances, arriving on my first visit to
Randalls;--and here I am conscious of wrong, for that visit might have
been sooner paid. You will look back and see that I did not come till
Miss Fairfax was in Highbury; and as _you_ were the person slighted, you
will forgive me instantly; but I must work on my father's compassion, by
reminding him, that so long as I absented myself from his house, so long
I lost the blessing of knowing you. My behaviour, during the very
happy fortnight which I spent with you, did not, I hope, lay me open to
reprehension, excepting on one point. And now I come to the principal,
the only important part of my conduct while belonging to you, which
excites my own anxiety, or requires very solicitous explanation. With
the greatest respect, and the warmest friendship, do I mention Miss
Woodhouse; my father perhaps will think I ought to add, with the deepest
humiliation.--A few words which dropped from him yesterday spoke his
opinion, and some censure I acknowledge myself liable to.--My behaviour
to Miss Woodhouse indicated, I believe, more than it ought.--In order to
assist a concealment so essential to me, I was led on to make more than
an allowable use of the sort of intimacy into which we were immediately
thrown.--I cannot deny that Miss Woodhouse was my ostensible object--but
I am sure you will believe the declaration, that had I not been
convinced of her indifference, I would not have been induced by any
selfish views to go on.--Amiable and delightful as Miss Woodhouse is,
she never gave me the idea of a young woman likely to be attached; and
that she was perfectly free from any tendency to being attached to me,
was as much my conviction as my wish.--She received my attentions with
an easy, friendly, goodhumoured playfulness, which exactly suited me.
We seemed to understand each other. From our relative situation, those
attentions were her due, and were felt to be so.--Whether Miss Woodhouse
began really to understand me before the expiration of that fortnight,
I cannot say;--when I called to take leave of her, I remember that I was
within a moment of confessing the truth, and I then fancied she was not
without suspicion; but I have no doubt of her having since detected me,
at least in some degree.--She may not have surmised the whole, but her
quickness must have penetrated a part. I cannot doubt it. You will find,
whenever the subject becomes freed from its present restraints, that it
did not take her wholly by surprize. She frequently gave me hints of it.
I remember her telling me at the ball, that I owed Mrs. Elton gratitude
for her attentions to Miss Fairfax.--I hope this history of my conduct
towards her will be admitted by you and my father as great extenuation
of what you saw amiss. While you considered me as having sinned against
Emma Woodhouse, I could deserve nothing from either. Acquit me here, and
procure for me, when it is allowable, the acquittal and good wishes
of that said Emma Woodhouse, whom I regard with so much brotherly
affection, as to long to have her as deeply and as happily in love as
myself.--Whatever strange things I said or did during that fortnight,
you have now a key to. My heart was in Highbury, and my business was to
get my body thither as often as might be, and with the least suspicion.
If you remember any queernesses, set them all to the right account.--Of
the pianoforte so much talked of, I feel it only necessary to say, that
its being ordered was absolutely unknown to Miss F--, who would never
have allowed me to send it, had any choice been given her.--The
delicacy of her mind throughout the whole engagement, my dear madam,
is much beyond my power of doing justice to. You will soon, I earnestly
hope, know her thoroughly yourself.--No description can describe her.
She must tell you herself what she is--yet not by word, for never
was there a human creature who would so designedly suppress her own
merit.--Since I began this letter, which will be longer than I foresaw,
I have heard from her.--She gives a good account of her own health; but
as she never complains, I dare not depend. I want to have your opinion
of her looks. I know you will soon call on her; she is living in dread
of the visit. Perhaps it is paid already. Let me hear from you without
delay; I am impatient for a thousand particulars. Remember how few
minutes I was at Randalls, and in how bewildered, how mad a state: and
I am not much better yet; still insane either from happiness or
misery. When I think of the kindness and favour I have met with, of her
excellence and patience, and my uncle's generosity, I am mad with joy:
but when I recollect all the uneasiness I occasioned her, and how little
I deserve to be forgiven, I am mad with anger. If I could but see her
again!--But I must not propose it yet. My uncle has been too good for me
to encroach.--I must still add to this long letter. You have not heard
all that you ought to hear. I could not give any connected detail
yesterday; but the suddenness, and, in one light, the unseasonableness
with which the affair burst out, needs explanation; for though the event
of the 26th ult., as you will conclude, immediately opened to me the
happiest prospects, I should not have presumed on such early measures,
but from the very particular circumstances, which left me not an hour to
lose. I should myself have shrunk from any thing so hasty, and she
would have felt every scruple of mine with multiplied strength and
refinement.--But I had no choice. The hasty engagement she had entered
into with that woman--Here, my dear madam, I was obliged to leave off
abruptly, to recollect and compose myself.--I have been walking over
the country, and am now, I hope, rational enough to make the rest of
my letter what it ought to be.--It is, in fact, a most mortifying
retrospect for me. I behaved shamefully. And here I can admit, that
my manners to Miss W., in being unpleasant to Miss F., were highly
blameable. _She_ disapproved them, which ought to have been enough.--My
plea of concealing the truth she did not think sufficient.--She was
displeased; I thought unreasonably so: I thought her, on a thousand
occasions, unnecessarily scrupulous and cautious: I thought her even
cold. But she was always right. If I had followed her judgment, and
subdued my spirits to the level of what she deemed proper, I should have
escaped the greatest unhappiness I have ever known.--We quarrelled.--
Do you remember the morning spent at Donwell?--_There_ every little
dissatisfaction that had occurred before came to a crisis. I was late;
I met her walking home by herself, and wanted to walk with her, but she
would not suffer it. She absolutely refused to allow me, which I then
thought most unreasonable. Now, however, I see nothing in it but a very
natural and consistent degree of discretion. While I, to blind the
world to our engagement, was behaving one hour with objectionable
particularity to another woman, was she to be consenting the next to a
proposal which might have made every previous caution useless?--Had we
been met walking together between Donwell and Highbury, the truth must
have been suspected.--I was mad enough, however, to resent.--I doubted
her affection. I doubted it more the next day on Box Hill; when,
provoked by such conduct on my side, such shameful, insolent neglect
of her, and such apparent devotion to Miss W., as it would have been
impossible for any woman of sense to endure, she spoke her resentment in
a form of words perfectly intelligible to me.--In short, my dear
madam, it was a quarrel blameless on her side, abominable on mine; and
I returned the same evening to Richmond, though I might have staid with
you till the next morning, merely because I would be as angry with
her as possible. Even then, I was not such a fool as not to mean to
be reconciled in time; but I was the injured person, injured by her
coldness, and I went away determined that she should make the first
advances.--I shall always congratulate myself that you were not of
the Box Hill party. Had you witnessed my behaviour there, I can hardly
suppose you would ever have thought well of me again. Its effect upon
her appears in the immediate resolution it produced: as soon as she
found I was really gone from Randalls, she closed with the offer of that
officious Mrs. Elton; the whole system of whose treatment of her, by the
bye, has ever filled me with indignation and hatred. I must not quarrel
with a spirit of forbearance which has been so richly extended towards
myself; but, otherwise, I should loudly protest against the share of it
which that woman has known.--'Jane,' indeed!--You will observe that I
have not yet indulged myself in calling her by that name, even to you.
Think, then, what I must have endured in hearing it bandied between
the Eltons with all the vulgarity of needless repetition, and all the
insolence of imaginary superiority. Have patience with me, I shall soon
have done.--She closed with this offer, resolving to break with me
entirely, and wrote the next day to tell me that we never were to meet
again.--_She_ _felt_ _the_ _engagement_ _to_ _be_ _a_ _source_ _of_
_repentance_ _and_ _misery_ _to_ _each_: _she_ _dissolved_ _it_.--This
letter reached me on the very morning of my poor aunt's death. I
answered it within an hour; but from the confusion of my mind, and the
multiplicity of business falling on me at once, my answer, instead of
being sent with all the many other letters of that day, was locked up in
my writing-desk; and I, trusting that I had written enough, though but
a few lines, to satisfy her, remained without any uneasiness.--I was
rather disappointed that I did not hear from her again speedily; but I
made excuses for her, and was too busy, and--may I add?--too cheerful
in my views to be captious.--We removed to Windsor; and two
days afterwards I received a parcel from her, my own letters all
returned!--and a few lines at the same time by the post, stating her
extreme surprize at not having had the smallest reply to her last; and
adding, that as silence on such a point could not be misconstrued,
and as it must be equally desirable to both to have every subordinate
arrangement concluded as soon as possible, she now sent me, by a safe
conveyance, all my letters, and requested, that if I could not directly
command hers, so as to send them to Highbury within a week, I would
forward them after that period to her at--: in short, the full direction
to Mr. Smallridge's, near Bristol, stared me in the face. I knew the
name, the place, I knew all about it, and instantly saw what she had
been doing. It was perfectly accordant with that resolution of character
which I knew her to possess; and the secrecy she had maintained, as to
any such design in her former letter, was equally descriptive of its
anxious delicacy. For the world would not she have seemed to threaten
me.--Imagine the shock; imagine how, till I had actually detected my
own blunder, I raved at the blunders of the post.--What was to be
done?--One thing only.--I must speak to my uncle. Without his sanction I
could not hope to be listened to again.--I spoke; circumstances were
in my favour; the late event had softened away his pride, and he was,
earlier than I could have anticipated, wholly reconciled and complying;
and could say at last, poor man! with a deep sigh, that he wished I
might find as much happiness in the marriage state as he had done.--I
felt that it would be of a different sort.--Are you disposed to pity
me for what I must have suffered in opening the cause to him, for my
suspense while all was at stake?--No; do not pity me till I reached
Highbury, and saw how ill I had made her. Do not pity me till I saw her
wan, sick looks.--I reached Highbury at the time of day when, from my
knowledge of their late breakfast hour, I was certain of a good chance
of finding her alone.--I was not disappointed; and at last I was not
disappointed either in the object of my journey. A great deal of very
reasonable, very just displeasure I had to persuade away. But it is
done; we are reconciled, dearer, much dearer, than ever, and no moment's
uneasiness can ever occur between us again. Now, my dear madam, I will
release you; but I could not conclude before. A thousand and a thousand
thanks for all the kindness you have ever shewn me, and ten thousand for
the attentions your heart will dictate towards her.--If you think me in
a way to be happier than I deserve, I am quite of your opinion.--Miss
W. calls me the child of good fortune. I hope she is right.--In one
respect, my good fortune is undoubted, that of being able to subscribe
myself,

                    Your obliged and affectionate Son,

                                          F. C. WESTON CHURCHILL.



CHAPTER XV


This letter must make its way to Emma's feelings. She was obliged, in
spite of her previous determination to the contrary, to do it all the
justice that Mrs. Weston foretold. As soon as she came to her own name,
it was irresistible; every line relating to herself was interesting,
and almost every line agreeable; and when this charm ceased, the subject
could still maintain itself, by the natural return of her former regard
for the writer, and the very strong attraction which any picture of
love must have for her at that moment. She never stopt till she had gone
through the whole; and though it was impossible not to feel that he had
been wrong, yet he had been less wrong than she had supposed--and he had
suffered, and was very sorry--and he was so grateful to Mrs. Weston, and
so much in love with Miss Fairfax, and she was so happy herself, that
there was no being severe; and could he have entered the room, she must
have shaken hands with him as heartily as ever.

She thought so well of the letter, that when Mr. Knightley came again,
she desired him to read it. She was sure of Mrs. Weston's wishing it to
be communicated; especially to one, who, like Mr. Knightley, had seen so
much to blame in his conduct.

“I shall be very glad to look it over,” said he; “but it seems long. I
will take it home with me at night.”

But that would not do. Mr. Weston was to call in the evening, and she
must return it by him.

“I would rather be talking to you,” he replied; “but as it seems a
matter of justice, it shall be done.”

He began--stopping, however, almost directly to say, “Had I been offered
the sight of one of this gentleman's letters to his mother-in-law a few
months ago, Emma, it would not have been taken with such indifference.”

He proceeded a little farther, reading to himself; and then, with a
smile, observed, “Humph! a fine complimentary opening: But it is his
way. One man's style must not be the rule of another's. We will not be
severe.”

“It will be natural for me,” he added shortly afterwards, “to speak my
opinion aloud as I read. By doing it, I shall feel that I am near you.
It will not be so great a loss of time: but if you dislike it--”

“Not at all. I should wish it.”

Mr. Knightley returned to his reading with greater alacrity.

“He trifles here,” said he, “as to the temptation. He knows he is wrong,
and has nothing rational to urge.--Bad.--He ought not to have formed the
engagement.--'His father's disposition:'--he is unjust, however, to his
father. Mr. Weston's sanguine temper was a blessing on all his upright
and honourable exertions; but Mr. Weston earned every present comfort
before he endeavoured to gain it.--Very true; he did not come till Miss
Fairfax was here.”

“And I have not forgotten,” said Emma, “how sure you were that he might
have come sooner if he would. You pass it over very handsomely--but you
were perfectly right.”

“I was not quite impartial in my judgment, Emma:--but yet, I think--had
_you_ not been in the case--I should still have distrusted him.”

When he came to Miss Woodhouse, he was obliged to read the whole of it
aloud--all that related to her, with a smile; a look; a shake of the
head; a word or two of assent, or disapprobation; or merely of love, as
the subject required; concluding, however, seriously, and, after steady
reflection, thus--

“Very bad--though it might have been worse.--Playing a most dangerous
game. Too much indebted to the event for his acquittal.--No judge of
his own manners by you.--Always deceived in fact by his own wishes, and
regardless of little besides his own convenience.--Fancying you to have
fathomed his secret. Natural enough!--his own mind full of intrigue,
that he should suspect it in others.--Mystery; Finesse--how they pervert
the understanding! My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more
and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each
other?”

Emma agreed to it, and with a blush of sensibility on Harriet's account,
which she could not give any sincere explanation of.

“You had better go on,” said she.

He did so, but very soon stopt again to say, “the pianoforte! Ah! That
was the act of a very, very young man, one too young to consider whether
the inconvenience of it might not very much exceed the pleasure. A
boyish scheme, indeed!--I cannot comprehend a man's wishing to give a
woman any proof of affection which he knows she would rather dispense
with; and he did know that she would have prevented the instrument's
coming if she could.”

After this, he made some progress without any pause. Frank Churchill's
confession of having behaved shamefully was the first thing to call for
more than a word in passing.

“I perfectly agree with you, sir,”--was then his remark. “You did behave
very shamefully. You never wrote a truer line.” And having gone through
what immediately followed of the basis of their disagreement, and his
persisting to act in direct opposition to Jane Fairfax's sense of right,
he made a fuller pause to say, “This is very bad.--He had induced her
to place herself, for his sake, in a situation of extreme difficulty and
uneasiness, and it should have been his first object to prevent her from
suffering unnecessarily.--She must have had much more to contend
with, in carrying on the correspondence, than he could. He should have
respected even unreasonable scruples, had there been such; but hers were
all reasonable. We must look to her one fault, and remember that she
had done a wrong thing in consenting to the engagement, to bear that she
should have been in such a state of punishment.”

Emma knew that he was now getting to the Box Hill party, and grew
uncomfortable. Her own behaviour had been so very improper! She was
deeply ashamed, and a little afraid of his next look. It was all read,
however, steadily, attentively, and without the smallest remark; and,
excepting one momentary glance at her, instantly withdrawn, in the fear
of giving pain--no remembrance of Box Hill seemed to exist.

“There is no saying much for the delicacy of our good friends, the
Eltons,” was his next observation.--“His feelings are natural.--What!
actually resolve to break with him entirely!--She felt the engagement to
be a source of repentance and misery to each--she dissolved it.--What a
view this gives of her sense of his behaviour!--Well, he must be a most
extraordinary--”

“Nay, nay, read on.--You will find how very much he suffers.”

“I hope he does,” replied Mr. Knightley coolly, and resuming the letter.
“'Smallridge!'--What does this mean? What is all this?”

“She had engaged to go as governess to Mrs. Smallridge's children--a
dear friend of Mrs. Elton's--a neighbour of Maple Grove; and, by the
bye, I wonder how Mrs. Elton bears the disappointment?”

“Say nothing, my dear Emma, while you oblige me to read--not even of
Mrs. Elton. Only one page more. I shall soon have done. What a letter
the man writes!”

“I wish you would read it with a kinder spirit towards him.”

“Well, there _is_ feeling here.--He does seem to have suffered in
finding her ill.--Certainly, I can have no doubt of his being fond of
her. 'Dearer, much dearer than ever.' I hope he may long continue to
feel all the value of such a reconciliation.--He is a very liberal
thanker, with his thousands and tens of thousands.--'Happier than I
deserve.' Come, he knows himself there. 'Miss Woodhouse calls me the
child of good fortune.'--Those were Miss Woodhouse's words, were they?--
And a fine ending--and there is the letter. The child of good fortune!
That was your name for him, was it?”

“You do not appear so well satisfied with his letter as I am; but still
you must, at least I hope you must, think the better of him for it. I
hope it does him some service with you.”

“Yes, certainly it does. He has had great faults, faults of
inconsideration and thoughtlessness; and I am very much of his opinion
in thinking him likely to be happier than he deserves: but still as he
is, beyond a doubt, really attached to Miss Fairfax, and will soon, it
may be hoped, have the advantage of being constantly with her, I am very
ready to believe his character will improve, and acquire from hers the
steadiness and delicacy of principle that it wants. And now, let me talk
to you of something else. I have another person's interest at present
so much at heart, that I cannot think any longer about Frank Churchill.
Ever since I left you this morning, Emma, my mind has been hard at work
on one subject.”

The subject followed; it was in plain, unaffected, gentlemanlike
English, such as Mr. Knightley used even to the woman he was in love
with, how to be able to ask her to marry him, without attacking the
happiness of her father. Emma's answer was ready at the first word.
“While her dear father lived, any change of condition must be impossible
for her. She could never quit him.” Part only of this answer, however,
was admitted. The impossibility of her quitting her father, Mr.
Knightley felt as strongly as herself; but the inadmissibility of any
other change, he could not agree to. He had been thinking it over most
deeply, most intently; he had at first hoped to induce Mr. Woodhouse to
remove with her to Donwell; he had wanted to believe it feasible, but
his knowledge of Mr. Woodhouse would not suffer him to deceive himself
long; and now he confessed his persuasion, that such a transplantation
would be a risk of her father's comfort, perhaps even of his life, which
must not be hazarded. Mr. Woodhouse taken from Hartfield!--No, he felt
that it ought not to be attempted. But the plan which had arisen on the
sacrifice of this, he trusted his dearest Emma would not find in any
respect objectionable; it was, that he should be received at Hartfield;
that so long as her father's happiness--in other words, his life--required
Hartfield to continue her home, it should be his likewise.

Of their all removing to Donwell, Emma had already had her own passing
thoughts. Like him, she had tried the scheme and rejected it; but such
an alternative as this had not occurred to her. She was sensible of all
the affection it evinced. She felt that, in quitting Donwell, he must
be sacrificing a great deal of independence of hours and habits; that
in living constantly with her father, and in no house of his own, there
would be much, very much, to be borne with. She promised to think of it,
and advised him to think of it more; but he was fully convinced, that no
reflection could alter his wishes or his opinion on the subject. He had
given it, he could assure her, very long and calm consideration; he had
been walking away from William Larkins the whole morning, to have his
thoughts to himself.

“Ah! there is one difficulty unprovided for,” cried Emma. “I am sure
William Larkins will not like it. You must get his consent before you
ask mine.”

She promised, however, to think of it; and pretty nearly promised,
moreover, to think of it, with the intention of finding it a very good
scheme.

It is remarkable, that Emma, in the many, very many, points of view in
which she was now beginning to consider Donwell Abbey, was never
struck with any sense of injury to her nephew Henry, whose rights as
heir-expectant had formerly been so tenaciously regarded. Think she must
of the possible difference to the poor little boy; and yet she only
gave herself a saucy conscious smile about it, and found amusement in
detecting the real cause of that violent dislike of Mr. Knightley's
marrying Jane Fairfax, or any body else, which at the time she had
wholly imputed to the amiable solicitude of the sister and the aunt.

This proposal of his, this plan of marrying and continuing at
Hartfield--the more she contemplated it, the more pleasing it became.
His evils seemed to lessen, her own advantages to increase, their mutual
good to outweigh every drawback. Such a companion for herself in the
periods of anxiety and cheerlessness before her!--Such a partner in
all those duties and cares to which time must be giving increase of
melancholy!

She would have been too happy but for poor Harriet; but every blessing
of her own seemed to involve and advance the sufferings of her friend,
who must now be even excluded from Hartfield. The delightful family
party which Emma was securing for herself, poor Harriet must, in mere
charitable caution, be kept at a distance from. She would be a loser in
every way. Emma could not deplore her future absence as any deduction
from her own enjoyment. In such a party, Harriet would be rather a
dead weight than otherwise; but for the poor girl herself, it seemed a
peculiarly cruel necessity that was to be placing her in such a state of
unmerited punishment.

In time, of course, Mr. Knightley would be forgotten, that is,
supplanted; but this could not be expected to happen very early. Mr.
Knightley himself would be doing nothing to assist the cure;--not
like Mr. Elton. Mr. Knightley, always so kind, so feeling, so truly
considerate for every body, would never deserve to be less worshipped
than now; and it really was too much to hope even of Harriet, that she
could be in love with more than _three_ men in one year.



CHAPTER XVI


It was a very great relief to Emma to find Harriet as desirous as
herself to avoid a meeting. Their intercourse was painful enough by
letter. How much worse, had they been obliged to meet!

Harriet expressed herself very much as might be supposed, without
reproaches, or apparent sense of ill-usage; and yet Emma fancied there
was a something of resentment, a something bordering on it in her style,
which increased the desirableness of their being separate.--It might be
only her own consciousness; but it seemed as if an angel only could have
been quite without resentment under such a stroke.

She had no difficulty in procuring Isabella's invitation; and she was
fortunate in having a sufficient reason for asking it, without resorting
to invention.--There was a tooth amiss. Harriet really wished, and
had wished some time, to consult a dentist. Mrs. John Knightley was
delighted to be of use; any thing of ill health was a recommendation to
her--and though not so fond of a dentist as of a Mr. Wingfield, she was
quite eager to have Harriet under her care.--When it was thus settled
on her sister's side, Emma proposed it to her friend, and found her
very persuadable.--Harriet was to go; she was invited for at least a
fortnight; she was to be conveyed in Mr. Woodhouse's carriage.--It was
all arranged, it was all completed, and Harriet was safe in Brunswick
Square.

Now Emma could, indeed, enjoy Mr. Knightley's visits; now she could
talk, and she could listen with true happiness, unchecked by that sense
of injustice, of guilt, of something most painful, which had haunted her
when remembering how disappointed a heart was near her, how much might
at that moment, and at a little distance, be enduring by the feelings
which she had led astray herself.

The difference of Harriet at Mrs. Goddard's, or in London, made perhaps
an unreasonable difference in Emma's sensations; but she could not think
of her in London without objects of curiosity and employment, which must
be averting the past, and carrying her out of herself.

She would not allow any other anxiety to succeed directly to the place
in her mind which Harriet had occupied. There was a communication before
her, one which _she_ only could be competent to make--the confession of
her engagement to her father; but she would have nothing to do with it
at present.--She had resolved to defer the disclosure till Mrs. Weston
were safe and well. No additional agitation should be thrown at this
period among those she loved--and the evil should not act on herself
by anticipation before the appointed time.--A fortnight, at least, of
leisure and peace of mind, to crown every warmer, but more agitating,
delight, should be hers.

She soon resolved, equally as a duty and a pleasure, to employ half an
hour of this holiday of spirits in calling on Miss Fairfax.--She ought
to go--and she was longing to see her; the resemblance of their present
situations increasing every other motive of goodwill. It would be a
_secret_ satisfaction; but the consciousness of a similarity of prospect
would certainly add to the interest with which she should attend to any
thing Jane might communicate.

She went--she had driven once unsuccessfully to the door, but had not
been into the house since the morning after Box Hill, when poor Jane had
been in such distress as had filled her with compassion, though all the
worst of her sufferings had been unsuspected.--The fear of being still
unwelcome, determined her, though assured of their being at home, to
wait in the passage, and send up her name.--She heard Patty announcing
it; but no such bustle succeeded as poor Miss Bates had before made so
happily intelligible.--No; she heard nothing but the instant reply of,
“Beg her to walk up;”--and a moment afterwards she was met on the stairs
by Jane herself, coming eagerly forward, as if no other reception of her
were felt sufficient.--Emma had never seen her look so well, so lovely,
so engaging. There was consciousness, animation, and warmth; there was
every thing which her countenance or manner could ever have wanted.--
She came forward with an offered hand; and said, in a low, but very
feeling tone,

“This is most kind, indeed!--Miss Woodhouse, it is impossible for me
to express--I hope you will believe--Excuse me for being so entirely
without words.”

Emma was gratified, and would soon have shewn no want of words, if the
sound of Mrs. Elton's voice from the sitting-room had not checked
her, and made it expedient to compress all her friendly and all her
congratulatory sensations into a very, very earnest shake of the hand.

Mrs. Bates and Mrs. Elton were together. Miss Bates was out, which
accounted for the previous tranquillity. Emma could have wished Mrs.
Elton elsewhere; but she was in a humour to have patience with every
body; and as Mrs. Elton met her with unusual graciousness, she hoped the
rencontre would do them no harm.

She soon believed herself to penetrate Mrs. Elton's thoughts, and
understand why she was, like herself, in happy spirits; it was being in
Miss Fairfax's confidence, and fancying herself acquainted with what was
still a secret to other people. Emma saw symptoms of it immediately in
the expression of her face; and while paying her own compliments to Mrs.
Bates, and appearing to attend to the good old lady's replies, she saw
her with a sort of anxious parade of mystery fold up a letter which she
had apparently been reading aloud to Miss Fairfax, and return it into
the purple and gold reticule by her side, saying, with significant nods,

“We can finish this some other time, you know. You and I shall not want
opportunities. And, in fact, you have heard all the essential already. I
only wanted to prove to you that Mrs. S. admits our apology, and is
not offended. You see how delightfully she writes. Oh! she is a sweet
creature! You would have doated on her, had you gone.--But not a word
more. Let us be discreet--quite on our good behaviour.--Hush!--You
remember those lines--I forget the poem at this moment:

        “For when a lady's in the case,
        “You know all other things give place.”

Now I say, my dear, in _our_ case, for _lady_, read----mum! a word to
the wise.--I am in a fine flow of spirits, an't I? But I want to set
your heart at ease as to Mrs. S.--_My_ representation, you see, has
quite appeased her.”

And again, on Emma's merely turning her head to look at Mrs. Bates's
knitting, she added, in a half whisper,

“I mentioned no _names_, you will observe.--Oh! no; cautious as a
minister of state. I managed it extremely well.”

Emma could not doubt. It was a palpable display, repeated on every
possible occasion. When they had all talked a little while in harmony of
the weather and Mrs. Weston, she found herself abruptly addressed with,

“Do not you think, Miss Woodhouse, our saucy little friend here is
charmingly recovered?--Do not you think her cure does Perry the highest
credit?--(here was a side-glance of great meaning at Jane.) Upon my
word, Perry has restored her in a wonderful short time!--Oh! if you had
seen her, as I did, when she was at the worst!”--And when Mrs. Bates
was saying something to Emma, whispered farther, “We do not say a word
of any _assistance_ that Perry might have; not a word of a certain young
physician from Windsor.--Oh! no; Perry shall have all the credit.”

“I have scarce had the pleasure of seeing you, Miss Woodhouse,” she
shortly afterwards began, “since the party to Box Hill. Very pleasant
party. But yet I think there was something wanting. Things did not
seem--that is, there seemed a little cloud upon the spirits of some.--So
it appeared to me at least, but I might be mistaken. However, I think
it answered so far as to tempt one to go again. What say you both to our
collecting the same party, and exploring to Box Hill again, while the
fine weather lasts?--It must be the same party, you know, quite the
same party, not _one_ exception.”

Soon after this Miss Bates came in, and Emma could not help being
diverted by the perplexity of her first answer to herself, resulting,
she supposed, from doubt of what might be said, and impatience to say
every thing.

“Thank you, dear Miss Woodhouse, you are all kindness.--It is impossible
to say--Yes, indeed, I quite understand--dearest Jane's prospects--that
is, I do not mean.--But she is charmingly recovered.--How is Mr.
Woodhouse?--I am so glad.--Quite out of my power.--Such a happy little
circle as you find us here.--Yes, indeed.--Charming young man!--that
is--so very friendly; I mean good Mr. Perry!--such attention to
Jane!”--And from her great, her more than commonly thankful delight
towards Mrs. Elton for being there, Emma guessed that there had been a
little show of resentment towards Jane, from the vicarage quarter,
which was now graciously overcome.--After a few whispers, indeed, which
placed it beyond a guess, Mrs. Elton, speaking louder, said,

“Yes, here I am, my good friend; and here I have been so long, that
anywhere else I should think it necessary to apologise; but, the truth
is, that I am waiting for my lord and master. He promised to join me
here, and pay his respects to you.”

“What! are we to have the pleasure of a call from Mr. Elton?--That will
be a favour indeed! for I know gentlemen do not like morning visits, and
Mr. Elton's time is so engaged.”

“Upon my word it is, Miss Bates.--He really is engaged from morning to
night.--There is no end of people's coming to him, on some pretence or
other.--The magistrates, and overseers, and churchwardens, are always
wanting his opinion. They seem not able to do any thing without
him.--'Upon my word, Mr. E.,' I often say, 'rather you than I.--I do
not know what would become of my crayons and my instrument, if I had
half so many applicants.'--Bad enough as it is, for I absolutely neglect
them both to an unpardonable degree.--I believe I have not played a bar
this fortnight.--However, he is coming, I assure you: yes, indeed, on
purpose to wait on you all.” And putting up her hand to screen her
words from Emma--“A congratulatory visit, you know.--Oh! yes, quite
indispensable.”

Miss Bates looked about her, so happily--!

“He promised to come to me as soon as he could disengage himself
from Knightley; but he and Knightley are shut up together in deep
consultation.--Mr. E. is Knightley's right hand.”

Emma would not have smiled for the world, and only said, “Is Mr. Elton
gone on foot to Donwell?--He will have a hot walk.”

“Oh! no, it is a meeting at the Crown, a regular meeting. Weston and
Cole will be there too; but one is apt to speak only of those who
lead.--I fancy Mr. E. and Knightley have every thing their own way.”

“Have not you mistaken the day?” said Emma. “I am almost certain that
the meeting at the Crown is not till to-morrow.--Mr. Knightley was at
Hartfield yesterday, and spoke of it as for Saturday.”

“Oh! no, the meeting is certainly to-day,” was the abrupt answer, which
denoted the impossibility of any blunder on Mrs. Elton's side.--“I do
believe,” she continued, “this is the most troublesome parish that ever
was. We never heard of such things at Maple Grove.”

“Your parish there was small,” said Jane.

“Upon my word, my dear, I do not know, for I never heard the subject
talked of.”

“But it is proved by the smallness of the school, which I have heard
you speak of, as under the patronage of your sister and Mrs. Bragge; the
only school, and not more than five-and-twenty children.”

“Ah! you clever creature, that's very true. What a thinking brain you
have! I say, Jane, what a perfect character you and I should make, if we
could be shaken together. My liveliness and your solidity would produce
perfection.--Not that I presume to insinuate, however, that _some_
people may not think _you_ perfection already.--But hush!--not a word,
if you please.”

It seemed an unnecessary caution; Jane was wanting to give her words,
not to Mrs. Elton, but to Miss Woodhouse, as the latter plainly saw.
The wish of distinguishing her, as far as civility permitted, was very
evident, though it could not often proceed beyond a look.

Mr. Elton made his appearance. His lady greeted him with some of her
sparkling vivacity.

“Very pretty, sir, upon my word; to send me on here, to be an
encumbrance to my friends, so long before you vouchsafe to come!--But
you knew what a dutiful creature you had to deal with. You knew I should
not stir till my lord and master appeared.--Here have I been sitting
this hour, giving these young ladies a sample of true conjugal
obedience--for who can say, you know, how soon it may be wanted?”

Mr. Elton was so hot and tired, that all this wit seemed thrown away.
His civilities to the other ladies must be paid; but his subsequent
object was to lament over himself for the heat he was suffering, and the
walk he had had for nothing.

“When I got to Donwell,” said he, “Knightley could not be found. Very
odd! very unaccountable! after the note I sent him this morning, and the
message he returned, that he should certainly be at home till one.”

“Donwell!” cried his wife.--“My dear Mr. E., you have not been to
Donwell!--You mean the Crown; you come from the meeting at the Crown.”

“No, no, that's to-morrow; and I particularly wanted to see Knightley
to-day on that very account.--Such a dreadful broiling morning!--I went
over the fields too--(speaking in a tone of great ill-usage,) which made
it so much the worse. And then not to find him at home! I assure you
I am not at all pleased. And no apology left, no message for me. The
housekeeper declared she knew nothing of my being expected.--Very
extraordinary!--And nobody knew at all which way he was gone. Perhaps
to Hartfield, perhaps to the Abbey Mill, perhaps into his woods.--Miss
Woodhouse, this is not like our friend Knightley!--Can you explain it?”

Emma amused herself by protesting that it was very extraordinary,
indeed, and that she had not a syllable to say for him.

“I cannot imagine,” said Mrs. Elton, (feeling the indignity as a wife
ought to do,) “I cannot imagine how he could do such a thing by you, of
all people in the world! The very last person whom one should expect to
be forgotten!--My dear Mr. E., he must have left a message for you, I am
sure he must.--Not even Knightley could be so very eccentric;--and his
servants forgot it. Depend upon it, that was the case: and very likely
to happen with the Donwell servants, who are all, I have often observed,
extremely awkward and remiss.--I am sure I would not have such a
creature as his Harry stand at our sideboard for any consideration. And
as for Mrs. Hodges, Wright holds her very cheap indeed.--She promised
Wright a receipt, and never sent it.”

“I met William Larkins,” continued Mr. Elton, “as I got near the house,
and he told me I should not find his master at home, but I did not
believe him.--William seemed rather out of humour. He did not know what
was come to his master lately, he said, but he could hardly ever get the
speech of him. I have nothing to do with William's wants, but it really
is of very great importance that _I_ should see Knightley to-day; and it
becomes a matter, therefore, of very serious inconvenience that I should
have had this hot walk to no purpose.”

Emma felt that she could not do better than go home directly. In
all probability she was at this very time waited for there; and Mr.
Knightley might be preserved from sinking deeper in aggression towards
Mr. Elton, if not towards William Larkins.

She was pleased, on taking leave, to find Miss Fairfax determined to
attend her out of the room, to go with her even downstairs; it gave her
an opportunity which she immediately made use of, to say,

“It is as well, perhaps, that I have not had the possibility. Had you
not been surrounded by other friends, I might have been tempted to
introduce a subject, to ask questions, to speak more openly than might
have been strictly correct.--I feel that I should certainly have been
impertinent.”

“Oh!” cried Jane, with a blush and an hesitation which Emma thought
infinitely more becoming to her than all the elegance of all her usual
composure--“there would have been no danger. The danger would have
been of my wearying you. You could not have gratified me more than
by expressing an interest--. Indeed, Miss Woodhouse, (speaking more
collectedly,) with the consciousness which I have of misconduct, very
great misconduct, it is particularly consoling to me to know that those
of my friends, whose good opinion is most worth preserving, are not
disgusted to such a degree as to--I have not time for half that I could
wish to say. I long to make apologies, excuses, to urge something for
myself. I feel it so very due. But, unfortunately--in short, if your
compassion does not stand my friend--”

“Oh! you are too scrupulous, indeed you are,” cried Emma warmly, and
taking her hand. “You owe me no apologies; and every body to whom you
might be supposed to owe them, is so perfectly satisfied, so delighted
even--”

“You are very kind, but I know what my manners were to you.--So
cold and artificial!--I had always a part to act.--It was a life of
deceit!--I know that I must have disgusted you.”

“Pray say no more. I feel that all the apologies should be on my side.
Let us forgive each other at once. We must do whatever is to be done
quickest, and I think our feelings will lose no time there. I hope you
have pleasant accounts from Windsor?”

“Very.”

“And the next news, I suppose, will be, that we are to lose you--just as
I begin to know you.”

“Oh! as to all that, of course nothing can be thought of yet. I am here
till claimed by Colonel and Mrs. Campbell.”

“Nothing can be actually settled yet, perhaps,” replied Emma,
smiling--“but, excuse me, it must be thought of.”

The smile was returned as Jane answered,

“You are very right; it has been thought of. And I will own to you, (I
am sure it will be safe), that so far as our living with Mr. Churchill
at Enscombe, it is settled. There must be three months, at least, of
deep mourning; but when they are over, I imagine there will be nothing
more to wait for.”

“Thank you, thank you.--This is just what I wanted to be assured
of.--Oh! if you knew how much I love every thing that is decided and
open!--Good-bye, good-bye.”



CHAPTER XVII


Mrs. Weston's friends were all made happy by her safety; and if the
satisfaction of her well-doing could be increased to Emma, it was by
knowing her to be the mother of a little girl. She had been decided in
wishing for a Miss Weston. She would not acknowledge that it was with
any view of making a match for her, hereafter, with either of Isabella's
sons; but she was convinced that a daughter would suit both father
and mother best. It would be a great comfort to Mr. Weston, as he grew
older--and even Mr. Weston might be growing older ten years hence--to
have his fireside enlivened by the sports and the nonsense, the freaks
and the fancies of a child never banished from home; and Mrs. Weston--no
one could doubt that a daughter would be most to her; and it would be
quite a pity that any one who so well knew how to teach, should not have
their powers in exercise again.

“She has had the advantage, you know, of practising on me,” she
continued--“like La Baronne d'Almane on La Comtesse d'Ostalis, in Madame
de Genlis' Adelaide and Theodore, and we shall now see her own little
Adelaide educated on a more perfect plan.”

“That is,” replied Mr. Knightley, “she will indulge her even more than
she did you, and believe that she does not indulge her at all. It will
be the only difference.”

“Poor child!” cried Emma; “at that rate, what will become of her?”

“Nothing very bad.--The fate of thousands. She will be disagreeable
in infancy, and correct herself as she grows older. I am losing all my
bitterness against spoilt children, my dearest Emma. I, who am owing all
my happiness to _you_, would not it be horrible ingratitude in me to be
severe on them?”

Emma laughed, and replied: “But I had the assistance of all your
endeavours to counteract the indulgence of other people. I doubt whether
my own sense would have corrected me without it.”

“Do you?--I have no doubt. Nature gave you understanding:--Miss Taylor
gave you principles. You must have done well. My interference was quite
as likely to do harm as good. It was very natural for you to say, what
right has he to lecture me?--and I am afraid very natural for you to
feel that it was done in a disagreeable manner. I do not believe I did
you any good. The good was all to myself, by making you an object of the
tenderest affection to me. I could not think about you so much without
doating on you, faults and all; and by dint of fancying so many errors,
have been in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least.”

“I am sure you were of use to me,” cried Emma. “I was very often
influenced rightly by you--oftener than I would own at the time. I
am very sure you did me good. And if poor little Anna Weston is to be
spoiled, it will be the greatest humanity in you to do as much for her
as you have done for me, except falling in love with her when she is
thirteen.”

“How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your
saucy looks--'Mr. Knightley, I am going to do so-and-so; papa says I
may, or I have Miss Taylor's leave'--something which, you knew, I
did not approve. In such cases my interference was giving you two bad
feelings instead of one.”

“What an amiable creature I was!--No wonder you should hold my speeches
in such affectionate remembrance.”

“'Mr. Knightley.'--You always called me, 'Mr. Knightley;' and, from
habit, it has not so very formal a sound.--And yet it is formal. I want
you to call me something else, but I do not know what.”

“I remember once calling you 'George,' in one of my amiable fits, about
ten years ago. I did it because I thought it would offend you; but, as
you made no objection, I never did it again.”

“And cannot you call me 'George' now?”

“Impossible!--I never can call you any thing but 'Mr. Knightley.' I
will not promise even to equal the elegant terseness of Mrs. Elton, by
calling you Mr. K.--But I will promise,” she added presently, laughing
and blushing--“I will promise to call you once by your Christian name.
I do not say when, but perhaps you may guess where;--in the building in
which N. takes M. for better, for worse.”

Emma grieved that she could not be more openly just to one important
service which his better sense would have rendered her, to the
advice which would have saved her from the worst of all her womanly
follies--her wilful intimacy with Harriet Smith; but it was too tender a
subject.--She could not enter on it.--Harriet was very seldom mentioned
between them. This, on his side, might merely proceed from her not being
thought of; but Emma was rather inclined to attribute it to delicacy,
and a suspicion, from some appearances, that their friendship were
declining. She was aware herself, that, parting under any other
circumstances, they certainly should have corresponded more, and that
her intelligence would not have rested, as it now almost wholly did, on
Isabella's letters. He might observe that it was so. The pain of being
obliged to practise concealment towards him, was very little inferior to
the pain of having made Harriet unhappy.

Isabella sent quite as good an account of her visitor as could be
expected; on her first arrival she had thought her out of spirits, which
appeared perfectly natural, as there was a dentist to be consulted; but,
since that business had been over, she did not appear to find Harriet
different from what she had known her before.--Isabella, to be sure,
was no very quick observer; yet if Harriet had not been equal to playing
with the children, it would not have escaped her. Emma's comforts and
hopes were most agreeably carried on, by Harriet's being to stay longer;
her fortnight was likely to be a month at least. Mr. and Mrs. John
Knightley were to come down in August, and she was invited to remain
till they could bring her back.

“John does not even mention your friend,” said Mr. Knightley. “Here is
his answer, if you like to see it.”

It was the answer to the communication of his intended marriage. Emma
accepted it with a very eager hand, with an impatience all alive to know
what he would say about it, and not at all checked by hearing that her
friend was unmentioned.

“John enters like a brother into my happiness,” continued Mr. Knightley,
“but he is no complimenter; and though I well know him to have,
likewise, a most brotherly affection for you, he is so far from making
flourishes, that any other young woman might think him rather cool in
her praise. But I am not afraid of your seeing what he writes.”

“He writes like a sensible man,” replied Emma, when she had read the
letter. “I honour his sincerity. It is very plain that he considers the
good fortune of the engagement as all on my side, but that he is not
without hope of my growing, in time, as worthy of your affection, as
you think me already. Had he said any thing to bear a different
construction, I should not have believed him.”

“My Emma, he means no such thing. He only means--”

“He and I should differ very little in our estimation of the two,”
 interrupted she, with a sort of serious smile--“much less, perhaps, than
he is aware of, if we could enter without ceremony or reserve on the
subject.”

“Emma, my dear Emma--”

“Oh!” she cried with more thorough gaiety, “if you fancy your brother
does not do me justice, only wait till my dear father is in the secret,
and hear his opinion. Depend upon it, he will be much farther from doing
_you_ justice. He will think all the happiness, all the advantage, on
your side of the question; all the merit on mine. I wish I may not
sink into 'poor Emma' with him at once.--His tender compassion towards
oppressed worth can go no farther.”

“Ah!” he cried, “I wish your father might be half as easily convinced as
John will be, of our having every right that equal worth can give, to be
happy together. I am amused by one part of John's letter--did you notice
it?--where he says, that my information did not take him wholly by
surprize, that he was rather in expectation of hearing something of the
kind.”

“If I understand your brother, he only means so far as your having
some thoughts of marrying. He had no idea of me. He seems perfectly
unprepared for that.”

“Yes, yes--but I am amused that he should have seen so far into my
feelings. What has he been judging by?--I am not conscious of any
difference in my spirits or conversation that could prepare him at
this time for my marrying any more than at another.--But it was so, I
suppose. I dare say there was a difference when I was staying with them
the other day. I believe I did not play with the children quite so much
as usual. I remember one evening the poor boys saying, 'Uncle seems
always tired now.'”

The time was coming when the news must spread farther, and other
persons' reception of it tried. As soon as Mrs. Weston was sufficiently
recovered to admit Mr. Woodhouse's visits, Emma having it in view that
her gentle reasonings should be employed in the cause, resolved first to
announce it at home, and then at Randalls.--But how to break it to her
father at last!--She had bound herself to do it, in such an hour of Mr.
Knightley's absence, or when it came to the point her heart would have
failed her, and she must have put it off; but Mr. Knightley was to come
at such a time, and follow up the beginning she was to make.--She was
forced to speak, and to speak cheerfully too. She must not make it a
more decided subject of misery to him, by a melancholy tone herself.
She must not appear to think it a misfortune.--With all the spirits she
could command, she prepared him first for something strange, and then,
in a few words, said, that if his consent and approbation could be
obtained--which, she trusted, would be attended with no difficulty,
since it was a plan to promote the happiness of all--she and Mr.
Knightley meant to marry; by which means Hartfield would receive the
constant addition of that person's company whom she knew he loved, next
to his daughters and Mrs. Weston, best in the world.

Poor man!--it was at first a considerable shock to him, and he tried
earnestly to dissuade her from it. She was reminded, more than once, of
having always said she would never marry, and assured that it would be
a great deal better for her to remain single; and told of poor Isabella,
and poor Miss Taylor.--But it would not do. Emma hung about him
affectionately, and smiled, and said it must be so; and that he must
not class her with Isabella and Mrs. Weston, whose marriages taking them
from Hartfield, had, indeed, made a melancholy change: but she was not
going from Hartfield; she should be always there; she was introducing
no change in their numbers or their comforts but for the better; and she
was very sure that he would be a great deal the happier for having Mr.
Knightley always at hand, when he were once got used to the idea.--Did
he not love Mr. Knightley very much?--He would not deny that he did,
she was sure.--Whom did he ever want to consult on business but Mr.
Knightley?--Who was so useful to him, who so ready to write his letters,
who so glad to assist him?--Who so cheerful, so attentive, so attached
to him?--Would not he like to have him always on the spot?--Yes. That
was all very true. Mr. Knightley could not be there too often; he should
be glad to see him every day;--but they did see him every day as it
was.--Why could not they go on as they had done?

Mr. Woodhouse could not be soon reconciled; but the worst was overcome,
the idea was given; time and continual repetition must do the rest.--To
Emma's entreaties and assurances succeeded Mr. Knightley's, whose fond
praise of her gave the subject even a kind of welcome; and he was soon
used to be talked to by each, on every fair occasion.--They had all
the assistance which Isabella could give, by letters of the strongest
approbation; and Mrs. Weston was ready, on the first meeting, to
consider the subject in the most serviceable light--first, as a settled,
and, secondly, as a good one--well aware of the nearly equal importance
of the two recommendations to Mr. Woodhouse's mind.--It was agreed
upon, as what was to be; and every body by whom he was used to be
guided assuring him that it would be for his happiness; and having some
feelings himself which almost admitted it, he began to think that some
time or other--in another year or two, perhaps--it might not be so very
bad if the marriage did take place.

Mrs. Weston was acting no part, feigning no feelings in all that she
said to him in favour of the event.--She had been extremely surprized,
never more so, than when Emma first opened the affair to her; but she
saw in it only increase of happiness to all, and had no scruple in
urging him to the utmost.--She had such a regard for Mr. Knightley, as
to think he deserved even her dearest Emma; and it was in every respect
so proper, suitable, and unexceptionable a connexion, and in one
respect, one point of the highest importance, so peculiarly eligible,
so singularly fortunate, that now it seemed as if Emma could not safely
have attached herself to any other creature, and that she had herself
been the stupidest of beings in not having thought of it, and wished it
long ago.--How very few of those men in a rank of life to address Emma
would have renounced their own home for Hartfield! And who but Mr.
Knightley could know and bear with Mr. Woodhouse, so as to make such
an arrangement desirable!--The difficulty of disposing of poor Mr.
Woodhouse had been always felt in her husband's plans and her own, for
a marriage between Frank and Emma. How to settle the claims of Enscombe
and Hartfield had been a continual impediment--less acknowledged by Mr.
Weston than by herself--but even he had never been able to finish
the subject better than by saying--“Those matters will take care of
themselves; the young people will find a way.” But here there was
nothing to be shifted off in a wild speculation on the future. It was
all right, all open, all equal. No sacrifice on any side worth the name.
It was a union of the highest promise of felicity in itself, and without
one real, rational difficulty to oppose or delay it.

Mrs. Weston, with her baby on her knee, indulging in such reflections
as these, was one of the happiest women in the world. If any thing could
increase her delight, it was perceiving that the baby would soon have
outgrown its first set of caps.

The news was universally a surprize wherever it spread; and Mr. Weston
had his five minutes share of it; but five minutes were enough to
familiarise the idea to his quickness of mind.--He saw the advantages
of the match, and rejoiced in them with all the constancy of his wife;
but the wonder of it was very soon nothing; and by the end of an hour he
was not far from believing that he had always foreseen it.

“It is to be a secret, I conclude,” said he. “These matters are always a
secret, till it is found out that every body knows them. Only let me be
told when I may speak out.--I wonder whether Jane has any suspicion.”

He went to Highbury the next morning, and satisfied himself on that
point. He told her the news. Was not she like a daughter, his eldest
daughter?--he must tell her; and Miss Bates being present, it passed,
of course, to Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Perry, and Mrs. Elton, immediately
afterwards. It was no more than the principals were prepared for; they
had calculated from the time of its being known at Randalls, how soon it
would be over Highbury; and were thinking of themselves, as the evening
wonder in many a family circle, with great sagacity.

In general, it was a very well approved match. Some might think him, and
others might think her, the most in luck. One set might recommend their
all removing to Donwell, and leaving Hartfield for the John Knightleys;
and another might predict disagreements among their servants; but yet,
upon the whole, there was no serious objection raised, except in one
habitation, the Vicarage.--There, the surprize was not softened by any
satisfaction. Mr. Elton cared little about it, compared with his wife;
he only hoped “the young lady's pride would now be contented;” and
supposed “she had always meant to catch Knightley if she could;” and,
on the point of living at Hartfield, could daringly exclaim, “Rather
he than I!”--But Mrs. Elton was very much discomposed indeed.--“Poor
Knightley! poor fellow!--sad business for him.”--She was extremely
concerned; for, though very eccentric, he had a thousand good
qualities.--How could he be so taken in?--Did not think him at all in
love--not in the least.--Poor Knightley!--There would be an end of all
pleasant intercourse with him.--How happy he had been to come and dine
with them whenever they asked him! But that would be all over now.--Poor
fellow!--No more exploring parties to Donwell made for _her_. Oh!
no; there would be a Mrs. Knightley to throw cold water on every
thing.--Extremely disagreeable! But she was not at all sorry that
she had abused the housekeeper the other day.--Shocking plan, living
together. It would never do. She knew a family near Maple Grove who
had tried it, and been obliged to separate before the end of the first
quarter.



CHAPTER XVIII


Time passed on. A few more to-morrows, and the party from London would
be arriving. It was an alarming change; and Emma was thinking of it one
morning, as what must bring a great deal to agitate and grieve her, when
Mr. Knightley came in, and distressing thoughts were put by. After the
first chat of pleasure he was silent; and then, in a graver tone, began
with,

“I have something to tell you, Emma; some news.”

“Good or bad?” said she, quickly, looking up in his face.

“I do not know which it ought to be called.”

“Oh! good I am sure.--I see it in your countenance. You are trying not
to smile.”

“I am afraid,” said he, composing his features, “I am very much afraid,
my dear Emma, that you will not smile when you hear it.”

“Indeed! but why so?--I can hardly imagine that any thing which pleases
or amuses you, should not please and amuse me too.”

“There is one subject,” he replied, “I hope but one, on which we do not
think alike.” He paused a moment, again smiling, with his eyes fixed on
her face. “Does nothing occur to you?--Do not you recollect?--Harriet
Smith.”

Her cheeks flushed at the name, and she felt afraid of something, though
she knew not what.

“Have you heard from her yourself this morning?” cried he. “You have, I
believe, and know the whole.”

“No, I have not; I know nothing; pray tell me.”

“You are prepared for the worst, I see--and very bad it is. Harriet
Smith marries Robert Martin.”

Emma gave a start, which did not seem like being prepared--and her eyes,
in eager gaze, said, “No, this is impossible!” but her lips were closed.

“It is so, indeed,” continued Mr. Knightley; “I have it from Robert
Martin himself. He left me not half an hour ago.”

She was still looking at him with the most speaking amazement.

“You like it, my Emma, as little as I feared.--I wish our opinions were
the same. But in time they will. Time, you may be sure, will make one
or the other of us think differently; and, in the meanwhile, we need not
talk much on the subject.”

“You mistake me, you quite mistake me,” she replied, exerting herself.
“It is not that such a circumstance would now make me unhappy, but I
cannot believe it. It seems an impossibility!--You cannot mean to say,
that Harriet Smith has accepted Robert Martin. You cannot mean that he
has even proposed to her again--yet. You only mean, that he intends it.”

“I mean that he has done it,” answered Mr. Knightley, with smiling but
determined decision, “and been accepted.”

“Good God!” she cried.--“Well!”--Then having recourse to her workbasket,
in excuse for leaning down her face, and concealing all the exquisite
feelings of delight and entertainment which she knew she must be
expressing, she added, “Well, now tell me every thing; make this
intelligible to me. How, where, when?--Let me know it all. I never was
more surprized--but it does not make me unhappy, I assure you.--How--how
has it been possible?”

“It is a very simple story. He went to town on business three days ago,
and I got him to take charge of some papers which I was wanting to send
to John.--He delivered these papers to John, at his chambers, and was
asked by him to join their party the same evening to Astley's. They were
going to take the two eldest boys to Astley's. The party was to be our
brother and sister, Henry, John--and Miss Smith. My friend Robert could
not resist. They called for him in their way; were all extremely amused;
and my brother asked him to dine with them the next day--which he
did--and in the course of that visit (as I understand) he found an
opportunity of speaking to Harriet; and certainly did not speak
in vain.--She made him, by her acceptance, as happy even as he is
deserving. He came down by yesterday's coach, and was with me this
morning immediately after breakfast, to report his proceedings, first
on my affairs, and then on his own. This is all that I can relate of
the how, where, and when. Your friend Harriet will make a much
longer history when you see her.--She will give you all the minute
particulars, which only woman's language can make interesting.--In our
communications we deal only in the great.--However, I must say, that
Robert Martin's heart seemed for _him_, and to _me_, very overflowing;
and that he did mention, without its being much to the purpose, that
on quitting their box at Astley's, my brother took charge of Mrs. John
Knightley and little John, and he followed with Miss Smith and Henry;
and that at one time they were in such a crowd, as to make Miss Smith
rather uneasy.”

He stopped.--Emma dared not attempt any immediate reply. To speak, she
was sure would be to betray a most unreasonable degree of happiness.
She must wait a moment, or he would think her mad. Her silence disturbed
him; and after observing her a little while, he added,

“Emma, my love, you said that this circumstance would not now make you
unhappy; but I am afraid it gives you more pain than you expected. His
situation is an evil--but you must consider it as what satisfies your
friend; and I will answer for your thinking better and better of him
as you know him more. His good sense and good principles would delight
you.--As far as the man is concerned, you could not wish your friend
in better hands. His rank in society I would alter if I could, which is
saying a great deal I assure you, Emma.--You laugh at me about William
Larkins; but I could quite as ill spare Robert Martin.”

He wanted her to look up and smile; and having now brought herself not
to smile too broadly--she did--cheerfully answering,

“You need not be at any pains to reconcile me to the match. I think
Harriet is doing extremely well. _Her_ connexions may be worse than
_his_. In respectability of character, there can be no doubt that they
are. I have been silent from surprize merely, excessive surprize. You
cannot imagine how suddenly it has come on me! how peculiarly unprepared
I was!--for I had reason to believe her very lately more determined
against him, much more, than she was before.”

“You ought to know your friend best,” replied Mr. Knightley; “but I
should say she was a good-tempered, soft-hearted girl, not likely to be
very, very determined against any young man who told her he loved her.”

Emma could not help laughing as she answered, “Upon my word, I believe
you know her quite as well as I do.--But, Mr. Knightley, are you
perfectly sure that she has absolutely and downright _accepted_ him.
I could suppose she might in time--but can she already?--Did not you
misunderstand him?--You were both talking of other things; of business,
shows of cattle, or new drills--and might not you, in the confusion of
so many subjects, mistake him?--It was not Harriet's hand that he was
certain of--it was the dimensions of some famous ox.”

The contrast between the countenance and air of Mr. Knightley and Robert
Martin was, at this moment, so strong to Emma's feelings, and so strong
was the recollection of all that had so recently passed on Harriet's
side, so fresh the sound of those words, spoken with such emphasis,
“No, I hope I know better than to think of Robert Martin,” that she was
really expecting the intelligence to prove, in some measure, premature.
It could not be otherwise.

“Do you dare say this?” cried Mr. Knightley. “Do you dare to suppose me
so great a blockhead, as not to know what a man is talking of?--What do
you deserve?”

“Oh! I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with
any other; and, therefore, you must give me a plain, direct answer. Are
you quite sure that you understand the terms on which Mr. Martin and
Harriet now are?”

“I am quite sure,” he replied, speaking very distinctly, “that he
told me she had accepted him; and that there was no obscurity, nothing
doubtful, in the words he used; and I think I can give you a proof that
it must be so. He asked my opinion as to what he was now to do. He knew
of no one but Mrs. Goddard to whom he could apply for information of
her relations or friends. Could I mention any thing more fit to be done,
than to go to Mrs. Goddard? I assured him that I could not. Then, he
said, he would endeavour to see her in the course of this day.”

“I am perfectly satisfied,” replied Emma, with the brightest smiles,
“and most sincerely wish them happy.”

“You are materially changed since we talked on this subject before.”

“I hope so--for at that time I was a fool.”

“And I am changed also; for I am now very willing to grant you all
Harriet's good qualities. I have taken some pains for your sake, and for
Robert Martin's sake, (whom I have always had reason to believe as much
in love with her as ever,) to get acquainted with her. I have often
talked to her a good deal. You must have seen that I did. Sometimes,
indeed, I have thought you were half suspecting me of pleading poor
Martin's cause, which was never the case; but, from all my observations,
I am convinced of her being an artless, amiable girl, with very good
notions, very seriously good principles, and placing her happiness in
the affections and utility of domestic life.--Much of this, I have no
doubt, she may thank you for.”

“Me!” cried Emma, shaking her head.--“Ah! poor Harriet!”

She checked herself, however, and submitted quietly to a little more
praise than she deserved.

Their conversation was soon afterwards closed by the entrance of her
father. She was not sorry. She wanted to be alone. Her mind was in a
state of flutter and wonder, which made it impossible for her to be
collected. She was in dancing, singing, exclaiming spirits; and till she
had moved about, and talked to herself, and laughed and reflected, she
could be fit for nothing rational.

Her father's business was to announce James's being gone out to put the
horses to, preparatory to their now daily drive to Randalls; and she
had, therefore, an immediate excuse for disappearing.

The joy, the gratitude, the exquisite delight of her sensations may be
imagined. The sole grievance and alloy thus removed in the prospect of
Harriet's welfare, she was really in danger of becoming too happy for
security.--What had she to wish for? Nothing, but to grow more worthy of
him, whose intentions and judgment had been ever so superior to her own.
Nothing, but that the lessons of her past folly might teach her humility
and circumspection in future.

Serious she was, very serious in her thankfulness, and in her
resolutions; and yet there was no preventing a laugh, sometimes in the
very midst of them. She must laugh at such a close! Such an end of the
doleful disappointment of five weeks back! Such a heart--such a Harriet!

Now there would be pleasure in her returning--Every thing would be a
pleasure. It would be a great pleasure to know Robert Martin.

High in the rank of her most serious and heartfelt felicities, was the
reflection that all necessity of concealment from Mr. Knightley would
soon be over. The disguise, equivocation, mystery, so hateful to her to
practise, might soon be over. She could now look forward to giving him
that full and perfect confidence which her disposition was most ready to
welcome as a duty.

In the gayest and happiest spirits she set forward with her father; not
always listening, but always agreeing to what he said; and, whether in
speech or silence, conniving at the comfortable persuasion of his
being obliged to go to Randalls every day, or poor Mrs. Weston would be
disappointed.

They arrived.--Mrs. Weston was alone in the drawing-room:--but hardly
had they been told of the baby, and Mr. Woodhouse received the thanks
for coming, which he asked for, when a glimpse was caught through the
blind, of two figures passing near the window.

“It is Frank and Miss Fairfax,” said Mrs. Weston. “I was just going to
tell you of our agreeable surprize in seeing him arrive this morning. He
stays till to-morrow, and Miss Fairfax has been persuaded to spend the
day with us.--They are coming in, I hope.”

In half a minute they were in the room. Emma was extremely glad to
see him--but there was a degree of confusion--a number of embarrassing
recollections on each side. They met readily and smiling, but with a
consciousness which at first allowed little to be said; and having all
sat down again, there was for some time such a blank in the circle, that
Emma began to doubt whether the wish now indulged, which she had long
felt, of seeing Frank Churchill once more, and of seeing him with Jane,
would yield its proportion of pleasure. When Mr. Weston joined the
party, however, and when the baby was fetched, there was no longer a
want of subject or animation--or of courage and opportunity for Frank
Churchill to draw near her and say,

“I have to thank you, Miss Woodhouse, for a very kind forgiving message
in one of Mrs. Weston's letters. I hope time has not made you less
willing to pardon. I hope you do not retract what you then said.”

“No, indeed,” cried Emma, most happy to begin, “not in the least. I am
particularly glad to see and shake hands with you--and to give you joy
in person.”

He thanked her with all his heart, and continued some time to speak with
serious feeling of his gratitude and happiness.

“Is not she looking well?” said he, turning his eyes towards Jane.
“Better than she ever used to do?--You see how my father and Mrs. Weston
doat upon her.”

But his spirits were soon rising again, and with laughing eyes, after
mentioning the expected return of the Campbells, he named the name of
Dixon.--Emma blushed, and forbade its being pronounced in her hearing.

“I can never think of it,” she cried, “without extreme shame.”

“The shame,” he answered, “is all mine, or ought to be. But is it
possible that you had no suspicion?--I mean of late. Early, I know, you
had none.”

“I never had the smallest, I assure you.”

“That appears quite wonderful. I was once very near--and I wish I
had--it would have been better. But though I was always doing wrong
things, they were very bad wrong things, and such as did me no
service.--It would have been a much better transgression had I broken
the bond of secrecy and told you every thing.”

“It is not now worth a regret,” said Emma.

“I have some hope,” resumed he, “of my uncle's being persuaded to pay a
visit at Randalls; he wants to be introduced to her. When the Campbells
are returned, we shall meet them in London, and continue there, I trust,
till we may carry her northward.--But now, I am at such a distance from
her--is not it hard, Miss Woodhouse?--Till this morning, we have not
once met since the day of reconciliation. Do not you pity me?”

Emma spoke her pity so very kindly, that with a sudden accession of gay
thought, he cried,

“Ah! by the bye,” then sinking his voice, and looking demure for the
moment--“I hope Mr. Knightley is well?” He paused.--She coloured and
laughed.--“I know you saw my letter, and think you may remember my wish
in your favour. Let me return your congratulations.--I assure you that
I have heard the news with the warmest interest and satisfaction.--He is
a man whom I cannot presume to praise.”

Emma was delighted, and only wanted him to go on in the same style; but
his mind was the next moment in his own concerns and with his own Jane,
and his next words were,

“Did you ever see such a skin?--such smoothness! such delicacy!--and
yet without being actually fair.--One cannot call her fair. It is a
most uncommon complexion, with her dark eye-lashes and hair--a most
distinguishing complexion! So peculiarly the lady in it.--Just colour
enough for beauty.”

“I have always admired her complexion,” replied Emma, archly; “but
do not I remember the time when you found fault with her for being so
pale?--When we first began to talk of her.--Have you quite forgotten?”

“Oh! no--what an impudent dog I was!--How could I dare--”

But he laughed so heartily at the recollection, that Emma could not help
saying,

“I do suspect that in the midst of your perplexities at that time, you
had very great amusement in tricking us all.--I am sure you had.--I am
sure it was a consolation to you.”

“Oh! no, no, no--how can you suspect me of such a thing? I was the most
miserable wretch!”

“Not quite so miserable as to be insensible to mirth. I am sure it was a
source of high entertainment to you, to feel that you were taking us
all in.--Perhaps I am the readier to suspect, because, to tell you the
truth, I think it might have been some amusement to myself in the same
situation. I think there is a little likeness between us.”

He bowed.

“If not in our dispositions,” she presently added, with a look of true
sensibility, “there is a likeness in our destiny; the destiny which bids
fair to connect us with two characters so much superior to our own.”

“True, true,” he answered, warmly. “No, not true on your side. You can
have no superior, but most true on mine.--She is a complete angel. Look
at her. Is not she an angel in every gesture? Observe the turn of her
throat. Observe her eyes, as she is looking up at my father.--You will
be glad to hear (inclining his head, and whispering seriously) that my
uncle means to give her all my aunt's jewels. They are to be new set.
I am resolved to have some in an ornament for the head. Will not it be
beautiful in her dark hair?”

“Very beautiful, indeed,” replied Emma; and she spoke so kindly, that he
gratefully burst out,

“How delighted I am to see you again! and to see you in such excellent
looks!--I would not have missed this meeting for the world. I should
certainly have called at Hartfield, had you failed to come.”

The others had been talking of the child, Mrs. Weston giving an account
of a little alarm she had been under, the evening before, from the
infant's appearing not quite well. She believed she had been foolish,
but it had alarmed her, and she had been within half a minute of sending
for Mr. Perry. Perhaps she ought to be ashamed, but Mr. Weston had been
almost as uneasy as herself.--In ten minutes, however, the child had
been perfectly well again. This was her history; and particularly
interesting it was to Mr. Woodhouse, who commended her very much for
thinking of sending for Perry, and only regretted that she had not done
it. “She should always send for Perry, if the child appeared in the
slightest degree disordered, were it only for a moment. She could not be
too soon alarmed, nor send for Perry too often. It was a pity, perhaps,
that he had not come last night; for, though the child seemed well now,
very well considering, it would probably have been better if Perry had
seen it.”

Frank Churchill caught the name.

“Perry!” said he to Emma, and trying, as he spoke, to catch Miss
Fairfax's eye. “My friend Mr. Perry! What are they saying about Mr.
Perry?--Has he been here this morning?--And how does he travel now?--Has
he set up his carriage?”

Emma soon recollected, and understood him; and while she joined in the
laugh, it was evident from Jane's countenance that she too was really
hearing him, though trying to seem deaf.

“Such an extraordinary dream of mine!” he cried. “I can never think of
it without laughing.--She hears us, she hears us, Miss Woodhouse. I see
it in her cheek, her smile, her vain attempt to frown. Look at her. Do
not you see that, at this instant, the very passage of her own letter,
which sent me the report, is passing under her eye--that the whole
blunder is spread before her--that she can attend to nothing else,
though pretending to listen to the others?”

Jane was forced to smile completely, for a moment; and the smile partly
remained as she turned towards him, and said in a conscious, low, yet
steady voice,

“How you can bear such recollections, is astonishing to me!--They
_will_ sometimes obtrude--but how you can court them!”

He had a great deal to say in return, and very entertainingly; but
Emma's feelings were chiefly with Jane, in the argument; and on leaving
Randalls, and falling naturally into a comparison of the two men, she
felt, that pleased as she had been to see Frank Churchill, and really
regarding him as she did with friendship, she had never been more
sensible of Mr. Knightley's high superiority of character. The happiness
of this most happy day, received its completion, in the animated
contemplation of his worth which this comparison produced.



CHAPTER XIX


If Emma had still, at intervals, an anxious feeling for Harriet, a
momentary doubt of its being possible for her to be really cured of her
attachment to Mr. Knightley, and really able to accept another man from
unbiased inclination, it was not long that she had to suffer from the
recurrence of any such uncertainty. A very few days brought the party
from London, and she had no sooner an opportunity of being one hour
alone with Harriet, than she became perfectly satisfied--unaccountable
as it was!--that Robert Martin had thoroughly supplanted Mr. Knightley,
and was now forming all her views of happiness.

Harriet was a little distressed--did look a little foolish at first:
but having once owned that she had been presumptuous and silly, and
self-deceived, before, her pain and confusion seemed to die away with
the words, and leave her without a care for the past, and with the
fullest exultation in the present and future; for, as to her friend's
approbation, Emma had instantly removed every fear of that nature, by
meeting her with the most unqualified congratulations.--Harriet was
most happy to give every particular of the evening at Astley's, and the
dinner the next day; she could dwell on it all with the utmost delight.
But what did such particulars explain?--The fact was, as Emma could now
acknowledge, that Harriet had always liked Robert Martin; and that his
continuing to love her had been irresistible.--Beyond this, it must ever
be unintelligible to Emma.

The event, however, was most joyful; and every day was giving her fresh
reason for thinking so.--Harriet's parentage became known. She proved
to be the daughter of a tradesman, rich enough to afford her the
comfortable maintenance which had ever been hers, and decent enough to
have always wished for concealment.--Such was the blood of gentility
which Emma had formerly been so ready to vouch for!--It was likely to
be as untainted, perhaps, as the blood of many a gentleman: but what
a connexion had she been preparing for Mr. Knightley--or for the
Churchills--or even for Mr. Elton!--The stain of illegitimacy,
unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed.

No objection was raised on the father's side; the young man was treated
liberally; it was all as it should be: and as Emma became acquainted
with Robert Martin, who was now introduced at Hartfield, she fully
acknowledged in him all the appearance of sense and worth which could
bid fairest for her little friend. She had no doubt of Harriet's
happiness with any good-tempered man; but with him, and in the home he
offered, there would be the hope of more, of security, stability, and
improvement. She would be placed in the midst of those who loved her,
and who had better sense than herself; retired enough for safety,
and occupied enough for cheerfulness. She would be never led into
temptation, nor left for it to find her out. She would be respectable
and happy; and Emma admitted her to be the luckiest creature in the
world, to have created so steady and persevering an affection in such a
man;--or, if not quite the luckiest, to yield only to herself.

Harriet, necessarily drawn away by her engagements with the Martins,
was less and less at Hartfield; which was not to be regretted.--The
intimacy between her and Emma must sink; their friendship must change
into a calmer sort of goodwill; and, fortunately, what ought to be,
and must be, seemed already beginning, and in the most gradual, natural
manner.

Before the end of September, Emma attended Harriet to church, and saw
her hand bestowed on Robert Martin with so complete a satisfaction, as
no remembrances, even connected with Mr. Elton as he stood before them,
could impair.--Perhaps, indeed, at that time she scarcely saw Mr. Elton,
but as the clergyman whose blessing at the altar might next fall on
herself.--Robert Martin and Harriet Smith, the latest couple engaged of
the three, were the first to be married.

Jane Fairfax had already quitted Highbury, and was restored to the
comforts of her beloved home with the Campbells.--The Mr. Churchills
were also in town; and they were only waiting for November.

The intermediate month was the one fixed on, as far as they dared, by
Emma and Mr. Knightley.--They had determined that their marriage ought
to be concluded while John and Isabella were still at Hartfield, to
allow them the fortnight's absence in a tour to the seaside, which was
the plan.--John and Isabella, and every other friend, were agreed in
approving it. But Mr. Woodhouse--how was Mr. Woodhouse to be induced
to consent?--he, who had never yet alluded to their marriage but as a
distant event.

When first sounded on the subject, he was so miserable, that they were
almost hopeless.--A second allusion, indeed, gave less pain.--He
began to think it was to be, and that he could not prevent it--a very
promising step of the mind on its way to resignation. Still, however, he
was not happy. Nay, he appeared so much otherwise, that his daughter's
courage failed. She could not bear to see him suffering, to know
him fancying himself neglected; and though her understanding almost
acquiesced in the assurance of both the Mr. Knightleys, that when
once the event were over, his distress would be soon over too, she
hesitated--she could not proceed.

In this state of suspense they were befriended, not by any sudden
illumination of Mr. Woodhouse's mind, or any wonderful change of his
nervous system, but by the operation of the same system in another
way.--Mrs. Weston's poultry-house was robbed one night of all her
turkeys--evidently by the ingenuity of man. Other poultry-yards in
the neighbourhood also suffered.--Pilfering was _housebreaking_ to Mr.
Woodhouse's fears.--He was very uneasy; and but for the sense of his
son-in-law's protection, would have been under wretched alarm every
night of his life. The strength, resolution, and presence of mind of the
Mr. Knightleys, commanded his fullest dependence. While either of them
protected him and his, Hartfield was safe.--But Mr. John Knightley must
be in London again by the end of the first week in November.

The result of this distress was, that, with a much more voluntary,
cheerful consent than his daughter had ever presumed to hope for at the
moment, she was able to fix her wedding-day--and Mr. Elton was called
on, within a month from the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Martin, to
join the hands of Mr. Knightley and Miss Woodhouse.

The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have
no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars
detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very
inferior to her own.--“Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a
most pitiful business!--Selina would stare when she heard of it.”--But,
in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence,
the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the
ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.



FINIS






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Title: Mansfield Park

Author: Jane Austen

Release Date: June, 1994  [Etext #141]
Posting Date: February 11, 2015
Last Updated: March 10, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANSFIELD PARK ***




Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





MANSFIELD PARK

(1814)


By Jane Austen




CHAPTER I

About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven
thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of
Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised
to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences
of an handsome house and large income. All Huntingdon exclaimed on the
greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her
to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it.
She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation; and such of their
acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as
Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal
advantage. But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in
the world as there are pretty women to deserve them. Miss Ward, at the
end of half a dozen years, found herself obliged to be attached to
the Rev. Mr. Norris, a friend of her brother-in-law, with scarcely any
private fortune, and Miss Frances fared yet worse. Miss Ward's match,
indeed, when it came to the point, was not contemptible: Sir Thomas
being happily able to give his friend an income in the living of
Mansfield; and Mr. and Mrs. Norris began their career of conjugal
felicity with very little less than a thousand a year. But Miss Frances
married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on
a lieutenant of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions, did
it very thoroughly. She could hardly have made a more untoward choice.
Sir Thomas Bertram had interest, which, from principle as well as
pride--from a general wish of doing right, and a desire of seeing all
that were connected with him in situations of respectability, he would
have been glad to exert for the advantage of Lady Bertram's sister; but
her husband's profession was such as no interest could reach; and before
he had time to devise any other method of assisting them, an absolute
breach between the sisters had taken place. It was the natural result of
the conduct of each party, and such as a very imprudent marriage almost
always produces. To save herself from useless remonstrance, Mrs. Price
never wrote to her family on the subject till actually married. Lady
Bertram, who was a woman of very tranquil feelings, and a temper
remarkably easy and indolent, would have contented herself with merely
giving up her sister, and thinking no more of the matter; but Mrs.
Norris had a spirit of activity, which could not be satisfied till she
had written a long and angry letter to Fanny, to point out the folly of
her conduct, and threaten her with all its possible ill consequences.
Mrs. Price, in her turn, was injured and angry; and an answer, which
comprehended each sister in its bitterness, and bestowed such very
disrespectful reflections on the pride of Sir Thomas as Mrs. Norris
could not possibly keep to herself, put an end to all intercourse
between them for a considerable period.

Their homes were so distant, and the circles in which they moved so
distinct, as almost to preclude the means of ever hearing of each
other's existence during the eleven following years, or, at least, to
make it very wonderful to Sir Thomas that Mrs. Norris should ever have
it in her power to tell them, as she now and then did, in an angry
voice, that Fanny had got another child. By the end of eleven years,
however, Mrs. Price could no longer afford to cherish pride or
resentment, or to lose one connexion that might possibly assist her.
A large and still increasing family, an husband disabled for active
service, but not the less equal to company and good liquor, and a very
small income to supply their wants, made her eager to regain the friends
she had so carelessly sacrificed; and she addressed Lady Bertram in
a letter which spoke so much contrition and despondence, such a
superfluity of children, and such a want of almost everything else, as
could not but dispose them all to a reconciliation. She was preparing
for her ninth lying-in; and after bewailing the circumstance, and
imploring their countenance as sponsors to the expected child, she
could not conceal how important she felt they might be to the future
maintenance of the eight already in being. Her eldest was a boy of ten
years old, a fine spirited fellow, who longed to be out in the world;
but what could she do? Was there any chance of his being hereafter
useful to Sir Thomas in the concerns of his West Indian property?
No situation would be beneath him; or what did Sir Thomas think of
Woolwich? or how could a boy be sent out to the East?

The letter was not unproductive. It re-established peace and kindness.
Sir Thomas sent friendly advice and professions, Lady Bertram dispatched
money and baby-linen, and Mrs. Norris wrote the letters.

Such were its immediate effects, and within a twelvemonth a more
important advantage to Mrs. Price resulted from it. Mrs. Norris was
often observing to the others that she could not get her poor sister and
her family out of her head, and that, much as they had all done for her,
she seemed to be wanting to do more; and at length she could not but
own it to be her wish that poor Mrs. Price should be relieved from the
charge and expense of one child entirely out of her great number. “What
if they were among them to undertake the care of her eldest daughter,
a girl now nine years old, of an age to require more attention than her
poor mother could possibly give? The trouble and expense of it to them
would be nothing, compared with the benevolence of the action.” Lady
Bertram agreed with her instantly. “I think we cannot do better,” said
she; “let us send for the child.”

Sir Thomas could not give so instantaneous and unqualified a consent. He
debated and hesitated;--it was a serious charge;--a girl so brought up
must be adequately provided for, or there would be cruelty instead
of kindness in taking her from her family. He thought of his own four
children, of his two sons, of cousins in love, etc.;--but no sooner
had he deliberately begun to state his objections, than Mrs. Norris
interrupted him with a reply to them all, whether stated or not.

“My dear Sir Thomas, I perfectly comprehend you, and do justice to the
generosity and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a
piece with your general conduct; and I entirely agree with you in
the main as to the propriety of doing everything one could by way of
providing for a child one had in a manner taken into one's own hands;
and I am sure I should be the last person in the world to withhold my
mite upon such an occasion. Having no children of my own, who should I
look to in any little matter I may ever have to bestow, but the children
of my sisters?--and I am sure Mr. Norris is too just--but you know I am
a woman of few words and professions. Do not let us be frightened from
a good deed by a trifle. Give a girl an education, and introduce
her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of
settling well, without farther expense to anybody. A niece of ours, Sir
Thomas, I may say, or at least of _yours_, would not grow up in this
neighbourhood without many advantages. I don't say she would be so
handsome as her cousins. I dare say she would not; but she would be
introduced into the society of this country under such very favourable
circumstances as, in all human probability, would get her a creditable
establishment. You are thinking of your sons--but do not you know that,
of all things upon earth, _that_ is the least likely to happen, brought
up as they would be, always together like brothers and sisters? It is
morally impossible. I never knew an instance of it. It is, in fact, the
only sure way of providing against the connexion. Suppose her a pretty
girl, and seen by Tom or Edmund for the first time seven years hence,
and I dare say there would be mischief. The very idea of her having been
suffered to grow up at a distance from us all in poverty and neglect,
would be enough to make either of the dear, sweet-tempered boys in love
with her. But breed her up with them from this time, and suppose her
even to have the beauty of an angel, and she will never be more to
either than a sister.”

“There is a great deal of truth in what you say,” replied Sir Thomas,
“and far be it from me to throw any fanciful impediment in the way of a
plan which would be so consistent with the relative situations of each.
I only meant to observe that it ought not to be lightly engaged in,
and that to make it really serviceable to Mrs. Price, and creditable to
ourselves, we must secure to the child, or consider ourselves engaged to
secure to her hereafter, as circumstances may arise, the provision of
a gentlewoman, if no such establishment should offer as you are so
sanguine in expecting.”

“I thoroughly understand you,” cried Mrs. Norris, “you are everything
that is generous and considerate, and I am sure we shall never disagree
on this point. Whatever I can do, as you well know, I am always ready
enough to do for the good of those I love; and, though I could never
feel for this little girl the hundredth part of the regard I bear your
own dear children, nor consider her, in any respect, so much my own,
I should hate myself if I were capable of neglecting her. Is not she a
sister's child? and could I bear to see her want while I had a bit of
bread to give her? My dear Sir Thomas, with all my faults I have a warm
heart; and, poor as I am, would rather deny myself the necessaries of
life than do an ungenerous thing. So, if you are not against it, I will
write to my poor sister tomorrow, and make the proposal; and, as soon
as matters are settled, _I_ will engage to get the child to Mansfield;
_you_ shall have no trouble about it. My own trouble, you know, I never
regard. I will send Nanny to London on purpose, and she may have a bed
at her cousin the saddler's, and the child be appointed to meet her
there. They may easily get her from Portsmouth to town by the coach,
under the care of any creditable person that may chance to be going. I
dare say there is always some reputable tradesman's wife or other going
up.”

Except to the attack on Nanny's cousin, Sir Thomas no longer made any
objection, and a more respectable, though less economical rendezvous
being accordingly substituted, everything was considered as settled,
and the pleasures of so benevolent a scheme were already enjoyed. The
division of gratifying sensations ought not, in strict justice, to
have been equal; for Sir Thomas was fully resolved to be the real and
consistent patron of the selected child, and Mrs. Norris had not the
least intention of being at any expense whatever in her maintenance.
As far as walking, talking, and contriving reached, she was thoroughly
benevolent, and nobody knew better how to dictate liberality to others;
but her love of money was equal to her love of directing, and she knew
quite as well how to save her own as to spend that of her friends.
Having married on a narrower income than she had been used to look
forward to, she had, from the first, fancied a very strict line of
economy necessary; and what was begun as a matter of prudence, soon grew
into a matter of choice, as an object of that needful solicitude which
there were no children to supply. Had there been a family to provide
for, Mrs. Norris might never have saved her money; but having no care
of that kind, there was nothing to impede her frugality, or lessen the
comfort of making a yearly addition to an income which they had never
lived up to. Under this infatuating principle, counteracted by no real
affection for her sister, it was impossible for her to aim at more than
the credit of projecting and arranging so expensive a charity; though
perhaps she might so little know herself as to walk home to the
Parsonage, after this conversation, in the happy belief of being the
most liberal-minded sister and aunt in the world.

When the subject was brought forward again, her views were more fully
explained; and, in reply to Lady Bertram's calm inquiry of “Where shall
the child come to first, sister, to you or to us?” Sir Thomas heard with
some surprise that it would be totally out of Mrs. Norris's power to
take any share in the personal charge of her. He had been considering
her as a particularly welcome addition at the Parsonage, as a desirable
companion to an aunt who had no children of her own; but he found
himself wholly mistaken. Mrs. Norris was sorry to say that the little
girl's staying with them, at least as things then were, was quite out of
the question. Poor Mr. Norris's indifferent state of health made it an
impossibility: he could no more bear the noise of a child than he could
fly; if, indeed, he should ever get well of his gouty complaints, it
would be a different matter: she should then be glad to take her turn,
and think nothing of the inconvenience; but just now, poor Mr. Norris
took up every moment of her time, and the very mention of such a thing
she was sure would distract him.

“Then she had better come to us,” said Lady Bertram, with the utmost
composure. After a short pause Sir Thomas added with dignity, “Yes, let
her home be in this house. We will endeavour to do our duty by her, and
she will, at least, have the advantage of companions of her own age, and
of a regular instructress.”

“Very true,” cried Mrs. Norris, “which are both very important
considerations; and it will be just the same to Miss Lee whether she has
three girls to teach, or only two--there can be no difference. I only
wish I could be more useful; but you see I do all in my power. I am not
one of those that spare their own trouble; and Nanny shall fetch her,
however it may put me to inconvenience to have my chief counsellor away
for three days. I suppose, sister, you will put the child in the little
white attic, near the old nurseries. It will be much the best place
for her, so near Miss Lee, and not far from the girls, and close by the
housemaids, who could either of them help to dress her, you know, and
take care of her clothes, for I suppose you would not think it fair to
expect Ellis to wait on her as well as the others. Indeed, I do not see
that you could possibly place her anywhere else.”

Lady Bertram made no opposition.

“I hope she will prove a well-disposed girl,” continued Mrs. Norris,
“and be sensible of her uncommon good fortune in having such friends.”

“Should her disposition be really bad,” said Sir Thomas, “we must not,
for our own children's sake, continue her in the family; but there is
no reason to expect so great an evil. We shall probably see much to wish
altered in her, and must prepare ourselves for gross ignorance, some
meanness of opinions, and very distressing vulgarity of manner; but
these are not incurable faults; nor, I trust, can they be dangerous for
her associates. Had my daughters been _younger_ than herself, I should
have considered the introduction of such a companion as a matter of very
serious moment; but, as it is, I hope there can be nothing to fear for
_them_, and everything to hope for _her_, from the association.”

“That is exactly what I think,” cried Mrs. Norris, “and what I was
saying to my husband this morning. It will be an education for the
child, said I, only being with her cousins; if Miss Lee taught her
nothing, she would learn to be good and clever from _them_.”

“I hope she will not tease my poor pug,” said Lady Bertram; “I have but
just got Julia to leave it alone.”

“There will be some difficulty in our way, Mrs. Norris,” observed Sir
Thomas, “as to the distinction proper to be made between the girls
as they grow up: how to preserve in the minds of my _daughters_ the
consciousness of what they are, without making them think too lowly of
their cousin; and how, without depressing her spirits too far, to make
her remember that she is not a _Miss Bertram_. I should wish to see them
very good friends, and would, on no account, authorise in my girls the
smallest degree of arrogance towards their relation; but still they
cannot be equals. Their rank, fortune, rights, and expectations will
always be different. It is a point of great delicacy, and you must
assist us in our endeavours to choose exactly the right line of
conduct.”

Mrs. Norris was quite at his service; and though she perfectly agreed
with him as to its being a most difficult thing, encouraged him to hope
that between them it would be easily managed.

It will be readily believed that Mrs. Norris did not write to her sister
in vain. Mrs. Price seemed rather surprised that a girl should be
fixed on, when she had so many fine boys, but accepted the offer most
thankfully, assuring them of her daughter's being a very well-disposed,
good-humoured girl, and trusting they would never have cause to throw
her off. She spoke of her farther as somewhat delicate and puny, but was
sanguine in the hope of her being materially better for change of air.
Poor woman! she probably thought change of air might agree with many of
her children.



CHAPTER II

The little girl performed her long journey in safety; and at Northampton
was met by Mrs. Norris, who thus regaled in the credit of being foremost
to welcome her, and in the importance of leading her in to the others,
and recommending her to their kindness.

Fanny Price was at this time just ten years old, and though there might
not be much in her first appearance to captivate, there was, at least,
nothing to disgust her relations. She was small of her age, with no glow
of complexion, nor any other striking beauty; exceedingly timid and shy,
and shrinking from notice; but her air, though awkward, was not vulgar,
her voice was sweet, and when she spoke her countenance was pretty. Sir
Thomas and Lady Bertram received her very kindly; and Sir Thomas,
seeing how much she needed encouragement, tried to be all that was
conciliating: but he had to work against a most untoward gravity of
deportment; and Lady Bertram, without taking half so much trouble, or
speaking one word where he spoke ten, by the mere aid of a good-humoured
smile, became immediately the less awful character of the two.

The young people were all at home, and sustained their share in the
introduction very well, with much good humour, and no embarrassment, at
least on the part of the sons, who, at seventeen and sixteen, and tall
of their age, had all the grandeur of men in the eyes of their little
cousin. The two girls were more at a loss from being younger and in
greater awe of their father, who addressed them on the occasion with
rather an injudicious particularity. But they were too much used to
company and praise to have anything like natural shyness; and their
confidence increasing from their cousin's total want of it, they were
soon able to take a full survey of her face and her frock in easy
indifference.

They were a remarkably fine family, the sons very well-looking, the
daughters decidedly handsome, and all of them well-grown and forward of
their age, which produced as striking a difference between the cousins
in person, as education had given to their address; and no one would
have supposed the girls so nearly of an age as they really were. There
were in fact but two years between the youngest and Fanny. Julia
Bertram was only twelve, and Maria but a year older. The little visitor
meanwhile was as unhappy as possible. Afraid of everybody, ashamed of
herself, and longing for the home she had left, she knew not how to look
up, and could scarcely speak to be heard, or without crying. Mrs. Norris
had been talking to her the whole way from Northampton of her wonderful
good fortune, and the extraordinary degree of gratitude and good
behaviour which it ought to produce, and her consciousness of misery was
therefore increased by the idea of its being a wicked thing for her
not to be happy. The fatigue, too, of so long a journey, became soon no
trifling evil. In vain were the well-meant condescensions of Sir Thomas,
and all the officious prognostications of Mrs. Norris that she would be
a good girl; in vain did Lady Bertram smile and make her sit on the sofa
with herself and pug, and vain was even the sight of a gooseberry tart
towards giving her comfort; she could scarcely swallow two mouthfuls
before tears interrupted her, and sleep seeming to be her likeliest
friend, she was taken to finish her sorrows in bed.

“This is not a very promising beginning,” said Mrs. Norris, when Fanny
had left the room. “After all that I said to her as we came along, I
thought she would have behaved better; I told her how much might depend
upon her acquitting herself well at first. I wish there may not be a
little sulkiness of temper--her poor mother had a good deal; but we must
make allowances for such a child--and I do not know that her being sorry
to leave her home is really against her, for, with all its faults,
it _was_ her home, and she cannot as yet understand how much she has
changed for the better; but then there is moderation in all things.”

It required a longer time, however, than Mrs. Norris was inclined to
allow, to reconcile Fanny to the novelty of Mansfield Park, and the
separation from everybody she had been used to. Her feelings were very
acute, and too little understood to be properly attended to. Nobody
meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure
her comfort.

The holiday allowed to the Miss Bertrams the next day, on purpose to
afford leisure for getting acquainted with, and entertaining their young
cousin, produced little union. They could not but hold her cheap on
finding that she had but two sashes, and had never learned French; and
when they perceived her to be little struck with the duet they were so
good as to play, they could do no more than make her a generous present
of some of their least valued toys, and leave her to herself, while
they adjourned to whatever might be the favourite holiday sport of the
moment, making artificial flowers or wasting gold paper.

Fanny, whether near or from her cousins, whether in the schoolroom, the
drawing-room, or the shrubbery, was equally forlorn, finding something
to fear in every person and place. She was disheartened by Lady
Bertram's silence, awed by Sir Thomas's grave looks, and quite overcome
by Mrs. Norris's admonitions. Her elder cousins mortified her by
reflections on her size, and abashed her by noticing her shyness: Miss
Lee wondered at her ignorance, and the maid-servants sneered at her
clothes; and when to these sorrows was added the idea of the brothers
and sisters among whom she had always been important as playfellow,
instructress, and nurse, the despondence that sunk her little heart was
severe.

The grandeur of the house astonished, but could not console her. The
rooms were too large for her to move in with ease: whatever she touched
she expected to injure, and she crept about in constant terror of
something or other; often retreating towards her own chamber to cry; and
the little girl who was spoken of in the drawing-room when she left it
at night as seeming so desirably sensible of her peculiar good fortune,
ended every day's sorrows by sobbing herself to sleep. A week had
passed in this way, and no suspicion of it conveyed by her quiet
passive manner, when she was found one morning by her cousin Edmund, the
youngest of the sons, sitting crying on the attic stairs.

“My dear little cousin,” said he, with all the gentleness of an
excellent nature, “what can be the matter?” And sitting down by her,
he was at great pains to overcome her shame in being so surprised, and
persuade her to speak openly. Was she ill? or was anybody angry with
her? or had she quarrelled with Maria and Julia? or was she puzzled
about anything in her lesson that he could explain? Did she, in short,
want anything he could possibly get her, or do for her? For a long while
no answer could be obtained beyond a “no, no--not at all--no, thank
you”; but he still persevered; and no sooner had he begun to revert
to her own home, than her increased sobs explained to him where the
grievance lay. He tried to console her.

“You are sorry to leave Mama, my dear little Fanny,” said he, “which
shows you to be a very good girl; but you must remember that you are
with relations and friends, who all love you, and wish to make you
happy. Let us walk out in the park, and you shall tell me all about your
brothers and sisters.”

On pursuing the subject, he found that, dear as all these brothers and
sisters generally were, there was one among them who ran more in her
thoughts than the rest. It was William whom she talked of most, and
wanted most to see. William, the eldest, a year older than herself, her
constant companion and friend; her advocate with her mother (of whom
he was the darling) in every distress. “William did not like she should
come away; he had told her he should miss her very much indeed.” “But
William will write to you, I dare say.” “Yes, he had promised he would,
but he had told _her_ to write first.” “And when shall you do it?” She
hung her head and answered hesitatingly, “she did not know; she had not
any paper.”

“If that be all your difficulty, I will furnish you with paper and every
other material, and you may write your letter whenever you choose. Would
it make you happy to write to William?”

“Yes, very.”

“Then let it be done now. Come with me into the breakfast-room, we shall
find everything there, and be sure of having the room to ourselves.”

“But, cousin, will it go to the post?”

“Yes, depend upon me it shall: it shall go with the other letters; and,
as your uncle will frank it, it will cost William nothing.”

“My uncle!” repeated Fanny, with a frightened look.

“Yes, when you have written the letter, I will take it to my father to
frank.”

Fanny thought it a bold measure, but offered no further resistance; and
they went together into the breakfast-room, where Edmund prepared her
paper, and ruled her lines with all the goodwill that her brother
could himself have felt, and probably with somewhat more exactness. He
continued with her the whole time of her writing, to assist her with his
penknife or his orthography, as either were wanted; and added to these
attentions, which she felt very much, a kindness to her brother which
delighted her beyond all the rest. He wrote with his own hand his
love to his cousin William, and sent him half a guinea under the seal.
Fanny's feelings on the occasion were such as she believed herself
incapable of expressing; but her countenance and a few artless words
fully conveyed all their gratitude and delight, and her cousin began
to find her an interesting object. He talked to her more, and, from all
that she said, was convinced of her having an affectionate heart, and
a strong desire of doing right; and he could perceive her to be farther
entitled to attention by great sensibility of her situation, and great
timidity. He had never knowingly given her pain, but he now felt that
she required more positive kindness; and with that view endeavoured,
in the first place, to lessen her fears of them all, and gave her
especially a great deal of good advice as to playing with Maria and
Julia, and being as merry as possible.

From this day Fanny grew more comfortable. She felt that she had a
friend, and the kindness of her cousin Edmund gave her better spirits
with everybody else. The place became less strange, and the people less
formidable; and if there were some amongst them whom she could not cease
to fear, she began at least to know their ways, and to catch the best
manner of conforming to them. The little rusticities and awkwardnesses
which had at first made grievous inroads on the tranquillity of all,
and not least of herself, necessarily wore away, and she was no longer
materially afraid to appear before her uncle, nor did her aunt Norris's
voice make her start very much. To her cousins she became occasionally
an acceptable companion. Though unworthy, from inferiority of age and
strength, to be their constant associate, their pleasures and schemes
were sometimes of a nature to make a third very useful, especially when
that third was of an obliging, yielding temper; and they could not but
own, when their aunt inquired into her faults, or their brother Edmund
urged her claims to their kindness, that “Fanny was good-natured
enough.”

Edmund was uniformly kind himself; and she had nothing worse to endure
on the part of Tom than that sort of merriment which a young man of
seventeen will always think fair with a child of ten. He was just
entering into life, full of spirits, and with all the liberal
dispositions of an eldest son, who feels born only for expense and
enjoyment. His kindness to his little cousin was consistent with his
situation and rights: he made her some very pretty presents, and laughed
at her.

As her appearance and spirits improved, Sir Thomas and Mrs. Norris
thought with greater satisfaction of their benevolent plan; and it
was pretty soon decided between them that, though far from clever, she
showed a tractable disposition, and seemed likely to give them little
trouble. A mean opinion of her abilities was not confined to _them_.
Fanny could read, work, and write, but she had been taught nothing more;
and as her cousins found her ignorant of many things with which they had
been long familiar, they thought her prodigiously stupid, and for the
first two or three weeks were continually bringing some fresh report of
it into the drawing-room. “Dear mama, only think, my cousin cannot
put the map of Europe together--or my cousin cannot tell the principal
rivers in Russia--or, she never heard of Asia Minor--or she does
not know the difference between water-colours and crayons!--How
strange!--Did you ever hear anything so stupid?”

“My dear,” their considerate aunt would reply, “it is very bad, but
you must not expect everybody to be as forward and quick at learning as
yourself.”

“But, aunt, she is really so very ignorant!--Do you know, we asked her
last night which way she would go to get to Ireland; and she said, she
should cross to the Isle of Wight. She thinks of nothing but the Isle of
Wight, and she calls it _the_ _Island_, as if there were no other island
in the world. I am sure I should have been ashamed of myself, if I had
not known better long before I was so old as she is. I cannot remember
the time when I did not know a great deal that she has not the least
notion of yet. How long ago it is, aunt, since we used to repeat the
chronological order of the kings of England, with the dates of their
accession, and most of the principal events of their reigns!”

“Yes,” added the other; “and of the Roman emperors as low as Severus;
besides a great deal of the heathen mythology, and all the metals,
semi-metals, planets, and distinguished philosophers.”

“Very true indeed, my dears, but you are blessed with wonderful
memories, and your poor cousin has probably none at all. There is a
vast deal of difference in memories, as well as in everything else,
and therefore you must make allowance for your cousin, and pity her
deficiency. And remember that, if you are ever so forward and clever
yourselves, you should always be modest; for, much as you know already,
there is a great deal more for you to learn.”

“Yes, I know there is, till I am seventeen. But I must tell you another
thing of Fanny, so odd and so stupid. Do you know, she says she does not
want to learn either music or drawing.”

“To be sure, my dear, that is very stupid indeed, and shows a great
want of genius and emulation. But, all things considered, I do not know
whether it is not as well that it should be so, for, though you know
(owing to me) your papa and mama are so good as to bring her up with
you, it is not at all necessary that she should be as accomplished as
you are;--on the contrary, it is much more desirable that there should
be a difference.”

Such were the counsels by which Mrs. Norris assisted to form her nieces'
minds; and it is not very wonderful that, with all their promising
talents and early information, they should be entirely deficient in the
less common acquirements of self-knowledge, generosity and humility. In
everything but disposition they were admirably taught. Sir Thomas did
not know what was wanting, because, though a truly anxious father, he
was not outwardly affectionate, and the reserve of his manner repressed
all the flow of their spirits before him.

To the education of her daughters Lady Bertram paid not the smallest
attention. She had not time for such cares. She was a woman who spent
her days in sitting, nicely dressed, on a sofa, doing some long piece of
needlework, of little use and no beauty, thinking more of her pug than
her children, but very indulgent to the latter when it did not put
herself to inconvenience, guided in everything important by Sir Thomas,
and in smaller concerns by her sister. Had she possessed greater leisure
for the service of her girls, she would probably have supposed it
unnecessary, for they were under the care of a governess, with proper
masters, and could want nothing more. As for Fanny's being stupid at
learning, “she could only say it was very unlucky, but some people
_were_ stupid, and Fanny must take more pains: she did not know what
else was to be done; and, except her being so dull, she must add she saw
no harm in the poor little thing, and always found her very handy and
quick in carrying messages, and fetching what she wanted.”

Fanny, with all her faults of ignorance and timidity, was fixed at
Mansfield Park, and learning to transfer in its favour much of her
attachment to her former home, grew up there not unhappily among her
cousins. There was no positive ill-nature in Maria or Julia; and though
Fanny was often mortified by their treatment of her, she thought too
lowly of her own claims to feel injured by it.

From about the time of her entering the family, Lady Bertram, in
consequence of a little ill-health, and a great deal of indolence, gave
up the house in town, which she had been used to occupy every spring,
and remained wholly in the country, leaving Sir Thomas to attend his
duty in Parliament, with whatever increase or diminution of comfort
might arise from her absence. In the country, therefore, the Miss
Bertrams continued to exercise their memories, practise their duets,
and grow tall and womanly: and their father saw them becoming in person,
manner, and accomplishments, everything that could satisfy his anxiety.
His eldest son was careless and extravagant, and had already given him
much uneasiness; but his other children promised him nothing but good.
His daughters, he felt, while they retained the name of Bertram, must
be giving it new grace, and in quitting it, he trusted, would extend
its respectable alliances; and the character of Edmund, his strong good
sense and uprightness of mind, bid most fairly for utility, honour, and
happiness to himself and all his connexions. He was to be a clergyman.

Amid the cares and the complacency which his own children suggested,
Sir Thomas did not forget to do what he could for the children of Mrs.
Price: he assisted her liberally in the education and disposal of her
sons as they became old enough for a determinate pursuit; and Fanny,
though almost totally separated from her family, was sensible of the
truest satisfaction in hearing of any kindness towards them, or of
anything at all promising in their situation or conduct. Once, and once
only, in the course of many years, had she the happiness of being with
William. Of the rest she saw nothing: nobody seemed to think of her ever
going amongst them again, even for a visit, nobody at home seemed to
want her; but William determining, soon after her removal, to be a
sailor, was invited to spend a week with his sister in Northamptonshire
before he went to sea. Their eager affection in meeting, their exquisite
delight in being together, their hours of happy mirth, and moments of
serious conference, may be imagined; as well as the sanguine views and
spirits of the boy even to the last, and the misery of the girl when he
left her. Luckily the visit happened in the Christmas holidays, when she
could directly look for comfort to her cousin Edmund; and he told her
such charming things of what William was to do, and be hereafter, in
consequence of his profession, as made her gradually admit that the
separation might have some use. Edmund's friendship never failed her:
his leaving Eton for Oxford made no change in his kind dispositions, and
only afforded more frequent opportunities of proving them. Without any
display of doing more than the rest, or any fear of doing too much,
he was always true to her interests, and considerate of her feelings,
trying to make her good qualities understood, and to conquer the
diffidence which prevented their being more apparent; giving her advice,
consolation, and encouragement.

Kept back as she was by everybody else, his single support could not
bring her forward; but his attentions were otherwise of the highest
importance in assisting the improvement of her mind, and extending its
pleasures. He knew her to be clever, to have a quick apprehension
as well as good sense, and a fondness for reading, which, properly
directed, must be an education in itself. Miss Lee taught her French,
and heard her read the daily portion of history; but he recommended
the books which charmed her leisure hours, he encouraged her taste, and
corrected her judgment: he made reading useful by talking to her of what
she read, and heightened its attraction by judicious praise. In return
for such services she loved him better than anybody in the world except
William: her heart was divided between the two.



CHAPTER III

The first event of any importance in the family was the death of Mr.
Norris, which happened when Fanny was about fifteen, and necessarily
introduced alterations and novelties. Mrs. Norris, on quitting the
Parsonage, removed first to the Park, and afterwards to a small house
of Sir Thomas's in the village, and consoled herself for the loss of her
husband by considering that she could do very well without him; and for
her reduction of income by the evident necessity of stricter economy.

The living was hereafter for Edmund; and, had his uncle died a few years
sooner, it would have been duly given to some friend to hold till he
were old enough for orders. But Tom's extravagance had, previous to
that event, been so great as to render a different disposal of the next
presentation necessary, and the younger brother must help to pay for the
pleasures of the elder. There was another family living actually held
for Edmund; but though this circumstance had made the arrangement
somewhat easier to Sir Thomas's conscience, he could not but feel it to
be an act of injustice, and he earnestly tried to impress his eldest son
with the same conviction, in the hope of its producing a better effect
than anything he had yet been able to say or do.

“I blush for you, Tom,” said he, in his most dignified manner; “I blush
for the expedient which I am driven on, and I trust I may pity your
feelings as a brother on the occasion. You have robbed Edmund for ten,
twenty, thirty years, perhaps for life, of more than half the income
which ought to be his. It may hereafter be in my power, or in yours
(I hope it will), to procure him better preferment; but it must not
be forgotten that no benefit of that sort would have been beyond his
natural claims on us, and that nothing can, in fact, be an equivalent
for the certain advantage which he is now obliged to forego through the
urgency of your debts.”

Tom listened with some shame and some sorrow; but escaping as quickly as
possible, could soon with cheerful selfishness reflect, firstly, that he
had not been half so much in debt as some of his friends; secondly, that
his father had made a most tiresome piece of work of it; and,
thirdly, that the future incumbent, whoever he might be, would, in all
probability, die very soon.

On Mr. Norris's death the presentation became the right of a Dr. Grant,
who came consequently to reside at Mansfield; and on proving to be a
hearty man of forty-five, seemed likely to disappoint Mr. Bertram's
calculations. But “no, he was a short-necked, apoplectic sort of fellow,
and, plied well with good things, would soon pop off.”

He had a wife about fifteen years his junior, but no children; and
they entered the neighbourhood with the usual fair report of being very
respectable, agreeable people.

The time was now come when Sir Thomas expected his sister-in-law to
claim her share in their niece, the change in Mrs. Norris's situation,
and the improvement in Fanny's age, seeming not merely to do away any
former objection to their living together, but even to give it the most
decided eligibility; and as his own circumstances were rendered less
fair than heretofore, by some recent losses on his West India estate, in
addition to his eldest son's extravagance, it became not undesirable
to himself to be relieved from the expense of her support, and the
obligation of her future provision. In the fullness of his belief that
such a thing must be, he mentioned its probability to his wife; and the
first time of the subject's occurring to her again happening to be when
Fanny was present, she calmly observed to her, “So, Fanny, you are going
to leave us, and live with my sister. How shall you like it?”

Fanny was too much surprised to do more than repeat her aunt's words,
“Going to leave you?”

“Yes, my dear; why should you be astonished? You have been five years
with us, and my sister always meant to take you when Mr. Norris died.
But you must come up and tack on my patterns all the same.”

The news was as disagreeable to Fanny as it had been unexpected. She had
never received kindness from her aunt Norris, and could not love her.

“I shall be very sorry to go away,” said she, with a faltering voice.

“Yes, I dare say you will; _that's_ natural enough. I suppose you have
had as little to vex you since you came into this house as any creature
in the world.”

“I hope I am not ungrateful, aunt,” said Fanny modestly.

“No, my dear; I hope not. I have always found you a very good girl.”

“And am I never to live here again?”

“Never, my dear; but you are sure of a comfortable home. It can make
very little difference to you, whether you are in one house or the
other.”

Fanny left the room with a very sorrowful heart; she could not feel the
difference to be so small, she could not think of living with her aunt
with anything like satisfaction. As soon as she met with Edmund she told
him her distress.

“Cousin,” said she, “something is going to happen which I do not like
at all; and though you have often persuaded me into being reconciled to
things that I disliked at first, you will not be able to do it now. I am
going to live entirely with my aunt Norris.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes; my aunt Bertram has just told me so. It is quite settled. I am to
leave Mansfield Park, and go to the White House, I suppose, as soon as
she is removed there.”

“Well, Fanny, and if the plan were not unpleasant to you, I should call
it an excellent one.”

“Oh, cousin!”

“It has everything else in its favour. My aunt is acting like a sensible
woman in wishing for you. She is choosing a friend and companion exactly
where she ought, and I am glad her love of money does not interfere.
You will be what you ought to be to her. I hope it does not distress you
very much, Fanny?”

“Indeed it does: I cannot like it. I love this house and everything in
it: I shall love nothing there. You know how uncomfortable I feel with
her.”

“I can say nothing for her manner to you as a child; but it was the
same with us all, or nearly so. She never knew how to be pleasant to
children. But you are now of an age to be treated better; I think she is
behaving better already; and when you are her only companion, you _must_
be important to her.”

“I can never be important to any one.”

“What is to prevent you?”

“Everything. My situation, my foolishness and awkwardness.”

“As to your foolishness and awkwardness, my dear Fanny, believe me, you
never have a shadow of either, but in using the words so improperly.
There is no reason in the world why you should not be important where
you are known. You have good sense, and a sweet temper, and I am sure
you have a grateful heart, that could never receive kindness without
wishing to return it. I do not know any better qualifications for a
friend and companion.”

“You are too kind,” said Fanny, colouring at such praise; “how shall I
ever thank you as I ought, for thinking so well of me. Oh! cousin, if I
am to go away, I shall remember your goodness to the last moment of my
life.”

“Why, indeed, Fanny, I should hope to be remembered at such a distance
as the White House. You speak as if you were going two hundred miles
off instead of only across the park; but you will belong to us almost
as much as ever. The two families will be meeting every day in the
year. The only difference will be that, living with your aunt, you will
necessarily be brought forward as you ought to be. _Here_ there are
too many whom you can hide behind; but with _her_ you will be forced to
speak for yourself.”

“Oh! I do not say so.”

“I must say it, and say it with pleasure. Mrs. Norris is much better
fitted than my mother for having the charge of you now. She is of a
temper to do a great deal for anybody she really interests herself
about, and she will force you to do justice to your natural powers.”

Fanny sighed, and said, “I cannot see things as you do; but I ought to
believe you to be right rather than myself, and I am very much obliged
to you for trying to reconcile me to what must be. If I could suppose
my aunt really to care for me, it would be delightful to feel myself of
consequence to anybody. _Here_, I know, I am of none, and yet I love the
place so well.”

“The place, Fanny, is what you will not quit, though you quit the house.
You will have as free a command of the park and gardens as ever. Even
_your_ constant little heart need not take fright at such a nominal
change. You will have the same walks to frequent, the same library to
choose from, the same people to look at, the same horse to ride.”

“Very true. Yes, dear old grey pony! Ah! cousin, when I remember how
much I used to dread riding, what terrors it gave me to hear it talked
of as likely to do me good (oh! how I have trembled at my uncle's
opening his lips if horses were talked of), and then think of the kind
pains you took to reason and persuade me out of my fears, and convince
me that I should like it after a little while, and feel how right you
proved to be, I am inclined to hope you may always prophesy as well.”

“And I am quite convinced that your being with Mrs. Norris will be as
good for your mind as riding has been for your health, and as much for
your ultimate happiness too.”

So ended their discourse, which, for any very appropriate service it
could render Fanny, might as well have been spared, for Mrs. Norris had
not the smallest intention of taking her. It had never occurred to her,
on the present occasion, but as a thing to be carefully avoided. To
prevent its being expected, she had fixed on the smallest habitation
which could rank as genteel among the buildings of Mansfield parish,
the White House being only just large enough to receive herself and her
servants, and allow a spare room for a friend, of which she made a
very particular point. The spare rooms at the Parsonage had never been
wanted, but the absolute necessity of a spare room for a friend was now
never forgotten. Not all her precautions, however, could save her from
being suspected of something better; or, perhaps, her very display of
the importance of a spare room might have misled Sir Thomas to suppose
it really intended for Fanny. Lady Bertram soon brought the matter to a
certainty by carelessly observing to Mrs. Norris--

“I think, sister, we need not keep Miss Lee any longer, when Fanny goes
to live with you.”

Mrs. Norris almost started. “Live with me, dear Lady Bertram! what do
you mean?”

“Is she not to live with you? I thought you had settled it with Sir
Thomas.”

“Me! never. I never spoke a syllable about it to Sir Thomas, nor he to
me. Fanny live with me! the last thing in the world for me to think
of, or for anybody to wish that really knows us both. Good heaven! what
could I do with Fanny? Me! a poor, helpless, forlorn widow, unfit for
anything, my spirits quite broke down; what could I do with a girl at
her time of life? A girl of fifteen! the very age of all others to need
most attention and care, and put the cheerfullest spirits to the test!
Sure Sir Thomas could not seriously expect such a thing! Sir Thomas is
too much my friend. Nobody that wishes me well, I am sure, would propose
it. How came Sir Thomas to speak to you about it?”

“Indeed, I do not know. I suppose he thought it best.”

“But what did he say? He could not say he _wished_ me to take Fanny. I
am sure in his heart he could not wish me to do it.”

“No; he only said he thought it very likely; and I thought so too. We
both thought it would be a comfort to you. But if you do not like it,
there is no more to be said. She is no encumbrance here.”

“Dear sister, if you consider my unhappy state, how can she be any
comfort to me? Here am I, a poor desolate widow, deprived of the best of
husbands, my health gone in attending and nursing him, my spirits still
worse, all my peace in this world destroyed, with hardly enough to
support me in the rank of a gentlewoman, and enable me to live so as not
to disgrace the memory of the dear departed--what possible comfort could
I have in taking such a charge upon me as Fanny? If I could wish it for
my own sake, I would not do so unjust a thing by the poor girl. She
is in good hands, and sure of doing well. I must struggle through my
sorrows and difficulties as I can.”

“Then you will not mind living by yourself quite alone?”

“Lady Bertram, I do not complain. I know I cannot live as I have done,
but I must retrench where I can, and learn to be a better manager. I
_have_ _been_ a liberal housekeeper enough, but I shall not be ashamed
to practise economy now. My situation is as much altered as my income.
A great many things were due from poor Mr. Norris, as clergyman of the
parish, that cannot be expected from me. It is unknown how much was
consumed in our kitchen by odd comers and goers. At the White House,
matters must be better looked after. I _must_ live within my income, or
I shall be miserable; and I own it would give me great satisfaction to
be able to do rather more, to lay by a little at the end of the year.”

“I dare say you will. You always do, don't you?”

“My object, Lady Bertram, is to be of use to those that come after me.
It is for your children's good that I wish to be richer. I have nobody
else to care for, but I should be very glad to think I could leave a
little trifle among them worth their having.”

“You are very good, but do not trouble yourself about them. They are
sure of being well provided for. Sir Thomas will take care of that.”

“Why, you know, Sir Thomas's means will be rather straitened if the
Antigua estate is to make such poor returns.”

“Oh! _that_ will soon be settled. Sir Thomas has been writing about it,
I know.”

“Well, Lady Bertram,” said Mrs. Norris, moving to go, “I can only say
that my sole desire is to be of use to your family: and so, if Sir
Thomas should ever speak again about my taking Fanny, you will be able
to say that my health and spirits put it quite out of the question;
besides that, I really should not have a bed to give her, for I must
keep a spare room for a friend.”

Lady Bertram repeated enough of this conversation to her husband to
convince him how much he had mistaken his sister-in-law's views; and
she was from that moment perfectly safe from all expectation, or the
slightest allusion to it from him. He could not but wonder at her
refusing to do anything for a niece whom she had been so forward to
adopt; but, as she took early care to make him, as well as Lady Bertram,
understand that whatever she possessed was designed for their family,
he soon grew reconciled to a distinction which, at the same time that it
was advantageous and complimentary to them, would enable him better to
provide for Fanny himself.

Fanny soon learnt how unnecessary had been her fears of a removal;
and her spontaneous, untaught felicity on the discovery, conveyed some
consolation to Edmund for his disappointment in what he had expected to
be so essentially serviceable to her. Mrs. Norris took possession of the
White House, the Grants arrived at the Parsonage, and these events over,
everything at Mansfield went on for some time as usual.

The Grants showing a disposition to be friendly and sociable, gave great
satisfaction in the main among their new acquaintance. They had their
faults, and Mrs. Norris soon found them out. The Doctor was very fond of
eating, and would have a good dinner every day; and Mrs. Grant, instead
of contriving to gratify him at little expense, gave her cook as high
wages as they did at Mansfield Park, and was scarcely ever seen in her
offices. Mrs. Norris could not speak with any temper of such grievances,
nor of the quantity of butter and eggs that were regularly consumed
in the house. “Nobody loved plenty and hospitality more than herself;
nobody more hated pitiful doings; the Parsonage, she believed, had never
been wanting in comforts of any sort, had never borne a bad character
in _her_ _time_, but this was a way of going on that she could not
understand. A fine lady in a country parsonage was quite out of place.
_Her_ store-room, she thought, might have been good enough for Mrs.
Grant to go into. Inquire where she would, she could not find out that
Mrs. Grant had ever had more than five thousand pounds.”

Lady Bertram listened without much interest to this sort of invective.
She could not enter into the wrongs of an economist, but she felt all
the injuries of beauty in Mrs. Grant's being so well settled in life
without being handsome, and expressed her astonishment on that point
almost as often, though not so diffusely, as Mrs. Norris discussed the
other.

These opinions had been hardly canvassed a year before another event
arose of such importance in the family, as might fairly claim some place
in the thoughts and conversation of the ladies. Sir Thomas found it
expedient to go to Antigua himself, for the better arrangement of his
affairs, and he took his eldest son with him, in the hope of detaching
him from some bad connexions at home. They left England with the
probability of being nearly a twelvemonth absent.

The necessity of the measure in a pecuniary light, and the hope of its
utility to his son, reconciled Sir Thomas to the effort of quitting the
rest of his family, and of leaving his daughters to the direction of
others at their present most interesting time of life. He could not
think Lady Bertram quite equal to supply his place with them, or rather,
to perform what should have been her own; but, in Mrs. Norris's watchful
attention, and in Edmund's judgment, he had sufficient confidence to
make him go without fears for their conduct.

Lady Bertram did not at all like to have her husband leave her; but she
was not disturbed by any alarm for his safety, or solicitude for his
comfort, being one of those persons who think nothing can be dangerous,
or difficult, or fatiguing to anybody but themselves.

The Miss Bertrams were much to be pitied on the occasion: not for their
sorrow, but for their want of it. Their father was no object of love to
them; he had never seemed the friend of their pleasures, and his absence
was unhappily most welcome. They were relieved by it from all restraint;
and without aiming at one gratification that would probably have been
forbidden by Sir Thomas, they felt themselves immediately at their
own disposal, and to have every indulgence within their reach. Fanny's
relief, and her consciousness of it, were quite equal to her cousins';
but a more tender nature suggested that her feelings were ungrateful,
and she really grieved because she could not grieve. “Sir Thomas, who
had done so much for her and her brothers, and who was gone perhaps
never to return! that she should see him go without a tear! it was a
shameful insensibility.” He had said to her, moreover, on the very last
morning, that he hoped she might see William again in the course of the
ensuing winter, and had charged her to write and invite him to Mansfield
as soon as the squadron to which he belonged should be known to be
in England. “This was so thoughtful and kind!” and would he only have
smiled upon her, and called her “my dear Fanny,” while he said it, every
former frown or cold address might have been forgotten. But he had ended
his speech in a way to sink her in sad mortification, by adding, “If
William does come to Mansfield, I hope you may be able to convince him
that the many years which have passed since you parted have not been
spent on your side entirely without improvement; though, I fear, he must
find his sister at sixteen in some respects too much like his sister at
ten.” She cried bitterly over this reflection when her uncle was
gone; and her cousins, on seeing her with red eyes, set her down as a
hypocrite.



CHAPTER IV

Tom Bertram had of late spent so little of his time at home that he
could be only nominally missed; and Lady Bertram was soon astonished
to find how very well they did even without his father, how well Edmund
could supply his place in carving, talking to the steward, writing to
the attorney, settling with the servants, and equally saving her
from all possible fatigue or exertion in every particular but that of
directing her letters.

The earliest intelligence of the travellers' safe arrival at Antigua,
after a favourable voyage, was received; though not before Mrs. Norris
had been indulging in very dreadful fears, and trying to make Edmund
participate them whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended
on being the first person made acquainted with any fatal catastrophe,
she had already arranged the manner of breaking it to all the others,
when Sir Thomas's assurances of their both being alive and well made it
necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches
for a while.

The winter came and passed without their being called for; the accounts
continued perfectly good; and Mrs. Norris, in promoting gaieties for her
nieces, assisting their toilets, displaying their accomplishments,
and looking about for their future husbands, had so much to do as, in
addition to all her own household cares, some interference in those of
her sister, and Mrs. Grant's wasteful doings to overlook, left her very
little occasion to be occupied in fears for the absent.

The Miss Bertrams were now fully established among the belles of the
neighbourhood; and as they joined to beauty and brilliant acquirements
a manner naturally easy, and carefully formed to general civility and
obligingness, they possessed its favour as well as its admiration. Their
vanity was in such good order that they seemed to be quite free from it,
and gave themselves no airs; while the praises attending such behaviour,
secured and brought round by their aunt, served to strengthen them in
believing they had no faults.

Lady Bertram did not go into public with her daughters. She was too
indolent even to accept a mother's gratification in witnessing their
success and enjoyment at the expense of any personal trouble, and the
charge was made over to her sister, who desired nothing better than a
post of such honourable representation, and very thoroughly relished
the means it afforded her of mixing in society without having horses to
hire.

Fanny had no share in the festivities of the season; but she enjoyed
being avowedly useful as her aunt's companion when they called away the
rest of the family; and, as Miss Lee had left Mansfield, she naturally
became everything to Lady Bertram during the night of a ball or a party.
She talked to her, listened to her, read to her; and the tranquillity
of such evenings, her perfect security in such a _tete-a-tete_ from any
sound of unkindness, was unspeakably welcome to a mind which had seldom
known a pause in its alarms or embarrassments. As to her cousins'
gaieties, she loved to hear an account of them, especially of the
balls, and whom Edmund had danced with; but thought too lowly of her
own situation to imagine she should ever be admitted to the same, and
listened, therefore, without an idea of any nearer concern in them. Upon
the whole, it was a comfortable winter to her; for though it brought
no William to England, the never-failing hope of his arrival was worth
much.

The ensuing spring deprived her of her valued friend, the old grey pony;
and for some time she was in danger of feeling the loss in her health as
well as in her affections; for in spite of the acknowledged importance
of her riding on horse-back, no measures were taken for mounting her
again, “because,” as it was observed by her aunts, “she might ride one
of her cousin's horses at any time when they did not want them,” and as
the Miss Bertrams regularly wanted their horses every fine day, and had
no idea of carrying their obliging manners to the sacrifice of any real
pleasure, that time, of course, never came. They took their cheerful
rides in the fine mornings of April and May; and Fanny either sat at
home the whole day with one aunt, or walked beyond her strength at
the instigation of the other: Lady Bertram holding exercise to be as
unnecessary for everybody as it was unpleasant to herself; and Mrs.
Norris, who was walking all day, thinking everybody ought to walk
as much. Edmund was absent at this time, or the evil would have
been earlier remedied. When he returned, to understand how Fanny was
situated, and perceived its ill effects, there seemed with him but one
thing to be done; and that “Fanny must have a horse” was the resolute
declaration with which he opposed whatever could be urged by the
supineness of his mother, or the economy of his aunt, to make it appear
unimportant. Mrs. Norris could not help thinking that some steady old
thing might be found among the numbers belonging to the Park that would
do vastly well; or that one might be borrowed of the steward; or that
perhaps Dr. Grant might now and then lend them the pony he sent to the
post. She could not but consider it as absolutely unnecessary, and even
improper, that Fanny should have a regular lady's horse of her own, in
the style of her cousins. She was sure Sir Thomas had never intended it:
and she must say that, to be making such a purchase in his absence, and
adding to the great expenses of his stable, at a time when a large part
of his income was unsettled, seemed to her very unjustifiable. “Fanny
must have a horse,” was Edmund's only reply. Mrs. Norris could not see
it in the same light. Lady Bertram did: she entirely agreed with her son
as to the necessity of it, and as to its being considered necessary by
his father; she only pleaded against there being any hurry; she only
wanted him to wait till Sir Thomas's return, and then Sir Thomas might
settle it all himself. He would be at home in September, and where would
be the harm of only waiting till September?

Though Edmund was much more displeased with his aunt than with his
mother, as evincing least regard for her niece, he could not help paying
more attention to what she said; and at length determined on a method of
proceeding which would obviate the risk of his father's thinking he
had done too much, and at the same time procure for Fanny the immediate
means of exercise, which he could not bear she should be without. He had
three horses of his own, but not one that would carry a woman. Two
of them were hunters; the third, a useful road-horse: this third he
resolved to exchange for one that his cousin might ride; he knew where
such a one was to be met with; and having once made up his mind, the
whole business was soon completed. The new mare proved a treasure; with
a very little trouble she became exactly calculated for the purpose,
and Fanny was then put in almost full possession of her. She had not
supposed before that anything could ever suit her like the old grey
pony; but her delight in Edmund's mare was far beyond any former
pleasure of the sort; and the addition it was ever receiving in the
consideration of that kindness from which her pleasure sprung, was
beyond all her words to express. She regarded her cousin as an example
of everything good and great, as possessing worth which no one but
herself could ever appreciate, and as entitled to such gratitude from
her as no feelings could be strong enough to pay. Her sentiments towards
him were compounded of all that was respectful, grateful, confiding, and
tender.

As the horse continued in name, as well as fact, the property of Edmund,
Mrs. Norris could tolerate its being for Fanny's use; and had Lady
Bertram ever thought about her own objection again, he might have
been excused in her eyes for not waiting till Sir Thomas's return in
September, for when September came Sir Thomas was still abroad, and
without any near prospect of finishing his business. Unfavourable
circumstances had suddenly arisen at a moment when he was beginning to
turn all his thoughts towards England; and the very great uncertainty
in which everything was then involved determined him on sending home his
son, and waiting the final arrangement by himself. Tom arrived safely,
bringing an excellent account of his father's health; but to very little
purpose, as far as Mrs. Norris was concerned. Sir Thomas's sending away
his son seemed to her so like a parent's care, under the influence of a
foreboding of evil to himself, that she could not help feeling dreadful
presentiments; and as the long evenings of autumn came on, was so
terribly haunted by these ideas, in the sad solitariness of her cottage,
as to be obliged to take daily refuge in the dining-room of the Park.
The return of winter engagements, however, was not without its effect;
and in the course of their progress, her mind became so pleasantly
occupied in superintending the fortunes of her eldest niece, as
tolerably to quiet her nerves. “If poor Sir Thomas were fated never to
return, it would be peculiarly consoling to see their dear Maria well
married,” she very often thought; always when they were in the company
of men of fortune, and particularly on the introduction of a young man
who had recently succeeded to one of the largest estates and finest
places in the country.

Mr. Rushworth was from the first struck with the beauty of Miss Bertram,
and, being inclined to marry, soon fancied himself in love. He was
a heavy young man, with not more than common sense; but as there was
nothing disagreeable in his figure or address, the young lady was well
pleased with her conquest. Being now in her twenty-first year, Maria
Bertram was beginning to think matrimony a duty; and as a marriage with
Mr. Rushworth would give her the enjoyment of a larger income than her
father's, as well as ensure her the house in town, which was now a prime
object, it became, by the same rule of moral obligation, her evident
duty to marry Mr. Rushworth if she could. Mrs. Norris was most zealous
in promoting the match, by every suggestion and contrivance likely to
enhance its desirableness to either party; and, among other means, by
seeking an intimacy with the gentleman's mother, who at present lived
with him, and to whom she even forced Lady Bertram to go through ten
miles of indifferent road to pay a morning visit. It was not long before
a good understanding took place between this lady and herself. Mrs.
Rushworth acknowledged herself very desirous that her son should marry,
and declared that of all the young ladies she had ever seen, Miss
Bertram seemed, by her amiable qualities and accomplishments, the best
adapted to make him happy. Mrs. Norris accepted the compliment,
and admired the nice discernment of character which could so well
distinguish merit. Maria was indeed the pride and delight of them
all--perfectly faultless--an angel; and, of course, so surrounded by
admirers, must be difficult in her choice: but yet, as far as Mrs.
Norris could allow herself to decide on so short an acquaintance, Mr.
Rushworth appeared precisely the young man to deserve and attach her.

After dancing with each other at a proper number of balls, the young
people justified these opinions, and an engagement, with a due reference
to the absent Sir Thomas, was entered into, much to the satisfaction
of their respective families, and of the general lookers-on of the
neighbourhood, who had, for many weeks past, felt the expediency of Mr.
Rushworth's marrying Miss Bertram.

It was some months before Sir Thomas's consent could be received; but,
in the meanwhile, as no one felt a doubt of his most cordial pleasure
in the connexion, the intercourse of the two families was carried
on without restraint, and no other attempt made at secrecy than Mrs.
Norris's talking of it everywhere as a matter not to be talked of at
present.

Edmund was the only one of the family who could see a fault in the
business; but no representation of his aunt's could induce him to find
Mr. Rushworth a desirable companion. He could allow his sister to be
the best judge of her own happiness, but he was not pleased that her
happiness should centre in a large income; nor could he refrain from
often saying to himself, in Mr. Rushworth's company--“If this man had
not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.”

Sir Thomas, however, was truly happy in the prospect of an alliance
so unquestionably advantageous, and of which he heard nothing but the
perfectly good and agreeable. It was a connexion exactly of the right
sort--in the same county, and the same interest--and his most hearty
concurrence was conveyed as soon as possible. He only conditioned that
the marriage should not take place before his return, which he was again
looking eagerly forward to. He wrote in April, and had strong hopes
of settling everything to his entire satisfaction, and leaving Antigua
before the end of the summer.

Such was the state of affairs in the month of July; and Fanny had just
reached her eighteenth year, when the society of the village received
an addition in the brother and sister of Mrs. Grant, a Mr. and Miss
Crawford, the children of her mother by a second marriage. They were
young people of fortune. The son had a good estate in Norfolk, the
daughter twenty thousand pounds. As children, their sister had been
always very fond of them; but, as her own marriage had been soon
followed by the death of their common parent, which left them to the
care of a brother of their father, of whom Mrs. Grant knew nothing, she
had scarcely seen them since. In their uncle's house they had found a
kind home. Admiral and Mrs. Crawford, though agreeing in nothing else,
were united in affection for these children, or, at least, were no
farther adverse in their feelings than that each had their favourite, to
whom they showed the greatest fondness of the two. The Admiral delighted
in the boy, Mrs. Crawford doted on the girl; and it was the lady's death
which now obliged her _protegee_, after some months' further trial at
her uncle's house, to find another home. Admiral Crawford was a man of
vicious conduct, who chose, instead of retaining his niece, to bring his
mistress under his own roof; and to this Mrs. Grant was indebted for her
sister's proposal of coming to her, a measure quite as welcome on one
side as it could be expedient on the other; for Mrs. Grant, having by
this time run through the usual resources of ladies residing in the
country without a family of children--having more than filled her
favourite sitting-room with pretty furniture, and made a choice
collection of plants and poultry--was very much in want of some variety
at home. The arrival, therefore, of a sister whom she had always loved,
and now hoped to retain with her as long as she remained single, was
highly agreeable; and her chief anxiety was lest Mansfield should not
satisfy the habits of a young woman who had been mostly used to London.

Miss Crawford was not entirely free from similar apprehensions, though
they arose principally from doubts of her sister's style of living and
tone of society; and it was not till after she had tried in vain to
persuade her brother to settle with her at his own country house,
that she could resolve to hazard herself among her other relations. To
anything like a permanence of abode, or limitation of society, Henry
Crawford had, unluckily, a great dislike: he could not accommodate his
sister in an article of such importance; but he escorted her, with the
utmost kindness, into Northamptonshire, and as readily engaged to fetch
her away again, at half an hour's notice, whenever she were weary of the
place.

The meeting was very satisfactory on each side. Miss Crawford found a
sister without preciseness or rusticity, a sister's husband who looked
the gentleman, and a house commodious and well fitted up; and Mrs. Grant
received in those whom she hoped to love better than ever a young man
and woman of very prepossessing appearance. Mary Crawford was remarkably
pretty; Henry, though not handsome, had air and countenance; the manners
of both were lively and pleasant, and Mrs. Grant immediately gave them
credit for everything else. She was delighted with each, but Mary was
her dearest object; and having never been able to glory in beauty of her
own, she thoroughly enjoyed the power of being proud of her sister's.
She had not waited her arrival to look out for a suitable match for her:
she had fixed on Tom Bertram; the eldest son of a baronet was not too
good for a girl of twenty thousand pounds, with all the elegance
and accomplishments which Mrs. Grant foresaw in her; and being a
warm-hearted, unreserved woman, Mary had not been three hours in the
house before she told her what she had planned.

Miss Crawford was glad to find a family of such consequence so very near
them, and not at all displeased either at her sister's early care, or
the choice it had fallen on. Matrimony was her object, provided she
could marry well: and having seen Mr. Bertram in town, she knew that
objection could no more be made to his person than to his situation in
life. While she treated it as a joke, therefore, she did not forget to
think of it seriously. The scheme was soon repeated to Henry.

“And now,” added Mrs. Grant, “I have thought of something to make it
complete. I should dearly love to settle you both in this country; and
therefore, Henry, you shall marry the youngest Miss Bertram, a nice,
handsome, good-humoured, accomplished girl, who will make you very
happy.”

Henry bowed and thanked her.

“My dear sister,” said Mary, “if you can persuade him into anything
of the sort, it will be a fresh matter of delight to me to find myself
allied to anybody so clever, and I shall only regret that you have
not half a dozen daughters to dispose of. If you can persuade Henry
to marry, you must have the address of a Frenchwoman. All that English
abilities can do has been tried already. I have three very particular
friends who have been all dying for him in their turn; and the pains
which they, their mothers (very clever women), as well as my dear aunt
and myself, have taken to reason, coax, or trick him into marrying, is
inconceivable! He is the most horrible flirt that can be imagined. If
your Miss Bertrams do not like to have their hearts broke, let them
avoid Henry.”

“My dear brother, I will not believe this of you.”

“No, I am sure you are too good. You will be kinder than Mary. You
will allow for the doubts of youth and inexperience. I am of a cautious
temper, and unwilling to risk my happiness in a hurry. Nobody can
think more highly of the matrimonial state than myself. I consider the
blessing of a wife as most justly described in those discreet lines of
the poet--'Heaven's _last_ best gift.'”

“There, Mrs. Grant, you see how he dwells on one word, and only look
at his smile. I assure you he is very detestable; the Admiral's lessons
have quite spoiled him.”

“I pay very little regard,” said Mrs. Grant, “to what any young person
says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for
it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.”

Dr. Grant laughingly congratulated Miss Crawford on feeling no
disinclination to the state herself.

“Oh yes! I am not at all ashamed of it. I would have everybody marry if
they can do it properly: I do not like to have people throw themselves
away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to
advantage.”



CHAPTER V

The young people were pleased with each other from the first. On each
side there was much to attract, and their acquaintance soon promised as
early an intimacy as good manners would warrant. Miss Crawford's beauty
did her no disservice with the Miss Bertrams. They were too handsome
themselves to dislike any woman for being so too, and were almost as
much charmed as their brothers with her lively dark eye, clear brown
complexion, and general prettiness. Had she been tall, full formed, and
fair, it might have been more of a trial: but as it was, there could be
no comparison; and she was most allowably a sweet, pretty girl, while
they were the finest young women in the country.

Her brother was not handsome: no, when they first saw him he was
absolutely plain, black and plain; but still he was the gentleman, with
a pleasing address. The second meeting proved him not so very plain:
he was plain, to be sure, but then he had so much countenance, and his
teeth were so good, and he was so well made, that one soon forgot he was
plain; and after a third interview, after dining in company with him at
the Parsonage, he was no longer allowed to be called so by anybody. He
was, in fact, the most agreeable young man the sisters had ever known,
and they were equally delighted with him. Miss Bertram's engagement made
him in equity the property of Julia, of which Julia was fully aware; and
before he had been at Mansfield a week, she was quite ready to be fallen
in love with.

Maria's notions on the subject were more confused and indistinct. She
did not want to see or understand. “There could be no harm in her liking
an agreeable man--everybody knew her situation--Mr. Crawford must take
care of himself.” Mr. Crawford did not mean to be in any danger! the
Miss Bertrams were worth pleasing, and were ready to be pleased; and he
began with no object but of making them like him. He did not want them
to die of love; but with sense and temper which ought to have made him
judge and feel better, he allowed himself great latitude on such points.

“I like your Miss Bertrams exceedingly, sister,” said he, as he returned
from attending them to their carriage after the said dinner visit; “they
are very elegant, agreeable girls.”

“So they are indeed, and I am delighted to hear you say it. But you like
Julia best.”

“Oh yes! I like Julia best.”

“But do you really? for Miss Bertram is in general thought the
handsomest.”

“So I should suppose. She has the advantage in every feature, and I
prefer her countenance; but I like Julia best; Miss Bertram is certainly
the handsomest, and I have found her the most agreeable, but I shall
always like Julia best, because you order me.”

“I shall not talk to you, Henry, but I know you _will_ like her best at
last.”

“Do not I tell you that I like her best _at_ _first_?”

“And besides, Miss Bertram is engaged. Remember that, my dear brother.
Her choice is made.”

“Yes, and I like her the better for it. An engaged woman is always more
agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares
are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing
without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged: no harm can be
done.”

“Why, as to that, Mr. Rushworth is a very good sort of young man, and it
is a great match for her.”

“But Miss Bertram does not care three straws for him; _that_ is your
opinion of your intimate friend. _I_ do not subscribe to it. I am sure
Miss Bertram is very much attached to Mr. Rushworth. I could see it in
her eyes, when he was mentioned. I think too well of Miss Bertram to
suppose she would ever give her hand without her heart.”

“Mary, how shall we manage him?”

“We must leave him to himself, I believe. Talking does no good. He will
be taken in at last.”

“But I would not have him _taken_ _in_; I would not have him duped; I
would have it all fair and honourable.”

“Oh dear! let him stand his chance and be taken in. It will do just as
well. Everybody is taken in at some period or other.”

“Not always in marriage, dear Mary.”

“In marriage especially. With all due respect to such of the present
company as chance to be married, my dear Mrs. Grant, there is not one in
a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry. Look where
I will, I see that it _is_ so; and I feel that it _must_ be so, when I
consider that it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect
most from others, and are least honest themselves.”

“Ah! You have been in a bad school for matrimony, in Hill Street.”

“My poor aunt had certainly little cause to love the state; but,
however, speaking from my own observation, it is a manoeuvring business.
I know so many who have married in the full expectation and confidence
of some one particular advantage in the connexion, or accomplishment, or
good quality in the person, who have found themselves entirely deceived,
and been obliged to put up with exactly the reverse. What is this but a
take in?”

“My dear child, there must be a little imagination here. I beg your
pardon, but I cannot quite believe you. Depend upon it, you see but
half. You see the evil, but you do not see the consolation. There will
be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to
expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human
nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make
a second better: we find comfort somewhere--and those evil-minded
observers, dearest Mary, who make much of a little, are more taken in
and deceived than the parties themselves.”

“Well done, sister! I honour your _esprit_ _du_ _corps_. When I am a
wife, I mean to be just as staunch myself; and I wish my friends in
general would be so too. It would save me many a heartache.”

“You are as bad as your brother, Mary; but we will cure you both.
Mansfield shall cure you both, and without any taking in. Stay with us,
and we will cure you.”

The Crawfords, without wanting to be cured, were very willing to stay.
Mary was satisfied with the Parsonage as a present home, and Henry
equally ready to lengthen his visit. He had come, intending to spend
only a few days with them; but Mansfield promised well, and there was
nothing to call him elsewhere. It delighted Mrs. Grant to keep them both
with her, and Dr. Grant was exceedingly well contented to have it so: a
talking pretty young woman like Miss Crawford is always pleasant society
to an indolent, stay-at-home man; and Mr. Crawford's being his guest was
an excuse for drinking claret every day.

The Miss Bertrams' admiration of Mr. Crawford was more rapturous than
anything which Miss Crawford's habits made her likely to feel. She
acknowledged, however, that the Mr. Bertrams were very fine young men,
that two such young men were not often seen together even in London, and
that their manners, particularly those of the eldest, were very good.
_He_ had been much in London, and had more liveliness and gallantry than
Edmund, and must, therefore, be preferred; and, indeed, his being the
eldest was another strong claim. She had felt an early presentiment that
she _should_ like the eldest best. She knew it was her way.

Tom Bertram must have been thought pleasant, indeed, at any rate; he was
the sort of young man to be generally liked, his agreeableness was of
the kind to be oftener found agreeable than some endowments of a higher
stamp, for he had easy manners, excellent spirits, a large acquaintance,
and a great deal to say; and the reversion of Mansfield Park, and a
baronetcy, did no harm to all this. Miss Crawford soon felt that he and
his situation might do. She looked about her with due consideration, and
found almost everything in his favour: a park, a real park, five miles
round, a spacious modern-built house, so well placed and well screened
as to deserve to be in any collection of engravings of gentlemen's
seats in the kingdom, and wanting only to be completely new
furnished--pleasant sisters, a quiet mother, and an agreeable man
himself--with the advantage of being tied up from much gaming at present
by a promise to his father, and of being Sir Thomas hereafter. It
might do very well; she believed she should accept him; and she began
accordingly to interest herself a little about the horse which he had to
run at the B---- races.

These races were to call him away not long after their acquaintance
began; and as it appeared that the family did not, from his usual goings
on, expect him back again for many weeks, it would bring his passion to
an early proof. Much was said on his side to induce her to attend the
races, and schemes were made for a large party to them, with all the
eagerness of inclination, but it would only do to be talked of.

And Fanny, what was _she_ doing and thinking all this while? and what
was _her_ opinion of the newcomers? Few young ladies of eighteen could
be less called on to speak their opinion than Fanny. In a quiet way,
very little attended to, she paid her tribute of admiration to Miss
Crawford's beauty; but as she still continued to think Mr. Crawford
very plain, in spite of her two cousins having repeatedly proved the
contrary, she never mentioned _him_. The notice, which she excited
herself, was to this effect. “I begin now to understand you all,
except Miss Price,” said Miss Crawford, as she was walking with the Mr.
Bertrams. “Pray, is she out, or is she not? I am puzzled. She dined at
the Parsonage, with the rest of you, which seemed like being _out_; and
yet she says so little, that I can hardly suppose she _is_.”

Edmund, to whom this was chiefly addressed, replied, “I believe I know
what you mean, but I will not undertake to answer the question. My
cousin is grown up. She has the age and sense of a woman, but the outs
and not outs are beyond me.”

“And yet, in general, nothing can be more easily ascertained. The
distinction is so broad. Manners as well as appearance are, generally
speaking, so totally different. Till now, I could not have supposed it
possible to be mistaken as to a girl's being out or not. A girl not out
has always the same sort of dress: a close bonnet, for instance; looks
very demure, and never says a word. You may smile, but it is so, I
assure you; and except that it is sometimes carried a little too far,
it is all very proper. Girls should be quiet and modest. The most
objectionable part is, that the alteration of manners on being
introduced into company is frequently too sudden. They sometimes pass in
such very little time from reserve to quite the opposite--to confidence!
_That_ is the faulty part of the present system. One does not like to
see a girl of eighteen or nineteen so immediately up to every thing--and
perhaps when one has seen her hardly able to speak the year before. Mr.
Bertram, I dare say _you_ have sometimes met with such changes.”

“I believe I have, but this is hardly fair; I see what you are at. You
are quizzing me and Miss Anderson.”

“No, indeed. Miss Anderson! I do not know who or what you mean. I am
quite in the dark. But I _will_ quiz you with a great deal of pleasure,
if you will tell me what about.”

“Ah! you carry it off very well, but I cannot be quite so far imposed
on. You must have had Miss Anderson in your eye, in describing an
altered young lady. You paint too accurately for mistake. It was exactly
so. The Andersons of Baker Street. We were speaking of them the other
day, you know. Edmund, you have heard me mention Charles Anderson.
The circumstance was precisely as this lady has represented it. When
Anderson first introduced me to his family, about two years ago, his
sister was not _out_, and I could not get her to speak to me. I sat
there an hour one morning waiting for Anderson, with only her and a
little girl or two in the room, the governess being sick or run away,
and the mother in and out every moment with letters of business, and I
could hardly get a word or a look from the young lady--nothing like a
civil answer--she screwed up her mouth, and turned from me with such an
air! I did not see her again for a twelvemonth. She was then _out_. I
met her at Mrs. Holford's, and did not recollect her. She came up to me,
claimed me as an acquaintance, stared me out of countenance; and talked
and laughed till I did not know which way to look. I felt that I must
be the jest of the room at the time, and Miss Crawford, it is plain, has
heard the story.”

“And a very pretty story it is, and with more truth in it, I dare say,
than does credit to Miss Anderson. It is too common a fault. Mothers
certainly have not yet got quite the right way of managing their
daughters. I do not know where the error lies. I do not pretend to set
people right, but I do see that they are often wrong.”

“Those who are showing the world what female manners _should_ be,” said
Mr. Bertram gallantly, “are doing a great deal to set them right.”

“The error is plain enough,” said the less courteous Edmund; “such girls
are ill brought up. They are given wrong notions from the beginning.
They are always acting upon motives of vanity, and there is no more
real modesty in their behaviour _before_ they appear in public than
afterwards.”

“I do not know,” replied Miss Crawford hesitatingly. “Yes, I cannot
agree with you there. It is certainly the modestest part of the
business. It is much worse to have girls not out give themselves the
same airs and take the same liberties as if they were, which I have seen
done. That is worse than anything--quite disgusting!”

“Yes, _that_ is very inconvenient indeed,” said Mr. Bertram. “It leads
one astray; one does not know what to do. The close bonnet and demure
air you describe so well (and nothing was ever juster), tell one what
is expected; but I got into a dreadful scrape last year from the want of
them. I went down to Ramsgate for a week with a friend last September,
just after my return from the West Indies. My friend Sneyd--you have
heard me speak of Sneyd, Edmund--his father, and mother, and sisters,
were there, all new to me. When we reached Albion Place they were out;
we went after them, and found them on the pier: Mrs. and the two Miss
Sneyds, with others of their acquaintance. I made my bow in form; and
as Mrs. Sneyd was surrounded by men, attached myself to one of her
daughters, walked by her side all the way home, and made myself as
agreeable as I could; the young lady perfectly easy in her manners, and
as ready to talk as to listen. I had not a suspicion that I could be
doing anything wrong. They looked just the same: both well-dressed, with
veils and parasols like other girls; but I afterwards found that I had
been giving all my attention to the youngest, who was not _out_, and
had most excessively offended the eldest. Miss Augusta ought not to have
been noticed for the next six months; and Miss Sneyd, I believe, has
never forgiven me.”

“That was bad indeed. Poor Miss Sneyd. Though I have no younger
sister, I feel for her. To be neglected before one's time must be very
vexatious; but it was entirely the mother's fault. Miss Augusta should
have been with her governess. Such half-and-half doings never prosper.
But now I must be satisfied about Miss Price. Does she go to balls? Does
she dine out every where, as well as at my sister's?”

“No,” replied Edmund; “I do not think she has ever been to a ball. My
mother seldom goes into company herself, and dines nowhere but with Mrs.
Grant, and Fanny stays at home with _her_.”

“Oh! then the point is clear. Miss Price is not out.”



CHAPTER VI

Mr. Bertram set off for--------, and Miss Crawford was prepared to
find a great chasm in their society, and to miss him decidedly in the
meetings which were now becoming almost daily between the families;
and on their all dining together at the Park soon after his going, she
retook her chosen place near the bottom of the table, fully expecting to
feel a most melancholy difference in the change of masters. It would
be a very flat business, she was sure. In comparison with his brother,
Edmund would have nothing to say. The soup would be sent round in a most
spiritless manner, wine drank without any smiles or agreeable trifling,
and the venison cut up without supplying one pleasant anecdote of any
former haunch, or a single entertaining story, about “my friend such a
one.” She must try to find amusement in what was passing at the upper
end of the table, and in observing Mr. Rushworth, who was now making his
appearance at Mansfield for the first time since the Crawfords' arrival.
He had been visiting a friend in the neighbouring county, and that
friend having recently had his grounds laid out by an improver, Mr.
Rushworth was returned with his head full of the subject, and very eager
to be improving his own place in the same way; and though not saying
much to the purpose, could talk of nothing else. The subject had
been already handled in the drawing-room; it was revived in the
dining-parlour. Miss Bertram's attention and opinion was evidently his
chief aim; and though her deportment showed rather conscious superiority
than any solicitude to oblige him, the mention of Sotherton Court,
and the ideas attached to it, gave her a feeling of complacency, which
prevented her from being very ungracious.

“I wish you could see Compton,” said he; “it is the most complete thing!
I never saw a place so altered in my life. I told Smith I did not know
where I was. The approach _now_, is one of the finest things in the
country: you see the house in the most surprising manner. I declare,
when I got back to Sotherton yesterday, it looked like a prison--quite a
dismal old prison.”

“Oh, for shame!” cried Mrs. Norris. “A prison indeed? Sotherton Court is
the noblest old place in the world.”

“It wants improvement, ma'am, beyond anything. I never saw a place that
wanted so much improvement in my life; and it is so forlorn that I do
not know what can be done with it.”

“No wonder that Mr. Rushworth should think so at present,” said Mrs.
Grant to Mrs. Norris, with a smile; “but depend upon it, Sotherton will
have _every_ improvement in time which his heart can desire.”

“I must try to do something with it,” said Mr. Rushworth, “but I do not
know what. I hope I shall have some good friend to help me.”

“Your best friend upon such an occasion,” said Miss Bertram calmly,
“would be Mr. Repton, I imagine.”

“That is what I was thinking of. As he has done so well by Smith, I
think I had better have him at once. His terms are five guineas a day.”

“Well, and if they were _ten_,” cried Mrs. Norris, “I am sure _you_ need
not regard it. The expense need not be any impediment. If I were you,
I should not think of the expense. I would have everything done in the
best style, and made as nice as possible. Such a place as Sotherton
Court deserves everything that taste and money can do. You have space to
work upon there, and grounds that will well reward you. For my own part,
if I had anything within the fiftieth part of the size of Sotherton, I
should be always planting and improving, for naturally I am excessively
fond of it. It would be too ridiculous for me to attempt anything where
I am now, with my little half acre. It would be quite a burlesque. But
if I had more room, I should take a prodigious delight in improving and
planting. We did a vast deal in that way at the Parsonage: we made it
quite a different place from what it was when we first had it. You young
ones do not remember much about it, perhaps; but if dear Sir Thomas were
here, he could tell you what improvements we made: and a great deal more
would have been done, but for poor Mr. Norris's sad state of health.
He could hardly ever get out, poor man, to enjoy anything, and _that_
disheartened me from doing several things that Sir Thomas and I used to
talk of. If it had not been for _that_, we should have carried on the
garden wall, and made the plantation to shut out the churchyard, just
as Dr. Grant has done. We were always doing something as it was. It was
only the spring twelvemonth before Mr. Norris's death that we put in the
apricot against the stable wall, which is now grown such a noble tree,
and getting to such perfection, sir,” addressing herself then to Dr.
Grant.

“The tree thrives well, beyond a doubt, madam,” replied Dr. Grant. “The
soil is good; and I never pass it without regretting that the fruit
should be so little worth the trouble of gathering.”

“Sir, it is a Moor Park, we bought it as a Moor Park, and it cost
us--that is, it was a present from Sir Thomas, but I saw the bill--and I
know it cost seven shillings, and was charged as a Moor Park.”

“You were imposed on, ma'am,” replied Dr. Grant: “these potatoes have as
much the flavour of a Moor Park apricot as the fruit from that tree. It
is an insipid fruit at the best; but a good apricot is eatable, which
none from my garden are.”

“The truth is, ma'am,” said Mrs. Grant, pretending to whisper across
the table to Mrs. Norris, “that Dr. Grant hardly knows what the natural
taste of our apricot is: he is scarcely ever indulged with one, for it
is so valuable a fruit; with a little assistance, and ours is such a
remarkably large, fair sort, that what with early tarts and preserves,
my cook contrives to get them all.”

Mrs. Norris, who had begun to redden, was appeased; and, for a little
while, other subjects took place of the improvements of Sotherton. Dr.
Grant and Mrs. Norris were seldom good friends; their acquaintance had
begun in dilapidations, and their habits were totally dissimilar.

After a short interruption Mr. Rushworth began again. “Smith's place
is the admiration of all the country; and it was a mere nothing before
Repton took it in hand. I think I shall have Repton.”

“Mr. Rushworth,” said Lady Bertram, “if I were you, I would have a
very pretty shrubbery. One likes to get out into a shrubbery in fine
weather.”

Mr. Rushworth was eager to assure her ladyship of his acquiescence, and
tried to make out something complimentary; but, between his submission
to _her_ taste, and his having always intended the same himself, with
the superadded objects of professing attention to the comfort of ladies
in general, and of insinuating that there was one only whom he was
anxious to please, he grew puzzled, and Edmund was glad to put an end
to his speech by a proposal of wine. Mr. Rushworth, however, though not
usually a great talker, had still more to say on the subject next his
heart. “Smith has not much above a hundred acres altogether in his
grounds, which is little enough, and makes it more surprising that the
place can have been so improved. Now, at Sotherton we have a good seven
hundred, without reckoning the water meadows; so that I think, if so
much could be done at Compton, we need not despair. There have been two
or three fine old trees cut down, that grew too near the house, and
it opens the prospect amazingly, which makes me think that Repton, or
anybody of that sort, would certainly have the avenue at Sotherton down:
the avenue that leads from the west front to the top of the hill,
you know,” turning to Miss Bertram particularly as he spoke. But Miss
Bertram thought it most becoming to reply--

“The avenue! Oh! I do not recollect it. I really know very little of
Sotherton.”

Fanny, who was sitting on the other side of Edmund, exactly opposite
Miss Crawford, and who had been attentively listening, now looked at
him, and said in a low voice--

“Cut down an avenue! What a pity! Does it not make you think of Cowper?
'Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.'”

He smiled as he answered, “I am afraid the avenue stands a bad chance,
Fanny.”

“I should like to see Sotherton before it is cut down, to see the place
as it is now, in its old state; but I do not suppose I shall.”

“Have you never been there? No, you never can; and, unluckily, it is out
of distance for a ride. I wish we could contrive it.”

“Oh! it does not signify. Whenever I do see it, you will tell me how it
has been altered.”

“I collect,” said Miss Crawford, “that Sotherton is an old place, and a
place of some grandeur. In any particular style of building?”

“The house was built in Elizabeth's time, and is a large, regular, brick
building; heavy, but respectable looking, and has many good rooms. It
is ill placed. It stands in one of the lowest spots of the park; in that
respect, unfavourable for improvement. But the woods are fine, and
there is a stream, which, I dare say, might be made a good deal of. Mr.
Rushworth is quite right, I think, in meaning to give it a modern dress,
and I have no doubt that it will be all done extremely well.”

Miss Crawford listened with submission, and said to herself, “He is a
well-bred man; he makes the best of it.”

“I do not wish to influence Mr. Rushworth,” he continued; “but, had I
a place to new fashion, I should not put myself into the hands of an
improver. I would rather have an inferior degree of beauty, of my own
choice, and acquired progressively. I would rather abide by my own
blunders than by his.”

“_You_ would know what you were about, of course; but that would not
suit _me_. I have no eye or ingenuity for such matters, but as they are
before me; and had I a place of my own in the country, I should be most
thankful to any Mr. Repton who would undertake it, and give me as much
beauty as he could for my money; and I should never look at it till it
was complete.”

“It would be delightful to _me_ to see the progress of it all,” said
Fanny.

“Ay, you have been brought up to it. It was no part of my education; and
the only dose I ever had, being administered by not the first favourite
in the world, has made me consider improvements _in_ _hand_ as the
greatest of nuisances. Three years ago the Admiral, my honoured uncle,
bought a cottage at Twickenham for us all to spend our summers in;
and my aunt and I went down to it quite in raptures; but it being
excessively pretty, it was soon found necessary to be improved, and for
three months we were all dirt and confusion, without a gravel walk to
step on, or a bench fit for use. I would have everything as complete
as possible in the country, shrubberies and flower-gardens, and rustic
seats innumerable: but it must all be done without my care. Henry is
different; he loves to be doing.”

Edmund was sorry to hear Miss Crawford, whom he was much disposed to
admire, speak so freely of her uncle. It did not suit his sense of
propriety, and he was silenced, till induced by further smiles and
liveliness to put the matter by for the present.

“Mr. Bertram,” said she, “I have tidings of my harp at last. I am
assured that it is safe at Northampton; and there it has probably been
these ten days, in spite of the solemn assurances we have so often
received to the contrary.” Edmund expressed his pleasure and surprise.
“The truth is, that our inquiries were too direct; we sent a servant,
we went ourselves: this will not do seventy miles from London; but this
morning we heard of it in the right way. It was seen by some farmer, and
he told the miller, and the miller told the butcher, and the butcher's
son-in-law left word at the shop.”

“I am very glad that you have heard of it, by whatever means, and hope
there will be no further delay.”

“I am to have it to-morrow; but how do you think it is to be conveyed?
Not by a wagon or cart: oh no! nothing of that kind could be hired in
the village. I might as well have asked for porters and a handbarrow.”

“You would find it difficult, I dare say, just now, in the middle of a
very late hay harvest, to hire a horse and cart?”

“I was astonished to find what a piece of work was made of it! To want
a horse and cart in the country seemed impossible, so I told my maid to
speak for one directly; and as I cannot look out of my dressing-closet
without seeing one farmyard, nor walk in the shrubbery without passing
another, I thought it would be only ask and have, and was rather grieved
that I could not give the advantage to all. Guess my surprise, when
I found that I had been asking the most unreasonable, most impossible
thing in the world; had offended all the farmers, all the labourers,
all the hay in the parish! As for Dr. Grant's bailiff, I believe I had
better keep out of _his_ way; and my brother-in-law himself, who is all
kindness in general, looked rather black upon me when he found what I
had been at.”

“You could not be expected to have thought on the subject before; but
when you _do_ think of it, you must see the importance of getting in
the grass. The hire of a cart at any time might not be so easy as you
suppose: our farmers are not in the habit of letting them out; but, in
harvest, it must be quite out of their power to spare a horse.”

“I shall understand all your ways in time; but, coming down with the
true London maxim, that everything is to be got with money, I was a
little embarrassed at first by the sturdy independence of your country
customs. However, I am to have my harp fetched to-morrow. Henry, who is
good-nature itself, has offered to fetch it in his barouche. Will it not
be honourably conveyed?”

Edmund spoke of the harp as his favourite instrument, and hoped to be
soon allowed to hear her. Fanny had never heard the harp at all, and
wished for it very much.

“I shall be most happy to play to you both,” said Miss Crawford; “at
least as long as you can like to listen: probably much longer, for
I dearly love music myself, and where the natural taste is equal the
player must always be best off, for she is gratified in more ways than
one. Now, Mr. Bertram, if you write to your brother, I entreat you to
tell him that my harp is come: he heard so much of my misery about it.
And you may say, if you please, that I shall prepare my most plaintive
airs against his return, in compassion to his feelings, as I know his
horse will lose.”

“If I write, I will say whatever you wish me; but I do not, at present,
foresee any occasion for writing.”

“No, I dare say, nor if he were to be gone a twelvemonth, would you ever
write to him, nor he to you, if it could be helped. The occasion would
never be foreseen. What strange creatures brothers are! You would not
write to each other but upon the most urgent necessity in the world; and
when obliged to take up the pen to say that such a horse is ill, or such
a relation dead, it is done in the fewest possible words. You have but
one style among you. I know it perfectly. Henry, who is in every other
respect exactly what a brother should be, who loves me, consults me,
confides in me, and will talk to me by the hour together, has never
yet turned the page in a letter; and very often it is nothing more
than--'Dear Mary, I am just arrived. Bath seems full, and everything
as usual. Yours sincerely.' That is the true manly style; that is a
complete brother's letter.”

“When they are at a distance from all their family,” said Fanny,
colouring for William's sake, “they can write long letters.”

“Miss Price has a brother at sea,” said Edmund, “whose excellence as a
correspondent makes her think you too severe upon us.”

“At sea, has she? In the king's service, of course?”

Fanny would rather have had Edmund tell the story, but his determined
silence obliged her to relate her brother's situation: her voice was
animated in speaking of his profession, and the foreign stations he had
been on; but she could not mention the number of years that he had been
absent without tears in her eyes. Miss Crawford civilly wished him an
early promotion.

“Do you know anything of my cousin's captain?” said Edmund; “Captain
Marshall? You have a large acquaintance in the navy, I conclude?”

“Among admirals, large enough; but,” with an air of grandeur, “we know
very little of the inferior ranks. Post-captains may be very good sort
of men, but they do not belong to _us_. Of various admirals I could tell
you a great deal: of them and their flags, and the gradation of their
pay, and their bickerings and jealousies. But, in general, I can assure
you that they are all passed over, and all very ill used. Certainly, my
home at my uncle's brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of
_Rears_ and _Vices_ I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun,
I entreat.”

Edmund again felt grave, and only replied, “It is a noble profession.”

“Yes, the profession is well enough under two circumstances: if it make
the fortune, and there be discretion in spending it; but, in short, it
is not a favourite profession of mine. It has never worn an amiable form
to _me_.”

Edmund reverted to the harp, and was again very happy in the prospect of
hearing her play.

The subject of improving grounds, meanwhile, was still under
consideration among the others; and Mrs. Grant could not help addressing
her brother, though it was calling his attention from Miss Julia
Bertram.

“My dear Henry, have _you_ nothing to say? You have been an improver
yourself, and from what I hear of Everingham, it may vie with any place
in England. Its natural beauties, I am sure, are great. Everingham,
as it _used_ to be, was perfect in my estimation: such a happy fall of
ground, and such timber! What would I not give to see it again?”

“Nothing could be so gratifying to me as to hear your opinion of it,”
 was his answer; “but I fear there would be some disappointment: you
would not find it equal to your present ideas. In extent, it is a mere
nothing; you would be surprised at its insignificance; and, as for
improvement, there was very little for me to do--too little: I should
like to have been busy much longer.”

“You are fond of the sort of thing?” said Julia.

“Excessively; but what with the natural advantages of the ground, which
pointed out, even to a very young eye, what little remained to be done,
and my own consequent resolutions, I had not been of age three
months before Everingham was all that it is now. My plan was laid
at Westminster, a little altered, perhaps, at Cambridge, and at
one-and-twenty executed. I am inclined to envy Mr. Rushworth for having
so much happiness yet before him. I have been a devourer of my own.”

“Those who see quickly, will resolve quickly, and act quickly,”
 said Julia. “_You_ can never want employment. Instead of envying Mr.
Rushworth, you should assist him with your opinion.”

Mrs. Grant, hearing the latter part of this speech, enforced it warmly,
persuaded that no judgment could be equal to her brother's; and as
Miss Bertram caught at the idea likewise, and gave it her full support,
declaring that, in her opinion, it was infinitely better to consult
with friends and disinterested advisers, than immediately to throw the
business into the hands of a professional man, Mr. Rushworth was very
ready to request the favour of Mr. Crawford's assistance; and Mr.
Crawford, after properly depreciating his own abilities, was quite at
his service in any way that could be useful. Mr. Rushworth then began to
propose Mr. Crawford's doing him the honour of coming over to Sotherton,
and taking a bed there; when Mrs. Norris, as if reading in her two
nieces' minds their little approbation of a plan which was to take Mr.
Crawford away, interposed with an amendment.

“There can be no doubt of Mr. Crawford's willingness; but why should not
more of us go? Why should not we make a little party? Here are many that
would be interested in your improvements, my dear Mr. Rushworth, and
that would like to hear Mr. Crawford's opinion on the spot, and that
might be of some small use to you with _their_ opinions; and, for my
own part, I have been long wishing to wait upon your good mother again;
nothing but having no horses of my own could have made me so remiss; but
now I could go and sit a few hours with Mrs. Rushworth, while the rest
of you walked about and settled things, and then we could all return
to a late dinner here, or dine at Sotherton, just as might be most
agreeable to your mother, and have a pleasant drive home by moonlight.
I dare say Mr. Crawford would take my two nieces and me in his barouche,
and Edmund can go on horseback, you know, sister, and Fanny will stay at
home with you.”

Lady Bertram made no objection; and every one concerned in the going
was forward in expressing their ready concurrence, excepting Edmund, who
heard it all and said nothing.



CHAPTER VII

“Well, Fanny, and how do you like Miss Crawford _now_?” said Edmund the
next day, after thinking some time on the subject himself. “How did you
like her yesterday?”

“Very well--very much. I like to hear her talk. She entertains me; and
she is so extremely pretty, that I have great pleasure in looking at
her.”

“It is her countenance that is so attractive. She has a wonderful play
of feature! But was there nothing in her conversation that struck you,
Fanny, as not quite right?”

“Oh yes! she ought not to have spoken of her uncle as she did. I was
quite astonished. An uncle with whom she has been living so many years,
and who, whatever his faults may be, is so very fond of her brother,
treating him, they say, quite like a son. I could not have believed it!”

“I thought you would be struck. It was very wrong; very indecorous.”

“And very ungrateful, I think.”

“Ungrateful is a strong word. I do not know that her uncle has any claim
to her _gratitude_; his wife certainly had; and it is the warmth of her
respect for her aunt's memory which misleads her here. She is awkwardly
circumstanced. With such warm feelings and lively spirits it must be
difficult to do justice to her affection for Mrs. Crawford, without
throwing a shade on the Admiral. I do not pretend to know which was most
to blame in their disagreements, though the Admiral's present conduct
might incline one to the side of his wife; but it is natural and amiable
that Miss Crawford should acquit her aunt entirely. I do not censure her
_opinions_; but there certainly _is_ impropriety in making them public.”

“Do not you think,” said Fanny, after a little consideration, “that this
impropriety is a reflection itself upon Mrs. Crawford, as her niece has
been entirely brought up by her? She cannot have given her right notions
of what was due to the Admiral.”

“That is a fair remark. Yes, we must suppose the faults of the niece
to have been those of the aunt; and it makes one more sensible of the
disadvantages she has been under. But I think her present home must
do her good. Mrs. Grant's manners are just what they ought to be. She
speaks of her brother with a very pleasing affection.”

“Yes, except as to his writing her such short letters. She made me
almost laugh; but I cannot rate so very highly the love or good-nature
of a brother who will not give himself the trouble of writing anything
worth reading to his sisters, when they are separated. I am sure William
would never have used _me_ so, under any circumstances. And what right
had she to suppose that _you_ would not write long letters when you were
absent?”

“The right of a lively mind, Fanny, seizing whatever may contribute
to its own amusement or that of others; perfectly allowable, when
untinctured by ill-humour or roughness; and there is not a shadow of
either in the countenance or manner of Miss Crawford: nothing sharp, or
loud, or coarse. She is perfectly feminine, except in the instances we
have been speaking of. There she cannot be justified. I am glad you saw
it all as I did.”

Having formed her mind and gained her affections, he had a good chance
of her thinking like him; though at this period, and on this subject,
there began now to be some danger of dissimilarity, for he was in a line
of admiration of Miss Crawford, which might lead him where Fanny
could not follow. Miss Crawford's attractions did not lessen. The harp
arrived, and rather added to her beauty, wit, and good-humour; for she
played with the greatest obligingness, with an expression and taste
which were peculiarly becoming, and there was something clever to be
said at the close of every air. Edmund was at the Parsonage every day,
to be indulged with his favourite instrument: one morning secured an
invitation for the next; for the lady could not be unwilling to have a
listener, and every thing was soon in a fair train.

A young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as elegant as herself, and
both placed near a window, cut down to the ground, and opening on a
little lawn, surrounded by shrubs in the rich foliage of summer, was
enough to catch any man's heart. The season, the scene, the air, were
all favourable to tenderness and sentiment. Mrs. Grant and her tambour
frame were not without their use: it was all in harmony; and as
everything will turn to account when love is once set going, even the
sandwich tray, and Dr. Grant doing the honours of it, were worth looking
at. Without studying the business, however, or knowing what he was
about, Edmund was beginning, at the end of a week of such intercourse,
to be a good deal in love; and to the credit of the lady it may be added
that, without his being a man of the world or an elder brother, without
any of the arts of flattery or the gaieties of small talk, he began to
be agreeable to her. She felt it to be so, though she had not foreseen,
and could hardly understand it; for he was not pleasant by any common
rule: he talked no nonsense; he paid no compliments; his opinions
were unbending, his attentions tranquil and simple. There was a charm,
perhaps, in his sincerity, his steadiness, his integrity, which Miss
Crawford might be equal to feel, though not equal to discuss with
herself. She did not think very much about it, however: he pleased her
for the present; she liked to have him near her; it was enough.

Fanny could not wonder that Edmund was at the Parsonage every morning;
she would gladly have been there too, might she have gone in uninvited
and unnoticed, to hear the harp; neither could she wonder that, when the
evening stroll was over, and the two families parted again, he should
think it right to attend Mrs. Grant and her sister to their home, while
Mr. Crawford was devoted to the ladies of the Park; but she thought it
a very bad exchange; and if Edmund were not there to mix the wine and
water for her, would rather go without it than not. She was a little
surprised that he could spend so many hours with Miss Crawford, and
not see more of the sort of fault which he had already observed, and of
which _she_ was almost always reminded by a something of the same nature
whenever she was in her company; but so it was. Edmund was fond of
speaking to her of Miss Crawford, but he seemed to think it enough that
the Admiral had since been spared; and she scrupled to point out her own
remarks to him, lest it should appear like ill-nature. The first actual
pain which Miss Crawford occasioned her was the consequence of an
inclination to learn to ride, which the former caught, soon after her
being settled at Mansfield, from the example of the young ladies at the
Park, and which, when Edmund's acquaintance with her increased, led to
his encouraging the wish, and the offer of his own quiet mare for the
purpose of her first attempts, as the best fitted for a beginner that
either stable could furnish. No pain, no injury, however, was designed
by him to his cousin in this offer: _she_ was not to lose a day's
exercise by it. The mare was only to be taken down to the Parsonage half
an hour before her ride were to begin; and Fanny, on its being first
proposed, so far from feeling slighted, was almost over-powered with
gratitude that he should be asking her leave for it.

Miss Crawford made her first essay with great credit to herself, and no
inconvenience to Fanny. Edmund, who had taken down the mare and presided
at the whole, returned with it in excellent time, before either Fanny or
the steady old coachman, who always attended her when she rode without
her cousins, were ready to set forward. The second day's trial was not
so guiltless. Miss Crawford's enjoyment of riding was such that she did
not know how to leave off. Active and fearless, and though rather small,
strongly made, she seemed formed for a horsewoman; and to the pure
genuine pleasure of the exercise, something was probably added in
Edmund's attendance and instructions, and something more in the
conviction of very much surpassing her sex in general by her early
progress, to make her unwilling to dismount. Fanny was ready and
waiting, and Mrs. Norris was beginning to scold her for not being gone,
and still no horse was announced, no Edmund appeared. To avoid her aunt,
and look for him, she went out.

The houses, though scarcely half a mile apart, were not within sight of
each other; but, by walking fifty yards from the hall door, she could
look down the park, and command a view of the Parsonage and all its
demesnes, gently rising beyond the village road; and in Dr. Grant's
meadow she immediately saw the group--Edmund and Miss Crawford both on
horse-back, riding side by side, Dr. and Mrs. Grant, and Mr. Crawford,
with two or three grooms, standing about and looking on. A happy party
it appeared to her, all interested in one object: cheerful beyond a
doubt, for the sound of merriment ascended even to her. It was a sound
which did not make _her_ cheerful; she wondered that Edmund should
forget her, and felt a pang. She could not turn her eyes from the
meadow; she could not help watching all that passed. At first Miss
Crawford and her companion made the circuit of the field, which was not
small, at a foot's pace; then, at _her_ apparent suggestion, they rose
into a canter; and to Fanny's timid nature it was most astonishing to
see how well she sat. After a few minutes they stopped entirely. Edmund
was close to her; he was speaking to her; he was evidently directing her
management of the bridle; he had hold of her hand; she saw it, or the
imagination supplied what the eye could not reach. She must not wonder
at all this; what could be more natural than that Edmund should be
making himself useful, and proving his good-nature by any one? She could
not but think, indeed, that Mr. Crawford might as well have saved him
the trouble; that it would have been particularly proper and becoming
in a brother to have done it himself; but Mr. Crawford, with all his
boasted good-nature, and all his coachmanship, probably knew nothing
of the matter, and had no active kindness in comparison of Edmund. She
began to think it rather hard upon the mare to have such double duty; if
she were forgotten, the poor mare should be remembered.

Her feelings for one and the other were soon a little tranquillised
by seeing the party in the meadow disperse, and Miss Crawford still on
horseback, but attended by Edmund on foot, pass through a gate into the
lane, and so into the park, and make towards the spot where she stood.
She began then to be afraid of appearing rude and impatient; and walked
to meet them with a great anxiety to avoid the suspicion.

“My dear Miss Price,” said Miss Crawford, as soon as she was at all
within hearing, “I am come to make my own apologies for keeping you
waiting; but I have nothing in the world to say for myself--I knew it
was very late, and that I was behaving extremely ill; and therefore, if
you please, you must forgive me. Selfishness must always be forgiven,
you know, because there is no hope of a cure.”

Fanny's answer was extremely civil, and Edmund added his conviction that
she could be in no hurry. “For there is more than time enough for my
cousin to ride twice as far as she ever goes,” said he, “and you have
been promoting her comfort by preventing her from setting off half an
hour sooner: clouds are now coming up, and she will not suffer from the
heat as she would have done then. I wish _you_ may not be fatigued by so
much exercise. I wish you had saved yourself this walk home.”

“No part of it fatigues me but getting off this horse, I assure you,”
 said she, as she sprang down with his help; “I am very strong. Nothing
ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like. Miss Price, I give way to
you with a very bad grace; but I sincerely hope you will have a pleasant
ride, and that I may have nothing but good to hear of this dear,
delightful, beautiful animal.”

The old coachman, who had been waiting about with his own horse, now
joining them, Fanny was lifted on hers, and they set off across another
part of the park; her feelings of discomfort not lightened by seeing, as
she looked back, that the others were walking down the hill together to
the village; nor did her attendant do her much good by his comments on
Miss Crawford's great cleverness as a horse-woman, which he had been
watching with an interest almost equal to her own.

“It is a pleasure to see a lady with such a good heart for riding!”
 said he. “I never see one sit a horse better. She did not seem to have
a thought of fear. Very different from you, miss, when you first began,
six years ago come next Easter. Lord bless you! how you did tremble when
Sir Thomas first had you put on!”

In the drawing-room Miss Crawford was also celebrated. Her merit in
being gifted by Nature with strength and courage was fully appreciated
by the Miss Bertrams; her delight in riding was like their own; her
early excellence in it was like their own, and they had great pleasure
in praising it.

“I was sure she would ride well,” said Julia; “she has the make for it.
Her figure is as neat as her brother's.”

“Yes,” added Maria, “and her spirits are as good, and she has the same
energy of character. I cannot but think that good horsemanship has a
great deal to do with the mind.”

When they parted at night Edmund asked Fanny whether she meant to ride
the next day.

“No, I do not know--not if you want the mare,” was her answer.

“I do not want her at all for myself,” said he; “but whenever you are
next inclined to stay at home, I think Miss Crawford would be glad to
have her a longer time--for a whole morning, in short. She has a great
desire to get as far as Mansfield Common: Mrs. Grant has been telling
her of its fine views, and I have no doubt of her being perfectly equal
to it. But any morning will do for this. She would be extremely sorry to
interfere with you. It would be very wrong if she did. _She_ rides only
for pleasure; _you_ for health.”

“I shall not ride to-morrow, certainly,” said Fanny; “I have been out
very often lately, and would rather stay at home. You know I am strong
enough now to walk very well.”

Edmund looked pleased, which must be Fanny's comfort, and the ride to
Mansfield Common took place the next morning: the party included all the
young people but herself, and was much enjoyed at the time, and doubly
enjoyed again in the evening discussion. A successful scheme of this
sort generally brings on another; and the having been to Mansfield
Common disposed them all for going somewhere else the day after. There
were many other views to be shewn; and though the weather was hot, there
were shady lanes wherever they wanted to go. A young party is always
provided with a shady lane. Four fine mornings successively were spent
in this manner, in shewing the Crawfords the country, and doing the
honours of its finest spots. Everything answered; it was all gaiety and
good-humour, the heat only supplying inconvenience enough to be talked
of with pleasure--till the fourth day, when the happiness of one of
the party was exceedingly clouded. Miss Bertram was the one. Edmund and
Julia were invited to dine at the Parsonage, and _she_ was excluded.
It was meant and done by Mrs. Grant, with perfect good-humour, on Mr.
Rushworth's account, who was partly expected at the Park that day;
but it was felt as a very grievous injury, and her good manners were
severely taxed to conceal her vexation and anger till she reached home.
As Mr. Rushworth did _not_ come, the injury was increased, and she had
not even the relief of shewing her power over him; she could only be
sullen to her mother, aunt, and cousin, and throw as great a gloom as
possible over their dinner and dessert.

Between ten and eleven Edmund and Julia walked into the drawing-room,
fresh with the evening air, glowing and cheerful, the very reverse
of what they found in the three ladies sitting there, for Maria would
scarcely raise her eyes from her book, and Lady Bertram was half-asleep;
and even Mrs. Norris, discomposed by her niece's ill-humour, and having
asked one or two questions about the dinner, which were not immediately
attended to, seemed almost determined to say no more. For a few minutes
the brother and sister were too eager in their praise of the night and
their remarks on the stars, to think beyond themselves; but when the
first pause came, Edmund, looking around, said, “But where is Fanny? Is
she gone to bed?”

“No, not that I know of,” replied Mrs. Norris; “she was here a moment
ago.”

Her own gentle voice speaking from the other end of the room, which was
a very long one, told them that she was on the sofa. Mrs. Norris began
scolding.

“That is a very foolish trick, Fanny, to be idling away all the evening
upon a sofa. Why cannot you come and sit here, and employ yourself as
_we_ do? If you have no work of your own, I can supply you from the
poor basket. There is all the new calico, that was bought last week,
not touched yet. I am sure I almost broke my back by cutting it out. You
should learn to think of other people; and, take my word for it, it is a
shocking trick for a young person to be always lolling upon a sofa.”

Before half this was said, Fanny was returned to her seat at the table,
and had taken up her work again; and Julia, who was in high good-humour,
from the pleasures of the day, did her the justice of exclaiming, “I
must say, ma'am, that Fanny is as little upon the sofa as anybody in the
house.”

“Fanny,” said Edmund, after looking at her attentively, “I am sure you
have the headache.”

She could not deny it, but said it was not very bad.

“I can hardly believe you,” he replied; “I know your looks too well. How
long have you had it?”

“Since a little before dinner. It is nothing but the heat.”

“Did you go out in the heat?”

“Go out! to be sure she did,” said Mrs. Norris: “would you have her stay
within such a fine day as this? Were not we _all_ out? Even your mother
was out to-day for above an hour.”

“Yes, indeed, Edmund,” added her ladyship, who had been thoroughly
awakened by Mrs. Norris's sharp reprimand to Fanny; “I was out above an
hour. I sat three-quarters of an hour in the flower-garden, while Fanny
cut the roses; and very pleasant it was, I assure you, but very hot. It
was shady enough in the alcove, but I declare I quite dreaded the coming
home again.”

“Fanny has been cutting roses, has she?”

“Yes, and I am afraid they will be the last this year. Poor thing! _She_
found it hot enough; but they were so full-blown that one could not
wait.”

“There was no help for it, certainly,” rejoined Mrs. Norris, in a rather
softened voice; “but I question whether her headache might not be caught
_then_, sister. There is nothing so likely to give it as standing and
stooping in a hot sun; but I dare say it will be well to-morrow. Suppose
you let her have your aromatic vinegar; I always forget to have mine
filled.”

“She has got it,” said Lady Bertram; “she has had it ever since she came
back from your house the second time.”

“What!” cried Edmund; “has she been walking as well as cutting roses;
walking across the hot park to your house, and doing it twice, ma'am? No
wonder her head aches.”

Mrs. Norris was talking to Julia, and did not hear.

“I was afraid it would be too much for her,” said Lady Bertram; “but
when the roses were gathered, your aunt wished to have them, and then
you know they must be taken home.”

“But were there roses enough to oblige her to go twice?”

“No; but they were to be put into the spare room to dry; and, unluckily,
Fanny forgot to lock the door of the room and bring away the key, so she
was obliged to go again.”

Edmund got up and walked about the room, saying, “And could nobody be
employed on such an errand but Fanny? Upon my word, ma'am, it has been a
very ill-managed business.”

“I am sure I do not know how it was to have been done better,” cried
Mrs. Norris, unable to be longer deaf; “unless I had gone myself,
indeed; but I cannot be in two places at once; and I was talking to Mr.
Green at that very time about your mother's dairymaid, by _her_ desire,
and had promised John Groom to write to Mrs. Jefferies about his son,
and the poor fellow was waiting for me half an hour. I think nobody
can justly accuse me of sparing myself upon any occasion, but really I
cannot do everything at once. And as for Fanny's just stepping down
to my house for me--it is not much above a quarter of a mile--I cannot
think I was unreasonable to ask it. How often do I pace it three times a
day, early and late, ay, and in all weathers too, and say nothing about
it?”

“I wish Fanny had half your strength, ma'am.”

“If Fanny would be more regular in her exercise, she would not be
knocked up so soon. She has not been out on horseback now this long
while, and I am persuaded that, when she does not ride, she ought to
walk. If she had been riding before, I should not have asked it of her.
But I thought it would rather do her good after being stooping among the
roses; for there is nothing so refreshing as a walk after a fatigue
of that kind; and though the sun was strong, it was not so very hot.
Between ourselves, Edmund,” nodding significantly at his mother, “it was
cutting the roses, and dawdling about in the flower-garden, that did the
mischief.”

“I am afraid it was, indeed,” said the more candid Lady Bertram, who had
overheard her; “I am very much afraid she caught the headache there,
for the heat was enough to kill anybody. It was as much as I could bear
myself. Sitting and calling to Pug, and trying to keep him from the
flower-beds, was almost too much for me.”

Edmund said no more to either lady; but going quietly to another table,
on which the supper-tray yet remained, brought a glass of Madeira to
Fanny, and obliged her to drink the greater part. She wished to be able
to decline it; but the tears, which a variety of feelings created, made
it easier to swallow than to speak.

Vexed as Edmund was with his mother and aunt, he was still more angry
with himself. His own forgetfulness of her was worse than anything which
they had done. Nothing of this would have happened had she been properly
considered; but she had been left four days together without any choice
of companions or exercise, and without any excuse for avoiding whatever
her unreasonable aunts might require. He was ashamed to think that
for four days together she had not had the power of riding, and very
seriously resolved, however unwilling he must be to check a pleasure of
Miss Crawford's, that it should never happen again.

Fanny went to bed with her heart as full as on the first evening of her
arrival at the Park. The state of her spirits had probably had its
share in her indisposition; for she had been feeling neglected, and been
struggling against discontent and envy for some days past. As she leant
on the sofa, to which she had retreated that she might not be seen, the
pain of her mind had been much beyond that in her head; and the sudden
change which Edmund's kindness had then occasioned, made her hardly know
how to support herself.



CHAPTER VIII

Fanny's rides recommenced the very next day; and as it was a pleasant
fresh-feeling morning, less hot than the weather had lately been, Edmund
trusted that her losses, both of health and pleasure, would be soon made
good. While she was gone Mr. Rushworth arrived, escorting his mother,
who came to be civil and to shew her civility especially, in urging the
execution of the plan for visiting Sotherton, which had been started a
fortnight before, and which, in consequence of her subsequent absence
from home, had since lain dormant. Mrs. Norris and her nieces were all
well pleased with its revival, and an early day was named and agreed
to, provided Mr. Crawford should be disengaged: the young ladies did
not forget that stipulation, and though Mrs. Norris would willingly have
answered for his being so, they would neither authorise the liberty nor
run the risk; and at last, on a hint from Miss Bertram, Mr. Rushworth
discovered that the properest thing to be done was for him to walk down
to the Parsonage directly, and call on Mr. Crawford, and inquire whether
Wednesday would suit him or not.

Before his return Mrs. Grant and Miss Crawford came in. Having been out
some time, and taken a different route to the house, they had not met
him. Comfortable hopes, however, were given that he would find Mr.
Crawford at home. The Sotherton scheme was mentioned of course. It was
hardly possible, indeed, that anything else should be talked of,
for Mrs. Norris was in high spirits about it; and Mrs. Rushworth, a
well-meaning, civil, prosing, pompous woman, who thought nothing of
consequence, but as it related to her own and her son's concerns,
had not yet given over pressing Lady Bertram to be of the party. Lady
Bertram constantly declined it; but her placid manner of refusal made
Mrs. Rushworth still think she wished to come, till Mrs. Norris's more
numerous words and louder tone convinced her of the truth.

“The fatigue would be too much for my sister, a great deal too much, I
assure you, my dear Mrs. Rushworth. Ten miles there, and ten back, you
know. You must excuse my sister on this occasion, and accept of our
two dear girls and myself without her. Sotherton is the only place that
could give her a _wish_ to go so far, but it cannot be, indeed. She will
have a companion in Fanny Price, you know, so it will all do very well;
and as for Edmund, as he is not here to speak for himself, I will answer
for his being most happy to join the party. He can go on horseback, you
know.”

Mrs. Rushworth being obliged to yield to Lady Bertram's staying at home,
could only be sorry. “The loss of her ladyship's company would be a
great drawback, and she should have been extremely happy to have seen
the young lady too, Miss Price, who had never been at Sotherton yet, and
it was a pity she should not see the place.”

“You are very kind, you are all kindness, my dear madam,” cried Mrs.
Norris; “but as to Fanny, she will have opportunities in plenty of
seeing Sotherton. She has time enough before her; and her going now is
quite out of the question. Lady Bertram could not possibly spare her.”

“Oh no! I cannot do without Fanny.”

Mrs. Rushworth proceeded next, under the conviction that everybody must
be wanting to see Sotherton, to include Miss Crawford in the invitation;
and though Mrs. Grant, who had not been at the trouble of visiting Mrs.
Rushworth, on her coming into the neighbourhood, civilly declined it on
her own account, she was glad to secure any pleasure for her sister;
and Mary, properly pressed and persuaded, was not long in accepting
her share of the civility. Mr. Rushworth came back from the Parsonage
successful; and Edmund made his appearance just in time to learn
what had been settled for Wednesday, to attend Mrs. Rushworth to her
carriage, and walk half-way down the park with the two other ladies.

On his return to the breakfast-room, he found Mrs. Norris trying to
make up her mind as to whether Miss Crawford's being of the party were
desirable or not, or whether her brother's barouche would not be full
without her. The Miss Bertrams laughed at the idea, assuring her that
the barouche would hold four perfectly well, independent of the box, on
which _one_ might go with him.

“But why is it necessary,” said Edmund, “that Crawford's carriage, or
his _only_, should be employed? Why is no use to be made of my mother's
chaise? I could not, when the scheme was first mentioned the other
day, understand why a visit from the family were not to be made in the
carriage of the family.”

“What!” cried Julia: “go boxed up three in a postchaise in this weather,
when we may have seats in a barouche! No, my dear Edmund, that will not
quite do.”

“Besides,” said Maria, “I know that Mr. Crawford depends upon taking us.
After what passed at first, he would claim it as a promise.”

“And, my dear Edmund,” added Mrs. Norris, “taking out _two_ carriages
when _one_ will do, would be trouble for nothing; and, between
ourselves, coachman is not very fond of the roads between this and
Sotherton: he always complains bitterly of the narrow lanes scratching
his carriage, and you know one should not like to have dear Sir Thomas,
when he comes home, find all the varnish scratched off.”

“That would not be a very handsome reason for using Mr. Crawford's,”
 said Maria; “but the truth is, that Wilcox is a stupid old fellow, and
does not know how to drive. I will answer for it that we shall find no
inconvenience from narrow roads on Wednesday.”

“There is no hardship, I suppose, nothing unpleasant,” said Edmund, “in
going on the barouche box.”

“Unpleasant!” cried Maria: “oh dear! I believe it would be generally
thought the favourite seat. There can be no comparison as to one's view
of the country. Probably Miss Crawford will choose the barouche-box
herself.”

“There can be no objection, then, to Fanny's going with you; there can
be no doubt of your having room for her.”

“Fanny!” repeated Mrs. Norris; “my dear Edmund, there is no idea of her
going with us. She stays with her aunt. I told Mrs. Rushworth so. She is
not expected.”

“You can have no reason, I imagine, madam,” said he, addressing his
mother, “for wishing Fanny _not_ to be of the party, but as it relates
to yourself, to your own comfort. If you could do without her, you would
not wish to keep her at home?”

“To be sure not, but I _cannot_ do without her.”

“You can, if I stay at home with you, as I mean to do.”

There was a general cry out at this. “Yes,” he continued, “there is no
necessity for my going, and I mean to stay at home. Fanny has a great
desire to see Sotherton. I know she wishes it very much. She has not
often a gratification of the kind, and I am sure, ma'am, you would be
glad to give her the pleasure now?”

“Oh yes! very glad, if your aunt sees no objection.”

Mrs. Norris was very ready with the only objection which could
remain--their having positively assured Mrs. Rushworth that Fanny could
not go, and the very strange appearance there would consequently be in
taking her, which seemed to her a difficulty quite impossible to be got
over. It must have the strangest appearance! It would be something so
very unceremonious, so bordering on disrespect for Mrs. Rushworth, whose
own manners were such a pattern of good-breeding and attention, that she
really did not feel equal to it. Mrs. Norris had no affection for Fanny,
and no wish of procuring her pleasure at any time; but her opposition to
Edmund _now_, arose more from partiality for her own scheme, because it
_was_ her own, than from anything else. She felt that she had arranged
everything extremely well, and that any alteration must be for the
worse. When Edmund, therefore, told her in reply, as he did when she
would give him the hearing, that she need not distress herself on Mrs.
Rushworth's account, because he had taken the opportunity, as he walked
with her through the hall, of mentioning Miss Price as one who would
probably be of the party, and had directly received a very sufficient
invitation for his cousin, Mrs. Norris was too much vexed to submit with
a very good grace, and would only say, “Very well, very well, just as
you chuse, settle it your own way, I am sure I do not care about it.”

“It seems very odd,” said Maria, “that you should be staying at home
instead of Fanny.”

“I am sure she ought to be very much obliged to you,” added Julia,
hastily leaving the room as she spoke, from a consciousness that she
ought to offer to stay at home herself.

“Fanny will feel quite as grateful as the occasion requires,” was
Edmund's only reply, and the subject dropt.

Fanny's gratitude, when she heard the plan, was, in fact, much greater
than her pleasure. She felt Edmund's kindness with all, and more than
all, the sensibility which he, unsuspicious of her fond attachment,
could be aware of; but that he should forego any enjoyment on her
account gave her pain, and her own satisfaction in seeing Sotherton
would be nothing without him.

The next meeting of the two Mansfield families produced another
alteration in the plan, and one that was admitted with general
approbation. Mrs. Grant offered herself as companion for the day to Lady
Bertram in lieu of her son, and Dr. Grant was to join them at dinner.
Lady Bertram was very well pleased to have it so, and the young ladies
were in spirits again. Even Edmund was very thankful for an arrangement
which restored him to his share of the party; and Mrs. Norris thought it
an excellent plan, and had it at her tongue's end, and was on the point
of proposing it, when Mrs. Grant spoke.

Wednesday was fine, and soon after breakfast the barouche arrived, Mr.
Crawford driving his sisters; and as everybody was ready, there was
nothing to be done but for Mrs. Grant to alight and the others to take
their places. The place of all places, the envied seat, the post of
honour, was unappropriated. To whose happy lot was it to fall? While
each of the Miss Bertrams were meditating how best, and with the most
appearance of obliging the others, to secure it, the matter was settled
by Mrs. Grant's saying, as she stepped from the carriage, “As there are
five of you, it will be better that one should sit with Henry; and as
you were saying lately that you wished you could drive, Julia, I think
this will be a good opportunity for you to take a lesson.”

Happy Julia! Unhappy Maria! The former was on the barouche-box in a
moment, the latter took her seat within, in gloom and mortification; and
the carriage drove off amid the good wishes of the two remaining ladies,
and the barking of Pug in his mistress's arms.

Their road was through a pleasant country; and Fanny, whose rides had
never been extensive, was soon beyond her knowledge, and was very happy
in observing all that was new, and admiring all that was pretty. She was
not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did
she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her
best companions; and, in observing the appearance of the country, the
bearings of the roads, the difference of soil, the state of the harvest,
the cottages, the cattle, the children, she found entertainment that
could only have been heightened by having Edmund to speak to of what she
felt. That was the only point of resemblance between her and the lady
who sat by her: in everything but a value for Edmund, Miss Crawford was
very unlike her. She had none of Fanny's delicacy of taste, of mind, of
feeling; she saw Nature, inanimate Nature, with little observation;
her attention was all for men and women, her talents for the light
and lively. In looking back after Edmund, however, when there was any
stretch of road behind them, or when he gained on them in ascending a
considerable hill, they were united, and a “there he is” broke at the
same moment from them both, more than once.

For the first seven miles Miss Bertram had very little real comfort:
her prospect always ended in Mr. Crawford and her sister sitting side by
side, full of conversation and merriment; and to see only his expressive
profile as he turned with a smile to Julia, or to catch the laugh of
the other, was a perpetual source of irritation, which her own sense
of propriety could but just smooth over. When Julia looked back, it was
with a countenance of delight, and whenever she spoke to them, it was in
the highest spirits: “her view of the country was charming, she wished
they could all see it,” etc.; but her only offer of exchange was
addressed to Miss Crawford, as they gained the summit of a long hill,
and was not more inviting than this: “Here is a fine burst of country. I
wish you had my seat, but I dare say you will not take it, let me press
you ever so much;” and Miss Crawford could hardly answer before they
were moving again at a good pace.

When they came within the influence of Sotherton associations, it was
better for Miss Bertram, who might be said to have two strings to her
bow. She had Rushworth feelings, and Crawford feelings, and in
the vicinity of Sotherton the former had considerable effect. Mr.
Rushworth's consequence was hers. She could not tell Miss Crawford that
“those woods belonged to Sotherton,” she could not carelessly observe
that “she believed that it was now all Mr. Rushworth's property on each
side of the road,” without elation of heart; and it was a pleasure
to increase with their approach to the capital freehold mansion,
and ancient manorial residence of the family, with all its rights of
court-leet and court-baron.

“Now we shall have no more rough road, Miss Crawford; our difficulties
are over. The rest of the way is such as it ought to be. Mr. Rushworth
has made it since he succeeded to the estate. Here begins the village.
Those cottages are really a disgrace. The church spire is reckoned
remarkably handsome. I am glad the church is not so close to the great
house as often happens in old places. The annoyance of the bells must be
terrible. There is the parsonage: a tidy-looking house, and I understand
the clergyman and his wife are very decent people. Those are almshouses,
built by some of the family. To the right is the steward's house; he
is a very respectable man. Now we are coming to the lodge-gates; but we
have nearly a mile through the park still. It is not ugly, you see, at
this end; there is some fine timber, but the situation of the house is
dreadful. We go down hill to it for half a mile, and it is a pity, for
it would not be an ill-looking place if it had a better approach.”

Miss Crawford was not slow to admire; she pretty well guessed Miss
Bertram's feelings, and made it a point of honour to promote her
enjoyment to the utmost. Mrs. Norris was all delight and volubility; and
even Fanny had something to say in admiration, and might be heard with
complacency. Her eye was eagerly taking in everything within her reach;
and after being at some pains to get a view of the house, and observing
that “it was a sort of building which she could not look at but with
respect,” she added, “Now, where is the avenue? The house fronts the
east, I perceive. The avenue, therefore, must be at the back of it. Mr.
Rushworth talked of the west front.”

“Yes, it is exactly behind the house; begins at a little distance, and
ascends for half a mile to the extremity of the grounds. You may see
something of it here--something of the more distant trees. It is oak
entirely.”

Miss Bertram could now speak with decided information of what she had
known nothing about when Mr. Rushworth had asked her opinion; and her
spirits were in as happy a flutter as vanity and pride could furnish,
when they drove up to the spacious stone steps before the principal
entrance.



CHAPTER IX

Mr. Rushworth was at the door to receive his fair lady; and the whole
party were welcomed by him with due attention. In the drawing-room they
were met with equal cordiality by the mother, and Miss Bertram had all
the distinction with each that she could wish. After the business of
arriving was over, it was first necessary to eat, and the doors were
thrown open to admit them through one or two intermediate rooms into the
appointed dining-parlour, where a collation was prepared with abundance
and elegance. Much was said, and much was ate, and all went well. The
particular object of the day was then considered. How would Mr. Crawford
like, in what manner would he chuse, to take a survey of the grounds?
Mr. Rushworth mentioned his curricle. Mr. Crawford suggested the greater
desirableness of some carriage which might convey more than two. “To be
depriving themselves of the advantage of other eyes and other judgments,
might be an evil even beyond the loss of present pleasure.”

Mrs. Rushworth proposed that the chaise should be taken also; but this
was scarcely received as an amendment: the young ladies neither smiled
nor spoke. Her next proposition, of shewing the house to such of them
as had not been there before, was more acceptable, for Miss Bertram
was pleased to have its size displayed, and all were glad to be doing
something.

The whole party rose accordingly, and under Mrs. Rushworth's guidance
were shewn through a number of rooms, all lofty, and many large, and
amply furnished in the taste of fifty years back, with shining floors,
solid mahogany, rich damask, marble, gilding, and carving, each handsome
in its way. Of pictures there were abundance, and some few good, but
the larger part were family portraits, no longer anything to anybody
but Mrs. Rushworth, who had been at great pains to learn all that the
housekeeper could teach, and was now almost equally well qualified to
shew the house. On the present occasion she addressed herself chiefly to
Miss Crawford and Fanny, but there was no comparison in the willingness
of their attention; for Miss Crawford, who had seen scores of great
houses, and cared for none of them, had only the appearance of civilly
listening, while Fanny, to whom everything was almost as interesting
as it was new, attended with unaffected earnestness to all that Mrs.
Rushworth could relate of the family in former times, its rise and
grandeur, regal visits and loyal efforts, delighted to connect anything
with history already known, or warm her imagination with scenes of the
past.

The situation of the house excluded the possibility of much prospect
from any of the rooms; and while Fanny and some of the others were
attending Mrs. Rushworth, Henry Crawford was looking grave and shaking
his head at the windows. Every room on the west front looked across
a lawn to the beginning of the avenue immediately beyond tall iron
palisades and gates.

Having visited many more rooms than could be supposed to be of any
other use than to contribute to the window-tax, and find employment for
housemaids, “Now,” said Mrs. Rushworth, “we are coming to the chapel,
which properly we ought to enter from above, and look down upon; but
as we are quite among friends, I will take you in this way, if you will
excuse me.”

They entered. Fanny's imagination had prepared her for something
grander than a mere spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of
devotion: with nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion
of mahogany, and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge of
the family gallery above. “I am disappointed,” said she, in a low voice,
to Edmund. “This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful
here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches,
no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be 'blown by the
night wind of heaven.' No signs that a 'Scottish monarch sleeps below.'”

“You forget, Fanny, how lately all this has been built, and for how
confined a purpose, compared with the old chapels of castles and
monasteries. It was only for the private use of the family. They have
been buried, I suppose, in the parish church. _There_ you must look for
the banners and the achievements.”

“It was foolish of me not to think of all that; but I am disappointed.”

Mrs. Rushworth began her relation. “This chapel was fitted up as you see
it, in James the Second's time. Before that period, as I understand,
the pews were only wainscot; and there is some reason to think that
the linings and cushions of the pulpit and family seat were only purple
cloth; but this is not quite certain. It is a handsome chapel, and was
formerly in constant use both morning and evening. Prayers were always
read in it by the domestic chaplain, within the memory of many; but the
late Mr. Rushworth left it off.”

“Every generation has its improvements,” said Miss Crawford, with a
smile, to Edmund.

Mrs. Rushworth was gone to repeat her lesson to Mr. Crawford; and
Edmund, Fanny, and Miss Crawford remained in a cluster together.

“It is a pity,” cried Fanny, “that the custom should have been
discontinued. It was a valuable part of former times. There is something
in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great house,
with one's ideas of what such a household should be! A whole family
assembling regularly for the purpose of prayer is fine!”

“Very fine indeed,” said Miss Crawford, laughing. “It must do the heads
of the family a great deal of good to force all the poor housemaids and
footmen to leave business and pleasure, and say their prayers here twice
a day, while they are inventing excuses themselves for staying away.”

“_That_ is hardly Fanny's idea of a family assembling,” said Edmund. “If
the master and mistress do _not_ attend themselves, there must be more
harm than good in the custom.”

“At any rate, it is safer to leave people to their own devices on such
subjects. Everybody likes to go their own way--to chuse their own time
and manner of devotion. The obligation of attendance, the formality, the
restraint, the length of time--altogether it is a formidable thing, and
what nobody likes; and if the good people who used to kneel and gape in
that gallery could have foreseen that the time would ever come when men
and women might lie another ten minutes in bed, when they woke with a
headache, without danger of reprobation, because chapel was missed,
they would have jumped with joy and envy. Cannot you imagine with what
unwilling feelings the former belles of the house of Rushworth did
many a time repair to this chapel? The young Mrs. Eleanors and Mrs.
Bridgets--starched up into seeming piety, but with heads full of
something very different--especially if the poor chaplain were not worth
looking at--and, in those days, I fancy parsons were very inferior even
to what they are now.”

For a few moments she was unanswered. Fanny coloured and looked
at Edmund, but felt too angry for speech; and he needed a little
recollection before he could say, “Your lively mind can hardly be
serious even on serious subjects. You have given us an amusing sketch,
and human nature cannot say it was not so. We must all feel _at_ _times_
the difficulty of fixing our thoughts as we could wish; but if you are
supposing it a frequent thing, that is to say, a weakness grown into a
habit from neglect, what could be expected from the _private_ devotions
of such persons? Do you think the minds which are suffered, which
are indulged in wanderings in a chapel, would be more collected in a
closet?”

“Yes, very likely. They would have two chances at least in their favour.
There would be less to distract the attention from without, and it would
not be tried so long.”

“The mind which does not struggle against itself under _one_
circumstance, would find objects to distract it in the _other_, I
believe; and the influence of the place and of example may often rouse
better feelings than are begun with. The greater length of the service,
however, I admit to be sometimes too hard a stretch upon the mind. One
wishes it were not so; but I have not yet left Oxford long enough to
forget what chapel prayers are.”

While this was passing, the rest of the party being scattered about the
chapel, Julia called Mr. Crawford's attention to her sister, by saying,
“Do look at Mr. Rushworth and Maria, standing side by side, exactly as
if the ceremony were going to be performed. Have not they completely the
air of it?”

Mr. Crawford smiled his acquiescence, and stepping forward to Maria,
said, in a voice which she only could hear, “I do not like to see Miss
Bertram so near the altar.”

Starting, the lady instinctively moved a step or two, but recovering
herself in a moment, affected to laugh, and asked him, in a tone not
much louder, “If he would give her away?”

“I am afraid I should do it very awkwardly,” was his reply, with a look
of meaning.

Julia, joining them at the moment, carried on the joke.

“Upon my word, it is really a pity that it should not take place
directly, if we had but a proper licence, for here we are altogether,
and nothing in the world could be more snug and pleasant.” And she
talked and laughed about it with so little caution as to catch the
comprehension of Mr. Rushworth and his mother, and expose her sister to
the whispered gallantries of her lover, while Mrs. Rushworth spoke
with proper smiles and dignity of its being a most happy event to her
whenever it took place.

“If Edmund were but in orders!” cried Julia, and running to where he
stood with Miss Crawford and Fanny: “My dear Edmund, if you were but in
orders now, you might perform the ceremony directly. How unlucky that
you are not ordained; Mr. Rushworth and Maria are quite ready.”

Miss Crawford's countenance, as Julia spoke, might have amused a
disinterested observer. She looked almost aghast under the new idea she
was receiving. Fanny pitied her. “How distressed she will be at what she
said just now,” passed across her mind.

“Ordained!” said Miss Crawford; “what, are you to be a clergyman?”

“Yes; I shall take orders soon after my father's return--probably at
Christmas.”

Miss Crawford, rallying her spirits, and recovering her complexion,
replied only, “If I had known this before, I would have spoken of the
cloth with more respect,” and turned the subject.

The chapel was soon afterwards left to the silence and stillness
which reigned in it, with few interruptions, throughout the year. Miss
Bertram, displeased with her sister, led the way, and all seemed to feel
that they had been there long enough.

The lower part of the house had been now entirely shewn, and Mrs.
Rushworth, never weary in the cause, would have proceeded towards the
principal staircase, and taken them through all the rooms above, if her
son had not interposed with a doubt of there being time enough. “For
if,” said he, with the sort of self-evident proposition which many a
clearer head does not always avoid, “we are _too_ long going over the
house, we shall not have time for what is to be done out of doors. It is
past two, and we are to dine at five.”

Mrs. Rushworth submitted; and the question of surveying the grounds,
with the who and the how, was likely to be more fully agitated, and Mrs.
Norris was beginning to arrange by what junction of carriages and horses
most could be done, when the young people, meeting with an outward door,
temptingly open on a flight of steps which led immediately to turf and
shrubs, and all the sweets of pleasure-grounds, as by one impulse, one
wish for air and liberty, all walked out.

“Suppose we turn down here for the present,” said Mrs. Rushworth,
civilly taking the hint and following them. “Here are the greatest
number of our plants, and here are the curious pheasants.”

“Query,” said Mr. Crawford, looking round him, “whether we may not find
something to employ us here before we go farther? I see walls of great
promise. Mr. Rushworth, shall we summon a council on this lawn?”

“James,” said Mrs. Rushworth to her son, “I believe the wilderness
will be new to all the party. The Miss Bertrams have never seen the
wilderness yet.”

No objection was made, but for some time there seemed no inclination to
move in any plan, or to any distance. All were attracted at first by the
plants or the pheasants, and all dispersed about in happy independence.
Mr. Crawford was the first to move forward to examine the capabilities
of that end of the house. The lawn, bounded on each side by a high wall,
contained beyond the first planted area a bowling-green, and beyond
the bowling-green a long terrace walk, backed by iron palisades, and
commanding a view over them into the tops of the trees of the wilderness
immediately adjoining. It was a good spot for fault-finding. Mr.
Crawford was soon followed by Miss Bertram and Mr. Rushworth; and when,
after a little time, the others began to form into parties, these three
were found in busy consultation on the terrace by Edmund, Miss Crawford,
and Fanny, who seemed as naturally to unite, and who, after a short
participation of their regrets and difficulties, left them and walked
on. The remaining three, Mrs. Rushworth, Mrs. Norris, and Julia, were
still far behind; for Julia, whose happy star no longer prevailed,
was obliged to keep by the side of Mrs. Rushworth, and restrain her
impatient feet to that lady's slow pace, while her aunt, having fallen
in with the housekeeper, who was come out to feed the pheasants, was
lingering behind in gossip with her. Poor Julia, the only one out of
the nine not tolerably satisfied with their lot, was now in a state of
complete penance, and as different from the Julia of the barouche-box as
could well be imagined. The politeness which she had been brought up to
practise as a duty made it impossible for her to escape; while the
want of that higher species of self-command, that just consideration of
others, that knowledge of her own heart, that principle of right, which
had not formed any essential part of her education, made her miserable
under it.

“This is insufferably hot,” said Miss Crawford, when they had taken one
turn on the terrace, and were drawing a second time to the door in the
middle which opened to the wilderness. “Shall any of us object to being
comfortable? Here is a nice little wood, if one can but get into it.
What happiness if the door should not be locked! but of course it is;
for in these great places the gardeners are the only people who can go
where they like.”

The door, however, proved not to be locked, and they were all agreed in
turning joyfully through it, and leaving the unmitigated glare of day
behind. A considerable flight of steps landed them in the wilderness,
which was a planted wood of about two acres, and though chiefly of
larch and laurel, and beech cut down, and though laid out with too much
regularity, was darkness and shade, and natural beauty, compared with
the bowling-green and the terrace. They all felt the refreshment of it,
and for some time could only walk and admire. At length, after a short
pause, Miss Crawford began with, “So you are to be a clergyman, Mr.
Bertram. This is rather a surprise to me.”

“Why should it surprise you? You must suppose me designed for some
profession, and might perceive that I am neither a lawyer, nor a
soldier, nor a sailor.”

“Very true; but, in short, it had not occurred to me. And you know there
is generally an uncle or a grandfather to leave a fortune to the second
son.”

“A very praiseworthy practice,” said Edmund, “but not quite universal.
I am one of the exceptions, and _being_ one, must do something for
myself.”

“But why are you to be a clergyman? I thought _that_ was always the lot
of the youngest, where there were many to chuse before him.”

“Do you think the church itself never chosen, then?”

“_Never_ is a black word. But yes, in the _never_ of conversation, which
means _not_ _very_ _often_, I do think it. For what is to be done in the
church? Men love to distinguish themselves, and in either of the other
lines distinction may be gained, but not in the church. A clergyman is
nothing.”

“The _nothing_ of conversation has its gradations, I hope, as well as
the _never_. A clergyman cannot be high in state or fashion. He must
not head mobs, or set the ton in dress. But I cannot call that situation
nothing which has the charge of all that is of the first importance
to mankind, individually or collectively considered, temporally and
eternally, which has the guardianship of religion and morals, and
consequently of the manners which result from their influence. No one
here can call the _office_ nothing. If the man who holds it is so, it
is by the neglect of his duty, by foregoing its just importance, and
stepping out of his place to appear what he ought not to appear.”

“_You_ assign greater consequence to the clergyman than one has been
used to hear given, or than I can quite comprehend. One does not see
much of this influence and importance in society, and how can it be
acquired where they are so seldom seen themselves? How can two sermons a
week, even supposing them worth hearing, supposing the preacher to have
the sense to prefer Blair's to his own, do all that you speak of? govern
the conduct and fashion the manners of a large congregation for the rest
of the week? One scarcely sees a clergyman out of his pulpit.”

“_You_ are speaking of London, _I_ am speaking of the nation at large.”

“The metropolis, I imagine, is a pretty fair sample of the rest.”

“Not, I should hope, of the proportion of virtue to vice throughout the
kingdom. We do not look in great cities for our best morality. It is not
there that respectable people of any denomination can do most good; and
it certainly is not there that the influence of the clergy can be most
felt. A fine preacher is followed and admired; but it is not in fine
preaching only that a good clergyman will be useful in his parish and
his neighbourhood, where the parish and neighbourhood are of a size
capable of knowing his private character, and observing his general
conduct, which in London can rarely be the case. The clergy are lost
there in the crowds of their parishioners. They are known to the largest
part only as preachers. And with regard to their influencing public
manners, Miss Crawford must not misunderstand me, or suppose I mean to
call them the arbiters of good-breeding, the regulators of refinement
and courtesy, the masters of the ceremonies of life. The _manners_ I
speak of might rather be called _conduct_, perhaps, the result of good
principles; the effect, in short, of those doctrines which it is their
duty to teach and recommend; and it will, I believe, be everywhere
found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are
the rest of the nation.”

“Certainly,” said Fanny, with gentle earnestness.

“There,” cried Miss Crawford, “you have quite convinced Miss Price
already.”

“I wish I could convince Miss Crawford too.”

“I do not think you ever will,” said she, with an arch smile; “I am just
as much surprised now as I was at first that you should intend to take
orders. You really are fit for something better. Come, do change your
mind. It is not too late. Go into the law.”

“Go into the law! With as much ease as I was told to go into this
wilderness.”

“Now you are going to say something about law being the worst wilderness
of the two, but I forestall you; remember, I have forestalled you.”

“You need not hurry when the object is only to prevent my saying a
_bon_ _mot_, for there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very
matter-of-fact, plain-spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a
repartee for half an hour together without striking it out.”

A general silence succeeded. Each was thoughtful. Fanny made the first
interruption by saying, “I wonder that I should be tired with only
walking in this sweet wood; but the next time we come to a seat, if it
is not disagreeable to you, I should be glad to sit down for a little
while.”

“My dear Fanny,” cried Edmund, immediately drawing her arm within his,
“how thoughtless I have been! I hope you are not very tired. Perhaps,”
 turning to Miss Crawford, “my other companion may do me the honour of
taking an arm.”

“Thank you, but I am not at all tired.” She took it, however, as she
spoke, and the gratification of having her do so, of feeling such a
connexion for the first time, made him a little forgetful of Fanny.
“You scarcely touch me,” said he. “You do not make me of any use. What a
difference in the weight of a woman's arm from that of a man! At Oxford
I have been a good deal used to have a man lean on me for the length of
a street, and you are only a fly in the comparison.”

“I am really not tired, which I almost wonder at; for we must have
walked at least a mile in this wood. Do not you think we have?”

“Not half a mile,” was his sturdy answer; for he was not yet so much in
love as to measure distance, or reckon time, with feminine lawlessness.

“Oh! you do not consider how much we have wound about. We have taken
such a very serpentine course, and the wood itself must be half a mile
long in a straight line, for we have never seen the end of it yet since
we left the first great path.”

“But if you remember, before we left that first great path, we saw
directly to the end of it. We looked down the whole vista, and saw it
closed by iron gates, and it could not have been more than a furlong in
length.”

“Oh! I know nothing of your furlongs, but I am sure it is a very long
wood, and that we have been winding in and out ever since we came into
it; and therefore, when I say that we have walked a mile in it, I must
speak within compass.”

“We have been exactly a quarter of an hour here,” said Edmund, taking
out his watch. “Do you think we are walking four miles an hour?”

“Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too
slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.”

A few steps farther brought them out at the bottom of the very walk they
had been talking of; and standing back, well shaded and sheltered, and
looking over a ha-ha into the park, was a comfortable-sized bench, on
which they all sat down.

“I am afraid you are very tired, Fanny,” said Edmund, observing her;
“why would not you speak sooner? This will be a bad day's amusement for
you if you are to be knocked up. Every sort of exercise fatigues her so
soon, Miss Crawford, except riding.”

“How abominable in you, then, to let me engross her horse as I did all
last week! I am ashamed of you and of myself, but it shall never happen
again.”

“_Your_ attentiveness and consideration makes me more sensible of my own
neglect. Fanny's interest seems in safer hands with you than with me.”

“That she should be tired now, however, gives me no surprise; for there
is nothing in the course of one's duties so fatiguing as what we have
been doing this morning: seeing a great house, dawdling from one room to
another, straining one's eyes and one's attention, hearing what one does
not understand, admiring what one does not care for. It is generally
allowed to be the greatest bore in the world, and Miss Price has found
it so, though she did not know it.”

“I shall soon be rested,” said Fanny; “to sit in the shade on a fine
day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment.”

After sitting a little while Miss Crawford was up again. “I must move,”
 said she; “resting fatigues me. I have looked across the ha-ha till I
am weary. I must go and look through that iron gate at the same view,
without being able to see it so well.”

Edmund left the seat likewise. “Now, Miss Crawford, if you will look up
the walk, you will convince yourself that it cannot be half a mile long,
or half half a mile.”

“It is an immense distance,” said she; “I see _that_ with a glance.”

He still reasoned with her, but in vain. She would not calculate, she
would not compare. She would only smile and assert. The greatest degree
of rational consistency could not have been more engaging, and they
talked with mutual satisfaction. At last it was agreed that they should
endeavour to determine the dimensions of the wood by walking a little
more about it. They would go to one end of it, in the line they were
then in--for there was a straight green walk along the bottom by
the side of the ha-ha--and perhaps turn a little way in some other
direction, if it seemed likely to assist them, and be back in a few
minutes. Fanny said she was rested, and would have moved too, but this
was not suffered. Edmund urged her remaining where she was with an
earnestness which she could not resist, and she was left on the bench to
think with pleasure of her cousin's care, but with great regret that she
was not stronger. She watched them till they had turned the corner, and
listened till all sound of them had ceased.



CHAPTER X

A quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, passed away, and Fanny was still
thinking of Edmund, Miss Crawford, and herself, without interruption
from any one. She began to be surprised at being left so long, and to
listen with an anxious desire of hearing their steps and their voices
again. She listened, and at length she heard; she heard voices and feet
approaching; but she had just satisfied herself that it was not those
she wanted, when Miss Bertram, Mr. Rushworth, and Mr. Crawford issued
from the same path which she had trod herself, and were before her.

“Miss Price all alone” and “My dear Fanny, how comes this?” were the
first salutations. She told her story. “Poor dear Fanny,” cried her
cousin, “how ill you have been used by them! You had better have staid
with us.”

Then seating herself with a gentleman on each side, she resumed
the conversation which had engaged them before, and discussed the
possibility of improvements with much animation. Nothing was fixed
on; but Henry Crawford was full of ideas and projects, and, generally
speaking, whatever he proposed was immediately approved, first by her,
and then by Mr. Rushworth, whose principal business seemed to be to
hear the others, and who scarcely risked an original thought of his own
beyond a wish that they had seen his friend Smith's place.

After some minutes spent in this way, Miss Bertram, observing the iron
gate, expressed a wish of passing through it into the park, that their
views and their plans might be more comprehensive. It was the very thing
of all others to be wished, it was the best, it was the only way of
proceeding with any advantage, in Henry Crawford's opinion; and he
directly saw a knoll not half a mile off, which would give them exactly
the requisite command of the house. Go therefore they must to that
knoll, and through that gate; but the gate was locked. Mr. Rushworth
wished he had brought the key; he had been very near thinking whether he
should not bring the key; he was determined he would never come without
the key again; but still this did not remove the present evil. They
could not get through; and as Miss Bertram's inclination for so doing
did by no means lessen, it ended in Mr. Rushworth's declaring outright
that he would go and fetch the key. He set off accordingly.

“It is undoubtedly the best thing we can do now, as we are so far from
the house already,” said Mr. Crawford, when he was gone.

“Yes, there is nothing else to be done. But now, sincerely, do not you
find the place altogether worse than you expected?”

“No, indeed, far otherwise. I find it better, grander, more complete in
its style, though that style may not be the best. And to tell you the
truth,” speaking rather lower, “I do not think that _I_ shall ever see
Sotherton again with so much pleasure as I do now. Another summer will
hardly improve it to me.”

After a moment's embarrassment the lady replied, “You are too much a
man of the world not to see with the eyes of the world. If other people
think Sotherton improved, I have no doubt that you will.”

“I am afraid I am not quite so much the man of the world as might be
good for me in some points. My feelings are not quite so evanescent, nor
my memory of the past under such easy dominion as one finds to be the
case with men of the world.”

This was followed by a short silence. Miss Bertram began again. “You
seemed to enjoy your drive here very much this morning. I was glad to
see you so well entertained. You and Julia were laughing the whole way.”

“Were we? Yes, I believe we were; but I have not the least recollection
at what. Oh! I believe I was relating to her some ridiculous stories of
an old Irish groom of my uncle's. Your sister loves to laugh.”

“You think her more light-hearted than I am?”

“More easily amused,” he replied; “consequently, you know,” smiling,
“better company. I could not have hoped to entertain you with Irish
anecdotes during a ten miles' drive.”

“Naturally, I believe, I am as lively as Julia, but I have more to think
of now.”

“You have, undoubtedly; and there are situations in which very high
spirits would denote insensibility. Your prospects, however, are too
fair to justify want of spirits. You have a very smiling scene before
you.”

“Do you mean literally or figuratively? Literally, I conclude. Yes,
certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But
unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and
hardship. 'I cannot get out,' as the starling said.” As she spoke, and
it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. “Mr.
Rushworth is so long fetching this key!”

“And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr.
Rushworth's authority and protection, or I think you might with little
difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance;
I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and
could allow yourself to think it not prohibited.”

“Prohibited! nonsense! I certainly can get out that way, and I will.
Mr. Rushworth will be here in a moment, you know; we shall not be out of
sight.”

“Or if we are, Miss Price will be so good as to tell him that he will
find us near that knoll: the grove of oak on the knoll.”

Fanny, feeling all this to be wrong, could not help making an effort to
prevent it. “You will hurt yourself, Miss Bertram,” she cried; “you will
certainly hurt yourself against those spikes; you will tear your gown;
you will be in danger of slipping into the ha-ha. You had better not
go.”

Her cousin was safe on the other side while these words were spoken,
and, smiling with all the good-humour of success, she said, “Thank you,
my dear Fanny, but I and my gown are alive and well, and so good-bye.”

Fanny was again left to her solitude, and with no increase of pleasant
feelings, for she was sorry for almost all that she had seen and heard,
astonished at Miss Bertram, and angry with Mr. Crawford. By taking
a circuitous route, and, as it appeared to her, very unreasonable
direction to the knoll, they were soon beyond her eye; and for some
minutes longer she remained without sight or sound of any companion.
She seemed to have the little wood all to herself. She could almost
have thought that Edmund and Miss Crawford had left it, but that it was
impossible for Edmund to forget her so entirely.

She was again roused from disagreeable musings by sudden footsteps:
somebody was coming at a quick pace down the principal walk. She
expected Mr. Rushworth, but it was Julia, who, hot and out of breath,
and with a look of disappointment, cried out on seeing her, “Heyday!
Where are the others? I thought Maria and Mr. Crawford were with you.”

Fanny explained.

“A pretty trick, upon my word! I cannot see them anywhere,” looking
eagerly into the park. “But they cannot be very far off, and I think I
am equal to as much as Maria, even without help.”

“But, Julia, Mr. Rushworth will be here in a moment with the key. Do
wait for Mr. Rushworth.”

“Not I, indeed. I have had enough of the family for one morning. Why,
child, I have but this moment escaped from his horrible mother. Such a
penance as I have been enduring, while you were sitting here so composed
and so happy! It might have been as well, perhaps, if you had been in my
place, but you always contrive to keep out of these scrapes.”

This was a most unjust reflection, but Fanny could allow for it, and let
it pass: Julia was vexed, and her temper was hasty; but she felt that it
would not last, and therefore, taking no notice, only asked her if she
had not seen Mr. Rushworth.

“Yes, yes, we saw him. He was posting away as if upon life and death,
and could but just spare time to tell us his errand, and where you all
were.”

“It is a pity he should have so much trouble for nothing.”

“_That_ is Miss Maria's concern. I am not obliged to punish myself for
_her_ sins. The mother I could not avoid, as long as my tiresome aunt
was dancing about with the housekeeper, but the son I _can_ get away
from.”

And she immediately scrambled across the fence, and walked away, not
attending to Fanny's last question of whether she had seen anything of
Miss Crawford and Edmund. The sort of dread in which Fanny now sat of
seeing Mr. Rushworth prevented her thinking so much of their continued
absence, however, as she might have done. She felt that he had been
very ill-used, and was quite unhappy in having to communicate what had
passed. He joined her within five minutes after Julia's exit; and
though she made the best of the story, he was evidently mortified and
displeased in no common degree. At first he scarcely said anything; his
looks only expressed his extreme surprise and vexation, and he walked to
the gate and stood there, without seeming to know what to do.

“They desired me to stay--my cousin Maria charged me to say that you
would find them at that knoll, or thereabouts.”

“I do not believe I shall go any farther,” said he sullenly; “I see
nothing of them. By the time I get to the knoll they may be gone
somewhere else. I have had walking enough.”

And he sat down with a most gloomy countenance by Fanny.

“I am very sorry,” said she; “it is very unlucky.” And she longed to be
able to say something more to the purpose.

After an interval of silence, “I think they might as well have staid for
me,” said he.

“Miss Bertram thought you would follow her.”

“I should not have had to follow her if she had staid.”

This could not be denied, and Fanny was silenced. After another pause,
he went on--“Pray, Miss Price, are you such a great admirer of this Mr.
Crawford as some people are? For my part, I can see nothing in him.”

“I do not think him at all handsome.”

“Handsome! Nobody can call such an undersized man handsome. He is not
five foot nine. I should not wonder if he is not more than five foot
eight. I think he is an ill-looking fellow. In my opinion, these
Crawfords are no addition at all. We did very well without them.”

A small sigh escaped Fanny here, and she did not know how to contradict
him.

“If I had made any difficulty about fetching the key, there might have
been some excuse, but I went the very moment she said she wanted it.”

“Nothing could be more obliging than your manner, I am sure, and I dare
say you walked as fast as you could; but still it is some distance, you
know, from this spot to the house, quite into the house; and when people
are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems
like five.”

He got up and walked to the gate again, and “wished he had had the key
about him at the time.” Fanny thought she discerned in his standing
there an indication of relenting, which encouraged her to another
attempt, and she said, therefore, “It is a pity you should not join
them. They expected to have a better view of the house from that part
of the park, and will be thinking how it may be improved; and nothing of
that sort, you know, can be settled without you.”

She found herself more successful in sending away than in retaining a
companion. Mr. Rushworth was worked on. “Well,” said he, “if you
really think I had better go: it would be foolish to bring the key
for nothing.” And letting himself out, he walked off without farther
ceremony.

Fanny's thoughts were now all engrossed by the two who had left her so
long ago, and getting quite impatient, she resolved to go in search
of them. She followed their steps along the bottom walk, and had just
turned up into another, when the voice and the laugh of Miss Crawford
once more caught her ear; the sound approached, and a few more windings
brought them before her. They were just returned into the wilderness
from the park, to which a sidegate, not fastened, had tempted them very
soon after their leaving her, and they had been across a portion of the
park into the very avenue which Fanny had been hoping the whole morning
to reach at last, and had been sitting down under one of the trees. This
was their history. It was evident that they had been spending their time
pleasantly, and were not aware of the length of their absence. Fanny's
best consolation was in being assured that Edmund had wished for her
very much, and that he should certainly have come back for her, had she
not been tired already; but this was not quite sufficient to do away
with the pain of having been left a whole hour, when he had talked of
only a few minutes, nor to banish the sort of curiosity she felt to know
what they had been conversing about all that time; and the result of
the whole was to her disappointment and depression, as they prepared by
general agreement to return to the house.

On reaching the bottom of the steps to the terrace, Mrs. Rushworth
and Mrs. Norris presented themselves at the top, just ready for the
wilderness, at the end of an hour and a half from their leaving the
house. Mrs. Norris had been too well employed to move faster. Whatever
cross-accidents had occurred to intercept the pleasures of her nieces,
she had found a morning of complete enjoyment; for the housekeeper,
after a great many courtesies on the subject of pheasants, had taken her
to the dairy, told her all about their cows, and given her the receipt
for a famous cream cheese; and since Julia's leaving them they had
been met by the gardener, with whom she had made a most satisfactory
acquaintance, for she had set him right as to his grandson's illness,
convinced him that it was an ague, and promised him a charm for it; and
he, in return, had shewn her all his choicest nursery of plants, and
actually presented her with a very curious specimen of heath.

On this _rencontre_ they all returned to the house together, there
to lounge away the time as they could with sofas, and chit-chat, and
Quarterly Reviews, till the return of the others, and the arrival of
dinner. It was late before the Miss Bertrams and the two gentlemen came
in, and their ramble did not appear to have been more than partially
agreeable, or at all productive of anything useful with regard to the
object of the day. By their own accounts they had been all walking after
each other, and the junction which had taken place at last seemed, to
Fanny's observation, to have been as much too late for re-establishing
harmony, as it confessedly had been for determining on any alteration.
She felt, as she looked at Julia and Mr. Rushworth, that hers was not
the only dissatisfied bosom amongst them: there was gloom on the face of
each. Mr. Crawford and Miss Bertram were much more gay, and she thought
that he was taking particular pains, during dinner, to do away any
little resentment of the other two, and restore general good-humour.

Dinner was soon followed by tea and coffee, a ten miles' drive home
allowed no waste of hours; and from the time of their sitting down to
table, it was a quick succession of busy nothings till the carriage came
to the door, and Mrs. Norris, having fidgeted about, and obtained a
few pheasants' eggs and a cream cheese from the housekeeper, and made
abundance of civil speeches to Mrs. Rushworth, was ready to lead the
way. At the same moment Mr. Crawford, approaching Julia, said, “I hope I
am not to lose my companion, unless she is afraid of the evening air
in so exposed a seat.” The request had not been foreseen, but was very
graciously received, and Julia's day was likely to end almost as well as
it began. Miss Bertram had made up her mind to something different, and
was a little disappointed; but her conviction of being really the
one preferred comforted her under it, and enabled her to receive Mr.
Rushworth's parting attentions as she ought. He was certainly better
pleased to hand her into the barouche than to assist her in ascending
the box, and his complacency seemed confirmed by the arrangement.

“Well, Fanny, this has been a fine day for you, upon my word,” said
Mrs. Norris, as they drove through the park. “Nothing but pleasure from
beginning to end! I am sure you ought to be very much obliged to your
aunt Bertram and me for contriving to let you go. A pretty good day's
amusement you have had!”

Maria was just discontented enough to say directly, “I think _you_ have
done pretty well yourself, ma'am. Your lap seems full of good things,
and here is a basket of something between us which has been knocking my
elbow unmercifully.”

“My dear, it is only a beautiful little heath, which that nice old
gardener would make me take; but if it is in your way, I will have it in
my lap directly. There, Fanny, you shall carry that parcel for me; take
great care of it: do not let it fall; it is a cream cheese, just like
the excellent one we had at dinner. Nothing would satisfy that good old
Mrs. Whitaker, but my taking one of the cheeses. I stood out as long
as I could, till the tears almost came into her eyes, and I knew it was
just the sort that my sister would be delighted with. That Mrs. Whitaker
is a treasure! She was quite shocked when I asked her whether wine was
allowed at the second table, and she has turned away two housemaids for
wearing white gowns. Take care of the cheese, Fanny. Now I can manage
the other parcel and the basket very well.”

“What else have you been spunging?” said Maria, half-pleased that
Sotherton should be so complimented.

“Spunging, my dear! It is nothing but four of those beautiful pheasants'
eggs, which Mrs. Whitaker would quite force upon me: she would not take
a denial. She said it must be such an amusement to me, as she understood
I lived quite alone, to have a few living creatures of that sort; and
so to be sure it will. I shall get the dairymaid to set them under the
first spare hen, and if they come to good I can have them moved to my
own house and borrow a coop; and it will be a great delight to me in
my lonely hours to attend to them. And if I have good luck, your mother
shall have some.”

It was a beautiful evening, mild and still, and the drive was as
pleasant as the serenity of Nature could make it; but when Mrs. Norris
ceased speaking, it was altogether a silent drive to those within. Their
spirits were in general exhausted; and to determine whether the day had
afforded most pleasure or pain, might occupy the meditations of almost
all.



CHAPTER XI

The day at Sotherton, with all its imperfections, afforded the Miss
Bertrams much more agreeable feelings than were derived from the letters
from Antigua, which soon afterwards reached Mansfield. It was much
pleasanter to think of Henry Crawford than of their father; and to think
of their father in England again within a certain period, which these
letters obliged them to do, was a most unwelcome exercise.

November was the black month fixed for his return. Sir Thomas wrote of
it with as much decision as experience and anxiety could authorise. His
business was so nearly concluded as to justify him in proposing to take
his passage in the September packet, and he consequently looked forward
with the hope of being with his beloved family again early in November.

Maria was more to be pitied than Julia; for to her the father brought a
husband, and the return of the friend most solicitous for her happiness
would unite her to the lover, on whom she had chosen that happiness
should depend. It was a gloomy prospect, and all she could do was to
throw a mist over it, and hope when the mist cleared away she should
see something else. It would hardly be _early_ in November, there
were generally delays, a bad passage or _something_; that favouring
_something_ which everybody who shuts their eyes while they look, or
their understandings while they reason, feels the comfort of. It would
probably be the middle of November at least; the middle of November
was three months off. Three months comprised thirteen weeks. Much might
happen in thirteen weeks.

Sir Thomas would have been deeply mortified by a suspicion of half that
his daughters felt on the subject of his return, and would hardly have
found consolation in a knowledge of the interest it excited in the
breast of another young lady. Miss Crawford, on walking up with her
brother to spend the evening at Mansfield Park, heard the good news; and
though seeming to have no concern in the affair beyond politeness, and
to have vented all her feelings in a quiet congratulation, heard it with
an attention not so easily satisfied. Mrs. Norris gave the particulars
of the letters, and the subject was dropt; but after tea, as Miss
Crawford was standing at an open window with Edmund and Fanny looking
out on a twilight scene, while the Miss Bertrams, Mr. Rushworth,
and Henry Crawford were all busy with candles at the pianoforte, she
suddenly revived it by turning round towards the group, and saying, “How
happy Mr. Rushworth looks! He is thinking of November.”

Edmund looked round at Mr. Rushworth too, but had nothing to say.

“Your father's return will be a very interesting event.”

“It will, indeed, after such an absence; an absence not only long, but
including so many dangers.”

“It will be the forerunner also of other interesting events: your
sister's marriage, and your taking orders.”

“Yes.”

“Don't be affronted,” said she, laughing, “but it does put me in mind of
some of the old heathen heroes, who, after performing great exploits in
a foreign land, offered sacrifices to the gods on their safe return.”

“There is no sacrifice in the case,” replied Edmund, with a serious
smile, and glancing at the pianoforte again; “it is entirely her own
doing.”

“Oh yes I know it is. I was merely joking. She has done no more than
what every young woman would do; and I have no doubt of her being
extremely happy. My other sacrifice, of course, you do not understand.”

“My taking orders, I assure you, is quite as voluntary as Maria's
marrying.”

“It is fortunate that your inclination and your father's convenience
should accord so well. There is a very good living kept for you, I
understand, hereabouts.”

“Which you suppose has biassed me?”

“But _that_ I am sure it has not,” cried Fanny.

“Thank you for your good word, Fanny, but it is more than I would affirm
myself. On the contrary, the knowing that there was such a provision for
me probably did bias me. Nor can I think it wrong that it should. There
was no natural disinclination to be overcome, and I see no reason why
a man should make a worse clergyman for knowing that he will have a
competence early in life. I was in safe hands. I hope I should not have
been influenced myself in a wrong way, and I am sure my father was too
conscientious to have allowed it. I have no doubt that I was biased, but
I think it was blamelessly.”

“It is the same sort of thing,” said Fanny, after a short pause, “as for
the son of an admiral to go into the navy, or the son of a general to be
in the army, and nobody sees anything wrong in that. Nobody wonders that
they should prefer the line where their friends can serve them best, or
suspects them to be less in earnest in it than they appear.”

“No, my dear Miss Price, and for reasons good. The profession, either
navy or army, is its own justification. It has everything in its favour:
heroism, danger, bustle, fashion. Soldiers and sailors are always
acceptable in society. Nobody can wonder that men are soldiers and
sailors.”

“But the motives of a man who takes orders with the certainty of
preferment may be fairly suspected, you think?” said Edmund. “To be
justified in your eyes, he must do it in the most complete uncertainty
of any provision.”

“What! take orders without a living! No; that is madness indeed;
absolute madness.”

“Shall I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to
take orders with a living nor without? No; for you certainly would not
know what to say. But I must beg some advantage to the clergyman from
your own argument. As he cannot be influenced by those feelings which
you rank highly as temptation and reward to the soldier and sailor in
their choice of a profession, as heroism, and noise, and fashion, are
all against him, he ought to be less liable to the suspicion of wanting
sincerity or good intentions in the choice of his.”

“Oh! no doubt he is very sincere in preferring an income ready made,
to the trouble of working for one; and has the best intentions of doing
nothing all the rest of his days but eat, drink, and grow fat. It is
indolence, Mr. Bertram, indeed. Indolence and love of ease; a want of
all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination
to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen.
A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish--read the
newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does
all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine.”

“There are such clergymen, no doubt, but I think they are not so common
as to justify Miss Crawford in esteeming it their general character. I
suspect that in this comprehensive and (may I say) commonplace censure,
you are not judging from yourself, but from prejudiced persons, whose
opinions you have been in the habit of hearing. It is impossible that
your own observation can have given you much knowledge of the clergy.
You can have been personally acquainted with very few of a set of men
you condemn so conclusively. You are speaking what you have been told at
your uncle's table.”

“I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion
is general, it is usually correct. Though _I_ have not seen much of
the domestic lives of clergymen, it is seen by too many to leave any
deficiency of information.”

“Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are
condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information,
or (smiling) of something else. Your uncle, and his brother admirals,
perhaps knew little of clergymen beyond the chaplains whom, good or bad,
they were always wishing away.”

“Poor William! He has met with great kindness from the chaplain of the
Antwerp,” was a tender apostrophe of Fanny's, very much to the purpose
of her own feelings if not of the conversation.

“I have been so little addicted to take my opinions from my uncle,”
 said Miss Crawford, “that I can hardly suppose--and since you push me so
hard, I must observe, that I am not entirely without the means of seeing
what clergymen are, being at this present time the guest of my own
brother, Dr. Grant. And though Dr. Grant is most kind and obliging to
me, and though he is really a gentleman, and, I dare say, a good scholar
and clever, and often preaches good sermons, and is very respectable,
_I_ see him to be an indolent, selfish _bon_ _vivant_, who must have
his palate consulted in everything; who will not stir a finger for the
convenience of any one; and who, moreover, if the cook makes a blunder,
is out of humour with his excellent wife. To own the truth, Henry and
I were partly driven out this very evening by a disappointment about a
green goose, which he could not get the better of. My poor sister was
forced to stay and bear it.”

“I do not wonder at your disapprobation, upon my word. It is a great
defect of temper, made worse by a very faulty habit of self-indulgence;
and to see your sister suffering from it must be exceedingly painful to
such feelings as yours. Fanny, it goes against us. We cannot attempt to
defend Dr. Grant.”

“No,” replied Fanny, “but we need not give up his profession for all
that; because, whatever profession Dr. Grant had chosen, he would have
taken a--not a good temper into it; and as he must, either in the navy
or army, have had a great many more people under his command than he
has now, I think more would have been made unhappy by him as a sailor or
soldier than as a clergyman. Besides, I cannot but suppose that whatever
there may be to wish otherwise in Dr. Grant would have been in a greater
danger of becoming worse in a more active and worldly profession, where
he would have had less time and obligation--where he might have escaped
that knowledge of himself, the _frequency_, at least, of that knowledge
which it is impossible he should escape as he is now. A man--a sensible
man like Dr. Grant, cannot be in the habit of teaching others their duty
every week, cannot go to church twice every Sunday, and preach such very
good sermons in so good a manner as he does, without being the better
for it himself. It must make him think; and I have no doubt that he
oftener endeavours to restrain himself than he would if he had been
anything but a clergyman.”

“We cannot prove to the contrary, to be sure; but I wish you a better
fate, Miss Price, than to be the wife of a man whose amiableness
depends upon his own sermons; for though he may preach himself into a
good-humour every Sunday, it will be bad enough to have him quarrelling
about green geese from Monday morning till Saturday night.”

“I think the man who could often quarrel with Fanny,” said Edmund
affectionately, “must be beyond the reach of any sermons.”

Fanny turned farther into the window; and Miss Crawford had only time
to say, in a pleasant manner, “I fancy Miss Price has been more used to
deserve praise than to hear it”; when, being earnestly invited by the
Miss Bertrams to join in a glee, she tripped off to the instrument,
leaving Edmund looking after her in an ecstasy of admiration of all her
many virtues, from her obliging manners down to her light and graceful
tread.

“There goes good-humour, I am sure,” said he presently. “There goes a
temper which would never give pain! How well she walks! and how readily
she falls in with the inclination of others! joining them the moment she
is asked. What a pity,” he added, after an instant's reflection, “that
she should have been in such hands!”

Fanny agreed to it, and had the pleasure of seeing him continue at the
window with her, in spite of the expected glee; and of having his eyes
soon turned, like hers, towards the scene without, where all that was
solemn, and soothing, and lovely, appeared in the brilliancy of an
unclouded night, and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods. Fanny
spoke her feelings. “Here's harmony!” said she; “here's repose! Here's
what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry only
can attempt to describe! Here's what may tranquillise every care, and
lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I
feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world;
and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature
were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by
contemplating such a scene.”

“I like to hear your enthusiasm, Fanny. It is a lovely night, and they
are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree,
as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in
early life. They lose a great deal.”

“_You_ taught me to think and feel on the subject, cousin.”

“I had a very apt scholar. There's Arcturus looking very bright.”

“Yes, and the Bear. I wish I could see Cassiopeia.”

“We must go out on the lawn for that. Should you be afraid?”

“Not in the least. It is a great while since we have had any
star-gazing.”

“Yes; I do not know how it has happened.” The glee began. “We will stay
till this is finished, Fanny,” said he, turning his back on the window;
and as it advanced, she had the mortification of seeing him advance too,
moving forward by gentle degrees towards the instrument, and when it
ceased, he was close by the singers, among the most urgent in requesting
to hear the glee again.

Fanny sighed alone at the window till scolded away by Mrs. Norris's
threats of catching cold.



CHAPTER XII

Sir Thomas was to return in November, and his eldest son had duties to
call him earlier home. The approach of September brought tidings of Mr.
Bertram, first in a letter to the gamekeeper and then in a letter
to Edmund; and by the end of August he arrived himself, to be gay,
agreeable, and gallant again as occasion served, or Miss Crawford
demanded; to tell of races and Weymouth, and parties and friends, to
which she might have listened six weeks before with some interest, and
altogether to give her the fullest conviction, by the power of actual
comparison, of her preferring his younger brother.

It was very vexatious, and she was heartily sorry for it; but so it was;
and so far from now meaning to marry the elder, she did not even want
to attract him beyond what the simplest claims of conscious beauty
required: his lengthened absence from Mansfield, without anything but
pleasure in view, and his own will to consult, made it perfectly clear
that he did not care about her; and his indifference was so much more
than equalled by her own, that were he now to step forth the owner of
Mansfield Park, the Sir Thomas complete, which he was to be in time, she
did not believe she could accept him.

The season and duties which brought Mr. Bertram back to Mansfield took
Mr. Crawford into Norfolk. Everingham could not do without him in the
beginning of September. He went for a fortnight--a fortnight of such
dullness to the Miss Bertrams as ought to have put them both on their
guard, and made even Julia admit, in her jealousy of her sister, the
absolute necessity of distrusting his attentions, and wishing him not
to return; and a fortnight of sufficient leisure, in the intervals of
shooting and sleeping, to have convinced the gentleman that he ought
to keep longer away, had he been more in the habit of examining his own
motives, and of reflecting to what the indulgence of his idle vanity was
tending; but, thoughtless and selfish from prosperity and bad example,
he would not look beyond the present moment. The sisters, handsome,
clever, and encouraging, were an amusement to his sated mind; and
finding nothing in Norfolk to equal the social pleasures of Mansfield,
he gladly returned to it at the time appointed, and was welcomed thither
quite as gladly by those whom he came to trifle with further.

Maria, with only Mr. Rushworth to attend to her, and doomed to the
repeated details of his day's sport, good or bad, his boast of his dogs,
his jealousy of his neighbours, his doubts of their qualifications,
and his zeal after poachers, subjects which will not find their way to
female feelings without some talent on one side or some attachment on
the other, had missed Mr. Crawford grievously; and Julia, unengaged and
unemployed, felt all the right of missing him much more. Each sister
believed herself the favourite. Julia might be justified in so doing by
the hints of Mrs. Grant, inclined to credit what she wished, and Maria
by the hints of Mr. Crawford himself. Everything returned into the same
channel as before his absence; his manners being to each so animated and
agreeable as to lose no ground with either, and just stopping short of
the consistence, the steadiness, the solicitude, and the warmth which
might excite general notice.

Fanny was the only one of the party who found anything to dislike; but
since the day at Sotherton, she could never see Mr. Crawford with either
sister without observation, and seldom without wonder or censure; and
had her confidence in her own judgment been equal to her exercise of it
in every other respect, had she been sure that she was seeing clearly,
and judging candidly, she would probably have made some important
communications to her usual confidant. As it was, however, she only
hazarded a hint, and the hint was lost. “I am rather surprised,” said
she, “that Mr. Crawford should come back again so soon, after being here
so long before, full seven weeks; for I had understood he was so
very fond of change and moving about, that I thought something would
certainly occur, when he was once gone, to take him elsewhere. He is
used to much gayer places than Mansfield.”

“It is to his credit,” was Edmund's answer; “and I dare say it gives his
sister pleasure. She does not like his unsettled habits.”

“What a favourite he is with my cousins!”

“Yes, his manners to women are such as must please. Mrs. Grant, I
believe, suspects him of a preference for Julia; I have never seen much
symptom of it, but I wish it may be so. He has no faults but what a
serious attachment would remove.”

“If Miss Bertram were not engaged,” said Fanny cautiously, “I could
sometimes almost think that he admired her more than Julia.”

“Which is, perhaps, more in favour of his liking Julia best, than you,
Fanny, may be aware; for I believe it often happens that a man, before
he has quite made up his own mind, will distinguish the sister or
intimate friend of the woman he is really thinking of more than the
woman herself. Crawford has too much sense to stay here if he found
himself in any danger from Maria; and I am not at all afraid for her,
after such a proof as she has given that her feelings are not strong.”

Fanny supposed she must have been mistaken, and meant to think
differently in future; but with all that submission to Edmund could
do, and all the help of the coinciding looks and hints which she
occasionally noticed in some of the others, and which seemed to say that
Julia was Mr. Crawford's choice, she knew not always what to think. She
was privy, one evening, to the hopes of her aunt Norris on the subject,
as well as to her feelings, and the feelings of Mrs. Rushworth, on a
point of some similarity, and could not help wondering as she listened;
and glad would she have been not to be obliged to listen, for it was
while all the other young people were dancing, and she sitting,
most unwillingly, among the chaperons at the fire, longing for the
re-entrance of her elder cousin, on whom all her own hopes of a partner
then depended. It was Fanny's first ball, though without the preparation
or splendour of many a young lady's first ball, being the thought only
of the afternoon, built on the late acquisition of a violin player in
the servants' hall, and the possibility of raising five couple with
the help of Mrs. Grant and a new intimate friend of Mr. Bertram's just
arrived on a visit. It had, however, been a very happy one to Fanny
through four dances, and she was quite grieved to be losing even a
quarter of an hour. While waiting and wishing, looking now at
the dancers and now at the door, this dialogue between the two
above-mentioned ladies was forced on her--

“I think, ma'am,” said Mrs. Norris, her eyes directed towards Mr.
Rushworth and Maria, who were partners for the second time, “we shall
see some happy faces again now.”

“Yes, ma'am, indeed,” replied the other, with a stately simper, “there
will be some satisfaction in looking on _now_, and I think it was rather
a pity they should have been obliged to part. Young folks in their
situation should be excused complying with the common forms. I wonder my
son did not propose it.”

“I dare say he did, ma'am. Mr. Rushworth is never remiss. But dear Maria
has such a strict sense of propriety, so much of that true delicacy
which one seldom meets with nowadays, Mrs. Rushworth--that wish of
avoiding particularity! Dear ma'am, only look at her face at this
moment; how different from what it was the two last dances!”

Miss Bertram did indeed look happy, her eyes were sparkling with
pleasure, and she was speaking with great animation, for Julia and her
partner, Mr. Crawford, were close to her; they were all in a cluster
together. How she had looked before, Fanny could not recollect, for she
had been dancing with Edmund herself, and had not thought about her.

Mrs. Norris continued, “It is quite delightful, ma'am, to see young
people so properly happy, so well suited, and so much the thing! I
cannot but think of dear Sir Thomas's delight. And what do you say,
ma'am, to the chance of another match? Mr. Rushworth has set a good
example, and such things are very catching.”

Mrs. Rushworth, who saw nothing but her son, was quite at a loss.

“The couple above, ma'am. Do you see no symptoms there?”

“Oh dear! Miss Julia and Mr. Crawford. Yes, indeed, a very pretty match.
What is his property?”

“Four thousand a year.”

“Very well. Those who have not more must be satisfied with what they
have. Four thousand a year is a pretty estate, and he seems a very
genteel, steady young man, so I hope Miss Julia will be very happy.”

“It is not a settled thing, ma'am, yet. We only speak of it among
friends. But I have very little doubt it _will_ be. He is growing
extremely particular in his attentions.”

Fanny could listen no farther. Listening and wondering were all
suspended for a time, for Mr. Bertram was in the room again; and though
feeling it would be a great honour to be asked by him, she thought it
must happen. He came towards their little circle; but instead of asking
her to dance, drew a chair near her, and gave her an account of the
present state of a sick horse, and the opinion of the groom, from
whom he had just parted. Fanny found that it was not to be, and in the
modesty of her nature immediately felt that she had been unreasonable
in expecting it. When he had told of his horse, he took a newspaper from
the table, and looking over it, said in a languid way, “If you want to
dance, Fanny, I will stand up with you.” With more than equal civility
the offer was declined; she did not wish to dance. “I am glad of it,”
 said he, in a much brisker tone, and throwing down the newspaper again,
“for I am tired to death. I only wonder how the good people can keep
it up so long. They had need be _all_ in love, to find any amusement in
such folly; and so they are, I fancy. If you look at them you may see
they are so many couple of lovers--all but Yates and Mrs. Grant--and,
between ourselves, she, poor woman, must want a lover as much as any one
of them. A desperate dull life hers must be with the doctor,” making
a sly face as he spoke towards the chair of the latter, who proving,
however, to be close at his elbow, made so instantaneous a change of
expression and subject necessary, as Fanny, in spite of everything,
could hardly help laughing at. “A strange business this in America, Dr.
Grant! What is your opinion? I always come to you to know what I am to
think of public matters.”

“My dear Tom,” cried his aunt soon afterwards, “as you are not dancing,
I dare say you will have no objection to join us in a rubber; shall
you?” Then leaving her seat, and coming to him to enforce the proposal,
added in a whisper, “We want to make a table for Mrs. Rushworth, you
know. Your mother is quite anxious about it, but cannot very well spare
time to sit down herself, because of her fringe. Now, you and I and Dr.
Grant will just do; and though _we_ play but half-crowns, you know, you
may bet half-guineas with _him_.”

“I should be most happy,” replied he aloud, and jumping up with
alacrity, “it would give me the greatest pleasure; but that I am
this moment going to dance.” Come, Fanny, taking her hand, “do not be
dawdling any longer, or the dance will be over.”

Fanny was led off very willingly, though it was impossible for her to
feel much gratitude towards her cousin, or distinguish, as he certainly
did, between the selfishness of another person and his own.

“A pretty modest request upon my word,” he indignantly exclaimed as they
walked away. “To want to nail me to a card-table for the next two hours
with herself and Dr. Grant, who are always quarrelling, and that poking
old woman, who knows no more of whist than of algebra. I wish my good
aunt would be a little less busy! And to ask me in such a way too!
without ceremony, before them all, so as to leave me no possibility
of refusing. _That_ is what I dislike most particularly. It raises my
spleen more than anything, to have the pretence of being asked, of
being given a choice, and at the same time addressed in such a way as
to oblige one to do the very thing, whatever it be! If I had not luckily
thought of standing up with you I could not have got out of it. It is
a great deal too bad. But when my aunt has got a fancy in her head,
nothing can stop her.”



CHAPTER XIII

The Honourable John Yates, this new friend, had not much to recommend
him beyond habits of fashion and expense, and being the younger son of
a lord with a tolerable independence; and Sir Thomas would probably
have thought his introduction at Mansfield by no means desirable. Mr.
Bertram's acquaintance with him had begun at Weymouth, where they had
spent ten days together in the same society, and the friendship, if
friendship it might be called, had been proved and perfected by Mr.
Yates's being invited to take Mansfield in his way, whenever he could,
and by his promising to come; and he did come rather earlier than had
been expected, in consequence of the sudden breaking-up of a large party
assembled for gaiety at the house of another friend, which he had left
Weymouth to join. He came on the wings of disappointment, and with his
head full of acting, for it had been a theatrical party; and the play
in which he had borne a part was within two days of representation,
when the sudden death of one of the nearest connexions of the family
had destroyed the scheme and dispersed the performers. To be so near
happiness, so near fame, so near the long paragraph in praise of the
private theatricals at Ecclesford, the seat of the Right Hon. Lord
Ravenshaw, in Cornwall, which would of course have immortalised the
whole party for at least a twelvemonth! and being so near, to lose
it all, was an injury to be keenly felt, and Mr. Yates could talk of
nothing else. Ecclesford and its theatre, with its arrangements and
dresses, rehearsals and jokes, was his never-failing subject, and to
boast of the past his only consolation.

Happily for him, a love of the theatre is so general, an itch for acting
so strong among young people, that he could hardly out-talk the interest
of his hearers. From the first casting of the parts to the epilogue it
was all bewitching, and there were few who did not wish to have been a
party concerned, or would have hesitated to try their skill. The play
had been Lovers' Vows, and Mr. Yates was to have been Count Cassel. “A
trifling part,” said he, “and not at all to my taste, and such a one
as I certainly would not accept again; but I was determined to make no
difficulties. Lord Ravenshaw and the duke had appropriated the only two
characters worth playing before I reached Ecclesford; and though Lord
Ravenshaw offered to resign his to me, it was impossible to take it, you
know. I was sorry for _him_ that he should have so mistaken his powers,
for he was no more equal to the Baron--a little man with a weak voice,
always hoarse after the first ten minutes. It must have injured the
piece materially; but _I_ was resolved to make no difficulties. Sir
Henry thought the duke not equal to Frederick, but that was because
Sir Henry wanted the part himself; whereas it was certainly in the best
hands of the two. I was surprised to see Sir Henry such a stick. Luckily
the strength of the piece did not depend upon him. Our Agatha was
inimitable, and the duke was thought very great by many. And upon the
whole, it would certainly have gone off wonderfully.”

“It was a hard case, upon my word”; and, “I do think you were very much
to be pitied,” were the kind responses of listening sympathy.

“It is not worth complaining about; but to be sure the poor old dowager
could not have died at a worse time; and it is impossible to help
wishing that the news could have been suppressed for just the three days
we wanted. It was but three days; and being only a grandmother, and all
happening two hundred miles off, I think there would have been no great
harm, and it was suggested, I know; but Lord Ravenshaw, who I suppose is
one of the most correct men in England, would not hear of it.”

“An afterpiece instead of a comedy,” said Mr. Bertram. “Lovers' Vows
were at an end, and Lord and Lady Ravenshaw left to act My Grandmother
by themselves. Well, the jointure may comfort _him_; and perhaps,
between friends, he began to tremble for his credit and his lungs in the
Baron, and was not sorry to withdraw; and to make _you_ amends, Yates, I
think we must raise a little theatre at Mansfield, and ask you to be our
manager.”

This, though the thought of the moment, did not end with the moment; for
the inclination to act was awakened, and in no one more strongly than in
him who was now master of the house; and who, having so much leisure as
to make almost any novelty a certain good, had likewise such a degree of
lively talents and comic taste, as were exactly adapted to the novelty
of acting. The thought returned again and again. “Oh for the Ecclesford
theatre and scenery to try something with.” Each sister could echo the
wish; and Henry Crawford, to whom, in all the riot of his gratifications
it was yet an untasted pleasure, was quite alive at the idea. “I really
believe,” said he, “I could be fool enough at this moment to undertake
any character that ever was written, from Shylock or Richard III down to
the singing hero of a farce in his scarlet coat and cocked hat. I feel
as if I could be anything or everything; as if I could rant and storm,
or sigh or cut capers, in any tragedy or comedy in the English language.
Let us be doing something. Be it only half a play, an act, a scene; what
should prevent us? Not these countenances, I am sure,” looking towards
the Miss Bertrams; “and for a theatre, what signifies a theatre? We
shall be only amusing ourselves. Any room in this house might suffice.”

“We must have a curtain,” said Tom Bertram; “a few yards of green baize
for a curtain, and perhaps that may be enough.”

“Oh, quite enough,” cried Mr. Yates, “with only just a side wing or two
run up, doors in flat, and three or four scenes to be let down; nothing
more would be necessary on such a plan as this. For mere amusement among
ourselves we should want nothing more.”

“I believe we must be satisfied with _less_,” said Maria. “There would
not be time, and other difficulties would arise. We must rather adopt
Mr. Crawford's views, and make the _performance_, not the _theatre_, our
object. Many parts of our best plays are independent of scenery.”

“Nay,” said Edmund, who began to listen with alarm. “Let us do nothing
by halves. If we are to act, let it be in a theatre completely fitted
up with pit, boxes, and gallery, and let us have a play entire from
beginning to end; so as it be a German play, no matter what, with a good
tricking, shifting afterpiece, and a figure-dance, and a hornpipe, and a
song between the acts. If we do not outdo Ecclesford, we do nothing.”

“Now, Edmund, do not be disagreeable,” said Julia. “Nobody loves a play
better than you do, or can have gone much farther to see one.”

“True, to see real acting, good hardened real acting; but I would hardly
walk from this room to the next to look at the raw efforts of those who
have not been bred to the trade: a set of gentlemen and ladies, who have
all the disadvantages of education and decorum to struggle through.”

After a short pause, however, the subject still continued, and was
discussed with unabated eagerness, every one's inclination increasing
by the discussion, and a knowledge of the inclination of the rest; and
though nothing was settled but that Tom Bertram would prefer a comedy,
and his sisters and Henry Crawford a tragedy, and that nothing in the
world could be easier than to find a piece which would please them all,
the resolution to act something or other seemed so decided as to
make Edmund quite uncomfortable. He was determined to prevent it, if
possible, though his mother, who equally heard the conversation which
passed at table, did not evince the least disapprobation.

The same evening afforded him an opportunity of trying his strength.
Maria, Julia, Henry Crawford, and Mr. Yates were in the billiard-room.
Tom, returning from them into the drawing-room, where Edmund was
standing thoughtfully by the fire, while Lady Bertram was on the sofa at
a little distance, and Fanny close beside her arranging her work, thus
began as he entered--“Such a horribly vile billiard-table as ours is not
to be met with, I believe, above ground. I can stand it no longer, and I
think, I may say, that nothing shall ever tempt me to it again; but one
good thing I have just ascertained: it is the very room for a theatre,
precisely the shape and length for it; and the doors at the farther
end, communicating with each other, as they may be made to do in five
minutes, by merely moving the bookcase in my father's room, is the very
thing we could have desired, if we had sat down to wish for it; and
my father's room will be an excellent greenroom. It seems to join the
billiard-room on purpose.”

“You are not serious, Tom, in meaning to act?” said Edmund, in a low
voice, as his brother approached the fire.

“Not serious! never more so, I assure you. What is there to surprise you
in it?”

“I think it would be very wrong. In a _general_ light, private
theatricals are open to some objections, but as _we_ are circumstanced,
I must think it would be highly injudicious, and more than injudicious
to attempt anything of the kind. It would shew great want of feeling
on my father's account, absent as he is, and in some degree of constant
danger; and it would be imprudent, I think, with regard to Maria, whose
situation is a very delicate one, considering everything, extremely
delicate.”

“You take up a thing so seriously! as if we were going to act three
times a week till my father's return, and invite all the country. But
it is not to be a display of that sort. We mean nothing but a little
amusement among ourselves, just to vary the scene, and exercise our
powers in something new. We want no audience, no publicity. We may be
trusted, I think, in chusing some play most perfectly unexceptionable;
and I can conceive no greater harm or danger to any of us in conversing
in the elegant written language of some respectable author than in
chattering in words of our own. I have no fears and no scruples. And
as to my father's being absent, it is so far from an objection, that I
consider it rather as a motive; for the expectation of his return must
be a very anxious period to my mother; and if we can be the means of
amusing that anxiety, and keeping up her spirits for the next few weeks,
I shall think our time very well spent, and so, I am sure, will he. It
is a _very_ anxious period for her.”

As he said this, each looked towards their mother. Lady Bertram, sunk
back in one corner of the sofa, the picture of health, wealth, ease,
and tranquillity, was just falling into a gentle doze, while Fanny was
getting through the few difficulties of her work for her.

Edmund smiled and shook his head.

“By Jove! this won't do,” cried Tom, throwing himself into a chair with
a hearty laugh. “To be sure, my dear mother, your anxiety--I was unlucky
there.”

“What is the matter?” asked her ladyship, in the heavy tone of one
half-roused; “I was not asleep.”

“Oh dear, no, ma'am, nobody suspected you! Well, Edmund,” he continued,
returning to the former subject, posture, and voice, as soon as Lady
Bertram began to nod again, “but _this_ I _will_ maintain, that we shall
be doing no harm.”

“I cannot agree with you; I am convinced that my father would totally
disapprove it.”

“And I am convinced to the contrary. Nobody is fonder of the exercise
of talent in young people, or promotes it more, than my father, and for
anything of the acting, spouting, reciting kind, I think he has always a
decided taste. I am sure he encouraged it in us as boys. How many a time
have we mourned over the dead body of Julius Caesar, and to _be'd_ and
not _to_ _be'd_, in this very room, for his amusement? And I am sure,
_my_ _name_ _was_ _Norval_, every evening of my life through one
Christmas holidays.”

“It was a very different thing. You must see the difference yourself. My
father wished us, as schoolboys, to speak well, but he would never
wish his grown-up daughters to be acting plays. His sense of decorum is
strict.”

“I know all that,” said Tom, displeased. “I know my father as well as
you do; and I'll take care that his daughters do nothing to distress
him. Manage your own concerns, Edmund, and I'll take care of the rest of
the family.”

“If you are resolved on acting,” replied the persevering Edmund, “I must
hope it will be in a very small and quiet way; and I think a theatre
ought not to be attempted. It would be taking liberties with my father's
house in his absence which could not be justified.”

“For everything of that nature I will be answerable,” said Tom, in a
decided tone. “His house shall not be hurt. I have quite as great an
interest in being careful of his house as you can have; and as to such
alterations as I was suggesting just now, such as moving a bookcase, or
unlocking a door, or even as using the billiard-room for the space of a
week without playing at billiards in it, you might just as well suppose
he would object to our sitting more in this room, and less in the
breakfast-room, than we did before he went away, or to my sister's
pianoforte being moved from one side of the room to the other. Absolute
nonsense!”

“The innovation, if not wrong as an innovation, will be wrong as an
expense.”

“Yes, the expense of such an undertaking would be prodigious! Perhaps
it might cost a whole twenty pounds. Something of a theatre we must have
undoubtedly, but it will be on the simplest plan: a green curtain and a
little carpenter's work, and that's all; and as the carpenter's work
may be all done at home by Christopher Jackson himself, it will be
too absurd to talk of expense; and as long as Jackson is employed,
everything will be right with Sir Thomas. Don't imagine that nobody in
this house can see or judge but yourself. Don't act yourself, if you do
not like it, but don't expect to govern everybody else.”

“No, as to acting myself,” said Edmund, “_that_ I absolutely protest
against.”

Tom walked out of the room as he said it, and Edmund was left to sit
down and stir the fire in thoughtful vexation.

Fanny, who had heard it all, and borne Edmund company in every feeling
throughout the whole, now ventured to say, in her anxiety to suggest
some comfort, “Perhaps they may not be able to find any play to suit
them. Your brother's taste and your sisters' seem very different.”

“I have no hope there, Fanny. If they persist in the scheme, they will
find something. I shall speak to my sisters and try to dissuade _them_,
and that is all I can do.”

“I should think my aunt Norris would be on your side.”

“I dare say she would, but she has no influence with either Tom or my
sisters that could be of any use; and if I cannot convince them myself,
I shall let things take their course, without attempting it through
her. Family squabbling is the greatest evil of all, and we had better do
anything than be altogether by the ears.”

His sisters, to whom he had an opportunity of speaking the next morning,
were quite as impatient of his advice, quite as unyielding to his
representation, quite as determined in the cause of pleasure, as Tom.
Their mother had no objection to the plan, and they were not in the
least afraid of their father's disapprobation. There could be no harm in
what had been done in so many respectable families, and by so many women
of the first consideration; and it must be scrupulousness run mad that
could see anything to censure in a plan like theirs, comprehending only
brothers and sisters and intimate friends, and which would never be
heard of beyond themselves. Julia _did_ seem inclined to admit that
Maria's situation might require particular caution and delicacy--but
that could not extend to _her_--she was at liberty; and Maria evidently
considered her engagement as only raising her so much more above
restraint, and leaving her less occasion than Julia to consult either
father or mother. Edmund had little to hope, but he was still urging the
subject when Henry Crawford entered the room, fresh from the Parsonage,
calling out, “No want of hands in our theatre, Miss Bertram. No want
of understrappers: my sister desires her love, and hopes to be admitted
into the company, and will be happy to take the part of any old duenna
or tame confidante, that you may not like to do yourselves.”

Maria gave Edmund a glance, which meant, “What say you now? Can we
be wrong if Mary Crawford feels the same?” And Edmund, silenced,
was obliged to acknowledge that the charm of acting might well carry
fascination to the mind of genius; and with the ingenuity of love, to
dwell more on the obliging, accommodating purport of the message than on
anything else.

The scheme advanced. Opposition was vain; and as to Mrs. Norris, he
was mistaken in supposing she would wish to make any. She started no
difficulties that were not talked down in five minutes by her eldest
nephew and niece, who were all-powerful with her; and as the whole
arrangement was to bring very little expense to anybody, and none at all
to herself, as she foresaw in it all the comforts of hurry, bustle,
and importance, and derived the immediate advantage of fancying herself
obliged to leave her own house, where she had been living a month at
her own cost, and take up her abode in theirs, that every hour might be
spent in their service, she was, in fact, exceedingly delighted with the
project.



CHAPTER XIV

Fanny seemed nearer being right than Edmund had supposed. The business
of finding a play that would suit everybody proved to be no trifle; and
the carpenter had received his orders and taken his measurements, had
suggested and removed at least two sets of difficulties, and having made
the necessity of an enlargement of plan and expense fully evident, was
already at work, while a play was still to seek. Other preparations
were also in hand. An enormous roll of green baize had arrived from
Northampton, and been cut out by Mrs. Norris (with a saving by her good
management of full three-quarters of a yard), and was actually forming
into a curtain by the housemaids, and still the play was wanting; and
as two or three days passed away in this manner, Edmund began almost to
hope that none might ever be found.

There were, in fact, so many things to be attended to, so many people
to be pleased, so many best characters required, and, above all, such a
need that the play should be at once both tragedy and comedy, that there
did seem as little chance of a decision as anything pursued by youth and
zeal could hold out.

On the tragic side were the Miss Bertrams, Henry Crawford, and Mr.
Yates; on the comic, Tom Bertram, not _quite_ alone, because it was
evident that Mary Crawford's wishes, though politely kept back, inclined
the same way: but his determinateness and his power seemed to make
allies unnecessary; and, independent of this great irreconcilable
difference, they wanted a piece containing very few characters in the
whole, but every character first-rate, and three principal women. All
the best plays were run over in vain. Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor
Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, presented anything that could
satisfy even the tragedians; and The Rivals, The School for Scandal,
Wheel of Fortune, Heir at Law, and a long et cetera, were successively
dismissed with yet warmer objections. No piece could be proposed that
did not supply somebody with a difficulty, and on one side or the other
it was a continual repetition of, “Oh no, _that_ will never do! Let us
have no ranting tragedies. Too many characters. Not a tolerable
woman's part in the play. Anything but _that_, my dear Tom. It would be
impossible to fill it up. One could not expect anybody to take such a
part. Nothing but buffoonery from beginning to end. _That_ might do,
perhaps, but for the low parts. If I _must_ give my opinion, I have
always thought it the most insipid play in the English language. _I_ do
not wish to make objections; I shall be happy to be of any use, but I
think we could not chuse worse.”

Fanny looked on and listened, not unamused to observe the selfishness
which, more or less disguised, seemed to govern them all, and wondering
how it would end. For her own gratification she could have wished that
something might be acted, for she had never seen even half a play, but
everything of higher consequence was against it.

“This will never do,” said Tom Bertram at last. “We are wasting time
most abominably. Something must be fixed on. No matter what, so that
something is chosen. We must not be so nice. A few characters too many
must not frighten us. We must _double_ them. We must descend a little.
If a part is insignificant, the greater our credit in making anything of
it. From this moment I make no difficulties. I take any part you chuse
to give me, so as it be comic. Let it but be comic, I condition for
nothing more.”

For about the fifth time he then proposed the Heir at Law, doubting only
whether to prefer Lord Duberley or Dr. Pangloss for himself; and very
earnestly, but very unsuccessfully, trying to persuade the others that
there were some fine tragic parts in the rest of the dramatis personae.

The pause which followed this fruitless effort was ended by the same
speaker, who, taking up one of the many volumes of plays that lay on the
table, and turning it over, suddenly exclaimed--“Lovers' Vows! And why
should not Lovers' Vows do for _us_ as well as for the Ravenshaws? How
came it never to be thought of before? It strikes me as if it would do
exactly. What say you all? Here are two capital tragic parts for Yates
and Crawford, and here is the rhyming Butler for me, if nobody else
wants it; a trifling part, but the sort of thing I should not dislike,
and, as I said before, I am determined to take anything and do my best.
And as for the rest, they may be filled up by anybody. It is only Count
Cassel and Anhalt.”

The suggestion was generally welcome. Everybody was growing weary of
indecision, and the first idea with everybody was, that nothing had been
proposed before so likely to suit them all. Mr. Yates was particularly
pleased: he had been sighing and longing to do the Baron at Ecclesford,
had grudged every rant of Lord Ravenshaw's, and been forced to re-rant
it all in his own room. The storm through Baron Wildenheim was the
height of his theatrical ambition; and with the advantage of knowing
half the scenes by heart already, he did now, with the greatest
alacrity, offer his services for the part. To do him justice, however,
he did not resolve to appropriate it; for remembering that there was
some very good ranting-ground in Frederick, he professed an equal
willingness for that. Henry Crawford was ready to take either. Whichever
Mr. Yates did not chuse would perfectly satisfy him, and a short parley
of compliment ensued. Miss Bertram, feeling all the interest of an
Agatha in the question, took on her to decide it, by observing to Mr.
Yates that this was a point in which height and figure ought to
be considered, and that _his_ being the tallest, seemed to fit him
peculiarly for the Baron. She was acknowledged to be quite right, and
the two parts being accepted accordingly, she was certain of the proper
Frederick. Three of the characters were now cast, besides Mr. Rushworth,
who was always answered for by Maria as willing to do anything; when
Julia, meaning, like her sister, to be Agatha, began to be scrupulous on
Miss Crawford's account.

“This is not behaving well by the absent,” said she. “Here are not women
enough. Amelia and Agatha may do for Maria and me, but here is nothing
for your sister, Mr. Crawford.”

Mr. Crawford desired _that_ might not be thought of: he was very sure
his sister had no wish of acting but as she might be useful, and that
she would not allow herself to be considered in the present case. But
this was immediately opposed by Tom Bertram, who asserted the part of
Amelia to be in every respect the property of Miss Crawford, if she
would accept it. “It falls as naturally, as necessarily to her,”
 said he, “as Agatha does to one or other of my sisters. It can be no
sacrifice on their side, for it is highly comic.”

A short silence followed. Each sister looked anxious; for each felt the
best claim to Agatha, and was hoping to have it pressed on her by the
rest. Henry Crawford, who meanwhile had taken up the play, and with
seeming carelessness was turning over the first act, soon settled the
business.

“I must entreat Miss _Julia_ Bertram,” said he, “not to engage in the
part of Agatha, or it will be the ruin of all my solemnity. You must
not, indeed you must not” (turning to her). “I could not stand your
countenance dressed up in woe and paleness. The many laughs we have had
together would infallibly come across me, and Frederick and his knapsack
would be obliged to run away.”

Pleasantly, courteously, it was spoken; but the manner was lost in the
matter to Julia's feelings. She saw a glance at Maria which confirmed
the injury to herself: it was a scheme, a trick; she was slighted, Maria
was preferred; the smile of triumph which Maria was trying to suppress
shewed how well it was understood; and before Julia could command
herself enough to speak, her brother gave his weight against her too,
by saying, “Oh yes! Maria must be Agatha. Maria will be the best Agatha.
Though Julia fancies she prefers tragedy, I would not trust her in it.
There is nothing of tragedy about her. She has not the look of it. Her
features are not tragic features, and she walks too quick, and speaks
too quick, and would not keep her countenance. She had better do the old
countrywoman: the Cottager's wife; you had, indeed, Julia. Cottager's
wife is a very pretty part, I assure you. The old lady relieves the
high-flown benevolence of her husband with a good deal of spirit. You
shall be Cottager's wife.”

“Cottager's wife!” cried Mr. Yates. “What are you talking of? The most
trivial, paltry, insignificant part; the merest commonplace; not a
tolerable speech in the whole. Your sister do that! It is an insult
to propose it. At Ecclesford the governess was to have done it. We
all agreed that it could not be offered to anybody else. A little more
justice, Mr. Manager, if you please. You do not deserve the office, if
you cannot appreciate the talents of your company a little better.”

“Why, as to _that_, my good friend, till I and my company have really
acted there must be some guesswork; but I mean no disparagement to
Julia. We cannot have two Agathas, and we must have one Cottager's
wife; and I am sure I set her the example of moderation myself in being
satisfied with the old Butler. If the part is trifling she will have
more credit in making something of it; and if she is so desperately bent
against everything humorous, let her take Cottager's speeches instead of
Cottager's wife's, and so change the parts all through; _he_ is solemn
and pathetic enough, I am sure. It could make no difference in the play,
and as for Cottager himself, when he has got his wife's speeches, _I_
would undertake him with all my heart.”

“With all your partiality for Cottager's wife,” said Henry Crawford, “it
will be impossible to make anything of it fit for your sister, and we
must not suffer her good-nature to be imposed on. We must not _allow_
her to accept the part. She must not be left to her own complaisance.
Her talents will be wanted in Amelia. Amelia is a character more
difficult to be well represented than even Agatha. I consider Amelia
is the most difficult character in the whole piece. It requires great
powers, great nicety, to give her playfulness and simplicity without
extravagance. I have seen good actresses fail in the part. Simplicity,
indeed, is beyond the reach of almost every actress by profession.
It requires a delicacy of feeling which they have not. It requires a
gentlewoman--a Julia Bertram. You _will_ undertake it, I hope?” turning
to her with a look of anxious entreaty, which softened her a little; but
while she hesitated what to say, her brother again interposed with Miss
Crawford's better claim.

“No, no, Julia must not be Amelia. It is not at all the part for her.
She would not like it. She would not do well. She is too tall and
robust. Amelia should be a small, light, girlish, skipping figure. It is
fit for Miss Crawford, and Miss Crawford only. She looks the part, and I
am persuaded will do it admirably.”

Without attending to this, Henry Crawford continued his supplication.
“You must oblige us,” said he, “indeed you must. When you have studied
the character, I am sure you will feel it suit you. Tragedy may be your
choice, but it will certainly appear that comedy chuses _you_. You
will be to visit me in prison with a basket of provisions; you will
not refuse to visit me in prison? I think I see you coming in with your
basket.”

The influence of his voice was felt. Julia wavered; but was he only
trying to soothe and pacify her, and make her overlook the previous
affront? She distrusted him. The slight had been most determined. He
was, perhaps, but at treacherous play with her. She looked suspiciously
at her sister; Maria's countenance was to decide it: if she were vexed
and alarmed--but Maria looked all serenity and satisfaction, and Julia
well knew that on this ground Maria could not be happy but at her
expense. With hasty indignation, therefore, and a tremulous voice, she
said to him, “You do not seem afraid of not keeping your countenance
when I come in with a basket of provisions--though one might have
supposed--but it is only as Agatha that I was to be so overpowering!”
 She stopped--Henry Crawford looked rather foolish, and as if he did not
know what to say. Tom Bertram began again--

“Miss Crawford must be Amelia. She will be an excellent Amelia.”

“Do not be afraid of _my_ wanting the character,” cried Julia, with
angry quickness: “I am _not_ to be Agatha, and I am sure I will do
nothing else; and as to Amelia, it is of all parts in the world the
most disgusting to me. I quite detest her. An odious, little, pert,
unnatural, impudent girl. I have always protested against comedy, and
this is comedy in its worst form.” And so saying, she walked hastily
out of the room, leaving awkward feelings to more than one, but exciting
small compassion in any except Fanny, who had been a quiet auditor of
the whole, and who could not think of her as under the agitations of
_jealousy_ without great pity.

A short silence succeeded her leaving them; but her brother soon
returned to business and Lovers' Vows, and was eagerly looking over
the play, with Mr. Yates's help, to ascertain what scenery would be
necessary--while Maria and Henry Crawford conversed together in an
under-voice, and the declaration with which she began of, “I am sure I
would give up the part to Julia most willingly, but that though I shall
probably do it very ill, I feel persuaded _she_ would do it worse,” was
doubtless receiving all the compliments it called for.

When this had lasted some time, the division of the party was completed
by Tom Bertram and Mr. Yates walking off together to consult farther in
the room now beginning to be called _the_ _Theatre_, and Miss Bertram's
resolving to go down to the Parsonage herself with the offer of Amelia
to Miss Crawford; and Fanny remained alone.

The first use she made of her solitude was to take up the volume which
had been left on the table, and begin to acquaint herself with the play
of which she had heard so much. Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran
through it with an eagerness which was suspended only by intervals of
astonishment, that it could be chosen in the present instance, that it
could be proposed and accepted in a private theatre! Agatha and Amelia
appeared to her in their different ways so totally improper for home
representation--the situation of one, and the language of the other,
so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty, that she could hardly
suppose her cousins could be aware of what they were engaging in; and
longed to have them roused as soon as possible by the remonstrance which
Edmund would certainly make.



CHAPTER XV

Miss Crawford accepted the part very readily; and soon after Miss
Bertram's return from the Parsonage, Mr. Rushworth arrived, and another
character was consequently cast. He had the offer of Count Cassel
and Anhalt, and at first did not know which to chuse, and wanted Miss
Bertram to direct him; but upon being made to understand the different
style of the characters, and which was which, and recollecting that he
had once seen the play in London, and had thought Anhalt a very stupid
fellow, he soon decided for the Count. Miss Bertram approved the
decision, for the less he had to learn the better; and though she could
not sympathise in his wish that the Count and Agatha might be to act
together, nor wait very patiently while he was slowly turning over the
leaves with the hope of still discovering such a scene, she very kindly
took his part in hand, and curtailed every speech that admitted being
shortened; besides pointing out the necessity of his being very much
dressed, and chusing his colours. Mr. Rushworth liked the idea of his
finery very well, though affecting to despise it; and was too much
engaged with what his own appearance would be to think of the others,
or draw any of those conclusions, or feel any of that displeasure which
Maria had been half prepared for.

Thus much was settled before Edmund, who had been out all the morning,
knew anything of the matter; but when he entered the drawing-room before
dinner, the buzz of discussion was high between Tom, Maria, and Mr.
Yates; and Mr. Rushworth stepped forward with great alacrity to tell him
the agreeable news.

“We have got a play,” said he. “It is to be Lovers' Vows; and I am to be
Count Cassel, and am to come in first with a blue dress and a pink satin
cloak, and afterwards am to have another fine fancy suit, by way of a
shooting-dress. I do not know how I shall like it.”

Fanny's eyes followed Edmund, and her heart beat for him as she heard
this speech, and saw his look, and felt what his sensations must be.

“Lovers' Vows!” in a tone of the greatest amazement, was his only reply
to Mr. Rushworth, and he turned towards his brother and sisters as if
hardly doubting a contradiction.

“Yes,” cried Mr. Yates. “After all our debatings and difficulties, we
find there is nothing that will suit us altogether so well, nothing so
unexceptionable, as Lovers' Vows. The wonder is that it should not have
been thought of before. My stupidity was abominable, for here we have
all the advantage of what I saw at Ecclesford; and it is so useful to
have anything of a model! We have cast almost every part.”

“But what do you do for women?” said Edmund gravely, and looking at
Maria.

Maria blushed in spite of herself as she answered, “I take the part
which Lady Ravenshaw was to have done, and” (with a bolder eye) “Miss
Crawford is to be Amelia.”

“I should not have thought it the sort of play to be so easily filled
up, with _us_,” replied Edmund, turning away to the fire, where sat
his mother, aunt, and Fanny, and seating himself with a look of great
vexation.

Mr. Rushworth followed him to say, “I come in three times, and have
two-and-forty speeches. That's something, is not it? But I do not much
like the idea of being so fine. I shall hardly know myself in a blue
dress and a pink satin cloak.”

Edmund could not answer him. In a few minutes Mr. Bertram was called
out of the room to satisfy some doubts of the carpenter; and being
accompanied by Mr. Yates, and followed soon afterwards by Mr. Rushworth,
Edmund almost immediately took the opportunity of saying, “I cannot,
before Mr. Yates, speak what I feel as to this play, without reflecting
on his friends at Ecclesford; but I must now, my dear Maria, tell _you_,
that I think it exceedingly unfit for private representation, and that I
hope you will give it up. I cannot but suppose you _will_ when you have
read it carefully over. Read only the first act aloud to either your
mother or aunt, and see how you can approve it. It will not be necessary
to send you to your _father's_ judgment, I am convinced.”

“We see things very differently,” cried Maria. “I am perfectly
acquainted with the play, I assure you; and with a very few omissions,
and so forth, which will be made, of course, I can see nothing
objectionable in it; and _I_ am not the _only_ young woman you find who
thinks it very fit for private representation.”

“I am sorry for it,” was his answer; “but in this matter it is _you_ who
are to lead. _You_ must set the example. If others have blundered, it
is your place to put them right, and shew them what true delicacy is.
In all points of decorum _your_ conduct must be law to the rest of the
party.”

This picture of her consequence had some effect, for no one loved better
to lead than Maria; and with far more good-humour she answered, “I am
much obliged to you, Edmund; you mean very well, I am sure: but I still
think you see things too strongly; and I really cannot undertake to
harangue all the rest upon a subject of this kind. _There_ would be the
greatest indecorum, I think.”

“Do you imagine that I could have such an idea in my head? No; let your
conduct be the only harangue. Say that, on examining the part, you feel
yourself unequal to it; that you find it requiring more exertion and
confidence than you can be supposed to have. Say this with firmness, and
it will be quite enough. All who can distinguish will understand your
motive. The play will be given up, and your delicacy honoured as it
ought.”

“Do not act anything improper, my dear,” said Lady Bertram. “Sir Thomas
would not like it.--Fanny, ring the bell; I must have my dinner.--To be
sure, Julia is dressed by this time.”

“I am convinced, madam,” said Edmund, preventing Fanny, “that Sir Thomas
would not like it.”

“There, my dear, do you hear what Edmund says?”

“If I were to decline the part,” said Maria, with renewed zeal, “Julia
would certainly take it.”

“What!” cried Edmund, “if she knew your reasons!”

“Oh! she might think the difference between us--the difference in our
situations--that _she_ need not be so scrupulous as _I_ might feel
necessary. I am sure she would argue so. No; you must excuse me; I
cannot retract my consent; it is too far settled, everybody would be so
disappointed, Tom would be quite angry; and if we are so very nice, we
shall never act anything.”

“I was just going to say the very same thing,” said Mrs. Norris.
“If every play is to be objected to, you will act nothing, and the
preparations will be all so much money thrown away, and I am sure _that_
would be a discredit to us all. I do not know the play; but, as Maria
says, if there is anything a little too warm (and it is so with most of
them) it can be easily left out. We must not be over-precise, Edmund. As
Mr. Rushworth is to act too, there can be no harm. I only wish Tom had
known his own mind when the carpenters began, for there was the loss
of half a day's work about those side-doors. The curtain will be a good
job, however. The maids do their work very well, and I think we shall be
able to send back some dozens of the rings. There is no occasion to put
them so very close together. I _am_ of some use, I hope, in preventing
waste and making the most of things. There should always be one
steady head to superintend so many young ones. I forgot to tell Tom of
something that happened to me this very day. I had been looking about me
in the poultry-yard, and was just coming out, when who should I see but
Dick Jackson making up to the servants' hall-door with two bits of deal
board in his hand, bringing them to father, you may be sure; mother had
chanced to send him of a message to father, and then father had bid
him bring up them two bits of board, for he could not no how do without
them. I knew what all this meant, for the servants' dinner-bell
was ringing at the very moment over our heads; and as I hate such
encroaching people (the Jacksons are very encroaching, I have always
said so: just the sort of people to get all they can), I said to the boy
directly (a great lubberly fellow of ten years old, you know, who ought
to be ashamed of himself), '_I'll_ take the boards to your father, Dick,
so get you home again as fast as you can.' The boy looked very silly,
and turned away without offering a word, for I believe I might speak
pretty sharp; and I dare say it will cure him of coming marauding about
the house for one while. I hate such greediness--so good as your father
is to the family, employing the man all the year round!”

Nobody was at the trouble of an answer; the others soon returned; and
Edmund found that to have endeavoured to set them right must be his only
satisfaction.

Dinner passed heavily. Mrs. Norris related again her triumph over Dick
Jackson, but neither play nor preparation were otherwise much talked
of, for Edmund's disapprobation was felt even by his brother, though
he would not have owned it. Maria, wanting Henry Crawford's animating
support, thought the subject better avoided. Mr. Yates, who was trying
to make himself agreeable to Julia, found her gloom less impenetrable on
any topic than that of his regret at her secession from their company;
and Mr. Rushworth, having only his own part and his own dress in his
head, had soon talked away all that could be said of either.

But the concerns of the theatre were suspended only for an hour or two:
there was still a great deal to be settled; and the spirits of evening
giving fresh courage, Tom, Maria, and Mr. Yates, soon after their being
reassembled in the drawing-room, seated themselves in committee at a
separate table, with the play open before them, and were just getting
deep in the subject when a most welcome interruption was given by the
entrance of Mr. and Miss Crawford, who, late and dark and dirty as it
was, could not help coming, and were received with the most grateful
joy.

“Well, how do you go on?” and “What have you settled?” and “Oh! we
can do nothing without you,” followed the first salutations; and Henry
Crawford was soon seated with the other three at the table, while his
sister made her way to Lady Bertram, and with pleasant attention was
complimenting _her_. “I must really congratulate your ladyship,” said
she, “on the play being chosen; for though you have borne it with
exemplary patience, I am sure you must be sick of all our noise and
difficulties. The actors may be glad, but the bystanders must be
infinitely more thankful for a decision; and I do sincerely give you
joy, madam, as well as Mrs. Norris, and everybody else who is in the
same predicament,” glancing half fearfully, half slyly, beyond Fanny to
Edmund.

She was very civilly answered by Lady Bertram, but Edmund said nothing.
His being only a bystander was not disclaimed. After continuing in chat
with the party round the fire a few minutes, Miss Crawford returned
to the party round the table; and standing by them, seemed to
interest herself in their arrangements till, as if struck by a sudden
recollection, she exclaimed, “My good friends, you are most composedly
at work upon these cottages and alehouses, inside and out; but pray let
me know my fate in the meanwhile. Who is to be Anhalt? What gentleman
among you am I to have the pleasure of making love to?”

For a moment no one spoke; and then many spoke together to tell the same
melancholy truth, that they had not yet got any Anhalt. “Mr. Rushworth
was to be Count Cassel, but no one had yet undertaken Anhalt.”

“I had my choice of the parts,” said Mr. Rushworth; “but I thought I
should like the Count best, though I do not much relish the finery I am
to have.”

“You chose very wisely, I am sure,” replied Miss Crawford, with a
brightened look; “Anhalt is a heavy part.”

“_The_ _Count_ has two-and-forty speeches,” returned Mr. Rushworth,
“which is no trifle.”

“I am not at all surprised,” said Miss Crawford, after a short pause,
“at this want of an Anhalt. Amelia deserves no better. Such a forward
young lady may well frighten the men.”

“I should be but too happy in taking the part, if it were possible,”
 cried Tom; “but, unluckily, the Butler and Anhalt are in together. I
will not entirely give it up, however; I will try what can be done--I
will look it over again.”

“Your _brother_ should take the part,” said Mr. Yates, in a low voice.
“Do not you think he would?”

“_I_ shall not ask him,” replied Tom, in a cold, determined manner.

Miss Crawford talked of something else, and soon afterwards rejoined the
party at the fire.

“They do not want me at all,” said she, seating herself. “I only puzzle
them, and oblige them to make civil speeches. Mr. Edmund Bertram, as
you do not act yourself, you will be a disinterested adviser; and,
therefore, I apply to _you_. What shall we do for an Anhalt? Is it
practicable for any of the others to double it? What is your advice?”

“My advice,” said he calmly, “is that you change the play.”

“_I_ should have no objection,” she replied; “for though I should not
particularly dislike the part of Amelia if well supported, that is, if
everything went well, I shall be sorry to be an inconvenience; but
as they do not chuse to hear your advice at _that_ _table_” (looking
round), “it certainly will not be taken.”

Edmund said no more.

“If _any_ part could tempt _you_ to act, I suppose it would be Anhalt,”
 observed the lady archly, after a short pause; “for he is a clergyman,
you know.”

“_That_ circumstance would by no means tempt me,” he replied, “for I
should be sorry to make the character ridiculous by bad acting. It
must be very difficult to keep Anhalt from appearing a formal, solemn
lecturer; and the man who chuses the profession itself is, perhaps, one
of the last who would wish to represent it on the stage.”

Miss Crawford was silenced, and with some feelings of resentment and
mortification, moved her chair considerably nearer the tea-table, and
gave all her attention to Mrs. Norris, who was presiding there.

“Fanny,” cried Tom Bertram, from the other table, where the conference
was eagerly carrying on, and the conversation incessant, “we want your
services.”

Fanny was up in a moment, expecting some errand; for the habit of
employing her in that way was not yet overcome, in spite of all that
Edmund could do.

“Oh! we do not want to disturb you from your seat. We do not want your
_present_ services. We shall only want you in our play. You must be
Cottager's wife.”

“Me!” cried Fanny, sitting down again with a most frightened look.
“Indeed you must excuse me. I could not act anything if you were to give
me the world. No, indeed, I cannot act.”

“Indeed, but you must, for we cannot excuse you. It need not frighten
you: it is a nothing of a part, a mere nothing, not above half a dozen
speeches altogether, and it will not much signify if nobody hears a word
you say; so you may be as creep-mouse as you like, but we must have you
to look at.”

“If you are afraid of half a dozen speeches,” cried Mr. Rushworth, “what
would you do with such a part as mine? I have forty-two to learn.”

“It is not that I am afraid of learning by heart,” said Fanny, shocked
to find herself at that moment the only speaker in the room, and to feel
that almost every eye was upon her; “but I really cannot act.”

“Yes, yes, you can act well enough for _us_. Learn your part, and we
will teach you all the rest. You have only two scenes, and as I shall
be Cottager, I'll put you in and push you about, and you will do it very
well, I'll answer for it.”

“No, indeed, Mr. Bertram, you must excuse me. You cannot have an idea.
It would be absolutely impossible for me. If I were to undertake it, I
should only disappoint you.”

“Phoo! Phoo! Do not be so shamefaced. You'll do it very well. Every
allowance will be made for you. We do not expect perfection. You must
get a brown gown, and a white apron, and a mob cap, and we must make
you a few wrinkles, and a little of the crowsfoot at the corner of your
eyes, and you will be a very proper, little old woman.”

“You must excuse me, indeed you must excuse me,” cried Fanny, growing
more and more red from excessive agitation, and looking distressfully
at Edmund, who was kindly observing her; but unwilling to exasperate
his brother by interference, gave her only an encouraging smile. Her
entreaty had no effect on Tom: he only said again what he had said
before; and it was not merely Tom, for the requisition was now backed by
Maria, and Mr. Crawford, and Mr. Yates, with an urgency which differed
from his but in being more gentle or more ceremonious, and which
altogether was quite overpowering to Fanny; and before she could breathe
after it, Mrs. Norris completed the whole by thus addressing her in a
whisper at once angry and audible--“What a piece of work here is about
nothing: I am quite ashamed of you, Fanny, to make such a difficulty of
obliging your cousins in a trifle of this sort--so kind as they are to
you! Take the part with a good grace, and let us hear no more of the
matter, I entreat.”

“Do not urge her, madam,” said Edmund. “It is not fair to urge her
in this manner. You see she does not like to act. Let her chuse for
herself, as well as the rest of us. Her judgment may be quite as safely
trusted. Do not urge her any more.”

“I am not going to urge her,” replied Mrs. Norris sharply; “but I shall
think her a very obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her
aunt and cousins wish her--very ungrateful, indeed, considering who and
what she is.”

Edmund was too angry to speak; but Miss Crawford, looking for a moment
with astonished eyes at Mrs. Norris, and then at Fanny, whose tears were
beginning to shew themselves, immediately said, with some keenness, “I
do not like my situation: this _place_ is too hot for me,” and moved
away her chair to the opposite side of the table, close to Fanny, saying
to her, in a kind, low whisper, as she placed herself, “Never mind,
my dear Miss Price, this is a cross evening: everybody is cross and
teasing, but do not let us mind them”; and with pointed attention
continued to talk to her and endeavour to raise her spirits, in spite of
being out of spirits herself. By a look at her brother she prevented any
farther entreaty from the theatrical board, and the really good feelings
by which she was almost purely governed were rapidly restoring her to
all the little she had lost in Edmund's favour.

Fanny did not love Miss Crawford; but she felt very much obliged to her
for her present kindness; and when, from taking notice of her work,
and wishing _she_ could work as well, and begging for the pattern, and
supposing Fanny was now preparing for her _appearance_, as of course she
would come out when her cousin was married, Miss Crawford proceeded to
inquire if she had heard lately from her brother at sea, and said that
she had quite a curiosity to see him, and imagined him a very fine young
man, and advised Fanny to get his picture drawn before he went to sea
again--she could not help admitting it to be very agreeable flattery, or
help listening, and answering with more animation than she had intended.

The consultation upon the play still went on, and Miss Crawford's
attention was first called from Fanny by Tom Bertram's telling her,
with infinite regret, that he found it absolutely impossible for him to
undertake the part of Anhalt in addition to the Butler: he had been most
anxiously trying to make it out to be feasible, but it would not do;
he must give it up. “But there will not be the smallest difficulty in
filling it,” he added. “We have but to speak the word; we may pick and
chuse. I could name, at this moment, at least six young men within six
miles of us, who are wild to be admitted into our company, and there are
one or two that would not disgrace us: I should not be afraid to trust
either of the Olivers or Charles Maddox. Tom Oliver is a very clever
fellow, and Charles Maddox is as gentlemanlike a man as you will see
anywhere, so I will take my horse early to-morrow morning and ride over
to Stoke, and settle with one of them.”

While he spoke, Maria was looking apprehensively round at Edmund in full
expectation that he must oppose such an enlargement of the plan as this:
so contrary to all their first protestations; but Edmund said nothing.
After a moment's thought, Miss Crawford calmly replied, “As far as I
am concerned, I can have no objection to anything that you all think
eligible. Have I ever seen either of the gentlemen? Yes, Mr. Charles
Maddox dined at my sister's one day, did not he, Henry? A quiet-looking
young man. I remember him. Let _him_ be applied to, if you please, for
it will be less unpleasant to me than to have a perfect stranger.”

Charles Maddox was to be the man. Tom repeated his resolution of going
to him early on the morrow; and though Julia, who had scarcely opened
her lips before, observed, in a sarcastic manner, and with a glance
first at Maria and then at Edmund, that “the Mansfield theatricals would
enliven the whole neighbourhood exceedingly,” Edmund still held his
peace, and shewed his feelings only by a determined gravity.

“I am not very sanguine as to our play,” said Miss Crawford, in an
undervoice to Fanny, after some consideration; “and I can tell Mr.
Maddox that I shall shorten some of _his_ speeches, and a great many of
_my_ _own_, before we rehearse together. It will be very disagreeable,
and by no means what I expected.”



CHAPTER XVI

It was not in Miss Crawford's power to talk Fanny into any real
forgetfulness of what had passed. When the evening was over, she went to
bed full of it, her nerves still agitated by the shock of such an attack
from her cousin Tom, so public and so persevered in, and her spirits
sinking under her aunt's unkind reflection and reproach. To be called
into notice in such a manner, to hear that it was but the prelude to
something so infinitely worse, to be told that she must do what was
so impossible as to act; and then to have the charge of obstinacy and
ingratitude follow it, enforced with such a hint at the dependence
of her situation, had been too distressing at the time to make the
remembrance when she was alone much less so, especially with the
superadded dread of what the morrow might produce in continuation of the
subject. Miss Crawford had protected her only for the time; and if
she were applied to again among themselves with all the authoritative
urgency that Tom and Maria were capable of, and Edmund perhaps away,
what should she do? She fell asleep before she could answer the
question, and found it quite as puzzling when she awoke the next
morning. The little white attic, which had continued her sleeping-room
ever since her first entering the family, proving incompetent to suggest
any reply, she had recourse, as soon as she was dressed, to another
apartment more spacious and more meet for walking about in and thinking,
and of which she had now for some time been almost equally mistress. It
had been their school-room; so called till the Miss Bertrams would not
allow it to be called so any longer, and inhabited as such to a later
period. There Miss Lee had lived, and there they had read and written,
and talked and laughed, till within the last three years, when she had
quitted them. The room had then become useless, and for some time was
quite deserted, except by Fanny, when she visited her plants, or wanted
one of the books, which she was still glad to keep there, from the
deficiency of space and accommodation in her little chamber above: but
gradually, as her value for the comforts of it increased, she had added
to her possessions, and spent more of her time there; and having nothing
to oppose her, had so naturally and so artlessly worked herself into it,
that it was now generally admitted to be hers. The East room, as it had
been called ever since Maria Bertram was sixteen, was now considered
Fanny's, almost as decidedly as the white attic: the smallness of the
one making the use of the other so evidently reasonable that the Miss
Bertrams, with every superiority in their own apartments which their own
sense of superiority could demand, were entirely approving it; and Mrs.
Norris, having stipulated for there never being a fire in it on Fanny's
account, was tolerably resigned to her having the use of what nobody
else wanted, though the terms in which she sometimes spoke of the
indulgence seemed to imply that it was the best room in the house.

The aspect was so favourable that even without a fire it was habitable
in many an early spring and late autumn morning to such a willing mind
as Fanny's; and while there was a gleam of sunshine she hoped not to be
driven from it entirely, even when winter came. The comfort of it in
her hours of leisure was extreme. She could go there after anything
unpleasant below, and find immediate consolation in some pursuit, or
some train of thought at hand. Her plants, her books--of which she had
been a collector from the first hour of her commanding a shilling--her
writing-desk, and her works of charity and ingenuity, were all within
her reach; or if indisposed for employment, if nothing but musing would
do, she could scarcely see an object in that room which had not an
interesting remembrance connected with it. Everything was a friend, or
bore her thoughts to a friend; and though there had been sometimes much
of suffering to her; though her motives had often been misunderstood,
her feelings disregarded, and her comprehension undervalued; though she
had known the pains of tyranny, of ridicule, and neglect, yet almost
every recurrence of either had led to something consolatory: her aunt
Bertram had spoken for her, or Miss Lee had been encouraging, or, what
was yet more frequent or more dear, Edmund had been her champion and her
friend: he had supported her cause or explained her meaning, he had told
her not to cry, or had given her some proof of affection which made
her tears delightful; and the whole was now so blended together, so
harmonised by distance, that every former affliction had its charm. The
room was most dear to her, and she would not have changed its furniture
for the handsomest in the house, though what had been originally plain
had suffered all the ill-usage of children; and its greatest elegancies
and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia's work, too ill done
for the drawing-room, three transparencies, made in a rage for
transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern
Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in
Cumberland, a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being
anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side, and pinned
against the wall, a small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the
Mediterranean by William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters
as tall as the mainmast.

To this nest of comforts Fanny now walked down to try its influence on
an agitated, doubting spirit, to see if by looking at Edmund's profile
she could catch any of his counsel, or by giving air to her geraniums
she might inhale a breeze of mental strength herself. But she had more
than fears of her own perseverance to remove: she had begun to feel
undecided as to what she _ought_ _to_ _do_; and as she walked round the
room her doubts were increasing. Was she _right_ in refusing what was
so warmly asked, so strongly wished for--what might be so essential to a
scheme on which some of those to whom she owed the greatest complaisance
had set their hearts? Was it not ill-nature, selfishness, and a fear of
exposing herself? And would Edmund's judgment, would his persuasion of
Sir Thomas's disapprobation of the whole, be enough to justify her in a
determined denial in spite of all the rest? It would be so horrible to
her to act that she was inclined to suspect the truth and purity of her
own scruples; and as she looked around her, the claims of her cousins
to being obliged were strengthened by the sight of present upon present
that she had received from them. The table between the windows was
covered with work-boxes and netting-boxes which had been given her at
different times, principally by Tom; and she grew bewildered as to the
amount of the debt which all these kind remembrances produced. A tap at
the door roused her in the midst of this attempt to find her way to her
duty, and her gentle “Come in” was answered by the appearance of one,
before whom all her doubts were wont to be laid. Her eyes brightened at
the sight of Edmund.

“Can I speak with you, Fanny, for a few minutes?” said he.

“Yes, certainly.”

“I want to consult. I want your opinion.”

“My opinion!” she cried, shrinking from such a compliment, highly as it
gratified her.

“Yes, your advice and opinion. I do not know what to do. This acting
scheme gets worse and worse, you see. They have chosen almost as bad a
play as they could, and now, to complete the business, are going to ask
the help of a young man very slightly known to any of us. This is the
end of all the privacy and propriety which was talked about at first.
I know no harm of Charles Maddox; but the excessive intimacy which
must spring from his being admitted among us in this manner is highly
objectionable, the _more_ than intimacy--the familiarity. I cannot
think of it with any patience; and it does appear to me an evil of such
magnitude as must, _if_ _possible_, be prevented. Do not you see it in
the same light?”

“Yes; but what can be done? Your brother is so determined.”

“There is but _one_ thing to be done, Fanny. I must take Anhalt myself.
I am well aware that nothing else will quiet Tom.”

Fanny could not answer him.

“It is not at all what I like,” he continued. “No man can like being
driven into the _appearance_ of such inconsistency. After being known to
oppose the scheme from the beginning, there is absurdity in the face of
my joining them _now_, when they are exceeding their first plan in every
respect; but I can think of no other alternative. Can you, Fanny?”

“No,” said Fanny slowly, “not immediately, but--”

“But what? I see your judgment is not with me. Think it a little over.
Perhaps you are not so much aware as I am of the mischief that _may_, of
the unpleasantness that _must_ arise from a young man's being received
in this manner: domesticated among us; authorised to come at all hours,
and placed suddenly on a footing which must do away all restraints. To
think only of the licence which every rehearsal must tend to create. It
is all very bad! Put yourself in Miss Crawford's place, Fanny. Consider
what it would be to act Amelia with a stranger. She has a right to be
felt for, because she evidently feels for herself. I heard enough of
what she said to you last night to understand her unwillingness to be
acting with a stranger; and as she probably engaged in the part with
different expectations--perhaps without considering the subject enough
to know what was likely to be--it would be ungenerous, it would be
really wrong to expose her to it. Her feelings ought to be respected.
Does it not strike you so, Fanny? You hesitate.”

“I am sorry for Miss Crawford; but I am more sorry to see you drawn in
to do what you had resolved against, and what you are known to think
will be disagreeable to my uncle. It will be such a triumph to the
others!”

“They will not have much cause of triumph when they see how infamously I
act. But, however, triumph there certainly will be, and I must brave it.
But if I can be the means of restraining the publicity of the business,
of limiting the exhibition, of concentrating our folly, I shall be
well repaid. As I am now, I have no influence, I can do nothing: I have
offended them, and they will not hear me; but when I have put them in
good-humour by this concession, I am not without hopes of persuading
them to confine the representation within a much smaller circle than
they are now in the high road for. This will be a material gain. My
object is to confine it to Mrs. Rushworth and the Grants. Will not this
be worth gaining?”

“Yes, it will be a great point.”

“But still it has not your approbation. Can you mention any other
measure by which I have a chance of doing equal good?”

“No, I cannot think of anything else.”

“Give me your approbation, then, Fanny. I am not comfortable without
it.”

“Oh, cousin!”

“If you are against me, I ought to distrust myself, and yet--But it is
absolutely impossible to let Tom go on in this way, riding about the
country in quest of anybody who can be persuaded to act--no matter whom:
the look of a gentleman is to be enough. I thought _you_ would have
entered more into Miss Crawford's feelings.”

“No doubt she will be very glad. It must be a great relief to her,” said
Fanny, trying for greater warmth of manner.

“She never appeared more amiable than in her behaviour to you last
night. It gave her a very strong claim on my goodwill.”

“She _was_ very kind, indeed, and I am glad to have her spared”...

She could not finish the generous effusion. Her conscience stopt her in
the middle, but Edmund was satisfied.

“I shall walk down immediately after breakfast,” said he, “and am sure
of giving pleasure there. And now, dear Fanny, I will not interrupt you
any longer. You want to be reading. But I could not be easy till I had
spoken to you, and come to a decision. Sleeping or waking, my head has
been full of this matter all night. It is an evil, but I am certainly
making it less than it might be. If Tom is up, I shall go to him
directly and get it over, and when we meet at breakfast we shall be all
in high good-humour at the prospect of acting the fool together with
such unanimity. _You_, in the meanwhile, will be taking a trip into
China, I suppose. How does Lord Macartney go on?”--opening a volume on
the table and then taking up some others. “And here are Crabbe's Tales,
and the Idler, at hand to relieve you, if you tire of your great book. I
admire your little establishment exceedingly; and as soon as I am
gone, you will empty your head of all this nonsense of acting, and sit
comfortably down to your table. But do not stay here to be cold.”

He went; but there was no reading, no China, no composure for Fanny. He
had told her the most extraordinary, the most inconceivable, the most
unwelcome news; and she could think of nothing else. To be acting! After
all his objections--objections so just and so public! After all that she
had heard him say, and seen him look, and known him to be feeling. Could
it be possible? Edmund so inconsistent! Was he not deceiving himself?
Was he not wrong? Alas! it was all Miss Crawford's doing. She had seen
her influence in every speech, and was miserable. The doubts and alarms
as to her own conduct, which had previously distressed her, and
which had all slept while she listened to him, were become of little
consequence now. This deeper anxiety swallowed them up. Things should
take their course; she cared not how it ended. Her cousins might attack,
but could hardly tease her. She was beyond their reach; and if at last
obliged to yield--no matter--it was all misery now.



CHAPTER XVII

It was, indeed, a triumphant day to Mr. Bertram and Maria. Such a
victory over Edmund's discretion had been beyond their hopes, and was
most delightful. There was no longer anything to disturb them in their
darling project, and they congratulated each other in private on the
jealous weakness to which they attributed the change, with all the glee
of feelings gratified in every way. Edmund might still look grave, and
say he did not like the scheme in general, and must disapprove the play
in particular; their point was gained: he was to act, and he was driven
to it by the force of selfish inclinations only. Edmund had descended
from that moral elevation which he had maintained before, and they were
both as much the better as the happier for the descent.

They behaved very well, however, to _him_ on the occasion, betraying no
exultation beyond the lines about the corners of the mouth, and seemed
to think it as great an escape to be quit of the intrusion of Charles
Maddox, as if they had been forced into admitting him against their
inclination. “To have it quite in their own family circle was what
they had particularly wished. A stranger among them would have been the
destruction of all their comfort”; and when Edmund, pursuing that idea,
gave a hint of his hope as to the limitation of the audience, they were
ready, in the complaisance of the moment, to promise anything. It was
all good-humour and encouragement. Mrs. Norris offered to contrive his
dress, Mr. Yates assured him that Anhalt's last scene with the Baron
admitted a good deal of action and emphasis, and Mr. Rushworth undertook
to count his speeches.

“Perhaps,” said Tom, “Fanny may be more disposed to oblige us now.
Perhaps you may persuade _her_.”

“No, she is quite determined. She certainly will not act.”

“Oh! very well.” And not another word was said; but Fanny felt herself
again in danger, and her indifference to the danger was beginning to
fail her already.

There were not fewer smiles at the Parsonage than at the Park on this
change in Edmund; Miss Crawford looked very lovely in hers, and entered
with such an instantaneous renewal of cheerfulness into the whole
affair as could have but one effect on him. “He was certainly right in
respecting such feelings; he was glad he had determined on it.” And the
morning wore away in satisfactions very sweet, if not very sound. One
advantage resulted from it to Fanny: at the earnest request of Miss
Crawford, Mrs. Grant had, with her usual good-humour, agreed to
undertake the part for which Fanny had been wanted; and this was all
that occurred to gladden _her_ heart during the day; and even this, when
imparted by Edmund, brought a pang with it, for it was Miss Crawford to
whom she was obliged--it was Miss Crawford whose kind exertions were to
excite her gratitude, and whose merit in making them was spoken of
with a glow of admiration. She was safe; but peace and safety were
unconnected here. Her mind had been never farther from peace. She could
not feel that she had done wrong herself, but she was disquieted
in every other way. Her heart and her judgment were equally against
Edmund's decision: she could not acquit his unsteadiness, and his
happiness under it made her wretched. She was full of jealousy and
agitation. Miss Crawford came with looks of gaiety which seemed an
insult, with friendly expressions towards herself which she could hardly
answer calmly. Everybody around her was gay and busy, prosperous and
important; each had their object of interest, their part, their dress,
their favourite scene, their friends and confederates: all were finding
employment in consultations and comparisons, or diversion in the playful
conceits they suggested. She alone was sad and insignificant: she had
no share in anything; she might go or stay; she might be in the midst
of their noise, or retreat from it to the solitude of the East room,
without being seen or missed. She could almost think anything would
have been preferable to this. Mrs. Grant was of consequence: _her_
good-nature had honourable mention; her taste and her time were
considered; her presence was wanted; she was sought for, and attended,
and praised; and Fanny was at first in some danger of envying her the
character she had accepted. But reflection brought better feelings, and
shewed her that Mrs. Grant was entitled to respect, which could never
have belonged to _her_; and that, had she received even the greatest,
she could never have been easy in joining a scheme which, considering
only her uncle, she must condemn altogether.

Fanny's heart was not absolutely the only saddened one amongst them,
as she soon began to acknowledge to herself. Julia was a sufferer too,
though not quite so blamelessly.

Henry Crawford had trifled with her feelings; but she had very long
allowed and even sought his attentions, with a jealousy of her sister so
reasonable as ought to have been their cure; and now that the conviction
of his preference for Maria had been forced on her, she submitted to it
without any alarm for Maria's situation, or any endeavour at rational
tranquillity for herself. She either sat in gloomy silence, wrapt in
such gravity as nothing could subdue, no curiosity touch, no wit amuse;
or allowing the attentions of Mr. Yates, was talking with forced gaiety
to him alone, and ridiculing the acting of the others.

For a day or two after the affront was given, Henry Crawford had
endeavoured to do it away by the usual attack of gallantry and
compliment, but he had not cared enough about it to persevere against a
few repulses; and becoming soon too busy with his play to have time for
more than one flirtation, he grew indifferent to the quarrel, or rather
thought it a lucky occurrence, as quietly putting an end to what might
ere long have raised expectations in more than Mrs. Grant. She was not
pleased to see Julia excluded from the play, and sitting by disregarded;
but as it was not a matter which really involved her happiness, as Henry
must be the best judge of his own, and as he did assure her, with a
most persuasive smile, that neither he nor Julia had ever had a serious
thought of each other, she could only renew her former caution as to
the elder sister, entreat him not to risk his tranquillity by too
much admiration there, and then gladly take her share in anything that
brought cheerfulness to the young people in general, and that did so
particularly promote the pleasure of the two so dear to her.

“I rather wonder Julia is not in love with Henry,” was her observation
to Mary.

“I dare say she is,” replied Mary coldly. “I imagine both sisters are.”

“Both! no, no, that must not be. Do not give him a hint of it. Think of
Mr. Rushworth!”

“You had better tell Miss Bertram to think of Mr. Rushworth. It may
do _her_ some good. I often think of Mr. Rushworth's property and
independence, and wish them in other hands; but I never think of him. A
man might represent the county with such an estate; a man might escape a
profession and represent the county.”

“I dare say he _will_ be in parliament soon. When Sir Thomas comes, I
dare say he will be in for some borough, but there has been nobody to
put him in the way of doing anything yet.”

“Sir Thomas is to achieve many mighty things when he comes home,” said
Mary, after a pause. “Do you remember Hawkins Browne's 'Address to
Tobacco,' in imitation of Pope?--

     Blest leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense
     To Templars modesty, to Parsons sense.

I will parody them--

     Blest Knight! whose dictatorial looks dispense
     To Children affluence, to Rushworth sense.

Will not that do, Mrs. Grant? Everything seems to depend upon Sir
Thomas's return.”

“You will find his consequence very just and reasonable when you see him
in his family, I assure you. I do not think we do so well without him.
He has a fine dignified manner, which suits the head of such a house,
and keeps everybody in their place. Lady Bertram seems more of a cipher
now than when he is at home; and nobody else can keep Mrs. Norris in
order. But, Mary, do not fancy that Maria Bertram cares for Henry. I
am sure _Julia_ does not, or she would not have flirted as she did last
night with Mr. Yates; and though he and Maria are very good friends, I
think she likes Sotherton too well to be inconstant.”

“I would not give much for Mr. Rushworth's chance if Henry stept in
before the articles were signed.”

“If you have such a suspicion, something must be done; and as soon as
the play is all over, we will talk to him seriously and make him know
his own mind; and if he means nothing, we will send him off, though he
is Henry, for a time.”

Julia _did_ suffer, however, though Mrs. Grant discerned it not, and
though it escaped the notice of many of her own family likewise. She had
loved, she did love still, and she had all the suffering which a warm
temper and a high spirit were likely to endure under the disappointment
of a dear, though irrational hope, with a strong sense of ill-usage.
Her heart was sore and angry, and she was capable only of angry
consolations. The sister with whom she was used to be on easy terms was
now become her greatest enemy: they were alienated from each other;
and Julia was not superior to the hope of some distressing end to the
attentions which were still carrying on there, some punishment to
Maria for conduct so shameful towards herself as well as towards Mr.
Rushworth. With no material fault of temper, or difference of opinion,
to prevent their being very good friends while their interests were
the same, the sisters, under such a trial as this, had not affection or
principle enough to make them merciful or just, to give them honour or
compassion. Maria felt her triumph, and pursued her purpose, careless of
Julia; and Julia could never see Maria distinguished by Henry Crawford
without trusting that it would create jealousy, and bring a public
disturbance at last.

Fanny saw and pitied much of this in Julia; but there was no outward
fellowship between them. Julia made no communication, and Fanny took
no liberties. They were two solitary sufferers, or connected only by
Fanny's consciousness.

The inattention of the two brothers and the aunt to Julia's
discomposure, and their blindness to its true cause, must be imputed to
the fullness of their own minds. They were totally preoccupied. Tom was
engrossed by the concerns of his theatre, and saw nothing that did not
immediately relate to it. Edmund, between his theatrical and his real
part, between Miss Crawford's claims and his own conduct, between love
and consistency, was equally unobservant; and Mrs. Norris was too busy
in contriving and directing the general little matters of the company,
superintending their various dresses with economical expedient, for
which nobody thanked her, and saving, with delighted integrity, half
a crown here and there to the absent Sir Thomas, to have leisure for
watching the behaviour, or guarding the happiness of his daughters.



CHAPTER XVIII

Everything was now in a regular train: theatre, actors, actresses, and
dresses, were all getting forward; but though no other great impediments
arose, Fanny found, before many days were past, that it was not all
uninterrupted enjoyment to the party themselves, and that she had not to
witness the continuance of such unanimity and delight as had been almost
too much for her at first. Everybody began to have their vexation.
Edmund had many. Entirely against _his_ judgment, a scene-painter
arrived from town, and was at work, much to the increase of the
expenses, and, what was worse, of the eclat of their proceedings; and
his brother, instead of being really guided by him as to the privacy of
the representation, was giving an invitation to every family who came
in his way. Tom himself began to fret over the scene-painter's slow
progress, and to feel the miseries of waiting. He had learned his
part--all his parts, for he took every trifling one that could be united
with the Butler, and began to be impatient to be acting; and every day
thus unemployed was tending to increase his sense of the insignificance
of all his parts together, and make him more ready to regret that some
other play had not been chosen.

Fanny, being always a very courteous listener, and often the only
listener at hand, came in for the complaints and the distresses of
most of them. _She_ knew that Mr. Yates was in general thought to rant
dreadfully; that Mr. Yates was disappointed in Henry Crawford; that
Tom Bertram spoke so quick he would be unintelligible; that Mrs. Grant
spoiled everything by laughing; that Edmund was behindhand with his
part, and that it was misery to have anything to do with Mr. Rushworth,
who was wanting a prompter through every speech. She knew, also, that
poor Mr. Rushworth could seldom get anybody to rehearse with him: _his_
complaint came before her as well as the rest; and so decided to her
eye was her cousin Maria's avoidance of him, and so needlessly often the
rehearsal of the first scene between her and Mr. Crawford, that she had
soon all the terror of other complaints from _him_. So far from being
all satisfied and all enjoying, she found everybody requiring something
they had not, and giving occasion of discontent to the others. Everybody
had a part either too long or too short; nobody would attend as they
ought; nobody would remember on which side they were to come in; nobody
but the complainer would observe any directions.

Fanny believed herself to derive as much innocent enjoyment from the
play as any of them; Henry Crawford acted well, and it was a pleasure to
_her_ to creep into the theatre, and attend the rehearsal of the first
act, in spite of the feelings it excited in some speeches for Maria.
Maria, she also thought, acted well, too well; and after the first
rehearsal or two, Fanny began to be their only audience; and sometimes
as prompter, sometimes as spectator, was often very useful. As far as
she could judge, Mr. Crawford was considerably the best actor of all: he
had more confidence than Edmund, more judgment than Tom, more talent and
taste than Mr. Yates. She did not like him as a man, but she must admit
him to be the best actor, and on this point there were not many who
differed from her. Mr. Yates, indeed, exclaimed against his tameness and
insipidity; and the day came at last, when Mr. Rushworth turned to her
with a black look, and said, “Do you think there is anything so very
fine in all this? For the life and soul of me, I cannot admire him; and,
between ourselves, to see such an undersized, little, mean-looking man,
set up for a fine actor, is very ridiculous in my opinion.”

From this moment there was a return of his former jealousy, which Maria,
from increasing hopes of Crawford, was at little pains to remove; and
the chances of Mr. Rushworth's ever attaining to the knowledge of his
two-and-forty speeches became much less. As to his ever making anything
_tolerable_ of them, nobody had the smallest idea of that except
his mother; _she_, indeed, regretted that his part was not more
considerable, and deferred coming over to Mansfield till they were
forward enough in their rehearsal to comprehend all his scenes; but the
others aspired at nothing beyond his remembering the catchword, and the
first line of his speech, and being able to follow the prompter through
the rest. Fanny, in her pity and kindheartedness, was at great pains to
teach him how to learn, giving him all the helps and directions in her
power, trying to make an artificial memory for him, and learning every
word of his part herself, but without his being much the forwarder.

Many uncomfortable, anxious, apprehensive feelings she certainly had;
but with all these, and other claims on her time and attention, she was
as far from finding herself without employment or utility amongst them,
as without a companion in uneasiness; quite as far from having no
demand on her leisure as on her compassion. The gloom of her first
anticipations was proved to have been unfounded. She was occasionally
useful to all; she was perhaps as much at peace as any.

There was a great deal of needlework to be done, moreover, in which her
help was wanted; and that Mrs. Norris thought her quite as well off
as the rest, was evident by the manner in which she claimed it--“Come,
Fanny,” she cried, “these are fine times for you, but you must not be
always walking from one room to the other, and doing the lookings-on at
your ease, in this way; I want you here. I have been slaving myself till
I can hardly stand, to contrive Mr. Rushworth's cloak without sending
for any more satin; and now I think you may give me your help in putting
it together. There are but three seams; you may do them in a trice. It
would be lucky for me if I had nothing but the executive part to do.
_You_ are best off, I can tell you: but if nobody did more than _you_,
we should not get on very fast.”

Fanny took the work very quietly, without attempting any defence; but
her kinder aunt Bertram observed on her behalf--

“One cannot wonder, sister, that Fanny _should_ be delighted: it is
all new to her, you know; you and I used to be very fond of a play
ourselves, and so am I still; and as soon as I am a little more at
leisure, _I_ mean to look in at their rehearsals too. What is the play
about, Fanny? you have never told me.”

“Oh! sister, pray do not ask her now; for Fanny is not one of those who
can talk and work at the same time. It is about Lovers' Vows.”

“I believe,” said Fanny to her aunt Bertram, “there will be three acts
rehearsed to-morrow evening, and that will give you an opportunity of
seeing all the actors at once.”

“You had better stay till the curtain is hung,” interposed Mrs. Norris;
“the curtain will be hung in a day or two--there is very little sense in
a play without a curtain--and I am much mistaken if you do not find it
draw up into very handsome festoons.”

Lady Bertram seemed quite resigned to waiting. Fanny did not share her
aunt's composure: she thought of the morrow a great deal, for if the
three acts were rehearsed, Edmund and Miss Crawford would then be acting
together for the first time; the third act would bring a scene between
them which interested her most particularly, and which she was longing
and dreading to see how they would perform. The whole subject of it was
love--a marriage of love was to be described by the gentleman, and very
little short of a declaration of love be made by the lady.

She had read and read the scene again with many painful, many wondering
emotions, and looked forward to their representation of it as a
circumstance almost too interesting. She did not _believe_ they had yet
rehearsed it, even in private.

The morrow came, the plan for the evening continued, and Fanny's
consideration of it did not become less agitated. She worked very
diligently under her aunt's directions, but her diligence and her
silence concealed a very absent, anxious mind; and about noon she
made her escape with her work to the East room, that she might have no
concern in another, and, as she deemed it, most unnecessary rehearsal of
the first act, which Henry Crawford was just proposing, desirous at
once of having her time to herself, and of avoiding the sight of Mr.
Rushworth. A glimpse, as she passed through the hall, of the two ladies
walking up from the Parsonage made no change in her wish of retreat, and
she worked and meditated in the East room, undisturbed, for a quarter of
an hour, when a gentle tap at the door was followed by the entrance of
Miss Crawford.

“Am I right? Yes; this is the East room. My dear Miss Price, I beg your
pardon, but I have made my way to you on purpose to entreat your help.”

Fanny, quite surprised, endeavoured to shew herself mistress of the room
by her civilities, and looked at the bright bars of her empty grate with
concern.

“Thank you; I am quite warm, very warm. Allow me to stay here a little
while, and do have the goodness to hear me my third act. I have brought
my book, and if you would but rehearse it with me, I should be _so_
obliged! I came here to-day intending to rehearse it with Edmund--by
ourselves--against the evening, but he is not in the way; and if he
_were_, I do not think I could go through it with _him_, till I have
hardened myself a little; for really there is a speech or two. You will
be so good, won't you?”

Fanny was most civil in her assurances, though she could not give them
in a very steady voice.

“Have you ever happened to look at the part I mean?” continued Miss
Crawford, opening her book. “Here it is. I did not think much of it at
first--but, upon my word. There, look at _that_ speech, and _that_, and
_that_. How am I ever to look him in the face and say such things? Could
you do it? But then he is your cousin, which makes all the difference.
You must rehearse it with me, that I may fancy _you_ him, and get on by
degrees. You _have_ a look of _his_ sometimes.”

“Have I? I will do my best with the greatest readiness; but I must
_read_ the part, for I can say very little of it.”

“_None_ of it, I suppose. You are to have the book, of course. Now for
it. We must have two chairs at hand for you to bring forward to the
front of the stage. There--very good school-room chairs, not made for a
theatre, I dare say; much more fitted for little girls to sit and kick
their feet against when they are learning a lesson. What would your
governess and your uncle say to see them used for such a purpose? Could
Sir Thomas look in upon us just now, he would bless himself, for we
are rehearsing all over the house. Yates is storming away in the
dining-room. I heard him as I came upstairs, and the theatre is engaged
of course by those indefatigable rehearsers, Agatha and Frederick. If
_they_ are not perfect, I _shall_ be surprised. By the bye, I looked in
upon them five minutes ago, and it happened to be exactly at one of the
times when they were trying _not_ to embrace, and Mr. Rushworth was with
me. I thought he began to look a little queer, so I turned it off as
well as I could, by whispering to him, 'We shall have an excellent
Agatha; there is something so _maternal_ in her manner, so completely
_maternal_ in her voice and countenance.' Was not that well done of me?
He brightened up directly. Now for my soliloquy.”

She began, and Fanny joined in with all the modest feeling which the
idea of representing Edmund was so strongly calculated to inspire; but
with looks and voice so truly feminine as to be no very good picture of
a man. With such an Anhalt, however, Miss Crawford had courage enough;
and they had got through half the scene, when a tap at the door brought
a pause, and the entrance of Edmund, the next moment, suspended it all.

Surprise, consciousness, and pleasure appeared in each of the three
on this unexpected meeting; and as Edmund was come on the very same
business that had brought Miss Crawford, consciousness and pleasure were
likely to be more than momentary in _them_. He too had his book, and was
seeking Fanny, to ask her to rehearse with him, and help him to prepare
for the evening, without knowing Miss Crawford to be in the house;
and great was the joy and animation of being thus thrown together, of
comparing schemes, and sympathising in praise of Fanny's kind offices.

_She_ could not equal them in their warmth. _Her_ spirits sank under the
glow of theirs, and she felt herself becoming too nearly nothing to
both to have any comfort in having been sought by either. They must now
rehearse together. Edmund proposed, urged, entreated it, till the lady,
not very unwilling at first, could refuse no longer, and Fanny was
wanted only to prompt and observe them. She was invested, indeed, with
the office of judge and critic, and earnestly desired to exercise it and
tell them all their faults; but from doing so every feeling within her
shrank--she could not, would not, dared not attempt it: had she been
otherwise qualified for criticism, her conscience must have restrained
her from venturing at disapprobation. She believed herself to feel too
much of it in the aggregate for honesty or safety in particulars. To
prompt them must be enough for her; and it was sometimes _more_ than
enough; for she could not always pay attention to the book. In watching
them she forgot herself; and, agitated by the increasing spirit of
Edmund's manner, had once closed the page and turned away exactly as he
wanted help. It was imputed to very reasonable weariness, and she was
thanked and pitied; but she deserved their pity more than she hoped they
would ever surmise. At last the scene was over, and Fanny forced herself
to add her praise to the compliments each was giving the other; and when
again alone and able to recall the whole, she was inclined to believe
their performance would, indeed, have such nature and feeling in it as
must ensure their credit, and make it a very suffering exhibition to
herself. Whatever might be its effect, however, she must stand the brunt
of it again that very day.

The first regular rehearsal of the three first acts was certainly to
take place in the evening: Mrs. Grant and the Crawfords were engaged to
return for that purpose as soon as they could after dinner; and every
one concerned was looking forward with eagerness. There seemed a general
diffusion of cheerfulness on the occasion. Tom was enjoying such an
advance towards the end; Edmund was in spirits from the morning's
rehearsal, and little vexations seemed everywhere smoothed away. All
were alert and impatient; the ladies moved soon, the gentlemen soon
followed them, and with the exception of Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris, and
Julia, everybody was in the theatre at an early hour; and having lighted
it up as well as its unfinished state admitted, were waiting only the
arrival of Mrs. Grant and the Crawfords to begin.

They did not wait long for the Crawfords, but there was no Mrs. Grant.
She could not come. Dr. Grant, professing an indisposition, for which he
had little credit with his fair sister-in-law, could not spare his wife.

“Dr. Grant is ill,” said she, with mock solemnity. “He has been ill ever
since he did not eat any of the pheasant today. He fancied it tough,
sent away his plate, and has been suffering ever since”.

Here was disappointment! Mrs. Grant's non-attendance was sad indeed.
Her pleasant manners and cheerful conformity made her always valuable
amongst them; but _now_ she was absolutely necessary. They could not
act, they could not rehearse with any satisfaction without her. The
comfort of the whole evening was destroyed. What was to be done? Tom, as
Cottager, was in despair. After a pause of perplexity, some eyes began
to be turned towards Fanny, and a voice or two to say, “If Miss Price
would be so good as to _read_ the part.” She was immediately surrounded
by supplications; everybody asked it; even Edmund said, “Do, Fanny, if
it is not _very_ disagreeable to you.”

But Fanny still hung back. She could not endure the idea of it. Why was
not Miss Crawford to be applied to as well? Or why had not she rather
gone to her own room, as she had felt to be safest, instead of attending
the rehearsal at all? She had known it would irritate and distress her;
she had known it her duty to keep away. She was properly punished.

“You have only to _read_ the part,” said Henry Crawford, with renewed
entreaty.

“And I do believe she can say every word of it,” added Maria, “for she
could put Mrs. Grant right the other day in twenty places. Fanny, I am
sure you know the part.”

Fanny could not say she did _not_; and as they all persevered, as
Edmund repeated his wish, and with a look of even fond dependence on
her good-nature, she must yield. She would do her best. Everybody was
satisfied; and she was left to the tremors of a most palpitating heart,
while the others prepared to begin.

They _did_ begin; and being too much engaged in their own noise to be
struck by an unusual noise in the other part of the house, had proceeded
some way when the door of the room was thrown open, and Julia, appearing
at it, with a face all aghast, exclaimed, “My father is come! He is in
the hall at this moment.”



CHAPTER XIX

How is the consternation of the party to be described? To the greater
number it was a moment of absolute horror. Sir Thomas in the house! All
felt the instantaneous conviction. Not a hope of imposition or mistake
was harboured anywhere. Julia's looks were an evidence of the fact that
made it indisputable; and after the first starts and exclamations, not a
word was spoken for half a minute: each with an altered countenance was
looking at some other, and almost each was feeling it a stroke the most
unwelcome, most ill-timed, most appalling! Mr. Yates might consider
it only as a vexatious interruption for the evening, and Mr. Rushworth
might imagine it a blessing; but every other heart was sinking under
some degree of self-condemnation or undefined alarm, every other heart
was suggesting, “What will become of us? what is to be done now?” It
was a terrible pause; and terrible to every ear were the corroborating
sounds of opening doors and passing footsteps.

Julia was the first to move and speak again. Jealousy and bitterness
had been suspended: selfishness was lost in the common cause; but at the
moment of her appearance, Frederick was listening with looks of devotion
to Agatha's narrative, and pressing her hand to his heart; and as soon
as she could notice this, and see that, in spite of the shock of her
words, he still kept his station and retained her sister's hand, her
wounded heart swelled again with injury, and looking as red as she had
been white before, she turned out of the room, saying, “_I_ need not be
afraid of appearing before him.”

Her going roused the rest; and at the same moment the two brothers
stepped forward, feeling the necessity of doing something. A very few
words between them were sufficient. The case admitted no difference of
opinion: they must go to the drawing-room directly. Maria joined them
with the same intent, just then the stoutest of the three; for the
very circumstance which had driven Julia away was to her the sweetest
support. Henry Crawford's retaining her hand at such a moment, a moment
of such peculiar proof and importance, was worth ages of doubt and
anxiety. She hailed it as an earnest of the most serious determination,
and was equal even to encounter her father. They walked off, utterly
heedless of Mr. Rushworth's repeated question of, “Shall I go too? Had
not I better go too? Will not it be right for me to go too?” but they
were no sooner through the door than Henry Crawford undertook to answer
the anxious inquiry, and, encouraging him by all means to pay his
respects to Sir Thomas without delay, sent him after the others with
delighted haste.

Fanny was left with only the Crawfords and Mr. Yates. She had been quite
overlooked by her cousins; and as her own opinion of her claims on Sir
Thomas's affection was much too humble to give her any idea of classing
herself with his children, she was glad to remain behind and gain a
little breathing-time. Her agitation and alarm exceeded all that was
endured by the rest, by the right of a disposition which not even
innocence could keep from suffering. She was nearly fainting: all her
former habitual dread of her uncle was returning, and with it compassion
for him and for almost every one of the party on the development before
him, with solicitude on Edmund's account indescribable. She had found
a seat, where in excessive trembling she was enduring all these fearful
thoughts, while the other three, no longer under any restraint, were
giving vent to their feelings of vexation, lamenting over such an
unlooked-for premature arrival as a most untoward event, and without
mercy wishing poor Sir Thomas had been twice as long on his passage, or
were still in Antigua.

The Crawfords were more warm on the subject than Mr. Yates, from better
understanding the family, and judging more clearly of the mischief that
must ensue. The ruin of the play was to them a certainty: they felt
the total destruction of the scheme to be inevitably at hand; while Mr.
Yates considered it only as a temporary interruption, a disaster for the
evening, and could even suggest the possibility of the rehearsal being
renewed after tea, when the bustle of receiving Sir Thomas were over,
and he might be at leisure to be amused by it. The Crawfords laughed
at the idea; and having soon agreed on the propriety of their walking
quietly home and leaving the family to themselves, proposed Mr. Yates's
accompanying them and spending the evening at the Parsonage. But Mr.
Yates, having never been with those who thought much of parental claims,
or family confidence, could not perceive that anything of the kind was
necessary; and therefore, thanking them, said, “he preferred remaining
where he was, that he might pay his respects to the old gentleman
handsomely since he _was_ come; and besides, he did not think it would
be fair by the others to have everybody run away.”

Fanny was just beginning to collect herself, and to feel that if she
staid longer behind it might seem disrespectful, when this point was
settled, and being commissioned with the brother and sister's apology,
saw them preparing to go as she quitted the room herself to perform the
dreadful duty of appearing before her uncle.

Too soon did she find herself at the drawing-room door; and after
pausing a moment for what she knew would not come, for a courage which
the outside of no door had ever supplied to her, she turned the lock in
desperation, and the lights of the drawing-room, and all the collected
family, were before her. As she entered, her own name caught her ear.
Sir Thomas was at that moment looking round him, and saying, “But where
is Fanny? Why do not I see my little Fanny?”--and on perceiving her,
came forward with a kindness which astonished and penetrated her,
calling her his dear Fanny, kissing her affectionately, and observing
with decided pleasure how much she was grown! Fanny knew not how to
feel, nor where to look. She was quite oppressed. He had never been so
kind, so _very_ kind to her in his life. His manner seemed changed, his
voice was quick from the agitation of joy; and all that had been awful
in his dignity seemed lost in tenderness. He led her nearer the light
and looked at her again--inquired particularly after her health, and
then, correcting himself, observed that he need not inquire, for
her appearance spoke sufficiently on that point. A fine blush having
succeeded the previous paleness of her face, he was justified in his
belief of her equal improvement in health and beauty. He inquired next
after her family, especially William: and his kindness altogether was
such as made her reproach herself for loving him so little, and thinking
his return a misfortune; and when, on having courage to lift her eyes to
his face, she saw that he was grown thinner, and had the burnt, fagged,
worn look of fatigue and a hot climate, every tender feeling was
increased, and she was miserable in considering how much unsuspected
vexation was probably ready to burst on him.

Sir Thomas was indeed the life of the party, who at his suggestion
now seated themselves round the fire. He had the best right to be the
talker; and the delight of his sensations in being again in his own
house, in the centre of his family, after such a separation, made him
communicative and chatty in a very unusual degree; and he was ready to
give every information as to his voyage, and answer every question
of his two sons almost before it was put. His business in Antigua had
latterly been prosperously rapid, and he came directly from Liverpool,
having had an opportunity of making his passage thither in a private
vessel, instead of waiting for the packet; and all the little
particulars of his proceedings and events, his arrivals and departures,
were most promptly delivered, as he sat by Lady Bertram and looked with
heartfelt satisfaction on the faces around him--interrupting himself
more than once, however, to remark on his good fortune in finding them
all at home--coming unexpectedly as he did--all collected together
exactly as he could have wished, but dared not depend on. Mr. Rushworth
was not forgotten: a most friendly reception and warmth of hand-shaking
had already met him, and with pointed attention he was now included in
the objects most intimately connected with Mansfield. There was nothing
disagreeable in Mr. Rushworth's appearance, and Sir Thomas was liking
him already.

By not one of the circle was he listened to with such unbroken,
unalloyed enjoyment as by his wife, who was really extremely happy to
see him, and whose feelings were so warmed by his sudden arrival as to
place her nearer agitation than she had been for the last twenty years.
She had been _almost_ fluttered for a few minutes, and still remained so
sensibly animated as to put away her work, move Pug from her side, and
give all her attention and all the rest of her sofa to her husband. She
had no anxieties for anybody to cloud _her_ pleasure: her own time had
been irreproachably spent during his absence: she had done a great
deal of carpet-work, and made many yards of fringe; and she would have
answered as freely for the good conduct and useful pursuits of all
the young people as for her own. It was so agreeable to her to see
him again, and hear him talk, to have her ear amused and her whole
comprehension filled by his narratives, that she began particularly
to feel how dreadfully she must have missed him, and how impossible it
would have been for her to bear a lengthened absence.

Mrs. Norris was by no means to be compared in happiness to her
sister. Not that _she_ was incommoded by many fears of Sir Thomas's
disapprobation when the present state of his house should be known, for
her judgment had been so blinded that, except by the instinctive caution
with which she had whisked away Mr. Rushworth's pink satin cloak as her
brother-in-law entered, she could hardly be said to shew any sign of
alarm; but she was vexed by the _manner_ of his return. It had left her
nothing to do. Instead of being sent for out of the room, and seeing
him first, and having to spread the happy news through the house, Sir
Thomas, with a very reasonable dependence, perhaps, on the nerves of his
wife and children, had sought no confidant but the butler, and had been
following him almost instantaneously into the drawing-room. Mrs. Norris
felt herself defrauded of an office on which she had always depended,
whether his arrival or his death were to be the thing unfolded; and was
now trying to be in a bustle without having anything to bustle about,
and labouring to be important where nothing was wanted but tranquillity
and silence. Would Sir Thomas have consented to eat, she might have gone
to the housekeeper with troublesome directions, and insulted the footmen
with injunctions of despatch; but Sir Thomas resolutely declined all
dinner: he would take nothing, nothing till tea came--he would rather
wait for tea. Still Mrs. Norris was at intervals urging something
different; and in the most interesting moment of his passage to England,
when the alarm of a French privateer was at the height, she burst
through his recital with the proposal of soup. “Sure, my dear Sir
Thomas, a basin of soup would be a much better thing for you than tea.
Do have a basin of soup.”

Sir Thomas could not be provoked. “Still the same anxiety for
everybody's comfort, my dear Mrs. Norris,” was his answer. “But indeed I
would rather have nothing but tea.”

“Well, then, Lady Bertram, suppose you speak for tea directly; suppose
you hurry Baddeley a little; he seems behindhand to-night.” She carried
this point, and Sir Thomas's narrative proceeded.

At length there was a pause. His immediate communications were
exhausted, and it seemed enough to be looking joyfully around him, now
at one, now at another of the beloved circle; but the pause was not
long: in the elation of her spirits Lady Bertram became talkative, and
what were the sensations of her children upon hearing her say, “How
do you think the young people have been amusing themselves lately, Sir
Thomas? They have been acting. We have been all alive with acting.”

“Indeed! and what have you been acting?”

“Oh! they'll tell you all about it.”

“The _all_ will soon be told,” cried Tom hastily, and with affected
unconcern; “but it is not worth while to bore my father with it now. You
will hear enough of it to-morrow, sir. We have just been trying, by way
of doing something, and amusing my mother, just within the last week,
to get up a few scenes, a mere trifle. We have had such incessant rains
almost since October began, that we have been nearly confined to the
house for days together. I have hardly taken out a gun since the 3rd.
Tolerable sport the first three days, but there has been no attempting
anything since. The first day I went over Mansfield Wood, and Edmund
took the copses beyond Easton, and we brought home six brace between
us, and might each have killed six times as many, but we respect your
pheasants, sir, I assure you, as much as you could desire. I do not
think you will find your woods by any means worse stocked than they
were. _I_ never saw Mansfield Wood so full of pheasants in my life
as this year. I hope you will take a day's sport there yourself, sir,
soon.”

For the present the danger was over, and Fanny's sick feelings subsided;
but when tea was soon afterwards brought in, and Sir Thomas, getting up,
said that he found that he could not be any longer in the house without
just looking into his own dear room, every agitation was returning. He
was gone before anything had been said to prepare him for the change he
must find there; and a pause of alarm followed his disappearance. Edmund
was the first to speak--

“Something must be done,” said he.

“It is time to think of our visitors,” said Maria, still feeling her
hand pressed to Henry Crawford's heart, and caring little for anything
else. “Where did you leave Miss Crawford, Fanny?”

Fanny told of their departure, and delivered their message.

“Then poor Yates is all alone,” cried Tom. “I will go and fetch him. He
will be no bad assistant when it all comes out.”

To the theatre he went, and reached it just in time to witness the first
meeting of his father and his friend. Sir Thomas had been a good deal
surprised to find candles burning in his room; and on casting his eye
round it, to see other symptoms of recent habitation and a general air
of confusion in the furniture. The removal of the bookcase from before
the billiard-room door struck him especially, but he had scarcely more
than time to feel astonished at all this, before there were sounds from
the billiard-room to astonish him still farther. Some one was talking
there in a very loud accent; he did not know the voice--more than
talking--almost hallooing. He stepped to the door, rejoicing at that
moment in having the means of immediate communication, and, opening it,
found himself on the stage of a theatre, and opposed to a ranting young
man, who appeared likely to knock him down backwards. At the very moment
of Yates perceiving Sir Thomas, and giving perhaps the very best start
he had ever given in the whole course of his rehearsals, Tom Bertram
entered at the other end of the room; and never had he found greater
difficulty in keeping his countenance. His father's looks of solemnity
and amazement on this his first appearance on any stage, and the gradual
metamorphosis of the impassioned Baron Wildenheim into the well-bred and
easy Mr. Yates, making his bow and apology to Sir Thomas Bertram, was
such an exhibition, such a piece of true acting, as he would not have
lost upon any account. It would be the last--in all probability--the
last scene on that stage; but he was sure there could not be a finer.
The house would close with the greatest eclat.

There was little time, however, for the indulgence of any images of
merriment. It was necessary for him to step forward, too, and assist
the introduction, and with many awkward sensations he did his best. Sir
Thomas received Mr. Yates with all the appearance of cordiality which
was due to his own character, but was really as far from pleased
with the necessity of the acquaintance as with the manner of its
commencement. Mr. Yates's family and connexions were sufficiently known
to him to render his introduction as the “particular friend,” another of
the hundred particular friends of his son, exceedingly unwelcome; and it
needed all the felicity of being again at home, and all the forbearance
it could supply, to save Sir Thomas from anger on finding himself thus
bewildered in his own house, making part of a ridiculous exhibition in
the midst of theatrical nonsense, and forced in so untoward a moment to
admit the acquaintance of a young man whom he felt sure of disapproving,
and whose easy indifference and volubility in the course of the first
five minutes seemed to mark him the most at home of the two.

Tom understood his father's thoughts, and heartily wishing he might be
always as well disposed to give them but partial expression, began to
see, more clearly than he had ever done before, that there might be some
ground of offence, that there might be some reason for the glance his
father gave towards the ceiling and stucco of the room; and that when he
inquired with mild gravity after the fate of the billiard-table, he was
not proceeding beyond a very allowable curiosity. A few minutes were
enough for such unsatisfactory sensations on each side; and Sir
Thomas having exerted himself so far as to speak a few words of
calm approbation in reply to an eager appeal of Mr. Yates, as to the
happiness of the arrangement, the three gentlemen returned to the
drawing-room together, Sir Thomas with an increase of gravity which was
not lost on all.

“I come from your theatre,” said he composedly, as he sat down; “I found
myself in it rather unexpectedly. Its vicinity to my own room--but in
every respect, indeed, it took me by surprise, as I had not the smallest
suspicion of your acting having assumed so serious a character. It
appears a neat job, however, as far as I could judge by candlelight,
and does my friend Christopher Jackson credit.” And then he would
have changed the subject, and sipped his coffee in peace over domestic
matters of a calmer hue; but Mr. Yates, without discernment to catch Sir
Thomas's meaning, or diffidence, or delicacy, or discretion enough to
allow him to lead the discourse while he mingled among the others with
the least obtrusiveness himself, would keep him on the topic of the
theatre, would torment him with questions and remarks relative to it,
and finally would make him hear the whole history of his disappointment
at Ecclesford. Sir Thomas listened most politely, but found much to
offend his ideas of decorum, and confirm his ill-opinion of Mr. Yates's
habits of thinking, from the beginning to the end of the story; and when
it was over, could give him no other assurance of sympathy than what a
slight bow conveyed.

“This was, in fact, the origin of _our_ acting,” said Tom, after
a moment's thought. “My friend Yates brought the infection from
Ecclesford, and it spread--as those things always spread, you know,
sir--the faster, probably, from _your_ having so often encouraged the
sort of thing in us formerly. It was like treading old ground again.”

Mr. Yates took the subject from his friend as soon as possible, and
immediately gave Sir Thomas an account of what they had done and were
doing: told him of the gradual increase of their views, the happy
conclusion of their first difficulties, and present promising state of
affairs; relating everything with so blind an interest as made him not
only totally unconscious of the uneasy movements of many of his
friends as they sat, the change of countenance, the fidget, the hem! of
unquietness, but prevented him even from seeing the expression of the
face on which his own eyes were fixed--from seeing Sir Thomas's dark
brow contract as he looked with inquiring earnestness at his daughters
and Edmund, dwelling particularly on the latter, and speaking a
language, a remonstrance, a reproof, which _he_ felt at his heart. Not
less acutely was it felt by Fanny, who had edged back her chair behind
her aunt's end of the sofa, and, screened from notice herself, saw all
that was passing before her. Such a look of reproach at Edmund from his
father she could never have expected to witness; and to feel that it
was in any degree deserved was an aggravation indeed. Sir Thomas's
look implied, “On your judgment, Edmund, I depended; what have you
been about?” She knelt in spirit to her uncle, and her bosom swelled to
utter, “Oh, not to _him_! Look so to all the others, but not to _him_!”

Mr. Yates was still talking. “To own the truth, Sir Thomas, we were in
the middle of a rehearsal when you arrived this evening. We were going
through the three first acts, and not unsuccessfully upon the whole. Our
company is now so dispersed, from the Crawfords being gone home, that
nothing more can be done to-night; but if you will give us the honour of
your company to-morrow evening, I should not be afraid of the result. We
bespeak your indulgence, you understand, as young performers; we bespeak
your indulgence.”

“My indulgence shall be given, sir,” replied Sir Thomas gravely, “but
without any other rehearsal.” And with a relenting smile, he added, “I
come home to be happy and indulgent.” Then turning away towards any
or all of the rest, he tranquilly said, “Mr. and Miss Crawford were
mentioned in my last letters from Mansfield. Do you find them agreeable
acquaintance?”

Tom was the only one at all ready with an answer, but he being entirely
without particular regard for either, without jealousy either in love
or acting, could speak very handsomely of both. “Mr. Crawford was a
most pleasant, gentleman-like man; his sister a sweet, pretty, elegant,
lively girl.”

Mr. Rushworth could be silent no longer. “I do not say he is not
gentleman-like, considering; but you should tell your father he is not
above five feet eight, or he will be expecting a well-looking man.”

Sir Thomas did not quite understand this, and looked with some surprise
at the speaker.

“If I must say what I think,” continued Mr. Rushworth, “in my opinion it
is very disagreeable to be always rehearsing. It is having too much of a
good thing. I am not so fond of acting as I was at first. I think we are
a great deal better employed, sitting comfortably here among ourselves,
and doing nothing.”

Sir Thomas looked again, and then replied with an approving smile, “I am
happy to find our sentiments on this subject so much the same. It gives
me sincere satisfaction. That I should be cautious and quick-sighted,
and feel many scruples which my children do _not_ feel, is perfectly
natural; and equally so that my value for domestic tranquillity, for a
home which shuts out noisy pleasures, should much exceed theirs. But at
your time of life to feel all this, is a most favourable circumstance
for yourself, and for everybody connected with you; and I am sensible of
the importance of having an ally of such weight.”

Sir Thomas meant to be giving Mr. Rushworth's opinion in better words
than he could find himself. He was aware that he must not expect a
genius in Mr. Rushworth; but as a well-judging, steady young man, with
better notions than his elocution would do justice to, he intended to
value him very highly. It was impossible for many of the others not to
smile. Mr. Rushworth hardly knew what to do with so much meaning; but by
looking, as he really felt, most exceedingly pleased with Sir Thomas's
good opinion, and saying scarcely anything, he did his best towards
preserving that good opinion a little longer.



CHAPTER XX

Edmund's first object the next morning was to see his father alone, and
give him a fair statement of the whole acting scheme, defending his own
share in it as far only as he could then, in a soberer moment, feel his
motives to deserve, and acknowledging, with perfect ingenuousness, that
his concession had been attended with such partial good as to make his
judgment in it very doubtful. He was anxious, while vindicating himself,
to say nothing unkind of the others: but there was only one amongst
them whose conduct he could mention without some necessity of defence
or palliation. “We have all been more or less to blame,” said he, “every
one of us, excepting Fanny. Fanny is the only one who has judged rightly
throughout; who has been consistent. _Her_ feelings have been steadily
against it from first to last. She never ceased to think of what was due
to you. You will find Fanny everything you could wish.”

Sir Thomas saw all the impropriety of such a scheme among such a party,
and at such a time, as strongly as his son had ever supposed he must; he
felt it too much, indeed, for many words; and having shaken hands with
Edmund, meant to try to lose the disagreeable impression, and forget how
much he had been forgotten himself as soon as he could, after the house
had been cleared of every object enforcing the remembrance, and restored
to its proper state. He did not enter into any remonstrance with his
other children: he was more willing to believe they felt their error
than to run the risk of investigation. The reproof of an immediate
conclusion of everything, the sweep of every preparation, would be
sufficient.

There was one person, however, in the house, whom he could not leave
to learn his sentiments merely through his conduct. He could not help
giving Mrs. Norris a hint of his having hoped that her advice might
have been interposed to prevent what her judgment must certainly have
disapproved. The young people had been very inconsiderate in forming the
plan; they ought to have been capable of a better decision themselves;
but they were young; and, excepting Edmund, he believed, of unsteady
characters; and with greater surprise, therefore, he must regard her
acquiescence in their wrong measures, her countenance of their unsafe
amusements, than that such measures and such amusements should have
been suggested. Mrs. Norris was a little confounded and as nearly
being silenced as ever she had been in her life; for she was ashamed to
confess having never seen any of the impropriety which was so glaring
to Sir Thomas, and would not have admitted that her influence was
insufficient--that she might have talked in vain. Her only resource was
to get out of the subject as fast as possible, and turn the current
of Sir Thomas's ideas into a happier channel. She had a great deal to
insinuate in her own praise as to _general_ attention to the interest
and comfort of his family, much exertion and many sacrifices to glance
at in the form of hurried walks and sudden removals from her own
fireside, and many excellent hints of distrust and economy to Lady
Bertram and Edmund to detail, whereby a most considerable saving had
always arisen, and more than one bad servant been detected. But her
chief strength lay in Sotherton. Her greatest support and glory was
in having formed the connexion with the Rushworths. _There_ she
was impregnable. She took to herself all the credit of bringing Mr.
Rushworth's admiration of Maria to any effect. “If I had not been
active,” said she, “and made a point of being introduced to his mother,
and then prevailed on my sister to pay the first visit, I am as certain
as I sit here that nothing would have come of it; for Mr. Rushworth
is the sort of amiable modest young man who wants a great deal of
encouragement, and there were girls enough on the catch for him if we
had been idle. But I left no stone unturned. I was ready to move heaven
and earth to persuade my sister, and at last I did persuade her. You
know the distance to Sotherton; it was in the middle of winter, and the
roads almost impassable, but I did persuade her.”

“I know how great, how justly great, your influence is with Lady Bertram
and her children, and am the more concerned that it should not have
been.”

“My dear Sir Thomas, if you had seen the state of the roads _that_ day!
I thought we should never have got through them, though we had the four
horses of course; and poor old coachman would attend us, out of his
great love and kindness, though he was hardly able to sit the box on
account of the rheumatism which I had been doctoring him for ever since
Michaelmas. I cured him at last; but he was very bad all the winter--and
this was such a day, I could not help going to him up in his room before
we set off to advise him not to venture: he was putting on his wig; so
I said, 'Coachman, you had much better not go; your Lady and I shall be
very safe; you know how steady Stephen is, and Charles has been upon the
leaders so often now, that I am sure there is no fear.' But, however, I
soon found it would not do; he was bent upon going, and as I hate to be
worrying and officious, I said no more; but my heart quite ached for him
at every jolt, and when we got into the rough lanes about Stoke, where,
what with frost and snow upon beds of stones, it was worse than anything
you can imagine, I was quite in an agony about him. And then the poor
horses too! To see them straining away! You know how I always feel for
the horses. And when we got to the bottom of Sandcroft Hill, what do you
think I did? You will laugh at me; but I got out and walked up. I did
indeed. It might not be saving them much, but it was something, and I
could not bear to sit at my ease and be dragged up at the expense of
those noble animals. I caught a dreadful cold, but _that_ I did not
regard. My object was accomplished in the visit.”

“I hope we shall always think the acquaintance worth any trouble that
might be taken to establish it. There is nothing very striking in Mr.
Rushworth's manners, but I was pleased last night with what appeared to
be his opinion on one subject: his decided preference of a quiet family
party to the bustle and confusion of acting. He seemed to feel exactly
as one could wish.”

“Yes, indeed, and the more you know of him the better you will like him.
He is not a shining character, but he has a thousand good qualities; and
is so disposed to look up to you, that I am quite laughed at about it,
for everybody considers it as my doing. 'Upon my word, Mrs. Norris,'
said Mrs. Grant the other day, 'if Mr. Rushworth were a son of your own,
he could not hold Sir Thomas in greater respect.'”

Sir Thomas gave up the point, foiled by her evasions, disarmed by her
flattery; and was obliged to rest satisfied with the conviction that
where the present pleasure of those she loved was at stake, her kindness
did sometimes overpower her judgment.

It was a busy morning with him. Conversation with any of them occupied
but a small part of it. He had to reinstate himself in all the wonted
concerns of his Mansfield life: to see his steward and his bailiff; to
examine and compute, and, in the intervals of business, to walk into
his stables and his gardens, and nearest plantations; but active and
methodical, he had not only done all this before he resumed his seat as
master of the house at dinner, he had also set the carpenter to work in
pulling down what had been so lately put up in the billiard-room,
and given the scene-painter his dismissal long enough to justify the
pleasing belief of his being then at least as far off as Northampton.
The scene-painter was gone, having spoilt only the floor of one room,
ruined all the coachman's sponges, and made five of the under-servants
idle and dissatisfied; and Sir Thomas was in hopes that another day or
two would suffice to wipe away every outward memento of what had been,
even to the destruction of every unbound copy of Lovers' Vows in the
house, for he was burning all that met his eye.

Mr. Yates was beginning now to understand Sir Thomas's intentions,
though as far as ever from understanding their source. He and his friend
had been out with their guns the chief of the morning, and Tom had taken
the opportunity of explaining, with proper apologies for his father's
particularity, what was to be expected. Mr. Yates felt it as acutely as
might be supposed. To be a second time disappointed in the same way was
an instance of very severe ill-luck; and his indignation was such,
that had it not been for delicacy towards his friend, and his friend's
youngest sister, he believed he should certainly attack the baronet
on the absurdity of his proceedings, and argue him into a little more
rationality. He believed this very stoutly while he was in Mansfield
Wood, and all the way home; but there was a something in Sir Thomas,
when they sat round the same table, which made Mr. Yates think it
wiser to let him pursue his own way, and feel the folly of it without
opposition. He had known many disagreeable fathers before, and often
been struck with the inconveniences they occasioned, but never, in
the whole course of his life, had he seen one of that class so
unintelligibly moral, so infamously tyrannical as Sir Thomas. He was
not a man to be endured but for his children's sake, and he might be
thankful to his fair daughter Julia that Mr. Yates did yet mean to stay
a few days longer under his roof.

The evening passed with external smoothness, though almost every
mind was ruffled; and the music which Sir Thomas called for from his
daughters helped to conceal the want of real harmony. Maria was in a
good deal of agitation. It was of the utmost consequence to her that
Crawford should now lose no time in declaring himself, and she was
disturbed that even a day should be gone by without seeming to advance
that point. She had been expecting to see him the whole morning, and
all the evening, too, was still expecting him. Mr. Rushworth had set off
early with the great news for Sotherton; and she had fondly hoped for
such an immediate _eclaircissement_ as might save him the trouble of
ever coming back again. But they had seen no one from the Parsonage,
not a creature, and had heard no tidings beyond a friendly note of
congratulation and inquiry from Mrs. Grant to Lady Bertram. It was the
first day for many, many weeks, in which the families had been wholly
divided. Four-and-twenty hours had never passed before, since August
began, without bringing them together in some way or other. It was a
sad, anxious day; and the morrow, though differing in the sort of evil,
did by no means bring less. A few moments of feverish enjoyment were
followed by hours of acute suffering. Henry Crawford was again in the
house: he walked up with Dr. Grant, who was anxious to pay his respects
to Sir Thomas, and at rather an early hour they were ushered into the
breakfast-room, where were most of the family. Sir Thomas soon appeared,
and Maria saw with delight and agitation the introduction of the man she
loved to her father. Her sensations were indefinable, and so were they
a few minutes afterwards upon hearing Henry Crawford, who had a chair
between herself and Tom, ask the latter in an undervoice whether
there were any plans for resuming the play after the present happy
interruption (with a courteous glance at Sir Thomas), because, in that
case, he should make a point of returning to Mansfield at any time
required by the party: he was going away immediately, being to meet his
uncle at Bath without delay; but if there were any prospect of a renewal
of Lovers' Vows, he should hold himself positively engaged, he should
break through every other claim, he should absolutely condition with his
uncle for attending them whenever he might be wanted. The play should
not be lost by _his_ absence.

“From Bath, Norfolk, London, York, wherever I may be,” said he; “I will
attend you from any place in England, at an hour's notice.”

It was well at that moment that Tom had to speak, and not his sister. He
could immediately say with easy fluency, “I am sorry you are going;
but as to our play, _that_ is all over--entirely at an end” (looking
significantly at his father). “The painter was sent off yesterday, and
very little will remain of the theatre to-morrow. I knew how _that_
would be from the first. It is early for Bath. You will find nobody
there.”

“It is about my uncle's usual time.”

“When do you think of going?”

“I may, perhaps, get as far as Banbury to-day.”

“Whose stables do you use at Bath?” was the next question; and while
this branch of the subject was under discussion, Maria, who wanted
neither pride nor resolution, was preparing to encounter her share of it
with tolerable calmness.

To her he soon turned, repeating much of what he had already said, with
only a softened air and stronger expressions of regret. But what availed
his expressions or his air? He was going, and, if not voluntarily going,
voluntarily intending to stay away; for, excepting what might be due
to his uncle, his engagements were all self-imposed. He might talk of
necessity, but she knew his independence. The hand which had so pressed
hers to his heart! the hand and the heart were alike motionless and
passive now! Her spirit supported her, but the agony of her mind was
severe. She had not long to endure what arose from listening to language
which his actions contradicted, or to bury the tumult of her feelings
under the restraint of society; for general civilities soon called
his notice from her, and the farewell visit, as it then became openly
acknowledged, was a very short one. He was gone--he had touched her
hand for the last time, he had made his parting bow, and she might seek
directly all that solitude could do for her. Henry Crawford was gone,
gone from the house, and within two hours afterwards from the parish;
and so ended all the hopes his selfish vanity had raised in Maria and
Julia Bertram.

Julia could rejoice that he was gone. His presence was beginning to be
odious to her; and if Maria gained him not, she was now cool enough to
dispense with any other revenge. She did not want exposure to be added
to desertion. Henry Crawford gone, she could even pity her sister.

With a purer spirit did Fanny rejoice in the intelligence. She heard it
at dinner, and felt it a blessing. By all the others it was mentioned
with regret; and his merits honoured with due gradation of feeling--from
the sincerity of Edmund's too partial regard, to the unconcern of his
mother speaking entirely by rote. Mrs. Norris began to look about her,
and wonder that his falling in love with Julia had come to nothing; and
could almost fear that she had been remiss herself in forwarding it; but
with so many to care for, how was it possible for even _her_ activity to
keep pace with her wishes?

Another day or two, and Mr. Yates was gone likewise. In _his_ departure
Sir Thomas felt the chief interest: wanting to be alone with his family,
the presence of a stranger superior to Mr. Yates must have been irksome;
but of him, trifling and confident, idle and expensive, it was every way
vexatious. In himself he was wearisome, but as the friend of Tom and
the admirer of Julia he became offensive. Sir Thomas had been quite
indifferent to Mr. Crawford's going or staying: but his good wishes
for Mr. Yates's having a pleasant journey, as he walked with him to the
hall-door, were given with genuine satisfaction. Mr. Yates had staid to
see the destruction of every theatrical preparation at Mansfield, the
removal of everything appertaining to the play: he left the house in all
the soberness of its general character; and Sir Thomas hoped, in seeing
him out of it, to be rid of the worst object connected with the scheme,
and the last that must be inevitably reminding him of its existence.

Mrs. Norris contrived to remove one article from his sight that might
have distressed him. The curtain, over which she had presided with such
talent and such success, went off with her to her cottage, where she
happened to be particularly in want of green baize.



CHAPTER XXI

Sir Thomas's return made a striking change in the ways of the family,
independent of Lovers' Vows. Under his government, Mansfield was an
altered place. Some members of their society sent away, and the spirits
of many others saddened--it was all sameness and gloom compared with
the past--a sombre family party rarely enlivened. There was little
intercourse with the Parsonage. Sir Thomas, drawing back from intimacies
in general, was particularly disinclined, at this time, for any
engagements but in one quarter. The Rushworths were the only addition to
his own domestic circle which he could solicit.

Edmund did not wonder that such should be his father's feelings, nor
could he regret anything but the exclusion of the Grants. “But they,” he
observed to Fanny, “have a claim. They seem to belong to us; they seem
to be part of ourselves. I could wish my father were more sensible of
their very great attention to my mother and sisters while he was away. I
am afraid they may feel themselves neglected. But the truth is, that my
father hardly knows them. They had not been here a twelvemonth when he
left England. If he knew them better, he would value their society as it
deserves; for they are in fact exactly the sort of people he would
like. We are sometimes a little in want of animation among ourselves: my
sisters seem out of spirits, and Tom is certainly not at his ease. Dr.
and Mrs. Grant would enliven us, and make our evenings pass away with
more enjoyment even to my father.”

“Do you think so?” said Fanny: “in my opinion, my uncle would not like
_any_ addition. I think he values the very quietness you speak of, and
that the repose of his own family circle is all he wants. And it does
not appear to me that we are more serious than we used to be--I mean
before my uncle went abroad. As well as I can recollect, it was always
much the same. There was never much laughing in his presence; or, if
there is any difference, it is not more, I think, than such an absence
has a tendency to produce at first. There must be a sort of shyness; but
I cannot recollect that our evenings formerly were ever merry, except
when my uncle was in town. No young people's are, I suppose, when those
they look up to are at home”.

“I believe you are right, Fanny,” was his reply, after a short
consideration. “I believe our evenings are rather returned to what they
were, than assuming a new character. The novelty was in their being
lively. Yet, how strong the impression that only a few weeks will give!
I have been feeling as if we had never lived so before.”

“I suppose I am graver than other people,” said Fanny. “The evenings do
not appear long to me. I love to hear my uncle talk of the West Indies.
I could listen to him for an hour together. It entertains _me_ more than
many other things have done; but then I am unlike other people, I dare
say.”

“Why should you dare say _that_?” (smiling). “Do you want to be told
that you are only unlike other people in being more wise and discreet?
But when did you, or anybody, ever get a compliment from me, Fanny? Go
to my father if you want to be complimented. He will satisfy you. Ask
your uncle what he thinks, and you will hear compliments enough: and
though they may be chiefly on your person, you must put up with it, and
trust to his seeing as much beauty of mind in time.”

Such language was so new to Fanny that it quite embarrassed her.

“Your uncle thinks you very pretty, dear Fanny--and that is the long and
the short of the matter. Anybody but myself would have made something
more of it, and anybody but you would resent that you had not been
thought very pretty before; but the truth is, that your uncle never
did admire you till now--and now he does. Your complexion is so
improved!--and you have gained so much countenance!--and your
figure--nay, Fanny, do not turn away about it--it is but an uncle. If
you cannot bear an uncle's admiration, what is to become of you? You
must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking
at. You must try not to mind growing up into a pretty woman.”

“Oh! don't talk so, don't talk so,” cried Fanny, distressed by more
feelings than he was aware of; but seeing that she was distressed, he
had done with the subject, and only added more seriously--

“Your uncle is disposed to be pleased with you in every respect; and I
only wish you would talk to him more. You are one of those who are too
silent in the evening circle.”

“But I do talk to him more than I used. I am sure I do. Did not you hear
me ask him about the slave-trade last night?”

“I did--and was in hopes the question would be followed up by others. It
would have pleased your uncle to be inquired of farther.”

“And I longed to do it--but there was such a dead silence! And while
my cousins were sitting by without speaking a word, or seeming at all
interested in the subject, I did not like--I thought it would appear as
if I wanted to set myself off at their expense, by shewing a curiosity
and pleasure in his information which he must wish his own daughters to
feel.”

“Miss Crawford was very right in what she said of you the other day:
that you seemed almost as fearful of notice and praise as other women
were of neglect. We were talking of you at the Parsonage, and those were
her words. She has great discernment. I know nobody who distinguishes
characters better. For so young a woman it is remarkable! She certainly
understands _you_ better than you are understood by the greater part of
those who have known you so long; and with regard to some others, I can
perceive, from occasional lively hints, the unguarded expressions of
the moment, that she could define _many_ as accurately, did not delicacy
forbid it. I wonder what she thinks of my father! She must admire him
as a fine-looking man, with most gentlemanlike, dignified, consistent
manners; but perhaps, having seen him so seldom, his reserve may be
a little repulsive. Could they be much together, I feel sure of their
liking each other. He would enjoy her liveliness and she has talents to
value his powers. I wish they met more frequently! I hope she does not
suppose there is any dislike on his side.”

“She must know herself too secure of the regard of all the rest of you,”
 said Fanny, with half a sigh, “to have any such apprehension. And Sir
Thomas's wishing just at first to be only with his family, is so very
natural, that she can argue nothing from that. After a little while, I
dare say, we shall be meeting again in the same sort of way, allowing
for the difference of the time of year.”

“This is the first October that she has passed in the country since her
infancy. I do not call Tunbridge or Cheltenham the country; and November
is a still more serious month, and I can see that Mrs. Grant is very
anxious for her not finding Mansfield dull as winter comes on.”

Fanny could have said a great deal, but it was safer to say nothing, and
leave untouched all Miss Crawford's resources--her accomplishments, her
spirits, her importance, her friends, lest it should betray her into
any observations seemingly unhandsome. Miss Crawford's kind opinion of
herself deserved at least a grateful forbearance, and she began to talk
of something else.

“To-morrow, I think, my uncle dines at Sotherton, and you and Mr.
Bertram too. We shall be quite a small party at home. I hope my uncle
may continue to like Mr. Rushworth.”

“That is impossible, Fanny. He must like him less after to-morrow's
visit, for we shall be five hours in his company. I should dread
the stupidity of the day, if there were not a much greater evil to
follow--the impression it must leave on Sir Thomas. He cannot much
longer deceive himself. I am sorry for them all, and would give
something that Rushworth and Maria had never met.”

In this quarter, indeed, disappointment was impending over Sir Thomas.
Not all his good-will for Mr. Rushworth, not all Mr. Rushworth's
deference for him, could prevent him from soon discerning some part of
the truth--that Mr. Rushworth was an inferior young man, as ignorant
in business as in books, with opinions in general unfixed, and without
seeming much aware of it himself.

He had expected a very different son-in-law; and beginning to feel
grave on Maria's account, tried to understand _her_ feelings. Little
observation there was necessary to tell him that indifference was the
most favourable state they could be in. Her behaviour to Mr. Rushworth
was careless and cold. She could not, did not like him. Sir Thomas
resolved to speak seriously to her. Advantageous as would be the
alliance, and long standing and public as was the engagement, her
happiness must not be sacrificed to it. Mr. Rushworth had, perhaps, been
accepted on too short an acquaintance, and, on knowing him better, she
was repenting.

With solemn kindness Sir Thomas addressed her: told her his fears,
inquired into her wishes, entreated her to be open and sincere, and
assured her that every inconvenience should be braved, and the connexion
entirely given up, if she felt herself unhappy in the prospect of it. He
would act for her and release her. Maria had a moment's struggle as she
listened, and only a moment's: when her father ceased, she was able to
give her answer immediately, decidedly, and with no apparent agitation.
She thanked him for his great attention, his paternal kindness, but he
was quite mistaken in supposing she had the smallest desire of breaking
through her engagement, or was sensible of any change of opinion or
inclination since her forming it. She had the highest esteem for Mr.
Rushworth's character and disposition, and could not have a doubt of her
happiness with him.

Sir Thomas was satisfied; too glad to be satisfied, perhaps, to urge the
matter quite so far as his judgment might have dictated to others. It
was an alliance which he could not have relinquished without pain;
and thus he reasoned. Mr. Rushworth was young enough to improve. Mr.
Rushworth must and would improve in good society; and if Maria could now
speak so securely of her happiness with him, speaking certainly without
the prejudice, the blindness of love, she ought to be believed. Her
feelings, probably, were not acute; he had never supposed them to be
so; but her comforts might not be less on that account; and if she could
dispense with seeing her husband a leading, shining character, there
would certainly be everything else in her favour. A well-disposed young
woman, who did not marry for love, was in general but the more attached
to her own family; and the nearness of Sotherton to Mansfield
must naturally hold out the greatest temptation, and would, in all
probability, be a continual supply of the most amiable and innocent
enjoyments. Such and such-like were the reasonings of Sir Thomas,
happy to escape the embarrassing evils of a rupture, the wonder,
the reflections, the reproach that must attend it; happy to secure a
marriage which would bring him such an addition of respectability
and influence, and very happy to think anything of his daughter's
disposition that was most favourable for the purpose.

To her the conference closed as satisfactorily as to him. She was in a
state of mind to be glad that she had secured her fate beyond recall:
that she had pledged herself anew to Sotherton; that she was safe from
the possibility of giving Crawford the triumph of governing her actions,
and destroying her prospects; and retired in proud resolve, determined
only to behave more cautiously to Mr. Rushworth in future, that her
father might not be again suspecting her.

Had Sir Thomas applied to his daughter within the first three or four
days after Henry Crawford's leaving Mansfield, before her feelings were
at all tranquillised, before she had given up every hope of him, or
absolutely resolved on enduring his rival, her answer might have been
different; but after another three or four days, when there was no
return, no letter, no message, no symptom of a softened heart, no hope
of advantage from separation, her mind became cool enough to seek all
the comfort that pride and self revenge could give.

Henry Crawford had destroyed her happiness, but he should not know that
he had done it; he should not destroy her credit, her appearance, her
prosperity, too. He should not have to think of her as pining in the
retirement of Mansfield for _him_, rejecting Sotherton and London,
independence and splendour, for _his_ sake. Independence was more
needful than ever; the want of it at Mansfield more sensibly felt. She
was less and less able to endure the restraint which her father imposed.
The liberty which his absence had given was now become absolutely
necessary. She must escape from him and Mansfield as soon as possible,
and find consolation in fortune and consequence, bustle and the world,
for a wounded spirit. Her mind was quite determined, and varied not.

To such feelings delay, even the delay of much preparation, would have
been an evil, and Mr. Rushworth could hardly be more impatient for the
marriage than herself. In all the important preparations of the mind
she was complete: being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home,
restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection,
and contempt of the man she was to marry. The rest might wait. The
preparations of new carriages and furniture might wait for London and
spring, when her own taste could have fairer play.

The principals being all agreed in this respect, it soon appeared that a
very few weeks would be sufficient for such arrangements as must precede
the wedding.

Mrs. Rushworth was quite ready to retire, and make way for the fortunate
young woman whom her dear son had selected; and very early in November
removed herself, her maid, her footman, and her chariot, with true
dowager propriety, to Bath, there to parade over the wonders of
Sotherton in her evening parties; enjoying them as thoroughly, perhaps,
in the animation of a card-table, as she had ever done on the spot; and
before the middle of the same month the ceremony had taken place which
gave Sotherton another mistress.

It was a very proper wedding. The bride was elegantly dressed; the two
bridesmaids were duly inferior; her father gave her away; her mother
stood with salts in her hand, expecting to be agitated; her aunt tried
to cry; and the service was impressively read by Dr. Grant. Nothing
could be objected to when it came under the discussion of the
neighbourhood, except that the carriage which conveyed the bride and
bridegroom and Julia from the church-door to Sotherton was the same
chaise which Mr. Rushworth had used for a twelvemonth before. In
everything else the etiquette of the day might stand the strictest
investigation.

It was done, and they were gone. Sir Thomas felt as an anxious father
must feel, and was indeed experiencing much of the agitation which his
wife had been apprehensive of for herself, but had fortunately escaped.
Mrs. Norris, most happy to assist in the duties of the day, by spending
it at the Park to support her sister's spirits, and drinking the health
of Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth in a supernumerary glass or two, was all
joyous delight; for she had made the match; she had done everything;
and no one would have supposed, from her confident triumph, that she
had ever heard of conjugal infelicity in her life, or could have the
smallest insight into the disposition of the niece who had been brought
up under her eye.

The plan of the young couple was to proceed, after a few days, to
Brighton, and take a house there for some weeks. Every public place was
new to Maria, and Brighton is almost as gay in winter as in summer. When
the novelty of amusement there was over, it would be time for the wider
range of London.

Julia was to go with them to Brighton. Since rivalry between the sisters
had ceased, they had been gradually recovering much of their former good
understanding; and were at least sufficiently friends to make each of
them exceedingly glad to be with the other at such a time. Some other
companion than Mr. Rushworth was of the first consequence to his lady;
and Julia was quite as eager for novelty and pleasure as Maria, though
she might not have struggled through so much to obtain them, and could
better bear a subordinate situation.

Their departure made another material change at Mansfield, a chasm
which required some time to fill up. The family circle became greatly
contracted; and though the Miss Bertrams had latterly added little to
its gaiety, they could not but be missed. Even their mother missed them;
and how much more their tenderhearted cousin, who wandered about
the house, and thought of them, and felt for them, with a degree of
affectionate regret which they had never done much to deserve!



CHAPTER XXII

Fanny's consequence increased on the departure of her cousins. Becoming,
as she then did, the only young woman in the drawing-room, the only
occupier of that interesting division of a family in which she had
hitherto held so humble a third, it was impossible for her not to be
more looked at, more thought of and attended to, than she had ever been
before; and “Where is Fanny?” became no uncommon question, even without
her being wanted for any one's convenience.

Not only at home did her value increase, but at the Parsonage too. In
that house, which she had hardly entered twice a year since Mr. Norris's
death, she became a welcome, an invited guest, and in the gloom and dirt
of a November day, most acceptable to Mary Crawford. Her visits there,
beginning by chance, were continued by solicitation. Mrs. Grant,
really eager to get any change for her sister, could, by the easiest
self-deceit, persuade herself that she was doing the kindest thing by
Fanny, and giving her the most important opportunities of improvement in
pressing her frequent calls.

Fanny, having been sent into the village on some errand by her aunt
Norris, was overtaken by a heavy shower close to the Parsonage; and
being descried from one of the windows endeavouring to find shelter
under the branches and lingering leaves of an oak just beyond their
premises, was forced, though not without some modest reluctance on her
part, to come in. A civil servant she had withstood; but when Dr. Grant
himself went out with an umbrella, there was nothing to be done but to
be very much ashamed, and to get into the house as fast as possible; and
to poor Miss Crawford, who had just been contemplating the dismal rain
in a very desponding state of mind, sighing over the ruin of all her
plan of exercise for that morning, and of every chance of seeing a
single creature beyond themselves for the next twenty-four hours, the
sound of a little bustle at the front door, and the sight of Miss Price
dripping with wet in the vestibule, was delightful. The value of an
event on a wet day in the country was most forcibly brought before her.
She was all alive again directly, and among the most active in being
useful to Fanny, in detecting her to be wetter than she would at first
allow, and providing her with dry clothes; and Fanny, after being
obliged to submit to all this attention, and to being assisted and
waited on by mistresses and maids, being also obliged, on returning
downstairs, to be fixed in their drawing-room for an hour while the rain
continued, the blessing of something fresh to see and think of was thus
extended to Miss Crawford, and might carry on her spirits to the period
of dressing and dinner.

The two sisters were so kind to her, and so pleasant, that Fanny might
have enjoyed her visit could she have believed herself not in the way,
and could she have foreseen that the weather would certainly clear at
the end of the hour, and save her from the shame of having Dr. Grant's
carriage and horses out to take her home, with which she was threatened.
As to anxiety for any alarm that her absence in such weather might
occasion at home, she had nothing to suffer on that score; for as her
being out was known only to her two aunts, she was perfectly aware that
none would be felt, and that in whatever cottage aunt Norris might chuse
to establish her during the rain, her being in such cottage would be
indubitable to aunt Bertram.

It was beginning to look brighter, when Fanny, observing a harp in the
room, asked some questions about it, which soon led to an acknowledgment
of her wishing very much to hear it, and a confession, which could
hardly be believed, of her having never yet heard it since its being
in Mansfield. To Fanny herself it appeared a very simple and natural
circumstance. She had scarcely ever been at the Parsonage since the
instrument's arrival, there had been no reason that she should; but Miss
Crawford, calling to mind an early expressed wish on the subject, was
concerned at her own neglect; and “Shall I play to you now?” and “What
will you have?” were questions immediately following with the readiest
good-humour.

She played accordingly; happy to have a new listener, and a listener who
seemed so much obliged, so full of wonder at the performance, and who
shewed herself not wanting in taste. She played till Fanny's eyes,
straying to the window on the weather's being evidently fair, spoke what
she felt must be done.

“Another quarter of an hour,” said Miss Crawford, “and we shall see how
it will be. Do not run away the first moment of its holding up. Those
clouds look alarming.”

“But they are passed over,” said Fanny. “I have been watching them. This
weather is all from the south.”

“South or north, I know a black cloud when I see it; and you must not
set forward while it is so threatening. And besides, I want to play
something more to you--a very pretty piece--and your cousin Edmund's
prime favourite. You must stay and hear your cousin's favourite.”

Fanny felt that she must; and though she had not waited for that
sentence to be thinking of Edmund, such a memento made her particularly
awake to his idea, and she fancied him sitting in that room again
and again, perhaps in the very spot where she sat now, listening with
constant delight to the favourite air, played, as it appeared to her,
with superior tone and expression; and though pleased with it herself,
and glad to like whatever was liked by him, she was more sincerely
impatient to go away at the conclusion of it than she had been before;
and on this being evident, she was so kindly asked to call again, to
take them in her walk whenever she could, to come and hear more of the
harp, that she felt it necessary to be done, if no objection arose at
home.

Such was the origin of the sort of intimacy which took place between
them within the first fortnight after the Miss Bertrams' going away--an
intimacy resulting principally from Miss Crawford's desire of something
new, and which had little reality in Fanny's feelings. Fanny went to her
every two or three days: it seemed a kind of fascination: she could not
be easy without going, and yet it was without loving her, without ever
thinking like her, without any sense of obligation for being sought
after now when nobody else was to be had; and deriving no higher
pleasure from her conversation than occasional amusement, and _that_
often at the expense of her judgment, when it was raised by pleasantry
on people or subjects which she wished to be respected. She went,
however, and they sauntered about together many an half-hour in Mrs.
Grant's shrubbery, the weather being unusually mild for the time of
year, and venturing sometimes even to sit down on one of the benches now
comparatively unsheltered, remaining there perhaps till, in the midst
of some tender ejaculation of Fanny's on the sweets of so protracted
an autumn, they were forced, by the sudden swell of a cold gust shaking
down the last few yellow leaves about them, to jump up and walk for
warmth.

“This is pretty, very pretty,” said Fanny, looking around her as
they were thus sitting together one day; “every time I come into this
shrubbery I am more struck with its growth and beauty. Three years ago,
this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field,
never thought of as anything, or capable of becoming anything; and now
it is converted into a walk, and it would be difficult to say whether
most valuable as a convenience or an ornament; and perhaps, in another
three years, we may be forgetting--almost forgetting what it was before.
How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the
changes of the human mind!” And following the latter train of thought,
she soon afterwards added: “If any one faculty of our nature may be
called _more_ wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There
seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers,
the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our
intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so
obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so
tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way;
but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past
finding out.”

Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing to say; and
Fanny, perceiving it, brought back her own mind to what she thought must
interest.

“It may seem impertinent in _me_ to praise, but I must admire the taste
Mrs. Grant has shewn in all this. There is such a quiet simplicity in
the plan of the walk! Not too much attempted!”

“Yes,” replied Miss Crawford carelessly, “it does very well for a
place of this sort. One does not think of extent _here_; and between
ourselves, till I came to Mansfield, I had not imagined a country parson
ever aspired to a shrubbery, or anything of the kind.”

“I am so glad to see the evergreens thrive!” said Fanny, in reply. “My
uncle's gardener always says the soil here is better than his own, and
so it appears from the growth of the laurels and evergreens in general.
The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen!
When one thinks of it, how astonishing a variety of nature! In some
countries we know the tree that sheds its leaf is the variety, but that
does not make it less amazing that the same soil and the same sun should
nurture plants differing in the first rule and law of their existence.
You will think me rhapsodising; but when I am out of doors, especially
when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of
wondering strain. One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural
production without finding food for a rambling fancy.”

“To say the truth,” replied Miss Crawford, “I am something like the
famous Doge at the court of Lewis XIV.; and may declare that I see no
wonder in this shrubbery equal to seeing myself in it. If anybody had
told me a year ago that this place would be my home, that I should be
spending month after month here, as I have done, I certainly should
not have believed them. I have now been here nearly five months; and,
moreover, the quietest five months I ever passed.”

“_Too_ quiet for you, I believe.”

“I should have thought so _theoretically_ myself, but,” and her eyes
brightened as she spoke, “take it all and all, I never spent so happy a
summer. But then,” with a more thoughtful air and lowered voice, “there
is no saying what it may lead to.”

Fanny's heart beat quick, and she felt quite unequal to surmising
or soliciting anything more. Miss Crawford, however, with renewed
animation, soon went on--

“I am conscious of being far better reconciled to a country residence
than I had ever expected to be. I can even suppose it pleasant to
spend _half_ the year in the country, under certain circumstances,
very pleasant. An elegant, moderate-sized house in the centre of family
connexions; continual engagements among them; commanding the first
society in the neighbourhood; looked up to, perhaps, as leading it even
more than those of larger fortune, and turning from the cheerful round
of such amusements to nothing worse than a _tete-a-tete_ with the person
one feels most agreeable in the world. There is nothing frightful in
such a picture, is there, Miss Price? One need not envy the new Mrs.
Rushworth with such a home as _that_.”

“Envy Mrs. Rushworth!” was all that Fanny attempted to say. “Come, come,
it would be very un-handsome in us to be severe on Mrs. Rushworth, for I
look forward to our owing her a great many gay, brilliant, happy hours.
I expect we shall be all very much at Sotherton another year. Such
a match as Miss Bertram has made is a public blessing; for the first
pleasures of Mr. Rushworth's wife must be to fill her house, and give
the best balls in the country.”

Fanny was silent, and Miss Crawford relapsed into thoughtfulness, till
suddenly looking up at the end of a few minutes, she exclaimed, “Ah!
here he is.” It was not Mr. Rushworth, however, but Edmund, who then
appeared walking towards them with Mrs. Grant. “My sister and Mr.
Bertram. I am so glad your eldest cousin is gone, that he may be Mr.
Bertram again. There is something in the sound of Mr. _Edmund_ Bertram
so formal, so pitiful, so younger-brother-like, that I detest it.”

“How differently we feel!” cried Fanny. “To me, the sound of _Mr._
Bertram is so cold and nothing-meaning, so entirely without warmth or
character! It just stands for a gentleman, and that's all. But there is
nobleness in the name of Edmund. It is a name of heroism and renown; of
kings, princes, and knights; and seems to breathe the spirit of chivalry
and warm affections.”

“I grant you the name is good in itself, and _Lord_ Edmund or _Sir_
Edmund sound delightfully; but sink it under the chill, the annihilation
of a Mr., and Mr. Edmund is no more than Mr. John or Mr. Thomas. Well,
shall we join and disappoint them of half their lecture upon sitting
down out of doors at this time of year, by being up before they can
begin?”

Edmund met them with particular pleasure. It was the first time of his
seeing them together since the beginning of that better acquaintance
which he had been hearing of with great satisfaction. A friendship
between two so very dear to him was exactly what he could have wished:
and to the credit of the lover's understanding, be it stated, that he
did not by any means consider Fanny as the only, or even as the greater
gainer by such a friendship.

“Well,” said Miss Crawford, “and do you not scold us for our imprudence?
What do you think we have been sitting down for but to be talked to
about it, and entreated and supplicated never to do so again?”

“Perhaps I might have scolded,” said Edmund, “if either of you had been
sitting down alone; but while you do wrong together, I can overlook a
great deal.”

“They cannot have been sitting long,” cried Mrs. Grant, “for when I went
up for my shawl I saw them from the staircase window, and then they were
walking.”

“And really,” added Edmund, “the day is so mild, that your sitting down
for a few minutes can be hardly thought imprudent. Our weather must
not always be judged by the calendar. We may sometimes take greater
liberties in November than in May.”

“Upon my word,” cried Miss Crawford, “you are two of the most
disappointing and unfeeling kind friends I ever met with! There is no
giving you a moment's uneasiness. You do not know how much we have been
suffering, nor what chills we have felt! But I have long thought Mr.
Bertram one of the worst subjects to work on, in any little manoeuvre
against common sense, that a woman could be plagued with. I had very
little hope of _him_ from the first; but you, Mrs. Grant, my sister, my
own sister, I think I had a right to alarm you a little.”

“Do not flatter yourself, my dearest Mary. You have not the smallest
chance of moving me. I have my alarms, but they are quite in a different
quarter; and if I could have altered the weather, you would have had a
good sharp east wind blowing on you the whole time--for here are some of
my plants which Robert _will_ leave out because the nights are so mild,
and I know the end of it will be, that we shall have a sudden change of
weather, a hard frost setting in all at once, taking everybody (at least
Robert) by surprise, and I shall lose every one; and what is worse, cook
has just been telling me that the turkey, which I particularly wished
not to be dressed till Sunday, because I know how much more Dr. Grant
would enjoy it on Sunday after the fatigues of the day, will not keep
beyond to-morrow. These are something like grievances, and make me think
the weather most unseasonably close.”

“The sweets of housekeeping in a country village!” said Miss Crawford
archly. “Commend me to the nurseryman and the poulterer.”

“My dear child, commend Dr. Grant to the deanery of Westminster or St.
Paul's, and I should be as glad of your nurseryman and poulterer as you
could be. But we have no such people in Mansfield. What would you have
me do?”

“Oh! you can do nothing but what you do already: be plagued very often,
and never lose your temper.”

“Thank you; but there is no escaping these little vexations, Mary, live
where we may; and when you are settled in town and I come to see you, I
dare say I shall find you with yours, in spite of the nurseryman and
the poulterer, perhaps on their very account. Their remoteness and
unpunctuality, or their exorbitant charges and frauds, will be drawing
forth bitter lamentations.”

“I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It
certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.”

“You intend to be very rich?” said Edmund, with a look which, to Fanny's
eye, had a great deal of serious meaning.

“To be sure. Do not you? Do not we all?”

“I cannot intend anything which it must be so completely beyond my power
to command. Miss Crawford may chuse her degree of wealth. She has only
to fix on her number of thousands a year, and there can be no doubt of
their coming. My intentions are only not to be poor.”

“By moderation and economy, and bringing down your wants to your income,
and all that. I understand you--and a very proper plan it is for a
person at your time of life, with such limited means and indifferent
connexions. What can _you_ want but a decent maintenance? You have
not much time before you; and your relations are in no situation to do
anything for you, or to mortify you by the contrast of their own wealth
and consequence. Be honest and poor, by all means--but I shall not envy
you; I do not much think I shall even respect you. I have a much greater
respect for those that are honest and rich.”

“Your degree of respect for honesty, rich or poor, is precisely what
I have no manner of concern with. I do not mean to be poor. Poverty
is exactly what I have determined against. Honesty, in the something
between, in the middle state of worldly circumstances, is all that I am
anxious for your not looking down on.”

“But I do look down upon it, if it might have been higher. I must
look down upon anything contented with obscurity when it might rise to
distinction.”

“But how may it rise? How may my honesty at least rise to any
distinction?”

This was not so very easy a question to answer, and occasioned an “Oh!”
 of some length from the fair lady before she could add, “You ought to be
in parliament, or you should have gone into the army ten years ago.”

“_That_ is not much to the purpose now; and as to my being in
parliament, I believe I must wait till there is an especial assembly for
the representation of younger sons who have little to live on. No, Miss
Crawford,” he added, in a more serious tone, “there _are_ distinctions
which I should be miserable if I thought myself without any
chance--absolutely without chance or possibility of obtaining--but they
are of a different character.”

A look of consciousness as he spoke, and what seemed a consciousness
of manner on Miss Crawford's side as she made some laughing answer,
was sorrowfull food for Fanny's observation; and finding herself quite
unable to attend as she ought to Mrs. Grant, by whose side she was now
following the others, she had nearly resolved on going home immediately,
and only waited for courage to say so, when the sound of the great clock
at Mansfield Park, striking three, made her feel that she had
really been much longer absent than usual, and brought the previous
self-inquiry of whether she should take leave or not just then, and how,
to a very speedy issue. With undoubting decision she directly began her
adieus; and Edmund began at the same time to recollect that his mother
had been inquiring for her, and that he had walked down to the Parsonage
on purpose to bring her back.

Fanny's hurry increased; and without in the least expecting Edmund's
attendance, she would have hastened away alone; but the general pace was
quickened, and they all accompanied her into the house, through which it
was necessary to pass. Dr. Grant was in the vestibule, and as they stopt
to speak to him she found, from Edmund's manner, that he _did_ mean to
go with her. He too was taking leave. She could not but be thankful. In
the moment of parting, Edmund was invited by Dr. Grant to eat his mutton
with him the next day; and Fanny had barely time for an unpleasant
feeling on the occasion, when Mrs. Grant, with sudden recollection,
turned to her and asked for the pleasure of her company too. This was
so new an attention, so perfectly new a circumstance in the events of
Fanny's life, that she was all surprise and embarrassment; and while
stammering out her great obligation, and her “but she did not suppose it
would be in her power,” was looking at Edmund for his opinion and help.
But Edmund, delighted with her having such an happiness offered, and
ascertaining with half a look, and half a sentence, that she had no
objection but on her aunt's account, could not imagine that his mother
would make any difficulty of sparing her, and therefore gave his decided
open advice that the invitation should be accepted; and though Fanny
would not venture, even on his encouragement, to such a flight of
audacious independence, it was soon settled, that if nothing were heard
to the contrary, Mrs. Grant might expect her.

“And you know what your dinner will be,” said Mrs. Grant, smiling--“the
turkey, and I assure you a very fine one; for, my dear,” turning to her
husband, “cook insists upon the turkey's being dressed to-morrow.”

“Very well, very well,” cried Dr. Grant, “all the better; I am glad
to hear you have anything so good in the house. But Miss Price and Mr.
Edmund Bertram, I dare say, would take their chance. We none of us want
to hear the bill of fare. A friendly meeting, and not a fine dinner,
is all we have in view. A turkey, or a goose, or a leg of mutton, or
whatever you and your cook chuse to give us.”

The two cousins walked home together; and, except in the immediate
discussion of this engagement, which Edmund spoke of with the warmest
satisfaction, as so particularly desirable for her in the intimacy which
he saw with so much pleasure established, it was a silent walk; for
having finished that subject, he grew thoughtful and indisposed for any
other.



CHAPTER XXIII

“But why should Mrs. Grant ask Fanny?” said Lady Bertram. “How came she
to think of asking Fanny? Fanny never dines there, you know, in this
sort of way. I cannot spare her, and I am sure she does not want to go.
Fanny, you do not want to go, do you?”

“If you put such a question to her,” cried Edmund, preventing his
cousin's speaking, “Fanny will immediately say No; but I am sure, my
dear mother, she would like to go; and I can see no reason why she
should not.”

“I cannot imagine why Mrs. Grant should think of asking her? She never
did before. She used to ask your sisters now and then, but she never
asked Fanny.”

“If you cannot do without me, ma'am--” said Fanny, in a self-denying
tone.

“But my mother will have my father with her all the evening.”

“To be sure, so I shall.”

“Suppose you take my father's opinion, ma'am.”

“That's well thought of. So I will, Edmund. I will ask Sir Thomas, as
soon as he comes in, whether I can do without her.”

“As you please, ma'am, on that head; but I meant my father's opinion
as to the _propriety_ of the invitation's being accepted or not; and
I think he will consider it a right thing by Mrs. Grant, as well as by
Fanny, that being the _first_ invitation it should be accepted.”

“I do not know. We will ask him. But he will be very much surprised that
Mrs. Grant should ask Fanny at all.”

There was nothing more to be said, or that could be said to any purpose,
till Sir Thomas were present; but the subject involving, as it did,
her own evening's comfort for the morrow, was so much uppermost in Lady
Bertram's mind, that half an hour afterwards, on his looking in for a
minute in his way from his plantation to his dressing-room, she called
him back again, when he had almost closed the door, with “Sir Thomas,
stop a moment--I have something to say to you.”

Her tone of calm languor, for she never took the trouble of raising her
voice, was always heard and attended to; and Sir Thomas came back. Her
story began; and Fanny immediately slipped out of the room; for to hear
herself the subject of any discussion with her uncle was more than her
nerves could bear. She was anxious, she knew--more anxious perhaps than
she ought to be--for what was it after all whether she went or staid?
but if her uncle were to be a great while considering and deciding, and
with very grave looks, and those grave looks directed to her, and
at last decide against her, she might not be able to appear properly
submissive and indifferent. Her cause, meanwhile, went on well. It
began, on Lady Bertram's part, with--“I have something to tell you that
will surprise you. Mrs. Grant has asked Fanny to dinner.”

“Well,” said Sir Thomas, as if waiting more to accomplish the surprise.

“Edmund wants her to go. But how can I spare her?”

“She will be late,” said Sir Thomas, taking out his watch; “but what is
your difficulty?”

Edmund found himself obliged to speak and fill up the blanks in his
mother's story. He told the whole; and she had only to add, “So strange!
for Mrs. Grant never used to ask her.”

“But is it not very natural,” observed Edmund, “that Mrs. Grant should
wish to procure so agreeable a visitor for her sister?”

“Nothing can be more natural,” said Sir Thomas, after a short
deliberation; “nor, were there no sister in the case, could anything,
in my opinion, be more natural. Mrs. Grant's shewing civility to Miss
Price, to Lady Bertram's niece, could never want explanation. The only
surprise I can feel is, that this should be the _first_ time of its
being paid. Fanny was perfectly right in giving only a conditional
answer. She appears to feel as she ought. But as I conclude that she
must wish to go, since all young people like to be together, I can see
no reason why she should be denied the indulgence.”

“But can I do without her, Sir Thomas?”

“Indeed I think you may.”

“She always makes tea, you know, when my sister is not here.”

“Your sister, perhaps, may be prevailed on to spend the day with us, and
I shall certainly be at home.”

“Very well, then, Fanny may go, Edmund.”

The good news soon followed her. Edmund knocked at her door in his way
to his own.

“Well, Fanny, it is all happily settled, and without the smallest
hesitation on your uncle's side. He had but one opinion. You are to go.”

“Thank you, I am _so_ glad,” was Fanny's instinctive reply; though when
she had turned from him and shut the door, she could not help feeling,
“And yet why should I be glad? for am I not certain of seeing or hearing
something there to pain me?”

In spite of this conviction, however, she was glad. Simple as such an
engagement might appear in other eyes, it had novelty and importance in
hers, for excepting the day at Sotherton, she had scarcely ever dined
out before; and though now going only half a mile, and only to three
people, still it was dining out, and all the little interests of
preparation were enjoyments in themselves. She had neither sympathy nor
assistance from those who ought to have entered into her feelings and
directed her taste; for Lady Bertram never thought of being useful to
anybody, and Mrs. Norris, when she came on the morrow, in consequence of
an early call and invitation from Sir Thomas, was in a very ill humour,
and seemed intent only on lessening her niece's pleasure, both present
and future, as much as possible.

“Upon my word, Fanny, you are in high luck to meet with such attention
and indulgence! You ought to be very much obliged to Mrs. Grant for
thinking of you, and to your aunt for letting you go, and you ought to
look upon it as something extraordinary; for I hope you are aware that
there is no real occasion for your going into company in this sort of
way, or ever dining out at all; and it is what you must not depend upon
ever being repeated. Nor must you be fancying that the invitation is
meant as any particular compliment to _you_; the compliment is intended
to your uncle and aunt and me. Mrs. Grant thinks it a civility due to
_us_ to take a little notice of you, or else it would never have come
into her head, and you may be very certain that, if your cousin Julia
had been at home, you would not have been asked at all.”

Mrs. Norris had now so ingeniously done away all Mrs. Grant's part of
the favour, that Fanny, who found herself expected to speak, could only
say that she was very much obliged to her aunt Bertram for sparing her,
and that she was endeavouring to put her aunt's evening work in such a
state as to prevent her being missed.

“Oh! depend upon it, your aunt can do very well without you, or you
would not be allowed to go. _I_ shall be here, so you may be quite easy
about your aunt. And I hope you will have a very _agreeable_ day, and
find it all mighty _delightful_. But I must observe that five is the
very awkwardest of all possible numbers to sit down to table; and I
cannot but be surprised that such an _elegant_ lady as Mrs. Grant should
not contrive better! And round their enormous great wide table, too,
which fills up the room so dreadfully! Had the doctor been contented to
take my dining-table when I came away, as anybody in their senses would
have done, instead of having that absurd new one of his own, which is
wider, literally wider than the dinner-table here, how infinitely better
it would have been! and how much more he would have been respected! for
people are never respected when they step out of their proper sphere.
Remember that, Fanny. Five--only five to be sitting round that table.
However, you will have dinner enough on it for ten, I dare say.”

Mrs. Norris fetched breath, and went on again.

“The nonsense and folly of people's stepping out of their rank and
trying to appear above themselves, makes me think it right to give _you_
a hint, Fanny, now that you are going into company without any of us;
and I do beseech and entreat you not to be putting yourself forward, and
talking and giving your opinion as if you were one of your cousins--as
if you were dear Mrs. Rushworth or Julia. _That_ will never do, believe
me. Remember, wherever you are, you must be the lowest and last; and
though Miss Crawford is in a manner at home at the Parsonage, you are
not to be taking place of her. And as to coming away at night, you are
to stay just as long as Edmund chuses. Leave him to settle _that_.”

“Yes, ma'am, I should not think of anything else.”

“And if it should rain, which I think exceedingly likely, for I never
saw it more threatening for a wet evening in my life, you must manage as
well as you can, and not be expecting the carriage to be sent for you. I
certainly do not go home to-night, and, therefore, the carriage will not
be out on my account; so you must make up your mind to what may happen,
and take your things accordingly.”

Her niece thought it perfectly reasonable. She rated her own claims
to comfort as low even as Mrs. Norris could; and when Sir Thomas soon
afterwards, just opening the door, said, “Fanny, at what time would you
have the carriage come round?” she felt a degree of astonishment which
made it impossible for her to speak.

“My dear Sir Thomas!” cried Mrs. Norris, red with anger, “Fanny can
walk.”

“Walk!” repeated Sir Thomas, in a tone of most unanswerable dignity, and
coming farther into the room. “My niece walk to a dinner engagement at
this time of the year! Will twenty minutes after four suit you?”

“Yes, sir,” was Fanny's humble answer, given with the feelings almost
of a criminal towards Mrs. Norris; and not bearing to remain with her
in what might seem a state of triumph, she followed her uncle out of
the room, having staid behind him only long enough to hear these words
spoken in angry agitation--

“Quite unnecessary! a great deal too kind! But Edmund goes; true, it is
upon Edmund's account. I observed he was hoarse on Thursday night.”

But this could not impose on Fanny. She felt that the carriage was for
herself, and herself alone: and her uncle's consideration of her, coming
immediately after such representations from her aunt, cost her some
tears of gratitude when she was alone.

The coachman drove round to a minute; another minute brought down the
gentleman; and as the lady had, with a most scrupulous fear of being
late, been many minutes seated in the drawing-room, Sir Thomas saw them
off in as good time as his own correctly punctual habits required.

“Now I must look at you, Fanny,” said Edmund, with the kind smile of an
affectionate brother, “and tell you how I like you; and as well as I can
judge by this light, you look very nicely indeed. What have you got on?”

“The new dress that my uncle was so good as to give me on my cousin's
marriage. I hope it is not too fine; but I thought I ought to wear it as
soon as I could, and that I might not have such another opportunity all
the winter. I hope you do not think me too fine.”

“A woman can never be too fine while she is all in white. No, I see no
finery about you; nothing but what is perfectly proper. Your gown seems
very pretty. I like these glossy spots. Has not Miss Crawford a gown
something the same?”

In approaching the Parsonage they passed close by the stable-yard and
coach-house.

“Heyday!” said Edmund, “here's company, here's a carriage! who have they
got to meet us?” And letting down the side-glass to distinguish, “'Tis
Crawford's, Crawford's barouche, I protest! There are his own two men
pushing it back into its old quarters. He is here, of course. This is
quite a surprise, Fanny. I shall be very glad to see him.”

There was no occasion, there was no time for Fanny to say how very
differently she felt; but the idea of having such another to observe
her was a great increase of the trepidation with which she performed the
very awful ceremony of walking into the drawing-room.

In the drawing-room Mr. Crawford certainly was, having been just long
enough arrived to be ready for dinner; and the smiles and pleased looks
of the three others standing round him, shewed how welcome was his
sudden resolution of coming to them for a few days on leaving Bath.
A very cordial meeting passed between him and Edmund; and with the
exception of Fanny, the pleasure was general; and even to _her_ there
might be some advantage in his presence, since every addition to the
party must rather forward her favourite indulgence of being suffered to
sit silent and unattended to. She was soon aware of this herself; for
though she must submit, as her own propriety of mind directed, in spite
of her aunt Norris's opinion, to being the principal lady in company,
and to all the little distinctions consequent thereon, she found, while
they were at table, such a happy flow of conversation prevailing, in
which she was not required to take any part--there was so much to be
said between the brother and sister about Bath, so much between the two
young men about hunting, so much of politics between Mr. Crawford and
Dr. Grant, and of everything and all together between Mr. Crawford
and Mrs. Grant, as to leave her the fairest prospect of having only
to listen in quiet, and of passing a very agreeable day. She could not
compliment the newly arrived gentleman, however, with any appearance of
interest, in a scheme for extending his stay at Mansfield, and sending
for his hunters from Norfolk, which, suggested by Dr. Grant, advised by
Edmund, and warmly urged by the two sisters, was soon in possession of
his mind, and which he seemed to want to be encouraged even by her to
resolve on. Her opinion was sought as to the probable continuance of the
open weather, but her answers were as short and indifferent as civility
allowed. She could not wish him to stay, and would much rather not have
him speak to her.

Her two absent cousins, especially Maria, were much in her thoughts on
seeing him; but no embarrassing remembrance affected _his_ spirits.
Here he was again on the same ground where all had passed before, and
apparently as willing to stay and be happy without the Miss Bertrams,
as if he had never known Mansfield in any other state. She heard them
spoken of by him only in a general way, till they were all re-assembled
in the drawing-room, when Edmund, being engaged apart in some matter of
business with Dr. Grant, which seemed entirely to engross them, and
Mrs. Grant occupied at the tea-table, he began talking of them with more
particularity to his other sister. With a significant smile, which made
Fanny quite hate him, he said, “So! Rushworth and his fair bride are at
Brighton, I understand; happy man!”

“Yes, they have been there about a fortnight, Miss Price, have they not?
And Julia is with them.”

“And Mr. Yates, I presume, is not far off.”

“Mr. Yates! Oh! we hear nothing of Mr. Yates. I do not imagine he
figures much in the letters to Mansfield Park; do you, Miss Price? I
think my friend Julia knows better than to entertain her father with Mr.
Yates.”

“Poor Rushworth and his two-and-forty speeches!” continued Crawford.
“Nobody can ever forget them. Poor fellow! I see him now--his toil and
his despair. Well, I am much mistaken if his lovely Maria will ever want
him to make two-and-forty speeches to her”; adding, with a momentary
seriousness, “She is too good for him--much too good.” And then changing
his tone again to one of gentle gallantry, and addressing Fanny, he
said, “You were Mr. Rushworth's best friend. Your kindness and patience
can never be forgotten, your indefatigable patience in trying to make it
possible for him to learn his part--in trying to give him a brain
which nature had denied--to mix up an understanding for him out of the
superfluity of your own! _He_ might not have sense enough himself to
estimate your kindness, but I may venture to say that it had honour from
all the rest of the party.”

Fanny coloured, and said nothing.

“It is as a dream, a pleasant dream!” he exclaimed, breaking forth
again, after a few minutes' musing. “I shall always look back on our
theatricals with exquisite pleasure. There was such an interest, such an
animation, such a spirit diffused. Everybody felt it. We were all alive.
There was employment, hope, solicitude, bustle, for every hour of
the day. Always some little objection, some little doubt, some little
anxiety to be got over. I never was happier.”

With silent indignation Fanny repeated to herself, “Never
happier!--never happier than when doing what you must know was not
justifiable!--never happier than when behaving so dishonourably and
unfeelingly! Oh! what a corrupted mind!”

“We were unlucky, Miss Price,” he continued, in a lower tone, to avoid
the possibility of being heard by Edmund, and not at all aware of her
feelings, “we certainly were very unlucky. Another week, only one other
week, would have been enough for us. I think if we had had the disposal
of events--if Mansfield Park had had the government of the winds
just for a week or two, about the equinox, there would have been
a difference. Not that we would have endangered his safety by any
tremendous weather--but only by a steady contrary wind, or a calm. I
think, Miss Price, we would have indulged ourselves with a week's calm
in the Atlantic at that season.”

He seemed determined to be answered; and Fanny, averting her face, said,
with a firmer tone than usual, “As far as _I_ am concerned, sir, I would
not have delayed his return for a day. My uncle disapproved it all so
entirely when he did arrive, that in my opinion everything had gone
quite far enough.”

She had never spoken so much at once to him in her life before, and
never so angrily to any one; and when her speech was over, she trembled
and blushed at her own daring. He was surprised; but after a few
moments' silent consideration of her, replied in a calmer, graver tone,
and as if the candid result of conviction, “I believe you are right.
It was more pleasant than prudent. We were getting too noisy.” And
then turning the conversation, he would have engaged her on some other
subject, but her answers were so shy and reluctant that he could not
advance in any.

Miss Crawford, who had been repeatedly eyeing Dr. Grant and Edmund,
now observed, “Those gentlemen must have some very interesting point to
discuss.”

“The most interesting in the world,” replied her brother--“how to make
money; how to turn a good income into a better. Dr. Grant is giving
Bertram instructions about the living he is to step into so soon. I find
he takes orders in a few weeks. They were at it in the dining-parlour. I
am glad to hear Bertram will be so well off. He will have a very pretty
income to make ducks and drakes with, and earned without much trouble. I
apprehend he will not have less than seven hundred a year. Seven hundred
a year is a fine thing for a younger brother; and as of course he will
still live at home, it will be all for his _menus_ _plaisirs_; and a
sermon at Christmas and Easter, I suppose, will be the sum total of
sacrifice.”

His sister tried to laugh off her feelings by saying, “Nothing amuses me
more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of
those who have a great deal less than themselves. You would look rather
blank, Henry, if your _menus_ _plaisirs_ were to be limited to seven
hundred a year.”

“Perhaps I might; but all _that_ you know is entirely comparative.
Birthright and habit must settle the business. Bertram is certainly well
off for a cadet of even a baronet's family. By the time he is four or
five and twenty he will have seven hundred a year, and nothing to do for
it.”

Miss Crawford _could_ have said that there would be a something to do
and to suffer for it, which she could not think lightly of; but she
checked herself and let it pass; and tried to look calm and unconcerned
when the two gentlemen shortly afterwards joined them.

“Bertram,” said Henry Crawford, “I shall make a point of coming to
Mansfield to hear you preach your first sermon. I shall come on purpose
to encourage a young beginner. When is it to be? Miss Price, will not
you join me in encouraging your cousin? Will not you engage to attend
with your eyes steadily fixed on him the whole time--as I shall do--not
to lose a word; or only looking off just to note down any sentence
preeminently beautiful? We will provide ourselves with tablets and a
pencil. When will it be? You must preach at Mansfield, you know, that
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram may hear you.”

“I shall keep clear of you, Crawford, as long as I can,” said Edmund;
“for you would be more likely to disconcert me, and I should be more
sorry to see you trying at it than almost any other man.”

“Will he not feel this?” thought Fanny. “No, he can feel nothing as he
ought.”

The party being now all united, and the chief talkers attracting each
other, she remained in tranquillity; and as a whist-table was formed
after tea--formed really for the amusement of Dr. Grant, by his
attentive wife, though it was not to be supposed so--and Miss Crawford
took her harp, she had nothing to do but to listen; and her tranquillity
remained undisturbed the rest of the evening, except when Mr. Crawford
now and then addressed to her a question or observation, which she could
not avoid answering. Miss Crawford was too much vexed by what had passed
to be in a humour for anything but music. With that she soothed herself
and amused her friend.

The assurance of Edmund's being so soon to take orders, coming upon her
like a blow that had been suspended, and still hoped uncertain and at a
distance, was felt with resentment and mortification. She was very angry
with him. She had thought her influence more. She _had_ begun to think
of him; she felt that she had, with great regard, with almost decided
intentions; but she would now meet him with his own cool feelings. It
was plain that he could have no serious views, no true attachment, by
fixing himself in a situation which he must know she would never
stoop to. She would learn to match him in his indifference. She would
henceforth admit his attentions without any idea beyond immediate
amusement. If _he_ could so command his affections, _hers_ should do her
no harm.



CHAPTER XXIV

Henry Crawford had quite made up his mind by the next morning to give
another fortnight to Mansfield, and having sent for his hunters, and
written a few lines of explanation to the Admiral, he looked round at
his sister as he sealed and threw the letter from him, and seeing the
coast clear of the rest of the family, said, with a smile, “And how do
you think I mean to amuse myself, Mary, on the days that I do not hunt?
I am grown too old to go out more than three times a week; but I have a
plan for the intermediate days, and what do you think it is?”

“To walk and ride with me, to be sure.”

“Not exactly, though I shall be happy to do both, but _that_ would be
exercise only to my body, and I must take care of my mind. Besides,
_that_ would be all recreation and indulgence, without the wholesome
alloy of labour, and I do not like to eat the bread of idleness. No, my
plan is to make Fanny Price in love with me.”

“Fanny Price! Nonsense! No, no. You ought to be satisfied with her two
cousins.”

“But I cannot be satisfied without Fanny Price, without making a small
hole in Fanny Price's heart. You do not seem properly aware of her
claims to notice. When we talked of her last night, you none of you
seemed sensible of the wonderful improvement that has taken place in her
looks within the last six weeks. You see her every day, and therefore do
not notice it; but I assure you she is quite a different creature from
what she was in the autumn. She was then merely a quiet, modest, not
plain-looking girl, but she is now absolutely pretty. I used to think
she had neither complexion nor countenance; but in that soft skin of
hers, so frequently tinged with a blush as it was yesterday, there is
decided beauty; and from what I observed of her eyes and mouth, I do
not despair of their being capable of expression enough when she
has anything to express. And then, her air, her manner, her _tout_
_ensemble_, is so indescribably improved! She must be grown two inches,
at least, since October.”

“Phoo! phoo! This is only because there were no tall women to compare
her with, and because she has got a new gown, and you never saw her so
well dressed before. She is just what she was in October, believe me.
The truth is, that she was the only girl in company for you to notice,
and you must have a somebody. I have always thought her pretty--not
strikingly pretty--but 'pretty enough,' as people say; a sort of beauty
that grows on one. Her eyes should be darker, but she has a sweet smile;
but as for this wonderful degree of improvement, I am sure it may all
be resolved into a better style of dress, and your having nobody else to
look at; and therefore, if you do set about a flirtation with her, you
never will persuade me that it is in compliment to her beauty, or that
it proceeds from anything but your own idleness and folly.”

Her brother gave only a smile to this accusation, and soon afterwards
said, “I do not quite know what to make of Miss Fanny. I do not
understand her. I could not tell what she would be at yesterday. What is
her character? Is she solemn? Is she queer? Is she prudish? Why did she
draw back and look so grave at me? I could hardly get her to speak. I
never was so long in company with a girl in my life, trying to entertain
her, and succeed so ill! Never met with a girl who looked so grave on
me! I must try to get the better of this. Her looks say, 'I will not
like you, I am determined not to like you'; and I say she shall.”

“Foolish fellow! And so this is her attraction after all! This it is,
her not caring about you, which gives her such a soft skin, and makes
her so much taller, and produces all these charms and graces! I do
desire that you will not be making her really unhappy; a _little_ love,
perhaps, may animate and do her good, but I will not have you plunge
her deep, for she is as good a little creature as ever lived, and has a
great deal of feeling.”

“It can be but for a fortnight,” said Henry; “and if a fortnight can
kill her, she must have a constitution which nothing could save. No, I
will not do her any harm, dear little soul! only want her to look kindly
on me, to give me smiles as well as blushes, to keep a chair for me by
herself wherever we are, and be all animation when I take it and talk
to her; to think as I think, be interested in all my possessions and
pleasures, try to keep me longer at Mansfield, and feel when I go away
that she shall be never happy again. I want nothing more.”

“Moderation itself!” said Mary. “I can have no scruples now. Well, you
will have opportunities enough of endeavouring to recommend yourself,
for we are a great deal together.”

And without attempting any farther remonstrance, she left Fanny to
her fate, a fate which, had not Fanny's heart been guarded in a way
unsuspected by Miss Crawford, might have been a little harder than she
deserved; for although there doubtless are such unconquerable young
ladies of eighteen (or one should not read about them) as are never
to be persuaded into love against their judgment by all that talent,
manner, attention, and flattery can do, I have no inclination to
believe Fanny one of them, or to think that with so much tenderness
of disposition, and so much taste as belonged to her, she could have
escaped heart-whole from the courtship (though the courtship only of
a fortnight) of such a man as Crawford, in spite of there being some
previous ill opinion of him to be overcome, had not her affection been
engaged elsewhere. With all the security which love of another and
disesteem of him could give to the peace of mind he was attacking,
his continued attentions--continued, but not obtrusive, and adapting
themselves more and more to the gentleness and delicacy of her
character--obliged her very soon to dislike him less than formerly. She
had by no means forgotten the past, and she thought as ill of him as
ever; but she felt his powers: he was entertaining; and his manners were
so improved, so polite, so seriously and blamelessly polite, that it was
impossible not to be civil to him in return.

A very few days were enough to effect this; and at the end of those few
days, circumstances arose which had a tendency rather to forward his
views of pleasing her, inasmuch as they gave her a degree of happiness
which must dispose her to be pleased with everybody. William, her
brother, the so long absent and dearly loved brother, was in England
again. She had a letter from him herself, a few hurried happy lines,
written as the ship came up Channel, and sent into Portsmouth with
the first boat that left the Antwerp at anchor in Spithead; and when
Crawford walked up with the newspaper in his hand, which he had hoped
would bring the first tidings, he found her trembling with joy over this
letter, and listening with a glowing, grateful countenance to the kind
invitation which her uncle was most collectedly dictating in reply.

It was but the day before that Crawford had made himself thoroughly
master of the subject, or had in fact become at all aware of her having
such a brother, or his being in such a ship, but the interest then
excited had been very properly lively, determining him on his return to
town to apply for information as to the probable period of the Antwerp's
return from the Mediterranean, etc.; and the good luck which attended
his early examination of ship news the next morning seemed the reward of
his ingenuity in finding out such a method of pleasing her, as well as
of his dutiful attention to the Admiral, in having for many years
taken in the paper esteemed to have the earliest naval intelligence. He
proved, however, to be too late. All those fine first feelings, of which
he had hoped to be the exciter, were already given. But his intention,
the kindness of his intention, was thankfully acknowledged: quite
thankfully and warmly, for she was elevated beyond the common timidity
of her mind by the flow of her love for William.

This dear William would soon be amongst them. There could be no doubt
of his obtaining leave of absence immediately, for he was still only a
midshipman; and as his parents, from living on the spot, must already
have seen him, and be seeing him perhaps daily, his direct holidays
might with justice be instantly given to the sister, who had been his
best correspondent through a period of seven years, and the uncle who
had done most for his support and advancement; and accordingly the reply
to her reply, fixing a very early day for his arrival, came as soon as
possible; and scarcely ten days had passed since Fanny had been in
the agitation of her first dinner-visit, when she found herself in an
agitation of a higher nature, watching in the hall, in the lobby, on
the stairs, for the first sound of the carriage which was to bring her a
brother.

It came happily while she was thus waiting; and there being neither
ceremony nor fearfulness to delay the moment of meeting, she was with
him as he entered the house, and the first minutes of exquisite feeling
had no interruption and no witnesses, unless the servants chiefly intent
upon opening the proper doors could be called such. This was exactly
what Sir Thomas and Edmund had been separately conniving at, as each
proved to the other by the sympathetic alacrity with which they both
advised Mrs. Norris's continuing where she was, instead of rushing out
into the hall as soon as the noises of the arrival reached them.

William and Fanny soon shewed themselves; and Sir Thomas had the
pleasure of receiving, in his protege, certainly a very different person
from the one he had equipped seven years ago, but a young man of an
open, pleasant countenance, and frank, unstudied, but feeling and
respectful manners, and such as confirmed him his friend.

It was long before Fanny could recover from the agitating happiness of
such an hour as was formed by the last thirty minutes of expectation,
and the first of fruition; it was some time even before her happiness
could be said to make her happy, before the disappointment inseparable
from the alteration of person had vanished, and she could see in him the
same William as before, and talk to him, as her heart had been yearning
to do through many a past year. That time, however, did gradually come,
forwarded by an affection on his side as warm as her own, and much less
encumbered by refinement or self-distrust. She was the first object
of his love, but it was a love which his stronger spirits, and bolder
temper, made it as natural for him to express as to feel. On the
morrow they were walking about together with true enjoyment, and every
succeeding morrow renewed a _tete-a-tete_ which Sir Thomas could not but
observe with complacency, even before Edmund had pointed it out to him.

Excepting the moments of peculiar delight, which any marked or
unlooked-for instance of Edmund's consideration of her in the last few
months had excited, Fanny had never known so much felicity in her life,
as in this unchecked, equal, fearless intercourse with the brother and
friend who was opening all his heart to her, telling her all his hopes
and fears, plans, and solicitudes respecting that long thought of,
dearly earned, and justly valued blessing of promotion; who could give
her direct and minute information of the father and mother, brothers and
sisters, of whom she very seldom heard; who was interested in all the
comforts and all the little hardships of her home at Mansfield; ready to
think of every member of that home as she directed, or differing only
by a less scrupulous opinion, and more noisy abuse of their aunt Norris,
and with whom (perhaps the dearest indulgence of the whole) all the evil
and good of their earliest years could be gone over again, and every
former united pain and pleasure retraced with the fondest recollection.
An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal
tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same
blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of
enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connexions can supply; and
it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which
no subsequent connexion can justify, if such precious remains of the
earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived. Too often, alas! it is
so. Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at others worse than
nothing. But with William and Fanny Price it was still a sentiment
in all its prime and freshness, wounded by no opposition of interest,
cooled by no separate attachment, and feeling the influence of time and
absence only in its increase.

An affection so amiable was advancing each in the opinion of all who had
hearts to value anything good. Henry Crawford was as much struck with
it as any. He honoured the warm-hearted, blunt fondness of the young
sailor, which led him to say, with his hands stretched towards Fanny's
head, “Do you know, I begin to like that queer fashion already, though
when I first heard of such things being done in England, I could
not believe it; and when Mrs. Brown, and the other women at the
Commissioner's at Gibraltar, appeared in the same trim, I thought they
were mad; but Fanny can reconcile me to anything”; and saw, with lively
admiration, the glow of Fanny's cheek, the brightness of her eye, the
deep interest, the absorbed attention, while her brother was describing
any of the imminent hazards, or terrific scenes, which such a period at
sea must supply.

It was a picture which Henry Crawford had moral taste enough to value.
Fanny's attractions increased--increased twofold; for the sensibility
which beautified her complexion and illumined her countenance was an
attraction in itself. He was no longer in doubt of the capabilities of
her heart. She had feeling, genuine feeling. It would be something to
be loved by such a girl, to excite the first ardours of her young
unsophisticated mind! She interested him more than he had foreseen. A
fortnight was not enough. His stay became indefinite.

William was often called on by his uncle to be the talker. His recitals
were amusing in themselves to Sir Thomas, but the chief object in
seeking them was to understand the reciter, to know the young man by his
histories; and he listened to his clear, simple, spirited details
with full satisfaction, seeing in them the proof of good principles,
professional knowledge, energy, courage, and cheerfulness, everything
that could deserve or promise well. Young as he was, William had already
seen a great deal. He had been in the Mediterranean; in the West Indies;
in the Mediterranean again; had been often taken on shore by the favour
of his captain, and in the course of seven years had known every variety
of danger which sea and war together could offer. With such means in
his power he had a right to be listened to; and though Mrs. Norris could
fidget about the room, and disturb everybody in quest of two needlefuls
of thread or a second-hand shirt button, in the midst of her nephew's
account of a shipwreck or an engagement, everybody else was attentive;
and even Lady Bertram could not hear of such horrors unmoved, or
without sometimes lifting her eyes from her work to say, “Dear me! how
disagreeable! I wonder anybody can ever go to sea.”

To Henry Crawford they gave a different feeling. He longed to have been
at sea, and seen and done and suffered as much. His heart was warmed,
his fancy fired, and he felt the highest respect for a lad who, before
he was twenty, had gone through such bodily hardships and given such
proofs of mind. The glory of heroism, of usefulness, of exertion, of
endurance, made his own habits of selfish indulgence appear in shameful
contrast; and he wished he had been a William Price, distinguishing
himself and working his way to fortune and consequence with so much
self-respect and happy ardour, instead of what he was!

The wish was rather eager than lasting. He was roused from the reverie
of retrospection and regret produced by it, by some inquiry from Edmund
as to his plans for the next day's hunting; and he found it was as well
to be a man of fortune at once with horses and grooms at his command.
In one respect it was better, as it gave him the means of conferring a
kindness where he wished to oblige. With spirits, courage, and curiosity
up to anything, William expressed an inclination to hunt; and Crawford
could mount him without the slightest inconvenience to himself, and with
only some scruples to obviate in Sir Thomas, who knew better than his
nephew the value of such a loan, and some alarms to reason away in
Fanny. She feared for William; by no means convinced by all that he
could relate of his own horsemanship in various countries, of the
scrambling parties in which he had been engaged, the rough horses and
mules he had ridden, or his many narrow escapes from dreadful falls,
that he was at all equal to the management of a high-fed hunter in an
English fox-chase; nor till he returned safe and well, without accident
or discredit, could she be reconciled to the risk, or feel any of that
obligation to Mr. Crawford for lending the horse which he had fully
intended it should produce. When it was proved, however, to have done
William no harm, she could allow it to be a kindness, and even reward
the owner with a smile when the animal was one minute tendered to his
use again; and the next, with the greatest cordiality, and in a manner
not to be resisted, made over to his use entirely so long as he remained
in Northamptonshire.

                        [End volume one of this edition.
                        Printed by T. and A. Constable,
                        Printers to Her Majesty at
                        the Edinburgh University Press]



CHAPTER XXV

The intercourse of the two families was at this period more nearly
restored to what it had been in the autumn, than any member of the
old intimacy had thought ever likely to be again. The return of Henry
Crawford, and the arrival of William Price, had much to do with it,
but much was still owing to Sir Thomas's more than toleration of the
neighbourly attempts at the Parsonage. His mind, now disengaged from
the cares which had pressed on him at first, was at leisure to find
the Grants and their young inmates really worth visiting; and though
infinitely above scheming or contriving for any the most advantageous
matrimonial establishment that could be among the apparent possibilities
of any one most dear to him, and disdaining even as a littleness the
being quick-sighted on such points, he could not avoid perceiving, in
a grand and careless way, that Mr. Crawford was somewhat distinguishing
his niece--nor perhaps refrain (though unconsciously) from giving a more
willing assent to invitations on that account.

His readiness, however, in agreeing to dine at the Parsonage, when the
general invitation was at last hazarded, after many debates and many
doubts as to whether it were worth while, “because Sir Thomas seemed
so ill inclined, and Lady Bertram was so indolent!” proceeded from
good-breeding and goodwill alone, and had nothing to do with Mr.
Crawford, but as being one in an agreeable group: for it was in the
course of that very visit that he first began to think that any one in
the habit of such idle observations _would_ _have_ _thought_ that Mr.
Crawford was the admirer of Fanny Price.

The meeting was generally felt to be a pleasant one, being composed in a
good proportion of those who would talk and those who would listen;
and the dinner itself was elegant and plentiful, according to the usual
style of the Grants, and too much according to the usual habits of
all to raise any emotion except in Mrs. Norris, who could never behold
either the wide table or the number of dishes on it with patience, and
who did always contrive to experience some evil from the passing of the
servants behind her chair, and to bring away some fresh conviction of
its being impossible among so many dishes but that some must be cold.

In the evening it was found, according to the predetermination of Mrs.
Grant and her sister, that after making up the whist-table there would
remain sufficient for a round game, and everybody being as perfectly
complying and without a choice as on such occasions they always are,
speculation was decided on almost as soon as whist; and Lady Bertram
soon found herself in the critical situation of being applied to for her
own choice between the games, and being required either to draw a card
for whist or not. She hesitated. Luckily Sir Thomas was at hand.

“What shall I do, Sir Thomas? Whist and speculation; which will amuse me
most?”

Sir Thomas, after a moment's thought, recommended speculation. He was
a whist player himself, and perhaps might feel that it would not much
amuse him to have her for a partner.

“Very well,” was her ladyship's contented answer; “then speculation, if
you please, Mrs. Grant. I know nothing about it, but Fanny must teach
me.”

Here Fanny interposed, however, with anxious protestations of her own
equal ignorance; she had never played the game nor seen it played in
her life; and Lady Bertram felt a moment's indecision again; but upon
everybody's assuring her that nothing could be so easy, that it was the
easiest game on the cards, and Henry Crawford's stepping forward with a
most earnest request to be allowed to sit between her ladyship and Miss
Price, and teach them both, it was so settled; and Sir Thomas, Mrs.
Norris, and Dr. and Mrs. Grant being seated at the table of prime
intellectual state and dignity, the remaining six, under Miss Crawford's
direction, were arranged round the other. It was a fine arrangement
for Henry Crawford, who was close to Fanny, and with his hands full of
business, having two persons' cards to manage as well as his own; for
though it was impossible for Fanny not to feel herself mistress of the
rules of the game in three minutes, he had yet to inspirit her play,
sharpen her avarice, and harden her heart, which, especially in any
competition with William, was a work of some difficulty; and as for Lady
Bertram, he must continue in charge of all her fame and fortune through
the whole evening; and if quick enough to keep her from looking at her
cards when the deal began, must direct her in whatever was to be done
with them to the end of it.

He was in high spirits, doing everything with happy ease, and preeminent
in all the lively turns, quick resources, and playful impudence that
could do honour to the game; and the round table was altogether a very
comfortable contrast to the steady sobriety and orderly silence of the
other.

Twice had Sir Thomas inquired into the enjoyment and success of his
lady, but in vain; no pause was long enough for the time his measured
manner needed; and very little of her state could be known till Mrs.
Grant was able, at the end of the first rubber, to go to her and pay her
compliments.

“I hope your ladyship is pleased with the game.”

“Oh dear, yes! very entertaining indeed. A very odd game. I do not know
what it is all about. I am never to see my cards; and Mr. Crawford does
all the rest.”

“Bertram,” said Crawford, some time afterwards, taking the opportunity
of a little languor in the game, “I have never told you what happened to
me yesterday in my ride home.” They had been hunting together, and were
in the midst of a good run, and at some distance from Mansfield, when
his horse being found to have flung a shoe, Henry Crawford had been
obliged to give up, and make the best of his way back. “I told you I
lost my way after passing that old farmhouse with the yew-trees, because
I can never bear to ask; but I have not told you that, with my usual
luck--for I never do wrong without gaining by it--I found myself in due
time in the very place which I had a curiosity to see. I was suddenly,
upon turning the corner of a steepish downy field, in the midst of
a retired little village between gently rising hills; a small stream
before me to be forded, a church standing on a sort of knoll to my
right--which church was strikingly large and handsome for the place, and
not a gentleman or half a gentleman's house to be seen excepting one--to
be presumed the Parsonage--within a stone's throw of the said knoll and
church. I found myself, in short, in Thornton Lacey.”

“It sounds like it,” said Edmund; “but which way did you turn after
passing Sewell's farm?”

“I answer no such irrelevant and insidious questions; though were I to
answer all that you could put in the course of an hour, you would never
be able to prove that it was _not_ Thornton Lacey--for such it certainly
was.”

“You inquired, then?”

“No, I never inquire. But I _told_ a man mending a hedge that it was
Thornton Lacey, and he agreed to it.”

“You have a good memory. I had forgotten having ever told you half so
much of the place.”

Thornton Lacey was the name of his impending living, as Miss Crawford
well knew; and her interest in a negotiation for William Price's knave
increased.

“Well,” continued Edmund, “and how did you like what you saw?”

“Very much indeed. You are a lucky fellow. There will be work for five
summers at least before the place is liveable.”

“No, no, not so bad as that. The farmyard must be moved, I grant you;
but I am not aware of anything else. The house is by no means bad, and
when the yard is removed, there may be a very tolerable approach to it.”

“The farmyard must be cleared away entirely, and planted up to shut
out the blacksmith's shop. The house must be turned to front the east
instead of the north--the entrance and principal rooms, I mean, must be
on that side, where the view is really very pretty; I am sure it may be
done. And _there_ must be your approach, through what is at present the
garden. You must make a new garden at what is now the back of the house;
which will be giving it the best aspect in the world, sloping to the
south-east. The ground seems precisely formed for it. I rode fifty yards
up the lane, between the church and the house, in order to look about
me; and saw how it might all be. Nothing can be easier. The meadows
beyond what _will_ _be_ the garden, as well as what now _is_, sweeping
round from the lane I stood in to the north-east, that is, to the
principal road through the village, must be all laid together, of
course; very pretty meadows they are, finely sprinkled with timber. They
belong to the living, I suppose; if not, you must purchase them. Then
the stream--something must be done with the stream; but I could not
quite determine what. I had two or three ideas.”

“And I have two or three ideas also,” said Edmund, “and one of them is,
that very little of your plan for Thornton Lacey will ever be put in
practice. I must be satisfied with rather less ornament and beauty. I
think the house and premises may be made comfortable, and given the air
of a gentleman's residence, without any very heavy expense, and that
must suffice me; and, I hope, may suffice all who care about me.”

Miss Crawford, a little suspicious and resentful of a certain tone of
voice, and a certain half-look attending the last expression of his
hope, made a hasty finish of her dealings with William Price; and
securing his knave at an exorbitant rate, exclaimed, “There, I will
stake my last like a woman of spirit. No cold prudence for me. I am not
born to sit still and do nothing. If I lose the game, it shall not be
from not striving for it.”

The game was hers, and only did not pay her for what she had given
to secure it. Another deal proceeded, and Crawford began again about
Thornton Lacey.

“My plan may not be the best possible: I had not many minutes to form
it in; but you must do a good deal. The place deserves it, and you
will find yourself not satisfied with much less than it is capable of.
(Excuse me, your ladyship must not see your cards. There, let them lie
just before you.) The place deserves it, Bertram. You talk of giving it
the air of a gentleman's residence. _That_ will be done by the removal
of the farmyard; for, independent of that terrible nuisance, I never saw
a house of the kind which had in itself so much the air of a
gentleman's residence, so much the look of a something above a mere
parsonage-house--above the expenditure of a few hundreds a year. It is
not a scrambling collection of low single rooms, with as many roofs
as windows; it is not cramped into the vulgar compactness of a square
farmhouse: it is a solid, roomy, mansion-like looking house, such as
one might suppose a respectable old country family had lived in from
generation to generation, through two centuries at least, and were now
spending from two to three thousand a year in.” Miss Crawford listened,
and Edmund agreed to this. “The air of a gentleman's residence,
therefore, you cannot but give it, if you do anything. But it is capable
of much more. (Let me see, Mary; Lady Bertram bids a dozen for that
queen; no, no, a dozen is more than it is worth. Lady Bertram does not
bid a dozen. She will have nothing to say to it. Go on, go on.) By some
such improvements as I have suggested (I do not really require you to
proceed upon my plan, though, by the bye, I doubt anybody's striking out
a better) you may give it a higher character. You may raise it into
a _place_. From being the mere gentleman's residence, it becomes, by
judicious improvement, the residence of a man of education, taste,
modern manners, good connexions. All this may be stamped on it; and that
house receive such an air as to make its owner be set down as the
great landholder of the parish by every creature travelling the road;
especially as there is no real squire's house to dispute the point--a
circumstance, between ourselves, to enhance the value of such a
situation in point of privilege and independence beyond all calculation.
_You_ think with me, I hope” (turning with a softened voice to Fanny).
“Have you ever seen the place?”

Fanny gave a quick negative, and tried to hide her interest in the
subject by an eager attention to her brother, who was driving as hard a
bargain, and imposing on her as much as he could; but Crawford pursued
with “No, no, you must not part with the queen. You have bought her too
dearly, and your brother does not offer half her value. No, no, sir,
hands off, hands off. Your sister does not part with the queen. She is
quite determined. The game will be yours,” turning to her again; “it
will certainly be yours.”

“And Fanny had much rather it were William's,” said Edmund, smiling at
her. “Poor Fanny! not allowed to cheat herself as she wishes!”

“Mr. Bertram,” said Miss Crawford, a few minutes afterwards, “you know
Henry to be such a capital improver, that you cannot possibly engage in
anything of the sort at Thornton Lacey without accepting his help. Only
think how useful he was at Sotherton! Only think what grand things were
produced there by our all going with him one hot day in August to drive
about the grounds, and see his genius take fire. There we went, and
there we came home again; and what was done there is not to be told!”

Fanny's eyes were turned on Crawford for a moment with an expression
more than grave--even reproachful; but on catching his, were instantly
withdrawn. With something of consciousness he shook his head at his
sister, and laughingly replied, “I cannot say there was much done at
Sotherton; but it was a hot day, and we were all walking after each
other, and bewildered.” As soon as a general buzz gave him shelter, he
added, in a low voice, directed solely at Fanny, “I should be sorry to
have my powers of _planning_ judged of by the day at Sotherton. I see
things very differently now. Do not think of me as I appeared then.”

Sotherton was a word to catch Mrs. Norris, and being just then in the
happy leisure which followed securing the odd trick by Sir Thomas's
capital play and her own against Dr. and Mrs. Grant's great hands,
she called out, in high good-humour, “Sotherton! Yes, that is a place,
indeed, and we had a charming day there. William, you are quite out of
luck; but the next time you come, I hope dear Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth
will be at home, and I am sure I can answer for your being kindly
received by both. Your cousins are not of a sort to forget their
relations, and Mr. Rushworth is a most amiable man. They are at Brighton
now, you know; in one of the best houses there, as Mr. Rushworth's fine
fortune gives them a right to be. I do not exactly know the distance,
but when you get back to Portsmouth, if it is not very far off, you
ought to go over and pay your respects to them; and I could send a
little parcel by you that I want to get conveyed to your cousins.”

“I should be very happy, aunt; but Brighton is almost by Beachey Head;
and if I could get so far, I could not expect to be welcome in such a
smart place as that--poor scrubby midshipman as I am.”

Mrs. Norris was beginning an eager assurance of the affability he might
depend on, when she was stopped by Sir Thomas's saying with authority,
“I do not advise your going to Brighton, William, as I trust you may
soon have more convenient opportunities of meeting; but my daughters
would be happy to see their cousins anywhere; and you will find Mr.
Rushworth most sincerely disposed to regard all the connexions of our
family as his own.”

“I would rather find him private secretary to the First Lord than
anything else,” was William's only answer, in an undervoice, not meant
to reach far, and the subject dropped.

As yet Sir Thomas had seen nothing to remark in Mr. Crawford's
behaviour; but when the whist-table broke up at the end of the second
rubber, and leaving Dr. Grant and Mrs. Norris to dispute over their last
play, he became a looker-on at the other, he found his niece the
object of attentions, or rather of professions, of a somewhat pointed
character.

Henry Crawford was in the first glow of another scheme about Thornton
Lacey; and not being able to catch Edmund's ear, was detailing it to his
fair neighbour with a look of considerable earnestness. His scheme was
to rent the house himself the following winter, that he might have a
home of his own in that neighbourhood; and it was not merely for the use
of it in the hunting-season (as he was then telling her), though _that_
consideration had certainly some weight, feeling as he did that, in
spite of all Dr. Grant's very great kindness, it was impossible for him
and his horses to be accommodated where they now were without material
inconvenience; but his attachment to that neighbourhood did not depend
upon one amusement or one season of the year: he had set his heart upon
having a something there that he could come to at any time, a little
homestall at his command, where all the holidays of his year might be
spent, and he might find himself continuing, improving, and _perfecting_
that friendship and intimacy with the Mansfield Park family which was
increasing in value to him every day. Sir Thomas heard and was not
offended. There was no want of respect in the young man's address;
and Fanny's reception of it was so proper and modest, so calm and
uninviting, that he had nothing to censure in her. She said little,
assented only here and there, and betrayed no inclination either of
appropriating any part of the compliment to herself, or of strengthening
his views in favour of Northamptonshire. Finding by whom he was
observed, Henry Crawford addressed himself on the same subject to Sir
Thomas, in a more everyday tone, but still with feeling.

“I want to be your neighbour, Sir Thomas, as you have, perhaps, heard me
telling Miss Price. May I hope for your acquiescence, and for your not
influencing your son against such a tenant?”

Sir Thomas, politely bowing, replied, “It is the only way, sir, in which
I could _not_ wish you established as a permanent neighbour; but I hope,
and believe, that Edmund will occupy his own house at Thornton Lacey.
Edmund, am I saying too much?”

Edmund, on this appeal, had first to hear what was going on; but, on
understanding the question, was at no loss for an answer.

“Certainly, sir, I have no idea but of residence. But, Crawford, though
I refuse you as a tenant, come to me as a friend. Consider the house as
half your own every winter, and we will add to the stables on your own
improved plan, and with all the improvements of your improved plan that
may occur to you this spring.”

“We shall be the losers,” continued Sir Thomas. “His going, though only
eight miles, will be an unwelcome contraction of our family circle; but
I should have been deeply mortified if any son of mine could reconcile
himself to doing less. It is perfectly natural that you should not have
thought much on the subject, Mr. Crawford. But a parish has wants and
claims which can be known only by a clergyman constantly resident, and
which no proxy can be capable of satisfying to the same extent. Edmund
might, in the common phrase, do the duty of Thornton, that is, he might
read prayers and preach, without giving up Mansfield Park: he might ride
over every Sunday, to a house nominally inhabited, and go through divine
service; he might be the clergyman of Thornton Lacey every seventh day,
for three or four hours, if that would content him. But it will not.
He knows that human nature needs more lessons than a weekly sermon can
convey; and that if he does not live among his parishioners, and prove
himself, by constant attention, their well-wisher and friend, he does
very little either for their good or his own.”

Mr. Crawford bowed his acquiescence.

“I repeat again,” added Sir Thomas, “that Thornton Lacey is the only
house in the neighbourhood in which I should _not_ be happy to wait on
Mr. Crawford as occupier.”

Mr. Crawford bowed his thanks.

“Sir Thomas,” said Edmund, “undoubtedly understands the duty of a parish
priest. We must hope his son may prove that _he_ knows it too.”

Whatever effect Sir Thomas's little harangue might really produce on Mr.
Crawford, it raised some awkward sensations in two of the others, two
of his most attentive listeners--Miss Crawford and Fanny. One of
whom, having never before understood that Thornton was so soon and so
completely to be his home, was pondering with downcast eyes on what it
would be _not_ to see Edmund every day; and the other, startled from the
agreeable fancies she had been previously indulging on the strength of
her brother's description, no longer able, in the picture she had
been forming of a future Thornton, to shut out the church, sink the
clergyman, and see only the respectable, elegant, modernised, and
occasional residence of a man of independent fortune, was considering
Sir Thomas, with decided ill-will, as the destroyer of all this, and
suffering the more from that involuntary forbearance which his character
and manner commanded, and from not daring to relieve herself by a single
attempt at throwing ridicule on his cause.

All the agreeable of _her_ speculation was over for that hour. It was
time to have done with cards, if sermons prevailed; and she was glad to
find it necessary to come to a conclusion, and be able to refresh her
spirits by a change of place and neighbour.

The chief of the party were now collected irregularly round the
fire, and waiting the final break-up. William and Fanny were the most
detached. They remained together at the otherwise deserted card-table,
talking very comfortably, and not thinking of the rest, till some of the
rest began to think of them. Henry Crawford's chair was the first to be
given a direction towards them, and he sat silently observing them for a
few minutes; himself, in the meanwhile, observed by Sir Thomas, who was
standing in chat with Dr. Grant.

“This is the assembly night,” said William. “If I were at Portsmouth I
should be at it, perhaps.”

“But you do not wish yourself at Portsmouth, William?”

“No, Fanny, that I do not. I shall have enough of Portsmouth and of
dancing too, when I cannot have you. And I do not know that there would
be any good in going to the assembly, for I might not get a partner.
The Portsmouth girls turn up their noses at anybody who has not a
commission. One might as well be nothing as a midshipman. One _is_
nothing, indeed. You remember the Gregorys; they are grown up amazing
fine girls, but they will hardly speak to _me_, because Lucy is courted
by a lieutenant.”

“Oh! shame, shame! But never mind it, William” (her own cheeks in a
glow of indignation as she spoke). “It is not worth minding. It is no
reflection on _you_; it is no more than what the greatest admirals have
all experienced, more or less, in their time. You must think of that,
you must try to make up your mind to it as one of the hardships which
fall to every sailor's share, like bad weather and hard living, only
with this advantage, that there will be an end to it, that there will
come a time when you will have nothing of that sort to endure. When you
are a lieutenant! only think, William, when you are a lieutenant, how
little you will care for any nonsense of this kind.”

“I begin to think I shall never be a lieutenant, Fanny. Everybody gets
made but me.”

“Oh! my dear William, do not talk so; do not be so desponding. My uncle
says nothing, but I am sure he will do everything in his power to get
you made. He knows, as well as you do, of what consequence it is.”

She was checked by the sight of her uncle much nearer to them than she
had any suspicion of, and each found it necessary to talk of something
else.

“Are you fond of dancing, Fanny?”

“Yes, very; only I am soon tired.”

“I should like to go to a ball with you and see you dance. Have you
never any balls at Northampton? I should like to see you dance, and I'd
dance with you if you _would_, for nobody would know who I was here,
and I should like to be your partner once more. We used to jump about
together many a time, did not we? when the hand-organ was in the street?
I am a pretty good dancer in my way, but I dare say you are a better.”
 And turning to his uncle, who was now close to them, “Is not Fanny a
very good dancer, sir?”

Fanny, in dismay at such an unprecedented question, did not know which
way to look, or how to be prepared for the answer. Some very grave
reproof, or at least the coldest expression of indifference, must be
coming to distress her brother, and sink her to the ground. But, on the
contrary, it was no worse than, “I am sorry to say that I am unable
to answer your question. I have never seen Fanny dance since she was a
little girl; but I trust we shall both think she acquits herself like
a gentlewoman when we do see her, which, perhaps, we may have an
opportunity of doing ere long.”

“I have had the pleasure of seeing your sister dance, Mr. Price,”
 said Henry Crawford, leaning forward, “and will engage to answer every
inquiry which you can make on the subject, to your entire satisfaction.
But I believe” (seeing Fanny looked distressed) “it must be at some
other time. There is _one_ person in company who does not like to have
Miss Price spoken of.”

True enough, he had once seen Fanny dance; and it was equally true
that he would now have answered for her gliding about with quiet, light
elegance, and in admirable time; but, in fact, he could not for the life
of him recall what her dancing had been, and rather took it for granted
that she had been present than remembered anything about her.

He passed, however, for an admirer of her dancing; and Sir Thomas, by no
means displeased, prolonged the conversation on dancing in general, and
was so well engaged in describing the balls of Antigua, and listening to
what his nephew could relate of the different modes of dancing which
had fallen within his observation, that he had not heard his carriage
announced, and was first called to the knowledge of it by the bustle of
Mrs. Norris.

“Come, Fanny, Fanny, what are you about? We are going. Do not you see
your aunt is going? Quick, quick! I cannot bear to keep good old Wilcox
waiting. You should always remember the coachman and horses. My dear Sir
Thomas, we have settled it that the carriage should come back for you,
and Edmund and William.”

Sir Thomas could not dissent, as it had been his own arrangement,
previously communicated to his wife and sister; but _that_ seemed
forgotten by Mrs. Norris, who must fancy that she settled it all
herself.

Fanny's last feeling in the visit was disappointment: for the shawl
which Edmund was quietly taking from the servant to bring and put round
her shoulders was seized by Mr. Crawford's quicker hand, and she was
obliged to be indebted to his more prominent attention.



CHAPTER XXVI

William's desire of seeing Fanny dance made more than a momentary
impression on his uncle. The hope of an opportunity, which Sir Thomas
had then given, was not given to be thought of no more. He remained
steadily inclined to gratify so amiable a feeling; to gratify anybody
else who might wish to see Fanny dance, and to give pleasure to the
young people in general; and having thought the matter over, and taken
his resolution in quiet independence, the result of it appeared the
next morning at breakfast, when, after recalling and commending what
his nephew had said, he added, “I do not like, William, that you
should leave Northamptonshire without this indulgence. It would give me
pleasure to see you both dance. You spoke of the balls at Northampton.
Your cousins have occasionally attended them; but they would not
altogether suit us now. The fatigue would be too much for your aunt. I
believe we must not think of a Northampton ball. A dance at home would
be more eligible; and if--”

“Ah, my dear Sir Thomas!” interrupted Mrs. Norris, “I knew what was
coming. I knew what you were going to say. If dear Julia were at home,
or dearest Mrs. Rushworth at Sotherton, to afford a reason, an occasion
for such a thing, you would be tempted to give the young people a dance
at Mansfield. I know you would. If _they_ were at home to grace the
ball, a ball you would have this very Christmas. Thank your uncle,
William, thank your uncle!”

“My daughters,” replied Sir Thomas, gravely interposing, “have their
pleasures at Brighton, and I hope are very happy; but the dance which I
think of giving at Mansfield will be for their cousins. Could we be all
assembled, our satisfaction would undoubtedly be more complete, but the
absence of some is not to debar the others of amusement.”

Mrs. Norris had not another word to say. She saw decision in his looks,
and her surprise and vexation required some minutes' silence to be
settled into composure. A ball at such a time! His daughters absent and
herself not consulted! There was comfort, however, soon at hand. _She_
must be the doer of everything: Lady Bertram would of course be spared
all thought and exertion, and it would all fall upon _her_. She should
have to do the honours of the evening; and this reflection quickly
restored so much of her good-humour as enabled her to join in with the
others, before their happiness and thanks were all expressed.

Edmund, William, and Fanny did, in their different ways, look and speak
as much grateful pleasure in the promised ball as Sir Thomas could
desire. Edmund's feelings were for the other two. His father had never
conferred a favour or shewn a kindness more to his satisfaction.

Lady Bertram was perfectly quiescent and contented, and had no
objections to make. Sir Thomas engaged for its giving her very little
trouble; and she assured him “that she was not at all afraid of the
trouble; indeed, she could not imagine there would be any.”

Mrs. Norris was ready with her suggestions as to the rooms he would
think fittest to be used, but found it all prearranged; and when she
would have conjectured and hinted about the day, it appeared that the
day was settled too. Sir Thomas had been amusing himself with shaping a
very complete outline of the business; and as soon as she would listen
quietly, could read his list of the families to be invited, from whom
he calculated, with all necessary allowance for the shortness of the
notice, to collect young people enough to form twelve or fourteen
couple: and could detail the considerations which had induced him to
fix on the 22nd as the most eligible day. William was required to be at
Portsmouth on the 24th; the 22nd would therefore be the last day of his
visit; but where the days were so few it would be unwise to fix on any
earlier. Mrs. Norris was obliged to be satisfied with thinking just the
same, and with having been on the point of proposing the 22nd herself,
as by far the best day for the purpose.

The ball was now a settled thing, and before the evening a proclaimed
thing to all whom it concerned. Invitations were sent with despatch,
and many a young lady went to bed that night with her head full of happy
cares as well as Fanny. To her the cares were sometimes almost beyond
the happiness; for young and inexperienced, with small means of choice
and no confidence in her own taste, the “how she should be dressed” was
a point of painful solicitude; and the almost solitary ornament in her
possession, a very pretty amber cross which William had brought her from
Sicily, was the greatest distress of all, for she had nothing but a bit
of ribbon to fasten it to; and though she had worn it in that manner
once, would it be allowable at such a time in the midst of all the rich
ornaments which she supposed all the other young ladies would appear in?
And yet not to wear it! William had wanted to buy her a gold chain too,
but the purchase had been beyond his means, and therefore not to wear
the cross might be mortifying him. These were anxious considerations;
enough to sober her spirits even under the prospect of a ball given
principally for her gratification.

The preparations meanwhile went on, and Lady Bertram continued to sit on
her sofa without any inconvenience from them. She had some extra visits
from the housekeeper, and her maid was rather hurried in making up a new
dress for her: Sir Thomas gave orders, and Mrs. Norris ran about; but
all this gave _her_ no trouble, and as she had foreseen, “there was, in
fact, no trouble in the business.”

Edmund was at this time particularly full of cares: his mind being
deeply occupied in the consideration of two important events now
at hand, which were to fix his fate in life--ordination and
matrimony--events of such a serious character as to make the ball, which
would be very quickly followed by one of them, appear of less moment in
his eyes than in those of any other person in the house. On the 23rd
he was going to a friend near Peterborough, in the same situation
as himself, and they were to receive ordination in the course of the
Christmas week. Half his destiny would then be determined, but the
other half might not be so very smoothly wooed. His duties would be
established, but the wife who was to share, and animate, and reward
those duties, might yet be unattainable. He knew his own mind, but he
was not always perfectly assured of knowing Miss Crawford's. There were
points on which they did not quite agree; there were moments in which
she did not seem propitious; and though trusting altogether to her
affection, so far as to be resolved--almost resolved--on bringing it to
a decision within a very short time, as soon as the variety of business
before him were arranged, and he knew what he had to offer her, he
had many anxious feelings, many doubting hours as to the result. His
conviction of her regard for him was sometimes very strong; he could
look back on a long course of encouragement, and she was as perfect in
disinterested attachment as in everything else. But at other times
doubt and alarm intermingled with his hopes; and when he thought of
her acknowledged disinclination for privacy and retirement, her decided
preference of a London life, what could he expect but a determined
rejection? unless it were an acceptance even more to be deprecated,
demanding such sacrifices of situation and employment on his side as
conscience must forbid.

The issue of all depended on one question. Did she love him well enough
to forego what had used to be essential points? Did she love him well
enough to make them no longer essential? And this question, which he was
continually repeating to himself, though oftenest answered with a “Yes,”
 had sometimes its “No.”

Miss Crawford was soon to leave Mansfield, and on this circumstance the
“no” and the “yes” had been very recently in alternation. He had seen
her eyes sparkle as she spoke of the dear friend's letter, which claimed
a long visit from her in London, and of the kindness of Henry, in
engaging to remain where he was till January, that he might convey her
thither; he had heard her speak of the pleasure of such a journey with
an animation which had “no” in every tone. But this had occurred on the
first day of its being settled, within the first hour of the burst of
such enjoyment, when nothing but the friends she was to visit was before
her. He had since heard her express herself differently, with other
feelings, more chequered feelings: he had heard her tell Mrs. Grant that
she should leave her with regret; that she began to believe neither the
friends nor the pleasures she was going to were worth those she left
behind; and that though she felt she must go, and knew she should enjoy
herself when once away, she was already looking forward to being at
Mansfield again. Was there not a “yes” in all this?

With such matters to ponder over, and arrange, and re-arrange, Edmund
could not, on his own account, think very much of the evening which the
rest of the family were looking forward to with a more equal degree of
strong interest. Independent of his two cousins' enjoyment in it, the
evening was to him of no higher value than any other appointed meeting
of the two families might be. In every meeting there was a hope of
receiving farther confirmation of Miss Crawford's attachment; but the
whirl of a ballroom, perhaps, was not particularly favourable to the
excitement or expression of serious feelings. To engage her early for
the two first dances was all the command of individual happiness which
he felt in his power, and the only preparation for the ball which he
could enter into, in spite of all that was passing around him on the
subject, from morning till night.

Thursday was the day of the ball; and on Wednesday morning Fanny, still
unable to satisfy herself as to what she ought to wear, determined to
seek the counsel of the more enlightened, and apply to Mrs. Grant and
her sister, whose acknowledged taste would certainly bear her blameless;
and as Edmund and William were gone to Northampton, and she had reason
to think Mr. Crawford likewise out, she walked down to the Parsonage
without much fear of wanting an opportunity for private discussion;
and the privacy of such a discussion was a most important part of it to
Fanny, being more than half-ashamed of her own solicitude.

She met Miss Crawford within a few yards of the Parsonage, just setting
out to call on her, and as it seemed to her that her friend, though
obliged to insist on turning back, was unwilling to lose her walk, she
explained her business at once, and observed, that if she would be so
kind as to give her opinion, it might be all talked over as well without
doors as within. Miss Crawford appeared gratified by the application,
and after a moment's thought, urged Fanny's returning with her in a much
more cordial manner than before, and proposed their going up into her
room, where they might have a comfortable coze, without disturbing Dr.
and Mrs. Grant, who were together in the drawing-room. It was just the
plan to suit Fanny; and with a great deal of gratitude on her side for
such ready and kind attention, they proceeded indoors, and upstairs, and
were soon deep in the interesting subject. Miss Crawford, pleased with
the appeal, gave her all her best judgment and taste, made everything
easy by her suggestions, and tried to make everything agreeable by her
encouragement. The dress being settled in all its grander parts--“But
what shall you have by way of necklace?” said Miss Crawford. “Shall not
you wear your brother's cross?” And as she spoke she was undoing a
small parcel, which Fanny had observed in her hand when they met. Fanny
acknowledged her wishes and doubts on this point: she did not know
how either to wear the cross, or to refrain from wearing it. She was
answered by having a small trinket-box placed before her, and being
requested to chuse from among several gold chains and necklaces. Such
had been the parcel with which Miss Crawford was provided, and such the
object of her intended visit: and in the kindest manner she now urged
Fanny's taking one for the cross and to keep for her sake, saying
everything she could think of to obviate the scruples which were making
Fanny start back at first with a look of horror at the proposal.

“You see what a collection I have,” said she; “more by half than I ever
use or think of. I do not offer them as new. I offer nothing but an old
necklace. You must forgive the liberty, and oblige me.”

Fanny still resisted, and from her heart. The gift was too valuable. But
Miss Crawford persevered, and argued the case with so much affectionate
earnestness through all the heads of William and the cross, and the
ball, and herself, as to be finally successful. Fanny found
herself obliged to yield, that she might not be accused of pride
or indifference, or some other littleness; and having with modest
reluctance given her consent, proceeded to make the selection. She
looked and looked, longing to know which might be least valuable; and
was determined in her choice at last, by fancying there was one necklace
more frequently placed before her eyes than the rest. It was of gold,
prettily worked; and though Fanny would have preferred a longer and a
plainer chain as more adapted for her purpose, she hoped, in fixing
on this, to be chusing what Miss Crawford least wished to keep. Miss
Crawford smiled her perfect approbation; and hastened to complete the
gift by putting the necklace round her, and making her see how well
it looked. Fanny had not a word to say against its becomingness, and,
excepting what remained of her scruples, was exceedingly pleased with
an acquisition so very apropos. She would rather, perhaps, have been
obliged to some other person. But this was an unworthy feeling. Miss
Crawford had anticipated her wants with a kindness which proved her a
real friend. “When I wear this necklace I shall always think of you,”
 said she, “and feel how very kind you were.”

“You must think of somebody else too, when you wear that necklace,”
 replied Miss Crawford. “You must think of Henry, for it was his choice
in the first place. He gave it to me, and with the necklace I make over
to you all the duty of remembering the original giver. It is to be
a family remembrancer. The sister is not to be in your mind without
bringing the brother too.”

Fanny, in great astonishment and confusion, would have returned the
present instantly. To take what had been the gift of another person,
of a brother too, impossible! it must not be! and with an eagerness
and embarrassment quite diverting to her companion, she laid down the
necklace again on its cotton, and seemed resolved either to take another
or none at all. Miss Crawford thought she had never seen a prettier
consciousness. “My dear child,” said she, laughing, “what are you afraid
of? Do you think Henry will claim the necklace as mine, and fancy you
did not come honestly by it? or are you imagining he would be too much
flattered by seeing round your lovely throat an ornament which his money
purchased three years ago, before he knew there was such a throat in the
world? or perhaps”--looking archly--“you suspect a confederacy between
us, and that what I am now doing is with his knowledge and at his
desire?”

With the deepest blushes Fanny protested against such a thought.

“Well, then,” replied Miss Crawford more seriously, but without at all
believing her, “to convince me that you suspect no trick, and are as
unsuspicious of compliment as I have always found you, take the necklace
and say no more about it. Its being a gift of my brother's need not make
the smallest difference in your accepting it, as I assure you it makes
none in my willingness to part with it. He is always giving me something
or other. I have such innumerable presents from him that it is quite
impossible for me to value or for him to remember half. And as for this
necklace, I do not suppose I have worn it six times: it is very pretty,
but I never think of it; and though you would be most heartily welcome
to any other in my trinket-box, you have happened to fix on the very
one which, if I have a choice, I would rather part with and see in your
possession than any other. Say no more against it, I entreat you. Such a
trifle is not worth half so many words.”

Fanny dared not make any farther opposition; and with renewed but less
happy thanks accepted the necklace again, for there was an expression in
Miss Crawford's eyes which she could not be satisfied with.

It was impossible for her to be insensible of Mr. Crawford's change of
manners. She had long seen it. He evidently tried to please her: he was
gallant, he was attentive, he was something like what he had been to her
cousins: he wanted, she supposed, to cheat her of her tranquillity as
he had cheated them; and whether he might not have some concern in this
necklace--she could not be convinced that he had not, for Miss Crawford,
complaisant as a sister, was careless as a woman and a friend.

Reflecting and doubting, and feeling that the possession of what she had
so much wished for did not bring much satisfaction, she now walked
home again, with a change rather than a diminution of cares since her
treading that path before.



CHAPTER XXVII

On reaching home Fanny went immediately upstairs to deposit this
unexpected acquisition, this doubtful good of a necklace, in some
favourite box in the East room, which held all her smaller treasures;
but on opening the door, what was her surprise to find her cousin Edmund
there writing at the table! Such a sight having never occurred before,
was almost as wonderful as it was welcome.

“Fanny,” said he directly, leaving his seat and his pen, and meeting her
with something in his hand, “I beg your pardon for being here. I came
to look for you, and after waiting a little while in hope of your coming
in, was making use of your inkstand to explain my errand. You will find
the beginning of a note to yourself; but I can now speak my business,
which is merely to beg your acceptance of this little trifle--a chain
for William's cross. You ought to have had it a week ago, but there has
been a delay from my brother's not being in town by several days so soon
as I expected; and I have only just now received it at Northampton. I
hope you will like the chain itself, Fanny. I endeavoured to consult the
simplicity of your taste; but, at any rate, I know you will be kind to
my intentions, and consider it, as it really is, a token of the love of
one of your oldest friends.”

And so saying, he was hurrying away, before Fanny, overpowered by a
thousand feelings of pain and pleasure, could attempt to speak; but
quickened by one sovereign wish, she then called out, “Oh! cousin, stop
a moment, pray stop!”

He turned back.

“I cannot attempt to thank you,” she continued, in a very agitated
manner; “thanks are out of the question. I feel much more than I can
possibly express. Your goodness in thinking of me in such a way is
beyond--”

“If that is all you have to say, Fanny” smiling and turning away again.

“No, no, it is not. I want to consult you.”

Almost unconsciously she had now undone the parcel he had just put
into her hand, and seeing before her, in all the niceness of jewellers'
packing, a plain gold chain, perfectly simple and neat, she could not
help bursting forth again, “Oh, this is beautiful indeed! This is the
very thing, precisely what I wished for! This is the only ornament I
have ever had a desire to possess. It will exactly suit my cross. They
must and shall be worn together. It comes, too, in such an acceptable
moment. Oh, cousin, you do not know how acceptable it is.”

“My dear Fanny, you feel these things a great deal too much. I am most
happy that you like the chain, and that it should be here in time for
to-morrow; but your thanks are far beyond the occasion. Believe me, I
have no pleasure in the world superior to that of contributing to yours.
No, I can safely say, I have no pleasure so complete, so unalloyed. It
is without a drawback.”

Upon such expressions of affection Fanny could have lived an hour
without saying another word; but Edmund, after waiting a moment, obliged
her to bring down her mind from its heavenly flight by saying, “But what
is it that you want to consult me about?”

It was about the necklace, which she was now most earnestly longing to
return, and hoped to obtain his approbation of her doing. She gave the
history of her recent visit, and now her raptures might well be over;
for Edmund was so struck with the circumstance, so delighted with what
Miss Crawford had done, so gratified by such a coincidence of conduct
between them, that Fanny could not but admit the superior power of one
pleasure over his own mind, though it might have its drawback. It was
some time before she could get his attention to her plan, or any answer
to her demand of his opinion: he was in a reverie of fond reflection,
uttering only now and then a few half-sentences of praise; but when
he did awake and understand, he was very decided in opposing what she
wished.

“Return the necklace! No, my dear Fanny, upon no account. It would be
mortifying her severely. There can hardly be a more unpleasant sensation
than the having anything returned on our hands which we have given with
a reasonable hope of its contributing to the comfort of a friend. Why
should she lose a pleasure which she has shewn herself so deserving of?”

“If it had been given to me in the first instance,” said Fanny, “I
should not have thought of returning it; but being her brother's
present, is not it fair to suppose that she would rather not part with
it, when it is not wanted?”

“She must not suppose it not wanted, not acceptable, at least: and its
having been originally her brother's gift makes no difference; for as
she was not prevented from offering, nor you from taking it on that
account, it ought not to prevent you from keeping it. No doubt it is
handsomer than mine, and fitter for a ballroom.”

“No, it is not handsomer, not at all handsomer in its way, and, for
my purpose, not half so fit. The chain will agree with William's cross
beyond all comparison better than the necklace.”

“For one night, Fanny, for only one night, if it _be_ a sacrifice; I am
sure you will, upon consideration, make that sacrifice rather than give
pain to one who has been so studious of your comfort. Miss Crawford's
attentions to you have been--not more than you were justly entitled
to--I am the last person to think that _could_ _be_, but they have been
invariable; and to be returning them with what must have something the
_air_ of ingratitude, though I know it could never have the _meaning_,
is not in your nature, I am sure. Wear the necklace, as you are engaged
to do, to-morrow evening, and let the chain, which was not ordered with
any reference to the ball, be kept for commoner occasions. This is my
advice. I would not have the shadow of a coolness between the two whose
intimacy I have been observing with the greatest pleasure, and in whose
characters there is so much general resemblance in true generosity
and natural delicacy as to make the few slight differences, resulting
principally from situation, no reasonable hindrance to a perfect
friendship. I would not have the shadow of a coolness arise,” he
repeated, his voice sinking a little, “between the two dearest objects I
have on earth.”

He was gone as he spoke; and Fanny remained to tranquillise herself as
she could. She was one of his two dearest--that must support her. But
the other: the first! She had never heard him speak so openly before,
and though it told her no more than what she had long perceived, it was
a stab, for it told of his own convictions and views. They were
decided. He would marry Miss Crawford. It was a stab, in spite of every
long-standing expectation; and she was obliged to repeat again and
again, that she was one of his two dearest, before the words gave her
any sensation. Could she believe Miss Crawford to deserve him, it would
be--oh, how different would it be--how far more tolerable! But he was
deceived in her: he gave her merits which she had not; her faults were
what they had ever been, but he saw them no longer. Till she had shed
many tears over this deception, Fanny could not subdue her agitation;
and the dejection which followed could only be relieved by the influence
of fervent prayers for his happiness.

It was her intention, as she felt it to be her duty, to try to overcome
all that was excessive, all that bordered on selfishness, in her
affection for Edmund. To call or to fancy it a loss, a disappointment,
would be a presumption for which she had not words strong enough to
satisfy her own humility. To think of him as Miss Crawford might be
justified in thinking, would in her be insanity. To her he could be
nothing under any circumstances; nothing dearer than a friend. Why did
such an idea occur to her even enough to be reprobated and forbidden? It
ought not to have touched on the confines of her imagination. She would
endeavour to be rational, and to deserve the right of judging of Miss
Crawford's character, and the privilege of true solicitude for him by a
sound intellect and an honest heart.

She had all the heroism of principle, and was determined to do her duty;
but having also many of the feelings of youth and nature, let her not
be much wondered at, if, after making all these good resolutions on the
side of self-government, she seized the scrap of paper on which Edmund
had begun writing to her, as a treasure beyond all her hopes, and
reading with the tenderest emotion these words, “My very dear Fanny,
you must do me the favour to accept” locked it up with the chain, as the
dearest part of the gift. It was the only thing approaching to a letter
which she had ever received from him; she might never receive another;
it was impossible that she ever should receive another so perfectly
gratifying in the occasion and the style. Two lines more prized had
never fallen from the pen of the most distinguished author--never
more completely blessed the researches of the fondest biographer. The
enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's. To her,
the handwriting itself, independent of anything it may convey, is a
blessedness. Never were such characters cut by any other human being as
Edmund's commonest handwriting gave! This specimen, written in haste
as it was, had not a fault; and there was a felicity in the flow of the
first four words, in the arrangement of “My very dear Fanny,” which she
could have looked at for ever.

Having regulated her thoughts and comforted her feelings by this happy
mixture of reason and weakness, she was able in due time to go down
and resume her usual employments near her aunt Bertram, and pay her the
usual observances without any apparent want of spirits.

Thursday, predestined to hope and enjoyment, came; and opened with
more kindness to Fanny than such self-willed, unmanageable days often
volunteer, for soon after breakfast a very friendly note was brought
from Mr. Crawford to William, stating that as he found himself obliged
to go to London on the morrow for a few days, he could not help trying
to procure a companion; and therefore hoped that if William could
make up his mind to leave Mansfield half a day earlier than had been
proposed, he would accept a place in his carriage. Mr. Crawford meant to
be in town by his uncle's accustomary late dinner-hour, and William
was invited to dine with him at the Admiral's. The proposal was a very
pleasant one to William himself, who enjoyed the idea of travelling post
with four horses, and such a good-humoured, agreeable friend; and, in
likening it to going up with despatches, was saying at once everything
in favour of its happiness and dignity which his imagination could
suggest; and Fanny, from a different motive, was exceedingly pleased;
for the original plan was that William should go up by the mail from
Northampton the following night, which would not have allowed him an
hour's rest before he must have got into a Portsmouth coach; and though
this offer of Mr. Crawford's would rob her of many hours of his company,
she was too happy in having William spared from the fatigue of such
a journey, to think of anything else. Sir Thomas approved of it for
another reason. His nephew's introduction to Admiral Crawford might be
of service. The Admiral, he believed, had interest. Upon the whole, it
was a very joyous note. Fanny's spirits lived on it half the morning,
deriving some accession of pleasure from its writer being himself to go
away.

As for the ball, so near at hand, she had too many agitations and fears
to have half the enjoyment in anticipation which she ought to have had,
or must have been supposed to have by the many young ladies looking
forward to the same event in situations more at ease, but under
circumstances of less novelty, less interest, less peculiar
gratification, than would be attributed to her. Miss Price, known
only by name to half the people invited, was now to make her first
appearance, and must be regarded as the queen of the evening. Who could
be happier than Miss Price? But Miss Price had not been brought up to
the trade of _coming_ _out_; and had she known in what light this ball
was, in general, considered respecting her, it would very much have
lessened her comfort by increasing the fears she already had of doing
wrong and being looked at. To dance without much observation or any
extraordinary fatigue, to have strength and partners for about half the
evening, to dance a little with Edmund, and not a great deal with Mr.
Crawford, to see William enjoy himself, and be able to keep away
from her aunt Norris, was the height of her ambition, and seemed to
comprehend her greatest possibility of happiness. As these were the best
of her hopes, they could not always prevail; and in the course of a long
morning, spent principally with her two aunts, she was often under the
influence of much less sanguine views. William, determined to make this
last day a day of thorough enjoyment, was out snipe-shooting; Edmund,
she had too much reason to suppose, was at the Parsonage; and left
alone to bear the worrying of Mrs. Norris, who was cross because the
housekeeper would have her own way with the supper, and whom _she_ could
not avoid though the housekeeper might, Fanny was worn down at last to
think everything an evil belonging to the ball, and when sent off with
a parting worry to dress, moved as languidly towards her own room, and
felt as incapable of happiness as if she had been allowed no share in
it.

As she walked slowly upstairs she thought of yesterday; it had been
about the same hour that she had returned from the Parsonage, and
found Edmund in the East room. “Suppose I were to find him there again
to-day!” said she to herself, in a fond indulgence of fancy.

“Fanny,” said a voice at that moment near her. Starting and looking up,
she saw, across the lobby she had just reached, Edmund himself, standing
at the head of a different staircase. He came towards her. “You look
tired and fagged, Fanny. You have been walking too far.”

“No, I have not been out at all.”

“Then you have had fatigues within doors, which are worse. You had
better have gone out.”

Fanny, not liking to complain, found it easiest to make no answer; and
though he looked at her with his usual kindness, she believed he had
soon ceased to think of her countenance. He did not appear in spirits:
something unconnected with her was probably amiss. They proceeded
upstairs together, their rooms being on the same floor above.

“I come from Dr. Grant's,” said Edmund presently. “You may guess my
errand there, Fanny.” And he looked so conscious, that Fanny could think
but of one errand, which turned her too sick for speech. “I wished to
engage Miss Crawford for the two first dances,” was the explanation that
followed, and brought Fanny to life again, enabling her, as she found
she was expected to speak, to utter something like an inquiry as to the
result.

“Yes,” he answered, “she is engaged to me; but” (with a smile that did
not sit easy) “she says it is to be the last time that she ever will
dance with me. She is not serious. I think, I hope, I am sure she is
not serious; but I would rather not hear it. She never has danced with a
clergyman, she says, and she never _will_. For my own sake, I could wish
there had been no ball just at--I mean not this very week, this very
day; to-morrow I leave home.”

Fanny struggled for speech, and said, “I am very sorry that anything has
occurred to distress you. This ought to be a day of pleasure. My uncle
meant it so.”

“Oh yes, yes! and it will be a day of pleasure. It will all end right. I
am only vexed for a moment. In fact, it is not that I consider the ball
as ill-timed; what does it signify? But, Fanny,” stopping her, by taking
her hand, and speaking low and seriously, “you know what all this means.
You see how it is; and could tell me, perhaps better than I could tell
you, how and why I am vexed. Let me talk to you a little. You are a
kind, kind listener. I have been pained by her manner this morning, and
cannot get the better of it. I know her disposition to be as sweet and
faultless as your own, but the influence of her former companions
makes her seem--gives to her conversation, to her professed opinions,
sometimes a tinge of wrong. She does not _think_ evil, but she speaks
it, speaks it in playfulness; and though I know it to be playfulness, it
grieves me to the soul.”

“The effect of education,” said Fanny gently.

Edmund could not but agree to it. “Yes, that uncle and aunt! They have
injured the finest mind; for sometimes, Fanny, I own to you, it does
appear more than manner: it appears as if the mind itself was tainted.”

Fanny imagined this to be an appeal to her judgment, and therefore,
after a moment's consideration, said, “If you only want me as a
listener, cousin, I will be as useful as I can; but I am not qualified
for an adviser. Do not ask advice of _me_. I am not competent.”

“You are right, Fanny, to protest against such an office, but you need
not be afraid. It is a subject on which I should never ask advice; it
is the sort of subject on which it had better never be asked; and few,
I imagine, do ask it, but when they want to be influenced against their
conscience. I only want to talk to you.”

“One thing more. Excuse the liberty; but take care _how_ you talk to me.
Do not tell me anything now, which hereafter you may be sorry for. The
time may come--”

The colour rushed into her cheeks as she spoke.

“Dearest Fanny!” cried Edmund, pressing her hand to his lips with
almost as much warmth as if it had been Miss Crawford's, “you are all
considerate thought! But it is unnecessary here. The time will never
come. No such time as you allude to will ever come. I begin to think it
most improbable: the chances grow less and less; and even if it should,
there will be nothing to be remembered by either you or me that we need
be afraid of, for I can never be ashamed of my own scruples; and if they
are removed, it must be by changes that will only raise her character
the more by the recollection of the faults she once had. You are the
only being upon earth to whom I should say what I have said; but you
have always known my opinion of her; you can bear me witness, Fanny,
that I have never been blinded. How many a time have we talked over
her little errors! You need not fear me; I have almost given up every
serious idea of her; but I must be a blockhead indeed, if, whatever
befell me, I could think of your kindness and sympathy without the
sincerest gratitude.”

He had said enough to shake the experience of eighteen. He had said
enough to give Fanny some happier feelings than she had lately known,
and with a brighter look, she answered, “Yes, cousin, I am convinced
that _you_ would be incapable of anything else, though perhaps some
might not. I cannot be afraid of hearing anything you wish to say. Do
not check yourself. Tell me whatever you like.”

They were now on the second floor, and the appearance of a housemaid
prevented any farther conversation. For Fanny's present comfort it was
concluded, perhaps, at the happiest moment: had he been able to talk
another five minutes, there is no saying that he might not have talked
away all Miss Crawford's faults and his own despondence. But as it was,
they parted with looks on his side of grateful affection, and with
some very precious sensations on hers. She had felt nothing like it for
hours. Since the first joy from Mr. Crawford's note to William had worn
away, she had been in a state absolutely the reverse; there had been
no comfort around, no hope within her. Now everything was smiling.
William's good fortune returned again upon her mind, and seemed of
greater value than at first. The ball, too--such an evening of pleasure
before her! It was now a real animation; and she began to dress for it
with much of the happy flutter which belongs to a ball. All went well:
she did not dislike her own looks; and when she came to the necklaces
again, her good fortune seemed complete, for upon trial the one given
her by Miss Crawford would by no means go through the ring of the cross.
She had, to oblige Edmund, resolved to wear it; but it was too large for
the purpose. His, therefore, must be worn; and having, with delightful
feelings, joined the chain and the cross--those memorials of the two
most beloved of her heart, those dearest tokens so formed for each other
by everything real and imaginary--and put them round her neck, and seen
and felt how full of William and Edmund they were, she was able, without
an effort, to resolve on wearing Miss Crawford's necklace too. She
acknowledged it to be right. Miss Crawford had a claim; and when it was
no longer to encroach on, to interfere with the stronger claims, the
truer kindness of another, she could do her justice even with pleasure
to herself. The necklace really looked very well; and Fanny left her
room at last, comfortably satisfied with herself and all about her.

Her aunt Bertram had recollected her on this occasion with an unusual
degree of wakefulness. It had really occurred to her, unprompted, that
Fanny, preparing for a ball, might be glad of better help than the upper
housemaid's, and when dressed herself, she actually sent her own maid to
assist her; too late, of course, to be of any use. Mrs. Chapman had just
reached the attic floor, when Miss Price came out of her room completely
dressed, and only civilities were necessary; but Fanny felt her aunt's
attention almost as much as Lady Bertram or Mrs. Chapman could do
themselves.



CHAPTER XXVIII

Her uncle and both her aunts were in the drawing-room when Fanny went
down. To the former she was an interesting object, and he saw with
pleasure the general elegance of her appearance, and her being in
remarkably good looks. The neatness and propriety of her dress was all
that he would allow himself to commend in her presence, but upon her
leaving the room again soon afterwards, he spoke of her beauty with very
decided praise.

“Yes,” said Lady Bertram, “she looks very well. I sent Chapman to her.”

“Look well! Oh, yes!” cried Mrs. Norris, “she has good reason to look
well with all her advantages: brought up in this family as she has been,
with all the benefit of her cousins' manners before her. Only think, my
dear Sir Thomas, what extraordinary advantages you and I have been the
means of giving her. The very gown you have been taking notice of is
your own generous present to her when dear Mrs. Rushworth married. What
would she have been if we had not taken her by the hand?”

Sir Thomas said no more; but when they sat down to table the eyes of
the two young men assured him that the subject might be gently touched
again, when the ladies withdrew, with more success. Fanny saw that she
was approved; and the consciousness of looking well made her look still
better. From a variety of causes she was happy, and she was soon made
still happier; for in following her aunts out of the room, Edmund, who
was holding open the door, said, as she passed him, “You must dance
with me, Fanny; you must keep two dances for me; any two that you like,
except the first.” She had nothing more to wish for. She had hardly
ever been in a state so nearly approaching high spirits in her life. Her
cousins' former gaiety on the day of a ball was no longer surprising to
her; she felt it to be indeed very charming, and was actually practising
her steps about the drawing-room as long as she could be safe from the
notice of her aunt Norris, who was entirely taken up at first in fresh
arranging and injuring the noble fire which the butler had prepared.

Half an hour followed that would have been at least languid under any
other circumstances, but Fanny's happiness still prevailed. It was but
to think of her conversation with Edmund, and what was the restlessness
of Mrs. Norris? What were the yawns of Lady Bertram?

The gentlemen joined them; and soon after began the sweet expectation of
a carriage, when a general spirit of ease and enjoyment seemed diffused,
and they all stood about and talked and laughed, and every moment had
its pleasure and its hope. Fanny felt that there must be a struggle
in Edmund's cheerfulness, but it was delightful to see the effort so
successfully made.

When the carriages were really heard, when the guests began really to
assemble, her own gaiety of heart was much subdued: the sight of so
many strangers threw her back into herself; and besides the gravity and
formality of the first great circle, which the manners of neither Sir
Thomas nor Lady Bertram were of a kind to do away, she found herself
occasionally called on to endure something worse. She was introduced
here and there by her uncle, and forced to be spoken to, and to curtsey,
and speak again. This was a hard duty, and she was never summoned to
it without looking at William, as he walked about at his ease in the
background of the scene, and longing to be with him.

The entrance of the Grants and Crawfords was a favourable epoch. The
stiffness of the meeting soon gave way before their popular manners and
more diffused intimacies: little groups were formed, and everybody grew
comfortable. Fanny felt the advantage; and, drawing back from the toils
of civility, would have been again most happy, could she have kept her
eyes from wandering between Edmund and Mary Crawford. _She_ looked all
loveliness--and what might not be the end of it? Her own musings
were brought to an end on perceiving Mr. Crawford before her, and
her thoughts were put into another channel by his engaging her almost
instantly for the first two dances. Her happiness on this occasion was
very much _a_ _la_ _mortal_, finely chequered. To be secure of a partner
at first was a most essential good--for the moment of beginning was now
growing seriously near; and she so little understood her own claims as
to think that if Mr. Crawford had not asked her, she must have been the
last to be sought after, and should have received a partner only through
a series of inquiry, and bustle, and interference, which would have been
terrible; but at the same time there was a pointedness in his manner of
asking her which she did not like, and she saw his eye glancing for
a moment at her necklace, with a smile--she thought there was a
smile--which made her blush and feel wretched. And though there was no
second glance to disturb her, though his object seemed then to be only
quietly agreeable, she could not get the better of her embarrassment,
heightened as it was by the idea of his perceiving it, and had no
composure till he turned away to some one else. Then she could gradually
rise up to the genuine satisfaction of having a partner, a voluntary
partner, secured against the dancing began.

When the company were moving into the ballroom, she found herself
for the first time near Miss Crawford, whose eyes and smiles were
immediately and more unequivocally directed as her brother's had been,
and who was beginning to speak on the subject, when Fanny, anxious
to get the story over, hastened to give the explanation of the second
necklace: the real chain. Miss Crawford listened; and all her intended
compliments and insinuations to Fanny were forgotten: she felt only one
thing; and her eyes, bright as they had been before, shewing they could
yet be brighter, she exclaimed with eager pleasure, “Did he? Did Edmund?
That was like himself. No other man would have thought of it. I honour
him beyond expression.” And she looked around as if longing to tell him
so. He was not near, he was attending a party of ladies out of the room;
and Mrs. Grant coming up to the two girls, and taking an arm of each,
they followed with the rest.

Fanny's heart sunk, but there was no leisure for thinking long even of
Miss Crawford's feelings. They were in the ballroom, the violins were
playing, and her mind was in a flutter that forbade its fixing on
anything serious. She must watch the general arrangements, and see how
everything was done.

In a few minutes Sir Thomas came to her, and asked if she were engaged;
and the “Yes, sir; to Mr. Crawford,” was exactly what he had intended
to hear. Mr. Crawford was not far off; Sir Thomas brought him to her,
saying something which discovered to Fanny, that _she_ was to lead the
way and open the ball; an idea that had never occurred to her before.
Whenever she had thought of the minutiae of the evening, it had been as
a matter of course that Edmund would begin with Miss Crawford; and the
impression was so strong, that though _her_ _uncle_ spoke the contrary,
she could not help an exclamation of surprise, a hint of her unfitness,
an entreaty even to be excused. To be urging her opinion against Sir
Thomas's was a proof of the extremity of the case; but such was her
horror at the first suggestion, that she could actually look him in
the face and say that she hoped it might be settled otherwise; in vain,
however: Sir Thomas smiled, tried to encourage her, and then looked too
serious, and said too decidedly, “It must be so, my dear,” for her to
hazard another word; and she found herself the next moment conducted by
Mr. Crawford to the top of the room, and standing there to be joined by
the rest of the dancers, couple after couple, as they were formed.

She could hardly believe it. To be placed above so many elegant young
women! The distinction was too great. It was treating her like her
cousins! And her thoughts flew to those absent cousins with most
unfeigned and truly tender regret, that they were not at home to take
their own place in the room, and have their share of a pleasure which
would have been so very delightful to them. So often as she had heard
them wish for a ball at home as the greatest of all felicities! And
to have them away when it was given--and for _her_ to be opening the
ball--and with Mr. Crawford too! She hoped they would not envy her that
distinction _now_; but when she looked back to the state of things in
the autumn, to what they had all been to each other when once dancing
in that house before, the present arrangement was almost more than she
could understand herself.

The ball began. It was rather honour than happiness to Fanny, for the
first dance at least: her partner was in excellent spirits, and tried to
impart them to her; but she was a great deal too much frightened to have
any enjoyment till she could suppose herself no longer looked at. Young,
pretty, and gentle, however, she had no awkwardnesses that were not
as good as graces, and there were few persons present that were not
disposed to praise her. She was attractive, she was modest, she was Sir
Thomas's niece, and she was soon said to be admired by Mr. Crawford. It
was enough to give her general favour. Sir Thomas himself was watching
her progress down the dance with much complacency; he was proud of his
niece; and without attributing all her personal beauty, as Mrs. Norris
seemed to do, to her transplantation to Mansfield, he was pleased with
himself for having supplied everything else: education and manners she
owed to him.

Miss Crawford saw much of Sir Thomas's thoughts as he stood, and having,
in spite of all his wrongs towards her, a general prevailing desire of
recommending herself to him, took an opportunity of stepping aside to
say something agreeable of Fanny. Her praise was warm, and he
received it as she could wish, joining in it as far as discretion, and
politeness, and slowness of speech would allow, and certainly appearing
to greater advantage on the subject than his lady did soon afterwards,
when Mary, perceiving her on a sofa very near, turned round before she
began to dance, to compliment her on Miss Price's looks.

“Yes, she does look very well,” was Lady Bertram's placid reply.
“Chapman helped her to dress. I sent Chapman to her.” Not but that
she was really pleased to have Fanny admired; but she was so much more
struck with her own kindness in sending Chapman to her, that she could
not get it out of her head.

Miss Crawford knew Mrs. Norris too well to think of gratifying _her_
by commendation of Fanny; to her, it was as the occasion offered--“Ah!
ma'am, how much we want dear Mrs. Rushworth and Julia to-night!” and
Mrs. Norris paid her with as many smiles and courteous words as she had
time for, amid so much occupation as she found for herself in making
up card-tables, giving hints to Sir Thomas, and trying to move all the
chaperons to a better part of the room.

Miss Crawford blundered most towards Fanny herself in her intentions
to please. She meant to be giving her little heart a happy flutter,
and filling her with sensations of delightful self-consequence; and,
misinterpreting Fanny's blushes, still thought she must be doing so when
she went to her after the two first dances, and said, with a significant
look, “Perhaps _you_ can tell me why my brother goes to town to-morrow?
He says he has business there, but will not tell me what. The first time
he ever denied me his confidence! But this is what we all come to.
All are supplanted sooner or later. Now, I must apply to you for
information. Pray, what is Henry going for?”

Fanny protested her ignorance as steadily as her embarrassment allowed.

“Well, then,” replied Miss Crawford, laughing, “I must suppose it to be
purely for the pleasure of conveying your brother, and of talking of you
by the way.”

Fanny was confused, but it was the confusion of discontent; while Miss
Crawford wondered she did not smile, and thought her over-anxious,
or thought her odd, or thought her anything rather than insensible of
pleasure in Henry's attentions. Fanny had a good deal of enjoyment in
the course of the evening; but Henry's attentions had very little to
do with it. She would much rather _not_ have been asked by him again so
very soon, and she wished she had not been obliged to suspect that his
previous inquiries of Mrs. Norris, about the supper hour, were all for
the sake of securing her at that part of the evening. But it was not to
be avoided: he made her feel that she was the object of all; though she
could not say that it was unpleasantly done, that there was indelicacy
or ostentation in his manner; and sometimes, when he talked of William,
he was really not unagreeable, and shewed even a warmth of heart
which did him credit. But still his attentions made no part of her
satisfaction. She was happy whenever she looked at William, and saw how
perfectly he was enjoying himself, in every five minutes that she could
walk about with him and hear his account of his partners; she was happy
in knowing herself admired; and she was happy in having the two dances
with Edmund still to look forward to, during the greatest part of the
evening, her hand being so eagerly sought after that her indefinite
engagement with _him_ was in continual perspective. She was happy even
when they did take place; but not from any flow of spirits on his side,
or any such expressions of tender gallantry as had blessed the morning.
His mind was fagged, and her happiness sprung from being the friend with
whom it could find repose. “I am worn out with civility,” said he. “I
have been talking incessantly all night, and with nothing to say. But
with _you_, Fanny, there may be peace. You will not want to be talked
to. Let us have the luxury of silence.” Fanny would hardly even speak
her agreement. A weariness, arising probably, in great measure, from the
same feelings which he had acknowledged in the morning, was peculiarly
to be respected, and they went down their two dances together with such
sober tranquillity as might satisfy any looker-on that Sir Thomas had
been bringing up no wife for his younger son.

The evening had afforded Edmund little pleasure. Miss Crawford had
been in gay spirits when they first danced together, but it was not her
gaiety that could do him good: it rather sank than raised his comfort;
and afterwards, for he found himself still impelled to seek her
again, she had absolutely pained him by her manner of speaking of the
profession to which he was now on the point of belonging. They had
talked, and they had been silent; he had reasoned, she had ridiculed;
and they had parted at last with mutual vexation. Fanny, not able to
refrain entirely from observing them, had seen enough to be tolerably
satisfied. It was barbarous to be happy when Edmund was suffering. Yet
some happiness must and would arise from the very conviction that he did
suffer.

When her two dances with him were over, her inclination and strength for
more were pretty well at an end; and Sir Thomas, having seen her walk
rather than dance down the shortening set, breathless, and with her hand
at her side, gave his orders for her sitting down entirely. From that
time Mr. Crawford sat down likewise.

“Poor Fanny!” cried William, coming for a moment to visit her, and
working away his partner's fan as if for life, “how soon she is knocked
up! Why, the sport is but just begun. I hope we shall keep it up these
two hours. How can you be tired so soon?”

“So soon! my good friend,” said Sir Thomas, producing his watch with all
necessary caution; “it is three o'clock, and your sister is not used to
these sort of hours.”

“Well, then, Fanny, you shall not get up to-morrow before I go. Sleep as
long as you can, and never mind me.”

“Oh! William.”

“What! Did she think of being up before you set off?”

“Oh! yes, sir,” cried Fanny, rising eagerly from her seat to be nearer
her uncle; “I must get up and breakfast with him. It will be the last
time, you know; the last morning.”

“You had better not. He is to have breakfasted and be gone by half-past
nine. Mr. Crawford, I think you call for him at half-past nine?”

Fanny was too urgent, however, and had too many tears in her eyes for
denial; and it ended in a gracious “Well, well!” which was permission.

“Yes, half-past nine,” said Crawford to William as the latter was
leaving them, “and I shall be punctual, for there will be no kind sister
to get up for _me_.” And in a lower tone to Fanny, “I shall have only
a desolate house to hurry from. Your brother will find my ideas of time
and his own very different to-morrow.”

After a short consideration, Sir Thomas asked Crawford to join the early
breakfast party in that house instead of eating alone: he should himself
be of it; and the readiness with which his invitation was accepted
convinced him that the suspicions whence, he must confess to himself,
this very ball had in great measure sprung, were well founded. Mr.
Crawford was in love with Fanny. He had a pleasing anticipation of what
would be. His niece, meanwhile, did not thank him for what he had just
done. She had hoped to have William all to herself the last morning. It
would have been an unspeakable indulgence. But though her wishes
were overthrown, there was no spirit of murmuring within her. On the
contrary, she was so totally unused to have her pleasure consulted, or
to have anything take place at all in the way she could desire, that she
was more disposed to wonder and rejoice in having carried her point so
far, than to repine at the counteraction which followed.

Shortly afterward, Sir Thomas was again interfering a little with her
inclination, by advising her to go immediately to bed. “Advise” was his
word, but it was the advice of absolute power, and she had only to
rise, and, with Mr. Crawford's very cordial adieus, pass quietly away;
stopping at the entrance-door, like the Lady of Branxholm Hall, “one
moment and no more,” to view the happy scene, and take a last look at
the five or six determined couple who were still hard at work; and then,
creeping slowly up the principal staircase, pursued by the ceaseless
country-dance, feverish with hopes and fears, soup and negus,
sore-footed and fatigued, restless and agitated, yet feeling, in spite
of everything, that a ball was indeed delightful.

In thus sending her away, Sir Thomas perhaps might not be thinking
merely of her health. It might occur to him that Mr. Crawford had been
sitting by her long enough, or he might mean to recommend her as a wife
by shewing her persuadableness.



CHAPTER XXIX

The ball was over, and the breakfast was soon over too; the last kiss
was given, and William was gone. Mr. Crawford had, as he foretold, been
very punctual, and short and pleasant had been the meal.

After seeing William to the last moment, Fanny walked back to the
breakfast-room with a very saddened heart to grieve over the melancholy
change; and there her uncle kindly left her to cry in peace, conceiving,
perhaps, that the deserted chair of each young man might exercise her
tender enthusiasm, and that the remaining cold pork bones and mustard in
William's plate might but divide her feelings with the broken egg-shells
in Mr. Crawford's. She sat and cried _con_ _amore_ as her uncle
intended, but it was _con_ _amore_ fraternal and no other. William was
gone, and she now felt as if she had wasted half his visit in idle cares
and selfish solicitudes unconnected with him.

Fanny's disposition was such that she could never even think of her
aunt Norris in the meagreness and cheerlessness of her own small house,
without reproaching herself for some little want of attention to her
when they had been last together; much less could her feelings acquit
her of having done and said and thought everything by William that was
due to him for a whole fortnight.

It was a heavy, melancholy day. Soon after the second breakfast, Edmund
bade them good-bye for a week, and mounted his horse for Peterborough,
and then all were gone. Nothing remained of last night but remembrances,
which she had nobody to share in. She talked to her aunt Bertram--she
must talk to somebody of the ball; but her aunt had seen so little of
what had passed, and had so little curiosity, that it was heavy work.
Lady Bertram was not certain of anybody's dress or anybody's place at
supper but her own. “She could not recollect what it was that she had
heard about one of the Miss Maddoxes, or what it was that Lady Prescott
had noticed in Fanny: she was not sure whether Colonel Harrison had been
talking of Mr. Crawford or of William when he said he was the finest
young man in the room--somebody had whispered something to her; she had
forgot to ask Sir Thomas what it could be.” And these were her longest
speeches and clearest communications: the rest was only a languid “Yes,
yes; very well; did you? did he? I did not see _that_; I should not know
one from the other.” This was very bad. It was only better than Mrs.
Norris's sharp answers would have been; but she being gone home with
all the supernumerary jellies to nurse a sick maid, there was peace
and good-humour in their little party, though it could not boast much
beside.

The evening was heavy like the day. “I cannot think what is the matter
with me,” said Lady Bertram, when the tea-things were removed. “I feel
quite stupid. It must be sitting up so late last night. Fanny, you must
do something to keep me awake. I cannot work. Fetch the cards; I feel so
very stupid.”

The cards were brought, and Fanny played at cribbage with her aunt till
bedtime; and as Sir Thomas was reading to himself, no sounds were
heard in the room for the next two hours beyond the reckonings of the
game--“And _that_ makes thirty-one; four in hand and eight in crib. You
are to deal, ma'am; shall I deal for you?” Fanny thought and thought
again of the difference which twenty-four hours had made in that room,
and all that part of the house. Last night it had been hope and smiles,
bustle and motion, noise and brilliancy, in the drawing-room, and out
of the drawing-room, and everywhere. Now it was languor, and all but
solitude.

A good night's rest improved her spirits. She could think of William the
next day more cheerfully; and as the morning afforded her an opportunity
of talking over Thursday night with Mrs. Grant and Miss Crawford, in a
very handsome style, with all the heightenings of imagination, and
all the laughs of playfulness which are so essential to the shade of a
departed ball, she could afterwards bring her mind without much effort
into its everyday state, and easily conform to the tranquillity of the
present quiet week.

They were indeed a smaller party than she had ever known there for
a whole day together, and _he_ was gone on whom the comfort and
cheerfulness of every family meeting and every meal chiefly depended.
But this must be learned to be endured. He would soon be always gone;
and she was thankful that she could now sit in the same room with her
uncle, hear his voice, receive his questions, and even answer them,
without such wretched feelings as she had formerly known.

“We miss our two young men,” was Sir Thomas's observation on both the
first and second day, as they formed their very reduced circle after
dinner; and in consideration of Fanny's swimming eyes, nothing more was
said on the first day than to drink their good health; but on the
second it led to something farther. William was kindly commended and
his promotion hoped for. “And there is no reason to suppose,” added Sir
Thomas, “but that his visits to us may now be tolerably frequent. As to
Edmund, we must learn to do without him. This will be the last winter of
his belonging to us, as he has done.”

“Yes,” said Lady Bertram, “but I wish he was not going away. They are
all going away, I think. I wish they would stay at home.”

This wish was levelled principally at Julia, who had just applied for
permission to go to town with Maria; and as Sir Thomas thought it best
for each daughter that the permission should be granted, Lady Bertram,
though in her own good-nature she would not have prevented it, was
lamenting the change it made in the prospect of Julia's return, which
would otherwise have taken place about this time. A great deal of good
sense followed on Sir Thomas's side, tending to reconcile his wife to
the arrangement. Everything that a considerate parent _ought_ to feel
was advanced for her use; and everything that an affectionate mother
_must_ feel in promoting her children's enjoyment was attributed to her
nature. Lady Bertram agreed to it all with a calm “Yes”; and at the end
of a quarter of an hour's silent consideration spontaneously observed,
“Sir Thomas, I have been thinking--and I am very glad we took Fanny as
we did, for now the others are away we feel the good of it.”

Sir Thomas immediately improved this compliment by adding, “Very true.
We shew Fanny what a good girl we think her by praising her to her face,
she is now a very valuable companion. If we have been kind to _her_, she
is now quite as necessary to _us_.”

“Yes,” said Lady Bertram presently; “and it is a comfort to think that
we shall always have _her_.”

Sir Thomas paused, half smiled, glanced at his niece, and then gravely
replied, “She will never leave us, I hope, till invited to some other
home that may reasonably promise her greater happiness than she knows
here.”

“And _that_ is not very likely to be, Sir Thomas. Who should invite her?
Maria might be very glad to see her at Sotherton now and then, but she
would not think of asking her to live there; and I am sure she is better
off here; and besides, I cannot do without her.”

The week which passed so quietly and peaceably at the great house in
Mansfield had a very different character at the Parsonage. To the young
lady, at least, in each family, it brought very different feelings. What
was tranquillity and comfort to Fanny was tediousness and vexation to
Mary. Something arose from difference of disposition and habit: one so
easily satisfied, the other so unused to endure; but still more might be
imputed to difference of circumstances. In some points of interest they
were exactly opposed to each other. To Fanny's mind, Edmund's absence
was really, in its cause and its tendency, a relief. To Mary it was
every way painful. She felt the want of his society every day, almost
every hour, and was too much in want of it to derive anything but
irritation from considering the object for which he went. He could not
have devised anything more likely to raise his consequence than this
week's absence, occurring as it did at the very time of her brother's
going away, of William Price's going too, and completing the sort of
general break-up of a party which had been so animated. She felt it
keenly. They were now a miserable trio, confined within doors by a
series of rain and snow, with nothing to do and no variety to hope for.
Angry as she was with Edmund for adhering to his own notions, and acting
on them in defiance of her (and she had been so angry that they had
hardly parted friends at the ball), she could not help thinking of
him continually when absent, dwelling on his merit and affection, and
longing again for the almost daily meetings they lately had. His absence
was unnecessarily long. He should not have planned such an absence--he
should not have left home for a week, when her own departure from
Mansfield was so near. Then she began to blame herself. She wished she
had not spoken so warmly in their last conversation. She was afraid she
had used some strong, some contemptuous expressions in speaking of the
clergy, and that should not have been. It was ill-bred; it was wrong.
She wished such words unsaid with all her heart.

Her vexation did not end with the week. All this was bad, but she had
still more to feel when Friday came round again and brought no Edmund;
when Saturday came and still no Edmund; and when, through the slight
communication with the other family which Sunday produced, she learned
that he had actually written home to defer his return, having promised
to remain some days longer with his friend.

If she had felt impatience and regret before--if she had been sorry for
what she said, and feared its too strong effect on him--she now felt
and feared it all tenfold more. She had, moreover, to contend with one
disagreeable emotion entirely new to her--jealousy. His friend Mr.
Owen had sisters; he might find them attractive. But, at any rate, his
staying away at a time when, according to all preceding plans, she was
to remove to London, meant something that she could not bear. Had Henry
returned, as he talked of doing, at the end of three or four days, she
should now have been leaving Mansfield. It became absolutely necessary
for her to get to Fanny and try to learn something more. She could not
live any longer in such solitary wretchedness; and she made her way
to the Park, through difficulties of walking which she had deemed
unconquerable a week before, for the chance of hearing a little in
addition, for the sake of at least hearing his name.

The first half-hour was lost, for Fanny and Lady Bertram were together,
and unless she had Fanny to herself she could hope for nothing. But
at last Lady Bertram left the room, and then almost immediately Miss
Crawford thus began, with a voice as well regulated as she could--“And
how do _you_ like your cousin Edmund's staying away so long? Being the
only young person at home, I consider _you_ as the greatest sufferer.
You must miss him. Does his staying longer surprise you?”

“I do not know,” said Fanny hesitatingly. “Yes; I had not particularly
expected it.”

“Perhaps he will always stay longer than he talks of. It is the general
way all young men do.”

“He did not, the only time he went to see Mr. Owen before.”

“He finds the house more agreeable _now_. He is a very--a very pleasing
young man himself, and I cannot help being rather concerned at not
seeing him again before I go to London, as will now undoubtedly be the
case. I am looking for Henry every day, and as soon as he comes there
will be nothing to detain me at Mansfield. I should like to have seen
him once more, I confess. But you must give my compliments to him. Yes;
I think it must be compliments. Is not there a something wanted,
Miss Price, in our language--a something between compliments and--and
love--to suit the sort of friendly acquaintance we have had together? So
many months' acquaintance! But compliments may be sufficient here.
Was his letter a long one? Does he give you much account of what he is
doing? Is it Christmas gaieties that he is staying for?”

“I only heard a part of the letter; it was to my uncle; but I believe
it was very short; indeed I am sure it was but a few lines. All that I
heard was that his friend had pressed him to stay longer, and that he
had agreed to do so. A _few_ days longer, or _some_ days longer; I am
not quite sure which.”

“Oh! if he wrote to his father; but I thought it might have been to Lady
Bertram or you. But if he wrote to his father, no wonder he was concise.
Who could write chat to Sir Thomas? If he had written to you, there
would have been more particulars. You would have heard of balls
and parties. He would have sent you a description of everything and
everybody. How many Miss Owens are there?”

“Three grown up.”

“Are they musical?”

“I do not at all know. I never heard.”

“That is the first question, you know,” said Miss Crawford, trying to
appear gay and unconcerned, “which every woman who plays herself is sure
to ask about another. But it is very foolish to ask questions about
any young ladies--about any three sisters just grown up; for one knows,
without being told, exactly what they are: all very accomplished and
pleasing, and one very pretty. There is a beauty in every family; it is
a regular thing. Two play on the pianoforte, and one on the harp; and
all sing, or would sing if they were taught, or sing all the better for
not being taught; or something like it.”

“I know nothing of the Miss Owens,” said Fanny calmly.

“You know nothing and you care less, as people say. Never did tone
express indifference plainer. Indeed, how can one care for those one has
never seen? Well, when your cousin comes back, he will find Mansfield
very quiet; all the noisy ones gone, your brother and mine and myself. I
do not like the idea of leaving Mrs. Grant now the time draws near. She
does not like my going.”

Fanny felt obliged to speak. “You cannot doubt your being missed by
many,” said she. “You will be very much missed.”

Miss Crawford turned her eye on her, as if wanting to hear or see more,
and then laughingly said, “Oh yes! missed as every noisy evil is missed
when it is taken away; that is, there is a great difference felt. But I
am not fishing; don't compliment me. If I _am_ missed, it will appear.
I may be discovered by those who want to see me. I shall not be in any
doubtful, or distant, or unapproachable region.”

Now Fanny could not bring herself to speak, and Miss Crawford was
disappointed; for she had hoped to hear some pleasant assurance of her
power from one who she thought must know, and her spirits were clouded
again.

“The Miss Owens,” said she, soon afterwards; “suppose you were to have
one of the Miss Owens settled at Thornton Lacey; how should you like it?
Stranger things have happened. I dare say they are trying for it. And
they are quite in the right, for it would be a very pretty establishment
for them. I do not at all wonder or blame them. It is everybody's duty
to do as well for themselves as they can. Sir Thomas Bertram's son is
somebody; and now he is in their own line. Their father is a clergyman,
and their brother is a clergyman, and they are all clergymen together.
He is their lawful property; he fairly belongs to them. You don't speak,
Fanny; Miss Price, you don't speak. But honestly now, do not you rather
expect it than otherwise?”

“No,” said Fanny stoutly, “I do not expect it at all.”

“Not at all!” cried Miss Crawford with alacrity. “I wonder at that. But
I dare say you know exactly--I always imagine you are--perhaps you do
not think him likely to marry at all--or not at present.”

“No, I do not,” said Fanny softly, hoping she did not err either in the
belief or the acknowledgment of it.

Her companion looked at her keenly; and gathering greater spirit from
the blush soon produced from such a look, only said, “He is best off as
he is,” and turned the subject.



CHAPTER XXX

Miss Crawford's uneasiness was much lightened by this conversation, and
she walked home again in spirits which might have defied almost another
week of the same small party in the same bad weather, had they been put
to the proof; but as that very evening brought her brother down from
London again in quite, or more than quite, his usual cheerfulness, she
had nothing farther to try her own. His still refusing to tell her what
he had gone for was but the promotion of gaiety; a day before it might
have irritated, but now it was a pleasant joke--suspected only of
concealing something planned as a pleasant surprise to herself. And the
next day _did_ bring a surprise to her. Henry had said he should just
go and ask the Bertrams how they did, and be back in ten minutes, but
he was gone above an hour; and when his sister, who had been waiting for
him to walk with her in the garden, met him at last most impatiently in
the sweep, and cried out, “My dear Henry, where can you have been
all this time?” he had only to say that he had been sitting with Lady
Bertram and Fanny.

“Sitting with them an hour and a half!” exclaimed Mary.

But this was only the beginning of her surprise.

“Yes, Mary,” said he, drawing her arm within his, and walking along
the sweep as if not knowing where he was: “I could not get away sooner;
Fanny looked so lovely! I am quite determined, Mary. My mind is entirely
made up. Will it astonish you? No: you must be aware that I am quite
determined to marry Fanny Price.”

The surprise was now complete; for, in spite of whatever his
consciousness might suggest, a suspicion of his having any such views
had never entered his sister's imagination; and she looked so truly the
astonishment she felt, that he was obliged to repeat what he had said,
and more fully and more solemnly. The conviction of his determination
once admitted, it was not unwelcome. There was even pleasure with the
surprise. Mary was in a state of mind to rejoice in a connexion with the
Bertram family, and to be not displeased with her brother's marrying a
little beneath him.

“Yes, Mary,” was Henry's concluding assurance. “I am fairly caught.
You know with what idle designs I began; but this is the end of them.
I have, I flatter myself, made no inconsiderable progress in her
affections; but my own are entirely fixed.”

“Lucky, lucky girl!” cried Mary, as soon as she could speak; “what a
match for her! My dearest Henry, this must be my _first_ feeling; but
my _second_, which you shall have as sincerely, is, that I approve your
choice from my soul, and foresee your happiness as heartily as I wish
and desire it. You will have a sweet little wife; all gratitude and
devotion. Exactly what you deserve. What an amazing match for her! Mrs.
Norris often talks of her luck; what will she say now? The delight
of all the family, indeed! And she has some _true_ friends in it! How
_they_ will rejoice! But tell me all about it! Talk to me for ever. When
did you begin to think seriously about her?”

Nothing could be more impossible than to answer such a question, though
nothing could be more agreeable than to have it asked. “How the pleasing
plague had stolen on him” he could not say; and before he had expressed
the same sentiment with a little variation of words three times over,
his sister eagerly interrupted him with, “Ah, my dear Henry, and this
is what took you to London! This was your business! You chose to consult
the Admiral before you made up your mind.”

But this he stoutly denied. He knew his uncle too well to consult him on
any matrimonial scheme. The Admiral hated marriage, and thought it never
pardonable in a young man of independent fortune.

“When Fanny is known to him,” continued Henry, “he will doat on her.
She is exactly the woman to do away every prejudice of such a man as
the Admiral, for she he would describe, if indeed he has now delicacy
of language enough to embody his own ideas. But till it is absolutely
settled--settled beyond all interference, he shall know nothing of the
matter. No, Mary, you are quite mistaken. You have not discovered my
business yet.”

“Well, well, I am satisfied. I know now to whom it must relate, and am
in no hurry for the rest. Fanny Price! wonderful, quite wonderful! That
Mansfield should have done so much for--that _you_ should have found
your fate in Mansfield! But you are quite right; you could not have
chosen better. There is not a better girl in the world, and you do not
want for fortune; and as to her connexions, they are more than good. The
Bertrams are undoubtedly some of the first people in this country. She
is niece to Sir Thomas Bertram; that will be enough for the world. But
go on, go on. Tell me more. What are your plans? Does she know her own
happiness?”

“No.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“For--for very little more than opportunity. Mary, she is not like her
cousins; but I think I shall not ask in vain.”

“Oh no! you cannot. Were you even less pleasing--supposing her not to
love you already (of which, however, I can have little doubt)--you would
be safe. The gentleness and gratitude of her disposition would secure
her all your own immediately. From my soul I do not think she would
marry you _without_ love; that is, if there is a girl in the world
capable of being uninfluenced by ambition, I can suppose it her; but ask
her to love you, and she will never have the heart to refuse.”

As soon as her eagerness could rest in silence, he was as happy to tell
as she could be to listen; and a conversation followed almost as deeply
interesting to her as to himself, though he had in fact nothing to
relate but his own sensations, nothing to dwell on but Fanny's charms.
Fanny's beauty of face and figure, Fanny's graces of manner and goodness
of heart, were the exhaustless theme. The gentleness, modesty, and
sweetness of her character were warmly expatiated on; that sweetness
which makes so essential a part of every woman's worth in the judgment
of man, that though he sometimes loves where it is not, he can never
believe it absent. Her temper he had good reason to depend on and
to praise. He had often seen it tried. Was there one of the family,
excepting Edmund, who had not in some way or other continually exercised
her patience and forbearance? Her affections were evidently strong. To
see her with her brother! What could more delightfully prove that the
warmth of her heart was equal to its gentleness? What could be more
encouraging to a man who had her love in view? Then, her understanding
was beyond every suspicion, quick and clear; and her manners were the
mirror of her own modest and elegant mind. Nor was this all. Henry
Crawford had too much sense not to feel the worth of good principles
in a wife, though he was too little accustomed to serious reflection to
know them by their proper name; but when he talked of her having such a
steadiness and regularity of conduct, such a high notion of honour, and
such an observance of decorum as might warrant any man in the fullest
dependence on her faith and integrity, he expressed what was inspired by
the knowledge of her being well principled and religious.

“I could so wholly and absolutely confide in her,” said he; “and _that_
is what I want.”

Well might his sister, believing as she really did that his opinion of
Fanny Price was scarcely beyond her merits, rejoice in her prospects.

“The more I think of it,” she cried, “the more am I convinced that you
are doing quite right; and though I should never have selected Fanny
Price as the girl most likely to attach you, I am now persuaded she is
the very one to make you happy. Your wicked project upon her peace turns
out a clever thought indeed. You will both find your good in it.”

“It was bad, very bad in me against such a creature; but I did not know
her then; and she shall have no reason to lament the hour that first put
it into my head. I will make her very happy, Mary; happier than she has
ever yet been herself, or ever seen anybody else. I will not take her
from Northamptonshire. I shall let Everingham, and rent a place in this
neighbourhood; perhaps Stanwix Lodge. I shall let a seven years' lease
of Everingham. I am sure of an excellent tenant at half a word. I could
name three people now, who would give me my own terms and thank me.”

“Ha!” cried Mary; “settle in Northamptonshire! That is pleasant! Then we
shall be all together.”

When she had spoken it, she recollected herself, and wished it unsaid;
but there was no need of confusion; for her brother saw her only as the
supposed inmate of Mansfield parsonage, and replied but to invite her in
the kindest manner to his own house, and to claim the best right in her.

“You must give us more than half your time,” said he. “I cannot admit
Mrs. Grant to have an equal claim with Fanny and myself, for we shall
both have a right in you. Fanny will be so truly your sister!”

Mary had only to be grateful and give general assurances; but she was
now very fully purposed to be the guest of neither brother nor sister
many months longer.

“You will divide your year between London and Northamptonshire?”

“Yes.”

“That's right; and in London, of course, a house of your own: no longer
with the Admiral. My dearest Henry, the advantage to you of getting away
from the Admiral before your manners are hurt by the contagion of his,
before you have contracted any of his foolish opinions, or learned to
sit over your dinner as if it were the best blessing of life! _You_ are
not sensible of the gain, for your regard for him has blinded you; but,
in my estimation, your marrying early may be the saving of you. To have
seen you grow like the Admiral in word or deed, look or gesture, would
have broken my heart.”

“Well, well, we do not think quite alike here. The Admiral has his
faults, but he is a very good man, and has been more than a father to
me. Few fathers would have let me have my own way half so much. You must
not prejudice Fanny against him. I must have them love one another.”

Mary refrained from saying what she felt, that there could not be two
persons in existence whose characters and manners were less accordant:
time would discover it to him; but she could not help _this_ reflection
on the Admiral. “Henry, I think so highly of Fanny Price, that if I
could suppose the next Mrs. Crawford would have half the reason which
my poor ill-used aunt had to abhor the very name, I would prevent the
marriage, if possible; but I know you: I know that a wife you _loved_
would be the happiest of women, and that even when you ceased to
love, she would yet find in you the liberality and good-breeding of a
gentleman.”

The impossibility of not doing everything in the world to make Fanny
Price happy, or of ceasing to love Fanny Price, was of course the
groundwork of his eloquent answer.

“Had you seen her this morning, Mary,” he continued, “attending with
such ineffable sweetness and patience to all the demands of her aunt's
stupidity, working with her, and for her, her colour beautifully
heightened as she leant over the work, then returning to her seat to
finish a note which she was previously engaged in writing for that
stupid woman's service, and all this with such unpretending gentleness,
so much as if it were a matter of course that she was not to have a
moment at her own command, her hair arranged as neatly as it always is,
and one little curl falling forward as she wrote, which she now and then
shook back, and in the midst of all this, still speaking at intervals to
_me_, or listening, and as if she liked to listen, to what I said. Had
you seen her so, Mary, you would not have implied the possibility of her
power over my heart ever ceasing.”

“My dearest Henry,” cried Mary, stopping short, and smiling in his face,
“how glad I am to see you so much in love! It quite delights me. But
what will Mrs. Rushworth and Julia say?”

“I care neither what they say nor what they feel. They will now see what
sort of woman it is that can attach me, that can attach a man of sense.
I wish the discovery may do them any good. And they will now see their
cousin treated as she ought to be, and I wish they may be heartily
ashamed of their own abominable neglect and unkindness. They will be
angry,” he added, after a moment's silence, and in a cooler tone; “Mrs.
Rushworth will be very angry. It will be a bitter pill to her; that is,
like other bitter pills, it will have two moments' ill flavour, and then
be swallowed and forgotten; for I am not such a coxcomb as to suppose
her feelings more lasting than other women's, though _I_ was the object
of them. Yes, Mary, my Fanny will feel a difference indeed: a daily,
hourly difference, in the behaviour of every being who approaches her;
and it will be the completion of my happiness to know that I am the doer
of it, that I am the person to give the consequence so justly her due.
Now she is dependent, helpless, friendless, neglected, forgotten.”

“Nay, Henry, not by all; not forgotten by all; not friendless or
forgotten. Her cousin Edmund never forgets her.”

“Edmund! True, I believe he is, generally speaking, kind to her, and
so is Sir Thomas in his way; but it is the way of a rich, superior,
long-worded, arbitrary uncle. What can Sir Thomas and Edmund together
do, what do they _do_ for her happiness, comfort, honour, and dignity in
the world, to what I _shall_ do?”



CHAPTER XXXI

Henry Crawford was at Mansfield Park again the next morning, and at an
earlier hour than common visiting warrants. The two ladies were together
in the breakfast-room, and, fortunately for him, Lady Bertram was on the
very point of quitting it as he entered. She was almost at the door, and
not chusing by any means to take so much trouble in vain, she still went
on, after a civil reception, a short sentence about being waited for,
and a “Let Sir Thomas know” to the servant.

Henry, overjoyed to have her go, bowed and watched her off, and without
losing another moment, turned instantly to Fanny, and, taking out some
letters, said, with a most animated look, “I must acknowledge myself
infinitely obliged to any creature who gives me such an opportunity
of seeing you alone: I have been wishing it more than you can have any
idea. Knowing as I do what your feelings as a sister are, I could hardly
have borne that any one in the house should share with you in the
first knowledge of the news I now bring. He is made. Your brother is a
lieutenant. I have the infinite satisfaction of congratulating you on
your brother's promotion. Here are the letters which announce it, this
moment come to hand. You will, perhaps, like to see them.”

Fanny could not speak, but he did not want her to speak. To see the
expression of her eyes, the change of her complexion, the progress of
her feelings, their doubt, confusion, and felicity, was enough. She took
the letters as he gave them. The first was from the Admiral to inform
his nephew, in a few words, of his having succeeded in the object he had
undertaken, the promotion of young Price, and enclosing two more, one
from the Secretary of the First Lord to a friend, whom the Admiral had
set to work in the business, the other from that friend to himself,
by which it appeared that his lordship had the very great happiness of
attending to the recommendation of Sir Charles; that Sir Charles was
much delighted in having such an opportunity of proving his regard
for Admiral Crawford, and that the circumstance of Mr. William Price's
commission as Second Lieutenant of H.M. Sloop Thrush being made out was
spreading general joy through a wide circle of great people.

While her hand was trembling under these letters, her eye running from
one to the other, and her heart swelling with emotion, Crawford thus
continued, with unfeigned eagerness, to express his interest in the
event--

“I will not talk of my own happiness,” said he, “great as it is, for I
think only of yours. Compared with you, who has a right to be happy? I
have almost grudged myself my own prior knowledge of what you ought to
have known before all the world. I have not lost a moment, however.
The post was late this morning, but there has not been since a moment's
delay. How impatient, how anxious, how wild I have been on the subject,
I will not attempt to describe; how severely mortified, how cruelly
disappointed, in not having it finished while I was in London! I was
kept there from day to day in the hope of it, for nothing less dear
to me than such an object would have detained me half the time from
Mansfield. But though my uncle entered into my wishes with all the
warmth I could desire, and exerted himself immediately, there were
difficulties from the absence of one friend, and the engagements of
another, which at last I could no longer bear to stay the end of, and
knowing in what good hands I left the cause, I came away on Monday,
trusting that many posts would not pass before I should be followed by
such very letters as these. My uncle, who is the very best man in
the world, has exerted himself, as I knew he would, after seeing your
brother. He was delighted with him. I would not allow myself yesterday
to say how delighted, or to repeat half that the Admiral said in his
praise. I deferred it all till his praise should be proved the praise of
a friend, as this day _does_ prove it. _Now_ I may say that even I could
not require William Price to excite a greater interest, or be followed
by warmer wishes and higher commendation, than were most voluntarily
bestowed by my uncle after the evening they had passed together.”

“Has this been all _your_ doing, then?” cried Fanny. “Good heaven! how
very, very kind! Have you really--was it by _your_ desire? I beg your
pardon, but I am bewildered. Did Admiral Crawford apply? How was it? I
am stupefied.”

Henry was most happy to make it more intelligible, by beginning at an
earlier stage, and explaining very particularly what he had done. His
last journey to London had been undertaken with no other view than that
of introducing her brother in Hill Street, and prevailing on the Admiral
to exert whatever interest he might have for getting him on. This had
been his business. He had communicated it to no creature: he had not
breathed a syllable of it even to Mary; while uncertain of the issue,
he could not have borne any participation of his feelings, but this had
been his business; and he spoke with such a glow of what his solicitude
had been, and used such strong expressions, was so abounding in the
_deepest_ _interest_, in _twofold_ _motives_, in _views_ _and_ _wishes_
_more_ _than_ _could_ _be_ _told_, that Fanny could not have remained
insensible of his drift, had she been able to attend; but her heart was
so full and her senses still so astonished, that she could listen but
imperfectly even to what he told her of William, and saying only when
he paused, “How kind! how very kind! Oh, Mr. Crawford, we are infinitely
obliged to you! Dearest, dearest William!” She jumped up and moved in
haste towards the door, crying out, “I will go to my uncle. My uncle
ought to know it as soon as possible.” But this could not be suffered.
The opportunity was too fair, and his feelings too impatient. He was
after her immediately. “She must not go, she must allow him five minutes
longer,” and he took her hand and led her back to her seat, and was in
the middle of his farther explanation, before she had suspected for what
she was detained. When she did understand it, however, and found herself
expected to believe that she had created sensations which his heart had
never known before, and that everything he had done for William was to
be placed to the account of his excessive and unequalled attachment
to her, she was exceedingly distressed, and for some moments unable
to speak. She considered it all as nonsense, as mere trifling and
gallantry, which meant only to deceive for the hour; she could not but
feel that it was treating her improperly and unworthily, and in such a
way as she had not deserved; but it was like himself, and entirely of a
piece with what she had seen before; and she would not allow herself to
shew half the displeasure she felt, because he had been conferring an
obligation, which no want of delicacy on his part could make a trifle
to her. While her heart was still bounding with joy and gratitude on
William's behalf, she could not be severely resentful of anything that
injured only herself; and after having twice drawn back her hand, and
twice attempted in vain to turn away from him, she got up, and said
only, with much agitation, “Don't, Mr. Crawford, pray don't! I beg you
would not. This is a sort of talking which is very unpleasant to me. I
must go away. I cannot bear it.” But he was still talking on, describing
his affection, soliciting a return, and, finally, in words so plain as
to bear but one meaning even to her, offering himself, hand, fortune,
everything, to her acceptance. It was so; he had said it. Her
astonishment and confusion increased; and though still not knowing
how to suppose him serious, she could hardly stand. He pressed for an
answer.

“No, no, no!” she cried, hiding her face. “This is all nonsense. Do not
distress me. I can hear no more of this. Your kindness to William makes
me more obliged to you than words can express; but I do not want, I
cannot bear, I must not listen to such--No, no, don't think of me. But
you are _not_ thinking of me. I know it is all nothing.”

She had burst away from him, and at that moment Sir Thomas was heard
speaking to a servant in his way towards the room they were in. It was
no time for farther assurances or entreaty, though to part with her at
a moment when her modesty alone seemed, to his sanguine and preassured
mind, to stand in the way of the happiness he sought, was a cruel
necessity. She rushed out at an opposite door from the one her uncle
was approaching, and was walking up and down the East room in the
utmost confusion of contrary feeling, before Sir Thomas's politeness
or apologies were over, or he had reached the beginning of the joyful
intelligence which his visitor came to communicate.

She was feeling, thinking, trembling about everything; agitated, happy,
miserable, infinitely obliged, absolutely angry. It was all beyond
belief! He was inexcusable, incomprehensible! But such were his habits
that he could do nothing without a mixture of evil. He had previously
made her the happiest of human beings, and now he had insulted--she knew
not what to say, how to class, or how to regard it. She would not have
him be serious, and yet what could excuse the use of such words and
offers, if they meant but to trifle?

But William was a lieutenant. _That_ was a fact beyond a doubt, and
without an alloy. She would think of it for ever and forget all the
rest. Mr. Crawford would certainly never address her so again: he must
have seen how unwelcome it was to her; and in that case, how gratefully
she could esteem him for his friendship to William!

She would not stir farther from the East room than the head of the great
staircase, till she had satisfied herself of Mr. Crawford's having left
the house; but when convinced of his being gone, she was eager to go
down and be with her uncle, and have all the happiness of his joy
as well as her own, and all the benefit of his information or his
conjectures as to what would now be William's destination. Sir Thomas
was as joyful as she could desire, and very kind and communicative; and
she had so comfortable a talk with him about William as to make her
feel as if nothing had occurred to vex her, till she found, towards the
close, that Mr. Crawford was engaged to return and dine there that
very day. This was a most unwelcome hearing, for though he might think
nothing of what had passed, it would be quite distressing to her to see
him again so soon.

She tried to get the better of it; tried very hard, as the dinner hour
approached, to feel and appear as usual; but it was quite impossible for
her not to look most shy and uncomfortable when their visitor entered
the room. She could not have supposed it in the power of any concurrence
of circumstances to give her so many painful sensations on the first day
of hearing of William's promotion.

Mr. Crawford was not only in the room--he was soon close to her. He
had a note to deliver from his sister. Fanny could not look at him, but
there was no consciousness of past folly in his voice. She opened her
note immediately, glad to have anything to do, and happy, as she read
it, to feel that the fidgetings of her aunt Norris, who was also to dine
there, screened her a little from view.

“My dear Fanny,--for so I may now always call you, to the infinite
relief of a tongue that has been stumbling at _Miss_ _Price_ for at
least the last six weeks--I cannot let my brother go without sending you
a few lines of general congratulation, and giving my most joyful consent
and approval. Go on, my dear Fanny, and without fear; there can be no
difficulties worth naming. I chuse to suppose that the assurance of my
consent will be something; so you may smile upon him with your sweetest
smiles this afternoon, and send him back to me even happier than he
goes.--Yours affectionately, M. C.”

These were not expressions to do Fanny any good; for though she read
in too much haste and confusion to form the clearest judgment of Miss
Crawford's meaning, it was evident that she meant to compliment her on
her brother's attachment, and even to _appear_ to believe it serious.
She did not know what to do, or what to think. There was wretchedness in
the idea of its being serious; there was perplexity and agitation every
way. She was distressed whenever Mr. Crawford spoke to her, and he spoke
to her much too often; and she was afraid there was a something in his
voice and manner in addressing her very different from what they were
when he talked to the others. Her comfort in that day's dinner was
quite destroyed: she could hardly eat anything; and when Sir Thomas
good-humouredly observed that joy had taken away her appetite, she
was ready to sink with shame, from the dread of Mr. Crawford's
interpretation; for though nothing could have tempted her to turn
her eyes to the right hand, where he sat, she felt that _his_ were
immediately directed towards her.

She was more silent than ever. She would hardly join even when William
was the subject, for his commission came all from the right hand too,
and there was pain in the connexion.

She thought Lady Bertram sat longer than ever, and began to be in
despair of ever getting away; but at last they were in the drawing-room,
and she was able to think as she would, while her aunts finished the
subject of William's appointment in their own style.

Mrs. Norris seemed as much delighted with the saving it would be to
Sir Thomas as with any part of it. “_Now_ William would be able to keep
himself, which would make a vast difference to his uncle, for it was
unknown how much he had cost his uncle; and, indeed, it would make some
difference in _her_ presents too. She was very glad that she had given
William what she did at parting, very glad, indeed, that it had been in
her power, without material inconvenience, just at that time to give him
something rather considerable; that is, for _her_, with _her_ limited
means, for now it would all be useful in helping to fit up his cabin.
She knew he must be at some expense, that he would have many things to
buy, though to be sure his father and mother would be able to put him in
the way of getting everything very cheap; but she was very glad she had
contributed her mite towards it.”

“I am glad you gave him something considerable,” said Lady Bertram, with
most unsuspicious calmness, “for _I_ gave him only 10 pounds.”

“Indeed!” cried Mrs. Norris, reddening. “Upon my word, he must have gone
off with his pockets well lined, and at no expense for his journey to
London either!”

“Sir Thomas told me 10 pounds would be enough.”

Mrs. Norris, being not at all inclined to question its sufficiency,
began to take the matter in another point.

“It is amazing,” said she, “how much young people cost their friends,
what with bringing them up and putting them out in the world! They
little think how much it comes to, or what their parents, or their
uncles and aunts, pay for them in the course of the year. Now, here are
my sister Price's children; take them all together, I dare say nobody
would believe what a sum they cost Sir Thomas every year, to say nothing
of what _I_ do for them.”

“Very true, sister, as you say. But, poor things! they cannot help
it; and you know it makes very little difference to Sir Thomas. Fanny,
William must not forget my shawl if he goes to the East Indies; and I
shall give him a commission for anything else that is worth having. I
wish he may go to the East Indies, that I may have my shawl. I think I
will have two shawls, Fanny.”

Fanny, meanwhile, speaking only when she could not help it, was very
earnestly trying to understand what Mr. and Miss Crawford were at. There
was everything in the world _against_ their being serious but his words
and manner. Everything natural, probable, reasonable, was against it;
all their habits and ways of thinking, and all her own demerits. How
could _she_ have excited serious attachment in a man who had seen so
many, and been admired by so many, and flirted with so many, infinitely
her superiors; who seemed so little open to serious impressions, even
where pains had been taken to please him; who thought so slightly, so
carelessly, so unfeelingly on all such points; who was everything to
everybody, and seemed to find no one essential to him? And farther,
how could it be supposed that his sister, with all her high and worldly
notions of matrimony, would be forwarding anything of a serious nature
in such a quarter? Nothing could be more unnatural in either. Fanny
was ashamed of her own doubts. Everything might be possible rather than
serious attachment, or serious approbation of it toward her. She had
quite convinced herself of this before Sir Thomas and Mr. Crawford
joined them. The difficulty was in maintaining the conviction quite so
absolutely after Mr. Crawford was in the room; for once or twice a
look seemed forced on her which she did not know how to class among the
common meaning; in any other man, at least, she would have said that
it meant something very earnest, very pointed. But she still tried to
believe it no more than what he might often have expressed towards her
cousins and fifty other women.

She thought he was wishing to speak to her unheard by the rest. She
fancied he was trying for it the whole evening at intervals, whenever
Sir Thomas was out of the room, or at all engaged with Mrs. Norris, and
she carefully refused him every opportunity.

At last--it seemed an at last to Fanny's nervousness, though not
remarkably late--he began to talk of going away; but the comfort of the
sound was impaired by his turning to her the next moment, and saying,
“Have you nothing to send to Mary? No answer to her note? She will be
disappointed if she receives nothing from you. Pray write to her, if it
be only a line.”

“Oh yes! certainly,” cried Fanny, rising in haste, the haste of
embarrassment and of wanting to get away--“I will write directly.”

She went accordingly to the table, where she was in the habit of writing
for her aunt, and prepared her materials without knowing what in the
world to say. She had read Miss Crawford's note only once, and how to
reply to anything so imperfectly understood was most distressing.
Quite unpractised in such sort of note-writing, had there been time for
scruples and fears as to style she would have felt them in abundance:
but something must be instantly written; and with only one decided
feeling, that of wishing not to appear to think anything really
intended, she wrote thus, in great trembling both of spirits and hand--

“I am very much obliged to you, my dear Miss Crawford, for your kind
congratulations, as far as they relate to my dearest William. The rest
of your note I know means nothing; but I am so unequal to anything of
the sort, that I hope you will excuse my begging you to take no farther
notice. I have seen too much of Mr. Crawford not to understand his
manners; if he understood me as well, he would, I dare say, behave
differently. I do not know what I write, but it would be a great favour
of you never to mention the subject again. With thanks for the honour of
your note, I remain, dear Miss Crawford, etc., etc.”

The conclusion was scarcely intelligible from increasing fright, for
she found that Mr. Crawford, under pretence of receiving the note, was
coming towards her.

“You cannot think I mean to hurry you,” said he, in an undervoice,
perceiving the amazing trepidation with which she made up the note, “you
cannot think I have any such object. Do not hurry yourself, I entreat.”

“Oh! I thank you; I have quite done, just done; it will be ready in a
moment; I am very much obliged to you; if you will be so good as to give
_that_ to Miss Crawford.”

The note was held out, and must be taken; and as she instantly and with
averted eyes walked towards the fireplace, where sat the others, he had
nothing to do but to go in good earnest.

Fanny thought she had never known a day of greater agitation, both of
pain and pleasure; but happily the pleasure was not of a sort to die
with the day; for every day would restore the knowledge of William's
advancement, whereas the pain, she hoped, would return no more. She had
no doubt that her note must appear excessively ill-written, that
the language would disgrace a child, for her distress had allowed no
arrangement; but at least it would assure them both of her being neither
imposed on nor gratified by Mr. Crawford's attentions.



CHAPTER XXXII

Fanny had by no means forgotten Mr. Crawford when she awoke the next
morning; but she remembered the purport of her note, and was not less
sanguine as to its effect than she had been the night before. If Mr.
Crawford would but go away! That was what she most earnestly desired:
go and take his sister with him, as he was to do, and as he returned to
Mansfield on purpose to do. And why it was not done already she could
not devise, for Miss Crawford certainly wanted no delay. Fanny had
hoped, in the course of his yesterday's visit, to hear the day named;
but he had only spoken of their journey as what would take place ere
long.

Having so satisfactorily settled the conviction her note would convey,
she could not but be astonished to see Mr. Crawford, as she accidentally
did, coming up to the house again, and at an hour as early as the day
before. His coming might have nothing to do with her, but she must avoid
seeing him if possible; and being then on her way upstairs, she resolved
there to remain, during the whole of his visit, unless actually sent
for; and as Mrs. Norris was still in the house, there seemed little
danger of her being wanted.

She sat some time in a good deal of agitation, listening, trembling, and
fearing to be sent for every moment; but as no footsteps approached the
East room, she grew gradually composed, could sit down, and be able to
employ herself, and able to hope that Mr. Crawford had come and would go
without her being obliged to know anything of the matter.

Nearly half an hour had passed, and she was growing very comfortable,
when suddenly the sound of a step in regular approach was heard; a heavy
step, an unusual step in that part of the house: it was her uncle's; she
knew it as well as his voice; she had trembled at it as often, and began
to tremble again, at the idea of his coming up to speak to her, whatever
might be the subject. It was indeed Sir Thomas who opened the door and
asked if she were there, and if he might come in. The terror of his
former occasional visits to that room seemed all renewed, and she felt
as if he were going to examine her again in French and English.

She was all attention, however, in placing a chair for him, and trying
to appear honoured; and, in her agitation, had quite overlooked the
deficiencies of her apartment, till he, stopping short as he entered,
said, with much surprise, “Why have you no fire to-day?”

There was snow on the ground, and she was sitting in a shawl. She
hesitated.

“I am not cold, sir: I never sit here long at this time of year.”

“But you have a fire in general?”

“No, sir.”

“How comes this about? Here must be some mistake. I understood that you
had the use of this room by way of making you perfectly comfortable.
In your bedchamber I know you _cannot_ have a fire. Here is some great
misapprehension which must be rectified. It is highly unfit for you to
sit, be it only half an hour a day, without a fire. You are not strong.
You are chilly. Your aunt cannot be aware of this.”

Fanny would rather have been silent; but being obliged to speak, she
could not forbear, in justice to the aunt she loved best, from saying
something in which the words “my aunt Norris” were distinguishable.

“I understand,” cried her uncle, recollecting himself, and not wanting
to hear more: “I understand. Your aunt Norris has always been an
advocate, and very judiciously, for young people's being brought up
without unnecessary indulgences; but there should be moderation in
everything. She is also very hardy herself, which of course will
influence her in her opinion of the wants of others. And on another
account, too, I can perfectly comprehend. I know what her sentiments
have always been. The principle was good in itself, but it may have
been, and I believe _has_ _been_, carried too far in your case. I
am aware that there has been sometimes, in some points, a misplaced
distinction; but I think too well of you, Fanny, to suppose you will
ever harbour resentment on that account. You have an understanding
which will prevent you from receiving things only in part, and judging
partially by the event. You will take in the whole of the past, you
will consider times, persons, and probabilities, and you will feel that
_they_ were not least your friends who were educating and preparing you
for that mediocrity of condition which _seemed_ to be your lot. Though
their caution may prove eventually unnecessary, it was kindly meant; and
of this you may be assured, that every advantage of affluence will be
doubled by the little privations and restrictions that may have been
imposed. I am sure you will not disappoint my opinion of you, by failing
at any time to treat your aunt Norris with the respect and attention
that are due to her. But enough of this. Sit down, my dear. I must speak
to you for a few minutes, but I will not detain you long.”

Fanny obeyed, with eyes cast down and colour rising. After a moment's
pause, Sir Thomas, trying to suppress a smile, went on.

“You are not aware, perhaps, that I have had a visitor this morning. I
had not been long in my own room, after breakfast, when Mr. Crawford was
shewn in. His errand you may probably conjecture.”

Fanny's colour grew deeper and deeper; and her uncle, perceiving that
she was embarrassed to a degree that made either speaking or looking
up quite impossible, turned away his own eyes, and without any farther
pause proceeded in his account of Mr. Crawford's visit.

Mr. Crawford's business had been to declare himself the lover of Fanny,
make decided proposals for her, and entreat the sanction of the uncle,
who seemed to stand in the place of her parents; and he had done it all
so well, so openly, so liberally, so properly, that Sir Thomas, feeling,
moreover, his own replies, and his own remarks to have been very much
to the purpose, was exceedingly happy to give the particulars of their
conversation; and little aware of what was passing in his niece's mind,
conceived that by such details he must be gratifying her far more than
himself. He talked, therefore, for several minutes without Fanny's
daring to interrupt him. She had hardly even attained the wish to do it.
Her mind was in too much confusion. She had changed her position; and,
with her eyes fixed intently on one of the windows, was listening to her
uncle in the utmost perturbation and dismay. For a moment he ceased, but
she had barely become conscious of it, when, rising from his chair, he
said, “And now, Fanny, having performed one part of my commission,
and shewn you everything placed on a basis the most assured and
satisfactory, I may execute the remainder by prevailing on you to
accompany me downstairs, where, though I cannot but presume on having
been no unacceptable companion myself, I must submit to your finding
one still better worth listening to. Mr. Crawford, as you have perhaps
foreseen, is yet in the house. He is in my room, and hoping to see you
there.”

There was a look, a start, an exclamation on hearing this, which
astonished Sir Thomas; but what was his increase of astonishment on
hearing her exclaim--“Oh! no, sir, I cannot, indeed I cannot go down to
him. Mr. Crawford ought to know--he must know that: I told him enough
yesterday to convince him; he spoke to me on this subject yesterday,
and I told him without disguise that it was very disagreeable to me, and
quite out of my power to return his good opinion.”

“I do not catch your meaning,” said Sir Thomas, sitting down again. “Out
of your power to return his good opinion? What is all this? I know he
spoke to you yesterday, and (as far as I understand) received as much
encouragement to proceed as a well-judging young woman could permit
herself to give. I was very much pleased with what I collected to have
been your behaviour on the occasion; it shewed a discretion highly to
be commended. But now, when he has made his overtures so properly, and
honourably--what are your scruples _now_?”

“You are mistaken, sir,” cried Fanny, forced by the anxiety of the
moment even to tell her uncle that he was wrong; “you are quite
mistaken. How could Mr. Crawford say such a thing? I gave him no
encouragement yesterday. On the contrary, I told him, I cannot recollect
my exact words, but I am sure I told him that I would not listen to him,
that it was very unpleasant to me in every respect, and that I begged
him never to talk to me in that manner again. I am sure I said as much
as that and more; and I should have said still more, if I had been quite
certain of his meaning anything seriously; but I did not like to be, I
could not bear to be, imputing more than might be intended. I thought it
might all pass for nothing with _him_.”

She could say no more; her breath was almost gone.

“Am I to understand,” said Sir Thomas, after a few moments' silence,
“that you mean to _refuse_ Mr. Crawford?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Refuse him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Refuse Mr. Crawford! Upon what plea? For what reason?”

“I--I cannot like him, sir, well enough to marry him.”

“This is very strange!” said Sir Thomas, in a voice of calm displeasure.
“There is something in this which my comprehension does not reach. Here
is a young man wishing to pay his addresses to you, with everything to
recommend him: not merely situation in life, fortune, and character,
but with more than common agreeableness, with address and conversation
pleasing to everybody. And he is not an acquaintance of to-day; you have
now known him some time. His sister, moreover, is your intimate friend,
and he has been doing _that_ for your brother, which I should suppose
would have been almost sufficient recommendation to you, had there been
no other. It is very uncertain when my interest might have got William
on. He has done it already.”

“Yes,” said Fanny, in a faint voice, and looking down with fresh shame;
and she did feel almost ashamed of herself, after such a picture as her
uncle had drawn, for not liking Mr. Crawford.

“You must have been aware,” continued Sir Thomas presently, “you must
have been some time aware of a particularity in Mr. Crawford's manners
to you. This cannot have taken you by surprise. You must have observed
his attentions; and though you always received them very properly (I
have no accusation to make on that head), I never perceived them to be
unpleasant to you. I am half inclined to think, Fanny, that you do not
quite know your own feelings.”

“Oh yes, sir! indeed I do. His attentions were always--what I did not
like.”

Sir Thomas looked at her with deeper surprise. “This is beyond me,”
 said he. “This requires explanation. Young as you are, and having seen
scarcely any one, it is hardly possible that your affections--”

He paused and eyed her fixedly. He saw her lips formed into a _no_,
though the sound was inarticulate, but her face was like scarlet. That,
however, in so modest a girl, might be very compatible with innocence;
and chusing at least to appear satisfied, he quickly added, “No, no, I
know _that_ is quite out of the question; quite impossible. Well, there
is nothing more to be said.”

And for a few minutes he did say nothing. He was deep in thought. His
niece was deep in thought likewise, trying to harden and prepare herself
against farther questioning. She would rather die than own the truth;
and she hoped, by a little reflection, to fortify herself beyond
betraying it.

“Independently of the interest which Mr. Crawford's _choice_ seemed to
justify” said Sir Thomas, beginning again, and very composedly, “his
wishing to marry at all so early is recommendatory to me. I am an
advocate for early marriages, where there are means in proportion, and
would have every young man, with a sufficient income, settle as soon
after four-and-twenty as he can. This is so much my opinion, that I am
sorry to think how little likely my own eldest son, your cousin, Mr.
Bertram, is to marry early; but at present, as far as I can judge,
matrimony makes no part of his plans or thoughts. I wish he were more
likely to fix.” Here was a glance at Fanny. “Edmund, I consider, from
his dispositions and habits, as much more likely to marry early than
his brother. _He_, indeed, I have lately thought, has seen the woman he
could love, which, I am convinced, my eldest son has not. Am I right? Do
you agree with me, my dear?”

“Yes, sir.”

It was gently, but it was calmly said, and Sir Thomas was easy on the
score of the cousins. But the removal of his alarm did his niece
no service: as her unaccountableness was confirmed his displeasure
increased; and getting up and walking about the room with a frown, which
Fanny could picture to herself, though she dared not lift up her eyes,
he shortly afterwards, and in a voice of authority, said, “Have you any
reason, child, to think ill of Mr. Crawford's temper?”

“No, sir.”

She longed to add, “But of his principles I have”; but her heart sunk
under the appalling prospect of discussion, explanation, and probably
non-conviction. Her ill opinion of him was founded chiefly on
observations, which, for her cousins' sake, she could scarcely dare
mention to their father. Maria and Julia, and especially Maria, were so
closely implicated in Mr. Crawford's misconduct, that she could not give
his character, such as she believed it, without betraying them. She had
hoped that, to a man like her uncle, so discerning, so honourable, so
good, the simple acknowledgment of settled _dislike_ on her side would
have been sufficient. To her infinite grief she found it was not.

Sir Thomas came towards the table where she sat in trembling
wretchedness, and with a good deal of cold sternness, said, “It is of no
use, I perceive, to talk to you. We had better put an end to this most
mortifying conference. Mr. Crawford must not be kept longer waiting. I
will, therefore, only add, as thinking it my duty to mark my opinion of
your conduct, that you have disappointed every expectation I had formed,
and proved yourself of a character the very reverse of what I had
supposed. For I _had_, Fanny, as I think my behaviour must have shewn,
formed a very favourable opinion of you from the period of my return to
England. I had thought you peculiarly free from wilfulness of temper,
self-conceit, and every tendency to that independence of spirit which
prevails so much in modern days, even in young women, and which in young
women is offensive and disgusting beyond all common offence. But you
have now shewn me that you can be wilful and perverse; that you can and
will decide for yourself, without any consideration or deference for
those who have surely some right to guide you, without even asking their
advice. You have shewn yourself very, very different from anything that
I had imagined. The advantage or disadvantage of your family, of your
parents, your brothers and sisters, never seems to have had a moment's
share in your thoughts on this occasion. How _they_ might be benefited,
how _they_ must rejoice in such an establishment for you, is nothing to
_you_. You think only of yourself, and because you do not feel for Mr.
Crawford exactly what a young heated fancy imagines to be necessary for
happiness, you resolve to refuse him at once, without wishing even for
a little time to consider of it, a little more time for cool
consideration, and for really examining your own inclinations; and are,
in a wild fit of folly, throwing away from you such an opportunity of
being settled in life, eligibly, honourably, nobly settled, as will,
probably, never occur to you again. Here is a young man of sense, of
character, of temper, of manners, and of fortune, exceedingly attached
to you, and seeking your hand in the most handsome and disinterested
way; and let me tell you, Fanny, that you may live eighteen years longer
in the world without being addressed by a man of half Mr. Crawford's
estate, or a tenth part of his merits. Gladly would I have bestowed
either of my own daughters on him. Maria is nobly married; but had
Mr. Crawford sought Julia's hand, I should have given it to him with
superior and more heartfelt satisfaction than I gave Maria's to Mr.
Rushworth.” After half a moment's pause: “And I should have been very
much surprised had either of my daughters, on receiving a proposal
of marriage at any time which might carry with it only _half_ the
eligibility of _this_, immediately and peremptorily, and without paying
my opinion or my regard the compliment of any consultation, put a
decided negative on it. I should have been much surprised and much hurt
by such a proceeding. I should have thought it a gross violation of duty
and respect. _You_ are not to be judged by the same rule. You do not
owe me the duty of a child. But, Fanny, if your heart can acquit you of
_ingratitude_--”

He ceased. Fanny was by this time crying so bitterly that, angry as he
was, he would not press that article farther. Her heart was almost broke
by such a picture of what she appeared to him; by such accusations,
so heavy, so multiplied, so rising in dreadful gradation! Self-willed,
obstinate, selfish, and ungrateful. He thought her all this. She had
deceived his expectations; she had lost his good opinion. What was to
become of her?

“I am very sorry,” said she inarticulately, through her tears, “I am
very sorry indeed.”

“Sorry! yes, I hope you are sorry; and you will probably have reason to
be long sorry for this day's transactions.”

“If it were possible for me to do otherwise” said she, with another
strong effort; “but I am so perfectly convinced that I could never make
him happy, and that I should be miserable myself.”

Another burst of tears; but in spite of that burst, and in spite of that
great black word _miserable_, which served to introduce it, Sir Thomas
began to think a little relenting, a little change of inclination, might
have something to do with it; and to augur favourably from the personal
entreaty of the young man himself. He knew her to be very timid, and
exceedingly nervous; and thought it not improbable that her mind
might be in such a state as a little time, a little pressing, a little
patience, and a little impatience, a judicious mixture of all on the
lover's side, might work their usual effect on. If the gentleman would
but persevere, if he had but love enough to persevere, Sir Thomas began
to have hopes; and these reflections having passed across his mind and
cheered it, “Well,” said he, in a tone of becoming gravity, but of less
anger, “well, child, dry up your tears. There is no use in these tears;
they can do no good. You must now come downstairs with me. Mr. Crawford
has been kept waiting too long already. You must give him your own
answer: we cannot expect him to be satisfied with less; and you only
can explain to him the grounds of that misconception of your sentiments,
which, unfortunately for himself, he certainly has imbibed. I am totally
unequal to it.”

But Fanny shewed such reluctance, such misery, at the idea of going down
to him, that Sir Thomas, after a little consideration, judged it better
to indulge her. His hopes from both gentleman and lady suffered a small
depression in consequence; but when he looked at his niece, and saw the
state of feature and complexion which her crying had brought her
into, he thought there might be as much lost as gained by an immediate
interview. With a few words, therefore, of no particular meaning, he
walked off by himself, leaving his poor niece to sit and cry over what
had passed, with very wretched feelings.

Her mind was all disorder. The past, present, future, everything was
terrible. But her uncle's anger gave her the severest pain of all.
Selfish and ungrateful! to have appeared so to him! She was miserable
for ever. She had no one to take her part, to counsel, or speak for her.
Her only friend was absent. He might have softened his father; but all,
perhaps all, would think her selfish and ungrateful. She might have to
endure the reproach again and again; she might hear it, or see it, or
know it to exist for ever in every connexion about her. She could not
but feel some resentment against Mr. Crawford; yet, if he really loved
her, and were unhappy too! It was all wretchedness together.

In about a quarter of an hour her uncle returned; she was almost
ready to faint at the sight of him. He spoke calmly, however, without
austerity, without reproach, and she revived a little. There was
comfort, too, in his words, as well as his manner, for he began with,
“Mr. Crawford is gone: he has just left me. I need not repeat what has
passed. I do not want to add to anything you may now be feeling, by an
account of what he has felt. Suffice it, that he has behaved in the
most gentlemanlike and generous manner, and has confirmed me in a most
favourable opinion of his understanding, heart, and temper. Upon my
representation of what you were suffering, he immediately, and with the
greatest delicacy, ceased to urge to see you for the present.”

Here Fanny, who had looked up, looked down again. “Of course,” continued
her uncle, “it cannot be supposed but that he should request to speak
with you alone, be it only for five minutes; a request too natural,
a claim too just to be denied. But there is no time fixed; perhaps
to-morrow, or whenever your spirits are composed enough. For the present
you have only to tranquillise yourself. Check these tears; they do but
exhaust you. If, as I am willing to suppose, you wish to shew me any
observance, you will not give way to these emotions, but endeavour to
reason yourself into a stronger frame of mind. I advise you to go out:
the air will do you good; go out for an hour on the gravel; you will
have the shrubbery to yourself, and will be the better for air and
exercise. And, Fanny” (turning back again for a moment), “I shall make
no mention below of what has passed; I shall not even tell your aunt
Bertram. There is no occasion for spreading the disappointment; say
nothing about it yourself.”

This was an order to be most joyfully obeyed; this was an act of
kindness which Fanny felt at her heart. To be spared from her aunt
Norris's interminable reproaches! he left her in a glow of gratitude.
Anything might be bearable rather than such reproaches. Even to see Mr.
Crawford would be less overpowering.

She walked out directly, as her uncle recommended, and followed his
advice throughout, as far as she could; did check her tears; did
earnestly try to compose her spirits and strengthen her mind. She wished
to prove to him that she did desire his comfort, and sought to regain
his favour; and he had given her another strong motive for exertion, in
keeping the whole affair from the knowledge of her aunts. Not to excite
suspicion by her look or manner was now an object worth attaining; and
she felt equal to almost anything that might save her from her aunt
Norris.

She was struck, quite struck, when, on returning from her walk and going
into the East room again, the first thing which caught her eye was a
fire lighted and burning. A fire! it seemed too much; just at that time
to be giving her such an indulgence was exciting even painful gratitude.
She wondered that Sir Thomas could have leisure to think of such a
trifle again; but she soon found, from the voluntary information of the
housemaid, who came in to attend it, that so it was to be every day. Sir
Thomas had given orders for it.

“I must be a brute, indeed, if I can be really ungrateful!” said she, in
soliloquy. “Heaven defend me from being ungrateful!”

She saw nothing more of her uncle, nor of her aunt Norris, till they met
at dinner. Her uncle's behaviour to her was then as nearly as possible
what it had been before; she was sure he did not mean there should be
any change, and that it was only her own conscience that could fancy
any; but her aunt was soon quarrelling with her; and when she found how
much and how unpleasantly her having only walked out without her aunt's
knowledge could be dwelt on, she felt all the reason she had to bless
the kindness which saved her from the same spirit of reproach, exerted
on a more momentous subject.

“If I had known you were going out, I should have got you just to go
as far as my house with some orders for Nanny,” said she, “which I have
since, to my very great inconvenience, been obliged to go and carry
myself. I could very ill spare the time, and you might have saved me the
trouble, if you would only have been so good as to let us know you were
going out. It would have made no difference to you, I suppose, whether
you had walked in the shrubbery or gone to my house.”

“I recommended the shrubbery to Fanny as the driest place,” said Sir
Thomas.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Norris, with a moment's check, “that was very kind of
you, Sir Thomas; but you do not know how dry the path is to my house.
Fanny would have had quite as good a walk there, I assure you, with the
advantage of being of some use, and obliging her aunt: it is all her
fault. If she would but have let us know she was going out but there is
a something about Fanny, I have often observed it before--she likes to
go her own way to work; she does not like to be dictated to; she takes
her own independent walk whenever she can; she certainly has a little
spirit of secrecy, and independence, and nonsense, about her, which I
would advise her to get the better of.”

As a general reflection on Fanny, Sir Thomas thought nothing could be
more unjust, though he had been so lately expressing the same sentiments
himself, and he tried to turn the conversation: tried repeatedly
before he could succeed; for Mrs. Norris had not discernment enough to
perceive, either now, or at any other time, to what degree he thought
well of his niece, or how very far he was from wishing to have his own
children's merits set off by the depreciation of hers. She was talking
_at_ Fanny, and resenting this private walk half through the dinner.

It was over, however, at last; and the evening set in with more
composure to Fanny, and more cheerfulness of spirits than she could
have hoped for after so stormy a morning; but she trusted, in the first
place, that she had done right: that her judgment had not misled her.
For the purity of her intentions she could answer; and she was willing
to hope, secondly, that her uncle's displeasure was abating, and would
abate farther as he considered the matter with more impartiality, and
felt, as a good man must feel, how wretched, and how unpardonable, how
hopeless, and how wicked it was to marry without affection.

When the meeting with which she was threatened for the morrow was past,
she could not but flatter herself that the subject would be finally
concluded, and Mr. Crawford once gone from Mansfield, that everything
would soon be as if no such subject had existed. She would not, could
not believe, that Mr. Crawford's affection for her could distress him
long; his mind was not of that sort. London would soon bring its cure.
In London he would soon learn to wonder at his infatuation, and be
thankful for the right reason in her which had saved him from its evil
consequences.

While Fanny's mind was engaged in these sort of hopes, her uncle was,
soon after tea, called out of the room; an occurrence too common to
strike her, and she thought nothing of it till the butler reappeared ten
minutes afterwards, and advancing decidedly towards herself, said,
“Sir Thomas wishes to speak with you, ma'am, in his own room.” Then it
occurred to her what might be going on; a suspicion rushed over her mind
which drove the colour from her cheeks; but instantly rising, she was
preparing to obey, when Mrs. Norris called out, “Stay, stay, Fanny! what
are you about? where are you going? don't be in such a hurry. Depend
upon it, it is not you who are wanted; depend upon it, it is me”
 (looking at the butler); “but you are so very eager to put yourself
forward. What should Sir Thomas want you for? It is me, Baddeley, you
mean; I am coming this moment. You mean me, Baddeley, I am sure; Sir
Thomas wants me, not Miss Price.”

But Baddeley was stout. “No, ma'am, it is Miss Price; I am certain of
its being Miss Price.” And there was a half-smile with the words, which
meant, “I do not think you would answer the purpose at all.”

Mrs. Norris, much discontented, was obliged to compose herself to work
again; and Fanny, walking off in agitating consciousness, found herself,
as she anticipated, in another minute alone with Mr. Crawford.



CHAPTER XXXIII

The conference was neither so short nor so conclusive as the lady had
designed. The gentleman was not so easily satisfied. He had all the
disposition to persevere that Sir Thomas could wish him. He had vanity,
which strongly inclined him in the first place to think she did love
him, though she might not know it herself; and which, secondly, when
constrained at last to admit that she did know her own present feelings,
convinced him that he should be able in time to make those feelings what
he wished.

He was in love, very much in love; and it was a love which, operating
on an active, sanguine spirit, of more warmth than delicacy, made her
affection appear of greater consequence because it was withheld, and
determined him to have the glory, as well as the felicity, of forcing
her to love him.

He would not despair: he would not desist. He had every well-grounded
reason for solid attachment; he knew her to have all the worth that
could justify the warmest hopes of lasting happiness with her; her
conduct at this very time, by speaking the disinterestedness and
delicacy of her character (qualities which he believed most rare
indeed), was of a sort to heighten all his wishes, and confirm all his
resolutions. He knew not that he had a pre-engaged heart to attack.
Of _that_ he had no suspicion. He considered her rather as one who
had never thought on the subject enough to be in danger; who had been
guarded by youth, a youth of mind as lovely as of person; whose modesty
had prevented her from understanding his attentions, and who was still
overpowered by the suddenness of addresses so wholly unexpected, and the
novelty of a situation which her fancy had never taken into account.

Must it not follow of course, that, when he was understood, he should
succeed? He believed it fully. Love such as his, in a man like himself,
must with perseverance secure a return, and at no great distance; and
he had so much delight in the idea of obliging her to love him in a very
short time, that her not loving him now was scarcely regretted. A little
difficulty to be overcome was no evil to Henry Crawford. He rather
derived spirits from it. He had been apt to gain hearts too easily. His
situation was new and animating.

To Fanny, however, who had known too much opposition all her life to
find any charm in it, all this was unintelligible. She found that he did
mean to persevere; but how he could, after such language from her as she
felt herself obliged to use, was not to be understood. She told him that
she did not love him, could not love him, was sure she never should love
him; that such a change was quite impossible; that the subject was most
painful to her; that she must entreat him never to mention it again, to
allow her to leave him at once, and let it be considered as concluded
for ever. And when farther pressed, had added, that in her opinion their
dispositions were so totally dissimilar as to make mutual affection
incompatible; and that they were unfitted for each other by nature,
education, and habit. All this she had said, and with the earnestness
of sincerity; yet this was not enough, for he immediately denied there
being anything uncongenial in their characters, or anything unfriendly
in their situations; and positively declared, that he would still love,
and still hope!

Fanny knew her own meaning, but was no judge of her own manner. Her
manner was incurably gentle; and she was not aware how much it concealed
the sternness of her purpose. Her diffidence, gratitude, and softness
made every expression of indifference seem almost an effort of
self-denial; seem, at least, to be giving nearly as much pain to herself
as to him. Mr. Crawford was no longer the Mr. Crawford who, as the
clandestine, insidious, treacherous admirer of Maria Bertram, had been
her abhorrence, whom she had hated to see or to speak to, in whom she
could believe no good quality to exist, and whose power, even of being
agreeable, she had barely acknowledged. He was now the Mr. Crawford who
was addressing herself with ardent, disinterested love; whose feelings
were apparently become all that was honourable and upright, whose views
of happiness were all fixed on a marriage of attachment; who was
pouring out his sense of her merits, describing and describing again his
affection, proving as far as words could prove it, and in the language,
tone, and spirit of a man of talent too, that he sought her for her
gentleness and her goodness; and to complete the whole, he was now the
Mr. Crawford who had procured William's promotion!

Here was a change, and here were claims which could not but operate!
She might have disdained him in all the dignity of angry virtue, in
the grounds of Sotherton, or the theatre at Mansfield Park; but he
approached her now with rights that demanded different treatment.
She must be courteous, and she must be compassionate. She must have
a sensation of being honoured, and whether thinking of herself or her
brother, she must have a strong feeling of gratitude. The effect of the
whole was a manner so pitying and agitated, and words intermingled with
her refusal so expressive of obligation and concern, that to a temper of
vanity and hope like Crawford's, the truth, or at least the strength
of her indifference, might well be questionable; and he was not so
irrational as Fanny considered him, in the professions of persevering,
assiduous, and not desponding attachment which closed the interview.

It was with reluctance that he suffered her to go; but there was no look
of despair in parting to belie his words, or give her hopes of his being
less unreasonable than he professed himself.

Now she was angry. Some resentment did arise at a perseverance so
selfish and ungenerous. Here was again a want of delicacy and regard for
others which had formerly so struck and disgusted her. Here was again
a something of the same Mr. Crawford whom she had so reprobated before.
How evidently was there a gross want of feeling and humanity where his
own pleasure was concerned; and alas! how always known no principle to
supply as a duty what the heart was deficient in! Had her own affections
been as free as perhaps they ought to have been, he never could have
engaged them.

So thought Fanny, in good truth and sober sadness, as she sat musing
over that too great indulgence and luxury of a fire upstairs: wondering
at the past and present; wondering at what was yet to come, and in a
nervous agitation which made nothing clear to her but the persuasion of
her being never under any circumstances able to love Mr. Crawford, and
the felicity of having a fire to sit over and think of it.

Sir Thomas was obliged, or obliged himself, to wait till the morrow for
a knowledge of what had passed between the young people. He then saw
Mr. Crawford, and received his account. The first feeling was
disappointment: he had hoped better things; he had thought that an
hour's entreaty from a young man like Crawford could not have worked so
little change on a gentle-tempered girl like Fanny; but there was speedy
comfort in the determined views and sanguine perseverance of the lover;
and when seeing such confidence of success in the principal, Sir Thomas
was soon able to depend on it himself.

Nothing was omitted, on his side, of civility, compliment, or kindness,
that might assist the plan. Mr. Crawford's steadiness was honoured, and
Fanny was praised, and the connexion was still the most desirable in the
world. At Mansfield Park Mr. Crawford would always be welcome; he had
only to consult his own judgment and feelings as to the frequency of his
visits, at present or in future. In all his niece's family and friends,
there could be but one opinion, one wish on the subject; the influence
of all who loved her must incline one way.

Everything was said that could encourage, every encouragement received
with grateful joy, and the gentlemen parted the best of friends.

Satisfied that the cause was now on a footing the most proper and
hopeful, Sir Thomas resolved to abstain from all farther importunity
with his niece, and to shew no open interference. Upon her disposition
he believed kindness might be the best way of working. Entreaty should
be from one quarter only. The forbearance of her family on a point,
respecting which she could be in no doubt of their wishes, might be
their surest means of forwarding it. Accordingly, on this principle, Sir
Thomas took the first opportunity of saying to her, with a mild gravity,
intended to be overcoming, “Well, Fanny, I have seen Mr. Crawford again,
and learn from him exactly how matters stand between you. He is a most
extraordinary young man, and whatever be the event, you must feel that
you have created an attachment of no common character; though, young
as you are, and little acquainted with the transient, varying, unsteady
nature of love, as it generally exists, you cannot be struck as I
am with all that is wonderful in a perseverance of this sort against
discouragement. With him it is entirely a matter of feeling: he claims
no merit in it; perhaps is entitled to none. Yet, having chosen so
well, his constancy has a respectable stamp. Had his choice been less
unexceptionable, I should have condemned his persevering.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Fanny, “I am very sorry that Mr. Crawford should
continue to know that it is paying me a very great compliment, and I
feel most undeservedly honoured; but I am so perfectly convinced, and I
have told him so, that it never will be in my power--”

“My dear,” interrupted Sir Thomas, “there is no occasion for this. Your
feelings are as well known to me as my wishes and regrets must be
to you. There is nothing more to be said or done. From this hour the
subject is never to be revived between us. You will have nothing to
fear, or to be agitated about. You cannot suppose me capable of trying
to persuade you to marry against your inclinations. Your happiness and
advantage are all that I have in view, and nothing is required of you
but to bear with Mr. Crawford's endeavours to convince you that they may
not be incompatible with his. He proceeds at his own risk. You are on
safe ground. I have engaged for your seeing him whenever he calls, as
you might have done had nothing of this sort occurred. You will see
him with the rest of us, in the same manner, and, as much as you
can, dismissing the recollection of everything unpleasant. He leaves
Northamptonshire so soon, that even this slight sacrifice cannot be
often demanded. The future must be very uncertain. And now, my dear
Fanny, this subject is closed between us.”

The promised departure was all that Fanny could think of with much
satisfaction. Her uncle's kind expressions, however, and forbearing
manner, were sensibly felt; and when she considered how much of the
truth was unknown to him, she believed she had no right to wonder at
the line of conduct he pursued. He, who had married a daughter to Mr.
Rushworth: romantic delicacy was certainly not to be expected from him.
She must do her duty, and trust that time might make her duty easier
than it now was.

She could not, though only eighteen, suppose Mr. Crawford's attachment
would hold out for ever; she could not but imagine that steady,
unceasing discouragement from herself would put an end to it in time.
How much time she might, in her own fancy, allot for its dominion, is
another concern. It would not be fair to inquire into a young lady's
exact estimate of her own perfections.

In spite of his intended silence, Sir Thomas found himself once more
obliged to mention the subject to his niece, to prepare her briefly for
its being imparted to her aunts; a measure which he would still have
avoided, if possible, but which became necessary from the totally
opposite feelings of Mr. Crawford as to any secrecy of proceeding. He
had no idea of concealment. It was all known at the Parsonage, where
he loved to talk over the future with both his sisters, and it would be
rather gratifying to him to have enlightened witnesses of the progress
of his success. When Sir Thomas understood this, he felt the necessity
of making his own wife and sister-in-law acquainted with the business
without delay; though, on Fanny's account, he almost dreaded the
effect of the communication to Mrs. Norris as much as Fanny herself. He
deprecated her mistaken but well-meaning zeal. Sir Thomas, indeed, was,
by this time, not very far from classing Mrs. Norris as one of those
well-meaning people who are always doing mistaken and very disagreeable
things.

Mrs. Norris, however, relieved him. He pressed for the strictest
forbearance and silence towards their niece; she not only promised, but
did observe it. She only looked her increased ill-will. Angry she was:
bitterly angry; but she was more angry with Fanny for having received
such an offer than for refusing it. It was an injury and affront to
Julia, who ought to have been Mr. Crawford's choice; and, independently
of that, she disliked Fanny, because she had neglected her; and she
would have grudged such an elevation to one whom she had been always
trying to depress.

Sir Thomas gave her more credit for discretion on the occasion than she
deserved; and Fanny could have blessed her for allowing her only to see
her displeasure, and not to hear it.

Lady Bertram took it differently. She had been a beauty, and a
prosperous beauty, all her life; and beauty and wealth were all that
excited her respect. To know Fanny to be sought in marriage by a man of
fortune, raised her, therefore, very much in her opinion. By convincing
her that Fanny _was_ very pretty, which she had been doubting about
before, and that she would be advantageously married, it made her feel a
sort of credit in calling her niece.

“Well, Fanny,” said she, as soon as they were alone together afterwards,
and she really had known something like impatience to be alone with her,
and her countenance, as she spoke, had extraordinary animation; “Well,
Fanny, I have had a very agreeable surprise this morning. I must just
speak of it _once_, I told Sir Thomas I must _once_, and then I
shall have done. I give you joy, my dear niece.” And looking at her
complacently, she added, “Humph, we certainly are a handsome family!”

Fanny coloured, and doubted at first what to say; when, hoping to assail
her on her vulnerable side, she presently answered--

“My dear aunt, _you_ cannot wish me to do differently from what I have
done, I am sure. _You_ cannot wish me to marry; for you would miss me,
should not you? Yes, I am sure you would miss me too much for that.”

“No, my dear, I should not think of missing you, when such an offer as
this comes in your way. I could do very well without you, if you were
married to a man of such good estate as Mr. Crawford. And you must be
aware, Fanny, that it is every young woman's duty to accept such a very
unexceptionable offer as this.”

This was almost the only rule of conduct, the only piece of advice,
which Fanny had ever received from her aunt in the course of eight years
and a half. It silenced her. She felt how unprofitable contention would
be. If her aunt's feelings were against her, nothing could be hoped from
attacking her understanding. Lady Bertram was quite talkative.

“I will tell you what, Fanny,” said she, “I am sure he fell in love with
you at the ball; I am sure the mischief was done that evening. You did
look remarkably well. Everybody said so. Sir Thomas said so. And you
know you had Chapman to help you to dress. I am very glad I sent
Chapman to you. I shall tell Sir Thomas that I am sure it was done
that evening.” And still pursuing the same cheerful thoughts, she soon
afterwards added, “And will tell you what, Fanny, which is more than I
did for Maria: the next time Pug has a litter you shall have a puppy.”



CHAPTER XXXIV

Edmund had great things to hear on his return. Many surprises were
awaiting him. The first that occurred was not least in interest: the
appearance of Henry Crawford and his sister walking together through the
village as he rode into it. He had concluded--he had meant them to be
far distant. His absence had been extended beyond a fortnight purposely
to avoid Miss Crawford. He was returning to Mansfield with spirits ready
to feed on melancholy remembrances, and tender associations, when her
own fair self was before him, leaning on her brother's arm, and he found
himself receiving a welcome, unquestionably friendly, from the woman
whom, two moments before, he had been thinking of as seventy miles off,
and as farther, much farther, from him in inclination than any distance
could express.

Her reception of him was of a sort which he could not have hoped
for, had he expected to see her. Coming as he did from such a purport
fulfilled as had taken him away, he would have expected anything rather
than a look of satisfaction, and words of simple, pleasant meaning.
It was enough to set his heart in a glow, and to bring him home in the
properest state for feeling the full value of the other joyful surprises
at hand.

William's promotion, with all its particulars, he was soon master of;
and with such a secret provision of comfort within his own breast to
help the joy, he found in it a source of most gratifying sensation and
unvarying cheerfulness all dinner-time.

After dinner, when he and his father were alone, he had Fanny's history;
and then all the great events of the last fortnight, and the present
situation of matters at Mansfield were known to him.

Fanny suspected what was going on. They sat so much longer than usual in
the dining-parlour, that she was sure they must be talking of her; and
when tea at last brought them away, and she was to be seen by Edmund
again, she felt dreadfully guilty. He came to her, sat down by her, took
her hand, and pressed it kindly; and at that moment she thought that,
but for the occupation and the scene which the tea-things afforded, she
must have betrayed her emotion in some unpardonable excess.

He was not intending, however, by such action, to be conveying to her
that unqualified approbation and encouragement which her hopes drew
from it. It was designed only to express his participation in all that
interested her, and to tell her that he had been hearing what quickened
every feeling of affection. He was, in fact, entirely on his father's
side of the question. His surprise was not so great as his father's at
her refusing Crawford, because, so far from supposing her to consider
him with anything like a preference, he had always believed it to
be rather the reverse, and could imagine her to be taken perfectly
unprepared, but Sir Thomas could not regard the connexion as more
desirable than he did. It had every recommendation to him; and while
honouring her for what she had done under the influence of her present
indifference, honouring her in rather stronger terms than Sir Thomas
could quite echo, he was most earnest in hoping, and sanguine in
believing, that it would be a match at last, and that, united by mutual
affection, it would appear that their dispositions were as exactly
fitted to make them blessed in each other, as he was now beginning
seriously to consider them. Crawford had been too precipitate. He had
not given her time to attach herself. He had begun at the wrong end.
With such powers as his, however, and such a disposition as hers, Edmund
trusted that everything would work out a happy conclusion. Meanwhile,
he saw enough of Fanny's embarrassment to make him scrupulously guard
against exciting it a second time, by any word, or look, or movement.

Crawford called the next day, and on the score of Edmund's return, Sir
Thomas felt himself more than licensed to ask him to stay dinner; it was
really a necessary compliment. He staid of course, and Edmund had then
ample opportunity for observing how he sped with Fanny, and what degree
of immediate encouragement for him might be extracted from her manners;
and it was so little, so very, very little--every chance, every
possibility of it, resting upon her embarrassment only; if there was
not hope in her confusion, there was hope in nothing else--that he was
almost ready to wonder at his friend's perseverance. Fanny was worth it
all; he held her to be worth every effort of patience, every exertion of
mind, but he did not think he could have gone on himself with any woman
breathing, without something more to warm his courage than his eyes
could discern in hers. He was very willing to hope that Crawford saw
clearer, and this was the most comfortable conclusion for his friend
that he could come to from all that he observed to pass before, and at,
and after dinner.

In the evening a few circumstances occurred which he thought more
promising. When he and Crawford walked into the drawing-room, his mother
and Fanny were sitting as intently and silently at work as if there
were nothing else to care for. Edmund could not help noticing their
apparently deep tranquillity.

“We have not been so silent all the time,” replied his mother. “Fanny
has been reading to me, and only put the book down upon hearing you
coming.” And sure enough there was a book on the table which had the air
of being very recently closed: a volume of Shakespeare. “She often
reads to me out of those books; and she was in the middle of a very
fine speech of that man's--what's his name, Fanny?--when we heard your
footsteps.”

Crawford took the volume. “Let me have the pleasure of finishing that
speech to your ladyship,” said he. “I shall find it immediately.” And by
carefully giving way to the inclination of the leaves, he did find it,
or within a page or two, quite near enough to satisfy Lady Bertram, who
assured him, as soon as he mentioned the name of Cardinal Wolsey, that
he had got the very speech. Not a look or an offer of help had Fanny
given; not a syllable for or against. All her attention was for her
work. She seemed determined to be interested by nothing else. But taste
was too strong in her. She could not abstract her mind five minutes: she
was forced to listen; his reading was capital, and her pleasure in good
reading extreme. To _good_ reading, however, she had been long used:
her uncle read well, her cousins all, Edmund very well, but in Mr.
Crawford's reading there was a variety of excellence beyond what she had
ever met with. The King, the Queen, Buckingham, Wolsey, Cromwell, all
were given in turn; for with the happiest knack, the happiest power of
jumping and guessing, he could always alight at will on the best scene,
or the best speeches of each; and whether it were dignity, or pride, or
tenderness, or remorse, or whatever were to be expressed, he could do
it with equal beauty. It was truly dramatic. His acting had first taught
Fanny what pleasure a play might give, and his reading brought all his
acting before her again; nay, perhaps with greater enjoyment, for it
came unexpectedly, and with no such drawback as she had been used to
suffer in seeing him on the stage with Miss Bertram.

Edmund watched the progress of her attention, and was amused and
gratified by seeing how she gradually slackened in the needlework, which
at the beginning seemed to occupy her totally: how it fell from her hand
while she sat motionless over it, and at last, how the eyes which had
appeared so studiously to avoid him throughout the day were turned and
fixed on Crawford--fixed on him for minutes, fixed on him, in short,
till the attraction drew Crawford's upon her, and the book was closed,
and the charm was broken. Then she was shrinking again into herself,
and blushing and working as hard as ever; but it had been enough to give
Edmund encouragement for his friend, and as he cordially thanked him, he
hoped to be expressing Fanny's secret feelings too.

“That play must be a favourite with you,” said he; “you read as if you
knew it well.”

“It will be a favourite, I believe, from this hour,” replied Crawford;
“but I do not think I have had a volume of Shakespeare in my hand before
since I was fifteen. I once saw Henry the Eighth acted, or I have heard
of it from somebody who did, I am not certain which. But Shakespeare
one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an
Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread
abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by
instinct. No man of any brain can open at a good part of one of his
plays without falling into the flow of his meaning immediately.”

“No doubt one is familiar with Shakespeare in a degree,” said Edmund,
“from one's earliest years. His celebrated passages are quoted
by everybody; they are in half the books we open, and we all talk
Shakespeare, use his similes, and describe with his descriptions; but
this is totally distinct from giving his sense as you gave it. To know
him in bits and scraps is common enough; to know him pretty thoroughly
is, perhaps, not uncommon; but to read him well aloud is no everyday
talent.”

“Sir, you do me honour,” was Crawford's answer, with a bow of mock
gravity.

Both gentlemen had a glance at Fanny, to see if a word of accordant
praise could be extorted from her; yet both feeling that it could not
be. Her praise had been given in her attention; _that_ must content
them.

Lady Bertram's admiration was expressed, and strongly too. “It was
really like being at a play,” said she. “I wish Sir Thomas had been
here.”

Crawford was excessively pleased. If Lady Bertram, with all her
incompetency and languor, could feel this, the inference of what her
niece, alive and enlightened as she was, must feel, was elevating.

“You have a great turn for acting, I am sure, Mr. Crawford,” said her
ladyship soon afterwards; “and I will tell you what, I think you will
have a theatre, some time or other, at your house in Norfolk. I mean
when you are settled there. I do indeed. I think you will fit up a
theatre at your house in Norfolk.”

“Do you, ma'am?” cried he, with quickness. “No, no, that will never be.
Your ladyship is quite mistaken. No theatre at Everingham! Oh no!” And
he looked at Fanny with an expressive smile, which evidently meant,
“That lady will never allow a theatre at Everingham.”

Edmund saw it all, and saw Fanny so determined _not_ to see it, as to
make it clear that the voice was enough to convey the full meaning of
the protestation; and such a quick consciousness of compliment, such a
ready comprehension of a hint, he thought, was rather favourable than
not.

The subject of reading aloud was farther discussed. The two young men
were the only talkers, but they, standing by the fire, talked over the
too common neglect of the qualification, the total inattention to it,
in the ordinary school-system for boys, the consequently natural, yet in
some instances almost unnatural, degree of ignorance and uncouthness
of men, of sensible and well-informed men, when suddenly called to the
necessity of reading aloud, which had fallen within their notice, giving
instances of blunders, and failures with their secondary causes, the
want of management of the voice, of proper modulation and emphasis, of
foresight and judgment, all proceeding from the first cause: want of
early attention and habit; and Fanny was listening again with great
entertainment.

“Even in my profession,” said Edmund, with a smile, “how little the
art of reading has been studied! how little a clear manner, and good
delivery, have been attended to! I speak rather of the past, however,
than the present. There is now a spirit of improvement abroad; but among
those who were ordained twenty, thirty, forty years ago, the larger
number, to judge by their performance, must have thought reading was
reading, and preaching was preaching. It is different now. The subject
is more justly considered. It is felt that distinctness and energy may
have weight in recommending the most solid truths; and besides, there is
more general observation and taste, a more critical knowledge diffused
than formerly; in every congregation there is a larger proportion who
know a little of the matter, and who can judge and criticise.”

Edmund had already gone through the service once since his ordination;
and upon this being understood, he had a variety of questions from
Crawford as to his feelings and success; questions, which being made,
though with the vivacity of friendly interest and quick taste, without
any touch of that spirit of banter or air of levity which Edmund knew to
be most offensive to Fanny, he had true pleasure in satisfying; and
when Crawford proceeded to ask his opinion and give his own as to the
properest manner in which particular passages in the service should be
delivered, shewing it to be a subject on which he had thought before,
and thought with judgment, Edmund was still more and more pleased. This
would be the way to Fanny's heart. She was not to be won by all that
gallantry and wit and good-nature together could do; or, at least,
she would not be won by them nearly so soon, without the assistance of
sentiment and feeling, and seriousness on serious subjects.

“Our liturgy,” observed Crawford, “has beauties, which not even a
careless, slovenly style of reading can destroy; but it has also
redundancies and repetitions which require good reading not to be felt.
For myself, at least, I must confess being not always so attentive as I
ought to be” (here was a glance at Fanny); “that nineteen times out of
twenty I am thinking how such a prayer ought to be read, and longing to
have it to read myself. Did you speak?” stepping eagerly to Fanny, and
addressing her in a softened voice; and upon her saying “No,” he added,
“Are you sure you did not speak? I saw your lips move. I fancied you
might be going to tell me I ought to be more attentive, and not _allow_
my thoughts to wander. Are not you going to tell me so?”

“No, indeed, you know your duty too well for me to--even supposing--”

She stopt, felt herself getting into a puzzle, and could not be
prevailed on to add another word, not by dint of several minutes of
supplication and waiting. He then returned to his former station, and
went on as if there had been no such tender interruption.

“A sermon, well delivered, is more uncommon even than prayers well read.
A sermon, good in itself, is no rare thing. It is more difficult
to speak well than to compose well; that is, the rules and trick of
composition are oftener an object of study. A thoroughly good sermon,
thoroughly well delivered, is a capital gratification. I can never hear
such a one without the greatest admiration and respect, and more than
half a mind to take orders and preach myself. There is something in the
eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled
to the highest praise and honour. The preacher who can touch and affect
such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long
worn threadbare in all common hands; who can say anything new or
striking, anything that rouses the attention without offending the
taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one
could not, in his public capacity, honour enough. I should like to be
such a man.”

Edmund laughed.

“I should indeed. I never listened to a distinguished preacher in my
life without a sort of envy. But then, I must have a London audience.
I could not preach but to the educated; to those who were capable of
estimating my composition. And I do not know that I should be fond of
preaching often; now and then, perhaps once or twice in the spring,
after being anxiously expected for half a dozen Sundays together; but
not for a constancy; it would not do for a constancy.”

Here Fanny, who could not but listen, involuntarily shook her head,
and Crawford was instantly by her side again, entreating to know her
meaning; and as Edmund perceived, by his drawing in a chair, and sitting
down close by her, that it was to be a very thorough attack, that looks
and undertones were to be well tried, he sank as quietly as possible
into a corner, turned his back, and took up a newspaper, very sincerely
wishing that dear little Fanny might be persuaded into explaining away
that shake of the head to the satisfaction of her ardent lover; and as
earnestly trying to bury every sound of the business from himself in
murmurs of his own, over the various advertisements of “A most desirable
Estate in South Wales”; “To Parents and Guardians”; and a “Capital
season'd Hunter.”

Fanny, meanwhile, vexed with herself for not having been as motionless
as she was speechless, and grieved to the heart to see Edmund's
arrangements, was trying by everything in the power of her modest,
gentle nature, to repulse Mr. Crawford, and avoid both his looks and
inquiries; and he, unrepulsable, was persisting in both.

“What did that shake of the head mean?” said he. “What was it meant to
express? Disapprobation, I fear. But of what? What had I been saying
to displease you? Did you think me speaking improperly, lightly,
irreverently on the subject? Only tell me if I was. Only tell me if
I was wrong. I want to be set right. Nay, nay, I entreat you; for one
moment put down your work. What did that shake of the head mean?”

In vain was her “Pray, sir, don't; pray, Mr. Crawford,” repeated twice
over; and in vain did she try to move away. In the same low, eager
voice, and the same close neighbourhood, he went on, reurging the same
questions as before. She grew more agitated and displeased.

“How can you, sir? You quite astonish me; I wonder how you can--”

“Do I astonish you?” said he. “Do you wonder? Is there anything in
my present entreaty that you do not understand? I will explain to you
instantly all that makes me urge you in this manner, all that gives me
an interest in what you look and do, and excites my present curiosity. I
will not leave you to wonder long.”

In spite of herself, she could not help half a smile, but she said
nothing.

“You shook your head at my acknowledging that I should not like to
engage in the duties of a clergyman always for a constancy. Yes, that
was the word. Constancy: I am not afraid of the word. I would spell it,
read it, write it with anybody. I see nothing alarming in the word. Did
you think I ought?”

“Perhaps, sir,” said Fanny, wearied at last into speaking--“perhaps,
sir, I thought it was a pity you did not always know yourself as well as
you seemed to do at that moment.”

Crawford, delighted to get her to speak at any rate, was determined
to keep it up; and poor Fanny, who had hoped to silence him by such an
extremity of reproof, found herself sadly mistaken, and that it was only
a change from one object of curiosity and one set of words to another.
He had always something to entreat the explanation of. The opportunity
was too fair. None such had occurred since his seeing her in her uncle's
room, none such might occur again before his leaving Mansfield. Lady
Bertram's being just on the other side of the table was a trifle,
for she might always be considered as only half-awake, and Edmund's
advertisements were still of the first utility.

“Well,” said Crawford, after a course of rapid questions and reluctant
answers; “I am happier than I was, because I now understand more clearly
your opinion of me. You think me unsteady: easily swayed by the whim of
the moment, easily tempted, easily put aside. With such an opinion, no
wonder that. But we shall see. It is not by protestations that I shall
endeavour to convince you I am wronged; it is not by telling you that my
affections are steady. My conduct shall speak for me; absence, distance,
time shall speak for me. _They_ shall prove that, as far as you can be
deserved by anybody, I do deserve you. You are infinitely my superior
in merit; all _that_ I know. You have qualities which I had not before
supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some
touches of the angel in you beyond what--not merely beyond what one
sees, because one never sees anything like it--but beyond what one
fancies might be. But still I am not frightened. It is not by equality
of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question. It is he
who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most
devotedly, that has the best right to a return. There I build my
confidence. By that right I do and will deserve you; and when once
convinced that my attachment is what I declare it, I know you too well
not to entertain the warmest hopes. Yes, dearest, sweetest Fanny. Nay”
 (seeing her draw back displeased), “forgive me. Perhaps I have as yet
no right; but by what other name can I call you? Do you suppose you are
ever present to my imagination under any other? No, it is 'Fanny' that
I think of all day, and dream of all night. You have given the name such
reality of sweetness, that nothing else can now be descriptive of you.”

Fanny could hardly have kept her seat any longer, or have refrained from
at least trying to get away in spite of all the too public opposition
she foresaw to it, had it not been for the sound of approaching relief,
the very sound which she had been long watching for, and long thinking
strangely delayed.

The solemn procession, headed by Baddeley, of tea-board, urn, and
cake-bearers, made its appearance, and delivered her from a grievous
imprisonment of body and mind. Mr. Crawford was obliged to move. She was
at liberty, she was busy, she was protected.

Edmund was not sorry to be admitted again among the number of those who
might speak and hear. But though the conference had seemed full long to
him, and though on looking at Fanny he saw rather a flush of vexation,
he inclined to hope that so much could not have been said and listened
to without some profit to the speaker.



CHAPTER XXXV

Edmund had determined that it belonged entirely to Fanny to chuse
whether her situation with regard to Crawford should be mentioned
between them or not; and that if she did not lead the way, it should
never be touched on by him; but after a day or two of mutual reserve, he
was induced by his father to change his mind, and try what his influence
might do for his friend.

A day, and a very early day, was actually fixed for the Crawfords'
departure; and Sir Thomas thought it might be as well to make one
more effort for the young man before he left Mansfield, that all his
professions and vows of unshaken attachment might have as much hope to
sustain them as possible.

Sir Thomas was most cordially anxious for the perfection of Mr.
Crawford's character in that point. He wished him to be a model of
constancy; and fancied the best means of effecting it would be by not
trying him too long.

Edmund was not unwilling to be persuaded to engage in the business; he
wanted to know Fanny's feelings. She had been used to consult him in
every difficulty, and he loved her too well to bear to be denied her
confidence now; he hoped to be of service to her, he thought he must be
of service to her; whom else had she to open her heart to? If she did
not need counsel, she must need the comfort of communication. Fanny
estranged from him, silent and reserved, was an unnatural state of
things; a state which he must break through, and which he could easily
learn to think she was wanting him to break through.

“I will speak to her, sir: I will take the first opportunity of speaking
to her alone,” was the result of such thoughts as these; and upon Sir
Thomas's information of her being at that very time walking alone in the
shrubbery, he instantly joined her.

“I am come to walk with you, Fanny,” said he. “Shall I?” Drawing her
arm within his. “It is a long while since we have had a comfortable walk
together.”

She assented to it all rather by look than word. Her spirits were low.

“But, Fanny,” he presently added, “in order to have a comfortable walk,
something more is necessary than merely pacing this gravel together. You
must talk to me. I know you have something on your mind. I know what you
are thinking of. You cannot suppose me uninformed. Am I to hear of it
from everybody but Fanny herself?”

Fanny, at once agitated and dejected, replied, “If you hear of it from
everybody, cousin, there can be nothing for me to tell.”

“Not of facts, perhaps; but of feelings, Fanny. No one but you can tell
me them. I do not mean to press you, however. If it is not what you wish
yourself, I have done. I had thought it might be a relief.”

“I am afraid we think too differently for me to find any relief in
talking of what I feel.”

“Do you suppose that we think differently? I have no idea of it. I dare
say that, on a comparison of our opinions, they would be found as much
alike as they have been used to be: to the point--I consider Crawford's
proposals as most advantageous and desirable, if you could return his
affection. I consider it as most natural that all your family should
wish you could return it; but that, as you cannot, you have done exactly
as you ought in refusing him. Can there be any disagreement between us
here?”

“Oh no! But I thought you blamed me. I thought you were against me. This
is such a comfort!”

“This comfort you might have had sooner, Fanny, had you sought it. But
how could you possibly suppose me against you? How could you imagine me
an advocate for marriage without love? Were I even careless in general
on such matters, how could you imagine me so where your happiness was at
stake?”

“My uncle thought me wrong, and I knew he had been talking to you.”

“As far as you have gone, Fanny, I think you perfectly right. I may be
sorry, I may be surprised--though hardly _that_, for you had not had
time to attach yourself--but I think you perfectly right. Can it admit
of a question? It is disgraceful to us if it does. You did not love him;
nothing could have justified your accepting him.”

Fanny had not felt so comfortable for days and days.

“So far your conduct has been faultless, and they were quite mistaken
who wished you to do otherwise. But the matter does not end here.
Crawford's is no common attachment; he perseveres, with the hope of
creating that regard which had not been created before. This, we know,
must be a work of time. But” (with an affectionate smile) “let him
succeed at last, Fanny, let him succeed at last. You have proved
yourself upright and disinterested, prove yourself grateful and
tender-hearted; and then you will be the perfect model of a woman which
I have always believed you born for.”

“Oh! never, never, never! he never will succeed with me.” And she spoke
with a warmth which quite astonished Edmund, and which she blushed at
the recollection of herself, when she saw his look, and heard him
reply, “Never! Fanny!--so very determined and positive! This is not like
yourself, your rational self.”

“I mean,” she cried, sorrowfully correcting herself, “that I _think_ I
never shall, as far as the future can be answered for; I think I never
shall return his regard.”

“I must hope better things. I am aware, more aware than Crawford can be,
that the man who means to make you love him (you having due notice of
his intentions) must have very uphill work, for there are all your early
attachments and habits in battle array; and before he can get your heart
for his own use he has to unfasten it from all the holds upon things
animate and inanimate, which so many years' growth have confirmed, and
which are considerably tightened for the moment by the very idea
of separation. I know that the apprehension of being forced to quit
Mansfield will for a time be arming you against him. I wish he had not
been obliged to tell you what he was trying for. I wish he had known you
as well as I do, Fanny. Between us, I think we should have won you. My
theoretical and his practical knowledge together could not have failed.
He should have worked upon my plans. I must hope, however, that time,
proving him (as I firmly believe it will) to deserve you by his steady
affection, will give him his reward. I cannot suppose that you have not
the _wish_ to love him--the natural wish of gratitude. You must have
some feeling of that sort. You must be sorry for your own indifference.”

“We are so totally unlike,” said Fanny, avoiding a direct answer, “we
are so very, very different in all our inclinations and ways, that
I consider it as quite impossible we should ever be tolerably happy
together, even if I _could_ like him. There never were two people more
dissimilar. We have not one taste in common. We should be miserable.”

“You are mistaken, Fanny. The dissimilarity is not so strong. You are
quite enough alike. You _have_ tastes in common. You have moral and
literary tastes in common. You have both warm hearts and benevolent
feelings; and, Fanny, who that heard him read, and saw you listen to
Shakespeare the other night, will think you unfitted as companions? You
forget yourself: there is a decided difference in your tempers, I allow.
He is lively, you are serious; but so much the better: his spirits will
support yours. It is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy
difficulties greater than they are. His cheerfulness will counteract
this. He sees difficulties nowhere: and his pleasantness and gaiety will
be a constant support to you. Your being so far unlike, Fanny, does not
in the smallest degree make against the probability of your happiness
together: do not imagine it. I am myself convinced that it is rather a
favourable circumstance. I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers
had better be unlike: I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in
the manners, in the inclination for much or little company, in the
propensity to talk or to be silent, to be grave or to be gay. Some
opposition here is, I am thoroughly convinced, friendly to matrimonial
happiness. I exclude extremes, of course; and a very close resemblance
in all those points would be the likeliest way to produce an extreme.
A counteraction, gentle and continual, is the best safeguard of manners
and conduct.”

Full well could Fanny guess where his thoughts were now: Miss Crawford's
power was all returning. He had been speaking of her cheerfully from the
hour of his coming home. His avoiding her was quite at an end. He had
dined at the Parsonage only the preceding day.

After leaving him to his happier thoughts for some minutes, Fanny,
feeling it due to herself, returned to Mr. Crawford, and said, “It
is not merely in _temper_ that I consider him as totally unsuited to
myself; though, in _that_ respect, I think the difference between us too
great, infinitely too great: his spirits often oppress me; but there is
something in him which I object to still more. I must say, cousin, that
I cannot approve his character. I have not thought well of him from the
time of the play. I then saw him behaving, as it appeared to me, so
very improperly and unfeelingly--I may speak of it now because it is all
over--so improperly by poor Mr. Rushworth, not seeming to care how he
exposed or hurt him, and paying attentions to my cousin Maria, which--in
short, at the time of the play, I received an impression which will
never be got over.”

“My dear Fanny,” replied Edmund, scarcely hearing her to the end, “let
us not, any of us, be judged by what we appeared at that period of
general folly. The time of the play is a time which I hate to recollect.
Maria was wrong, Crawford was wrong, we were all wrong together; but
none so wrong as myself. Compared with me, all the rest were blameless.
I was playing the fool with my eyes open.”

“As a bystander,” said Fanny, “perhaps I saw more than you did; and I do
think that Mr. Rushworth was sometimes very jealous.”

“Very possibly. No wonder. Nothing could be more improper than the whole
business. I am shocked whenever I think that Maria could be capable of
it; but, if she could undertake the part, we must not be surprised at
the rest.”

“Before the play, I am much mistaken if _Julia_ did not think he was
paying her attentions.”

“Julia! I have heard before from some one of his being in love with
Julia; but I could never see anything of it. And, Fanny, though I hope I
do justice to my sisters' good qualities, I think it very possible that
they might, one or both, be more desirous of being admired by Crawford,
and might shew that desire rather more unguardedly than was perfectly
prudent. I can remember that they were evidently fond of his society;
and with such encouragement, a man like Crawford, lively, and it may
be, a little unthinking, might be led on to--there could be nothing very
striking, because it is clear that he had no pretensions: his heart was
reserved for you. And I must say, that its being for you has raised him
inconceivably in my opinion. It does him the highest honour; it shews
his proper estimation of the blessing of domestic happiness and pure
attachment. It proves him unspoilt by his uncle. It proves him, in
short, everything that I had been used to wish to believe him, and
feared he was not.”

“I am persuaded that he does not think, as he ought, on serious
subjects.”

“Say, rather, that he has not thought at all upon serious subjects,
which I believe to be a good deal the case. How could it be otherwise,
with such an education and adviser? Under the disadvantages, indeed,
which both have had, is it not wonderful that they should be what they
are? Crawford's _feelings_, I am ready to acknowledge, have hitherto
been too much his guides. Happily, those feelings have generally been
good. You will supply the rest; and a most fortunate man he is to attach
himself to such a creature--to a woman who, firm as a rock in her own
principles, has a gentleness of character so well adapted to recommend
them. He has chosen his partner, indeed, with rare felicity. He will
make you happy, Fanny; I know he will make you happy; but you will make
him everything.”

“I would not engage in such a charge,” cried Fanny, in a shrinking
accent; “in such an office of high responsibility!”

“As usual, believing yourself unequal to anything! fancying everything
too much for you! Well, though I may not be able to persuade you into
different feelings, you will be persuaded into them, I trust. I confess
myself sincerely anxious that you may. I have no common interest in
Crawford's well-doing. Next to your happiness, Fanny, his has the first
claim on me. You are aware of my having no common interest in Crawford.”

Fanny was too well aware of it to have anything to say; and they walked
on together some fifty yards in mutual silence and abstraction. Edmund
first began again--

“I was very much pleased by her manner of speaking of it yesterday,
particularly pleased, because I had not depended upon her seeing
everything in so just a light. I knew she was very fond of you; but yet
I was afraid of her not estimating your worth to her brother quite as
it deserved, and of her regretting that he had not rather fixed on
some woman of distinction or fortune. I was afraid of the bias of those
worldly maxims, which she has been too much used to hear. But it was
very different. She spoke of you, Fanny, just as she ought. She desires
the connexion as warmly as your uncle or myself. We had a long talk
about it. I should not have mentioned the subject, though very anxious
to know her sentiments; but I had not been in the room five minutes
before she began introducing it with all that openness of heart, and
sweet peculiarity of manner, that spirit and ingenuousness which are so
much a part of herself. Mrs. Grant laughed at her for her rapidity.”

“Was Mrs. Grant in the room, then?”

“Yes, when I reached the house I found the two sisters together by
themselves; and when once we had begun, we had not done with you, Fanny,
till Crawford and Dr. Grant came in.”

“It is above a week since I saw Miss Crawford.”

“Yes, she laments it; yet owns it may have been best. You will see her,
however, before she goes. She is very angry with you, Fanny; you must be
prepared for that. She calls herself very angry, but you can imagine her
anger. It is the regret and disappointment of a sister, who thinks her
brother has a right to everything he may wish for, at the first moment.
She is hurt, as you would be for William; but she loves and esteems you
with all her heart.”

“I knew she would be very angry with me.”

“My dearest Fanny,” cried Edmund, pressing her arm closer to him, “do
not let the idea of her anger distress you. It is anger to be talked
of rather than felt. Her heart is made for love and kindness, not for
resentment. I wish you could have overheard her tribute of praise;
I wish you could have seen her countenance, when she said that you
_should_ be Henry's wife. And I observed that she always spoke of you
as 'Fanny,' which she was never used to do; and it had a sound of most
sisterly cordiality.”

“And Mrs. Grant, did she say--did she speak; was she there all the
time?”

“Yes, she was agreeing exactly with her sister. The surprise of your
refusal, Fanny, seems to have been unbounded. That you could refuse such
a man as Henry Crawford seems more than they can understand. I said what
I could for you; but in good truth, as they stated the case--you must
prove yourself to be in your senses as soon as you can by a different
conduct; nothing else will satisfy them. But this is teasing you. I have
done. Do not turn away from me.”

“I _should_ have thought,” said Fanny, after a pause of recollection and
exertion, “that every woman must have felt the possibility of a man's
not being approved, not being loved by some one of her sex at least, let
him be ever so generally agreeable. Let him have all the perfections
in the world, I think it ought not to be set down as certain that a man
must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself. But,
even supposing it is so, allowing Mr. Crawford to have all the claims
which his sisters think he has, how was I to be prepared to meet him
with any feeling answerable to his own? He took me wholly by surprise.
I had not an idea that his behaviour to me before had any meaning; and
surely I was not to be teaching myself to like him only because he was
taking what seemed very idle notice of me. In my situation, it would
have been the extreme of vanity to be forming expectations on Mr.
Crawford. I am sure his sisters, rating him as they do, must have
thought it so, supposing he had meant nothing. How, then, was I to
be--to be in love with him the moment he said he was with me? How was I
to have an attachment at his service, as soon as it was asked for? His
sisters should consider me as well as him. The higher his deserts, the
more improper for me ever to have thought of him. And, and--we think
very differently of the nature of women, if they can imagine a woman so
very soon capable of returning an affection as this seems to imply.”

“My dear, dear Fanny, now I have the truth. I know this to be the truth;
and most worthy of you are such feelings. I had attributed them to you
before. I thought I could understand you. You have now given exactly
the explanation which I ventured to make for you to your friend and Mrs.
Grant, and they were both better satisfied, though your warm-hearted
friend was still run away with a little by the enthusiasm of her
fondness for Henry. I told them that you were of all human creatures the
one over whom habit had most power and novelty least; and that the very
circumstance of the novelty of Crawford's addresses was against him.
Their being so new and so recent was all in their disfavour; that you
could tolerate nothing that you were not used to; and a great deal more
to the same purpose, to give them a knowledge of your character. Miss
Crawford made us laugh by her plans of encouragement for her brother.
She meant to urge him to persevere in the hope of being loved in time,
and of having his addresses most kindly received at the end of about ten
years' happy marriage.”

Fanny could with difficulty give the smile that was here asked for. Her
feelings were all in revolt. She feared she had been doing wrong: saying
too much, overacting the caution which she had been fancying necessary;
in guarding against one evil, laying herself open to another; and to
have Miss Crawford's liveliness repeated to her at such a moment, and on
such a subject, was a bitter aggravation.

Edmund saw weariness and distress in her face, and immediately resolved
to forbear all farther discussion; and not even to mention the name
of Crawford again, except as it might be connected with what _must_ be
agreeable to her. On this principle, he soon afterwards observed--“They
go on Monday. You are sure, therefore, of seeing your friend either
to-morrow or Sunday. They really go on Monday; and I was within a trifle
of being persuaded to stay at Lessingby till that very day! I had almost
promised it. What a difference it might have made! Those five or six
days more at Lessingby might have been felt all my life.”

“You were near staying there?”

“Very. I was most kindly pressed, and had nearly consented. Had I
received any letter from Mansfield, to tell me how you were all going
on, I believe I should certainly have staid; but I knew nothing that
had happened here for a fortnight, and felt that I had been away long
enough.”

“You spent your time pleasantly there?”

“Yes; that is, it was the fault of my own mind if I did not. They were
all very pleasant. I doubt their finding me so. I took uneasiness with
me, and there was no getting rid of it till I was in Mansfield again.”

“The Miss Owens--you liked them, did not you?”

“Yes, very well. Pleasant, good-humoured, unaffected girls. But I am
spoilt, Fanny, for common female society. Good-humoured, unaffected
girls will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They
are two distinct orders of being. You and Miss Crawford have made me too
nice.”

Still, however, Fanny was oppressed and wearied; he saw it in her looks,
it could not be talked away; and attempting it no more, he led her
directly, with the kind authority of a privileged guardian, into the
house.



CHAPTER XXXVI

Edmund now believed himself perfectly acquainted with all that Fanny
could tell, or could leave to be conjectured of her sentiments, and he
was satisfied. It had been, as he before presumed, too hasty a measure
on Crawford's side, and time must be given to make the idea first
familiar, and then agreeable to her. She must be used to the
consideration of his being in love with her, and then a return of
affection might not be very distant.

He gave this opinion as the result of the conversation to his father;
and recommended there being nothing more said to her: no farther
attempts to influence or persuade; but that everything should be left to
Crawford's assiduities, and the natural workings of her own mind.

Sir Thomas promised that it should be so. Edmund's account of Fanny's
disposition he could believe to be just; he supposed she had all those
feelings, but he must consider it as very unfortunate that she _had_;
for, less willing than his son to trust to the future, he could not
help fearing that if such very long allowances of time and habit were
necessary for her, she might not have persuaded herself into receiving
his addresses properly before the young man's inclination for paying
them were over. There was nothing to be done, however, but to submit
quietly and hope the best.

The promised visit from “her friend,” as Edmund called Miss Crawford,
was a formidable threat to Fanny, and she lived in continual terror of
it. As a sister, so partial and so angry, and so little scrupulous of
what she said, and in another light so triumphant and secure, she was in
every way an object of painful alarm. Her displeasure, her penetration,
and her happiness were all fearful to encounter; and the dependence of
having others present when they met was Fanny's only support in looking
forward to it. She absented herself as little as possible from Lady
Bertram, kept away from the East room, and took no solitary walk in the
shrubbery, in her caution to avoid any sudden attack.

She succeeded. She was safe in the breakfast-room, with her aunt, when
Miss Crawford did come; and the first misery over, and Miss Crawford
looking and speaking with much less particularity of expression than she
had anticipated, Fanny began to hope there would be nothing worse to be
endured than a half-hour of moderate agitation. But here she hoped too
much; Miss Crawford was not the slave of opportunity. She was determined
to see Fanny alone, and therefore said to her tolerably soon, in a low
voice, “I must speak to you for a few minutes somewhere”; words that
Fanny felt all over her, in all her pulses and all her nerves. Denial
was impossible. Her habits of ready submission, on the contrary, made
her almost instantly rise and lead the way out of the room. She did it
with wretched feelings, but it was inevitable.

They were no sooner in the hall than all restraint of countenance was
over on Miss Crawford's side. She immediately shook her head at Fanny
with arch, yet affectionate reproach, and taking her hand, seemed hardly
able to help beginning directly. She said nothing, however, but, “Sad,
sad girl! I do not know when I shall have done scolding you,” and had
discretion enough to reserve the rest till they might be secure of
having four walls to themselves. Fanny naturally turned upstairs, and
took her guest to the apartment which was now always fit for comfortable
use; opening the door, however, with a most aching heart, and feeling
that she had a more distressing scene before her than ever that spot had
yet witnessed. But the evil ready to burst on her was at least delayed
by the sudden change in Miss Crawford's ideas; by the strong effect on
her mind which the finding herself in the East room again produced.

“Ha!” she cried, with instant animation, “am I here again? The East
room! Once only was I in this room before”; and after stopping to look
about her, and seemingly to retrace all that had then passed, she added,
“Once only before. Do you remember it? I came to rehearse. Your cousin
came too; and we had a rehearsal. You were our audience and prompter.
A delightful rehearsal. I shall never forget it. Here we were, just in
this part of the room: here was your cousin, here was I, here were the
chairs. Oh! why will such things ever pass away?”

Happily for her companion, she wanted no answer. Her mind was entirely
self-engrossed. She was in a reverie of sweet remembrances.

“The scene we were rehearsing was so very remarkable! The subject of
it so very--very--what shall I say? He was to be describing and
recommending matrimony to me. I think I see him now, trying to be as
demure and composed as Anhalt ought, through the two long speeches.
'When two sympathetic hearts meet in the marriage state, matrimony
may be called a happy life.' I suppose no time can ever wear out the
impression I have of his looks and voice as he said those words. It was
curious, very curious, that we should have such a scene to play! If I
had the power of recalling any one week of my existence, it should be
that week--that acting week. Say what you would, Fanny, it should be
_that_; for I never knew such exquisite happiness in any other. His
sturdy spirit to bend as it did! Oh! it was sweet beyond expression. But
alas, that very evening destroyed it all. That very evening brought your
most unwelcome uncle. Poor Sir Thomas, who was glad to see you? Yet,
Fanny, do not imagine I would now speak disrespectfully of Sir Thomas,
though I certainly did hate him for many a week. No, I do him justice
now. He is just what the head of such a family should be. Nay, in sober
sadness, I believe I now love you all.” And having said so, with a
degree of tenderness and consciousness which Fanny had never seen in her
before, and now thought only too becoming, she turned away for a moment
to recover herself. “I have had a little fit since I came into this
room, as you may perceive,” said she presently, with a playful smile,
“but it is over now; so let us sit down and be comfortable; for as to
scolding you, Fanny, which I came fully intending to do, I have not
the heart for it when it comes to the point.” And embracing her very
affectionately, “Good, gentle Fanny! when I think of this being the
last time of seeing you for I do not know how long, I feel it quite
impossible to do anything but love you.”

Fanny was affected. She had not foreseen anything of this, and her
feelings could seldom withstand the melancholy influence of the word
“last.” She cried as if she had loved Miss Crawford more than she
possibly could; and Miss Crawford, yet farther softened by the sight of
such emotion, hung about her with fondness, and said, “I hate to leave
you. I shall see no one half so amiable where I am going. Who says we
shall not be sisters? I know we shall. I feel that we are born to
be connected; and those tears convince me that you feel it too, dear
Fanny.”

Fanny roused herself, and replying only in part, said, “But you are
only going from one set of friends to another. You are going to a very
particular friend.”

“Yes, very true. Mrs. Fraser has been my intimate friend for years. But
I have not the least inclination to go near her. I can think only of the
friends I am leaving: my excellent sister, yourself, and the Bertrams in
general. You have all so much more _heart_ among you than one finds in
the world at large. You all give me a feeling of being able to trust and
confide in you, which in common intercourse one knows nothing of. I wish
I had settled with Mrs. Fraser not to go to her till after Easter, a
much better time for the visit, but now I cannot put her off. And when
I have done with her I must go to her sister, Lady Stornaway, because
_she_ was rather my most particular friend of the two, but I have not
cared much for _her_ these three years.”

After this speech the two girls sat many minutes silent, each
thoughtful: Fanny meditating on the different sorts of friendship in the
world, Mary on something of less philosophic tendency. _She_ first spoke
again.

“How perfectly I remember my resolving to look for you upstairs, and
setting off to find my way to the East room, without having an idea
whereabouts it was! How well I remember what I was thinking of as I came
along, and my looking in and seeing you here sitting at this table at
work; and then your cousin's astonishment, when he opened the door, at
seeing me here! To be sure, your uncle's returning that very evening!
There never was anything quite like it.”

Another short fit of abstraction followed, when, shaking it off, she
thus attacked her companion.

“Why, Fanny, you are absolutely in a reverie. Thinking, I hope, of one
who is always thinking of you. Oh! that I could transport you for a
short time into our circle in town, that you might understand how your
power over Henry is thought of there! Oh! the envyings and heartburnings
of dozens and dozens; the wonder, the incredulity that will be felt at
hearing what you have done! For as to secrecy, Henry is quite the hero
of an old romance, and glories in his chains. You should come to London
to know how to estimate your conquest. If you were to see how he is
courted, and how I am courted for his sake! Now, I am well aware that
I shall not be half so welcome to Mrs. Fraser in consequence of his
situation with you. When she comes to know the truth she will, very
likely, wish me in Northamptonshire again; for there is a daughter of
Mr. Fraser, by a first wife, whom she is wild to get married, and
wants Henry to take. Oh! she has been trying for him to such a degree.
Innocent and quiet as you sit here, you cannot have an idea of the
_sensation_ that you will be occasioning, of the curiosity there will
be to see you, of the endless questions I shall have to answer! Poor
Margaret Fraser will be at me for ever about your eyes and your teeth,
and how you do your hair, and who makes your shoes. I wish Margaret were
married, for my poor friend's sake, for I look upon the Frasers to be
about as unhappy as most other married people. And yet it was a most
desirable match for Janet at the time. We were all delighted. She could
not do otherwise than accept him, for he was rich, and she had nothing;
but he turns out ill-tempered and _exigeant_, and wants a young woman,
a beautiful young woman of five-and-twenty, to be as steady as himself.
And my friend does not manage him well; she does not seem to know how
to make the best of it. There is a spirit of irritation which, to say
nothing worse, is certainly very ill-bred. In their house I shall call
to mind the conjugal manners of Mansfield Parsonage with respect. Even
Dr. Grant does shew a thorough confidence in my sister, and a certain
consideration for her judgment, which makes one feel there _is_
attachment; but of that I shall see nothing with the Frasers. I shall
be at Mansfield for ever, Fanny. My own sister as a wife, Sir Thomas
Bertram as a husband, are my standards of perfection. Poor Janet has
been sadly taken in, and yet there was nothing improper on her side:
she did not run into the match inconsiderately; there was no want of
foresight. She took three days to consider of his proposals, and during
those three days asked the advice of everybody connected with her whose
opinion was worth having, and especially applied to my late dear aunt,
whose knowledge of the world made her judgment very generally and
deservedly looked up to by all the young people of her acquaintance, and
she was decidedly in favour of Mr. Fraser. This seems as if nothing were
a security for matrimonial comfort. I have not so much to say for my
friend Flora, who jilted a very nice young man in the Blues for the sake
of that horrid Lord Stornaway, who has about as much sense, Fanny, as
Mr. Rushworth, but much worse-looking, and with a blackguard character.
I _had_ my doubts at the time about her being right, for he has not even
the air of a gentleman, and now I am sure she was wrong. By the bye,
Flora Ross was dying for Henry the first winter she came out. But were I
to attempt to tell you of all the women whom I have known to be in love
with him, I should never have done. It is you, only you, insensible
Fanny, who can think of him with anything like indifference. But are you
so insensible as you profess yourself? No, no, I see you are not.”

There was, indeed, so deep a blush over Fanny's face at that moment as
might warrant strong suspicion in a predisposed mind.

“Excellent creature! I will not tease you. Everything shall take its
course. But, dear Fanny, you must allow that you were not so absolutely
unprepared to have the question asked as your cousin fancies. It is not
possible but that you must have had some thoughts on the subject, some
surmises as to what might be. You must have seen that he was trying to
please you by every attention in his power. Was not he devoted to you
at the ball? And then before the ball, the necklace! Oh! you received
it just as it was meant. You were as conscious as heart could desire. I
remember it perfectly.”

“Do you mean, then, that your brother knew of the necklace beforehand?
Oh! Miss Crawford, _that_ was not fair.”

“Knew of it! It was his own doing entirely, his own thought. I am
ashamed to say that it had never entered my head, but I was delighted to
act on his proposal for both your sakes.”

“I will not say,” replied Fanny, “that I was not half afraid at the time
of its being so, for there was something in your look that frightened
me, but not at first; I was as unsuspicious of it at first--indeed,
indeed I was. It is as true as that I sit here. And had I had an idea
of it, nothing should have induced me to accept the necklace. As to your
brother's behaviour, certainly I was sensible of a particularity: I had
been sensible of it some little time, perhaps two or three weeks; but
then I considered it as meaning nothing: I put it down as simply being
his way, and was as far from supposing as from wishing him to have any
serious thoughts of me. I had not, Miss Crawford, been an inattentive
observer of what was passing between him and some part of this family in
the summer and autumn. I was quiet, but I was not blind. I could not
but see that Mr. Crawford allowed himself in gallantries which did mean
nothing.”

“Ah! I cannot deny it. He has now and then been a sad flirt, and
cared very little for the havoc he might be making in young ladies'
affections. I have often scolded him for it, but it is his only fault;
and there is this to be said, that very few young ladies have any
affections worth caring for. And then, Fanny, the glory of fixing one
who has been shot at by so many; of having it in one's power to pay off
the debts of one's sex! Oh! I am sure it is not in woman's nature to
refuse such a triumph.”

Fanny shook her head. “I cannot think well of a man who sports with any
woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than
a stander-by can judge of.”

“I do not defend him. I leave him entirely to your mercy, and when he
has got you at Everingham, I do not care how much you lecture him. But
this I will say, that his fault, the liking to make girls a little
in love with him, is not half so dangerous to a wife's happiness as a
tendency to fall in love himself, which he has never been addicted to.
And I do seriously and truly believe that he is attached to you in a way
that he never was to any woman before; that he loves you with all his
heart, and will love you as nearly for ever as possible. If any man ever
loved a woman for ever, I think Henry will do as much for you.”

Fanny could not avoid a faint smile, but had nothing to say.

“I cannot imagine Henry ever to have been happier,” continued Mary
presently, “than when he had succeeded in getting your brother's
commission.”

She had made a sure push at Fanny's feelings here.

“Oh! yes. How very, very kind of him.”

“I know he must have exerted himself very much, for I know the parties
he had to move. The Admiral hates trouble, and scorns asking favours;
and there are so many young men's claims to be attended to in the same
way, that a friendship and energy, not very determined, is easily put
by. What a happy creature William must be! I wish we could see him.”

Poor Fanny's mind was thrown into the most distressing of all its
varieties. The recollection of what had been done for William was always
the most powerful disturber of every decision against Mr. Crawford; and
she sat thinking deeply of it till Mary, who had been first watching
her complacently, and then musing on something else, suddenly called
her attention by saying: “I should like to sit talking with you here all
day, but we must not forget the ladies below, and so good-bye, my dear,
my amiable, my excellent Fanny, for though we shall nominally part in
the breakfast-parlour, I must take leave of you here. And I do take
leave, longing for a happy reunion, and trusting that when we meet
again, it will be under circumstances which may open our hearts to each
other without any remnant or shadow of reserve.”

A very, very kind embrace, and some agitation of manner, accompanied
these words.

“I shall see your cousin in town soon: he talks of being there tolerably
soon; and Sir Thomas, I dare say, in the course of the spring; and your
eldest cousin, and the Rushworths, and Julia, I am sure of meeting again
and again, and all but you. I have two favours to ask, Fanny: one is
your correspondence. You must write to me. And the other, that you will
often call on Mrs. Grant, and make her amends for my being gone.”

The first, at least, of these favours Fanny would rather not have been
asked; but it was impossible for her to refuse the correspondence; it
was impossible for her even not to accede to it more readily than
her own judgment authorised. There was no resisting so much apparent
affection. Her disposition was peculiarly calculated to value a fond
treatment, and from having hitherto known so little of it, she was the
more overcome by Miss Crawford's. Besides, there was gratitude towards
her, for having made their _tete-a-tete_ so much less painful than her
fears had predicted.

It was over, and she had escaped without reproaches and without
detection. Her secret was still her own; and while that was the case,
she thought she could resign herself to almost everything.

In the evening there was another parting. Henry Crawford came and
sat some time with them; and her spirits not being previously in the
strongest state, her heart was softened for a while towards him, because
he really seemed to feel. Quite unlike his usual self, he scarcely said
anything. He was evidently oppressed, and Fanny must grieve for him,
though hoping she might never see him again till he were the husband of
some other woman.

When it came to the moment of parting, he would take her hand, he would
not be denied it; he said nothing, however, or nothing that she heard,
and when he had left the room, she was better pleased that such a token
of friendship had passed.

On the morrow the Crawfords were gone.



CHAPTER XXXVII

Mr. Crawford gone, Sir Thomas's next object was that he should be
missed; and he entertained great hope that his niece would find a blank
in the loss of those attentions which at the time she had felt, or
fancied, an evil. She had tasted of consequence in its most flattering
form; and he did hope that the loss of it, the sinking again into
nothing, would awaken very wholesome regrets in her mind. He watched her
with this idea; but he could hardly tell with what success. He hardly
knew whether there were any difference in her spirits or not. She
was always so gentle and retiring that her emotions were beyond his
discrimination. He did not understand her: he felt that he did not; and
therefore applied to Edmund to tell him how she stood affected on the
present occasion, and whether she were more or less happy than she had
been.

Edmund did not discern any symptoms of regret, and thought his father
a little unreasonable in supposing the first three or four days could
produce any.

What chiefly surprised Edmund was, that Crawford's sister, the friend
and companion who had been so much to her, should not be more visibly
regretted. He wondered that Fanny spoke so seldom of _her_, and had so
little voluntarily to say of her concern at this separation.

Alas! it was this sister, this friend and companion, who was now the
chief bane of Fanny's comfort. If she could have believed Mary's future
fate as unconnected with Mansfield as she was determined the brother's
should be, if she could have hoped her return thither to be as distant
as she was much inclined to think his, she would have been light of
heart indeed; but the more she recollected and observed, the more deeply
was she convinced that everything was now in a fairer train for Miss
Crawford's marrying Edmund than it had ever been before. On his side the
inclination was stronger, on hers less equivocal. His objections, the
scruples of his integrity, seemed all done away, nobody could tell
how; and the doubts and hesitations of her ambition were equally got
over--and equally without apparent reason. It could only be imputed to
increasing attachment. His good and her bad feelings yielded to love,
and such love must unite them. He was to go to town as soon as some
business relative to Thornton Lacey were completed--perhaps within a
fortnight; he talked of going, he loved to talk of it; and when once
with her again, Fanny could not doubt the rest. Her acceptance must be
as certain as his offer; and yet there were bad feelings still remaining
which made the prospect of it most sorrowful to her, independently, she
believed, independently of self.

In their very last conversation, Miss Crawford, in spite of some amiable
sensations, and much personal kindness, had still been Miss Crawford;
still shewn a mind led astray and bewildered, and without any suspicion
of being so; darkened, yet fancying itself light. She might love, but
she did not deserve Edmund by any other sentiment. Fanny believed there
was scarcely a second feeling in common between them; and she may be
forgiven by older sages for looking on the chance of Miss Crawford's
future improvement as nearly desperate, for thinking that if Edmund's
influence in this season of love had already done so little in clearing
her judgment, and regulating her notions, his worth would be finally
wasted on her even in years of matrimony.

Experience might have hoped more for any young people so circumstanced,
and impartiality would not have denied to Miss Crawford's nature that
participation of the general nature of women which would lead her to
adopt the opinions of the man she loved and respected as her own. But
as such were Fanny's persuasions, she suffered very much from them, and
could never speak of Miss Crawford without pain.

Sir Thomas, meanwhile, went on with his own hopes and his own
observations, still feeling a right, by all his knowledge of human
nature, to expect to see the effect of the loss of power and consequence
on his niece's spirits, and the past attentions of the lover producing a
craving for their return; and he was soon afterwards able to account for
his not yet completely and indubitably seeing all this, by the prospect
of another visitor, whose approach he could allow to be quite enough to
support the spirits he was watching. William had obtained a ten days'
leave of absence, to be given to Northamptonshire, and was coming, the
happiest of lieutenants, because the latest made, to shew his happiness
and describe his uniform.

He came; and he would have been delighted to shew his uniform there too,
had not cruel custom prohibited its appearance except on duty. So the
uniform remained at Portsmouth, and Edmund conjectured that before Fanny
had any chance of seeing it, all its own freshness and all the freshness
of its wearer's feelings must be worn away. It would be sunk into a
badge of disgrace; for what can be more unbecoming, or more worthless,
than the uniform of a lieutenant, who has been a lieutenant a year or
two, and sees others made commanders before him? So reasoned Edmund,
till his father made him the confidant of a scheme which placed Fanny's
chance of seeing the second lieutenant of H.M.S. Thrush in all his glory
in another light.

This scheme was that she should accompany her brother back to
Portsmouth, and spend a little time with her own family. It had occurred
to Sir Thomas, in one of his dignified musings, as a right and desirable
measure; but before he absolutely made up his mind, he consulted his
son. Edmund considered it every way, and saw nothing but what was right.
The thing was good in itself, and could not be done at a better time;
and he had no doubt of it being highly agreeable to Fanny. This was
enough to determine Sir Thomas; and a decisive “then so it shall be”
 closed that stage of the business; Sir Thomas retiring from it with some
feelings of satisfaction, and views of good over and above what he had
communicated to his son; for his prime motive in sending her away had
very little to do with the propriety of her seeing her parents again,
and nothing at all with any idea of making her happy. He certainly
wished her to go willingly, but he as certainly wished her to be
heartily sick of home before her visit ended; and that a little
abstinence from the elegancies and luxuries of Mansfield Park would
bring her mind into a sober state, and incline her to a juster estimate
of the value of that home of greater permanence, and equal comfort, of
which she had the offer.

It was a medicinal project upon his niece's understanding, which he must
consider as at present diseased. A residence of eight or nine years in
the abode of wealth and plenty had a little disordered her powers of
comparing and judging. Her father's house would, in all probability,
teach her the value of a good income; and he trusted that she would be
the wiser and happier woman, all her life, for the experiment he had
devised.

Had Fanny been at all addicted to raptures, she must have had a strong
attack of them when she first understood what was intended, when her
uncle first made her the offer of visiting the parents, and brothers,
and sisters, from whom she had been divided almost half her life; of
returning for a couple of months to the scenes of her infancy, with
William for the protector and companion of her journey, and the
certainty of continuing to see William to the last hour of his remaining
on land. Had she ever given way to bursts of delight, it must have been
then, for she was delighted, but her happiness was of a quiet, deep,
heart-swelling sort; and though never a great talker, she was always
more inclined to silence when feeling most strongly. At the moment she
could only thank and accept. Afterwards, when familiarised with the
visions of enjoyment so suddenly opened, she could speak more largely
to William and Edmund of what she felt; but still there were emotions
of tenderness that could not be clothed in words. The remembrance of all
her earliest pleasures, and of what she had suffered in being torn from
them, came over her with renewed strength, and it seemed as if to be
at home again would heal every pain that had since grown out of the
separation. To be in the centre of such a circle, loved by so many,
and more loved by all than she had ever been before; to feel affection
without fear or restraint; to feel herself the equal of those who
surrounded her; to be at peace from all mention of the Crawfords, safe
from every look which could be fancied a reproach on their account. This
was a prospect to be dwelt on with a fondness that could be but half
acknowledged.

Edmund, too--to be two months from _him_ (and perhaps she might be
allowed to make her absence three) must do her good. At a distance,
unassailed by his looks or his kindness, and safe from the perpetual
irritation of knowing his heart, and striving to avoid his confidence,
she should be able to reason herself into a properer state; she should
be able to think of him as in London, and arranging everything there,
without wretchedness. What might have been hard to bear at Mansfield was
to become a slight evil at Portsmouth.

The only drawback was the doubt of her aunt Bertram's being comfortable
without her. She was of use to no one else; but _there_ she might be
missed to a degree that she did not like to think of; and that part of
the arrangement was, indeed, the hardest for Sir Thomas to accomplish,
and what only _he_ could have accomplished at all.

But he was master at Mansfield Park. When he had really resolved on
any measure, he could always carry it through; and now by dint of long
talking on the subject, explaining and dwelling on the duty of Fanny's
sometimes seeing her family, he did induce his wife to let her go;
obtaining it rather from submission, however, than conviction, for Lady
Bertram was convinced of very little more than that Sir Thomas thought
Fanny ought to go, and therefore that she must. In the calmness of
her own dressing-room, in the impartial flow of her own meditations,
unbiassed by his bewildering statements, she could not acknowledge any
necessity for Fanny's ever going near a father and mother who had done
without her so long, while she was so useful to herself. And as to the
not missing her, which under Mrs. Norris's discussion was the point
attempted to be proved, she set herself very steadily against admitting
any such thing.

Sir Thomas had appealed to her reason, conscience, and dignity. He
called it a sacrifice, and demanded it of her goodness and self-command
as such. But Mrs. Norris wanted to persuade her that Fanny could be very
well spared--_she_ being ready to give up all her own time to her as
requested--and, in short, could not really be wanted or missed.

“That may be, sister,” was all Lady Bertram's reply. “I dare say you are
very right; but I am sure I shall miss her very much.”

The next step was to communicate with Portsmouth. Fanny wrote to offer
herself; and her mother's answer, though short, was so kind--a few
simple lines expressed so natural and motherly a joy in the prospect
of seeing her child again, as to confirm all the daughter's views of
happiness in being with her--convincing her that she should now find a
warm and affectionate friend in the “mama” who had certainly shewn no
remarkable fondness for her formerly; but this she could easily suppose
to have been her own fault or her own fancy. She had probably alienated
love by the helplessness and fretfulness of a fearful temper, or been
unreasonable in wanting a larger share than any one among so many could
deserve. Now, when she knew better how to be useful, and how to forbear,
and when her mother could be no longer occupied by the incessant
demands of a house full of little children, there would be leisure and
inclination for every comfort, and they should soon be what mother and
daughter ought to be to each other.

William was almost as happy in the plan as his sister. It would be the
greatest pleasure to him to have her there to the last moment before he
sailed, and perhaps find her there still when he came in from his first
cruise. And besides, he wanted her so very much to see the Thrush before
she went out of harbour--the Thrush was certainly the finest sloop in
the service--and there were several improvements in the dockyard, too,
which he quite longed to shew her.

He did not scruple to add that her being at home for a while would be a
great advantage to everybody.

“I do not know how it is,” said he; “but we seem to want some of
your nice ways and orderliness at my father's. The house is always in
confusion. You will set things going in a better way, I am sure. You
will tell my mother how it all ought to be, and you will be so useful to
Susan, and you will teach Betsey, and make the boys love and mind you.
How right and comfortable it will all be!”

By the time Mrs. Price's answer arrived, there remained but a very few
days more to be spent at Mansfield; and for part of one of those days
the young travellers were in a good deal of alarm on the subject of
their journey, for when the mode of it came to be talked of, and Mrs.
Norris found that all her anxiety to save her brother-in-law's money
was vain, and that in spite of her wishes and hints for a less expensive
conveyance of Fanny, they were to travel post; when she saw Sir Thomas
actually give William notes for the purpose, she was struck with the
idea of there being room for a third in the carriage, and suddenly
seized with a strong inclination to go with them, to go and see her poor
dear sister Price. She proclaimed her thoughts. She must say that she
had more than half a mind to go with the young people; it would be such
an indulgence to her; she had not seen her poor dear sister Price for
more than twenty years; and it would be a help to the young people in
their journey to have her older head to manage for them; and she could
not help thinking her poor dear sister Price would feel it very unkind
of her not to come by such an opportunity.

William and Fanny were horror-struck at the idea.

All the comfort of their comfortable journey would be destroyed at
once. With woeful countenances they looked at each other. Their suspense
lasted an hour or two. No one interfered to encourage or dissuade. Mrs.
Norris was left to settle the matter by herself; and it ended, to the
infinite joy of her nephew and niece, in the recollection that she could
not possibly be spared from Mansfield Park at present; that she was a
great deal too necessary to Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram for her to
be able to answer it to herself to leave them even for a week, and
therefore must certainly sacrifice every other pleasure to that of being
useful to them.

It had, in fact, occurred to her, that though taken to Portsmouth for
nothing, it would be hardly possible for her to avoid paying her own
expenses back again. So her poor dear sister Price was left to all the
disappointment of her missing such an opportunity, and another twenty
years' absence, perhaps, begun.

Edmund's plans were affected by this Portsmouth journey, this absence of
Fanny's. He too had a sacrifice to make to Mansfield Park as well as his
aunt. He had intended, about this time, to be going to London; but he
could not leave his father and mother just when everybody else of most
importance to their comfort was leaving them; and with an effort, felt
but not boasted of, he delayed for a week or two longer a journey which
he was looking forward to with the hope of its fixing his happiness for
ever.

He told Fanny of it. She knew so much already, that she must know
everything. It made the substance of one other confidential discourse
about Miss Crawford; and Fanny was the more affected from feeling it to
be the last time in which Miss Crawford's name would ever be mentioned
between them with any remains of liberty. Once afterwards she was
alluded to by him. Lady Bertram had been telling her niece in the
evening to write to her soon and often, and promising to be a good
correspondent herself; and Edmund, at a convenient moment, then added
in a whisper, “And _I_ shall write to you, Fanny, when I have anything
worth writing about, anything to say that I think you will like to hear,
and that you will not hear so soon from any other quarter.” Had she
doubted his meaning while she listened, the glow in his face, when she
looked up at him, would have been decisive.

For this letter she must try to arm herself. That a letter from Edmund
should be a subject of terror! She began to feel that she had not yet
gone through all the changes of opinion and sentiment which the progress
of time and variation of circumstances occasion in this world of
changes. The vicissitudes of the human mind had not yet been exhausted
by her.

Poor Fanny! though going as she did willingly and eagerly, the last
evening at Mansfield Park must still be wretchedness. Her heart was
completely sad at parting. She had tears for every room in the house,
much more for every beloved inhabitant. She clung to her aunt, because
she would miss her; she kissed the hand of her uncle with struggling
sobs, because she had displeased him; and as for Edmund, she could
neither speak, nor look, nor think, when the last moment came with
_him_; and it was not till it was over that she knew he was giving her
the affectionate farewell of a brother.

All this passed overnight, for the journey was to begin very early in
the morning; and when the small, diminished party met at breakfast,
William and Fanny were talked of as already advanced one stage.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

The novelty of travelling, and the happiness of being with William, soon
produced their natural effect on Fanny's spirits, when Mansfield Park
was fairly left behind; and by the time their first stage was ended, and
they were to quit Sir Thomas's carriage, she was able to take leave of
the old coachman, and send back proper messages, with cheerful looks.

Of pleasant talk between the brother and sister there was no end.
Everything supplied an amusement to the high glee of William's mind, and
he was full of frolic and joke in the intervals of their higher-toned
subjects, all of which ended, if they did not begin, in praise of the
Thrush, conjectures how she would be employed, schemes for an action
with some superior force, which (supposing the first lieutenant out of
the way, and William was not very merciful to the first lieutenant) was
to give himself the next step as soon as possible, or speculations upon
prize-money, which was to be generously distributed at home, with only
the reservation of enough to make the little cottage comfortable,
in which he and Fanny were to pass all their middle and later life
together.

Fanny's immediate concerns, as far as they involved Mr. Crawford, made
no part of their conversation. William knew what had passed, and from
his heart lamented that his sister's feelings should be so cold towards
a man whom he must consider as the first of human characters; but he was
of an age to be all for love, and therefore unable to blame; and knowing
her wish on the subject, he would not distress her by the slightest
allusion.

She had reason to suppose herself not yet forgotten by Mr. Crawford. She
had heard repeatedly from his sister within the three weeks which had
passed since their leaving Mansfield, and in each letter there had been
a few lines from himself, warm and determined like his speeches. It
was a correspondence which Fanny found quite as unpleasant as she had
feared. Miss Crawford's style of writing, lively and affectionate, was
itself an evil, independent of what she was thus forced into reading
from the brother's pen, for Edmund would never rest till she had read
the chief of the letter to him; and then she had to listen to his
admiration of her language, and the warmth of her attachments. There
had, in fact, been so much of message, of allusion, of recollection, so
much of Mansfield in every letter, that Fanny could not but suppose it
meant for him to hear; and to find herself forced into a purpose of
that kind, compelled into a correspondence which was bringing her the
addresses of the man she did not love, and obliging her to administer
to the adverse passion of the man she did, was cruelly mortifying. Here,
too, her present removal promised advantage. When no longer under the
same roof with Edmund, she trusted that Miss Crawford would have no
motive for writing strong enough to overcome the trouble, and that at
Portsmouth their correspondence would dwindle into nothing.

With such thoughts as these, among ten hundred others, Fanny proceeded
in her journey safely and cheerfully, and as expeditiously as could
rationally be hoped in the dirty month of February. They entered Oxford,
but she could take only a hasty glimpse of Edmund's college as they
passed along, and made no stop anywhere till they reached Newbury, where
a comfortable meal, uniting dinner and supper, wound up the enjoyments
and fatigues of the day.

The next morning saw them off again at an early hour; and with no
events, and no delays, they regularly advanced, and were in the environs
of Portsmouth while there was yet daylight for Fanny to look around her,
and wonder at the new buildings. They passed the drawbridge, and
entered the town; and the light was only beginning to fail as, guided
by William's powerful voice, they were rattled into a narrow street,
leading from the High Street, and drawn up before the door of a small
house now inhabited by Mr. Price.

Fanny was all agitation and flutter; all hope and apprehension. The
moment they stopped, a trollopy-looking maidservant, seemingly in
waiting for them at the door, stepped forward, and more intent on
telling the news than giving them any help, immediately began with, “The
Thrush is gone out of harbour, please sir, and one of the officers has
been here to--” She was interrupted by a fine tall boy of eleven years
old, who, rushing out of the house, pushed the maid aside, and while
William was opening the chaise-door himself, called out, “You are just
in time. We have been looking for you this half-hour. The Thrush went
out of harbour this morning. I saw her. It was a beautiful sight. And
they think she will have her orders in a day or two. And Mr. Campbell
was here at four o'clock to ask for you: he has got one of the Thrush's
boats, and is going off to her at six, and hoped you would be here in
time to go with him.”

A stare or two at Fanny, as William helped her out of the carriage, was
all the voluntary notice which this brother bestowed; but he made no
objection to her kissing him, though still entirely engaged in detailing
farther particulars of the Thrush's going out of harbour, in which
he had a strong right of interest, being to commence his career of
seamanship in her at this very time.

Another moment and Fanny was in the narrow entrance-passage of the
house, and in her mother's arms, who met her there with looks of true
kindness, and with features which Fanny loved the more, because they
brought her aunt Bertram's before her, and there were her two sisters:
Susan, a well-grown fine girl of fourteen, and Betsey, the youngest of
the family, about five--both glad to see her in their way, though with
no advantage of manner in receiving her. But manner Fanny did not want.
Would they but love her, she should be satisfied.

She was then taken into a parlour, so small that her first conviction
was of its being only a passage-room to something better, and she stood
for a moment expecting to be invited on; but when she saw there was
no other door, and that there were signs of habitation before her, she
called back her thoughts, reproved herself, and grieved lest they should
have been suspected. Her mother, however, could not stay long enough
to suspect anything. She was gone again to the street-door, to welcome
William. “Oh! my dear William, how glad I am to see you. But have you
heard about the Thrush? She is gone out of harbour already; three days
before we had any thought of it; and I do not know what I am to do about
Sam's things, they will never be ready in time; for she may have her
orders to-morrow, perhaps. It takes me quite unawares. And now you must
be off for Spithead too. Campbell has been here, quite in a worry about
you; and now what shall we do? I thought to have had such a comfortable
evening with you, and here everything comes upon me at once.”

Her son answered cheerfully, telling her that everything was always for
the best; and making light of his own inconvenience in being obliged to
hurry away so soon.

“To be sure, I had much rather she had stayed in harbour, that I might
have sat a few hours with you in comfort; but as there is a boat ashore,
I had better go off at once, and there is no help for it. Whereabouts
does the Thrush lay at Spithead? Near the Canopus? But no matter; here's
Fanny in the parlour, and why should we stay in the passage? Come,
mother, you have hardly looked at your own dear Fanny yet.”

In they both came, and Mrs. Price having kindly kissed her daughter
again, and commented a little on her growth, began with very natural
solicitude to feel for their fatigues and wants as travellers.

“Poor dears! how tired you must both be! and now, what will you have? I
began to think you would never come. Betsey and I have been watching for
you this half-hour. And when did you get anything to eat? And what would
you like to have now? I could not tell whether you would be for some
meat, or only a dish of tea, after your journey, or else I would have
got something ready. And now I am afraid Campbell will be here before
there is time to dress a steak, and we have no butcher at hand. It is
very inconvenient to have no butcher in the street. We were better off
in our last house. Perhaps you would like some tea as soon as it can be
got.”

They both declared they should prefer it to anything. “Then, Betsey, my
dear, run into the kitchen and see if Rebecca has put the water on; and
tell her to bring in the tea-things as soon as she can. I wish we could
get the bell mended; but Betsey is a very handy little messenger.”

Betsey went with alacrity, proud to shew her abilities before her fine
new sister.

“Dear me!” continued the anxious mother, “what a sad fire we have got,
and I dare say you are both starved with cold. Draw your chair nearer,
my dear. I cannot think what Rebecca has been about. I am sure I told
her to bring some coals half an hour ago. Susan, you should have taken
care of the fire.”

“I was upstairs, mama, moving my things,” said Susan, in a fearless,
self-defending tone, which startled Fanny. “You know you had but just
settled that my sister Fanny and I should have the other room; and I
could not get Rebecca to give me any help.”

Farther discussion was prevented by various bustles: first, the driver
came to be paid; then there was a squabble between Sam and Rebecca about
the manner of carrying up his sister's trunk, which he would manage all
his own way; and lastly, in walked Mr. Price himself, his own loud voice
preceding him, as with something of the oath kind he kicked away his
son's port-manteau and his daughter's bandbox in the passage, and called
out for a candle; no candle was brought, however, and he walked into the
room.

Fanny with doubting feelings had risen to meet him, but sank down again
on finding herself undistinguished in the dusk, and unthought of. With
a friendly shake of his son's hand, and an eager voice, he instantly
began--“Ha! welcome back, my boy. Glad to see you. Have you heard the
news? The Thrush went out of harbour this morning. Sharp is the
word, you see! By G--, you are just in time! The doctor has been here
inquiring for you: he has got one of the boats, and is to be off for
Spithead by six, so you had better go with him. I have been to Turner's
about your mess; it is all in a way to be done. I should not wonder if
you had your orders to-morrow: but you cannot sail with this wind, if
you are to cruise to the westward; and Captain Walsh thinks you will
certainly have a cruise to the westward, with the Elephant. By G--, I
wish you may! But old Scholey was saying, just now, that he thought you
would be sent first to the Texel. Well, well, we are ready, whatever
happens. But by G--, you lost a fine sight by not being here in the
morning to see the Thrush go out of harbour! I would not have been out
of the way for a thousand pounds. Old Scholey ran in at breakfast-time,
to say she had slipped her moorings and was coming out, I jumped up, and
made but two steps to the platform. If ever there was a perfect beauty
afloat, she is one; and there she lays at Spithead, and anybody in
England would take her for an eight-and-twenty. I was upon the platform
two hours this afternoon looking at her. She lays close to the Endymion,
between her and the Cleopatra, just to the eastward of the sheer hulk.”

“Ha!” cried William, “_that's_ just where I should have put her myself.
It's the best berth at Spithead. But here is my sister, sir; here is
Fanny,” turning and leading her forward; “it is so dark you do not see
her.”

With an acknowledgment that he had quite forgot her, Mr. Price now
received his daughter; and having given her a cordial hug, and observed
that she was grown into a woman, and he supposed would be wanting a
husband soon, seemed very much inclined to forget her again. Fanny
shrunk back to her seat, with feelings sadly pained by his language and
his smell of spirits; and he talked on only to his son, and only of the
Thrush, though William, warmly interested as he was in that subject,
more than once tried to make his father think of Fanny, and her long
absence and long journey.

After sitting some time longer, a candle was obtained; but as there was
still no appearance of tea, nor, from Betsey's reports from the kitchen,
much hope of any under a considerable period, William determined to
go and change his dress, and make the necessary preparations for
his removal on board directly, that he might have his tea in comfort
afterwards.

As he left the room, two rosy-faced boys, ragged and dirty, about eight
and nine years old, rushed into it just released from school, and coming
eagerly to see their sister, and tell that the Thrush was gone out of
harbour; Tom and Charles. Charles had been born since Fanny's going
away, but Tom she had often helped to nurse, and now felt a particular
pleasure in seeing again. Both were kissed very tenderly, but Tom she
wanted to keep by her, to try to trace the features of the baby she had
loved, and talked to, of his infant preference of herself. Tom, however,
had no mind for such treatment: he came home not to stand and be talked
to, but to run about and make a noise; and both boys had soon burst from
her, and slammed the parlour-door till her temples ached.

She had now seen all that were at home; there remained only two brothers
between herself and Susan, one of whom was a clerk in a public office
in London, and the other midshipman on board an Indiaman. But though she
had _seen_ all the members of the family, she had not yet _heard_ all
the noise they could make. Another quarter of an hour brought her a
great deal more. William was soon calling out from the landing-place of
the second story for his mother and for Rebecca. He was in distress
for something that he had left there, and did not find again. A key was
mislaid, Betsey accused of having got at his new hat, and some slight,
but essential alteration of his uniform waistcoat, which he had been
promised to have done for him, entirely neglected.

Mrs. Price, Rebecca, and Betsey all went up to defend themselves, all
talking together, but Rebecca loudest, and the job was to be done as
well as it could in a great hurry; William trying in vain to send Betsey
down again, or keep her from being troublesome where she was; the whole
of which, as almost every door in the house was open, could be plainly
distinguished in the parlour, except when drowned at intervals by the
superior noise of Sam, Tom, and Charles chasing each other up and down
stairs, and tumbling about and hallooing.

Fanny was almost stunned. The smallness of the house and thinness of the
walls brought everything so close to her, that, added to the fatigue of
her journey, and all her recent agitation, she hardly knew how to
bear it. _Within_ the room all was tranquil enough, for Susan having
disappeared with the others, there were soon only her father and herself
remaining; and he, taking out a newspaper, the accustomary loan of a
neighbour, applied himself to studying it, without seeming to recollect
her existence. The solitary candle was held between himself and the
paper, without any reference to her possible convenience; but she had
nothing to do, and was glad to have the light screened from her aching
head, as she sat in bewildered, broken, sorrowful contemplation.

She was at home. But, alas! it was not such a home, she had not such a
welcome, as--she checked herself; she was unreasonable. What right had
she to be of importance to her family? She could have none, so long lost
sight of! William's concerns must be dearest, they always had been, and
he had every right. Yet to have so little said or asked about herself,
to have scarcely an inquiry made after Mansfield! It did pain her to
have Mansfield forgotten; the friends who had done so much--the dear,
dear friends! But here, one subject swallowed up all the rest. Perhaps
it must be so. The destination of the Thrush must be now preeminently
interesting. A day or two might shew the difference. _She_ only was to
blame. Yet she thought it would not have been so at Mansfield. No, in
her uncle's house there would have been a consideration of times and
seasons, a regulation of subject, a propriety, an attention towards
everybody which there was not here.

The only interruption which thoughts like these received for nearly half
an hour was from a sudden burst of her father's, not at all calculated
to compose them. At a more than ordinary pitch of thumping and hallooing
in the passage, he exclaimed, “Devil take those young dogs! How they are
singing out! Ay, Sam's voice louder than all the rest! That boy is fit
for a boatswain. Holla, you there! Sam, stop your confounded pipe, or I
shall be after you.”

This threat was so palpably disregarded, that though within five minutes
afterwards the three boys all burst into the room together and sat down,
Fanny could not consider it as a proof of anything more than their
being for the time thoroughly fagged, which their hot faces and panting
breaths seemed to prove, especially as they were still kicking each
other's shins, and hallooing out at sudden starts immediately under
their father's eye.

The next opening of the door brought something more welcome: it was for
the tea-things, which she had begun almost to despair of seeing that
evening. Susan and an attendant girl, whose inferior appearance informed
Fanny, to her great surprise, that she had previously seen the upper
servant, brought in everything necessary for the meal; Susan looking, as
she put the kettle on the fire and glanced at her sister, as if divided
between the agreeable triumph of shewing her activity and usefulness,
and the dread of being thought to demean herself by such an office. “She
had been into the kitchen,” she said, “to hurry Sally and help make the
toast, and spread the bread and butter, or she did not know when they
should have got tea, and she was sure her sister must want something
after her journey.”

Fanny was very thankful. She could not but own that she should be very
glad of a little tea, and Susan immediately set about making it, as if
pleased to have the employment all to herself; and with only a little
unnecessary bustle, and some few injudicious attempts at keeping her
brothers in better order than she could, acquitted herself very well.
Fanny's spirit was as much refreshed as her body; her head and heart
were soon the better for such well-timed kindness. Susan had an open,
sensible countenance; she was like William, and Fanny hoped to find her
like him in disposition and goodwill towards herself.

In this more placid state of things William reentered, followed not
far behind by his mother and Betsey. He, complete in his lieutenant's
uniform, looking and moving all the taller, firmer, and more graceful
for it, and with the happiest smile over his face, walked up directly
to Fanny, who, rising from her seat, looked at him for a moment in
speechless admiration, and then threw her arms round his neck to sob out
her various emotions of pain and pleasure.

Anxious not to appear unhappy, she soon recovered herself; and wiping
away her tears, was able to notice and admire all the striking parts
of his dress; listening with reviving spirits to his cheerful hopes of
being on shore some part of every day before they sailed, and even of
getting her to Spithead to see the sloop.

The next bustle brought in Mr. Campbell, the surgeon of the Thrush, a
very well-behaved young man, who came to call for his friend, and for
whom there was with some contrivance found a chair, and with some hasty
washing of the young tea-maker's, a cup and saucer; and after another
quarter of an hour of earnest talk between the gentlemen, noise rising
upon noise, and bustle upon bustle, men and boys at last all in motion
together, the moment came for setting off; everything was ready, William
took leave, and all of them were gone; for the three boys, in spite
of their mother's entreaty, determined to see their brother and Mr.
Campbell to the sally-port; and Mr. Price walked off at the same time to
carry back his neighbour's newspaper.

Something like tranquillity might now be hoped for; and accordingly,
when Rebecca had been prevailed on to carry away the tea-things,
and Mrs. Price had walked about the room some time looking for a
shirt-sleeve, which Betsey at last hunted out from a drawer in the
kitchen, the small party of females were pretty well composed, and the
mother having lamented again over the impossibility of getting Sam ready
in time, was at leisure to think of her eldest daughter and the friends
she had come from.

A few inquiries began: but one of the earliest--“How did sister Bertram
manage about her servants?” “Was she as much plagued as herself to get
tolerable servants?”--soon led her mind away from Northamptonshire, and
fixed it on her own domestic grievances, and the shocking character of
all the Portsmouth servants, of whom she believed her own two were the
very worst, engrossed her completely. The Bertrams were all forgotten
in detailing the faults of Rebecca, against whom Susan had also much
to depose, and little Betsey a great deal more, and who did seem so
thoroughly without a single recommendation, that Fanny could not help
modestly presuming that her mother meant to part with her when her year
was up.

“Her year!” cried Mrs. Price; “I am sure I hope I shall be rid of her
before she has staid a year, for that will not be up till November.
Servants are come to such a pass, my dear, in Portsmouth, that it is
quite a miracle if one keeps them more than half a year. I have no hope
of ever being settled; and if I was to part with Rebecca, I should
only get something worse. And yet I do not think I am a very difficult
mistress to please; and I am sure the place is easy enough, for there is
always a girl under her, and I often do half the work myself.”

Fanny was silent; but not from being convinced that there might not be a
remedy found for some of these evils. As she now sat looking at Betsey,
she could not but think particularly of another sister, a very pretty
little girl, whom she had left there not much younger when she went into
Northamptonshire, who had died a few years afterwards. There had been
something remarkably amiable about her. Fanny in those early days had
preferred her to Susan; and when the news of her death had at last
reached Mansfield, had for a short time been quite afflicted. The sight
of Betsey brought the image of little Mary back again, but she would
not have pained her mother by alluding to her for the world. While
considering her with these ideas, Betsey, at a small distance, was
holding out something to catch her eyes, meaning to screen it at the
same time from Susan's.

“What have you got there, my love?” said Fanny; “come and shew it to
me.”

It was a silver knife. Up jumped Susan, claiming it as her own, and
trying to get it away; but the child ran to her mother's protection,
and Susan could only reproach, which she did very warmly, and evidently
hoping to interest Fanny on her side. “It was very hard that she was not
to have her _own_ knife; it was her own knife; little sister Mary had
left it to her upon her deathbed, and she ought to have had it to keep
herself long ago. But mama kept it from her, and was always letting
Betsey get hold of it; and the end of it would be that Betsey would
spoil it, and get it for her own, though mama had _promised_ her that
Betsey should not have it in her own hands.”

Fanny was quite shocked. Every feeling of duty, honour, and tenderness
was wounded by her sister's speech and her mother's reply.

“Now, Susan,” cried Mrs. Price, in a complaining voice, “now, how can
you be so cross? You are always quarrelling about that knife. I wish you
would not be so quarrelsome. Poor little Betsey; how cross Susan is to
you! But you should not have taken it out, my dear, when I sent you to
the drawer. You know I told you not to touch it, because Susan is so
cross about it. I must hide it another time, Betsey. Poor Mary little
thought it would be such a bone of contention when she gave it me to
keep, only two hours before she died. Poor little soul! she could but
just speak to be heard, and she said so prettily, 'Let sister Susan have
my knife, mama, when I am dead and buried.' Poor little dear! she was so
fond of it, Fanny, that she would have it lay by her in bed, all through
her illness. It was the gift of her good godmother, old Mrs. Admiral
Maxwell, only six weeks before she was taken for death. Poor little
sweet creature! Well, she was taken away from evil to come. My own
Betsey” (fondling her), “_you_ have not the luck of such a good
godmother. Aunt Norris lives too far off to think of such little people
as you.”

Fanny had indeed nothing to convey from aunt Norris, but a message to
say she hoped that her god-daughter was a good girl, and learnt her
book. There had been at one moment a slight murmur in the drawing-room
at Mansfield Park about sending her a prayer-book; but no second sound
had been heard of such a purpose. Mrs. Norris, however, had gone home
and taken down two old prayer-books of her husband with that idea; but,
upon examination, the ardour of generosity went off. One was found
to have too small a print for a child's eyes, and the other to be too
cumbersome for her to carry about.

Fanny, fatigued and fatigued again, was thankful to accept the first
invitation of going to bed; and before Betsey had finished her cry at
being allowed to sit up only one hour extraordinary in honour of sister,
she was off, leaving all below in confusion and noise again; the boys
begging for toasted cheese, her father calling out for his rum and
water, and Rebecca never where she ought to be.

There was nothing to raise her spirits in the confined and scantily
furnished chamber that she was to share with Susan. The smallness of
the rooms above and below, indeed, and the narrowness of the passage and
staircase, struck her beyond her imagination. She soon learned to think
with respect of her own little attic at Mansfield Park, in _that_ house
reckoned too small for anybody's comfort.



CHAPTER XXXIX

Could Sir Thomas have seen all his niece's feelings, when she wrote her
first letter to her aunt, he would not have despaired; for though a good
night's rest, a pleasant morning, the hope of soon seeing William again,
and the comparatively quiet state of the house, from Tom and Charles
being gone to school, Sam on some project of his own, and her father
on his usual lounges, enabled her to express herself cheerfully on the
subject of home, there were still, to her own perfect consciousness,
many drawbacks suppressed. Could he have seen only half that she felt
before the end of a week, he would have thought Mr. Crawford sure of
her, and been delighted with his own sagacity.

Before the week ended, it was all disappointment. In the first place,
William was gone. The Thrush had had her orders, the wind had changed,
and he was sailed within four days from their reaching Portsmouth; and
during those days she had seen him only twice, in a short and
hurried way, when he had come ashore on duty. There had been no free
conversation, no walk on the ramparts, no visit to the dockyard, no
acquaintance with the Thrush, nothing of all that they had planned and
depended on. Everything in that quarter failed her, except William's
affection. His last thought on leaving home was for her. He stepped back
again to the door to say, “Take care of Fanny, mother. She is tender,
and not used to rough it like the rest of us. I charge you, take care of
Fanny.”

William was gone: and the home he had left her in was, Fanny could not
conceal it from herself, in almost every respect the very reverse of
what she could have wished. It was the abode of noise, disorder, and
impropriety. Nobody was in their right place, nothing was done as it
ought to be. She could not respect her parents as she had hoped. On her
father, her confidence had not been sanguine, but he was more negligent
of his family, his habits were worse, and his manners coarser, than
she had been prepared for. He did not want abilities but he had no
curiosity, and no information beyond his profession; he read only
the newspaper and the navy-list; he talked only of the dockyard, the
harbour, Spithead, and the Motherbank; he swore and he drank, he was
dirty and gross. She had never been able to recall anything approaching
to tenderness in his former treatment of herself. There had remained
only a general impression of roughness and loudness; and now he scarcely
ever noticed her, but to make her the object of a coarse joke.

Her disappointment in her mother was greater: _there_ she had hoped
much, and found almost nothing. Every flattering scheme of being of
consequence to her soon fell to the ground. Mrs. Price was not unkind;
but, instead of gaining on her affection and confidence, and becoming
more and more dear, her daughter never met with greater kindness from
her than on the first day of her arrival. The instinct of nature was
soon satisfied, and Mrs. Price's attachment had no other source. Her
heart and her time were already quite full; she had neither leisure nor
affection to bestow on Fanny. Her daughters never had been much to her.
She was fond of her sons, especially of William, but Betsey was the
first of her girls whom she had ever much regarded. To her she was most
injudiciously indulgent. William was her pride; Betsey her darling;
and John, Richard, Sam, Tom, and Charles occupied all the rest of her
maternal solicitude, alternately her worries and her comforts. These
shared her heart: her time was given chiefly to her house and her
servants. Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; all was busy
without getting on, always behindhand and lamenting it, without altering
her ways; wishing to be an economist, without contrivance or regularity;
dissatisfied with her servants, without skill to make them better, and
whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging them, without any power
of engaging their respect.

Of her two sisters, Mrs. Price very much more resembled Lady Bertram
than Mrs. Norris. She was a manager by necessity, without any of Mrs.
Norris's inclination for it, or any of her activity. Her disposition
was naturally easy and indolent, like Lady Bertram's; and a situation of
similar affluence and do-nothingness would have been much more suited
to her capacity than the exertions and self-denials of the one which her
imprudent marriage had placed her in. She might have made just as good a
woman of consequence as Lady Bertram, but Mrs. Norris would have been a
more respectable mother of nine children on a small income.

Much of all this Fanny could not but be sensible of. She might scruple
to make use of the words, but she must and did feel that her mother was
a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught
nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement
and discomfort from beginning to end, and who had no talent, no
conversation, no affection towards herself; no curiosity to know her
better, no desire of her friendship, and no inclination for her company
that could lessen her sense of such feelings.

Fanny was very anxious to be useful, and not to appear above her home,
or in any way disqualified or disinclined, by her foreign education,
from contributing her help to its comforts, and therefore set about
working for Sam immediately; and by working early and late, with
perseverance and great despatch, did so much that the boy was shipped
off at last, with more than half his linen ready. She had great pleasure
in feeling her usefulness, but could not conceive how they would have
managed without her.

Sam, loud and overbearing as he was, she rather regretted when he went,
for he was clever and intelligent, and glad to be employed in any errand
in the town; and though spurning the remonstrances of Susan, given as
they were, though very reasonable in themselves, with ill-timed and
powerless warmth, was beginning to be influenced by Fanny's services
and gentle persuasions; and she found that the best of the three younger
ones was gone in him: Tom and Charles being at least as many years as
they were his juniors distant from that age of feeling and reason, which
might suggest the expediency of making friends, and of endeavouring to
be less disagreeable. Their sister soon despaired of making the smallest
impression on _them_; they were quite untameable by any means of address
which she had spirits or time to attempt. Every afternoon brought a
return of their riotous games all over the house; and she very early
learned to sigh at the approach of Saturday's constant half-holiday.

Betsey, too, a spoiled child, trained up to think the alphabet her
greatest enemy, left to be with the servants at her pleasure, and
then encouraged to report any evil of them, she was almost as ready to
despair of being able to love or assist; and of Susan's temper she
had many doubts. Her continual disagreements with her mother, her rash
squabbles with Tom and Charles, and petulance with Betsey, were at least
so distressing to Fanny that, though admitting they were by no means
without provocation, she feared the disposition that could push them to
such length must be far from amiable, and from affording any repose to
herself.

Such was the home which was to put Mansfield out of her head, and
teach her to think of her cousin Edmund with moderated feelings. On the
contrary, she could think of nothing but Mansfield, its beloved inmates,
its happy ways. Everything where she now was in full contrast to it. The
elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony, and perhaps, above all, the
peace and tranquillity of Mansfield, were brought to her remembrance
every hour of the day, by the prevalence of everything opposite to them
_here_.

The living in incessant noise was, to a frame and temper delicate and
nervous like Fanny's, an evil which no superadded elegance or harmony
could have entirely atoned for. It was the greatest misery of all. At
Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts,
no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course
of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's
feelings were consulted. If tenderness could be ever supposed wanting,
good sense and good breeding supplied its place; and as to the little
irritations sometimes introduced by aunt Norris, they were short, they
were trifling, they were as a drop of water to the ocean, compared with
the ceaseless tumult of her present abode. Here everybody was noisy,
every voice was loud (excepting, perhaps, her mother's, which resembled
the soft monotony of Lady Bertram's, only worn into fretfulness).
Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out
their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the
stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody
sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke.

In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end
of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson's celebrated
judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield
Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.



CHAPTER XL

Fanny was right enough in not expecting to hear from Miss Crawford now
at the rapid rate in which their correspondence had begun; Mary's next
letter was after a decidedly longer interval than the last, but she
was not right in supposing that such an interval would be felt a great
relief to herself. Here was another strange revolution of mind! She was
really glad to receive the letter when it did come. In her present exile
from good society, and distance from everything that had been wont to
interest her, a letter from one belonging to the set where her heart
lived, written with affection, and some degree of elegance, was
thoroughly acceptable. The usual plea of increasing engagements was made
in excuse for not having written to her earlier; “And now that I have
begun,” she continued, “my letter will not be worth your reading, for
there will be no little offering of love at the end, no three or four
lines _passionnees_ from the most devoted H. C. in the world, for
Henry is in Norfolk; business called him to Everingham ten days ago, or
perhaps he only pretended to call, for the sake of being travelling
at the same time that you were. But there he is, and, by the bye, his
absence may sufficiently account for any remissness of his sister's in
writing, for there has been no 'Well, Mary, when do you write to Fanny?
Is not it time for you to write to Fanny?' to spur me on. At last, after
various attempts at meeting, I have seen your cousins, 'dear Julia and
dearest Mrs. Rushworth'; they found me at home yesterday, and we were
glad to see each other again. We _seemed_ _very_ glad to see each other,
and I do really think we were a little. We had a vast deal to say. Shall
I tell you how Mrs. Rushworth looked when your name was mentioned? I did
not use to think her wanting in self-possession, but she had not quite
enough for the demands of yesterday. Upon the whole, Julia was in the
best looks of the two, at least after you were spoken of. There was no
recovering the complexion from the moment that I spoke of 'Fanny,' and
spoke of her as a sister should. But Mrs. Rushworth's day of good looks
will come; we have cards for her first party on the 28th. Then she
will be in beauty, for she will open one of the best houses in Wimpole
Street. I was in it two years ago, when it was Lady Lascelle's, and
prefer it to almost any I know in London, and certainly she will then
feel, to use a vulgar phrase, that she has got her pennyworth for her
penny. Henry could not have afforded her such a house. I hope she will
recollect it, and be satisfied, as well as she may, with moving the
queen of a palace, though the king may appear best in the background;
and as I have no desire to tease her, I shall never _force_ your name
upon her again. She will grow sober by degrees. From all that I hear
and guess, Baron Wildenheim's attentions to Julia continue, but I do not
know that he has any serious encouragement. She ought to do better.
A poor honourable is no catch, and I cannot imagine any liking in the
case, for take away his rants, and the poor baron has nothing. What a
difference a vowel makes! If his rents were but equal to his rants! Your
cousin Edmund moves slowly; detained, perchance, by parish duties. There
may be some old woman at Thornton Lacey to be converted. I am unwilling
to fancy myself neglected for a _young_ one. Adieu! my dear sweet Fanny,
this is a long letter from London: write me a pretty one in reply to
gladden Henry's eyes, when he comes back, and send me an account of all
the dashing young captains whom you disdain for his sake.”

There was great food for meditation in this letter, and chiefly for
unpleasant meditation; and yet, with all the uneasiness it supplied, it
connected her with the absent, it told her of people and things about
whom she had never felt so much curiosity as now, and she would
have been glad to have been sure of such a letter every week. Her
correspondence with her aunt Bertram was her only concern of higher
interest.

As for any society in Portsmouth, that could at all make amends for
deficiencies at home, there were none within the circle of her father's
and mother's acquaintance to afford her the smallest satisfaction: she
saw nobody in whose favour she could wish to overcome her own shyness
and reserve. The men appeared to her all coarse, the women all pert,
everybody underbred; and she gave as little contentment as she received
from introductions either to old or new acquaintance. The young ladies
who approached her at first with some respect, in consideration of her
coming from a baronet's family, were soon offended by what they termed
“airs”; for, as she neither played on the pianoforte nor wore fine
pelisses, they could, on farther observation, admit no right of
superiority.

The first solid consolation which Fanny received for the evils of home,
the first which her judgment could entirely approve, and which gave any
promise of durability, was in a better knowledge of Susan, and a hope of
being of service to her. Susan had always behaved pleasantly to herself,
but the determined character of her general manners had astonished
and alarmed her, and it was at least a fortnight before she began to
understand a disposition so totally different from her own. Susan saw
that much was wrong at home, and wanted to set it right. That a girl of
fourteen, acting only on her own unassisted reason, should err in the
method of reform, was not wonderful; and Fanny soon became more disposed
to admire the natural light of the mind which could so early distinguish
justly, than to censure severely the faults of conduct to which it led.
Susan was only acting on the same truths, and pursuing the same system,
which her own judgment acknowledged, but which her more supine and
yielding temper would have shrunk from asserting. Susan tried to be
useful, where _she_ could only have gone away and cried; and that Susan
was useful she could perceive; that things, bad as they were, would
have been worse but for such interposition, and that both her mother and
Betsey were restrained from some excesses of very offensive indulgence
and vulgarity.

In every argument with her mother, Susan had in point of reason the
advantage, and never was there any maternal tenderness to buy her off.
The blind fondness which was for ever producing evil around her she had
never known. There was no gratitude for affection past or present to
make her better bear with its excesses to the others.

All this became gradually evident, and gradually placed Susan before her
sister as an object of mingled compassion and respect. That her manner
was wrong, however, at times very wrong, her measures often ill-chosen
and ill-timed, and her looks and language very often indefensible, Fanny
could not cease to feel; but she began to hope they might be rectified.
Susan, she found, looked up to her and wished for her good opinion; and
new as anything like an office of authority was to Fanny, new as it
was to imagine herself capable of guiding or informing any one, she did
resolve to give occasional hints to Susan, and endeavour to exercise for
her advantage the juster notions of what was due to everybody, and what
would be wisest for herself, which her own more favoured education had
fixed in her.

Her influence, or at least the consciousness and use of it, originated
in an act of kindness by Susan, which, after many hesitations of
delicacy, she at last worked herself up to. It had very early occurred
to her that a small sum of money might, perhaps, restore peace for
ever on the sore subject of the silver knife, canvassed as it now was
continually, and the riches which she was in possession of herself,
her uncle having given her 10 pounds at parting, made her as able as she was
willing to be generous. But she was so wholly unused to confer favours,
except on the very poor, so unpractised in removing evils, or bestowing
kindnesses among her equals, and so fearful of appearing to elevate
herself as a great lady at home, that it took some time to determine
that it would not be unbecoming in her to make such a present. It
was made, however, at last: a silver knife was bought for Betsey, and
accepted with great delight, its newness giving it every advantage
over the other that could be desired; Susan was established in the full
possession of her own, Betsey handsomely declaring that now she had got
one so much prettier herself, she should never want _that_ again; and
no reproach seemed conveyed to the equally satisfied mother, which Fanny
had almost feared to be impossible. The deed thoroughly answered: a
source of domestic altercation was entirely done away, and it was the
means of opening Susan's heart to her, and giving her something more to
love and be interested in. Susan shewed that she had delicacy: pleased
as she was to be mistress of property which she had been struggling for
at least two years, she yet feared that her sister's judgment had been
against her, and that a reproof was designed her for having so struggled
as to make the purchase necessary for the tranquillity of the house.

Her temper was open. She acknowledged her fears, blamed herself for
having contended so warmly; and from that hour Fanny, understanding the
worth of her disposition and perceiving how fully she was inclined to
seek her good opinion and refer to her judgment, began to feel again the
blessing of affection, and to entertain the hope of being useful to a
mind so much in need of help, and so much deserving it. She gave advice,
advice too sound to be resisted by a good understanding, and given so
mildly and considerately as not to irritate an imperfect temper, and she
had the happiness of observing its good effects not unfrequently.
More was not expected by one who, while seeing all the obligation and
expediency of submission and forbearance, saw also with sympathetic
acuteness of feeling all that must be hourly grating to a girl like
Susan. Her greatest wonder on the subject soon became--not that Susan
should have been provoked into disrespect and impatience against her
better knowledge--but that so much better knowledge, so many good
notions should have been hers at all; and that, brought up in the midst
of negligence and error, she should have formed such proper opinions
of what ought to be; she, who had had no cousin Edmund to direct her
thoughts or fix her principles.

The intimacy thus begun between them was a material advantage to
each. By sitting together upstairs, they avoided a great deal of the
disturbance of the house; Fanny had peace, and Susan learned to think it
no misfortune to be quietly employed. They sat without a fire; but
that was a privation familiar even to Fanny, and she suffered the
less because reminded by it of the East room. It was the only point of
resemblance. In space, light, furniture, and prospect, there was
nothing alike in the two apartments; and she often heaved a sigh at the
remembrance of all her books and boxes, and various comforts there. By
degrees the girls came to spend the chief of the morning upstairs, at
first only in working and talking, but after a few days, the remembrance
of the said books grew so potent and stimulative that Fanny found it
impossible not to try for books again. There were none in her father's
house; but wealth is luxurious and daring, and some of hers found its
way to a circulating library. She became a subscriber; amazed at being
anything _in propria persona_, amazed at her own doings in every way, to
be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any one's improvement
in view in her choice! But so it was. Susan had read nothing, and Fanny
longed to give her a share in her own first pleasures, and inspire a
taste for the biography and poetry which she delighted in herself.

In this occupation she hoped, moreover, to bury some of the
recollections of Mansfield, which were too apt to seize her mind if her
fingers only were busy; and, especially at this time, hoped it might
be useful in diverting her thoughts from pursuing Edmund to London,
whither, on the authority of her aunt's last letter, she knew he was
gone. She had no doubt of what would ensue. The promised notification
was hanging over her head. The postman's knock within the neighbourhood
was beginning to bring its daily terrors, and if reading could banish
the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.



CHAPTER XLI

A week was gone since Edmund might be supposed in town, and Fanny had
heard nothing of him. There were three different conclusions to be drawn
from his silence, between which her mind was in fluctuation; each of
them at times being held the most probable. Either his going had been
again delayed, or he had yet procured no opportunity of seeing Miss
Crawford alone, or he was too happy for letter-writing!

One morning, about this time, Fanny having now been nearly four weeks
from Mansfield, a point which she never failed to think over and
calculate every day, as she and Susan were preparing to remove, as
usual, upstairs, they were stopped by the knock of a visitor, whom they
felt they could not avoid, from Rebecca's alertness in going to the
door, a duty which always interested her beyond any other.

It was a gentleman's voice; it was a voice that Fanny was just turning
pale about, when Mr. Crawford walked into the room.

Good sense, like hers, will always act when really called upon; and she
found that she had been able to name him to her mother, and recall her
remembrance of the name, as that of “William's friend,” though she could
not previously have believed herself capable of uttering a syllable
at such a moment. The consciousness of his being known there only as
William's friend was some support. Having introduced him, however, and
being all reseated, the terrors that occurred of what this visit might
lead to were overpowering, and she fancied herself on the point of
fainting away.

While trying to keep herself alive, their visitor, who had at first
approached her with as animated a countenance as ever, was wisely and
kindly keeping his eyes away, and giving her time to recover, while he
devoted himself entirely to her mother, addressing her, and attending
to her with the utmost politeness and propriety, at the same time with
a degree of friendliness, of interest at least, which was making his
manner perfect.

Mrs. Price's manners were also at their best. Warmed by the sight of
such a friend to her son, and regulated by the wish of appearing to
advantage before him, she was overflowing with gratitude--artless,
maternal gratitude--which could not be unpleasing. Mr. Price was out,
which she regretted very much. Fanny was just recovered enough to
feel that _she_ could not regret it; for to her many other sources of
uneasiness was added the severe one of shame for the home in which he
found her. She might scold herself for the weakness, but there was no
scolding it away. She was ashamed, and she would have been yet more
ashamed of her father than of all the rest.

They talked of William, a subject on which Mrs. Price could never tire;
and Mr. Crawford was as warm in his commendation as even her heart could
wish. She felt that she had never seen so agreeable a man in her life;
and was only astonished to find that, so great and so agreeable as he
was, he should be come down to Portsmouth neither on a visit to the
port-admiral, nor the commissioner, nor yet with the intention of going
over to the island, nor of seeing the dockyard. Nothing of all that she
had been used to think of as the proof of importance, or the employment
of wealth, had brought him to Portsmouth. He had reached it late the
night before, was come for a day or two, was staying at the Crown, had
accidentally met with a navy officer or two of his acquaintance since
his arrival, but had no object of that kind in coming.

By the time he had given all this information, it was not unreasonable
to suppose that Fanny might be looked at and spoken to; and she was
tolerably able to bear his eye, and hear that he had spent half an hour
with his sister the evening before his leaving London; that she had
sent her best and kindest love, but had had no time for writing; that he
thought himself lucky in seeing Mary for even half an hour, having spent
scarcely twenty-four hours in London, after his return from Norfolk,
before he set off again; that her cousin Edmund was in town, had been in
town, he understood, a few days; that he had not seen him himself, but
that he was well, had left them all well at Mansfield, and was to dine,
as yesterday, with the Frasers.

Fanny listened collectedly, even to the last-mentioned circumstance;
nay, it seemed a relief to her worn mind to be at any certainty; and the
words, “then by this time it is all settled,” passed internally, without
more evidence of emotion than a faint blush.

After talking a little more about Mansfield, a subject in which her
interest was most apparent, Crawford began to hint at the expediency of
an early walk. “It was a lovely morning, and at that season of the year
a fine morning so often turned off, that it was wisest for everybody
not to delay their exercise”; and such hints producing nothing, he soon
proceeded to a positive recommendation to Mrs. Price and her
daughters to take their walk without loss of time. Now they came to an
understanding. Mrs. Price, it appeared, scarcely ever stirred out of
doors, except of a Sunday; she owned she could seldom, with her large
family, find time for a walk. “Would she not, then, persuade her
daughters to take advantage of such weather, and allow him the pleasure
of attending them?” Mrs. Price was greatly obliged and very complying.
“Her daughters were very much confined; Portsmouth was a sad place; they
did not often get out; and she knew they had some errands in the town,
which they would be very glad to do.” And the consequence was, that
Fanny, strange as it was--strange, awkward, and distressing--found
herself and Susan, within ten minutes, walking towards the High Street
with Mr. Crawford.

It was soon pain upon pain, confusion upon confusion; for they were
hardly in the High Street before they met her father, whose
appearance was not the better from its being Saturday. He stopt; and,
ungentlemanlike as he looked, Fanny was obliged to introduce him to Mr.
Crawford. She could not have a doubt of the manner in which Mr. Crawford
must be struck. He must be ashamed and disgusted altogether. He must
soon give her up, and cease to have the smallest inclination for the
match; and yet, though she had been so much wanting his affection to
be cured, this was a sort of cure that would be almost as bad as the
complaint; and I believe there is scarcely a young lady in the United
Kingdoms who would not rather put up with the misfortune of being sought
by a clever, agreeable man, than have him driven away by the vulgarity
of her nearest relations.

Mr. Crawford probably could not regard his future father-in-law with any
idea of taking him for a model in dress; but (as Fanny instantly, and to
her great relief, discerned) her father was a very different man, a
very different Mr. Price in his behaviour to this most highly respected
stranger, from what he was in his own family at home. His manners
now, though not polished, were more than passable: they were grateful,
animated, manly; his expressions were those of an attached father, and
a sensible man; his loud tones did very well in the open air, and there
was not a single oath to be heard. Such was his instinctive compliment
to the good manners of Mr. Crawford; and, be the consequence what it
might, Fanny's immediate feelings were infinitely soothed.

The conclusion of the two gentlemen's civilities was an offer of Mr.
Price's to take Mr. Crawford into the dockyard, which Mr. Crawford,
desirous of accepting as a favour what was intended as such, though
he had seen the dockyard again and again, and hoping to be so much the
longer with Fanny, was very gratefully disposed to avail himself of, if
the Miss Prices were not afraid of the fatigue; and as it was somehow or
other ascertained, or inferred, or at least acted upon, that they were
not at all afraid, to the dockyard they were all to go; and but for
Mr. Crawford, Mr. Price would have turned thither directly, without the
smallest consideration for his daughters' errands in the High Street. He
took care, however, that they should be allowed to go to the shops they
came out expressly to visit; and it did not delay them long, for Fanny
could so little bear to excite impatience, or be waited for, that before
the gentlemen, as they stood at the door, could do more than begin upon
the last naval regulations, or settle the number of three-deckers now in
commission, their companions were ready to proceed.

They were then to set forward for the dockyard at once, and the walk
would have been conducted--according to Mr. Crawford's opinion--in a
singular manner, had Mr. Price been allowed the entire regulation of it,
as the two girls, he found, would have been left to follow, and keep up
with them or not, as they could, while they walked on together at their
own hasty pace. He was able to introduce some improvement occasionally,
though by no means to the extent he wished; he absolutely would not walk
away from them; and at any crossing or any crowd, when Mr. Price was
only calling out, “Come, girls; come, Fan; come, Sue, take care of
yourselves; keep a sharp lookout!” he would give them his particular
attendance.

Once fairly in the dockyard, he began to reckon upon some happy
intercourse with Fanny, as they were very soon joined by a brother
lounger of Mr. Price's, who was come to take his daily survey of how
things went on, and who must prove a far more worthy companion than
himself; and after a time the two officers seemed very well satisfied
going about together, and discussing matters of equal and never-failing
interest, while the young people sat down upon some timbers in the yard,
or found a seat on board a vessel in the stocks which they all went to
look at. Fanny was most conveniently in want of rest. Crawford could not
have wished her more fatigued or more ready to sit down; but he could
have wished her sister away. A quick-looking girl of Susan's age was the
very worst third in the world: totally different from Lady Bertram, all
eyes and ears; and there was no introducing the main point before her.
He must content himself with being only generally agreeable, and letting
Susan have her share of entertainment, with the indulgence, now and
then, of a look or hint for the better-informed and conscious Fanny.
Norfolk was what he had mostly to talk of: there he had been some time,
and everything there was rising in importance from his present schemes.
Such a man could come from no place, no society, without importing
something to amuse; his journeys and his acquaintance were all of use,
and Susan was entertained in a way quite new to her. For Fanny, somewhat
more was related than the accidental agreeableness of the parties he had
been in. For her approbation, the particular reason of his going into
Norfolk at all, at this unusual time of year, was given. It had been
real business, relative to the renewal of a lease in which the welfare
of a large and--he believed--industrious family was at stake. He had
suspected his agent of some underhand dealing; of meaning to bias
him against the deserving; and he had determined to go himself, and
thoroughly investigate the merits of the case. He had gone, had done
even more good than he had foreseen, had been useful to more than his
first plan had comprehended, and was now able to congratulate himself
upon it, and to feel that in performing a duty, he had secured agreeable
recollections for his own mind. He had introduced himself to some
tenants whom he had never seen before; he had begun making acquaintance
with cottages whose very existence, though on his own estate, had been
hitherto unknown to him. This was aimed, and well aimed, at Fanny. It
was pleasing to hear him speak so properly; here he had been acting as
he ought to do. To be the friend of the poor and the oppressed! Nothing
could be more grateful to her; and she was on the point of giving him an
approving look, when it was all frightened off by his adding a something
too pointed of his hoping soon to have an assistant, a friend, a guide
in every plan of utility or charity for Everingham: a somebody that
would make Everingham and all about it a dearer object than it had ever
been yet.

She turned away, and wished he would not say such things. She was
willing to allow he might have more good qualities than she had been
wont to suppose. She began to feel the possibility of his turning out
well at last; but he was and must ever be completely unsuited to her,
and ought not to think of her.

He perceived that enough had been said of Everingham, and that it would
be as well to talk of something else, and turned to Mansfield. He could
not have chosen better; that was a topic to bring back her attention and
her looks almost instantly. It was a real indulgence to her to hear or
to speak of Mansfield. Now so long divided from everybody who knew the
place, she felt it quite the voice of a friend when he mentioned it,
and led the way to her fond exclamations in praise of its beauties and
comforts, and by his honourable tribute to its inhabitants allowed her
to gratify her own heart in the warmest eulogium, in speaking of her
uncle as all that was clever and good, and her aunt as having the
sweetest of all sweet tempers.

He had a great attachment to Mansfield himself; he said so; he looked
forward with the hope of spending much, very much, of his time there;
always there, or in the neighbourhood. He particularly built upon a very
happy summer and autumn there this year; he felt that it would be so: he
depended upon it; a summer and autumn infinitely superior to the last.
As animated, as diversified, as social, but with circumstances of
superiority undescribable.

“Mansfield, Sotherton, Thornton Lacey,” he continued; “what a society
will be comprised in those houses! And at Michaelmas, perhaps, a fourth
may be added: some small hunting-box in the vicinity of everything so
dear; for as to any partnership in Thornton Lacey, as Edmund Bertram
once good-humouredly proposed, I hope I foresee two objections: two
fair, excellent, irresistible objections to that plan.”

Fanny was doubly silenced here; though when the moment was passed,
could regret that she had not forced herself into the acknowledged
comprehension of one half of his meaning, and encouraged him to say
something more of his sister and Edmund. It was a subject which she must
learn to speak of, and the weakness that shrunk from it would soon be
quite unpardonable.

When Mr. Price and his friend had seen all that they wished, or had time
for, the others were ready to return; and in the course of their walk
back, Mr. Crawford contrived a minute's privacy for telling Fanny that
his only business in Portsmouth was to see her; that he was come down
for a couple of days on her account, and hers only, and because he could
not endure a longer total separation. She was sorry, really sorry; and
yet in spite of this and the two or three other things which she wished
he had not said, she thought him altogether improved since she had seen
him; he was much more gentle, obliging, and attentive to other people's
feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield; she had never seen him so
agreeable--so _near_ being agreeable; his behaviour to her father could
not offend, and there was something particularly kind and proper in the
notice he took of Susan. He was decidedly improved. She wished the next
day over, she wished he had come only for one day; but it was not
so very bad as she would have expected: the pleasure of talking of
Mansfield was so very great!

Before they parted, she had to thank him for another pleasure, and one
of no trivial kind. Her father asked him to do them the honour of taking
his mutton with them, and Fanny had time for only one thrill of horror,
before he declared himself prevented by a prior engagement. He was
engaged to dinner already both for that day and the next; he had met
with some acquaintance at the Crown who would not be denied; he should
have the honour, however, of waiting on them again on the morrow, etc.,
and so they parted--Fanny in a state of actual felicity from escaping so
horrible an evil!

To have had him join their family dinner-party, and see all their
deficiencies, would have been dreadful! Rebecca's cookery and Rebecca's
waiting, and Betsey's eating at table without restraint, and pulling
everything about as she chose, were what Fanny herself was not yet
enough inured to for her often to make a tolerable meal. _She_ was nice
only from natural delicacy, but _he_ had been brought up in a school of
luxury and epicurism.



CHAPTER XLII

The Prices were just setting off for church the next day when Mr.
Crawford appeared again. He came, not to stop, but to join them; he was
asked to go with them to the Garrison chapel, which was exactly what he
had intended, and they all walked thither together.

The family were now seen to advantage. Nature had given them no
inconsiderable share of beauty, and every Sunday dressed them in their
cleanest skins and best attire. Sunday always brought this comfort to
Fanny, and on this Sunday she felt it more than ever. Her poor mother
now did not look so very unworthy of being Lady Bertram's sister as she
was but too apt to look. It often grieved her to the heart to think of
the contrast between them; to think that where nature had made so little
difference, circumstances should have made so much, and that her mother,
as handsome as Lady Bertram, and some years her junior, should have an
appearance so much more worn and faded, so comfortless, so slatternly,
so shabby. But Sunday made her a very creditable and tolerably
cheerful-looking Mrs. Price, coming abroad with a fine family of
children, feeling a little respite of her weekly cares, and only
discomposed if she saw her boys run into danger, or Rebecca pass by with
a flower in her hat.

In chapel they were obliged to divide, but Mr. Crawford took care not to
be divided from the female branch; and after chapel he still continued
with them, and made one in the family party on the ramparts.

Mrs. Price took her weekly walk on the ramparts every fine Sunday
throughout the year, always going directly after morning service and
staying till dinner-time. It was her public place: there she met her
acquaintance, heard a little news, talked over the badness of the
Portsmouth servants, and wound up her spirits for the six days ensuing.

Thither they now went; Mr. Crawford most happy to consider the Miss
Prices as his peculiar charge; and before they had been there long,
somehow or other, there was no saying how, Fanny could not have believed
it, but he was walking between them with an arm of each under his,
and she did not know how to prevent or put an end to it. It made her
uncomfortable for a time, but yet there were enjoyments in the day and
in the view which would be felt.

The day was uncommonly lovely. It was really March; but it was April in
its mild air, brisk soft wind, and bright sun, occasionally clouded for
a minute; and everything looked so beautiful under the influence of such
a sky, the effects of the shadows pursuing each other on the ships at
Spithead and the island beyond, with the ever-varying hues of the sea,
now at high water, dancing in its glee and dashing against the ramparts
with so fine a sound, produced altogether such a combination of charms
for Fanny, as made her gradually almost careless of the circumstances
under which she felt them. Nay, had she been without his arm, she would
soon have known that she needed it, for she wanted strength for a two
hours' saunter of this kind, coming, as it generally did, upon a week's
previous inactivity. Fanny was beginning to feel the effect of being
debarred from her usual regular exercise; she had lost ground as to
health since her being in Portsmouth; and but for Mr. Crawford and the
beauty of the weather would soon have been knocked up now.

The loveliness of the day, and of the view, he felt like herself. They
often stopt with the same sentiment and taste, leaning against the wall,
some minutes, to look and admire; and considering he was not Edmund,
Fanny could not but allow that he was sufficiently open to the charms
of nature, and very well able to express his admiration. She had a few
tender reveries now and then, which he could sometimes take advantage
of to look in her face without detection; and the result of these looks
was, that though as bewitching as ever, her face was less blooming than
it ought to be. She _said_ she was very well, and did not like to be
supposed otherwise; but take it all in all, he was convinced that her
present residence could not be comfortable, and therefore could not
be salutary for her, and he was growing anxious for her being again at
Mansfield, where her own happiness, and his in seeing her, must be so
much greater.

“You have been here a month, I think?” said he.

“No; not quite a month. It is only four weeks to-morrow since I left
Mansfield.”

“You are a most accurate and honest reckoner. I should call that a
month.”

“I did not arrive here till Tuesday evening.”

“And it is to be a two months' visit, is not?”

“Yes. My uncle talked of two months. I suppose it will not be less.”

“And how are you to be conveyed back again? Who comes for you?”

“I do not know. I have heard nothing about it yet from my aunt. Perhaps
I may be to stay longer. It may not be convenient for me to be fetched
exactly at the two months' end.”

After a moment's reflection, Mr. Crawford replied, “I know Mansfield, I
know its way, I know its faults towards _you_. I know the danger of
your being so far forgotten, as to have your comforts give way to the
imaginary convenience of any single being in the family. I am aware
that you may be left here week after week, if Sir Thomas cannot settle
everything for coming himself, or sending your aunt's maid for you,
without involving the slightest alteration of the arrangements which he
may have laid down for the next quarter of a year. This will not do. Two
months is an ample allowance; I should think six weeks quite enough.
I am considering your sister's health,” said he, addressing himself to
Susan, “which I think the confinement of Portsmouth unfavourable to. She
requires constant air and exercise. When you know her as well as I do,
I am sure you will agree that she does, and that she ought never to
be long banished from the free air and liberty of the country. If,
therefore” (turning again to Fanny), “you find yourself growing unwell,
and any difficulties arise about your returning to Mansfield, without
waiting for the two months to be ended, _that_ must not be regarded
as of any consequence, if you feel yourself at all less strong or
comfortable than usual, and will only let my sister know it, give her
only the slightest hint, she and I will immediately come down, and take
you back to Mansfield. You know the ease and the pleasure with which
this would be done. You know all that would be felt on the occasion.”

Fanny thanked him, but tried to laugh it off.

“I am perfectly serious,” he replied, “as you perfectly know. And I
hope you will not be cruelly concealing any tendency to indisposition.
Indeed, you shall _not_; it shall not be in your power; for so long only
as you positively say, in every letter to Mary, 'I am well,' and I
know you cannot speak or write a falsehood, so long only shall you be
considered as well.”

Fanny thanked him again, but was affected and distressed to a degree
that made it impossible for her to say much, or even to be certain of
what she ought to say. This was towards the close of their walk. He
attended them to the last, and left them only at the door of their own
house, when he knew them to be going to dinner, and therefore pretended
to be waited for elsewhere.

“I wish you were not so tired,” said he, still detaining Fanny after all
the others were in the house--“I wish I left you in stronger health. Is
there anything I can do for you in town? I have half an idea of going
into Norfolk again soon. I am not satisfied about Maddison. I am sure
he still means to impose on me if possible, and get a cousin of his own
into a certain mill, which I design for somebody else. I must come to an
understanding with him. I must make him know that I will not be tricked
on the south side of Everingham, any more than on the north: that I will
be master of my own property. I was not explicit enough with him before.
The mischief such a man does on an estate, both as to the credit of his
employer and the welfare of the poor, is inconceivable. I have a great
mind to go back into Norfolk directly, and put everything at once on
such a footing as cannot be afterwards swerved from. Maddison is a
clever fellow; I do not wish to displace him, provided he does not try
to displace _me_; but it would be simple to be duped by a man who has no
right of creditor to dupe me, and worse than simple to let him give me a
hard-hearted, griping fellow for a tenant, instead of an honest man,
to whom I have given half a promise already. Would it not be worse than
simple? Shall I go? Do you advise it?”

“I advise! You know very well what is right.”

“Yes. When you give me your opinion, I always know what is right. Your
judgment is my rule of right.”

“Oh, no! do not say so. We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we
would attend to it, than any other person can be. Good-bye; I wish you a
pleasant journey to-morrow.”

“Is there nothing I can do for you in town?”

“Nothing; I am much obliged to you.”

“Have you no message for anybody?”

“My love to your sister, if you please; and when you see my cousin, my
cousin Edmund, I wish you would be so good as to say that I suppose I
shall soon hear from him.”

“Certainly; and if he is lazy or negligent, I will write his excuses
myself.”

He could say no more, for Fanny would be no longer detained. He pressed
her hand, looked at her, and was gone. _He_ went to while away the next
three hours as he could, with his other acquaintance, till the best
dinner that a capital inn afforded was ready for their enjoyment, and
_she_ turned in to her more simple one immediately.

Their general fare bore a very different character; and could he have
suspected how many privations, besides that of exercise, she endured in
her father's house, he would have wondered that her looks were not much
more affected than he found them. She was so little equal to Rebecca's
puddings and Rebecca's hashes, brought to table, as they all were, with
such accompaniments of half-cleaned plates, and not half-cleaned knives
and forks, that she was very often constrained to defer her heartiest
meal till she could send her brothers in the evening for biscuits and
buns. After being nursed up at Mansfield, it was too late in the day
to be hardened at Portsmouth; and though Sir Thomas, had he known all,
might have thought his niece in the most promising way of being starved,
both mind and body, into a much juster value for Mr. Crawford's good
company and good fortune, he would probably have feared to push his
experiment farther, lest she might die under the cure.

Fanny was out of spirits all the rest of the day. Though tolerably
secure of not seeing Mr. Crawford again, she could not help being low.
It was parting with somebody of the nature of a friend; and though, in
one light, glad to have him gone, it seemed as if she was now deserted
by everybody; it was a sort of renewed separation from Mansfield; and
she could not think of his returning to town, and being frequently with
Mary and Edmund, without feelings so near akin to envy as made her hate
herself for having them.

Her dejection had no abatement from anything passing around her; a
friend or two of her father's, as always happened if he was not with
them, spent the long, long evening there; and from six o'clock till
half-past nine, there was little intermission of noise or grog. She
was very low. The wonderful improvement which she still fancied in Mr.
Crawford was the nearest to administering comfort of anything within the
current of her thoughts. Not considering in how different a circle she
had been just seeing him, nor how much might be owing to contrast, she
was quite persuaded of his being astonishingly more gentle and regardful
of others than formerly. And, if in little things, must it not be so in
great? So anxious for her health and comfort, so very feeling as he now
expressed himself, and really seemed, might not it be fairly supposed
that he would not much longer persevere in a suit so distressing to her?



CHAPTER XLIII

It was presumed that Mr. Crawford was travelling back, to London, on the
morrow, for nothing more was seen of him at Mr. Price's; and two days
afterwards, it was a fact ascertained to Fanny by the following letter
from his sister, opened and read by her, on another account, with the
most anxious curiosity:--

“I have to inform you, my dearest Fanny, that Henry has been down to
Portsmouth to see you; that he had a delightful walk with you to the
dockyard last Saturday, and one still more to be dwelt on the next day,
on the ramparts; when the balmy air, the sparkling sea, and your sweet
looks and conversation were altogether in the most delicious harmony,
and afforded sensations which are to raise ecstasy even in retrospect.
This, as well as I understand, is to be the substance of my information.
He makes me write, but I do not know what else is to be communicated,
except this said visit to Portsmouth, and these two said walks, and his
introduction to your family, especially to a fair sister of yours, a
fine girl of fifteen, who was of the party on the ramparts, taking her
first lesson, I presume, in love. I have not time for writing much, but
it would be out of place if I had, for this is to be a mere letter of
business, penned for the purpose of conveying necessary information,
which could not be delayed without risk of evil. My dear, dear Fanny,
if I had you here, how I would talk to you! You should listen to me till
you were tired, and advise me till you were still tired more; but it is
impossible to put a hundredth part of my great mind on paper, so I will
abstain altogether, and leave you to guess what you like. I have no news
for you. You have politics, of course; and it would be too bad to plague
you with the names of people and parties that fill up my time. I ought
to have sent you an account of your cousin's first party, but I was
lazy, and now it is too long ago; suffice it, that everything was just
as it ought to be, in a style that any of her connexions must have been
gratified to witness, and that her own dress and manners did her the
greatest credit. My friend, Mrs. Fraser, is mad for such a house, and it
would not make _me_ miserable. I go to Lady Stornaway after Easter;
she seems in high spirits, and very happy. I fancy Lord S. is very
good-humoured and pleasant in his own family, and I do not think him so
very ill-looking as I did--at least, one sees many worse. He will not
do by the side of your cousin Edmund. Of the last-mentioned hero, what
shall I say? If I avoided his name entirely, it would look suspicious.
I will say, then, that we have seen him two or three times, and that
my friends here are very much struck with his gentlemanlike appearance.
Mrs. Fraser (no bad judge) declares she knows but three men in town
who have so good a person, height, and air; and I must confess, when he
dined here the other day, there were none to compare with him, and
we were a party of sixteen. Luckily there is no distinction of dress
nowadays to tell tales, but--but--but Yours affectionately.”

“I had almost forgot (it was Edmund's fault: he gets into my head more
than does me good) one very material thing I had to say from Henry and
myself--I mean about our taking you back into Northamptonshire. My dear
little creature, do not stay at Portsmouth to lose your pretty looks.
Those vile sea-breezes are the ruin of beauty and health. My poor aunt
always felt affected if within ten miles of the sea, which the Admiral
of course never believed, but I know it was so. I am at your service
and Henry's, at an hour's notice. I should like the scheme, and we would
make a little circuit, and shew you Everingham in our way, and perhaps
you would not mind passing through London, and seeing the inside of St.
George's, Hanover Square. Only keep your cousin Edmund from me at such
a time: I should not like to be tempted. What a long letter! one word
more. Henry, I find, has some idea of going into Norfolk again upon
some business that _you_ approve; but this cannot possibly be permitted
before the middle of next week; that is, he cannot anyhow be spared till
after the 14th, for _we_ have a party that evening. The value of a man
like Henry, on such an occasion, is what you can have no conception
of; so you must take it upon my word to be inestimable. He will see the
Rushworths, which own I am not sorry for--having a little curiosity, and
so I think has he--though he will not acknowledge it.”

This was a letter to be run through eagerly, to be read deliberately,
to supply matter for much reflection, and to leave everything in greater
suspense than ever. The only certainty to be drawn from it was, that
nothing decisive had yet taken place. Edmund had not yet spoken. How
Miss Crawford really felt, how she meant to act, or might act without
or against her meaning; whether his importance to her were quite what
it had been before the last separation; whether, if lessened, it were
likely to lessen more, or to recover itself, were subjects for endless
conjecture, and to be thought of on that day and many days to come,
without producing any conclusion. The idea that returned the oftenest
was that Miss Crawford, after proving herself cooled and staggered by
a return to London habits, would yet prove herself in the end too much
attached to him to give him up. She would try to be more ambitious than
her heart would allow. She would hesitate, she would tease, she would
condition, she would require a great deal, but she would finally accept.

This was Fanny's most frequent expectation. A house in town--that, she
thought, must be impossible. Yet there was no saying what Miss Crawford
might not ask. The prospect for her cousin grew worse and worse. The
woman who could speak of him, and speak only of his appearance! What an
unworthy attachment! To be deriving support from the commendations of
Mrs. Fraser! _She_ who had known him intimately half a year! Fanny was
ashamed of her. Those parts of the letter which related only to Mr.
Crawford and herself, touched her, in comparison, slightly. Whether Mr.
Crawford went into Norfolk before or after the 14th was certainly no
concern of hers, though, everything considered, she thought he _would_
go without delay. That Miss Crawford should endeavour to secure a
meeting between him and Mrs. Rushworth, was all in her worst line of
conduct, and grossly unkind and ill-judged; but she hoped _he_ would
not be actuated by any such degrading curiosity. He acknowledged no such
inducement, and his sister ought to have given him credit for better
feelings than her own.

She was yet more impatient for another letter from town after receiving
this than she had been before; and for a few days was so unsettled by
it altogether, by what had come, and what might come, that her usual
readings and conversation with Susan were much suspended. She could
not command her attention as she wished. If Mr. Crawford remembered her
message to her cousin, she thought it very likely, most likely, that he
would write to her at all events; it would be most consistent with his
usual kindness; and till she got rid of this idea, till it gradually
wore off, by no letters appearing in the course of three or four days
more, she was in a most restless, anxious state.

At length, a something like composure succeeded. Suspense must be
submitted to, and must not be allowed to wear her out, and make her
useless. Time did something, her own exertions something more, and she
resumed her attentions to Susan, and again awakened the same interest in
them.

Susan was growing very fond of her, and though without any of the early
delight in books which had been so strong in Fanny, with a disposition
much less inclined to sedentary pursuits, or to information for
information's sake, she had so strong a desire of not _appearing_
ignorant, as, with a good clear understanding, made her a most
attentive, profitable, thankful pupil. Fanny was her oracle. Fanny's
explanations and remarks were a most important addition to every essay,
or every chapter of history. What Fanny told her of former times dwelt
more on her mind than the pages of Goldsmith; and she paid her sister
the compliment of preferring her style to that of any printed author.
The early habit of reading was wanting.

Their conversations, however, were not always on subjects so high as
history or morals. Others had their hour; and of lesser matters, none
returned so often, or remained so long between them, as Mansfield Park,
a description of the people, the manners, the amusements, the ways
of Mansfield Park. Susan, who had an innate taste for the genteel and
well-appointed, was eager to hear, and Fanny could not but indulge
herself in dwelling on so beloved a theme. She hoped it was not wrong;
though, after a time, Susan's very great admiration of everything
said or done in her uncle's house, and earnest longing to go into
Northamptonshire, seemed almost to blame her for exciting feelings which
could not be gratified.

Poor Susan was very little better fitted for home than her elder sister;
and as Fanny grew thoroughly to understand this, she began to feel that
when her own release from Portsmouth came, her happiness would have a
material drawback in leaving Susan behind. That a girl so capable of
being made everything good should be left in such hands, distressed her
more and more. Were _she_ likely to have a home to invite her to, what
a blessing it would be! And had it been possible for her to return Mr.
Crawford's regard, the probability of his being very far from objecting
to such a measure would have been the greatest increase of all her own
comforts. She thought he was really good-tempered, and could fancy his
entering into a plan of that sort most pleasantly.



CHAPTER XLIV

Seven weeks of the two months were very nearly gone, when the one
letter, the letter from Edmund, so long expected, was put into Fanny's
hands. As she opened, and saw its length, she prepared herself for a
minute detail of happiness and a profusion of love and praise towards
the fortunate creature who was now mistress of his fate. These were the
contents--

“My Dear Fanny,--Excuse me that I have not written before. Crawford told
me that you were wishing to hear from me, but I found it impossible to
write from London, and persuaded myself that you would understand my
silence. Could I have sent a few happy lines, they should not have been
wanting, but nothing of that nature was ever in my power. I am returned
to Mansfield in a less assured state than when I left it. My hopes are
much weaker. You are probably aware of this already. So very fond of you
as Miss Crawford is, it is most natural that she should tell you enough
of her own feelings to furnish a tolerable guess at mine. I will not be
prevented, however, from making my own communication. Our confidences in
you need not clash. I ask no questions. There is something soothing
in the idea that we have the same friend, and that whatever unhappy
differences of opinion may exist between us, we are united in our love
of you. It will be a comfort to me to tell you how things now are, and
what are my present plans, if plans I can be said to have. I have been
returned since Saturday. I was three weeks in London, and saw her (for
London) very often. I had every attention from the Frasers that could be
reasonably expected. I dare say I was not reasonable in carrying with
me hopes of an intercourse at all like that of Mansfield. It was her
manner, however, rather than any unfrequency of meeting. Had she been
different when I did see her, I should have made no complaint, but from
the very first she was altered: my first reception was so unlike what I
had hoped, that I had almost resolved on leaving London again directly.
I need not particularise. You know the weak side of her character, and
may imagine the sentiments and expressions which were torturing me. She
was in high spirits, and surrounded by those who were giving all the
support of their own bad sense to her too lively mind. I do not like
Mrs. Fraser. She is a cold-hearted, vain woman, who has married entirely
from convenience, and though evidently unhappy in her marriage,
places her disappointment not to faults of judgment, or temper, or
disproportion of age, but to her being, after all, less affluent than
many of her acquaintance, especially than her sister, Lady Stornaway,
and is the determined supporter of everything mercenary and ambitious,
provided it be only mercenary and ambitious enough. I look upon her
intimacy with those two sisters as the greatest misfortune of her life
and mine. They have been leading her astray for years. Could she be
detached from them!--and sometimes I do not despair of it, for the
affection appears to me principally on their side. They are very fond of
her; but I am sure she does not love them as she loves you. When I think
of her great attachment to you, indeed, and the whole of her judicious,
upright conduct as a sister, she appears a very different creature,
capable of everything noble, and I am ready to blame myself for a too
harsh construction of a playful manner. I cannot give her up, Fanny. She
is the only woman in the world whom I could ever think of as a wife. If
I did not believe that she had some regard for me, of course I should
not say this, but I do believe it. I am convinced that she is not
without a decided preference. I have no jealousy of any individual. It
is the influence of the fashionable world altogether that I am jealous
of. It is the habits of wealth that I fear. Her ideas are not higher
than her own fortune may warrant, but they are beyond what our incomes
united could authorise. There is comfort, however, even here. I could
better bear to lose her because not rich enough, than because of my
profession. That would only prove her affection not equal to sacrifices,
which, in fact, I am scarcely justified in asking; and, if I am refused,
that, I think, will be the honest motive. Her prejudices, I trust, are
not so strong as they were. You have my thoughts exactly as they arise,
my dear Fanny; perhaps they are sometimes contradictory, but it will
not be a less faithful picture of my mind. Having once begun, it is a
pleasure to me to tell you all I feel. I cannot give her up. Connected
as we already are, and, I hope, are to be, to give up Mary Crawford
would be to give up the society of some of those most dear to me; to
banish myself from the very houses and friends whom, under any other
distress, I should turn to for consolation. The loss of Mary I must
consider as comprehending the loss of Crawford and of Fanny. Were it a
decided thing, an actual refusal, I hope I should know how to bear it,
and how to endeavour to weaken her hold on my heart, and in the course
of a few years--but I am writing nonsense. Were I refused, I must bear
it; and till I am, I can never cease to try for her. This is the truth.
The only question is _how_? What may be the likeliest means? I have
sometimes thought of going to London again after Easter, and sometimes
resolved on doing nothing till she returns to Mansfield. Even now, she
speaks with pleasure of being in Mansfield in June; but June is at
a great distance, and I believe I shall write to her. I have nearly
determined on explaining myself by letter. To be at an early certainty
is a material object. My present state is miserably irksome. Considering
everything, I think a letter will be decidedly the best method of
explanation. I shall be able to write much that I could not say, and
shall be giving her time for reflection before she resolves on her
answer, and I am less afraid of the result of reflection than of an
immediate hasty impulse; I think I am. My greatest danger would lie in
her consulting Mrs. Fraser, and I at a distance unable to help my own
cause. A letter exposes to all the evil of consultation, and where
the mind is anything short of perfect decision, an adviser may, in an
unlucky moment, lead it to do what it may afterwards regret. I must
think this matter over a little. This long letter, full of my own
concerns alone, will be enough to tire even the friendship of a Fanny.
The last time I saw Crawford was at Mrs. Fraser's party. I am more
and more satisfied with all that I see and hear of him. There is not a
shadow of wavering. He thoroughly knows his own mind, and acts up to his
resolutions: an inestimable quality. I could not see him and my eldest
sister in the same room without recollecting what you once told me,
and I acknowledge that they did not meet as friends. There was
marked coolness on her side. They scarcely spoke. I saw him draw back
surprised, and I was sorry that Mrs. Rushworth should resent any former
supposed slight to Miss Bertram. You will wish to hear my opinion
of Maria's degree of comfort as a wife. There is no appearance of
unhappiness. I hope they get on pretty well together. I dined twice in
Wimpole Street, and might have been there oftener, but it is mortifying
to be with Rushworth as a brother. Julia seems to enjoy London
exceedingly. I had little enjoyment there, but have less here. We are
not a lively party. You are very much wanted. I miss you more than I
can express. My mother desires her best love, and hopes to hear from
you soon. She talks of you almost every hour, and I am sorry to find
how many weeks more she is likely to be without you. My father means
to fetch you himself, but it will not be till after Easter, when he has
business in town. You are happy at Portsmouth, I hope, but this must
not be a yearly visit. I want you at home, that I may have your opinion
about Thornton Lacey. I have little heart for extensive improvements
till I know that it will ever have a mistress. I think I shall certainly
write. It is quite settled that the Grants go to Bath; they leave
Mansfield on Monday. I am glad of it. I am not comfortable enough to be
fit for anybody; but your aunt seems to feel out of luck that such an
article of Mansfield news should fall to my pen instead of hers.--Yours
ever, my dearest Fanny.”

“I never will, no, I certainly never will wish for a letter again,” was
Fanny's secret declaration as she finished this. “What do they bring but
disappointment and sorrow? Not till after Easter! How shall I bear it?
And my poor aunt talking of me every hour!”

Fanny checked the tendency of these thoughts as well as she could, but
she was within half a minute of starting the idea that Sir Thomas was
quite unkind, both to her aunt and to herself. As for the main subject
of the letter, there was nothing in that to soothe irritation. She was
almost vexed into displeasure and anger against Edmund. “There is no
good in this delay,” said she. “Why is not it settled? He is blinded,
and nothing will open his eyes; nothing can, after having had truths
before him so long in vain. He will marry her, and be poor and
miserable. God grant that her influence do not make him cease to be
respectable!” She looked over the letter again. “'So very fond of me!'
'tis nonsense all. She loves nobody but herself and her brother. Her
friends leading her astray for years! She is quite as likely to have led
_them_ astray. They have all, perhaps, been corrupting one another; but
if they are so much fonder of her than she is of them, she is the less
likely to have been hurt, except by their flattery. 'The only woman in
the world whom he could ever think of as a wife.' I firmly believe it.
It is an attachment to govern his whole life. Accepted or refused, his
heart is wedded to her for ever. 'The loss of Mary I must consider as
comprehending the loss of Crawford and Fanny.' Edmund, you do not know
me. The families would never be connected if you did not connect
them! Oh! write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this
suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself.”

Such sensations, however, were too near akin to resentment to be long
guiding Fanny's soliloquies. She was soon more softened and sorrowful.
His warm regard, his kind expressions, his confidential treatment,
touched her strongly. He was only too good to everybody. It was a
letter, in short, which she would not but have had for the world, and
which could never be valued enough. This was the end of it.

Everybody at all addicted to letter-writing, without having much to say,
which will include a large proportion of the female world at least, must
feel with Lady Bertram that she was out of luck in having such a capital
piece of Mansfield news as the certainty of the Grants going to Bath,
occur at a time when she could make no advantage of it, and will admit
that it must have been very mortifying to her to see it fall to the
share of her thankless son, and treated as concisely as possible at the
end of a long letter, instead of having it to spread over the largest
part of a page of her own. For though Lady Bertram rather shone in the
epistolary line, having early in her marriage, from the want of other
employment, and the circumstance of Sir Thomas's being in Parliament,
got into the way of making and keeping correspondents, and formed for
herself a very creditable, common-place, amplifying style, so that a
very little matter was enough for her: she could not do entirely without
any; she must have something to write about, even to her niece; and
being so soon to lose all the benefit of Dr. Grant's gouty symptoms and
Mrs. Grant's morning calls, it was very hard upon her to be deprived of
one of the last epistolary uses she could put them to.

There was a rich amends, however, preparing for her. Lady Bertram's
hour of good luck came. Within a few days from the receipt of Edmund's
letter, Fanny had one from her aunt, beginning thus--

“My Dear Fanny,--I take up my pen to communicate some very alarming
intelligence, which I make no doubt will give you much concern”.

This was a great deal better than to have to take up the pen to acquaint
her with all the particulars of the Grants' intended journey, for the
present intelligence was of a nature to promise occupation for the pen
for many days to come, being no less than the dangerous illness of her
eldest son, of which they had received notice by express a few hours
before.

Tom had gone from London with a party of young men to Newmarket, where
a neglected fall and a good deal of drinking had brought on a fever; and
when the party broke up, being unable to move, had been left by himself
at the house of one of these young men to the comforts of sickness and
solitude, and the attendance only of servants. Instead of being soon
well enough to follow his friends, as he had then hoped, his disorder
increased considerably, and it was not long before he thought so ill of
himself as to be as ready as his physician to have a letter despatched
to Mansfield.

“This distressing intelligence, as you may suppose,” observed
her ladyship, after giving the substance of it, “has agitated us
exceedingly, and we cannot prevent ourselves from being greatly alarmed
and apprehensive for the poor invalid, whose state Sir Thomas fears
may be very critical; and Edmund kindly proposes attending his brother
immediately, but I am happy to add that Sir Thomas will not leave me on
this distressing occasion, as it would be too trying for me. We shall
greatly miss Edmund in our small circle, but I trust and hope he
will find the poor invalid in a less alarming state than might be
apprehended, and that he will be able to bring him to Mansfield shortly,
which Sir Thomas proposes should be done, and thinks best on every
account, and I flatter myself the poor sufferer will soon be able to
bear the removal without material inconvenience or injury. As I
have little doubt of your feeling for us, my dear Fanny, under these
distressing circumstances, I will write again very soon.”

Fanny's feelings on the occasion were indeed considerably more warm and
genuine than her aunt's style of writing. She felt truly for them all.
Tom dangerously ill, Edmund gone to attend him, and the sadly small
party remaining at Mansfield, were cares to shut out every other care,
or almost every other. She could just find selfishness enough to wonder
whether Edmund _had_ written to Miss Crawford before this summons came,
but no sentiment dwelt long with her that was not purely affectionate
and disinterestedly anxious. Her aunt did not neglect her: she wrote
again and again; they were receiving frequent accounts from Edmund,
and these accounts were as regularly transmitted to Fanny, in the same
diffuse style, and the same medley of trusts, hopes, and fears, all
following and producing each other at haphazard. It was a sort of
playing at being frightened. The sufferings which Lady Bertram did not
see had little power over her fancy; and she wrote very comfortably
about agitation, and anxiety, and poor invalids, till Tom was actually
conveyed to Mansfield, and her own eyes had beheld his altered
appearance. Then a letter which she had been previously preparing for
Fanny was finished in a different style, in the language of real feeling
and alarm; then she wrote as she might have spoken. “He is just come, my
dear Fanny, and is taken upstairs; and I am so shocked to see him, that
I do not know what to do. I am sure he has been very ill. Poor Tom! I am
quite grieved for him, and very much frightened, and so is Sir Thomas;
and how glad I should be if you were here to comfort me. But Sir
Thomas hopes he will be better to-morrow, and says we must consider his
journey.”

The real solicitude now awakened in the maternal bosom was not
soon over. Tom's extreme impatience to be removed to Mansfield, and
experience those comforts of home and family which had been little
thought of in uninterrupted health, had probably induced his being
conveyed thither too early, as a return of fever came on, and for a week
he was in a more alarming state than ever. They were all very seriously
frightened. Lady Bertram wrote her daily terrors to her niece, who
might now be said to live upon letters, and pass all her time between
suffering from that of to-day and looking forward to to-morrow's.
Without any particular affection for her eldest cousin, her tenderness
of heart made her feel that she could not spare him, and the purity of
her principles added yet a keener solicitude, when she considered how
little useful, how little self-denying his life had (apparently) been.

Susan was her only companion and listener on this, as on more common
occasions. Susan was always ready to hear and to sympathise. Nobody else
could be interested in so remote an evil as illness in a family above an
hundred miles off; not even Mrs. Price, beyond a brief question or two,
if she saw her daughter with a letter in her hand, and now and then the
quiet observation of, “My poor sister Bertram must be in a great deal of
trouble.”

So long divided and so differently situated, the ties of blood were
little more than nothing. An attachment, originally as tranquil as their
tempers, was now become a mere name. Mrs. Price did quite as much for
Lady Bertram as Lady Bertram would have done for Mrs. Price. Three or
four Prices might have been swept away, any or all except Fanny and
William, and Lady Bertram would have thought little about it; or perhaps
might have caught from Mrs. Norris's lips the cant of its being a very
happy thing and a great blessing to their poor dear sister Price to have
them so well provided for.



CHAPTER XLV

At about the week's end from his return to Mansfield, Tom's immediate
danger was over, and he was so far pronounced safe as to make his mother
perfectly easy; for being now used to the sight of him in his suffering,
helpless state, and hearing only the best, and never thinking beyond
what she heard, with no disposition for alarm and no aptitude at a hint,
Lady Bertram was the happiest subject in the world for a little medical
imposition. The fever was subdued; the fever had been his complaint;
of course he would soon be well again. Lady Bertram could think nothing
less, and Fanny shared her aunt's security, till she received a few
lines from Edmund, written purposely to give her a clearer idea of his
brother's situation, and acquaint her with the apprehensions which
he and his father had imbibed from the physician with respect to some
strong hectic symptoms, which seemed to seize the frame on the departure
of the fever. They judged it best that Lady Bertram should not be
harassed by alarms which, it was to be hoped, would prove unfounded;
but there was no reason why Fanny should not know the truth. They were
apprehensive for his lungs.

A very few lines from Edmund shewed her the patient and the sickroom
in a juster and stronger light than all Lady Bertram's sheets of paper
could do. There was hardly any one in the house who might not have
described, from personal observation, better than herself; not one who
was not more useful at times to her son. She could do nothing but glide
in quietly and look at him; but when able to talk or be talked to, or
read to, Edmund was the companion he preferred. His aunt worried him by
her cares, and Sir Thomas knew not how to bring down his conversation or
his voice to the level of irritation and feebleness. Edmund was all in
all. Fanny would certainly believe him so at least, and must find that
her estimation of him was higher than ever when he appeared as the
attendant, supporter, cheerer of a suffering brother. There was not only
the debility of recent illness to assist: there was also, as she now
learnt, nerves much affected, spirits much depressed to calm and raise,
and her own imagination added that there must be a mind to be properly
guided.

The family were not consumptive, and she was more inclined to hope than
fear for her cousin, except when she thought of Miss Crawford; but Miss
Crawford gave her the idea of being the child of good luck, and to her
selfishness and vanity it would be good luck to have Edmund the only
son.

Even in the sick chamber the fortunate Mary was not forgotten. Edmund's
letter had this postscript. “On the subject of my last, I had actually
begun a letter when called away by Tom's illness, but I have now changed
my mind, and fear to trust the influence of friends. When Tom is better,
I shall go.”

Such was the state of Mansfield, and so it continued, with scarcely any
change, till Easter. A line occasionally added by Edmund to his
mother's letter was enough for Fanny's information. Tom's amendment was
alarmingly slow.

Easter came particularly late this year, as Fanny had most sorrowfully
considered, on first learning that she had no chance of leaving
Portsmouth till after it. It came, and she had yet heard nothing of her
return--nothing even of the going to London, which was to precede
her return. Her aunt often expressed a wish for her, but there was no
notice, no message from the uncle on whom all depended. She supposed
he could not yet leave his son, but it was a cruel, a terrible delay
to her. The end of April was coming on; it would soon be almost three
months, instead of two, that she had been absent from them all, and that
her days had been passing in a state of penance, which she loved them
too well to hope they would thoroughly understand; and who could yet say
when there might be leisure to think of or fetch her?

Her eagerness, her impatience, her longings to be with them, were such
as to bring a line or two of Cowper's Tirocinium for ever before her.
“With what intense desire she wants her home,” was continually on her
tongue, as the truest description of a yearning which she could not
suppose any schoolboy's bosom to feel more keenly.

When she had been coming to Portsmouth, she had loved to call it her
home, had been fond of saying that she was going home; the word had
been very dear to her, and so it still was, but it must be applied to
Mansfield. _That_ was now the home. Portsmouth was Portsmouth; Mansfield
was home. They had been long so arranged in the indulgence of her secret
meditations, and nothing was more consolatory to her than to find her
aunt using the same language: “I cannot but say I much regret your being
from home at this distressing time, so very trying to my spirits. I
trust and hope, and sincerely wish you may never be absent from home so
long again,” were most delightful sentences to her. Still, however, it
was her private regale. Delicacy to her parents made her careful not to
betray such a preference of her uncle's house. It was always: “When I go
back into Northamptonshire, or when I return to Mansfield, I shall do
so and so.” For a great while it was so, but at last the longing grew
stronger, it overthrew caution, and she found herself talking of what
she should do when she went home before she was aware. She reproached
herself, coloured, and looked fearfully towards her father and mother.
She need not have been uneasy. There was no sign of displeasure, or even
of hearing her. They were perfectly free from any jealousy of Mansfield.
She was as welcome to wish herself there as to be there.

It was sad to Fanny to lose all the pleasures of spring. She had not
known before what pleasures she _had_ to lose in passing March and April
in a town. She had not known before how much the beginnings and progress
of vegetation had delighted her. What animation, both of body and mind,
she had derived from watching the advance of that season which cannot,
in spite of its capriciousness, be unlovely, and seeing its increasing
beauties from the earliest flowers in the warmest divisions of her
aunt's garden, to the opening of leaves of her uncle's plantations, and
the glory of his woods. To be losing such pleasures was no trifle; to
be losing them, because she was in the midst of closeness and noise,
to have confinement, bad air, bad smells, substituted for liberty,
freshness, fragrance, and verdure, was infinitely worse: but even these
incitements to regret were feeble, compared with what arose from the
conviction of being missed by her best friends, and the longing to be
useful to those who were wanting her!

Could she have been at home, she might have been of service to every
creature in the house. She felt that she must have been of use to all.
To all she must have saved some trouble of head or hand; and were it
only in supporting the spirits of her aunt Bertram, keeping her from
the evil of solitude, or the still greater evil of a restless, officious
companion, too apt to be heightening danger in order to enhance her own
importance, her being there would have been a general good. She loved to
fancy how she could have read to her aunt, how she could have talked to
her, and tried at once to make her feel the blessing of what was, and
prepare her mind for what might be; and how many walks up and down
stairs she might have saved her, and how many messages she might have
carried.

It astonished her that Tom's sisters could be satisfied with remaining
in London at such a time, through an illness which had now, under
different degrees of danger, lasted several weeks. _They_ might return
to Mansfield when they chose; travelling could be no difficulty to
_them_, and she could not comprehend how both could still keep away.
If Mrs. Rushworth could imagine any interfering obligations, Julia was
certainly able to quit London whenever she chose. It appeared from one
of her aunt's letters that Julia had offered to return if wanted, but
this was all. It was evident that she would rather remain where she was.

Fanny was disposed to think the influence of London very much at war
with all respectable attachments. She saw the proof of it in Miss
Crawford, as well as in her cousins; _her_ attachment to Edmund had been
respectable, the most respectable part of her character; her friendship
for herself had at least been blameless. Where was either sentiment now?
It was so long since Fanny had had any letter from her, that she had
some reason to think lightly of the friendship which had been so dwelt
on. It was weeks since she had heard anything of Miss Crawford or of
her other connexions in town, except through Mansfield, and she was
beginning to suppose that she might never know whether Mr. Crawford had
gone into Norfolk again or not till they met, and might never hear from
his sister any more this spring, when the following letter was received
to revive old and create some new sensations--

“Forgive me, my dear Fanny, as soon as you can, for my long silence, and
behave as if you could forgive me directly. This is my modest request
and expectation, for you are so good, that I depend upon being treated
better than I deserve, and I write now to beg an immediate answer. I
want to know the state of things at Mansfield Park, and you, no doubt,
are perfectly able to give it. One should be a brute not to feel for the
distress they are in; and from what I hear, poor Mr. Bertram has a bad
chance of ultimate recovery. I thought little of his illness at first.
I looked upon him as the sort of person to be made a fuss with, and to
make a fuss himself in any trifling disorder, and was chiefly concerned
for those who had to nurse him; but now it is confidently asserted that
he is really in a decline, that the symptoms are most alarming, and that
part of the family, at least, are aware of it. If it be so, I am sure
you must be included in that part, that discerning part, and therefore
entreat you to let me know how far I have been rightly informed. I need
not say how rejoiced I shall be to hear there has been any mistake, but
the report is so prevalent that I confess I cannot help trembling. To
have such a fine young man cut off in the flower of his days is most
melancholy. Poor Sir Thomas will feel it dreadfully. I really am quite
agitated on the subject. Fanny, Fanny, I see you smile and look cunning,
but, upon my honour, I never bribed a physician in my life. Poor young
man! If he is to die, there will be _two_ poor young men less in the
world; and with a fearless face and bold voice would I say to any one,
that wealth and consequence could fall into no hands more deserving of
them. It was a foolish precipitation last Christmas, but the evil of
a few days may be blotted out in part. Varnish and gilding hide many
stains. It will be but the loss of the Esquire after his name. With real
affection, Fanny, like mine, more might be overlooked. Write to me by
return of post, judge of my anxiety, and do not trifle with it. Tell me
the real truth, as you have it from the fountainhead. And now, do
not trouble yourself to be ashamed of either my feelings or your own.
Believe me, they are not only natural, they are philanthropic and
virtuous. I put it to your conscience, whether 'Sir Edmund' would not do
more good with all the Bertram property than any other possible 'Sir.'
Had the Grants been at home I would not have troubled you, but you are
now the only one I can apply to for the truth, his sisters not being
within my reach. Mrs. R. has been spending the Easter with the Aylmers
at Twickenham (as to be sure you know), and is not yet returned; and
Julia is with the cousins who live near Bedford Square, but I forget
their name and street. Could I immediately apply to either, however, I
should still prefer you, because it strikes me that they have all along
been so unwilling to have their own amusements cut up, as to shut their
eyes to the truth. I suppose Mrs. R.'s Easter holidays will not last
much longer; no doubt they are thorough holidays to her. The Aylmers
are pleasant people; and her husband away, she can have nothing but
enjoyment. I give her credit for promoting his going dutifully down to
Bath, to fetch his mother; but how will she and the dowager agree in one
house? Henry is not at hand, so I have nothing to say from him. Do not
you think Edmund would have been in town again long ago, but for this
illness?--Yours ever, Mary.”

“I had actually begun folding my letter when Henry walked in, but he
brings no intelligence to prevent my sending it. Mrs. R. knows a decline
is apprehended; he saw her this morning: she returns to Wimpole Street
to-day; the old lady is come. Now do not make yourself uneasy with any
queer fancies because he has been spending a few days at Richmond. He
does it every spring. Be assured he cares for nobody but you. At this
very moment he is wild to see you, and occupied only in contriving the
means for doing so, and for making his pleasure conduce to yours. In
proof, he repeats, and more eagerly, what he said at Portsmouth about
our conveying you home, and I join him in it with all my soul. Dear
Fanny, write directly, and tell us to come. It will do us all good.
He and I can go to the Parsonage, you know, and be no trouble to our
friends at Mansfield Park. It would really be gratifying to see them
all again, and a little addition of society might be of infinite use to
them; and as to yourself, you must feel yourself to be so wanted there,
that you cannot in conscience--conscientious as you are--keep away, when
you have the means of returning. I have not time or patience to give
half Henry's messages; be satisfied that the spirit of each and every
one is unalterable affection.”

Fanny's disgust at the greater part of this letter, with her extreme
reluctance to bring the writer of it and her cousin Edmund together,
would have made her (as she felt) incapable of judging impartially
whether the concluding offer might be accepted or not. To herself,
individually, it was most tempting. To be finding herself, perhaps
within three days, transported to Mansfield, was an image of the
greatest felicity, but it would have been a material drawback to be
owing such felicity to persons in whose feelings and conduct, at the
present moment, she saw so much to condemn: the sister's feelings,
the brother's conduct, _her_ cold-hearted ambition, _his_ thoughtless
vanity. To have him still the acquaintance, the flirt perhaps, of Mrs.
Rushworth! She was mortified. She had thought better of him. Happily,
however, she was not left to weigh and decide between opposite
inclinations and doubtful notions of right; there was no occasion to
determine whether she ought to keep Edmund and Mary asunder or not. She
had a rule to apply to, which settled everything. Her awe of her uncle,
and her dread of taking a liberty with him, made it instantly plain to
her what she had to do. She must absolutely decline the proposal. If he
wanted, he would send for her; and even to offer an early return was
a presumption which hardly anything would have seemed to justify. She
thanked Miss Crawford, but gave a decided negative. “Her uncle,
she understood, meant to fetch her; and as her cousin's illness had
continued so many weeks without her being thought at all necessary,
she must suppose her return would be unwelcome at present, and that she
should be felt an encumbrance.”

Her representation of her cousin's state at this time was exactly
according to her own belief of it, and such as she supposed would convey
to the sanguine mind of her correspondent the hope of everything she was
wishing for. Edmund would be forgiven for being a clergyman, it seemed,
under certain conditions of wealth; and this, she suspected, was all
the conquest of prejudice which he was so ready to congratulate himself
upon. She had only learnt to think nothing of consequence but money.



CHAPTER XLVI

As Fanny could not doubt that her answer was conveying a real
disappointment, she was rather in expectation, from her knowledge of
Miss Crawford's temper, of being urged again; and though no second
letter arrived for the space of a week, she had still the same feeling
when it did come.

On receiving it, she could instantly decide on its containing little
writing, and was persuaded of its having the air of a letter of haste
and business. Its object was unquestionable; and two moments were enough
to start the probability of its being merely to give her notice that
they should be in Portsmouth that very day, and to throw her into all
the agitation of doubting what she ought to do in such a case. If two
moments, however, can surround with difficulties, a third can disperse
them; and before she had opened the letter, the possibility of Mr. and
Miss Crawford's having applied to her uncle and obtained his permission
was giving her ease. This was the letter--

“A most scandalous, ill-natured rumour has just reached me, and I write,
dear Fanny, to warn you against giving the least credit to it, should it
spread into the country. Depend upon it, there is some mistake, and that
a day or two will clear it up; at any rate, that Henry is blameless, and
in spite of a moment's _etourderie_, thinks of nobody but you. Say not a
word of it; hear nothing, surmise nothing, whisper nothing till I
write again. I am sure it will be all hushed up, and nothing proved but
Rushworth's folly. If they are gone, I would lay my life they are only
gone to Mansfield Park, and Julia with them. But why would not you let
us come for you? I wish you may not repent it.--Yours, etc.”

Fanny stood aghast. As no scandalous, ill-natured rumour had reached
her, it was impossible for her to understand much of this strange
letter. She could only perceive that it must relate to Wimpole Street
and Mr. Crawford, and only conjecture that something very imprudent had
just occurred in that quarter to draw the notice of the world, and to
excite her jealousy, in Miss Crawford's apprehension, if she heard it.
Miss Crawford need not be alarmed for her. She was only sorry for the
parties concerned and for Mansfield, if the report should spread so far;
but she hoped it might not. If the Rushworths were gone themselves to
Mansfield, as was to be inferred from what Miss Crawford said, it was
not likely that anything unpleasant should have preceded them, or at
least should make any impression.

As to Mr. Crawford, she hoped it might give him a knowledge of his own
disposition, convince him that he was not capable of being steadily
attached to any one woman in the world, and shame him from persisting
any longer in addressing herself.

It was very strange! She had begun to think he really loved her, and to
fancy his affection for her something more than common; and his sister
still said that he cared for nobody else. Yet there must have been some
marked display of attentions to her cousin, there must have been some
strong indiscretion, since her correspondent was not of a sort to regard
a slight one.

Very uncomfortable she was, and must continue, till she heard from
Miss Crawford again. It was impossible to banish the letter from her
thoughts, and she could not relieve herself by speaking of it to any
human being. Miss Crawford need not have urged secrecy with so much
warmth; she might have trusted to her sense of what was due to her
cousin.

The next day came and brought no second letter. Fanny was disappointed.
She could still think of little else all the morning; but, when her
father came back in the afternoon with the daily newspaper as usual, she
was so far from expecting any elucidation through such a channel that
the subject was for a moment out of her head.

She was deep in other musing. The remembrance of her first evening in
that room, of her father and his newspaper, came across her. No candle
was now wanted. The sun was yet an hour and half above the horizon. She
felt that she had, indeed, been three months there; and the sun's rays
falling strongly into the parlour, instead of cheering, made her still
more melancholy, for sunshine appeared to her a totally different
thing in a town and in the country. Here, its power was only a glare:
a stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt
that might otherwise have slept. There was neither health nor gaiety in
sunshine in a town. She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud
of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls, marked by
her father's head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers, where
stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped
in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the
bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca's
hands had first produced it. Her father read his newspaper, and her
mother lamented over the ragged carpet as usual, while the tea was
in preparation, and wished Rebecca would mend it; and Fanny was first
roused by his calling out to her, after humphing and considering over
a particular paragraph: “What's the name of your great cousins in town,
Fan?”

A moment's recollection enabled her to say, “Rushworth, sir.”

“And don't they live in Wimpole Street?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, there's the devil to pay among them, that's all! There” (holding
out the paper to her); “much good may such fine relations do you. I
don't know what Sir Thomas may think of such matters; he may be too much
of the courtier and fine gentleman to like his daughter the less. But,
by G--! if she belonged to _me_, I'd give her the rope's end as long as
I could stand over her. A little flogging for man and woman too would be
the best way of preventing such things.”

Fanny read to herself that “it was with infinite concern the newspaper
had to announce to the world a matrimonial _fracas_ in the family of
Mr. R. of Wimpole Street; the beautiful Mrs. R., whose name had not long
been enrolled in the lists of Hymen, and who had promised to become
so brilliant a leader in the fashionable world, having quitted her
husband's roof in company with the well-known and captivating Mr. C.,
the intimate friend and associate of Mr. R., and it was not known even
to the editor of the newspaper whither they were gone.”

“It is a mistake, sir,” said Fanny instantly; “it must be a mistake, it
cannot be true; it must mean some other people.”

She spoke from the instinctive wish of delaying shame; she spoke with
a resolution which sprung from despair, for she spoke what she did not,
could not believe herself. It had been the shock of conviction as she
read. The truth rushed on her; and how she could have spoken at all,
how she could even have breathed, was afterwards matter of wonder to
herself.

Mr. Price cared too little about the report to make her much answer.
“It might be all a lie,” he acknowledged; “but so many fine ladies were
going to the devil nowadays that way, that there was no answering for
anybody.”

“Indeed, I hope it is not true,” said Mrs. Price plaintively; “it would
be so very shocking! If I have spoken once to Rebecca about that carpet,
I am sure I have spoke at least a dozen times; have not I, Betsey? And
it would not be ten minutes' work.”

The horror of a mind like Fanny's, as it received the conviction of such
guilt, and began to take in some part of the misery that must ensue, can
hardly be described. At first, it was a sort of stupefaction; but every
moment was quickening her perception of the horrible evil. She could not
doubt, she dared not indulge a hope, of the paragraph being false. Miss
Crawford's letter, which she had read so often as to make every line
her own, was in frightful conformity with it. Her eager defence of her
brother, her hope of its being _hushed_ _up_, her evident agitation,
were all of a piece with something very bad; and if there was a woman
of character in existence, who could treat as a trifle this sin of the
first magnitude, who would try to gloss it over, and desire to have it
unpunished, she could believe Miss Crawford to be the woman! Now she
could see her own mistake as to _who_ were gone, or _said_ to be
gone. It was not Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth; it was Mrs. Rushworth and Mr.
Crawford.

Fanny seemed to herself never to have been shocked before. There was no
possibility of rest. The evening passed without a pause of misery, the
night was totally sleepless. She passed only from feelings of sickness
to shudderings of horror; and from hot fits of fever to cold. The event
was so shocking, that there were moments even when her heart revolted
from it as impossible: when she thought it could not be. A woman married
only six months ago; a man professing himself devoted, even _engaged_ to
another; that other her near relation; the whole family, both families
connected as they were by tie upon tie; all friends, all intimate
together! It was too horrible a confusion of guilt, too gross a
complication of evil, for human nature, not in a state of utter
barbarism, to be capable of! yet her judgment told her it was so.
_His_ unsettled affections, wavering with his vanity, _Maria's_
decided attachment, and no sufficient principle on either side, gave it
possibility: Miss Crawford's letter stampt it a fact.

What would be the consequence? Whom would it not injure? Whose views
might it not affect? Whose peace would it not cut up for ever? Miss
Crawford, herself, Edmund; but it was dangerous, perhaps, to tread
such ground. She confined herself, or tried to confine herself, to the
simple, indubitable family misery which must envelop all, if it were
indeed a matter of certified guilt and public exposure. The mother's
sufferings, the father's; there she paused. Julia's, Tom's, Edmund's;
there a yet longer pause. They were the two on whom it would fall most
horribly. Sir Thomas's parental solicitude and high sense of honour and
decorum, Edmund's upright principles, unsuspicious temper, and genuine
strength of feeling, made her think it scarcely possible for them to
support life and reason under such disgrace; and it appeared to her
that, as far as this world alone was concerned, the greatest blessing to
every one of kindred with Mrs. Rushworth would be instant annihilation.

Nothing happened the next day, or the next, to weaken her terrors. Two
posts came in, and brought no refutation, public or private. There was
no second letter to explain away the first from Miss Crawford; there was
no intelligence from Mansfield, though it was now full time for her
to hear again from her aunt. This was an evil omen. She had, indeed,
scarcely the shadow of a hope to soothe her mind, and was reduced to so
low and wan and trembling a condition, as no mother, not unkind, except
Mrs. Price could have overlooked, when the third day did bring the
sickening knock, and a letter was again put into her hands. It bore the
London postmark, and came from Edmund.

“Dear Fanny,--You know our present wretchedness. May God support you
under your share! We have been here two days, but there is nothing to
be done. They cannot be traced. You may not have heard of the last
blow--Julia's elopement; she is gone to Scotland with Yates. She left
London a few hours before we entered it. At any other time this would
have been felt dreadfully. Now it seems nothing; yet it is an heavy
aggravation. My father is not overpowered. More cannot be hoped. He is
still able to think and act; and I write, by his desire, to propose your
returning home. He is anxious to get you there for my mother's sake. I
shall be at Portsmouth the morning after you receive this, and hope to
find you ready to set off for Mansfield. My father wishes you to invite
Susan to go with you for a few months. Settle it as you like; say what
is proper; I am sure you will feel such an instance of his kindness at
such a moment! Do justice to his meaning, however I may confuse it. You
may imagine something of my present state. There is no end of the evil
let loose upon us. You will see me early by the mail.--Yours, etc.”

Never had Fanny more wanted a cordial. Never had she felt such a one
as this letter contained. To-morrow! to leave Portsmouth to-morrow!
She was, she felt she was, in the greatest danger of being exquisitely
happy, while so many were miserable. The evil which brought such good
to her! She dreaded lest she should learn to be insensible of it. To be
going so soon, sent for so kindly, sent for as a comfort, and with leave
to take Susan, was altogether such a combination of blessings as set her
heart in a glow, and for a time seemed to distance every pain, and
make her incapable of suitably sharing the distress even of those
whose distress she thought of most. Julia's elopement could affect her
comparatively but little; she was amazed and shocked; but it could not
occupy her, could not dwell on her mind. She was obliged to call herself
to think of it, and acknowledge it to be terrible and grievous, or it
was escaping her, in the midst of all the agitating pressing joyful
cares attending this summons to herself.

There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for
relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy,
and her occupations were hopeful. She had so much to do, that not even
the horrible story of Mrs. Rushworth--now fixed to the last point of
certainty could affect her as it had done before. She had not time to
be miserable. Within twenty-four hours she was hoping to be gone; her
father and mother must be spoken to, Susan prepared, everything got
ready. Business followed business; the day was hardly long enough. The
happiness she was imparting, too, happiness very little alloyed by the
black communication which must briefly precede it--the joyful consent
of her father and mother to Susan's going with her--the general
satisfaction with which the going of both seemed regarded, and the
ecstasy of Susan herself, was all serving to support her spirits.

The affliction of the Bertrams was little felt in the family. Mrs. Price
talked of her poor sister for a few minutes, but how to find anything to
hold Susan's clothes, because Rebecca took away all the boxes and spoilt
them, was much more in her thoughts: and as for Susan, now unexpectedly
gratified in the first wish of her heart, and knowing nothing personally
of those who had sinned, or of those who were sorrowing--if she could
help rejoicing from beginning to end, it was as much as ought to be
expected from human virtue at fourteen.

As nothing was really left for the decision of Mrs. Price, or the good
offices of Rebecca, everything was rationally and duly accomplished,
and the girls were ready for the morrow. The advantage of much sleep
to prepare them for their journey was impossible. The cousin who was
travelling towards them could hardly have less than visited their
agitated spirits--one all happiness, the other all varying and
indescribable perturbation.

By eight in the morning Edmund was in the house. The girls heard his
entrance from above, and Fanny went down. The idea of immediately seeing
him, with the knowledge of what he must be suffering, brought back all
her own first feelings. He so near her, and in misery. She was ready to
sink as she entered the parlour. He was alone, and met her instantly;
and she found herself pressed to his heart with only these words, just
articulate, “My Fanny, my only sister; my only comfort now!” She could
say nothing; nor for some minutes could he say more.

He turned away to recover himself, and when he spoke again, though his
voice still faltered, his manner shewed the wish of self-command, and
the resolution of avoiding any farther allusion. “Have you breakfasted?
When shall you be ready? Does Susan go?” were questions following each
other rapidly. His great object was to be off as soon as possible. When
Mansfield was considered, time was precious; and the state of his own
mind made him find relief only in motion. It was settled that he should
order the carriage to the door in half an hour. Fanny answered for their
having breakfasted and being quite ready in half an hour. He had already
ate, and declined staying for their meal. He would walk round the
ramparts, and join them with the carriage. He was gone again; glad to
get away even from Fanny.

He looked very ill; evidently suffering under violent emotions, which he
was determined to suppress. She knew it must be so, but it was terrible
to her.

The carriage came; and he entered the house again at the same
moment, just in time to spend a few minutes with the family, and be a
witness--but that he saw nothing--of the tranquil manner in which the
daughters were parted with, and just in time to prevent their sitting
down to the breakfast-table, which, by dint of much unusual activity,
was quite and completely ready as the carriage drove from the door.
Fanny's last meal in her father's house was in character with her first:
she was dismissed from it as hospitably as she had been welcomed.

How her heart swelled with joy and gratitude as she passed the barriers
of Portsmouth, and how Susan's face wore its broadest smiles, may be
easily conceived. Sitting forwards, however, and screened by her bonnet,
those smiles were unseen.

The journey was likely to be a silent one. Edmund's deep sighs often
reached Fanny. Had he been alone with her, his heart must have opened
in spite of every resolution; but Susan's presence drove him quite into
himself, and his attempts to talk on indifferent subjects could never be
long supported.

Fanny watched him with never-failing solicitude, and sometimes catching
his eye, revived an affectionate smile, which comforted her; but the
first day's journey passed without her hearing a word from him on the
subjects that were weighing him down. The next morning produced a
little more. Just before their setting out from Oxford, while Susan was
stationed at a window, in eager observation of the departure of a
large family from the inn, the other two were standing by the fire; and
Edmund, particularly struck by the alteration in Fanny's looks, and from
his ignorance of the daily evils of her father's house, attributing an
undue share of the change, attributing _all_ to the recent event, took
her hand, and said in a low, but very expressive tone, “No wonder--you
must feel it--you must suffer. How a man who had once loved, could
desert you! But _yours_--your regard was new compared with----Fanny,
think of _me_!”

The first division of their journey occupied a long day, and brought
them, almost knocked up, to Oxford; but the second was over at a much
earlier hour. They were in the environs of Mansfield long before the
usual dinner-time, and as they approached the beloved place, the hearts
of both sisters sank a little. Fanny began to dread the meeting with her
aunts and Tom, under so dreadful a humiliation; and Susan to feel
with some anxiety, that all her best manners, all her lately acquired
knowledge of what was practised here, was on the point of being called
into action. Visions of good and ill breeding, of old vulgarisms and new
gentilities, were before her; and she was meditating much upon silver
forks, napkins, and finger-glasses. Fanny had been everywhere awake to
the difference of the country since February; but when they entered the
Park her perceptions and her pleasures were of the keenest sort. It was
three months, full three months, since her quitting it, and the
change was from winter to summer. Her eye fell everywhere on lawns
and plantations of the freshest green; and the trees, though not fully
clothed, were in that delightful state when farther beauty is known to
be at hand, and when, while much is actually given to the sight, more
yet remains for the imagination. Her enjoyment, however, was for herself
alone. Edmund could not share it. She looked at him, but he was leaning
back, sunk in a deeper gloom than ever, and with eyes closed, as if the
view of cheerfulness oppressed him, and the lovely scenes of home must
be shut out.

It made her melancholy again; and the knowledge of what must be enduring
there, invested even the house, modern, airy, and well situated as it
was, with a melancholy aspect.

By one of the suffering party within they were expected with such
impatience as she had never known before. Fanny had scarcely passed the
solemn-looking servants, when Lady Bertram came from the drawing-room
to meet her; came with no indolent step; and falling on her neck, said,
“Dear Fanny! now I shall be comfortable.”



CHAPTER XLVII

It had been a miserable party, each of the three believing themselves
most miserable. Mrs. Norris, however, as most attached to Maria, was
really the greatest sufferer. Maria was her first favourite, the dearest
of all; the match had been her own contriving, as she had been wont with
such pride of heart to feel and say, and this conclusion of it almost
overpowered her.

She was an altered creature, quieted, stupefied, indifferent to
everything that passed. The being left with her sister and nephew, and
all the house under her care, had been an advantage entirely thrown
away; she had been unable to direct or dictate, or even fancy herself
useful. When really touched by affliction, her active powers had been
all benumbed; and neither Lady Bertram nor Tom had received from her the
smallest support or attempt at support. She had done no more for them
than they had done for each other. They had been all solitary, helpless,
and forlorn alike; and now the arrival of the others only established
her superiority in wretchedness. Her companions were relieved, but there
was no good for _her_. Edmund was almost as welcome to his brother
as Fanny to her aunt; but Mrs. Norris, instead of having comfort from
either, was but the more irritated by the sight of the person whom, in
the blindness of her anger, she could have charged as the daemon of the
piece. Had Fanny accepted Mr. Crawford this could not have happened.

Susan too was a grievance. She had not spirits to notice her in more
than a few repulsive looks, but she felt her as a spy, and an intruder,
and an indigent niece, and everything most odious. By her other aunt,
Susan was received with quiet kindness. Lady Bertram could not give her
much time, or many words, but she felt her, as Fanny's sister, to have
a claim at Mansfield, and was ready to kiss and like her; and Susan
was more than satisfied, for she came perfectly aware that nothing but
ill-humour was to be expected from aunt Norris; and was so provided
with happiness, so strong in that best of blessings, an escape from
many certain evils, that she could have stood against a great deal more
indifference than she met with from the others.

She was now left a good deal to herself, to get acquainted with the
house and grounds as she could, and spent her days very happily in so
doing, while those who might otherwise have attended to her were shut
up, or wholly occupied each with the person quite dependent on them, at
this time, for everything like comfort; Edmund trying to bury his own
feelings in exertions for the relief of his brother's, and Fanny devoted
to her aunt Bertram, returning to every former office with more than
former zeal, and thinking she could never do enough for one who seemed
so much to want her.

To talk over the dreadful business with Fanny, talk and lament, was all
Lady Bertram's consolation. To be listened to and borne with, and hear
the voice of kindness and sympathy in return, was everything that could
be done for her. To be otherwise comforted was out of the question. The
case admitted of no comfort. Lady Bertram did not think deeply, but,
guided by Sir Thomas, she thought justly on all important points; and
she saw, therefore, in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither
endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little
of guilt and infamy.

Her affections were not acute, nor was her mind tenacious. After a time,
Fanny found it not impossible to direct her thoughts to other subjects,
and revive some interest in the usual occupations; but whenever Lady
Bertram _was_ fixed on the event, she could see it only in one light, as
comprehending the loss of a daughter, and a disgrace never to be wiped
off.

Fanny learnt from her all the particulars which had yet transpired. Her
aunt was no very methodical narrator, but with the help of some letters
to and from Sir Thomas, and what she already knew herself, and could
reasonably combine, she was soon able to understand quite as much as she
wished of the circumstances attending the story.

Mrs. Rushworth had gone, for the Easter holidays, to Twickenham, with
a family whom she had just grown intimate with: a family of lively,
agreeable manners, and probably of morals and discretion to suit, for to
_their_ house Mr. Crawford had constant access at all times. His having
been in the same neighbourhood Fanny already knew. Mr. Rushworth had
been gone at this time to Bath, to pass a few days with his mother, and
bring her back to town, and Maria was with these friends without any
restraint, without even Julia; for Julia had removed from Wimpole Street
two or three weeks before, on a visit to some relations of Sir Thomas;
a removal which her father and mother were now disposed to attribute
to some view of convenience on Mr. Yates's account. Very soon after the
Rushworths' return to Wimpole Street, Sir Thomas had received a letter
from an old and most particular friend in London, who hearing and
witnessing a good deal to alarm him in that quarter, wrote to recommend
Sir Thomas's coming to London himself, and using his influence with his
daughter to put an end to the intimacy which was already exposing her to
unpleasant remarks, and evidently making Mr. Rushworth uneasy.

Sir Thomas was preparing to act upon this letter, without communicating
its contents to any creature at Mansfield, when it was followed by
another, sent express from the same friend, to break to him the almost
desperate situation in which affairs then stood with the young people.
Mrs. Rushworth had left her husband's house: Mr. Rushworth had been
in great anger and distress to _him_ (Mr. Harding) for his advice; Mr.
Harding feared there had been _at_ _least_ very flagrant indiscretion.
The maidservant of Mrs. Rushworth, senior, threatened alarmingly. He
was doing all in his power to quiet everything, with the hope of Mrs.
Rushworth's return, but was so much counteracted in Wimpole Street by
the influence of Mr. Rushworth's mother, that the worst consequences
might be apprehended.

This dreadful communication could not be kept from the rest of the
family. Sir Thomas set off, Edmund would go with him, and the others had
been left in a state of wretchedness, inferior only to what followed
the receipt of the next letters from London. Everything was by that time
public beyond a hope. The servant of Mrs. Rushworth, the mother, had
exposure in her power, and supported by her mistress, was not to be
silenced. The two ladies, even in the short time they had been
together, had disagreed; and the bitterness of the elder against her
daughter-in-law might perhaps arise almost as much from the personal
disrespect with which she had herself been treated as from sensibility
for her son.

However that might be, she was unmanageable. But had she been less
obstinate, or of less weight with her son, who was always guided by the
last speaker, by the person who could get hold of and shut him up, the
case would still have been hopeless, for Mrs. Rushworth did not appear
again, and there was every reason to conclude her to be concealed
somewhere with Mr. Crawford, who had quitted his uncle's house, as for a
journey, on the very day of her absenting herself.

Sir Thomas, however, remained yet a little longer in town, in the hope
of discovering and snatching her from farther vice, though all was lost
on the side of character.

_His_ present state Fanny could hardly bear to think of. There was but
one of his children who was not at this time a source of misery to
him. Tom's complaints had been greatly heightened by the shock of his
sister's conduct, and his recovery so much thrown back by it, that even
Lady Bertram had been struck by the difference, and all her alarms were
regularly sent off to her husband; and Julia's elopement, the additional
blow which had met him on his arrival in London, though its force had
been deadened at the moment, must, she knew, be sorely felt. She saw
that it was. His letters expressed how much he deplored it. Under any
circumstances it would have been an unwelcome alliance; but to have it
so clandestinely formed, and such a period chosen for its completion,
placed Julia's feelings in a most unfavourable light, and severely
aggravated the folly of her choice. He called it a bad thing, done in
the worst manner, and at the worst time; and though Julia was yet as
more pardonable than Maria as folly than vice, he could not but
regard the step she had taken as opening the worst probabilities of a
conclusion hereafter like her sister's. Such was his opinion of the set
into which she had thrown herself.

Fanny felt for him most acutely. He could have no comfort but in Edmund.
Every other child must be racking his heart. His displeasure against
herself she trusted, reasoning differently from Mrs. Norris, would now
be done away. _She_ should be justified. Mr. Crawford would have fully
acquitted her conduct in refusing him; but this, though most material
to herself, would be poor consolation to Sir Thomas. Her uncle's
displeasure was terrible to her; but what could her justification or her
gratitude and attachment do for him? His stay must be on Edmund alone.

She was mistaken, however, in supposing that Edmund gave his father no
present pain. It was of a much less poignant nature than what the others
excited; but Sir Thomas was considering his happiness as very deeply
involved in the offence of his sister and friend; cut off by it, as
he must be, from the woman whom he had been pursuing with undoubted
attachment and strong probability of success; and who, in everything but
this despicable brother, would have been so eligible a connexion. He was
aware of what Edmund must be suffering on his own behalf, in addition
to all the rest, when they were in town: he had seen or conjectured
his feelings; and, having reason to think that one interview with Miss
Crawford had taken place, from which Edmund derived only increased
distress, had been as anxious on that account as on others to get him
out of town, and had engaged him in taking Fanny home to her aunt, with
a view to his relief and benefit, no less than theirs. Fanny was not in
the secret of her uncle's feelings, Sir Thomas not in the secret of Miss
Crawford's character. Had he been privy to her conversation with his
son, he would not have wished her to belong to him, though her twenty
thousand pounds had been forty.

That Edmund must be for ever divided from Miss Crawford did not admit
of a doubt with Fanny; and yet, till she knew that he felt the same, her
own conviction was insufficient. She thought he did, but she wanted to
be assured of it. If he would now speak to her with the unreserve which
had sometimes been too much for her before, it would be most consoling;
but _that_ she found was not to be. She seldom saw him: never alone. He
probably avoided being alone with her. What was to be inferred? That
his judgment submitted to all his own peculiar and bitter share of this
family affliction, but that it was too keenly felt to be a subject of
the slightest communication. This must be his state. He yielded, but it
was with agonies which did not admit of speech. Long, long would it be
ere Miss Crawford's name passed his lips again, or she could hope for a
renewal of such confidential intercourse as had been.

It _was_ long. They reached Mansfield on Thursday, and it was not till
Sunday evening that Edmund began to talk to her on the subject. Sitting
with her on Sunday evening--a wet Sunday evening--the very time of
all others when, if a friend is at hand, the heart must be opened, and
everything told; no one else in the room, except his mother, who,
after hearing an affecting sermon, had cried herself to sleep, it was
impossible not to speak; and so, with the usual beginnings, hardly to
be traced as to what came first, and the usual declaration that if she
would listen to him for a few minutes, he should be very brief, and
certainly never tax her kindness in the same way again; she need not
fear a repetition; it would be a subject prohibited entirely: he entered
upon the luxury of relating circumstances and sensations of the first
interest to himself, to one of whose affectionate sympathy he was quite
convinced.

How Fanny listened, with what curiosity and concern, what pain and what
delight, how the agitation of his voice was watched, and how carefully
her own eyes were fixed on any object but himself, may be imagined. The
opening was alarming. He had seen Miss Crawford. He had been invited to
see her. He had received a note from Lady Stornaway to beg him to call;
and regarding it as what was meant to be the last, last interview
of friendship, and investing her with all the feelings of shame and
wretchedness which Crawford's sister ought to have known, he had gone to
her in such a state of mind, so softened, so devoted, as made it for a
few moments impossible to Fanny's fears that it should be the last. But
as he proceeded in his story, these fears were over. She had met him,
he said, with a serious--certainly a serious--even an agitated air;
but before he had been able to speak one intelligible sentence, she had
introduced the subject in a manner which he owned had shocked him. “'I
heard you were in town,' said she; 'I wanted to see you. Let us talk
over this sad business. What can equal the folly of our two relations?'
I could not answer, but I believe my looks spoke. She felt reproved.
Sometimes how quick to feel! With a graver look and voice she then
added, 'I do not mean to defend Henry at your sister's expense.' So
she began, but how she went on, Fanny, is not fit, is hardly fit to be
repeated to you. I cannot recall all her words. I would not dwell upon
them if I could. Their substance was great anger at the _folly_ of each.
She reprobated her brother's folly in being drawn on by a woman whom he
had never cared for, to do what must lose him the woman he adored; but
still more the folly of poor Maria, in sacrificing such a situation,
plunging into such difficulties, under the idea of being really loved
by a man who had long ago made his indifference clear. Guess what I must
have felt. To hear the woman whom--no harsher name than folly given!
So voluntarily, so freely, so coolly to canvass it! No reluctance, no
horror, no feminine, shall I say, no modest loathings? This is what the
world does. For where, Fanny, shall we find a woman whom nature had so
richly endowed? Spoilt, spoilt!”

After a little reflection, he went on with a sort of desperate calmness.
“I will tell you everything, and then have done for ever. She saw it
only as folly, and that folly stamped only by exposure. The want of
common discretion, of caution: his going down to Richmond for the whole
time of her being at Twickenham; her putting herself in the power of
a servant; it was the detection, in short--oh, Fanny! it was the
detection, not the offence, which she reprobated. It was the imprudence
which had brought things to extremity, and obliged her brother to give
up every dearer plan in order to fly with her.”

He stopt. “And what,” said Fanny (believing herself required to speak),
“what could you say?”

“Nothing, nothing to be understood. I was like a man stunned. She
went on, began to talk of you; yes, then she began to talk of you,
regretting, as well she might, the loss of such a--. There she spoke
very rationally. But she has always done justice to you. 'He has thrown
away,' said she, 'such a woman as he will never see again. She would
have fixed him; she would have made him happy for ever.' My dearest
Fanny, I am giving you, I hope, more pleasure than pain by this
retrospect of what might have been--but what never can be now. You do
not wish me to be silent? If you do, give me but a look, a word, and I
have done.”

No look or word was given.

“Thank God,” said he. “We were all disposed to wonder, but it seems to
have been the merciful appointment of Providence that the heart which
knew no guile should not suffer. She spoke of you with high praise and
warm affection; yet, even here, there was alloy, a dash of evil; for in
the midst of it she could exclaim, 'Why would not she have him? It is
all her fault. Simple girl! I shall never forgive her. Had she accepted
him as she ought, they might now have been on the point of marriage, and
Henry would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object.
He would have taken no pains to be on terms with Mrs. Rushworth again.
It would have all ended in a regular standing flirtation, in yearly
meetings at Sotherton and Everingham.' Could you have believed it
possible? But the charm is broken. My eyes are opened.”

“Cruel!” said Fanny, “quite cruel. At such a moment to give way to
gaiety, to speak with lightness, and to you! Absolute cruelty.”

“Cruelty, do you call it? We differ there. No, hers is not a cruel
nature. I do not consider her as meaning to wound my feelings. The evil
lies yet deeper: in her total ignorance, unsuspiciousness of there being
such feelings; in a perversion of mind which made it natural to her to
treat the subject as she did. She was speaking only as she had been used
to hear others speak, as she imagined everybody else would speak. Hers
are not faults of temper. She would not voluntarily give unnecessary
pain to any one, and though I may deceive myself, I cannot but think
that for me, for my feelings, she would--Hers are faults of principle,
Fanny; of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind. Perhaps it
is best for me, since it leaves me so little to regret. Not so, however.
Gladly would I submit to all the increased pain of losing her, rather
than have to think of her as I do. I told her so.”

“Did you?”

“Yes; when I left her I told her so.”

“How long were you together?”

“Five-and-twenty minutes. Well, she went on to say that what remained
now to be done was to bring about a marriage between them. She spoke of
it, Fanny, with a steadier voice than I can.” He was obliged to pause
more than once as he continued. “'We must persuade Henry to marry
her,' said she; 'and what with honour, and the certainty of having shut
himself out for ever from Fanny, I do not despair of it. Fanny he must
give up. I do not think that even _he_ could now hope to succeed with
one of her stamp, and therefore I hope we may find no insuperable
difficulty. My influence, which is not small shall all go that way; and
when once married, and properly supported by her own family, people of
respectability as they are, she may recover her footing in society to a
certain degree. In some circles, we know, she would never be admitted,
but with good dinners, and large parties, there will always be those
who will be glad of her acquaintance; and there is, undoubtedly, more
liberality and candour on those points than formerly. What I advise
is, that your father be quiet. Do not let him injure his own cause by
interference. Persuade him to let things take their course. If by any
officious exertions of his, she is induced to leave Henry's protection,
there will be much less chance of his marrying her than if she remain
with him. I know how he is likely to be influenced. Let Sir Thomas trust
to his honour and compassion, and it may all end well; but if he get his
daughter away, it will be destroying the chief hold.'”

After repeating this, Edmund was so much affected that Fanny, watching
him with silent, but most tender concern, was almost sorry that the
subject had been entered on at all. It was long before he could speak
again. At last, “Now, Fanny,” said he, “I shall soon have done. I have
told you the substance of all that she said. As soon as I could speak,
I replied that I had not supposed it possible, coming in such a state of
mind into that house as I had done, that anything could occur to make
me suffer more, but that she had been inflicting deeper wounds in almost
every sentence. That though I had, in the course of our acquaintance,
been often sensible of some difference in our opinions, on points,
too, of some moment, it had not entered my imagination to conceive the
difference could be such as she had now proved it. That the manner in
which she treated the dreadful crime committed by her brother and my
sister (with whom lay the greater seduction I pretended not to say),
but the manner in which she spoke of the crime itself, giving it every
reproach but the right; considering its ill consequences only as they
were to be braved or overborne by a defiance of decency and impudence in
wrong; and last of all, and above all, recommending to us a compliance,
a compromise, an acquiescence in the continuance of the sin, on the
chance of a marriage which, thinking as I now thought of her brother,
should rather be prevented than sought; all this together most
grievously convinced me that I had never understood her before, and
that, as far as related to mind, it had been the creature of my own
imagination, not Miss Crawford, that I had been too apt to dwell on
for many months past. That, perhaps, it was best for me; I had less to
regret in sacrificing a friendship, feelings, hopes which must, at any
rate, have been torn from me now. And yet, that I must and would confess
that, could I have restored her to what she had appeared to me before,
I would infinitely prefer any increase of the pain of parting, for the
sake of carrying with me the right of tenderness and esteem. This is
what I said, the purport of it; but, as you may imagine, not spoken
so collectedly or methodically as I have repeated it to you. She was
astonished, exceedingly astonished--more than astonished. I saw her
change countenance. She turned extremely red. I imagined I saw a
mixture of many feelings: a great, though short struggle; half a wish of
yielding to truths, half a sense of shame, but habit, habit carried
it. She would have laughed if she could. It was a sort of laugh, as she
answered, 'A pretty good lecture, upon my word. Was it part of your last
sermon? At this rate you will soon reform everybody at Mansfield and
Thornton Lacey; and when I hear of you next, it may be as a celebrated
preacher in some great society of Methodists, or as a missionary into
foreign parts.' She tried to speak carelessly, but she was not so
careless as she wanted to appear. I only said in reply, that from my
heart I wished her well, and earnestly hoped that she might soon learn
to think more justly, and not owe the most valuable knowledge we could
any of us acquire, the knowledge of ourselves and of our duty, to the
lessons of affliction, and immediately left the room. I had gone a few
steps, Fanny, when I heard the door open behind me. 'Mr. Bertram,' said
she. I looked back. 'Mr. Bertram,' said she, with a smile; but it was
a smile ill-suited to the conversation that had passed, a saucy playful
smile, seeming to invite in order to subdue me; at least it appeared so
to me. I resisted; it was the impulse of the moment to resist, and still
walked on. I have since, sometimes, for a moment, regretted that I did
not go back, but I know I was right, and such has been the end of our
acquaintance. And what an acquaintance has it been! How have I been
deceived! Equally in brother and sister deceived! I thank you for your
patience, Fanny. This has been the greatest relief, and now we will have
done.”

And such was Fanny's dependence on his words, that for five minutes
she thought they _had_ done. Then, however, it all came on again, or
something very like it, and nothing less than Lady Bertram's rousing
thoroughly up could really close such a conversation. Till that
happened, they continued to talk of Miss Crawford alone, and how she had
attached him, and how delightful nature had made her, and how excellent
she would have been, had she fallen into good hands earlier. Fanny, now
at liberty to speak openly, felt more than justified in adding to
his knowledge of her real character, by some hint of what share his
brother's state of health might be supposed to have in her wish for a
complete reconciliation. This was not an agreeable intimation. Nature
resisted it for a while. It would have been a vast deal pleasanter to
have had her more disinterested in her attachment; but his vanity was
not of a strength to fight long against reason. He submitted to believe
that Tom's illness had influenced her, only reserving for himself this
consoling thought, that considering the many counteractions of opposing
habits, she had certainly been _more_ attached to him than could have
been expected, and for his sake been more near doing right. Fanny
thought exactly the same; and they were also quite agreed in their
opinion of the lasting effect, the indelible impression, which such
a disappointment must make on his mind. Time would undoubtedly abate
somewhat of his sufferings, but still it was a sort of thing which he
never could get entirely the better of; and as to his ever meeting with
any other woman who could--it was too impossible to be named but with
indignation. Fanny's friendship was all that he had to cling to.



CHAPTER XLVIII

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects
as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault
themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.

My Fanny, indeed, at this very time, I have the satisfaction of knowing,
must have been happy in spite of everything. She must have been a happy
creature in spite of all that she felt, or thought she felt, for the
distress of those around her. She had sources of delight that must force
their way. She was returned to Mansfield Park, she was useful, she was
beloved; she was safe from Mr. Crawford; and when Sir Thomas came back
she had every proof that could be given in his then melancholy state of
spirits, of his perfect approbation and increased regard; and happy as
all this must make her, she would still have been happy without any of
it, for Edmund was no longer the dupe of Miss Crawford.

It is true that Edmund was very far from happy himself. He was suffering
from disappointment and regret, grieving over what was, and wishing for
what could never be. She knew it was so, and was sorry; but it was with
a sorrow so founded on satisfaction, so tending to ease, and so much in
harmony with every dearest sensation, that there are few who might not
have been glad to exchange their greatest gaiety for it.

Sir Thomas, poor Sir Thomas, a parent, and conscious of errors in his
own conduct as a parent, was the longest to suffer. He felt that he
ought not to have allowed the marriage; that his daughter's sentiments
had been sufficiently known to him to render him culpable in authorising
it; that in so doing he had sacrificed the right to the expedient, and
been governed by motives of selfishness and worldly wisdom. These were
reflections that required some time to soften; but time will do almost
everything; and though little comfort arose on Mrs. Rushworth's side for
the misery she had occasioned, comfort was to be found greater than
he had supposed in his other children. Julia's match became a less
desperate business than he had considered it at first. She was humble,
and wishing to be forgiven; and Mr. Yates, desirous of being really
received into the family, was disposed to look up to him and be guided.
He was not very solid; but there was a hope of his becoming less
trifling, of his being at least tolerably domestic and quiet; and at any
rate, there was comfort in finding his estate rather more, and his debts
much less, than he had feared, and in being consulted and treated as
the friend best worth attending to. There was comfort also in Tom, who
gradually regained his health, without regaining the thoughtlessness and
selfishness of his previous habits. He was the better for ever for his
illness. He had suffered, and he had learned to think: two advantages
that he had never known before; and the self-reproach arising from the
deplorable event in Wimpole Street, to which he felt himself accessory
by all the dangerous intimacy of his unjustifiable theatre, made an
impression on his mind which, at the age of six-and-twenty, with no want
of sense or good companions, was durable in its happy effects. He became
what he ought to be: useful to his father, steady and quiet, and not
living merely for himself.

Here was comfort indeed! and quite as soon as Sir Thomas could place
dependence on such sources of good, Edmund was contributing to his
father's ease by improvement in the only point in which he had given
him pain before--improvement in his spirits. After wandering about and
sitting under trees with Fanny all the summer evenings, he had so well
talked his mind into submission as to be very tolerably cheerful again.

These were the circumstances and the hopes which gradually brought their
alleviation to Sir Thomas, deadening his sense of what was lost, and
in part reconciling him to himself; though the anguish arising from the
conviction of his own errors in the education of his daughters was never
to be entirely done away.

Too late he became aware how unfavourable to the character of any young
people must be the totally opposite treatment which Maria and Julia had
been always experiencing at home, where the excessive indulgence and
flattery of their aunt had been continually contrasted with his own
severity. He saw how ill he had judged, in expecting to counteract what
was wrong in Mrs. Norris by its reverse in himself; clearly saw that he
had but increased the evil by teaching them to repress their spirits in
his presence so as to make their real disposition unknown to him, and
sending them for all their indulgences to a person who had been able to
attach them only by the blindness of her affection, and the excess of
her praise.

Here had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was, he gradually
grew to feel that it had not been the most direful mistake in his plan
of education. Something must have been wanting _within_, or time would
have worn away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle, active
principle, had been wanting; that they had never been properly taught
to govern their inclinations and tempers by that sense of duty which can
alone suffice. They had been instructed theoretically in their religion,
but never required to bring it into daily practice. To be distinguished
for elegance and accomplishments, the authorised object of their youth,
could have had no useful influence that way, no moral effect on the
mind. He had meant them to be good, but his cares had been directed to
the understanding and manners, not the disposition; and of the necessity
of self-denial and humility, he feared they had never heard from any
lips that could profit them.

Bitterly did he deplore a deficiency which now he could scarcely
comprehend to have been possible. Wretchedly did he feel, that with all
the cost and care of an anxious and expensive education, he had brought
up his daughters without their understanding their first duties, or his
being acquainted with their character and temper.

The high spirit and strong passions of Mrs. Rushworth, especially, were
made known to him only in their sad result. She was not to be prevailed
on to leave Mr. Crawford. She hoped to marry him, and they continued
together till she was obliged to be convinced that such hope was vain,
and till the disappointment and wretchedness arising from the conviction
rendered her temper so bad, and her feelings for him so like hatred,
as to make them for a while each other's punishment, and then induce a
voluntary separation.

She had lived with him to be reproached as the ruin of all his happiness
in Fanny, and carried away no better consolation in leaving him than
that she _had_ divided them. What can exceed the misery of such a mind
in such a situation?

Mr. Rushworth had no difficulty in procuring a divorce; and so ended a
marriage contracted under such circumstances as to make any better end
the effect of good luck not to be reckoned on. She had despised him,
and loved another; and he had been very much aware that it was so. The
indignities of stupidity, and the disappointments of selfish passion,
can excite little pity. His punishment followed his conduct, as did a
deeper punishment the deeper guilt of his wife. _He_ was released from
the engagement to be mortified and unhappy, till some other pretty girl
could attract him into matrimony again, and he might set forward on a
second, and, it is to be hoped, more prosperous trial of the state: if
duped, to be duped at least with good humour and good luck; while she
must withdraw with infinitely stronger feelings to a retirement and
reproach which could allow no second spring of hope or character.

Where she could be placed became a subject of most melancholy and
momentous consultation. Mrs. Norris, whose attachment seemed to augment
with the demerits of her niece, would have had her received at home
and countenanced by them all. Sir Thomas would not hear of it; and Mrs.
Norris's anger against Fanny was so much the greater, from considering
_her_ residence there as the motive. She persisted in placing his
scruples to _her_ account, though Sir Thomas very solemnly assured her
that, had there been no young woman in question, had there been no young
person of either sex belonging to him, to be endangered by the society
or hurt by the character of Mrs. Rushworth, he would never have offered
so great an insult to the neighbourhood as to expect it to notice her.
As a daughter, he hoped a penitent one, she should be protected by him,
and secured in every comfort, and supported by every encouragement to do
right, which their relative situations admitted; but farther than _that_
he could not go. Maria had destroyed her own character, and he would
not, by a vain attempt to restore what never could be restored, by
affording his sanction to vice, or in seeking to lessen its disgrace, be
anywise accessory to introducing such misery in another man's family as
he had known himself.

It ended in Mrs. Norris's resolving to quit Mansfield and devote herself
to her unfortunate Maria, and in an establishment being formed for them
in another country, remote and private, where, shut up together with
little society, on one side no affection, on the other no judgment,
it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual
punishment.

Mrs. Norris's removal from Mansfield was the great supplementary comfort
of Sir Thomas's life. His opinion of her had been sinking from the day
of his return from Antigua: in every transaction together from that
period, in their daily intercourse, in business, or in chat, she had
been regularly losing ground in his esteem, and convincing him that
either time had done her much disservice, or that he had considerably
over-rated her sense, and wonderfully borne with her manners before. He
had felt her as an hourly evil, which was so much the worse, as there
seemed no chance of its ceasing but with life; she seemed a part of
himself that must be borne for ever. To be relieved from her, therefore,
was so great a felicity that, had she not left bitter remembrances
behind her, there might have been danger of his learning almost to
approve the evil which produced such a good.

She was regretted by no one at Mansfield. She had never been able to
attach even those she loved best; and since Mrs. Rushworth's elopement,
her temper had been in a state of such irritation as to make her
everywhere tormenting. Not even Fanny had tears for aunt Norris, not
even when she was gone for ever.

That Julia escaped better than Maria was owing, in some measure, to a
favourable difference of disposition and circumstance, but in a greater
to her having been less the darling of that very aunt, less flattered
and less spoilt. Her beauty and acquirements had held but a second
place. She had been always used to think herself a little inferior to
Maria. Her temper was naturally the easiest of the two; her feelings,
though quick, were more controllable, and education had not given her so
very hurtful a degree of self-consequence.

She had submitted the best to the disappointment in Henry Crawford.
After the first bitterness of the conviction of being slighted was over,
she had been tolerably soon in a fair way of not thinking of him again;
and when the acquaintance was renewed in town, and Mr. Rushworth's house
became Crawford's object, she had had the merit of withdrawing herself
from it, and of chusing that time to pay a visit to her other friends,
in order to secure herself from being again too much attracted. This had
been her motive in going to her cousin's. Mr. Yates's convenience had
had nothing to do with it. She had been allowing his attentions some
time, but with very little idea of ever accepting him; and had not her
sister's conduct burst forth as it did, and her increased dread of her
father and of home, on that event, imagining its certain consequence
to herself would be greater severity and restraint, made her hastily
resolve on avoiding such immediate horrors at all risks, it is probable
that Mr. Yates would never have succeeded. She had not eloped with any
worse feelings than those of selfish alarm. It had appeared to her the
only thing to be done. Maria's guilt had induced Julia's folly.

Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad domestic example,
indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long. Once
it had, by an opening undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of
happiness. Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one
amiable woman's affections, could he have found sufficient exultation
in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and
tenderness of Fanny Price, there would have been every probability of
success and felicity for him. His affection had already done something.
Her influence over him had already given him some influence over her.
Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt that more would have
been obtained, especially when that marriage had taken place, which
would have given him the assistance of her conscience in subduing her
first inclination, and brought them very often together. Would he have
persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward, and a reward
very voluntarily bestowed, within a reasonable period from Edmund's
marrying Mary.

Had he done as he intended, and as he knew he ought, by going down to
Everingham after his return from Portsmouth, he might have been deciding
his own happy destiny. But he was pressed to stay for Mrs. Fraser's
party; his staying was made of flattering consequence, and he was to
meet Mrs. Rushworth there. Curiosity and vanity were both engaged, and
the temptation of immediate pleasure was too strong for a mind unused to
make any sacrifice to right: he resolved to defer his Norfolk journey,
resolved that writing should answer the purpose of it, or that its
purpose was unimportant, and staid. He saw Mrs. Rushworth, was received
by her with a coldness which ought to have been repulsive, and have
established apparent indifference between them for ever; but he was
mortified, he could not bear to be thrown off by the woman whose smiles
had been so wholly at his command: he must exert himself to subdue so
proud a display of resentment; it was anger on Fanny's account; he must
get the better of it, and make Mrs. Rushworth Maria Bertram again in her
treatment of himself.

In this spirit he began the attack, and by animated perseverance had
soon re-established the sort of familiar intercourse, of gallantry,
of flirtation, which bounded his views; but in triumphing over the
discretion which, though beginning in anger, might have saved them both,
he had put himself in the power of feelings on her side more strong
than he had supposed. She loved him; there was no withdrawing attentions
avowedly dear to her. He was entangled by his own vanity, with as little
excuse of love as possible, and without the smallest inconstancy of mind
towards her cousin. To keep Fanny and the Bertrams from a knowledge of
what was passing became his first object. Secrecy could not have been
more desirable for Mrs. Rushworth's credit than he felt it for his own.
When he returned from Richmond, he would have been glad to see Mrs.
Rushworth no more. All that followed was the result of her imprudence;
and he went off with her at last, because he could not help it,
regretting Fanny even at the moment, but regretting her infinitely more
when all the bustle of the intrigue was over, and a very few months had
taught him, by the force of contrast, to place a yet higher value on the
sweetness of her temper, the purity of her mind, and the excellence of
her principles.

That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace, should in a just
measure attend _his_ share of the offence is, we know, not one of the
barriers which society gives to virtue. In this world the penalty is
less equal than could be wished; but without presuming to look forward
to a juster appointment hereafter, we may fairly consider a man of
sense, like Henry Crawford, to be providing for himself no small
portion of vexation and regret: vexation that must rise sometimes
to self-reproach, and regret to wretchedness, in having so requited
hospitality, so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most
estimable, and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom he had
rationally as well as passionately loved.

After what had passed to wound and alienate the two families, the
continuance of the Bertrams and Grants in such close neighbourhood would
have been most distressing; but the absence of the latter, for some
months purposely lengthened, ended very fortunately in the necessity, or
at least the practicability, of a permanent removal. Dr. Grant, through
an interest on which he had almost ceased to form hopes, succeeded to
a stall in Westminster, which, as affording an occasion for leaving
Mansfield, an excuse for residence in London, and an increase of income
to answer the expenses of the change, was highly acceptable to those who
went and those who staid.

Mrs. Grant, with a temper to love and be loved, must have gone with some
regret from the scenes and people she had been used to; but the same
happiness of disposition must in any place, and any society, secure her
a great deal to enjoy, and she had again a home to offer Mary; and Mary
had had enough of her own friends, enough of vanity, ambition, love, and
disappointment in the course of the last half-year, to be in need of the
true kindness of her sister's heart, and the rational tranquillity
of her ways. They lived together; and when Dr. Grant had brought on
apoplexy and death, by three great institutionary dinners in one week,
they still lived together; for Mary, though perfectly resolved against
ever attaching herself to a younger brother again, was long in finding
among the dashing representatives, or idle heir-apparents, who were at
the command of her beauty, and her £20,000, any one who could satisfy the
better taste she had acquired at Mansfield, whose character and manners
could authorise a hope of the domestic happiness she had there learned
to estimate, or put Edmund Bertram sufficiently out of her head.

Edmund had greatly the advantage of her in this respect. He had not to
wait and wish with vacant affections for an object worthy to succeed her
in them. Scarcely had he done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to
Fanny how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another
woman, before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of
woman might not do just as well, or a great deal better: whether Fanny
herself were not growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles
and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been; and whether it might
not be a possible, an hopeful undertaking to persuade her that her warm
and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.

I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may
be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable
passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as
to time in different people. I only entreat everybody to believe that
exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and
not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and
became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire.

With such a regard for her, indeed, as his had long been, a regard
founded on the most endearing claims of innocence and helplessness, and
completed by every recommendation of growing worth, what could be more
natural than the change? Loving, guiding, protecting her, as he had been
doing ever since her being ten years old, her mind in so great a degree
formed by his care, and her comfort depending on his kindness, an
object to him of such close and peculiar interest, dearer by all his own
importance with her than any one else at Mansfield, what was there now
to add, but that he should learn to prefer soft light eyes to sparkling
dark ones. And being always with her, and always talking confidentially,
and his feelings exactly in that favourable state which a recent
disappointment gives, those soft light eyes could not be very long in
obtaining the pre-eminence.

Having once set out, and felt that he had done so on this road to
happiness, there was nothing on the side of prudence to stop him or make
his progress slow; no doubts of her deserving, no fears of opposition of
taste, no need of drawing new hopes of happiness from dissimilarity
of temper. Her mind, disposition, opinions, and habits wanted no
half-concealment, no self-deception on the present, no reliance on
future improvement. Even in the midst of his late infatuation, he had
acknowledged Fanny's mental superiority. What must be his sense of it
now, therefore? She was of course only too good for him; but as nobody
minds having what is too good for them, he was very steadily earnest in
the pursuit of the blessing, and it was not possible that encouragement
from her should be long wanting. Timid, anxious, doubting as she was, it
was still impossible that such tenderness as hers should not, at times,
hold out the strongest hope of success, though it remained for a later
period to tell him the whole delightful and astonishing truth. His
happiness in knowing himself to have been so long the beloved of such a
heart, must have been great enough to warrant any strength of language
in which he could clothe it to her or to himself; it must have been
a delightful happiness. But there was happiness elsewhere which no
description can reach. Let no one presume to give the feelings of a
young woman on receiving the assurance of that affection of which she
has scarcely allowed herself to entertain a hope.

Their own inclinations ascertained, there were no difficulties behind,
no drawback of poverty or parent. It was a match which Sir Thomas's
wishes had even forestalled. Sick of ambitious and mercenary connexions,
prizing more and more the sterling good of principle and temper, and
chiefly anxious to bind by the strongest securities all that remained to
him of domestic felicity, he had pondered with genuine satisfaction on
the more than possibility of the two young friends finding their natural
consolation in each other for all that had occurred of disappointment to
either; and the joyful consent which met Edmund's application, the high
sense of having realised a great acquisition in the promise of Fanny for
a daughter, formed just such a contrast with his early opinion on the
subject when the poor little girl's coming had been first agitated, as
time is for ever producing between the plans and decisions of mortals,
for their own instruction, and their neighbours' entertainment.

Fanny was indeed the daughter that he wanted. His charitable kindness
had been rearing a prime comfort for himself. His liberality had a rich
repayment, and the general goodness of his intentions by her deserved
it. He might have made her childhood happier; but it had been an error
of judgment only which had given him the appearance of harshness, and
deprived him of her early love; and now, on really knowing each other,
their mutual attachment became very strong. After settling her at
Thornton Lacey with every kind attention to her comfort, the object of
almost every day was to see her there, or to get her away from it.

Selfishly dear as she had long been to Lady Bertram, she could not be
parted with willingly by _her_. No happiness of son or niece could make
her wish the marriage. But it was possible to part with her, because
Susan remained to supply her place. Susan became the stationary niece,
delighted to be so; and equally well adapted for it by a readiness of
mind, and an inclination for usefulness, as Fanny had been by sweetness
of temper, and strong feelings of gratitude. Susan could never be
spared. First as a comfort to Fanny, then as an auxiliary, and last as
her substitute, she was established at Mansfield, with every appearance
of equal permanency. Her more fearless disposition and happier nerves
made everything easy to her there. With quickness in understanding
the tempers of those she had to deal with, and no natural timidity to
restrain any consequent wishes, she was soon welcome and useful to all;
and after Fanny's removal succeeded so naturally to her influence over
the hourly comfort of her aunt, as gradually to become, perhaps, the
most beloved of the two. In _her_ usefulness, in Fanny's excellence,
in William's continued good conduct and rising fame, and in the general
well-doing and success of the other members of the family, all assisting
to advance each other, and doing credit to his countenance and aid, Sir
Thomas saw repeated, and for ever repeated, reason to rejoice in what he
had done for them all, and acknowledge the advantages of early hardship
and discipline, and the consciousness of being born to struggle and
endure.

With so much true merit and true love, and no want of fortune and
friends, the happiness of the married cousins must appear as secure as
earthly happiness can be. Equally formed for domestic life, and attached
to country pleasures, their home was the home of affection and comfort;
and to complete the picture of good, the acquisition of Mansfield
living, by the death of Dr. Grant, occurred just after they had been
married long enough to begin to want an increase of income, and feel
their distance from the paternal abode an inconvenience.

On that event they removed to Mansfield; and the Parsonage there,
which, under each of its two former owners, Fanny had never been able
to approach but with some painful sensation of restraint or alarm, soon
grew as dear to her heart, and as thoroughly perfect in her eyes, as
everything else within the view and patronage of Mansfield Park had long
been.


THE END






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Title: Pride and Prejudice

Author: Jane Austen

Posting Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1342]
Release Date: June, 1998
Last Updated: March 10, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIDE AND PREJUDICE ***




Produced by Anonymous Volunteers





PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

By Jane Austen



Chapter 1


It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession
of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his
first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds
of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property
of some one or other of their daughters.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that
Netherfield Park is let at last?”

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she
told me all about it.”

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

“Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.

“_You_ want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”

This was invitation enough.

“Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken
by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came
down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much
delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he
is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to
be in the house by the end of next week.”

“What is his name?”

“Bingley.”

“Is he married or single?”

“Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or
five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”

“How so? How can it affect them?”

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tiresome! You
must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.”

“Is that his design in settling here?”

“Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he
_may_ fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as
soon as he comes.”

“I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send
them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are
as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the
party.”

“My dear, you flatter me. I certainly _have_ had my share of beauty, but
I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five
grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty.”

“In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.”

“But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into
the neighbourhood.”

“It is more than I engage for, I assure you.”

“But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would
be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to
go, merely on that account, for in general, you know, they visit no
newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for _us_ to
visit him if you do not.”

“You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very
glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my
hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though
I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.”

“I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the
others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so
good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving _her_ the preference.”

“They have none of them much to recommend them,” replied he; “they are
all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of
quickness than her sisters.”

“Mr. Bennet, how _can_ you abuse your own children in such a way? You
take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves.”

“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They
are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration
these last twenty years at least.”

“Ah, you do not know what I suffer.”

“But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four
thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.”

“It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not
visit them.”

“Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them
all.”

Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour,
reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had
been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. _Her_ mind
was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding,
little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented,
she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her
daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.



Chapter 2


Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Bingley. He
had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring
his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was
paid she had no knowledge of it. It was then disclosed in the following
manner. Observing his second daughter employed in trimming a hat, he
suddenly addressed her with:

“I hope Mr. Bingley will like it, Lizzy.”

“We are not in a way to know _what_ Mr. Bingley likes,” said her mother
resentfully, “since we are not to visit.”

“But you forget, mamma,” said Elizabeth, “that we shall meet him at the
assemblies, and that Mrs. Long promised to introduce him.”

“I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two nieces
of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion
of her.”

“No more have I,” said Mr. Bennet; “and I am glad to find that you do
not depend on her serving you.”

Mrs. Bennet deigned not to make any reply, but, unable to contain
herself, began scolding one of her daughters.

“Don't keep coughing so, Kitty, for Heaven's sake! Have a little
compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.”

“Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,” said her father; “she times
them ill.”

“I do not cough for my own amusement,” replied Kitty fretfully. “When is
your next ball to be, Lizzy?”

“To-morrow fortnight.”

“Aye, so it is,” cried her mother, “and Mrs. Long does not come back
till the day before; so it will be impossible for her to introduce him,
for she will not know him herself.”

“Then, my dear, you may have the advantage of your friend, and introduce
Mr. Bingley to _her_.”

“Impossible, Mr. Bennet, impossible, when I am not acquainted with him
myself; how can you be so teasing?”

“I honour your circumspection. A fortnight's acquaintance is certainly
very little. One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a
fortnight. But if _we_ do not venture somebody else will; and after all,
Mrs. Long and her neices must stand their chance; and, therefore, as
she will think it an act of kindness, if you decline the office, I will
take it on myself.”

The girls stared at their father. Mrs. Bennet said only, “Nonsense,
nonsense!”

“What can be the meaning of that emphatic exclamation?” cried he. “Do
you consider the forms of introduction, and the stress that is laid on
them, as nonsense? I cannot quite agree with you _there_. What say you,
Mary? For you are a young lady of deep reflection, I know, and read
great books and make extracts.”

Mary wished to say something sensible, but knew not how.

“While Mary is adjusting her ideas,” he continued, “let us return to Mr.
Bingley.”

“I am sick of Mr. Bingley,” cried his wife.

“I am sorry to hear _that_; but why did not you tell me that before? If
I had known as much this morning I certainly would not have called
on him. It is very unlucky; but as I have actually paid the visit, we
cannot escape the acquaintance now.”

The astonishment of the ladies was just what he wished; that of Mrs.
Bennet perhaps surpassing the rest; though, when the first tumult of joy
was over, she began to declare that it was what she had expected all the
while.

“How good it was in you, my dear Mr. Bennet! But I knew I should
persuade you at last. I was sure you loved your girls too well to
neglect such an acquaintance. Well, how pleased I am! and it is such a
good joke, too, that you should have gone this morning and never said a
word about it till now.”

“Now, Kitty, you may cough as much as you choose,” said Mr. Bennet; and,
as he spoke, he left the room, fatigued with the raptures of his wife.

“What an excellent father you have, girls!” said she, when the door was
shut. “I do not know how you will ever make him amends for his kindness;
or me, either, for that matter. At our time of life it is not so
pleasant, I can tell you, to be making new acquaintances every day; but
for your sakes, we would do anything. Lydia, my love, though you _are_
the youngest, I dare say Mr. Bingley will dance with you at the next
ball.”

“Oh!” said Lydia stoutly, “I am not afraid; for though I _am_ the
youngest, I'm the tallest.”

The rest of the evening was spent in conjecturing how soon he would
return Mr. Bennet's visit, and determining when they should ask him to
dinner.



Chapter 3


Not all that Mrs. Bennet, however, with the assistance of her five
daughters, could ask on the subject, was sufficient to draw from her
husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley. They attacked him
in various ways--with barefaced questions, ingenious suppositions, and
distant surmises; but he eluded the skill of them all, and they were at
last obliged to accept the second-hand intelligence of their neighbour,
Lady Lucas. Her report was highly favourable. Sir William had been
delighted with him. He was quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely
agreeable, and, to crown the whole, he meant to be at the next assembly
with a large party. Nothing could be more delightful! To be fond of
dancing was a certain step towards falling in love; and very lively
hopes of Mr. Bingley's heart were entertained.

“If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield,”
 said Mrs. Bennet to her husband, “and all the others equally well
married, I shall have nothing to wish for.”

In a few days Mr. Bingley returned Mr. Bennet's visit, and sat about
ten minutes with him in his library. He had entertained hopes of being
admitted to a sight of the young ladies, of whose beauty he had
heard much; but he saw only the father. The ladies were somewhat more
fortunate, for they had the advantage of ascertaining from an upper
window that he wore a blue coat, and rode a black horse.

An invitation to dinner was soon afterwards dispatched; and already
had Mrs. Bennet planned the courses that were to do credit to her
housekeeping, when an answer arrived which deferred it all. Mr. Bingley
was obliged to be in town the following day, and, consequently, unable
to accept the honour of their invitation, etc. Mrs. Bennet was quite
disconcerted. She could not imagine what business he could have in town
so soon after his arrival in Hertfordshire; and she began to fear that
he might be always flying about from one place to another, and never
settled at Netherfield as he ought to be. Lady Lucas quieted her fears
a little by starting the idea of his being gone to London only to get
a large party for the ball; and a report soon followed that Mr. Bingley
was to bring twelve ladies and seven gentlemen with him to the assembly.
The girls grieved over such a number of ladies, but were comforted the
day before the ball by hearing, that instead of twelve he brought only
six with him from London--his five sisters and a cousin. And when
the party entered the assembly room it consisted of only five
altogether--Mr. Bingley, his two sisters, the husband of the eldest, and
another young man.

Mr. Bingley was good-looking and gentlemanlike; he had a pleasant
countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine women,
with an air of decided fashion. His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely
looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention
of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and
the report which was in general circulation within five minutes
after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen
pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he
was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great
admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust
which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be
proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all
his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most
forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared
with his friend.

Mr. Bingley had soon made himself acquainted with all the principal
people in the room; he was lively and unreserved, danced every dance,
was angry that the ball closed so early, and talked of giving
one himself at Netherfield. Such amiable qualities must speak for
themselves. What a contrast between him and his friend! Mr. Darcy danced
only once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Bingley, declined being
introduced to any other lady, and spent the rest of the evening in
walking about the room, speaking occasionally to one of his own party.
His character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man
in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come there again.
Amongst the most violent against him was Mrs. Bennet, whose dislike of
his general behaviour was sharpened into particular resentment by his
having slighted one of her daughters.

Elizabeth Bennet had been obliged, by the scarcity of gentlemen, to sit
down for two dances; and during part of that time, Mr. Darcy had been
standing near enough for her to hear a conversation between him and Mr.
Bingley, who came from the dance for a few minutes, to press his friend
to join it.

“Come, Darcy,” said he, “I must have you dance. I hate to see you
standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better
dance.”

“I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am
particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this
it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not
another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to
stand up with.”

“I would not be so fastidious as you are,” cried Mr. Bingley, “for a
kingdom! Upon my honour, I never met with so many pleasant girls in
my life as I have this evening; and there are several of them you see
uncommonly pretty.”

“_You_ are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room,” said Mr.
Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet.

“Oh! She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one
of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I
dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you.”

“Which do you mean?” and turning round he looked for a moment at
Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said:
“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt _me_; I am in no
humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted
by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her
smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.”

Mr. Bingley followed his advice. Mr. Darcy walked off; and Elizabeth
remained with no very cordial feelings toward him. She told the story,
however, with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively,
playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous.

The evening altogether passed off pleasantly to the whole family. Mrs.
Bennet had seen her eldest daughter much admired by the Netherfield
party. Mr. Bingley had danced with her twice, and she had been
distinguished by his sisters. Jane was as much gratified by this as
her mother could be, though in a quieter way. Elizabeth felt Jane's
pleasure. Mary had heard herself mentioned to Miss Bingley as the most
accomplished girl in the neighbourhood; and Catherine and Lydia had been
fortunate enough never to be without partners, which was all that they
had yet learnt to care for at a ball. They returned, therefore, in good
spirits to Longbourn, the village where they lived, and of which they
were the principal inhabitants. They found Mr. Bennet still up. With
a book he was regardless of time; and on the present occasion he had a
good deal of curiosity as to the event of an evening which had raised
such splendid expectations. He had rather hoped that his wife's views on
the stranger would be disappointed; but he soon found out that he had a
different story to hear.

“Oh! my dear Mr. Bennet,” as she entered the room, “we have had a most
delightful evening, a most excellent ball. I wish you had been there.
Jane was so admired, nothing could be like it. Everybody said how well
she looked; and Mr. Bingley thought her quite beautiful, and danced with
her twice! Only think of _that_, my dear; he actually danced with her
twice! and she was the only creature in the room that he asked a second
time. First of all, he asked Miss Lucas. I was so vexed to see him stand
up with her! But, however, he did not admire her at all; indeed, nobody
can, you know; and he seemed quite struck with Jane as she was going
down the dance. So he inquired who she was, and got introduced, and
asked her for the two next. Then the two third he danced with Miss King,
and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifth with Jane again,
and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the _Boulanger_--”

“If he had had any compassion for _me_,” cried her husband impatiently,
“he would not have danced half so much! For God's sake, say no more of
his partners. Oh that he had sprained his ankle in the first dance!”

“Oh! my dear, I am quite delighted with him. He is so excessively
handsome! And his sisters are charming women. I never in my life saw
anything more elegant than their dresses. I dare say the lace upon Mrs.
Hurst's gown--”

Here she was interrupted again. Mr. Bennet protested against any
description of finery. She was therefore obliged to seek another branch
of the subject, and related, with much bitterness of spirit and some
exaggeration, the shocking rudeness of Mr. Darcy.

“But I can assure you,” she added, “that Lizzy does not lose much by not
suiting _his_ fancy; for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at
all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that there was no enduring
him! He walked here, and he walked there, fancying himself so very
great! Not handsome enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my
dear, to have given him one of your set-downs. I quite detest the man.”



Chapter 4


When Jane and Elizabeth were alone, the former, who had been cautious in
her praise of Mr. Bingley before, expressed to her sister just how very
much she admired him.

“He is just what a young man ought to be,” said she, “sensible,
good-humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manners!--so much
ease, with such perfect good breeding!”

“He is also handsome,” replied Elizabeth, “which a young man ought
likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.”

“I was very much flattered by his asking me to dance a second time. I
did not expect such a compliment.”

“Did not you? I did for you. But that is one great difference between
us. Compliments always take _you_ by surprise, and _me_ never. What
could be more natural than his asking you again? He could not help
seeing that you were about five times as pretty as every other woman
in the room. No thanks to his gallantry for that. Well, he certainly is
very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a
stupider person.”

“Dear Lizzy!”

“Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general.
You never see a fault in anybody. All the world are good and agreeable
in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in your
life.”

“I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone; but I always speak
what I think.”

“I know you do; and it is _that_ which makes the wonder. With _your_
good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of
others! Affectation of candour is common enough--one meets with it
everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design--to take the
good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing
of the bad--belongs to you alone. And so you like this man's sisters,
too, do you? Their manners are not equal to his.”

“Certainly not--at first. But they are very pleasing women when you
converse with them. Miss Bingley is to live with her brother, and keep
his house; and I am much mistaken if we shall not find a very charming
neighbour in her.”

Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced; their behaviour at
the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more
quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister,
and with a judgement too unassailed by any attention to herself, she
was very little disposed to approve them. They were in fact very fine
ladies; not deficient in good humour when they were pleased, nor in the
power of making themselves agreeable when they chose it, but proud and
conceited. They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the
first private seminaries in town, had a fortune of twenty thousand
pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and of
associating with people of rank, and were therefore in every respect
entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of others. They were of
a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply
impressed on their memories than that their brother's fortune and their
own had been acquired by trade.

Mr. Bingley inherited property to the amount of nearly a hundred
thousand pounds from his father, who had intended to purchase an
estate, but did not live to do it. Mr. Bingley intended it likewise, and
sometimes made choice of his county; but as he was now provided with a
good house and the liberty of a manor, it was doubtful to many of those
who best knew the easiness of his temper, whether he might not spend the
remainder of his days at Netherfield, and leave the next generation to
purchase.

His sisters were anxious for his having an estate of his own; but,
though he was now only established as a tenant, Miss Bingley was by no
means unwilling to preside at his table--nor was Mrs. Hurst, who had
married a man of more fashion than fortune, less disposed to consider
his house as her home when it suited her. Mr. Bingley had not been of
age two years, when he was tempted by an accidental recommendation
to look at Netherfield House. He did look at it, and into it for
half-an-hour--was pleased with the situation and the principal
rooms, satisfied with what the owner said in its praise, and took it
immediately.

Between him and Darcy there was a very steady friendship, in spite of
great opposition of character. Bingley was endeared to Darcy by the
easiness, openness, and ductility of his temper, though no disposition
could offer a greater contrast to his own, and though with his own he
never appeared dissatisfied. On the strength of Darcy's regard, Bingley
had the firmest reliance, and of his judgement the highest opinion.
In understanding, Darcy was the superior. Bingley was by no means
deficient, but Darcy was clever. He was at the same time haughty,
reserved, and fastidious, and his manners, though well-bred, were not
inviting. In that respect his friend had greatly the advantage. Bingley
was sure of being liked wherever he appeared, Darcy was continually
giving offense.

The manner in which they spoke of the Meryton assembly was sufficiently
characteristic. Bingley had never met with more pleasant people or
prettier girls in his life; everybody had been most kind and attentive
to him; there had been no formality, no stiffness; he had soon felt
acquainted with all the room; and, as to Miss Bennet, he could not
conceive an angel more beautiful. Darcy, on the contrary, had seen a
collection of people in whom there was little beauty and no fashion, for
none of whom he had felt the smallest interest, and from none received
either attention or pleasure. Miss Bennet he acknowledged to be pretty,
but she smiled too much.

Mrs. Hurst and her sister allowed it to be so--but still they admired
her and liked her, and pronounced her to be a sweet girl, and one
whom they would not object to know more of. Miss Bennet was therefore
established as a sweet girl, and their brother felt authorized by such
commendation to think of her as he chose.



Chapter 5


Within a short walk of Longbourn lived a family with whom the Bennets
were particularly intimate. Sir William Lucas had been formerly in trade
in Meryton, where he had made a tolerable fortune, and risen to the
honour of knighthood by an address to the king during his mayoralty.
The distinction had perhaps been felt too strongly. It had given him a
disgust to his business, and to his residence in a small market town;
and, in quitting them both, he had removed with his family to a house
about a mile from Meryton, denominated from that period Lucas Lodge,
where he could think with pleasure of his own importance, and,
unshackled by business, occupy himself solely in being civil to all
the world. For, though elated by his rank, it did not render him
supercilious; on the contrary, he was all attention to everybody. By
nature inoffensive, friendly, and obliging, his presentation at St.
James's had made him courteous.

Lady Lucas was a very good kind of woman, not too clever to be a
valuable neighbour to Mrs. Bennet. They had several children. The eldest
of them, a sensible, intelligent young woman, about twenty-seven, was
Elizabeth's intimate friend.

That the Miss Lucases and the Miss Bennets should meet to talk over
a ball was absolutely necessary; and the morning after the assembly
brought the former to Longbourn to hear and to communicate.

“_You_ began the evening well, Charlotte,” said Mrs. Bennet with civil
self-command to Miss Lucas. “_You_ were Mr. Bingley's first choice.”

“Yes; but he seemed to like his second better.”

“Oh! you mean Jane, I suppose, because he danced with her twice. To be
sure that _did_ seem as if he admired her--indeed I rather believe he
_did_--I heard something about it--but I hardly know what--something
about Mr. Robinson.”

“Perhaps you mean what I overheard between him and Mr. Robinson; did not
I mention it to you? Mr. Robinson's asking him how he liked our Meryton
assemblies, and whether he did not think there were a great many
pretty women in the room, and _which_ he thought the prettiest? and his
answering immediately to the last question: 'Oh! the eldest Miss Bennet,
beyond a doubt; there cannot be two opinions on that point.'”

“Upon my word! Well, that is very decided indeed--that does seem as
if--but, however, it may all come to nothing, you know.”

“_My_ overhearings were more to the purpose than _yours_, Eliza,” said
Charlotte. “Mr. Darcy is not so well worth listening to as his friend,
is he?--poor Eliza!--to be only just _tolerable_.”

“I beg you would not put it into Lizzy's head to be vexed by his
ill-treatment, for he is such a disagreeable man, that it would be quite
a misfortune to be liked by him. Mrs. Long told me last night that he
sat close to her for half-an-hour without once opening his lips.”

“Are you quite sure, ma'am?--is not there a little mistake?” said Jane.
“I certainly saw Mr. Darcy speaking to her.”

“Aye--because she asked him at last how he liked Netherfield, and he
could not help answering her; but she said he seemed quite angry at
being spoke to.”

“Miss Bingley told me,” said Jane, “that he never speaks much,
unless among his intimate acquaintances. With _them_ he is remarkably
agreeable.”

“I do not believe a word of it, my dear. If he had been so very
agreeable, he would have talked to Mrs. Long. But I can guess how it
was; everybody says that he is eat up with pride, and I dare say he had
heard somehow that Mrs. Long does not keep a carriage, and had come to
the ball in a hack chaise.”

“I do not mind his not talking to Mrs. Long,” said Miss Lucas, “but I
wish he had danced with Eliza.”

“Another time, Lizzy,” said her mother, “I would not dance with _him_,
if I were you.”

“I believe, ma'am, I may safely promise you _never_ to dance with him.”

“His pride,” said Miss Lucas, “does not offend _me_ so much as pride
often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so
very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour,
should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a _right_
to be proud.”

“That is very true,” replied Elizabeth, “and I could easily forgive
_his_ pride, if he had not mortified _mine_.”

“Pride,” observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her
reflections, “is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have
ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human
nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us
who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some
quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different
things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may
be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of
ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

“If I were as rich as Mr. Darcy,” cried a young Lucas, who came with
his sisters, “I should not care how proud I was. I would keep a pack of
foxhounds, and drink a bottle of wine a day.”

“Then you would drink a great deal more than you ought,” said Mrs.
Bennet; “and if I were to see you at it, I should take away your bottle
directly.”

The boy protested that she should not; she continued to declare that she
would, and the argument ended only with the visit.



Chapter 6


The ladies of Longbourn soon waited on those of Netherfield. The visit
was soon returned in due form. Miss Bennet's pleasing manners grew on
the goodwill of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and though the mother was
found to be intolerable, and the younger sisters not worth speaking to,
a wish of being better acquainted with _them_ was expressed towards
the two eldest. By Jane, this attention was received with the greatest
pleasure, but Elizabeth still saw superciliousness in their treatment
of everybody, hardly excepting even her sister, and could not like them;
though their kindness to Jane, such as it was, had a value as arising in
all probability from the influence of their brother's admiration. It
was generally evident whenever they met, that he _did_ admire her and
to _her_ it was equally evident that Jane was yielding to the preference
which she had begun to entertain for him from the first, and was in a
way to be very much in love; but she considered with pleasure that it
was not likely to be discovered by the world in general, since Jane
united, with great strength of feeling, a composure of temper and a
uniform cheerfulness of manner which would guard her from the suspicions
of the impertinent. She mentioned this to her friend Miss Lucas.

“It may perhaps be pleasant,” replied Charlotte, “to be able to impose
on the public in such a case; but it is sometimes a disadvantage to be
so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill
from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and
it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in
the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every
attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all
_begin_ freely--a slight preference is natural enough; but there are
very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without
encouragement. In nine cases out of ten a woman had better show _more_
affection than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he
may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on.”

“But she does help him on, as much as her nature will allow. If I can
perceive her regard for him, he must be a simpleton, indeed, not to
discover it too.”

“Remember, Eliza, that he does not know Jane's disposition as you do.”

“But if a woman is partial to a man, and does not endeavour to conceal
it, he must find it out.”

“Perhaps he must, if he sees enough of her. But, though Bingley and Jane
meet tolerably often, it is never for many hours together; and, as they
always see each other in large mixed parties, it is impossible that
every moment should be employed in conversing together. Jane should
therefore make the most of every half-hour in which she can command his
attention. When she is secure of him, there will be more leisure for
falling in love as much as she chooses.”

“Your plan is a good one,” replied Elizabeth, “where nothing is in
question but the desire of being well married, and if I were determined
to get a rich husband, or any husband, I dare say I should adopt it. But
these are not Jane's feelings; she is not acting by design. As yet,
she cannot even be certain of the degree of her own regard nor of its
reasonableness. She has known him only a fortnight. She danced four
dances with him at Meryton; she saw him one morning at his own house,
and has since dined with him in company four times. This is not quite
enough to make her understand his character.”

“Not as you represent it. Had she merely _dined_ with him, she might
only have discovered whether he had a good appetite; but you must
remember that four evenings have also been spent together--and four
evenings may do a great deal.”

“Yes; these four evenings have enabled them to ascertain that they
both like Vingt-un better than Commerce; but with respect to any other
leading characteristic, I do not imagine that much has been unfolded.”

“Well,” said Charlotte, “I wish Jane success with all my heart; and
if she were married to him to-morrow, I should think she had as good a
chance of happiness as if she were to be studying his character for a
twelvemonth. Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If
the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or
ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the
least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to
have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as
possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your
life.”

“You make me laugh, Charlotte; but it is not sound. You know it is not
sound, and that you would never act in this way yourself.”

Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley's attentions to her sister, Elizabeth
was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some
interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely
allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the
ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticise. But no
sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she hardly
had a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered
uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To
this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had
detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry
in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and
pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those
of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of
this she was perfectly unaware; to her he was only the man who made
himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough
to dance with.

He began to wish to know more of her, and as a step towards conversing
with her himself, attended to her conversation with others. His doing so
drew her notice. It was at Sir William Lucas's, where a large party were
assembled.

“What does Mr. Darcy mean,” said she to Charlotte, “by listening to my
conversation with Colonel Forster?”

“That is a question which Mr. Darcy only can answer.”

“But if he does it any more I shall certainly let him know that I see
what he is about. He has a very satirical eye, and if I do not begin by
being impertinent myself, I shall soon grow afraid of him.”

On his approaching them soon afterwards, though without seeming to have
any intention of speaking, Miss Lucas defied her friend to mention such
a subject to him; which immediately provoking Elizabeth to do it, she
turned to him and said:

“Did you not think, Mr. Darcy, that I expressed myself uncommonly
well just now, when I was teasing Colonel Forster to give us a ball at
Meryton?”

“With great energy; but it is always a subject which makes a lady
energetic.”

“You are severe on us.”

“It will be _her_ turn soon to be teased,” said Miss Lucas. “I am going
to open the instrument, Eliza, and you know what follows.”

“You are a very strange creature by way of a friend!--always wanting me
to play and sing before anybody and everybody! If my vanity had taken
a musical turn, you would have been invaluable; but as it is, I would
really rather not sit down before those who must be in the habit of
hearing the very best performers.” On Miss Lucas's persevering, however,
she added, “Very well, if it must be so, it must.” And gravely glancing
at Mr. Darcy, “There is a fine old saying, which everybody here is of
course familiar with: 'Keep your breath to cool your porridge'; and I
shall keep mine to swell my song.”

Her performance was pleasing, though by no means capital. After a song
or two, and before she could reply to the entreaties of several that
she would sing again, she was eagerly succeeded at the instrument by her
sister Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in
the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always
impatient for display.

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her
application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited
manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she
had reached. Elizabeth, easy and unaffected, had been listened to with
much more pleasure, though not playing half so well; and Mary, at the
end of a long concerto, was glad to purchase praise and gratitude by
Scotch and Irish airs, at the request of her younger sisters, who,
with some of the Lucases, and two or three officers, joined eagerly in
dancing at one end of the room.

Mr. Darcy stood near them in silent indignation at such a mode of
passing the evening, to the exclusion of all conversation, and was too
much engrossed by his thoughts to perceive that Sir William Lucas was
his neighbour, till Sir William thus began:

“What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy! There
is nothing like dancing after all. I consider it as one of the first
refinements of polished society.”

“Certainly, sir; and it has the advantage also of being in vogue amongst
the less polished societies of the world. Every savage can dance.”

Sir William only smiled. “Your friend performs delightfully,” he
continued after a pause, on seeing Bingley join the group; “and I doubt
not that you are an adept in the science yourself, Mr. Darcy.”

“You saw me dance at Meryton, I believe, sir.”

“Yes, indeed, and received no inconsiderable pleasure from the sight. Do
you often dance at St. James's?”

“Never, sir.”

“Do you not think it would be a proper compliment to the place?”

“It is a compliment which I never pay to any place if I can avoid it.”

“You have a house in town, I conclude?”

Mr. Darcy bowed.

“I had once had some thought of fixing in town myself--for I am fond
of superior society; but I did not feel quite certain that the air of
London would agree with Lady Lucas.”

He paused in hopes of an answer; but his companion was not disposed
to make any; and Elizabeth at that instant moving towards them, he was
struck with the action of doing a very gallant thing, and called out to
her:

“My dear Miss Eliza, why are you not dancing? Mr. Darcy, you must allow
me to present this young lady to you as a very desirable partner. You
cannot refuse to dance, I am sure when so much beauty is before you.”
 And, taking her hand, he would have given it to Mr. Darcy who, though
extremely surprised, was not unwilling to receive it, when she instantly
drew back, and said with some discomposure to Sir William:

“Indeed, sir, I have not the least intention of dancing. I entreat you
not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a partner.”

Mr. Darcy, with grave propriety, requested to be allowed the honour of
her hand, but in vain. Elizabeth was determined; nor did Sir William at
all shake her purpose by his attempt at persuasion.

“You excel so much in the dance, Miss Eliza, that it is cruel to deny
me the happiness of seeing you; and though this gentleman dislikes the
amusement in general, he can have no objection, I am sure, to oblige us
for one half-hour.”

“Mr. Darcy is all politeness,” said Elizabeth, smiling.

“He is, indeed; but, considering the inducement, my dear Miss Eliza,
we cannot wonder at his complaisance--for who would object to such a
partner?”

Elizabeth looked archly, and turned away. Her resistance had not
injured her with the gentleman, and he was thinking of her with some
complacency, when thus accosted by Miss Bingley:

“I can guess the subject of your reverie.”

“I should imagine not.”

“You are considering how insupportable it would be to pass many evenings
in this manner--in such society; and indeed I am quite of your opinion.
I was never more annoyed! The insipidity, and yet the noise--the
nothingness, and yet the self-importance of all those people! What would
I give to hear your strictures on them!”

“Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more
agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure
which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.”

Miss Bingley immediately fixed her eyes on his face, and desired he
would tell her what lady had the credit of inspiring such reflections.
Mr. Darcy replied with great intrepidity:

“Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”

“Miss Elizabeth Bennet!” repeated Miss Bingley. “I am all astonishment.
How long has she been such a favourite?--and pray, when am I to wish you
joy?”

“That is exactly the question which I expected you to ask. A lady's
imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love
to matrimony, in a moment. I knew you would be wishing me joy.”

“Nay, if you are serious about it, I shall consider the matter is
absolutely settled. You will be having a charming mother-in-law, indeed;
and, of course, she will always be at Pemberley with you.”

He listened to her with perfect indifference while she chose to
entertain herself in this manner; and as his composure convinced her
that all was safe, her wit flowed long.



Chapter 7


Mr. Bennet's property consisted almost entirely in an estate of two
thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed,
in default of heirs male, on a distant relation; and their mother's
fortune, though ample for her situation in life, could but ill supply
the deficiency of his. Her father had been an attorney in Meryton, and
had left her four thousand pounds.

She had a sister married to a Mr. Phillips, who had been a clerk to
their father and succeeded him in the business, and a brother settled in
London in a respectable line of trade.

The village of Longbourn was only one mile from Meryton; a most
convenient distance for the young ladies, who were usually tempted
thither three or four times a week, to pay their duty to their aunt and
to a milliner's shop just over the way. The two youngest of the family,
Catherine and Lydia, were particularly frequent in these attentions;
their minds were more vacant than their sisters', and when nothing
better offered, a walk to Meryton was necessary to amuse their morning
hours and furnish conversation for the evening; and however bare of news
the country in general might be, they always contrived to learn some
from their aunt. At present, indeed, they were well supplied both with
news and happiness by the recent arrival of a militia regiment in the
neighbourhood; it was to remain the whole winter, and Meryton was the
headquarters.

Their visits to Mrs. Phillips were now productive of the most
interesting intelligence. Every day added something to their knowledge
of the officers' names and connections. Their lodgings were not long a
secret, and at length they began to know the officers themselves. Mr.
Phillips visited them all, and this opened to his nieces a store of
felicity unknown before. They could talk of nothing but officers; and
Mr. Bingley's large fortune, the mention of which gave animation
to their mother, was worthless in their eyes when opposed to the
regimentals of an ensign.

After listening one morning to their effusions on this subject, Mr.
Bennet coolly observed:

“From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two
of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but
I am now convinced.”

Catherine was disconcerted, and made no answer; but Lydia, with perfect
indifference, continued to express her admiration of Captain Carter,
and her hope of seeing him in the course of the day, as he was going the
next morning to London.

“I am astonished, my dear,” said Mrs. Bennet, “that you should be so
ready to think your own children silly. If I wished to think slightingly
of anybody's children, it should not be of my own, however.”

“If my children are silly, I must hope to be always sensible of it.”

“Yes--but as it happens, they are all of them very clever.”

“This is the only point, I flatter myself, on which we do not agree. I
had hoped that our sentiments coincided in every particular, but I must
so far differ from you as to think our two youngest daughters uncommonly
foolish.”

“My dear Mr. Bennet, you must not expect such girls to have the sense of
their father and mother. When they get to our age, I dare say they will
not think about officers any more than we do. I remember the time when
I liked a red coat myself very well--and, indeed, so I do still at my
heart; and if a smart young colonel, with five or six thousand a year,
should want one of my girls I shall not say nay to him; and I thought
Colonel Forster looked very becoming the other night at Sir William's in
his regimentals.”

“Mamma,” cried Lydia, “my aunt says that Colonel Forster and Captain
Carter do not go so often to Miss Watson's as they did when they first
came; she sees them now very often standing in Clarke's library.”

Mrs. Bennet was prevented replying by the entrance of the footman with
a note for Miss Bennet; it came from Netherfield, and the servant waited
for an answer. Mrs. Bennet's eyes sparkled with pleasure, and she was
eagerly calling out, while her daughter read,

“Well, Jane, who is it from? What is it about? What does he say? Well,
Jane, make haste and tell us; make haste, my love.”

“It is from Miss Bingley,” said Jane, and then read it aloud.

“MY DEAR FRIEND,--

“If you are not so compassionate as to dine to-day with Louisa and me,
we shall be in danger of hating each other for the rest of our lives,
for a whole day's tete-a-tete between two women can never end without a
quarrel. Come as soon as you can on receipt of this. My brother and the
gentlemen are to dine with the officers.--Yours ever,

“CAROLINE BINGLEY”

“With the officers!” cried Lydia. “I wonder my aunt did not tell us of
_that_.”

“Dining out,” said Mrs. Bennet, “that is very unlucky.”

“Can I have the carriage?” said Jane.

“No, my dear, you had better go on horseback, because it seems likely to
rain; and then you must stay all night.”

“That would be a good scheme,” said Elizabeth, “if you were sure that
they would not offer to send her home.”

“Oh! but the gentlemen will have Mr. Bingley's chaise to go to Meryton,
and the Hursts have no horses to theirs.”

“I had much rather go in the coach.”

“But, my dear, your father cannot spare the horses, I am sure. They are
wanted in the farm, Mr. Bennet, are they not?”

“They are wanted in the farm much oftener than I can get them.”

“But if you have got them to-day,” said Elizabeth, “my mother's purpose
will be answered.”

She did at last extort from her father an acknowledgment that the horses
were engaged. Jane was therefore obliged to go on horseback, and her
mother attended her to the door with many cheerful prognostics of a
bad day. Her hopes were answered; Jane had not been gone long before
it rained hard. Her sisters were uneasy for her, but her mother was
delighted. The rain continued the whole evening without intermission;
Jane certainly could not come back.

“This was a lucky idea of mine, indeed!” said Mrs. Bennet more than
once, as if the credit of making it rain were all her own. Till the
next morning, however, she was not aware of all the felicity of her
contrivance. Breakfast was scarcely over when a servant from Netherfield
brought the following note for Elizabeth:

“MY DEAREST LIZZY,--

“I find myself very unwell this morning, which, I suppose, is to be
imputed to my getting wet through yesterday. My kind friends will not
hear of my returning till I am better. They insist also on my seeing Mr.
Jones--therefore do not be alarmed if you should hear of his having been
to me--and, excepting a sore throat and headache, there is not much the
matter with me.--Yours, etc.”

“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Bennet, when Elizabeth had read the note
aloud, “if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of illness--if she
should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of
Mr. Bingley, and under your orders.”

“Oh! I am not afraid of her dying. People do not die of little trifling
colds. She will be taken good care of. As long as she stays there, it is
all very well. I would go and see her if I could have the carriage.”

Elizabeth, feeling really anxious, was determined to go to her, though
the carriage was not to be had; and as she was no horsewoman, walking
was her only alternative. She declared her resolution.

“How can you be so silly,” cried her mother, “as to think of such a
thing, in all this dirt! You will not be fit to be seen when you get
there.”

“I shall be very fit to see Jane--which is all I want.”

“Is this a hint to me, Lizzy,” said her father, “to send for the
horses?”

“No, indeed, I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing
when one has a motive; only three miles. I shall be back by dinner.”

“I admire the activity of your benevolence,” observed Mary, “but every
impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion,
exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.”

“We will go as far as Meryton with you,” said Catherine and Lydia.
Elizabeth accepted their company, and the three young ladies set off
together.

“If we make haste,” said Lydia, as they walked along, “perhaps we may
see something of Captain Carter before he goes.”

In Meryton they parted; the two youngest repaired to the lodgings of one
of the officers' wives, and Elizabeth continued her walk alone, crossing
field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing
over puddles with impatient activity, and finding herself at last
within view of the house, with weary ankles, dirty stockings, and a face
glowing with the warmth of exercise.

She was shown into the breakfast-parlour, where all but Jane were
assembled, and where her appearance created a great deal of surprise.
That she should have walked three miles so early in the day, in such
dirty weather, and by herself, was almost incredible to Mrs. Hurst and
Miss Bingley; and Elizabeth was convinced that they held her in contempt
for it. She was received, however, very politely by them; and in their
brother's manners there was something better than politeness; there
was good humour and kindness. Mr. Darcy said very little, and Mr.
Hurst nothing at all. The former was divided between admiration of the
brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion, and doubt as
to the occasion's justifying her coming so far alone. The latter was
thinking only of his breakfast.

Her inquiries after her sister were not very favourably answered. Miss
Bennet had slept ill, and though up, was very feverish, and not
well enough to leave her room. Elizabeth was glad to be taken to her
immediately; and Jane, who had only been withheld by the fear of giving
alarm or inconvenience from expressing in her note how much she longed
for such a visit, was delighted at her entrance. She was not equal,
however, to much conversation, and when Miss Bingley left them
together, could attempt little besides expressions of gratitude for the
extraordinary kindness she was treated with. Elizabeth silently attended
her.

When breakfast was over they were joined by the sisters; and Elizabeth
began to like them herself, when she saw how much affection and
solicitude they showed for Jane. The apothecary came, and having
examined his patient, said, as might be supposed, that she had caught
a violent cold, and that they must endeavour to get the better of it;
advised her to return to bed, and promised her some draughts. The advice
was followed readily, for the feverish symptoms increased, and her head
ached acutely. Elizabeth did not quit her room for a moment; nor were
the other ladies often absent; the gentlemen being out, they had, in
fact, nothing to do elsewhere.

When the clock struck three, Elizabeth felt that she must go, and very
unwillingly said so. Miss Bingley offered her the carriage, and she only
wanted a little pressing to accept it, when Jane testified such concern
in parting with her, that Miss Bingley was obliged to convert the offer
of the chaise to an invitation to remain at Netherfield for the present.
Elizabeth most thankfully consented, and a servant was dispatched to
Longbourn to acquaint the family with her stay and bring back a supply
of clothes.



Chapter 8


At five o'clock the two ladies retired to dress, and at half-past six
Elizabeth was summoned to dinner. To the civil inquiries which then
poured in, and amongst which she had the pleasure of distinguishing the
much superior solicitude of Mr. Bingley's, she could not make a very
favourable answer. Jane was by no means better. The sisters, on hearing
this, repeated three or four times how much they were grieved, how
shocking it was to have a bad cold, and how excessively they disliked
being ill themselves; and then thought no more of the matter: and their
indifference towards Jane when not immediately before them restored
Elizabeth to the enjoyment of all her former dislike.

Their brother, indeed, was the only one of the party whom she could
regard with any complacency. His anxiety for Jane was evident, and his
attentions to herself most pleasing, and they prevented her feeling
herself so much an intruder as she believed she was considered by the
others. She had very little notice from any but him. Miss Bingley was
engrossed by Mr. Darcy, her sister scarcely less so; and as for Mr.
Hurst, by whom Elizabeth sat, he was an indolent man, who lived only to
eat, drink, and play at cards; who, when he found her to prefer a plain
dish to a ragout, had nothing to say to her.

When dinner was over, she returned directly to Jane, and Miss Bingley
began abusing her as soon as she was out of the room. Her manners were
pronounced to be very bad indeed, a mixture of pride and impertinence;
she had no conversation, no style, no beauty. Mrs. Hurst thought the
same, and added:

“She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an excellent
walker. I shall never forget her appearance this morning. She really
looked almost wild.”

“She did, indeed, Louisa. I could hardly keep my countenance. Very
nonsensical to come at all! Why must _she_ be scampering about the
country, because her sister had a cold? Her hair, so untidy, so blowsy!”

“Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat, six inches deep
in mud, I am absolutely certain; and the gown which had been let down to
hide it not doing its office.”

“Your picture may be very exact, Louisa,” said Bingley; “but this was
all lost upon me. I thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet looked remarkably
well when she came into the room this morning. Her dirty petticoat quite
escaped my notice.”

“_You_ observed it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley; “and I am
inclined to think that you would not wish to see _your_ sister make such
an exhibition.”

“Certainly not.”

“To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is,
above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! What could she mean by
it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence,
a most country-town indifference to decorum.”

“It shows an affection for her sister that is very pleasing,” said
Bingley.

“I am afraid, Mr. Darcy,” observed Miss Bingley in a half whisper, “that
this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes.”

“Not at all,” he replied; “they were brightened by the exercise.” A
short pause followed this speech, and Mrs. Hurst began again:

“I have an excessive regard for Miss Jane Bennet, she is really a very
sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well settled. But with
such a father and mother, and such low connections, I am afraid there is
no chance of it.”

“I think I have heard you say that their uncle is an attorney in
Meryton.”

“Yes; and they have another, who lives somewhere near Cheapside.”

“That is capital,” added her sister, and they both laughed heartily.

“If they had uncles enough to fill _all_ Cheapside,” cried Bingley, “it
would not make them one jot less agreeable.”

“But it must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men of any
consideration in the world,” replied Darcy.

To this speech Bingley made no answer; but his sisters gave it their
hearty assent, and indulged their mirth for some time at the expense of
their dear friend's vulgar relations.

With a renewal of tenderness, however, they returned to her room on
leaving the dining-parlour, and sat with her till summoned to coffee.
She was still very poorly, and Elizabeth would not quit her at all, till
late in the evening, when she had the comfort of seeing her sleep, and
when it seemed to her rather right than pleasant that she should go
downstairs herself. On entering the drawing-room she found the whole
party at loo, and was immediately invited to join them; but suspecting
them to be playing high she declined it, and making her sister the
excuse, said she would amuse herself for the short time she could stay
below, with a book. Mr. Hurst looked at her with astonishment.

“Do you prefer reading to cards?” said he; “that is rather singular.”

“Miss Eliza Bennet,” said Miss Bingley, “despises cards. She is a great
reader, and has no pleasure in anything else.”

“I deserve neither such praise nor such censure,” cried Elizabeth; “I am
_not_ a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things.”

“In nursing your sister I am sure you have pleasure,” said Bingley; “and
I hope it will be soon increased by seeing her quite well.”

Elizabeth thanked him from her heart, and then walked towards the
table where a few books were lying. He immediately offered to fetch her
others--all that his library afforded.

“And I wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my own
credit; but I am an idle fellow, and though I have not many, I have more
than I ever looked into.”

Elizabeth assured him that she could suit herself perfectly with those
in the room.

“I am astonished,” said Miss Bingley, “that my father should have left
so small a collection of books. What a delightful library you have at
Pemberley, Mr. Darcy!”

“It ought to be good,” he replied, “it has been the work of many
generations.”

“And then you have added so much to it yourself, you are always buying
books.”

“I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as
these.”

“Neglect! I am sure you neglect nothing that can add to the beauties of
that noble place. Charles, when you build _your_ house, I wish it may be
half as delightful as Pemberley.”

“I wish it may.”

“But I would really advise you to make your purchase in that
neighbourhood, and take Pemberley for a kind of model. There is not a
finer county in England than Derbyshire.”

“With all my heart; I will buy Pemberley itself if Darcy will sell it.”

“I am talking of possibilities, Charles.”

“Upon my word, Caroline, I should think it more possible to get
Pemberley by purchase than by imitation.”

Elizabeth was so much caught with what passed, as to leave her very
little attention for her book; and soon laying it wholly aside, she drew
near the card-table, and stationed herself between Mr. Bingley and his
eldest sister, to observe the game.

“Is Miss Darcy much grown since the spring?” said Miss Bingley; “will
she be as tall as I am?”

“I think she will. She is now about Miss Elizabeth Bennet's height, or
rather taller.”

“How I long to see her again! I never met with anybody who delighted me
so much. Such a countenance, such manners! And so extremely accomplished
for her age! Her performance on the pianoforte is exquisite.”

“It is amazing to me,” said Bingley, “how young ladies can have patience
to be so very accomplished as they all are.”

“All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?”

“Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens, and
net purses. I scarcely know anyone who cannot do all this, and I am sure
I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being
informed that she was very accomplished.”

“Your list of the common extent of accomplishments,” said Darcy, “has
too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no
otherwise than by netting a purse or covering a screen. But I am very
far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I
cannot boast of knowing more than half-a-dozen, in the whole range of my
acquaintance, that are really accomplished.”

“Nor I, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley.

“Then,” observed Elizabeth, “you must comprehend a great deal in your
idea of an accomplished woman.”

“Yes, I do comprehend a great deal in it.”

“Oh! certainly,” cried his faithful assistant, “no one can be really
esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met
with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing,
dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides
all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of
walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word
will be but half-deserved.”

“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must
yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by
extensive reading.”

“I am no longer surprised at your knowing _only_ six accomplished women.
I rather wonder now at your knowing _any_.”

“Are you so severe upon your own sex as to doubt the possibility of all
this?”

“I never saw such a woman. I never saw such capacity, and taste, and
application, and elegance, as you describe united.”

Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley both cried out against the injustice of her
implied doubt, and were both protesting that they knew many women who
answered this description, when Mr. Hurst called them to order, with
bitter complaints of their inattention to what was going forward. As all
conversation was thereby at an end, Elizabeth soon afterwards left the
room.

“Elizabeth Bennet,” said Miss Bingley, when the door was closed on her,
“is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the
other sex by undervaluing their own; and with many men, I dare say, it
succeeds. But, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art.”

“Undoubtedly,” replied Darcy, to whom this remark was chiefly addressed,
“there is a meanness in _all_ the arts which ladies sometimes condescend
to employ for captivation. Whatever bears affinity to cunning is
despicable.”

Miss Bingley was not so entirely satisfied with this reply as to
continue the subject.

Elizabeth joined them again only to say that her sister was worse, and
that she could not leave her. Bingley urged Mr. Jones being sent for
immediately; while his sisters, convinced that no country advice could
be of any service, recommended an express to town for one of the most
eminent physicians. This she would not hear of; but she was not so
unwilling to comply with their brother's proposal; and it was settled
that Mr. Jones should be sent for early in the morning, if Miss Bennet
were not decidedly better. Bingley was quite uncomfortable; his sisters
declared that they were miserable. They solaced their wretchedness,
however, by duets after supper, while he could find no better relief
to his feelings than by giving his housekeeper directions that every
attention might be paid to the sick lady and her sister.



Chapter 9


Elizabeth passed the chief of the night in her sister's room, and in the
morning had the pleasure of being able to send a tolerable answer to the
inquiries which she very early received from Mr. Bingley by a housemaid,
and some time afterwards from the two elegant ladies who waited on his
sisters. In spite of this amendment, however, she requested to have a
note sent to Longbourn, desiring her mother to visit Jane, and form her
own judgement of her situation. The note was immediately dispatched, and
its contents as quickly complied with. Mrs. Bennet, accompanied by her
two youngest girls, reached Netherfield soon after the family breakfast.

Had she found Jane in any apparent danger, Mrs. Bennet would have been
very miserable; but being satisfied on seeing her that her illness was
not alarming, she had no wish of her recovering immediately, as her
restoration to health would probably remove her from Netherfield. She
would not listen, therefore, to her daughter's proposal of being carried
home; neither did the apothecary, who arrived about the same time, think
it at all advisable. After sitting a little while with Jane, on Miss
Bingley's appearance and invitation, the mother and three daughters all
attended her into the breakfast parlour. Bingley met them with hopes
that Mrs. Bennet had not found Miss Bennet worse than she expected.

“Indeed I have, sir,” was her answer. “She is a great deal too ill to be
moved. Mr. Jones says we must not think of moving her. We must trespass
a little longer on your kindness.”

“Removed!” cried Bingley. “It must not be thought of. My sister, I am
sure, will not hear of her removal.”

“You may depend upon it, Madam,” said Miss Bingley, with cold civility,
“that Miss Bennet will receive every possible attention while she
remains with us.”

Mrs. Bennet was profuse in her acknowledgments.

“I am sure,” she added, “if it was not for such good friends I do not
know what would become of her, for she is very ill indeed, and suffers
a vast deal, though with the greatest patience in the world, which is
always the way with her, for she has, without exception, the sweetest
temper I have ever met with. I often tell my other girls they are
nothing to _her_. You have a sweet room here, Mr. Bingley, and a
charming prospect over the gravel walk. I do not know a place in the
country that is equal to Netherfield. You will not think of quitting it
in a hurry, I hope, though you have but a short lease.”

“Whatever I do is done in a hurry,” replied he; “and therefore if I
should resolve to quit Netherfield, I should probably be off in five
minutes. At present, however, I consider myself as quite fixed here.”

“That is exactly what I should have supposed of you,” said Elizabeth.

“You begin to comprehend me, do you?” cried he, turning towards her.

“Oh! yes--I understand you perfectly.”

“I wish I might take this for a compliment; but to be so easily seen
through I am afraid is pitiful.”

“That is as it happens. It does not follow that a deep, intricate
character is more or less estimable than such a one as yours.”

“Lizzy,” cried her mother, “remember where you are, and do not run on in
the wild manner that you are suffered to do at home.”

“I did not know before,” continued Bingley immediately, “that you were a
studier of character. It must be an amusing study.”

“Yes, but intricate characters are the _most_ amusing. They have at
least that advantage.”

“The country,” said Darcy, “can in general supply but a few subjects for
such a study. In a country neighbourhood you move in a very confined and
unvarying society.”

“But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be
observed in them for ever.”

“Yes, indeed,” cried Mrs. Bennet, offended by his manner of mentioning
a country neighbourhood. “I assure you there is quite as much of _that_
going on in the country as in town.”

Everybody was surprised, and Darcy, after looking at her for a moment,
turned silently away. Mrs. Bennet, who fancied she had gained a complete
victory over him, continued her triumph.

“I cannot see that London has any great advantage over the country, for
my part, except the shops and public places. The country is a vast deal
pleasanter, is it not, Mr. Bingley?”

“When I am in the country,” he replied, “I never wish to leave it;
and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have each their
advantages, and I can be equally happy in either.”

“Aye--that is because you have the right disposition. But that
gentleman,” looking at Darcy, “seemed to think the country was nothing
at all.”

“Indeed, Mamma, you are mistaken,” said Elizabeth, blushing for her
mother. “You quite mistook Mr. Darcy. He only meant that there was not
such a variety of people to be met with in the country as in the town,
which you must acknowledge to be true.”

“Certainly, my dear, nobody said there were; but as to not meeting
with many people in this neighbourhood, I believe there are few
neighbourhoods larger. I know we dine with four-and-twenty families.”

Nothing but concern for Elizabeth could enable Bingley to keep his
countenance. His sister was less delicate, and directed her eyes towards
Mr. Darcy with a very expressive smile. Elizabeth, for the sake of
saying something that might turn her mother's thoughts, now asked her if
Charlotte Lucas had been at Longbourn since _her_ coming away.

“Yes, she called yesterday with her father. What an agreeable man Sir
William is, Mr. Bingley, is not he? So much the man of fashion! So
genteel and easy! He has always something to say to everybody. _That_
is my idea of good breeding; and those persons who fancy themselves very
important, and never open their mouths, quite mistake the matter.”

“Did Charlotte dine with you?”

“No, she would go home. I fancy she was wanted about the mince-pies. For
my part, Mr. Bingley, I always keep servants that can do their own work;
_my_ daughters are brought up very differently. But everybody is to
judge for themselves, and the Lucases are a very good sort of girls,
I assure you. It is a pity they are not handsome! Not that I think
Charlotte so _very_ plain--but then she is our particular friend.”

“She seems a very pleasant young woman.”

“Oh! dear, yes; but you must own she is very plain. Lady Lucas herself
has often said so, and envied me Jane's beauty. I do not like to boast
of my own child, but to be sure, Jane--one does not often see anybody
better looking. It is what everybody says. I do not trust my own
partiality. When she was only fifteen, there was a man at my brother
Gardiner's in town so much in love with her that my sister-in-law was
sure he would make her an offer before we came away. But, however, he
did not. Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some verses
on her, and very pretty they were.”

“And so ended his affection,” said Elizabeth impatiently. “There has
been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first
discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!”

“I have been used to consider poetry as the _food_ of love,” said Darcy.

“Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is
strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I
am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.”

Darcy only smiled; and the general pause which ensued made Elizabeth
tremble lest her mother should be exposing herself again. She longed to
speak, but could think of nothing to say; and after a short silence Mrs.
Bennet began repeating her thanks to Mr. Bingley for his kindness to
Jane, with an apology for troubling him also with Lizzy. Mr. Bingley was
unaffectedly civil in his answer, and forced his younger sister to be
civil also, and say what the occasion required. She performed her part
indeed without much graciousness, but Mrs. Bennet was satisfied, and
soon afterwards ordered her carriage. Upon this signal, the youngest of
her daughters put herself forward. The two girls had been whispering to
each other during the whole visit, and the result of it was, that the
youngest should tax Mr. Bingley with having promised on his first coming
into the country to give a ball at Netherfield.

Lydia was a stout, well-grown girl of fifteen, with a fine complexion
and good-humoured countenance; a favourite with her mother, whose
affection had brought her into public at an early age. She had high
animal spirits, and a sort of natural self-consequence, which the
attention of the officers, to whom her uncle's good dinners, and her own
easy manners recommended her, had increased into assurance. She was very
equal, therefore, to address Mr. Bingley on the subject of the ball, and
abruptly reminded him of his promise; adding, that it would be the most
shameful thing in the world if he did not keep it. His answer to this
sudden attack was delightful to their mother's ear:

“I am perfectly ready, I assure you, to keep my engagement; and when
your sister is recovered, you shall, if you please, name the very day of
the ball. But you would not wish to be dancing when she is ill.”

Lydia declared herself satisfied. “Oh! yes--it would be much better to
wait till Jane was well, and by that time most likely Captain Carter
would be at Meryton again. And when you have given _your_ ball,” she
added, “I shall insist on their giving one also. I shall tell Colonel
Forster it will be quite a shame if he does not.”

Mrs. Bennet and her daughters then departed, and Elizabeth returned
instantly to Jane, leaving her own and her relations' behaviour to the
remarks of the two ladies and Mr. Darcy; the latter of whom, however,
could not be prevailed on to join in their censure of _her_, in spite of
all Miss Bingley's witticisms on _fine eyes_.



Chapter 10


The day passed much as the day before had done. Mrs. Hurst and Miss
Bingley had spent some hours of the morning with the invalid, who
continued, though slowly, to mend; and in the evening Elizabeth joined
their party in the drawing-room. The loo-table, however, did not appear.
Mr. Darcy was writing, and Miss Bingley, seated near him, was watching
the progress of his letter and repeatedly calling off his attention by
messages to his sister. Mr. Hurst and Mr. Bingley were at piquet, and
Mrs. Hurst was observing their game.

Elizabeth took up some needlework, and was sufficiently amused in
attending to what passed between Darcy and his companion. The perpetual
commendations of the lady, either on his handwriting, or on the evenness
of his lines, or on the length of his letter, with the perfect unconcern
with which her praises were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was
exactly in union with her opinion of each.

“How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter!”

He made no answer.

“You write uncommonly fast.”

“You are mistaken. I write rather slowly.”

“How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of a
year! Letters of business, too! How odious I should think them!”

“It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of yours.”

“Pray tell your sister that I long to see her.”

“I have already told her so once, by your desire.”

“I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend
pens remarkably well.”

“Thank you--but I always mend my own.”

“How can you contrive to write so even?”

He was silent.

“Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp;
and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful
little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss
Grantley's.”

“Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again? At
present I have not room to do them justice.”

“Oh! it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you
always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?”

“They are generally long; but whether always charming it is not for me
to determine.”

“It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter with
ease, cannot write ill.”

“That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline,” cried her
brother, “because he does _not_ write with ease. He studies too much for
words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?”

“My style of writing is very different from yours.”

“Oh!” cried Miss Bingley, “Charles writes in the most careless way
imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest.”

“My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them--by which
means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.”

“Your humility, Mr. Bingley,” said Elizabeth, “must disarm reproof.”

“Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, “than the appearance of
humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an
indirect boast.”

“And which of the two do you call _my_ little recent piece of modesty?”

“The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in
writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of
thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you
think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with
quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any
attention to the imperfection of the performance. When you told Mrs.
Bennet this morning that if you ever resolved upon quitting Netherfield
you should be gone in five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of
panegyric, of compliment to yourself--and yet what is there so very
laudable in a precipitance which must leave very necessary business
undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone else?”

“Nay,” cried Bingley, “this is too much, to remember at night all the
foolish things that were said in the morning. And yet, upon my honour,
I believe what I said of myself to be true, and I believe it at this
moment. At least, therefore, I did not assume the character of needless
precipitance merely to show off before the ladies.”

“I dare say you believed it; but I am by no means convinced that
you would be gone with such celerity. Your conduct would be quite as
dependent on chance as that of any man I know; and if, as you were
mounting your horse, a friend were to say, 'Bingley, you had better
stay till next week,' you would probably do it, you would probably not
go--and at another word, might stay a month.”

“You have only proved by this,” cried Elizabeth, “that Mr. Bingley did
not do justice to his own disposition. You have shown him off now much
more than he did himself.”

“I am exceedingly gratified,” said Bingley, “by your converting what my
friend says into a compliment on the sweetness of my temper. But I am
afraid you are giving it a turn which that gentleman did by no means
intend; for he would certainly think better of me, if under such a
circumstance I were to give a flat denial, and ride off as fast as I
could.”

“Would Mr. Darcy then consider the rashness of your original intentions
as atoned for by your obstinacy in adhering to it?”

“Upon my word, I cannot exactly explain the matter; Darcy must speak for
himself.”

“You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine,
but which I have never acknowledged. Allowing the case, however, to
stand according to your representation, you must remember, Miss Bennet,
that the friend who is supposed to desire his return to the house, and
the delay of his plan, has merely desired it, asked it without offering
one argument in favour of its propriety.”

“To yield readily--easily--to the _persuasion_ of a friend is no merit
with you.”

“To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of
either.”

“You appear to me, Mr. Darcy, to allow nothing for the influence of
friendship and affection. A regard for the requester would often make
one readily yield to a request, without waiting for arguments to reason
one into it. I am not particularly speaking of such a case as you have
supposed about Mr. Bingley. We may as well wait, perhaps, till the
circumstance occurs before we discuss the discretion of his behaviour
thereupon. But in general and ordinary cases between friend and friend,
where one of them is desired by the other to change a resolution of no
very great moment, should you think ill of that person for complying
with the desire, without waiting to be argued into it?”

“Will it not be advisable, before we proceed on this subject, to
arrange with rather more precision the degree of importance which is to
appertain to this request, as well as the degree of intimacy subsisting
between the parties?”

“By all means,” cried Bingley; “let us hear all the particulars, not
forgetting their comparative height and size; for that will have more
weight in the argument, Miss Bennet, than you may be aware of. I assure
you, that if Darcy were not such a great tall fellow, in comparison with
myself, I should not pay him half so much deference. I declare I do not
know a more awful object than Darcy, on particular occasions, and in
particular places; at his own house especially, and of a Sunday evening,
when he has nothing to do.”

Mr. Darcy smiled; but Elizabeth thought she could perceive that he was
rather offended, and therefore checked her laugh. Miss Bingley warmly
resented the indignity he had received, in an expostulation with her
brother for talking such nonsense.

“I see your design, Bingley,” said his friend. “You dislike an argument,
and want to silence this.”

“Perhaps I do. Arguments are too much like disputes. If you and Miss
Bennet will defer yours till I am out of the room, I shall be very
thankful; and then you may say whatever you like of me.”

“What you ask,” said Elizabeth, “is no sacrifice on my side; and Mr.
Darcy had much better finish his letter.”

Mr. Darcy took her advice, and did finish his letter.

When that business was over, he applied to Miss Bingley and Elizabeth
for an indulgence of some music. Miss Bingley moved with some alacrity
to the pianoforte; and, after a polite request that Elizabeth would lead
the way which the other as politely and more earnestly negatived, she
seated herself.

Mrs. Hurst sang with her sister, and while they were thus employed,
Elizabeth could not help observing, as she turned over some music-books
that lay on the instrument, how frequently Mr. Darcy's eyes were fixed
on her. She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of
admiration to so great a man; and yet that he should look at her
because he disliked her, was still more strange. She could only imagine,
however, at last that she drew his notice because there was something
more wrong and reprehensible, according to his ideas of right, than in
any other person present. The supposition did not pain her. She liked
him too little to care for his approbation.

After playing some Italian songs, Miss Bingley varied the charm by
a lively Scotch air; and soon afterwards Mr. Darcy, drawing near
Elizabeth, said to her:

“Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an
opportunity of dancing a reel?”

She smiled, but made no answer. He repeated the question, with some
surprise at her silence.

“Oh!” said she, “I heard you before, but I could not immediately
determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say 'Yes,'
that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always
delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of
their premeditated contempt. I have, therefore, made up my mind to tell
you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all--and now despise me if
you dare.”

“Indeed I do not dare.”

Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his
gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her
manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Darcy
had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her. He really
believed, that were it not for the inferiority of her connections, he
should be in some danger.

Miss Bingley saw, or suspected enough to be jealous; and her great
anxiety for the recovery of her dear friend Jane received some
assistance from her desire of getting rid of Elizabeth.

She often tried to provoke Darcy into disliking her guest, by talking of
their supposed marriage, and planning his happiness in such an alliance.

“I hope,” said she, as they were walking together in the shrubbery
the next day, “you will give your mother-in-law a few hints, when this
desirable event takes place, as to the advantage of holding her tongue;
and if you can compass it, do cure the younger girls of running after
officers. And, if I may mention so delicate a subject, endeavour to
check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence,
which your lady possesses.”

“Have you anything else to propose for my domestic felicity?”

“Oh! yes. Do let the portraits of your uncle and aunt Phillips be placed
in the gallery at Pemberley. Put them next to your great-uncle the
judge. They are in the same profession, you know, only in different
lines. As for your Elizabeth's picture, you must not have it taken, for
what painter could do justice to those beautiful eyes?”

“It would not be easy, indeed, to catch their expression, but their
colour and shape, and the eyelashes, so remarkably fine, might be
copied.”

At that moment they were met from another walk by Mrs. Hurst and
Elizabeth herself.

“I did not know that you intended to walk,” said Miss Bingley, in some
confusion, lest they had been overheard.

“You used us abominably ill,” answered Mrs. Hurst, “running away without
telling us that you were coming out.”

Then taking the disengaged arm of Mr. Darcy, she left Elizabeth to walk
by herself. The path just admitted three. Mr. Darcy felt their rudeness,
and immediately said:

“This walk is not wide enough for our party. We had better go into the
avenue.”

But Elizabeth, who had not the least inclination to remain with them,
laughingly answered:

“No, no; stay where you are. You are charmingly grouped, and appear
to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a
fourth. Good-bye.”

She then ran gaily off, rejoicing as she rambled about, in the hope of
being at home again in a day or two. Jane was already so much recovered
as to intend leaving her room for a couple of hours that evening.



Chapter 11


When the ladies removed after dinner, Elizabeth ran up to her
sister, and seeing her well guarded from cold, attended her into the
drawing-room, where she was welcomed by her two friends with many
professions of pleasure; and Elizabeth had never seen them so agreeable
as they were during the hour which passed before the gentlemen appeared.
Their powers of conversation were considerable. They could describe an
entertainment with accuracy, relate an anecdote with humour, and laugh
at their acquaintance with spirit.

But when the gentlemen entered, Jane was no longer the first object;
Miss Bingley's eyes were instantly turned toward Darcy, and she had
something to say to him before he had advanced many steps. He addressed
himself to Miss Bennet, with a polite congratulation; Mr. Hurst also
made her a slight bow, and said he was “very glad;” but diffuseness
and warmth remained for Bingley's salutation. He was full of joy and
attention. The first half-hour was spent in piling up the fire, lest she
should suffer from the change of room; and she removed at his desire
to the other side of the fireplace, that she might be further from
the door. He then sat down by her, and talked scarcely to anyone
else. Elizabeth, at work in the opposite corner, saw it all with great
delight.

When tea was over, Mr. Hurst reminded his sister-in-law of the
card-table--but in vain. She had obtained private intelligence that Mr.
Darcy did not wish for cards; and Mr. Hurst soon found even his open
petition rejected. She assured him that no one intended to play, and
the silence of the whole party on the subject seemed to justify her. Mr.
Hurst had therefore nothing to do, but to stretch himself on one of the
sofas and go to sleep. Darcy took up a book; Miss Bingley did the same;
and Mrs. Hurst, principally occupied in playing with her bracelets
and rings, joined now and then in her brother's conversation with Miss
Bennet.

Miss Bingley's attention was quite as much engaged in watching Mr.
Darcy's progress through _his_ book, as in reading her own; and she
was perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking at his page. She
could not win him, however, to any conversation; he merely answered her
question, and read on. At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be
amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the
second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, “How pleasant
it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no
enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a
book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not
an excellent library.”

No one made any reply. She then yawned again, threw aside her book, and
cast her eyes round the room in quest for some amusement; when hearing
her brother mentioning a ball to Miss Bennet, she turned suddenly
towards him and said:

“By the bye, Charles, are you really serious in meditating a dance at
Netherfield? I would advise you, before you determine on it, to consult
the wishes of the present party; I am much mistaken if there are
not some among us to whom a ball would be rather a punishment than a
pleasure.”

“If you mean Darcy,” cried her brother, “he may go to bed, if he
chooses, before it begins--but as for the ball, it is quite a settled
thing; and as soon as Nicholls has made white soup enough, I shall send
round my cards.”

“I should like balls infinitely better,” she replied, “if they were
carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably
tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much
more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order of
the day.”

“Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be
near so much like a ball.”

Miss Bingley made no answer, and soon afterwards she got up and walked
about the room. Her figure was elegant, and she walked well; but
Darcy, at whom it was all aimed, was still inflexibly studious. In
the desperation of her feelings, she resolved on one effort more, and,
turning to Elizabeth, said:

“Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a
turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so
long in one attitude.”

Elizabeth was surprised, but agreed to it immediately. Miss Bingley
succeeded no less in the real object of her civility; Mr. Darcy looked
up. He was as much awake to the novelty of attention in that quarter as
Elizabeth herself could be, and unconsciously closed his book. He was
directly invited to join their party, but he declined it, observing that
he could imagine but two motives for their choosing to walk up and down
the room together, with either of which motives his joining them would
interfere. “What could he mean? She was dying to know what could be his
meaning?”--and asked Elizabeth whether she could at all understand him?

“Not at all,” was her answer; “but depend upon it, he means to be severe
on us, and our surest way of disappointing him will be to ask nothing
about it.”

Miss Bingley, however, was incapable of disappointing Mr. Darcy in
anything, and persevered therefore in requiring an explanation of his
two motives.

“I have not the smallest objection to explaining them,” said he, as soon
as she allowed him to speak. “You either choose this method of passing
the evening because you are in each other's confidence, and have secret
affairs to discuss, or because you are conscious that your figures
appear to the greatest advantage in walking; if the first, I would be
completely in your way, and if the second, I can admire you much better
as I sit by the fire.”

“Oh! shocking!” cried Miss Bingley. “I never heard anything so
abominable. How shall we punish him for such a speech?”

“Nothing so easy, if you have but the inclination,” said Elizabeth. “We
can all plague and punish one another. Tease him--laugh at him. Intimate
as you are, you must know how it is to be done.”

“But upon my honour, I do _not_. I do assure you that my intimacy has
not yet taught me _that_. Tease calmness of manner and presence of
mind! No, no; I feel he may defy us there. And as to laughter, we will
not expose ourselves, if you please, by attempting to laugh without a
subject. Mr. Darcy may hug himself.”

“Mr. Darcy is not to be laughed at!” cried Elizabeth. “That is an
uncommon advantage, and uncommon I hope it will continue, for it would
be a great loss to _me_ to have many such acquaintances. I dearly love a
laugh.”

“Miss Bingley,” said he, “has given me more credit than can be.
The wisest and the best of men--nay, the wisest and best of their
actions--may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in
life is a joke.”

“Certainly,” replied Elizabeth--“there are such people, but I hope I
am not one of _them_. I hope I never ridicule what is wise and good.
Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, _do_ divert me, I own,
and I laugh at them whenever I can. But these, I suppose, are precisely
what you are without.”

“Perhaps that is not possible for anyone. But it has been the study
of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a strong
understanding to ridicule.”

“Such as vanity and pride.”

“Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride--where there is a real
superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.”

Elizabeth turned away to hide a smile.

“Your examination of Mr. Darcy is over, I presume,” said Miss Bingley;
“and pray what is the result?”

“I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it
himself without disguise.”

“No,” said Darcy, “I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough,
but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch
for. It is, I believe, too little yielding--certainly too little for the
convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others
so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings
are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper
would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost
forever.”

“_That_ is a failing indeed!” cried Elizabeth. “Implacable resentment
_is_ a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I
really cannot _laugh_ at it. You are safe from me.”

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular
evil--a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”

“And _your_ defect is to hate everybody.”

“And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is willfully to misunderstand
them.”

“Do let us have a little music,” cried Miss Bingley, tired of a
conversation in which she had no share. “Louisa, you will not mind my
waking Mr. Hurst?”

Her sister had not the smallest objection, and the pianoforte was
opened; and Darcy, after a few moments' recollection, was not sorry for
it. He began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.



Chapter 12


In consequence of an agreement between the sisters, Elizabeth wrote the
next morning to their mother, to beg that the carriage might be sent for
them in the course of the day. But Mrs. Bennet, who had calculated on
her daughters remaining at Netherfield till the following Tuesday, which
would exactly finish Jane's week, could not bring herself to receive
them with pleasure before. Her answer, therefore, was not propitious, at
least not to Elizabeth's wishes, for she was impatient to get home. Mrs.
Bennet sent them word that they could not possibly have the carriage
before Tuesday; and in her postscript it was added, that if Mr. Bingley
and his sister pressed them to stay longer, she could spare them
very well. Against staying longer, however, Elizabeth was positively
resolved--nor did she much expect it would be asked; and fearful, on the
contrary, as being considered as intruding themselves needlessly long,
she urged Jane to borrow Mr. Bingley's carriage immediately, and at
length it was settled that their original design of leaving Netherfield
that morning should be mentioned, and the request made.

The communication excited many professions of concern; and enough was
said of wishing them to stay at least till the following day to work
on Jane; and till the morrow their going was deferred. Miss Bingley was
then sorry that she had proposed the delay, for her jealousy and dislike
of one sister much exceeded her affection for the other.

The master of the house heard with real sorrow that they were to go so
soon, and repeatedly tried to persuade Miss Bennet that it would not be
safe for her--that she was not enough recovered; but Jane was firm where
she felt herself to be right.

To Mr. Darcy it was welcome intelligence--Elizabeth had been at
Netherfield long enough. She attracted him more than he liked--and Miss
Bingley was uncivil to _her_, and more teasing than usual to himself.
He wisely resolved to be particularly careful that no sign of admiration
should _now_ escape him, nothing that could elevate her with the hope
of influencing his felicity; sensible that if such an idea had been
suggested, his behaviour during the last day must have material weight
in confirming or crushing it. Steady to his purpose, he scarcely spoke
ten words to her through the whole of Saturday, and though they were
at one time left by themselves for half-an-hour, he adhered most
conscientiously to his book, and would not even look at her.

On Sunday, after morning service, the separation, so agreeable to almost
all, took place. Miss Bingley's civility to Elizabeth increased at last
very rapidly, as well as her affection for Jane; and when they parted,
after assuring the latter of the pleasure it would always give her
to see her either at Longbourn or Netherfield, and embracing her most
tenderly, she even shook hands with the former. Elizabeth took leave of
the whole party in the liveliest of spirits.

They were not welcomed home very cordially by their mother. Mrs. Bennet
wondered at their coming, and thought them very wrong to give so much
trouble, and was sure Jane would have caught cold again. But their
father, though very laconic in his expressions of pleasure, was really
glad to see them; he had felt their importance in the family circle. The
evening conversation, when they were all assembled, had lost much of
its animation, and almost all its sense by the absence of Jane and
Elizabeth.

They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough-bass and human
nature; and had some extracts to admire, and some new observations of
threadbare morality to listen to. Catherine and Lydia had information
for them of a different sort. Much had been done and much had been said
in the regiment since the preceding Wednesday; several of the officers
had dined lately with their uncle, a private had been flogged, and it
had actually been hinted that Colonel Forster was going to be married.



Chapter 13


“I hope, my dear,” said Mr. Bennet to his wife, as they were at
breakfast the next morning, “that you have ordered a good dinner to-day,
because I have reason to expect an addition to our family party.”

“Who do you mean, my dear? I know of nobody that is coming, I am sure,
unless Charlotte Lucas should happen to call in--and I hope _my_ dinners
are good enough for her. I do not believe she often sees such at home.”

“The person of whom I speak is a gentleman, and a stranger.”

Mrs. Bennet's eyes sparkled. “A gentleman and a stranger! It is Mr.
Bingley, I am sure! Well, I am sure I shall be extremely glad to see Mr.
Bingley. But--good Lord! how unlucky! There is not a bit of fish to be
got to-day. Lydia, my love, ring the bell--I must speak to Hill this
moment.”

“It is _not_ Mr. Bingley,” said her husband; “it is a person whom I
never saw in the whole course of my life.”

This roused a general astonishment; and he had the pleasure of being
eagerly questioned by his wife and his five daughters at once.

After amusing himself some time with their curiosity, he thus explained:

“About a month ago I received this letter; and about a fortnight ago
I answered it, for I thought it a case of some delicacy, and requiring
early attention. It is from my cousin, Mr. Collins, who, when I am dead,
may turn you all out of this house as soon as he pleases.”

“Oh! my dear,” cried his wife, “I cannot bear to hear that mentioned.
Pray do not talk of that odious man. I do think it is the hardest thing
in the world, that your estate should be entailed away from your own
children; and I am sure, if I had been you, I should have tried long ago
to do something or other about it.”

Jane and Elizabeth tried to explain to her the nature of an entail. They
had often attempted to do it before, but it was a subject on which
Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason, and she continued to rail
bitterly against the cruelty of settling an estate away from a family of
five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.

“It certainly is a most iniquitous affair,” said Mr. Bennet, “and
nothing can clear Mr. Collins from the guilt of inheriting Longbourn.
But if you will listen to his letter, you may perhaps be a little
softened by his manner of expressing himself.”

“No, that I am sure I shall not; and I think it is very impertinent of
him to write to you at all, and very hypocritical. I hate such false
friends. Why could he not keep on quarreling with you, as his father did
before him?”

“Why, indeed; he does seem to have had some filial scruples on that
head, as you will hear.”

“Hunsford, near Westerham, Kent, 15th October.

“Dear Sir,--

“The disagreement subsisting between yourself and my late honoured
father always gave me much uneasiness, and since I have had the
misfortune to lose him, I have frequently wished to heal the breach; but
for some time I was kept back by my own doubts, fearing lest it might
seem disrespectful to his memory for me to be on good terms with anyone
with whom it had always pleased him to be at variance.--'There, Mrs.
Bennet.'--My mind, however, is now made up on the subject, for having
received ordination at Easter, I have been so fortunate as to be
distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de
Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and beneficence has
preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be
my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her
ladyship, and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which
are instituted by the Church of England. As a clergyman, moreover, I
feel it my duty to promote and establish the blessing of peace in
all families within the reach of my influence; and on these grounds I
flatter myself that my present overtures are highly commendable, and
that the circumstance of my being next in the entail of Longbourn estate
will be kindly overlooked on your side, and not lead you to reject the
offered olive-branch. I cannot be otherwise than concerned at being the
means of injuring your amiable daughters, and beg leave to apologise for
it, as well as to assure you of my readiness to make them every possible
amends--but of this hereafter. If you should have no objection to
receive me into your house, I propose myself the satisfaction of waiting
on you and your family, Monday, November 18th, by four o'clock, and
shall probably trespass on your hospitality till the Saturday se'ennight
following, which I can do without any inconvenience, as Lady Catherine
is far from objecting to my occasional absence on a Sunday, provided
that some other clergyman is engaged to do the duty of the day.--I
remain, dear sir, with respectful compliments to your lady and
daughters, your well-wisher and friend,

“WILLIAM COLLINS”

“At four o'clock, therefore, we may expect this peace-making gentleman,”
 said Mr. Bennet, as he folded up the letter. “He seems to be a most
conscientious and polite young man, upon my word, and I doubt not will
prove a valuable acquaintance, especially if Lady Catherine should be so
indulgent as to let him come to us again.”

“There is some sense in what he says about the girls, however, and if
he is disposed to make them any amends, I shall not be the person to
discourage him.”

“Though it is difficult,” said Jane, “to guess in what way he can mean
to make us the atonement he thinks our due, the wish is certainly to his
credit.”

Elizabeth was chiefly struck by his extraordinary deference for Lady
Catherine, and his kind intention of christening, marrying, and burying
his parishioners whenever it were required.

“He must be an oddity, I think,” said she. “I cannot make him
out.--There is something very pompous in his style.--And what can he
mean by apologising for being next in the entail?--We cannot suppose he
would help it if he could.--Could he be a sensible man, sir?”

“No, my dear, I think not. I have great hopes of finding him quite the
reverse. There is a mixture of servility and self-importance in his
letter, which promises well. I am impatient to see him.”

“In point of composition,” said Mary, “the letter does not seem
defective. The idea of the olive-branch perhaps is not wholly new, yet I
think it is well expressed.”

To Catherine and Lydia, neither the letter nor its writer were in any
degree interesting. It was next to impossible that their cousin should
come in a scarlet coat, and it was now some weeks since they had
received pleasure from the society of a man in any other colour. As for
their mother, Mr. Collins's letter had done away much of her ill-will,
and she was preparing to see him with a degree of composure which
astonished her husband and daughters.

Mr. Collins was punctual to his time, and was received with great
politeness by the whole family. Mr. Bennet indeed said little; but the
ladies were ready enough to talk, and Mr. Collins seemed neither in
need of encouragement, nor inclined to be silent himself. He was a
tall, heavy-looking young man of five-and-twenty. His air was grave and
stately, and his manners were very formal. He had not been long seated
before he complimented Mrs. Bennet on having so fine a family of
daughters; said he had heard much of their beauty, but that in this
instance fame had fallen short of the truth; and added, that he did
not doubt her seeing them all in due time disposed of in marriage. This
gallantry was not much to the taste of some of his hearers; but Mrs.
Bennet, who quarreled with no compliments, answered most readily.

“You are very kind, I am sure; and I wish with all my heart it may
prove so, for else they will be destitute enough. Things are settled so
oddly.”

“You allude, perhaps, to the entail of this estate.”

“Ah! sir, I do indeed. It is a grievous affair to my poor girls, you
must confess. Not that I mean to find fault with _you_, for such things
I know are all chance in this world. There is no knowing how estates
will go when once they come to be entailed.”

“I am very sensible, madam, of the hardship to my fair cousins, and
could say much on the subject, but that I am cautious of appearing
forward and precipitate. But I can assure the young ladies that I come
prepared to admire them. At present I will not say more; but, perhaps,
when we are better acquainted--”

He was interrupted by a summons to dinner; and the girls smiled on each
other. They were not the only objects of Mr. Collins's admiration. The
hall, the dining-room, and all its furniture, were examined and praised;
and his commendation of everything would have touched Mrs. Bennet's
heart, but for the mortifying supposition of his viewing it all as his
own future property. The dinner too in its turn was highly admired; and
he begged to know to which of his fair cousins the excellency of its
cooking was owing. But he was set right there by Mrs. Bennet, who
assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a
good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen. He
begged pardon for having displeased her. In a softened tone she declared
herself not at all offended; but he continued to apologise for about a
quarter of an hour.



Chapter 14


During dinner, Mr. Bennet scarcely spoke at all; but when the servants
were withdrawn, he thought it time to have some conversation with his
guest, and therefore started a subject in which he expected him to
shine, by observing that he seemed very fortunate in his patroness. Lady
Catherine de Bourgh's attention to his wishes, and consideration for
his comfort, appeared very remarkable. Mr. Bennet could not have chosen
better. Mr. Collins was eloquent in her praise. The subject elevated him
to more than usual solemnity of manner, and with a most important aspect
he protested that “he had never in his life witnessed such behaviour in
a person of rank--such affability and condescension, as he had himself
experienced from Lady Catherine. She had been graciously pleased to
approve of both of the discourses which he had already had the honour of
preaching before her. She had also asked him twice to dine at Rosings,
and had sent for him only the Saturday before, to make up her pool of
quadrille in the evening. Lady Catherine was reckoned proud by many
people he knew, but _he_ had never seen anything but affability in her.
She had always spoken to him as she would to any other gentleman; she
made not the smallest objection to his joining in the society of the
neighbourhood nor to his leaving the parish occasionally for a week or
two, to visit his relations. She had even condescended to advise him to
marry as soon as he could, provided he chose with discretion; and had
once paid him a visit in his humble parsonage, where she had perfectly
approved all the alterations he had been making, and had even vouchsafed
to suggest some herself--some shelves in the closet up stairs.”

“That is all very proper and civil, I am sure,” said Mrs. Bennet, “and
I dare say she is a very agreeable woman. It is a pity that great ladies
in general are not more like her. Does she live near you, sir?”

“The garden in which stands my humble abode is separated only by a lane
from Rosings Park, her ladyship's residence.”

“I think you said she was a widow, sir? Has she any family?”

“She has only one daughter, the heiress of Rosings, and of very
extensive property.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Bennet, shaking her head, “then she is better off than
many girls. And what sort of young lady is she? Is she handsome?”

“She is a most charming young lady indeed. Lady Catherine herself says
that, in point of true beauty, Miss de Bourgh is far superior to the
handsomest of her sex, because there is that in her features which marks
the young lady of distinguished birth. She is unfortunately of a sickly
constitution, which has prevented her from making that progress in many
accomplishments which she could not have otherwise failed of, as I am
informed by the lady who superintended her education, and who still
resides with them. But she is perfectly amiable, and often condescends
to drive by my humble abode in her little phaeton and ponies.”

“Has she been presented? I do not remember her name among the ladies at
court.”

“Her indifferent state of health unhappily prevents her being in town;
and by that means, as I told Lady Catherine one day, has deprived the
British court of its brightest ornament. Her ladyship seemed pleased
with the idea; and you may imagine that I am happy on every occasion to
offer those little delicate compliments which are always acceptable
to ladies. I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine, that
her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most
elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by
her. These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and
it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to
pay.”

“You judge very properly,” said Mr. Bennet, “and it is happy for you
that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask
whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the
moment, or are the result of previous study?”

“They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I
sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant
compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to
give them as unstudied an air as possible.”

Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd
as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment,
maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance,
and, except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner
in his pleasure.

By tea-time, however, the dose had been enough, and Mr. Bennet was glad
to take his guest into the drawing-room again, and, when tea was over,
glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies. Mr. Collins readily
assented, and a book was produced; but, on beholding it (for everything
announced it to be from a circulating library), he started back, and
begging pardon, protested that he never read novels. Kitty stared at
him, and Lydia exclaimed. Other books were produced, and after some
deliberation he chose Fordyce's Sermons. Lydia gaped as he opened the
volume, and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity, read three
pages, she interrupted him with:

“Do you know, mamma, that my uncle Phillips talks of turning away
Richard; and if he does, Colonel Forster will hire him. My aunt told me
so herself on Saturday. I shall walk to Meryton to-morrow to hear more
about it, and to ask when Mr. Denny comes back from town.”

Lydia was bid by her two eldest sisters to hold her tongue; but Mr.
Collins, much offended, laid aside his book, and said:

“I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by books
of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. It amazes
me, I confess; for, certainly, there can be nothing so advantageous to
them as instruction. But I will no longer importune my young cousin.”

Then turning to Mr. Bennet, he offered himself as his antagonist at
backgammon. Mr. Bennet accepted the challenge, observing that he acted
very wisely in leaving the girls to their own trifling amusements.
Mrs. Bennet and her daughters apologised most civilly for Lydia's
interruption, and promised that it should not occur again, if he would
resume his book; but Mr. Collins, after assuring them that he bore his
young cousin no ill-will, and should never resent her behaviour as any
affront, seated himself at another table with Mr. Bennet, and prepared
for backgammon.



Chapter 15


Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had
been but little assisted by education or society; the greatest part
of his life having been spent under the guidance of an illiterate and
miserly father; and though he belonged to one of the universities, he
had merely kept the necessary terms, without forming at it any useful
acquaintance. The subjection in which his father had brought him up had
given him originally great humility of manner; but it was now a
good deal counteracted by the self-conceit of a weak head, living in
retirement, and the consequential feelings of early and unexpected
prosperity. A fortunate chance had recommended him to Lady Catherine de
Bourgh when the living of Hunsford was vacant; and the respect which
he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his patroness,
mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a
clergyman, and his right as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of
pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility.

Having now a good house and a very sufficient income, he intended to
marry; and in seeking a reconciliation with the Longbourn family he had
a wife in view, as he meant to choose one of the daughters, if he found
them as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report.
This was his plan of amends--of atonement--for inheriting their father's
estate; and he thought it an excellent one, full of eligibility and
suitableness, and excessively generous and disinterested on his own
part.

His plan did not vary on seeing them. Miss Bennet's lovely face
confirmed his views, and established all his strictest notions of what
was due to seniority; and for the first evening _she_ was his settled
choice. The next morning, however, made an alteration; for in a
quarter of an hour's tete-a-tete with Mrs. Bennet before breakfast, a
conversation beginning with his parsonage-house, and leading naturally
to the avowal of his hopes, that a mistress might be found for it at
Longbourn, produced from her, amid very complaisant smiles and general
encouragement, a caution against the very Jane he had fixed on. “As to
her _younger_ daughters, she could not take upon her to say--she could
not positively answer--but she did not _know_ of any prepossession; her
_eldest_ daughter, she must just mention--she felt it incumbent on her
to hint, was likely to be very soon engaged.”

Mr. Collins had only to change from Jane to Elizabeth--and it was soon
done--done while Mrs. Bennet was stirring the fire. Elizabeth, equally
next to Jane in birth and beauty, succeeded her of course.

Mrs. Bennet treasured up the hint, and trusted that she might soon have
two daughters married; and the man whom she could not bear to speak of
the day before was now high in her good graces.

Lydia's intention of walking to Meryton was not forgotten; every sister
except Mary agreed to go with her; and Mr. Collins was to attend them,
at the request of Mr. Bennet, who was most anxious to get rid of him,
and have his library to himself; for thither Mr. Collins had followed
him after breakfast; and there he would continue, nominally engaged with
one of the largest folios in the collection, but really talking to Mr.
Bennet, with little cessation, of his house and garden at Hunsford. Such
doings discomposed Mr. Bennet exceedingly. In his library he had been
always sure of leisure and tranquillity; and though prepared, as he told
Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room of the
house, he was used to be free from them there; his civility, therefore,
was most prompt in inviting Mr. Collins to join his daughters in their
walk; and Mr. Collins, being in fact much better fitted for a walker
than a reader, was extremely pleased to close his large book, and go.

In pompous nothings on his side, and civil assents on that of his
cousins, their time passed till they entered Meryton. The attention of
the younger ones was then no longer to be gained by him. Their eyes were
immediately wandering up in the street in quest of the officers, and
nothing less than a very smart bonnet indeed, or a really new muslin in
a shop window, could recall them.

But the attention of every lady was soon caught by a young man, whom
they had never seen before, of most gentlemanlike appearance, walking
with another officer on the other side of the way. The officer was
the very Mr. Denny concerning whose return from London Lydia came
to inquire, and he bowed as they passed. All were struck with the
stranger's air, all wondered who he could be; and Kitty and Lydia,
determined if possible to find out, led the way across the street, under
pretense of wanting something in an opposite shop, and fortunately
had just gained the pavement when the two gentlemen, turning back, had
reached the same spot. Mr. Denny addressed them directly, and entreated
permission to introduce his friend, Mr. Wickham, who had returned with
him the day before from town, and he was happy to say had accepted a
commission in their corps. This was exactly as it should be; for the
young man wanted only regimentals to make him completely charming.
His appearance was greatly in his favour; he had all the best part of
beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address.
The introduction was followed up on his side by a happy readiness
of conversation--a readiness at the same time perfectly correct and
unassuming; and the whole party were still standing and talking together
very agreeably, when the sound of horses drew their notice, and Darcy
and Bingley were seen riding down the street. On distinguishing the
ladies of the group, the two gentlemen came directly towards them, and
began the usual civilities. Bingley was the principal spokesman, and
Miss Bennet the principal object. He was then, he said, on his way to
Longbourn on purpose to inquire after her. Mr. Darcy corroborated
it with a bow, and was beginning to determine not to fix his eyes
on Elizabeth, when they were suddenly arrested by the sight of the
stranger, and Elizabeth happening to see the countenance of both as they
looked at each other, was all astonishment at the effect of the meeting.
Both changed colour, one looked white, the other red. Mr. Wickham,
after a few moments, touched his hat--a salutation which Mr. Darcy just
deigned to return. What could be the meaning of it? It was impossible to
imagine; it was impossible not to long to know.

In another minute, Mr. Bingley, but without seeming to have noticed what
passed, took leave and rode on with his friend.

Mr. Denny and Mr. Wickham walked with the young ladies to the door of
Mr. Phillip's house, and then made their bows, in spite of Miss Lydia's
pressing entreaties that they should come in, and even in spite of
Mrs. Phillips's throwing up the parlour window and loudly seconding the
invitation.

Mrs. Phillips was always glad to see her nieces; and the two eldest,
from their recent absence, were particularly welcome, and she was
eagerly expressing her surprise at their sudden return home, which, as
their own carriage had not fetched them, she should have known nothing
about, if she had not happened to see Mr. Jones's shop-boy in the
street, who had told her that they were not to send any more draughts to
Netherfield because the Miss Bennets were come away, when her civility
was claimed towards Mr. Collins by Jane's introduction of him. She
received him with her very best politeness, which he returned with
as much more, apologising for his intrusion, without any previous
acquaintance with her, which he could not help flattering himself,
however, might be justified by his relationship to the young ladies who
introduced him to her notice. Mrs. Phillips was quite awed by such an
excess of good breeding; but her contemplation of one stranger was soon
put to an end by exclamations and inquiries about the other; of whom,
however, she could only tell her nieces what they already knew, that
Mr. Denny had brought him from London, and that he was to have a
lieutenant's commission in the ----shire. She had been watching him the
last hour, she said, as he walked up and down the street, and had Mr.
Wickham appeared, Kitty and Lydia would certainly have continued the
occupation, but unluckily no one passed windows now except a few of the
officers, who, in comparison with the stranger, were become “stupid,
disagreeable fellows.” Some of them were to dine with the Phillipses
the next day, and their aunt promised to make her husband call on Mr.
Wickham, and give him an invitation also, if the family from Longbourn
would come in the evening. This was agreed to, and Mrs. Phillips
protested that they would have a nice comfortable noisy game of lottery
tickets, and a little bit of hot supper afterwards. The prospect of such
delights was very cheering, and they parted in mutual good spirits. Mr.
Collins repeated his apologies in quitting the room, and was assured
with unwearying civility that they were perfectly needless.

As they walked home, Elizabeth related to Jane what she had seen pass
between the two gentlemen; but though Jane would have defended either
or both, had they appeared to be in the wrong, she could no more explain
such behaviour than her sister.

Mr. Collins on his return highly gratified Mrs. Bennet by admiring
Mrs. Phillips's manners and politeness. He protested that, except Lady
Catherine and her daughter, he had never seen a more elegant woman;
for she had not only received him with the utmost civility, but even
pointedly included him in her invitation for the next evening, although
utterly unknown to her before. Something, he supposed, might be
attributed to his connection with them, but yet he had never met with so
much attention in the whole course of his life.



Chapter 16


As no objection was made to the young people's engagement with their
aunt, and all Mr. Collins's scruples of leaving Mr. and Mrs. Bennet for
a single evening during his visit were most steadily resisted, the coach
conveyed him and his five cousins at a suitable hour to Meryton; and
the girls had the pleasure of hearing, as they entered the drawing-room,
that Mr. Wickham had accepted their uncle's invitation, and was then in
the house.

When this information was given, and they had all taken their seats, Mr.
Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire, and he was so much
struck with the size and furniture of the apartment, that he declared he
might almost have supposed himself in the small summer breakfast
parlour at Rosings; a comparison that did not at first convey much
gratification; but when Mrs. Phillips understood from him what
Rosings was, and who was its proprietor--when she had listened to the
description of only one of Lady Catherine's drawing-rooms, and found
that the chimney-piece alone had cost eight hundred pounds, she felt all
the force of the compliment, and would hardly have resented a comparison
with the housekeeper's room.

In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her mansion,
with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble abode, and
the improvements it was receiving, he was happily employed until the
gentlemen joined them; and he found in Mrs. Phillips a very attentive
listener, whose opinion of his consequence increased with what she
heard, and who was resolving to retail it all among her neighbours as
soon as she could. To the girls, who could not listen to their cousin,
and who had nothing to do but to wish for an instrument, and examine
their own indifferent imitations of china on the mantelpiece, the
interval of waiting appeared very long. It was over at last, however.
The gentlemen did approach, and when Mr. Wickham walked into the room,
Elizabeth felt that she had neither been seeing him before, nor thinking
of him since, with the smallest degree of unreasonable admiration.
The officers of the ----shire were in general a very creditable,
gentlemanlike set, and the best of them were of the present party; but
Mr. Wickham was as far beyond them all in person, countenance, air, and
walk, as _they_ were superior to the broad-faced, stuffy uncle Phillips,
breathing port wine, who followed them into the room.

Mr. Wickham was the happy man towards whom almost every female eye was
turned, and Elizabeth was the happy woman by whom he finally seated
himself; and the agreeable manner in which he immediately fell into
conversation, though it was only on its being a wet night, made her feel
that the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered
interesting by the skill of the speaker.

With such rivals for the notice of the fair as Mr. Wickham and the
officers, Mr. Collins seemed to sink into insignificance; to the young
ladies he certainly was nothing; but he had still at intervals a kind
listener in Mrs. Phillips, and was by her watchfulness, most abundantly
supplied with coffee and muffin. When the card-tables were placed, he
had the opportunity of obliging her in turn, by sitting down to whist.

“I know little of the game at present,” said he, “but I shall be glad
to improve myself, for in my situation in life--” Mrs. Phillips was very
glad for his compliance, but could not wait for his reason.

Mr. Wickham did not play at whist, and with ready delight was he
received at the other table between Elizabeth and Lydia. At first there
seemed danger of Lydia's engrossing him entirely, for she was a most
determined talker; but being likewise extremely fond of lottery tickets,
she soon grew too much interested in the game, too eager in making bets
and exclaiming after prizes to have attention for anyone in particular.
Allowing for the common demands of the game, Mr. Wickham was therefore
at leisure to talk to Elizabeth, and she was very willing to hear
him, though what she chiefly wished to hear she could not hope to be
told--the history of his acquaintance with Mr. Darcy. She dared not
even mention that gentleman. Her curiosity, however, was unexpectedly
relieved. Mr. Wickham began the subject himself. He inquired how far
Netherfield was from Meryton; and, after receiving her answer, asked in
a hesitating manner how long Mr. Darcy had been staying there.

“About a month,” said Elizabeth; and then, unwilling to let the subject
drop, added, “He is a man of very large property in Derbyshire, I
understand.”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Wickham; “his estate there is a noble one. A clear
ten thousand per annum. You could not have met with a person more
capable of giving you certain information on that head than myself, for
I have been connected with his family in a particular manner from my
infancy.”

Elizabeth could not but look surprised.

“You may well be surprised, Miss Bennet, at such an assertion, after
seeing, as you probably might, the very cold manner of our meeting
yesterday. Are you much acquainted with Mr. Darcy?”

“As much as I ever wish to be,” cried Elizabeth very warmly. “I have
spent four days in the same house with him, and I think him very
disagreeable.”

“I have no right to give _my_ opinion,” said Wickham, “as to his being
agreeable or otherwise. I am not qualified to form one. I have known him
too long and too well to be a fair judge. It is impossible for _me_
to be impartial. But I believe your opinion of him would in general
astonish--and perhaps you would not express it quite so strongly
anywhere else. Here you are in your own family.”

“Upon my word, I say no more _here_ than I might say in any house in
the neighbourhood, except Netherfield. He is not at all liked in
Hertfordshire. Everybody is disgusted with his pride. You will not find
him more favourably spoken of by anyone.”

“I cannot pretend to be sorry,” said Wickham, after a short
interruption, “that he or that any man should not be estimated beyond
their deserts; but with _him_ I believe it does not often happen. The
world is blinded by his fortune and consequence, or frightened by his
high and imposing manners, and sees him only as he chooses to be seen.”

“I should take him, even on _my_ slight acquaintance, to be an
ill-tempered man.” Wickham only shook his head.

“I wonder,” said he, at the next opportunity of speaking, “whether he is
likely to be in this country much longer.”

“I do not at all know; but I _heard_ nothing of his going away when I
was at Netherfield. I hope your plans in favour of the ----shire will
not be affected by his being in the neighbourhood.”

“Oh! no--it is not for _me_ to be driven away by Mr. Darcy. If _he_
wishes to avoid seeing _me_, he must go. We are not on friendly terms,
and it always gives me pain to meet him, but I have no reason for
avoiding _him_ but what I might proclaim before all the world, a sense
of very great ill-usage, and most painful regrets at his being what he
is. His father, Miss Bennet, the late Mr. Darcy, was one of the best men
that ever breathed, and the truest friend I ever had; and I can never
be in company with this Mr. Darcy without being grieved to the soul by
a thousand tender recollections. His behaviour to myself has been
scandalous; but I verily believe I could forgive him anything and
everything, rather than his disappointing the hopes and disgracing the
memory of his father.”

Elizabeth found the interest of the subject increase, and listened with
all her heart; but the delicacy of it prevented further inquiry.

Mr. Wickham began to speak on more general topics, Meryton, the
neighbourhood, the society, appearing highly pleased with all that
he had yet seen, and speaking of the latter with gentle but very
intelligible gallantry.

“It was the prospect of constant society, and good society,” he added,
“which was my chief inducement to enter the ----shire. I knew it to be
a most respectable, agreeable corps, and my friend Denny tempted me
further by his account of their present quarters, and the very great
attentions and excellent acquaintances Meryton had procured them.
Society, I own, is necessary to me. I have been a disappointed man, and
my spirits will not bear solitude. I _must_ have employment and society.
A military life is not what I was intended for, but circumstances have
now made it eligible. The church _ought_ to have been my profession--I
was brought up for the church, and I should at this time have been in
possession of a most valuable living, had it pleased the gentleman we
were speaking of just now.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes--the late Mr. Darcy bequeathed me the next presentation of the best
living in his gift. He was my godfather, and excessively attached to me.
I cannot do justice to his kindness. He meant to provide for me amply,
and thought he had done it; but when the living fell, it was given
elsewhere.”

“Good heavens!” cried Elizabeth; “but how could _that_ be? How could his
will be disregarded? Why did you not seek legal redress?”

“There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest as to
give me no hope from law. A man of honour could not have doubted the
intention, but Mr. Darcy chose to doubt it--or to treat it as a merely
conditional recommendation, and to assert that I had forfeited all claim
to it by extravagance, imprudence--in short anything or nothing. Certain
it is, that the living became vacant two years ago, exactly as I was
of an age to hold it, and that it was given to another man; and no
less certain is it, that I cannot accuse myself of having really done
anything to deserve to lose it. I have a warm, unguarded temper, and
I may have spoken my opinion _of_ him, and _to_ him, too freely. I can
recall nothing worse. But the fact is, that we are very different sort
of men, and that he hates me.”

“This is quite shocking! He deserves to be publicly disgraced.”

“Some time or other he _will_ be--but it shall not be by _me_. Till I
can forget his father, I can never defy or expose _him_.”

Elizabeth honoured him for such feelings, and thought him handsomer than
ever as he expressed them.

“But what,” said she, after a pause, “can have been his motive? What can
have induced him to behave so cruelly?”

“A thorough, determined dislike of me--a dislike which I cannot but
attribute in some measure to jealousy. Had the late Mr. Darcy liked me
less, his son might have borne with me better; but his father's uncommon
attachment to me irritated him, I believe, very early in life. He had
not a temper to bear the sort of competition in which we stood--the sort
of preference which was often given me.”

“I had not thought Mr. Darcy so bad as this--though I have never liked
him. I had not thought so very ill of him. I had supposed him to be
despising his fellow-creatures in general, but did not suspect him of
descending to such malicious revenge, such injustice, such inhumanity as
this.”

After a few minutes' reflection, however, she continued, “I _do_
remember his boasting one day, at Netherfield, of the implacability of
his resentments, of his having an unforgiving temper. His disposition
must be dreadful.”

“I will not trust myself on the subject,” replied Wickham; “I can hardly
be just to him.”

Elizabeth was again deep in thought, and after a time exclaimed, “To
treat in such a manner the godson, the friend, the favourite of his
father!” She could have added, “A young man, too, like _you_, whose very
countenance may vouch for your being amiable”--but she contented herself
with, “and one, too, who had probably been his companion from childhood,
connected together, as I think you said, in the closest manner!”

“We were born in the same parish, within the same park; the greatest
part of our youth was passed together; inmates of the same house,
sharing the same amusements, objects of the same parental care. _My_
father began life in the profession which your uncle, Mr. Phillips,
appears to do so much credit to--but he gave up everything to be of
use to the late Mr. Darcy and devoted all his time to the care of the
Pemberley property. He was most highly esteemed by Mr. Darcy, a most
intimate, confidential friend. Mr. Darcy often acknowledged himself to
be under the greatest obligations to my father's active superintendence,
and when, immediately before my father's death, Mr. Darcy gave him a
voluntary promise of providing for me, I am convinced that he felt it to
be as much a debt of gratitude to _him_, as of his affection to myself.”

“How strange!” cried Elizabeth. “How abominable! I wonder that the very
pride of this Mr. Darcy has not made him just to you! If from no better
motive, that he should not have been too proud to be dishonest--for
dishonesty I must call it.”

“It _is_ wonderful,” replied Wickham, “for almost all his actions may
be traced to pride; and pride had often been his best friend. It has
connected him nearer with virtue than with any other feeling. But we are
none of us consistent, and in his behaviour to me there were stronger
impulses even than pride.”

“Can such abominable pride as his have ever done him good?”

“Yes. It has often led him to be liberal and generous, to give his money
freely, to display hospitality, to assist his tenants, and relieve the
poor. Family pride, and _filial_ pride--for he is very proud of what
his father was--have done this. Not to appear to disgrace his family,
to degenerate from the popular qualities, or lose the influence of the
Pemberley House, is a powerful motive. He has also _brotherly_ pride,
which, with _some_ brotherly affection, makes him a very kind and
careful guardian of his sister, and you will hear him generally cried up
as the most attentive and best of brothers.”

“What sort of girl is Miss Darcy?”

He shook his head. “I wish I could call her amiable. It gives me pain to
speak ill of a Darcy. But she is too much like her brother--very, very
proud. As a child, she was affectionate and pleasing, and extremely fond
of me; and I have devoted hours and hours to her amusement. But she is
nothing to me now. She is a handsome girl, about fifteen or sixteen,
and, I understand, highly accomplished. Since her father's death, her
home has been London, where a lady lives with her, and superintends her
education.”

After many pauses and many trials of other subjects, Elizabeth could not
help reverting once more to the first, and saying:

“I am astonished at his intimacy with Mr. Bingley! How can Mr. Bingley,
who seems good humour itself, and is, I really believe, truly amiable,
be in friendship with such a man? How can they suit each other? Do you
know Mr. Bingley?”

“Not at all.”

“He is a sweet-tempered, amiable, charming man. He cannot know what Mr.
Darcy is.”

“Probably not; but Mr. Darcy can please where he chooses. He does not
want abilities. He can be a conversible companion if he thinks it worth
his while. Among those who are at all his equals in consequence, he is
a very different man from what he is to the less prosperous. His
pride never deserts him; but with the rich he is liberal-minded, just,
sincere, rational, honourable, and perhaps agreeable--allowing something
for fortune and figure.”

The whist party soon afterwards breaking up, the players gathered round
the other table and Mr. Collins took his station between his cousin
Elizabeth and Mrs. Phillips. The usual inquiries as to his success were
made by the latter. It had not been very great; he had lost every
point; but when Mrs. Phillips began to express her concern thereupon,
he assured her with much earnest gravity that it was not of the least
importance, that he considered the money as a mere trifle, and begged
that she would not make herself uneasy.

“I know very well, madam,” said he, “that when persons sit down to a
card-table, they must take their chances of these things, and happily I
am not in such circumstances as to make five shillings any object. There
are undoubtedly many who could not say the same, but thanks to Lady
Catherine de Bourgh, I am removed far beyond the necessity of regarding
little matters.”

Mr. Wickham's attention was caught; and after observing Mr. Collins for
a few moments, he asked Elizabeth in a low voice whether her relation
was very intimately acquainted with the family of de Bourgh.

“Lady Catherine de Bourgh,” she replied, “has very lately given him
a living. I hardly know how Mr. Collins was first introduced to her
notice, but he certainly has not known her long.”

“You know of course that Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Lady Anne Darcy
were sisters; consequently that she is aunt to the present Mr. Darcy.”

“No, indeed, I did not. I knew nothing at all of Lady Catherine's
connections. I never heard of her existence till the day before
yesterday.”

“Her daughter, Miss de Bourgh, will have a very large fortune, and it is
believed that she and her cousin will unite the two estates.”

This information made Elizabeth smile, as she thought of poor Miss
Bingley. Vain indeed must be all her attentions, vain and useless her
affection for his sister and her praise of himself, if he were already
self-destined for another.

“Mr. Collins,” said she, “speaks highly both of Lady Catherine and her
daughter; but from some particulars that he has related of her ladyship,
I suspect his gratitude misleads him, and that in spite of her being his
patroness, she is an arrogant, conceited woman.”

“I believe her to be both in a great degree,” replied Wickham; “I have
not seen her for many years, but I very well remember that I never liked
her, and that her manners were dictatorial and insolent. She has the
reputation of being remarkably sensible and clever; but I rather believe
she derives part of her abilities from her rank and fortune, part from
her authoritative manner, and the rest from the pride for her
nephew, who chooses that everyone connected with him should have an
understanding of the first class.”

Elizabeth allowed that he had given a very rational account of it, and
they continued talking together, with mutual satisfaction till supper
put an end to cards, and gave the rest of the ladies their share of Mr.
Wickham's attentions. There could be no conversation in the noise
of Mrs. Phillips's supper party, but his manners recommended him to
everybody. Whatever he said, was said well; and whatever he did, done
gracefully. Elizabeth went away with her head full of him. She could
think of nothing but of Mr. Wickham, and of what he had told her, all
the way home; but there was not time for her even to mention his name
as they went, for neither Lydia nor Mr. Collins were once silent. Lydia
talked incessantly of lottery tickets, of the fish she had lost and the
fish she had won; and Mr. Collins in describing the civility of Mr. and
Mrs. Phillips, protesting that he did not in the least regard his losses
at whist, enumerating all the dishes at supper, and repeatedly fearing
that he crowded his cousins, had more to say than he could well manage
before the carriage stopped at Longbourn House.



Chapter 17


Elizabeth related to Jane the next day what had passed between Mr.
Wickham and herself. Jane listened with astonishment and concern; she
knew not how to believe that Mr. Darcy could be so unworthy of Mr.
Bingley's regard; and yet, it was not in her nature to question the
veracity of a young man of such amiable appearance as Wickham. The
possibility of his having endured such unkindness, was enough to
interest all her tender feelings; and nothing remained therefore to be
done, but to think well of them both, to defend the conduct of each,
and throw into the account of accident or mistake whatever could not be
otherwise explained.

“They have both,” said she, “been deceived, I dare say, in some way
or other, of which we can form no idea. Interested people have perhaps
misrepresented each to the other. It is, in short, impossible for us to
conjecture the causes or circumstances which may have alienated them,
without actual blame on either side.”

“Very true, indeed; and now, my dear Jane, what have you got to say on
behalf of the interested people who have probably been concerned in the
business? Do clear _them_ too, or we shall be obliged to think ill of
somebody.”

“Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my
opinion. My dearest Lizzy, do but consider in what a disgraceful light
it places Mr. Darcy, to be treating his father's favourite in such
a manner, one whom his father had promised to provide for. It is
impossible. No man of common humanity, no man who had any value for his
character, could be capable of it. Can his most intimate friends be so
excessively deceived in him? Oh! no.”

“I can much more easily believe Mr. Bingley's being imposed on, than
that Mr. Wickham should invent such a history of himself as he gave me
last night; names, facts, everything mentioned without ceremony. If it
be not so, let Mr. Darcy contradict it. Besides, there was truth in his
looks.”

“It is difficult indeed--it is distressing. One does not know what to
think.”

“I beg your pardon; one knows exactly what to think.”

But Jane could think with certainty on only one point--that Mr. Bingley,
if he _had_ been imposed on, would have much to suffer when the affair
became public.

The two young ladies were summoned from the shrubbery, where this
conversation passed, by the arrival of the very persons of whom they had
been speaking; Mr. Bingley and his sisters came to give their personal
invitation for the long-expected ball at Netherfield, which was fixed
for the following Tuesday. The two ladies were delighted to see their
dear friend again, called it an age since they had met, and repeatedly
asked what she had been doing with herself since their separation. To
the rest of the family they paid little attention; avoiding Mrs. Bennet
as much as possible, saying not much to Elizabeth, and nothing at all to
the others. They were soon gone again, rising from their seats with an
activity which took their brother by surprise, and hurrying off as if
eager to escape from Mrs. Bennet's civilities.

The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to every
female of the family. Mrs. Bennet chose to consider it as given in
compliment to her eldest daughter, and was particularly flattered
by receiving the invitation from Mr. Bingley himself, instead of a
ceremonious card. Jane pictured to herself a happy evening in the
society of her two friends, and the attentions of their brother; and
Elizabeth thought with pleasure of dancing a great deal with Mr.
Wickham, and of seeing a confirmation of everything in Mr. Darcy's look
and behaviour. The happiness anticipated by Catherine and Lydia depended
less on any single event, or any particular person, for though they
each, like Elizabeth, meant to dance half the evening with Mr. Wickham,
he was by no means the only partner who could satisfy them, and a ball
was, at any rate, a ball. And even Mary could assure her family that she
had no disinclination for it.

“While I can have my mornings to myself,” said she, “it is enough--I
think it is no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening engagements.
Society has claims on us all; and I profess myself one of those
who consider intervals of recreation and amusement as desirable for
everybody.”

Elizabeth's spirits were so high on this occasion, that though she did
not often speak unnecessarily to Mr. Collins, she could not help asking
him whether he intended to accept Mr. Bingley's invitation, and if
he did, whether he would think it proper to join in the evening's
amusement; and she was rather surprised to find that he entertained no
scruple whatever on that head, and was very far from dreading a rebuke
either from the Archbishop, or Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by venturing to
dance.

“I am by no means of the opinion, I assure you,” said he, “that a ball
of this kind, given by a young man of character, to respectable people,
can have any evil tendency; and I am so far from objecting to dancing
myself, that I shall hope to be honoured with the hands of all my fair
cousins in the course of the evening; and I take this opportunity of
soliciting yours, Miss Elizabeth, for the two first dances especially,
a preference which I trust my cousin Jane will attribute to the right
cause, and not to any disrespect for her.”

Elizabeth felt herself completely taken in. She had fully proposed being
engaged by Mr. Wickham for those very dances; and to have Mr. Collins
instead! her liveliness had never been worse timed. There was no help
for it, however. Mr. Wickham's happiness and her own were perforce
delayed a little longer, and Mr. Collins's proposal accepted with as
good a grace as she could. She was not the better pleased with his
gallantry from the idea it suggested of something more. It now first
struck her, that _she_ was selected from among her sisters as worthy
of being mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a
quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors.
The idea soon reached to conviction, as she observed his increasing
civilities toward herself, and heard his frequent attempt at a
compliment on her wit and vivacity; and though more astonished than
gratified herself by this effect of her charms, it was not long before
her mother gave her to understand that the probability of their marriage
was extremely agreeable to _her_. Elizabeth, however, did not choose
to take the hint, being well aware that a serious dispute must be the
consequence of any reply. Mr. Collins might never make the offer, and
till he did, it was useless to quarrel about him.

If there had not been a Netherfield ball to prepare for and talk of, the
younger Miss Bennets would have been in a very pitiable state at this
time, for from the day of the invitation, to the day of the ball, there
was such a succession of rain as prevented their walking to Meryton
once. No aunt, no officers, no news could be sought after--the very
shoe-roses for Netherfield were got by proxy. Even Elizabeth might have
found some trial of her patience in weather which totally suspended the
improvement of her acquaintance with Mr. Wickham; and nothing less than
a dance on Tuesday, could have made such a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and
Monday endurable to Kitty and Lydia.



Chapter 18


Till Elizabeth entered the drawing-room at Netherfield, and looked in
vain for Mr. Wickham among the cluster of red coats there assembled, a
doubt of his being present had never occurred to her. The certainty
of meeting him had not been checked by any of those recollections that
might not unreasonably have alarmed her. She had dressed with more than
usual care, and prepared in the highest spirits for the conquest of all
that remained unsubdued of his heart, trusting that it was not more than
might be won in the course of the evening. But in an instant arose
the dreadful suspicion of his being purposely omitted for Mr. Darcy's
pleasure in the Bingleys' invitation to the officers; and though
this was not exactly the case, the absolute fact of his absence was
pronounced by his friend Denny, to whom Lydia eagerly applied, and who
told them that Wickham had been obliged to go to town on business the
day before, and was not yet returned; adding, with a significant smile,
“I do not imagine his business would have called him away just now, if
he had not wanted to avoid a certain gentleman here.”

This part of his intelligence, though unheard by Lydia, was caught by
Elizabeth, and, as it assured her that Darcy was not less answerable for
Wickham's absence than if her first surmise had been just, every
feeling of displeasure against the former was so sharpened by immediate
disappointment, that she could hardly reply with tolerable civility to
the polite inquiries which he directly afterwards approached to make.
Attendance, forbearance, patience with Darcy, was injury to Wickham. She
was resolved against any sort of conversation with him, and turned away
with a degree of ill-humour which she could not wholly surmount even in
speaking to Mr. Bingley, whose blind partiality provoked her.

But Elizabeth was not formed for ill-humour; and though every prospect
of her own was destroyed for the evening, it could not dwell long on her
spirits; and having told all her griefs to Charlotte Lucas, whom she had
not seen for a week, she was soon able to make a voluntary transition
to the oddities of her cousin, and to point him out to her particular
notice. The first two dances, however, brought a return of distress;
they were dances of mortification. Mr. Collins, awkward and solemn,
apologising instead of attending, and often moving wrong without being
aware of it, gave her all the shame and misery which a disagreeable
partner for a couple of dances can give. The moment of her release from
him was ecstasy.

She danced next with an officer, and had the refreshment of talking of
Wickham, and of hearing that he was universally liked. When those dances
were over, she returned to Charlotte Lucas, and was in conversation with
her, when she found herself suddenly addressed by Mr. Darcy who took
her so much by surprise in his application for her hand, that,
without knowing what she did, she accepted him. He walked away again
immediately, and she was left to fret over her own want of presence of
mind; Charlotte tried to console her:

“I dare say you will find him very agreeable.”

“Heaven forbid! _That_ would be the greatest misfortune of all! To find
a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! Do not wish me such an
evil.”

When the dancing recommenced, however, and Darcy approached to claim her
hand, Charlotte could not help cautioning her in a whisper, not to be a
simpleton, and allow her fancy for Wickham to make her appear unpleasant
in the eyes of a man ten times his consequence. Elizabeth made no
answer, and took her place in the set, amazed at the dignity to which
she was arrived in being allowed to stand opposite to Mr. Darcy, and
reading in her neighbours' looks, their equal amazement in beholding
it. They stood for some time without speaking a word; and she began to
imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances, and at
first was resolved not to break it; till suddenly fancying that it would
be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk, she made
some slight observation on the dance. He replied, and was again
silent. After a pause of some minutes, she addressed him a second time
with:--“It is _your_ turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked
about the dance, and _you_ ought to make some sort of remark on the size
of the room, or the number of couples.”

He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say should be
said.

“Very well. That reply will do for the present. Perhaps by and by I may
observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones. But
_now_ we may be silent.”

“Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?”

“Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be
entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet for the advantage of
_some_, conversation ought to be so arranged, as that they may have the
trouble of saying as little as possible.”

“Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you
imagine that you are gratifying mine?”

“Both,” replied Elizabeth archly; “for I have always seen a great
similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial,
taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say
something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to
posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.”

“This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure,”
 said he. “How near it may be to _mine_, I cannot pretend to say. _You_
think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly.”

“I must not decide on my own performance.”

He made no answer, and they were again silent till they had gone down
the dance, when he asked her if she and her sisters did not very often
walk to Meryton. She answered in the affirmative, and, unable to resist
the temptation, added, “When you met us there the other day, we had just
been forming a new acquaintance.”

The effect was immediate. A deeper shade of _hauteur_ overspread his
features, but he said not a word, and Elizabeth, though blaming herself
for her own weakness, could not go on. At length Darcy spoke, and in a
constrained manner said, “Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners
as may ensure his _making_ friends--whether he may be equally capable of
_retaining_ them, is less certain.”

“He has been so unlucky as to lose _your_ friendship,” replied Elizabeth
with emphasis, “and in a manner which he is likely to suffer from all
his life.”

Darcy made no answer, and seemed desirous of changing the subject. At
that moment, Sir William Lucas appeared close to them, meaning to pass
through the set to the other side of the room; but on perceiving Mr.
Darcy, he stopped with a bow of superior courtesy to compliment him on
his dancing and his partner.

“I have been most highly gratified indeed, my dear sir. Such very
superior dancing is not often seen. It is evident that you belong to the
first circles. Allow me to say, however, that your fair partner does not
disgrace you, and that I must hope to have this pleasure often repeated,
especially when a certain desirable event, my dear Eliza (glancing at
her sister and Bingley) shall take place. What congratulations will then
flow in! I appeal to Mr. Darcy:--but let me not interrupt you, sir. You
will not thank me for detaining you from the bewitching converse of that
young lady, whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me.”

The latter part of this address was scarcely heard by Darcy; but Sir
William's allusion to his friend seemed to strike him forcibly, and his
eyes were directed with a very serious expression towards Bingley and
Jane, who were dancing together. Recovering himself, however, shortly,
he turned to his partner, and said, “Sir William's interruption has made
me forget what we were talking of.”

“I do not think we were speaking at all. Sir William could not have
interrupted two people in the room who had less to say for themselves.
We have tried two or three subjects already without success, and what we
are to talk of next I cannot imagine.”

“What think you of books?” said he, smiling.

“Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same
feelings.”

“I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be
no want of subject. We may compare our different opinions.”

“No--I cannot talk of books in a ball-room; my head is always full of
something else.”

“The _present_ always occupies you in such scenes--does it?” said he,
with a look of doubt.

“Yes, always,” she replied, without knowing what she said, for her
thoughts had wandered far from the subject, as soon afterwards appeared
by her suddenly exclaiming, “I remember hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy,
that you hardly ever forgave, that your resentment once created was
unappeasable. You are very cautious, I suppose, as to its _being
created_.”

“I am,” said he, with a firm voice.

“And never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice?”

“I hope not.”

“It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion,
to be secure of judging properly at first.”

“May I ask to what these questions tend?”

“Merely to the illustration of _your_ character,” said she, endeavouring
to shake off her gravity. “I am trying to make it out.”

“And what is your success?”

She shook her head. “I do not get on at all. I hear such different
accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.”

“I can readily believe,” answered he gravely, “that reports may vary
greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were
not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to
fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either.”

“But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have another
opportunity.”

“I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours,” he coldly replied.
She said no more, and they went down the other dance and parted in
silence; and on each side dissatisfied, though not to an equal degree,
for in Darcy's breast there was a tolerably powerful feeling towards
her, which soon procured her pardon, and directed all his anger against
another.

They had not long separated, when Miss Bingley came towards her, and
with an expression of civil disdain accosted her:

“So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with George Wickham!
Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand
questions; and I find that the young man quite forgot to tell you, among
his other communication, that he was the son of old Wickham, the late
Mr. Darcy's steward. Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to
give implicit confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr. Darcy's
using him ill, it is perfectly false; for, on the contrary, he has
always been remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has treated
Mr. Darcy in a most infamous manner. I do not know the particulars, but
I know very well that Mr. Darcy is not in the least to blame, that he
cannot bear to hear George Wickham mentioned, and that though my brother
thought that he could not well avoid including him in his invitation to
the officers, he was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself
out of the way. His coming into the country at all is a most insolent
thing, indeed, and I wonder how he could presume to do it. I pity you,
Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favourite's guilt; but really,
considering his descent, one could not expect much better.”

“His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the same,” said
Elizabeth angrily; “for I have heard you accuse him of nothing worse
than of being the son of Mr. Darcy's steward, and of _that_, I can
assure you, he informed me himself.”

“I beg your pardon,” replied Miss Bingley, turning away with a sneer.
“Excuse my interference--it was kindly meant.”

“Insolent girl!” said Elizabeth to herself. “You are much mistaken
if you expect to influence me by such a paltry attack as this. I see
nothing in it but your own wilful ignorance and the malice of Mr.
Darcy.” She then sought her eldest sister, who had undertaken to make
inquiries on the same subject of Bingley. Jane met her with a smile of
such sweet complacency, a glow of such happy expression, as sufficiently
marked how well she was satisfied with the occurrences of the evening.
Elizabeth instantly read her feelings, and at that moment solicitude for
Wickham, resentment against his enemies, and everything else, gave way
before the hope of Jane's being in the fairest way for happiness.

“I want to know,” said she, with a countenance no less smiling than her
sister's, “what you have learnt about Mr. Wickham. But perhaps you have
been too pleasantly engaged to think of any third person; in which case
you may be sure of my pardon.”

“No,” replied Jane, “I have not forgotten him; but I have nothing
satisfactory to tell you. Mr. Bingley does not know the whole of
his history, and is quite ignorant of the circumstances which have
principally offended Mr. Darcy; but he will vouch for the good conduct,
the probity, and honour of his friend, and is perfectly convinced that
Mr. Wickham has deserved much less attention from Mr. Darcy than he has
received; and I am sorry to say by his account as well as his sister's,
Mr. Wickham is by no means a respectable young man. I am afraid he has
been very imprudent, and has deserved to lose Mr. Darcy's regard.”

“Mr. Bingley does not know Mr. Wickham himself?”

“No; he never saw him till the other morning at Meryton.”

“This account then is what he has received from Mr. Darcy. I am
satisfied. But what does he say of the living?”

“He does not exactly recollect the circumstances, though he has heard
them from Mr. Darcy more than once, but he believes that it was left to
him _conditionally_ only.”

“I have not a doubt of Mr. Bingley's sincerity,” said Elizabeth warmly;
“but you must excuse my not being convinced by assurances only. Mr.
Bingley's defense of his friend was a very able one, I dare say; but
since he is unacquainted with several parts of the story, and has learnt
the rest from that friend himself, I shall venture to still think of
both gentlemen as I did before.”

She then changed the discourse to one more gratifying to each, and on
which there could be no difference of sentiment. Elizabeth listened with
delight to the happy, though modest hopes which Jane entertained of Mr.
Bingley's regard, and said all in her power to heighten her confidence
in it. On their being joined by Mr. Bingley himself, Elizabeth withdrew
to Miss Lucas; to whose inquiry after the pleasantness of her last
partner she had scarcely replied, before Mr. Collins came up to them,
and told her with great exultation that he had just been so fortunate as
to make a most important discovery.

“I have found out,” said he, “by a singular accident, that there is now
in the room a near relation of my patroness. I happened to overhear the
gentleman himself mentioning to the young lady who does the honours of
the house the names of his cousin Miss de Bourgh, and of her mother Lady
Catherine. How wonderfully these sort of things occur! Who would have
thought of my meeting with, perhaps, a nephew of Lady Catherine de
Bourgh in this assembly! I am most thankful that the discovery is made
in time for me to pay my respects to him, which I am now going to
do, and trust he will excuse my not having done it before. My total
ignorance of the connection must plead my apology.”

“You are not going to introduce yourself to Mr. Darcy!”

“Indeed I am. I shall entreat his pardon for not having done it earlier.
I believe him to be Lady Catherine's _nephew_. It will be in my power to
assure him that her ladyship was quite well yesterday se'nnight.”

Elizabeth tried hard to dissuade him from such a scheme, assuring him
that Mr. Darcy would consider his addressing him without introduction
as an impertinent freedom, rather than a compliment to his aunt; that
it was not in the least necessary there should be any notice on either
side; and that if it were, it must belong to Mr. Darcy, the superior in
consequence, to begin the acquaintance. Mr. Collins listened to her
with the determined air of following his own inclination, and, when she
ceased speaking, replied thus:

“My dear Miss Elizabeth, I have the highest opinion in the world in
your excellent judgement in all matters within the scope of your
understanding; but permit me to say, that there must be a wide
difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst the laity,
and those which regulate the clergy; for, give me leave to observe that
I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with
the highest rank in the kingdom--provided that a proper humility of
behaviour is at the same time maintained. You must therefore allow me to
follow the dictates of my conscience on this occasion, which leads me to
perform what I look on as a point of duty. Pardon me for neglecting to
profit by your advice, which on every other subject shall be my constant
guide, though in the case before us I consider myself more fitted by
education and habitual study to decide on what is right than a young
lady like yourself.” And with a low bow he left her to attack Mr.
Darcy, whose reception of his advances she eagerly watched, and whose
astonishment at being so addressed was very evident. Her cousin prefaced
his speech with a solemn bow and though she could not hear a word of
it, she felt as if hearing it all, and saw in the motion of his lips the
words “apology,” “Hunsford,” and “Lady Catherine de Bourgh.” It vexed
her to see him expose himself to such a man. Mr. Darcy was eyeing him
with unrestrained wonder, and when at last Mr. Collins allowed him time
to speak, replied with an air of distant civility. Mr. Collins, however,
was not discouraged from speaking again, and Mr. Darcy's contempt seemed
abundantly increasing with the length of his second speech, and at the
end of it he only made him a slight bow, and moved another way. Mr.
Collins then returned to Elizabeth.

“I have no reason, I assure you,” said he, “to be dissatisfied with my
reception. Mr. Darcy seemed much pleased with the attention. He answered
me with the utmost civility, and even paid me the compliment of saying
that he was so well convinced of Lady Catherine's discernment as to be
certain she could never bestow a favour unworthily. It was really a very
handsome thought. Upon the whole, I am much pleased with him.”

As Elizabeth had no longer any interest of her own to pursue, she turned
her attention almost entirely on her sister and Mr. Bingley; and the
train of agreeable reflections which her observations gave birth to,
made her perhaps almost as happy as Jane. She saw her in idea settled in
that very house, in all the felicity which a marriage of true affection
could bestow; and she felt capable, under such circumstances, of
endeavouring even to like Bingley's two sisters. Her mother's thoughts
she plainly saw were bent the same way, and she determined not to
venture near her, lest she might hear too much. When they sat down to
supper, therefore, she considered it a most unlucky perverseness which
placed them within one of each other; and deeply was she vexed to find
that her mother was talking to that one person (Lady Lucas) freely,
openly, and of nothing else but her expectation that Jane would soon
be married to Mr. Bingley. It was an animating subject, and Mrs. Bennet
seemed incapable of fatigue while enumerating the advantages of the
match. His being such a charming young man, and so rich, and living but
three miles from them, were the first points of self-gratulation; and
then it was such a comfort to think how fond the two sisters were of
Jane, and to be certain that they must desire the connection as much as
she could do. It was, moreover, such a promising thing for her younger
daughters, as Jane's marrying so greatly must throw them in the way of
other rich men; and lastly, it was so pleasant at her time of life to be
able to consign her single daughters to the care of their sister, that
she might not be obliged to go into company more than she liked. It was
necessary to make this circumstance a matter of pleasure, because on
such occasions it is the etiquette; but no one was less likely than Mrs.
Bennet to find comfort in staying home at any period of her life. She
concluded with many good wishes that Lady Lucas might soon be equally
fortunate, though evidently and triumphantly believing there was no
chance of it.

In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother's
words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible
whisper; for, to her inexpressible vexation, she could perceive that the
chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy, who sat opposite to them. Her
mother only scolded her for being nonsensical.

“What is Mr. Darcy to me, pray, that I should be afraid of him? I am
sure we owe him no such particular civility as to be obliged to say
nothing _he_ may not like to hear.”

“For heaven's sake, madam, speak lower. What advantage can it be for you
to offend Mr. Darcy? You will never recommend yourself to his friend by
so doing!”

Nothing that she could say, however, had any influence. Her mother would
talk of her views in the same intelligible tone. Elizabeth blushed and
blushed again with shame and vexation. She could not help frequently
glancing her eye at Mr. Darcy, though every glance convinced her of what
she dreaded; for though he was not always looking at her mother, she was
convinced that his attention was invariably fixed by her. The expression
of his face changed gradually from indignant contempt to a composed and
steady gravity.

At length, however, Mrs. Bennet had no more to say; and Lady Lucas, who
had been long yawning at the repetition of delights which she saw no
likelihood of sharing, was left to the comforts of cold ham and
chicken. Elizabeth now began to revive. But not long was the interval of
tranquillity; for, when supper was over, singing was talked of, and
she had the mortification of seeing Mary, after very little entreaty,
preparing to oblige the company. By many significant looks and silent
entreaties, did she endeavour to prevent such a proof of complaisance,
but in vain; Mary would not understand them; such an opportunity of
exhibiting was delightful to her, and she began her song. Elizabeth's
eyes were fixed on her with most painful sensations, and she watched her
progress through the several stanzas with an impatience which was very
ill rewarded at their close; for Mary, on receiving, amongst the thanks
of the table, the hint of a hope that she might be prevailed on to
favour them again, after the pause of half a minute began another.
Mary's powers were by no means fitted for such a display; her voice was
weak, and her manner affected. Elizabeth was in agonies. She looked at
Jane, to see how she bore it; but Jane was very composedly talking to
Bingley. She looked at his two sisters, and saw them making signs
of derision at each other, and at Darcy, who continued, however,
imperturbably grave. She looked at her father to entreat his
interference, lest Mary should be singing all night. He took the hint,
and when Mary had finished her second song, said aloud, “That will do
extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other
young ladies have time to exhibit.”

Mary, though pretending not to hear, was somewhat disconcerted; and
Elizabeth, sorry for her, and sorry for her father's speech, was afraid
her anxiety had done no good. Others of the party were now applied to.

“If I,” said Mr. Collins, “were so fortunate as to be able to sing, I
should have great pleasure, I am sure, in obliging the company with an
air; for I consider music as a very innocent diversion, and perfectly
compatible with the profession of a clergyman. I do not mean, however,
to assert that we can be justified in devoting too much of our time
to music, for there are certainly other things to be attended to. The
rector of a parish has much to do. In the first place, he must make
such an agreement for tithes as may be beneficial to himself and not
offensive to his patron. He must write his own sermons; and the time
that remains will not be too much for his parish duties, and the care
and improvement of his dwelling, which he cannot be excused from making
as comfortable as possible. And I do not think it of light importance
that he should have attentive and conciliatory manners towards everybody,
especially towards those to whom he owes his preferment. I cannot acquit
him of that duty; nor could I think well of the man who should omit an
occasion of testifying his respect towards anybody connected with the
family.” And with a bow to Mr. Darcy, he concluded his speech, which had
been spoken so loud as to be heard by half the room. Many stared--many
smiled; but no one looked more amused than Mr. Bennet himself, while his
wife seriously commended Mr. Collins for having spoken so sensibly,
and observed in a half-whisper to Lady Lucas, that he was a remarkably
clever, good kind of young man.

To Elizabeth it appeared that, had her family made an agreement to
expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would
have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit or
finer success; and happy did she think it for Bingley and her sister
that some of the exhibition had escaped his notice, and that his
feelings were not of a sort to be much distressed by the folly which he
must have witnessed. That his two sisters and Mr. Darcy, however, should
have such an opportunity of ridiculing her relations, was bad enough,
and she could not determine whether the silent contempt of the
gentleman, or the insolent smiles of the ladies, were more intolerable.

The rest of the evening brought her little amusement. She was teased by
Mr. Collins, who continued most perseveringly by her side, and though
he could not prevail on her to dance with him again, put it out of her
power to dance with others. In vain did she entreat him to stand up with
somebody else, and offer to introduce him to any young lady in the room.
He assured her, that as to dancing, he was perfectly indifferent to it;
that his chief object was by delicate attentions to recommend himself to
her and that he should therefore make a point of remaining close to her
the whole evening. There was no arguing upon such a project. She owed
her greatest relief to her friend Miss Lucas, who often joined them, and
good-naturedly engaged Mr. Collins's conversation to herself.

She was at least free from the offense of Mr. Darcy's further notice;
though often standing within a very short distance of her, quite
disengaged, he never came near enough to speak. She felt it to be the
probable consequence of her allusions to Mr. Wickham, and rejoiced in
it.

The Longbourn party were the last of all the company to depart, and, by
a manoeuvre of Mrs. Bennet, had to wait for their carriage a quarter of
an hour after everybody else was gone, which gave them time to see how
heartily they were wished away by some of the family. Mrs. Hurst and her
sister scarcely opened their mouths, except to complain of fatigue, and
were evidently impatient to have the house to themselves. They repulsed
every attempt of Mrs. Bennet at conversation, and by so doing threw a
languor over the whole party, which was very little relieved by the
long speeches of Mr. Collins, who was complimenting Mr. Bingley and his
sisters on the elegance of their entertainment, and the hospitality and
politeness which had marked their behaviour to their guests. Darcy said
nothing at all. Mr. Bennet, in equal silence, was enjoying the scene.
Mr. Bingley and Jane were standing together, a little detached from the
rest, and talked only to each other. Elizabeth preserved as steady a
silence as either Mrs. Hurst or Miss Bingley; and even Lydia was too
much fatigued to utter more than the occasional exclamation of “Lord,
how tired I am!” accompanied by a violent yawn.

When at length they arose to take leave, Mrs. Bennet was most pressingly
civil in her hope of seeing the whole family soon at Longbourn, and
addressed herself especially to Mr. Bingley, to assure him how happy he
would make them by eating a family dinner with them at any time, without
the ceremony of a formal invitation. Bingley was all grateful pleasure,
and he readily engaged for taking the earliest opportunity of waiting on
her, after his return from London, whither he was obliged to go the next
day for a short time.

Mrs. Bennet was perfectly satisfied, and quitted the house under the
delightful persuasion that, allowing for the necessary preparations of
settlements, new carriages, and wedding clothes, she should undoubtedly
see her daughter settled at Netherfield in the course of three or four
months. Of having another daughter married to Mr. Collins, she thought
with equal certainty, and with considerable, though not equal, pleasure.
Elizabeth was the least dear to her of all her children; and though the
man and the match were quite good enough for _her_, the worth of each
was eclipsed by Mr. Bingley and Netherfield.



Chapter 19


The next day opened a new scene at Longbourn. Mr. Collins made his
declaration in form. Having resolved to do it without loss of time, as
his leave of absence extended only to the following Saturday, and having
no feelings of diffidence to make it distressing to himself even at
the moment, he set about it in a very orderly manner, with all the
observances, which he supposed a regular part of the business. On
finding Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth, and one of the younger girls together,
soon after breakfast, he addressed the mother in these words:

“May I hope, madam, for your interest with your fair daughter Elizabeth,
when I solicit for the honour of a private audience with her in the
course of this morning?”

Before Elizabeth had time for anything but a blush of surprise, Mrs.
Bennet answered instantly, “Oh dear!--yes--certainly. I am sure Lizzy
will be very happy--I am sure she can have no objection. Come, Kitty, I
want you up stairs.” And, gathering her work together, she was hastening
away, when Elizabeth called out:

“Dear madam, do not go. I beg you will not go. Mr. Collins must excuse
me. He can have nothing to say to me that anybody need not hear. I am
going away myself.”

“No, no, nonsense, Lizzy. I desire you to stay where you are.” And upon
Elizabeth's seeming really, with vexed and embarrassed looks, about to
escape, she added: “Lizzy, I _insist_ upon your staying and hearing Mr.
Collins.”

Elizabeth would not oppose such an injunction--and a moment's
consideration making her also sensible that it would be wisest to get it
over as soon and as quietly as possible, she sat down again and tried to
conceal, by incessant employment the feelings which were divided between
distress and diversion. Mrs. Bennet and Kitty walked off, and as soon as
they were gone, Mr. Collins began.

“Believe me, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that your modesty, so far from
doing you any disservice, rather adds to your other perfections. You
would have been less amiable in my eyes had there _not_ been this little
unwillingness; but allow me to assure you, that I have your respected
mother's permission for this address. You can hardly doubt the
purport of my discourse, however your natural delicacy may lead you to
dissemble; my attentions have been too marked to be mistaken. Almost as
soon as I entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of
my future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this
subject, perhaps it would be advisable for me to state my reasons for
marrying--and, moreover, for coming into Hertfordshire with the design
of selecting a wife, as I certainly did.”

The idea of Mr. Collins, with all his solemn composure, being run away
with by his feelings, made Elizabeth so near laughing, that she could
not use the short pause he allowed in any attempt to stop him further,
and he continued:

“My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for
every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example
of matrimony in his parish; secondly, that I am convinced that it will
add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly--which perhaps I ought
to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and
recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling
patroness. Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked
too!) on this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I
left Hunsford--between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was
arranging Miss de Bourgh's footstool, that she said, 'Mr. Collins, you
must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose properly, choose
a gentlewoman for _my_ sake; and for your _own_, let her be an active,
useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small
income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as
you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her.' Allow me, by the
way, to observe, my fair cousin, that I do not reckon the notice
and kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as among the least of the
advantages in my power to offer. You will find her manners beyond
anything I can describe; and your wit and vivacity, I think, must be
acceptable to her, especially when tempered with the silence and
respect which her rank will inevitably excite. Thus much for my general
intention in favour of matrimony; it remains to be told why my views
were directed towards Longbourn instead of my own neighbourhood, where I
can assure you there are many amiable young women. But the fact is, that
being, as I am, to inherit this estate after the death of your honoured
father (who, however, may live many years longer), I could not satisfy
myself without resolving to choose a wife from among his daughters, that
the loss to them might be as little as possible, when the melancholy
event takes place--which, however, as I have already said, may not
be for several years. This has been my motive, my fair cousin, and
I flatter myself it will not sink me in your esteem. And now nothing
remains for me but to assure you in the most animated language of the
violence of my affection. To fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and
shall make no demand of that nature on your father, since I am well
aware that it could not be complied with; and that one thousand pounds
in the four per cents, which will not be yours till after your mother's
decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that head,
therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that
no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married.”

It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.

“You are too hasty, sir,” she cried. “You forget that I have made no
answer. Let me do it without further loss of time. Accept my thanks for
the compliment you are paying me. I am very sensible of the honour of
your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than to
decline them.”

“I am not now to learn,” replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the
hand, “that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the
man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their
favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second, or even a
third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just
said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.”

“Upon my word, sir,” cried Elizabeth, “your hope is a rather
extraordinary one after my declaration. I do assure you that I am not
one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so
daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second
time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make _me_
happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who
could make you so. Nay, were your friend Lady Catherine to know me, I
am persuaded she would find me in every respect ill qualified for the
situation.”

“Were it certain that Lady Catherine would think so,” said Mr. Collins
very gravely--“but I cannot imagine that her ladyship would at all
disapprove of you. And you may be certain when I have the honour of
seeing her again, I shall speak in the very highest terms of your
modesty, economy, and other amiable qualification.”

“Indeed, Mr. Collins, all praise of me will be unnecessary. You
must give me leave to judge for myself, and pay me the compliment
of believing what I say. I wish you very happy and very rich, and by
refusing your hand, do all in my power to prevent your being otherwise.
In making me the offer, you must have satisfied the delicacy of your
feelings with regard to my family, and may take possession of Longbourn
estate whenever it falls, without any self-reproach. This matter may
be considered, therefore, as finally settled.” And rising as she
thus spoke, she would have quitted the room, had Mr. Collins not thus
addressed her:

“When I do myself the honour of speaking to you next on the subject, I
shall hope to receive a more favourable answer than you have now given
me; though I am far from accusing you of cruelty at present, because I
know it to be the established custom of your sex to reject a man on
the first application, and perhaps you have even now said as much to
encourage my suit as would be consistent with the true delicacy of the
female character.”

“Really, Mr. Collins,” cried Elizabeth with some warmth, “you puzzle me
exceedingly. If what I have hitherto said can appear to you in the form
of encouragement, I know not how to express my refusal in such a way as
to convince you of its being one.”

“You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that your
refusal of my addresses is merely words of course. My reasons for
believing it are briefly these: It does not appear to me that my hand is
unworthy of your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would
be any other than highly desirable. My situation in life, my connections
with the family of de Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are
circumstances highly in my favour; and you should take it into further
consideration, that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no
means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made you. Your
portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo
the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications. As I must
therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me,
I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by
suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females.”

“I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to that kind
of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would
rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you
again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but
to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect
forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant
female, intending to plague you, but as a rational creature, speaking
the truth from her heart.”

“You are uniformly charming!” cried he, with an air of awkward
gallantry; “and I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the express
authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals will not fail of
being acceptable.”

To such perseverance in wilful self-deception Elizabeth would make
no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew; determined, if
he persisted in considering her repeated refusals as flattering
encouragement, to apply to her father, whose negative might be uttered
in such a manner as to be decisive, and whose behaviour at least could
not be mistaken for the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female.



Chapter 20


Mr. Collins was not left long to the silent contemplation of his
successful love; for Mrs. Bennet, having dawdled about in the vestibule
to watch for the end of the conference, no sooner saw Elizabeth open
the door and with quick step pass her towards the staircase, than she
entered the breakfast-room, and congratulated both him and herself in
warm terms on the happy prospect of their nearer connection. Mr. Collins
received and returned these felicitations with equal pleasure, and then
proceeded to relate the particulars of their interview, with the result
of which he trusted he had every reason to be satisfied, since the
refusal which his cousin had steadfastly given him would naturally flow
from her bashful modesty and the genuine delicacy of her character.

This information, however, startled Mrs. Bennet; she would have been
glad to be equally satisfied that her daughter had meant to encourage
him by protesting against his proposals, but she dared not believe it,
and could not help saying so.

“But, depend upon it, Mr. Collins,” she added, “that Lizzy shall be
brought to reason. I will speak to her about it directly. She is a very
headstrong, foolish girl, and does not know her own interest but I will
_make_ her know it.”

“Pardon me for interrupting you, madam,” cried Mr. Collins; “but if
she is really headstrong and foolish, I know not whether she would
altogether be a very desirable wife to a man in my situation, who
naturally looks for happiness in the marriage state. If therefore she
actually persists in rejecting my suit, perhaps it were better not
to force her into accepting me, because if liable to such defects of
temper, she could not contribute much to my felicity.”

“Sir, you quite misunderstand me,” said Mrs. Bennet, alarmed. “Lizzy is
only headstrong in such matters as these. In everything else she is as
good-natured a girl as ever lived. I will go directly to Mr. Bennet, and
we shall very soon settle it with her, I am sure.”

She would not give him time to reply, but hurrying instantly to her
husband, called out as she entered the library, “Oh! Mr. Bennet, you
are wanted immediately; we are all in an uproar. You must come and make
Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she vows she will not have him, and if you
do not make haste he will change his mind and not have _her_.”

Mr. Bennet raised his eyes from his book as she entered, and fixed them
on her face with a calm unconcern which was not in the least altered by
her communication.

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you,” said he, when she had
finished her speech. “Of what are you talking?”

“Of Mr. Collins and Lizzy. Lizzy declares she will not have Mr. Collins,
and Mr. Collins begins to say that he will not have Lizzy.”

“And what am I to do on the occasion? It seems an hopeless business.”

“Speak to Lizzy about it yourself. Tell her that you insist upon her
marrying him.”

“Let her be called down. She shall hear my opinion.”

Mrs. Bennet rang the bell, and Miss Elizabeth was summoned to the
library.

“Come here, child,” cried her father as she appeared. “I have sent for
you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr. Collins has made
you an offer of marriage. Is it true?” Elizabeth replied that it was.
“Very well--and this offer of marriage you have refused?”

“I have, sir.”

“Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your
accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?”

“Yes, or I will never see her again.”

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must
be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you
again if you do _not_ marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again
if you _do_.”

Elizabeth could not but smile at such a conclusion of such a beginning,
but Mrs. Bennet, who had persuaded herself that her husband regarded the
affair as she wished, was excessively disappointed.

“What do you mean, Mr. Bennet, in talking this way? You promised me to
_insist_ upon her marrying him.”

“My dear,” replied her husband, “I have two small favours to request.
First, that you will allow me the free use of my understanding on the
present occasion; and secondly, of my room. I shall be glad to have the
library to myself as soon as may be.”

Not yet, however, in spite of her disappointment in her husband, did
Mrs. Bennet give up the point. She talked to Elizabeth again and again;
coaxed and threatened her by turns. She endeavoured to secure Jane
in her interest; but Jane, with all possible mildness, declined
interfering; and Elizabeth, sometimes with real earnestness, and
sometimes with playful gaiety, replied to her attacks. Though her manner
varied, however, her determination never did.

Mr. Collins, meanwhile, was meditating in solitude on what had passed.
He thought too well of himself to comprehend on what motives his cousin
could refuse him; and though his pride was hurt, he suffered in no other
way. His regard for her was quite imaginary; and the possibility of her
deserving her mother's reproach prevented his feeling any regret.

While the family were in this confusion, Charlotte Lucas came to spend
the day with them. She was met in the vestibule by Lydia, who, flying to
her, cried in a half whisper, “I am glad you are come, for there is such
fun here! What do you think has happened this morning? Mr. Collins has
made an offer to Lizzy, and she will not have him.”

Charlotte hardly had time to answer, before they were joined by Kitty,
who came to tell the same news; and no sooner had they entered the
breakfast-room, where Mrs. Bennet was alone, than she likewise began on
the subject, calling on Miss Lucas for her compassion, and entreating
her to persuade her friend Lizzy to comply with the wishes of all her
family. “Pray do, my dear Miss Lucas,” she added in a melancholy tone,
“for nobody is on my side, nobody takes part with me. I am cruelly used,
nobody feels for my poor nerves.”

Charlotte's reply was spared by the entrance of Jane and Elizabeth.

“Aye, there she comes,” continued Mrs. Bennet, “looking as unconcerned
as may be, and caring no more for us than if we were at York, provided
she can have her own way. But I tell you, Miss Lizzy--if you take it
into your head to go on refusing every offer of marriage in this way,
you will never get a husband at all--and I am sure I do not know who is
to maintain you when your father is dead. I shall not be able to keep
you--and so I warn you. I have done with you from this very day. I told
you in the library, you know, that I should never speak to you again,
and you will find me as good as my word. I have no pleasure in talking
to undutiful children. Not that I have much pleasure, indeed, in talking
to anybody. People who suffer as I do from nervous complaints can have
no great inclination for talking. Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it
is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.”

Her daughters listened in silence to this effusion, sensible that
any attempt to reason with her or soothe her would only increase the
irritation. She talked on, therefore, without interruption from any of
them, till they were joined by Mr. Collins, who entered the room with
an air more stately than usual, and on perceiving whom, she said to
the girls, “Now, I do insist upon it, that you, all of you, hold
your tongues, and let me and Mr. Collins have a little conversation
together.”

Elizabeth passed quietly out of the room, Jane and Kitty followed, but
Lydia stood her ground, determined to hear all she could; and Charlotte,
detained first by the civility of Mr. Collins, whose inquiries after
herself and all her family were very minute, and then by a little
curiosity, satisfied herself with walking to the window and pretending
not to hear. In a doleful voice Mrs. Bennet began the projected
conversation: “Oh! Mr. Collins!”

“My dear madam,” replied he, “let us be for ever silent on this point.
Far be it from me,” he presently continued, in a voice that marked his
displeasure, “to resent the behaviour of your daughter. Resignation
to inevitable evils is the duty of us all; the peculiar duty of a
young man who has been so fortunate as I have been in early preferment;
and I trust I am resigned. Perhaps not the less so from feeling a doubt
of my positive happiness had my fair cousin honoured me with her hand;
for I have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as
when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our
estimation. You will not, I hope, consider me as showing any disrespect
to your family, my dear madam, by thus withdrawing my pretensions to
your daughter's favour, without having paid yourself and Mr. Bennet the
compliment of requesting you to interpose your authority in my
behalf. My conduct may, I fear, be objectionable in having accepted my
dismission from your daughter's lips instead of your own. But we are all
liable to error. I have certainly meant well through the whole affair.
My object has been to secure an amiable companion for myself, with due
consideration for the advantage of all your family, and if my _manner_
has been at all reprehensible, I here beg leave to apologise.”



Chapter 21


The discussion of Mr. Collins's offer was now nearly at an end, and
Elizabeth had only to suffer from the uncomfortable feelings necessarily
attending it, and occasionally from some peevish allusions of her
mother. As for the gentleman himself, _his_ feelings were chiefly
expressed, not by embarrassment or dejection, or by trying to avoid her,
but by stiffness of manner and resentful silence. He scarcely ever spoke
to her, and the assiduous attentions which he had been so sensible of
himself were transferred for the rest of the day to Miss Lucas, whose
civility in listening to him was a seasonable relief to them all, and
especially to her friend.

The morrow produced no abatement of Mrs. Bennet's ill-humour or ill
health. Mr. Collins was also in the same state of angry pride. Elizabeth
had hoped that his resentment might shorten his visit, but his plan did
not appear in the least affected by it. He was always to have gone on
Saturday, and to Saturday he meant to stay.

After breakfast, the girls walked to Meryton to inquire if Mr. Wickham
were returned, and to lament over his absence from the Netherfield ball.
He joined them on their entering the town, and attended them to their
aunt's where his regret and vexation, and the concern of everybody, was
well talked over. To Elizabeth, however, he voluntarily acknowledged
that the necessity of his absence _had_ been self-imposed.

“I found,” said he, “as the time drew near that I had better not meet
Mr. Darcy; that to be in the same room, the same party with him for so
many hours together, might be more than I could bear, and that scenes
might arise unpleasant to more than myself.”

She highly approved his forbearance, and they had leisure for a full
discussion of it, and for all the commendation which they civilly
bestowed on each other, as Wickham and another officer walked back with
them to Longbourn, and during the walk he particularly attended to
her. His accompanying them was a double advantage; she felt all the
compliment it offered to herself, and it was most acceptable as an
occasion of introducing him to her father and mother.

Soon after their return, a letter was delivered to Miss Bennet; it came
from Netherfield. The envelope contained a sheet of elegant, little,
hot-pressed paper, well covered with a lady's fair, flowing hand; and
Elizabeth saw her sister's countenance change as she read it, and saw
her dwelling intently on some particular passages. Jane recollected
herself soon, and putting the letter away, tried to join with her usual
cheerfulness in the general conversation; but Elizabeth felt an anxiety
on the subject which drew off her attention even from Wickham; and no
sooner had he and his companion taken leave, than a glance from Jane
invited her to follow her up stairs. When they had gained their own room,
Jane, taking out the letter, said:

“This is from Caroline Bingley; what it contains has surprised me a good
deal. The whole party have left Netherfield by this time, and are on
their way to town--and without any intention of coming back again. You
shall hear what she says.”

She then read the first sentence aloud, which comprised the information
of their having just resolved to follow their brother to town directly,
and of their meaning to dine in Grosvenor Street, where Mr. Hurst had a
house. The next was in these words: “I do not pretend to regret anything
I shall leave in Hertfordshire, except your society, my dearest friend;
but we will hope, at some future period, to enjoy many returns of that
delightful intercourse we have known, and in the meanwhile may
lessen the pain of separation by a very frequent and most unreserved
correspondence. I depend on you for that.” To these highflown
expressions Elizabeth listened with all the insensibility of distrust;
and though the suddenness of their removal surprised her, she saw
nothing in it really to lament; it was not to be supposed that their
absence from Netherfield would prevent Mr. Bingley's being there; and as
to the loss of their society, she was persuaded that Jane must cease to
regard it, in the enjoyment of his.

“It is unlucky,” said she, after a short pause, “that you should not be
able to see your friends before they leave the country. But may we not
hope that the period of future happiness to which Miss Bingley looks
forward may arrive earlier than she is aware, and that the delightful
intercourse you have known as friends will be renewed with yet greater
satisfaction as sisters? Mr. Bingley will not be detained in London by
them.”

“Caroline decidedly says that none of the party will return into
Hertfordshire this winter. I will read it to you:”

“When my brother left us yesterday, he imagined that the business which
took him to London might be concluded in three or four days; but as we
are certain it cannot be so, and at the same time convinced that when
Charles gets to town he will be in no hurry to leave it again, we have
determined on following him thither, that he may not be obliged to spend
his vacant hours in a comfortless hotel. Many of my acquaintances are
already there for the winter; I wish that I could hear that you, my
dearest friend, had any intention of making one of the crowd--but of
that I despair. I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire may
abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings, and that your
beaux will be so numerous as to prevent your feeling the loss of the
three of whom we shall deprive you.”

“It is evident by this,” added Jane, “that he comes back no more this
winter.”

“It is only evident that Miss Bingley does not mean that he _should_.”

“Why will you think so? It must be his own doing. He is his own
master. But you do not know _all_. I _will_ read you the passage which
particularly hurts me. I will have no reserves from _you_.”

“Mr. Darcy is impatient to see his sister; and, to confess the truth,
_we_ are scarcely less eager to meet her again. I really do not think
Georgiana Darcy has her equal for beauty, elegance, and accomplishments;
and the affection she inspires in Louisa and myself is heightened into
something still more interesting, from the hope we dare entertain of
her being hereafter our sister. I do not know whether I ever before
mentioned to you my feelings on this subject; but I will not leave the
country without confiding them, and I trust you will not esteem them
unreasonable. My brother admires her greatly already; he will have
frequent opportunity now of seeing her on the most intimate footing;
her relations all wish the connection as much as his own; and a sister's
partiality is not misleading me, I think, when I call Charles most
capable of engaging any woman's heart. With all these circumstances to
favour an attachment, and nothing to prevent it, am I wrong, my dearest
Jane, in indulging the hope of an event which will secure the happiness
of so many?”

“What do you think of _this_ sentence, my dear Lizzy?” said Jane as she
finished it. “Is it not clear enough? Does it not expressly declare that
Caroline neither expects nor wishes me to be her sister; that she is
perfectly convinced of her brother's indifference; and that if she
suspects the nature of my feelings for him, she means (most kindly!) to
put me on my guard? Can there be any other opinion on the subject?”

“Yes, there can; for mine is totally different. Will you hear it?”

“Most willingly.”

“You shall have it in a few words. Miss Bingley sees that her brother is
in love with you, and wants him to marry Miss Darcy. She follows him
to town in hope of keeping him there, and tries to persuade you that he
does not care about you.”

Jane shook her head.

“Indeed, Jane, you ought to believe me. No one who has ever seen you
together can doubt his affection. Miss Bingley, I am sure, cannot. She
is not such a simpleton. Could she have seen half as much love in Mr.
Darcy for herself, she would have ordered her wedding clothes. But the
case is this: We are not rich enough or grand enough for them; and she
is the more anxious to get Miss Darcy for her brother, from the notion
that when there has been _one_ intermarriage, she may have less trouble
in achieving a second; in which there is certainly some ingenuity, and
I dare say it would succeed, if Miss de Bourgh were out of the way. But,
my dearest Jane, you cannot seriously imagine that because Miss Bingley
tells you her brother greatly admires Miss Darcy, he is in the smallest
degree less sensible of _your_ merit than when he took leave of you on
Tuesday, or that it will be in her power to persuade him that, instead
of being in love with you, he is very much in love with her friend.”

“If we thought alike of Miss Bingley,” replied Jane, “your
representation of all this might make me quite easy. But I know the
foundation is unjust. Caroline is incapable of wilfully deceiving
anyone; and all that I can hope in this case is that she is deceiving
herself.”

“That is right. You could not have started a more happy idea, since you
will not take comfort in mine. Believe her to be deceived, by all means.
You have now done your duty by her, and must fret no longer.”

“But, my dear sister, can I be happy, even supposing the best, in
accepting a man whose sisters and friends are all wishing him to marry
elsewhere?”

“You must decide for yourself,” said Elizabeth; “and if, upon mature
deliberation, you find that the misery of disobliging his two sisters is
more than equivalent to the happiness of being his wife, I advise you by
all means to refuse him.”

“How can you talk so?” said Jane, faintly smiling. “You must know that
though I should be exceedingly grieved at their disapprobation, I could
not hesitate.”

“I did not think you would; and that being the case, I cannot consider
your situation with much compassion.”

“But if he returns no more this winter, my choice will never be
required. A thousand things may arise in six months!”

The idea of his returning no more Elizabeth treated with the utmost
contempt. It appeared to her merely the suggestion of Caroline's
interested wishes, and she could not for a moment suppose that those
wishes, however openly or artfully spoken, could influence a young man
so totally independent of everyone.

She represented to her sister as forcibly as possible what she felt
on the subject, and had soon the pleasure of seeing its happy effect.
Jane's temper was not desponding, and she was gradually led to hope,
though the diffidence of affection sometimes overcame the hope, that
Bingley would return to Netherfield and answer every wish of her heart.

They agreed that Mrs. Bennet should only hear of the departure of the
family, without being alarmed on the score of the gentleman's conduct;
but even this partial communication gave her a great deal of concern,
and she bewailed it as exceedingly unlucky that the ladies should happen
to go away just as they were all getting so intimate together. After
lamenting it, however, at some length, she had the consolation that Mr.
Bingley would be soon down again and soon dining at Longbourn, and the
conclusion of all was the comfortable declaration, that though he had
been invited only to a family dinner, she would take care to have two
full courses.



Chapter 22


The Bennets were engaged to dine with the Lucases and again during the
chief of the day was Miss Lucas so kind as to listen to Mr. Collins.
Elizabeth took an opportunity of thanking her. “It keeps him in good
humour,” said she, “and I am more obliged to you than I can express.”
 Charlotte assured her friend of her satisfaction in being useful, and
that it amply repaid her for the little sacrifice of her time. This was
very amiable, but Charlotte's kindness extended farther than Elizabeth
had any conception of; its object was nothing else than to secure her
from any return of Mr. Collins's addresses, by engaging them towards
herself. Such was Miss Lucas's scheme; and appearances were so
favourable, that when they parted at night, she would have felt almost
secure of success if he had not been to leave Hertfordshire so very
soon. But here she did injustice to the fire and independence of his
character, for it led him to escape out of Longbourn House the next
morning with admirable slyness, and hasten to Lucas Lodge to throw
himself at her feet. He was anxious to avoid the notice of his cousins,
from a conviction that if they saw him depart, they could not fail to
conjecture his design, and he was not willing to have the attempt known
till its success might be known likewise; for though feeling almost
secure, and with reason, for Charlotte had been tolerably encouraging,
he was comparatively diffident since the adventure of Wednesday.
His reception, however, was of the most flattering kind. Miss Lucas
perceived him from an upper window as he walked towards the house, and
instantly set out to meet him accidentally in the lane. But little had
she dared to hope that so much love and eloquence awaited her there.

In as short a time as Mr. Collins's long speeches would allow,
everything was settled between them to the satisfaction of both; and as
they entered the house he earnestly entreated her to name the day that
was to make him the happiest of men; and though such a solicitation must
be waived for the present, the lady felt no inclination to trifle with
his happiness. The stupidity with which he was favoured by nature must
guard his courtship from any charm that could make a woman wish for its
continuance; and Miss Lucas, who accepted him solely from the pure
and disinterested desire of an establishment, cared not how soon that
establishment were gained.

Sir William and Lady Lucas were speedily applied to for their consent;
and it was bestowed with a most joyful alacrity. Mr. Collins's present
circumstances made it a most eligible match for their daughter, to whom
they could give little fortune; and his prospects of future wealth were
exceedingly fair. Lady Lucas began directly to calculate, with more
interest than the matter had ever excited before, how many years longer
Mr. Bennet was likely to live; and Sir William gave it as his decided
opinion, that whenever Mr. Collins should be in possession of the
Longbourn estate, it would be highly expedient that both he and his wife
should make their appearance at St. James's. The whole family, in short,
were properly overjoyed on the occasion. The younger girls formed hopes
of _coming out_ a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have
done; and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte's
dying an old maid. Charlotte herself was tolerably composed. She had
gained her point, and had time to consider of it. Her reflections were
in general satisfactory. Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither sensible
nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must
be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly
either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was
the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune,
and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest
preservative from want. This preservative she had now obtained; and at
the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all
the good luck of it. The least agreeable circumstance in the business
was the surprise it must occasion to Elizabeth Bennet, whose friendship
she valued beyond that of any other person. Elizabeth would wonder,
and probably would blame her; and though her resolution was not to be
shaken, her feelings must be hurt by such a disapprobation. She resolved
to give her the information herself, and therefore charged Mr. Collins,
when he returned to Longbourn to dinner, to drop no hint of what had
passed before any of the family. A promise of secrecy was of course very
dutifully given, but it could not be kept without difficulty; for the
curiosity excited by his long absence burst forth in such very direct
questions on his return as required some ingenuity to evade, and he was
at the same time exercising great self-denial, for he was longing to
publish his prosperous love.

As he was to begin his journey too early on the morrow to see any of the
family, the ceremony of leave-taking was performed when the ladies moved
for the night; and Mrs. Bennet, with great politeness and cordiality,
said how happy they should be to see him at Longbourn again, whenever
his engagements might allow him to visit them.

“My dear madam,” he replied, “this invitation is particularly
gratifying, because it is what I have been hoping to receive; and
you may be very certain that I shall avail myself of it as soon as
possible.”

They were all astonished; and Mr. Bennet, who could by no means wish for
so speedy a return, immediately said:

“But is there not danger of Lady Catherine's disapprobation here, my
good sir? You had better neglect your relations than run the risk of
offending your patroness.”

“My dear sir,” replied Mr. Collins, “I am particularly obliged to you
for this friendly caution, and you may depend upon my not taking so
material a step without her ladyship's concurrence.”

“You cannot be too much upon your guard. Risk anything rather than her
displeasure; and if you find it likely to be raised by your coming to us
again, which I should think exceedingly probable, stay quietly at home,
and be satisfied that _we_ shall take no offence.”

“Believe me, my dear sir, my gratitude is warmly excited by such
affectionate attention; and depend upon it, you will speedily receive
from me a letter of thanks for this, and for every other mark of your
regard during my stay in Hertfordshire. As for my fair cousins, though
my absence may not be long enough to render it necessary, I shall now
take the liberty of wishing them health and happiness, not excepting my
cousin Elizabeth.”

With proper civilities the ladies then withdrew; all of them equally
surprised that he meditated a quick return. Mrs. Bennet wished to
understand by it that he thought of paying his addresses to one of her
younger girls, and Mary might have been prevailed on to accept him.
She rated his abilities much higher than any of the others; there was
a solidity in his reflections which often struck her, and though by no
means so clever as herself, she thought that if encouraged to read
and improve himself by such an example as hers, he might become a very
agreeable companion. But on the following morning, every hope of this
kind was done away. Miss Lucas called soon after breakfast, and in a
private conference with Elizabeth related the event of the day before.

The possibility of Mr. Collins's fancying himself in love with her
friend had once occurred to Elizabeth within the last day or two; but
that Charlotte could encourage him seemed almost as far from
possibility as she could encourage him herself, and her astonishment was
consequently so great as to overcome at first the bounds of decorum, and
she could not help crying out:

“Engaged to Mr. Collins! My dear Charlotte--impossible!”

The steady countenance which Miss Lucas had commanded in telling her
story, gave way to a momentary confusion here on receiving so direct a
reproach; though, as it was no more than she expected, she soon regained
her composure, and calmly replied:

“Why should you be surprised, my dear Eliza? Do you think it incredible
that Mr. Collins should be able to procure any woman's good opinion,
because he was not so happy as to succeed with you?”

But Elizabeth had now recollected herself, and making a strong effort
for it, was able to assure with tolerable firmness that the prospect of
their relationship was highly grateful to her, and that she wished her
all imaginable happiness.

“I see what you are feeling,” replied Charlotte. “You must be surprised,
very much surprised--so lately as Mr. Collins was wishing to marry
you. But when you have had time to think it over, I hope you will be
satisfied with what I have done. I am not romantic, you know; I never
was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins's
character, connection, and situation in life, I am convinced that my
chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on
entering the marriage state.”

Elizabeth quietly answered “Undoubtedly;” and after an awkward pause,
they returned to the rest of the family. Charlotte did not stay much
longer, and Elizabeth was then left to reflect on what she had heard.
It was a long time before she became at all reconciled to the idea of so
unsuitable a match. The strangeness of Mr. Collins's making two offers
of marriage within three days was nothing in comparison of his being now
accepted. She had always felt that Charlotte's opinion of matrimony was
not exactly like her own, but she had not supposed it to be possible
that, when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better
feeling to worldly advantage. Charlotte the wife of Mr. Collins was a
most humiliating picture! And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself
and sunk in her esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it
was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had
chosen.



Chapter 23


Elizabeth was sitting with her mother and sisters, reflecting on what
she had heard, and doubting whether she was authorised to mention
it, when Sir William Lucas himself appeared, sent by his daughter, to
announce her engagement to the family. With many compliments to them,
and much self-gratulation on the prospect of a connection between the
houses, he unfolded the matter--to an audience not merely wondering, but
incredulous; for Mrs. Bennet, with more perseverance than politeness,
protested he must be entirely mistaken; and Lydia, always unguarded and
often uncivil, boisterously exclaimed:

“Good Lord! Sir William, how can you tell such a story? Do not you know
that Mr. Collins wants to marry Lizzy?”

Nothing less than the complaisance of a courtier could have borne
without anger such treatment; but Sir William's good breeding carried
him through it all; and though he begged leave to be positive as to the
truth of his information, he listened to all their impertinence with the
most forbearing courtesy.

Elizabeth, feeling it incumbent on her to relieve him from so unpleasant
a situation, now put herself forward to confirm his account, by
mentioning her prior knowledge of it from Charlotte herself; and
endeavoured to put a stop to the exclamations of her mother and sisters
by the earnestness of her congratulations to Sir William, in which she
was readily joined by Jane, and by making a variety of remarks on the
happiness that might be expected from the match, the excellent character
of Mr. Collins, and the convenient distance of Hunsford from London.

Mrs. Bennet was in fact too much overpowered to say a great deal while
Sir William remained; but no sooner had he left them than her feelings
found a rapid vent. In the first place, she persisted in disbelieving
the whole of the matter; secondly, she was very sure that Mr. Collins
had been taken in; thirdly, she trusted that they would never be
happy together; and fourthly, that the match might be broken off. Two
inferences, however, were plainly deduced from the whole: one, that
Elizabeth was the real cause of the mischief; and the other that she
herself had been barbarously misused by them all; and on these two
points she principally dwelt during the rest of the day. Nothing could
console and nothing could appease her. Nor did that day wear out her
resentment. A week elapsed before she could see Elizabeth without
scolding her, a month passed away before she could speak to Sir William
or Lady Lucas without being rude, and many months were gone before she
could at all forgive their daughter.

Mr. Bennet's emotions were much more tranquil on the occasion, and such
as he did experience he pronounced to be of a most agreeable sort; for
it gratified him, he said, to discover that Charlotte Lucas, whom he had
been used to think tolerably sensible, was as foolish as his wife, and
more foolish than his daughter!

Jane confessed herself a little surprised at the match; but she said
less of her astonishment than of her earnest desire for their happiness;
nor could Elizabeth persuade her to consider it as improbable. Kitty
and Lydia were far from envying Miss Lucas, for Mr. Collins was only a
clergyman; and it affected them in no other way than as a piece of news
to spread at Meryton.

Lady Lucas could not be insensible of triumph on being able to retort
on Mrs. Bennet the comfort of having a daughter well married; and she
called at Longbourn rather oftener than usual to say how happy she was,
though Mrs. Bennet's sour looks and ill-natured remarks might have been
enough to drive happiness away.

Between Elizabeth and Charlotte there was a restraint which kept them
mutually silent on the subject; and Elizabeth felt persuaded that
no real confidence could ever subsist between them again. Her
disappointment in Charlotte made her turn with fonder regard to her
sister, of whose rectitude and delicacy she was sure her opinion could
never be shaken, and for whose happiness she grew daily more anxious,
as Bingley had now been gone a week and nothing more was heard of his
return.

Jane had sent Caroline an early answer to her letter, and was counting
the days till she might reasonably hope to hear again. The promised
letter of thanks from Mr. Collins arrived on Tuesday, addressed to
their father, and written with all the solemnity of gratitude which a
twelvemonth's abode in the family might have prompted. After discharging
his conscience on that head, he proceeded to inform them, with many
rapturous expressions, of his happiness in having obtained the affection
of their amiable neighbour, Miss Lucas, and then explained that it was
merely with the view of enjoying her society that he had been so ready
to close with their kind wish of seeing him again at Longbourn, whither
he hoped to be able to return on Monday fortnight; for Lady Catherine,
he added, so heartily approved his marriage, that she wished it to take
place as soon as possible, which he trusted would be an unanswerable
argument with his amiable Charlotte to name an early day for making him
the happiest of men.

Mr. Collins's return into Hertfordshire was no longer a matter of
pleasure to Mrs. Bennet. On the contrary, she was as much disposed to
complain of it as her husband. It was very strange that he should come
to Longbourn instead of to Lucas Lodge; it was also very inconvenient
and exceedingly troublesome. She hated having visitors in the house
while her health was so indifferent, and lovers were of all people the
most disagreeable. Such were the gentle murmurs of Mrs. Bennet, and
they gave way only to the greater distress of Mr. Bingley's continued
absence.

Neither Jane nor Elizabeth were comfortable on this subject. Day after
day passed away without bringing any other tidings of him than the
report which shortly prevailed in Meryton of his coming no more to
Netherfield the whole winter; a report which highly incensed Mrs.
Bennet, and which she never failed to contradict as a most scandalous
falsehood.

Even Elizabeth began to fear--not that Bingley was indifferent--but that
his sisters would be successful in keeping him away. Unwilling as
she was to admit an idea so destructive of Jane's happiness, and so
dishonorable to the stability of her lover, she could not prevent its
frequently occurring. The united efforts of his two unfeeling sisters
and of his overpowering friend, assisted by the attractions of Miss
Darcy and the amusements of London might be too much, she feared, for
the strength of his attachment.

As for Jane, _her_ anxiety under this suspense was, of course, more
painful than Elizabeth's, but whatever she felt she was desirous of
concealing, and between herself and Elizabeth, therefore, the subject
was never alluded to. But as no such delicacy restrained her mother,
an hour seldom passed in which she did not talk of Bingley, express her
impatience for his arrival, or even require Jane to confess that if he
did not come back she would think herself very ill used. It needed
all Jane's steady mildness to bear these attacks with tolerable
tranquillity.

Mr. Collins returned most punctually on Monday fortnight, but his
reception at Longbourn was not quite so gracious as it had been on his
first introduction. He was too happy, however, to need much attention;
and luckily for the others, the business of love-making relieved them
from a great deal of his company. The chief of every day was spent by
him at Lucas Lodge, and he sometimes returned to Longbourn only in time
to make an apology for his absence before the family went to bed.

Mrs. Bennet was really in a most pitiable state. The very mention of
anything concerning the match threw her into an agony of ill-humour,
and wherever she went she was sure of hearing it talked of. The sight
of Miss Lucas was odious to her. As her successor in that house, she
regarded her with jealous abhorrence. Whenever Charlotte came to see
them, she concluded her to be anticipating the hour of possession; and
whenever she spoke in a low voice to Mr. Collins, was convinced that
they were talking of the Longbourn estate, and resolving to turn herself
and her daughters out of the house, as soon as Mr. Bennet were dead. She
complained bitterly of all this to her husband.

“Indeed, Mr. Bennet,” said she, “it is very hard to think that Charlotte
Lucas should ever be mistress of this house, that I should be forced to
make way for _her_, and live to see her take her place in it!”

“My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope for
better things. Let us flatter ourselves that I may be the survivor.”

This was not very consoling to Mrs. Bennet, and therefore, instead of
making any answer, she went on as before.

“I cannot bear to think that they should have all this estate. If it was
not for the entail, I should not mind it.”

“What should not you mind?”

“I should not mind anything at all.”

“Let us be thankful that you are preserved from a state of such
insensibility.”

“I never can be thankful, Mr. Bennet, for anything about the entail. How
anyone could have the conscience to entail away an estate from one's own
daughters, I cannot understand; and all for the sake of Mr. Collins too!
Why should _he_ have it more than anybody else?”

“I leave it to yourself to determine,” said Mr. Bennet.



Chapter 24


Miss Bingley's letter arrived, and put an end to doubt. The very first
sentence conveyed the assurance of their being all settled in London for
the winter, and concluded with her brother's regret at not having had
time to pay his respects to his friends in Hertfordshire before he left
the country.

Hope was over, entirely over; and when Jane could attend to the rest
of the letter, she found little, except the professed affection of the
writer, that could give her any comfort. Miss Darcy's praise occupied
the chief of it. Her many attractions were again dwelt on, and Caroline
boasted joyfully of their increasing intimacy, and ventured to predict
the accomplishment of the wishes which had been unfolded in her former
letter. She wrote also with great pleasure of her brother's being an
inmate of Mr. Darcy's house, and mentioned with raptures some plans of
the latter with regard to new furniture.

Elizabeth, to whom Jane very soon communicated the chief of all this,
heard it in silent indignation. Her heart was divided between concern
for her sister, and resentment against all others. To Caroline's
assertion of her brother's being partial to Miss Darcy she paid no
credit. That he was really fond of Jane, she doubted no more than she
had ever done; and much as she had always been disposed to like him, she
could not think without anger, hardly without contempt, on that easiness
of temper, that want of proper resolution, which now made him the slave
of his designing friends, and led him to sacrifice of his own happiness
to the caprice of their inclination. Had his own happiness, however,
been the only sacrifice, he might have been allowed to sport with it in
whatever manner he thought best, but her sister's was involved in it, as
she thought he must be sensible himself. It was a subject, in short,
on which reflection would be long indulged, and must be unavailing. She
could think of nothing else; and yet whether Bingley's regard had really
died away, or were suppressed by his friends' interference; whether
he had been aware of Jane's attachment, or whether it had escaped his
observation; whatever were the case, though her opinion of him must be
materially affected by the difference, her sister's situation remained
the same, her peace equally wounded.

A day or two passed before Jane had courage to speak of her feelings to
Elizabeth; but at last, on Mrs. Bennet's leaving them together, after a
longer irritation than usual about Netherfield and its master, she could
not help saying:

“Oh, that my dear mother had more command over herself! She can have no
idea of the pain she gives me by her continual reflections on him. But
I will not repine. It cannot last long. He will be forgot, and we shall
all be as we were before.”

Elizabeth looked at her sister with incredulous solicitude, but said
nothing.

“You doubt me,” cried Jane, slightly colouring; “indeed, you have
no reason. He may live in my memory as the most amiable man of my
acquaintance, but that is all. I have nothing either to hope or fear,
and nothing to reproach him with. Thank God! I have not _that_ pain. A
little time, therefore--I shall certainly try to get the better.”

With a stronger voice she soon added, “I have this comfort immediately,
that it has not been more than an error of fancy on my side, and that it
has done no harm to anyone but myself.”

“My dear Jane!” exclaimed Elizabeth, “you are too good. Your sweetness
and disinterestedness are really angelic; I do not know what to say
to you. I feel as if I had never done you justice, or loved you as you
deserve.”

Miss Bennet eagerly disclaimed all extraordinary merit, and threw back
the praise on her sister's warm affection.

“Nay,” said Elizabeth, “this is not fair. _You_ wish to think all the
world respectable, and are hurt if I speak ill of anybody. I only want
to think _you_ perfect, and you set yourself against it. Do not
be afraid of my running into any excess, of my encroaching on your
privilege of universal good-will. You need not. There are few people
whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see
of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms
my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the
little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or
sense. I have met with two instances lately, one I will not mention; the
other is Charlotte's marriage. It is unaccountable! In every view it is
unaccountable!”

“My dear Lizzy, do not give way to such feelings as these. They will
ruin your happiness. You do not make allowance enough for difference
of situation and temper. Consider Mr. Collins's respectability, and
Charlotte's steady, prudent character. Remember that she is one of a
large family; that as to fortune, it is a most eligible match; and be
ready to believe, for everybody's sake, that she may feel something like
regard and esteem for our cousin.”

“To oblige you, I would try to believe almost anything, but no one else
could be benefited by such a belief as this; for were I persuaded that
Charlotte had any regard for him, I should only think worse of her
understanding than I now do of her heart. My dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a
conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as
I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him
cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though
it is Charlotte Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual,
change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade
yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of
danger security for happiness.”

“I must think your language too strong in speaking of both,” replied
Jane; “and I hope you will be convinced of it by seeing them happy
together. But enough of this. You alluded to something else. You
mentioned _two_ instances. I cannot misunderstand you, but I entreat
you, dear Lizzy, not to pain me by thinking _that person_ to blame, and
saying your opinion of him is sunk. We must not be so ready to fancy
ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man
to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but
our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than
it does.”

“And men take care that they should.”

“If it is designedly done, they cannot be justified; but I have no idea
of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine.”

“I am far from attributing any part of Mr. Bingley's conduct to design,”
 said Elizabeth; “but without scheming to do wrong, or to make others
unhappy, there may be error, and there may be misery. Thoughtlessness,
want of attention to other people's feelings, and want of resolution,
will do the business.”

“And do you impute it to either of those?”

“Yes; to the last. But if I go on, I shall displease you by saying what
I think of persons you esteem. Stop me whilst you can.”

“You persist, then, in supposing his sisters influence him?”

“Yes, in conjunction with his friend.”

“I cannot believe it. Why should they try to influence him? They can
only wish his happiness; and if he is attached to me, no other woman can
secure it.”

“Your first position is false. They may wish many things besides his
happiness; they may wish his increase of wealth and consequence; they
may wish him to marry a girl who has all the importance of money, great
connections, and pride.”

“Beyond a doubt, they _do_ wish him to choose Miss Darcy,” replied Jane;
“but this may be from better feelings than you are supposing. They have
known her much longer than they have known me; no wonder if they love
her better. But, whatever may be their own wishes, it is very unlikely
they should have opposed their brother's. What sister would think
herself at liberty to do it, unless there were something very
objectionable? If they believed him attached to me, they would not try
to part us; if he were so, they could not succeed. By supposing such an
affection, you make everybody acting unnaturally and wrong, and me most
unhappy. Do not distress me by the idea. I am not ashamed of having been
mistaken--or, at least, it is light, it is nothing in comparison of what
I should feel in thinking ill of him or his sisters. Let me take it in
the best light, in the light in which it may be understood.”

Elizabeth could not oppose such a wish; and from this time Mr. Bingley's
name was scarcely ever mentioned between them.

Mrs. Bennet still continued to wonder and repine at his returning no
more, and though a day seldom passed in which Elizabeth did not account
for it clearly, there was little chance of her ever considering it with
less perplexity. Her daughter endeavoured to convince her of what she
did not believe herself, that his attentions to Jane had been merely the
effect of a common and transient liking, which ceased when he saw her
no more; but though the probability of the statement was admitted at
the time, she had the same story to repeat every day. Mrs. Bennet's best
comfort was that Mr. Bingley must be down again in the summer.

Mr. Bennet treated the matter differently. “So, Lizzy,” said he one day,
“your sister is crossed in love, I find. I congratulate her. Next to
being married, a girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then.
It is something to think of, and it gives her a sort of distinction
among her companions. When is your turn to come? You will hardly bear to
be long outdone by Jane. Now is your time. Here are officers enough in
Meryton to disappoint all the young ladies in the country. Let Wickham
be _your_ man. He is a pleasant fellow, and would jilt you creditably.”

“Thank you, sir, but a less agreeable man would satisfy me. We must not
all expect Jane's good fortune.”

“True,” said Mr. Bennet, “but it is a comfort to think that whatever of
that kind may befall you, you have an affectionate mother who will make
the most of it.”

Mr. Wickham's society was of material service in dispelling the gloom
which the late perverse occurrences had thrown on many of the Longbourn
family. They saw him often, and to his other recommendations was now
added that of general unreserve. The whole of what Elizabeth had already
heard, his claims on Mr. Darcy, and all that he had suffered from him,
was now openly acknowledged and publicly canvassed; and everybody was
pleased to know how much they had always disliked Mr. Darcy before they
had known anything of the matter.

Miss Bennet was the only creature who could suppose there might be
any extenuating circumstances in the case, unknown to the society
of Hertfordshire; her mild and steady candour always pleaded for
allowances, and urged the possibility of mistakes--but by everybody else
Mr. Darcy was condemned as the worst of men.



Chapter 25


After a week spent in professions of love and schemes of felicity,
Mr. Collins was called from his amiable Charlotte by the arrival of
Saturday. The pain of separation, however, might be alleviated on his
side, by preparations for the reception of his bride; as he had reason
to hope, that shortly after his return into Hertfordshire, the day would
be fixed that was to make him the happiest of men. He took leave of his
relations at Longbourn with as much solemnity as before; wished his fair
cousins health and happiness again, and promised their father another
letter of thanks.

On the following Monday, Mrs. Bennet had the pleasure of receiving
her brother and his wife, who came as usual to spend the Christmas
at Longbourn. Mr. Gardiner was a sensible, gentlemanlike man, greatly
superior to his sister, as well by nature as education. The Netherfield
ladies would have had difficulty in believing that a man who lived
by trade, and within view of his own warehouses, could have been so
well-bred and agreeable. Mrs. Gardiner, who was several years younger
than Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Phillips, was an amiable, intelligent, elegant
woman, and a great favourite with all her Longbourn nieces. Between the
two eldest and herself especially, there subsisted a particular regard.
They had frequently been staying with her in town.

The first part of Mrs. Gardiner's business on her arrival was to
distribute her presents and describe the newest fashions. When this was
done she had a less active part to play. It became her turn to listen.
Mrs. Bennet had many grievances to relate, and much to complain of. They
had all been very ill-used since she last saw her sister. Two of her
girls had been upon the point of marriage, and after all there was
nothing in it.

“I do not blame Jane,” she continued, “for Jane would have got Mr.
Bingley if she could. But Lizzy! Oh, sister! It is very hard to think
that she might have been Mr. Collins's wife by this time, had it not
been for her own perverseness. He made her an offer in this very room,
and she refused him. The consequence of it is, that Lady Lucas will have
a daughter married before I have, and that the Longbourn estate is just
as much entailed as ever. The Lucases are very artful people indeed,
sister. They are all for what they can get. I am sorry to say it of
them, but so it is. It makes me very nervous and poorly, to be thwarted
so in my own family, and to have neighbours who think of themselves
before anybody else. However, your coming just at this time is the
greatest of comforts, and I am very glad to hear what you tell us, of
long sleeves.”

Mrs. Gardiner, to whom the chief of this news had been given before,
in the course of Jane and Elizabeth's correspondence with her, made her
sister a slight answer, and, in compassion to her nieces, turned the
conversation.

When alone with Elizabeth afterwards, she spoke more on the subject. “It
seems likely to have been a desirable match for Jane,” said she. “I am
sorry it went off. But these things happen so often! A young man, such
as you describe Mr. Bingley, so easily falls in love with a pretty girl
for a few weeks, and when accident separates them, so easily forgets
her, that these sort of inconsistencies are very frequent.”

“An excellent consolation in its way,” said Elizabeth, “but it will not
do for _us_. We do not suffer by _accident_. It does not often
happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young man of
independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom he was violently in
love with only a few days before.”

“But that expression of 'violently in love' is so hackneyed, so
doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea. It is as
often applied to feelings which arise from a half-hour's acquaintance,
as to a real, strong attachment. Pray, how _violent was_ Mr. Bingley's
love?”

“I never saw a more promising inclination; he was growing quite
inattentive to other people, and wholly engrossed by her. Every time
they met, it was more decided and remarkable. At his own ball he
offended two or three young ladies, by not asking them to dance; and I
spoke to him twice myself, without receiving an answer. Could there be
finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”

“Oh, yes!--of that kind of love which I suppose him to have felt. Poor
Jane! I am sorry for her, because, with her disposition, she may not get
over it immediately. It had better have happened to _you_, Lizzy; you
would have laughed yourself out of it sooner. But do you think she
would be prevailed upon to go back with us? Change of scene might be
of service--and perhaps a little relief from home may be as useful as
anything.”

Elizabeth was exceedingly pleased with this proposal, and felt persuaded
of her sister's ready acquiescence.

“I hope,” added Mrs. Gardiner, “that no consideration with regard to
this young man will influence her. We live in so different a part of
town, all our connections are so different, and, as you well know, we go
out so little, that it is very improbable that they should meet at all,
unless he really comes to see her.”

“And _that_ is quite impossible; for he is now in the custody of his
friend, and Mr. Darcy would no more suffer him to call on Jane in such
a part of London! My dear aunt, how could you think of it? Mr. Darcy may
perhaps have _heard_ of such a place as Gracechurch Street, but he
would hardly think a month's ablution enough to cleanse him from its
impurities, were he once to enter it; and depend upon it, Mr. Bingley
never stirs without him.”

“So much the better. I hope they will not meet at all. But does not Jane
correspond with his sister? _She_ will not be able to help calling.”

“She will drop the acquaintance entirely.”

But in spite of the certainty in which Elizabeth affected to place this
point, as well as the still more interesting one of Bingley's being
withheld from seeing Jane, she felt a solicitude on the subject which
convinced her, on examination, that she did not consider it entirely
hopeless. It was possible, and sometimes she thought it probable, that
his affection might be reanimated, and the influence of his friends
successfully combated by the more natural influence of Jane's
attractions.

Miss Bennet accepted her aunt's invitation with pleasure; and the
Bingleys were no otherwise in her thoughts at the same time, than as she
hoped by Caroline's not living in the same house with her brother,
she might occasionally spend a morning with her, without any danger of
seeing him.

The Gardiners stayed a week at Longbourn; and what with the Phillipses,
the Lucases, and the officers, there was not a day without its
engagement. Mrs. Bennet had so carefully provided for the entertainment
of her brother and sister, that they did not once sit down to a family
dinner. When the engagement was for home, some of the officers always
made part of it--of which officers Mr. Wickham was sure to be one; and
on these occasions, Mrs. Gardiner, rendered suspicious by Elizabeth's
warm commendation, narrowly observed them both. Without supposing them,
from what she saw, to be very seriously in love, their preference
of each other was plain enough to make her a little uneasy; and
she resolved to speak to Elizabeth on the subject before she left
Hertfordshire, and represent to her the imprudence of encouraging such
an attachment.

To Mrs. Gardiner, Wickham had one means of affording pleasure,
unconnected with his general powers. About ten or a dozen years ago,
before her marriage, she had spent a considerable time in that very
part of Derbyshire to which he belonged. They had, therefore, many
acquaintances in common; and though Wickham had been little there since
the death of Darcy's father, it was yet in his power to give her fresher
intelligence of her former friends than she had been in the way of
procuring.

Mrs. Gardiner had seen Pemberley, and known the late Mr. Darcy by
character perfectly well. Here consequently was an inexhaustible subject
of discourse. In comparing her recollection of Pemberley with the minute
description which Wickham could give, and in bestowing her tribute of
praise on the character of its late possessor, she was delighting both
him and herself. On being made acquainted with the present Mr. Darcy's
treatment of him, she tried to remember some of that gentleman's
reputed disposition when quite a lad which might agree with it, and
was confident at last that she recollected having heard Mr. Fitzwilliam
Darcy formerly spoken of as a very proud, ill-natured boy.



Chapter 26


Mrs. Gardiner's caution to Elizabeth was punctually and kindly given
on the first favourable opportunity of speaking to her alone; after
honestly telling her what she thought, she thus went on:

“You are too sensible a girl, Lizzy, to fall in love merely because
you are warned against it; and, therefore, I am not afraid of speaking
openly. Seriously, I would have you be on your guard. Do not involve
yourself or endeavour to involve him in an affection which the want
of fortune would make so very imprudent. I have nothing to say against
_him_; he is a most interesting young man; and if he had the fortune he
ought to have, I should think you could not do better. But as it is, you
must not let your fancy run away with you. You have sense, and we all
expect you to use it. Your father would depend on _your_ resolution and
good conduct, I am sure. You must not disappoint your father.”

“My dear aunt, this is being serious indeed.”

“Yes, and I hope to engage you to be serious likewise.”

“Well, then, you need not be under any alarm. I will take care of
myself, and of Mr. Wickham too. He shall not be in love with me, if I
can prevent it.”

“Elizabeth, you are not serious now.”

“I beg your pardon, I will try again. At present I am not in love with
Mr. Wickham; no, I certainly am not. But he is, beyond all comparison,
the most agreeable man I ever saw--and if he becomes really attached to
me--I believe it will be better that he should not. I see the imprudence
of it. Oh! _that_ abominable Mr. Darcy! My father's opinion of me does
me the greatest honour, and I should be miserable to forfeit it. My
father, however, is partial to Mr. Wickham. In short, my dear aunt, I
should be very sorry to be the means of making any of you unhappy; but
since we see every day that where there is affection, young people
are seldom withheld by immediate want of fortune from entering into
engagements with each other, how can I promise to be wiser than so many
of my fellow-creatures if I am tempted, or how am I even to know that it
would be wisdom to resist? All that I can promise you, therefore, is not
to be in a hurry. I will not be in a hurry to believe myself his first
object. When I am in company with him, I will not be wishing. In short,
I will do my best.”

“Perhaps it will be as well if you discourage his coming here so very
often. At least, you should not _remind_ your mother of inviting him.”

“As I did the other day,” said Elizabeth with a conscious smile: “very
true, it will be wise in me to refrain from _that_. But do not imagine
that he is always here so often. It is on your account that he has been
so frequently invited this week. You know my mother's ideas as to the
necessity of constant company for her friends. But really, and upon my
honour, I will try to do what I think to be the wisest; and now I hope
you are satisfied.”

Her aunt assured her that she was, and Elizabeth having thanked her for
the kindness of her hints, they parted; a wonderful instance of advice
being given on such a point, without being resented.

Mr. Collins returned into Hertfordshire soon after it had been quitted
by the Gardiners and Jane; but as he took up his abode with the Lucases,
his arrival was no great inconvenience to Mrs. Bennet. His marriage was
now fast approaching, and she was at length so far resigned as to think
it inevitable, and even repeatedly to say, in an ill-natured tone, that
she “_wished_ they might be happy.” Thursday was to be the wedding day,
and on Wednesday Miss Lucas paid her farewell visit; and when she
rose to take leave, Elizabeth, ashamed of her mother's ungracious and
reluctant good wishes, and sincerely affected herself, accompanied her
out of the room. As they went downstairs together, Charlotte said:

“I shall depend on hearing from you very often, Eliza.”

“_That_ you certainly shall.”

“And I have another favour to ask you. Will you come and see me?”

“We shall often meet, I hope, in Hertfordshire.”

“I am not likely to leave Kent for some time. Promise me, therefore, to
come to Hunsford.”

Elizabeth could not refuse, though she foresaw little pleasure in the
visit.

“My father and Maria are coming to me in March,” added Charlotte, “and I
hope you will consent to be of the party. Indeed, Eliza, you will be as
welcome as either of them.”

The wedding took place; the bride and bridegroom set off for Kent from
the church door, and everybody had as much to say, or to hear, on
the subject as usual. Elizabeth soon heard from her friend; and their
correspondence was as regular and frequent as it had ever been; that
it should be equally unreserved was impossible. Elizabeth could never
address her without feeling that all the comfort of intimacy was over,
and though determined not to slacken as a correspondent, it was for the
sake of what had been, rather than what was. Charlotte's first letters
were received with a good deal of eagerness; there could not but be
curiosity to know how she would speak of her new home, how she would
like Lady Catherine, and how happy she would dare pronounce herself to
be; though, when the letters were read, Elizabeth felt that Charlotte
expressed herself on every point exactly as she might have foreseen. She
wrote cheerfully, seemed surrounded with comforts, and mentioned nothing
which she could not praise. The house, furniture, neighbourhood, and
roads, were all to her taste, and Lady Catherine's behaviour was most
friendly and obliging. It was Mr. Collins's picture of Hunsford and
Rosings rationally softened; and Elizabeth perceived that she must wait
for her own visit there to know the rest.

Jane had already written a few lines to her sister to announce their
safe arrival in London; and when she wrote again, Elizabeth hoped it
would be in her power to say something of the Bingleys.

Her impatience for this second letter was as well rewarded as impatience
generally is. Jane had been a week in town without either seeing or
hearing from Caroline. She accounted for it, however, by supposing that
her last letter to her friend from Longbourn had by some accident been
lost.

“My aunt,” she continued, “is going to-morrow into that part of the
town, and I shall take the opportunity of calling in Grosvenor Street.”

She wrote again when the visit was paid, and she had seen Miss Bingley.
“I did not think Caroline in spirits,” were her words, “but she was very
glad to see me, and reproached me for giving her no notice of my coming
to London. I was right, therefore, my last letter had never reached
her. I inquired after their brother, of course. He was well, but so much
engaged with Mr. Darcy that they scarcely ever saw him. I found that
Miss Darcy was expected to dinner. I wish I could see her. My visit was
not long, as Caroline and Mrs. Hurst were going out. I dare say I shall
see them soon here.”

Elizabeth shook her head over this letter. It convinced her that
accident only could discover to Mr. Bingley her sister's being in town.

Four weeks passed away, and Jane saw nothing of him. She endeavoured to
persuade herself that she did not regret it; but she could no longer be
blind to Miss Bingley's inattention. After waiting at home every morning
for a fortnight, and inventing every evening a fresh excuse for her, the
visitor did at last appear; but the shortness of her stay, and yet more,
the alteration of her manner would allow Jane to deceive herself no
longer. The letter which she wrote on this occasion to her sister will
prove what she felt.

“My dearest Lizzy will, I am sure, be incapable of triumphing in her
better judgement, at my expense, when I confess myself to have been
entirely deceived in Miss Bingley's regard for me. But, my dear sister,
though the event has proved you right, do not think me obstinate if I
still assert that, considering what her behaviour was, my confidence was
as natural as your suspicion. I do not at all comprehend her reason for
wishing to be intimate with me; but if the same circumstances were to
happen again, I am sure I should be deceived again. Caroline did not
return my visit till yesterday; and not a note, not a line, did I
receive in the meantime. When she did come, it was very evident that
she had no pleasure in it; she made a slight, formal apology, for not
calling before, said not a word of wishing to see me again, and was
in every respect so altered a creature, that when she went away I was
perfectly resolved to continue the acquaintance no longer. I pity,
though I cannot help blaming her. She was very wrong in singling me out
as she did; I can safely say that every advance to intimacy began on
her side. But I pity her, because she must feel that she has been acting
wrong, and because I am very sure that anxiety for her brother is the
cause of it. I need not explain myself farther; and though _we_ know
this anxiety to be quite needless, yet if she feels it, it will easily
account for her behaviour to me; and so deservedly dear as he is to
his sister, whatever anxiety she must feel on his behalf is natural and
amiable. I cannot but wonder, however, at her having any such fears now,
because, if he had at all cared about me, we must have met, long ago.
He knows of my being in town, I am certain, from something she said
herself; and yet it would seem, by her manner of talking, as if she
wanted to persuade herself that he is really partial to Miss Darcy. I
cannot understand it. If I were not afraid of judging harshly, I should
be almost tempted to say that there is a strong appearance of duplicity
in all this. But I will endeavour to banish every painful thought,
and think only of what will make me happy--your affection, and the
invariable kindness of my dear uncle and aunt. Let me hear from you very
soon. Miss Bingley said something of his never returning to Netherfield
again, of giving up the house, but not with any certainty. We had better
not mention it. I am extremely glad that you have such pleasant accounts
from our friends at Hunsford. Pray go to see them, with Sir William and
Maria. I am sure you will be very comfortable there.--Yours, etc.”

This letter gave Elizabeth some pain; but her spirits returned as she
considered that Jane would no longer be duped, by the sister at least.
All expectation from the brother was now absolutely over. She would not
even wish for a renewal of his attentions. His character sunk on
every review of it; and as a punishment for him, as well as a possible
advantage to Jane, she seriously hoped he might really soon marry Mr.
Darcy's sister, as by Wickham's account, she would make him abundantly
regret what he had thrown away.

Mrs. Gardiner about this time reminded Elizabeth of her promise
concerning that gentleman, and required information; and Elizabeth
had such to send as might rather give contentment to her aunt than to
herself. His apparent partiality had subsided, his attentions were over,
he was the admirer of some one else. Elizabeth was watchful enough to
see it all, but she could see it and write of it without material pain.
Her heart had been but slightly touched, and her vanity was satisfied
with believing that _she_ would have been his only choice, had fortune
permitted it. The sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds was the most
remarkable charm of the young lady to whom he was now rendering himself
agreeable; but Elizabeth, less clear-sighted perhaps in this case than
in Charlotte's, did not quarrel with him for his wish of independence.
Nothing, on the contrary, could be more natural; and while able to
suppose that it cost him a few struggles to relinquish her, she was
ready to allow it a wise and desirable measure for both, and could very
sincerely wish him happy.

All this was acknowledged to Mrs. Gardiner; and after relating the
circumstances, she thus went on: “I am now convinced, my dear aunt, that
I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure
and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and
wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial
towards _him_; they are even impartial towards Miss King. I cannot find
out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to
think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this. My
watchfulness has been effectual; and though I certainly should be a more
interesting object to all my acquaintances were I distractedly in love
with him, I cannot say that I regret my comparative insignificance.
Importance may sometimes be purchased too dearly. Kitty and Lydia take
his defection much more to heart than I do. They are young in the
ways of the world, and not yet open to the mortifying conviction that
handsome young men must have something to live on as well as the plain.”



Chapter 27


With no greater events than these in the Longbourn family, and otherwise
diversified by little beyond the walks to Meryton, sometimes dirty and
sometimes cold, did January and February pass away. March was to take
Elizabeth to Hunsford. She had not at first thought very seriously of
going thither; but Charlotte, she soon found, was depending on the plan
and she gradually learned to consider it herself with greater pleasure
as well as greater certainty. Absence had increased her desire of seeing
Charlotte again, and weakened her disgust of Mr. Collins. There
was novelty in the scheme, and as, with such a mother and such
uncompanionable sisters, home could not be faultless, a little change
was not unwelcome for its own sake. The journey would moreover give her
a peep at Jane; and, in short, as the time drew near, she would have
been very sorry for any delay. Everything, however, went on smoothly,
and was finally settled according to Charlotte's first sketch. She was
to accompany Sir William and his second daughter. The improvement
of spending a night in London was added in time, and the plan became
perfect as plan could be.

The only pain was in leaving her father, who would certainly miss her,
and who, when it came to the point, so little liked her going, that he
told her to write to him, and almost promised to answer her letter.

The farewell between herself and Mr. Wickham was perfectly friendly; on
his side even more. His present pursuit could not make him forget that
Elizabeth had been the first to excite and to deserve his attention, the
first to listen and to pity, the first to be admired; and in his manner
of bidding her adieu, wishing her every enjoyment, reminding her of
what she was to expect in Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and trusting their
opinion of her--their opinion of everybody--would always coincide, there
was a solicitude, an interest which she felt must ever attach her to
him with a most sincere regard; and she parted from him convinced that,
whether married or single, he must always be her model of the amiable
and pleasing.

Her fellow-travellers the next day were not of a kind to make her
think him less agreeable. Sir William Lucas, and his daughter Maria, a
good-humoured girl, but as empty-headed as himself, had nothing to say
that could be worth hearing, and were listened to with about as much
delight as the rattle of the chaise. Elizabeth loved absurdities, but
she had known Sir William's too long. He could tell her nothing new of
the wonders of his presentation and knighthood; and his civilities were
worn out, like his information.

It was a journey of only twenty-four miles, and they began it so early
as to be in Gracechurch Street by noon. As they drove to Mr. Gardiner's
door, Jane was at a drawing-room window watching their arrival; when
they entered the passage she was there to welcome them, and Elizabeth,
looking earnestly in her face, was pleased to see it healthful and
lovely as ever. On the stairs were a troop of little boys and girls,
whose eagerness for their cousin's appearance would not allow them to
wait in the drawing-room, and whose shyness, as they had not seen
her for a twelvemonth, prevented their coming lower. All was joy and
kindness. The day passed most pleasantly away; the morning in bustle and
shopping, and the evening at one of the theatres.

Elizabeth then contrived to sit by her aunt. Their first object was her
sister; and she was more grieved than astonished to hear, in reply to
her minute inquiries, that though Jane always struggled to support her
spirits, there were periods of dejection. It was reasonable, however,
to hope that they would not continue long. Mrs. Gardiner gave her the
particulars also of Miss Bingley's visit in Gracechurch Street, and
repeated conversations occurring at different times between Jane and
herself, which proved that the former had, from her heart, given up the
acquaintance.

Mrs. Gardiner then rallied her niece on Wickham's desertion, and
complimented her on bearing it so well.

“But my dear Elizabeth,” she added, “what sort of girl is Miss King? I
should be sorry to think our friend mercenary.”

“Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs,
between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end,
and avarice begin? Last Christmas you were afraid of his marrying me,
because it would be imprudent; and now, because he is trying to get
a girl with only ten thousand pounds, you want to find out that he is
mercenary.”

“If you will only tell me what sort of girl Miss King is, I shall know
what to think.”

“She is a very good kind of girl, I believe. I know no harm of her.”

“But he paid her not the smallest attention till her grandfather's death
made her mistress of this fortune.”

“No--why should he? If it were not allowable for him to gain _my_
affections because I had no money, what occasion could there be for
making love to a girl whom he did not care about, and who was equally
poor?”

“But there seems an indelicacy in directing his attentions towards her
so soon after this event.”

“A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those elegant
decorums which other people may observe. If _she_ does not object to it,
why should _we_?”

“_Her_ not objecting does not justify _him_. It only shows her being
deficient in something herself--sense or feeling.”

“Well,” cried Elizabeth, “have it as you choose. _He_ shall be
mercenary, and _she_ shall be foolish.”

“No, Lizzy, that is what I do _not_ choose. I should be sorry, you know,
to think ill of a young man who has lived so long in Derbyshire.”

“Oh! if that is all, I have a very poor opinion of young men who live in
Derbyshire; and their intimate friends who live in Hertfordshire are not
much better. I am sick of them all. Thank Heaven! I am going to-morrow
where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has
neither manner nor sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones
worth knowing, after all.”

“Take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of disappointment.”

Before they were separated by the conclusion of the play, she had the
unexpected happiness of an invitation to accompany her uncle and aunt in
a tour of pleasure which they proposed taking in the summer.

“We have not determined how far it shall carry us,” said Mrs. Gardiner,
“but, perhaps, to the Lakes.”

No scheme could have been more agreeable to Elizabeth, and her
acceptance of the invitation was most ready and grateful. “Oh, my dear,
dear aunt,” she rapturously cried, “what delight! what felicity! You
give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What
are young men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport
we shall spend! And when we _do_ return, it shall not be like other
travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of anything. We
_will_ know where we have gone--we _will_ recollect what we have seen.
Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our
imaginations; nor when we attempt to describe any particular scene,
will we begin quarreling about its relative situation. Let _our_
first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of
travellers.”



Chapter 28


Every object in the next day's journey was new and interesting to
Elizabeth; and her spirits were in a state of enjoyment; for she had
seen her sister looking so well as to banish all fear for her health,
and the prospect of her northern tour was a constant source of delight.

When they left the high road for the lane to Hunsford, every eye was in
search of the Parsonage, and every turning expected to bring it in view.
The palings of Rosings Park was their boundary on one side. Elizabeth
smiled at the recollection of all that she had heard of its inhabitants.

At length the Parsonage was discernible. The garden sloping to the
road, the house standing in it, the green pales, and the laurel hedge,
everything declared they were arriving. Mr. Collins and Charlotte
appeared at the door, and the carriage stopped at the small gate which
led by a short gravel walk to the house, amidst the nods and smiles of
the whole party. In a moment they were all out of the chaise, rejoicing
at the sight of each other. Mrs. Collins welcomed her friend with the
liveliest pleasure, and Elizabeth was more and more satisfied with
coming when she found herself so affectionately received. She saw
instantly that her cousin's manners were not altered by his marriage;
his formal civility was just what it had been, and he detained her some
minutes at the gate to hear and satisfy his inquiries after all her
family. They were then, with no other delay than his pointing out the
neatness of the entrance, taken into the house; and as soon as they
were in the parlour, he welcomed them a second time, with ostentatious
formality to his humble abode, and punctually repeated all his wife's
offers of refreshment.

Elizabeth was prepared to see him in his glory; and she could not help
in fancying that in displaying the good proportion of the room, its
aspect and its furniture, he addressed himself particularly to her,
as if wishing to make her feel what she had lost in refusing him. But
though everything seemed neat and comfortable, she was not able to
gratify him by any sigh of repentance, and rather looked with wonder at
her friend that she could have so cheerful an air with such a companion.
When Mr. Collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be
ashamed, which certainly was not unseldom, she involuntarily turned her
eye on Charlotte. Once or twice she could discern a faint blush; but
in general Charlotte wisely did not hear. After sitting long enough to
admire every article of furniture in the room, from the sideboard to
the fender, to give an account of their journey, and of all that had
happened in London, Mr. Collins invited them to take a stroll in the
garden, which was large and well laid out, and to the cultivation of
which he attended himself. To work in this garden was one of his most
respectable pleasures; and Elizabeth admired the command of countenance
with which Charlotte talked of the healthfulness of the exercise, and
owned she encouraged it as much as possible. Here, leading the way
through every walk and cross walk, and scarcely allowing them an
interval to utter the praises he asked for, every view was pointed out
with a minuteness which left beauty entirely behind. He could number the
fields in every direction, and could tell how many trees there were in
the most distant clump. But of all the views which his garden, or which
the country or kingdom could boast, none were to be compared with the
prospect of Rosings, afforded by an opening in the trees that bordered
the park nearly opposite the front of his house. It was a handsome
modern building, well situated on rising ground.

From his garden, Mr. Collins would have led them round his two meadows;
but the ladies, not having shoes to encounter the remains of a white
frost, turned back; and while Sir William accompanied him, Charlotte
took her sister and friend over the house, extremely well pleased,
probably, to have the opportunity of showing it without her husband's
help. It was rather small, but well built and convenient; and everything
was fitted up and arranged with a neatness and consistency of which
Elizabeth gave Charlotte all the credit. When Mr. Collins could be
forgotten, there was really an air of great comfort throughout, and by
Charlotte's evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often
forgotten.

She had already learnt that Lady Catherine was still in the country. It
was spoken of again while they were at dinner, when Mr. Collins joining
in, observed:

“Yes, Miss Elizabeth, you will have the honour of seeing Lady Catherine
de Bourgh on the ensuing Sunday at church, and I need not say you will
be delighted with her. She is all affability and condescension, and I
doubt not but you will be honoured with some portion of her notice
when service is over. I have scarcely any hesitation in saying she
will include you and my sister Maria in every invitation with which she
honours us during your stay here. Her behaviour to my dear Charlotte is
charming. We dine at Rosings twice every week, and are never allowed
to walk home. Her ladyship's carriage is regularly ordered for us. I
_should_ say, one of her ladyship's carriages, for she has several.”

“Lady Catherine is a very respectable, sensible woman indeed,” added
Charlotte, “and a most attentive neighbour.”

“Very true, my dear, that is exactly what I say. She is the sort of
woman whom one cannot regard with too much deference.”

The evening was spent chiefly in talking over Hertfordshire news,
and telling again what had already been written; and when it closed,
Elizabeth, in the solitude of her chamber, had to meditate upon
Charlotte's degree of contentment, to understand her address in guiding,
and composure in bearing with, her husband, and to acknowledge that it
was all done very well. She had also to anticipate how her visit
would pass, the quiet tenor of their usual employments, the vexatious
interruptions of Mr. Collins, and the gaieties of their intercourse with
Rosings. A lively imagination soon settled it all.

About the middle of the next day, as she was in her room getting ready
for a walk, a sudden noise below seemed to speak the whole house in
confusion; and, after listening a moment, she heard somebody running
up stairs in a violent hurry, and calling loudly after her. She opened
the door and met Maria in the landing place, who, breathless with
agitation, cried out--

“Oh, my dear Eliza! pray make haste and come into the dining-room, for
there is such a sight to be seen! I will not tell you what it is. Make
haste, and come down this moment.”

Elizabeth asked questions in vain; Maria would tell her nothing more,
and down they ran into the dining-room, which fronted the lane, in
quest of this wonder; It was two ladies stopping in a low phaeton at the
garden gate.

“And is this all?” cried Elizabeth. “I expected at least that the pigs
were got into the garden, and here is nothing but Lady Catherine and her
daughter.”

“La! my dear,” said Maria, quite shocked at the mistake, “it is not
Lady Catherine. The old lady is Mrs. Jenkinson, who lives with them;
the other is Miss de Bourgh. Only look at her. She is quite a little
creature. Who would have thought that she could be so thin and small?”

“She is abominably rude to keep Charlotte out of doors in all this wind.
Why does she not come in?”

“Oh, Charlotte says she hardly ever does. It is the greatest of favours
when Miss de Bourgh comes in.”

“I like her appearance,” said Elizabeth, struck with other ideas. “She
looks sickly and cross. Yes, she will do for him very well. She will
make him a very proper wife.”

Mr. Collins and Charlotte were both standing at the gate in conversation
with the ladies; and Sir William, to Elizabeth's high diversion, was
stationed in the doorway, in earnest contemplation of the greatness
before him, and constantly bowing whenever Miss de Bourgh looked that
way.

At length there was nothing more to be said; the ladies drove on, and
the others returned into the house. Mr. Collins no sooner saw the two
girls than he began to congratulate them on their good fortune, which
Charlotte explained by letting them know that the whole party was asked
to dine at Rosings the next day.



Chapter 29


Mr. Collins's triumph, in consequence of this invitation, was complete.
The power of displaying the grandeur of his patroness to his wondering
visitors, and of letting them see her civility towards himself and his
wife, was exactly what he had wished for; and that an opportunity
of doing it should be given so soon, was such an instance of Lady
Catherine's condescension, as he knew not how to admire enough.

“I confess,” said he, “that I should not have been at all surprised by
her ladyship's asking us on Sunday to drink tea and spend the evening at
Rosings. I rather expected, from my knowledge of her affability, that it
would happen. But who could have foreseen such an attention as this? Who
could have imagined that we should receive an invitation to dine there
(an invitation, moreover, including the whole party) so immediately
after your arrival!”

“I am the less surprised at what has happened,” replied Sir William,
“from that knowledge of what the manners of the great really are, which
my situation in life has allowed me to acquire. About the court, such
instances of elegant breeding are not uncommon.”

Scarcely anything was talked of the whole day or next morning but their
visit to Rosings. Mr. Collins was carefully instructing them in what
they were to expect, that the sight of such rooms, so many servants, and
so splendid a dinner, might not wholly overpower them.

When the ladies were separating for the toilette, he said to Elizabeth--

“Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel. Lady
Catherine is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us which
becomes herself and her daughter. I would advise you merely to put on
whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest--there is no occasion
for anything more. Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you
for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank
preserved.”

While they were dressing, he came two or three times to their different
doors, to recommend their being quick, as Lady Catherine very much
objected to be kept waiting for her dinner. Such formidable accounts of
her ladyship, and her manner of living, quite frightened Maria Lucas
who had been little used to company, and she looked forward to her
introduction at Rosings with as much apprehension as her father had done
to his presentation at St. James's.

As the weather was fine, they had a pleasant walk of about half a
mile across the park. Every park has its beauty and its prospects; and
Elizabeth saw much to be pleased with, though she could not be in such
raptures as Mr. Collins expected the scene to inspire, and was but
slightly affected by his enumeration of the windows in front of the
house, and his relation of what the glazing altogether had originally
cost Sir Lewis de Bourgh.

When they ascended the steps to the hall, Maria's alarm was every
moment increasing, and even Sir William did not look perfectly calm.
Elizabeth's courage did not fail her. She had heard nothing of Lady
Catherine that spoke her awful from any extraordinary talents or
miraculous virtue, and the mere stateliness of money or rank she thought
she could witness without trepidation.

From the entrance-hall, of which Mr. Collins pointed out, with a
rapturous air, the fine proportion and the finished ornaments, they
followed the servants through an ante-chamber, to the room where Lady
Catherine, her daughter, and Mrs. Jenkinson were sitting. Her ladyship,
with great condescension, arose to receive them; and as Mrs. Collins had
settled it with her husband that the office of introduction should
be hers, it was performed in a proper manner, without any of those
apologies and thanks which he would have thought necessary.

In spite of having been at St. James's, Sir William was so completely
awed by the grandeur surrounding him, that he had but just courage
enough to make a very low bow, and take his seat without saying a word;
and his daughter, frightened almost out of her senses, sat on the edge
of her chair, not knowing which way to look. Elizabeth found herself
quite equal to the scene, and could observe the three ladies before her
composedly. Lady Catherine was a tall, large woman, with strongly-marked
features, which might once have been handsome. Her air was not
conciliating, nor was her manner of receiving them such as to make her
visitors forget their inferior rank. She was not rendered formidable by
silence; but whatever she said was spoken in so authoritative a tone,
as marked her self-importance, and brought Mr. Wickham immediately to
Elizabeth's mind; and from the observation of the day altogether, she
believed Lady Catherine to be exactly what he represented.

When, after examining the mother, in whose countenance and deportment
she soon found some resemblance of Mr. Darcy, she turned her eyes on the
daughter, she could almost have joined in Maria's astonishment at her
being so thin and so small. There was neither in figure nor face any
likeness between the ladies. Miss de Bourgh was pale and sickly; her
features, though not plain, were insignificant; and she spoke very
little, except in a low voice, to Mrs. Jenkinson, in whose appearance
there was nothing remarkable, and who was entirely engaged in listening
to what she said, and placing a screen in the proper direction before
her eyes.

After sitting a few minutes, they were all sent to one of the windows to
admire the view, Mr. Collins attending them to point out its beauties,
and Lady Catherine kindly informing them that it was much better worth
looking at in the summer.

The dinner was exceedingly handsome, and there were all the servants and
all the articles of plate which Mr. Collins had promised; and, as he had
likewise foretold, he took his seat at the bottom of the table, by her
ladyship's desire, and looked as if he felt that life could furnish
nothing greater. He carved, and ate, and praised with delighted
alacrity; and every dish was commended, first by him and then by Sir
William, who was now enough recovered to echo whatever his son-in-law
said, in a manner which Elizabeth wondered Lady Catherine could bear.
But Lady Catherine seemed gratified by their excessive admiration, and
gave most gracious smiles, especially when any dish on the table proved
a novelty to them. The party did not supply much conversation. Elizabeth
was ready to speak whenever there was an opening, but she was seated
between Charlotte and Miss de Bourgh--the former of whom was engaged in
listening to Lady Catherine, and the latter said not a word to her all
dinner-time. Mrs. Jenkinson was chiefly employed in watching how little
Miss de Bourgh ate, pressing her to try some other dish, and fearing
she was indisposed. Maria thought speaking out of the question, and the
gentlemen did nothing but eat and admire.

When the ladies returned to the drawing-room, there was little to
be done but to hear Lady Catherine talk, which she did without any
intermission till coffee came in, delivering her opinion on every
subject in so decisive a manner, as proved that she was not used to
have her judgement controverted. She inquired into Charlotte's domestic
concerns familiarly and minutely, gave her a great deal of advice as
to the management of them all; told her how everything ought to be
regulated in so small a family as hers, and instructed her as to the
care of her cows and her poultry. Elizabeth found that nothing was
beneath this great lady's attention, which could furnish her with an
occasion of dictating to others. In the intervals of her discourse
with Mrs. Collins, she addressed a variety of questions to Maria and
Elizabeth, but especially to the latter, of whose connections she knew
the least, and who she observed to Mrs. Collins was a very genteel,
pretty kind of girl. She asked her, at different times, how many sisters
she had, whether they were older or younger than herself, whether any of
them were likely to be married, whether they were handsome, where they
had been educated, what carriage her father kept, and what had been
her mother's maiden name? Elizabeth felt all the impertinence of
her questions but answered them very composedly. Lady Catherine then
observed,

“Your father's estate is entailed on Mr. Collins, I think. For your
sake,” turning to Charlotte, “I am glad of it; but otherwise I see no
occasion for entailing estates from the female line. It was not thought
necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family. Do you play and sing, Miss
Bennet?”

“A little.”

“Oh! then--some time or other we shall be happy to hear you. Our
instrument is a capital one, probably superior to----You shall try it
some day. Do your sisters play and sing?”

“One of them does.”

“Why did not you all learn? You ought all to have learned. The Miss
Webbs all play, and their father has not so good an income as yours. Do
you draw?”

“No, not at all.”

“What, none of you?”

“Not one.”

“That is very strange. But I suppose you had no opportunity. Your mother
should have taken you to town every spring for the benefit of masters.”

“My mother would have had no objection, but my father hates London.”

“Has your governess left you?”

“We never had any governess.”

“No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home
without a governess! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must
have been quite a slave to your education.”

Elizabeth could hardly help smiling as she assured her that had not been
the case.

“Then, who taught you? who attended to you? Without a governess, you
must have been neglected.”

“Compared with some families, I believe we were; but such of us as
wished to learn never wanted the means. We were always encouraged to
read, and had all the masters that were necessary. Those who chose to be
idle, certainly might.”

“Aye, no doubt; but that is what a governess will prevent, and if I had
known your mother, I should have advised her most strenuously to engage
one. I always say that nothing is to be done in education without steady
and regular instruction, and nobody but a governess can give it. It is
wonderful how many families I have been the means of supplying in that
way. I am always glad to get a young person well placed out. Four nieces
of Mrs. Jenkinson are most delightfully situated through my means; and
it was but the other day that I recommended another young person,
who was merely accidentally mentioned to me, and the family are quite
delighted with her. Mrs. Collins, did I tell you of Lady Metcalf's
calling yesterday to thank me? She finds Miss Pope a treasure. 'Lady
Catherine,' said she, 'you have given me a treasure.' Are any of your
younger sisters out, Miss Bennet?”

“Yes, ma'am, all.”

“All! What, all five out at once? Very odd! And you only the second. The
younger ones out before the elder ones are married! Your younger sisters
must be very young?”

“Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps _she_ is full young to be
much in company. But really, ma'am, I think it would be very hard upon
younger sisters, that they should not have their share of society and
amusement, because the elder may not have the means or inclination to
marry early. The last-born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth
as the first. And to be kept back on _such_ a motive! I think it would
not be very likely to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind.”

“Upon my word,” said her ladyship, “you give your opinion very decidedly
for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?”

“With three younger sisters grown up,” replied Elizabeth, smiling, “your
ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.”

Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer;
and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever
dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence.

“You cannot be more than twenty, I am sure, therefore you need not
conceal your age.”

“I am not one-and-twenty.”

When the gentlemen had joined them, and tea was over, the card-tables
were placed. Lady Catherine, Sir William, and Mr. and Mrs. Collins sat
down to quadrille; and as Miss de Bourgh chose to play at cassino, the
two girls had the honour of assisting Mrs. Jenkinson to make up her
party. Their table was superlatively stupid. Scarcely a syllable was
uttered that did not relate to the game, except when Mrs. Jenkinson
expressed her fears of Miss de Bourgh's being too hot or too cold, or
having too much or too little light. A great deal more passed at the
other table. Lady Catherine was generally speaking--stating the mistakes
of the three others, or relating some anecdote of herself. Mr. Collins
was employed in agreeing to everything her ladyship said, thanking her
for every fish he won, and apologising if he thought he won too many.
Sir William did not say much. He was storing his memory with anecdotes
and noble names.

When Lady Catherine and her daughter had played as long as they chose,
the tables were broken up, the carriage was offered to Mrs. Collins,
gratefully accepted and immediately ordered. The party then gathered
round the fire to hear Lady Catherine determine what weather they were
to have on the morrow. From these instructions they were summoned by
the arrival of the coach; and with many speeches of thankfulness on Mr.
Collins's side and as many bows on Sir William's they departed. As soon
as they had driven from the door, Elizabeth was called on by her cousin
to give her opinion of all that she had seen at Rosings, which, for
Charlotte's sake, she made more favourable than it really was. But her
commendation, though costing her some trouble, could by no means satisfy
Mr. Collins, and he was very soon obliged to take her ladyship's praise
into his own hands.



Chapter 30


Sir William stayed only a week at Hunsford, but his visit was long
enough to convince him of his daughter's being most comfortably settled,
and of her possessing such a husband and such a neighbour as were not
often met with. While Sir William was with them, Mr. Collins devoted his
morning to driving him out in his gig, and showing him the country; but
when he went away, the whole family returned to their usual employments,
and Elizabeth was thankful to find that they did not see more of her
cousin by the alteration, for the chief of the time between breakfast
and dinner was now passed by him either at work in the garden or in
reading and writing, and looking out of the window in his own book-room,
which fronted the road. The room in which the ladies sat was backwards.
Elizabeth had at first rather wondered that Charlotte should not prefer
the dining-parlour for common use; it was a better sized room, and had a
more pleasant aspect; but she soon saw that her friend had an excellent
reason for what she did, for Mr. Collins would undoubtedly have been
much less in his own apartment, had they sat in one equally lively; and
she gave Charlotte credit for the arrangement.

From the drawing-room they could distinguish nothing in the lane, and
were indebted to Mr. Collins for the knowledge of what carriages went
along, and how often especially Miss de Bourgh drove by in her phaeton,
which he never failed coming to inform them of, though it happened
almost every day. She not unfrequently stopped at the Parsonage, and
had a few minutes' conversation with Charlotte, but was scarcely ever
prevailed upon to get out.

Very few days passed in which Mr. Collins did not walk to Rosings, and
not many in which his wife did not think it necessary to go likewise;
and till Elizabeth recollected that there might be other family livings
to be disposed of, she could not understand the sacrifice of so many
hours. Now and then they were honoured with a call from her ladyship,
and nothing escaped her observation that was passing in the room during
these visits. She examined into their employments, looked at their work,
and advised them to do it differently; found fault with the arrangement
of the furniture; or detected the housemaid in negligence; and if she
accepted any refreshment, seemed to do it only for the sake of finding
out that Mrs. Collins's joints of meat were too large for her family.

Elizabeth soon perceived, that though this great lady was not in
commission of the peace of the county, she was a most active magistrate
in her own parish, the minutest concerns of which were carried to her
by Mr. Collins; and whenever any of the cottagers were disposed to
be quarrelsome, discontented, or too poor, she sallied forth into the
village to settle their differences, silence their complaints, and scold
them into harmony and plenty.

The entertainment of dining at Rosings was repeated about twice a week;
and, allowing for the loss of Sir William, and there being only one
card-table in the evening, every such entertainment was the counterpart
of the first. Their other engagements were few, as the style of living
in the neighbourhood in general was beyond Mr. Collins's reach. This,
however, was no evil to Elizabeth, and upon the whole she spent her time
comfortably enough; there were half-hours of pleasant conversation with
Charlotte, and the weather was so fine for the time of year that she had
often great enjoyment out of doors. Her favourite walk, and where she
frequently went while the others were calling on Lady Catherine, was
along the open grove which edged that side of the park, where there was
a nice sheltered path, which no one seemed to value but herself, and
where she felt beyond the reach of Lady Catherine's curiosity.

In this quiet way, the first fortnight of her visit soon passed away.
Easter was approaching, and the week preceding it was to bring an
addition to the family at Rosings, which in so small a circle must be
important. Elizabeth had heard soon after her arrival that Mr. Darcy was
expected there in the course of a few weeks, and though there were not
many of her acquaintances whom she did not prefer, his coming would
furnish one comparatively new to look at in their Rosings parties, and
she might be amused in seeing how hopeless Miss Bingley's designs on him
were, by his behaviour to his cousin, for whom he was evidently
destined by Lady Catherine, who talked of his coming with the greatest
satisfaction, spoke of him in terms of the highest admiration, and
seemed almost angry to find that he had already been frequently seen by
Miss Lucas and herself.

His arrival was soon known at the Parsonage; for Mr. Collins was walking
the whole morning within view of the lodges opening into Hunsford Lane,
in order to have the earliest assurance of it, and after making his
bow as the carriage turned into the Park, hurried home with the great
intelligence. On the following morning he hastened to Rosings to pay his
respects. There were two nephews of Lady Catherine to require them, for
Mr. Darcy had brought with him a Colonel Fitzwilliam, the younger son of
his uncle Lord ----, and, to the great surprise of all the party, when
Mr. Collins returned, the gentlemen accompanied him. Charlotte had seen
them from her husband's room, crossing the road, and immediately running
into the other, told the girls what an honour they might expect, adding:

“I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy would
never have come so soon to wait upon me.”

Elizabeth had scarcely time to disclaim all right to the compliment,
before their approach was announced by the door-bell, and shortly
afterwards the three gentlemen entered the room. Colonel Fitzwilliam,
who led the way, was about thirty, not handsome, but in person and
address most truly the gentleman. Mr. Darcy looked just as he had been
used to look in Hertfordshire--paid his compliments, with his usual
reserve, to Mrs. Collins, and whatever might be his feelings toward her
friend, met her with every appearance of composure. Elizabeth merely
curtseyed to him without saying a word.

Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with the
readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very pleasantly; but
his cousin, after having addressed a slight observation on the house and
garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for some time without speaking to anybody.
At length, however, his civility was so far awakened as to inquire of
Elizabeth after the health of her family. She answered him in the usual
way, and after a moment's pause, added:

“My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never
happened to see her there?”

She was perfectly sensible that he never had; but she wished to see
whether he would betray any consciousness of what had passed between
the Bingleys and Jane, and she thought he looked a little confused as he
answered that he had never been so fortunate as to meet Miss Bennet. The
subject was pursued no farther, and the gentlemen soon afterwards went
away.



Chapter 31


Colonel Fitzwilliam's manners were very much admired at the Parsonage,
and the ladies all felt that he must add considerably to the pleasures
of their engagements at Rosings. It was some days, however, before they
received any invitation thither--for while there were visitors in the
house, they could not be necessary; and it was not till Easter-day,
almost a week after the gentlemen's arrival, that they were honoured by
such an attention, and then they were merely asked on leaving church to
come there in the evening. For the last week they had seen very little
of Lady Catherine or her daughter. Colonel Fitzwilliam had called at the
Parsonage more than once during the time, but Mr. Darcy they had seen
only at church.

The invitation was accepted of course, and at a proper hour they joined
the party in Lady Catherine's drawing-room. Her ladyship received
them civilly, but it was plain that their company was by no means so
acceptable as when she could get nobody else; and she was, in fact,
almost engrossed by her nephews, speaking to them, especially to Darcy,
much more than to any other person in the room.

Colonel Fitzwilliam seemed really glad to see them; anything was a
welcome relief to him at Rosings; and Mrs. Collins's pretty friend had
moreover caught his fancy very much. He now seated himself by her, and
talked so agreeably of Kent and Hertfordshire, of travelling and staying
at home, of new books and music, that Elizabeth had never been half so
well entertained in that room before; and they conversed with so much
spirit and flow, as to draw the attention of Lady Catherine herself,
as well as of Mr. Darcy. _His_ eyes had been soon and repeatedly turned
towards them with a look of curiosity; and that her ladyship, after a
while, shared the feeling, was more openly acknowledged, for she did not
scruple to call out:

“What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are talking
of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is.”

“We are speaking of music, madam,” said he, when no longer able to avoid
a reply.

“Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I
must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music.
There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment
of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt,
I should have been a great proficient. And so would Anne, if her health
had allowed her to apply. I am confident that she would have performed
delightfully. How does Georgiana get on, Darcy?”

Mr. Darcy spoke with affectionate praise of his sister's proficiency.

“I am very glad to hear such a good account of her,” said Lady
Catherine; “and pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to excel
if she does not practice a good deal.”

“I assure you, madam,” he replied, “that she does not need such advice.
She practises very constantly.”

“So much the better. It cannot be done too much; and when I next write
to her, I shall charge her not to neglect it on any account. I often
tell young ladies that no excellence in music is to be acquired without
constant practice. I have told Miss Bennet several times, that she
will never play really well unless she practises more; and though Mrs.
Collins has no instrument, she is very welcome, as I have often told
her, to come to Rosings every day, and play on the pianoforte in Mrs.
Jenkinson's room. She would be in nobody's way, you know, in that part
of the house.”

Mr. Darcy looked a little ashamed of his aunt's ill-breeding, and made
no answer.

When coffee was over, Colonel Fitzwilliam reminded Elizabeth of having
promised to play to him; and she sat down directly to the instrument. He
drew a chair near her. Lady Catherine listened to half a song, and then
talked, as before, to her other nephew; till the latter walked away
from her, and making with his usual deliberation towards the pianoforte
stationed himself so as to command a full view of the fair performer's
countenance. Elizabeth saw what he was doing, and at the first
convenient pause, turned to him with an arch smile, and said:

“You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear
me? I will not be alarmed though your sister _does_ play so well. There
is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the
will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate
me.”

“I shall not say you are mistaken,” he replied, “because you could not
really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have
had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know that you find
great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are
not your own.”

Elizabeth laughed heartily at this picture of herself, and said to
Colonel Fitzwilliam, “Your cousin will give you a very pretty notion of
me, and teach you not to believe a word I say. I am particularly unlucky
in meeting with a person so able to expose my real character, in a part
of the world where I had hoped to pass myself off with some degree of
credit. Indeed, Mr. Darcy, it is very ungenerous in you to mention all
that you knew to my disadvantage in Hertfordshire--and, give me leave to
say, very impolitic too--for it is provoking me to retaliate, and such
things may come out as will shock your relations to hear.”

“I am not afraid of you,” said he, smilingly.

“Pray let me hear what you have to accuse him of,” cried Colonel
Fitzwilliam. “I should like to know how he behaves among strangers.”

“You shall hear then--but prepare yourself for something very dreadful.
The first time of my ever seeing him in Hertfordshire, you must know,
was at a ball--and at this ball, what do you think he did? He danced
only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain
knowledge, more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a
partner. Mr. Darcy, you cannot deny the fact.”

“I had not at that time the honour of knowing any lady in the assembly
beyond my own party.”

“True; and nobody can ever be introduced in a ball-room. Well, Colonel
Fitzwilliam, what do I play next? My fingers wait your orders.”

“Perhaps,” said Darcy, “I should have judged better, had I sought an
introduction; but I am ill-qualified to recommend myself to strangers.”

“Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?” said Elizabeth, still
addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Shall we ask him why a man of sense and
education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend
himself to strangers?”

“I can answer your question,” said Fitzwilliam, “without applying to
him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.”

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said Darcy,
“of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot
catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their
concerns, as I often see done.”

“My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not move over this instrument in the
masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same
force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I
have always supposed it to be my own fault--because I will not take the
trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe _my_ fingers as
capable as any other woman's of superior execution.”

Darcy smiled and said, “You are perfectly right. You have employed your
time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can
think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers.”

Here they were interrupted by Lady Catherine, who called out to know
what they were talking of. Elizabeth immediately began playing again.
Lady Catherine approached, and, after listening for a few minutes, said
to Darcy:

“Miss Bennet would not play at all amiss if she practised more, and
could have the advantage of a London master. She has a very good notion
of fingering, though her taste is not equal to Anne's. Anne would have
been a delightful performer, had her health allowed her to learn.”

Elizabeth looked at Darcy to see how cordially he assented to his
cousin's praise; but neither at that moment nor at any other could she
discern any symptom of love; and from the whole of his behaviour to Miss
de Bourgh she derived this comfort for Miss Bingley, that he might have
been just as likely to marry _her_, had she been his relation.

Lady Catherine continued her remarks on Elizabeth's performance, mixing
with them many instructions on execution and taste. Elizabeth received
them with all the forbearance of civility, and, at the request of the
gentlemen, remained at the instrument till her ladyship's carriage was
ready to take them all home.



Chapter 32


Elizabeth was sitting by herself the next morning, and writing to Jane
while Mrs. Collins and Maria were gone on business into the village,
when she was startled by a ring at the door, the certain signal of a
visitor. As she had heard no carriage, she thought it not unlikely to
be Lady Catherine, and under that apprehension was putting away her
half-finished letter that she might escape all impertinent questions,
when the door opened, and, to her very great surprise, Mr. Darcy, and
Mr. Darcy only, entered the room.

He seemed astonished too on finding her alone, and apologised for his
intrusion by letting her know that he had understood all the ladies were
to be within.

They then sat down, and when her inquiries after Rosings were made,
seemed in danger of sinking into total silence. It was absolutely
necessary, therefore, to think of something, and in this emergence
recollecting _when_ she had seen him last in Hertfordshire, and
feeling curious to know what he would say on the subject of their hasty
departure, she observed:

“How very suddenly you all quitted Netherfield last November, Mr. Darcy!
It must have been a most agreeable surprise to Mr. Bingley to see you
all after him so soon; for, if I recollect right, he went but the day
before. He and his sisters were well, I hope, when you left London?”

“Perfectly so, I thank you.”

She found that she was to receive no other answer, and, after a short
pause added:

“I think I have understood that Mr. Bingley has not much idea of ever
returning to Netherfield again?”

“I have never heard him say so; but it is probable that he may spend
very little of his time there in the future. He has many friends, and
is at a time of life when friends and engagements are continually
increasing.”

“If he means to be but little at Netherfield, it would be better for
the neighbourhood that he should give up the place entirely, for then we
might possibly get a settled family there. But, perhaps, Mr. Bingley did
not take the house so much for the convenience of the neighbourhood as
for his own, and we must expect him to keep it or quit it on the same
principle.”

“I should not be surprised,” said Darcy, “if he were to give it up as
soon as any eligible purchase offers.”

Elizabeth made no answer. She was afraid of talking longer of his
friend; and, having nothing else to say, was now determined to leave the
trouble of finding a subject to him.

He took the hint, and soon began with, “This seems a very comfortable
house. Lady Catherine, I believe, did a great deal to it when Mr.
Collins first came to Hunsford.”

“I believe she did--and I am sure she could not have bestowed her
kindness on a more grateful object.”

“Mr. Collins appears to be very fortunate in his choice of a wife.”

“Yes, indeed, his friends may well rejoice in his having met with one
of the very few sensible women who would have accepted him, or have made
him happy if they had. My friend has an excellent understanding--though
I am not certain that I consider her marrying Mr. Collins as the
wisest thing she ever did. She seems perfectly happy, however, and in a
prudential light it is certainly a very good match for her.”

“It must be very agreeable for her to be settled within so easy a
distance of her own family and friends.”

“An easy distance, do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles.”

“And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day's
journey. Yes, I call it a _very_ easy distance.”

“I should never have considered the distance as one of the _advantages_
of the match,” cried Elizabeth. “I should never have said Mrs. Collins
was settled _near_ her family.”

“It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Anything beyond
the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would appear far.”

As he spoke there was a sort of smile which Elizabeth fancied she
understood; he must be supposing her to be thinking of Jane and
Netherfield, and she blushed as she answered:

“I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her
family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many
varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expenses of
travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the
case _here_. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a comfortable income, but not
such a one as will allow of frequent journeys--and I am persuaded my
friend would not call herself _near_ her family under less than _half_
the present distance.”

Mr. Darcy drew his chair a little towards her, and said, “_You_ cannot
have a right to such very strong local attachment. _You_ cannot have
been always at Longbourn.”

Elizabeth looked surprised. The gentleman experienced some change of
feeling; he drew back his chair, took a newspaper from the table, and
glancing over it, said, in a colder voice:

“Are you pleased with Kent?”

A short dialogue on the subject of the country ensued, on either side
calm and concise--and soon put an end to by the entrance of Charlotte
and her sister, just returned from her walk. The tete-a-tete surprised
them. Mr. Darcy related the mistake which had occasioned his intruding
on Miss Bennet, and after sitting a few minutes longer without saying
much to anybody, went away.

“What can be the meaning of this?” said Charlotte, as soon as he was
gone. “My dear, Eliza, he must be in love with you, or he would never
have called us in this familiar way.”

But when Elizabeth told of his silence, it did not seem very likely,
even to Charlotte's wishes, to be the case; and after various
conjectures, they could at last only suppose his visit to proceed from
the difficulty of finding anything to do, which was the more probable
from the time of year. All field sports were over. Within doors there
was Lady Catherine, books, and a billiard-table, but gentlemen cannot
always be within doors; and in the nearness of the Parsonage, or the
pleasantness of the walk to it, or of the people who lived in it, the
two cousins found a temptation from this period of walking thither
almost every day. They called at various times of the morning, sometimes
separately, sometimes together, and now and then accompanied by their
aunt. It was plain to them all that Colonel Fitzwilliam came because he
had pleasure in their society, a persuasion which of course recommended
him still more; and Elizabeth was reminded by her own satisfaction in
being with him, as well as by his evident admiration of her, of her
former favourite George Wickham; and though, in comparing them, she saw
there was less captivating softness in Colonel Fitzwilliam's manners,
she believed he might have the best informed mind.

But why Mr. Darcy came so often to the Parsonage, it was more difficult
to understand. It could not be for society, as he frequently sat there
ten minutes together without opening his lips; and when he did speak,
it seemed the effect of necessity rather than of choice--a sacrifice
to propriety, not a pleasure to himself. He seldom appeared really
animated. Mrs. Collins knew not what to make of him. Colonel
Fitzwilliam's occasionally laughing at his stupidity, proved that he was
generally different, which her own knowledge of him could not have told
her; and as she would liked to have believed this change the effect
of love, and the object of that love her friend Eliza, she set herself
seriously to work to find it out. She watched him whenever they were at
Rosings, and whenever he came to Hunsford; but without much success. He
certainly looked at her friend a great deal, but the expression of that
look was disputable. It was an earnest, steadfast gaze, but she often
doubted whether there were much admiration in it, and sometimes it
seemed nothing but absence of mind.

She had once or twice suggested to Elizabeth the possibility of his
being partial to her, but Elizabeth always laughed at the idea; and Mrs.
Collins did not think it right to press the subject, from the danger of
raising expectations which might only end in disappointment; for in her
opinion it admitted not of a doubt, that all her friend's dislike would
vanish, if she could suppose him to be in her power.


In her kind schemes for Elizabeth, she sometimes planned her marrying
Colonel Fitzwilliam. He was beyond comparison the most pleasant man; he
certainly admired her, and his situation in life was most eligible; but,
to counterbalance these advantages, Mr. Darcy had considerable patronage
in the church, and his cousin could have none at all.



Chapter 33


More than once did Elizabeth, in her ramble within the park,
unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy. She felt all the perverseness of the
mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought, and, to
prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him at first that
it was a favourite haunt of hers. How it could occur a second time,
therefore, was very odd! Yet it did, and even a third. It seemed like
wilful ill-nature, or a voluntary penance, for on these occasions it was
not merely a few formal inquiries and an awkward pause and then away,
but he actually thought it necessary to turn back and walk with her. He
never said a great deal, nor did she give herself the trouble of talking
or of listening much; but it struck her in the course of their third
rencontre that he was asking some odd unconnected questions--about
her pleasure in being at Hunsford, her love of solitary walks, and her
opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Collins's happiness; and that in speaking of
Rosings and her not perfectly understanding the house, he seemed to
expect that whenever she came into Kent again she would be staying
_there_ too. His words seemed to imply it. Could he have Colonel
Fitzwilliam in his thoughts? She supposed, if he meant anything, he must
mean an allusion to what might arise in that quarter. It distressed
her a little, and she was quite glad to find herself at the gate in the
pales opposite the Parsonage.

She was engaged one day as she walked, in perusing Jane's last letter,
and dwelling on some passages which proved that Jane had not written in
spirits, when, instead of being again surprised by Mr. Darcy, she saw
on looking up that Colonel Fitzwilliam was meeting her. Putting away the
letter immediately and forcing a smile, she said:

“I did not know before that you ever walked this way.”

“I have been making the tour of the park,” he replied, “as I generally
do every year, and intend to close it with a call at the Parsonage. Are
you going much farther?”

“No, I should have turned in a moment.”

And accordingly she did turn, and they walked towards the Parsonage
together.

“Do you certainly leave Kent on Saturday?” said she.

“Yes--if Darcy does not put it off again. But I am at his disposal. He
arranges the business just as he pleases.”

“And if not able to please himself in the arrangement, he has at least
pleasure in the great power of choice. I do not know anybody who seems
more to enjoy the power of doing what he likes than Mr. Darcy.”

“He likes to have his own way very well,” replied Colonel Fitzwilliam.
“But so we all do. It is only that he has better means of having it
than many others, because he is rich, and many others are poor. I speak
feelingly. A younger son, you know, must be inured to self-denial and
dependence.”

“In my opinion, the younger son of an earl can know very little of
either. Now seriously, what have you ever known of self-denial and
dependence? When have you been prevented by want of money from going
wherever you chose, or procuring anything you had a fancy for?”

“These are home questions--and perhaps I cannot say that I have
experienced many hardships of that nature. But in matters of greater
weight, I may suffer from want of money. Younger sons cannot marry where
they like.”

“Unless where they like women of fortune, which I think they very often
do.”

“Our habits of expense make us too dependent, and there are not many
in my rank of life who can afford to marry without some attention to
money.”

“Is this,” thought Elizabeth, “meant for me?” and she coloured at the
idea; but, recovering herself, said in a lively tone, “And pray, what
is the usual price of an earl's younger son? Unless the elder brother is
very sickly, I suppose you would not ask above fifty thousand pounds.”

He answered her in the same style, and the subject dropped. To interrupt
a silence which might make him fancy her affected with what had passed,
she soon afterwards said:

“I imagine your cousin brought you down with him chiefly for the sake of
having someone at his disposal. I wonder he does not marry, to secure a
lasting convenience of that kind. But, perhaps, his sister does as well
for the present, and, as she is under his sole care, he may do what he
likes with her.”

“No,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, “that is an advantage which he must
divide with me. I am joined with him in the guardianship of Miss Darcy.”

“Are you indeed? And pray what sort of guardians do you make? Does your
charge give you much trouble? Young ladies of her age are sometimes a
little difficult to manage, and if she has the true Darcy spirit, she
may like to have her own way.”

As she spoke she observed him looking at her earnestly; and the manner
in which he immediately asked her why she supposed Miss Darcy likely to
give them any uneasiness, convinced her that she had somehow or other
got pretty near the truth. She directly replied:

“You need not be frightened. I never heard any harm of her; and I dare
say she is one of the most tractable creatures in the world. She is a
very great favourite with some ladies of my acquaintance, Mrs. Hurst and
Miss Bingley. I think I have heard you say that you know them.”

“I know them a little. Their brother is a pleasant gentlemanlike man--he
is a great friend of Darcy's.”

“Oh! yes,” said Elizabeth drily; “Mr. Darcy is uncommonly kind to Mr.
Bingley, and takes a prodigious deal of care of him.”

“Care of him! Yes, I really believe Darcy _does_ take care of him in
those points where he most wants care. From something that he told me in
our journey hither, I have reason to think Bingley very much indebted to
him. But I ought to beg his pardon, for I have no right to suppose that
Bingley was the person meant. It was all conjecture.”

“What is it you mean?”

“It is a circumstance which Darcy could not wish to be generally known,
because if it were to get round to the lady's family, it would be an
unpleasant thing.”

“You may depend upon my not mentioning it.”

“And remember that I have not much reason for supposing it to be
Bingley. What he told me was merely this: that he congratulated himself
on having lately saved a friend from the inconveniences of a most
imprudent marriage, but without mentioning names or any other
particulars, and I only suspected it to be Bingley from believing
him the kind of young man to get into a scrape of that sort, and from
knowing them to have been together the whole of last summer.”

“Did Mr. Darcy give you reasons for this interference?”

“I understood that there were some very strong objections against the
lady.”

“And what arts did he use to separate them?”

“He did not talk to me of his own arts,” said Fitzwilliam, smiling. “He
only told me what I have now told you.”

Elizabeth made no answer, and walked on, her heart swelling with
indignation. After watching her a little, Fitzwilliam asked her why she
was so thoughtful.

“I am thinking of what you have been telling me,” said she. “Your
cousin's conduct does not suit my feelings. Why was he to be the judge?”

“You are rather disposed to call his interference officious?”

“I do not see what right Mr. Darcy had to decide on the propriety of his
friend's inclination, or why, upon his own judgement alone, he was to
determine and direct in what manner his friend was to be happy.
But,” she continued, recollecting herself, “as we know none of the
particulars, it is not fair to condemn him. It is not to be supposed
that there was much affection in the case.”

“That is not an unnatural surmise,” said Fitzwilliam, “but it is a
lessening of the honour of my cousin's triumph very sadly.”

This was spoken jestingly; but it appeared to her so just a picture
of Mr. Darcy, that she would not trust herself with an answer, and
therefore, abruptly changing the conversation talked on indifferent
matters until they reached the Parsonage. There, shut into her own room,
as soon as their visitor left them, she could think without interruption
of all that she had heard. It was not to be supposed that any other
people could be meant than those with whom she was connected. There
could not exist in the world _two_ men over whom Mr. Darcy could have
such boundless influence. That he had been concerned in the measures
taken to separate Bingley and Jane she had never doubted; but she had
always attributed to Miss Bingley the principal design and arrangement
of them. If his own vanity, however, did not mislead him, _he_ was
the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause, of all that Jane had
suffered, and still continued to suffer. He had ruined for a while
every hope of happiness for the most affectionate, generous heart in the
world; and no one could say how lasting an evil he might have inflicted.

“There were some very strong objections against the lady,” were Colonel
Fitzwilliam's words; and those strong objections probably were, her
having one uncle who was a country attorney, and another who was in
business in London.

“To Jane herself,” she exclaimed, “there could be no possibility of
objection; all loveliness and goodness as she is!--her understanding
excellent, her mind improved, and her manners captivating. Neither
could anything be urged against my father, who, though with some
peculiarities, has abilities Mr. Darcy himself need not disdain, and
respectability which he will probably never reach.” When she thought of
her mother, her confidence gave way a little; but she would not allow
that any objections _there_ had material weight with Mr. Darcy, whose
pride, she was convinced, would receive a deeper wound from the want of
importance in his friend's connections, than from their want of sense;
and she was quite decided, at last, that he had been partly governed
by this worst kind of pride, and partly by the wish of retaining Mr.
Bingley for his sister.

The agitation and tears which the subject occasioned, brought on a
headache; and it grew so much worse towards the evening, that, added to
her unwillingness to see Mr. Darcy, it determined her not to attend her
cousins to Rosings, where they were engaged to drink tea. Mrs. Collins,
seeing that she was really unwell, did not press her to go and as much
as possible prevented her husband from pressing her; but Mr. Collins
could not conceal his apprehension of Lady Catherine's being rather
displeased by her staying at home.



Chapter 34


When they were gone, Elizabeth, as if intending to exasperate herself
as much as possible against Mr. Darcy, chose for her employment the
examination of all the letters which Jane had written to her since her
being in Kent. They contained no actual complaint, nor was there any
revival of past occurrences, or any communication of present suffering.
But in all, and in almost every line of each, there was a want of that
cheerfulness which had been used to characterise her style, and which,
proceeding from the serenity of a mind at ease with itself and kindly
disposed towards everyone, had been scarcely ever clouded. Elizabeth
noticed every sentence conveying the idea of uneasiness, with an
attention which it had hardly received on the first perusal. Mr. Darcy's
shameful boast of what misery he had been able to inflict, gave her
a keener sense of her sister's sufferings. It was some consolation
to think that his visit to Rosings was to end on the day after the
next--and, a still greater, that in less than a fortnight she should
herself be with Jane again, and enabled to contribute to the recovery of
her spirits, by all that affection could do.

She could not think of Darcy's leaving Kent without remembering that
his cousin was to go with him; but Colonel Fitzwilliam had made it clear
that he had no intentions at all, and agreeable as he was, she did not
mean to be unhappy about him.

While settling this point, she was suddenly roused by the sound of the
door-bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its
being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once before called late in
the evening, and might now come to inquire particularly after her.
But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently
affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the
room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an inquiry after her
health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better.
She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and
then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but
said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her
in an agitated manner, and thus began:

“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be
repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love
you.”

Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured,
doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement;
and the avowal of all that he felt, and had long felt for her,
immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were feelings besides
those of the heart to be detailed; and he was not more eloquent on the
subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority--of
its being a degradation--of the family obstacles which had always
opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to
the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his
suit.

In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to
the compliment of such a man's affection, and though her intentions did
not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to
receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she
lost all compassion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to
answer him with patience, when he should have done. He concluded with
representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite
of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with
expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of
his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt
of a favourable answer. He _spoke_ of apprehension and anxiety, but
his countenance expressed real security. Such a circumstance could
only exasperate farther, and, when he ceased, the colour rose into her
cheeks, and she said:

“In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to
express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however
unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should
be felt, and if I could _feel_ gratitude, I would now thank you. But I
cannot--I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly
bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to
anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be
of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented
the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in
overcoming it after this explanation.”

Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes fixed
on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than
surprise. His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance
of his mind was visible in every feature. He was struggling for the
appearance of composure, and would not open his lips till he believed
himself to have attained it. The pause was to Elizabeth's feelings
dreadful. At length, with a voice of forced calmness, he said:

“And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting!
I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little _endeavour_ at
civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance.”

“I might as well inquire,” replied she, “why with so evident a desire
of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me
against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?
Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I _was_ uncivil? But I have
other provocations. You know I have. Had not my feelings decided against
you--had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you
think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has
been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most
beloved sister?”

As she pronounced these words, Mr. Darcy changed colour; but the emotion
was short, and he listened without attempting to interrupt her while she
continued:

“I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can
excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted _there_. You dare not,
you cannot deny, that you have been the principal, if not the only means
of dividing them from each other--of exposing one to the censure of the
world for caprice and instability, and the other to its derision for
disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest
kind.”

She paused, and saw with no slight indignation that he was listening
with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse.
He even looked at her with a smile of affected incredulity.

“Can you deny that you have done it?” she repeated.

With assumed tranquillity he then replied: “I have no wish of denying
that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your
sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards _him_ I have been
kinder than towards myself.”

Elizabeth disdained the appearance of noticing this civil reflection,
but its meaning did not escape, nor was it likely to conciliate her.

“But it is not merely this affair,” she continued, “on which my dislike
is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion of you was
decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received
many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to
say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself?
or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?”

“You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns,” said Darcy,
in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.

“Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an
interest in him?”

“His misfortunes!” repeated Darcy contemptuously; “yes, his misfortunes
have been great indeed.”

“And of your infliction,” cried Elizabeth with energy. “You have reduced
him to his present state of poverty--comparative poverty. You have
withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for
him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence
which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this!
and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortune with contempt and
ridicule.”

“And this,” cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the room,
“is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me!
I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this
calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps,” added he, stopping in
his walk, and turning towards her, “these offenses might have been
overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the
scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These
bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater
policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of
my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by
reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.
Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and
just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your
connections?--to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose
condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”

Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every moment; yet she tried to
the utmost to speak with composure when she said:

“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your
declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern
which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more
gentlemanlike manner.”

She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she continued:

“You could not have made the offer of your hand in any possible way that
would have tempted me to accept it.”

Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an
expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went on:

“From the very beginning--from the first moment, I may almost say--of
my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest
belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of
the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of
disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a
dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the
last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

“You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your
feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been.
Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and accept my best
wishes for your health and happiness.”

And with these words he hastily left the room, and Elizabeth heard him
the next moment open the front door and quit the house.

The tumult of her mind, was now painfully great. She knew not how
to support herself, and from actual weakness sat down and cried for
half-an-hour. Her astonishment, as she reflected on what had passed,
was increased by every review of it. That she should receive an offer of
marriage from Mr. Darcy! That he should have been in love with her for
so many months! So much in love as to wish to marry her in spite of
all the objections which had made him prevent his friend's marrying
her sister, and which must appear at least with equal force in his
own case--was almost incredible! It was gratifying to have inspired
unconsciously so strong an affection. But his pride, his abominable
pride--his shameless avowal of what he had done with respect to
Jane--his unpardonable assurance in acknowledging, though he could
not justify it, and the unfeeling manner in which he had mentioned Mr.
Wickham, his cruelty towards whom he had not attempted to deny, soon
overcame the pity which the consideration of his attachment had for
a moment excited. She continued in very agitated reflections till the
sound of Lady Catherine's carriage made her feel how unequal she was to
encounter Charlotte's observation, and hurried her away to her room.



Chapter 35


Elizabeth awoke the next morning to the same thoughts and meditations
which had at length closed her eyes. She could not yet recover from the
surprise of what had happened; it was impossible to think of anything
else; and, totally indisposed for employment, she resolved, soon after
breakfast, to indulge herself in air and exercise. She was proceeding
directly to her favourite walk, when the recollection of Mr. Darcy's
sometimes coming there stopped her, and instead of entering the park,
she turned up the lane, which led farther from the turnpike-road. The
park paling was still the boundary on one side, and she soon passed one
of the gates into the ground.

After walking two or three times along that part of the lane, she was
tempted, by the pleasantness of the morning, to stop at the gates and
look into the park. The five weeks which she had now passed in Kent had
made a great difference in the country, and every day was adding to the
verdure of the early trees. She was on the point of continuing her walk,
when she caught a glimpse of a gentleman within the sort of grove which
edged the park; he was moving that way; and, fearful of its being Mr.
Darcy, she was directly retreating. But the person who advanced was now
near enough to see her, and stepping forward with eagerness, pronounced
her name. She had turned away; but on hearing herself called, though
in a voice which proved it to be Mr. Darcy, she moved again towards the
gate. He had by that time reached it also, and, holding out a letter,
which she instinctively took, said, with a look of haughty composure,
“I have been walking in the grove some time in the hope of meeting you.
Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?” And then, with a
slight bow, turned again into the plantation, and was soon out of sight.

With no expectation of pleasure, but with the strongest curiosity,
Elizabeth opened the letter, and, to her still increasing wonder,
perceived an envelope containing two sheets of letter-paper, written
quite through, in a very close hand. The envelope itself was likewise
full. Pursuing her way along the lane, she then began it. It was dated
from Rosings, at eight o'clock in the morning, and was as follows:--

“Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension
of its containing any repetition of those sentiments or renewal of those
offers which were last night so disgusting to you. I write without any
intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes
which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten; and the
effort which the formation and the perusal of this letter must occasion,
should have been spared, had not my character required it to be written
and read. You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand
your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I
demand it of your justice.

“Two offenses of a very different nature, and by no means of equal
magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first mentioned was,
that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had detached Mr. Bingley
from your sister, and the other, that I had, in defiance of various
claims, in defiance of honour and humanity, ruined the immediate
prosperity and blasted the prospects of Mr. Wickham. Wilfully and
wantonly to have thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged
favourite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other
dependence than on our patronage, and who had been brought up to expect
its exertion, would be a depravity, to which the separation of two young
persons, whose affection could be the growth of only a few weeks, could
bear no comparison. But from the severity of that blame which was last
night so liberally bestowed, respecting each circumstance, I shall hope
to be in the future secured, when the following account of my actions
and their motives has been read. If, in the explanation of them, which
is due to myself, I am under the necessity of relating feelings which
may be offensive to yours, I can only say that I am sorry. The necessity
must be obeyed, and further apology would be absurd.

“I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common with
others, that Bingley preferred your elder sister to any other young
woman in the country. But it was not till the evening of the dance
at Netherfield that I had any apprehension of his feeling a serious
attachment. I had often seen him in love before. At that ball, while I
had the honour of dancing with you, I was first made acquainted, by Sir
William Lucas's accidental information, that Bingley's attentions to
your sister had given rise to a general expectation of their marriage.
He spoke of it as a certain event, of which the time alone could
be undecided. From that moment I observed my friend's behaviour
attentively; and I could then perceive that his partiality for Miss
Bennet was beyond what I had ever witnessed in him. Your sister I also
watched. Her look and manners were open, cheerful, and engaging as ever,
but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I remained convinced
from the evening's scrutiny, that though she received his attentions
with pleasure, she did not invite them by any participation of
sentiment. If _you_ have not been mistaken here, _I_ must have been
in error. Your superior knowledge of your sister must make the latter
probable. If it be so, if I have been misled by such error to inflict
pain on her, your resentment has not been unreasonable. But I shall not
scruple to assert, that the serenity of your sister's countenance and
air was such as might have given the most acute observer a conviction
that, however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be
easily touched. That I was desirous of believing her indifferent is
certain--but I will venture to say that my investigation and decisions
are not usually influenced by my hopes or fears. I did not believe
her to be indifferent because I wished it; I believed it on impartial
conviction, as truly as I wished it in reason. My objections to the
marriage were not merely those which I last night acknowledged to have
the utmost force of passion to put aside, in my own case; the want of
connection could not be so great an evil to my friend as to me. But
there were other causes of repugnance; causes which, though still
existing, and existing to an equal degree in both instances, I had
myself endeavoured to forget, because they were not immediately before
me. These causes must be stated, though briefly. The situation of your
mother's family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison to that
total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by
herself, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your
father. Pardon me. It pains me to offend you. But amidst your concern
for the defects of your nearest relations, and your displeasure at this
representation of them, let it give you consolation to consider that, to
have conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of the like censure,
is praise no less generally bestowed on you and your elder sister, than
it is honourable to the sense and disposition of both. I will only say
farther that from what passed that evening, my opinion of all parties
was confirmed, and every inducement heightened which could have led
me before, to preserve my friend from what I esteemed a most unhappy
connection. He left Netherfield for London, on the day following, as
you, I am certain, remember, with the design of soon returning.

“The part which I acted is now to be explained. His sisters' uneasiness
had been equally excited with my own; our coincidence of feeling was
soon discovered, and, alike sensible that no time was to be lost in
detaching their brother, we shortly resolved on joining him directly in
London. We accordingly went--and there I readily engaged in the office
of pointing out to my friend the certain evils of such a choice. I
described, and enforced them earnestly. But, however this remonstrance
might have staggered or delayed his determination, I do not suppose
that it would ultimately have prevented the marriage, had it not been
seconded by the assurance that I hesitated not in giving, of your
sister's indifference. He had before believed her to return his
affection with sincere, if not with equal regard. But Bingley has great
natural modesty, with a stronger dependence on my judgement than on his
own. To convince him, therefore, that he had deceived himself, was
no very difficult point. To persuade him against returning into
Hertfordshire, when that conviction had been given, was scarcely the
work of a moment. I cannot blame myself for having done thus much. There
is but one part of my conduct in the whole affair on which I do not
reflect with satisfaction; it is that I condescended to adopt the
measures of art so far as to conceal from him your sister's being in
town. I knew it myself, as it was known to Miss Bingley; but her
brother is even yet ignorant of it. That they might have met without
ill consequence is perhaps probable; but his regard did not appear to me
enough extinguished for him to see her without some danger. Perhaps this
concealment, this disguise was beneath me; it is done, however, and it
was done for the best. On this subject I have nothing more to say, no
other apology to offer. If I have wounded your sister's feelings, it
was unknowingly done and though the motives which governed me may to
you very naturally appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn
them.

“With respect to that other, more weighty accusation, of having injured
Mr. Wickham, I can only refute it by laying before you the whole of his
connection with my family. Of what he has _particularly_ accused me I
am ignorant; but of the truth of what I shall relate, I can summon more
than one witness of undoubted veracity.

“Mr. Wickham is the son of a very respectable man, who had for many
years the management of all the Pemberley estates, and whose good
conduct in the discharge of his trust naturally inclined my father to
be of service to him; and on George Wickham, who was his godson, his
kindness was therefore liberally bestowed. My father supported him at
school, and afterwards at Cambridge--most important assistance, as his
own father, always poor from the extravagance of his wife, would have
been unable to give him a gentleman's education. My father was not only
fond of this young man's society, whose manners were always engaging; he
had also the highest opinion of him, and hoping the church would be
his profession, intended to provide for him in it. As for myself, it is
many, many years since I first began to think of him in a very different
manner. The vicious propensities--the want of principle, which he was
careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend, could not escape
the observation of a young man of nearly the same age with himself,
and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded moments, which Mr.
Darcy could not have. Here again I shall give you pain--to what degree
you only can tell. But whatever may be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham
has created, a suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from
unfolding his real character--it adds even another motive.

“My excellent father died about five years ago; and his attachment to
Mr. Wickham was to the last so steady, that in his will he particularly
recommended it to me, to promote his advancement in the best manner
that his profession might allow--and if he took orders, desired that a
valuable family living might be his as soon as it became vacant. There
was also a legacy of one thousand pounds. His own father did not long
survive mine, and within half a year from these events, Mr. Wickham
wrote to inform me that, having finally resolved against taking orders,
he hoped I should not think it unreasonable for him to expect some more
immediate pecuniary advantage, in lieu of the preferment, by which he
could not be benefited. He had some intention, he added, of studying
law, and I must be aware that the interest of one thousand pounds would
be a very insufficient support therein. I rather wished, than believed
him to be sincere; but, at any rate, was perfectly ready to accede to
his proposal. I knew that Mr. Wickham ought not to be a clergyman; the
business was therefore soon settled--he resigned all claim to assistance
in the church, were it possible that he could ever be in a situation to
receive it, and accepted in return three thousand pounds. All connection
between us seemed now dissolved. I thought too ill of him to invite him
to Pemberley, or admit his society in town. In town I believe he chiefly
lived, but his studying the law was a mere pretence, and being now free
from all restraint, his life was a life of idleness and dissipation.
For about three years I heard little of him; but on the decease of the
incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, he applied to
me again by letter for the presentation. His circumstances, he assured
me, and I had no difficulty in believing it, were exceedingly bad. He
had found the law a most unprofitable study, and was now absolutely
resolved on being ordained, if I would present him to the living in
question--of which he trusted there could be little doubt, as he was
well assured that I had no other person to provide for, and I could not
have forgotten my revered father's intentions. You will hardly blame
me for refusing to comply with this entreaty, or for resisting every
repetition to it. His resentment was in proportion to the distress of
his circumstances--and he was doubtless as violent in his abuse of me
to others as in his reproaches to myself. After this period every
appearance of acquaintance was dropped. How he lived I know not. But
last summer he was again most painfully obtruded on my notice.

“I must now mention a circumstance which I would wish to forget myself,
and which no obligation less than the present should induce me to unfold
to any human being. Having said thus much, I feel no doubt of your
secrecy. My sister, who is more than ten years my junior, was left to
the guardianship of my mother's nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and myself.
About a year ago, she was taken from school, and an establishment formed
for her in London; and last summer she went with the lady who presided
over it, to Ramsgate; and thither also went Mr. Wickham, undoubtedly by
design; for there proved to have been a prior acquaintance between him
and Mrs. Younge, in whose character we were most unhappily deceived; and
by her connivance and aid, he so far recommended himself to Georgiana,
whose affectionate heart retained a strong impression of his kindness to
her as a child, that she was persuaded to believe herself in love, and
to consent to an elopement. She was then but fifteen, which must be her
excuse; and after stating her imprudence, I am happy to add, that I owed
the knowledge of it to herself. I joined them unexpectedly a day or two
before the intended elopement, and then Georgiana, unable to support the
idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost looked up to as
a father, acknowledged the whole to me. You may imagine what I felt and
how I acted. Regard for my sister's credit and feelings prevented
any public exposure; but I wrote to Mr. Wickham, who left the place
immediately, and Mrs. Younge was of course removed from her charge. Mr.
Wickham's chief object was unquestionably my sister's fortune, which
is thirty thousand pounds; but I cannot help supposing that the hope of
revenging himself on me was a strong inducement. His revenge would have
been complete indeed.

“This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have
been concerned together; and if you do not absolutely reject it as
false, you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth of cruelty towards Mr.
Wickham. I know not in what manner, under what form of falsehood he
had imposed on you; but his success is not perhaps to be wondered
at. Ignorant as you previously were of everything concerning either,
detection could not be in your power, and suspicion certainly not in
your inclination.

“You may possibly wonder why all this was not told you last night; but
I was not then master enough of myself to know what could or ought to
be revealed. For the truth of everything here related, I can appeal more
particularly to the testimony of Colonel Fitzwilliam, who, from our
near relationship and constant intimacy, and, still more, as one of
the executors of my father's will, has been unavoidably acquainted
with every particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of _me_
should make _my_ assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented by
the same cause from confiding in my cousin; and that there may be
the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to find some
opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in the course of the
morning. I will only add, God bless you.

“FITZWILLIAM DARCY”



Chapter 36


If Elizabeth, when Mr. Darcy gave her the letter, did not expect it to
contain a renewal of his offers, she had formed no expectation at all of
its contents. But such as they were, it may well be supposed how eagerly
she went through them, and what a contrariety of emotion they excited.
Her feelings as she read were scarcely to be defined. With amazement did
she first understand that he believed any apology to be in his power;
and steadfastly was she persuaded, that he could have no explanation
to give, which a just sense of shame would not conceal. With a strong
prejudice against everything he might say, she began his account of what
had happened at Netherfield. She read with an eagerness which hardly
left her power of comprehension, and from impatience of knowing what the
next sentence might bring, was incapable of attending to the sense of
the one before her eyes. His belief of her sister's insensibility she
instantly resolved to be false; and his account of the real, the worst
objections to the match, made her too angry to have any wish of doing
him justice. He expressed no regret for what he had done which satisfied
her; his style was not penitent, but haughty. It was all pride and
insolence.

But when this subject was succeeded by his account of Mr. Wickham--when
she read with somewhat clearer attention a relation of events which,
if true, must overthrow every cherished opinion of his worth, and which
bore so alarming an affinity to his own history of himself--her
feelings were yet more acutely painful and more difficult of definition.
Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror, oppressed her. She wished
to discredit it entirely, repeatedly exclaiming, “This must be false!
This cannot be! This must be the grossest falsehood!”--and when she had
gone through the whole letter, though scarcely knowing anything of the
last page or two, put it hastily away, protesting that she would not
regard it, that she would never look in it again.

In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on
nothing, she walked on; but it would not do; in half a minute the letter
was unfolded again, and collecting herself as well as she could, she
again began the mortifying perusal of all that related to Wickham, and
commanded herself so far as to examine the meaning of every sentence.
The account of his connection with the Pemberley family was exactly what
he had related himself; and the kindness of the late Mr. Darcy, though
she had not before known its extent, agreed equally well with his own
words. So far each recital confirmed the other; but when she came to the
will, the difference was great. What Wickham had said of the living
was fresh in her memory, and as she recalled his very words, it was
impossible not to feel that there was gross duplicity on one side or the
other; and, for a few moments, she flattered herself that her wishes did
not err. But when she read and re-read with the closest attention, the
particulars immediately following of Wickham's resigning all pretensions
to the living, of his receiving in lieu so considerable a sum as three
thousand pounds, again was she forced to hesitate. She put down
the letter, weighed every circumstance with what she meant to be
impartiality--deliberated on the probability of each statement--but with
little success. On both sides it was only assertion. Again she read
on; but every line proved more clearly that the affair, which she had
believed it impossible that any contrivance could so represent as to
render Mr. Darcy's conduct in it less than infamous, was capable of a
turn which must make him entirely blameless throughout the whole.

The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to lay at
Mr. Wickham's charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more so, as she could
bring no proof of its injustice. She had never heard of him before his
entrance into the ----shire Militia, in which he had engaged at the
persuasion of the young man who, on meeting him accidentally in town,
had there renewed a slight acquaintance. Of his former way of life
nothing had been known in Hertfordshire but what he told himself. As
to his real character, had information been in her power, she had
never felt a wish of inquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner had
established him at once in the possession of every virtue. She tried
to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of
integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of
Mr. Darcy; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those
casual errors under which she would endeavour to class what Mr. Darcy
had described as the idleness and vice of many years' continuance. But
no such recollection befriended her. She could see him instantly before
her, in every charm of air and address; but she could remember no more
substantial good than the general approbation of the neighbourhood, and
the regard which his social powers had gained him in the mess. After
pausing on this point a considerable while, she once more continued to
read. But, alas! the story which followed, of his designs on Miss
Darcy, received some confirmation from what had passed between Colonel
Fitzwilliam and herself only the morning before; and at last she was
referred for the truth of every particular to Colonel Fitzwilliam
himself--from whom she had previously received the information of his
near concern in all his cousin's affairs, and whose character she had no
reason to question. At one time she had almost resolved on applying to
him, but the idea was checked by the awkwardness of the application, and
at length wholly banished by the conviction that Mr. Darcy would never
have hazarded such a proposal, if he had not been well assured of his
cousin's corroboration.

She perfectly remembered everything that had passed in conversation
between Wickham and herself, in their first evening at Mr. Phillips's.
Many of his expressions were still fresh in her memory. She was _now_
struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and
wondered it had escaped her before. She saw the indelicacy of putting
himself forward as he had done, and the inconsistency of his professions
with his conduct. She remembered that he had boasted of having no fear
of seeing Mr. Darcy--that Mr. Darcy might leave the country, but that
_he_ should stand his ground; yet he had avoided the Netherfield ball
the very next week. She remembered also that, till the Netherfield
family had quitted the country, he had told his story to no one but
herself; but that after their removal it had been everywhere discussed;
that he had then no reserves, no scruples in sinking Mr. Darcy's
character, though he had assured her that respect for the father would
always prevent his exposing the son.

How differently did everything now appear in which he was concerned!
His attentions to Miss King were now the consequence of views solely and
hatefully mercenary; and the mediocrity of her fortune proved no longer
the moderation of his wishes, but his eagerness to grasp at anything.
His behaviour to herself could now have had no tolerable motive; he had
either been deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying
his vanity by encouraging the preference which she believed she had most
incautiously shown. Every lingering struggle in his favour grew fainter
and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr. Darcy, she could not
but allow that Mr. Bingley, when questioned by Jane, had long ago
asserted his blamelessness in the affair; that proud and repulsive as
were his manners, she had never, in the whole course of their
acquaintance--an acquaintance which had latterly brought them much
together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his ways--seen anything
that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust--anything that spoke him
of irreligious or immoral habits; that among his own connections he was
esteemed and valued--that even Wickham had allowed him merit as a
brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his
sister as to prove him capable of _some_ amiable feeling; that had his
actions been what Mr. Wickham represented them, so gross a violation of
everything right could hardly have been concealed from the world; and
that friendship between a person capable of it, and such an amiable man
as Mr. Bingley, was incomprehensible.

She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham
could she think without feeling she had been blind, partial, prejudiced,
absurd.

“How despicably I have acted!” she cried; “I, who have prided myself
on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have
often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified
my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this
discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could
not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my
folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect
of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted
prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were
concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.”

From herself to Jane--from Jane to Bingley, her thoughts were in a line
which soon brought to her recollection that Mr. Darcy's explanation
_there_ had appeared very insufficient, and she read it again. Widely
different was the effect of a second perusal. How could she deny that
credit to his assertions in one instance, which she had been obliged to
give in the other? He declared himself to be totally unsuspicious of her
sister's attachment; and she could not help remembering what Charlotte's
opinion had always been. Neither could she deny the justice of his
description of Jane. She felt that Jane's feelings, though fervent, were
little displayed, and that there was a constant complacency in her air
and manner not often united with great sensibility.

When she came to that part of the letter in which her family were
mentioned in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, her sense
of shame was severe. The justice of the charge struck her too forcibly
for denial, and the circumstances to which he particularly alluded as
having passed at the Netherfield ball, and as confirming all his first
disapprobation, could not have made a stronger impression on his mind
than on hers.

The compliment to herself and her sister was not unfelt. It soothed,
but it could not console her for the contempt which had thus been
self-attracted by the rest of her family; and as she considered
that Jane's disappointment had in fact been the work of her nearest
relations, and reflected how materially the credit of both must be hurt
by such impropriety of conduct, she felt depressed beyond anything she
had ever known before.

After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every
variety of thought--re-considering events, determining probabilities,
and reconciling herself, as well as she could, to a change so sudden and
so important, fatigue, and a recollection of her long absence, made
her at length return home; and she entered the house with the wish
of appearing cheerful as usual, and the resolution of repressing such
reflections as must make her unfit for conversation.

She was immediately told that the two gentlemen from Rosings had each
called during her absence; Mr. Darcy, only for a few minutes, to take
leave--but that Colonel Fitzwilliam had been sitting with them at least
an hour, hoping for her return, and almost resolving to walk after her
till she could be found. Elizabeth could but just _affect_ concern
in missing him; she really rejoiced at it. Colonel Fitzwilliam was no
longer an object; she could think only of her letter.



Chapter 37


The two gentlemen left Rosings the next morning, and Mr. Collins having
been in waiting near the lodges, to make them his parting obeisance, was
able to bring home the pleasing intelligence, of their appearing in very
good health, and in as tolerable spirits as could be expected, after the
melancholy scene so lately gone through at Rosings. To Rosings he then
hastened, to console Lady Catherine and her daughter; and on his return
brought back, with great satisfaction, a message from her ladyship,
importing that she felt herself so dull as to make her very desirous of
having them all to dine with her.

Elizabeth could not see Lady Catherine without recollecting that, had
she chosen it, she might by this time have been presented to her as
her future niece; nor could she think, without a smile, of what her
ladyship's indignation would have been. “What would she have said? how
would she have behaved?” were questions with which she amused herself.

Their first subject was the diminution of the Rosings party. “I assure
you, I feel it exceedingly,” said Lady Catherine; “I believe no one
feels the loss of friends so much as I do. But I am particularly
attached to these young men, and know them to be so much attached to
me! They were excessively sorry to go! But so they always are. The
dear Colonel rallied his spirits tolerably till just at last; but Darcy
seemed to feel it most acutely, more, I think, than last year. His
attachment to Rosings certainly increases.”

Mr. Collins had a compliment, and an allusion to throw in here, which
were kindly smiled on by the mother and daughter.

Lady Catherine observed, after dinner, that Miss Bennet seemed out of
spirits, and immediately accounting for it by herself, by supposing that
she did not like to go home again so soon, she added:

“But if that is the case, you must write to your mother and beg that
you may stay a little longer. Mrs. Collins will be very glad of your
company, I am sure.”

“I am much obliged to your ladyship for your kind invitation,” replied
Elizabeth, “but it is not in my power to accept it. I must be in town
next Saturday.”

“Why, at that rate, you will have been here only six weeks. I expected
you to stay two months. I told Mrs. Collins so before you came. There
can be no occasion for your going so soon. Mrs. Bennet could certainly
spare you for another fortnight.”

“But my father cannot. He wrote last week to hurry my return.”

“Oh! your father of course may spare you, if your mother can. Daughters
are never of so much consequence to a father. And if you will stay
another _month_ complete, it will be in my power to take one of you as
far as London, for I am going there early in June, for a week; and as
Dawson does not object to the barouche-box, there will be very good room
for one of you--and indeed, if the weather should happen to be cool, I
should not object to taking you both, as you are neither of you large.”

“You are all kindness, madam; but I believe we must abide by our
original plan.”

Lady Catherine seemed resigned. “Mrs. Collins, you must send a servant
with them. You know I always speak my mind, and I cannot bear the idea
of two young women travelling post by themselves. It is highly improper.
You must contrive to send somebody. I have the greatest dislike in
the world to that sort of thing. Young women should always be properly
guarded and attended, according to their situation in life. When my
niece Georgiana went to Ramsgate last summer, I made a point of her
having two men-servants go with her. Miss Darcy, the daughter of
Mr. Darcy, of Pemberley, and Lady Anne, could not have appeared with
propriety in a different manner. I am excessively attentive to all those
things. You must send John with the young ladies, Mrs. Collins. I
am glad it occurred to me to mention it; for it would really be
discreditable to _you_ to let them go alone.”

“My uncle is to send a servant for us.”

“Oh! Your uncle! He keeps a man-servant, does he? I am very glad you
have somebody who thinks of these things. Where shall you change horses?
Oh! Bromley, of course. If you mention my name at the Bell, you will be
attended to.”

Lady Catherine had many other questions to ask respecting their journey,
and as she did not answer them all herself, attention was necessary,
which Elizabeth believed to be lucky for her; or, with a mind so
occupied, she might have forgotten where she was. Reflection must be
reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it
as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary
walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant
recollections.

Mr. Darcy's letter she was in a fair way of soon knowing by heart. She
studied every sentence; and her feelings towards its writer were at
times widely different. When she remembered the style of his address,
she was still full of indignation; but when she considered how unjustly
she had condemned and upbraided him, her anger was turned against
herself; and his disappointed feelings became the object of compassion.
His attachment excited gratitude, his general character respect; but she
could not approve him; nor could she for a moment repent her refusal,
or feel the slightest inclination ever to see him again. In her own past
behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation and regret; and in
the unhappy defects of her family, a subject of yet heavier chagrin.
They were hopeless of remedy. Her father, contented with laughing at
them, would never exert himself to restrain the wild giddiness of his
youngest daughters; and her mother, with manners so far from right
herself, was entirely insensible of the evil. Elizabeth had frequently
united with Jane in an endeavour to check the imprudence of Catherine
and Lydia; but while they were supported by their mother's indulgence,
what chance could there be of improvement? Catherine, weak-spirited,
irritable, and completely under Lydia's guidance, had been always
affronted by their advice; and Lydia, self-willed and careless, would
scarcely give them a hearing. They were ignorant, idle, and vain. While
there was an officer in Meryton, they would flirt with him; and while
Meryton was within a walk of Longbourn, they would be going there
forever.

Anxiety on Jane's behalf was another prevailing concern; and Mr. Darcy's
explanation, by restoring Bingley to all her former good opinion,
heightened the sense of what Jane had lost. His affection was proved
to have been sincere, and his conduct cleared of all blame, unless any
could attach to the implicitness of his confidence in his friend. How
grievous then was the thought that, of a situation so desirable in every
respect, so replete with advantage, so promising for happiness, Jane had
been deprived, by the folly and indecorum of her own family!

When to these recollections was added the development of Wickham's
character, it may be easily believed that the happy spirits which had
seldom been depressed before, were now so much affected as to make it
almost impossible for her to appear tolerably cheerful.

Their engagements at Rosings were as frequent during the last week of
her stay as they had been at first. The very last evening was spent
there; and her ladyship again inquired minutely into the particulars of
their journey, gave them directions as to the best method of packing,
and was so urgent on the necessity of placing gowns in the only right
way, that Maria thought herself obliged, on her return, to undo all the
work of the morning, and pack her trunk afresh.

When they parted, Lady Catherine, with great condescension, wished them
a good journey, and invited them to come to Hunsford again next year;
and Miss de Bourgh exerted herself so far as to curtsey and hold out her
hand to both.



Chapter 38


On Saturday morning Elizabeth and Mr. Collins met for breakfast a few
minutes before the others appeared; and he took the opportunity of
paying the parting civilities which he deemed indispensably necessary.

“I know not, Miss Elizabeth,” said he, “whether Mrs. Collins has yet
expressed her sense of your kindness in coming to us; but I am very
certain you will not leave the house without receiving her thanks for
it. The favour of your company has been much felt, I assure you. We
know how little there is to tempt anyone to our humble abode. Our plain
manner of living, our small rooms and few domestics, and the little we
see of the world, must make Hunsford extremely dull to a young lady like
yourself; but I hope you will believe us grateful for the condescension,
and that we have done everything in our power to prevent your spending
your time unpleasantly.”

Elizabeth was eager with her thanks and assurances of happiness. She
had spent six weeks with great enjoyment; and the pleasure of being with
Charlotte, and the kind attentions she had received, must make _her_
feel the obliged. Mr. Collins was gratified, and with a more smiling
solemnity replied:

“It gives me great pleasure to hear that you have passed your time not
disagreeably. We have certainly done our best; and most fortunately
having it in our power to introduce you to very superior society, and,
from our connection with Rosings, the frequent means of varying the
humble home scene, I think we may flatter ourselves that your Hunsford
visit cannot have been entirely irksome. Our situation with regard to
Lady Catherine's family is indeed the sort of extraordinary advantage
and blessing which few can boast. You see on what a footing we are. You
see how continually we are engaged there. In truth I must acknowledge
that, with all the disadvantages of this humble parsonage, I should
not think anyone abiding in it an object of compassion, while they are
sharers of our intimacy at Rosings.”

Words were insufficient for the elevation of his feelings; and he was
obliged to walk about the room, while Elizabeth tried to unite civility
and truth in a few short sentences.

“You may, in fact, carry a very favourable report of us into
Hertfordshire, my dear cousin. I flatter myself at least that you will
be able to do so. Lady Catherine's great attentions to Mrs. Collins you
have been a daily witness of; and altogether I trust it does not appear
that your friend has drawn an unfortunate--but on this point it will be
as well to be silent. Only let me assure you, my dear Miss Elizabeth,
that I can from my heart most cordially wish you equal felicity in
marriage. My dear Charlotte and I have but one mind and one way of
thinking. There is in everything a most remarkable resemblance of
character and ideas between us. We seem to have been designed for each
other.”

Elizabeth could safely say that it was a great happiness where that was
the case, and with equal sincerity could add, that she firmly believed
and rejoiced in his domestic comforts. She was not sorry, however, to
have the recital of them interrupted by the lady from whom they sprang.
Poor Charlotte! it was melancholy to leave her to such society! But she
had chosen it with her eyes open; and though evidently regretting that
her visitors were to go, she did not seem to ask for compassion. Her
home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their
dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.

At length the chaise arrived, the trunks were fastened on, the parcels
placed within, and it was pronounced to be ready. After an affectionate
parting between the friends, Elizabeth was attended to the carriage by
Mr. Collins, and as they walked down the garden he was commissioning her
with his best respects to all her family, not forgetting his thanks
for the kindness he had received at Longbourn in the winter, and his
compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, though unknown. He then handed her
in, Maria followed, and the door was on the point of being closed,
when he suddenly reminded them, with some consternation, that they had
hitherto forgotten to leave any message for the ladies at Rosings.

“But,” he added, “you will of course wish to have your humble respects
delivered to them, with your grateful thanks for their kindness to you
while you have been here.”

Elizabeth made no objection; the door was then allowed to be shut, and
the carriage drove off.

“Good gracious!” cried Maria, after a few minutes' silence, “it seems
but a day or two since we first came! and yet how many things have
happened!”

“A great many indeed,” said her companion with a sigh.

“We have dined nine times at Rosings, besides drinking tea there twice!
How much I shall have to tell!”

Elizabeth added privately, “And how much I shall have to conceal!”

Their journey was performed without much conversation, or any alarm; and
within four hours of their leaving Hunsford they reached Mr. Gardiner's
house, where they were to remain a few days.

Jane looked well, and Elizabeth had little opportunity of studying her
spirits, amidst the various engagements which the kindness of her
aunt had reserved for them. But Jane was to go home with her, and at
Longbourn there would be leisure enough for observation.

It was not without an effort, meanwhile, that she could wait even for
Longbourn, before she told her sister of Mr. Darcy's proposals. To know
that she had the power of revealing what would so exceedingly astonish
Jane, and must, at the same time, so highly gratify whatever of her own
vanity she had not yet been able to reason away, was such a temptation
to openness as nothing could have conquered but the state of indecision
in which she remained as to the extent of what she should communicate;
and her fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried
into repeating something of Bingley which might only grieve her sister
further.



Chapter 39


It was the second week in May, in which the three young ladies set out
together from Gracechurch Street for the town of ----, in Hertfordshire;
and, as they drew near the appointed inn where Mr. Bennet's carriage
was to meet them, they quickly perceived, in token of the coachman's
punctuality, both Kitty and Lydia looking out of a dining-room up stairs.
These two girls had been above an hour in the place, happily employed
in visiting an opposite milliner, watching the sentinel on guard, and
dressing a salad and cucumber.

After welcoming their sisters, they triumphantly displayed a table set
out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords, exclaiming,
“Is not this nice? Is not this an agreeable surprise?”

“And we mean to treat you all,” added Lydia, “but you must lend us the
money, for we have just spent ours at the shop out there.” Then, showing
her purchases--“Look here, I have bought this bonnet. I do not think
it is very pretty; but I thought I might as well buy it as not. I shall
pull it to pieces as soon as I get home, and see if I can make it up any
better.”

And when her sisters abused it as ugly, she added, with perfect
unconcern, “Oh! but there were two or three much uglier in the shop; and
when I have bought some prettier-coloured satin to trim it with fresh, I
think it will be very tolerable. Besides, it will not much signify what
one wears this summer, after the ----shire have left Meryton, and they
are going in a fortnight.”

“Are they indeed!” cried Elizabeth, with the greatest satisfaction.

“They are going to be encamped near Brighton; and I do so want papa to
take us all there for the summer! It would be such a delicious scheme;
and I dare say would hardly cost anything at all. Mamma would like to
go too of all things! Only think what a miserable summer else we shall
have!”

“Yes,” thought Elizabeth, “_that_ would be a delightful scheme indeed,
and completely do for us at once. Good Heaven! Brighton, and a whole
campful of soldiers, to us, who have been overset already by one poor
regiment of militia, and the monthly balls of Meryton!”

“Now I have got some news for you,” said Lydia, as they sat down at
table. “What do you think? It is excellent news--capital news--and about
a certain person we all like!”

Jane and Elizabeth looked at each other, and the waiter was told he need
not stay. Lydia laughed, and said:

“Aye, that is just like your formality and discretion. You thought the
waiter must not hear, as if he cared! I dare say he often hears worse
things said than I am going to say. But he is an ugly fellow! I am glad
he is gone. I never saw such a long chin in my life. Well, but now for
my news; it is about dear Wickham; too good for the waiter, is it not?
There is no danger of Wickham's marrying Mary King. There's for you! She
is gone down to her uncle at Liverpool: gone to stay. Wickham is safe.”

“And Mary King is safe!” added Elizabeth; “safe from a connection
imprudent as to fortune.”

“She is a great fool for going away, if she liked him.”

“But I hope there is no strong attachment on either side,” said Jane.

“I am sure there is not on _his_. I will answer for it, he never cared
three straws about her--who could about such a nasty little freckled
thing?”

Elizabeth was shocked to think that, however incapable of such
coarseness of _expression_ herself, the coarseness of the _sentiment_
was little other than her own breast had harboured and fancied liberal!

As soon as all had ate, and the elder ones paid, the carriage was
ordered; and after some contrivance, the whole party, with all their
boxes, work-bags, and parcels, and the unwelcome addition of Kitty's and
Lydia's purchases, were seated in it.

“How nicely we are all crammed in,” cried Lydia. “I am glad I bought my
bonnet, if it is only for the fun of having another bandbox! Well, now
let us be quite comfortable and snug, and talk and laugh all the way
home. And in the first place, let us hear what has happened to you all
since you went away. Have you seen any pleasant men? Have you had any
flirting? I was in great hopes that one of you would have got a husband
before you came back. Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare.
She is almost three-and-twenty! Lord, how ashamed I should be of not
being married before three-and-twenty! My aunt Phillips wants you so to
get husbands, you can't think. She says Lizzy had better have taken Mr.
Collins; but _I_ do not think there would have been any fun in it. Lord!
how I should like to be married before any of you; and then I would
chaperon you about to all the balls. Dear me! we had such a good piece
of fun the other day at Colonel Forster's. Kitty and me were to spend
the day there, and Mrs. Forster promised to have a little dance in the
evening; (by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me are _such_ friends!) and so
she asked the two Harringtons to come, but Harriet was ill, and so Pen
was forced to come by herself; and then, what do you think we did? We
dressed up Chamberlayne in woman's clothes on purpose to pass for a
lady, only think what fun! Not a soul knew of it, but Colonel and Mrs.
Forster, and Kitty and me, except my aunt, for we were forced to borrow
one of her gowns; and you cannot imagine how well he looked! When Denny,
and Wickham, and Pratt, and two or three more of the men came in, they
did not know him in the least. Lord! how I laughed! and so did Mrs.
Forster. I thought I should have died. And _that_ made the men suspect
something, and then they soon found out what was the matter.”

With such kinds of histories of their parties and good jokes, did
Lydia, assisted by Kitty's hints and additions, endeavour to amuse her
companions all the way to Longbourn. Elizabeth listened as little as she
could, but there was no escaping the frequent mention of Wickham's name.

Their reception at home was most kind. Mrs. Bennet rejoiced to see Jane
in undiminished beauty; and more than once during dinner did Mr. Bennet
say voluntarily to Elizabeth:

“I am glad you are come back, Lizzy.”

Their party in the dining-room was large, for almost all the Lucases
came to meet Maria and hear the news; and various were the subjects that
occupied them: Lady Lucas was inquiring of Maria, after the welfare and
poultry of her eldest daughter; Mrs. Bennet was doubly engaged, on one
hand collecting an account of the present fashions from Jane, who sat
some way below her, and, on the other, retailing them all to the younger
Lucases; and Lydia, in a voice rather louder than any other person's,
was enumerating the various pleasures of the morning to anybody who
would hear her.

“Oh! Mary,” said she, “I wish you had gone with us, for we had such fun!
As we went along, Kitty and I drew up the blinds, and pretended there
was nobody in the coach; and I should have gone so all the way, if Kitty
had not been sick; and when we got to the George, I do think we behaved
very handsomely, for we treated the other three with the nicest cold
luncheon in the world, and if you would have gone, we would have treated
you too. And then when we came away it was such fun! I thought we never
should have got into the coach. I was ready to die of laughter. And then
we were so merry all the way home! we talked and laughed so loud, that
anybody might have heard us ten miles off!”

To this Mary very gravely replied, “Far be it from me, my dear sister,
to depreciate such pleasures! They would doubtless be congenial with the
generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for
_me_--I should infinitely prefer a book.”

But of this answer Lydia heard not a word. She seldom listened to
anybody for more than half a minute, and never attended to Mary at all.

In the afternoon Lydia was urgent with the rest of the girls to walk
to Meryton, and to see how everybody went on; but Elizabeth steadily
opposed the scheme. It should not be said that the Miss Bennets could
not be at home half a day before they were in pursuit of the officers.
There was another reason too for her opposition. She dreaded seeing Mr.
Wickham again, and was resolved to avoid it as long as possible. The
comfort to _her_ of the regiment's approaching removal was indeed beyond
expression. In a fortnight they were to go--and once gone, she hoped
there could be nothing more to plague her on his account.

She had not been many hours at home before she found that the Brighton
scheme, of which Lydia had given them a hint at the inn, was under
frequent discussion between her parents. Elizabeth saw directly that her
father had not the smallest intention of yielding; but his answers were
at the same time so vague and equivocal, that her mother, though often
disheartened, had never yet despaired of succeeding at last.



Chapter 40


Elizabeth's impatience to acquaint Jane with what had happened could
no longer be overcome; and at length, resolving to suppress every
particular in which her sister was concerned, and preparing her to be
surprised, she related to her the next morning the chief of the scene
between Mr. Darcy and herself.

Miss Bennet's astonishment was soon lessened by the strong sisterly
partiality which made any admiration of Elizabeth appear perfectly
natural; and all surprise was shortly lost in other feelings. She was
sorry that Mr. Darcy should have delivered his sentiments in a manner so
little suited to recommend them; but still more was she grieved for the
unhappiness which her sister's refusal must have given him.

“His being so sure of succeeding was wrong,” said she, “and certainly
ought not to have appeared; but consider how much it must increase his
disappointment!”

“Indeed,” replied Elizabeth, “I am heartily sorry for him; but he has
other feelings, which will probably soon drive away his regard for me.
You do not blame me, however, for refusing him?”

“Blame you! Oh, no.”

“But you blame me for having spoken so warmly of Wickham?”

“No--I do not know that you were wrong in saying what you did.”

“But you _will_ know it, when I tell you what happened the very next
day.”

She then spoke of the letter, repeating the whole of its contents as far
as they concerned George Wickham. What a stroke was this for poor Jane!
who would willingly have gone through the world without believing that
so much wickedness existed in the whole race of mankind, as was here
collected in one individual. Nor was Darcy's vindication, though
grateful to her feelings, capable of consoling her for such discovery.
Most earnestly did she labour to prove the probability of error, and
seek to clear the one without involving the other.

“This will not do,” said Elizabeth; “you never will be able to make both
of them good for anything. Take your choice, but you must be satisfied
with only one. There is but such a quantity of merit between them; just
enough to make one good sort of man; and of late it has been shifting
about pretty much. For my part, I am inclined to believe it all Darcy's;
but you shall do as you choose.”

It was some time, however, before a smile could be extorted from Jane.

“I do not know when I have been more shocked,” said she. “Wickham so
very bad! It is almost past belief. And poor Mr. Darcy! Dear Lizzy, only
consider what he must have suffered. Such a disappointment! and with the
knowledge of your ill opinion, too! and having to relate such a thing
of his sister! It is really too distressing. I am sure you must feel it
so.”

“Oh! no, my regret and compassion are all done away by seeing you so
full of both. I know you will do him such ample justice, that I am
growing every moment more unconcerned and indifferent. Your profusion
makes me saving; and if you lament over him much longer, my heart will
be as light as a feather.”

“Poor Wickham! there is such an expression of goodness in his
countenance! such an openness and gentleness in his manner!”

“There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those
two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the
appearance of it.”

“I never thought Mr. Darcy so deficient in the _appearance_ of it as you
used to do.”

“And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike
to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an
opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually
abusive without saying anything just; but one cannot always be laughing
at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.”

“Lizzy, when you first read that letter, I am sure you could not treat
the matter as you do now.”

“Indeed, I could not. I was uncomfortable enough, I may say unhappy. And
with no one to speak to about what I felt, no Jane to comfort me and say
that I had not been so very weak and vain and nonsensical as I knew I
had! Oh! how I wanted you!”

“How unfortunate that you should have used such very strong expressions
in speaking of Wickham to Mr. Darcy, for now they _do_ appear wholly
undeserved.”

“Certainly. But the misfortune of speaking with bitterness is a most
natural consequence of the prejudices I had been encouraging. There
is one point on which I want your advice. I want to be told whether I
ought, or ought not, to make our acquaintances in general understand
Wickham's character.”

Miss Bennet paused a little, and then replied, “Surely there can be no
occasion for exposing him so dreadfully. What is your opinion?”

“That it ought not to be attempted. Mr. Darcy has not authorised me
to make his communication public. On the contrary, every particular
relative to his sister was meant to be kept as much as possible to
myself; and if I endeavour to undeceive people as to the rest of his
conduct, who will believe me? The general prejudice against Mr. Darcy
is so violent, that it would be the death of half the good people in
Meryton to attempt to place him in an amiable light. I am not equal
to it. Wickham will soon be gone; and therefore it will not signify to
anyone here what he really is. Some time hence it will be all found out,
and then we may laugh at their stupidity in not knowing it before. At
present I will say nothing about it.”

“You are quite right. To have his errors made public might ruin him for
ever. He is now, perhaps, sorry for what he has done, and anxious to
re-establish a character. We must not make him desperate.”

The tumult of Elizabeth's mind was allayed by this conversation. She had
got rid of two of the secrets which had weighed on her for a fortnight,
and was certain of a willing listener in Jane, whenever she might wish
to talk again of either. But there was still something lurking behind,
of which prudence forbade the disclosure. She dared not relate the other
half of Mr. Darcy's letter, nor explain to her sister how sincerely she
had been valued by her friend. Here was knowledge in which no one
could partake; and she was sensible that nothing less than a perfect
understanding between the parties could justify her in throwing off
this last encumbrance of mystery. “And then,” said she, “if that very
improbable event should ever take place, I shall merely be able to
tell what Bingley may tell in a much more agreeable manner himself. The
liberty of communication cannot be mine till it has lost all its value!”

She was now, on being settled at home, at leisure to observe the real
state of her sister's spirits. Jane was not happy. She still cherished a
very tender affection for Bingley. Having never even fancied herself
in love before, her regard had all the warmth of first attachment,
and, from her age and disposition, greater steadiness than most first
attachments often boast; and so fervently did she value his remembrance,
and prefer him to every other man, that all her good sense, and all her
attention to the feelings of her friends, were requisite to check the
indulgence of those regrets which must have been injurious to her own
health and their tranquillity.

“Well, Lizzy,” said Mrs. Bennet one day, “what is your opinion _now_ of
this sad business of Jane's? For my part, I am determined never to speak
of it again to anybody. I told my sister Phillips so the other day. But
I cannot find out that Jane saw anything of him in London. Well, he is
a very undeserving young man--and I do not suppose there's the least
chance in the world of her ever getting him now. There is no talk of
his coming to Netherfield again in the summer; and I have inquired of
everybody, too, who is likely to know.”

“I do not believe he will ever live at Netherfield any more.”

“Oh well! it is just as he chooses. Nobody wants him to come. Though I
shall always say he used my daughter extremely ill; and if I was her, I
would not have put up with it. Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will
die of a broken heart; and then he will be sorry for what he has done.”

But as Elizabeth could not receive comfort from any such expectation,
she made no answer.

“Well, Lizzy,” continued her mother, soon afterwards, “and so the
Collinses live very comfortable, do they? Well, well, I only hope
it will last. And what sort of table do they keep? Charlotte is an
excellent manager, I dare say. If she is half as sharp as her
mother, she is saving enough. There is nothing extravagant in _their_
housekeeping, I dare say.”

“No, nothing at all.”

“A great deal of good management, depend upon it. Yes, yes, _they_ will
take care not to outrun their income. _They_ will never be distressed
for money. Well, much good may it do them! And so, I suppose, they often
talk of having Longbourn when your father is dead. They look upon it as
quite their own, I dare say, whenever that happens.”

“It was a subject which they could not mention before me.”

“No; it would have been strange if they had; but I make no doubt they
often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an
estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be
ashamed of having one that was only entailed on me.”



Chapter 41


The first week of their return was soon gone. The second began. It was
the last of the regiment's stay in Meryton, and all the young ladies
in the neighbourhood were drooping apace. The dejection was almost
universal. The elder Miss Bennets alone were still able to eat, drink,
and sleep, and pursue the usual course of their employments. Very
frequently were they reproached for this insensibility by Kitty and
Lydia, whose own misery was extreme, and who could not comprehend such
hard-heartedness in any of the family.

“Good Heaven! what is to become of us? What are we to do?” would they
often exclaim in the bitterness of woe. “How can you be smiling so,
Lizzy?”

Their affectionate mother shared all their grief; she remembered what
she had herself endured on a similar occasion, five-and-twenty years
ago.

“I am sure,” said she, “I cried for two days together when Colonel
Miller's regiment went away. I thought I should have broken my heart.”

“I am sure I shall break _mine_,” said Lydia.

“If one could but go to Brighton!” observed Mrs. Bennet.

“Oh, yes!--if one could but go to Brighton! But papa is so
disagreeable.”

“A little sea-bathing would set me up forever.”

“And my aunt Phillips is sure it would do _me_ a great deal of good,”
 added Kitty.

Such were the kind of lamentations resounding perpetually through
Longbourn House. Elizabeth tried to be diverted by them; but all sense
of pleasure was lost in shame. She felt anew the justice of Mr. Darcy's
objections; and never had she been so much disposed to pardon his
interference in the views of his friend.

But the gloom of Lydia's prospect was shortly cleared away; for she
received an invitation from Mrs. Forster, the wife of the colonel of
the regiment, to accompany her to Brighton. This invaluable friend was a
very young woman, and very lately married. A resemblance in good humour
and good spirits had recommended her and Lydia to each other, and out of
their _three_ months' acquaintance they had been intimate _two_.

The rapture of Lydia on this occasion, her adoration of Mrs. Forster,
the delight of Mrs. Bennet, and the mortification of Kitty, are scarcely
to be described. Wholly inattentive to her sister's feelings, Lydia
flew about the house in restless ecstasy, calling for everyone's
congratulations, and laughing and talking with more violence than ever;
whilst the luckless Kitty continued in the parlour repined at her fate
in terms as unreasonable as her accent was peevish.

“I cannot see why Mrs. Forster should not ask _me_ as well as Lydia,”
 said she, “Though I am _not_ her particular friend. I have just as much
right to be asked as she has, and more too, for I am two years older.”

In vain did Elizabeth attempt to make her reasonable, and Jane to make
her resigned. As for Elizabeth herself, this invitation was so far from
exciting in her the same feelings as in her mother and Lydia, that she
considered it as the death warrant of all possibility of common sense
for the latter; and detestable as such a step must make her were it
known, she could not help secretly advising her father not to let her
go. She represented to him all the improprieties of Lydia's general
behaviour, the little advantage she could derive from the friendship of
such a woman as Mrs. Forster, and the probability of her being yet more
imprudent with such a companion at Brighton, where the temptations must
be greater than at home. He heard her attentively, and then said:

“Lydia will never be easy until she has exposed herself in some public
place or other, and we can never expect her to do it with so
little expense or inconvenience to her family as under the present
circumstances.”

“If you were aware,” said Elizabeth, “of the very great disadvantage to
us all which must arise from the public notice of Lydia's unguarded and
imprudent manner--nay, which has already arisen from it, I am sure you
would judge differently in the affair.”

“Already arisen?” repeated Mr. Bennet. “What, has she frightened away
some of your lovers? Poor little Lizzy! But do not be cast down. Such
squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity
are not worth a regret. Come, let me see the list of pitiful fellows who
have been kept aloof by Lydia's folly.”

“Indeed you are mistaken. I have no such injuries to resent. It is not
of particular, but of general evils, which I am now complaining. Our
importance, our respectability in the world must be affected by the
wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of all restraint which mark
Lydia's character. Excuse me, for I must speak plainly. If you, my dear
father, will not take the trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and
of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of
her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character
will be fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt
that ever made herself or her family ridiculous; a flirt, too, in the
worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any attraction beyond
youth and a tolerable person; and, from the ignorance and emptiness
of her mind, wholly unable to ward off any portion of that universal
contempt which her rage for admiration will excite. In this danger
Kitty also is comprehended. She will follow wherever Lydia leads. Vain,
ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrolled! Oh! my dear father, can you
suppose it possible that they will not be censured and despised wherever
they are known, and that their sisters will not be often involved in the
disgrace?”

Mr. Bennet saw that her whole heart was in the subject, and
affectionately taking her hand said in reply:

“Do not make yourself uneasy, my love. Wherever you and Jane are known
you must be respected and valued; and you will not appear to less
advantage for having a couple of--or I may say, three--very silly
sisters. We shall have no peace at Longbourn if Lydia does not go to
Brighton. Let her go, then. Colonel Forster is a sensible man, and will
keep her out of any real mischief; and she is luckily too poor to be an
object of prey to anybody. At Brighton she will be of less importance
even as a common flirt than she has been here. The officers will find
women better worth their notice. Let us hope, therefore, that her being
there may teach her her own insignificance. At any rate, she cannot grow
many degrees worse, without authorising us to lock her up for the rest
of her life.”

With this answer Elizabeth was forced to be content; but her own opinion
continued the same, and she left him disappointed and sorry. It was not
in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on
them. She was confident of having performed her duty, and to fret
over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was no part of her
disposition.

Had Lydia and her mother known the substance of her conference with her
father, their indignation would hardly have found expression in their
united volubility. In Lydia's imagination, a visit to Brighton comprised
every possibility of earthly happiness. She saw, with the creative eye
of fancy, the streets of that gay bathing-place covered with officers.
She saw herself the object of attention, to tens and to scores of them
at present unknown. She saw all the glories of the camp--its tents
stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young
and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet; and, to complete the view, she
saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six
officers at once.

Had she known her sister sought to tear her from such prospects and such
realities as these, what would have been her sensations? They could have
been understood only by her mother, who might have felt nearly the same.
Lydia's going to Brighton was all that consoled her for her melancholy
conviction of her husband's never intending to go there himself.

But they were entirely ignorant of what had passed; and their raptures
continued, with little intermission, to the very day of Lydia's leaving
home.

Elizabeth was now to see Mr. Wickham for the last time. Having been
frequently in company with him since her return, agitation was pretty
well over; the agitations of former partiality entirely so. She had even
learnt to detect, in the very gentleness which had first delighted
her, an affectation and a sameness to disgust and weary. In his present
behaviour to herself, moreover, she had a fresh source of displeasure,
for the inclination he soon testified of renewing those intentions which
had marked the early part of their acquaintance could only serve, after
what had since passed, to provoke her. She lost all concern for him in
finding herself thus selected as the object of such idle and frivolous
gallantry; and while she steadily repressed it, could not but feel the
reproof contained in his believing, that however long, and for whatever
cause, his attentions had been withdrawn, her vanity would be gratified,
and her preference secured at any time by their renewal.

On the very last day of the regiment's remaining at Meryton, he dined,
with other of the officers, at Longbourn; and so little was Elizabeth
disposed to part from him in good humour, that on his making some
inquiry as to the manner in which her time had passed at Hunsford, she
mentioned Colonel Fitzwilliam's and Mr. Darcy's having both spent three
weeks at Rosings, and asked him, if he was acquainted with the former.

He looked surprised, displeased, alarmed; but with a moment's
recollection and a returning smile, replied, that he had formerly seen
him often; and, after observing that he was a very gentlemanlike man,
asked her how she had liked him. Her answer was warmly in his favour.
With an air of indifference he soon afterwards added:

“How long did you say he was at Rosings?”

“Nearly three weeks.”

“And you saw him frequently?”

“Yes, almost every day.”

“His manners are very different from his cousin's.”

“Yes, very different. But I think Mr. Darcy improves upon acquaintance.”

“Indeed!” cried Mr. Wickham with a look which did not escape her. “And
pray, may I ask?--” But checking himself, he added, in a gayer tone, “Is
it in address that he improves? Has he deigned to add aught of civility
to his ordinary style?--for I dare not hope,” he continued in a lower
and more serious tone, “that he is improved in essentials.”

“Oh, no!” said Elizabeth. “In essentials, I believe, he is very much
what he ever was.”

While she spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing whether to
rejoice over her words, or to distrust their meaning. There was a
something in her countenance which made him listen with an apprehensive
and anxious attention, while she added:

“When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean that
his mind or his manners were in a state of improvement, but that, from
knowing him better, his disposition was better understood.”

Wickham's alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and agitated
look; for a few minutes he was silent, till, shaking off his
embarrassment, he turned to her again, and said in the gentlest of
accents:

“You, who so well know my feeling towards Mr. Darcy, will readily
comprehend how sincerely I must rejoice that he is wise enough to assume
even the _appearance_ of what is right. His pride, in that direction,
may be of service, if not to himself, to many others, for it must only
deter him from such foul misconduct as I have suffered by. I only
fear that the sort of cautiousness to which you, I imagine, have been
alluding, is merely adopted on his visits to his aunt, of whose good
opinion and judgement he stands much in awe. His fear of her has always
operated, I know, when they were together; and a good deal is to be
imputed to his wish of forwarding the match with Miss de Bourgh, which I
am certain he has very much at heart.”

Elizabeth could not repress a smile at this, but she answered only by a
slight inclination of the head. She saw that he wanted to engage her on
the old subject of his grievances, and she was in no humour to indulge
him. The rest of the evening passed with the _appearance_, on his
side, of usual cheerfulness, but with no further attempt to distinguish
Elizabeth; and they parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a
mutual desire of never meeting again.

When the party broke up, Lydia returned with Mrs. Forster to Meryton,
from whence they were to set out early the next morning. The separation
between her and her family was rather noisy than pathetic. Kitty was the
only one who shed tears; but she did weep from vexation and envy. Mrs.
Bennet was diffuse in her good wishes for the felicity of her daughter,
and impressive in her injunctions that she should not miss the
opportunity of enjoying herself as much as possible--advice which
there was every reason to believe would be well attended to; and in
the clamorous happiness of Lydia herself in bidding farewell, the more
gentle adieus of her sisters were uttered without being heard.



Chapter 42


Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could
not have formed a very pleasing opinion of conjugal felicity or domestic
comfort. Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance
of good humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a
woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in
their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect,
esteem, and confidence had vanished for ever; and all his views
of domestic happiness were overthrown. But Mr. Bennet was not of
a disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his own
imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often
console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice. He was fond of
the country and of books; and from these tastes had arisen his principal
enjoyments. To his wife he was very little otherwise indebted, than as
her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement. This is not
the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his
wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true
philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.

Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of her
father's behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with pain; but
respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of
herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to
banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation
and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own
children, was so highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so
strongly as now the disadvantages which must attend the children of so
unsuitable a marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising
from so ill-judged a direction of talents; talents, which, rightly used,
might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, even
if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife.

When Elizabeth had rejoiced over Wickham's departure she found little
other cause for satisfaction in the loss of the regiment. Their parties
abroad were less varied than before, and at home she had a mother and
sister whose constant repinings at the dullness of everything around
them threw a real gloom over their domestic circle; and, though Kitty
might in time regain her natural degree of sense, since the disturbers
of her brain were removed, her other sister, from whose disposition
greater evil might be apprehended, was likely to be hardened in all
her folly and assurance by a situation of such double danger as a
watering-place and a camp. Upon the whole, therefore, she found, what
has been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had been
looking with impatient desire did not, in taking place, bring all the
satisfaction she had promised herself. It was consequently necessary to
name some other period for the commencement of actual felicity--to have
some other point on which her wishes and hopes might be fixed, and by
again enjoying the pleasure of anticipation, console herself for the
present, and prepare for another disappointment. Her tour to the Lakes
was now the object of her happiest thoughts; it was her best consolation
for all the uncomfortable hours which the discontentedness of her mother
and Kitty made inevitable; and could she have included Jane in the
scheme, every part of it would have been perfect.

“But it is fortunate,” thought she, “that I have something to wish for.
Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment would be certain.
But here, by carrying with me one ceaseless source of regret in my
sister's absence, I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of
pleasure realised. A scheme of which every part promises delight can
never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by
the defence of some little peculiar vexation.”

When Lydia went away she promised to write very often and very minutely
to her mother and Kitty; but her letters were always long expected, and
always very short. Those to her mother contained little else than that
they were just returned from the library, where such and such officers
had attended them, and where she had seen such beautiful ornaments as
made her quite wild; that she had a new gown, or a new parasol, which
she would have described more fully, but was obliged to leave off in a
violent hurry, as Mrs. Forster called her, and they were going off to
the camp; and from her correspondence with her sister, there was still
less to be learnt--for her letters to Kitty, though rather longer, were
much too full of lines under the words to be made public.

After the first fortnight or three weeks of her absence, health, good
humour, and cheerfulness began to reappear at Longbourn. Everything wore
a happier aspect. The families who had been in town for the winter came
back again, and summer finery and summer engagements arose. Mrs. Bennet
was restored to her usual querulous serenity; and, by the middle of
June, Kitty was so much recovered as to be able to enter Meryton without
tears; an event of such happy promise as to make Elizabeth hope that by
the following Christmas she might be so tolerably reasonable as not to
mention an officer above once a day, unless, by some cruel and malicious
arrangement at the War Office, another regiment should be quartered in
Meryton.

The time fixed for the beginning of their northern tour was now fast
approaching, and a fortnight only was wanting of it, when a letter
arrived from Mrs. Gardiner, which at once delayed its commencement and
curtailed its extent. Mr. Gardiner would be prevented by business from
setting out till a fortnight later in July, and must be in London again
within a month, and as that left too short a period for them to go so
far, and see so much as they had proposed, or at least to see it with
the leisure and comfort they had built on, they were obliged to give up
the Lakes, and substitute a more contracted tour, and, according to the
present plan, were to go no farther northwards than Derbyshire. In that
county there was enough to be seen to occupy the chief of their three
weeks; and to Mrs. Gardiner it had a peculiarly strong attraction. The
town where she had formerly passed some years of her life, and where
they were now to spend a few days, was probably as great an object of
her curiosity as all the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth,
Dovedale, or the Peak.

Elizabeth was excessively disappointed; she had set her heart on seeing
the Lakes, and still thought there might have been time enough. But it
was her business to be satisfied--and certainly her temper to be happy;
and all was soon right again.

With the mention of Derbyshire there were many ideas connected. It was
impossible for her to see the word without thinking of Pemberley and its
owner. “But surely,” said she, “I may enter his county with impunity,
and rob it of a few petrified spars without his perceiving me.”

The period of expectation was now doubled. Four weeks were to pass away
before her uncle and aunt's arrival. But they did pass away, and Mr.
and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did at length appear at
Longbourn. The children, two girls of six and eight years old, and two
younger boys, were to be left under the particular care of their
cousin Jane, who was the general favourite, and whose steady sense and
sweetness of temper exactly adapted her for attending to them in every
way--teaching them, playing with them, and loving them.

The Gardiners stayed only one night at Longbourn, and set off the
next morning with Elizabeth in pursuit of novelty and amusement.
One enjoyment was certain--that of suitableness of companions;
a suitableness which comprehended health and temper to bear
inconveniences--cheerfulness to enhance every pleasure--and affection
and intelligence, which might supply it among themselves if there were
disappointments abroad.

It is not the object of this work to give a description of Derbyshire,
nor of any of the remarkable places through which their route thither
lay; Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenilworth, Birmingham, etc. are
sufficiently known. A small part of Derbyshire is all the present
concern. To the little town of Lambton, the scene of Mrs. Gardiner's
former residence, and where she had lately learned some acquaintance
still remained, they bent their steps, after having seen all the
principal wonders of the country; and within five miles of Lambton,
Elizabeth found from her aunt that Pemberley was situated. It was not
in their direct road, nor more than a mile or two out of it. In
talking over their route the evening before, Mrs. Gardiner expressed
an inclination to see the place again. Mr. Gardiner declared his
willingness, and Elizabeth was applied to for her approbation.

“My love, should not you like to see a place of which you have heard
so much?” said her aunt; “a place, too, with which so many of your
acquaintances are connected. Wickham passed all his youth there, you
know.”

Elizabeth was distressed. She felt that she had no business at
Pemberley, and was obliged to assume a disinclination for seeing it. She
must own that she was tired of seeing great houses; after going over so
many, she really had no pleasure in fine carpets or satin curtains.

Mrs. Gardiner abused her stupidity. “If it were merely a fine house
richly furnished,” said she, “I should not care about it myself; but
the grounds are delightful. They have some of the finest woods in the
country.”

Elizabeth said no more--but her mind could not acquiesce. The
possibility of meeting Mr. Darcy, while viewing the place, instantly
occurred. It would be dreadful! She blushed at the very idea, and
thought it would be better to speak openly to her aunt than to run such
a risk. But against this there were objections; and she finally resolved
that it could be the last resource, if her private inquiries to the
absence of the family were unfavourably answered.

Accordingly, when she retired at night, she asked the chambermaid
whether Pemberley were not a very fine place? what was the name of its
proprietor? and, with no little alarm, whether the family were down for
the summer? A most welcome negative followed the last question--and her
alarms now being removed, she was at leisure to feel a great deal of
curiosity to see the house herself; and when the subject was revived the
next morning, and she was again applied to, could readily answer, and
with a proper air of indifference, that she had not really any dislike
to the scheme. To Pemberley, therefore, they were to go.



Chapter 43


Elizabeth, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance of
Pemberley Woods with some perturbation; and when at length they turned
in at the lodge, her spirits were in a high flutter.

The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They
entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some time through
a beautiful wood stretching over a wide extent.

Elizabeth's mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired
every remarkable spot and point of view. They gradually ascended for
half-a-mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable
eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by
Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which
the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome stone
building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of
high woody hills; and in front, a stream of some natural importance was
swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks
were neither formal nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She
had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural
beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were
all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that
to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!

They descended the hill, crossed the bridge, and drove to the door; and,
while examining the nearer aspect of the house, all her apprehension of
meeting its owner returned. She dreaded lest the chambermaid had been
mistaken. On applying to see the place, they were admitted into the
hall; and Elizabeth, as they waited for the housekeeper, had leisure to
wonder at her being where she was.

The housekeeper came; a respectable-looking elderly woman, much less
fine, and more civil, than she had any notion of finding her. They
followed her into the dining-parlour. It was a large, well proportioned
room, handsomely fitted up. Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went
to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, which
they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance,
was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and
she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its
banks and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it,
with delight. As they passed into other rooms these objects were taking
different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be
seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to
the fortune of its proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of
his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of
splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.

“And of this place,” thought she, “I might have been mistress! With
these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted! Instead of
viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in them as my own, and
welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and aunt. But no,”--recollecting
herself--“that could never be; my uncle and aunt would have been lost to
me; I should not have been allowed to invite them.”

This was a lucky recollection--it saved her from something very like
regret.

She longed to inquire of the housekeeper whether her master was really
absent, but had not the courage for it. At length however, the question
was asked by her uncle; and she turned away with alarm, while Mrs.
Reynolds replied that he was, adding, “But we expect him to-morrow, with
a large party of friends.” How rejoiced was Elizabeth that their own
journey had not by any circumstance been delayed a day!

Her aunt now called her to look at a picture. She approached and saw the
likeness of Mr. Wickham, suspended, amongst several other miniatures,
over the mantelpiece. Her aunt asked her, smilingly, how she liked it.
The housekeeper came forward, and told them it was a picture of a young
gentleman, the son of her late master's steward, who had been brought
up by him at his own expense. “He is now gone into the army,” she added;
“but I am afraid he has turned out very wild.”

Mrs. Gardiner looked at her niece with a smile, but Elizabeth could not
return it.

“And that,” said Mrs. Reynolds, pointing to another of the miniatures,
“is my master--and very like him. It was drawn at the same time as the
other--about eight years ago.”

“I have heard much of your master's fine person,” said Mrs. Gardiner,
looking at the picture; “it is a handsome face. But, Lizzy, you can tell
us whether it is like or not.”

Mrs. Reynolds respect for Elizabeth seemed to increase on this
intimation of her knowing her master.

“Does that young lady know Mr. Darcy?”

Elizabeth coloured, and said: “A little.”

“And do not you think him a very handsome gentleman, ma'am?”

“Yes, very handsome.”

“I am sure I know none so handsome; but in the gallery up stairs you
will see a finer, larger picture of him than this. This room was my late
master's favourite room, and these miniatures are just as they used to
be then. He was very fond of them.”

This accounted to Elizabeth for Mr. Wickham's being among them.

Mrs. Reynolds then directed their attention to one of Miss Darcy, drawn
when she was only eight years old.

“And is Miss Darcy as handsome as her brother?” said Mrs. Gardiner.

“Oh! yes--the handsomest young lady that ever was seen; and so
accomplished!--She plays and sings all day long. In the next room is
a new instrument just come down for her--a present from my master; she
comes here to-morrow with him.”

Mr. Gardiner, whose manners were very easy and pleasant, encouraged her
communicativeness by his questions and remarks; Mrs. Reynolds, either
by pride or attachment, had evidently great pleasure in talking of her
master and his sister.

“Is your master much at Pemberley in the course of the year?”

“Not so much as I could wish, sir; but I dare say he may spend half his
time here; and Miss Darcy is always down for the summer months.”

“Except,” thought Elizabeth, “when she goes to Ramsgate.”

“If your master would marry, you might see more of him.”

“Yes, sir; but I do not know when _that_ will be. I do not know who is
good enough for him.”

Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner smiled. Elizabeth could not help saying, “It is
very much to his credit, I am sure, that you should think so.”

“I say no more than the truth, and everybody will say that knows him,”
 replied the other. Elizabeth thought this was going pretty far; and she
listened with increasing astonishment as the housekeeper added, “I have
never known a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him ever
since he was four years old.”

This was praise, of all others most extraordinary, most opposite to her
ideas. That he was not a good-tempered man had been her firmest opinion.
Her keenest attention was awakened; she longed to hear more, and was
grateful to her uncle for saying:

“There are very few people of whom so much can be said. You are lucky in
having such a master.”

“Yes, sir, I know I am. If I were to go through the world, I could
not meet with a better. But I have always observed, that they who are
good-natured when children, are good-natured when they grow up; and
he was always the sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted boy in the
world.”

Elizabeth almost stared at her. “Can this be Mr. Darcy?” thought she.

“His father was an excellent man,” said Mrs. Gardiner.

“Yes, ma'am, that he was indeed; and his son will be just like him--just
as affable to the poor.”

Elizabeth listened, wondered, doubted, and was impatient for more. Mrs.
Reynolds could interest her on no other point. She related the subjects
of the pictures, the dimensions of the rooms, and the price of the
furniture, in vain. Mr. Gardiner, highly amused by the kind of family
prejudice to which he attributed her excessive commendation of her
master, soon led again to the subject; and she dwelt with energy on his
many merits as they proceeded together up the great staircase.

“He is the best landlord, and the best master,” said she, “that ever
lived; not like the wild young men nowadays, who think of nothing but
themselves. There is not one of his tenants or servants but will give
him a good name. Some people call him proud; but I am sure I never saw
anything of it. To my fancy, it is only because he does not rattle away
like other young men.”

“In what an amiable light does this place him!” thought Elizabeth.

“This fine account of him,” whispered her aunt as they walked, “is not
quite consistent with his behaviour to our poor friend.”

“Perhaps we might be deceived.”

“That is not very likely; our authority was too good.”

On reaching the spacious lobby above they were shown into a very pretty
sitting-room, lately fitted up with greater elegance and lightness than
the apartments below; and were informed that it was but just done to
give pleasure to Miss Darcy, who had taken a liking to the room when
last at Pemberley.

“He is certainly a good brother,” said Elizabeth, as she walked towards
one of the windows.

Mrs. Reynolds anticipated Miss Darcy's delight, when she should enter
the room. “And this is always the way with him,” she added. “Whatever
can give his sister any pleasure is sure to be done in a moment. There
is nothing he would not do for her.”

The picture-gallery, and two or three of the principal bedrooms, were
all that remained to be shown. In the former were many good paintings;
but Elizabeth knew nothing of the art; and from such as had been already
visible below, she had willingly turned to look at some drawings of Miss
Darcy's, in crayons, whose subjects were usually more interesting, and
also more intelligible.

In the gallery there were many family portraits, but they could have
little to fix the attention of a stranger. Elizabeth walked in quest of
the only face whose features would be known to her. At last it arrested
her--and she beheld a striking resemblance to Mr. Darcy, with such a
smile over the face as she remembered to have sometimes seen when he
looked at her. She stood several minutes before the picture, in earnest
contemplation, and returned to it again before they quitted the gallery.
Mrs. Reynolds informed them that it had been taken in his father's
lifetime.

There was certainly at this moment, in Elizabeth's mind, a more gentle
sensation towards the original than she had ever felt at the height of
their acquaintance. The commendation bestowed on him by Mrs. Reynolds
was of no trifling nature. What praise is more valuable than the praise
of an intelligent servant? As a brother, a landlord, a master, she
considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship!--how
much of pleasure or pain was it in his power to bestow!--how much of
good or evil must be done by him! Every idea that had been brought
forward by the housekeeper was favourable to his character, and as she
stood before the canvas on which he was represented, and fixed his
eyes upon herself, she thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment of
gratitude than it had ever raised before; she remembered its warmth, and
softened its impropriety of expression.

When all of the house that was open to general inspection had been seen,
they returned downstairs, and, taking leave of the housekeeper, were
consigned over to the gardener, who met them at the hall-door.

As they walked across the hall towards the river, Elizabeth turned back
to look again; her uncle and aunt stopped also, and while the former
was conjecturing as to the date of the building, the owner of it himself
suddenly came forward from the road, which led behind it to the stables.

They were within twenty yards of each other, and so abrupt was his
appearance, that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Their eyes
instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest
blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment seemed immovable from
surprise; but shortly recovering himself, advanced towards the party,
and spoke to Elizabeth, if not in terms of perfect composure, at least
of perfect civility.

She had instinctively turned away; but stopping on his approach,
received his compliments with an embarrassment impossible to be
overcome. Had his first appearance, or his resemblance to the picture
they had just been examining, been insufficient to assure the other two
that they now saw Mr. Darcy, the gardener's expression of surprise, on
beholding his master, must immediately have told it. They stood a little
aloof while he was talking to their niece, who, astonished and confused,
scarcely dared lift her eyes to his face, and knew not what answer
she returned to his civil inquiries after her family. Amazed at the
alteration of his manner since they last parted, every sentence that
he uttered was increasing her embarrassment; and every idea of the
impropriety of her being found there recurring to her mind, the few
minutes in which they continued were some of the most uncomfortable in
her life. Nor did he seem much more at ease; when he spoke, his accent
had none of its usual sedateness; and he repeated his inquiries as
to the time of her having left Longbourn, and of her having stayed in
Derbyshire, so often, and in so hurried a way, as plainly spoke the
distraction of his thoughts.

At length every idea seemed to fail him; and, after standing a few
moments without saying a word, he suddenly recollected himself, and took
leave.

The others then joined her, and expressed admiration of his figure; but
Elizabeth heard not a word, and wholly engrossed by her own feelings,
followed them in silence. She was overpowered by shame and vexation. Her
coming there was the most unfortunate, the most ill-judged thing in the
world! How strange it must appear to him! In what a disgraceful light
might it not strike so vain a man! It might seem as if she had purposely
thrown herself in his way again! Oh! why did she come? Or, why did he
thus come a day before he was expected? Had they been only ten minutes
sooner, they should have been beyond the reach of his discrimination;
for it was plain that he was that moment arrived--that moment alighted
from his horse or his carriage. She blushed again and again over
the perverseness of the meeting. And his behaviour, so strikingly
altered--what could it mean? That he should even speak to her was
amazing!--but to speak with such civility, to inquire after her family!
Never in her life had she seen his manners so little dignified, never
had he spoken with such gentleness as on this unexpected meeting. What
a contrast did it offer to his last address in Rosings Park, when he put
his letter into her hand! She knew not what to think, or how to account
for it.

They had now entered a beautiful walk by the side of the water, and
every step was bringing forward a nobler fall of ground, or a finer
reach of the woods to which they were approaching; but it was some time
before Elizabeth was sensible of any of it; and, though she answered
mechanically to the repeated appeals of her uncle and aunt, and
seemed to direct her eyes to such objects as they pointed out, she
distinguished no part of the scene. Her thoughts were all fixed on that
one spot of Pemberley House, whichever it might be, where Mr. Darcy then
was. She longed to know what at the moment was passing in his mind--in
what manner he thought of her, and whether, in defiance of everything,
she was still dear to him. Perhaps he had been civil only because he
felt himself at ease; yet there had been _that_ in his voice which was
not like ease. Whether he had felt more of pain or of pleasure in
seeing her she could not tell, but he certainly had not seen her with
composure.

At length, however, the remarks of her companions on her absence of mind
aroused her, and she felt the necessity of appearing more like herself.

They entered the woods, and bidding adieu to the river for a while,
ascended some of the higher grounds; when, in spots where the opening of
the trees gave the eye power to wander, were many charming views of the
valley, the opposite hills, with the long range of woods overspreading
many, and occasionally part of the stream. Mr. Gardiner expressed a wish
of going round the whole park, but feared it might be beyond a walk.
With a triumphant smile they were told that it was ten miles round.
It settled the matter; and they pursued the accustomed circuit; which
brought them again, after some time, in a descent among hanging woods,
to the edge of the water, and one of its narrowest parts. They crossed
it by a simple bridge, in character with the general air of the scene;
it was a spot less adorned than any they had yet visited; and the
valley, here contracted into a glen, allowed room only for the stream,
and a narrow walk amidst the rough coppice-wood which bordered it.
Elizabeth longed to explore its windings; but when they had crossed the
bridge, and perceived their distance from the house, Mrs. Gardiner,
who was not a great walker, could go no farther, and thought only
of returning to the carriage as quickly as possible. Her niece was,
therefore, obliged to submit, and they took their way towards the house
on the opposite side of the river, in the nearest direction; but their
progress was slow, for Mr. Gardiner, though seldom able to indulge the
taste, was very fond of fishing, and was so much engaged in watching the
occasional appearance of some trout in the water, and talking to the
man about them, that he advanced but little. Whilst wandering on in this
slow manner, they were again surprised, and Elizabeth's astonishment
was quite equal to what it had been at first, by the sight of Mr. Darcy
approaching them, and at no great distance. The walk being here
less sheltered than on the other side, allowed them to see him before
they met. Elizabeth, however astonished, was at least more prepared
for an interview than before, and resolved to appear and to speak with
calmness, if he really intended to meet them. For a few moments, indeed,
she felt that he would probably strike into some other path. The idea
lasted while a turning in the walk concealed him from their view; the
turning past, he was immediately before them. With a glance, she saw
that he had lost none of his recent civility; and, to imitate his
politeness, she began, as they met, to admire the beauty of the place;
but she had not got beyond the words “delightful,” and “charming,” when
some unlucky recollections obtruded, and she fancied that praise of
Pemberley from her might be mischievously construed. Her colour changed,
and she said no more.

Mrs. Gardiner was standing a little behind; and on her pausing, he asked
her if she would do him the honour of introducing him to her friends.
This was a stroke of civility for which she was quite unprepared;
and she could hardly suppress a smile at his being now seeking the
acquaintance of some of those very people against whom his pride had
revolted in his offer to herself. “What will be his surprise,” thought
she, “when he knows who they are? He takes them now for people of
fashion.”

The introduction, however, was immediately made; and as she named their
relationship to herself, she stole a sly look at him, to see how he bore
it, and was not without the expectation of his decamping as fast as he
could from such disgraceful companions. That he was _surprised_ by the
connection was evident; he sustained it, however, with fortitude, and
so far from going away, turned back with them, and entered into
conversation with Mr. Gardiner. Elizabeth could not but be pleased,
could not but triumph. It was consoling that he should know she had
some relations for whom there was no need to blush. She listened most
attentively to all that passed between them, and gloried in every
expression, every sentence of her uncle, which marked his intelligence,
his taste, or his good manners.

The conversation soon turned upon fishing; and she heard Mr. Darcy
invite him, with the greatest civility, to fish there as often as he
chose while he continued in the neighbourhood, offering at the same time
to supply him with fishing tackle, and pointing out those parts of
the stream where there was usually most sport. Mrs. Gardiner, who was
walking arm-in-arm with Elizabeth, gave her a look expressive of wonder.
Elizabeth said nothing, but it gratified her exceedingly; the compliment
must be all for herself. Her astonishment, however, was extreme, and
continually was she repeating, “Why is he so altered? From what can
it proceed? It cannot be for _me_--it cannot be for _my_ sake that his
manners are thus softened. My reproofs at Hunsford could not work such a
change as this. It is impossible that he should still love me.”

After walking some time in this way, the two ladies in front, the two
gentlemen behind, on resuming their places, after descending to
the brink of the river for the better inspection of some curious
water-plant, there chanced to be a little alteration. It originated
in Mrs. Gardiner, who, fatigued by the exercise of the morning, found
Elizabeth's arm inadequate to her support, and consequently preferred
her husband's. Mr. Darcy took her place by her niece, and they walked on
together. After a short silence, the lady first spoke. She wished him
to know that she had been assured of his absence before she came to the
place, and accordingly began by observing, that his arrival had been
very unexpected--“for your housekeeper,” she added, “informed us that
you would certainly not be here till to-morrow; and indeed, before we
left Bakewell, we understood that you were not immediately expected
in the country.” He acknowledged the truth of it all, and said that
business with his steward had occasioned his coming forward a few hours
before the rest of the party with whom he had been travelling. “They
will join me early to-morrow,” he continued, “and among them are some
who will claim an acquaintance with you--Mr. Bingley and his sisters.”

Elizabeth answered only by a slight bow. Her thoughts were instantly
driven back to the time when Mr. Bingley's name had been the last
mentioned between them; and, if she might judge by his complexion, _his_
mind was not very differently engaged.

“There is also one other person in the party,” he continued after a
pause, “who more particularly wishes to be known to you. Will you allow
me, or do I ask too much, to introduce my sister to your acquaintance
during your stay at Lambton?”

The surprise of such an application was great indeed; it was too great
for her to know in what manner she acceded to it. She immediately felt
that whatever desire Miss Darcy might have of being acquainted with her
must be the work of her brother, and, without looking farther, it was
satisfactory; it was gratifying to know that his resentment had not made
him think really ill of her.

They now walked on in silence, each of them deep in thought. Elizabeth
was not comfortable; that was impossible; but she was flattered and
pleased. His wish of introducing his sister to her was a compliment of
the highest kind. They soon outstripped the others, and when they had
reached the carriage, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner were half a quarter of a
mile behind.

He then asked her to walk into the house--but she declared herself not
tired, and they stood together on the lawn. At such a time much might
have been said, and silence was very awkward. She wanted to talk, but
there seemed to be an embargo on every subject. At last she recollected
that she had been travelling, and they talked of Matlock and Dove Dale
with great perseverance. Yet time and her aunt moved slowly--and her
patience and her ideas were nearly worn out before the tete-a-tete was
over. On Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner's coming up they were all pressed to go
into the house and take some refreshment; but this was declined, and
they parted on each side with utmost politeness. Mr. Darcy handed the
ladies into the carriage; and when it drove off, Elizabeth saw him
walking slowly towards the house.

The observations of her uncle and aunt now began; and each of them
pronounced him to be infinitely superior to anything they had expected.
“He is perfectly well behaved, polite, and unassuming,” said her uncle.

“There _is_ something a little stately in him, to be sure,” replied her
aunt, “but it is confined to his air, and is not unbecoming. I can now
say with the housekeeper, that though some people may call him proud, I
have seen nothing of it.”

“I was never more surprised than by his behaviour to us. It was more
than civil; it was really attentive; and there was no necessity for such
attention. His acquaintance with Elizabeth was very trifling.”

“To be sure, Lizzy,” said her aunt, “he is not so handsome as Wickham;
or, rather, he has not Wickham's countenance, for his features
are perfectly good. But how came you to tell me that he was so
disagreeable?”

Elizabeth excused herself as well as she could; said that she had liked
him better when they had met in Kent than before, and that she had never
seen him so pleasant as this morning.

“But perhaps he may be a little whimsical in his civilities,” replied
her uncle. “Your great men often are; and therefore I shall not take him
at his word, as he might change his mind another day, and warn me off
his grounds.”

Elizabeth felt that they had entirely misunderstood his character, but
said nothing.

“From what we have seen of him,” continued Mrs. Gardiner, “I really
should not have thought that he could have behaved in so cruel a way by
anybody as he has done by poor Wickham. He has not an ill-natured look.
On the contrary, there is something pleasing about his mouth when he
speaks. And there is something of dignity in his countenance that would
not give one an unfavourable idea of his heart. But, to be sure, the
good lady who showed us his house did give him a most flaming character!
I could hardly help laughing aloud sometimes. But he is a liberal
master, I suppose, and _that_ in the eye of a servant comprehends every
virtue.”

Elizabeth here felt herself called on to say something in vindication of
his behaviour to Wickham; and therefore gave them to understand, in
as guarded a manner as she could, that by what she had heard from
his relations in Kent, his actions were capable of a very different
construction; and that his character was by no means so faulty, nor
Wickham's so amiable, as they had been considered in Hertfordshire. In
confirmation of this, she related the particulars of all the pecuniary
transactions in which they had been connected, without actually naming
her authority, but stating it to be such as might be relied on.

Mrs. Gardiner was surprised and concerned; but as they were now
approaching the scene of her former pleasures, every idea gave way to
the charm of recollection; and she was too much engaged in pointing out
to her husband all the interesting spots in its environs to think of
anything else. Fatigued as she had been by the morning's walk they
had no sooner dined than she set off again in quest of her former
acquaintance, and the evening was spent in the satisfactions of an
intercourse renewed after many years' discontinuance.

The occurrences of the day were too full of interest to leave Elizabeth
much attention for any of these new friends; and she could do nothing
but think, and think with wonder, of Mr. Darcy's civility, and, above
all, of his wishing her to be acquainted with his sister.



Chapter 44


Elizabeth had settled it that Mr. Darcy would bring his sister to visit
her the very day after her reaching Pemberley; and was consequently
resolved not to be out of sight of the inn the whole of that morning.
But her conclusion was false; for on the very morning after their
arrival at Lambton, these visitors came. They had been walking about the
place with some of their new friends, and were just returning to the inn
to dress themselves for dining with the same family, when the sound of a
carriage drew them to a window, and they saw a gentleman and a lady in
a curricle driving up the street. Elizabeth immediately recognizing
the livery, guessed what it meant, and imparted no small degree of her
surprise to her relations by acquainting them with the honour which she
expected. Her uncle and aunt were all amazement; and the embarrassment
of her manner as she spoke, joined to the circumstance itself, and many
of the circumstances of the preceding day, opened to them a new idea on
the business. Nothing had ever suggested it before, but they felt that
there was no other way of accounting for such attentions from such a
quarter than by supposing a partiality for their niece. While these
newly-born notions were passing in their heads, the perturbation of
Elizabeth's feelings was at every moment increasing. She was quite
amazed at her own discomposure; but amongst other causes of disquiet,
she dreaded lest the partiality of the brother should have said too much
in her favour; and, more than commonly anxious to please, she naturally
suspected that every power of pleasing would fail her.

She retreated from the window, fearful of being seen; and as she walked
up and down the room, endeavouring to compose herself, saw such looks of
inquiring surprise in her uncle and aunt as made everything worse.

Miss Darcy and her brother appeared, and this formidable introduction
took place. With astonishment did Elizabeth see that her new
acquaintance was at least as much embarrassed as herself. Since her
being at Lambton, she had heard that Miss Darcy was exceedingly proud;
but the observation of a very few minutes convinced her that she was
only exceedingly shy. She found it difficult to obtain even a word from
her beyond a monosyllable.

Miss Darcy was tall, and on a larger scale than Elizabeth; and, though
little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, and her appearance
womanly and graceful. She was less handsome than her brother; but there
was sense and good humour in her face, and her manners were perfectly
unassuming and gentle. Elizabeth, who had expected to find in her as
acute and unembarrassed an observer as ever Mr. Darcy had been, was much
relieved by discerning such different feelings.

They had not long been together before Mr. Darcy told her that Bingley
was also coming to wait on her; and she had barely time to express her
satisfaction, and prepare for such a visitor, when Bingley's quick
step was heard on the stairs, and in a moment he entered the room. All
Elizabeth's anger against him had been long done away; but had she still
felt any, it could hardly have stood its ground against the unaffected
cordiality with which he expressed himself on seeing her again. He
inquired in a friendly, though general way, after her family, and looked
and spoke with the same good-humoured ease that he had ever done.

To Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner he was scarcely a less interesting personage
than to herself. They had long wished to see him. The whole party before
them, indeed, excited a lively attention. The suspicions which had just
arisen of Mr. Darcy and their niece directed their observation towards
each with an earnest though guarded inquiry; and they soon drew from
those inquiries the full conviction that one of them at least knew
what it was to love. Of the lady's sensations they remained a little
in doubt; but that the gentleman was overflowing with admiration was
evident enough.

Elizabeth, on her side, had much to do. She wanted to ascertain the
feelings of each of her visitors; she wanted to compose her own, and
to make herself agreeable to all; and in the latter object, where she
feared most to fail, she was most sure of success, for those to whom she
endeavoured to give pleasure were prepossessed in her favour. Bingley
was ready, Georgiana was eager, and Darcy determined, to be pleased.

In seeing Bingley, her thoughts naturally flew to her sister; and, oh!
how ardently did she long to know whether any of his were directed in
a like manner. Sometimes she could fancy that he talked less than on
former occasions, and once or twice pleased herself with the notion
that, as he looked at her, he was trying to trace a resemblance. But,
though this might be imaginary, she could not be deceived as to his
behaviour to Miss Darcy, who had been set up as a rival to Jane. No look
appeared on either side that spoke particular regard. Nothing occurred
between them that could justify the hopes of his sister. On this point
she was soon satisfied; and two or three little circumstances occurred
ere they parted, which, in her anxious interpretation, denoted a
recollection of Jane not untinctured by tenderness, and a wish of saying
more that might lead to the mention of her, had he dared. He observed
to her, at a moment when the others were talking together, and in a tone
which had something of real regret, that it “was a very long time since
he had had the pleasure of seeing her;” and, before she could reply,
he added, “It is above eight months. We have not met since the 26th of
November, when we were all dancing together at Netherfield.”

Elizabeth was pleased to find his memory so exact; and he afterwards
took occasion to ask her, when unattended to by any of the rest, whether
_all_ her sisters were at Longbourn. There was not much in the question,
nor in the preceding remark; but there was a look and a manner which
gave them meaning.

It was not often that she could turn her eyes on Mr. Darcy himself;
but, whenever she did catch a glimpse, she saw an expression of general
complaisance, and in all that he said she heard an accent so removed
from _hauteur_ or disdain of his companions, as convinced her that
the improvement of manners which she had yesterday witnessed however
temporary its existence might prove, had at least outlived one day. When
she saw him thus seeking the acquaintance and courting the good opinion
of people with whom any intercourse a few months ago would have been a
disgrace--when she saw him thus civil, not only to herself, but to the
very relations whom he had openly disdained, and recollected their last
lively scene in Hunsford Parsonage--the difference, the change was
so great, and struck so forcibly on her mind, that she could hardly
restrain her astonishment from being visible. Never, even in the company
of his dear friends at Netherfield, or his dignified relations
at Rosings, had she seen him so desirous to please, so free from
self-consequence or unbending reserve, as now, when no importance
could result from the success of his endeavours, and when even the
acquaintance of those to whom his attentions were addressed would draw
down the ridicule and censure of the ladies both of Netherfield and
Rosings.

Their visitors stayed with them above half-an-hour; and when they arose
to depart, Mr. Darcy called on his sister to join him in expressing
their wish of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, and Miss Bennet, to dinner
at Pemberley, before they left the country. Miss Darcy, though with a
diffidence which marked her little in the habit of giving invitations,
readily obeyed. Mrs. Gardiner looked at her niece, desirous of knowing
how _she_, whom the invitation most concerned, felt disposed as to its
acceptance, but Elizabeth had turned away her head. Presuming however,
that this studied avoidance spoke rather a momentary embarrassment than
any dislike of the proposal, and seeing in her husband, who was fond of
society, a perfect willingness to accept it, she ventured to engage for
her attendance, and the day after the next was fixed on.

Bingley expressed great pleasure in the certainty of seeing Elizabeth
again, having still a great deal to say to her, and many inquiries to
make after all their Hertfordshire friends. Elizabeth, construing all
this into a wish of hearing her speak of her sister, was pleased, and on
this account, as well as some others, found herself, when their
visitors left them, capable of considering the last half-hour with some
satisfaction, though while it was passing, the enjoyment of it had been
little. Eager to be alone, and fearful of inquiries or hints from her
uncle and aunt, she stayed with them only long enough to hear their
favourable opinion of Bingley, and then hurried away to dress.

But she had no reason to fear Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner's curiosity; it was
not their wish to force her communication. It was evident that she was
much better acquainted with Mr. Darcy than they had before any idea of;
it was evident that he was very much in love with her. They saw much to
interest, but nothing to justify inquiry.

Of Mr. Darcy it was now a matter of anxiety to think well; and, as far
as their acquaintance reached, there was no fault to find. They could
not be untouched by his politeness; and had they drawn his character
from their own feelings and his servant's report, without any reference
to any other account, the circle in Hertfordshire to which he was known
would not have recognized it for Mr. Darcy. There was now an interest,
however, in believing the housekeeper; and they soon became sensible
that the authority of a servant who had known him since he was four
years old, and whose own manners indicated respectability, was not to be
hastily rejected. Neither had anything occurred in the intelligence of
their Lambton friends that could materially lessen its weight. They had
nothing to accuse him of but pride; pride he probably had, and if not,
it would certainly be imputed by the inhabitants of a small market-town
where the family did not visit. It was acknowledged, however, that he
was a liberal man, and did much good among the poor.

With respect to Wickham, the travellers soon found that he was not held
there in much estimation; for though the chief of his concerns with the
son of his patron were imperfectly understood, it was yet a well-known
fact that, on his quitting Derbyshire, he had left many debts behind
him, which Mr. Darcy afterwards discharged.

As for Elizabeth, her thoughts were at Pemberley this evening more than
the last; and the evening, though as it passed it seemed long, was not
long enough to determine her feelings towards _one_ in that mansion;
and she lay awake two whole hours endeavouring to make them out. She
certainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she
had almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him,
that could be so called. The respect created by the conviction of his
valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some
time ceased to be repugnant to her feeling; and it was now heightened
into somewhat of a friendlier nature, by the testimony so highly in
his favour, and bringing forward his disposition in so amiable a light,
which yesterday had produced. But above all, above respect and esteem,
there was a motive within her of goodwill which could not be overlooked.
It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her,
but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and
acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations
accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid
her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most
eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display
of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only
were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent
on making her known to his sister. Such a change in a man of so much
pride exciting not only astonishment but gratitude--for to love, ardent
love, it must be attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a
sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not be
exactly defined. She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him,
she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted to know how
far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself, and how far it would
be for the happiness of both that she should employ the power, which her
fancy told her she still possessed, of bringing on her the renewal of
his addresses.

It had been settled in the evening between the aunt and the niece, that
such a striking civility as Miss Darcy's in coming to see them on the
very day of her arrival at Pemberley, for she had reached it only to a
late breakfast, ought to be imitated, though it could not be equalled,
by some exertion of politeness on their side; and, consequently, that
it would be highly expedient to wait on her at Pemberley the following
morning. They were, therefore, to go. Elizabeth was pleased; though when
she asked herself the reason, she had very little to say in reply.

Mr. Gardiner left them soon after breakfast. The fishing scheme had been
renewed the day before, and a positive engagement made of his meeting
some of the gentlemen at Pemberley before noon.



Chapter 45


Convinced as Elizabeth now was that Miss Bingley's dislike of her had
originated in jealousy, she could not help feeling how unwelcome her
appearance at Pemberley must be to her, and was curious to know with how
much civility on that lady's side the acquaintance would now be renewed.

On reaching the house, they were shown through the hall into the saloon,
whose northern aspect rendered it delightful for summer. Its windows
opening to the ground, admitted a most refreshing view of the high woody
hills behind the house, and of the beautiful oaks and Spanish chestnuts
which were scattered over the intermediate lawn.

In this house they were received by Miss Darcy, who was sitting there
with Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley, and the lady with whom she lived in
London. Georgiana's reception of them was very civil, but attended with
all the embarrassment which, though proceeding from shyness and the fear
of doing wrong, would easily give to those who felt themselves inferior
the belief of her being proud and reserved. Mrs. Gardiner and her niece,
however, did her justice, and pitied her.

By Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley they were noticed only by a curtsey; and,
on their being seated, a pause, awkward as such pauses must always be,
succeeded for a few moments. It was first broken by Mrs. Annesley, a
genteel, agreeable-looking woman, whose endeavour to introduce some kind
of discourse proved her to be more truly well-bred than either of the
others; and between her and Mrs. Gardiner, with occasional help from
Elizabeth, the conversation was carried on. Miss Darcy looked as if she
wished for courage enough to join in it; and sometimes did venture a
short sentence when there was least danger of its being heard.

Elizabeth soon saw that she was herself closely watched by Miss Bingley,
and that she could not speak a word, especially to Miss Darcy, without
calling her attention. This observation would not have prevented her
from trying to talk to the latter, had they not been seated at an
inconvenient distance; but she was not sorry to be spared the necessity
of saying much. Her own thoughts were employing her. She expected every
moment that some of the gentlemen would enter the room. She wished, she
feared that the master of the house might be amongst them; and whether
she wished or feared it most, she could scarcely determine. After
sitting in this manner a quarter of an hour without hearing Miss
Bingley's voice, Elizabeth was roused by receiving from her a cold
inquiry after the health of her family. She answered with equal
indifference and brevity, and the other said no more.

The next variation which their visit afforded was produced by the
entrance of servants with cold meat, cake, and a variety of all the
finest fruits in season; but this did not take place till after many
a significant look and smile from Mrs. Annesley to Miss Darcy had been
given, to remind her of her post. There was now employment for the whole
party--for though they could not all talk, they could all eat; and the
beautiful pyramids of grapes, nectarines, and peaches soon collected
them round the table.

While thus engaged, Elizabeth had a fair opportunity of deciding whether
she most feared or wished for the appearance of Mr. Darcy, by the
feelings which prevailed on his entering the room; and then, though but
a moment before she had believed her wishes to predominate, she began to
regret that he came.

He had been some time with Mr. Gardiner, who, with two or three other
gentlemen from the house, was engaged by the river, and had left him
only on learning that the ladies of the family intended a visit to
Georgiana that morning. No sooner did he appear than Elizabeth wisely
resolved to be perfectly easy and unembarrassed; a resolution the more
necessary to be made, but perhaps not the more easily kept, because she
saw that the suspicions of the whole party were awakened against them,
and that there was scarcely an eye which did not watch his behaviour
when he first came into the room. In no countenance was attentive
curiosity so strongly marked as in Miss Bingley's, in spite of the
smiles which overspread her face whenever she spoke to one of its
objects; for jealousy had not yet made her desperate, and her attentions
to Mr. Darcy were by no means over. Miss Darcy, on her brother's
entrance, exerted herself much more to talk, and Elizabeth saw that he
was anxious for his sister and herself to get acquainted, and forwarded
as much as possible, every attempt at conversation on either side. Miss
Bingley saw all this likewise; and, in the imprudence of anger, took the
first opportunity of saying, with sneering civility:

“Pray, Miss Eliza, are not the ----shire Militia removed from Meryton?
They must be a great loss to _your_ family.”

In Darcy's presence she dared not mention Wickham's name; but Elizabeth
instantly comprehended that he was uppermost in her thoughts; and the
various recollections connected with him gave her a moment's distress;
but exerting herself vigorously to repel the ill-natured attack, she
presently answered the question in a tolerably detached tone. While
she spoke, an involuntary glance showed her Darcy, with a heightened
complexion, earnestly looking at her, and his sister overcome with
confusion, and unable to lift up her eyes. Had Miss Bingley known what
pain she was then giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly would
have refrained from the hint; but she had merely intended to discompose
Elizabeth by bringing forward the idea of a man to whom she believed
her partial, to make her betray a sensibility which might injure her in
Darcy's opinion, and, perhaps, to remind the latter of all the follies
and absurdities by which some part of her family were connected
with that corps. Not a syllable had ever reached her of Miss Darcy's
meditated elopement. To no creature had it been revealed, where secrecy
was possible, except to Elizabeth; and from all Bingley's connections
her brother was particularly anxious to conceal it, from the very
wish which Elizabeth had long ago attributed to him, of their becoming
hereafter her own. He had certainly formed such a plan, and without
meaning that it should affect his endeavour to separate him from Miss
Bennet, it is probable that it might add something to his lively concern
for the welfare of his friend.

Elizabeth's collected behaviour, however, soon quieted his emotion; and
as Miss Bingley, vexed and disappointed, dared not approach nearer to
Wickham, Georgiana also recovered in time, though not enough to be able
to speak any more. Her brother, whose eye she feared to meet, scarcely
recollected her interest in the affair, and the very circumstance which
had been designed to turn his thoughts from Elizabeth seemed to have
fixed them on her more and more cheerfully.

Their visit did not continue long after the question and answer above
mentioned; and while Mr. Darcy was attending them to their carriage Miss
Bingley was venting her feelings in criticisms on Elizabeth's person,
behaviour, and dress. But Georgiana would not join her. Her brother's
recommendation was enough to ensure her favour; his judgement could not
err. And he had spoken in such terms of Elizabeth as to leave Georgiana
without the power of finding her otherwise than lovely and amiable. When
Darcy returned to the saloon, Miss Bingley could not help repeating to
him some part of what she had been saying to his sister.

“How very ill Miss Eliza Bennet looks this morning, Mr. Darcy,” she
cried; “I never in my life saw anyone so much altered as she is since
the winter. She is grown so brown and coarse! Louisa and I were agreeing
that we should not have known her again.”

However little Mr. Darcy might have liked such an address, he contented
himself with coolly replying that he perceived no other alteration than
her being rather tanned, no miraculous consequence of travelling in the
summer.

“For my own part,” she rejoined, “I must confess that I never could
see any beauty in her. Her face is too thin; her complexion has no
brilliancy; and her features are not at all handsome. Her nose
wants character--there is nothing marked in its lines. Her teeth are
tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for her eyes,
which have sometimes been called so fine, I could never see anything
extraordinary in them. They have a sharp, shrewish look, which I do
not like at all; and in her air altogether there is a self-sufficiency
without fashion, which is intolerable.”

Persuaded as Miss Bingley was that Darcy admired Elizabeth, this was not
the best method of recommending herself; but angry people are not always
wise; and in seeing him at last look somewhat nettled, she had all the
success she expected. He was resolutely silent, however, and, from a
determination of making him speak, she continued:

“I remember, when we first knew her in Hertfordshire, how amazed we all
were to find that she was a reputed beauty; and I particularly recollect
your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, '_She_
a beauty!--I should as soon call her mother a wit.' But afterwards she
seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at
one time.”

“Yes,” replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, “but _that_
was only when I first saw her, for it is many months since I have
considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”

He then went away, and Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of
having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself.

Mrs. Gardiner and Elizabeth talked of all that had occurred during their
visit, as they returned, except what had particularly interested them
both. The look and behaviour of everybody they had seen were discussed,
except of the person who had mostly engaged their attention. They talked
of his sister, his friends, his house, his fruit--of everything but
himself; yet Elizabeth was longing to know what Mrs. Gardiner thought of
him, and Mrs. Gardiner would have been highly gratified by her niece's
beginning the subject.



Chapter 46


Elizabeth had been a good deal disappointed in not finding a letter from
Jane on their first arrival at Lambton; and this disappointment had been
renewed on each of the mornings that had now been spent there; but
on the third her repining was over, and her sister justified, by the
receipt of two letters from her at once, on one of which was marked that
it had been missent elsewhere. Elizabeth was not surprised at it, as
Jane had written the direction remarkably ill.

They had just been preparing to walk as the letters came in; and
her uncle and aunt, leaving her to enjoy them in quiet, set off by
themselves. The one missent must first be attended to; it had been
written five days ago. The beginning contained an account of all their
little parties and engagements, with such news as the country afforded;
but the latter half, which was dated a day later, and written in evident
agitation, gave more important intelligence. It was to this effect:

“Since writing the above, dearest Lizzy, something has occurred of a
most unexpected and serious nature; but I am afraid of alarming you--be
assured that we are all well. What I have to say relates to poor Lydia.
An express came at twelve last night, just as we were all gone to bed,
from Colonel Forster, to inform us that she was gone off to Scotland
with one of his officers; to own the truth, with Wickham! Imagine our
surprise. To Kitty, however, it does not seem so wholly unexpected. I am
very, very sorry. So imprudent a match on both sides! But I am willing
to hope the best, and that his character has been misunderstood.
Thoughtless and indiscreet I can easily believe him, but this step
(and let us rejoice over it) marks nothing bad at heart. His choice is
disinterested at least, for he must know my father can give her nothing.
Our poor mother is sadly grieved. My father bears it better. How
thankful am I that we never let them know what has been said against
him; we must forget it ourselves. They were off Saturday night about
twelve, as is conjectured, but were not missed till yesterday morning at
eight. The express was sent off directly. My dear Lizzy, they must have
passed within ten miles of us. Colonel Forster gives us reason to expect
him here soon. Lydia left a few lines for his wife, informing her of
their intention. I must conclude, for I cannot be long from my poor
mother. I am afraid you will not be able to make it out, but I hardly
know what I have written.”

Without allowing herself time for consideration, and scarcely knowing
what she felt, Elizabeth on finishing this letter instantly seized the
other, and opening it with the utmost impatience, read as follows: it
had been written a day later than the conclusion of the first.

“By this time, my dearest sister, you have received my hurried letter; I
wish this may be more intelligible, but though not confined for time, my
head is so bewildered that I cannot answer for being coherent. Dearest
Lizzy, I hardly know what I would write, but I have bad news for you,
and it cannot be delayed. Imprudent as the marriage between Mr. Wickham
and our poor Lydia would be, we are now anxious to be assured it has
taken place, for there is but too much reason to fear they are not gone
to Scotland. Colonel Forster came yesterday, having left Brighton the
day before, not many hours after the express. Though Lydia's short
letter to Mrs. F. gave them to understand that they were going to Gretna
Green, something was dropped by Denny expressing his belief that W.
never intended to go there, or to marry Lydia at all, which was
repeated to Colonel F., who, instantly taking the alarm, set off from B.
intending to trace their route. He did trace them easily to Clapham,
but no further; for on entering that place, they removed into a hackney
coach, and dismissed the chaise that brought them from Epsom. All that
is known after this is, that they were seen to continue the London road.
I know not what to think. After making every possible inquiry on that
side London, Colonel F. came on into Hertfordshire, anxiously renewing
them at all the turnpikes, and at the inns in Barnet and Hatfield, but
without any success--no such people had been seen to pass through. With
the kindest concern he came on to Longbourn, and broke his apprehensions
to us in a manner most creditable to his heart. I am sincerely grieved
for him and Mrs. F., but no one can throw any blame on them. Our
distress, my dear Lizzy, is very great. My father and mother believe the
worst, but I cannot think so ill of him. Many circumstances might make
it more eligible for them to be married privately in town than to pursue
their first plan; and even if _he_ could form such a design against a
young woman of Lydia's connections, which is not likely, can I suppose
her so lost to everything? Impossible! I grieve to find, however, that
Colonel F. is not disposed to depend upon their marriage; he shook his
head when I expressed my hopes, and said he feared W. was not a man to
be trusted. My poor mother is really ill, and keeps her room. Could she
exert herself, it would be better; but this is not to be expected. And
as to my father, I never in my life saw him so affected. Poor Kitty has
anger for having concealed their attachment; but as it was a matter of
confidence, one cannot wonder. I am truly glad, dearest Lizzy, that you
have been spared something of these distressing scenes; but now, as the
first shock is over, shall I own that I long for your return? I am not
so selfish, however, as to press for it, if inconvenient. Adieu! I
take up my pen again to do what I have just told you I would not; but
circumstances are such that I cannot help earnestly begging you all to
come here as soon as possible. I know my dear uncle and aunt so well,
that I am not afraid of requesting it, though I have still something
more to ask of the former. My father is going to London with Colonel
Forster instantly, to try to discover her. What he means to do I am sure
I know not; but his excessive distress will not allow him to pursue any
measure in the best and safest way, and Colonel Forster is obliged to
be at Brighton again to-morrow evening. In such an exigence, my
uncle's advice and assistance would be everything in the world; he will
immediately comprehend what I must feel, and I rely upon his goodness.”

“Oh! where, where is my uncle?” cried Elizabeth, darting from her seat
as she finished the letter, in eagerness to follow him, without losing
a moment of the time so precious; but as she reached the door it was
opened by a servant, and Mr. Darcy appeared. Her pale face and impetuous
manner made him start, and before he could recover himself to speak,
she, in whose mind every idea was superseded by Lydia's situation,
hastily exclaimed, “I beg your pardon, but I must leave you. I must find
Mr. Gardiner this moment, on business that cannot be delayed; I have not
an instant to lose.”

“Good God! what is the matter?” cried he, with more feeling than
politeness; then recollecting himself, “I will not detain you a minute;
but let me, or let the servant go after Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. You are
not well enough; you cannot go yourself.”

Elizabeth hesitated, but her knees trembled under her and she felt how
little would be gained by her attempting to pursue them. Calling back
the servant, therefore, she commissioned him, though in so breathless
an accent as made her almost unintelligible, to fetch his master and
mistress home instantly.

On his quitting the room she sat down, unable to support herself, and
looking so miserably ill, that it was impossible for Darcy to leave her,
or to refrain from saying, in a tone of gentleness and commiseration,
“Let me call your maid. Is there nothing you could take to give you
present relief? A glass of wine; shall I get you one? You are very ill.”

“No, I thank you,” she replied, endeavouring to recover herself. “There
is nothing the matter with me. I am quite well; I am only distressed by
some dreadful news which I have just received from Longbourn.”

She burst into tears as she alluded to it, and for a few minutes could
not speak another word. Darcy, in wretched suspense, could only say
something indistinctly of his concern, and observe her in compassionate
silence. At length she spoke again. “I have just had a letter from Jane,
with such dreadful news. It cannot be concealed from anyone. My younger
sister has left all her friends--has eloped; has thrown herself into
the power of--of Mr. Wickham. They are gone off together from Brighton.
_You_ know him too well to doubt the rest. She has no money, no
connections, nothing that can tempt him to--she is lost for ever.”

Darcy was fixed in astonishment. “When I consider,” she added in a yet
more agitated voice, “that I might have prevented it! I, who knew what
he was. Had I but explained some part of it only--some part of what I
learnt, to my own family! Had his character been known, this could not
have happened. But it is all--all too late now.”

“I am grieved indeed,” cried Darcy; “grieved--shocked. But is it
certain--absolutely certain?”

“Oh, yes! They left Brighton together on Sunday night, and were traced
almost to London, but not beyond; they are certainly not gone to
Scotland.”

“And what has been done, what has been attempted, to recover her?”

“My father is gone to London, and Jane has written to beg my uncle's
immediate assistance; and we shall be off, I hope, in half-an-hour. But
nothing can be done--I know very well that nothing can be done. How is
such a man to be worked on? How are they even to be discovered? I have
not the smallest hope. It is every way horrible!”

Darcy shook his head in silent acquiescence.

“When _my_ eyes were opened to his real character--Oh! had I known what
I ought, what I dared to do! But I knew not--I was afraid of doing too
much. Wretched, wretched mistake!”

Darcy made no answer. He seemed scarcely to hear her, and was walking
up and down the room in earnest meditation, his brow contracted, his air
gloomy. Elizabeth soon observed, and instantly understood it. Her
power was sinking; everything _must_ sink under such a proof of family
weakness, such an assurance of the deepest disgrace. She could neither
wonder nor condemn, but the belief of his self-conquest brought nothing
consolatory to her bosom, afforded no palliation of her distress. It
was, on the contrary, exactly calculated to make her understand her own
wishes; and never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved
him, as now, when all love must be vain.

But self, though it would intrude, could not engross her. Lydia--the
humiliation, the misery she was bringing on them all, soon swallowed
up every private care; and covering her face with her handkerchief,
Elizabeth was soon lost to everything else; and, after a pause of
several minutes, was only recalled to a sense of her situation by
the voice of her companion, who, in a manner which, though it spoke
compassion, spoke likewise restraint, said, “I am afraid you have been
long desiring my absence, nor have I anything to plead in excuse of my
stay, but real, though unavailing concern. Would to Heaven that anything
could be either said or done on my part that might offer consolation to
such distress! But I will not torment you with vain wishes, which may
seem purposely to ask for your thanks. This unfortunate affair will, I
fear, prevent my sister's having the pleasure of seeing you at Pemberley
to-day.”

“Oh, yes. Be so kind as to apologise for us to Miss Darcy. Say that
urgent business calls us home immediately. Conceal the unhappy truth as
long as it is possible, I know it cannot be long.”

He readily assured her of his secrecy; again expressed his sorrow for
her distress, wished it a happier conclusion than there was at present
reason to hope, and leaving his compliments for her relations, with only
one serious, parting look, went away.

As he quitted the room, Elizabeth felt how improbable it was that they
should ever see each other again on such terms of cordiality as
had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire; and as she threw a
retrospective glance over the whole of their acquaintance, so full
of contradictions and varieties, sighed at the perverseness of those
feelings which would now have promoted its continuance, and would
formerly have rejoiced in its termination.

If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's
change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if
otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or
unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on
a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been
exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given
somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham,
and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other
less interesting mode of attachment. Be that as it may, she saw him
go with regret; and in this early example of what Lydia's infamy must
produce, found additional anguish as she reflected on that wretched
business. Never, since reading Jane's second letter, had she entertained
a hope of Wickham's meaning to marry her. No one but Jane, she thought,
could flatter herself with such an expectation. Surprise was the least
of her feelings on this development. While the contents of the first
letter remained in her mind, she was all surprise--all astonishment that
Wickham should marry a girl whom it was impossible he could marry
for money; and how Lydia could ever have attached him had appeared
incomprehensible. But now it was all too natural. For such an attachment
as this she might have sufficient charms; and though she did not suppose
Lydia to be deliberately engaging in an elopement without the intention
of marriage, she had no difficulty in believing that neither her virtue
nor her understanding would preserve her from falling an easy prey.

She had never perceived, while the regiment was in Hertfordshire, that
Lydia had any partiality for him; but she was convinced that Lydia
wanted only encouragement to attach herself to anybody. Sometimes one
officer, sometimes another, had been her favourite, as their attentions
raised them in her opinion. Her affections had continually been
fluctuating but never without an object. The mischief of neglect and
mistaken indulgence towards such a girl--oh! how acutely did she now
feel it!

She was wild to be at home--to hear, to see, to be upon the spot to
share with Jane in the cares that must now fall wholly upon her, in a
family so deranged, a father absent, a mother incapable of exertion, and
requiring constant attendance; and though almost persuaded that nothing
could be done for Lydia, her uncle's interference seemed of the utmost
importance, and till he entered the room her impatience was severe. Mr.
and Mrs. Gardiner had hurried back in alarm, supposing by the servant's
account that their niece was taken suddenly ill; but satisfying them
instantly on that head, she eagerly communicated the cause of their
summons, reading the two letters aloud, and dwelling on the postscript
of the last with trembling energy.--Though Lydia had never been a
favourite with them, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner could not but be deeply
afflicted. Not Lydia only, but all were concerned in it; and after the
first exclamations of surprise and horror, Mr. Gardiner promised every
assistance in his power. Elizabeth, though expecting no less, thanked
him with tears of gratitude; and all three being actuated by one spirit,
everything relating to their journey was speedily settled. They were to
be off as soon as possible. “But what is to be done about Pemberley?”
 cried Mrs. Gardiner. “John told us Mr. Darcy was here when you sent for
us; was it so?”

“Yes; and I told him we should not be able to keep our engagement.
_That_ is all settled.”

“What is all settled?” repeated the other, as she ran into her room to
prepare. “And are they upon such terms as for her to disclose the real
truth? Oh, that I knew how it was!”

But wishes were vain, or at least could only serve to amuse her in the
hurry and confusion of the following hour. Had Elizabeth been at leisure
to be idle, she would have remained certain that all employment was
impossible to one so wretched as herself; but she had her share of
business as well as her aunt, and amongst the rest there were notes to
be written to all their friends at Lambton, with false excuses for their
sudden departure. An hour, however, saw the whole completed; and Mr.
Gardiner meanwhile having settled his account at the inn, nothing
remained to be done but to go; and Elizabeth, after all the misery of
the morning, found herself, in a shorter space of time than she could
have supposed, seated in the carriage, and on the road to Longbourn.



Chapter 47


“I have been thinking it over again, Elizabeth,” said her uncle, as they
drove from the town; “and really, upon serious consideration, I am much
more inclined than I was to judge as your eldest sister does on the
matter. It appears to me so very unlikely that any young man should
form such a design against a girl who is by no means unprotected or
friendless, and who was actually staying in his colonel's family, that I
am strongly inclined to hope the best. Could he expect that her friends
would not step forward? Could he expect to be noticed again by the
regiment, after such an affront to Colonel Forster? His temptation is
not adequate to the risk!”

“Do you really think so?” cried Elizabeth, brightening up for a moment.

“Upon my word,” said Mrs. Gardiner, “I begin to be of your uncle's
opinion. It is really too great a violation of decency, honour, and
interest, for him to be guilty of. I cannot think so very ill of
Wickham. Can you yourself, Lizzy, so wholly give him up, as to believe
him capable of it?”

“Not, perhaps, of neglecting his own interest; but of every other
neglect I can believe him capable. If, indeed, it should be so! But I
dare not hope it. Why should they not go on to Scotland if that had been
the case?”

“In the first place,” replied Mr. Gardiner, “there is no absolute proof
that they are not gone to Scotland.”

“Oh! but their removing from the chaise into a hackney coach is such
a presumption! And, besides, no traces of them were to be found on the
Barnet road.”

“Well, then--supposing them to be in London. They may be there, though
for the purpose of concealment, for no more exceptional purpose. It is
not likely that money should be very abundant on either side; and it
might strike them that they could be more economically, though less
expeditiously, married in London than in Scotland.”

“But why all this secrecy? Why any fear of detection? Why must their
marriage be private? Oh, no, no--this is not likely. His most particular
friend, you see by Jane's account, was persuaded of his never intending
to marry her. Wickham will never marry a woman without some money. He
cannot afford it. And what claims has Lydia--what attraction has she
beyond youth, health, and good humour that could make him, for her sake,
forego every chance of benefiting himself by marrying well? As to what
restraint the apprehensions of disgrace in the corps might throw on a
dishonourable elopement with her, I am not able to judge; for I know
nothing of the effects that such a step might produce. But as to your
other objection, I am afraid it will hardly hold good. Lydia has
no brothers to step forward; and he might imagine, from my father's
behaviour, from his indolence and the little attention he has ever
seemed to give to what was going forward in his family, that _he_ would
do as little, and think as little about it, as any father could do, in
such a matter.”

“But can you think that Lydia is so lost to everything but love of him
as to consent to live with him on any terms other than marriage?”

“It does seem, and it is most shocking indeed,” replied Elizabeth, with
tears in her eyes, “that a sister's sense of decency and virtue in such
a point should admit of doubt. But, really, I know not what to say.
Perhaps I am not doing her justice. But she is very young; she has never
been taught to think on serious subjects; and for the last half-year,
nay, for a twelvemonth--she has been given up to nothing but amusement
and vanity. She has been allowed to dispose of her time in the most idle
and frivolous manner, and to adopt any opinions that came in her way.
Since the ----shire were first quartered in Meryton, nothing but love,
flirtation, and officers have been in her head. She has been doing
everything in her power by thinking and talking on the subject, to give
greater--what shall I call it? susceptibility to her feelings; which are
naturally lively enough. And we all know that Wickham has every charm of
person and address that can captivate a woman.”

“But you see that Jane,” said her aunt, “does not think so very ill of
Wickham as to believe him capable of the attempt.”

“Of whom does Jane ever think ill? And who is there, whatever might be
their former conduct, that she would think capable of such an attempt,
till it were proved against them? But Jane knows, as well as I do, what
Wickham really is. We both know that he has been profligate in every
sense of the word; that he has neither integrity nor honour; that he is
as false and deceitful as he is insinuating.”

“And do you really know all this?” cried Mrs. Gardiner, whose curiosity
as to the mode of her intelligence was all alive.

“I do indeed,” replied Elizabeth, colouring. “I told you, the other day,
of his infamous behaviour to Mr. Darcy; and you yourself, when last at
Longbourn, heard in what manner he spoke of the man who had behaved
with such forbearance and liberality towards him. And there are other
circumstances which I am not at liberty--which it is not worth while to
relate; but his lies about the whole Pemberley family are endless. From
what he said of Miss Darcy I was thoroughly prepared to see a proud,
reserved, disagreeable girl. Yet he knew to the contrary himself. He
must know that she was as amiable and unpretending as we have found
her.”

“But does Lydia know nothing of this? can she be ignorant of what you
and Jane seem so well to understand?”

“Oh, yes!--that, that is the worst of all. Till I was in Kent, and saw
so much both of Mr. Darcy and his relation Colonel Fitzwilliam, I was
ignorant of the truth myself. And when I returned home, the ----shire
was to leave Meryton in a week or fortnight's time. As that was the
case, neither Jane, to whom I related the whole, nor I, thought it
necessary to make our knowledge public; for of what use could
it apparently be to any one, that the good opinion which all the
neighbourhood had of him should then be overthrown? And even when it was
settled that Lydia should go with Mrs. Forster, the necessity of opening
her eyes to his character never occurred to me. That _she_ could be
in any danger from the deception never entered my head. That such a
consequence as _this_ could ensue, you may easily believe, was far
enough from my thoughts.”

“When they all removed to Brighton, therefore, you had no reason, I
suppose, to believe them fond of each other?”

“Not the slightest. I can remember no symptom of affection on either
side; and had anything of the kind been perceptible, you must be aware
that ours is not a family on which it could be thrown away. When first
he entered the corps, she was ready enough to admire him; but so we all
were. Every girl in or near Meryton was out of her senses about him for
the first two months; but he never distinguished _her_ by any particular
attention; and, consequently, after a moderate period of extravagant and
wild admiration, her fancy for him gave way, and others of the regiment,
who treated her with more distinction, again became her favourites.”

                          * * * * *

It may be easily believed, that however little of novelty could be added
to their fears, hopes, and conjectures, on this interesting subject, by
its repeated discussion, no other could detain them from it long, during
the whole of the journey. From Elizabeth's thoughts it was never absent.
Fixed there by the keenest of all anguish, self-reproach, she could find
no interval of ease or forgetfulness.

They travelled as expeditiously as possible, and, sleeping one night
on the road, reached Longbourn by dinner time the next day. It was a
comfort to Elizabeth to consider that Jane could not have been wearied
by long expectations.

The little Gardiners, attracted by the sight of a chaise, were standing
on the steps of the house as they entered the paddock; and, when the
carriage drove up to the door, the joyful surprise that lighted up their
faces, and displayed itself over their whole bodies, in a variety of
capers and frisks, was the first pleasing earnest of their welcome.

Elizabeth jumped out; and, after giving each of them a hasty kiss,
hurried into the vestibule, where Jane, who came running down from her
mother's apartment, immediately met her.

Elizabeth, as she affectionately embraced her, whilst tears filled the
eyes of both, lost not a moment in asking whether anything had been
heard of the fugitives.

“Not yet,” replied Jane. “But now that my dear uncle is come, I hope
everything will be well.”

“Is my father in town?”

“Yes, he went on Tuesday, as I wrote you word.”

“And have you heard from him often?”

“We have heard only twice. He wrote me a few lines on Wednesday to say
that he had arrived in safety, and to give me his directions, which I
particularly begged him to do. He merely added that he should not write
again till he had something of importance to mention.”

“And my mother--how is she? How are you all?”

“My mother is tolerably well, I trust; though her spirits are greatly
shaken. She is up stairs and will have great satisfaction in seeing you
all. She does not yet leave her dressing-room. Mary and Kitty, thank
Heaven, are quite well.”

“But you--how are you?” cried Elizabeth. “You look pale. How much you
must have gone through!”

Her sister, however, assured her of her being perfectly well; and their
conversation, which had been passing while Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner were
engaged with their children, was now put an end to by the approach
of the whole party. Jane ran to her uncle and aunt, and welcomed and
thanked them both, with alternate smiles and tears.

When they were all in the drawing-room, the questions which Elizabeth
had already asked were of course repeated by the others, and they soon
found that Jane had no intelligence to give. The sanguine hope of
good, however, which the benevolence of her heart suggested had not yet
deserted her; she still expected that it would all end well, and that
every morning would bring some letter, either from Lydia or her father,
to explain their proceedings, and, perhaps, announce their marriage.

Mrs. Bennet, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few minutes'
conversation together, received them exactly as might be expected; with
tears and lamentations of regret, invectives against the villainous
conduct of Wickham, and complaints of her own sufferings and ill-usage;
blaming everybody but the person to whose ill-judging indulgence the
errors of her daughter must principally be owing.

“If I had been able,” said she, “to carry my point in going to Brighton,
with all my family, _this_ would not have happened; but poor dear Lydia
had nobody to take care of her. Why did the Forsters ever let her go out
of their sight? I am sure there was some great neglect or other on their
side, for she is not the kind of girl to do such a thing if she had been
well looked after. I always thought they were very unfit to have the
charge of her; but I was overruled, as I always am. Poor dear child!
And now here's Mr. Bennet gone away, and I know he will fight Wickham,
wherever he meets him and then he will be killed, and what is to become
of us all? The Collinses will turn us out before he is cold in his
grave, and if you are not kind to us, brother, I do not know what we
shall do.”

They all exclaimed against such terrific ideas; and Mr. Gardiner, after
general assurances of his affection for her and all her family, told her
that he meant to be in London the very next day, and would assist Mr.
Bennet in every endeavour for recovering Lydia.

“Do not give way to useless alarm,” added he; “though it is right to be
prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.
It is not quite a week since they left Brighton. In a few days more we
may gain some news of them; and till we know that they are not married,
and have no design of marrying, do not let us give the matter over as
lost. As soon as I get to town I shall go to my brother, and make
him come home with me to Gracechurch Street; and then we may consult
together as to what is to be done.”

“Oh! my dear brother,” replied Mrs. Bennet, “that is exactly what I
could most wish for. And now do, when you get to town, find them out,
wherever they may be; and if they are not married already, _make_ them
marry. And as for wedding clothes, do not let them wait for that, but
tell Lydia she shall have as much money as she chooses to buy them,
after they are married. And, above all, keep Mr. Bennet from fighting.
Tell him what a dreadful state I am in, that I am frighted out of my
wits--and have such tremblings, such flutterings, all over me--such
spasms in my side and pains in my head, and such beatings at heart, that
I can get no rest by night nor by day. And tell my dear Lydia not to
give any directions about her clothes till she has seen me, for she does
not know which are the best warehouses. Oh, brother, how kind you are! I
know you will contrive it all.”

But Mr. Gardiner, though he assured her again of his earnest endeavours
in the cause, could not avoid recommending moderation to her, as well
in her hopes as her fear; and after talking with her in this manner till
dinner was on the table, they all left her to vent all her feelings on
the housekeeper, who attended in the absence of her daughters.

Though her brother and sister were persuaded that there was no real
occasion for such a seclusion from the family, they did not attempt to
oppose it, for they knew that she had not prudence enough to hold her
tongue before the servants, while they waited at table, and judged it
better that _one_ only of the household, and the one whom they could
most trust should comprehend all her fears and solicitude on the
subject.

In the dining-room they were soon joined by Mary and Kitty, who had been
too busily engaged in their separate apartments to make their appearance
before. One came from her books, and the other from her toilette. The
faces of both, however, were tolerably calm; and no change was visible
in either, except that the loss of her favourite sister, or the anger
which she had herself incurred in this business, had given more of
fretfulness than usual to the accents of Kitty. As for Mary, she was
mistress enough of herself to whisper to Elizabeth, with a countenance
of grave reflection, soon after they were seated at table:

“This is a most unfortunate affair, and will probably be much talked of.
But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of
each other the balm of sisterly consolation.”

Then, perceiving in Elizabeth no inclination of replying, she added,
“Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful
lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one
false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less
brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in
her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.”

Elizabeth lifted up her eyes in amazement, but was too much oppressed
to make any reply. Mary, however, continued to console herself with such
kind of moral extractions from the evil before them.

In the afternoon, the two elder Miss Bennets were able to be for
half-an-hour by themselves; and Elizabeth instantly availed herself of
the opportunity of making any inquiries, which Jane was equally eager to
satisfy. After joining in general lamentations over the dreadful sequel
of this event, which Elizabeth considered as all but certain, and Miss
Bennet could not assert to be wholly impossible, the former continued
the subject, by saying, “But tell me all and everything about it which
I have not already heard. Give me further particulars. What did Colonel
Forster say? Had they no apprehension of anything before the elopement
took place? They must have seen them together for ever.”

“Colonel Forster did own that he had often suspected some partiality,
especially on Lydia's side, but nothing to give him any alarm. I am so
grieved for him! His behaviour was attentive and kind to the utmost. He
_was_ coming to us, in order to assure us of his concern, before he had
any idea of their not being gone to Scotland: when that apprehension
first got abroad, it hastened his journey.”

“And was Denny convinced that Wickham would not marry? Did he know of
their intending to go off? Had Colonel Forster seen Denny himself?”

“Yes; but, when questioned by _him_, Denny denied knowing anything of
their plans, and would not give his real opinion about it. He did not
repeat his persuasion of their not marrying--and from _that_, I am
inclined to hope, he might have been misunderstood before.”

“And till Colonel Forster came himself, not one of you entertained a
doubt, I suppose, of their being really married?”

“How was it possible that such an idea should enter our brains? I felt
a little uneasy--a little fearful of my sister's happiness with him
in marriage, because I knew that his conduct had not been always quite
right. My father and mother knew nothing of that; they only felt how
imprudent a match it must be. Kitty then owned, with a very natural
triumph on knowing more than the rest of us, that in Lydia's last letter
she had prepared her for such a step. She had known, it seems, of their
being in love with each other, many weeks.”

“But not before they went to Brighton?”

“No, I believe not.”

“And did Colonel Forster appear to think well of Wickham himself? Does
he know his real character?”

“I must confess that he did not speak so well of Wickham as he formerly
did. He believed him to be imprudent and extravagant. And since this sad
affair has taken place, it is said that he left Meryton greatly in debt;
but I hope this may be false.”

“Oh, Jane, had we been less secret, had we told what we knew of him,
this could not have happened!”

“Perhaps it would have been better,” replied her sister. “But to expose
the former faults of any person without knowing what their present
feelings were, seemed unjustifiable. We acted with the best intentions.”

“Could Colonel Forster repeat the particulars of Lydia's note to his
wife?”

“He brought it with him for us to see.”

Jane then took it from her pocket-book, and gave it to Elizabeth. These
were the contents:

“MY DEAR HARRIET,

“You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I cannot help
laughing myself at your surprise to-morrow morning, as soon as I am
missed. I am going to Gretna Green, and if you cannot guess with who,
I shall think you a simpleton, for there is but one man in the world I
love, and he is an angel. I should never be happy without him, so think
it no harm to be off. You need not send them word at Longbourn of my
going, if you do not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater,
when I write to them and sign my name 'Lydia Wickham.' What a good joke
it will be! I can hardly write for laughing. Pray make my excuses to
Pratt for not keeping my engagement, and dancing with him to-night.
Tell him I hope he will excuse me when he knows all; and tell him I will
dance with him at the next ball we meet, with great pleasure. I shall
send for my clothes when I get to Longbourn; but I wish you would tell
Sally to mend a great slit in my worked muslin gown before they are
packed up. Good-bye. Give my love to Colonel Forster. I hope you will
drink to our good journey.

“Your affectionate friend,

“LYDIA BENNET.”

“Oh! thoughtless, thoughtless Lydia!” cried Elizabeth when she had
finished it. “What a letter is this, to be written at such a moment!
But at least it shows that _she_ was serious on the subject of their
journey. Whatever he might afterwards persuade her to, it was not on her
side a _scheme_ of infamy. My poor father! how he must have felt it!”

“I never saw anyone so shocked. He could not speak a word for full ten
minutes. My mother was taken ill immediately, and the whole house in
such confusion!”

“Oh! Jane,” cried Elizabeth, “was there a servant belonging to it who
did not know the whole story before the end of the day?”

“I do not know. I hope there was. But to be guarded at such a time is
very difficult. My mother was in hysterics, and though I endeavoured to
give her every assistance in my power, I am afraid I did not do so
much as I might have done! But the horror of what might possibly happen
almost took from me my faculties.”

“Your attendance upon her has been too much for you. You do not look
well. Oh that I had been with you! you have had every care and anxiety
upon yourself alone.”

“Mary and Kitty have been very kind, and would have shared in every
fatigue, I am sure; but I did not think it right for either of them.
Kitty is slight and delicate; and Mary studies so much, that her hours
of repose should not be broken in on. My aunt Phillips came to Longbourn
on Tuesday, after my father went away; and was so good as to stay till
Thursday with me. She was of great use and comfort to us all. And
Lady Lucas has been very kind; she walked here on Wednesday morning to
condole with us, and offered her services, or any of her daughters', if
they should be of use to us.”

“She had better have stayed at home,” cried Elizabeth; “perhaps she
_meant_ well, but, under such a misfortune as this, one cannot see
too little of one's neighbours. Assistance is impossible; condolence
insufferable. Let them triumph over us at a distance, and be satisfied.”

She then proceeded to inquire into the measures which her father had
intended to pursue, while in town, for the recovery of his daughter.

“He meant I believe,” replied Jane, “to go to Epsom, the place where
they last changed horses, see the postilions and try if anything could
be made out from them. His principal object must be to discover the
number of the hackney coach which took them from Clapham. It had come
with a fare from London; and as he thought that the circumstance of a
gentleman and lady's removing from one carriage into another might
be remarked he meant to make inquiries at Clapham. If he could anyhow
discover at what house the coachman had before set down his fare, he
determined to make inquiries there, and hoped it might not be impossible
to find out the stand and number of the coach. I do not know of any
other designs that he had formed; but he was in such a hurry to be gone,
and his spirits so greatly discomposed, that I had difficulty in finding
out even so much as this.”



Chapter 48


The whole party were in hopes of a letter from Mr. Bennet the next
morning, but the post came in without bringing a single line from him.
His family knew him to be, on all common occasions, a most negligent and
dilatory correspondent; but at such a time they had hoped for exertion.
They were forced to conclude that he had no pleasing intelligence to
send; but even of _that_ they would have been glad to be certain. Mr.
Gardiner had waited only for the letters before he set off.

When he was gone, they were certain at least of receiving constant
information of what was going on, and their uncle promised, at parting,
to prevail on Mr. Bennet to return to Longbourn, as soon as he could,
to the great consolation of his sister, who considered it as the only
security for her husband's not being killed in a duel.

Mrs. Gardiner and the children were to remain in Hertfordshire a few
days longer, as the former thought her presence might be serviceable
to her nieces. She shared in their attendance on Mrs. Bennet, and was a
great comfort to them in their hours of freedom. Their other aunt also
visited them frequently, and always, as she said, with the design of
cheering and heartening them up--though, as she never came without
reporting some fresh instance of Wickham's extravagance or irregularity,
she seldom went away without leaving them more dispirited than she found
them.

All Meryton seemed striving to blacken the man who, but three months
before, had been almost an angel of light. He was declared to be in debt
to every tradesman in the place, and his intrigues, all honoured with
the title of seduction, had been extended into every tradesman's family.
Everybody declared that he was the wickedest young man in the world;
and everybody began to find out that they had always distrusted the
appearance of his goodness. Elizabeth, though she did not credit above
half of what was said, believed enough to make her former assurance of
her sister's ruin more certain; and even Jane, who believed still less
of it, became almost hopeless, more especially as the time was now come
when, if they had gone to Scotland, which she had never before entirely
despaired of, they must in all probability have gained some news of
them.

Mr. Gardiner left Longbourn on Sunday; on Tuesday his wife received a
letter from him; it told them that, on his arrival, he had immediately
found out his brother, and persuaded him to come to Gracechurch Street;
that Mr. Bennet had been to Epsom and Clapham, before his arrival,
but without gaining any satisfactory information; and that he was now
determined to inquire at all the principal hotels in town, as Mr. Bennet
thought it possible they might have gone to one of them, on their first
coming to London, before they procured lodgings. Mr. Gardiner himself
did not expect any success from this measure, but as his brother was
eager in it, he meant to assist him in pursuing it. He added that Mr.
Bennet seemed wholly disinclined at present to leave London and promised
to write again very soon. There was also a postscript to this effect:

“I have written to Colonel Forster to desire him to find out, if
possible, from some of the young man's intimates in the regiment,
whether Wickham has any relations or connections who would be likely to
know in what part of town he has now concealed himself. If there were
anyone that one could apply to with a probability of gaining such a
clue as that, it might be of essential consequence. At present we have
nothing to guide us. Colonel Forster will, I dare say, do everything in
his power to satisfy us on this head. But, on second thoughts, perhaps,
Lizzy could tell us what relations he has now living, better than any
other person.”

Elizabeth was at no loss to understand from whence this deference to her
authority proceeded; but it was not in her power to give any information
of so satisfactory a nature as the compliment deserved. She had never
heard of his having had any relations, except a father and mother, both
of whom had been dead many years. It was possible, however, that some of
his companions in the ----shire might be able to give more information;
and though she was not very sanguine in expecting it, the application
was a something to look forward to.

Every day at Longbourn was now a day of anxiety; but the most anxious
part of each was when the post was expected. The arrival of letters
was the grand object of every morning's impatience. Through letters,
whatever of good or bad was to be told would be communicated, and every
succeeding day was expected to bring some news of importance.

But before they heard again from Mr. Gardiner, a letter arrived for
their father, from a different quarter, from Mr. Collins; which, as Jane
had received directions to open all that came for him in his absence,
she accordingly read; and Elizabeth, who knew what curiosities his
letters always were, looked over her, and read it likewise. It was as
follows:

“MY DEAR SIR,

“I feel myself called upon, by our relationship, and my situation
in life, to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now
suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed by a letter from
Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear sir, that Mrs. Collins and myself
sincerely sympathise with you and all your respectable family, in
your present distress, which must be of the bitterest kind, because
proceeding from a cause which no time can remove. No arguments shall be
wanting on my part that can alleviate so severe a misfortune--or that
may comfort you, under a circumstance that must be of all others the
most afflicting to a parent's mind. The death of your daughter would
have been a blessing in comparison of this. And it is the more to
be lamented, because there is reason to suppose as my dear Charlotte
informs me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter has
proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence; though, at the same time,
for the consolation of yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think
that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be
guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age. Howsoever that may be,
you are grievously to be pitied; in which opinion I am not only joined
by Mrs. Collins, but likewise by Lady Catherine and her daughter, to
whom I have related the affair. They agree with me in apprehending that
this false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of
all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says,
will connect themselves with such a family? And this consideration leads
me moreover to reflect, with augmented satisfaction, on a certain event
of last November; for had it been otherwise, I must have been involved
in all your sorrow and disgrace. Let me then advise you, dear sir, to
console yourself as much as possible, to throw off your unworthy child
from your affection for ever, and leave her to reap the fruits of her
own heinous offense.

“I am, dear sir, etc., etc.”

Mr. Gardiner did not write again till he had received an answer from
Colonel Forster; and then he had nothing of a pleasant nature to send.
It was not known that Wickham had a single relationship with whom he
kept up any connection, and it was certain that he had no near one
living. His former acquaintances had been numerous; but since he
had been in the militia, it did not appear that he was on terms of
particular friendship with any of them. There was no one, therefore,
who could be pointed out as likely to give any news of him. And in the
wretched state of his own finances, there was a very powerful motive for
secrecy, in addition to his fear of discovery by Lydia's relations, for
it had just transpired that he had left gaming debts behind him to a
very considerable amount. Colonel Forster believed that more than a
thousand pounds would be necessary to clear his expenses at Brighton.
He owed a good deal in town, but his debts of honour were still more
formidable. Mr. Gardiner did not attempt to conceal these particulars
from the Longbourn family. Jane heard them with horror. “A gamester!”
 she cried. “This is wholly unexpected. I had not an idea of it.”

Mr. Gardiner added in his letter, that they might expect to see their
father at home on the following day, which was Saturday. Rendered
spiritless by the ill-success of all their endeavours, he had yielded
to his brother-in-law's entreaty that he would return to his family, and
leave it to him to do whatever occasion might suggest to be advisable
for continuing their pursuit. When Mrs. Bennet was told of this, she did
not express so much satisfaction as her children expected, considering
what her anxiety for his life had been before.

“What, is he coming home, and without poor Lydia?” she cried. “Sure he
will not leave London before he has found them. Who is to fight Wickham,
and make him marry her, if he comes away?”

As Mrs. Gardiner began to wish to be at home, it was settled that she
and the children should go to London, at the same time that Mr. Bennet
came from it. The coach, therefore, took them the first stage of their
journey, and brought its master back to Longbourn.

Mrs. Gardiner went away in all the perplexity about Elizabeth and her
Derbyshire friend that had attended her from that part of the world. His
name had never been voluntarily mentioned before them by her niece; and
the kind of half-expectation which Mrs. Gardiner had formed, of their
being followed by a letter from him, had ended in nothing. Elizabeth had
received none since her return that could come from Pemberley.

The present unhappy state of the family rendered any other excuse for
the lowness of her spirits unnecessary; nothing, therefore, could be
fairly conjectured from _that_, though Elizabeth, who was by this time
tolerably well acquainted with her own feelings, was perfectly aware
that, had she known nothing of Darcy, she could have borne the dread of
Lydia's infamy somewhat better. It would have spared her, she thought,
one sleepless night out of two.

When Mr. Bennet arrived, he had all the appearance of his usual
philosophic composure. He said as little as he had ever been in the
habit of saying; made no mention of the business that had taken him
away, and it was some time before his daughters had courage to speak of
it.

It was not till the afternoon, when he had joined them at tea, that
Elizabeth ventured to introduce the subject; and then, on her briefly
expressing her sorrow for what he must have endured, he replied, “Say
nothing of that. Who should suffer but myself? It has been my own doing,
and I ought to feel it.”

“You must not be too severe upon yourself,” replied Elizabeth.

“You may well warn me against such an evil. Human nature is so prone
to fall into it! No, Lizzy, let me once in my life feel how much I have
been to blame. I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression.
It will pass away soon enough.”

“Do you suppose them to be in London?”

“Yes; where else can they be so well concealed?”

“And Lydia used to want to go to London,” added Kitty.

“She is happy then,” said her father drily; “and her residence there
will probably be of some duration.”

Then after a short silence he continued:

“Lizzy, I bear you no ill-will for being justified in your advice to me
last May, which, considering the event, shows some greatness of mind.”

They were interrupted by Miss Bennet, who came to fetch her mother's
tea.

“This is a parade,” he cried, “which does one good; it gives such an
elegance to misfortune! Another day I will do the same; I will sit in my
library, in my nightcap and powdering gown, and give as much trouble as
I can; or, perhaps, I may defer it till Kitty runs away.”

“I am not going to run away, papa,” said Kitty fretfully. “If I should
ever go to Brighton, I would behave better than Lydia.”

“_You_ go to Brighton. I would not trust you so near it as Eastbourne
for fifty pounds! No, Kitty, I have at last learnt to be cautious, and
you will feel the effects of it. No officer is ever to enter into
my house again, nor even to pass through the village. Balls will be
absolutely prohibited, unless you stand up with one of your sisters.
And you are never to stir out of doors till you can prove that you have
spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner.”

Kitty, who took all these threats in a serious light, began to cry.

“Well, well,” said he, “do not make yourself unhappy. If you are a good
girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review at the end of
them.”



Chapter 49


Two days after Mr. Bennet's return, as Jane and Elizabeth were walking
together in the shrubbery behind the house, they saw the housekeeper
coming towards them, and, concluding that she came to call them to their
mother, went forward to meet her; but, instead of the expected summons,
when they approached her, she said to Miss Bennet, “I beg your pardon,
madam, for interrupting you, but I was in hopes you might have got some
good news from town, so I took the liberty of coming to ask.”

“What do you mean, Hill? We have heard nothing from town.”

“Dear madam,” cried Mrs. Hill, in great astonishment, “don't you know
there is an express come for master from Mr. Gardiner? He has been here
this half-hour, and master has had a letter.”

Away ran the girls, too eager to get in to have time for speech. They
ran through the vestibule into the breakfast-room; from thence to the
library; their father was in neither; and they were on the point of
seeking him up stairs with their mother, when they were met by the
butler, who said:

“If you are looking for my master, ma'am, he is walking towards the
little copse.”

Upon this information, they instantly passed through the hall once
more, and ran across the lawn after their father, who was deliberately
pursuing his way towards a small wood on one side of the paddock.

Jane, who was not so light nor so much in the habit of running as
Elizabeth, soon lagged behind, while her sister, panting for breath,
came up with him, and eagerly cried out:

“Oh, papa, what news--what news? Have you heard from my uncle?”

“Yes I have had a letter from him by express.”

“Well, and what news does it bring--good or bad?”

“What is there of good to be expected?” said he, taking the letter from
his pocket. “But perhaps you would like to read it.”

Elizabeth impatiently caught it from his hand. Jane now came up.

“Read it aloud,” said their father, “for I hardly know myself what it is
about.”

“Gracechurch Street, Monday, August 2.

“MY DEAR BROTHER,

“At last I am able to send you some tidings of my niece, and such as,
upon the whole, I hope it will give you satisfaction. Soon after you
left me on Saturday, I was fortunate enough to find out in what part of
London they were. The particulars I reserve till we meet; it is enough
to know they are discovered. I have seen them both--”

“Then it is as I always hoped,” cried Jane; “they are married!”

Elizabeth read on:

“I have seen them both. They are not married, nor can I find there
was any intention of being so; but if you are willing to perform the
engagements which I have ventured to make on your side, I hope it will
not be long before they are. All that is required of you is, to assure
to your daughter, by settlement, her equal share of the five thousand
pounds secured among your children after the decease of yourself and
my sister; and, moreover, to enter into an engagement of allowing her,
during your life, one hundred pounds per annum. These are conditions
which, considering everything, I had no hesitation in complying with,
as far as I thought myself privileged, for you. I shall send this by
express, that no time may be lost in bringing me your answer. You
will easily comprehend, from these particulars, that Mr. Wickham's
circumstances are not so hopeless as they are generally believed to be.
The world has been deceived in that respect; and I am happy to say there
will be some little money, even when all his debts are discharged, to
settle on my niece, in addition to her own fortune. If, as I conclude
will be the case, you send me full powers to act in your name throughout
the whole of this business, I will immediately give directions to
Haggerston for preparing a proper settlement. There will not be the
smallest occasion for your coming to town again; therefore stay quiet at
Longbourn, and depend on my diligence and care. Send back your answer as
fast as you can, and be careful to write explicitly. We have judged it
best that my niece should be married from this house, of which I hope
you will approve. She comes to us to-day. I shall write again as soon as
anything more is determined on. Yours, etc.,

“EDW. GARDINER.”

“Is it possible?” cried Elizabeth, when she had finished. “Can it be
possible that he will marry her?”

“Wickham is not so undeserving, then, as we thought him,” said her
sister. “My dear father, I congratulate you.”

“And have you answered the letter?” cried Elizabeth.

“No; but it must be done soon.”

Most earnestly did she then entreat him to lose no more time before he
wrote.

“Oh! my dear father,” she cried, “come back and write immediately.
Consider how important every moment is in such a case.”

“Let me write for you,” said Jane, “if you dislike the trouble
yourself.”

“I dislike it very much,” he replied; “but it must be done.”

And so saying, he turned back with them, and walked towards the house.

“And may I ask--” said Elizabeth; “but the terms, I suppose, must be
complied with.”

“Complied with! I am only ashamed of his asking so little.”

“And they _must_ marry! Yet he is _such_ a man!”

“Yes, yes, they must marry. There is nothing else to be done. But there
are two things that I want very much to know; one is, how much money
your uncle has laid down to bring it about; and the other, how am I ever
to pay him.”

“Money! My uncle!” cried Jane, “what do you mean, sir?”

“I mean, that no man in his senses would marry Lydia on so slight a
temptation as one hundred a year during my life, and fifty after I am
gone.”

“That is very true,” said Elizabeth; “though it had not occurred to me
before. His debts to be discharged, and something still to remain! Oh!
it must be my uncle's doings! Generous, good man, I am afraid he has
distressed himself. A small sum could not do all this.”

“No,” said her father; “Wickham's a fool if he takes her with a farthing
less than ten thousand pounds. I should be sorry to think so ill of him,
in the very beginning of our relationship.”

“Ten thousand pounds! Heaven forbid! How is half such a sum to be
repaid?”

Mr. Bennet made no answer, and each of them, deep in thought, continued
silent till they reached the house. Their father then went on to the
library to write, and the girls walked into the breakfast-room.

“And they are really to be married!” cried Elizabeth, as soon as they
were by themselves. “How strange this is! And for _this_ we are to be
thankful. That they should marry, small as is their chance of happiness,
and wretched as is his character, we are forced to rejoice. Oh, Lydia!”

“I comfort myself with thinking,” replied Jane, “that he certainly would
not marry Lydia if he had not a real regard for her. Though our kind
uncle has done something towards clearing him, I cannot believe that ten
thousand pounds, or anything like it, has been advanced. He has children
of his own, and may have more. How could he spare half ten thousand
pounds?”

“If he were ever able to learn what Wickham's debts have been,” said
Elizabeth, “and how much is settled on his side on our sister, we shall
exactly know what Mr. Gardiner has done for them, because Wickham has
not sixpence of his own. The kindness of my uncle and aunt can never
be requited. Their taking her home, and affording her their personal
protection and countenance, is such a sacrifice to her advantage as
years of gratitude cannot enough acknowledge. By this time she is
actually with them! If such goodness does not make her miserable now,
she will never deserve to be happy! What a meeting for her, when she
first sees my aunt!”

“We must endeavour to forget all that has passed on either side,” said
Jane: “I hope and trust they will yet be happy. His consenting to
marry her is a proof, I will believe, that he is come to a right way of
thinking. Their mutual affection will steady them; and I flatter myself
they will settle so quietly, and live in so rational a manner, as may in
time make their past imprudence forgotten.”

“Their conduct has been such,” replied Elizabeth, “as neither you, nor
I, nor anybody can ever forget. It is useless to talk of it.”

It now occurred to the girls that their mother was in all likelihood
perfectly ignorant of what had happened. They went to the library,
therefore, and asked their father whether he would not wish them to make
it known to her. He was writing and, without raising his head, coolly
replied:

“Just as you please.”

“May we take my uncle's letter to read to her?”

“Take whatever you like, and get away.”

Elizabeth took the letter from his writing-table, and they went up stairs
together. Mary and Kitty were both with Mrs. Bennet: one communication
would, therefore, do for all. After a slight preparation for good news,
the letter was read aloud. Mrs. Bennet could hardly contain herself. As
soon as Jane had read Mr. Gardiner's hope of Lydia's being soon
married, her joy burst forth, and every following sentence added to its
exuberance. She was now in an irritation as violent from delight, as she
had ever been fidgety from alarm and vexation. To know that her daughter
would be married was enough. She was disturbed by no fear for her
felicity, nor humbled by any remembrance of her misconduct.

“My dear, dear Lydia!” she cried. “This is delightful indeed! She will
be married! I shall see her again! She will be married at sixteen!
My good, kind brother! I knew how it would be. I knew he would manage
everything! How I long to see her! and to see dear Wickham too! But the
clothes, the wedding clothes! I will write to my sister Gardiner about
them directly. Lizzy, my dear, run down to your father, and ask him
how much he will give her. Stay, stay, I will go myself. Ring the bell,
Kitty, for Hill. I will put on my things in a moment. My dear, dear
Lydia! How merry we shall be together when we meet!”

Her eldest daughter endeavoured to give some relief to the violence of
these transports, by leading her thoughts to the obligations which Mr.
Gardiner's behaviour laid them all under.

“For we must attribute this happy conclusion,” she added, “in a great
measure to his kindness. We are persuaded that he has pledged himself to
assist Mr. Wickham with money.”

“Well,” cried her mother, “it is all very right; who should do it but
her own uncle? If he had not had a family of his own, I and my children
must have had all his money, you know; and it is the first time we have
ever had anything from him, except a few presents. Well! I am so happy!
In a short time I shall have a daughter married. Mrs. Wickham! How well
it sounds! And she was only sixteen last June. My dear Jane, I am in
such a flutter, that I am sure I can't write; so I will dictate, and
you write for me. We will settle with your father about the money
afterwards; but the things should be ordered immediately.”

She was then proceeding to all the particulars of calico, muslin, and
cambric, and would shortly have dictated some very plentiful orders, had
not Jane, though with some difficulty, persuaded her to wait till her
father was at leisure to be consulted. One day's delay, she observed,
would be of small importance; and her mother was too happy to be quite
so obstinate as usual. Other schemes, too, came into her head.

“I will go to Meryton,” said she, “as soon as I am dressed, and tell the
good, good news to my sister Philips. And as I come back, I can call
on Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long. Kitty, run down and order the carriage.
An airing would do me a great deal of good, I am sure. Girls, can I do
anything for you in Meryton? Oh! Here comes Hill! My dear Hill, have you
heard the good news? Miss Lydia is going to be married; and you shall
all have a bowl of punch to make merry at her wedding.”

Mrs. Hill began instantly to express her joy. Elizabeth received her
congratulations amongst the rest, and then, sick of this folly, took
refuge in her own room, that she might think with freedom.

Poor Lydia's situation must, at best, be bad enough; but that it was
no worse, she had need to be thankful. She felt it so; and though, in
looking forward, neither rational happiness nor worldly prosperity could
be justly expected for her sister, in looking back to what they had
feared, only two hours ago, she felt all the advantages of what they had
gained.



Chapter 50


Mr. Bennet had very often wished before this period of his life that,
instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum for
the better provision of his children, and of his wife, if she survived
him. He now wished it more than ever. Had he done his duty in that
respect, Lydia need not have been indebted to her uncle for whatever
of honour or credit could now be purchased for her. The satisfaction of
prevailing on one of the most worthless young men in Great Britain to be
her husband might then have rested in its proper place.

He was seriously concerned that a cause of so little advantage to anyone
should be forwarded at the sole expense of his brother-in-law, and he
was determined, if possible, to find out the extent of his assistance,
and to discharge the obligation as soon as he could.

When first Mr. Bennet had married, economy was held to be perfectly
useless, for, of course, they were to have a son. The son was to join
in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should be of age, and the widow
and younger children would by that means be provided for. Five daughters
successively entered the world, but yet the son was to come; and Mrs.
Bennet, for many years after Lydia's birth, had been certain that he
would. This event had at last been despaired of, but it was then
too late to be saving. Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy, and her
husband's love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their
income.

Five thousand pounds was settled by marriage articles on Mrs. Bennet and
the children. But in what proportions it should be divided amongst the
latter depended on the will of the parents. This was one point, with
regard to Lydia, at least, which was now to be settled, and Mr. Bennet
could have no hesitation in acceding to the proposal before him. In
terms of grateful acknowledgment for the kindness of his brother,
though expressed most concisely, he then delivered on paper his perfect
approbation of all that was done, and his willingness to fulfil the
engagements that had been made for him. He had never before supposed
that, could Wickham be prevailed on to marry his daughter, it would
be done with so little inconvenience to himself as by the present
arrangement. He would scarcely be ten pounds a year the loser by the
hundred that was to be paid them; for, what with her board and pocket
allowance, and the continual presents in money which passed to her
through her mother's hands, Lydia's expenses had been very little within
that sum.

That it would be done with such trifling exertion on his side, too, was
another very welcome surprise; for his wish at present was to have as
little trouble in the business as possible. When the first transports
of rage which had produced his activity in seeking her were over, he
naturally returned to all his former indolence. His letter was soon
dispatched; for, though dilatory in undertaking business, he was quick
in its execution. He begged to know further particulars of what he
was indebted to his brother, but was too angry with Lydia to send any
message to her.

The good news spread quickly through the house, and with proportionate
speed through the neighbourhood. It was borne in the latter with decent
philosophy. To be sure, it would have been more for the advantage
of conversation had Miss Lydia Bennet come upon the town; or, as the
happiest alternative, been secluded from the world, in some distant
farmhouse. But there was much to be talked of in marrying her; and the
good-natured wishes for her well-doing which had proceeded before from
all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton lost but a little of their spirit
in this change of circumstances, because with such an husband her misery
was considered certain.

It was a fortnight since Mrs. Bennet had been downstairs; but on this
happy day she again took her seat at the head of her table, and in
spirits oppressively high. No sentiment of shame gave a damp to her
triumph. The marriage of a daughter, which had been the first object
of her wishes since Jane was sixteen, was now on the point of
accomplishment, and her thoughts and her words ran wholly on those
attendants of elegant nuptials, fine muslins, new carriages, and
servants. She was busily searching through the neighbourhood for a
proper situation for her daughter, and, without knowing or considering
what their income might be, rejected many as deficient in size and
importance.

“Haye Park might do,” said she, “if the Gouldings could quit it--or the
great house at Stoke, if the drawing-room were larger; but Ashworth is
too far off! I could not bear to have her ten miles from me; and as for
Pulvis Lodge, the attics are dreadful.”

Her husband allowed her to talk on without interruption while the
servants remained. But when they had withdrawn, he said to her: “Mrs.
Bennet, before you take any or all of these houses for your son and
daughter, let us come to a right understanding. Into _one_ house in this
neighbourhood they shall never have admittance. I will not encourage the
impudence of either, by receiving them at Longbourn.”

A long dispute followed this declaration; but Mr. Bennet was firm. It
soon led to another; and Mrs. Bennet found, with amazement and horror,
that her husband would not advance a guinea to buy clothes for his
daughter. He protested that she should receive from him no mark of
affection whatever on the occasion. Mrs. Bennet could hardly comprehend
it. That his anger could be carried to such a point of inconceivable
resentment as to refuse his daughter a privilege without which her
marriage would scarcely seem valid, exceeded all she could believe
possible. She was more alive to the disgrace which her want of new
clothes must reflect on her daughter's nuptials, than to any sense of
shame at her eloping and living with Wickham a fortnight before they
took place.

Elizabeth was now most heartily sorry that she had, from the distress of
the moment, been led to make Mr. Darcy acquainted with their fears for
her sister; for since her marriage would so shortly give the
proper termination to the elopement, they might hope to conceal its
unfavourable beginning from all those who were not immediately on the
spot.

She had no fear of its spreading farther through his means. There were
few people on whose secrecy she would have more confidently depended;
but, at the same time, there was no one whose knowledge of a sister's
frailty would have mortified her so much--not, however, from any fear
of disadvantage from it individually to herself, for, at any rate,
there seemed a gulf impassable between them. Had Lydia's marriage been
concluded on the most honourable terms, it was not to be supposed that
Mr. Darcy would connect himself with a family where, to every other
objection, would now be added an alliance and relationship of the
nearest kind with a man whom he so justly scorned.

From such a connection she could not wonder that he would shrink. The
wish of procuring her regard, which she had assured herself of his
feeling in Derbyshire, could not in rational expectation survive such a
blow as this. She was humbled, she was grieved; she repented, though she
hardly knew of what. She became jealous of his esteem, when she could no
longer hope to be benefited by it. She wanted to hear of him, when there
seemed the least chance of gaining intelligence. She was convinced that
she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they
should meet.

What a triumph for him, as she often thought, could he know that the
proposals which she had proudly spurned only four months ago, would now
have been most gladly and gratefully received! He was as generous, she
doubted not, as the most generous of his sex; but while he was mortal,
there must be a triumph.

She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in
disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and
temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It
was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease
and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved;
and from his judgement, information, and knowledge of the world, she
must have received benefit of greater importance.

But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude what
connubial felicity really was. An union of a different tendency, and
precluding the possibility of the other, was soon to be formed in their
family.

How Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable independence,
she could not imagine. But how little of permanent happiness could
belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions
were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture.

                          * * * * *

Mr. Gardiner soon wrote again to his brother. To Mr. Bennet's
acknowledgments he briefly replied, with assurance of his eagerness to
promote the welfare of any of his family; and concluded with entreaties
that the subject might never be mentioned to him again. The principal
purport of his letter was to inform them that Mr. Wickham had resolved
on quitting the militia.

“It was greatly my wish that he should do so,” he added, “as soon as
his marriage was fixed on. And I think you will agree with me, in
considering the removal from that corps as highly advisable, both on
his account and my niece's. It is Mr. Wickham's intention to go into
the regulars; and among his former friends, there are still some who
are able and willing to assist him in the army. He has the promise of an
ensigncy in General ----'s regiment, now quartered in the North. It
is an advantage to have it so far from this part of the kingdom. He
promises fairly; and I hope among different people, where they may each
have a character to preserve, they will both be more prudent. I have
written to Colonel Forster, to inform him of our present arrangements,
and to request that he will satisfy the various creditors of Mr. Wickham
in and near Brighton, with assurances of speedy payment, for which I
have pledged myself. And will you give yourself the trouble of carrying
similar assurances to his creditors in Meryton, of whom I shall subjoin
a list according to his information? He has given in all his debts; I
hope at least he has not deceived us. Haggerston has our directions,
and all will be completed in a week. They will then join his regiment,
unless they are first invited to Longbourn; and I understand from Mrs.
Gardiner, that my niece is very desirous of seeing you all before she
leaves the South. She is well, and begs to be dutifully remembered to
you and her mother.--Yours, etc.,

“E. GARDINER.”

Mr. Bennet and his daughters saw all the advantages of Wickham's removal
from the ----shire as clearly as Mr. Gardiner could do. But Mrs. Bennet
was not so well pleased with it. Lydia's being settled in the North,
just when she had expected most pleasure and pride in her company,
for she had by no means given up her plan of their residing in
Hertfordshire, was a severe disappointment; and, besides, it was such a
pity that Lydia should be taken from a regiment where she was acquainted
with everybody, and had so many favourites.

“She is so fond of Mrs. Forster,” said she, “it will be quite shocking
to send her away! And there are several of the young men, too, that she
likes very much. The officers may not be so pleasant in General ----'s
regiment.”

His daughter's request, for such it might be considered, of being
admitted into her family again before she set off for the North,
received at first an absolute negative. But Jane and Elizabeth,
who agreed in wishing, for the sake of their sister's feelings and
consequence, that she should be noticed on her marriage by her parents,
urged him so earnestly yet so rationally and so mildly, to receive her
and her husband at Longbourn, as soon as they were married, that he was
prevailed on to think as they thought, and act as they wished. And their
mother had the satisfaction of knowing that she would be able to show
her married daughter in the neighbourhood before she was banished to the
North. When Mr. Bennet wrote again to his brother, therefore, he sent
his permission for them to come; and it was settled, that as soon as
the ceremony was over, they should proceed to Longbourn. Elizabeth was
surprised, however, that Wickham should consent to such a scheme, and
had she consulted only her own inclination, any meeting with him would
have been the last object of her wishes.



Chapter 51


Their sister's wedding day arrived; and Jane and Elizabeth felt for her
probably more than she felt for herself. The carriage was sent to
meet them at ----, and they were to return in it by dinner-time. Their
arrival was dreaded by the elder Miss Bennets, and Jane more especially,
who gave Lydia the feelings which would have attended herself, had she
been the culprit, and was wretched in the thought of what her sister
must endure.

They came. The family were assembled in the breakfast room to receive
them. Smiles decked the face of Mrs. Bennet as the carriage drove up to
the door; her husband looked impenetrably grave; her daughters, alarmed,
anxious, uneasy.

Lydia's voice was heard in the vestibule; the door was thrown open, and
she ran into the room. Her mother stepped forwards, embraced her, and
welcomed her with rapture; gave her hand, with an affectionate smile,
to Wickham, who followed his lady; and wished them both joy with an
alacrity which shewed no doubt of their happiness.

Their reception from Mr. Bennet, to whom they then turned, was not quite
so cordial. His countenance rather gained in austerity; and he scarcely
opened his lips. The easy assurance of the young couple, indeed, was
enough to provoke him. Elizabeth was disgusted, and even Miss Bennet
was shocked. Lydia was Lydia still; untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy,
and fearless. She turned from sister to sister, demanding their
congratulations; and when at length they all sat down, looked eagerly
round the room, took notice of some little alteration in it, and
observed, with a laugh, that it was a great while since she had been
there.

Wickham was not at all more distressed than herself, but his manners
were always so pleasing, that had his character and his marriage been
exactly what they ought, his smiles and his easy address, while he
claimed their relationship, would have delighted them all. Elizabeth had
not before believed him quite equal to such assurance; but she sat down,
resolving within herself to draw no limits in future to the impudence
of an impudent man. She blushed, and Jane blushed; but the cheeks of the
two who caused their confusion suffered no variation of colour.

There was no want of discourse. The bride and her mother could neither
of them talk fast enough; and Wickham, who happened to sit near
Elizabeth, began inquiring after his acquaintance in that neighbourhood,
with a good humoured ease which she felt very unable to equal in her
replies. They seemed each of them to have the happiest memories in the
world. Nothing of the past was recollected with pain; and Lydia led
voluntarily to subjects which her sisters would not have alluded to for
the world.

“Only think of its being three months,” she cried, “since I went away;
it seems but a fortnight I declare; and yet there have been things
enough happened in the time. Good gracious! when I went away, I am sure
I had no more idea of being married till I came back again! though I
thought it would be very good fun if I was.”

Her father lifted up his eyes. Jane was distressed. Elizabeth looked
expressively at Lydia; but she, who never heard nor saw anything of
which she chose to be insensible, gaily continued, “Oh! mamma, do the
people hereabouts know I am married to-day? I was afraid they might not;
and we overtook William Goulding in his curricle, so I was determined he
should know it, and so I let down the side-glass next to him, and took
off my glove, and let my hand just rest upon the window frame, so that
he might see the ring, and then I bowed and smiled like anything.”

Elizabeth could bear it no longer. She got up, and ran out of the room;
and returned no more, till she heard them passing through the hall to
the dining parlour. She then joined them soon enough to see Lydia, with
anxious parade, walk up to her mother's right hand, and hear her say
to her eldest sister, “Ah! Jane, I take your place now, and you must go
lower, because I am a married woman.”

It was not to be supposed that time would give Lydia that embarrassment
from which she had been so wholly free at first. Her ease and good
spirits increased. She longed to see Mrs. Phillips, the Lucases, and
all their other neighbours, and to hear herself called “Mrs. Wickham”
 by each of them; and in the mean time, she went after dinner to show her
ring, and boast of being married, to Mrs. Hill and the two housemaids.

“Well, mamma,” said she, when they were all returned to the breakfast
room, “and what do you think of my husband? Is not he a charming man? I
am sure my sisters must all envy me. I only hope they may have half
my good luck. They must all go to Brighton. That is the place to get
husbands. What a pity it is, mamma, we did not all go.”

“Very true; and if I had my will, we should. But my dear Lydia, I don't
at all like your going such a way off. Must it be so?”

“Oh, lord! yes;--there is nothing in that. I shall like it of all
things. You and papa, and my sisters, must come down and see us. We
shall be at Newcastle all the winter, and I dare say there will be some
balls, and I will take care to get good partners for them all.”

“I should like it beyond anything!” said her mother.

“And then when you go away, you may leave one or two of my sisters
behind you; and I dare say I shall get husbands for them before the
winter is over.”

“I thank you for my share of the favour,” said Elizabeth; “but I do not
particularly like your way of getting husbands.”

Their visitors were not to remain above ten days with them. Mr. Wickham
had received his commission before he left London, and he was to join
his regiment at the end of a fortnight.

No one but Mrs. Bennet regretted that their stay would be so short; and
she made the most of the time by visiting about with her daughter, and
having very frequent parties at home. These parties were acceptable to
all; to avoid a family circle was even more desirable to such as did
think, than such as did not.

Wickham's affection for Lydia was just what Elizabeth had expected
to find it; not equal to Lydia's for him. She had scarcely needed her
present observation to be satisfied, from the reason of things, that
their elopement had been brought on by the strength of her love, rather
than by his; and she would have wondered why, without violently caring
for her, he chose to elope with her at all, had she not felt certain
that his flight was rendered necessary by distress of circumstances; and
if that were the case, he was not the young man to resist an opportunity
of having a companion.

Lydia was exceedingly fond of him. He was her dear Wickham on every
occasion; no one was to be put in competition with him. He did every
thing best in the world; and she was sure he would kill more birds on
the first of September, than any body else in the country.

One morning, soon after their arrival, as she was sitting with her two
elder sisters, she said to Elizabeth:

“Lizzy, I never gave _you_ an account of my wedding, I believe. You
were not by, when I told mamma and the others all about it. Are not you
curious to hear how it was managed?”

“No really,” replied Elizabeth; “I think there cannot be too little said
on the subject.”

“La! You are so strange! But I must tell you how it went off. We were
married, you know, at St. Clement's, because Wickham's lodgings were in
that parish. And it was settled that we should all be there by eleven
o'clock. My uncle and aunt and I were to go together; and the others
were to meet us at the church. Well, Monday morning came, and I was in
such a fuss! I was so afraid, you know, that something would happen to
put it off, and then I should have gone quite distracted. And there was
my aunt, all the time I was dressing, preaching and talking away just as
if she was reading a sermon. However, I did not hear above one word in
ten, for I was thinking, you may suppose, of my dear Wickham. I longed
to know whether he would be married in his blue coat.”

“Well, and so we breakfasted at ten as usual; I thought it would never
be over; for, by the bye, you are to understand, that my uncle and aunt
were horrid unpleasant all the time I was with them. If you'll believe
me, I did not once put my foot out of doors, though I was there a
fortnight. Not one party, or scheme, or anything. To be sure London was
rather thin, but, however, the Little Theatre was open. Well, and so
just as the carriage came to the door, my uncle was called away upon
business to that horrid man Mr. Stone. And then, you know, when once
they get together, there is no end of it. Well, I was so frightened I
did not know what to do, for my uncle was to give me away; and if we
were beyond the hour, we could not be married all day. But, luckily, he
came back again in ten minutes' time, and then we all set out. However,
I recollected afterwards that if he had been prevented going, the
wedding need not be put off, for Mr. Darcy might have done as well.”

“Mr. Darcy!” repeated Elizabeth, in utter amazement.

“Oh, yes!--he was to come there with Wickham, you know. But gracious
me! I quite forgot! I ought not to have said a word about it. I promised
them so faithfully! What will Wickham say? It was to be such a secret!”

“If it was to be secret,” said Jane, “say not another word on the
subject. You may depend upon my seeking no further.”

“Oh! certainly,” said Elizabeth, though burning with curiosity; “we will
ask you no questions.”

“Thank you,” said Lydia, “for if you did, I should certainly tell you
all, and then Wickham would be angry.”

On such encouragement to ask, Elizabeth was forced to put it out of her
power, by running away.

But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible; or at least
it was impossible not to try for information. Mr. Darcy had been at
her sister's wedding. It was exactly a scene, and exactly among people,
where he had apparently least to do, and least temptation to go.
Conjectures as to the meaning of it, rapid and wild, hurried into her
brain; but she was satisfied with none. Those that best pleased her, as
placing his conduct in the noblest light, seemed most improbable. She
could not bear such suspense; and hastily seizing a sheet of paper,
wrote a short letter to her aunt, to request an explanation of what
Lydia had dropt, if it were compatible with the secrecy which had been
intended.

“You may readily comprehend,” she added, “what my curiosity must be
to know how a person unconnected with any of us, and (comparatively
speaking) a stranger to our family, should have been amongst you at such
a time. Pray write instantly, and let me understand it--unless it is,
for very cogent reasons, to remain in the secrecy which Lydia seems
to think necessary; and then I must endeavour to be satisfied with
ignorance.”

“Not that I _shall_, though,” she added to herself, as she finished
the letter; “and my dear aunt, if you do not tell me in an honourable
manner, I shall certainly be reduced to tricks and stratagems to find it
out.”

Jane's delicate sense of honour would not allow her to speak to
Elizabeth privately of what Lydia had let fall; Elizabeth was glad
of it;--till it appeared whether her inquiries would receive any
satisfaction, she had rather be without a confidante.



Chapter 52


Elizabeth had the satisfaction of receiving an answer to her letter as
soon as she possibly could. She was no sooner in possession of it
than, hurrying into the little copse, where she was least likely to
be interrupted, she sat down on one of the benches and prepared to
be happy; for the length of the letter convinced her that it did not
contain a denial.

“Gracechurch street, Sept. 6.

“MY DEAR NIECE,

“I have just received your letter, and shall devote this whole morning
to answering it, as I foresee that a _little_ writing will not comprise
what I have to tell you. I must confess myself surprised by your
application; I did not expect it from _you_. Don't think me angry,
however, for I only mean to let you know that I had not imagined such
inquiries to be necessary on _your_ side. If you do not choose to
understand me, forgive my impertinence. Your uncle is as much surprised
as I am--and nothing but the belief of your being a party concerned
would have allowed him to act as he has done. But if you are really
innocent and ignorant, I must be more explicit.

“On the very day of my coming home from Longbourn, your uncle had a most
unexpected visitor. Mr. Darcy called, and was shut up with him several
hours. It was all over before I arrived; so my curiosity was not so
dreadfully racked as _yours_ seems to have been. He came to tell Mr.
Gardiner that he had found out where your sister and Mr. Wickham were,
and that he had seen and talked with them both; Wickham repeatedly,
Lydia once. From what I can collect, he left Derbyshire only one day
after ourselves, and came to town with the resolution of hunting for
them. The motive professed was his conviction of its being owing to
himself that Wickham's worthlessness had not been so well known as to
make it impossible for any young woman of character to love or confide
in him. He generously imputed the whole to his mistaken pride, and
confessed that he had before thought it beneath him to lay his private
actions open to the world. His character was to speak for itself. He
called it, therefore, his duty to step forward, and endeavour to remedy
an evil which had been brought on by himself. If he _had another_
motive, I am sure it would never disgrace him. He had been some days
in town, before he was able to discover them; but he had something to
direct his search, which was more than _we_ had; and the consciousness
of this was another reason for his resolving to follow us.

“There is a lady, it seems, a Mrs. Younge, who was some time ago
governess to Miss Darcy, and was dismissed from her charge on some cause
of disapprobation, though he did not say what. She then took a large
house in Edward-street, and has since maintained herself by letting
lodgings. This Mrs. Younge was, he knew, intimately acquainted with
Wickham; and he went to her for intelligence of him as soon as he got to
town. But it was two or three days before he could get from her what he
wanted. She would not betray her trust, I suppose, without bribery and
corruption, for she really did know where her friend was to be found.
Wickham indeed had gone to her on their first arrival in London, and had
she been able to receive them into her house, they would have taken up
their abode with her. At length, however, our kind friend procured the
wished-for direction. They were in ---- street. He saw Wickham, and
afterwards insisted on seeing Lydia. His first object with her, he
acknowledged, had been to persuade her to quit her present disgraceful
situation, and return to her friends as soon as they could be prevailed
on to receive her, offering his assistance, as far as it would go. But
he found Lydia absolutely resolved on remaining where she was. She cared
for none of her friends; she wanted no help of his; she would not hear
of leaving Wickham. She was sure they should be married some time or
other, and it did not much signify when. Since such were her feelings,
it only remained, he thought, to secure and expedite a marriage, which,
in his very first conversation with Wickham, he easily learnt had never
been _his_ design. He confessed himself obliged to leave the regiment,
on account of some debts of honour, which were very pressing; and
scrupled not to lay all the ill-consequences of Lydia's flight on her
own folly alone. He meant to resign his commission immediately; and as
to his future situation, he could conjecture very little about it. He
must go somewhere, but he did not know where, and he knew he should have
nothing to live on.

“Mr. Darcy asked him why he had not married your sister at once. Though
Mr. Bennet was not imagined to be very rich, he would have been able
to do something for him, and his situation must have been benefited by
marriage. But he found, in reply to this question, that Wickham still
cherished the hope of more effectually making his fortune by marriage in
some other country. Under such circumstances, however, he was not likely
to be proof against the temptation of immediate relief.

“They met several times, for there was much to be discussed. Wickham of
course wanted more than he could get; but at length was reduced to be
reasonable.

“Every thing being settled between _them_, Mr. Darcy's next step was to
make your uncle acquainted with it, and he first called in Gracechurch
street the evening before I came home. But Mr. Gardiner could not be
seen, and Mr. Darcy found, on further inquiry, that your father was
still with him, but would quit town the next morning. He did not judge
your father to be a person whom he could so properly consult as your
uncle, and therefore readily postponed seeing him till after the
departure of the former. He did not leave his name, and till the next
day it was only known that a gentleman had called on business.

“On Saturday he came again. Your father was gone, your uncle at home,
and, as I said before, they had a great deal of talk together.

“They met again on Sunday, and then _I_ saw him too. It was not all
settled before Monday: as soon as it was, the express was sent off to
Longbourn. But our visitor was very obstinate. I fancy, Lizzy, that
obstinacy is the real defect of his character, after all. He has been
accused of many faults at different times, but _this_ is the true one.
Nothing was to be done that he did not do himself; though I am sure (and
I do not speak it to be thanked, therefore say nothing about it), your
uncle would most readily have settled the whole.

“They battled it together for a long time, which was more than either
the gentleman or lady concerned in it deserved. But at last your uncle
was forced to yield, and instead of being allowed to be of use to his
niece, was forced to put up with only having the probable credit of it,
which went sorely against the grain; and I really believe your letter
this morning gave him great pleasure, because it required an explanation
that would rob him of his borrowed feathers, and give the praise where
it was due. But, Lizzy, this must go no farther than yourself, or Jane
at most.

“You know pretty well, I suppose, what has been done for the young
people. His debts are to be paid, amounting, I believe, to considerably
more than a thousand pounds, another thousand in addition to her own
settled upon _her_, and his commission purchased. The reason why all
this was to be done by him alone, was such as I have given above. It
was owing to him, to his reserve and want of proper consideration, that
Wickham's character had been so misunderstood, and consequently that he
had been received and noticed as he was. Perhaps there was some truth
in _this_; though I doubt whether _his_ reserve, or _anybody's_ reserve,
can be answerable for the event. But in spite of all this fine talking,
my dear Lizzy, you may rest perfectly assured that your uncle would
never have yielded, if we had not given him credit for _another
interest_ in the affair.

“When all this was resolved on, he returned again to his friends, who
were still staying at Pemberley; but it was agreed that he should be in
London once more when the wedding took place, and all money matters were
then to receive the last finish.

“I believe I have now told you every thing. It is a relation which
you tell me is to give you great surprise; I hope at least it will not
afford you any displeasure. Lydia came to us; and Wickham had constant
admission to the house. _He_ was exactly what he had been, when I
knew him in Hertfordshire; but I would not tell you how little I was
satisfied with her behaviour while she staid with us, if I had not
perceived, by Jane's letter last Wednesday, that her conduct on coming
home was exactly of a piece with it, and therefore what I now tell
you can give you no fresh pain. I talked to her repeatedly in the most
serious manner, representing to her all the wickedness of what she had
done, and all the unhappiness she had brought on her family. If she
heard me, it was by good luck, for I am sure she did not listen. I was
sometimes quite provoked, but then I recollected my dear Elizabeth and
Jane, and for their sakes had patience with her.

“Mr. Darcy was punctual in his return, and as Lydia informed you,
attended the wedding. He dined with us the next day, and was to leave
town again on Wednesday or Thursday. Will you be very angry with me, my
dear Lizzy, if I take this opportunity of saying (what I was never bold
enough to say before) how much I like him. His behaviour to us has,
in every respect, been as pleasing as when we were in Derbyshire. His
understanding and opinions all please me; he wants nothing but a little
more liveliness, and _that_, if he marry _prudently_, his wife may teach
him. I thought him very sly;--he hardly ever mentioned your name. But
slyness seems the fashion.

“Pray forgive me if I have been very presuming, or at least do not
punish me so far as to exclude me from P. I shall never be quite happy
till I have been all round the park. A low phaeton, with a nice little
pair of ponies, would be the very thing.

“But I must write no more. The children have been wanting me this half
hour.

“Yours, very sincerely,

“M. GARDINER.”

The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of spirits,
in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure or pain bore the
greatest share. The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had
produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's
match, which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too
great to be probable, and at the same time dreaded to be just, from the
pain of obligation, were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true!
He had followed them purposely to town, he had taken on himself all
the trouble and mortification attendant on such a research; in which
supplication had been necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and
despise, and where he was reduced to meet, frequently meet, reason
with, persuade, and finally bribe, the man whom he always most wished to
avoid, and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had
done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her
heart did whisper that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly
checked by other considerations, and she soon felt that even her vanity
was insufficient, when required to depend on his affection for her--for
a woman who had already refused him--as able to overcome a sentiment so
natural as abhorrence against relationship with Wickham. Brother-in-law
of Wickham! Every kind of pride must revolt from the connection. He had,
to be sure, done much. She was ashamed to think how much. But he had
given a reason for his interference, which asked no extraordinary
stretch of belief. It was reasonable that he should feel he had been
wrong; he had liberality, and he had the means of exercising it; and
though she would not place herself as his principal inducement, she
could, perhaps, believe that remaining partiality for her might assist
his endeavours in a cause where her peace of mind must be materially
concerned. It was painful, exceedingly painful, to know that they were
under obligations to a person who could never receive a return. They
owed the restoration of Lydia, her character, every thing, to him. Oh!
how heartily did she grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever
encouraged, every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him. For
herself she was humbled; but she was proud of him. Proud that in a cause
of compassion and honour, he had been able to get the better of himself.
She read over her aunt's commendation of him again and again. It
was hardly enough; but it pleased her. She was even sensible of some
pleasure, though mixed with regret, on finding how steadfastly both she
and her uncle had been persuaded that affection and confidence subsisted
between Mr. Darcy and herself.

She was roused from her seat, and her reflections, by some one's
approach; and before she could strike into another path, she was
overtaken by Wickham.

“I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble, my dear sister?” said he,
as he joined her.

“You certainly do,” she replied with a smile; “but it does not follow
that the interruption must be unwelcome.”

“I should be sorry indeed, if it were. We were always good friends; and
now we are better.”

“True. Are the others coming out?”

“I do not know. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia are going in the carriage to
Meryton. And so, my dear sister, I find, from our uncle and aunt, that
you have actually seen Pemberley.”

She replied in the affirmative.

“I almost envy you the pleasure, and yet I believe it would be too much
for me, or else I could take it in my way to Newcastle. And you saw the
old housekeeper, I suppose? Poor Reynolds, she was always very fond of
me. But of course she did not mention my name to you.”

“Yes, she did.”

“And what did she say?”

“That you were gone into the army, and she was afraid had--not turned
out well. At such a distance as _that_, you know, things are strangely
misrepresented.”

“Certainly,” he replied, biting his lips. Elizabeth hoped she had
silenced him; but he soon afterwards said:

“I was surprised to see Darcy in town last month. We passed each other
several times. I wonder what he can be doing there.”

“Perhaps preparing for his marriage with Miss de Bourgh,” said
Elizabeth. “It must be something particular, to take him there at this
time of year.”

“Undoubtedly. Did you see him while you were at Lambton? I thought I
understood from the Gardiners that you had.”

“Yes; he introduced us to his sister.”

“And do you like her?”

“Very much.”

“I have heard, indeed, that she is uncommonly improved within this year
or two. When I last saw her, she was not very promising. I am very glad
you liked her. I hope she will turn out well.”

“I dare say she will; she has got over the most trying age.”

“Did you go by the village of Kympton?”

“I do not recollect that we did.”

“I mention it, because it is the living which I ought to have had. A
most delightful place!--Excellent Parsonage House! It would have suited
me in every respect.”

“How should you have liked making sermons?”

“Exceedingly well. I should have considered it as part of my duty,
and the exertion would soon have been nothing. One ought not to
repine;--but, to be sure, it would have been such a thing for me! The
quiet, the retirement of such a life would have answered all my ideas
of happiness! But it was not to be. Did you ever hear Darcy mention the
circumstance, when you were in Kent?”

“I have heard from authority, which I thought _as good_, that it was
left you conditionally only, and at the will of the present patron.”

“You have. Yes, there was something in _that_; I told you so from the
first, you may remember.”

“I _did_ hear, too, that there was a time, when sermon-making was not
so palatable to you as it seems to be at present; that you actually
declared your resolution of never taking orders, and that the business
had been compromised accordingly.”

“You did! and it was not wholly without foundation. You may remember
what I told you on that point, when first we talked of it.”

They were now almost at the door of the house, for she had walked fast
to get rid of him; and unwilling, for her sister's sake, to provoke him,
she only said in reply, with a good-humoured smile:

“Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister, you know. Do not let
us quarrel about the past. In future, I hope we shall be always of one
mind.”

She held out her hand; he kissed it with affectionate gallantry, though
he hardly knew how to look, and they entered the house.



Chapter 53


Mr. Wickham was so perfectly satisfied with this conversation that he
never again distressed himself, or provoked his dear sister Elizabeth,
by introducing the subject of it; and she was pleased to find that she
had said enough to keep him quiet.

The day of his and Lydia's departure soon came, and Mrs. Bennet was
forced to submit to a separation, which, as her husband by no means
entered into her scheme of their all going to Newcastle, was likely to
continue at least a twelvemonth.

“Oh! my dear Lydia,” she cried, “when shall we meet again?”

“Oh, lord! I don't know. Not these two or three years, perhaps.”

“Write to me very often, my dear.”

“As often as I can. But you know married women have never much time for
writing. My sisters may write to _me_. They will have nothing else to
do.”

Mr. Wickham's adieus were much more affectionate than his wife's. He
smiled, looked handsome, and said many pretty things.

“He is as fine a fellow,” said Mr. Bennet, as soon as they were out of
the house, “as ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and makes love to
us all. I am prodigiously proud of him. I defy even Sir William Lucas
himself to produce a more valuable son-in-law.”

The loss of her daughter made Mrs. Bennet very dull for several days.

“I often think,” said she, “that there is nothing so bad as parting with
one's friends. One seems so forlorn without them.”

“This is the consequence, you see, Madam, of marrying a daughter,” said
Elizabeth. “It must make you better satisfied that your other four are
single.”

“It is no such thing. Lydia does not leave me because she is married,
but only because her husband's regiment happens to be so far off. If
that had been nearer, she would not have gone so soon.”

But the spiritless condition which this event threw her into was shortly
relieved, and her mind opened again to the agitation of hope, by an
article of news which then began to be in circulation. The housekeeper
at Netherfield had received orders to prepare for the arrival of her
master, who was coming down in a day or two, to shoot there for several
weeks. Mrs. Bennet was quite in the fidgets. She looked at Jane, and
smiled and shook her head by turns.

“Well, well, and so Mr. Bingley is coming down, sister,” (for Mrs.
Phillips first brought her the news). “Well, so much the better. Not
that I care about it, though. He is nothing to us, you know, and I am
sure _I_ never want to see him again. But, however, he is very welcome
to come to Netherfield, if he likes it. And who knows what _may_ happen?
But that is nothing to us. You know, sister, we agreed long ago never to
mention a word about it. And so, is it quite certain he is coming?”

“You may depend on it,” replied the other, “for Mrs. Nicholls was in
Meryton last night; I saw her passing by, and went out myself on purpose
to know the truth of it; and she told me that it was certain true. He
comes down on Thursday at the latest, very likely on Wednesday. She was
going to the butcher's, she told me, on purpose to order in some meat on
Wednesday, and she has got three couple of ducks just fit to be killed.”

Miss Bennet had not been able to hear of his coming without changing
colour. It was many months since she had mentioned his name to
Elizabeth; but now, as soon as they were alone together, she said:

“I saw you look at me to-day, Lizzy, when my aunt told us of the present
report; and I know I appeared distressed. But don't imagine it was from
any silly cause. I was only confused for the moment, because I felt that
I _should_ be looked at. I do assure you that the news does not affect
me either with pleasure or pain. I am glad of one thing, that he comes
alone; because we shall see the less of him. Not that I am afraid of
_myself_, but I dread other people's remarks.”

Elizabeth did not know what to make of it. Had she not seen him in
Derbyshire, she might have supposed him capable of coming there with no
other view than what was acknowledged; but she still thought him partial
to Jane, and she wavered as to the greater probability of his coming
there _with_ his friend's permission, or being bold enough to come
without it.

“Yet it is hard,” she sometimes thought, “that this poor man cannot
come to a house which he has legally hired, without raising all this
speculation! I _will_ leave him to himself.”

In spite of what her sister declared, and really believed to be her
feelings in the expectation of his arrival, Elizabeth could easily
perceive that her spirits were affected by it. They were more disturbed,
more unequal, than she had often seen them.

The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their parents,
about a twelvemonth ago, was now brought forward again.

“As soon as ever Mr. Bingley comes, my dear,” said Mrs. Bennet, “you
will wait on him of course.”

“No, no. You forced me into visiting him last year, and promised, if I
went to see him, he should marry one of my daughters. But it ended in
nothing, and I will not be sent on a fool's errand again.”

His wife represented to him how absolutely necessary such an attention
would be from all the neighbouring gentlemen, on his returning to
Netherfield.

“'Tis an etiquette I despise,” said he. “If he wants our society,
let him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not spend my hours
in running after my neighbours every time they go away and come back
again.”

“Well, all I know is, that it will be abominably rude if you do not wait
on him. But, however, that shan't prevent my asking him to dine here, I
am determined. We must have Mrs. Long and the Gouldings soon. That will
make thirteen with ourselves, so there will be just room at table for
him.”

Consoled by this resolution, she was the better able to bear her
husband's incivility; though it was very mortifying to know that her
neighbours might all see Mr. Bingley, in consequence of it, before
_they_ did. As the day of his arrival drew near,--

“I begin to be sorry that he comes at all,” said Jane to her sister. “It
would be nothing; I could see him with perfect indifference, but I can
hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well;
but she does not know, no one can know, how much I suffer from what she
says. Happy shall I be, when his stay at Netherfield is over!”

“I wish I could say anything to comfort you,” replied Elizabeth; “but it
is wholly out of my power. You must feel it; and the usual satisfaction
of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied me, because you have
always so much.”

Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants,
contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety
and fretfulness on her side might be as long as it could. She counted
the days that must intervene before their invitation could be sent;
hopeless of seeing him before. But on the third morning after his
arrival in Hertfordshire, she saw him, from her dressing-room window,
enter the paddock and ride towards the house.

Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane resolutely
kept her place at the table; but Elizabeth, to satisfy her mother, went
to the window--she looked,--she saw Mr. Darcy with him, and sat down
again by her sister.

“There is a gentleman with him, mamma,” said Kitty; “who can it be?”

“Some acquaintance or other, my dear, I suppose; I am sure I do not
know.”

“La!” replied Kitty, “it looks just like that man that used to be with
him before. Mr. what's-his-name. That tall, proud man.”

“Good gracious! Mr. Darcy!--and so it does, I vow. Well, any friend of
Mr. Bingley's will always be welcome here, to be sure; but else I must
say that I hate the very sight of him.”

Jane looked at Elizabeth with surprise and concern. She knew but little
of their meeting in Derbyshire, and therefore felt for the awkwardness
which must attend her sister, in seeing him almost for the first time
after receiving his explanatory letter. Both sisters were uncomfortable
enough. Each felt for the other, and of course for themselves; and their
mother talked on, of her dislike of Mr. Darcy, and her resolution to be
civil to him only as Mr. Bingley's friend, without being heard by either
of them. But Elizabeth had sources of uneasiness which could not be
suspected by Jane, to whom she had never yet had courage to shew Mrs.
Gardiner's letter, or to relate her own change of sentiment towards him.
To Jane, he could be only a man whose proposals she had refused,
and whose merit she had undervalued; but to her own more extensive
information, he was the person to whom the whole family were indebted
for the first of benefits, and whom she regarded herself with an
interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just as
what Jane felt for Bingley. Her astonishment at his coming--at his
coming to Netherfield, to Longbourn, and voluntarily seeking her again,
was almost equal to what she had known on first witnessing his altered
behaviour in Derbyshire.

The colour which had been driven from her face, returned for half a
minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight added lustre to
her eyes, as she thought for that space of time that his affection and
wishes must still be unshaken. But she would not be secure.

“Let me first see how he behaves,” said she; “it will then be early
enough for expectation.”

She sat intently at work, striving to be composed, and without daring to
lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them to the face of
her sister as the servant was approaching the door. Jane looked a little
paler than usual, but more sedate than Elizabeth had expected. On the
gentlemen's appearing, her colour increased; yet she received them with
tolerable ease, and with a propriety of behaviour equally free from any
symptom of resentment or any unnecessary complaisance.

Elizabeth said as little to either as civility would allow, and sat down
again to her work, with an eagerness which it did not often command. She
had ventured only one glance at Darcy. He looked serious, as usual; and,
she thought, more as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire, than as
she had seen him at Pemberley. But, perhaps he could not in her mother's
presence be what he was before her uncle and aunt. It was a painful, but
not an improbable, conjecture.

Bingley, she had likewise seen for an instant, and in that short period
saw him looking both pleased and embarrassed. He was received by Mrs.
Bennet with a degree of civility which made her two daughters ashamed,
especially when contrasted with the cold and ceremonious politeness of
her curtsey and address to his friend.

Elizabeth, particularly, who knew that her mother owed to the latter
the preservation of her favourite daughter from irremediable infamy,
was hurt and distressed to a most painful degree by a distinction so ill
applied.

Darcy, after inquiring of her how Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner did, a question
which she could not answer without confusion, said scarcely anything. He
was not seated by her; perhaps that was the reason of his silence; but
it had not been so in Derbyshire. There he had talked to her friends,
when he could not to herself. But now several minutes elapsed without
bringing the sound of his voice; and when occasionally, unable to resist
the impulse of curiosity, she raised her eyes to his face, she as often
found him looking at Jane as at herself, and frequently on no object but
the ground. More thoughtfulness and less anxiety to please, than when
they last met, were plainly expressed. She was disappointed, and angry
with herself for being so.

“Could I expect it to be otherwise!” said she. “Yet why did he come?”

She was in no humour for conversation with anyone but himself; and to
him she had hardly courage to speak.

She inquired after his sister, but could do no more.

“It is a long time, Mr. Bingley, since you went away,” said Mrs. Bennet.

He readily agreed to it.

“I began to be afraid you would never come back again. People _did_ say
you meant to quit the place entirely at Michaelmas; but, however, I hope
it is not true. A great many changes have happened in the neighbourhood,
since you went away. Miss Lucas is married and settled. And one of my
own daughters. I suppose you have heard of it; indeed, you must have
seen it in the papers. It was in The Times and The Courier, I know;
though it was not put in as it ought to be. It was only said, 'Lately,
George Wickham, Esq. to Miss Lydia Bennet,' without there being a
syllable said of her father, or the place where she lived, or anything.
It was my brother Gardiner's drawing up too, and I wonder how he came to
make such an awkward business of it. Did you see it?”

Bingley replied that he did, and made his congratulations. Elizabeth
dared not lift up her eyes. How Mr. Darcy looked, therefore, she could
not tell.

“It is a delightful thing, to be sure, to have a daughter well married,”
 continued her mother, “but at the same time, Mr. Bingley, it is very
hard to have her taken such a way from me. They are gone down to
Newcastle, a place quite northward, it seems, and there they are to stay
I do not know how long. His regiment is there; for I suppose you have
heard of his leaving the ----shire, and of his being gone into the
regulars. Thank Heaven! he has _some_ friends, though perhaps not so
many as he deserves.”

Elizabeth, who knew this to be levelled at Mr. Darcy, was in such
misery of shame, that she could hardly keep her seat. It drew from her,
however, the exertion of speaking, which nothing else had so effectually
done before; and she asked Bingley whether he meant to make any stay in
the country at present. A few weeks, he believed.

“When you have killed all your own birds, Mr. Bingley,” said her mother,
“I beg you will come here, and shoot as many as you please on Mr.
Bennet's manor. I am sure he will be vastly happy to oblige you, and
will save all the best of the covies for you.”

Elizabeth's misery increased, at such unnecessary, such officious
attention! Were the same fair prospect to arise at present as had
flattered them a year ago, every thing, she was persuaded, would be
hastening to the same vexatious conclusion. At that instant, she felt
that years of happiness could not make Jane or herself amends for
moments of such painful confusion.

“The first wish of my heart,” said she to herself, “is never more to
be in company with either of them. Their society can afford no pleasure
that will atone for such wretchedness as this! Let me never see either
one or the other again!”

Yet the misery, for which years of happiness were to offer no
compensation, received soon afterwards material relief, from observing
how much the beauty of her sister re-kindled the admiration of her
former lover. When first he came in, he had spoken to her but little;
but every five minutes seemed to be giving her more of his attention. He
found her as handsome as she had been last year; as good natured, and
as unaffected, though not quite so chatty. Jane was anxious that no
difference should be perceived in her at all, and was really persuaded
that she talked as much as ever. But her mind was so busily engaged,
that she did not always know when she was silent.

When the gentlemen rose to go away, Mrs. Bennet was mindful of her
intended civility, and they were invited and engaged to dine at
Longbourn in a few days time.

“You are quite a visit in my debt, Mr. Bingley,” she added, “for when
you went to town last winter, you promised to take a family dinner with
us, as soon as you returned. I have not forgot, you see; and I assure
you, I was very much disappointed that you did not come back and keep
your engagement.”

Bingley looked a little silly at this reflection, and said something of
his concern at having been prevented by business. They then went away.

Mrs. Bennet had been strongly inclined to ask them to stay and dine
there that day; but, though she always kept a very good table, she did
not think anything less than two courses could be good enough for a man
on whom she had such anxious designs, or satisfy the appetite and pride
of one who had ten thousand a year.



Chapter 54


As soon as they were gone, Elizabeth walked out to recover her spirits;
or in other words, to dwell without interruption on those subjects that
must deaden them more. Mr. Darcy's behaviour astonished and vexed her.

“Why, if he came only to be silent, grave, and indifferent,” said she,
“did he come at all?”

She could settle it in no way that gave her pleasure.

“He could be still amiable, still pleasing, to my uncle and aunt, when
he was in town; and why not to me? If he fears me, why come hither? If
he no longer cares for me, why silent? Teasing, teasing, man! I will
think no more about him.”

Her resolution was for a short time involuntarily kept by the approach
of her sister, who joined her with a cheerful look, which showed her
better satisfied with their visitors, than Elizabeth.

“Now,” said she, “that this first meeting is over, I feel perfectly
easy. I know my own strength, and I shall never be embarrassed again by
his coming. I am glad he dines here on Tuesday. It will then be publicly
seen that, on both sides, we meet only as common and indifferent
acquaintance.”

“Yes, very indifferent indeed,” said Elizabeth, laughingly. “Oh, Jane,
take care.”

“My dear Lizzy, you cannot think me so weak, as to be in danger now?”

“I think you are in very great danger of making him as much in love with
you as ever.”

                          * * * * *

They did not see the gentlemen again till Tuesday; and Mrs. Bennet, in
the meanwhile, was giving way to all the happy schemes, which the good
humour and common politeness of Bingley, in half an hour's visit, had
revived.

On Tuesday there was a large party assembled at Longbourn; and the two
who were most anxiously expected, to the credit of their punctuality
as sportsmen, were in very good time. When they repaired to the
dining-room, Elizabeth eagerly watched to see whether Bingley would take
the place, which, in all their former parties, had belonged to him, by
her sister. Her prudent mother, occupied by the same ideas, forbore
to invite him to sit by herself. On entering the room, he seemed to
hesitate; but Jane happened to look round, and happened to smile: it was
decided. He placed himself by her.

Elizabeth, with a triumphant sensation, looked towards his friend.
He bore it with noble indifference, and she would have imagined that
Bingley had received his sanction to be happy, had she not seen his eyes
likewise turned towards Mr. Darcy, with an expression of half-laughing
alarm.

His behaviour to her sister was such, during dinner time, as showed an
admiration of her, which, though more guarded than formerly, persuaded
Elizabeth, that if left wholly to himself, Jane's happiness, and his
own, would be speedily secured. Though she dared not depend upon the
consequence, she yet received pleasure from observing his behaviour. It
gave her all the animation that her spirits could boast; for she was in
no cheerful humour. Mr. Darcy was almost as far from her as the table
could divide them. He was on one side of her mother. She knew how little
such a situation would give pleasure to either, or make either appear to
advantage. She was not near enough to hear any of their discourse, but
she could see how seldom they spoke to each other, and how formal and
cold was their manner whenever they did. Her mother's ungraciousness,
made the sense of what they owed him more painful to Elizabeth's mind;
and she would, at times, have given anything to be privileged to tell
him that his kindness was neither unknown nor unfelt by the whole of the
family.

She was in hopes that the evening would afford some opportunity of
bringing them together; that the whole of the visit would not pass away
without enabling them to enter into something more of conversation than
the mere ceremonious salutation attending his entrance. Anxious
and uneasy, the period which passed in the drawing-room, before the
gentlemen came, was wearisome and dull to a degree that almost made her
uncivil. She looked forward to their entrance as the point on which all
her chance of pleasure for the evening must depend.

“If he does not come to me, _then_,” said she, “I shall give him up for
ever.”

The gentlemen came; and she thought he looked as if he would have
answered her hopes; but, alas! the ladies had crowded round the table,
where Miss Bennet was making tea, and Elizabeth pouring out the coffee,
in so close a confederacy that there was not a single vacancy near her
which would admit of a chair. And on the gentlemen's approaching, one of
the girls moved closer to her than ever, and said, in a whisper:

“The men shan't come and part us, I am determined. We want none of them;
do we?”

Darcy had walked away to another part of the room. She followed him with
her eyes, envied everyone to whom he spoke, had scarcely patience enough
to help anybody to coffee; and then was enraged against herself for
being so silly!

“A man who has once been refused! How could I ever be foolish enough to
expect a renewal of his love? Is there one among the sex, who would not
protest against such a weakness as a second proposal to the same woman?
There is no indignity so abhorrent to their feelings!”

She was a little revived, however, by his bringing back his coffee cup
himself; and she seized the opportunity of saying:

“Is your sister at Pemberley still?”

“Yes, she will remain there till Christmas.”

“And quite alone? Have all her friends left her?”

“Mrs. Annesley is with her. The others have been gone on to Scarborough,
these three weeks.”

She could think of nothing more to say; but if he wished to converse
with her, he might have better success. He stood by her, however, for
some minutes, in silence; and, at last, on the young lady's whispering
to Elizabeth again, he walked away.

When the tea-things were removed, and the card-tables placed, the ladies
all rose, and Elizabeth was then hoping to be soon joined by him,
when all her views were overthrown by seeing him fall a victim to her
mother's rapacity for whist players, and in a few moments after seated
with the rest of the party. She now lost every expectation of pleasure.
They were confined for the evening at different tables, and she had
nothing to hope, but that his eyes were so often turned towards her side
of the room, as to make him play as unsuccessfully as herself.

Mrs. Bennet had designed to keep the two Netherfield gentlemen to
supper; but their carriage was unluckily ordered before any of the
others, and she had no opportunity of detaining them.

“Well girls,” said she, as soon as they were left to themselves, “What
say you to the day? I think every thing has passed off uncommonly well,
I assure you. The dinner was as well dressed as any I ever saw. The
venison was roasted to a turn--and everybody said they never saw so
fat a haunch. The soup was fifty times better than what we had at the
Lucases' last week; and even Mr. Darcy acknowledged, that the partridges
were remarkably well done; and I suppose he has two or three French
cooks at least. And, my dear Jane, I never saw you look in greater
beauty. Mrs. Long said so too, for I asked her whether you did not. And
what do you think she said besides? 'Ah! Mrs. Bennet, we shall have her
at Netherfield at last.' She did indeed. I do think Mrs. Long is as good
a creature as ever lived--and her nieces are very pretty behaved girls,
and not at all handsome: I like them prodigiously.”

Mrs. Bennet, in short, was in very great spirits; she had seen enough of
Bingley's behaviour to Jane, to be convinced that she would get him at
last; and her expectations of advantage to her family, when in a happy
humour, were so far beyond reason, that she was quite disappointed at
not seeing him there again the next day, to make his proposals.

“It has been a very agreeable day,” said Miss Bennet to Elizabeth. “The
party seemed so well selected, so suitable one with the other. I hope we
may often meet again.”

Elizabeth smiled.

“Lizzy, you must not do so. You must not suspect me. It mortifies me.
I assure you that I have now learnt to enjoy his conversation as an
agreeable and sensible young man, without having a wish beyond it. I am
perfectly satisfied, from what his manners now are, that he never had
any design of engaging my affection. It is only that he is blessed
with greater sweetness of address, and a stronger desire of generally
pleasing, than any other man.”

“You are very cruel,” said her sister, “you will not let me smile, and
are provoking me to it every moment.”

“How hard it is in some cases to be believed!”

“And how impossible in others!”

“But why should you wish to persuade me that I feel more than I
acknowledge?”

“That is a question which I hardly know how to answer. We all love to
instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing. Forgive
me; and if you persist in indifference, do not make me your confidante.”



Chapter 55


A few days after this visit, Mr. Bingley called again, and alone. His
friend had left him that morning for London, but was to return home in
ten days time. He sat with them above an hour, and was in remarkably
good spirits. Mrs. Bennet invited him to dine with them; but, with many
expressions of concern, he confessed himself engaged elsewhere.

“Next time you call,” said she, “I hope we shall be more lucky.”

He should be particularly happy at any time, etc. etc.; and if she would
give him leave, would take an early opportunity of waiting on them.

“Can you come to-morrow?”

Yes, he had no engagement at all for to-morrow; and her invitation was
accepted with alacrity.

He came, and in such very good time that the ladies were none of them
dressed. In ran Mrs. Bennet to her daughter's room, in her dressing
gown, and with her hair half finished, crying out:

“My dear Jane, make haste and hurry down. He is come--Mr. Bingley is
come. He is, indeed. Make haste, make haste. Here, Sarah, come to Miss
Bennet this moment, and help her on with her gown. Never mind Miss
Lizzy's hair.”

“We will be down as soon as we can,” said Jane; “but I dare say Kitty is
forwarder than either of us, for she went up stairs half an hour ago.”

“Oh! hang Kitty! what has she to do with it? Come be quick, be quick!
Where is your sash, my dear?”

But when her mother was gone, Jane would not be prevailed on to go down
without one of her sisters.

The same anxiety to get them by themselves was visible again in the
evening. After tea, Mr. Bennet retired to the library, as was his
custom, and Mary went up stairs to her instrument. Two obstacles of
the five being thus removed, Mrs. Bennet sat looking and winking at
Elizabeth and Catherine for a considerable time, without making any
impression on them. Elizabeth would not observe her; and when at last
Kitty did, she very innocently said, “What is the matter mamma? What do
you keep winking at me for? What am I to do?”

“Nothing child, nothing. I did not wink at you.” She then sat still
five minutes longer; but unable to waste such a precious occasion, she
suddenly got up, and saying to Kitty, “Come here, my love, I want to
speak to you,” took her out of the room. Jane instantly gave a look
at Elizabeth which spoke her distress at such premeditation, and her
entreaty that _she_ would not give in to it. In a few minutes, Mrs.
Bennet half-opened the door and called out:

“Lizzy, my dear, I want to speak with you.”

Elizabeth was forced to go.

“We may as well leave them by themselves you know;” said her mother, as
soon as she was in the hall. “Kitty and I are going up stairs to sit in
my dressing-room.”

Elizabeth made no attempt to reason with her mother, but remained
quietly in the hall, till she and Kitty were out of sight, then returned
into the drawing-room.

Mrs. Bennet's schemes for this day were ineffectual. Bingley was every
thing that was charming, except the professed lover of her daughter. His
ease and cheerfulness rendered him a most agreeable addition to their
evening party; and he bore with the ill-judged officiousness of the
mother, and heard all her silly remarks with a forbearance and command
of countenance particularly grateful to the daughter.

He scarcely needed an invitation to stay supper; and before he went
away, an engagement was formed, chiefly through his own and Mrs.
Bennet's means, for his coming next morning to shoot with her husband.

After this day, Jane said no more of her indifference. Not a word passed
between the sisters concerning Bingley; but Elizabeth went to bed in
the happy belief that all must speedily be concluded, unless Mr. Darcy
returned within the stated time. Seriously, however, she felt tolerably
persuaded that all this must have taken place with that gentleman's
concurrence.

Bingley was punctual to his appointment; and he and Mr. Bennet spent
the morning together, as had been agreed on. The latter was much more
agreeable than his companion expected. There was nothing of presumption
or folly in Bingley that could provoke his ridicule, or disgust him into
silence; and he was more communicative, and less eccentric, than the
other had ever seen him. Bingley of course returned with him to dinner;
and in the evening Mrs. Bennet's invention was again at work to get
every body away from him and her daughter. Elizabeth, who had a letter
to write, went into the breakfast room for that purpose soon after tea;
for as the others were all going to sit down to cards, she could not be
wanted to counteract her mother's schemes.

But on returning to the drawing-room, when her letter was finished, she
saw, to her infinite surprise, there was reason to fear that her mother
had been too ingenious for her. On opening the door, she perceived her
sister and Bingley standing together over the hearth, as if engaged in
earnest conversation; and had this led to no suspicion, the faces of
both, as they hastily turned round and moved away from each other, would
have told it all. Their situation was awkward enough; but _hers_ she
thought was still worse. Not a syllable was uttered by either; and
Elizabeth was on the point of going away again, when Bingley, who as
well as the other had sat down, suddenly rose, and whispering a few
words to her sister, ran out of the room.

Jane could have no reserves from Elizabeth, where confidence would give
pleasure; and instantly embracing her, acknowledged, with the liveliest
emotion, that she was the happiest creature in the world.

“'Tis too much!” she added, “by far too much. I do not deserve it. Oh!
why is not everybody as happy?”

Elizabeth's congratulations were given with a sincerity, a warmth,
a delight, which words could but poorly express. Every sentence of
kindness was a fresh source of happiness to Jane. But she would not
allow herself to stay with her sister, or say half that remained to be
said for the present.

“I must go instantly to my mother;” she cried. “I would not on any
account trifle with her affectionate solicitude; or allow her to hear it
from anyone but myself. He is gone to my father already. Oh! Lizzy, to
know that what I have to relate will give such pleasure to all my dear
family! how shall I bear so much happiness!”

She then hastened away to her mother, who had purposely broken up the
card party, and was sitting up stairs with Kitty.

Elizabeth, who was left by herself, now smiled at the rapidity and ease
with which an affair was finally settled, that had given them so many
previous months of suspense and vexation.

“And this,” said she, “is the end of all his friend's anxious
circumspection! of all his sister's falsehood and contrivance! the
happiest, wisest, most reasonable end!”

In a few minutes she was joined by Bingley, whose conference with her
father had been short and to the purpose.

“Where is your sister?” said he hastily, as he opened the door.

“With my mother up stairs. She will be down in a moment, I dare say.”

He then shut the door, and, coming up to her, claimed the good wishes
and affection of a sister. Elizabeth honestly and heartily expressed
her delight in the prospect of their relationship. They shook hands with
great cordiality; and then, till her sister came down, she had to listen
to all he had to say of his own happiness, and of Jane's perfections;
and in spite of his being a lover, Elizabeth really believed all his
expectations of felicity to be rationally founded, because they had for
basis the excellent understanding, and super-excellent disposition of
Jane, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and
himself.

It was an evening of no common delight to them all; the satisfaction of
Miss Bennet's mind gave a glow of such sweet animation to her face, as
made her look handsomer than ever. Kitty simpered and smiled, and hoped
her turn was coming soon. Mrs. Bennet could not give her consent or
speak her approbation in terms warm enough to satisfy her feelings,
though she talked to Bingley of nothing else for half an hour; and when
Mr. Bennet joined them at supper, his voice and manner plainly showed
how really happy he was.

Not a word, however, passed his lips in allusion to it, till their
visitor took his leave for the night; but as soon as he was gone, he
turned to his daughter, and said:

“Jane, I congratulate you. You will be a very happy woman.”

Jane went to him instantly, kissed him, and thanked him for his
goodness.

“You are a good girl;” he replied, “and I have great pleasure in
thinking you will be so happily settled. I have not a doubt of your
doing very well together. Your tempers are by no means unlike. You are
each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so
easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will
always exceed your income.”

“I hope not so. Imprudence or thoughtlessness in money matters would be
unpardonable in me.”

“Exceed their income! My dear Mr. Bennet,” cried his wife, “what are you
talking of? Why, he has four or five thousand a year, and very likely
more.” Then addressing her daughter, “Oh! my dear, dear Jane, I am so
happy! I am sure I shan't get a wink of sleep all night. I knew how it
would be. I always said it must be so, at last. I was sure you could not
be so beautiful for nothing! I remember, as soon as ever I saw him, when
he first came into Hertfordshire last year, I thought how likely it was
that you should come together. Oh! he is the handsomest young man that
ever was seen!”

Wickham, Lydia, were all forgotten. Jane was beyond competition her
favourite child. At that moment, she cared for no other. Her younger
sisters soon began to make interest with her for objects of happiness
which she might in future be able to dispense.

Mary petitioned for the use of the library at Netherfield; and Kitty
begged very hard for a few balls there every winter.

Bingley, from this time, was of course a daily visitor at Longbourn;
coming frequently before breakfast, and always remaining till after
supper; unless when some barbarous neighbour, who could not be enough
detested, had given him an invitation to dinner which he thought himself
obliged to accept.

Elizabeth had now but little time for conversation with her sister; for
while he was present, Jane had no attention to bestow on anyone else;
but she found herself considerably useful to both of them in those hours
of separation that must sometimes occur. In the absence of Jane, he
always attached himself to Elizabeth, for the pleasure of talking of
her; and when Bingley was gone, Jane constantly sought the same means of
relief.

“He has made me so happy,” said she, one evening, “by telling me that he
was totally ignorant of my being in town last spring! I had not believed
it possible.”

“I suspected as much,” replied Elizabeth. “But how did he account for
it?”

“It must have been his sister's doing. They were certainly no friends to
his acquaintance with me, which I cannot wonder at, since he might have
chosen so much more advantageously in many respects. But when they see,
as I trust they will, that their brother is happy with me, they will
learn to be contented, and we shall be on good terms again; though we
can never be what we once were to each other.”

“That is the most unforgiving speech,” said Elizabeth, “that I ever
heard you utter. Good girl! It would vex me, indeed, to see you again
the dupe of Miss Bingley's pretended regard.”

“Would you believe it, Lizzy, that when he went to town last November,
he really loved me, and nothing but a persuasion of _my_ being
indifferent would have prevented his coming down again!”

“He made a little mistake to be sure; but it is to the credit of his
modesty.”

This naturally introduced a panegyric from Jane on his diffidence, and
the little value he put on his own good qualities. Elizabeth was pleased
to find that he had not betrayed the interference of his friend; for,
though Jane had the most generous and forgiving heart in the world, she
knew it was a circumstance which must prejudice her against him.

“I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed!” cried
Jane. “Oh! Lizzy, why am I thus singled from my family, and blessed
above them all! If I could but see _you_ as happy! If there _were_ but
such another man for you!”

“If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so happy as
you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your
happiness. No, no, let me shift for myself; and, perhaps, if I have very
good luck, I may meet with another Mr. Collins in time.”

The situation of affairs in the Longbourn family could not be long a
secret. Mrs. Bennet was privileged to whisper it to Mrs. Phillips,
and she ventured, without any permission, to do the same by all her
neighbours in Meryton.

The Bennets were speedily pronounced to be the luckiest family in the
world, though only a few weeks before, when Lydia had first run away,
they had been generally proved to be marked out for misfortune.



Chapter 56


One morning, about a week after Bingley's engagement with Jane had been
formed, as he and the females of the family were sitting together in the
dining-room, their attention was suddenly drawn to the window, by the
sound of a carriage; and they perceived a chaise and four driving up
the lawn. It was too early in the morning for visitors, and besides, the
equipage did not answer to that of any of their neighbours. The horses
were post; and neither the carriage, nor the livery of the servant who
preceded it, were familiar to them. As it was certain, however, that
somebody was coming, Bingley instantly prevailed on Miss Bennet to avoid
the confinement of such an intrusion, and walk away with him into the
shrubbery. They both set off, and the conjectures of the remaining three
continued, though with little satisfaction, till the door was thrown
open and their visitor entered. It was Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

They were of course all intending to be surprised; but their
astonishment was beyond their expectation; and on the part of Mrs.
Bennet and Kitty, though she was perfectly unknown to them, even
inferior to what Elizabeth felt.

She entered the room with an air more than usually ungracious, made no
other reply to Elizabeth's salutation than a slight inclination of the
head, and sat down without saying a word. Elizabeth had mentioned her
name to her mother on her ladyship's entrance, though no request of
introduction had been made.

Mrs. Bennet, all amazement, though flattered by having a guest of such
high importance, received her with the utmost politeness. After sitting
for a moment in silence, she said very stiffly to Elizabeth,

“I hope you are well, Miss Bennet. That lady, I suppose, is your
mother.”

Elizabeth replied very concisely that she was.

“And _that_ I suppose is one of your sisters.”

“Yes, madam,” said Mrs. Bennet, delighted to speak to Lady Catherine.
“She is my youngest girl but one. My youngest of all is lately married,
and my eldest is somewhere about the grounds, walking with a young man
who, I believe, will soon become a part of the family.”

“You have a very small park here,” returned Lady Catherine after a short
silence.

“It is nothing in comparison of Rosings, my lady, I dare say; but I
assure you it is much larger than Sir William Lucas's.”

“This must be a most inconvenient sitting room for the evening, in
summer; the windows are full west.”

Mrs. Bennet assured her that they never sat there after dinner, and then
added:

“May I take the liberty of asking your ladyship whether you left Mr. and
Mrs. Collins well.”

“Yes, very well. I saw them the night before last.”

Elizabeth now expected that she would produce a letter for her from
Charlotte, as it seemed the only probable motive for her calling. But no
letter appeared, and she was completely puzzled.

Mrs. Bennet, with great civility, begged her ladyship to take some
refreshment; but Lady Catherine very resolutely, and not very politely,
declined eating anything; and then, rising up, said to Elizabeth,

“Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little wilderness
on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you
will favour me with your company.”

“Go, my dear,” cried her mother, “and show her ladyship about the
different walks. I think she will be pleased with the hermitage.”

Elizabeth obeyed, and running into her own room for her parasol,
attended her noble guest downstairs. As they passed through the
hall, Lady Catherine opened the doors into the dining-parlour and
drawing-room, and pronouncing them, after a short survey, to be decent
looking rooms, walked on.

Her carriage remained at the door, and Elizabeth saw that her
waiting-woman was in it. They proceeded in silence along the gravel walk
that led to the copse; Elizabeth was determined to make no effort for
conversation with a woman who was now more than usually insolent and
disagreeable.

“How could I ever think her like her nephew?” said she, as she looked in
her face.

As soon as they entered the copse, Lady Catherine began in the following
manner:--

“You can be at no loss, Miss Bennet, to understand the reason of my
journey hither. Your own heart, your own conscience, must tell you why I
come.”

Elizabeth looked with unaffected astonishment.

“Indeed, you are mistaken, Madam. I have not been at all able to account
for the honour of seeing you here.”

“Miss Bennet,” replied her ladyship, in an angry tone, “you ought to
know, that I am not to be trifled with. But however insincere _you_ may
choose to be, you shall not find _me_ so. My character has ever been
celebrated for its sincerity and frankness, and in a cause of such
moment as this, I shall certainly not depart from it. A report of a most
alarming nature reached me two days ago. I was told that not only your
sister was on the point of being most advantageously married, but that
you, that Miss Elizabeth Bennet, would, in all likelihood, be soon
afterwards united to my nephew, my own nephew, Mr. Darcy. Though I
_know_ it must be a scandalous falsehood, though I would not injure him
so much as to suppose the truth of it possible, I instantly resolved
on setting off for this place, that I might make my sentiments known to
you.”

“If you believed it impossible to be true,” said Elizabeth, colouring
with astonishment and disdain, “I wonder you took the trouble of coming
so far. What could your ladyship propose by it?”

“At once to insist upon having such a report universally contradicted.”

“Your coming to Longbourn, to see me and my family,” said Elizabeth
coolly, “will be rather a confirmation of it; if, indeed, such a report
is in existence.”

“If! Do you then pretend to be ignorant of it? Has it not been
industriously circulated by yourselves? Do you not know that such a
report is spread abroad?”

“I never heard that it was.”

“And can you likewise declare, that there is no foundation for it?”

“I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your ladyship. You may
ask questions which I shall not choose to answer.”

“This is not to be borne. Miss Bennet, I insist on being satisfied. Has
he, has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?”

“Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible.”

“It ought to be so; it must be so, while he retains the use of his
reason. But your arts and allurements may, in a moment of infatuation,
have made him forget what he owes to himself and to all his family. You
may have drawn him in.”

“If I have, I shall be the last person to confess it.”

“Miss Bennet, do you know who I am? I have not been accustomed to such
language as this. I am almost the nearest relation he has in the world,
and am entitled to know all his dearest concerns.”

“But you are not entitled to know mine; nor will such behaviour as this,
ever induce me to be explicit.”

“Let me be rightly understood. This match, to which you have the
presumption to aspire, can never take place. No, never. Mr. Darcy is
engaged to my daughter. Now what have you to say?”

“Only this; that if he is so, you can have no reason to suppose he will
make an offer to me.”

Lady Catherine hesitated for a moment, and then replied:

“The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind. From their infancy,
they have been intended for each other. It was the favourite wish of
_his_ mother, as well as of hers. While in their cradles, we planned
the union: and now, at the moment when the wishes of both sisters would
be accomplished in their marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of
inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to
the family! Do you pay no regard to the wishes of his friends? To his
tacit engagement with Miss de Bourgh? Are you lost to every feeling of
propriety and delicacy? Have you not heard me say that from his earliest
hours he was destined for his cousin?”

“Yes, and I had heard it before. But what is that to me? If there is
no other objection to my marrying your nephew, I shall certainly not
be kept from it by knowing that his mother and aunt wished him to
marry Miss de Bourgh. You both did as much as you could in planning the
marriage. Its completion depended on others. If Mr. Darcy is neither
by honour nor inclination confined to his cousin, why is not he to make
another choice? And if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?”

“Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it. Yes,
Miss Bennet, interest; for do not expect to be noticed by his family or
friends, if you wilfully act against the inclinations of all. You will
be censured, slighted, and despised, by everyone connected with him.
Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned
by any of us.”

“These are heavy misfortunes,” replied Elizabeth. “But the wife of Mr.
Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily
attached to her situation, that she could, upon the whole, have no cause
to repine.”

“Obstinate, headstrong girl! I am ashamed of you! Is this your gratitude
for my attentions to you last spring? Is nothing due to me on that
score? Let us sit down. You are to understand, Miss Bennet, that I came
here with the determined resolution of carrying my purpose; nor will
I be dissuaded from it. I have not been used to submit to any person's
whims. I have not been in the habit of brooking disappointment.”

“_That_ will make your ladyship's situation at present more pitiable;
but it will have no effect on me.”

“I will not be interrupted. Hear me in silence. My daughter and my
nephew are formed for each other. They are descended, on the maternal
side, from the same noble line; and, on the father's, from respectable,
honourable, and ancient--though untitled--families. Their fortune on
both sides is splendid. They are destined for each other by the voice of
every member of their respective houses; and what is to divide them?
The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections,
or fortune. Is this to be endured! But it must not, shall not be. If you
were sensible of your own good, you would not wish to quit the sphere in
which you have been brought up.”

“In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that
sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are
equal.”

“True. You _are_ a gentleman's daughter. But who was your mother?
Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of their
condition.”

“Whatever my connections may be,” said Elizabeth, “if your nephew does
not object to them, they can be nothing to _you_.”

“Tell me once for all, are you engaged to him?”

Though Elizabeth would not, for the mere purpose of obliging Lady
Catherine, have answered this question, she could not but say, after a
moment's deliberation:

“I am not.”

Lady Catherine seemed pleased.

“And will you promise me, never to enter into such an engagement?”

“I will make no promise of the kind.”

“Miss Bennet I am shocked and astonished. I expected to find a more
reasonable young woman. But do not deceive yourself into a belief that
I will ever recede. I shall not go away till you have given me the
assurance I require.”

“And I certainly _never_ shall give it. I am not to be intimidated into
anything so wholly unreasonable. Your ladyship wants Mr. Darcy to marry
your daughter; but would my giving you the wished-for promise make their
marriage at all more probable? Supposing him to be attached to me, would
my refusing to accept his hand make him wish to bestow it on his cousin?
Allow me to say, Lady Catherine, that the arguments with which you have
supported this extraordinary application have been as frivolous as the
application was ill-judged. You have widely mistaken my character, if
you think I can be worked on by such persuasions as these. How far your
nephew might approve of your interference in his affairs, I cannot tell;
but you have certainly no right to concern yourself in mine. I must beg,
therefore, to be importuned no farther on the subject.”

“Not so hasty, if you please. I have by no means done. To all the
objections I have already urged, I have still another to add. I am
no stranger to the particulars of your youngest sister's infamous
elopement. I know it all; that the young man's marrying her was a
patched-up business, at the expence of your father and uncles. And is
such a girl to be my nephew's sister? Is her husband, is the son of his
late father's steward, to be his brother? Heaven and earth!--of what are
you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”

“You can now have nothing further to say,” she resentfully answered.
“You have insulted me in every possible method. I must beg to return to
the house.”

And she rose as she spoke. Lady Catherine rose also, and they turned
back. Her ladyship was highly incensed.

“You have no regard, then, for the honour and credit of my nephew!
Unfeeling, selfish girl! Do you not consider that a connection with you
must disgrace him in the eyes of everybody?”

“Lady Catherine, I have nothing further to say. You know my sentiments.”

“You are then resolved to have him?”

“I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in that manner,
which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without
reference to _you_, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”

“It is well. You refuse, then, to oblige me. You refuse to obey the
claims of duty, honour, and gratitude. You are determined to ruin him in
the opinion of all his friends, and make him the contempt of the world.”

“Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude,” replied Elizabeth, “have any
possible claim on me, in the present instance. No principle of either
would be violated by my marriage with Mr. Darcy. And with regard to the
resentment of his family, or the indignation of the world, if the former
_were_ excited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment's
concern--and the world in general would have too much sense to join in
the scorn.”

“And this is your real opinion! This is your final resolve! Very well.
I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Bennet, that your
ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I hoped to find you
reasonable; but, depend upon it, I will carry my point.”

In this manner Lady Catherine talked on, till they were at the door of
the carriage, when, turning hastily round, she added, “I take no leave
of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve
no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.”

Elizabeth made no answer; and without attempting to persuade her
ladyship to return into the house, walked quietly into it herself. She
heard the carriage drive away as she proceeded up stairs. Her mother
impatiently met her at the door of the dressing-room, to ask why Lady
Catherine would not come in again and rest herself.

“She did not choose it,” said her daughter, “she would go.”

“She is a very fine-looking woman! and her calling here was prodigiously
civil! for she only came, I suppose, to tell us the Collinses were
well. She is on her road somewhere, I dare say, and so, passing through
Meryton, thought she might as well call on you. I suppose she had
nothing particular to say to you, Lizzy?”

Elizabeth was forced to give into a little falsehood here; for to
acknowledge the substance of their conversation was impossible.



Chapter 57


The discomposure of spirits which this extraordinary visit threw
Elizabeth into, could not be easily overcome; nor could she, for many
hours, learn to think of it less than incessantly. Lady Catherine, it
appeared, had actually taken the trouble of this journey from Rosings,
for the sole purpose of breaking off her supposed engagement with Mr.
Darcy. It was a rational scheme, to be sure! but from what the report
of their engagement could originate, Elizabeth was at a loss to imagine;
till she recollected that _his_ being the intimate friend of Bingley,
and _her_ being the sister of Jane, was enough, at a time when the
expectation of one wedding made everybody eager for another, to supply
the idea. She had not herself forgotten to feel that the marriage of her
sister must bring them more frequently together. And her neighbours
at Lucas Lodge, therefore (for through their communication with the
Collinses, the report, she concluded, had reached Lady Catherine), had
only set that down as almost certain and immediate, which she had looked
forward to as possible at some future time.

In revolving Lady Catherine's expressions, however, she could not help
feeling some uneasiness as to the possible consequence of her persisting
in this interference. From what she had said of her resolution to
prevent their marriage, it occurred to Elizabeth that she must meditate
an application to her nephew; and how _he_ might take a similar
representation of the evils attached to a connection with her, she dared
not pronounce. She knew not the exact degree of his affection for his
aunt, or his dependence on her judgment, but it was natural to suppose
that he thought much higher of her ladyship than _she_ could do; and it
was certain that, in enumerating the miseries of a marriage with _one_,
whose immediate connections were so unequal to his own, his aunt would
address him on his weakest side. With his notions of dignity, he would
probably feel that the arguments, which to Elizabeth had appeared weak
and ridiculous, contained much good sense and solid reasoning.

If he had been wavering before as to what he should do, which had often
seemed likely, the advice and entreaty of so near a relation might
settle every doubt, and determine him at once to be as happy as dignity
unblemished could make him. In that case he would return no more. Lady
Catherine might see him in her way through town; and his engagement to
Bingley of coming again to Netherfield must give way.

“If, therefore, an excuse for not keeping his promise should come to his
friend within a few days,” she added, “I shall know how to understand
it. I shall then give over every expectation, every wish of his
constancy. If he is satisfied with only regretting me, when he might
have obtained my affections and hand, I shall soon cease to regret him
at all.”

                          * * * * *

The surprise of the rest of the family, on hearing who their visitor had
been, was very great; but they obligingly satisfied it, with the same
kind of supposition which had appeased Mrs. Bennet's curiosity; and
Elizabeth was spared from much teasing on the subject.

The next morning, as she was going downstairs, she was met by her
father, who came out of his library with a letter in his hand.

“Lizzy,” said he, “I was going to look for you; come into my room.”

She followed him thither; and her curiosity to know what he had to
tell her was heightened by the supposition of its being in some manner
connected with the letter he held. It suddenly struck her that it
might be from Lady Catherine; and she anticipated with dismay all the
consequent explanations.

She followed her father to the fire place, and they both sat down. He
then said,

“I have received a letter this morning that has astonished me
exceedingly. As it principally concerns yourself, you ought to know its
contents. I did not know before, that I had two daughters on the brink
of matrimony. Let me congratulate you on a very important conquest.”

The colour now rushed into Elizabeth's cheeks in the instantaneous
conviction of its being a letter from the nephew, instead of the aunt;
and she was undetermined whether most to be pleased that he explained
himself at all, or offended that his letter was not rather addressed to
herself; when her father continued:

“You look conscious. Young ladies have great penetration in such matters
as these; but I think I may defy even _your_ sagacity, to discover the
name of your admirer. This letter is from Mr. Collins.”

“From Mr. Collins! and what can _he_ have to say?”

“Something very much to the purpose of course. He begins with
congratulations on the approaching nuptials of my eldest daughter, of
which, it seems, he has been told by some of the good-natured, gossiping
Lucases. I shall not sport with your impatience, by reading what he says
on that point. What relates to yourself, is as follows: 'Having thus
offered you the sincere congratulations of Mrs. Collins and myself on
this happy event, let me now add a short hint on the subject of another;
of which we have been advertised by the same authority. Your daughter
Elizabeth, it is presumed, will not long bear the name of Bennet, after
her elder sister has resigned it, and the chosen partner of her fate may
be reasonably looked up to as one of the most illustrious personages in
this land.'

“Can you possibly guess, Lizzy, who is meant by this? 'This young
gentleman is blessed, in a peculiar way, with every thing the heart of
mortal can most desire,--splendid property, noble kindred, and extensive
patronage. Yet in spite of all these temptations, let me warn my cousin
Elizabeth, and yourself, of what evils you may incur by a precipitate
closure with this gentleman's proposals, which, of course, you will be
inclined to take immediate advantage of.'

“Have you any idea, Lizzy, who this gentleman is? But now it comes out:

“'My motive for cautioning you is as follows. We have reason to imagine
that his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, does not look on the match with
a friendly eye.'

“_Mr. Darcy_, you see, is the man! Now, Lizzy, I think I _have_
surprised you. Could he, or the Lucases, have pitched on any man within
the circle of our acquaintance, whose name would have given the lie
more effectually to what they related? Mr. Darcy, who never looks at any
woman but to see a blemish, and who probably never looked at you in his
life! It is admirable!”

Elizabeth tried to join in her father's pleasantry, but could only force
one most reluctant smile. Never had his wit been directed in a manner so
little agreeable to her.

“Are you not diverted?”

“Oh! yes. Pray read on.”

“'After mentioning the likelihood of this marriage to her ladyship last
night, she immediately, with her usual condescension, expressed what she
felt on the occasion; when it became apparent, that on the score of some
family objections on the part of my cousin, she would never give her
consent to what she termed so disgraceful a match. I thought it my duty
to give the speediest intelligence of this to my cousin, that she and
her noble admirer may be aware of what they are about, and not run
hastily into a marriage which has not been properly sanctioned.' Mr.
Collins moreover adds, 'I am truly rejoiced that my cousin Lydia's sad
business has been so well hushed up, and am only concerned that their
living together before the marriage took place should be so generally
known. I must not, however, neglect the duties of my station, or refrain
from declaring my amazement at hearing that you received the young
couple into your house as soon as they were married. It was an
encouragement of vice; and had I been the rector of Longbourn, I should
very strenuously have opposed it. You ought certainly to forgive them,
as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their
names to be mentioned in your hearing.' That is his notion of Christian
forgiveness! The rest of his letter is only about his dear Charlotte's
situation, and his expectation of a young olive-branch. But, Lizzy, you
look as if you did not enjoy it. You are not going to be _missish_,
I hope, and pretend to be affronted at an idle report. For what do we
live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our
turn?”

“Oh!” cried Elizabeth, “I am excessively diverted. But it is so
strange!”

“Yes--_that_ is what makes it amusing. Had they fixed on any other man
it would have been nothing; but _his_ perfect indifference, and _your_
pointed dislike, make it so delightfully absurd! Much as I abominate
writing, I would not give up Mr. Collins's correspondence for any
consideration. Nay, when I read a letter of his, I cannot help giving
him the preference even over Wickham, much as I value the impudence and
hypocrisy of my son-in-law. And pray, Lizzy, what said Lady Catherine
about this report? Did she call to refuse her consent?”

To this question his daughter replied only with a laugh; and as it had
been asked without the least suspicion, she was not distressed by
his repeating it. Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her
feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh, when she
would rather have cried. Her father had most cruelly mortified her, by
what he said of Mr. Darcy's indifference, and she could do nothing but
wonder at such a want of penetration, or fear that perhaps, instead of
his seeing too little, she might have fancied too much.



Chapter 58


Instead of receiving any such letter of excuse from his friend, as
Elizabeth half expected Mr. Bingley to do, he was able to bring Darcy
with him to Longbourn before many days had passed after Lady Catherine's
visit. The gentlemen arrived early; and, before Mrs. Bennet had time
to tell him of their having seen his aunt, of which her daughter sat
in momentary dread, Bingley, who wanted to be alone with Jane, proposed
their all walking out. It was agreed to. Mrs. Bennet was not in the
habit of walking; Mary could never spare time; but the remaining five
set off together. Bingley and Jane, however, soon allowed the others
to outstrip them. They lagged behind, while Elizabeth, Kitty, and Darcy
were to entertain each other. Very little was said by either; Kitty
was too much afraid of him to talk; Elizabeth was secretly forming a
desperate resolution; and perhaps he might be doing the same.

They walked towards the Lucases, because Kitty wished to call upon
Maria; and as Elizabeth saw no occasion for making it a general concern,
when Kitty left them she went boldly on with him alone. Now was the
moment for her resolution to be executed, and, while her courage was
high, she immediately said:

“Mr. Darcy, I am a very selfish creature; and, for the sake of giving
relief to my own feelings, care not how much I may be wounding yours. I
can no longer help thanking you for your unexampled kindness to my
poor sister. Ever since I have known it, I have been most anxious to
acknowledge to you how gratefully I feel it. Were it known to the rest
of my family, I should not have merely my own gratitude to express.”

“I am sorry, exceedingly sorry,” replied Darcy, in a tone of surprise
and emotion, “that you have ever been informed of what may, in a
mistaken light, have given you uneasiness. I did not think Mrs. Gardiner
was so little to be trusted.”

“You must not blame my aunt. Lydia's thoughtlessness first betrayed to
me that you had been concerned in the matter; and, of course, I could
not rest till I knew the particulars. Let me thank you again and again,
in the name of all my family, for that generous compassion which induced
you to take so much trouble, and bear so many mortifications, for the
sake of discovering them.”

“If you _will_ thank me,” he replied, “let it be for yourself alone.
That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other
inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your
_family_ owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought
only of _you_.”

Elizabeth was too much embarrassed to say a word. After a short pause,
her companion added, “You are too generous to trifle with me. If your
feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. _My_
affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence
me on this subject for ever.”

Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of
his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not
very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone
so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make
her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The
happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never
felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as
warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had Elizabeth
been able to encounter his eye, she might have seen how well the
expression of heartfelt delight, diffused over his face, became him;
but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of
feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his
affection every moment more valuable.

They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to
be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects. She
soon learnt that they were indebted for their present good understanding
to the efforts of his aunt, who did call on him in her return through
London, and there relate her journey to Longbourn, its motive, and the
substance of her conversation with Elizabeth; dwelling emphatically on
every expression of the latter which, in her ladyship's apprehension,
peculiarly denoted her perverseness and assurance; in the belief that
such a relation must assist her endeavours to obtain that promise
from her nephew which she had refused to give. But, unluckily for her
ladyship, its effect had been exactly contrariwise.

“It taught me to hope,” said he, “as I had scarcely ever allowed myself
to hope before. I knew enough of your disposition to be certain that,
had you been absolutely, irrevocably decided against me, you would have
acknowledged it to Lady Catherine, frankly and openly.”

Elizabeth coloured and laughed as she replied, “Yes, you know enough
of my frankness to believe me capable of _that_. After abusing you so
abominably to your face, I could have no scruple in abusing you to all
your relations.”

“What did you say of me, that I did not deserve? For, though your
accusations were ill-founded, formed on mistaken premises, my
behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof. It was
unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence.”

“We will not quarrel for the greater share of blame annexed to that
evening,” said Elizabeth. “The conduct of neither, if strictly examined,
will be irreproachable; but since then, we have both, I hope, improved
in civility.”

“I cannot be so easily reconciled to myself. The recollection of what I
then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of
it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your
reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: 'had you behaved in a
more gentlemanlike manner.' Those were your words. You know not, you can
scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me;--though it was some time,
I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.”

“I was certainly very far from expecting them to make so strong an
impression. I had not the smallest idea of their being ever felt in such
a way.”

“I can easily believe it. You thought me then devoid of every proper
feeling, I am sure you did. The turn of your countenance I shall never
forget, as you said that I could not have addressed you in any possible
way that would induce you to accept me.”

“Oh! do not repeat what I then said. These recollections will not do at
all. I assure you that I have long been most heartily ashamed of it.”

Darcy mentioned his letter. “Did it,” said he, “did it soon make you
think better of me? Did you, on reading it, give any credit to its
contents?”

She explained what its effect on her had been, and how gradually all her
former prejudices had been removed.

“I knew,” said he, “that what I wrote must give you pain, but it was
necessary. I hope you have destroyed the letter. There was one part
especially, the opening of it, which I should dread your having the
power of reading again. I can remember some expressions which might
justly make you hate me.”

“The letter shall certainly be burnt, if you believe it essential to the
preservation of my regard; but, though we have both reason to think my
opinions not entirely unalterable, they are not, I hope, quite so easily
changed as that implies.”

“When I wrote that letter,” replied Darcy, “I believed myself perfectly
calm and cool, but I am since convinced that it was written in a
dreadful bitterness of spirit.”

“The letter, perhaps, began in bitterness, but it did not end so. The
adieu is charity itself. But think no more of the letter. The feelings
of the person who wrote, and the person who received it, are now
so widely different from what they were then, that every unpleasant
circumstance attending it ought to be forgotten. You must learn some
of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you
pleasure.”

“I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kind. Your
retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment
arising from them is not of philosophy, but, what is much better, of
innocence. But with me, it is not so. Painful recollections will intrude
which cannot, which ought not, to be repelled. I have been a selfish
being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I
was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I
was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.
Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt
by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all
that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught
me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family
circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least
to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I
was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been
but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You
taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you,
I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception.
You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman
worthy of being pleased.”

“Had you then persuaded yourself that I should?”

“Indeed I had. What will you think of my vanity? I believed you to be
wishing, expecting my addresses.”

“My manners must have been in fault, but not intentionally, I assure
you. I never meant to deceive you, but my spirits might often lead me
wrong. How you must have hated me after _that_ evening?”

“Hate you! I was angry perhaps at first, but my anger soon began to take
a proper direction.”

“I am almost afraid of asking what you thought of me, when we met at
Pemberley. You blamed me for coming?”

“No indeed; I felt nothing but surprise.”

“Your surprise could not be greater than _mine_ in being noticed by you.
My conscience told me that I deserved no extraordinary politeness, and I
confess that I did not expect to receive _more_ than my due.”

“My object then,” replied Darcy, “was to show you, by every civility in
my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to
obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you
see that your reproofs had been attended to. How soon any other wishes
introduced themselves I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an
hour after I had seen you.”

He then told her of Georgiana's delight in her acquaintance, and of her
disappointment at its sudden interruption; which naturally leading to
the cause of that interruption, she soon learnt that his resolution of
following her from Derbyshire in quest of her sister had been formed
before he quitted the inn, and that his gravity and thoughtfulness
there had arisen from no other struggles than what such a purpose must
comprehend.

She expressed her gratitude again, but it was too painful a subject to
each, to be dwelt on farther.

After walking several miles in a leisurely manner, and too busy to know
anything about it, they found at last, on examining their watches, that
it was time to be at home.

“What could become of Mr. Bingley and Jane!” was a wonder which
introduced the discussion of their affairs. Darcy was delighted with
their engagement; his friend had given him the earliest information of
it.

“I must ask whether you were surprised?” said Elizabeth.

“Not at all. When I went away, I felt that it would soon happen.”

“That is to say, you had given your permission. I guessed as much.” And
though he exclaimed at the term, she found that it had been pretty much
the case.

“On the evening before my going to London,” said he, “I made a
confession to him, which I believe I ought to have made long ago. I
told him of all that had occurred to make my former interference in his
affairs absurd and impertinent. His surprise was great. He had never had
the slightest suspicion. I told him, moreover, that I believed myself
mistaken in supposing, as I had done, that your sister was indifferent
to him; and as I could easily perceive that his attachment to her was
unabated, I felt no doubt of their happiness together.”

Elizabeth could not help smiling at his easy manner of directing his
friend.

“Did you speak from your own observation,” said she, “when you told him
that my sister loved him, or merely from my information last spring?”

“From the former. I had narrowly observed her during the two visits
which I had lately made here; and I was convinced of her affection.”

“And your assurance of it, I suppose, carried immediate conviction to
him.”

“It did. Bingley is most unaffectedly modest. His diffidence had
prevented his depending on his own judgment in so anxious a case, but
his reliance on mine made every thing easy. I was obliged to confess
one thing, which for a time, and not unjustly, offended him. I could not
allow myself to conceal that your sister had been in town three months
last winter, that I had known it, and purposely kept it from him. He was
angry. But his anger, I am persuaded, lasted no longer than he remained
in any doubt of your sister's sentiments. He has heartily forgiven me
now.”

Elizabeth longed to observe that Mr. Bingley had been a most delightful
friend; so easily guided that his worth was invaluable; but she checked
herself. She remembered that he had yet to learn to be laughed at,
and it was rather too early to begin. In anticipating the happiness
of Bingley, which of course was to be inferior only to his own, he
continued the conversation till they reached the house. In the hall they
parted.



Chapter 59


“My dear Lizzy, where can you have been walking to?” was a question
which Elizabeth received from Jane as soon as she entered their room,
and from all the others when they sat down to table. She had only to
say in reply, that they had wandered about, till she was beyond her own
knowledge. She coloured as she spoke; but neither that, nor anything
else, awakened a suspicion of the truth.

The evening passed quietly, unmarked by anything extraordinary. The
acknowledged lovers talked and laughed, the unacknowledged were silent.
Darcy was not of a disposition in which happiness overflows in mirth;
and Elizabeth, agitated and confused, rather _knew_ that she was happy
than _felt_ herself to be so; for, besides the immediate embarrassment,
there were other evils before her. She anticipated what would be felt
in the family when her situation became known; she was aware that no
one liked him but Jane; and even feared that with the others it was a
dislike which not all his fortune and consequence might do away.

At night she opened her heart to Jane. Though suspicion was very far
from Miss Bennet's general habits, she was absolutely incredulous here.

“You are joking, Lizzy. This cannot be!--engaged to Mr. Darcy! No, no,
you shall not deceive me. I know it to be impossible.”

“This is a wretched beginning indeed! My sole dependence was on you; and
I am sure nobody else will believe me, if you do not. Yet, indeed, I am
in earnest. I speak nothing but the truth. He still loves me, and we are
engaged.”

Jane looked at her doubtingly. “Oh, Lizzy! it cannot be. I know how much
you dislike him.”

“You know nothing of the matter. _That_ is all to be forgot. Perhaps I
did not always love him so well as I do now. But in such cases as
these, a good memory is unpardonable. This is the last time I shall ever
remember it myself.”

Miss Bennet still looked all amazement. Elizabeth again, and more
seriously assured her of its truth.

“Good Heaven! can it be really so! Yet now I must believe you,” cried
Jane. “My dear, dear Lizzy, I would--I do congratulate you--but are you
certain? forgive the question--are you quite certain that you can be
happy with him?”

“There can be no doubt of that. It is settled between us already, that
we are to be the happiest couple in the world. But are you pleased,
Jane? Shall you like to have such a brother?”

“Very, very much. Nothing could give either Bingley or myself more
delight. But we considered it, we talked of it as impossible. And do you
really love him quite well enough? Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than
marry without affection. Are you quite sure that you feel what you ought
to do?”

“Oh, yes! You will only think I feel _more_ than I ought to do, when I
tell you all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, I must confess that I love him better than I do Bingley. I am
afraid you will be angry.”

“My dearest sister, now _be_ serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let
me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me
how long you have loved him?”

“It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began.
But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds
at Pemberley.”

Another entreaty that she would be serious, however, produced the
desired effect; and she soon satisfied Jane by her solemn assurances
of attachment. When convinced on that article, Miss Bennet had nothing
further to wish.

“Now I am quite happy,” said she, “for you will be as happy as myself.
I always had a value for him. Were it for nothing but his love of you,
I must always have esteemed him; but now, as Bingley's friend and your
husband, there can be only Bingley and yourself more dear to me. But
Lizzy, you have been very sly, very reserved with me. How little did you
tell me of what passed at Pemberley and Lambton! I owe all that I know
of it to another, not to you.”

Elizabeth told her the motives of her secrecy. She had been unwilling
to mention Bingley; and the unsettled state of her own feelings had made
her equally avoid the name of his friend. But now she would no longer
conceal from her his share in Lydia's marriage. All was acknowledged,
and half the night spent in conversation.

                          * * * * *

“Good gracious!” cried Mrs. Bennet, as she stood at a window the next
morning, “if that disagreeable Mr. Darcy is not coming here again with
our dear Bingley! What can he mean by being so tiresome as to be always
coming here? I had no notion but he would go a-shooting, or something or
other, and not disturb us with his company. What shall we do with him?
Lizzy, you must walk out with him again, that he may not be in Bingley's
way.”

Elizabeth could hardly help laughing at so convenient a proposal; yet
was really vexed that her mother should be always giving him such an
epithet.

As soon as they entered, Bingley looked at her so expressively, and
shook hands with such warmth, as left no doubt of his good information;
and he soon afterwards said aloud, “Mrs. Bennet, have you no more lanes
hereabouts in which Lizzy may lose her way again to-day?”

“I advise Mr. Darcy, and Lizzy, and Kitty,” said Mrs. Bennet, “to walk
to Oakham Mount this morning. It is a nice long walk, and Mr. Darcy has
never seen the view.”

“It may do very well for the others,” replied Mr. Bingley; “but I am
sure it will be too much for Kitty. Won't it, Kitty?” Kitty owned that
she had rather stay at home. Darcy professed a great curiosity to see
the view from the Mount, and Elizabeth silently consented. As she went
up stairs to get ready, Mrs. Bennet followed her, saying:

“I am quite sorry, Lizzy, that you should be forced to have that
disagreeable man all to yourself. But I hope you will not mind it: it is
all for Jane's sake, you know; and there is no occasion for talking
to him, except just now and then. So, do not put yourself to
inconvenience.”

During their walk, it was resolved that Mr. Bennet's consent should be
asked in the course of the evening. Elizabeth reserved to herself the
application for her mother's. She could not determine how her mother
would take it; sometimes doubting whether all his wealth and grandeur
would be enough to overcome her abhorrence of the man. But whether she
were violently set against the match, or violently delighted with it, it
was certain that her manner would be equally ill adapted to do credit
to her sense; and she could no more bear that Mr. Darcy should hear
the first raptures of her joy, than the first vehemence of her
disapprobation.

                          * * * * *

In the evening, soon after Mr. Bennet withdrew to the library, she saw
Mr. Darcy rise also and follow him, and her agitation on seeing it was
extreme. She did not fear her father's opposition, but he was going to
be made unhappy; and that it should be through her means--that _she_,
his favourite child, should be distressing him by her choice, should be
filling him with fears and regrets in disposing of her--was a wretched
reflection, and she sat in misery till Mr. Darcy appeared again, when,
looking at him, she was a little relieved by his smile. In a few minutes
he approached the table where she was sitting with Kitty; and, while
pretending to admire her work said in a whisper, “Go to your father, he
wants you in the library.” She was gone directly.

Her father was walking about the room, looking grave and anxious.
“Lizzy,” said he, “what are you doing? Are you out of your senses, to be
accepting this man? Have not you always hated him?”

How earnestly did she then wish that her former opinions had been more
reasonable, her expressions more moderate! It would have spared her from
explanations and professions which it was exceedingly awkward to give;
but they were now necessary, and she assured him, with some confusion,
of her attachment to Mr. Darcy.

“Or, in other words, you are determined to have him. He is rich, to be
sure, and you may have more fine clothes and fine carriages than Jane.
But will they make you happy?”

“Have you any other objection,” said Elizabeth, “than your belief of my
indifference?”

“None at all. We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but
this would be nothing if you really liked him.”

“I do, I do like him,” she replied, with tears in her eyes, “I love him.
Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable. You do not
know what he really is; then pray do not pain me by speaking of him in
such terms.”

“Lizzy,” said her father, “I have given him my consent. He is the kind
of man, indeed, to whom I should never dare refuse anything, which he
condescended to ask. I now give it to _you_, if you are resolved on
having him. But let me advise you to think better of it. I know
your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor
respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked
up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the
greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape
discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the grief of seeing
_you_ unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are
about.”

Elizabeth, still more affected, was earnest and solemn in her reply; and
at length, by repeated assurances that Mr. Darcy was really the object
of her choice, by explaining the gradual change which her estimation of
him had undergone, relating her absolute certainty that his affection
was not the work of a day, but had stood the test of many months'
suspense, and enumerating with energy all his good qualities, she did
conquer her father's incredulity, and reconcile him to the match.

“Well, my dear,” said he, when she ceased speaking, “I have no more to
say. If this be the case, he deserves you. I could not have parted with
you, my Lizzy, to anyone less worthy.”

To complete the favourable impression, she then told him what Mr. Darcy
had voluntarily done for Lydia. He heard her with astonishment.

“This is an evening of wonders, indeed! And so, Darcy did every thing;
made up the match, gave the money, paid the fellow's debts, and got him
his commission! So much the better. It will save me a world of trouble
and economy. Had it been your uncle's doing, I must and _would_ have
paid him; but these violent young lovers carry every thing their own
way. I shall offer to pay him to-morrow; he will rant and storm about
his love for you, and there will be an end of the matter.”

He then recollected her embarrassment a few days before, on his reading
Mr. Collins's letter; and after laughing at her some time, allowed her
at last to go--saying, as she quitted the room, “If any young men come
for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure.”

Elizabeth's mind was now relieved from a very heavy weight; and, after
half an hour's quiet reflection in her own room, she was able to join
the others with tolerable composure. Every thing was too recent for
gaiety, but the evening passed tranquilly away; there was no longer
anything material to be dreaded, and the comfort of ease and familiarity
would come in time.

When her mother went up to her dressing-room at night, she followed her,
and made the important communication. Its effect was most extraordinary;
for on first hearing it, Mrs. Bennet sat quite still, and unable to
utter a syllable. Nor was it under many, many minutes that she could
comprehend what she heard; though not in general backward to credit
what was for the advantage of her family, or that came in the shape of a
lover to any of them. She began at length to recover, to fidget about in
her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder, and bless herself.

“Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy! Who would
have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich
and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages
you will have! Jane's is nothing to it--nothing at all. I am so
pleased--so happy. Such a charming man!--so handsome! so tall!--Oh, my
dear Lizzy! pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. I
hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house in town! Every thing
that is charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! Oh,
Lord! What will become of me. I shall go distracted.”

This was enough to prove that her approbation need not be doubted: and
Elizabeth, rejoicing that such an effusion was heard only by herself,
soon went away. But before she had been three minutes in her own room,
her mother followed her.

“My dearest child,” she cried, “I can think of nothing else! Ten
thousand a year, and very likely more! 'Tis as good as a Lord! And a
special licence. You must and shall be married by a special licence. But
my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of,
that I may have it to-morrow.”

This was a sad omen of what her mother's behaviour to the gentleman
himself might be; and Elizabeth found that, though in the certain
possession of his warmest affection, and secure of her relations'
consent, there was still something to be wished for. But the morrow
passed off much better than she expected; for Mrs. Bennet luckily stood
in such awe of her intended son-in-law that she ventured not to speak to
him, unless it was in her power to offer him any attention, or mark her
deference for his opinion.

Elizabeth had the satisfaction of seeing her father taking pains to get
acquainted with him; and Mr. Bennet soon assured her that he was rising
every hour in his esteem.

“I admire all my three sons-in-law highly,” said he. “Wickham, perhaps,
is my favourite; but I think I shall like _your_ husband quite as well
as Jane's.”



Chapter 60


Elizabeth's spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr.
Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. “How could
you begin?” said she. “I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when
you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first
place?”

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which
laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I
knew that I _had_ begun.”

“My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners--my behaviour
to _you_ was at least always bordering on the uncivil, and I never spoke
to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not. Now be sincere;
did you admire me for my impertinence?”

“For the liveliness of your mind, I did.”

“You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very little less.
The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious
attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking,
and looking, and thinking for _your_ approbation alone. I roused, and
interested you, because I was so unlike _them_. Had you not been really
amiable, you would have hated me for it; but in spite of the pains you
took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and
in your heart, you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously
courted you. There--I have saved you the trouble of accounting for
it; and really, all things considered, I begin to think it perfectly
reasonable. To be sure, you knew no actual good of me--but nobody thinks
of _that_ when they fall in love.”

“Was there no good in your affectionate behaviour to Jane while she was
ill at Netherfield?”

“Dearest Jane! who could have done less for her? But make a virtue of it
by all means. My good qualities are under your protection, and you are
to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me
to find occasions for teasing and quarrelling with you as often as may
be; and I shall begin directly by asking you what made you so unwilling
to come to the point at last. What made you so shy of me, when you first
called, and afterwards dined here? Why, especially, when you called, did
you look as if you did not care about me?”

“Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement.”

“But I was embarrassed.”

“And so was I.”

“You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner.”

“A man who had felt less, might.”

“How unlucky that you should have a reasonable answer to give, and that
I should be so reasonable as to admit it! But I wonder how long you
_would_ have gone on, if you had been left to yourself. I wonder when
you _would_ have spoken, if I had not asked you! My resolution of
thanking you for your kindness to Lydia had certainly great effect.
_Too much_, I am afraid; for what becomes of the moral, if our comfort
springs from a breach of promise? for I ought not to have mentioned the
subject. This will never do.”

“You need not distress yourself. The moral will be perfectly fair. Lady
Catherine's unjustifiable endeavours to separate us were the means of
removing all my doubts. I am not indebted for my present happiness to
your eager desire of expressing your gratitude. I was not in a humour
to wait for any opening of yours. My aunt's intelligence had given me
hope, and I was determined at once to know every thing.”

“Lady Catherine has been of infinite use, which ought to make her happy,
for she loves to be of use. But tell me, what did you come down to
Netherfield for? Was it merely to ride to Longbourn and be embarrassed?
or had you intended any more serious consequence?”

“My real purpose was to see _you_, and to judge, if I could, whether I
might ever hope to make you love me. My avowed one, or what I avowed to
myself, was to see whether your sister were still partial to Bingley,
and if she were, to make the confession to him which I have since made.”

“Shall you ever have courage to announce to Lady Catherine what is to
befall her?”

“I am more likely to want more time than courage, Elizabeth. But it
ought to be done, and if you will give me a sheet of paper, it shall be
done directly.”

“And if I had not a letter to write myself, I might sit by you and
admire the evenness of your writing, as another young lady once did. But
I have an aunt, too, who must not be longer neglected.”

From an unwillingness to confess how much her intimacy with Mr. Darcy
had been over-rated, Elizabeth had never yet answered Mrs. Gardiner's
long letter; but now, having _that_ to communicate which she knew would
be most welcome, she was almost ashamed to find that her uncle and
aunt had already lost three days of happiness, and immediately wrote as
follows:

“I would have thanked you before, my dear aunt, as I ought to have done,
for your long, kind, satisfactory, detail of particulars; but to say the
truth, I was too cross to write. You supposed more than really existed.
But _now_ suppose as much as you choose; give a loose rein to your
fancy, indulge your imagination in every possible flight which the
subject will afford, and unless you believe me actually married, you
cannot greatly err. You must write again very soon, and praise him a
great deal more than you did in your last. I thank you, again and again,
for not going to the Lakes. How could I be so silly as to wish it! Your
idea of the ponies is delightful. We will go round the Park every day. I
am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so
before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she
only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world that
he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.
Yours, etc.”

Mr. Darcy's letter to Lady Catherine was in a different style; and still
different from either was what Mr. Bennet sent to Mr. Collins, in reply
to his last.

“DEAR SIR,

“I must trouble you once more for congratulations. Elizabeth will soon
be the wife of Mr. Darcy. Console Lady Catherine as well as you can.
But, if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has more to give.

“Yours sincerely, etc.”

Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching
marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere. She wrote even
to Jane on the occasion, to express her delight, and repeat all her
former professions of regard. Jane was not deceived, but she was
affected; and though feeling no reliance on her, could not help writing
her a much kinder answer than she knew was deserved.

The joy which Miss Darcy expressed on receiving similar information,
was as sincere as her brother's in sending it. Four sides of paper were
insufficient to contain all her delight, and all her earnest desire of
being loved by her sister.

Before any answer could arrive from Mr. Collins, or any congratulations
to Elizabeth from his wife, the Longbourn family heard that the
Collinses were come themselves to Lucas Lodge. The reason of this
sudden removal was soon evident. Lady Catherine had been rendered
so exceedingly angry by the contents of her nephew's letter, that
Charlotte, really rejoicing in the match, was anxious to get away till
the storm was blown over. At such a moment, the arrival of her friend
was a sincere pleasure to Elizabeth, though in the course of their
meetings she must sometimes think the pleasure dearly bought, when she
saw Mr. Darcy exposed to all the parading and obsequious civility of
her husband. He bore it, however, with admirable calmness. He could even
listen to Sir William Lucas, when he complimented him on carrying away
the brightest jewel of the country, and expressed his hopes of their all
meeting frequently at St. James's, with very decent composure. If he did
shrug his shoulders, it was not till Sir William was out of sight.

Mrs. Phillips's vulgarity was another, and perhaps a greater, tax on his
forbearance; and though Mrs. Phillips, as well as her sister, stood in
too much awe of him to speak with the familiarity which Bingley's good
humour encouraged, yet, whenever she _did_ speak, she must be vulgar.
Nor was her respect for him, though it made her more quiet, at all
likely to make her more elegant. Elizabeth did all she could to shield
him from the frequent notice of either, and was ever anxious to keep
him to herself, and to those of her family with whom he might converse
without mortification; and though the uncomfortable feelings arising
from all this took from the season of courtship much of its pleasure, it
added to the hope of the future; and she looked forward with delight to
the time when they should be removed from society so little pleasing
to either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party at
Pemberley.



Chapter 61


Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got
rid of her two most deserving daughters. With what delighted pride
she afterwards visited Mrs. Bingley, and talked of Mrs. Darcy, may
be guessed. I wish I could say, for the sake of her family, that the
accomplishment of her earnest desire in the establishment of so many
of her children produced so happy an effect as to make her a sensible,
amiable, well-informed woman for the rest of her life; though perhaps it
was lucky for her husband, who might not have relished domestic felicity
in so unusual a form, that she still was occasionally nervous and
invariably silly.

Mr. Bennet missed his second daughter exceedingly; his affection for her
drew him oftener from home than anything else could do. He delighted in
going to Pemberley, especially when he was least expected.

Mr. Bingley and Jane remained at Netherfield only a twelvemonth. So near
a vicinity to her mother and Meryton relations was not desirable even to
_his_ easy temper, or _her_ affectionate heart. The darling wish of his
sisters was then gratified; he bought an estate in a neighbouring county
to Derbyshire, and Jane and Elizabeth, in addition to every other source
of happiness, were within thirty miles of each other.

Kitty, to her very material advantage, spent the chief of her time with
her two elder sisters. In society so superior to what she had generally
known, her improvement was great. She was not of so ungovernable a
temper as Lydia; and, removed from the influence of Lydia's example,
she became, by proper attention and management, less irritable, less
ignorant, and less insipid. From the further disadvantage of Lydia's
society she was of course carefully kept, and though Mrs. Wickham
frequently invited her to come and stay with her, with the promise of
balls and young men, her father would never consent to her going.

Mary was the only daughter who remained at home; and she was necessarily
drawn from the pursuit of accomplishments by Mrs. Bennet's being quite
unable to sit alone. Mary was obliged to mix more with the world, but
she could still moralize over every morning visit; and as she was no
longer mortified by comparisons between her sisters' beauty and her own,
it was suspected by her father that she submitted to the change without
much reluctance.

As for Wickham and Lydia, their characters suffered no revolution from
the marriage of her sisters. He bore with philosophy the conviction that
Elizabeth must now become acquainted with whatever of his ingratitude
and falsehood had before been unknown to her; and in spite of every
thing, was not wholly without hope that Darcy might yet be prevailed on
to make his fortune. The congratulatory letter which Elizabeth received
from Lydia on her marriage, explained to her that, by his wife at least,
if not by himself, such a hope was cherished. The letter was to this
effect:

“MY DEAR LIZZY,

“I wish you joy. If you love Mr. Darcy half as well as I do my dear
Wickham, you must be very happy. It is a great comfort to have you so
rich, and when you have nothing else to do, I hope you will think of us.
I am sure Wickham would like a place at court very much, and I do not
think we shall have quite money enough to live upon without some help.
Any place would do, of about three or four hundred a year; but however,
do not speak to Mr. Darcy about it, if you had rather not.

“Yours, etc.”

As it happened that Elizabeth had _much_ rather not, she endeavoured in
her answer to put an end to every entreaty and expectation of the kind.
Such relief, however, as it was in her power to afford, by the practice
of what might be called economy in her own private expences, she
frequently sent them. It had always been evident to her that such an
income as theirs, under the direction of two persons so extravagant in
their wants, and heedless of the future, must be very insufficient to
their support; and whenever they changed their quarters, either Jane or
herself were sure of being applied to for some little assistance
towards discharging their bills. Their manner of living, even when the
restoration of peace dismissed them to a home, was unsettled in the
extreme. They were always moving from place to place in quest of a cheap
situation, and always spending more than they ought. His affection for
her soon sunk into indifference; hers lasted a little longer; and
in spite of her youth and her manners, she retained all the claims to
reputation which her marriage had given her.

Though Darcy could never receive _him_ at Pemberley, yet, for
Elizabeth's sake, he assisted him further in his profession. Lydia was
occasionally a visitor there, when her husband was gone to enjoy himself
in London or Bath; and with the Bingleys they both of them frequently
staid so long, that even Bingley's good humour was overcome, and he
proceeded so far as to talk of giving them a hint to be gone.

Miss Bingley was very deeply mortified by Darcy's marriage; but as she
thought it advisable to retain the right of visiting at Pemberley, she
dropt all her resentment; was fonder than ever of Georgiana, almost as
attentive to Darcy as heretofore, and paid off every arrear of civility
to Elizabeth.

Pemberley was now Georgiana's home; and the attachment of the sisters
was exactly what Darcy had hoped to see. They were able to love each
other even as well as they intended. Georgiana had the highest opinion
in the world of Elizabeth; though at first she often listened with
an astonishment bordering on alarm at her lively, sportive, manner of
talking to her brother. He, who had always inspired in herself a respect
which almost overcame her affection, she now saw the object of open
pleasantry. Her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen
in her way. By Elizabeth's instructions, she began to comprehend that
a woman may take liberties with her husband which a brother will not
always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself.

Lady Catherine was extremely indignant on the marriage of her nephew;
and as she gave way to all the genuine frankness of her character in
her reply to the letter which announced its arrangement, she sent him
language so very abusive, especially of Elizabeth, that for some time
all intercourse was at an end. But at length, by Elizabeth's persuasion,
he was prevailed on to overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation;
and, after a little further resistance on the part of his aunt, her
resentment gave way, either to her affection for him, or her curiosity
to see how his wife conducted herself; and she condescended to wait
on them at Pemberley, in spite of that pollution which its woods had
received, not merely from the presence of such a mistress, but the
visits of her uncle and aunt from the city.

With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms.
Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever
sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing
her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.





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Title: The Bet and other stories

Author: Anton Tchekhov

Translator: Samuel Solomonovitch Koteliansky
            John Middleton Murry

Release Date: August 7, 2017 [EBook #55283]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BET AND OTHER STORIES ***




Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon
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THE BET

AND OTHER STORIES

BY

ANTON TCHEKHOV

TRANSLATED BY

S. KOTELIANSKY AND J. M. MURRY

JOHN W. LUCE & CO.

BOSTON

1915




TRANSLATORS' NOTE

Stiepanovich and Stepanich are two forms of the same name,
meaning--"son of Stephen." The abbreviated form is the more intimate
and familiar.

The Russian dishes mentioned in "A Tedious Story" have no exact
equivalents. _Sossoulki_ are a kind of little dumplings eaten in
soup; _schi_ is a soup made of sour cabbage; and _kasha_ is a kind of
porridge.

The words of the song which the students sing in "The Fit" come from
Poushkin.



    CONTENTS

    THE BET
    A TEDIOUS STORY
    THE FIT
    MISFORTUNE
    AFTER THE THEATRE
    THAT WRETCHED BOY
    ENEMIES
    A TRIFLING OCCURRENCE
    A GENTLEMAN FRIEND
    OVERWHELMING SENSATIONS
    EXPENSIVE LESSONS
    A LIVING CALENDAR
    OLD AGE




THE BET


It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from corner to
corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave in the
autumn fifteen years ago. There were many clever people at the party
and much interesting conversation. They talked among other things of
capital punishment. The guests, among them not a few scholars and
journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital punishment. They
found it obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted to a Christian
State and immoral. Some of them thought that capital punishment should
be replaced universally by life-imprisonment.

"I don't agree with you," said the host. "I myself have experienced
neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may
judge _a priori,_ then in my opinion capital punishment is more
moral and more humane than imprisonment. Execution kills instantly,
life-imprisonment kills by degrees. Who is the more humane executioner,
one who kills you in a few seconds or one who draws the life out of
you incessantly, for years?"

"They're both equally immoral," remarked one of the guests, "because
their purpose is the same, to take away life. The State is not God. It
has no right to take away that which it cannot give back, if it should
so desire."

Among the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five. On
being asked his opinion, he said:

"Capital punishment and life-imprisonment are equally immoral; but if
I were offered the choice between them, I would certainly choose the
second. It's better to live somehow than not to live at all."

There ensued a lively discussion. The banker who was then younger and
more nervous suddenly lost his temper, banged his fist on the table, and
turning to the young lawyer, cried out:

"It's a lie. I bet you two millions you wouldn't stick in a cell even
for five years."

"If that's serious," replied the lawyer, "then I bet I'll stay not five
but fifteen."

"Fifteen! Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two millions."

"Agreed. You stake two millions, I my freedom," said the lawyer.

So this wild, ridiculous bet came to pass. The banker, who at that time
had too many millions to count, spoiled and capricious, was beside
himself with rapture. During supper he said to the lawyer jokingly:

"Come to your senses, young man, before it's too late. Two millions are
nothing to me, but you stand to lose three or four of the best years of
your life. I say three or four, because you'll never stick it out any
longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary is much
heavier than enforced imprisonment. The idea that you have the right to
free yourself at any moment will poison the whole of your life in the
cell. I pity you."

And now the banker pacing from corner to corner, recalled all this and
asked himself:

"Why did I make this bet? What's the good? The lawyer loses fifteen
years of his life and I throw away two millions. Will it convince
people that capital punishment is worse or better than imprisonment for
life. No, No! all stuff and rubbish. On my part, it was the caprice of
a well-fed man; on the lawyer's, pure greed of gold."

He recollected further what happened after the evening party. It
was decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the
strictest observation, in a garden-wing of the banker's house. It was
agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right to
cross the threshold, to see living people, to hear human voices, and
to receive letters and newspapers. He was permitted to have a musical
instrument, to read books, to write letters, to drink wine and smoke
tobacco. By the agreement he could communicate, but only in silence,
with the outside world through a little window specially constructed
for this purpose. Everything necessary, books, music, wine, he could
receive in any quantity by sending a note through the window. The
agreement provided for all the minutest details, which made the
confinement strictly solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to remain
exactly fifteen years from twelve o'clock of November 14th 1870 to
twelve o'clock of November 14th 1885. The least attempt on his part to
violate the conditions, to escape if only for two minutes before the
time freed the banker from the obligation to pay him the two millions.

During the first year of imprisonment, the lawyer, as far as it
was possible to judge from his short notes, suffered terribly from
loneliness and boredom. From his wing day and night came the sound of
the piano. He rejected wine and tobacco. "Wine," he wrote, "excites
desires, and desires are the chief foes of a prisoner; besides, nothing
is more boring than to drink good wine alone," and tobacco spoils the
air in his room. During the first year the lawyer was sent books of a
light character; novels with a complicated love interest, stories of
crime and fantasy, comedies, and so on.

In the second year the piano was heard no longer and the lawyer asked
only for classics. In the fifth year, music was heard again, and the
prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him said that during the
whole of that year he was only eating, drinking, and lying on his bed.
He yawned often and talked angrily to himself. Books he did not read.
Sometimes at nights he would sit down to write. He would write for a
long time and tear it all up in the morning. More than once he was
heard to weep.

In the second half of the sixth year, the prisoner began zealously to
study languages, philosophy, and history. He fell on these subjects so
hungrily that the banker hardly had time to get books enough for him.
In the space of four years about six hundred volumes were bought at
his request. It was while that passion lasted that the banker received
the following letter from the prisoner: "My dear gaoler, I am writing
these lines in six languages. Show them to experts. Let them read them.
If they do not find one single mistake, I beg you to give orders to
have a gun fired off in the garden. By the noise I shall know that my
efforts have not been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and countries
speak in different languages; but in them all burns the same flame. Oh,
if you knew my heavenly happiness now that I can understand them!" The
prisoner's desire was fulfilled. Two shots were fired in the garden by
the banker's order.

Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his
table and read only the New Testament. The banker found it strange
that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite volumes,
should have spent nearly a year in reading one book, easy to
understand and by no means thick. The New Testament was then replaced
by the history of religions and theology.

During the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an
extraordinary amount, quite haphazard. Now he would apply himself to
the natural sciences, then would read Byron or Shakespeare. Notes used
to come from him in which he asked to be sent at the same time a book
on chemistry, a text-book of medicine, a novel, and some treatise on
philosophy or theology. He read as though he were swimming in the sea
among the broken pieces of wreckage, and in his desire to save his life
was eagerly grasping one piece after another.



II


The banker recalled all this, and thought:

"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he receives his freedom. Under the
agreement, I shall have to pay him two millions. If I pay, it's all
over with me. I am ruined for ever...."

Fifteen years before he had too many millions to count, but now he was
afraid to ask himself which he had more of, money or debts. Gambling on
the Stock-Exchange, risky speculation, and the recklessness of which
he could not rid himself even in old age, had gradually brought his
business to decay; and the fearless, self-confident, proud man of
business had become an ordinary banker, trembling at every rise and
fall in the market.

"That cursed bet," murmured the old man clutching his head in
despair.... "Why didn't the man die? He's only forty years old. He will
take away my last farthing, marry, enjoy life, gamble on the Exchange,
and I will look on like an envious beggar and hear the same words from
him every day: 'I'm obliged to you for the happiness of my life. Let
me help you.' No, it's too much! The only escape from bankruptcy and
disgrace--is that the man should die."

The clock had just struck three. The banker was listening. In Ike house
everyone was asleep, and one could hear only the frozen trees whining
outside the windows. Trying to make no sound, he took out of his safe
the key of the door which had not been opened for fifteen years, put
on his overcoat, and went out of the house. The garden was dark and
cold. It was raining. A keen damp wind hovered howling over all the
garden and gave the trees no rest. Though he strained his eyes, the
banker could see neither the ground, nor the white statues, nor the
garden-wing, nor the trees. Approaching the place where the garden wing
stood, he called the watchman twice. There was no answer. Evidently
the watchman had taken shelter from the bad weather and was now asleep
somewhere in the kitchen or the greenhouse.

"If I have the courage to fulfil my intention," thought the old man,
"the suspicion will fall on the watchman first of all."

In the darkness he groped for the stairs and the door and entered the
hall of the gardenwing, then poked his way into a narrow passage and
struck a match. Not a soul was there. Someone's bed, with no bedclothes
on it, stood there, and an iron stove was dark in the corner. The seals
on the door that led into the prisoner's room were unbroken.

When the match went out, the old man, trembling from agitation, peeped
into the little window.

In the prisoner's room a candle was burning dim. The prisoner himself
sat by the table. Only his back, the hair on his head and his hands
were visible. On the table, the two chairs, the carpet by the table
open books were strewn.

Five minutes passed and the prisoner never once stirred. Fifteen years
confinement had taught him to sit motionless. The banker tapped on the
window with his finger, but the prisoner gave no movement in reply.
Then the banker cautiously tore the seals from the door and put the key
into the lock. The rusty lock gave a hoarse groan and the door creaked.
The banker expected instantly to hear a cry of surprise and the sound
of steps. Three minutes passed and it was as quiet behind the door as
it had been before. He made up his mind to enter. Before the table
sat a man, unlike an ordinary human being. It was a skeleton, with
tight-drawn skin, with a woman's long curly hair, and a shaggy beard.
The colour of his face was yellow, of an earthy shade; the cheeks were
sunken, the back long and narrow, and the hand upon which he leaned his
hairy head was so lean and skinny that it was painful to look upon.
His hair was already silvering with grey, and no one who glanced at
the senile emaciation of the face would have believed that he was only
forty years old. On the table, before his bended head, lay a sheet of
paper on which something was written in a tiny hand.

"Poor devil," thought the banker, "he's asleep and probably seeing
millions in his dreams. I have only to take and throw this half-dead
thing on the bed, smother him a moment with the pillow, and the most
careful examination will find no trace of unnatural death. But, first,
let us read what he has written here."

The banker took the sheet from the table and read:

"To-morrow at twelve o'clock midnight, I shall obtain my freedom and
the right to mix with people. But before I leave this room and see the
sun I think it necessary to say a few words to you. On my own clear
conscience and before God who sees me I declare to you that I despise
freedom, life, health, and all that your books call the blessings of
the world.

"For fifteen years I have diligently studied earthly life. True,
I saw neither the earth nor the people, but in your books I drank
fragrant wine, sang songs, hunted deer and wild boar in the forests,
loved women.... And beautiful women, like clouds ethereal, created by
the magic of your poets' genius, visited me by night and whispered me
wonderful tales, which made my head drunken. In your books I climbed
the summits of Elbruz and Mont Blanc and saw from thence how the
sun rose in the morning, and in the evening overflowed the sky, the
ocean and the mountain ridges with a purple gold. I saw from thence
how above me lightnings glimmered cleaving the clouds; I saw green
forests, fields, rivers, lakes, cities; I heard syrens singing, and the
playing of the pipes of Pan; I touched the wings of beautiful devils
who came flying to me to speak of God.... In your books I cast myself
into bottomless abysses, worked miracles, burned cities to the ground,
preached new religions, conquered whole countries....

"Your books gave me wisdom. All that unwearying human thought created
in the centuries is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I know
that I am more clever than you all.

"And I despise your books, despise all wordly blessings and wisdom.
Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive like a mirage. Though
you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the
face of the earth like the mice underground; and your posterity, your
history, and the immortality of your men of genius will be as frozen
slag, burnt down together with the terrestrial globe.

"You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You take lie for truth and
ugliness for beauty. You would marvel if by certain conditions there
should suddenly grow on apple and orange trees, instead of fruit,
frogs and lizards, and if roses should begin to breathe the odour of
a sweating horse. So do I marvel at you, who have bartered heaven for
earth. I do not want to understand you.

"That I may show you in deed my contempt for that by which you live,
I waive the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise, and
which I now despise. That I may deprive myself of my right to them, I
shall come out from here five minutes before the stipulated term, and
thus shall violate the agreement."

When he had read, the banker put the sheet on the table, kissed the
head of the strange man, and began to weep. He went out of the wing.
Never at any other time, not even after his terrible losses on the
Exchange, had he felt such contempt for himself as now. Coming home,
he lay down on his bed, but agitation and tears kept him long from
sleep....

The next morning the poor watchman came running to him and told him
that they had seen the man who lived in the wing climbing through the
window into the garden. He had gone to the gate and disappeared.
Together with his servants the banker went instantly to the wing and
established the escape of his prisoner. To avoid unnecessary rumours he
took the paper with the renunciation from the table and, on his return,
locked it in his safe.




A TEDIOUS STORY


(FROM AN OLD MAN'S JOURNAL)


There lives in Russia an emeritus professor, Nicolai Stiepanovich ...
privy councillor and knight. He has so many Russian and foreign Orders
that when he puts them on the students call him "the holy picture."
His acquaintance is most distinguished. Not a single famous scholar
lived or died during the last twenty-five or thirty years but he was
intimately acquainted with him. Now he has no one to be friendly with,
but speaking of the past the long list of his eminent friends would
end with such names as Pirogov, Kavelin, and the poet Nekrasov, who
bestowed upon him their warmest and most sincere friendship. He is a
member of all the Russian and of three foreign universities, et cetera,
et cetera. All this, and a great deal besides, forms what is known as
my name.

This name of mine is very popular. It is known to every literate person
in Russia; abroad it is mentioned from professorial chairs with the
epithets "eminent and esteemed." It is reckoned among those fortunate
names which to mention in vain or to abuse in public or in the Press
is considered a mark of bad breeding. Indeed, it should be so; because
with my name is inseparably associated the idea of a famous, richly
gifted, and indubitably useful person. I am a steady worker, with
the endurance of a camel, which is important. I am also endowed with
talent, which is still more important. In passing, I would add that
I am a well-educated, modest, and honest fellow. I have never poked
my nose into letters or politics, never sought popularity in disputes
with the ignorant, and made no speeches either at dinners or at my
colleagues' funerals. Altogether there is not a single spot on my
learned name, and it has nothing to complain of. It is fortunate.

The bearer of this name, that is myself, is a man of sixty-two, with a
bald head, false teeth and an incurable tic. My name is as brilliant
and prepossessing, as I, myself am dull and ugly. My head and hands
tremble from weakness; my neck, like that of one of Turgeniev's
heroines, resembles the handle of a counter-bass; my chest is hollow
and my back narrow. When I speak or read my mouth twists, and when I
smile my whole face is covered with senile, deathly wrinkles. There is
nothing imposing in my pitiable face, save that when I suffer from the
tic, I have a singular expression which compels anyone who looks at me
to think: "This man will die soon, for sure."

I can still read pretty well; I can still hold the attention of my
audience for two hours. My passionate manner, the literary form of
my exposition and my humour make the defects of my voice almost
unnoticeable, though it is dry, harsh, and hard like a hypocrite's.
But I write badly. The part of my brain which governs the ability to
write refused office. My memory has weakened, and my thoughts are
too inconsequent; and when I expound them on paper, I always have a
feeling that I have lost the sense of their organic connection. The
construction is monotonous, and the sentence feeble and timid. I
often do not write what I want to, and when I write the end I cannot
remember the beginning. I often forget common words, and in writing a
letter I always have to waste much energy in order to avoid superfluous
sentences and unnecessary incidental statements; both bear clear
witness of the decay of my intellectual activity. And it is remarkable
that, the simpler the letter, the more tormenting is my effort. When
writing a scientific article I fed much freer and much more intelligent
than in writing a letter of welcome or a report. One thing more: it is
easier for me to write German or English than Russian.

As regards my present life, I must first of all note insomnia, from
which I have begun to suffer lately. If I were asked: "What is now
the chief and fundamental fact of your existence?" I would answer:
"Insomnia." From habit, I still undress at midnight precisely and get
into bed. I soon fall asleep but wake just after one with the feeling
that I have not slept at all. I must get out of bed and light the
lamp. For an hour or two I walk about the room from corner to corner
and inspect the long familiar pictures. When I am weary of walking I
sit down to the table. I sit motionless thinking of nothing, feeling
no desires; if a book lies before me I draw it mechanically towards me
and read without interest. Thus lately in one night I read mechanically
a whole novel with a strange title, "Of What the Swallow Sang." Or in
order to occupy my attention I make myself count to a thousand, or I
imagine the face of some one of my friends, and begin to remember in
what year and under what circumstances he joined the faculty. I love
to listen to sounds. Now, two rooms away from me my daughter Liza will
say something quickly, in her sleep; then my wife will walk through the
drawing-room with a candle and infallibly drop the box of matches. Then
the shrinking wood of the cupboard squeaks or the burner of the lamp
tinkles suddenly, and all these sounds somehow agitate me.

Not to sleep of nights confesses one abnormal; and therefore I wait
impatiently for the morning and the day, when I have the right not
to sleep. Many oppressive hours pass before the cock crows. He is my
harbinger of good. As soon as he has crowed I know that in an hour's
time the porter downstairs will awake and for some reason or other go
up the stairs, coughing angrily; and later beyond the windows the air
begins to pale gradually and voices echo in the street.

The day begins with the coming of my wife. She comes in to me in a
petticoat, with her hair undone, but already washed and smelling of eau
de Cologne, and looking as though she came in by accident, saying the
same thing every time: "Pardon, I came in for a moment. You haven't
slept again?" Then she puts the lamp out, sits by the table and begins
to talk. I am not a prophet but I know beforehand what the subject of
conversation will be, every morning the same. Usually, after breathless
inquiries after my health, she suddenly remembers our son, the officer,
who is serving in Warsaw. On the twentieth of each month we send him
fifty roubles. This is our chief subject of conversation.

"Of course it is hard on us," my wife sighs. "But until he is finally
settled we are obliged to help him. The boy is among strangers; the
pay is small. But if you like, next month we'll send him forty roubles
instead of fifty. What do you think?"

Daily experience might have convinced my wife that expenses do
not grow less by talking of them. But my wife does not acknowledge
experience and speaks about our officer punctually every day, about
bread, thank Heaven, being cheaper and sugar a half-penny dearer--and
all this in a tone as though it were news to me.

I listen and agree mechanically. Probably because I have not slept
during the night strange idle thoughts take hold of me. I look at my
wife and wonder like a child. In perplexity I ask myself: This old,
stout, clumsy woman, with sordid cares and anxiety about bread and
butter written in the dull expression of her face, her eyes tired with
eternal thoughts of debts and poverty, who can talk only of expenses
and smile only when things are cheap--was this once the slim Varya
whom I loved passionately for her fine clear mind, her pure soul, her
beauty, and as Othello loved Desdemona, for her "compassion" of my
science? Is she really the same, my wife Varya, who bore me a son?

I gaze intently into the fat, clumsy old woman's face. I seek in her
my Varya; but from the past nothing remains but her fear for my health
and her way of calling my salary "our" salary and my hat "our" hat. It
pains me to look at her, and to console her, if only a little, I let
her talk as she pleases, and I am silent even when she judges people
unjustly, or scolds me because I do not practise and do not publish
text-books.

Our conversation always ends in the same way. My wife suddenly
remembers that I have not yet had tea, and gives a start:

"Why am I sitting down?" she says, getting up. "The samovar has been on
the table a long while, and I sit chatting. How forgetful I am? Good
gracious!"

She hurries away, but stops at the door to say:

"We owe Yegor five months' wages. Do you realise it? It's a bad thing
to let the servants' wages run on. I've said so often. It's much easier
to pay ten roubles every month than fifty for five!"

Outside the door she stops again:

"I pity our poor Liza more than anybody. The girl studies at the
Conservatoire. She's always in good society, and the Lord only knows
how she's dressed. That fur-coat of hers! It's a sin to show yourself
in the street in it. If she had a different father, it would do, but
everyone knows he is a famous professor, a privy councillor."

So, having reproached me for my name and title, she goes away at last.
Thus begins my day. It does not improve.

When I have drunk my tea, Liza comes in, in a fur-coat and hat, with
her music, ready to go to the Conservatoire. She is twenty-two. She
looks younger. She is pretty, rather like my wife when she was young.
She kisses me tenderly on my forehead and my hand.

"Good morning, Papa. Quite well?"

As a child she adored ice-cream, and I often had to take her to a
confectioner's. Ice-cream was her standard of beauty. If she wanted
to praise me, she used to say: "Papa, you are ice-creamy." One finger
she called the pistachio, the other the cream, the third the raspberry
finger and so on. And when she came to say good morning, I used to lift
her on to my knees and kiss her fingers, and say:

"The cream one, the pistachio one, the lemon one."

And now from force of habit I kiss Liza's fingers and murmur:

"Pistachio one, cream one, lemon one." But it does not sound the same.
I am cold like the ice-cream and I feel ashamed. When my daughter comes
in and touches my forehead with her lips I shudder as though a bee had
stung my forehead, I smile constrainedly and turn away my face. Since
my insomnia began a question has been driving like a nail into my
brain. My daughter continually sees how terribly I, an old man, blush
because I owe the servant his wages; she sees how often the worry of
small debts forces me to leave my work and to pace the room from corner
to corner for hours, thinking; but why hasn't she, even once, come to
me without telling her mother and whispered: "Father, here's my watch,
bracelets, earrings, dresses.... Pawn them all.... You need money"?
Why, seeing how I and her mother try to hide our poverty, out of false
pride--why does she not deny herself the luxury of music lessons? I
would not accept the watch, the bracelets, or her sacrifices--God
forbid!--I do not want that.

Which reminds me of my son, the Warsaw officer. He is a clever, honest,
and sober fellow. But that doesn't mean very much. If I had an old
father, and I knew that there were moments when he was ashamed of his
poverty, I think I would give up my commission to someone else and
hire myself out as a navvy. These thoughts of the children poison me.
What good are they? Only a mean and irritable person Can take refuge
in thinking evil of ordinary people because they are not heroes. But
enough of that.

At a quarter to ten I have to go and lecture to my dear boys. I dress
myself and walk the road I have known these thirty years. For me it has
a history of its own. Here is a big grey building with a chemist's shop
beneath. A tiny house once stood there, and it was a beer-shop. In this
beer-shop I thought out my thesis, and wrote my first love-letter to
Varya. I wrote it in pencil on a scrap of paper that began "Historia
Morbi." Here is a grocer's shop. It used to belong to a little Jew who
sold me cigarettes on credit, and later on to a fat woman who loved
students "because every one of them had a mother." Now a red-headed
merchant sits there, a very nonchalant man, who drinks tea from a
copper tea-pot. And here are the gloomy gates of the University that
have not been repaired for years; a weary porter in a sheepskin coat, a
broom, heaps of snow ... Such gates cannot produce a good impression on
a boy who comes fresh from the provinces and imagines that the temple
of science is really a temple. Certainly, in the history of Russian
pessimism, the age of university buildings, the dreariness of the
corridors, the smoke-stains on the walls, the meagre light, the dismal
appearance of the stairs, the clothes-pegs and the benches, hold one of
the foremost places in the series of predisposing causes. Here is our
garden. It does not seem to have grown any better or any worse since I
was a student. I do not like it. It would be much more sensible if tall
pine-trees and fine oaks grew there instead of consumptive lime-trees,
yellow acacias and thin clipped lilac. The student's mood is created
mainly by every one of the surroundings in which he studies; therefore
he must see everywhere before him only what is great and strong and
exquisite. Heaven preserve him from starveling trees, broken windows,
and drab walls and doors covered with tom oilcloth.

As I approach my main staircase the door is open wide. I am met by
my old friend, of the same age and name as I, Nicolas the porter. He
grunts as he lets me in:

"It's frosty, Your Excellency."

Or if my coat is wet:

"It's raining a bit, Your Excellency."

Then he runs in front of me and opens all the doors on my way. In the
study he carefully takes off my coat and at the same time manages
to tell me some university news. Because of the close acquaintance
that exists between all the University porters and keepers, he knows
all that happens in the four faculties, in the registry, in the
chancellor's cabinet, and the library. He knows everything. When, for
instance, the resignation of the rector or dean is under discussion,
I hear him talking to the junior porters, naming candidates and
explaining offhand that so and so will not be approved by the Minister,
so and so will himself refuse the honour; then he plunges into
fantastic details of some mysterious papers received in the registry,
of a secret conversation which appears to have taken place between the
Minister and the curator, and so on. These details apart, he is almost
always right. The impressions he forms of each candidate are original,
but also true. If you want to know who read his thesis, joined the
staff, resigned or died in a particular year, then you must seek the
assistance of this veteran's colossal memory. He will not only name you
the year, month, and day, but give you the accompanying details of this
or any other event. Such memory is the privilege of love.

He is the guardian of the university traditions. From the porters
before him he inherited many legends of the life of the university. He
added to this wealth much of his own and if you like he will tell you
many stories, long or short. He can tell you of extraordinary savants
who knew _everything,_ of remarkable scholars who did not sleep for
weeks on end, of numberless martyrs to science; good triumphs over evil
with him. The weak always conquer the strong, the wise man the fool,
the modest the proud, the young the old. There is no need to take all
these legends and stories for sterling; but filter them, and you will
find what you want in your filter, a noble tradition and the names of
true heroes acknowledged by all.

In our society all the information about the learned world consists
entirely of anecdotes of the extraordinary absent-mindedness of old
professors, and of a handful of jokes, which are ascribed to Guber
or to myself or to Baboukhin. But this is too little for an educated
society. If it loved science, savants and students as Nicolas loves
them, it would long ago have had a literature of whole epics, stories,
and biographies. But unfortunately this is yet to be.

The news told, Nicolas looks stem and we begin to talk business. If
an outsider were then to hear how freely Nicolas uses the jargon, he
would be inclined to think that he was a scholar, posing as a soldier.
By the way, the rumours of the university-porter's erudition are very
exaggerated. It is true that Nicolas knows more than a hundred Latin
tags, can put a skeleton together and on occasion make a preparation,
can make the students laugh with a long learned quotation, but the
simple theory of the circulation of the blood is as dark to him now as
it was twenty years ago.

At the table in my room, bent low over a book or a preparation, sits
my dissector, Peter Ignatievich. He is a hardworking, modest man of
thirty-five without any gifts, already bald and with a big belly.
He works from morning to night, reads tremendously and remembers
everything he has read. In this respect he is not merely an excellent
man, but a man of gold; but in all others he is a cart-horse, or if you
like a learned blockhead. The characteristic traits of a cart-horse
which distinguish him from a creature of talent are these. His outlook
is narrow, absolutely bounded by his specialism. Apart from his own
subject he is as naive as a child. I remember once entering the room
and saying:

"Think what bad luck! They say, Skobielev is dead."

Nicolas crossed himself; but Peter Ignatievich turned to me:

"Which Skobielev do you mean?"

Another time,--some time earlier--I announced that Professor Pierov was
dead. That darling Peter Ignatievich asked:

"What was his subject?"

I imagine that if Patti sang into his ear, or Russia were attacked by
hordes of Chinamen, or there was an earthquake, he would not lift
a finger, but would go on in the quietest way with his eye screwed
over his microscope. In a word: "What's Hecuba to him?" I would give
anything to see how this dry old stick goes to bed with his wife.

Another trait: a fanatical belief in the infallibility of science,
above all in everything that the Germans write. He is sure of himself
and his preparations, knows the purpose of life, is absolutely ignorant
of the doubts and disillusionments that turn talents grey,--a slavish
worship of the authorities, and not a shadow of need to think for
himself. It is hard to persuade him and quite impossible to discuss
with him. Just try a discussion with a man who is profoundly convinced
that the best science is medicine, the best men doctors, the best
traditions--the medical! From the ugly past of medicine only one
tradition has survived,--the white necktie that doctors wear still.
For a learned, and more generally for an educated person there can
exist only a general university tradition, without any division into
traditions of medicine, of law, and so on. But it's quite impossible
for Peter Ignatievich to agree with that; and he is ready to argue it
with you till doomsday.

His future is quite plain to me. During the whole of his life he will
make several hundred preparations of extraordinary purity, will write
any number of dry, quite competent, essays, will make about ten
scrupulously accurate translations; but he won't invent gunpowder.
For gunpowder, imagination is wanted, inventiveness, and a gift for
divination, and Peter Ignatievich has nothing of the kind. In short, he
is not a master of science but a labourer.

Peter Ignatievich, Nicolas, and I whisper together. We are rather
strange to ourselves. One feels something quite particular, when the
audience booms like the sea behind the door. In thirty years I have not
grown used to this feeling, and I have it every morning. I button up my
frock-coat nervously, ask Nicolas unnecessary questions, get angry....
It is as though I were afraid; but it is not fear, but something else
which I cannot name nor describe.

Unnecessarily, I look at my watch and say:

"Well, it's time to go."

And we march in, in this order: Nicolas with the preparations or the
atlases in front, myself next, and after me, the cart-horse, modestly
hanging his head; or, if necessary, a corpse on a stretcher in front
and behind the corpse Nicolas and so on. The students rise when I
appear, then sit down and the noise of the sea is suddenly still. Calm
begins.

I know what I will lecture about, but I know nothing of how I will
lecture, where I will begin and where I will end. There is not a single
sentence ready in my brain. But as soon as I glance at the audience,
sitting around me in an amphitheatre, and utter the stereotyped "In
our last lecture we ended with...." and the sentences fly out of
my soul in a long line--then it is full steam ahead. I speak with
irresistible speed, and with passion, and it seems as though no earthly
power could check the current of my speech. In order to lecture well,
that is without being wearisome and to the listener's profit, besides
talent you must have the knack of it and experience; you must have
a clear idea both of your own powers, of the people to whom you are
lecturing, and of the subject of your remarks. Moreover, you must be
quick in the uptake, keep a sharp eye open, and never for a moment lose
your field of vision.

When he presents the composer's thought, a good conductor does twenty
things at once. He reads the score, waves his baton, watches the
singer makes a gesture now towards the drum, now to the double-bass,
and so on. It is the same with me when lecturing. I have some hundred
and fifty faces before me, quite unlike each other, and three hundred
eyes staring me straight in the face. My purpose is to conquer this
many-headed hydra. If I have a clear idea how far they are attending
and how much they are comprehending every minute while I am lecturing,
then the hydra is in my power. My other opponent is within me. This
is the endless variety of forms, phenomena and laws, and the vast
number of ideas, whether my own or others', which depend upon them.
Every moment I must be skilful enough to choose what is most important
and necessary from this enormous material, and just as swiftly as
my speech flows to clothe my thought in a form which will penetrate
the hydra's understanding and excite its attention. Besides I must
watch carefully to see that my thoughts shall not be presented as
they have been accumulated, but in a certain order, necessary for the
correct composition of the picture which I wish to paint. Further, I
endeavour to make my speech literary, my definitions brief and exact,
my sentences as simple and elegant as possible. Every moment I must
hold myself in and remember that I have only an hour and forty minutes
to spend. In other words, it is a heavy labour. At one and the same
time you have to be a savant, a schoolmaster, and an orator, and it is
a failure if the orator triumphs over the schoolmaster in you or the
schoolmaster over the orator.

After lecturing for a quarter, for half an hour, I notice suddenly that
the students have begun to stare at the ceiling or Peter Ignatievich.
One will feel for his handkerchief, another settle himself comfortably,
another smile at his own thoughts. This means their attention is tried.
I must take steps. I seize the first opening and make a pun. All the
hundred and fifty faces have a broad smile, their eyes flash merrily,
and for a while you can hear the boom of the sea. I laugh too. Their
attention is refreshed and I can go on.

No sport, no recreation, no game ever gave me such delight as reading
a lecture. Only in a lecture could I surrender myself wholly to
passion and understand that inspiration is not a poet's fiction, but
exists indeed. And I do not believe that Hercules, even after the
most delightful of his exploits, felt such a pleasant weariness as I
experienced every time after a lecture.

This was in the past. Now at lectures I experience only torture. Not
half an hour passes before I begin to feel an invincible weakness in
my legs and shoulders. I sit down in my chair, but I am not used to
lecture sitting. In a moment I am up again, and lecture standing. Then
I sit down again. Inside my mouth is dry, my voice is hoarse, my head
feels dizzy. To hide my state from my audience I drink some water now
and then, cough, wipe my nose continually, as though I was troubled
by a cold, make inopportune puns, and finally announce the interval
earlier than I should. But chiefly I feel ashamed.

Conscience and reason tell me that the best thing I could do now is to
read my farewell lecture to the boys, give them my last word, bless
them and give up my place to someone younger and stronger than I. But,
heaven be my judge, I have not the courage to act up to my conscience.

Unfortunately, I am neither philosopher nor theologian. I know quite
well I have no more than six months to live; and it would seem that
now I ought to be mainly occupied with questions of the darkness
beyond the grave, and the visions which will visit my sleep in the
earth. But somehow my soul is not curious of these questions, though
my mind grants every atom of their importance. Now before my death it
is just as it was twenty or thirty years ago. Only science interests
me.--When I take my last breath I shall still believe that Science is
the most important, the most beautiful, the most necessary thing in the
life of man; that she has always been and always will be the highest
manifestation of love, and that by her alone will man triumph over
nature and himself. This faith is, perhaps, at bottom naive and unfair,
but I am not to blame if this and not another is my faith. To conquer
this faith within me is for me impossible.

But this is beside the point. I only ask that you should incline to my
weakness and understand that to tear a man who is more deeply concerned
with the destiny of a brain tissue than the final goal of creation away
from his rostrum and his students is like taking him and nailing him up
in a coffin without waiting until he is dead.

Because of my insomnia and the intense struggle with my increasing
weakness a strange thing happens inside me. In the middle of my
lecture tears rise to my throat, my eyes begin to ache, and I have
a passionate and hysterical desire to stretch out my hands and moan
aloud. I want to cry out that fate has doomed me, a famous man, to
death; that in some six months here in the auditorium another will be
master. I want to cry out that I am poisoned; that new ideas that I
did not know before have poisoned the last days of my life, and sting
my brain incessantly like mosquitoes. At that moment my position seems
so terrible to me that I want all my students to be terrified, to jump
from their seats and rush panic-stricken to the door, shrieking in
despair.

It is not easy to live through such moments.



II


After the lecture I sit at home and work. I read reviews,
dissertations, or prepare for the next lecture, and sometimes I write
something. I work with interruptions, since I have to receive visitors.

The bell rings. It is a friend who has come to talk over some business.
He enters with hat and stick. He holds them both in front of him and
says:

"Just a minute, a minute. Sit down, cher confrère. Only a word or two."

First we try to show each other that we are both extraordinarily polite
and very glad to see each other. I make him sit down in the chair,
and he makes me sit down; and then we touch each other's waists, and
put our hands on each other's buttons, as though we were feeling each
other and afraid to bum ourselves. We both laugh, though we say nothing
funny. Sitting down, we bend our heads together and begin to whisper to
each other. We must gild our conversation with such Chinese formalities
as: "You remarked most justly" or "I have already had the occasion to
say." We must giggle if either of us makes a pun, though it's a bad
one. When we have finished with the business, my friend gets up with a
rush, waves his hat towards my work, and begins to take his leave. We
feel each other once more and laugh. I accompany him down to the hall.
There I help my friend on with his coat, but he emphatically declines
so great an honour. Then, when Yegor opens the door my friend assures
me that I will catch cold, and I pretend to be ready to follow him into
the street. And when I finally return to my study my face keeps smiling
still, it must be from inertia.

A little later another ring. Someone enters the hall, spends a
long time taking off his coat and coughs. Yegor brings me word
that a student has come. I tell him to show him up. In a minute a
pleasant-faced young man appears. For a year we have been on these
forced terms together. He sends in abominable answers at examinations,
and I mark him gamma. Every year I have about seven of these people
to whom, to use the students' slang, "I give a plough" or "haul them
through." Those of them who fail because of stupidity or illness,
usually bear their cross in patience and do not bargain with me; only
sanguine temperaments, "open natures," bargain with me and come to my
house, people whose appetite is spoiled or who are prevented from going
regularly to the opera by a delay in their examinations. With the first
I am over-indulgent; the second kind I keep on the run for a year.

"Sit down," I say to my guest. "What was it you wished to say?"

"Forgive me for troubling you, Professor...." he begins, stammering
and never looking me in the face. "I would not venture to trouble you
unless.... I was up for my examination before you for the fifth time
... and I failed. I implore you to be kind, and give me a 'satis,'
because...."

The defence which all idlers make of themselves is always the same.
They have passed in every other subject with distinction, and failed
only in mine, which is all the more strange because they had always
studied my subject most diligently and know it thoroughly. They failed
through some inconceivable misunderstanding.

"Forgive me, my friend," I say to my guest. "But I can't give you a
'satis'--impossible. Go and read your lectures again, and then come.
Then we'll see."

Pause. I get a desire to torment the student a little, because he
prefers beer and the opera to science; and I say with a sigh:

"In my opinion, the best thing for you now is to give up the Faculty of
Medicine altogether. With your abilities, if you find it impossible to
pass the examination, then it seems you have neither the desire nor the
vocation to be a doctor."

My sanguine friend's face grows grave.

"Excuse me, Professor," he smiles, "but it would be strange, to say the
least, on my part. Studying medicine for five years and suddenly--to
throw it over."

"Yes, but it's better to waste five years than to spend your whole life
afterwards in an occupation which you dislike."

Immediately I begin to feel sorry for him and hasten to say:

"Well, do as you please. Read a little and come again."

"When?" the idler asks, dully.

"Whenever you like. To-morrow, even."

And I read in his pleasant eyes. "I can come again; but you'll send me
away again, you beast."

"Of course," I say, "you won't become more learned because you have to
come up to me fifteen times for examination; but this will form your
character. You must be thankful for that."

Silence. I rise and wait for my guest to leave. But he stands there,
looking at the window, pulling at his little beard and thinking. It
becomes tedious.

My sanguine friend has a pleasant, succulent voice, clever, amusing
eyes, a good-natured face, rather puffed by assiduity to beer and much
resting on the sofa. Evidently he could tell me many interesting things
about the opera, about his love affairs, about the friends he adores;
but, unfortunately, it is not the thing. And I would so eagerly listen!

"On my word of honour, Professor, if you give me a 'satis' I'll...."

As soon as it gets to "my word of honour," I wave my hands and sit down
to the table. The student thinks for a while and says, dejectedly:

"In that case, good-bye.... Forgive me!"

"Good-bye, my friend.... Good-bye!"

He walks irresolutely into the hall, slowly puts on his coat, and, when
he goes into the street, probably thinks again for a long while; having
excogitated nothing better than "old devil" for me, he goes to a cheap
restaurant to drink beer and dine, and then home to sleep. Peace be to
your ashes, honest labourer!

A third ring. Enters a young doctor in a new black suit, gold-rimmed
spectacles and the inevitable white necktie. He introduces himself.
I ask him to take a seat and inquire his business. The young priest
of science begins to tell me, not without agitation, that he passed
his doctor's examination this year, and now has only to write his
dissertation. He would like to work with me, under my guidance; and
I would do him a great kindness if I would suggest a subject for his
dissertation.

"I should be delighted to be of use to you, mon cher confrère," I
say. "But first of all, let us come to an agreement as to what is a
dissertation. Generally we understand by this, work produced as the
result of an independent creative power. Isn't that so? But a work
written on another's subject, under another's guidance, has a different
name."

The aspirant is silent. I fire up and jump out of my seat. "Why do you
all come to me? I can't understand," I cry out angrily. "Do I keep a
shop? I don't sell theses across the counter. For the one thousandth
time I ask you all to leave me alone. Forgive my rudeness, but I've got
tired of it at last!"

The aspirant is silent. Only, a tinge of colour shows on his cheek.
His face expresses his profound respect for my famous name and my
erudition, but I see in his eyes that he despises my voice, my pitiable
figure, my nervous gestures. When I am angry I seem to him a very queer
fellow.

"I do not keep a shop," I storm. "It's an amazing business! Why don't
you want to be independent? Why do you find freedom so objectionable?"

I say a great deal, but he is silent. At last by degrees I grow calm,
and, of course, surrender. The aspirant will receive a valueless
subject from me, will write under my observation a needless thesis,
will pass his tedious disputation _cum laude_ and will get a useless
and learned degree.

The rings follow in endless succession, but here I confine myself
to four. The fourth ring sounds, and I hear the familiar steps, the
rustling dress, the dear voice.

Eighteen years ago my dear friend, the oculist, died and left behind
him a seven year old daughter, Katy, and sixty thousand roubles. By
his will he made me guardian. Katy lived in my family till she was
ten. Afterwards she was sent to College and lived with me only in
her holidays in the summer months. I had no time to attend to her
education. I watched only by fits and starts; so that I can say very
little about her childhood.

The chief thing I remember, the one I love to dwell upon in memory,
is the extraordinary confidence which she had when she entered my
house, when she had to have the doctor,--a confidence which was always
shining in her darling face. She would sit in a corner somewhere
with her face tied up, and would be sure to be absorbed in watching
something. Whether she was watching me write and read books, or my wife
bustling about, or the cook peeling the potatoes in the kitchen or
the dog playing about--her eyes invariably expressed the same thing:
"Everything that goes on in this world,--everything is beautiful and
clever." She was inquisitive and adored to talk to me. She would sit at
the table opposite me, watching my movements and asking questions. She
is interested to know what I read, what I do at the University, if I'm
not afraid of corpses, what I do with my money.

"Do the students fight at the University?" she would ask.

"They do, my dear."

"You make them go down on their knees?"

"I do."

And it seemed funny to her that the students fought and that I made
them go down on their knees, and she laughed. She was a gentle, good,
patient child.

Pretty often I happened to see how something was taken away from her,
or she was unjustly punished, or her curiosity was not satisfied. At
such moments sadness would be added to her permanent expression of
confidence--nothing more. I didn't know how to take her part, but when
I saw her sadness, I always had the desire to draw her close to me and
comfort her in an old nurse's voice: "My darling little orphan!"

I remember too she loved to be well dressed and to sprinkle herself
with scents. In this she was like me. I also love good clothes and fine
scents.

I regret that I had neither the time nor the inclination to watch the
beginnings and the growth of the passion which had completely taken
hold of Katy when she was no more than fourteen or fifteen. I mean her
passionate love for the theatre. When she used to come from the College
for her holidays and live with us, nothing gave her such pleasure and
enthusiasm to talk about as plays and actors. She used to tire us
with her incessant conversation about the theatre. I alone hadn't the
courage to deny her my attention. My wife and children did not listen
to her. When she felt the desire to share her raptures she would come
to my study and coax: "Nicolai Stiepanich, do let me speak to you about
the theatre."

I used to show her the time and say:

"I'll give you half an hour. Fire away!"

Later on she used to bring in pictures of the actors and actresses she
worshipped--whole dozens of them. Then several times she tried to take
part in amateur theatricals, and finally when she left College she
declared to me she was born to be an actress.

I never shared Katy's enthusiasms for the theatre. My opinion is that
if a play is good then there's no need to trouble the actors for it to
make the proper impression; you can be satisfied merely by reading it.
If the play is bad, no acting will make it good.

When I was young I often went to the theatre, and nowadays my family
takes a box twice a year and carries me off for an airing there. Of
course this is not enough to give me the right to pass verdicts on the
theatre; but I will say a few words about it. In my opinion the theatre
hasn't improved in the last thirty or forty years. I can't find any
more than I did then, a glass of dean water, either in the corridors
or the foyer. Just as they did then, the attendants fine me sixpence
for my coat, though there's nothing illegal in wearing a warm coat in
winter. Just as it did then, the orchestra plays quite unnecessarily
in the intervals, and adds a new, gratuitous impression to the one
received from the play. Just as they did then, men go to the bar in the
intervals and drink spirits. If there is no perceptible improvement in
little things, it will be useless to look for it in the bigger things.
When an actor, hide-bound in theatrical traditions and prejudices,
tries to read simple straightforward monologue: "To be or not to be,"
not at all simply, but with an incomprehensible and inevitable hiss and
convulsions over his whole body, or when he tries to convince me that
Chazky, who is always talking to fools and is in love with a fool, is
a very clever man and that "The Sorrows of Knowledge" is not a boring
play,--then I get from the stage a breath of the same old routine
that exasperated me forty years ago when I was regaled with classical
lamentation and beating on the breast. Every time I come out of the
theatre a more thorough conservative than I went in.

It's quite possible to convince the sentimental, self-confident crowd
that the theatre in its present state is an education. But not a man
who knows what true education is would swallow this. I don't know what
it may be in fifty or a hundred years, but under present conditions the
theatre can only be a recreation. But the recreation is too expensive
for continual use, and robs the country of thousands of young, healthy,
gifted men and women, who if they had not devoted themselves to
the theatre would be excellent doctors, farmers, schoolmistresses,
or officers. It robs the public of its evenings, the best time for
intellectual work and friendly conversation. I pass over the waste of
money and the moral injuries to the spectator when he sees murder,
adultery, or slander wrongly treated on the stage.

But Katy's opinion was quite the opposite. She assured me that even in
its present state the theatre is above lecture-rooms and books, above
everything else in the world. The theatre is a power that unites in
itself all the arts, and the actors are men with a mission. No separate
art or science can act on the human soul so strongly and truly as the
stage; and therefore it is reasonable that a medium actor should enjoy
much greater popularity than the finest scholar or painter. No public
activity can give such delight and satisfaction as the theatrical.

So one fine day Katy joined a theatrical company and went away, I
believe, to Ufa, taking with her a lot of money, a bagful of rainbow
hopes, and some very high-class views on the business.

Her first letters on the journey were wonderful. When I read them I was
simply amazed that little sheets of paper could contain so much youth,
such transparent purity, such divine innocence, and at the same time
so many subtle, sensible judgments, that would do honour to a sound
masculine intelligence. The Volga, nature, the towns she visited, her
friends, her successes and failures--she did not write about them, she
sang. Every line breathed the confidence which I used to see in her
face; and with all this a mass of grammatical mistakes and hardly a
single stop.

Scarce six months passed before I received a highly poetical
enthusiastic letter, beginning, "I have fallen in love." She enclosed a
photograph of a young man with a clean-shaven face, in a broad-brimmed
hat, with a plaid thrown over his shoulders. The next letters were just
as splendid, but stops already began to appear and the grammatical
mistakes to vanish. They had a strong masculine scent. Katy began
to write about what a good thing it would be to build a big theatre
somewhere in the Volga, but on a cooperative basis, and to attract
the rich business-men and shipowners to the undertaking. There would
be plenty of money, huge receipts, and the actors would work in
partnership.... Perhaps all this is really a good thing, but I can't
help thinking such schemes could only come from a man's head.

Anyhow for eighteen months or a couple of years everything seemed
to be all right. Katy was in love, had her heart in her business
and was happy. But later on I began to notice dear symptoms of a
decline in her letters. It began with Katy complaining about her
friends. This is the first and most ominous sign. If a young scholar
or litterateur begins his career by complaining bitterly about other
scholars or littérateurs, it means that he is tired already and not
fit for his business. Katy wrote to me that her friends would not
come to rehearsals and never knew their parts; that they showed an
utter contempt for the public in the absurd plays they staged and
the manner they behaved. To swell the box-office receipts--the only
topic of conversation--serious actresses degrade themselves by singing
sentimentalities, and tragic actors sing music-hall songs, laughing at
husbands who are deceived and unfaithful wives who are pregnant. In
short, it was amazing that the profession, in the provinces, was not
absolutely dead. The marvel was that it could exist at all with such
thin, rotten blood in its veins.

In reply I sent Katy a long and, I confess, a very tedious letter.
Among other things I wrote: "I used to talk fairly often to actors in
the past, men of the noblest character, who honoured me with their
friendship. From my conversations with them I understood that their
activities were guided rather by the whim and fashion of society than
by the free working of their own minds. The best of them in their
lifetime had to play in tragedy, in musical comedy, in French farce,
and in pantomime; yet all through they considered that they were
treading the right path and being useful. You see that this means
that you must look for the cause of the evil, not in the actors, but
deeper down, in the art itself and the attitude of society towards
it." This letter of mine only made Katy cross. "You and I are playing
in different operas. I didn't write to you about men of the noblest
character, but about a lot of sharks who haven't a spark of nobility in
them. They are a horde of savages who came on the stage only because
they wouldn't be allowed anywhere else. The only ground they have for
calling themselves artists is their impudence. Not a single talent
among them, but any number of incapables, drunkards, intriguers, and
slanderers. I can't tell you how bitterly I feel it that the art I love
so much is fallen into the hands of people I despise. It hurts me that
the best men should be content to look at evil from a distance and
not want to come nearer. Instead of taking an active part, they write
ponderous platitudes and useless sermons...." and more in the same
strain.

A little while after I received the following: "I have been inhumanly
deceived. I can't go on living any more. Do as you think fit with my
money. I loved you as a father and as my only friend. Forgive me."

So it appeared that _he_ too belonged to the horde of savages. Later
on, I gathered from various hints, that there was an attempt at
suicide. Apparently, Katy tried to poison herself. I think she must
have been seriously ill afterwards, for I got the following letter from
Yalta, where most probably the doctors had sent her. Her last letter
to me contained a request that I should send her at Yalta a thousand
roubles, and it ended with the words: "Forgive me for writing such a
sad letter. I buried my baby yesterday." After she had spent about a
year in the Crimea she returned home.

She had been travelling for about four years, and during these four
years I confess that I occupied a strange and unenviable position in
regard to her. When she announced to me that she was going on to the
stage and afterwards wrote to me about her love; when the desire to
spend took hold of her, as it did periodically, and I had to send her
every now and then one or two thousand roubles at her request; when
she wrote that she intended to die, and afterwards that her baby was
dead,---I was at a loss every time. All my sympathy with her fate
consisted in thinking hard and writing long tedious letters which might
as well never have been written. But then I was _in loco parentis_ and
I loved her as a daughter.

Katy lives half a mile away from me now. She took a five-roomed
house and furnished it comfortably, with the taste that was born in
her. If anyone were to undertake to depict her surroundings, then the
dominating mood of the picture would be indolence. Soft cushions, soft
chairs for her indolent body; carpets for her indolent feet; faded,
dim, dull colours for her indolent eyes; for her indolent soul, a
heap of cheap fans and tiny pictures on the walls, pictures in which
novelty of execution was more noticeable than content; plenty of
little tables and stands, set out with perfectly useless and worthless
things, shapeless scraps instead of curtains.... All this, combined
with a horror of bright colours, of symmetry, and space, betokened a
perversion of the natural taste as well as indolence of the soul. For
whole days Katy lies on the sofa and reads books, mostly novels and
stories. She goes outside her house but once in the day, to come and
see me.

I work. Katy sits on the sofa at my side. She is silent, and wraps
herself up in her shawl as though she were cold. Either because she
is sympathetic to me, or I because I had got used to her continual
visits while she was still a little girl, her presence does not prevent
me from concentrating on my work. At long intervals I ask her some
question or other, mechanically, and she answers very curtly; or, for
a moment's rest, I turn towards her and watch how she is absorbed
in looking through some medical review or newspaper. And then I see
that the old expression of confidence in her face is there no more.
Her expression now is cold, indifferent, distracted, like that of a
passenger who has to wait a long while for his train. She dresses as
she used--well and simply, but carelessly. Evidently her clothes and
her hair suffer not a little from the sofas and hammocks on which she
lies for days together. And she is not curious any more. She doesn't
ask me questions any more, as if she had experienced everything in life
and did not expect to hear anything new.

About four o'clock there is a sound of movement in the hall and the
drawing-room. It's Liza come back from the Conservatoire, bringing her
friends with her. You can hear them playing the piano, trying their
voices and giggling. Yegor is laying the table in the dining-room and
making a noise with the plates.

"Good-bye," says Katy. "I shan't go in to see your people. They must
excuse me. I haven't time. Come and see me."

When I escort her into the hall, she looks me over sternly from head to
foot, and says in vexation:

"You get thinner and thinner. Why don't you take a cure? I'll go to
Sergius Fiodorovich and ask him to come. You must let him see you."

"It's not necessary, Katy."

"I can't understand why your family does nothing. They're a nice lot."

She puts on her jacket with her rush. Inevitably, two or three
hair-pins fall out of her careless hair on to the floor. It's too much
bother to tidy her hair now; besides she is in a hurry. She pushes the
straggling strands of hair untidily under her hat and goes away.

As soon as I come into the dining-room, my wife asks:

"Was that Katy with you just now? Why didn't she come to see us. It
really is extraordinary...."

"Mamma!" says Liza reproachfully, "If she doesn't want to come, that's
her affair. There's no need for us to go on our knees."

"Very well; but it's insulting. To sit in the study for three hours,
without thinking of us. But she can do as she likes."

Varya and Liza both hate Katy. This hatred is unintelligible to me;
probably you have to be a woman to understand it. I'll bet my life on
it that you'll hardly find a single one among the hundred and fifty
young men I see almost every day in my audience, or the hundred old
ones I happen to meet every week, who would be able to understand why
women hate and abhor Katy's past, her being pregnant and unmarried and
her illegitimate child. Yet at the same time I cannot bring to mind
a single woman or girl of my acquaintance who would not cherish such
feelings, either consciously or instinctively. And it's not because
women are purer and more virtuous than men. If virtue and purity are
not free from evil feeling, there's precious little difference between
them and vice. I explain it simply by the backward state of women's
development. The sorrowful sense of compassion and the torment of
conscience, which the modern man experiences when he sees distress have
much more to tell me about culture and moral development than have
hatred and repulsion. The modern woman is as lachrymose and as coarse
in heart as she was in the middle ages. And in my opinion those who
advise her to be educated like a man have wisdom on their side.

But still my wife does not like Katy, because she was an actress,
and for her ingratitude, her pride, her extravagances, and all the
innumerable vices one woman can always discover in another.

Besides myself and my family we have two or three of my daughter's
girl friends to dinner and Alexander Adolphovich Gnekker, Liza's
admirer and suitor. He is a fair young man, not more than thirty years
old, of middle height, very fat, broad shouldered, with reddish hair
round his ears and a little stained moustache, which give his smooth
chubby face the look of a doll's. He wears a very short jacket, a
fancy waistcoat, large-striped trousers, very full on the hip and very
narrow in the leg, and brown boots without heels. His eyes stick out
like a lobster's, his tie is like a lobster's tail, and I can't help
thinking even that the smell of lobster soup clings about the whole
of this young man. He visits us every day; but no one in the family
knows where he comes from, where he was educated, or how he lives. He
cannot play or sing, but he has a certain connection with music as well
as singing, for he is agent for somebody's pianos, and is often at the
Academy. He knows all the celebrities, and he manages concerts. He
gives his opinion on music with great authority and I have noticed that
everybody hastens to agree with him.

Rich men always have parasites about them. So do the sciences and the
arts. It seems that there is no science or art in existence, which
is free from such "foreign bodies" as this Mr. Gnekker. I am not a
musician and perhaps I am mistaken about Gnekker, besides I don't know
him very well. But I can't help suspecting the authority and dignity
with which he stands beside the piano and listens when anyone is
singing or playing.

You may be a gentleman and a privy councillor a hundred times over; but
if you have a daughter you can't be guaranteed against the pettinesses
that are so often brought into your house and into your own humour, by
courtings, engagements, and weddings. For instance, I cannot reconcile
myself to my wife's solemn expression every time Gnekker comes to our
house, nor to those bottles of Château Lafitte, port, and sherry which
are put on the table only for him, to convince him beyond doubt of
the generous luxury in which we live. Nor can I stomach the staccato
laughter which Liza learned at the Academy, and her way of screwing up
her eyes, when men are about the house. Above all, I can't understand
why it is that such a creature should come to me every day and have
dinner with me--a creature perfectly foreign to my habits, my science,
and the whole tenour of my life, a creature absolutely unlike the men I
love. My wife and the servants whisper mysteriously that that is "the
bridegroom," but still I can't understand why he's there. It disturbs
my mind just as much as if a Zulu were put next to me at table.
Besides, it seems strange to me that my daughter whom I used to think
of as a baby should be in love with that necktie, those eyes, those
chubby cheeks.

Formerly, I either enjoyed my dinner or was indifferent about it.
Now it does nothing but bore and exasperate me. Since I was made an
Excellency and Dean of the Faculty, for some reason or other my family
found it necessary to make a thorough change in our menu and the dinner
arrangements. Instead of the simple food I was used to as a student and
a doctor, I am now fed on potage-puree, with some _sossoulki_ swimming
about in it, and kidneys in Madeira. The title of General and my renown
have robbed me for ever of _schi_ and savoury pies, and roast goose
with apple sauce, and bream with _kasha._ They robbed me as well of my
maid servant Agasha, a funny, talkative old woman, instead of whom I
am now waited on by Yegor, a stupid, conceited fellow who always has
a white glove in his right hand. The intervals between the courses are
short, but they seem terribly long. There is nothing to fill them. We
don't have any more of the old good-humour, the familiar conversations,
the jokes and the laughter; no more mutual endearments, or the gaiety
that used to animate my children, my wife, and myself when we met at
the dinner table. For a busy man like me dinner was a time to rest and
meet my friends, and a feast for my wife and children, not a very long
feast, to be sure, but a gay and happy one, for they knew that for half
an hour I did not belong to science and my students, but solely to
them and to no one else. No more chance of getting tipsy on a single
glass of wine, no more Agasha, no more bream with _kasha,_ no more the
old uproar to welcome our little _contretemps_ at dinner, when the cat
fought the dog under the table, or Katy's head-band fell down her cheek
into her soup.

Our dinner nowadays is as nasty to describe as to eat. On my wife's
face there is pompousness, an assumed gravity, and the usual anxiety.
She eyes our plates nervously: "I see you don't like the meat?...
Honestly, don't you like it?" And I must answer, "Don't worry, my dear.
The meat is very good." She: "You're always taking my part, Nicolai
Stiepanich. You never tell the truth. Why has Alexander Adolphovich
eaten so little?" and the same sort of conversation for the whole of
dinner. Liza laughs staccato and screws up her eyes. I look at both of
them, and at this moment at dinner here I can see quite clearly that
their inner lives have slipped out of my observation long ago. I feel
as though once upon a time I lived at home with a real family, but now
I am dining as a guest with an unreal wife and looking at an unreal
Liza. There has been an utter change in both of them, while I have lost
sight of the long process that led up to the change. No wonder I don't
understand anything. What was the reason of the change? I don't know.
Perhaps the only trouble is that God did not give my wife and daughter
the strength He gave me. From my childhood I have been accustomed to
resist outside influences and have been hardened enough. Such earthly
catastrophes as fame, being made General, the change from comfort to
living above my means, acquaintance with high society, have scarcely
touched me. I have survived safe and sound. But it all fell down like
an avalanche on my weak, unhardened wife and Liza, and crushed them.

Gnekker and the girls talk of fugues and counter-fugues; singers
and pianists, Bach and Brahms, and my wife, frightened of being
suspected of musical ignorance, smiles sympathetically and murmurs:
"Wonderful.... Is it possible?... Why?..." Gnekker eats steadily,
jokes gravely, and listens condescendingly to the ladies' remarks. Now
and then he has the desire to talk bad French, and then he finds it
necessary for some unknown reason to address me magnificently, "Votre
Excellence."

And I am morose. Apparently I embarrass them all and they embarrass me.
I never had any intimate acquaintance with class antagonism before,
but now something of the kind torments me indeed. I try to find only
bad traits in Gnekker. It does not take long and then I am tormented
because one of my friends has not taken his place as bridegroom. In
another way too his presence has a bad effect upon me. Usually, when
I am left alone with myself or when I am in the company of people I
love, I never think of my merits; and if I begin to think about them
they seem as trivial as though I had become a scholar only yesterday.
But in the presence of a man like Gnekker my merits appear to me like
an extremely high mountain, whose summit is lost in the clouds, while
Gnekkers move about the foot, so small as hardly to be seen.

After dinner I go up to my study and light my little pipe, the only one
during the whole day, the sole survivor of my old habit of smoking from
morning to night. My wife comes into me while I am smoking and sits
down to speak to me. Just as in the morning, I know beforehand what the
conversation will be.

"We ought to talk seriously, Nicolai Stiepanovich," she begins. "I mean
about Liza. Why won't you attend?"

"Attend to what?"

"You pretend you don't notice anything. It's not right: It's not right
to be unconcerned. Gnekker has intentions about Liza. What do you say
to that?"

"I can't say he's a bad man, because I don't know him; but I've told
you a thousand times already that I don't like him."

"But that's impossible ... impossible...." She rises and walks about in
agitation.

"It's impossible to have such an attitude to a serious matter,"
she says. "When our daughter's happiness is concerned, we must put
everything personal aside. I know you don't like him.... Very well....
But if we refuse him now and upset everything, how can you guarantee
that Liza won't have a grievance against us for the rest of her life?
Heaven knows there aren't many young men nowadays. It's quite likely
there won't be another chance. He loves Liza very much and she likes
him, evidently. Of course he hasn't a settled position. But what is
there to do? Please God, he'll get a position in time. He comes of a
good family, and he's rich."

"How did you find that out?"

"He said so himself. His father has a big house in Kharkov and an
estate outside. You must certainly go to Kharkov."

"Why?"

"You'll find out there. You have acquaintances among the professors
there. I'd go myself. But I'm a woman. I can't."

"I will not go to Kharkov," I say morosely.

My wife gets frightened; a tormented expression comes over her face.

"For God's sake, Nicolai Stiepanich," she implores, sobbing, "For God's
sake help me with this burden! It hurts me."

It is painful to look at her.

"Very well, Varya," I say kindly, "If you like--very well I'll go to
Kharkov, and do everything you want."

She puts her handkerchief to her eyes and goes to cry in her room. I am
left alone.

A little later they bring in the lamp. The familiar shadows that
have wearied me for years fall from the chairs and the lamp-shade on
to the walls and the floor. When I look at them it seems that it's
night already, and the cursed insomnia has begun. I lie down on the
bed; then I get up and walk about the room then lie down again. My
nervous excitement generally reaches its highest after dinner, before
the evening. For no reason I begin to cry and hide my head in the
pillow. All the while I am afraid somebody may come in; I am afraid I
shall die suddenly; I am ashamed of my tears; altogether, something
intolerable is happening in my soul. I feel I cannot look at the lamp
or the books or the shadows on the floor, or listen to the voices in
the drawing-room any more. Some invisible, mysterious force pushes me
rudely out of my house. I jump up, dress hurriedly, and go cautiously
out into the street so that the household shall not notice me. Where
shall I go?

The answer to this question has long been there in my brain: "To Katy."



III


As usual she is lying on the Turkish divan or the couch and reading
something. Seeing me she lifts her head languidly, sits down, and gives
me her hand.

"You are always lying down like that," I say after a reposeful silence.
"It's unhealthy. You'd far better be doing something."

"Ah?"

"You'd far better be doing something, I say."

"What?... A woman can be either a simple worker or an actress."

"Well, then--if you can't become a worker, be an actress."

She is silent.

"You had better marry," I say, half-joking.

"There's no one to marry: and no use if I did."

"You can't go on living like this."

"Without a husband? As if that mattered. There are as many men as you
like, if you only had the will."

"This isn't right, Katy."

"What isn't right?"

"What you said just now."

Katy sees that I am chagrined, and desires to soften the bad impression.

"Come. Let's come here. Here."

She leads me into a small room, very cosy, and points to the writing
table.

"There. I made it for you. You'll work here. Come every day and bring
your work with you. They only disturb you there at home.... Will you
work here? Would you like to?"

In order not to hurt her by refusing, I answer that I shall work with
her and that I like the room immensely. Then we both sit down in the
cosy room and begin to talk.

The warmth, the cosy surroundings, the presence of a sympathetic being,
rouses in me now not a feeling of pleasure as it used but a strong
desire to complain and grumble. Anyhow it seems to me that if I moan
and complain I shall feel better.

"It's a bad business, my dear," I begin with a sigh. "Very bad."

"What is the matter?"

"I'll tell you what is the matter. The best and most sacred right
of kings is the right to pardon. And I have always felt myself a
king so long as I used this right prodigally. I never judged, I was
compassionate, I pardoned everyone right and left. Where others
protested and revolted I only advised and persuaded. All my life
I've tried to make my society tolerable to the family of students,
friends and servants. And this attitude of mine towards people, I know,
educated every one who came into contact with me. But now I am king no
more. There's something going on in me which belongs only to slaves.
Day and night evil thoughts roam about in my head, and feelings which I
never knew before have made their home in my soul. I hate and despise;
I'm exasperated, disturbed, and afraid. I've become strict beyond
measure, exacting, unkind, and suspicious. Even the things which in the
past gave me the chance of making an extra pun, now bring me a feeling
of oppression. My logic has changed too. I used to despise money alone;
now I cherish evil feelings, not to money, but to the rich, as if they
were guilty. I used to hate violence and arbitrariness; now I hate the
people who employ violence, as if they alone are to blame and not all
of us, who cannot educate one another. What does it all mean? If my new
thoughts and feelings come from a change of my convictions, where could
the change have come from? Has the world grown worse and I better, or
was I blind and indifferent before? But if the change is due to the
general decline of my physical and mental powers--I am sick and losing
weight every day--then I'm in a pitiable position. It means that my new
thoughts are abnormal and unhealthy, that I must be ashamed of them and
consider them valueless...."

"Sickness hasn't anything to do with it," Katy interrupts. "Your eyes
are opened--that's all. You've begun to notice things you didn't want
to notice before for some reason. My opinion is that you must break
with your family finally first of all and then go away."

"You're talking nonsense."

"You don't love them any more. Then, why do you behave unfairly? And is
it a family! Mere nobodies. If they died to-day, no one would notice
their absence to-morrow."

Katy despises my wife and daughter as much as they hate her. It's
scarcely possible nowadays to speak of the right of people to despise
one another. But if you accept Katy's point of view and own that such a
right exists, you will notice that she has the same right to despise my
wife and Liza as they have to hate her.

"Mere nobodies!" she repeats. "Did you have any dinner to-day? It's a
wonder they didn't forget to tell you dinner was ready. I don't know
how they still remember that you exist."

"Katy!" I say sternly. "Please be quiet."

"You don't think it's fun for me to talk about them, do you? I wish I
didn't know them at all. You listen to me, dear. Leave everything and
go away: go abroad--the quicker, the better."

"What nonsense! What about the University?"

"And the University, too. What is it to you? There's no sense in it
all. You've been lecturing for thirty years, and where are your
pupils? Have you many famous scholars? Count them up. But to increase
the number of doctors who exploit the general ignorance and make
hundreds of thousands,--there's no need to be a good and gifted man.
You aren't wanted."

"My God, how bitter you are!" I get terrified. "How bitter you are. Be
quiet, or I'll go away. I can't reply to the bitter things you say."

The maid enters and calls us to tea. Thank God, our conversation
changes round the samovar. I have made my moan, and now I want to
indulge another senile weakness--reminiscences. I tell Katy about
my past, to my great surprise with details that I never suspected I
had kept safe in my memory. And she listens to me with emotion, with
pride, holding her breath. I like particularly to tell how I once was a
student at a seminary and how I dreamed of entering the University.

"I used to walk in the seminary garden," I tell her, "and the wind
would bring the sound of a song and the thrumming of an accordion from
a distant tavern, or a _troika_ with bells would pass quickly by the
seminary fence. That would be quite enough to fill not only my breast
with a sense of happiness, but my stomach, legs, and hands. As I heard
the sound of the accordion or the bells fading away, I would see myself
a doctor and paint pictures, one more glorious than another. And, you
see, my dreams came true. There were more things I dared to dream of.
I have been a favourite professor thirty years, I have had excellent
friends and an honourable reputation. I loved and married when I was
passionately in love. I had children. Altogether, when I look back
the whole of my life seems like a nice, clever composition. The only
thing I have to do now is not to spoil the _finale._ For this, I must
die like a man. If death is really a danger then I must meet it as
becomes a teacher, a scholar, and a citizen of a Christian State. But I
am spoiling the _finale._ I am drowning, and I run to you and beg for
help, and you say: 'Drown. It's your duty.'"

At this point a ring at the bell sounds in the hall. Katy and I both
recognise it and say:

"That must be Mikhail Fiodorovich."

And indeed in a minute Mikhail Fiodorovich, my colleague, the
philologist, enters. He is a tall, well-built man about fifty years
old, clean shaven, with thick grey hair and black eyebrows. He is a
good man and an admirable friend. He belongs to an old aristocratic
family, a prosperous and gifted house which has played a notable _rôle_
in the history of our literature and education. He himself is clever,
gifted, and highly educated, but not without his eccentricities.
To a certain extent we are all eccentric, queer fellows, but his
eccentricities have an element of the exceptional, not quite safe for
his friends. Among the latter I know not a few who cannot see his many
merits clearly because of his eccentricities.

As he walks in he slowly removes his gloves and says in his velvety
bass:

"How do you do? Drinking tea. Just in time. It's hellishly cold."

Then he sits down at the table, takes a glass of tea and immediately
begins to talk. What chiefly marks his way of talking is his invariably
ironical tone, a mixture of philosophy and jest, like Shakespeare's
grave-diggers. He always talks of serious matters; but never seriously.
His opinions are always acid and provocative, but thanks to his
tender, easy, jesting tone, it somehow happens that his acidity and
provocativeness don't tire one's ears, and one very soon gets used
to it. Every evening he brings along some half-dozen stories of the
university life and generally begins with them when he sits down at the
table.

"O Lord," he sighs with an amusing movement of his black eyebrows,
"there are some funny people in the world."

"Who?" asks Katy.

"I was coming down after my lecture to-day and I met that old idiot
N---- on the stairs. He walks along, as usual pushing out that horse
jowl of his, looking for some one to bewail his headaches, his wife,
and his students, who won't come to his lectures. 'Well,' I think to
myself, 'he's seen me. It's all up--no hope for And so on in the same
strain. Or he begins like this,

"Yesterday I was at Z's public lecture. Tell it not in Gath, but I do
wonder how our _alma mater_ dares to show the public such an ass, such
a double-dyed blockhead as Z. Why he's a European fool. Good Lord,
you won't find one like him in all Europe--not even if you looked in
daytime, and with a lantern. Imagine it: he lectures as though he were
sucking a stick of barley-sugar--su--su--su. He gets a fright because
he can't make out his manuscript. His little thoughts will only just
keep moving, hardly moving, like a bishop riding a bicycle. Above all
you can't make out a word he says. The flies die of boredom, it's so
terrific. It can only be compared with the boredom in the great Hall at
the Commemoration, when the traditional speech is made. To hell with
it!"

Immediately an abrupt change of subject.

"I had to make the speech; three years ago. Nicolai Stiepanovich will
remember. It was hot, close. My full uniform was tight under my arms,
tight as death. I read for half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half,
two hours. 'Well,' I thought, 'thank God I've only ten pages left.' And
I had four pages of peroration that I needn't read at all. 'Only six
pages then,' I thought. Imagine it. I just gave a glance in front of me
and saw sitting next to each other in the front row a general with a
broad ribbon and a bishop. The poor devils were bored stiff. They were
staring about madly to stop themselves from going to sleep. For all
that they are still trying to look attentive, to make some appearance
of understanding what I'm reading, and look as though they like it.
'Well,' I thought, 'if you like it, then you shall have it. I'll spite
you.' So I set to and read the four pages, every word."

When he speaks only his eyes and eyebrows smile as it is generally with
the ironical. At such moments there is no hatred or malice in his eyes
but a great deal of acuteness and that peculiar fox-cunning which you
can catch only in very observant people. Further, about his eyes I have
noticed one more peculiarity. When he takes his glass from Katy, or
listens to her remarks, or follows her with a glance as she goes out of
the room for a little while, then I catch in his look something humble,
prayerful, pure....

The maid takes the samovar away and puts on the table a big piece of
cheese, some fruit, and a bottle of Crimean champagne, a thoroughly
bad wine which Katy got to like when she lived in the Crimea. Mikhail
Fiodorovich takes two packs of cards from the shelves and sets them out
for patience. If one may believe his assurances, some games of patience
demand a great power of combination and concentration. Nevertheless
while he sets out the cards he amuses himself by talking continually.
Katy follows his cards carefully, helping him more by mimicry than
words. In the whole evening she drinks no more than two small glasses
of wine, I drink only a quarter of a glass, the remainder of the bottle
falls to Mikhail Fiodorovich, who can drink any amount without ever
getting drunk.

During patience we solve all kinds of questions, mostly of the lofty
order, and our dearest love, science, comes off second best.

"Science, thank God, has had her day," says Mikhail Fiodorovich very
slowly. "She has had her swan-song. Ye-es. Mankind has begun to feel
the desire to replace her by something else. She was grown from the
soil of prejudice, fed by prejudices, and is now the same quintessence
of prejudices as were her bygone grandmothers: alchemy, metaphysics
and philosophy. As between European scholars and the Chinese who have
no sciences at all the difference is merely trifling, a matter only of
externals. The Chinese had no scientific knowledge, but what have they
lost by that?"

"Flies haven't any scientific knowledge either," I say; "but what does
that prove?"

"It's no use getting angry, Nicolai Stiepanich. I say this only between
ourselves. I'm more cautious than you think. I shan't proclaim it from
the housetops, God forbid! The masses still keep alive a prejudice that
science and art are superior to agriculture and commerce, superior to
crafts. Our persuasion makes a living from this prejudice. It's not for
you and me to destroy it. God forbid!"

During patience the younger generation also comes in for it.

"Our public is degenerate nowadays," Mikhail Fiodorovich sighs. "I
don't speak of ideals and such things, I only ask that they should
be able to work and think decently. 'Sadly I look at the men of our
time'--it's quite true in this connection."

"Yes, they're frightfully degenerate," Katy agrees. "Tell me, had you
one single eminent person under you during the last five or ten years?"

"I don't know how it is with the other professors,--but somehow I don't
recollect that it ever happened to me."

"In my lifetime I've seen a great many of your students and young
scholars, a great many actors.... What happened? I never once had
the luck to meet, not a hero or a man of talent, but an ordinarily
interesting person. Everything's dull and incapable, swollen and
pretentious...."

All these conversations about degeneracy give me always the impression
that I have unwittingly overheard an unpleasant conversation about my
daughter. I feel offended because the indictments are made wholesale
and are based upon such ancient hackneyed commonplaces and such
penny-dreadful notions as degeneracy, lack of ideals, or comparisons
with the glorious past. Any indictment, even if it's made in a company
of ladies, should be formulated with all possible precision; otherwise
it isn't an indictment, but an empty calumny, unworthy of decent people.

I am an old man, and have served for the last thirty years; but I don't
see any sign either of degeneracy or the lack of ideals. I don't find
it any worse now than before. My porter, Nicolas, whose experience in
this case has its value, says that students nowadays are neither better
nor worse than their predecessors.

If I were asked what was the thing I did not like about my present
pupils, I wouldn't say offhand or answer at length, but with a certain
precision. I know their defects and there's no need for me to take
refuge in a mist of commonplaces. I don't like the way they smoke,
and drink spirits, and marry late; or the way they are careless
and indifferent to the point of allowing students to go hungry in
their midst, and not paying their debts into "The Students' Aid
Society." They are ignorant of modern languages and express themselves
incorrectly in Russian. Only yesterday my colleague, the hygienist,
complained to me that he had to lecture twice as often because of
their incompetent knowledge of physics and their complete ignorance of
meteorology. They are readily influenced by the most modern writers,
and some of those not the best, but they are absolutely indifferent to
classics like Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Pascal; and
their worldly unpracticality shows itself mostly in their inability
to distinguish between great and small. They solve all difficult
questions which have a more or less social character (emigration,
for instance) by getting up subscriptions, but not by the method of
scientific investigation and experiment, though this is at their full
disposal, and, above all, corresponds to their vocation. They readily
become house-doctors, assistant house-doctors, clinical assistants, or
consulting doctors, and they are prepared to keep these positions until
they are forty, though independence, a sense of freedom, and personal
initiative are quite as necessary in science, as, for instance, in art
or commerce. I have pupils and listeners, but I have no helpers or
successors. Therefore I love them and am concerned for them, but I'm
not proud of them ... and so on.

However great the number of such defects may be, it's only in a
cowardly and timid person that they give rise to pessimism and
distraction. All of them are by nature accidental and transitory, and
are completely dependent on the conditions of life. Ten years will
be enough for them to disappear or give place to new and different
defects, which are quite indispensable, but will in their turn give
the timid a fright. Students' shortcomings often annoy me, but the
annoyance is nothing in comparison with the joy I have had these thirty
years in speaking with my pupils, lecturing to them, studying their
relations and comparing them with people of a different class.

Mikhail Fiodorovich is a slanderer. Katy listens and neither of them
notices how deep is the pit into which they are drawn by such an
outwardly innocuous recreation as condemning one's neighbours. They
don't realise how a simple conversation gradually turns into mockery
and derision, or how they both begin even to employ the manners of
calumny.

"There are some queer types to be found," says Mikhail Fiodorovich.
"Yesterday I went to see our friend Yegor Pietrovich. There I found a
student, one of your medicos, a third-year man, I think. His face ...
rather in the style of Dobroliubov--the stamp of profound thought on
his brow. We began to talk. 'My dear fellow--an extraordinary business.
I've just read that some German or other--can't remember his name--has
extracted a new alkaloid from the human brain--idiotine.' Do you know
he really believed it, and produced an expression of respect on his
face, as much as to say, 'See, what a power we are.'"

"The other day I went to the theatre. I sat down. Just in front of me
in the next row two people were sitting: one, 'one of the chosen,'
evidently a law student, the other a whiskery medico. The medico was as
drunk as a cobbler. Not an atom of attention to the stage. Dozing and
nodding. But the moment some actor began to deliver a loud monologue,
or just raised his voice, my medico thrills, digs his neighbour in the
ribs. 'What's he say? Something noble?' 'Noble,' answers 'the chosen.'

"'Brrravo!' bawls the medico. 'No--ble. Bravo.' You see the drunken
blockhead didn't come to the theatre for art, but for something noble.
He wants nobility."

Katy listens and laughs. Her laugh is rather strange. She breathes out
in swift, rhythmic, and regular alternation with her inward breathing.
It's as though she were playing an accordion. Of her face, only her
nostrils laugh. My heart fails me. I don't know what to say. I lose my
temper, crimson, jump up from my seat and cry:

"Be quiet, won't you? Why do you sit here like two toads, poisoning the
air with your breath? I've had enough."

In vain I wait for them to stop their slanders. I prepare to go home.
And it's time, too. Past ten o'clock.

"I'll sit here a little longer," says Mikhail Fiodorovich, "if you give
me leave, Ekaterina Vladimirovna?"

"You have my leave," Katy answers.

"_Bene._ In that case, order another bottle, please."

Together they escort me to the hall with candles in their hands. While
I'm putting on my overcoat, Mikhail Fiodorovich says:

"You've grown terribly thin and old lately. Nicolai Stiepanovich.
What's the matter with you? Ill?

"Yes, a little."

"And he will not look after himself," Katy puts in sternly.

"Why don't you look after yourself? How can you go on like this? God
helps those who help themselves, my dear man. Give my regards to your
family and make my excuses for not coming. One of these days, before I
go abroad, I'll come to say good-bye. Without fail. I'm off next week."

I came away from Katy's irritated, frightened by the talk about
my illness and discontented with myself. "And why," I ask myself,
"shouldn't I be attended by one of my colleagues?" Instantly I see how
my friend, after sounding me, will go to the window silently, think a
little while, turn towards me and say, indifferently, trying to prevent
me from reading the truth in his face: "At the moment I don't see
anything particular; but still, cher confrère, I would advise you to
break off your work...." And that will take my last hope away.

Who doesn't have hopes? Nowadays, when I diagnose and treat myself, I
sometimes hope that my ignorance deceives me, that I am mistaken about
the albumen and sugar which I find, as well as about my heart, and also
about the anasarca which I have noticed twice in the morning. While I
read over the therapeutic text-books again with the eagerness of a
hypochondriac, and change the prescriptions every day, I still believe
that I will come across something hopeful. How trivial it all is!

Whether the sky is cloudy all over or the moon and stars are shining
in it, every time I come back home I look at it and think that death
will take me soon. Surely at that moment my thoughts should be as deep
as the sky, as bright, as striking ... but no! I think of myself, of
my wife, Liza, Gnekker, the students, people in general. My thoughts
are not good, they are mean; I juggle with myself, and at this moment
my attitude towards life can be expressed in the words the famous
Arakheev wrote in one of his intimate letters: "All good in the world
is inseparably linked to bad, and there is always more bad than good."
Which means that everything is ugly, there's nothing to live for,
and the sixty-two years I have lived out must be counted as lost. I
surprise myself in these thoughts and try to convince myself they are
accidental and temporary and not deeply rooted in me, but I think
immediately:

"If that's true, why am I drawn every evening to those two toads." And
I swear to myself never to go to Katy any more, though I know I will go
to her again to-morrow.

As I pull my door bell and go upstairs, I feel already that I have no
family and no desire to return to it. It is plain my new, Arakheev
thoughts are not accidental or temporary in me, but possess my whole
being. With a bad conscience, dull, indolent, hardly able to move my
limbs, as though I had a ten ton weight upon me, I lie down in my bed
and soon fall asleep.

And then--insomnia.



IV


The summer comes and life changes.

One fine morning Liza comes in to me and says in a joking tone:

"Come, Your Excellency. It's all ready."

They lead My Excellency into the street, put me into a cab and drive me
away. For want of occupation I read the signboards backwards as I go.
The word "Tavern" becomes "Nrevat." That would do for a baron's name:
Baroness Nrevat. Beyond, I drive across the field by the cemetery,
which produces no impression upon me whatever, though I'll soon
lie there. After a two hours' drive, My Excellency is led into the
ground-floor of the bungalow, and put into a small, lively room with a
light-blue paper.

Insomnia at night as before, but I am no more wakeful in the morning
and don't listen to my wife, but lie in bed. I don't sleep, but I
am in a sleepy state, half-forgetfulness, when you know you are not
asleep, but have dreams. I get up in the afternoon, and sit down at
the table by force of habit, but now I don't work any more but amuse
myself with French yellow-backs sent me by Katy. Of course it would
be more patriotic to read Russian authors, but to tell the truth I'm
not particularly disposed to them. Leaving out two or three old ones,
all the modern literature doesn't seem to me to be literature but a
unique home industry which exists only to be encouraged, but the goods
are bought with reluctance. The best of these homemade goods can't be
called remarkable and it's impossible to praise it sincerely without a
saving "but"; and the same must be said of all the literary novelties
I've read during the last ten or fifteen years. Not one remarkable,
and you can't dispense with "but." They have cleverness, nobility, and
no talent; talent, nobility and no cleverness; or finally, talent,
cleverness, but no nobility.

I would not say that French books have talent, cleverness, and
nobility. Nor do they satisfy me. But they are not so boring as the
Russian; and it is not rare to find in them the chief constituent
of creative genius--the sense of personal freedom, which is lacking
to Russian authors. I do not recall one single new book in which
from the very first page the author did not try to tie himself up in
all manner of conventions and contracts with his conscience. One is
frightened to speak of the naked body, another is bound hand and foot
by psychological analysis, a third must have "a kindly attitude to
his fellow-men," the fourth heaps up whole pages with descriptions of
nature on purpose to avoid any suspicion of a tendency.... One desires
to be in his books a bourgeois at all costs, another at all costs an
aristocrat. Deliberation, cautiousness, cunning: but no freedom, no
courage to write as one likes, and therefore no creative genius.

All this refers to _belles-lettres,_ so-called.

As for serious articles in Russian, on sociology, for instance, or
art and so forth, I don't read them, simply out of timidity. For
some reason in my childhood and youth I had a fear of porters and
theatre attendants, and this fear has remained with me up till now.
Even now I am afraid of them. It is said that only that which one
cannot understand seems terrible. And indeed it is very difficult to
understand why hall-porters and theatre attendants are so pompous
and haughty and importantly polite. When I read serious articles, I
have exactly the same indefinable fear. Their portentous gravity,
their playfulness, like an archbishop's, their over-familiar
attitude to foreign authors, their capacity for talking dignified
nonsense--"filling a vacuum with emptiness"--it is all inconceivable
to me and terrifying, and quite unlike the modesty and the calm and
gentlemanly tone to which I am accustomed when reading our writers on
medicine and the natural sciences. Not only articles; I have difficulty
also in reading translations even when they are edited by serious
Russians. The presumptuous benevolence of the prefaces, the abundance
of notes by the translator (which prevents one from concentrating), the
parenthetical queries and _sics,_ which are so liberally scattered
over the book or the article by the translator--seem to me an assault
on the author's person, as well as on my independence as a reader.

Once I was invited as an expert to the High Court. In the interval
one of my fellow-experts called my attention to the rude behaviour
of the public prosecutor to the prisoners, among whom were two women
intellectuals. I don't think I exaggerated at all when I replied to
my colleague that he was not behaving more rudely than authors of
serious articles behave to one another. Indeed their behaviour is so
rude that one speaks of them with bitterness. They behave to each other
or to the writers whom they criticise either with too much deference,
careless of their own dignity, or, on the other hand, they treat them
much worse than I have treated Gnekker, my future son-in-law, in
these notes and thoughts of mine. Accusations of irresponsibility, of
impure intentions, of any kind of crime even, are the usual adornment
of serious articles. And this, as our young medicos love to say in
their little articles--quite _ultima ratio._ Such an attitude must
necessarily be reflected in the character of the young generation of
writers, and therefore I'm not at all surprised that in the new books
which, have been added to our _belles lettres_ in the last ten or
fifteen years, the heroes drink a great deal of vodka and the heroines
are not sufficiently chaste.

I read French books and look out of the window, which is open--I see
the pointed palings of my little garden, two or three skinny trees,
and there, beyond the garden, the road, fields, then a wide strip of
young pine-forest. I often delight in watching a little boy and girl,
both white-haired and ragged, climb on the garden fence and laugh at
my baldness. In their shining little eyes I read, "Come out, thou
bald-head." These are almost the only people who don't care a bit about
my reputation or my title.

I don't have visitors everyday now. I'll mention only the visits of
Nicolas and Piotr Ignatievich. Nicolas comes to me usually on holidays,
pretending to come on business, but really to see me. He is very
hilarious, a thing which never happens to him in the winter.

"Well, what have you got to say?" I ask him, coming out into the
passage.

"Your Excellency!" he says, pressing his hand to his heart and looking
at me with a lover's rapture. "Your Excellency! So help me God! God
strike me where I stand! _Gaudeamus igitur juvenestus._"

And he kisses me eagerly on the shoulders, on my sleeves, and buttons.

"Is everything all right over there?" I ask.

"Your Excellency! I swear to God...."

He never stops swearing, quite unnecessarily, and I soon get bored, and
send him to the kitchen, where they give him dinner. Piotr Ignatievich
also comes on holidays specially to visit me and communicate his
thoughts to me. He usually sits by the table in my room, modest,
clean, judicious, without daring to cross his legs or lean his elbows
on the table, all the while telling me in a quiet, even voice what
he considers very piquant items of news gathered from journals and
pamphlets.

These items are all alike and can be reduced to the following type: A
Frenchman made a discovery. Another--a German--exposed him by showing
that this discovery had been made as long ago as 1870 by some American.
Then a third--also a German--outwitted them both by showing that
both of them had been confused, by taking spherules of air under a
microscope for dark pigment. Even when he wants to make me laugh, Piotr
Ignatievich tells his story at great length, very much as though he
were defending a thesis, enumerating his literary sources in detail,
with every effort to avoid mistakes in the dates, the particular number
of the journal and the names. Moreover, he does not say Petit simply
but inevitably, Jean Jacques Petit. If he happens to stay to dinner, he
will tell the same sort of piquant stories and drive all the company
to despondency. If Gnekker and Liza begin to speak of fugues and
counter-fugues in his presence he modestly lowers his eyes, and his
face falls. He is ashamed that such trivialities should be spoken of in
the presence of such serious men as him and me.

In my present state of mind five minutes are enough for him to bore
me as though I had seen and listened to him for a whole eternity. I
hate the poor man. I wither away beneath his quiet, even voice and
his bookish language. His stories make me stupid.... He cherishes the
kindliest feelings towards me and talks to me only to give me pleasure.
I reward him by staring at his face as if I wanted to hypnotise him,
and thinking "Go away. Go, go...." But he is proof against my mental
suggestion and sits, sits, sits....

While he sits with me I cannot rid myself of the idea: "When I die,
it's quite possible that he will be appointed in my place." Then my
poor audience appears to me as an oasis where the stream has dried,
up, and I am unkind to Piotr Ignatievich, and silent and morose as if
he were guilty of such thoughts and not I myself. When he begins, as
usual, to glorify the German scholars, I no longer jest good-naturedly,
but murmur sternly:

"They're fools, your Germans...."

It's like the late Professor Nikita Krylov when he was bathing with
Pirogov at Reval. He got angry with the water, which was very cold,
and swore about "These scoundrelly Germans." I behave badly to Piotr
Ignatievich; and it's only when he is going away and I see through the
window his grey hat disappearing behind the garden fence, that I want
to call him back and say: "Forgive me, my dear fellow."

The dinner goes yet more wearily than in winter. The same Gnekker,
whom I now hate and despise, dines with me every day. Before, I
used to suffer his presence in silence, but now I say biting things
to him, which make my wife and Liza blush. Carried away by an evil
feeling, I often say things that are merely foolish, end don't know
why I say them. Thus it happened once that after looking at Gnekker
contemptuously for a long while, I suddenly fired off, for no reason at
all:

    "Eagles than barnyard-fowls may lower bend;
    But fowls shall never to the heav'ns ascend."

More's the pity that the fowl Gnekker shows himself more clever than
the eagle professor. Knowing my wife and daughter are on his side he
maintains these tactics. He replies to my shafts with a condescending
silence ("The old man's off his head.... What's the good of talking to
him?"), or makes good-humoured fun of me. It is amazing to what depths
of pettiness a man may descend. During the whole dinner I can dream how
Gnekker will be shown to be an adventurer, how Liza and my wife will
realise their mistake, and I will tease them--ridiculous dreams like
these at a time when I have one foot in the grave.

Now there occur misunderstandings, of a kind which I formerly knew only
by hearsay. Though it is painful I will describe one which occurred
after dinner the other day. I sit in my room smoking a little pipe.
Enters my wife, as usual, sits down and begins to talk. What a good
idea it would be to go to Kharkov now while the weather is warm and
there is the time, and inquire what kind of man our Gnekker is.

"Very well. I'll go," I agree.

My wife gets up, pleased with me, and walks to the door; but
immediately returns:

"By-the bye, I've one more favour to ask. I know you'll be angry;
but it's my duty to warn you.... Forgive me, Nicolai,--but all
our neighbours have begun to talk about the way you go to Katy's
continually. I don't deny that she's clever and educated. It's pleasant
to spend the time with her. But at your age and in your position it's
rather strange to find pleasure in her society.... Besides she has a
reputation enough to...."

All my blood rushes instantly from my brain. My eyes flash fire. I
catch hold of my hair, and stamp and cry, in a voice that is not mine:

"Leave me alone, leave me, leave me...."

My face is probably terrible, and my voice strange, for my wife
suddenly gets pale, and calls aloud, with a despairing voice, also not
her own. At our cries rush in Liza and Gnekker, then Yegor.

My feet grow numb, as though they did not exist. I feel that I am
falling into somebody's arms. Then I hear crying for a little while
and sink into a faint which lasts for two or three hours.

Now for Katy. She comes to see me before evening every day, which of
course must be noticed by my neighbours and my friends. After a minute
she takes me with her for a drive. She has her own horse and a new
buggy she bought this summer. Generally she lives like a princess. She
has taken an expensive detached bungalow with a big garden, and put
into it all her town furniture. She has two maids and a coachman. I
often ask her:

"Katy, what will you live on when you've spent all your father's money?"

"We'll see, then," she answers.

"But this money deserves to be treated more seriously, my dear. It was
earned by a good man and honest labour."

"You've told me that before. I know."

First we drive by the field, then by a young pine forest, which you
can see from my window. Nature seems to me as beautiful as she used,
although the devil whispers to me that all these pines and firs, the
birds and white clouds in the sky will not notice my absence in three
or four months when I am dead. Katy likes to take the reins, and it is
good that the weather is fine and I am sitting by her side. She is in a
happy mood, and does not say bitter things.

"You're a very good man, Nicolai," she says. "You are a rare bird.
There's no actor who could play your part. Mine or Mikhail's, for
instance--even a bad actor could manage, but yours--there's nobody. I
envy you, envy you terribly I What am I? What?"

She thinks for a moment, and asks:

"I'm a negative phenomenon, aren't I?"

"Yes," I answer.

"H'm ... what's to be done then?"

What answer can I give? It's easy to say "Work," or "Give your property
to the poor," or "Know yourself," and because it's so easy to say this
I don't know what to answer.

My therapeutist colleagues, when teaching methods of cure, advise one
"to individualise each particular case." This advice must be followed
in order to convince one's self that the remedies recommended in the
text-books as the best and most thoroughly suitable as a general
rule, are quite unsuitable in particular cases. It applies to moral
affections as well. But I must answer something. So I say:

"You've too much time on your hands, my dear. You must take up
something.... In fact, why shouldn't you go on the stage again, if you
have a vocation."

"I can't."

"You have the manner and tone of a victim. I don't like it, my dear.
You have yourself to blame. Remember, you began by getting angry with
people and things in general; but you never did anything to improve
either of them. You didn't put up a struggle against the evil. You got
tired. You're not a victim of the struggle but of your own weakness.
Certainly you were young then and inexperienced. But now everything can
be different. Come on, be an actress. You will work; you will serve in
the temple of art."...

"Don't be so clever, Nicolai," she interrupts. "Let's agree once for
all: let's speak about actors, actresses, writers, but let us leave art
out of it. You're a rare and excellent man. But you don't understand
enough about art to consider it truly sacred. You have no _flair,_ no
ear for art. You've been busy all your life, and you never had time to
acquire the _flair._ Really ... I don't love these conversations about
art!" she continues nervously. "I don't love them. They've vulgarised
it enough already, thank you."

"Who's vulgarised it?"

"_They_ vulgarised it by their drunkenness, newspapers by their
over-familiarity, clever people by philosophy."

"What's philosophy got to do with it?"

"A great deal. If a man philosophises, it means he doesn't understand."

So that it should not come to bitter words, I hasten to change the
subject, and then keep silence for a long while. It's not till we come
out of the forest and drive towards Katy's bungalow, I return to the
subject and ask:

"Still, you haven't answered me why you don't want to go on the stage?"

"Really, it's cruel," she cries out, and suddenly blushes all over.
"You want me to tell you the truth outright. Very well if ... if you
will have it I I've no talent! No talent and ... much ambition! There
you are!"

After this confession, she turns her face away from me, and to hide the
trembling of her hands, tugs at the reins.

As we approach her bungalow, from a distance we see Mikhail already,
walking about by the gate, impatiently awaiting us.

"This Fiodorovich again," Katy says with annoyance. "Please take him
away from me. I'm sick of him. He's flat.... Let him go to the deuce."

Mikhail Fiodorovich ought to have gone abroad long ago, but he has
postponed his departure every week. There have been some changes in him
lately. He's suddenly got thin, begun to be affected by drink--a thing
that never happened to him before, and his black eyebrows have begun
to get grey. When our buggy stops at the gate he cannot hide his joy
and impatience. Anxiously he helps Katy and me from the buggy, hastily
asks us questions, laughs, slowly rubs his hands, and that gentle,
prayerful, pure something that I used to notice only in his eyes is now
poured over all his face. He is happy and at the same time ashamed of
his happiness, ashamed of his habit of coming to Katy's every evening,
and he finds it necessary to give a reason for his coming, some
obvious absurdity, like: "I was passing on business, and I thought I'd
just drop in for a second."

All three of us go indoors. First we drink tea, then our old friends,
the two packs of cards, appear on the table, with a big piece of
cheese, some fruit, and a bottle of Crimean champagne. The subjects of
conversation are not new, but all exactly the same as they were in the
winter. The university, the students, literature, the theatre--all of
them come in for it. The air thickens with slanders, and grows more
dose. It is poisoned by the breath, not of two toads as in winter,
but now by all three. Besides the velvety, baritone laughter and the
accordion-like giggle, the maid who waits upon us hears also the
unpleasant jarring laugh of a musical comedy general: "He, he, he!"



V


There sometimes come fearful nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and
wind, which the peasants call "sparrow-nights." There was one such
sparrow-night in my own personal life....

I wake after midnight and suddenly leap out of bed. Somehow it seems
to me that I am going to die immediately. I do not know why, for there
is no single sensation in my body which points to a quick end; but
a terror presses on my soul as though I had suddenly seen a huge,
ill-boding fire in the sky.

I light the lamp quickly and drink some water straight out of the
decanter. Then I hurry to the window. The weather is magnificent. The
air smells of hay and some delicious thing besides. I see the spikes of
my garden fence, the sleepy starveling trees by the window, the road,
the dark strip of forest. There is a calm and brilliant moon in the sky
and not a single cloud. Serenity. Not a leaf stirs. To me it seems that
everything is looking at me and listening for me to die.

Dread seizes me. I shut the window and run to the bed, I feel for my
pulse. I cannot find it in my wrist; I seek it in my temples, my chin,
my hand again. They are all cold and slippery with sweat. My breathing
comes quicker and quicker; my body trembles, all my bowels are stirred,
and my face and forehead feel as though a cobweb had settled on them.

What shall I do? Shall I call my family? No use. I do not know what my
wife and Liza will do when they come in to me.

I hide my head under the pillow, shut my eyes and wait, wait.... My
spine is cold. It almost contracts within me. And I feel that death
will approach me only from behind, very quietly.

"Kivi, kivi." A squeak sounds in the stillness of the night. I do not
know whether it is in my heart or in the street.

God, how awful! I would drink some more water; but now I dread opening
my eyes, and fear to raise my head. The terror is unaccountable,
animal. I cannot understand why I am afraid. Is it because I want to
live, or because a new and unknown pain awaits me?

Upstairs, above the ceiling, a moan, then a laugh ... I listen. A
little after steps sound on the staircase. Someone hurries down, then
up again. In a minute steps sound downstairs again. Someone stops by my
door and listens.

"Who's there?" I call.

The door opens. I open my eyes boldly and see my wife. Her face is pale
and her eyes red with weeping.

"You're not asleep, Nicolai Stiepanovich?" she asks.

"What is it?"

"For God's sake go down to Liza. Something is wrong with her."

"Very well ... with pleasure," I murmur, very glad that I am not alone.
"Very well ... immediately."

As I follow my wife I hear what she tells me, and from agitation
understand not a word. Bright spots from her candle dance over the
steps of the stairs; our long shadows tremble; my feet catch in the
skirts of my dressing-gown. My breath goes, and it seems to me that
someone is chasing me, trying to seize my back. "I shall die here on
the staircase, this second," I think, "this second." But we have passed
the staircase, the dark hall with the Italian window and we go into
Liza's room. She sits in bed in her chemise; her bare legs hang down
and she moans.

"Oh, my God ... oh, my God!" she murmurs, half shutting her eyes from
our candles. "I can't, I can't."

"Liza, my child," I say, "what's the matter?"

Seeing me, she calls out and falls on my neck.

"Papa darling," she sobs. "Papa dearest ... my sweet. I don't know what
it is.... It hurts."

She embraces me, kisses me and lisps endearments which I heard her lisp
when she was still a baby.

"Be calm, my child. God's with you," I say. "You mustn't cry. Something
hurts me too."

I try to cover her with the bedclothes; my wife gives her to drink; and
both of us jostle in confusion round the bed. My shoulders push into
hers, and at that moment I remember how we used to bathe our children.

"But help her, help her!" my wife implores. "Do something!" And what
can I do? Nothing. There is some weight on the girl's soul; but I
understand nothing, know nothing and can only murmur:

"It's nothing, nothing.... It will pass.... Sleep, sleep."

As if on purpose a dog suddenly howls in the yard, at first low and
irresolute, then aloud, in two voices. I never put any value on such
signs as dogs' whining or screeching owls; but now my heart contracts
painfully, and I hasten to explain the howling.

"Nonsense," I think. "It's the influence of one organism on another.
My great nervous strain was transmitted to my wife, to Liza, and to
the dog. That's all. Such transmissions explain presentiments and
previsions."

A little later when I return to my room to write a prescription for
Liza I no longer think that I shall die soon. My soul simply feels
heavy and dull, so that I am even sad that I did not die suddenly. For
a long while I stand motionless in the middle of the room, pondering
what I shall prescribe for Liza; but the moans above the ceiling are
silent and I decide not to write a prescription, but stand there still.

There is a dead silence, a silence, as one man wrote, that rings
in one's ears. The time goes slowly. The bars of moonshine on the
windowsill do not move from their place, as though congealed.... The
dawn is still far away.

But the garden-gate creaks; someone steals in, and strips a twig from
the starveling trees, and cautiously knocks with it on my window.

"Nicolai Stiepanovich!" I hear a whisper. "Nicolai Stiepanovich!"

I open the window, and I think that I am dreaming. Under the window,
close against the wall stands a woman in a blade dress. She is brightly
lighted by the moon and looks at me with wide eyes. Her face is pale,
stem and fantastic in the moon, like marble. Her chin trembles.

"It is I...." she says, "I ... Katy!"

In the moon all women's eyes are big and black, people are taller and
paler. Probably that is the reason why I did not recognise her in the
first moment.

"What's the matter?"

"Forgive me," she says. "I suddenly felt so dreary ... I could not bear
it. So I came here. There's a light in your window ... and I decided to
knock.... Forgive me.... Ah, if you knew how dreary I felt! What are
you doing now?"

"Nothing. Insomnia."

Her eyebrows lift, her eyes shine with tears and all her face is
illumined as with light, with the familiar, but long unseen, look of
confidence.

"Nicolai Stiepanovich!" she says imploringly, stretching out both her
hands to me. "Dear, I beg you ... I implore.... If you do not despise
my friendship and my respect for you, then do what I implore you."

"What is it?"

"Take my money."

"What next? What's the good of your money to me?"

"You will go somewhere to be cured. You must cure yourself. You will
take it? Yes? Dear ... Yes?"

She looks into my face eagerly and repeats:

"Yes? You will take it?"

"No, my dear, I won't take it....", I say. "Thank you."

She turns her back to me and lowers her head. Probably the tone of my
refusal would not allow any further talk of money.

"Go home to sleep," I say. "I'll see you to-morrow."

"It means, you don't consider me your friend?" she asks sadly.

"I don't say that. But your money is no good to me."

"Forgive me," she says lowering her voice by a full octave. "I
understand you. To be obliged to a person like me ... a retired
actress... But good-bye."

And she walks away so quickly that I have no time even to say
"Good-bye."



VI


I am in Kharkov.

Since it would be useless to fight against my present mood, and I have
no power to do it, I made up my mind that the last days of my life
shall be irreproachable, on the formal side. If I am not right with
my family, which I certainly admit, I will try at least to do as it
wishes. Besides I am lately become so indifferent that it's positively
all the same, to me whether I go to Kharkov, or Paris, or Berditshev.

I arrived here at noon and put up at a hotel not far from the
cathedral. The train made me giddy, the draughts blew through me, and
now I am sitting on the bed with my head in my hands waiting for the
tic. I ought to go to my professor friends to-day, but I have neither
the will nor the strength.

The old hall-porter comes in to ask whether I have brought my own
bed-clothes. I keep him about five minutes asking him questions about
Gnekker, on whose account I came here. The porter happens to be
Kharkov-born, and knows the town inside out; but he doesn't remember
any family with the name of Gnekker. I inquire about the estate. The
answer is the same.

The clock in the passage strikes one,... two,... three.... The last
months of my life, while I wait for death, seem to me far longer than
my whole life. Never before could I reconcile myself to the slowness
of time as I can now. Before, when I had to wait for a train at the
station, or to sit at an examination, a quarter of an hour would seem
an eternity. Now I can sit motionless in bed the whole night long,
quite calmly thinking that there will be the same long, colourless
night to-morrow, and the next day....

In the passage the clock strikes five, six, seven.... It grows dark.
There is dull pain in my cheek--the beginning of the tic. To occupy
myself with thoughts, I return to my old point of view, when I was not
indifferent, and ask: Why do I, a famous man, a privy councillor, sit
in this little room, on this bed with a strange grey blanket? Why do
I look at this cheap tin washstand and listen to the wretched clock
jarring in the passage? Is all this worthy of my fame and my high
position among people? And I answer these questions with a smile. My
naïveté seems funny to me--the _naïveté_ with which as a young man
I exaggerated the value of fame and of the exclusive position which
famous men enjoy. I am famous, my name is spoken with reverence. My
portrait has appeared in "Niva" and in "The Universal Illustration."
I've even read my biography in a German paper, but what of that? I sit
lonely, by myself, in a strange city, on a strange bed, rubbing my
aching cheek with my palm....

Family scandals, the hardness of creditors, the rudeness of railway
men, the discomforts of the passport system, the expensive and
unwholesome food at the buffets, the general coarseness and roughness
of people,--all this and a great deal more that would take too long
to put down, concerns me as much as it concerns any bourgeois who is
known only in his own little street. Where is the exclusiveness of my
position then? We will admit that I am infinitely famous, that I am a
hero of whom my country is proud. All the newspapers give bulletins
of my illness, the post is already bringing in sympathetic addresses
from my friends, my pupils, and the public. But all this will not save
me from dying in anguish on a stranger's bed in utter loneliness. Of
course there is no one to blame for this. But I must confess I do not
like my popularity. I feel that it has deceived me.

At about ten I fall asleep, and, in spite of the tic sleep soundly, and
would sleep for a long while were I not awakened. Just after one there
is a sudden knock on my door.

"Who's there?"

"A telegram."

"You could have brought it to-morrow," I storm, as I take the telegram
from the porter. "Now I shan't sleep again."

"I'm sorry. There was a light in your room. I thought you were not
asleep."

I open the telegram and look first at the signature--my wife's. What
does she want?

"Gnekker married Liza secretly yesterday. Return."

I read the telegram. For a long while I am not startled. Not Gnekker's
or Liza's action frightens me, but the indifference with which I
receive the news of their marriage. Men say that philosophers and true
_savants_ are indifferent. It is untrue. Indifference is the paralysis
of the soul, premature death.

I go to bed again and begin to ponder with what thoughts I can occupy
myself. What on earth shall I think of? I seem to have thought over
everything, and now there is nothing powerful enough to rouse my
thought.

When the day begins to dawn, I sit in bed clasping my knees and, for
want of occupation I try to know myself. "Know yourself" is good,
useful advice; but it is a pity that the ancients did not think of
showing us the way to avail ourselves of it.

Before, when I had the desire to understand somebody else, or myself,
I used not to take into consideration actions, wherein everything is
conditional, but desires. Tell me what you want, and I will tell you
what you are.

And now I examine myself. What do I want?

I want our wives, children, friends, and pupils to love in us, not the
name or the firm or the label, but the ordinary human beings. What
besides? I should like to have assistants and successors. What more? I
should like to wake in a hundred years' time, and take a look, if only
with one eye, at what has happened to science. I should like to live
ten years more.... What further?

Nothing further. I think, think a long while and cannot make out
anything else. However much I were to think, wherever my thoughts
should stray, it is clear to me that the chief, all-important something
is lacking in my desires. In my infatuation for science, my desire to
live, my sitting here on a strange bed, my yearning to know myself, in
all the thoughts, feelings, and ideas I form about anything, there is
wanting the something universal which could bind all these together in
one whole. Each feeling and thought lives detached in me, and in all
my opinions about science, the theatre, literature, and my pupils, and
in all the little pictures which my imagination paints, not even the
most cunning analyst will discover what is called the general idea, or
the god of the living man.

And if this is not there, then nothing is there.

In poverty such as this a serious infirmity, fear of death, influence
of circumstances and people would have been enough to overthrow and
shatter all that I formerly considered as my conception of the world,
and all wherein I saw the meaning and joy of my life. Therefore, it
is nothing strange that I have darkened the last months of my life by
thoughts and feelings worthy of a slave or a savage, and that I am now
indifferent and do not notice the dawn. If there is lacking in a man
that which is higher and stronger than all outside influences, then
verily a good cold in the head is enough to upset his balance and to
make him see each bird an owl and hear a dog's whine in every sound;
and all his pessimism or his optimism with their attendant thoughts,
great and small, seem then to be merely symptoms and no more.

I am beaten. Then it's no good going on thinking, no good talking. I
shall sit and wait in silence for what will come.

In the morning the porter brings me tea and the local paper.
Mechanically I read the advertisements on the first page, the leader,
the extracts from newspapers and magazines, the local news ... Among
other things I find in the local news an item like this: "Our famous
scholar, emeritus professor Nicolai Stiepanovich arrived in Kharkov
yesterday by the express, and stayed at----hotel."

Evidently big names are created to live detached from those who bear
them. Now my name walks in Kharkov undisturbed. In some three months it
will shine as bright as the sun itself, inscribed in letters of gold on
my tombstone--at a time when I myself will be under the sod....

A faint knock at the door. Somebody wants me.

"Who's there? Come in!"

The door opens. I step back in astonishment, and hasten to pull my
dressing gown together. Before me stands Katy.

"How do you do?" she says, panting from running up the stairs. "You
didn't expect me? I ... I've come too."

She sits down and continues, stammering and looking away from me. "Why
don't you say 'Good morning'? I arrived too ... to-day. I found out you
were at this hotel, and came to see you."

"I'm delighted to see you," I say shrugging my shoulders. "But I'm
surprised. You might have dropped straight from heaven. What are you
doing here?"

"I?... I just came."

Silence. Suddenly she gets up impetuously and comes over to me.

"Nicolai Stiepanich!" she says, growing pale and pressing her hands to
her breast. "Nicolai Stiepanich! I can't go on like this any longer. I
can't. For God's sake tell me now, immediately. What shall I do? Tell
me, what shall I do?"

"What can I say? I am beaten. I can say nothing."

"But tell me, I implore you," she continues, out of breath and
trembling all over her body. "I swear to you, I can't go on like this
any longer. I haven't the strength."

She drops into a chair and begins to sob. She throws her head back,
wrings her hands, stamps with her feet; her hat falls from her head and
dangles by its string, her hair is loosened.

"Help me, help," she implores. "I can't bear it any more."

She takes a handkerchief out of her little travelling bag and with
it pulls out some letters which fall from her knees to the floor.
I pick them up from the floor and recognise on one of them Mikhail
Fiodorovich's hand-writing, and accidentally read part of a word:
"passionat...."

"There's nothing that I can say to you, Katy," I say.

"Help me," she sobs, seizing my hand and kissing it. "You're my father,
my only friend. You're wise and learned, and you've lived long! You
were a teacher. Tell me what to do."

I am bewildered and surprised, stirred by her sobbing, and I can hardly
stand upright.

"Let's have some breakfast, Katy," I say with a constrained smile.

Instantly I add in a sinking voice:

"I shall be dead soon, Katy...."

"Only one word, only one word," she weeps and stretches out her hands
to me. "What shall I do?"

"You're a queer thing, really....", I murmur. "I can't understand it.
Such a clever woman and suddenly--weeping...."

Comes silence. Katy arranges her hair, puts on her hat, then crumples
her letters and stuffs them in her little bag, all in silence and
unhurried. Her face, her bosom and her gloves are wet with tears, but
her expression is dry already, stern.... I look at her and am ashamed
that I am happier than she. It was but a little while before my death,
in the ebb of my life, that I noticed in myself the absence of what our
friends the philosophers call the general idea; but this poor thing's
soul has never known and never will know shelter all her life, all her
life.

"Katy, let's have breakfast," I say.

"No, thank you," she answers coldly.

One minute more passes in silence.

"I don't like Kharkov," I say. "It's too grey. A grey city."

"Yes ... ugly.... I'm not here for long.... On my way. I leave to-day."

"For where?"

"For the Crimea ... I mean, the Caucasus."

"So. For long?"

"I don't know."

Katy gets up and gives me her hand with a cold smile, looking away from
me.

I would like to ask her: "That means you won't be at my funeral?" But
she does not look at me; her hand is cold and like a stranger's. I
escort her to the door in silenqe.... She goes out of my room and walks
down the long passage, without looking back. She knows that my eyes are
following her, and probably on the landing she will look back.

No, she did not look back. The black dress showed for the last time,
her steps were stilled.... Goodbye, my treasure!




THE FIT


The medical student Mayer, and Ribnikov, a student at the Moscow school
of painting, sculpture, and architecture, came one evening to their
friend Vassiliev, law student, and proposed that he should go with
them to S----v Street. For a long while Vassiliev did not agree, but
eventually dressed himself and went with them.

Unfortunate women he knew only by hearsay and from books, and never
once in his life had he been in the houses where they live. He knew
there were immoral women who were forced by the pressure of disastrous
circumstances--environment, bad up-bringing, poverty, and the like--to
sell their honour for money. They do not know pure love, have no
children and no legal rights; mothers and sisters mourn them for
dead, science treats them as an evil, men are familiar with them. But
notwithstanding all this they do not lose the image and likeness of
God. They all acknowledge their sin and hope for salvation. They are
free to avail themselves of every means of salvation. True, Society
does not forgive people their past, but with God Mary of Egypt is
not lower than the other saints. Whenever Vassiliev recognised an
unfortunate woman in the street by her costume or her manner, or saw a
picture of one in a comic paper, there came into his mind every time
a story he once read somewhere: a pure and heroic young man falls in
love with an unfortunate woman and asks her to be his wife, but she,
considering herself unworthy of such happiness, poisons herself.

Vassiliev lived in one of the streets off the Tverskoi boulevard.
When he and his friends came out of the house it was about eleven
o'clock--the first snow had just fallen and all nature was under
the spell of this new snow; The air smelt of snow, the snow cracked
softly under foot, the earth, the roofs, the trees, the benches on the
boulevards--all were soft, white, and young. Owing to this the houses
had a different look from yesterday, the lamps burned brighter, the
air was more transparent, the clatter of the cabs was dulled and there
entered into the soul with the fresh, easy, frosty air a feeling like
the white, young, feathery snow. "To these sad shores unknowing" the
medico began to sing in a pleasant tenor, "An unknown power entices"
... "Behold the mill" ... the painter's voice took him up, "it is now
fall'n to ruin."

"Behold the mill, it is now fall'n to ruin," the medico repeated,
raising his eyebrows and sadly shaking his head.

He was silent for a while, passed his hand over his forehead trying to
recall the words, and began to sing in a loud voice and so well that
the passers-by looked back.

"Here, long ago, came free, free love to me"...

All three went into a restaurant and without taking off their coats
they each had two thimblefuls of vodka at the bar. Before drinking the
second, Vassiliev noticed a piece of cork in his Vodka, lifted the
glass to his eye, looked at it for a long while with a short-sighted
frown. The medico misunderstood his expression and said--

"Well, what are you staring at? No philosophy, please. Vodka's made to
be drunk, caviare to be eaten, women to sleep with, snow to walk on.
Live like a man for one evening."

"Well, I've nothing to say," said Vassiliev laughingly, "I'm not
refusing?"

The vodka warmed his breast. He looked at his friends, admired and
envied them. How balanced everything is in these healthy, strong,
cheerful people. Everything in their minds and souls is smooth and
rounded off. They sing, have a passion for the theatre, paint, talk
continually, and drink, and they never have a headache the next day.
They are romantic and dissolute, sentimental and insolent; they can
work and go on the loose and laugh at nothing and talk rubbish; they
are hot-headed, honest, heroic and as human beings not a bit worse
than Vassiliev, who watches his every step and word, who is careful,
cautious, and able to give the smallest trifle the dignity of a
problem. And he made tip his mind if only for one evening to live like
his friends, to let himself go, and be free from his own control.
Must he drink vodka? He'll drink, even if his head falls to pieces
to-morrow. Must he be taken to women? He'll go. He'll laugh, play the
fool, and give a joking answer to disapproving passers-by.

He came out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends--one in a
battered hat with a wide brim who aped aesthetic disorder; the other in
a sealskin cap, not very poor, with a pretence of learned Bohemia. He
liked the snow, the paleness, the lamp-lights, the dear black prints
which the passers' feet left on the snow. He liked the air, and above
all the transparent, tender, naive, virgin tone which can be seen in
nature only twice in the year: when everything is covered in snow, on
the bright days in spring, and on moonlight nights when the ice breaks
on the river.

"To these sad shores unknowing," he began to sing _sotto-voce,_ "An
unknown power entices."

And all the way for some reason or other he and his friends had this
melody on their lips. All three hummed it mechanically out of time with
each other.

Vassiliev Imagined how in about ten minutes he and his friends would
knock at a door, how they would stealthily walk through-the narrow
little passages and dark rooms to the women, how he would take
advantage of the dark, suddenly strike a match, and see lit up a
suffering face and a guilty smile. There he will surely find a fair
or a dark woman in a white nightgown with her hair loose. She will be
frightened of the light, dreadfully confused and say: "Good God! What
are you doing? Blow it out!" All this was frightening, but curious and
novel.



II


The friends turned out of Trubnoi Square into the Grachovka and soon
arrived at the street which Vassiliev knew only from hearsay. Seeing
two rows of houses with brightly lighted windows and wide open doors,
and hearing the gay sound of pianos and fiddles--sounds which flew out
of all the doors and mingled in a strange confusion, as if somewhere
in the darkness over the roof-tops an unseen orchestra were tuning,
Vassiliev was bewildered and said:

"What a lot of houses!"

"What's that?" said the medico. "There are ten times as many in London.
There are a hundred thousand of these women there."

The cabmen sat on their boxes quiet and indifferent as in other
streets; on the pavement walked the same passers-by. No one was in
a hurry; no one hid his face in his collar; no one shook his head
reproachfully. And in this indifference, in the confused sound of
the pianos and fiddles, in the bright windows and wide-open doors,
something very free, impudent, bold and daring could be felt. It must
have been the same as this in the old times on the slave-markets, as
gay and as noisy; people looked and walked with the same indifference.

"Let's begin right at the beginning," said the painter.

The friends walked into a narrow little passage lighted by a single
lamp with a reflector. When they opened the door a man in a black
jacket rose lazily from the yellow sofa in the hall. He had an unshaven
lackey's face and sleepy eyes. The place smelt like a laundry, and of
vinegar. From the hall a door led into a brightly lighted room. The
medico and the painter stopped in the doorway, stretched out their
necks and peeped into the room together:

"Buona sera, signore, Rigoletto--huguenote--traviata!--" the painter
began, making a theatrical bow.

"Havanna--blackbeetlano--pistoletto!" said the medico, pressing his hat
to his heart and bowing low.

Vassiliev kept behind them. He wanted to bow theatrically too and say
something silly. But he only smiled, felt awkward and ashamed, and
awaited impatiently what was to follow. In the door appeared a little
fair girl of seventeen or eighteen, with short hair, wearing a short
blue dress with a white bow on her breast.

"What are you standing in the door for?" she said. "Take off your
overcoats and come into the salon."

The medico and the painter went into the salon, still speaking Italian.
Vassiliev followed them irresolutely.

"Gentlemen, take off your overcoats," said the lackey stiffly. "You're
not allowed in as you are."

Besides the fair girl there was another woman in the salon, very stout
and tall, with a foreign face and bare arms. She sat by the piano,
with a game of patience spread on her knees. She took no notice of the
guests.

"Where are the other girls?" asked the medico.

"They're drinking tea," said the fair one. "Stiepan," she called out.
"Go and tell the girls some students have come!"

A little later a third girl entered, in a bright red dress with blue
stripes. Her face was thickly and unskilfully painted. Her forehead was
hidden under her hair. She stared with dull, frightened eyes. As she
came she immediately began to sing in a strong hoarse contralto. After
her a fourth girl. After her a fifth.

In all this Vassiliev saw nothing new or curious. It seemed to him
that he had seen before, and more than once, this salon, piano, cheap
gilt mirror, the white bow, the dress with blue stripes and the
stupid, indifferent faces. But of darkness, quiet, mystery, and guilty
smile--of all he had expected to meet here and which frightened him--he
did not see even a shadow.

Everything was commonplace, prosaic, and dull. Only one thing provoked
his curiosity a little, that was the terrible, as it were intentional
lack of taste, which was seen in the overmantels, the absurd pictures,
the dresses and the White bow. In this lack of taste there was
something characteristic and singular.

"How poor and foolish it all is!" thought Vassiliev. "What is there in
all this rubbish to tempt a normal man, to provoke him into committing
a frightful sin, to buy a living soul for a rouble? I can understand
anyone sinning for the sake of splendour, beauty, grace, passion; but
what is there here? What tempts people here? But ... it's no good
thinking!"

"Whiskers, stand me champagne." The fair one turned to him.

Vassiliev suddenly blushed.

"With pleasure," he said, bowing politely. "But excuse me if I ... I
don't drink with you, I don't drink."

Five minutes after the friends were off to another house.

"Why did you order drinks?" stormed the medico. "What a millionaire,
flinging six roubles into the gutter like that for nothing at all."

"Why shouldn't I give her pleasure if she wants it?" said Vassiliev,
justifying himself.

"You didn't give her any pleasure. Madame got that. It's Madame who
tells them to ask the guests for drinks. She makes by it."

"Behold the mill," the painter began to sing, "Now fall'n to ruin...."

When they came to another house the friends stood outside in the
vestibule, but did not enter the salon. As in the first house, a figure
rose up from the sofa in the hall, in a black jacket, with a sleepy
lackey's face. As he looked at this lackey, at his face and shabby
jacket, Vassiliev thought: "What must an ordinary simple Russian go
through before Fate casts him up here? Where was he before, and what
was he doing? What awaits him? Is he married, where's his mother,
and does she know he's a lackey here?" Thenceforward in every house
Vassiliev involuntarily turned his attention to the lackey first of all.

In one of the houses, it seemed to be the fourth, the lackey was a dry
little, puny fellow, with a chain across his waistcoat. He was reading
a newspaper and took no notice of the guests at all. Glancing at his
face, Vassiliev had the idea that a fellow with a face like that could
steal and murder and perjure. And indeed the face was interesting: a
big forehead, grey eyes, a flat little nose, small close-set teeth, and
the expression on his face dull and impudent at once, like a puppy hard
on a hare. Vassiliev had the thought that he would like to touch this
lackey's hair: is it rough or soft f It must be rough like a dog's.



III


Because he had had two glasses the painter suddenly got rather drunk,
and unnaturally lively.

"Let's go to another place," he added, waving his hands. "I'll
introduce you to the best!"

When he had taken his friends into the house which was according to him
the best, he proclaimed a persistent desire to dance a quadrille. The
medico began to grumble that they would have to pay the musicians a
rouble but agreed to be his _vis-à-vis._ The dance began.

It was just as bad in the best house as in the worst. Just the same
mirrors and pictures were here, the same coiffures and dresses. Looking
round at the furniture and the costumes Vassiliev now understood that
it was not lack of taste, but something that might be called the
particular taste and style of S----v Street, quite impossible to find
anywhere else, something complete, not accidental, evolved in time.
After he had been to eight houses he no longer wondered at the colour
of the dresses or the long trains, or at the bright bows, or the sailor
dresses, or the thick violent painting of the cheeks; he understood
that all this was in harmony, that if only one woman dressed herself
humanly, or one decent print hung on the wall, then the general tone of
the whole street would suffer.

How badly they manage the business? Can't they really understand that
vice is only fascinating when it is beautiful and secret, hidden under
the cloak of virtue? Modest black dresses, pale faces, sad smiles, and
darkness act more strongly than this clumsy tinsel. Idiots! If they
don't understand it themselves, their guests ought to teach them....

A girl in a Polish costume trimmed with white fur came up close to him
and sat down by his side.

"Why don't you dance, my brown-haired darling?" she asked. "What do you
fed so bored about?"

"Because it is boring."

"Stand me a Château Lafitte, then you won't be bored."

Vassiliev made no answer. For a little while he was silent, then he
asked:

"What time do you go to bed as a rule?"

"Six."

"When do you get up?"

"Sometimes two, sometimes three."

"And after you get up what do you do?"

"We drink coffee. We have dinner at seven."

"And what do you have for dinner?"

"Soup or _schi_ as a rule, beef-steak, dessert. Our madame keeps the
girls well. But what are you asking all this for?"

"Just to have a talk...."

Vassiliev wanted to ask about all sorts of things. He had a strong
desire to find out where she came from, were her parents alive, and did
they know she was here; how she got into the house; was she happy and
contented, or gloomy and depressed with dark thoughts. Does she ever
hope to escape.... But he could not possibly think how to begin, or how
to put his questions without seeming indiscreet. He thought for a long
while and asked:

"How old are you?"

"Eighty," joked the girl, looking and laughing at the tricks the
painter was doing with his hands and feet.

She suddenly giggled and uttered a long filthy expression aloud so that
every one could hear.

Vassiliev, terrified, not knowing how to look, began to laugh uneasily.
He alone smiled: all the others, his friends, the musicians and the
women--paid no attention to his neighbour. They might never have heard.

"Stand me a Lafitte," said the girl again.

Vassiliev was suddenly repelled by her white trimming and her voice
and left her. It seemed to him close and hot. His heart began to beat
slowly and violently, like a hammer, one, two, three.

"Let's get out of here," he said, pulling the painter's sleeve.

"Wait. Let's finish it."

While the medico and the painter were finishing their quadrille,
Vassiliev, in order to avoid the women, eyed the musicians. The
pianist was a nice old man with spectacles, with a face like Marshal
Basin; the fiddler a young man with a short, fair beard dressed in
the latest fashion. The young man was not stupid or starved, on the
contrary he looked clever, young and fresh. He was dressed with a touch
of originality, and played with emotion. Problem: how did he and the
decent old man get here? Why aren't they ashamed to sit here? What do
they think about when they look at the women?

If the piano and the fiddle were played by ragged, hungry, gloomy,
drunken creatures, with thin stupid faces, then their presence would
perhaps be intelligible. As it was, Vassiliev could understand.
nothing. Into his memory came the story that he had read about the
unfortunate woman, and now he found that the human figure with the
guilty smile had nothing to do with this. It seemed to him that they
were not unfortunate women that he saw, but they belonged to another,
utterly different world, foreign and inconceivable to him; if he had
seen this world on the stage or read about it in a book he would never
have believed it.... The girl with the white trimming giggled again and
said something disgusting aloud. He felt sick, blushed, and went out:

"Wait. We're coming too," cried the painter.



IV


"I had a talk with my _mam'selle_ while we were dancing," said the
medico when all three came into the street. "The subject was her first
love. _He_ was a bookkeeper in Smolensk with a wife and five children.
She was seventeen and lived with her pa and ma who kept a soap and
candle shop."

"How did he conquer her heart?" asked Vassiliev.

"He bought her fifty roubles'-worth of underclothes--Lord knows what!"

"However could he get her love-story out of his girl?" thought
Vassiliev. "I can't. My dear chaps, I'm off home," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I don't know how to get on here. I'm bored and disgusted. What
is there amusing about it? If they were only human beings; but they're
savages and beasts. I'm going, please."

"Grisha darling, please," the painter said with a sob in his voice,
pressing close to Vassiliev, "let's go to one more--then to Hell with
them. Do come, Grigor."

They prevailed on Vassiliev and led him up a staircase. The carpet and
the gilded balustrade, the porter who opened the door, the panels which
decorated the hall, were still in the same S----v Street style, but
here it was perfected and imposing.

"Really I'm going home," said Vassiliev, taking off his overcoat.

"Darling, please, please," said the painter and kissed him on the neck.
"Don't be so faddy, Grigri--be a pal. Together we came, together we go.
What a beast you are though!"

"I can wait for you in the street. My God, it's disgusting here."

"Please, please.... You just look on, see, just look on."

"One should look at things objectively," said the medico seriously.

Vassiliev entered the salon and sat down. There were many more guests
besides him and his friends: two infantry officers, a grey, bald-headed
gentleman with gold spectacles, two young clean-shaven men from the
Surveyors' Institute, and a very drunk man with an actor's face.
All the girls were looking after these guests and took no notice of
Vassiliev. Only one of them dressed like Aïda glanced at him sideways,
smiled at something and said with a yawn:

"So the dark one's come."

Vassiliev's heart was beating and his face was burning. He felt
ashamed for being there, disgusted and tormented. He was tortured by
the thought that he, a decent and affectionate man (so he considered
himself up till now), despised these women and felt nothing towards
them but repulsion. He could not feel pity for them or for the
musicians or the lackeys.

"It's because I don't try to understand them," he thought. "They're all
more like beasts than human beings; but all the same they are human
beings. They've got souls. One should understand them first, then judge
them."

"Grisha, don't go away. Wait for us," called the painter; and he
disappeared somewhere.

Soon the medico disappeared also.

"Yes, one should try to understand. It's no good, otherwise," thought
Vassiliev, and he began to examine intently the face of each girl,
looking for the guilty smile. But whether he could not read faces or
because none of these women felt guilty he saw in each face only a dull
look of common, vulgar boredom and satiety. Stupid eyes, stupid smiles,
harsh, stupid voices, impudent gestures--and nothing else. Evidently
every woman had in her past a love romance with a bookkeeper and fifty
roubles'-worth of underclothes. And in the present the only good things
in life were coffee, a three-course dinner, wine, quadrilles, and
sleeping till two in the afternoon....

Finding not one guilty smile, Vassiliev began to examine them to see
if even one looked clever and his attention was arrested by one pale,
rather tired face. It was that of a dark woman no longer young, wearing
a dress scattered with spangles. She sat in a chair staring at the
floor and thinking of something. Vassiliev paced up and down and then
sat down beside her as if by accident.

"One must begin with something trivial," he thought, "and gradually
pass on to serious conversation...."

"What a beautiful little dress you have on," he said, and touched the
gold fringe of her scarf with his finger.

"It's all right," said the dark woman.

"Where do you come from?"

"I? A long way. From Tchernigov."

"It's a nice part."

"It always is, where you don't happen to be."

"What a pity I can't describe nature," thought Vassiliev. "I'd move her
by descriptions of Tchernigov. She must love it if she was born there."

"Do you feel lonely here?" he asked.

"Of course I'm lonely."

"Why don't you go away from here, if you're lonely?"

"Where shall I go to? Start begging, eh?"

"It's easier to beg than to live here."

"Where did you get that idea? Have you been a beggar?"

"I begged, when I hadn't enough to pay my university fees; and even if
I hadn't begged it's easy enough to understand. A beggar is a free man,
at any rate, and you're a slave."

The dark woman stretched herself, and followed with sleepy eyes the
lackey who carried a tray of glasses and soda-water.

"Stand us a champagne," she said, and yawned again.

"Champagne," said Vassiliev. "What would happen if your mother or your
brother suddenly came in? What would you say? And what would they say?
You would say 'champagne' then."

Suddenly the noise of crying was heard. From the next room where the
lackey had carried the soda-water, a fair man rushed out with a red
face and angry eyes. He was followed by the tall, stout madame, who
screamed in a squeaky voice:

"No one gave you permission to slap the girls in the face. Better class
than you come here, and never slap a girl. You bounder!"

Followed an uproar. Vassiliev was scared and went white. In the next
room some one wept, sobbing, sincerely, as only the insulted weep.
And he understood that indeed human beings lived here, actually
human beings, who get offended, suffer, weep, and ask for help. The
smouldering hatred, the feeling of repulsion, gave way to an acute
sense of pity and anger against the wrong-doer. He rushed into the
room from which the weeping came. Through the rows of bottles which
stood on the marble table-top he saw a suffering tear-stained face,
stretched out his hands towards this face, stepped to the table and
instantly gave a leap back in terror. The sobbing woman was dead-drunk.

As he made his way through the noisy crowd, gathered round the fair
man, his heart failed him, he lost his courage like a boy, and it
seemed to him that in this foreign, inconceivable world, they wanted to
run after him, to beat him, to abuse him with foul words. He tore down
his coat from the peg and rushed headlong down the stairs.



V


Pressing dose to the fence, he stood near to the house and waited
for his friends to come out. The sounds of the pianos and fiddles,
gay, bold, impudent and sad, mingled into chaos in the air, and this
confusion was, as before, as if an unseen orchestra were tuning in the
dark over the roof-tops. If he looked up towards the darkness, then
all the background was scattered with white, moving points: it was
snowing. The flakes, coming into the light, spun lazily in the air like
feathers, and still more lazily fell. Flakes of snow crowded whirling
about Vassiliev, and hung on his beard, his eyelashes, his eyebrows.
The cabmen, the horses, and the passers-by, all were white.

"How dare the snow fall in this street?" thought Vassiliev. "A curse on
these houses."

Because of his headlong rush down the staircase his feet failed him
from weariness; he was out of breath as if he had climbed a mountain.
His heart beat so loud that he could hear it. A longing came over him
to get out of this street as soon as possible and go home; but still
stronger was his desire to wait for his friends and to vent upon them
his feeling of heaviness.

He had not understood many things in the houses. The souls of the
perishing women were to him a mystery as before; but it was dear to
him that the business was much worse than one would have thought. If
the guilty woman who poisoned herself was called a prostitute, then it
was hard to find a suitable name for all these creatures, who danced
to the muddling music and said long, disgusting phrases. They were not
perishing; they were already done for.

"Vice is here," he thought; "but there is neither confession of sin
nor hope of salvation. They are bought and sold, drowned in wine
and torpor, and they are dull and indifferent as sheep and do not
understand. My God, my God!"

It was so dear to him that all that which is called human dignity,
individuality, the image and likeness of God, was here dragged down to
the gutter, as they say of drunkards, and that not only the street and
the stupid women were to blame for it.

A crowd of students white with snow, talking and laughing gaily,
passed by. One of them, a tall, thin man, peered into Vassiliev's face
and said drunkenly, "He's one of ours. Logged, old man? Aha! my lad.
Never mind. Walk up, never say die, uncle."

He took Vassiliev by the shoulders and pressed his cold wet moustaches
to his cheek, then slipped, staggered, brandished his arms, and cried
out:

"Steady there--don't fall."

Laughing, he ran to join his comrades.

Through the noise the painter's voice became audible.

"You dare beat women! I won't have it. Go to Hell. You're regular
swine."

The medico appeared at the door of the house. He glanced round and on
seeing Vassiliev, said in alarm:

"Is that you? My God, it's simply impossible to go anywhere with Yegor.
I can't understand a chap like that. He kicked up a row--can't you
hear? Yegor," he called from the door. "Yegor!"

"I won't have you hitting women." The painter's shrill voice was
audible again from upstairs.

Something heavy and bulky tumbled down the staircase. It was the
painter coming head over heels. He had evidently been thrown out.

He lifted himself up from the ground, dusted his hat, and with an angry
indignant face, shook his fist at the upstairs.

"Scoundrels! Butchers! Bloodsuckers! I won't have you hitting a weak,
drunken woman. Ah, you...."

"Yegor ... Yegor!" the medico began to implore, "I give my word I'll
never go out with you again. Upon my honour, I won't."

The painter gradually calmed, and the friends went home.

"To these sad shores unknowing"--the medico began--"An unknown power
entices...."

"'Behold the mill,' the painter sang with him after a pause, 'Now fallen
into ruin.' How the snow is falling, most Holy Mother. Why did you go
away, Grisha? You're a coward; you're only an old woman."

Vassiliev was walking behind his friends. He stared at their backs and
thought: "One of two things: either prostitution only seems to us an
evil and we exaggerate it, or if prostitution is really such an evil as
is commonly thought, these charming friends of mine are just as much
slavers, violators, and murderers as the inhabitants of Syria and Cairo
whose photographs appear in 'The Field.' They're singing, laughing,
arguing soundly now, but haven't they just been exploiting starvation,
ignorance, and stupidity? They have, I saw them at it. Where does their
humanity, their science, and their painting come in, then? The science,
art, and lofty sentiments of these murderers remind me of the lump of
fat in the story. Two robbers killed a beggar in a forest; they began
to divide his clothes between themselves and found in his bag a lump
of pork fat. 'In the nick of time,' said one of them. 'Let's have a
bite!' 'How can you?' the other cried in terror. 'Have you forgotten
to-day's Friday?' So they refrained from eating. After having cut the
man's throat they walked out of the forest confident that they were
pious fellows. These two are just the same. When they've paid for women
they go and imagine they're painters and scholars....

"Listen, you two," he said angrily and sharply. "Why do you go to those
places? Can't you understand how horrible they are? Your medicine
tells you every one of these women dies prematurely from consumption
or something else; your arts tell you that she died morally still
earlier. Each of them dies because during her lifetime she accepts on
an average, let us say, five hundred men. Each of them is killed by
five hundred men, and you're amongst the five hundred. Now if each of
you comes here and to places like this two hundred and fifty times in
his lifetime, then it means that between you you have killed one woman.
Can't you understand that? Isn't it horrible?"

"Ah, isn't this awful, my God?"

"There, I knew it would end like this," said the painter frowning. "We
oughtn't to have had anything to do with this fool of a blockhead. I
suppose you think your head's full of great thoughts and great ideas
now. Devil knows what they are, but they're not ideas. You're staring
at me now with hatred and disgust; but if you want my opinion you'd
better build twenty more of the houses than look like that. There's
more vice in your look than in the whole street. Let's dear out,
Volodya, damn him! He's a fool. He's a blockhead, and that's all he is."

"Human beings are always killing each other," said the medico. "That is
immoral, of course. But philosophy won't help you. Good-bye!"

The friends parted at Trubnoi Square and went their way. Left alone,
Vassiliev began to stride along the boulevard. He was frightened of the
dark, frightened of the snow, which fell to the earth in little flakes,
but seemed to long to cover the whole world; he was frightened of the
street-lamps, which glimmered faintly through the clouds of snow. An
inexplicable faint-hearted fear possessed his soul. Now and then people
passed him; but he gave a start and stepped aside. It seemed to him
that from everywhere there came and stared at him women, only women....

"It's coming on," he thought, "I'm going to have a fit."



VI


At home he lay on his bed and began to talk, shivering all over his
body.

"Live women, live.... My God, they're alive."

He sharpened the edge of his imagination in every possible way. Now he
was the brother of an unfortunate, now her father. Now he was himself a
fallen woman, with painted cheeks; and all this terrified him.

It seemed to him somehow that he must solve this question immediately,
at all costs, and that the problem was not strange to him, but was his
own. He made a great effort, conquered his despair, and, sitting on the
side of the bed, his head clutched in his hands, he began to think:

How could all the women he had seen that night be saved? The process
of solving a problem was familiar to him as to a learned person; and
notwithstanding all his excitement he kept strictly to this process.
He recalled to mind the history of the question, its literature, and
just after three o'clock he was pacing up and down, trying to remember
all the experiments which are practised nowadays for the salvation of
women. He had a great many good friends who lived in furnished rooms,
Falzfein, Galyashkin, Nechaiev, Yechkin ... not a few among them were
honest and self-sacrificing, and some of them had attempted to save
these women....

All these few attempts, thought Vassiliev, rare attempts, may be
divided into three groups. Some having rescued a woman from a brothel
hired a room for her, bought her a sewing-machine and she became a
dressmaker, and the man who saved her kept her for his mistress,
openly or otherwise, but later when he had finished his studies and was
going away, he would hand her over to another decent fellow. So the
fallen woman remained fallen. Others after having bought her out also
hired a room for her, bought the inevitable sewing-machine and started
her off reading and writing and preached at her. The woman sits and
sews as long as it is novel and amusing, but later, when she is bored,
she begins to receive men secretly, or runs back to where she can sleep
till three in the afternoon, drink coffee, and eat till she is full.
Finally, the most ardent and self-sacrificing take a bold, determined
step. They marry, and when the impudent, self-indulgent, stupefied
creature becomes a wife, a lady of the house, and then a mother, her
life and outlook are utterly changed, and in the wife and mother it is
hard to recognise the unfortunate woman. Yes, marriage is the best, it
may be the only, resource.

"But it's impossible," Vassiliev said aloud and threw himself down on
his bed. "First of all, I could not marry one. One would have to be a
saint to be able to do it, unable to hate, not knowing disgust. But
let us suppose that the painter, the medico, and I got the better of
our feelings and married, that all these women got married, what is
the result? What kind of effect follows? The result is that while the
women get married here in Moscow, the Smolensk bookkeeper seduces a
fresh lot, and these will pour into the empty places, together with
women from Saratov, Nijni-Novgorod, Warsaw.... And what happens to the
hundred thousand in London? What can be done with those in Hamburg?

The oil in the lamp was used up and the lamp began to smell. Vassiliev
did not notice it. Again he began to pace up and down, thinking. Now he
put the question differently. What can be done to remove the demand for
fallen women? For this it is necessary that the men who buy and kill
them should at once begin to feel all the immorality of their _rôle_ of
slave-owners, and this should terrify them. It is necessary to save the
men.

Science and art apparently won't do, thought Vassiliev. There is only
one way out--to be an apostle.

And he began to dream how he would stand to-morrow evening at the
corner of the street and say to each passer-by: "Where are you going
and what for? Fear God!"

He would turn to the indifferent cabmen and say to them:

"Why are you standing here? Why don't you revolt? You do believe in
God, don't you? And you do know that this is a crime, and that people
will go to Hell for this? Why do you keep quiet, then? True, the women
are strangers to you, but they have fathers and brothers exactly the
same as you...."

Some friend of Vassiliev's once said of him that he was a man of
talent. There is a talent for writing, for the theatre, for painting;
but Vassiliev's was peculiar, a talent for humanity. He had a fine and
noble _flair_ for every kind of suffering. As a good actor reflects in
himself the movement and voice of another, so Vassiliev could reflect
in himself another's pain. Seeing tears, he wept. With a sick person,
he himself became sick and moaned. If he saw violence done, it seemed
to him that he was the victim. He was frightened like a child, and,
frightened, ran for help. Another's pain roused him, excited him, threw
him into a state of ecstasy....

Whether the friend was right I do not know, but what happened to
Vassiliev when it seemed to him that the question was solved was very
much like an ecstasy. He sobbed, laughed, said aloud the things he
would say to-morrow, felt a burning love for the men who would listen
to him and stand by his side at the corner of the street, preaching. He
sat down to write to them; he made vows.

All this was the more like an ecstasy in that it did not last.
Vassiliev was soon tired. The London women, the Hamburg women, those
from Warsaw, crushed him with their mass, as the mountains crush the
earth. He quailed before this mass; he lost himself; he remembered he
had no gift for speaking, that he was timid and faint-hearted, that
strange people would hardly want to listen to and understand him, a
law-student in his third year, a frightened and insignificant figure.
The true apostleship consisted, not only in preaching, but also in
deeds....

When daylight came and the carts rattled on the streets, Vassiliev lay
motionless on the sofa, staring at one point. He did not think any
more of women, or men, or apostles. All his attention was fixed on the
pain of his soul which tormented him. It was a dull pain, indefinite,
vague; it was like anguish and the most acute fear and despair. He
could say where the pain was. It was in his breast, under the heart.
It could not be compared to anything. Once on a time he used to have
violent toothache. Once, he had pleurisy and neuralgia. But all these
pains were as nothing beside the pain of his soul. Beneath this pain
life seemed repulsive. The thesis, his brilliant work already written,
the people he loved, the salvation of fallen women, all that which only
yesterday he loved or was indifferent to, remembered now, irritated
him in the same way as the noise of the carts, the running about of
the porters and the daylight.... If someone now were to perform before
his eyes a deed of mercy or an act of revolting violence, both would
produce upon him an equally repulsive impression. Of all the thoughts
which roved lazily in his head, two only did not irritate him: one--at
any moment he had the power to kill himself, the other--that the pain
would not last more than three days. The second he knew from experience.

After having lain down for a while he got up and walked wringing his
hands, not from corner to corner as usually, but in a square along
the walls. He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass. His face
was pale and haggard, his temples hollow, his eyes bigger, darker,
more immobile, as if they were not his own, and they expressed the
intolerable suffering of his soul.

In the afternoon the painter knocked at the door.

"Gregory, are you at home?" he asked.

Receiving no answer, he stood musing for a while, and said to himself
good-naturedly:

"Out. He's gone to the University. Damn him."

And went away.

Vassiliev lay down on his bed and burying his head in the pillow he
began to cry with the pain. But the faster his tears flowed, the more
terrible was the pain. When it was dark, he got into his mind the idea
of the horrible night which was awaiting him and awful despair seized
him. He dressed quickly, ran out of his room, leaving the door wide
open, and into the street without reason or purpose. Without asking
himself where he was going, he walked quickly to Sadovaia Street.

Snow was falling as yesterday. It was thawing. Putting his hands into
his sleeves, shivering, and frightened of the noises and the bells
of the trams and of passers-by, Vassiliev walked from Sadovaia to
Sukhariev Tower then to the Red Gates, and from here he turned and
went to Basmannaia. He went into a public-house and gulped down a big
glass of vodka, but felt no better. Arriving at Razgoulyai, he turned
to the right and began to stride down streets that he had never in
his life been down before. He came to that old bridge under which the
river Yaouza roars and from whence long rows of lights are seen in the
windows of the Red Barracks. In order to distract the pain of his soul
by a new sensation or another pain, not knowing what to do, weeping
and trembling, Vassiliev unbuttoned his coat and jacket, baring his
naked breast to the damp snow and the wind. Neither lessened the pain.
Then he bent over the rail of the bridge and stared down at the black,
turbulent Yaouza, and he suddenly wanted to throw himself head-first,
not from hatred of life, not for the sake of suicide, but only to hurt
himself and so to kill one pain by another. But the black water, the
dark, deserted banks covered with snow were frightening. He shuddered
and went on. He walked as far as the Red Barracks, then back and into a
wood, from the wood to the bridge again.

"No! Home, home," he thought. "At home I believe it's easier."

And he went back. On returning home he tore off his wet clothes and
hat, began to pace along the walls, and paced incessantly until the
very morning.



VII


The next morning when the painter and the medico came to see him,
they found him in a shirt torn to ribbons, his hands bitten all over,
tossing about in the room and moaning with pain.

"For God's sake!" he began to sob, seeing his comrades, "Take me
anywhere you like, do what you like, but save me, for God's sake now,
now! I'll kill myself."

The painter went pale and was bewildered. The medico, too, nearly began
to cry; but, believing that medical men must be cool and serious on
every occasion of life, he said coldly:

"It's a fit you've got. But never mind. Come to the doctor, at once."

"Anywhere you like, but quickly, for God's sake!"

"Don't be agitated. You must struggle with yourself."

The painter and the medico dressed Vassiliev with trembling hands and
led him into the street.

"Mikhail Sergueyich has been wanting to make your acquaintance for a
long while," the medico said on the way. "He's a very nice man, and
knows his job splendidly. He took his degree in '82, and has got a huge
practice already. He keeps friends with the students."

"Quicker, quicker...." urged Vassiliev. Mikhail Sergueyich, a stout
doctor with fair hair, received the friends politely, firmly, coldly,
and smiled with one cheek only.

"The painter and Mayer have told me of your disease already," he said.
"Very glad to be of service to you. Well? Sit down, please."

He made Vassiliev sit down in a big chair by the table, and put a box
of cigarettes in front of him.

"Well?" he began, stroking his knees. "Let's make a start. How old are
you?"

He put questions and the medico answered. He asked whether Vassiliev's
father suffered from any peculiar diseases, if he had fits of drinking,
was he distinguished by his severity or any other eccentricities. He
asked the same questions about his grandfather, mother, sisters, and
brothers. Having ascertained that his mother had a fine voice and
occasionally appeared on the stage, he suddenly brightened up and asked:

"Excuse me, but could you recall whether the theatre was not a passion
with your mother?"

About twenty minutes passed. Vassiliev was bored by the doctor stroking
his knees and talking of the same thing all the while.

"As far as I can understand your questions, Doctor," he said. "You want
to know whether my disease is hereditary or not. It is not hereditary."

The doctor went on to ask if Vassiliev had not any secret vices
in his early youth, any blows on the head, any love passions,
eccentricities, or exceptional infatuations. To half the questions
habitually asked by careful doctors you may return no answer without
any injury to your health; but Mikhail Sergueyich, the medico and the
painter looked as though, if Vassiliev failed to answer even one single
question, everything would be ruined. For some reason the doctor wrote
down the answers he received on a scrap of paper. Discovering that
Vassiliev had already passed through the faculty of natural science and
was now in the Law faculty, the doctor began to be pensive....

"He wrote a brilliant thesis last year...." said the medico.

"Excuse me. You mustn't interrupt me; you prevent me from
concentrating," the doctor said, smiling with one cheek. "Yes,
certainly that is important for the anamnesis.... Yes, yes.... And do
you drink vodka?" he turned to Vassiliev.

"Very rarely."

Another twenty minutes passed. The medico began _sotto voce_ to give
his opinion of the immediate causes of the fit and told how he, the
painter and Vassiliev went to S----v Street the day before yesterday.

The indifferent, reserved, cold tone in which his friends and the
doctor were speaking of the women and the miserable street seemed to
him in the highest degree strange....

"Doctor, tell me this one thing," he said, restraining himself from
being rude. "Is prostitution an evil or not?"

"My dear fellow, who disputes it?" the doctor said with an expression
as though he had long ago solved all these questions for himself. "Who
disputes it?"

"Are you a psychiatrist?"

"Yes-s, a psychiatrist."

"Perhaps all of you are right," said Vassiliev, rising and beginning
to walk from corner to corner. "It may be. But to me all this seems
amazing. They see a great achievement in my having passed through two
faculties at the university; they praise me to the skies because I have
written a work that will be thrown away and forgotten in three years'
time, but became I can't speak of prostitutes as indifferently as I can
about these chairs, they send me to doctors, call me a lunatic, and
pity me."

For some reason Vassiliev suddenly began to feel an intolerable pity
for himself, his friends, and everybody whom he had seen the day before
yesterday, and for the doctor. He began to sob and fell into the chair.

The friends looked interrogatively at the doctor. He, looking as though
he magnificently understood the tears and the despair, and knew himself
a specialist in this line, approached Vassiliev and gave him some drops
to drink, and then when Vassiliev grew calm undressed him and began to
examine the sensitiveness of his skin, of the knee reflexes....

And Vassiliev felt better. When he was coming out of the doctor's he
was already ashamed; the noise of the traffic did not seem irritating,
and the heaviness beneath his heart became easier and easier as though
it were thawing. In his hand were two prescriptions. One was for
kali-bromatum, the other--morphia. He used to take both before.

He stood still in the street for a while, pensive, and then, taking
leave of his friends, lazily dragged on towards the university.




MISFORTUNE


Sophia Pietrovna, the wife of the solicitor Loubianzev, a handsome
young woman of about twenty-five, was walking quickly along a forest
path with her bungalow neighbour, the barrister Ilyin. It was just
after four. In the distance, above the path, white feathery clouds
gathered; from behind them some bright blue pieces of cloud showed
through. The clouds were motionless, as if caught on the tops of the
tall, aged fir trees. It was calm and warm.

In the distance the path was cut across by a low railway embankment,
along which at this hour, for some reason or other, a sentry strode.
Just behind the embankment a big, six-towered church with a rusty roof
shone white.

"I did not expect to meet you here," Sophia Pietrovna was saying,
looking down and touching the last year's leaves with the end of her
parasol. "But now I am glad to have met you. I want to speak to you
seriously and finally. Ivan Mikhailovich, if you really love and
respect me I implore you to stop pursuing me i You follow me like
a shadow--there's such a wicked look in your eye--you make love to
me--write extraordinary letters and ... I don't know how all this is
going to end--Good Heavens! What can all this lead to?"

Ilyin was silent. Sophia Pietrovna took a few steps and continued:

"And this sudden complete change has happened in two or three weeks
after five years of friendship. I do not know you any more, Ivan
Mikhailovich."

Sophia Pietrovna glanced sideways at her companion. He was staring
intently, screwing up his eyes at the feathery clouds. The expression
of his face was angry, capricious and distracted, like that of a man
who suffers and at the same time must listen to nonsense.

"It is annoying that you yourself can't realise it!" Madame Loubianzev
continued, shrugging her shoulders. "Please understand that you're not
playing a very nice game. I am married, I love and respect my husband.
I have a daughter. Don't you really care in the slightest for all this?
Besides, as an old friend, you know my views on family life ... on the
sanctity of the home, generally."

Ilyin gave an angry grunt and sighed:

"The sanctity of the home," he murmured, "Good Lord!"

"Yes, yes. I love and respect my husband and at any rate the peace of
my family life is precious to me. I'd sooner let myself be killed than
be the cause of Andrey's or his daughter's unhappiness. So, please,
Ivan Mikhailovich, for goodness' sake, leave me alone. Let us be good
and dear friends, and give up these sighings and gaspings which don't
suit you. It's settled and done with! Not another word about it. Let us
talk of something else!"

Sophia Pietrovna again glanced sideways at Ilyin. He was looking up.
He was pale, and angrily he bit his trembling lips. Madame Loubianzev
could not understand why he was disturbed and angry, but his pallor
moved her.

"Don't be cross. Let's be friends," she said, sweetly.

"Agreed! Here is my hand."

Ilyin took her tiny plump hand in both his, pressed it and slowly
raised it to his lips.

"I'm not a schoolboy," he murmured. "I'm not in the least attracted by
the idea of friendship with the woman I love."

"That's enough. Stop! It is all settled and done with. We have come as
far as the bench. Let us sit down...."

A sweet sense of repose filled Sophia Pietrovna's soul. The most
difficult and delicate thing was already said. The tormenting question
was settled and done with. Now she could breathe easily and look
straight at Ilyin. She looked at him, and the egotistical sense of
superiority that a woman feels over her lover caressed her pleasantly.
She liked the way this big strong man with a virile angry face and a
huge black beard sat obediently at her side and hung his head. They
were silent for a little while. "Nothing is yet settled and done with,"
Ilyin began. "You are reading me a sermon. 'I love and respect my
husband ... the sanctity of the home....' I know all that for myself
and I can tell you more. Honestly and sincerely I confess that I
consider my conduct as criminal and immoral. What else? But why say
what is known already? Instead of sermonizing you had far better tell
me what I am to do."

"I have already told you. Go away."

"I have gone. You know quite well. I have started five times and
half-way there I have come back again. I can show you the through
tickets. I have kept them all safe. But I haven't the power to run away
from you. I struggle frightfully, but what in Heaven's name is the use?
If I cannot harden myself, if I'm weak and faint-hearted. I can't fight
nature. Do you understand? I cannot! I run away from her and she holds
me back by my coattails. Vile, vulgar weakness."

Ilyin blushed, got up, and began walking by the bench:

"How I hate and despise myself. Good Lord, I'm like a vicious
boy--running after another man's wife, writing idiotic letters,
degrading myself. Ach!" He clutched his head, grunted and sit down.

"And now comes your lack of sincerity into the bargain," he continued
with bitterness. "If you don't think I am playing a nice game--why
are you here? What drew you? In my letters I only ask you for a
straightforward answer: Yes, or No; and instead of giving it me, every
day you contrive that we shall meet 'by chance' and you treat me to
quotations from a moral copy-book."

Madame Loubianzev reddened and got frightened. She suddenly felt the
kind of awkwardness that a modest woman would feel at being suddenly
discovered naked.

"You seem to suspect some deceit on my side," she murmured. "I have
always given you a straight answer; and I asked you for one to-day."

"Ah, does one ask such things? If you had said to me at once 'Go away,'
I would have gone long ago, but you never told me to. Never once have
you been frank. Strange irresolution. My God, either you're playing
with me, or...."

Ilyin did not finish, and rested his head in his hands. Sophia
Pietrovna recalled her behaviour all through. She remembered that she
had felt all these days not only in deed but even in her most intimate
thoughts opposed to Ilyin's love. But at the same moment she knew that
there was a grain of truth in the barrister's words. And not knowing
what kind of truth it was she could not think, no matter how much she
thought about it, what to say to him in answer to his complaint. It was
awkward being silent, so she said shrugging her shoulders:

"So I'm to blame for that too?"

"I don't blame you for your insincerity," sighed Ilyin. "It slipped out
unconsciously. Your insincerity is natural to you, in the natural order
of things as well. If all mankind were to agree suddenly to become
serious, everything would go to the Devil, to ruin."

Sophia Pietrovna was not in the mood for philosophy; but she was glad
of the opportunity to change the conversation and asked:

"Why indeed?"

"Because only savages and animals are sincere. Since civilisation
introduced into society the demand, for instance, for such a luxury as
woman's virtue, sincerity has been out of place."

Angrily Ilyin began to thrust his stick into the sand. Madame
Loubianzev listened without understanding much of it; she liked the
conversation. First of all, she was pleased that a gifted man should
speak to her, an average woman, about intellectual things; also it gave
her great pleasure to watch how the pale, lively, still angry, young
face was working. Much she did not understand; but the fine courage
of modern man was revealed to her, the courage by which he without
reflection or surmise solves the great questions and constructs his
simple conclusions.

Suddenly she discovered that she was admiring him, and it frightened
her.

"Pardon, but I don't really understand," she hastened to say. "Why
did you mention insincerity? I entreat you once more, be a dear, good
friend and leave me alone. Sincerely, I ask it."

"Good--I'll do my best. But hardly anything will come of it. Either
I'll put a bullet through my brains or ... I'll start drinking in
the stupidest possible way. Things will end badly for me. Everything
has its limit, even a struggle with nature. Tell me now, how can one
struggle with madness? If you've drunk wine, how can you get over the
excitement? What can I do if your image has grown into my soul, and
stands incessantly before my eyes, night and day, as plain as that
fir tree there? Tell me then what thing I must do to get out of this
wretched, unhappy state, when all my thoughts, desires, and dreams
belong, not to me, but to some devil that has got hold of me? I love
you, I love you so much that I've turned away from my path, given up my
career and my closest friends, forgot my God. Never in my life have I
loved so much."

Sophia Pietrovna, who was not expecting this turn, drew her body away
from Ilyin, and glanced at him frightened. Tears shone in his eyes. His
lips trembled, and a hungry, suppliant expression showed over all his
face.

"I love you," he murmured, bringing his own eyes near to her big,
frightened ones. "You are so beautiful. I'm suffering now; but I swear
I could remain so all my life, suffering and looking into your eyes,
but.... Keep silent, I implore you."

Sophia Pietrovna as if taken unawares began, quickly, quickly, to think
out words with which to stop him. "I shall go away," she decided, but
no sooner had she moved to get up, than Ilyin was on his knees at her
feet already. He embraced her knees, looked into her eyes and spoke
passionately, ardently, beautifully. She did not hear his words, for
her fear and agitation. Somehow now at this dangerous moment when
her knees pleasantly contracted, as in a warm bath, she sought with
evil intention to read some meaning into her sensation. She was angry
because the whole of her instead of protesting virtue was filled with
weakness, laziness, and emptiness, like a drunken man to whom the ocean
is but knee-deep; only in the depths of her soul, a little remote
malignant voice teased: "Why don't you go away? Then this is right, is
it?"

Seeking in herself an explanation she could not understand why she had
not withdrawn the hand to which Ilyin's lips clung like a leech, nor
why, at the same time as Ilyin, she looked hurriedly right and left to
see that they were not observed.

The fir-trees and the clouds stood motionless, and gazed at them
severely like broken-down masters who see something going on, but have
been bribed not to report to the head. The sentry on the embankment
stood like a stick and seemed to be staring at the bench. "Let him
look!" thought Sophia Pietrovna.

"But ... But listen," she said at last with despair in her voice. "What
will this lead to? What will happen afterwards?"

"I don't know. I don't know," he began to whisper, waving these
unpleasant questions aside.

The hoarse, jarring whistle of a railway engine became audible. This
cold, prosaic sound of the everyday world made Madame Loubianzev start.

"It's time, I must go," she said, getting up quickly. "The train is
coming. Audrey is arriving. He will want his dinner."

Sophia Pietrovna turned her blazing cheeks to the embankment. First
the engine came slowly into sight, after it the carriages. It was not
a bungalow train, but a goods train. In a long row, one after another
like the days of man's life, the cars drew past the white background of
the church, and there seemed to be no end to them.

But at last the train disappeared, and the end car with the guard and
the lighted lamps disappeared into the green. Sophia Pietrovna turned
sharply and not looking at Ilyin began to walk quickly back along the
path. She had herself in control again. Red with shame, offended, not
by Ilyin, no I but by the cowardice and shamelessness with which she,
a good, respectable woman allowed a stranger to embrace her knees.
She had only one thought now, to reach her bungalow and her family
as quickly as possible. The barrister could hardly keep up with her.
Turning from the path on to a little track, she glanced at him so
quickly that she noticed only the sand on his knees, and she motioned
with her hand at him to let her be.

Running into the house Sophia Pietrovna stood for about five minutes
motionless in her room, looking now at the window then at the writing
table.... "You disgraceful woman," she scolded herself; "disgraceful!"
In spite of herself she recollected every detail, hiding nothing, how
all these days she had been against Ilyin's love-making, yet she was
somehow drawn to meet him and explain; but besides this when he was
lying at her feet she felt an extraordinary pleasure. She recalled
everything, not sparing herself, and now, stifled with shame, she could
have slapped her own face.

"Poor Andrey," she thought, trying, as she remembered her husband,
to give her face the tenderest possible expression--"Varya, my poor
darling child, does not know what a mother she has. Forgive me, my
dears. I love you very much ... very much!..."

And wishing to convince herself that she was still a good wife and
mother, that corruption had not yet touched those "sanctities" of hers,
of which she had spoken to Ilyin, Sophia Pietrovna ran into the kitchen
and scolded the cook for not having laid the table for Andrey Ilyitch.
She tried to imagine her husband's tired, hungry look, and pitying him
aloud, she laid the table herself, a thing which she had never done
before. Then she found her daughter Varya, lifted her up in her hands
and kissed her passionately; the child seemed to her heavy and cold,
but she would not own it to herself, and she began to tell her what a
good, dear, splendid father she had.

But when, soon after, Andrey. Ilyitch arrived, she barely greeted him.
The flow of imaginary feelings had ebbed away without convincing her of
anything; she was only exasperated and enraged by the lie. She sat at
the window, suffered, and raged. Only in distress can people understand
how difficult it is to master their thoughts and feelings. Sophia
Pietrovna said afterwards a confusion was going on inside her as hard
to define as to count a cloud of swiftly flying sparrows. Thus from
the fact that she was delighted at her husband's arrival and pleased
with the way he behaved at dinner, she suddenly concluded that she had
begun to hate him. Andrey Ilyitch, languid with hunger and fatigue,
while waiting for the soup, fell upon the sausage and ate it greedily,
chewing loudly and moving his temples.

"My God," thought Sophia Pietrovna. "I do love and respect him, but ...
why does he chew so disgustingly."

Her thoughts were no less disturbed than her feelings. Madame
Loubianzev, like all who have no experience of the struggle with
unpleasant thought, did her best not to think of her unhappiness,
and the more zealously she tried, the more vivid Ilyin became to her
imagination, the sand on his knees, the feathery clouds, the train....

"Why did I--idiot--go to-day?" she teased herself. "And am I really a
person who can't answer for herself?"

Fear has big eyes. When Andrey Ilyitch had finished the last course,
she had already resolved to tell him everything and so escape from
danger.

"Andrey, I want to speak to you seriously," she began after dinner,
when her husband was taking off his coat and boots in order to have a
lie down.

"Well?"

"Let's go away from here!"

"How--where to? It's still too early to go to town."

"No. Travel or something like that."

"Travel," murmured the solicitor, stretching himself. "I dream of it
myself, but where shall I get the money, and who'll look after my
business."

After a little reflection he added:

"Yes, really you are bored. Go by yourself if you want to."

Sophia Pietrovna agreed; but at the same time she saw that Ilyin would
be glad of the opportunity to travel in the same train with her, in the
same carriage....

She pondered and looked at her husband, who was full fed but still
languid. For some reason her eyes stopped on his feet, tiny, almost
womanish, in stupid socks. On the toe of both socks little threads
were standing out. Under the drawn blind a bumble bee was knocking
against the window pane and buzzing. Sophia Pietrovna stared at the
threads, listened to the bumble bee and pictured her journey.... Day
and night Ilyin sits opposite, without taking his eyes from her, angry
with his weakness and pale with the pain of his soul. He brands himself
as a libertine, accuses her, tears his hair; but when the dark comes
he seizes the chance when the passengers go to sleep or alight at a
station and falls on his knees before her and clasps her feet, as he
did by the bench....

She realised that she was dreaming....

"Listen. I am not going by myself," she said. "You must come, too!"

"Sophochka, that's all imagination!" sighed Loubianzev. "You must be
serious and only ask for the possible...."

"You'll come when you And out!" thought Sophia Pietrovna.

Having decided to go away at all costs, she began to feel free from
danger; her thoughts fell gradually into order, she became cheerful and
even allowed herself to think about everything. Whatever she may think
or dream about, she is going all the same. While her husband still
slept, little by little, evening came....

She sat in the drawing-room playing the piano. Outside the window the
evening animation, the sound of music, but chiefly the thought of her
own cleverness in mastering her misery gave the final touch to her
joy. Other women, her easy conscience told her, in a position like her
own would surely not resist, they would spin round like a whirlwind;
but she was nearly burnt up with shame, she suffered and now she had
escaped from a danger which perhaps was nonexistent! Her virtue and
resolution moved her so much that she even glanced at herself in the
glass three times.

When it was dark visitors came. The men sat down to cards in the
dining-room, the ladies were in the drawing room and on the terrace.
Ilyin came last, he was stem and gloomy and looked ill. He sat down
on a corner of the sofa and did not get up for the whole evening.
Usually cheerful and full of conversation, he was now silent, frowning,
and rubbing his eyes. When he had to answer a question he smiled
with difficulty and only with his upper lip, answering abruptly and
spitefully. He made about five jokes in all, but his jokes seemed crude
and insolent. It seemed to Sophia Pietrovna that he was on the brink
of hysteria. But only now as she sat at the piano did she acknowledge
that the unhappy man was not in the mood to joke, that he was sick in
his soul, he could find no place for himself. It was for her sake he
was ruining the best days of his career and his youth, wasting his last
farthing on a bungalow, had left his mother and sisters uncared for,
and, above all, was breaking down under the martyrdom of his struggle.
From simple, common humanity she ought to take him seriously....

All this was dear to her, even to paining her. If she were to go up
to Ilyin now and say to him "No," there would be such strength in her
voice that it would be hard to disobey. But she did not go up to him
and she did not say it, did not even think it.... The petty selfishness
of a young nature seemed never to have been revealed in her as strongly
as that evening. She admitted that Byin was unhappy and that he sat
on the sofa as if on hot coals. She was sorry for him, but at the
same time the presence of the man who loved her so desperately filled
her with a triumphant sense of her own power. She felt her youth,
her beauty, her inaccessibility, and--since she had decided to go
away--she gave herself full rein this evening. She coquetted, laughed
continually, she sang with singular emotion, and as one inspired.
Everything made her gay and everything seemed funny. It amused her to
recall the incident of the bench, the sentry looking on. The visitors
seemed funny to her, Ilyin's insolent jokes, his tie pin which she had
never seen before. The pin was a little red snake with tiny diamond
eyes; the snake seemed so funny that she was ready to kiss and kiss it.

Sophia Pietrovna, nervously sang romantic songs, with a kind of
half-intoxication, and as if jeering at another's sorrow she chose sad,
melancholy songs that spoke of lost hopes, of the past, of old age....
"And old age is approaching nearer and nearer," she sang. What had she
to do with old age?

"There's something wrong going on in me," she thought now and then
through laughter and singing.

At twelve o'clock the visitors departed. Ilyin was the last to go. She
still felt warm enough about him to go with him to the lower step of
the terrace. She had the idea of telling him that she was going away
with her husband, just to see what effect this news would have upon him.

The moon was hiding behind the clouds, but it was so bright that Sophia
Pietrovna could see the wind playing with the tails of his overcoat and
with the creepers on the terrace. It was also plain how pale Ilyin was,
and how he twisted his upper-lip, trying to smile. "Sonia, Sonichka,
my dear little woman," he murmured, not letting her speak. "My darling,
my pretty one."

In a paroxysm of tenderness with tears in his voice, he showered her
with endearing words each tenderer than the other, and was already
speaking to her as if she were his wife or his mistress. Suddenly and
unexpectedly to her, he put one arm round her and with the other hand
he seized her elbow.

"My dear one, my beauty," he began to whisper, kissing the nape of her
neck; "be sincere, come to me now."

She slipped out of his embrace and lifted her head to break out in
indignation and revolt. But indignation did not come, and of all her
praiseworthy virtue and purity, there was left only enough for her to
say that which all average women say in similar circumstances:

"You must be mad."

"But really let us go," continued Ilyin. "Just now and over there by
the bench I felt convinced that you, Sonia, were as helpless as myself.
You too will be all the worse for it. You love me, and you are making a
useless bargain with your conscience."

Seeing that she was leaving him he seized her by her lace sleeve and
ended quickly:

"If not to-day, then to-morrow; but you will have to give in. What's
the good of putting if off? My dear, my darling Sonia, the verdict has
been pronounced. Why postpone the execution? Why deceive yourself?"

Sophia Pietrovna broke away from him and suddenly disappeared
inside the door. She returned to the drawing-room, shut the piano
mechanically, stared for a long time at the cover of a music book, and
sat down. She could neither stand nor think.... From her agitation
and passion remained only an awful weakness mingled with laziness
and tiredness. Her conscience whispered to her that she had behaved
wickedly and foolishly to-night, like a madwoman; that just now she
had been kissed on the terrace, and even now she had some strange
sensation in her waist and in her elbow. Not a soul was in the
drawing-room. Only a single candle was burning. Madame Loubianzev sat
on a little round stool before the piano without stirring as if waiting
for something, and as if taking advantage of her extreme exhaustion
and the dark a heavy unconquerable desire began to possess her. Like a
boa-constrictor, it enchained her limbs and soul. It grew every second
and was no longer threatening, but stood clear before her in all its
nakedness.

She sat thus for half an hour, not moving, and not stopping herself
from thinking of Ilyin. Then she got up lazily and went slowly into
the bed-room. Andrey Ilyitch was in bed already. She sat by the window
and gave herself to her desire. She felt no more "confusion." All her
feelings and thoughts pressed lovingly round some clear purpose.
She still had a mind to struggle, but instantly she waved her hand
impotently, realising the strength and the determination of the foe. To
fight him power and strength were necessary, but her birth, up-bringing
and life had given her nothing on which to lean.

"You're immoral, you're horrible," she tormented herself for her
weakness. "You're a nice sort, you are!"

So indignant was her insulted modesty at this weakness that she called
herself all the bad names that she knew and she related to herself many
insulting, degrading truths. Thus she told herself that she never was
moral, and she had not fallen before only because there was no pretext,
that her day-long struggle had been nothing but a game and a comedy....

"Let us admit that I struggled," she thought, "but what kind of a
fight was it? Even prostitutes struggle before they sell themselves,
and still they do sell themselves. It's a pretty sort of fight. Like
milk, turns in a day." She realised that it was not love that drew her
from her home nor Ilyin's personality, but the sensations which await
her.... A little week-end _type_ like the rest of them.

"When the young bird's mother was killed," a hoarse tenor finished
singing.

If I am going, it's time, thought Sophia Pietrovna. Her heart began to
beat with a frightful force.

"Andrey," she almost cried. "Listen. Shall we go away? Shall we? Yes?"

"Yes.... I've told you already. You go alone."

"But listen," she said, "if you don't come too, you may lose me. I seem
to be in love already."

"Who with?" Andrey Ilyitch asked.

"It must be all the same for you, who with," Sophia Pietrovna cried out.

Andrey Ilyitch got up, dangled his feet over the side of the bed, with
a look of surprise at the dark form of his wife.

"Imagination," he yawned.

He could not believe her, but all the same he was frightened. After
having thought for a while, and asked his wife some unimportant
questions, he gave his views of the family, of infidelity.... He spoke
sleepily for about ten minutes and then lay down again. His remarks had
no success. There are a great many opinions in this world, and more
than half of them belong to people who have never known misery.

In spite of the late hour, the bungalow people were still moving behind
their windows. Sophia Pietrovna put on a long coat and stood for a
while, thinking. She still had force of mind to say to her sleepy
husband:

"Are you asleep? I'm going for a little walk. Would you like to come
with me?"

That was her last hope. Receiving no answer, she walked out. It was
breezy and cool. She did not feel the breeze or the darkness but
walked on and on.... An irresistible power drove her, and it seemed to
her that if she stopped that power would push her in the back. "You're
an immoral woman," she murmured mechanically. "You're horrible."

She was choking for breath, burning with shame, did not feel her feet
under her, for that which drove her along was stronger than her shame,
her reason, her fear....




AFTER THE THEATRE


Nadya Zelenina had just returned with her mother from the theatre,
where they had been to see a performance of "Eugene Oniegin." Entering
her room, she quickly threw off her dress, loosened her hair, and sat
down hurriedly in her petticoat and a white blouse to write a letter in
the style of Tatiana.

"I love you,"--she wrote--"but you don't love me; no, you don't!"

The moment she had written this, she smiled.

She was only sixteen years old, and so far she had not been in love.
She knew that Gorny, the officer, and Gronsdiev, the student, loved
her; but now, after the theatre, she wanted to doubt their love. To be
unloved and unhappy--how interesting. There is something beautiful,
affecting, romantic in the fact that one loves deeply while the other
is indifferent. Oniegin is interesting because he does not love at all,
and Tatiana is delightful because she is very much in love; but if
they loved each other equally and were happy, they would seem boring,
instead.

"Don't go on protesting that you love me," Nadya wrote on, thinking
of Gorny, the officer, "I can't believe you. You're very clever,
educated, serious; you have a great talent, and perhaps, a splendid
future waiting, but I am an uninteresting poor-spirited girl, and you
yourself know quite well that I shall only be a drag upon your life.
It's true I carried you off your feet, and you thought you had met your
ideal in me, but that was a mistake. Already you are asking yourself in
despair, 'Why did I meet this girl?' Only your kindness prevents you
from confessing it."

Nadya pitied herself. She wept and went on.

"If it were not so difficult for me to leave mother and brother I would
put on a nun's gown and go where my eyes direct me. You would then be
free to love another. If I were to die!"

Through her tears she could not make out what she had written. Brief
rainbows trembled on the table, on the floor and the ceiling, as though
Nadya were looking through a prism. Impossible to write. She sank back
in her chair and began to think of Gorny.

Oh, how fascinating, how interesting men are! Nadya remembered the
beautiful expression of Gorny's face, appealing, guilty, and tender,
when someone discussed music with him,--the efforts he made to prevent
the passion from sounding in his voice. Passion must be concealed in
a society where cold reserve and indifference are the signs of good
breeding. And he does try to conceal it, but he does not succeed,
and everybody knows quite well that he has a passion for music.
Never-ending discussions about music, blundering pronouncements by men
who do not understand--keep him in incessant tension. He is scared,
timid, silent. He plays superbly, as an ardent pianist. If he were not
an officer, he would be a famous musician.

The tears dried in her eyes. Nadya remembered how Gorny told her of his
love at a symphony concert, and again downstairs by the cloak-room.

"I am so glad you have at last made the acquaintance of the student
Gronsdiev," she continued to write. "He is a very clever man, and you
are sure to love him. Yesterday he was sitting with us till two o'clock
in the morning. We were all so happy. I was sorry that you hadn't come
to us. He said a lot of remarkable things."

Nadya laid her hands on the table and lowered her head. Her hair
covered the letter. She remembered that Gronsdiev also loved her,
and that he had the same right to her letter as Gorny. Perhaps she
had better write to Gronsdiev? For no cause, a happiness began to
quicken in her breast. At first it was a little one, rolling about in
her breast like a rubber ball. Then it grew broader and bigger, and
broke forth like a wave. Nadya had already forgotten about Gorny and
Gronsdiev. Her thoughts became confused. The happiness grew more and
more. From her breast it ran into her arms and legs, and it seemed
that a light fresh breeze blew over her head, stirring her hair. Her
shoulders trembled with quiet laughter. The table and the lampglass
trembled. Tears from her eyes splashed the letter. She was powerless to
stop her laughter; and to convince herself that she had a reason for
it, she hastened to remember something funny.

"What a funny poodle!" she cried, feeling that she was choking with
laughter. "What a funny poodle!"

She remembered how Gronsdiev was playing with Maxim the poodle after
tea yesterday; how he told a story afterwards of a very clever poodle
who was chasing a crow in the yard. The crow gave him a look and said:

"Oh, you swindler!"

The poodle did not know he had to do with a learned crow. He was
terribly confused, and ran away dumfounded. Afterwards he began to bark.

"No, I'd better love Gronsdiev," Nadya decided and tore up the letter.

She began to think of the student, of his love, of her own love, with
the result that the thoughts in her head swam apart and she thought
about everything, about her mother, the street, the pencil, the
piano. She was happy thinking, and found that everything was good,
magnificent. Her happiness told her that this was not all, that a
little later it would be still better. Soon it will be spring, summer.
They will go with mother to Gorbiki in the country. Gorny will come for
his holidays. He will walk in the orchard with her, and make love to
her. Gronsdiev will come too. He will play croquet with her and bowls.
He will tell funny, wonderful stories. She passionately longed for the
orchard, the darkness, the pure sky, the stars. Again her shoulders
trembled with laughter and she seemed to awake to a smell of wormwood
in the room; and a branch was tapping at the window.

She went to her bed and sat down. She did not know what to do with her
great happiness. It overwhelmed her. She stared at the crucifix which
hung at the head of her bed and saying:

"Dear God, dear God, dear God."




THAT WRETCHED BOY


Ivan Ivanich Lapkin, a pleasant looking young man, and Anna Zamblizky,
a young girl with a little snub nose, walked down the sloping bank
and sat down on the bench. The bench was close to the water's edge,
among thick bushes of young willow. A heavenly spot! You sat down, and
you were hidden from the world. Only the fish could see you and the
catspaws which flashed over the water like lightning. The two young
persons were equipped with rods, fish hooks, bags, tins of worms and
everything else necessary. Once seated, they immediately began to fish.

"I am glad that we're left alone at last," said Lapkin, looking round.
I've got a lot to tell you, Anna--tremendous ... when I saw you for
the first time ... you've got a nibble ... I understood then--why I
am alive, I knew where my idol was, to whom I can devote my honest,
hardworking life.... It must be a big one ... it is biting.... When I
saw you--for the first time in my life I fell in love--fell in love
passionately I Don't pull. Let it go on biting.... Tell me, darling,
tell me--will you let me hope? No! I'm not worth it. I dare not even
think of it--may I hope for.... Pull!

Anna lifted her hand that held the rod--pulled, cried out. A silvery
green fish shone in the air.

"Goodness! it's a perch! Help--quick! It's slipping off." The perch
tore itself from the hook--danced in the grass towards its native
element and ... leaped into the water.

But instead of the little fish that he was chasing, Lapkin quite by
accident caught hold of Anna's hand--quite by accident pressed it to
his lips. She drew back, but it was too late; quite by accident their
lips met and kissed; yes, it was an absolute accident! They kissed and
kissed. Then came vows and assurances.... Blissful moments! But there
is no such thing as absolute happiness in this life. If happiness
itself does not contain a poison, poison will enter in from without.
Which happened this time. Suddenly, while the two were kissing, a laugh
was heard. They looked at the river and were paralysed. The schoolboy
Kolia, Anna's brother, was standing in the water, watching the young
people and maliciously laughing.

"Ah--ha! Kissing!" said he. "Right O, I'll tell Mother."

"I hope that you--as a man of honour," Lapkin muttered, blushing. "It's
disgusting to spy on us, it's loathsome to tell tales, it's rotten. As
a man of honour...."

"Give me a shilling, then I'll shut up!" the man of honour retorted.
"If you don't, I'll tell."

Lapkin took a shilling out of his pocket and gave it to Kolia, who
squeezed it in his wet fist, whistled, and swam away. And the young
people did not kiss any more just then.

Next day Lapkin brought Kolia some paints and a ball from town, and his
sister gave him all her empty pill boxes. Then they had to present him
with a set of studs like dogs' heads. The wretched boy enjoyed this
game immensely, and to keep it going he began to spy on them. Wherever
Lapkin and Anna went, he was there too. He did not leave them alone for
a single moment.

"Beast!" Lapkin gnashed his teeth. "So young and yet such a full
fledged scoundrel. What on earth will become of him later!"

During the whole of July the poor lovers had no life apart from him. He
threatened to tell on them; he dogged them and demanded more presents.
Nothing satisfied him--finally he hinted at a gold watch. All right,
they had to promise the watch.

Once, at table, when biscuits were being handed round, he burst out
laughing and said to Lapkin: "Shall I let on? Ah--ha!"

Lapkin blushed fearfully and instead of a biscuit he began to chew his
table napkin. Anna jumped up from the table and rushed out of the room.

And this state of things went on until the end of August, up to the
day when Lapkin at last proposed to Anna. Ah! What a happy day that
was! When he had spoken to her parents and obtained their consent
Lapkin rushed into the garden after Kolia. When he found him he nearly
cried for joy and caught hold of the wretched boy by the ear. Anna, who
was also looking for Kolia came running up and grabbed him by the other
ear. You should have seen the happiness depicted on their faces while
Kolia roared and begged them:

"Darling, precious pets, I won't do it again. O-oh--O-oh! Forgive me!"
And both of them confessed afterwards that during all the time they
were in love with each other they never experienced such happiness,
such overwhelming joy as during those moments when they pulled the
wretched boy's ears.




ENEMIES


About ten o'clock of a dark September evening the Zemstvo doctor
Kirilov's only son, six-year-old Andrey, died of diphtheria. As the
doctor's wife dropped on to her knees before the dead child's cot and
the first paroxysm of despair took hold of her, the bell rang sharply
in the hall.

When the diphtheria came all the servants were sent away from the
house, that very morning. Kirilov himself went to the door, just as he
was, in his shirt-sleeves with his waistcoat unbuttoned, without wiping
his wet face or hands, which had been burnt with carbolic acid. It was
dark in the hall, and of the person who entered could be distinguished
only his middle height, a white scarf and a big, extraordinarily pale
face, so pale that it seemed as though its appearance made the hall
brighter....

"Is the doctor in?" the visitor asked abruptly.

"I'm at home," answered Kirilov. "What do you want?"

"Oh, you're the doctor? I'm so glad!" The visitor was overjoyed and
began to seek for the doctor's hand in the darkness. He found it
and squeezed it hard in his own. "I'm very ... very glad! We were
introduced ... I am Aboguin ... had the pleasure of meeting you this
summer at Mr. Gnouchev's. I am very glad to have found you at home....
For God's sake, don't say you won't come with me immediately.... My
wife has been taken dangerously ill.... I have the carriage with me...."

From the visitor's voice and movements it was evident that he had
been in a state of violent agitation. Exactly as though he had been
frightened by a fire or a mad dog, he could hardly restrain his hurried
breathing, and he spoke quickly in a trembling voice. In his speech
there sounded a note of real sincerity, of childish fright. Like all
men who are frightened and dazed, he spoke in short, abrupt phrases and
uttered many superfluous, quite unnecessary, words.

"I was afraid I shouldn't find you at home," he continued. "While I was
coming to you I suffered terribly.... Dress yourself and let us go, for
God's sake.... It happened like this. Papchinsky came to me--Alexander
Siemionovich, you know him.... We were chatting.... Then we sat down to
tea. Suddenly my wife cries out, presses her hands to her heart, and
falls back in her chair. We carried her off to her bed and ... and I
rubbed her forehead with sal-volatile, and splashed her with water....
She lies like a corpse.... I'm afraid that her heart's failed.... Let
us go.... Her father too died of heart-failure."

Kirilov listened in silence as though he did not understand the Russian
language.

When Aboguin once more mentioned Papchinsky and his wife's father, and
once more began to seek for the doctor's hand in the darkness, the
doctor shook his head and said, drawling each word listlessly:

"Excuse me, but I can't go.... Five minutes ago my ... my son died."

"Is that true?" Aboguin whispered, stepping back. "My God, what an
awful moment to come! It's a terribly fated day ... terribly! What a
coincidence ... and it might have been on purpose!"

Aboguin took hold of the door handle and drooped his head in
meditation. Evidently he was hesitating, not knowing whether to go
away, or to ask the doctor once more.

"Listen," he said eagerly, seizing Kirilov by the sleeve. "I fully
understand your state! God knows I'm ashamed to try to hold your
attention at such a moment, but what can I do? Think yourself--who can
I go to? There isn't another doctor here besides you. For heaven's sake
come. I'm not asking for myself. It's not I that's ill!"

Silence began. Kirilov turned his back to Aboguin, stood still for a
while and slowly went out of the hall into the drawing-room. To judge
by his uncertain, machine-like movement, and by the attentiveness
with which he arranged the hanging shade on the unlighted lamp in the
drawing-room and consulted a thick book which lay on the table--at
such a moment he had neither purpose nor desire, nor did he think of
anything, and probably had already forgotten that there was a stranger
standing in his hall. The gloom and the quiet of the drawing-room
apparently increased his insanity. As he went from the drawing-room to
his study he raised his right foot higher than he need, felt with his
hands for the door-posts, and then one felt a certain perplexity in
his whole figure, as though he had entered a strange house by chance,
or for the first time in his life had got drunk, and now was giving
himself up in bewilderment to the new sensation. A wide line of light
stretched across the bookshelves on one wall of the study; this light,
together with the heavy stifling smell of carbolic acid and ether
came from the door ajar that led from the study into the bed-room....
The doctor sank into a chair before the table; for a while he looked
drowsily at the shining books, then rose and went into the bed-room.

Here, in the bed-room, dead quiet reigned. Everything, down to the
last trifle, spoke eloquently of the tempest undergone, of weariness,
and everything rested. The candle which stood among a close crowd of
phials, boxes and jars on the stool and the big lamp on the chest of
drawers brightly lit the room. On the bed, by the window, the boy lay
open-eyed, with a look of wonder on his face. He did not move, but it
seemed that his open eyes became darker and darker every second and
sank into his skull. Having laid her hands on his body and hid her face
in the folds of the bed-clothes, the mother now was on her knees before
the bed. Like the boy she did not move, but how much living movement
was felt in the coil of her body and in her hands! She was pressing
close to the bed with her whole being, with eager vehemence, as though
she were afraid to violate the quiet and comfortable pose which she had
found at last for her weary body. Blankets, cloths, basins, splashes on
the floor, brushes and spoons scattered everywhere, a white bottle of
lime-water, the stifling heavy air itself--everything died away, and as
it were plunged into quietude.

The doctor stopped by his wife, thrust his hands into his trouser
pockets and bending his head on one side looked fixedly at his son. His
face showed indifference; only the drops which glistened on his beard
revealed that he had been lately weeping.

The repulsive terror of which we think when we speak of death was
absent from the bed-room. In the pervading dumbness, in the mother's
pose, in the indifference of the doctor's face was something attractive
that touched the heart, the subtle and elusive beauty of human grief,
which it will take men long to understand and describe, and only
music, it seems, is able to express. Beauty too was felt in the stern
stillness. Kirilov and his wife were silent and did not weep, as
though they confessed all the poetry of their condition. As once the
season of their youth passed away, so now in this boy their right to
bear children had passed away, alas! for ever to eternity. The doctor
is forty-four years old, already grey and looks like an old man; his
faded sick wife is thirty-five. Audrey was not merely the only son but
the last.

In contrast to his wife the doctor's nature belonged to those which
feel the necessity of movement when their soul is in pain. After
standing by his wife for about five minutes, he passed from the
bed-room, lifting his right foot too high, into a little room half
filled with a big broad divan. From there he went to the kitchen. After
wandering about the fireplace and the cook's bed, he stooped through a
little door and came into the hall.

Here he saw the white scarf and the pale face again.

"At last," sighed Aboguin, seizing the doorhandle. "Let us go, please."

The doctor shuddered, glanced at him and remembered.

"Listen. I've told you already that I can't go," he said, livening.
"What a strange idea!"

"Doctor, I'm made of flesh and blood, too. I fully understand your
condition. I sympathise with you," Aboguin said in an imploring voice,
putting his hand to his scarf. "But I am not asking for myself. My wife
is dying. If you had heard her cry, if you'd seen her face, you would
understand my insistence! My God--and I thought that you'd gone to
dress yourself. The time is precious, Doctor! Let us go, I beg of you."

"I can't come," Kirilov said after a pause, and stepped into his
drawing-room.

Aboguin followed him and seized him by the sleeve.

"You're in sorrow. I understand. But I'm not asking you to cure a
toothache, or to give expert evidence,--but to save a human life." He
went on imploring like a beggar. "This life is more than any personal
grief. I ask you for courage, for a brave deed--in the name of
humanity."

"Humanity cuts both ways," Kirilov said irritably. "In the name of the
same humanity I ask you not to take me away. My God, what a strange
idea! I can hardly stand on my feet and you frighten me with humanity.
I'm not fit for anything now. I won't go for anything. With whom shall
I leave my wife? No, no...."

Kirilov flung out his open hands and drew back.

"And ... and don't ask me," he continued, disturbed. "I'm sorry....
Under the Laws, Volume XIII., I'm obliged to go and you have the right
to drag me by the neck.... Well, drag me, but ... I'm not fit.... I'm
not even able to speak. Excuse me."

"It's quite unfair to speak to me in that tone, Doctor," said Aboguin,
again taking the doctor by the sleeve. "The thirteenth volume be
damned! I have no right to do violence to your will. If you want to,
come; if you don't, then God be with you; but it's not to your will
that I apply, but to your feelings. A young woman is dying! You say
your son died just now. Who could understand my terror better than you?"

Aboguin's voice trembled with agitation. His tremor and his tone were
much more convincing than his words. Aboguin was sincere, but it is
remarkable that every phrase he used came out stilted, soulless,
inopportunely florid, and as it were insulted the atmosphere of the
doctor's house and the woman who was dying. He felt it himself, and
in his fear of being misunderstood he exerted himself to the utmost
to make his voice soft and tender so as to convince by the sincerity
of his tone at least, if not by his words. As a rule, however deep
and beautiful the words they affect only the unconcerned. They
cannot always satisfy those who are happy or distressed because the
highest expression of happiness or distress is most often silence.
Lovers understand each other best when they are silent, and a fervent
passionate speech at the graveside affects only outsiders. To the widow
and children it seems cold and trivial.

Kirilov stood still and was silent. When Aboguin uttered some more
words on the higher vocation of a doctor, and self-sacrifice, the
doctor sternly asked:

"Is it far?"

"Thirteen or fourteen versts. I've got good horses, doctor. I give you
my word of honour that I'll take you there and back in an hour. Only an
hour."

The last words impressed the doctor more strongly than the references
to humanity or the doctor's vocation. He thought for a while and said
with a sigh.

"Well, let us go!"

He went off quickly, with a step that was now sure, to his study
and soon after returned in a long coat. Aboguin, delighted, danced
impatiently round him, helped him on with his overcoat, and accompanied
him out of the house.

Outside it was dark, but brighter than in the hall. Now in the darkness
the tall stooping figure of the doctor was clearly visible with the
long, narrow beard and the aquiline nose. Besides his pale face
Aboguin's big face could now be seen and a little student's cap which
hardly covered the crown of his head. The scarf showed white only in
front, but behind it was hid under his long hair.

"Believe me, I'm able to appreciate your magnanimity," murmured
Aboguin, as he helped the doctor to a seat in the carriage. "We'll
whirl away. Luke, dear man, drive as fast as you can, do!"

The coachman drove quickly. First appeared a row of bare buildings,
which stood along the hospital yard. It was dark everywhere, save
that at the end of the yard a bright light from someone's window broke
through the garden fence, and three windows in the upper story of the
separate house seemed to be paler than the air. Then the carriage drove
into dense obscurity where you could smell mushroom damp, and hear the
whisper of the trees. The noise of the wheels awoke the rooks who began
to stir in the leaves and raised a doleful, bewildered cry as if they
knew that the doctor's son was dead and Aboguin's wife ill. Then began
to appear separate trees, a shrub. Sternly gleamed the pond, where big
black shadows slept. The carriage rolled along over an even plain. Now
the cry of the rooks was but faintly heard far away behind. Soon it
became completely still.

Almost all the way Kirilov and Aboguin were silent; save that once
Aboguin sighed profoundly and murmured.

"It's terrible pain. One never loves his nearest so much as when there
is the risk of losing them."

And when the carriage was quietly passing through the river, Kirilov
gave a sudden start, as though the dashing of the water frightened him,
and he began to move impatiently.

"Let me go," he said in anguish. "I'll come to you later. I only want
to send the attendant to my wife. She is all alone."

Aboguin was silent. The carriage, swaying and rattling against the
stones, drove over the sandy bank and went on. Kirilov began to toss
about in anguish, and glanced around. Behind the road was visible in
the scant light of the stars and the willows that fringed the bank
disappearing into the darkness. To the right the plain stretched smooth
and boundless as heaven. On it in the distance here and there dim
lights were burning, probably on the turf-pits. To the left, parallel
with the road stretched a little hill, tufted with tiny shrubs, and on
the hill a big half-moon stood motionless, red, slightly veiled with a
mist, and surrounded with fine clouds which seemed to be gazing upon it
from every side, and guarding it, lest it should disappear.

In all nature one felt something hopeless and sick. Like a fallen
woman who sits alone in a dark room trying not to think of her past,
the earth languished with reminiscence of spring and summer and waited
in apathy for ineluctable winter. Wherever one's glance turned nature
showed everywhere like a dark, cold, bottomless pit, whence neither
Kirilov nor Aboguin nor the red half-moon could escape....

The nearer the carriage approached the destination the more impatient
did Aboguin become. He moved about, jumped up and stared over the
driver's shoulder in front of him. And when at last the carriage drew
up at the foot of the grand staircase, nicely covered with a striped
linen awning and he looked up at the lighted windows of the first floor
one could hear his breath trembling.

"If anything happens ... I shan't survive it," he said entering the
hall with the doctor and slowly rubbing his hands in his agitation.
"But I can't hear any noise. That means it's all right so far," he
added, listening to the stillness.

No voices or steps were heard in the hall. For all the bright
illumination the whole house seemed asleep. Now the doctor and Aboguin
who had been in darkness up till now could examine each other. The
doctor was tall, with a stoop, slovenly dressed, and his face was
plain. There was something unpleasantly sharp, ungracious, and severe
in his thick negro lips, his aquiline nose and his faded, indifferent
look. His tangled hair, his sunken temples, the early grey in his long
thin beard, that showed his shining chin, his pale grey complexion
and the slipshod awkwardness of his manners--the hardness of it all
suggested to the mind bad times undergone, an unjust lot and weariness
of life and men. To look at the hard figure of the man, you could not
believe that he had a wife and could weep over his child. Aboguin
revealed something different. He was robust, solid and fair-haired,
with a big head and large, yet soft, features, exquisitely dressed in
the latest fashion. In his carriage, his tight-buttoned coat and his
mane of hair you felt something noble and leonine. He walked with his
head straight and his chest prominent, he spoke in a pleasant baritone,
and in his manner of removing his scarf or arranging his hair there
appeared a subtle, almost feminine, elegance. Even his pallor and
childish fear as he glanced upwards to the staircase while taking off
his coat, did not disturb his carriage or take from the satisfaction,
the health and aplomb which his figure breathed.

"There's no one about, nothing I can hear," he said walking upstairs.
"No commotion. May God be good!"

He accompanied the doctor through the hall to a large salon, where a
big piano showed dark and a lustre hung in a white cover. Thence they
both passed into a small and beautiful drawing-room, very cosy, filled
with a pleasant, rosy half-darkness.

"Please sit here a moment, Doctor," said Aboguin, "I ... I won't be a
second. I'll just have a look and tell them."

Kirilov was left alone. The luxury of the drawing-room, the pleasant
half-darkness, even his presence in a stranger's unfamiliar house
evidently did not move him. He sat in a chair looking at his hands
burnt with carbolic acid. He had no more than a glimpse of the bright
red lampshade, the cello case, and when he looked sideways across the
room to where the dock was ticking, he noticed a stuffed wolf, as solid
and satisfied as Aboguin himself.

It was still.... Somewhere far away in the other rooms someone uttered
a loud "Ah!" A glass door, probably a cupboard door, rang, and again
everything was still. After five minutes had passed, Kirilov did not
look at his hands any more. He raised his eyes to the door through
which Aboguin had disappeared.

Aboguin was standing on the threshold, but not the same man as went
out. The expression of satisfaction and subtle elegance had disappeared
from him. His face and hands, the attitude of his body were distorted
with a disgusting expression either of horror or of tormenting physical
pain. His nose, lips, moustache, all his features were moving and as it
were trying to tear themselves away from his face, but the eyes were as
though laughing from pain.

Aboguin took a long heavy step into the middle of the room, stooped,
moaned, and shook his fists.

"Deceived!" he cried, emphasising the syllable _cei._ "She deceived me!
She's gone! She fell ill and sent me for the doctor only to run away
with this fool Papchinsky. My God!" Aboguin stepped heavily towards
the doctor, thrust his white soft fists before his face, and went on
wailing, shaking his fists the while.

"She's gone off! She's deceived me! But why this lie? My God, my God!
Why this dirty, foul trick, this devilish, serpent's game? What have I
done to her? She's gone off." Tears gushed from his eyes. He turned on
his heel and began to pace the drawing-room. Now in his short jacket
and his fashionable narrow trousers in which his legs seemed too thin
for his body, he was extraordinarily like a lion. Curiosity kindled in
the doctor's impassive face. He rose and eyed Aboguin.

"Well, where's the patient?"

"The patient, the patient," cried Aboguin, laughing, weeping, and still
shaking his fists. "She's not ill, but accursed. Vile--dastardly. The
Devil himself couldn't have planned a fouler trick. She sent me so that
she could run away with a fool, an utter clown, an Alphonse! My God,
far better she should have died. I'll not bear it. I shall not bear it."

The doctor stood up straight. His eyes began to blink, filled with
tears; his thin beard began to move with his jaw right and left.

"What's this?" he asked, looking curiously about. "My child's dead.
My wife in anguish, alone in all the house.... I can hardly stand on
my feet, I haven't slept for three nights ... and I'm made to play in
a vulgar comedy, to play the part of a stage property! I don't ... I
don't understand it!"

Aboguin opened one fist, flung a crumpled note on the floor and trod on
it, as upon an insect he wished to crush.

"And I didn't see ... didn't understand," he said through his set
teeth, brandishing one fist round his head, with an expression as
though someone had trod on a corn. "I didn't notice how he came to see
us every day. I didn't notice that he came in a carriage to-day! What
was the carriage for? And I didn't see! Innocent!"

"I don't ... I don't understand," the doctor murmured. "What's it all
mean? It's jeering at a man, laughing at a man's suffering! That's
impossible.... I've never seen it in my life before!"

With the dull bewilderment of a man who has just begun to understand
that someone has bitterly offended him, the doctor shrugged his
shoulders, waved his hands and not knowing what to say or do, dropped
exhausted into a chair.

"Well, she didn't love me any more. She loved another man. Very well.
But why the deceit, why this foul treachery?" Aboguin spoke with tears
in his voice. "Why, why? What have I done to you? Listen, doctor," he
said passionately approaching Kirilov. "You were the unwilling witness
of my misfortune, and I am not going to hide the truth from you. I
swear I loved this woman. I loved her with devotion, like a slave. I
sacrificed everything for her. I broke with my family, I gave up the
service and my music. I forgave her things I could not have forgiven
my mother and sister.... I never once gave her an angry look ... I
never gave her any cause. Why this lie then? I do not demand love, but
why this abominable deceit? If you don't love any more then speak out
honestly, above all when you know what I feel about this matter...."

With tears in his eyes and trembling in all his bones, Aboguin was
pouring out his soul to the doctor. He spoke passionately, pressing
both hands to his heart. He revealed all the family secrets without
hesitation, as though he were glad that these secrets were being tom
from his heart. Had he spoken thus for an hour or two and poured out
all his soul, he would surely have been easier.

Who can say whether, had the doctor listened and given him friendly
sympathy, he would not, as so often happens, have been reconciled to
his grief unprotesting, without turning to unprofitable follies? But
it happened otherwise. While Aboguin was speaking the offended doctor
changed countenance visibly. The indifference and amazement in his face
gradually gave way to an expression of bitter outrage, indignation, and
anger. His features became still sharper, harder, and more forbidding.
When Aboguin put before his eyes the photograph of his young wife,
with a pretty, but dry, inexpressive face like a nun's, and asked if
it were possible to look at that face and grant that it could express
a lie, the doctor suddenly started away, with flashing eyes, and said,
coarsely forging out each several word:

"Why do you tell me all this? I do not want to hear! I don't want
to," he cried and banged his fist upon the table. "I don't want your
trivial vulgar secrets--to Hell with them. You dare not tell me such
trivialities. Or do you think I have not yet been insulted enough! That
I'm a lackey to whom you can give the last insult? Yes?"

Aboguin drew back from Kirilov and stared at him in surprise.

"Why did you bring me here?" the doctor went on, shaking his beard.
"You marry out of high spirits, get angry out of high spirits, and
make a melodrama--but where do I come in? What have I got to do with
your romances? Leave me alone I Get on with your noble grabbing,
parade your humane ideas, play--" the doctor gave a side-glance at the
cello-case--"the double-bass and the trombone, stuff yourselves like
capons, but don't dare to jeer at a real man! If you can't respect him,
then you can at least spare him your attentions."

"What does all this mean?" Aboguin asked, blushing.

"It means that it's vile and foul to play with a man I I'm a doctor.
You consider doctors and all men who work and don't reek of scent and
harlotry, your footmen, your _mauvais tons._ Very well, but no one gave
you the right to turn a man who suffers into a property."

"How dare you say that?" Aboguin asked quietly. Again his face began to
twist about, this time in visible anger.

"How dare _you_ bring me here to listen to trivial rubbish, when you
know that I'm in sorrow?" the doctor cried and banged his fists on the
table once more. "Who gave you the right to jeer at another's grief?"

"You're mad," cried Aboguin. "You're ungenerous. I too am deeply
unhappy and ... and ..."

"Unhappy"--the doctor gave a sneering laugh--"Don't touch the word,
it's got nothing to do with you. Wasters who can't get money on a bill
call themselves unhappy too. A capon's unhappy, oppressed with all its
superfluous fat. You worthless lot!"

"Sir, you're forgetting yourself," Aboguin gave a piercing scream. "For
words like those, people are beaten. Do you understand?"

Aboguin thrust his hand into his side pocket, took out a pocket-book,
found two notes and flung them on the table.

"There's your fee," he said, and his nostrils trembled. "You're paid."

"You dare not offer me money," said the doctor, and brushed the notes
from the table to the floor. "You don't settle an insult with money."

Aboguin and the doctor stood face to face, heaping each other with
undeserved insults. Never in their lives, even in a frenzy, had
they said so much that was unjust and cruel and absurd. In both the
selfishness of the unhappy is violently manifest. Unhappy men are
selfish, wicked, unjust, and less able to understand each other than
fools. Unhappiness does not unite people, but separates them; and just
where one would imagine that people should be united by the community
of grief, there is more injustice and cruelty done than among the
comparatively contented.

"Send me home, please," the doctor cried, out of breath.

Aboguin rang the bell violently. Nobody came. He rang once more; then
flung the bell angrily to the floor. It struck dully on the carpet and
gave out a mournful sound like a death-moan. The footman appeared.

"Where have you been hiding, damn you?" The master sprang upon him with
clenched fists. "Where have you been just now? Go away and tell them to
said the carriage round for this gentleman, and get the brougham ready
for me. Wait," he called out as the footman turned to go. "Not a single
traitor remains to-morrow. Pack off all of you! I will engage new ones
... Rabble!"

While they waited Aboguin and the doctor were silent. Already the
expression of satisfaction and the subtle elegance had returned to
the former. He paced the drawing-room, shook his head elegantly and
evidently was planning something. His anger was not yet cool, but he
tried to make as if he did not notice his enemy.... The doctor stood
with one hand on the edge of the table, looking at Aboguin with that
deep, rather cynical, ugly contempt with which only grief and an unjust
lot can look, when they see satiety and elegance before them.

A little later, when the doctor took his seat in the carriage and drove
away, his eyes still glanced contemptuously. It was dark, much darker
than an hour ago. The red half-moon had now disappeared behind the
little hill, and the clouds which watched it lay in dark spots round
the stars. The brougham with the red lamps began to rattle on the road
and passed the doctor. It was Aboguin on his way to protest, to commit
all manner of folly.

All the way the doctor thought not of his wife or Andrey, but only of
Aboguin and those who lived in the house he just left. His thoughts
were unjust, inhuman, and cruel. He passed sentence on Aboguin, his
wife, Papchinsky, and all those who live in rosy semi-darkness and
smell of scent. All the way he hated them, and his heart ached with his
contempt for them. The conviction he formed about them would last his
life long.

Time will pass and Kirilov's sorrow, but this conviction, unjust and
unworthy of the human heart, will not pass, but will remain in the
doctor's mind until the grave.




A TRIFLING OCCURRENCE


Nicolai Ilyich Byelyaev, a Petersburg landlord, very fond of the
racecourse, a well fed, pink young man of about thirty-two, once called
towards evening on Madame Irnin--Olga Ivanovna--with whom he had a
_liaison,_ or, to use his own phrase, spun out a long and tedious
romance. And indeed the first pages of this romance, pages of interest
and inspiration, had been read long ago; now they dragged on and on,
and presented neither novelty nor interest.

Finding that Olga Ivanovna was not at home, my hero lay down a moment
on the drawing-room sofa and began to wait.

"Good evening, Nicolai Ilyich," he suddenly heard a child's voice say.
"Mother will be in in a moment. She's gone to the dressmaker's with
Sonya."

In the same drawing-room on the sofa lay Olga Vassilievna's son,
Alyosha, a boy about eight years old, well built, well looked after,
dressed up like a picture in a velvet jacket and long black stockings.
He lay on a satin pillow, and apparently imitating an acrobat whom
he had lately seen in the circus, lifted up first one leg then the
other. When his elegant legs began to be tired, he moved his hands, or
he jumped up impetuously and then went on all fours, trying to stand
with his legs in the air. All this he did with a most serious face,
breathing heavily, as if he himself found no happiness in God's gift of
such a restless body.

"Ah, how do you do, my friend?" said Byelyaev. "Is it you? I didn't
notice you. Is your mother well?"

At the moment Alyosha had just taken hold of the toe of his left foot
in his right hand and got into a most awkward pose. He turned head over
heels, jumped up, and glanced from under the big, fluffy lampshade at
Byelyaev.

"How can I put it?" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "As a matter of
plain fact mother is never well. You see she's a woman, and women,
Nicolai Ilyich, have always some pain or another."

For something to do, Byelyaev began to examine Alyosha's face. All the
time he had been acquainted with Olga Ivanovna he had never once turned
his attention to the boy and had completely ignored his existence. A
boy is stuck in front of your eyes, but what is he doing here, what is
his _rôle_?--you don't want to give a single thought to the question.

In the evening dusk Alyosha's face with a pale forehead and steady
black eyes unexpectedly reminded Byelyaev of Olga Vassilievna as
she was in the first pages of the romance. He had the desire to be
affectionate to the boy.

"Come here, whipper-snapper," he said. "Come and let me have a good
look at you, quite close."

The boy jumped off the sofa and ran to Byelyaev.

"Well?" Nicolai Ilyich began, putting his hand on the thin shoulders.
"And how are things with you?"

"How shall I put it?... They used to be much better before."

"How?"

"Quite simple. Before, Sonya and I only had to do music and reading,
and now we're given French verses to learn. You've had your hair cut
lately?"

"Yes, just lately."

"That's why I noticed it. Your beard's shorter. May I touch it ...
doesn't it hurt?"

"No, not a bit."

"Why is it that it hurts if you pull one hair, and when you pull a
whole lot, it doesn't hurt a bit? Ah, ah I You know it's a pity you
don't have side-whiskers. You should shave here, and at the sides ...
and leave the hair just here."

The boy pressed close to Byelyaev and began to play with his
watch-chain.

"When I go to the gymnasium," he said, "Mother is going to buy me a
watch. I'll ask her to buy me a chain just like this. What a fine
locket I Father has one just the same, but yours has stripes, here,
and his has got letters.... Inside it's mother's picture. Father has
another chain now, not in links, but like a ribbon...."

"How do you know? Do you see your father?"

"I? Mm ... no ... I ..."

Alyosha blushed and in the violent confusion of being detected in a
lie began to scratch the locket busily with his finger-nail. Byelyaev
looked steadily at his face and asked:

"Do you see your father?"

"No ... no!"

"But, be honest--on your honour. By your face I can see you're not
telling me the truth. If you made a slip of the tongue by mistake,
what's the use of shuffling. Tell me, do you see him? As one friend to
another."

Alyosha mused.

"And you won't tell Mother?" he asked.

"What next."

"On your word of honour."

"My word of honour."

"Swear an oath."

"What a nuisance you are! What do you take me for?"

Alyosha looked round, made big eyes and began to whisper.

"Only for God's sake don't tell Mother! Never tell it to anyone at all,
because it's a secret. God forbid that Mother should ever get to know;
then I and Sonya and Pelagueia will pay for it.... Listen. Sonya and
I meet Father every Tuesday and Friday. When Pelagueia takes us for a
walk before dinner, we go into Apfel's sweet-shop and Father's waiting
for us. He always sits in a separate room, you know, where there's a
splendid marble table and an ash-tray shaped like a goose without a
back...."

"And what do you do there?"

"Nothing!--First, we welcome one another, then we sit down at a little
table and Father begins to treat us to coffee and cakes. You know,
Sonya eats meat-pies, and I can't bear pies with meat in them! I like
them made of cabbage and eggs. We eat so much that afterwards at dinner
we try to eat as much as we possibly can so that Mother shan't notice."

"What do you talk about there?"

"To Father? About anything. He kisses us and cuddles us, tells us
all kinds of funny stories. You know, he says that he will take us
to live with him when we are grown up. Sonya doesn't want to go, but
I say 'Yes.' Of course, it'll be lonely without Mother; but I'll
write letters to her. How funny: we could go to her for our holidays
then--couldn't we? Besides, Father says that he'll buy me a horse. He's
a splendid man. I can't understand why Mother doesn't invite him to
live with her or why she says we mustn't meet him. He loves Mother very
much indeed. He's always asking us how she is and what she's doing.
When she was ill, he took hold of his head like this ... and ran, ran,
all the time. He is always telling us to obey and respect her. Tell me,
is it true that we're unlucky?"

"H'm ... how?"

"Father says so. He says: 'You are unlucky children.' It's quite
strange to listen to him. He says: 'You are unhappy, I'm unhappy, and
Mother's unhappy.' He says: 'Pray to God for yourselves and for her.'"
Alyosha's eyes rested upon the stuffed bird and he mused.

"Exactly...." snorted Byelyaev. "This is what you do. You arrange
conferences in sweet-shops. And your mother doesn't know?" "N--no....
How could she know? Pelagueia won't tell for anything. The day before
yesterday Father stood us pears. Sweet, like jam. I had two."

"H'm ... well, now ... tell me, doesn't your father speak about me?"

"About you? How shall I put it?" Alyosha gave a searching glance to
Byelyaev's face and shrugged his shoulders.

"He doesn't say anything in particular."

"What does he say, for instance?"

"You won't be offended?"

"What next? Why, does he abuse me?"

"He doesn't abuse you, but you know ... he is cross with you. He says
that it's through you that Mother's unhappy and that you ... ruined
Mother. But he is so queer! I explain to him that you are good and
never shout at Mother, but he only shakes his head."

"Does he say those very words: that I ruined her?"

"Yes. Don't be offended, Nicolai Ilyich!"

Byelyaev got up, stood still a moment, and then began to walk about the
drawing-room.

"This is strange, and ... funny," he murmured, shrugging his shoulders
and smiling ironically. "He is to blame all round, and now I've ruined
her, eh? What an innocent lamb! Did he say those very words to you:
that I ruined your mother?"

"Yes, but ... you said that you wouldn't get offended."

"I'm not offended, and ... and it's none of your business! No, it ...
it's quite funny though. I fell, into the trap, yet I'm to be blamed as
well."

The bell rang. The boy dashed from his place and ran out. In a minute
a lady entered the room with a little girl. It was Olga Ivanovna,
Alyosha's mother. After her, hopping, humming noisily, and waving his
hands, followed Alyosha.

"Of course, who is there to accuse except me?" he murmured, sniffing.
"He's right, he's the injured husband."

"What's the matter?" asked Olga Ivanovna.

"What's the matter! Listen to the kind of sermon your dear husband
preaches. It appears I'm a scoundrel and a murderer, I've ruined you
and the children. All of you are unhappy, and only I am awfully happy!
Awfully, awfully happy!"

"I don't understand, Nicolai! What is it?"

"Just listen to this young gentleman," Byelyaev said, pointing to
Alyosha.

Alyosha blushed, then became pale suddenly and his whole face was
twisted in fright.

"Nicolai Ilyich," he whispered loudly. "Shh!"

Olga Ivanovna glanced in surprise at Alyosha, at Byelyaev, and then
again at Alyosha.

"Ask him, if you please," went on Byelyaev. "That stupid fool Pelagueia
of yours, takes them to sweet-shops and arranges meetings with their
dear father there. But that's not the point. The point is that the dear
father is a martyr, and I'm a murderer, I'm a scoundrel, who broke the
lives of both of you...."

"Nicolai Ilyich!" moaned Alyosha. "You gave your word of honour!"

"Ah, let me alone!" Byelyaev waved his hand. "This is something more
important than any words of honour. The hypocrisy revolts me, the lie!"

"I don't understand," muttered Olga Ivanovna, and tears began to
glimmer in her eyes. "Tell me, Lyolka,"--she turned to her son, "Do you
see your father?"

Alyosha did not hear and looked with horror at Byelyaev.

"It's impossible," said the mother. "I'll go and ask Pelagueia."

Olga Ivanovna went out.

"But, but you gave me your word of honour," Alyosha said trembling all
over.

Byelyaev waved his hand at him and went on walking up and down. He
was absorbed in his insult, and now, as before, he did not notice the
presence of the boy. He, a big serious man, had nothing to do with
boys. And Alyosha sat down in a corner and in terror told Sonya how he
had been deceived. He trembled, stammered, wept. This was the first
time in his life that he had been set, roughly, face to face with a
lie. He had never known before that in this world besides sweet pears
and cakes and expensive watches, there exist many other things which
have no name in children's language.




A GENTLEMAN FRIEND


When she came out of the hospital the charming Vanda, or, according to
her passport, "the honourable lady-citizen Nastasya Kanavkina," found
herself in a position in which she had never been before: without a
roof and without a son. What was to be done?

First of all, she went to a pawnshop to pledge her turquoise ring,
her only jewellery. They gave her a rouble for the ring ... but what
can you buy for a rouble? For that you can't get a short jacket _à
la mode_, or an elaborate hat, or a pair of brown shoes; yet without
these things she felt naked. She felt as though, not only the people,
but even the horses and dogs were staring at her and laughing at the
plainness of her clothes. And her only thought was for her clothes; she
did not care at all what she ate or where she slept.

"If only I were to meet a gentleman friend...." she thought. "I could
get some money ... Nobody would say 'No,' because...."

But she came across no gentleman Mends. It's easy to find them of
nights in the _Renaissance,_ but they wouldn't let her go into the
_Renaissance_ in that plain dress and without a hat. What's to be done?
After a long time of anguish, vexed and weary with walking, sitting,
and thinking, Vanda made up her mind to play her last card: to go
straight to the rooms of some gentleman friend and ask him for money.

"But who shall I go to?" she pondered. "I can't possibly go to
Misha ... he's got a family.... The ginger-headed old man is at his
office...."

Vanda recollected Finkel, the dentist, the converted Jew, who gave her
a bracelet three months ago. Once she poured a glass of beer on his
head at the German dub. She was awfully glad that she had thought of
Finkel.

"He'll be certain to give me some, if only I find him in..." she
thought, on her way to him. "And if he won't, then I'll break every
single thing there."

She had her plan already prepared. She approached the dentist's door.
She would run up the stairs, with a laugh, fly into his private room
and ask for twenty-five roubles.... But when she took hold of the
bell-pull, the plan went clean out of her head. Vanda suddenly began to
be afraid and agitated, a thing which had never happened to her before.
She was never anything but bold and independent in drunken company;
but now, dressed in common clothes, and just like any ordinary person
begging a favour, she felt timid and humble.

"Perhaps he has forgotten me..." she thought, not daring to pull the
bell. "And how can I go up to him in a dress like this? As if I were a
pauper, or a dowdy respectable..."

She rang the bell irresolutely.

There were steps behind the door. It was the porter.

"Is the doctor at home?" she asked.

She would have been very pleased now if the porter had said "No,"
but instead of answering he showed her into the hall, and took her
jacket. The stairs seemed to her luxurious and magnificent, but what
she noticed first of all in all the luxury was a large mirror in
which she saw a ragged creature without an elaborate hat, without a
modish jacket, and without a pair of brown shoes. And Vanda found it
strange that, now that she was poorly dressed and looking more like a
seamstress or a washerwoman, for the first time she felt ashamed, and
had no more assurance or boldness left. In her thoughts she began to
call herself Nastya Kanavkina, instead of Vanda as she used.

"This way, please!" said the maid-servant, leading her to the private
room. "The doctor will be here immediately.... Please, take a seat."

Vanda dropped into an easy chair.

"I'll say: 'Lend me ...'" she thought. "That's the right thing, because
we are acquainted. But the maid must go out of the room.... It's
awkward in front of the maid.... What is she standing there for?"

In five minutes the door opened and Finkel entered--a tall, swarthy,
convert Jew, with fat cheeks and goggle-eyes. His cheeks, eyes,
belly, fleshy hips--were all so full, repulsive, and coarse! At the
_Renaissance_ and the German club he used always to be a little drunk,
to spend a lot of money on women, patiently put up with all their
tricks--for instance, when Vanda poured the beer on his head, he only
smiled and shook his finger at her--but now he looked dull and sleepy;
he had the pompous, chilly expression of a superior, and he was chewing
something.

"What is the matter?" he asked, without looking at Vanda. Vanda glanced
at the maid's serious face, at the blown-out figure of Finkel, who
obviously did not recognise her, and she blushed.

"What's the matter?" the dentist repeated, irritated.

"To ... oth ache...." whispered Vanda.

"Ah ... which tooth ... where?"

Vanda remembered she had a tooth with a hole.

"At the bottom ... to the right," she said.

"H'm ... open your mouth."

Finkel frowned, held his breath, and began to work the aching tooth
loose.

"Do you feel any pain?" he asked, picking at her tooth with some
instrument.

"Yes, I do...." Vanda lied. "Shall I remind him?" she thought, "he'll
be sure to remember.... But ... the maid ... what is she standing
there for?"

Finkel suddenly snorted like a steam-engine straight into her mouth,
and said:

"I don't advise you to have a stopping.... Anyhow the tooth is quite
useless."

Again he picked at the tooth for a little, and soiled Vanda's lips and
gums with his tobacco-stained fingers. Again he held his breath and
dived into her mouth with something cold....

Vanda suddenly felt a terrible pain, shrieked and seized Finkel's
hand....

"Never mind...." he murmured. "Don't be frightened.... This tooth isn't
any use."

And his tobacco-stained fingers, covered with blood, held up the
extracted tooth before her eyes. The maid came forward and put a bowl
to her lips.

"Rinse your mouth with cold water at home," said Finkel. "That will
make the blood stop."

He stood before her in the attitude of a man impatient to be left alone
at last.

"Good-bye ..." she said, turning to the door.

"H'm! And who's to pay me for the work?" Finkel asked laughingly.

"Ah ... yes!" Vanda recollected, blushed and gave the dentist the
rouble she had got for the turquoise ring.

When she came into the street she felt still more ashamed than before,
but she was not ashamed of her poverty any more. Nor did she notice any
more that she hadn't an elaborate hat or a modish jacket. She walked
along the street spitting blood and each red spittle told her about
her life, a bad, hard life; about the insults she had suffered and had
still to suffer-to-morrow, a week, a year hence--her whole life, till
death....

"Oh, how terrible it is!" she whispered. "My God, how terrible!"

But the next day she was at the _Renaissance_ and she danced there. She
wore a new, immense red hat, a new jacket _à la mode_ and a pair of
brown shoes. She was treated to supper by a young merchant from Kazan.




OVERWHELMING SENSATIONS


This happened not so very long ago in the Moscow Circuit Court. The
jurymen, left in court for the night, before going to bed, began a
conversation about overwhelming sensations. It was occasioned by
someone's recollection of a witness who became a stammerer and turned
grey, owing, as he said, to one dreadful moment. The jurymen decided
before going to bed that each one of them should dig into his memories
and tell a story. Life is short; but still there is not a single man
who can boast that he had not had some dreadful moments in his past.

One juryman related how he was nearly drowned. A second told how one
night he poisoned his own child, in a place where there was neither
doctor nor chemist, by giving the child white copperas in mistake for
soda. The child did not die, but the father nearly went mad. A third,
not an old man, but sickly, described his two attempts to commit
suicide. Once he shot himself; the second time he threw himself in
front of a train.

The fourth, a short, stout man, smartly dressed, told the following
story:

"I was no more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old, when I fell
head over heels in love with my present wife and proposed to her. Now,
I would gladly give myself a thrashing for that early marriage; but
then--well, I don't know what would have happened to me if Natasha
had refused. My love was most ardent, the kind described in novels as
mad, passionate, and so on. My happiness choked me, and I did not know
how to escape from it. I bored my father, my friends, the servants
by continually telling them how desperately I was in love. Happy
people are quite the most tiresome and boring. I used to be awfully
exasperating. Even now I'm ashamed.

"At the time I had a newly-called barrister among my friends. The
barrister is now known all over Russia, but then he was only at the
beginning of his popularity, and he was not rich or famous enough to
have the right not to recognise a friend when he met him or not to
raise his hat. I used to go and see him once or twice a week.

"When I came, we used both to stretch ourselves upon the sofas and
begin to philosophise.

"Once I lay on the sofa, harping on the theme that there is no more
ungrateful profession than a barrister's. I tried to show that after
the witnesses have been heard the Court can easily dispense with
the Crown Prosecutor and the barrister, because they are equally
unnecessary and only hindrances. If an adult juryman, sound in spirit
and mind, is convinced that this ceiling is white, or that Ivanov
is guilty, no Demosthenes has the power to fight and overcome his
conviction. Who can convince me that my moustache is carroty when
I know it is black? When I listen to an orator I may perhaps get
sentimental and even shed a tear, but my rooted convictions, for the
most part based on the obvious and on facts, will not be changed an
atom. My friend the barrister contended that I was still young and
silly and was talking childish nonsense. In his opinion an obvious fact
when illumined by conscientious experts became still more obvious.
That was his first point. His second was that a talent is a force, an
elemental power, a hurricane, that is able to turn even stones to dust,
not to speak of such trifles as the convictions of householders and
small shopkeepers. It is as hard for human frailty to struggle against
a talent as it is to look at the sun without being blinded or to stop
the wind. By the power of the word one single mortal converts thousands
of convinced savages to Christianity. Ulysses was the most convinced
person in the world, but he was all submission before the Syrens, and
so on. All history is made up of such instances. In life we meet them
at every turn. And so it ought to be; otherwise a clever person of
talent would not be preferred before the stupid and untalented.

"I persisted and continued to argue that a conviction is stronger than
any talent, though, speaking frankly, I myself could not define what
exactly is a conviction and what is a talent. Probably I talked only
for the sake of talking.

"'Take even your own case' ... said the barrister. 'You are convinced
that your _fiancée_ is an angel and that there's not a man in all the
town happier than you. I tell you, ten or twenty minutes would be quite
enough for me to make you sit down at this very table and write to
break off the engagement.'

"I began to laugh.

"'Don't laugh. I'm talking seriously,' said my friend. 'If I only had
the desire, in twenty minutes you would be happy in the thought that
you have been saved from marriage. My talent is not great, but neither
are you strong?'

"'Well, try, please,' I said.

"'No, why should I? I only said it in passing. You're a good boy. It
would be a pity to expose you to such an experiment. Besides, I'm not
in the mood, to-day.'

"We sat down to supper. The wine and thoughts of Natasha and my love
utterly filled me with a sense of youth and happiness. My happiness was
so infinitely great that the green-eyed barrister opposite me seemed so
unhappy, so little, so grey!"

"'But do try,' I pressed him. 'I beg you.'

"The barrister shook his head and knit his brows. Evidently I had begun
to bore him.

"'I know,' he said, 'that when the experiment is over you will thank
me and call me saviour, but one must think of your sweetheart too. She
loves you, and your refusal would make her suffer. But what a beauty
she is 'I envy you.'

"The barrister sighed, swallowed some wine, and began to speak of
what a wonderful creature my Natasha was. He had an uncommon gift for
description. He could pour out a whole heap of words about a woman's
eyelashes or her little finger. I listened to him with delight.

"'I've seen many women in my life-time;' he said, 'but I give you my
word of honour, I tell you as a friend, your Natasha Andreevna is a
gem, a rare girl! Of course, there are defects, even a good many, I
grant you, but still she is charming.'

"And the barrister began to speak of the defects of my sweetheart.
Now I quite understand it was a general conversation about women,
one about their weak points in general; but it appeared to me then
as though he was speaking only of Natasha. He went into raptures
about her snub-nose, her excited voice, her shrill laugh, her
affectation--indeed, about everything I particularly disliked in
her. All this was in his opinion infinitely amiable, gracious and
feminine. Imperceptibly he changed from enthusiasm first to paternal
edification, then to a light, sneering tone.... There was no Chairman
of the Bench with us to stop the barrister riding the high horse. I
hadn't a chance of opening my mouth--and what could I have said? My
friend said nothing new, his truths were long familiar. The poison was
not at all in what he said, but altogether in the devilish form in
which he said it. A form of Satan's own invention! As I listened to him
I was convinced that one and the same word had a thousand meanings and
nuances according to the way it is pronounced and the turn given to the
sentence. I certainly cannot reproduce the tone or the form. I can only
say that as I listened to my friend and paced from corner to corner
of my room, I was revolted, exasperated, contemptuous according as he
felt. I even believed him when, with tears in his eyes, he declared to
me that I was a great man, deserving a better fate, and destined in the
future to accomplish some remarkable exploit, from which I might be
prevented by my marriage.

"'My dear friend,' he exclaimed, firmly grasping my hand, 'I implore
you, I command you: stop before it is too late. Stop! God save you from
this strange and terrible mistake! My friend, don't ruin your youth.'

"Believe me or not as you will, but finally I sat down at the table
and wrote to my sweetheart breaking off the engagement. I wrote and
rejoiced that there was still time to repair my mistake. When the
envelope was sealed I hurried into the street to put it in a pillar
box. The barrister came with me.

"'Splendid! Superb!' he praised me when my letter to Natasha
disappeared into the darkness of the pillar-box. 'I congratulate you
with all my heart. I'm delighted for your sake.'

"After we had gone about ten steps together, the barrister continued:

"'Of course, marriage has its bright side too. I, for instance, belong
to the kind of men for whom marriage and family life are everything.'

"He was already describing his life: all the ugliness of a lonely
bachelor existence appeared before me.

"He spoke with enthusiasm of his future wife, of the pleasures of an
ordinary family life, and his transports were so beautiful and sincere
that I was in absolute despair by the time we reached his door.

"'What are you doing with me, you damnable man?' I said panting.
'You've ruined me! Why did you make me write that cursed letter? I love
her! I love her!'

"And I swore that I was in love. I was terrified of my action. It
already seemed wild and absurd to me. Gentlemen, it is quite impossible
to imagine a more overwhelming sensation than mine at that moment! If a
kind man had happened to slip a revolver into my hand I would have put
a bullet through my head gladly.

"'Well, that's enough, enough!' the advocate said, patting my shoulder
and beginning to laugh. 'Stop crying! The letter won't reach your
sweetheart. It was I, not you, wrote the address on the envelope, and I
muddled it up so that they won't be able to make anything of it at the
post-office. But let this be a lesson to you. Don't discuss things you
don't understand.'"

"Now, gentlemen, next, please."

The fifth juryman had settled himself comfortably and already opened
his mouth to begin his story, when we heard the dock striking from
Spaisky Church-tower.

"Twelve...." one of the jurymen counted. "To which class, gentlemen,
would you assign the sensations which our prisoner at the bar is now
feeling? The murderer passes the night here in a prisoner's cell,
either lying or sitting, certainly without sleeping and all through
the sleepless night listens to the striking of the hours. What does he
think of? What dreams visit him?"

And all the jurymen suddenly forgot about overwhelming sensations. The
experience of their friend, who once wrote the letter to his Natasha,
seemed unimportant, and not even amusing. Nobody told any more stories;
but they began to go to bed quietly, in silence.




EXPENSIVE LESSONS


It is a great bore for an educated person not to know foreign
languages. Vorotov felt it strongly, when on leaving the university
after he had got his degree he occupied himself with a little
scientific research.

"It's awful!" he used to say, losing his breath (for although only
twenty-six he was stout, heavy, and short of breath). "It's awful.
Without knowing languages I'm like a bird without wings. I'll simply
have to chuck the work."

So he decided, come what might, to conquer his natural laziness and to
study French and German, and he began to look out for a teacher.

One winter afternoon, as Vorotov sat working in his study, the servant
announced a lady to see him.

"Show her in," said Vorotov.

And a young lady, exquisitely dressed in the latest fashion, entered
the study. She introduced herself as Alice Ossipovna Enquette, a
teacher of French, and said that a friend of Vorotov's had sent her to
him.

"Very glad! Sit down!" said Vorotov, losing his breath, and clutching
at the collar of his night shirt. (He always worked in a night shirt
in order to breathe more easily.) "You were sent to me by Peter
Sergueyevich? Yes.... Yes ... I asked him.... Very glad!"

While he discussed the matter with Mademoiselle Enquette he glanced at
her shyly, with curiosity. She was a genuine Frenchwoman, very elegant,
and still quite young. From her pale and languid face, from her short,
curly hair and unnaturally small waist, you would not think her more
than eighteen, but looking at her broad, well-developed shoulders, her
charming back and severe eyes, Vorotov decided that she was certainly
not less than twenty-three, perhaps even twenty-five; but then again
it seemed to him that she was only eighteen. Her face had the cold,
business-like expression of one who had come to discuss a business
matter. Never once did she smile or frown, and only once a look of
perplexity flashed into her eyes, when she discovered that she was not
asked to teach children but a grown up, stout young man.

"So, Alice Ossipovna," Vorotov said to her, "you will give me a lesson
daily from seven to eight o'clock in the evening. With regard to your
wish to receive a rouble a lesson, I have no objection at all. A
rouble--well, let it be a rouble...."

And he went on asking her if she wanted tea or coffee, if the weather
was fine, and, smiling good naturedly, stroking the tablecloth with
the palm of his hand, he asked her kindly who she was, where she had
completed her education, and how she earned her living.

In a cold, business-like tone Alice Ossipovna answered that she had
completed her education at a private school, and had then qualified
as a domestic teacher, that her father had died recently of scarlet
fever, her mother was alive and made artificial flowers, that she,
Mademoiselle Enquette, gave private lessons at a pension in the
morning, and from one o'clock right until the evening she taught in
respectable private houses.

She went, leaving a slight and almost imperceptible perfume of a
woman's dress behind her. Vorotov did not work for a long time
afterwards but sat at the table stroking the green cloth and thinking.

"It's very pleasant to see girls earning their own living," he thought.
"On the other hand it is very unpleasant to realise that poverty does
not spare even such elegant and pretty girls as Alice Ossipovna; she,
too, must struggle for her existence. Rotten luck!..."

Having never seen virtuous Frenchwomen he also thought that this
exquisitely dressed Alice Ossipovna, with her well-developed shoulders
and unnaturally small waist was in all probability, engaged in
something else besides teaching.

Next evening when the clock pointed to five minutes to seven, Alice
Ossipovna arrived, rosy from the cold; she opened Margot (an elementary
text-book) and began without any preamble:

"The French grammar has twenty-six letters. The first is called A, the
second B...."

"Pardon," interrupted Vorotov, smiling, "I must warn you, Mademoiselle,
that you will have to change your methods somewhat in my case. The
fact is that I know Russian, Latin and Greek very well. I have studied
comparative philology, and it seems to me that we may leave out Margot
and begin straight off to read some author." And he explained to the
Frenchwoman how grown-up people study languages.

"A friend of mine," said he, "who wished to know modern languages put
a French, German and Latin gospel in front of him and then minutely
analysed one word after another. The result--he achieved his purpose in
less than a year. Let us take some author and start reading."

The Frenchwoman gave him a puzzled look. It was evident that Vorotov's
proposal appeared to her naive and absurd. If he had not been grown up
she would certainly have got angry and stormed at him, but as he was a
very stout, adult man at whom she could not storm, she only shrugged
her shoulders half-perceptibly and said:

"Just as you please."

Vorotov ransacked his bookshelves and produced a ragged French book.

"Will this do?" he asked.

"It's all the same."

"In that case let us begin. Let us start from the title, _Mémoires_."

"Reminiscences...." translated Mademoiselle Enquette.

"Reminiscences...." repeated Vorotov.

Smiling good naturedly and breathing heavily, he passed a quarter of
an hour over the word _mémoires_ and the same with the word _de._ This
tired Alice Ossipovna out. She answered his questions carelessly, got
confused and evidently neither understood her pupil nor tried to.
Vorotov asked her questions, and at the same time glanced furtively at
her fair hair, thinking:

"The hair is not naturally curly. She waves it. Marvellous! She works
from morning till night and yet she finds time to wave her hair."

At eight o'clock sharp she got up, gave him a dry, cold "Au revoir,
Monsieur," and left the study. After her lingered the same sweet,
subtle, agitating perfume. The pupil again did nothing for a long time,
but sat by the table and thought.

During the following days he became convinced that his teacher was a
charming girl serious and punctual, but very uneducated and incapable
of teaching grown up people; so he decided he would not waste his
time, but part with her and engage someone else. When she came for the
seventh lesson he took an envelope containing seven roubles out of his
pocket. Holding it in his hands and blushing furiously, he began:

"I am sorry, Alice Ossipovna, but I must tell you.... I am placed in an
awkward position...."

The Frenchwoman glanced at the envelope and guessed what was the
matter. For the first time during the lessons a shiver passed over her
face and the cold, business-like expression disappeared. She reddened
faintly, and casting her eyes down, began to play absently with her
thin gold chain. And Vorotov, noticing her confusion, understood how
precious this rouble was to her, how hard it would be for her to lose
this money.

"I must tell you," he murmured, getting still more confused. His heart
gave a thump. Quickly he put the envelope back into his pocket and
continued:

"Excuse me. I ... I will leave you for ten minutes...."

And as though he did not want to dismiss her at all, but had only asked
permission to retire for a moment he went into another room and sat
there for ten minutes. Then he returned, more confused than ever; he
thought that his leaving her like that would be explained by her in a
certain way and this made him awkward.

The lessons began again.

Vorotov wanted them no more. Knowing that they would lead to nothing
he gave the Frenchwoman a free hand; he did not question or interrupt
her any more. She translated at her own sweet will, ten pages a lesson,
but he did not listen. He breathed heavily and for want of occupation
gazed now and then at her curly little head, her neck, her soft white
hands, and inhaled the perfume of her dress.

He caught himself thinking about her as he ought not and it shamed
him, or admiring her, and then he felt aggrieved and angry because
she behaved so coldly towards him, in such a businesslike way, never
smiling and as if afraid that he might suddenly touch her. All the
while he thought: How could he inspire her with confidence in him, how
could he get to know her better, to help her, to make her realise how
badly she taught, poor little soul?

Once Alice Ossipovna came to the lesson in a dainty pink dress, a
little _décolleté_, and such a sweet scent came from her that you might
have thought she was wrapped in a cloud, that you had only to blow on
her for her to fly away or dissolve like smoke. She apologised, saying
she could only stay for half an hour, because she had to go straight
from the lesson to a ball.

He gazed at her neck, at her bare shoulders and he thought he
understood why Frenchwomen were known to be light-minded and easily
won; he was drowned in this cloud of scent, beauty, and nudity, and
she, quite unaware of his thoughts and probably not in the least
interested in them, read over the pages quickly and translated full
steam ahead:

"He walked over the street and met the gentleman of his friend and
said: where do you rush? seeing your face so pale it makes me pain."

The _Mémoires_ had been finished long ago; Alice was now translating
another book. Once she came to the lesson an hour earlier, apologising
because she had to go to the Little Theatre at seven o'clock. When the
lesson was over Vorotov dressed and he too went to the theatre. It
seemed to him only for the sake of rest and distraction, and he did not
even think of Alice. He would not admit that a serious man, preparing
for a scientific career, a stay-at-home, should brush aside his book
and rush to the theatre for the sake of meeting an unintellectual,
stupid girl whom he hardly knew.

But somehow, dining the intervals his heart beat, and, without noticing
it, he ran about the foyer and the corridors like a boy, looking
impatiently for someone. Every time the interval was over he was
tired, but when he discovered the familiar pink dress and the lovely
shoulders veiled with tulle his heart jumped as if from a presentiment
of happiness, he smiled joyfully, and for the first time in his life he
felt jealous.

Alice was with two ugly students and an officer. She was laughing,
talking loudly and evidently flirting. Vorotov had never seen her like
that. Apparently she was happy, contented, natural, warm. Why? What was
the reason? Perhaps because these people were dear to her and belonged
to the same class as she. Vorotov felt the huge abyss between him and
that class. He bowed to his teacher, but she nodded coldly and quietly
passed by. It was plain she did not want her cavaliers to know that she
had pupils and gave lessons because she was poor.

After the meeting at the theatre Vorotov knew that he was in love.
During lessons that followed he devoured his elegant teacher with his
eyes, and no longer struggling, he gave full rein to his pure and
impure thoughts. Alice's face was always cold. Exactly at eight o'clock
every evening she said calmly, "Au revoir, Monsieur," and he felt that
she was indifferent to him and would remain indifferent, that--his
position was hopeless.

Sometimes in the middle of a lesson he would begin dreaming, hoping,
building plans; he composed an amorous declaration, remembering that
Frenchwomen were frivolous and complaisant, but he had only to give his
teacher one glance for his thoughts to be blown out like a candle, when
you carry it on to the verandah of a bungalow and the wind is blowing.
Once, overcome, forgetting everything, in a frenzy, he could stand it
no longer. He barred her way when she came from the study into the
hall after the lesson and, losing his breath and stammering, began to
declare his love:

"You are dear to me!... I love you. Please let me speak!"

Alice grew pale: probably she was afraid that after this declaration
she would not be able to come to him any more and receive a rouble
a lesson. She looked at him with terrified eyes and began in a loud
whisper:

"Ah, it's impossible! Do not speak, I beg you! Impossible!"

Afterwards Vorotov did not sleep all night; he tortured himself with
shame, abused himself, thinking feverishly. He thought that his
declaration had offended the girl and that she would not come any
more. He made up his mind to find out where she lived from the Address
Bureau and to write her an apology. But Alice came without the letter.
For a moment she felt awkward, and then opened the book and began to
translate quickly, in an animated voice, as always:

"'Oh, young gentleman, do not rend these flowers in my garden which I
want to give to my sick daughter.'"

She still goes. Four books have been translated by now but Vorotov
knows nothing beyond the word _mémoires,_ and when he is asked about
his scientific research work he waves his hand, leaves the question
unanswered, and begins to talk about the weather.




A LIVING CALENDAR


State-Councillor Sharamykin's drawing-room is wrapped in a pleasant
half-darkness. The big bronze lamp with the green shade, makes
the walls, the furniture, the faces, all green, _couleur_ "_Nuit
d'Ukraine_" Occasionally a smouldering log flares up in the dying fire
and for a moment casts a red glow over the faces; but this does not
spoil the general harmony of light. The general tone, as the painters
say, is well sustained.

Sharamykin sits in a chair in front of the fireplace, in the attitude
of a man who has just dined. He is an elderly man with a high
official's grey side whiskers and meek blue eyes. Tenderness is shed
over his face, and his lips are set in a melancholy smile. At his
feet, stretched out lazily, with his legs towards the fire-place,
Vice-Governor Lopniev sits on a little stool. He is a brave-looking man
of about forty. Sharamykin's children are moving about round the piano;
Nina, Kolya, Nadya, and Vanya. The door leading to Madame Sharamykin's
room is slightly open and the light breaks through timidly. There
behind the door sits Sharamykin's wife, Anna Pavlovna, in front of
her writing-table. She is president of the local ladies' committee, a
lively, piquant lady of thirty years and a little bit over. Through
her pince-nez her vivacious black eyes are running over the pages of a
French novel. Beneath the novel lies a tattered copy of the report of
the committee for last year.

"Formerly our town was much better off in these things," says
Sharamykin, screwing up his meek eyes at the glowing coals. "Never a
winter passed but some star would pay us a visit. Famous actors and
singers used to come ... but now, besides acrobats and organ-grinders,
the devil only knows what comes. There's no aesthetic pleasure
at all.... We might be living in a forest. Yes.... And does your
Excellency remember that Italian tragedian?... What's his name?... He
was so dark, and tall.... Let me think.... Oh, yes! Luigi Ernesto di
Ruggiero.... Remarkable talent.... And strength. He had only to say
one word and the whole theatre was on the _qui vive._ My darling Anna
used to take a great interest in his talent. She hired the theatre for
him and sold tickets for the performances in advance.... In return he
taught her elocution and gesture. A first-rate fellow! He came here
... to be quite exact ... twelve years ago.... No, that's not true....
Less, ten years.... Anna dear, how old is our Nina?"

"She'll be ten next birthday," calls Anna Pavlovna from her room. "Why?"

"Nothing in particular, my dear. I was just curious.... And good
singers used to come. Do you remember Prilipchin, the _tenore di
grazia_? What a charming fellow he was! How good looking! Fair ...
a very expressive face, Parisian manners.... And what a voice, your
Excellency! Only one weakness: he would sing some notes with his
stomach and would take _re_ falsetto--otherwise everything was good.
Tamberlik, he said, had taught him.... My dear Anna and I hired a hall
for him at the Social Club, and in gratitude for that he used to sing
to us for whole days and nights.... He taught dear Anna to sing. He
came--I remember it as though it were last night--in Lent, some twelve
years ago. No, it's more.... How bad my memory is getting, Heaven help
me! Anna dear, how old is our darling Nadya?

"Twelve."

"Twelve ... then we've got to add ten months.... That makes it exact
... thirteen. Somehow there used to be more life in our town then....
Take, for instance, the charity soirées. What enjoyable soirées we
used to have before! How elegant! There were singing, playing, and
recitation.... After the war, I remember, when the Turkish prisoners
were here, dear Anna arranged a soiree on behalf of the wounded. We
collected eleven hundred roubles. I remember the Turkish officers
were passionately fond of dear Anna's voice, and kissed her hand
incessantly. He-he! Asiatics, but a grateful nation. Would you believe
me, the soiree was such a success that I wrote an account of it in my
diary? It was,--I remember it as though it had only just happened,--in
'76,... no, in '77.... No! Pray, when were the Turks here? Anna dear,
how old is our little Kolya?"

"I'm seven, Papa!" says Kolya, a brat with a swarthy face and coal
black hair.

"Yes, we're old, and we've lost the energy we used to have," Lopniev
agreed with a sigh. "That's the real cause. Old age, my friend. No new
moving spirits arrive, and the old ones grow old.... The old fire is
dull now. When I was younger I did not like company to be bored....
I was your Anna Pavlovna's first assistant. Whether it was a charity
soirée or a tombola to support a star who was going to arrive, whatever
Anna Pavlovna was arranging, I used to throw over everything and begin
to bustle about. One winter, I remember, I bustled and ran so much that
I even got ill.... I shan't forget that winter.... Do you remember what
a performance we arranged with Anna Pavlovna in aid of the victims of
the fire?"

"What year was it?"

"Not so very long ago.... In '79. No, in '80, I believe! Tell me how
old is your Vanya?"

"Five," Anna Pavlovna calls from the study.

"Well, that means it was six years ago. Yes, my dear friend, that was a
time. It's all over now. The old fire's quite gone."

Lopniev and Sharamykin grew thoughtful. The smouldering log flares up
for the last time, and then is covered in ash.




OLD AGE


State-Councillor Usielkov, architect, arrived in his native town,
where he had been summoned to restore the cemetery church. He was born
in the town, he had grown up and been married there, and yet when he
got out of the train he hardly recognised it. Everything was changed.
For instance, eighteen years ago, when he left the town to settle in
Petersburg, where the railway station is now boys used to hunt for
marmots: now as you come into the High Street there is a four storied
"Hotel Vienna," with apartments, where there was of old an ugly grey
fence. But not the fence or the houses, or anything had changed so much
as the people. Questioning the hall-porter, Usielkov discovered that
more than half of the people he remembered were dead or paupers or
forgotten.

"Do you remember Usielkov?" he asked the porter. "Usielkov, the
architect, who divorced his wife.... He had a house in Sviribev
Street.... Surely you remember."

"No, I don't remember anyone of the name."

"Why, it's impossible not to remember. It was an exciting case. All
the cabmen knew, even. Try to remember. His divorce was managed by the
attorney, Shapkin, the swindler ... the notorious sharper, the man who
was thrashed at the dub...."

"You mean Ivan Nicolaich?"

"Yes.... Is he alive? dead?"

"Thank heaven, his honour's alive. His honour's a notary now, with an
office. Well-to-do. Two houses in Kirpichny Street. Just lately married
his daughter off."

Usielkov strode from one corner of the room to another. An idea
flashed into his mind. From boredom, he decided to see Shapkin. It
was afternoon when he left the hotel and quietly walked to Kirpichny
Street. He found Shapkin in his office and hardly recognised him. From
the well-built, alert attorney with a quick, impudent, perpetually
tipsy expression, Shapkin had become a modest, grey-haired, shrunken
old man.

"You don't recognise me.... You have forgotten ...." Usielkov began.
"I'm your old client, Usielkov."

"Usielkov? Which Usielkov? Ah!" Remembrance came to Shapkin: he
recognised him and was confused. Began exclamations, questions,
recollections.

"Never expected ... never thought...." chuckled Shapkin. "What will you
have? Would you like champagne? Perhaps you'd like oysters. My dear
man, what a lot of money I got out of you in the old days--so much that
I can't think what I ought to stand you."

"Please don't trouble," said Usielkov. "I haven't time. I must go to
the cemetery and examine the church. I have a commission."

"Splendid. We'll have something to eat and a drink and go together.
I've got some splendid horses! I'll take you there and introduce you to
the churchwarden.... I'll fix up everything.... But what's the matter,
my dearest man? You're not avoiding me, not afraid? Please sit nearer.
There's nothing to be afraid of now.... Long ago, I really was pretty
sharp, a bit of a rogue ... but now I'm quieter than water, humbler
than grass. I've grown old; got a family. There are children.... Time
to die!"

The friends had something to eat and drink, and went in a coach and
pair to the cemetery.

"Yes, it was a good time," Shapkin was reminiscent, sitting in the
sledge. "I remember, but I simply can't believe it. Do you remember
how you divorced your wife? It's almost twenty years ago, and you've
probably forgotten everything, but I remember it as though I conducted
the petition yesterday. My God, how rotten I was! Then I was a smart,
casuistical devil, full of sharp practice and devilry.... and I used
to run into some shady affairs, particularly when there was a good
fee, as in your case, for instance. What was it you paid me then?
Five--six hundred. Enough to upset anybody! By the time you left for
Petersburg you'd left the whole affair completely in my hands. 'Do what
you like!' And your former wife, Sophia Mikhailovna, though she did
come from a merchant family, was proud and selfish. To bribe her to
take the guilt on herself was difficult--extremely difficult. I used to
come to her for a business talk, and when she saw me, she would say to
her maid: 'Masha, surely I told you I wasn't at home to scoundrels.'
I tried one way, then another ... wrote letters to her, tried to meet
her accidentally--no good. I had to work through a third person. For a
long time I had trouble with her, and she only yielded when you agreed
to give her ten thousand. She could not stand out against ten thousand.
She succumbed.... She began to weep, spat in my face, but she yielded
and took the guilt on herself."

"If I remember it was fifteen, not ten thousand she took from me," said
Usielkov.

"Yes, of course ... fifteen, my mistake." Shapkin was disconcerted.
"Anyway it's all past and done with now. Why shouldn't I confess,
frankly? Ten I gave to her, and the remaining five I bargained out of
you for my own share. I deceived both of you.... It's all past, why be
ashamed of it? And who else was there to take from, Boris Pietrovich,
if not from you? I ask you.... You were rich and well-to-do. You
married in caprice: you were divorced in caprice. You were making a
fortune. I remember you got twenty thousand out of a single contract.
Whom was I to tap, if not you? And I must confess, I was tortured by
envy. If you got hold of a nice lot of money, people would take off
their hats to you: but the same people would beat me for shillings and
smack my face in the club. But why recall it? It's time to forget."

"Tell me, please, how did Sophia Mikhailovna live afterwards?"

"With her ten thousand? _On ne peut plus_ badly.... God knows whether
it was frenzy or pride and conscience that tortured her, because she
had sold herself for money--or perhaps she loved you; but, she took to
drink, you know. She received the money and began to gad about with
officers in troikas.... Drunkenness, philandering, debauchery.... She
would come into a tavern with an officer, and instead of port or a
light wine, she would drink the strongest cognac to drive her into a
frenzy."

"Yes, she was eccentric. I suffered enough with her. She would take
offence at some trifle and then get nervous.... And what happened
afterwards?"

"A week passed, a fortnight.... I was sitting at home writing.
Suddenly, the door opened and she comes in. 'Take your cursed money,'
she said, and threw the parcel in my face.... She could not resist
it.... Five hundred were missing. She had only got rid of five
hundred."

"And what did you do with the money?"

"It's all past and done with. What's the good of concealing it?...
I certainly took it. What are you staring at me like that for? Wait
for the sequel. It's a complete novel, the sickness of a soul! Two
months passed by. One night I came home drunk, in a wicked mood....
I turned on the light and saw Sophia Mikhailovna sitting on my sofa,
drunk too, wandering a bit, with something savage in her face as if
she had just escaped from the mad-house. 'Give me my money back,' she
said. 'I've changed my mind. If I'm going to the dogs, I want to go
madly, passionately. Make haste, you scoundrel, give me the money.' How
indecent it was!"

"And you ... did you give it her?"

"I remember I gave her ten roubles."

"Oh ... is it possible?" Usielkov frowned. "If you couldn't do it
yourself, or you didn't want to, you could have written to me.... And I
didn't know ... I didn't know."

"My dear man, why should I write, when she wrote herself afterwards
when she was in hospital?"

"I was so taken up with the new marriage that I paid no attention to
letters.... But you were an outsider; you had no antagonism to Sophia
Mikhailovna.... Why didn't you help her?"

"We can't judge by our present standards, Boris Pietrovich. Now we
think in this way; but then we thought quite differently.... Now I
might perhaps give her a thousand roubles; but then even ten roubles
... she didn't get them for nothing. It's a terrible story. It's time
to forget.... But here you are!"

The sledge stopped at the churchyard gate. Usielkov and Shapkin got
out of the sledge, went through the gate and walked along a long,
broad avenue. The bare cherry trees, the acacias, the grey crosses and
monuments sparkled with hoar-frost. In each flake of snow the bright
sunny day was reflected. There was the smell you find in all cemeteries
of incense and fresh-dug earth.

"You have a beautiful cemetery," said Usielkov. "It's almost an
orchard."

"Yes, but it's a pity the thieves steal the monuments. Look, there,
behind that cast-iron memorial, on the right, Sophia Mikhailovna is
buried. Would you like to see?"

The friends turned to the right, stepping in deep snow towards the
cast-iron memorial.

"Down here," said Shapkin, pointing to a little stone of white marble.
"Some subaltern or other put up the monument on her grave." Usielkov
slowly took off his hat and showed his bald pate to the snow. Eying
him, Shapkin also took off his hat, and another baldness shone beneath
the sun. The silence round about was like the tomb, as though the air
were dead, too. The friends looked at the stone, silent, thinking.

"She is asleep!" Shapkin broke the silence. "And she cares very little
that she took the guilt upon herself and drank cognac. Confess, Boris
Pietrovich!"

"What?" asked Usielkov, sternly.

"That, however loathsome the past may be, it's better than this." And
Shapkin pointed to his grey hairs.

"In the old days I did not even think of death.... If I'd met her, I
would have circumvented her, but now ... well, now!"

Sadness took hold of Usielkov. Suddenly he wanted to cry, passionately,
as he once desired to love.... And he felt that these tears would be
exquisite, refreshing. Moisture came out of his eyes and a lump rose in
his throat, but.... Shapkin was standing by his side, and Usielkov felt
ashamed of his weakness before a witness. He turned back quickly and
walked towards the church.

Two hours later, having arranged with the churchwarden and examined the
church, he seized the opportunity while Shapkin was talking away to the
priest, and ran to shed a tear. He walked to the stone surreptitiously,
with stealthy steps, looking round all the time. The little white
monument stared at him absently, so sadly and innocently, as though a
girl and not a wanton _divorcée_ were beneath.

"If I could weep, could weep!" thought Usielkov.

But the moment for weeping had been lost. Though the old man managed
to make his eyes shine, and tried to bring himself to the right pitch,
the tears did not flow and the lump did not rise in his throat....
After waiting for about ten minutes, Usielkov waved his arm and went to
look for Shapkin.





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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The House with the Mezzanine and Other
Stories, by Anton Tchekoff

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories

Author: Anton Tchekoff

Translator: S.S. Koteliansky
            Gilbert Cannan

Release Date: December 4, 2008 [EBook #27411]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE ***




Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)










THE HOUSE

WITH THE MEZZANINE

AND OTHER STORIES

BY

ANTON TCHEKOFF

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY

S. S. KOTELIANSKY
AND
GILBERT CANNAN

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1917

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published August, 1917




CONTENTS


THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE

TYPHUS

GOOSEBERRIES

IN EXILE

THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG

GOUSSIEV

MY LIFE




THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE

(A PAINTER'S STORY)


It happened nigh on seven years ago, when I was living in one of the
districts of the J. province, on the estate of Bielokurov, a landowner,
a young man who used to get up early, dress himself in a long overcoat,
drink beer in the evenings, and all the while complain to me that he
could nowhere find any one in sympathy with his ideas. He lived in a
little house in the orchard, and I lived in the old manor-house, in a
huge pillared hall where there was no furniture except a large divan, on
which I slept, and a table at which I used to play patience. Even in
calm weather there was always a moaning in the chimney, and in a storm
the whole house would rock and seem as though it must split, and it was
quite terrifying, especially at night, when all the ten great windows
were suddenly lit up by a flash of lightning.

Doomed by fate to permanent idleness, I did positively nothing. For
hours together I would sit and look through the windows at the sky, the
birds, the trees and read my letters over and over again, and then for
hours together I would sleep. Sometimes I would go out and wander
aimlessly until evening.

Once on my way home I came unexpectedly on a strange farmhouse. The sun
was already setting, and the lengthening shadows were thrown over the
ripening corn. Two rows of closely planted tall fir-trees stood like two
thick walls, forming a sombre, magnificent avenue. I climbed the fence
and walked up the avenue, slipping on the fir needles which lay two
inches thick on the ground. It was still, dark, and only here and there
in the tops of the trees shimmered a bright gold light casting the
colours of the rainbow on a spider's web. The smell of the firs was
almost suffocating. Then I turned into an avenue of limes. And here too
were desolation and decay; the dead leaves rustled mournfully beneath my
feet, and there were lurking shadows among the trees. To the right, in
an old orchard, a goldhammer sang a faint reluctant song, and he too
must have been old. The lime-trees soon came to an end and I came to a
white house with a terrace and a mezzanine, and suddenly a vista opened
upon a farmyard with a pond and a bathing-shed, and a row of green
willows, with a village beyond, and above it stood a tall, slender
belfry, on which glowed a cross catching the light of the setting sun.
For a moment I was possessed with a sense of enchantment, intimate,
particular, as though I had seen the scene before in my childhood.

By the white-stone gate surmounted with stone lions, which led from the
yard into the field, stood two girls. One of them, the elder, thin,
pale, very handsome, with masses of chestnut hair and a little stubborn
mouth, looked rather prim and scarcely glanced at me; the other, who was
quite young--seventeen or eighteen, no more, also thin and pale, with a
big mouth and big eyes, looked at me in surprise, as I passed, said
something in English and looked confused, and it seemed to me that I had
always known their dear faces. And I returned home feeling as though I
had awoke from a pleasant dream.

Soon after that, one afternoon, when Bielokurov and I were walking near
the house, suddenly there came into the yard a spring-carriage in which
sat one of the two girls, the elder. She had come to ask for
subscriptions to a fund for those who had suffered in a recent fire.
Without looking at us, she told us very seriously how many houses had
been burned down in Sianov, how many men, women, and children had been
left without shelter, and what had been done by the committee of which
she was a member. She gave us the list for us to write our names, put it
away, and began to say good-bye.

"You have completely forgotten us, Piotr Petrovich," she said to
Bielokurov, as she gave him her hand. "Come and see us, and if Mr. N.
(she said my name) would like to see how the admirers of his talent live
and would care to come and see us, then mother and I would be very
pleased."

I bowed.

When she had gone Piotr Petrovich began to tell me about her. The girl,
he said, was of a good family and her name was Lydia Volchaninov, and
the estate, on which she lived with her mother and sister, was called,
like the village on the other side of the pond, Sholkovka. Her father
had once occupied an eminent position in Moscow and died a privy
councillor. Notwithstanding their large means, the Volchaninovs always
lived in the village, summer and winter, and Lydia was a teacher in the
Zemstvo School at Sholkovka and earned twenty-five roubles a month. She
only spent what she earned on herself and was proud of her independence.

"They are an interesting family," said Bielokurov. "We ought to go and
see them. They will be very glad to see you."

One afternoon, during a holiday, we remembered the Volchaninovs and went
over to Sholkovka. They were all at home. The mother, Ekaterina
Pavlovna, had obviously once been handsome, but now she was stouter
than her age warranted, suffered from asthma, was melancholy and
absent-minded as she tried to entertain me with talk about painting.
When she heard from her daughter that I might perhaps come over to
Sholkovka, she hurriedly called to mind a few of my landscapes which she
had seen in exhibitions in Moscow, and now she asked what I had tried to
express in them. Lydia, or as she was called at home, Lyda, talked more
to Bielokurov than to me. Seriously and without a smile, she asked him
why he did not work for the Zemstvo and why up till now he had never
been to a Zemstvo meeting.

"It is not right of you, Piotr Petrovich," she said reproachfully. "It
is not right. It is a shame."

"True, Lyda, true," said her mother. "It is not right."

"All our district is in Balaguin's hands," Lyda went on, turning to me.
"He is the chairman of the council and all the jobs in the district are
given to his nephews and brothers-in-law, and he does exactly as he
likes. We ought to fight him. The young people ought to form a strong
party; but you see what our young men are like. It is a shame, Piotr
Petrovich."

The younger sister, Genya, was silent during the conversation about the
Zemstvo. She did not take part in serious conversations, for by the
family she was not considered grown-up, and they gave her her baby-name,
Missyuss, because as a child she used to call her English governess
that. All the time she examined me curiously and when I looked at the
photograph-album she explained: "This is my uncle.... That is my
godfather," and fingered the portraits, and at the same time touched me
with her shoulder in a childlike way, and I could see her small,
undeveloped bosom, her thin shoulders, her long, slim waist tightly
drawn in by a belt.

We played croquet and lawn-tennis, walked in the garden, had tea, and
then a large supper. After the huge pillared hall, I felt out of tune in
the small cosy house, where there were no oleographs on the walls and
the servants were treated considerately, and everything seemed to me
young and pure, through the presence of Lyda and Missyuss, and
everything was decent and orderly. At supper Lyda again talked to
Bielokurov about the Zemstvo, about Balaguin, about school libraries.
She was a lively, sincere, serious girl, and it was interesting to
listen to her, though she spoke at length and in a loud voice--perhaps
because she was used to holding forth at school. On the other hand,
Piotr Petrovich, who from his university days had retained the habit of
reducing any conversation to a discussion, spoke tediously, slowly, and
deliberately, with an obvious desire to be taken for a clever and
progressive man. He gesticulated and upset the sauce with his sleeve and
it made a large pool on the table-cloth, though nobody but myself seemed
to notice it.

When we returned home the night was dark and still.

"I call it good breeding," said Bielokurov, with a sigh, "not so much
not to upset the sauce on the table, as not to notice it when some one
else has done it. Yes. An admirable intellectual family. I'm rather out
of touch with nice people. Ah! terribly. And all through business,
business, business!"

He went on to say what hard work being a good farmer meant. And I
thought: What a stupid, lazy lout! When we talked seriously he would
drag it out with his awful drawl--er, er, er--and he works just as he
talks--slowly, always behindhand, never up to time; and as for his being
businesslike, I don't believe it, for he often keeps letters given him
to post for weeks in his pocket.

"The worst of it is," he murmured as he walked along by my side, "the
worst of it is that you go working away and never get any sympathy from
anybody."


II

I began to frequent the Volchaninovs' house. Usually I sat on the bottom
step of the veranda. I was filled with dissatisfaction, vague discontent
with my life, which had passed so quickly and uninterestingly, and I
thought all the while how good it would be to tear out of my breast my
heart which had grown so weary. There would be talk going on on the
terrace, the rustling of dresses, the fluttering of the pages of a
book. I soon got used to Lyda receiving the sick all day long, and
distributing books, and I used often to go with her to the village,
bareheaded, under an umbrella. And in the evening she would hold forth
about the Zemstvo and schools. She was very handsome, subtle, correct,
and her lips were thin and sensitive, and whenever a serious
conversation started she would say to me drily:

"This won't interest you."

I was not sympathetic to her. She did not like me because I was a
landscape-painter, and in my pictures did not paint the suffering of the
masses, and I seemed to her indifferent to what she believed in. I
remember once driving along the shore of the Baikal and I met a Bouryat
girl, in shirt and trousers of Chinese cotton, on horseback: I asked her
if she would sell me her pipe and, while we were talking, she looked
with scorn at my European face and hat, and in a moment she got bored
with talking to me, whooped and galloped away. And in exactly the same
way Lyda despised me as a stranger. Outwardly she never showed her
dislike of me, but I felt it, and, as I sat on the bottom step of the
terrace, I had a certain irritation and said that treating the peasants
without being a doctor meant deceiving them, and that it is easy to be
a benefactor when one owns four thousand acres.

Her sister, Missyuss, had no such cares and spent her time in complete
idleness, like myself. As soon as she got up in the morning she would
take a book and read it on the terrace, sitting far back in a lounge
chair so that her feet hardly touched the ground, or she would hide
herself with her book in the lime-walk, or she would go through the gate
into the field. She would read all day long, eagerly poring over the
book, and only through her looking fatigued, dizzy, and pale sometimes,
was it possible to guess how much her reading exhausted her. When she
saw me come she would blush a little and leave her book, and, looking
into my face with her big eyes, she would tell me of things that had
happened, how the chimney in the servants' room had caught fire, or how
the labourer had caught a large fish in the pond. On week-days she
usually wore a bright-coloured blouse and a dark-blue skirt. We used to
go out together and pluck cherries for jam, in the boat, and when she
jumped to reach a cherry, or pulled the oars, her thin, round arms would
shine through her wide sleeves. Or I would make a sketch and she would
stand and watch me breathlessly.

One Sunday, at the end of June, I went over to the Volchaninovs in the
morning about nine o'clock. I walked through the park, avoiding the
house, looking for mushrooms, which were very plentiful that summer,
and marking them so as to pick them later with Genya. A warm wind was
blowing. I met Genya and her mother, both in bright Sunday dresses,
going home from church, and Genya was holding her hat against the wind.
They told me they were going to have tea on the terrace.

As a man without a care in the world, seeking somehow to justify his
constant idleness, I have always found such festive mornings in a
country house universally attractive. When the green garden, still moist
with dew, shines in the sun and seems happy, and when the terrace smells
of mignonette and oleander, and the young people have just returned from
church and drink tea in the garden, and when they are all so gaily
dressed and so merry, and when you know that all these healthy,
satisfied, beautiful people will do nothing all day long, then you long
for all life to be like that. So I thought then as I walked through the
garden, quite prepared to drift like that without occupation or purpose,
all through the day, all through the summer.

Genya carried a basket and she looked as though she knew that she would
find me there. We gathered mushrooms and talked, and whenever she asked
me a question she stood in front of me to see my face.

"Yesterday," she said, "a miracle happened in our village. Pelagueya,
the cripple, has been ill for a whole year, and no doctors or medicines
were any good, but yesterday an old woman muttered over her and she got
better."

"That's nothing," I said. "One should not go to sick people and old
women for miracles. Is not health a miracle? And life itself? A miracle
is something incomprehensible."

"And you are not afraid of the incomprehensible?"

"No. I like to face things I do not understand and I do not submit to
them. I am superior to them. Man must think himself higher than lions,
tigers, stars, higher than anything in nature, even higher than that
which seems incomprehensible and miraculous. Otherwise he is not a man,
but a mouse which is afraid of everything."

Genya thought that I, as an artist, knew a great deal and could guess
what I did not know. She wanted me to lead her into the region of the
eternal and the beautiful, into the highest world, with which, as she
thought, I was perfectly familiar, and she talked to me of God, of
eternal life, of the miraculous. And I, who did not admit that I and my
imagination would perish for ever, would reply: "Yes. Men are immortal.
Yes, eternal life awaits us." And she would listen and believe me and
never asked for proof.

As we approached the house she suddenly stopped and said:

"Our Lyda is a remarkable person, isn't she? I love her dearly and would
gladly sacrifice my life for her at any time. But tell me"--Genya
touched my sleeve with her finger--"but tell me, why do you argue with
her all the time? Why are you so irritated?"

"Because she is not right."

Genya shook her head and tears came to her eyes.

"How incomprehensible!" she muttered.

At that moment Lyda came out, and she stood by the balcony with a
riding-whip in her hand, and looked very fine and pretty in the
sunlight as she gave some orders to a farm-hand. Bustling about and
talking loudly, she tended two or three of her patients, and then with a
businesslike, preoccupied look she walked through the house, opening one
cupboard after another, and at last went off to the attic; it took some
time to find her for dinner and she did not come until we had finished
the soup. Somehow I remember all these, little details and love to dwell
on them, and I remember the whole of that day vividly, though nothing
particular happened. After dinner Genya read, lying in her lounge chair,
and I sat on the bottom step of the terrace. We were silent. The sky was
overcast and a thin fine rain began to fall. It was hot, the wind had
dropped, and it seemed the day would never end. Ekaterina Pavlovna came
out on to the terrace with a fan, looking very sleepy.

"O, mamma," said Genya, kissing her hand. "It is not good for you to
sleep during the day."

They adored each other. When one went into the garden, the other would
stand on the terrace and look at the trees and call: "Hello!" "Genya!"
or "Mamma, dear, where are you?" They always prayed together and shared
the same faith, and they understood each other very well, even when they
were silent. And they treated other people in exactly the same way.
Ekaterina Pavlovna also soon got used to me and became attached to me,
and when I did not turn up for a few days she would send to inquire if I
was well. And she too used to look admiringly at my sketches, and with
the same frank loquacity she would tell me things that happened, and she
would confide her domestic secrets to me.

She revered her elder daughter. Lyda never came to her for caresses, and
only talked about serious things: she went her own way and to her mother
and sister she was as sacred and enigmatic as the admiral, sitting in
his cabin, to his sailors.

"Our Lyda is a remarkable person," her mother would often say; "isn't
she?"

And, now, as the soft rain fell, we spoke of Lyda:

"She is a remarkable woman," said her mother, and added in a low voice
like a conspirator's as she looked round, "such as she have to be looked
for with a lamp in broad daylight, though you know, I am beginning to be
anxious. The school, pharmacies, books--all very well, but why go to
such extremes? She is twenty-three and it is time for her to think
seriously about herself. If she goes on with her books and her
pharmacies she won't know how life has passed.... She ought to marry."

Genya, pale with reading, and with her hair ruffled, looked up and said,
as if to herself, as she glanced at her mother:

"Mamma, dear, everything depends on the will of God."

And once more she plunged into her book.

Bielokurov came over in a _poddiovka_, wearing an embroidered shirt. We
played croquet and lawn-tennis, and when it grew dark we had a long
supper, and Lyda once more spoke of her schools and Balaguin, who had
got the whole district into his own hands. As I left the Volchaninovs
that night I carried away an impression of a long, long idle day, with a
sad consciousness that everything ends, however long it may be. Genya
took me to the gate, and perhaps, because she had spent the whole day
with me from the beginning to end, I felt somehow lonely without her,
and the whole kindly family was dear to me: and for the first time
during the whole of that summer I had a desire to work.

"Tell me why you lead such a monotonous life," I asked Bielokurov, as we
went home. "My life is tedious, dull, monotonous, because I am a
painter, a queer fish, and have been worried all my life with envy,
discontent, disbelief in my work: I am always poor, I am a vagabond, but
you are a wealthy, normal man, a landowner, a gentleman--why do you live
so tamely and take so little from life? Why, for instance, haven't you
fallen in love with Lyda or Genya?"

"You forget that I love another woman," answered Bielokurov.

He meant his mistress, Lyabor Ivanovna, who lived with him in the
orchard house. I used to see the lady every day, very stout, podgy,
pompous, like a fatted goose, walking in the garden in a Russian
head-dress, always with a sunshade, and the servants used to call her to
meals or tea. Three years ago she rented a part of his house for the
summer, and stayed on to live with Bielokurov, apparently for ever. She
was ten years older than he and managed him very strictly, so that he
had to ask her permission to go out. She would often sob and make
horrible noises like a man with a cold, and then I used to send and tell
her that I'm if she did not stop I would go away. Then she would stop.

When we reached home, Bielokurov sat down on the divan and frowned and
brooded, and I began to pace up and down the hall, feeling a sweet
stirring in me, exactly like the stirring of love. I wanted to talk
about the Volchaninovs.

"Lyda could only fall in love with a Zemstvo worker like herself, some
one who is run off his legs with hospitals and schools," I said. "For
the sake of a girl like that a man might not only become a Zemstvo
worker, but might even become worn out, like the tale of the iron boots.
And Missyuss? How charming Missyuss is!"

Bielokurov began to talk at length and with his drawling er-er-ers of
the disease of the century--pessimism. He spoke confidently and
argumentatively. Hundreds of miles of deserted, monotonous, blackened
steppe could not so forcibly depress the mind as a man like that,
sitting and talking and showing no signs of going away.

"The point is neither pessimism nor optimism," I said irritably, "but
that ninety-nine out of a hundred have no sense."

Bielokurov took this to mean himself, was offended, and went away.


III

"The Prince is on a visit to Malozyomov and sends you his regards," said
Lyda to her mother, as she came in and took off her gloves. "He told me
many interesting things. He promised to bring forward in the Zemstvo
Council the question of a medical station at Malozyomov, but he says
there is little hope." And turning to me, she said: "Forgive me, I keep
forgetting that you are not interested."

I felt irritated.

"Why not?" I asked and shrugged my shoulders. "You don't care about my
opinion, but I assure you, the question greatly interests me."

"Yes?"

"In my opinion there is absolutely no need for a medical station at
Malozyomov."

My irritation affected her: she gave a glance at me, half closed her
eyes and said:

"What is wanted then? Landscapes?"

"Not landscapes either. Nothing is wanted there."

She finished taking off her gloves and took up a newspaper which had
just come by post; a moment later, she said quietly, apparently
controlling herself:

"Last week Anna died in childbirth, and if a medical man had been
available she would have lived. However, I suppose landscape-painters
are entitled to their opinions."

"I have a very definite opinion, I assure you," said I, and she took
refuge behind the newspaper, as though she did not wish to listen. "In
my opinion medical stations, schools, libraries, pharmacies, under
existing conditions, only lead to slavery. The masses are caught in a
vast chain: you do not cut it but only add new links to it. That is my
opinion."

She looked at me and smiled mockingly, and I went on, striving to catch
the thread of my ideas.

"It does not matter that Anna should die in childbirth, but it does
matter that all these Annas, Mavras, Pelagueyas, from dawn to sunset
should be grinding away, ill from overwork, all their lives worried
about their starving sickly children; all their lives they are afraid of
death and disease, and have to be looking after themselves; they fade in
youth, grow old very early, and die in filth and dirt; their children as
they grow up go the same way and hundreds of years slip by and millions
of people live worse than animals--in constant dread of never having a
crust to eat; but the horror of their position is that they have no time
to think of their souls, no time to remember that they are made in the
likeness of God; hunger, cold, animal fear, incessant work, like drifts
of snow block all the ways to spiritual activity, to the very thing that
distinguishes man from the animals, and is the only thing indeed that
makes life worth living. You come to their assistance with hospitals and
schools, but you do not free them from their fetters; on the contrary,
you enslave them even more, since by introducing new prejudices into
their lives, you increase the number of their demands, not to mention
the fact that they have to pay the Zemstvo for their drugs and
pamphlets, and therefore, have to work harder than ever."

"I will not argue with you," said Lyda. "I have heard all that." She put
down her paper. "I will only tell you one thing, it is no good sitting
with folded hands. It is true, we do not save mankind, and perhaps we do
make mistakes, but we do what we can and we are right. The highest and
most sacred truth for an educated being--is to help his neighbours, and
we do what we can to help. You do not like it, but it is impossible to
please everybody."

"True, Lyda, true," said her mother.

In Lyda's presence her courage always failed her, and as she talked she
would look timidly at her, for she was afraid of saying something
foolish or out of place: and she never contradicted, but would always
agree: "True, Lyda, true."

"Teaching peasants to read and write, giving them little moral pamphlets
and medical assistance, cannot decrease either ignorance or mortality,
just as the light from your windows cannot illuminate this huge garden,"
I said. "You give nothing by your interference in the lives of these
people. You only create new demands, and a new compulsion to work."

"Ah! My God, but we must do something!" said Lyda exasperatedly, and I
could tell by her voice that she thought my opinions negligible and
despised me.

"It is necessary," I said, "to free people from hard physical work. It
is necessary to relieve them of their yoke, to give them breathing
space, to save them from spending their whole lives in the kitchen or
the byre, in the fields; they should have time to take thought of their
souls, of God and to develop their spiritual capacities. Every human
being's salvation lies in spiritual activity--in his continual search
for truth and the meaning of life. Give them some relief from rough,
animal labour, let them feel free, then you will see how ridiculous at
bottom your pamphlets and pharmacies are. Once a human being is aware of
his vocation, then he can only be satisfied with religion, service, art,
and not with trifles like that."

"Free them from work?" Lyda gave a smile. "Is that possible?"

"Yes.... Take upon yourself a part of their work. If we all, in town and
country, without exception, agreed to share the work which is being
spent by mankind in the satisfaction of physical demands, then none of
us would have to work more than two or three hours a day. If all of us,
rich and poor, worked three hours a day the rest of our time would be
free. And then to be still less dependent on our bodies, we should
invent machines to do the work and we should try to reduce our demands
to the minimum. We should toughen ourselves and our children should not
be afraid of hunger and cold, and we should not be anxious about their
health, as Anna, Maria, Pelagueya were anxious. Then supposing we did
not bother about doctors and pharmacies, and did away with tobacco
factories and distilleries--what a lot of free time we should have! We
should give our leisure to service and the arts. Just as peasants all
work together to repair the roads, so the whole community would work
together to seek truth and the meaning of life, and, I am sure of
it--truth would be found very soon, man would get rid of his continual,
poignant, depressing fear of death and even of death itself."

"But you contradict yourself," said Lyda. "You talk about service and
deny education."

"I deny the education of a man who can only use it to read the signs on
the public houses and possibly a pamphlet which he is incapable of
understanding--the kind of education we have had from the time of
Riurik: and village life has remained exactly as it was then. Not
education is wanted but freedom for the full development of spiritual
capacities. Not schools are wanted but universities."

"You deny medicine too."

"Yes. It should only be used for the investigation of diseases, as
natural phenomenon, not for their cure. It is no good curing diseases if
you don't cure their causes. Remove the chief cause--physical labour,
and there will be no diseases. I don't acknowledge the science which
cures," I went on excitedly. "Science and art, when they are true, are
directed not to temporary or private purposes, but to the eternal and
the general--they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God,
the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities,
like pharmacies and libraries, then they only complicate and encumber
life. We have any number of doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, and highly
educated people, but we have no biologists, mathematicians,
philosophers, poets. All our intellectual and spiritual energy is wasted
on temporary passing needs.... Scientists, writers, painters work and
work, and thanks to them the comforts of life grow greater every day,
the demands of the body multiply, but we are still a long way from the
truth and man still remains the most rapacious and unseemly of animals,
and everything tends to make the majority of mankind degenerate and more
and more lacking in vitality. Under such conditions the life of an
artist has no meaning and the more talented he is, the more strange and
incomprehensible his position is, since it only amounts to his working
for the amusement of the predatory, disgusting animal, man, and
supporting the existing state of things. And I don't want to work and
will not.... Nothing is wanted, so let the world go to hell."

"Missyuss, go away," said Lyda to her sister, evidently thinking my
words dangerous to so young a girl.

Genya looked sadly at her sister and mother and went out.

"People generally talk like that," said Lyda, "when they want to excuse
their indifference. It is easier to deny hospitals and schools than to
come and teach."

"True, Lyda, true," her mother agreed.

"You say you will not work," Lyda went on. "Apparently you set a high
price on your work, but do stop arguing. We shall never agree, since I
value the most imperfect library or pharmacy, of which you spoke so
scornfully just now, more than all the landscapes in the world." And at
once she turned to her mother and began to talk in quite a different
tone: "The Prince has got very thin, and is much changed since the last
time he was here. The doctors are sending him to Vichy."

She talked to her mother about the Prince to avoid talking to me. Her
face was burning, and, in order to conceal her agitation, she bent over
the table as if she were short-sighted and made a show of reading the
newspaper. My presence was distasteful to her. I took my leave and went
home.


IV

All was quiet outside: the village on the other side of the pond was
already asleep, not a single light was to be seen, and on the pond
there was only the faint reflection of the stars. By the gate with the
stone lions stood Genya, waiting to accompany me.

"The village is asleep," I said, trying to see her face in the darkness,
and I could see her dark sad eyes fixed on me. "The innkeeper and the
horse-stealers are sleeping quietly, and decent people like ourselves
quarrel and irritate each other."

It was a melancholy August night--melancholy because it already smelled
of the autumn: the moon rose behind a purple cloud and hardly lighted
the road and the dark fields of winter corn on either side. Stars fell
frequently, Genya walked beside me on the road and tried not to look at
the sky, to avoid seeing the falling stars, which somehow frightened
her.

"I believe you are right," she said, trembling in the evening chill. "If
people could give themselves to spiritual activity, they would soon
burst everything."

"Certainly. We are superior beings, and if we really knew all the power
of the human genius and lived only for higher purposes then we should
become like gods. But this will never be. Mankind will degenerate and of
their genius not a trace will be left."

When the gate was out of sight Genya stopped and hurriedly shook my
hand.

"Good night," she said, trembling; her shoulders were covered only with
a thin blouse and she was shivering with cold. "Come to-morrow."

I was filled with a sudden dread of being left alone with my inevitable
dissatisfaction with myself and people, and I, too, tried not to see the
falling stars.

"Stay with me a little longer," I said. "Please."

I loved Genya, and she must have loved me, because she used to meet me
and walk with me, and because she looked at me with tender admiration.
How thrillingly beautiful her pale face was, her thin nose, her arms,
her slenderness, her idleness, her constant reading. And her mind? I
suspected her of having an unusual intellect: I was fascinated by the
breadth of her views, perhaps because she thought differently from the
strong, handsome Lyda, who did not love me. Genya liked me as a painter,
I had conquered her heart by my talent, and I longed passionately to
paint only for her, and I dreamed of her as my little queen, who would
one day possess with me the trees, the fields, the river, the dawn, all
Nature, wonderful and fascinating, with whom, as with them, I have felt
helpless and useless.

"Stay with me a moment longer," I called. "I implore you."

I took off my overcoat and covered her childish shoulders. Fearing that
she would look queer and ugly in a man's coat, she began to laugh and
threw it off, and as she did so, I embraced her and began to cover her
face, her shoulders, her arms with kisses.

"Till to-morrow," she whispered timidly as though she was afraid to
break the stillness of the night. She embraced me: "We have no secrets
from one another. I must tell mamma and my sister.... Is it so terrible?
Mamma will be pleased. Mamma loves you, but Lyda!"

She ran to the gates.

"Good-bye," she called out.

For a couple of minutes I stood and heard her running. I had no desire
to go home, there was nothing there to go for. I stood for a while lost
in thought, and then quietly dragged myself back, to have one more look
at the house in which she lived, the dear, simple, old house, which
seemed to look at me with the windows of the mezzanine for eyes, and to
understand everything. I walked past the terrace, sat down on a bench by
the lawn-tennis court, in the darkness under an old elm-tree, and looked
at the house. In the windows of the mezzanine, where Missyuss had her
room, shone a bright light, and then a faint green glow. The lamp had
been covered with a shade. Shadows began to move.... I was filled with
tenderness and a calm satisfaction, to think that I could let myself be
carried away and fall in love, and at the same time I felt uneasy at the
thought that only a few yards away in one of the rooms of the house lay
Lyda who did not love me, and perhaps hated me. I sat and waited to see
if Genya would come out. I listened attentively and it seemed to me they
were sitting in the mezzanine.

An hour passed. The green light went out, and the shadows were no longer
visible. The moon hung high above the house and lit the sleeping garden
and the avenues: I could distinctly see the dahlias and roses in the
flower-bed in front of the house, and all seemed to be of one colour. It
was very cold. I left the garden, picked up my overcoat in the road, and
walked slowly home.

Next day after dinner when I went to the Volchaninovs', the glass door
was wide open. I sat down on the terrace expecting Genya to come from
behind the flower-bed or from one of the avenues, or to hear her voice
come from out of the rooms; then I went into the drawing-room and the
dining-room. There was not a soul to be seen. From the dining-room I
went down a long passage into the hall, and then back again. There were
several doors in the passage and behind one of them I could hear Lyda's
voice:

"To the crow somewhere ... God ..."--she spoke slowly and distinctly,
and was probably dictating--" ... God sent a piece of cheese.... To the
crow ... somewhere.... Who is there?" she called out suddenly as she
heard my footsteps.

"It is I."

"Oh! excuse me. I can't come out just now. I am teaching Masha."

"Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?"

"No. She and my sister left to-day for my Aunt's in Penga, and in the
winter they are probably going abroad." She added after a short silence:
"To the crow somewhere God sent a pi-ece of cheese. Have you got that?"

I went out into the hall, and, without a thought in my head, stood and
looked out at the pond and the village, and still I heard:

"A piece of cheese.... To the crow somewhere God sent a piece of
cheese."

And I left the house by the way I had come the first time, only
reversing the order, from the yard into the garden, past the house, then
along the lime-walk. Here a boy overtook me and handed me a note: "I
have told my sister everything and she insists on my parting from you,"
I read. "I could not hurt her by disobeying. God will give you
happiness. If you knew how bitterly mamma and I have cried."

Then through the fir avenue and the rotten fence. ...Over the fields
where the corn was ripening and the quails screamed, cows and shackled
horses now were browsing. Here and there on the hills the winter corn
was already showing green. A sober, workaday mood possessed me and I was
ashamed of all I had said at the Volchaninovs', and once more it became
tedious to go on living. I went home, packed my things, and left that
evening for Petersburg.

* * *

I never saw the Volchaninovs again. Lately on my way to the Crimea I met
Bielokurov at a station. As of old he was in a _poddiovka_, wearing an
embroidered shirt, and when I asked after his health, he replied:
"Quite well, thanks be to God." He began to talk. He had sold his estate
and bought another, smaller one in the name of Lyabov Ivanovna. He told
me a little about the Volchaninovs. Lyda, he said, still lived at
Sholkovka and taught the children in the school; little by little she
succeeded in gathering round herself a circle of sympathetic people, who
formed a strong party, and at the last Zemstvo election they drove out
Balaguin, who up till then had had the whole district in his hands. Of
Genya Bielokurov said that she did not live at home and he did not know
where she was.

I have already begun to forget about the house with the mezzanine, and
only now and then, when I am working or reading, suddenly--without rhyme
or reason--I remember the green light in the window, and the sound of my
own footsteps as I walked through the fields that night, when I was in
love, rubbing my hands to keep them warm. And even more rarely, when I
am sad and lonely, I begin already to recollect and it seems to me that
I, too, am being remembered and waited for, and that we shall meet....

Missyuss, where are you?





TYPHUS


In a smoking-compartment of the mail-train from Petrograd to Moscow sat
a young lieutenant, Klimov by name. Opposite him sat an elderly man with
a clean-shaven, shipmaster's face, to all appearances a well-to-do Finn
or Swede, who all through the journey smoked a pipe and talked round and
round the same subject.

"Ha! you are an officer! My brother is also an officer, but he is a
sailor. He is a sailor and is stationed at Kronstadt. Why are you going
to Moscow?"

"I am stationed there."

"Ha! Are you married?"

"No. I live with my aunt and sister."

"My brother is also an officer, but he is married and has a wife and
three children. Ha!"

The Finn looked surprised at something, smiled broadly and fatuously as
he exclaimed, "Ha," and every now and then blew through the stem of his
pipe. Klimov, who was feeling rather unwell, and not at all inclined to
answer questions, hated him with all his heart. He thought how good it
would be to snatch his gurgling pipe out of his hands and throw it under
the seat and to order the Finn himself into another car.

"They are awful people, these Finns and ... Greeks," he thought.
"Useless, good-for-nothing, disgusting people. They only cumber the
earth. What is the good of them?"

And the thought of Finns and Greeks filled him with a kind of nausea. He
tried to compare them with the French and the Italians, but the idea of
those races somehow roused in him the notion of organ-grinders, naked
women, and the foreign oleographs which hung over the chest of drawers
in his aunt's house.

The young officer felt generally out of sorts. There seemed to be no
room for his arms and legs, though he had the whole seat to himself; his
mouth was dry and sticky, his head was heavy and his clouded thoughts
seemed to wander at random, not only in his head, but also outside it
among the seats and the people looming in the darkness. Through the
turmoil in his brain, as through a dream, he heard the murmur of
voices, the rattle of the wheels, the slamming of doors. Bells,
whistles, conductors, the tramp of the people on the platforms came
oftener than usual. The time slipped by quickly, imperceptibly, and it
seemed that the train stopped every minute at a station as now and then
there would come up the sound of metallic voices:

"Is the post ready?"

"Ready."

It seemed to him that the stove-neater came in too often to look at the
thermometer, and that trains never stopped passing and his own train was
always roaring over bridges. The noise, the whistle, the Finn, the
tobacco smoke--all mixed with the ominous shifting of misty shapes,
weighed on Klimov like an intolerable nightmare. In terrible anguish he
lifted up his aching head, looked at the lamp whose light was encircled
with shadows and misty spots; he wanted to ask for water, but his dry
tongue would hardly move, and he had hardly strength enough to answer
the Finn's questions. He tried to lie down more comfortably and sleep,
but he could not succeed; the Finn fell asleep several times, woke up
and lighted his pipe, talked to him with his "Ha!" and went to sleep
again; and the lieutenant could still not find room for his legs on the
seat, and all the while the ominous figures shifted before his eyes.

At Spirov he got out to have a drink of water. He saw some people
sitting at a table eating hurriedly.

"How can they eat?" he thought, trying to avoid the smell of roast meat
in the air and seeing the chewing mouths, for both seemed to him utterly
disgusting and made him feel sick.

A handsome lady was talking to a military man in a red cap, and she
showed magnificent white teeth when she smiled; her smile, her teeth,
the lady herself produced in Klimov the same impression of disgust as
the ham and the fried cutlets. He could not understand how the military
man in the red cap could bear to sit near her and look at her healthy
smiling face.

After he had drunk some water, he went back to his place. The Finn sat
and smoked. His pipe gurgled and sucked like a galoche full of holes in
dirty weather.

"Ha!" he said with some surprise. "What station is this?"

"I don't know," said Klimov, lying down and shutting his mouth to keep
out the acrid tobacco smoke.

"When do we get to Tver."

"I don't know. I am sorry, I ... I can't talk. I am not well. I have a
cold."

The Finn knocked out his pipe against the window-frame and began to talk
of his brother, the sailor. Klimov paid no more attention to him and
thought in agony of his soft, comfortable bed, of the bottle of cold
water, of his sister Katy, who knew so well how to tuck him up and
cosset him. He even smiled when there flashed across his mind his
soldier-servant Pavel, taking off his heavy, close-fitting boots and
putting water on the table. It seemed to him that he would only have to
lie on his bed and drink some water and his nightmare would give way to
a sound, healthy sleep.

"Is the post ready?" came a dull voice from a distance.

"Ready," answered a loud, bass voice almost by the very window.

It was the second or third station from Spirov.

Time passed quickly, seemed to gallop along, and there would be no end
to the bells, whistles, and stops. In despair Klimov pressed his face
into the corner of the cushion, held his head in his hands, and again
began to think of his sister Katy and his orderly Pavel; but his sister
and his orderly got mixed up with the looming figures and whirled about
and disappeared. His breath, thrown back from the cushion, burned his
face, and his legs ached and a draught from the window poured into his
back, but, painful though it was, he refused to change his position....
A heavy, drugging torpor crept over him and chained his limbs.

When at length he raised his head, the car was quite light. The
passengers were putting on their overcoats and moving about. The train
stopped. Porters in white aprons and number-plates bustled about the
passengers and seized their boxes. Klimov put on his greatcoat
mechanically and left the train, and he felt as though it were not
himself walking, but some one else, a stranger, and he felt that he was
accompanied by the heat of the train, his thirst, and the ominous,
lowering figures which all night long had prevented his sleeping.
Mechanically he got his luggage and took a cab. The cabman charged him
one rouble and twenty-five copecks for driving him to Povarska Street,
but he did not haggle and submissively took his seat in the sledge. He
could still grasp the difference in numbers, but money had no value to
him whatever.

At home Klimov was met by his aunt and his sister Katy, a girl of
eighteen. Katy had a copy-book and a pencil in her hands as she greeted
him, and he remembered that she was preparing for a teacher's
examination. He took no notice of their greetings and questions, but
gasped from the heat, and walked aimlessly through the rooms until he
reached his own, and then he fell prone on the bed. The Finn, the red
cap, the lady with the white teeth, the smell of roast meat, the
shifting spot in the lamp, filled his mind and he lost consciousness
and did not hear the frightened voices near him.

When he came to himself he found himself in bed, undressed, and noticed
the water-bottle and Pavel, but it did not make him any more comfortable
nor easy. His legs and arms, as before, felt cramped, his tongue clove
to his palate, and he could hear the chuckle of the Finn's pipe.... By
the bed, growing out of Pavel's broad back, a stout, black-bearded
doctor was bustling.

"All right, all right, my lad," he murmured. "Excellent, excellent....
Jist so, jist so...."

The doctor called Klimov "my lad." Instead of "just so," he said "jist
saow," and instead of "yes," "yies."

"Yies, yies, yies," he said. "Jist saow, jist saow.... Don't be
downhearted!"

The doctor's quick, careless way of speaking, his well-fed face, and the
condescending tone in which he said "my lad" exasperated Klimov.

"Why do you call me 'my lad'?" he moaned. "Why this familiarity, damn it
all?"

And he was frightened by the sound of his own voice. It was so dry,
weak, and hollow that he could hardly recognise it.

"Excellent, excellent," murmured the doctor, not at all offended. "Yies,
yies. You mustn't be cross."

And at home the time galloped away as alarmingly quickly as in the
train.... The light of day in his bedroom was every now and then changed
to the dim light of evening.... The doctor never seemed to leave the
bedside, and his "Yies, yies, yies," could be heard at every moment.
Through the room stretched an endless row of faces; Pavel, the Finn,
Captain Taroshevich, Sergeant Maximenko, the red cap, the lady with the
white teeth, the doctor. All of them talked, waved their hands, smoked,
ate. Once in broad daylight Klimov saw his regimental priest, Father
Alexander, in his stole and with the host in his hands, standing by the
bedside and muttering something with such a serious expression as Klimov
had never seen him wear before. The lieutenant remembered that Father
Alexander used to call all the Catholic officers Poles, and wishing to
make the priest laugh, he exclaimed:

"Father Taroshevich, the Poles have fled to the woods."

But Father Alexander, usually a gay, light-hearted man, did not laugh
and looked even more serious, and made the sign of the cross over
Klimov. At night, one after the other, there would come slowly creeping
in and out two shadows. They were his aunt and his sister. The shadow of
his sister would kneel down and pray; she would bow to the ikon, and her
grey shadow on the wall would bow, too, so that two shadows prayed to
God. And all the time there was a smell of roast meat and of the Finn's
pipe, but once Klimov could detect a distinct smell of incense. He
nearly vomited and cried:

"Incense! Take it away."

There was no reply. He could only hear priests chanting in an undertone
and some one running on the stairs.

When Klimov recovered from his delirium there was not a soul in the
bedroom. The morning sun flared through the window and the drawn
curtains, and a trembling beam, thin and keen as a sword, played on the
water-bottle. He could hear the rattle of wheels--that meant there was
no more snow in the streets. The lieutenant looked at the sunbeam, at
the familiar furniture and the door, and his first inclination was to
laugh. His chest and stomach trembled with a sweet, happy, tickling
laughter. From head to foot his whole body was filled with a feeling of
infinite happiness, like that which the first man must have felt when he
stood erect and beheld the world for the first time. Klimov had a
passionate longing for people, movement, talk. His body lay motionless;
he could only move his hands, but he hardly noticed it, for his whole
attention was fixed on little things. He was delighted with his
breathing and with his laughter; he was delighted with the existence of
the water-bottle, the ceiling, the sunbeam, the ribbon on the curtain.
God's world, even in such a narrow corner as his bedroom, seemed to him
beautiful, varied, great. When the doctor appeared the lieutenant
thought how nice his medicine was, how nice and sympathetic the doctor
was, how nice and interesting people were, on the whole.

"Yies, yies, yies," said the doctor. "Excellent, excellent. Now we are
well again. Jist saow. Jist saow."

The lieutenant listened and laughed gleefully. He remembered the Finn,
the lady with the white teeth, the train, and he wanted to eat and
smoke.

"Doctor," he said, "tell them to bring me a slice of rye bread and salt,
and some sardines...."

The doctor refused. Pavel did not obey his order and refused to go for
bread. The lieutenant could not bear it and began to cry like a thwarted
child.

"Ba-by," the doctor laughed. "Mamma! Hush-aby!"

Klimov also began to laugh, and when the doctor had gone, he fell sound
asleep. He woke up with the same feeling of joy and happiness. His aunt
was sitting by his bed.

"Oh, aunty!" He was very happy. "What has been the matter with me?"

"Typhus."

"I say! And now I am well, quite well! Where is Katy?"

"She is not at home. She has probably gone to see some one after her
examination."

The old woman bent over her stocking as she said this; her lips began to
tremble; she turned her face away and suddenly began to sob. In her
grief, she forgot the doctor's orders and cried:

"Oh! Katy! Katy! Our angel is gone from us! She is gone!"

She dropped her stocking and stooped down for it, and her cap fell off
her head. Klimov stared at her grey hair, could not understand, was
alarmed for Katy, and asked:

"But where is she, aunty?"

The old woman, who had already forgotten Klimov and remembered only her
grief, said:

"She caught typhus from you and ... and died. She was buried the day
before yesterday."

This sudden appalling piece of news came home to Klimov's mind, but
dreadful and shocking though it was it could not subdue the animal joy
which thrilled through the convalescent lieutenant. He cried, laughed,
and soon began to complain that he was given nothing to eat.

Only a week later, when, supported by Pavel, he walked in a
dressing-gown to the window, and saw the grey spring sky and heard the
horrible rattle of some old rails being carried by on a lorry, then his
heart ached with sorrow and he began to weep and pressed his forehead
against the window-frame.

"How unhappy I am!" he murmured. "My God, how unhappy I am!"

And joy gave way to his habitual weariness and a sense of his
irreparable loss.





GOOSEBERRIES


From early morning the sky had been overcast with clouds; the day was
still, cool, and wearisome, as usual on grey, dull days when the clouds
hang low over the fields and it looks like rain, which never comes. Ivan
Ivanich, the veterinary surgeon, and Bourkin, the schoolmaster, were
tired of walking and the fields seemed endless to them. Far ahead they
could just see the windmills of the village of Mirousky, to the right
stretched away to disappear behind the village a line of hills, and they
knew that it was the bank of the river; meadows, green willows,
farmhouses; and from one of the hills there could be seen a field as
endless, telegraph-posts, and the train, looking from a distance like a
crawling caterpillar, and in clear weather even the town. In the calm
weather when all Nature seemed gentle and melancholy, Ivan Ivanich and
Bourkin were filled with love for the fields and thought how grand and
beautiful the country was.

"Last time, when we stopped in Prokofyi's shed," said Bourkin, "you were
going to tell me a story."

"Yes. I wanted to tell you about my brother."

Ivan Ivanich took a deep breath and lighted his pipe before beginning
his story, but just then the rain began to fall. And in about five
minutes it came pelting down and showed no signs of stopping. Ivan
Ivanich stopped and hesitated; the dogs, wet through, stood with their
tails between their legs and looked at them mournfully.

"We ought to take shelter," said Bourkin. "Let us go to Aliokhin. It is
close by."

"Very well."

They took a short cut over a stubble-field and then bore to the right,
until they came to the road. Soon there appeared poplars, a garden, the
red roofs of granaries; the river began to glimmer and they came to a
wide road with a mill and a white bathing-shed. It was Sophino, where
Aliokhin lived.

The mill was working, drowning the sound of the rain, and the dam shook.
Round the carts stood wet horses, hanging their heads, and men were
walking about with their heads covered with sacks. It was wet, muddy,
and unpleasant, and the river looked cold and sullen. Ivan Ivanich and
Bourkin felt wet and uncomfortable through and through; their feet were
tired with walking in the mud, and they walked past the dam to the barn
in silence as though they were angry with each other.

In one of the barns a winnowing-machine was working, sending out clouds
of dust. On the threshold stood Aliokhin himself, a man of about forty,
tall and stout, with long hair, more like a professor or a painter than
a farmer. He was wearing a grimy white shirt and rope belt, and pants
instead of trousers; and his boots were covered with mud and straw. His
nose and eyes were black with dust. He recognised Ivan Ivanich and was
apparently very pleased.

"Please, gentlemen," he said, "go to the house. I'll be with you in a
minute."

The house was large and two-storied. Aliokhin lived down-stairs in two
vaulted rooms with little windows designed for the farm-hands; the
farmhouse was plain, and the place smelled of rye bread and vodka, and
leather. He rarely used the reception-rooms, only when guests arrived.
Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin were received by a chambermaid; such a pretty
young woman that both of them stopped and exchanged glances.

"You cannot imagine how glad I am to see you, gentlemen," said Aliokhin,
coming after them into the hall. "I never expected you. Pelagueya," he
said to the maid, "give my friends a change of clothes. And I will
change, too. But I must have a bath. I haven't had one since the spring.
Wouldn't you like to come to the bathing-shed? And meanwhile our things
will be got ready."

Pretty Pelagueya, dainty and sweet, brought towels and soap, and
Aliokhin led his guests to the bathing-shed.

"Yes," he said, "it is a long time since I had a bath. My bathing-shed
is all right, as you see. My father and I put it up, but somehow I have
no time to bathe."

He sat down on the step and lathered his long hair and neck, and the
water round him became brown.

"Yes. I see," said Ivan Ivanich heavily, looking at his head.

"It is a long time since I bathed," said Aliokhin shyly, as he soaped
himself again, and the water round him became dark blue, like ink.

Ivan Ivanich came out of the shed, plunged into the water with a splash,
and swam about in the rain, flapping his arms, and sending waves back,
and on the waves tossed white lilies; he swam out to the middle of the
pool and dived, and in a minute came up again in another place and kept
on swimming and diving, trying to reach the bottom. "Ah! how delicious!"
he shouted in his glee. "How delicious!" He swam to the mill, spoke to
the peasants, and came back, and in the middle of the pool he lay on his
back to let the rain fall on his face. Bourkin and Aliokhin were already
dressed and ready to go, but he kept on swimming and diving.

"Delicious," he said. "Too delicious!"

"You've had enough," shouted Bourkin.

They went to the house. And only when the lamp was lit in the large
drawing-room up-stairs, and Bourkin and Ivan Ivanich, dressed in silk
dressing-gowns and warm slippers, lounged in chairs, and Aliokhin
himself, washed and brushed, in a new frock coat, paced up and down
evidently delighting in the warmth and cleanliness and dry clothes and
slippers, and pretty Pelagueya, noiselessly tripping over the carpet and
smiling sweetly, brought in tea and jam on a tray, only then did Ivan
Ivanich begin his story, and it was as though he was being listened to
not only by Bourkin and Aliokhin, but also by the old and young ladies
and the officer who looked down so staidly and tranquilly from the
golden frames.

"We are two brothers," he began, "I, Ivan Ivanich, and Nicholai Ivanich,
two years younger. I went in for study and became a veterinary surgeon,
while Nicholai was at the Exchequer Court when he was nineteen. Our
father, Tchimasha-Himalaysky, was a cantonist, but he died with an
officer's rank and left us his title of nobility and a small estate.
After his death the estate went to pay his debts. However, we spent our
childhood there in the country. We were just like peasant's children,
spent days and nights in the fields and the woods, minded the house,
barked the lime-trees, fished, and so on.... And you know once a man has
fished, or watched the thrushes hovering in flocks over the village in
the bright, cool, autumn days, he can never really be a townsman, and to
the day of his death he will be drawn to the country. My brother pined
away in the Exchequer. Years passed and he sat in the same place, wrote
out the same documents, and thought of one thing, how to get back to the
country. And little by little his distress became a definite disorder, a
fixed idea--to buy a small farm somewhere by the bank of a river or a
lake.

"He was a good fellow and I loved him, but I never sympathised with the
desire to shut oneself up on one's own farm. It is a common saying that
a man needs only six feet of land. But surely a corpse wants that, not a
man. And I hear that our intellectuals have a longing for the land and
want to acquire farms. But it all comes down to the six feet of land. To
leave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and go and hide
yourself in a farmhouse is not life--it is egoism, laziness; it is a
kind of monasticism, but monasticism without action. A man needs, not
six feet of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature, where in
full liberty he can display all the properties and qualities of the free
spirit.

"My brother Nicholai, sitting in his office, would dream of eating his
own _schi_, with its savoury smell floating across the farmyard; and of
eating out in the open air, and of sleeping in the sun, and of sitting
for hours together on a seat by the gate and gazing at the field and the
forest. Books on agriculture and the hints in almanacs were his joy, his
favourite spiritual food; and he liked reading newspapers, but only the
advertisements of land to be sold, so many acres of arable and grass
land, with a farmhouse, river, garden, mill, and mill-pond. And he would
dream of garden-walls, flowers, fruits, nests, carp in the pond, don't
you know, and all the rest of it. These fantasies of his used to vary
according to the advertisements he found, but somehow there was always a
gooseberry-bush in every one. Not a house, not a romantic spot could he
imagine without its gooseberry-bush.

"'Country life has its advantages,' he used to say. 'You sit on the
veranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everything
smells good ... and there are gooseberries.'

"He used to draw out a plan of his estate and always the same things
were shown on it: (_a_) Farmhouse, (_b_) cottage, (_c_) vegetable
garden, (_d_) gooseberry-bush. He used to live meagrely and never had
enough to eat and drink, dressed God knows how, exactly like a beggar,
and always saved and put his money into the bank. He was terribly
stingy. It used to hurt me to see him, and I used to give him money to
go away for a holiday, but he would put that away, too. Once a man gets
a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done.

"Years passed; he was transferred to another province. He completed his
fortieth year and was still reading advertisements in the papers and
saving up his money. Then I heard he was married. Still with the same
idea of buying a farmhouse with a gooseberry-bush, he married an
elderly, ugly widow, not out of any feeling for her, but because she had
money. With her he still lived stingily, kept her half-starved, and put
the money into the bank in his own name. She had been the wife of a
postmaster and was used to good living, but with her second husband she
did not even have enough black bread; she pined away in her new life,
and in three years or so gave up her soul to God. And my brother never
for a moment thought himself to blame for her death. Money, like vodka,
can play queer tricks with a man. Once in our town a merchant lay dying.
Before his death he asked for some honey, and he ate all his notes and
scrip with the honey so that nobody should get it. Once I was examining
a herd of cattle at a station and a horse-jobber fell under the engine,
and his foot was cut off. We carried him into the waiting-room, with the
blood pouring down--a terrible business--and all the while he kept on
asking anxiously for his foot; he had twenty-five roubles in his boot
and did not want to lose them."

"Keep to your story," said Bourkin.

"After the death of his wife," Ivan Ivanich continued, after a long
pause, "my brother began to look out for an estate. Of course you may
search for five years, and even then buy a pig in a poke. Through an
agent my brother Nicholai raised a mortgage and bought three hundred
acres with a farmhouse, a cottage, and a park, but there was no orchard,
no gooseberry-bush, no duck-pond; there was a river but the water in it
was coffee-coloured because the estate lay between a brick-yard and a
gelatine factory. But my brother Nicholai was not worried about that;
he ordered twenty gooseberry-bushes and settled down to a country life.

"Last year I paid him a visit. I thought I'd go and see how things were
with him. In his letters my brother called his estate Tchimbarshov
Corner, or Himalayskoe. I arrived at Himalayskoe in the afternoon. It
was hot. There were ditches, fences, hedges, rows of young fir-trees,
trees everywhere, and there was no telling how to cross the yard or
where to put your horse. I went to the house and was met by a red-haired
dog, as fat as a pig. He tried to bark but felt too lazy. Out of the
kitchen came the cook, barefooted, and also as fat as a pig, and said
that the master was having his afternoon rest. I went in to my brother
and found him sitting on his bed with his knees covered with a blanket;
he looked old, stout, flabby; his cheeks, nose, and lips were pendulous.
I half expected him to grunt like a pig.

"We embraced and shed a tear of joy and also of sadness to think that
we had once been young, but were now both going grey and nearing death.
He dressed and took me to see his estate.

"'Well? How are you getting on?' I asked.

"'All right, thank God. I am doing very well.'

"He was no longer the poor, tired official, but a real landowner and a
person of consequence. He had got used to the place and liked it, ate a
great deal, took Russian baths, was growing fat, had already gone to law
with the parish and the two factories, and was much offended if the
peasants did not call him 'Your Lordship.' And, like a good landowner,
he looked after his soul and did good works pompously, never simply.
What good works? He cured the peasants of all kinds of diseases with
soda and castor-oil, and on his birthday he would have a thanksgiving
service held in the middle of the village, and would treat the peasants
to half a bucket of vodka, which he thought the right thing to do. Ah!
Those horrible buckets of vodka. One day a greasy landowner will drag
the peasants before the Zembro Court for trespass, and the next, if
it's a holiday, he will give them a bucket of vodka, and they drink and
shout Hooray! and lick his boots in their drunkenness. A change to good
eating and idleness always fills a Russian with the most preposterous
self-conceit. Nicholai Ivanich who, when he was in the Exchequer, was
terrified to have an opinion of his own, now imagined that what he said
was law. 'Education is necessary for the masses, but they are not fit
for it.' 'Corporal punishment is generally harmful, but in certain cases
it is useful and indispensable.'

"'I know the people and I know how to treat them,' he would say. 'The
people love me. I have only to raise my finger and they will do as I
wish.'

"And all this, mark you, was said with a kindly smile of wisdom. He was
constantly saying: 'We noblemen,' or 'I, as a nobleman.' Apparently he
had forgotten that our grandfather was a peasant and our father a common
soldier. Even our family name, Tchimacha-Himalaysky, which is really an
absurd one, seemed to him full-sounding, distinguished, and very
pleasing.

"But my point does not concern him so much as myself. I want to tell you
what a change took place in me in those few hours while I was in his
house. In the evening, while we were having tea, the cook laid a
plateful of gooseberries on the table. They had not been bought, but
were his own gooseberries, plucked for the first time since the bushes
were planted. Nicholai Ivanich laughed with joy and for a minute or two
he looked in silence at the gooseberries with tears in his eyes. He
could not speak for excitement, then put one into his mouth, glanced at
me in triumph, like a child at last being given its favourite toy, and
said:

"'How good they are!'

"He went on eating greedily, and saying all the while:

"'How good they are! Do try one!'

"It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the illusion which exalts
us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. I saw a happy man, one
whose dearest dream had come true, who had attained his goal in life,
who had got what he wanted, and was pleased with his destiny and with
himself. In my idea of human life there is always some alloy of sadness,
but now at the sight of a happy man I was filled with something like
despair. And at night it grew on me. A bed was made up for me in the
room near my brother's and I could hear him, unable to sleep, going
again and again to the plate of gooseberries. I thought: 'After all,
what a lot of contented, happy people there must be! What an
overwhelming power that means! I look at this life and see the arrogance
and the idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the
weak, the horrible poverty everywhere, overcrowding, drunkenness,
hypocrisy, falsehood.... Meanwhile in all the houses, all the streets,
there is peace; out of fifty thousand people who live in our town there
is not one to kick against it all. Think of the people who go to the
market for food: during the day they eat; at night they sleep, talk
nonsense, marry, grow old, piously follow their dead to the cemetery;
one never sees or hears those who suffer, and all the horror of life
goes on somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is quiet, peaceful, and
against it all there is only the silent protest of statistics; so many
go mad, so many gallons are drunk, so many children die of
starvation.... And such a state of things is obviously what we want;
apparently a happy man only feels so because the unhappy bear their
burden in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible. It is a
general hypnosis. Every happy man should have some one with a little
hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy
people, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or later
show its claws, and some misfortune will befall him--illness, poverty,
loss, and then no one will see or hear him, just as he now neither sees
nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer, and the happy go on
living, just a little fluttered with the petty cares of every day, like
an aspen-tree in the wind--and everything is all right.'

"That night I was able to understand how I, too, had been content and
happy," Ivan Ivanich went on, getting up. "I, too, at meals or out
hunting, used to lay down the law about living, and religion, and
governing the masses. I, too, used to say that teaching is light, that
education is necessary, but that for simple folk reading and writing is
enough for the present. Freedom is a boon, I used to say, as essential
as the air we breathe, but we must wait. Yes--I used to say so, but now
I ask: 'Why do we wait?'" Ivan Ivanich glanced angrily at Bourkin. "Why
do we wait, I ask you? What considerations keep us fast? I am told that
we cannot have everything at once, and that every idea is realised in
time. But who says so? Where is the proof that it is so? You refer me to
the natural order of things, to the law of cause and effect, but is
there order or natural law in that I, a living, thinking creature,
should stand by a ditch until it fills up, or is narrowed, when I could
jump it or throw a bridge over it? Tell me, I say, why should we wait?
Wait, when we have no strength to live, and yet must live and are full
of the desire to live!

"I left my brother early the next morning, and from that time on I found
it impossible to live in town. The peace and the quiet of it oppress me.
I dare not look in at the windows, for nothing is more dreadful to see
than the sight of a happy family, sitting round a table, having tea. I
am an old man now and am no good for the struggle. I commenced late. I
can only grieve within my soul, and fret and sulk. At night my head
buzzes with the rush of my thoughts and I cannot sleep.... Ah! If I were
young!"

Ivan Ivanich walked excitedly up and down the room and repeated:

"If I were young."

He suddenly walked up to Aliokhin and shook him first by one hand and
then by the other.

"Pavel Konstantinich," he said in a voice of entreaty, "don't be
satisfied, don't let yourself be lulled to sleep! While you are young,
strong, wealthy, do not cease to do good! Happiness does not exist, nor
should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are not
in our peddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and grand.
Do good!"

Ivan Ivanich said this with a piteous supplicating smile, as though he
were asking a personal favour.

Then they all three sat in different corners of the drawing-room and
were silent. Ivan Ivanich's story had satisfied neither Bourkin nor
Aliokhin. With the generals and ladies looking down from their gilt
frames, seeming alive in the firelight, it was tedious to hear the story
of a miserable official who ate gooseberries.... Somehow they had a
longing to hear and to speak of charming people, and of women. And the
mere fact of sitting in the drawing-room where everything--the lamp with
its coloured shade, the chairs, and the carpet under their feet--told
how the very people who now looked down at them from their frames once
walked, and sat and had tea there, and the fact that pretty Pelagueya
was near--was much better than any story.

Aliokhin wanted very much to go to bed; he had to get up for his work
very early, about two in the morning, and now his eyes were closing,
but he was afraid of his guests saying something interesting without his
hearing it, so he would not go. He did not trouble to think whether what
Ivan Ivanich had been saying was clever or right; his guests were
talking of neither groats, nor hay, nor tar, but of something which had
no bearing on his life, and he liked it and wanted them to go on....

"However, it's time to go to bed," said Bourkin, getting up. "I will
wish you good night."

Aliokhin said good night and went down-stairs, and left his guests. Each
had a large room with an old wooden bed and carved ornaments; in the
corner was an ivory crucifix; and their wide, cool beds, made by pretty
Pelagueya, smelled sweetly of clean linen.

Ivan Ivanich undressed in silence and lay down.

"God forgive me, a wicked sinner," he murmured, as he drew the clothes
over his head.

A smell of burning tobacco came from his pipe which lay on the table,
and Bourkin could not sleep for a long time and was worried because he
could not make out where the unpleasant smell came from.

The rain beat against the windows all night long.




IN EXILE


Old Simeon, whose nickname was Brains, and a young Tartar, whose name
nobody knew, were sitting on the bank of the river by a wood-fire. The
other three ferrymen were in the hut. Simeon who was an old man of about
sixty, skinny and toothless, but broad-shouldered and healthy, was
drunk. He would long ago have gone to bed, but he had a bottle in his
pocket and was afraid of his comrades asking him for vodka. The Tartar
was ill and miserable, and, pulling his rags about him, he went on
talking about the good things in the province of Simbirsk, and what a
beautiful and clever wife he had left at home. He was not more than
twenty-five, and now, by the light of the wood-fire, with his pale,
sorrowful, sickly face, he looked a mere boy.

"Of course, it is not a paradise here," said Brains, "you see, water,
the bare bushes by the river, clay everywhere--nothing else.... It is
long past Easter and there is still ice on the water and this morning
there was snow...."

"Bad! Bad!" said the Tartar with a frightened look.

A few yards away flowed the dark, cold river, muttering, dashing against
the holes in the clayey banks as it tore along to the distant sea. By
the bank they were sitting on, loomed a great barge, which the ferrymen
call a _karbass_. Far away and away, flashing out, flaring up, were
fires crawling like snakes--last year's grass being burned. And behind
the water again was darkness. Little banks of ice could be heard
knocking against the barge.... It was very damp and cold....

The Tartar glanced at the sky. There were as many stars as at home, and
the darkness was the same, but something was missing. At home in the
Simbirsk province the stars and the sky were altogether different.

"Bad! Bad!" he repeated.

"You will get used to it," said Brains with a laugh. "You are young yet
and foolish; the milk is hardly dry on your lips, and in your folly you
imagine that there is no one unhappier than you, but there will come a
time when you will say: God give every one such a life! Just look at me.
In a week's time the floods will be gone, and we will fix the ferry
here, and all of you will go away into Siberia and I shall stay here,
going to and fro. I have been living thus for the last two-and-twenty
years, but, thank God, I want nothing. God give everybody such a life."

The Tartar threw some branches onto the fire, crawled near to it and
said:

"My father is sick. When he dies, my mother and my wife have promised to
come here."

"What do you want your mother and your wife for?" asked Brains. "Just
foolishness, my friend. It's the devil tempting you, plague take him.
Don't listen to the Evil One. Don't give way to him. When he talks to
you about women you should answer him sharply: 'I don't want them!' When
he talks of freedom, you should stick to it and say: 'I don't want it. I
want nothing! No father, no mother, no wife, no freedom, no home, no
love! I want nothing.' Plague take 'em all."

Brains took a swig at his bottle and went on:

"My brother, I am not an ordinary peasant. I don't come from the servile
masses. I am the son of a deacon, and when I was a free man at Rursk, I
used to wear a frock coat, and now I have brought myself to such a point
that I can sleep naked on the ground and eat grass. God give such a life
to everybody. I want nothing. I am afraid of nobody and I think there is
no man richer or freer than I. When they sent me here from Russia I set
my teeth at once and said: 'I want nothing!' The devil whispers to me
about my wife and my kindred, and about freedom and I say to him: 'I
want nothing!' I stuck to it, and, you see, I live happily and have
nothing to grumble at. If a man gives the devil the least opportunity
and listens to him just once, then he is lost and has no hope of
salvation: he will be over ears in the mire and will never get out. Not
only peasants the like of you are lost, but the nobly born and the
educated also. About fifteen years ago a certain nobleman was sent here
from Russia. He had had some trouble with his brothers and had made a
forgery in a will. People said he was a prince or a baron, but perhaps
he was only a high official--who knows? Well, he came here and at once
bought a house and land in Moukhzyink. 'I want to live by my own work,'
said he, 'in the sweat of my brow, because I am no longer a nobleman but
an exile.' 'Why,' said I. 'God help you, for that is good.' He was a
young man then, ardent and eager; he used to mow and go fishing, and he
would ride sixty miles on horseback. Only one thing was wrong; from the
very beginning he was always driving to the post-office at Guyrin. He
used to sit in my boat and sigh: 'Ah! Simeon, it is a long time since
they sent me any money from home.' 'You are better without money,
Vassili Sergnevich,' said I. 'What's the good of it? You just throw away
the past, as though it had never happened, as though it were only a
dream, and start life afresh. Don't listen to the devil,' I said, 'he
won't do you any good, and he will only tighten the noose. You want
money now, but in a little while you will want something else, and then
more and more. If,' said I, 'you want to be happy you must want nothing.
Exactly.... If,' I said, 'fate has been hard on you and me, it is no
good asking her for charity and falling at her feet. We must ignore her
and laugh at her.' That's what I said to him.... Two years later I
ferried him over and he rubbed his hands and laughed. 'I'm going,' said
he, 'to Guyrin to meet my wife. She has taken pity on me, she says, and
she is coming here. She is very kind and good.' And he gave a gasp of
joy. Then one day he came with his wife, a beautiful young lady with a
little girl in her arms and a lot of luggage. And Vassili Andreich kept
turning and looking at her and could not look at her or praise her
enough. 'Yes, Simeon, my friend, even in Siberia people live.' Well,
thought I, all right, you won't be content. And from that time on, mark
you, he used to go to Guyrin every week to find out if money had been
sent from Russia. A terrible lot of money was wasted. 'She stays here,'
said he, 'for my sake, and her youth and beauty wither away here in
Siberia. She shares my bitter lot with me,' said he, 'and I must give
her all the pleasure I can for it....' To make his wife happier he took
up with the officials and any kind of rubbish. And they couldn't have
company without giving food and drink, and they must have a piano and a
fluffy little dog on the sofa--bad cess to it.... Luxury, in a word, all
kinds of tricks. My lady did not stay with him long. How could she?
Clay, water, cold, no vegetables, no fruit; uneducated people and
drunkards, with no manners, and she was a pretty pampered young lady
from the metropolis.... Of course she got bored. And her husband was no
longer a gentleman, but an exile--quite a different matter. Three years
later, I remember, on the eve of the Assumption, I heard shouts from the
other bank. I went over in the ferry and saw my lady, all wrapped up,
with a young gentleman, a government official, in a troika.... I ferried
them across, they got into the carriage and disappeared, and I saw no
more of them. Toward the morning Vassili Andreich came racing up in a
coach and pair. 'Has my wife been across, Simeon, with a gentleman in
spectacles?' 'She has,' said I, 'but you might as well look for the wind
in the fields.' He raced after them and kept it up for five days and
nights. When he came back he jumped on to the ferry and began to knock
his head against the side and to cry aloud. 'You see,' said I, 'there
you are.' And I laughed and reminded him: 'Even in Siberia people live.'
But he went on beating his head harder than ever.... Then he got the
desire for freedom. His wife had gone to Russia and he longed to go
there to see her and take her away from her lover. And he began to go to
the post-office every day, and then to the authorities of the town. He
was always sending applications or personally handing them to the
authorities, asking to have his term remitted and to be allowed to go,
and he told me that he had spent over two hundred roubles on telegrams.
He sold his land and mortgaged his house to the money-lenders. His hair
went grey, he grew round-shouldered, and his face got yellow and
consumptive-looking. He used to cough whenever he spoke and tears used
to come to his eyes. He spent eight years on his applications, and at
last he became happy again and lively: he had thought of a new dodge.
His daughter, you see, had grown up. He doted on her and could never
take his eyes off her. And, indeed, she was very pretty, dark and
clever. Every Sunday he used to go to church with her at Guyrin. They
would stand side by side on the ferry, and she would smile and he would
devour her with his eyes. 'Yes, Simeon,' he would say. 'Even in Siberia
people live. Even in Siberia there is happiness. Look what a fine
daughter I have. You wouldn't find one like her in a thousand miles'
journey.' 'She's a nice girl,' said I. 'Oh, yes.' ... And I thought to
myself: 'You wait.... She is young. Young blood will have its way; she
wants to live and what life is there here?' And she began to pine
away.... Wasting, wasting away, she withered away, fell ill and had to
keep to her bed.... Consumption. That's Siberian happiness, plague take
it; that's Siberian life.... He rushed all over the place after the
doctors and dragged them home with him. If he heard of a doctor or a
quack three hundred miles off he would rush off after him. He spent a
terrific amount of money on doctors and I think it would have been much
better spent on drink. All the same she had to die. No help for it. Then
it was all up with him. He thought of hanging himself, and of trying to
escape to Russia. That would be the end of him. He would try to escape:
he would be caught, tried, penal servitude, flogging."

"Good! Good!" muttered the Tartar with a shiver.

"What is good?" asked Brains.

"Wife and daughter. What does penal servitude and suffering matter? He
saw his wife and his daughter. You say one should want nothing. But
nothing--is evil! His wife spent three years with him. God gave him
that. Nothing is evil, and three years is good. Why don't you understand
that?"

Trembling and stammering as he groped for Russian words, of which he
knew only a few, the Tartar began to say: "God forbid he should fall ill
among strangers, and die and be buried in the cold sodden earth, and
then, if his wife could come to him if only for one day or even for one
hour, he would gladly endure any torture for such happiness, and would
even thank God. Better one day of happiness than nothing."

Then once more he said what a beautiful clever wife he had left at home,
and with his head in his hands he began to cry and assured Simeon that
he was innocent, and had been falsely accused. His two brothers and his
uncle had stolen some horses from a peasant and beat the old man nearly
to death, and the community never looked into the matter at all, and
judgment was passed by which all three brothers were exiled to Siberia,
while his uncle, a rich man, remained at home.

"You will get used to it," said Simeon.

The Tartar relapsed into silence and stared into the fire with his eyes
red from weeping; he looked perplexed and frightened, as if he could not
understand why he was in the cold and the darkness, among strangers, and
not in the province of Simbirsk. Brains lay down near the fire, smiled
at something, and began to say in an undertone:

"But what a joy she must be to your father," he muttered after a pause.
"He loves her and she is a comfort to him, eh? But, my man, don't tell
me. He is a strict, harsh old man. And girls don't want strictness; they
want kisses and laughter, scents and pomade. Yes.... Ah! What a life!"
Simeon swore heavily. "No more vodka! That means bedtime. What? I'm
going, my man."

Left alone, the Tartar threw more branches on the fire, lay down, and,
looking into the blaze, began to think of his native village and of his
wife; if she could come if only for a month, or even a day, and then, if
she liked, go back again! Better a month or even a day, than nothing.
But even if his wife kept her promise and came, how could he provide for
her? Where was she to live?

"If there is nothing to eat; how are we to live?" asked the Tartar
aloud.

For working at the oars day and night he was paid two copecks a day; the
passengers gave tips, but the ferrymen shared them out and gave nothing
to the Tartar, and only laughed at him. And he was poor, cold, hungry,
and fearful.... With his whole body aching and shivering he thought it
would be good to go into the hut and sleep; but there was nothing to
cover himself with, and it was colder there than on the bank. He had
nothing to cover himself with there, but he could make up a fire....

In a week's time, when the floods had subsided and the ferry would be
fixed up, all the ferrymen except Simeon would not be wanted any longer
and the Tartar would have to go from village to village, begging and
looking for work. His wife was only seventeen; beautiful, soft, and
shy.... Could she go unveiled begging through the villages? No. The idea
of it was horrible.

It was already dawn. The barges, the bushy willows above the water, the
swirling flood began to take shape, and up above in a clayey cliff a hut
thatched with straw, and above that the straggling houses of the
village, where the cocks had begun to crow.

The ginger-coloured clay cliff, the barge, the river, the strange wild
people, hunger, cold, illness--perhaps all these things did not really
exist. Perhaps, thought the Tartar, it was only a dream. He felt that he
must be asleep, and he heard his own snoring.... Certainly he was at
home in the Simbirsk province; he had but to call his wife and she would
answer; and his mother was in the next room.... But what awful dreams
there are! Why? The Tartar smiled and opened his eyes. What river was
that? The Volga?

It was snowing.

"Hi! Ferry!" some one shouted on the other bank. "_Karba-a-ass!_"

The Tartar awoke and went to fetch his mates to row over to the other
side. Hurrying into their sheepskins, swearing sleepily in hoarse
voices, and shivering from the cold, the four men appeared on the bank.
After their sleep, the river from which there came a piercing blast,
seemed to them horrible and disgusting. They stepped slowly into the
barge.... The Tartar and the three ferrymen took the long, broad-bladed
oars, which in the dim light looked like a crab's claw, and Simeon flung
himself with his belly against the tiller. And on the other side the
voice kept on shouting, and a revolver was fired twice, for the man
probably thought the ferrymen were asleep or gone to the village inn.

"All right. Plenty of time!" said Brains in the tone of one who was
convinced that there is no need for hurry in this world--and indeed
there is no reason for it.

The heavy, clumsy barge left the bank and heaved through the willows,
and by the willows slowly receding it was possible to tell that the
barge was moving. The ferrymen plied the oars with a slow measured
stroke; Brains hung over the tiller with his stomach pressed against it
and swung from side to side. In the dim light they looked like men
sitting on some antediluvian animal with long limbs, swimming out to a
cold dismal nightmare country.

They got clear of the willows and swung out into mid-stream. The thud of
the oars and the splash could be heard on the other bank and shouts
came: "Quicker! Quicker!" After another ten minutes the barge bumped
heavily against the landing-stage.

"And it is still snowing, snowing all the time," Simeon murmured, wiping
the snow off his face. "God knows where it comes from!"

On the other side a tall, lean old man was waiting in a short fox-fur
coat and a white astrachan hat. He was standing some distance from his
horses and did not move; he had a stern concentrated expression as if he
were trying to remember something and were furious with his recalcitrant
memory. When Simeon went up to him and took off his hat with a smile he
said:

"I'm in a hurry to get to Anastasievka. My daughter is worse again and
they tell me there's a new doctor at Anastasievka."

The coach was clamped onto the barge and they rowed back. All the while
as they rowed the man, whom Simeon called Vassili Andreich, stood
motionless, pressing his thick lips tight and staring in front of him.
When the driver craved leave to smoke in his presence, he answered
nothing, as if he did not hear. And Simeon hung over the rudder and
looked at him mockingly and said:

"Even in Siberia people live. L-i-v-e!"

On Brains's face was a triumphant expression as if he were proving
something, as if pleased that things had happened just as he thought
they would. The unhappy, helpless look of the man in the fox-fur coat
seemed to give him great pleasure.

"The roads are now muddy, Vassili Andreich," he said, when the horses
had been harnessed on the bank. "You'd better wait a couple of weeks,
until it gets dryer.... If there were any point in going--but you know
yourself that people are always on the move day and night and there's no
point in it. Sure!"

Vassili Andreich said nothing, gave him a tip, took his seat in the
coach and drove away.

"Look! He's gone galloping after the doctor!" said Simeon, shivering in
the cold. "Yes. To look for a real doctor, trying to overtake the wind
in the fields, and catch the devil by the tail, plague take him! What
queer fish there are! God forgive me, a miserable sinner."

The Tartar went up to Brains, and, looking at him with mingled hatred
and disgust, trembling, and mixing Tartar words up with his broken
Russian, said:

"He good ... good. And you ... bad! You are bad! The gentleman is a good
soul, very good, and you are a beast, you are bad! The gentleman is
alive and you are dead.... God made man that he should be alive, that he
should have happiness, sorrow, grief, and you want nothing, so you are
not alive, but a stone! A stone wants nothing and so do you.... You are
a stone--and God does not love you and the gentleman he does."

They all began to laugh: the Tartar furiously knit his brows, waved his
hand, drew his rags round him and went to the fire. The ferrymen and
Simeon went slowly to the hut.

"It's cold," said one of the ferrymen hoarsely, as he stretched himself
on the straw with which the damp, clay floor was covered.

"Yes. It's not warm," another agreed.... "It's a hard life."

All of them lay down. The wind blew the door open. The snow drifted into
the hut. Nobody could bring himself to get up and shut the door; it was
cold, but they put up with it.

"And I am happy," muttered Simeon as he fell asleep. "God give such a
life to everybody."

"You certainly are the devil's own. Even the devil don't need to take
you."

Sounds like the barking of a dog came from outside.

"Who is that? Who is there?"

"It's the Tartar crying."

"Oh! he's a queer fish."

"He'll get used to it!" said Simeon, and at once he fell asleep. Soon
the others slept too and the door was left open.




THE LADY WITH THE TOY DOG


It was reported that a new face had been seen on the quay; a lady with a
little dog. Dimitri Dimitrich Gomov, who had been a fortnight at Talta
and had got used to it, had begun to show an interest in new faces. As
he sat in the pavilion at Verné's he saw a young lady, blond and fairly
tall, and wearing a broad-brimmed hat, pass along the quay. After her
ran a white Pomeranian.

Later he saw her in the park and in the square several times a day. She
walked by herself, always in the same broad-brimmed hat, and with this
white dog. Nobody knew who she was, and she was spoken of as the lady
with the toy dog.

"If," thought Gomov, "if she is here without a husband or a friend, it
would be as well to make her acquaintance."

He was not yet forty, but he had a daughter of twelve and two boys at
school. He had married young, in his second year at the University, and
now his wife seemed half as old again as himself. She was a tall woman,
with dark eyebrows, erect, grave, stolid, and she thought herself an
intellectual woman. She read a great deal, called her husband not
Dimitri, but Demitri, and in his private mind he thought her
short-witted, narrow-minded, and ungracious. He was afraid of her and
disliked being at home. He had begun to betray her with other women long
ago, betrayed her frequently, and, probably for that reason nearly
always spoke ill of women, and when they were discussed in his presence
he would maintain that they were an inferior race.

It seemed to him that his experience was bitter enough to give him the
right to call them any name he liked, but he could not live a couple of
days without the "inferior race." With men he was bored and ill at ease,
cold and unable to talk, but when he was with women, he felt easy and
knew what to talk about, and how to behave, and even when he was silent
with them he felt quite comfortable. In his appearance as in his
character, indeed in his whole nature, there was something attractive,
indefinable, which drew women to him and charmed them; he knew it, and
he, too, was drawn by some mysterious power to them.

His frequent, and, indeed, bitter experiences had taught him long ago
that every affair of that kind, at first a divine diversion, a delicious
smooth adventure, is in the end a source of worry for a decent man,
especially for men like those at Moscow who are slow to move,
irresolute, domesticated, for it becomes at last an acute and
extraordinary complicated problem and a nuisance. But whenever he met
and was interested in a new woman, then his experience would slip away
from his memory, and he would long to live, and everything would seem so
simple and amusing.

And it so happened that one evening he dined in the gardens, and the
lady in the broad-brimmed hat came up at a leisurely pace and sat at the
next table. Her expression, her gait, her dress, her coiffure told him
that she belonged to society, that she was married, that she was paying
her first visit to Talta, that she was alone, and that she was bored....
There is a great deal of untruth in the gossip about the immorality of
the place. He scorned such tales, knowing that they were for the most
part concocted by people who would be only too ready to sin if they had
the chance, but when the lady sat down at the next table, only a yard or
two away from him, his thoughts were filled with tales of easy
conquests, of trips to the mountains; and he was suddenly possessed by
the alluring idea of a quick transitory liaison, a moment's affair with
an unknown woman whom he knew not even by name.

He beckoned to the little dog, and when it came up to him, wagged his
finger at it. The dog began to growl. Gomov again wagged his finger.

The lady glanced at him and at once cast her eyes down.

"He won't bite," she said and blushed.

"May I give him a bone?"--and when she nodded emphatically, he asked
affably: "Have you been in Talta long?"

"About five days."

"And I am just dragging through my second week."

They were silent for a while.

"Time goes quickly," she said, "and it is amazingly boring here."

"It is the usual thing to say that it is boring here. People live quite
happily in dull holes like Bieliev or Zhidra, but as soon as they come
here they say: 'How boring it is! The very dregs of dullness!' One would
think they came from Spain."

She smiled. Then both went on eating in silence as though they did not
know each other; but after dinner they went off together--and then
began an easy, playful conversation as though they were perfectly happy,
and it was all one to them where they went or what they talked of. They
walked and talked of how the sea was strangely luminous; the water
lilac, so soft and warm, and athwart it the moon cast a golden streak.
They said how stifling it was after the hot day. Gomov told her how he
came from Moscow and was a philologist by education, but in a bank by
profession; and how he had once wanted to sing in opera, but gave it up;
and how he had two houses in Moscow.... And from her he learned that she
came from Petersburg, was born there, but married at S. where she had
been living for the last two years; that she would stay another month at
Talta, and perhaps her husband would come for her, because, he too,
needed a rest. She could not tell him what her husband was--Provincial
Administration or Zemstvo Council--and she seemed to think it funny. And
Gomov found out that her name was Anna Sergueyevna.

In his room at night, he thought of her and how they would meet next
day. They must do so. As he was going to sleep, it struck him that she
could only lately have left school, and had been at her lessons even as
his daughter was then; he remembered how bashful and gauche she was when
she laughed and talked with a stranger--it must be, he thought, the
first time she had been alone, and in such a place with men walking
after her and looking at her and talking to her, all with the same
secret purpose which she could not but guess. He thought of her slender
white neck and her pretty, grey eyes.

"There is something touching about her," he thought as he began to fall
asleep.


II

A week passed. It was a blazing day. Indoors it was stifling, and in the
streets the dust whirled along. All day long he was plagued with thirst
and he came into the pavilion every few minutes and offered Anna
Sergueyevna an iced drink or an ice. It was impossibly hot.

In the evening, when the air was fresher, they walked to the jetty to
see the steamer come in. There was quite a crowd all gathered to meet
somebody, for they carried bouquets. And among them were clearly marked
the peculiarities of Talta: the elderly ladies were youngly dressed and
there were many generals.

The sea was rough and the steamer was late, and before it turned into
the jetty it had to do a great deal of manoeuvring. Anna Sergueyevna
looked through her lorgnette at the steamer and the passengers as though
she were looking for friends, and when she turned to Gomov, her eyes
shone. She talked much and her questions were abrupt, and she forgot
what she had said; and then she lost her lorgnette in the crowd.

The well-dressed people went away, the wind dropped, and Gomov and Anna
Sergueyevna stood as though they were waiting for somebody to come from
the steamer. Anna Sergueyevna was silent. She smelled her flowers and
did not look at Gomov.

"The weather has got pleasanter toward evening," he said. "Where shall
we go now? Shall we take a carriage?"

She did not answer.

He fixed his eyes on her and suddenly embraced her and kissed her lips,
and he was kindled with the perfume and the moisture of the flowers; at
once he started and looked round; had not some one seen?

"Let us go to your--" he murmured.

And they walked quickly away.

Her room was stifling, and smelled of scents which she had bought at the
Japanese shop. Gomov looked at her and thought: "What strange chances
there are in life!" From the past there came the memory of earlier
good-natured women, gay in their love, grateful to him for their
happiness, short though it might be; and of others--like his wife--who
loved without sincerity, and talked overmuch and affectedly,
hysterically, as though they were protesting that it was not love, nor
passion, but something more important; and of the few beautiful cold
women, into whose eyes there would flash suddenly a fierce expression, a
stubborn desire to take, to snatch from life more than it can give; they
were no longer in their first youth, they were capricious, unstable,
domineering, imprudent, and when Gomov became cold toward them then
their beauty roused him to hatred, and the lace on their lingerie
reminded him of the scales of fish.

But here there was the shyness and awkwardness of inexperienced youth, a
feeling of constraint; an impression of perplexity and wonder, as though
some one had suddenly knocked at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, "the lady
with the toy dog" took what had happened somehow seriously, with a
particular gravity, as though thinking that this was her downfall and
very strange and improper. Her features seemed to sink and wither, and
on either side of her face her long hair hung mournfully down; she sat
crestfallen and musing, exactly like a woman taken in sin in some old
picture.

"It is not right," she said. "You are the first to lose respect for me."

There was a melon on the table. Gomov cut a slice and began to eat it
slowly. At least half an hour passed in silence.

Anna Sergueyevna was very touching; she irradiated the purity of a
simple, devout, inexperienced woman; the solitary candle on the table
hardly lighted her face, but it showed her very wretched.

"Why should I cease to respect you?" asked Gomov. "You don't know what
you are saying."

"God forgive me!" she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "It is
horrible."

"You seem to want to justify yourself."

"How can I justify myself? I am a wicked, low woman and I despise
myself. I have no thought of justifying myself. It is not my husband
that I have deceived, but myself. And not only now but for a long time
past. My husband may be a good honest man, but he is a lackey. I do not
know what work he does, but I do know that he is a lackey in his soul. I
was twenty when I married him. I was overcome by curiosity. I longed for
something. 'Surely,' I said to myself, 'there is another kind of life.'
I longed to live! To live, and to live.... Curiosity burned me up....
You do not understand it, but I swear by God, I could no longer control
myself. Something strange was going on in me. I could not hold myself
in. I told my husband that I was ill and came here.... And here I have
been walking about dizzily, like a lunatic.... And now I have become a
low, filthy woman whom everybody may despise."

Gomov was already bored; her simple words irritated him with their
unexpected and inappropriate repentance; but for the tears in her eyes
he might have thought her to be joking or playing a part.

"I do not understand," he said quietly. "What do you want?"

She hid her face in his bosom and pressed close to him.

"Believe, believe me, I implore you," she said. "I love a pure, honest
life, and sin is revolting to me. I don't know myself what I am doing.
Simple people say: 'The devil entrapped me,' and I can say of myself:
'The Evil One tempted me.'"

"Don't, don't," he murmured.

He looked into her staring, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke quietly
and tenderly, and gradually quieted her and she was happy again, and
they both began to laugh.

Later, when they went out, there was not a soul on the quay; the town
with its cypresses looked like a city of the dead, but the sea still
roared and broke against the shore; a boat swung on the waves; and in
it sleepily twinkled the light of a lantern.

They found a cab and drove out to the Oreanda.

"Just now in the hall," said Gomov, "I discovered your name written on
the board--von Didenitz. Is your husband a German?"

"No. His grandfather, I believe, was a German, but he himself is an
Orthodox Russian."

At Oreanda they sat on a bench, not far from the church, looked down at
the sea and were silent. Talta was hardly visible through the morning
mist. The tops of the hills were shrouded in motionless white clouds.
The leaves of the trees never stirred, the cicadas trilled, and the
monotonous dull sound of the sea, coming up from below, spoke of the
rest, the eternal sleep awaiting us. So the sea roared when there was
neither Talta nor Oreanda, and so it roars and will roar, dully,
indifferently when we shall be no more. And in this continual
indifference to the life and death of each of us, lives pent up, the
pledge of our eternal salvation, of the uninterrupted movement of life
on earth and its unceasing perfection. Sitting side by side with a young
woman, who in the dawn seemed so beautiful, Gomov, appeased and
enchanted by the sight of the fairy scene, the sea, the mountains, the
clouds, the wide sky, thought how at bottom, if it were thoroughly
explored, everything on earth was beautiful, everything, except what we
ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and
our own human dignity.

A man came up--a coast-guard--gave a look at them, then went away. He,
too, seemed mysterious and enchanted. A steamer came over from
Feodossia, by the light of the morning star, its own lights already put
out.

"There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergueyevna after a silence.

"Yes. It is time to go home."

They returned to the town.

Then every afternoon they met on the quay, and lunched together, dined,
walked, enjoyed the sea. She complained that she slept badly, that her
heart beat alarmingly. She would ask the same question over and over
again, and was troubled now by jealousy, now by fear that he did not
sufficiently respect her. And often in the square or the gardens, when
there was no one near, he would draw her close and kiss her
passionately. Their complete idleness, these kisses in the full
daylight, given timidly and fearfully lest any one should see, the heat,
the smell of the sea and the continual brilliant parade of leisured,
well-dressed, well-fed people almost regenerated him. He would tell Anna
Sergueyevna how delightful she was, how tempting. He was impatiently
passionate, never left her side, and she would often brood, and even
asked him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love her at
all, and only saw in her a loose woman. Almost every evening, rather
late, they would drive out of the town, to Oreanda, or to the waterfall;
and these drives were always delightful, and the impressions won during
them were always beautiful and sublime.

They expected her husband to come. But he sent a letter in which he said
that his eyes were bad and implored his wife to come home. Anna
Sergueyevna began to worry.

"It is a good thing I am going away," she would say to Gomov. "It is
fate."

She went in a carriage and he accompanied her. They drove for a whole
day. When she took her seat in the car of an express-train and when the
second bell sounded, she said:

"Let me have another look at you.... Just one more look. Just as you
are."

She did not cry, but was sad and low-spirited, and her lips trembled.

"I will think of you--often," she said. "Good-bye. Good-bye. Don't think
ill of me. We part for ever. We must, because we ought not to have met
at all. Now, good-bye."

The train moved off rapidly. Its lights disappeared, and in a minute or
two the sound of it was lost, as though everything were agreed to put an
end to this sweet, oblivious madness. Left alone on the platform,
looking into the darkness, Gomov heard the trilling of the grasshoppers
and the humming of the telegraph-wires, and felt as though he had just
woke up. And he thought that it had been one more adventure, one more
affair, and it also was finished and had left only a memory. He was
moved, sad, and filled with a faint remorse; surely the young woman,
whom he would never see again, had not been happy with him; he had been
kind to her, friendly, and sincere, but still in his attitude toward
her, in his tone and caresses, there had always been a thin shadow of
raillery, the rather rough arrogance of the successful male aggravated
by the fact that he was twice as old as she. And all the time she had
called him kind, remarkable, noble, so that he was never really himself
to her, and had involuntarily deceived her....

Here at the station, the smell of autumn was in the air, and the evening
was cool.

"It is time for me to go North," thought Gomov, as he left the platform.
"It is time."


III

At home in Moscow, it was already like winter; the stoves were heated,
and in the mornings, when the children were getting ready to go to
school, and had their tea, it was dark and their nurse lighted the lamp
for a short while. The frost had already begun. When the first snow
falls, the first day of driving in sledges, it is good to see the white
earth, the white roofs; one breathes easily, eagerly, and then one
remembers the days of youth. The old lime-trees and birches, white with
hoarfrost, have a kindly expression; they are nearer to the heart than
cypresses and palm-trees, and with the dear familiar trees there is no
need to think of mountains and the sea.

Gomov was a native of Moscow. He returned to Moscow on a fine frosty
day, and when he donned his fur coat and warm gloves, and took a stroll
through Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the church-bells
ringing, then his recent travels and the places he had visited lost all
their charm. Little by little he sank back into Moscow life, read
eagerly three newspapers a day, and said that he did not read Moscow
papers as a matter of principle. He was drawn into a round of
restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties, parties, and he was flattered to
have his house frequented by famous lawyers and actors, and to play
cards with a professor at the University club. He could eat a whole
plateful of hot _sielianka_.

So a month would pass, and Anna Sergueyevna, he thought, would be lost
in the mists of memory and only rarely would she visit his dreams with
her touching smile, just as other women had done. But more than a month
passed, full winter came, and in his memory everything was clear, as
though he had parted from Anna Sergueyevna only yesterday. And his
memory was lit by a light that grew ever stronger. No matter how,
through the voices of his children saying their lessons, penetrating to
the evening stillness of his study, through hearing a song, or the music
in a restaurant, or the snow-storm howling in the chimney, suddenly the
whole thing would come to life again in his memory: the meeting on the
jetty, the early morning with the mists on the mountains, the steamer
from Feodossia and their kisses. He would pace up and down his room and
remember it all and smile, and then his memories would drift into
dreams, and the past was confused in his imagination with the future. He
did not dream at night of Anna Sergueyevna, but she followed him
everywhere, like a shadow, watching him. As he shut his eyes, he could
see her, vividly, and she seemed handsomer, tenderer, younger than in
reality; and he seemed to himself better than he had been at Talta. In
the evenings she would look at him from the bookcase, from the
fireplace, from the corner; he could hear her breathing and the soft
rustle of her dress. In the street he would gaze at women's faces to see
if there were not one like her....

He was filled with a great longing to share his memories with some one.
But at home it was impossible to speak of his love, and away from
home--there was no one. Impossible to talk of her to the other people in
the house and the men at the bank. And talk of what? Had he loved then?
Was there anything fine, romantic, or elevating or even interesting in
his relations with Anna Sergueyevna? And he would speak vaguely of love,
of women, and nobody guessed what was the matter, and only his wife
would raise her dark eyebrows and say:

"Demitri, the rôle of coxcomb does not suit you at all."

One night, as he was coming out of the club with his partner, an
official, he could not help saying:

"If only I could tell what a fascinating woman I met at Talta."

The official seated himself in his sledge and drove off, but suddenly
called:

"Dimitri Dimitrich!"

"Yes."

"You were right. The sturgeon was tainted."

These banal words suddenly roused Gomov's indignation. They seemed to
him degrading and impure. What barbarous customs and people!

What preposterous nights, what dull, empty days! Furious card-playing,
gourmandising, drinking, endless conversations about the same things,
futile activities and conversations taking up the best part of the day
and all the best of a man's forces, leaving only a stunted, wingless
life, just rubbish; and to go away and escape was impossible--one might
as well be in a lunatic asylum or in prison with hard labour.

Gomov did not sleep that night, but lay burning with indignation, and
then all next day he had a headache. And the following night he slept
badly, sitting up in bed and thinking, or pacing from corner to corner
of his room. His children bored him, the bank bored him, and he had no
desire to go out or to speak to any one.

In December when the holidays came he prepared to go on a journey and
told his wife he was going to Petersburg to present a petition for a
young friend of his--and went to S. Why? He did not know. He wanted to
see Anna Sergueyevna, to talk to her, and if possible to arrange an
assignation.

He arrived at S. in the morning and occupied the best room in the hotel,
where the whole floor was covered with a grey canvas, and on the table
there stood an inkstand grey with dust, adorned with a horseman on a
headless horse holding a net in his raised hand. The porter gave him the
necessary information: von Didenitz; Old Goucharno Street, his own
house--not far from the hotel; lives well, has his own horses, every one
knows him.

Gomov walked slowly to Old Goucharno Street and found the house. In
front of it was a long, grey fence spiked with nails.

"No getting over a fence like that," thought Gomov, glancing from the
windows to the fence.

He thought: "To-day is a holiday and her husband is probably at home.
Besides it would be tactless to call and upset her. If he sent a note
then it might fall into her husband's hands and spoil everything. It
would be better to wait for an opportunity." And he kept on walking up
and down the street, and round the fence, waiting for his opportunity.
He saw a beggar go in at the gate and the dogs attack him. He heard a
piano and the sounds came faintly to his ears. It must be Anna
Sergueyevna playing. The door suddenly opened and out of it came an old
woman, and after her ran the familiar white Pomeranian. Gomov wanted to
call the dog, but his heart suddenly began to thump and in his agitation
he could not remember the dog's name.

He walked on, and more and more he hated the grey fence and thought with
a gust of irritation that Anna Sergueyevna had already forgotten him,
and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, as would be
only natural in a young woman forced from morning to night to behold the
accursed fence. He returned to his room and sat for a long time on the
sofa, not knowing what to do. Then he dined and afterward slept for a
long while.

"How idiotic and tiresome it all is," he thought as he awoke and saw the
dark windows; for it was evening. "I've had sleep enough, and what shall
I do to-night?"

He sat on his bed which was covered with a cheap, grey blanket, exactly
like those used in a hospital, and tormented himself.

"So much for the lady with the toy dog.... So much for the great
adventure.... Here you sit."

However, in the morning, at the station, his eye had been caught by a
poster with large letters: "First Performance of 'The Geisha.'" He
remembered that and went to the theatre.

"It is quite possible she will go to the first performance," he thought.


The theatre was full and, as usual in all provincial theatres, there was
a thick mist above the lights, the gallery was noisily restless; in the
first row before the opening of the performance stood the local dandies
with their hands behind their backs, and there in the governor's box, in
front, sat the governor's daughter, and the governor himself sat
modestly behind the curtain and only his hands were visible. The curtain
quivered; the orchestra tuned up for a long time, and while the audience
were coming in and taking their seats, Gomov gazed eagerly round.

At last Anna Sergueyevna came in. She took her seat in the third row,
and when Gomov glanced at her his heart ached and he knew that for him
there was no one in the whole world nearer, dearer, and more important
than she; she was lost in this provincial rabble, the little
undistinguished woman, with a common lorgnette in her hands, yet she
filled his whole life; she was his grief, his joy, his only happiness,
and he longed for her; and through the noise of the bad orchestra with
its tenth-rate fiddles, he thought how dear she was to him. He thought
and dreamed.

With Anna Sergueyevna there came in a young man with short
side-whiskers, very tall, stooping; with every movement he shook and
bowed continually. Probably he was the husband whom in a bitter mood at
Talta she had called a lackey. And, indeed, in his long figure, his
side-whiskers, the little bald patch on the top of his head, there was
something of the lackey; he had a modest sugary smile and in his
buttonhole he wore a University badge exactly like a lackey's number.

In the first entr'acte the husband went out to smoke, and she was left
alone. Gomov, who was also in the pit, came up to her and said in a
trembling voice with a forced smile:

"How do you do?"

She looked up at him and went pale. Then she glanced at him again in
terror, not believing her eyes, clasped her fan and lorgnette tightly
together, apparently struggling to keep herself from fainting. Both were
silent. She sat, he stood; frightened by her emotion, not daring to sit
down beside her. The fiddles and flutes began to play and suddenly it
seemed to them as though all the people in the boxes were looking at
them. She got up and walked quickly to the exit; he followed, and both
walked absently along the corridors, down the stairs, up the stairs,
with the crowd shifting and shimmering before their eyes; all kinds of
uniforms, judges, teachers, crown-estates, and all with badges; ladies
shone and shimmered before them, like fur coats on moving rows of
clothes-pegs, and there was a draught howling through the place laden
with the smell of tobacco and cigar-ends. And Gomov, whose heart was
thudding wildly, thought:

"Oh, Lord! Why all these men and that beastly orchestra?"

At that very moment he remembered how when he had seen Anna Sergueyevna
off that evening at the station he had said to himself that everything
was over between them, and they would never meet again. And now how far
off they were from the end!

On a narrow, dark staircase over which was written: "This Way to the
Amphitheatre," she stopped:

"How you frightened me!" she said, breathing heavily, still pale and
apparently stupefied. "Oh! how you frightened me! I am nearly dead. Why
did you come? Why?"

"Understand me, Anna," he whispered quickly. "I implore you to
understand...."

She looked at him fearfully, in entreaty, with love in her eyes, gazing
fixedly to gather up in her memory every one of his features.

"I suffer so!" she went on, not listening to him. "All the time, I
thought only of you. I lived with thoughts of you.... And I wanted to
forget, to forget, but why, why did you come?"

A little above them, on the landing, two schoolboys stood and smoked and
looked down at them, but Gomov did not care. He drew her to him and
began to kiss her cheeks, her hands.

"What are you doing? What are you doing?" she said in terror, thrusting
him away.... "We were both mad. Go away to-night. You must go away at
once.... I implore you, by everything you hold sacred, I implore you....
The people are coming-----"

Some one passed them on the stairs.

"You must go away," Anna Sergueyevna went on in a whisper. "Do you hear,
Dimitri Dimitrich? I'll come to you in Moscow. I never was happy. Now I
am unhappy and I shall never, never be happy, never! Don't make me
suffer even more! I swear, I'll come to Moscow. And now let us part. My
dear, dearest darling, let us part!"

She pressed his hand and began to go quickly down-stairs, all the while
looking back at him, and in her eyes plainly showed that she was most
unhappy. Gomov stood for a while, listened, then, when all was quiet he
found his coat and left the theatre.


IV

And Anna Sergueyevna began to come to him in Moscow. Once every two or
three months she would leave S., telling her husband that she was going
to consult a specialist in women's diseases. Her husband half believed
and half disbelieved her. At Moscow she would stay at the "Slaviansky
Bazaar" and send a message at once to Gomov. He would come to her, and
nobody in Moscow knew.

Once as he was going to her as usual one winter morning--he had not
received her message the night before--he had his daughter with him, for
he was taking her to school which was on the way. Great wet flakes of
snow were falling.

"Three degrees above freezing," he said, "and still the snow is falling.
But the warmth is only on the surface of the earth. In the upper strata
of the atmosphere there is quite a different temperature."

"Yes, papa. Why is there no thunder in winter?"

He explained this too, and as he spoke he thought of his assignation,
and that not a living soul knew of it, or ever would know. He had two
lives; one obvious, which every one could see and know, if they were
sufficiently interested, a life full of conventional truth and
conventional fraud, exactly like the lives of his friends and
acquaintances; and another, which moved underground. And by a strange
conspiracy of circumstances, everything that was to him important,
interesting, vital, everything that enabled him to be sincere and denied
self-deception and was the very core of his being, must dwell hidden
away from others, and everything that made him false, a mere shape in
which he hid himself in order to conceal the truth, as for instance his
work in the bank, arguments at the club, his favourite gibe about women,
going to parties with his wife--all this was open. And, judging others
by himself, he did not believe the things he saw, and assumed that
everybody else also had his real vital life passing under a veil of
mystery as under the cover of the night. Every man's intimate existence
is kept mysterious, and perhaps, in part, because of that civilised
people are so nervously anxious that a personal secret should be
respected.

When he had left his daughter at school, Gomov went to the "Slaviansky
Bazaar." He took off his fur coat down-stairs, went up and knocked
quietly at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress,
tired by the journey, had been expecting him to come all night. She was
pale, and looked at him without a smile, and flung herself on his breast
as soon as he entered. Their kiss was long and lingering as though they
had not seen each other for a couple of years.

"Well, how are you getting on down there?" he asked. "What is your
news?"

"Wait. I'll tell you presently.... I cannot."

She could not speak, for she was weeping. She turned her face from him
and dried her eyes.

"Well, let her cry a bit.... I'll wait," he thought, and sat down.

Then he rang and ordered tea, and then, as he drank it, she stood and
gazed out of the window.... She was weeping in distress, in the bitter
knowledge that their life had fallen out so sadly; only seeing each
other in secret, hiding themselves away like thieves! Was not their life
crushed?

"Don't cry.... Don't cry," he said.

It was clear to him that their love was yet far from its end, which
there was no seeing. Anna Sergueyevna was more and more passionately
attached to him; she adored him and it was inconceivable that he should
tell her that their love must some day end; she would not believe it.

He came up to her and patted her shoulder fondly and at that moment he
saw himself in the mirror.

His hair was already going grey. And it seemed strange to him that in
the last few years he should have got so old and ugly. Her shoulders
were warm and trembled to his touch. He was suddenly filled with pity
for her life, still so warm and beautiful, but probably beginning to
fade and wither, like his own. Why should she love him so much? He
always seemed to women not what he really was, and they loved in him,
not himself, but the creature of their imagination, the thing they
hankered for in life, and when they had discovered their mistake, still
they loved him. And not one of them was happy with him. Time passed; he
met women and was friends with them, went further and parted, but never
once did he love; there was everything but love.

And now at last when his hair was grey he had fallen in love, real
love--for the first time in his life.

Anna Sergueyevna and he loved one another, like dear kindred, like
husband and wife, like devoted friends; it seemed to them that Fate had
destined them for one another, and it was inconceivable that he should
have a wife, she a husband; they were like two birds of passage, a male
and a female, which had been caught and forced to live in separate
cages. They had forgiven each other all the past of which they were
ashamed; they forgave everything in the present, and they felt that
their love had changed both of them.

Formerly, when he felt a melancholy compunction, he used to comfort
himself with all kinds of arguments, just as they happened to cross his
mind, but now he was far removed from any such ideas; he was filled with
a profound pity, and he desired to be tender and sincere....

"Don't cry, my darling," he said. "You have cried enough.... Now let us
talk and see if we can't find some way out."

Then they talked it all over, and tried to discover some means of
avoiding the necessity for concealment and deception, and the torment of
living in different towns, and of not seeing each other for a long time.
How could they shake off these intolerable fetters?

"How? How?" he asked, holding his head in his hands. "How?"

And it seemed that but a little while and the solution would be found
and there would begin a lovely new life; and to both of them it was
clear that the end was still very far off, and that their hardest and
most difficult period was only just beginning.




GOUSSIEV


It was already dark and would soon be night.

Goussiev, a private on long leave, raised himself a little in his
hammock and said in a whisper:

"Can you hear me, Pavel Ivanich? A soldier at Souchan told me that their
boat ran into an enormous fish and knocked a hole in her bottom."

The man of condition unknown whom he addressed, and whom everybody in
the hospital-ship called Pavel Ivanich, was silent, as if he had not
heard.

And once more there was silence.... The wind whistled through the
rigging, the screw buzzed, the waves came washing, the hammocks
squeaked, but to all these sounds their ears were long since accustomed
and it seemed as though everything were wrapped in sleep and silence.
It was very oppressive. The three patients--two soldiers and a
sailor--who had played cards all day were now asleep and tossing to and
fro.

The vessel began to shake. The hammock under Goussiev slowly heaved up
and down, as though it were breathing--one, two, three.... Something
crashed on the floor and began to tinkle: the jug must have fallen down.

"The wind has broken loose...." said Goussiev, listening attentively.

This time Pavel Ivanich coughed and answered irritably:

"You spoke just now of a ship colliding with a large fish, and now you
talk of the wind breaking loose.... Is the wind a dog to break loose?"

"That's what people say."

"Then people are as ignorant as you.... But what do they not say? You
should keep a head on your shoulders and think. Silly idiot!"

Pavel Ivanich was subject to seasickness. When the ship rolled he would
get very cross, and the least trifle would upset him, though Goussiev
could never see anything to be cross about. What was there unusual in
his story about the fish or in his saying that the wind had broken
loose? Suppose the fish were as big as a mountain and its back were as
hard as a sturgeon's, and suppose that at the end of the wood there were
huge stone walls with the snarling winds chained up to them.... If they
do not break loose, why then do they rage over the sea as though they
were possessed, and rush about like dogs? If they are not chained, what
happens to them when it is calm?

Goussiev thought for a long time of a fish as big as a mountain, and of
thick rusty chains; then he got tired of that and began to think of his
native place whither he was returning after five years' service in the
Far East. He saw with his mind's eye the great pond covered with
snow.... On one side of the pond was a brick-built pottery, with a tall
chimney belching clouds of black smoke, and on the other side was the
village.... From the yard of the fifth house from the corner came his
brother Alency in a sledge; behind him sat his little son Vanka in large
felt boots, and his daughter Akulka, also in felt boots. Alency is
tipsy, Vanka laughs, and Akulka's face is hidden--she is well wrapped
up.

"The children will catch cold ..." thought Goussiev. "God grant them,"
he whispered, "a pure right mind that they may honour their parents and
be better than their father and mother...."

"The boots want soling," cried the sick sailor in a deep voice. "Aye,
aye."

The thread of Goussiev's thoughts was broken, and instead of the pond,
suddenly--without rhyme or reason--he saw a large bull's head without
eyes, and the horse and sledge did not move on, but went round and round
in a black mist. But still he was glad he had seen his dear ones. He
gasped for joy, and his limbs tingled and his fingers throbbed.

"God suffered me to see them!" he muttered, and opened his eyes and
looked round in the darkness for water.

He drank, then lay down again, and once more the sledge skimmed along,
and he saw the bull's head without eyes, black smoke, clouds of it. And
so on till dawn.


II

At first through the darkness there appeared only a blue circle, the
port-hole, then Goussiev began slowly to distinguish the man in the next
hammock, Pavel Ivanich. He was sleeping in a sitting position, for if he
lay down he could not breathe. His face was grey; his nose long and
sharp, and his eyes were huge, because he was so thin; his temples were
sunk, his beard scanty, the hair on his head long.... By his face it was
impossible to tell his class: gentleman, merchant, or peasant; judging
by his appearance and long hair he looked almost like a recluse, a
lay-brother, but when he spoke--he was not at all like a monk. He was
losing strength through his cough and his illness and the suffocating
heat, and he breathed heavily and was always moving his dry lips.
Noticing that Goussiev was looking at him, he turned toward him and
said:

"I'm beginning to understand.... Yes.... Now I understand."

"What do you understand, Pavel Ivanich?"

"Yes.... It was strange to me at first, why you sick men, instead of
being kept quiet, should be on this steamer, where the heat is stifling,
and stinking, and pitching and tossing, and must be fatal to you; but
now it is all clear to me.... Yes. The doctors sent you to the steamer
to get rid of you. They got tired of all the trouble you gave them,
brutes like you.

...You don't pay them; you only give a lot of trouble, and if you die
you spoil their reports. Therefore you are just cattle, and there is no
difficulty in getting rid of you.... They only need to lack conscience
and humanity, and to deceive the owners of the steamer. We needn't worry
about the first, they are experts by nature; but the second needs a
certain amount of practice. In a crowd of four hundred healthy soldiers
and sailors--five sick men are never noticed; so you were carried up to
the steamer, mixed with a healthy lot who were counted in such a hurry
that nothing wrong was noticed, and when the steamer got away they saw
fever-stricken and consumptive men lying helpless on the deck...."

Goussiev could not make out what Pavel Ivanich was talking about;
thinking he was being taken to task, he said by way of excusing himself:

"I lay on the deck because when we were taken off the barge I caught a
chill."

"Shocking!" said Pavel Ivanich. "They know quite well that you can't
last out the voyage, and yet they send you here! You may get as far as
the Indian Ocean, but what then? It is awful to think of.... And that's
all the return you get for faithful unblemished service!"

Pavel Ivanich looked very angry, and smote his forehead and gasped:

"They ought to be shown up in the papers. There would be an awful row."

The two sick soldiers and the sailor were already up and had begun to
play cards, the sailor propped up in his hammock, and the soldiers
squatting uncomfortably on the floor. One soldier had his right arm in a
sling and his wrist was tightly bandaged so that he had to hold the
cards in his left hand or in the crook of his elbow. The boat was
rolling violently so that it was impossible to get up or to drink tea or
to take medicine.

"You were an orderly?" Pavel Ivanich asked Goussiev.

"That's it. An orderly."

"My God, my God!" said Pavel Ivanich sorrowfully. "To take a man from
his native place, drag him fifteen thousand miles, drive him into
consumption ... and what for? I ask you. To make him an orderly to some
Captain Farthing or Midshipman Hole! Where's the sense of it?"

"It's not a bad job, Pavel Ivanich. You get up in the morning, clean the
boots, boil the samovar, tidy up the room, and then there is nothing to
do. The lieutenant draws plans all day long, and you can pray to God if
you like--or read books--or go out into the streets. It's a good enough
life."

"Yes. Very good! The lieutenant draws plans, and you stay in the kitchen
all day long and suffer from homesickness.... Plans.... Plans don't
matter. It's human life that matters! Life doesn't come again. One
should be sparing of it."

"Certainly Pavel Ivanich. A bad man meets no quarter, either at home, or
in the army, but if you live straight, and do as you are told, then no
one will harm you. They are educated and they understand.... For five
years now I've never been in the cells and I've only been thrashed
once--touch wood!"

"What was that for?"

"Fighting. I have a heavy fist, Pavel Ivanich. Four Chinamen came into
our yard: they were carrying wood, I think, but I don't remember. Well,
I was bored. I went for them and one of them got a bloody nose. The
lieutenant saw it through the window and gave me a thick ear."

"You poor fool," muttered Pavel Ivanich. "You don't understand
anything."

He was completely exhausted with the tossing of the boat and shut his
eyes; his head fell back and then flopped forward onto his chest. He
tried several times to lie down, but in vain, for he could not breathe.

"And why did you go for the four Chinamen?" he asked after a while.

"For no reason. They came into the yard and I went for them."

Silence fell.... The gamblers played for a couple of hours, absorbed and
cursing, but the tossing of the ship tired even them; they threw the
cards away and laid down. Once more Goussiev thought of the big pond,
the pottery, the village. Once more the sledges skimmed along, once more
Vanka laughed, and that fool of an Akulka opened her fur coat, and
stretched out her feet; look, she seemed to say, look, poor people, my
felt boots are new and not like Vanka's.

"She's getting on for six and still she has no sense!" said Goussiev.
"Instead of showing your boots off, why don't you bring some water to
your soldier-uncle? I'll give you a present."

Then came Andrea, with his firelock on his shoulder, carrying a hare he
had shot, and he was followed by Tsaichik the cripple, who offered him a
piece of soap for the hare; and there was the black heifer in the yard,
and Domna sewing a shirt and crying over something, and there was the
eyeless bull's head and the black smoke....

Overhead there was shouting, sailors running; the sound of something
heavy being dragged along the deck, or something had broken.... More
running. Something wrong? Goussiev raised his head, listened and saw the
two soldiers and the sailor playing cards again; Pavel Ivanich sitting
up and moving his lips. It was very close, he could hardly breathe, he
wanted a drink, but the water was warm and disgusting.... The pitching
of the boat was now better.

Suddenly something queer happened to one of the soldiers.... He called
ace of diamonds, lost his reckoning and dropped his cards. He started
and laughed stupidly and looked round.

"In a moment, you fellows," he said and lay down on the floor.

All were at a loss. They shouted at him but he made no reply.

"Stiepan, are you ill?" asked the other soldier with the bandaged hand.
"Perhaps we'd better call the priest, eh?"

"Stiepan, drink some water," said the sailor. "Here, mate, have a
drink."

"What's the good of breaking his teeth with the jug," shouted Goussiev
angrily. "Don't you see, you fatheads?"

"What."

"What!" cried Goussiev. "He's snuffed it, dead. That's what! Good God,
what fools!..."


III

The rolling stopped and Pavel Ivanich cheered up. He was no longer
peevish. His face had an arrogant, impetuous, and mocking expression. He
looked as if he were on the point of saying: "I'll tell you a story that
will make you die of laughter." Their port-hole was open and a soft
wind blew in on Pavel Ivanich. Voices could be heard and the splash of
oars in the water.... Beneath the window some one was howling in a thin,
horrible voice; probably a Chinaman singing.

"Yes. We are in harbour," said Pavel Ivanich, smiling mockingly.
"Another month and we shall be in Russia. It's true; my gallant
warriors, I shall get to Odessa and thence I shall go straight to
Kharkhov. At Kharkhov I have a friend, a literary man. I shall go to him
and I shall say, 'now, my friend, give up your rotten little
love-stories and descriptions of nature, and expose the vileness of the
human biped.... There's a subject for you.'"

He thought for a moment and then he said:

"Goussiev, do you know how I swindled them?"

"Who, Pavel Ivanich?"

"The lot out there.... You see there's only first and third class on the
steamer, and only peasants are allowed to go third. If you have a decent
suit, and look like a nobleman or a bourgeois, at a distance, then you
must go first. It may break you, but you have to lay down your five
hundred roubles. 'What's the point of such an arrangement?' I asked. 'Is
it meant to raise the prestige of Russian intellectuals?' 'Not a bit,'
said they. 'We don't let you go, simply because it is impossible for a
decent man to go third. It is so vile and disgusting.' 'Yes,' said I.
'Thanks for taking so much trouble about decent people. Anyhow, bad or
no, I haven't got five hundred roubles as I have neither robbed the
treasury nor exploited foreigners, nor dealt in contraband, nor flogged
any one to death, and, therefore, I think I have a right to go
first-class and to take rank with the intelligentsia of Russia.' But
there's no convincing them by logic.... I had to try fraud. I put on a
peasant's coat and long boots, and a drunken, stupid expression and went
to the agent and said: 'Give me a ticket, your Honour.'

"'What's your position?' says the agent.

"'Clerical,' said I. 'My father was an honest priest. He always told the
truth to the great ones of the earth, and so he suffered much.'"

Pavel Ivanich got tired with talking, and his breath failed him, but he
went on:

"Yes. I always tell the truth straight out.... I am afraid of nobody and
nothing. There's a great difference between myself and you in that
respect. You are dull, blind, stupid, you see nothing, and you don't
understand what you do see. You are told that the wind breaks its chain,
that you are brutes and worse, and you believe; you are thrashed and you
kiss the hand that thrashes you; a swine in a raccoon pelisse robs you,
and throws you sixpence for tea, and you say: 'Please, your Honour, let
me kiss your hand.' You are pariahs, skunks.... I am different. I live
consciously. I see everything, as an eagle or a hawk sees when it hovers
over the earth, and I understand everything. I am a living protest. I
see injustice--I protest; I see bigotry and hypocrisy--I protest; I see
swine triumphant--I protest, and I am unconquerable. No Spanish
inquisition can make me hold my tongue. Aye.... Cut my tongue out. I'll
protest by gesture.... Shut me up in a dungeon--I'll shout so loud that
I shall be heard for a mile round, or I'll starve myself, so that there
shall be a still heavier weight on their black consciences. Kill me--and
my ghost will return. All my acquaintances tell me: 'You are a most
insufferable man, Pavel Ivanich!' I am proud of such a reputation. I
served three years in the Far East, and have got bitter memories enough
for a hundred years. I inveighed against it all. My friends write from
Russia: 'Do not come.' But I'm going, to spite them.... Yes.... That is
life. I understand. You can call that life."

Goussiev was not listening, but lay looking out of the port-hole; on the
transparent lovely turquoise water swung a boat all shining in the
shimmering light; a fat Chinaman was sitting in it eating rice with
chop-sticks. The water murmured softly, and over it lazily soared white
sea-gulls.

"It would be fun to give that fat fellow one on the back of his
neck...." thought Goussiev, watching the fat Chinaman and yawning.

He dozed, and it seemed to him that all the world was slumbering. Time
slipped swiftly away. The day passed imperceptibly; imperceptibly the
twilight fell.... The steamer was still no longer but was moving on.


IV

Two days passed. Pavel Ivanich no longer sat up, but lay full length;
his eyes were closed and his nose seemed to be sharper than ever.

"Pavel Ivanich!" called Goussiev, "Pavel Ivanich."

Pavel Ivanich opened his eyes and moved his lips.

"Aren't you well?"

"It's nothing," answered Pavel Ivanich, breathing heavily. "It's
nothing. No. I'm much better. You see I can lie down now. I'm much
better."

"Thank God for it, Pavel Ivanich."

"When I compare myself with you, I am sorry for you ... poor devils. My
lungs are all right; my cough comes from indigestion ... I can endure
this hell, not to mention the Red Sea! Besides, I have a critical
attitude toward my illness, as well as to my medicine. But you ... you
are ignorant.... It's hard lines on you, very hard."

The ship was running smoothly; it was calm but still stifling and hot as
a Turkish bath; it was hard not only to speak but even to listen without
an effort. Goussiev clasped his knees, leaned his head on them and
thought of his native place. My God, in such heat it was a pleasure to
think of snow and cold! He saw himself driving on a sledge, and suddenly
the horses were frightened and bolted.... Heedless of roads, dikes,
ditches they rushed like mad through the village, across the pond, past
the works, through the fields.... "Hold them in!" cried the women and
the passers-by. "Hold them in!" But why hold them in? Let the cold wind
slap your face and cut your hands; let the lumps of snow thrown up by
the horses' hoofs fall on your hat, down your neck and chest; let the
runners of the sledge be buckled, and the traces and harness be torn and
be damned to it! What fun when the sledge topples over and you are flung
hard into a snow-drift; with your face slap into the snow, and you get
up all white with your moustaches covered with icicles, hatless,
gloveless, with your belt undone.... People laugh and dogs bark....

Pavel Ivanich, with one eye half open looked at Goussiev and asked
quietly:

"Goussiev, did your commander steal?"

"How do I know, Pavel Ivanich? The likes of us don't hear of it."

A long time passed in silence. Goussiev thought, dreamed, drank water;
it was difficult to speak, difficult to hear, and he was afraid of being
spoken to. One hour passed, a second, a third; evening came, then night;
but he noticed nothing as he sat dreaming of the snow.

He could hear some one coming into the ward; voices, but five minutes
passed and all was still.

"God rest his soul!" said the soldier with the bandaged hand. "He was a
restless man."

"What?" asked Goussiev. "Who?"

"He's dead. He has just been taken up-stairs."

"Oh, well," muttered Goussiev with a yawn. "God rest his soul."

"What do you think, Goussiev?" asked the bandaged soldier after some
time. "Will he go to heaven?"

"Who?"

"Pavel Ivanich."

"He will. He suffered much. Besides, he was a priest's son, and priests
have many relations. They will pray for his soul."

The bandaged soldier sat down on Goussiev's hammock and said in an
undertone:

"You won't live much longer, Goussiev. You'll never see Russia."

"Did the doctor or the nurse tell you that?" asked Goussiev.

"No one told me, but I can see it. You can always tell when a man is
going to die soon. You neither eat nor drink, and you have gone very
thin and awful to look at. Consumption. That's what it is. I'm not
saying this to make you uneasy, but because I thought you might like to
have the last sacrament. And if you have any money, you had better give
it to the senior officer."

"I have not written home," said Goussiev. "I shall die and they will
never know."

"They will know," said the sailor in his deep voice. "When you die they
will put you down in the log, and at Odessa they will give a note to the
military governor, and he will send it to your parish or wherever it
is...."

This conversation made Goussiev begin to feel unhappy and a vague desire
began to take possession of him. He drank water--it was not that; he
stretched out to the port-hole and breathed the hot, moist air--it was
not that; he tried to think of his native place and the snow--it was not
that.... At last he felt that he would choke if he stayed a moment
longer in the hospital.

"I feel poorly, mates," he said. "I want to go on deck. For Christ's
sake take me on deck."

Goussiev flung his arms round the soldier's neck and the soldier held
him with his free arm and supported him up the gangway. On deck there
were rows and rows of sleeping soldiers and sailors; so many of them
that it was difficult to pick a way through them.

"Stand up," said the bandaged soldier gently. "Walk after me slowly and
hold on to my shirt...."

It was dark. There was no light on deck or on the masts or over the sea.
In the bows a sentry stood motionless as a statue, but he looked as if
he were asleep. It was as though the steamer had been left to its own
sweet will, to go where it liked.

"They are going to throw Pavel Ivanich into the sea," said the bandaged
soldier. "They will put him in a sack and throw him overboard."

"Yes. That's the way they do."

"But it's better to lie at home in the earth. Then the mother can go to
the grave and weep over it."

"Surely."

There was a smell of dung and hay. With heads hanging there were oxen
standing by the bulwark--one, two, three ... eight beasts. And there was
a little horse. Goussiev put out his hand to pat it, but it shook its
head, showed its teeth and tried to bite his sleeve.

"Damn you," said Goussiev angrily.

He and the soldier slowly made their way to the bows and stood against
the bulwark and looked silently up and down. Above them was the wide
sky, bright with stars, peace and tranquillity--exactly as it was at
home in his village; but below--darkness and turbulence. Mysterious
towering waves. Each wave seemed to strive to rise higher than the rest;
and they pressed and jostled each other and yet others came, fierce and
ugly, and hurled themselves into the fray.

There is neither sense nor pity in the sea. Had the steamer been
smaller, and not made of tough iron, the waves would have crushed it
remorselessly and all the men in it, without distinction of good and
bad. The steamer too seemed cruel and senseless. The large-nosed monster
pressed forward and cut its way through millions of waves; it was
afraid neither of darkness, nor of the wind, nor of space, nor of
loneliness; it cared for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, the
monster would crush them without distinction of good and bad.

"Where are we now?" asked Goussiev.

"I don't know. Must be the ocean."

"There's no land in sight."

"Why, they say we shan't see land for another seven days."

The two soldiers looked at the white foam gleaming with phosphorescence.
Goussiev was the first to break the silence.

"Nothing is really horrible," he said. "You feel uneasy, as if you were
in a dark forest. Suppose a boat were lowered and I was ordered to go a
hundred miles out to sea to fish--I would go. Or suppose I saw a soul
fall into the water--I would go in after him. I wouldn't go in for a
German or a Chinaman, but I'd try to save a Russian."

"Aren't you afraid to die?"

"Yes. I'm afraid. I'm sorry for the people at home. I have a brother at
home, you know, and he is not steady; he drinks, beats his wife for
nothing at all, and my old father and mother may be brought to ruin. But
my legs are giving way, mate, and it is hot here.... Let me go to bed."


V

Goussiev went back to the ward and lay down in his hammock. As before, a
vague desire tormented him and he could not make out what it was. There
was a congestion in his chest; a noise in his head, and his mouth was so
dry that he could hardly move his tongue. He dozed and dreamed, and,
exhausted by the heat, his cough and the nightmares that haunted him,
toward morning he fell into a deep sleep. He dreamed he was in barracks,
and the bread had just been taken out of the oven, and he crawled into
the oven and lathered himself with a birch broom. He slept for two days
and on the third day in the afternoon two sailors came down and carried
him out of the ward.

He was sewn up in sail-cloth, and to make him heavier two iron bars were
sewn up with him. In the sail-cloth he looked like a carrot or a radish,
broad at the top, narrow at the bottom.... Just before sunset he was
taken on deck and laid on a board one end of which lay on the bulwark,
the other on a box, raised up by a stool. Round him stood the invalided
soldiers.

"Blessed is our God," began the priest; "always, now and for ever and
ever."

"Amen!" said three sailors.

The soldiers and the crew crossed themselves and looked askance at the
waves. It was strange that a man should be sewn up in sail-cloth and
dropped into the sea. Could it happen to any one?

The priest sprinkled Goussiev with earth and bowed. A hymn was sung.

The guard lifted up the end of the board, Goussiev slipped down it; shot
headlong, turned over in the air, then plop! The foam covered him, for a
moment it looked as though he was swathed in lace, but the moment
passed--and he disappeared beneath the waves.

He dropped down to the bottom. Would he reach it? The bottom is miles
down, they say. He dropped down almost sixty or seventy feet, then began
to go slower and slower, swung to and fro as though he were thinking;
then, borne along by the current; he moved more sideways than downward.

But soon he met a shoal of pilot-fish. Seeing a dark body, the fish
stopped dead and sudden, all together, turned and went back. Less than a
minute later, like arrows they darted at Goussiev, zigzagging through
the water around him....

Later came another dark body, a shark. Gravely and leisurely, as though
it had not noticed Goussiev, it swam up under him, and he rolled over on
its back; it turned its belly up, taking its ease in the warm,
translucent water, and slowly opened its mouth with its two rows of
teeth. The pilot-fish were wildly excited; they stopped to see what was
going to happen. The shark played with the body, then slowly opened its
mouth under it, touched it with its teeth, and the sail-cloth was ripped
open from head to foot; one of the bars fell out, frightening the
pilot-fish and striking the shark on its side, and sank to the bottom.

And above the surface, the clouds were huddling up about the setting
sun; one cloud was like a triumphal arch, another like a lion, another
like a pair of scissors.... From behind the clouds came a broad green
ray reaching up to the very middle of the sky; a little later a violet
ray was flung alongside this, and then others gold and pink.... The sky
was soft and lilac, pale and tender. At first beneath the lovely,
glorious sky the ocean frowned, but soon the ocean also took on
colour--sweet, joyful, passionate colours, almost impossible to name in
human language.




MY LIFE

THE STORY OF A PROVINCIAL


The director said to me: "I only keep you out of respect for your worthy
father, or you would have gone long since." I replied: "You flatter me,
your Excellency, but I suppose I am in a position to go." And then I
heard him saying: "Take the fellow away, he is getting on my nerves."

Two days later I was dismissed. Ever since I had been grown up, to the
great sorrow of my father, the municipal architect, I had changed my
position nine times, going from one department to another, but all the
departments were as like each other as drops of water; I had to sit and
write, listen to inane and rude remarks, and just wait until I was
dismissed.

When I told my father, he was sitting back in his chair with his eyes
shut. His thin, dry face, with a dove-coloured tinge where he shaved
(his face was like that of an old Catholic organist), wore an expression
of meek submission. Without answering my greeting or opening his eyes,
he said:

"If my dear wife, your mother, were alive, your life would be a constant
grief to her. I can see the hand of Providence in her untimely death.
Tell me, you unhappy boy," he went on, opening his eyes, "what am I to
do with you?"

When I was younger my relations and friends knew what to do with me;
some advised me to go into the army as a volunteer, others were for
pharmacy, others for the telegraph service; but now that I was
twenty-four and was going grey at the temples and had already tried the
army and pharmacy and the telegraph service, and every possibility
seemed to be exhausted, they gave me no more advice, but only sighed and
shook their heads.

"What do you think of yourself?" my father went on. "At your age other
young men have a good social position, and just look at yourself: a lazy
lout, a beggar, living on your father!"

And, as usual, he went on to say that young men were going to the dogs
through want of faith, materialism, and conceit, and that amateur
theatricals should be prohibited because they seduce young people from
religion and their duty.

"To-morrow we will go together, and you shall apologise to the director
and promise to do your work conscientiously," he concluded. "You must
not be without a position in society for a single day."

"Please listen to me," said I firmly, though I did not anticipate
gaining anything by speaking. "What you call a position in society is
the privilege of capital and education. But people who are poor and
uneducated have to earn their living by hard physical labour, and I see
no reason why I should be an exception."

"It is foolish and trivial of you to talk of physical labour," said my
father with some irritation. "Do try to understand, you idiot, and get
it into your brainless head, that in addition to physical strength you
have a divine spirit; a sacred fire, by which you are distinguished from
an ass or a reptile and bringing you nigh to God. This sacred fire has
been kept alight for thousands of years by the best of mankind. Your
great-grandfather, General Pologniev, fought at Borodino; your
grandfather was a poet, an orator, and a marshal of the nobility; your
uncle was an educationalist; and I, your father, am an architect! Have
all the Polognievs kept the sacred fire alight for you to put it out?"

"There must be justice," said I. "Millions of people have to do manual
labour."

"Let them. They can do nothing else! Even a fool or a criminal can do
manual labour. It is the mark of a slave and a barbarian, whereas the
sacred fire is given only to a few!"

It was useless to go on with the conversation. My father worshipped
himself and would not be convinced by anything unless he said it
himself. Besides, I knew quite well that the annoyance with which he
spoke of unskilled labour came not so much from any regard for the
sacred fire, as from a secret fear that I should become a working man
and the talk of the town. But the chief thing was that all my
schoolfellows had long ago gone through the University and were making
careers for themselves, and the son of the director of the State Bank
was already a collegiate assessor, while I, an only son, was nothing! It
was useless and unpleasant to go on with the conversation, but I still
sat there and raised objections in the hope of making myself understood.
The problem was simple and clear: how was I to earn my living? But he
could not see its simplicity and kept on talking with sugary rounded
phrases about Borodino and the sacred fire, and my uncle, and the
forgotten poet who wrote bad, insincere verses, and he called me a
brainless fool. But how I longed to be understood! In spite of
everything, I loved my father and my sister, and from boyhood I have had
a habit of considering them, so strongly rooted that I shall probably
never get rid of it; whether I am right or wrong I am always afraid of
hurting them, and go in terror lest my father's thin neck should go red
with anger and he should have an apoplectic fit.

"It is shameful and degrading for a man of my age to sit in a stuffy
room and compete with a typewriting-machine," I said. "What has that to
do with the sacred fire?"

"Still, it is intellectual work," said my father. "But that's enough.
Let us drop the conversation and I warn you that if you refuse to
return to your office and indulge your contemptible inclinations, then
you will lose my love and your sister's. I shall cut you out of my
will--that I swear, by God!"

With perfect sincerity, in order to show the purity of my motives, by
which I hope to be guided all through my life, I said:

"The matter of inheritance does not strike me as important. I renounce
any rights I may have."

For some unexpected reason these words greatly offended my father. He
went purple in the face.

"How dare you talk to me like that, you fool!" he cried to me in a thin,
shrill voice. "You scoundrel!" And he struck me quickly and dexterously
with a familiar movement; once--twice. "You forget yourself!"

When I was a boy and my father struck me, I used to stand bolt upright
like a soldier and look him straight in the face; and, exactly as if I
were still a boy, I stood erect, and tried to look into his eyes. My
father was old and very thin, but his spare muscles must have been as
strong as whip-cord, for he hit very hard.

I returned to the hall, but there he seized his umbrella and struck me
several times over the head and shoulders; at that moment my sister
opened the drawing-room door to see what the noise was, but immediately
drew back with an expression of pity and horror, and said not one word
in my defence.

My intention not to return to the office, but to start a new working
life, was unshakable. It only remained to choose the kind of work--and
there seemed to be no great difficulty about that, because I was strong,
patient, and willing. I was prepared to face a monotonous, laborious
life, of semi-starvation, filth, and rough surroundings, always
overshadowed with the thought of finding a job and a living. And--who
knows--returning from work in the Great Gentry Street, I might often
envy Dolyhikov, the engineer, who lives by intellectual work, but I was
happy in thinking of my coming troubles. I used to dream of intellectual
activity, and to imagine myself a teacher, a doctor, a writer, but my
dreams remained only dreams. A liking for intellectual pleasures--like
the theatre and reading--grew into a passion with me, but I did not know
whether I had any capacity for intellectual work. At school I had an
unconquerable aversion for the Greek language, so that I had to leave
when I was in the fourth class. Teachers were got to coach me up for the
fifth class, and then I went into various departments, spending most of
my time in perfect idleness, and this, I was told, was intellectual
work.

My activity in the education department or in the municipal office
required neither mental effort, nor talent, nor personal ability, nor
creative spiritual impulse; it was purely mechanical, and such
intellectual work seemed to me lower than manual labour. I despise it
and I do not think that it for a moment justifies an idle, careless
life, because it is nothing but a swindle, and only a kind of idleness.
In all probability I have never known real intellectual work.

It was evening. We lived in Great Gentry Street--the chief street in the
town--and our rank and fashion walked up and down it in the evenings, as
there were no public gardens. The street was very charming, and was
almost as good as a garden, for it had two rows of poplar-trees, which
smelt very sweet, especially after rain, and acacias, and tall trees,
and apple-trees hung over the fences and hedges. May evenings, the scent
of the lilac, the hum of the cockchafers, the warm, still air--how new
and extraordinary it all is, though spring comes every year! I stood by
the gate and looked at the passers-by. With most of them I had grown up
and had played with them, but now my presence might upset them, because
I was poorly dressed, in unfashionable clothes, and people made fun of
my very narrow trousers and large, clumsy boots, and called them
macaroni-on-steamboats. And I had a bad reputation in the town because I
had no position and went to play billiards in low cafés, and had once
been taken up, for no particular offence, by the political police.

In a large house opposite, Dolyhikov's, the engineer's, some one was
playing the piano. It was beginning to get dark and the stars were
beginning to shine. And slowly, answering people's salutes, my father
passed with my sister on his arm. He was wearing an old top hat with a
broad curly brim.

"Look!" he said to my sister, pointing to the sky with the very umbrella
with which he had just struck me. "Look at the sky! Even the smallest
stars are worlds! How insignificant man is in comparison with the
universe."

And he said this in a tone that seemed to convey that he found it
extremely flattering and pleasant to be so insignificant. What an
untalented man he was! Unfortunately, he was the only architect in the
town, and during the last fifteen or twenty years I could not remember
one decent house being built. When he had to design a house, as a rule
he would draw first the hall and the drawing-room; as in olden days
schoolgirls could only begin to dance by the fireplace, so his artistic
ideas could only evolve from the hall and drawing-room. To them he would
add the dining-room, nursery, study, connecting them with doors, so that
in the end they were just so many passages, and each room had two or
three doors too many. His houses were obscure, extremely confused, and
limited. Every time, as though he felt something was missing, he had
recourse to various additions, plastering them one on top of the other,
and there would be various lobbies, and passages, and crooked staircases
leading to the entresol, where it was only possible to stand in a
stooping position, and where instead of a floor there would be a thin
flight of stairs like a Russian bath, and the kitchen would always be
under the house with a vaulted ceiling and a brick floor. The front of
his houses always had a hard, stubborn expression, with stiff, French
lines, low, squat roofs, and fat, pudding-like chimneys surmounted with
black cowls and squeaking weathercocks. And somehow all the houses
built by my father were like each other, and vaguely reminded me of a
top hat, and the stiff, obstinate back of his head. In the course of
time the people of the town grew used to my father's lack of talent,
which took root and became our style.

My father introduced the style into my sister's life. To begin with, he
gave her the name of Cleopatra (and he called me Misail). When she was a
little girl he used to frighten her by telling her about the stars and
our ancestors; and explained the nature of life and duty to her at great
length; and now when she was twenty-six he went on in the same way,
allowing her to take no one's arm but his own, and somehow imagining
that sooner or later an ardent young man would turn up and wish to enter
into marriage with her out of admiration for his qualities. And she
adored my father, was afraid of him, and believed in his extraordinary
intellectual powers.

It got quite dark and the street grew gradually empty. In the house
opposite the music stopped. The gate was wide open and out into the
street, careering with all its bells jingling, came a troika. It was the
engineer and his daughter going for a drive. Time to go to bed!

I had a room in the house, but I lived in the courtyard in a hut, under
the same roof as the coach-house, which had been built probably as a
harness-room--for there were big nails in the walls--but now it was not
used, and my father for thirty years had kept his newspapers there,
which for some reason he had bound half-yearly and then allowed no one
to touch. Living there I was less in touch with my father and his
guests, and I used to think that if I did not live in a proper room and
did not go to the house every day for meals, my father's reproach that I
was living on him lost some of its sting.

My sister was waiting for me. She had brought me supper unknown to my
father; a small piece of cold veal and a slice of bread. In the family
there were sayings: "Money loves an account," or "A copeck saves a
rouble," and so on, and my sister, impressed by such wisdom, did her
best to cut down expenses and made us feed rather meagrely. She put the
plate on the table, sat on my bed, and began to cry.

"Misail," she said, "what are you doing to us?"

She did not cover her face, her tears ran down her cheeks and hands, and
her expression was sorrowful. She fell on the pillow, gave way to her
tears, trembling all over and sobbing.

"You have left your work again!" she said. "How awful!"

"Do try to understand, sister!" I said, and because she cried I was
filled with despair.

As though it were deliberately arranged, the paraffin in my little lamp
ran out, and the lamp smoked and guttered, and the old hooks in the wall
looked terrible and their shadows flickered.

"Spare us!" said my sister, rising up. "Father is in an awful state, and
I am ill. I shall go mad. What will become of you?" she asked, sobbing
and holding out her hands to me. "I ask you, I implore you, in the name
of our dear mother, to go back to your work."

"I cannot, Cleopatra," I said, feeling that only a little more would
make me give in. "I cannot."

"Why?" insisted my sister, "why? If you have not made it up with your
chief, look for another place. For instance, why shouldn't you work on
the railway? I have just spoken to Aniuta Blagovo, and she assures me
you would be taken on, and she even promised to do what she could for
you. For goodness sake, Misail, think! Think it over, I implore you!"

We talked a little longer and I gave in. I said that the thought of
working on the railway had never come into my head, and that I was ready
to try.

She smiled happily through her tears and clasped my hand, and still she
cried, because she could not stop, and I went into the kitchen for
paraffin.


II

Among the supporters of amateur theatricals, charity concerts, and
_tableaux vivants_ the leaders were the Azhoguins, who lived in their
own house in Great Gentry house the Street. They used to lend their
house and assume the necessary trouble and expense. They were a rich
landowning family, and had about three thousand _urskins_, with a
magnificent farm in the neighbourhood, but they did not care for village
life and lived in the town summer and winter. The family consisted of a
mother, a tall, spare, delicate lady, who had short hair, wore a blouse
and a plain skirt à l'Anglais, and three daughters, who were spoken of,
not by their names, but as the eldest, the middle, and the youngest;
they all had ugly, sharp chins, and they were short-sighted,
high-shouldered, dressed in the same style as their mother, had an
unpleasant lisp, and yet they always took part in every play and were
always doing something for charity--acting, reciting, singing. They were
very serious and never smiled, and even in burlesque operettas they
acted without gaiety and with a businesslike air, as though they were
engaged in bookkeeping.

I loved our plays, especially the rehearsals, which were frequent,
rather absurd, and noisy, and we were always given supper after them. I
had no part in the selection of the pieces and the casting of the
characters. I had to look after the stage. I used to design the scenery
and copy out the parts, and prompt and make up. And I also had to look
after the various effects such as thunder, the singing of a nightingale,
and so on. Having no social position, I had no decent clothes, and
during rehearsals had to hold aloof from the others in the darkened
wings and shyly say nothing.

I used to paint the scenery in the Azhoguins' coach-house or yard. I was
assisted by a house-painter, or, as he called himself, a decorating
contractor, named Andrey Ivanov, a man of about fifty, tall and very
thin and pale, with a narrow chest, hollow temples, and dark rings under
his eyes, he was rather awful to look at. He had some kind of wasting
disease, and every spring and autumn he was said to be on the point of
death, but he would go to bed for a while and then get up and say with
surprise: "I'm not dead this time!"

In the town he was called Radish, and people said it was his real name.
He loved the theatre as much as I, and no sooner did he hear that a play
was in hand than he gave up all his work and went to the Azhoguins' to
paint scenery.

The day after my conversation with my sister I worked from morning till
night at the Azhoguins'. The rehearsal was fixed for seven o'clock, and
an hour before it began all the players were assembled, and the eldest,
the middle, and the youngest Miss Azhoguin were reading their parts on
the stage. Radish, in a long, brown overcoat with a scarf wound round
his neck, was standing, leaning with his head against the wall, looking
at the stage with a rapt expression. Mrs. Azhoguin went from guest to
guest saying something pleasant to every one. She had a way of gazing
into one's face and speaking in a hushed voice as though she were
telling a secret.

"It must be difficult to paint scenery," she said softly, coming up to
me. "I was just talking to Mrs. Mufke about prejudice when I saw you
come in. Mon Dieu! All my life I have struggled against prejudice. To
convince the servants that all their superstitions are nonsense I always
light three candles, and I begin all my important business on the
thirteenth."

The daughter of Dolyhikov, the engineer, was there, a handsome, plump,
fair girl, dressed, as people said in our town, in Parisian style. She
did not act, but at rehearsals a chair was put for her on the stage, and
the plays did not begin until she appeared in the front row, to astonish
everybody with the brilliance of her clothes. As coming from the
metropolis, she was allowed to make remarks during rehearsals, and she
did so with an affable, condescending smile, and it was clear that she
regarded our plays as a childish amusement. It was said that she had
studied singing at the Petersburg conservatoire and had sung for a
winter season in opera. I liked her very much, and during rehearsals or
the performance, I never took my eyes off her.

I had taken the book and began to prompt when suddenly my sister
appeared. Without taking off her coat and hat she came up to me and
said:

"Please come!"

I went. Behind the stage in the doorway stood Aniuta Blagovo, also
wearing a hat with a dark veil. She was the daughter of the
vice-president of the Court, who had been appointed to our town years
ago, almost as soon as the High Court was established. She was tall and
had a good figure, and was considered indispensable for the _tableaux
vivants_, and when she represented a fairy or a muse, her face would
burn with shame; but she took no part in the plays, and would only look
in at rehearsals, on some business, and never enter the hall. And it was
evident now that she had only looked in for a moment.

"My father has mentioned you," she said drily, not looking at me and
blushing.... "Dolyhikov has promised to find you something to do on the
railway. If you go to his house to-morrow, he will see you."

I bowed and thanked her for her kindness.

"And you must leave this," she said, pointing to my book.

She and my sister went up to Mrs. Azhoguin and began to whisper, looking
at me.

"Indeed," said Mrs. Azhoguin, coming up to me, and gazing into my face.
"Indeed, if it takes you from your more serious business"--she took the
book out of my hands--"then you must hand it over to some one else.
Don't worry, my friend. It will be all right."

I said good-bye and left in some confusion. As I went down-stairs I saw
my sister and Aniuta Blagovo going away; they were talking animatedly, I
suppose about my going on the railway, and they hurried away. My sister
had never been to a rehearsal before, and she was probably tortured by
her conscience and by her fear of my father finding out that she had
been to the Azhoguins' without permission.

The next day I went to see Dolyhikov at one o'clock. The man servant
showed me into a charming room, which was the engineer's drawing-room
and study. Everything in it was charming and tasteful, and to a man like
myself, unused to such things, very strange. Costly carpets, huge
chairs, bronzes, pictures in gold and velvet frames; photographs on the
walls of beautiful women, clever, handsome faces, and striking
attitudes; from the drawing-room a door led straight into the garden, by
a veranda, and I saw lilac and a table laid for breakfast, rolls, and a
bunch of roses; and there was a smell of spring, and good cigars, and
happiness--and everything seemed to say, here lives a man who has worked
and won the highest happiness here on earth. At the table the engineer's
daughter was sitting reading a newspaper.

"Do you want my father?" she asked. "He is having a shower-bath. He will
be down presently. Please take a chair."

I sat down.

"I believe you live opposite?" she asked after a short silence.

"Yes."

"When I have nothing to do I look out of the window. You must excuse
me," she added, turning to her newspaper, "and I often see you and your
sister. She has such a kind, wistful expression."

Dolyhikov came in. He was wiping his neck with a towel.

"Papa, this is Mr. Pologniev," said his daughter.

"Yes, yes. Blagovo spoke to me." He turned quickly to me, but did not
hold out his hand. "But what do you think I can give you? I'm not
bursting with situations. You are queer people!" he went on in a loud
voice and as though he were scolding me. "I get about twenty people
every day, as though I were a Department of State. I run a railway, sir.
I employ hard labour; I need mechanics, navvies, joiners, well-sinkers,
and you can only sit and write. That's all! You are all clerks!"

And he exhaled the same air of happiness as his carpets and chairs. He
was stout, healthy, with red cheeks and a broad chest; he looked clean
in his pink shirt and wide trousers, just like a china figure of a
post-boy. He had a round, bristling beard--and not a single grey
hair--and a nose with a slight bridge, and bright, innocent, dark eyes.

"What can you do?" he went on. "Nothing! I am an engineer and
well-to-do, but before I was given this railway I worked very hard for a
long time. I was an engine-driver for two years, I worked in Belgium as
an ordinary lubricator. Now, my dear man, just think--what work can I
offer you?"

"I quite agree," said I, utterly abashed, not daring to meet his bright,
innocent eyes.

"Are you any good with the telegraph?" he asked after some thought.

"Yes. I have been in the telegraph service."

"Hm.... Well, we'll see. Go to Dubechnia. There's a fellow there
already. But he is a scamp."

"And what will my duties be?" I asked.

"We'll see to that later. Go there now. I'll give orders. But please
don't drivel and don't bother me with petitions or I'll kick you out."

He turned away from me without even a nod. I bowed to him and his
daughter, who was reading the newspaper, and went out. I felt so
miserable that when my sister asked how the engineer had received me, I
could not utter a single word.

To go to Dubechnia I got up early in the morning at sunrise. There was
not a soul in the street, the whole town was asleep, and my footsteps
rang out with a hollow sound. The dewy poplars filled the air with a
soft scent. I was sad and had no desire to leave the town. It seemed so
nice and warm! I loved the green trees, the quiet sunny mornings, the
ringing of the bells, but the people in the town were alien to me,
tiresome and sometimes even loathsome. I neither liked nor understood
them.

I did not understand why or for what purpose those thirty-five thousand
people lived. I knew that Kimry made a living by manufacturing boots,
that Tula made samovars and guns, that Odessa was a port; but I did not
know what our town was or what it did. The people in Great Gentry Street
and two other clean streets had independent means and salaries paid by
the Treasury, but how the people lived in the other eight streets which
stretched parallel to each other for three miles and then were lost
behind the hill--that was always an insoluble problem to me. And I am
ashamed to think of the way they lived. They had neither public gardens,
nor a theatre, nor a decent orchestra; the town and club libraries are
used only by young Jews, so that books and magazines would lie for
months uncut. The rich and the intelligentsia slept in close, stuffy
bedrooms, with wooden beds infested with bugs; the children were kept in
filthy, dirty rooms called nurseries, and the servants, even when they
were old and respectable, slept on the kitchen floor and covered
themselves with rags. Except in Lent all the houses smelt of _bortsch_,
and during Lent of sturgeon fried in sunflower oil. The food was
unsavoury, the water unwholesome. On the town council, at the
governor's, at the archbishop's, everywhere there had been talk for
years about there being no good, cheap water-supply and of borrowing two
hundred thousand roubles from the Treasury. Even the very rich people,
of whom there were about thirty in the town, people who would lose a
whole estate at cards, used to drink the bad water and talk passionately
about the loan--and I could never understand this, for it seemed to me
it would be simpler for them to pay up the two hundred thousand.

I did not know a single honest man in the whole town. My father took
bribes, and imagined they were given to him out of respect for his
spiritual qualities; the boys at the high school, in order to be
promoted, went to lodge with the masters and paid them large sums; the
wife of the military commandant took levies from the recruits during the
recruiting, and even allowed them to stand her drinks, and once she was
so drunk in church that she could not get up from her knees; during the
recruiting the doctors also took bribes, and the municipal doctor and
the veterinary surgeon levied taxes on the butcher shops and public
houses; the district school did a trade in certificates which gave
certain privileges in the civil service; the provosts took bribes from
the clergy and church-wardens whom they controlled, and on the town
council and various committees every one who came before them was
pursued with: "One expects thanks!"--and thereby forty copecks had to
change hands. And those who did not take bribes, like the High Court
officials, were stiff and proud, and shook hands with two fingers, and
were distinguished by their indifference and narrow-mindedness. They
drank and played cards, married rich women, and always had a bad,
insidious influence on those round them. Only the girls had any moral
purity; most of them had lofty aspirations and were pure and honest at
heart; but they knew nothing of life, and believed that bribes were
given to honour spiritual qualities; and when they married, they soon
grew old and weak, and were hopelessly lost in the mire of that vulgar,
bourgeois existence.


III

A railway was being built in our district. On holidays and thereabouts
the town was filled with crowds of ragamuffins called "railies," of whom
the people were afraid. I used often to see a miserable wretch with a
bloody face, and without a hat, being dragged off by the police, and
behind him was the proof of his crime, a samovar or some wet, newly
washed linen. The "railies" used to collect near the public houses and
on the squares; and they drank, ate, and swore terribly, and whistled
after the town prostitutes. To amuse these ruffians our shopkeepers used
to make the cats and dogs drink vodka, or tie a kerosene-tin to a dog's
tail, and whistle to make the dog come tearing along the street with the
tin clattering after him, and making him squeal with terror and think he
had some frightful monster hard at his heels, so that he would rush out
of the town and over the fields until he could run no more. We had
several dogs in the town which were left with a permanent shiver and
used to crawl about with their tails between their legs, and people said
that they could not stand such tricks and had gone mad.

The station was being built five miles from the town. It was said that
the engineer had asked for a bribe of fifty thousand roubles to bring
the station nearer, but the municipality would only agree to forty; they
would not give in to the extra ten thousand, and now the townspeople are
sorry because they had to make a road to the station which cost them
more. Sleepers and rails were fixed all along the line, and
service-trains were running to carry building materials and labourers,
and they were only waiting for the bridges upon which Dolyhikov was at
work, and here and there the stations were not ready.

Dubechnia--the name of our first station--was seventeen versts from the
town. I went on foot. The winter and spring corn was bright green,
shining in the morning sun. The road was smooth and bright, and in the
distance I could see in outline the station, the hills, and the remote
farmhouses.... How good it was out in the open! And how I longed to be
filled with the sense of freedom, if only for that morning, to stop
thinking of what was going on in the town, or of my needs, or even of
eating! Nothing has so much prevented my living as the feeling of acute
hunger, which make my finest thoughts get mixed up with thoughts of
porridge, cutlets, and fried fish. When I stand alone in the fields and
look up at the larks hanging marvellously in the air, and bursting with
hysterical song, I think: "It would be nice to have some bread and
butter." Or when I sit in the road and shut my eyes and listen to the
wonderful sounds of a May-day, I remember how good hot potatoes smell.
Being big and of a strong constitution I never have quite enough to eat,
and so my chief sensation during the day is hunger, and so I can
understand why so many people who are working for a bare living, can
talk of nothing but food.

At Dubechnia the station was being plastered inside, and the upper story
of the water-tank was being built. It was close and smelt of lime, and
the labourers were wandering lazily over piles of chips and rubbish. The
signalman was asleep near his box with the sun pouring straight into
his face. There was not a single tree. The telephone gave a faint hum,
and here and there birds had alighted on it. I wandered over the heaps,
not knowing what to do, and remembered how when I asked the engineer
what my duties would be, he had replied: "We will see there." But what
was there to see in such a wilderness? The plasterers were talking about
the foreman and about one Fedot Vassilievich. I could not understand and
was filled with embarrassment--physical embarrassment. I felt conscious
of my arms and legs, and of the whole of my big body, and did not know
what to do with them or where to go.

After walking for at least a couple of hours I noticed that from the
station to the right of the line there were telegraph-poles which after
about one and a half or two miles ended in a white stone wall. The
labourers said it was the office, and I decided at last that I must go
there.

It was a very old farmhouse, long unused. The wall of rough, white stone
was decayed, and in places had crumbled away, and the roof of the wing,
the blind wall of which looked toward the railway, had perished, and
was patched here and there with tin. Through the gates there was a large
yard, overgrown with tall grass, and beyond that, an old house with
Venetian blinds in the windows, and a high roof, brown with rot. On
either side of the house, to right and left, were two symmetrical wings;
the windows of one were boarded up, while by the other, the windows of
which were open, there were a number of calves grazing. The last
telegraph-pole stood in the yard, and the wire went from it to the wing
with the blind wall. The door was open and I went in. By the table at
the telegraph was sitting a man with a dark, curly head in a canvas
coat; he glared at me sternly and askance, but he immediately smiled and
said:

"How do you do, Profit?"

It was Ivan Cheprakov, my school friend, who was expelled, when he was
in the second class, for smoking. Once, during the autumn, we were out
catching goldfinches, starlings, and hawfinches, to sell them in the
market early in the morning when our parents were still asleep.

We beat up flocks of starlings and shot at them with pellets, and then
picked up the wounded, and some died in terrible agony--I can still
remember how they moaned at night in my case--and some recovered. And we
sold them, and swore black and blue that they were male birds. Once in
the market I had only one starling left, which I hawked about and
finally sold for a copeck. "A little profit!" I said to console myself,
and from that time at school I was always known as "Little Profit," and
even now, schoolboys and the townspeople sometimes use the name to tease
me, though no one but myself remembers how it came about.

Cheprakov never was strong. He was narrow-chested, round-shouldered,
long-legged. His tie looked like a piece of string, he had no waistcoat,
and his boots were worse than mine--with the heels worn down. He blinked
with his eyes and had an eager expression as though he were trying to
catch something and he was in a constant fidget.

"You wait," he said, bustling about. "Look here!... What was I saying
just now?"

We began to talk. I discovered that the estate had till recently
belonged to the Cheprakovs and only the previous autumn had passed to
Dolyhikov, who thought it more profitable to keep his money in land than
in shares, and had already bought three big estates in our district with
the transfer of all mortgages. When Cheprakov's mother sold, she
stipulated for the right to live in one of the wings for another two
years and got her son a job in the office.

"Why shouldn't he buy?" said Cheprakov of the engineer. "He gets a lot
from the contractors. He bribes them all."

Then he took me to dinner, deciding in his emphatic way that I was to
live with him in the wing and board with his mother.

"She is a screw," he said, "but she will not take much from you."

In the small rooms where his mother lived there was a queer jumble; even
the hall and the passage were stacked with furniture, which had been
taken from the house after the sale of the estate; and the furniture was
old, and of redwood. Mrs. Cheprakov, a very stout elderly lady, with
slanting, Chinese eyes, sat by the window, in a big chair, knitting a
stocking. She received me ceremoniously.

"It is Pologniev, mother," said Cheprakov, introducing me. "He is going
to work here."

"Are you a nobleman?" she asked in a strange, unpleasant voice as though
she had boiling fat in her throat.

"Yes," I answered.

"Sit down."

The dinner was bad. It consisted only of a pie with unsweetened curds
and some milk soup. Elena Nikifirovna, my hostess, was perpetually
winking, first with one eye, then with the other. She talked and ate,
but in her whole aspect there was a deathlike quality, and one could
almost detect the smell of a corpse. Life hardly stirred in her, yet she
had the air of being the lady of the manor, who had once had her serfs,
and was the wife of a general, whose servants had to call him "Your
Excellency," and when these miserable embers of life flared up in her
for a moment, she would say to her son:

"Ivan, that is not the way to hold your knife!"

Or she would say, gasping for breath, with the preciseness of a hostess
labouring to entertain her guest:

"We have just sold our estate, you know. It is a pity, of course, we
have got so used to being here, but Dolyhikov promised to make Ivan
station-master at Dubechnia, so that we shan't have to leave. We shall
live here on the station, which is the same as living on the estate. The
engineer is such a nice man! Don't you think him very handsome?"

Until recently the Cheprakovs had been very well-to-do, but with the
general's death everything changed. Elena Nikifirovna began to quarrel
with the neighbours and to go to law, and she did not pay her bailiffs
and labourers; she was always afraid of being robbed--and in less than
ten years Dubechnia changed completely.

Behind the house there was an old garden run wild, overgrown with tall
grass and brushwood. I walked along the terrace which was still
well-kept and beautiful; through the glass door I saw a room with a
parquet floor, which must have been the drawing-room. It contained an
ancient piano, some engravings in mahogany frames on the walls--and
nothing else. There was nothing left of the flower-garden but peonies
and poppies, rearing their white and scarlet heads above the ground; on
the paths, all huddled together, were young maples and elm-trees, which
had been stripped by the cows. The growth was dense and the garden
seemed impassable, and only near the house, where there still stood
poplars, firs, and some old bricks, were there traces of the former
avenues, and further on the garden was being cleared for a hay-field,
and here it was no longer allowed to run wild, and one's mouth and eyes
were no longer filled with spiders' webs, and a pleasant air was
stirring. The further out one went, the more open it was, and there were
cherry-trees, plum-trees, wide-spreading old apple-trees, lichened and
held up with props, and the pear-trees were so tall that it was
incredible that there could be pears on them. This part of the garden
was let to the market-women of our town, and it was guarded from thieves
and starlings by a peasant--an idiot who lived in a hut.

The orchard grew thinner and became a mere meadow running down to the
river, which was overgrown with reeds and withy-beds. There was a pool
by the mill-dam, deep and full of fish, and a little mill with a straw
roof ground and roared, and the frogs croaked furiously. On the water,
which was as smooth as glass, circles appeared from time to time, and
water-lilies trembled on the impact of a darting fish. The village of
Dubechnia was on the other side of the river. The calm, azure pool was
alluring with its promise of coolness and rest. And now all this, the
pool, the mill, the comfortable banks of the river, belonged to the
engineer!

And here my new work began. I received and despatched telegrams, I wrote
out various accounts and copied orders, claims, and reports, sent in to
the office by our illiterate foremen and mechanics. But most of the day
I did nothing, walking up and down the room waiting for telegrams, or I
would tell the boy to stay in the wing, and go into the garden until the
boy came to say the bell was ringing. I had dinner with Mrs. Cheprakov.
Meat was served very rarely; most of the dishes were made of milk, and
on Wednesdays and Fridays we had Lenten fare, and the food was served in
pink plates, which were called Lenten. Mrs. Cheprakov was always
blinking--the habit grew on her, and I felt awkward and embarrassed in
her presence.

As there was not enough work for one, Cheprakov did nothing, but slept
or went down to the pool with his gun to shoot ducks. In the evenings he
got drunk in the village, or at the station, and before going to bed he
would look in the glass and say:

"How are you, Ivan Cheprakov?"

When he was drunk, he was very pale and used to rub his hands and laugh,
or rather neigh, He-he-he! Out of bravado he would undress himself and
run naked through the fields, and he used to eat flies and say they were
a bit sour.


IV

Once after dinner he came running into the wing, panting, to say:

"Your sister has come to see you."

I went out and saw a fly standing by the steps of the house. My sister
had brought Aniuta Blagovo and a military gentleman in a summer uniform.
As I approached I recognised the military gentleman as Aniuta's brother,
the doctor.

"We've come to take you for a picnic," he said, "if you've no
objection."

My sister and Aniuta wanted to ask how I was getting on, but they were
both silent and only looked at me. They felt that I didn't like my job,
and tears came into my sister's eyes and Aniuta Blagovo blushed. We went
into the orchard, the doctor first, and he said ecstatically:

"What air! By Jove, what air!"

He was just a boy to look at. He talked and walked like an
undergraduate, and the look in his grey eyes was as lively, simple, and
frank as that of a nice boy. Compared with his tall, handsome sister he
looked weak and slight, and his little beard was thin and so was his
voice--a thin tenor, though quite pleasant. He was away somewhere with
his regiment and had come home on leave, and said that he was going to
Petersburg in the autumn to take his M.D. He already had a family--a
wife and three children; he had married young, in his second year at the
University, and people said he was unhappily married and was not living
with his wife.

"What is the time?" My sister was uneasy. "We must go back soon, for my
father would only let me have until six o'clock."

"Oh, your father," sighed the doctor.

I made tea, and we drank it sitting on a carpet in front of the terrace,
and the doctor, kneeling, drank from his saucer, and said that he was
perfectly happy. Then Cheprakov fetched the key and unlocked the glass
door and we all entered the house. It was dark and mysterious and
smelled of mushrooms, and our footsteps made a hollow sound as though
there were a vault under the floor. The doctor stopped by the piano and
touched the keys and it gave out a faint, tremulous, cracked but still
melodious sound. He raised his voice and began to sing a romance,
frowning and impatiently stamping his foot when he touched a broken key.
My sister forgot about going home, but walked agitatedly up and down the
room and said:

"I am happy! I am very, very happy!"

There was a note of surprise in her voice as though it seemed impossible
to her that she should be happy. It was the first time in my life that I
had seen her so gay. She even looked handsome. Her profile was not good,
her nose and mouth somehow protruded and made her look as if she was
always blowing, but she had beautiful, dark eyes, a pale, very delicate
complexion, and a touching expression of kindness and sadness, and when
she spoke she seemed very charming and even beautiful. Both she and I
took after our mother; we were broad-shouldered, strong, and sturdy, but
her paleness was a sign of sickness, she often coughed, and in her eyes
I often noticed the expression common to people who are ill, but who for
some reason conceal it. In her present cheerfulness there was something
childish and naïve, as though all the joy which had been suppressed and
dulled during our childhood by a strict upbringing, had suddenly
awakened in her soul and rushed out into freedom.

But when evening came and the fly was brought round, my sister became
very quiet and subdued, and sat in the fly as though it were a
prison-van.

Soon they were all gone. The noise of the fly died away.... I remembered
that Aniuta Blagovo had said not a single word to me all day.

"A wonderful girl!" I thought "A wonderful girl."

Lent came and every day we had Lenten dishes. I was greatly depressed by
my idleness and the uncertainty of my position, and, slothful, hungry,
dissatisfied with myself, I wandered over the estate and only waited for
an energetic mood to leave the place.

Once in the afternoon when Radish was sitting in our wing, Dolyhikov
entered unexpectedly, very sunburnt, and grey with dust. He had been out
on the line for three days and had come to Dubechnia on a locomotive and
walked over. While he waited for the carriage which he had ordered to
come out to meet him he went over the estate with his bailiff, giving
orders in a loud voice, and then for a whole hour he sat in our wing and
wrote letters. When telegrams came through for him, he himself tapped
out the answers, while we stood there stiff and silent.

"What a mess!" he said, looking angrily through the accounts. "I shall
transfer the office to the station in a fortnight and I don't know what
I shall do with you then."

"I've done my best, sir," said Cheprakov.

"Quite so. I can see what your best is. You can only draw your wages."
The engineer looked at me and went on. "You rely on getting
introductions to make a career for yourself with as little trouble as
possible. Well, I don't care about introductions. Nobody helped me.
Before I had this line, I was an engine-driver. I worked in Belgium as
an ordinary lubricator. And what are you doing here, Panteley?" he
asked, turning to Radish. "Going out drinking?"

For some reason or other he called all simple people Panteley, while he
despised men like Cheprakov and myself, and called us drunkards, beasts,
canaille. As a rule he was hard on petty officials, and paid and
dismissed them ruthlessly without any explanation.

At last the carriage came for him. When he left he promised to dismiss
us all in a fortnight; called the bailiff a fool, stretched himself out
comfortably in the carriage, and drove away.

"Andrey Ivanich," I said to Radish, "will you take me on as a labourer?"

"What! Why?"

We went together toward the town, and when the station and the farm were
far behind us, I asked:

"Andrey Ivanich, why did you come to Dubechnia?"

"Firstly because some of my men are working on the line, and secondly to
pay interest to Mrs. Cheprakov. I borrowed fifty roubles from her last
summer, and now I pay her one rouble a month."

The decorator stopped and took hold of my coat.

"Misail Alereich, my friend," he went on, "I take it that if a common
man or a gentleman takes interest, he is a wrong-doer. The truth is not
in him."

Radish, looking thin, pale, and rather terrible, shut his eyes, shook
his head, and muttered in a philosophic tone:

"The grub eats grass, rust eats iron, lies devour the soul. God save us
miserable sinners!"


V

Radish was unpractical and he was no business man; he undertook more
work than he could do, and when he came to payment he always lost his
reckoning and so was always out on the wrong side. He was a painter, a
glazier, a paper-hanger, and would even take on tiling, and I remember
how he used to run about for days looking for tiles to make an
insignificant profit. He was an excellent workman and would sometimes
earn ten roubles a day, and but for his desire to be a master and to
call himself a contractor, he would probably have made quite a lot of
money.

He himself was paid by contract and paid me and the others by the day,
between seventy-five copecks and a rouble per day. When the weather was
hot and dry he did various outside jobs, chiefly painting roofs. Not
being used to it, my feet got hot, as though I were walking over a
red-hot oven, and when I wore felt boots my feet swelled. But this was
only at the beginning. Later on I got used to it and everything went all
right. I lived among the people, to whom work was obligatory and
unavoidable, people who worked like dray-horses, and knew nothing of the
moral value of labour, and never even used the word "labour" in their
talk. Among them I also felt like a dray-horse, more and more imbued
with the necessity and inevitability of what I was doing, and this made
my life easier, and saved me from doubt.

At first everything amused me, everything was new. It was like being
born again. I could sleep on the ground and go barefoot--and found it
exceedingly pleasant. I could stand in a crowd of simple folks, without
embarrassing them, and when a cab-horse fell down in the street, I used
to run and help it up without being afraid of soiling my clothes. But,
best of all, I was living independently and was not a burden on any one.

The painting of roofs, especially when we mixed our own paint, was
considered a very profitable business, and, therefore, even such good
workmen as Radish did not shun this rough and tiresome work. In short
trousers, showing his lean, muscular legs, he used to prowl over the
roof like a stork, and I used to hear him sigh wearily as he worked his
brush:

"Woe, woe to us, miserable sinners!"

He could walk as easily on a roof as on the ground. In spite of his
looking so ill and pale and corpse-like, his agility was extraordinary;
like any young man he would paint the cupola and the top of the church
without scaffolding, using only ladders and a rope, and it was queer and
strange when, standing there, far above the ground, he would rise to his
full height and cry to the world at large:

"Grubs eat grass, rust eats iron, lies devour the soul!"

Or, thinking of something, he would suddenly answer his own thought:

"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"

When I went home from work all the people sitting outside their doors,
the shop assistants, dogs, and their masters, used to shout after me and
jeer spitefully, and at first it seemed monstrous and distressed me
greatly.

"Little Profit," they used to shout. "House-painter! Yellow ochre!"

And no one treated me so unmercifully as those who had only just risen
above the people and had quite recently had to work for their living.
Once in the market-place as I passed the ironmonger's a can of water was
spilled over me as if by accident, and once a stick was thrown at me.
And once a fishmonger, a grey-haired old man, stood in my way and looked
at me morosely and said:

"It isn't you I'm sorry for, you fool, it's your father."

And when my acquaintances met me they got confused. Some regarded me as
a queer fish and a fool, and they were sorry for me; others did not know
how to treat me and it was difficult to understand them. Once, in the
daytime, in one of the streets off Great Gentry Street, I met Aniuta
Blagovo. I was on my way to my work and was carrying two long brushes
and a pot of paint. When she recognised me, Aniuta blushed.

"Please do not acknowledge me in the street," she said nervously,
sternly, in a trembling voice, without offering to shake hands with me,
and tears suddenly gleamed in her eyes. "If you must be like this, then,
so--so be it, but please avoid me in public!"

I had left Great Gentry Street and was living in a suburb called
Makarikha with my nurse Karpovna, a good-natured but gloomy old woman
who was always looking for evil, and was frightened by her dreams, and
saw omens and ill in the bees and wasps which flew into her room. And in
her opinion my having become a working man boded no good.

"You are lost!" she said mournfully, shaking her head. "Lost!"

With her in her little house lived her adopted son, Prokofyi, a butcher,
a huge, clumsy fellow, of about thirty, with ginger hair and scrubby
moustache. When he met me in the hall, he would silently and
respectfully make way for me, and when he was drunk he would salute me
with his whole hand. In the evenings he used to have supper, and
through the wooden partition I could hear him snorting and snuffling as
he drank glass after glass.

"Mother," he would say in an undertone.

"Well," Karpovna would reply. She was passionately fond of him. "What is
it, my son?"

"I'll do you a favour, mother. I'll feed you in your old age in this
vale of tears, and when you die I'll bury you at my own expense. So I
say and so I'll do."

I used to get up every day before sunrise and go to bed early. We
painters ate heavily and slept soundly, and only during the night would
we have any excitement. I never quarrelled with my comrades. All day
long there was a ceaseless stream of abuse, cursing and hearty good
wishes, as, for instance, that one's eyes should burst, or that one
might be carried off by cholera, but, all the same, among ourselves we
were very friendly. The men suspected me of being a religious crank and
used to laugh at me good-naturedly, saying that even my own father
denounced me, and they used to say that they very seldom went to church
and that many of them had not been to confession for ten years, and
they justified their laxness by saying that a decorator is among men
like a jackdaw among birds.

My mates respected me and regarded me with esteem; they evidently liked
my not drinking or smoking, and leading a quiet, steady life. They were
only rather disagreeably surprised at my not stealing the oil, or going
with them to ask our employers for a drink. The stealing of the
employers' oil and paint was a custom with house-painters, and was not
regarded as theft, and it was remarkable that even so honest a man as
Radish would always come away from work with some white lead and oil.
And even respectable old men who had their own houses in Makarikha were
not ashamed to ask for tips, and when the men, at the beginning or end
of a job, made up to some vulgar fool and thanked him humbly for a few
pence, I used to feel sick and sorry.

With the customers they behaved like sly courtiers, and almost every day
I was reminded of Shakespeare's Polonius.

"There will probably be rain," a customer would say, staring at the sky.


"It is sure to rain," the painters would agree.

"But the clouds aren't rain-clouds. Perhaps it won't rain."

"No, sir. It won't rain. It won't rain, sure."

Behind their backs they generally regarded the customers ironically, and
when, for instance, they saw a gentleman sitting on his balcony with a
newspaper, they would say:

"He reads newspapers, but he has nothing to eat."

I never visited my people. When I returned from work I often found
short, disturbing notes from my sister about my father; how he was very
absent-minded at dinner, and then slipped away and locked himself in his
study and did not come out for a long time. Such news upset me. I could
not sleep, and I would go sometimes at night and walk along Great
Gentry Street by our house, and look up at the dark windows, and try to
guess if all was well within. On Sundays my sister would come to see me,
but by stealth, as though she came not to see me, but my nurse. And if
she came into my room she would look pale, with her eyes red, and at
once she would begin to weep.

"Father cannot bear it much longer," she would say. "If, as God forbid,
something were to happen to him, it would be on your conscience all your
life. It is awful, Misail! For mother's sake I implore you to mend your
ways."

"My dear sister," I replied. "How can I reform when I am convinced that
I am acting according to my conscience? Do try to understand me!"

"I know you are obeying your conscience, but it ought to be possible to
do so without hurting anybody."

"Oh, saints above!" the old woman would sigh behind the door. "You are
lost. There will be a misfortune, my dear. It is bound to come."


VI

On Sunday, Doctor Blagovo came to see me unexpectedly. He was wearing a
white summer uniform over a silk shirt, and high glacé boots.

"I came to see you!" he began, gripping my hand in his hearty,
undergraduate fashion. "I hear of you every day and I have long intended
to go and see you to have a heart-to-heart, as they say. Things are
awfully boring in the town; there is not a living soul worth talking to.
How hot it is, by Jove!" he went on, taking off his tunic and standing
in his silk shirt. "My dear fellow, let us have a talk."

I was feeling bored and longing for other society than that of the
decorators. I was really glad to see him.

"To begin with," he said, sitting on my bed, "I sympathise with you
heartily, and I have a profound respect for your present way of living.
In the town you are misunderstood and there is nobody to understand you,
because, as you know, it is full of Gogolian pig-faces. But I guessed
what you were at the picnic. You are a noble soul, an honest,
high-minded man! I respect you and think it an honour to shake hands
with you. To change your life so abruptly and suddenly as you did, you
must have passed through a most trying spiritual process, and to go on
with it now, to live scrupulously by your convictions, you must have to
toil incessantly both in mind and in heart. Now, please tell me, don't
you think that if you spent all this force of will, intensity, and power
on something else, like trying to be a great scholar or an artist, that
your life would be both wider and deeper, and altogether more
productive?"

We talked and when we came to speak of physical labour, I expressed this
idea: that it was necessary that the strong should not enslave the weak,
and that the minority should not be a parasite on the majority, always
sucking up the finest sap, _i. e._, it was necessary that all without
exception--the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor--should share
equally in the struggle for existence, every man for himself, and in
that respect there was no better means of levelling than physical labour
and compulsory service for all.

"You think, then," said the doctor, "that all, without, exception,
should be employed in physical labour?"

"Yes."

"But don't you think that if everybody, including the best people,
thinkers and men of science, were to take part in the struggle for
existence, each man for himself, and took to breaking stones and
painting roofs, it would be a serious menace to progress?"

"Where is the danger?" I asked. "Progress consists in deeds of love, in
the fulfilment of the moral law. If you enslave no one, and are a burden
upon no one, what further progress do you want?"

"But look here!" said Blagovo, suddenly losing his temper and getting
up. "I say! If a snail in its shell is engaged in self-perfection in
obedience to the moral law--would you call that progress?"

"But why?" I was nettled. "If you make your neighbours feed you, clothe
you, carry you, defend you from your enemies, their life is built up on
slavery, and that is not progress. My view is that that is the most real
and, perhaps, the only possible, the only progress necessary."

"The limits of universal progress, which is common to all men, are in
infinity, and it seems to me strange to talk of a 'possible' progress
limited by our needs and temporal conceptions."

"If the limits of peoples are in infinity, as you say, then it means
that its goal is indefinite," I said. "Think of living without knowing
definitely what for!"

"Why not? Your 'not knowing' is not so boring as your 'knowing.' I am
walking up a ladder which is called progress, civilisation, culture. I
go on and on, not knowing definitely where I am going to, but surely it
is worth while living for the sake of the wonderful ladder alone. And
you know exactly what you are living for--that some should not enslave
others, that the artist and the man who mixes his colours for him should
dine together. But that is the bourgeois, kitchen side of life, and
isn't it disgusting only to live for that? If some insects devour
others, devil take them, let them! We need not think of them, they will
perish and rot, however you save them from slavery--we must think of
that great Cross which awaits all mankind in the distant future."

Blagovo argued hotly with me, but it was noticeable that he was
disturbed by some outside thought.

"Your sister is not coming," he said, consulting his watch. "Yesterday
she was at our house and said she was going to see you. You go on
talking about slavery, slavery," he went on, "but it is a special
question, and all these questions are solved by mankind gradually."

We began to talk of evolution. I said that every man decides the
question of good and evil for himself, and does not wait for mankind to
solve the question by virtue of gradual development. Besides, evolution
is a stick with two ends. Side by side with the gradual development of
humanitarian ideas, there is the gradual growth of ideas of a different
kind. Serfdom is past, and capitalism is growing. And with ideas of
liberation at their height the majority, just as in the days of Baty,
feeds, clothes, and defends the minority; and is left hungry, naked, and
defenceless. The state of things harmonises beautifully with all your
tendencies and movements, because the art of enslaving is also being
gradually developed. We no longer flog our servants in the stables, but
we give slavery more refined forms; at any rate, we are able to justify
it in each separate case. Ideas remain ideas with us, but if we could,
now, at the end of the nineteenth century, throw upon the working
classes all our most unpleasant physiological functions, we should do
so, and, of course, we should justify ourselves by saying that if the
best people, thinkers and great scholars, had to waste their time on
such functions, progress would be in serious jeopardy.

Just then my sister entered. When she saw the doctor, she was flurried
and excited, and at once began to say that it was time for her to go
home to her father.

"Cleopatra Alexeyevna," said Blagovo earnestly, laying his hands on his
heart, "what will happen to your father if you spend half an hour with
your brother and me?"

He was a simple kind of man and could communicate his cheerfulness to
others. My sister thought for a minute and began to laugh, and suddenly
got very happy, suddenly, unexpectedly, just as she did at the picnic.
We went out into the fields and lay on the grass, and went on with our
conversation and looked at the town, where all the windows facing the
west looked golden in the setting sun.

After that Blagovo appeared every time my sister came to see me, and
they always greeted each other as though their meeting was unexpected.
My sister used to listen while the doctor and I argued, and her face was
always joyful and rapturous, admiring and curious, and it seemed to me
that a new world was slowly being discovered before her eyes, a world
which she had not seen before even in her dreams, which now she was
trying to divine; when the doctor was not there she was quiet and sad,
and if, as she sat on my bed, she sometimes wept, it was for reasons of
which she did not speak.

In August Radish gave us orders to go to the railway. A couple of days
before we were "driven" out of town, my father came to see me. He sat
down and, without looking at me, slowly wiped his red face, then took
out of his pocket our local paper and read out with deliberate emphasis
on each word that a schoolfellow of my own age, the son of the director
of the State Bank, had been appointed chief clerk of the Court of the
Exchequer.

"And now, look at yourself," he said, folding up the newspaper. "You are
a beggar, a vagabond, a scoundrel! Even the bourgeoisie and other
peasants get education to make themselves decent people, while you, a
Pologniev, with famous, noble ancestors, go wallowing in the mire! But I
did not come here to talk to you. I have given you up already." He went
on in a choking voice, as he stood up: "I came here to find out where
your sister is, you scoundrel! She left me after dinner. It is now past
seven o'clock and she is not in. She has been going out lately without
telling me, and she has been disrespectful--and I see your filthy,
abominable influence at work. Where is she?"

He had in his hands the familiar umbrella, and I was already taken
aback, and I stood stiff and erect, like a schoolboy, waiting for my
father to thrash me, but he saw the glance I cast at the umbrella and
this probably checked him.

"Live as you like!" he said. "My blessing is gone from you."

"Good God!" muttered my old nurse behind the door. "You are lost. Oh! my
heart feels some misfortune coming. I can feel it."

I went to work on the railway. During the whole of August there was wind
and rain. It was damp and cold; the corn had now been gathered in the
fields, and on the big farms where the reaping was done with machines,
the wheat lay not in stacks, but in heaps; and I remember how those
melancholy heaps grew darker and darker every day, and the grain
sprouted. It was hard work; the pouring rain spoiled everything that we
succeeded in finishing. We were not allowed either to live or to sleep
in the station buildings and had to take shelter in dirty, damp, mud
huts where the "railies" had lived during the summer, and at night I
could not sleep from the cold and the bugs crawling over my face and
hands. And when we were working near the bridges, then the "railies"
used to come out in a crowd to fight the painters--which they regarded
as sport. They used to thrash us, steal our trousers, and to infuriate
us and provoke us to a fight; they used to spoil our work, as when they
smeared the signal-boxes with green paint. To add to all our miseries
Radish began to pay us very irregularly. All the painting on the line
was given to one contractor, who subcontracted with another, and he
again with Radish, stipulating for twenty per cent commission. The job
itself was unprofitable; then came the rains; time was wasted; we did no
work and Radish had to pay his men every day. The starving painters
nearly came to blows with him, called him a swindler, a bloodsucker, a
Judas, and he, poor man, sighed and in despair raised his hands to the
heavens and was continually going to Mrs. Cheprakov to borrow money.


VII

Came the rainy, muddy, dark autumn, bringing a slack time, and I used to
sit at home three days in the week without work, or did various jobs
outside painting; such as digging earth for ballast for twenty copecks
a day. Doctor Blagovo had gone to Petersburg. My sister did not come to
see me. Radish lay at home ill, expecting to die every day.

And my mood was also autumnal; perhaps because when I became a working
man I saw only the seamy side of the life of our town, and every day
made fresh discoveries which brought me to despair. My fellow townsmen,
both those of whom I had had a low opinion before, and those whom I had
thought fairly decent, now seemed to me base, cruel, and up to any dirty
trick. We poor people were tricked and cheated in the accounts, kept
waiting for hours in cold passages or in the kitchen, and we were
insulted and uncivilly treated. In the autumn I had to paper the library
and two rooms at the club. I was paid seven copecks a piece, but was
told to give a receipt for twelve copecks, and when I refused to do it,
a respectable gentleman in gold spectacles, one of the stewards of the
club, said to me:

"If you say another word, you scoundrel, I'll knock you down."

And when a servant whispered to him that I was the son of Pologniev, the
architect, then I got flustered and blushed, but he recovered himself at
once and said:

"Damn him."

In the shops we working men were sold bad meat, musty flour, and coarse
tea. In church we were jostled by the police, and in the hospitals we
were mulcted by the assistants and nurses, and if we could not give them
bribes through poverty, we were given food in dirty dishes. In the
post-office the lowest official considered it his duty to treat us as
animals and to shout rudely and insolently: "Wait! Don't you come
pushing your way in here!" Even the dogs, even they were hostile to us
and hurled themselves at us with a peculiar malignancy. But what struck
me most of all in my new position was the entire lack of justice, what
the people call "forgetting God." Rarely a day went by without some
swindle. The shopkeeper, who sold us oil, the contractor, the workmen,
the customers themselves, all cheated. It was an understood thing that
our rights were never considered, and we always had to pay for the money
we had earned, going with our hats off to the back door.

I was paper-hanging in one of the club-rooms, next the library, when,
one evening as I was on the point of leaving, Dolyhikov's daughter came
into the room carrying a bundle of books.

I bowed to her.

"Ah! How are you?" she said, recognising me at once and holding out her
hand. "I am very glad to see you."

She smiled and looked with a curious puzzled expression at my blouse and
the pail of paste and the papers lying on the floor; I was embarrassed
and she also felt awkward.

"Excuse my staring at you," she said. "I have heard so much about you.
Especially from Doctor Blagovo. He is enthusiastic about you. I have met
your sister; she is a dear, sympathetic girl, but I could not make her
see that there is nothing awful in your simple life. On the contrary,
you are the most interesting man in the town."

Once more she glanced at the pail of paste and the paper and said:

"I asked Doctor Blagovo to bring us together, but he either forgot or
had no time. However, we have met now. I should be very pleased if you
would call on me. I do so want to have a talk. I am a simple person,"
she said, holding out her hand, "and I hope you will come and see me
without ceremony. My father is away, in Petersburg."

She went into the reading-room, with her dress rustling, and for a long
time after I got home I could not sleep.

During that autumn some kind soul, wishing to relieve my existence, sent
me from time to time presents of tea and lemons, or biscuits, or roast
pigeons. Karpovna said the presents were brought by a soldier, though
from whom she did not know; and the soldier used to ask if I was well,
if I had dinner every day, and if I had warm clothes. When the frost
began the soldier came while I was out and brought a soft knitted scarf,
which gave out a soft, hardly perceptible scent, and I guessed who my
good fairy had been. For the scarf smelled of lily-of-the-valley, Aniuta
Blagovo's favourite scent.

Toward winter there was more work and things became more cheerful.
Radish came to life again and we worked together in the cemetery church,
where we scraped the holy shrine for gilding. It was a clean, quiet,
and, as our mates said, a specially good job. We could do a great deal
in one day, and so time passed quickly, imperceptibly. There was no
swearing, nor laughing, nor loud altercations. The place compelled quiet
and decency, and disposed one for tranquil, serious thoughts. Absorbed
in our work, we stood or sat immovably, like statues; there was a dead
silence, very proper to a cemetery, so that if a tool fell down, or the
oil in the lamp spluttered, the sound would be loud and startling, and
we would turn to see what it was. After a long silence one could hear a
humming like that of a swarm of bees; in the porch, in an undertone, the
funeral service was being read over a dead baby; or a painter painting a
moon surrounded with stars on the cupola would begin to whistle quietly,
and remembering suddenly that he was in a church, would stop; or Radish
would sigh at his own thoughts: "Anything may happen! Anything may
happen!" or above our heads there would be the slow, mournful tolling of
a bell, and the painters would say it must be a rich man being brought
to the church....

The days I spent in the peace of the little church, and during the
evenings I played billiards, or went to the gallery of the theatre in
the new serge suit I had bought with my own hard-earned money. They were
already beginning plays and concerts at the Azhoguins', and Radish did
the scenery by himself. He told me about the plays and tableaux vivants
at the Azhoguins', and I listened to him enviously. I had a great
longing to take part in the rehearsals, but I dared not go to the
Azhoguins'.

A week before Christmas Doctor Blagovo arrived, and we resumed our
arguments and played billiards in the evenings. When he played billiards
he used to take off his coat, and unfasten his shirt at the neck, and
generally try to look like a debauchee. He drank a little, but rowdily,
and managed to spend in a cheap tavern like the Volga as much as twenty
roubles in an evening.

Once more my sister came to see me, and when they met they expressed
surprise, but I could see by her happy, guilty face that these meetings
were not accidental. One evening when we were playing billiards the
doctor said to me:

"I say, why don't you call on Miss Dolyhikov? You don't know Maria
Victorovna. She is a clever, charming, simple creature."

I told him how the engineer had received me in the spring.

"Nonsense!" laughed the doctor. "The engineer is one thing and she is
another. Really, my good fellow, you mustn't offend her. Go and see her
some time. Let us go to-morrow evening. Will you?"

He persuaded me. Next evening I donned my serge suit and with some
perturbation set out to call on Miss Dolyhikov. The footman did not seem
to me so haughty and formidable, or the furniture so oppressive, as on
the morning when I had come to ask for work. Maria Victorovna was
expecting me and greeted me as an old friend and gave my hand a warm,
friendly grip. She was wearing a grey dress with wide sleeves, and had
her hair done in the style which when it became the fashion a year later
in our town, was called "dog's ears." The hair was combed back over the
ears, and it made Maria Victorovna's face look broader, and she looked
very like her father, whose face was broad and red and rather like a
coachman's. She was handsome and elegant, but not young; about thirty to
judge by her appearance, though she was not more than twenty-five.

"Dear doctor!" she said, making me sit down. "How grateful I am to him.
But for him, you would not have come. I am bored to death! My father has
gone and left me alone, and I do not know what to do with myself."

Then she began to ask where I was working, how much I got, and where I
lived.

"Do you only spend what you earn on yourself?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You are a happy man," she replied. "All the evil in life, it seems to
me, comes from boredom and idleness, and spiritual emptiness, which are
inevitable when one lives at other people's expense. Don't think I'm
showing off. I mean it sincerely. It is dull and unpleasant to be rich.
Win friends by just riches, they say, because as a rule there is and can
be no such thing as just riches."

She looked at the furniture with a serious, cold expression, as though
she was making an inventory of it, and went on:

"Ease and comfort possess a magic power. Little by little they seduce
even strong-willed people. Father and I used to live poorly and simply,
and now you see how we live. Isn't it strange?" she said with a shrug.
"We spend twenty thousand roubles a year! In the provinces!"

"Ease and comfort must not be regarded as the inevitable privilege of
capital and education," I said. "It seems to me possible to unite the
comforts of life with work, however hard and dirty it may be. Your
father is rich, but, as he says, he used to be a mechanic, and just a
lubricator."

She smiled and shook her head thoughtfully.

"Papa sometimes eats _tiurya_," she said, "but only out of caprice."

A bell rang and she got up.

"The rich and the educated ought to work like the rest," she went on,
"and if there is to be any comfort, it should be accessible to all.
There should be no privileges. However, that's enough philosophy. Tell
me something cheerful. Tell me about the painters. What are they like?
Funny?"

The doctor came. I began to talk about the painters, but, being unused
to it, I felt awkward and talked solemnly and ponderously like an
ethnographist. The doctor also told a few stories about working people.
He rocked to and fro and cried, and fell on his knees, and when he was
depicting a drunkard, lay flat on the floor. It was as good as a play,
and Maria Victorovna laughed until she cried. Then he played the piano
and sang in his high-pitched tenor, and Maria Victorovna stood by him
and told him what to sing and corrected him when he made a mistake.

"I hear you sing, too," said I.

"Too?" cried the doctor. "She is a wonderful singer, an artist, and you
say--too! Careful, careful!"

"I used to study seriously," she replied, "but I have given it up now."

She sat on a low stool and told us about her life in Petersburg, and
imitated famous singers, mimicking their voices and mannerisms; then she
sketched the doctor and myself in her album, not very well, but both
were good likenesses. She laughed and made jokes and funny faces, and
this suited her better than talking about unjust riches, and it seemed
to me that what she had said about "riches and comfort" came not from
herself, but was just mimicry. She was an admirable comedian. I compared
her mentally with the girls of our town, and not even the beautiful,
serious Aniuta Blagovo could stand up against her; the difference was as
vast as that between a wild and a garden rose.

We stayed to supper. The doctor and Maria Victorovna drank red wine,
champagne, and coffee with cognac; they touched glasses and drank to
friendship, to wit, to progress, to freedom, and never got drunk, but
went rather red and laughed for no reason until they cried. To avoid
being out of it I, too, drank red wine.

"People with talent and with gifted natures," said Miss Dolyhikov, "know
how to live and go their own way; but ordinary people like myself know
nothing and can do nothing by themselves; there is nothing for them but
to find some deep social current and let themselves be borne along by
it."

"Is it possible to find that which does not exist?" asked the doctor.

"It doesn't exist because we don't see it."

"Is that so? Social currents are the invention of modern literature.
They don't exist here."

A discussion began.

"We have no profound social movements; nor have we had them," said the
doctor. "Modern literature has invented a lot of things, and modern
literature invented intellectual working men in village life, but go
through all our villages and you will only find Mr. Cheeky Snout in a
jacket or black frock coat, who will make four mistakes in the word
'one.' Civilised life has not begun with us yet. We have the same
savagery, the same slavery, the same nullity as we had five hundred
years ago. Movements, currents--all that is so wretched and puerile
mixed up with such vulgar, catch-penny interests--and one cannot take it
seriously. You may think you have discovered a large social movement,
and you may follow it and devote your life in the modern fashion to such
problems as the liberation of vermin from slavery, or the abolition of
meat cutlets--and I congratulate you, madam. But we have to learn,
learn, learn, and there will be plenty of time for social movements; we
are not up to them yet, and upon my soul, we don't understand anything
at all about them."

"You don't understand, but I do," said Maria Victorovna. "Good Heavens!
What a bore you are to-night."

"It is our business to learn and learn, to try and accumulate as much
knowledge as possible, because serious social movements come where there
is knowledge, and the future happiness of mankind lies in science.
Here's to science!"

"One thing is certain. Life must somehow be arranged differently," said
Maria Victorovna, after some silence and deep thought, "and life as it
has been up to now is worthless. Don't let us talk about it."

When we left her the Cathedral clock struck two.

"Did you like her?" asked the doctor. "Isn't she a dear girl?"

We had dinner at Maria Victorovna's on Christmas Day, and then we went
to see her every day during the holidays. There was nobody besides
ourselves, and she was right when she said she had no friends in the
town but the doctor and me. We spent most of the time talking, and
sometimes the doctor would bring a book or a magazine and read aloud.
After all, he was the first cultivated man I had met. I could not tell
if he knew much, but he was always generous with his knowledge because
he wished others to know too. When he talked about medicine, he was not
like any of our local doctors, but he made a new and singular
impression, and it seemed to me that if he had wished he could have
become a genuine scientist. And perhaps he was the only person at that
time who had any real influence over me. Meeting him and reading the
books he gave me, I began gradually to feel a need for knowledge to
inspire the tedium of my work. It seemed strange to me that I had not
known before such things as that the whole world consisted of sixty
elements. I did not know what oil or paint was, and I could do without
knowing. My acquaintance with the doctor raised me morally too. I used
to argue with him, and though I usually stuck to my opinion, yet,
through him, I came gradually to perceive that everything was not clear
to me, and I tried to cultivate convictions as definite as possible so
that the promptings of my conscience should be precise and have nothing
vague about them. Nevertheless, educated and fine as he was, far and
away the best man in the town, he was by no means perfect. There was
something rather rude and priggish in his ways and in his trick of
dragging talk down to discussion, and when he took off his coat and sat
in his shirt and gave the footman a tip, it always seemed to me that
culture was just a part of him, with the rest untamed Tartar.

After the holidays he left once more for Petersburg. He went in the
morning and after dinner my sister came to see me. Without taking off
her furs, she sat silent, very pale, staring in front of her. She began
to shiver and seemed to be fighting against some illness.

"You must have caught a cold," I said.

Her eyes filled with tears. She rose and went to Karpovna without a
word to me, as though I had offended her. And a little later I heard her
speaking in a tone of bitter reproach.

"Nurse, what have I been living for, up to now? What for? Tell me;
haven't I wasted my youth? During the last years I have had nothing but
making up accounts, pouring out tea, counting the copecks, entertaining
guests, without a thought that there was anything better in the world!
Nurse, try to understand me, I too have human desires and I want to live
and they have made a housekeeper of me. It is awful, awful!"

She flung her keys against the door and they fell with a clatter in my
room. They were the keys of the side-board, the larder, the cellar, and
the tea-chest--the keys my mother used to carry.

"Oh! Oh! Saints above!" cried my old nurse in terror. "The blessed
saints!"

When she left, my sister came into my room for her keys and said:

"Forgive me. Something strange has been going on in me lately."


VIII

One evening when I came home late from Maria Victorovna's I found a
young policeman in a new uniform in my room; he was sitting by the table
reading.

"At last!" he said getting up and stretching himself. "This is the third
time I have been to see you. The governor has ordered you to go and see
him to-morrow at nine o'clock sharp. Don't be late."

He made me give him a written promise to comply with his Excellency's
orders and went away. This policeman's visit and the unexpected
invitation to see the governor had a most depressing effect on me. From
my early childhood I have had a dread of gendarmes, police, legal
officials, and I was tormented with anxiety as though I had really
committed a crime and I could not sleep. Nurse and Prokofyi were also
upset and could not sleep. And, to make things worse, nurse had an
earache, and moaned and more than once screamed out. Hearing that I
could not sleep Prokofyi came quietly into my room with a little lamp
and sat by the table.

"You should have a drop of pepper-brandy...." he said after some
thought. "In this vale of tears things go on all right when you take a
drop. And if mother had some pepper-brandy poured into her ear she
would be much better."

About three he got ready to go to the slaughter-house to fetch some
meat. I knew I should not sleep until morning, and to use up the time
until nine, I went with him. We walked with a lantern, and his boy,
Nicolka, who was about thirteen, and had blue spots on his face and an
expression like a murderer's, drove behind us in a sledge, urging the
horse on with hoarse cries.

"You will probably be punished at the governor's," said Prokofyi as we
walked. "There is a governor's rank, and an archimandrite's rank, and an
officer's rank, and a doctor's rank, and every profession has its own
rank. You don't keep to yours and they won't allow it."

The slaughter-house stood behind the cemetery, and till then I had only
seen it at a distance. It consisted of three dark sheds surrounded by a
grey fence, from which, when the wind was in that direction in summer,
there came an overpowering stench. Now, as I entered the yard, I could
not see the sheds in the darkness; I groped through horses and sledges,
both empty and laden with meat; and there were men walking about with
lanterns and swearing disgustingly. Prokofyi and Nicolka swore as
filthily and there was a continuous hum from the swearing and coughing
and the neighing of the horses.

The place smelled of corpses and offal, the snow was thawing and already
mixed with mud, and in the darkness it seemed to me that I was walking
through a pool of blood.

When we had filled the sledge with meat, we went to the butcher's shop
in the market-place. Day was beginning to dawn. One after another the
cooks came with baskets and old women in mantles. With an axe in his
hand, wearing a white, blood-stained apron, Prokofyi swore terrifically
and crossed himself, turning toward the church, and shouted so loud that
he could be heard all over the market, avowing that he sold his meat at
cost price and even at a loss. He cheated in weighing and reckoning, the
cooks saw it, but, dazed by his shouting, they did not protest, but only
called him a gallows-bird.

Raising and dropping his formidable axe, he assumed picturesque
attitudes and constantly uttered the sound "Hak!" with a furious
expression, and I was really afraid of his cutting off some one's head
or hand.

I stayed in the butcher's shop the whole morning, and when at last I
went to the governor's my fur coat smelled of meat and blood. My state
of mind would have been appropriate for an encounter with a bear armed
with no more than a staff. I remember a long staircase with a striped
carpet, and a young official in a frock coat with shining buttons, who
silently indicated the door with both hands and went in to announce me.
I entered the hall, where the furniture was most luxurious, but cold and
tasteless, forming a most unpleasant impression--the tall, narrow
pier-glasses, and the bright, yellow hangings over the windows; one
could see that, though governors changed, the furniture remained the
same. The young official again pointed with both hands to the door and
went toward a large, green table, by which stood a general with the
Order of Vladimir at his neck.

"Mr. Pologniev," he began, holding a letter in his hand and opening his
mouth wide so that it made a round O. "I asked you to come to say this
to you: 'Your esteemed father has applied verbally and in writing to the
provincial marshal of nobility, to have you summoned and made to see the
incongruity of your conduct with the title of nobleman which you have
the honour to bear. His Excellency Alexander Pavlovich, justly thinking
that your conduct may be subversive, and finding that persuasion may not
be sufficient, without serious intervention on the part of the
authorities, has given me his decision as to your case, and I agree with
him.'"

He said this quietly, respectfully, standing erect as if I was his
superior, and his expression was not at all severe. He had a flabby,
tired face, covered with wrinkles, with pouches under his eyes; his hair
was dyed, and it was hard to guess his age from his appearance--fifty or
sixty.

"I hope," he went on, "that you will appreciate Alexander Pavlovich's
delicacy in applying to me, not officially, but privately. I have
invited you unofficially not as a governor, but as a sincere admirer of
your father's. And I ask you to change your conduct and to return to the
duties proper to your rank, or, to avoid the evil effects of your
example, to go to some other place where you are not known and where you
may do what you like. Otherwise I shall have to resort to extreme
measures."

For half a minute he stood in silence staring at me open-mouthed.

"Are you a vegetarian?" he asked.

"No, your Excellency, I eat meat."

He sat down and took up a document, and I bowed and left.

It was not worth while going to work before dinner. I went home and
tried to sleep, but could not because of the unpleasant, sickly feeling
from the slaughter-house and my conversation with the governor. And so I
dragged through till the evening and then, feeling gloomy and out of
sorts, I went to see Maria Victorovna. I told her about my visit to the
governor and she looked at me in bewilderment, as if she did not believe
me, and suddenly she began to laugh merrily, heartily, stridently, as
only good-natured, light-hearted people can.

"If I were to tell this in Petersburg!" she cried, nearly dropping with
laughter, bending over the table. "If I could tell them in Petersburg!"


IX

Now we saw each other often, sometimes twice a day. Almost every day,
after dinner, she drove up to the cemetery and, as she waited for me,
read the inscriptions on the crosses and monuments. Sometimes she came
into the church and stood by my side and watched me working. The
silence, the simple industry of the painters and gilders, Radish's good
sense, and the fact that outwardly I was no different from the other
artisans and worked as they did, in a waistcoat and old shoes, and that
they addressed me familiarly--were new to her, and she was moved by it
all. Once in her presence a painter who was working, at a door on the
roof, called down to me:

"Misail, fetch me the white lead."

I fetched him the white lead and as I came down the scaffolding she was
moved to tears and looked at me and smiled:

"What a dear you are!" she said.

I have always remembered how when I was a child a green parrot got out
of its cage in one of the rich people's houses and wandered about the
town for a whole month, flying from one garden to another, homeless and
lonely. And Maria Victorovna reminded me of the bird.

"Except to the cemetery," she said with a laugh, "I have absolutely
nowhere to go. The town bores me to tears. People read, sing, and
twitter at the Azhoguins', but I cannot bear them lately. Your sister is
shy, Miss Blagovo for some reason hates me. I don't like the theatre.
What can I do with myself?"

When I was at her house I smelled of paint and turpentine, and my hands
were stained. She liked that. She wanted me to come to her in my
ordinary working-clothes; but I felt awkward in them in her
drawing-room, and as if I were in uniform, and so I always wore my new
serge suit. She did not like that.

"You must confess," she said once, "that you have not got used to your
new rôle. A working-man's suit makes you feel awkward and embarrassed.
Tell me, isn't it because you are not sure of yourself and are
unsatisfied? Does this work you have chosen, this painting of yours,
really satisfy you?" she asked merrily. "I know paint makes things look
nicer and wear better, but the things themselves belong to the rich and
after all they are a luxury. Besides you have said more than once that
everybody should earn his living with his own hands and you earn money,
not bread. Why don't you keep to the exact meaning of what you say? You
must earn bread, real bread, you must plough, sow, reap, thrash, or do
something which has to do directly with agriculture, such as keeping
cows, digging, or building houses...."

She opened a handsome bookcase which stood by the writing-table and
said:

"I'm telling you all this because I'm going to let you into my secret.
Voilà. This is my agricultural library. Here are books on arable land,
vegetable-gardens, orchard-keeping, cattle-keeping, bee-keeping: I read
them eagerly and have studied the theory of everything thoroughly. It is
my dream to go to Dubechnia as soon as March begins. It is wonderful
there, amazing; isn't it? The first year I shall only be learning the
work and getting used to it, and in the second year I shall begin to
work thoroughly, without sparing myself. My father promised to give me
Dubechnia as a present, and I am to do anything I like with it."

She blushed and with mingled laughter and tears she dreamed aloud of her
life at Dubechnia and how absorbing it would be. And I envied her. March
would soon be here. The days were drawing out, and in the bright sunny
afternoons the snow dripped from the roofs, and the smell of spring was
in the air. I too longed for the country.

And when she said she was going to live at Dubechnia, I saw at once that
I should be left alone in the town, and I felt jealous of the bookcase
with her books about farming. I knew and cared nothing about farming and
I was on the point of telling her that agriculture was work for slaves,
but I recollected that my father had once said something of the sort
and I held my peace.

Lent began. The engineer, Victor Ivanich, came home from Petersburg. I
had begun to forget his existence. He came unexpectedly, not even
sending a telegram. When I went there as usual in the evening, he was
walking up and down the drawing-room, after a bath, with his hair cut,
looking ten years younger, and talking. His daughter was kneeling by his
trunks and taking out boxes, bottles, books, and handing them to Pavel
the footman. When I saw the engineer, I involuntarily stepped back and
he held out both his hands and smiled and showed his strong, white,
cab-driver's teeth.

"Here he is! Here he is! I'm very pleased to see you, Mr. House-painter!
Maria told me all about you and sang your praises. I quite understand
you and heartily approve." He took me by the arm and went on: "It is
much cleverer and more honest to be a decent workman than to spoil State
paper and to wear a cockade. I myself worked with my hands in Belgium. I
was an engine-driver for five years...."

He was wearing a short jacket and comfortable slippers, and he shuffled
along like a gouty man waving and rubbing his hands; humming and buzzing
and shrugging with pleasure at being at home again with his favourite
shower-bath.

"There's no denying," he said at supper, "there's no denying that you
are kind, sympathetic people, but somehow as soon as you gentlefolk take
on manual labour or try to spare the peasants, you reduce it all to
sectarianism. You are a sectarian. You don't drink vodka. What is that
but sectarianism?"

To please him I drank vodka. I drank wine, too. We ate cheese, sausages,
pastries, pickles, and all kinds of dainties that the engineer had
brought with him, and we sampled wines sent from abroad during his
absence. They were excellent. For some reason the engineer had wines and
cigars sent from abroad--duty free; somebody sent him caviare and
_baliki_ gratis; he did not pay rent for his house because his landlord
supplied the railway with kerosene, and generally he and his daughter
gave me the impression of having all the best things in the world at
their service free of charge.

I went on visiting them, but with less pleasure than before. The
engineer oppressed me and I felt cramped in his presence. I could not
endure his clear, innocent eyes; his opinions bored me and were
offensive to me, and I was distressed by the recollection that I had so
recently been subordinate to this ruddy, well-fed man, and that he had
been mercilessly rude to me. True he would put his arm round my waist
and clap me kindly on the shoulder and approve of my way of living, but
I felt that he despised my nullity just as much as before and only
suffered me to please his daughter, but I could no longer laugh and talk
easily, and I thought myself ill-mannered, and all the time was
expecting him to call me Panteley as he did his footman Pavel. How my
provincial, bourgeois pride rode up against him! I, a working man, a
painter, going every day to the house of rich strangers, whom the whole
town regarded as foreigners, and drinking their expensive wines and
outlandish dishes! I could not reconcile this with my conscience. When I
went to see them I sternly avoided those whom I met on the way, and
looked askance at them like a real sectarian, and when I left the
engineer's house I was ashamed of feeling so well-fed.

But chiefly I was afraid of falling in love. Whether walking in the
street, or working, or talking to my mates, I thought all the time of
going to Maria Victorovna's in the evening, and always had her voice,
her laughter, her movements with me. And always as I got ready to go to
her, I would stand for a long time in front of the cracked mirror tying
my necktie; my serge suit seemed horrible to me, and I suffered, but at
the same time, despised myself for feeling so small. When she called to
me from another room to say that she was not dressed yet and to ask me
to wait a bit, and I could hear her dressing, I was agitated and felt as
though the floor was sinking under me. And when I saw a woman in the
street, even at a distance, I fell to comparing her figure with hers,
and it seemed to me that all our women and girls were vulgar, absurdly
dressed, and without manners; and such comparisons roused in me a
feeling of pride; Maria Victorovna was better than all of them. And at
night I dreamed of her and myself.

Once at supper the engineer and I ate a whole lobster. When I reached
home I remember that the engineer had twice called me "my dear fellow,"
and I thought that they treated me as they might have done a big,
unhappy dog, separated from his master, and that they were amusing
themselves with me, and that they would order me away like a dog when
they were bored with me. I began to feel ashamed and hurt; went to the
point of tears, as though I had been insulted, and, raising my eyes to
the heavens, I vowed to put an end to it all.

Next day I did not go to the Dolyhikovs'. Late at night, when it was
quite dark and pouring with rain, I walked up and down Great Gentry
Street, looking at the windows. At the Azhoguins' everybody was asleep
and the only light was in one of the top windows; old Mrs. Azhoguin was
sitting in her room embroidering by candle-light and imagining herself
to be fighting against prejudice. It was dark in our house and opposite,
at the Dolyhikovs' the windows were lit up, but it was impossible to see
anything through the flowers and curtains. I kept on walking up and down
the street; I was soaked through with the cold March rain. I heard my
father come home from the club; he knocked at the door; in a minute a
light appeared at a window and I saw my sister walking quickly with her
lamp and hurriedly arranging her thick hair. Then my father paced up and
down the drawing-room, talking and rubbing his hands, and my sister sat
still in a corner, lost in thought, not listening to him....

But soon they left the room and the light was put out.... I looked at
the engineer's house and that too was now dark. In the darkness and the
rain I felt desperately lonely. Cast out at the mercy of Fate, and I
felt how, compared with my loneliness, and my suffering, actual and to
come, all my work and all my desires and all that I had hitherto thought
and read, were vain and futile. Alas! The activities and thoughts of
human beings are not nearly so important as their sorrows! And not
knowing exactly what I was doing I pulled with all my might at the bell
at the Dolyhikovs' gate, broke it, and ran away down the street like a
little boy, full of fear, thinking they would rush out at once and
recognise me. When I stopped to take breath at the end of the street, I
could hear nothing but the falling rain and far away a night-watchman
knocking on a sheet of iron.

For a whole week I did not go to the Dolyhikovs'. I sold my serge suit.
I had no work and I was once more half-starved, earning ten or twenty
copecks a day, when possible, by disagreeable work. Floundering
knee-deep in the mire, putting out all my strength, I tried to drown my
memories and to punish myself for all the cheeses and pickles to which I
had been treated at the engineer's. Still, no sooner did I go to bed,
wet and hungry, than my untamed imagination set to work to evolve
wonderful, alluring pictures, and to my amazement I confessed that I was
in love, passionately in love, and I fell sound asleep feeling that the
hard life had only made my body stronger and younger.

One evening it began, most unseasonably, to snow, and the wind blew from
the north, exactly as if winter had begun again. When I got home from
work I found Maria Victorovna in my room. She was in her furs with her
hands in her muff.

"Why don't you come to see me?" she asked, looking at me with her bright
sagacious eyes, and I was overcome with joy and stood stiffly in front
of her, just as I had done with my father when he was going to thrash
me; she looked straight into my face and I could see by her eyes that
she understood why I was overcome.

"Why don't you come to see me?" she repeated. "You don't want to come? I
had to come to you."

She got up and came close to me.

"Don't leave me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "I am
lonely, utterly lonely."

She began to cry and said, covering her face with her muff:

"Alone! Life is hard, very hard, and in the whole world I have no one
but you. Don't leave me!"

Looking for her handkerchief to dry her tears, she gave a smile; we were
silent for some time, then I embraced and kissed her, and the pin in her
hat scratched my face and drew blood.

And we began to talk as though we had been dear to each other for a
long, long time.


X

In a couple of days she sent me to Dubechnia and I was beyond words
delighted with it. As I walked to the station, and as I sat in the
train, I laughed for no reason and people thought me drunk. There were
snow and frost in the mornings still, but the roads were getting dark,
and there were rooks cawing above them.

At first I thought of arranging the side wing opposite Mrs. Cheprakov's
for myself and Masha, but it appeared that doves and pigeons had taken
up their abode there and it would be impossible to cleanse it without
destroying a great number of nests. We would have to live willy-nilly in
the uncomfortable rooms with Venetian blinds in the big house. The
peasants called it a palace; there were more than twenty rooms in it,
and the only furniture was a piano and a child's chair, lying in the
attic, and even if Masha brought all her furniture from town we should
not succeed in removing the impression of frigid emptiness and coldness.
I chose three small rooms with windows looking on to the garden, and
from early morning till late at night I was at work in them, glazing the
windows, hanging paper, blocking up the chinks and holes in the floor.
It was an easy, pleasant job. Every now and then I would run to the
river to see if the ice was breaking and all the while I dreamed of the
starlings returning. And at night when I thought of Masha I would be
filled with an inexpressibly sweet feeling of an all-embracing joy to
listen to the rats and the wind rattling and knocking above the ceiling;
it was like an old hobgoblin coughing in the attic.

The snow was deep; there was a heavy fall at the end of March, but it
thawed rapidly, as if by magic, and the spring floods rushed down so
that by the beginning of April the starlings were already chattering and
yellow butterflies fluttered in the garden. The weather was wonderful.
Every day toward evening I walked toward the town to meet Masha, and how
delightful it was to walk along the soft, drying road with bare feet!
Half-way I would sit down and look at the town, not daring to go nearer.
The sight of it upset me, I was always wondering how my acquaintances
would behave toward me when they heard of my love. What would my father
say? I was particularly worried by the idea that my life was becoming
more complicated, and that I had entirely lost control of it, and that
she was carrying me off like a balloon, God knows whither. I had already
given up thinking how to make a living, and I thought--indeed, I cannot
remember what I thought.

Masha used to come in a carriage. I would take a seat beside her and
together, happy and free, we used to drive to Dubechnia. Or, having
waited till sunset, I would return home, weary and disconsolate,
wondering why Masha had not come, and then by the gate or in the garden
I would find my darling. She would come by the railway and walk over
from the station. What a triumph she had then! In her plain, woollen
dress, with a simple umbrella, but keeping a trim, fashionable figure
and expensive, Parisian boots--she was a gifted actress playing the
country girl. We used to go over the house, and plan out the rooms, and
the paths, and the vegetable-garden, and the beehives. We already had
chickens and ducks and geese which we loved because they were ours. We
had oats, clover, buckwheat, and vegetable seeds all ready for sowing,
and we used to examine them all and wonder what the crops would be like,
and everything Masha said to me seemed extraordinarily clever and fine.
This was the happiest time of my life.

Soon after Easter we were married in the parish church in the village of
Kurilovka three miles from Dubechnia. Masha wanted everything to be
simple; by her wish our bridesmen were peasant boys, only one deacon
sang, and we returned from the church in a little, shaky cart which she
drove herself. My sister was the only guest from the town. Masha had
sent her a note a couple of days before the wedding. My sister wore a
white dress and white gloves.... During the ceremony she cried softly
for joy and emotion, and her face had a maternal expression of infinite
goodness. She was intoxicated with our happiness and smiled as though
she were breathing a sweet perfume, and when I looked at her I
understood that there was nothing in the world higher in her eyes than
love, earthly love, and that she was always dreaming of love, secretly,
timidly, yet passionately. She embraced Masha and kissed her, and, not
knowing how to express her ecstasy, she said to her of me:

"He is a good man! A very good man."

Before she left us, she put on her ordinary clothes, and took me into
the garden to have a quiet talk.

"Father is very hurt that you have not written to him," she said. "You
should have asked for his blessing. But, at heart, he is very pleased.
He says that this marriage will raise you in the eyes of society, and
that under Maria Victorovna's influence you will begin to adopt a more
serious attitude toward life. In the evening now we talk about nothing
but you; and yesterday he even said, 'our Misail.' I was delighted. He
has evidently thought of a plan and I believe he wants to set you an
example of magnanimity, and that he will be the first to talk of
reconciliation. It is quite possible that one of these days he will come
and see you here."

She made the sign of the cross over me and said:

"Well, God bless you. Be happy. Aniuta Blagovo is a very clever girl.
She says of your marriage that God has sent you a new ordeal. Well?
Married life is not made up only of joy but of suffering as well. It is
impossible to avoid it."

Masha and I walked about three miles with her, and then walked home
quietly and silently, as though it were a rest for both of us. Masha had
her hand on my arm. We were at peace and there was no need to talk of
love; after the wedding we grew closer to each other and dearer, and it
seemed as though nothing could part us.

"Your sister is a dear, lovable creature," said Masha, "but looks as
though she had lived in torture. Your father must be a terrible man."

I began to tell her how my sister and I had been brought up and how
absurd and full of torture our childhood had been. When she heard that
my father had thrashed me quite recently she shuddered and clung to me:


"Don't tell me any more," she said. "It is too horrible."

And now she did not leave me. We lived in the big house, in three rooms,
and in the evenings we bolted the door that led to the empty part of the
house, as though some one lived there whom we did not know and feared. I
used to get up early, at dawn, and begin working. I repaired the carts;
made paths in the garden, dug the beds, painted the roofs. When the time
came to sow oats, I tried to plough and harrow, and sow and did it all
conscientiously, and did not leave it all to the labourer. I used to get
tired, and my face and feet used to burn with the rain and the sharp
cold wind. But work in the fields did not attract me. I knew nothing
about agriculture and did not like it; perhaps because my ancestors were
not tillers of the soil and pure town blood ran in my veins. I loved
nature dearly; I loved the fields and the meadows and the garden, but
the peasant who turns the earth with his plough, shouting at his
miserable horse, ragged and wet, with bowed shoulders, was to me an
expression of wild, rude, ugly force, and as I watched his clumsy
movements I could not help thinking of the long-passed legendary life,
when men did not yet know the use of fire. The fierce bull which led the
herd, and the horses that stampeded through the village, filled me with
terror, and all the large creatures, strong and hostile, a ram with
horns, a gander, or a watch-dog seemed to me to be symbolical of some
rough, wild force. These prejudices used to be particularly strong in me
in bad weather, when heavy clouds hung over the black plough-lands. But
worst of all was that when I was ploughing or sowing, and a few peasants
stood and watched how I did it, I no longer felt the inevitability and
necessity of the work and it seemed to me that I was trifling my time
away.

I used to go through the gardens and the meadow to the mill. It was
leased by Stiepan, a Kurilovka peasant; handsome, swarthy, with a black
beard--an athletic appearance. He did not care for mill work and thought
it tiresome and unprofitable, and he only lived at the mill to escape
from home. He was a saddler and always smelled of tan and leather. He
did not like talking, was slow and immovable, and used to hum
"U-lu-lu-lu," sitting on the bank or in the doorway of the mill.
Sometimes his wife and mother-in-law used to come from Kurilovka to see
him; they were both fair, languid, soft, and they used to bow to him
humbly and call him Stiepan Petrovich. And he would not answer their
greeting with a word or a sign, but would turn where he sat on the bank
and hum quietly: "U-lu-lu-lu." There would be a silence for an hour or
two. His mother-in-law and his wife would whisper to each other, get up
and look expectantly at him for some time, waiting for him to look at
them, and then they would bow humbly and say in sweet, soft voices:

"Good-bye, Stiepan Petrovich."

And they would go away. After that, Stiepan would put away the bundle of
cracknels or the shirt they had left for him and sigh and give a wink in
their direction and say:

"The female sex!"

The mill was worked with both wheels day and night. I used to help
Stiepan, I liked it, and when he went away I was glad to take his place.


XI

After a spell of warm bright weather we had a season of bad roads. It
rained and was cold all through May. The grinding of the millstones and
the drip of the rain induced idleness and sleep. The floor shook, the
whole place smelled of flour, and this too made one drowsy. My wife in a
short fur coat and high rubber boots used to appear twice a day and she
always said the same thing:

"Call this summer! It is worse than October!"

We used to have tea together and cook porridge, or sit together for
hours in silence thinking the rain would never stop. Once when Stiepan
went away to a fair, Masha stayed the night in the mill. When we got up
we could not tell what time it was for the sky was overcast; the sleepy
cocks at Dubechnia were crowing, and the corncrakes were trilling in the
meadow; it was very, very early.... My wife and I walked down to the
pool and drew up the bow-net that Stiepan had put out in our presence
the day before. There was one large perch in it and a crayfish angrily
stretched out his claws.

"Let them go," said Masha. "Let them be happy too."

Because we got up very early and had nothing to do, the day seemed very
long, the longest in my life. Stiepan returned before dusk and I went
back to the farmhouse.

"Your father came here to-day," said Masha.

"Where is he?"

"He has gone. I did not receive him."

Seeing my silence and feeling that I was sorry for my father, she said:

"We must be logical. I did not receive him and sent a message to ask him
not to trouble us again and not to come and see us."

In a moment I was outside the gates, striding toward the town to make it
up with my father. It was muddy, slippery, cold. For the first time
since our marriage I suddenly felt sad, and through my brain, tired with
the long day, there flashed the thought that perhaps I was not living as
I ought; I got more and more tired and was gradually overcome with
weakness, inertia; I had no desire to move or to think, and after
walking for some time, I waved my hand and went home.

In the middle of the yard stood the engineer in a leather coat with a
hood. He was shouting:

"Where's the furniture? There was some good Empire furniture, pictures,
vases. There's nothing left! Damn it, I bought the place with the
furniture!"

Near him stood Moissey, Mrs. Cheprakov's bailiff, fumbling with his cap;
a lank fellow of about twenty-five, with a spotty face and little,
impudent eyes; one side of his face was larger than the other as though
he had been lain on.

"Yes, Right Honourable Sir, you bought it without the furniture," he
said sheepishly. "I remember that clearly."

"Silence!" shouted the engineer, going red in the face, and beginning to
shake, and his shout echoed through the garden.


XII

When I was busy in the garden or the yard, Moissey would stand with his
hands behind his back and stare at me impertinently with his little
eyes. And this used to irritate me to such an extent that I would put
aside my work and go away.

We learned from Stiepan that Moissey had been Mrs. Cheprakov's lover. I
noticed that when people went to her for money they used to apply to
Moissey first, and once I saw a peasant, a charcoal-burner, black all
over, grovel at his feet. Sometimes after a whispered conversation
Moissey would hand over the money himself without saying anything to his
mistress, from which I concluded that the transaction was settled on his
own account.

He used to shoot in our garden, under our very windows, steal food from
our larder, borrow our horses without leave, and we were furious,
feeling that Dubechnia was no longer ours, and Masha used to go pale and
say:

"Have we to live another year and a half with these creatures?"

Ivan Cheprakov, the son, was a guard on the railway. During the winter
he got very thin and weak, so that he got drunk on one glass of vodka,
and felt cold out of the sun. He hated wearing his guard's uniform and
was ashamed of it, but found his job profitable because he could steal
candles and sell them. My new position gave him a mixed feeling of
astonishment, envy, and vague hope that something of the sort might
happen to him. He used to follow Masha with admiring eyes, and to ask me
what I had for dinner nowadays, and his ugly, emaciated face used to
wear a sweet, sad expression, and he used to twitch his fingers as
though he could feel my happiness with them.

"I say, Little Profit," he would say excitedly, lighting and relighting
his cigarette; he always made a mess wherever he stood because he used
to waste a whole box of matches on one cigarette. "I say, my life is
about as beastly as it could be. Every little squirt of a soldier can
shout: 'Here guard! Here!' I have such a lot in the trains and you know,
mine's a rotten life! My mother has ruined me! I heard a doctor say in
the train, if the parents are loose, their children become drunkards or
criminals. That's it."

Once he came staggering into the yard. His eyes wandered aimlessly and
he breathed heavily; he laughed and cried, and said something in a kind
of frenzy, and through his thickly uttered words I could only hear: "My
mother? Where is my mother?" and he wailed like a child crying, because
it has lost its mother in a crowd. I led him away into the garden and
laid him down under a tree, and all that day and through the night Masha
and I took it in turns to stay with him. He was sick and Masha looked
with disgust at his pale, wet face and said:

"Are we to have these creatures on the place for another year and a
half? It is awful! Awful!"

And what a lot of trouble the peasants gave us! How many disappointments
we had at the outset, in the spring, when we so longed to be happy! My
wife built a school. I designed the school for sixty boys, and the
Zemstvo Council approved the design, but recommended our building the
school at Kurilovka, the big village, only three miles away; besides the
Kurilovka school, where the children of four villages, including that of
Dubechnia, were taught, was old and inadequate and the floor was so
rotten that the children were afraid to walk on it. At the end of March
Masha, by her own desire, was appointed trustee of the Kurilovka school,
and at the beginning of April we called three parish meetings and
persuaded the peasants that the school was old and inadequate, and that
it was necessary to build a new one. A member of the Zemstvo Council and
the elementary school inspector came down too and addressed them. After
each meeting we were mobbed and asked for a pail of vodka; we felt
stifled in the crowd and soon got tired and returned home dissatisfied
and rather abashed. At last the peasants allotted a site for the school
and undertook to cart the materials from the town. And as soon as the
spring corn was sown, on the very first Sunday, carts set out from
Kurilovka and Dubechnia to fetch the bricks for the foundations. They
went at dawn and returned late in the evening. The peasants were drunk
and said they were tired out.

The rain and the cold continued, as though deliberately, all through
May. The roads were spoiled and deep in mud. When the carts came from
town they usually drove to our horror, into our yard! A horse would
appear in the gate, straddling its fore legs, with its big belly
heaving; before it came into the yard it would strain and heave and
after it would come a ten-yard beam in a four-wheeled wagon, wet and
slimy; alongside it, wrapped up to keep the rain out, never looking
where he was going and splashing through the puddles, a peasant would
walk with the skirt of his coat tucked up in his belt. Another cart
would appear with planks; then a third with a beam; then a fourth ...
and the yard in front of the house would gradually be blocked up with
horses, beams, planks. Peasants, men and women with their heads wrapped
up and their skirts tucked up, would stare morosely at our windows, kick
up a row and insist on the lady of the house coming out to them; and
they would curse and swear. And in a corner Moissey would stand, and it
seemed to us that he delighted in our discomfiture.

"We won't cart any more!" the peasants shouted. "We are tired to death!
Let her go and cart it herself!"

Pale and scared, thinking they would any minute break into the house,
Masha would send them money for a pail of vodka; after which the noise
would die down and the long beams would go jolting out of the yard.

When I went to look at the building my wife would get agitated and say:

"The peasants are furious. They might do something to you. No. Wait.
I'll go with you."

We used to drive over to Kurilovka together and then the carpenters
would ask for tips. The framework was ready for the foundations to be
laid, but the masons never came and when at last the masons did come it
was apparent that there was no sand; somehow it had been forgotten that
sand was wanted. Taking advantage of our helplessness, the peasants
asked thirty copecks a load, although it was less than a quarter of a
mile from the building to the river where the sand was to be fetched,
and more than five hundred loads were needed. There were endless
misunderstandings, wrangles, and continual begging. My wife was
indignant and the building contractor, Petrov, an old man of seventy,
took her by the hand and said:

"You look here! Look here! Just get me sand and I'll find ten men and
have the work done in two days. Look here!"

Sand was brought, but two, four days, a week passed and still there
yawned a ditch where the foundations were to be.

"I shall go mad," cried my wife furiously. "What wretches they are! What
wretches!"

During these disturbances Victor Ivanich used to come and see us. He
used to bring hampers of wine and dainties, and eat for a long time, and
then go to sleep on the terrace and snore so that the labourers shook
their heads and said:

"He's all right!"

Masha took no pleasure in his visits. She did not believe in him, and
yet she used to ask his advice; when, after a sound sleep after dinner,
he got up out of humour, and spoke disparagingly of our domestic
arrangements, and said he was sorry he had ever bought Dubechnia which
had cost him so much, and poor Masha looked miserably anxious and
complained to him, he would yawn and say the peasants ought to be
flogged.

He called our marriage and the life we were living a comedy, and used to
say it was a caprice, a whimsy.

"She did the same sort of thing once before," he told me. "She fancied
herself as an opera singer, and ran away from me. It took me two months
to find her, and my dear fellow, I wasted a thousand roubles on
telegrams alone."

He had dropped calling me a sectarian or the House-painter; and no
longer approved of my life as a working man, but he used to say:

"You are a queer fish! An abnormality. I don't venture to prophesy, but
you will end badly!"

Masha slept poorly at nights and would sit by the window of our bedroom
thinking. She no longer laughed and made faces at supper. I suffered,
and when it rained, every drop cut into my heart like a bullet, and I
could have gone on my knees to Masha and apologised for the weather.
When the peasants made a row in the yard, I felt that it was my fault. I
would sit for hours in one place, thinking only how splendid and how
wonderful Masha was. I loved her passionately, and I was enraptured by
everything she did and said. Her taste was for quiet indoor occupation;
she loved to read for hours and to study; she who knew about farm-work
only from books, surprised us all by her knowledge and the advice she
gave was always useful, and when applied was never in vain. And in
addition she had the fineness, the taste, and the good sense, the very
sound sense which only very well-bred people possess!

To such a woman, with her healthy, orderly mind, the chaotic environment
with its petty cares and dirty tittle-tattle, in which we lived, was
very painful. I could see that, and I, too, could not sleep at night. My
brain whirled and I could hardly choke back my tears. I tossed about,
not knowing what to do.

I used to rush to town and bring Masha books, newspapers, sweets,
flowers, and I used to go fishing with Stiepan, dragging for hours,
neck-deep in cold water, in the rain, to catch an eel by way of varying
our fare. I used humbly to ask the peasants not to shout, and I gave
them vodka, bribed them, promised them anything they asked. And what a
lot of other foolish things I did!

* * *

At last the rain stopped. The earth dried up. I used to get up in the
morning and go into the garden--dew shining on the flowers, birds and
insects shrilling, not a cloud in the sky, and the garden, the meadow,
the river were so beautiful, perfect but for the memory of the peasants
and the carts and the engineer. Masha and I used to drive out in a car
to see how the oats were coming on. She drove and I sat behind; her
shoulders were always a little hunched, and the wind would play with her
hair.

"Keep to the right!" she shouted to the passers-by.

"You are like a coachman!" I once said to her.

"Perhaps. My grandfather, my father's father, was a coachman. Didn't you
know?" she asked, turning round, and immediately she began to mimic the
way the coachmen shout and sing.

"Thank God!" I thought, as I listened to her. "Thank God!"

And again I remember the peasants, the carts, the engineer....


XIII

Doctor Blagovo came over on a bicycle. My sister began to come often.
Once more we talked of manual labour and progress, and the mysterious
Cross awaiting humanity in the remote future. The doctor did not like
our life, because it interfered with our discussions and he said it was
unworthy of a free man to plough, and reap, and breed cattle, and that
in time all such elementary forms of the struggle for existence would be
left to animals and machines, while men would devote themselves
exclusively to scientific investigation. And my sister always asked me
to let her go home earlier, and if she stayed late, or for the night,
she was greatly distressed.

"Good gracious, what a baby you are," Masha used to say reproachfully.
"It is quite ridiculous."

"Yes, it is absurd," my sister would agree. "I admit it is absurd, but
what can I do if I have not the power to control myself. It always seems
to me that I am doing wrong."

During the haymaking my body, not being used to it, ached all over;
sitting on the terrace in the evening, I would suddenly fall asleep and
they would all laugh at me. They would wake me up and make me sit down
to supper. I would be overcome with drowsiness and in a stupor saw
lights, faces, plates, and heard voices without understanding what they
were saying. And I used to get up early in the morning and take my
scythe, or go to the school and work there all day.

When I was at home on holidays I noticed that my wife and sister were
hiding something from me and even seemed to be avoiding me. My wife was
tender with me as always, but she had some new thought of her own which
she did not communicate to me. Certainly her exasperation with the
peasants had increased and life was growing harder and harder for her,
but she no longer complained to me. She talked more readily to the
doctor than to me, and I could not understand why.

It was the custom in our province for the labourers to come to the farm
in the evenings to be treated to vodka, even the girls having a glass.
We did not keep the custom; the haymakers and the women used to come
into the yard and stay until late in the evening, waiting for vodka, and
then they went away cursing. And then Masha used to frown and relapse
into silence or whisper irritably to the doctor:

"Savages! Barbarians!"

Newcomers to the villages were received ungraciously, almost with
hostility; like new arrivals at a school. At first we were looked upon
as foolish, soft-headed people who had bought the estate because we did
not know what to do with our money. We were laughed at. The peasants
grazed their cattle in our pasture and even in our garden, drove our
cows and horses into the village and then came and asked for
compensation. The whole village used to come into our yard and declare
loudly that in mowing we had cut the border of common land which did not
belong to us; and as we did not know our boundaries exactly we used to
take their word for it and pay a fine. But afterward it appeared that we
had been in the right. They used to bark the young lime-trees in our
woods. A Dubechnia peasant, a money-lender, who sold vodka without a
licence, bribed our labourers to help him cheat us in the most
treacherous way; he substituted old wheels for the new on our wagons,
stole our ploughing yokes and sold them back to us, and so on. But worst
of all was the building at Kurilovka. There the women at night stole
planks, bricks, tiles, iron; the bailiff and his assistants made a
search; the women were each fined two roubles by the village council,
and then the whole lot of them got drunk on the money.

When Masha found out, she would say to the doctor and my sister:

"What beasts! It is horrible! Horrible!"

And more than once I heard her say she was sorry she had decided to
build the school.

"You must understand," the doctor tried to point out, "that if you build
a school or undertake any good work, it is not for the peasants, but for
the sake of culture and the future. The worse the peasants are the more
reason there is for building a school. Do understand!"

There was a loss of confidence in his voice, and it seemed to me that he
hated the peasants as much as Masha.

Masha used often to go to the mill with my sister and they would say
jokingly that they were going to have a look at Stiepan because he was
so handsome. Stiepan it appeared was reserved and silent only with men,
and in the company of women was free and talkative. Once when I went
down to the river to bathe I involuntarily overheard a conversation.
Masha and Cleopatra, both in white, were sitting on the bank under the
broad shade of a willow and Stiepan was standing near with his hands
behind his back, saying:

"But are peasants human beings? Not they; they are, excuse me, brutes,
beasts, and thieves. What does a peasant's life consist of? Eating and
drinking, crying for cheaper food, bawling in taverns, without decent
conversation, or behaviour or manners. Just an ignorant beast! He lives
in filth, his wife and children live in filth; he sleeps in his clothes;
takes the potatoes out of the soup with his fingers, drinks down a black
beetle with his _kvass_--because he won't trouble to fish it out!"

"It is because of their poverty!" protested my sister.

"What poverty? Of course there is want, but there are different kinds of
necessity. If a man is in prison, or is blind, say, or has lost his
legs, then he is in a bad way and God help him; but if he is at liberty
and in command of his senses, if he has eyes and hands and strength,
then, good God, what more does he want? It is lamentable, my lady,
ignorance, but not poverty. If you kind people, with your education, out
of charity try to help him, then he will spend your money in drink, like
the swine he is, or worse still, he will open a tavern and begin to rob
the people on the strength of your money. You say--poverty. But does a
rich peasant live any better? He lives like a pig, too, excuse me, a
clodhopper, a blusterer, a big-bellied blockhead, with a swollen red
mug--makes me want to hit him in the eye, the blackguard. Look at Larion
of Dubechnia--he is rich, but all the same he barks the trees in your
woods just like the poor; and he is a foul-mouthed brute, and his
children are foul-mouthed, and when he is drunk he falls flat in the mud
and goes to sleep. They are all worthless, my lady. It is just hell to
live with them in the village. The village sticks in my gizzard, and I
thank God, the King of heaven, that I am well fed and clothed, and that
I am a free man; I can live where I like, I don't want to live in the
village and nobody can force me to do it. They say: 'You have a wife.'
They say: 'You are obliged to live at home with your wife.' Why? I have
not sold myself to her."

"Tell me, Stiepan. Did you marry for love?" asked Masha.

"What love is there in a village?" Stiepan answered with a smile. "If
you want to know, my lady, it is my second marriage. I do not come from
Kurilovka, but from Zalegosch, and I went to Kurilovka when I married.
My father did not want to divide the land up between us--there are five
of us. So I bowed to it and cut adrift and went to another village to my
wife's family. My first wife died when she was young."

"What did she die of?"

"Foolishness. She used to sit and cry. She was always crying for no
reason at all and so she wasted away. She used to drink herbs to make
herself prettier and it must have ruined her inside. And my second wife
at Kurilovka--what about her? A village woman, a peasant; that's all.
When the match was being made I was nicely had; I thought she was young,
nice to look at and clean. Her mother was clean enough, drank coffee
and, chiefly because they were a clean lot, I got married. Next day we
sat down to dinner and I told my mother-in-law to fetch me a spoon. She
brought me a spoon and I saw her wipe it with her finger. So that,
thought I, is their cleanliness! I lived with them for a year and went
away. Perhaps I ought to have married a town girl"--he went on after a
silence. "They say a wife is a helpmate to her husband. What do I want
with a helpmate? I can look after myself. But you talk to me sensibly
and soberly, without giggling all the while. He--he--he! What is life
without a good talk?"

Stiepan suddenly stopped and relapsed into his dreary, monotonous
"U-lu-lu-lu." That meant that he had noticed me.

Masha used often to visit the mill, she evidently took pleasure in her
talks with Stiepan; he abused the peasants so sincerely and
convincingly--and this attracted her to him. When she returned from the
mill the idiot who looked after the garden used to shout after her:

"Paloshka! Hullo, Paloshka!" And he would bark at her like a dog: "Bow,
wow!"

And she would stop and stare at him as if she found in the idiot's
barking an answer to her thought, and perhaps he attracted her as much
as Stiepan's abuse. And at home she would find some unpleasant news
awaiting her, as that the village geese had ruined the cabbages in the
kitchen-garden, or that Larion had stolen the reins, and she would shrug
her shoulders with a smile and say:

"What can you expect of such people?"

She was exasperated and a fury was gathering in her soul, and I, on the
other hand, was getting used to the peasants and more and more attracted
to them. For the most part, they were nervous, irritable, absurd people;
they were people with suppressed imaginations, ignorant, with a bare,
dull outlook, always dazed by the same thought of the grey earth, grey
days, black bread; they were people driven to cunning, but, like birds,
they only hid their heads behind the trees--they could not reason. They
did not come to us for the twenty roubles earned by haymaking, but for
the half-pail of vodka, though they could buy four pails of vodka for
the twenty roubles. Indeed they were dirty, drunken, and dishonest, but
for all that one felt that the peasant life as a whole was sound at the
core. However clumsy and brutal the peasant might look as he followed
his antiquated plough, and however he might fuddle himself with vodka,
still, looking at him more closely, one felt that there was something
vital and important in him, something that was lacking in Masha and the
doctor, for instance, namely, that he believes that the chief thing on
earth is truth, that his and everybody's salvation lies in truth, and
therefore above all else on earth he loves justice. I used to say to my
wife that she was seeing the stain on the window, but not the glass
itself; and she would be silent or, like Stiepan, she would hum,
"U-lu-lu-lu...." When she, good, clever actress that she was, went pale
with fury and then harangued the doctor in a trembling voice about
drunkenness and dishonesty; her blindness confounded and appalled me.
How could she forget that her father, the engineer, drank, drank
heavily, and that the money with which he bought Dubechnia was acquired
by means of a whole series of impudent, dishonest swindles? How could
she forget?


XIV

And my sister, too, was living with her own private thoughts which she
hid from me. She used often to sit whispering with Masha. When I went up
to her, she would shrink away, and her eyes would look guilty and full
of entreaty. Evidently there was something going on in her soul of which
she was afraid or ashamed. To avoid meeting me in the garden or being
left alone with me she clung to Masha and I hardly ever had a chance to
talk to her except at dinner.

One evening, on my way home from the school, I came quietly through the
garden. It had already begun to grow dark. Without noticing me or
hearing footsteps, my sister walked round an old wide-spreading
apple-tree, perfectly noiselessly like a ghost. She was in black, and
walked very quickly, up and down, up and down, with her eyes on the
ground. An apple fell from the tree, she started at the noise, stopped
and pressed her hands to her temples. At that moment I went up to her.

In an impulse of tenderness, which suddenly came rushing to my heart,
with tears in my eyes, somehow remembering our mother and our childhood,
I took hold of her shoulders and kissed her.

"What is the matter?" I asked. "You are suffering. I have seen it for a
long time now. Tell me, what is the matter?"

"I am afraid...." she murmured, with a shiver.

"What's the matter with you?" I inquired. "For God's sake, be frank!"

"I will, I will be frank. I will tell you the whole truth. It is so
hard, so painful to conceal anything from you!... Misail, I am in love."
She went on in a whisper. "Love, love.... I am happy, but I am afraid."

I heard footsteps and Doctor Blagovo appeared among the trees. He was
wearing a silk shirt and high boots. Clearly they had arranged a
rendezvous by the apple-tree. When she saw him she flung herself
impulsively into his arms with a cry of anguish, as though he was being
taken away from her:

"Vladimir! Vladimir!"

She clung to him, and gazed eagerly at him and only then I noticed how
thin and pale she had become. It was especially noticeable through her
lace collar, which I had known for years, for it now hung loosely about
her slim neck. The doctor was taken aback, but controlled himself at
once, and said, as he stroked her hair:

"That's enough. Enough!... Why are you so nervous? You see, I have
come."

We were silent for a time, bashfully glancing at each other. Then we all
moved away and I heard the doctor saying to me:

"Civilised life has not yet begun with us. The old console themselves
with saying that, if there is nothing now, there was something in the
forties and the sixties; that is all right for the old ones, but we are
young and our brains are not yet touched with senile decay. We cannot
console ourselves with such illusions. The beginning of Russia was in
862, and civilised Russia, as I understand it, has not yet begun."

But I could not bother about what he was saying. It was very strange,
but I could not believe that my sister was in love, that she had just
been walking with her hand on the arm of a stranger and gazing at him
tenderly. My sister, poor, frightened, timid, downtrodden creature as
she was, loved a man who was already married and had children! I was
full of pity without knowing why; the doctor's presence was distasteful
to me and I could not make out what was to come of such a love.


XV

Masha and I drove over to Kurilovka for the opening of the school.

"Autumn, autumn, autumn...." said Masha, looking about her. Summer had
passed. There were no birds and only the willows were green.

Yes. Summer had passed. The days were bright and warm, but it was fresh
in the mornings; the shepherds went out in their sheepskins, and the dew
never dried all day on the asters in the garden. There were continual
mournful sounds and it was impossible to tell whether it was a shutter
creaking on its rusty hinges or the cranes flying--and one felt so well
and so full of the desire for life!

"Summer has passed...." said Masha. "Now we can both make up our
accounts. We have worked hard and thought a great deal and we are the
better for it--all honour and praise to us; we have improved ourselves;
but have our successes had any perceptible influence on the life around
us, have they been of any use to a single person? No! Ignorance, dirt,
drunkenness, a terribly high rate of infant mortality--everything is
just as it was, and no one is any the better for your having ploughed
and sown and my having spent money and read books. Evidently we have
only worked and broadened our minds for ourselves."

I was abashed by such arguments and did not know what to think.

"From beginning to end we have been sincere," I said, "and if a man is
sincere, he is right."

"Who denies that? We have been right but we have been wrong in our way
of setting about it. First of all, are not our very ways of living
wrong? You want to be useful to people, but by the mere fact of buying
an estate you make it impossible to be so. Further, if you work, dress,
and eat like a peasant you lend your authority and approval to the
clumsy clothes, and their dreadful houses and their dirty beards.... On
the other hand, suppose you work for a long, long time, all you life,
and in the end obtain some practical results--what will your results
amount to, what can they do against such elemental forces as wholesale
ignorance, hunger, cold, and degeneracy? A drop in the ocean! Other
methods of fighting are necessary, strong, bold, quick! If you want to
be useful then you must leave the narrow circle of common activity and
try to act directly on the masses! First of all, you need vigorous,
noisy, propaganda. Why are art and music, for instance, so much alive
and so popular and so powerful? Because the musician or the singer
influences thousands directly. Art, wonderful art!" She looked wistfully
at the sky and went on: "Art gives wings and carries you far, far away.
If you are bored with dirt and pettifogging interests, if you are
exasperated and outraged and indignant, rest and satisfaction are only
to be found in beauty."

As we approached Kurilovka the weather was fine, clear, and joyous. In
the yards the peasants were thrashing and there was a smell of corn and
straw. Behind the wattled hedges the fruit-trees were reddening and all
around the trees were red or golden. In the church-tower the bells were
ringing, the children were carrying ikons to the school and singing the
Litany of the Virgin. And how clear the air was, and how high the doves
soared!

The Te Deum was sung in the schoolroom. Then the Kurilovka peasants
presented Masha with an ikon, and the Dubechnia peasants gave her a
large cracknel and a gilt salt-cellar. And Masha began to weep.

"And if we have said anything out of the way or have been discontented,
please forgive us," said an old peasant, bowing to us both.

As we drove home Masha looked back at the school. The green roof which I
had painted glistened in the sun, and we could see it for a long time.
And I felt that Masha's glances were glances of farewell.


XVI

In the evening she got ready to go to town.

She had often been to town lately to stay the night. In her absence I
could not work, and felt listless and disheartened; our big yard seemed
dreary, disgusting, and deserted; there were ominous noises in the
garden, and without her the house, the trees, the horses were no longer
"ours."

I never went out but sat all the time at her writing-table among her
books on farming and agriculture, those deposed favourites, wanted no
more, which looked out at me so shamefacedly from the bookcase. For
hours together, while it struck seven, eight, nine, and the autumn night
crept up as black as soot to the windows, I sat brooding over an old
glove of hers, or the pen she always used, and her little scissors. I
did nothing and saw clearly that everything I had done before,
ploughing, sowing, and felling trees, had only been because she wanted
it. And if she told me to clean out a well, when I had to stand
waist-deep in water, I would go and do it, without trying to find out
whether the well wanted cleaning or not. And now, when she was away,
Dubechnia with its squalor, its litter, its slamming shutters, with
thieves prowling about it day and night, seemed to me like a chaos in
which work was entirely useless. And why should I work, then? Why
trouble and worry about the future, when I felt that the ground was
slipping away from under me, that my position at Dubechnia was hollow,
that, in a word, the same fate awaited me as had befallen the books on
agriculture? Oh! what anguish it was at night, in the lonely hours, when
I lay listening uneasily, as though I expected some one any minute to
call out that it was time for me to go away. I was not sorry to leave
Dubechnia, my sorrow was for my love, for which it seemed that autumn
had already begun. What a tremendous happiness it is to love and to be
loved, and what a horror it is to feel that you are beginning to topple
down from that lofty tower!

Masha returned from town toward evening on the following day. She was
dissatisfied with something, but concealed it and said only: "Why have
the winter windows been put in? It will be stifling." I opened two of
the windows. We did not feel like eating, but we sat down and had
supper.

"Go and wash your hands," she said. "You smell of putty."

She had brought some new illustrated magazines from town and we both
read them after supper. They had supplements with fashion-plates and
patterns. Masha just glanced at them and put them aside to look at them
carefully later on; but one dress, with a wide, bell-shaped skirt and
big sleeves interested her, and for a moment she looked at it seriously
and attentively.

"That's not bad," she said.

"Yes, it would suit you very well," said I. "Very well."

And I admired the dress, only because she liked it, and went on
tenderly:

"A wonderful, lovely dress! Lovely, wonderful, Masha. My dear Masha!"

And tears began to drop on the fashion-plate.

"Wonderful Masha...." I murmured. "Dear, darling Masha...."

She went and lay down and I sat still for an hour and looked at the
illustrations.

"You should not have opened the windows," she called from the bedroom.
"I'm afraid it will be cold. Look how the wind is blowing in!"

I read the miscellany, about the preparation of cheap fish, and the size
of the largest diamond in the world. Then I chanced on the picture of
the dress she had liked and I imagined her at a ball, with a fan, and
bare shoulders, a brilliant, dazzling figure, well up in music and
painting and literature, and how insignificant and brief my share in her
life seemed to be!

Our coming together, our marriage, was only an episode, one of many in
the life of this lively, highly gifted creature. All the best things in
the world, as I have said, were at her service, and she had them for
nothing; even ideas and fashionable intellectual movements served her
pleasure, a diversion in her existence, and I was only the coachman who
drove her from one infatuation to another. Now I was no longer necessary
to her; she would fly away and I should be left alone.

As if in answer to my thoughts a desperate scream suddenly came from the
yard:

"Mur-der!"

It was a shrill female voice, and exactly as though it were trying to
imitate it, the wind also howled dismally in the chimney. Half a minute
passed and again it came through the sound of the wind, but as though
from the other end of the yard:

"Mur-der!"

"Misail, did you hear that?" said my wife in a hushed voice. "Did you
hear?"

She came out of the bedroom in her nightgown, with her hair down, and
stood listening and staring out of the dark window.

"Somebody is being murdered!" she muttered. "It only wanted that!"

I took my gun and went out; it was very dark outside; a violent wind was
blowing so that it was hard to stand up. I walked to the gate and
listened; the trees were moaning; the wind went whistling through them,
and in the garden the idiot's dog was howling. Beyond the gate it was
pitch dark; there was not a light on the railway. And just by the wing,
where the offices used to be, I suddenly heard a choking cry:

"Mur-der!"

"Who is there?" I called.

Two men were locked in a struggle. One had nearly thrown the other, who
was resisting with all his might. And both were breathing heavily.

"Let go!" said one of them and I recognised Ivan Cheprakov. It was he
who had cried out in a thin, falsetto voice. "Let go, damn you, or I'll
bite your hands!"

The other man I recognised as Moissey. I parted them and could not
resist hitting Moissey in the face twice. He fell down, then got up, and
I struck him again.

"He tried to kill me," he muttered. "I caught him creeping to his
mother's drawer.... I tried to shut him up in the wing for safety."

Cheprakov was drunk and did not recognise me. He stood gasping for
breath as though trying to get enough wind to shriek again.

I left them and went back to the house. My wife was lying on the bed,
fully dressed. I told her what had happened in the yard and did not keep
back the fact that I had struck Moissey.

"Living in the country is horrible," she said. "And what a long night it
is!"

"Mur-der!" we heard again, a little later.

"I'll go and part them," I said.

"No. Let them kill each other," she said with an expression of disgust.

She lay staring at the ceiling, listening, and I sat near her, not
daring to speak and feeling that it was my fault that screams of
"murder" came from the yard and the night was so long.

We were silent and I waited impatiently for the light to peep in at the
window. And Masha looked as though she had wakened from a long sleep and
was astonished to find herself, so clever, so educated, so refined, cast
away in this miserable provincial hole, among a lot of petty, shallow
people, and to think that she could have so far forgotten herself as to
have been carried away by one of them and to have been his wife for more
than half a year. It seemed to me that we were all the same to
her--myself, Moissey, Cheprakov; all swept together into the drunken,
wild scream of "murder"--myself, our marriage, our work, and the muddy
roads of autumn; and when she breathed or stirred to make herself more
comfortable I could read in her eyes: "Oh, if the morning would come
quicker!"

In the morning she went away.

I stayed at Dubechnia for another three days, waiting for her; then I
moved all our things into one room, locked it, and went to town. When I
rang the bell at the engineer's, it was evening, and the lamps were
alight in Great Gentry Street. Pavel told me that nobody was at home;
Victor Ivanich had gone to Petersburg and Maria Victorovna must be at a
rehearsal at the Azhoguins'. I remember the excitement with which I went
to the Azhoguins', and how my heart thumped and sank within me, as I
went up-stairs and stood for a long while on the landing, not daring to
enter that temple of the Muses! In the hall, on the table, on the piano,
on the stage, there were candles burning; all in threes, for the first
performance was fixed for the thirteenth, and the dress rehearsal was on
Monday--the unlucky day. A fight against prejudice! All the lovers of
dramatic art were assembled; the eldest, the middle, and the youngest
Miss Azhoguin were walking about the stage, reading their parts. Radish
was standing still in a corner all by himself, with his head against the
wall, looking at the stage with adoring eyes, waiting for the beginning
of the rehearsal. Everything was just the same!

I went toward my hostess to greet her, when suddenly everybody began to
say "Ssh" and to wave their hands to tell me not to make such a noise.
There was a silence. The top of the piano was raised, a lady sat down,
screwing up her short-sighted eyes at the music, and Masha stood by the
piano, dressed up, beautiful, but beautiful in an odd new way, not at
all like the Masha who used to come to see me at the mill in the spring.
She began to sing:

    "Why do I love thee, straight night?"

It was the first time since I had known her that I had heard her sing.
She had a fine, rich, powerful voice, and to hear her sing was like
eating a ripe, sweet-scented melon. She finished the song and was
applauded. She smiled and looked pleased, made play with her eyes,
stared at the music, plucked at her dress exactly like a bird which has
broken out of its cage and preens its wings at liberty. Her hair was
combed back over her ears, and she had a sly defiant expression on her
face, as though she wished to challenge us all, or to shout at us, as
though we were horses: "Gee up, old things!"

And at that moment she must have looked very like her grandfather, the
coachman.

"You here, too?" she asked, giving me her hand. "Did you hear me sing?
How did you like it?" And, without waiting for me to answer she went on:
"You arrived very opportunely. I'm going to Petersburg for a short time
to-night. May I?"

At midnight I took her to the station. She embraced me tenderly,
probably out of gratitude, because I did not pester her with useless
questions, and she promised to write to me, and I held her hands for a
long time and kissed them, finding it hard to keep back my tears, and
not saying a word.

And when the train moved, I stood looking at the receding lights, kissed
her in my imagination and whispered:

"Masha dear, wonderful Masha!..."

I spent the night at Mikhokhov, at Karpovna's, and in the morning I
worked with Radish, upholstering the furniture at a rich merchant's, who
had married his daughter to a doctor.


XVII

On Sunday afternoon my sister came to see me and had tea with me.

"I read a great deal now," she said, showing me the books she had got
out of the town library on her way. "Thanks to your wife and Vladimir.
They awakened my self-consciousness. They saved me and have made me feel
that I am a human being. I used not to sleep at night for worrying:
'What a lot of sugar has been wasted during the week.' 'The cucumbers
must not be oversalted!' I don't sleep now, but I have quite different
thoughts. I am tormented with the thought that half my life has passed
so foolishly and half-heartedly. I despise my old life. I am ashamed of
it. And I regard my father now as an enemy. Oh, how grateful I am to
your wife! And Vladimir. He is such a wonderful man! They opened my
eyes."

"It is not good that you can't sleep," I said.

"You think I am ill? Not a bit. Vladimir sounded me and says I am
perfectly healthy. But health is not the point. That doesn't matter so
much.... Tell me, am I right?"

She needed moral support. That was obvious. Masha had gone, Doctor
Blagovo was in Petersburg, and there was no one except myself in the
town, who could tell her that she was right. She fixed her eyes on me,
trying to read my inmost thoughts, and if I were sad in her presence,
she always took it upon herself and was depressed. I had to be
continually on my guard, and when she asked me if she was right, I
hastened to assure her that she was right and that I had a profound
respect for her.

"You know, they have given me a part at the Azhoguins'," she went on. "I
wanted to act. I want to live. I want to drink deep of life; I have no
talent whatever, and my part is only ten lines, but it is immeasurably
finer and nobler than pouring out tea five times a day and watching to
see that the cook does not eat the sugar left over. And most of all I
want to let father see that I too can protest."

After tea she lay down on my bed and stayed there for some time, with
her eyes closed, and her face very pale.

"Just weakness!" she said, as she got up. "Vladimir said all town girls
and women are anæmic from lack of work. What a clever man Vladimir is!
He is right; wonderfully right! We do need work!"

Two days later she came to rehearsal at the Azhoguins' with her part in
her hand. She was in black, with a garnet necklace, and a brooch that
looked at a distance like a pasty, and she had enormous earrings, in
each of which sparkled a diamond. I felt uneasy when I saw her; I was
shocked by her lack of taste. The others noticed too that she was
unsuitably dressed and that her earrings and diamonds were out of place.
I saw their smiles and heard some one say jokingly:

"Cleopatra of Egypt!"

She was trying to be fashionable, and easy, and assured, and she seemed
affected and odd. She lost her simplicity and her charm.

"I just told father that I was going to a rehearsal," she began, coming
up to me, "and he shouted that he would take his blessing from me, and
he nearly struck me. Fancy," she added, glancing at her part, "I don't
know my part. I'm sure to make a mistake. Well, the die is cast," she
said excitedly; "the die is cast."

She felt that all the people were looking at her and were all amazed at
the important step she had taken and that they were all expecting
something remarkable from her, and it was impossible to convince her
that nobody took any notice of such small uninteresting persons as she
and I.

She had nothing to do until the third act, and her part, a guest, a
country gossip, consisted only in standing by the door, as if she were
overhearing something, and then speaking a short monologue. For at least
an hour and a half before her cue, while the others were walking,
reading, having tea, quarrelling, she never left me and kept on mumbling
her part, and dropping her written copy, imagining that everybody was
looking at her, and waiting for her to come on, and she patted her hair
with a trembling hand and said:

"I'm sure to make a mistake.... You don't know how awful I feel! I am as
terrified as if I were going to the scaffold."

At last her cue came.

"Cleopatra Alexeyevna--your cue!" said the manager.

She walked on to the middle of the stage with an expression of terror on
her face; she looked ugly and stiff, and for half a minute was
speechless, perfectly motionless, except for her large earrings which
wabbled on either side of her face.

"You can read your part, the first time," said some one.

I could see that she was trembling so that she could neither speak nor
open her part, and that she had entirely forgotten the words and I had
just made up my mind to go up and say something to her when she suddenly
dropped down on her knees in the middle of the stage and sobbed loudly.

There was a general stir and uproar. And I stood quite still by the
wings, shocked by what had happened, not understanding at all, not
knowing what to do. I saw them lift her up and lead her away. I saw
Aniuta Blagovo come up to me. I had not seen her in the hall before and
she seemed to have sprung up from the floor. She was wearing a hat and
veil, and as usual looked as if she had only dropped in for a minute.

"I told her not to try to act," she said angrily, biting out each word,
with her cheeks blushing. "It is folly! You ought to have stopped her!"

Mrs. Azhoguin came up in a short jacket with short sleeves. She had
tobacco ash on her thin, flat bosom.

"My dear, it is too awful!" she said, wringing her hands, and as usual,
staring into my face. "It is too awful!... Your sister is in a
condition.... She is going to have a baby! You must take her away at
once...."

In her agitation she breathed heavily. And behind her, stood her three
daughters, all thin and flat-chested like herself, and all huddled
together in their dismay. They were frightened, overwhelmed just as if a
convict had been caught in the house. What a shame! How awful! And this
was the family that had been fighting the prejudices and superstitions
of mankind all their lives; evidently they thought that all the
prejudices and superstitions of mankind were to be found in burning
three candles and in the number thirteen, or the unlucky day--Monday.

"I must request ... request ..." Mrs. Azhoguin kept on saying,
compressing her lips and accentuating the _quest_. "I must request you
to take her away."


XVIII

A little later my sister and I were walking along the street. I covered
her with the skirt of my overcoat; we hurried along through by-streets,
where there were no lamps, avoiding the passers-by, and it was like a
flight. She did not weep any more, but stared at me with dry eyes. It
was about twenty minutes' walk to Mikhokhov, whither I was taking her,
and in that short time we went over the whole of our lives, and talked
over everything, and considered the position and pondered....

We decided that we could not stay in the town, and that when I could get
some money, we would go to some other place. In some of the houses the
people were asleep already, and in others they were playing cards; we
hated those houses, were afraid of them, and we talked of the
fanaticism, callousness, and nullity of these respectable families,
these lovers of dramatic art whom we had frightened so much, and I
wondered how those stupid, cruel, slothful, dishonest people were better
than the drunken and superstitious peasants of Kurilovka, or how they
were better than animals, which also lose their heads when some accident
breaks the monotony of their lives, which are limited by their
instincts. What would happen to my sister if she stayed at home? What
moral torture would she have to undergo, talking to my father and
meeting acquaintances every day? I imagined it all and there came into
my memory people I had known who had been gradually dropped by their
friends and relations, and I remember the tortured dogs which had gone
mad, and sparrows plucked alive and thrown into the water--and a whole
long series of dull, protracted sufferings which I had seen going on in
the town since my childhood; and I could not conceive what the sixty
thousand inhabitants lived for, why they read the Bible, why they
prayed, why they skimmed books and magazines. What good was all that had
been written and said, if they were in the same spiritual darkness and
had the same hatred of freedom, as if they were living hundreds and
hundreds of years ago? The builder spends his time putting up houses all
over the town, and yet would go down to his grave saying "galdary" for
"gallery." And the sixty thousand inhabitants had read and heard of
truth and mercy and freedom for generations, but to the bitter end they
would go on lying from morning to night, tormenting one another, fearing
and hating freedom as a deadly enemy.

"And so, my fate is decided," said my sister when we reached home.
"After what has happened I can never go _there_ again. My God, how good
it is! I feel at peace."

She lay down at once. Tears shone on her eyelashes, but her expression
was happy. She slept soundly and softly, and it was clear that her heart
was easy and that she was at rest. For a long, long time she had not
slept so well.

So we began to live together. She was always singing and said she felt
very well, and I took back the books we had borrowed from the library
unread, because she gave up reading; she only wanted to dream and to
talk of the future. She would hum as she mended my clothes or helped
Karpovna with the cooking, or talk of her Vladimir, of his mind, and his
goodness, and his fine manners, and his extraordinary learning. And I
agreed with her, though I no longer liked the doctor. She wanted to
work, to be independent, and to live by herself, and she said she would
become a school-teacher or a nurse as soon as her health allowed, and
she would scrub the floors and do her own washing. She loved her unborn
baby passionately, and she knew already the colour of his eyes and the
shape of his hands and how he laughed. She liked to talk of his
upbringing, and since the best man on earth was Vladimir, all her ideas
were reduced to making the boy as charming as his father. There was no
end to her chatter, and everything she talked about filled her with a
lively joy. Sometimes I, too, rejoiced, though I knew not why.

She must have infected me with her dreaminess, for I, too, read nothing
and just dreamed. In the evenings, in spite of being tired, I used to
pace up and down the room with my hands in my pockets, talking about
Masha.

"When do you think she will return?" I used to ask my sister. "I think
she'll be back at Christmas. Not later. What is she doing there?"

"If she doesn't write to you, it means she must be coming soon."

"True," I would agree, though I knew very well that there was nothing to
make Masha return to our town.

I missed her very much, but I could not help deceiving myself and wanted
others to deceive me. My sister was longing for her doctor, I for Masha,
and we both laughed and talked and never saw that we were keeping
Karpovna from sleeping. She would lie on the stove and murmur:

"The samovar tinkled this morning. Tink-led! That bodes nobody any good,
my merry friends!"

Nobody came to the house except the postman who brought my sister
letters from the doctor, and Prokofyi, who used to come in sometimes in
the evening and glance secretly at my sister, and then go into the
kitchen and say:

"Every class has its ways, and if you're too proud to understand that,
the worse for you in this vale of tears."

He loved the expression--vale of tears. And--about Christmas time--when
I was going through the market, he called me into his shop, and without
giving me his hand, declared that he had some important business to
discuss. He was red in the face with the frost and with vodka; near him
by the counter stood Nicolka of the murderous face, holding a bloody
knife in his hand.

"I want to be blunt with you," began Prokofyi. "This business must not
happen because, as you know, people will neither forgive you nor us for
such a vale of tears. Mother, of course, is too dutiful to say anything
unpleasant to you herself, and tell you that your sister must go
somewhere else because of her condition, but I don't want it either,
because I do not approve of her behaviour."

I understood and left the shop. That very day my sister and I went to
Radish's. We had no money for a cab, so we went on foot; I carried a
bundle with all our belongings on my back, my sister had nothing in her
hands, and she was breathless and kept coughing and asking if we would
soon be there.


XIX

At last there came a letter from Masha.

"My dear, kind M. A.," she wrote, "my brave, sweet angel, as the old
painter calls you, good-bye. I am going to America with my father for
the exhibition. In a few days I shall be on the ocean--so far from
Dubechnia. It is awful to think of! It is vast and open like the sky and
I long for it and freedom. I rejoice and dance about and you see how
incoherent my letter is. My dear Misail, give me my freedom. Quick, tear
the thread which still holds and binds us. My meeting and knowing you
was a ray from heaven, which brightened my existence. But, you know, my
becoming your wife was a mistake, and the knowledge of the mistake
weighs me down, and I implore you on my knees, my dear, generous friend,
quick--quick--before I go over the sea--wire that you will agree to
correct our mutual mistake, remove then the only burden on my wings, and
my father, who will be responsible for the whole business, has promised
me not to overwhelm you with formalities. So, then, I am free of the
whole world? Yes?

"Be happy. God bless you. Forgive my wickedness.

"I am alive and well. I am squandering money on all sorts of follies,
and every minute I thank God that such a wicked woman as I am has no
children. I am singing and I am a success, but it is not a passing whim.
No. It is my haven, my convent cell where I go for rest. King David had
a ring with an inscription: 'Everything passes.' When one is sad, these
words make one cheerful; and when one is cheerful, they make one sad.
And I have got a ring with the words written in Hebrew, and this
talisman will keep me from losing my heart and head. Or does one need
nothing but consciousness of freedom, because, when one is free, one
wants nothing, nothing, nothing. Snap the thread then. I embrace you and
your sister warmly. Forgive and forget your M."

My sister had one room. Radish, who had been ill and was recovering, was
in the other. Just as I received this letter, my sister went into the
painter's room and sat by his side and began to read to him. She read
Ostrovsky or Gogol to him every day, and he used to listen, staring
straight in front of him, never laughing, shaking his head, and every
now and then muttering to himself:

"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"

If there was anything ugly in what she read, he would say vehemently,
pointing to the book:

"There it is! Lies! That's what lies do!"

Stories used to attract him by their contents as well as by their moral
and their skilfully complicated plot, and he used to marvel at _him_,
though he never called _him_ by his name.

"How well _he_ has managed it."

Now my sister read a page quickly and then stopped, because her breath
failed her. Radish held her hand, and moving his dry lips he said in a
hoarse, hardly audible voice:

"The soul of the righteous is white and smooth as chalk; and the soul of
the sinner is as a pumice-stone. The soul of the righteous is clear oil,
and the soul of the sinner is coal-tar. We must work and sorrow and
pity," he went on. "And if a man does not work and sorrow he will not
enter the kingdom of heaven. Woe, woe to the well fed, woe to the
strong, woe to the rich, woe to the usurers! They will not see the
kingdom of heaven. Grubs eat grass, rust eats iron...."

"And lies devour the soul," said my sister, laughing.

I read the letter once more. At that moment the soldier came into the
kitchen who had brought in twice a week, without saying from whom, tea,
French bread, and pigeons, all smelling of scent. I had no work and used
to sit at home for days together, and probably the person who sent us
the bread knew that we were in want.

I heard my sister talking to the soldier and laughing merrily. Then she
lay down and ate some bread and said to me:

"When you wanted to get away from the office and become a house-painter,
Aniuta Blagovo and I knew from the very beginning that you were right,
but we were afraid to say so. Tell me what power is it that keeps us
from saying what we feel? There's Aniuta Blagovo. She loves you, adores
you, and she knows that you are right. She loves me, too, like a sister,
and she knows that I am right, and in her heart she envies me, but some
power prevents her coming to see us. She avoids us. She is afraid."

My sister folded her hands across her bosom and said rapturously:

"If you only knew how she loves you! She confessed it to me and to no
one else, very hesitatingly, in the dark. She used to take me out into
the garden, into the dark, and begin to tell me in a whisper how dear
you were to her. You will see that she will never marry because she
loves you. Are you sorry for her?"

"Yes."

"It was she sent the bread. She is funny. Why should she hide herself? I
used to be silly and stupid, but I left all that and I am not afraid of
any one, and I think and say aloud what I like--and I am happy. When I
lived at home I had no notion of happiness, and now I would not change
places with a queen."

Doctor Blagovo came. He had got his diploma and was now living in the
town, at his father's, taking a rest. After which he said he would go
back to Petersburg. He wanted to devote himself to vaccination against
typhus, and, I believe, cholera; he wanted to go abroad to increase his
knowledge and then to become a University professor. He had already left
the army and wore serge clothes, with well-cut coats, wide trousers, and
expensive ties. My sister was enraptured with his pins and studs and his
red-silk handkerchief, which, out of swagger, he wore in his outside
breast-pocket. Once, when we had nothing to do, she and I fell to
counting up his suits and came to the conclusion that he must have at
least ten. It was clear that he still loved my sister, but never once,
even in joke, did he talk of taking her to Petersburg or abroad with
him, and I could not imagine what would happen to her if she lived, or
what was to become of her child. But she was happy in her dreams and
would not think seriously of the future. She said he could go wherever
he liked and even cast her aside, if only he were happy himself, and
what had been was enough for her.

Usually when he came to see us he would sound her very carefully, and
ask her to drink some milk with some medicine in it. He did so now. He
sounded her and made her drink a glass of milk, and the room began to
smell of creosote.

"That's a good girl," he said, taking the glass from her. "You must not
talk much, and you have been chattering like a magpie lately. Please, be
quiet."

She began to laugh and he came into Radish's room, where I was sitting,
and tapped me affectionately on the shoulder.

"Well, old man, how are you?" he asked, bending over the patient.

"Sir," said Radish, only just moving his lips. "Sir, I make so bold....
We are all in the hands of God, and we must all die.... Let me tell you
the truth, sir.... You will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

And suddenly I lost consciousness and was caught up into a dream: it was
winter, at night, and I was standing in the yard of the slaughter-house
with Prokofyi by my side, smelling of pepper-brandy; I pulled myself
together and rubbed my eyes and then I seemed to be going to the
governor's for an explanation. Nothing of the kind ever happened to me,
before or after, and I can only explain these strange dreams like
memories, by ascribing them to overstrain of the nerves. I lived again
through the scene in the slaughter-house and the conversation with the
governor, and at the same time I was conscious of its unreality.

When I came to myself I saw that I was not at home, but standing with
the doctor by a lamp in the street.

"It is sad, sad," he was saying with tears running down his cheeks. "She
is happy and always laughing and full of hope. But, poor darling, her
condition is hopeless. Old Radish hates me and keeps trying to make me
understand that I have wronged her. In his way he is right, but I have
my point of view, too, and I do not repent of what has happened. It is
necessary to love. We must all love. That's true, isn't it? Without love
there would be no life, and a man who avoids and fears love is not
free."

We gradually passed to other subjects. He began to speak of science and
his dissertation which had been very well received in Petersburg. He
spoke enthusiastically and thought no more of my sister, or of his
going, or of myself. Life was carrying him away. She has America and a
ring with an inscription, I thought, and he has his medical degree and
his scientific career, and my sister and I are left with the past.

When we parted I stood beneath the lamp and read my letter again. And I
remembered vividly how she came to me at the mill that spring morning
and lay down and covered herself with my fur coat--pretending to be just
a peasant woman. And another time--also in the early morning--when we
pulled the bow-net out of the water, and the willows on the bank
showered great drops of water on us and we laughed....

All was dark in our house in Great Gentry Street. I climbed the fence,
and, as I used to do in old days, I went into the kitchen by the back
door to get a little lamp. There was nobody in the kitchen. On the stove
the samovar was singing merrily, all ready for my father. "Who pours out
my father's tea now?" I thought. I took the lamp and went on to the shed
and made a bed of old newspapers and lay down. The nails in the wall
looked ominous as before and their shadows flickered. It was cold. I
thought I saw my sister coming in with my supper, but I remembered at
once that she was ill at Radish's, and it seemed strange to me that I
should have climbed the fence and be lying in the cold shed. My mind was
blurred and filled with fantastic imaginations.

A bell rang; sounds familiar from childhood; first the wire rustled
along the wall, and then there was a short, melancholy tinkle in the
kitchen. It was my father returning from the club. I got up and went
into the kitchen. Akhsinya, the cook, clapped her hands when she saw me
and began to cry:

"Oh, my dear," she said in a whisper. "Oh, my dear! My God!"

And in her agitation she began to pluck at her apron. On the window-sill
were two large bottles of berries soaking in vodka. I poured out a cup
and gulped it down, for I was very thirsty. Akhsinya had just scrubbed
the table and the chairs, and the kitchen had the good smell which
kitchens always have when the cook is clean and tidy. This smell and the
trilling of the cricket used to entice us into the kitchen when we were
children, and there we used to be told fairy-tales, and we played at
kings and queens....

"And where is Cleopatra?" asked Akhsinya hurriedly, breathlessly. "And
where is your hat, sir? And they say your wife has gone to Petersburg."

She had been with us in my mother's time and used to bathe Cleopatra and
me in a tub, and we were still children to her, and it was her duty to
correct us. In a quarter of an hour or so she laid bare all her
thoughts, which she had been storing up in her quiet kitchen all the
time I had been away. She said the doctor ought to be made to marry
Cleopatra--we would only have to frighten him a bit and make him send in
a nicely written application, and then the archbishop would dissolve his
first marriage, and it would be a good thing to sell Dubechnia without
saying anything to my wife, and to bank the money in my own name; and if
my sister and I went on our knees to our father and asked him nicely,
then perhaps he would forgive us; and we ought to pray to the Holy
Mother to intercede for us....

"Now, sir, go and talk to him," she said, when we heard my father's
cough. "Go, speak to him, and beg his pardon. He won't bite your head
off."

I went in. My father was sitting at his desk working on the plan of a
bungalow with Gothic windows and a stumpy tower like the lookout of a
fire-station--an immensely stiff and inartistic design. As I entered the
study I stood so that I could not help seeing the plan. I did not know
why I had come to my father, but I remember that when I saw his thin
face, red neck, and his shadow on the wall, I wanted to throw my arms
round him and, as Akhsinya had bid me, to beg his pardon humbly; but the
sight of the bungalow with the Gothic windows and the stumpy tower
stopped me.

"Good evening," I said.

He glanced at me and at once cast his eyes down on his plan.

"What do you want?" he asked after a while.

"I came to tell you that my sister is very ill. She is dying," I said
dully.

"Well?" My father sighed, took off his spectacles and laid them on the
table. "As you have sown, so you must reap. I want you to remember how
you came to me two years ago, and on this very spot I asked you to give
up your delusions, and I reminded you of your honour, your duty, your
obligations to your ancestors, whose traditions must be kept sacred. Did
you listen to me? You spurned my advice and clung to your wicked
opinions; furthermore, you dragged your sister into your abominable
delusions and brought about her downfall and her shame. Now you are both
suffering for it. As you have sown, so you must reap."

He paced up and down the study as he spoke. Probably he thought that I
had come to him to admit that I was wrong, and probably he was waiting
for me to ask his help for my sister and myself. I was cold, but I shook
as though I were in a fever, and I spoke with difficulty in a hoarse
voice.

"And I must ask you to remember," I said, "that on this very spot I
implored you to try to understand me, to reflect, and to think what we
were living for and to what end, and your answer was to talk about my
ancestors and my grandfather who wrote verses. Now you are told that
your only daughter is in a hopeless condition and you talk of ancestors
and traditions!... And you can maintain such frivolity when death is
near and you have only five or ten years left to live!"

"Why did you come here?" asked my father sternly, evidently affronted at
my reproaching him with frivolity.

"I don't know. I love you. I am more sorry than I can say that we are so
far apart. That is why I came. I still love you, but my sister has
finally broken with you. She does not forgive you and will never forgive
you. Your very name fills her with hatred of her past life."

"And who is to blame?" cried my father. "You, you scoundrel!"

"Yes. Say that I am to blame," I said. "I admit that I am to blame for
many things, but why is your life, which you have tried to force on us,
so tedious and frigid, and ungracious, why are there no people in any of
the houses you have built during the last thirty years from whom I could
learn how to live and how to avoid such suffering? These houses of yours
are infernal dungeons in which mothers and daughters are persecuted,
children are tortured.... My poor mother! My unhappy sister! One needs
to drug oneself with vodka, cards, scandal; cringe, play the hypocrite,
and go on year after year designing rotten houses, not to see the horror
that lurks in them. Our town has been in existence for hundreds of
years, and during the whole of that time it has not given the country
one useful man--not one! You have strangled in embryo everything that
was alive and joyous! A town of shopkeepers, publicans, clerks, and
hypocrites, an aimless, futile town, and not a soul would be the worse
if it were suddenly razed to the ground."

"I don't want to hear you, you scoundrel," said my father, taking a
ruler from his desk. "You are drunk! You dare come into your father's
presence in such a state! I tell you for the last time, and you can tell
this to your strumpet of a sister, that you will get nothing from me. I
have torn my disobedient children out of my heart, and if they suffer
through their disobedience and obstinacy I have no pity for them. You
may go back where you came from! God has been pleased to punish me
through you. I will humbly bear my punishment and, like Job, I find
consolation in suffering and unceasing toil. You shall not cross my
threshold until you have mended your ways. I am a just man, and
everything I say is practical good sense, and if you had any regard for
yourself, you would remember what I have said, and what I am saying
now."

I threw up my hands and went out; I do not remember what happened that
night or next day.

They say that I went staggering through the street without a hat,
singing aloud, with crowds of little boys shouting after me:

"Little Profit! Little Profit!"


XX

If I wanted to order a ring, I would have it inscribed: "Nothing
passes." I believe that nothing passes without leaving some trace, and
that every little step has some meaning for the present and the future
life.

What I lived through was not in vain. My great misfortunes, my patience,
moved the hearts of the people of the town and they no longer call me
"Little Profit," they no longer laugh at me and throw water over me as I
walk through the market. They got used to my being a working man and see
nothing strange in my carrying paint-pots and glazing windows; on the
contrary, they give me orders, and I am considered a good workman and
the best contractor, after Radish, who, though he recovered and still
paints the cupolas of the church without scaffolding, is not strong
enough to manage the men, and I have taken his place and go about the
town touting for orders, and take on and sack the men, and lend money at
exorbitant interest. And now that I am a contractor I can understand how
it is possible to spend several days hunting through the town for
slaters to carry out a trifling order. People are polite to me, and
address me respectfully and give me tea in the houses where I work, and
send the servant to ask me if I would like dinner. Children and girls
often come and watch me with curious, sad eyes.

Once I was working in the governor's garden, painting the summer-house
marble. The governor came into the summer-house, and having nothing
better to do, began to talk to me, and I reminded him how he had once
sent for me to caution me. For a moment he stared at my face, opened his
mouth like a round O, waved his hands, and said:

"I don't remember."

I am growing old, taciturn, crotchety, strict; I seldom laugh, and
people say I am growing like Radish, and, like him, I bore the men with
my aimless moralising.

Maria Victorovna, my late wife, lives abroad, and her father is making a
railway somewhere in the Eastern provinces and buying land there. Doctor
Blagovo is also abroad. Dubechnia has passed to Mrs. Cheprakov, who
bought it from the engineer after haggling him into a twenty-per-cent
reduction in the price. Moissey walks about in a bowler hat; he often
drives into town in a trap and stops outside the bank. People say he has
already bought an estate on a mortgage, and is always inquiring at the
bank about Dubechnia, which he also intends to buy. Poor Ivan Cheprakov
used to hang about the town, doing nothing and drinking. I tried to give
him a job in our business, and for a time he worked with us painting
roofs and glazing, and he rather took to it, and, like a regular
house-painter, he stole the oil, and asked for tips, and got drunk. But
it soon bored him. He got tired of it and went back to Dubechnia, and
some time later I was told by the peasants that he had been inciting
them to kill Moissey one night and rob Mrs. Cheprakov.

My father has got very old and bent, and just takes a little walk in the
evening near his house.

When we had the cholera, Prokofyi cured the shopkeepers with
pepper-brandy and tar and took money for it, and as I read in the
newspaper, he was flogged for libelling the doctors as he sat in his
shop. His boy Nicolka died of cholera. Karpovna is still alive, and
still loves and fears her Prokofyi. Whenever she sees me she sadly
shakes her head and says with a sigh:

"Poor thing. You are lost!"

On week-days I am busy from early morning till late at night. And on
Sundays and holidays I take my little niece (my sister expected a boy,
but a girl was born) and go with her to the cemetery, where I stand or
sit and look at the grave of my dear one, and tell the child that her
mother is lying there.

Sometimes I find Aniuta Blagovo by the grave. We greet each other and
stand silently, or we talk of Cleopatra, and the child, and the sadness
of this life. Then we leave the cemetery and walk in silence and she
lags behind--on purpose, to avoid staying with me. The little girl,
joyful, happy, with her eyes half-closed against the brilliant sunlight,
laughs and holds out her little hands to her, and we stop and together
we fondle the darling child.

And when we reach the town, Aniuta Blagovo, blushing and agitated, says
good-bye, and walks on alone, serious and circumspect.... And, to look
at her, none of the passers-by could imagine that she had just been
walking by my side and even fondling the child.


BOOKS BY ANTON TCHEKOFF

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,
Volume I (of II), by Charles Darwin

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I (of II)
       Edited by His Son

Author: Charles Darwin

Editor: Francis Darwin

Release Date: February 1999 [EBook #2087]
Last Updated: July 28, 2012

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE AND LETTERS OF DARWIN ***




Produced by Sue Asscher






THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF CHARLES DARWIN

By Charles Darwin


Including An Autobiographical Chapter


Edited By His Son Francis Darwin




VOLUME I




PREFACE

In choosing letters for publication I have been largely guided by the
wish to illustrate my father's personal character. But his life was so
essentially one of work, that a history of the man could not be written
without following closely the career of the author. Thus it comes
about that the chief part of the book falls into chapters whose titles
correspond to the names of his books.

In arranging the letters I have adhered as far as possible to
chronological sequence, but the character and variety of his researches
make a strictly chronological order an impossibility. It was his habit
to work more or less simultaneously at several subjects. Experimental
work was often carried on as a refreshment or variety, while books
entailing reasoning and the marshalling of large bodies of facts were
being written. Moreover, many of his researches were allowed to
drop, and only resumed after an interval of years. Thus a rigidly
chronological series of letters would present a patchwork of subjects,
each of which would be difficult to follow. The Table of Contents will
show in what way I have attempted to avoid this result.

In printing the letters I have followed (except in a few cases) the
usual plan of indicating the existence of omissions or insertions. My
father's letters give frequent evidence of having been written when he
was tired or hurried, and they bear the marks of this circumstance. In
writing to a friend, or to one of his family, he frequently omitted the
articles: these have been inserted without the usual indications, except
in a few instances, where it is of special interest to preserve intact
the hurried character of the letter. Other small words, such as "of",
"to", etc., have been inserted usually within brackets. I have not
followed the originals as regards the spelling of names, the use of
capitals, or in the matter of punctuation. My father underlined many
words in his letters; these have not always been given in italics,--a
rendering which would unfairly exaggerate their effect.

The Diary or Pocket-book, from which quotations occur in the following
pages, has been of value as supplying a frame-work of facts round which
letters may be grouped. It is unfortunately written with great brevity,
the history of a year being compressed into a page or less; and contains
little more than the dates of the principal events of his life, together
with entries as to his work, and as to the duration of his more serious
illnesses. He rarely dated his letters, so that but for the Diary it
would have been all but impossible to unravel the history of his books.
It has also enabled me to assign dates to many letters which would
otherwise have been shorn of half their value.

Of letters addressed to my father I have not made much use. It was his
custom to file all letters received, and when his slender stock of files
("spits" as he called them) was exhausted, he would burn the letters of
several years, in order that he might make use of the liberated "spits."
This process, carried on for years, destroyed nearly all letters
received before 1862. After that date he was persuaded to keep the more
interesting letters, and these are preserved in an accessible form.

I have attempted to give, in Chapter III., some account of his manner
of working. During the last eight years of his life I acted as his
assistant, and thus had an opportunity of knowing something of his
habits and methods.

I have received much help from my friends in the course of my work.
To some I am indebted for reminiscences of my father, to others for
information, criticisms, and advice. To all these kind coadjutors
I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness. The names of some occur in
connection with their contributions, but I do not name those to whom I
am indebted for criticisms or corrections, because I should wish to bear
alone the load of my short-comings, rather than to let any of it fall on
those who have done their best to lighten it.

It will be seen how largely I am indebted to Sir Joseph Hooker for the
means of illustrating my father's life. The readers of these pages
will, I think, be grateful to Sir Joseph for the care with which he has
preserved his valuable collection of letters, and I should wish to add
my acknowledgment of the generosity with which he has placed it at my
disposal, and for the kindly encouragement given throughout my work.

To Mr. Huxley I owe a debt of thanks, not only for much kind help, but
for his willing compliance with my request that he should contribute a
chapter on the reception of the 'Origin of Species.'

Finally, it is a pleasure to acknowledge the courtesy of the publishers
of the 'Century Magazine' who have freely given me the use of their
illustrations. To Messrs. Maull and Fox and Messrs. Elliott and Fry I am
also indebted for their kindness in allowing me the use of reproductions
of their photographs.

FRANCIS DARWIN.

Cambridge, October, 1887.




TABLE OF CONTENTS.

VOLUME I.


CHAPTER 1.I.--The Darwin Family.

CHAPTER 1.II.--Autobiography.

CHAPTER 1.III.--Reminiscences.


LETTERS.

CHAPTER 1.IV.--Cambridge Life--1828-1831.

CHAPTER 1.V.--The Appointment to the 'Beagle'--1831.

CHAPTER 1.VI.--The Voyage--1831-1836.

CHAPTER 1.VII.--London and Cambridge--1836-1842.

CHAPTER 1.VIII.--Religion.

CHAPTER 1.IX.--Life at Down--1842-1854.

CHAPTER 1.X.--The Growth of the 'Origin of Species.'

CHAPTER 1.XI.--The Growth of the 'Origin of
Species'--Letters--1843-1856.

CHAPTER 1.XII.--The Unfinished Book--May 1856-June 1858.

CHAPTER 1.XIII.--The Writing of the 'Origin of Species'--June 18,
1858--November 1859.

CHAPTER 1.XIV.--Professor Huxley on the Reception of the 'Origin of
Species.'




LIFE AND LETTERS OF CHARLES DARWIN.




VOLUME I.




CHAPTER 1.I. -- THE DARWIN FAMILY.

The earliest records of the family show the Darwins to have been
substantial yeomen residing on the northern borders of Lincolnshire,
close to Yorkshire. The name is now very unusual in England, but I
believe that it is not unknown in the neighbourhood of Sheffield and in
Lancashire. Down to the year 1600 we find the name spelt in a variety
of ways--Derwent, Darwen, Darwynne, etc. It is possible, therefore, that
the family migrated at some unknown date from Yorkshire, Cumberland, or
Derbyshire, where Derwent occurs as the name of a river.

The first ancestor of whom we know was one William Darwin, who lived,
about the year 1500, at Marton, near Gainsborough. His great grandson,
Richard Darwyn, inherited land at Marton and elsewhere, and in his will,
dated 1584, "bequeathed the sum of 3s. 4d. towards the settynge up of
the Queene's Majestie's armes over the quearie (choir) doore in the
parishe churche of Marton." (We owe a knowledge of these earlier members
of the family to researches amongst the wills at Lincoln, made by the
well-known genealogist, Colonel Chester.)

The son of this Richard, named William Darwin, and described as
"gentleman," appears to have been a successful man. Whilst retaining his
ancestral land at Marton, he acquired through his wife and by purchase
an estate at Cleatham, in the parish of Manton, near Kirton Lindsey, and
fixed his residence there. This estate remained in the family down
to the year 1760. A cottage with thick walls, some fish-ponds and old
trees, now alone show where the "Old Hall" once stood, and a field is
still locally known as the "Darwin Charity," from being subject to a
charge in favour of the poor of Marton. William Darwin must, at least in
part, have owed his rise in station to his appointment in 1613 by James
I. to the post of Yeoman of the Royal Armoury of Greenwich. The office
appears to have been worth only 33 pounds a year, and the duties were
probably almost nominal; he held the post down to his death during the
Civil Wars.

The fact that this William was a royal servant may explain why his
son, also named William, served when almost a boy for the King, as
"Captain-Lieutenant" in Sir William Pelham's troop of horse. On the
partial dispersion of the royal armies, and the retreat of the remainder
to Scotland, the boy's estates were sequestrated by the Parliament, but
they were redeemed on his signing the Solemn League and Covenant, and on
his paying a fine which must have struck his finances severely; for in
a petition to Charles II. he speaks of his almost utter ruin from having
adhered to the royal cause.

During the Commonwealth, William Darwin became a barrister of Lincoln's
Inn, and this circumstance probably led to his marriage with the
daughter of Erasmus Earle, serjeant-at-law; hence his great-grandson,
Erasmus Darwin, the Poet, derived his Christian name. He ultimately
became Recorder of the city of Lincoln.

The eldest son of the Recorder, again called William, was born in
1655, and married the heiress of Robert Waring, a member of a good
Staffordshire family. This lady inherited from the family of Lassells,
or Lascelles, the manor and hall of Elston, near Newark, which has
remained ever since in the family. (Captain Lassells, or Lascelles, of
Elston was military secretary to Monk, Duke of Albemarle, during the
Civil Wars. A large volume of account books, countersigned in many
places by Monk, are now in the possession of my cousin Francis Darwin.
The accounts might possibly prove of interest to the antiquarian or
historian. A portrait of Captain Lassells in armour, although used at
one time as an archery-target by some small boys of our name, was not
irretrievably ruined.) A portrait of this William Darwin at Elston shows
him as a good-looking young man in a full-bottomed wig.

This third William had two sons, William, and Robert who was educated
as a barrister. The Cleatham property was left to William, but on the
termination of his line in daughters reverted to the younger brother,
who had received Elston. On his mother's death Robert gave up his
profession and resided ever afterwards at Elston Hall. Of this Robert,
Charles Darwin writes (What follows is quoted from Charles Darwin's
biography of his grandfather, forming the preliminary notice to Ernst
Krause's interesting essay, 'Erasmus Darwin,' London, 1879, page 4.):--

"He seems to have had some taste for science, for he was an early
member of the well-known Spalding Club; and the celebrated antiquary
Dr. Stukeley, in 'An Account of the almost entire Sceleton of a large
Animal,' etc., published in the 'Philosophical Transactions,' April and
May 1719, begins the paper as follows: 'Having an account from my friend
Robert Darwin, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, a person of curiosity, of a human
sceleton impressed in stone, found lately by the rector of Elston,' etc.
Stukeley then speaks of it as a great rarity, 'the like whereof has not
been observed before in this island to my knowledge.' Judging from a
sort of litany written by Robert, and handed down in the family, he
was a strong advocate of temperance, which his son ever afterwards so
strongly advocated:--

     From a morning that doth shine,
     From a boy that drinketh wine,
     From a wife that talketh Latine,
     Good Lord deliver me!

"It is suspected that the third line may be accounted for by his wife,
the mother of Erasmus, having been a very learned lady. The eldest son
of Robert, christened Robert Waring, succeeded to the estate of Elston,
and died there at the age of ninety-two, a bachelor. He had a strong
taste for poetry, like his youngest brother Erasmus. Robert also
cultivated botany, and, when an oldish man, he published his 'Principia
Botanica.' This book in MS. was beautifully written, and my father [Dr.
R.W. Darwin] declared that he believed it was published because his old
uncle could not endure that such fine caligraphy should be wasted.
But this was hardly just, as the work contains many curious notes on
biology--a subject wholly neglected in England in the last century. The
public, moreover, appreciated the book, as the copy in my possession is
the third edition."

The second son, William Alvey, inherited Elston, and transmitted it to
his granddaughter, the late Mrs. Darwin, of Elston and Creskeld. A third
son, John, became rector of Elston, the living being in the gift of the
family. The fourth son, the youngest child, was Erasmus Darwin, the poet
and philosopher.

TABLE OF RELATIONSHIP. (An incomplete list of family members.)

ROBERT DARWIN of Elston, 1682-1754, had three sons, William Alvey
Darwin, 1726-1783, Robert Waring Darwin, 1724-1816, and Erasmus Darwin,
1731-1802.

William Alvey Darwin, 1726-1783, had a son, William Brown Darwin, 1774-
1841, and a daughter, Anne Darwin.

William Brown Darwin, 1774-1841, had two daughters, Charlotte Darwin and
Sarah Darwin.

Charlotte Darwin married Francis Rhodes, now Francis Darwin of Creskeld
and Elston.

Sarah Darwin married Edward Noel.

Anne Darwin married Samuel Fox and had a son, William Darwin Fox.

ERASMUS DARWIN, 1731-1802, married (1) MARY HOWARD, 1740-1770, with whom
he had two sons, Charles Darwin, 1758-1778, and ROBERT WARING DARWIN,
and (2) Eliz. Chandos-Pole, 1747-1832, with whom he had a daughter,
Violetta Darwin, and a son, Francis Sacheverel Darwin.

ROBERT WARING DARWIN, 1767-1848, married SUSANNAH WEDGWOOD and had a
son, CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN, b. February 12, 1809, d. April 19, 1882.

Violetta Darwin married Samuel Tertius Galton and had a son, Francis
Galton.

Francis Sacheverel Darwin, 1786-1859, had two sons, Reginald Darwin and
Edward Darwin, "High Elms."

The table above shows Charles Darwin's descent from Robert, and his
relationship to some other members of the family, whose names occur in
his correspondence. Among these are included William Darwin Fox, one of
his earliest correspondents, and Francis Galton, with whom he maintained
a warm friendship for many years. Here also occurs the name of Francis
Sacheverel Darwin, who inherited a love of natural history from Erasmus,
and transmitted it to his son Edward Darwin, author (under the name of
"High Elms") of a 'Gamekeeper's Manual' (4th Edition 1863), which shows
keen observation of the habits of various animals.

It is always interesting to see how far a man's personal characteristics
can be traced in his forefathers. Charles Darwin inherited the tall
stature, but not the bulky figure of Erasmus; but in his features
there is no traceable resemblance to those of his grandfather. Nor,
it appears, had Erasmus the love of exercise and of field-sports, so
characteristic of Charles Darwin as a young man, though he had, like
his grandson, an indomitable love of hard mental work. Benevolence and
sympathy with others, and a great personal charm of manner, were common
to the two. Charles Darwin possessed, in the highest degree, that
"vividness of imagination" of which he speaks as strongly characteristic
of Erasmus, and as leading "to his overpowering tendency to theorise
and generalise." This tendency, in the case of Charles Darwin, was fully
kept in check by the determination to test his theories to the utmost.
Erasmus had a strong love of all kinds of mechanism, for which Charles
Darwin had no taste. Neither had Charles Darwin the literary temperament
which made Erasmus a poet as well as a philosopher. He writes of Erasmus
('Life of Erasmus Darwin,' page 68.): "Throughout his letters I have
been struck with his indifference to fame, and the complete absence of
all signs of any over-estimation of his own abilities, or of the success
of his works." These, indeed, seem indications of traits most strikingly
prominent in his own character. Yet we get no evidence in Erasmus of
the intense modesty and simplicity that marked Charles Darwin's whole
nature. But by the quick bursts of anger provoked in Erasmus, at the
sight of any inhumanity or injustice, we are again reminded of him.

On the whole, however, it seems to me that we do not know enough of the
essential personal tone of Erasmus Darwin's character to attempt more
than a superficial comparison; and I am left with an impression that, in
spite of many resemblances, the two men were of a different type. It
has been shown that Miss Seward and Mrs. Schimmelpenninck have
misrepresented Erasmus Darwin's character. (Ibid., pages 77, 79, etc.)
It is, however, extremely probable that the faults which they exaggerate
were to some extent characteristic of the man; and this leads me to
think that Erasmus had a certain acerbity or severity of temper which
did not exist in his grandson.

The sons of Erasmus Darwin inherited in some degree his intellectual
tastes, for Charles Darwin writes of them as follows:

"His eldest son, Charles (born September 3, 1758), was a young man of
extraordinary promise, but died (May 15, 1778) before he was twenty-one
years old, from the effects of a wound received whilst dissecting
the brain of a child. He inherited from his father a strong taste for
various branches of science, for writing verses, and for mechanics...He
also inherited stammering. With the hope of curing him, his father sent
him to France, when about eight years old (1766-'67), with a private
tutor, thinking that if he was not allowed to speak English for a time,
the habit of stammering might be lost; and it is a curious fact, that in
after years, when speaking French, he never stammered. At a very early
age he collected specimens of all kinds. When sixteen years old he
was sent for a year to [Christ Church] Oxford, but he did not like the
place, and thought (in the words of his father) that the 'vigour of his
mind languished in the pursuit of classical elegance like Hercules at
the distaff, and sighed to be removed to the robuster exercise of
the medical school of Edinburgh.' He stayed three years at Edinburgh,
working hard at his medical studies, and attending 'with diligence all
the sick poor of the parish of Waterleith, and supplying them with the
necessary medicines.' The Aesculapian Society awarded him its first
gold medal for an experimental inquiry on pus and mucus. Notices of
him appeared in various journals; and all the writers agree about his
uncommon energy and abilities. He seems like his father to have
excited the warm affection of his friends. Professor Andrew Duncan...
spoke...about him with the warmest affection forty-seven years after his
death when I was a young medical student at Edinburgh...

"About the character of his second son, Erasmus (born 1759), I have
little to say, for though he wrote poetry, he seems to have had none
of the other tastes of his father. He had, however, his own peculiar
tastes, viz., genealogy, the collecting of coins, and statistics. When
a boy he counted all the houses in the city of Lichfield, and found out
the number of inhabitants in as many as he could; he thus made a census,
and when a real one was first made, his estimate was found to be nearly
accurate. His disposition was quiet and retiring. My father had a very
high opinion of his abilities, and this was probably just, for he would
not otherwise have been invited to travel with, and pay long visits to,
men so distinguished in different ways as Boulton the engineer, and Day
the moralist and novelist." His death by suicide, in 1799, seems to have
taken place in a state of incipient insanity.

Robert Waring, the father of Charles Darwin, was born May 30, 1766, and
entered the medical profession like his father. He studied for a few
months at Leyden, and took his M.D. (I owe this information to the
kindness of Professor Rauwenhoff, Director of the Archives at Leyden.
He quotes from the catalogue of doctors that "Robertus Waring Darwin,
Anglo-britannus," defended (February 26, 1785) in the Senate a
Dissertation on the coloured images seen after looking at a bright
object, and "Medicinae Doctor creatus est a clar. Paradijs." The
archives of Leyden University are so complete that Professor Rauwenhoff
is able to tell me that my grandfather lived together with a certain
"Petrus Crompton, Anglus," in lodgings in the Apothekersdijk. Dr.
Darwin's Leyden dissertation was published in the 'Philosophical
Transactions,' and my father used to say that the work was in fact due
to Erasmus Darwin.--F.D.) at that University on February 26, 1785. "His
father" (Erasmus) "brought ('Life of Erasmus Darwin,' page 85.) him to
Shrewsbury before he was twenty-one years old (1787), and left him 20
pounds, saying, 'Let me know when you want more, and I will send it
you.' His uncle, the rector of Elston, afterwards also sent him
20 pounds, and this was the sole pecuniary aid which he ever
received...Erasmus tells Mr. Edgeworth that his son Robert, after being
settled in Shrewsbury for only six months, 'already had between forty
and fifty patients.' By the second year he was in considerable, and ever
afterwards in very large, practice."

Robert Waring Darwin married (April 18, 1796) Susannah, the daughter
of his father's friend, Josiah Wedgwood, of Etruria, then in her
thirty-second year. We have a miniature of her, with a remarkably sweet
and happy face, bearing some resemblance to the portrait by Sir Joshua
Reynolds of her father; a countenance expressive of the gentle and
sympathetic nature which Miss Meteyard ascribes to her. ('A Group of
Englishmen,' by Miss Meteyard, 1871.) She died July 15, 1817, thirty-two
years before her husband, whose death occurred on November 13, 1848. Dr.
Darwin lived before his marriage for two or three years on St. John's
Hill; afterwards at the Crescent, where his eldest daughter Marianne
was born; lastly at the "Mount," in the part of Shrewsbury known as
Frankwell, where the other children were born. This house was built
by Dr. Darwin about 1800, it is now in the possession of Mr. Spencer
Phillips, and has undergone but little alteration. It is a large, plain,
square, red-brick house, of which the most attractive feature is the
pretty green-house, opening out of the morning-room.

The house is charmingly placed, on the top of a steep bank leading down
to the Severn. The terraced bank is traversed by a long walk, leading
from end to end, still called "the Doctor's Walk." At one point in this
walk grows a Spanish chestnut, the branches of which bend back parallel
to themselves in a curious manner, and this was Charles Darwin's
favourite tree as a boy, where he and his sister Catherine had each
their special seat.

The Doctor took a great pleasure in his garden, planting it with
ornamental trees and shrubs, and being especially successful in
fruit-trees; and this love of plants was, I think, the only taste
kindred to natural history which he possessed. Of the "Mount
pigeons," which Miss Meteyard describes as illustrating Dr. Darwin's
natural-history taste, I have not been able to hear from those most
capable of knowing. Miss Meteyard's account of him is not quite accurate
in a few points. For instance, it is incorrect to describe Dr. Darwin as
having a philosophical mind; his was a mind especially given to detail,
and not to generalising. Again, those who knew him intimately describe
him as eating remarkably little, so that he was not "a great feeder,
eating a goose for his dinner, as easily as other men do a partridge."
('A Group of Englishmen,' page 263.) In the matter of dress he was
conservative, and wore to the end of his life knee-breeches and drab
gaiters, which, however, certainly did not, as Miss Meteyard says,
button above the knee--a form of costume chiefly known to us in
grenadiers of Queen Anne's day, and in modern wood-cutters and
ploughboys.

Charles Darwin had the strongest feeling of love and respect for his
father's memory. His recollection of everything that was connected with
him was peculiarly distinct, and he spoke of him frequently; generally
prefacing an anecdote with some such phrase as, "My father, who was
the wisest man I ever knew, etc..." It was astonishing how clearly he
remembered his father's opinions, so that he was able to quote some
maxims or hint of his in most cases of illness. As a rule, he put small
faith in doctors, and thus his unlimited belief in Dr. Darwin's medical
instinct and methods of treatment was all the more striking.

His reverence for him was boundless and most touching. He would have
wished to judge everything else in the world dispassionately, but
anything his father had said was received with almost implicit faith.
His daughter Mrs. Litchfield remembers him saying that he hoped none
of his sons would ever believe anything because he said it, unless they
were themselves convinced of its truth,--a feeling in striking contrast
with his own manner of faith.

A visit which Charles Darwin made to Shrewsbury in 1869 left on the mind
of his daughter who accompanied him a strong impression of his love for
his old home. The then tenant of the Mount showed them over the house,
etc., and with mistaken hospitality remained with the party during the
whole visit. As they were leaving, Charles Darwin said, with a pathetic
look of regret, "If I could have been left alone in that green-house
for five minutes, I know I should have been able to see my father in his
wheel-chair as vividly as if he had been there before me."

Perhaps this incident shows what I think is the truth, that the memory
of his father he loved the best, was that of him as an old man. Mrs.
Litchfield has noted down a few words which illustrate well his feeling
towards his father. She describes him as saying with the most tender
respect, "I think my father was a little unjust to me when I was young,
but afterwards I am thankful to think I became a prime favourite with
him." She has a vivid recollection of the expression of happy reverie
that accompanied these words, as if he were reviewing the whole
relation, and the remembrance left a deep sense of peace and gratitude.

What follows was added by Charles Darwin to his autobiographical
'Recollections,' and was written about 1877 or 1878.

"I may here add a few pages about my father, who was in many ways a
remarkable man.

"He was about 6 feet 2 inches in height, with broad shoulders, and very
corpulent, so that he was the largest man whom I ever saw. When he
last weighed himself, he was 24 stone, but afterwards increased much in
weight. His chief mental characteristics were his powers of observation
and his sympathy, neither of which have I ever seen exceeded or even
equalled. His sympathy was not only with the distresses of others, but
in a greater degree with the pleasures of all around him. This led him
to be always scheming to give pleasure to others, and, though hating
extravagance, to perform many generous actions. For instance, Mr. B--,
a small manufacturer in Shrewsbury, came to him one day, and said he
should be bankrupt unless he could at once borrow 10,000 pounds, but
that he was unable to give any legal security. My father heard his
reasons for believing that he could ultimately repay the money, and
from [his] intuitive perception of character felt sure that he was to
be trusted. So he advanced this sum, which was a very large one for him
while young, and was after a time repaid.

"I suppose that it was his sympathy which gave him unbounded power of
winning confidence, and as a consequence made him highly successful as a
physician. He began to practise before he was twenty-one years old, and
his fees during the first year paid for the keep of two horses and a
servant. On the following year his practice was large, and so continued
for about sixty years, when he ceased to attend on any one. His great
success as a doctor was the more remarkable, as he told me that he
at first hated his profession so much that if he had been sure of the
smallest pittance, or if his father had given him any choice, nothing
should have induced him to follow it. To the end of his life, the
thought of an operation almost sickened him, and he could scarcely
endure to see a person bled--a horror which he has transmitted to
me--and I remember the horror which I felt as a schoolboy in reading
about Pliny (I think) bleeding to death in a warm bath...

"Owing to my father's power of winning confidence, many patients,
especially ladies, consulted him when suffering from any misery, as
a sort of Father-Confessor. He told me that they always began by
complaining in a vague manner about their health, and by practice he
soon guessed what was really the matter. He then suggested that they
had been suffering in their minds, and now they would pour out their
troubles, and he heard nothing more about the body...Owing to
my father's skill in winning confidence he received many strange
confessions of misery and guilt. He often remarked how many miserable
wives he had known. In several instances husbands and wives had gone on
pretty well together for between twenty and thirty years, and then hated
each other bitterly; this he attributed to their having lost a common
bond in their young children having grown up.

"But the most remarkable power which my father possessed was that of
reading the characters, and even the thoughts of those whom he saw even
for a short time. We had many instances of the power, some of which
seemed almost supernatural. It saved my father from ever making (with
one exception, and the character of this man was soon discovered) an
unworthy friend. A strange clergyman came to Shrewsbury, and seemed
to be a rich man; everybody called on him, and he was invited to many
houses. My father called, and on his return home told my sisters on no
account to invite him or his family to our house; for he felt sure that
the man was not to be trusted. After a few months he suddenly bolted,
being heavily in debt, and was found out to be little better than an
habitual swindler. Here is a case of trustfulness which not many men
would have ventured on. An Irish gentleman, a complete stranger, called
on my father one day, and said that he had lost his purse, and that it
would be a serious inconvenience to him to wait in Shrewsbury until he
could receive a remittance from Ireland. He then asked my father to lend
him 20 pounds, which was immediately done, as my father felt certain
that the story was a true one. As soon as a letter could arrive from
Ireland, one came with the most profuse thanks, and enclosing, as he
said, a 20 pound Bank of England note, but no note was enclosed. I asked
my father whether this did not stagger him, but he answered 'not in
the least.' On the next day another letter came with many apologies for
having forgotten (like a true Irishman) to put the note into his letter
of the day before...(A gentleman) brought his nephew, who was insane
but quite gentle, to my father; and the young man's insanity led him to
accuse himself of all the crimes under heaven. When my father afterwards
talked over the matter with the uncle, he said, 'I am sure that your
nephew is really guilty of...a heinous crime.' Whereupon [the gentleman]
said, 'Good God, Dr. Darwin, who told you; we thought that no human
being knew the fact except ourselves!' My father told me the story many
years after the event, and I asked him how he distinguished the true
from the false self-accusations; and it was very characteristic of my
father that he said he could not explain how it was.

"The following story shows what good guesses my father could make. Lord
Shelburne, afterwards the first Marquis of Lansdowne, was famous (as
Macaulay somewhere remarks) for his knowledge of the affairs of Europe,
on which he greatly prided himself. He consulted my father medically,
and afterwards harangued him on the state of Holland. My father had
studied medicine at Leyden, and one day [while there] went a long walk
into the country with a friend who took him to the house of a clergyman
(we will say the Rev. Mr. A--, for I have forgotten his name), who had
married an Englishwoman. My father was very hungry, and there was little
for luncheon except cheese, which he could never eat. The old lady was
surprised and grieved at this, and assured my father that it was an
excellent cheese, and had been sent her from Bowood, the seat of Lord
Shelburne. My father wondered why a cheese should be sent her from
Bowood, but thought nothing more about it until it flashed across his
mind many years afterwards, whilst Lord Shelburne was talking about
Holland. So he answered, 'I should think from what I saw of the Rev. Mr.
A--, that he was a very able man, and well acquainted with the state
of Holland.' My father saw that the Earl, who immediately changed the
conversation was much startled. On the next morning my father received a
note from the Earl, saying that he had delayed starting on his journey,
and wished particularly to see my father. When he called, the Earl said,
'Dr. Darwin, it is of the utmost importance to me and to the Rev.
Mr. A-- to learn how you have discovered that he is the source of my
information about Holland.' So my father had to explain the state of
the case, and he supposed that Lord Shelburne was much struck with
his diplomatic skill in guessing, for during many years afterwards he
received many kind messages from him through various friends. I think
that he must have told the story to his children; for Sir C. Lyell asked
me many years ago why the Marquis of Lansdowne (the son or grand-son
of the first marquis) felt so much interest about me, whom he had never
seen, and my family. When forty new members (the forty thieves as they
were then called) were added to the Athenaeum Club, there was much
canvassing to be one of them; and without my having asked any one,
Lord Lansdowne proposed me and got me elected. If I am right in my
supposition, it was a queer concatenation of events that my father not
eating cheese half-a-century before in Holland led to my election as a
member of the Athenaeum.

"The sharpness of his observation led him to predict with remarkable
skill the course of any illness, and he suggested endless small details
of relief. I was told that a young doctor in Shrewsbury, who disliked my
father, used to say that he was wholly unscientific, but owned that his
power of predicting the end of an illness was unparalleled. Formerly
when he thought that I should be a doctor, he talked much to me about
his patients. In the old days the practice of bleeding largely was
universal, but my father maintained that far more evil was thus caused
than good done; and he advised me if ever I was myself ill not to allow
any doctor to take more than an extremely small quantity of blood. Long
before typhoid fever was recognised as distinct, my father told me that
two utterly distinct kinds of illness were confounded under the name
of typhus fever. He was vehement against drinking, and was convinced of
both the direct and inherited evil effects of alcohol when habitually
taken even in moderate quantity in a very large majority of cases. But
he admitted and advanced instances of certain persons who could drink
largely during their whole lives without apparently suffering any evil
effects, and he believed that he could often beforehand tell who would
thus not suffer. He himself never drank a drop of any alcoholic fluid.
This remark reminds me of a case showing how a witness under the most
favourable circumstances may be utterly mistaken. A gentleman-farmer was
strongly urged by my father not to drink, and was encouraged by being
told that he himself never touched any spirituous liquor. Whereupon the
gentleman said, 'Come, come, Doctor, this won't do--though it is very
kind of you to say so for my sake--for I know that you take a very
large glass of hot gin and water every evening after your dinner.' (This
belief still survives, and was mentioned to my brother in 1884 by an
old inhabitant of Shrewsbury.--F.D.) So my father asked him how he knew
this. The man answered, 'My cook was your kitchen-maid for two or three
years, and she saw the butler every day prepare and take to you the
gin and water.' The explanation was that my father had the odd habit of
drinking hot water in a very tall and large glass after his dinner; and
the butler used first to put some cold water in the glass, which the
girl mistook for gin, and then filled it up with boiling water from the
kitchen boiler.

"My father used to tell me many little things which he had found useful
in his medical practice. Thus ladies often cried much while telling him
their troubles, and thus caused much loss of his precious time. He soon
found that begging them to command and restrain themselves, always made
them weep the more, so that afterwards he always encouraged them to go
on crying, saying that this would relieve them more than anything else,
and with the invariable result that they soon ceased to cry, and he
could hear what they had to say and give his advice. When patients who
were very ill craved for some strange and unnatural food, my father
asked them what had put such an idea into their heads; if they answered
that they did not know, he would allow them to try the food, and often
with success, as he trusted to their having a kind of instinctive
desire; but if they answered that they had heard that the food in
question had done good to some one else, he firmly refused his assent.

"He gave one day an odd little specimen of human nature. When a very
young man he was called in to consult with the family physician in the
case of a gentleman of much distinction in Shropshire. The old doctor
told the wife that the illness was of such a nature that it must
end fatally. My father took a different view and maintained that the
gentleman would recover: he was proved quite wrong in all respects (I
think by autopsy) and he owned his error. He was then convinced that he
should never again be consulted by this family; but after a few months
the widow sent for him, having dismissed the old family doctor. My
father was so much surprised at this, that he asked a friend of the
widow to find out why he was again consulted. The widow answered her
friend, that 'she would never again see the odious old doctor who said
from the first that her husband would die, while Dr. Darwin always
maintained that he would recover!' In another case my father told a lady
that her husband would certainly die. Some months afterwards he saw
the widow, who was a very sensible woman, and she said, 'You are a very
young man, and allow me to advise you always to give, as long as you
possibly can, hope to any near relative nursing a patient. You made me
despair, and from that moment I lost strength.' My father said that
he had often since seen the paramount importance, for the sake of the
patient, of keeping up the hope and with it the strength of the nurse in
charge. This he sometimes found difficult to do compatibly with truth.
One old gentleman, however, caused him no such perplexity. He was sent
for by Mr.P--, who said, 'From all that I have seen and heard of you I
believe that you are the sort of man who will speak the truth, and if I
ask, you will tell me when I am dying. Now I much desire that you should
attend me, if you will promise, whatever I may say, always to declare
that I am not going to die.' My father acquiesced on the understanding
that his words should in fact have no meaning.

"My father possessed an extraordinary memory, especially for dates, so
that he knew, when he was very old, the day of the birth, marriage, and
death of a multitude of persons in Shropshire; and he once told me that
this power annoyed him; for if he once heard a date, he could not forget
it; and thus the deaths of many friends were often recalled to his mind.
Owing to his strong memory he knew an extraordinary number of curious
stories, which he liked to tell, as he was a great talker. He was
generally in high spirits, and laughed and joked with every one--often
with his servants--with the utmost freedom; yet he had the art of making
every one obey him to the letter. Many persons were much afraid of him.
I remember my father telling us one day, with a laugh, that several
persons had asked him whether Miss --, a grand old lady in Shropshire,
had called on him, so that at last he enquired why they asked him; and
he was told that Miss --, whom my father had somehow mortally offended,
was telling everybody that she would call and tell 'that fat old doctor
very plainly what she thought of him.' She had already called, but
her courage had failed, and no one could have been more courteous and
friendly. As a boy, I went to stay at the house of --, whose wife was
insane; and the poor creature, as soon as she saw me, was in the most
abject state of terror that I ever saw, weeping bitterly and asking me
over and over again, 'Is your father coming?' but was soon pacified.
On my return home, I asked my father why she was so frightened, and
he answered he was very glad to hear it, as he had frightened her on
purpose, feeling sure that she would be kept in safety and much happier
without any restraint, if her husband could influence her, whenever she
became at all violent, by proposing to send for Dr. Darwin; and these
words succeeded perfectly during the rest of her long life.

"My father was very sensitive, so that many small events annoyed him or
pained him much. I once asked him, when he was old and could not walk,
why he did not drive out for exercise; and he answered, 'Every road out
of Shrewsbury is associated in my mind with some painful event.' Yet he
was generally in high spirits. He was easily made very angry, but his
kindness was unbounded. He was widely and deeply loved.

"He was a cautious and good man of business, so that he hardly ever lost
money by an investment, and left to his children a very large property.
I remember a story showing how easily utterly false beliefs originate
and spread. Mr. E --, a squire of one of the oldest families in
Shropshire, and head partner in a bank, committed suicide. My father was
sent for as a matter of form, and found him dead. I may mention, by the
way, to show how matters were managed in those old days, that because
Mr. E -- was a rather great man, and universally respected, no inquest
was held over his body. My father, in returning home, thought it proper
to call at the bank (where he had an account) to tell the managing
partners of the event, as it was not improbable that it would cause a
run on the bank. Well, the story was spread far and wide, that my father
went into the bank, drew out all his money, left the bank, came back
again, and said, 'I may just tell you that Mr. E -- has killed himself,'
and then departed. It seems that it was then a common belief that money
withdrawn from a bank was not safe until the person had passed out
through the door of the bank. My father did not hear this story till
some little time afterwards, when the managing partner said that he had
departed from his invariable rule of never allowing any one to see the
account of another man, by having shown the ledger with my father's
account to several persons, as this proved that my father had not drawn
out a penny on that day. It would have been dishonourable in my father
to have used his professional knowledge for his private advantage.
Nevertheless, the supposed act was greatly admired by some persons;
and many years afterwards, a gentleman remarked, 'Ah, Doctor, what a
splendid man of business you were in so cleverly getting all your money
safe out of that bank!'

"My father's mind was not scientific, and he did not try to generalize
his knowledge under general laws; yet he formed a theory for almost
everything which occurred. I do not think I gained much from him
intellectually; but his example ought to have been of much moral service
to all his children. One of his golden rules (a hard one to follow) was,
'Never become the friend of any one whom you cannot respect.'"

Dr. Darwin had six children (Of these Mrs. Wedgwood is now the sole
survivor.): Marianne, married Dr. Henry Parker; Caroline, married
Josiah Wedgwood; Erasmus Alvey; Susan, died unmarried; Charles Robert;
Catherine, married Rev. Charles Langton.

The elder son, Erasmus, was born in 1804, and died unmarried at the age
of seventy-seven.

He, like his brother, was educated at Shrewsbury School and at Christ's
College, Cambridge. He studied medicine at Edinburgh and in London, and
took the degree of Bachelor of Medicine at Cambridge. He never made any
pretence of practising as a doctor, and, after leaving Cambridge, lived
a quiet life in London.

There was something pathetic in Charles Darwin's affection for his
brother Erasmus, as if he always recollected his solitary life, and the
touching patience and sweetness of his nature. He often spoke of him
as "Poor old Ras," or "Poor dear old Philos"--I imagine Philos
(Philosopher) was a relic of the days when they worked at chemistry
in the tool-house at Shrewsbury--a time of which he always preserved a
pleasant memory. Erasmus being rather more than four years older than
Charles Darwin, they were not long together at Cambridge, but previously
at Edinburgh they lived in the same lodgings, and after the Voyage they
lived for a time together in Erasmus' house in Great Marlborough Street.
At this time also he often speaks with much affection of Erasmus in his
letters to Fox, using words such as "my dear good old brother." In later
years Erasmus Darwin came to Down occasionally, or joined his brother's
family in a summer holiday. But gradually it came about that he could
not, through ill health, make up his mind to leave London, and then they
only saw each other when Charles Darwin went for a week at a time to his
brother's house in Queen Anne Street.

The following note on his brother's character was written by Charles
Darwin at about the same time that the sketch of his father was added to
the 'Recollections.':--

"My brother Erasmus possessed a remarkably clear mind with extensive
and diversified tastes and knowledge in literature, art, and even in
science. For a short time he collected and dried plants, and during
a somewhat longer time experimented in chemistry. He was extremely
agreeable, and his wit often reminded me of that in the letters and
works of Charles Lamb. He was very kind-hearted...His health from his
boyhood had been weak, and as a consequence he failed in energy. His
spirits were not high, sometimes low, more especially during early
and middle manhood. He read much, even whilst a boy, and at school
encouraged me to read, lending me books. Our minds and tastes
were, however, so different, that I do not think I owe much to him
intellectually. I am inclined to agree with Francis Galton in believing
that education and environment produce only a small effect on the mind
of any one, and that most of our qualities are innate."

Erasmus Darwin's name, though not known to the general public, may
be remembered from the sketch of his character in Carlyle's
'Reminiscences,' which I here reproduce in part:--

"Erasmus Darwin, a most diverse kind of mortal, came to seek us out very
soon ('had heard of Carlyle in Germany, etc.') and continues ever
since to be a quiet house-friend, honestly attached; though his visits
latterly have been rarer and rarer, health so poor, I so occupied, etc.,
etc. He had something of original and sarcastically ingenious in him,
one of the sincerest, naturally truest, and most modest of men; elder
brother of Charles Darwin (the famed Darwin on Species of these days) to
whom I rather prefer him for intellect, had not his health quite doomed
him to silence and patient idleness...My dear one had a great favour for
this honest Darwin always; many a road, to shops and the like, he drove
her in his cab (Darwingium Cabbum comparable to Georgium Sidus) in those
early days when even the charge of omnibuses was a consideration, and
his sparse utterances, sardonic often, were a great amusement to her. 'A
perfect gentleman,' she at once discerned him to be, and of sound worth
and kindliness in the most unaffected form." (Carlyle's 'Reminiscences,'
vol. ii. page 208.)

Charles Darwin did not appreciate this sketch of his brother; he thought
Carlyle had missed the essence of his most lovable nature.

I am tempted by the wish of illustrating further the character of one
so sincerely beloved by all Charles Darwin's children, to reproduce a
letter to the "Spectator" (September 3, 1881) by his cousin Miss Julia
Wedgwood.

"A portrait from Mr. Carlyle's portfolio not regretted by any who loved
the original, surely confers sufficient distinction to warrant a few
words of notice, when the character it depicts is withdrawn from mortal
gaze. Erasmus, the only brother of Charles Darwin, and the faithful
and affectionate old friend of both the Carlyles, has left a circle of
mourners who need no tribute from illustrious pen to embalm the memory
so dear to their hearts; but a wider circle must have felt some interest
excited by that tribute, and may receive with a certain attention the
record of a unique and indelible impression, even though it be made only
on the hearts of those who cannot bequeath it, and with whom, therefore,
it must speedily pass away. They remember it with the same distinctness
as they remember a creation of genius; it has in like manner enriched
and sweetened life, formed a common meeting-point for those who had
no other; and, in its strong fragrance of individuality, enforced that
respect for the idiosyncracies of human character without which moral
judgment is always hard and shallow, and often unjust. Carlyle was one
to find a peculiar enjoyment in the combination of liveliness and repose
which gave his friend's society an influence at once stimulating and
soothing, and the warmth of his appreciation was not made known first
in its posthumous expression; his letters of anxiety nearly thirty
years ago, when the frail life which has been prolonged to old age
was threatened by serious illness, are still fresh in my memory. The
friendship was equally warm with both husband and wife. I remember
well a pathetic little remonstrance from her elicited by an avowal from
Erasmus Darwin, that he preferred cats to dogs, which she felt a slur
on her little 'Nero;' and the tones in which she said, 'Oh, but you
are fond of dogs! you are too kind not to be,' spoke of a long vista of
small, gracious kindnesses, remembered with a tender gratitude. He was
intimate also with a person whose friends, like those of Mr. Carlyle,
have not always had cause to congratulate themselves on their place in
her gallery,--Harriet Martineau. I have heard him more than once call
her a faithful friend, and it always seemed to me a curious tribute
to something in the friendship that he alone supplied; but if she had
written of him at all, I believe the mention, in its heartiness of
appreciation, would have afforded a rare and curious meeting-point with
the other 'Reminiscences,' so like and yet so unlike. It is not possible
to transfer the impression of a character; we can only suggest it by
means of some resemblance; and it is a singular illustration of that
irony which checks or directs our sympathies, that in trying to give
some notion of the man whom, among those who were not his kindred,
Carlyle appears to have most loved, I can say nothing more descriptive
than that he seems to me to have had something in common with the man
whom Carlyle least appreciated. The society of Erasmus Darwin had, to my
mind, much the same charm as the writings of Charles Lamb. There was
the same kind of playfulness, the same lightness of touch, the same
tenderness, perhaps the same limitations. On another side of his nature,
I have often been reminded of him by the quaint, delicate humour, the
superficial intolerance, the deep springs of pity, the peculiar mixture
of something pathetic with a sort of gay scorn, entirely remote from
contempt, which distinguish the Ellesmere of Sir Arthur Helps' earlier
dialogues. Perhaps we recall such natures most distinctly, when such a
resemblance is all that is left of them. The character is not merged
in the creation; and what we lose in the power to communicate our
impression, we seem to gain in its vividness. Erasmus Darwin has
passed away in old age, yet his memory retains something of a youthful
fragrance; his influence gave much happiness, of a kind usually
associated with youth, to many lives besides the illustrious one whose
records justify, though certainly they do not inspire, the wish to place
this fading chaplet on his grave."

The foregoing pages give, in a fragmentary manner, as much perhaps as
need be told of the family from which Charles Darwin came, and may serve
as an introduction to the autobiographical chapter which follows.




CHAPTER 1.II. -- AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

[My father's autobiographical recollections, given in the present
chapter, were written for his children,--and written without any
thought that they would ever be published. To many this may seem an
impossibility; but those who knew my father will understand how it was
not only possible, but natural. The autobiography bears the heading,
'Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character,' and end
with the following note:--

"Aug.3, 1876. This sketch of my life was begun about May 28th at
Hopedene (Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood's house in Surrey.), and since then I
have written for nearly an hour on most afternoons." It will easily be
understood that, in a narrative of a personal and intimate kind written
for his wife and children, passages should occur which must here be
omitted; and I have not thought it necessary to indicate where
such omissions are made. It has been found necessary to make a few
corrections of obvious verbal slips, but the number of such alterations
has been kept down to the minimum.--F.D.]

A German Editor having written to me for an account of the development
of my mind and character with some sketch of my autobiography, I have
thought that the attempt would amuse me, and might possibly interest
my children or their children. I know that it would have interested me
greatly to have read even so short and dull a sketch of the mind of my
grandfather, written by himself, and what he thought and did, and how he
worked. I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if
I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life. Nor have
I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me. I have taken no
pains about my style of writing.

I was born at Shrewsbury on February 12th, 1809, and my earliest
recollection goes back only to when I was a few months over four years
old, when we went to near Abergele for sea-bathing, and I recollect some
events and places there with some little distinctness.

My mother died in July 1817, when I was a little over eight years old,
and it is odd that I can remember hardly anything about her except
her death-bed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed
work-table. In the spring of this same year I was sent to a day-school
in Shrewsbury, where I stayed a year. I have been told that I was much
slower in learning than my younger sister Catherine, and I believe that
I was in many ways a naughty boy.

By the time I went to this day-school (Kept by Rev. G. Case, minister of
the Unitarian Chapel in the High Street. Mrs. Darwin was a Unitarian
and attended Mr. Case's chapel, and my father as a little boy went there
with his elder sisters. But both he and his brother were christened and
intended to belong to the Church of England; and after his early boyhood
he seems usually to have gone to church and not to Mr. Case's. It
appears ("St. James' Gazette", Dec. 15, 1883) that a mural tablet has
been erected to his memory in the chapel, which is now known as the
'Free Christian Church.') my taste for natural history, and more
especially for collecting, was well developed. I tried to make out
the names of plants (Rev. W.A. Leighton, who was a schoolfellow of my
father's at Mr. Case's school, remembers his bringing a flower to school
and saying that his mother had taught him how by looking at the inside
of the blossom the name of the plant could be discovered. Mr. Leighton
goes on, "This greatly roused my attention and curiosity, and I enquired
of him repeatedly how this could be done?"--but his lesson was naturally
enough not transmissible.--F.D.), and collected all sorts of things,
shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting
which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser,
was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or
brother ever had this taste.

One little event during this year has fixed itself very firmly in my
mind, and I hope that it has done so from my conscience having been
afterwards sorely troubled by it; it is curious as showing that
apparently I was interested at this early age in the variability of
plants! I told another little boy (I believe it was Leighton, who
afterwards became a well-known lichenologist and botanist), that I could
produce variously coloured polyanthuses and primroses by watering them
with certain coloured fluids, which was of course a monstrous fable, and
had never been tried by me. I may here also confess that as a little boy
I was much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods, and this was always
done for the sake of causing excitement. For instance, I once gathered
much valuable fruit from my father's trees and hid it in the shrubbery,
and then ran in breathless haste to spread the news that I had
discovered a hoard of stolen fruit.

I must have been a very simple little fellow when I first went to the
school. A boy of the name of Garnett took me into a cake shop one day,
and bought some cakes for which he did not pay, as the shopman trusted
him. When we came out I asked him why he did not pay for them, and he
instantly answered, "Why, do you not know that my uncle left a great
sum of money to the town on condition that every tradesman should give
whatever was wanted without payment to any one who wore his old hat and
moved [it] in a particular manner?" and he then showed me how it was
moved. He then went into another shop where he was trusted, and asked
for some small article, moving his hat in the proper manner, and of
course obtained it without payment. When we came out he said, "Now if
you like to go by yourself into that cake-shop (how well I remember its
exact position) I will lend you my hat, and you can get whatever you
like if you move the hat on your head properly." I gladly accepted the
generous offer, and went in and asked for some cakes, moved the old hat
and was walking out of the shop, when the shopman made a rush at me, so
I dropped the cakes and ran for dear life, and was astonished by being
greeted with shouts of laughter by my false friend Garnett.

I can say in my own favour that I was as a boy humane, but I owed this
entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed
whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of
collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a bird's
nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for their
value, but from a sort of bravado.

I had a strong taste for angling, and would sit for any number of hours
on the bank of a river or pond watching the float; when at Maer (The
house of his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood.) I was told that I could kill the
worms with salt and water, and from that day I never spitted a living
worm, though at the expense probably of some loss of success.

Once as a very little boy whilst at the day school, or before that time,
I acted cruelly, for I beat a puppy, I believe, simply from enjoying
the sense of power; but the beating could not have been severe, for
the puppy did not howl, of which I feel sure, as the spot was near
the house. This act lay heavily on my conscience, as is shown by my
remembering the exact spot where the crime was committed. It probably
lay all the heavier from my love of dogs being then, and for a long time
afterwards, a passion. Dogs seemed to know this, for I was an adept in
robbing their love from their masters.

I remember clearly only one other incident during this year whilst at
Mr. Case's daily school,--namely, the burial of a dragoon soldier; and
it is surprising how clearly I can still see the horse with the man's
empty boots and carbine suspended to the saddle, and the firing over the
grave. This scene deeply stirred whatever poetic fancy there was in me.

In the summer of 1818 I went to Dr. Butler's great school in Shrewsbury,
and remained there for seven years still Midsummer 1825, when I was
sixteen years old. I boarded at this school, so that I had the great
advantage of living the life of a true schoolboy; but as the distance
was hardly more than a mile to my home, I very often ran there in the
longer intervals between the callings over and before locking up at
night. This, I think, was in many ways advantageous to me by keeping up
home affections and interests. I remember in the early part of my school
life that I often had to run very quickly to be in time, and from being
a fleet runner was generally successful; but when in doubt I prayed
earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my
success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and marvelled how
generally I was aided.

I have heard my father and elder sister say that I had, as a very young
boy, a strong taste for long solitary walks; but what I thought about I
know not. I often became quite absorbed, and once, whilst returning to
school on the summit of the old fortifications round Shrewsbury, which
had been converted into a public foot-path with no parapet on one side,
I walked off and fell to the ground, but the height was only seven or
eight feet. Nevertheless the number of thoughts which passed through my
mind during this very short, but sudden and wholly unexpected fall, was
astonishing, and seem hardly compatible with what physiologists have, I
believe, proved about each thought requiring quite an appreciable amount
of time.

Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than
Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being
taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a
means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life I have
been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention
was paid to verse-making, and this I could never do well. I had many
friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by
patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work into any
subject. Much attention was paid to learning by heart the lessons of the
previous day; this I could effect with great facility, learning forty or
fifty lines of Virgil or Homer, whilst I was in morning chapel; but
this exercise was utterly useless, for every verse was forgotten
in forty-eight hours. I was not idle, and with the exception of
versification, generally worked conscientiously at my classics, not
using cribs. The sole pleasure I ever received from such studies, was
from some of the odes of Horace, which I admired greatly.

When I left the school I was for my age neither high nor low in it; and
I believe that I was considered by all my masters and by my father as a
very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. To my
deep mortification my father once said to me, "You care for nothing but
shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself
and all your family." But my father, who was the kindest man I ever
knew and whose memory I love with all my heart, must have been angry and
somewhat unjust when he used such words.

Looking back as well as I can at my character during my school life, the
only qualities which at this period promised well for the future,
were, that I had strong and diversified tastes, much zeal for whatever
interested me, and a keen pleasure in understanding any complex subject
or thing. I was taught Euclid by a private tutor, and I distinctly
remember the intense satisfaction which the clear geometrical proofs
gave me. I remember, with equal distinctness, the delight which my uncle
gave me (the father of Francis Galton) by explaining the principle
of the vernier of a barometer with respect to diversified tastes,
independently of science, I was fond of reading various books, and
I used to sit for hours reading the historical plays of Shakespeare,
generally in an old window in the thick walls of the school. I read also
other poetry, such as Thomson's 'Seasons,' and the recently published
poems of Byron and Scott. I mention this because later in life I
wholly lost, to my great regret, all pleasure from poetry of any kind,
including Shakespeare. In connection with pleasure from poetry, I may
add that in 1822 a vivid delight in scenery was first awakened in my
mind, during a riding tour on the borders of Wales, and this has lasted
longer than any other aesthetic pleasure.

Early in my school days a boy had a copy of the 'Wonders of the World,'
which I often read, and disputed with other boys about the veracity of
some of the statements; and I believe that this book first gave me a
wish to travel in remote countries, which was ultimately fulfilled
by the voyage of the "Beagle". In the latter part of my school life
I became passionately fond of shooting; I do not believe that any
one could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than I did for
shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my
excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun
from the trembling of my hands. This taste long continued, and I became
a very good shot. When at Cambridge I used to practise throwing up my
gun to my shoulder before a looking-glass to see that I threw it up
straight. Another and better plan was to get a friend to wave about a
lighted candle, and then to fire at it with a cap on the nipple, and if
the aim was accurate the little puff of air would blow out the candle.
The explosion of the cap caused a sharp crack, and I was told that the
tutor of the college remarked, "What an extraordinary thing it is, Mr.
Darwin seems to spend hours in cracking a horse-whip in his room, for I
often hear the crack when I pass under his windows."

I had many friends amongst the schoolboys, whom I loved dearly, and I
think that my disposition was then very affectionate.

With respect to science, I continued collecting minerals with much
zeal, but quite unscientifically--all that I cared about was a new-NAMED
mineral, and I hardly attempted to classify them. I must have observed
insects with some little care, for when ten years old (1819) I went for
three weeks to Plas Edwards on the sea-coast in Wales, I was very much
interested and surprised at seeing a large black and scarlet Hemipterous
insect, many moths (Zygaena), and a Cicindela which are not found in
Shropshire. I almost made up my mind to begin collecting all the insects
which I could find dead, for on consulting my sister I concluded that it
was not right to kill insects for the sake of making a collection. From
reading White's 'Selborne,' I took much pleasure in watching the
habits of birds, and even made notes on the subject. In my simplicity I
remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.

Towards the close of my school life, my brother worked hard at
chemistry, and made a fair laboratory with proper apparatus in the
tool-house in the garden, and I was allowed to aid him as a servant in
most of his experiments. He made all the gases and many compounds, and
I read with great care several books on chemistry, such as Henry and
Parkes' 'Chemical Catechism.' The subject interested me greatly, and we
often used to go on working till rather late at night. This was the best
part of my education at school, for it showed me practically the meaning
of experimental science. The fact that we worked at chemistry somehow
got known at school, and as it was an unprecedented fact, I was
nicknamed "Gas." I was also once publicly rebuked by the head-master,
Dr. Butler, for thus wasting my time on such useless subjects; and he
called me very unjustly a "poco curante," and as I did not understand
what he meant, it seemed to me a fearful reproach.

As I was doing no good at school, my father wisely took me away at a
rather earlier age than usual, and sent me (Oct. 1825) to Edinburgh
University with my brother, where I stayed for two years or sessions. My
brother was completing his medical studies, though I do not believe he
ever really intended to practise, and I was sent there to commence
them. But soon after this period I became convinced from various small
circumstances that my father would leave me property enough to subsist
on with some comfort, though I never imagined that I should be so rich a
man as I am; but my belief was sufficient to check any strenuous efforts
to learn medicine.

The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were
intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry by Hope; but
to my mind there are no advantages and many disadvantages in lectures
compared with reading. Dr. Duncan's lectures on Materia Medica at 8
o'clock on a winter's morning are something fearful to remember. Dr.--
made his lectures on human anatomy as dull as he was himself, and the
subject disgusted me. It has proved one of the greatest evils in my life
that I was not urged to practise dissection, for I should soon have got
over my disgust; and the practice would have been invaluable for all
my future work. This has been an irremediable evil, as well as my
incapacity to draw. I also attended regularly the clinical wards in the
hospital. Some of the cases distressed me a good deal, and I still have
vivid pictures before me of some of them; but I was not so foolish as to
allow this to lessen my attendance. I cannot understand why this part
of my medical course did not interest me in a greater degree; for during
the summer before coming to Edinburgh I began attending some of the poor
people, chiefly children and women in Shrewsbury: I wrote down as full
an account as I could of the case with all the symptoms, and read them
aloud to my father, who suggested further inquiries and advised me what
medicines to give, which I made up myself. At one time I had at least a
dozen patients, and I felt a keen interest in the work. My father, who
was by far the best judge of character whom I ever knew, declared that
I should make a successful physician,--meaning by this one who would
get many patients. He maintained that the chief element of success was
exciting confidence; but what he saw in me which convinced him that I
should create confidence I know not. I also attended on two occasions
the operating theatre in the hospital at Edinburgh, and saw two very
bad operations, one on a child, but I rushed away before they were
completed. Nor did I ever attend again, for hardly any inducement would
have been strong enough to make me do so; this being long before the
blessed days of chloroform. The two cases fairly haunted me for many a
long year.

My brother stayed only one year at the University, so that during the
second year I was left to my own resources; and this was an advantage,
for I became well acquainted with several young men fond of natural
science. One of these was Ainsworth, who afterwards published his
travels in Assyria; he was a Wernerian geologist, and knew a little
about many subjects. Dr. Coldstream was a very different young man,
prim, formal, highly religious, and most kind-hearted; he afterwards
published some good zoological articles. A third young man was Hardie,
who would, I think, have made a good botanist, but died early in
India. Lastly, Dr. Grant, my senior by several years, but how I became
acquainted with him I cannot remember; he published some first-rate
zoological papers, but after coming to London as Professor in University
College, he did nothing more in science, a fact which has always been
inexplicable to me. I knew him well; he was dry and formal in manner,
with much enthusiasm beneath this outer crust. He one day, when we were
walking together, burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck and his
views on evolution. I listened in silent astonishment, and as far as
I can judge without any effect on my mind. I had previously read the
'Zoonomia' of my grandfather, in which similar views are maintained, but
without producing any effect on me. Nevertheless it is probable that the
hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may
have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my 'Origin of
Species.' At this time I admired greatly the 'Zoonomia;' but on reading
it a second time after an interval of ten or fifteen years, I was much
disappointed; the proportion of speculation being so large to the facts
given.

Drs. Grant and Coldstream attended much to marine Zoology, and I often
accompanied the former to collect animals in the tidal pools, which I
dissected as well as I could. I also became friends with some of the
Newhaven fishermen, and sometimes accompanied them when they trawled
for oysters, and thus got many specimens. But from not having had any
regular practice in dissection, and from possessing only a wretched
microscope, my attempts were very poor. Nevertheless I made one
interesting little discovery, and read, about the beginning of the year
1826, a short paper on the subject before the Plinian Society. This was
that the so-called ova of Flustra had the power of independent movement
by means of cilia, and were in fact larvae. In another short paper I
showed that the little globular bodies which had been supposed to be
the young state of Fucus loreus were the egg-cases of the wormlike
Pontobdella muricata.

The Plinian Society was encouraged and, I believe, founded by Professor
Jameson: it consisted of students and met in an underground room in
the University for the sake of reading papers on natural science and
discussing them. I used regularly to attend, and the meetings had a
good effect on me in stimulating my zeal and giving me new congenial
acquaintances. One evening a poor young man got up, and after stammering
for a prodigious length of time, blushing crimson, he at last slowly
got out the words, "Mr. President, I have forgotten what I was going to
say." The poor fellow looked quite overwhelmed, and all the members
were so surprised that no one could think of a word to say to cover his
confusion. The papers which were read to our little society were not
printed, so that I had not the satisfaction of seeing my paper in print;
but I believe Dr. Grant noticed my small discovery in his excellent
memoir on Flustra.

I was also a member of the Royal Medical Society, and attended pretty
regularly; but as the subjects were exclusively medical, I did not much
care about them. Much rubbish was talked there, but there were some good
speakers, of whom the best was the present Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth. Dr.
Grant took me occasionally to the meetings of the Wernerian Society,
where various papers on natural history were read, discussed, and
afterwards published in the 'Transactions.' I heard Audubon deliver
there some interesting discourses on the habits of N. American birds,
sneering somewhat unjustly at Waterton. By the way, a negro lived in
Edinburgh, who had travelled with Waterton, and gained his livelihood
by stuffing birds, which he did excellently: he gave me lessons for
payment, and I used often to sit with him, for he was a very pleasant
and intelligent man.

Mr. Leonard Horner also took me once to a meeting of the Royal Society
of Edinburgh, where I saw Sir Walter Scott in the chair as President,
and he apologised to the meeting as not feeling fitted for such a
position. I looked at him and at the whole scene with some awe and
reverence, and I think it was owing to this visit during my youth, and
to my having attended the Royal Medical Society, that I felt the honour
of being elected a few years ago an honorary member of both these
Societies, more than any other similar honour. If I had been told at
that time that I should one day have been thus honoured, I declare that
I should have thought it as ridiculous and improbable, as if I had been
told that I should be elected King of England.

During my second year at Edinburgh I attended --'s lectures on Geology
and Zoology, but they were incredibly dull. The sole effect they
produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read
a book on Geology, or in any way to study the science. Yet I feel sure
that I was prepared for a philosophical treatment of the subject; for
an old Mr. Cotton in Shropshire, who knew a good deal about rocks,
had pointed out to me two or three years previously a well-known large
erratic boulder in the town of Shrewsbury, called the "bell-stone"; he
told me that there was no rock of the same kind nearer than Cumberland
or Scotland, and he solemnly assured me that the world would come to an
end before any one would be able to explain how this stone came where
it now lay. This produced a deep impression on me, and I meditated over
this wonderful stone. So that I felt the keenest delight when I first
read of the action of icebergs in transporting boulders, and I gloried
in the progress of Geology. Equally striking is the fact that I, though
now only sixty-seven years old, heard the Professor, in a field lecture
at Salisbury Craigs, discoursing on a trapdyke, with amygdaloidal
margins and the strata indurated on each side, with volcanic rocks all
around us, say that it was a fissure filled with sediment from above,
adding with a sneer that there were men who maintained that it had
been injected from beneath in a molten condition. When I think of this
lecture, I do not wonder that I determined never to attend to Geology.

From attending --'s lectures, I became acquainted with the curator
of the museum, Mr. Macgillivray, who afterwards published a large
and excellent book on the birds of Scotland. I had much interesting
natural-history talk with him, and he was very kind to me. He gave me
some rare shells, for I at that time collected marine mollusca, but with
no great zeal.

My summer vacations during these two years were wholly given up to
amusements, though I always had some book in hand, which I read with
interest. During the summer of 1826 I took a long walking tour with
two friends with knapsacks on our backs through North wales. We walked
thirty miles most days, including one day the ascent of Snowdon. I
also went with my sister a riding tour in North Wales, a servant with
saddle-bags carrying our clothes. The autumns were devoted to shooting
chiefly at Mr. Owen's, at Woodhouse, and at my Uncle Jos's (Josiah
Wedgwood, the son of the founder of the Etruria Works.) at Maer. My zeal
was so great that I used to place my shooting-boots open by my bed-side
when I went to bed, so as not to lose half a minute in putting them on
in the morning; and on one occasion I reached a distant part of the Maer
estate, on the 20th of August for black-game shooting, before I could
see: I then toiled on with the game-keeper the whole day through thick
heath and young Scotch firs.

I kept an exact record of every bird which I shot throughout the whole
season. One day when shooting at Woodhouse with Captain Owen, the eldest
son, and Major Hill, his cousin, afterwards Lord Berwick, both of whom I
liked very much, I thought myself shamefully used, for every time after
I had fired and thought that I had killed a bird, one of the two acted
as if loading his gun, and cried out, "You must not count that bird,
for I fired at the same time," and the gamekeeper, perceiving the joke,
backed them up. After some hours they told me the joke, but it was no
joke to me, for I had shot a large number of birds, but did not know how
many, and could not add them to my list, which I used to do by making a
knot in a piece of string tied to a button-hole. This my wicked friends
had perceived.

How I did enjoy shooting! But I think that I must have been
half-consciously ashamed of my zeal, for I tried to persuade myself
that shooting was almost an intellectual employment; it required so much
skill to judge where to find most game and to hunt the dogs well.

One of my autumnal visits to Maer in 1827 was memorable from meeting
there Sir J. Mackintosh, who was the best converser I ever listened
to. I heard afterwards with a glow of pride that he had said, "There
is something in that young man that interests me." This must have been
chiefly due to his perceiving that I listened with much interest to
everything which he said, for I was as ignorant as a pig about his
subjects of history, politics, and moral philosophy. To hear of praise
from an eminent person, though no doubt apt or certain to excite vanity,
is, I think, good for a young man, as it helps to keep him in the right
course.

My visits to Maer during these two or three succeeding years were quite
delightful, independently of the autumnal shooting. Life there was
perfectly free; the country was very pleasant for walking or riding;
and in the evening there was much very agreeable conversation, not
so personal as it generally is in large family parties, together with
music. In the summer the whole family used often to sit on the steps
of the old portico, with the flower-garden in front, and with the steep
wooded bank opposite the house reflected in the lake, with here and
there a fish rising or a water-bird paddling about. Nothing has left a
more vivid picture on my mind than these evenings at Maer. I was
also attached to and greatly revered my Uncle Jos; he was silent and
reserved, so as to be a rather awful man; but he sometimes talked openly
with me. He was the very type of an upright man, with the clearest
judgment. I do not believe that any power on earth could have made him
swerve an inch from what he considered the right course. I used to apply
to him in my mind the well-known ode of Horace, now forgotten by me, in
which the words "nec vultus tyranni, etc.," come in. (Justum et tenacem
propositi virum Non civium ardor prava jubentium Non vultus instantis
tyranni Mente quatit solida.)

CAMBRIDGE 1828-1831.

After having spent two sessions in Edinburgh, my father perceived, or
he heard from my sisters, that I did not like the thought of being a
physician, so he proposed that I should become a clergyman. He was very
properly vehement against my turning into an idle sporting man, which
then seemed my probable destination. I asked for some time to consider,
as from what little I had heard or thought on the subject I had scruples
about declaring my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England;
though otherwise I liked the thought of being a country clergyman.
Accordingly I read with care 'Pearson on the Creed,' and a few other
books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict
and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself
that our Creed must be fully accepted.

Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox, it seems
ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman. Nor was this intention
and my father's wish ever formerly given up, but died a natural death
when, on leaving Cambridge, I joined the "Beagle" as naturalist. If the
phrenologists are to be trusted, I was well fitted in one respect to be
a clergyman. A few years ago the secretaries of a German psychological
society asked me earnestly by letter for a photograph of myself; and
some time afterwards I received the proceedings of one of the meetings,
in which it seemed that the shape of my head had been the subject of a
public discussion, and one of the speakers declared that I had the bump
of reverence developed enough for ten priests.

As it was decided that I should be a clergyman, it was necessary that I
should go to one of the English universities and take a degree; but as
I had never opened a classical book since leaving school, I found to
my dismay, that in the two intervening years I had actually forgotten,
incredible as it may appear, almost everything which I had learnt,
even to some few of the Greek letters. I did not therefore proceed to
Cambridge at the usual time in October, but worked with a private tutor
in Shrewsbury, and went to Cambridge after the Christmas vacation, early
in 1828. I soon recovered my school standard of knowledge, and could
translate easy Greek books, such as Homer and the Greek Testament, with
moderate facility.

During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted,
as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as at
Edinburgh and at school. I attempted mathematics, and even went during
the summer of 1828 with a private tutor (a very dull man) to Barmouth,
but I got on very slowly. The work was repugnant to me, chiefly from my
not being able to see any meaning in the early steps in algebra. This
impatience was very foolish, and in after years I have deeply regretted
that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of
the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem
to have an extra sense. But I do not believe that I should ever have
succeeded beyond a very low grade. With respect to Classics I did
nothing except attend a few compulsory college lectures, and the
attendance was almost nominal. In my second year I had to work for a
month or two to pass the Little-Go, which I did easily. Again, in my
last year I worked with some earnestness for my final degree of B.A.,
and brushed up my Classics, together with a little Algebra and Euclid,
which latter gave me much pleasure, as it did at school. In order to
pass the B.A. examination, it was also necessary to get up Paley's
'Evidences of Christianity,' and his 'Moral Philosophy.' This was done
in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out
the whole of the 'Evidences' with perfect correctness, but not of course
in the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I may
add, of his 'Natural Theology,' gave me as much delight as did Euclid.
The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part
by rote, was the only part of the academical course which, as I then
felt and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the education
of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself about Paley's
premises; and taking these on trust, I was charmed and convinced by the
long line of argumentation. By answering well the examination questions
in Paley, by doing Euclid well, and by not failing miserably in
Classics, I gained a good place among the oi polloi or crowd of men who
do not go in for honours. Oddly enough, I cannot remember how high I
stood, and my memory fluctuates between the fifth, tenth, or twelfth,
name on the list. (Tenth in the list of January 1831.)

Public lectures on several branches were given in the University,
attendance being quite voluntary; but I was so sickened with lectures at
Edinburgh that I did not even attend Sedgwick's eloquent and interesting
lectures. Had I done so I should probably have become a geologist
earlier than I did. I attended, however, Henslow's lectures on Botany,
and liked them much for their extreme clearness, and the admirable
illustrations; but I did not study botany. Henslow used to take his
pupils, including several of the older members of the University, field
excursions, on foot or in coaches, to distant places, or in a barge
down the river, and lectured on the rarer plants and animals which were
observed. These excursions were delightful.

Although, as we shall presently see, there were some redeeming features
in my life at Cambridge, my time was sadly wasted there, and worse than
wasted. From my passion for shooting and for hunting, and, when this
failed, for riding across country, I got into a sporting set, including
some dissipated low-minded young men. We used often to dine together in
the evening, though these dinners often included men of a higher stamp,
and we sometimes drank too much, with jolly singing and playing at cards
afterwards. I know that I ought to feel ashamed of days and evenings
thus spent, but as some of my friends were very pleasant, and we were
all in the highest spirits, I cannot help looking back to these times
with much pleasure.

But I am glad to think that I had many other friends of a widely
different nature. I was very intimate with Whitley (Rev. C. Whitley,
Hon. Canon of Durham, formerly Reader in Natural Philosophy in
Durham University.), who was afterwards Senior Wrangler, and we used
continually to take long walks together. He inoculated me with a taste
for pictures and good engravings, of which I bought some. I frequently
went to the Fitzwilliam Gallery, and my taste must have been fairly
good, for I certainly admired the best pictures, which I discussed with
the old curator. I read also with much interest Sir Joshua Reynolds'
book. This taste, though not natural to me, lasted for several years,
and many of the pictures in the National Gallery in London gave me
much pleasure; that of Sebastian del Piombo exciting in me a sense of
sublimity.

I also got into a musical set, I believe by means of my warm-hearted
friend, Herbert (The late John Maurice Herbert, County Court Judge of
Cardiff and the Monmouth Circuit.), who took a high wrangler's degree.
From associating with these men, and hearing them play, I acquired a
strong taste for music, and used very often to time my walks so as to
hear on week days the anthem in King's College Chapel. This gave me
intense pleasure, so that my backbone would sometimes shiver. I am sure
that there was no affectation or mere imitation in this taste, for I
used generally to go by myself to King's College, and I sometimes hired
the chorister boys to sing in my rooms. Nevertheless I am so utterly
destitute of an ear, that I cannot perceive a discord, or keep time
and hum a tune correctly; and it is a mystery how I could possibly have
derived pleasure from music.

My musical friends soon perceived my state, and sometimes amused
themselves by making me pass an examination, which consisted in
ascertaining how many tunes I could recognise when they were played
rather more quickly or slowly than usual. 'God save the King,' when thus
played, was a sore puzzle. There was another man with almost as bad an
ear as I had, and strange to say he played a little on the flute. Once I
had the triumph of beating him in one of our musical examinations.

But no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness
or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles. It was the mere
passion for collecting, for I did not dissect them, and rarely compared
their external characters with published descriptions, but got them
named anyhow. I will give a proof of my zeal: one day, on tearing off
some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then
I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I
popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it
ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was
forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.

I was very successful in collecting, and invented two new methods; I
employed a labourer to scrape during the winter, moss off old trees
and place it in a large bag, and likewise to collect the rubbish at the
bottom of the barges in which reeds are brought from the fens, and thus
I got some very rare species. No poet ever felt more delighted at
seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing, in Stephens'
'Illustrations of British Insects,' the magic words, "captured by C.
Darwin, Esq." I was introduced to entomology by my second cousin W.
Darwin Fox, a clever and most pleasant man, who was then at Christ's
College, and with whom I became extremely intimate. Afterwards I became
well acquainted, and went out collecting, with Albert Way of Trinity,
who in after years became a well-known archaeologist; also with H.
Thompson of the same College, afterwards a leading agriculturist,
chairman of a great railway, and Member of Parliament. It seems
therefore that a taste for collecting beetles is some indication of
future success in life!

I am surprised what an indelible impression many of the beetles which
I caught at Cambridge have left on my mind. I can remember the exact
appearance of certain posts, old trees and banks where I made a good
capture. The pretty Panagaeus crux-major was a treasure in those days,
and here at Down I saw a beetle running across a walk, and on picking it
up instantly perceived that it differed slightly from P. crux-major,
and it turned out to be P. quadripunctatus, which is only a variety or
closely allied species, differing from it very slightly in outline. I
had never seen in those old days Licinus alive, which to an uneducated
eye hardly differs from many of the black Carabidous beetles; but my
sons found here a specimen, and I instantly recognised that it was new
to me; yet I had not looked at a British beetle for the last twenty
years.

I have not as yet mentioned a circumstance which influenced my whole
career more than any other. This was my friendship with Professor
Henslow. Before coming up to Cambridge, I had heard of him from my
brother as a man who knew every branch of science, and I was accordingly
prepared to reverence him. He kept open house once every week when
all undergraduates, and some older members of the University, who were
attached to science, used to meet in the evening. I soon got, through
Fox, an invitation, and went there regularly. Before long I became
well acquainted with Henslow, and during the latter half of my time at
Cambridge took long walks with him on most days; so that I was called by
some of the dons "the man who walks with Henslow;" and in the evening I
was very often asked to join his family dinner. His knowledge was great
in botany, entomology, chemistry, mineralogy, and geology. His strongest
taste was to draw conclusions from long-continued minute observations.
His judgment was excellent, and his whole mind well balanced; but I
do not suppose that any one would say that he possessed much original
genius. He was deeply religious, and so orthodox that he told me one day
he should be grieved if a single word of the Thirty-nine Articles were
altered. His moral qualities were in every way admirable. He was free
from every tinge of vanity or other petty feeling; and I never saw a man
who thought so little about himself or his own concerns. His temper was
imperturbably good, with the most winning and courteous manners; yet,
as I have seen, he could be roused by any bad action to the warmest
indignation and prompt action.

I once saw in his company in the streets of Cambridge almost as horrid
a scene as could have been witnessed during the French Revolution. Two
body-snatchers had been arrested, and whilst being taken to prison had
been torn from the constable by a crowd of the roughest men, who dragged
them by their legs along the muddy and stony road. They were covered
from head to foot with mud, and their faces were bleeding either from
having been kicked or from the stones; they looked like corpses, but
the crowd was so dense that I got only a few momentary glimpses of the
wretched creatures. Never in my life have I seen such wrath painted on
a man's face as was shown by Henslow at this horrid scene. He tried
repeatedly to penetrate the mob; but it was simply impossible. He then
rushed away to the mayor, telling me not to follow him, but to get more
policemen. I forget the issue, except that the two men were got into the
prison without being killed.

Henslow's benevolence was unbounded, as he proved by his many excellent
schemes for his poor parishioners, when in after years he held the
living of Hitcham. My intimacy with such a man ought to have been, and I
hope was, an inestimable benefit. I cannot resist mentioning a trifling
incident, which showed his kind consideration. Whilst examining some
pollen-grains on a damp surface, I saw the tubes exserted, and instantly
rushed off to communicate my surprising discovery to him. Now I do not
suppose any other professor of botany could have helped laughing at my
coming in such a hurry to make such a communication. But he agreed how
interesting the phenomenon was, and explained its meaning, but made me
clearly understand how well it was known; so I left him not in the
least mortified, but well pleased at having discovered for myself so
remarkable a fact, but determined not to be in such a hurry again to
communicate my discoveries.

Dr. Whewell was one of the older and distinguished men who sometimes
visited Henslow, and on several occasions I walked home with him at
night. Next to Sir J. Mackintosh he was the best converser on grave
subjects to whom I ever listened. Leonard Jenyns (The well-known Soame
Jenyns was cousin to Mr. Jenyns' father.), who afterwards published some
good essays in Natural History (Mr. Jenyns (now Blomefield) described
the fish for the Zoology of the "Beagle"; and is author of a long series
of papers, chiefly Zoological.), often stayed with Henslow, who was his
brother-in-law. I visited him at his parsonage on the borders of the
Fens [Swaffham Bulbeck], and had many a good walk and talk with him
about Natural History. I became also acquainted with several other men
older than me, who did not care much about science, but were friends of
Henslow. One was a Scotchman, brother of Sir Alexander Ramsay, and tutor
of Jesus College: he was a delightful man, but did not live for many
years. Another was Mr. Dawes, afterwards Dean of Hereford, and famous
for his success in the education of the poor. These men and others of
the same standing, together with Henslow, used sometimes to take distant
excursions into the country, which I was allowed to join, and they were
most agreeable.

Looking back, I infer that there must have been something in me a little
superior to the common run of youths, otherwise the above-mentioned men,
so much older than me and higher in academical position, would never
have allowed me to associate with them. Certainly I was not aware of any
such superiority, and I remember one of my sporting friends, Turner,
who saw me at work with my beetles, saying that I should some day be a
Fellow of the Royal Society, and the notion seemed to me preposterous.

During my last year at Cambridge, I read with care and profound interest
Humboldt's 'Personal Narrative.' This work, and Sir J. Herschel's
'Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy,' stirred up in me
a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble
structure of Natural Science. No one or a dozen other books influenced
me nearly so much as these two. I copied out from Humboldt long passages
about Teneriffe, and read them aloud on one of the above-mentioned
excursions, to (I think) Henslow, Ramsay, and Dawes, for on a previous
occasion I had talked about the glories of Teneriffe, and some of the
party declared they would endeavour to go there; but I think that they
were only half in earnest. I was, however, quite in earnest, and got
an introduction to a merchant in London to enquire about ships; but
the scheme was, of course, knocked on the head by the voyage of the
"Beagle".

My summer vacations were given up to collecting beetles, to some
reading, and short tours. In the autumn my whole time was devoted to
shooting, chiefly at Woodhouse and Maer, and sometimes with young Eyton
of Eyton. Upon the whole the three years which I spent at Cambridge were
the most joyful in my happy life; for I was then in excellent health,
and almost always in high spirits.

As I had at first come up to Cambridge at Christmas, I was forced to
keep two terms after passing my final examination, at the commencement
of 1831; and Henslow then persuaded me to begin the study of geology.
Therefore on my return to Shropshire I examined sections, and coloured
a map of parts round Shrewsbury. Professor Sedgwick intended to visit
North Wales in the beginning of August to pursue his famous geological
investigations amongst the older rocks, and Henslow asked him to allow
me to accompany him. (In connection with this tour my father used
to tell a story about Sedgwick: they had started from their inn one
morning, and had walked a mile or two, when Sedgwick suddenly stopped,
and vowed that he would return, being certain "that damned scoundrel"
(the waiter) had not given the chambermaid the sixpence intrusted to
him for the purpose. He was ultimately persuaded to give up the project,
seeing that there was no reason for suspecting the waiter of especial
perfidy.--F.D.) Accordingly he came and slept at my father's house.

A short conversation with him during this evening produced a strong
impression on my mind. Whilst examining an old gravel-pit near
Shrewsbury, a labourer told me that he had found in it a large worn
tropical Volute shell, such as may be seen on the chimney-pieces of
cottages; and as he would not sell the shell, I was convinced that he
had really found it in the pit. I told Sedgwick of the fact, and he at
once said (no doubt truly) that it must have been thrown away by some
one into the pit; but then added, if really embedded there it would be
the greatest misfortune to geology, as it would overthrow all that
we know about the superficial deposits of the Midland Counties. These
gravel-beds belong in fact to the glacial period, and in after years I
found in them broken arctic shells. But I was then utterly astonished at
Sedgwick not being delighted at so wonderful a fact as a tropical shell
being found near the surface in the middle of England. Nothing
before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various
scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that
general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.

Next morning we started for Llangollen, Conway, Bangor, and Capel Curig.
This tour was of decided use in teaching me a little how to make out the
geology of a country. Sedgwick often sent me on a line parallel to
his, telling me to bring back specimens of the rocks and to mark the
stratification on a map. I have little doubt that he did this for my
good, as I was too ignorant to have aided him. On this tour I had a
striking instance of how easy it is to overlook phenomena, however
conspicuous, before they have been observed by any one. We spent many
hours in Cwm Idwal, examining all the rocks with extreme care, as
Sedgwick was anxious to find fossils in them; but neither of us saw
a trace of the wonderful glacial phenomena all around us; we did not
notice the plainly scored rocks, the perched boulders, the lateral and
terminal moraines. Yet these phenomena are so conspicuous that, as
I declared in a paper published many years afterwards in the
'Philosophical Magazine' ('Philosophical Magazine,' 1842.), a house
burnt down by fire did not tell its story more plainly than did this
valley. If it had still been filled by a glacier, the phenomena would
have been less distinct than they now are.

At Capel Curig I left Sedgwick and went in a straight line by compass
and map across the mountains to Barmouth, never following any track
unless it coincided with my course. I thus came on some strange wild
places, and enjoyed much this manner of travelling. I visited Barmouth
to see some Cambridge friends who were reading there, and thence
returned to Shrewsbury and to Maer for shooting; for at that time
I should have thought myself mad to give up the first days of
partridge-shooting for geology or any other science.

"VOYAGE OF THE 'BEAGLE' FROM DECEMBER 27, 1831, TO OCTOBER 2, 1836."

On returning home from my short geological tour in North Wales, I found
a letter from Henslow, informing me that Captain Fitz-Roy was willing to
give up part of his own cabin to any young man who would volunteer to go
with him without pay as naturalist to the Voyage of the "Beagle". I
have given, as I believe, in my MS. Journal an account of all the
circumstances which then occurred; I will here only say that I was
instantly eager to accept the offer, but my father strongly objected,
adding the words, fortunate for me, "If you can find any man of common
sense who advises you to go I will give my consent." So I wrote that
evening and refused the offer. On the next morning I went to Maer to
be ready for September 1st, and, whilst out shooting, my uncle (Josiah
Wedgwood.) sent for me, offering to drive me over to Shrewsbury and talk
with my father, as my uncle thought it would be wise in me to accept the
offer. My father always maintained that he was one of the most sensible
men in the world, and he at once consented in the kindest manner. I had
been rather extravagant at Cambridge, and to console my father, said,
"that I should be deuced clever to spend more than my allowance whilst
on board the 'Beagle';" but he answered with a smile, "But they tell me
you are very clever."

Next day I started for Cambridge to see Henslow, and thence to London
to see Fitz-Roy, and all was soon arranged. Afterwards, on becoming very
intimate with Fitz-Roy, I heard that I had run a very narrow risk of
being rejected, on account of the shape of my nose! He was an ardent
disciple of Lavater, and was convinced that he could judge of a man's
character by the outline of his features; and he doubted whether any one
with my nose could possess sufficient energy and determination for the
voyage. But I think he was afterwards well satisfied that my nose had
spoken falsely.

Fitz-Roy's character was a singular one, with very many noble features:
he was devoted to his duty, generous to a fault, bold, determined, and
indomitably energetic, and an ardent friend to all under his sway. He
would undertake any sort of trouble to assist those whom he thought
deserved assistance. He was a handsome man, strikingly like a gentleman,
with highly courteous manners, which resembled those of his maternal
uncle, the famous Lord Castlereagh, as I was told by the Minister at
Rio. Nevertheless he must have inherited much in his appearance from
Charles II., for Dr. Wallich gave me a collection of photographs which
he had made, and I was struck with the resemblance of one to Fitz-Roy;
and on looking at the name, I found it Ch. E. Sobieski Stuart, Count
d'Albanie, a descendant of the same monarch.

Fitz-Roy's temper was a most unfortunate one. It was usually worst in
the early morning, and with his eagle eye he could generally detect
something amiss about the ship, and was then unsparing in his blame. He
was very kind to me, but was a man very difficult to live with on the
intimate terms which necessarily followed from our messing by ourselves
in the same cabin. We had several quarrels; for instance, early in the
voyage at Bahia, in Brazil, he defended and praised slavery, which I
abominated, and told me that he had just visited a great slave-owner,
who had called up many of his slaves and asked them whether they were
happy, and whether they wished to be free, and all answered "No." I then
asked him, perhaps with a sneer, whether he thought that the answer of
slaves in the presence of their master was worth anything? This made him
excessively angry, and he said that as I doubted his word we could not
live any longer together. I thought that I should have been compelled to
leave the ship; but as soon as the news spread, which it did quickly,
as the captain sent for the first lieutenant to assuage his anger by
abusing me, I was deeply gratified by receiving an invitation from all
the gun-room officers to mess with them. But after a few hours Fitz-Roy
showed his usual magnanimity by sending an officer to me with an apology
and a request that I would continue to live with him.

His character was in several respects one of the most noble which I have
ever known.

The voyage of the "Beagle" has been by far the most important event in
my life, and has determined my whole career; yet it depended on so
small a circumstance as my uncle offering to drive me thirty miles to
Shrewsbury, which few uncles would have done, and on such a trifle as
the shape of my nose. I have always felt that I owe to the voyage the
first real training or education of my mind; I was led to attend
closely to several branches of natural history, and thus my powers of
observation were improved, though they were always fairly developed.

The investigation of the geology of all the places visited was far more
important, as reasoning here comes into play. On first examining a new
district nothing can appear more hopeless than the chaos of rocks; but
by recording the stratification and nature of the rocks and fossils
at many points, always reasoning and predicting what will be found
elsewhere, light soon begins to dawn on the district, and the structure
of the whole becomes more or less intelligible. I had brought with me
the first volume of Lyell's 'Principles of Geology,' which I studied
attentively; and the book was of the highest service to me in many ways.
The very first place which I examined, namely St. Jago in the Cape de
Verde islands, showed me clearly the wonderful superiority of Lyell's
manner of treating geology, compared with that of any other author,
whose works I had with me or ever afterwards read.

Another of my occupations was collecting animals of all classes, briefly
describing and roughly dissecting many of the marine ones; but from not
being able to draw, and from not having sufficient anatomical knowledge,
a great pile of MS. which I made during the voyage has proved almost
useless. I thus lost much time, with the exception of that spent in
acquiring some knowledge of the Crustaceans, as this was of service when
in after years I undertook a monograph of the Cirripedia.

During some part of the day I wrote my Journal, and took much pains in
describing carefully and vividly all that I had seen; and this was good
practice. My Journal served also, in part, as letters to my home, and
portions were sent to England whenever there was an opportunity.

The above various special studies were, however, of no importance
compared with the habit of energetic industry and of concentrated
attention to whatever I was engaged in, which I then acquired.
Everything about which I thought or read was made to bear directly
on what I had seen or was likely to see; and this habit of mind was
continued during the five years of the voyage. I feel sure that it
was this training which has enabled me to do whatever I have done in
science.

Looking backwards, I can now perceive how my love for science gradually
preponderated over every other taste. During the first two years my old
passion for shooting survived in nearly full force, and I shot myself
all the birds and animals for my collection; but gradually I gave up my
gun more and more, and finally altogether, to my servant, as shooting
interfered with my work, more especially with making out the geological
structure of a country. I discovered, though unconsciously and
insensibly, that the pleasure of observing and reasoning was a much
higher one than that of skill and sport. That my mind became developed
through my pursuits during the voyage is rendered probable by a remark
made by my father, who was the most acute observer whom I ever saw, of a
sceptical disposition, and far from being a believer in phrenology; for
on first seeing me after the voyage, he turned round to my sisters, and
exclaimed, "Why, the shape of his head is quite altered."

To return to the voyage. On September 11th (1831), I paid a flying visit
with Fitz-Roy to the "Beagle" at Plymouth. Thence to Shrewsbury to wish
my father and sisters a long farewell. On October 24th I took up my
residence at Plymouth, and remained there until December 27th, when the
"Beagle" finally left the shores of England for her circumnavigation of
the world. We made two earlier attempts to sail, but were driven back
each time by heavy gales. These two months at Plymouth were the most
miserable which I ever spent, though I exerted myself in various ways.
I was out of spirits at the thought of leaving all my family and friends
for so long a time, and the weather seemed to me inexpressibly gloomy.
I was also troubled with palpitation and pain about the heart, and like
many a young ignorant man, especially one with a smattering of medical
knowledge, was convinced that I had heart disease. I did not consult any
doctor, as I fully expected to hear the verdict that I was not fit for
the voyage, and I was resolved to go at all hazards.

I need not here refer to the events of the voyage--where we went and
what we did--as I have given a sufficiently full account in my published
Journal. The glories of the vegetation of the Tropics rise before my
mind at the present time more vividly than anything else; though
the sense of sublimity, which the great deserts of Patagonia and the
forest-clad mountains of Tierra del Fuego excited in me, has left an
indelible impression on my mind. The sight of a naked savage in his
native land is an event which can never be forgotten. Many of my
excursions on horseback through wild countries, or in the boats, some
of which lasted several weeks, were deeply interesting: their discomfort
and some degree of danger were at that time hardly a drawback, and none
at all afterwards. I also reflect with high satisfaction on some of
my scientific work, such as solving the problem of coral islands, and
making out the geological structure of certain islands, for instance,
St. Helena. Nor must I pass over the discovery of the singular relations
of the animals and plants inhabiting the several islands of the
Galapagos archipelago, and of all of them to the inhabitants of South
America.

As far as I can judge of myself, I worked to the utmost during the
voyage from the mere pleasure of investigation, and from my strong
desire to add a few facts to the great mass of facts in Natural
Science. But I was also ambitious to take a fair place among scientific
men,--whether more ambitious or less so than most of my fellow-workers,
I can form no opinion.

The geology of St. Jago is very striking, yet simple: a stream of lava
formerly flowed over the bed of the sea, formed of triturated recent
shells and corals, which it has baked into a hard white rock. Since then
the whole island has been upheaved. But the line of white rock revealed
to me a new and important fact, namely, that there had been afterwards
subsidence round the craters, which had since been in action, and had
poured forth lava. It then first dawned on me that I might perhaps write
a book on the geology of the various countries visited, and this made me
thrill with delight. That was a memorable hour to me, and how distinctly
I can call to mind the low cliff of lava beneath which I rested, with
the sun glaring hot, a few strange desert plants growing near, and
with living corals in the tidal pools at my feet. Later in the voyage,
Fitz-Roy asked me to read some of my Journal, and declared it would be
worth publishing; so here was a second book in prospect!

Towards the close of our voyage I received a letter whilst at Ascension,
in which my sisters told me that Sedgwick had called on my father, and
said that I should take a place among the leading scientific men. I
could not at the time understand how he could have learnt anything of
my proceedings, but I heard (I believe afterwards) that Henslow had
read some of the letters which I wrote to him before the Philosophical
Society of Cambridge (Read at the meeting held November 16, 1835, and
printed in a pamphlet of 31 pages for distribution among the members
of the Society.), and had printed them for private distribution. My
collection of fossil bones, which had been sent to Henslow, also excited
considerable attention amongst palaeontologists. After reading this
letter, I clambered over the mountains of Ascension with a bounding
step, and made the volcanic rocks resound under my geological hammer.
All this shows how ambitious I was; but I think that I can say with
truth that in after years, though I cared in the highest degree for the
approbation of such men as Lyell and Hooker, who were my friends, I
did not care much about the general public. I do not mean to say that a
favourable review or a large sale of my books did not please me greatly,
but the pleasure was a fleeting one, and I am sure that I have never
turned one inch out of my course to gain fame.

FROM MY RETURN TO ENGLAND (OCTOBER 2, 1836) TO MY MARRIAGE (JANUARY 29,
1839.)

These two years and three months were the most active ones which I ever
spent, though I was occasionally unwell, and so lost some time. After
going backwards and forwards several times between Shrewsbury,
Maer, Cambridge, and London, I settled in lodgings at Cambridge (In
Fitzwilliam Street.) on December 13th, where all my collections were
under the care of Henslow. I stayed here three months, and got my
minerals and rocks examined by the aid of Professor Miller.

I began preparing my 'Journal of Travels,' which was not hard work,
as my MS. Journal had been written with care, and my chief labour was
making an abstract of my more interesting scientific results. I sent
also, at the request of Lyell, a short account of my observations on
the elevation of the coast of Chile to the Geological Society. ('Geolog.
Soc. Proc. ii. 1838, pages 446-449.)

On March 7th, 1837, I took lodgings in Great Marlborough Street in
London, and remained there for nearly two years, until I was married.
During these two years I finished my Journal, read several papers before
the Geological Society, began preparing the MS. for my 'Geological
Observations,' and arranged for the publication of the 'Zoology of the
Voyage of the "Beagle".' In July I opened my first note-book for facts
in relation to the Origin of Species, about which I had long reflected,
and never ceased working for the next twenty years.

During these two years I also went a little into society, and acted as
one of the honorary secretaries of the Geological Society. I saw a great
deal of Lyell. One of his chief characteristics was his sympathy with
the work of others, and I was as much astonished as delighted at the
interest which he showed when, on my return to England, I explained to
him my views on coral reefs. This encouraged me greatly, and his advice
and example had much influence on me. During this time I saw also a good
deal of Robert Brown; I used often to call and sit with him during his
breakfast on Sunday mornings, and he poured forth a rich treasure of
curious observations and acute remarks, but they almost always related
to minute points, and he never with me discussed large or general
questions in science.

During these two years I took several short excursions as a relaxation,
and one longer one to the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, an account of
which was published in the 'Philosophical Transactions.' (1839, pages
39-82.) This paper was a great failure, and I am ashamed of it. Having
been deeply impressed with what I had seen of the elevation of the land
of South America, I attributed the parallel lines to the action of
the sea; but I had to give up this view when Agassiz propounded his
glacier-lake theory. Because no other explanation was possible under our
then state of knowledge, I argued in favour of sea-action; and my error
has been a good lesson to me never to trust in science to the principle
of exclusion.

As I was not able to work all day at science, I read a good deal during
these two years on various subjects, including some metaphysical books;
but I was not well fitted for such studies. About this time I took much
delight in Wordsworth's and Coleridge's poetry; and can boast that I
read the 'Excursion' twice through. Formerly Milton's 'Paradise Lost'
had been my chief favourite, and in my excursions during the voyage of
the "Beagle", when I could take only a single volume, I always chose
Milton.

FROM MY MARRIAGE, JANUARY 29, 1839, AND RESIDENCE IN UPPER GOWER STREET,
TO OUR LEAVING LONDON AND SETTLING AT DOWN, SEPTEMBER 14, 1842.

(After speaking of his happy married life, and of his children, he
continues:--)

During the three years and eight months whilst we resided in London, I
did less scientific work, though I worked as hard as I possibly could,
than during any other equal length of time in my life. This was owing
to frequently recurring unwellness, and to one long and serious illness.
The greater part of my time, when I could do anything, was devoted to
my work on 'Coral Reefs,' which I had begun before my marriage, and of
which the last proof-sheet was corrected on May 6th, 1842. This book,
though a small one, cost me twenty months of hard work, as I had to read
every work on the islands of the Pacific and to consult many charts. It
was thought highly of by scientific men, and the theory therein given
is, I think, now well established.

No other work of mine was begun in so deductive a spirit as this, for
the whole theory was thought out on the west coast of South America,
before I had seen a true coral reef. I had therefore only to verify and
extend my views by a careful examination of living reefs. But it should
be observed that I had during the two previous years been incessantly
attending to the effects on the shores of South America of the
intermittent elevation of the land, together with denudation and the
deposition of sediment. This necessarily led me to reflect much on the
effects of subsidence, and it was easy to replace in imagination the
continued deposition of sediment by the upward growth of corals. To do
this was to form my theory of the formation of barrier-reefs and atolls.

Besides my work on coral-reefs, during my residence in London, I read
before the Geological Society papers on the Erratic Boulders of South
America ('Geolog. Soc. Proc.' iii. 1842.), on Earthquakes ('Geolog.
Trans. v. 1840.), and on the Formation by the Agency of Earth-worms of
Mould. ('Geolog. Soc. Proc. ii. 1838.) I also continued to superintend
the publication of the 'Zoology of the Voyage of the "Beagle".' Nor did
I ever intermit collecting facts bearing on the origin of species; and I
could sometimes do this when I could do nothing else from illness.

In the summer of 1842 I was stronger than I had been for some time, and
took a little tour by myself in North Wales, for the sake of observing
the effects of the old glaciers which formerly filled all the larger
valleys. I published a short account of what I saw in the 'Philosophical
Magazine.' ('Philosophical Magazine,' 1842.) This excursion interested
me greatly, and it was the last time I was ever strong enough to climb
mountains or to take long walks such as are necessary for geological
work.

During the early part of our life in London, I was strong enough to go
into general society, and saw a good deal of several scientific men, and
other more or less distinguished men. I will give my impressions with
respect to some of them, though I have little to say worth saying.

I saw more of Lyell than of any other man, both before and after
my marriage. His mind was characterised, as it appeared to me, by
clearness, caution, sound judgment, and a good deal of originality. When
I made any remark to him on Geology, he never rested until he saw the
whole case clearly, and often made me see it more clearly than I had
done before. He would advance all possible objections to my suggestion,
and even after these were exhausted would long remain dubious. A second
characteristic was his hearty sympathy with the work of other scientific
men. (The slight repetition here observable is accounted for by the
notes on Lyell, etc., having been added in April, 1881, a few years
after the rest of the 'Recollections' were written.)

On my return from the voyage of the "Beagle", I explained to him
my views on coral-reefs, which differed from his, and I was greatly
surprised and encouraged by the vivid interest which he showed. His
delight in science was ardent, and he felt the keenest interest in the
future progress of mankind. He was very kind-hearted, and thoroughly
liberal in his religious beliefs, or rather disbeliefs; but he was a
strong theist. His candour was highly remarkable. He exhibited this by
becoming a convert to the Descent theory, though he had gained much
fame by opposing Lamarck's views, and this after he had grown old. He
reminded me that I had many years before said to him, when discussing
the opposition of the old school of geologists to his new views, "What
a good thing it would be if every scientific man was to die when sixty
years old, as afterwards he would be sure to oppose all new doctrines."
But he hoped that now he might be allowed to live.

The science of Geology is enormously indebted to Lyell--more so, as I
believe, than to any other man who ever lived. When [I was] starting on
the voyage of the "Beagle", the sagacious Henslow, who, like all other
geologists, believed at that time in successive cataclysms, advised me
to get and study the first volume of the 'Principles,' which had then
just been published, but on no account to accept the views therein
advocated. How differently would any one now speak of the 'Principles'!
I am proud to remember that the first place, namely, St. Jago, in the
Cape de Verde archipelago, in which I geologised, convinced me of the
infinite superiority of Lyell's views over those advocated in any other
work known to me.

The powerful effects of Lyell's works could formerly be plainly seen in
the different progress of the science in France and England. The present
total oblivion of Elie de Beaumont's wild hypotheses, such as his
'Craters of Elevation' and 'Lines of Elevation' (which latter hypothesis
I heard Sedgwick at the Geological Society lauding to the skies), may be
largely attributed to Lyell.

I saw a good deal of Robert Brown, "facile Princeps Botanicorum," as he
was called by Humboldt. He seemed to me to be chiefly remarkable for
the minuteness of his observations, and their perfect accuracy. His
knowledge was extraordinarily great, and much died with him, owing to
his excessive fear of ever making a mistake. He poured out his knowledge
to me in the most unreserved manner, yet was strangely jealous on some
points. I called on him two or three times before the voyage of the
"Beagle", and on one occasion he asked me to look through a microscope
and describe what I saw. This I did, and believe now that it was the
marvellous currents of protoplasm in some vegetable cell. I then asked
him what I had seen; but he answered me, "That is my little secret."

He was capable of the most generous actions. When old, much out of
health, and quite unfit for any exertion, he daily visited (as Hooker
told me) an old man-servant, who lived at a distance (and whom he
supported), and read aloud to him. This is enough to make up for any
degree of scientific penuriousness or jealousy.

I may here mention a few other eminent men, whom I have occasionally
seen, but I have little to say about them worth saying. I felt a high
reverence for Sir J. Herschel, and was delighted to dine with him at his
charming house at the Cape of Good Hope, and afterwards at his London
house. I saw him, also, on a few other occasions. He never talked much,
but every word which he uttered was worth listening to.

I once met at breakfast at Sir R. Murchison's house the illustrious
Humboldt, who honoured me by expressing a wish to see me. I was a little
disappointed with the great man, but my anticipations probably were too
high. I can remember nothing distinctly about our interview, except that
Humboldt was very cheerful and talked much.

--reminds me of Buckle whom I once met at Hensleigh Wedgwood's. I was
very glad to learn from him his system of collecting facts. He told me
that he bought all the books which he read, and made a full index, to
each, of the facts which he thought might prove serviceable to him, and
that he could always remember in what book he had read anything, for his
memory was wonderful. I asked him how at first he could judge what facts
would be serviceable, and he answered that he did not know, but that a
sort of instinct guided him. From this habit of making indices, he was
enabled to give the astonishing number of references on all sorts of
subjects, which may be found in his 'History of Civilisation.' This book
I thought most interesting, and read it twice, but I doubt whether his
generalisations are worth anything. Buckle was a great talker, and I
listened to him saying hardly a word, nor indeed could I have done so
for he left no gaps. When Mrs. Farrer began to sing, I jumped up and
said that I must listen to her; after I had moved away he turned around
to a friend and said (as was overheard by my brother), "Well, Mr.
Darwin's books are much better than his conversation."

Of other great literary men, I once met Sydney Smith at Dean Milman's
house. There was something inexplicably amusing in every word which he
uttered. Perhaps this was partly due to the expectation of being amused.
He was talking about Lady Cork, who was then extremely old. This was the
lady who, as he said, was once so much affected by one of his charity
sermons, that she BORROWED a guinea from a friend to put in the plate.
He now said "It is generally believed that my dear old friend Lady Cork
has been overlooked," and he said this in such a manner that no one
could for a moment doubt that he meant that his dear old friend had been
overlooked by the devil. How he managed to express this I know not.

I likewise once met Macaulay at Lord Stanhope's (the historian's) house,
and as there was only one other man at dinner, I had a grand opportunity
of hearing him converse, and he was very agreeable. He did not talk at
all too much; nor indeed could such a man talk too much, as long as he
allowed others to turn the stream of his conversation, and this he did
allow.

Lord Stanhope once gave me a curious little proof of the accuracy and
fulness of Macaulay's memory: many historians used often to meet at
Lord Stanhope's house, and in discussing various subjects they would
sometimes differ from Macaulay, and formerly they often referred to some
book to see who was right; but latterly, as Lord Stanhope noticed, no
historian ever took this trouble, and whatever Macaulay said was final.

On another occasion I met at Lord Stanhope's house, one of his parties
of historians and other literary men, and amongst them were Motley and
Grote. After luncheon I walked about Chevening Park for nearly an hour
with Grote, and was much interested by his conversation and pleased by
the simplicity and absence of all pretension in his manners.

Long ago I dined occasionally with the old Earl, the father of the
historian; he was a strange man, but what little I knew of him I
liked much. He was frank, genial, and pleasant. He had strongly marked
features, with a brown complexion, and his clothes, when I saw him,
were all brown. He seemed to believe in everything which was to others
utterly incredible. He said one day to me, "Why don't you give up your
fiddle-faddle of geology and zoology, and turn to the occult sciences!"
The historian, then Lord Mahon, seemed shocked at such a speech to me,
and his charming wife much amused.

The last man whom I will mention is Carlyle, seen by me several times at
my brother's house, and two or three times at my own house. His talk was
very racy and interesting, just like his writings, but he sometimes
went on too long on the same subject. I remember a funny dinner at my
brother's, where, amongst a few others, were Babbage and Lyell, both of
whom liked to talk. Carlyle, however, silenced every one by haranguing
during the whole dinner on the advantages of silence. After dinner
Babbage, in his grimmest manner, thanked Carlyle for his very
interesting lecture on silence.

Carlyle sneered at almost every one: one day in my house he called
Grote's 'History' "a fetid quagmire, with nothing spiritual about it." I
always thought, until his 'Reminiscences' appeared, that his sneers were
partly jokes, but this now seems rather doubtful. His expression was
that of a depressed, almost despondent yet benevolent man; and it is
notorious how heartily he laughed. I believe that his benevolence was
real, though stained by not a little jealousy. No one can doubt about
his extraordinary power of drawing pictures of things and men--far more
vivid, as it appears to me, than any drawn by Macaulay. Whether his
pictures of men were true ones is another question.

He has been all-powerful in impressing some grand moral truths on the
minds of men. On the other hand, his views about slavery were revolting.
In his eyes might was right. His mind seemed to me a very narrow one;
even if all branches of science, which he despised, are excluded. It is
astonishing to me that Kingsley should have spoken of him as a man
well fitted to advance science. He laughed to scorn the idea that a
mathematician, such as Whewell, could judge, as I maintained he could,
of Goethe's views on light. He thought it a most ridiculous thing that
any one should care whether a glacier moved a little quicker or a little
slower, or moved at all. As far as I could judge, I never met a man with
a mind so ill adapted for scientific research.

Whilst living in London, I attended as regularly as I could the
meetings of several scientific societies, and acted as secretary to the
Geological Society. But such attendance, and ordinary society, suited my
health so badly that we resolved to live in the country, which we both
preferred and have never repented of.

RESIDENCE AT DOWN FROM SEPTEMBER 14, 1842, TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1876.

After several fruitless searches in Surrey and elsewhere, we found this
house and purchased it. I was pleased with the diversified appearance
of vegetation proper to a chalk district, and so unlike what I had been
accustomed to in the Midland counties; and still more pleased with the
extreme quietness and rusticity of the place. It is not, however, quite
so retired a place as a writer in a German periodical makes it, who
says that my house can be approached only by a mule-track! Our fixing
ourselves here has answered admirably in one way, which we did not
anticipate, namely, by being very convenient for frequent visits from
our children.

Few persons can have lived a more retired life than we have done.
Besides short visits to the houses of relations, and occasionally to the
seaside or elsewhere, we have gone nowhere. During the first part of
our residence we went a little into society, and received a few friends
here; but my health almost always suffered from the excitement, violent
shivering and vomiting attacks being thus brought on. I have therefore
been compelled for many years to give up all dinner-parties; and this
has been somewhat of a deprivation to me, as such parties always put me
into high spirits. From the same cause I have been able to invite here
very few scientific acquaintances.

My chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life has been
scientific work; and the excitement from such work makes me for the
time forget, or drives quite away, my daily discomfort. I have therefore
nothing to record during the rest of my life, except the publication
of my several books. Perhaps a few details how they arose may be worth
giving.

MY SEVERAL PUBLICATIONS.

In the early part of 1844, my observations on the volcanic islands
visited during the voyage of the "Beagle" were published. In 1845,
I took much pains in correcting a new edition of my 'Journal of
Researches,' which was originally published in 1839 as part of
Fitz-Roy's work. The success of this, my first literary child, always
tickles my vanity more than that of any of my other books. Even to this
day it sells steadily in England and the United States, and has been
translated for the second time into German, and into French and other
languages. This success of a book of travels, especially of a scientific
one, so many years after its first publication, is surprising. Ten
thousand copies have been sold in England of the second edition. In 1846
my 'Geological Observations on South America' were published. I record
in a little diary, which I have always kept, that my three geological
books ('Coral Reefs' included) consumed four and a half years' steady
work; "and now it is ten years since my return to England. How much time
have I lost by illness?" I have nothing to say about these three books
except that to my surprise new editions have lately been called for.
('Geological Observations,' 2nd Edit.1876. 'Coral Reefs,' 2nd Edit.
1874.)

In October, 1846, I began to work on 'Cirripedia.' When on the coast of
Chile, I found a most curious form, which burrowed into the shells of
Concholepas, and which differed so much from all other Cirripedes that
I had to form a new sub-order for its sole reception. Lately an allied
burrowing genus has been found on the shores of Portugal. To understand
the structure of my new Cirripede I had to examine and dissect many
of the common forms; and this gradually led me on to take up the whole
group. I worked steadily on this subject for the next eight years, and
ultimately published two thick volumes (Published by the Ray Society.),
describing all the known living species, and two thin quartos on the
extinct species. I do not doubt that Sir E. Lytton Bulwer had me in his
mind when he introduced in one of his novels a Professor Long, who had
written two huge volumes on limpets.

Although I was employed during eight years on this work, yet I record in
my diary that about two years out of this time was lost by illness. On
this account I went in 1848 for some months to Malvern for hydropathic
treatment, which did me much good, so that on my return home I was able
to resume work. So much was I out of health that when my dear father
died on November 13th, 1848, I was unable to attend his funeral or to
act as one of his executors.

My work on the Cirripedia possesses, I think, considerable value, as
besides describing several new and remarkable forms, I made out the
homologies of the various parts--I discovered the cementing apparatus,
though I blundered dreadfully about the cement glands--and lastly I
proved the existence in certain genera of minute males complemental to
and parasitic on the hermaphrodites. This latter discovery has at last
been fully confirmed; though at one time a German writer was pleased to
attribute the whole account to my fertile imagination. The Cirripedes
form a highly varying and difficult group of species to class; and my
work was of considerable use to me, when I had to discuss in the 'Origin
of Species' the principles of a natural classification. Nevertheless, I
doubt whether the work was worth the consumption of so much time.

From September 1854 I devoted my whole time to arranging my huge pile
of notes, to observing, and to experimenting in relation to the
transmutation of species. During the voyage of the "Beagle" I had been
deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil
animals covered with armour like that on the existing armadillos;
secondly, by the manner in which closely allied animals replace one
another in proceeding southwards over the Continent; and thirdly, by
the South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos
archipelago, and more especially by the manner in which they differ
slightly on each island of the group; none of the islands appearing to
be very ancient in a geological sense.

It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could
only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become
modified; and the subject haunted me. But it was equally evident that
neither the action of the surrounding conditions, nor the will of the
organisms (especially in the case of plants) could account for the
innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully
adapted to their habits of life--for instance, a woodpecker or a
tree-frog to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes. I
had always been much struck by such adaptations, and until these could
be explained it seemed to me almost useless to endeavour to prove by
indirect evidence that species have been modified.

After my return to England it appeared to me that by following the
example of Lyell in Geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in
any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and
nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. My
first note-book was opened in July 1837. I worked on true Baconian
principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale,
more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed
enquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by
extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which
I read and abstracted, including whole series of Journals and
Transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that
selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of
animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms
living in a state of nature remained for some time a mystery to me.

In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic
enquiry, I happened to read for amusement 'Malthus on Population,'
and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which
everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of
animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances
favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable
ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new
species. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work; but I
was so anxious to avoid prejudice, that I determined not for some time
to write even the briefest sketch of it. In June 1842 I first allowed
myself the satisfaction of writing a very brief abstract of my theory in
pencil in 35 pages; and this was enlarged during the summer of 1844 into
one of 230 pages, which I had fairly copied out and still possess.

But at that time I overlooked one problem of great importance; and it is
astonishing to me, except on the principle of Columbus and his egg,
how I could have overlooked it and its solution. This problem is the
tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in
character as they become modified. That they have diverged greatly is
obvious from the manner in which species of all kinds can be classed
under genera, genera under families, families under sub-orders and
so forth; and I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my
carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me; and this was
long after I had come to Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the
modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become
adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature.

Early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my views pretty fully, and
I began at once to do so on a scale three or four times as extensive as
that which was afterwards followed in my 'Origin of Species;' yet it
was only an abstract of the materials which I had collected, and I got
through about half the work on this scale. But my plans were overthrown,
for early in the summer of 1858 Mr. Wallace, who was then in the Malay
archipelago, sent me an essay "On the Tendency of Varieties to depart
indefinitely from the Original Type;" and this essay contained exactly
the same theory as mine. Mr. Wallace expressed the wish that if I
thought well of his essay, I should sent it to Lyell for perusal.

The circumstances under which I consented at the request of Lyell and
Hooker to allow of an abstract from my MS., together with a letter to
Asa Gray, dated September 5, 1857, to be published at the same time with
Wallace's Essay, are given in the 'Journal of the Proceedings of the
Linnean Society,' 1858, page 45. I was at first very unwilling
to consent, as I thought Mr. Wallace might consider my doing so
unjustifiable, for I did not then know how generous and noble was his
disposition. The extract from my MS. and the letter to Asa Gray had
neither been intended for publication, and were badly written. Mr.
Wallace's essay, on the other hand, was admirably expressed and
quite clear. Nevertheless, our joint productions excited very little
attention, and the only published notice of them which I can remember
was by Professor Haughton of Dublin, whose verdict was that all that
was new in them was false, and what was true was old. This shows how
necessary it is that any new view should be explained at considerable
length in order to arouse public attention.

In September 1858 I set to work by the strong advice of Lyell and Hooker
to prepare a volume on the transmutation of species, but was often
interrupted by ill-health, and short visits to Dr. Lane's delightful
hydropathic establishment at Moor Park. I abstracted the MS. begun on a
much larger scale in 1856, and completed the volume on the same reduced
scale. It cost me thirteen months and ten days' hard labour. It was
published under the title of the 'Origin of Species,' in November 1859.
Though considerably added to and corrected in the later editions, it has
remained substantially the same book.

It is no doubt the chief work of my life. It was from the first highly
successful. The first small edition of 1250 copies was sold on the day
of publication, and a second edition of 3000 copies soon afterwards.
Sixteen thousand copies have now (1876) been sold in England; and
considering how stiff a book it is, this is a large sale. It has been
translated into almost every European tongue, even into such languages
as Spanish, Bohemian, Polish, and Russian. It has also, according to
Miss Bird, been translated into Japanese (Miss Bird is mistaken, as I
learn from Prof. Mitsukuri.--F.D.), and is there much studied. Even an
essay in Hebrew has appeared on it, showing that the theory is contained
in the Old Testament! The reviews were very numerous; for some time I
collected all that appeared on the 'Origin' and on my related books, and
these amount (excluding newspaper reviews) to 265; but after a time I
gave up the attempt in despair. Many separate essays and books on the
subject have appeared; and in Germany a catalogue or bibliography on
"Darwinismus" has appeared every year or two.

The success of the 'Origin' may, I think, be attributed in large part to
my having long before written two condensed sketches, and to my having
finally abstracted a much larger manuscript, which was itself an
abstract. By this means I was enabled to select the more striking facts
and conclusions. I had, also, during many years followed a golden rule,
namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought
came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a
memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience
that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory
than favourable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were
raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted
to answer.

It has sometimes been said that the success of the 'Origin' proved "that
the subject was in the air," or "that men's minds were prepared for it."
I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded
not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one
who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species. Even Lyell and
Hooker, though they would listen with interest to me, never seemed to
agree. I tried once or twice to explain to able men what I meant by
Natural Selection, but signally failed. What I believe was strictly
true is that innumerable well-observed facts were stored in the minds
of naturalists ready to take their proper places as soon as any theory
which would receive them was sufficiently explained. Another element
in the success of the book was its moderate size; and this I owe to the
appearance of Mr. Wallace's essay; had I published on the scale in which
I began to write in 1856, the book would have been four or five times as
large as the 'Origin,' and very few would have had the patience to read
it.

I gained much by my delay in publishing from about 1839, when the theory
was clearly conceived, to 1859; and I lost nothing by it, for I cared
very little whether men attributed most originality to me or Wallace;
and his essay no doubt aided in the reception of the theory. I was
forestalled in only one important point, which my vanity has always made
me regret, namely, the explanation by means of the Glacial period of
the presence of the same species of plants and of some few animals on
distant mountain summits and in the arctic regions. This view pleased me
so much that I wrote it out in extenso, and I believe that it was read
by Hooker some years before E. Forbes published his celebrated memoir
('Geolog. Survey Mem.,' 1846.) on the subject. In the very few points in
which we differed, I still think that I was in the right. I have never,
of course, alluded in print to my having independently worked out this
view.

Hardly any point gave me so much satisfaction when I was at work on
the 'Origin,' as the explanation of the wide difference in many classes
between the embryo and the adult animal, and of the close resemblance of
the embryos within the same class. No notice of this point was taken, as
far as I remember, in the early reviews of the 'Origin,' and I recollect
expressing my surprise on this head in a letter to Asa Gray. Within late
years several reviewers have given the whole credit to Fritz Muller and
Hackel, who undoubtedly have worked it out much more fully, and in some
respects more correctly than I did. I had materials for a whole chapter
on the subject, and I ought to have made the discussion longer; for it
is clear that I failed to impress my readers; and he who succeeds in
doing so deserves, in my opinion, all the credit.

This leads me to remark that I have almost always been treated honestly
by my reviewers, passing over those without scientific knowledge as
not worthy of notice. My views have often been grossly misrepresented,
bitterly opposed and ridiculed, but this has been generally done, as I
believe, in good faith. On the whole I do not doubt that my works have
been over and over again greatly overpraised. I rejoice that I have
avoided controversies, and this I owe to Lyell, who many years ago,
in reference to my geological works, strongly advised me never to get
entangled in a controversy, as it rarely did any good and caused a
miserable loss of time and temper.

Whenever I have found out that I have blundered, or that my work has
been imperfect, and when I have been contemptuously criticised, and even
when I have been overpraised, so that I have felt mortified, it has
been my greatest comfort to say hundreds of times to myself that "I
have worked as hard and as well as I could, and no man can do more
than this." I remember when in Good Success Bay, in Tierra del Fuego,
thinking (and, I believe, that I wrote home to the effect) that I could
not employ my life better than in adding a little to Natural Science.
This I have done to the best of my abilities, and critics may say what
they like, but they cannot destroy this conviction.

During the two last months of 1859 I was fully occupied in preparing a
second edition of the 'Origin,' and by an enormous correspondence.
On January 1st, 1860, I began arranging my notes for my work on the
'Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication;' but it was not
published until the beginning of 1868; the delay having been caused
partly by frequent illnesses, one of which lasted seven months, and
partly by being tempted to publish on other subjects which at the time
interested me more.

On May 15th, 1862, my little book on the 'Fertilisation of Orchids,'
which cost me ten months' work, was published: most of the facts had
been slowly accumulated during several previous years. During the summer
of 1839, and, I believe, during the previous summer, I was led to attend
to the cross-fertilisation of flowers by the aid of insects, from having
come to the conclusion in my speculations on the origin of species, that
crossing played an important part in keeping specific forms constant. I
attended to the subject more or less during every subsequent summer; and
my interest in it was greatly enhanced by having procured and read
in November 1841, through the advice of Robert Brown, a copy of C.K.
Sprengel's wonderful book, 'Das entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur.' For
some years before 1862 I had specially attended to the fertilisation
of our British orchids; and it seemed to me the best plan to prepare as
complete a treatise on this group of plants as well as I could, rather
than to utilise the great mass of matter which I had slowly collected
with respect to other plants.

My resolve proved a wise one; for since the appearance of my book, a
surprising number of papers and separate works on the fertilisation of
all kinds of flowers have appeared: and these are far better done than
I could possibly have effected. The merits of poor old Sprengel, so long
overlooked, are now fully recognised many years after his death.

During the same year I published in the 'Journal of the Linnean Society'
a paper "On the Two Forms, or Dimorphic Condition of Primula,"
and during the next five years, five other papers on dimorphic and
trimorphic plants. I do not think anything in my scientific life has
given me so much satisfaction as making out the meaning of the structure
of these plants. I had noticed in 1838 or 1839 the dimorphism of Linum
flavum, and had at first thought that it was merely a case of unmeaning
variability. But on examining the common species of Primula I found that
the two forms were much too regular and constant to be thus viewed. I
therefore became almost convinced that the common cowslip and primrose
were on the high road to become dioecious;--that the short pistil in the
one form, and the short stamens in the other form were tending towards
abortion. The plants were therefore subjected under this point of view
to trial; but as soon as the flowers with short pistils fertilised with
pollen from the short stamens, were found to yield more seeds than any
other of the four possible unions, the abortion-theory was knocked on
the head. After some additional experiment, it became evident that the
two forms, though both were perfect hermaphrodites, bore almost the same
relation to one another as do the two sexes of an ordinary animal. With
Lythrum we have the still more wonderful case of three forms standing in
a similar relation to one another. I afterwards found that the offspring
from the union of two plants belonging to the same forms presented a
close and curious analogy with hybrids from the union of two distinct
species.

In the autumn of 1864 I finished a long paper on 'Climbing Plants,' and
sent it to the Linnean Society. The writing of this paper cost me four
months; but I was so unwell when I received the proof-sheets that I was
forced to leave them very badly and often obscurely expressed. The paper
was little noticed, but when in 1875 it was corrected and published as a
separate book it sold well. I was led to take up this subject by reading
a short paper by Asa Gray, published in 1858. He sent me seeds, and
on raising some plants I was so much fascinated and perplexed by the
revolving movements of the tendrils and stems, which movements are
really very simple, though appearing at first sight very complex, that
I procured various other kinds of climbing plants, and studied the
whole subject. I was all the more attracted to it, from not being at all
satisfied with the explanation which Henslow gave us in his lectures,
about twining plants, namely, that they had a natural tendency to grow
up in a spire. This explanation proved quite erroneous. Some of the
adaptations displayed by Climbing Plants are as beautiful as those of
Orchids for ensuring cross-fertilisation.

My 'Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication' was begun, as
already stated, in the beginning of 1860, but was not published until
the beginning of 1868. It was a big book, and cost me four years and two
months' hard labour. It gives all my observations and an immense number
of facts collected from various sources, about our domestic productions.
In the second volume the causes and laws of variation, inheritance,
etc., are discussed as far as our present state of knowledge permits.
Towards the end of the work I give my well-abused hypothesis of
Pangenesis. An unverified hypothesis is of little or no value; but if
any one should hereafter be led to make observations by which some such
hypothesis could be established, I shall have done good service, as an
astonishing number of isolated facts can be thus connected together and
rendered intelligible. In 1875 a second and largely corrected edition,
which cost me a good deal of labour, was brought out.

My 'Descent of Man' was published in February, 1871. As soon as I had
become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced that species were mutable
productions, I could not avoid the belief that man must come under
the same law. Accordingly I collected notes on the subject for my own
satisfaction, and not for a long time with any intention of publishing.
Although in the 'Origin of Species' the derivation of any particular
species is never discussed, yet I thought it best, in order that no
honourable man should accuse me of concealing my views, to add that by
the work "light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history."
It would have been useless and injurious to the success of the book to
have paraded, without giving any evidence, my conviction with respect to
his origin.

But when I found that many naturalists fully accepted the doctrine of
the evolution of species, it seemed to me advisable to work up such
notes as I possessed, and to publish a special treatise on the origin of
man. I was the more glad to do so, as it gave me an opportunity of
fully discussing sexual selection--a subject which had always greatly
interested me. This subject, and that of the variation of our
domestic productions, together with the causes and laws of variation,
inheritance, and the intercrossing of plants, are the sole subjects
which I have been able to write about in full, so as to use all the
materials which I have collected. The 'Descent of Man' took me three
years to write, but then as usual some of this time was lost by ill
health, and some was consumed by preparing new editions and other minor
works. A second and largely corrected edition of the 'Descent' appeared
in 1874.

My book on the 'Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals' was
published in the autumn of 1872. I had intended to give only a chapter
on the subject in the 'Descent of Man,' but as soon as I began to put my
notes together, I saw that it would require a separate treatise.

My first child was born on December 27th, 1839, and I at once commenced
to make notes on the first dawn of the various expressions which he
exhibited, for I felt convinced, even at this early period, that the
most complex and fine shades of expression must all have had a gradual
and natural origin. During the summer of the following year, 1840,
I read Sir C. Bell's admirable work on expression, and this greatly
increased the interest which I felt in the subject, though I could not
at all agree with his belief that various muscles had been specially
created for the sake of expression. From this time forward I
occasionally attended to the subject, both with respect to man and our
domesticated animals. My book sold largely; 5267 copies having been
disposed of on the day of publication.

In the summer of 1860 I was idling and resting near Hartfield, where two
species of Drosera abound; and I noticed that numerous insects had been
entrapped by the leaves. I carried home some plants, and on giving them
insects saw the movements of the tentacles, and this made me think
it probable that the insects were caught for some special purpose.
Fortunately a crucial test occurred to me, that of placing a large
number of leaves in various nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous fluids of
equal density; and as soon as I found that the former alone excited
energetic movements, it was obvious that here was a fine new field for
investigation.

During subsequent years, whenever I had leisure, I pursued my
experiments, and my book on 'Insectivorous Plants' was published in July
1875--that is, sixteen years after my first observations. The delay in
this case, as with all my other books, has been a great advantage to me;
for a man after a long interval can criticise his own work, almost as
well as if it were that of another person. The fact that a plant should
secrete, when properly excited, a fluid containing an acid and ferment,
closely analogous to the digestive fluid of an animal, was certainly a
remarkable discovery.

During this autumn of 1876 I shall publish on the 'Effects of Cross
and Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom.' This book will form a
complement to that on the 'Fertilisation of Orchids,' in which I showed
how perfect were the means for cross-fertilisation, and here I shall
show how important are the results. I was led to make, during eleven
years, the numerous experiments recorded in this volume, by a mere
accidental observation; and indeed it required the accident to be
repeated before my attention was thoroughly aroused to the remarkable
fact that seedlings of self-fertilised parentage are inferior, even
in the first generation, in height and vigour to seedlings of
cross-fertilised parentage. I hope also to republish a revised edition
of my book on Orchids, and hereafter my papers on dimorphic and
trimorphic plants, together with some additional observations on allied
points which I never have had time to arrange. My strength will then
probably be exhausted, and I shall be ready to exclaim "Nunc dimittis."

WRITTEN MAY 1ST, 1881.

'The Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilisation' was published in the
autumn of 1876; and the results there arrived at explain, as I believe,
the endless and wonderful contrivances for the transportal of pollen
from one plant to another of the same species. I now believe, however,
chiefly from the observations of Hermann Muller, that I ought to
have insisted more strongly than I did on the many adaptations for
self-fertilisation; though I was well aware of many such adaptations. A
much enlarged edition of my 'Fertilisation of Orchids' was published in
1877.

In this same year 'The Different Forms of Flowers, etc.,' appeared,
and in 1880 a second edition. This book consists chiefly of the several
papers on Heterostyled flowers originally published by the Linnean
Society, corrected, with much new matter added, together with
observations on some other cases in which the same plant bears two kinds
of flowers. As before remarked, no little discovery of mine ever gave me
so much pleasure as the making out the meaning of heterostyled flowers.
The results of crossing such flowers in an illegitimate manner, I
believe to be very important, as bearing on the sterility of hybrids;
although these results have been noticed by only a few persons.

In 1879, I had a translation of Dr. Ernst Krause's 'Life of Erasmus
Darwin' published, and I added a sketch of his character and habits from
material in my possession. Many persons have been much interested by
this little life, and I am surprised that only 800 or 900 copies were
sold.

In 1880 I published, with [my son] Frank's assistance, our 'Power of
Movement in Plants.' This was a tough piece of work. The book bears
somewhat the same relation to my little book on 'Climbing Plants,' which
'Cross-Fertilisation' did to the 'Fertilisation of Orchids;' for in
accordance with the principle of evolution it was impossible to account
for climbing plants having been developed in so many widely different
groups unless all kinds of plants possess some slight power of movement
of an analogous kind. This I proved to be the case; and I was further
led to a rather wide generalisation, viz. that the great and important
classes of movements, excited by light, the attraction of gravity, etc.,
are all modified forms of the fundamental movement of circumnutation. It
has always pleased me to exalt plants in the scale of organised beings;
and I therefore felt an especial pleasure in showing how many and what
admirably well adapted movements the tip of a root possesses.

I have now (May 1, 1881) sent to the printers the MS. of a little book
on 'The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms.' This
is a subject of but small importance; and I know not whether it will
interest any readers (Between November 1881 and February 1884, 8500
copies have been sold.), but it has interested me. It is the completion
of a short paper read before the Geological Society more than forty
years ago, and has revived old geological thoughts.

I have now mentioned all the books which I have published, and these
have been the milestones in my life, so that little remains to be said.
I am not conscious of any change in my mind during the last thirty
years, excepting in one point presently to be mentioned; nor, indeed,
could any change have been expected unless one of general deterioration.
But my father lived to his eighty-third year with his mind as lively as
ever it was, and all his faculties undimmed; and I hope that I may die
before my mind fails to a sensible extent. I think that I have become
a little more skilful in guessing right explanations and in devising
experimental tests; but this may probably be the result of mere
practice, and of a larger store of knowledge. I have as much difficulty
as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; and this difficulty
has caused me a very great loss of time; but it has had the compensating
advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sentence,
and thus I have been led to see errors in reasoning and in my own
observations or those of others.

There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind leading me to put at
first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly
I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for
several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand
whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words;
and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often
better ones than I could have written deliberately.

Having said thus much about my manner of writing, I will add that with
my large books I spend a good deal of time over the general arrangement
of the matter. I first make the rudest outline in two or three pages,
and then a larger one in several pages, a few words or one word standing
for a whole discussion or series of facts. Each one of these headings is
again enlarged and often transferred before I begin to write in extenso.
As in several of my books facts observed by others have been very
extensively used, and as I have always had several quite distinct
subjects in hand at the same time, I may mention that I keep from thirty
to forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into which
I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum. I have bought many
books, and at their ends I make an index of all the facts that concern
my work; or, if the book is not my own, write out a separate abstract,
and of such abstracts I have a large drawer full. Before beginning
on any subject I look to all the short indexes and make a general and
classified index, and by taking the one or more proper portfolios I have
all the information collected during my life ready for use.

I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last
twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry
of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy
I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical
plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and
music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read
a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found
it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost
my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too
energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me
pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me
the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, novels
which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order,
have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often
bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and
I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily--against
which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not
come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can
thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better.

This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all
the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently
of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts
of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to
have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large
collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of
that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I
cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better
constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and
if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some
poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps
the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active
through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may
possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral
character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

My books have sold largely in England, have been translated into many
languages, and passed through several editions in foreign countries. I
have heard it said that the success of a work abroad is the best test
of its enduring value. I doubt whether this is at all trustworthy; but
judged by this standard my name ought to last for a few years. Therefore
it may be worth while to try to analyse the mental qualities and the
conditions on which my success has depended; though I am aware that no
man can do this correctly.

I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable
in some clever men, for instance, Huxley. I am therefore a poor critic:
a paper or book, when first read, generally excites my admiration,
and it is only after considerable reflection that I perceive the weak
points. My power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought
is very limited; and therefore I could never have succeeded with
metaphysics or mathematics. My memory is extensive, yet hazy: it
suffices to make me cautious by vaguely telling me that I have observed
or read something opposed to the conclusion which I am drawing, or
on the other hand in favour of it; and after a time I can generally
recollect where to search for my authority. So poor in one sense is my
memory, that I have never been able to remember for more than a few days
a single date or a line of poetry.

Some of my critics have said, "Oh, he is a good observer, but he has
no power of reasoning!" I do not think that this can be true, for the
'Origin of Species' is one long argument from the beginning to the end,
and it has convinced not a few able men. No one could have written
it without having some power of reasoning. I have a fair share of
invention, and of common sense or judgment, such as every fairly
successful lawyer or doctor must have, but not, I believe, in any higher
degree.

On the favourable side of the balance, I think that I am superior to the
common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and
in observing them carefully. My industry has been nearly as great as it
could have been in the observation and collection of facts. What is far
more important, my love of natural science has been steady and ardent.

This pure love has, however, been much aided by the ambition to be
esteemed by my fellow naturalists. From my early youth I have had the
strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed,--that is,
to group all facts under some general laws. These causes combined have
given me the patience to reflect or ponder for any number of years over
any unexplained problem. As far as I can judge, I am not apt to follow
blindly the lead of other men. I have steadily endeavoured to keep my
mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I
cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown
to be opposed to it. Indeed, I have had no choice but to act in this
manner, for with the exception of the Coral Reefs, I cannot remember a
single first-formed hypothesis which had not after a time to be given
up or greatly modified. This has naturally led me to distrust greatly
deductive reasoning in the mixed sciences. On the other hand, I am not
very sceptical,--a frame of mind which I believe to be injurious to the
progress of science. A good deal of scepticism in a scientific man is
advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met with not a few
men, who, I feel sure, have often thus been deterred from experiment
or observations, which would have proved directly or indirectly
serviceable.

In illustration, I will give the oddest case which I have known. A
gentleman (who, as I afterwards heard, is a good local botanist) wrote
to me from the Eastern counties that the seed or beans of the common
field-bean had this year everywhere grown on the wrong side of the pod.
I wrote back, asking for further information, as I did not understand
what was meant; but I did not receive any answer for a very long time.
I then saw in two newspapers, one published in Kent and the other in
Yorkshire, paragraphs stating that it was a most remarkable fact that
"the beans this year had all grown on the wrong side." So I thought
there must be some foundation for so general a statement. Accordingly,
I went to my gardener, an old Kentish man, and asked him whether he had
heard anything about it, and he answered, "Oh, no, sir, it must be a
mistake, for the beans grow on the wrong side only on leap-year, and
this is not leap-year." I then asked him how they grew in common years
and how on leap-years, but soon found that he knew absolutely nothing of
how they grew at any time, but he stuck to his belief.

After a time I heard from my first informant, who, with many apologies,
said that he should not have written to me had he not heard the
statement from several intelligent farmers; but that he had since spoken
again to every one of them, and not one knew in the least what he had
himself meant. So that here a belief--if indeed a statement with no
definite idea attached to it can be called a belief--had spread over
almost the whole of England without any vestige of evidence.

I have known in the course of my life only three intentionally falsified
statements, and one of these may have been a hoax (and there have
been several scientific hoaxes) which, however, took in an American
Agricultural Journal. It related to the formation in Holland of a new
breed of oxen by the crossing of distinct species of Bos (some of which
I happen to know are sterile together), and the author had the impudence
to state that he had corresponded with me, and that I had been deeply
impressed with the importance of his result. The article was sent to me
by the editor of an English Agricultural Journal, asking for my opinion
before republishing it.

A second case was an account of several varieties, raised by the author
from several species of Primula, which had spontaneously yielded a
full complement of seed, although the parent plants had been carefully
protected from the access of insects. This account was published before
I had discovered the meaning of heterostylism, and the whole statement
must have been fraudulent, or there was neglect in excluding insects so
gross as to be scarcely credible.

The third case was more curious: Mr. Huth published in his book on
'Consanguineous Marriage' some long extracts from a Belgian author, who
stated that he had interbred rabbits in the closest manner for very
many generations, without the least injurious effects. The account was
published in a most respectable Journal, that of the Royal Society of
Belgium; but I could not avoid feeling doubts--I hardly know why, except
that there were no accidents of any kind, and my experience in breeding
animals made me think this very improbable.

So with much hesitation I wrote to Professor Van Beneden, asking him
whether the author was a trustworthy man. I soon heard in answer that
the Society had been greatly shocked by discovering that the whole
account was a fraud. (The falseness of the published statements on which
Mr. Huth relied has been pointed out by himself in a slip inserted in
all the copies of his book which then remained unsold.) The writer had
been publicly challenged in the Journal to say where he had resided and
kept his large stock of rabbits while carrying on his experiments, which
must have consumed several years, and no answer could be extracted from
him.

My habits are methodical, and this has been of not a little use for
my particular line of work. Lastly, I have had ample leisure from not
having to earn my own bread. Even ill-health, though it has annihilated
several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of society
and amusement.

Therefore my success as a man of science, whatever this may have
amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex
and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these, the most
important have been--the love of science--unbounded patience in long
reflecting over any subject--industry in observing and collecting
facts--and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense. With
such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I
should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific
men on some important points.




CHAPTER 1.III. -- REMINISCENCES OF MY FATHER'S EVERYDAY LIFE.

It is my wish in the present chapter to give some idea of my father's
everyday life. It has seemed to me that I might carry out this object
in the form of a rough sketch of a day's life at Down, interspersed
with such recollections as are called up by the record. Many of these
recollections, which have a meaning for those who knew my father, will
seem colourless or trifling to strangers. Nevertheless, I give them
in the hope that they may help to preserve that impression of his
personality which remains on the minds of those who knew and loved
him--an impression at once so vivid and so untranslatable into words.

Of his personal appearance (in these days of multiplied photographs) it
is hardly necessary to say much. He was about six feet in height, but
scarcely looked so tall, as he stooped a good deal; in later days he
yielded to the stoop; but I can remember seeing him long ago swinging
his arms back to open out his chest, and holding himself upright with a
jerk. He gave one the idea that he had been active rather than strong;
his shoulders were not broad for his height, though certainly not
narrow. As a young man he must have had much endurance, for on one of
the shore excursions from the "Beagle", when all were suffering from
want of water, he was one of the two who were better able than the rest
to struggle on in search of it. As a boy he was active, and could jump a
bar placed at the height of the "Adam's apple" in his neck.

He walked with a swinging action, using a stick heavily shod with iron,
which he struck loudly against the ground, producing as he went round
the "Sand-walk" at Down, a rhythmical click which is with all of us a
very distinct remembrance. As he returned from the midday walk, often
carrying the waterproof or cloak which had proved too hot, one could see
that the swinging step was kept up by something of an effort. Indoors
his step was often slow and laboured, and as he went upstairs in the
afternoon he might be heard mounting the stairs with a heavy footfall,
as if each step were an effort. When interested in his work he moved
about quickly and easily enough, and often in the middle of dictating
he went eagerly into the hall to get a pinch of snuff, leaving the study
door open, and calling out the last words of his sentence as he went.
Indoors he sometimes used an oak stick like a little alpenstock, and
this was a sign that he felt giddiness.

In spite of his strength and activity, I think he must always have had a
clumsiness of movement. He was naturally awkward with his hands, and
was unable to draw at all well. (The figure representing the aggregated
cell-contents in 'Insectivorous Plants' was drawn by him.) This he
always regretted much, and he frequently urged the paramount necessity
of a young naturalist making himself a good draughtsman.

He could dissect well under the simple microscope, but I think it was by
dint of his great patience and carefulness. It was characteristic of him
that he thought many little bits of skilful dissection something almost
superhuman. He used to speak with admiration of the skill with which he
saw Newport dissect a humble bee, getting out the nervous system with
a few cuts of a fine pair of scissors, held, as my father used to show,
with the elbow raised, and in an attitude which certainly would render
great steadiness necessary. He used to consider cutting sections a great
feat, and in the last year of his life, with wonderful energy, took the
pains to learn to cut sections of roots and leaves. His hand was not
steady enough to hold the object to be cut, and he employed a common
microtome, in which the pith for holding the object was clamped, and the
razor slid on a glass surface in making the sections. He used to laugh
at himself, and at his own skill in section-cutting, at which he would
say he was "speechless with admiration." On the other hand, he must have
had accuracy of eye and power of co-ordinating his movements, since he
was a good shot with a gun as a young man, and as a boy was skilful
in throwing. He once killed a hare sitting in the flower-garden at
Shrewsbury by throwing a marble at it, and, as a man, he once killed a
cross-beak with a stone. He was so unhappy at having uselessly killed
the cross-beak that he did not mention it for years, and then explained
that he should never have thrown at it if he had not felt sure that his
old skill had gone from him.

When walking he had a fidgetting movement with his fingers, which he has
described in one of his books as the habit of an old man. When he sat
still he often took hold of one wrist with the other hand; he sat with
his legs crossed, and from being so thin they could be crossed very far,
as may be seen in one of the photographs. He had his chair in the study
and in the drawing-room raised so as to be much higher than ordinary
chairs; this was done because sitting on a low or even an ordinary chair
caused him some discomfort. We used to laugh at him for making his tall
drawing-room chair still higher by putting footstools on it, and then
neutralising the result by resting his feet on another chair.

His beard was full and almost untrimmed, the hair being grey and
white, fine rather than coarse, and wavy or frizzled. His moustache was
somewhat disfigured by being cut short and square across. He became very
bald, having only a fringe of dark hair behind.

His face was ruddy in colour, and this perhaps made people think him
less of an invalid than he was. He wrote to Dr. Hooker (June 13, 1849),
"Every one tells me that I look quite blooming and beautiful; and most
think I am shamming, but you have never been one of those." And it must
be remembered that at this time he was miserably ill, far worse than
in later years. His eyes were bluish grey under deep overhanging
brows, with thick bushy projecting eyebrows. His high forehead was
much wrinkled, but otherwise his face was not much marked or lined. His
expression showed no signs of the continual discomfort he suffered.

When he was excited with pleasant talk his whole manner was wonderfully
bright and animated, and his face shared to the full in the general
animation. His laugh was a free and sounding peal, like that of a man
who gives himself sympathetically and with enjoyment to the person and
the thing which have amused him. He often used some sort of gesture
with his laugh, lifting up his hands or bringing one down with a slap.
I think, generally speaking, he was given to gesture, and often used his
hands in explaining anything (e.g. the fertilisation of a flower) in a
way that seemed rather an aid to himself than to the listener. He did
this on occasions when most people would illustrate their explanations
by means of a rough pencil sketch.

He wore dark clothes, of a loose and easy fit. Of late years he gave up
the tall hat even in London, and wore a soft black one in winter, and
a big straw hat in summer. His usual out-of-doors dress was the short
cloak in which Elliot and Fry's photograph represents him leaning
against the pillar of the verandah. Two peculiarities of his indoor
dress were that he almost always wore a shawl over his shoulders, and
that he had great loose cloth boots lined with fur which he could slip
on over his indoor shoes. Like most delicate people he suffered from
heat as well as from chilliness; it was as if he could not hit the
balance between too hot and too cold; often a mental cause would make
him too hot, so that he would take off his coat if anything went wrong
in the course of his work.

He rose early, chiefly because he could not lie in bed, and I think he
would have liked to get up earlier than he did. He took a short turn
before breakfast, a habit which began when he went for the first time to
a water-cure establishment. This habit he kept up till almost the end
of his life. I used, as a little boy, to like going out with him, and I
have a vague sense of the red of the winter sunrise, and a recollection
of the pleasant companionship, and a certain honour and glory in it. He
used to delight me as a boy by telling me how, in still earlier walks,
on dark winter mornings, he had once or twice met foxes trotting home at
the dawning.

After breakfasting alone about 7.45, he went to work at once,
considering the 1 1/2 hour between 8 and 9.30 one of his best working
times. At 9.30 he came into the drawing-room for his letters--rejoicing
if the post was a light one and being sometimes much worried if it was
not. He would then hear any family letters read aloud as he lay on the
sofa.

The reading aloud, which also included part of a novel, lasted till
about half-past ten, when he went back to work till twelve or a quarter
past. By this time he considered his day's work over, and would often
say, in a satisfied voice, "I'VE done a good day's work." He then went
out of doors whether it was wet or fine; Polly, his white terrier,
went with him in fair weather, but in rain she refused or might be seen
hesitating in the verandah, with a mixed expression of disgust and shame
at her own want of courage; generally, however, her conscience carried
the day, and as soon as he was evidently gone she could not bear to stay
behind.

My father was always fond of dogs, and as a young man had the power of
stealing away the affections of his sister's pets; at Cambridge, he won
the love of his cousin W.D. Fox's dog, and this may perhaps have been
the little beast which used to creep down inside his bed and sleep at
the foot every night. My father had a surly dog, who was devoted to
him, but unfriendly to every one else, and when he came back from the
"Beagle" voyage, the dog remembered him, but in a curious way, which my
father was fond of telling. He went into the yard and shouted in his old
manner; the dog rushed out and set off with him on his walk, showing no
more emotion or excitement than if the same thing had happened the day
before, instead of five years ago. This story is made use of in the
'Descent of Man,' 2nd Edition, page 74.

In my memory there were only two dogs which had much connection with my
father. One was a large black and white half-bred retriever, called Bob,
to which we, as children, were much devoted. He was the dog of whom
the story of the "hot-house face" is told in the 'Expression of the
Emotions.'

But the dog most closely associated with my father was the
above-mentioned Polly, a rough, white fox-terrier. She was a
sharp-witted, affectionate dog; when her master was going away on a
journey, she always discovered the fact by the signs of packing going on
in the study, and became low-spirited accordingly. She began, too, to
be excited by seeing the study prepared for his return home. She was a
cunning little creature, and used to tremble or put on an air of misery
when my father passed, while she was waiting for dinner, just as if she
knew that he would say (as he did often say) that "she was famishing."
My father used to make her catch biscuits off her nose, and had an
affectionate and mock-solemn way of explaining to her before-hand that
she must "be a very good girl." She had a mark on her back where she had
been burnt, and where the hair had re-grown red instead of white, and my
father used to commend her for this tuft of hair as being in accordance
with his theory of pangenesis; her father had been a red bull-terrier,
thus the red hair appearing after the burn showed the presence of latent
red gemmules. He was delightfully tender to Polly, and never showed any
impatience at the attentions she required, such as to be let in at the
door, or out at the verandah window, to bark at "naughty people,"
a self-imposed duty she much enjoyed. She died, or rather had to be
killed, a few days after his death. (The basket in which she usually lay
curled up near the fire in his study is faithfully represented in Mr.
Parson's drawing, "The Study at Down.")

My father's midday walk generally began by a call at the greenhouse,
where he looked at any germinating seeds or experimental plants which
required a casual examination, but he hardly ever did any serious
observing at this time. Then he went on for his constitutional--either
round the "Sand-walk," or outside his own grounds in the immediate
neighbourhood of the house. The "Sand-walk" was a narrow strip of land 1
1/2 acres in extent, with a gravel-walk round it. On one side of it
was a broad old shaw with fair-sized oaks in it, which made a sheltered
shady walk; the other side was separated from a neighbouring grass field
by a low quickset hedge, over which you could look at what view there
was, a quiet little valley losing itself in the upland country towards
the edge of the Westerham hill, with hazel coppice and larch wood, the
remnants of what was once a large wood, stretching away to the Westerham
road. I have heard my father say that the charm of this simple little
valley helped to make him settle at Down.

The Sand-walk was planted by my father with a variety of trees, such
as hazel, alder, lime, hornbeam, birch, privet, and dogwood, and with a
long line of hollies all down the exposed side. In earlier times he took
a certain number of turns every day, and used to count them by means of
a heap of flints, one of which he kicked out on the path each time he
passed. Of late years I think he did not keep to any fixed number of
turns, but took as many as he felt strength for. The Sand-walk was our
play-ground as children, and here we continually saw my father as he
walked round. He liked to see what we were doing, and was ever ready
to sympathize in any fun that was going on. It is curious to think how,
with regard to the Sand-walk in connection with my father, my earliest
recollections coincide with my latest; it shows how unvarying his habits
have been.

Sometimes when alone he stood still or walked stealthily to observe
birds or beasts. It was on one of these occasions that some young
squirrels ran up his back and legs, while their mother barked at them in
an agony from the tree. He always found birds' nests even up to the last
years of his life, and we, as children, considered that he had a special
genius in this direction. In his quiet prowls he came across the less
common birds, but I fancy he used to conceal it from me, as a little
boy, because he observed the agony of mind which I endured at not having
seen the siskin or goldfinch, or whatever it might have been. He used to
tell us how, when he was creeping noiselessly along in the "Big-Woods,"
he came upon a fox asleep in the daytime, which was so much astonished
that it took a good stare at him before it ran off. A Spitz dog which
accompanied him showed no sign of excitement at the fox, and he used to
end the story by wondering how the dog could have been so faint-hearted.

Another favourite place was "Orchis Bank," above the quiet Cudham
valley, where fly- and musk-orchis grew among the junipers, and
Cephalanthera and Neottia under the beech boughs; the little wood
"Hangrove," just above this, he was also fond of, and here I remember
his collecting grasses, when he took a fancy to make out the names of
all the common kinds. He was fond of quoting the saying of one of his
little boys, who, having found a grass that his father had not seen
before, had it laid by his own plate during dinner, remarking, "I are an
extraordinary grass-finder!"

My father much enjoyed wandering slowly in the garden with my mother or
some of his children, or making one of a party, sitting out on a bench
on the lawn; he generally sat, however, on the grass, and I remember him
often lying under one of the big lime-trees, with his head on the green
mound at its foot. In dry summer weather, when we often sat out, the
big fly-wheel of the well was commonly heard spinning round, and so the
sound became associated with those pleasant days. He used to like to
watch us playing at lawn-tennis, and often knocked up a stray ball for
us with the curved handle of his stick. === Though he took no personal
share in the management of the garden, he had great delight in the
beauty of flowers--for instance, in the mass of Azaleas which generally
stood in the drawing-room. I think he sometimes fused together his
admiration of the structure of a flower and of its intrinsic beauty;
for instance, in the case of the big pendulous pink and white flowers
of Dielytra. In the same way he had an affection, half-artistic,
half-botanical, for the little blue Lobelia. In admiring flowers, he
would often laugh at the dingy high-art colours, and contrast them with
the bright tints of nature. I used to like to hear him admire the beauty
of a flower; it was a kind of gratitude to the flower itself, and a
personal love for its delicate form and colour. I seem to remember
him gently touching a flower he delighted in; it was the same simple
admiration that a child might have.

He could not help personifying natural things. This feeling came out in
abuse as well as in praise--e.g. of some seedlings--"The little
beggars are doing just what I don't want them to." He would speak in a
half-provoked, half-admiring way of the ingenuity of a Mimosa leaf in
screwing itself out of a basin of water in which he had tried to fix
it. One must see the same spirit in his way of speaking of Sundew,
earth-worms, etc. (Cf. Leslie Stephen's 'Swift,' 1882, page 200, where
Swift's inspection of the manners and customs of servants are compared
to my father's observations on worms, "The difference is," says Mr.
Stephen, "that Darwin had none but kindly feelings for worms.")

Within my memory, his only outdoor recreation, besides walking, was
riding, which he took to on the recommendation of Dr. Bence Jones, and
we had the luck to find for him the easiest and quietest cob in the
world, named "Tommy." He enjoyed these rides extremely, and devised a
number of short rounds which brought him home in time for lunch. Our
country is good for this purpose, owing to the number of small valleys
which give a variety to what in a flat country would be a dull loop of
road. He was not, I think, naturally fond of horses, nor had he a high
opinion of their intelligence, and Tommy was often laughed at for
the alarm he showed at passing and repassing the same heap of
hedge-clippings as he went round the field. I think he used to feel
surprised at himself, when he remembered how bold a rider he had been,
and how utterly old age and bad health had taken away his nerve. He
would say that riding prevented him thinking much more effectually
than walking--that having to attend to the horse gave him occupation
sufficient to prevent any really hard thinking. And the change of scene
which it gave him was good for spirits and health.

Unluckily, Tommy one day fell heavily with him on Keston common. This,
and an accident with another horse, upset his nerves, and he was advised
to give up riding.

If I go beyond my own experience, and recall what I have heard him say
of his love for sport, etc., I can think of a good deal, but much of it
would be a repetition of what is contained in his 'Recollections.' At
school he was fond of bat-fives, and this was the only game at which he
was skilful. He was fond of his gun as quite a boy, and became a good
shot; he used to tell how in South America he killed twenty-three snipe
in twenty-four shots. In telling the story he was careful to add that he
thought they were not quite so wild as English snipe.

Luncheon at Down came after his midday walk; and here I may say a word
or two about his meals generally. He had a boy-like love of sweets,
unluckily for himself, since he was constantly forbidden to take them.
He was not particularly successful in keeping the "vows," as he called
them, which he made against eating sweets, and never considered them
binding unless he made them aloud.

He drank very little wine, but enjoyed, and was revived by, the little
he did drink. He had a horror of drinking, and constantly warned his
boys that any one might be led into drinking too much. I remember, in my
innocence as a small boy, asking him if he had been ever tipsy; and he
answered very gravely that he was ashamed to say he had once drunk too
much at Cambridge. I was much impressed, so that I know now the place
where the question was asked.

After his lunch, he read the newspaper, lying on the sofa in the
drawing-room. I think the paper was the only non-scientific matter which
he read to himself. Everything else, novels, travels, history, was read
aloud to him. He took so wide an interest in life, that there was much
to occupy him in newspapers, though he laughed at the wordiness of
the debates; reading them, I think, only in abstract. His interest in
politics was considerable, but his opinion on these matters was formed
rather by the way than with any serious amount of thought.

After he read his paper, came his time for writing letters. These, as
well as the MS. of his books, were written by him as he sat in a huge
horse-hair chair by the fire, his paper supported on a board resting
on the arms of the chair. When he had many or long letters to write, he
would dictate them from a rough copy; these rough copies were written on
the backs of manuscript or of proof-sheets, and were almost illegible,
sometimes even to himself. He made a rule of keeping ALL letters that he
received; this was a habit which he learnt from his father, and which he
said had been of great use to him.

He received many letters from foolish, unscrupulous people, and all of
these received replies. He used to say that if he did not answer them,
he had it on his conscience afterwards, and no doubt it was in great
measure the courtesy with which he answered every one, which produced
the universal and widespread sense of his kindness of nature, which was
so evident on his death.

He was considerate to his correspondents in other and lesser things, for
instance when dictating a letter to a foreigner he hardly ever failed
to say to me, "You'd better try and write well, as it's to a foreigner."
His letters were generally written on the assumption that they would be
carelessly read; thus, when he was dictating, he was careful to tell me
to make an important clause begin with an obvious paragraph "to catch
his eye," as he often said. How much he thought of the trouble he gave
others by asking questions, will be well enough shown by his letters. It
is difficult to say anything about the general tone of his letters,
they will speak for themselves. The unvarying courtesy of them is very
striking. I had a proof of this quality in the feeling with which Mr.
Hacon, his solicitor, regarded him. He had never seen my father, yet
had a sincere feeling of friendship for him, and spoke especially of
his letters as being such as a man seldom receives in the way of
business:--"Everything I did was right, and everything was profusely
thanked for."

He had a printed form to be used in replying to troublesome
correspondents, but he hardly ever used it; I suppose he never found an
occasion that seemed exactly suitable. I remember an occasion on which
it might have been used with advantage. He received a letter from a
stranger stating that the writer had undertaken to uphold Evolution at
a debating society, and that being a busy young man, without time for
reading, he wished to have a sketch of my father's views. Even this
wonderful young man got a civil answer, though I think he did not get
much material for his speech. His rule was to thank the donors of books,
but not of pamphlets. He sometimes expressed surprise that so few people
thanked him for his books which he gave away liberally; the letters that
he did receive gave him much pleasure, because he habitually formed so
humble an estimate of the value of all his works, that he was generally
surprised at the interest which they excited.

In money and business matters he was remarkably careful and exact. He
kept accounts with great care, classifying them, and balancing at the
end of the year like a merchant. I remember the quick way in which
he would reach out for his account-book to enter each cheque paid, as
though he were in a hurry to get it entered before he had forgotten it.
His father must have allowed him to believe that he would be poorer than
he really was, for some of the difficulty experienced in finding a house
in the country must have arisen from the modest sum he felt prepared to
give. Yet he knew, of course, that he would be in easy circumstances,
for in his 'Recollections' he mentions this as one of the reasons for
his not having worked at medicine with so much zeal as he would have
done if he had been obliged to gain his living.

He had a pet economy in paper, but it was rather a hobby than a real
economy. All the blank sheets of letters received were kept in a
portfolio to be used in making notes; it was his respect for paper that
made him write so much on the backs of his old MS., and in this way,
unfortunately, he destroyed large parts of the original MS. of his
books. His feeling about paper extended to waste paper, and he objected,
half in fun, to the careless custom of throwing a spill into the fire
after it had been used for lighting a candle.

My father was wonderfully liberal and generous to all his children in
the matter of money, and I have special cause to remember his kindness
when I think of the way in which he paid some Cambridge debts of
mine--making it almost seem a virtue in me to have told him of them.
In his later years he had the kind and generous plan of dividing his
surplus at the year's end among his children.

He had a great respect for pure business capacity, and often spoke with
admiration of a relative who had doubled his fortune. And of himself
would often say in fun that what he really WAS proud of was the money he
had saved. He also felt satisfaction in the money he made by his books.
His anxiety to save came in a great measure from his fears that his
children would not have health enough to earn their own livings, a
foreboding which fairly haunted him for many years. And I have a dim
recollection of his saying, "Thank God, you'll have bread and cheese,"
when I was so young that I was rather inclined to take it literally.

When letters were finished, about three in the afternoon, he rested in
his bedroom, lying on the sofa and smoking a cigarette, and listening
to a novel or other book not scientific. He only smoked when resting,
whereas snuff was a stimulant, and was taken during working hours.
He took snuff for many years of his life, having learnt the habit at
Edinburgh as a student. He had a nice silver snuff-box given him by
Mrs. Wedgwood of Maer, which he valued much--but he rarely carried it,
because it tempted him to take too many pinches. In one of his early
letters he speaks of having given up snuff for a month, and describes
himself as feeling "most lethargic, stupid, and melancholy." Our former
neighbour and clergyman, Mr. Brodie Innes, tells me that at one time my
father made a resolve not to take snuff except away from home, "a most
satisfactory arrangement for me," he adds, "as I kept a box in my study
to which there was access from the garden without summoning servants,
and I had more frequently, than might have been otherwise the case,
the privilege of a few minutes' conversation with my dear friend." He
generally took snuff from a jar on the hall table, because having to go
this distance for a pinch was a slight check; the clink of the lid of
the snuff jar was a very familiar sound. Sometimes when he was in the
drawing-room, it would occur to him that the study fire must be burning
low, and when some of us offered to see after it, it would turn out that
he also wished to get a pinch of snuff.

Smoking he only took to permanently of late years, though on his Pampas
rides he learned to smoke with the Gauchos, and I have heard him speak
of the great comfort of a cup of mate and a cigarette when he halted
after a long ride and was unable to get food for some time.

The reading aloud often sent him to sleep, and he used to regret losing
parts of a novel, for my mother went steadily on lest the cessation of
the sound might wake him. He came down at four o'clock to dress for
his walk, and he was so regular that one might be quite certain it was
within a few minutes of four when his descending steps were heard.

From about half-past four to half-past five he worked; then he came to
the drawing-room, and was idle till it was time (about six) to go up for
another rest with novel-reading and a cigarette.

Latterly he gave up late dinner, and had a simple tea at half-past
seven (while we had dinner), with an egg or a small piece of meat. After
dinner he never stayed in the room, and used to apologise by saying he
was an old woman, who must be allowed to leave with the ladies. This
was one of the many signs and results of his constant weakness and
ill-health. Half an hour more or less conversation would make to him
the difference of a sleepless night, and of the loss perhaps of half the
next day's work.

After dinner he played backgammon with my mother, two games being played
every night; for many years a score of the games which each won was
kept, and in this score he took the greatest interest. He became
extremely animated over these games, bitterly lamenting his bad luck and
exploding with exaggerated mock-anger at my mother's good fortune.

After backgammon he read some scientific book to himself, either in the
drawing-room, or, if much talking was going on, in the study.

In the evening, that is, after he had read as much as his strength would
allow, and before the reading aloud began, he would often lie on the
sofa and listen to my mother playing the piano. He had not a good ear,
yet in spite of this he had a true love of fine music. He used to lament
that his enjoyment of music had become dulled with age, yet within my
recollection, his love of a good tune was strong. I never heard him hum
more than one tune, the Welsh song "Ar hyd y nos," which he went through
correctly; he used also, I believe, to hum a little Otaheitan song.
From his want of ear he was unable to recognize a tune when he heard it
again, but he remained constant to what he liked, and would often say,
when an old favourite was played, "That's a fine thing; what is it?" He
liked especially parts of Beethoven's symphonies, and bits of Handel.
He made a little list of all the pieces which he especially liked among
those which my mother played--giving in a few words the impression that
each one made on him--but these notes are unfortunately lost. He was
sensitive to differences in style, and enjoyed the late Mrs. Vernon
Lushington's playing intensely, and in June 1881, when Hans Richter paid
a visit at Down, he was roused to strong enthusiasm by his magnificent
performance on the piano. He much enjoyed good singing, and was moved
almost to tears by grand or pathetic songs. His niece Lady Farrer's
singing of Sullivan's "Will he come" was a never-failing enjoyment
to him. He was humble in the extreme about his own taste, and
correspondingly pleased when he found that others agreed with him.

He became much tired in the evenings, especially of late years, when
he left the drawing-room about ten, going to bed at half-past ten. His
nights were generally bad, and he often lay awake or sat up in bed
for hours, suffering much discomfort. He was troubled at night by the
activity of his thoughts, and would become exhausted by his mind working
at some problem which he would willingly have dismissed. At night, too,
anything which had vexed or troubled him in the day would haunt him,
and I think it was then that he suffered if he had not answered some
troublesome person's letter.

The regular readings, which I have mentioned, continued for so many
years, enabled him to get through a great deal of lighter kinds of
literature. He was extremely fond of novels, and I remember well the way
in which he would anticipate the pleasure of having a novel read to him,
as he lay down, or lighted his cigarette. He took a vivid interest both
in plot and characters, and would on no account know beforehand, how
a story finished; he considered looking at the end of a novel as a
feminine vice. He could not enjoy any story with a tragical end, for
this reason he did not keenly appreciate George Eliot, though he often
spoke warmly in praise of 'Silas Marner.' Walter Scott, Miss Austen, and
Mrs. Gaskell, were read and re-read till they could be read no more. He
had two or three books in hand at the same time--a novel and perhaps a
biography and a book of travels. He did not often read out-of-the-way or
old standard books, but generally kept to the books of the day obtained
from a circulating library.

I do not think that his literary tastes and opinions were on a level
with the rest of his mind. He himself, though he was clear as to what he
thought good, considered that in matters of literary taste, he was
quite outside the pale, and often spoke of what those within it liked or
disliked, as if they formed a class to which he had no claim to belong.

In all matters of art he was inclined to laugh at professed critics,
and say that their opinions were formed by fashion. Thus in painting,
he would say how in his day every one admired masters who are now
neglected. His love of pictures as a young man is almost a proof that he
must have had an appreciation of a portrait as a work of art, not as
a likeness. Yet he often talked laughingly of the small worth of
portraits, and said that a photograph was worth any number of pictures,
as if he were blind to the artistic quality in a painted portrait. But
this was generally said in his attempts to persuade us to give up the
idea of having his portrait painted, an operation very irksome to him.

This way of looking at himself as an ignoramus in all matters of art,
was strengthened by the absence of pretence, which was part of his
character. With regard to questions of taste, as well as to more serious
things, he always had the courage of his opinions. I remember, however,
an instance that sounds like a contradiction to this: when he was
looking at the Turners in Mr. Ruskin's bedroom, he did not confess, as
he did afterwards, that he could make out absolutely nothing of what Mr.
Ruskin saw in them. But this little pretence was not for his own sake,
but for the sake of courtesy to his host. He was pleased and amused
when subsequently Mr. Ruskin brought him some photographs of pictures
(I think Vandyke portraits), and courteously seemed to value my father's
opinion about them.

Much of his scientific reading was in German, and this was a great
labour to him; in reading a book after him, I was often struck at
seeing, from the pencil-marks made each day where he left off, how
little he could read at a time. He used to call German the "Verdammte,"
pronounced as if in English. He was especially indignant with Germans,
because he was convinced that they could write simply if they chose, and
often praised Dr. F. Hildebrand for writing German which was as clear
as French. He sometimes gave a German sentence to a friend, a patriotic
German lady, and used to laugh at her if she did not translate it
fluently. He himself learnt German simply by hammering away with a
dictionary; he would say that his only way was to read a sentence a
great many times over, and at last the meaning occurred to him. When he
began German long ago, he boasted of the fact (as he used to tell) to
Sir J. Hooker, who replied, "Ah, my dear fellow, that's nothing; I've
begun it many times."

In spite of his want of grammar, he managed to get on wonderfully with
German, and the sentences that he failed to make out were generally
really difficult ones. He never attempted to speak German correctly, but
pronounced the words as though they were English; and this made it not
a little difficult to help him, when he read out a German sentence and
asked for a translation. He certainly had a bad ear for vocal sounds,
so that he found it impossible to perceive small differences in
pronunciation.

His wide interest in branches of science that were not specially his own
was remarkable. In the biological sciences his doctrines make themselves
felt so widely that there was something interesting to him in most
departments of it. He read a good deal of many quite special works, and
large parts of text books, such as Huxley's 'Invertebrate Anatomy,' or
such a book as Balfour's 'Embryology,' where the detail, at any rate,
was not specially in his own line. And in the case of elaborate books of
the monograph type, though he did not make a study of them, yet he felt
the strongest admiration for them.

In the non-biological sciences he felt keen sympathy with work of which
he could not really judge. For instance, he used to read nearly the
whole of 'Nature,' though so much of it deals with mathematics and
physics. I have often heard him say that he got a kind of satisfaction
in reading articles which (according to himself) he could not
understand. I wish I could reproduce the manner in which he would laugh
at himself for it.

It was remarkable, too, how he kept up his interest in subjects at which
he had formerly worked. This was strikingly the case with geology. In
one of his letters to Mr. Judd he begs him to pay him a visit, saying
that since Lyell's death he hardly ever gets a geological talk. His
observations, made only a few years before his death, on the upright
pebbles in the drift at Southampton, and discussed in a letter to Mr.
Geikie, afford another instance. Again, in the letters to Dr. Dohrn, he
shows how his interest in barnacles remained alive. I think it was all
due to the vitality and persistence of his mind--a quality I have heard
him speak of as if he felt that he was strongly gifted in that respect.
Not that he used any such phrases as these about himself, but he would
say that he had the power of keeping a subject or question more or less
before him for a great many years. The extent to which he possessed this
power appears when we consider the number of different problems which he
solved, and the early period at which some of them began to occupy him.

It was a sure sign that he was not well when he was idle at any times
other than his regular resting hours; for, as long as he remained
moderately well, there was no break in the regularity of his life.
Week-days and Sundays passed by alike, each with their stated intervals
of work and rest. It is almost impossible, except for those who watched
his daily life, to realise how essential to his well-being was the
regular routine that I have sketched: and with what pain and difficulty
anything beyond it was attempted. Any public appearance, even of the
most modest kind, was an effort to him. In 1871 he went to the little
village church for the wedding of his elder daughter, but he could
hardly bear the fatigue of being present through the short service. The
same may be said of the few other occasions on which he was present at
similar ceremonies.

I remember him many years ago at a christening; a memory which has
remained with me, because to us children it seemed an extraordinary and
abnormal occurrence. I remember his look most distinctly at his brother
Erasmus's funeral, as he stood in the scattering of snow, wrapped in a
long black funeral cloak, with a grave look of sad reverie.

When, after an interval of many years, he again attended a meeting
of the Linnean Society, it was felt to be, and was in fact, a serious
undertaking; one not to be determined on without much sinking of
heart, and hardly to be carried into effect without paying a penalty
of subsequent suffering. In the same way a breakfast-party at Sir James
Paget's, with some of the distinguished visitors to the Medical Congress
(1881), was to him a severe exertion.

The early morning was the only time at which he could make any effort of
the kind, with comparative impunity. Thus it came about that the visits
he paid to his scientific friends in London were by preference made
as early as ten in the morning. For the same reason he started on his
journeys by the earliest possible train, and used to arrive at the
houses of relatives in London when they were beginning their day.

He kept an accurate journal of the days on which he worked and those
on which his ill health prevented him from working, so that it would
be possible to tell how many were idle days in any given year. In
this journal--a little yellow Lett's Diary, which lay open on his
mantel-piece, piled on the diaries of previous years--he also entered
the day on which he started for a holiday and that of his return.

The most frequent holidays were visits of a week to London, either
to his brother's house (6 Queen Anne Street), or to his daughter's (4
Bryanston Street). He was generally persuaded by my mother to take these
short holidays, when it became clear from the frequency of "bad days,"
or from the swimming of his head, that he was being overworked. He
went unwillingly, and tried to drive hard bargains, stipulating, for
instance, that he should come home in five days instead of six. Even
if he were leaving home for no more than a week, the packing had to be
begun early on the previous day, and the chief part of it he would do
himself. The discomfort of a journey to him was, at least latterly,
chiefly in the anticipation, and in the miserable sinking feeling from
which he suffered immediately before the start; even a fairly long
journey, such as that to Coniston, tired him wonderfully little,
considering how much an invalid he was; and he certainly enjoyed it in
an almost boyish way, and to a curious extent.

Although, as he has said, some of his aesthetic tastes had suffered a
gradual decay, his love of scenery remained fresh and strong. Every walk
at Coniston was a fresh delight, and he was never tired of praising the
beauty of the broken hilly country at the head of the lake.

One of the happy memories of this time [1879] is that of a delightful
visit to Grasmere: "The perfect day," my sister writes, "and my father's
vivid enjoyment and flow of spirits, form a picture in my mind that I
like to think of. He could hardly sit still in the carriage for turning
round and getting up to admire the view from each fresh point, and even
in returning he was full of the beauty of Rydal Water, though he would
not allow that Grasmere at all equalled his beloved Coniston."

Besides these longer holidays, there were shorter visits to various
relatives--to his brother-in-law's house, close to Leith Hill, and to
his son near Southampton. He always particularly enjoyed rambling over
rough open country, such as the commons near Leith Hill and Southampton,
the heath-covered wastes of Ashdown Forest, or the delightful "Rough"
near the house of his friend Sir Thomas Farrer. He never was quite idle
even on these holidays, and found things to observe. At Hartfield he
watched Drosera catching insects, etc.; at Torquay he observed the
fertilisation of an orchid (Spiranthes), and also made out the relations
of the sexes in Thyme.

He was always rejoiced to get home after his holidays; he used greatly
to enjoy the welcome he got from his dog Polly, who would get wild with
excitement, panting, squeaking, rushing round the room, and jumping on
and off the chairs; and he used to stoop down, pressing her face to
his, letting her lick him, and speaking to her with a peculiarly tender,
caressing voice.

My father had the power of giving to these summer holidays a charm which
was strongly felt by all his family. The pressure of his work at home
kept him at the utmost stretch of his powers of endurance, and when
released from it, he entered on a holiday with a youthfulness of
enjoyment that made his companionship delightful; we felt that we saw
more of him in a week's holiday than in a month at home.

Some of these absences from home, however, had a depressing effect on
him; when he had been previously much overworked it seemed as though
the absence of the customary strain allowed him to fall into a peculiar
condition of miserable health.

Besides the holidays which I have mentioned, there were his visits
to water-cure establishments. In 1849, when very ill, suffering from
constant sickness, he was urged by a friend to try the water-cure,
and at last agreed to go to Dr. Gully's establishment at Malvern. His
letters to Mr. Fox show how much good the treatment did him; he seems
to have thought that he had found a cure for his troubles, but, like all
other remedies, it had only a transient effect on him. However, he found
it, at first, so good for him that when he came home he built himself a
douche-bath, and the butler learnt to be his bathman.

He paid many visits to Moor Park, Dr. Lane's water-cure establishment in
Surrey, not far from Aldershot. These visits were pleasant ones, and
he always looked back to them with pleasure. Dr. Lane has given his
recollections of my father in Dr. Richardson's 'Lecture on Charles
Darwin,' October 22, 1882, from which I quote:--

"In a public institution like mine, he was surrounded, of course, by
multifarious types of character, by persons of both sexes, mostly very
different from himself--commonplace people, in short, as the majority
are everywhere, but like to him at least in this, that they were
fellow-creatures and fellow-patients. And never was any one more genial,
more considerate, more friendly, more altogether charming than he
universally was."...He "never aimed, as too often happens with good
talkers, at monopolising the conversation. It was his pleasure rather
to give and take, and he was as good a listener as a speaker. He never
preached nor prosed, but his talk, whether grave or gay (and it was each
by turns), was full of life and salt--racy, bright, and animated."

Some idea of his relation to his family and his friends may be gathered
from what has gone before; it would be impossible to attempt a complete
account of these relationships, but a slightly fuller outline may not be
out of place. Of his married life I cannot speak, save in the
briefest manner. In his relationship towards my mother, his tender
and sympathetic nature was shown in its most beautiful aspect. In her
presence he found his happiness, and through her, his life,--which
might have been overshadowed by gloom,--became one of content and quiet
gladness.

The 'Expression of the Emotions' shows how closely he watched his
children; it was characteristic of him that (as I have heard him tell),
although he was so anxious to observe accurately the expression of a
crying child, his sympathy with the grief spoiled his observation. His
note-book, in which are recorded sayings of his young children, shows
his pleasure in them. He seemed to retain a sort of regretful memory
of the childhoods which had faded away, and thus he wrote in his
'Recollections':--"When you were very young it was my delight to play
with you all, and I think with a sigh that such days can never return."

I may quote, as showing the tenderness of his nature, some sentences
from an account of his little daughter Annie, written a few days after
her death:--

"Our poor child, Annie, was born in Gower Street, on March 2, 1841, and
expired at Malvern at mid-day on the 23rd of April, 1851.

"I write these few pages, as I think in after years, if we live,
the impressions now put down will recall more vividly her chief
characteristics. From whatever point I look back at her, the main
feature in her disposition which at once rises before me, is her
buoyant joyousness, tempered by two other characteristics, namely, her
sensitiveness, which might easily have been overlooked by a stranger,
and her strong affection. Her joyousness and animal spirits radiated
from her whole countenance, and rendered every movement elastic and full
of life and vigour. It was delightful and cheerful to behold her. Her
dear face now rises before me, as she used sometimes to come running
downstairs with a stolen pinch of snuff for me her whole form radiant
with the pleasure of giving pleasure. Even when playing with her
cousins, when her joyousness almost passed into boisterousness, a single
glance of my eye, not of displeasure (for I thank God I hardly ever cast
one on her), but of want of sympathy, would for some minutes alter her
whole countenance.

"The other point in her character, which made her joyousness and spirits
so delightful, was her strong affection, which was of a most clinging,
fondling nature. When quite a baby, this showed itself in never being
easy without touching her mother, when in bed with her; and quite
lately she would, when poorly, fondle for any length of time one of her
mother's arms. When very unwell, her mother lying down beside her seemed
to soothe her in a manner quite different from what it would have done
to any of our other children. So, again, she would at almost any time
spend half an hour in arranging my hair, 'making it,' as she called
it, 'beautiful,' or in smoothing, the poor dear darling, my collar or
cuffs--in short, in fondling me.

"Beside her joyousness thus tempered, she was in her manners remarkably
cordial, frank, open, straightforward, natural, and without any shade of
reserve. Her whole mind was pure and transparent. One felt one knew her
thoroughly and could trust her. I always thought, that come what might,
we should have had in our old age at least one loving soul which nothing
could have changed. All her movements were vigorous, active, and usually
graceful. When going round the Sand-walk with me, although I walked
fast, yet she often used to go before, pirouetting in the most elegant
way, her dear face bright all the time with the sweetest smiles.
Occasionally she had a pretty coquettish manner towards me, the memory
of which is charming. She often used exaggerated language, and when I
quizzed her by exaggerating what she had said, how clearly can I now see
the little toss of the head, and exclamation of 'Oh, papa what a shame
of you!' In the last short illness her conduct in simple truth was
angelic. She never once complained; never became fretful; was ever
considerate of others, and was thankful in the most gentle, pathetic
manner for everything done for her. When so exhausted that she could
hardly speak, she praised everything that was given her, and said some
tea 'was beautifully good.' When I gave her some water she said, 'I
quite thank you;' and these, I believe, were the last precious words
ever addressed by her dear lips to me.

"We have lost the joy of the household, and the solace of our old age.
She must have known how we loved her. Oh, that she could now know how
deeply, how tenderly, we do still and shall ever love her dear joyous
face! Blessings on her!

"April 30, 1851."

We his children all took especial pleasure in the games he played at
with us, but I do not think he romped much with us; I suppose his health
prevented any rough play. He used sometimes to tell us stories, which
were considered especially delightful, partly on account of their
rarity.

The way he brought us up is shown by a little story about my brother
Leonard, which my father was fond of telling. He came into the
drawing-room and found Leonard dancing about on the sofa, which was
forbidden, for the sake of the springs, and said, "Oh, Lenny, Lenny,
that's against all rules," and received for answer, "Then I think you'd
better go out of the room." I do not believe he ever spoke an angry
word to any of his children in his life; but I am certain that it never
entered our heads to disobey him. I well remember one occasion when my
father reproved me for a piece of carelessness; and I can still recall
the feeling of depression which came over me, and the care which he took
to disperse it by speaking to me soon afterwards with especial kindness.
He kept up his delightful, affectionate manner towards us all his life.
I sometimes wonder that he could do so, with such an undemonstrative
race as we are; but I hope he knew how much we delighted in his loving
words and manner. How often, when a man, I have wished when my father
was behind my chair, that he would pass his hand over my hair, as he
used to do when I was a boy. He allowed his grown-up children to laugh
with and at him, and was, generally speaking, on terms of perfect
equality with us.

He was always full of interest about each one's plans or successes. We
used to laugh at him, and say he would not believe in his sons, because,
for instance, he would be a little doubtful about their taking some bit
of work for which he did not feel sure that they had knowledge enough.
On the other hand, he was only too much inclined to take a favourable
view of our work. When I thought he had set too high a value on anything
that I had done, he used to be indignant and inclined to explode in mock
anger. His doubts were part of his humility concerning what was in any
way connected with himself; his too favourable view of our work was due
to his sympathetic nature, which made him lenient to every one.

He kept up towards his children his delightful manner of expressing his
thanks; and I never wrote a letter, or read a page aloud to him, without
receiving a few kind words of recognition. His love and goodness towards
his little grandson Bernard were great; and he often spoke of the
pleasure it was to him to see "his little face opposite to him" at
luncheon. He and Bernard used to compare their tastes; e.g., in liking
brown sugar better than white, etc.; the result being, "We always agree,
don't we?"

My sister writes:--

"My first remembrances of my father are of the delights of his playing
with us. He was passionately attached to his own children, although
he was not an indiscriminate child-lover. To all of us he was the most
delightful play-fellow, and the most perfect sympathiser. Indeed it is
impossible adequately to describe how delightful a relation his was to
his family, whether as children or in their later life.

"It is a proof of the terms on which we were, and also of how much he
was valued as a play-fellow, that one of his sons when about four years
old tried to bribe him with sixpence to come and play in working hours.
We all knew the sacredness of working-time, but that any one should
resist sixpence seemed an impossibility.

"He must have been the most patient and delightful of nurses. I remember
the haven of peace and comfort it seemed to me when I was unwell, to
be tucked up on the study sofa, idly considering the old geological map
hung on the wall. This must have been in his working hours, for I always
picture him sitting in the horsehair arm-chair by the corner of the
fire.

"Another mark of his unbounded patience was the way in which we were
suffered to make raids into the study when we had an absolute need of
sticking-plaster, string, pins, scissors, stamps, foot-rule, or hammer.
These and other such necessaries were always to be found in the study,
and it was the only place where this was a certainty. We used to feel it
wrong to go in during work-time; still, when the necessity was great we
did so. I remember his patient look when he said once, 'Don't you think
you could not come in again, I have been interrupted very often.' We
used to dread going in for sticking-plaster, because he disliked to
see that we had cut ourselves, both for our sakes and on account of his
acute sensitiveness to the sight of blood. I well remember lurking about
the passage till he was safe away, and then stealing in for the plaster.

"Life seems to me, as I look back upon it, to have been very regular in
those early days, and except relations (and a few intimate friends), I
do not think any one came to the house. After lessons, we were always
free to go where we would, and that was chiefly in the drawing-room
and about the garden, so that we were very much with both my father and
mother. We used to think it most delightful when he told us any stories
about the 'Beagle', or about early Shrewsbury days--little bits about
school-life and his boyish tastes. Sometimes too he read aloud to his
children such books as Scott's novels, and I remember a few little
lectures on the steam-engine.

"I was more or less ill during the five years between my thirteenth and
eighteenth years, and for a long time (years it seems to me) he used to
play a couple of games of backgammon with me every afternoon. He played
them with the greatest spirit, and I remember we used at one time to
keep account of the games, and as this record came out in favour of him,
we kept a list of the doublets thrown by each, as I was convinced that
he threw better than myself.

"His patience and sympathy were boundless during this weary illness, and
sometimes when most miserable I felt his sympathy to be almost too keen.
When at my worst, we went to my aunt's house at Hartfield, in Sussex,
and as soon as we had made the move safely he went on to Moor Park for
a fortnight's water-cure. I can recall now how on his return I could
hardly bear to have him in the room, the expression of tender sympathy
and emotion in his face was too agitating, coming fresh upon me after
his little absence.

"He cared for all our pursuits and interests, and lived our lives with
us in a way that very few fathers do. But I am certain that none of
us felt that this intimacy interfered the least with our respect or
obedience. Whatever he said was absolute truth and law to us. He always
put his whole mind into answering any of our questions. One trifling
instance makes me feel how he cared for what we cared for. He had no
special taste for cats, though he admired the pretty ways of a kitten.
But yet he knew and remembered the individualities of my many cats, and
would talk about the habits and characters of the more remarkable ones
years after they had died.

"Another characteristic of his treatment of his children was his respect
for their liberty, and for their personality. Even as quite a girl, I
remember rejoicing in this sense of freedom. Our father and mother would
not even wish to know what we were doing or thinking unless we wished
to tell. He always made us feel that we were each of us creatures whose
opinions and thoughts were valuable to him, so that whatever there was
best in us came out in the sunshine of his presence.

"I do not think his exaggerated sense of our good qualities,
intellectual or moral, made us conceited, as might perhaps have been
expected, but rather more humble and grateful to him. The reason being
no doubt that the influence of his character, of his sincerity and
greatness of nature, had a much deeper and more lasting effect than any
small exaltation which his praises or admiration may have caused to our
vanity."

As head of a household he was much loved and respected; he always spoke
to servants with politeness, using the expression, "would you be
so good," in asking for anything. He was hardly ever angry with his
servants; it shows how seldom this occurred, that when, as a small boy,
I overheard a servant being scolded, and my father speaking angrily,
it impressed me as an appalling circumstance, and I remember running up
stairs out of a general sense of awe. He did not trouble himself about
the management of the garden, cows, etc. He considered the horses so
little his concern, that he used to ask doubtfully whether he might
have a horse and cart to send to Keston for Drosera, or to the Westerham
nurseries for plants, or the like.

As a host my father had a peculiar charm: the presence of visitors
excited him, and made him appear to his best advantage. At Shrewsbury,
he used to say, it was his father's wish that the guests should be
attended to constantly, and in one of the letters to Fox he speaks
of the impossibility of writing a letter while the house was full
of company. I think he always felt uneasy at not doing more for the
entertainment of his guests, but the result was successful; and, to make
up for any loss, there was the gain that the guests felt perfectly free
to do as they liked. The most usual visitors were those who stayed
from Saturday till Monday; those who remained longer were generally
relatives, and were considered to be rather more my mother's affair than
his.

Besides these visitors, there were foreigners and other strangers,
who came down for luncheon and went away in the afternoon. He used
conscientiously to represent to them the enormous distance of Down from
London, and the labour it would be to come there, unconsciously taking
for granted that they would find the journey as toilsome as he did
himself. If, however, they were not deterred, he used to arrange their
journeys for them, telling them when to come, and practically when to
go. It was pleasant to see the way in which he shook hands with a guest
who was being welcomed for the first time; his hand used to shoot out
in a way that gave one the feeling that it was hastening to meet the
guest's hands. With old friends his hand came down with a hearty swing
into the other hand in a way I always had satisfaction in seeing. His
good-bye was chiefly characterised by the pleasant way in which he
thanked his guests, as he stood at the door, for having come to see him.

These luncheons were very successful entertainments, there was no drag
or flagging about them, my father was bright and excited throughout the
whole visit. Professor De Candolle has described a visit to Down, in
his admirable and sympathetic sketch of my father. ('Darwin considere au
point de vue des causes de son succes.'--Geneva, 1882.) He speaks of
his manner as resembling that of a "savant" of Oxford or Cambridge.
This does not strike me as quite a good comparison; in his ease and
naturalness there was more of the manner of some soldiers; a manner
arising from total absence of pretence or affectation. It was this
absence of pose, and the natural and simple way in which he began
talking to his guests, so as to get them on their own lines, which made
him so charming a host to a stranger. His happy choice of matter for
talk seemed to flow out of his sympathetic nature, and humble, vivid
interest in other people's work.

To some, I think, he caused actual pain by his modesty; I have seen the
late Francis Balfour quite discomposed by having knowledge ascribed to
himself on a point about which my father claimed to be utterly ignorant.

It is difficult to seize on the characteristics of my father's
conversation.

He had more dread than have most people of repeating his stories, and
continually said, "You must have heard me tell," or "I dare say I've
told you." One peculiarity he had, which gave a curious effect to his
conversation. The first few words of a sentence would often remind him
of some exception to, or some reason against, what he was going to say;
and this again brought up some other point, so that the sentence would
become a system of parenthesis within parenthesis, and it was often
impossible to understand the drift of what he was saying until he came
to the end of his sentence. He used to say of himself that he was not
quick enough to hold an argument with any one, and I think this was
true. Unless it was a subject on which he was just then at work, he
could not get the train of argument into working order quickly enough.
This is shown even in his letters; thus, in the case of two letters to
Prof. Semper about the effect of isolation, he did not recall the series
of facts he wanted until some days after the first letter had been sent
off.

When puzzled in talking, he had a peculiar stammer on the first word of
a sentence. I only recall this occurring with words beginning with w;
possibly he had a special difficulty with this letter, for I have heard
him say that as a boy he could not pronounce w, and that sixpence was
offered him if he could say "white wine," which he pronounced "rite
rine." Possibly he may have inherited this tendency from Erasmus
Darwin, who stammered. (My father related a Johnsonian answer of Erasmus
Darwin's: "Don't you find it very inconvenient stammering, Dr. Darwin?"
"No, sir, because I have time to think before I speak, and don't ask
impertinent questions.")

He sometimes combined his metaphors in a curious way, using such a
phrase as "holding on like life,"--a mixture of "holding on for his
life," and "holding on like grim death." It came from his eager way of
putting emphasis into what he was saying. This sometimes gave an air of
exaggeration where it was not intended; but it gave, too, a noble air
of strong and generous conviction; as, for instance, when he gave his
evidence before the Royal Commission on vivisection and came out with
his words about cruelty, "It deserves detestation and abhorrence."
When he felt strongly about any similar question, he could hardly trust
himself to speak, as he then easily became angry, a thing which he
disliked excessively. He was conscious that his anger had a tendency
to multiply itself in the utterance, and for this reason dreaded (for
example) having to scold a servant.

It was a great proof of the modesty of his style of talking, that, when,
for instance, a number of visitors came over from Sir John Lubbock's for
a Sunday afternoon call he never seemed to be preaching or lecturing,
although he had so much of the talk to himself. He was particularly
charming when "chaffing" any one, and in high spirits over it. His
manner at such times was light-hearted and boyish, and his refinement
of nature came out most strongly. So, when he was talking to a lady who
pleased and amused him, the combination of raillery and deference in his
manner was delightful to see.

When my father had several guests he managed them well, getting a talk
with each, or bringing two or three together round his chair. In
these conversations there was always a good deal of fun, and, speaking
generally, there was either a humorous turn in his talk, or a sunny
geniality which served instead. Perhaps my recollection of a pervading
element of humour is the more vivid, because the best talks were with
Mr. Huxley, in whom there is the aptness which is akin to humour, even
when humour itself is not there. My father enjoyed Mr. Huxley's humour
exceedingly, and would often say, "What splendid fun Huxley is!" I think
he probably had more scientific argument (of the nature of a fight) with
Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker.

He used to say that it grieved him to find that for the friends of his
later life he had not the warm affection of his youth. Certainly in his
early letters from Cambridge he gives proofs of very strong friendship
for Herbert and Fox; but no one except himself would have said that
his affection for his friends was not, throughout life, of the warmest
possible kind. In serving a friend he would not spare himself, and
precious time and strength were willingly given. He undoubtedly had,
to an unusual degree, the power of attaching his friends to him. He had
many warm friendships, but to Sir Joseph Hooker he was bound by ties
of affection stronger than we often see among men. He wrote in his
'Recollections,' "I have known hardly any man more lovable than Hooker."

His relationship to the village people was a pleasant one; he treated
them, one and all, with courtesy, when he came in contact with them, and
took an interest in all relating to their welfare. Some time after he
came to live at Down he helped to found a Friendly Club, and served as
treasurer for thirty years. He took much trouble about the club, keeping
its accounts with minute and scrupulous exactness, and taking pleasure
in its prosperous condition. Every Whit-Monday the club used to march
round with band and banner, and paraded on the lawn in front of the
house. There he met them, and explained to them their financial position
in a little speech seasoned with a few well worn jokes. He was often
unwell enough to make even this little ceremony an exertion, but I think
he never failed to meet them.

He was also treasurer of the Coal Club, which gave him some work, and he
acted for some years as a County Magistrate.

With regard to my father's interest in the affairs of the village, Mr.
Brodie Innes has been so good as to give me his recollections:--

"On my becoming Vicar of Down in 1846, we became friends, and so
continued till his death. His conduct towards me and my family was one
of unvarying kindness, and we repaid it by warm affection.

"In all parish matters he was an active assistant; in matters
connected with the schools, charities, and other business, his liberal
contribution was ever ready, and in the differences which at times
occurred in that, as in other parishes, I was always sure of his
support. He held that where there was really no important objection,
his assistance should be given to the clergyman, who ought to know the
circumstances best, and was chiefly responsible."

His intercourse with strangers was marked with scrupulous and rather
formal politeness, but in fact he had few opportunities of meeting
strangers.

Dr. Lane has described (Lecture by Dr. B.W. Richardson, in St. George's
Hall, October 22, 1882.) how, on the rare occasion of my father
attending a lecture (Dr. Sanderson's) at the Royal Institution, "the
whole assembly...rose to their feet to welcome him," while he seemed
"scarcely conscious that such an outburst of applause could possibly
be intended for himself." The quiet life he led at Down made him feel
confused in a large society; for instance, at the Royal Society's
soirees he felt oppressed by the numbers. The feeling that he ought
to know people, and the difficulty he had in remembering faces in his
latter years, also added to his discomfort on such occasions. He did not
realise that he would be recognised from his photographs, and I remember
his being uneasy at being obviously recognised by a stranger at the
Crystal Palace Aquarium.

I must say something of his manner of working: one characteristic of it
was his respect for time; he never forgot how precious it was. This
was shown, for instance, in the way in which he tried to curtail his
holidays; also, and more clearly, with respect to shorter periods. He
would often say, that saving the minutes was the way to get work done;
he showed his love of saving the minutes in the difference he felt
between a quarter of an hour and ten minutes' work; he never wasted a
few spare minutes from thinking that it was not worth while to set to
work. I was often struck by his way of working up to the very limit of
his strength, so that he suddenly stopped in dictating, with the words,
"I believe I mustn't do any more." The same eager desire not to lose
time was seen in his quick movements when at work. I particularly
remember noticing this when he was making an experiment on the roots of
beans, which required some care in manipulation; fastening the little
bits of card upon the roots was done carefully and necessarily slowly,
but the intermediate movements were all quick; taking a fresh bean,
seeing that the root was healthy, impaling it on a pin, fixing it on
a cork, and seeing that it was vertical, etc; all these processes were
performed with a kind of restrained eagerness. He always gave one the
impression of working with pleasure, and not with any drag. I have an
image, too, of him as he recorded the result of some experiment, looking
eagerly at each root, etc., and then writing with equal eagerness. I
remember the quick movement of his head up and down as he looked from
the object to the notes.

He saved a great deal of time through not having to do things twice.
Although he would patiently go on repeating experiments where there
was any good to be gained, he could not endure having to repeat an
experiment which ought, if complete care had been taken, to have
succeeded the first time--and this gave him a continual anxiety that the
experiment should not be wasted; he felt the experiment to be sacred,
however slight a one it was. He wished to learn as much as possible
from an experiment, so that he did not confine himself to observing
the single point to which the experiment was directed, and his power of
seeing a number of other things was wonderful. I do not think he cared
for preliminary or rough observation intended to serve as guides and
to be repeated. Any experiment done was to be of some use, and in this
connection I remember how strongly he urged the necessity of keeping the
notes of experiments which failed, and to this rule he always adhered.

In the literary part of his work he had the same horror of losing time,
and the same zeal in what he was doing at the moment, and this made him
careful not to be obliged unnecessarily to read anything a second time.

His natural tendency was to use simple methods and few instruments. The
use of the compound microscope has much increased since his youth,
and this at the expense of the simple one. It strikes us nowadays as
extraordinary that he should have had no compound microscope when he
went his "Beagle" voyage; but in this he followed the advice of Robt.
Brown, who was an authority in such matters. He always had a great
liking for the simple microscope, and maintained that nowadays it was
too much neglected, and that one ought always to see as much as possible
with the simple before taking to the compound microscope. In one of his
letters he speaks on this point, and remarks that he always suspects the
work of a man who never uses the simple microscope.

His dissecting table was a thick board, let into a window of the study;
it was lower than an ordinary table, so that he could not have worked at
it standing; but this, from wishing to save his strength, he would not
have done in any case. He sat at his dissecting-table on a curious
low stool which had belonged to his father, with a seat revolving on a
vertical spindle, and mounted on large castors, so that he could turn
easily from side to side. His ordinary tools, etc., were lying about on
the table, but besides these a number of odds and ends were kept in a
round table full of radiating drawers, and turning on a vertical axis,
which stood close by his left side, as he sat at his microscope-table.
The drawers were labelled, "best tools," "rough tools," "specimens,"
"preparations for specimens," etc. The most marked peculiarity of the
contents of these drawers was the care with which little scraps and
almost useless things were preserved; he held the well-known belief,
that if you threw a thing away you were sure to want it directly--and so
things accumulated.

If any one had looked at his tools, etc., lying on the table, he would
have been struck by an air of simpleness, make-shift, and oddness.

At his right hand were shelves, with a number of other odds and ends,
glasses, saucers, tin biscuit boxes for germinating seeds, zinc labels,
saucers full of sand, etc., etc. Considering how tidy and methodical
he was in essential things, it is curious that he bore with so many
make-shifts: for instance, instead of having a box made of a desired
shape, and stained black inside, he would hunt up something like what he
wanted and get it darkened inside with shoe-blacking; he did not care
to have glass covers made for tumblers in which he germinated seeds,
but used broken bits of irregular shape, with perhaps a narrow angle
sticking uselessly out on one side. But so much of his experimenting was
of a simple kind, that he had no need for any elaboration, and I think
his habit in this respect was in great measure due to his desire to
husband his strength, and not waste it on inessential things.

His way of marking objects may here be mentioned. If he had a number of
things to distinguish, such as leaves, flowers, etc., he tied threads of
different colours round them. In particular he used this method when
he had only two classes of objects to distinguish; thus in the case of
crossed and self-fertilised flowers, one set would be marked with
black and one with white thread, tied round the stalk of the flower. I
remember well the look of two sets of capsules, gathered and waiting to
be weighed, counted, etc., with pieces of black and of white thread to
distinguish the trays in which they lay. When he had to compare two sets
of seedlings, sowed in the same pot, he separated them by a partition of
zinc-plate; and the zinc label, which gave the necessary details about
the experiment, was always placed on a certain side, so that it became
instinctive with him to know without reading the label which were the
"crossed" and which were the "self-fertilised."

His love of each particular experiment, and his eager zeal not to lose
the fruit of it, came out markedly in these crossing experiments--in
the elaborate care he took not to make any confusion in putting capsules
into wrong trays, etc., etc. I can recall his appearance as he counted
seeds under the simple microscope with an alertness not usually
characterising such mechanical work as counting. I think he personified
each seed as a small demon trying to elude him by getting into the
wrong heap, or jumping away altogether; and this gave to the work the
excitement of a game. He had great faith in instruments, and I do not
think it naturally occurred to him to doubt the accuracy of a scale or
measuring glass, etc. He was astonished when we found that one of
his micrometers differed from the other. He did not require any great
accuracy in most of his measurements, and had not good scales; he had an
old three-foot rule, which was the common property of the household,
and was constantly being borrowed, because it was the only one which
was certain to be in its place--unless, indeed, the last borrower had
forgotten to put it back. For measuring the height of plants he had a
seven-foot deal rod, graduated by the village carpenter. Latterly he
took to using paper scales graduated to millimeters. For small
objects he used a pair of compasses and an ivory protractor. It
was characteristic of him that he took scrupulous pains in making
measurements with his somewhat rough scales. A trifling example of his
faith in authority is that he took his "inch in terms of millimeters"
from an old book, in which it turned out to be inaccurately given.
He had a chemical balance which dated from the days when he worked at
chemistry with his brother Erasmus. Measurements of capacity were made
with an apothecary's measuring glass: I remember well its rough look
and bad graduation. With this, too, I remember the great care he took
in getting the fluid-line on to the graduation. I do not mean by this
account of his instruments that any of his experiments suffered from
want of accuracy in measurement, I give them as examples of his simple
methods and faith in others--faith at least in instrument-makers, whose
whole trade was a mystery to him.

A few of his mental characteristics, bearing especially on his mode of
working, occur to me. There was one quality of mind which seemed to be
of special and extreme advantage in leading him to make discoveries.
It was the power of never letting exceptions pass unnoticed. Everybody
notices a fact as an exception when it is striking or frequent, but he
had a special instinct for arresting an exception. A point apparently
slight and unconnected with his present work is passed over by many a
man almost unconsciously with some half-considered explanation, which
is in fact no explanation. It was just these things that he seized on to
make a start from. In a certain sense there is nothing special in this
procedure, many discoveries being made by means of it. I only mention
it because, as I watched him at work, the value of this power to an
experimenter was so strongly impressed upon me.

Another quality which was shown in his experimental works was his power
of sticking to a subject; he used almost to apologise for his patience,
saying that he could not bear to be beaten, as if this were rather a
sign of weakness on his part. He often quoted the saying, "It's dogged
as does it;" and I think doggedness expresses his frame of mind almost
better than perseverance. Perseverance seems hardly to express his
almost fierce desire to force the truth to reveal itself. He often said
that it was important that a man should know the right point at which to
give up an inquiry. And I think it was his tendency to pass this point
that inclined him to apologise for his perseverance, and gave the air of
doggedness to his work.

He often said that no one could be a good observer unless he was an
active theoriser. This brings me back to what I said about his instinct
for arresting exceptions: it was as though he were charged with
theorising power ready to flow into any channel on the slightest
disturbance, so that no fact, however small, could avoid releasing a
stream of theory, and thus the fact became magnified into importance. In
this way it naturally happened that many untenable theories occurred
to him; but fortunately his richness of imagination was equalled by his
power of judging and condemning the thoughts that occurred to him. He
was just to his theories, and did not condemn them unheard; and so it
happened that he was willing to test what would seem to most people
not at all worth testing. These rather wild trials he called "fool's
experiments," and enjoyed extremely. As an example I may mention that
finding the cotyledons of Biophytum to be highly sensitive to vibrations
of the table, he fancied that they might perceive the vibrations of
sound, and therefore made me play my bassoon close to a plant. (This is
not so much an example of superabundant theorising from a small cause,
but only of his wish to test the most improbable ideas.)

The love of experiment was very strong in him, and I can remember the
way he would say, "I shan't be easy till I have tried it," as if an
outside force were driving him. He enjoyed experimenting much more than
work which only entailed reasoning, and when he was engaged on one of
his books which required argument and the marshalling of facts, he felt
experimental work to be a rest or holiday. Thus, while working upon
the 'Variations of Animals and Plants,' in 1860-61, he made out the
fertilisation of Orchids, and thought himself idle for giving so much
time to them. It is interesting to think that so important a piece of
research should have been undertaken and largely worked out as a pastime
in place of more serious work. The letters to Hooker of this period
contain expressions such as, "God forgive me for being so idle; I am
quite sillily interested in this work." The intense pleasure he took
in understanding the adaptations for fertilisation is strongly shown
in these letters. He speaks in one of his letters of his intention of
working at Drosera as a rest from the 'Descent of Man.' He has described
in his 'Recollections' the strong satisfaction he felt in solving the
problem of heterostylism. And I have heard him mention that the Geology
of South America gave him almost more pleasure than anything else. It
was perhaps this delight in work requiring keen observation that
made him value praise given to his observing powers almost more than
appreciation of his other qualities.

For books he had no respect, but merely considered them as tools to be
worked with. Thus he did not bind them, and even when a paper book fell
to pieces from use, as happened to Muller's 'Befruchtung,' he preserved
it from complete dissolution by putting a metal clip over its back.
In the same way he would cut a heavy book in half, to make it more
convenient to hold. He used to boast that he made Lyell publish the
second edition of one of his books in two volumes instead of one, by
telling him how he had been obliged to cut it in half. Pamphlets were
often treated even more severely than books, for he would tear out, for
the sake of saving room, all the pages except the one that interested
him. The consequence of all this was, that his library was not
ornamental, but was striking from being so evidently a working
collection of books.

He was methodical in his manner of reading books and pamphlets bearing
on his own work. He had one shelf on which were piled up the books
he had not yet read, and another to which they were transferred after
having been read, and before being catalogued. He would often groan over
his unread books, because there were so many which he knew he should
never read. Many a book was at once transferred to the other heap,
either marked with a cypher at the end, to show that it contained no
marked passages, or inscribed, perhaps, "not read," or "only skimmed."
The books accumulated in the "read" heap until the shelves overflowed,
and then, with much lamenting, a day was given up to the cataloguing. He
disliked this work, and as the necessity of undertaking the work became
imperative, would often say, in a voice of despair, "We really must do
these books soon."

In each book, as he read it, he marked passages bearing on his work. In
reading a book or pamphlet, etc., he made pencil-lines at the side of
the page, often adding short remarks, and at the end made a list of
the pages marked. When it was to be catalogued and put away, the marked
pages were looked at, and so a rough abstract of the book was made.
This abstract would perhaps be written under three or four headings on
different sheets, the facts being sorted out and added to the previously
collected facts in different subjects. He had other sets of abstracts
arranged, not according to subject, but according to periodical. When
collecting facts on a large scale, in earlier years, he used to
read through, and make abstracts, in this way, of whole series of
periodicals.

In some of his early letters he speaks of filling several note-books
with facts for his book on species; but it was certainly early that
he adopted his plan of using portfolios as described in the
'Recollections.' (The racks on which the portfolios were placed are
shown in the illustration, "The Study at Down," in the recess at the
right-hand side of the fire-place.) My father and M. de Candolle were
mutually pleased to discover that they had adopted the same plan of
classifying facts. De Candolle describes the method in his 'Phytologie,'
and in his sketch of my father mentions the satisfaction he felt in
seeing it in action at Down.

Besides these portfolios, of which there are some dozens full of notes,
there are large bundles of MS. marked "used" and put away. He felt the
value of his notes, and had a horror of their destruction by fire. I
remember, when some alarm of fire had happened, his begging me to be
especially careful, adding very earnestly, that the rest of his life
would be miserable if his notes and books were to be destroyed.

He shows the same feeling in writing about the loss of a manuscript,
the purport of his words being, "I have a copy, or the loss would have
killed me." In writing a book he would spend much time and labour
in making a skeleton or plan of the whole, and in enlarging and
sub-classing each heading, as described in his 'Recollections.' I think
this careful arrangement of the plan was not at all essential to the
building up of his argument, but for its presentment, and for the
arrangement of his facts. In his 'Life of Erasmus Darwin,' as it was
first printed in slips, the growth of the book from a skeleton was
plainly visible. The arrangement was altered afterwards, because it
was too formal and categorical, and seemed to give the character of his
grandfather rather by means of a list of qualities than as a complete
picture.

It was only within the last few years that he adopted a plan of writing
which he was convinced suited him best, and which is described in the
'Recollections;' namely, writing a rough copy straight off without the
slightest attention to style. It was characteristic of him that he felt
unable to write with sufficient want of care if he used his best paper,
and thus it was that he wrote on the backs of old proofs or manuscript.
The rough copy was then reconsidered, and a fair copy was made. For this
purpose he had foolscap paper ruled at wide intervals, the lines
being needed to prevent him writing so closely that correction became
difficult. The fair copy was then corrected, and was recopied before
being sent to the printers. The copying was done by Mr. E. Norman, who
began this work many years ago when village schoolmaster at Down. My
father became so used to Mr. Norman's hand-writing, that he could
not correct manuscript, even when clearly written out by one of
his children, until it had been recopied by Mr. Norman. The MS., on
returning from Mr. Norman was once more corrected, and then sent off to
the printers. Then came the work of revising and correcting the proofs,
which my father found especially wearisome.

It was at this stage that he first seriously considered the style of
what he had written. When this was going on he usually started some
other piece of work as a relief. The correction of slips consisted in
fact of two processes, for the corrections were first written in pencil,
and then re-considered and written in ink.

When the book was passing through the "slip" stage he was glad to have
corrections and suggestions from others. Thus my mother looked over
the proofs of the 'Origin.' In some of the later works my sister, Mrs.
Litchfield, did much of the correction. After my sister's marriage
perhaps most of the work fell to my share.

My sister, Mrs. Litchfield, writes:--

"This work was very interesting in itself, and it was inexpressibly
exhilarating to work for him. He was always so ready to be convinced
that any suggested alteration was an improvement, and so full of
gratitude for the trouble taken. I do not think that he ever used to
forget to tell me what improvement he thought that I had made, and he
used almost to excuse himself if he did not agree with any correction. I
think I felt the singular modesty and graciousness of his nature through
thus working for him in a way I never should otherwise have done.

"He did not write with ease, and was apt to invert his sentences both in
writing and speaking, putting the qualifying clause before it was clear
what it was to qualify. He corrected a great deal, and was eager to
express himself as well as he possibly could."

Perhaps the commonest corrections needed were of obscurities due to the
omission of a necessary link in the reasoning, something which he had
evidently omitted through familiarity with the subject. Not that there
was any fault in the sequence of the thoughts, but that from familiarity
with his argument he did not notice when the words failed to reproduce
his thought. He also frequently put too much matter into one sentence,
so that it had to be cut up into two.

On the whole, I think the pains which my father took over the literary
part of the work was very remarkable. He often laughed or grumbled at
himself for the difficulty which he found in writing English, saying,
for instance, that if a bad arrangement of a sentence was possible, he
should be sure to adopt it. He once got much amusement and satisfaction
out of the difficulty which one of the family found in writing a short
circular. He had the pleasure of correcting and laughing at obscurities,
involved sentences, and other defects, and thus took his revenge for
all the criticism he had himself to bear with. He used to quote with
astonishment Miss Martineau's advice to young authors, to write straight
off and send the MS. to the printer without correction. But in some
cases he acted in a somewhat similar manner. When a sentence got
hopelessly involved, he would ask himself, "now what DO you want
to say?" and his answer written down, would often disentangle the
confusion.

His style has been much praised; on the other hand, at least one good
judge has remarked to me that it is not a good style. It is, above all
things, direct and clear; and it is characteristic of himself in its
simplicity, bordering on naivete, and in its absence of pretence. He had
the strongest disbelief in the common idea that a classical scholar must
write good English; indeed, he thought that the contrary was the case.
In writing, he sometimes showed the same tendency to strong expressions
as he did in conversation. Thus in the 'Origin,' page 440, there is
a description of a larval cirripede, "with six pairs of beautifully
constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes, and
extremely complex antennae." We used to laugh at him for this sentence,
which we compared to an advertisement. This tendency to give himself
up to the enthusiastic turn of his thought, without fear of being
ludicrous, appears elsewhere in his writings.

His courteous and conciliatory tone towards his reader is remarkable,
and it must be partly this quality which revealed his personal sweetness
of character to so many who had never seen him. I have always felt it
to be a curious fact, that he who had altered the face of Biological
Science, and is in this respect the chief of the moderns, should have
written and worked in so essentially a non-modern spirit and manner. In
reading his books one is reminded of the older naturalists rather than
of the modern school of writers. He was a Naturalist in the old sense of
the word, that is, a man who works at many branches of the science, not
merely a specialist in one. Thus it is, that, though he founded whole
new divisions of special subjects--such as the fertilisation of flowers,
insectivorous plants, dimorphism, etc.--yet even in treating these very
subjects he does not strike the reader as a specialist. The reader feels
like a friend who is being talked to by a courteous gentleman, not like
a pupil being lectured by a professor. The tone of such a book as the
'Origin' is charming, and almost pathetic; it is the tone of a man who,
convinced of the truth of his own views, hardly expects to convince
others; it is just the reverse of the style of a fanatic, who wants to
force people to believe. The reader is never scorned for any amount of
doubt which he may be imagined to feel, and his scepticism is
treated with patient respect. A sceptical reader, or perhaps even
an unreasonable reader, seems to have been generally present to his
thoughts. It was in consequence of this feeling, perhaps, that he took
much trouble over points which he imagined would strike the reader, or
save him trouble, and so tempt him to read.

For the same reason he took much interest in the illustrations of
his books, and I think rated rather too highly their value. The
illustrations for his earlier books were drawn by professional artists.
This was the case in 'Animals and Plants,' the 'Descent of Man,' and
the 'Expression of the Emotions.' On the other hand, 'Climbing Plants,'
'Insectivorous Plants,' the 'Movements of Plants,' and 'Forms
of Flowers,' were, to a large extent, illustrated by some of his
children--my brother George having drawn by far the most. It was
delightful to draw for him, as he was enthusiastic in his praise of very
moderate performances. I remember well his charming manner of receiving
the drawings of one of his daughters-in-law, and how he would finish his
words of praise by saying, "Tell A--, Michael Angelo is nothing to
it." Though he praised so generously, he always looked closely at the
drawing, and easily detected mistakes or carelessness.

He had a horror of being lengthy, and seems to have been really much
annoyed and distressed when he found how the 'Variations of Animals and
Plants' was growing under his hands. I remember his cordially agreeing
with 'Tristram Shandy's' words, "Let no man say, 'Come, I'll write a
duodecimo.'"

His consideration for other authors was as marked a characteristic as
his tone towards his reader. He speaks of all other authors as persons
deserving of respect. In cases where, as in the case of --'s experiments
on Drosera, he thought lightly of the author, he speaks of him in such a
way that no one would suspect it. In other cases he treats the confused
writings of ignorant persons as though the fault lay with himself for
not appreciating or understanding them. Besides this general tone of
respect, he had a pleasant way of expressing his opinion on the value of
a quoted work, or his obligation for a piece of private information.

His respectful feeling was not only morally beautiful, but was I
think of practical use in making him ready to consider the ideas and
observations of all manner of people. He used almost to apologise for
this, and would say that he was at first inclined to rate everything too
highly.

It was a great merit in his mind that, in spite of having so strong a
respectful feeling towards what he read, he had the keenest of instincts
as to whether a man was trustworthy or not. He seemed to form a very
definite opinion as to the accuracy of the men whose books he read; and
made use of this judgment in his choice of facts for use in argument
or as illustrations. I gained the impression that he felt this power of
judging of a man's trustworthiness to be of much value.

He had a keen feeling of the sense of honour that ought to reign among
authors, and had a horror of any kind of laxness in quoting. He had
a contempt for the love of honour and glory, and in his letters often
blames himself for the pleasure he took in the success of his books,
as though he were departing from his ideal--a love of truth and
carelessness about fame. Often, when writing to Sir J. Hooker what he
calls a boasting letter, he laughs at himself for his conceit and want
of modesty. There is a wonderfully interesting letter which he wrote
to my mother bequeathing to her, in case of his death, the care of
publishing the manuscript of his first essay on evolution. This letter
seems to me full of the intense desire that his theory should succeed
as a contribution to knowledge, and apart from any desire for personal
fame. He certainly had the healthy desire for success which a man of
strong feelings ought to have. But at the time of the publication of
the 'Origin' it is evident that he was overwhelmingly satisfied with the
adherence of such men as Lyell, Hooker, Huxley, and Asa Gray, and did
not dream of or desire any such wide and general fame as he attained to.

Connected with his contempt for the undue love of fame, was an equally
strong dislike of all questions of priority. The letters to Lyell, at
the time of the 'Origin,' show the anger he felt with himself for not
being able to repress a feeling of disappointment at what he thought
was Mr. Wallace's forestalling of all his years of work. His sense of
literary honour comes out strongly in these letters; and his feeling
about priority is again shown in the admiration expressed in his
'Recollections' of Mr. Wallace's self-annihilation.

His feeling about reclamations, including answers to attacks and all
kinds of discussions, was strong. It is simply expressed in a letter to
Falconer (1863?), "If I ever felt angry towards you, for whom I have a
sincere friendship, I should begin to suspect that I was a little mad. I
was very sorry about your reclamation, as I think it is in every case
a mistake and should be left to others. Whether I should so act myself
under provocation is a different question." It was a feeling partly
dictated by instinctive delicacy, and partly by a strong sense of the
waste of time, energy, and temper thus caused. He said that he owed his
determination not to get into discussions (He departed from his rule in
his "Note on the Habits of the Pampas Woodpecker, Colaptes campestris,"
'Proc. Zool. Soc.,' 1870, page 705: also in a letter published in the
'Athenaeum' (1863, page 554), in which case he afterwards regretted
that he had not remained silent. His replies to criticisms, in the later
editions of the 'Origin,' can hardly be classed as infractions of his
rule.) to the advice of Lyell,--advice which he transmitted to those
among his friends who were given to paper warfare.

If the character of my father's working life is to be understood, the
conditions of ill-health, under which he worked, must be constantly
borne in mind. He bore his illness with such uncomplaining patience,
that even his children can hardly, I believe, realise the extent of his
habitual suffering. In their case the difficulty is heightened by the
fact that, from the days of their earliest recollections, they saw him
in constant ill-health,--and saw him, in spite of it, full of pleasure
in what pleased them. Thus, in later life, their perception of what he
endured had to be disentangled from the impression produced in childhood
by constant genial kindness under conditions of unrecognised difficulty.
No one indeed, except my mother, knows the full amount of suffering
he endured, or the full amount of his wonderful patience. For all the
latter years of his life she never left him for a night; and her days
were so planned that all his resting hours might be shared with her. She
shielded him from every avoidable annoyance, and omitted nothing that
might save him trouble, or prevent him becoming overtired, or that might
alleviate the many discomforts of his ill-health. I hesitate to speak
thus freely of a thing so sacred as the life-long devotion which
prompted all this constant and tender care. But it is, I repeat, a
principal feature of his life, that for nearly forty years he never knew
one day of the health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one
long struggle against the weariness and strain of sickness. And this
cannot be told without speaking of the one condition which enabled him
to bear the strain and fight out the struggle to the end.


LETTERS.

The earliest letters to which I have access are those written by my
father when an undergraduate at Cambridge.

The history of his life, as told in his correspondence, must therefore
begin with this period.




CHAPTER 1.IV. -- CAMBRIDGE LIFE.

[My father's Cambridge life comprises the time between the Lent Term,
1828, when he came up as a Freshman, and the end of the May Term, 1831,
when he took his degree and left the University.]

It appears from the College books, that my father "admissus est
pensionarius minor sub Magistro Shaw" on October 15, 1827. He did not
come into residence till the Lent Term, 1828, so that, although he
passed his examination in due season, he was unable to take his degree
at the usual time,--the beginning of the Lent Term, 1831. In such a case
a man usually took his degree before Ash-Wednesday, when he was called
"Baccalaureus ad Diem Cinerum," and ranked with the B.A.'s of the
year. My father's name, however, occurs in the list of Bachelors
"ad Baptistam," or those admitted between Ash-Wednesday and St. John
Baptist's Day (June 24th); ("On Tuesday last Charles Darwin, of Christ's
College, was admitted B.A."--"Cambridge Chronicle", Friday, April 29,
1831.) he therefore took rank among the Bachelors of 1832.

He "kept" for a term or two in lodgings, over Bacon the tobacconist's;
not, however, over the shop in the Market Place, now so well known to
Cambridge men, but in Sidney Street. For the rest of his time he had
pleasant rooms on the south side of the first court of Christ's. (The
rooms are on the first floor, on the west side of the middle staircase.
A medallion (given by my brother) has recently been let into the wall of
the sitting-room.)

What determined the choice of this college for his brother Erasmus
and himself I have no means of knowing. Erasmus the elder, their
grandfather, had been at St. John's, and this college might have been
reasonably selected for them, being connected with Shrewsbury School.
But the life of an under-graduate at St. John's seems, in those days, to
have been a troubled one, if I may judge from the fact that a relative
of mine migrated thence to Christ's to escape the harassing discipline
of the place. A story told by Mr. Herbert illustrates the same state of
things:--

"In the beginning of the October Term of 1830, an incident occurred
which was attended with somewhat disagreeable, though ludicrous
consequences to myself. Darwin asked me to take a long walk with him in
the Fens, to search for some natural objects he was desirous of having.
After a very long, fatiguing day's work, we dined together, late in the
evening, at his rooms in Christ's College; and as soon as our dinner was
over we threw ourselves into easy chairs and fell sound asleep. I was
first to awake, about three in the morning, when, having looked at my
watch, and knowing the strict rule of St. John's, which required men in
statu pupillari to come into college before midnight, I rushed homeward
at the utmost speed, in fear of the consequences, but hoping that the
Dean would accept the excuse as sufficient when I told him the
real facts. He, however, was inexorable, and refused to receive my
explanations, or any evidence I could bring; and although during
my undergraduateship I had never been reported for coming late into
College, now, when I was a hard-working B.A., and had five or six
pupils, he sentenced me to confinement to the College walls for the
rest of the term. Darwin's indignation knew no bounds, and the stupid
injustice and tyranny of the Dean raised not only a perfect ferment
among my friends, but was the subject of expostulation from some of the
leading members of the University."

My father seems to have found no difficulty in living at peace with
all men in and out of office at Lady Margaret's other foundation. The
impression of a contemporary of my father's is that Christ's in their
day was a pleasant, fairly quiet college, with some tendency towards
"horsiness"; many of the men made a custom of going to Newmarket during
the races, though betting was not a regular practice. In this they were
by no means discouraged by the Senior Tutor, Mr. Shaw, who was himself
generally to be seen on the Heath on these occasions. There was a
somewhat high proportion of Fellow-Commoners,--eight or nine, to sixty
or seventy Pensioners, and this would indicate that it was not an
unpleasant college for men with money to spend and with no great love of
strict discipline.

The way in which the service was conducted in chapel shows that the
Dean, at least, was not over zealous. I have heard my father tell how
at evening chapel the Dean used to read alternate verses of the Psalms,
without making even a pretence of waiting for the congregation to take
their share. And when the Lesson was a lengthy one, he would rise and
go on with the Canticles after the scholar had read fifteen or twenty
verses.

It is curious that my father often spoke of his Cambridge life as if it
had been so much time wasted, forgetting that, although the set studies
of the place were barren enough for him, he yet gained in the highest
degree the best advantages of a University life--the contact with men
and an opportunity for his mind to grow vigorously. It is true that he
valued at its highest the advantages which he gained from associating
with Professor Henslow and some others, but he seemed to consider this
as a chance outcome of his life at Cambridge, not an advantage for which
Alma Mater could claim any credit. One of my father's Cambridge friends
was the late Mr. J.M. Herbert, County Court Judge for South Wales, from
whom I was fortunate enough to obtain some notes which help us to gain
an idea of how my father impressed his contemporaries. Mr. Herbert
writes: "I think it was in the spring of 1828 that I first met Darwin,
either at my cousin Whitley's rooms in St. John's, or at the rooms of
some other of his old Shrewsbury schoolfellows, with many of whom I was
on terms of great intimacy. But it certainly was in the summer of that
year that our acquaintance ripened into intimacy, when we happened to
be together at Barmouth, for the Long Vacation, reading with private
tutors,--he with Batterton of St. John's, his Classical and Mathematical
Tutor, and I with Yate of St. John's."

The intercourse between them practically ceased in 1831, when my father
said goodbye to Herbert at Cambridge, on starting on his "Beagle"
voyage. I once met Mr. Herbert, then almost an old man, and I was much
struck by the evident warmth and freshness of the affection with which
he remembered my father. The notes from which I quote end with this
warm-hearted eulogium: "It would be idle for me to speak of his vast
intellectual powers...but I cannot end this cursory and rambling sketch
without testifying, and I doubt not all his surviving college friends
would concur with me, that he was the most genial, warm-hearted,
generous, and affectionate of friends; that his sympathies were with all
that was good and true; and that he had a cordial hatred for everything
false, or vile, or cruel, or mean, or dishonourable. He was not only
great, but pre-eminently good, and just, and loveable."

Two anecdotes told by Mr. Herbert show that my father's feeling for
suffering, whether of man or beast, was as strong in him as a young man
as it was in later years: "Before he left Cambridge he told me that he
had made up his mind not to shoot any more; that he had had two days'
shooting at his friend's, Mr. Owen of Woodhouse; and that on the second
day, when going over some of the ground they had beaten on the day
before, he picked up a bird not quite dead, but lingering from a shot it
had received on the previous day; and that it had made and left such a
painful impression on his mind, that he could not reconcile it to his
conscience to continue to derive pleasure from a sport which inflicted
such cruel suffering."

To realise the strength of the feeling that led to this resolve, we must
remember how passionate was his love of sport. We must recall the
boy shooting his first snipe ('Recollections.'), and trembling with
excitement so that he could hardly reload his gun. Or think of such a
sentence as, "Upon my soul, it is only about a fortnight to the 'First,'
then if there is a bliss on earth that is it." (Letter from C. Darwin to
W.D. Fox.)

Another anecdote told by Mr. Herbert illustrates again his tenderness of
heart:--

"When at Barmouth he and I went to an exhibition of 'learned dogs.' In
the middle of the entertainment one of the dogs failed in performing the
trick his master told him to do. On the man reproving him, the dog put
on a most piteous expression, as if in fear of the whip. Darwin seeing
it, asked me to leave with him, saying, 'Come along, I can't stand this
any longer; how those poor dogs must have been licked.'"

It is curious that the same feeling recurred to my father more
than fifty years afterwards, on seeing some performing dogs at the
Westminster Aquarium; on this occasion he was reassured by the manager
telling him that the dogs were taught more by reward than by punishment.
Mr. Herbert goes on:--"It stirred one's inmost depth of feeling to hear
him descant upon, and groan over, the horrors of the slave-trade, or the
cruelties to which the suffering Poles were subjected at Warsaw...These,
and other like proofs have left on my mind the conviction that a more
humane or tender-hearted man never lived."

His old college friends agree in speaking with affectionate warmth of
his pleasant, genial temper as a young man. From what they have been
able to tell me, I gain the impression of a young man overflowing with
animal spirits--leading a varied healthy life--not over-industrious in
the set of studies of the place, but full of other pursuits, which were
followed with a rejoicing enthusiasm. Entomology, riding, shooting in
the fens, suppers and card-playing, music at King's Chapel, engravings
at the Fitzwilliam Museum, walks with Professor Henslow--all combined
to fill up a happy life. He seems to have infected others with his
enthusiasm. Mr. Herbert relates how, during the same Barmouth summer,
he was pressed into the service of "the science"--as my father called
collecting beetles. They took their daily walks together among the hills
behind Barmouth, or boated in the Mawddach estuary, or sailed to
Sarn Badrig to land there at low water, or went fly-fishing in the
Cors-y-gedol lakes. "On these occasions Darwin entomologized most
industriously, picking up creatures as he walked along, and bagging
everything which seemed worthy of being pursued, or of further
examination. And very soon he armed me with a bottle of alcohol, in
which I had to drop any beetle which struck me as not of a common kind.
I performed this duty with some diligence in my constitutional walks;
but alas! my powers of discrimination seldom enabled me to secure a
prize--the usual result, on his examining the contents of my bottle,
being an exclamation, 'Well, old Cherbury' (No doubt in allusion to the
title of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.) (the nickname he gave me, and by
which he usually addressed me), 'none of these will do.'" Again, the
Rev. T. Butler, who was one of the Barmouth reading-party in 1828, says:
"He inoculated me with a taste for Botany which has stuck by me all my
life."

Archdeacon Watkins, another old college friend of my father's,
remembers him unearthing beetles in the willows between Cambridge and
Grantchester, and speaks of a certain beetle the remembrance of whose
name is "Crux major." (Panagaeus crux-major.) How enthusiastically must
my father have exulted over this beetle to have impressed its name on
a companion so that he remembers it after half a century! Archdeacon
Watkins goes on: "I do not forget the long and very interesting
conversations that we had about Brazilian scenery and tropical
vegetation of all sorts. Nor do I forget the way and the vehemence
with which he rubbed his chin when he got excited on such subjects, and
discoursed eloquently of lianas, orchids, etc."

He became intimate with Henslow, the Professor of Botany, and through
him with some other older members of the University. "But," Mr. Herbert
writes, "he always kept up the closest connection with the friends of
his own standing; and at our frequent social gatherings--at breakfast,
wine or supper parties--he was ever one of the most cheerful, the most
popular, and the most welcome."

My father formed one of a club for dining once a week, called the
Gourmet (Mr. Herbert mentions the name as 'The Glutton Club.') Club,
the members, besides himself and Mr. Herbert (from whom I quote), being
Whitley of St. John's, now Honorary Canon of Durham (Formerly Reader
in Natural Philosophy at Durham University.); Heaviside of Sidney, now
Canon of Norwich; Lovett Cameron of Trinity, now vicar of Shoreham;
Blane of Trinity, who held a high post during the Crimean war; H. Lowe
(Brother of Lord Sherbrooke.) (Now Sherbrooke) of Trinity Hall; and
Watkins of Emmanuel, now Archdeacon of York. The origin of the club's
name seems already to have become involved in obscurity. Mr. Herbert
says that it was chosen in derision of another "set of men who called
themselves by a long Greek name signifying 'fond of dainties,' but who
falsified their claim to such a designation by their weekly practice of
dining at some roadside inn, six miles from Cambridge, on mutton chops
or beans and bacon." Another old member of the club tells me that the
name arose because the members were given to making experiments on
"birds and beasts which were before unknown to human palate." He says
that hawk and bittern were tried, and that their zeal broke down over
an old brown owl, "which was indescribable." At any rate, the meetings
seemed to have been successful, and to have ended with "a game of mild
vingt-et-un."

Mr. Herbert gives an amusing account of the musical examinations
described by my father in his "Recollections." Mr. Herbert speaks
strongly of his love of music, and adds, "What gave him the greatest
delight was some grand symphony or overture of Mozart's or Beethoven's,
with their full harmonies." On one occasion Herbert remembers
"accompanying him to the afternoon service at King's, when we heard
a very beautiful anthem. At the end of one of the parts, which was
exceedingly impressive, he turned round to me and said, with a deep
sigh, 'How's your backbone?'" He often spoke of a feeling of coldness or
shivering in his back on hearing beautiful music.

Besides a love of music, he had certainly at this time a love of fine
literature; and Mr. Cameron tells me that he used to read Shakespeare
to my father in his rooms at Christ's, who took much pleasure in it.
He also speaks of his "great liking for first-class line engravings,
especially those of Raphael Morghen and Muller; and he spent hours in
the Fitzwilliam Museum in looking over the prints in that collection."

My father's letters to Fox show how sorely oppressed he felt by the
reading of an examination: "I am reading very hard, and have spirits for
nothing. I actually have not stuck a beetle this term." His despair over
mathematics must have been profound, when he expressed a hope that Fox's
silence is due to "your being ten fathoms deep in the Mathematics; and
if you are, God help you, for so am I, only with this difference, I
stick fast in the mud at the bottom, and there I shall remain." Mr.
Herbert says: "He had, I imagine, no natural turn for mathematics, and
he gave up his mathematical reading before he had mastered the first
part of Algebra, having had a special quarrel with Surds and the
Binomial Theorem."

We get some evidence from his letters to Fox of my father's intention
of going into the Church. "I am glad," he writes (March 18, 1829.), "to
hear that you are reading divinity. I should like to know what books
you are reading, and your opinions about them; you need not be afraid
of preaching to me prematurely." Mr. Herbert's sketch shows how doubts
arose in my father's mind as to the possibility of his taking Orders.
He writes, "We had an earnest conversation about going into Holy Orders;
and I remember his asking me, with reference to the question put by the
Bishop in the ordination service, 'Do you trust that you are inwardly
moved by the Holy Spirit, etc.,' whether I could answer in the
affirmative, and on my saying I could not, he said, 'Neither can I,
and therefore I cannot take orders.'" This conversation appears to have
taken place in 1829, and if so, the doubts here expressed must have been
quieted, for in May 1830, he speaks of having some thoughts of reading
divinity with Henslow.

[The greater number of the following letters are addressed by my father
to his cousin, William Darwin Fox. Mr. Fox's relationship to my father
is shown in the pedigree given in Chapter I. The degree of kinship
appears to have remained a problem to my father, as he signs himself in
one letter "cousin/n to the power 2." Their friendship was, in fact, due
to their being undergraduates together. My father's letters show clearly
enough how genuine the friendship was. In after years, distance, large
families, and ill-health on both sides, checked the intercourse; but a
warm feeling of friendship remained. The correspondence was never quite
dropped and continued till Mr. Fox's death in 1880. Mr. Fox took orders,
and worked as a country clergyman until forced by ill-health to leave
his living in Delamare Forest. His love of natural history remained
strong, and he became a skilled fancier of many kinds of birds, etc.
The index to 'Animals and Plants,' and my father's later correspondence,
show how much help he received from his old College friend.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.M. HERBERT. Saturday Evening [September 14, 1828].
(The postmark being Derby seems to show that the letter was written from
his cousin, W.D. Fox's house, Osmaston, near Derby.)

My dear old Cherbury,

I am about to fulfil my promise of writing to you, but I am sorry to add
there is a very selfish motive at the bottom. I am going to ask you
a great favour, and you cannot imagine how much you will oblige me by
procuring some more specimens of some insects which I dare say I can
describe. In the first place, I must inform you that I have taken
some of the rarest of the British Insects, and their being found near
Barmouth, is quite unknown to the Entomological world: I think I shall
write and inform some of the crack entomologists.

But now for business. SEVERAL more specimens, if you can procure them
without much trouble, of the following insects:--The violet-black
coloured beetle, found on Craig Storm (The top of the hill immediately
behind Barmouth was called Craig-Storm, a hybrid Cambro-English word.),
under stones, also a large smooth black one very like it; a bluish
metallic-coloured dung-beetle, which is VERY common on the hill-sides;
also, if you WOULD be so very kind as to cross the ferry, and you
will find a great number under the stones on the waste land of a long,
smooth, jet-black beetle (a great many of these); also, in the same
situation, a very small pinkish insect, with black spots, with a curved
thorax projecting beyond the head; also, upon the marshy land over the
ferry, near the sea, under old sea-weed, stones, etc., you will find a
small yellowish transparent beetle, with two or four blackish marks on
the back. Under these stones there are two sorts, one much darker than
the other; the lighter-coloured is that which I want. These last two
insects are EXCESSIVELY RARE, and you will really EXTREMELY oblige me by
taking all this trouble pretty soon; remember me most kindly to Butler,
tell him of my success, and I dare say both of you will easily recognise
these insects. I hope his caterpillars go on well. I think many of the
Chrysalises are well worth keeping. I really am quite ashamed [of] so
long a letter all about my own concerns; but do return good for evil,
and send me a long account of all your proceedings.

In the first week I killed seventy-five head of game--a very
contemptible number--but there are very few birds. I killed, however, a
brace of black game. Since then I have been staying at the Fox's, near
Derby; it is a very pleasant house, and the music meeting went off very
well. I want to hear how Yates likes his gun, and what use he has made
of it.

If the bottle is not large you can buy another for me, and when you pass
through Shrewsbury you can leave these treasures, and I hope, if you
possibly can, you will stay a day or two with me, as I hope I need
not say how glad I shall be to see you again. Fox remarked what deuced
good-natured fellows your friends at Barmouth must be; and if I did not
know how you and Butler were so, I would not think of giving you so much
trouble.

Believe me, my dear Herbert, Yours, most sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN.
Remember me to all friends.


[In the following January we find him looking forward with pleasure to
the beginning of another year of his Cambridge life: he writes to Fox--

"I waited till to-day for the chance of a letter, but I will wait no
longer. I must most sincerely and cordially congratulate you on
having finished all your labours. I think your place a VERY GOOD one
considering by how much you have beaten many men who had the start of
you in reading. I do so wish I were now in Cambridge (a very selfish
wish, however, as I was not with you in all your troubles and misery),
to join in all the glory and happiness, which dangers gone by can give.
How we would talk, walk, and entomologise! Sappho should be the best of
bitches, and Dash, of dogs: then should be 'peace on earth, good will to
men,'--which, by the way, I always think the most perfect description of
happiness that words can give."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Cambridge, Thursday [February 26, 1829].

My dear Fox,

When I arrived here on Tuesday I found to my great grief and surprise, a
letter on my table which I had written to you about a fortnight ago, the
stupid porter never took the trouble of getting the letter forwarded. I
suppose you have been abusing me for a most ungrateful wretch; but I am
sure you will pity me now, as nothing is so vexatious as having written
a letter in vain.

Last Thursday I left Shrewsbury for London, and stayed there till
Tuesday, on which I came down here by the 'Times.' The first two days
I spent entirely with Mr. Hope (Founder of the Chair of Zoology at
Oxford.), and did little else but talk about and look at insects; his
collection is most magnificent, and he himself is the most generous of
entomologists; he has given me about 160 new species, and actually often
wanted to give me the rarest insects of which he had only two specimens.
He made many civil speeches, and hoped you will call on him some
time with me, whenever we should happen to be in London. He greatly
compliments our exertions in Entomology, and says we have taken a
wonderfully great number of good insects. On Sunday I spent the day with
Holland, who lent me a horse to ride in the Park with.

On Monday evening I drank tea with Stephens (J.F. Stephens, author of 'A
Manual of British Coleoptera,' 1839, and other works.); his cabinet is
more magnificent than the most zealous entomologist could dream of; he
appears to be a very good-humoured pleasant little man. Whilst in town I
went to the Royal Institution, Linnean Society, and Zoological Gardens,
and many other places where naturalists are gregarious. If you had been
with me, I think London would be a very delightful place; as things
were, it was much pleasanter than I could have supposed such a dreary
wilderness of houses to be.

I shot whilst in Shrewsbury a Dundiver (female Goosander, as I suppose
you know). Shaw has stuffed it, and when I have an opportunity I will
send it to Osmaston. There have been shot also five Waxen Chatterers,
three of which Shaw has for sale; would you like to purchase a specimen?
I have not yet thanked you for your last very long and agreeable letter.
It would have been still more agreeable had it contained the joyful
intelligence that you were coming up here; my two solitary breakfasts
have already made me aware how very very much I shall miss you.

...

Believe me, My dear old Fox, Most sincerely yours, C. DARWIN.


[Later on in the Lent term he writes to Fox:--

"I am leading a quiet everyday sort of a life; a little of Gibbon's
History in the morning, and a good deal of "Van John" in the evening;
this, with an occasional ride with Simcox and constitutional with
Whitley, makes up the regular routine of my days. I see a good deal both
of Herbert and Whitley, and the more I see of them increases every day
the respect I have for their excellent understandings and dispositions.
They have been giving some very gay parties, nearly sixty men there both
evenings."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Christ's College [Cambridge], April 1
[1829].

My dear Fox,

In your letter to Holden you are pleased to observe "that of all the
blackguards you ever met with I am the greatest." Upon this observation
I shall make no remarks, excepting that I must give you all due credit
for acting on it most rigidly. And now I should like to know in what one
particular are you less of a blackguard than I am? You idle old wretch,
why have you not answered my last letter, which I am sure I forwarded to
Clifton nearly three weeks ago? If I was not really very anxious to hear
what you are doing, I should have allowed you to remain till you thought
it worth while to treat me like a gentleman. And now having vented my
spleen in scolding you, and having told you, what you must know, how
very much and how anxiously I want to hear how you and your family are
getting on at Clifton, the purport of this letter is finished. If you
did but know how often I think of you, and how often I regret your
absence, I am sure I should have heard from you long enough ago.

I find Cambridge rather stupid, and as I know scarcely any one that
walks, and this joined with my lips not being quite so well, has reduced
me to a sort of hybernation... I have caught Mr. Harbour letting --
have the first pick of the beetles; accordingly we have made our final
adieus, my part in the affecting scene consisted in telling him he was a
d--d rascal, and signifying I should kick him down the stairs if ever
he appeared in my rooms again. It seemed altogether mightily to
surprise the young gentleman. I have no news to tell you; indeed, when
a correspondence has been broken off like ours has been, it is difficult
to make the first start again. Last night there was a terrible fire at
Linton, eleven miles from Cambridge. Seeing the reflection so plainly in
the sky, Hall, Woodyeare, Turner, and myself thought we would ride and
see it. We set out at half-past nine, and rode like incarnate devils
there, and did not return till two in the morning. Altogether it was a
most awful sight. I cannot conclude without telling you, that of all the
blackguards I ever met with, you are the greatest and the best.

C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. [Cambridge, Thursday, April 23, 1829.]

My dear Fox,

I have delayed answering your last letter for these few days, as I
thought that under such melancholy circumstances my writing to you would
be probably only giving you trouble. This morning I received a letter
from Catherine informing me of that event (The death of Fox's sister,
Mrs. Bristowe.), which, indeed, from your letter, I had hardly dared to
hope would have happened otherwise. I feel most sincerely and deeply for
you and all your family; but at the same time, as far as any one can,
by his own good principles and religion, be supported under such a
misfortune, you, I am assured, will know where to look for such support.
And after so pure and holy a comfort as the Bible affords, I am equally
assured how useless the sympathy of all friends must appear, although
it be as heartfelt and sincere, as I hope you believe me capable of
feeling. At such a time of deep distress I will say nothing more,
excepting that I trust your father and Mrs. Fox bear this blow as well
as, under such circumstances, can be hoped for.

I am afraid it will be a long time, my dear Fox, before we meet; till
then, believe me at all times,

Yours most affectionately, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Shrewsbury, Friday [July 4, 1829].

My dear Fox,

I should have written to you before only that whilst our expedition
lasted I was too much engaged, and the conclusion was so unfortunate,
that I was too unhappy to write to you till this week's quiet at home.
The thoughts of Woodhouse next week has at last given me courage to
relate my unfortunate case.

I started from this place about a fortnight ago to take an entomological
trip with Mr. Hope through all North Wales; and Barmouth was our first
destination. The two first days I went on pretty well, taking several
good insects; but for the rest of that week my lips became suddenly so
bad (Probably with eczema, from which he often suffered.), and I myself
not very well, that I was unable to leave the room, and on the Monday I
retreated with grief and sorrow back again to Shrewsbury. The first two
days I took some good insects...But the days that I was unable to go
out, Mr. Hope did wonders...and to-day I have received another parcel
of insects from him, such Colymbetes, such Carabi, and such magnificent
Elaters (two species of the bright scarlet sort). I am sure you will
properly sympathise with my unfortunate situation: I am determined I
will go over the same ground that he does before autumn comes, and if
working hard will procure insects I will bring home a glorious
stock....

My dear Fox, Yours most sincerely, CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Shrewsbury, July 18, 1829.

I am going to Maer next week in order to entomologise, and shall
stay there a week, and for the rest of this summer I intend to lead a
perfectly idle and wandering life...You see I am much in the same state
that you are, with this difference, you make good resolutions and never
keep them; I never make them, so cannot keep them; it is all very well
writing in this manner, but I must read for my Little-go. Graham smiled
and bowed so very civilly, when he told me that he was one of the
six appointed to make the examination stricter, and that they were
determined this would make it a very different thing from any previous
examination, that from all this I am sure it will be the very devil to
pay amongst all idle men and entomologists. Erasmus, we expect home in
a few weeks' time: he intends passing next winter in Paris. Be sure you
order the two lists of insects published by Stephens, one printed on
both sides, and the other only on one; you will find them very useful in
many points of view.

Dear old Fox, yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Christ's College, Thursday [October 16,
1829].

My dear Fox,

I am afraid you will be very angry with me for not having written during
the Music Meeting, but really I was worked so hard that I had no time; I
arrived here on Monday and found my rooms in dreadful confusion, as
they have been taking up the floor, and you may suppose that I have had
plenty to do for these two days. The Music Meeting (At Birmingham.) was
the most glorious thing I ever experienced; and as for Malibran, words
cannot praise her enough, she is quite the most charming person I
ever saw. We had extracts out of several of the best operas, acted in
character, and you cannot imagine how very superior it made the concerts
to any I ever heard before. J. de Begnis (De Begnis's Christian name
was Giuseppe.) acted 'Il Fanatico' in character; being dressed up an
extraordinary figure gives a much greater effect to his acting. He kept
the whole theatre in roars of laughter. I liked Madame Blasis very much,
but nothing will do after Malibran, who sung some comic songs, and [a]
person's heart must have been made of stone not to have lost it to her.
I lodged very near the Wedgwoods, and lived entirely with them, which
was very pleasant, and had you been there it would have been quite
perfect. It knocked me up most dreadfully, and I will never attempt
again to do two things the same day.

...

CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. [Cambridge] Thursday [March, 1830].

My dear Fox,

I am through my Little-Go!!! I am too much exalted to humble myself by
apologising for not having written before. But I assure you before I
went in, and when my nerves were in a shattered and weak condition,
your injured person often rose before my eyes and taunted me with my
idleness. But I am through, through, through. I could write the whole
sheet full with this delightful word. I went in yesterday, and have just
heard the joyful news. I shall not know for a week which class I am in.
The whole examination is carried on in a different system. It has one
grand advantage--being over in one day. They are rather strict, and ask
a wonderful number of questions.

And now I want to know something about your plans; of course you intend
coming up here: what fun we will have together; what beetles we will
catch; it will do my heart good to go once more together to some of our
old haunts. I have two very promising pupils in Entomology, and we will
make regular campaigns into the Fens. Heaven protect the beetles and
Mr. Jenyns, for we won't leave him a pair in the whole country. My new
Cabinet is come down, and a gay little affair it is.

And now for the time--I think I shall go for a few days to town to hear
an opera and see Mr. Hope; not to mention my brother also, whom I should
have no objection to see. If I go pretty soon, you can come afterwards,
but if you will settle your plans definitely, I will arrange mine,
so send me a letter by return of post. And I charge you let it be
favourable--that is to say, come directly. Holden has been ordained,
and drove the Coach out on the Monday. I do not think he is looking very
well. Chapman wants you and myself to pay him a visit when you come up,
and begs to be remembered to you. You must excuse this short letter,
as I have no end more to send off by this day's post. I long to see you
again, and till then,

My dear good old Fox, Yours most sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN.


[In August he was in North Wales and wrote to Fox:--

"I have been intending to write every hour for the last fortnight, but
REALLY have had no time. I left Shrewsbury this day fortnight ago, and
have since that time been working from morning to night in catching fish
or beetles. This is literally the first idle day I have had to myself;
for on the rainy days I go fishing, on the good ones entomologising. You
may recollect that for the fortnight previous to all this, you told me
not to write, so that I hope I have made out some sort of defence for
not having sooner answered your two long and very agreeable letters."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. [Cambridge, November 5, 1830.]

My dear Fox,

I have so little time at present, and am so disgusted by reading that
I have not the heart to write to anybody. I have only written once home
since I came up. This must excuse me for not having answered your three
letters, for which I am really very much obliged...

I have not stuck an insect this term, and scarcely opened a case. If
I had time I would have sent you the insects which I have so long
promised; but really I have not spirits or time to do anything. Reading
makes me quite desperate; the plague of getting up all my subjects is
next thing to intolerable. Henslow is my tutor, and a most ADMIRABLE one
he makes; the hour with him is the pleasantest in the whole day. I think
he is quite the most perfect man I ever met with. I have been to some
very pleasant parties there this term. His good-nature is unbounded.

I am sure you will be sorry to hear poor old Whitley's father is dead.
In a worldly point of view it is of great consequence to him, as it will
prevent him going to the Bar for some time.--(Be sure answer this:) What
did you pay for the iron hoop you had made in Shrewsbury? Because I
do not mean to pay the whole of the Cambridge man's bill. You need not
trouble yourself about the Phallus, as I have bought up both species. I
have heard men say that Henslow has some curious religious opinions. I
never perceived anything of it, have you? I am very glad to hear, after
all your delays, you have heard of a curacy where you may read all the
commandments without endangering your throat. I am also still more glad
to hear that your mother continues steadily to improve. I do trust that
you will have no further cause for uneasiness. With every wish for your
happiness, my dear old Fox,

Believe me yours most sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Cambridge, Sunday, January 23, 1831.

My dear Fox,

I do hope you will excuse my not writing before I took my degree. I felt
a quite inexplicable aversion to write to anybody. But now I do most
heartily congratulate you upon passing your examination, and hope you
find your curacy comfortable. If it is my last shilling (I have not
many), I will come and pay you a visit.

I do not know why the degree should make one so miserable, both before
and afterwards. I recollect you were sufficiently wretched before, and
I can assure [you] I am now, and what makes it the more ridiculous is, I
know not what about. I believe it is a beautiful provision of nature to
make one regret the less leaving so pleasant a place as Cambridge; and
amongst all its pleasures--I say it for once and for all--none so great
as my friendship with you. I sent you a newspaper yesterday, in which
you will see what a good place [10th] I have got in the Poll. As for
Christ's, did you ever see such a college for producing Captains and
Apostles? (The "Captain" is at the head of the "Poll": the "Apostles"
are the last twelve in the Mathematical Tripos.) There are no men either
at Emmanuel or Christ's plucked. Cameron is gulfed, together with other
three Trinity scholars! My plans are not at all settled. I think I shall
keep this term, and then go and economise at Shrewsbury, return and take
my degree.

A man may be excused for writing so much about himself when he has
just passed the examination; so you must excuse [me]. And on the same
principle do you write a letter brimful of yourself and plans. I want to
know something about your examination. Tell me about the state of your
nerves; what books you got up, and how perfect. I take an interest
about that sort of thing, as the time will come when I must suffer. Your
tutor, Thompson, begged to be remembered to you, and so does Whitley.
If you will answer this, I will send as many stupid answers as you can
desire.

Believe me, dear Fox, CHAS. DARWIN.




CHAPTER 1.V. -- THE APPOINTMENT TO THE 'BEAGLE.'

[In a letter addressed to Captain Fitz-Roy, before the "Beagle" sailed,
my father wrote, "What a glorious day the 4th of November (The "Beagle"
did not however make her final and successful start until December 27.)
will be to me--my second life will then commence, and it shall be as a
birthday for the rest of my life."]

The circumstances which led to this second birth--so much more important
than my father then imagined--are connected with his Cambridge life, but
may be more appropriately told in the present chapter. Foremost in the
chain of circumstances which lead to his appointment to the "Beagle",
was my father's friendship with Professor Henslow. He wrote in a
pocket-book or diary, which contain a brief record of dates, etc.,
throughout his life:--

"1831. CHRISTMAS.--Passed my examination for B.A. degree and kept the
two following terms.

"During these months lived much with Professor Henslow, often dining
with him and walking with him; became slightly acquainted with several
of the learned men in Cambridge, which much quickened the zeal which
dinner parties and hunting had not destroyed.

"In the spring paid Mr. Dawes a visit with Ramsay and Kirby, and talked
over an excursion to Teneriffe. In the spring Henslow persuaded me
to think of Geology, and introduced me to Sedgwick. During Midsummer
geologised a little in Shropshire.

"AUGUST.--Went on Geological tour (Mentioned by Sedgwick in his preface
to Salter's 'Catalogue of Cambrian and Silurian Fossils,' 1873.) by
Llangollen, Ruthin, Conway, Bangor, and Capel Curig, where I left
Professor Sedgwick, and crossed the mountain to Barmouth."

In a letter to Fox (May, 1831), my father writes:--"I am very busy...and
see a great deal of Henslow, whom I do not know whether I love or
respect most." His feeling for this admirable man is finely expressed
in a letter which he wrote to Rev. L. Blomefield (then Rev. L. Jenyns),
when the latter was engaged in his 'Memoir of Professor Henslow'
(published 1862). The passage ('Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow,
M.A.,' by the Rev. Leonard Jenyns. 8vo. London, 1862, page 51.) has been
made use of in the first of the memorial notices written for 'Nature,'
and Mr. Romanes points out that my father, "while describing the
character of another, is unconsciously giving a most accurate
description of his own":--

"I went to Cambridge early in the year 1828, and soon became acquainted,
through some of my brother entomologists, with Professor Henslow, for
all who cared for any branch of natural history were equally encouraged
by him. Nothing could be more simple, cordial, and unpretending than the
encouragement which he afforded to all young naturalists. I soon became
intimate with him, for he had a remarkable power of making the young
feel completely at ease with him; though we were all awe-struck with the
amount of his knowledge. Before I saw him, I heard one young man sum up
his attainments by simply saying that he knew everything. When I reflect
how immediately we felt at perfect ease with a man older, and in every
way so immensely our superior, I think it was as much owing to the
transparent sincerity of his character as to his kindness of heart; and,
perhaps, even still more, to a highly remarkable absence in him of all
self-consciousness. One perceived at once that he never thought of his
own varied knowledge or clear intellect, but solely on the subject in
hand. Another charm, which must have struck every one, was that his
manner to old and distinguished persons and to the youngest student was
exactly the same: and to all he showed the same winning courtesy. He
would receive with interest the most trifling observation in any branch
of natural history; and however absurd a blunder one might make,
he pointed it out so clearly and kindly, that one left him no way
disheartened, but only determined to be more accurate the next time. In
short, no man could be better formed to win the entire confidence of the
young, and to encourage them in their pursuits.

"His lectures on Botany were universally popular, and as clear as
daylight. So popular were they, that several of the older members of
the University attended successive courses. Once every week he kept open
house in the evening, and all who cared for natural history attended
these parties, which, by thus favouring inter-communication, did the
same good in Cambridge, in a very pleasant manner, as the Scientific
Societies do in London. At these parties many of the most distinguished
members of the University occasionally attended; and when only a few
were present, I have listened to the great men of those days, conversing
on all sorts of subjects, with the most varied and brilliant powers.
This was no small advantage to some of the younger men, as it stimulated
their mental activity and ambition. Two or three times in each session
he took excursions with his botanical class; either a long walk to the
habitat of some rare plant, or in a barge down the river to the fens, or
in coaches to some more distant place, as to Gamlingay, to see the wild
lily of the valley, and to catch on the heath the rare natter-jack.
These excursions have left a delightful impression on my mind. He was,
on such occasions, in as good spirits as a boy, and laughed as
heartily as a boy at the misadventures of those who chased the splendid
swallow-tail butterflies across the broken and treacherous fens. He used
to pause every now and then to lecture on some plant or other object;
and something he could tell us on every insect, shell, or fossil
collected, for he had attended to every branch of natural history. After
our day's work we used to dine at some inn or house, and most jovial we
then were. I believe all who joined these excursions will agree with me
that they have left an enduring impression of delight on our minds.

"As time passed on at Cambridge I became very intimate with Professor
Henslow, and his kindness was unbounded; he continually asked me to his
house, and allowed me to accompany him in his walks. He talked on all
subjects, including his deep sense of religion, and was entirely open. I
own more than I can express to this excellent man...

"During the years when I associated so much with Professor Henslow, I
never once saw his temper even ruffled. He never took an ill-natured
view of any one's character, though very far from blind to the foibles
of others. It always struck me that his mind could not be even touched
by any paltry feeling of vanity, envy, or jealousy. With all this
equability of temper and remarkable benevolence, there was no insipidity
of character. A man must have been blind not to have perceived that
beneath this placid exterior there was a vigorous and determined will.
When principle came into play, no power on earth could have turned him
one hair's-breadth...

"Reflecting over his character with gratitude and reverence, his
moral attributes rise, as they should do in the highest character, in
pre-eminence over his intellect."

In a letter to Rev. L. Blomefield (Jenyns), May 24, 1862, my father
wrote with the same feelings that he had expressed in his letters thirty
years before:--

"I thank you most sincerely for your kind present of your Memoir of
Henslow. I have read about half, and it has interested me much. I do not
think that I could have venerated him more than I did; but your book has
even exalted his character in my eyes. From turning over the pages of
the latter half, I should think your account would be invaluable to any
clergyman who wished to follow poor dear Henslow's noble example. What
an admirable man he was."

The geological work mentioned in the quotation from my father's
pocket-book was doubtless of importance as giving him some practical
experience, and perhaps of more importance in helping to give him some
confidence in himself. In July of the same year, 1831, he was "working
like a tiger" at Geology, and trying to make a map of Shropshire, but
not finding it "as easy as I expected."

In writing to Henslow about the same time, he gives some account of his
work:--

"I should have written to you some time ago, only I was determined
to wait for the clinometer, and I am very glad to say I think it
will answer admirably. I put all the tables in my bedroom at every
conceivable angle and direction. I will venture to say I have measured
them as accurately as any geologist going could do...I have been working
at so many things that I have not got on much with geology. I suspect
the first expedition I take, clinometer and hammer in hand, will send me
back very little wiser and a good deal more puzzled than when I started.
As yet I have only indulged in hypotheses, but they are such powerful
ones that I suppose, if they were put into action for but one day, the
world would come to an end."

He was evidently most keen to get to work with Sedgwick, for he wrote
to Henslow: "I have not heard from Professor Sedgwick, so I am afraid
he will not pay the Severn formations a visit. I hope and trust you did
your best to urge him."

My father has given in his Recollections some account of this Tour.

There too we read of the projected excursion to the Canaries, of which
slight mention occurs in letters to Fox and Henslow.

In April 1831 he writes to Fox: "At present I talk, think, and dream of
a scheme I have almost hatched of going to the Canary Islands. I
have long had a wish of seeing tropical scenery and vegetation, and,
according to Humboldt, Teneriffe is a very pretty specimen." And again
in May: "As for my Canary scheme, it is rash of you to ask questions;
my other friends most sincerely wish me there, I plague them so with
talking about tropical scenery, etc. Eyton will go next summer, and I am
learning Spanish."

Later on in the summer the scheme took more definite form, and the date
seems to have been fixed for June, 1832. He got information in London
about passage-money, and in July was working at Spanish and calling
Fox "un grandisimo lebron," in proof of his knowledge of the language;
which, however, he found "intensely stupid." But even then he seems
to have had some doubts about his companions' zeal, for he writes to
Henslow (July 27, 1831): "I hope you continue to fan your Canary ardour.
I read and re-read Humboldt; do you do the same? I am sure nothing will
prevent us seeing the Great Dragon Tree."

Geological work and Teneriffe dreams carried him through the summer,
till on returning from Barmouth for the sacred 1st of September, he
received the offer of appointment as Naturalist to the "Beagle".

The following extract from the pocket-book will be a help in reading the
letters:--

"Returned to Shrewsbury at end of August. Refused offer of voyage.

"September.--Went to Maer, returned with Uncle Jos. to Shrewsbury,
thence to Cambridge. London.

"11th.--Went with Captain Fitz-Roy in steamer to Plymouth to see the
"Beagle".

"22nd.--Returned to Shrewsbury, passing through Cambridge.

"October 2nd.--Took leave of my home. Stayed in London.

"24th--Reached Plymouth.

"October and November.--These months very miserable.

"December 10th.--Sailed, but were obliged to put back.

"21st.--Put to sea again, and were driven back.

"27th.--Sailed from England on our Circumnavigation."


GEORGE PEACOCK (Formerly Dean of Ely, and Lowndean Professor of
Astronomy at Cambridge.) TO J.S. HENSLOW. 7 Suffolk Street, Pall Mall
East. [1831.]

My dear Henslow,

Captain Fitz-Roy is going out to survey the southern coast of Tierra
del Fuego, and afterwards to visit many of the South Sea Islands, and to
return by the Indian Archipelago. The vessel is fitted out expressly
for scientific purposes, combined with the survey; it will furnish,
therefore, a rare opportunity for a naturalist, and it would be a great
misfortune that it should be lost.

An offer has been made to me to recommend a proper person to go out as
a naturalist with this expedition; he will be treated with every
consideration. The Captain is a young man of very pleasing manners (a
nephew of the Duke of Grafton), of great zeal in his profession, and who
is very highly spoken of; if Leonard Jenyns could go, what treasures he
might bring home with him, as the ship would be placed at his disposal
whenever his inquiries made it necessary or desirable. In the absence
of so accomplished a naturalist, is there any person whom you could
strongly recommend? he must be such a person as would do credit to our
recommendation. Do think of this subject, it would be a serious loss to
the cause of natural science if this fine opportunity was lost....

The ship sails about the end of September.

Write immediately, and tell me what can be done.

Believe me, My dear Henslow, Most truly yours, GEORGE PEACOCK.


J.S. HENSLOW TO C. DARWIN. Cambridge, August 24, 1831.

My dear Darwin,

Before I enter upon the immediate business of this letter, let us
condole together upon the loss of our inestimable friend poor Ramsay, of
whose death you have undoubtedly heard long before this.

I will not now dwell upon this painful subject, as I shall hope to see
you shortly, fully expecting that you will eagerly catch at the offer
which is likely to be made you of a trip to Tierra del Fuego, and home
by the East Indies. I have been asked by Peacock, who will read and
forward this to you from London, to recommend him a Naturalist as
companion to Captain Fitz-Roy, employed by Government to survey the
southern extremity of America. I have stated that I consider you to be
the best qualified person I know of who is likely to undertake such a
situation. I state this not in the supposition of your being a FINISHED
naturalist, but as amply qualified for collecting, observing, and
noting, anything worthy to be noted in Natural History. Peacock has the
appointment at his disposal, and if he cannot find a man willing to
take the office, the opportunity will probably be lost. Captain Fitz-Roy
wants a man (I understand) more as a companion than a mere collector,
and would not take any one, however good a naturalist, who was not
recommended to him likewise as a GENTLEMAN. Particulars of salary, etc.,
I know nothing. The voyage is to last two years, and if you take plenty
of books with you, anything you please may be done. You will have ample
opportunities at command. In short, I suppose there never was a finer
chance for a man of zeal and spirit; Captain Fitz-Roy is a young man.
What I wish you to do is instantly to come and consult with Peacock (at
No. 7 Suffolk Street, Pall Mall East, or else at the University Club),
and learn further particulars. Don't put on any modest doubts or fears
about your disqualifications, for I assure you I think you are the very
man they are in search of; so conceive yourself to be tapped on the
shoulder by your bum-bailiff and affectionate friend,

J.S. HENSLOW.

The expedition is to sail on 25th September (at earliest), so there is
no time to be lost.


G. PEACOCK TO C. DARWIN. [1831.]

My dear Sir,

I received Henslow's letter last night too late to forward it to you by
the post; a circumstance which I do not regret, as it has given me
an opportunity of seeing Captain Beaufort at the Admiralty (the
Hydrographer), and of stating to him the offer which I have to make to
you. He entirely approves of it, and you may consider the situation as
at your absolute disposal. I trust that you will accept it, as it is
an opportunity which should not be lost, and I look forward with great
interest to the benefit which our collections of Natural History may
receive from your labours.

The circumstances are these;--

Captain Fitz-Roy (a nephew of the Duke of Grafton) sails at the end of
September, in a ship to survey, in the first instance, the South Coast
of Tierra del Fuego, afterwards to visit the South Sea Islands, and to
return by the Indian Archipelago to England. The expedition is entirely
for scientific purposes, and the ship will generally wait your
leisure for researches in Natural History, etc. Captain Fitz-Roy is a
public-spirited and zealous officer, of delightful manners, and greatly
beloved by all his brother officers. He went with Captain Beechey (For
'Beechey' read 'King.' I do not find the name Fitz-Roy in the list of
Beechey's officers. The Fuegians were brought back from Captain King's
voyage.), and spent 1500 pounds in bringing over and educating at his
own charge three natives of Patagonia. He engages at his own expense an
artist at 200 pounds a year to go with him. You may be sure, therefore,
of having a very pleasant companion, who will enter heartily into all
your views.

The ship sails about the end of September, and you must lose no time
in making known your acceptance to Captain Beaufort, Admiralty
Hydrographer. I have had a good deal of correspondence about this matter
[with Henslow?], who feels, in common with myself, the greatest anxiety
that you should go. I hope that no other arrangements are likely to
interfere with it....

The Admiralty are not disposed to give a salary, though they will
furnish you with an official appointment, and every accommodation. If a
salary should be required, however, I am inclined to think that it would
be granted.

Believe me, my dear Sir, Very truly yours, GEORGE PEACOCK.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. Shrewsbury, Tuesday [August 30?, 1831].

My dear Sir,

Mr. Peacock's letter arrived on Saturday, and I received it late
yesterday evening. As far as my own mind is concerned, I should, I think
CERTAINLY, most gladly have accepted the opportunity which you so kindly
have offered me. But my father, although he does not decidedly refuse
me, gives such strong advice against going, that I should not be
comfortable if I did not follow it.

My father's objections are these: the unfitting me to settle down as a
Clergyman, my little habit of seafaring, THE SHORTNESS OF THE TIME, and
the chance of my not suiting Captain Fitz-Roy. It is certainly a very
serious objection, the very short time for all my preparations, as not
only body but mind wants making up for such an undertaking. But if it
had not been for my father I would have taken all risks. What was the
reason that a Naturalist was not long ago fixed upon? I am very much
obliged for the trouble you have had about it; there certainly could not
have been a better opportunity....

My trip with Sedgwick answered most perfectly. I did not hear of poor
Mr. Ramsay's loss till a few days before your letter. I have been
lucky hitherto in never losing any person for whom I had any esteem or
affection. My acquaintance, although very short, was sufficient to give
me those feelings in a great degree. I can hardly make myself believe he
is no more. He was the finest character I ever knew.

Yours most sincerely, My dear Sir, CH. DARWIN.

I have written to Mr. Peacock, and I mentioned that I have asked you to
send one line in the chance of his not getting my letter. I have also
asked him to communicate with Captain Fitz-Roy. Even if I was to go, my
father disliking would take away all energy, and I should want a good
stock of that. Again I must thank you, it adds a little to the heavy but
pleasant load of gratitude which I owe to you.


CHARLES DARWIN TO R.W. DARWIN. [Maer] August 31, [1831].

My dear Father,

I am afraid I am going to make you again very uncomfortable. But,
upon consideration, I think you will excuse me once again, stating
my opinions on the offer of the voyage. My excuse and reason is the
different way all the Wedgwoods view the subject from what you and my
sisters do.

I have given Uncle Jos (Josiah Wedgwood.) what I fervently trust is an
accurate and full list of your objections, and he is kind enough to give
his opinions on all. The list and his answers will be enclosed. But may
I beg of you one favour, it will be doing me the greatest kindness, if
you will send me a decided answer, yes or no? If the latter, I should be
most ungrateful if I did not implicitly yield to your better judgment,
and to the kindest indulgence you have shown me all through my life;
and you may rely upon it I will never mention the subject again. If
your answer should be yes; I will go directly to Henslow and consult
deliberately with him, and then come to Shrewsbury.

The danger appears to me and all the Wedgwoods not great. The expense
cannot be serious, and the time I do not think, anyhow, would be more
thrown away then if I stayed at home. But pray do not consider that I
am so bent on going that I would for one SINGLE MOMENT hesitate, if you
thought that after a short period you should continue uncomfortable.

I must again state I cannot think it would unfit me hereafter for a
steady life. I do hope this letter will not give you much uneasiness. I
send it by the car to-morrow morning; if you make up your mind directly
will you send me an answer on the following day by the same means? If
this letter should not find you at home, I hope you will answer as soon
as you conveniently can.

I do not know what to say about Uncle Jos' kindness; I never can forget
how he interests himself about me.

Believe me, my dear father, Your affectionate son, CHARLES DARWIN.


[Here follows the list of objections which are referred to in the
following letter:--

1. Disreputable to my character as a Clergyman hereafter.

2. A wild scheme.

3. That they must have offered to many others before me the place of
Naturalist.

4. And from its not being accepted there must be some serious objection
to the vessel or expedition.

5. That I should never settle down to a steady life hereafter.

6. That my accommodations would be most uncomfortable.

7. That you [i.e. Dr. Darwin] should consider it as again changing my
profession.

8. That it would be a useless undertaking.]


JOSIAH WEDGWOOD TO R.W. DARWIN. Maer, August 31, 1831. [Read this last.]
(In C. Darwin's writing.)

My dear Doctor,

I feel the responsibility of your application to me on the offer that
has been made to Charles as being weighty, but as you have desired
Charles to consult me, I cannot refuse to give the result of such
consideration as I have been able to [give?] it.

Charles has put down what he conceives to be your principal objections,
and I think the best course I can take will be to state what occurs to
me upon each of them.

1. I should not think that it would be in any degree disreputable to
his character as a Clergyman. I should on the contrary think the offer
honourable to him; and the pursuit of Natural History, though certainly
not professional, is very suitable to a clergyman.

2. I hardly know how to meet this objection, but he would have definite
objects upon which to employ himself, and might acquire and strengthen
habits of application, and I should think would be as likely to do so as
in any way in which he is likely to pass the next two years at home.

3. The notion did not occur to me in reading the letters; and on reading
them again with that object in my mind I see no ground for it.

4. I cannot conceive that the Admiralty would send out a bad vessel on
such a service. As to objections to the expedition, they will differ in
each man's case, and nothing would, I think, be inferred in Charles's
case, if it were known that others had objected.

5. You are a much better judge of Charles's character than I can be. If
on comparing this mode of spending the next two years with the way in
which he will probably spend them, if he does not accept this offer, you
think him more likely to be rendered unsteady and unable to settle, it
is undoubtedly a weighty objection. Is it not the case that sailors are
prone to settle in domestic and quiet habits?

6. I can form no opinion on this further than that if appointed by the
Admiralty he will have a claim to be as well accommodated as the vessel
will allow.

7. If I saw Charles now absorbed in professional studies I should
probably think it would not be advisable to interrupt them; but this is
not, and, I think, will not be the case with him. His present pursuit
of knowledge is in the same track as he would have to follow in the
expedition.

8. The undertaking would be useless as regards his profession, but
looking upon him as a man of enlarged curiosity, it affords him such an
opportunity of seeing men and things as happens to few.

You will bear in mind that I have had very little time for
consideration, and that you and Charles are the persons who must decide.

I am, My dear Doctor, Affectionately yours, JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. Cambridge, Red Lion [September 2], 1831.

My dear Sir,

I am just arrived; you will guess the reason. My father has changed his
mind. I trust the place is not given away.

I am very much fatigued, and am going to bed.

I dare say you have not yet got my second letter.

How soon shall I come to you in the morning? Send a verbal answer.

Good-night, Yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS SUSAN DARWIN. Cambridge, Sunday Morning
[September 4].

My dear Susan,

As a letter would not have gone yesterday, I put off writing till
to-day. I had rather a wearisome journey, but got into Cambridge very
fresh. The whole of yesterday I spent with Henslow, thinking of what is
to be done, and that I find is a great deal. By great good luck I know
a man of the name of Wood, nephew of Lord Londonderry. He is a great
friend of Captain Fitz-Roy, and has written to him about me. I heard
a part of Captain Fitz-Roy's letter, dated some time ago, in which he
says: "I have a right good set of officers, and most of my men have been
there before." It seems he has been there for the last few years; he was
then second in command with the same vessel that he has now chosen. He
is only twenty-three years old, but [has] seen a deal of service, and
won the gold medal at Portsmouth. The Admiralty say his maps are most
perfect. He had choice of two vessels, and he chose the smallest.
Henslow will give me letters to all travellers in town whom he thinks
may assist me.

Peacock has sole appointment of Naturalist. The first person offered
was Leonard Jenyns, who was so near accepting it that he packed up
his clothes. But having [a] living, he did not think it right to leave
it--to the great regret of all his family. Henslow himself was not very
far from accepting it, for Mrs. Henslow most generously, and without
being asked, gave her consent; but she looked so miserable that Henslow
at once settled the point....

I am afraid there will be a good deal of expense at first. Henslow
is much against taking many things; it is [the] mistake all young
travellers fall into. I write as if it was settled, but Henslow tells me
BY NO MEANS to make up my mind till I have had long conversations
with Captains Beaufort and Fitz-Roy. Good-bye. You will hear from me
constantly. Direct 17 Spring Gardens. TELL NOBODY in Shropshire yet. Be
sure not.

C. DARWIN.

I was so tired that evening I was in Shrewsbury that I thanked none of
you for your kindness half so much as I felt.

Love to my father.

The reason I don't want people told in Shropshire: in case I should not
go, it will make it more flat.


CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS S. DARWIN. 17 Spring Gardens, Monday [September
5, 1831].

I have so little time to spare that I have none to waste in re-writing
letters, so that you must excuse my bringing up the other with me and
altering it. The last letter was written in the morning. In [the] middle
of [the] day, Wood received a letter from Captain Fitz-Roy, which I must
say was MOST straightforward and GENTLEMANLIKE, but so much against my
going, that I immediately gave up the scheme; and Henslow did the same,
saying that he thought Peacock had acted VERY WRONG in misrepresenting
things so much.

I scarcely thought of going to town, but here I am; and now for more
details, and much more promising ones. Captain Fitz-Roy is [in] town,
and I have seen him; it is no use attempting to praise him as much as
I feel inclined to do, for you would not believe me. One thing I am
certain, nothing could be more open and kind than he was to me. It seems
he had promised to take a friend with him, who is in office and cannot
go, and he only received the letter five minutes before I came in;
and this makes things much better for me, as want of room was one of
Fitz-Roy's greatest objections. He offers me to go share in everything
in his cabin if I like to come, and every sort of accommodation that
I can have, but they will not be numerous. He says nothing would be so
miserable for him as having me with him if I was uncomfortable, as in
a small vessel we must be thrown together, and thought it his duty
to state everything in the worst point of view. I think I shall go on
Sunday to Plymouth to see the vessel.

There is something most extremely attractive in his manners and way of
coming straight to the point. If I live with him, he says I must live
poorly--no wine, and the plainest dinners. The scheme is not certainly
so good as Peacock describes. Captain Fitz-Roy advises me not [to] make
up my mind quite yet, but that, seriously, he thinks it will have much
more pleasure than pain for me. The vessel does not sail till the 10th
of October. It contains sixty men, five or six officers, etc., but is a
small vessel. It will probably be out nearly three years. I shall pay
to the mess the same as [the] Captain does himself, 30 pounds per annum;
and Fitz-Roy says if I spend, including my outfitting, 500 pounds, it
will be beyond the extreme. But now for still worse news. The round the
world is not CERTAIN, but the chance most excellent. Till that point is
decided, I will not be so. And you may believe, after the many changes I
have made, that nothing but my reason shall decide me.

Fitz-Roy says the stormy sea is exaggerated; that if I do not choose to
remain with them, I can at any time get home to England, so many vessels
sail that way, and that during bad weather (probably two months), if
I like I shall be left in some healthy, safe and nice country; that I
shall always have assistance; that he has many books, all instruments,
guns, at my service; that the fewer and cheaper clothes I take the
better. The manner of proceeding will just suit me. They anchor the
ship, and then remain for a fortnight at a place. I have made Captain
Beaufort perfectly understand me. He says if I start and do not go round
the world, I shall have good reason to think myself deceived. I am to
call the day after to-morrow, and, if possible, to receive more certain
instructions. The want of room is decidedly the most serious objection;
but Captain Fitz-Roy (probably owing to Wood's letter) seems determined
to make me [as] comfortable as he possibly can. I like his manner of
proceeding. He asked me at once, "Shall you bear being told that I want
the cabin to myself--when I want to be alone? If we treat each other
this way, I hope we shall suit; if not, probably we should wish each
other at the devil."

We stop a week at [the] Madeira Islands, and shall see most of [the]
big cities in South America. Captain Beaufort is drawing up the track
through the South Sea. I am writing in [a] great hurry; I do not know
whether you take interest enough to excuse treble postage. I hope I am
judging reasonably, and not through prejudice, about Captain Fitz-Roy;
if so, I am sure we shall suit. I dine with him to-day. I could write
[a] great deal more if I thought you liked it, and I had at present
time. There is indeed a tide in the affairs of man, and I have
experienced it, and I had ENTIRELY given it up till one to-day.

Love to my father. Dearest Susan, good-bye.

CH. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. London, Monday, [September 5, 1831].

My dear Sir,

Gloria in excelsis is the most moderate beginning I can think of.
Things are more prosperous than I should have thought possible. Captain
Fitz-Roy is everything that is delightful. If I was to praise half so
much as I feel inclined, you would say it was absurd, only once seeing
him. I think he really wishes to have me. He offers me to mess with him,
and he will take care I have such room as is possible. But about the
cases he says I must limit myself; but then he thinks like a sailor
about size. Captain Beaufort says I shall be upon the Boards, and then
it will only cost me like other officers. Ship sails 10th of October.
Spends a week at Madeira Islands; and then Rio de Janeiro. They all
think most extremely probable, home by the Indian archipelago; but till
that is decided, I will not be so.

What has induced Captain Fitz-Roy to take a better view of the case is,
that Mr. Chester, who was going as a friend, cannot go, so that I shall
have his place in every respect.

Captain Fitz-Roy has [a] good stock of books, many of which were in my
list, and rifles, etc., so that the outfit will be much less expensive
than I supposed.

The vessel will be out three years. I do not object so that my father
does not. On Wednesday I have another interview with Captain Beaufort,
and on Sunday most likely go with Captain Fitz-Roy to Plymouth. So I
hope you will keep on thinking on the subject, and just keep memoranda
of what may strike you. I will call most probably on Mr. Burchell and
introduce myself. I am in lodgings at 17 Spring Gardens. You cannot
imagine anything more pleasant, kind, and open than Captain Fitz-Roy's
manners were to me. I am sure it will be my fault if we do not suit.

What changes I have had. Till one to-day I was building castles in the
air about hunting foxes the Shropshire, now llamas in South America.

There is indeed a tide in the affairs of men. If you see Mr. Wood,
remember me very kindly to him.

Good-bye. My dear Henslow, Your most sincere friend, CHAS. DARWIN.

Excuse this letter in such a hurry.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. 17 Spring Gardens, London, September 6,
1831....

Your letter gave me great pleasure. You cannot imagine how much your
former letter annoyed and hurt me. (He had misunderstood a letter of
Fox's as implying a charge of falsehood.) But, thank heaven, I firmly
believe that it was my OWN ENTIRE fault in so interpreting your letter.
I lost a friend the other day, and I doubt whether the moral death (as
I then wickedly supposed) of our friendship did not grieve me as much as
the real and sudden death of poor Ramsay. We have known each other too
long to need, I trust, any more explanations. But I will mention just
one thing--that on my death-bed, I think I could say I never uttered one
insincere (which at the time I did not fully feel) expression about my
regard for you. One thing more--the sending IMMEDIATELY the insects, on
my honour, was an unfortunate coincidence. I forgot how you naturally
would take them. When you look at them now, I hope no unkindly feelings
will rise in your mind, and that you will believe that you have always
had in me a sincere, and I will add, an obliged friend. The very many
pleasant minutes that we spent together in Cambridge rose like departed
spirits in judgment against me. May we have many more such, will be one
of my last wishes in leaving England. God bless you, dear old Fox. May
you always be happy.

Yours truly, CHAS. DARWIN.

I have left your letter behind, so do not know whether I direct right.


CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS SUSAN DARWIN. 17 Spring Gardens, Tuesday,
[September 6, 1831.]

My dear Susan,

Again I am going to trouble you. I suspect, if I keep on at this rate,
you will sincerely wish me at Tierra del Fuego, or any other Terra, but
England. First I will give my commissions. Tell Nancy to make me
some twelve instead of eight shirts. Tell Edward to send me up in my
carpet-bag (he can slip the key in the bag tied to some string), my
slippers, a pair of lightish walking-shoes, my Spanish books, my new
microscope (about six inches long and three or four deep), which must
have cotton stuffed inside; my geological compass; my father knows
that; a little book, if I have got it in my bedroom--'Taxidermy.' Ask
my father if he thinks there would be any objection to my taking arsenic
for a little time, as my hands are not quite well, and I have always
observed that if I once get them well, and change my manner of living
about the same time, they will generally remain well. What is the dose?
Tell Edward my gun is dirty. What is Erasmus's direction? Tell me if you
think there is time to write and receive an answer before I start, as I
should like particularly to know what he thinks about it. I suppose you
do not know Sir J. Mackintosh's direction?

I write all this as if it was settled, but it is not more than it was,
excepting that from Captain Fitz-Roy wishing me so much to go, and from
his kindness, I feel a predestination I shall start. I spent a very
pleasant evening with him yesterday. He must be more than twenty-three
years old; he is of a slight figure, and a dark but handsome edition of
Mr. Kynaston, and, according to my notions, pre-eminently good manners.
He is all for economy, excepting on one point--viz., fire-arms. He
recommends me strongly to get a case of pistols like his, which cost 60
pounds!! and never to go on shore anywhere without loaded ones, and he
is doubting about a rifle; he says I cannot appreciate the luxury
of fresh meat here. Of course I shall buy nothing till everything is
settled; but I work all day long at my lists, putting in and striking
out articles. This is the first really cheerful day I have spent since
I received the letter, and it all is owing to the sort of involuntary
confidence I place in my beau ideal of a Captain.

We stop at Teneriffe. His object is to stop at as many places as
possible. He takes out twenty chronometers, and it will be a "sin" not
to settle the longitude. He tells me to get it down in writing at the
Admiralty that I have the free choice to leave as soon and whenever I
like. I dare say you expect I shall turn back at the Madeira; if I have
a morsel of stomach left, I won't give up. Excuse my so often troubling
and writing: the one is of great utility, the other a great amusement to
me. Most likely I shall write to-morrow. Answer by return of post. Love
to my father, dearest Susan.

C. DARWIN.

As my instruments want altering, send my things by the 'Oxonian' the
same night.


CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS SUSAN DARWIN. London, Friday Morning, September
9, 1831.

My dear Susan,

I have just received the parcel. I suppose it was not delivered
yesterday owing to the Coronation. I am very much obliged to my father,
and everybody else. Everything is done quite right. I suppose by this
time you have received my letter written next day, and I hope will send
off the things. My affairs remain in statu quo. Captain Beaufort says I
am on the books for victuals, and he thinks I shall have no difficulty
about my collections when I come home. But he is too deep a fish for me
to make him out. The only thing that now prevents me finally making up
my mind, is the want of certainty about the South Sea Islands; although
morally I have no doubt we should go there whether or no it is put in
the instructions. Captain Fitz-Roy says I do good by plaguing Captain
Beaufort, it stirs him up with a long pole. Captain Fitz-Roy says he is
sure he has interest enough (particularly if this Administration is not
everlasting--I shall soon turn Tory!), anyhow, even when out, to get
the ship ordered home by whatever track he likes. From what Wood says, I
presume the Dukes of Grafton and Richmond interest themselves about him.
By the way, Wood has been of the greatest use to me; and I am sure his
personal introduction of me inclined Captain Fitz-Roy to have me.

To explain things from the very beginning: Captain Fitz-Roy first wished
to have a Naturalist, and then he seems to have taken a sudden horror of
the chances of having somebody he should not like on board the vessel.
He confesses his letter to Cambridge was to throw cold water on the
scheme. I don't think we shall quarrel about politics, although Wood (as
might be expected from a Londonderry) solemnly warned Fitz-Roy that I
was a Whig. Captain Fitz-Roy was before Uncle Jos., he said, "now your
friends will tell you a sea-captain is the greatest brute on the face
of the creation. I do not know how to help you in this case, except by
hoping you will give me a trial." How one does change! I actually now
wish the voyage was longer before we touch land. I feel my blood run
cold at the quantity I have to do. Everybody seems ready to assist me.
The Zoological want to make me a corresponding member. All this I
can construct without crossing the Equator. But one friend is quite
invaluable, viz., a Mr. Yarrell, a stationer, and excellent naturalist.
(William Yarrell, well-known for his 'History of British Birds' and
'History of British Fishes,' was born in 1784. He inherited from his
father a newsagent's business, to which he steadily adhered up to his
death, "in his 73rd year." He was a man of a thoroughly amiable and
honourable character, and was a valued office-bearer of several of
the learned Societies.) He goes to the shops with me and bullies about
prices (not that I yet buy): hang me if I give 60 pounds for pistols.

Yesterday all the shops were shut, so that I could do nothing; and I was
child enough to give 1 pound 1 shilling for an excellent seat to see the
Procession. (The Coronation of William IV.) And it certainly was very
well worth seeing. I was surprised that any quantity of gold could make
a long row of people quite glitter. It was like only what one sees in
picture-books of Eastern processions. The King looked very well, and
seemed popular, but there was very little enthusiasm; so little that I
can hardly think there will be a coronation this time fifty years.

The Life Guards pleased me as much as anything--they are quite
magnificent; and it is beautiful to see them clear a crowd. You think
that they must kill a score at least, and apparently they really hurt
nobody, but most deucedly frighten them. Whenever a crowd was so dense
that the people were forced off the causeway, one of these six-feet
gentlemen, on a black horse, rode straight at the place, making his
horse rear very high, and fall on the thickest spot. You would suppose
men were made of sponge to see them shrink away.

In the evening there was an illumination, and much grander than the one
on the Reform Bill. All the principal streets were crowded just like a
race-ground. Carriages generally being six abreast, and I will venture
to say not going one mile an hour. The Duke of Northumberland learnt a
lesson last time, for his house was very grand; much more so than the
other great nobility, and in much better taste; every window in his
house was full of straight lines of brilliant lights, and from their
extreme regularity and number had a beautiful effect. The paucity of
invention was very striking, crowns, anchors, and "W.R.'s" were repeated
in endless succession. The prettiest were gas-pipes with small holes;
they were almost painfully brilliant. I have written so much about the
Coronation, that I think you will have no occasion to read the "Morning
Herald".

For about the first time in my life I find London very pleasant; hurry,
bustle, and noise are all in unison with my feelings. And I have plenty
to do in spare moments. I work at Astronomy, as I suppose it would
astound a sailor if one did not know how to find Latitude and Longitude.
I am now going to Captain Fitz-Roy, and will keep [this] letter open
till evening for anything that may occur. I will give you one proof of
Fitz-Roy being a good officer--all the officers are the same as before;
two-thirds of his crew and [the] eight marines who went before all
offered to come again, so the service cannot be so very bad. The
Admiralty have just issued orders for a large stock of canister-meat
and lemon-juice, etc. etc. I have just returned from spending a long
day with Captain Fitz-Roy, driving about in his gig, and shopping. This
letter is too late for to-day's post. You may consider it settled that I
go. Yet there is room for change if any untoward accident should happen;
this I can see no reason to expect. I feel convinced nothing else will
alter my wish of going. I have begun to order things. I have procured a
case of good strong pistols and an excellent rifle for 50 pounds, there
is a saving; a good telescope, with compass, 5 pounds, and these are
nearly the only expensive instruments I shall want. Captain Fitz-Roy has
everything. I never saw so (what I should call, he says not) extravagant
a man, as regards himself, but as economical towards me. How he did
order things! His fire-arms will cost 400 pounds at least. I found the
carpet bag when I arrived all right, and much obliged. I do not think
I shall take any arsenic; shall send partridges to Mr. Yarrell; much
obliged. Ask Edward to BARGAIN WITH Clemson to make for my gun--TWO
SPARE hammers or cocks, two main-springs, two sere-springs, four nipples
or plugs--I mean one for each barrel, except nipples, of which there
must be two for each, all of excellent quality, and set about them
immediately; tell Edward to make inquiries about prices. I go on Sunday
per packet to Plymouth, shall stay one or two days, then return, and
hope to find a letter from you; a few days in London; then Cambridge,
Shrewsbury, London, Plymouth, Madeira, is my route. It is a great bore
my writing so much about the Coronation; I could fill another sheet.
I have just been with Captain King, Fitz-Roy's senior officer last
expedition; he thinks that the expedition will suit me. Unasked, he
said Fitz-Roy's temper was perfect. He sends his own son with him
as midshipman. The key of my microscope was forgotten; it is of no
consequence. Love to all.

CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. 17 Spring Gardens (and here I shall remain
till I start) [September 19, 1831].

My dear Fox,

I returned from my expedition to see the "Beagle" at Plymouth on
Saturday, and found your most welcome letter on my table. It is quite
ridiculous what a very long period these last twenty days have appeared
to me, certainly much more than as many weeks on ordinary occasions;
this will account for my not recollecting how much I told you of my
plans....

But on the whole it is a grand and fortunate opportunity; there will be
so many things to interest me--fine scenery and an endless occupation
and amusement in the different branches of Natural History; then again
navigation and meteorology will amuse me on the voyage, joined to the
grand requisite of there being a pleasant set of officers, and, as
far as I can judge, this is certain. On the other hand there is very
considerable risk to one's life and health, and the leaving for so very
long a time so many people whom I dearly love, is oftentimes a feeling
so painful that it requires all my resolution to overcome it. But
everything is now settled, and before the 20th of October I trust to
be on the broad sea. My objection to the vessel is its smallness, which
cramps one so for room for packing my own body and all my cases, etc.,
etc. As to its safety, I hope the Admiralty are the best judges; to a
landsman's eye she looks very small. She is a ten-gun three-masted brig,
but, I believe, an excellent vessel. So much for my future plans, and
now for my present. I go to-night by the mail to Cambridge, and from
thence, after settling my affairs, proceed to Shrewsbury (most likely on
Friday 23rd, or perhaps before); there I shall stay a few days, and be
in London by the 1st of October, and start for Plymouth on the 9th.

And now for the principal part of my letter. I do not know how to tell
you how very kind I feel your offer of coming to see me before I
leave England. Indeed I should like it very much; but I must tell you
decidedly that I shall have very little time to spare, and that little
time will be almost spoilt by my having so much to think about; and
secondly, I can hardly think it worth your while to leave your parish
for such a cause. But I shall never forget such generous kindness. Now
I know you will act just as you think right; but do not come up for my
sake. Any time is the same for me. I think from this letter you will
know as much of my plans as I do myself, and will judge accordingly
the where and when to write to me. Every now and then I have moments of
glorious enthusiasm, when I think of the date and cocoa-trees, the palms
and ferns so lofty and beautiful, everything new, everything sublime.
And if I live to see years in after life, how grand must such
recollections be! Do you know Humboldt? (If you don't, do so directly.)
With what intense pleasure he appears always to look back on the days
spent in the tropical countries. I hope when you next write to Osmaston,
[you will] tell them my scheme, and give them my kindest regards and
farewells.

Good-bye, my dear Fox, Yours ever sincerely, CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO R. FITZ-ROY. 17 Spring Gardens [October 17? 1831].

Dear Fitz-Roy,

Very many thanks for your letter; it has made me most comfortable, for
it would have been heart-breaking to have left anything quite behind,
and I never should have thought of sending things by some other vessel.
This letter will, I trust, accompany some talc. I read your letter
without attending to the name. But I have now procured some from Jones,
which appears very good, and I will send it this evening by the mail.
You will be surprised at not seeing me propria persona instead of my
handwriting. But I had just found out that the large steam-packet did
not intend to sail on Sunday, and I was picturing to myself a small,
dirty cabin, with the proportion of 39-40ths of the passengers very
sick, when Mr. Earl came in and told me the "Beagle" would not sail till
the beginning of November. This, of course, settled the point; so that I
remain in London one week more. I shall then send heavy goods by steamer
and start myself by the coach on Sunday evening.

Have you a good set of mountain barometers? Several great guns in the
scientific world have told me some points in geology to ascertain which
entirely depend on their relative height. If you have not a good stock,
I will add one more to the list. I ought to be ashamed to trouble you so
much, but will you SEND ONE LINE to inform me? I am daily becoming more
anxious to be off, and, if I am so, you must be in a perfect fever. What
a glorious day the 4th of November will be to me! My second life will
then commence, and it shall be as a birthday for the rest of my life.

Believe me, dear Fitz-Roy, Yours most sincerely, CHAS. DARWIN.

MONDAY.--I hope I have not put you to much inconvenience by ordering the
room in readiness.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. Devonport, November 15, 1831.

My dear Henslow,

The orders are come down from the Admiralty, and everything is finally
settled. We positively sail the last day of this month, and I think
before that time the vessel will be ready. She looks most beautiful,
even a landsman must admire her. WE all think her the most perfect
vessel ever turned out of the Dockyard. One thing is certain, no vessel
has been fitted out so expensively, and with so much care. Everything
that can be made so is of mahogany, and nothing can exceed the neatness
and beauty of all the accommodations. The instructions are very general,
and leave a great deal to the Captain's discretion and judgment, paying
a substantial as well as a verbal compliment to him....

No vessel ever left England with such a set of Chronometers, viz.,
twenty-four, all very good ones. In short, everything is well, and I
have only now to pray for the sickness to moderate its fierceness, and
I shall do very well. Yet I should not call it one of the very best
opportunities for natural history that has ever occurred. The absolute
want of room is an evil that nothing can surmount. I think L. Jenyns did
very wisely in not coming, that is judging from my own feelings, for I
am sure if I had left college some few years, or been those years older,
I NEVER could have endured it. The officers (excepting the Captain) are
like the freshest freshmen, that is in their manners, in everything else
widely different. Remember me most kindly to him, and tell him if ever
he dreams in the night of palm-trees, he may in the morning comfort
himself with the assurance that the voyage would not have suited him.

I am much obliged for your advice, de Mathematicis. I suspect when I am
struggling with a triangle, I shall often wish myself in your room, and
as for those wicked sulky surds, I do not know what I shall do without
you to conjure them. My time passes away very pleasantly. I know one
or two pleasant people, foremost of whom is Mr. Thunder-and-lightning
Harris (William Snow Harris, the Electrician.), whom I dare say you have
heard of. My chief employment is to go on board the "Beagle", and try to
look as much like a sailor as I can. I have no evidence of having taken
in man, woman or child.

I am going to ask you to do one more commission, and I trust it will
be the last. When I was in Cambridge, I wrote to Mr. Ash, asking him to
send my College account to my father, after having subtracted about 30
pounds for my furniture. This he has forgotten to do, and my father has
paid the bill, and I want to have the furniture-money transmitted to
my father. Perhaps you would be kind enough to speak to Mr. Ash. I have
cost my father so much money, I am quite ashamed of myself.

I will write once again before sailing, and perhaps you will write to me
before then.

Remember me to Professor Sedgwick and Mr. Peacock.

Believe me, yours affectionately, CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. Devonport, December 3, 1831.

My dear Henslow,

It is now late in the evening, and to-night I am going to sleep on
board. On Monday we most certainly sail, so you may guess what a
desperate state of confusion we are all in. If you were to hear the
various exclamations of the officers, you would suppose we had scarcely
had a week's notice. I am just in the same way taken all ABACK, and in
such a bustle I hardly know what to do. The number of things to be done
is infinite. I look forward even to sea-sickness with something like
satisfaction, anything must be better than this state of anxiety. I am
very much obliged for your last kind and affectionate letter. I always
like advice from you, and no one whom I have the luck to know is more
capable of giving it than yourself. Recollect, when you write, that I am
a sort of protege of yours, and that it is your bounden duty to lecture
me.

I will now give you my direction; it is at first, Rio; but if you
will send me a letter on the first Tuesday (when the packet sails) in
February, directed to Monte Video, it will give me very great pleasure;
I shall so much enjoy hearing a little Cambridge news. Poor dear old
Alma Mater! I am a very worthy son in as far as affection goes. I have
little more to write about...I cannot end this without telling you how
cordially I feel grateful for the kindness you have shown me during
my Cambridge life. Much of the pleasure and utility which I may have
derived from it is owing to you. I long for the time when we shall again
meet, and till then believe me, my dear Henslow,

Your affectionate and obliged friend, CH. DARWIN.

Remember me most kindly to those who take any interest in me.




CHAPTER 1.VI. -- THE VOYAGE.

"There is a natural good-humoured energy in his letters just like
himself."--From a letter of Dr. R.W. Darwin's to Prof. Henslow.

[The object of the "Beagle" voyage is briefly described in my father's
'Journal of Researches,' page 1, as being "to complete the Survey of
Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, commenced under Captain King in 1826
to 1830; to survey the shores of Chile, Peru, and some island in the
Pacific; and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the
world."]

The "Beagle" is described as a well-built little vessel, of 235 tons,
rigged as a barque, and carrying six guns. She belonged to the old class
of ten-gun brigs, which were nicknamed "coffins," from their liability
to go down in severe weather. They were very "deep-waisted," that is,
their bulwarks were high in proportion to their size, so that a heavy
sea breaking over them might be highly dangerous. Nevertheless, she
lived through the five years' work, in the most stormy regions in the
world, under Commanders Stokes and Fitz-Roy, without a serious accident.
When re-commissioned in 1831 for her second voyage, she was found (as
I learn from Admiral Sir James Sulivan) to be so rotten that she had
practically to be rebuilt, and it was this that caused the long delay
in refitting. The upper deck was raised, making her much safer in heavy
weather, and giving her far more comfortable accommodation below. By
these alterations and by the strong sheathing added to her bottom
she was brought up to 242 tons burthen. It is a proof of the splendid
seamanship of Captain Fitz-Roy and his officers that she returned
without having carried away a spar, and that in only one of the heavy
storms that she encountered was she in great danger.

She was fitted out for the expedition with all possible care, being
supplied with carefully chosen spars and ropes, six boats, and a
"dinghy;" lightning conductors, "invented by Mr. Harris, were fixed in
all the masts, the bowsprits, and even in the flying jib-boom." To quote
my father's description, written from Devonport, November 17, 1831:
"Everybody, who can judge, says it is one of the grandest voyages
that has almost ever been sent out. Everything is on a grand scale.
Twenty-four chronometers. The whole ship is fitted up with mahogany;
she is the admiration of the whole place. In short, everything is as
prosperous as human means can make it."

Owing to the smallness of the vessel, every one on board was cramped for
room, and my father's accommodation seems to have been small enough: "I
have just room to turn round," he writes to Henslow, "and that is all."
Admiral Sir James Sulivan writes to me: "The narrow space at the end of
the chart-table was his only accommodation for working, dressing, and
sleeping; the hammock being left hanging over his head by day, when the
sea was at all rough, that he might lie on it with a book in his hand
when he could not any longer sit at the table. His only stowage for
clothes being several small drawers in the corner, reaching from deck to
deck; the top one being taken out when the hammock was hung up, without
which there was not length for it, so then the foot-clews took the place
of the top drawer. For specimens he had a very small cabin under the
forecastle."

Yet of this narrow room he wrote enthusiastically, September 17, 1831:--

"When I wrote last I was in great alarm about my cabin. The cabins were
not then marked out, but when I left they were, and mine is a capital
one, certainly next best to the Captain's and remarkably light. My
companion most luckily, I think, will turn out to be the officer whom I
shall like best. Captain Fitz-Roy says he will take care that one corner
is so fitted up that I shall be comfortable in it and shall consider
it my home, but that also I shall have the run of his. My cabin is the
drawing one; and in the middle is a large table, on which we two sleep
in hammocks. But for the first two months there will be no drawing to
be done, so that it will be quite a luxurious room, and good deal larger
than the Captain's cabin."

My father used to say that it was the absolute necessity of tidiness
in the cramped space of the "Beagle" that helped 'to give him his
methodical habits of working.' On the "Beagle", too, he would say, that
he learned what he considered the golden rule for saving time; i.e.,
taking care of the minutes.

Sir James Sulivan tells me that the chief fault in the outfit of the
expedition was the want of a second smaller vessel to act as tender.
This want was so much felt by Captain Fitz-Roy that he hired two decked
boats to survey the coast of Patagonia, at a cost of 1100 pounds, a sum
which he had to supply, although the boats saved several thousand pounds
to the country. He afterwards bought a schooner to act as a tender, thus
saving the country a further large amount. He was ultimately ordered to
sell the schooner, and was compelled to bear the loss himself, and it
was only after his death that some inadequate compensation was made for
all the losses which he suffered through his zeal.

For want of a proper tender, much of the work had to be done in small
open whale boats, which were sent away from the ship for weeks together,
and this in a climate, where the crews were exposed to severe hardships
from the almost constant rains, which sometimes continued for weeks
together. The completeness of the equipment was also in other respects
largely due to the public spirit of Captain Fitz-Roy. He provided at
his own cost an artist, and a skilled instrument-maker to look after
the chronometers. (Either one or both were on the books for victuals.)
Captain Fitz-Roy's wish was to take "some well-educated and scientific
person" as his private guest, but this generous offer was only accepted
by my father on condition of being allowed to pay a fair share of the
expense of the Captain's table; he was, moreover, on the ship's books
for victuals.

In a letter to his sister (July 1832) he writes contentedly of his
manner of life at sea:--"I do not think I have ever given you an account
of how the day passes. We breakfast at eight o'clock. The invariable
maxim is to throw away all politeness--that is, never to wait for each
other, and bolt off the minute one has done eating, etc. At sea, when
the weather is calm, I work at marine animals, with which the whole
ocean abounds. If there is any sea up I am either sick or contrive to
read some voyage or travels. At one we dine. You shore-going people are
lamentably mistaken about the manner of living on board. We have never
yet (nor shall we) dined off salt meat. Rice and peas and calavanses are
excellent vegetables, and, with good bread, who could want more? Judge
Alderson could not be more temperate, as nothing but water comes on the
table. At five we have tea. The midshipmen's berth have all their meals
an hour before us, and the gun-room an hour afterwards."

The crew of the "Beagle" consisted of Captain Fitz-Roy, "Commander and
Surveyor," two lieutenants, one of whom (the first lieutenant) was the
late Captain Wickham, Governor of Queensland; the present Admiral Sir
James Sulivan, K.C.B., was the second lieutenant. Besides the master
and two mates, there was an assistant-surveyor, the present Admiral Lort
Stokes. There were also a surgeon, assistant-surgeon, two midshipmen,
master's mate, a volunteer (1st class), purser, carpenter, clerk,
boatswain, eight marines, thirty-four seamen, and six boys.

There are not now (1882) many survivors of my father's old ship-mates.
Admiral Mellersh, Mr. Hammond, and Mr. Philip King, of the Legislative
Council of Sydney, and Mr. Usborne, are among the number. Admiral
Johnson died almost at the same time as my father.

He retained to the last a most pleasant recollection of the voyage of
the "Beagle", and of the friends he made on board her. To his children
their names were familiar, from his many stories of the voyage, and we
caught his feeling of friendship for many who were to us nothing more
than names.

It is pleasant to know how affectionately his old companions remembered
him.

Sir James Sulivan remained, throughout my father's lifetime, one of
his best and truest friends. He writes:--"I can confidently express my
belief that during the five years in the "Beagle", he was never known to
be out of temper, or to say one unkind or hasty word OF or TO any
one. You will therefore readily understand how this, combined with the
admiration of his energy and ability, led to our giving him the name of
'the dear old Philosopher.'" (His other nickname was "The Flycatcher." I
have heard my father tell how he overheard the boatswain of the "Beagle"
showing another boatswain over the ship, and pointing out the
officers: "That's our first lieutenant; that's our doctor; that's our
flycatcher.") Admiral Mellersh writes to me:--"Your father is as vividly
in my mind's eye as if it was only a week ago that I was in the "Beagle"
with him; his genial smile and conversation can never be forgotten by
any who saw them and heard them. I was sent on two or three occasions
away in a boat with him on some of his scientific excursions, and always
looked forward to these trips with great pleasure, an anticipation that,
unlike many others, was always realised. I think he was the only man
I ever knew against whom I never heard a word said; and as people when
shut up in a ship for five years are apt to get cross with each other,
that is saying a good deal. Certainly we were always so hard at work, we
had no time to quarrel, but if we had done so, I feel sure your father
would have tried (and have been successful) to throw oil on the troubled
waters."

Admiral Stokes, Mr. King, Mr. Usborne, and Mr. Hamond, all speak of
their friendship with him in the same warm-hearted way.

Of the life on board and on shore his letters give some idea. Captain
Fitz-Roy was a strict officer, and made himself thoroughly respected
both by officers and men. The occasional severity of his manner was
borne with because every one on board knew that his first thought was
his duty, and that he would sacrifice anything to the real welfare
of the ship. My father writes, July 1834, "We all jog on very well
together, there is no quarrelling on board, which is something to say.
The Captain keeps all smooth by rowing every one in turn." The best
proof that Fitz-Roy was valued as a commander is given by the fact that
many ('Voyage of the "Adventure" and "Beagle",' vol. ii. page 21.) of
the crew had sailed with him in the "Beagle's" former voyage, and there
were a few officers as well as seamen and marines, who had served in the
"Adventure" or "Beagle" during the whole of that expedition.

My father speaks of the officers as a fine determined set of men, and
especially of Wickham, the first lieutenant, as a "glorious fellow." The
latter being responsible for the smartness and appearance of the ship
strongly objected to his littering the decks, and spoke of specimens as
"d--d beastly devilment," and used to add, "If I were skipper, I would
soon have you and all your d--d mess out of the place."

A sort of halo of sanctity was given to my father by the fact of his
dining in the Captain's cabin, so that the midshipmen used at first to
call him "Sir," a formality, however, which did not prevent his becoming
fast friends with the younger officers. He wrote about the year 1861
or 1862 to Mr. P.G. King, M.L.C., Sydney, who, as before stated, was a
midshipman on board the "Beagle":--"The remembrance of old days, when we
used to sit and talk on the booms of the "Beagle", will always, to the
day of my death, make me glad to hear of your happiness and prosperity."
Mr. King describes the pleasure my father seemed to take "in pointing
out to me as a youngster the delights of the tropical nights, with their
balmy breezes eddying out of the sails above us, and the sea lighted
up by the passage of the ship through the never-ending streams of
phosphorescent animalculae."

It has been assumed that his ill-health in later years was due to his
having suffered so much from sea-sickness. This he did not himself
believe, but rather ascribed his bad health to the hereditary fault
which came out as gout in some of the past generations. I am not
quite clear as to how much he actually suffered from sea-sickness; my
impression is distinct that, according to his own memory, he was not
actually ill after the first three weeks, but constantly uncomfortable
when the vessel pitched at all heavily. But, judging from his letters,
and from the evidence of some of the officers, it would seem that
in later years he forgot the extent of the discomfort from which he
suffered. Writing June 3, 1836, from the Cape of Good Hope, he says: "It
is a lucky thing for me that the voyage is drawing to its close, for
I positively suffer more from sea-sickness now than three years ago."
Admiral Lort Stokes wrote to the "Times", April 25, 1883:--

"May I beg a corner for my feeble testimony to the marvellous
persevering endurance in the cause of science of that great naturalist,
my old and lost friend, Mr. Charles Darwin, whose remains are so very
justly to be honoured with a resting-place in Westminster Abbey?

"Perhaps no one can better testify to his early and most trying labours
than myself. We worked together for several years at the same table in
the poop cabin of the 'Beagle' during her celebrated voyage, he with his
microscope and myself at the charts. It was often a very lively end of
the little craft, and distressingly so to my old friend, who suffered
greatly from sea-sickness. After perhaps an hour's work he would say to
me, 'Old fellow, I must take the horizontal for it,' that being the best
relief position from ship motion; a stretch out on one side of the table
for some time would enable him to resume his labours for a while, when
he had again to lie down.

"It was distressing to witness this early sacrifice of Mr. Darwin's
health, who ever afterwards seriously felt the ill-effects of the
'Beagle's' voyage."

Mr. A.B. Usborne writes, "He was a dreadful sufferer from sea-sickness,
and at times, when I have been officer of the watch, and reduced the
sails, making the ship more easy, and thus relieving him, I have been
pronounced by him to be 'a good officer,' and he would resume his
microscopic observations in the poop cabin." The amount of work that he
got through on the "Beagle" shows that he was habitually in full vigour;
he had, however, one severe illness, in South America, when he was
received into the house of an Englishman, Mr. Corfield, who tended him
with careful kindness. I have heard him say that in this illness every
secretion of the body was affected, and that when he described the
symptoms to his father Dr. Darwin could make no guess as to the nature
of the disease. My father was sometimes inclined to think that the
breaking up of his health was to some extent due to this attack.

The "Beagle" letters give ample proof of his strong love of home, and
all connected with it, from his father down to Nancy, his old nurse, to
whom he sometimes sends his love.

His delight in home-letters is shown in such passages as:--"But if you
knew the glowing, unspeakable delight, which I felt at being certain
that my father and all of you were well, only four months ago, you would
not grudge the labour lost in keeping up the regular series of letters."

Or again--his longing to return in words like these:--"It is too
delightful to think that I shall see the leaves fall and hear the robin
sing next autumn at Shrewsbury. My feelings are those of a schoolboy to
the smallest point; I doubt whether ever boy longed for his holidays as
much as I do to see you all again. I am at present, although nearly half
the world is between me and home, beginning to arrange what I shall do,
where I shall go during the first week."

Another feature in his letters is the surprise and delight with which
he hears of his collections and observations being of some use. It seems
only to have gradually occurred to him that he would ever be more than
collector of specimens and facts, of which the great men were to make
use. And even as to the value of his collections he seems to have had
much doubt, for he wrote to Henslow in 1834:--"I really began to think
that my collections were so poor that you were puzzled what to say; the
case is now quite on the opposite tack, for you are guilty of exciting
all my vain feelings to a most comfortable pitch; if hard work will
atone for these thoughts, I vow it shall not be spared."

After his return and settlement in London, he began to realise the value
of what he had done, and wrote to Captain Fitz-Roy--"However others
may look back to the 'Beagle's' voyage, now that the small disagreeable
parts are well-nigh forgotten, I think it far the MOST FORTUNATE
CIRCUMSTANCE IN MY LIFE that the chance afforded by your offer of taking
a Naturalist fell on me. I often have the most vivid and delightful
pictures of what I saw on board the 'Beagle' pass before my eyes.
These recollections, and what I learnt on Natural History, I would not
exchange for twice ten thousand a year."

[In selecting the following series of letters, I have been guided by the
wish to give as much personal detail as possible. I have given only a
few scientific letters, to illustrate the way in which he worked, and
how he regarded his own results. In his 'Journal of Researches' he gives
incidentally some idea of his personal character; the letters given in
the present chapter serve to amplify in fresher and more spontaneous
words that impression of his personality which the 'Journal' has given
to so many readers.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO R.W. DARWIN. Bahia, or San Salvador, Brazils [February
8, 1832].

I find after the first page I have been writing to my sisters.

My dear Father,

I am writing this on the 8th of February, one day's sail past St.
Jago (Cape de Verd), and intend taking the chance of meeting with a
homeward-bound vessel somewhere about the equator. The date, however,
will tell this whenever the opportunity occurs. I will now begin from
the day of leaving England, and give a short account of our progress.
We sailed, as you know, on the 27th of December, and have been fortunate
enough to have had from that time to the present a fair and moderate
breeze. It afterwards proved that we had escaped a heavy gale in the
Channel, another at Madeira, and another on [the] Coast of Africa. But
in escaping the gale, we felt its consequences--a heavy sea. In the
Bay of Biscay there was a long and continuous swell, and the misery
I endured from sea-sickness is far beyond what I ever guessed at. I
believe you are curious about it. I will give you all my dear-bought
experience. Nobody who has only been to sea for twenty-four hours has
a right to say that sea-sickness is even uncomfortable. The real misery
only begins when you are so exhausted that a little exertion makes a
feeling of faintness come on. I found nothing but lying in my hammock
did me any good. I must especially except your receipt of raisins, which
is the only food that the stomach will bear.

On the 4th of January we were not many miles from Madeira, but as there
was a heavy sea running, and the island lay to windward, it was not
thought worth while to beat up to it. It afterwards has turned out it
was lucky we saved ourselves the trouble. I was much too sick even to
get up to see the distant outline. On the 6th, in the evening, we sailed
into the harbour of Santa Cruz. I now first felt even moderately well,
and I was picturing to myself all the delights of fresh fruits growing
in beautiful valleys, and reading Humboldt's descriptions of the
island's glorious views, when perhaps you may nearly guess at our
disappointment, when a small pale man informed us we must perform a
strict quarantine of twelve days. There was a death-like stillness in
the ship till the Captain cried "up jib," and we left this long-wished
for place.

We were becalmed for a day between Teneriffe and the Grand Canary, and
here I first experienced any enjoyment. The view was glorious. The Peak
of Teneriffe was seen amongst the clouds like another world. Our only
drawback was the extreme wish of visiting this glorious island. TELL
EYTON NEVER TO FORGET EITHER THE CANARY ISLANDS OR SOUTH AMERICA; that I
am sure it will well repay the necessary trouble, but that he must make
up his mind to find a good deal of the latter. I feel certain he will
regret it if he does not make the attempt. From Teneriffe to St. Jago
the voyage was extremely pleasant. I had a net astern the vessel which
caught great numbers of curious animals, and fully occupied my time in
my cabin, and on deck the weather was so delightful and clear, that the
sky and water together made a picture. On the 16th we arrived at
Port Praya, the capital of the Cape de Verds, and there we remained
twenty-three days, viz., till yesterday, the 7th of February. The time
has flown away most delightfully, indeed nothing can be pleasanter;
exceedingly busy, and that business both a duty and a great delight. I
do not believe I have spent one half-hour idly since leaving Teneriffe.
St. Jago has afforded me an exceedingly rich harvest in several branches
of Natural History. I find the descriptions scarcely worth anything
of many of the commoner animals that inhabit the Tropics. I allude, of
course, to those of the lower classes.

Geologising in a volcanic country is most delightful; besides the
interest attached to itself, it leads you into most beautiful and
retired spots. Nobody but a person fond of Natural History can imagine
the pleasure of strolling under cocoa-nuts in a thicket of bananas and
coffee-plants, and an endless number of wild flowers. And this island,
that has given me so much instruction and delight, is reckoned the most
uninteresting place that we perhaps shall touch at during our voyage. It
certainly is generally very barren, but the valleys are more exquisitely
beautiful, from the very contrast. It is utterly useless to say anything
about the scenery; it would be as profitable to explain to a blind
man colours, as to a person who has not been out of Europe, the total
dissimilarity of a tropical view. Whenever I enjoy anything, I always
either look forward to writing it down, either in my log-book (which
increases in bulk), or in a letter; so you must excuse raptures, and
those raptures badly expressed. I find my collections are increasing
wonderfully, and from Rio I think I shall be obliged to send a cargo
home.

All the endless delays which we experienced at Plymouth have been most
fortunate, as I verily believe no person ever went out better provided
for collecting and observing in the different branches of Natural
History. In a multitude of counsellors I certainly found good. I find to
my great surprise that a ship is singularly comfortable for all sorts
of work. Everything is so close at hand, and being cramped makes one so
methodical, that in the end I have been a gainer. I already have got to
look at going to sea as a regular quiet place, like going back to home
after staying away from it. In short, I find a ship a very comfortable
house, with everything you want, and if it was not for sea-sickness the
whole world would be sailors. I do not think there is much danger of
Erasmus setting the example, but in case there should be, he may rely
upon it he does not know one-tenth of the sufferings of sea-sickness.

I like the officers much more than I did at first, especially Wickham,
and young King and Stokes, and indeed all of them. The Captain continues
steadily very kind, and does everything in his power to assist me. We
see very little of each other when in harbour, our pursuits lead us
in such different tracks. I never in my life met with a man who could
endure nearly so great a share of fatigue. He works incessantly, and
when apparently not employed, he is thinking. If he does not kill
himself, he will during this voyage do a wonderful quantity of work.
I find I am very well, and stand the little heat we have had as yet
as well as anybody. We shall soon have it in real earnest. We are now
sailing for Fernando Noronha, off the coast of Brazil, where we shall
not stay very long, and then examine the shoals between there and Rio,
touching perhaps at Bahia. I will finish this letter when an opportunity
of sending it occurs.

FEBRUARY 26TH.

About 280 miles from Bahia. On the 10th we spoke the packet "Lyra", on
her voyage to Rio. I sent a short letter by her, to be sent to England
on [the] first opportunity. We have been singularly unlucky in not
meeting with any homeward-bound vessels, but I suppose [at] Bahia we
certainly shall be able to write to England. Since writing the first
part of [this] letter nothing has occurred except crossing the Equator,
and being shaved. This most disagreeable operation consists in having
your face rubbed with paint and tar, which forms a lather for a saw
which represents the razor, and then being half drowned in a sail filled
with salt water. About 50 miles north of the line we touched at the
rocks of St. Paul; this little speck (about 1/4 of a mile across) in the
Atlantic has seldom been visited. It is totally barren, but is covered
by hosts of birds; they were so unused to men that we found we could
kill plenty with stones and sticks. After remaining some hours on the
island, we returned on board with the boat loaded with our prey. From
this we went to Fernando Noronha, a small island where the [Brazilians]
send their exiles. The landing there was attended with so much
difficulty owing [to] a heavy surf that the Captain determined to
sail the next day after arriving. My one day on shore was exceedingly
interesting, the whole island is one single wood so matted together by
creepers that it is very difficult to move out of the beaten path.
I find the Natural History of all these unfrequented spots most
exceedingly interesting, especially the geology. I have written this
much in order to save time at Bahia.

Decidedly the most striking thing in the Tropics is the novelty of the
vegetable forms. Cocoa-nuts could well be imagined from drawings, if
you add to them a graceful lightness which no European tree partakes of.
Bananas and plantains are exactly the same as those in hothouses, the
acacias or tamarinds are striking from the blueness of their foliage;
but of the glorious orange trees, no description, no drawings, will give
any just idea; instead of the sickly green of our oranges, the native
ones exceed the Portugal laurel in the darkness of their tint, and
infinitely exceed it in beauty of form. Cocoa-nuts, papaws, the light
green bananas, and oranges, loaded with fruit, generally surround the
more luxuriant villages. Whilst viewing such scenes, one feels the
impossibility that any description would come near the mark, much less
be overdrawn.

MARCH 1ST.

Bahia, or San Salvador. I arrived at this place on the 28th of February,
and am now writing this letter after having in real earnest strolled
in the forests of the new world. No person could imagine anything so
beautiful as the ancient town of Bahia, it is fairly embosomed in a
luxuriant wood of beautiful trees, and situated on a steep bank, and
overlooks the calm waters of the great bay of All Saints. The houses
are white and lofty, and, from the windows being narrow and long, have
a very light and elegant appearance. Convents, porticos, and public
buildings, vary the uniformity of the houses; the bay is scattered over
with large ships; in short, and what can be said more, it is one of
the finest views in the Brazils. But the exquisite glorious pleasure of
walking amongst such flowers, and such trees, cannot be comprehended
but by those who have experienced it. Although in so low a latitude the
locality is not disagreeably hot, but at present it is very damp, for it
is the rainy season. I find the climate as yet agrees admirably with me;
it makes me long to live quietly for some time in such a country. If
you really want to have [an idea] of tropical countries, study Humboldt.
Skip the scientific parts, and commence after leaving Teneriffe. My
feelings amount to admiration the more I read him. Tell Eyton (I find I
am writing to my sisters!) how exceedingly I enjoy America, and that I
am sure it will be a great pity if he does not make a start.

This letter will go on the 5th, and I am afraid will be some time before
it reaches you; it must be a warning how in other parts of the world you
may be a long time without hearing. A year might by accident thus pass.
About the 12th we start for Rio, but we remain some time on the way in
sounding the Albrolhos shoals. Tell Eyton as far as my experience goes
let him study Spanish, French, drawing, and Humboldt. I do sincerely
hope to hear of (if not to see him) in South America. I look forward to
the letters in Rio--till each one is acknowledged, mention its date in
the next.

We have beat all the ships in manoeuvring, so much so that the
commanding officer says, we need not follow his example; because we do
everything better than his great ship. I begin to take great interest in
naval points, more especially now, as I find they all say we are the No.
1 in South America. I suppose the Captain is a most excellent officer.
It was quite glorious to-day how we beat the "Samarang" in furling
sails. It is quite a new thing for a "sounding ship" to beat a regular
man-of-war; and yet the "Beagle" is not at all a particular ship.
Erasmus will clearly perceive it when he hears that in the night I have
actually sat down in the sacred precincts of the quarter deck. You must
excuse these queer letters, and recollect they are generally written in
the evening after my day's work. I take more pains over my log-book, so
that eventually you will have a good account of all the places I visit.
Hitherto the voyage has answered ADMIRABLY to me, and yet I am now more
fully aware of your wisdom in throwing cold water on the whole scheme;
the chances are so numerous of turning out quite the reverse; to such
an extent do I feel this, that if my advice was asked by any person on
a similar occasion, I should be very cautious in encouraging him. I have
not time to write to anybody else, so send to Maer to let them know,
that in the midst of the glorious tropical scenery, I do not forget how
instrumental they were in placing me there. I will not rapturise again,
but I give myself great credit in not being crazy out of pure delight.

Give my love to every soul at home, and to the Owens.

I think one's affections, like other good things, flourish and increase
in these tropical regions.

The conviction that I am walking in the New World is even yet marvellous
in my own eyes, and I dare say it is little less so to you, the
receiving a letter from a son of yours in such a quarter.

Believe me, my dear Father, Your most affectionate son, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Botofogo Bay, near Rio de Janeiro, May,
1832.

My dear Fox,

I have delayed writing to you and all my other friends till I arrived
here and had some little spare time. My mind has been, since leaving
England, in a perfect HURRICANE of delight and astonishment, and to this
hour scarcely a minute has passed in idleness...

At St. Jago my natural history and most delightful labours commenced.
During the three weeks I collected a host of marine animals, and enjoyed
many a good geological walk. Touching at some islands, we sailed to
Bahia, and from thence to Rio, where I have already been some weeks. My
collections go on admirably in almost every branch. As for insects, I
trust I shall send a host of undescribed species to England. I believe
they have no small ones in the collections, and here this morning I have
taken minute Hydropori, Noterus, Colymbetes, Hydrophilus, Hydrobius,
Gromius, etc., etc., as specimens of fresh-water beetles. I am entirely
occupied with land animals, as the beach is only sand. Spiders and the
adjoining tribes have perhaps given me, from their novelty, the most
pleasure. I think I have already taken several new genera.

But Geology carries the day: it is like the pleasure of gambling.
Speculating, on first arriving, what the rocks may be, I often mentally
cry out 3 to 1 tertiary against primitive; but the latter have hitherto
won all the bets. So much for the grand end of my voyage; in other
respects things are equally flourishing. My life, when at sea, is
so quiet, that to a person who can employ himself, nothing can be
pleasanter; the beauty of the sky and brilliancy of the ocean together
make a picture. But when on shore, and wandering in the sublime forests,
surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined,
I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can
understand. If it is to be done, it must be by studying Humboldt. At our
ancient snug breakfasts, at Cambridge, I little thought that the wide
Atlantic would ever separate us; but it is a rare privilege that with
the body, the feelings and memory are not divided. On the contrary, the
pleasantest scenes in my life, many of which have been in Cambridge,
rise from the contrast of the present, the more vividly in my
imagination. Do you think any diamond beetle will ever give me so much
pleasure as our old friend crux major?... It is one of my most constant
amusements to draw pictures of the past; and in them I often see you
and poor little Fran. Oh, Lord, and then old Dash, poor thing! Do you
recollect how you all tormented me about his beautiful tail?

...Think when you are picking insects off a hawthorn-hedge on a fine May
day (wretchedly cold, I have no doubt), think of me collecting amongst
pine-apples and orange-trees; whilst staining your fingers with dirty
blackberries, think and be envious of ripe oranges. This is a proper
piece of bravado, for I would walk through many a mile of sleet, snow,
or rain to shake you by the hand. My dear old Fox, God bless you.
Believe me,

Yours affectionately, CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. Rio de Janeiro, May 18, 1832.

My dear Henslow,...

Till arriving at Teneriffe (we did not touch at Madeira) I was scarcely
out of my hammock, and really suffered more than you can well imagine
from such a cause. At Santa Cruz, whilst looking amongst the clouds for
the Peak, and repeating to myself Humboldt's sublime descriptions, it
was announced we must perform twelve days' strict quarantine. We had
made a short passage, so "Up jib," and away for St. Jago. You will say
all this sounds very bad, and so it was; but from that to the present
time it has been nearly one scene of continual enjoyment. A net over the
stern kept me at full work till we arrived at St. Jago. Here we spent
three most delightful weeks. The geology was pre-eminently interesting,
and I believe quite new; there are some facts on a large scale of
upraised coast (which is an excellent epoch for all the volcanic rocks
to date from), that would interest Mr. Lyell.

One great source of perplexity to me is an utter ignorance whether I
note the right facts, and whether they are of sufficient importance to
interest others. In the one thing collecting I cannot go wrong. St. Jago
is singularly barren, and produces few plants or insects, so that my
hammer was my usual companion, and in its company most delightful
hours I spent. On the coast I collected many marine animals, chiefly
gasteropodous (I think some new). I examined pretty accurately a
Caryopyllia, and, if my eyes are not bewitched, former descriptions have
not the slightest resemblance to the animal. I took several specimens
of an Octopus which possessed a most marvellous power of changing
its colours, equalling any chameleon, and evidently accommodating the
changes to the colour of the ground which it passed over. Yellowish
green, dark brown, and red, were the prevailing colours; this
fact appears to be new, as far as I can find out. Geology and the
invertebrate animals will be my chief object of pursuit through the
whole voyage.

We then sailed for Bahia, and touched at the rock of St. Paul. This is a
serpentine formation. Is it not the only island in the Atlantic which
is not volcanic? We likewise stayed a few hours at Fernando Noronha; a
tremendous surf was running so that a boat was swamped, and the Captain
would not wait. I find my life on board when we are on blue water most
delightful, so very comfortable and quiet--it is almost impossible to
be idle, and that for me is saying a good deal. Nobody could possibly be
better fitted in every respect for collecting than I am; many cooks
have not spoiled the broth this time. Mr. Brown's little hints about
microscopes, etc., have been invaluable. I am well off in books, the
'Dictionnaire Classique' IS MOST USEFUL. If you should think of any
thing or book that would be useful to me, if you would write one line,
E. Darwin, Wyndham Club, St. James's Street, he will procure them, and
send them with some other things to Monte Video, which for the next year
will be my headquarters.

Touching at the Abrolhos, we arrived here on April 4th, when amongst
others I received your most kind letter. You may rely on it during the
evening I thought of the many most happy hours I have spent with you in
Cambridge. I am now living at Botofogo, a village about a league from
the city, and shall be able to remain a month longer. The "Beagle" has
gone back to Bahia, and will pick me up on its return. There is a most
important error in the longitude of South America, to settle which this
second trip has been undertaken. Our chronometers, at least sixteen
of them, are going superbly; none on record have ever gone at all like
them.

A few days after arriving I started on an expedition of 150 miles to Rio
Macao, which lasted eighteen days. Here I first saw a tropical forest in
all its sublime grander--nothing but the reality can give any idea how
wonderful, how magnificent the scene is. If I was to specify any one
thing I should give the pre-eminence to the host of parasitical plants.
Your engraving is exactly true, but underrates rather than exaggerates
the luxuriance. I never experienced such intense delight. I formerly
admired Humboldt, I now almost adore him; he alone gives any notion of
the feelings which are raised in the mind on first entering the Tropics.
I am now collecting fresh-water and land animals; if what was told me in
London is true, viz., that there are no small insects in the collections
from the Tropics, I tell Entomologists to look out and have their pens
ready for describing. I have taken as minute (if not more so) as in
England, Hydropori, Hygroti, Hydrobii, Pselaphi, Staphylini, Curculio,
etc. etc. It is exceedingly interesting observing the difference of
genera and species from those which I know, it is however much less
than I had expected. I am at present red-hot with spiders; they are
very interesting, and if I am not mistaken I have already taken some
new genera. I shall have a large box to send very soon to Cambridge, and
with that I will mention some more natural history particulars.

The Captain does everything in his power to assist me, and we get on
very well, but I thank my better fortune he has not made me a renegade
to Whig principles. I would not be a Tory, if it was merely on account
of their cold hearts about that scandal to Christian nations--Slavery. I
am very good friends with all the officers.

I have just returned from a walk, and as a specimen, how little the
insects are known. Noterus, according to the 'Dictionary Classique,'
contains solely three European species. I in one haul of my net took
five distinct species; is this not quite extraordinary?...

Tell Professor Sedgwick he does not know how much I am indebted to him
for the Welsh Expedition; it has given me an interest in Geology which
I would not give up for any consideration. I do not think I ever spent
a more delightful three weeks than pounding the North-west Mountains. I
look forward to the geology about Monte Video as I hear there are slates
there, so I presume in that district I shall find the junctions of the
Pampas, and the enormous granite formation of Brazils. At Bahia the
pegmatite and gneiss in beds had the same direction, as observed by
Humboldt, prevailing over Columbia, distant 1300 miles--is it not
wonderful? Monte Video will be for a long time my direction. I hope
you will write again to me, there is nobody from whom I like receiving
advice so much as from you...Excuse this almost unintelligible letter,
and believe me, my dear Henslow, with the warmest feelings of respect
and friendship,

Yours affectionately, CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.M. HERBERT. Botofogo Bay, Rio de Janeiro, June 1832.

My dear old Herbert,

Your letter arrived here when I had given up all hopes of receiving
another, it gave me, therefore, an additional degree of pleasure. At
such an interval of time and space one does learn to feel truly obliged
to those who do not forget one. The memory when recalling scenes past
by, affords to us EXILES one of the greatest pleasures. Often and often
whilst wandering amongst these hills do I think of Barmouth, and, I may
add, as often wish for such a companion. What a contrast does a walk
in these two places afford; here abrupt and stony peaks are to the very
summit enclosed by luxuriant woods; the whole surface of the country,
excepting where cleared by man, is one impenetrable forest. How
different from Wales, with its sloping hills covered with turf, and
its open valleys. I was not previously aware how intimately what may be
called the moral part is connected with the enjoyment of scenery. I mean
such ideas, as the history of the country, the utility of the produce,
and more especially the happiness of the people living with them. Change
the English labourer into a poor slave, working for another, and you
will hardly recognise the same view. I am sure you will be glad to hear
how very well every part (Heaven forefend, except sea-sickness) of the
expedition has answered. We have already seen Teneriffe and the Great
Canary; St. Jago where I spent three most delightful weeks, revelling
in the delights of first naturalising a tropical volcanic island, and
besides other islands, the two celebrated ports in the Brazils, viz.
Bahia and Rio.

I was in my hammock till we arrived at the Canaries, and I shall never
forget the sublime impression the first view of Teneriffe made on
my mind. The first arriving into warm weather was most luxuriously
pleasant; the clear blue sky of the Tropics was no common change after
those accursed south-west gales at Plymouth. About the Line it became
weltering hot. We spent one day at St. Paul's, a little group of rocks
about a quarter of a mile in circumference, peeping up in the midst of
the Atlantic. There was such a scene here. Wickham (1st Lieutenant) and
I were the only two who landed with guns and geological hammers, etc.
The birds by myriads were too close to shoot; we then tried stones, but
at last, proh pudor! my geological hammer was the instrument of death.
We soon loaded the boat with birds and eggs. Whilst we were so engaged,
the men in the boat were fairly fighting with the sharks for such
magnificent fish as you could not see in the London market. Our boat
would have made a fine subject for Snyders, such a medley of game it
contained. We have been here ten weeks, and shall now start for Monte
Video, when I look forward to many a gallop over the Pampas. I am
ashamed of sending such a scrambling letter, but if you were to see the
heap of letters on my table you would understand the reason...

I am glad to hear music flourishes so well in Cambridge; but it [is] as
barbarous to talk to me of "celestial concerts" as to a person in Arabia
of cold water. In a voyage of this sort, if one gains many new and great
pleasures, on the other side the loss is not inconsiderable. How should
you like to be suddenly debarred from seeing every person and place,
which you have ever known and loved, for five years? I do assure you I
am occasionally "taken aback" by this reflection; and then for man or
ship it is not so easy to right again. Remember me most sincerely to the
remnant of most excellent fellows whom I have the good luck to know in
Cambridge--I mean Whitley and Watkins. Tell Lowe I am even beneath his
contempt. I can eat salt beef and musty biscuits for dinner. See what a
fall man may come to!

My direction for the next year and a half will be Monte Video.

God bless you, my very dear old Herbert. May you always be happy and
prosperous is my most cordial wish.

Yours affectionately, CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO F. WATKINS. Monte Video, River Plata, August 18, 1832.

My dear Watkins,

I do not feel very sure you will think a letter from one so far distant
will be worth having; I write therefore on the selfish principle of
getting an answer. In the different countries we visit the entire
newness and difference from England only serves to make more keen the
recollection of its scenes and delights. In consequence the pleasure of
thinking of, and hearing from one's former friends, does indeed become
great. Recollect this, and some long winter's evening sit down and send
me a long account of yourself and our friends; both what you have, and
what [you] intend doing; otherwise in three or four more years when I
return you will be all strangers to me. Considering how many months
have passed, we have not in the "Beagle" made much way round the world.
Hitherto everything has well repaid the necessary trouble and loss of
comfort. We stayed three weeks at the Cape de Verds; it was no ordinary
pleasure rambling over the plains of lava under a tropical sun, but when
I first entered on and beheld the luxuriant vegetation in Brazil, it
was realizing the visions in the 'Arabian Nights.' The brilliancy of the
scenery throws one into a delirium of delight, and a beetle hunter is
not likely soon to awaken from it, when whichever way he turns fresh
treasures meet his eye. At Rio de Janeiro three months passed away like
so many weeks. I made a most delightful excursion during this time of
150 miles into the country. I stayed at an estate which is the last of
the cleared ground, behind is one vast impenetrable forest. It is almost
impossible to imagine the quietude of such a life. Not a human being
within some miles interrupts the solitude. To seat oneself amidst the
gloom of such a forest on a decaying trunk, and then think of home, is a
pleasure worth taking some trouble for.

We are at present in a much less interesting country. One single walk
over the undulatory turf plain shows everything which is to be seen.
It is not at all unlike Cambridgeshire, only that every hedge, tree and
hill must be leveled, and arable land turned into pasture. All South
America is in such an unsettled state that we have not entered one port
without some sort of disturbance. At Buenos Ayres a shot came whistling
over our heads; it is a noise I had never before heard, but I found I
had an instinctive knowledge of what it meant. The other day we landed
our men here, and took possession, at the request of the inhabitants, of
the central fort. We philosophers do not bargain for this sort of work,
and I hope there will be no more. We sail in the course of a day or two
to survey the coast of Patagonia; as it is entirely unknown, I expect a
good deal of interest. But already do I perceive the grievous difference
between sailing on these seas and the Equinoctial ocean. In the "Ladies'
Gulf," as the Spaniard's call it, it is so luxurious to sit on deck and
enjoy the coolness of the night, and admire the new constellations of
the South...I wonder when we shall ever meet again; but be it when it
may, few things will give me greater pleasure than to see you again, and
talk over the long time we have passed together.

If you were to meet me at present I certainly should be looked at like a
wild beast, a great grizzly beard and flushing jacket would disfigure
an angel. Believe me, my dear Watkins, with the warmest feelings of
friendship.

Ever yours, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. April 11, 1833.

My dear Henslow,

We are now running up from the Falkland Islands to the Rio Negro (or
Colorado). The "Beagle" will proceed to Monte Video; but if it can be
managed I intend staying at the former place. It is now some months
since we have been at a civilised port; nearly all this time has been
spent in the most southern part of Tierra del Fuego. It is a detestable
place; gales succeed gales with such short intervals that it is
difficult to do anything. We were twenty-three days off Cape Horn, and
could by no means get to the westward. The last and final gale before we
gave up the attempt was unusually severe. A sea stove one of the boats,
and there was so much water on the decks that every place was afloat;
nearly all the paper for drying plants is spoiled, and half of this
curious collection.

We at last ran into harbour, and in the boats got to the west by the
inland channels. As I was one of this party I was very glad of it.
With two boats we went about 300 miles, and thus I had an excellent
opportunity of geologising and seeing much of the savages. The Fuegians
are in a more miserable state of barbarism than I had expected ever to
have seen a human being. In this inclement country they are absolutely
naked, and their temporary houses are like what children make in
summer with boughs of trees. I do not think any spectacle can be more
interesting than the first sight of man in his primitive wildness. It
is an interest which cannot well be imagined until it is experienced.
I shall never forget this when entering Good Success Bay--the yell with
which a party received us. They were seated on a rocky point, surrounded
by the dark forest of beech; as they threw their arms wildly round their
heads, and their long hair streaming, they seemed the troubled spirits
of another world. The climate in some respects is a curious mixture of
severity and mildness; as far as regards the animal kingdom, the
former character prevails; I have in consequence not added much to my
collections.

The Geology of this part of Tierra del Fuego was, as indeed every place
is, to me very interesting. The country is non-fossiliferous, and a
common-place succession of granitic rocks and slates; attempting to
make out the relation of cleavage, strata, etc., etc., was my chief
amusement. The mineralogy, however, of some of the rocks will, I think,
be curious from their resemblance to those of volcanic origin....

After leaving Tierra del Fuego we sailed to the Falklands. I forgot to
mention the fate of the Fuegians whom we took back to their country.
They had become entirely European in their habits and wishes, so much
so that the younger one had forgotten his own language, and their
countrymen paid but very little attention to them. We built houses for
them and planted gardens, but by the time we return again on our passage
round the Horn, I think it will be very doubtful how much of their
property will be left unstolen.

...When I am sea-sick and miserable, it is one of my highest
consolations to picture the future when we again shall be pacing
together the roads round Cambridge. That day is a weary long way off.
We have another cruise to make to Tierra del Fuego next summer, and then
our voyage round the world will really commence. Captain Fitz-Roy has
purchased a large schooner of 170 tons. In many respects it will be a
great advantage having a consort--perhaps it may somewhat shorten our
cruise, which I most cordially hope it may. I trust, however, that
the Coral Reefs and various animals of the Pacific may keep up my
resolution. Remember me most kindly to Mrs. Henslow and all other
friends; I am a true lover of Alma Mater and all its inhabitants.

Believe me, my dear Henslow, Your affectionate and most obliged friend,
CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS C. DARWIN. Maldonado, Rio Plata, May 22, 1833.

...The following business piece is to my father. Having a servant of
my own would be a really great addition to my comfort. For these two
reasons: as at present the Captain has appointed one of the men always
to be with me, but I do not think it just thus to take a seaman out of
the ship; and, secondly, when at sea I am rather badly off for any one
to wait on me. The man is willing to be my servant, and all the expenses
would be under 60 pounds per annum. I have taught him to shoot and skin
birds, so that in my main object he is very useful. I have now left
England nearly a year and a half, and I find my expenses are not above
200 pounds per annum; so that, it being hopeless (from time) to write
for permission, I have come to the conclusion that you would allow me
this expense. But I have not yet resolved to ask the Captain, and the
chances are even that he would not be willing to have an additional man
in the ship. I have mentioned this because for a long time I have been
thinking about it.

JUNE.

I have just received a bundle more letters. I do not know how to thank
you all sufficiently. One from Catherine, February 8th, another from
Susan, March 3rd, together with notes from Caroline and from my father;
give my best love to my father. I almost cried for pleasure at receiving
it; it was very kind thinking of writing to me. My letters are both
few, short, and stupid in return for all yours; but I always ease my
conscience by considering the Journal as a long letter. If I can
manage it, I will, before doubling the Horn, send the rest. I am quite
delighted to find the hide of the Megatherium has given you all some
little interest in my employments. These fragments are not, however,
by any means the most valuable of the geological relics. I trust and
believe that the time spent in this voyage, if thrown away for all other
respects, will produce its full worth in Natural History; and it appears
to me the doing what LITTLE we can to increase the general stock
of knowledge is as respectable an object of life as one can in any
likelihood pursue. It is more the result of such reflections (as I have
already said) than much immediate pleasure which now makes me continue
the voyage, together with the glorious prospect of the future, when
passing the Straits of Magellan, we have in truth the world before us.
Think of the Andes, the luxuriant forest of Guayaquil, the islands
of the South Sea, and New South Wales. How many magnificent and
characteristic views, how many and curious tribes of men we shall see!
What fine opportunities for geology and for studying the infinite host
of living beings! Is not this a prospect to keep up the most flagging
spirit? If I was to throw it away, I don't think I should ever rest
quiet in my grave. I certainly should be a ghost and haunt the British
Museum.

How famously the Ministers appear to be going on. I always much enjoy
political gossip and what you at home think will, etc., etc., take
place. I steadily read up the weekly paper, but it is not sufficient
to guide one's opinion; and I find it a very painful state not to be as
obstinate as a pig in politics. I have watched how steadily the general
feeling, as shown at elections, has been rising against Slavery. What
a proud thing for England if she is the first European nation which
utterly abolishes it! I was told before leaving England that after
living in slave countries all my opinions would be altered; the only
alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the negro
character. It is impossible to see a negro and not feel kindly towards
him; such cheerful, open, honest expressions and such fine muscular
bodies. I never saw any of the diminutive Portuguese, with their
murderous countenances, without almost wishing for Brazil to follow the
example of Hayti; and, considering the enormous healthy-looking black
population, it will be wonderful if, at some future day, it does not
take place. There is at Rio a man (I know not his title) who has a
large salary to prevent (I believe) the landing of slaves; he lives
at Botofogo, and yet that was the bay where, during my residence, the
greater number of smuggled slaves were landed. Some of the Anti-Slavery
people ought to question about his office; it was the subject of
conversation at Rio amongst the lower English...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.M. HERBERT. Maldonado, Rio Plata, June 2, 1833.

My dear Herbert,

I have been confined for the last three days to a miserable dark room,
in an old Spanish house, from the torrents of rain; I am not, therefore,
in very good trim for writing; but, defying the blue devils, I will send
you a few lines, if it is merely to thank you very sincerely for writing
to me. I received your letter, dated December 1st, a short time since.
We are now passing part of the winter in the Rio Plata, after having
had a hard summer's work to the south. Tierra del Fuego is indeed a
miserable place; the ceaseless fury of the gales is quite tremendous.
One evening we saw old Cape Horn, and three weeks afterwards we were
only thirty miles to windward of it. It is a grand spectacle to see all
nature thus raging; but Heaven knows every one in the "Beagle" has seen
enough in this one summer to last them their natural lives.

The first place we landed at was Good Success Bay. It was here Banks
and Solander met such disasters on ascending one of the mountains. The
weather was tolerably fine, and I enjoyed some walks in a wild country,
like that behind Barmouth. The valleys are impenetrable from the
entangled woods, but the higher parts, near the limits of perpetual
snow, are bare. From some of these hills the scenery, from its savage,
solitary character, was most sublime. The only inhabitant of these
heights is the guanaco, and with its shrill neighing it often breaks the
stillness. The consciousness that no European foot had ever trod much
of this ground added to the delight of these rambles. How often and how
vividly have many of the hours spent at Barmouth come before my mind! I
look back to that time with no common pleasure; at this moment I can see
you seated on the hill behind the inn, almost as plainly as if you were
really there. It is necessary to be separated from all which one
has been accustomed to, to know how properly to treasure up such
recollections, and at this distance, I may add, how properly to esteem
such as yourself, my dear old Herbert. I wonder when I shall ever
see you again. I hope it may be, as you say, surrounded with heaps of
parchment; but then there must be, sooner or later, a dear little lady
to take care of you and your house. Such a delightful vision makes me
quite envious. This is a curious life for a regular shore-going person
such as myself; the worst part of it is its extreme length. There
is certainly a great deal of high enjoyment, and on the contrary a
tolerable share of vexation of spirit. Everything, however, shall bend
to the pleasure of grubbing up old bones, and captivating new animals.
By the way, you rank my Natural History labours far too high. I am
nothing more than a lions' provider: I do not feel at all sure that they
will not growl and finally destroy me.

It does one's heart good to hear how things are going on in England.
Hurrah for the honest Whigs! I trust they will soon attack that
monstrous stain on our boasted liberty, Colonial Slavery. I have seen
enough of Slavery and the dispositions of the negroes, to be thoroughly
disgusted with the lies and nonsense one hears on the subject in
England. Thank God, the cold-hearted Tories, who, as J. Mackintosh used
to say, have no enthusiasm, except against enthusiasm, have for the
present run their race. I am sorry, by your letter, to hear you have not
been well, and that you partly attribute it to want of exercise. I wish
you were here amongst the green plains; we would take walks which would
rival the Dolgelly ones, and you should tell stories, which I would
believe, even to a CUBIC FATHOM OF PUDDING. Instead I must take my
solitary ramble, think of Cambridge days, and pick up snakes, beetles
and toads. Excuse this short letter (you know I never studied 'The
Complete Letter-writer'), and believe me, my dear Herbert,

Your affectionate friend, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. East Falkland Island, March, 1834.

...I am quite charmed with Geology, but like the wise animal between
two bundles of hay, I do not know which to like the best; the old
crystalline group of rocks, or the softer and fossiliferous beds. When
puzzling about stratifications, etc., I feel inclined to cry "a fig for
your big oysters, and your bigger megatheriums." But then when digging
out some fine bones, I wonder how any man can tire his arms with
hammering granite. By the way I have not one clear idea about cleavage,
stratification, lines of upheaval. I have no books which tell me much,
and what they do I cannot apply to what I see. In consequence I draw
my own conclusions, and most gloriously ridiculous ones they are, I
sometimes fancy...Can you throw any light into my mind by telling me
what relation cleavage and planes of deposition bear to each other?

And now for my second SECTION, Zoology. I have chiefly been employed
in preparing myself for the South Sea by examining the polypi of the
smaller Corallines in these latitudes. Many in themselves are very
curious, and I think are quite undescribed; there was one appalling one,
allied to a Flustra, which I dare say I mentioned having found to the
northward, where the cells have a movable organ (like a vulture's head,
with a dilatable beak), fixed on the edge. But what is of more general
interest is the unquestionable (as it appears to me) existence of
another species of ostrich, besides the Struthio rhea. All the Gauchos
and Indians state it is the case, and I place the greatest faith in
their observations. I have the head, neck, piece of skin, feathers, and
legs of one. The differences are chiefly in the colour of the feathers
and scales on legs, being feathered below the knees, nidification, and
geographical distribution. So much for what I have lately done; the
prospect before me is full of sunshine, fine weather, glorious scenery,
the geology of the Andes, plains abounding with organic remains (which
perhaps I may have the good luck to catch in the very act of moving),
and lastly, an ocean, its shores abounding with life, so that, if
nothing unforeseen happens, I will stick to the voyage, although for
what I can see this may last till we return a fine set of white-headed
old gentlemen. I have to thank you most cordially for sending me the
books. I am now reading the Oxford 'Report' (The second meeting of the
British Association was held at Oxford in 1832, the following year
it was at Cambridge.); the whole account of your proceedings is most
glorious; you remaining in England cannot well imagine how excessively
interesting I find the reports. I am sure from my own thrilling
sensations when reading them, that they cannot fail to have an excellent
effect upon all those residing in distant colonies, and who have
little opportunity of seeing the periodicals. My hammer has flown with
redoubled force on the devoted blocks; as I thought over the eloquence
of the Cambridge President, I hit harder and harder blows. I hope to
give my arms strength for the Cordilleras. You will send me through
Capt. Beaufort a copy of the Cambridge 'Report.'

I have forgotten to mention that for some time past, and for the future,
I will put a pencil cross on the pill-boxes containing insects, as these
alone will require being kept particularly dry; it may perhaps save you
some trouble. When this letter will go I do not know, as this little
seat of discord has lately been embroiled by a dreadful scene of murder,
and at present there are more prisoners than inhabitants. If a merchant
vessel is chartered to take them to Rio, I will send some specimens
(especially my few plants and seeds). Remember me to all my Cambridge
friends. I love and treasure up every recollection of dear old
Cambridge. I am much obliged to you for putting my name down to poor
Ramsay's monument; I never think of him without the warmest admiration.
Farewell, my dear Henslow.

Believe me your most obliged and affectionate friend, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS C. DARWIN. East Falkland Island, April 6, 1834.

My dear Catherine,

When this letter will reach you I know not, but probably some man-of-war
will call here before, in the common course of events, I should have
another opportunity of writing....

After visiting some of the southern islands, we beat up through the
magnificent scenery of the Beagle Channel to Jemmy Button's country.
(Jemmy Button, York Minster, and Fuegia Basket, were natives of Tierra
del Fuego, brought to England by Captain Fitz-Roy in his former voyage,
and restored to their country by him in 1832.) We could hardly recognise
poor Jemmy. Instead of the clean, well-dressed stout lad we left him,
we found him a naked, thin, squalid savage. York and Fuegia had moved to
their own country some months ago, the former having stolen all Jemmy's
clothes. Now he had nothing except a bit of blanket round his waist.
Poor Jemmy was very glad to see us, and, with his usual good feeling,
brought several presents (otter-skins, which are most valuable to
themselves) for his old friends. The Captain offered to take him to
England, but this, to our surprise, he at once refused. In the evening
his young wife came alongside and showed us the reason. He was quite
contented. Last year, in the height of his indignation, he said "his
country people no sabe nothing--damned fools"--now they were very good
people, with TOO much to eat, and all the luxuries of life. Jemmy and
his wife paddled away in their canoe loaded with presents, and very
happy. The most curious thing is, that Jemmy, instead of recovering his
own language, has taught all his friends a little English. "J. Button's
canoe" and "Jemmy's wife come," "Give me knife," etc., was said by
several of them.

We then bore away for this island--this little miserable seat of
discord. We found that the Gauchos, under pretence of a revolution, had
murdered and plundered all the Englishmen whom they could catch, and
some of their own countrymen. All the economy at home makes the foreign
movements of England most contemptible. How different from old Spain.
Here we, dog-in-the-manger fashion, seize an island, and leave to
protect it a Union Jack; the possessor has, of course, been murdered;
we now send a lieutenant with four sailors, without authority or
instructions. A man-of-war, however, ventured to leave a party of
marines, and by their assistance, and the treachery of some of the
party, the murderers have all been taken, there being now as many
prisoners as inhabitants. This island must some day become a very
important halting-place in the most turbulent sea in the world. It is
mid-way between Australia and the South Sea to England; between Chili,
Peru, etc., and the Rio Plata and the Rio de Janeiro. There are fine
harbours, plenty of fresh water, and good beef. It would doubtless
produce the coarser vegetables. In other respects it is a wretched
place. A little time since, I rode across the island, and returned in
four days. My excursion would have been longer, but during the whole
time it blew a gale of wind, with hail and snow. There is no firewood
bigger than heath, and the whole country is, more or less an elastic
peat-bog. Sleeping out at night was too miserable work to endure it for
all the rocks in South America.

We shall leave this scene of iniquity in two or three days, and go to
the Rio de la Sta. Cruz. One of the objects is to look at the ship's
bottom. We struck heavily on an unknown rock off Port Desire, and some
of her copper is torn off. After this is repaired the Captain has a
glorious scheme; it is to go to the very head of this river, that is
probably to the Andes. It is quite unknown; the Indians tell us it is
two or three hundred yards broad, and horses can nowhere ford it. I
cannot imagine anything more interesting. Our plans then are to go
to Fort Famine, and there we meet the "Adventure", who is employed in
making the Chart of the Falklands. This will be in the middle of winter,
so I shall see Tierra del Fuego in her white drapery. We leave the
straits to enter the Pacific by the Barbara Channel, one very little
known, and which passes close to the foot of Mount Sarmiento (the
highest mountain in the south, excepting Mt.!! Darwin!!). We then shall
scud away for Concepcion in Chili. I believe the ship must once again
steer southward, but if any one catches me there again, I will give him
leave to hang me up as a scarecrow for all future naturalists. I long
to be at work in the Cordilleras, the geology of this side, which
I understand pretty well is so intimately connected with periods of
violence in that great chain of mountains. The future is, indeed, to
me a brilliant prospect. You say its very brilliancy frightens you; but
really I am very careful; I may mention as a proof, in all my rambles I
have never had any one accident or scrape...Continue in your good custom
of writing plenty of gossip; I much like hearing all about all things.
Remember me most kindly to Uncle Jos, and to all the Wedgwoods. Tell
Charlotte (their married names sound downright unnatural) I should like
to have written to her, to have told her how well everything is going
on; but it would only have been a transcript of this letter, and I
have a host of animals at this minute surrounding me which all require
embalming and numbering. I have not forgotten the comfort I received
that day at Maer, when my mind was like a swinging pendulum. Give my
best love to my father. I hope he will forgive all my extravagance, but
not as a Christian, for then I suppose he would send me no more money.

Good-bye, dear, to you, and all your goodly sisterhood.

Your affectionate brother, CHAS. DARWIN.

My love to Nancy (His old nurse.); tell her, if she was now to see me
with my great beard, she would think I was some worthy Solomon, come to
sell the trinkets.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. WHITLEY. Valparaiso, July 23, 1834.

My dear Whitley,

I have long intended writing, just to put you in mind that there is a
certain hunter of beetles, and pounder of rocks still in existence. Why
I have not done so before I know not, but it will serve me right if you
have quite forgotten me. It is a very long time since I have heard any
Cambridge news; I neither know where you are living or what you are
doing. I saw your name down as one of the indefatigable guardians of the
eighteen hundred philosophers. I was delighted to see this, for when
we last left Cambridge you were at sad variance with poor science; you
seemed to think her a public prostitute working for popularity. If your
opinions are the same as formerly, you would agree most admirably with
Captain Fitz-Roy,--the object of his most devout abhorrence is one of
the d--d scientific Whigs. As captains of men-of-war are the greatest
men going, far greater than kings or schoolmasters, I am obliged to tell
him everything in my own favour. I have often said I once had a very
good friend, an out-and-out Tory, and we managed to get on very well
together. But he is very much inclined to doubt if ever I really was so
much honoured; at present we hear scarcely anything about politics; this
saves a great deal of trouble, for we all stick to our former opinions
rather more obstinately than before, and can give rather fewer reasons
for doing so.

I do hope you will write to me: ('H.M.S. "Beagle", S. American Station'
will find me). I should much like to hear in what state you are both in
body and mind. ?Quien Sabe? as the people say here (and God knows they
well may, for they do know little enough), if you are not a married man,
and may be nursing, as Miss Austen says, little olive branches, little
pledges of mutual affection. Eheu! Eheu! this puts me in mind of former
visions of glimpses into futurity, where I fancied I saw retirement,
green cottages, and white petticoats. What will become of me hereafter
I know not; I feel like a ruined man, who does not see or care how to
extricate himself. That this voyage must come to a conclusion my
reason tells me, but otherwise I see no end to it. It is impossible not
bitterly to regret the friends and other sources of pleasure one leaves
behind in England; in place of it there is much solid enjoyment, some
present, but more in anticipation, when the ideas gained during the
voyage can be compared to fresh ones. I find in Geology a never-failing
interest, as it has been remarked, it creates the same grand ideas
respecting this world which Astronomy does for the universe. We have
seen much fine scenery; that of the Tropics in its glory and luxuriance
exceeds even the language of Humboldt to describe. A Persian writer
could alone do justice to it, and if he succeeded he would in England be
called the 'Grandfather of all liars.'

But I have seen nothing which more completely astonished me than the
first sight of a savage. It was a naked Fuegian, his long hair blowing
about, his face besmeared with paint. There is in their countenances
an expression which I believe, to those who have not seen it, must
be inconceivably wild. Standing on a rock he uttered tones and made
gesticulations, than which the cries of domestic animals are far more
intelligible.

When I return to England, you must take me in hand with respect to the
fine arts. I yet recollect there was a man called Raffaelle Sanctus. How
delightful it will be once again to see, in the Fitzwilliam, Titian's
Venus. How much more than delightful to go to some good concert or fine
opera. These recollections will not do. I shall not be able to-morrow
to pick out the entrails of some small animal with half my usual
gusto. Pray tell me some news about Cameron, Watkins, Marindin, the two
Thompsons of Trinity, Lowe, Heaviside, Matthew. Herbert I have heard
from. How is Henslow getting on? and all other good friends of dear
Cambridge? Often and often do I think over those past hours, so many of
which have been passed in your company. Such can never return, but their
recollection can never die away.

God bless you, my dear Whitley, Believe me, your most sincere friend,
CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS C. DARWIN. Valparaiso, November 8, 1834.

My dear Catherine,

My last letter was rather a gloomy one, for I was not very well when I
wrote it. Now everything is as bright as sunshine. I am quite well again
after being a second time in bed for a fortnight. Captain Fitz-Roy very
generously has delayed the ship ten days on my account, and without at
the time telling me for what reason.

We have had some strange proceedings on board the "Beagle", but which
have ended most capitally for all hands. Captain Fitz-Roy has for
the last two months been working EXTREMELY hard, and at the same time
constantly annoyed by interruptions from officers of other ships; the
selling the schooner and its consequences were very vexatious; the
cold manner the Admiralty (solely I believe because he is a Tory) have
treated him, and a thousand other, etc. etc.'s, has made him very thin
and unwell. This was accompanied by a morbid depression of spirits, and
a loss of all decision and resolution... All that Bynoe [the Surgeon]
could say, that it was merely the effect of bodily health and exhaustion
after such application, would not do; he invalided, and Wickham was
appointed to the command. By the instructions Wickham could only finish
the survey of the southern part, and would then have been obliged to
return direct to England. The grief on board the "Beagle" about the
Captain's decision was universal and deeply felt; one great source
of his annoyment was the feeling it impossible to fulfil the whole
instructions; from his state of mind it never occurred to him that the
very instructions ordered him to do as much of the West coast AS HE HAS
TIME FOR, and then proceed across the Pacific.

Wickham (very disinterestedly giving up his own promotion) urged this
most strongly, stated that when he took the command nothing should
induce him to go to Tierra del Fuego again; and then asked the Captain
what would be gained by his resignation? why not do the more useful
part, and return as commanded by the Pacific. The Captain at last, to
every one's joy, consented, and the resignation was withdrawn.

Hurrah! hurrah! it is fixed the "Beagle" shall not go one mile south of
Cape Tres Montes (about 200 miles south of Chiloe), and from that point
to Valparaiso will be finished in about five months. We shall examine
the Chonos Archipelago, entirely unknown, and the curious inland sea
behind Chiloe. For me it is glorious. Cape Tres Montes is the most
southern point where there is much geological interest, as there the
modern beds end. The Captain then talks of crossing the Pacific; but
I think we shall persuade him to finish the Coast of Peru, where the
climate is delightful, the country hideously sterile, but abounding with
the highest interest to a geologist. For the first time since leaving
England I now see a clear and not so distant prospect of returning to
you all: crossing the Pacific, and from Sydney home, will not take much
time.

As soon as the Captain invalided I at once determined to leave the
"Beagle", but it was quite absurd what a revolution in five minutes was
effected in all my feelings. I have long been grieved and most sorry
at the interminable length of the voyage (although I never would have
quitted it); but the minute it was all over, I could not make up my mind
to return. I could not give up all the geological castles in the air
which I had been building up for the last two years. One whole night
I tried to think over the pleasure of seeing Shrewsbury again, but the
barren plains of Peru gained the day. I made the following scheme (I
know you will abuse me, and perhaps if I had put it in execution, my
father would have sent a mandamus after me); it was to examine the
Cordilleras of Chili during this summer, and in winter go from port
to port on the coast of Peru to Lima, returning this time next year
to Valparaiso, cross the Cordilleras to Buenos Ayres, and take ship
to England. Would not this have been a fine excursion, and in sixteen
months I should have been with you all? To have endured Tierra del Fuego
and not seen the Pacific would have been miserable...

I go on board to-morrow; I have been for the last six weeks in
Corfield's house. You cannot imagine what a kind friend I have
found him. He is universally liked, and respected by the natives and
foreigners. Several Chileno Signoritas are very obligingly anxious to
become the signoras of this house. Tell my father I have kept my promise
of being extravagant in Chili. I have drawn a bill of 100 pounds (had it
not better be notified to Messrs. Robarts & Co.); 50 pounds goes to the
Captain for the ensuing year, and 30 pounds I take to sea for the small
ports; so that bona fide I have not spent 180 pounds during these last
four months. I hope not to draw another bill for six months. All the
foregoing particulars were only settled yesterday. It has done me more
good than a pint of medicine, and I have not been so happy for the last
year. If it had not been for my illness, these four months in Chili
would have been very pleasant. I have had ill luck, however, in only one
little earthquake having happened. I was lying in bed when there was a
party at dinner in the house; on a sudden I heard such a hubbub in the
dining-room; without a word being spoken, it was devil take the hindmost
who should get out first; at the same moment I felt my bed SLIGHTLY
vibrate in a lateral direction. The party were old stagers, and heard
the noise which always precedes a shock; and no old stager looks at an
earthquake with philosophical eyes...

Good-bye to you all; you will not have another letter for some time.

My dear Catherine, Yours affectionately, CHAS. DARWIN.

My best love to my father, and all of you. Love to Nancy.


CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS S. DARWIN. Valparaiso, April 23, 1835.

My dear Susan,

I received, a few days since, your letter of November; the three letters
which I before mentioned are yet missing, but I do not doubt they will
come to life. I returned a week ago from my excursion across the Andes
to Mendoza. Since leaving England I have never made so successful a
journey; it has, however, been very expensive. I am sure my father would
not regret it, if he could know how deeply I have enjoyed it: it was
something more than enjoyment; I cannot express the delight which I
felt at such a famous winding-up of all my geology in South America. I
literally could hardly sleep at nights for thinking over my day's work.
The scenery was so new, and so majestic; everything at an elevation of
12,000 feet bears so different an aspect from that in a lower country. I
have seen many views more beautiful, but none with so strongly marked
a character. To a geologist, also, there are such manifest proofs of
excessive violence; the strata of the highest pinnacles are tossed about
like the crust of a broken pie.

I crossed by the Portillo Pass, which at this time of the year is apt to
be dangerous, so could not afford to delay there. After staying a day in
the stupid town of Mendoza, I began my return by Uspallate, which I did
very leisurely. My whole trip only took up twenty-two days. I travelled
with, for me, uncommon comfort, as I carried a BED! My party consisted
of two Peons and ten mules, two of which were with baggage, or rather
food, in case of being snowed up. Everything, however, favoured me;
not even a speck of this year's snow had fallen on the road. I do not
suppose any of you can be much interested in geological details, but
I will just mention my principal results:--Besides understanding to
a certain extent the description and manner of the force which has
elevated this great line of mountains, I can clearly demonstrate that
one part of the double line is of an age long posterior to the other.
In the more ancient line, which is the true chain of the Andes, I can
describe the sort and order of the rocks which compose it. These are
chiefly remarkable by containing a bed of gypsum nearly 2000 feet
thick--a quantity of this substance I should think unparalleled in
the world. What is of much greater consequence, I have procured fossil
shells (from an elevation of 12,000 feet). I think an examination of
these will give an approximate age to these mountains, as compared to
the strata of Europe. In the other line of the Cordilleras there is a
strong presumption (in my own mind, conviction) that the enormous mass
of mountains, the peaks of which rise to 13,000 and 14,000 feet, are so
very modern as to be contemporaneous with the plains of Patagonia (or
about with the UPPER strata of the Isle of Wight). If this result shall
be considered as proved (The importance of these results has been fully
recognised by geologists.), it is a very important fact in the theory
of the formation of the world; because, if such wonderful changes have
taken place so recently in the crust of the globe, there can be no
reason for supposing former epochs of excessive violence. These modern
strata are very remarkable by being threaded with metallic veins of
silver, gold, copper, etc.; hitherto these have been considered as
appertaining to older formations. In these same beds, and close to a
goldmine, I found a clump of petrified trees, standing up right, with
layers of fine sandstone deposited round them, bearing the impression of
their bark. These trees are covered by other sandstones and streams of
lava to the thickness of several thousand feet. These rocks have been
deposited beneath water; yet it is clear the spot where the trees grew
must once have been above the level of the sea, so that it is certain
the land must have been depressed by at least as many thousand feet as
the superincumbent subaqueous deposits are thick. But I am afraid you
will tell me I am prosy with my geological descriptions and theories...

Your account of Erasmus' visit to Cambridge has made me long to be back
there. I cannot fancy anything more delightful than his Sunday round of
King's, Trinity, and those talking giants, Whewell and Sedgwick; I hope
your musical tastes continue in due force. I shall be ravenous for the
pianoforte...

I have not quite determined whether I will sleep at the 'Lion' the first
night when I arrive per 'Wonder,' or disturb you all in the dead of
night; everything short of that is absolutely planned. Everything about
Shrewsbury is growing in my mind bigger and more beautiful; I am certain
the acacia and copper beech are two superb trees; I shall know every
bush, and I will trouble you young ladies, when each of you cut down
your tree, to spare a few. As for the view behind the house, I have seen
nothing like it. It is the same with North Wales; Snowdon, to my
mind, looks much higher and much more beautiful than any peak in the
Cordilleras. So you will say, with my benighted faculties, it is time to
return, and so it is, and I long to be with you. Whatever the trees are,
I know what I shall find all you. I am writing nonsense, so farewell. My
most affectionate love to all, and I pray forgiveness from my father.

Yours most affectionately, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Lima, July, 1835.

My dear Fox,

I have lately received two of your letters, one dated June and the other
November, 1834 (they reached me, however, in an inverted order). I was
very glad to receive a history of this most important year in your life.
Previously I had only heard the plain fact that you were married. You
are a true Christian and return good for evil, to send two such letters
to so bad a correspondent as I have been. God bless you for writing
so kindly and affectionately; if it is a pleasure to have friends in
England, it is doubly so to think and know that one is not forgotten
because absent. This voyage is terribly long. I do so earnestly desire
to return, yet I dare hardly look forward to the future, for I do not
know what will become of me. Your situation is above envy: I do not
venture even to frame such happy visions. To a person fit to take the
office, the life of a clergyman is a type of all that is respectable and
happy. You tempt me by talking of your fireside, whereas it is a sort
of scene I never ought to think about. I saw the other day a vessel
sail for England; it was quite dangerous to know how easily I might
turn deserter. As for an English lady, I have almost forgotten what
she is--something very angelic and good. As for the women in these
countries, they wear caps and petticoats, and a very few have pretty
faces, and then all is said. But if we are not wrecked on some unlucky
reef, I will sit by that same fireside in Vale Cottage and tell some of
the wonderful stories, which you seem to anticipate and, I presume, are
not very ready to believe. Gracias a dios, the prospect of such times is
rather shorter than formerly.

From this most wretched 'City of the Kings' we sail in a fortnight, from
thence to Guayaquil, Galapagos, Marquesas, Society Islands, etc., etc. I
look forward to the Galapagos with more interest than any other part
of the voyage. They abound with active volcanoes, and, I should hope,
contain Tertiary strata. I am glad to hear you have some thoughts of
beginning Geology. I hope you will; there is so much larger a field for
thought than in the other branches of Natural History. I am become a
zealous disciple of Mr. Lyell's views, as known in his admirable book.
Geologising in South America, I am tempted to carry parts to a greater
extent even than he does. Geology is a capital science to begin, as it
requires nothing but a little reading, thinking, and hammering. I have
a considerable body of notes together; but it is a constant subject of
perplexity to me, whether they are of sufficient value for all the time
I have spent about them, or whether animals would not have been of more
certain value.

I shall indeed be glad once again to see you and tell you how grateful I
feel for your steady friendship. God bless you, my very dear Fox.

Believe me, Yours affectionately, CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. Sydney, January, 1836.

My dear Henslow,

This is the last opportunity of communicating with you before that
joyful day when I shall reach Cambridge. I have very little to say:
but I must write if it is only to express my joy that the last year is
concluded, and that the present one, in which the "Beagle" will return,
is gliding onwards. We have all been disappointed here in not finding
even a single letter; we are, indeed, rather before our expected time,
otherwise, I dare say, I should have seen your handwriting. I must
feed upon the future, and it is beyond bounds delightful to feel the
certainty that within eight months I shall be residing once again most
quietly in Cambridge. Certainly, I never was intended for a traveller;
my thoughts are always rambling over past or future scenes; I cannot
enjoy the present happiness for anticipating the future, which is about
as foolish as the dog who dropped the real bone for its shadow....

In our passage across the Pacific we only touched at Tahiti and New
Zealand; at neither of these places or at sea had I much opportunity
of working. Tahiti is a most charming spot. Everything which former
navigators have written is true. 'A new Cytheraea has risen from the
ocean.' Delicious scenery, climate, manners of the people are all in
harmony. It is, moreover, admirable to behold what the missionaries both
here and at New Zealand have effected. I firmly believe they are good
men working for the sake of a good cause. I much suspect that those who
have abused or sneered at the missionaries have generally been such as
were not very anxious to find the natives moral and intelligent beings.
During the remainder of our voyage we shall only visit places generally
acknowledged as civilised, and nearly all under the British flag. These
will be a poor field for Natural History, and without it I have lately
discovered that the pleasure of seeing new places is as nothing. I must
return to my old resource and think of the future, but that I may not
become more prosy, I will say farewell till the day arrives, when I
shall see my Master in Natural History, and can tell him how grateful I
feel for his kindness and friendship.

Believe me, dear Henslow, Ever yours, most faithfully, CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS S. DARWIN. Bahia, Brazil, August 4 [1836].

My dear Susan,

I will just write a few lines to explain the cause of this letter being
dated on the coast of South America. Some singular disagreements in the
longitudes made Captain Fitz-Roy anxious to complete the circle in the
southern hemisphere, and then retrace our steps by our first line to
England. This zigzag manner of proceeding is very grievous; it has put
the finishing stroke to my feelings. I loathe, I abhor the sea and all
ships which sail on it. But I yet believe we shall reach England in the
latter half of October. At Ascension I received Catherine's letter of
October, and yours of November; the letter at the Cape was of a later
date, but letters of all sorts are inestimable treasures, and I
thank you both for them. The desert, volcanic rocks, and wild sea of
Ascension, as soon as I knew there was news from home, suddenly wore a
pleasing aspect, and I set to work with a good-will at my old work of
Geology. You would be surprised to know how entirely the pleasure in
arriving at a new place depends on letters. We only stayed four days at
Ascension, and then made a very good passage to Bahia.

I little thought to have put my foot on South American coast again.
It has been almost painful to find how much good enthusiasm has been
evaporated during the last four years. I can now walk soberly through
a Brazilian forest; not but what it is exquisitely beautiful, but now,
instead of seeking for splendid contrasts, I compare the stately mango
trees with the horse-chestnuts of England. Although this zigzag has lost
us at least a fortnight, in some respects I am glad of it. I think I
shall be able to carry away one vivid picture of inter-tropical scenery.
We go from hence to the Cape de Verds; that is, if the winds or the
Equatorial calms will allow us. I have some faint hopes that a steady
foul wind might induce the Captain to proceed direct to the Azores. For
which most untoward event I heartily pray.

Both your letters were full of good news; especially the expressions
which you tell me Professor Sedgwick used about my collections. I
confess they are deeply gratifying--I trust one part at least will turn
out true, and that I shall act as I now think--as a man who dares to
waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. Professor
Sedgwick mentioning my name at all gives me hopes that he will assist me
with his advice, of which, in my geological questions, I stand much in
need. It is useless to tell you from the shameful state of this scribble
that I am writing against time, having been out all morning, and now
there are some strangers on board to whom I must go down and talk
civility. Moreover, as this letter goes by a foreign ship, it is
doubtful whether it will ever arrive. Farewell, my very dear Susan and
all of you. Good-bye.

C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. St. Helena, July 9, 1836.

My dear Henslow,

I am going to ask you to do me a favour. I am very anxious to belong to
the Geological Society. I do not know, but I suppose it is necessary to
be proposed some time before being ballotted for; if such is the case,
would you be good enough to take the proper preparatory steps? Professor
Sedgwick very kindly offered to propose me before leaving England, if he
should happen to be in London. I dare say he would yet do so.

I have very little to write about. We have neither seen, done, or heard
of anything particular for a long time past; and indeed if at present
the wonders of another planet could be displayed before us, I believe we
should unanimously exclaim, what a consummate plague. No schoolboys ever
sung the half sentimental and half jovial strain of 'dulce domum' with
more fervour, than we all feel inclined to do. But the whole subject
of 'dulce domum,' and the delight of seeing one's friends, is most
dangerous, it must infallibly make one very prosy or very boisterous.
Oh, the degree to which I long to be once again living quietly with not
one single novel object near me! No one can imagine it till he has been
whirled round the world during five long years in a ten-gun-brig. I am
at present living in a small house (amongst the clouds) in the centre of
the island, and within stone's throw of Napoleon's tomb. It is blowing
a gale of wind with heavy rain and wretchedly cold; if Napoleon's ghost
haunts his dreary place of confinement, this would be a most excellent
night for such wandering spirits. If the weather chooses to permit me,
I hope to see a little of the Geology (so often partially described) of
the island. I suspect that differently from most volcanic islands its
structure is rather complicated. It seems strange that this little
centre of a distinct creation should, as is asserted, bear marks of
recent elevation.

The "Beagle" proceeds from this place to Ascension, then to the Cape de
Verds (what miserable places!) to the Azores to Plymouth, and then
to home. That most glorious of all days in my life will not, however,
arrive till the middle of October. Some time in that month you will see
me at Cambridge, where I must directly come to report myself to you, as
my first Lord of the Admiralty. At the Cape of Good Hope we all on board
suffered a bitter disappointment in missing nine months' letters, which
are chasing us from one side of the globe to the other. I dare say
amongst them there was a letter from you; it is long since I have
seen your handwriting, but I shall soon see you yourself, which is
far better. As I am your pupil, you are bound to undertake the task of
criticising and scolding me for all the things ill done and not done at
all, which I fear I shall need much; but I hope for the best, and I am
sure I have a good if not too easy taskmaster.

At the Cape Captain Fitz-Roy and myself enjoyed a memorable piece of
good fortune in meeting Sir J. Herschel. We dined at his house and
saw him a few times besides. He was exceedingly good natured, but his
manners at first appeared to me rather awful. He is living in a very
comfortable country house, surrounded by fir and oak trees, which alone
in so open a country, give a most charming air of seclusion and comfort.
He appears to find time for everything; he showed us a pretty garden
full of Cape bulbs of his own collecting, and I afterwards understood
that everything was the work of his own hands...I am very stupid, and I
have nothing more to say; the wind is whistling so mournfully over the
bleak hills, that I shall go to bed and dream of England.

Goodnight, my dear Henslow, Yours most truly obliged and affectionately,
CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. Shrewsbury, Thursday, October 6, [1836].

My dear Henslow,

I am sure you will congratulate me on the delight of once again being
home. The "Beagle" arrived at Falmouth on Sunday evening, and I reached
Shrewsbury yesterday morning. I am exceedingly anxious to see you, and
as it will be necessary in four or five days to return to London to get
my goods and chattels out of the "Beagle", it appears to me my best plan
to pass through Cambridge. I want your advice on many points; indeed I
am in the clouds, and neither know what to do or where to go. My chief
puzzle is about the geological specimens--who will have the charity
to help me in describing their mineralogical nature? Will you be kind
enough to write to me one line by RETURN OF POST, saying whether you
are now at Cambridge? I am doubtful till I hear from Captain Fitz-Roy
whether I shall not be obliged to start before the answer can arrive,
but pray try the chance. My dear Henslow, I do long to see you; you have
been the kindest friend to me that ever man possessed. I can write no
more, for I am giddy with joy and confusion.

Farewell for the present, Yours most truly obliged, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO R. FITZ-ROY. Shrewsbury, Thursday morning, October 6,
[1836].

My dear Fitz-Roy,

I arrived here yesterday morning at breakfast time, and, thank God,
found all my dear good sisters and father quite well. My father appears
more cheerful and very little older than when I left. My sisters assure
me I do not look the least different, and I am able to return the
compliment. Indeed, all England appears changed excepting the good old
town of Shrewsbury and its inhabitants, which, for all I can see to
the contrary, may go on as they now are to Doomsday. I wish with all
my heart I was writing to you amongst your friends instead of at that
horrid Plymouth. But the day will soon come, and you will be as happy as
I now am. I do assure you I am a very great man at home; the five years'
voyage has certainly raised me a hundred per cent. I fear such greatness
must experience a fall.

I am thoroughly ashamed of myself in what a dead-and-half-alive state I
spent the few last days on board; my only excuse is that certainly I was
not quite well. The first day in the mail tired me, but as I drew nearer
to Shrewsbury everything looked more beautiful and cheerful. In passing
Gloucestershire and Worcestershire I wished much for you to admire the
fields, woods, and orchards. The stupid people on the coach did not seem
to think the fields one bit greener than usual; but I am sure we should
have thoroughly agreed that the wide world does not contain so happy a
prospect as the rich cultivated land of England.

I hope you will not forget to send me a note telling me how you go on.
I do indeed hope all your vexations and trouble with respect to our
voyage, which we now know HAS an end, have come to a close. If you do
not receive much satisfaction for all the mental and bodily energy you
have expended in His Majesty's service, you will be most hardly treated.
I put my radical sisters into an uproar at some of the prudent (if
they were not honest Whigs, I would say shabby) proceedings of our
Government. By the way, I must tell you for the honour and glory of the
family that my father has a large engraving of King George IV. put up
in his sitting-room. But I am no renegade, and by the time we meet my
politics will be as firmly fixed and as wisely founded as ever they
were.

I thought when I began this letter I would convince you what a steady
and sober frame of mind I was in. But I find I am writing most precious
nonsense. Two or three of our labourers yesterday immediately set to
work and got most excessively drunk in honour of the arrival of Master
Charles. Who then shall gainsay if Master Charles himself chooses to
make himself a fool. Good-bye. God bless you! I hope you are as happy,
but much wiser, than your most sincere but unworthy philosopher,

CHAS. DARWIN.




CHAPTER 1.VII. -- LONDON AND CAMBRIDGE.

1836-1842.

[The period illustrated by the following letters includes the years
between my father's return from the voyage of the "Beagle" and his
settling at Down. It is marked by the gradual appearance of that
weakness of health which ultimately forced him to leave London and take
up his abode for the rest of his life in a quiet country house.]

In June, 1841, he writes to Lyell: "My father scarcely seems to expect
that I shall become strong for some years; it has been a bitter
mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the 'race is for the
strong,' and that I shall probably do little more but be content to
admire the strides others make in science."

There is no evidence of any intention of entering a profession after his
return from the voyage, and early in 1840 he wrote to Fitz-Roy: "I
have nothing to wish for, excepting stronger health to go on with the
subjects to which I have joyfully determined to devote my life."

These two conditions--permanent ill-health and a passionate love of
scientific work for its own sake--determined thus early in his career,
the character of his whole future life. They impelled him to lead a
retired life of constant labour, carried on to the utmost limits of his
physical power, a life which signally falsified his melancholy prophecy.

The end of the last chapter saw my father safely arrived at Shrewsbury
on October 4, 1836, "after an absence of five years and two days." He
wrote to Fox: "You cannot imagine how gloriously delightful my first
visit was at home; it was worth the banishment." But it was a pleasure
that he could not long enjoy, for in the last days of October he was at
Greenwich unpacking specimens from the "Beagle". As to the destination
of the collections he writes, somewhat despondingly, to Henslow:--

"I have not made much progress with the great men. I find, as you told
me, that they are all overwhelmed with their own business. Mr. Lyell
has entered, in the MOST good-natured manner, and almost without being
asked, into all my plans. He tells me, however, the same story, that
I must do all myself. Mr. Owen seems anxious to dissect some of the
animals in spirits, and, besides these two, I have scarcely met any
one who seems to wish to possess any of my specimens. I must except Dr.
Grant, who is willing to examine some of the corallines. I see it is
quite unreasonable to hope for a minute that any man will undertake
the examination of a whole order. It is clear the collectors so much
outnumber the real naturalists that the latter have no time to spare.

"I do not even find that the Collections care for receiving the unnamed
specimens. The Zoological Museum (The Museum of the Zoological Society,
then at 33 Bruton Street. The collection was some years later broken
up and dispersed.) is nearly full, and upwards of a thousand specimens
remain unmounted. I dare say the British Museum would receive them, but
I cannot feel, from all I hear, any great respect even for the present
state of that establishment. Your plan will be not only the best, but
the only one, namely, to come down to Cambridge, arrange and group
together the different families, and then wait till people, who are
already working in different branches, may want specimens. But it
appears to me [that] to do this it will be almost necessary to reside
in London. As far as I can yet see my best plan will be to spend several
months in Cambridge, and then when, by your assistance, I know on what
ground I stand, to emigrate to London, where I can complete my Geology
and try to push on the Zoology. I assure you I grieve to find how many
things make me see the necessity of living for some time in this
dirty, odious London. For even in Geology I suspect much assistance and
communication will be necessary in this quarter, for instance, in fossil
bones, of which none excepting the fragments of Megatherium have been
looked at, and I clearly see that without my presence they never would
be....

"I only wish I had known the Botanists cared so much for specimens (A
passage in a subsequent letter shows that his plants also gave him some
anxiety. "I met Mr. Brown a few days after you had called on him; he
asked me in rather an ominous manner what I meant to do with my plants.
In the course of conversation Mr. Broderip, who was present, remarked
to him, 'You forget how long it is since Captain King's expedition.'
He answered, 'Indeed, I have something in the shape of Captain King's
undescribed plants to make me recollect it.' Could a better reason be
given, if I had been asked, by me, for not giving the plants to the
British Museum?") and the Zoologists so little; the proportional number
of specimens in the two branches should have had a very different
appearance. I am out of patience with the Zoologists, not because they
are overworked, but for their mean, quarrelsome spirit. I went the other
evening to the Zoological Society, where the speakers were snarling
at each other in a manner anything but like that of gentlemen. Thank
Heavens! as long as I remain in Cambridge there will not be any danger
of falling into any such contemptible quarrels, whilst in London I do
not see how it is to be avoided. Of the Naturalists, F. Hope is out of
London; Westwood I have not seen, so about my insects I know nothing.
I have seen Mr. Yarrell twice, but he is so evidently oppressed with
business that it is too selfish to plague him with my concerns. He has
asked me to dine with the Linnean on Tuesday, and on Wednesday I dine
with the Geological, so that I shall see all the great men. Mr. Bell,
I hear, is so much occupied that there is no chance of his wishing for
specimens of reptiles. I have forgotten to mention Mr. Lonsdale (William
Lonsdale, 1794-1871, was originally in the army, and served at the
battles of Salamanca and Waterloo. After the war he left the service
and gave himself up to science. He acted as assistant secretary to
the Geological Society from 1829-42, when he resigned, owing to ill
health.), who gave me a most cordial reception, and with whom I had
much most interesting conversation. If I was not much more inclined
for geology than the other branches of Natural History, I am sure Mr.
Lyell's and Lonsdale's kindness ought to fix me. You cannot conceive
anything more thoroughly good-natured than the heart-and-soul manner in
which he put himself in my place and thought what would be best to do.
At first he was all for London versus Cambridge, but at last I made him
confess that, for some time at least, the latter would be for me
much the best. There is not another soul whom I could ask, excepting
yourself, to wade through and criticise some of those papers which I
have left with you. Mr. Lyell owned that, second to London, there was no
place in England so good for a Naturalist as Cambridge. Upon my word
I am ashamed of writing so many foolish details, no young lady ever
described her first ball with more particularity."

A few days later he writes more cheerfully: "I became acquainted with
Mr. Bell (T. Bell, F.R.S., formerly Prof. of Zoology in King's College,
London, and some time secretary to the Royal Society. He afterwards
described the reptiles for the zoology of the voyage of the "Beagle".)
who to my surprise expressed a good deal of interest about my crustacea
and reptiles, and seems willing to work at them. I also heard that Mr.
Broderip would be glad to look over the South American shells, so that
things flourish well with me."

About his plants he writes with characteristic openness as to his own
ignorance: "You have made me known amongst the botanists, but I felt
very foolish when Mr. Don remarked on the beautiful appearance of some
plant with an astounding long name, and asked me about its habitation.
Some one else seemed quite surprised that I knew nothing about a Carex
from I do not know where. I was at last forced to plead most entire
innocence, and that I knew no more about the plants which I had
collected than the man in the moon."

As to part of his Geological Collection he was soon able to write:
"I [have] disposed of the most important part [of] my collections, by
giving all the fossil bones to the College of Surgeons, casts of them
will be distributed, and descriptions published. They are very curious
and valuable; one head belonged to some gnawing animal, but of the size
of a Hippopotamus! Another to an ant-eater of the size of a horse!"

It is worth noting that at this time the only extinct mammalia from
South America, which had been described, were Mastodon (three species)
and Megatherium. The remains of the other extinct Edentata from Sir
Woodbine Parish's collection had not been described. My father's
specimens included (besides the above-mentioned Toxodon and
Scelidotherium) the remains of Mylodon, Glossotherium, another gigantic
animal allied to the ant-eater, and Macrauchenia. His discovery of
these remains is a matter of interest in itself, but it has a special
importance as a point in his own life, since it was the vivid impression
produced by excavating them with his own hands (I have often heard
him speak of the despair with which he had to break off the projecting
extremity of a huge, partly excavated bone, when the boat waiting for
him would wait no longer.) that formed one of the chief starting-points
of his speculation on the origin of species. This is shown in the
following extract from his Pocket Book for this year (1837): "In July
opened first note-book on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly
struck from about the month of previous March on character of South
American fossils, and species on Galapagos Archipelago. These facts
(especially latter), origin of all my views."]


1836-1837.

CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. 43 Great Marlborough Street, November 6th
[1836].

My dear Fox,

I have taken a shamefully long time in answering your letter. But the
busiest time of the whole voyage has been tranquillity itself to this
last month. After paying Henslow a short but very pleasant visit, I came
up to town to wait for the "Beagle's" arrival. At last I have removed
all my property from on board, and sent the specimens of Natural History
to Cambridge, so that I am now a free man. My London visit has been
quite idle as far as Natural History goes, but has been passed in
most exciting dissipation amongst the Dons in science. All my affairs,
indeed, are most prosperous; I find there are plenty who will undertake
the description of whole tribes of animals, of which I know nothing. So
that about this day month I hope to set to work tooth and nail at the
Geology, which I shall publish by itself.

It is quite ridiculous what an immensely long period it appears to me
since landing at Falmouth. The fact is I have talked and laughed enough
for years instead of weeks, so [that] my memory is quite confounded with
the noise. I am delighted to hear you are turned geologist: when I pay
the Isle of Wight a visit, which I am determined shall somehow come to
pass, you will be a capital cicerone to the famous line of dislocation.
I really suppose there are few parts of the world more interesting to a
geologist than your island. Amongst the great scientific men, no one
has been nearly so friendly and kind as Lyell. I have seen him several
times, and feel inclined to like him much. You cannot imagine how
good-naturedly he entered into all my plans. I speak now only of the
London men, for Henslow was just like his former self, and therefore
a most cordial and affectionate friend. When you pay London a visit I
shall be very proud to take you to the Geological Society, for be it
known, I was proposed to be a F.G.S. last Tuesday. It is, however, a
great pity that these and the other letters, especially F.R.S., are so
very expensive.

I do not scruple to ask you to write to me in a week's time in
Shrewsbury, for you are a good letter writer, and if people will have
such good characters they must pay the penalty. Good-bye, dear Fox.

Yours, C.D.


[His affairs being thus so far prosperously managed he was able to put
into execution his plan of living at Cambridge, where he settled on
December 10th, 1836. He was at first a guest in the comfortable home of
the Henslows, but afterwards, for the sake of undisturbed work, he moved
into lodgings.]

He thus writes to Fox, March 13th, 1837, from London:--

"My residence at Cambridge was rather longer than I expected, owing to
a job which I determined to finish there, namely, looking over all my
geological specimens. Cambridge yet continues a very pleasant, but not
half so merry a place as before. To walk through the courts of Christ's
College, and not know an inhabitant of a single room, gave one a feeling
half melancholy. The only evil I found in Cambridge was its being too
pleasant: there was some agreeable party or another every evening, and
one cannot say one is engaged with so much impunity there as in this
great city."

A trifling record of my father's presence in Cambridge occurs in the
book kept in Christ's College combination-room, where fines and bets
were recorded, the earlier entries giving a curious impression of the
after-dinner frame of mind of the fellows. The bets were not allowed to
be made in money, but were, like the fines, paid in wine. The bet which
my father made and lost is thus recorded:--

"FEBRUARY 23, 1837."

Mr. Darwin v. Mr. Baines, that the combination-room measures from the
ceiling to the floor more than (x) feet. 1 Bottle paid same day.

"N.B. Mr. Darwin may measure at any part of the room he pleases."

Besides arranging the geological and mineralogical specimens, he had
his 'Journal of Researches' to work at, which occupied his evenings at
Cambridge. He also read a short paper at the Zoological Society ("Notes
upon Rhea Americana," 'Zool. Soc. Proc.' v. 1837, pages 35, 36.), and
another at the Geological Society ('Geol. Soc. Proc.' ii. 1838, pages
446- 449.), on the recent elevation of the coast of Chile.

Early in the spring of 1837 (March 6th) he left Cambridge for London,
and a week later he was settled in lodgings at 36 Great Marlborough
Street; and except for a "short visit to Shrewsbury" in June, he worked
on till September, being almost entirely employed on his 'Journal.'
He found time, however, for two papers at the Geological Society. ("A
sketch of the deposits containing extinct mammalia in the neighbourhood
of the Plata," 'Geol. Soc. Proc.' ii. 1838, pages 542-544; and "On
certain areas of elevation and subsidence in the Pacific and Indian
oceans, as deduced from the study of coral formations." 'Geol. Soc.
Proc' ii. 1838, pages 552- 554.)

He writes of his work to Fox (March, 1837):--

"In your last letter you urge me to get ready THE book. I am now hard at
work and give up everything else for it. Our plan is as follows: Captain
Fitz-Roy writes two volumes out of the materials collected during
the last voyage under Capt. King to Tierra del Fuego, and during our
circumnavigation. I am to have the third volume, in which I intend
giving a kind of journal of a naturalist, not following, however, always
the order of time, but rather the order of position. The habits of
animals will occupy a large portion, sketches of the geology,
the appearance of the country, and personal details will make the
hodge-podge complete. Afterwards I shall write an account of the geology
in detail, and draw up some zoological papers. So that I have plenty of
work for the next year or two, and till that is finished I will have no
holidays."

Another letter to Fox (July) gives an account of the progress of his
work:--

"I gave myself a holiday and a visit to Shrewsbury [in June], as I had
finished my Journal. I shall now be very busy in filling up gaps and
getting it quite ready for the press by the first of August. I shall
always feel respect for every one who has written a book, let it be what
it may, for I had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common
English could cost one. And, alas, there yet remains the worst part of
all, correcting the press. As soon as ever that is done I must put my
shoulder to the wheel and commence at the Geology. I have read some
short papers to the Geological Society, and they were favourably
received by the great guns, and this gives me much confidence, and I
hope not a very great deal of vanity, though I confess I feel too often
like a peacock admiring his tail. I never expected that my Geology would
ever have been worth the consideration of such men as Lyell, who has
been to me, since my return, a most active friend. My life is a very
busy one at present, and I hope may ever remain so; though Heaven knows
there are many serious drawbacks to such a life, and chief amongst them
is the little time it allows one for seeing one's natural friends. For
the last three years, I have been longing and longing to be living at
Shrewsbury, and after all now in the course of several months, I see
my dear good people at Shrewsbury for a week. Susan and Catherine have,
however, been staying with my brother here for some weeks, but they had
returned home before my visit."

[Besides the work already mentioned he had much to busy him in making
arrangements for the publication of the 'Zoology of the Voyage of the
"Beagle".' The following letters illustrate this subject.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO L. JENYNS. (Now Rev L. Blomefield.) 36 Great
Marlborough Street, April 10th, 1837.

Dear Jenyns,

During the last week several of the zoologists of this place have been
urging me to consider the possibility of publishing the 'Zoology of
the "Beagle's" Voyage' on some uniform plan. Mr. Macleay (William Sharp
Macleay was the son of Alexander Macleay, formerly Colonial Secretary
of New South Wales, and for many years Secretary of the Linnean Society.)
The son, who was a most zealous Naturalist, and had inherited from his
father a very large general collection of insects, made Entomology his
chief study, and gained great notoriety by his now forgotten "Quinary
System", set forth in the Second Part of his 'Horae Entomologicae,'
published in 1821.--[I am indebted to Rev. L. Blomefield for the
foregoing note.] has taken a great deal of interest in the subject, and
maintains that such a publication is very desirable, because it keeps
together a series of observations made respecting animals inhabiting the
same part of the world, and allows any future traveller taking them with
him. How far this facility of reference is of any consequence I am very
doubtful; but if such is the case, it would be more satisfactory to
myself to see the gleanings of my hands, after having passed through the
brains of other naturalists, collected together in one work. But such
considerations ought not to have much weight. The whole scheme is at
present merely floating in the air; but I was determined to let you
know, as I should much like to know what you think about it, and whether
you would object to supply descriptions of the fish to such a
work instead of to 'Transactions.' I apprehend the whole will be
impracticable, without Government will aid in engraving the plates, and
this I fear is a mere chance, only I think I can put in a strong claim,
and get myself well backed by the naturalists of this place, who nearly
all take a good deal of interest in my collections. I mean to-morrow
to see Mr. Yarrell; if he approves, I shall begin and take more active
steps; for I hear he is most prudent and most wise. It is scarcely any
use speculating about any plan, but I thought of getting subscribers and
publishing the work in parts (as long as funds would last, for I myself
will not lose money by it). In such case, whoever had his own part ready
on any order might publish it separately (and ultimately the parts might
be sold separately), so that no one should be delayed by the other. The
plan would resemble, on a humble scale, Ruppel's 'Atlas,' or Humboldt's
'Zoologie,' where Latreille, Cuvier, etc., wrote different parts. I
myself should have little to do with it; excepting in some orders
adding habits and ranges, etc., and geographical sketches, and perhaps
afterwards some descriptions of invertebrate animals...

I am working at my Journal; it gets on slowly, though I am not idle. I
thought Cambridge a bad place from good dinners and other temptations,
but I find London no better, and I fear it may grow worse. I have a
capital friend in Lyell, and see a great deal of him, which is very
advantageous to me in discussing much South American geology. I miss a
walk in the country very much; this London is a vile smoky place, where
a man loses a great part of the best enjoyments in life. But I see no
chance of escaping, even for a week, from this prison for a long time
to come. I fear it will be some time before we shall meet; for I suppose
you will not come up here during the spring, and I do not think I shall
be able to go down to Cambridge. How I should like to have a good walk
along the Newmarket road to-morrow, but Oxford Street must do instead. I
do hate the streets of London. Will you tell Henslow to be careful with
the EDIBLE fungi from Tierra del Fuego, for I shall want some specimens
for Mr. Brown, who seems PARTICULARLY interested about them. Tell
Henslow, I think my silicified wood has unflintified Mr. Brown's heart,
for he was very gracious to me, and talked about the Galapagos plants;
but before he never would say a word. It is just striking twelve
o'clock; so I will wish you a very good night.

My dear Jenyns, Yours most truly, CHARLES DARWIN.

[A few weeks later the plan seems to have been matured, and the idea of
seeking Government aid to have been adopted.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. 36 Great Marlborough Street, [18th May,
1837].

My dear Henslow,

I was very glad to receive your letter. I wanted much to hear how you
were getting on with your manifold labours. Indeed I do not wonder your
head began to ache; it is almost a wonder you have any head left. Your
account of the Gamlingay expedition was cruelly tempting, but I cannot
anyhow leave London. I wanted to pay my good, dear people at Shrewsbury
a visit of a few days, but I found I could not manage it; at present I
am waiting for the signatures of the Duke of Somerset, as President of
the Linnean, and of Lord Derby and Whewell, to a statement of the value
of my collection; the instant I get this I shall apply to Government for
assistance in engraving, and so publish the 'Zoology' on some uniform
plan. It is quite ridiculous the time any operation requires which
depends on many people.

I have been working very steadily, but have only got two-thirds through
the Journal part alone. I find, though I remain daily many hours at
work, the progress is very slow: it is an awful thing to say to oneself,
every fool and every clever man in England, if he chooses, may make as
many ill-natured remarks as he likes on this unfortunate sentence....


In August he writes to Henslow to announce the success of the scheme
for the publication of the 'Zoology of the Voyage of the "Beagle",'
through the promise of a grant of 1000 pounds from the Treasury: "I
have delayed writing to you, to thank you most sincerely for having so
effectually managed my affair. I waited till I had an interview with the
Chancellor of the Exchequer (T. Spring Rice.). He appointed to see me
this morning, and I had a long conversation with him, Mr. Peacock being
present. Nothing could be more thoroughly obliging and kind than his
whole manner. He made no sort of restriction, but only told me to make
the most of [the] money, which of course I am right willing to do.

"I expected rather an awful interview, but I never found anything less
so in my life. It will be my fault if I do not make a good work; but I
sometimes take an awful fright that I have not materials enough. It will
be excessively satisfactory at the end of some two years to find all
materials made the most they were capable of."

Later in the autumn he wrote to Henslow: "I have not been very well of
late, with an uncomfortable palpitation of the heart, and my doctors
urge me STRONGLY to knock off all work, and go and live in the country
for a few weeks." He accordingly took a holiday of about a month at
Shrewsbury and Maer, and paid a visit in the Isle of Wight. It was, I
believe, during this visit, at Mr. Wedgwood's house at Maer, that he
made his first observations on the work done by earthworms, and late
in the autumn he read a paper on the subject at the Geological Society.
("On the formation of mould," 'Geol. Soc. Proc.' ii. 1838, pages
574-576.) During these two months he was also busy preparing the scheme
of the 'Zoology of the Voyage of the "Beagle",' and in beginning to put
together the Geological results of his travels.

The following letter refers to the proposal that he should take the
Secretaryship of the Geological Society.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. October 14th, [1837].

My dear Henslow,

...I am much obliged to you for your message about the Secretaryship. I
am exceedingly anxious for you to hear my side of the question, and will
you be so kind as afterwards to give me your fair judgment. The subject
has haunted me all summer. I am unwilling to undertake the office for
the following reasons: First, my entire ignorance of English Geology, a
knowledge of which would be almost necessary in order to shorten many
of the papers before reading them before the Society, or rather to
know what parts to skip. Again, my ignorance of all languages, and
not knowing how to pronounce a SINGLE word of French--a language so
perpetually quoted. It would be disgraceful to the Society to have a
Secretary who could not read French. Secondly, the loss of time; pray
consider that I should have to look after the artists, superintend and
furnish materials for the Government work, which will come out in parts,
and which must appear regularly. All my Geological notes are in a very
rough state; none of my fossil shells worked up; and I have much to
read. I have had hopes, by giving up society and not wasting an hour,
that I should finish my Geology in a year and a half, by which time the
description of the higher animals by others would be completed, and my
whole time would then necessarily be required to complete myself
the description of the invertebrate ones. If this plan fails, as the
Government work must go on, the Geology would necessarily be deferred
till probably at least three years from this time. In the present state
of the science, a great part of the utility of the little I have done
would be lost, and all freshness and pleasure quite taken from me.

I know from experience the time required to make abstracts EVEN of my
own papers for the 'Proceedings.' If I was Secretary, and had to make
double abstracts of each paper, studying them before reading, and
attendance would AT LEAST cost me three days (and often more) in the
fortnight. There are likewise other accidental and contingent losses of
time; I know Dr. Royle found the office consumed much of his time. If by
merely giving up any amusement, or by working harder than I have done,
I could save time, I would undertake the Secretaryship; but I appeal to
you whether, with my slow manner of writing, with two works in hand, and
with the certainty, if I cannot complete the Geological part within
a fixed period, that its publication must be retarded for a very long
time,--whether any Society whatever has any claim on me for three days'
disagreeable work every fortnight. I cannot agree that it is a duty on
my part, as a follower of science, as long as I devote myself to the
completion of the work I have in hand, to delay that, by undertaking
what may be done by any person who happens to have more spare time than
I have at present. Moreover, so early in my scientific life, with
so very much as I have to learn, the office, though no doubt a great
honour, etc., for me, would be the more burdensome. Mr. Whewell (I know
very well), judging from himself, will think I exaggerate the time the
Secretaryship would require; but I absolutely know the time which with
me the simplest writing consumes. I do not at all like appearing so
selfish as to refuse Mr. Whewell, more especially as he has always
shown, in the kindest manner, an interest in my affairs. But I cannot
look forward with even tolerable comfort to undertaking an office
without entering on it heart and soul, and that would be impossible with
the Government work and the Geology in hand.

My last objection is, that I doubt how far my health will stand the
confinement of what I have to do, without any additional work. I merely
repeat, that you may know I am not speaking idly, that when I consulted
Dr. Clark in town, he at first urged me to give up entirely all writing
and even correcting press for some weeks. Of late anything which
flurries me completely knocks me up afterwards, and brings on a violent
palpitation of the heart. Now the Secretaryship would be a periodical
source of more annoying trouble to me than all the rest of the fortnight
put together. In fact, till I return to town, and see how I get on, if
I wished the office ever so much, I COULD not say I would positively
undertake it. I beg of you to excuse this very long prose all about
myself, but the point is one of great interest. I can neither bear to
think myself very selfish and sulky, nor can I see the possibility of my
taking the Secretaryship without making a sacrifice of all my plans and
a good deal of comfort.

If you see Whewell, would you tell him the substance of this letter; or,
if he will take the trouble, he may read it. My dear Henslow, I appeal
to you in loco parentis. Pray tell me what you think? But do not judge
me by the activity of mind which you and a few others possess, for in
that case the more difficult things in hand the pleasanter the work;
but, though I hope I never shall be idle, such is not the case with me.

Ever, dear Henslow, Yours most truly, C. DARWIN.

[He ultimately accepted the post, and held it for three years--from
February 16, 1838, to February 19, 1841.

After being assured of the Grant for the publication of the 'Zoology of
the Voyage of the "Beagle",' there was much to be done in arranging the
scheme of publication, and this occupied him during part of October and
November.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.S. HENSLOW. [4th November, 1837.]

My dear Henslow,

...Pray tell Leonard (Rev. L. Jenyns.) that my Government work is
going on smoothly, and I hope will be prosperous. He will see in the
Prospectus his name attached to the fish; I set my shoulders to the
work with a good heart. I am very much better than I was during the
last month before my Shrewsbury visit. I fear the Geology will take me
a great deal of time; I was looking over one set of notes, and the
quantity I found I had to read, for that one place was frightful. If I
live till I am eighty years old I shall not cease to marvel at finding
myself an author; in the summer before I started, if any one had told me
that I should have been an angel by this time, I should have thought it
an equal impossibility. This marvellous transformation is all owing to
you.

I am sorry to find that a good many errata are left in the part of my
volume, which is printed. During my absence Mr. Colburn employed some
goose to revise, and he has multiplied, instead of diminishing my
oversights; but for all that, the smooth paper and clear type has
a charming appearance, and I sat the other evening gazing in silent
admiration at the first page of my own volume, when I received it from
the printers!

Good-bye, my dear Henslow, C. DARWIN.


1838.

[From the beginning of this year to nearly the end of June, he was
busily employed on the zoological and geological results of his voyage.
This spell of work was interrupted only by a visit of three days to
Cambridge, in May; and even this short holiday was taken in consequence
of failing health, as we may assume from the entry in his diary: "May
1st, unwell," and from a letter to his sister (May 16, 1838), when he
wrote:--

"My trip of three days to Cambridge has done me such wonderful good, and
filled my limbs with such elasticity, that I must get a little work
out of my body before another holiday." This holiday seems to have been
thoroughly enjoyed; he wrote to his sister:--

"Now for Cambridge: I stayed at Henslow's house and enjoyed my visit
extremely. My friends gave me a most cordial welcome. Indeed, I was
quite a lion there. Mrs. Henslow unfortunately was obliged to go on
Friday for a visit in the country. That evening we had at Henslow's a
brilliant party of all the geniuses in Cambridge, and a most remarkable
set of men they most assuredly are. On Saturday I rode over to L.
Jenyns', and spent the morning with him. I found him very cheerful, but
bitterly complaining of his solitude. On Saturday evening dined at one
of the Colleges, played at bowls on the College Green after dinner,
and was deafened with nightingales singing. Sunday, dined in Trinity;
capital dinner, and was very glad to sit by Professor Lee (Samuel
Lee, of Queens', was Professor of Arabic from 1819 to 1831, and Regius
Professor of Hebrew from 1831 to 1848.)...; I find him a very pleasant
chatting man, and in high spirits like a boy, at having lately returned
from a living or a curacy, for seven years in Somersetshire, to
civilised society and oriental manuscripts. He had exchanged his living
to one within fourteen miles of Cambridge, and seemed perfectly happy.
In the evening attended Trinity Chapel, and heard 'The Heavens are
telling the Glory of God,' in magnificent style; the last chorus seemed
to shake the very walls of the College. After chapel a large party in
Sedgwick's rooms. So much for my Annals."

He started, towards the end of June, on his expedition to Glen Roy, of
which he writes to Fox: "I have not been very well of late, which has
suddenly determined me to leave London earlier than I had anticipated. I
go by the steam-packet to Edinburgh,--take a solitary walk on Salisbury
Craigs, and call up old thoughts of former times, then go on to Glasgow
and the great valley of Inverness, near which I intend stopping a week
to geologise the parallel roads of Glen Roy, thence to Shrewsbury, Maer
for one day, and London for smoke, ill-health and hard work."

He spent "eight good days" over the Parallel Roads. His Essay on this
subject was written out during the same summer, and published by the
Royal Society. ('Phil. Trans.' 1839, pages 39-82.) He wrote in his
Pocket Book: "September 6 [1838]. Finished the paper on 'Glen Roy,' one
of the most difficult and instructive tasks I was ever engaged on." It
will be remembered that in his 'Recollections' he speaks of this paper
as a failure, of which he was ashamed.

At the time at which he wrote, the latest theory of the formation of
the Parallel Roads was that of Sir Lauder Dick and Dr. Macculloch, who
believed that lakes had anciently existed in Glen Roy, caused by dams
of rock or alluvium. In arguing against this theory he conceived that he
had disproved the admissibility of any lake theory, but in this point
he was mistaken. He wrote (Glen Roy paper, page 49) "the conclusion is
inevitable, that no hypothesis founded on the supposed existence of a
sheet of water confined by BARRIERS, that is a lake, can be admitted as
solving the problematical origin of the parallel roads of Lochaber."

Mr. Archibald Geikie has been so good as to allow me to quote a passage
from a letter addressed to me (November 19, 1884) in compliance with my
request for his opinion on the character of my father's Glen Roy work:--

"Mr. Darwin's 'Glen Roy' paper, I need not say, is marked by all his
characteristic acuteness of observation and determination to consider
all possible objections. It is a curious example, however, of the danger
of reasoning by a method of exclusion in Natural Science. Finding that
the waters which formed the terraces in the Glen Roy region could not
possibly have been dammed back by barriers of rock or of detritus, he
saw no alternative but to regard them as the work of the sea. Had the
idea of transient barriers of glacier-ice occurred to him, he would have
found the difficulties vanish from the lake-theory which he opposed,
and he would not have been unconsciously led to minimise the altogether
overwhelming objections to the supposition that the terraces are of
marine origin."

It may be added that the idea of the barriers being formed by glaciers
could hardly have occurred to him, considering what was the state of
knowledge at the time, and bearing in mind his want of opportunities of
observing glacial action on a large scale.

The latter half of July was passed at Shrewsbury and Maer. The only
entry of any interest is one of being "very idle" at Shrewsbury, and of
opening "a note-book connected with metaphysical inquiries." In August
he records that he read "a good deal of various amusing books, and paid
some attention to metaphysical subjects."

The work done during the remainder of the year comprises the book
on coral reefs (begun in October), and some work on the phenomena of
elevation in S. America.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. 36 Great Marlborough Street, August 9th
[1838].

My dear Lyell,

I do not write to you at Norwich, for I thought I should have more to
say, if I waited a few more days. Very many thanks for the present of
your 'Elements,' which I received (and I believe the VERY FIRST copy
distributed) together with your note. I have read it through every word,
and am full of admiration of it, and, as I now see no geologist, I must
talk to you about it. There is no pleasure in reading a book if one
cannot have a good talk over it; I repeat, I am full of admiration
of it, it is as clear as daylight, in fact I felt in many parts some
mortification at thinking how geologists have laboured and struggled at
proving what seems, as you have put it, so evidently probable. I read
with much interest your sketch of the secondary deposits; you have
contrived to make it quite "juicy," as we used to say as children of a
good story. There was also much new to me, and I have to copy out some
fifty notes and references. It must do good, the heretics against common
sense must yield...By the way, do you recollect my telling you how much
I disliked the manner -- referred to his other works, as much as to say,
"You must, ought, and shall buy everything I have written." To my mind,
you have somehow quite avoided this; your references only seem to say,
"I can't tell you all in this work, else I would, so you must go to the
'Principles'"; and many a one, I trust, you will send there, and make
them, like me, adorers of the good science of rock-breaking. You will
see I am in a fit of enthusiasm, and good cause I have to be, when I
find you have made such infinitely more use of my Journal than I could
have anticipated. I will say no more about the book, for it is all
praise. I must, however, admire the elaborate honesty with which you
quote the words of all living and dead geologists.

My Scotch expedition answered brilliantly; my trip in the steam-packet
was absolutely pleasant, and I enjoyed the spectacle, wretch that I am,
of two ladies, and some small children quite sea-sick, I being well.
Moreover, on my return from Glasgow to Liverpool, I triumphed in a
similar manner over some full-grown men. I stayed one whole day in
Edinburgh, or more truly on Salisbury Craigs; I want to hear some day
what you think about that classical ground,--the structure was to me new
and rather curious,--that is, if I understand it right. I crossed from
Edinburgh in gigs and carts (and carts without springs, as I never shall
forget) to Loch Leven. I was disappointed in the scenery, and reached
Glen Roy on Saturday evening, one week after leaving Marlborough Street.
Here I enjoyed five [?] days of the most beautiful weather with gorgeous
sunsets, and all nature looking as happy as I felt. I wandered over
the mountains in all directions, and examined that most extraordinary
district. I think, without any exceptions, not even the first volcanic
island, the first elevated beach, or the passage of the Cordillera, was
so interesting to me as this week. It is far the most remarkable area
I ever examined. I have fully convinced myself (after some doubting at
first) that the shelves are sea-beaches, although I could not find a
trace of a shell; and I think I can explain away most, if not all, the
difficulties. I found a piece of a road in another valley, not hitherto
observed, which is important; and I have some curious facts about
erratic blocks, one of which was perched up on a peak 2200 feet above
the sea. I am now employed in writing a paper on the subject, which I
find very amusing work, excepting that I cannot anyhow condense it into
reasonable limits. At some future day I hope to talk over some of the
conclusions with you, which the examination of Glen Roy has led me to.
Now I have had my talk out, I am much easier, for I can assure you Glen
Roy has astonished me.

I am living very quietly, and therefore pleasantly, and am crawling on
slowly but steadily with my work. I have come to one conclusion,
which you will think proves me to be a very sensible man, namely, that
whatever you say proves right; and as a proof of this, I am coming into
your way of only working about two hours at a spell; I then go out and
do my business in the streets, return and set to work again, and thus
make two separate days out of one. The new plan answers capitally; after
the second half day is finished I go and dine at the Athenaeum like a
gentleman, or rather like a lord, for I am sure the first evening I sat
in that great drawing-room, all on a sofa by myself, I felt just like a
duke. I am full of admiration at the Athenaeum, one meets so many people
there that one likes to see. The very first time I dined there (i.e.
last week) I met Dr. Fitton (W.H. Fitton (1780-1861) was a physician
and geologist, and sometime president of the Geological Society. He
established the 'Proceedings,' a mode of publication afterwards
adopted by other societies.) at the door, and he got together quite a
party--Robert Brown, who is gone to Paris and Auvergne, Macleay [?] and
Dr. Boott. (Francis Boott (1792-1863) is chiefly known as a botanist
through his work on the genus Carex. He was also well-known in
connection with the Linnean Society of which he was for many years an
office-bearer. He is described (in a biographical sketch published
in the "Gardener's Chronicle", 1864) as having been one of the first
physicians in London who gave up the customary black coat, knee-breeches
and silk stockings, and adopted the ordinary dress of the period, a
blue coat with brass buttons, and a buff waiscoat, a costume which he
continued to wear to the last. After giving up practice, which he
did early in life, he spent much of his time in acts of unpretending
philanthropy.) Your helping me into the Athenaeum has not been thrown
away, and I enjoy it the more because I fully expected to detest it.

I am writing you a most unmerciful letter, but I shall get Owen to take
it to Newcastle. If you have a mind to be a very generous man you will
write to me from Kinnordy (The house of Lyell's father.), and tell me
some Newcastle news, as well as about the Craig, and about yourself and
Mrs. Lyell, and everything else in the world. I will send by Hall the
'Entomological Transactions,' which I have borrowed for you; you will be
disappointed in --'s papers, that is if you suppose my dear friend has
a single clear idea upon any one subject. He has so involved recent
insects and true fossil insects in one table that I fear you will not
make much out of it, though it is a subject which ought I should
think to come into the 'Principles.' You will be amused at some of the
ridiculo-sublime passages in the papers, and no doubt will feel acutely
a sneer there is at yourself. I have heard from more than one quarter
that quarrelling is expected at Newcastle (At the meeting of the British
Association.); I am sorry to hear it. I met old -- this evening at the
Athenaeum, and he muttered something about writing to you or some one on
the subject; I am however all in the dark. I suppose, however, I shall
be illuminated, for I am going to dine with him in a few days, as my
inventive powers failed in making any excuse. A friend of mine dined
with him the other day, a party of four, and they finished ten bottles
of wine--a pleasant prospect for me; but I am determined not even to
taste his wine, partly for the fun of seeing his infinite disgust and
surprise...

I pity you the infliction of this most unmerciful letter. Pray remember
me most kindly to Mrs. Lyell when you arrive at Kinnordy. I saw her name
in the landlord's book of Inverorum. Tell Mrs. Lyell to read the
second series of 'Mr. Slick of Slickville's Sayings.'...He almost beats
"Samivel," that prince of heroes. Goodnight, my dear Lyell; you will
think I have been drinking some strong drink to write so much nonsense,
but I did not even taste Minerva's small beer to-day.

Yours most sincerely, CHAS. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Friday night, September 13th [1838].

My dear Lyell,

I was astonished and delighted at your gloriously long letter, and I am
sure I am very much obliged to Mrs. Lyell for having taken the trouble
to write so much. (Lyell dictated much of his correspondence.) I mean to
have a good hour's enjoyment and scribble away to you, who have so much
geological sympathy that I do not care how egotistically I write...

I have got so much to say about all sorts of trifling things that I
hardly know what to begin about. I need not say how pleased I am to hear
that Mr. Lyell (Father of the geologist.) likes my Journal. To hear
such tidings is a kind of resurrection, for I feel towards my first-born
child as if it had long since been dead, buried, and forgotten; but the
past is nothing and the future everything to us geologists, as you show
in your capital motto to the 'Elements.' By the way, have you read
the article, in the 'Edinburgh Review,' on M. Comte, 'Cours de la
Philosophie' (or some such title)? It is capital; there are some fine
sentences about the very essence of science being prediction, which
reminded me of "its law being progress."

I will now begin and go through your letter seriatim. I dare say your
plan of putting the Elie de Beaumont's chapter separately and early will
be very good; anyhow, it is showing a bold front in the first edition
which is to be translated into French. It will be a curious point to
geologists hereafter to note how long a man's name will support a theory
so completely exposed as that of De Beaumont's has been by you; you
say you "begin to hope that the great principles there insisted on will
stand the test of time." BEGIN TO HOPE: why, the POSSIBILITY of a
doubt has never crossed my mind for many a day. This may be very
unphilosophical, but my geological salvation is staked on it. After
having just come back from Glen Roy, and found how difficulties smooth
away under your principles, it makes me quite indignant that you should
talk of HOPING. With respect to the question, how far my coral theory
bears on De Beaumont's theory, I think it would be prudent to quote me
with great caution until my whole account is published, and then
you (and others) can judge how far there is foundation for such
generalisation. Mind, I do not doubt its truth; but the extension of
any view over such large spaces, from comparatively few facts, must be
received with much caution. I do not myself the least doubt that
within the recent (or as you, much to my annoyment, would call it, "New
Pliocene") period, tortuous bands--not all the bands parallel to each
other--have been elevated and corresponding ones subsided, though within
the same period some parts probably remained for a time stationary, or
even subsided. I do not believe a more utterly false view could have
been invented than great straight lines being suddenly thrown up.

When my book on Volcanoes and Coral Reefs will be published I hardly
know; I fear it will be at least four or five months; though, mind,
the greater part is written. I find so much time is lost in correcting
details and ascertaining their accuracy. The Government Zoological work
is a millstone round my neck, and the Glen Roy paper has lost me six
weeks. I will not, however, say lost; for, supposing I can prove to
others' satisfaction what I have convinced myself is the case, the
inference I think you will allow to be important. I cannot doubt that
the molten matter beneath the earth's crust possesses a high degree of
fluidity, almost like the sea beneath the block ice. By the way, I hope
you will give me some Swedish case to quote, of shells being preserved
on the surface, but not in contemporaneous beds of gravel...

Remember what I have often heard you say: the country is very bad
for the intellects; the Scotch mists will put out some volcanic
speculations. You see I am affecting to become very Cockneyfied, and to
despise the poor country-folk, who breath fresh air instead of smoke,
and see the goodly fields instead of the brick houses in Marlborough
Street, the very sight of which I confess I abhor. I am glad to hear
what a favourable report you give of the British Association. I am the
more pleased because I have been fighting its battles with Basil Hall,
Stokes, and several others, having made up my mind, from the report in
the "Athenaeum", that it must have been an excellent meeting. I have
been much amused with an account I have received of the wars of Don
Roderick (Murchison.) and Babbage. What a grievous pity it is that the
latter should be so implacable...This is a most rigmarole letter, for
after each sentence I take breath, and you will have need of it in
reading it...

I wish with all my heart that my Geological book was out. I have every
motive to work hard, and will, following your steps, work just that
degree of hardness to keep well. I should like my volume to be out
before your new edition of 'Principles' appears. Besides the Coral
theory, the volcanic chapters will, I think, contain some new facts.
I have lately been sadly tempted to be idle--that is, as far as pure
geology is concerned--by the delightful number of new views which
have been coming in thickly and steadily,--on the classification and
affinities and instincts of animals--bearing on the question of species.
Note-book after note-book has been filled with facts which begin to
group themselves CLEARLY under sub-laws.

Good night, my dear Lyell. I have filled my letter and enjoyed my talk
to you as much as I can without having you in propria persona. Think of
the bad effects of the country--so once more good night.

Ever yours, CHAS. DARWIN.

Pray again give my best thanks to Mrs. Lyell.


[The record of what he wrote during the year does not give a true index
of the most important work that was in progress,--the laying of the
foundation-stones of what was to be the achievement of his life. This is
shown in the foregoing letter to Lyell, where he speaks of being "idle,"
and the following extract from a letter to Fox, written in June, is of
interest in this point of view:

"I am delighted to hear you are such a good man as not to have forgotten
my questions about the crossing of animals. It is my prime hobby, and
I really think some day I shall be able to do something in that most
intricate subject, species and varieties."]


1839-1841.

[In the winter of 1839 (January 29) my father was married to his cousin,
Emma Wedgwood. (Daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of Maer, and grand-daughter
of the founder of the Etruria Pottery Works.) The house in which they
lived for the first few years of their married life, No. 12 Upper Gower
Street, was a small common-place London house, with a drawing-room in
front, and a small room behind, in which they lived for the sake of
quietness. In later years my father used to laugh over the surpassing
ugliness of the furniture, carpets, etc., of the Gower Street house. The
only redeeming feature was a better garden than most London houses have,
a strip as wide as the house, and thirty yards long. Even this small
space of dingy grass made their London house more tolerable to its two
country-bred inhabitants.

Of his life in London he writes to Fox (October 1839): "We are living
a life of extreme quietness; Delamere itself, which you describe as so
secluded a spot, is, I will answer for it, quite dissipated compared
with Gower Street. We have given up all parties, for they agree with
neither of us; and if one is quiet in London, there is nothing like
its quietness--there is a grandeur about its smoky fogs, and the dull
distant sounds of cabs and coaches; in fact you may perceive I am
becoming a thorough-paced Cockney, and I glory in thoughts that I shall
be here for the next six months."

The entries of ill health in the Diary increase in number during
these years, and as a consequence the holidays become longer and more
frequent. From April 26 to May 13, 1839, he was at Maer and Shrewsbury.
Again, from August 23 to October 2 he was away from London at
Maer, Shrewsbury, and at Birmingham for the meeting of the British
Association.

The entry under August 1839 is: "During my visit to Maer, read a little,
was much unwell and scandalously idle. I have derived this much good,
that NOTHING is so intolerable as idleness."

At the end of 1839 his eldest child was born, and it was then that he
began his observations ultimately published in the 'Expression of the
Emotions.' His book on this subject, and the short paper published in
'Mind,' (July 1877.) show how closely he observed his child. He seems to
have been surprised at his own feelings for a young baby, for he wrote
to Fox (July 1840): "He [i.e. the baby] is so charming that I cannot
pretend to any modesty. I defy anybody to flatter us on our baby, for
I defy any one to say anything in its praise of which we are not fully
conscious...I had not the smallest conception there was so much in a
five-month baby. You will perceive by this that I have a fine degree of
paternal fervour."

During these years he worked intermittently at 'Coral Reefs,' being
constantly interrupted by ill health. Thus he speaks of "recommencing"
the subject in February 1839, and again in the October of the same year,
and once more in July 1841, "after more than thirteen months' interval."
His other scientific work consisted of a contribution to the Geological
Society ('Geol. Soc. Proc.' iii. 1842, and 'Geol. Soc. Trans.' vi), on
the boulders and "till" of South America, as well as a few other
minor papers on geological subjects. He also worked busily at the
ornithological part of the Zoology of the "Beagle", i.e. the notice of
the habits and ranges of the birds which were described by Gould.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Wednesday morning [February 1840].

My dear Lyell,

Many thanks for your kind note. I will send for the "Scotsman". Dr.
Holland thinks he has found out what is the matter with me, and now
hopes he shall be able to set me going again. Is it not mortifying, it
is now nine weeks since I have done a whole day's work, and not more
than four half days. But I won't grumble any more, though it is hard
work to prevent doing so. Since receiving your note I have read over my
chapter on Coral, and find I am prepared to stand by almost everything;
it is much more cautiously and accurately written than I thought. I had
set my heart upon having my volume completed before your new edition,
but not, you may believe me, for you to notice anything new in it (for
there is very little besides details), but you are the one man in Europe
whose opinion of the general truth of a toughish argument I should be
always most anxious to hear. My MS. is in such confusion, otherwise I
am sure you should most willingly if it had been worth your while, have
looked at any part you choose....

[In a letter to Fox (January 1841) he shows that his "Species work" was
still occupying his mind:--

"If you attend at all to Natural History I send you this P.S. as a
memento, that I continue to collect all kinds of facts about 'Varieties
and Species,' for my some-day work to be so entitled; the smallest
contributions thankfully accepted; descriptions of offspring of all
crosses between all domestic birds and animals, dogs, cats, etc., etc.,
very valuable. Don't forget, if your half-bred African cat should die
that I should be very much obliged for its carcase sent up in a little
hamper for the skeleton; it, or any cross-bred pigeons, fowl, duck,
etc., etc., will be more acceptable than the finest haunch of venison,
or the finest turtle."

Later in the year (September) he writes to Fox about his health, and
also with reference to his plan of moving into the country:--

"I have steadily been gaining ground, and really believe now I shall
some day be quite strong. I write daily for a couple of hours on my
Coral volume, and take a little walk or ride every day. I grow very
tired in the evenings, and am not able to go out at that time, or hardly
to receive my nearest relations; but my life ceases to be burdensome now
that I can do something. We are taking steps to leave London, and live
about twenty miles from it on some railway."]


1842.

[The record of work includes his volume on 'Coral Reefs' (A notice of
the Coral Reef work appeared in the Geograph. Soc. Journal, xii., page
115.), the manuscript of which was at last sent to the printers in
January of this year, and the last proof corrected in May. He thus
writes of the work in his diary:--

"I commenced this work three years and seven months ago. Out of this
period about twenty months (besides work during "Beagle's" voyage) has
been spent on it, and besides it, I have only compiled the Bird part of
Zoology; Appendix to Journal, paper on Boulders, and corrected papers
on Glen Roy and earthquakes, reading on species, and rest all lost by
illness."

In May and June he was at Shrewsbury and Maer, whence he went on to make
the little tour in Wales, of which he spoke in his 'Recollections,' and
of which the results were published as "Notes on the effects produced by
the ancient glaciers of Caernarvonshire, and on the Boulders transported
by floating Ice." ('Philosophical Magazine,' 1842, page 352.)

Mr. Archibald Geikie speaks of this paper as standing "almost at the
top of the long list of English contributions to the history of the Ice
Age." (Charles Darwin, 'Nature' Series, page 23.)

The latter part of this year belongs to the period including the
settlement at Down, and is therefore dealt with in another chapter.]




CHAPTER 1.VIII. -- RELIGION.

[The history of this part of my father's life may justly include some
mention of his religious views. For although, as he points out, he did
not give continuous systematic thought to religious questions, yet we
know from his own words that about this time (1836-39) the subject was
much before his mind.]

In his published works he was reticent on the matter of religion,
and what he has left on the subject was not written with a view
to publication. (As an exception may be mentioned, a few words of
concurrence with Dr. Abbot's 'Truths for the Times,' which my father
allowed to be published in the "Index".)

I believe that his reticence arose from several causes. He felt
strongly that a man's religion is an essentially private matter, and
one concerning himself alone. This is indicated by the following extract
from a letter of 1879:--(Addressed to Mr. J. Fordyce, and published by
him in his 'Aspects of Scepticism,' 1883.)

"What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one
but myself. But, as you ask, I may state that my judgment often
fluctuates...In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an
Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that
generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an
Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind."

He naturally shrank from wounding the sensibilities of others in
religious matters, and he was also influenced by the consciousness
that a man ought not to publish on a subject to which he has not given
special and continuous thought. That he felt this caution to apply
to himself in the matter of religion is shown in a letter to Dr. F.E.
Abbot, of Cambridge, U.S. (September 6, 1871). After explaining that the
weakness arising from his bad health prevented him from feeling "equal
to deep reflection, on the deepest subject which can fill a man's mind,"
he goes on to say: "With respect to my former notes to you, I quite
forget their contents. I have to write many letters, and can reflect but
little on what I write; but I fully believe and hope that I have never
written a word, which at the time I did not think; but I think you will
agree with me, that anything which is to be given to the public ought to
be maturely weighed and cautiously put. It never occurred to me that you
would wish to print any extract from my notes: if it had, I would have
kept a copy. I put 'private' from habit, only as yet partially acquired,
from some hasty notes of mine having been printed, which were not in
the least degree worth printing, though otherwise unobjectionable. It is
simply ridiculous to suppose that my former note to you would be worth
sending to me, with any part marked which you desire to print; but
if you like to do so, I will at once say whether I should have any
objection. I feel in some degree unwilling to express myself publicly on
religious subjects, as I do not feel that I have thought deeply enough
to justify any publicity."

I may also quote from another letter to Dr. Abbot (November 16,
1871), in which my father gives more fully his reasons for not feeling
competent to write on religious and moral subjects:--

"I can say with entire truth that I feel honoured by your request that I
should become a contributor to the "Index", and am much obliged for the
draft. I fully, also, subscribe to the proposition that it is the duty
of every one to spread what he believes to be the truth; and I honour
you for doing so, with so much devotion and zeal. But I cannot comply
with your request for the following reasons; and excuse me for giving
them in some detail, as I should be very sorry to appear in your eyes
ungracious. My health is very weak: I NEVER pass 24 hours without many
hours of discomfort, when I can do nothing whatever. I have thus, also,
lost two whole consecutive months this season. Owing to this weakness,
and my head being often giddy, I am unable to master new subjects
requiring much thought, and can deal only with old materials. At no
time am I a quick thinker or writer: whatever I have done in science has
solely been by long pondering, patience and industry.

"Now I have never systematically thought much on religion in relation
to science, or on morals in relation to society; and without steadily
keeping my mind on such subjects for a LONG period, I am really
incapable of writing anything worth sending to the 'Index'."

He was more than once asked to give his views on religion, and he had,
as a rule, no objection to doing so in a private letter. Thus in answer
to a Dutch student he wrote (April 2, 1873):--

"I am sure you will excuse my writing at length, when I tell you that I
have long been much out of health, and am now staying away from my home
for rest.

"It is impossible to answer your question briefly; and I am not sure
that I could do so, even if I wrote at some length. But I may say that
the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe,
with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief
argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of
real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we
admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came, and
how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the immense amount
of suffering through the world. I am, also, induced to defer to a
certain extent to the judgment of the many able men who have fully
believed in God; but here again I see how poor an argument this is. The
safest conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is beyond the scope
of man's intellect; but man can do his duty."

Again in 1879 he was applied to by a German student, in a similar
manner. The letter was answered by a member of my father's family, who
wrote:--

"Mr. Darwin begs me to say that he receives so many letters, that he
cannot answer them all.

"He considers that the theory of Evolution is quite compatible with the
belief in a God; but that you must remember that different persons have
different definitions of what they mean by God."

This, however, did not satisfy the German youth, who again wrote to my
father, and received from him the following reply:--

"I am much engaged, an old man, and out of health, and I cannot spare
time to answer your questions fully,--nor indeed can they be answered.
Science has nothing to do with Christ, except in so far as the habit
of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence. For
myself, I do not believe that there ever has been any revelation. As
for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting
vague probabilities."

The passages which here follow are extracts, somewhat abbreviated, from
a part of the Autobiography, written in 1876, in which my father gives
the history of his religious views:--

"During these two years (October 1836 to January 1839.) I was led to
think much about religion. Whilst on board the 'Beagle' I was quite
orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the
officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an
unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the
novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come by
this time, i.e. 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament was no more
to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. The question then
continually rose before my mind and would not be banished,--is it
credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, he
would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, etc.,
as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament? This appeared to me
utterly incredible.

"By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite
to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is
supported,--and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the
more incredible do miracles become,--that the men at that time were
ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,--that
the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously
with the events,--that they differ in many important details, far too
important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies
of eye-witnesses;--by such reflections as these, which I give not
as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I
gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The
fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the
earth like wild-fire had some weight with me.

"But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for
I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters
between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at
Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all
that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult,
with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would
suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow
rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no
distress.

"Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God
until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague
conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument from design
in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive,
fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We
can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve
shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of
a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of
organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the
course which the wind blows. But I have discussed this subject at the
end of my book on the 'Variations of Domesticated Animals and Plants'
(My father asks whether we are to believe that the forms are preordained
of the broken fragments of rock tumbled from a precipice which are
fitted together by man to build his houses. If not, why should
we believe that the variations of domestic animals or plants are
preordained for the sake of the breeder? "But if we give up the
principle in one case,... no shadow of reason can be assigned for the
belief that variations, alike in nature and the result of the same
general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection
of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man
included, were intentionally and specially guided."--'The Variation of
Animals and Plants,' 1st Edition volume ii. page 431.--F.D.), and the
argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered.

"But passing over the endless beautiful adaptations which we everywhere
meet with, it may be asked how can the generally beneficent arrangement
of the world be accounted for? Some writers indeed are so much impressed
with the amount of suffering in the world, that they doubt, if we look
to all sentient beings, whether there is more of misery or of happiness;
whether the world as a whole is a good or bad one. According to my
judgment happiness decidedly prevails, though this would be very
difficult to prove. If the truth of this conclusion be granted, it
harmonises well with the effects which we might expect from natural
selection. If all the individuals of any species were habitually to
suffer to an extreme degree, they would neglect to propagate their kind;
but we have no reason to believe that this has ever, or at least often
occurred. Some other considerations, moreover, lead to the belief that
all sentient beings have been formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule,
happiness.

"Everyone who believes, as I do, that all the corporeal and
mental organs (excepting those which are neither advantageous nor
disadvantageous to the possessor) of all beings have been developed
through natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, together
with use or habit, will admit that these organs have been formed so that
their possessors may compete successfully with other beings, and thus
increase in number. Now an animal may be led to pursue that course of
action which is most beneficial to the species by suffering, such
as pain, hunger, thirst, and fear; or by pleasure, as in eating and
drinking, and in the propagation of the species, etc.; or by both means
combined, as in the search for food. But pain or suffering of any kind,
if long continued, causes depression and lessens the power of action,
yet is well adapted to make a creature guard itself against any great
or sudden evil. Pleasurable sensations, on the other hand, may be long
continued without any depressing effect; on the contrary, they stimulate
the whole system to increased action. Hence it has come to pass that
most or all sentient beings have been developed in such a manner,
through natural selection, that pleasurable sensations serve as their
habitual guides. We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even
occasionally from great exertion of the body or mind,--in the pleasure
of our daily meals, and especially in the pleasure derived from
sociability, and from loving our families. The sum of such pleasures as
these, which are habitual or frequently recurrent, give, as I can hardly
doubt, to most sentient beings an excess of happiness over misery,
although many occasionally suffer much. Such suffering is quite
compatible with the belief in Natural Selection, which is not perfect
in its action, but tends only to render each species as successful
as possible in the battle for life with other species, in wonderfully
complex and changing circumstances.

"That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have
attempted to explain this with reference to man by imagining that it
serves for his moral improvement. But the number of men in the world
is as nothing compared with that of all other sentient beings, and
they often suffer greatly without any moral improvement. This very old
argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an
intelligent First Cause seems to me a strong one; whereas, as just
remarked, the presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that
all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural
selection.

"At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an
intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings
which are experienced by most persons.

"Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to (although
I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed
in me), to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the
immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in
the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, "it is not possible to
give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration,
and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind." I well remember my
conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and
feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man
who has become colour-blind, and the universal belief by men of the
existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the
least value as evidence. This argument would be a valid one if all men
of all races had the same inward conviction of the existence of one
God; but we know that this is very far from being the case. Therefore I
cannot see that such inward convictions and feelings are of any weight
as evidence of what really exists. The state of mind which grand scenes
formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief
in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called
the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to explain the
genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the
existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar
feelings excited by music.

"With respect to immortality, nothing shows me [so clearly] how strong
and almost instinctive a belief it is, as the consideration of the view
now held by most physicists, namely, that the sun with all the planets
will in time grow too cold for life, unless indeed some great body
dashes into the sun, and thus gives it fresh life. Believing as I do
that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than
he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient
beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued
slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human
soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.

"Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with
the reason, and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more
weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility
of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with
his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the
result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel
compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some
degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.
This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can
remember, when I wrote the 'Origin of Species;' and it is since that
time that it has very gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker.
But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully
believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the
lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?

"I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems.
The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for
one must be content to remain an Agnostic."

[The following letters repeat to some extent what has been given from
the Autobiography. The first one refers to 'The Boundaries of Science, a
Dialogue,' published in 'Macmillan's Magazine,' for July 1861.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS JULIA WEDGWOOD. July 11 [1861].

Some one has sent us 'Macmillan'; and I must tell you how much I admire
your Article; though at the same time I must confess that I could not
clearly follow you in some parts, which probably is in main part due
to my not being at all accustomed to metaphysical trains of thought. I
think that you understand my book (The 'Origin of Species.') perfectly,
and that I find a very rare event with my critics. The ideas in the
last page have several times vaguely crossed my mind. Owing to several
correspondents I have been led lately to think, or rather to try to
think over some of the chief points discussed by you. But the result has
been with me a maze--something like thinking on the origin of evil, to
which you allude. The mind refuses to look at this universe, being what
it is, without having been designed; yet, where one would most expect
design, viz. in the structure of a sentient being, the more I think
on the subject, the less I can see proof of design. Asa Gray and some
others look at each variation, or at least at each beneficial variation
(which A. Gray would compare with the rain drops (Dr. Gray's rain-drop
metaphor occurs in the Essay 'Darwin and his Reviewers' ('Darwiniana,'
page 157): "The whole animate life of a country depends absolutely upon
the vegetation, the vegetation upon the rain. The moisture is furnished
by the ocean, is raised by the sun's heat from the ocean's surface, and
is wafted inland by the winds. But what multitudes of rain-drops fall
back into the ocean--are as much without a final cause as the incipient
varieties which come to nothing! Does it therefore follow that the rains
which are bestowed upon the soil with such rule and average regularity
were not designed to support vegetable and animal life?") which do not
fall on the sea, but on to the land to fertilize it) as having been
providentially designed. Yet when I ask him whether he looks at each
variation in the rock-pigeon, by which man has made by accumulation
a pouter or fantail pigeon, as providentially designed for man's
amusement, he does not know what to answer; and if he, or any one,
admits [that] these variations are accidental, as far as purpose is
concerned (of course not accidental as to their cause or origin); then I
can see no reason why he should rank the accumulated variations by which
the beautifully adapted woodpecker has been formed, as providentially
designed. For it would be easy to imagine the enlarged crop of the
pouter, or tail of the fantail, as of some use to birds, in a state of
nature, having peculiar habits of life. These are the considerations
which perplex me about design; but whether you will care to hear them, I
know not....

[On the subject of design, he wrote (July 1860) to Dr. Gray:

"One word more on 'designed laws' and 'undesigned results.' I see a bird
which I want for food, take my gun and kill it, I do this DESIGNEDLY.
An innocent and good man stands under a tree and is killed by a flash
of lightning. Do you believe (and I really should like to hear) that
God DESIGNEDLY killed this man? Many or most persons do believe this; I
can't and don't. If you believe so, do you believe that when a swallow
snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow should
snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant? I believe
that the man and the gnat are in the same predicament. If the death of
neither man nor gnat are designed, I see no good reason to believe that
their FIRST birth or production should be necessarily designed."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO W. GRAHAM. Down, July 3rd, 1881.

Dear Sir,

I hope that you will not think it intrusive on my part to thank you
heartily for the pleasure which I have derived from reading your
admirably written 'Creed of Science,' though I have not yet quite
finished it, as now that I am old I read very slowly. It is a very long
time since any other book has interested me so much. The work must have
cost you several years and much hard labour with full leisure for work.
You would not probably expect any one fully to agree with you on so many
abstruse subjects; and there are some points in your book which I cannot
digest. The chief one is that the existence of so-called natural laws
implies purpose. I cannot see this. Not to mention that many expect that
the several great laws will some day be found to follow inevitably from
some one single law, yet taking the laws as we now know them, and
look at the moon, where the law of gravitation--and no doubt of the
conservation of energy--of the atomic theory, etc. etc., hold good, and
I cannot see that there is then necessarily any purpose. Would there
be purpose if the lowest organisms alone, destitute of consciousness
existed in the moon? But I have had no practice in abstract reasoning,
and I may be all astray. Nevertheless you have expressed my inward
conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done,
that the Universe is not the result of chance. (The Duke of Argyll
('Good Words,' Ap. 1885, page 244) has recorded a few words on this
subject, spoken by my father in the last year of his life. "...in the
course of that conversation I said to Mr. Darwin, with reference to some
of his own remarkable works on the 'Fertilization of Orchids,' and
upon 'The Earthworms,' and various other observations he made of the
wonderful contrivances for certain purposes in nature--I said it was
impossible to look at these without seeing that they were the effect
and the expression of mind. I shall never forget Mr. Darwin's answer.
He looked at me very hard and said, 'Well, that often comes over me with
overwhelming force; but at other times,' and he shook his head vaguely,
adding, 'it seems to go away.'") But then with me the horrid doubt
always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been
developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all
trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind,
if there are any convictions in such a mind? Secondly, I think that I
could make somewhat of a case against the enormous importance which you
attribute to our greatest men; I have been accustomed to think, second,
third, and fourth rate men of very high importance, at least in the case
of Science. Lastly, I could show fight on natural selection having done
and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined
to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many
centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such
an idea now is! The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten
the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world
at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will
have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.
But I will write no more, and not even mention the many points in your
work which have much interested me. I have indeed cause to apologise for
troubling you with my impressions, and my sole excuse is the excitement
in my mind which your book has aroused.

I beg leave to remain, Dear Sir, Yours faithfully and obliged, CHARLES
DARWIN.


[My father spoke little on these subjects, and I can contribute nothing
from my own recollection of his conversation which can add to the
impression here given of his attitude towards Religion. Some further
idea of his views may, however, be gathered from occasional remarks in
his letters.] (Dr. Aveling has published an account of a conversation
with my father. I think that the readers of this pamphlet ('The
Religious Views of Charles Darwin,' Free Thought Publishing Company,
1883) may be misled into seeing more resemblance than really existed
between the positions of my father and Dr. Aveling: and I say this
in spite of my conviction that Dr. Aveling gives quite fairly his
impressions of my father's views. Dr. Aveling tried to show that the
terms "Agnostic" and "Atheist" were practically equivalent--that an
atheist is one who, without denying the existence of God, is without
God, inasmuch as he is unconvinced of the existence of a Deity. My
father's replies implied his preference for the unaggressive attitude
of an Agnostic. Dr. Aveling seems (page 5) to regard the absence
of aggressiveness in my father's views as distinguishing them in an
unessential manner from his own. But, in my judgment, it is precisely
differences of this kind which distinguish him so completely from the
class of thinkers to which Dr. Aveling belongs.)




CHAPTER 1.IX. -- LIFE AT DOWN.

1842-1854.

"My life goes on like clockwork, and I am fixed on the spot where I
shall end it."

Letter to Captain Fitz-Roy, October, 1846.

[With the view of giving in the following chapters a connected account
of the growth of the 'Origin of Species,' I have taken the more
important letters bearing on that subject out of their proper
chronological position here, and placed them with the rest of the
correspondence bearing on the same subject; so that in the present group
of letters we only get occasional hints of the growth of my father's
views, and we may suppose ourselves to be looking at his life, as it
might have been looked at by those who had no knowledge of the quiet
development of his theory of evolution during this period.]

On September 14, 1842, my father left London with his family and settled
at Down. (I must not omit to mention a member of the household who
accompanied him. This was his butler, Joseph Parslow, who remained in
the family, a valued friend and servant, for forty years, and became as
Sir Joseph Hooker once remarked to me, "an integral part of the
family, and felt to be such by all visitors at the house.") In the
Autobiographical chapter, his motives for taking this step in the
country are briefly given. He speaks of the attendance at scientific
societies, and ordinary social duties, as suiting his health so "badly
that we resolved to live in the country, which we both preferred and
have never repented of." His intention of keeping up with scientific
life in London is expressed in a letter to Fox (December, 1842):--

"I hope by going up to town for a night every fortnight or three weeks,
to keep up my communication with scientific men and my own zeal, and so
not to turn into a complete Kentish hog."

Visits to London of this kind were kept up for some years at the cost of
much exertion on his part. I have often heard him speak of the wearisome
drives of ten miles to or from Croydon or Sydenham--the nearest
stations--with an old gardener acting as coachman, who drove with great
caution and slowness up and down the many hills. In later years, all
regular scientific intercourse with London became, as before mentioned,
an impossibility.

The choice of Down was rather the result of despair than of actual
preference; my father and mother were weary of house-hunting, and the
attractive points about the place thus seemed to them to counterbalance
its somewhat more obvious faults. It had at least one desideratum,
namely quietness. Indeed it would have been difficult to find a more
retired place so near to London. In 1842 a coach drive of some twenty
miles was the only means of access to Down; and even now that railways
have crept closer to it, it is singularly out of the world, with nothing
to suggest the neighbourhood of London, unless it be the dull haze of
smoke that sometimes clouds the sky. The village stands in an angle
between two of the larger high-roads of the country, one leading to
Tunbridge and the other to Westerham and Edenbridge. It is cut off from
the Weald by a line of steep chalk hills on the south, and an abrupt
hill, now smoothed down by a cutting and embankment, must formerly
have been something of a barrier against encroachments from the side
of London. In such a situation, a village, communicating with the main
lines of traffic, only by stony tortuous lanes, may well have been
enabled to preserve its retired character. Nor is it hard to believe in
the smugglers and their strings of pack-horses making their way up from
the lawless old villages of the Weald, of which the memory still existed
when my father settled in Down. The village stands on solitary upland
country, 500 to 600 feet above the sea,-- a country with little natural
beauty, but possessing a certain charm in the shaws, or straggling
strips of wood, capping the chalky banks and looking down upon the quiet
ploughed lands of the valleys. The village, of three or four hundred
inhabitants, consists of three small streets of cottages meeting in
front of the little flint-built church. It is a place where new-comers
are seldom seen, and the names occurring far back in the old church
registers are still well-known in the village. The smock-frock is not
yet quite extinct, though chiefly used as a ceremonial dress by the
"bearers" at funerals: but as a boy I remember the purple or green
smocks of the men at church.

The house stands a quarter of a mile from the village, and is built,
like so many houses of the last century, as near as possible to the
road--a narrow lane winding away to the Westerham high-road. In 1842,
it was dull and unattractive enough: a square brick building of three
storeys, covered with shabby whitewash and hanging tiles. The garden
had none of the shrubberies or walls that now give shelter; it was
overlooked from the lane, and was open, bleak, and desolate. One of my
father's first undertakings was to lower the lane by about two feet, and
to build a flint wall along that part of it which bordered the garden.
The earth thus excavated was used in making banks and mounds round the
lawn: these were planted with evergreens, which now give to the garden
its retired and sheltered character.

The house was made to look neater by being covered with stucco, but the
chief improvement effected was the building of a large bow extending
up through three storeys. This bow became covered with a tangle of
creepers, and pleasantly varied the south side of the house. The
drawing-room, with its verandah opening into the garden, as well as the
study in which my father worked during the later years of his life, were
added at subsequent dates.

Eighteen acres of land were sold with the house, of which twelve acres
on the south side of the house formed a pleasant field, scattered with
fair-sized oaks and ashes. From this field a strip was cut off and
converted into a kitchen garden, in which the experimental plot of
ground was situated, and where the greenhouses were ultimately put up.

The following letter to Mr. Fox (March 28th, 1843) gives among other
things my father's early impressions of Down:--

"I will tell you all the trifling particulars about myself that I can
think of. We are now exceedingly busy with the first brick laid down
yesterday to an addition to our house; with this, with almost making a
new kitchen garden and sundry other projected schemes, my days are
very full. I find all this very bad for geology, but I am very slowly
progressing with a volume, or rather pamphlet, on the volcanic islands
which we visited: I manage only a couple of hours per day and that not
very regularly. It is uphill work writing books, which cost money in
publishing, and which are not read even by geologists. I forget whether
I ever described this place: it is a good, very ugly house with 18
acres, situated on a chalk flat, 560 feet above sea. There are peeps
of far distant country and the scenery is moderately pretty: its chief
merit is its extreme rurality. I think I was never in a more perfectly
quiet country. Three miles south of us the great chalk escarpment
quite cuts us off from the low country of Kent, and between us and the
escarpment there is not a village or gentleman's house, but only great
woods and arable fields (the latter in sadly preponderant numbers) so
that we are absolutely at the extreme verge of the world. The whole
country is intersected by foot-paths; but the surface over the chalk
is clayey and sticky, which is the worst feature in our purchase. The
dingles and banks often remind me of Cambridgeshire and walks with you
to Cherry Hinton, and other places, though the general aspect of the
country is very different. I was looking over my arranged cabinet
(the only remnant I have preserved of all my English insects), and was
admiring Panagaeus Crux-major: it is curious the vivid manner in
which this insect calls up in my mind your appearance, with little Fan
trotting after, when I was first introduced to you. Those entomological
days were very pleasant ones. I am VERY much stronger corporeally,
but am little better in being able to stand mental fatigue, or rather
excitement, so that I cannot dine out or receive visitors, except
relations with whom I can pass some time after dinner in silence."

I could have wished to give here some idea of the position which, at
this period of his life, my father occupied among scientific men and
the reading public generally. But contemporary notices are few and of
no particular value for my purpose,--which therefore must, in spite of a
good deal of pains, remain unfulfilled.

His 'Journal of Researches' was then the only one of his books which had
any chance of being commonly known. But the fact that it was published
with the 'Voyages' of Captains King and Fitz-Roy probably interfered
with its general popularity. Thus Lyell wrote to him in 1838 ('Lyell's
Life,' ii. page 43), "I assure you my father is quite enthusiastic about
your journal...and he agrees with me that it would have a large sale if
published separately. He was disappointed at hearing that it was to be
fettered by the other volumes, for, although he should equally buy it,
he feared so many of the public would be checked from doing so." In
a notice of the three voyages in the 'Edinburgh Review' (July, 1839),
there is nothing leading a reader to believe that he would find it more
attractive than its fellow-volumes. And, as a fact, it did not become
widely known until it was separately published in 1845. It may be
noted, however, that the 'Quarterly Review' (December, 1839) called the
attention of its readers to the merits of the 'Journal' as a book of
travels. The reviewer speaks of the "charm arising from the freshness of
heart which is thrown over these virgin pages of a strong intellectual
man and an acute and deep observer."

The German translation (1844) of the 'Journal' received a favourable
notice in No. 12 of the 'Heidelberger Jahrbucher der Literatur,'
1847--where the Reviewer speaks of the author's "varied canvas, on
which he sketches in lively colours the strange customs of those
distant regions with their remarkable fauna, flora and geological
peculiarities." Alluding to the translation, my father writes--"Dr.
Dieffenbach...has translated my 'Journal' into German, and I must, with
unpardonable vanity, boast that it was at the instigation of Liebig and
Humboldt."

The geological work of which he speaks in the above letter to Mr. Fox
occupied him for the whole of 1843, and was published in the spring
of the following year. It was entitled 'Geological Observations on the
Volcanic Islands, visited during the voyage of H.M.S. "Beagle", together
with some brief notices on the geology of Australia and the Cape of Good
Hope': it formed the second part of the 'Geology of the Voyage of the
"Beagle",' published "with the Approval of the Lords Commissioners of
Her Majesty's Treasury." The volume on 'Coral Reefs' forms Part I. of
the series, and was published, as we have seen, in 1842. For the sake
of the non-geological reader, I may here quote Professor Geikie's words
(Charles Darwin, 'Nature' Series, 1882.) on these two volumes--which
were up to this time my father's chief geological works. Speaking of the
'Coral Reefs,' he says:--page 17, "This well-known treatise, the most
original of all its author's geological memoirs, has become one of the
classics of geological literature. The origin of those remarkable rings
of coral-rock in mid-ocean has given rise to much speculation, but no
satisfactory solution of the problem has been proposed. After visiting
many of them, and examining also coral reefs that fringe islands and
continents, he offered a theory which for simplicity and grandeur
strikes every reader with astonishment. It is pleasant, after the lapse
of many years, to recall the delight with which one first read the
'Coral Reefs'; how one watched the facts being marshalled into their
places, nothing being ignored or passed lightly over; and how, step by
step, one was led to the grand conclusion of wide oceanic subsidence. No
more admirable example of scientific method was ever given to the world,
and even if he had written nothing else, the treatise alone would have
placed Darwin in the very front of investigators of nature."

It is interesting to see in the following extract from one of Lyell's
letters (To Sir John Herschel, May 24, 1837. 'Life of Sir Charles
Lyell,' vol. ii. page 12.) how warmly and readily he embraced the
theory. The extract also gives incidentally some idea of the theory
itself.

"I am very full of Darwin's new theory of Coral Islands, and have urged
Whewell to make him read it at our next meeting. I must give up my
volcanic crater theory for ever, though it cost me a pang at first,
for it accounted for so much, the annular form, the central lagoon, the
sudden rising of an isolated mountain in a deep sea; all went so well
with the notion of submerged, crateriform, and conical volcanoes,... and
then the fact that in the South Pacific we had scarcely any rocks in the
regions of coral islands, save two kinds, coral limestone and volcanic!
Yet spite of all this, the whole theory is knocked on the head, and the
annular shape and central lagoon have nothing to do with volcanoes, nor
even with a crateriform bottom. Perhaps Darwin told you when at the
Cape what he considers the true cause? Let any mountain be submerged
gradually, and coral grow in the sea in which it is sinking, and there
will be a ring of coral, and finally only a lagoon in the centre. Why?
For the same reason that a barrier reef of coral grows along certain
coasts: Australia, etc. Coral islands are the last efforts of drowning
continents to lift their heads above water. Regions of elevation and
subsidence in the ocean may be traced by the state of the coral reefs."
There is little to be said as to published contemporary criticism.
The book was not reviewed in the 'Quarterly Review' till 1847, when
a favourable notice was given. The reviewer speaks of the "bold and
startling" character of the work, but seems to recognize the fact that
the views are generally accepted by geologists. By that time the minds
of men were becoming more ready to receive geology of this type. Even
ten years before, in 1837, Lyell ('Life of Sir Charles Lyell,' vol. ii.
page 6.) says, "people are now much better prepared to believe Darwin
when he advances proofs of the slow rise of the Andes, than they were
in 1830, when I first startled them with that doctrine." This sentence
refers to the theory elaborated in my father's geological observations
on South America (1846), but the gradual change in receptivity of the
geological mind must have been favourable to all his geological work.
Nevertheless, Lyell seems at first not to have expected any ready
acceptance of the Coral theory; thus he wrote to my father in 1837:--"I
could think of nothing for days after your lesson on coral reefs, but
of the tops of submerged continents. It is all true, but do not flatter
yourself that you will be believed till you are growing bald like me,
with hard work and vexation at the incredulity of the world."

The second part of the 'Geology of the Voyage of the "Beagle",' i.e. the
volume on Volcanic Islands, which specially concerns us now, cannot
be better described than by again quoting from Professor Geikie (page
18):--

"Full of detailed observations, this work still remains the best
authority on the general geological structure of most of the regions it
describes. At the time it was written the 'crater of elevation theory,'
though opposed by Constant Prevost, Scrope, and Lyell, was generally
accepted, at least on the Continent. Darwin, however, could not receive
it as a valid explanation of the facts; and though he did not share the
view of its chief opponents, but ventured to propose a hypothesis of
his own, the observations impartially made and described by him in this
volume must be regarded as having contributed towards the final solution
of the difficulty." Professor Geikie continues (page 21): "He is one
of the earliest writers to recognize the magnitude of the denudation to
which even recent geological accumulations have been subjected. One of
the most impressive lessons to be learnt from his account of 'Volcanic
Islands' is the prodigious extent to which they have been denuded...He
was disposed to attribute more of this work to the sea than most
geologists would now admit; but he lived himself to modify his original
views, and on this subject his latest utterances are quite abreast of
the time."

An extract from a letter of my father's to Lyell shows his estimate
of his own work. "You have pleased me much by saying that you intend
looking through my 'Volcanic Islands': it cost me eighteen months!!! and
I have heard of very few who have read it. Now I shall feel, whatever
little (and little it is) there is confirmatory of old work, or new,
will work its effect and not be lost."

The third of his geological books, 'Geological Observations on South
America,' may be mentioned here, although it was not published until
1846. "In this work the author embodied all the materials collected by
him for the illustration of South American Geology, save some which have
been published elsewhere. One of the most important features of the book
was the evidence which it brought forward to prove the slow interrupted
elevation of the South American Continent during a recent geological
period." (Geikie, loc. cit.)

Of this book my father wrote to Lyell:--"My volume will be about 240
pages, dreadfully dull, yet much condensed. I think whenever you have
time to look through it, you will think the collection of facts on the
elevation of the land and on the formation of terraces pretty good."

Of his special geological work as a whole, Professor Geikie, while
pointing out that it was not "of the same epoch-making kind as his
biological researches," remarks that he "gave a powerful impulse to" the
general reception of Lyell's teaching "by the way in which he gathered
from all parts of the world facts in its support."


WORK OF THE PERIOD 1842 TO 1854.

The work of these years may be roughly divided into a period of geology
from 1842 to 1846, and one of zoology from 1846 onwards.

I extract from his diary notices of the time spent on his geological
books and on his 'Journal.'

'Volcanic Islands.' Summer of 1842 to January, 1844.

'Geology of South America.' July, 1844, to April, 1845.

Second Edition of 'The Journal,' October, 1845, to October, 1846.

The time between October, 1846, and October, 1854, was practically given
up to working at the Cirripedia (Barnacles); the results were published
in two volumes by the Ray Society in 1851 and 1854. His volumes on the
Fossil Cirripedes were published by the Palaeontographical Society in
1851 and 1854.

Some account of these volumes will be given later.

The minor works may be placed together, independently of subject matter.

"Observations on the Structure, etc., of the genus Sagitta," Ann. Nat.
Hist. xiii., 1844, pages 1-6.

"Brief descriptions of several Terrestrial Planariae, etc.," Ann. Nat.
Hist. xiv., 1844, pages 241-251.

"An Account of the Fine Dust (A sentence occurs in this paper of
interest, as showing that the author was alive to the importance of all
means of distribution:--

"The fact that particles of this size have been brought at least 330
miles from the land is interesting as bearing on the distribution of
Cryptogamic plants.") which often Falls on Vessels in the Atlantic
Ocean," Geol. Soc. Journ. ii., 1846, pages 26-30.

"On the Geology of the Falkland Islands," Geol. Soc. Journ. ii., 1846,
pages 267-274.

"On the Transportal of Erratic Boulders, etc.," Geol. Soc. Journ. iv.,
1848, pages 315-323. (An extract from a letter to Lyell, 1847, is of
interest in connection with this essay:--"Would you be so good (if you
know it) as to put Maclaren's address on the enclosed letter and post
it. It is chiefly to enquire in what paper he has described the Boulders
on Arthur's Seat. Mr. D. Milne in the last Edinburgh 'New Phil. Journal'
[1847], has a long paper on it. He says: 'Some glacialists have ventured
to explain the transportation of boulders even in the situation of those
now referred to, by imagining that they were transported on ice floes,'
etc. He treats this view, and the scratching of rocks by icebergs, as
almost absurd...he has finally stirred me up so, that (without you
would answer him) I think I will send a paper in opposition to the same
Journal. I can thus introduce some old remarks of mine, and some new,
and will insist on your capital observations in N. America. It is a bore
to stop one's work, but he has made me quite wroth.")

The article "Geology," in the Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry
(1849), pages 156-195. This was written in the spring of 1848.

"On British Fossil Lepadidae," 'Geol. Soc. Journ.' vi., 1850, pages
439-440.

"Analogy of the structure of some Volcanic Rocks with that of Glaciers,"
'Edin. Roy. Soc. Proc.' ii., 1851, pages 17-18.

Professor Geikie has been so good as to give me (in a letter dated
November 1885) his impressions of my father's article in the 'Admiralty
Manual.' He mentions the following points as characteristic of the
work:--

"1. Great breadth of view. No one who had not practically studied and
profoundly reflected on the questions discussed could have written it.

"2. The insight so remarkable in all that Mr. Darwin ever did. The way
in which he points out lines of enquiry that would elucidate geological
problems is eminently typical of him. Some of these lines have never yet
been adequately followed; so with regard to them he was in advance of
his time.

"3. Interesting and sympathetic treatment. The author at once puts his
readers into harmony with him. He gives them enough of information to
show how delightful the field is to which he invites them, and how much
they might accomplish in it. There is a broad sketch of the subject
which everybody can follow, and there is enough of detail to instruct
and guide a beginner and start him on the right track.

"Of course, geology has made great strides since 1849, and the article,
if written now, would need to take notice of other branches of inquiry,
and to modify statements which are not now quite accurate; but most of
the advice Mr. Darwin gives is as needful and valuable now as when it
was given. It is curious to see with what unerring instinct he seems to
have fastened on the principles that would stand the test of time."

In a letter to Lyell (1853) my father wrote, "I went up for a paper by
the Arctic Dr. Sutherland, on ice action, read only in abstract, but I
should think with much good matter. It was very pleasant to hear that it
was written owing to the Admiralty Manual."

To give some idea of the retired life which now began for my father at
Down, I have noted from his diary the short periods during which he was
away from home between the autumn of 1842, when he came to Down, and the
end of 1854.

  1843 July.--Week at Maer and Shrewsbury.
         October.--Twelve days at Shrewsbury.

  1844 April.--Week at Maer and Shrewsbury.
         July.--Twelve days at Shrewsbury.

  1845 September 15.--Six weeks, "Shrewsbury, Lincolnshire, York,
         the Dean of Manchester, Waterton, Chatsworth."

  1846 February.--Eleven days at Shrewsbury.
         July.--Ten days at Shrewsbury.
         September.--Ten days at Southampton, etc., for the British
         Association.

  1847 February.--Twelve days at Shrewsbury.
         June.--Ten days at Oxford, etc., for the British Association.
         October.--Fortnight at Shrewsbury.

  1848 May.--Fortnight at Shrewsbury.
         July.--Week at Swanage.
         October.--Fortnight at Shrewsbury.
         November.--Eleven days at Shrewsbury.

  1849 March to June.--Sixteen weeks at Malvern.
         September.--Eleven days at Birmingham for the
         British Association.

  1850 June.--Week at Malvern.
        August.--Week at Leith Hill, the house of a relative.
        October.--Week at the house of another relative.

 1851 March.--Week at Malvern.
        April.--Nine days at Malvern.
        July.--Twelve days in London.

 1852 March.--Week at Rugby and Shrewsbury.
        September.--Six days at the house of a relative.

 1853 July.--Three weeks at Eastbourne.
        August.--Five days at the military Camp at Chobham.

 1854 March.--Five days at the house of a relative.
        July.--Three days at the house of a relative.
        October.--Six days at the house of a relative.

It will be seen that he was absent from home sixty weeks in twelve
years. But it must be remembered that much of the remaining time spent
at Down was lost through ill-health.]


LETTERS.


CHARLES DARWIN TO R. FITZ-ROY. Down [March 31st, 1843].

Dear Fitz-Roy,

I read yesterday with surprise and the greatest interest, your
appointment as Governor of New Zealand. I do not know whether to
congratulate you on it, but I am sure I may the Colony, on possessing
your zeal and energy. I am most anxious to know whether the report is
true, for I cannot bear the thoughts of your leaving the country without
seeing you once again; the past is often in my memory, and I feel that
I owe to you much bygone enjoyment, and the whole destiny of my
life, which (had my health been stronger) would have been one full of
satisfaction to me. During the last three months I have never once
gone up to London without intending to call in the hopes of seeing Mrs.
Fitz-Roy and yourself; but I find, most unfortunately for myself,
that the little excitement of breaking out of my most quiet routine so
generally knocks me up, that I am able to do scarcely anything when in
London, and I have not even been able to attend one evening meeting of
the Geological Society. Otherwise, I am very well, as are, thank God, my
wife and two children. The extreme retirement of this place suits us all
very well, and we enjoy our country life much. But I am writing trifles
about myself, when your mind and time must be fully occupied. My object
in writing is to beg of you or Mrs. Fitz-Roy to have the kindness to
send me one line to say whether it is true, and whether you sail soon.
I shall come up next week for one or two days; could you see me for even
five minutes, if I called early on Thursday morning, viz. at nine or ten
o'clock, or at whatever hour (if you keep early ship hours) you finish
your breakfast. Pray remember me very kindly to Mrs. Fitz-Roy, who I
trust is able to look at her long voyage with boldness.

Believe me, dear Fitz-Roy, Your ever truly obliged, CHARLES DARWIN.


[A quotation from another letter (1846) to Fitz-Roy may be worth giving,
as showing my father's affectionate remembrance of his old Captain.

"Farewell, dear Fitz-Roy, I often think of your many acts of kindness
to me, and not seldomest on the time, no doubt quite forgotten by you,
when, before making Madeira, you came and arranged my hammock with
your own hands, and which, as I afterwards heard, brought tears into my
father's eyes."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. [Down, September 5, 1843.] Monday morning.

My dear Fox,

When I sent off the glacier paper, I was just going out and so had no
time to write. I hope your friend will enjoy (and I wish you were going
there with him) his tour as much as I did. It was a kind of geological
novel. But your friend must have patience, for he will not get a good
GLACIAL EYE for a few days. Murchison and Count Keyserling RUSHED
through North Wales the same autumn and could see nothing except the
effects of rain trickling over the rocks! I cross-examined Murchison
a little, and evidently saw he had looked carefully at nothing. I feel
CERTAIN about the glacier-effects in North Wales. Get up your steam,
if this weather lasts, and have a ramble in Wales; its glorious scenery
must do every one's heart and body good. I wish I had energy to come to
Delamere and go with you; but as you observe, you might as well ask
St. Paul's. Whenever I give myself a trip, it shall be, I think, to
Scotland, to hunt for more parallel roads. My marine theory for these
roads was for a time knocked on the head by Agassiz ice-work, but it is
now reviving again...

Farewell,--we are getting nearly finished--almost all the workmen gone,
and the gravel laying down on the walks. Ave Maria! how the money does
go. There are twice as many temptations to extravagance in the country
compared with London. Adios.

Yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1844?].

...I have also read the 'Vestiges,' ('The Vestiges of the Natural
History of Creation' was published anonymously in 1844, and is
confidently believed to have been written by the late Robert Chambers.
My father's copy gives signs of having been carefully read, a long list
of marked passages being pinned in at the end. One useful lesson he
seems to have learned from it. He writes: "The idea of a fish passing
into a reptile, monstrous. I will not specify any genealogies--much too
little known at present." He refers again to the book in a letter to
Fox, February, 1845: "Have you read that strange, unphilosophical but
capitally-written book, the 'Vestiges': it has made more talk than any
work of late, and has been by some attributed to me--at which I ought to
be much flattered and unflattered."), but have been somewhat less amused
at it than you appear to have been: the writing and arrangement are
certainly admirable, but his geology strikes me as bad, and his zoology
far worse. I should be very much obliged, if at any future or leisure
time you could tell me on what you ground your doubtful belief in
imagination of a mother affecting her offspring. (This refers to the
case of a relative of Sir J. Hooker's, who insisted that a mole, which
appeared on one of her children, was the effect of fright upon herself
on having, before the birth of the child, blotted with sepia a copy
of Turner's 'Liber Studiorum' that had been lent to her with special
injunctions to be careful.) I have attended to the several statements
scattered about, but do not believe in more than accidental
coincidences. W. Hunter told my father, then in a lying-in hospital,
that in many thousand cases, he had asked the mother, BEFORE HER
CONFINEMENT, whether anything had affected her imagination, and recorded
the answers; and absolutely not one case came right, though, when the
child was anything remarkable, they afterwards made the cap to fit.
Reproduction seems governed by such similar laws in the whole animal
kingdom, that I am most loth [to believe]...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.M. HERBERT. Down [1844 or 1845].

My dear Herbert,

I was very glad to see your handwriting and hear a bit of news about
you. Though you cannot come here this autumn, I do hope you and Mrs.
Herbert will come in the winter, and we will have lots of talk of old
times, and lots of Beethoven.

I have little or rather nothing to say about myself; we live like
clock-work, and in what most people would consider the dullest
possible manner. I have of late been slaving extra hard, to the great
discomfiture of wretched digestive organs, at South America, and thank
all the fates, I have done three-fourths of it. Writing plain English
grows with me more and more difficult, and never attainable. As for your
pretending that you will read anything so dull as my pure geological
descriptions, lay not such a flattering unction on my soul (On the same
subject he wrote to Fitz-Roy: "I have sent my 'South American Geology'
to Dover Street, and you will get it, no doubt, in the course of time.
You do not know what you threaten when you propose to read it--it is
purely geological. I said to my brother, 'You will of course read it,'
and his answer was, 'Upon my life, I would sooner even buy it.'") for
it is incredible. I have long discovered that geologists never read each
other's works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of
earnestness, and that you do not form your opinions without undergoing
labour of some kind. Geology is at present very oral, and what I here
say is to a great extent quite true. But I am giving you a discussion as
long as a chapter in the odious book itself.

I have lately been to Shrewsbury, and found my father surprisingly well
and cheerful.

Believe me, my dear old friend, ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, Monday [February 10th, 1845].

My dear Hooker,

I am much obliged for your very agreeable letter; it was very
good-natured, in the midst of your scientific and theatrical
dissipation, to think of writing so long a letter to me. I am astonished
at your news, and I must condole with you in your PRESENT view of the
Professorship (Sir J.D. Hooker was a candidate for the Professorship of
Botany at Edinburgh University.), and most heartily deplore it on my
own account. There is something so chilling in a separation of so many
hundred miles, though we did not see much of each other when nearer.
You will hardly believe how deeply I regret for MYSELF your present
prospects. I had looked forward to [our] seeing much of each other
during our lives. It is a heavy disappointment; and in a mere selfish
point of view, as aiding me in my work, your loss is indeed irreparable.
But, on the other hand, I cannot doubt that you take at present a
desponding, instead of bright, view of your prospects: surely there
are great advantages, as well as disadvantages. The place is one of
eminence; and really it appears to me there are so many indifferent
workers, and so few readers, that it is a high advantage, in a purely
scientific point of view, for a good worker to hold a position which
leads others to attend to his work. I forget whether you attended
Edinburgh, as a student, but in my time there was a knot of men who were
far from being the indifferent and dull listeners which you expect for
your audience. Reflect what a satisfaction and honour it would be to
MAKE a good botanist--with your disposition you will be to many what
Henslow was at Cambridge to me and others, a most kind friend and guide.
Then what a fine garden, and how good a Public Library! why, Forbes
always regrets the advantages of Edinburgh for work: think of the
inestimable advantage of getting within a short walk of those noble
rocks and hills and sandy shores near Edinburgh! Indeed, I cannot
pity you much, though I pity myself exceedingly in your loss. Surely
lecturing will, in a year or two, with your GREAT capacity for work
(whatever you may be pleased to say to the contrary) become easy, and
you will have a fair time for your Antarctic Flora and general views of
distribution. If I thought your Professorship would stop your work, I
should wish it and all the good worldly consequences at el Diavolo. I
know I shall live to see you the first authority in Europe on that grand
subject, that almost keystone of the laws of creation, Geographical
Distribution. Well, there is one comfort, you will be at Kew, no doubt,
every year, so I shall finish by forcing down your throat my sincere
congratulations. Thanks for all your news. I grieve to hear Humboldt is
failing; one cannot help feeling, though unrightly, that such an end is
humiliating: even when I saw him he talked beyond all reason. If you see
him again, pray give him my most respectful and kind compliments, and
say that I never forget that my whole course of life is due to having
read and re-read as a youth his 'Personal Narrative.' How true
and pleasing are all your remarks on his kindness; think how many
opportunities you will have, in your new place, of being a Humboldt
to others. Ask him about the river in N.E. Europe, with the Flora very
different on its opposite banks. I have got and read your Wilkes; what a
feeble book in matter and style, and how splendidly got up! Do write me
a line from Berlin. Also thanks for the proof-sheets. I do not,
however, mean proof plates; I value them, as saving me copying extracts.
Farewell, my dear Hooker, with a heavy heart I wish you joy of your
prospects.

Your sincere friend,

C. DARWIN.


[The second edition of the 'Journal,' to which the following letter
refers, was completed between April 25th and August 25th. It was
published by Mr. Murray in the 'Colonial and Home Library,' and in this
more accessible form soon had a large sale.

Up to the time of his first negotiations with Mr. Murray for its
publication in this form, he had received payment only in the form of a
large number of presentation copies, and he seems to have been glad to
sell the copyright of the second edition to Mr. Murray for 150 pounds.

The points of difference between it and the first edition are of
interest chiefly in connection with the growth of the author's views on
evolution, and will be considered later.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down [July, 1845].

My dear Lyell,

I send you the first part (No doubt proof-sheets.) of the new edition
[of the 'Journal of Researches'], which I so entirely owe to you. You
will see that I have ventured to dedicate it to you (The dedication of
the second edition of the 'Journal of Researches,' is as follows:--"To
Charles Lyell, Esq., F.R.S., this second edition is dedicated with
grateful pleasure--as an acknowledgment that the chief part of whatever
scientific merit this Journal and the other works of the Author may
possess, has been derived from studying the well-known and admirable
'Principles of Geology.'"), and I trust that this cannot be
disagreeable. I have long wished, not so much for your sake, as for
my own feelings of honesty, to acknowledge more plainly than by mere
reference, how much I geologically owe you. Those authors, however, who
like you, educate people's minds as well as teach them special facts,
can never, I should think, have full justice done them except by
posterity, for the mind thus insensibly improved can hardly perceive its
own upward ascent. I had intended putting in the present acknowledgment
in the third part of my Geology, but its sale is so exceedingly small
that I should not have had the satisfaction of thinking that as far as
lay in my power I had owned, though imperfectly, my debt. Pray do not
think that I am so silly, as to suppose that my dedication can any ways
gratify you, except so far as I trust you will receive it, as a most
sincere mark of my gratitude and friendship. I think I have improved
this edition, especially the second part, which I have just finished.
I have added a good deal about the Fuegians, and cut down into half
the mercilessly long discussion on climate and glaciers, etc. I do not
recollect anything added to the first part, long enough to call your
attention to; there is a page of description of a very curious breed of
oxen in Banda Oriental. I should like you to read the few last pages;
there is a little discussion on extinction, which will not perhaps
strike you as new, though it has so struck me, and has placed in my mind
all the difficulties with respect to the causes of extinction, in the
same class with other difficulties which are generally quite overlooked
and undervalued by naturalists; I ought, however, to have made my
discussion longer and shewn by facts, as I easily could, how steadily
every species must be checked in its numbers.

I received your Travels ('Travels in North America,' 2 volumes, 1845.)
yesterday; and I like exceedingly its external and internal appearance;
I read only about a dozen pages last night (for I was tired with
hay-making), but I saw quite enough to perceive how VERY much it will
interest me, and how many passages will be scored. I am pleased to find
a good sprinkling of Natural History; I shall be astonished if it does
not sell very largely...

How sorry I am to think that we shall not see you here again for so
long; I wish you may knock yourself a little bit up before you start and
require a day's fresh air, before the ocean breezes blow on you...

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, Saturday [August 1st, 1845].

My dear Lyell,

I have been wishing to write to you for a week past, but every five
minutes' worth of strength has been expended in getting out my second
part. (Of the second edition of the 'Journal of Researches.') Your note
pleased me a good deal more I dare say than my dedication did you, and I
thank you much for it. Your work has interested me much, and I will give
you my impressions, though, as I never thought you would care to hear
what I thought of the non-scientific parts, I made no notes, nor took
pains to remember any particular impression of two-thirds of the first
volume. The first impression I should say would be with most (though I
have literally seen not one soul since reading it) regret at there not
being more of the non-scientific [parts]. I am not a good judge, for
I have read nothing, i.e. non-scientific about North America, but the
whole struck me as very new, fresh, and interesting. Your discussions
bore to my mind the evident stamp of matured thought, and of conclusions
drawn from facts observed by yourself, and not from the opinions of the
people whom you met; and this I suspect is comparatively rare.

Your slave discussion disturbed me much; but as you would care no more
for my opinion on this head than for the ashes of this letter, I will
say nothing except that it gave me some sleepless, most uncomfortable
hours. Your account of the religious state of the States particularly
interested me; I am surprised throughout at your very proper boldness
against the Clergy. In your University chapter the Clergy, and not the
State of Education, are most severely and justly handled, and this I
think is very bold, for I conceive you might crush a leaden-headed old
Don, as a Don, with more safety, than touch the finger of that Corporate
Animal, the Clergy. What a contrast in Education does England show
itself! Your apology (using the term, like the old religionists who
meant anything but an apology) for lectures, struck me as very clever;
but all the arguments in the world on your side, are not equal to one
course of Jamieson's Lectures on the other side, which I formerly for
my sins experienced. Although I had read about the 'Coalfields in North
America,' I never in the smallest degree really comprehended their area,
their thickness and favourable position; nothing hardly astounded me
more in your book.

Some few parts struck me as rather heterogeneous, but I do not know
whether to an extent that at all signified. I missed however, a good
deal, some general heading to the chapters, such as the two or three
principal places visited. One has no right to expect an author to write
down to the zero of geographical ignorance of the reader; but I not
knowing a single place, was occasionally rather plagued in tracing your
course. Sometimes in the beginning of a chapter, in one paragraph your
course was traced through a half dozen places; anyone, as ignorant as
myself, if he could be found, would prefer such a disturbing paragraph
left out. I cut your map loose, and I found that a great comfort; I
could not follow your engraved track. I think in a second edition,
interspaces here and there of one line open, would be an improvement. By
the way, I take credit to myself in giving my Journal a less scientific
air in having printed all names of species and genera in Romans;
the printing looks, also, better. All the illustrations strike me
as capital, and the map is an admirable volume in itself. If your
'Principles' had not met with such universal admiration, I should have
feared there would have been too much geology in this for the general
reader; certainly all that the most clear and light style could do,
has been done. To myself the geology was an excellent, well-condensed,
well-digested resume of all that has been made out in North America,
and every geologist ought to be grateful to you. The summing up of the
Niagara chapter appeared to me the grandest part; I was also deeply
interested by your discussion on the origin of the Silurian formations.
I have made scores of SCORES marking passages hereafter useful to me.

All the coal theory appeared to me very good; but it is no use going on
enumerating in this manner. I wish there had been more Natural History;
I liked ALL the scattered fragments. I have now given you an exact
transcript of my thoughts, but they are hardly worth your reading...


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, August 25th [1845].

My dear Lyell,

This is literally the first day on which I have had any time to spare;
and I will amuse myself by beginning a letter to you...

I was delighted with your letter in which you touch on Slavery; I wish
the same feelings had been apparent in your published discussion. But
I will not write on this subject, I should perhaps annoy you, and most
certainly myself. I have exhaled myself with a paragraph or two in my
Journal on the sin of Brazilian slavery; you perhaps will think that
it is in answer to you; but such is not the case. I have remarked on
nothing which I did not hear on the coast of South America. My few
sentences, however, are merely an explosion of feeling. How could you
relate so placidly that atrocious sentiment (In the passage referred
to, Lyell does not give his own views, but those of a planter.) about
separating children from their parents; and in the next page speak of
being distressed at the whites not having prospered; I assure you the
contrast made me exclaim out. But I have broken my intention, and so no
more on this odious deadly subject.

There is a favourable, but not strong enough review on you, in the
"Gardeners' Chronicle". I am sorry to see that Lindley abides by the
carbonic acid gas theory. By the way, I was much pleased by Lindley
picking out my extinction paragraphs and giving them uncurtailed. To
my mind, putting the comparative rarity of existing species in the same
category with extinction has removed a great weight; though of course
it does not explain anything, it shows that until we can explain
comparative rarity, we ought not to feel any surprise at not explaining
extinction...

I am much pleased to hear of the call for a new edition of the
'Principles': what glorious good that work has done. I fear this time
you will not be amongst the old rocks; how I shall rejoice to live to
see you publish and discover another stage below the Silurian--it would
be the grandest step possible, I think. I am very glad to hear what
progress Bunbury is making in fossil Botany; there is a fine hiatus
for him to fill up in this country. I will certainly call on him this
winter...From what little I saw of him, I can quite believe everything
which you say of his talents...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Shrewsbury [1845?].

My dear Hooker,

I have just received your note, which has astonished me, and has most
truly grieved me. I never for one minute doubted of your success, for I
most erroneously imagined, that merit was sure to gain the day. I feel
most sure that the day will come soon, when those who have voted against
you, if they have any shame or conscience in them, will be ashamed at
having allowed politics to blind their eyes to your qualifications,
and those qualifications vouched for by Humboldt and Brown! Well, those
testimonials must be a consolation to you. Proh pudor! I am vexed and
indignant by turns. I cannot even take comfort in thinking that I shall
see more of you, and extract more knowledge from your well-arranged
stock. I am pleased to think, that after having read a few of your
letters, I never once doubted the position you will ultimately hold
amongst European Botanists. I can think about nothing else, otherwise
I should like [to] discuss 'Cosmos' (A translation of Humboldt's
'Kosmos.') with you. I trust you will pay me and my wife a visit this
autumn at Down. I shall be at Down on the 24th, and till then moving
about.

My dear Hooker, allow me to call myself Your very true friend, C.
DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. October 8th [1845], Shrewsbury.

...I have lately been taking a little tour to see a farm I have
purchased in Lincolnshire (He speaks of his Lincolnshire farm in a
letter to Henslow (July 4th):--"I have bought a farm in Lincolnshire,
and when I go there this autumn, I mean to see what I can do in
providing any cottage on my small estate with gardens. It is a hopeless
thing to look to, but I believe few things would do this country more
good in future ages than the destruction of primogeniture, so as to
lessen the difference in land-wealth, and make more small freeholders.
How atrociously unjust are the stamp laws, which render it so expensive
for the poor man to buy his quarter of an acre; it makes one's blood
burn with indignation.") and then to York, where I visited the Dean of
Manchester (Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert. The visit is mentioned in a letter
to Dr. Hooker:--"I have been taking a little tour, partly on business,
and visited the Dean of Manchester, and had very much interesting talk
with him on hybrids, sterility, and variation, etc., etc. He is full of
self-gained knowledge, but knows surprisingly little what others have
done on the same subjects. He is very heterodox on 'species': not much
better as most naturalists would esteem it, than poor Mr. Vestiges.")
the great maker of Hybrids, who gave me much curious information. I also
visited Waterton at Walton Hall, and was extremely amused with my visit
there. He is an amusing strange fellow; at our early dinner, our party
consisted of two Catholic priests and two Mulattresses! He is past
sixty years old, and the day before ran down and caught a leveret in
a turnip-field. It is a fine old house, and the lake swarms with
water-fowl. I then saw Chatsworth, and was in transport with the great
hothouse; it is a perfect fragment of a tropical forest, and the sight
made me think with delight of old recollections. My little ten-day tour
made me feel wonderfully strong at the time, but the good effects did
not last. My wife, I am sorry to say, does not get very strong, and the
children are the hope of the family, for they are all happy, life, and
spirits. I have been much interested with Sedgwick's review (Sedgwick's
review of the 'Vestiges of Creation' in the 'Edinburgh Review,' July,
1845.) though I find it far from popular with our scientific readers.
I think some few passages savour of the dogmatism of the pulpit, rather
than of the philosophy of the Professor's Chair; and some of the wit
strikes me as only worthy of -- in the 'Quarterly.' Nevertheless, it is
a grand piece of argument against mutability of species, and I read it
with fear and trembling, but was well pleased to find that I had not
overlooked any of the arguments, though I had put them to myself as
feebly as milk and water. Have you read 'Cosmos' yet? The English
translation is wretched, and the semi-metaphysico-politico descriptions
in the first part are barely intelligible; but I think the volcanic
discussion well worth your attention, it has astonished me by its vigour
and information. I grieve to find Humboldt an adorer of Von Buch, with
his classification of volcanos, craters of elevation, etc., etc., and
carbonic acid gas atmosphere. He is indeed a wonderful man.

I hope to get home in a fortnight and stick to my wearyful South America
till I finish it. I shall be very anxious to hear how you get on from
the Horners, but you must not think of wasting your time by writing to
me. We shall miss, indeed, your visits to Down, and I shall feel a lost
man in London without my morning "house of call" at Hart Street...

Believe me, my dear Lyell, ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, Farnborough, Kent. Thursday,
September, 1846.

My dear Hooker,

I hope this letter will catch you at Clifton, but I have been prevented
writing by being unwell, and having had the Horners here as visitors,
which, with my abominable press-work, has fully occupied my time. It is,
indeed, a long time since we wrote to each other; though, I beg to tell
you, that I wrote last, but what about I cannot remember, except,
I know, it was after reading your last numbers (Sir J.D. Hooker's
Antarctic Botany.), and I send you a uniquely laudatory epistle,
considering it was from a man who hardly knows a Daisy from a Dandelion
to a professed Botanist...

I cannot remember what papers have given me the impression, but I have
that, which you state to be the case, firmly fixed on my mind, namely,
the little chemical importance of the soil to its vegetation. What a
strong fact it is, as R. Brown once remarked to me, of certain plants
being calcareous ones here, which are not so under a more favourable
climate on the Continent, or the reverse, for I forget which; but you,
no doubt, will know to what I refer. By-the-way, there are some such
cases in Herbert's paper in the 'Horticultural Journal.' ('Journal of
the Horticultural Society,' 1846.) Have you read it: it struck me as
extremely original, and bears DIRECTLY on your present researches. (Sir
J.D. Hooker was at this time attending to polymorphism, variability,
etc.) To a NON-BOTANIST the chalk has the most peculiar aspect of any
flora in England; why will you not come here to make your observations?
WE go to Southampton, if my courage and stomach do not fail, for the
Brit. Assoc. (Do you not consider it your duty to be there?) And why
cannot you come here afterward and WORK?...


THE MONOGRAPH OF THE CIRRIPEDIA,

October 1846 to October 1854.

[Writing to Sir J.D. Hooker in 1845, my father says: "I hope this next
summer to finish my South American Geology, then to get out a little
Zoology, and hurrah for my species work..." This passage serves to show
that he had at this time no intention of making an exhaustive study of
the Cirripedes. Indeed it would seem that his original intention was,
as I learn from Sir J.D. Hooker, merely to work out one special
problem. This is quite in keeping with the following passage in the
Autobiography: "When on the coast of Chile, I found a most curious form,
which burrowed into the shells of Concholepas, and which differed so
much from all other Cirripedes that I had to form a new sub-order for
its sole reception...To understand the structure of my new Cirripede I
had to examine and dissect many of the common forms; and this gradually
led me on to take up the whole group." In later years he seems to have
felt some doubt as to the value of these eight years of work,--for
instance when he wrote in his Autobiography--"My work was of
considerable use to me, when I had to discuss in the 'Origin of
Species,' the principles of a natural classification. Nevertheless I
doubt whether the work was worth the consumption of so much time." Yet I
learn from Sir J.D. Hooker that he certainly recognised at the time its
value to himself as systematic training. Sir Joseph writes to me: "Your
father recognised three stages in his career as a biologist: the mere
collector at Cambridge; the collector and observer in the "Beagle", and
for some years afterwards; and the trained naturalist after, and only
after the Cirripede work. That he was a thinker all along is true
enough, and there is a vast deal in his writings previous to the
Cirripedes that a trained naturalist could but emulate...He often
alluded to it as a valued discipline, and added that even the 'hateful'
work of digging out synonyms, and of describing, not only improved his
methods but opened his eyes to the difficulties and merits of the works
of the dullest of cataloguers. One result was that he would never allow
a depreciatory remark to pass unchallenged on the poorest class of
scientific workers, provided that their work was honest, and good of
its kind. I have always regarded it as one of the finest traits of his
character,--this generous appreciation of the hod-men of science, and
of their labours...and it was monographing the Barnacles that brought it
about."]

Professor Huxley allows me to quote his opinion as to the value of the
eight years given to the Cirripedes:--

"In my opinion your sagacious father never did a wiser thing than when
he devoted himself to the years of patient toil which the Cirripede-book
cost him.

"Like the rest of us, he had no proper training in biological science,
and it has always struck me as a remarkable instance of his scientific
insight, that he saw the necessity of giving himself such training, and
of his courage, that he did not shirk the labour of obtaining it.

"The great danger which besets all men of large speculative faculty, is
the temptation to deal with the accepted statements of facts in natural
science, as if they were not only correct, but exhaustive; as if they
might be dealt with deductively, in the same way as propositions in
Euclid may be dealt with. In reality, every such statement, however true
it may be, is true only relatively to the means of observation and the
point of view of those who have enunciated it. So far it may be depended
upon. But whether it will bear every speculative conclusion that may be
logically deduced from it, is quite another question.

"Your father was building a vast superstructure upon the foundations
furnished by the recognised facts of geological and biological science.
In Physical Geography, in Geology proper, in Geographical Distribution,
and in Palaeontology, he had acquired an extensive practical training
during the voyage of the "Beagle". He knew of his own knowledge the way
in which the raw materials of these branches of science are acquired,
and was therefore a most competent judge of the speculative strain they
would bear. That which he needed, after his return to England, was
a corresponding acquaintance with Anatomy and Development, and their
relation to Taxonomy--and he acquired this by his Cirripede work.

"Thus, in my apprehension, the value of the Cirripede monograph lies
not merely in the fact that it is a very admirable piece of work, and
constituted a great addition to positive knowledge, but still more in
the circumstance that it was a piece of critical self-discipline,
the effect of which manifested itself in everything your father wrote
afterwards, and saved him from endless errors of detail.

"So far from such work being a loss of time, I believe it would have
been well worth his while, had it been practicable, to have supplemented
it by a special study of embryology and physiology. His hands would
have been greatly strengthened thereby when he came to write out sundry
chapters of the 'Origin of Species.' But of course in those days it was
almost impossible for him to find facilities for such work."

No one can look a the two volumes on the recent Cirripedes, of 399
and 684 pages respectively (not to speak of the volumes on the fossil
species), without being struck by the immense amount of detailed work
which they contain. The forty plates, some of them with thirty figures,
and the fourteen pages of index in the two volumes together, give some
rough idea of the labour spent on the work. (The reader unacquainted
with Zoology will find some account of the more interesting results in
Mr. Romanes' article on "Charles Darwin" ('Nature' Series, 1882).) The
state of knowledge, as regards the Cirripedes, was most unsatisfactory
at the time that my father began to work at them. As an illustration
of this fact, it may be mentioned that he had even to re-organise the
nomenclature of the group, or, as he expressed it, he "unwillingly found
it indispensable to give names to several valves, and to some few of
the softer parts of Cirripedes." (Vol. i. page 3.) It is interesting
to learn from his diary the amount of time which he gave to different
genera. Thus the genus Chthamalus, the description of which occupies
twenty-two pages, occupied him for thirty-six days; Coronula took
nineteen days, and is described in twenty-seven pages. Writing to
Fitz-Roy, he speaks of being "for the last half-month daily hard at work
in dissecting a little animal about the size of a pin's head, from the
Chonos archipelago, and I could spend another month, and daily see more
beautiful structure."

Though he became excessively weary of the work before the end of the
eight years, he had much keen enjoyment in the course of it. Thus
he wrote to Sir J.D. Hooker (1847?):--"As you say, there is an
extraordinary pleasure in pure observation; not but what I suspect the
pleasure in this case is rather derived from comparisons forming in
one's mind with allied structures. After having been so long employed
in writing my old geological observations, it is delightful to use one's
eyes and fingers again." It was, in fact, a return to the work which
occupied so much of his time when at sea during his voyage. His
zoological notes of that period give an impression of vigorous work,
hampered by ignorance and want of appliances. And his untiring industry
in the dissection of marine animals, especially of Crustacea, must have
been of value to him as training for his Cirripede work. Most of his
work was done with the simple dissecting microscope--but it was the need
which he found for higher powers that induced him, in 1846, to buy a
compound microscope. He wrote to Hooker:--"When I was drawing with L.,
I was so delighted with the appearance of the objects, especially with
their perspective, as seen through the weak powers of a good compound
microscope, that I am going to order one; indeed, I often have
structures in which the 1/30 is not power enough."

During part of the time covered by the present chapter, my father
suffered perhaps more from ill-health than at any other time of his
life. He felt severely the depressing influence of these long years of
illness; thus as early as 1840 he wrote to Fox: "I am grown a dull,
old, spiritless dog to what I used to be. One gets stupider as one grows
older I think." It is not wonderful that he should so have written,
it is rather to be wondered at that his spirit withstood so great and
constant a strain. He wrote to Sir J.D. Hooker in 1845: "You are very
kind in your enquiries about my health; I have nothing to say about it,
being always much the same, some days better and some worse. I believe
I have not had one whole day, or rather night, without my stomach having
been greatly disordered, during the last three years, and most days
great prostration of strength: thank you for your kindness; many of my
friends, I believe, think me a hypochondriac."

Again, in 1849, he notes in his diary:--"January 1st to March
10th.--Health very bad, with much sickness and failure of power. Worked
on all well days." This was written just before his first visit to Dr.
Gully's Water-Cure Establishment at Malvern. In April of the same year
he wrote:--"I believe I am going on very well, but I am rather weary of
my present inactive life, and the water-cure has the most extraordinary
effect in producing indolence and stagnation of mind: till experiencing
it, I could not have believed it possible. I now increase in weight,
have escaped sickness for thirty days." He returned in June, after
sixteen weeks' absence, much improved in health, and, as already
described, continued the water-cure at home for some time.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [October, 1846].

My dear Hooker,

I have not heard from Sulivan (Admiral Sir B.J. Sulivan, formerly an
officer of the "Beagle".) lately; when he last wrote he named from 8th
to 10th as the most likely time. Immediately that I hear, I will fly you
a line, for the chance of your being able to come. I forget whether you
know him, but I suppose so; he is a real good fellow. Anyhow, if you do
not come then, I am very glad that you propose coming soon after...

I am going to begin some papers on the lower marine animals, which will
last me some months, perhaps a year, and then I shall begin looking over
my ten-year-long accumulation of notes on species and varieties,
which, with writing, I dare say will take me five years, and then, when
published, I dare say I shall stand infinitely low in the opinion of all
sound Naturalists--so this is my prospect for the future.

Are you a good hand at inventing names. I have a quite new and curious
genus of Barnacle, which I want to name, and how to invent a name
completely puzzles me.

By the way, I have told you nothing about Southampton. We enjoyed (wife
and myself) our week beyond measure: the papers were all dull, but I met
so many friends and made so many new acquaintances (especially some of
the Irish Naturalists), and took so many pleasant excursions. I wish you
had been there. On Sunday we had so pleasant an excursion to
Winchester with Falconer (Hugh Falconer, 1809-1865. Chiefly known as a
palaeontologist, although employed as a botanist during his whole career
in India, where he was also a medical officer in the H.E.I.C. Service;
he was superintendent of the Company's garden, first at Saharunpore,
and then at Calcutta. He was one of the first botanical explorers of
Kashmir. Falconer's discoveries of Miocene mammalian remains in the
Sewalik Hills, were, at the time, perhaps the greatest "finds" which had
been made. His book on the subject, 'Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis,' remained
unfinished at the time of his death.), Colonel Sabine (The late Sir
Edward Sabine, formerly President of the Royal Society, and author of a
long series of memoirs on Terrestrial Magnetism.), and Dr. Robinson
(The late Dr. Thomas Romney Robinson, of the Armagh Observatory.), and
others. I never enjoyed a day more in my life. I missed having a look
at H. Watson. (The late Hewett Cottrell Watson, author of the 'Cybele
Britannica,' one of a most valuable series of works on the topography
and geographical distribution of the plants of the British Islands.)
I suppose you heard that he met Forbes and told him he had a severe
article in the Press. I understood that Forbes explained to him that he
had no cause to complain, but as the article was printed, he would not
withdraw it, but offered it to Forbes for him to append notes to it,
which Forbes naturally declined...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 7th [1847?].

My dear Hooker,

I should have written before now, had I not been almost continually
unwell, and at present I am suffering from four boils and swellings, one
of which hardly allows me the use of my right arm, and has stopped all
my work, and damped all my spirits. I was much disappointed at missing
my trip to Kew, and the more so, as I had forgotten you would be away
all this month; but I had no choice, and was in bed nearly all Friday
and Saturday. I congratulate you over your improved prospects about
India (Sir J. Hooker left England on November 11, 1847, for his
Himalayan and Tibetan journey. The expedition was supported by a small
grant from the Treasury, and thus assumed the character of a Government
mission.), but at the same time must sincerely groan over it. I shall
feel quite lost without you to discuss many points with, and to
point out (ill-luck to you) difficulties and objections to my species
hypotheses. It will be a horrid shame if money stops your expedition;
but Government will surely help you to some extent...Your present trip,
with your new views, amongst the coal-plants, will be very interesting.
If you have spare time, BUT NOT WITHOUT, I should enjoy having some news
of your progress. Your present trip will work well in, if you go to
any of the coal districts in India. Would this not be a good object to
parade before Government; the utilitarian souls would comprehend this.
By the way, I will get some work out of you, about the domestic races of
animals in India...


CHARLES DARWIN TO L. JENYNS (BLOMEFIELD). Down [1847].

Dear Jenyns,

("This letter relates to a small Almanack first published in 1843, under
the name of 'The Naturalists' Pocket Almanack,' by Mr. Van Voorst,
and which I edited for him. It was intended especially for those who
interest themselves in the periodic phenomena of animals and plants, of
which a select list was given under each month of the year.

"The Pocket Almanack contained, moreover, miscellaneous information
relating to Zoology and Botany; to Natural History and other scientific
societies; to public Museums and Gardens, in addition to the ordinary
celestial phenomena found in most other Almanacks. It continued to be
issued till 1847, after which year the publication was abandoned."--From
a letter from Rev. L. Blomefield to F. Darwin.)

I am very much obliged for the capital little Almanack; it so happened
that I was wishing for one to keep in my portfolio. I had never seen
this kind before, and shall certainly get one for the future. I think
it is very amusing to have a list before one's eyes of the order of
appearance of the plants and animals around one; it gives a fresh
interest to each fine day. There is one point I should like to see
a little improved, viz., the correction for the clock at shorter
intervals. Most people, I suspect, who like myself have dials, will wish
to be more precise than with a margin of three minutes. I always buy
a shilling almanack for this SOLE end. By the way, YOURS, i.e., Van
Voorst's Almanack, is very dear; it ought, at least, to be advertised
post-free for the shilling. Do you not think a table (not rules) of
conversion of French into English measures, and perhaps weights, would
be exceedingly useful; also centigrade into Fahrenheit,--magnifying
powers according to focal distances?--in fact you might make it the more
useful publication of the age. I know what I should like best of all,
namely, current meteorological remarks for each month, with statement
of average course of winds and prediction of weather, in accordance with
movements of barometer. People, I think, are always amused at knowing
the extremes and means of temperature for corresponding times in other
years.

I hope you will go on with it another year. With many thanks, my dear
Jenyns,

Yours very truly, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, Sunday [April 18th, 1847].

My dear Hooker,

I return with many thanks Watson's letter, which I have had copied. It
is a capital one, and I am extremely obliged to you for obtaining me
such valuable information. Surely he is rather in a hurry when he says
intermediate varieties must almost be necessarily rare, otherwise they
would be taken as the types of the species; for he overlooks numerical
frequency as an element. Surely if A, B, C were three varieties, and
if A were a good deal the commonest (therefore, also, first known),
it would be taken as the type, without regarding whether B was quite
intermediate or not, or whether it was rare or not. What capital
essays W would write; but I suppose he has written a good deal in the
'Phytologist.' You ought to encourage him to publish on variation; it
is a shame that such facts as those in his letter should remain
unpublished. I must get you to introduce me to him; would he be a good
and sociable man for Dropmore? (A much enjoyed expedition made from
Oxford--when the British Association met there in 1847.) though if he
comes, Forbes must not (and I think you talked of inviting Forbes), or
we shall have a glorious battle. I should like to see sometime the war
correspondence. Have you the 'Phytologist,' and could you sometime spare
it? I would go through it quickly...I have read your last five numbers
(Of the Botany of Hooker's 'Antarctic Voyage.'), and as usual have been
much interested in several points, especially with your discussions
on the beech and potato. I see you have introduced several sentences
against us Transmutationists. I have also been looking through the
latter volumes of the 'Annals of Natural History,' and have read two
such soulless, pompous papers of --, quite worthy of the author...The
contrast of the papers in the "Annals" with those in the "Annales"
is rather humiliating; so many papers in the former, with short
descriptions of species, without one word on their affinities, internal
structure, range or habits. I am now reading --, and I have picked
out some things which have interested me; but he strikes me as rather
dullish, and with all his Materia Medica smells of the doctor's shop. I
shall ever hate the name of the Materia Medica, since hearing Duncan's
lectures at eight o'clock on a winter's morning--a whole, cold
breakfastless hour on the properties of rhubarb!

I hope your journey will be very prosperous. Believe me, my dear Hooker,

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I think I have only made one new acquaintance of late, that is
R. Chambers; and I have just received a presentation copy of the sixth
edition of the 'Vestiges.' Somehow I now feel perfectly convinced he is
the author. He is in France, and has written to me thence.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1847?].

...I am delighted to hear that Brongniart thought Sigillaria aquatic,
and that Binney considers coal a sort of submarine peat. I would bet
5 to 1 that in twenty years this will be generally admitted (An
unfulfilled prophecy.); and I do not care for whatever the botanical
difficulties or impossibilities may be. If I could but persuade myself
that Sigillaria and Co. had a good range of depth, i.e., could live from
5 to 100 fathoms under water, all difficulties of nearly all kinds would
be removed (for the simple fact of muddy ordinary shallow sea implies
proximity of land). [N.B.--I am chuckling to think how you are sneering
all this time.] It is not much of a difficulty, there not being shells
with the coal, considering how unfavourable deep mud is for most
Mollusca, and that shells would probably decay from the humic acid, as
seems to take place in peat and in the BLACK moulds (as Lyell tells me)
of the Mississippi. So coal question settled--Q.E.D. Sneer away!

Many thanks for your welcome note from Cambridge, and I am glad you like
my alma mater, which I despise heartily as a place of education, but
love from many most pleasant recollections...

Thanks for your offer of the 'Phytologist;' I shall be very much obliged
for it, for I do not suppose I should be able to borrow it from any
other quarter. I will not be set up too much by your praise, but I do
not believe I ever lost a book or forgot to return it during a long
lapse of time. Your 'Webb' is well wrapped up, and with your name in
large letters OUTSIDE.

My new microscope is come home (a "splendid plaything," as old R.
Brown called it), and I am delighted with it; it really is a splendid
plaything. I have been in London for three days, and saw many of our
friends. I was extremely sorry to hear a not very good account of
Sir William. Farewell, my dear Hooker, and be a good boy, and make
Sigillaria a submarine sea-weed.

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [May 6th, 1847].

My dear Hooker,

You have made a savage onslaught, and I must try to defend myself.
But, first, let me say that I never write to you except for my own
good pleasure; now I fear that you answer me when busy and without
inclination (and I am sure I should have none if I was as busy as you).
Pray do not do so, and if I thought my writing entailed an answer from
you nolens volens, it would destroy all my pleasure in writing. Firstly,
I did not consider my letter as REASONING, or even as SPECULATION, but
simply as mental rioting; and as I was sending Binney's paper, I poured
out to you the result of reading it. Secondly, you are right, indeed, in
thinking me mad, if you suppose that I would class any ferns as marine
plants; but surely there is a wide distinction between the plants found
upright in the coal-beds and those not upright, and which might have
been drifted. Is it not possible that the same circumstances which have
preserved the vegetation in situ, should have preserved drifted plants?
I know Calamites is found upright; but I fancied its affinities were
very obscure, like Sigillaria. As for Lepidodendron, I forgot its
existence, as happens when one goes riot, and now know neither what
it is, or whether upright. If these plants, i.e. Calamites and
Lepidodendron, have VERY CLEAR RELATIONS to terrestrial vegetables, like
the ferns have, and are found upright in situ, of course I must give up
the ghost. But surely Sigillaria is the main upright plant, and on its
obscure affinities I have heard you enlarge.

Thirdly, it never entered my head to undervalue botanical relatively to
zoological evidence; except in so far as I thought it was admitted that
the vegetative structure seldom yielded any evidence of affinity nearer
than that of families, and not always so much. And is it not in plants,
as certainly it is in animals, dangerous to judge of habits without
very near affinity. Could a Botanist tell from structure alone that the
Mangrove family, almost or quite alone in Dicotyledons, could live in
the sea, and the Zostera family almost alone among the Monocotyledons?
Is it a safe argument, that because algae are almost the only, or the
only submerged sea-plants, that formerly other groups had not members
with such habits? With animals such an argument would not be conclusive,
as I could illustrate by many examples; but I am forgetting myself; I
want only to some degree to defend myself, and not burn my fingers by
attacking you. The foundation of my letter, and what is my deliberate
opinion, though I dare say you will think it absurd, is that I would
rather trust, caeteris paribus, pure geological evidence than either
zoological or botanical evidence. I do not say that I would sooner trust
POOR geological evidence than GOOD organic. I think the basis of pure
geological reasoning is simpler (consisting chiefly of the action of
water on the crust of the earth, and its up and down movements) than a
basis drawn from the difficult subject of affinities and of structure in
relation to habits. I can hardly analyze the facts on which I have come
to this conclusion; but I can illustrate it. Pallas's account would lead
any one to suppose that the Siberian strata, with the frozen carcasses,
had been quickly deposited, and hence that the embedded animals had
lived in the neighbourhood; but our zoological knowledge of thirty years
ago led every one falsely to reject this conclusion.

Tell me that an upright fern in situ occurs with Sigillaria and
Stigmaria, or that the affinities of Calamites and Lepidodendron
(supposing that they are found in situ with Sigillaria) are so CLEAR,
that they could not have been marine, like, but in a greater degree,
than the mangrove and sea-wrack, and I will humbly apologise to you
and all Botanists for having let my mind run riot on a subject on which
assuredly I know nothing. But till I hear this, I shall keep privately
to my own opinion with the same pertinacity and, as you will think,
with the same philosophical spirit with which Koenig maintains that
Cheirotherium-footsteps are fuci.

Whether this letter will sink me lower in your opinion, or put me a
little right, I know not, but hope the latter. Anyhow, I have revenged
myself with boring you with a very long epistle. Farewell, and be
forgiving. Ever yours,

C. DARWIN.

P.S.--When will you return to Kew? I have forgotten one main object of
my letter, to thank you MUCH for your offer of the 'Hort. Journal,' but
I have ordered the two numbers.


[The two following extracts [1847] give the continuation and conclusion
of the coal battle.

"By the way, as submarine coal made you so wrath, I thought I would
experimentise on Falconer and Bunbury (The late Sir C. Bunbury,
well-known as a palaeobotanist.) together, and it made [them] even more
savage; 'such infernal nonsense ought to be thrashed out of me.' Bunbury
was more polite and contemptuous. So I now know how to stir up and show
off any Botanist. I wonder whether Zoologists and Geologists have got
their tender points; I wish I could find out."

"I cannot resist thanking you for your most kind note. Pray do not
think that I was annoyed by your letter: I perceived that you had been
thinking with animation, and accordingly expressed yourself strongly,
and so I understood it. Forfend me from a man who weighs every
expression with Scotch prudence. I heartily wish you all success in your
noble problem, and I shall be very curious to have some talk with you
and hear your ultimatum."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. (Parts of two letters.) Down [October,
1847].

I congratulate you heartily on your arrangements being completed, with
some prospect for the future. It will be a noble voyage and journey,
but I wish it was over, I shall miss you selfishly and all ways to a
dreadful extent ...I am in great perplexity how we are to meet...I can
well understand how dreadfully busy you must be. If you CANNOT come
here, you MUST let me come to you for a night; for I must have one more
chat and one more quarrel with you over the coal.

By the way, I endeavoured to stir up Lyell (who has been staying
here some days with me) to theorise on the coal: his oolitic UPRIGHT
Equisetums are dreadful for my submarine flora. I should die much easier
if some one would solve me the coal question. I sometimes think it could
not have been formed at all. Old Sir Anthony Carlisle once said to me
gravely, that he supposed Megatherium and such cattle were just sent
down from heaven to see whether the earth would support them; and I
suppose the coal was rained down to puzzle mortals. You must work the
coal well in India.

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [November 6th, 1847.]

My dear Hooker,

I have just received your note with sincere grief: there is no help for
it. I shall always look at your intention of coming here, under such
circumstances, as the greatest proof of friendship I ever received from
mortal man. My conscience would have upbraided me in not having come
to you on Thursday, but, as it turned out, I could not, for I was quite
unable to leave Shrewsbury before that day, and I reached home only
last night, much knocked up. Without I hear to-morrow (which is hardly
possible), and if I am feeling pretty well, I will drive over to Kew on
Monday morning, just to say farewell. I will stay only an hour...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [November, 1847.]

My dear Hooker,

I am very unwell, and incapable of doing anything. I do hope I have not
inconvenienced you. I was so unwell all yesterday, that I was rejoicing
you were not here; for it would have been a bitter mortification to me
to have had you here and not enjoyed your last day. I shall not now see
you. Farewell, and God bless you.

Your affectionate friend, C. DARWIN.

I will write to you in India.


[In 1847 appeared a paper by Mr. D. Milne (Now Mr. Milne Home. The
essay was published in Transactions of the Edinburgh Royal Society, vol.
xvi.), in which my father's Glen Roy work is criticised, and which is
referred to in the following characteristic extract from a letter to Sir
J. Hooker:] "I have been bad enough for these few last days, having had
to think and write too much about Glen Roy...Mr. Milne having attacked
my theory, which made me horribly sick." I have not been able to find
any published reply to Mr. Milne, so that I imagine the "writing"
mentioned was confined to letters. Mr. Milne's paper was not destructive
to the Glen Roy paper, and this my father recognises in the following
extract from a letter to Lyell (March, 1847). The reference to Chambers
is explained by the fact that he accompanied Mr. Milne in his visit to
Glen Roy. "I got R. Chambers to give me a sketch of Milne's Glen Roy
views, and I have re-read my paper, and am, now that I have heard what
is to be said, not even staggered. It is provoking and humiliating to
find that Chambers not only had not read with any care my paper on
this subject, or even looked at the coloured map, so that the new shelf
described by me had not been searched for, and my arguments and facts of
detail not in the least attended to. I entirely gave up the ghost, and
was quite chicken-hearted at the Geological Society, till you reassured
and reminded me of the main facts in the whole case."


The two following letters to Lyell, though of later date (June, 1848),
bear on the same subject:--

"I was at the evening meeting [of the Geological Society], but did not
get within hail of you. What a fool (though I must say a very amusing
one) -- did make of himself. Your speech was refreshing after it,
and was well characterized by Fox (my cousin) in three words--'What a
contrast!' That struck me as a capital speculation about the Wealden
Continent going down. I did not hear what you settled at the Council; I
was quite wearied out and bewildered. I find Smith, of Jordan Hill, has
a much worse opinion of R. Chambers's book than even I have. Chambers
has piqued me a little ('Ancient Sea Margins, 1848.' The words quoted by
my father should be "the mobility of the land was an ascendant idea.");
he says I 'propound' and 'profess my belief' that Glen Roy is marine,
and that the idea was accepted because the 'mobility of the land was the
ascendant idea of the day.' He adds some very faint UPPER lines in Glen
Spean (seen, by the way, by Agassiz), and has shown that Milne and Kemp
are right in there being horizontal aqueous markings (NOT at coincident
levels with those of Glen Roy) in other parts of Scotland at great
heights, and he adds several other cases. This is the whole of his
addition to the data. He not only takes my line of argument from the
buttresses and terraces below the lower shelf and some other arguments
(without acknowledgment), but he sneers at all his predecessors
not having perceived the importance of the short portions of lines
intermediate between the chief ones in Glen Roy; whereas I commence the
description of them with saying, that 'perceiving their importance,
I examined them with scrupulous care,' and expatiate at considerable
length on them. I have indirectly told him I do not think he has quite
claims to consider that he alone (which he pretty directly asserts) has
solved the problem of Glen Roy. With respect to the terraces at lower
levels coincident in height all round Scotland and England, I am
inclined to believe he shows some little probability of there being some
leading ones coincident, but much more exact evidence is required. Would
you believe it credible? he advances as a probable solution to account
for the rise of Great Britain that in some great ocean one-twentieth
of the bottom of the whole aqueous surface of the globe has sunk in (he
does not say where he puts it) for a thickness of half a mile, and this
he has calculated would make an apparent rise of 130 feet."


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down [June, 1848].

My dear Lyell,

Out of justice to Chambers I must trouble you with one line to say, as
far as I am personally concerned in Glen Roy, he has made the amende
honorable, and pleads guilty through inadvertency of taking my two lines
of arguments and facts without acknowledgment. He concluded by saying he
"came to the same point by an independent course of inquiry, which in a
small degree excuses this inadvertency." His letter altogether shows a
very good disposition, and says he is "much gratified with the MEASURED
approbation which you bestow, etc." I am heartily glad I was able to
say in truth that I thought he had done good service in calling more
attention to the subject of the terraces. He protests it is unfair to
call the sinking of the sea his theory, for that he with care always
speaks of mere change of level, and this is quite true; but the one
section in which he shows how he conceives the sea might sink is so
astonishing, that I believe it will with others, as with me, more than
counterbalance his previous caution. I hope that you may think better of
the book than I do.

Yours most truly, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. October 6th, 1848.

...I have lately been trying to get up an agitation (but I shall not
succeed, and indeed doubt whether I have time and strength to go on with
it), against the practice of Naturalists appending for perpetuity the
name of the FIRST describer to species. I look at this as a direct
premium to hasty work, to NAMING instead of DESCRIBING. A species ought
to have a name so well known that the addition of the author's name
would be superfluous, and a [piece] of empty vanity. (His contempt for
the self-regarding spirit in a naturalist is illustrated by an anecdote,
for which I am indebted to Rev. L. Blomefield. After speaking of my
father's love of Entomology at Cambridge, Mr. Blomefield continues:--"He
occasionally came over from Cambridge to my Vicarage at Swaffham
Bulbeck, and we went out together to collect insects in the woods at
Bottisham Hall, close at hand, or made longer excursions in the Fens.
On one occasion he captured in a large bag net, with which he used
vigorously to sweep the weeds and long grass, a rare coleopterous
insect, one of the Lepturidae, which I myself had never taken in
Cambridgeshire. He was pleased with his capture, and of course carried
it home in triumph. Some years afterwards, the voyage of the 'Beagle'
having been made in the interim, talking over old times with him, I
reverted to this circumstance, and asked if he remembered it. 'Oh, yes,'
(he said,) 'I remember it well; and I was selfish enough to keep
the specimen, when you were collecting materials for a Fauna of
Cambridgeshire, and for a local museum in the Philosophical Society.' He
followed this up with some remarks on the pettiness of collectors, who
aimed at nothing beyond filling their cabinets with rare things.")
At present, it would not do to give mere specific names; but I think
Zoologists might open the road to the omission, by referring to good
systematic writers instead of to first describers. Botany, I fancy,
has not suffered so much as Zoology from mere NAMING; the characters,
fortunately, are more obscure. Have you ever thought on this point?
Why should Naturalists append their own names to new species, when
Mineralogists and Chemists do not do so to new substances? When you
write to Falconer pray remember me affectionately to him. I grieve most
sincerely to hear that he has been ill, my dear Hooker, God bless you,
and fare you well.

Your sincere friend, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO HUGH STRICKLAND. (Hugh Edwin Strickland, M.A., F.R.S.,
was born 2nd of March, 1811, and educated at Rugby, under Arnold, and at
Oriel College, Oxford. In 1835 and 1836 he travelled through Europe to
the Levant with W.J. Hamilton, the geologist, wintering in Asia Minor.
In 1841 he brought the subject of Natural History Nomenclature before
the British Association, and prepared the Code of Rules for Zoological
Nomenclature, now known by his name--the principles of which are very
generally adopted. In 1843 he was one of the founders (if not the
original projector) of the Ray Society. In 1845 he married the second
daughter of Sir William Jardine, Bart. In 1850 he was appointed, in
consequence of Buckland's illness, Deputy Reader in Geology at Oxford.
His promising career was suddenly cut short on September 14, 1853, when,
while geologizing in a railway cutting between Retford and Gainsborough,
he was run over by a train and instantly killed. A memoir of him and a
reprint of his principal contributions to journals was published by Sir
William Jardine in 1858; but he was also the author of 'The Dodo and its
Kindred' (1848); 'Bibliographia Zoologiae' (the latter in conjunction
with Louis Agassiz, and issued by the Ray Society); 'Ornithological
Synonyms' (one volume only published, and that posthumously). A
catalogue of his ornithological collection, given by his widow to the
University of Cambridge, was compiled by Mr. Salvin, and published in
1882. (I am indebted to Prof. Newton for the above note.)) Down, January
29th [1849].

...What a labour you have undertaken; I do HONOUR your devoted zeal in
the good cause of Natural Science. Do you happen to have a SPARE copy
of the Nomenclature rules published in the 'British Association
Transactions?' if you have, and would give it to me, I should be truly
obliged, for I grudge buying the volume for it. I have found the rules
very useful, it is quite a comfort to have something to rest on in the
turbulent ocean of nomenclature (and am accordingly grateful to you),
though I find it very difficult to obey always. Here is a case (and I
think it should have been noticed in the rules), Coronula, Cineras and
Otion, are names adopted by Cuvier, Lamarck, Owen, and almost EVERY
well-known writer, but I find that all three names were anticipated by
a German: now I believe if I were to follow the strict rule of priority,
more harm would be done than good, and more especially as I feel sure
that the newly fished-up names would not be adopted. I have almost made
up my mind to reject the rule of priority in this case; would you grudge
the trouble to send me your opinion? I have been led of late to reflect
much on the subject of naming, and I have come to a fixed opinion that
the plan of the first describer's name, being appended for perpetuity to
a species, had been the greatest curse to Natural History. Some months
since, I wrote out the enclosed badly drawn-up paper, thinking that
perhaps I would agitate the subject; but the fit has passed, and I do
not suppose I ever shall; I send it you for the CHANCE of your caring
to see my notions. I have been surprised to find in conversation that
several naturalists were of nearly my way of thinking. I feel sure as
long as species-mongers have their vanity tickled by seeing their own
names appended to a species, because they miserably described it in two
or three lines, we shall have the same VAST amount of bad work as at
present, and which is enough to dishearten any man who is willing to
work out any branch with care and time. I find every genus of Cirripedia
has half-a-dozen names, and not one careful description of any one
species in any one genus. I do not believe that this would have been the
case if each man knew that the memory of his own name depended on his
doing his work well, and not upon merely appending a name with a few
wretched lines indicating only a few prominent external characters. But
I will not weary you with any longer tirade. Read my paper or NOT, just
as you like, and return it whenever you please.

Yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN.


HUGH STRICKLAND TO CHARLES DARWIN. The Lodge, Tewkesbury, January 31st,
1849.

...I have next to notice your second objection--that retaining the name
of the FIRST describer in perpetuum along with that of the species, is
a premium on hasty and careless work. This is quite a different question
from that of the law of priority itself, and it never occurred to me
before, though it seems highly probable that the general recognition of
that law may produce such a result. We must try to counteract this evil
in some other way.

The object of appending the name of a man to the name of a species is
not to gratify the vanity of the man, but to indicate more precisely
the species. Sometimes two men will, by accident, give the same name
(independently) to two species of the same genus. More frequently a
later author will misapply the specific name of an older one. Thus the
Helix putris of Montagu is not H. putris of Linnaeus, though Montague
supposed it to be so. In such a case we cannot define the species by
Helix putris alone, but must append the name of the author whom we
quote. But when a species has never borne but one name (as Corvus
frugilegus), and no other species of Corvus has borne the same name,
it is, of course, unnecessary to add the author's name. Yet even here
I like the form Corvus frugilegus, Linn., as it reminds us that this
is one of the old species, long known, and to be found in the 'Systema
Naturae,' etc. I fear, therefore, that (at least until our nomenclature
is more definitely settled) it will be impossible to indicate species
with scientific accuracy, without adding the name of their first author.
You may, indeed, do it as you propose, by saying in Lam. An. Invert.,
etc., but then this would be incompatible with the law of priority, for
where Lamarck has violated that low, one cannot adopt his name. It is,
nevertheless, highly conducive to accurate indication to append to the
(oldest) specific name ONE good reference to a standard work, especially
to a FIGURE, with an accompanying synonym if necessary. This method may
be cumbrous, but cumbrousness is a far less evil than uncertainty.

It, moreover, seems hardly possible to carry out the PRIORITY principle,
without the historical aid afforded by appending the author's name
to the specific one. If I, a PRIORITY MAN, called a species C.D., it
implies that C.D. is the oldest name that I know of; but in order
that you and others may judge of the propriety of that name, you must
ascertain when, and by whom, the name was first coined. Now, if to the
specific name C.D., I append the name A.B., of its first describer, I at
once furnish you with the clue to the dates when, and the book in which,
this description was given, and I thus assist you in determining whether
C.D. be really the oldest, and therefore the correct, designation.

I do, however, admit that the priority principle (excellent as it is)
has a tendency, when the author's name is added, to encourage vanity and
slovenly work. I think, however, that much might be done to discourage
those obscure and unsatisfactory definitions of which you so justly
complain, by WRITING DOWN the practice. Let the better disposed
naturalists combine to make a formal protest against all vague, loose,
and inadequate definitions of (supposed) new species. Let a committee
(say of the British Association) be appointed to prepare a sort of CLASS
LIST of the various modern works in which new species are described,
arranged in order of merit. The lowest class would contain the worst
examples of the kind, and their authors would thus be exposed to
the obloquy which they deserve, and be gibbeted in terrorem for the
edification of those who may come after.

I have thus candidly stated my views (I hope intelligibly) of what
seems best to be done in the present transitional and dangerous state
of systematic zoology. Innumerable labourers, many of them crotchety and
half-educated, are rushing into the field, and it depends, I think, on
the present generation whether the science is to descend to posterity a
chaotic mass, or possessed of some traces of law and organisation. If we
could only get a congress of deputies from the chief scientific bodies
of Europe and America, something might be done, but, as the case stands,
I confess I do not clearly see my way, beyond humbly endeavouring to
reform NUMBER ONE.

Yours ever, H.E. STRICKLAND.


CHARLES DARWIN TO HUGH STRICKLAND. Down, Sunday [February 4th, 1849].

My dear Strickland,

I am, in truth, GREATLY obliged to you for your long, most interesting,
and clear letter, and the Report. I will consider your arguments, which
are of the greatest weight, but I confess I cannot yet bring myself to
reject very WELL-KNOWN names, not in ONE country, but over the world,
for obscure ones,--simply on the ground that I do not believe I should
be followed. Pray believe that I should break the law of priority only
in rare cases; will you read the enclosed (and return it), and tell me
whether it does not stagger you? (N.B. I PROMISE that I will not give
you any more trouble.) I want simple answers, and not for you to waste
your time in reasons; I am curious for your answer in regard to Balanus.
I put the case of Otion, etc., to W. Thompson, who is fierce for the
law of priority, and he gave it up in such well-known names. I am in
a perfect maze of doubt on nomenclature. In not one large genus of
Cirripedia has ANY ONE species been correctly defined; it is pure
guesswork (being guided by range and commonness and habits) to recognise
any species: thus I can make out, from plates or descriptions, hardly
any of the British sessile cirripedes. I cannot bear to give new names
to all the species, and yet I shall perhaps do wrong to attach old names
by little better than guess; I cannot at present tell the least which
of two species all writers have meant by the common Anatifera laevis;
I have, therefore, given that name to the one which is rather the
commonest. Literally, not one species is properly defined; not one
naturalist has ever taken the trouble to open the shell of any species
to describe it scientifically, and yet all the genera have half-a-dozen
synonyms. For ARGUMENT'S sake, suppose I do my work thoroughly well,
any one who happens to have the original specimens named, I will say by
Chenu, who has figured and named hundreds of species, will be able to
upset all my names according to the law of priority (for he may maintain
his descriptions are sufficient), do you think it advantageous to
science that this should be done: I think not, and that convenience and
high merit (here put as mere argument) had better come into some play.
The subject is heart-breaking.

I hope you will occasionally turn in your mind my argument of the evil
done by the "mihi" attached to specific names; I can most clearly see
the EXCESSIVE evil it has caused; in mineralogy I have myself found
there is no rage to merely name; a person does not take up the subject
without he intends to work it out, as he knows that his ONLY claim to
merit rests on his work being ably done, and has no relation whatever
to NAMING. I give up one point, and grant that reference to first
describer's name should be given in all systematic works, but I think
something would be gained if a reference was given without the author's
name being actually appended as part of the binomial name, and I think,
except in systematic works, a reference, such as I propose, would
damp vanity much. I think a very wrong spirit runs through all Natural
History, as if some merit was due to a man for merely naming and
defining a species; I think scarcely any, or none, is due; if he works
out MINUTELY and anatomically any one species, or systematically a whole
group, credit is due, but I must think the mere defining a species is
nothing, and that no INJUSTICE is done him if it be overlooked, though
a great inconvenience to Natural History is thus caused. I do not think
more credit is due to a man for defining a species, than to a carpenter
for making a box. But I am foolish and rabid against species-mongers, or
rather against their vanity; it is useful and necessary work which must
be done; but they act as if they had actually made the species, and it
was their own property.

I use Agassiz's nomenclator; at least two-thirds of the dates in the
Cirripedia are grossly wrong.

I shall do what I can in fossil Cirripedia, and should be very grateful
for specimens; but I do not believe that species (and hardly genera)
can be defined by single valves; as in every recent species yet examined
their forms vary greatly: to describe a species by valves alone, is the
same as to describe a crab from SMALL portions of its carapace alone,
these portions being highly variable, and not, as in Crustacea, modelled
over viscera. I sincerely apologise for the trouble which I have given
you, but indeed I will give no more.

Yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--In conversation I found Owen and Andrew Smith much inclined to
throw over the practice of attaching authors' names; I believe if I
agitated I could get a large party to join. W. Thompson agreed some way
with me, but was not prepared to go nearly as far as I am.


CHARLES DARWIN TO HUGH STRICKLAND. Down, February 10th [1849].

My dear Strickland,

I have again to thank you cordially for your letter. Your remarks shall
fructify to some extent, and I will try to be more faithful to rigid
virtue and priority; but as for calling Balanus "Lepas" (which I did not
think of), I cannot do it, my pen won't write it--it is IMPOSSIBLE. I
have great hopes some of my difficulties will disappear, owing to wrong
dates in Agassiz, and to my having to run several genera into one, for I
have as yet gone, in but few cases, to original sources. With respect to
adopting my own notions in my Cirripedia book, I should not like to
do so without I found others approved, and in some public way,--nor,
indeed, is it well adapted, as I can never recognise a species without I
have the original specimen, which, fortunately, I have in many cases in
the British Museum. Thus far I mean to adopt my notion, as never putting
mihi or "Darwin" after my own species, and in the anatomical text giving
no authors' names at all, as the systematic Part will serve for those
who want to know the History of a species as far as I can imperfectly
work it out...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [The Lodge, Malvern, March 28th, 1849.]

My dear Hooker,

Your letter of the 13th of October has remained unanswered till this
day! What an ungrateful return for a letter which interested me so much,
and which contained so much and curious information. But I have had a
bad winter.

On the 13th of November, my poor dear father died, and no one who did
not know him would believe that a man above eighty-three years old could
have retained so tender and affectionate a disposition, with all his
sagacity unclouded to the last. I was at the time so unwell, that I was
unable to travel, which added to my misery. Indeed, all this winter I
have been bad enough...and my nervous system began to be affected, so
that my hands trembled, and head was often swimming. I was not able to
do anything one day out of three, and was altogether too dispirited to
write to you, or to do anything but what I was compelled. I thought I
was rapidly going the way of all flesh. Having heard, accidentally, of
two persons who had received much benefit from the water-cure, I got Dr.
Gully's book, and made further enquiries, and at last started here,
with wife, children, and all our servants. We have taken a house for
two months, and have been here a fortnight. I am already a little
stronger...Dr. Gully feels pretty sure he can do me good, which most
certainly the regular doctors could not...I feel certain that the
water-cure is no quackery.

How I shall enjoy getting back to Down with renovated health, if such
is to be my good fortune, and resuming the beloved Barnacles. Now I hope
that you will forgive me for my negligence in not having sooner answered
your letter. I was uncommonly interested by the sketch you give of
your intended grand expedition, from which I suppose you will soon
be returning. How earnestly I hope that it may prove in every way
successful...

[When my father was at the Water-cure Establishment at Malvern he
was brought into contact with clairvoyance, of which he writes in the
following extract from a letter to Fox, September, 1850.

"You speak about Homoeopathy, which is a subject which makes me more
wrath, even than does Clairvoyance. Clairvoyance so transcends belief,
that one's ordinary faculties are put out of the question, but in
homoeopathy common sense and common observation come into play, and both
these must go to the dogs, if the infinitesimal doses have any effect
whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in
respect to evidence of curative processes, viz., that no one knows in
disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard
with which to compare homoeopathy, and all other such things. It is a
sad flaw, I cannot but think, in my beloved Dr. Gully, that he believes
in everything. When Miss -- was very ill, he had a clairvoyant girl
to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep--an
homoeopathist, viz. Dr. --, and himself as hydropathist! and the girl
recovered."

A passage out of an earlier letter to Fox (December, 1884) shows that
he was equally sceptical on the subject of mesmerism: "With respect to
mesmerism, the whole country resounds with wonderful facts or tales..I
have just heard of a child, three or four years old (whose parents and
self I well knew) mesmerised by his father, which is the first fact
which has staggered me. I shall not believe fully till I see or hear
from good evidence of animals (as has been stated is possible) not
drugged, being put to stupor; of course the impossibility would not
prove mesmerism false; but it is the only clear experimentum crucis, and
I am astonished it has not been systematically tried. If mesmerism was
investigated, like a science, this could not have been left till the
present day to be DONE SATISFACTORILY, as it has been I believe left.
Keep some cats yourself, and do get some mesmeriser to attempt it. One
man told me he had succeeded, but his experiments were most vague, and
as was likely from a man who said cats were more easily done than other
animals, because they were so electrical!"]


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, December 4th [1849].

My dear Lyell,

This letter requires no answer, and I write from exuberance of vanity.
Dana has sent me the Geology of the United States Expedition, and I have
just read the Coral part. To begin with a modest speech, I AM ASTONISHED
AT MY OWN ACCURACY!! If I were to rewrite now my Coral book there is
hardly a sentence I should have to alter, except that I ought to have
attributed more effect to recent volcanic action in checking growth of
coral. When I say all this I ought to add that the CONSEQUENCES of the
theory on areas of subsidence are treated in a separate chapter to which
I have not come, and in this, I suspect, we shall differ more. Dana
talks of agreeing with my theory IN MOST POINTS; I can find out not one
in which he differs. Considering how infinitely more he saw of Coral
Reefs than I did, this is wonderfully satisfactory to me. He treats me
most courteously. There now, my vanity is pretty well satisfied...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Malvern, April 9th, 1849.

My dear Hooker,

The very next morning after posting my last letter (I think on 23rd
of March), I received your two interesting gossipaceous and geological
letters; and the latter I have since exchanged with Lyell for his. I
will write higglety-pigglety just as subjects occur. I saw the Review in
the 'Athenaeum,' it was written in an ill-natured spirit; but the whole
virus consisted in saying that there was not novelty enough in your
remarks for publication. No one, nowadays, cares for reviews. I may
just mention that my Journal got some REAL GOOD abuse, "presumption,"
etc.,--ended with saying that the volume appeared "made up of the scraps
and rubbish of the author's portfolio." I most truly enter into what
you say, and quite believe you that you care only for the review with
respect to your father; and that this ALONE would make you like to
see extracts from your letters more properly noticed in this same
periodical. I have considered to the very best of my judgment whether
any portion of your present letters are adapted for the 'Athenaeum' (in
which I have no interest; the beasts not having even NOTICED my three
geological volumes which I had sent to them), and I have come to the
conclusion it is better not to send them. I feel sure, considering all
the circumstances, that without you took pains and wrote WITH CARE, a
condensed and finished sketch of some striking feature in your travels,
it is better not to send anything. These two letters are, moreover,
rather too geological for the 'Athenaeum,' and almost require woodcuts.
On the other hand, there are hardly enough details for a communication
to the Geological Society. I have not the SMALLEST DOUBT that your
facts are of the highest interest with regard to glacial action in the
Himalaya; but it struck both Lyell and myself that your evidence ought
to have been given more distinctly...

I have written so lately that I have nothing to say about myself; my
health prevented me going on with a crusade against "mihi" and "nobis,"
of which you warn me of the dangers. I showed my paper to three or
four Naturalists, and they all agreed with me to a certain extent: with
health and vigour, I would not have shown a white feather, [and] with
aid of half-a-dozen really good Naturalists, I believe something might
have been done against the miserable and degrading passion of mere
species naming. In your letter you wonder what "Ornamental Poultry" has
to do with Barnacles; but do not flatter yourself that I shall not yet
live to finish the Barnacles, and then make a fool of myself on the
subject of species, under which head ornamental Poultry are very
interesting...


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. The Lodge, Malvern [June, 1849].

...I have got your book ('A Second Visit to the United States.'), and
have read all the first and a small part of the second volume (reading
is the hardest work allowed here), and greatly I have been interested by
it. It makes me long to be a Yankee. E. desires me to say that she
quite "gloated" over the truth of your remarks on religious progress...I
delight to think how you will disgust some of the bigots and educational
dons. As yet there has not been MUCH Geology or Natural History, for
which I hope you feel a little ashamed. Your remarks on all social
subjects strike me as worthy of the author of the 'Principles.' And yet
(I know it is prejudice and pride) if I had written the Principles, I
never would have written any travels; but I believe I am more jealous
about the honour and glory of the Principles than you are yourself...


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. September 14th, 1849.

...I go on with my aqueous processes, and very steadily but slowly gain
health and strength. Against all rules, I dined at Chevening with Lord
Mahon, who did me the great honour of calling on me, and how he heard of
me I can't guess. I was charmed with Lady Mahon, and any one might have
been proud at the pieces of agreeableness which came from her beautiful
lips with respect to you. I like old Lord Stanhope very much; though he
abused Geology and Zoology heartily. "To suppose that the Omnipotent
God made a world, found it a failure, and broke it up, and then made
it again, and again broke it up, as the Geologists say, is all fiddle
faddle. Describing Species of birds and shells, etc., is all fiddle
faddle..."

I am heartily glad we shall meet at Birmingham, as I trust we shall, if
my health will but keep up. I work now every day at the Cirripedia for
2 1/2 hours, and so get on a little, but very slowly. I sometimes,
after being a whole week employed and having described perhaps only
two species, agree mentally with Lord Stanhope, that it is all fiddle
faddle; however, the other day I got a curious case of a unisexual,
instead of hermaphrodite cirripede, in which the female had the common
cirripedial character, and in two valves of her shell had two little
pockets, in EACH of which she kept a little husband; I do not know of
any other case where a female invariably has two husbands. I have one
still odder fact, common to several species, namely, that though they
are hermaphrodite, they have small additional, or as I shall call them,
complemental males, one specimen itself hermaphrodite had no less than
SEVEN, of these complemental males attached to it. Truly the schemes and
wonders of Nature are illimitable. But I am running on as badly about my
cirripedia as about Geology; it makes me groan to think that probably
I shall never again have the exquisite pleasure of making out some new
district, of evolving geological light out of some troubled dark region.
So I must make the best of my Cirripedia...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, October 12th, 1849.

...By the way, one of the pleasantest parts of the British Association
was my journey down to Birmingham with Mrs. Sabine, Mrs. Reeve, and
the Colonel; also Col. Sykes and Porter. Mrs. Sabine and myself agreed
wonderfully on many points, and in none more sincerely than about you.
We spoke about your letters from the Erebus; and she quite agreed
with me, that you and the AUTHOR (Sir J. Hooker wrote the spirited
description of cattle hunting in Sir J. Ross's 'Voyage of Discovery in
the Southern Regions,' 1847, vol. ii., page 245.), of the description
of the cattle hunting in the Falklands, would have made a capital book
together! A very nice woman she is, and so is her sharp and sagacious
mother...Birmingham was very flat compared to Oxford, though I had my
wife with me. We saw a good deal of the Lyells and Horners and Robinsons
(the President); but the place was dismal, and I was prevented, by being
unwell, from going to Warwick, though that, i.e., the party, by all
accounts, was wonderfully inferior to Blenheim, not to say anything of
that heavenly day at Dropmore. One gets weary of all the spouting...

You ask about my cold-water cure; I am going on very well, and am
certainly a little better every month, my nights mend much slower than
my days. I have built a douche, and am to go on through all the winter,
frost or no frost. My treatment now is lamp five times per week, and
shallow bath for five minutes afterwards; douche daily for five minutes,
and dripping sheet daily. The treatment is wonderfully tonic, and I
have had more better consecutive days this month than on any previous
ones...I am allowed to work now two and a half hours daily, and I find
it as much as I can do, for the cold-water cure, together with three
short walks, is curiously exhausting; and I am actually FORCED to go to
bed at eight o'clock completely tired. I steadily gain in weight, and
eat immensely, and am never oppressed with my food. I have lost the
involuntary twitching of the muscle, and all the fainting feelings,
etc--black spots before eyes, etc. Dr. Gully thinks he shall quite cure
me in six or nine months more.

The greatest bore, which I find in the water-cure, is the having been
compelled to give up all reading, except the newspapers; for my daily
two and a half hours at the Barnacles is fully as much as I can do of
anything which occupies the mind; I am consequently terribly behind
in all scientific books. I have of late been at work at mere species
describing, which is much more difficult than I expected, and has much
the same sort of interest as a puzzle has; but I confess I often feel
wearied with the work, and cannot help sometimes asking myself what is
the good of spending a week or fortnight in ascertaining that certain
just perceptible differences blend together and constitute varieties
and not species. As long as I am on anatomy I never feel myself in that
disgusting, horrid, cui bono, inquiring, humour. What miserable work,
again, it is searching for priority of names. I have just finished two
species, which possess seven generic, and twenty-four specific names! My
chief comfort is, that the work must be sometime done, and I may as well
do it, as any one else.

I have given up my agitation against mihi and nobis; my paper is too
long to send to you, so you must see it, if you care to do so, on your
return. By-the-way, you say in your letter that you care more for my
species work than for the Barnacles; now this is too bad of you, for I
declare your decided approval of my plain Barnacle work over theoretic
species work, had very great influence in deciding me to go on with the
former, and defer my species paper...


[The following letter refers to the death of his little daughter, which
took place at Malvern on April 24, 1851:]


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, April 29th [1851].

My dear Fox,

I do not suppose you will have heard of our bitter and cruel loss. Poor
dear little Annie, when going on very well at Malvern, was taken with a
vomiting attack, which was at first thought of the smallest importance;
but it rapidly assumed the form of a low and dreadful fever, which
carried her off in ten days. Thank God, she suffered hardly at all, and
expired as tranquilly as a little angel. Our only consolation is that
she passed a short, though joyous life. She was my favourite child; her
cordiality, openness, buoyant joyousness and strong affections made her
most lovable. Poor dear little soul. Well it is all over...


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, March 7th [1852].

My dear Fox,

It is indeed an age since we have had any communication, and very glad
I was to receive your note. Our long silence occurred to me a few weeks
since, and I had then thought of writing, but was idle. I congratulate
and condole with you on your TENTH child; but please to observe when I
have a tenth, send only condolences to me. We have now seven children,
all well, thank God, as well as their mother; of these seven, five are
boys; and my father used to say that it was certain that a boy gave
as much trouble as three girls; so that bona fide we have seventeen
children. It makes me sick whenever I think of professions; all seem
hopelessly bad, and as yet I cannot see a ray of light. I should
very much like to talk over this (by the way, my three bugbears are
Californian and Australian gold, beggaring me by making my money on
mortgage worth nothing; the French coming by the Westerham and Sevenoaks
roads, and therefore enclosing Down; and thirdly, professions for my
boys), and I should like to talk about education, on which you ask me
what we are doing. No one can more truly despise the old stereotyped
stupid classical education than I do; but yet I have not had courage
to break through the trammels. After many doubts we have just sent our
eldest boy to Rugby, where for his age he has been very well placed...I
honour, admire, and envy you for educating your boys at home. What on
earth shall you do with your boys? Towards the end of this month we
go to see W. at Rugby, and thence for five or six days to Susan (His
sister.) at Shrewsbury; I then return home to look after the babies,
and E. goes to F. Wedgwood's of Etruria for a week. Very many thanks
for your most kind and large invitation to Delamere, but I fear we can
hardly compass it. I dread going anywhere, on account of my stomach so
easily failing under any excitement. I rarely even now go to London;
not that I am at all worse, perhaps rather better, and lead a very
comfortable life with my three hours of daily work, but it is the
life of a hermit. My nights are ALWAYS bad, and that stops my becoming
vigorous. You ask about water-cure. I take at intervals of two or three
months, five or six weeks of MODERATELY severe treatment, and always
with good effect. Do you come here, I pray and beg whenever you can find
time; you cannot tell how much pleasure it would give me and E. I have
finished the 1st volume for the Ray Society of Pedunculated Cirripedes,
which, as I think you are a member, you will soon get. Read what I
describe on the sexes of Ibla and Scalpellum. I am now at work on the
Sessile Cirripedes, and am wonderfully tired of my job: a man to be a
systematic naturalist ought to work at least eight hours per day. You
saw through me, when you said that I must have wished to have seen the
effects of the [word illegible] Debacle, for I was saying a week ago to
E., that had I been as I was in old days, I would have been certainly
off that hour. You ask after Erasmus; he is much as usual, and
constantly more or less unwell. Susan (His sister.) is much better, and
very flourishing and happy. Catherine (Another sister.) is at Rome,
and has enjoyed it in a degree that is quite astonishing to my dry old
bones. And now I think I have told you enough, and more than enough
about the house of Darwin; so my dear old friend, farewell. What
pleasant times we had in drinking coffee in your rooms at Christ's
College, and think of the glories of Crux major. (The beetle Panagaeus
crux-major.) Ah, in those days there were no professions for sons, no
ill-health to fear for them, no Californian gold, no French invasions.
How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by
children. My dread is hereditary ill-health. Even death is better for
them.

My dear Fox, your sincere friend, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--Susan has lately been working in a way which I think truly heroic
about the scandalous violation of the Act against children climbing
chimneys. We have set up a little Society in Shrewsbury to prosecute
those who break the law. It is all Susan's doing. She has had very nice
letters from Lord Shaftesbury and the Duke of Sutherland, but the brutal
Shropshire squires are as hard as stones to move. The Act out of London
seems most commonly violated. It makes one shudder to fancy one of
one's own children at seven years old being forced up a chimney--to say
nothing of the consequent loathsome disease and ulcerated limbs, and
utter moral degradation. If you think strongly on this subject, do make
some inquiries; add to your many good works, this other one, and try
to stir up the magistrates. There are several people making a stir in
different parts of England on this subject. It is not very likely
that you would wish for such, but I could send you some essays and
information if you so liked, either for yourself or to give away.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down [October 24th, 1852].

My dear Fox,

I received your long and most welcome letter this morning, and will
answer it this evening, as I shall be very busy with an artist, drawing
Cirripedia, and much overworked for the next fortnight. But first you
deserve to be well abused--and pray consider yourself well abused--for
thinking or writing that I could for one minute be bored by any amount
of detail about yourself and belongings. It is just what I like hearing;
believe me that I often think of old days spent with you, and sometimes
can hardly believe what a jolly careless individual one was in those
old days. A bright autumn evening often brings to mind some shooting
excursion from Osmaston. I do indeed regret that we live so far off each
other, and that I am so little locomotive. I have been unusually well
of late (no water-cure), but I do not find that I can stand any change
better than formerly...The other day I went to London and back, and
the fatigue, though so trifling, brought on my bad form of vomiting. I
grieve to hear that your chest has been ailing, and most sincerely do
I hope that it is only the muscles; how frequently the voice fails with
the clergy. I can well understand your reluctance to break up your large
and happy party and go abroad; but your life is very valuable, so you
ought to be very cautious in good time. You ask about all of us, now
five boys (oh! the professions; oh! the gold; and oh! the French--these
three oh's all rank as dreadful bugbears) and two girls...but another
and the worst of my bugbears is hereditary weakness. All my sisters are
well except Mrs. Parker, who is much out of health; and so is Erasmus
at his poor average: he has lately moved into Queen Anne Street. I had
heard of the intended marriage (To the Rev. J. Hughes.) of your sister
Frances. I believe I have seen her since, but my memory takes me back
some twenty-five years, when she was lying down. I remember well the
delightful expression of her countenance. I most sincerely wish her all
happiness.

I see I have not answered half your queries. We like very well all that
we have seen and heard of Rugby, and have never repented of sending [W.]
there. I feel sure schools have greatly improved since our days; but I
hate schools and the whole system of breaking through the affections of
the family by separating the boys so early in life; but I see no help,
and dare not run the risk of a youth being exposed to the temptations of
the world without having undergone the milder ordeal of a great school.

I see you even ask after our pears. We have lots of Beurrees d'Aremberg,
Winter Nelis, Marie Louise, and "Ne plus Ultra," but all off the wall;
the standard dwarfs have borne a few, but I have no room for more trees,
so their names would be useless to me. You really must make a holiday
and pay us a visit sometime; nowhere could you be more heartily welcome.
I am at work at the second volume of the Cirripedia, of which creatures
I am wonderfully tired. I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not
even a sailor in a slow-sailing ship. My first volume is out; the only
part worth looking at is on the sexes of Ibla and Scalpellum. I hope
by next summer to have done with my tedious work. Farewell,--do come
whenever you can possibly manage it.

I cannot but hope that the carbuncle may possibly do you good: I have
heard of all sorts of weaknesses disappearing after a carbuncle. I
suppose the pain is dreadful. I agree most entirely, what a blessed
discovery is chloroform. When one thinks of one's children, it makes
quite a little difference in one's happiness. The other day I had five
grinders (two by the elevator) out at a sitting under this wonderful
substance, and felt hardly anything.

My dear old friend, yours very affectionately, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, January 29th [1853].

My dear Fox,

Your last account some months ago was so little satisfactory that I have
often been thinking of you, and should be really obliged if you would
give me a few lines, and tell me how your voice and chest are. I most
sincerely hope that your report will be good...Our second lad has a
strong mechanical turn, and we think of making him an engineer. I shall
try and find out for him some less classical school, perhaps Bruce
Castle. I certainly should like to see more diversity in education
than there is in any ordinary school--no exercising of the observing or
reasoning faculties, no general knowledge acquired--I must think it a
wretched system. On the other hand, a boy who has learnt to stick at
Latin and conquer its difficulties, ought to be able to stick at any
labour. I should always be glad to hear anything about schools or
education from you. I am at my old, never-ending subject, but trust
I shall really go to press in a few months with my second volume on
Cirripedes. I have been much pleased by finding some odd facts in my
first volume believed by Owen and a few others, whose good opinion I
regard as final...Do write pretty soon, and tell me all you can about
yourself and family; and I trust your report of yourself may be much
better than your last.

...I have been very little in London of late, and have not seen Lyell
since his return from America; how lucky he was to exhume with his
own hand parts of three skeletons of reptiles out of the CARBONIFEROUS
strata, and out of the inside of a fossil tree, which had been hollow
within.

Farewell, my dear Fox, yours affectionately, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. 13 Sea Houses, Eastbourne, [July 15th?
1853].

My dear Fox,

Here we are in a state of profound idleness, which to me is a luxury;
and we should all, I believe, have been in a state of high enjoyment,
had it not been for the detestable cold gales and much rain, which
always gives much ennui to children away from their homes. I received
your letter of 13th June, when working like a slave with Mr. Sowerby at
drawing for my second volume, and so put off answering it till when I
knew I should be at leisure. I was extremely glad to get your letter. I
had intended a couple of months ago sending you a savage or supplicating
jobation to know how you were, when I met Sir P. Egerton, who told me
you were well, and, as usual, expressed his admiration of your doings,
especially your farming, and the number of animals, including children,
which you kept on your land. Eleven children, ave Maria! it is a serious
look-out for you. Indeed, I look at my five boys as something awful, and
hate the very thoughts of professions, etc. If one could insure moderate
health for them it would not signify so much, for I cannot but hope,
with the enormous emigration, professions will somewhat improve. But my
bugbear is hereditary weakness. I particularly like to hear all that you
can say about education, and you deserve to be scolded for saying "you
did not mean to TORMENT me with a long yarn." You ask about Rugby.
I like it very well, on the same principle as my neighbour, Sir J.
Lubbock, likes Eton, viz., that it is not worse than any other school;
the expense, WITH ALL ETC., ETC., including some clothes, travelling
expenses, etc., is from 110 pounds to 120 pounds per annum. I do not
think schools are so wicked as they were, and far more industrious. The
boys, I think, live too secluded in their separate studies; and I doubt
whether they will get so much knowledge of character as boys used to do;
and this, in my opinion, is the ONE good of public schools over small
schools. I should think the only superiority of a small school over home
was forced regularity in their work, which your boys perhaps get at
your home, but which I do not believe my boys would get at my home.
Otherwise, it is quite lamentable sending boys so early in life from
their home.

...To return to schools. My main objection to them, as places of
education, is the enormous proportion of time spent over classics. I
fancy (though perhaps it is only fancy) that I can perceive the ill
and contracting effect on my eldest boy's mind, in checking interest in
anything in which reasoning and observation come into play. Mere memory
seems to be worked. I shall certainly look out for some school with more
diversified studies for my younger boys. I was talking lately to the
Dean of Hereford, who takes most strongly this view; and he tells me
that there is a school at Hereford commencing on this plan; and that
Dr. Kennedy at Shrewsbury is going to begin vigorously to modify that
school...

I am EXTREMELY glad to hear that you approved of my cirripedial volume.
I have spent an almost ridiculous amount of labour on the subject, and
certainly would never have undertaken it had I foreseen what a job it
was. I hope to have finished by the end of the year. Do write again
before a very long time; it is a real pleasure to me to hear from you.
Farewell, with my wife's kindest remembrances to yourself and Mrs. Fox.

My dear old friend, yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, August 10th [1853].

My dear Fox,

I thank you sincerely for writing to me so soon after your most
heavy misfortune. Your letter affected me so much. We both most truly
sympathise with you and Mrs. Fox. We too lost, as you may remember, not
so very long ago, a most dear child, of whom I can hardly yet bear
to think tranquilly; yet, as you must know from your own most painful
experience, time softens and deadens, in a manner truly wonderful, one's
feelings and regrets. At first it is indeed bitter. I can only hope that
your health and that of poor Mrs. Fox may be preserved, and that time
may do its work softly, and bring you all together, once again, as the
happy family, which, as I can well believe, you so lately formed.

My dear Fox, your affectionate friend, CHARLES DARWIN.


[The following letter refers to the Royal Society's Medal, which was
awarded to him in November, 1853:]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, November 5th [1853].

My dear Hooker,

Amongst my letters received this morning, I opened first one from
Colonel Sabine; the contents certainly surprised me very much, but,
though the letter was a VERY KIND ONE, somehow, I cared very little
indeed for the announcement it contained. I then opened yours, and
such is the effect of warmth, friendship, and kindness from one that is
loved, that the very same fact, told as you told it, made me glow with
pleasure till my very heart throbbed. Believe me, I shall not soon
forget the pleasure of your letter. Such hearty, affectionate sympathy
is worth more than all the medals that ever were or will be coined.
Again, my dear Hooker, I thank you. I hope Lindley (John Lindley,
1799-1865, was the son of a nurseryman near Norwich, through whose
failure in business he was thrown at the age of twenty on his own
resources. He was befriended by Sir W. Hooker, and employed as assistant
librarian by Sir J. Banks. He seems to have had enormous capacity of
work, and is said to have translated Richard's 'Analyse du Fruit' at one
sitting of two days and three nights. He became Assistant-Secretary to
the Horticultural Society, and in 1829 was appointed Professor of Botany
at University College, a post which he held for upwards of thirty years.
His writings are numerous: the best known being perhaps his 'Vegetable
Kingdom,' published in 1846. His influence in helping to introduce the
natural system of classification was considerable, and he brought "all
the weight of his teaching and all the force of his controversial powers
to support it," as against the Linnean system universally taught in the
earlier part of his career. Sachs points out (Geschichte der Botanik,
1875, page 161), that though Lindley adopted in the main a sound
classification of plants, he only did so by abandoning his own
theoretical principle that the physiological importance of an organ is
a measure of its classificatory value.) will never hear that he was a
competitor against me; for really it is almost RIDICULOUS (of course you
would never repeat that I said this, for it would be thought by others,
though not, I believe, by you, to be affectation) his not having the
medal long before me; I must feel SURE that you did quite right to
propose him; and what a good, dear, kind fellow you are, nevertheless,
to rejoice in this honour being bestowed on me.

What PLEASURE I have felt on the occasion, I owe almost entirely to you.

Farewell, my dear Hooker, yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--You may believe what a surprise it was, for I had never heard that
the medals could be given except for papers in the 'Transactions.' All
this will make me work with better heart at finishing the second volume.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, February 18th [1854].

My dear Lyell,

I should have written before, had it not seemed doubtful whether you
would go on to Teneriffe, but now I am extremely glad to hear your
further progress is certain; not that I have much of any sort to say, as
you may well believe when you hear that I have only once been in London
since you started. I was particularly glad to see, two days since, your
letter to Mr. Horner, with its geological news; how fortunate for you
that your knees are recovered. I am astonished at what you say of the
beauty, though I had fancied it great. It really makes me quite envious
to think of your clambering up and down those steep valleys. And what
a pleasant party on your return from your expeditions. I often think
of the delight which I felt when examining volcanic islands, and I can
remember even particular rocks which I struck, and the smell of the hot,
black, scoriaceous cliffs; but of those HOT smells you do not seem to
have had much. I do quite envy you. How I should like to be with you,
and speculate on the deep and narrow valleys.

How very singular the fact is which you mention about the inclination of
the strata being greater round the circumference than in the middle
of the island; do you suppose the elevation has had the form of a flat
dome? I remember in the Cordillera being OFTEN struck with the greater
abruptness of the strata in the LOW EXTREME outermost ranges, compared
with the great mass of inner mountains. I dare say you will have thought
of measuring exactly the width of any dikes at the top and bottom of any
great cliff (which was done by Mr. Searle [?] at St. Helena), for it
has often struck me as VERY ODD that the cracks did not die out OFTENER
upwards. I can think of hardly any news to tell you, as I have seen no
one since being in London, when I was delighted to see Forbes looking so
well, quite big and burly. I saw at the Museum some of the surprisingly
rich gold ore from North Wales. Ramsay also told me that he has lately
turned a good deal of New Red Sandstone into Permian, together with the
Labyrinthodon. No doubt you see newspapers, and know that E. de Beaumont
is perpetual Secretary, and will, I suppose, be more powerful than ever;
and Le Verrier has Arago's place in the Observatory. There was a meeting
lately at the Geological Society, at which Prestwich (judging from what
R. Jones told me) brought forward your exact theory, viz. that the whole
red clay and flints over the chalk plateau hereabouts is the residuum
from the slow dissolution of the chalk!

As regards ourselves, we have no news, and are all well. The Hookers,
sometime ago, stayed a fortnight with us, and, to our extreme delight,
Henslow came down, and was most quiet and comfortable here. It does one
good to see so composed, benevolent, and intellectual a countenance.
There have been great fears that his heart is affected; but, I hope
to God, without foundation. Hooker's book (Sir J. Hooker's 'Himalayan
Journal.') is out, and MOST BEAUTIFULLY got up. He has honoured me
beyond measure by dedicating it to me! As for myself, I am got to the
page 112 of the Barnacles, and that is the sum total of my history.
By-the-way, as you care so much about North America, I may mention that
I had a long letter from a shipmate in Australia, who says the Colony is
getting decidedly republican from the influx of Americans, and that
all the great and novel schemes for working the gold are planned and
executed by these men. What a go-a-head nation it is! Give my kindest
remembrances to Lady Lyell, and to Mrs. Bunbury, and to Bunbury. I
most heartily wish that the Canaries may be ten times as interesting as
Madeira, and that everything may go on most prosperously with your whole
party.

My dear Lyell, Yours most truly and affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 1st [1854].

My dear Hooker,

I finished yesterday evening the first volume, and I very sincerely
congratulate you on having produced a FIRST-CLASS book ('Himalayan
Journal.')--a book which certainly will last. I cannot doubt that it
will take its place as a standard, not so much because it contains real
solid matter, but that it gives a picture of the whole country. One can
feel that one has seen it (and desperately uncomfortable I felt in going
over some of the bridges and steep slopes), and one REALISES all the
great Physical features. You have in truth reason to be proud; consider
how few travellers there have been with a profound knowledge of one
subject, and who could in addition make a map (which, by-the-way, is one
of the most distinct ones I ever looked at, wherefore blessings alight
on your head), and study geology and meteorology! I thought I knew you
very well, but I had not the least idea that your Travels were your
hobby; but I am heartily glad of it, for I feel sure that the time will
never come when you and Mrs. Hooker will not be proud to look back at
the labour bestowed on these beautiful volumes.

Your letter, received this morning, has interested me EXTREMELY, and I
thank you sincerely for telling me your old thoughts and aspirations.
All that you say makes me even more deeply gratified by the Dedication;
but you, bad man, do you remember asking me how I thought Lyell
would like the work to be dedicated to him? I remember how strongly I
answered, and I presume you wanted to know what I should feel; whoever
would have dreamed of your being so crafty? I am glad you have shown a
little bit of ambition about your Journal, for you must know that I have
often abused you for not caring more about fame, though, at the same
time, I must confess, I have envied and honoured you for being so free
(too free, as I have always thought) of this "last infirmity of, etc."
Do not say, "there never was a past hitherto to me--the phantom was
always in view," for you will soon find other phantoms in view. How well
I know this feeling, and did formerly still more vividly; but I think
my stomach has much deadened my former pure enthusiasm for science and
knowledge.

I am writing an unconscionably long letter, but I must return to the
Journals, about which I have hardly said anything in detail. Imprimis,
the illustrations and maps appear to me the best I have ever seen; the
style seems to me everywhere perfectly clear (how rare a virtue), and
some passages really eloquent. How excellently you have described the
upper valleys, and how detestable their climate; I felt quite anxious on
the slopes of Kinchin that dreadful snowy night. Nothing has astonished
me more than your physical strength; and all those devilish bridges!
Well, thank goodness! It is not VERY likely that I shall ever go to
the Himalaya. Much in a scientific point of view has interested me,
especially all about those wonderful moraines. I certainly think I quite
realise the valleys, more vividly perhaps from having seen the valleys
of Tahiti. I cannot doubt that the Himalaya owe almost all their contour
to running water, and that they have been subjected to such action
longer than any mountains (as yet described) in the world. What a
contrast with the Andes!

Perhaps you would like to hear the very little that I can say per
contra, and this only applied to the beginning, in which (as it struck
me) there was not FLOW enough till you get to Mirzapore on the Ganges
(but the Thugs were MOST interesting), where the stream seemed to
carry you on more equably with longer sentences and longer facts and
discussions, etc. In another edition (and I am delighted to hear that
Murray has sold all off), I would consider whether this part could not
be condensed. Even if the meteorology was put in foot-notes, I think it
would be an improvement. All the world is against me, but it makes me
very unhappy to see the Latin names all in Italics, and all mingled with
English names in Roman type; but I must bear this burden, for all men of
Science seem to think it would corrupt the Latin to dress it up in the
same type as poor old English. Well, I am very proud of MY book; but
there is one bore, that I do not much like asking people whether they
have seen it, and how they like it, for I feel so much identified with
it, that such questions become rather personal. Hence, I cannot tell you
the opinion of others. You will have seen a fairly good review in the
'Athenaeum.'

What capital news from Tasmania: it really is a very remarkable and
creditable fact to the Colony. (This refers to an unsolicited grant by
the Colonial Government towards the expenses of Sir J. Hooker's 'Flora
of Tasmania.') I am always building veritable castles in the air about
emigrating, and Tasmania has been my head-quarters of late; so that I
feel very proud of my adopted country: is really a very singular and
delightful fact, contrasted with the slight appreciation of science in
the old country. I thank you heartily for your letter this morning, and
for all the gratification your Dedication has given me; I could not help
thinking how much -- would despise you for not having dedicated it to
some great man, who would have done you and it some good in the eyes
of the world. Ah, my dear Hooker, you were very soft on this head, and
justify what I say about not caring enough for your own fame. I wish
I was in every way more worthy of your good opinion. Farewell.
How pleasantly Mrs. Hooker and you must rest from one of your many
labours...

Again farewell: I have written a wonderfully long letter. Adios, and God
bless you.

My dear Hooker, ever yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I have just looked over my rambling letter; I see that I have not
at all expressed my strong admiration at the amount of scientific work,
in so many branches, which you have effected. It is really grand. You
have a right to rest on your oars; or even to say, if it so pleases you,
that "your meridian is past;" but well assured do I feel that the day of
your reputation and general recognition has only just begun to dawn.


[In September, 1854, his Cirripede work was practically finished, and he
wrote to Dr. Hooker:

"I have been frittering away my time for the last several weeks in a
wearisome manner, partly idleness, and odds and ends, and sending ten
thousand Barnacles out of the house all over the world. But I shall now
in a day or two begin to look over my old notes on species. What a deal
I shall have to discuss with you; I shall have to look sharp that I do
not 'progress' into one of the greatest bores in life, to the few like
you with lots of knowledge."]




CHAPTER 1.X. -- THE GROWTH OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.'

[The growth of the 'Origin of Species' has been briefly described in my
father's words (above). The letters given in the present and following
chapters will illustrate and amplify the history thus sketched out.]

It is clear that in the early part of the voyage of the "Beagle" he did
not feel it inconsistent with his views to express himself in thoroughly
orthodox language as to the genesis of new species. Thus in 1834 he
wrote (MS. Journals, page 468.) at Valparaiso: "I have already found
beds of recent shells yet retaining their colour at an elevation of 1300
feet, and beneath, the level country is strewn with them. It seems not a
very improbable conjecture that the want of animals may be owing to none
having been created since this country was raised from the sea."

This passage does not occur in the published 'Journal,' the last proof
of which was finished in 1837; and this fact harmonizes with the change
we know to have been proceeding in his views. But in the published
'Journal' we find passages which show a point of view more in accordance
with orthodox theological natural history than with his later views.
Thus, in speaking of the birds Synallaxis and Scytalopus (1st edition
page 353; 2nd edition page 289), he says: "When finding, as in this
case, any animal which seems to play so insignificant a part in the
great scheme of nature, one is apt to wonder why a distinct species
should have been created."

A comparison of the two editions of the 'Journal' is instructive, as
giving some idea of the development of his views on evolution. It does
not give us a true index of the mass of conjecture which was taking
shape in his mind, but it shows us that he felt sure enough of the truth
of his belief to allow a stronger tinge of evolution to appear in the
second edition. He has mentioned in the Autobiography that it was not
until he read Malthus that he got a clear view of the potency of natural
selection. This was in 1838--a year after he finished the first edition
(it was not published until 1839), and five years before the second
edition was written (1845). Thus the turning-point in the formation of
his theory took place between the writing of the two editions.

I will first give a few passages which are practically the same in
the two editions, and which are, therefore, chiefly of interest as
illustrating his frame of mind in 1837.

The case of the two species of Molothrus (1st edition page 61; 2nd
edition page 53) must have been one of the earliest instances noticed
by him of the existence of representative species--a phenomenon which we
know ('Autobiography,') struck him deeply. The discussion on introduced
animals (1st edition page 139; 2nd edition page 120) shows how much he
was impressed by the complicated interdependence of the inhabitants of a
given area.

An analogous point of view is given in the discussion (1st edition
page 98; 2nd edition page 85) of the mistaken belief that large animals
require, for their support, a luxuriant vegetation; the incorrectness of
this view is illustrated by the comparison of the fauna of South
Africa and South America, and the vegetation of the two continents.
The interest of the discussion is that it shows clearly our a priori
ignorance of the conditions of life suitable to any organism.

There is a passage which has been more than once quoted as bearing
on the origin of his views. It is where he discusses the striking
difference between the species of mice on the east and west of the Andes
(1st edition page 399): "Unless we suppose the same species to have been
created in two different countries, we ought not to expect any closer
similarity between the organic beings on the opposite sides of the
Andes than on shores separated by a broad strait of the sea." In the
2nd edition page 327, the passage is almost verbally identical, and is
practically the same.

There are other passages again which are more strongly evolutionary in
the 2nd edition, but otherwise are similar to the corresponding passages
in the 1st edition. Thus, in describing the blind Tuco-tuco (1st edition
page 60; 2nd edition page 52), in the first edition he makes no allusion
to what Lamarck might have thought, nor is the instance used as an
example of modification, as in the edition of 1845.

A striking passage occurs in the 2nd edition (page 173) on the
relationship between the "extinct edentata and the living sloths,
ant-eaters, and armadillos."

"This wonderful relationship in the same continent between the dead
and the living, will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light on the
appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their disappearance from
it, than any other class of facts."

This sentence does not occur in the 1st edition, but he was evidently
profoundly struck by the disappearance of the gigantic forerunners of
the present animals. The difference between the discussions in the two
editions is most instructive. In both, our ignorance of the conditions
of life is insisted on, but in the second edition, the discussion is
made to led up to a strong statement of the intensity of the struggle
for life. Then follows a comparison between rarity (In the second
edition, page 146, the destruction of Niata cattle by droughts is
given as a good example of our ignorance of the causes of rarity or
extinction. The passage does not occur in the first edition.) and
extinction, which introduces the idea that the preservation and
dominance of existing species depend on the degree in which they are
adapted to surrounding conditions. In the first edition, he is merely
"tempted to believe in such simple relations as variation of climate
and food, or introduction of enemies, or the increased number of other
species, as the cause of the succession of races." But finally (1st
edition) he ends the chapter by comparing the extinction of a species to
the exhaustion and disappearance of varieties of fruit-trees: as if he
thought that a mysterious term of life was impressed on each species at
its creation.

The difference of treatment of the Galapagos problem is of some
interest. In the earlier book, the American type of the productions
of the islands is noticed, as is the fact that the different islands
possess forms specially their own, but the importance of the whole
problem is not so strongly put forward. Thus, in the first edition, he
merely says:--

"This similarity of type between distant islands and continents, while
the species are distinct, has scarcely been sufficiently noticed. The
circumstance would be explained, according to the views of some authors,
by saying that the creative power had acted according to the same law
over a wide area."--(1st edition page 474.)

This passage is not given in the second edition, and the generalisations
on geographical distribution are much wider and fuller. Thus he asks:--

"Why were their aboriginal inhabitants, associated...in different
proportions both in kind and number from those on the Continent, and
therefore acting on each other in a different manner--why were they
created on American types of organisation?"--(2nd edition page 393.)

The same difference of treatment is shown elsewhere in this chapter.
Thus the gradation in the form of beak presented by the thirteen allied
species of finch is described in the first edition (page 461) without
comment. Whereas in the second edition (page 380) he concludes:--

"One might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this
Archipelago, one species has been taken and modified for different
ends."

On the whole it seems to me remarkable that the difference between the
two editions is not greater; it is another proof of the author's caution
and self-restraint in the treatment of his theory. After reading the
second edition of the 'Journal,' we find with a strong sense of surprise
how far developed were his views in 1837. We are enabled to form
an opinion on this point from the note-books in which he wrote down
detached thoughts and queries. I shall quote from the first note-book,
completed between July 1837 and February 1838: and this is the more
worth doing, as it gives us an insight into the condition of his
thoughts before the reading of Malthus. The notes are written in his
most hurried style, so many words being omitted, that it is often
difficult to arrive at the meaning. With a few exceptions (indicated by
square brackets) (In the extracts from the note-book ordinary brackets
represent my father's parentheses.) I have printed the extracts as
written; the punctuation, however, has been altered, and a few obvious
slips corrected where it seemed necessary. The extracts are not
printed in order, but are roughly classified. (On the first page of the
note-book, is written "Zoonomia"; this seems to refer to the first few
pages in which reproduction by gemmation is discussed, and where the
"Zoonomia" is mentioned. Many pages have been cut out of the note-book,
probably for use in writing the Sketch of 1844, and these would have no
doubt contained the most interesting extracts.)

"Propagation explains why modern animals same type as extinct, which is
law, almost proved."

"We can see why structure is common in certain countries when we can
hardly believe necessary, but if it was necessary to one forefather,
the result would be as it is. Hence antelopes at Cape of Good Hope;
marsupials at Australia."

"Countries longest separated greatest differences--if separated
from immersage, possibly two distinct types, but each having its
representatives--as in Australia."

"Will this apply to whole organic kingdom when our planet first cooled?"

The two following extracts show that he applied the theory of evolution
to the "whole organic kingdom" from plants to man.

"If we choose to let conjecture run wild, then animals, our fellow
brethren in pain, disease, death, suffering and famine--our slaves in
the most laborious works, our companions in our amusements--they may
partake [of?] our origin in one common ancestor--we may be all melted
together."

"The different intellects of man and animals not so great as between
living things without thought (plants), and living things with thought
(animals)."

The following extracts are again concerned with an a priori view of
the probability of the origin of species by descent ["propagation," he
called it.].

"The tree of life should perhaps be called the coral of life, base of
branches dead; so that passages cannot be seen."

"There never may have been grade between pig and tapir, yet from some
common progenitor. Now if the intermediate ranks had produced infinite
species, probably the series would have been more perfect."

At another place, speaking of intermediate forms he says:--

"Cuvier objects to propagation of species by saying, why have not some
intermediate forms been discovered between Palaeotherium, Megalonyx,
Mastodon, and the species now living? Now according to my view (in
S. America) parent of all Armadilloes might be brother to
Megatherium--uncle now dead."

Speaking elsewhere of intermediate forms, he remarks:--

"Opponents will say--'show them me.' I will answer yes, if you will show
me every step between bulldog and greyhound."

Here we see that the case of domestic animals was already present in his
mind as bearing on the production of natural species. The disappearance
of intermediate forms naturally leads up to the subject of extinction,
with which the next extract begins.

"It is a wonderful fact, horse, elephant, and mastodon, dying out about
same time in such different quarters.

"Will Mr. Lyell say that some [same?] circumstance killed it over a
tract from Spain to South America?--(Never).

"They die, without they change, like golden pippins; it is a GENERATION
OF SPECIES like generation OF INDIVIDUALS.

"Why does individual die? To perpetuate certain peculiarities (therefore
adaptation), and obliterate accidental varieties, and to accommodate
itself to change (for, of course, change, even in varieties, is
accommodation). Now this argument applies to species.

"If individual cannot propagate he has no issue--so with species.

"If SPECIES generate other SPECIES, their race is not utterly cut off:--
like golden pippins, if produced by seed, go on--otherwise all die.

"The fossil horse generated, in South Africa, zebra--and
continued--perished in America.

"All animals of same species are bound together just like buds of
plants, which die at one time, though produced either sooner or later.
Prove animals like plants--trace gradation between associated and
non-associated animals--and the story will be complete."

Here we have the view already alluded to of a term of life impressed on
a species.

But in the following note we get extinction connected with unfavourable
variation, and thus a hint is given of natural selection:

"With respect to extinction, we can easily see that [a] variety of [the]
ostrich (Petise), may not be well adapted, and thus perish out; or, on
the other hand, like Orpheus [a Galapagos bird], being favourable, many
might be produced. This requires [the] principle that the permanent
variations produced by confined breeding and changing circumstances are
continued and produced according to the adaptation of such circumstance,
and therefore that death of species is a consequence (contrary to what
would appear from America) of non-adaptation of circumstances."

The first part of the next extract has a similar bearing. The end of the
passage is of much interest, as showing that he had at this early date
visions of the far-reaching character of the theory of evolution:--

"With belief of transmutation and geographical grouping, we are lead to
endeavour to discover CAUSES of change; the manner of adaptation (wish
of parents??), instinct and structure becomes full of speculation and
lines of observation. View of generation being condensation (I imagine
him to mean that each generation is "condensed" to a small number of
the best organized individuals.) test of highest organisation
intelligible...My theory would give zest to recent and fossil
comparative anatomy; it would lead to the study of instincts, heredity,
and mind-heredity, whole [of] metaphysics.

"It would lead to closest examination of hybridity and generation,
causes of change in order to know what we have come from and to what we
tend--to what circumstances favour crossing and what prevents it--this,
and direct examination of direct passages of structure in species, might
lead to laws of change, which would then be [the] main object of study,
to guide our speculations."

The following two extracts have a similar interest; the second is
especially interesting, as it contains the germ of concluding sentence
of the 'Origin of Species': ('Origin of Species' (1st edition), page
490:-- "There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one;
and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed
law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.")--

"Before the attraction of gravity discovered it might have been said it
was as great a difficulty to account for the movement of all [planets]
by one law, as to account for each separate one; so to say that all
mammalia were born from one stock, and since distributed by such means
as we can recognise, may be thought to explain nothing.

"Astronomers might formerly have said that God fore-ordered each planet
to move in its particular destiny. In the same manner God orders each
animal created with certain forms in certain countries, but how much
more simple and sublime [a] power--let attraction act according to
certain law, such are inevitable consequences--let animals be created,
then by the fixed laws of generation, such will be their successors.

"Let the powers of transportal be such, and so will be the forms of one
country to another--let geological changes go at such a rate, so will be
the number and distribution of the species!!"

The three next extracts are of miscellaneous interest:--

"When one sees nipple on man's breast, one does not say some use, but
sex not having been determined--so with useless wings under elytra of
beetles--born from beetles with wings, and modified--if simple creation
merely, would have been born without them."

"In a decreasing population at any one moment fewer closely related
(few species of genera); ultimately few genera (for otherwise the
relationship would converge sooner), and lastly, perhaps, some one
single one. Will not this account for the odd genera with few species
which stand between great groups, which we are bound to consider the
increasing ones?"

The last extract which I shall quote gives the germ of his theory of
the relation between alpine plants in various parts of the world, in the
publication of which he was forestalled by E. Forbes (see volume i.
page 72). He says, in the 1837 note-book, that alpine plants, "formerly
descended lower, therefore [they are] species of lower genera altered,
or northern plants."

When we turn to the Sketch of his theory, written in 1844 (still
therefore before the second edition of the 'Journal' was completed), we
find an enormous advance made on the note-book of 1837. The Sketch is
an fact a surprisingly complete presentation of the argument afterwards
familiar to us in the 'Origin of Species.' There is some obscurity as to
the date of the short Sketch which formed the basis of the 1844 Essay.
We know from his own words (volume i., page 68), that it was in June
1842 that he first wrote out a short sketch of his views. (This version
I cannot find, and it was probably destroyed, like so much of his MS.,
after it had been enlarged and re-copied in 1844.) This statement is
given with so much circumstance that it is almost impossible to suppose
that it contains an error of date. It agrees also with the following
extract from his Diary.

1842. May 18th. Went to Maer.

"June 15th to Shrewsbury, and on 18th to Capel Curig. During my stay at
Maer and Shrewsbury (five years after commencement) wrote pencil-sketch
of species theory."

Again in the introduction to the 'Origin,' page 1, he writes, "after
an interval of five years' work" [from 1837, i.e. in 1842], "I allowed
myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes."

Nevertheless in the letter signed by Sir C. Lyell and Sir J.D. Hooker,
which serves as an introduction to the joint paper of Messrs. C. Darwin
and A. Wallace on the 'Tendency of Species to form Varieties,' ('Linn.
Soc. Journal,' 1858, page 45.) the essay of 1844 (extracts from which
form part of the paper) is said to have been "sketched in 1839, and
copied in 1844." This statement is obviously made on the authority of
a note written in my father's hand across the Table of Contents of the
1844 Essay. It is to the following effect: "This was sketched in 1839,
and copied out in full, as here written and read by you in 1844." I
conclude that this note was added in 1858, when the MS. was sent to Sir
J.D. Hooker (see Letter of June 29, 1858, page 476). There is also some
further evidence on this side of the question. Writing to Mr. Wallace
(January 25, 1859) my father says:-- "Every one whom I have seen
has thought your paper very well written and interesting. It puts my
extracts (written in 1839, now just twenty years ago!), which I must say
in apology were never for an instant intended for publication; into the
shade." The statement that the earliest sketch was written in 1839 has
been frequently made in biographical notices of my father, no doubt
on the authority of the 'Linnean Journal,' but it must, I think, be
considered as erroneous. The error may possibly have arisen in this way.
In writing on the Table of Contents of the 1844 MS. that it was sketched
in 1839, I think my father may have intended to imply that the framework
of the theory was clearly thought out by him at that date. In the
Autobiography he speaks of the time, "about 1839, when the theory was
clearly conceived," meaning, no doubt, the end of 1838 and beginning of
1839, when the reading of Malthus had given him the key to the idea of
natural selection. But this explanation does not apply to the letter to
Mr. Wallace; and with regard to the passage (My father certainly saw the
proofs of the paper, for he added a foot-note apologising for the style
of the extracts, on the ground that the "work was never intended for
publication.") in the 'Linnean Journal' it is difficult to understand
how it should have been allowed to remain as it now stands, conveying,
as it clearly does, the impression that 1839 was the date of his
earliest written sketch.

The sketch of 1844 is written in a clerk's hand, in two hundred and
thirty-one pages folio, blank leaves being alternated with the MS.
with a view to amplification. The text has been revised and corrected,
criticisms being pencilled by himself on the margin. It is divided into
two parts: I. "On the variation of Organic Beings under Domestication
and in their Natural State." II. "On the Evidence favourable and opposed
to the view that Species are naturally formed races descended from
common Stocks." The first part contains the main argument of the 'Origin
of Species.' It is founded, as is the argument of that work, on the
study of domestic animals, and both the Sketch and the 'Origin' open
with a chapter on variation under domestication and on artificial
selection. This is followed, in both essays, by discussions on variation
under nature, on natural selection, and on the struggle for life. Here,
any close resemblance between the two essays with regard to arrangement
ceases. Chapter III. of the Sketch, which concludes the first part,
treats of the variations which occur in the instincts and habits of
animals, and thus corresponds to some extent with Chapter VII. of the
'Origin' (1st edition). It thus forms a complement to the chapters which
deal with variation in structure. It seems to have been placed thus
early in the Essay to prevent the hasty rejection of the whole theory by
a reader to whom the idea of natural selection acting on instincts might
seem impossible. This is the more probable, as the Chapter on Instinct
in the 'Origin' is specially mentioned (Introduction, page 5) as one of
the "most apparent and gravest difficulties on the theory." Moreover the
chapter in the Sketch ends with a discussion, "whether any particular
corporeal structures...are so wonderful as to justify the rejection
prima facie of our theory." Under this heading comes the discussion
of the eye, which in the 'Origin' finds its place in Chapter VI. under
"Difficulties of the Theory." The second part seems to have been planned
in accordance with his favourite point of view with regard to his
theory. This is briefly given in a letter to Dr. Asa Gray, November
11th, 1859: "I cannot possibly believe that a false theory would explain
so many classes of facts, as I think it certainly does explain. On these
grounds I drop my anchor, and believe that the difficulties will slowly
disappear." On this principle, having stated the theory in the first
part, he proceeds to show to what extent various wide series of facts
can be explained by its means.

Thus the second part of the Sketch corresponds roughly to the nine
concluding Chapters of the First Edition of the 'Origin.' But we must
exclude Chapter VII. ('Origin') on Instinct, which forms a chapter in
the first part of the Sketch, and Chapter VIII. ('Origin') on Hybridism,
a subject treated in the Sketch with 'Variation under Nature' in the
first part.

The following list of the chapters of the second part of the Sketch will
illustrate their correspondence with the final chapters of the 'Origin.'

Chapter I. "On the kind of intermediateness necessary, and the number
of such intermediate forms." This includes a geological discussion, and
corresponds to parts of Chapters VI. and IX. of the 'Origin.'

Chapter II. "The gradual appearance and disappearance of organic
beings." Corresponds to Chapter X. of the 'Origin.'

Chapter III. "Geographical Distribution." Corresponds to Chapters XI.
and XII. of the 'Origin.'

Chapter IV. "Affinities and Classification of Organic beings."

Chapter V. "Unity of Type," Morphology, Embryology.

Chapter VI. Rudimentary Organs.

These three chapters correspond to Chapter XII. of the 'Origin.'

Chapter VII. Recapitulation and Conclusion. The final sentence of the
Sketch, which we saw in its first rough form in the Note Book of 1837,
closely resembles the final sentence of the 'Origin,' much of it being
identical. The 'Origin' is not divided into two "Parts," but we see
traces of such a division having been present in the writer's mind, in
this resemblance between the second part of the Sketch and the final
chapters of the 'Origin.' That he should speak ('Origin,' Introduction,
page 5.) of the chapters on transition, on instinct, on hybridism, and
on the geological record, as forming a group, may be due to the division
of his early MS. into two parts.

Mr. Huxley, who was good enough to read the Sketch at my request, while
remarking that the "main lines of argument," and the illustrations
employed are the same, points out that in the 1844 Essay, "much more
weight is attached to the influence of external conditions in producing
variation, and to the inheritance of acquired habits than in the
Origin.'"

It is extremely interesting to find in the Sketch the first mention of
principles familiar to us in the 'Origin of Species.' Foremost among
these may be mentioned the principle of Sexual Selection, which
is clearly enunciated. The important form of selection known as
"unconscious," is also given. Here also occurs a statement of the
law that peculiarities tend to appear in the offspring at an age
corresponding to that at which they occurred in the parent.

Professor Newton, who was so kind as to look through the 1844
Sketch, tells me that my father's remarks on the migration of
birds, incidentally given in more than one passage, show that he had
anticipated the views of some later writers.

With regard to the general style of the Sketch, it is not to be expected
that it should have all the characteristics of the 'Origin,' and we
do not, in fact, find that balance and control, that concentration and
grasp, which are so striking in the work of 1859.

In the Autobiography (page 68, volume 1) my father has stated what
seemed to him the chief flaw of the 1844 Sketch; he had overlooked
"one problem of great importance," the problem of the divergence of
character. This point is discussed in the 'Origin of Species,' but, as
it may not be familiar to all readers, I will give a short account
of the difficulty and its solution. The author begins by stating that
varieties differ from each other less than species, and then goes on:
"Nevertheless, according to my view, varieties are species in process of
formation...How then does the lesser difference between varieties become
augmented into the greater difference between species?" ('Origin,' 1st
edition, page 111.) He shows how an analogous divergence takes place
under domestication where an originally uniform stock of horses has
been split up into race-horses, dray-horses, etc., and then goes on to
explain how the same principle applies to natural species. "From the
simple circumstance that the more diversified the descendants from any
one species become in structure, constitution, and habits, by so much
will they be better enabled to seize on many and widely diversified
places in the polity of nature, and so be enabled to increase in
numbers."

The principle is exemplified by the fact that if on one plot of ground
a single variety of wheat be sown, and on to another a mixture of
varieties, in the latter case the produce is greater. More individuals
have been able to exist because they were not all of the same variety.
An organism becomes more perfect and more fitted to survive when by
division of labour the different functions of life are performed by
different organs. In the same way a species becomes more efficient
and more able to survive when different sections of the species become
differentiated so as to fill different stations.

In reading the Sketch of 1844, I have found it difficult to recognise
the absence of any definite statement of the principle of divergence as
a flaw in the Essay. Descent with modification implies divergence,
and we become so habituated to a belief in descent, and therefore in
divergence, that we do not notice the absence of proof that divergence
is in itself an advantage. As shown in the Autobiography, my father in
1876 found it hardly credible that he should have overlooked the problem
and its solution.

The following letter will be more in place here than its chronological
position, since it shows what was my father's feeling as to the value of
the Sketch at the time of its completion.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO MRS. DARWIN. Down, July 5, 1844.

I have just finished my sketch of my species theory. If, as I believe,
my theory in time be accepted even by one competent judge, it will be a
considerable step in science.

I therefore write this in case of my sudden death, as my most solemn and
last request, which I am sure you will consider the same as if legally
entered in my will, that you will devote 400 pounds to its publication,
and further, will yourself, or through Hensleigh (Mr. H. Wedgwood.),
take trouble in promoting it. I wish that my sketch be given to some
competent person, with this sum to induce him to take trouble in its
improvement and enlargement. I give to him all my books on Natural
History, which are either scored or have references at the end to the
pages, begging him carefully to look over and consider such passages as
actually bearing, or by possibility bearing, on this subject. I wish you
to make a list of all such books as some temptation to an editor. I
also request that you will hand over [to] him all those scraps roughly
divided in eight or ten brown paper portfolios. The scraps, with copied
quotations from various works, are those which may aid my editor. I also
request that you, or some amanuensis, will aid in deciphering any of
the scraps which the editor may think possibly of use. I leave to the
editor's judgment whether to interpolate these facts in the text, or
as notes, or under appendices. As the looking over the references and
scraps will be a long labour, and as the CORRECTING and enlarging and
altering my sketch will also take considerable time, I leave this sum
of 400 pounds as some remuneration, and any profits from the work. I
consider that for this the editor is bound to get the sketch published
either at a publisher's or his own risk. Many of the scrap in the
portfolios contains mere rude suggestions and early views, now useless,
and many of the facts will probably turn out as having no bearing on my
theory.

With respect to editors, Mr. Lyell would be the best if he would
undertake it; I believe he would find the work pleasant, and he would
learn some facts new to him. As the editor must be a geologist as well
as a naturalist, the next best editor would be Professor Forbes of
London. The next best (and quite best in many respects) would be
Professor Henslow. Dr. Hooker would be VERY good. The next, Mr.
Strickland. (After Mr. Strickland's name comes the following sentence,
which has been erased but remained legible. "Professor Owen would be
very good; but I presume he would not undertake such a work." If none of
these would undertake it, I would request you to consult with Mr. Lyell,
or some other capable man for some editor, a geologist and naturalist.
Should one other hundred pounds make the difference of procuring a good
editor, request earnestly that you will raise 500 pounds.)

My remaining collections in Natural History may be given to any one or
any museum where it would be accepted...

[The following note seems to have formed part of the original letter,
but may have been of later date:

"Lyell, especially with the aid of Hooker (and of any good zoological
aid), would be best of all. Without an editor will pledge himself to
give up time to it, it would be of no use paying such a sum.

"If there should be any difficulty in getting an editor who would go
thoroughly into the subject, and think of the bearing of the passages
marked in the books and copied out of scraps of paper, then let my
sketch be published as it is, stating that it was done several years ago
(The words "several years ago and," seem to have been added at a
later date.) and from memory without consulting any works, and with no
intention of publication in its present form."

The idea that the Sketch of 1844 might remain, in the event of his
death, as the only record of his work, seems to have been long in his
mind, for in August 1854, when he had finished with the Cirripedes, and
was thinking of beginning his "species work," he added on the back of
the above letter, "Hooker by far best man to edit my species volume.
August 1854."]




CHAPTER 1.XI. -- THE GROWTH OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.'

LETTERS, 1843-1856.


[The history of my father's life is told more completely in his
correspondence with Sir J.D. Hooker than in any other series of letters;
and this is especially true of the history of the growth of the 'Origin
of Species.' This, therefore, seems an appropriate place for the
following notes, which Sir Joseph Hooker has kindly given me. They
give, moreover, an interesting picture of his early friendship with my
father:--

"My first meeting with Mr. Darwin was in 1839, in Trafalgar Square. I
was walking with an officer who had been his shipmate for a short time
in the "Beagle" seven years before, but who had not, I believe, since
met him. I was introduced; the interview was of course brief, and the
memory of him that I carried away and still retain was that of a rather
tall and rather broad-shouldered man, with a slight stoop, an agreeable
and animated expression when talking, beetle brows, and a hollow
but mellow voice; and that his greeting of his old acquaintance was
sailor-like--that is, delightfully frank and cordial. I observed him
well, for I was already aware of his attainments and labours, derived
from having read various proof-sheets of his then unpublished 'Journal.'
These had been submitted to Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Lyell by Mr.
Darwin, and by him sent to his father, Ch. Lyell, Esq., of Kinnordy, who
(being a very old friend of my father and taking a kind interest in my
projected career as a naturalist) had allowed me to peruse them. At
this time I was hurrying on my studies, so as to take my degree before
volunteering to accompany Sir James Ross in the Antarctic Expedition,
which had just been determined on by the Admiralty; and so pressed for
time was I, that I used to sleep with the sheets of the 'Journal'
under my pillow, that I might read them between waking and rising. They
impressed me profoundly, I might say despairingly, with the variety of
acquirements, mental and physical, required in a naturalist who should
follow in Darwin's footsteps, whilst they stimulated me to enthusiasm in
the desire to travel and observe.

"It has been a permanent source of happiness to me that I knew so much
of Mr. Darwin's scientific work so many years before that intimacy began
which ripened into feelings as near to those of reverence for his life,
works, and character as is reasonable and proper. It only remains to
add to this little episode that I received a copy of the 'Journal'
complete,--a gift from Mr. Lyell,--a few days before leaving England.

"Very soon after the return of the Antarctic Expedition my
correspondence with Mr. Darwin began (December, 1843) by his sending me
a long letter, warmly congratulating me on my return to my family
and friends, and expressing a wish to hear more of the results of the
expedition, of which he had derived some knowledge from private letters
of my own (written to or communicated through Mr. Lyell). Then, plunging
at once into scientific matters, he directed my attention to the
importance of correlating the Fuegian Flora with that of the Cordillera
and of Europe, and invited me to study the botanical collections which
he had made in the Galapagos Islands, as well as his Patagonian and
Fuegian plants.

"This led to me sending him an outline of the conclusions I had formed
regarding the distribution of plants in the southern regions, and the
necessity of assuming the destruction of considerable areas of land
to account for the relations of the flora of the so-called Antarctic
Islands. I do not suppose that any of these ideas were new to him, but
they led to an animated and lengthy correspondence full of instruction."

Here follows the letter (1843) to Sir J.D. Hooker above referred to.]


My dear Sir,

I had hoped before this time to have had the pleasure of seeing you
and congratulating you on your safe return from your long and glorious
voyage. But as I seldom go to London, we may not yet meet for some
time--without you are led to attend the Geological Meetings.

I am anxious to know what you intend doing with all your materials--I
had so much pleasure in reading parts of some of your letters, that I
shall be very sorry if I, as one of the public, have no opportunity of
reading a good deal more. I suppose you are very busy now and full of
enjoyment: how well I remember the happiness of my first few months of
England--it was worth all the discomforts of many a gale! But I have run
from the subject, which made me write, of expressing my pleasure that
Henslow (as he informed me a few days since by letter) has sent to you
my small collection of plants. You cannot think how much pleased I am,
as I feared they would have been all lost, and few as they are, they
cost me a good deal of trouble. There are a very few notes, which I
believe Henslow has got, describing the habitats, etc., of some few of
the more remarkable plants. I paid particular attention to the Alpine
flowers of Tierra del Fuego, and I am sure I got every plant which was
in flower in Patagonia at the seasons when we were there. I have long
thought that some general sketch of the Flora of the point of land,
stretching so far into the southern seas, would be very curious. Do make
comparative remarks on the species allied to the European species, for
the advantage of botanical ignoramuses like myself. It has often struck
me as a curious point to find out, whether there are many European
genera in Tierra del Fuego which are not found along the ridge of the
Cordillera; the separation in such case would be so enormous. Do
point out in any sketch you draw up, what genera are American and what
European, and how great the differences of the species are, when the
genera are European, for the sake of the ignoramuses.

I hope Henslow will send you my Galapagos plants (about which Humboldt
even expressed to me considerable curiosity)--I took much pains in
collecting all I could. A Flora of this archipelago would, I suspect,
offer a nearly parallel case to that of St. Helena, which has so long
excited interest. Pray excuse this long rambling note, and believe me,
my dear sir, yours very sincerely,

C. DARWIN.

Will you be so good as to present my respectful compliments to Sir W.
Hooker.


[Referring to Sir J.D. Hooker's work on the Galapagos Flora, my father
wrote in 1846:

"I cannot tell you how delighted and astonished I am at the results
of your examination; how wonderfully they support my assertion on the
differences in the animals of the different islands, about which I have
always been fearful."


Again he wrote (1849):--

"I received a few weeks ago your Galapagos papers (These papers include
the results of Sir J.D. Hooker's examination of my father's Galapagos
plants, and were published by the Linnean Society in 1849.), and I have
read them since being here. I really cannot express too strongly my
admiration of the geographical discussion: to my judgment it is a
perfect model of what such a paper should be; it took me four days to
read and think over. How interesting the Flora of the Sandwich Islands
appears to be, how I wish there were materials for you to treat its
flora as you have done the Galapagos. In the Systematic paper I was
rather disappointed in not finding general remarks on affinities,
structures, etc., such as you often give in conversation, and such as
De Candolle and St. Hilaire introduced in almost all their papers, and
which make them interesting even to a non-Botanist."

"Very soon afterwards [continues Sir J.D. Hooker] in a letter dated
January 1844, the subject of the 'Origin of Species' was brought forward
by him, and I believe that I was the first to whom he communicated
his then new ideas on the subject, and which being of interest as
a contribution to the history of Evolution, I here copy from his
letter":--]

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [January 11th, 1844.]

Besides a general interest about the southern lands, I have been now
ever since my return engaged in a very presumptuous work, and I know
no one individual who would not say a very foolish one. I was so struck
with the distribution of the Galapagos organisms, etc. etc., and with
the character of the American fossil mammifers, etc. etc., that I
determined to collect blindly every sort of fact, which could bear
any way on what are species. I have read heaps of agricultural and
horticultural books, and have never ceased collecting facts. At last
gleams of light have come, and I am almost convinced (quite contrary to
the opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing
a murder) immutable. Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a
"tendency to progression," "adaptations from the slow willing of
animals," etc.! But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different
from his; though the means of change are wholly so. I think I have
found out (here's presumption!) the simple way by which species become
exquisitely adapted to various ends. You will now groan, and think to
yourself, "on what a man have I been wasting my time and writing to." I
should, five years ago, have thought so...


[The following letter written on February 23, 1844, shows that the
acquaintanceship with Sir J.D. Hooker was then fast ripening into
friendship. The letter is chiefly of interest as showing the sort of
problems then occupying my father's mind:]

Dear Hooker,

I hope you will excuse the freedom of my address, but I feel that as
co-circum-wanderers and as fellow labourers (though myself a very weak
one) we may throw aside some of the old-world formality...I have just
finished a little volume on the volcanic islands which we visited. I do
not know how far you care for dry simple geology, but I hope you will
let me send you a copy. I suppose I can send it from London by common
coach conveyance.

...I am going to ask you some MORE questions, though I daresay, without
asking them, I shall see answers in your work, when published, which
will be quite time enough for my purposes. First for the Galapagos, you
will see in my Journal, that the Birds, though peculiar species, have a
most obvious S. American aspect: I have just ascertained the same thing
holds good with the sea-shells. It is so with those plants which are
peculiar to this archipelago; you state that their numerical proportions
are continental (is not this a very curious fact?) but are they related
in forms to S. America. Do you know of any other case of an archipelago,
with the separate islands possessing distinct representative species?
I have always intended (but have not yet done so) to examine Webb
and Berthelot on the Canary Islands for this object. Talking with
Mr. Bentham, he told me that the separate islands of the Sandwich
Archipelago possessed distinct representative species of the same genera
of Labiatae: would not this be worth your enquiry? How is it with the
Azores; to be sure the heavy western gales would tend to diffuse the
same species over that group.

I hope you will (I dare say my hope is quite superfluous) attend to this
general kind of affinity in isolated islands, though I suppose it is
more difficult to perceive this sort of relation in plants, than in
birds or quadrupeds, the groups of which are, I fancy, rather more
confined. Can St. Helena be classed, though remotely, either with Africa
or S. America? From some facts, which I have collected, I have been led
to conclude that the fauna of mountains are EITHER remarkably similar
(sometimes in the presence of the same species and at other times
of same genera), OR that they are remarkably dissimilar; and it has
occurred to me that possibly part of this peculiarity of the St. Helena
and Galapagos floras may be attributed to a great part of these two
Floras being mountain Floras. I fear my notes will hardly serve to
distinguish much of the habitats of the Galapagos plants, but they may
in some cases; most, if not all, of the green, leafy plants come from
the summits of the islands, and the thin brown leafless plants come from
the lower arid parts: would you be so kind as to bear this remark in
mind, when examining my collection.

I will trouble you with only one other question. In discussion with Mr.
Gould, I found that in most of the genera of birds which range over the
whole or greater part of the world, the individual species have wider
ranges, thus the Owl is mundane, and many of the species have very wide
ranges. So I believe it is with land and fresh-water shells--and I might
adduce other cases. Is it not so with Cryptogamic plants; have not most
of the species wide ranges, in those genera which are mundane? I do not
suppose that the converse holds, viz.--that when a species has a
wide range, its genus also ranges wide. Will you so far oblige me by
occasionally thinking over this? It would cost me vast trouble to get a
list of mundane phanerogamic genera and then search how far the species
of these genera are apt to range wide in their several countries; but
you might occasionally, in the course of your pursuits, just bear this
in mind, though perhaps the point may long since have occurred to you
or other Botanists. Geology is bringing to light interesting facts,
concerning the ranges of shells; I think it is pretty well established,
that according as the geographical range of a species is wide, so is
its persistence and duration in time. I hope you will try to grudge as
little as you can the trouble of my letters, and pray believe me very
truly yours,

C. DARWIN.

P.S. I should feel extremely obliged for your kind offer of the sketch
of Humboldt; I venerate him, and after having had the pleasure of
conversing with him in London, I shall still more like to have any
portrait of him.


[What follows is quoted from Sir J. Hooker's notes. "The next act in the
drama of our lives opens with personal intercourse. This began with an
invitation to breakfast with him at his brother's (Erasmus Darwin's)
house in Park Street; which was shortly afterwards followed by an
invitation to Down to meet a few brother Naturalists. In the short
intervals of good health that followed the long illnesses which
oftentimes rendered life a burthen to him, between 1844 and 1847, I had
many such invitations, and delightful they were. A more hospitable and
more attractive home under every point of view could not be imagined--of
Society there were most often Dr. Falconer, Edward Forbes, Professor
Bell, and Mr. Waterhouse--there were long walks, romps with the children
on hands and knees, music that haunts me still. Darwin's own hearty
manner, hollow laugh, and thorough enjoyment of home life with friends;
strolls with him all together, and interviews with us one by one in
his study, to discuss questions in any branch of biological or physical
knowledge that we had followed; and which I at any rate always left with
the feeling that I had imparted nothing and carried away more than
I could stagger under. Latterly, as his health became more seriously
affected, I was for days and weeks the only visitor, bringing my work
with me and enjoying his society as opportunity offered. It was an
established rule that he every day pumped me, as he called it, for half
an hour or so after breakfast in his study, when he first brought out
a heap of slips with questions botanical, geographical, etc., for me to
answer, and concluded by telling me of the progress he had made in his
own work, asking my opinion on various points. I saw no more of him till
about noon, when I heard his mellow ringing voice calling my name under
my window--this was to join him in his daily forenoon walk round the
sand-walk. On joining him I found him in a rough grey shooting-coat in
summer, and thick cape over his shoulders in winter, and a stout staff
in his hand; away we trudged through the garden, where there was always
some experiment to visit, and on to the sand-walk, round which a fixed
number of turns were taken, during which our conversation usually ran
on foreign lands and seas, old friends, old books, and things far off to
both mind and eye.

"In the afternoon there was another such walk, after which he again
retired till dinner if well enough to join the family; if not, he
generally managed to appear in the drawing-room, where seated in his
high chair, with his feet in enormous carpet shoes, supported on a high
stool--he enjoyed the music or conversation of his family."


Here follows a series of letters illustrating the growth of my father's
views, and the nature of his work during this period.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1844].

...The conclusion, which I have come at is, that those areas, in which
species are most numerous, have oftenest been divided and isolated from
other areas, united and again divided; a process implying antiquity and
some changes in the external conditions. This will justly sound very
hypothetical. I cannot give my reasons in detail; but the most general
conclusion, which the geographical distribution of all organic beings,
appears to me to indicate, is that isolation is the chief concomitant or
cause of the appearance of NEW forms (I well know there are some staring
exceptions). Secondly, from seeing how often the plants and animals
swarm in a country, when introduced into it, and from seeing what a vast
number of plants will live, for instance in England, if kept FREE FROM
WEEDS, AND NATIVE PLANTS, I have been led to consider that the spreading
and number of the organic beings of any country depend less on its
external features, than on the number of forms, which have been there
originally created or produced. I much doubt whether you will find it
possible to explain the number of forms by proportional differences of
exposure; and I cannot doubt if half the species in any country were
destroyed or had not been created, yet that country would appear to us
fully peopled. With respect to original creation or production of new
forms, I have said that isolation appears the chief element. Hence,
with respect to terrestrial productions, a tract of country, which had
oftenest within the late geological periods subsided and been converted
into islands, and reunited, I should expect to contain most forms.

But such speculations are amusing only to one self, and in this case
useless, as they do not show any direct line of observation: if I had
seen how hypothetical [is] the little, which I have unclearly written, I
would not have troubled you with the reading of it. Believe me,--at last
not hypothetically,

Yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 1844.

...I forget my last letter, but it must have been a very silly one, as
it seems I gave my notion of the number of species being in great degree
governed by the degree to which the area had been often isolated and
divided; I must have been cracked to have written it, for I have no
evidence, without a person be willing to admit all my views, and then
it does follow; but in my most sanguine moments, all I expect, is that
I shall be able to show even to sound Naturalists, that there are two
sides to the question of the immutability of species;--that facts can be
viewed and grouped under the notion of allied species having descended
from common stocks. With respect to books on this subject, I do not know
of any systematical ones, except Lamarck's, which is veritable rubbish;
but there are plenty, as Lyell, Pritchard, etc., on the view of the
immutability. Agassiz lately has brought the strongest argument in
favour of immutability. Isidore G. St. Hilaire has written some good
Essays, tending towards the mutability-side, in the 'Suites a Buffon,'
entitled "Zoolog. Generale." Is it not strange that the author, of
such a book as the 'Animaux sans Vertebres,' should have written that
insects, which never see their eggs, should WILL (and plants, their
seeds) to be of particular forms, so as to become attached to particular
objects. The other, common (specially Germanic) notion is hardly less
absurd, viz. that climate, food, etc., should make a Pediculus formed to
climb hair, or wood-pecker, to climb trees. I believe all these absurd
views arise, from no one having, as far as I know, approached the
subject on the side of variation under domestication, and having studied
all that is known about domestication. I was very glad to hear your
criticism on island-floras and on non-diffusion of plants: the subject
is too long for a letter: I could defend myself to some considerable
extent, but I doubt whether successfully in your eyes, or indeed in my
own...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [July, 1844].

...I am now reading a wonderful book for facts on variation--Bronn,
'Geschichte der Natur.' It is stiff German: it forestalls me, sometimes
I think delightfully, and sometimes cruelly. You will be ten times
hereafter more horrified at me than at H. Watson. I hate arguments from
results, but on my views of descent, really Natural History becomes
a sublimely grand result-giving subject (now you may quiz me for so
foolish an escape of mouth)...I must leave this letter till to-morrow,
for I am tired; but I so enjoy writing to you, that I must inflict a
little more on you.

Have you any good evidence for absence of insects in small islands? I
found thirteen species in Keeling Atoll. Flies are good fertilizers,
and I have seen a microscopic Thrips and a Cecidomya take flight from
a flower in the direction of another with pollen adhering to them. In
Arctic countries a bee seems to go as far N. as any flower...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Shrewsbury [September, 1845].

My dear Hooker,

I write a line to say that Cosmos (A translation of Humboldt's
'Kosmos.') arrived quite safely [N.B. One sheet came loose in Part I.],
and to thank you for your nice note. I have just begun the introduction,
and groan over the style, which in such parts is full half the battle.
How true many of the remarks are (i.e. as far as I can understand the
wretched English) on the scenery; it is an exact expression of one's own
thoughts.

I wish I ever had any books to lend you in return for the many you have
lent me...

All of what you kindly say about my species work does not alter one
iota my long self-acknowledged presumption in accumulating facts and
speculating on the subject of variation, without having worked out my
due share of species. But now for nine years it has been anyhow the
greatest amusement to me.

Farewell, my dear Hooker, I grieve more than you can well believe, over
our prospect of so seldom meeting.

I have never perceived but one fault in you, and that you have
grievously, viz. modesty; you form an exception to Sydney Smith's
aphorism, that merit and modesty have no other connection, except in
their first letter.

Farewell, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO L. JENYNS (BLOMEFIELD). Down, October 12th, [1845].

My dear Jenyns,

Thanks for your note. I am sorry to say I have not even the tail-end
of a fact in English Zoology to communicate. I have found that even
trifling observations require, in my case, some leisure and energy, both
of which ingredients I have had none to spare, as writing my Geology
thoroughly expends both. I had always thought that I would keep a
journal and record everything, but in the way I now live I find I
observe nothing to record. Looking after my garden and trees, and
occasionally a very little walk in an idle frame of mind, fills up every
afternoon in the same manner. I am surprised that with all your parish
affairs, you have had time to do all that which you have done. I shall
be very glad to see your little work (Mr. Jenyns' 'Observations in
Natural History.' It is prefaced by an Introduction on "Habits of
observing as connected with the study of Natural History," and followed
by a "Calendar of Periodic Phenomena in Natural History," with "Remarks
on the importance of such Registers." My father seems to be alluding to
this Register in the P.S. to the letter dated October 17, 1846.) (and
proud should I have been if I could have added a single fact to it).
My work on the species question has impressed me very forcibly with
the importance of all such works as your intended one, containing what
people are pleased generally to call trifling facts. These are the facts
which make one understand the working or economy of nature. There is
one subject, on which I am very curious, and which perhaps you may throw
some light on, if you have ever thought on it; namely, what are the
checks and what the periods of life,--by which the increase of any given
species is limited. Just calculate the increase of any bird, if you
assume that only half the young are reared, and these breed: within the
NATURAL (i.e., if free from accidents) life of the parents the number
of individuals will become enormous, and I have been much surprised to
think how great destruction MUST annually or occasionally be falling on
every species, yet the means and period of such destruction is scarcely
perceived by us.

I have continued steadily reading and collecting facts on variation of
domestic animals and plants, and on the question of what are species.
I have a grand body of facts, and I think I can draw some sound
conclusions. The general conclusions at which I have slowly been driven
from a directly opposite conviction, is that species are mutable, and
that allied species are co-descendants from common stocks. I know how
much I open myself to reproach for such a conclusion, but I have at
least honestly and deliberately come to it. I shall not publish on
this subject for several years. At present I am on the Geology of
South America. I hope to pick up from your book some facts on
slight variations in structure or instincts in the animals of your
acquaintance.

Believe me, ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO L. JENYNS (REV. L. BLOMEFIELD). Down, [1845?].

My dear Jenyns,

I am very much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken in having
written me so long a note. The question of where, when, and how
the check to the increase of a given species falls appears to me
particularly interesting, and our difficulty in answering it shows how
really ignorant we are of the lives and habits of our most familiar
species. I was aware of the bare fact of old birds driving away their
young, but had never thought of the effect you so clearly point out, of
local gaps in number being thus immediately filled up. But the original
difficulty remains; for if your farmers had not killed your sparrows
and rooks, what would have become of those which now immigrate into your
parish? in the middle of England one is too far distant from the natural
limits of the rook and sparrow to suppose that the young are thus far
expelled from Cambridgeshire. The check must fall heavily at some time
of each species' life; for, if one calculates that only half the progeny
are reared and bred, how enormous is the increase! One has, however, no
business to feel so much surprise at one's ignorance, when one knows how
impossible it is without statistics to conjecture the duration of life
and percentage of deaths to births in mankind. If it could be shown that
apparently the birds of passage WHICH BREED HERE and increase, return in
the succeeding years in about the same number, whereas those that come
here for their winter and non-breeding season annually, come here with
the same numbers, but return with greatly decreased numbers, one
would know (as indeed seems probable) that the check fell chiefly on
full-grown birds in the winter season, and not on the eggs and very
young birds, which has appeared to me often the most probable period. If
at any time any remarks on this subject should occur to you, I should be
most grateful for the benefit of them.

With respect to my far distant work on species, I must have expressed
myself with singular inaccuracy if I led you to suppose that I meant
to say that my conclusions were inevitable. They have become so, after
years of weighing puzzles, to myself ALONE; but in my wildest day-dream,
I never expect more than to be able to show that there are two sides to
the question of the immutability of species, i.e. whether species are
DIRECTLY created or by intermediate laws (as with the life and death
of individuals). I did not approach the subject on the side of the
difficulty in determining what are species and what are varieties, but
(though, why I should give you such a history of my doings it would be
hard to say) from such facts as the relationship between the living
and extinct mammifers in South America, and between those living on the
Continent and on adjoining islands, such as the Galapagos. It occured
to me that a collection of all such analogous facts would throw light
either for or against the view of related species being co-descendants
from a common stock. A long searching amongst agricultural and
horticultural books and people makes me believe (I well know how
absurdly presumptuous this must appear) that I see the way in which new
varieties become exquisitely adapted to the external conditions of life
and to other surrounding beings. I am a bold man to lay myself open
to being thought a complete fool, and a most deliberate one. From the
nature of the grounds which make me believe that species are mutable in
form, these grounds cannot be restricted to the closest-allied species;
but how far they extend I cannot tell, as my reasons fall away by
degrees, when applied to species more and more remote from each other.
Pray do not think that I am so blind as not to see that there are
numerous immense difficulties in my notions, but they appear to me less
than on the common view. I have drawn up a sketch and had it copied (in
200 pages) of my conclusions; and if I thought at some future time that
you would think it worth reading, I should, of course, be most thankful
to have the criticism of so competent a critic. Excuse this very long
and egotistical and ill-written letter, which by your remarks you had
led me into, and believe me,

Yours very truly, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO L. JENYNS (BLOMEFIELD). Down, October 17th, 1846.

Dear Jenyns,

I have taken a most ungrateful length of time in thanking you for your
very kind present of your 'Observations.' But I happened to have had in
hand several other books, and have finished yours only a few days ago.
I found it very pleasant reading, and many of your facts interested me
much. I think I was more interested, which is odd, with your notes on
some of the lower animals than on the higher ones. The introduction
struck me as very good; but this is what I expected, for I well remember
being quite delighted with a preliminary essay to the first number of
the 'Annals of Natural History.' I missed one discussion, and think
myself ill-used, for I remember your saying you would make some remarks
on the weather and barometer, as a guide for the ignorant in prediction.
I had also hoped to have perhaps met with some remarks on the amount of
variation in our common species. Andrew Smith once declared he would get
some hundreds of specimens of larks and sparrows from all parts of Great
Britain, and see whether, with finest measurements, he could detect any
proportional variations in beaks or limbs, etc. This point interests me
from having lately been skimming over the absurdly opposite conclusions
of Gloger and Brehm; the one making half-a-dozen species out of every
common bird, and the other turning so many reputed species into one.
Have you ever done anything of this kind, or have you ever studied
Gloger's or Brehm's works? I was interested in your account of the
martins, for I had just before been utterly perplexed by noticing just
such a proceeding as you describe: I counted seven, one day lately,
visiting a single nest and sticking dirt on the adjoining wall. I may
mention that I once saw some squirrels eagerly splitting those little
semi-transparent spherical galls on the back of oak-leaves for the
maggot within; so that they are insectivorous. A Cychrus rostratus once
squirted into my eyes and gave me extreme pain; and I must tell you what
happened to me on the banks of the Cam, in my early entomological days:
under a piece of bark I found two Carabi (I forget which), and caught
one in each hand, when lo and behold I saw a sacred Panagaeus crux
major! I could not bear to give up either of my Carabi, and to lose
Panagaeus was out of the question; so that in despair I gently seized
one of the Carabi between my teeth, when to my unspeakable disgust and
pain the little inconsiderate beast squirted his acid down my throat,
and I lost both Carabi and Panagaeus! I was quite astonished to hear of
a terrestrial Planaria; for about a year or two ago I described in the
'Annals of Natural History' several beautifully coloured terrestrial
species of the Southern Hemisphere, and thought it quite a new fact.
By the way, you speak of a sheep with a broken leg not having flukes:
I have heard my father aver that a fever, or any SERIOUS ACCIDENT, as
a broken limb, will cause in a man all the intestinal worms to be
evacuated. Might not this possibly have been the case with the flukes in
their early state?

I hope you were none the worse for Southampton (The meeting of the
British Association.); I wish I had seen you looking rather fatter. I
enjoyed my week extremely, and it did me good. I missed you the last few
days, and we never managed to see much of each other; but there were so
many people there, that I for one hardly saw anything of any one. Once
again I thank you very cordially for your kind present, and the pleasure
it has given me, and believe me,

Ever most truly yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I have quite forgotten to say how greatly interested I was with
your discussion on the statistics of animals: when will Natural History
be so perfect that such points as you discuss will be perfectly known
about any one animal?


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Malvern, June 13 [1849].

...At last I am going to press with a small poor first-fruit of my
confounded Cirripedia, viz. the fossil pedunculate cirripedia. You ask
what effect studying species has had on my variation theories; I do not
think much--I have felt some difficulties more. On the other hand,
I have been struck (and probably unfairly from the class) with the
variability of every part in some slight degree of every species. When
the same organ is RIGOROUSLY compared in many individuals, I always find
some slight variability, and consequently that the diagnosis of species
from minute differences is always dangerous. I had thought the same
parts of the same species more resemble (than they do anyhow in
Cirripedia) objects cast in the same mould. Systematic work would be
easy were it not for this confounded variation, which, however, is
pleasant to me as a speculatist, though odious to me as a systematist.
Your remarks on the distinctness (so unpleasant to me) of the Himalayan
Rubi, willows, etc., compared with those of northern [Europe?], etc.,
are very interesting; if my rude species-sketch had any SMALL share in
leading you to these observations, it has already done good and ample
service, and may lay its bones in the earth in peace. I never heard
anything so strange as Falconer's neglect of your letters; I am
extremely glad you are cordial with him again, though it must have cost
you an effort. Falconer is a man one must love...May you prosper in
every way, my dear Hooker.

Your affectionate friend, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, Wednesday [September, n.d.].

...Many thanks for your letter received yesterday, which, as always,
set me thinking: I laughed at your attack at my stinginess in changes of
level towards Forbes (Edward Forbes, 1815-1854, born in the Isle of Man.
His best known work was his Report on the distribution of marine animals
at different depths in the Mediterranean. An important memoir of his
is referred to in my father's 'Autobiography.' He held successively the
posts of Curator to the Geological Society's Museum, and Professor of
Natural History in the Museum of Practical Geology; shortly before he
died he was appointed Professor of Natural History in the University
of Edinburgh. He seems to have impressed his contemporaries as a man of
strikingly versatile and vigorous mind. The above allusion to changes of
level refers to Forbes's tendency to explain the facts of geographical
distribution by means of an active geological imagination.), being so
liberal towards myself; but I must maintain, that I have never let down
or upheaved our mother-earth's surface, for the sake of explaining any
one phenomenon, and I trust I have very seldom done so without some
distinct evidence. So I must still think it a bold step (perhaps a
very true one) to sink into the depths of ocean, within the period of
existing species, so large a tract of surface. But there is no amount or
extent of change of level, which I am not fully prepared to admit, but
I must say I should like better evidence, than the identity of a few
plants, which POSSIBLY (I do not say probably) might have been otherwise
transported. Particular thanks for your attempt to get me a copy of
'L'Espece' (Probably Godron's essay, published by the Academy of Nancy
in 1848-49, and afterwards as a separate book in 1859.), and almost
equal thanks for your criticisms on him: I rather misdoubted him, and
felt not much inclined to take as gospel his facts. I find this one of
my greatest difficulties with foreign authors, viz. judging of their
credibility. How painfully (to me) true is your remark, that no one has
hardly a right to examine the question of species who has not minutely
described many. I was, however, pleased to hear from Owen (who is
vehemently opposed to any mutability in species), that he thought it was
a very fair subject, and that there was a mass of facts to be brought to
bear on the question, not hitherto collected. My only comfort is (as I
mean to attempt the subject), that I have dabbled in several branches
of Natural History, and seen good specific men work out my species, and
know something of geology (an indispensable union); and though I shall
get more kicks than half-pennies, I will, life serving, attempt my
work. Lamarck is the only exception, that I can think of, of an accurate
describer of species at least in the Invertebrate Kingdom, who has
disbelieved in permanent species, but he in his absurd though clever
work has done the subject harm, as has Mr. Vestiges, and, as (some
future loose naturalist attempting the same speculations will perhaps
say) has Mr. D...

C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, September 25th [1853].

My dear Hooker,

I have read your paper with great interest; it seems all very clear, and
will form an admirable introduction to the New Zealand Flora, or to any
Flora in the world. How few generalizers there are among systematists;
I really suspect there is something absolutely opposed to each other
and hostile in the two frames of mind required for systematising and
reasoning on large collections of facts. Many of your arguments appear
to me very well put, and, as far as my experience goes, the candid
way in which you discuss the subject is unique. The whole will be very
useful to me whenever I undertake my volume, though parts take the wind
very completely out of my sails; it will be all nuts to me...for I have
for some time determined to give the arguments on BOTH sides (as far as
I could), instead of arguing on the mutability side alone.

In my own Cirripedial work (by the way, thank you for the dose of soft
solder; it does one--or at least me--a great deal of good)--in my own
work I have not felt conscious that disbelieving in the mere PERMANENCE
of species has made much difference one way or the other; in some few
cases (if publishing avowedly on doctrine of non-permanence), I should
NOT have affixed names, and in some few cases should have affixed
names to remarkable varieties. Certainly I have felt it humiliating,
discussing and doubting, and examining over and over again, when in
my own mind the only doubt has been whether the form varied TO-DAY OR
YESTERDAY (not to put too fine a point on it, as Snagsby (In 'Bleak
House.') would say). After describing a set of forms as distinct
species, tearing up my MS., and making them one species, tearing that
up and making them separate, and then making them one again (which has
happened to me), I have gnashed my teeth, cursed species, and asked what
sin I had committed to be so punished. But I must confess that perhaps
nearly the same thing would have happened to me on any scheme of work.

I am heartily glad to hear your Journal (Sir J.D. Hooker's 'Himalayan
Journal.') is so much advanced; how magnificently it seems to be
illustrated! An "Oriental Naturalist," with lots of imagination and not
too much regard to facts, is just the man to discuss species! I think
your title of 'A Journal of a Naturalist in the East' very good; but
whether "in the Himalaya" would not be better, I have doubted, for the
East sounds rather vague...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [1853].

My dear Hooker,

I have no remarks at all worth sending you, nor, indeed, was it likely
that I should, considering how perfect and elaborated an essay it is.
('New Zealand Flora,' 1853.) As far as my judgment goes, it is the most
important discussion on the points in question ever published. I can say
no more. I agree with almost everything you say; but I require much time
to digest an essay of such quality. It almost made me gloomy, partly
from feeling I could not answer some points which theoretically I should
have liked to have been different, and partly from seeing SO FAR BETTER
DONE than I COULD have done, discussions on some points which I had
intended to have taken up...

I much enjoyed the slaps you have given to the provincial
species-mongers. I wish I could have been of the slightest use: I have
been deeply interested by the whole essay, and congratulate you on
having produced a memoir which I believe will be memorable. I was deep
in it when your most considerate note arrived, begging me not to hurry.
I thank Mrs. Hooker and yourself most sincerely for your wish to see me.
I will not let another summer pass without seeing you at Kew, for indeed
I should enjoy it much...

You do me really more honour than I have any claim to, putting me in
after Lyell on ups and downs. In a year or two's time, when I shall be
at my species book (if I do not break down), I shall gnash my teeth and
abuse you for having put so many hostile facts so confoundedly well.

Ever yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 26th [1854].

My dear Hooker,

I had hoped that you would have had a little breathing-time after your
Journal, but this seems to be very far from the case; and I am the
more obliged (and somewhat contrite) for the long letter received this
morning, MOST juicy with news and MOST interesting to me in many ways. I
am very glad indeed to hear of the reforms, etc., in the Royal Society.
With respect to the Club (The Philosophical Club, to which my father was
elected (as Professor Bonney is good enough to inform me) on April 24,
1854. He resigned his membership in 1864. The Club was founded in 1847.
The number of members being limited to 47, it was proposed to christen
it "the Club of 47," but the name was never adopted. The nature of the
Club may be gathered from its first rule: "The purpose of the Club is to
promote as much as possible the scientific objects of the Royal Society;
to facilitate intercourse between those Fellows who are actively engaged
in cultivating the various branches of Natural Science, and who have
contributed to its progress; to increase the attendance at the evening
meetings, and to encourage the contribution and discussion of papers."
The Club met for dinner (at first) at 6, and the chair was to be quitted
at 8.15, it being expected that members would go to the Royal Society.
Of late years the dinner has been at 6.30, the Society meeting in the
afternoon.), I am deeply interested; only two or three days ago, I
was regretting to my wife, how I was letting drop and being dropped by
nearly all my acquaintances, and that I would endeavour to go oftener
to London; I was not then thinking of the Club, which, as far as any one
thing goes, would answer my exact object in keeping up old and making
some new acquaintances. I will therefore come up to London for every
(with rare exceptions) Club-day, and then my head, I think, will allow
me on an average to go to every other meeting. But it is grievous how
often any change knocks me up. I will further pledge myself, as I told
Lyell, to resign after a year, if I did not attend pretty often, so
that I should AT WORST encumber the Club temporarily. If you can get me
elected, I certainly shall be very much pleased. Very many thanks for
answers about Glaciers. I am very glad to hear of the second Edition (Of
the Himalayan Journal.) so very soon; but am not surprised, for I
have heard of several, in our small circle, reading it with very much
pleasure. I shall be curious to hear what Humboldt will say: it will, I
should think, delight him, and meet with more praise from him than any
other book of Travels, for I cannot remember one, which has so many
subjects in common with him. What a wonderful old fellow he is...By the
way, I hope, when you go to Hitcham, towards the end of May, you will be
forced to have some rest. I am grieved to hear that all the bad symptoms
have not left Henslow; it is so strange and new to feel any uneasiness
about his health. I am particularly obliged to you for sending me
Asa Gray's letter; how very pleasantly he writes. To see his and your
caution on the species-question ought to overwhelm me in confusion and
shame; it does make me feel deuced uncomfortable...It is delightful
to hear all that he says on Agassiz: how very singular it is that so
EMINENTLY clever a man, with such IMMENSE knowledge on many branches of
Natural History, should write as he does. Lyell told me that he was so
delighted with one of his (Agassiz) lectures on progressive development,
etc., etc., that he went to him afterwards and told him, "that it was so
delightful, that he could not help all the time wishing it was true." I
seldom see a Zoological paper from North America, without observing the
impress of Agassiz's doctrines--another proof, by the way, of how great
a man he is. I was pleased and surprised to see A. Gray's remarks on
crossing, obliterating varieties, on which, as you know, I have been
collecting facts for these dozen years. How awfully flat I shall feel,
if when I get my notes together on species, etc., etc., the whole thing
explodes like an empty puff-ball. Do not work yourself to death.

Ever yours most truly, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, November 5th [1854].

My dear Hooker,

I was delighted to get your note yesterday. I congratulate you very
heartily (On the award to him of the Royal Society's Medal.), and
whether you care much or little, I rejoice to see the highest scientific
judgment-court in Great Britain recognise your claims. I do hope Mrs.
Hooker is pleased, and E. desires me particularly to send her cordial
congratulations ...I pity you from the very bottom of my heart about
your after-dinner speech, which I fear I shall not hear. Without you
have a very much greater soul than I have (and I believe that you have),
you will find the medal a pleasant little stimulus, when work goes
badly, and one ruminates that all is vanity, it is pleasant to have some
tangible proof, that others have thought something of one's labours.

Good-bye my dear Hooker, I can assure [you] that we both most truly
enjoyed your and Mrs. Hooker's visit here. Farewell.

My dear Hooker, your sincere friend, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. March 7 [1855].

...I have just finished working well at Wollaston's (Thomas Vernon
Wollaston died (in his fifty-seventh year, as I believe) on January 4,
1878. His health forcing him in early manhood to winter in the south,
he devoted himself to a study of the Coleoptera of Madeira, the Cape
de Verdes, and St. Helena, whence he deduced evidence in support of the
belief in the submerged continent of 'Atlantis.' In an obituary notice
by Mr. Rye ('Nature,' 1878) he is described as working persistently
"upon a broad conception of the science to which he was devoted," while
being at the same time "accurate, elaborate, and precise ad punctum, and
naturally of a minutely critical habit." His first scientific paper was
written when he was an undergraduate at Jesus College, Cambridge. While
at the University, he was an Associate and afterwards a Member of the
Ray Club: this is a small society which still meets once a week, and
where the undergraduate members, or Associates, receive much kindly
encouragement from their elders.) 'Insecta Maderensia': it is an
ADMIRABLE work. There is a very curious point in the astounding
proportion of Coleoptera that are apterous; and I think I have guessed
the reason, viz., that powers of flight would be injurious to insects
inhabiting a confined locality, and expose them to be blown to the sea:
to test this, I find that the insects inhabiting the Dezerte Grande, a
quite small islet, would be still more exposed to this danger, and here
the proportion of apterous insects is even considerably greater than on
Madeira Proper. Wollaston speaks of Madeira and the other Archipelagoes
as being "sure and certain witnesses of Forbes' old continent," and of
course the Entomological world implicitly follows this view. But to my
eyes it would be difficult to imagine facts more opposed to such a
view. It is really disgusting and humiliating to see directly opposite
conclusions drawn from the same facts.

I have had some correspondence with Wollaston on this and other
subjects, and I find that he coolly assumes, (1) that formerly insects
possessed greater migratory powers than now, (2) that the old land was
SPECIALLY rich in centres of creation, (3) that the uniting land was
destroyed before the special creations had time to diffuse, and (4) that
the land was broken down before certain families and genera had time
to reach from Europe or Africa the points of land in question. Are not
these a jolly lot of assumptions? and yet I shall see for the next dozen
or score of years Wollaston quoted as proving the former existence of
poor Forbes' Atlantis.

I hope I have not wearied you, but I thought you would like to hear
about this book, which strikes me as EXCELLENT in its facts, and the
author a most nice and modest man.

Most truly yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, March 19th [1855].

My dear Fox,

How long it is since we have had any communication, and I really want to
hear how the world goes with you; but my immediate object is to ask you
to observe a point for me, and as I know now you are a very busy man
with too much to do, I shall have a good chance of your doing what I
want, as it would be hopeless to ask a quite idle man. As you have a
Noah's Ark, I do not doubt that you have pigeons. (How I wish by any
chance they were fantails!) Now what I want to know is, at what age
nestling pigeons have their tail feathers sufficiently developed to be
counted. I do not think I ever saw a young pigeon. I am hard at work at
my notes collecting and comparing them, in order in some two or three
years to write a book with all the facts and arguments, which I can
collect, FOR AND VERSUS the immutability of species. I want to get the
young of our domestic breeds, to see how young, and to what degree the
differences appear. I must either breed myself (which is no amusement
but a horrid bore to me) the pigeons or buy their young; and before I go
to a seller, whom I have heard of from Yarrell, I am really anxious
to know something about their development, not to expose my excessive
ignorance, and therefore be excessively liable to be cheated and gulled.
With respect to the ONE point of the tail feathers, it is of course
in relation to the wonderful development of tail feathers in the adult
fantail. If you had any breed of poultry pure, I would beg a chicken
with exact age stated, about a week or fortnight old! To be sent in
a box by post, if you could have the heart to kill one; and secondly,
would let me pay postage...Indeed, I should be very glad to have a
nestling common pigeon sent, for I mean to make skeletons, and have
already just begun comparing wild and tame ducks. And I think the
results rather curious ("I have just been testing practically what
disuse does in reducing parts; I have made skeleton of wild and
tame duck (oh, the smell of well-boiled, high duck!!) and I find the
tame-duck wing ought, according to scale of wild prototype, to have its
two wings 360 grains in weight, but it has it only 317."--A letter to
Sir J. Hooker, 1855.), for on weighing the several bones very carefully,
when perfectly cleaned the proportional weights of the two have greatly
varied, the foot of the tame having largely increased. How I wish I
could get a little wild duck of a week old, but that I know is almost
impossible.

With respect to ourselves, I have not much to say; we have now a
terribly noisy house with the whooping cough, but otherwise are all
well. Far the greatest fact about myself is that I have at last quite
done with the everlasting barnacles. At the end of the year we had two
of our little boys very ill with fever and bronchitis, and all sorts of
ailments. Partly for amusement, and partly for change of air, we went to
London and took a house for a month, but it turned out a great failure,
for that dreadful frost just set in when we went, and all our children
got unwell, and E. and I had coughs and colds and rheumatism nearly all
the time. We had put down first on our list of things to do, to go and
see Mrs. Fox, but literally after waiting some time to see whether the
weather would not improve, we had not a day when we both could go out.

I do hope before very long you will be able to manage to pay us a visit.
Time is slipping away, and we are getting oldish. Do tell us about
yourself and all your large family.

I know you will help me IF YOU CAN with information about the young
pigeons; and anyhow do write before very long.

My dear Fox, your sincere old friend, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--Amongst all sorts of odds and ends, with which I am amusing
myself, I am comparing the seeds of the variations of plants. I had
formerly some wild cabbage seeds, which I gave to some one, was it to
you? It is a THOUSAND to one it was thrown away, if not I should be very
glad of a pinch of it.


[The following extract from a letter to Mr. Fox (March 27th, 1855)
refers to the same subject as the last letter, and gives some account
of the "species work:" "The way I shall kill young things will be to put
them under a tumbler glass with a teaspoon of ether or chloroform, the
glass being pressed down on some yielding surface, and leave them for an
hour or two, young have such power of revivication. (I have thus killed
moths and butterflies.) The best way would be to send them as you
procure them, in pasteboard chip-box by post, on which you could write
and just tie up with string; and you will REALLY make me happier by
allowing me to keep an account of postage, etc. Upon my word I can
hardly believe that ANY ONE could be so good-natured as to take such
trouble and do such a very disagreeable thing as kill babies; and I am
very sure I do not know one soul who, except yourself, would do so. I am
going to ask one thing more; should old hens of any above poultry (not
duck) die or become so old as to be USELESS, I wish you would send her
to me per rail, addressed to C. Darwin, care of Mr. Acton, Post-office,
Bromley, Kent." Will you keep this address? as shortest way for parcels.
But I do not care so much for this, as I could buy the old birds dead at
Baily to make skeletons. I should have written at once even if I had
not heard from you, to beg you not to take trouble about pigeons, for
Yarrell has persuaded me to attempt it, and I am now fitting up a place,
and have written to Baily about prices, etc., etc. SOMETIME (when you
are better) I should like very much to hear a little about your
"Little Call Duck"; why so-called? And where you got it? and what it is
like?... I was so ignorant I do not even know there were three varieties
of Dorking fowl: how do they differ?...

I forget whether I ever told you what the object of my present work
is,--it is to view all facts that I can master (eheu, eheu, how ignorant
I find I am) in Natural History (as on geographical distribution,
palaeontology, classification, hybridism, domestic animals and plants,
etc., etc., etc.) to see how far they favour or are opposed to the
notion that wild species are mutable or immutable: I mean with my utmost
power to give all arguments and facts on both sides. I have a NUMBER of
people helping me in every way, and giving me most valuable assistance;
but I often doubt whether the subject will not quite overpower me.

So much for the quasi-business part of my letter. I am very very sorry
to hear so indifferent account of your health: with your large family
your life is very precious, and I am sure with all your activity and
goodness it ought to be a happy one, or as happy as can reasonably be
expected with all the cares of futurity on one.

One cannot expect the present to be like the old Crux-major days at the
foot of those noble willow stumps, the memory of which I revere. I
now find my little entomology which I wholly owe to you, comes in very
useful. I am very glad to hear that you have given yourself a rest from
Sunday duties. How much illness you have had in your life! Farewell
my dear Fox. I assure you I thank you heartily for your proffered
assistance.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, May 7th [1855].

My dear Fox,

My correspondence has cost you a deal of trouble, though this note will
not. I found yours on my return home on Saturday after a week's work
in London. Whilst there I saw Yarrell, who told me he had carefully
examined all points in the Call Duck, and did not feel any doubt about
it being specifically identical, and that it had crossed freely with
common varieties in St. James's Park. I should therefore be very glad
for a seven-days' duckling and for one of the old birds, should one ever
die a natural death. Yarrell told me that Sabine had collected forty
varieties of the common duck!...Well, to return to business; nobody,
I am sure, could fix better for me than you the characteristic age of
little chickens; with respect to skeletons, I have feared it would be
impossible to make them, but I suppose I shall be able to measure limbs,
etc., by feeling the joints. What you say about old cocks just confirms
what I thought, and I will make my skeletons of old cocks. Should an
old wild turkey ever die, please remember me; I do not care for a baby
turkey, nor for a mastiff. Very many thanks for your offer. I have
puppies of bull-dogs and greyhound in salt, and I have had cart-horse
and race-horse young colts carefully measured. Whether I shall do any
good I doubt. I am getting out of my depth.

Most truly yours, C. DARWIN.


[An extract from a letter to Mr. Fox may find a place here, though of a
later date, viz. July, 1855]:

"Many thanks for the seven days' old white Dorking, and for the other
promised ones. I am getting quite a 'chamber of horrors,' I appreciate
your kindness even more than before; for I have done the black deed and
murdered an angelic little fantail and pouter at ten days old. I tried
chloroform and ether for the first, and though evidently a perfectly
easy death, it was prolonged; and for the second I tried putting lumps
of cyanide of potassium in a very large damp bottle, half an hour before
putting in the pigeon, and the prussic acid gas thus generated was very
quickly fatal."

A letter to Mr. Fox (May 23rd, 1855) gives the first mention of my
father's laborious piece of work on the breeding of pigeons:

"I write now to say that I have been looking at some of our mongrel
chickens, and I should say ONE WEEK OLD would do very well. The chief
points which I am, and have been for years, very curious about, is to
ascertain whether the YOUNG of our domestic breeds differ as much from
each other as do their parents, and I have no faith in anything short
of actual measurement and the Rule of Three. I hope and believe I am not
giving so much trouble without a motive of sufficient worth. I have got
my fantails and pouters (choice birds, I hope, as I paid 20 shillings
for each pair from Baily) in a grand cage and pigeon-house, and they are
a decided amusement to me, and delight to H."

In the course of my father's pigeon-fancying enterprise he necessarily
became acquainted with breeders, and was fond of relating his
experiences as a member of the Columbarian and Philoperistera Clubs,
where he met the purest enthusiasts of the "fancy," and learnt much
of the mysteries of their art. In writing to Mr. Huxley some years
afterwards, he quotes from a book on 'Pigeons' by Mr. J. Eaton, in
illustration of the "extreme attention and close observation" necessary
to be a good fancier.

"In his [Mr. Eaton's] treatise, devoted to the Almond Tumbler ALONE,
which is a sub-variety of the short-faced variety, which is a variety of
the Tumbler, as that is of the Rock-pigeon, Mr. Eaton says: 'There are
some of the young fanciers who are over-covetous, who go for all the
five properties at once [i.e., the five characteristic points which are
mainly attended to,--C.D.], they have their reward by getting nothing.'
In short, it is almost beyond the human intellect to attend to ALL the
excellencies of the Almond Tumbler!

"To be a good breeder, and to succeed in improving any breed, beyond
everything enthusiasm is required. Mr. Eaton has gained lots of prizes,
listen to him.

"'If it was possible for noblemen and gentlemen to know the amazing
amount of solace and pleasure derived from the Almond Tumbler, when they
begin to understand their (i.e., the tumbler's) properties, I should
think that scarce any nobleman or gentleman would be without their
aviaries of Almond Tumblers.'"

My father was fond of quoting this passage, and always with a tone of
fellow-feeling for the author, though, no doubt, he had forgotten
his own wonderings as a child that "every gentleman did not become an
ornithologist."--('Autobiography,' page 32.)

To Mr. W.B. Tegetmeier, the well-known writer on poultry, etc., he was
indebted for constant advice and co-operation. Their correspondence
began in 1855, and lasted to 1881, when my father wrote: "I can assure
you that I often look back with pleasure to the old days when I attended
to pigeons, fowls, etc., and when you gave me such valuable assistance.
I not rarely regret that I have had so little strength that I have not
been able to keep up old acquaintances and friendships." My father's
letters to Mr. Tegetmeier consist almost entirely of series of questions
relating to the different breeds of fowls, pigeons, etc., and are not,
therefore interesting. In reading through the pile of letters, one is
much struck by the diligence of the writer's search for facts, and it is
made clear that Mr. Tegetmeier's knowledge and judgment were completely
trusted and highly valued by him. Numerous phrases, such as "your note
is a mine of wealth to me," occur, expressing his sense of the value of
Mr. Tegetmeier's help, as well as words expressing his warm appreciation
of Mr. Tegetmeier's unstinting zeal and kindness, or his "pure and
disinterested love of science." On the subject of hive-bees and their
combs, Mr. Tegetmeier's help was also valued by my father, who wrote,
"your paper on 'Bees-cells,' read before the British Association, was
highly useful and suggestive to me."

To work out the problems on the Geographical Distributions of animals
and plants on evolutionary principles, he had to study the means by
which seeds, eggs, etc., can be transported across wide spaces of ocean.
It was this need which gave an interest to the class of experiment to
which the following letters allude.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, May 17th [1855].

My dear Fox,

You will hate the very sight of my hand-writing; but after this time I
promise I will ask for nothing more, at least for a long time. As you
live on sandy soil, have you lizards at all common? If you have, should
you think it too ridiculous to offer a reward for me for lizard's eggs
to the boys in your school; a shilling for every half-dozen, or more if
rare, till you got two or three dozen and send them to me? If snake's
eggs were brought in mistake it would be very well, for I want such
also; and we have neither lizards nor snakes about here. My object is
to see whether such eggs will float on sea water, and whether they will
keep alive thus floating for a month or two in my cellar. I am trying
experiments on transportation of all organic beings that I can; and
lizards are found on every island, and therefore I am very anxious to
see whether their eggs stand sea water. Of course this note need not be
answered, without, by a strange and favourable chance, you can some day
answer it with the eggs.

Your most troublesome friend, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. April 13th [1855].

...I have had one experiment some little time in progress, which will, I
think, be interesting, namely, seeds in salt water immersed in water of
32-33 degrees, which I have and shall long have, as I filled a great
tank with snow. When I wrote last I was going to triumph over you, for
my experiment had in a slight degree succeeded; but this, with infinite
baseness, I did not tell, in hopes that you would say that you would
eat all the plants which I could raise after immersion. It is very
aggravating that I cannot in the least remember what you did formerly
say that made me think you scoffed at the experiments vastly; for you
now seem to view the experiment like a good Christian. I have in small
bottles out of doors, exposed to variation of temperature, cress,
radish, cabbages, lettuces, carrots, and celery, and onion seed--four
great families. These, after immersion for exactly one week, have all
germinated, which I did not in the least expect (and thought how you
would sneer at me); for the water of nearly all, and of the cress
especially, smelt very badly, and the cress seed emitted a wonderful
quantity of mucus (the 'Vestiges' would have expected them to turn into
tadpoles), so as to adhere in a mass; but these seeds germinated and
grew splendidly. The germination of all (especially cress and lettuces)
has been accelerated, except the cabbages, which have come up very
irregularly, and a good many, I think, dead. One would have thought,
from their native habitat, that the cabbage would have stood well. The
Umbelliferae and onions seem to stand the salt well. I wash the seed
before planting them. I have written to the "Gardeners' Chronicle" (A
few words asking for information. The results were published in the
'Gardeners' Chronicle,' May 26, November 24, 1855. In the same year
(page 789) he sent a P.S. to his former paper, correcting a misprint and
adding a few words on the seeds of the Leguminosae. A fuller paper on
the germination of seeds after treatment in salt water, appeared in the
'Linnaean Soc. Journal,' 1857, page 130.), though I doubt whether it was
worth while. If my success seems to make it worth while, I will send a
seed list, to get you to mark some different classes of seeds. To-day I
replant the same seeds as above after fourteen days' immersion. As many
sea-currents go a mile an hour, even in a week they might be transported
168 miles; the Gulf Stream is said to go fifty and sixty miles a day. So
much and too much on this head; but my geese are always swans...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [April 14th, 1855.]

...You are a good man to confess that you expected the cress would be
killed in a week, for this gives me a nice little triumph. The children
at first were tremendously eager, and asked me often, "whether I should
beat Dr. Hooker!" The cress and lettuce have just vegetated well after
twenty-one days' immersion. But I will write no more, which is a
great virtue in me; for it is to me a very great pleasure telling you
everything I do.

...If you knew some of the experiments (if they may be so-called) which
I am trying, you would have a good right to sneer, for they are so
ABSURD even in MY opinion that I dare not tell you.

Have not some men a nice notion of experimentising? I have had a letter
telling me that seeds MUST have GREAT power of resisting salt water, for
otherwise how could they get to islands? This is the true way to solve a
problem!


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1855].

My dear Hooker,

You have been a very good man to exhale some of your satisfaction in
writing two notes to me; you could not have taken a better line in
my opinion; but as for showing your satisfaction in confounding my
experiments, I assure you I am quite enough confounded--those horrid
seeds, which, as you truly observe, if they sink they won't float.

I have written to Scoresby and have had a rather dry answer, but very
much to the purpose, and giving me no hopes of any law unknown to me
which might arrest their everlasting descent into the deepest depths of
the ocean. By the way it was very odd, but I talked to Col. Sabine for
half an hour on the subject, and could not make him see with respect to
transportal the difficulty of the sinking question! The bore is, if
the confounded seeds will sink, I have been taking all this trouble in
salting the ungrateful rascals for nothing.

Everything has been going wrong with me lately; the fish at the
Zoological Society ate up lots of soaked seeds, and in imagination
they had in my mind been swallowed, fish and all, by a heron, had been
carried a hundred miles, been voided on the banks of some other lake and
germinated splendidly, when lo and behold, the fish ejected vehemently,
and with disgust equal to my own, ALL the seeds from their mouths. (In
describing these troubles to Mr. Fox, my father wrote:--"All nature is
perverse and will not do as I wish it; and just at present I wish I had
my old barnacles to work at, and nothing new." The experiment ultimately
succeeded, and he wrote to Sir J. Hooker:--"I find fish will greedily
eat seeds of aquatic grasses, and that millet-seed put into fish and
given to a stork, and then voided, will germinate. So this is the
nursery rhyme of 'this is the stick that beats the pig,' etc., etc.,")

But I am not going to give up the floating yet: in first place I must
try fresh seeds, though of course it seems far more probable that they
will sink; and secondly, as a last resource, I must believe in the pod
or even whole plant or branch being washed into the sea; with floods and
slips and earthquakes; this must continually be happening, and if kept
wet, I fancy the pods, etc. etc., would not open and shed their seeds.
Do try your Mimosa seed at Kew.

I had intended to have asked you whether the Mimosa scandens and
Guilandina bonduc grows at Kew, to try fresh seeds. R. Brown tells me
he believes four W. Indian seeds have been washed on shores of Europe.
I was assured at Keeling Island that seeds were not rarely washed
on shore: so float they must and shall! What a long yarn I have been
spinning.

If you have several of the Loffoden seeds, do soak some in tepid water,
and get planted with the utmost care: this is an experiment after my own
heart, with chances 1000 to 1 against its success.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 11th [1855].

My dear Hooker,--I have just received your note. I am most sincerely
and heartily glad at the news (The appointment of Sir J.D. Hooker as
Assistant Director of the Royal Gardens at Kew.) it contains, and so is
my wife. Though the income is but a poor one, yet the certainty, I hope,
is satisfactory to yourself and Mrs. Hooker. As it must lead in future
years to the Directorship, I do hope you look at it, as a piece of good
fortune. For my own taste I cannot fancy a pleasanter position, than
the Head of such a noble and splendid place; far better, I should
think, than a Professorship in a great town. The more I think of it, the
gladder I am. But I will say no more; except that I hope Mrs. Hooker is
pretty well pleased...

As the "Gardeners' Chronicle" put in my question, and took notice of it,
I think I am bound to send, which I had thought of doing next week, my
first report to Lindley to give him the option of inserting it; but I
think it likely that he may not think it fit for a Gardening periodical.
When my experiments are ended (should the results appear worthy) and
should the 'Linnean Journal' not object to the previous publication of
imperfect and provisional reports, I should be DELIGHTED to insert the
final report there; for it has cost me so much trouble, that I should
think that probably the result was worthy of more permanent record than
a newspaper; but I think I am bound to send it first to Lindley.

I begin to think the floating question more serious than the germinating
one; and am making all the inquiries which I can on the subject, and
hope to get some little light on it...

I hope you managed a good meeting at the Club. The Treasurership must be
a plague to you, and I hope you will not be Treasurer for long: I know I
would much sooner give up the Club than be its Treasurer.

Farewell, Mr. Assistant Director and dear friend, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. June 5th, 1855.

...Miss Thorley (A lady who was for many years a governess in the
family.) and I are doing A LITTLE BOTANICAL WORK! for our amusement, and
it does amuse me very much, viz., making a collection of all the plants,
which grow in a field, which has been allowed to run waste for fifteen
years, but which before was cultivated from time immemorial; and we
are also collecting all the plants in an adjoining and SIMILAR but
cultivated field; just for the fun of seeing what plants have survived
or died out. Hereafter we shall want a bit of help in naming puzzlers.
How dreadfully difficult it is to name plants.

What a REMARKABLY nice and kind letter Dr. A. Gray has sent me in answer
to my troublesome queries; I retained your copy of his 'Manual' till I
heard from him, and when I have answered his letter, I will return it to
you.

I thank you much for Hedysarum: I do hope it is not very precious,
for as I told you it is for probably a MOST foolish purpose. I read
somewhere that no plant closes its leaves so promptly in darkness, and I
want to cover it up daily for half an hour, and see if I can teach it
to close by itself, or more easily than at first in darkness...I cannot
make out why you would prefer a continental transmission, as I think
you do, to carriage by sea. I should have thought you would have been
pleased at as many means of transmission as possible. For my own pet
theoretic notions, it is quite indifferent whether they are transmitted
by sea or land, as long as some tolerably probable way is shown. But it
shocks my philosophy to create land, without some other and independent
evidence. Whenever we meet, by a very few words I should, I think, more
clearly understand your views...

I have just made out my first grass, hurrah! hurrah! I must confess that
fortune favours the bold, for, as good luck would have it, it was the
easy Anthoxanthum odoratum: nevertheless it is a great discovery; I
never expected to make out a grass in all my life, so hurrah! It has
done my stomach surprising good...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, [June?] 15th, [1855].

My dear Hooker,

I just write one line to say that the Hedysarum is come QUITE SAFELY,
and thank you for it.

You cannot imagine what amusement you have given me by naming those
three grasses: I have just got paper to dry and collect all grasses. If
ever you catch quite a beginner, and want to give him a taste of Botany,
tell him to make a perfect list of some little field or wood. Both Miss
Thorley and I agree that it gives a really uncommon interest to the
work, having a nice little definite world to work on, instead of the
awful abyss and immensity of all British Plants.

Adios. I was really consummately impudent to express my opinion "on the
retrograde step" ("To imagine such enormous geological changes within
the period of the existence of now living beings, on no other ground but
to account for their distribution, seems to me, in our present state
of ignorance on the means of transportal, an almost retrograde step
in science."--Extract from the paper on 'Salt Water and Seeds' in
"Gardeners' Chronicle", May 26, 1855.), and I deserved a good snub,
and upon reflection I am very glad you did not answer me in "Gardeners'
Chronicle".

I have been VERY MUCH interested with the Florula. (Godron's 'Florula
Juvenalis,' which gives an interesting account of plants introduced in
imported wool.)


[Writing on June 5th to Sir J.D. Hooker, my father mentions a letter
from Dr. Asa Gray. The letter referred to was an answer to the
following:]


CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. (The well-known American Botanist. My
father's friendship with Dr. Gray began with the correspondence of which
the present is the first letter. An extract from a letter to Sir J.
Hooker, 1857, shows that my father's strong personal regard for Dr. Gray
had an early origin: "I have been glad to see A. Gray's letters; there
is always something in them that shows that he is a very lovable man.")
Down, April 25th [1855].

My dear Sir,

I hope that you will remember that I had the pleasure of being
introduced to you at Kew. I want to beg a great favour of you, for which
I well know I can offer no apology. But the favour will not, I think,
cause you much trouble, and will greatly oblige me. As I am no botanist,
it will seem so absurd to you my asking botanical questions; that I
may premise that I have for several years been collecting facts on
"variation," and when I find that any general remark seems to hold good
amongst animals, I try to test it in Plants. [Here follows a request for
information on American Alpine plants, and a suggestion as to publishing
on the subject.] I can assure you that I perceive how presumptuous it is
in me, not a botanist, to make even the most trifling suggestion to such
a botanist as yourself; but from what I saw and have heard of you from
our dear and kind friend Hooker, I hope and think you will forgive me,
and believe me, with much respect,

Dear sir, yours very faithfully, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. Down, June 8th [1855].

My dear Sir,

I thank you cordially for your remarkably kind letter of the 22d. ult.,
and for the extremely pleasant and obliging manner in which you have
taken my rather troublesome questions. I can hardly tell you how much
your list of Alpine plants has interested me, and I can now in some
degree picture to myself the plants of your Alpine summits. The new
edition of your Manual is CAPITAL news for me. I know from your preface
how pressed you are for room, but it would take no space to append (Eu)
in brackets to any European plant, and, as far as I am concerned,
this would answer every purpose. (This suggestion Dr. Gray adopted in
subsequent editions.) From my own experience, whilst making out English
plants in our manuals, it has often struck me how much interest it would
give if some notion of their range had been given; and so, I cannot
doubt, your American inquirers and beginners would much like to know
which of their plants were indigenous and which European. Would it not
be well in the Alpine plants to append the very same addition which you
have now sent me in MS.? though here, owing to your kindness, I do not
speak selfishly, but merely pro bono Americano publico. I presume it
would be too troublesome to give in your manual the habitats of those
plants found west of the Rocky Mountains, and likewise those found
in Eastern Asia, taking the Yenesei (?),--which, if I remember right,
according to Gmelin, is the main partition line of Siberia. Perhaps
Siberia more concerns the northern Flora of North America. The ranges of
plants to the east and west, viz., whether most found are in Greenland
and Western Europe, or in E. Asia, appears to me a very interesting
point as tending to show whether the migration has been eastward or
westward. Pray believe me that I am most entirely conscious that
the ONLY USE of these remarks is to show a botanist what points a
non-botanist is curious to learn; for I think every one who studies
profoundly a subject often becomes unaware [on] what points the ignorant
require information. I am so very glad that you think of drawing up
some notice on your geographical distribution, for the air of the Manual
strikes me as in some points better adapted for comparison with Europe
than that of the whole of North America. You ask me to state definitely
some of the points on which I much wish for information; but I really
hardly can, for they are so vague; and I rather wish to see what results
will come out from comparisons, than have as yet defined objects. I
presume that, like other botanists, you would give, for your area, the
proportion (leaving out introduced plants) to the whole of the great
leading families: this is one point I had intended (and, indeed, have
done roughly) to tabulate from your book, but of course I could
have done it only VERY IMPERFECTLY. I should also, of course, have
ascertained the proportion, to the whole Flora, of the European plants
(leaving out introduced) AND OF THE SEPARATE GREAT FAMILIES, in order to
speculate on means of transportal. By the way, I ventured to send a few
days ago a copy of the "Gardeners' Chronicle" with a short report by me
of some trifling experiments which I have been trying on the power of
seeds to withstand sea water. I do not know whether it has struck you,
but it has me, that it would be advisable for botanists to give in WHOLE
NUMBERS, as well as in the lowest fraction, the proportional numbers of
the families, thus I make out from your Manual that of the INDIGENOUS
plants the proportion of the Umbelliferae are 36/1798 = 1/49; for,
without one knows the WHOLE numbers, one cannot judge how really
close the numbers of the plants of the same family are in two distant
countries; but very likely you may think this superfluous. Mentioning
these proportional numbers, I may give you an instance of the sort of
points, and how vague and futile they often are, which I ATTEMPT to work
out...; reflecting on R. Brown's and Hooker's remark, that near identity
of proportional numbers of the great families in two countries, shows
probably that they were once continuously united, I thought I would
calculate the proportions of, for instance, the INTRODUCED Compositae in
Great Britain to all the introduced plants, and the result was, 10/92 =
1/9.2. In our ABORIGINAL or indigenous flora the proportion is 1/10; and
in many other cases I found an equally striking correspondence. I then
took your Manual, and worked out the same question; here I find in the
Compositae an almost equally striking correspondence, viz. 24/206 = 1/8
in the introduced plants, and 223/1798 = 1/8 in the indigenous; but when
I came to the other families I found the proportion entirely different,
showing that the coincidences in the British Flora were probably
accidental!

You will, I presume, give the proportion of the species to the genera,
i.e., show on an average how many species each genus contains; though I
have done this for myself.

If it would not be too troublesome, do you not think it would be very
interesting, and give a very good idea of your Flora, to divide the
species into three groups, viz., (a) species common to the old world,
stating numbers common to Europe and Asia; (b) indigenous species, but
belonging to genera found in the old world; and (c) species belonging
to genera confined to America or the New World. To make (according to my
ideas) perfection perfect, one ought to be told whether there are other
cases, like Erica, of genera common in Europe or in Old World not found
in your area. But honestly I feel that it is quite ridiculous my writing
to you at such length on the subject; but, as you have asked me, I do it
gratefully, and write to you as I should to Hooker, who often laughs at
me unmercifully, and I am sure you have better reason to do so.

There is one point on which I am MOST anxious for information, and I
mention it with the greatest hesitation, and only in the FULL BELIEF
that you will believe me that I have not the folly and presumption
to hope for a second that you will give it, without you can with very
little trouble. The point can at present interest no one but myself,
which makes the case wholly different from geographical distribution.
The only way in which, I think, you possibly could do it with little
trouble would be to bear in mind, whilst correcting your proof-sheets
of the Manual, my question and put a cross or mark to the species, and
whenever sending a parcel to Hooker to let me have such old sheets. But
this would give you the trouble of remembering my question, and I can
hardly hope or expect that you will do it. But I will just mention what
I want; it is to have marked the "close species" in a Flora, so as
to compare in DIFFERENT Floras whether the same genera have "close
species," and for other purposes too vague to enumerate. I have
attempted, by Hooker's help, to ascertain in a similar way whether the
different species of the same genera in distant quarters of the globe
are variable or present varieties. The definition I should give of a
"CLOSE SPECIES" was one that YOU thought specifically distinct, but
which you could conceive some other GOOD botanist might think only
a race or variety; or, again, a species that you had trouble, though
having opportunities of knowing it well, in discriminating from some
other species. Supposing that you were inclined to be so very kind as
to do this, and could (which I do not expect) spare the time, as I have
said, a mere cross to each such species in any useless proof-sheets
would give me the information desired, which, I may add, I know must be
vague.

How can I apologise enough for all my presumption and the extreme length
of this letter? The great good nature of your letter to me has been
partly the cause, so that, as is too often the case in this world, you
are punished for your good deeds. With hearty thanks, believe me,

Yours very truly and gratefully, CH. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 18th [July, 1855].

...I think I am getting a MILD case about Charlock seed (In the
"Gardeners' Chronicle", 1855, page 758, appeared a notice (half a column
in length) by my father on the "Vitality of Seeds." The facts related
refer to the "Sand-walk"; the wood was planted in 1846 on a piece of
pasture land laid down as grass in 1840. In 1855, on the soil being dug
in several places, Charlock (Brassica sinapistrum) sprang up freely.
The subject continued to interest him, and I find a note dated July
2nd, 1874, in which my father recorded that forty-six plants of Charlock
sprang up in that year over a space (14 x 7 feet) which had been dug
to a considerable depth.); but just as about salting, ill-luck to it, I
cannot remember how many years you would allow that Charlock seed might
live in the ground. Next time you write, show a bold face, and say in
how many years, you think, Charlock seed would probably all be dead. A
man told me the other day of, as I thought, a splendid instance,--and
SPLENDID it was, for according to his evidence the seed came up alive
out of the LOWER PART of the LONDON CLAY!! I disgusted him by telling
him that Palms ought to have come up.

You ask how far I go in attributing organisms to a common descent; I
answer I know not; the way in which I intend treating the subject, is
to show (AS FAR AS I CAN) the facts and arguments for and against the
common descent of the species of the same genus; and then show how
far the same arguments tell for or against forms, more and more widely
different: and when we come to forms of different orders and classes,
there remain only some such arguments as those which can perhaps be
deduced from similar rudimentary structures, and very soon not an
argument is left.


[The following extract from a letter to Mr. Fox [October, 1855 (In this
year he published ('Phil. Mag.' x.) a paper 'On the power of icebergs
to make rectilinear uniformly-directed grooves across a submarine
undulatory surface.'") gives a brief mention of the last meeting of the
British Association which he attended:] "I really have no news: the
only thing we have done for a long time, was to go to Glasgow; but the
fatigue was to me more than it was worth, and E. caught a bad cold. On
our return we stayed a single day at Shrewsbury, and enjoyed seeing the
old place. I saw a little of Sir Philip (Sir P. Egerton was a neighbour
of Mr. Fox.) (whom I liked much), and he asked me "why on earth I
instigated you to rob his poultry-yard?' The meeting was a good one, and
the Duke of Argyll spoke excellently."]




CHAPTER 1.XII. -- THE UNFINISHED BOOK.

MAY 1856 TO JUNE 1858.

[In the Autobiographical chapter (page 69,) my father wrote:--"Early in
1856 Lyell advised me to write out my views pretty fully, and I began at
once to do so on a scale three or four times as extensive as that which
was afterwards followed in my 'Origin of Species;' yet it was only an
abstract of the materials which I had collected." The letters in the
present chapter are chiefly concerned with the preparation of this
unfinished book.

The work was begun on May 14th, and steadily continued up to June 1858,
when it was interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Wallace's MS. During the
two years which we are now considering he wrote ten chapters (that is
about one-half) of the projected book. He remained for the most part at
home, but paid several visits to Dr. Lane's Water-Cure Establishment
at Moor Park, during one of which he made a pilgrimage to the shrine of
Gilbert White at Selborne.]


LETTERS.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL May 3 [1856].

...With respect to your suggestion of a sketch of my views, I hardly
know what to think, but will reflect on it, but it goes against my
prejudices. To give a fair sketch would be absolutely impossible, for
every proposition requires such an array of facts. If I were
to do anything, it could only refer to the main agency of
change--selection--and perhaps point out a very few of the leading
features, which countenance such a view, and some few of the main
difficulties. But I do not know what to think; I rather hate the idea of
writing for priority, yet I certainly should be vexed if any one were
to publish my doctrines before me. Anyhow, I thank you heartily for
your sympathy. I shall be in London next week, and I will call on you on
Thursday morning for one hour precisely, so as not to lose much of
your time and my own; but will you let me this time come as early as 9
o'clock, for I have much which I must do in the morning in my strongest
time? Farewell, my dear old patron.

Yours, C. DARWIN.

By the way, THREE plants have come up out of the earth, perfectly
enclosed in the roots of the trees. And twenty-nine plants in the
table-spoonful of mud, out of the little pond; Hooker was surprised at
this, and struck with it, when I showed him how much mud I had scraped
off one duck's feet.

If I did publish a short sketch, where on earth should I publish it?

If I do NOT hear, I shall understand that I may come from 9 to 10 on
Thursday.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. May 9th, [1856].

...I very much want advice and TRUTHFUL consolation if you can give
it. I had a good talk with Lyell about my species work, and he urges
me strongly to publish something. I am fixed against any periodical
or Journal, as I positively will NOT expose myself to an Editor or a
Council, allowing a publication for which they might be abused. If I
publish anything it must be a VERY THIN and little volume, giving
a sketch of my views and difficulties; but it is really dreadfully
unphilosophical to give a resume, without exact references, of an
unpublished work. But Lyell seemed to think I might do this, at the
suggestion of friends, and on the ground, which I might state, that I
had been at work for eighteen (The interval of eighteen years, from 1837
when he began to collect facts, would bring the date of this letter to
1855, not 1856, nevertheless the latter seems the more probable date.)
years, and yet could not publish for several years, and especially as
I could point out difficulties which seemed to me to require especial
investigation. Now what think you? I should be really grateful for
advice. I thought of giving up a couple of months and writing such a
sketch, and trying to keep my judgment open whether or no to publish
it when completed. It will be simply impossible for me to give exact
references; anything important I should state on the authority of the
author generally; and instead of giving all the facts on which I ground
my opinion, I could give by memory only one or two. In the Preface I
would state that the work could not be considered strictly scientific,
but a mere sketch or outline of a future work in which full references,
etc. should be given. Eheu, eheu, I believe I should sneer at any one
else doing this, and my only comfort is, that I TRULY never dreamed
of it, till Lyell suggested it, and seems deliberately to think it
advisable.

I am in a peck of troubles and do pray forgive me for troubling you.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. May 11th [1856].

...Now for a MORE IMPORTANT! subject, viz., my own self: I am extremely
glad you think well of a separate "Preliminary Essay" (i.e., if anything
whatever is published; for Lyell seemed rather to doubt on this head)
(The meaning of the sentence in parentheses is obscure.); but I cannot
bear the idea of BEGGING some Editor and Council to publish, and then
perhaps to have to APOLOGISE humbly for having led them into a scrape.
In this one respect I am in the state which, according to a very wise
saying of my father's, is the only fit state for asking advice, viz.,
with my mind firmly made up, and then, as my father used to say, GOOD
advice was very comfortable, and it was easy to reject BAD advice. But
Heaven knows I am not in this state with respect to publishing at all
any preliminary essay. It yet strikes me as quite unphilosophical
to publish results without the full details which have lead to such
results.

It is a melancholy, and I hope not quite true view of yours that facts
will prove anything, and are therefore superfluous! But I have rather
exaggerated, I see, your doctrine. I do not fear being tied down
to error, i.e., I feel pretty sure I should give up anything false
published in the preliminary essay, in my larger work; but I may thus,
it is very true, do mischief by spreading error, which as I have often
heard you say is much easier spread than corrected. I confess I lean
more and more to at least making the attempt and drawing up a sketch
and trying to keep my judgment, whether to publish, open. But I always
return to my fixed idea that it is dreadfully unphilosophical to publish
without full details. I certainly think my future work in full would
profit by hearing what my friends or critics (if reviewed) thought of
the outline.

To any one but you I should apologise for such long discussion on so
personal an affair; but I believe, and indeed you have proved it by the
trouble you have taken, that this would be superfluous.

Yours truly obliged, CH. DARWIN.

P.S. What you say (for I have just re-read your letter) that the Essay
might supersede and take away all novelty and value from any future
larger Book, is very true; and that would grieve me beyond everything.
On the other hand (again from Lyell's urgent advice), I published a
preliminary sketch of the Coral Theory, and this did neither good nor
harm. I begin MOST HEARTILY to wish that Lyell had never put this idea
of an Essay into my head.


FROM A LETTER TO SIR C. LYELL [July, 1856].

"I am delighted that I may say (with absolute truth) that my essay
is published at your suggestion, but I hope it will not need so much
apology as I at first thought; for I have resolved to make it nearly as
complete as my present materials allow. I cannot put in all which you
suggest, for it would appear too conceited."


FROM A LETTER TO W.D. FOX. Down, June 14th [1856].

"...What you say about my Essay, I dare say is very true; and it gave me
another fit of the wibber-gibbers: I hope that I shall succeed in making
it modest. One great motive is to get information on the many points
on which I want it. But I tremble about it, which I should not do, if
I allowed some three or four more years to elapse before publishing
anything..."


[The following extracts from letters to Mr. Fox are worth giving, as
showing how great was the accumulation of material which now had to be
dealt with.

June 14th [1856].

"Very many thanks for the capital information on cats; I see I had
blundered greatly, but I know I had somewhere your original notes; but
my notes are so numerous during nineteen years' collection, that it
would take me at least a year to go over and classify them."

November 1856.

"Sometimes I fear I shall break down, for my subject gets bigger and
bigger with each month's work."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL Down, 16th [June, 1856].

My dear Lyell,

I am going to do the most impudent thing in the world. But my blood gets
hot with passion and turns cold alternately at the geological strides,
which many of your disciples are taking.

Here, poor Forbes made a continent to [i.e., extending to] North America
and another (or the same) to the Gulf weed; Hooker makes one from New
Zealand to South America and round the World to Kerguelen Land. Here
is Wollaston speaking of Madeira and P. Santo "as the sure and certain
witnesses of a former continent." Here is Woodward writes to me, if you
grant a continent over 200 or 300 miles of ocean depths (as if that was
nothing), why not extend a continent to every island in the Pacific and
Atlantic Oceans? And all this within the existence of recent species! If
you do not stop this, if there be a lower region for the punishment of
geologists, I believe, my great master, you will go there. Why, your
disciples in a slow and creeping manner beat all the old Catastrophists
who ever lived. You will live to be the great chief of the
Catastrophists.

There, I have done myself a great deal of good, and have exploded my
passion.

So my master, forgive me, and believe me, ever yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S. Don't answer this, I did it to ease myself.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [June] 17th, 1856.

...I have been very deeply interested by Wollaston's book ('The
Variation of Species,' 1856.), though I differ GREATLY from many of his
doctrines. Did you ever read anything so rich, considering how very
far he goes, as his denunciations against those who go further: "Most
mischievous," "absurd," "unsound." Theology is at the bottom of some
of this. I told him he was like Calvin burning a heretic. It is a very
valuable and clever book in my opinion. He has evidently read very
little out of his own line. I urged him to read the New Zealand essay.
His Geology also is rather eocene, as I told him. In fact I wrote most
frankly; he says he is sure that ultra-honesty is my characteristic:
I do not know whether he meant it as a sneer; I hope not. Talking
of eocene geology, I got so wrath about the Atlantic continent, more
especially from a note from Woodward (who has published a capital book
on shells), who does not seem to doubt that every island in the Pacific
and Atlantic are the remains of continents, submerged within period of
existing species, that I fairly exploded, and wrote to Lyell to protest,
and summed up all the continents created of late years by Forbes (the
head sinner!) YOURSELF, Wollaston, and Woodward, and a pretty nice
little extension of land they make altogether! I am fairly rabid on the
question and therefore, if not wrong already, am pretty sure to become
so...

I have enjoyed your note much. Adios, C. DARWIN.

P.S. [June] 18th. Lyell has written me a CAPITAL letter on your side,
which ought to upset me entirely, but I cannot say it does quite.

Though I must try and cease being rabid and try to feel humble, and
allow you all to make continents, as easily as a cook does pancakes.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, June 25th [1856].

My dear Lyell,

I will have the following tremendous letter copied to make the reading
easier, and as I want to keep a copy.

As you say you would like to hear my reasons for being most unwilling
to believe in the continental extensions of late authors, I gladly write
them, as, without I am convinced of my error, I shall have to give them
condensed in my essay, when I discuss single and multiple creation; I
shall therefore be particularly glad to have your general opinion on
them. I may QUITE LIKELY have persuaded myself in my wrath that there
is more in them than there is. If there was much more reason to admit a
continental extension in any one or two instances (as in Madeira) than
in other cases, I should feel no difficulty whatever. But if on account
of European plants, and littoral sea shells, it is thought necessary to
join Madeira to the mainland, Hooker is quite right to join New Holland
to New Zealand, and Auckland Island (and Raoul Island to N.E.), and
these to S. America and the Falklands, and these to Tristan d'Acunha,
and these to Kerguelen Land; thus making, either strictly at the same
time, or at different periods, but all within the life of recent
beings, an almost circumpolar belt of land. So again Galapagos and Juan
Fernandez must be joined to America; and if we trust to littoral see
shells, the Galapagos must have been joined to the Pacific Islands (2400
miles distant) as well as to America, and as Woodward seems to think
all the islands in the Pacific into a magnificent continent; also
the islands in the Southern Indian Ocean into another continent, with
Madagascar and Africa, and perhaps India. In the North Atlantic, Europe
will stretch half-way across the ocean to the Azores, and further north
right across. In short, we must suppose probably, half the present ocean
was land within the period of living organisms. The Globe within this
period must have had a quite different aspect. Now the only way to
test this, that I can see, is to consider whether the continents have
undergone within this same period such wonderful permutations. In all
North and South and Central America, we have both recent and miocene (or
eocene) shells, quite distinct on the opposite sides, and hence I cannot
doubt that FUNDAMENTALLY America has held its place since at least, the
miocene period. In Africa almost all the living shells are distinct on
the opposite sides of the inter-tropical regions, short as the distance
is compared to the range of marine mollusca, in uninterrupted seas;
hence I infer that Africa has existed since our present species were
created. Even the isthmus of Suez and the Aralo-Caspian basin have had a
great antiquity. So I imagine, from the tertiary deposits, has India.
In Australia the great fauna of extinct marsupials shows that before the
present mammals appeared, Australia was a separate continent. I do not
for one second doubt that very large portions of all these continents
have undergone GREAT changes of level within this period, but yet I
conclude that fundamentally they stood as barriers in the sea, where
they now stand; and therefore I should require the weightiest evidence
to make me believe in such immense changes within the period of living
organisms in our oceans, where, moreover, from the great depths, the
changes must have been vaster in a vertical sense.

SECONDLY.

Submerge our present continents, leaving a few mountain peaks as
islands, and what will the character of the islands be,--Consider
that the Pyrenees, Sierra Nevada, Apennines, Alps, Carpathians, are
non-volcanic, Etna and Caucasus, volcanic. In Asia, Altai and Himalaya,
I believe non-volcanic. In North Africa the non-volcanic, as I imagine,
Alps of Abyssinia and of the Atlas. In South Africa, the Snow Mountains.
In Australia, the non-volcanic Alps. In North America, the White
Mountains, Alleghanies and Rocky Mountains--some of the latter alone,
I believe, volcanic. In South America to the east, the non-volcanic
[Silla?] of Caracas, and Itacolumi of Brazil, further south the Sierra
Ventanas, and in the Cordilleras, many volcanic but not all. Now compare
these peaks with the oceanic islands; as far as known all are volcanic,
except St. Paul's (a strange bedevilled rock), and the Seychelles,
if this latter can be called oceanic, in the line of Madagascar; the
Falklands, only 500 miles off, are only a shallow bank; New Caledonia,
hardly oceanic, is another exception. This argument has to me great
weight. Compare on a Geographical map, islands which, we have SEVERAL
reasons to suppose, were connected with mainland, as Sardinia, and how
different it appears. Believing, as I am inclined, that continents as
continents, and oceans as oceans, are of immense antiquity--I should
say that if any of the existing oceanic islands have any relation of any
kind to continents, they are forming continents; and that by the time
they could form a continent, the volcanoes would be denuded to their
cores, leaving peaks of syenite, diorite, or porphyry. But have we
nowhere any last wreck of a continent, in the midst of the ocean? St.
Paul's Rock, and such old battered volcanic islands, as St. Helena, may
be; but I think we can see some reason why we should have less evidence
of sinking than of rising continents (if my view in my Coral volume has
any truth in it, viz.: that volcanic outbursts accompany rising areas),
for during subsidence there will be no compensating agent at work, in
rising areas there will be the ADDITIONAL element of outpoured volcanic
matter.

THIRDLY.

Considering the depth of the ocean, I was, before I got your letter,
inclined vehemently to dispute the vast amount of subsidence, but I
must strike my colours. With respect to coral reefs, I carefully guarded
against its being supposed that a continent was indicated by the groups
of atolls. It is difficult to guess, as it seems to me, the amount of
subsidence indicated by coral reefs; but in such large areas as the Lowe
Archipelago, the Marshall Archipelago, and Laccadive group, it would,
judging, from the heights of existing oceanic archipelagoes, be odd, if
some peaks of from 8000 to 10,000 feet had not been buried. Even after
your letter a suspicion crossed me whether it would be fair to argue
from subsidences in the middle of the greatest oceans to continents; but
refreshing my memory by talking with Ramsay in regard to the probable
thickness in one vertical line of the Silurian and carboniferous
formation, it seems there must have been AT LEAST 10,000 feet of
subsidence during these formations in Europe and North America, and
therefore during the continuance of nearly the same set of organic
beings. But even 12,000 feet would not be enough for the Azores, or
for Hooker's continent; I believe Hooker does not infer a continuous
continent, but approximate groups of islands, with, if we may judge
from existing continents, not PROFOUNDLY deep sea between them; but
the argument from the volcanic nature of nearly every existing oceanic
island tell against such supposed groups of islands,--for I presume he
does not suppose a mere chain of volcanic islands belting the southern
hemisphere.

FOURTHLY.

The supposed continental extensions do not seem to me, perfectly to
account for all the phenomena of distribution on islands; as the absence
of mammals and Batrachians; the absence of certain great groups of
insects on Madeira, and of Acaciae and Banksias, etc., in New Zealand;
the paucity of plants in some cases, etc. Not that those who believe in
various accidental means of dispersal, can explain most of these cases;
but they may at least say that these facts seem hardly compatible with
former continuous land.

FINALLY.

For these several reasons, and especially considering it certain
(in which you will agree) that we are extremely ignorant of means of
dispersal, I cannot avoid thinking that Forbes' 'Atlantis,' was
an ill-service to science, as checking a close study of means of
dissemination. I shall be really grateful to hear, as briefly as you
like, whether these arguments have any weight with you, putting yourself
in the position of an honest judge. I told Hooker that I was going to
write to you on this subject; and I should like him to read this; but
whether he or you will think it worth time and postage remains to be
proved.

Yours most truly, CHARLES DARWIN.


[On July 8th he wrote to Sir Charles Lyell.

"I am sorry you cannot give any verdict on Continental extensions; and
I infer that you think my argument of not much weight against such
extensions. I know I wish I could believe so."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. Down, July 20th [1856].

...It is not a little egotistical, but I should like to tell you (and
I do not THINK I have) how I view my work. Nineteen years (!) ago it
occurred to me that whilst otherwise employed on Natural History,
I might perhaps do good if I noted any sort of facts bearing on the
question of the origin of species, and this I have since been doing.
Either species have been independently created, or they have descended
from other species, like varieties from one species. I think it can
be shown to be probable that man gets his most distinct varieties by
preserving such as arise best worth keeping and destroying the others,
but I should fill a quire if I were to go on. To be brief, I ASSUME that
species arise like our domestic varieties with MUCH extinction; and
then test this hypothesis by comparison with as many general and pretty
well-established propositions as I can find made out,--in geographical
distribution, geological history, affinities, etc., etc. And it seems
to me that, SUPPOSING that such hypothesis were to explain such general
propositions, we ought, in accordance with the common way of following
all sciences, to admit it till some better hypothesis be found out. For
to my mind to say that species were created so and so is no scientific
explanation, only a reverent way of saying it is so and so. But it is
nonsensical trying to show how I try to proceed in the compass of a
note. But as an honest man, I must tell you that I have come to the
heterodox conclusion that there are no such things as independently
created species--that species are only strongly defined varieties. I
know that this will make you despise me. I do not much underrate the
many HUGE difficulties on this view, but yet it seems to me to explain
too much, otherwise inexplicable, to be false. Just to allude to one
point in your last note, viz., about species of the same genus
GENERALLY having a common or continuous area; if they are actual lineal
descendants of one species, this of course would be the case; and the
sadly too many exceptions (for me) have to be explained by climatal
and geological changes. A fortiori on this view (but on exactly
same grounds), all the individuals of the same species should have a
continuous distribution. On this latter branch of the subject I have
put a chapter together, and Hooker kindly read it over. I thought the
exceptions and difficulties were so great that on the whole the balance
weighed against my notions, but I was much pleased to find that it
seemed to have considerable weight with Hooker, who said he had never
been so much staggered about the permanence of species.

I must say one word more in justification (for I feel sure that your
tendency will be to despise me and my crotchets), that all my notions
about HOW species change are derived from long continued study of the
works of (and converse with) agriculturists and horticulturists; and
I believe I see my way pretty clearly on the means used by nature
to change her species and ADAPT them to the wondrous and exquisitely
beautiful contingencies to which every living being is exposed...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, July 30th 1856.

My dear Hooker,

Your letter is of MUCH value to me. I was not able to get a definite
answer from Lyell (On the continental extensions of Forbes and others.),
as you will see in the enclosed letters, though I inferred that
he thought nothing of my arguments. Had it not been for this
correspondence, I should have written sadly too strongly. You may
rely on it I shall put my doubts moderately. There never was such a
predicament as mine: here you continental extensionists would remove
enormous difficulties opposed to me, and yet I cannot honestly admit the
doctrine, and must therefore say so. I cannot get over the fact that not
a fragment of secondary or palaeozoic rock has been found on any island
above 500 or 600 miles from a mainland. You rather misunderstand me
when you think I doubt the POSSIBILITY of subsidence of 20,000 or 30,000
feet; it is only probability, considering such evidence as we have
independently of distribution. I have not yet worked out in full detail
the distribution of mammalia, both IDENTICAL and allied, with respect
to the ONE ELEMENT OF DEPTH OF THE SEA; but as far as I have gone, the
results are to me surprisingly accordant with my very most troublesome
belief in not such great geographical changes as you believe; and in
mammalia we certainly know more of MEANS of distribution than in any
other class. Nothing is so vexatious to me, as so constantly finding
myself drawing different conclusions from better judges than myself,
from the same facts.

I fancy I have lately removed many (not geographical) great difficulties
opposed to my notions, but God knows it may be all hallucination.

Please return Lyell's letters.

What a capital letter of Lyell's that to you is, and what a wonderful
man he is. I differ from him greatly in thinking that those who believe
that species are NOT fixed will multiply specific names: I know in my
own case my most frequent source of doubt was whether others would not
think this or that was a God-created Barnacle, and surely deserved
a name. Otherwise I should only have thought whether the amount of
difference and permanence was sufficient to justify a name: I am, also,
surprised at his thinking it immaterial whether species are absolute or
not: whenever it is proved that all species are produced by generation,
by laws of change, what good evidence we shall have of the gaps in
formations. And what a science Natural History will be, when we are
in our graves, when all the laws of change are thought one of the most
important parts of Natural History.

I cannot conceive why Lyell thinks such notions as mine or of
'Vestiges,' will invalidate specific centres. But I must not run on
and take up your time. My MS. will not, I fear, be copied before you go
abroad. With hearty thanks.

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--After giving much condensed, my argument versus continental
extensions, I shall append some such sentence, as that two better judges
than myself have considered these arguments, and attach no weight to
them.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, August 5th [1856].

...I quite agree about Lyell's letters to me, which, though to me
interesting, have afforded me no new light. Your letters, under the
GEOLOGICAL point of view, have been more valuable to me. You cannot
imagine how earnestly I wish I could swallow continental extension,
but I cannot; the more I think (and I cannot get the subject out of my
head), the more difficult I find it. If there were only some half-dozen
cases, I should not feel the least difficulty; but the generality of the
facts of all islands (except one or two) having a considerable part of
their productions in common with one or more mainlands utterly staggers
me. What a wonderful case of the Epacridae! It is most vexatious, also
humiliating, to me that I cannot follow and subscribe to the way in
which you strikingly put your view of the case. I look at your facts
(about Eucalyptus, etc.) as DAMNING against continental extension, and
if you like also damning against migration, or at least of ENORMOUS
difficulty. I see the ground of our difference (in a letter I must put
myself on an equality in arguing) lies, in my opinion, that scarcely
anything is known of means of distribution. I quite agree with A. De
Candolle's (and I dare say your) opinion that it is poor work putting
together the merely POSSIBLE means of distribution; but I see no
other way in which the subject can be attacked, for I think that A. De
Candolle's argument, that no plants have been introduced into England
except by man's agency, [is] of no weight. I cannot but think that the
theory of continental extension does do some little harm as stopping
investigation of the means of dispersal, which, whether NEGATIVE or
positive, seems to me of value; when negatived, then every one who
believes in single centres will have to admit continental extensions.

...I see from your remarks that you do not understand my notions
(whether or no worth anything) about modification; I attribute very
little to the direct action of climate, etc. I suppose, in regard to
specific centres, we are at cross purposes; I should call the kitchen
garden in which the red cabbage was produced, or the farm in which
Bakewell made the Shorthorn cattle, the specific centre of these
SPECIES! And surely this is centralisation enough!

I thank you most sincerely for all your assistance; and whether or no my
book may be wretched, you have done your best to make it less wretched.
Sometimes I am in very good spirits and sometimes very low about it. My
own mind is decided on the question of the origin of species; but, good
heavens, how little that is worth!...

[With regard to "specific centres," a passage from a letter dated July
25, 1856, by Sir Charles Lyell to Sir J.D. Hooker ('Life' ii. page 216)
is of interest:

"I fear much that if Darwin argues that species are phantoms, he will
also have to admit that single centres of dispersion are phantoms also,
and that would deprive me of much of the value which I ascribe to the
present provinces of animals and plants, as illustrating modern and
tertiary changes in physical geography."

He seems to have recognised, however, that the phantom doctrine would
soon have to be faced, for he wrote in the same letter: "Whether Darwin
persuades you and me to renounce our faith in species (when geological
epochs are considered) or not, I foresee that many will go over to the
indefinite modifiability doctrine."


In the autumn my father was still working at geographical distribution,
and again sought the aid of Sir J.D. Hooker.

A LETTER TO SIR J.D. HOOKER [September, 1856].

"In the course of some weeks, you unfortunate wretch, you will have my
MS. on one point of Geographical Distribution. I will however, never ask
such a favour again; but in regard to this one piece of MS., it is of
infinite importance to me for you to see it; for never in my life have
I felt such difficulty what to do, and I heartily wish I could slur the
whole subject over."

In a letter to Sir J.D. Hooker (June, 1856), the following
characteristic passage occurs, suggested, no doubt, by the kind of work
which his chapter on Geographical Distribution entailed:

"There is wonderful ill logic in his [E. Forbes'] famous and admirable
memoir on distribution, as it appears to me, now that I have got it up
so as to give the heads in a page. Depend on it, my saying is a true
one, viz., that a compiler is a GREAT man, and an original man a
commonplace man. Any fool can generalise and speculate; but, oh, my
heavens! To get up AT SECOND HAND a New Zealand Flora, that is work."


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. October 3 [1856].

...I remember you protested against Lyell's advice of writing a
SKETCH of my species doctrines. Well, when I began I found it such
unsatisfactory work that I have desisted, and am now drawing up my work
as perfect as my materials of nineteen years' collecting suffice, but do
not intend to stop to perfect any line of investigation beyond current
work. Thus far and no farther I shall follow Lyell's urgent advice. Your
remarks weighed with me considerably. I find to my sorrow it will run
to quite a big book. I have found my careful work at pigeons really
invaluable, as enlightening me on many points on variation under
domestication. The copious old literature, by which I can trace the
gradual changes in the breeds of pigeons has been extraordinarily useful
to me. I have just had pigeons and fowls ALIVE from the Gambia! Rabbits
and ducks I am attending to pretty carefully, but less so than pigeons.
I find most remarkable differences in the skeletons of rabbits. Have you
ever kept any odd breeds of rabbits, and can you give me any details?
One other question: You used to keep hawks; do you at all know, after
eating a bird, how soon after they throw up the pellet?

No subject gives me so much trouble and doubt and difficulty as the
means of dispersal of the same species of terrestrial productions on
the oceanic islands. Land mollusca drive me mad, and I cannot anyhow get
their eggs to experimentise their power of floating and resistance to
the injurious action of salt water. I will not apologise for writing
so much about my own doings, as I believe you will like to hear. Do
sometime, I beg you, let me hear how you get on in health; and IF SO
INCLINED, let me have some words on call-ducks.

My dear Fox, yours affectionately, CH. DARWIN.


[With regard to his book he wrote (November 10th) to Sir Charles Lyell]:

"I am working very steadily at my big book; I have found it quite
impossible to publish any preliminary essay or sketch; but am doing
my work as completely as my present materials allow without waiting to
perfect them. And this much acceleration I owe to you."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, Sunday [October 1856].

My dear Hooker,

The seeds are come all safe, many thanks for them. I was very sorry to
run away so soon and miss any part of my MOST pleasant evening; and I
ran away like a Goth and Vandal without wishing Mrs. Hooker good-bye;
but I was only just in time, as I got on the platform the train had
arrived.

I was particularly glad of our discussion after dinner, fighting a
battle with you always clears my mind wonderfully. I groan to hear that
A. Gray agrees with you about the condition of Botanical Geography.
All I know is that if you had had to search for light in Zoological
Geography you would by contrast, respect your own subject a vast deal
more than you now do. The hawks have behaved like gentlemen, and have
cast up pellets with lots of seeds in them; and I have just had a parcel
of partridge's feet well caked with mud!!! (The mud in such cases often
contains seeds, so that plants are thus transported.) Adios.

Your insane and perverse friend, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, November 4th [1856].

My dear Hooker,

I thank you more CORDIALLY than you will think probable, for your note.
Your verdict (On the MS. relating to geographical distribution.) has
been a great relief. On my honour I had no idea whether or not you would
say it was (and I knew you would say it very kindly) so bad, that you
would have begged me to have burnt the whole. To my own mind my MS.
relieved me of some few difficulties, and the difficulties seemed to me
pretty fairly stated, but I had become so bewildered with conflicting
facts, evidence, reasoning and opinions, that I felt to myself that
I had lost all judgment. Your general verdict is INCOMPARABLY more
favourable than I had anticipated...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, November 23rd [1856].

My dear Hooker,

I fear I shall weary you with letters, but do not answer this, for in
truth and without flattery, I so value your letters, that after a heavy
batch, as of late, I feel that I have been extravagant and have drawn
too much money, and shall therefore have to stint myself on another
occasion.

When I sent my MS. I felt strongly that some preliminary questions on
the causes of variation ought to have been sent you. Whether I am
right or wrong in these points is quite a separate question, but the
conclusion which I have come to, quite independently of geographical
distribution, is that external conditions (to which naturalists so often
appeal) do by themselves VERY LITTLE. How much they do is the point of
all others on which I feel myself very weak. I judge from the facts
of variation under domestication, and I may yet get more light. But at
present, after drawing up a rough copy on this subject, my conclusion
is that external conditions do EXTREMELY little, except in causing mere
variability. This mere variability (causing the child NOT closely to
resemble its parent) I look at as VERY different from the formation of a
marked variety or new species. (No doubt the variability is governed
by laws, some of which I am endeavouring very obscurely to trace.) The
formation of a strong variety or species I look a as almost wholly due
to the selection of what may be incorrectly called CHANCE variations or
variability. This power of selection stands in the most direct relation
to time, and in the state of nature can be only excessively slow. Again,
the slight differences selected, by which a race or species is at last
formed, stands, as I think can be shown (even with plants, and obviously
with animals), in a far more important relation to its associates than
to external conditions. Therefore, according to my principles, whether
right or wrong, I cannot agree with your proposition that time, and
altered conditions, and altered associates, are 'convertible terms.'
I look at the first and the last as FAR more important: time being
important only so far as giving scope to selection. God knows whether
you will perceive at what I am driving. I shall have to discuss and
think more about your difficulty of the temperate and sub-arctic forms
in the S. hemisphere than I have yet done. But I am inclined to think
that I am right (if my general principles are right), that there would
be little tendency to the formation of a new species, during the period
of migration, whether shorter or longer, though considerable variability
may have supervened...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. December 24th [1856].

...How I do wish I lived near you to discuss matters with. I have
just been comparing definitions of species, and stating briefly how
systematic naturalists work out their subjects. Aquilegia in the Flora
Indica was a capital example for me. It is really laughable to see what
different ideas are prominent in various naturalists' minds, when they
speak of "species;" in some, resemblance is everything and descent
of little weight--in some, resemblance seems to go for nothing, and
Creation the reigning idea--in some, descent is the key,--in some,
sterility an unfailing test, with others it is not worth a farthing. It
all comes, I believe, from trying to define the undefinable. I
suppose you have lost the odd black seed from the birds' dung, which
germinated,--anyhow, it is not worth taking trouble over. I have now got
about a dozen seeds out of small birds' dung. Adios,

My dear Hooker, ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. Down, January 1st [1857?].

My dear Dr Gray,

I have received the second part of your paper ('Statistics of the Flora
of the Northern United States.' "Silliman's Journal", 1857.), and though
I have nothing particular to say, I must send you my thanks and hearty
admiration. The whole paper strikes me as quite exhausting the subject,
and I quite fancy and flatter myself I now appreciate the character
of your Flora. What a difference in regard to Europe your remark in
relation to the genera makes! I have been eminently glad to see your
conclusion in regard to the species of large genera widely ranging; it
is in strict conformity with the results I have worked out in several
ways. It is of great importance to my notions. By the way you have
paid me a GREAT compliment ("From some investigations of his own, this
sagacious naturalist inclines to think that [the species of] large
genera range over a larger area than the species of small genera
do."--Asa Gray, loc. cit.): to be SIMPLY mentioned even in such a paper
I consider a very great honour. One of your conclusions makes me groan,
viz., that the line of connection of the strictly alpine plants is
through Greenland. I should EXTREMELY like to see your reasons published
in detail, for it "riles" me (this is a proper expression, is it not?)
dreadfully. Lyell told me, that Agassiz having a theory about when
Saurians were first created, on hearing some careful observations
opposed to this, said he did not believe it, "for Nature never lied."
I am just in this predicament, and repeat to you that, "Nature never
lies," ergo, theorisers are always right...

Overworked as you are, I dare say you will say that I am an odious
plague; but here is another suggestion! I was led by one of my wild
speculations to conclude (though it has nothing to do with geographical
distribution, yet it has with your statistics) that trees would have a
strong tendency to have flowers with dioecious, monoecious or polygamous
structure. Seeing that this seemed so in Persoon, I took one little
British Flora, and discriminating trees from bushes according to Loudon,
I have found that the result was in species, genera and families, as I
anticipated. So I sent my notions to Hooker to ask him to tabulate the
New Zealand Flora for this end, and he thought my result sufficiently
curious, to do so; and the accordance with Britain is very striking, and
the more so, as he made three classes of trees, bushes, and herbaceous
plants. (He says further he shall work the Tasmanian Flora on the same
principle.) The bushes hold an intermediate position between the other
two classes. It seems to me a curious relation in itself, and is very
much so, if my theory and explanation are correct. (See 'Origin,'
Edition i., page 100.)

With hearty thanks, your most troublesome friend, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 12th [1857].

My dear Hooker,

Your letter has pleased me much, for I never can get it out of my head,
that I take unfair advantage of your kindness, as I receive all and give
nothing. What a splendid discussion you could write on the whole subject
of variation! The cases discussed in your last note are valuable to me
(though odious and damnable), as showing how profoundly ignorant we are
on the causes of variation. I shall just allude to these cases, as a
sort of sub-division of polymorphism a little more definite, I fancy,
than the variation of, for instance, the Rubi, and equally or more
perplexing.

I have just been putting my notes together on variations APPARENTLY due
to the immediate and direct action of external causes; and I have been
struck with one result. The most firm sticklers for independent creation
admit, that the fur of the SAME species is thinner towards the south of
the range of the same species than to the north--that the SAME shells
are brighter-coloured to the south than north; that the same [shell]
is paler-coloured in deep water--that insects are smaller and darker on
mountains--more livid and testaceous near sea--that plants are smaller
and more hairy and with brighter flowers on mountains: now in all such,
and other cases, distinct species in the two zones follow the same rule,
which seems to me to be most simply explained by species, being only
strongly marked varieties, and therefore following the same laws as
recognised and admitted varieties. I mention all this on account of the
variation of plants in ascending mountains; I have quoted the foregoing
remark only generally with no examples, for I add, there is so much
doubt and dispute what to call varieties; but yet I have stumbled on
so many casual remarks on VARIETIES of plants on mountains being so
characterised, that I presume there is some truth in it. What think
you? Do you believe there is ANY tendency in VARIETIES, as GENERALLY
so-called, of plants to become more hairy and with proportionally larger
and brighter-coloured flowers in ascending a mountain?

I have been interested in my "weed garden," of 3 x 2 feet square: I mark
each seedling as it appears, and I am astonished at the number that come
up, and still more at the number killed by slugs, etc. Already 59 have
been so killed; I expected a good many, but I had fancied that this
was a less potent check than it seems to be, and I attributed almost
exclusively to mere choking, the destruction of the seedlings.
Grass-seedlings seem to suffer much less than exogens...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Moor Park, Farnham [April (?) 1857].

My dear Hooker,

Your letter has been forwarded to me here, where I am undergoing
hydropathy for a fortnight, having been here a week, and having already
received an amount of good which is quite incredible to myself and quite
unaccountable. I can walk and eat like a hearty Christian, and even my
nights are good. I cannot in the least understand how hydropathy can act
as it certainly does on me. It dulls one's brain splendidly; I have not
thought about a single species of any kind since leaving home. Your note
has taken me aback; I thought the hairiness, etc., of Alpine SPECIES
was generally admitted; I am sure I have seen it alluded to a score of
times. Falconer was haranguing on it the other day to me. Meyen or Gay,
or some such fellow (whom you would despise), I remember, makes some
remark on Chilian Cordillera plants. Wimmer has written a little book on
the same lines, and on VARIETIES being so characterised in the Alps.
But after writing to you, I confess I was staggered by finding one
man (Moquin-Tandon, I think) saying that Alpine flowers are strongly
inclined to be white, and Linnaeus saying that cold makes plants
APETALOUS, even the same species! Are Arctic plants often apetalous? My
general belief from my compiling work is quite to agree with what
you say about the little direct influence of climate; and I have
just alluded to the hairiness of Alpine plants as an EXCEPTION. The
odoriferousness would be a good case for me if I knew of VARIETIES being
more odoriferous in dry habitats.

I fear that I have looked at the hairiness of Alpine plants as so
generally acknowledged that I have not marked passages, so as at all
to see what kind of evidence authors advance. I must confess, the other
day, when I asked Falconer, whether he knew of INDIVIDUAL plants losing
or acquiring hairiness when transported, he did not. But now THIS
SECOND, my memory flashes on me, and I am certain I have somewhere
got marked a case of hairy plants from the Pyrenees losing hairs when
cultivated at Montpellier. Shall you think me very impudent if I tell
you that I have sometimes thought that (quite independently of the
present case), you are a little too hard on bad observers; that a remark
made by a bad observer CANNOT be right; an observer who deserves to be
damned you would utterly damn. I feel entire deference to any remark you
make out of your own head; but when in opposition to some poor devil, I
somehow involuntarily feel not quite so much, but yet much deference for
your opinion. I do not know in the least whether there is any truth in
this my criticism against you, but I have often thought I would tell you
it.

I am really very much obliged for your letter, for, though I intended to
put only one sentence and that vaguely, I should probably have put that
much too strongly.

Ever, my dear Hooker, yours most truly, C. DARWIN.

P.S. This note, as you see, has not anything requiring an answer.

The distribution of fresh-water molluscs has been a horrid incubus to
me, but I think I know my way now; when first hatched they are very
active, and I have had thirty or forty crawl on a dead duck's foot; and
they cannot be jerked off, and will live fifteen and even twenty-four
hours out of water.


[The following letter refers to the expedition of the Austrian frigate
"Novara"; Lyell had asked my father for suggestions.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, February 11th [1857].

My dear Lyell,

I was glad to see in the newspapers about the Austrian Expedition. I
have nothing to add geologically to my notes in the Manual. (The article
"Geology" in the Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry.) I do not know
whether the Expedition is tied down to call at only fixed spots. But
if there be any choice or power in the scientific men to influence
the places--this would be most desirable. It is my most deliberate
conviction that nothing would aid more, Natural History, than careful
collecting and investigating ALL THE PRODUCTIONS of the most isolated
islands, especially of the southern hemisphere. Except Tristan d'Acunha
and Kerguelen Land, they are very imperfectly known; and even at
Kerguelen Land, how much there is to make out about the lignite beds,
and whether there are signs of old Glacial action. Every sea shell and
insect and plant is of value from such spots. Some one in the Expedition
especially ought to have Hooker's New Zealand Essay. What grand work to
explore Rodriguez, with its fossil birds, and little known productions
of every kind. Again the Seychelles, which, with the Cocos so near, must
be a remnant of some older land. The outer island of Juan Fernandez
is little known. The investigation of these little spots by a band of
naturalists would be grand; St. Paul's and Amsterdam would be glorious,
botanically, and geologically. Can you not recommend them to get my
'Journal' and 'Volcanic Islands' on account of the Galapagos. If they
come from the north it will be a shame and a sin if they do not call
at Cocos Islet, one of the Galapagos. I always regretted that I was
not able to examine the great craters on Albemarle Island, one of the
Galapagos. In New Zealand urge on them to look out for erratic boulders
and marks of old glaciers.

Urge the use of the dredge in the Tropics; how little or nothing we know
of the limit of life downward in the hot seas?

My present work leads me to perceive how much the domestic animals have
been neglected in out of the way countries.

The Revillagigedo Island off Mexico, I believe, has never been trodden
by foot of naturalist.

If the expedition sticks to such places as Rio, Cape of Good Hope,
Ceylon and Australia, etc., it will not do much.

Ever yours most truly, C. DARWIN.


[The following passage occurs in a letter to Mr. Fox, February 22, 1857,
and has reference to the book on Evolution on which he was still at
work. The remainder of the letter is made up in details of no interest:

"I am got most deeply interested in my subject; though I wish I could
set less value on the bauble fame, either present or posthumous, than
I do, but not I think, to any extreme degree: yet, if I know myself, I
would work just as hard, though with less gusto, if I knew that my book
would be published for ever anonymously."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO A.R. WALLACE. Moor Park, May 1st, 1857.

My dear Sir,

I am much obliged for your letter of October 10th, from Celebes,
received a few days ago; in a laborious undertaking, sympathy is a
valuable and real encouragement. By your letter and even still more
by your paper ('On the law that has regulated the introduction of new
species.'--Ann. Nat. Hist., 1855.) in the Annals, a year or more ago, I
can plainly see that we have thought much alike and to a certain extent
have come to similar conclusions. In regard to the Paper in the Annals,
I agree to the truth of almost every word of your paper; and I dare
say that you will agree with me that it is very rare to find oneself
agreeing pretty closely with any theoretical paper; for it is lamentable
how each man draws his own different conclusions from the very same
facts. This summer will make the 20th year (!) since I opened my first
note-book, on the question how and in what way do species and varieties
differ from each other. I am now preparing my work for publication,
but I find the subject so very large, that though I have written many
chapters, I do not suppose I shall go to press for two years. I have
never heard how long you intend staying in the Malay Archipelago; I wish
I might profit by the publication of your Travels there before my work
appears, for no doubt you will reap a large harvest of facts. I have
acted already in accordance with your advice of keeping domestic
varieties, and those appearing in a state of nature, distinct; but I
have sometimes doubted of the wisdom of this, and therefore I am glad to
be backed by your opinion. I must confess, however, I rather doubt the
truth of the now very prevalent doctrine of all our domestic animals
having descended from several wild stocks; though I do not doubt that
it is so in some cases. I think there is rather better evidence on the
sterility of hybrid animals than you seem to admit: and in regard to
plants the collection of carefully recorded facts by Kolreuter and
Gaertner (and Herbert,) is ENORMOUS. I most entirely agree with you on
the little effects of "climatal conditions," which one sees referred
to ad nauseam in all books: I suppose some very little effect must be
attributed to such influences, but I fully believe that they are very
slight. It is really IMPOSSIBLE to explain my views (in the compass of a
letter), on the causes and means of variation in a state of nature; but
I have slowly adopted a distinct and tangible idea,--whether true or
false others must judge; for the firmest conviction of the truth of a
doctrine by its author, seems, alas, not to be the slightest guarantee
of truth!...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Moor Park, Saturday [May 2nd, 1857].

My dear Hooker,

You have shaved the hair off the Alpine plants pretty effectually.
The case of the Anthyllis will make a "tie" with the believed case of
Pyrenees plants becoming glabrous at low levels. If I DO find that I
have marked such facts, I will lay the evidence before you. I wonder how
the belief could have originated! Was it through final causes to keep
the plants warm? Falconer in talk coupled the two facts of woolly Alpine
plants and mammals. How candidly and meekly you took my Jeremiad on your
severity to second-class men. After I had sent it off, an ugly little
voice asked me, once or twice, how much of my noble defence of the
poor in spirit and in fact, was owing to your having not seldom smashed
favourite notions of my own. I silenced the ugly little voice with
contempt, but it would whisper again and again. I sometimes despise
myself as a poor compiler as heartily as you could do, though I do
NOT despise my whole work, as I think there is enough known to lay a
foundation for the discussion on the origin of species. I have been led
to despise and laugh at myself as a compiler, for having put down that
"Alpine plants have large flowers," and now perhaps I may write over
these very words, "Alpine plants have small or apetalous flowers!"...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, [May] 16th [1857].

My dear Hooker,

You said--I hope honestly--that you did not dislike my asking questions
on general points, you of course answering or not as time or inclination
might serve. I find in the animal kingdom that the proposition that any
part or organ developed normally (i.e., not a monstrosity) in a species
in any HIGH or UNUSUAL degree, compared with the same part or organ in
allied species, tends to be HIGHLY VARIABLE. I cannot doubt this from
my mass of collected facts. To give an instance, the Cross-bill is
very abnormal in the structure of its bill compared with other allied
Fringillidae, and the beak is EMINENTLY VARIABLE. The Himantopus,
remarkable from the wonderful length of its legs, is VERY variable in
the length of its legs. I could give MANY most striking and curious
illustrations in all classes; so many that I think it cannot be chance.
But I have NONE in the vegetable kingdom, owing, as I believe, to my
ignorance. If Nepenthes consisted of ONE or two species in a group with
a pitcher developed, then I should have expected it to have been very
variable; but I do not consider Nepenthes a case in point, for when a
whole genus or group has an organ, however anomalous, I do not expect
it to be variable,--it is only when one or few species differ greatly in
some one part or organ from the forms CLOSELY ALLIED to it in all other
respects, that I believe such part or organ to be highly variable. Will
you turn this in your mind? It is an important apparent LAW (!) for me.

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I do not know how far you will care to hear, but I find
Moquin-Tandon treats in his 'Teratologie' on villosity of plants, and
seems to attribute more to dryness than altitude; but seems to think
that it must be admitted that mountain plants are villose, and that this
villosity is only in part explained by De Candolle's remark that the
dwarfed condition of mountain plants would condense the hairs, and
so give them the APPEARANCE of being more hairy. He quotes Senebier,
'Physiologie Vegetale,' as authority--I suppose the first authority, for
mountain plants being hairy.

If I could show positively that the endemic species were more hairy in
dry districts, then the case of the varieties becoming more hairy in dry
ground would be a fact for me.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, June 3rd [1857].

My dear Hooker,

I am going to enjoy myself by having a prose on my own subjects to you,
and this is a greater enjoyment to me than you will readily understand,
as I for months together do not open my mouth on Natural History.
Your letter is of great value to me, and staggers me in regard to my
proposition. I dare say the absence of botanical facts may in part be
accounted for by the difficulty of measuring slight variations. Indeed,
after writing, this occurred to me; for I have Crucianella stylosa
coming into flower, and the pistil ought to be very variable in length,
and thinking of this I at once felt how could one judge whether it was
variable in any high degree. How different, for instance, from the
beak of a bird! But I am not satisfied with this explanation, and am
staggered. Yet I think there is something in the law; I have had so
many instances, as the following: I wrote to Wollaston to ask him to
run through the Madeira Beetles and tell me whether any one presented
anything very anomalous in relation to its allies. He gave me a unique
case of an enormous head in a female, and then I found in his book,
already stated, that the size of the head was ASTONISHINGLY variable.
Part of the difference with plants may be accounted for by many of
my cases being secondary male or FEMALE characters, but then I have
striking cases with hermaphrodite Cirripedes. The cases seem to me
far too numerous for accidental coincidences, of great variability and
abnormal development. I presume that you will not object to my putting a
note saying that you had reflected over the case, and though one or
two cases seemed to support, quite as many or more seemed wholly
contradictory. This want of evidence is the more surprising to me, as
generally I find any proposition more easily tested by observations in
botanical works, which I have picked up, than in zoological works. I
never dreamed that you had kept the subject at all before your
mind. Altogether the case is one more of my MANY horrid puzzles. My
observations, though on so infinitely a small scale, on the struggle for
existence, begin to make me see a little clearer how the fight goes on.
Out of sixteen kinds of seed sown on my meadow, fifteen have germinated,
but now they are perishing at such a rate that I doubt whether more than
one will flower. Here we have choking which has taken place likewise on
a great scale, with plants not seedlings, in a bit of my lawn allowed
to grow up. On the other hand, in a bit of ground, 2 by 3 feet, I have
daily marked each seedling weed as it has appeared during March, April
and May, and 357 have come up, and of these 277 have ALREADY been killed
chiefly by slugs. By the way, at Moor Park, I saw rather a pretty case
of the effects of animals on vegetation: there are enormous commons with
clumps of old Scotch firs on the hills, and about eight or ten years ago
some of these commons were enclosed, and all round the clumps nice young
trees are springing up by the million, looking exactly as if planted,
so many are of the same age. In other parts of the common, not yet
enclosed, I looked for miles and not ONE young tree could be seen.
I then went near (within quarter of a mile of the clumps) and looked
closely in the heather, and there I found tens of thousands of young
Scotch firs (thirty in one square yard) with their tops nibbled off by
the few cattle which occasionally roam over these wretched heaths. One
little tree, three inches high, by the rings appeared to be twenty-six
years old, with a short stem about as thick as a stick of sealing-wax.
What a wondrous problem it is, what a play of forces, determining the
kind and proportion of each plant in a square yard of turf! It is to my
mind truly wonderful. And yet we are pleased to wonder when some animal
or plant becomes extinct.

I am so sorry that you will not be at the Club. I see Mrs. Hooker is
going to Yarmouth; I trust that the health of your children is not the
motive. Good-bye.

My dear Hooker, ever yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I believe you are afraid to send me a ripe Edwardsia pod, for fear
I should float it from New Zealand to Chile!!!


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, June 5 [1857].

My dear Hooker,

I honour your conscientious care about the medals. (The Royal Society's
medals.) Thank God! I am only an amateur (but a much interested one) on
the subject.

It is an old notion of mine that more good is done by giving medals to
younger men in the early part of their career, than as a mere reward to
men whose scientific career is nearly finished. Whether medals ever do
any good is a question which does not concern us, as there the medals
are. I am almost inclined to think that I would rather lower the
standard, and give medals to young workers than to old ones with
no ESPECIAL claims. With regard to especial claims, I think it just
deserving your attention, that if general claims are once admitted, it
opens the door to great laxity in giving them. Think of the case of
a very rich man, who aided SOLELY with his money, but to a grand
extent--or such an inconceivable prodigy as a minister of the Crown who
really cared for science. Would you give such men medals? Perhaps medals
could not be better applied than EXCLUSIVELY to such men. I confess at
present I incline to stick to especial claims which can be put down on
paper...

I am much confounded by your showing that there are not obvious
instances of my (or rather Waterhouse's) law of abnormal developments
being highly variable. I have been thinking more of your remark about
the difficulty of judging or comparing variability in plants from the
great general variability of parts. I should look at the law as more
completely smashed if you would turn in your mind for a little while
for cases of great variability of an organ, and tell me whether it is
moderately easy to pick out such cases; For IF THEY CAN BE PICKED
OUT, and, notwithstanding, do not coincide with great or abnormal
development, it would be a complete smasher. It is only beginning in
your mind at the variability end of the question instead of at the
abnormality end. PERHAPS cases in which a part is highly variable in all
the species of a group should be excluded, as possibly being something
distinct, and connected with the perplexing subject of polymorphism.
Will you perfect your assistance by further considering, for a little,
the subject this way?

I have been so much interested this morning in comparing all my notes on
the variation of the several species of the genus Equus and the results
of their crossing. Taking most strictly analogous facts amongst the
blessed pigeons for my guide, I believe I can plainly see the colouring
and marks of the grandfather of the Ass, Horse, Quagga, Hemionus and
Zebra, some millions of generations ago! Should not I [have] sneer[ed]
at any one who made such a remark to me a few years ago; but my evidence
seems to me so good that I shall publish my vision at the end of my
little discussion on this genus.

I have of late inundated you with my notions, you best of friends and
philosophers.

Adios, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Moor Park, Farnham, June 25th [1857].

My dear Hooker,

This requires no answer, but I will ask you whenever we meet. Look at
enclosed seedling gorses, especially one with the top knocked off. The
leaves succeeding the cotyledons being almost clover-like in shape,
seems to me feebly analogous to embryonic resemblances in young animals,
as, for instance, the young lion being striped. I shall ask you whether
this is so...(See 'Power of Movement in Plants,' page 414.)

Dr. Lane (The physician at Moor Park.) and wife, and mother-in-law, Lady
Drysdale, are some of the nicest people I ever met.

I return home on the 30th. Good-bye, my dear Hooker.

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.


[Here follows a group of letters, of various dates, bearing on the
question of large genera varying.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. March 11th [1858].

I was led to all this work by a remark of Fries, that the species in
large genera were more closely related to each other than in small
genera; and if this were so, seeing that varieties and species are so
hardly distinguishable, I concluded that I should find more varieties
in the large genera than in the small...Some day I hope you will read
my short discussion on the whole subject. You have done me infinite
service, whatever opinion I come to, in drawing my attention to at least
the possibility or the probability of botanists recording more varieties
in the large than in the small genera. It will be hard work for me to be
candid in coming to my conclusion.

Ever yours, most truly, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I shall be several weeks at my present job. The work has been
turning out badly for me this morning, and I am sick at heart; and, oh!
how I do hate species and varieties.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. July 14th [1857?].

...I write now to supplicate most earnestly a favour, viz., the loan of
"Boreau, Flore du centre de la France", either 1st or 2nd edition,
last best; also "Flora Ratisbonensis," by Dr. Furnrohr, in 'Naturhist.
Topographie von Regensburg, 1839.' If you can POSSIBLY spare them, will
you send them at once to the enclosed address. If you have not them,
will you send one line by return of post: as I must try whether
Kippist (The late Mr. Kippist was at this time in charge of the Linnean
Society's Library.) can anyhow find them, which I fear will be nearly
impossible in the Linnean Library, in which I know they are.

I have been making some calculations about varieties, etc., and talking
yesterday with Lubbock, he has pointed out to me the grossest blunder
which I have made in principle, and which entails two or three weeks'
lost work; and I am at a dead-lock till I have these books to go over
again, and see what the result of calculation on the right principle is.
I am the most miserable, bemuddled, stupid dog in all England, and am
ready to cry with vexation at my blindness and presumption.

Ever yours, most miserably, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO JOHN LUBBOCK. Down, [July] 14th [1857].

My dear Lubbock,

You have done me the greatest possible service in helping me to clarify
my brains. If I am as muzzy on all subjects as I am on proportion and
chance,--what a book I shall produce!

I have divided the New Zealand Flora as you suggested, there are 329
species in genera of 4 and upwards, and 323 in genera of 3 and less.

The 339 species have 51 species presenting one or more varieties. The
323 species have only 37. Proportionately (339: 323:: 51: 48.5) they
ought to have had 48 1/2 species presenting vars. So that the case goes
as I want it, but not strong enough, without it be general, for me to
have much confidence in. I am quite convinced yours is the right way; I
had thought of it, but should never have done it had it not been for my
most fortunate conversation with you.

Un quite shocked to find how easily I am muddled, for I had before
thought over the subject much, and concluded my way was fair. It is
dreadfully erroneous.

What a disgraceful blunder you have saved me from. I heartily thank you.

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--It is enough to make me tear up all my MS. and give up in despair.

It will take me several weeks to go over all my materials. But oh, if
you knew how thankful I am to you!


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, August [1857].

My dear Hooker,

It is a horrid bore you cannot come soon, and I reproach myself that
I did not write sooner. How busy you must be! with such a heap of
botanists at Kew. Only think, I have just had a letter from Henslow,
saying he will come here between 11th and 15th! Is not that grand? Many
thanks about Furnrohr. I must humbly supplicate Kippist to search for
it: he most kindly got Boreau for me.

I am got extremely interested in tabulating, according to mere size
of genera, the species having any varieties marked by Greek letters or
otherwise: the result (as far as I have yet gone) seems to me one of the
most important arguments I have yet met with, that varieties are only
small species--or species only strongly marked varieties. The subject
is in many ways so very important for me; I wish much you would think of
any well-worked Floras with from 1000-2000 species, with the varieties
marked. It is good to have hair-splitters and lumpers. (Those who
make many species are the "splitters," and those who make few are the
"lumpers.") I have done, or am doing:--

  Babington.......................
  Henslow.........................
  British Flora. London Catalogue. H.C. Watson...

  Boreau.......................... France.

  Miquel.......................... Holland.

  Asa Gray........................ N.U. States.

  Hooker.......................... New Zealand.
                                    Fragment of Indian Flora.

  Wollaston....................... Madeira insects.


Has not Koch published a good German Flora? Does he mark varieties?
Could you send it me? Is there not some grand Russian Flora, which
perhaps has varieties marked? The Floras ought to be well known.

I am in no hurry for a few weeks. Will you turn this in your head when,
if ever, you have leisure? The subject is very important for my work,
though I clearly see MANY causes of error...


CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. Down, February 21st [1859].

My dear Gray,

My last letter begged no favour, this one does: but it will really cost
you very little trouble to answer to me, and it will be of very GREAT
service to me, owing to a remark made to me by Hooker, which I cannot
credit, and which was suggested to him by one of my letters. He
suggested my asking you, and I told him I would not give the least
hint what he thought. I generally believe Hooker implicitly, but he is
sometimes, I think, and he confesses it, rather over critical, and
his ingenuity in discovering flaws seems to me admirable. Here is my
question:--"Do you think that good botanists in drawing up a local
Flora, whether small or large, or in making a Prodromus like De
Candolle's, would almost universally, but unintentionally and
unconsciously, tend to record (i.e., marking with Greek letters and
giving short characters) varieties in the large or in the small genera?
Or would the tendency be to record the varieties about equally in genera
of all sizes? Are you yourself conscious on reflection that you have
attended to, and recorded more carefully the varieties in large or
small, or very small genera?"

I know what fleeting and trifling things varieties very often are;
but my query applies to such as have been thought worth marking and
recording. If you could screw time to send me ever so brief an answer to
this, pretty soon, it would be a great service to me.

Yours most truly obliged, CH. DARWIN.

P.S.--Do you know whether any one has ever published any remarks on the
geographical range of varieties of plants in comparison with the species
to which they are supposed to belong? I have in vain tried to get some
vague idea, and with the exception of a little information on this head
given me by Mr. Watson in a paper on Land Shells in United States, I
have quite failed; but perhaps it would be difficult for you to give me
even a brief answer on this head, and if so I am not so unreasonable, I
ASSURE YOU, as to expect it.

If you are writing to England soon, you could enclose other letters
[for] me to forward.

Please observe the question is not whether there are more or fewer
varieties in larger or smaller genera, but whether there is a stronger
or weaker tendency in the minds of botanists to RECORD such in large or
small genera.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 6th [1858].

...I send by this post my MS. on the "commonness," "range," and
"variation" of species in large and small genera. You have undertaken
a horrid job in so very kindly offering to read it, and I thank you
warmly. I have just corrected the copy, and am disappointed in finding
how tough and obscure it is; I cannot make it clearer, and at present
I loathe the very sight of it. The style of course requires further
correction, and if published I must try, but as yet see not how, to make
it clearer.

If you have much to say and can have patience to consider the whole
subject, I would meet you in London on the Phil. Club day, so as to save
you the trouble of writing. For Heaven's sake, you stern and awful judge
and sceptic, remember that my conclusions may be true, notwithstanding
that Botanists may have recorded more varieties in large than in small
genera. It seems to me a mere balancing of probabilities. Again I thank
you most sincerely, but I fear you will find it a horrid job.

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--As usual, Hydropathy has made a man of me for a short time: I hope
the sea will do Mrs. Hooker much good.


CHARLES DARWIN TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, December 22nd, 1857.

My dear Sir,

I thank you for your letter of September 27th. I am extremely glad
to hear how you are attending to distribution in accordance with
theoretical ideas. I am a firm believer that without speculation there
is no good and original observation. Few travellers have attended to
such points as you are now at work on; and, indeed, the whole subject
of distribution of animals is dreadfully behind that of plants. You say
that you have been somewhat surprised at no notice having been taken
of your paper in the Annals. ('On the law that has regulated the
introduction of New Species.' Ann. Nat. Hist., 1855.) I cannot say that
I am, for so very few naturalists care for anything beyond the mere
description of species. But you must not suppose that your paper has not
been attended to: two very good men, Sir C. Lyell, and Mr. E. Blyth at
Calcutta, specially called my attention to it. Though agreeing with you
on your conclusions in that paper, I believe I go much further than you;
but it is too long a subject to enter on my speculative notions. I
have not yet seen your paper on the distribution of animals in the Aru
Islands. I shall read it with the utmost interest; for I think that the
most interesting quarter of the whole globe in respect to distribution,
and I have long been very imperfectly trying to collect data for the
Malay Archipelago. I shall be quite prepared to subscribe to your
doctrine of subsidence; indeed, from the quite independent evidence of
the Coral Reefs I coloured my original map (in my Coral volume) of
the Aru Islands as one of subsidence, but got frightened and left it
uncoloured. But I can see that you are inclined to go much further
than I am in regard to the former connection of oceanic islands with
continents. Ever since poor E. Forbes propounded this doctrine it has
been eagerly followed; and Hooker elaborately discusses the former
connection of all the Antarctic Islands and New Zealand and South
America. About a year ago I discussed this subject much with Lyell and
Hooker (for I shall have to treat of it), and wrote out my arguments in
opposition; but you will be glad to hear that neither Lyell nor Hooker
thought much of my arguments. Nevertheless, for once in my life, I dare
withstand the almost preternatural sagacity of Lyell.

You ask about land-shells on islands far distant from continents:
Madeira has a few identical with those of Europe, and here the evidence
is really good, as some of them are sub-fossil. In the Pacific Islands
there are cases of identity, which I cannot at present persuade myself
to account for by introduction through man's agency; although Dr.
Aug. Gould has conclusively shown that many land-shells have thus
been distributed over the Pacific by man's agency. These cases of
introduction are most plaguing. Have you not found it so in the Malay
Archipelago? It has seemed to me in the lists of mammals of Timor and
other islands, that SEVERAL in all probability have been naturalised...

You ask whether I shall discuss "man." I think I shall avoid the whole
subject, as so surrounded with prejudices; though I fully admit that it
is the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist. My work,
on which I have now been at work more or less for twenty years, will
not fix or settle anything; but I hope it will aid by giving a large
collection of facts, with one definite end. I get on very slowly, partly
from ill-health, partly from being a very slow worker. I have got about
half written; but I do not suppose I shall publish under a couple of
years. I have now been three whole months on one chapter on Hybridism!

I am astonished to see that you expect to remain out three or four years
more. What a wonderful deal you will have seen, and what interesting
areas--the grand Malay Archipelago and the richest parts of South
America! I infinitely admire and honour your zeal and courage in the
good cause of Natural Science; and you have my very sincere and cordial
good wishes for success of all kinds, and may all your theories succeed,
except that on Oceanic Islands, on which subject I will do battle to the
death.

Pray believe me, my dear sir, yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. February 8th [1858].

...I am working very hard at my book, perhaps too hard. It will be very
big, and I am become most deeply interested in the way facts fall into
groups. I am like Croesus overwhelmed with my riches in facts, and I
mean to make my book as perfect as ever I can. I shall not go to press
at soonest for a couple of years...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. February 23rd [1858].

...I was not much struck with the great Buckle, and I admired the way
you stuck up about deduction and induction. I am reading his book ('The
History of Civilisation.'), which, with much sophistry, as it seems to
me, is WONDERFULLY clever and original, and with astounding knowledge.

I saw that you admired Mrs. Farrer's 'Questa tomba' of Beethoven
thoroughly; there is something grand in her sweet tones.

Farewell. I have partly written this note to drive bee's-cells out of
my head; for I am half-mad on the subject to try to make out some
simple steps from which all the wondrous angles may result. (He had
much correspondence on this subject with the late Professor Miller of
Cambridge.)

I was very glad to see Mrs. Hooker on Friday; how well she appears to be
and looks.

Forgive your intolerable but affectionate friend, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, April 16th [1858].

My dear Fox,

I want you to observe one point for me, on which I am extremely much
interested, and which will give you no trouble beyond keeping your eyes
open, and that is a habit I know full well that you have.

I find horses of various colours often have a spinal band or stripe of
different and darker tint than the rest of the body; rarely transverse
bars on the legs, generally on the under-side of the front legs, still
more rarely a very faint transverse shoulder-stripe like an ass.

Is there any breed of Delamere forest ponies? I have found out little
about ponies in these respects. Sir P. Egerton has, I believe, some
quite thoroughbred chestnut horses; have any of them the spinal stripe?
Mouse-coloured ponies, or rather small horses, often have spinal and leg
bars. So have dun horses (by dun I mean real colour of cream mixed with
brown, bay, or chestnut). So have sometimes chestnuts, but I have not
yet got a case of spinal stripe in chestnut, race horse, or in quite
heavy cart-horse. Any fact of this nature of such stripes in horses
would be MOST useful to me. There is a parallel case in the legs of
the donkey, and I have collected some most curious cases of stripes
appearing in various crossed equine animals. I have also a large mass of
parallel facts in the breeds of pigeons about the wing bars. I SUSPECT
it will throw light on the colour of the primeval horse. So do help me
if occasion turns up...My health has been lately very bad from
overwork, and on Tuesday I go for a fortnight's hydropathy. My work is
everlasting. Farewell.

My dear Fox, I trust you are well. Farewell, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Moor Park, Farnham [April 26th, 1858].

...I have just had the innermost cockles of my heart rejoiced by a
letter from Lyell. I said to him (or he to me) that I believed from
the character of the flora of the Azores, that icebergs must have been
stranded there; and that I expected erratic boulders would be detected
embedded between the upheaved lava-beds; and I got Lyell to write to
Hartung to ask, and now H. says my question explains what had astounded
him, viz., large boulders (and some polished) of mica-schist, quartz,
sandstone, etc., some embedded, and some 40 and 50 feet above the level
of the sea, so that he had inferred that they had not been brought as
ballast. Is this not beautiful?

The water-cure has done me some good, but I [am] nothing to boast of
to-day, so good-bye.

My dear friend, yours, C.D.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Moor Park, Farnham, April 26th [1858].

My dear Lyell,

I have come here for a fortnight's hydropathy, as my stomach had got,
from steady work, into a horrid state. I am extremely much obliged to
you for sending me Hartung's interesting letter. The erratic boulders
are splendid. It is a grand case of floating ice versus glaciers. He
ought to have compared the northern and southern shores of the islands.
It is eminently interesting to me, for I have written a very long
chapter on the subject, collecting briefly all the geological evidence
of glacial action in different parts of the world, and then at great
length (on the theory of species changing) I have discussed the
migration and modification of plants and animals, in sea and land, over
a large part of the world. To my mind, it throws a flood of light on
the whole subject of distribution, if combined with the modification of
species. Indeed, I venture to speak with some little confidence on this,
for Hooker, about a year ago, kindly read over my chapter, and though he
then demurred gravely to the general conclusion, I was delighted to hear
a week or two ago that he was inclined to come round pretty strongly to
my views of distribution and change during the glacial period. I had a
letter from Thompson, of Calcutta, the other day, which helps me much,
as he is making out for me what heat our temperate plants can endure.
But it is too long a subject for a note; and I have written thus only
because Hartung's note has set the whole subject afloat in my mind
again. But I will write no more, for my object here is to think
about nothing, bathe much, walk much, eat much, and read much novels.
Farewell, with many thanks, and very kind remembrance to Lady Lyell.

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO MRS. DARWIN. Moor Park, Wednesday, April [1858].

The weather is quite delicious. Yesterday, after writing to you, I
strolled a little beyond the glade for an hour and a half, and enjoyed
myself--the fresh yet dark-green of the grand Scotch firs, the brown of
the catkins of the old birches, with their white stems, and a fringe of
distant green from the larches made an excessively pretty view. At
last I fell fast asleep on the grass, and awoke with a chorus of
birds singing around me, and squirrels running up the trees, and some
woodpeckers laughing, and it was as pleasant and rural a scene as ever
I saw, and I did not care one penny how any of the beasts or birds had
been formed. I sat in the drawing-room till after eight, and then went
and read the Chief Justice's summing up, and thought Bernard (Simon
Bernard was tried in April 1858 as an accessory to Orsini's attempt on
the life of the Emperor of the French. The verdict was "not guilty.")
guilty, and then read a bit of my novel, which is feminine, virtuous,
clerical, philanthropical, and all that sort of thing, but very
decidedly flat. I say feminine, for the author is ignorant about money
matters, and not much of a lady--for she makes her men say, "My Lady."
I like Miss Craik very much, though we have some battles, and differ on
every subject. I like also the Hungarian; a thorough gentleman, formerly
attache at Paris, and then in the Austrian cavalry, and now a pardoned
exile, with broken health. He does not seem to like Kossuth, but says,
he is certain [he is] a sincere patriot, most clever and eloquent, but
weak, with no determination of character...




CHAPTER 1. XIII. -- THE WRITING OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.'

JUNE 18, 1858, TO NOVEMBER, 1859.

[The letters given in the present chapter tell their story with
sufficient clearness, and need but a few words of explanation. Mr.
Wallace's Essay, referred to in the first letter, bore the sub-title,
'On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original
Type,' was published in the Linnean Society's Journal (1858, volume
iii. page 53) as part of the joint paper of "Messrs. C. Darwin and A.
Wallace," of which the full title was 'On the Tendency of Species to
form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by
Natural Means of Selection.'

My father's contribution to the paper consisted of (1) Extracts from
the sketch of 1844; (2) part of a letter addressed to Dr Asa Gray,
dated September 5, 1857, and which is given above. The paper was
"communicated" to the Society by Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph
Hooker, in whose prefatory letter, a clear account of the circumstances
of the case is given.

Referring to Mr. Wallace's Essay, they wrote:

"So highly did Mr. Darwin appreciate the value of the views therein set
forth, that he proposed, in a letter to Sir Charles Lyell, to obtain
Mr. Wallace's consent to allow the Essay to be published as soon as
possible. Of this step we highly approved, provided Mr. Darwin did not
withhold from the public, as he was strongly inclined to do (in favour
of Mr. Wallace), the memoir which he had himself written on the same
subject, and which, as before stated, one of us had perused in 1844, and
the contents of which we had both of us been privy to for many years. On
representing this to Mr. Darwin, he gave us permission to make what
use we thought proper of his memoir, etc.; and in adopting our present
course, of presenting it to the Linnean Society, we have explained to
him that we are not solely considering the relative claims to priority
of himself and his friend, but the interests of science generally."]


LETTERS.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, 18th [June 1858].

My dear Lyell,

Some year or so ago you recommended me to read a paper by Wallace in the
'Annals' ('Annals and Magazine of Natural History', 1855.), which had
interested you, and, as I was writing to him, I knew this would please
him much, so I told him. He has to-day sent me the enclosed, and asked
me to forward it to you. It seems to me well worth reading. Your words
have come true with a vengeance--that I should be forestalled. You said
this, when I explained to you here very briefly my views of 'Natural
Selection' depending on the struggle for existence. I never saw a more
striking coincidence; if Wallace had my MS. sketch written out in 1842,
he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand
as heads of my chapters. Please return me the MS., which he does not say
he wishes me to publish, but I shall of course, at once write and offer
to send to any journal. So all my originality, whatever it may amount
to, will be smashed, though my book, if it will ever have any value,
will not be deteriorated; as all the labour consists in the application
of the theory.

I hope you will approve of Wallace's sketch, that I may tell him what
you say.

My dear Lyell, yours most truly, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, Friday [June 25, 1858].

My dear Lyell,

I am very sorry to trouble you, busy as you are, in so merely a personal
an affair; but if you will give me your deliberate opinion, you will do
me as great a service as ever man did, for I have entire confidence in
your judgment and honour...

There is nothing in Wallace's sketch which is not written out much
fuller in my sketch, copied out in 1844, and read by Hooker some dozen
years ago. About a year ago I sent a short sketch, of which I have a
copy, of my views (owing to correspondence on several points) to Asa
Gray, so that I could most truly say and prove that I take nothing
from Wallace. I should be extremely glad now to publish a sketch of my
general views in about a dozen pages or so; but I cannot persuade myself
that I can do so honourably. Wallace says nothing about publication, and
I enclose his letter. But as I had not intended to publish any sketch,
can I do so honourably, because Wallace has sent me an outline of his
doctrine? I would far rather burn my whole book, than that he or any
other man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit. Do you
not think his having sent me this sketch ties my hands?... If I could
honourably publish, I would state that I was induced now to publish a
sketch (and I should be very glad to be permitted to say, to follow
your advice long ago given) from Wallace having sent me an outline of
my general conclusions. We differ only, [in] that I was led to my views
from what artificial selection has done for domestic animals. I would
send Wallace a copy of my letter to Asa Gray, to show him that I had not
stolen his doctrine. But I cannot tell whether to publish now would
not be base and paltry. This was my first impression, and I should have
certainly acted on it had it not been for your letter.

This is a trumpery affair to trouble you with, but you cannot tell how
much obliged I should be for your advice.

By the way, would you object to send this and your answer to Hooker to
be forwarded to me, for then I shall have the opinion of my two best and
kindest friends. This letter is miserably written, and I write it now,
that I may for a time banish the whole subject; and I am worn out with
musing...

My good dear friend forgive me. This is a trumpery letter, influenced by
trumpery feelings.

Yours most truly, C. DARWIN.

I will never trouble you or Hooker on the subject again.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, 26th [June, 1858].

My dear Lyell,

Forgive me for adding a P.S. to make the case as strong as possible
against myself.

Wallace might say, "You did not intend publishing an abstract of your
views till you received my communication. Is it fair to take advantage
of my having freely, though unasked, communicated to you my ideas, and
thus prevent me forestalling you?" The advantage which I should take
being that I am induced to publish from privately knowing that Wallace
is in the field. It seems hard on me that I should be thus compelled to
lose my priority of many years' standing, but I cannot feel at all
sure that this alters the justice of the case. First impressions are
generally right, and I at first thought it would be dishonourable in me
now to publish.

Yours most truly, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I have always thought you would make a first-rate Lord Chancellor;
and I now appeal to you as a Lord Chancellor.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, Tuesday [June 29, 1858].

...I have received your letters. I cannot think now (So soon after the
death, from scarlet fever, of his infant child.) on the subject, but
soon will. But I can see that you have acted with more kindness, and so
has Lyell, even than I could have expected from you both, most kind as
you are.

I can easily get my letter to Asa Gray copied, but it is too short.

...God bless you. You shall hear soon, as soon as I can think.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Tuesday night [June 29, 1858].

My dear Hooker,

I have just read your letter, and see you want the papers at once. I
am quite prostrated, and can do nothing, but I send Wallace, and the
abstract ("Abstract" is here used in the sense of "extract;" in this
sense also it occurs in the 'Linnean Journal,' where the sources of my
father's paper are described.) of my letter to Asa Gray, which gives
most imperfectly only the means of change, and does not touch on reasons
for believing that species do change. I dare say all is too late. I
hardly care about it. But you are too generous to sacrifice so much time
and kindness. It is most generous, most kind. I send my sketch of 1844
solely that you may see by your own handwriting that you did read it.
I really cannot bear to look at it. Do not waste much time. It is
miserable in me to care at all about priority.

The table of contents will show what it is.

I would make a similar, but shorter and more accurate sketch for the
'Linnean Journal.'

I will do anything. God bless you, my dear kind friend.

I can write no more. I send this by my servant to Kew.

Yours, C. DARWIN.


[The following letter is that already referred to as forming part of the
joint paper published in the Linnean Society's 'Journal,' 1858]:--


CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. Down, September 5th [1857]. (The date is
given as October in the 'Linnean Journal.' The extracts were printed
from a duplicate undated copy in my father's possession, on which he had
written, "This was sent to Asa Gray 8 or 9 months ago, I think October
1857.")

My dear Gray,

I forget the exact words which I used in my former letter, but I dare
say I said that I thought you would utterly despise me when I told you
what views I had arrived at, which I did because I thought I was bound
as an honest man to do so. I should have been a strange mortal, seeing
how much I owe to your quite extraordinary kindness, if in saying this
I had meant to attribute the least bad feeling to you. Permit me to tell
you that, before I had ever corresponded with you, Hooker had shown me
several of your letters (not of a private nature), and these gave me the
warmest feeling of respect to you; and I should indeed be ungrateful
if your letters to me, and all I have heard of you, had not strongly
enhanced this feeling. But I did not feel in the least sure that when
you knew whither I was tending, that you might not think me so wild and
foolish in my views (God knows, arrived at slowly enough, and I hope
conscientiously), that you would think me worth no more notice or
assistance. To give one example: the last time I saw my dear old friend
Falconer, he attacked me most vigorously, but quite kindly, and told me,
"You will do more harm than any ten Naturalists will do good. I can see
that you have already CORRUPTED and half-spoiled Hooker!!" Now when I
see such strong feeling in my oldest friends, you need not wonder that I
always expect my views to be received with contempt. But enough and too
much of this.

I thank you most truly for the kind spirit of your last letter. I agree
to every word in it, and think I go as far as almost any one in seeing
the grave difficulties against my doctrine. With respect to the extent
to which I go, all the arguments in favour of my notions fall RAPIDLY
away, the greater the scope of forms considered. But in animals,
embryology leads me to an enormous and frightful range. The facts which
kept me longest scientifically orthodox are those of adaptation--the
pollen-masses in asclepias--the mistletoe, with its pollen carried by
insects, and seed by birds--the woodpecker, with its feet and tail, beak
and tongue, to climb the tree and secure insects. To talk of climate or
Lamarckian habit producing such adaptations to other organic beings
is futile. This difficulty I believe I have surmounted. As you seem
interested in the subject, and as it is an IMMENSE advantage to me
to write to you and to hear, ever so briefly, what you think, I will
enclose (copied, so as to save you trouble in reading) the briefest
abstract of my notions on the means by which Nature makes her species.
Why I think that species have really changed, depends on general facts
in the affinities, embryology, rudimentary organs, geological history,
and geographical distribution of organic beings. In regard to my
Abstract, you must take immensely on trust, each paragraph occupying one
or two chapters in my book. You will, perhaps, think it paltry in me,
when I ask you not to mention my doctrine; the reason is, if any one,
like the author of the 'Vestiges,' were to hear of them, he might
easily work them in, and then I should have to quote from a work perhaps
despised by naturalists, and this would greatly injure any chance of
my views being received by those alone whose opinions I value. [Here
follows a discussion on "large genera varying," which has no direct
connection with the remainder of the letter.]

I. It is wonderful what the principle of Selection by Man, that is the
picking out of individuals with any desired quality, and breeding from
them, and again picking out, can do. Even breeders have been astonished
at their own results. They can act on differences inappreciable to an
uneducated eye. Selection has been METHODICALLY followed in Europe for
only the last half century. But it has occasionally, and even in some
degree methodically, been followed in the most ancient times. There must
have been also a kind of unconscious selection from the most ancient
times, namely, in the preservation of the individual animals (without
any thought of their offspring) most useful to each race of man in
his particular circumstances. The "roguing," as nursery-men call the
destroying of varieties, which depart from their type, is a kind of
selection. I am convinced that intentional and occasional selection has
been the main agent in making our domestic races. But, however this may
be, its great power of modification has been indisputedly shown in late
times. Selection acts only by the accumulation of very slight or greater
variations, caused by external conditions, or by the mere fact that in
generation the child is not absolutely similar to its parent. Man,
by this power of accumulating variations, adapts living beings to his
wants--he MAY BE SAID to make the wool of one sheep good for carpets,
and another for cloth, etc.

II. Now, suppose there was a being, who did not judge by mere external
appearance, but could study the whole internal organisation--who never
was capricious--who should go on selecting for one end during millions
of generations, who will say what he might not effect! In nature we have
some SLIGHT variations, occasionally in all parts: and I think it can be
shown that a change in the conditions of existence is the main cause
of the child not exactly resembling its parents; and in nature, geology
shows us what changes have taken place, and are taking place. We have
almost unlimited time: no one but a practical geologist can fully
appreciate this: think of the Glacial period, during the whole of which
the same species of shells at least have existed; there must have been
during this period, millions on millions of generations.

III. I think it can be shown that there is such an unerring power
at work, or NATURAL SELECTION (the title of my book), which selects
exclusively for the good of each organic being. The elder De Candolle,
W. Herbert, and Lyell, have written strongly on the struggle for life;
but even they have not written strongly enough. Reflect that every being
(even the elephant) breeds at such a rate that, in a few years, or at
most a few centuries or thousands of years, the surface of the earth
would not hold the progeny of any one species. I have found it hard
constantly to bear in mind that the increase of every single species is
checked during some part of its life, or during some shortly recurrent
generation. Only a few of those annually born can live to propagate
their kind. What a trifling difference must often determine which shall
survive and which perish.

IV. Now take the case of a country undergoing some change; this will
tend to cause some of its inhabitants to vary slightly; not but what I
believe most beings vary at all times enough for selection to act on.
Some of its inhabitants will be exterminated, and the remainder will be
exposed to the mutual action of a different set of inhabitants, which
I believe to be more important to the life of each being than mere
climate. Considering the infinitely various ways beings have to obtain
food by struggling with other beings, to escape danger at various times
of life, to have their eggs or seeds disseminated, etc., etc., I cannot
doubt that during millions of generations individuals of a species
will be born with some slight variation profitable to some part of its
economy; such will have a better chance of surviving, propagating this
variation, which again will be slowly increased by the accumulative
action of natural selection; and the variety thus formed will either
coexist with, or more commonly will exterminate its parent form. An
organic being like the woodpecker, or the mistletoe, may thus come to
be adapted to a score of contingencies; natural selection, accumulating
those slight variations in all parts of its structure which are in any
way useful to it, during any part of its life.

V. Multiform difficulties will occur to every one on this theory. Most
can, I think, be satisfactorily answered.--"Natura non facit saltum"
answer some of the most obvious. The slowness of the change, and only a
very few undergoing change at any one time answers others. The extreme
imperfections of our geological records answers others.

VI. One other principle, which may be called the principle of
divergence, plays, I believe, an important part in the origin of
species. The same spot will support more life if occupied by very
diverse forms: we see this in the many generic forms in a square yard of
turf (I have counted twenty species belonging to eighteen genera), or in
the plants and insects, on any little uniform islet, belonging to almost
as many genera and families as to species. We can understand this with
the higher animals, whose habits we best understand. We know that it
has been experimentally shown that a plot of land will yield a greater
weight, if cropped with several species of grasses, than with two or
three species. Now every single organic being, by propagating rapidly,
may be said to be striving its utmost to increase in numbers. So it will
be with the offspring of any species after it has broken into varieties,
or sub-species, or true species. And it follows, I think, from the
foregoing facts, that the varying offspring of each species will try
(only a few will succeed) to seize on as many and as diverse places
in the economy of nature as possible. Each new variety or species when
formed will generally take the place of, and so exterminate its
less well-fitted parent. This, I believe, to be the origin of the
classification or arrangement of all organic beings at all times. These
always SEEM to branch and sub-branch like a tree from a common trunk;
the flourishing twigs destroying the less vigorous--the dead and lost
branches rudely representing extinct genera and families.

This sketch is MOST imperfect; but in so short a space I cannot make
it better. Your imagination must fill up many wide blanks. Without some
reflection, it will appear all rubbish; perhaps it will appear so after
reflection.

C.D.

P.S.--This little abstract touches only the accumulative power of
natural selection, which I look at as by far the most important element
in the production of new forms. The laws governing the incipient or
primordial variation (unimportant except as the groundwork for selection
to act on, in which respect it is all important), I shall discuss under
several heads, but I can come, as you may well believe, only to very
partial and imperfect conclusions.


[The joint paper of Mr. Wallace and my father was read at the Linnean
Society on the evening of July 1st. Sir Charles Lyell and Sir J.D.
Hooker were present, and both, I believe, made a few remarks, chiefly
with a view of impressing on those present the necessity of giving the
most careful consideration to what they had heard. There was, however,
no semblance of a discussion. Sir Joseph Hooker writes to me: "The
interest excited was intense, but the subject was too novel and too
ominous for the old school to enter the lists, before armouring. After
the meeting it was talked over with bated breath: Lyell's approval, and
perhaps in a small way mine, as his lieutenant in the affair, rather
overawed the Fellows, who would otherwise have flown out against the
doctrine. We had, too, the vantage ground of being familiar with the
authors and their theme."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, July 5th [1858].

My dear Hooker,

We are become more happy and less panic-struck, now that we have sent
out of the house every child, and shall remove H.,as soon as she can
move. The first nurse became ill with ulcerated throat and quinsey,
and the second is now ill with the scarlet fever, but, thank God, is
recovering. You may imagine how frightened we have been. It has been a
most miserable fortnight. Thank you much for your note, telling me that
all had gone on prosperously at the Linnean Society. You must let me
once again tell you how deeply I feel your generous kindness and Lyell's
on this occasion. But in truth it shames me that you should have lost
time on a mere point of priority. I shall be curious to see the proofs.
I do not in the least understand whether my letter to A. Gray is to be
printed; I suppose not, only your note; but I am quite indifferent, and
place myself absolutely in your and Lyell's hands.

I can easily prepare an abstract of my whole work, but I can hardly see
how it can be made scientific for a Journal, without giving facts, which
would be impossible. Indeed, a mere abstract cannot be very short. Could
you give me any idea how many pages of the Journal could probably be
spared me?

Directly after my return home, I would begin and cut my cloth to my
measure. If the Referees were to reject it as not strictly scientific, I
could, perhaps publish it as a pamphlet.

With respect to my big interleaved abstract (The Sketch of 1844.), would
you send it any time before you leave England, to the enclosed address?
If you do not go till August 7th-10th, I should prefer it left with
you. I hope you have jotted criticisms on my MS. on big Genera, etc.,
sufficient to make you remember your remarks, as I should be infinitely
sorry to lose them. And I see no chance of our meeting if you go soon
abroad. We thank you heartily for your invitation to join you: I can
fancy nothing which I should enjoy more; but our children are too
delicate for us to leave; I should be mere living lumber.

Lastly, you said you would write to Wallace; I certainly should much
like this, as it would quite exonerate me: if you would send me your
note, sealed up, I would forward it with my own, as I know the address,
etc.

Will you answer me sometime about your notions of the length of my
abstract.

If you see Lyell, will you tell him how truly grateful I feel for his
kind interest in this affair of mine. You must know that I look at it,
as very important, for the reception of the view of species not being
immutable, the fact of the greatest Geologist and Botanist in England
taking ANY SORT OF INTEREST in the subject: I am sure it will do much to
break down prejudices.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Miss Wedgwood's, Hartfield, Tunbridge
Wells, [July 13th, 1858].

My dear Hooker,

Your letter to Wallace seems to me perfect, quite clear and most
courteous. I do not think it could possibly be improved, and I have
to day forwarded it with a letter of my own. I always thought it very
possible that I might be forestalled, but I fancied that I had a grand
enough soul not to care; but I found myself mistaken and punished; I
had, however, quite resigned myself, and had written half a letter to
Wallace to give up all priority to him, and should certainly not
have changed had it not been for Lyell's and your quite extraordinary
kindness. I assure you I feel it, and shall not forget it. I am MORE
than satisfied at what took place at the Linnean Society. I had thought
that your letter and mine to Asa Gray were to be only an appendix to
Wallace's paper.

We go from here in a few days to the sea-side, probably to the Isle of
Wight, and on my return (after a battle with pigeon skeletons) I will
set to work at the abstract, though how on earth I shall make anything
of an abstract in thirty pages of the Journal, I know not, but will try
my best. I shall order Bentham; is it not a pity that you should waste
time in tabulating varieties? for I can get the Down schoolmaster to do
it on my return, and can tell you all the results.

I must try and see you before your journey; but do not think I am
fishing to ask you to come to Down, for you will have no time for that.

You cannot imagine how pleased I am that the notion of Natural Selection
has acted as a purgative on your bowels of immutability. Whenever
naturalists can look at species changing as certain, what a magnificent
field will be open,--on all the laws of variation,--on the genealogy of
all living beings,--on their lines of migration, etc., etc. Pray thank
Mrs. Hooker for her very kind little note, and pray, say how truly
obliged I am, and in truth ashamed to think that she should have had
the trouble of copying my ugly MS. It was extraordinarily kind in her.
Farewell, my dear kind friend.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--I have had some fun here in watching a slave-making ant; for I
could not help rather doubting the wonderful stories, but I have now
seen a defeated marauding party, and I have seen a migration from one
nest to another of the slave-makers, carrying their slaves (who are
HOUSE, and not field niggers) in their mouths!

I am inclined to think that it is a true generalisation that, when honey
is secreted at one point of the circle of the corolla, if the pistil
bends, it always bends into the line of the gangway to the honey. The
Larkspur is a good instance, in contrast to Columbine,--if you think of
it, just attend to this little point.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. King's Head Hotel, Sandown, Isle of Wight,
July 18th [1858].

...We are established here for ten days, and then go on to Shanklin,
which seems more amusing to one, like myself, who cannot walk. We hope
much that the sea may do H. and L. good. And if it does, our expedition
will answer, but not otherwise.

I have never half thanked you for all the extraordinary trouble and
kindness you showed me about Wallace's affair. Hooker told me what was
done at the Linnean Society, and I am far more than satisfied, and I do
not think that Wallace can think my conduct unfair in allowing you and
Hooker to do whatever you thought fair. I certainly was a little annoyed
to lose all priority, but had resigned myself to my fate. I am going to
prepare a longer abstract; but it is really impossible to do justice
to the subject, except by giving the facts on which each conclusion is
grounded, and that will, of course, be absolutely impossible. Your name
and Hooker's name appearing as in any way the least interested in my
work will, I am certain, have the most important bearing in leading
people to consider the subject without prejudice. I look at this as so
very important, that I am almost glad of Wallace's paper for having led
to this.

My dear Lyell, yours most gratefully, CH. DARWIN.


[The following letter refers to the proof-sheets of the Linnean paper.
The 'introduction' means the prefatory letter signed by Sir C. Lyell and
Sir J.D. Hooker.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. King's Head Hotel, Sandown, Isle of
Wight, July 21st [1858].

My dear Hooker,

I received only yesterday the proof-sheets, which I now return. I think
your introduction cannot be improved.

I am disgusted with my bad writing. I could not improve it, without
rewriting all, which would not be fair or worth while, as I have begun
on a better abstract for the Linnean Society. My excuse is that it NEVER
was intended for publication. I have made only a few corrections in the
style; but I cannot make it decent, but I hope moderately intelligible.
I suppose some one will correct the revise. (Shall I?)

Could I have a clean proof to send to Wallace?

I have not yet fully considered your remarks on big genera (but your
general concurrence is of the HIGHEST POSSIBLE interest to me); nor
shall I be able till I re-read my MS.; but you may rely on it that
you never make a remark to me which is lost from INATTENTION. I am
particularly glad you do not object to my stating your objections in
a modified form, for they always struck me as very important, and as
having much inherent value, whether or no they were fatal to my notions.
I will consider and reconsider all your remarks...

I have ordered Bentham, for, as -- says, it will be very curious to see
a Flora written by a man who knows nothing of British plants!!

I am very glad at what you say about my Abstract, but you may rely on
it that I will condense to the utmost. I would aid in money if it is
too long. (That is to say, he would help to pay for the printing, if
it should prove too long for the Linnean Society.) In how many ways you
have aided me!

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

[The 'Abstract' mentioned in the last sentence of the preceding letter
was in fact the 'Origin of Species,' on which he now set to work. In his
'Autobiography' he speaks of beginning to write in September, but in
his Diary he wrote, "July 20 to August 12, at Sandown, began Abstract of
Species book." "September 16, Recommenced Abstract." The book was
begun with the idea that it would be published as a paper, or series of
papers, by the Linnean Society, and it was only in the late autumn that
it became clear that it must take the form of an independent volume.]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Norfolk House, Shanklin, Isle of Wight,
Friday [July] 30th [1858].

My dear Hooker,

Will you give the enclosed scrap to Sir William to thank him for his
kindness; and this gives me an excuse to amuse myself by writing to you
a note, which requires no answer.

This is a very charming place, and we have got a very comfortable house.
But, alas, I cannot say that the sea has done H. or L. much good. Nor
has my stomach recovered from all our troubles. I am very glad we left
home, for six children have now died of scarlet fever in Down. We return
on the 14th of August.

I have got Bentham ('British Flora.'), and am charmed with it, and
William (who has just started for a tour abroad) has been making out all
sorts of new (to me) plants capitally. The little scraps of information
are so capital...The English names in the analytical keys drive us mad:
give them by all means, but why on earth [not] make them subordinate to
the Latin; it puts me in a passion. W. charged into the Compositae and
Umbelliferae like a hero, and demolished ever so many in grand style.

I pass my time by doing daily a couple of hours of my Abstract, and I
find it amusing and improving work. I am now most heartily obliged to
you and Lyell for having set me on this; for I shall, when it is done,
be able to finish my work with greater ease and leisure. I confess I
hated the thought of the job; and now I find it very unsatisfactory in
not being able to give my reasons for each conclusion.

I will be longer than I expected; it will take thirty-five of my MS.
folio pages to give an abstract on variation under domestication alone;
but I will try to put in nothing which does not seem to me of some
interest, and which was once new to me. It seems a queer plan to give an
abstract of an unpublished work; nevertheless, I repeat, I am extremely
glad I have begun in earnest on it.

I hope you and Mrs. Hooker will have a very very pleasant tour.
Farewell, my dear Hooker.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Norfolk House, Shanklin, Isle of Wight,
Thursday [August 5, 1858].

My dear Hooker,

I should think the note apologetical about the style of the abstract was
best as a note...But I write now to ask you to send me by return of post
the MS. on big genera, that I may make an abstract of a couple of pages
in length. I presume that you have quite done with it, otherwise I would
not for anything have it back. If you tie it with string, and mark it
MS. for printing, it will not cost, I should think, more than 4 pence.
I shall wish much to say that you have read this MS. and concur; but you
shall, before I read it to the Society, hear the sentence.

What you tell me after speaking with Busk about the length of the
Abstract is an IMMENSE relief to me; it will make the labour far less,
not having to shorten so much every single subject; but I will try not
to be too diffusive. I fear it will spoil all interest in my book (The
larger book begun in 1856.), whenever published. The Abstract will
do very well to divide into several parts: thus I have just finished
"Variation under Domestication," in forty-four MS. pages, and that would
do for one evening; but I should be extremely sorry if all could not be
published together.

What else you say about my Abstract pleases me highly, but frightens me,
for I fear I shall never be able to make it good enough. But how I do
run on about my own affairs to you!

I was astonished to see Sir W. Hooker's card here two or three days
ago: I was unfortunately out walking. Henslow, also, has written to me,
proposing to come to Down on the 9th, but alas, I do not return till the
13th, and my wife not till a week later; so that I am also most sorry to
think I shall not see you, for I should not like to leave home so soon.
I had thought of going to London and running down for an hour or two to
Kew...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Norfolk House, Shanklin, Isle of Wight,
[August] [1858].

My dear Hooker,

I write merely to say that the MS. came safely two or three days ago.
I am much obliged for the correction of style: I find it unutterably
difficult to write clearly. When we meet I must talk over a few points
on the subject.

You speak of going to the sea-side somewhere; we think this the nicest
seaside place which we have ever seen, and we like Shanklin better than
other spots on the south coast of the island, though many are charming
and prettier, so that I would suggest your thinking of this place. We
are on the actual coast; but tastes differ so much about places.

If you go to Broadstairs, when there is a strong wind from the coast of
France and in fine, dry, warm weather, look out, and you will PROBABLY
(!) see thistle-seeds blown across the Channel. The other day I saw one
blown right inland, and then in a few minutes a second one and then a
third; and I said to myself, God bless me, how many thistles there must
be in France; and I wrote a letter in imagination to you. But I then
looked at the LOW clouds, and noticed that they were not coming inland,
so I feared a screw was loose. I then walked beyond a headland, and
found the wind parallel to the coast, and on this very headland a noble
bed of thistles, which by every wide eddy were blown far out to sea, and
then came right in at right angles to the shore! One day such a number
of insects were washed up by the tide, and I brought to life thirteen
species of Coleoptera; not that I suppose these came from France. But do
you watch for thistle-seed as you saunter along the coast...


CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. August 11th [1858].

My dear Gray,

Your note of July 27th has just reached me in the Isle of Wight. It is a
real and great pleasure to me to write to you about my notions; and
even if it were not so, I should be a most ungrateful dog, after all
the invaluable assistance you have rendered me, if I did not do anything
which you asked.

I have discussed in my long MS. the later changes of climate and the
effect on migration, and I will here give you an ABSTRACT of an ABSTRACT
(which latter I am preparing of my whole work for the Linnean Society).
I cannot give you facts, and I must write dogmatically, though I do not
feel so on any point. I may just mention, in order that you may believe
that I have SOME foundation for my views, that Hooker has read my MS.,
and though he at first demurred to my main point, he has since told me
that further reflection and new facts have made him a convert.

In the older, or perhaps newer, Pliocene age (a little BEFORE the
Glacial epoch) the temperature was higher; of this there can be little
doubt; the land, on a LARGE SCALE, held much its present disposition:
the species were mainly, judging from shells, what they are now. At this
period when all animals and plants ranged 10 or 15 degrees nearer the
poles, I believe the northern part of Siberia and of North America being
almost CONTINUOUS, were peopled (it is quite possible, considering
the shallow water, that Behring Straits were united, perhaps a little
southward) by a nearly uniform fauna and flora, just as the Arctic
regions now are. The climate then became gradually colder till it became
what it now is; and then the temperate parts of Europe and America would
be separated, as far as migration is concerned, just as they now are.
Then came on the Glacial period, driving far south all living things;
middle or even southern Europe being peopled with Arctic productions;
as the warmth returned, the Arctic productions slowly crawled up the
mountains as they became denuded of snow; and we now see on their
summits the remnants of a once continuous flora and fauna. This is E.
Forbes' theory, which, however, I may add, I had written out four years
before he published.

Some facts have made me vaguely SUSPECT that between the glacial and
the present temperature there was a period of SLIGHTLY greater warmth.
According to my modification-doctrines, I look at many of the species of
North America which CLOSELY represent those of Europe, as having become
modified since the Pliocene period, when in the northern part of the
world there was nearly free communication between the old and new
worlds. But now comes a more important consideration; there is a
considerable body of geological evidence that during the Glacial epoch
the whole world was colder; I inferred that, many years ago, from
erratic boulder phenomena carefully observed by me on both the east and
west coast of South America. Now I am so bold as to believe that at the
height of the Glacial epoch, AND WHEN ALL TROPICAL PRODUCTIONS MUST
HAVE BEEN CONSIDERABLY DISTRESSED, that several temperate forms slowly
travelled into the heart of the Tropics, and even reached the southern
hemisphere; and some few southern forms penetrated in a reverse
direction northward. (Heights of Borneo with Australian forms, Abyssinia
with Cape forms.) Wherever there was nearly continuous HIGH land, this
migration would have been immensely facilitated; hence the European
character of the plants of Tierra del Fuego and summits of Cordilleras;
hence ditto on Himalaya. As the temperature rose, all the temperate
intruders would crawl up the mountains. Hence the European forms on
Nilgherries, Ceylon, summit of Java, Organ Mountains of Brazil. But
these intruders being surrounded with new forms would be very liable to
be improved or modified by natural selection, to adapt them to the new
forms with which they had to compete; hence most of the forms on the
mountains of the Tropics are not identical, but REPRESENTATIVE forms of
North temperate plants.

There are similar classes of facts in marine productions. All this will
appear very rash to you, and rash it may be; but I am sure not so rash
as it will at first appear to you: Hooker could not stomach it at all at
first, but has become largely a convert. From mammalia and shallow sea,
I believe Japan to have been joined to main land of China within no
remote period; and then the migration north and south before, during,
and after the Glacial epoch would act on Japan, as on the corresponding
latitude of China and the United States.

I should beyond anything like to know whether you have any Alpine
collections from Japan, and what is their character. This letter is
miserably expressed, but perhaps it will suffice to show what I believe
have been the later main migrations and changes of temperature...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [Down] October 6th, 1858.

...If you have or can make leisure, I should very much like to hear news
of Mrs. Hooker, yourself, and the children. Where did you go, and what
did you do and are doing? There is a comprehensive text.

You cannot tell how I enjoyed your little visit here, it did me much
good. If Harvey is still with you, pray remember me very kindly to him.

...I am working most steadily at my Abstract, but it grows to an
inordinate length; yet fully to make my view clear (and never giving
briefly more than a fact or two, and slurring over difficulties), I
cannot make it shorter. It will yet take me three or four months; so
slow do I work, though never idle. You cannot imagine what a service you
have done me in making me make this Abstract; for though I thought I had
got all clear, it has clarified my brains very much, by making me weigh
the relative importance of the several elements.

I have been reading with much interest your (as I believe it to be)
capital memoir of R. Brown in the "Gardeners' Chronicle"...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, October 12th, [1858].

...I have sent eight copies (Of the joint paper by C. Darwin and A.R.
Wallace.) by post to Wallace, and will keep the others for him, for I
could not think of any one to send any to.

I pray you not to pronounce too strongly against Natural Selection, till
you have read my abstract, for though I dare say you will strike out
MANY difficulties, which have never occurred to me; yet you cannot have
thought so fully on the subject as I have.

I expect my Abstract will run into a small volume, which will have to be
published separately...

What a splendid lot of work you have in hand.

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, October 13th [1858].

...I have been a little vexed at myself at having asked you not "to
pronounce too strongly against Natural Selection." I am sorry to have
bothered you, though I have been much interested by your note in answer.
I wrote the sentence without reflection. But the truth is, that I have
so accustomed myself, partly from being quizzed by my non-naturalist
relations, to expect opposition and even contempt, that I forgot for
the moment that you are the one living soul from whom I have constantly
received sympathy. Believe [me] that I never forget for even a minute
how much assistance I have received from you. You are quite correct that
I never even suspected that my speculations were a "jam-pot" to you;
indeed, I thought, until quite lately, that my MS. had produced no
effect on you, and this has often staggered me. Nor did I know that you
had spoken in general terms about my work to our friends, excepting to
dear old Falconer, who some few years ago once told me that I should do
more mischief than any ten other naturalists would do good, [and] that I
had half spoiled you already! All this is stupid egotistical stuff,
and I write it only because you may think me ungrateful for not having
valued and understood your sympathy; which God knows is not the case. It
is an accursed evil to a man to become so absorbed in any subject as I
am in mine.

I was in London yesterday for a few hours with Falconer, and he gave
me a magnificent lecture on the age of man. We are not upstarts; we can
boast of a pedigree going far back in time coeval with extinct species.
He has a grand fact of some large molar tooth in the Trias.

I am quite knocked up, and am going next Monday to revive under
Water-cure at Moor Park.

My dear Hooker, yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. November 1858.

...I had vowed not to mention my everlasting Abstract to you again, for
I am sure I have bothered you far more than enough about it; but, as you
allude to its previous publication, I may say that I have the chapters
on Instinct and Hybridism to abstract, which may take a fortnight each;
and my materials for Palaeontology, Geographical Distribution, and
Affinities, being less worked up, I dare say each of these will take me
three weeks, so that I shall not have done at soonest till April, and
then my Abstract will in bulk make a small volume. I never give more
than one or two instances, and I pass over briefly all difficulties, and
yet I cannot make my Abstract shorter, to be satisfactory, than I am now
doing, and yet it will expand to a small volume...


[About this time my father revived his old knowledge of beetles in
helping his boys in their collecting. He sent a short notice to the
'Entomologist's Weekly Intelligencer,' June 25th, 1859, recording the
capture of Licinus silphoides, Clytus mysticus, Panagaeus 4-pustulatus.
The notice begins with the words, "We three very young collectors having
lately taken in the parish of Down," etc., and is signed by three of his
boys, but was clearly not written by them. I have a vivid recollection
of the pleasure of turning out my bottle of dead beetles for my father
to name, and the excitement, in which he fully shared, when any of them
proved to be uncommon ones. The following letters to Mr. Fox (November
13, 1858), and to Sir John Lubbock, illustrate this point:]


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, November 13th [1858].

...W., my son, is now at Christ's College, in the rooms above yours.
My old Gyp, Impey, was astounded to hear that he was my son, and very
simply asked, "Why, has he been long married?" What pleasant hours those
were when I used to come and drink coffee with you daily! I am reminded
of old days by my third boy having just begun collecting beetles, and
he caught the other day Brachinus crepitans, of immortal Whittlesea
Mere memory. My blood boiled with old ardour when he caught a Licinus--a
prize unknown to me...


CHARLES DARWIN TO JOHN LUBBOCK. Thursday [before 1857].

Dear Lubbock,

I do not know whether you care about beetles, but for the chance I
send this in a bottle, which I never remember having seen; though it
is excessively rash to speak from a twenty-five-year old remembrance.
Whenever we meet you can tell me whether you know it...

I feel like an old war-horse at the sound of the trumpet, when I read
about the capturing of rare beetles--is not this a magnanimous simile
for a decayed entomologist?--It really almost makes me long to begin
collecting again. Adios.

"Floreat Entomologia"!--to which toast at Cambridge I have drunk many a
glass of wine. So again, "Floreat Entomologia." N.B. I have NOT now been
drinking any glasses full of wine.

Yours, C.D.


CHARLES DARWIN TO HERBERT SPENCER. Down, November 25th [1858].

Dear Sir,

I beg permission to thank you sincerely for your very kind present
of your Essays. ('Essays, Scientific, Political, and Speculative,' by
Herbert Spencer, 1858-74.) I have already read several of them with
much interest. Your remarks on the general argument of the so-called
development theory seems to me admirable. I am at present preparing an
Abstract of a larger work on the changes of species; but I treat the
subject simply as a naturalist, and not from a general point of view,
otherwise, in my opinion, your argument could not have been improved on,
and might have been quoted by me with great advantage. Your article
on Music has also interested me much, for I had often thought on the
subject, and had come to nearly the same conclusion with you, though
unable to support the notion in any detail. Furthermore, by a curious
coincidence, expression has been for years a persistent subject with
me for LOOSE speculation, and I must entirely agree with you that
all expression has some biological meaning. I hope to profit by your
criticism on style, and with very best thanks, I beg leave to remain,
dear Sir,

Yours truly obliged, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, December 24th [1858].

My dear Hooker,

Your news about your unsolicited salary and house is jolly, and
creditable to the Government. My room (28 x 19), with divided room
above, with ALL FIXTURES (and painted), not furniture, and plastered
outside, cost about 500 pounds. I am heartily glad of this news.

Your facts about distribution are, indeed, very striking. I remember
well that none of your many wonderful facts in your several works,
perplexed me, for years, more than the migration having been mainly from
north to south, and not in the reverse direction. I have now at last
satisfied MYSELF (but that is very different from satisfying others) on
this head; but it would take a little volume to fully explain myself.
I did not for long see the bearing of a conclusion, at which I had
arrived, with respect to this subject. It is, that species inhabiting a
very large area, and therefore existing in large numbers, and which have
been subjected to the severest competition with many other forms, will
have arrived, through natural selection, at a higher stage of perfection
than the inhabitants of a small area. Thus I explain the fact of so many
anomalies, or what may be called "living fossils," inhabiting now only
fresh water, having been beaten out, and exterminated in the sea, by
more improved forms; thus all existing Ganoid fishes are fresh water,
as [are] Lepidosiren and Ornithorhynchus, etc. The plants of Europe and
Asia, as being the largest territory, I look at as the most "improved,"
and therefore as being able to withstand the less-perfected Australian
plants; [whilst] these could not resist the Indian. See how all the
productions of New Zealand yield to those of Europe. I dare say you will
think all this utter bosh, but I believe it to be solid truth.

You will, I think, admit that Australian plants, flourishing so in
India, is no argument that they could hold their own against the ten
thousand natural contingencies of other plants, insects, animals, etc.,
etc. With respect to South West Australia and the Cape, I am shut up,
and can only d--n the whole case.

...You say you should like to see my MS., but you did read and approve
of my long Glacial chapter, and I have not yet written my Abstract on
the whole of the Geographical Distribution, nor shall I begin it for two
or three weeks. But either Abstract or the old MS. I should be DELIGHTED
to send you, especially the Abstract chapter...

I have now written 330 folio pages of my abstract, and it will require
150-200 [more]; so that it will make a printed volume of 400 pages,
and must be printed separately, which I think will be better in many
respects. The subject really seems to me too large for discussion at any
Society, and I believe religion would be brought in by men whom I know.

I am thinking of a 12mo volume, like Lyell's fourth or fifth edition of
the 'Principles.'...

I have written you a scandalously long note. So now good-bye, my dear
Hooker,

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 20th, 1859.

My dear Hooker,

I should very much like to borrow Heer at some future time, for I want
to read nothing perplexing at present till my Abstract is done.
Your last very instructive letter shall make me very cautious on the
hyper-speculative points we have been discussing.

When you say you cannot master the train of thoughts, I know well enough
that they are too doubtful and obscure to be mastered. I have often
experienced what you call the humiliating feeling of getting more and
more involved in doubt the more one thinks of the facts and reasoning
on doubtful points. But I always comfort myself with thinking of the
future, and in the full belief that the problems which we are just
entering on, will some day be solved; and if we just break the ground we
shall have done some service, even if we reap no harvest.

I quite agree that we only differ in DEGREE about the means of
dispersal, and that I think a satisfactory amount of accordance. You put
in a very striking manner the mutation of our continents, and I quite
agree; I doubt only about our oceans.

I also agree (I am in a very agreeing frame of mind) with your
argumentum ad hominem, about the highness of the Australian Flora
from the number of species and genera; but here comes in a superlative
bothering element of doubt, viz., the effect of isolation.

The only point in which I PRESUMPTUOUSLY rather demur is about the
status of the naturalised plants in Australia. I think Muller speaks of
their having spread largely beyond cultivated ground; and I can hardly
believe that our European plants would occupy stations so barren that
the native plants could not live there. I should require much evidence
to make me believe this. I have written this note merely to thank you,
as you will see it requires no answer.

I have heard to my amazement this morning from Phillips that the
Geological Council have given me the Wollaston Medal!!!

Ever yours, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 23d, 1859.

...I enclose letters to you and me from Wallace. I admire extremely the
spirit in which they are written. I never felt very sure what he would
say. He must be an amiable man. Please return that to me, and Lyell
ought to be told how well satisfied he is. These letters have vividly
brought before me how much I owe to your and Lyell's most kind and
generous conduct in all this affair.

...How glad I shall be when the Abstract is finished, and I can rest!...


CHARLES DARWIN TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, January 25th [1859].

My dear Sir,

I was extremely much pleased at receiving three days ago your letter to
me and that to Dr. Hooker. Permit me to say how heartily I admire
the spirit in which they are written. Though I had absolutely nothing
whatever to do in leading Lyell and Hooker to what they thought a fair
course of action, yet I naturally could not but feel anxious to hear
what your impression would be. I owe indirectly much to you and them;
for I almost think that Lyell would have proved right, and I should
never have completed my larger work, for I have found my Abstract hard
enough with my poor health, but now, thank God, I am in my last chapter
but one. My Abstract will make a small volume of 400 or 500 pages.
Whenever published, I will, of course, send you a copy, and then you
will see what I mean about the part which I believe selection has played
with domestic productions. It is a very different part, as you suppose,
from that played by "Natural Selection." I sent off, by the same address
as this note, a copy of the 'Journal of the Linnean Society,' and
subsequently I have sent some half-dozen copies of the paper. I have
many other copies at your disposal...

I am glad to hear that you have been attending to birds' nests. I have
done so, though almost exclusively under one point of view, viz., to
show that instincts vary, so that selection could work on and improve
them. Few other instincts, so to speak, can be preserved in a Museum.

Many thanks for your offer to look after horses' stripes; If there
are any donkeys, pray add them. I am delighted to hear that you have
collected bees' combs...This is an especial hobby of mine, and I think
I can throw a light on the subject. If you can collect duplicates, at no
very great expense, I should be glad of some specimens for myself with
some bees of each kind. Young, growing, and irregular combs, and
those which have not had pupae, are most valuable for measurements and
examination. Their edges should be well protected against abrasion.

Every one whom I have seen has thought your paper very well written and
interesting. It puts my extracts (written in 1839, now just twenty years
ago!), which I must say in apology were never for an instant intended
for publication, into the shade.

You ask about Lyell's frame of mind. I think he is somewhat staggered,
but does not give in, and speaks with horror, often to me, of what a
thing it would be, and what a job it would be for the next edition of
'The Principles,' if he were "PERverted." But he is most candid and
honest, and I think will end by being PERverted. Dr. Hooker has become
almost as heterodox as you or I, and I look at Hooker as BY FAR the most
capable judge in Europe.

Most cordially do I wish you health and entire success in all your
pursuits, and, God knows, if admirable zeal and energy deserve success,
most amply do you deserve it. I look at my own career as nearly run out.
If I can publish my Abstract and perhaps my greater work on the same
subject, I shall look at my course as done.

Believe me, my dear sir, yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 2nd [1859].

My dear Hooker,

Here is an odd, though very little, fact. I think it would be hardly
possible to name a bird which apparently could have less to do with
distribution than a Petrel. Sir W. Milner, at St. Kilda, cut open some
young nestling Petrels, and he found large, curious nuts in their crops;
I suspect picked up by parent birds from the Gulf stream. He seems to
value these nuts excessively. I have asked him (but I doubt whether
he will) to send a nut to Sir William Hooker (I gave this address for
grandeur sake) to see if any of you can name it and its native country.
Will you PLEASE MENTION this to Sir William Hooker, and if the nut does
arrive, will you oblige me by returning it to "Sir W. Milner, Bart.,
Nunappleton, Tadcaster," in a registered letter, and I will repay you
postage. Enclose slip of paper with the name and country if you can, and
let me hereafter know. Forgive me asking you to take this much trouble;
for it is a funny little fact after my own heart.

Now for another subject. I have finished my Abstract of the chapter on
Geographical Distribution, as bearing on my subject. I should like you
much to read it; but I say this, believing that you will not do so, if,
as I believe to be the case, you are extra busy. On my honour, I shall
not be mortified, and I earnestly beg you not to do it, if it will
bother you. I want it, because I here feel especially unsafe, and errors
may have crept in. Also, I should much like to know what parts you will
MOST VEHEMENTLY object to. I know we do, and must, differ widely on
several heads. Lastly, I should like particularly to know whether I
have taken anything from you, which you would like to retain for first
publication; but I think I have chiefly taken from your published
works, and, though I have several times, in this chapter and elsewhere,
acknowledged your assistance, I am aware that it is not possible for
me in the Abstract to do it sufficiently. ("I never did pick any one's
pocket, but whilst writing my present chapter I keep on feeling (even
when differing most from you) just as if I were stealing from you, so
much do I owe to your writings and conversation, so much more than mere
acknowledgments show."--Letter to Sir J.D. Hooker, 1859.) But again
let me say that you must not offer to read it if very irksome. It is
long--about ninety pages, I expect, when fully copied out.

I hope you are all well. Moor Park has done me some good.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--Heaven forgive me, here is another question: How far am I right
in supposing that with plants, the most important characters for main
divisions are Embryological? The seed itself cannot be considered as
such, I suppose, nor the albumens, etc. But I suppose the Cotyledons and
their position, and the position of the plumule and the radicle, and the
position and form of the whole embryo in the seed are embryological, and
how far are these very important? I wish to instance plants as a case
of high importance of embryological characters in classification. In the
Animal Kingdom there is, of course, no doubt of this.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 5th [1859].

My dear Hooker,

Many thanks about the seed...it is curious. Petrels at St. Kilda
apparently being fed by seeds raised in the West Indies. It should be
noted whether it is a nut ever imported into England. I am VERY glad
you will read my Geographical MS.; it is now copying, and it will (I
presume) take ten days or so in being finished; it shall be sent as soon
as done...

I shall be very glad to see your embryological ideas on plants; by the
sentence which I sent you, you will see that I only want one sentence;
if facts are at all, as I suppose, and I shall see this from your note,
for sending which very many thanks.

I have been so poorly, the last three days, that I sometimes doubt
whether I shall ever get my little volume done, though so nearly
completed...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, March 15th [1859].

My dear Hooker,

I am PLEASED at what you say of my chapter. You have not attacked it
nearly so much as I feared you would. You do not seem to have detected
MANY errors. It was nearly all written from memory, and hence I was
particularly fearful; it would have been better if the whole had first
been carefully written out, and abstracted afterwards. I look at it as
morally certain that it must include much error in some of its general
views. I will just run over a few points in your note, but do not
trouble yourself to reply without you have something important to say...

...I should like to know whether the case of Endemic bats in islands
struck you; it has me especially; perhaps too strongly.

With hearty thanks, ever yours, C. DARWIN.

P.S. You cannot tell what a relief it has been to me your looking over
this chapter, as I felt very shaky on it.

I shall to-morrow finish my last chapter (except a recapitulation) on
Affinities, Homologies, Embryology, etc., and the facts seem to me to
come out VERY strong for mutability of species.

I have been much interested in working out the chapter.

I shall now, thank God, begin looking over the old first chapters for
press.

But my health is now so very poor, that even this will take me long.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down [March] 24th [1859].

My dear Fox,

It was very good of you to write to me in the midst of all your
troubles, though you seem to have got over some of them, in the recovery
of your wife's and your own health. I had not heard lately of your
mother's health, and am sorry to hear so poor an account. But as she
does not suffer much, that is the great thing; for mere life I do not
think is much valued by the old. What a time you must have had of it,
when you had to go backwards and forwards.

We are all pretty well, and our eldest daughter is improving. I can see
daylight through my work, and am now finally correcting my chapters for
the press; and I hope in a month or six weeks to have proof-sheets. I am
weary of my work. It is a very odd thing that I have no sensation that
I overwork my brain; but facts compel me to conclude that my brain was
never formed for much thinking. We are resolved to go for two or three
months, when I have finished, to Ilkley, or some such place, to see if
I can anyhow give my health a good start, for it certainly has been
wretched of late, and has incapacitated me for everything. You do me
injustice when you think that I work for fame; I value it to a certain
extent; but, if I know myself, I work from a sort of instinct to try to
make out truth. How glad I should be if you could sometime come to Down;
especially when I get a little better, as I still hope to be. We have
set up a billiard table, and I find it does me a deal of good, and
drives the horrid species out of my head. Farewell, my dear old friend.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, March 28th [1859].

My dear Lyell,

If I keep decently well, I hope to be able to go to press with my volume
early in May. This being so, I want much to beg a little advice from
you. From an expression in Lady Lyell's note, I fancy that you have
spoken to Murray. Is it so? And is he willing to publish my Abstract?
If you will tell me whether anything, and what has passed, I will then
write to him. Does he know at all of the subject of the book? Secondly,
can you advise me, whether I had better state what terms of publication
I should prefer, or first ask him to propose terms? And what do you
think would be fair terms for an edition? Share profits, or what?

Lastly, will you be so very kind as to look at the enclosed title and
give me your opinion and any criticisms; you must remember that, if I
have health and it appears worth doing, I have a much larger and full
book on the same subject nearly ready.

My Abstract will be about five hundred pages of the size of your first
edition of the 'Elements of Geology.'

Pray forgive me troubling you with the above queries; and you shall have
no more trouble on the subject. I hope the world goes well with you, and
that you are getting on with your various works.

I am working very hard for me, and long to finish and be free and try to
recover some health.

My dear Lyell, ever yours, C. DARWIN.

Very sincere thanks to you for standing my proxy for the Wollaston
Medal.

P.S. Would you advise me to tell Murray that my book is not more
UN-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable. That I do not discuss the
origin of man. That I do not bring in any discussion about Genesis,
etc., etc., and only give facts, and such conclusions from them as seem
to me fair.

Or had I better say NOTHING to Murray, and assume that he cannot object
to this much unorthodoxy, which in fact is not more than any Geological
Treatise which runs slap counter to Genesis.

INCLOSURE.

AN ABSTRACT OF AN ESSAY

ON THE

ORIGIN

OF

SPECIES AND VARIETIES

THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION

BY

CHARLES DARWIN, M.A.

Fellow of the Royal Geological and Linnean Societies...

LONDON:

etc., etc., etc., etc.

1859.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, March 30th [1859].

My dear Lyell,

You have been uncommonly kind in all you have done. You not only have
saved me much trouble and some anxiety, but have done all incomparably
better than I could have done it. I am much pleased at all you say about
Murray. I will write either to-day or to-morrow to him, and will send
shortly a large bundle of MS., but unfortunately I cannot for a week, as
the first three chapters are in the copyists' hands.

I am sorry about Murray objecting to the term Abstract, as I look at
it as the only possible apology for NOT giving references and facts in
full, but I will defer to him and you. I am also sorry about the term
"natural selection." I hope to retain it with explanation somewhat as
thus--

"Through natural selection, or the preservation of favoured Races."

Why I like the term is that it is constantly used in all works on
breeding, and I am surprised that it is not familiar to Murray; but I
have so long studied such works that I have ceased to be a competent
judge.

I again most truly and cordially thank you for your really valuable
assistance.

Yours most truly, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 2nd [1859].

...I wrote to him [Mr. Murray] and gave him the headings of the
chapters, and told him he could not have the MS. for ten days or so;
and this morning I received a letter, offering me handsome terms, and
agreeing to publish without seeing the MS.! So he is eager enough; I
think I should have been cautious, anyhow, but, owing to your letter,
I told him most EXPLICITLY that I accept his offer solely on condition
that, after he has seen part or all the MS., he has full power of
retracting. You will think me presumptuous, but I think my book will
be popular to a certain extent (enough to ensure [against] heavy loss)
amongst scientific and semi-scientific men; why I think so is, because
I have found in conversation so great and surprising an interest amongst
such men, and some o-scientific [non-scientific] men on this subject,
and all my chapters are not NEARLY so dry and dull as that which you
have read on geographical distribution. Anyhow, Murray ought to be the
best judge, and if he chooses to publish it, I think I may wash my hands
of all responsibility. I am sure my friends, i.e., Lyell and you, have
been EXTRAORDINARILY kind in troubling yourselves on the matter.

I shall be delighted to see you the day before Good Friday; there would
be one advantage for you in any other day--as I believe both my boys
come home on that day--and it would be almost impossible that I could
send the carriage for you. There will, I believe, be some relations in
the house--but I hope you will not care for that, as we shall easily get
as much talking as my IMBECILE STATE allows. I shall deeply enjoy seeing
you.

...I am tired, so no more.

My dear Hooker, your affectionate, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--Please to send, well TIED UP with strong string, my Geographical
MS., towards the latter half of next week--i.e., 7th or 8th--that I may
send it with more to Murray; and God help him if he tries to read it.

...I cannot help a little doubting whether Lyell would take much pains
to induce Murray to publish my book; this was not done at my request,
and it rather grates against my pride.

I know that Lyell has been INFINITELY kind about my affair, but your
dashed (i.e., underlined) "INDUCE" gives the idea that Lyell had
unfairly urged Murray.


CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. April 4th [1859].

...You ask to see my sheets as printed off; I assure you that it will be
the HIGHEST satisfaction to me to do so: I look at the request as a high
compliment. I shall not, you may depend, forget a request which I look
at as a favour. But (and it is a heavy "but" to me) it will be long
before I go to press; I can truly say I am NEVER idle; indeed, I work
too hard for my much weakened health; yet I can do only three hours of
work daily, and I cannot at all see when I shall have finished: I have
done eleven long chapters, but I have got some other very difficult
ones: as palaeontology, classifications, and embryology, etc., and I
have to correct and add largely to all those done. I find, alas! each
chapter takes me on an average three months, so slow I am. There is
no end to the necessary digressions. I have just finished a chapter on
Instinct, and here I found grappling with such a subject as bees'
cells, and comparing all my notes made during twenty years, took up a
despairing length of time.

But I am running on about myself in a most egotistical style. Yet I must
just say how useful I have again and again found your letters, which I
have lately been looking over and quoting! but you need not fear that I
shall quote anything you would dislike, for I try to be very cautious
on this head. I most heartily hope you may succeed in getting your
"incubus" of old work off your hands, and be in some degree a free
man...

Again let me say that I do indeed feel grateful to you...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J. MURRAY. Down, April 5th [1859].

My dear Sir,

I send by this post, the Title (with some remarks on a separate page),
and the first three chapters. If you have patience to read all Chapter
I., I honestly think you will have a fair notion of the interest of the
whole book. It may be conceit, but I believe the subject will interest
the public, and I am sure that the views are original. If you think
otherwise, I must repeat my request that you will freely reject my
work; and though I shall be a little disappointed, I shall be in no way
injured.

If you choose to read Chapters II. and III., you will have a dull and
rather abstruse chapter, and a plain and interesting one, in my opinion.

As soon as you have done with the MS., please to send it by CAREFUL
MESSENGER, AND PLAINLY DIRECTED, to Miss G. Tollett, 14, Queen Anne
Street, Cavendish Square.

This lady, being an excellent judge of style, is going to look out for
errors for me.

You must take your own time, but the sooner you finish, the sooner she
will, and the sooner I shall get to press, which I so earnestly wish.

I presume you will wish to see Chapter IV., the key-stone of my arch,
and Chapters X. and XI., but please to inform me on this head.

My dear Sir, yours sincerely, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 11th [1859].

...I write one line to say that I heard from Murray yesterday, and he
says he has read the first three chapters of one MS.(and this includes a
very dull one), and he abides by his offer. Hence he does not want more
MS., and you can send my Geographical chapter when it pleases you...


[Part of the MS. seems to have been lost on its way back to my father;
he wrote (April 14) to Sir J.D. Hooker:]

"I have the old MS., otherwise, the loss would have killed me! The worst
is now that it will cause delay in getting to press, and FAR WORST of
all, lose all advantage of your having looked over my chapter, except
the third part returned. I am very sorry Mrs. Hooker took the trouble of
copying the two pages."


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [April or May, 1859].

...Please do not say to any one that I thought my book on Species would
be fairly popular, and have a fairly remunerative sale (which was the
height of my ambition), for if it prove a dead failure, it would make me
the more ridiculous.

I enclose a criticism, a taste of the future--

REV. S. HAUGHTON'S ADDRESS TO THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, DUBLIN. (February
9, 1859.)

"This speculation of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace would not be worthy
of notice were it not for the weight of authority of the names (i.e.
Lyell's and yours), under whose auspices it has been brought forward. If
it means what it says, it is a truism; if it means anything more, it is
contrary to fact."

Q.E.D.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 11th [1859].

My dear Hooker,

Thank you for telling me about obscurity of style. But on my life no
nigger with lash over him could have worked harder at clearness than
I have done. But the very difficulty to me, of itself leads to the
probability that I fail. Yet one lady who has read all my MS. has found
only two or three obscure sentences, but Mrs. Hooker having so found
it, makes me tremble. I will do my best in proofs. You are a good man to
take the trouble to write about it.

With respect to our mutual muddle ("When I go over the chapter I will
see what I can do, but I hardly know how I am obscure, and I think we
are somehow in a mutual muddle with respect to each other, from starting
from some fundamentally different notions."--Letter of May 6, 1859.),
I never for a moment thought we could not make our ideas clear to each
other by talk, or if either of us had time to write in extenso.

I imagine from some expressions (but if you ask me what, I could not
answer) that you look at variability as some necessary contingency with
organisms, and further that there is some necessary tendency in the
variability to go on diverging in character or degree. IF YOU DO, I do
not agree. "Reversion" again (a form of inheritance), I look at as in no
way directly connected with Variation, though of course inheritance is
of fundamental importance to us, for if a variation be not inherited,
it is of no significance to us. It was on such points as these I FANCIED
that we perhaps started differently.

I fear that my book will not deserve at all the pleasant things you say
about it; and Good Lord, how I do long to have done with it!

Since the above was written, I have received and have been MUCH
INTERESTED by A. Gray. I am delighted at his note about my and Wallace's
paper. He will go round, for it is futile to give up very many species,
and stop at an arbitrary line at others. It is what my grandfather
called Unitarianism, "a feather bed to catch a falling Christian."...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 18th [1859].

My dear Hooker,

My health has quite failed. I am off to-morrow for a week of Hydropathy.
I am very very sorry to say that I cannot look over any proofs (Of Sir
J. Hooker's Introduction to the 'Flora of Australia.') in the week,
as my object is to drive the subject out of my head. I shall return
to-morrow week. If it be worth while, which probably it is not, you
could keep back any proofs till my return home.

In haste, ever yours, C. DARWIN.


[Ten days later he wrote to Sir J.D. Hooker:

"...I write one word to say that I shall return on Saturday, and if you
have any proof-sheets to send, I shall be glad to do my best in any
criticisms. I had... great prostration of mind and body, but entire
rest, and the douche, and 'Adam Bede,' have together done me a world of
good."]


CHARLES DARWIN TO J. MURRAY. Down, June 14th [1859].

My dear Sir,

The diagram will do very well, and I will send it shortly to Mr. West to
have a few trifling corrections made.

I get on very slowly with proofs. I remember writing to you that I
thought there would not be much correction. I honestly wrote what I
thought, but was most grievously mistaken. I find the style incredibly
bad, and most difficult to make clear and smooth. I am extremely
sorry to say, on account of expense, and loss of time for me, that
the corrections are very heavy, as heavy as possible. But from casual
glances, I still hope that later chapters are not so badly written. How
I could have written so badly is quite inconceivable, but I suppose
it was owing to my whole attention being fixed on the general line of
argument, and not on details. All I can say is, that I am very sorry.

Yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.

P.S. I have been looking at the corrections, and considering them.
It seems to me that I shall put you to a quite unfair expense. If
you please I should like to enter into some such arrangement as the
following: when work completed, you to allow in the account a fairly
moderately heavy charge for corrections, and all excess over that to be
deducted from my profits, or paid by me individually.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, June 21st [1859].

I am working very hard, but get on slowly, for I find that my
corrections are terrifically heavy, and the work most difficult to me. I
have corrected 130 pages, and the volume will be about 500. I have tried
my best to make it clear and striking, but very much fear that I have
failed--so many discussions are and must be very perplexing. I have done
my best. If you had all my materials, I am sure you would have made a
splendid book. I long to finish, for I am nearly worn out.

My dear Lyell, ever yours most truly, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, 22nd [June, 1859].

My dear Hooker,

I did not answer your pleasant note, with a good deal of news to me,
of May 30th, as I have been expecting proofs from you. But now, having
nothing particular to do, I will fly a note, though I have nothing
particular to say or ask. Indeed, how can a man have anything to say,
who spends every day in correcting accursed proofs; and such proofs! I
have fairly to blacken them, and fasten slips of paper on, so miserable
have I found the style. You say that you dreamt that my book was
ENTERTAINING; that dream is pretty well over with me, and I begin to
fear that the public will find it intolerably dry and perplexing. But I
will never give up that a better man could have made a splendid book
out of the materials. I was glad to hear about Prestwich's paper. (Mr.
Prestwich wrote on the occurrence of flint instruments associated with
the remains of extinct animals in France.--(Proc. R. Soc., 1859.))
My doubt has been (and I see Wright has inserted the same in the
'Athenaeum') whether the pieces of flint are really tools; their
numbers make me doubt, and when I formerly looked at Boucher de Perthe's
drawings, I came to the conclusion that they were angular fragments
broken by ice action.

Did crossing the Acacia do any good? I am so hard worked, that I can
make no experiments. I have got only to 150 pages in first proof.

Adios, my dear Hooker, ever yours, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J. MURRAY. Down, July 25th [1859].

My dear Sir,

I write to say that five sheets are returned to the printers ready to
strike off, and two more sheets require only a revise; so that I presume
you will soon have to decide what number of copies to print off.

I am quite incapable of forming an opinion. I think I have got the style
FAIRLY good and clear, with infinite trouble. But whether the book will
be successful to a degree to satisfy you, I really cannot conjecture. I
heartily hope it may.

My dear Sir, yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, August 9th, 1859.

My dear Mr. Wallace,

I received your letter and memoir (This seems to refer to Mr. Wallace's
paper, "On the Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago," 'Linn.
Soc. Journ,' 1860.) on the 7th, and will forward it to-morrow to the
Linnean Society. But you will be aware that there is no meeting till
the beginning of November. Your paper seems to me ADMIRABLE in matter,
style, and reasoning; and I thank you for allowing me to read it. Had I
read it some months ago, I should have profited by it for my forthcoming
volume. But my two chapters on this subject are in type, and, though not
yet corrected, I am so wearied out and weak in health, that I am fully
resolved not to add one word, and merely improve the style. So you will
see that my views are nearly the same with yours, and you may rely on it
that not one word shall be altered owing to my having read your
ideas. Are you aware that Mr. W. Earl (Probably Mr. W. Earle's paper,
Geographical Soc. Journal, 1845.) published several years ago the view
of distribution of animals in the Malay Archipelago, in relation to the
depth of the sea between the islands? I was much struck with this,
and have been in the habit of noting all facts in distribution in
that archipelago, and elsewhere, in this relation. I have been led
to conclude that there has been a good deal of naturalisation in the
different Malay islands, and which I have thought, to a certain extent,
would account for anomalies. Timor has been my greatest puzzle. What do
you say to the peculiar Felis there? I wish that you had visited Timor;
it has been asserted that a fossil mastodon's or elephant's tooth (I
forget which) has been found there, which would be a grand fact. I was
aware that Celebes was very peculiar; but the relation to Africa is
quite new to me, and marvellous, and almost passes belief. It is as
anomalous as the relation of PLANTS in S.W. Australia to the Cape of
Good Hope. I differ WHOLLY from you on the colonisation of oceanic
islands, but you will have EVERY ONE else on your side. I quite agree
with respect to all islands not situated far in the ocean. I quite agree
on the little occasional intermigration between lands [islands?] when
once pretty well stocked with inhabitants, but think this does not apply
to rising and ill-stocked islands. Are you aware that ANNUALLY birds are
blown to Madeira, the Azores (and to Bermuda from America). I wish I had
given a fuller abstract of my reasons for not believing in Forbes' great
continental extensions; but it is too late, for I will alter nothing--I
am worn out, and must have rest. Owen, I do not doubt, will bitterly
oppose us...Hooker is publishing a grand introduction to the Flora of
Australia, and goes the whole length. I have seen proofs of about half.
With every good wish.

Believe me, yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, September 1st [1859].

...I am not surprised at your finding your Introduction very difficult.
But do not grudge the labour, and do not say you "have burnt your
fingers," and are "deep in the mud"; for I feel sure that the result
will be well worth the labour. Unless I am a fool, I must be a judge
to some extent of the value of such general essays, and I am fully
convinced that yours are the must valuable ever published.

I have corrected all but the last two chapters of my book, and hope to
have done revises and all in about three weeks, and then I (or we all)
shall start for some months' hydropathy; my health has been very bad,
and I am becoming as weak as a child, and incapable of doing anything
whatever, except my three hours daily work at proof-sheets. God knows
whether I shall ever be good at anything again, perhaps a long rest and
hydropathy may do something.

I have not had A. Gray's Essay, and should not feel up to criticise it,
even if I had the impertinence and courage. You will believe me that
I speak strictly the truth when I say that your Australian Essay is
EXTREMELY interesting to me, rather too much so. I enjoy reading it
over, and if you think my criticisms are worth anything to you, I beg
you to send the sheets (if you can give me time for good days); but
unless I can render you any little, however little assistance, I would
rather read the essay when published. Pray understand that I should be
TRULY vexed not to read them, if you wish it for your own sake.

I had a terribly long fit of sickness yesterday, which makes the world
rather extra gloomy to-day, and I have an insanely strong wish to finish
my accursed book, such corrections every page has required as I never
saw before. It is so weariful, killing the whole afternoon, after 12
o'clock doing nothing whatever. But I will grumble no more. So farewell,
we shall meet in the winter I trust.

Farewell, my dear Hooker, your affectionate friend, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, September 2nd [1859].

...I am very glad you wish to see my clean sheets: I should have offered
them, but did not know whether it would bore you; I wrote by this
morning's post to Murray to send them. Unfortunately I have not got to
the part which will interest you, I think most, and which tells most
in favour of the view, viz., Geological Succession, Geographical
Distribution, and especially Morphology, Embryology and Rudimentary
Organs. I will see that the remaining sheets, when printed off, are sent
to you. But would you like for me to send the last and perfect revises
of the sheets as I correct them? if so, send me your address in a blank
envelope. I hope that you will read all, whether dull (especially latter
part of Chapter II.) or not, for I am convinced there is not a sentence
which has not a bearing on the whole argument. You will find Chapter
IV. perplexing and unintelligible, without the aid of the enclosed queer
diagram (The diagram illustrates descent with divergence.), of which
I send an old and useless proof. I have, as Murray says, corrected so
heavily, as almost to have re-written it; but yet I fear it is poorly
written. Parts are intricate; and I do not think that even you could
make them quite clear. Do not, I beg, be in a hurry in committing
yourself (like so many naturalists) to go a certain length and no
further; for I am deeply convinced that it is absolutely necessary to
go the whole vast length, or stick to the creation of each separate
species; I argue this point briefly in the last chapter. Remember that
your verdict will probably have more influence than my book in deciding
whether such views as I hold will be admitted or rejected at present; in
the future I cannot doubt about their admittance, and our posterity will
marvel as much about the current belief as we do about fossils shells
having been thought to have been created as we now see them. But forgive
me for running on about my hobby-horse...


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, [September] 11th [1859].

My dear Hooker,

I corrected the last proof yesterday, and I have now my revises, index,
etc., which will take me near to the end of the month. So that the neck
of my work, thank God, is broken.

I write now to say that I am uneasy in my conscience about hesitating to
look over your proofs, but I was feeling miserably unwell and shattered
when I wrote. I do not suppose I could be of hardly any use, but if I
could, pray send me any proofs. I should be (and fear I was) the most
ungrateful man to hesitate to do anything for you after some fifteen or
more years' help from you.

As soon as ever I have fairly finished I shall be off to Ilkley, or some
other Hydropathic establishment. But I shall be some time yet, as my
proofs have been so utterly obscured with corrections, that I have to
correct heavily on revises.

Murray proposes to publish the first week in November. Oh, good heavens,
the relief to my head and body to banish the whole subject from my mind!

I hope to God, you do not think me a brute about your proof-sheets.

Farewell, yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, September 20th [1859].

My dear Lyell,

You once gave me intense pleasure, or rather delight, by the way you
were interested, in a manner I never expected, in my Coral Reef notions,
and now you have again given me similar pleasure by the manner you have
noticed my species work. (Sir Charles was President of the Geological
section at the meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen in 1859.
The following passage occurs in the address: "On this difficult and
mysterious subject a work will very shortly appear by Mr. Charles
Darwin, the result of twenty years of observations and experiments in
Zoology, Botany, and Geology, by which he had been led to the conclusion
that those powers of nature which give rise to races and permanent
varieties in animals and plants, are the same as those which in much
longer periods produce species, and in a still longer series of ages
give rise to differences of generic rank. He appears to me to have
succeeded by his investigations and reasonings in throwing a flood
of light on many classes of phenomena connected with the affinities,
geographical distribution, and geological succession of organic beings,
for which no other hypothesis has been able, or has even attempted to
account.") Nothing could be more satisfactory to me, and I thank you for
myself, and even more for the subject's sake, as I know well that
the sentence will make many fairly consider the subject, instead of
ridiculing it. Although your previously felt doubts on the immutability
of species, may have more influence in converting you (if you be
converted) than my book; yet as I regard your verdict as far more
important in my own eyes, and I believe in the eyes of the world than of
any other dozen men, I am naturally very anxious about it. Therefore
let me beg you to keep your mind open till you receive (in perhaps a
fortnight's time) my latter chapters, which are the most important of
all on the favourable side. The last chapter, which sums up and balances
in a mass all the arguments contra and pro, will, I think, be useful to
you. I cannot too strongly express my conviction of the general truth
of my doctrines, and God knows I have never shirked a difficulty. I am
foolishly anxious for your verdict, not that I shall be disappointed if
you are not converted; for I remember the long years it took me to
come round; but I shall be most deeply delighted if you do come round,
especially if I have a fair share in the conversion, I shall then
feel that my career is run, and care little whether I ever am good for
anything again in this life.

Thank you much for allowing me to put in the sentence about your grave
doubt. (As to the immutability of species, 'Origin,' Edition i., page
310.) So much and too much about myself.

I have read with extreme interest in the Aberdeen paper about the flint
tools; you have made the whole case far clearer to me; I suppose that
you did not think the evidence sufficient about the Glacial period.

With cordial thanks for your splendid notice of my book.

Believe me, my dear Lyell, your affectionate disciple, CHARLES DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, September 23rd [1859].

My dear Fox,

I was very glad to get your letter a few days ago. I was wishing to hear
about you, but have been in such an absorbed, slavish, overworked
state, that I had not heart without compulsion to write to any one or
do anything beyond my daily work. Though your account of yourself is
better, I cannot think it at all satisfactory, and I wish you would soon
go to Malvern again. My father used to believe largely in an old saying
that, if a man grew thinner between fifty and sixty years of age, his
chance of long life was poor, and that on the contrary it was a very
good sign if he grew fatter; so that your stoutness, I look at as a
very good omen. My health has been as bad as it well could be all this
summer; and I have kept on my legs, only by going at short intervals to
Moor Park; but I have been better lately, and, thank Heaven, I have at
last as good as done my book, having only the index and two or three
revises to do. It will be published in the first week in November, and a
copy shall be sent you. Remember it is only an Abstract (but has cost
me above thirteen months to write!!), and facts and authorities are far
from given in full. I shall be curious to hear what you think of it, but
I am not so silly as to expect to convert you. Lyell has read about
half of the volume in clean sheets, and gives me very great kudos. He
is wavering so much about the immutability of species, that I expect
he will come round. Hooker has come round, and will publish his belief
soon. So much for my abominable volume, which has cost me so much labour
that I almost hate it. On October 3rd I start for Ilkley, but shall
take three days for the journey! It is so late that we shall not take
a house; but I go there alone for three or four weeks, then return home
for a week and go to Moor Park for three or four weeks, and then I shall
get a moderate spell of hydropathy: and I intend, if I can keep to my
resolution, of being idle this winter. But I fear ennui will be as bad
as a bad stomach...


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, September 25th [1859].

My dear Lyell,

I send by this post four corrected sheets. I have altered the sentence
about the Eocene fauna being beaten by recent, thanks to your remark.
But I imagined that it would have been clear that I supposed the climate
to be nearly similar; you do not doubt, I imagine, that the climate of
the eocene and recent periods in DIFFERENT parts of the world could
be matched. Not that I think climate nearly so important as most
naturalists seem to think. In my opinion no error is more mischievous
than this.

I was very glad to find that Hooker, who read over, in MS., my
Geographical chapters, quite agreed in the view of the greater
importance of organic relations. I should like you to consider page 77
and reflect on the case of any organism in the midst of its range.

I shall be curious hereafter to hear what you think of distribution
during the glacial and preceding warmer periods. I am so glad you do
not think the Chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record
exaggerated; I was more fearful about this chapter than about any part.

Embryology in Chapter VIII. is one of my strongest points I think. But
I must not bore you by running on. My mind is so wearisomely full of the
subject.

I do thank you for your eulogy at Aberdeen. I have been so wearied and
exhausted of late that I have for months doubted whether I have not been
throwing away time and labour for nothing. But now I care not what the
universal world says; I have always found you right, and certainly on
this occasion I am not going to doubt for the first time. Whether you go
far, or but a very short way with me and others who believe as I do, I
am contented, for my work cannot be in vain. You would laugh if you knew
how often I have read your paragraph, and it has acted like a little
dram...

Farewell, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down, September 30th [1859].

My dear Lyell,

I sent off this morning the last sheets, but without index, which is not
in type. I look at you as my Lord High Chancellor in Natural Science,
and therefore I request you, after you have finished, just to RERUN over
the heads in the Recapitulation-part of last chapter. I shall be deeply
anxious to hear what you decide (if you are able to decide) on the
balance of the pros and contras given in my volume, and of such other
pros and contras as may occur to you. I hope that you will think that I
have given the difficulties fairly. I feel an entire conviction that if
you are now staggered to any moderate extent, that you will come more
and more round, the longer you keep the subject at all before your mind.
I remember well how many long years it was before I could look into the
faces of some of the difficulties and not feel quite abashed. I fairly
struck my colours before the case of neuter insects.

I suppose that I am a very slow thinker, for you would be surprised at
the number of years it took me to see clearly what some of the problems
were which had to be solved, such as the necessity of the principle of
divergence of character, the extinction of intermediate varieties, on
a continuous area, with graduated conditions; the double problem of
sterile first crosses and sterile hybrids, etc., etc.

Looking back, I think it was more difficult to see what the problems
were than to solve them, so far as I have succeeded in doing, and this
seems to me rather curious. Well, good or bad, my work, thank God, is
over; and hard work, I can assure you, I have had, and much work which
has never borne fruit. You can see, by the way I am scribbling, that
I have an idle and rainy afternoon. I was not able to start for Ilkley
yesterday as I was too unwell; but I hope to get there on Tuesday or
Wednesday. Do, I beg you, when you have finished my book and thought a
little over it, let me hear from you. Never mind and pitch into me, if
you think it requisite; some future day, in London possibly, you may
give me a few criticisms in detail, that is, if you have scribbled any
remarks on the margin, for the chance of a second edition.

Murray has printed 1250 copies, which seems to me rather too large an
edition, but I hope he will not lose.

I make as much fuss about my book as if it were my first. Forgive me,
and believe me, my dear Lyell,

Yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Ilkley, Yorkshire, October 15th [1859].

My dear Hooker,

Be a good man and screw out time enough to write me a note and tell me a
little about yourself, your doings, and belongings.

Is your Introduction fairly finished? I know you will abuse it, and I
know well how much I shall like it. I have been here nearly a fortnight,
and it has done me very much good, though I sprained my ankle last
Sunday, which has quite stopped walking. All my family come here on
Monday to stop three or four weeks, and then I shall go back to the
great establishment, and stay a fortnight; so that if I can keep my
spirits, I shall stay eight weeks here, and thus give hydropathy a
fair chance. Before starting here I was in an awful state of stomach,
strength, temper, and spirits. My book has been completely finished some
little time; as soon as copies are ready, of course one will be sent
you. I hope you will mark your copy with scores, so that I may profit
by any criticisms. I should like to hear your general impression. From
Lyell's letters, he thinks favourably of it, but seems staggered by
the lengths to which I go. But if you go any considerable length in the
admission of modification, I can see no possible means of drawing the
line, and saying here you must stop. Lyell is going to reread my book,
and I yet entertain hopes that he will be converted, or perverted, as he
calls it. Lyell has been EXTREMELY kind in writing me three volume-like
letters; but he says nothing about dispersal during the glacial period.
I should like to know what he thinks on this head. I have one question
to ask: Would it be any good to send a copy of my book to Decaisne?
and do you know any philosophical botanists on the Continent, who read
English and care for such subjects? if so, give their addresses. How
about Andersson in Sweden? You cannot think how refreshing it is to
idle away the whole day, and hardly ever think in the least about my
confounded book which half-killed me. I much wish I could hear of your
taking a real rest. I know how very strong you are, mentally, but I
never will believe you can go on working as you have worked of late with
impunity. You will some day stretch the string too tight. Farewell, my
good, and kind, and dear friend,

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO T.H. HUXLEY. Ilkley, Otley, Yorkshire, October 15th
[1859].

My dear Huxley,

I am here hydropathising and coming to life again, after having finished
my accursed book, which would have been easy work to any one else, but
half-killed me. I have thought you would give me one bit of information,
and I know not to whom else to apply; viz., the addresses of Barrande,
Von Siebold, Keyserling (I dare say Sir Roderick would know the latter).

Can you tell me of any good and SPECULATIVE foreigners to whom it would
be worth while to send copies of my book, on the 'Origin of Species'?
I doubt whether it is worth sending to Siebold. I should like to send a
few copies about, but how many I can afford I know not yet till I hear
what price Murray affixes.

I need not say that I will send, of course, one to you, in the first
week of November. I hope to send copies abroad immediately. I shall be
INTENSELY curious to hear what effect the book produces on you. I know
that there will be much in it which you will object to, and I do not
doubt many errors. I am very far from expecting to convert you to many
of my heresies; but if, on the whole, you and two or three others think
I am on the right road, I shall not care what the mob of naturalists
think. The penultimate chapter (Chapter XIII. is on Classification,
Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs.), though I believe it
includes the truth, will, I much fear, make you savage. Do not act and
say, like Macleay versus Fleming, "I write with aqua fortis to bite into
brass."

Ever yours, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Ilkley, Yorkshire, October 20th [1859].

My dear Lyell,

I have been reading over all your letters consecutively, and I do not
feel that I have thanked you half enough for the extreme pleasure which
they have given me, and for their utility. I see in them evidence of
fluctuation in the degree of credence you give to the theory; nor am
I at all surprised at this, for many and many fluctuations I have
undergone.

There is one point in your letter which I did not notice, about the
animals (and many plants) naturalised in Australia, which you think
could not endure without man's aid. I cannot see how man does aid the
feral cattle. But, letting that pass, you seem to think, that because
they suffer prodigious destruction during droughts, that they would all
be destroyed. In the "gran secos" of La Plata, the indigenous animals,
such as the American deer, die by thousands, and suffer apparently as
much as the cattle. In parts of India, after a drought, it takes ten
or more years before the indigenous mammals get up to their full number
again. Your argument would, I think, apply to the aborigines as well as
to the feral.

An animal or plant which becomes feral in one small territory might be
destroyed by climate, but I can hardly believe so, when once feral over
several large territories. Again, I feel inclined to swear at climate:
do not think me impudent for attacking you about climate. You say you
doubt whether man could have existed under the Eocene climate, but man
can now withstand the climate of Esquimaux-land and West Equatorial
Africa; and surely you do not think the Eocene climate differed from the
present throughout all Europe, as much as the Arctic regions differ from
Equatorial Africa?

With respect to organisms being created on the American type in America,
it might, I think, be said that they were so created to prevent them
being too well created, so as to beat the aborigines; but this seems to
me, somehow, a monstrous doctrine.

I have reflected a good deal on what you say on the necessity of
continued intervention of creative power. I cannot see this necessity;
and its admission, I think, would make the theory of Natural Selection
valueless. Grant a simple Archetypal creature, like the Mud-fish or
Lepidosiren, with the five senses and some vestige of mind, and I
believe natural selection will account for the production of every
vertebrate animal.

Farewell; forgive me for indulging in this prose, and believe me, with
cordial thanks,

Your ever attached disciple, C. DARWIN.

P.S.--When, and if, you reread, I supplicate you to write on the margin
the word "expand," when too condensed, or "not clear." or "?." Such
marks would cost you little trouble, and I could copy them and reflect
on them, and their value would be infinite to me.

My larger book will have to be wholly re-written, and not merely the
present volume expanded; so that I want to waste as little time over
this volume as possible, if another edition be called for; but I fear
the subject will be too perplexing, as I have treated it, for general
public.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Ilkley, Yorkshire, Sunday [October 23rd,
1859].

My dear Hooker,

I congratulate you on your 'Introduction' ("Australian Flora".) being in
fact finished. I am sure from what I read of it (and deeply I shall be
interested in reading it straight through), that it must have cost you
a prodigious amount of labour and thought. I shall like very much to
see the sheet, which you wish me to look at. Now I am so completely a
gentleman, that I have sometimes a little difficulty to pass the day;
but it is astonishing how idle a three weeks I have passed. If it is any
comfort to you, pray delude yourself by saying that you intend "sticking
to humdrum science." But I believe it just as much as if a plant were
to say that, "I have been growing all my life, and, by Jove, I will stop
growing." You cannot help yourself; you are not clever enough for that.
You could not even remain idle, as I have done, for three weeks! What
you say about Lyell pleases me exceedingly; I had not at all inferred
from his letters that he had come so much round. I remember thinking,
above a year ago, that if ever I lived to see Lyell, yourself,
and Huxley come round, partly by my book, and partly by their own
reflections, I should feel that the subject is safe, and all the world
might rail, but that ultimately the theory of Natural Selection (though,
no doubt, imperfect in its present condition, and embracing many errors)
would prevail. Nothing will ever convince me that three such men, with
so much diversified knowledge, and so well accustomed to search for
truth, could err greatly. I have spoken of you here as a convert made
by me; but I know well how much larger the share has been of your own
self-thought. I am intensely curious to hear Huxley's opinion of my
book. I fear my long discussion on Classification will disgust him; for
it is much opposed to what he once said to me.

But, how I am running on. You see how idle I am; but I have so enjoyed
your letter that you must forgive me. With respect to migration during
the glacial period: I think Lyell quite comprehends, for he has given me
a supporting fact. But, perhaps, he unconsciously hates (do not say so
to him) the view as slightly staggering him on his favourite theory of
all changes of climate being due to changes in the relative position of
land and water.

I will send copies of my book to all the men specified by you;... you
would be so kind as to add title, as Doctor, or Professor, or Monsieur,
or Von, and initials (when wanted), and addresses to the names on the
enclosed list, and let me have it pretty SOON, as towards the close
of this week Murray says the copies to go abroad will be ready. I am
anxious to get my view generally known, and not, I hope and think, for
mere personal conceit...


CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Ilkley, Yorkshire, October 25th [1859].

...Our difference on "principle of improvement" and "power of
adaptation" is too profound for discussion by letter. If I am wrong, I
am quite blind to my error. If I am right, our difference will be got
over only by your re-reading carefully and reflecting on my first four
chapters. I supplicate you to read these again carefully. The so-called
improvement of our Shorthorn cattle, pigeons, etc., does not presuppose
or require any aboriginal "power of adaptation," or "principle of
improvement;" it requires only diversified variability, and man to
select or take advantage of those modifications which are useful to him;
so under nature any slight modification which CHANCES to arise, and is
useful to any creature, is selected or preserved in the struggle for
life; any modification which is injurious is destroyed or rejected;
any which is neither useful nor injurious will be left a fluctuating
element. When you contrast natural selection and "improvement," you seem
always to overlook (for I do not see how you can deny) that every step
in the natural selection of each species implies improvement in that
species in relation to its conditions of life. No modification can be
selected without it be an improvement or advantage. Improvement implies,
I suppose, each form obtaining many parts or organs, all excellently
adapted for their functions. As each species is improved, and as the
number of forms will have increased, if we look to the whole course of
time, the organic condition of life for other forms will become more
complex, and there will be a necessity for other forms to become
improved, or they will be exterminated; and I can see no limit to this
process of improvement, without the intervention of any other and direct
principle of improvement. All this seems to me quite compatible with
certain forms fitted for simple conditions, remaining unaltered, or
being degraded.

If I have a second edition, I will reiterate "Natural Selection," and,
as a general consequence, "Natural Improvement."

As you go, as far as you do, I begin strongly to think, judging from
myself, that you will go much further. How slowly the older geologists
admitted your grand views on existing geological causes of change!

If at any time you think I can answer any question, it is a real
pleasure to me to write.

Yours affectionately, C. DARWIN.


CHARLES DARWIN TO J. MURRAY. Ilkley, Yorkshire [1859].

My dear Sir,

I have received your kind note and the copy; I am infinitely pleased and
proud at the appearance of my child.

I quite agree to all you propose about price. But you are really too
generous about the, to me, scandalously heavy corrections. Are you not
acting unfairly towards yourself? Would it not be better at least to
share the 72 pounds 8 shillings? I shall be fully satisfied, for I had
no business to send, though quite unintentionally and unexpectedly, such
badly composed MS. to the printers.

Thank you for your kind offer to distribute the copies to my friends and
assistors as soon as possible. Do not trouble yourself much about the
foreigners, as Messrs. Williams and Norgate have most kindly offered
to do their best, and they are accustomed to send to all parts of the
world.

I will pay for my copies whenever you like. I am so glad that you were
so good as to undertake the publication of my book.

My dear Sir, yours very sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN.

P.S.--Please do not forget to let me hear about two days before the
copies are distributed.

I do not know when I shall leave this place, certainly not for several
weeks. Whenever I am in London I will call on you.




CHAPTER 1.XIV. -- BY PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

ON THE RECEPTION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.'

To the present generation, that is to say, the people a few years on
the hither and thither side of thirty, the name of Charles Darwin stands
alongside of those of Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday; and, like them,
calls up the grand ideal of a searcher after truth and interpreter of
Nature. They think of him who bore it as a rare combination of genius,
industry, and unswerving veracity, who earned his place among the most
famous men of the age by sheer native power, in the teeth of a gale of
popular prejudice, and uncheered by a sign of favour or appreciation
from the official fountains of honour; as one who in spite of an acute
sensitiveness to praise and blame, and notwithstanding provocations
which might have excused any outbreak, kept himself clear of all envy,
hatred, and malice, nor dealt otherwise than fairly and justly with the
unfairness and injustice which was showered upon him; while, to the end
of his days, he was ready to listen with patience and respect to the
most insignificant of reasonable objectors.

And with respect to that theory of the origin of the forms of life
peopling our globe, with which Darwin's name is bound up as closely
as that of Newton with the theory of gravitation, nothing seems to be
further from the mind of the present generation than any attempt to
smother it with ridicule or to crush it by vehemence of denunciation.
"The struggle for existence," and "Natural selection," have become
household words and every-day conceptions. The reality and the
importance of the natural processes on which Darwin founds his
deductions are no more doubted than those of growth and multiplication;
and, whether the full potency attributed to them is admitted or not,
no one doubts their vast and far-reaching significance. Wherever the
biological sciences are studied, the 'Origin of Species' lights the
paths of the investigator; wherever they are taught it permeates the
course of instruction. Nor has the influence of Darwinian ideas
been less profound, beyond the realms of Biology. The oldest of all
philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand and foot and cast into
utter darkness during the millennium of theological scholasticism. But
Darwin poured new life-blood into the ancient frame; the bonds burst,
and the revivified thought of ancient Greece has proved itself to be a
more adequate expression of the universal order of things than any of
the schemes which have been accepted by the credulity and welcomed by
the superstition of seventy later generations of men.

To any one who studies the signs of the times, the emergence of the
philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of claimant to the throne
of the world of thought, from the limbo of hated and, as many hoped,
forgotten things, is the most portentous event of the nineteenth
century. But the most effective weapons of the modern champions of
Evolution were fabricated by Darwin; and the 'Origin of Species' has
enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained in the severe school
of Physical Science, whose ears might have long remained deaf to the
speculations of a priori philosophers.

I do not think any candid or instructed person will deny the truth
of that which has just been asserted. He may hate the very name of
Evolution, and may deny its pretensions as vehemently as a Jacobite
denied those of George the Second. But there it is--not only as
solidly seated as the Hanoverian dynasty, but happily independent of
Parliamentary sanction--and the dullest antagonists have come to see
that they have to deal with an adversary whose bones are to be broken by
no amount of bad words.

Even the theologians have almost ceased to pit the plain meaning of
Genesis against the no less plain meaning of Nature. Their more candid,
or more cautious, representatives have given up dealing with Evolution
as if it were a damnable heresy, and have taken refuge in one of two
courses. Either they deny that Genesis was meant to teach scientific
truth, and thus save the veracity of the record at the expense of
its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel
ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of
making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et
dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always
reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no
more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin,
claiming no scientific authority and possessing none.

As my pen finishes these passages, I can but be amused to think what
a terrible hubbub would have been made (in truth was made) about any
similar expressions of opinion a quarter of a century ago. In fact,
the contrast between the present condition of public opinion upon the
Darwinian question; between the estimation in which Darwin's views are
now held in the scientific world; between the acquiescence, or at least
quiescence, of the theologians of the self-respecting order at the
present day and the outburst of antagonism on all sides in 1858-9, when
the new theory respecting the origin of species first became known to
the older generation to which I belong, is so startling that, except
for documentary evidence, I should be sometimes inclined to think my
memories dreams. I have a great respect for the younger generation
myself (they can write our lives, and ravel out all our follies, if
they choose to take the trouble, by and by), and I should be glad to be
assured that the feeling is reciprocal; but I am afraid that the
story of our dealings with Darwin may prove a great hindrance to that
veneration for our wisdom which I should like them to display. We have
not even the excuse that, thirty years ago, Mr. Darwin was an obscure
novice, who had no claims on our attention. On the contrary, his
remarkable zoological and geological investigations had long given him
an assured position among the most eminent and original investigators of
the day; while his charming 'Voyage of a Naturalist' had justly earned
him a wide-spread reputation among the general public. I doubt if there
was any man then living who had a better right to expect that anything
he might choose to say on such a question as the Origin of Species would
be listened to with profound attention, and discussed with respect; and
there was certainly no man whose personal character should have afforded
a better safeguard against attacks, instinct with malignity and spiced
with shameless impertinences.

Yet such was the portion of one of the kindest and truest men that it
was ever my good fortune to know; and years had to pass away before
misrepresentation, ridicule, and denunciation, ceased to be the most
notable constituents of the majority of the multitudinous criticisms
of his work which poured from the press. I am loth to rake any of these
ancient scandals from their well-deserved oblivion; but I must make good
a statement which may seem overcharged to the present generation, and
there is no piece justificative more apt for the purpose, or more worthy
of such dishonour, than the article in the 'Quarterly Review' for July,
1860. (I was not aware when I wrote these passages that the authorship
of the article had been publicly acknowledged. Confession unaccompanied
by penitence, however, affords no ground for mitigation of judgment;
and the kindliness with which Mr. Darwin speaks of his assailant, Bishop
Wilberforce (vol. ii.), is so striking an exemplification of his singular
gentleness and modesty, that it rather increases one's indignation
against the presumption of his critic.) Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr.
Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow
pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which
one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most
candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as
a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric
of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is
reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this
high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr.
Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or
of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection
to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable
varieties of turnips are tending to become men;" who is so ignorant of
paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants
of the carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely
affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be "entirely
separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to
themselves;" of the rudiments of physiology, that he can ask, "what
advantage of life could alter the shape of the corpuscles into which
the blood can be evaporated?" Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this
outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of the
odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between
Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by
the proviso that he cannot "consent to test the truth of Natural Science
by the word of Revelation;" but, for all that, he devotes pages to the
exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory "contradicts the
revealed relation of the creation to its Creator," and is "inconsistent
with the fulness of his glory."

If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species'
to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do
not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the 'Quarterly
Review' article, unless, perhaps, the address of a Reverend Professor to
the Dublin Geological Society might enter into competition with it. But
a large proportion of Mr. Darwin's critics had a lamentable resemblance
to the 'Quarterly' reviewer, in so far as they lacked either the will,
or the wit, to make themselves masters of his doctrine; hardly any
possessed the knowledge required to follow him through the immense range
of biological and geological science which the 'Origin' covered; while,
too commonly, they had prejudiced the case on theological grounds, and,
as seems to be inevitable when this happens, eked out lack of reason by
superfluity of railing.

But it will be more pleasant and more profitable to consider those
criticisms, which were acknowledged by writers of scientific authority,
or which bore internal evidence of the greater or less competency and,
often, of the good faith, of their authors. Restricting my survey to a
twelvemonth, or thereabouts, after the publication of the 'Origin,'
I find among such critics Louis Agassiz ("The arguments presented by
Darwin in favor of a universal derivation from one primary form of all
the peculiarities existing now among living beings have not made the
slightest impression on my mind.")

"Until the facts of Nature are shown to have been mistaken by those who
have collected them, and that they have a different meaning from
that now generally assigned to them, I shall therefore consider the
transmutation theory as a scientific mistake, untrue in its
facts, unscientific in its method, and mischievous in its
tendency."--Silliman's 'Journal,' July, 1860, pages 143, 154. Extract
from the 3rd volume of 'Contributions to the Natural History of the
United States.'); Murray, an excellent entomologist; Harvey, a botanist
of considerable repute; and the author of an article in the 'Edinburgh
Review,' all strongly adverse to Darwin. Pictet, the distinguished and
widely learned paleontogist of Geneva, treats Mr. Darwin with a respect
which forms a grateful contrast to the tone of some of the preceding
writers, but consents to go with him only a very little way. ("I see no
serious objections to the formation of varieties by natural selection
in the existing world, and that, so far as earlier epochs are concerned,
this law may be assumed to explain the origin of closely allied species,
supposing for this purpose a very long period of time."

"With regard to simple varieties and closely allied species, I believe
that Mr. Darwin's theory may explain many things, and throw a great
light upon numerous questions."--'Sur l'Origine de l'Espece. Par Charles
Darwin.' ('Archives des Sc. de la Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve,'
pages 242, 243, Mars 1860.) On the other hand, Lyell, up to that time a
pillar of the anti-transmutationists (who regarded him, ever afterwards,
as Pallas Athene may have looked at Dian, after the Endymion affair),
declared himself a Darwinian, though not without putting in a serious
caveat. Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength, and his courageous
stand for truth as against consistency, did him infinite honour. As
evolutionists, sans phrase, I do not call to mind among the biologists
more than Asa Gray, who fought the battle splendidly in the United
States; Hooker, who was no less vigorous here; the present Sir John
Lubbock and myself. Wallace was far away in the Malay Archipelago; but,
apart from his direct share in the promulgation of the theory of natural
selection, no enumeration of the influences at work, at the time I am
speaking of, would be complete without the mention of his powerful essay
'On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species,' which
was published in 1855. On reading it afresh, I have been astonished to
recollect how small was the impression it made.

In France, the influence of Elie de Beaumont and of Flourens--the
former of whom is said to have "damned himself to everlasting fame" by
inventing the nickname of "la science moussante" for Evolutionism
(One is reminded of the effect of another small academic epigram. The
so-called vertebral theory of the skull is said to have been nipped in
the bud in France by the whisper of an academician to his neighbour,
that, in that case, one's head was a "vertebre pensante."),--to say
nothing of the ill-will of other powerful members of the Institut,
produced for a long time the effect of a conspiracy of silence; and many
years passed before the Academy redeemed itself from the reproach that
the name of Darwin was not to be found on the list of its members.
However, an accomplished writer, out of the range of academical
influences, M. Laugel, gave an excellent and appreciative notice of the
'Origin' in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' Germany took time to consider;
Bronn produced a slightly Bowdlerized translation of the 'Origin'; and
'Kladderadatsch' cut his jokes upon the ape origin of man; but I do not
call to mind that any scientific notability declared himself publicly
in 1860. (However, the man who stands next to Darwin in his influence
on modern biologists, K.E. von Baer, wrote to me, in August 1860,
expressing his general assent to evolutionist views. His phrase, "J'ai
enonce les memes idees...que M. Darwin" (volume ii.) is shown by his
subsequent writings to mean no more than this.) None of us dreamed that,
in the course of a few years, the strength (and perhaps I may add
the weakness) of "Darwinismus" would have its most extensive and most
brilliant illustrations in the land of learning. If a foreigner may
presume to speculate on the cause of this curious interval of silence,
I fancy it was that one moiety of the German biologists were orthodox at
any price, and the other moiety as distinctly heterodox. The latter were
evolutionists, a priori, already, and they must have felt the disgust
natural to deductive philosophers at being offered an inductive and
experimental foundation for a conviction which they had reached by
a shorter cut. It is undoubtedly trying to learn that, though your
conclusions may be all right, your reasons for them are all wrong, or,
at any rate, insufficient.

On the whole, then, the supporters of Mr. Darwin's views in 1860 were
numerically extremely insignificant. There is not the slightest doubt
that, if a general council of the Church scientific had been held at
that time, we should have been condemned by an overwhelming majority.
And there is as little doubt that, if such a council gathered now, the
decree would be of an exactly contrary nature. It would indicate a
lack of sense, as well as of modesty, to ascribe to the men of that
generation less capacity or less honesty than their successors possess.
What, then, are the causes which led instructed and fair-judging men of
that day to arrive at a judgment so different from that which seems
just and fair to those who follow them? That is really one of the most
interesting of all questions connected with the history of science, and
I shall try to answer it. I am afraid that in order to do so I must run
the risk of appearing egotistical. However, if I tell my own story it is
only because I know it better than that of other people.

I think I must have read the 'Vestiges' before I left England in 1846;
but, if I did, the book made very little impression upon me, and I was
not brought into serious contact with the 'Species' question until after
1850. At that time, I had long done with the Pentateuchal cosmogony,
which had been impressed upon my childish understanding as Divine truth,
with all the authority of parents and instructors, and from which it
had cost me many a struggle to get free. But my mind was unbiassed in
respect of any doctrine which presented itself, if it professed to be
based on purely philosophical and scientific reasoning. It seemed to
me then (as it does now) that "creation," in the ordinary sense of the
word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in imagining that,
at some former period, this universe was not in existence; and that
it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is
preferred), in consequence of the volition of some pre-existent Being.
Then, as now, the so-called a priori arguments against Theism; and,
given a Deity, against the possibility of creative acts, appeared to me
to be devoid of reasonable foundation. I had not then, and I have not
now, the smallest a priori objection to raise to the account of the
creation of animals and plants given in 'Paradise Lost,' in which Milton
so vividly embodies the natural sense of Genesis. Far be it from me to
say that it is untrue because it is impossible. I confine myself to what
must be regarded as a modest and reasonable request for some particle of
evidence that the existing species of animals and plants did originate
in that way, as a condition of my belief in a statement which appears to
me to be highly improbable.

And, by way of being perfectly fair, I had exactly the same answer to
give to the evolutionists of 1851-8. Within the ranks of the biologists,
at that time, I met with nobody, except Dr. Grant, of University
College, who had a word to say for Evolution--and his advocacy was not
calculated to advance the cause. Outside these ranks, the only person
known to me whose knowledge and capacity compelled respect, and who
was, at the same time, a thorough-going evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert
Spencer, whose acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852, and then entered
into the bonds of a friendship which, I am happy to think, has known
no interruption. Many and prolonged were the battles we fought on this
topic. But even my friend's rare dialectic skill and copiousness of apt
illustration could not drive me from my agnostic position. I took my
stand upon two grounds: firstly, that up to that time, the evidence in
favour of transmutation was wholly insufficient; and secondly, that no
suggestion respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed, which
had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the phenomena. Looking
back at the state of knowledge at that time, I really do not see that
any other conclusion was justifiable.

In those days I had never even heard of Treviranus' 'Biologie.' However,
I had studied Lamarck attentively and I had read the 'Vestiges' with due
care; but neither of them afforded me any good ground for changing my
negative and critical attitude. As for the 'Vestiges,' I confess that
the book simply irritated me by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly
unscientific habit of mind manifested by the writer. If it had any
influence on me at all, it set me against Evolution; and the only
review I ever have qualms of conscience about, on the ground of needless
savagery, is one I wrote on the 'Vestiges' while under that influence.

With respect to the 'Philosophie Zoologique,' it is no reproach to
Lamarck to say that the discussion of the Species question in that work,
whatever might be said for it in 1809, was miserably below the level
of the knowledge of half a century later. In that interval of time the
elucidation of the structure of the lower animals and plants had
given rise to wholly new conceptions of their relations; histology and
embryology, in the modern sense, had been created; physiology had been
reconstituted; the facts of distribution, geological and geographical,
had been prodigiously multiplied and reduced to order. To any biologist
whose studies had carried him beyond mere species-mongering in 1850,
one-half of Lamarck's arguments were obsolete and the other half
erroneous, or defective, in virtue of omitting to deal with the various
classes of evidence which had been brought to light since his time.
Moreover his one suggestion as to the cause of the gradual modification
of species--effort excited by change of conditions--was, on the face of
it, inapplicable to the whole vegetable world. I do not think that any
impartial judge who reads the 'Philosophie Zoologique' now, and who
afterwards takes up Lyell's trenchant and effectual criticism (published
as far back as 1830), will be disposed to allot to Lamarck a much higher
place in the establishment of biological evolution than that which
Bacon assigns to himself in relation to physical science
generally,--buccinator tantum. (Erasmus Darwin first promulgated
Lamarck's fundamental conceptions, and, with greater logical
consistency, he had applied them to plants. But the advocates of his
claims have failed to show that he, in any respect, anticipated the
central idea of the 'Origin of Species.')

But, by a curious irony of fate, the same influence which led me to
put as little faith in modern speculations on this subject, as in the
venerable traditions recorded in the first two chapters of Genesis,
was perhaps more potent than any other in keeping alive a sort of
pious conviction that Evolution, after all, would turn out true. I have
recently read afresh the first edition of the 'Principles of Geology';
and when I consider that this remarkable book had been nearly thirty
years in everybody's hands, and that it brings home to any reader of
ordinary intelligence a great principle and a great fact--the principle,
that the past must be explained by the present, unless good cause be
shown to the contrary; and the fact, that, so far as our knowledge of
the past history of life on our globe goes, no such cause can be shown
(The same principle and the same fact guide the result from all sound
historical investigation. Grote's 'History of Greece' is a product of
the same intellectual movement as Lyell's 'Principles.')--I cannot but
believe that Lyell, for others, as for myself, was the chief agent
for smoothing the road for Darwin. For consistent uniformitarianism
postulates evolution as much in the organic as in the inorganic world.
The origin of a new species by other than ordinary agencies would be a
vastly greater "catastrophe" than any of those which Lyell successfully
eliminated from sober geological speculation.

In fact, no one was better aware of this than Lyell himself. (Lyell,
with perfect right, claims this position for himself. He speaks of
having "advocated a law of continuity even in the organic world, so far
as possible without adopting Lamarck's theory of transmutation"...)

"But while I taught that as often as certain forms of animals and plants
disappeared, for reasons quite intelligible to us, others took their
place by virtue of a causation which was beyond our comprehension; it
remained for Darwin to accumulate proof that there is no break between
the incoming and the outgoing species, that they are the work of
evolution, and not of special creation...

"I had certainly prepared the way in this country, in six editions of my
work before the 'Vestiges of Creation' appeared in 1842 [1844], for
the reception of Darwin's gradual and insensible evolution of
species."--('Life and Letters,' Letter to Haeckel, volume ii. page 436.
November 23, 1868.) If one reads any of the earlier editions of the
'Principles' carefully (especially by the light of the interesting
series of letters recently published by Sir Charles Lyell's biographer),
it is easy to see that, with all his energetic opposition to Lamarck, on
the one hand, and to the ideal quasi-progressionism of Agassiz, on the
other, Lyell, in his own mind, was strongly disposed to account for the
origination of all past and present species of living things by natural
causes. But he would have liked, at the same time, to keep the name of
creation for a natural process which he imagined to be incomprehensible.

In a letter addressed to Mantell (dated March 2, 1827), Lyell speaks
of having just read Lamarck; he expresses his delight at Lamarck's
theories, and his personal freedom from any objection based on
theological grounds. And though he is evidently alarmed at the pithecoid
origin of man involved in Lamarck's doctrine, he observes:--

"But, after all, what changes species may really undergo! How impossible
will it be to distinguish and lay down a line, beyond which some of the
so-called extinct species have never passed into recent ones."

Again, the following remarkable passage occurs in the postscript of a
letter addressed to Sir John Herschel in 1836:--

"In regard to the origination of new species, I am very glad to find
that you think it probable that it may be carried on through the
intervention of intermediate causes. I left this rather to be inferred,
not thinking it worth while to offend a certain class of persons by
embodying in words what would only be a speculation." (In the same
sense, see the letter to Whewell, March 7, 1837, volume ii., page 5):--

"In regard to this last subject [the changes from one set of animal and
vegetable species to another]...you remember what Herschel said in his
letter to me. If I had stated as plainly as he has done the possibility
of the introduction or origination of fresh species being a natural, in
contradistinction to a miraculous process, I should have raised a host
of prejudices against me, which are unfortunately opposed at every
step to any philosopher who attempts to address the public on these
mysterious subjects." See also letter to Sedgwick, January 12, 1838 ii.
page 35.) He goes on to refer to the criticisms which have been directed
against him on the ground that, by leaving species to be originated by
miracle, he is inconsistent with his own doctrine of uniformitarianism;
and he leaves it to be understood that he had not replied, on the ground
of his general objection to controversy.

Lyell's contemporaries were not without some inkling of his esoteric
doctrine. Whewell's 'History of the Inductive Sciences,' whatever its
philosophical value, is always worth reading and always interesting, if
under no other aspect than that of an evidence of the speculative limits
within which a highly-placed divine might, at that time, safely range
at will. In the course of his discussion of uniformitarianism, the
encyclopaedic Master of Trinity observes:--

"Mr. Lyell, indeed, has spoken of an hypothesis that 'the successive
creation of species may constitute a regular part of the economy of
nature,' but he has nowhere, I think, so described this process as
to make it appear in what department of science we are to place the
hypothesis. Are these new species created by the production, at long
intervals, of an offspring different in species from the parents? Or
are the species so created produced without parents? Are they gradually
evolved from some embryo substance? Or do they suddenly start from the
ground, as in the creation of the poet?...

"Some selection of one of these forms of the hypothesis, rather than the
others, with evidence for the selection, is requisite to entitle us to
place it among the known causes of change, which in this chapter we are
considering. The bare conviction that a creation of species has taken
place, whether once or many times, so long as it is unconnected with
our organical sciences, is a tenet of Natural Theology rather than of
Physical Philosophy." (Whewell's 'History,' volume iii. page 639-640
(Edition 2, 1847.))

The earlier part of this criticism appears perfectly just and
appropriate; but, from the concluding paragraph, Whewell evidently
imagines that by "creation" Lyell means a preternatural intervention of
the Deity; whereas the letter to Herschel shows that, in his own
mind, Lyell meant natural causation; and I see no reason to doubt (The
following passages in Lyell's letters appear to me decisive on this
point):--

To Darwin, October 3, 1859 (ii, 325), on first reading the 'Origin.'

"I have long seen most clearly that if any concession is made, all that
you claim in your concluding pages will follow.

"It is this which has made me so long hesitate, always feeling that the
case of Man and his Races, and of other animals, and that of plants, is
one and the same, and that if a vera causa be admitted for one instant,
[instead] of a purely unknown and imaginary one, such as the word
'creation,' all the consequences must follow."

To Darwin, March 15, 1863 (volume ii. page 365).

"I remember that it was the conclusion he [Lamarck] came to about man
that fortified me thirty years ago against the great impression which
his arguments at first made on my mind, all the greater because Constant
Prevost, a pupil of Cuvier's forty years ago, told me his conviction
'that Cuvier thought species not real, but that science could not
advance without assuming that they were so.'"

To Hooker, March 9, 1863 (volume ii. page 361), in reference to Darwin's
feeling about the 'Antiquity of Man.'

"He [Darwin] seems much disappointed that I do not go farther with him,
or do not speak out more. I can only say that I have spoken out to
the full extent of my present convictions, and even beyond my state of
FEELING as to man's unbroken descent from the brutes, and I find I am
half converting not a few who were in arms against Darwin, and are even
now against Huxley." He speaks of having had to abandon "old and long
cherished ideas, which constituted the charm to me of the theoretical
part of the science in my earlier day, when I believed with Pascal in
the theory, as Hallam terms it, of 'the arch-angel ruined.'"

See the same sentiment in the letter to Darwin, March 11, 1863, page
363:--

"I think the old 'creation' is almost as much required as ever, but
of course it takes a new form if Lamarck's views improved by yours
are adopted." that, if Sir Charles could have avoided the inevitable
corollary of the pithecoid origin of man--for which, to the end of his
life, he entertained a profound antipathy--he would have advocated the
efficiency of causes now in operation to bring about the condition
of the organic world, as stoutly as he championed that doctrine in
reference to inorganic nature.

The fact is, that a discerning eye might have seen that some form or
other of the doctrine of transmutation was inevitable, from the time
when the truth enunciated by William Smith that successive strata are
characterised by different kinds of fossil remains, became a firmly
established law of nature. No one has set forth the speculative
consequences of this generalisation better than the historian of the
'Inductive Sciences':--

"But the study of geology opens to us the spectacle of many groups of
species which have, in the course of the earth's history, succeeded
each other at vast intervals of time; one set of animals and plants
disappearing, as it would seem, from the face of our planet, and others,
which did not before exist, becoming the only occupants of the globe.
And the dilemma then presents itself to us anew:--either we must accept
the doctrine of the transmutation of species, and must suppose that the
organized species of one geological epoch were transmuted into those
of another by some long-continued agency of natural causes; or else,
we must believe in many successive acts of creation and extinction of
species, out of the common course of nature; acts which, therefore,
we may properly call miraculous." (Whewell's 'History of the Inductive
Sciences.' Edition ii., 1847, volume iii. pages 624-625. See for the
author's verdict, pages 638- 39.)

Dr. Whewell decides in favour of the latter conclusion. And if any one
had plied him with the four questions which he puts to Lyell in the
passage already cited, all that can be said now is that he would
certainly have rejected the first. But would he really have had the
courage to say that a Rhinoceros tichorhinus, for instance, "was
produced without parents;" or was "evolved from some embryo substance;"
or that it suddenly started from the ground like Milton's lion "pawing
to get free his hinder parts." I permit myself to doubt whether even
the Master of Trinity's well-tried courage--physical, intellectual,
and moral--would have been equal to this feat. No doubt the sudden
concurrence of half-a-ton of inorganic molecules into a live rhinoceros
is conceivable, and therefore may be possible. But does such an event
lie sufficiently within the bounds of probability to justify the
belief in its occurrence on the strength of any attainable, or, indeed,
imaginable, evidence?

In view of the assertion (often repeated in the early days of the
opposition to Darwin) that he had added nothing to Lamarck, it is very
interesting to observe that the possibility of a fifth alternative, in
addition to the four he has stated, has not dawned upon Dr. Whewell's
mind. The suggestion that new species may result from the selective
action of external conditions upon the variations from their specific
type which individuals present--and which we call "spontaneous,"
because we are ignorant of their causation--is as wholly unknown to the
historian of scientific ideas as it was to biological specialists
before 1858. But that suggestion is the central idea of the 'Origin of
Species,' and contains the quintessence of Darwinism.

Thus, looking back into the past, it seems to me that my own position
of critical expectancy was just and reasonable, and must have been taken
up, on the same grounds, by many other persons. If Agassiz told me that
the forms of life which had successively tenanted the globe were the
incarnations of successive thoughts of the Deity; and that he had wiped
out one set of these embodiments by an appalling geological catastrophe
as soon as His ideas took a more advanced shape, I found myself not
only unable to admit the accuracy of the deductions from the facts of
paleontology, upon which this astounding hypothesis was founded, but I
had to confess my want of any means of testing the correctness of his
explanation of them. And besides that, I could by no means see what the
explanation explained. Neither did it help me to be told by an eminent
anatomist that species had succeeded one another in time, in virtue of
"a continuously operative creational law." That seemed to me to be no
more than saying that species had succeeded one another, in the form of
a vote-catching resolution, with "law" to please the man of science,
and "creational" to draw the orthodox. So I took refuge in that "thatige
Skepsis" which Goethe has so well defined; and, reversing the apostolic
precept to be all things to all men, I usually defended the tenability
of the received doctrines, when I had to do with the transmutationists;
and stood up for the possibility of transmutation among the
orthodox--thereby, no doubt, increasing an already current, but quite
undeserved, reputation for needless combativeness.

I remember, in the course of my first interview with Mr. Darwin,
expressing my belief in the sharpness of the lines of demarcation
between natural groups and in the absence of transitional forms, with
all the confidence of youth and imperfect knowledge. I was not aware,
at that time, that he had then been many years brooding over the
species-question; and the humorous smile which accompanied his gentle
answer, that such was not altogether his view, long haunted and puzzled
me. But it would seem that four or five years' hard work had enabled me
to understand what it meant; for Lyell ('Life and Letters,' volume ii.
page 212.), writing to Sir Charles Bunbury (under date of April 30,
1856), says:--

"When Huxley, Hooker, and Wollaston were at Darwin's last week they (all
four of them) ran a tilt against species--further, I believe, than they
are prepared to go."

I recollect nothing of this beyond the fact of meeting Mr. Wollaston;
and except for Sir Charles' distinct assurance as to "all four," I
should have thought my "outrecuidance" was probably a counterblast to
Wollaston's conservatism. With regard to Hooker, he was already,
like Voltaire's Habbakuk, "capable du tout" in the way of advocating
Evolution.

As I have already said, I imagine that most of those of my
contemporaries who thought seriously about the matter, were very much
in my own state of mind--inclined to say to both Mosaists and
Evolutionists, "a plague on both your houses!" and disposed to turn
aside from an interminable and apparently fruitless discussion,
to labour in the fertile fields of ascertainable fact. And I may,
therefore, further suppose that the publication of the Darwin and
Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of the 'Origin' in 1859, had
the effect upon them of the flash of light, which to a man who has lost
himself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes
him straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we were
looking for, and could not find, was a hypothesis respecting the origin
of known organic forms, which assumed the operation of no causes but
such as could be proved to be actually at work. We wanted, not to pin
our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and
definite conceptions which could be brought face to face with facts and
have their validity tested. The 'Origin' provided us with the working
hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did the immense service of freeing us
for ever from the dilemma--refuse to accept the creation hypothesis, and
what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner?
In 1857, I had no answer ready, and I do not think that any one else
had. A year later, we reproached ourselves with dullness for being
perplexed by such an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself
master of the central idea of the 'Origin,' was, "How extremely stupid
not to have thought of that!" I suppose that Columbus' companions
said much the same when he made the egg stand on end. The facts of
variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions,
were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the
heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace
dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the 'Origin' guided the
benighted.

Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of evolution, as applied
to the organic world, took in Darwin's hands, would prove to be final or
not, was, to me, a matter of indifference. In my earliest criticisms
of the 'Origin' I ventured to point out that its logical foundation was
insecure so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced
varieties which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains
up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt which
my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained
incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had
none of us been able to discern the paramount significance of some of
the most patent and notorious of natural facts, until they were, so
to speak, thrust under our noses, what force remained in the
dilemma--creation or nothing? It was obvious that, hereafter, the
probability would be immensely greater, that the links of natural
causation were hidden from our purblind eyes, than that natural
causation should be incompetent to produce all the phenomena of nature.
The only rational course for those who had no other object than the
attainment of truth, was to accept "Darwinism" as a working hypothesis,
and see what could be made of it. Either it would prove its capacity to
elucidate the facts of organic life, or it would break down under the
strain. This was surely the dictate of common sense; and, for once,
common sense carried the day. The result has been that complete
volte-face of the whole scientific world, which must seem so surprising
to the present generation. I do not mean to say that all the leaders of
biological science have avowed themselves Darwinians; but I do not think
that there is a single zoologist, or botanist, or palaeontologist, among
the multitude of active workers of this generation, who is other than an
evolutionist, profoundly influenced by Darwin's views. Whatever may
be the ultimate fate of the particular theory put forth by Darwin, I
venture to affirm that, so far as my knowledge goes, all the ingenuity
and all the learning of hostile critics have not enabled them to adduce
a solitary fact, of which it can be said, this is irreconcilable with
the Darwinian theory. In the prodigious variety and complexity of
organic nature, there are multitudes of phenomena which are not
deducible from any generalisations we have yet reached. But the same
may be said of every other class of natural objects. I believe that
astronomers cannot yet get the moon's motions into perfect accordance
with the theory of gravitation.

It would be inappropriate, even if it were possible, to discuss the
difficulties and unresolved problems which have hitherto met the
evolutionist, and which will probably continue to puzzle him for
generations to come, in the course of this brief history of the
reception of Mr. Darwin's great work. But there are two or three
objections of a more general character, based, or supposed to be based,
upon philosophical and theological foundations, which were loudly
expressed in the early days of the Darwinian controversy, and which,
though they have been answered over and over again, crop up now and then
to the present day.

The most singular of these, perhaps immortal, fallacies, which live on,
Tithonus-like, when sense and force have long deserted them, is that
which charges Mr. Darwin with having attempted to reinstate the old
pagan goddess, Chance. It is said that he supposes variations to come
about "by chance," and that the fittest survive the "chances" of
the struggle for existence, and thus "chance" is substituted for
providential design.

It is not a little wonderful that such an accusation as this should
be brought against a writer who has, over and over again, warned his
readers that when he uses the word "spontaneous," he merely means that
he is ignorant of the cause of that which is so termed; and whose whole
theory crumbles to pieces if the uniformity and regularity of natural
causation for illimitable past ages is denied. But probably the best
answer to those who talk of Darwinism meaning the reign of "chance," is
to ask them what they themselves understand by "chance"? Do they believe
that anything in this universe happens without reason or without a
cause? Do they really conceive that any event has no cause, and could
not have been predicted by any one who had a sufficient insight into
the order of Nature? If they do, it is they who are the inheritors of
antique superstition and ignorance, and whose minds have never been
illumined by a ray of scientific thought. The one act of faith in the
convert to science, is the confession of the universality of order and
of the absolute validity in all times and under all circumstances, of
the law of causation. This confession is an act of faith, because,
by the nature of the case, the truth of such propositions is not
susceptible of proof. But such faith is not blind, but reasonable;
because it is invariably confirmed by experience, and constitutes the
sole trustworthy foundation for all action.

If one of these people, in whom the chance-worship of our remoter
ancestors thus strangely survives, should be within reach of the sea
when a heavy gale is blowing, let him betake himself to the shore and
watch the scene. Let him note the infinite variety of form and size of
the tossing waves out at sea; or of the curves of their foam-crested
breakers, as they dash against the rocks; let him listen to the roar and
scream of the shingle as it is cast up and torn down the beach; or look
at the flakes of foam as they drive hither and thither before the wind;
or note the play of colours, which answers a gleam of sunshine as it
falls upon the myriad bubbles. Surely here, if anywhere, he will say
that chance is supreme, and bend the knee as one who has entered the
very penetralia of his divinity. But the man of science knows that here,
as everywhere, perfect order is manifested; that there is not a curve
of the waves, not a note in the howling chorus, not a rainbow-glint on
a bubble, which is other than a necessary consequence of the ascertained
laws of nature; and that with a sufficient knowledge of the conditions,
competent physico-mathematical skill could account for, and indeed
predict, every one of these "chance" events.

A second very common objection to Mr. Darwin's views was (and is), that
they abolish Teleology, and eviscerate the argument from design. It
is nearly twenty years since I ventured to offer some remarks on this
subject, and as my arguments have as yet received no refutation, I hope
I may be excused for reproducing them. I observed, "that the doctrine
of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner and
coarser forms of Teleology. But perhaps the most remarkable service to
the Philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation
of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both,
which his views offer. The teleology which supposes that the eye, such
as we see it in man, or one of the higher vertebrata, was made with the
precise structure it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal
which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that there is a wider
teleology which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is
actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution. This
proposition is that the whole world, living and not living, is the
result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the
forces (I should now like to substitute the word powers for "forces.")
possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the
universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that
the existing world lay potentially in the cosmic vapour, and that a
sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the
molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the fauna of
Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen
to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's day...

...The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not,
necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a
mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial
molecular arrangement of which all the phenomena of the universe are the
consequences, and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the
teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial
molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the
universe." (The "Genealogy of Animals" ('The Academy,' 1869), reprinted
in 'Critiques and Addresses.')

The acute champion of Teleology, Paley, saw no difficulty in admitting
that the "production of things" may be the result of trains of
mechanical dispositions fixed beforehand by intelligent appointment and
kept in action by a power at the centre ('Natural Theology,' chapter
xxiii.), that is to say, he proleptically accepted the modern doctrine
of Evolution; and his successors might do well to follow their leader,
or at any rate to attend to his weighty reasonings, before rushing into
an antagonism which has no reasonable foundation.

Having got rid of the belief in chance and the disbelief in design,
as in no sense appurtenances of Evolution, the third libel upon that
doctrine, that it is anti-theistic, might perhaps be left to shift for
itself. But the persistence with which many people refuse to draw the
plainest consequences from the propositions they profess to accept,
renders it advisable to remark that the doctrine of Evolution is neither
Anti-theistic nor Theistic. It simply has no more to do with Theism
than the first book of Euclid has. It is quite certain that a normal
fresh-laid egg contains neither cock nor hen; and it is also as certain
as any proposition in physics or morals, that if such an egg is kept
under proper conditions for three weeks, a cock or hen chicken will be
found in it. It is also quite certain that if the shell were transparent
we should be able to watch the formation of the young fowl, day by day,
by a process of evolution, from a microscopic cellular germ to its
full size and complication of structure. Therefore Evolution, in the
strictest sense, is actually going on in this and analogous millions and
millions of instances, wherever living creatures exist. Therefore,
to borrow an argument from Butler, as that which now happens must be
consistent with the attributes of the Deity, if such a Being exists,
Evolution must be consistent with those attributes. And, if so, the
evolution of the universe, which is neither more nor less explicable
than that of a chicken, must also be consistent with them. The doctrine
of Evolution, therefore, does not even come into contact with Theism,
considered as a philosophical doctrine. That with which it does collide,
and with which it is absolutely inconsistent, is the conception of
creation, which theological speculators have based upon the history
narrated in the opening of the book of Genesis.

There is a great deal of talk and not a little lamentation about the
so-called religious difficulties which physical science has created.
In theological science, as a matter of fact, it has created none. Not
a solitary problem presents itself to the philosophical Theist, at the
present day, which has not existed from the time that philosophers began
to think out the logical grounds and the logical consequences of Theism.
All the real or imaginary perplexities which flow from the conception
of the universe as a determinate mechanism, are equally involved in
the assumption of an Eternal, Omnipotent and Omniscient Deity. The
theological equivalent of the scientific conception of order is
Providence; and the doctrine of determinism follows as surely from
the attributes of foreknowledge assumed by the theologian, as from the
universality of natural causation assumed by the man of science. The
angels in 'Paradise Lost' would have found the task of enlightening Adam
upon the mysteries of "Fate, Foreknowledge, and Free-will," not a whit
more difficult, if their pupil had been educated in a "Real-schule" and
trained in every laboratory of a modern university. In respect of the
great problems of Philosophy, the post-Darwinian generation is, in one
sense, exactly where the prae-Darwinian generations were. They remain
insoluble. But the present generation has the advantage of being better
provided with the means of freeing itself from the tyranny of certain
sham solutions.

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on
an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our
business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add
something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a
cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last
quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that
the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural
knowledge which has come into men's hands, since the publication of
Newton's 'Principia,' is Darwin's 'Origin of Species.'

It was badly received by the generation to which it was first addressed,
and the outpouring of angry nonsense to which it gave rise is sad to
think upon. But the present generation will probably behave just as
badly if another Darwin should arise, and inflict upon them that which
the generality of mankind most hate--the necessity of revising their
convictions. Let them, then, be charitable to us ancients; and if they
behave no better than the men of my day to some new benefactor, let them
recollect that, after all, our wrath did not come to much, and vented
itself chiefly in the bad language of sanctimonious scolds. Let them
as speedily perform a strategic right-about-face, and follow the truth
wherever it leads. The opponents of the new truth will discover, as
those of Darwin are doing, that, after all, theories do not alter facts,
and that the universe remains unaffected even though texts crumble. Or,
it may be, that, as history repeats itself, their happy ingenuity will
also discover that the new wine is exactly of the same vintage as
the old, and that (rightly viewed) the old bottles prove to have been
expressly made for holding it.






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Title: On the Origin of Species
       1st Edition

Author: Charles Darwin

Release Date: Release Date: March, 1998 [EBook #1228]
Posting Date: November 23, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES ***




Produced by Sue Asscher





ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.


By Charles Darwin, M.A.,

Fellow Of The Royal, Geological, Linnaean, Etc., Societies;

Author Of 'Journal Of Researches During H.M.S. Beagle's Voyage Round The
World.'


LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1859.


Down, Bromley, Kent,

October 1st, 1859.



"But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as
this--we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated
interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by
the establishment of general laws."

W. Whewell: Bridgewater Treatise.



"To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety,
or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search
too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book
of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an
endless progress or proficience in both."

Bacon: Advancement of Learning.


CONTENTS.



  INTRODUCTION.


  CHAPTER 1. VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION.

  Causes of Variability.
  Effects of Habit.
  Correlation of Growth.
  Inheritance.
  Character of Domestic Varieties.
  Difficulty of distinguishing between Varieties and Species.
  Origin of Domestic Varieties from one or more Species.
  Domestic Pigeons, their Differences and Origin.
  Principle of Selection anciently followed, its Effects.
  Methodical and Unconscious Selection.
  Unknown Origin of our Domestic Productions.
  Circumstances favourable to Man's power of Selection.


  CHAPTER 2. VARIATION UNDER NATURE.

  Variability.
  Individual Differences.
  Doubtful species.
  Wide ranging, much diffused, and common species vary most.
  Species of the larger genera in any country vary more than the species
  of the smaller genera.
  Many of the species of the larger genera resemble varieties in being
  very closely, but unequally, related to each other, and in having
  restricted ranges.


  CHAPTER 3. STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.

  Bears on natural selection.
  The term used in a wide sense.
  Geometrical powers of increase.
  Rapid increase of naturalised animals and plants.
  Nature of the checks to increase.
  Competition universal.
  Effects of climate.
  Protection from the number of individuals.
  Complex relations of all animals and plants throughout nature.
  Struggle for life most severe between individuals and varieties of the
  same species; often severe between species of the same genus.
  The relation of organism to organism the most important of all
  relations.


  CHAPTER 4. NATURAL SELECTION.

  Natural Selection: its power compared with man's selection, its power
  on characters of trifling importance, its power at all ages and on
  both sexes.
  Sexual Selection.
  On the generality of intercrosses between individuals of the same
  species.
  Circumstances favourable and unfavourable to Natural Selection,
  namely, intercrossing, isolation, number of individuals.
  Slow action.
  Extinction caused by Natural Selection.
  Divergence of Character, related to the diversity of inhabitants of
  any small area, and to naturalisation.
  Action of Natural Selection, through Divergence of Character and
  Extinction, on the descendants from a common parent.
  Explains the Grouping of all organic beings.


  CHAPTER 5. LAWS OF VARIATION.

  Effects of external conditions.
  Use and disuse, combined with natural selection; organs of flight and
  of vision.
  Acclimatisation.
  Correlation of growth.
  Compensation and economy of growth.
  False correlations.
  Multiple, rudimentary, and lowly organised structures variable.
  Parts developed in an unusual manner are highly variable: specific
  characters more variable than generic: secondary sexual characters
  variable.
  Species of the same genus vary in an analogous manner.
  Reversions to long-lost characters.
  Summary.


  CHAPTER 6. DIFFICULTIES ON THEORY.

  Difficulties on the theory of descent with modification.
  Transitions.
  Absence or rarity of transitional varieties.
  Transitions in habits of life.
  Diversified habits in the same species.
  Species with habits widely different from those of their allies.
  Organs of extreme perfection.
  Means of transition.
  Cases of difficulty.
  Natura non facit saltum.
  Organs of small importance.
  Organs not in all cases absolutely perfect.
  The law of Unity of Type and of the Conditions of Existence embraced
  by the theory of Natural Selection.


  CHAPTER 7. INSTINCT.

  Instincts comparable with habits, but different in their origin.
  Instincts graduated.
  Aphides and ants.
  Instincts variable.
  Domestic instincts, their origin.
  Natural instincts of the cuckoo, ostrich, and parasitic bees.
  Slave-making ants.
  Hive-bee, its cell-making instinct.
  Difficulties on the theory of the Natural Selection of instincts.
  Neuter or sterile insects.
  Summary.


  CHAPTER 8. HYBRIDISM.

  Distinction between the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids.
  Sterility various in degree, not universal, affected by close
  interbreeding, removed by domestication.
  Laws governing the sterility of hybrids.
  Sterility not a special endowment, but incidental on other
  differences.
  Causes of the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids.
  Parallelism between the effects of changed conditions of life and
  crossing.
  Fertility of varieties when crossed and of their mongrel offspring not
  universal.
  Hybrids and mongrels compared independently of their fertility.
  Summary.


  CHAPTER 9. ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD.

  On the absence of intermediate varieties at the present day.
  On the nature of extinct intermediate varieties; on their number.
  On the vast lapse of time, as inferred from the rate of deposition and
  of denudation.
  On the poorness of our palaeontological collections.
  On the intermittence of geological formations.
  On the absence of intermediate varieties in any one formation.
  On the sudden appearance of groups of species.
  On their sudden appearance in the lowest known fossiliferous strata.


  CHAPTER 10. ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS.

  On the slow and successive appearance of new species.
  On their different rates of change.
  Species once lost do not reappear.
  Groups of species follow the same general rules in their appearance
  and disappearance as do single species.
  On Extinction.
  On simultaneous changes in the forms of life throughout the world.
  On the affinities of extinct species to each other and to living
  species.
  On the state of development of ancient forms.
  On the succession of the same types within the same areas.
  Summary of preceding and present chapters.


  CHAPTER 11. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION.

  Present distribution cannot be accounted for by differences in
  physical conditions.
  Importance of barriers.
  Affinity of the productions of the same continent.
  Centres of creation.
  Means of dispersal, by changes of climate and of the level of the
  land, and by occasional means.
  Dispersal during the Glacial period co-extensive with the world.


  CHAPTER 12. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION--continued.

  Distribution of fresh-water productions.
  On the inhabitants of oceanic islands.
  Absence of Batrachians and of terrestrial Mammals.
  On the relation of the inhabitants of islands to those of the nearest
  mainland.
  On colonisation from the nearest source with subsequent modification.
  Summary of the last and present chapters.


  CHAPTER 13. MUTUAL AFFINITIES OF ORGANIC BEINGS: MORPHOLOGY:
  EMBRYOLOGY: RUDIMENTARY
  ORGANS.

  CLASSIFICATION, groups subordinate to groups.
  Natural system.
  Rules and difficulties in classification, explained on the theory of
  descent with modification.
  Classification of varieties.
  Descent always used in classification.
  Analogical or adaptive characters.
  Affinities, general, complex and radiating.
  Extinction separates and defines groups.
  MORPHOLOGY, between members of the same class, between parts of the
  same individual.
  EMBRYOLOGY, laws of, explained by variations not supervening at an
  early age, and being inherited at a corresponding age.
  RUDIMENTARY ORGANS; their origin explained.
  Summary.


  CHAPTER 14. RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION.

  Recapitulation of the difficulties on the theory of Natural Selection.
  Recapitulation of the general and special circumstances in its favour.
  Causes of the general belief in the immutability of species.
  How far the theory of natural selection may be extended.
  Effects of its adoption on the study of Natural history.
  Concluding remarks.




ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.




INTRODUCTION.

When on board H.M.S. 'Beagle,' as naturalist, I was much struck with
certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America,
and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants
of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the
origin of species--that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by
one of our greatest philosophers. On my return home, it occurred to me,
in 1837, that something might perhaps be made out on this question by
patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could
possibly have any bearing on it. After five years' work I allowed myself
to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I
enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions, which then seemed to
me probable: from that period to the present day I have steadily pursued
the same object. I hope that I may be excused for entering on these
personal details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in
coming to a decision.

My work is now nearly finished; but as it will take me two or three more
years to complete it, and as my health is far from strong, I have been
urged to publish this Abstract. I have more especially been induced to
do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying the natural history of
the Malay archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general
conclusions that I have on the origin of species. Last year he sent to
me a memoir on this subject, with a request that I would forward it
to Sir Charles Lyell, who sent it to the Linnean Society, and it is
published in the third volume of the Journal of that Society. Sir C.
Lyell and Dr. Hooker, who both knew of my work--the latter having read
my sketch of 1844--honoured me by thinking it advisable to publish, with
Mr. Wallace's excellent memoir, some brief extracts from my manuscripts.

This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I
cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements;
and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy.
No doubt errors will have crept in, though I hope I have always been
cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only
the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in
illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice. No one can
feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in
detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been
grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this. For I am well aware
that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts
cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly
opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained
only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both
sides of each question; and this cannot possibly be here done.

I much regret that want of space prevents my having the satisfaction of
acknowledging the generous assistance which I have received from very
many naturalists, some of them personally unknown to me. I cannot,
however, let this opportunity pass without expressing my deep
obligations to Dr. Hooker, who for the last fifteen years has aided me
in every possible way by his large stores of knowledge and his excellent
judgment.

In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a
naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings,
on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution,
geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the
conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but
had descended, like varieties, from other species. Nevertheless, such
a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it
could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world
have been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure and
coadaptation which most justly excites our admiration. Naturalists
continually refer to external conditions, such as climate, food, etc.,
as the only possible cause of variation. In one very limited sense,
as we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it is preposterous to
attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance,
of the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably
adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the
misseltoe, which draws its nourishment from certain trees, which has
seeds that must be transported by certain birds, and which has flowers
with separate sexes absolutely requiring the agency of certain insects
to bring pollen from one flower to the other, it is equally preposterous
to account for the structure of this parasite, with its relations to
several distinct organic beings, by the effects of external conditions,
or of habit, or of the volition of the plant itself.

The author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' would, I presume, say that,
after a certain unknown number of generations, some bird had given birth
to a woodpecker, and some plant to the misseltoe, and that these had
been produced perfect as we now see them; but this assumption seems to
me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case of the coadaptations of
organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life,
untouched and unexplained.

It is, therefore, of the highest importance to gain a clear insight into
the means of modification and coadaptation. At the commencement of
my observations it seemed to me probable that a careful study of
domesticated animals and of cultivated plants would offer the best
chance of making out this obscure problem. Nor have I been disappointed;
in this and in all other perplexing cases I have invariably found that
our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of variation under domestication,
afforded the best and safest clue. I may venture to express my
conviction of the high value of such studies, although they have been
very commonly neglected by naturalists.

From these considerations, I shall devote the first chapter of this
Abstract to Variation under Domestication. We shall thus see that a
large amount of hereditary modification is at least possible, and, what
is equally or more important, we shall see how great is the power of man
in accumulating by his Selection successive slight variations. I will
then pass on to the variability of species in a state of nature; but
I shall, unfortunately, be compelled to treat this subject far too
briefly, as it can be treated properly only by giving long catalogues of
facts. We shall, however, be enabled to discuss what circumstances
are most favourable to variation. In the next chapter the Struggle
for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which
inevitably follows from their high geometrical powers of increase, will
be treated of. This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole
animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each species
are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a
frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being,
if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under
the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better
chance of surviving, and thus be NATURALLY SELECTED. From the strong
principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate
its new and modified form.

This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at
some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural
Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved
forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character.
In the next chapter I shall discuss the complex and little known laws of
variation and of correlation of growth. In the four succeeding chapters,
the most apparent and gravest difficulties on the theory will be given:
namely, first, the difficulties of transitions, or in understanding how
a simple being or a simple organ can be changed and perfected into a
highly developed being or elaborately constructed organ; secondly
the subject of Instinct, or the mental powers of animals, thirdly,
Hybridism, or the infertility of species and the fertility of varieties
when intercrossed; and fourthly, the imperfection of the Geological
Record. In the next chapter I shall consider the geological succession
of organic beings throughout time; in the eleventh and twelfth, their
geographical distribution throughout space; in the thirteenth, their
classification or mutual affinities, both when mature and in an
embryonic condition. In the last chapter I shall give a brief
recapitulation of the whole work, and a few concluding remarks.

No one ought to feel surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained in
regard to the origin of species and varieties, if he makes due allowance
for our profound ignorance in regard to the mutual relations of all
the beings which live around us. Who can explain why one species ranges
widely and is very numerous, and why another allied species has a narrow
range and is rare? Yet these relations are of the highest importance,
for they determine the present welfare, and, as I believe, the future
success and modification of every inhabitant of this world. Still less
do we know of the mutual relations of the innumerable inhabitants of the
world during the many past geological epochs in its history. Although
much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no
doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of
which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists entertain,
and which I formerly entertained--namely, that each species has been
independently created--is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species
are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the
same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct
species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one
species are the descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am convinced
that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of
modification.




1. VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION.

Causes of Variability. Effects of Habit. Correlation of Growth.
Inheritance. Character of Domestic Varieties. Difficulty of
distinguishing between Varieties and Species. Origin of Domestic
Varieties from one or more Species. Domestic Pigeons, their Differences
and Origin. Principle of Selection anciently followed, its Effects.
Methodical and Unconscious Selection. Unknown Origin of our Domestic
Productions. Circumstances favourable to Man's power of Selection.

When we look to the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of
our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which
strikes us, is, that they generally differ much more from each other,
than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of
nature. When we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals
which have been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under
the most different climates and treatment, I think we are driven to
conclude that this greater variability is simply due to our domestic
productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform
as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent-species have
been exposed under nature. There is, also, I think, some probability
in the view propounded by Andrew Knight, that this variability may be
partly connected with excess of food. It seems pretty clear that organic
beings must be exposed during several generations to the new conditions
of life to cause any appreciable amount of variation; and that when the
organisation has once begun to vary, it generally continues to vary for
many generations. No case is on record of a variable being ceasing to be
variable under cultivation. Our oldest cultivated plants, such as wheat,
still often yield new varieties: our oldest domesticated animals are
still capable of rapid improvement or modification.

It has been disputed at what period of life the causes of variability,
whatever they may be, generally act; whether during the early or late
period of development of the embryo, or at the instant of conception.
Geoffroy St. Hilaire's experiments show that unnatural treatment of the
embryo causes monstrosities; and monstrosities cannot be separated by
any clear line of distinction from mere variations. But I am strongly
inclined to suspect that the most frequent cause of variability may
be attributed to the male and female reproductive elements having been
affected prior to the act of conception. Several reasons make me believe
in this; but the chief one is the remarkable effect which confinement or
cultivation has on the functions of the reproductive system; this
system appearing to be far more susceptible than any other part of the
organisation, to the action of any change in the conditions of life.
Nothing is more easy than to tame an animal, and few things more
difficult than to get it to breed freely under confinement, even in the
many cases when the male and female unite. How many animals there
are which will not breed, though living long under not very close
confinement in their native country! This is generally attributed to
vitiated instincts; but how many cultivated plants display the utmost
vigour, and yet rarely or never seed! In some few such cases it has
been found out that very trifling changes, such as a little more or less
water at some particular period of growth, will determine whether or not
the plant sets a seed. I cannot here enter on the copious details which
I have collected on this curious subject; but to show how singular the
laws are which determine the reproduction of animals under confinement,
I may just mention that carnivorous animals, even from the tropics,
breed in this country pretty freely under confinement, with the
exception of the plantigrades or bear family; whereas, carnivorous
birds, with the rarest exceptions, hardly ever lay fertile eggs. Many
exotic plants have pollen utterly worthless, in the same exact
condition as in the most sterile hybrids. When, on the one hand, we
see domesticated animals and plants, though often weak and sickly, yet
breeding quite freely under confinement; and when, on the other hand,
we see individuals, though taken young from a state of nature,
perfectly tamed, long-lived, and healthy (of which I could give numerous
instances), yet having their reproductive system so seriously affected
by unperceived causes as to fail in acting, we need not be surprised
at this system, when it does act under confinement, acting not quite
regularly, and producing offspring not perfectly like their parents or
variable.

Sterility has been said to be the bane of horticulture; but on this
view we owe variability to the same cause which produces sterility; and
variability is the source of all the choicest productions of the garden.
I may add, that as some organisms will breed most freely under the
most unnatural conditions (for instance, the rabbit and ferret kept
in hutches), showing that their reproductive system has not been thus
affected; so will some animals and plants withstand domestication or
cultivation, and vary very slightly--perhaps hardly more than in a state
of nature.

A long list could easily be given of "sporting plants;" by this term
gardeners mean a single bud or offset, which suddenly assumes a new and
sometimes very different character from that of the rest of the plant.
Such buds can be propagated by grafting, etc., and sometimes by seed.
These "sports" are extremely rare under nature, but far from rare under
cultivation; and in this case we see that the treatment of the parent
has affected a bud or offset, and not the ovules or pollen. But it is
the opinion of most physiologists that there is no essential difference
between a bud and an ovule in their earliest stages of formation; so
that, in fact, "sports" support my view, that variability may be largely
attributed to the ovules or pollen, or to both, having been affected by
the treatment of the parent prior to the act of conception. These cases
anyhow show that variation is not necessarily connected, as some authors
have supposed, with the act of generation.

Seedlings from the same fruit, and the young of the same litter,
sometimes differ considerably from each other, though both the young
and the parents, as Muller has remarked, have apparently been exposed to
exactly the same conditions of life; and this shows how unimportant the
direct effects of the conditions of life are in comparison with the laws
of reproduction, and of growth, and of inheritance; for had the action
of the conditions been direct, if any of the young had varied, all would
probably have varied in the same manner. To judge how much, in the case
of any variation, we should attribute to the direct action of heat,
moisture, light, food, etc., is most difficult: my impression is, that
with animals such agencies have produced very little direct effect,
though apparently more in the case of plants. Under this point of view,
Mr. Buckman's recent experiments on plants seem extremely valuable.
When all or nearly all the individuals exposed to certain conditions are
affected in the same way, the change at first appears to be directly
due to such conditions; but in some cases it can be shown that quite
opposite conditions produce similar changes of structure. Nevertheless
some slight amount of change may, I think, be attributed to the direct
action of the conditions of life--as, in some cases, increased size from
amount of food, colour from particular kinds of food and from light, and
perhaps the thickness of fur from climate.

Habit also has a decided influence, as in the period of flowering with
plants when transported from one climate to another. In animals it has
a more marked effect; for instance, I find in the domestic duck that
the bones of the wing weigh less and the bones of the leg more,
in proportion to the whole skeleton, than do the same bones in the
wild-duck; and I presume that this change may be safely attributed to
the domestic duck flying much less, and walking more, than its wild
parent. The great and inherited development of the udders in cows and
goats in countries where they are habitually milked, in comparison with
the state of these organs in other countries, is another instance of the
effect of use. Not a single domestic animal can be named which has not
in some country drooping ears; and the view suggested by some authors,
that the drooping is due to the disuse of the muscles of the ear, from
the animals not being much alarmed by danger, seems probable.

There are many laws regulating variation, some few of which can be dimly
seen, and will be hereafter briefly mentioned. I will here only allude
to what may be called correlation of growth. Any change in the embryo
or larva will almost certainly entail changes in the mature animal. In
monstrosities, the correlations between quite distinct parts are very
curious; and many instances are given in Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's
great work on this subject. Breeders believe that long limbs are almost
always accompanied by an elongated head. Some instances of correlation
are quite whimsical; thus cats with blue eyes are invariably deaf;
colour and constitutional peculiarities go together, of which many
remarkable cases could be given amongst animals and plants. From the
facts collected by Heusinger, it appears that white sheep and pigs are
differently affected from coloured individuals by certain vegetable
poisons. Hairless dogs have imperfect teeth; long-haired and
coarse-haired animals are apt to have, as is asserted, long or many
horns; pigeons with feathered feet have skin between their outer toes;
pigeons with short beaks have small feet, and those with long beaks
large feet. Hence, if man goes on selecting, and thus augmenting, any
peculiarity, he will almost certainly unconsciously modify other parts
of the structure, owing to the mysterious laws of the correlation of
growth.

The result of the various, quite unknown, or dimly seen laws of
variation is infinitely complex and diversified. It is well worth while
carefully to study the several treatises published on some of our old
cultivated plants, as on the hyacinth, potato, even the dahlia, etc.;
and it is really surprising to note the endless points in structure and
constitution in which the varieties and sub-varieties differ slightly
from each other. The whole organisation seems to have become plastic,
and tends to depart in some small degree from that of the parental type.

Any variation which is not inherited is unimportant for us. But the
number and diversity of inheritable deviations of structure, both
those of slight and those of considerable physiological importance,
is endless. Dr. Prosper Lucas's treatise, in two large volumes, is the
fullest and the best on this subject. No breeder doubts how strong
is the tendency to inheritance: like produces like is his fundamental
belief: doubts have been thrown on this principle by theoretical writers
alone. When a deviation appears not unfrequently, and we see it in the
father and child, we cannot tell whether it may not be due to the same
original cause acting on both; but when amongst individuals, apparently
exposed to the same conditions, any very rare deviation, due to some
extraordinary combination of circumstances, appears in the parent--say,
once amongst several million individuals--and it reappears in the
child, the mere doctrine of chances almost compels us to attribute
its reappearance to inheritance. Every one must have heard of cases of
albinism, prickly skin, hairy bodies, etc., appearing in several members
of the same family. If strange and rare deviations of structure are
truly inherited, less strange and commoner deviations may be freely
admitted to be inheritable. Perhaps the correct way of viewing the
whole subject, would be, to look at the inheritance of every character
whatever as the rule, and non-inheritance as the anomaly.

The laws governing inheritance are quite unknown; no one can say why the
same peculiarity in different individuals of the same species, and in
individuals of different species, is sometimes inherited and sometimes
not so; why the child often reverts in certain characters to its
grandfather or grandmother or other much more remote ancestor; why a
peculiarity is often transmitted from one sex to both sexes or to one
sex alone, more commonly but not exclusively to the like sex. It is a
fact of some little importance to us, that peculiarities appearing
in the males of our domestic breeds are often transmitted either
exclusively, or in a much greater degree, to males alone. A much more
important rule, which I think may be trusted, is that, at whatever
period of life a peculiarity first appears, it tends to appear in the
offspring at a corresponding age, though sometimes earlier. In many
cases this could not be otherwise: thus the inherited peculiarities
in the horns of cattle could appear only in the offspring when nearly
mature; peculiarities in the silkworm are known to appear at the
corresponding caterpillar or cocoon stage. But hereditary diseases and
some other facts make me believe that the rule has a wider extension,
and that when there is no apparent reason why a peculiarity should
appear at any particular age, yet that it does tend to appear in the
offspring at the same period at which it first appeared in the parent. I
believe this rule to be of the highest importance in explaining the
laws of embryology. These remarks are of course confined to the first
APPEARANCE of the peculiarity, and not to its primary cause, which may
have acted on the ovules or male element; in nearly the same manner as
in the crossed offspring from a short-horned cow by a long-horned bull,
the greater length of horn, though appearing late in life, is clearly
due to the male element.

Having alluded to the subject of reversion, I may here refer to
a statement often made by naturalists--namely, that our domestic
varieties, when run wild, gradually but certainly revert in character to
their aboriginal stocks. Hence it has been argued that no deductions can
be drawn from domestic races to species in a state of nature. I have in
vain endeavoured to discover on what decisive facts the above statement
has so often and so boldly been made. There would be great difficulty
in proving its truth: we may safely conclude that very many of the most
strongly-marked domestic varieties could not possibly live in a wild
state. In many cases we do not know what the aboriginal stock was, and
so could not tell whether or not nearly perfect reversion had ensued.
It would be quite necessary, in order to prevent the effects of
intercrossing, that only a single variety should be turned loose in
its new home. Nevertheless, as our varieties certainly do occasionally
revert in some of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me
not improbable, that if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to
cultivate, during many generations, the several races, for instance,
of the cabbage, in very poor soil (in which case, however, some effect
would have to be attributed to the direct action of the poor soil),
that they would to a large extent, or even wholly, revert to the wild
aboriginal stock. Whether or not the experiment would succeed, is not of
great importance for our line of argument; for by the experiment itself
the conditions of life are changed. If it could be shown that our
domestic varieties manifested a strong tendency to reversion,--that
is, to lose their acquired characters, whilst kept under unchanged
conditions, and whilst kept in a considerable body, so that free
intercrossing might check, by blending together, any slight deviations
of structure, in such case, I grant that we could deduce nothing from
domestic varieties in regard to species. But there is not a shadow of
evidence in favour of this view: to assert that we could not breed
our cart and race-horses, long and short-horned cattle, and poultry of
various breeds, and esculent vegetables, for an almost infinite number
of generations, would be opposed to all experience. I may add, that when
under nature the conditions of life do change, variations and reversions
of character probably do occur; but natural selection, as will hereafter
be explained, will determine how far the new characters thus arising
shall be preserved.

When we look to the hereditary varieties or races of our domestic
animals and plants, and compare them with species closely allied
together, we generally perceive in each domestic race, as already
remarked, less uniformity of character than in true species. Domestic
races of the same species, also, often have a somewhat monstrous
character; by which I mean, that, although differing from each other,
and from the other species of the same genus, in several trifling
respects, they often differ in an extreme degree in some one part, both
when compared one with another, and more especially when compared with
all the species in nature to which they are nearest allied. With these
exceptions (and with that of the perfect fertility of varieties when
crossed,--a subject hereafter to be discussed), domestic races of the
same species differ from each other in the same manner as, only in most
cases in a lesser degree than, do closely-allied species of the same
genus in a state of nature. I think this must be admitted, when we find
that there are hardly any domestic races, either amongst animals or
plants, which have not been ranked by some competent judges as
mere varieties, and by other competent judges as the descendants of
aboriginally distinct species. If any marked distinction existed
between domestic races and species, this source of doubt could not so
perpetually recur. It has often been stated that domestic races do not
differ from each other in characters of generic value. I think it could
be shown that this statement is hardly correct; but naturalists differ
most widely in determining what characters are of generic value; all
such valuations being at present empirical. Moreover, on the view of
the origin of genera which I shall presently give, we have no right
to expect often to meet with generic differences in our domesticated
productions.

When we attempt to estimate the amount of structural difference between
the domestic races of the same species, we are soon involved in doubt,
from not knowing whether they have descended from one or several
parent-species. This point, if it could be cleared up, would be
interesting; if, for instance, it could be shown that the greyhound,
bloodhound, terrier, spaniel, and bull-dog, which we all know propagate
their kind so truly, were the offspring of any single species, then such
facts would have great weight in making us doubt about the immutability
of the many very closely allied and natural species--for instance, of
the many foxes--inhabiting different quarters of the world. I do not
believe, as we shall presently see, that all our dogs have descended
from any one wild species; but, in the case of some other domestic
races, there is presumptive, or even strong, evidence in favour of this
view.

It has often been assumed that man has chosen for domestication animals
and plants having an extraordinary inherent tendency to vary, and
likewise to withstand diverse climates. I do not dispute that these
capacities have added largely to the value of most of our domesticated
productions; but how could a savage possibly know, when he first tamed
an animal, whether it would vary in succeeding generations, and whether
it would endure other climates? Has the little variability of the ass or
guinea-fowl, or the small power of endurance of warmth by the rein-deer,
or of cold by the common camel, prevented their domestication? I
cannot doubt that if other animals and plants, equal in number to our
domesticated productions, and belonging to equally diverse classes and
countries, were taken from a state of nature, and could be made to breed
for an equal number of generations under domestication, they would
vary on an average as largely as the parent species of our existing
domesticated productions have varied.

In the case of most of our anciently domesticated animals and plants, I
do not think it is possible to come to any definite conclusion, whether
they have descended from one or several species. The argument mainly
relied on by those who believe in the multiple origin of our domestic
animals is, that we find in the most ancient records, more especially on
the monuments of Egypt, much diversity in the breeds; and that some of
the breeds closely resemble, perhaps are identical with, those still
existing. Even if this latter fact were found more strictly and
generally true than seems to me to be the case, what does it show, but
that some of our breeds originated there, four or five thousand years
ago? But Mr. Horner's researches have rendered it in some degree
probable that man sufficiently civilized to have manufactured pottery
existed in the valley of the Nile thirteen or fourteen thousand years
ago; and who will pretend to say how long before these ancient periods,
savages, like those of Tierra del Fuego or Australia, who possess a
semi-domestic dog, may not have existed in Egypt?

The whole subject must, I think, remain vague; nevertheless, I may,
without here entering on any details, state that, from geographical and
other considerations, I think it highly probable that our domestic dogs
have descended from several wild species. In regard to sheep and goats
I can form no opinion. I should think, from facts communicated to me by
Mr. Blyth, on the habits, voice, and constitution, etc., of the humped
Indian cattle, that these had descended from a different aboriginal
stock from our European cattle; and several competent judges believe
that these latter have had more than one wild parent. With respect to
horses, from reasons which I cannot give here, I am doubtfully inclined
to believe, in opposition to several authors, that all the races have
descended from one wild stock. Mr. Blyth, whose opinion, from his large
and varied stores of knowledge, I should value more than that of almost
any one, thinks that all the breeds of poultry have proceeded from
the common wild Indian fowl (Gallus bankiva). In regard to ducks and
rabbits, the breeds of which differ considerably from each other in
structure, I do not doubt that they all have descended from the common
wild duck and rabbit.

The doctrine of the origin of our several domestic races from several
aboriginal stocks, has been carried to an absurd extreme by some
authors. They believe that every race which breeds true, let the
distinctive characters be ever so slight, has had its wild prototype.
At this rate there must have existed at least a score of species of wild
cattle, as many sheep, and several goats in Europe alone, and several
even within Great Britain. One author believes that there formerly
existed in Great Britain eleven wild species of sheep peculiar to it!
When we bear in mind that Britain has now hardly one peculiar mammal,
and France but few distinct from those of Germany and conversely, and
so with Hungary, Spain, etc., but that each of these kingdoms possesses
several peculiar breeds of cattle, sheep, etc., we must admit that many
domestic breeds have originated in Europe; for whence could they have
been derived, as these several countries do not possess a number of
peculiar species as distinct parent-stocks? So it is in India. Even in
the case of the domestic dogs of the whole world, which I fully admit
have probably descended from several wild species, I cannot doubt that
there has been an immense amount of inherited variation. Who can believe
that animals closely resembling the Italian greyhound, the bloodhound,
the bull-dog, or Blenheim spaniel, etc.--so unlike all wild
Canidae--ever existed freely in a state of nature? It has often been
loosely said that all our races of dogs have been produced by the
crossing of a few aboriginal species; but by crossing we can get only
forms in some degree intermediate between their parents; and if we
account for our several domestic races by this process, we must
admit the former existence of the most extreme forms, as the Italian
greyhound, bloodhound, bull-dog, etc., in the wild state. Moreover,
the possibility of making distinct races by crossing has been greatly
exaggerated. There can be no doubt that a race may be modified
by occasional crosses, if aided by the careful selection of those
individual mongrels, which present any desired character; but that
a race could be obtained nearly intermediate between two extremely
different races or species, I can hardly believe. Sir J. Sebright
expressly experimentised for this object, and failed. The offspring from
the first cross between two pure breeds is tolerably and sometimes (as I
have found with pigeons) extremely uniform, and everything seems simple
enough; but when these mongrels are crossed one with another for several
generations, hardly two of them will be alike, and then the extreme
difficulty, or rather utter hopelessness, of the task becomes apparent.
Certainly, a breed intermediate between TWO VERY DISTINCT breeds could
not be got without extreme care and long-continued selection; nor can
I find a single case on record of a permanent race having been thus
formed.

ON THE BREEDS OF THE DOMESTIC PIGEON.

Believing that it is always best to study some special group, I have,
after deliberation, taken up domestic pigeons. I have kept every breed
which I could purchase or obtain, and have been most kindly favoured
with skins from several quarters of the world, more especially by the
Honourable W. Elliot from India, and by the Honourable C. Murray from
Persia. Many treatises in different languages have been published on
pigeons, and some of them are very important, as being of considerable
antiquity. I have associated with several eminent fanciers, and have
been permitted to join two of the London Pigeon Clubs. The diversity of
the breeds is something astonishing. Compare the English carrier and the
short-faced tumbler, and see the wonderful difference in their beaks,
entailing corresponding differences in their skulls. The carrier,
more especially the male bird, is also remarkable from the wonderful
development of the carunculated skin about the head, and this is
accompanied by greatly elongated eyelids, very large external orifices
to the nostrils, and a wide gape of mouth. The short-faced tumbler has a
beak in outline almost like that of a finch; and the common tumbler has
the singular and strictly inherited habit of flying at a great height in
a compact flock, and tumbling in the air head over heels. The runt is a
bird of great size, with long, massive beak and large feet; some of the
sub-breeds of runts have very long necks, others very long wings and
tails, others singularly short tails. The barb is allied to the carrier,
but, instead of a very long beak, has a very short and very broad
one. The pouter has a much elongated body, wings, and legs; and its
enormously developed crop, which it glories in inflating, may well
excite astonishment and even laughter. The turbit has a very short and
conical beak, with a line of reversed feathers down the breast; and it
has the habit of continually expanding slightly the upper part of the
oesophagus. The Jacobin has the feathers so much reversed along the back
of the neck that they form a hood, and it has, proportionally to its
size, much elongated wing and tail feathers. The trumpeter and laugher,
as their names express, utter a very different coo from the other
breeds. The fantail has thirty or even forty tail-feathers, instead of
twelve or fourteen, the normal number in all members of the great pigeon
family; and these feathers are kept expanded, and are carried so erect
that in good birds the head and tail touch; the oil-gland is quite
aborted. Several other less distinct breeds might have been specified.

In the skeletons of the several breeds, the development of the bones
of the face in length and breadth and curvature differs enormously. The
shape, as well as the breadth and length of the ramus of the lower
jaw, varies in a highly remarkable manner. The number of the caudal and
sacral vertebrae vary; as does the number of the ribs, together with
their relative breadth and the presence of processes. The size and shape
of the apertures in the sternum are highly variable; so is the degree
of divergence and relative size of the two arms of the furcula. The
proportional width of the gape of mouth, the proportional length of the
eyelids, of the orifice of the nostrils, of the tongue (not always in
strict correlation with the length of beak), the size of the crop and
of the upper part of the oesophagus; the development and abortion of
the oil-gland; the number of the primary wing and caudal feathers; the
relative length of wing and tail to each other and to the body; the
relative length of leg and of the feet; the number of scutellae on
the toes, the development of skin between the toes, are all points of
structure which are variable. The period at which the perfect plumage is
acquired varies, as does the state of the down with which the nestling
birds are clothed when hatched. The shape and size of the eggs vary. The
manner of flight differs remarkably; as does in some breeds the voice
and disposition. Lastly, in certain breeds, the males and females have
come to differ to a slight degree from each other.

Altogether at least a score of pigeons might be chosen, which if shown
to an ornithologist, and he were told that they were wild birds, would
certainly, I think, be ranked by him as well-defined species. Moreover,
I do not believe that any ornithologist would place the English carrier,
the short-faced tumbler, the runt, the barb, pouter, and fantail in
the same genus; more especially as in each of these breeds several
truly-inherited sub-breeds, or species as he might have called them,
could be shown him.

Great as the differences are between the breeds of pigeons, I am fully
convinced that the common opinion of naturalists is correct, namely,
that all have descended from the rock-pigeon (Columba livia), including
under this term several geographical races or sub-species, which differ
from each other in the most trifling respects. As several of the reasons
which have led me to this belief are in some degree applicable in other
cases, I will here briefly give them. If the several breeds are not
varieties, and have not proceeded from the rock-pigeon, they must have
descended from at least seven or eight aboriginal stocks; for it is
impossible to make the present domestic breeds by the crossing of any
lesser number: how, for instance, could a pouter be produced by crossing
two breeds unless one of the parent-stocks possessed the characteristic
enormous crop? The supposed aboriginal stocks must all have been
rock-pigeons, that is, not breeding or willingly perching on trees. But
besides C. livia, with its geographical sub-species, only two or three
other species of rock-pigeons are known; and these have not any of the
characters of the domestic breeds. Hence the supposed aboriginal stocks
must either still exist in the countries where they were originally
domesticated, and yet be unknown to ornithologists; and this,
considering their size, habits, and remarkable characters, seems very
improbable; or they must have become extinct in the wild state. But
birds breeding on precipices, and good fliers, are unlikely to be
exterminated; and the common rock-pigeon, which has the same habits with
the domestic breeds, has not been exterminated even on several of the
smaller British islets, or on the shores of the Mediterranean. Hence the
supposed extermination of so many species having similar habits with the
rock-pigeon seems to me a very rash assumption. Moreover, the several
above-named domesticated breeds have been transported to all parts of
the world, and, therefore, some of them must have been carried back
again into their native country; but not one has ever become wild or
feral, though the dovecot-pigeon, which is the rock-pigeon in a very
slightly altered state, has become feral in several places. Again, all
recent experience shows that it is most difficult to get any wild
animal to breed freely under domestication; yet on the hypothesis of the
multiple origin of our pigeons, it must be assumed that at least seven
or eight species were so thoroughly domesticated in ancient times by
half-civilized man, as to be quite prolific under confinement.

An argument, as it seems to me, of great weight, and applicable in
several other cases, is, that the above-specified breeds, though
agreeing generally in constitution, habits, voice, colouring, and
in most parts of their structure, with the wild rock-pigeon, yet are
certainly highly abnormal in other parts of their structure: we may look
in vain throughout the whole great family of Columbidae for a beak like
that of the English carrier, or that of the short-faced tumbler, or
barb; for reversed feathers like those of the jacobin; for a crop like
that of the pouter; for tail-feathers like those of the fantail.
Hence it must be assumed not only that half-civilized man succeeded in
thoroughly domesticating several species, but that he intentionally or
by chance picked out extraordinarily abnormal species; and further, that
these very species have since all become extinct or unknown. So many
strange contingencies seem to me improbable in the highest degree.

Some facts in regard to the colouring of pigeons well deserve
consideration. The rock-pigeon is of a slaty-blue, and has a white rump
(the Indian sub-species, C. intermedia of Strickland, having it bluish);
the tail has a terminal dark bar, with the bases of the outer feathers
externally edged with white; the wings have two black bars; some
semi-domestic breeds and some apparently truly wild breeds have, besides
the two black bars, the wings chequered with black. These several marks
do not occur together in any other species of the whole family. Now, in
every one of the domestic breeds, taking thoroughly well-bred birds, all
the above marks, even to the white edging of the outer tail-feathers,
sometimes concur perfectly developed. Moreover, when two birds belonging
to two distinct breeds are crossed, neither of which is blue or has
any of the above-specified marks, the mongrel offspring are very apt
suddenly to acquire these characters; for instance, I crossed some
uniformly white fantails with some uniformly black barbs, and they
produced mottled brown and black birds; these I again crossed together,
and one grandchild of the pure white fantail and pure black barb was of
as beautiful a blue colour, with the white rump, double black wing-bar,
and barred and white-edged tail-feathers, as any wild rock-pigeon! We
can understand these facts, on the well-known principle of reversion to
ancestral characters, if all the domestic breeds have descended from the
rock-pigeon. But if we deny this, we must make one of the two following
highly improbable suppositions. Either, firstly, that all the
several imagined aboriginal stocks were coloured and marked like the
rock-pigeon, although no other existing species is thus coloured and
marked, so that in each separate breed there might be a tendency to
revert to the very same colours and markings. Or, secondly, that each
breed, even the purest, has within a dozen or, at most, within a score
of generations, been crossed by the rock-pigeon: I say within a dozen or
twenty generations, for we know of no fact countenancing the belief that
the child ever reverts to some one ancestor, removed by a greater number
of generations. In a breed which has been crossed only once with some
distinct breed, the tendency to reversion to any character derived from
such cross will naturally become less and less, as in each succeeding
generation there will be less of the foreign blood; but when there has
been no cross with a distinct breed, and there is a tendency in both
parents to revert to a character, which has been lost during some former
generation, this tendency, for all that we can see to the contrary, may
be transmitted undiminished for an indefinite number of generations.
These two distinct cases are often confounded in treatises on
inheritance.

Lastly, the hybrids or mongrels from between all the domestic breeds
of pigeons are perfectly fertile. I can state this from my own
observations, purposely made on the most distinct breeds. Now, it is
difficult, perhaps impossible, to bring forward one case of the hybrid
offspring of two animals CLEARLY DISTINCT being themselves perfectly
fertile. Some authors believe that long-continued domestication
eliminates this strong tendency to sterility: from the history of the
dog I think there is some probability in this hypothesis, if applied to
species closely related together, though it is unsupported by a single
experiment. But to extend the hypothesis so far as to suppose that
species, aboriginally as distinct as carriers, tumblers, pouters, and
fantails now are, should yield offspring perfectly fertile, inter se,
seems to me rash in the extreme.

From these several reasons, namely, the improbability of man having
formerly got seven or eight supposed species of pigeons to breed freely
under domestication; these supposed species being quite unknown in a
wild state, and their becoming nowhere feral; these species having very
abnormal characters in certain respects, as compared with all other
Columbidae, though so like in most other respects to the rock-pigeon;
the blue colour and various marks occasionally appearing in all the
breeds, both when kept pure and when crossed; the mongrel offspring
being perfectly fertile;--from these several reasons, taken together, I
can feel no doubt that all our domestic breeds have descended from the
Columba livia with its geographical sub-species.

In favour of this view, I may add, firstly, that C. livia, or the
rock-pigeon, has been found capable of domestication in Europe and in
India; and that it agrees in habits and in a great number of points of
structure with all the domestic breeds. Secondly, although an English
carrier or short-faced tumbler differs immensely in certain characters
from the rock-pigeon, yet by comparing the several sub-breeds of these
breeds, more especially those brought from distant countries, we
can make an almost perfect series between the extremes of structure.
Thirdly, those characters which are mainly distinctive of each breed,
for instance the wattle and length of beak of the carrier, the shortness
of that of the tumbler, and the number of tail-feathers in the fantail,
are in each breed eminently variable; and the explanation of this fact
will be obvious when we come to treat of selection. Fourthly, pigeons
have been watched, and tended with the utmost care, and loved by many
people. They have been domesticated for thousands of years in several
quarters of the world; the earliest known record of pigeons is in the
fifth Aegyptian dynasty, about 3000 B.C., as was pointed out to me by
Professor Lepsius; but Mr. Birch informs me that pigeons are given in a
bill of fare in the previous dynasty. In the time of the Romans, as we
hear from Pliny, immense prices were given for pigeons; "nay, they are
come to this pass, that they can reckon up their pedigree and race."
Pigeons were much valued by Akber Khan in India, about the year 1600;
never less than 20,000 pigeons were taken with the court. "The monarchs
of Iran and Turan sent him some very rare birds;" and, continues the
courtly historian, "His Majesty by crossing the breeds, which method
was never practised before, has improved them astonishingly." About
this same period the Dutch were as eager about pigeons as were the old
Romans. The paramount importance of these considerations in explaining
the immense amount of variation which pigeons have undergone, will be
obvious when we treat of Selection. We shall then, also, see how it is
that the breeds so often have a somewhat monstrous character. It is also
a most favourable circumstance for the production of distinct breeds,
that male and female pigeons can be easily mated for life; and thus
different breeds can be kept together in the same aviary.

I have discussed the probable origin of domestic pigeons at some,
yet quite insufficient, length; because when I first kept pigeons and
watched the several kinds, knowing well how true they bred, I felt fully
as much difficulty in believing that they could ever have descended
from a common parent, as any naturalist could in coming to a similar
conclusion in regard to the many species of finches, or other large
groups of birds, in nature. One circumstance has struck me much;
namely, that all the breeders of the various domestic animals and
the cultivators of plants, with whom I have ever conversed, or whose
treatises I have read, are firmly convinced that the several breeds
to which each has attended, are descended from so many aboriginally
distinct species. Ask, as I have asked, a celebrated raiser of Hereford
cattle, whether his cattle might not have descended from long horns, and
he will laugh you to scorn. I have never met a pigeon, or poultry, or
duck, or rabbit fancier, who was not fully convinced that each main
breed was descended from a distinct species. Van Mons, in his treatise
on pears and apples, shows how utterly he disbelieves that the several
sorts, for instance a Ribston-pippin or Codlin-apple, could ever have
proceeded from the seeds of the same tree. Innumerable other examples
could be given. The explanation, I think, is simple: from long-continued
study they are strongly impressed with the differences between the
several races; and though they well know that each race varies slightly,
for they win their prizes by selecting such slight differences, yet they
ignore all general arguments, and refuse to sum up in their minds slight
differences accumulated during many successive generations. May not
those naturalists who, knowing far less of the laws of inheritance than
does the breeder, and knowing no more than he does of the intermediate
links in the long lines of descent, yet admit that many of our domestic
races have descended from the same parents--may they not learn a lesson
of caution, when they deride the idea of species in a state of nature
being lineal descendants of other species?

SELECTION.

Let us now briefly consider the steps by which domestic races have been
produced, either from one or from several allied species. Some little
effect may, perhaps, be attributed to the direct action of the external
conditions of life, and some little to habit; but he would be a bold
man who would account by such agencies for the differences of a dray and
race horse, a greyhound and bloodhound, a carrier and tumbler pigeon.
One of the most remarkable features in our domesticated races is that we
see in them adaptation, not indeed to the animal's or plant's own good,
but to man's use or fancy. Some variations useful to him have probably
arisen suddenly, or by one step; many botanists, for instance, believe
that the fuller's teazle, with its hooks, which cannot be rivalled by
any mechanical contrivance, is only a variety of the wild Dipsacus; and
this amount of change may have suddenly arisen in a seedling. So it has
probably been with the turnspit dog; and this is known to have been
the case with the ancon sheep. But when we compare the dray-horse and
race-horse, the dromedary and camel, the various breeds of sheep fitted
either for cultivated land or mountain pasture, with the wool of one
breed good for one purpose, and that of another breed for another
purpose; when we compare the many breeds of dogs, each good for man in
very different ways; when we compare the game-cock, so pertinacious
in battle, with other breeds so little quarrelsome, with "everlasting
layers" which never desire to sit, and with the bantam so small and
elegant; when we compare the host of agricultural, culinary, orchard,
and flower-garden races of plants, most useful to man at different
seasons and for different purposes, or so beautiful in his eyes, we
must, I think, look further than to mere variability. We cannot suppose
that all the breeds were suddenly produced as perfect and as useful as
we now see them; indeed, in several cases, we know that this has not
been their history. The key is man's power of accumulative selection:
nature gives successive variations; man adds them up in certain
directions useful to him. In this sense he may be said to make for
himself useful breeds.

The great power of this principle of selection is not hypothetical.
It is certain that several of our eminent breeders have, even within a
single lifetime, modified to a large extent some breeds of cattle and
sheep. In order fully to realise what they have done, it is almost
necessary to read several of the many treatises devoted to this subject,
and to inspect the animals. Breeders habitually speak of an animal's
organisation as something quite plastic, which they can model almost
as they please. If I had space I could quote numerous passages to this
effect from highly competent authorities. Youatt, who was probably
better acquainted with the works of agriculturalists than almost any
other individual, and who was himself a very good judge of an animal,
speaks of the principle of selection as "that which enables the
agriculturist, not only to modify the character of his flock, but to
change it altogether. It is the magician's wand, by means of which
he may summon into life whatever form and mould he pleases." Lord
Somerville, speaking of what breeders have done for sheep, says:--"It
would seem as if they had chalked out upon a wall a form perfect in
itself, and then had given it existence." That most skilful breeder,
Sir John Sebright, used to say, with respect to pigeons, that "he would
produce any given feather in three years, but it would take him
six years to obtain head and beak." In Saxony the importance of the
principle of selection in regard to merino sheep is so fully recognised,
that men follow it as a trade: the sheep are placed on a table and are
studied, like a picture by a connoisseur; this is done three times at
intervals of months, and the sheep are each time marked and classed, so
that the very best may ultimately be selected for breeding.

What English breeders have actually effected is proved by the enormous
prices given for animals with a good pedigree; and these have now been
exported to almost every quarter of the world. The improvement is by no
means generally due to crossing different breeds; all the best breeders
are strongly opposed to this practice, except sometimes amongst closely
allied sub-breeds. And when a cross has been made, the closest selection
is far more indispensable even than in ordinary cases. If selection
consisted merely in separating some very distinct variety, and breeding
from it, the principle would be so obvious as hardly to be worth
notice; but its importance consists in the great effect produced by
the accumulation in one direction, during successive generations, of
differences absolutely inappreciable by an uneducated eye--differences
which I for one have vainly attempted to appreciate. Not one man in
a thousand has accuracy of eye and judgment sufficient to become an
eminent breeder. If gifted with these qualities, and he studies his
subject for years, and devotes his lifetime to it with indomitable
perseverance, he will succeed, and may make great improvements; if he
wants any of these qualities, he will assuredly fail. Few would readily
believe in the natural capacity and years of practice requisite to
become even a skilful pigeon-fancier.

The same principles are followed by horticulturists; but the variations
are here often more abrupt. No one supposes that our choicest
productions have been produced by a single variation from the aboriginal
stock. We have proofs that this is not so in some cases, in which exact
records have been kept; thus, to give a very trifling instance, the
steadily-increasing size of the common gooseberry may be quoted. We see
an astonishing improvement in many florists' flowers, when the flowers
of the present day are compared with drawings made only twenty or thirty
years ago. When a race of plants is once pretty well established, the
seed-raisers do not pick out the best plants, but merely go over their
seed-beds, and pull up the "rogues," as they call the plants that
deviate from the proper standard. With animals this kind of selection
is, in fact, also followed; for hardly any one is so careless as to
allow his worst animals to breed.

In regard to plants, there is another means of observing the accumulated
effects of selection--namely, by comparing the diversity of flowers in
the different varieties of the same species in the flower-garden; the
diversity of leaves, pods, or tubers, or whatever part is valued, in the
kitchen-garden, in comparison with the flowers of the same varieties;
and the diversity of fruit of the same species in the orchard, in
comparison with the leaves and flowers of the same set of varieties. See
how different the leaves of the cabbage are, and how extremely alike the
flowers; how unlike the flowers of the heartsease are, and how alike the
leaves; how much the fruit of the different kinds of gooseberries differ
in size, colour, shape, and hairiness, and yet the flowers present very
slight differences. It is not that the varieties which differ largely
in some one point do not differ at all in other points; this is hardly
ever, perhaps never, the case. The laws of correlation of growth,
the importance of which should never be overlooked, will ensure some
differences; but, as a general rule, I cannot doubt that the continued
selection of slight variations, either in the leaves, the flowers, or
the fruit, will produce races differing from each other chiefly in these
characters.

It may be objected that the principle of selection has been reduced to
methodical practice for scarcely more than three-quarters of a century;
it has certainly been more attended to of late years, and many treatises
have been published on the subject; and the result, I may add, has been,
in a corresponding degree, rapid and important. But it is very far from
true that the principle is a modern discovery. I could give several
references to the full acknowledgment of the importance of the principle
in works of high antiquity. In rude and barbarous periods of English
history choice animals were often imported, and laws were passed to
prevent their exportation: the destruction of horses under a certain
size was ordered, and this may be compared to the "roguing" of plants
by nurserymen. The principle of selection I find distinctly given in an
ancient Chinese encyclopaedia. Explicit rules are laid down by some of
the Roman classical writers. From passages in Genesis, it is clear that
the colour of domestic animals was at that early period attended to.
Savages now sometimes cross their dogs with wild canine animals, to
improve the breed, and they formerly did so, as is attested by passages
in Pliny. The savages in South Africa match their draught cattle by
colour, as do some of the Esquimaux their teams of dogs. Livingstone
shows how much good domestic breeds are valued by the negroes of the
interior of Africa who have not associated with Europeans. Some of these
facts do not show actual selection, but they show that the breeding of
domestic animals was carefully attended to in ancient times, and is now
attended to by the lowest savages. It would, indeed, have been a strange
fact, had attention not been paid to breeding, for the inheritance of
good and bad qualities is so obvious.

At the present time, eminent breeders try by methodical selection, with
a distinct object in view, to make a new strain or sub-breed, superior
to anything existing in the country. But, for our purpose, a kind of
Selection, which may be called Unconscious, and which results from every
one trying to possess and breed from the best individual animals, is
more important. Thus, a man who intends keeping pointers naturally tries
to get as good dogs as he can, and afterwards breeds from his own best
dogs, but he has no wish or expectation of permanently altering the
breed. Nevertheless I cannot doubt that this process, continued during
centuries, would improve and modify any breed, in the same way as
Bakewell, Collins, etc., by this very same process, only carried on more
methodically, did greatly modify, even during their own lifetimes, the
forms and qualities of their cattle. Slow and insensible changes of this
kind could never be recognised unless actual measurements or careful
drawings of the breeds in question had been made long ago, which might
serve for comparison. In some cases, however, unchanged or but little
changed individuals of the same breed may be found in less civilised
districts, where the breed has been less improved. There is reason to
believe that King Charles's spaniel has been unconsciously modified to
a large extent since the time of that monarch. Some highly competent
authorities are convinced that the setter is directly derived from the
spaniel, and has probably been slowly altered from it. It is known that
the English pointer has been greatly changed within the last century,
and in this case the change has, it is believed, been chiefly effected
by crosses with the fox-hound; but what concerns us is, that the change
has been effected unconsciously and gradually, and yet so effectually,
that, though the old Spanish pointer certainly came from Spain, Mr.
Borrow has not seen, as I am informed by him, any native dog in Spain
like our pointer.

By a similar process of selection, and by careful training, the whole
body of English racehorses have come to surpass in fleetness and size
the parent Arab stock, so that the latter, by the regulations for the
Goodwood Races, are favoured in the weights they carry. Lord Spencer and
others have shown how the cattle of England have increased in weight
and in early maturity, compared with the stock formerly kept in this
country. By comparing the accounts given in old pigeon treatises of
carriers and tumblers with these breeds as now existing in Britain,
India, and Persia, we can, I think, clearly trace the stages through
which they have insensibly passed, and come to differ so greatly from
the rock-pigeon.

Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects of a course of
selection, which may be considered as unconsciously followed, in so far
that the breeders could never have expected or even have wished to have
produced the result which ensued--namely, the production of two distinct
strains. The two flocks of Leicester sheep kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr.
Burgess, as Mr. Youatt remarks, "have been purely bred from the original
stock of Mr. Bakewell for upwards of fifty years. There is not a
suspicion existing in the mind of any one at all acquainted with
the subject that the owner of either of them has deviated in any one
instance from the pure blood of Mr. Bakewell's flock, and yet the
difference between the sheep possessed by these two gentlemen is so
great that they have the appearance of being quite different varieties."

If there exist savages so barbarous as never to think of the inherited
character of the offspring of their domestic animals, yet any one animal
particularly useful to them, for any special purpose, would be carefully
preserved during famines and other accidents, to which savages are
so liable, and such choice animals would thus generally leave more
offspring than the inferior ones; so that in this case there would be a
kind of unconscious selection going on. We see the value set on animals
even by the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, by their killing and
devouring their old women, in times of dearth, as of less value than
their dogs.

In plants the same gradual process of improvement, through the
occasional preservation of the best individuals, whether or not
sufficiently distinct to be ranked at their first appearance as distinct
varieties, and whether or not two or more species or races have become
blended together by crossing, may plainly be recognised in the increased
size and beauty which we now see in the varieties of the heartsease,
rose, pelargonium, dahlia, and other plants, when compared with the
older varieties or with their parent-stocks. No one would ever expect to
get a first-rate heartsease or dahlia from the seed of a wild plant. No
one would expect to raise a first-rate melting pear from the seed of a
wild pear, though he might succeed from a poor seedling growing wild,
if it had come from a garden-stock. The pear, though cultivated in
classical times, appears, from Pliny's description, to have been a
fruit of very inferior quality. I have seen great surprise expressed
in horticultural works at the wonderful skill of gardeners, in having
produced such splendid results from such poor materials; but the art,
I cannot doubt, has been simple, and, as far as the final result is
concerned, has been followed almost unconsciously. It has consisted in
always cultivating the best known variety, sowing its seeds, and, when
a slightly better variety has chanced to appear, selecting it, and so
onwards. But the gardeners of the classical period, who cultivated
the best pear they could procure, never thought what splendid fruit we
should eat; though we owe our excellent fruit, in some small degree,
to their having naturally chosen and preserved the best varieties they
could anywhere find.

A large amount of change in our cultivated plants, thus slowly and
unconsciously accumulated, explains, as I believe, the well-known fact,
that in a vast number of cases we cannot recognise, and therefore do
not know, the wild parent-stocks of the plants which have been longest
cultivated in our flower and kitchen gardens. If it has taken centuries
or thousands of years to improve or modify most of our plants up to
their present standard of usefulness to man, we can understand how it
is that neither Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, nor any other region
inhabited by quite uncivilised man, has afforded us a single plant worth
culture. It is not that these countries, so rich in species, do not by
a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of any useful plants, but
that the native plants have not been improved by continued selection up
to a standard of perfection comparable with that given to the plants in
countries anciently civilised.

In regard to the domestic animals kept by uncivilised man, it should
not be overlooked that they almost always have to struggle for their
own food, at least during certain seasons. And in two countries very
differently circumstanced, individuals of the same species, having
slightly different constitutions or structure, would often succeed
better in the one country than in the other, and thus by a process of
"natural selection," as will hereafter be more fully explained, two
sub-breeds might be formed. This, perhaps, partly explains what has been
remarked by some authors, namely, that the varieties kept by savages
have more of the character of species than the varieties kept in
civilised countries.

On the view here given of the all-important part which selection by
man has played, it becomes at once obvious, how it is that our domestic
races show adaptation in their structure or in their habits to man's
wants or fancies. We can, I think, further understand the frequently
abnormal character of our domestic races, and likewise their differences
being so great in external characters and relatively so slight in
internal parts or organs. Man can hardly select, or only with much
difficulty, any deviation of structure excepting such as is externally
visible; and indeed he rarely cares for what is internal. He can never
act by selection, excepting on variations which are first given to
him in some slight degree by nature. No man would ever try to make
a fantail, till he saw a pigeon with a tail developed in some slight
degree in an unusual manner, or a pouter till he saw a pigeon with a
crop of somewhat unusual size; and the more abnormal or unusual any
character was when it first appeared, the more likely it would be to
catch his attention. But to use such an expression as trying to make a
fantail, is, I have no doubt, in most cases, utterly incorrect. The man
who first selected a pigeon with a slightly larger tail, never dreamed
what the descendants of that pigeon would become through long-continued,
partly unconscious and partly methodical selection. Perhaps the parent
bird of all fantails had only fourteen tail-feathers somewhat expanded,
like the present Java fantail, or like individuals of other and distinct
breeds, in which as many as seventeen tail-feathers have been counted.
Perhaps the first pouter-pigeon did not inflate its crop much more than
the turbit now does the upper part of its oesophagus,--a habit which
is disregarded by all fanciers, as it is not one of the points of the
breed.

Nor let it be thought that some great deviation of structure would
be necessary to catch the fancier's eye: he perceives extremely small
differences, and it is in human nature to value any novelty, however
slight, in one's own possession. Nor must the value which would formerly
be set on any slight differences in the individuals of the same species,
be judged of by the value which would now be set on them, after several
breeds have once fairly been established. Many slight differences might,
and indeed do now, arise amongst pigeons, which are rejected as faults
or deviations from the standard of perfection of each breed. The common
goose has not given rise to any marked varieties; hence the Thoulouse
and the common breed, which differ only in colour, that most fleeting of
characters, have lately been exhibited as distinct at our poultry-shows.

I think these views further explain what has sometimes been
noticed--namely that we know nothing about the origin or history of
any of our domestic breeds. But, in fact, a breed, like a dialect of
a language, can hardly be said to have had a definite origin. A man
preserves and breeds from an individual with some slight deviation of
structure, or takes more care than usual in matching his best animals
and thus improves them, and the improved individuals slowly spread in
the immediate neighbourhood. But as yet they will hardly have a distinct
name, and from being only slightly valued, their history will be
disregarded. When further improved by the same slow and gradual process,
they will spread more widely, and will get recognised as something
distinct and valuable, and will then probably first receive a provincial
name. In semi-civilised countries, with little free communication, the
spreading and knowledge of any new sub-breed will be a slow process.
As soon as the points of value of the new sub-breed are once fully
acknowledged, the principle, as I have called it, of unconscious
selection will always tend,--perhaps more at one period than at another,
as the breed rises or falls in fashion,--perhaps more in one district
than in another, according to the state of civilisation of the
inhabitants--slowly to add to the characteristic features of the breed,
whatever they may be. But the chance will be infinitely small of any
record having been preserved of such slow, varying, and insensible
changes.

I must now say a few words on the circumstances, favourable, or the
reverse, to man's power of selection. A high degree of variability is
obviously favourable, as freely giving the materials for selection to
work on; not that mere individual differences are not amply sufficient,
with extreme care, to allow of the accumulation of a large amount
of modification in almost any desired direction. But as variations
manifestly useful or pleasing to man appear only occasionally, the
chance of their appearance will be much increased by a large number
of individuals being kept; and hence this comes to be of the highest
importance to success. On this principle Marshall has remarked, with
respect to the sheep of parts of Yorkshire, that "as they generally
belong to poor people, and are mostly IN SMALL LOTS, they never can be
improved." On the other hand, nurserymen, from raising large stocks
of the same plants, are generally far more successful than amateurs in
getting new and valuable varieties. The keeping of a large number of
individuals of a species in any country requires that the species should
be placed under favourable conditions of life, so as to breed freely in
that country. When the individuals of any species are scanty, all the
individuals, whatever their quality may be, will generally be allowed
to breed, and this will effectually prevent selection. But probably the
most important point of all, is, that the animal or plant should be
so highly useful to man, or so much valued by him, that the closest
attention should be paid to even the slightest deviation in the
qualities or structure of each individual. Unless such attention be paid
nothing can be effected. I have seen it gravely remarked, that it was
most fortunate that the strawberry began to vary just when gardeners
began to attend closely to this plant. No doubt the strawberry had
always varied since it was cultivated, but the slight varieties had been
neglected. As soon, however, as gardeners picked out individual plants
with slightly larger, earlier, or better fruit, and raised seedlings
from them, and again picked out the best seedlings and bred from them,
then, there appeared (aided by some crossing with distinct species)
those many admirable varieties of the strawberry which have been raised
during the last thirty or forty years.

In the case of animals with separate sexes, facility in preventing
crosses is an important element of success in the formation of new
races,--at least, in a country which is already stocked with other
races. In this respect enclosure of the land plays a part. Wandering
savages or the inhabitants of open plains rarely possess more than one
breed of the same species. Pigeons can be mated for life, and this is a
great convenience to the fancier, for thus many races may be kept true,
though mingled in the same aviary; and this circumstance must have
largely favoured the improvement and formation of new breeds. Pigeons,
I may add, can be propagated in great numbers and at a very quick rate,
and inferior birds may be freely rejected, as when killed they serve
for food. On the other hand, cats, from their nocturnal rambling habits,
cannot be matched, and, although so much valued by women and children,
we hardly ever see a distinct breed kept up; such breeds as we do
sometimes see are almost always imported from some other country, often
from islands. Although I do not doubt that some domestic animals vary
less than others, yet the rarity or absence of distinct breeds of the
cat, the donkey, peacock, goose, etc., may be attributed in main part
to selection not having been brought into play: in cats, from the
difficulty in pairing them; in donkeys, from only a few being kept by
poor people, and little attention paid to their breeding; in peacocks,
from not being very easily reared and a large stock not kept; in geese,
from being valuable only for two purposes, food and feathers, and more
especially from no pleasure having been felt in the display of distinct
breeds.

To sum up on the origin of our Domestic Races of animals and plants.
I believe that the conditions of life, from their action on the
reproductive system, are so far of the highest importance as causing
variability. I do not believe that variability is an inherent and
necessary contingency, under all circumstances, with all organic beings,
as some authors have thought. The effects of variability are modified by
various degrees of inheritance and of reversion. Variability is governed
by many unknown laws, more especially by that of correlation of growth.
Something may be attributed to the direct action of the conditions of
life. Something must be attributed to use and disuse. The final result
is thus rendered infinitely complex. In some cases, I do not doubt
that the intercrossing of species, aboriginally distinct, has played an
important part in the origin of our domestic productions. When in
any country several domestic breeds have once been established, their
occasional intercrossing, with the aid of selection, has, no doubt,
largely aided in the formation of new sub-breeds; but the importance of
the crossing of varieties has, I believe, been greatly exaggerated, both
in regard to animals and to those plants which are propagated by seed.
In plants which are temporarily propagated by cuttings, buds, etc., the
importance of the crossing both of distinct species and of varieties
is immense; for the cultivator here quite disregards the extreme
variability both of hybrids and mongrels, and the frequent sterility of
hybrids; but the cases of plants not propagated by seed are of little
importance to us, for their endurance is only temporary. Over all
these causes of Change I am convinced that the accumulative action
of Selection, whether applied methodically and more quickly, or
unconsciously and more slowly, but more efficiently, is by far the
predominant Power.




2. VARIATION UNDER NATURE.

Variability. Individual differences. Doubtful species. Wide ranging,
much diffused, and common species vary most. Species of the larger
genera in any country vary more than the species of the smaller genera.
Many of the species of the larger genera resemble varieties in being
very closely, but unequally, related to each other, and in having
restricted ranges.

Before applying the principles arrived at in the last chapter to organic
beings in a state of nature, we must briefly discuss whether these
latter are subject to any variation. To treat this subject at all
properly, a long catalogue of dry facts should be given; but these I
shall reserve for my future work. Nor shall I here discuss the various
definitions which have been given of the term species. No one definition
has as yet satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely
what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes
the unknown element of a distinct act of creation. The term "variety"
is almost equally difficult to define; but here community of descent is
almost universally implied, though it can rarely be proved. We have also
what are called monstrosities; but they graduate into varieties. By a
monstrosity I presume is meant some considerable deviation of structure
in one part, either injurious to or not useful to the species, and
not generally propagated. Some authors use the term "variation" in a
technical sense, as implying a modification directly due to the physical
conditions of life; and "variations" in this sense are supposed not to
be inherited: but who can say that the dwarfed condition of shells in
the brackish waters of the Baltic, or dwarfed plants on Alpine summits,
or the thicker fur of an animal from far northwards, would not in some
cases be inherited for at least some few generations? and in this case I
presume that the form would be called a variety.

Again, we have many slight differences which may be called individual
differences, such as are known frequently to appear in the offspring
from the same parents, or which may be presumed to have thus arisen,
from being frequently observed in the individuals of the same species
inhabiting the same confined locality. No one supposes that all the
individuals of the same species are cast in the very same mould. These
individual differences are highly important for us, as they afford
materials for natural selection to accumulate, in the same manner as
man can accumulate in any given direction individual differences in his
domesticated productions. These individual differences generally affect
what naturalists consider unimportant parts; but I could show by a long
catalogue of facts, that parts which must be called important, whether
viewed under a physiological or classificatory point of view, sometimes
vary in the individuals of the same species. I am convinced that the
most experienced naturalist would be surprised at the number of the
cases of variability, even in important parts of structure, which he
could collect on good authority, as I have collected, during a course of
years. It should be remembered that systematists are far from pleased at
finding variability in important characters, and that there are not
many men who will laboriously examine internal and important organs, and
compare them in many specimens of the same species. I should never
have expected that the branching of the main nerves close to the great
central ganglion of an insect would have been variable in the same
species; I should have expected that changes of this nature could have
been effected only by slow degrees: yet quite recently Mr. Lubbock has
shown a degree of variability in these main nerves in Coccus, which may
almost be compared to the irregular branching of the stem of a tree.
This philosophical naturalist, I may add, has also quite recently shown
that the muscles in the larvae of certain insects are very far from
uniform. Authors sometimes argue in a circle when they state that
important organs never vary; for these same authors practically rank
that character as important (as some few naturalists have honestly
confessed) which does not vary; and, under this point of view, no
instance of an important part varying will ever be found: but under any
other point of view many instances assuredly can be given.

There is one point connected with individual differences, which seems
to me extremely perplexing: I refer to those genera which have sometimes
been called "protean" or "polymorphic," in which the species present
an inordinate amount of variation; and hardly two naturalists can agree
which forms to rank as species and which as varieties. We may instance
Rubus, Rosa, and Hieracium amongst plants, several genera of insects,
and several genera of Brachiopod shells. In most polymorphic genera
some of the species have fixed and definite characters. Genera which
are polymorphic in one country seem to be, with some few exceptions,
polymorphic in other countries, and likewise, judging from Brachiopod
shells, at former periods of time. These facts seem to be very
perplexing, for they seem to show that this kind of variability is
independent of the conditions of life. I am inclined to suspect that we
see in these polymorphic genera variations in points of structure which
are of no service or disservice to the species, and which consequently
have not been seized on and rendered definite by natural selection, as
hereafter will be explained.

Those forms which possess in some considerable degree the character of
species, but which are so closely similar to some other forms, or are so
closely linked to them by intermediate gradations, that naturalists do
not like to rank them as distinct species, are in several respects the
most important for us. We have every reason to believe that many of
these doubtful and closely-allied forms have permanently retained their
characters in their own country for a long time; for as long, as far as
we know, as have good and true species. Practically, when a naturalist
can unite two forms together by others having intermediate characters,
he treats the one as a variety of the other, ranking the most common,
but sometimes the one first described, as the species, and the other
as the variety. But cases of great difficulty, which I will not here
enumerate, sometimes occur in deciding whether or not to rank one
form as a variety of another, even when they are closely connected by
intermediate links; nor will the commonly-assumed hybrid nature of the
intermediate links always remove the difficulty. In very many cases,
however, one form is ranked as a variety of another, not because the
intermediate links have actually been found, but because analogy leads
the observer to suppose either that they do now somewhere exist, or may
formerly have existed; and here a wide door for the entry of doubt and
conjecture is opened.

Hence, in determining whether a form should be ranked as a species or
a variety, the opinion of naturalists having sound judgment and wide
experience seems the only guide to follow. We must, however, in many
cases, decide by a majority of naturalists, for few well-marked and
well-known varieties can be named which have not been ranked as species
by at least some competent judges.

That varieties of this doubtful nature are far from uncommon cannot be
disputed. Compare the several floras of Great Britain, of France or
of the United States, drawn up by different botanists, and see what
a surprising number of forms have been ranked by one botanist as good
species, and by another as mere varieties. Mr. H. C. Watson, to whom I
lie under deep obligation for assistance of all kinds, has marked for
me 182 British plants, which are generally considered as varieties, but
which have all been ranked by botanists as species; and in making this
list he has omitted many trifling varieties, but which nevertheless have
been ranked by some botanists as species, and he has entirely omitted
several highly polymorphic genera. Under genera, including the most
polymorphic forms, Mr. Babington gives 251 species, whereas Mr. Bentham
gives only 112,--a difference of 139 doubtful forms! Amongst animals
which unite for each birth, and which are highly locomotive, doubtful
forms, ranked by one zoologist as a species and by another as a variety,
can rarely be found within the same country, but are common in separated
areas. How many of those birds and insects in North America and Europe,
which differ very slightly from each other, have been ranked by one
eminent naturalist as undoubted species, and by another as varieties,
or, as they are often called, as geographical races! Many years ago,
when comparing, and seeing others compare, the birds from the separate
islands of the Galapagos Archipelago, both one with another, and with
those from the American mainland, I was much struck how entirely vague
and arbitrary is the distinction between species and varieties. On the
islets of the little Madeira group there are many insects which are
characterized as varieties in Mr. Wollaston's admirable work, but
which it cannot be doubted would be ranked as distinct species by many
entomologists. Even Ireland has a few animals, now generally regarded
as varieties, but which have been ranked as species by some zoologists.
Several most experienced ornithologists consider our British red grouse
as only a strongly-marked race of a Norwegian species, whereas the
greater number rank it as an undoubted species peculiar to Great
Britain. A wide distance between the homes of two doubtful forms leads
many naturalists to rank both as distinct species; but what distance, it
has been well asked, will suffice? if that between America and Europe
is ample, will that between the Continent and the Azores, or Madeira, or
the Canaries, or Ireland, be sufficient? It must be admitted that many
forms, considered by highly-competent judges as varieties, have so
perfectly the character of species that they are ranked by other
highly-competent judges as good and true species. But to discuss whether
they are rightly called species or varieties, before any definition of
these terms has been generally accepted, is vainly to beat the air.

Many of the cases of strongly-marked varieties or doubtful species well
deserve consideration; for several interesting lines of argument, from
geographical distribution, analogical variation, hybridism, etc., have
been brought to bear on the attempt to determine their rank. I will here
give only a single instance,--the well-known one of the primrose and
cowslip, or Primula veris and elatior. These plants differ considerably
in appearance; they have a different flavour and emit a different
odour; they flower at slightly different periods; they grow in somewhat
different stations; they ascend mountains to different heights; they
have different geographical ranges; and lastly, according to very
numerous experiments made during several years by that most careful
observer Gartner, they can be crossed only with much difficulty.
We could hardly wish for better evidence of the two forms being
specifically distinct. On the other hand, they are united by many
intermediate links, and it is very doubtful whether these links are
hybrids; and there is, as it seems to me, an overwhelming amount of
experimental evidence, showing that they descend from common parents,
and consequently must be ranked as varieties.

Close investigation, in most cases, will bring naturalists to an
agreement how to rank doubtful forms. Yet it must be confessed, that it
is in the best-known countries that we find the greatest number of forms
of doubtful value. I have been struck with the fact, that if any animal
or plant in a state of nature be highly useful to man, or from any cause
closely attract his attention, varieties of it will almost universally
be found recorded. These varieties, moreover, will be often ranked by
some authors as species. Look at the common oak, how closely it has
been studied; yet a German author makes more than a dozen species out
of forms, which are very generally considered as varieties; and in
this country the highest botanical authorities and practical men can be
quoted to show that the sessile and pedunculated oaks are either good
and distinct species or mere varieties.

When a young naturalist commences the study of a group of organisms
quite unknown to him, he is at first much perplexed to determine what
differences to consider as specific, and what as varieties; for he
knows nothing of the amount and kind of variation to which the group
is subject; and this shows, at least, how very generally there is some
variation. But if he confine his attention to one class within one
country, he will soon make up his mind how to rank most of the doubtful
forms. His general tendency will be to make many species, for he will
become impressed, just like the pigeon or poultry-fancier before alluded
to, with the amount of difference in the forms which he is continually
studying; and he has little general knowledge of analogical variation
in other groups and in other countries, by which to correct his first
impressions. As he extends the range of his observations, he will meet
with more cases of difficulty; for he will encounter a greater number
of closely-allied forms. But if his observations be widely extended, he
will in the end generally be enabled to make up his own mind which to
call varieties and which species; but he will succeed in this at the
expense of admitting much variation,--and the truth of this admission
will often be disputed by other naturalists. When, moreover, he comes to
study allied forms brought from countries not now continuous, in which
case he can hardly hope to find the intermediate links between his
doubtful forms, he will have to trust almost entirely to analogy, and
his difficulties will rise to a climax.

Certainly no clear line of demarcation has as yet been drawn between
species and sub-species--that is, the forms which in the opinion of some
naturalists come very near to, but do not quite arrive at the rank of
species; or, again, between sub-species and well-marked varieties, or
between lesser varieties and individual differences. These differences
blend into each other in an insensible series; and a series impresses
the mind with the idea of an actual passage.

Hence I look at individual differences, though of small interest to
the systematist, as of high importance for us, as being the first step
towards such slight varieties as are barely thought worth recording
in works on natural history. And I look at varieties which are in any
degree more distinct and permanent, as steps leading to more strongly
marked and more permanent varieties; and at these latter, as leading to
sub-species, and to species. The passage from one stage of difference
to another and higher stage may be, in some cases, due merely to the
long-continued action of different physical conditions in two different
regions; but I have not much faith in this view; and I attribute the
passage of a variety, from a state in which it differs very slightly
from its parent to one in which it differs more, to the action of
natural selection in accumulating (as will hereafter be more fully
explained) differences of structure in certain definite directions.
Hence I believe a well-marked variety may be justly called an incipient
species; but whether this belief be justifiable must be judged of by
the general weight of the several facts and views given throughout this
work.

It need not be supposed that all varieties or incipient species
necessarily attain the rank of species. They may whilst in this
incipient state become extinct, or they may endure as varieties for very
long periods, as has been shown to be the case by Mr. Wollaston with the
varieties of certain fossil land-shells in Madeira. If a variety were
to flourish so as to exceed in numbers the parent species, it would then
rank as the species, and the species as the variety; or it might come to
supplant and exterminate the parent species; or both might co-exist, and
both rank as independent species. But we shall hereafter have to return
to this subject.

From these remarks it will be seen that I look at the term species,
as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of
individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not
essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less
distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again,
in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied
arbitrarily, and for mere convenience sake.

Guided by theoretical considerations, I thought that some interesting
results might be obtained in regard to the nature and relations of the
species which vary most, by tabulating all the varieties in several
well-worked floras. At first this seemed a simple task; but Mr. H. C.
Watson, to whom I am much indebted for valuable advice and assistance
on this subject, soon convinced me that there were many difficulties, as
did subsequently Dr. Hooker, even in stronger terms. I shall reserve
for my future work the discussion of these difficulties, and the tables
themselves of the proportional numbers of the varying species.
Dr. Hooker permits me to add, that after having carefully read my
manuscript, and examined the tables, he thinks that the following
statements are fairly well established. The whole subject, however,
treated as it necessarily here is with much brevity, is rather
perplexing, and allusions cannot be avoided to the "struggle for
existence," "divergence of character," and other questions, hereafter to
be discussed.

Alph. De Candolle and others have shown that plants which have very wide
ranges generally present varieties; and this might have been expected,
as they become exposed to diverse physical conditions, and as they
come into competition (which, as we shall hereafter see, is a far more
important circumstance) with different sets of organic beings. But my
tables further show that, in any limited country, the species which are
most common, that is abound most in individuals, and the species
which are most widely diffused within their own country (and this is a
different consideration from wide range, and to a certain extent from
commonness), often give rise to varieties sufficiently well-marked to
have been recorded in botanical works. Hence it is the most flourishing,
or, as they may be called, the dominant species,--those which range
widely over the world, are the most diffused in their own country,
and are the most numerous in individuals,--which oftenest produce
well-marked varieties, or, as I consider them, incipient species. And
this, perhaps, might have been anticipated; for, as varieties, in order
to become in any degree permanent, necessarily have to struggle with the
other inhabitants of the country, the species which are already dominant
will be the most likely to yield offspring which, though in some slight
degree modified, will still inherit those advantages that enabled their
parents to become dominant over their compatriots.

If the plants inhabiting a country and described in any Flora be divided
into two equal masses, all those in the larger genera being placed
on one side, and all those in the smaller genera on the other side, a
somewhat larger number of the very common and much diffused or dominant
species will be found on the side of the larger genera. This, again,
might have been anticipated; for the mere fact of many species of the
same genus inhabiting any country, shows that there is something in the
organic or inorganic conditions of that country favourable to the genus;
and, consequently, we might have expected to have found in the larger
genera, or those including many species, a large proportional number of
dominant species. But so many causes tend to obscure this result, that
I am surprised that my tables show even a small majority on the side of
the larger genera. I will here allude to only two causes of obscurity.
Fresh-water and salt-loving plants have generally very wide ranges and
are much diffused, but this seems to be connected with the nature of the
stations inhabited by them, and has little or no relation to the size of
the genera to which the species belong. Again, plants low in the scale
of organisation are generally much more widely diffused than plants
higher in the scale; and here again there is no close relation to the
size of the genera. The cause of lowly-organised plants ranging widely
will be discussed in our chapter on geographical distribution.

From looking at species as only strongly-marked and well-defined
varieties, I was led to anticipate that the species of the larger genera
in each country would oftener present varieties, than the species of the
smaller genera; for wherever many closely related species (i.e. species
of the same genus) have been formed, many varieties or incipient species
ought, as a general rule, to be now forming. Where many large trees
grow, we expect to find saplings. Where many species of a genus have
been formed through variation, circumstances have been favourable
for variation; and hence we might expect that the circumstances would
generally be still favourable to variation. On the other hand, if we
look at each species as a special act of creation, there is no apparent
reason why more varieties should occur in a group having many species,
than in one having few.

To test the truth of this anticipation I have arranged the plants of
twelve countries, and the coleopterous insects of two districts, into
two nearly equal masses, the species of the larger genera on one side,
and those of the smaller genera on the other side, and it has invariably
proved to be the case that a larger proportion of the species on the
side of the larger genera present varieties, than on the side of the
smaller genera. Moreover, the species of the large genera which present
any varieties, invariably present a larger average number of varieties
than do the species of the small genera. Both these results follow when
another division is made, and when all the smallest genera, with from
only one to four species, are absolutely excluded from the tables.
These facts are of plain signification on the view that species are only
strongly marked and permanent varieties; for wherever many species of
the same genus have been formed, or where, if we may use the expression,
the manufactory of species has been active, we ought generally to find
the manufactory still in action, more especially as we have every reason
to believe the process of manufacturing new species to be a slow one.
And this certainly is the case, if varieties be looked at as incipient
species; for my tables clearly show as a general rule that, wherever
many species of a genus have been formed, the species of that genus
present a number of varieties, that is of incipient species, beyond the
average. It is not that all large genera are now varying much, and are
thus increasing in the number of their species, or that no small genera
are now varying and increasing; for if this had been so, it would have
been fatal to my theory; inasmuch as geology plainly tells us that small
genera have in the lapse of time often increased greatly in size;
and that large genera have often come to their maxima, declined, and
disappeared. All that we want to show is, that where many species of a
genus have been formed, on an average many are still forming; and this
holds good.

There are other relations between the species of large genera and their
recorded varieties which deserve notice. We have seen that there is no
infallible criterion by which to distinguish species and well-marked
varieties; and in those cases in which intermediate links have not been
found between doubtful forms, naturalists are compelled to come to
a determination by the amount of difference between them, judging by
analogy whether or not the amount suffices to raise one or both to the
rank of species. Hence the amount of difference is one very important
criterion in settling whether two forms should be ranked as species or
varieties. Now Fries has remarked in regard to plants, and Westwood in
regard to insects, that in large genera the amount of difference between
the species is often exceedingly small. I have endeavoured to test this
numerically by averages, and, as far as my imperfect results go, they
always confirm the view. I have also consulted some sagacious and most
experienced observers, and, after deliberation, they concur in this
view. In this respect, therefore, the species of the larger genera
resemble varieties, more than do the species of the smaller genera.
Or the case may be put in another way, and it may be said, that in
the larger genera, in which a number of varieties or incipient species
greater than the average are now manufacturing, many of the species
already manufactured still to a certain extent resemble varieties, for
they differ from each other by a less than usual amount of difference.

Moreover, the species of the large genera are related to each other, in
the same manner as the varieties of any one species are related to
each other. No naturalist pretends that all the species of a genus are
equally distinct from each other; they may generally be divided into
sub-genera, or sections, or lesser groups. As Fries has well remarked,
little groups of species are generally clustered like satellites around
certain other species. And what are varieties but groups of forms,
unequally related to each other, and clustered round certain forms--that
is, round their parent-species? Undoubtedly there is one most important
point of difference between varieties and species; namely, that the
amount of difference between varieties, when compared with each other or
with their parent-species, is much less than that between the species of
the same genus. But when we come to discuss the principle, as I call it,
of Divergence of Character, we shall see how this may be explained, and
how the lesser differences between varieties will tend to increase into
the greater differences between species.

There is one other point which seems to me worth notice. Varieties
generally have much restricted ranges: this statement is indeed scarcely
more than a truism, for if a variety were found to have a wider range
than that of its supposed parent-species, their denominations ought to
be reversed. But there is also reason to believe, that those species
which are very closely allied to other species, and in so far resemble
varieties, often have much restricted ranges. For instance, Mr. H. C.
Watson has marked for me in the well-sifted London Catalogue of plants
(4th edition) 63 plants which are therein ranked as species, but which
he considers as so closely allied to other species as to be of doubtful
value: these 63 reputed species range on an average over 6.9 of the
provinces into which Mr. Watson has divided Great Britain. Now, in this
same catalogue, 53 acknowledged varieties are recorded, and these range
over 7.7 provinces; whereas, the species to which these varieties belong
range over 14.3 provinces. So that the acknowledged varieties have very
nearly the same restricted average range, as have those very closely
allied forms, marked for me by Mr. Watson as doubtful species, but which
are almost universally ranked by British botanists as good and true
species.

Finally, then, varieties have the same general characters as species,
for they cannot be distinguished from species,--except, firstly, by
the discovery of intermediate linking forms, and the occurrence of
such links cannot affect the actual characters of the forms which they
connect; and except, secondly, by a certain amount of difference, for
two forms, if differing very little, are generally ranked as varieties,
notwithstanding that intermediate linking forms have not been
discovered; but the amount of difference considered necessary to give to
two forms the rank of species is quite indefinite. In genera having more
than the average number of species in any country, the species of these
genera have more than the average number of varieties. In large genera
the species are apt to be closely, but unequally, allied together,
forming little clusters round certain species. Species very closely
allied to other species apparently have restricted ranges. In all these
several respects the species of large genera present a strong analogy
with varieties. And we can clearly understand these analogies, if
species have once existed as varieties, and have thus originated:
whereas, these analogies are utterly inexplicable if each species has
been independently created.

We have, also, seen that it is the most flourishing and dominant species
of the larger genera which on an average vary most; and varieties, as
we shall hereafter see, tend to become converted into new and distinct
species. The larger genera thus tend to become larger; and throughout
nature the forms of life which are now dominant tend to become still
more dominant by leaving many modified and dominant descendants. But by
steps hereafter to be explained, the larger genera also tend to break up
into smaller genera. And thus, the forms of life throughout the universe
become divided into groups subordinate to groups.




3. STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.

Bears on natural selection. The term used in a wide sense. Geometrical
powers of increase. Rapid increase of naturalised animals and plants.
Nature of the checks to increase. Competition universal. Effects of
climate. Protection from the number of individuals. Complex relations of
all animals and plants throughout nature. Struggle for life most severe
between individuals and varieties of the same species; often severe
between species of the same genus. The relation of organism to organism
the most important of all relations.

Before entering on the subject of this chapter, I must make a few
preliminary remarks, to show how the struggle for existence bears on
Natural Selection. It has been seen in the last chapter that
amongst organic beings in a state of nature there is some individual
variability; indeed I am not aware that this has ever been disputed.
It is immaterial for us whether a multitude of doubtful forms be called
species or sub-species or varieties; what rank, for instance, the two or
three hundred doubtful forms of British plants are entitled to hold,
if the existence of any well-marked varieties be admitted. But the
mere existence of individual variability and of some few well-marked
varieties, though necessary as the foundation for the work, helps us but
little in understanding how species arise in nature. How have all those
exquisite adaptations of one part of the organisation to another part,
and to the conditions of life, and of one distinct organic being to
another being, been perfected? We see these beautiful co-adaptations
most plainly in the woodpecker and missletoe; and only a little
less plainly in the humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of a
quadruped or feathers of a bird; in the structure of the beetle which
dives through the water; in the plumed seed which is wafted by the
gentlest breeze; in short, we see beautiful adaptations everywhere and
in every part of the organic world.

Again, it may be asked, how is it that varieties, which I have called
incipient species, become ultimately converted into good and distinct
species, which in most cases obviously differ from each other far
more than do the varieties of the same species? How do those groups of
species, which constitute what are called distinct genera, and which
differ from each other more than do the species of the same genus,
arise? All these results, as we shall more fully see in the next
chapter, follow inevitably from the struggle for life. Owing to this
struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause
proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any
species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and
to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual,
and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring,
also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many
individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small
number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight
variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection,
in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. We have seen
that man by selection can certainly produce great results, and can adapt
organic beings to his own uses, through the accumulation of slight
but useful variations, given to him by the hand of Nature. But Natural
Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for
action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the
works of Nature are to those of Art.

We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence.
In my future work this subject shall be treated, as it well deserves,
at much greater length. The elder De Candolle and Lyell have largely
and philosophically shown that all organic beings are exposed to severe
competition. In regard to plants, no one has treated this subject with
more spirit and ability than W. Herbert, Dean of Manchester, evidently
the result of his great horticultural knowledge. Nothing is easier than
to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more
difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this
conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind,
I am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact on
distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be
dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright
with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or
we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on
insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget
how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are
destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind,
that though food may be now superabundant, it is not so at all seasons
of each recurring year.

I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large
and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another,
and including (which is more important) not only the life of the
individual, but success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals in a time
of dearth, may be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get
food and live. But a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle
for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to
be dependent on the moisture. A plant which annually produces a thousand
seeds, of which on an average only one comes to maturity, may be more
truly said to struggle with the plants of the same and other kinds which
already clothe the ground. The missletoe is dependent on the apple and a
few other trees, but can only in a far-fetched sense be said to struggle
with these trees, for if too many of these parasites grow on the same
tree, it will languish and die. But several seedling missletoes, growing
close together on the same branch, may more truly be said to struggle
with each other. As the missletoe is disseminated by birds, its
existence depends on birds; and it may metaphorically be said to
struggle with other fruit-bearing plants, in order to tempt birds to
devour and thus disseminate its seeds rather than those of other
plants. In these several senses, which pass into each other, I use for
convenience sake the general term of struggle for existence.

A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which
all organic beings tend to increase. Every being, which during its
natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds, must suffer destruction
during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional
year, otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers
would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support
the product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly
survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either
one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals
of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the
doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and
vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase
of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage. Although some
species may be now increasing, more or less rapidly, in numbers, all
cannot do so, for the world would not hold them.

There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally
increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, the earth would soon
be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has
doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in a few thousand years,
there would literally not be standing room for his progeny. Linnaeus has
calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds--and there is
no plant so unproductive as this--and their seedlings next year produced
two, and so on, then in twenty years there would be a million plants.
The elephant is reckoned to be the slowest breeder of all known animals,
and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of
natural increase: it will be under the mark to assume that it breeds
when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old,
bringing forth three pair of young in this interval; if this be so,
at the end of the fifth century there would be alive fifteen million
elephants, descended from the first pair.

But we have better evidence on this subject than mere theoretical
calculations, namely, the numerous recorded cases of the astonishingly
rapid increase of various animals in a state of nature, when
circumstances have been favourable to them during two or three following
seasons. Still more striking is the evidence from our domestic animals
of many kinds which have run wild in several parts of the world: if the
statements of the rate of increase of slow-breeding cattle and horses
in South America, and latterly in Australia, had not been well
authenticated, they would have been quite incredible. So it is with
plants: cases could be given of introduced plants which have become
common throughout whole islands in a period of less than ten years.
Several of the plants now most numerous over the wide plains of La
Plata, clothing square leagues of surface almost to the exclusion of
all other plants, have been introduced from Europe; and there are plants
which now range in India, as I hear from Dr. Falconer, from Cape
Comorin to the Himalaya, which have been imported from America since its
discovery. In such cases, and endless instances could be given, no one
supposes that the fertility of these animals or plants has been
suddenly and temporarily increased in any sensible degree. The obvious
explanation is that the conditions of life have been very favourable,
and that there has consequently been less destruction of the old and
young, and that nearly all the young have been enabled to breed. In such
cases the geometrical ratio of increase, the result of which never fails
to be surprising, simply explains the extraordinarily rapid increase and
wide diffusion of naturalised productions in their new homes.

In a state of nature almost every plant produces seed, and amongst
animals there are very few which do not annually pair. Hence we may
confidently assert, that all plants and animals are tending to increase
at a geometrical ratio, that all would most rapidly stock every station
in which they could any how exist, and that the geometrical tendency
to increase must be checked by destruction at some period of life. Our
familiarity with the larger domestic animals tends, I think, to mislead
us: we see no great destruction falling on them, and we forget that
thousands are annually slaughtered for food, and that in a state of
nature an equal number would have somehow to be disposed of.

The only difference between organisms which annually produce eggs or
seeds by the thousand, and those which produce extremely few, is,
that the slow-breeders would require a few more years to people, under
favourable conditions, a whole district, let it be ever so large. The
condor lays a couple of eggs and the ostrich a score, and yet in the
same country the condor may be the more numerous of the two: the Fulmar
petrel lays but one egg, yet it is believed to be the most numerous bird
in the world. One fly deposits hundreds of eggs, and another, like the
hippobosca, a single one; but this difference does not determine how
many individuals of the two species can be supported in a district.
A large number of eggs is of some importance to those species, which
depend on a rapidly fluctuating amount of food, for it allows them
rapidly to increase in number. But the real importance of a large number
of eggs or seeds is to make up for much destruction at some period of
life; and this period in the great majority of cases is an early one. If
an animal can in any way protect its own eggs or young, a small number
may be produced, and yet the average stock be fully kept up; but if many
eggs or young are destroyed, many must be produced, or the species will
become extinct. It would suffice to keep up the full number of a tree,
which lived on an average for a thousand years, if a single seed were
produced once in a thousand years, supposing that this seed were never
destroyed, and could be ensured to germinate in a fitting place. So that
in all cases, the average number of any animal or plant depends only
indirectly on the number of its eggs or seeds.

In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing
considerations always in mind--never to forget that every single organic
being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in
numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that
heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old, during
each generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten any check, mitigate
the destruction ever so little, and the number of the species will
almost instantaneously increase to any amount. The face of Nature may
be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed
close together and driven inwards by incessant blows, sometimes one
wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.

What checks the natural tendency of each species to increase in number
is most obscure. Look at the most vigorous species; by as much as it
swarms in numbers, by so much will its tendency to increase be still
further increased. We know not exactly what the checks are in even
one single instance. Nor will this surprise any one who reflects how
ignorant we are on this head, even in regard to mankind, so incomparably
better known than any other animal. This subject has been ably treated
by several authors, and I shall, in my future work, discuss some of the
checks at considerable length, more especially in regard to the feral
animals of South America. Here I will make only a few remarks, just to
recall to the reader's mind some of the chief points. Eggs or very young
animals seem generally to suffer most, but this is not invariably the
case. With plants there is a vast destruction of seeds, but, from some
observations which I have made, I believe that it is the seedlings which
suffer most from germinating in ground already thickly stocked with
other plants. Seedlings, also, are destroyed in vast numbers by various
enemies; for instance, on a piece of ground three feet long and two
wide, dug and cleared, and where there could be no choking from other
plants, I marked all the seedlings of our native weeds as they came up,
and out of the 357 no less than 295 were destroyed, chiefly by slugs
and insects. If turf which has long been mown, and the case would be the
same with turf closely browsed by quadrupeds, be let to grow, the more
vigorous plants gradually kill the less vigorous, though fully grown,
plants: thus out of twenty species growing on a little plot of turf
(three feet by four) nine species perished from the other species being
allowed to grow up freely.

The amount of food for each species of course gives the extreme limit
to which each can increase; but very frequently it is not the obtaining
food, but the serving as prey to other animals, which determines the
average numbers of a species. Thus, there seems to be little doubt that
the stock of partridges, grouse, and hares on any large estate depends
chiefly on the destruction of vermin. If not one head of game were shot
during the next twenty years in England, and, at the same time, if no
vermin were destroyed, there would, in all probability, be less game
than at present, although hundreds of thousands of game animals are now
annually killed. On the other hand, in some cases, as with the elephant
and rhinoceros, none are destroyed by beasts of prey: even the tiger in
India most rarely dares to attack a young elephant protected by its dam.

Climate plays an important part in determining the average numbers of a
species, and periodical seasons of extreme cold or drought, I believe
to be the most effective of all checks. I estimated that the winter of
1854-55 destroyed four-fifths of the birds in my own grounds; and this
is a tremendous destruction, when we remember that ten per cent. is an
extraordinarily severe mortality from epidemics with man. The action of
climate seems at first sight to be quite independent of the struggle for
existence; but in so far as climate chiefly acts in reducing food, it
brings on the most severe struggle between the individuals, whether of
the same or of distinct species, which subsist on the same kind of food.
Even when climate, for instance extreme cold, acts directly, it will
be the least vigorous, or those which have got least food through the
advancing winter, which will suffer most. When we travel from south to
north, or from a damp region to a dry, we invariably see some species
gradually getting rarer and rarer, and finally disappearing; and the
change of climate being conspicuous, we are tempted to attribute the
whole effect to its direct action. But this is a very false view: we
forget that each species, even where it most abounds, is constantly
suffering enormous destruction at some period of its life, from enemies
or from competitors for the same place and food; and if these enemies
or competitors be in the least degree favoured by any slight change of
climate, they will increase in numbers, and, as each area is already
fully stocked with inhabitants, the other species will decrease. When
we travel southward and see a species decreasing in numbers, we may feel
sure that the cause lies quite as much in other species being favoured,
as in this one being hurt. So it is when we travel northward, but in
a somewhat lesser degree, for the number of species of all kinds,
and therefore of competitors, decreases northwards; hence in going
northward, or in ascending a mountain, we far oftener meet with stunted
forms, due to the DIRECTLY injurious action of climate, than we do in
proceeding southwards or in descending a mountain. When we reach
the Arctic regions, or snow-capped summits, or absolute deserts, the
struggle for life is almost exclusively with the elements.

That climate acts in main part indirectly by favouring other species, we
may clearly see in the prodigious number of plants in our gardens
which can perfectly well endure our climate, but which never become
naturalised, for they cannot compete with our native plants, nor resist
destruction by our native animals.

When a species, owing to highly favourable circumstances, increases
inordinately in numbers in a small tract, epidemics--at least, this
seems generally to occur with our game animals--often ensue: and here
we have a limiting check independent of the struggle for life. But even
some of these so-called epidemics appear to be due to parasitic worms,
which have from some cause, possibly in part through facility of
diffusion amongst the crowded animals, been disproportionably favoured:
and here comes in a sort of struggle between the parasite and its prey.

On the other hand, in many cases, a large stock of individuals of the
same species, relatively to the numbers of its enemies, is absolutely
necessary for its preservation. Thus we can easily raise plenty of
corn and rape-seed, etc., in our fields, because the seeds are in great
excess compared with the number of birds which feed on them; nor can
the birds, though having a superabundance of food at this one season,
increase in number proportionally to the supply of seed, as their
numbers are checked during winter: but any one who has tried, knows how
troublesome it is to get seed from a few wheat or other such plants in
a garden; I have in this case lost every single seed. This view of the
necessity of a large stock of the same species for its preservation,
explains, I believe, some singular facts in nature, such as that of very
rare plants being sometimes extremely abundant in the few spots where
they do occur; and that of some social plants being social, that is,
abounding in individuals, even on the extreme confines of their range.
For in such cases, we may believe, that a plant could exist only where
the conditions of its life were so favourable that many could exist
together, and thus save each other from utter destruction. I should add
that the good effects of frequent intercrossing, and the ill effects of
close interbreeding, probably come into play in some of these cases; but
on this intricate subject I will not here enlarge.

Many cases are on record showing how complex and unexpected are the
checks and relations between organic beings, which have to struggle
together in the same country. I will give only a single instance, which,
though a simple one, has interested me. In Staffordshire, on the estate
of a relation where I had ample means of investigation, there was a
large and extremely barren heath, which had never been touched by the
hand of man; but several hundred acres of exactly the same nature had
been enclosed twenty-five years previously and planted with Scotch fir.
The change in the native vegetation of the planted part of the heath was
most remarkable, more than is generally seen in passing from one quite
different soil to another: not only the proportional numbers of the
heath-plants were wholly changed, but twelve species of plants (not
counting grasses and carices) flourished in the plantations, which could
not be found on the heath. The effect on the insects must have been
still greater, for six insectivorous birds were very common in the
plantations, which were not to be seen on the heath; and the heath was
frequented by two or three distinct insectivorous birds. Here we see how
potent has been the effect of the introduction of a single tree, nothing
whatever else having been done, with the exception that the land had
been enclosed, so that cattle could not enter. But how important an
element enclosure is, I plainly saw near Farnham, in Surrey. Here
there are extensive heaths, with a few clumps of old Scotch firs on
the distant hill-tops: within the last ten years large spaces have been
enclosed, and self-sown firs are now springing up in multitudes, so
close together that all cannot live.

When I ascertained that these young trees had not been sown or planted,
I was so much surprised at their numbers that I went to several points
of view, whence I could examine hundreds of acres of the unenclosed
heath, and literally I could not see a single Scotch fir, except the old
planted clumps. But on looking closely between the stems of the heath,
I found a multitude of seedlings and little trees, which had been
perpetually browsed down by the cattle. In one square yard, at a
point some hundred yards distant from one of the old clumps, I counted
thirty-two little trees; and one of them, judging from the rings of
growth, had during twenty-six years tried to raise its head above the
stems of the heath, and had failed. No wonder that, as soon as the land
was enclosed, it became thickly clothed with vigorously growing young
firs. Yet the heath was so extremely barren and so extensive that no
one would ever have imagined that cattle would have so closely and
effectually searched it for food.

Here we see that cattle absolutely determine the existence of the Scotch
fir; but in several parts of the world insects determine the existence
of cattle. Perhaps Paraguay offers the most curious instance of this;
for here neither cattle nor horses nor dogs have ever run wild, though
they swarm southward and northward in a feral state; and Azara and
Rengger have shown that this is caused by the greater number in Paraguay
of a certain fly, which lays its eggs in the navels of these animals
when first born. The increase of these flies, numerous as they are,
must be habitually checked by some means, probably by birds. Hence, if
certain insectivorous birds (whose numbers are probably regulated by
hawks or beasts of prey) were to increase in Paraguay, the flies would
decrease--then cattle and horses would become feral, and this would
certainly greatly alter (as indeed I have observed in parts of South
America) the vegetation: this again would largely affect the insects;
and this, as we just have seen in Staffordshire, the insectivorous
birds, and so onwards in ever-increasing circles of complexity. We began
this series by insectivorous birds, and we have ended with them. Not
that in nature the relations can ever be as simple as this. Battle
within battle must ever be recurring with varying success; and yet in
the long-run the forces are so nicely balanced, that the face of nature
remains uniform for long periods of time, though assuredly the merest
trifle would often give the victory to one organic being over another.
Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption,
that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and
as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world,
or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!

I am tempted to give one more instance showing how plants and animals,
most remote in the scale of nature, are bound together by a web of
complex relations. I shall hereafter have occasion to show that the
exotic Lobelia fulgens, in this part of England, is never visited by
insects, and consequently, from its peculiar structure, never can set a
seed. Many of our orchidaceous plants absolutely require the visits of
moths to remove their pollen-masses and thus to fertilise them. I
have, also, reason to believe that humble-bees are indispensable to the
fertilisation of the heartsease (Viola tricolor), for other bees do not
visit this flower. From experiments which I have tried, I have found
that the visits of bees, if not indispensable, are at least highly
beneficial to the fertilisation of our clovers; but humble-bees alone
visit the common red clover (Trifolium pratense), as other bees cannot
reach the nectar. Hence I have very little doubt, that if the whole
genus of humble-bees became extinct or very rare in England, the
heartsease and red clover would become very rare, or wholly disappear.
The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great degree on
the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Mr.
H. Newman, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, believes
that "more than two thirds of them are thus destroyed all over England."
Now the number of mice is largely dependent, as every one knows, on the
number of cats; and Mr. Newman says, "Near villages and small towns I
have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which
I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence it is
quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in
a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and
then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district!

In the case of every species, many different checks, acting at different
periods of life, and during different seasons or years, probably come
into play; some one check or some few being generally the most potent,
but all concurring in determining the average number or even
the existence of the species. In some cases it can be shown that
widely-different checks act on the same species in different districts.
When we look at the plants and bushes clothing an entangled bank, we
are tempted to attribute their proportional numbers and kinds to what we
call chance. But how false a view is this! Every one has heard that when
an American forest is cut down, a very different vegetation springs
up; but it has been observed that the trees now growing on the ancient
Indian mounds, in the Southern United States, display the same beautiful
diversity and proportion of kinds as in the surrounding virgin forests.
What a struggle between the several kinds of trees must here have gone
on during long centuries, each annually scattering its seeds by the
thousand; what war between insect and insect--between insects, snails,
and other animals with birds and beasts of prey--all striving to
increase, and all feeding on each other or on the trees or their seeds
and seedlings, or on the other plants which first clothed the ground and
thus checked the growth of the trees! Throw up a handful of feathers,
and all must fall to the ground according to definite laws; but how
simple is this problem compared to the action and reaction of the
innumerable plants and animals which have determined, in the course of
centuries, the proportional numbers and kinds of trees now growing on
the old Indian ruins!

The dependency of one organic being on another, as of a parasite on its
prey, lies generally between beings remote in the scale of nature. This
is often the case with those which may strictly be said to struggle with
each other for existence, as in the case of locusts and grass-feeding
quadrupeds. But the struggle almost invariably will be most severe
between the individuals of the same species, for they frequent the same
districts, require the same food, and are exposed to the same dangers.
In the case of varieties of the same species, the struggle will
generally be almost equally severe, and we sometimes see the contest
soon decided: for instance, if several varieties of wheat be sown
together, and the mixed seed be resown, some of the varieties which best
suit the soil or climate, or are naturally the most fertile, will beat
the others and so yield more seed, and will consequently in a few years
quite supplant the other varieties. To keep up a mixed stock of even
such extremely close varieties as the variously coloured sweet-peas,
they must be each year harvested separately, and the seed then mixed
in due proportion, otherwise the weaker kinds will steadily decrease in
numbers and disappear. So again with the varieties of sheep: it has
been asserted that certain mountain-varieties will starve out other
mountain-varieties, so that they cannot be kept together. The same
result has followed from keeping together different varieties of the
medicinal leech. It may even be doubted whether the varieties of any
one of our domestic plants or animals have so exactly the same strength,
habits, and constitution, that the original proportions of a mixed stock
could be kept up for half a dozen generations, if they were allowed to
struggle together, like beings in a state of nature, and if the seed or
young were not annually sorted.

As species of the same genus have usually, though by no means
invariably, some similarity in habits and constitution, and always in
structure, the struggle will generally be more severe between species
of the same genus, when they come into competition with each other, than
between species of distinct genera. We see this in the recent extension
over parts of the United States of one species of swallow having
caused the decrease of another species. The recent increase of the
missel-thrush in parts of Scotland has caused the decrease of the
song-thrush. How frequently we hear of one species of rat taking the
place of another species under the most different climates! In Russia
the small Asiatic cockroach has everywhere driven before it its great
congener. One species of charlock will supplant another, and so in
other cases. We can dimly see why the competition should be most severe
between allied forms, which fill nearly the same place in the economy
of nature; but probably in no one case could we precisely say why one
species has been victorious over another in the great battle of life.

A corollary of the highest importance may be deduced from the foregoing
remarks, namely, that the structure of every organic being is related,
in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all other
organic beings, with which it comes into competition for food or
residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys. This
is obvious in the structure of the teeth and talons of the tiger; and in
that of the legs and claws of the parasite which clings to the hair on
the tiger's body. But in the beautifully plumed seed of the dandelion,
and in the flattened and fringed legs of the water-beetle, the relation
seems at first confined to the elements of air and water. Yet the
advantage of plumed seeds no doubt stands in the closest relation to the
land being already thickly clothed by other plants; so that the
seeds may be widely distributed and fall on unoccupied ground. In the
water-beetle, the structure of its legs, so well adapted for diving,
allows it to compete with other aquatic insects, to hunt for its own
prey, and to escape serving as prey to other animals.

The store of nutriment laid up within the seeds of many plants seems at
first sight to have no sort of relation to other plants. But from the
strong growth of young plants produced from such seeds (as peas and
beans), when sown in the midst of long grass, I suspect that the chief
use of the nutriment in the seed is to favour the growth of the young
seedling, whilst struggling with other plants growing vigorously all
around.

Look at a plant in the midst of its range, why does it not double or
quadruple its numbers? We know that it can perfectly well withstand a
little more heat or cold, dampness or dryness, for elsewhere it ranges
into slightly hotter or colder, damper or drier districts. In this case
we can clearly see that if we wished in imagination to give the plant
the power of increasing in number, we should have to give it some
advantage over its competitors, or over the animals which preyed on it.
On the confines of its geographical range, a change of constitution with
respect to climate would clearly be an advantage to our plant; but we
have reason to believe that only a few plants or animals range so far,
that they are destroyed by the rigour of the climate alone. Not until
we reach the extreme confines of life, in the arctic regions or on the
borders of an utter desert, will competition cease. The land may be
extremely cold or dry, yet there will be competition between some few
species, or between the individuals of the same species, for the warmest
or dampest spots.

Hence, also, we can see that when a plant or animal is placed in a new
country amongst new competitors, though the climate may be exactly
the same as in its former home, yet the conditions of its life will
generally be changed in an essential manner. If we wished to increase
its average numbers in its new home, we should have to modify it in a
different way to what we should have done in its native country; for
we should have to give it some advantage over a different set of
competitors or enemies.

It is good thus to try in our imagination to give any form some
advantage over another. Probably in no single instance should we know
what to do, so as to succeed. It will convince us of our ignorance on
the mutual relations of all organic beings; a conviction as necessary,
as it seems to be difficult to acquire. All that we can do, is to keep
steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase at a
geometrical ratio; that each at some period of its life, during some
season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to
struggle for life, and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on
this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the
war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is
generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy
survive and multiply.




4.

NATURAL SELECTION.

Natural Selection: its power compared with man's selection, its power
on characters of trifling importance, its power at all ages and on
both sexes. Sexual Selection. On the generality of intercrosses
between individuals of the same species. Circumstances favourable and
unfavourable to Natural Selection, namely, intercrossing, isolation,
number of individuals. Slow action. Extinction caused by Natural
Selection. Divergence of Character, related to the diversity of
inhabitants of any small area, and to naturalisation. Action of Natural
Selection, through Divergence of Character and Extinction, on the
descendants from a common parent. Explains the Grouping of all organic
beings.

How will the struggle for existence, discussed too briefly in the last
chapter, act in regard to variation? Can the principle of selection,
which we have seen is so potent in the hands of man, apply in nature? I
think we shall see that it can act most effectually. Let it be borne
in mind in what an endless number of strange peculiarities our domestic
productions, and, in a lesser degree, those under nature, vary; and how
strong the hereditary tendency is. Under domestication, it may be truly
said that the whole organisation becomes in some degree plastic. Let it
be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual
relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical
conditions of life. Can it, then, be thought improbable, seeing
that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other
variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex
battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of
generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more
individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having
any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance
of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may
feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be
rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the
rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Variations
neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection,
and would be left a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the
species called polymorphic.

We shall best understand the probable course of natural selection
by taking the case of a country undergoing some physical change, for
instance, of climate. The proportional numbers of its inhabitants would
almost immediately undergo a change, and some species might become
extinct. We may conclude, from what we have seen of the intimate and
complex manner in which the inhabitants of each country are bound
together, that any change in the numerical proportions of some of the
inhabitants, independently of the change of climate itself, would most
seriously affect many of the others. If the country were open on its
borders, new forms would certainly immigrate, and this also would
seriously disturb the relations of some of the former inhabitants. Let
it be remembered how powerful the influence of a single introduced tree
or mammal has been shown to be. But in the case of an island, or of a
country partly surrounded by barriers, into which new and better adapted
forms could not freely enter, we should then have places in the economy
of nature which would assuredly be better filled up, if some of the
original inhabitants were in some manner modified; for, had the area
been open to immigration, these same places would have been seized on by
intruders. In such case, every slight modification, which in the course
of ages chanced to arise, and which in any way favoured the individuals
of any of the species, by better adapting them to their altered
conditions, would tend to be preserved; and natural selection would thus
have free scope for the work of improvement.

We have reason to believe, as stated in the first chapter, that a change
in the conditions of life, by specially acting on the reproductive
system, causes or increases variability; and in the foregoing case the
conditions of life are supposed to have undergone a change, and this
would manifestly be favourable to natural selection, by giving a
better chance of profitable variations occurring; and unless profitable
variations do occur, natural selection can do nothing. Not that, as
I believe, any extreme amount of variability is necessary; as man can
certainly produce great results by adding up in any given direction
mere individual differences, so could Nature, but far more easily, from
having incomparably longer time at her disposal. Nor do I believe that
any great physical change, as of climate, or any unusual degree of
isolation to check immigration, is actually necessary to produce new
and unoccupied places for natural selection to fill up by modifying and
improving some of the varying inhabitants. For as all the inhabitants
of each country are struggling together with nicely balanced forces,
extremely slight modifications in the structure or habits of one
inhabitant would often give it an advantage over others; and still
further modifications of the same kind would often still further
increase the advantage. No country can be named in which all the native
inhabitants are now so perfectly adapted to each other and to the
physical conditions under which they live, that none of them could
anyhow be improved; for in all countries, the natives have been so far
conquered by naturalised productions, that they have allowed foreigners
to take firm possession of the land. And as foreigners have thus
everywhere beaten some of the natives, we may safely conclude that the
natives might have been modified with advantage, so as to have better
resisted such intruders.

As man can produce and certainly has produced a great result by his
methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not nature
effect? Man can act only on external and visible characters: nature
cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they may be useful
to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of
constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects
only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she
tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by her; and the being
is placed under well-suited conditions of life. Man keeps the natives
of many climates in the same country; he seldom exercises each selected
character in some peculiar and fitting manner; he feeds a long and a
short beaked pigeon on the same food; he does not exercise a long-backed
or long-legged quadruped in any peculiar manner; he exposes sheep with
long and short wool to the same climate. He does not allow the most
vigorous males to struggle for the females. He does not rigidly destroy
all inferior animals, but protects during each varying season, as far as
lies in his power, all his productions. He often begins his selection
by some half-monstrous form; or at least by some modification prominent
enough to catch his eye, or to be plainly useful to him. Under nature,
the slightest difference of structure or constitution may well turn the
nicely-balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so be preserved.
How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time!
and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those
accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder,
then, that nature's productions should be far "truer" in character than
man's productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the
most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of
far higher workmanship?

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising,
throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting
that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently
and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at
the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and
inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in
progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and
then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that
we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they
formerly were.

Although natural selection can act only through and for the good of each
being, yet characters and structures, which we are apt to consider as of
very trifling importance, may thus be acted on. When we see leaf-eating
insects green, and bark-feeders mottled-grey; the alpine ptarmigan white
in winter, the red-grouse the colour of heather, and the black-grouse
that of peaty earth, we must believe that these tints are of service to
these birds and insects in preserving them from danger. Grouse, if not
destroyed at some period of their lives, would increase in countless
numbers; they are known to suffer largely from birds of prey; and hawks
are guided by eyesight to their prey,--so much so, that on parts of the
Continent persons are warned not to keep white pigeons, as being the
most liable to destruction. Hence I can see no reason to doubt that
natural selection might be most effective in giving the proper colour
to each kind of grouse, and in keeping that colour, when once acquired,
true and constant. Nor ought we to think that the occasional destruction
of an animal of any particular colour would produce little effect: we
should remember how essential it is in a flock of white sheep to destroy
every lamb with the faintest trace of black. In plants the down on
the fruit and the colour of the flesh are considered by botanists
as characters of the most trifling importance: yet we hear from
an excellent horticulturist, Downing, that in the United States
smooth-skinned fruits suffer far more from a beetle, a curculio, than
those with down; that purple plums suffer far more from a certain
disease than yellow plums; whereas another disease attacks
yellow-fleshed peaches far more than those with other coloured flesh.
If, with all the aids of art, these slight differences make a great
difference in cultivating the several varieties, assuredly, in a state
of nature, where the trees would have to struggle with other trees and
with a host of enemies, such differences would effectually settle which
variety, whether a smooth or downy, a yellow or purple fleshed fruit,
should succeed.

In looking at many small points of difference between species, which, as
far as our ignorance permits us to judge, seem to be quite unimportant,
we must not forget that climate, food, etc., probably produce some
slight and direct effect. It is, however, far more necessary to bear in
mind that there are many unknown laws of correlation of growth, which,
when one part of the organisation is modified through variation, and the
modifications are accumulated by natural selection for the good of the
being, will cause other modifications, often of the most unexpected
nature.

As we see that those variations which under domestication appear at any
particular period of life, tend to reappear in the offspring at the
same period;--for instance, in the seeds of the many varieties of our
culinary and agricultural plants; in the caterpillar and cocoon stages
of the varieties of the silkworm; in the eggs of poultry, and in the
colour of the down of their chickens; in the horns of our sheep and
cattle when nearly adult;--so in a state of nature, natural selection
will be enabled to act on and modify organic beings at any age, by
the accumulation of profitable variations at that age, and by their
inheritance at a corresponding age. If it profit a plant to have its
seeds more and more widely disseminated by the wind, I can see no
greater difficulty in this being effected through natural selection,
than in the cotton-planter increasing and improving by selection the
down in the pods on his cotton-trees. Natural selection may modify
and adapt the larva of an insect to a score of contingencies,
wholly different from those which concern the mature insect. These
modifications will no doubt affect, through the laws of correlation, the
structure of the adult; and probably in the case of those insects which
live only for a few hours, and which never feed, a large part of their
structure is merely the correlated result of successive changes in the
structure of their larvae. So, conversely, modifications in the adult
will probably often affect the structure of the larva; but in all cases
natural selection will ensure that modifications consequent on other
modifications at a different period of life, shall not be in the least
degree injurious: for if they became so, they would cause the extinction
of the species.

Natural selection will modify the structure of the young in relation
to the parent, and of the parent in relation to the young. In social
animals it will adapt the structure of each individual for the benefit
of the community; if each in consequence profits by the selected change.
What natural selection cannot do, is to modify the structure of one
species, without giving it any advantage, for the good of another
species; and though statements to this effect may be found in works of
natural history, I cannot find one case which will bear investigation.
A structure used only once in an animal's whole life, if of high
importance to it, might be modified to any extent by natural selection;
for instance, the great jaws possessed by certain insects, and used
exclusively for opening the cocoon--or the hard tip to the beak of
nestling birds, used for breaking the egg. It has been asserted, that
of the best short-beaked tumbler-pigeons more perish in the egg than are
able to get out of it; so that fanciers assist in the act of hatching.
Now, if nature had to make the beak of a full-grown pigeon very short
for the bird's own advantage, the process of modification would be very
slow, and there would be simultaneously the most rigorous selection of
the young birds within the egg, which had the most powerful and hardest
beaks, for all with weak beaks would inevitably perish: or, more
delicate and more easily broken shells might be selected, the thickness
of the shell being known to vary like every other structure.

SEXUAL SELECTION.

Inasmuch as peculiarities often appear under domestication in one sex
and become hereditarily attached to that sex, the same fact probably
occurs under nature, and if so, natural selection will be able to modify
one sex in its functional relations to the other sex, or in relation to
wholly different habits of life in the two sexes, as is sometimes the
case with insects. And this leads me to say a few words on what I call
Sexual Selection. This depends, not on a struggle for existence, but on
a struggle between the males for possession of the females; the result
is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring.
Sexual selection is, therefore, less rigorous than natural selection.
Generally, the most vigorous males, those which are best fitted for
their places in nature, will leave most progeny. But in many cases,
victory will depend not on general vigour, but on having special
weapons, confined to the male sex. A hornless stag or spurless cock
would have a poor chance of leaving offspring. Sexual selection by
always allowing the victor to breed might surely give indomitable
courage, length to the spur, and strength to the wing to strike in the
spurred leg, as well as the brutal cock-fighter, who knows well that he
can improve his breed by careful selection of the best cocks. How low
in the scale of nature this law of battle descends, I know not; male
alligators have been described as fighting, bellowing, and whirling
round, like Indians in a war-dance, for the possession of the females;
male salmons have been seen fighting all day long; male stag-beetles
often bear wounds from the huge mandibles of other males. The war is,
perhaps, severest between the males of polygamous animals, and these
seem oftenest provided with special weapons. The males of carnivorous
animals are already well armed; though to them and to others, special
means of defence may be given through means of sexual selection, as the
mane to the lion, the shoulder-pad to the boar, and the hooked jaw to
the male salmon; for the shield may be as important for victory, as the
sword or spear.

Amongst birds, the contest is often of a more peaceful character.
All those who have attended to the subject, believe that there is the
severest rivalry between the males of many species to attract by singing
the females. The rock-thrush of Guiana, birds of Paradise, and some
others, congregate; and successive males display their gorgeous plumage
and perform strange antics before the females, which standing by as
spectators, at last choose the most attractive partner. Those who have
closely attended to birds in confinement well know that they often take
individual preferences and dislikes: thus Sir R. Heron has described how
one pied peacock was eminently attractive to all his hen birds. It may
appear childish to attribute any effect to such apparently weak means: I
cannot here enter on the details necessary to support this view; but if
man can in a short time give elegant carriage and beauty to his bantams,
according to his standard of beauty, I can see no good reason to doubt
that female birds, by selecting, during thousands of generations,
the most melodious or beautiful males, according to their standard of
beauty, might produce a marked effect. I strongly suspect that some
well-known laws with respect to the plumage of male and female birds, in
comparison with the plumage of the young, can be explained on the view
of plumage having been chiefly modified by sexual selection, acting when
the birds have come to the breeding age or during the breeding season;
the modifications thus produced being inherited at corresponding ages or
seasons, either by the males alone, or by the males and females; but I
have not space here to enter on this subject.

Thus it is, as I believe, that when the males and females of any animal
have the same general habits of life, but differ in structure, colour,
or ornament, such differences have been mainly caused by sexual
selection; that is, individual males have had, in successive
generations, some slight advantage over other males, in their weapons,
means of defence, or charms; and have transmitted these advantages to
their male offspring. Yet, I would not wish to attribute all such
sexual differences to this agency: for we see peculiarities arising and
becoming attached to the male sex in our domestic animals (as the wattle
in male carriers, horn-like protuberances in the cocks of certain fowls,
etc.), which we cannot believe to be either useful to the males in
battle, or attractive to the females. We see analogous cases under
nature, for instance, the tuft of hair on the breast of the turkey-cock,
which can hardly be either useful or ornamental to this bird;--indeed,
had the tuft appeared under domestication, it would have been called a
monstrosity.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ACTION OF NATURAL SELECTION.

In order to make it clear how, as I believe, natural selection acts, I
must beg permission to give one or two imaginary illustrations. Let us
take the case of a wolf, which preys on various animals, securing some
by craft, some by strength, and some by fleetness; and let us suppose
that the fleetest prey, a deer for instance, had from any change in
the country increased in numbers, or that other prey had decreased in
numbers, during that season of the year when the wolf is hardest pressed
for food. I can under such circumstances see no reason to doubt that the
swiftest and slimmest wolves would have the best chance of surviving,
and so be preserved or selected,--provided always that they retained
strength to master their prey at this or at some other period of the
year, when they might be compelled to prey on other animals. I can see
no more reason to doubt this, than that man can improve the fleetness
of his greyhounds by careful and methodical selection, or by that
unconscious selection which results from each man trying to keep the
best dogs without any thought of modifying the breed.

Even without any change in the proportional numbers of the animals on
which our wolf preyed, a cub might be born with an innate tendency to
pursue certain kinds of prey. Nor can this be thought very improbable;
for we often observe great differences in the natural tendencies of our
domestic animals; one cat, for instance, taking to catch rats, another
mice; one cat, according to Mr. St. John, bringing home winged game,
another hares or rabbits, and another hunting on marshy ground and
almost nightly catching woodcocks or snipes. The tendency to catch rats
rather than mice is known to be inherited. Now, if any slight innate
change of habit or of structure benefited an individual wolf, it would
have the best chance of surviving and of leaving offspring. Some of its
young would probably inherit the same habits or structure, and by the
repetition of this process, a new variety might be formed which would
either supplant or coexist with the parent-form of wolf. Or, again,
the wolves inhabiting a mountainous district, and those frequenting the
lowlands, would naturally be forced to hunt different prey; and from the
continued preservation of the individuals best fitted for the two sites,
two varieties might slowly be formed. These varieties would cross and
blend where they met; but to this subject of intercrossing we shall soon
have to return. I may add, that, according to Mr. Pierce, there are two
varieties of the wolf inhabiting the Catskill Mountains in the United
States, one with a light greyhound-like form, which pursues deer, and
the other more bulky, with shorter legs, which more frequently attacks
the shepherd's flocks.

Let us now take a more complex case. Certain plants excrete a sweet
juice, apparently for the sake of eliminating something injurious from
their sap: this is effected by glands at the base of the stipules in
some Leguminosae, and at the back of the leaf of the common laurel. This
juice, though small in quantity, is greedily sought by insects. Let us
now suppose a little sweet juice or nectar to be excreted by the inner
bases of the petals of a flower. In this case insects in seeking the
nectar would get dusted with pollen, and would certainly often transport
the pollen from one flower to the stigma of another flower. The flowers
of two distinct individuals of the same species would thus get crossed;
and the act of crossing, we have good reason to believe (as will
hereafter be more fully alluded to), would produce very vigorous
seedlings, which consequently would have the best chance of flourishing
and surviving. Some of these seedlings would probably inherit the
nectar-excreting power. Those individual flowers which had the largest
glands or nectaries, and which excreted most nectar, would be oftenest
visited by insects, and would be oftenest crossed; and so in the
long-run would gain the upper hand. Those flowers, also, which had their
stamens and pistils placed, in relation to the size and habits of the
particular insects which visited them, so as to favour in any degree
the transportal of their pollen from flower to flower, would likewise be
favoured or selected. We might have taken the case of insects visiting
flowers for the sake of collecting pollen instead of nectar; and as
pollen is formed for the sole object of fertilisation, its destruction
appears a simple loss to the plant; yet if a little pollen were carried,
at first occasionally and then habitually, by the pollen-devouring
insects from flower to flower, and a cross thus effected, although
nine-tenths of the pollen were destroyed, it might still be a great gain
to the plant; and those individuals which produced more and more pollen,
and had larger and larger anthers, would be selected.

When our plant, by this process of the continued preservation or natural
selection of more and more attractive flowers, had been rendered highly
attractive to insects, they would, unintentionally on their part,
regularly carry pollen from flower to flower; and that they can most
effectually do this, I could easily show by many striking instances.
I will give only one--not as a very striking case, but as likewise
illustrating one step in the separation of the sexes of plants,
presently to be alluded to. Some holly-trees bear only male flowers,
which have four stamens producing rather a small quantity of pollen, and
a rudimentary pistil; other holly-trees bear only female flowers; these
have a full-sized pistil, and four stamens with shrivelled anthers, in
which not a grain of pollen can be detected. Having found a female
tree exactly sixty yards from a male tree, I put the stigmas of twenty
flowers, taken from different branches, under the microscope, and
on all, without exception, there were pollen-grains, and on some a
profusion of pollen. As the wind had set for several days from the
female to the male tree, the pollen could not thus have been carried.
The weather had been cold and boisterous, and therefore not favourable
to bees, nevertheless every female flower which I examined had been
effectually fertilised by the bees, accidentally dusted with pollen,
having flown from tree to tree in search of nectar. But to return to
our imaginary case: as soon as the plant had been rendered so highly
attractive to insects that pollen was regularly carried from flower
to flower, another process might commence. No naturalist doubts the
advantage of what has been called the "physiological division of
labour;" hence we may believe that it would be advantageous to a plant
to produce stamens alone in one flower or on one whole plant, and
pistils alone in another flower or on another plant. In plants under
culture and placed under new conditions of life, sometimes the male
organs and sometimes the female organs become more or less impotent;
now if we suppose this to occur in ever so slight a degree under nature,
then as pollen is already carried regularly from flower to flower,
and as a more complete separation of the sexes of our plant would be
advantageous on the principle of the division of labour, individuals
with this tendency more and more increased, would be continually
favoured or selected, until at last a complete separation of the sexes
would be effected.

Let us now turn to the nectar-feeding insects in our imaginary case: we
may suppose the plant of which we have been slowly increasing the nectar
by continued selection, to be a common plant; and that certain insects
depended in main part on its nectar for food. I could give many facts,
showing how anxious bees are to save time; for instance, their habit of
cutting holes and sucking the nectar at the bases of certain flowers,
which they can, with a very little more trouble, enter by the mouth.
Bearing such facts in mind, I can see no reason to doubt that an
accidental deviation in the size and form of the body, or in the
curvature and length of the proboscis, etc., far too slight to be
appreciated by us, might profit a bee or other insect, so that an
individual so characterised would be able to obtain its food more
quickly, and so have a better chance of living and leaving descendants.
Its descendants would probably inherit a tendency to a similar slight
deviation of structure. The tubes of the corollas of the common red and
incarnate clovers (Trifolium pratense and incarnatum) do not on a hasty
glance appear to differ in length; yet the hive-bee can easily suck
the nectar out of the incarnate clover, but not out of the common red
clover, which is visited by humble-bees alone; so that whole fields of
the red clover offer in vain an abundant supply of precious nectar to
the hive-bee. Thus it might be a great advantage to the hive-bee to have
a slightly longer or differently constructed proboscis. On the other
hand, I have found by experiment that the fertility of clover greatly
depends on bees visiting and moving parts of the corolla, so as to push
the pollen on to the stigmatic surface. Hence, again, if humble-bees
were to become rare in any country, it might be a great advantage to the
red clover to have a shorter or more deeply divided tube to its corolla,
so that the hive-bee could visit its flowers. Thus I can understand how
a flower and a bee might slowly become, either simultaneously or one
after the other, modified and adapted in the most perfect manner to each
other, by the continued preservation of individuals presenting mutual
and slightly favourable deviations of structure.

I am well aware that this doctrine of natural selection, exemplified in
the above imaginary instances, is open to the same objections which were
at first urged against Sir Charles Lyell's noble views on "the modern
changes of the earth, as illustrative of geology;" but we now very
seldom hear the action, for instance, of the coast-waves, called a
trifling and insignificant cause, when applied to the excavation of
gigantic valleys or to the formation of the longest lines of inland
cliffs. Natural selection can act only by the preservation and
accumulation of infinitesimally small inherited modifications, each
profitable to the preserved being; and as modern geology has almost
banished such views as the excavation of a great valley by a single
diluvial wave, so will natural selection, if it be a true principle,
banish the belief of the continued creation of new organic beings, or of
any great and sudden modification in their structure.

ON THE INTERCROSSING OF INDIVIDUALS.

I must here introduce a short digression. In the case of animals
and plants with separated sexes, it is of course obvious that two
individuals must always unite for each birth; but in the case of
hermaphrodites this is far from obvious. Nevertheless I am strongly
inclined to believe that with all hermaphrodites two individuals, either
occasionally or habitually, concur for the reproduction of their kind.
This view, I may add, was first suggested by Andrew Knight. We shall
presently see its importance; but I must here treat the subject with
extreme brevity, though I have the materials prepared for an ample
discussion. All vertebrate animals, all insects, and some other large
groups of animals, pair for each birth. Modern research has much
diminished the number of supposed hermaphrodites, and of real
hermaphrodites a large number pair; that is, two individuals regularly
unite for reproduction, which is all that concerns us. But still there
are many hermaphrodite animals which certainly do not habitually pair,
and a vast majority of plants are hermaphrodites. What reason, it may be
asked, is there for supposing in these cases that two individuals ever
concur in reproduction? As it is impossible here to enter on details, I
must trust to some general considerations alone.

In the first place, I have collected so large a body of facts, showing,
in accordance with the almost universal belief of breeders, that with
animals and plants a cross between different varieties, or between
individuals of the same variety but of another strain, gives vigour
and fertility to the offspring; and on the other hand, that CLOSE
interbreeding diminishes vigour and fertility; that these facts alone
incline me to believe that it is a general law of nature (utterly
ignorant though we be of the meaning of the law) that no organic being
self-fertilises itself for an eternity of generations; but that a
cross with another individual is occasionally--perhaps at very long
intervals--indispensable.

On the belief that this is a law of nature, we can, I think, understand
several large classes of facts, such as the following, which on any
other view are inexplicable. Every hybridizer knows how unfavourable
exposure to wet is to the fertilisation of a flower, yet what a
multitude of flowers have their anthers and stigmas fully exposed to
the weather! but if an occasional cross be indispensable, the fullest
freedom for the entrance of pollen from another individual will explain
this state of exposure, more especially as the plant's own anthers and
pistil generally stand so close together that self-fertilisation seems
almost inevitable. Many flowers, on the other hand, have their organs
of fructification closely enclosed, as in the great papilionaceous or
pea-family; but in several, perhaps in all, such flowers, there is a
very curious adaptation between the structure of the flower and the
manner in which bees suck the nectar; for, in doing this, they either
push the flower's own pollen on the stigma, or bring pollen from another
flower. So necessary are the visits of bees to papilionaceous flowers,
that I have found, by experiments published elsewhere, that their
fertility is greatly diminished if these visits be prevented. Now, it
is scarcely possible that bees should fly from flower to flower, and not
carry pollen from one to the other, to the great good, as I believe,
of the plant. Bees will act like a camel-hair pencil, and it is quite
sufficient just to touch the anthers of one flower and then the stigma
of another with the same brush to ensure fertilisation; but it must not
be supposed that bees would thus produce a multitude of hybrids between
distinct species; for if you bring on the same brush a plant's own
pollen and pollen from another species, the former will have such a
prepotent effect, that it will invariably and completely destroy, as has
been shown by Gartner, any influence from the foreign pollen.

When the stamens of a flower suddenly spring towards the pistil, or
slowly move one after the other towards it, the contrivance seems
adapted solely to ensure self-fertilisation; and no doubt it is useful
for this end: but, the agency of insects is often required to cause the
stamens to spring forward, as Kolreuter has shown to be the case with
the barberry; and curiously in this very genus, which seems to have a
special contrivance for self-fertilisation, it is well known that if
very closely-allied forms or varieties are planted near each other, it
is hardly possible to raise pure seedlings, so largely do they
naturally cross. In many other cases, far from there being any aids for
self-fertilisation, there are special contrivances, as I could show
from the writings of C. C. Sprengel and from my own observations, which
effectually prevent the stigma receiving pollen from its own flower: for
instance, in Lobelia fulgens, there is a really beautiful and
elaborate contrivance by which every one of the infinitely numerous
pollen-granules are swept out of the conjoined anthers of each flower,
before the stigma of that individual flower is ready to receive them;
and as this flower is never visited, at least in my garden, by insects,
it never sets a seed, though by placing pollen from one flower on the
stigma of another, I raised plenty of seedlings; and whilst another
species of Lobelia growing close by, which is visited by bees, seeds
freely. In very many other cases, though there be no special mechanical
contrivance to prevent the stigma of a flower receiving its own pollen,
yet, as C. C. Sprengel has shown, and as I can confirm, either the
anthers burst before the stigma is ready for fertilisation, or the
stigma is ready before the pollen of that flower is ready, so that these
plants have in fact separated sexes, and must habitually be crossed.
How strange are these facts! How strange that the pollen and stigmatic
surface of the same flower, though placed so close together, as if
for the very purpose of self-fertilisation, should in so many cases be
mutually useless to each other! How simply are these facts explained
on the view of an occasional cross with a distinct individual being
advantageous or indispensable!

If several varieties of the cabbage, radish, onion, and of some other
plants, be allowed to seed near each other, a large majority, as I
have found, of the seedlings thus raised will turn out mongrels: for
instance, I raised 233 seedling cabbages from some plants of different
varieties growing near each other, and of these only 78 were true to
their kind, and some even of these were not perfectly true. Yet the
pistil of each cabbage-flower is surrounded not only by its own six
stamens, but by those of the many other flowers on the same plant. How,
then, comes it that such a vast number of the seedlings are mongrelized?
I suspect that it must arise from the pollen of a distinct VARIETY
having a prepotent effect over a flower's own pollen; and that this is
part of the general law of good being derived from the intercrossing
of distinct individuals of the same species. When distinct SPECIES are
crossed the case is directly the reverse, for a plant's own pollen
is always prepotent over foreign pollen; but to this subject we shall
return in a future chapter.

In the case of a gigantic tree covered with innumerable flowers, it may
be objected that pollen could seldom be carried from tree to tree, and
at most only from flower to flower on the same tree, and that flowers
on the same tree can be considered as distinct individuals only in a
limited sense. I believe this objection to be valid, but that nature has
largely provided against it by giving to trees a strong tendency to bear
flowers with separated sexes. When the sexes are separated, although
the male and female flowers may be produced on the same tree, we can see
that pollen must be regularly carried from flower to flower; and this
will give a better chance of pollen being occasionally carried from tree
to tree. That trees belonging to all Orders have their sexes more often
separated than other plants, I find to be the case in this country; and
at my request Dr. Hooker tabulated the trees of New Zealand, and Dr. Asa
Gray those of the United States, and the result was as I anticipated. On
the other hand, Dr. Hooker has recently informed me that he finds that
the rule does not hold in Australia; and I have made these few remarks
on the sexes of trees simply to call attention to the subject.

Turning for a very brief space to animals: on the land there are some
hermaphrodites, as land-mollusca and earth-worms; but these all pair.
As yet I have not found a single case of a terrestrial animal which
fertilises itself. We can understand this remarkable fact, which
offers so strong a contrast with terrestrial plants, on the view of an
occasional cross being indispensable, by considering the medium in which
terrestrial animals live, and the nature of the fertilising element; for
we know of no means, analogous to the action of insects and of the wind
in the case of plants, by which an occasional cross could be effected
with terrestrial animals without the concurrence of two individuals.
Of aquatic animals, there are many self-fertilising hermaphrodites;
but here currents in the water offer an obvious means for an occasional
cross. And, as in the case of flowers, I have as yet failed, after
consultation with one of the highest authorities, namely, Professor
Huxley, to discover a single case of an hermaphrodite animal with the
organs of reproduction so perfectly enclosed within the body, that
access from without and the occasional influence of a distinct
individual can be shown to be physically impossible. Cirripedes long
appeared to me to present a case of very great difficulty under this
point of view; but I have been enabled, by a fortunate chance, elsewhere
to prove that two individuals, though both are self-fertilising
hermaphrodites, do sometimes cross.

It must have struck most naturalists as a strange anomaly that, in the
case of both animals and plants, species of the same family and even of
the same genus, though agreeing closely with each other in almost their
whole organisation, yet are not rarely, some of them hermaphrodites,
and some of them unisexual. But if, in fact, all hermaphrodites do
occasionally intercross with other individuals, the difference between
hermaphrodites and unisexual species, as far as function is concerned,
becomes very small.

From these several considerations and from the many special facts which
I have collected, but which I am not here able to give, I am strongly
inclined to suspect that, both in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, an
occasional intercross with a distinct individual is a law of nature. I
am well aware that there are, on this view, many cases of difficulty,
some of which I am trying to investigate. Finally then, we may conclude
that in many organic beings, a cross between two individuals is an
obvious necessity for each birth; in many others it occurs perhaps only
at long intervals; but in none, as I suspect, can self-fertilisation go
on for perpetuity.

CIRCUMSTANCES FAVOURABLE TO NATURAL SELECTION.

This is an extremely intricate subject. A large amount of inheritable
and diversified variability is favourable, but I believe mere individual
differences suffice for the work. A large number of individuals, by
giving a better chance for the appearance within any given period
of profitable variations, will compensate for a lesser amount of
variability in each individual, and is, I believe, an extremely
important element of success. Though nature grants vast periods of time
for the work of natural selection, she does not grant an indefinite
period; for as all organic beings are striving, it may be said, to seize
on each place in the economy of nature, if any one species does
not become modified and improved in a corresponding degree with its
competitors, it will soon be exterminated.

In man's methodical selection, a breeder selects for some definite
object, and free intercrossing will wholly stop his work. But when many
men, without intending to alter the breed, have a nearly common standard
of perfection, and all try to get and breed from the best animals,
much improvement and modification surely but slowly follow from this
unconscious process of selection, notwithstanding a large amount of
crossing with inferior animals. Thus it will be in nature; for within a
confined area, with some place in its polity not so perfectly occupied
as might be, natural selection will always tend to preserve all the
individuals varying in the right direction, though in different degrees,
so as better to fill up the unoccupied place. But if the area be large,
its several districts will almost certainly present different conditions
of life; and then if natural selection be modifying and improving a
species in the several districts, there will be intercrossing with the
other individuals of the same species on the confines of each. And in
this case the effects of intercrossing can hardly be counterbalanced by
natural selection always tending to modify all the individuals in each
district in exactly the same manner to the conditions of each; for in a
continuous area, the conditions will generally graduate away insensibly
from one district to another. The intercrossing will most affect those
animals which unite for each birth, which wander much, and which do
not breed at a very quick rate. Hence in animals of this nature, for
instance in birds, varieties will generally be confined to separated
countries; and this I believe to be the case. In hermaphrodite organisms
which cross only occasionally, and likewise in animals which unite for
each birth, but which wander little and which can increase at a very
rapid rate, a new and improved variety might be quickly formed on any
one spot, and might there maintain itself in a body, so that whatever
intercrossing took place would be chiefly between the individuals of
the same new variety. A local variety when once thus formed might
subsequently slowly spread to other districts. On the above principle,
nurserymen always prefer getting seed from a large body of plants of
the same variety, as the chance of intercrossing with other varieties is
thus lessened.

Even in the case of slow-breeding animals, which unite for each birth,
we must not overrate the effects of intercrosses in retarding natural
selection; for I can bring a considerable catalogue of facts, showing
that within the same area, varieties of the same animal can long remain
distinct, from haunting different stations, from breeding at slightly
different seasons, or from varieties of the same kind preferring to pair
together.

Intercrossing plays a very important part in nature in keeping the
individuals of the same species, or of the same variety, true and
uniform in character. It will obviously thus act far more efficiently
with those animals which unite for each birth; but I have already
attempted to show that we have reason to believe that occasional
intercrosses take place with all animals and with all plants. Even if
these take place only at long intervals, I am convinced that the
young thus produced will gain so much in vigour and fertility over the
offspring from long-continued self-fertilisation, that they will have a
better chance of surviving and propagating their kind; and thus, in the
long run, the influence of intercrosses, even at rare intervals, will be
great. If there exist organic beings which never intercross, uniformity
of character can be retained amongst them, as long as their conditions
of life remain the same, only through the principle of inheritance, and
through natural selection destroying any which depart from the
proper type; but if their conditions of life change and they undergo
modification, uniformity of character can be given to their modified
offspring, solely by natural selection preserving the same favourable
variations.

Isolation, also, is an important element in the process of natural
selection. In a confined or isolated area, if not very large, the
organic and inorganic conditions of life will generally be in a great
degree uniform; so that natural selection will tend to modify all the
individuals of a varying species throughout the area in the same
manner in relation to the same conditions. Intercrosses, also, with the
individuals of the same species, which otherwise would have inhabited
the surrounding and differently circumstanced districts, will be
prevented. But isolation probably acts more efficiently in checking the
immigration of better adapted organisms, after any physical change, such
as of climate or elevation of the land, etc.; and thus new places in the
natural economy of the country are left open for the old inhabitants
to struggle for, and become adapted to, through modifications in their
structure and constitution. Lastly, isolation, by checking immigration
and consequently competition, will give time for any new variety to
be slowly improved; and this may sometimes be of importance in the
production of new species. If, however, an isolated area be very small,
either from being surrounded by barriers, or from having very peculiar
physical conditions, the total number of the individuals supported on it
will necessarily be very small; and fewness of individuals will greatly
retard the production of new species through natural selection, by
decreasing the chance of the appearance of favourable variations.

If we turn to nature to test the truth of these remarks, and look at
any small isolated area, such as an oceanic island, although the total
number of the species inhabiting it, will be found to be small, as we
shall see in our chapter on geographical distribution; yet of these
species a very large proportion are endemic,--that is, have been
produced there, and nowhere else. Hence an oceanic island at first sight
seems to have been highly favourable for the production of new species.
But we may thus greatly deceive ourselves, for to ascertain whether a
small isolated area, or a large open area like a continent, has been
most favourable for the production of new organic forms, we ought to
make the comparison within equal times; and this we are incapable of
doing.

Although I do not doubt that isolation is of considerable importance
in the production of new species, on the whole I am inclined to believe
that largeness of area is of more importance, more especially in the
production of species, which will prove capable of enduring for a long
period, and of spreading widely. Throughout a great and open area, not
only will there be a better chance of favourable variations arising from
the large number of individuals of the same species there supported, but
the conditions of life are infinitely complex from the large number
of already existing species; and if some of these many species
become modified and improved, others will have to be improved in a
corresponding degree or they will be exterminated. Each new form, also,
as soon as it has been much improved, will be able to spread over the
open and continuous area, and will thus come into competition with many
others. Hence more new places will be formed, and the competition to
fill them will be more severe, on a large than on a small and
isolated area. Moreover, great areas, though now continuous, owing to
oscillations of level, will often have recently existed in a broken
condition, so that the good effects of isolation will generally, to a
certain extent, have concurred. Finally, I conclude that, although small
isolated areas probably have been in some respects highly favourable for
the production of new species, yet that the course of modification
will generally have been more rapid on large areas; and what is more
important, that the new forms produced on large areas, which already
have been victorious over many competitors, will be those that will
spread most widely, will give rise to most new varieties and species,
and will thus play an important part in the changing history of the
organic world.

We can, perhaps, on these views, understand some facts which will
be again alluded to in our chapter on geographical distribution; for
instance, that the productions of the smaller continent of Australia
have formerly yielded, and apparently are now yielding, before those
of the larger Europaeo-Asiatic area. Thus, also, it is that continental
productions have everywhere become so largely naturalised on islands. On
a small island, the race for life will have been less severe, and there
will have been less modification and less extermination. Hence, perhaps,
it comes that the flora of Madeira, according to Oswald Heer, resembles
the extinct tertiary flora of Europe. All fresh-water basins, taken
together, make a small area compared with that of the sea or of the
land; and, consequently, the competition between fresh-water productions
will have been less severe than elsewhere; new forms will have been
more slowly formed, and old forms more slowly exterminated. And it is
in fresh water that we find seven genera of Ganoid fishes, remnants of
a once preponderant order: and in fresh water we find some of the most
anomalous forms now known in the world, as the Ornithorhynchus and
Lepidosiren, which, like fossils, connect to a certain extent orders now
widely separated in the natural scale. These anomalous forms may almost
be called living fossils; they have endured to the present day, from
having inhabited a confined area, and from having thus been exposed to
less severe competition.

To sum up the circumstances favourable and unfavourable to natural
selection, as far as the extreme intricacy of the subject permits. I
conclude, looking to the future, that for terrestrial productions a
large continental area, which will probably undergo many oscillations
of level, and which consequently will exist for long periods in a broken
condition, will be the most favourable for the production of many new
forms of life, likely to endure long and to spread widely. For the area
will first have existed as a continent, and the inhabitants, at this
period numerous in individuals and kinds, will have been subjected
to very severe competition. When converted by subsidence into large
separate islands, there will still exist many individuals of the same
species on each island: intercrossing on the confines of the range of
each species will thus be checked: after physical changes of any kind,
immigration will be prevented, so that new places in the polity of
each island will have to be filled up by modifications of the old
inhabitants; and time will be allowed for the varieties in each to
become well modified and perfected. When, by renewed elevation, the
islands shall be re-converted into a continental area, there will again
be severe competition: the most favoured or improved varieties will be
enabled to spread: there will be much extinction of the less improved
forms, and the relative proportional numbers of the various inhabitants
of the renewed continent will again be changed; and again there will
be a fair field for natural selection to improve still further the
inhabitants, and thus produce new species.

That natural selection will always act with extreme slowness, I fully
admit. Its action depends on there being places in the polity of nature,
which can be better occupied by some of the inhabitants of the country
undergoing modification of some kind. The existence of such places will
often depend on physical changes, which are generally very slow, and
on the immigration of better adapted forms having been checked. But the
action of natural selection will probably still oftener depend on some
of the inhabitants becoming slowly modified; the mutual relations of
many of the other inhabitants being thus disturbed. Nothing can be
effected, unless favourable variations occur, and variation itself is
apparently always a very slow process. The process will often be greatly
retarded by free intercrossing. Many will exclaim that these several
causes are amply sufficient wholly to stop the action of natural
selection. I do not believe so. On the other hand, I do believe that
natural selection will always act very slowly, often only at long
intervals of time, and generally on only a very few of the inhabitants
of the same region at the same time. I further believe, that this very
slow, intermittent action of natural selection accords perfectly
well with what geology tells us of the rate and manner at which the
inhabitants of this world have changed.

Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much
by his powers of artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount
of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the coadaptations
between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical
conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by
nature's power of selection.

EXTINCTION.

This subject will be more fully discussed in our chapter on Geology; but
it must be here alluded to from being intimately connected with natural
selection. Natural selection acts solely through the preservation of
variations in some way advantageous, which consequently endure. But as
from the high geometrical powers of increase of all organic beings, each
area is already fully stocked with inhabitants, it follows that as
each selected and favoured form increases in number, so will the less
favoured forms decrease and become rare. Rarity, as geology tells us, is
the precursor to extinction. We can, also, see that any form represented
by few individuals will, during fluctuations in the seasons or in the
number of its enemies, run a good chance of utter extinction. But we may
go further than this; for as new forms are continually and slowly being
produced, unless we believe that the number of specific forms goes on
perpetually and almost indefinitely increasing, numbers inevitably must
become extinct. That the number of specific forms has not indefinitely
increased, geology shows us plainly; and indeed we can see reason why
they should not have thus increased, for the number of places in the
polity of nature is not indefinitely great,--not that we have any means
of knowing that any one region has as yet got its maximum of species.
Probably no region is as yet fully stocked, for at the Cape of Good
Hope, where more species of plants are crowded together than in any
other quarter of the world, some foreign plants have become naturalised,
without causing, as far as we know, the extinction of any natives.

Furthermore, the species which are most numerous in individuals will
have the best chance of producing within any given period favourable
variations. We have evidence of this, in the facts given in the second
chapter, showing that it is the common species which afford the greatest
number of recorded varieties, or incipient species. Hence, rare species
will be less quickly modified or improved within any given period, and
they will consequently be beaten in the race for life by the modified
descendants of the commoner species.

From these several considerations I think it inevitably follows, that as
new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection,
others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which
stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and
improvement, will naturally suffer most. And we have seen in the
chapter on the Struggle for Existence that it is the most closely-allied
forms,--varieties of the same species, and species of the same genus
or of related genera,--which, from having nearly the same structure,
constitution, and habits, generally come into the severest competition
with each other. Consequently, each new variety or species, during the
progress of its formation, will generally press hardest on its nearest
kindred, and tend to exterminate them. We see the same process of
extermination amongst our domesticated productions, through the
selection of improved forms by man. Many curious instances could
be given showing how quickly new breeds of cattle, sheep, and other
animals, and varieties of flowers, take the place of older and inferior
kinds. In Yorkshire, it is historically known that the ancient black
cattle were displaced by the long-horns, and that these "were swept away
by the short-horns" (I quote the words of an agricultural writer) "as if
by some murderous pestilence."

DIVERGENCE OF CHARACTER.

The principle, which I have designated by this term, is of high
importance on my theory, and explains, as I believe, several important
facts. In the first place, varieties, even strongly-marked ones, though
having somewhat of the character of species--as is shown by the hopeless
doubts in many cases how to rank them--yet certainly differ from
each other far less than do good and distinct species. Nevertheless,
according to my view, varieties are species in the process of formation,
or are, as I have called them, incipient species. How, then, does the
lesser difference between varieties become augmented into the greater
difference between species? That this does habitually happen, we must
infer from most of the innumerable species throughout nature presenting
well-marked differences; whereas varieties, the supposed prototypes and
parents of future well-marked species, present slight and ill-defined
differences. Mere chance, as we may call it, might cause one variety
to differ in some character from its parents, and the offspring of this
variety again to differ from its parent in the very same character and
in a greater degree; but this alone would never account for so habitual
and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same
species and species of the same genus.

As has always been my practice, let us seek light on this head from our
domestic productions. We shall here find something analogous. A fancier
is struck by a pigeon having a slightly shorter beak; another fancier is
struck by a pigeon having a rather longer beak; and on the acknowledged
principle that "fanciers do not and will not admire a medium standard,
but like extremes," they both go on (as has actually occurred with
tumbler-pigeons) choosing and breeding from birds with longer and longer
beaks, or with shorter and shorter beaks. Again, we may suppose that at
an early period one man preferred swifter horses; another stronger and
more bulky horses. The early differences would be very slight; in the
course of time, from the continued selection of swifter horses by some
breeders, and of stronger ones by others, the differences would become
greater, and would be noted as forming two sub-breeds; finally, after
the lapse of centuries, the sub-breeds would become converted into two
well-established and distinct breeds. As the differences slowly become
greater, the inferior animals with intermediate characters, being
neither very swift nor very strong, will have been neglected, and will
have tended to disappear. Here, then, we see in man's productions
the action of what may be called the principle of divergence, causing
differences, at first barely appreciable, steadily to increase, and
the breeds to diverge in character both from each other and from their
common parent.

But how, it may be asked, can any analogous principle apply in nature?
I believe it can and does apply most efficiently, from the simple
circumstance that the more diversified the descendants from any one
species become in structure, constitution, and habits, by so much will
they be better enabled to seize on many and widely diversified places in
the polity of nature, and so be enabled to increase in numbers.

We can clearly see this in the case of animals with simple habits. Take
the case of a carnivorous quadruped, of which the number that can be
supported in any country has long ago arrived at its full average. If
its natural powers of increase be allowed to act, it can succeed in
increasing (the country not undergoing any change in its conditions)
only by its varying descendants seizing on places at present occupied by
other animals: some of them, for instance, being enabled to feed on
new kinds of prey, either dead or alive; some inhabiting new stations,
climbing trees, frequenting water, and some perhaps becoming less
carnivorous. The more diversified in habits and structure the
descendants of our carnivorous animal became, the more places they would
be enabled to occupy. What applies to one animal will apply throughout
all time to all animals--that is, if they vary--for otherwise natural
selection can do nothing. So it will be with plants. It has been
experimentally proved, that if a plot of ground be sown with one species
of grass, and a similar plot be sown with several distinct genera of
grasses, a greater number of plants and a greater weight of dry herbage
can thus be raised. The same has been found to hold good when first
one variety and then several mixed varieties of wheat have been sown on
equal spaces of ground. Hence, if any one species of grass were to go
on varying, and those varieties were continually selected which differed
from each other in at all the same manner as distinct species and genera
of grasses differ from each other, a greater number of individual plants
of this species of grass, including its modified descendants, would
succeed in living on the same piece of ground. And we well know that
each species and each variety of grass is annually sowing almost
countless seeds; and thus, as it may be said, is striving its utmost to
increase its numbers. Consequently, I cannot doubt that in the course
of many thousands of generations, the most distinct varieties of any one
species of grass would always have the best chance of succeeding and
of increasing in numbers, and thus of supplanting the less distinct
varieties; and varieties, when rendered very distinct from each other,
take the rank of species.

The truth of the principle, that the greatest amount of life can be
supported by great diversification of structure, is seen under many
natural circumstances. In an extremely small area, especially if freely
open to immigration, and where the contest between individual and
individual must be severe, we always find great diversity in its
inhabitants. For instance, I found that a piece of turf, three feet by
four in size, which had been exposed for many years to exactly the same
conditions, supported twenty species of plants, and these belonged to
eighteen genera and to eight orders, which shows how much these plants
differed from each other. So it is with the plants and insects on small
and uniform islets; and so in small ponds of fresh water. Farmers find
that they can raise most food by a rotation of plants belonging to the
most different orders: nature follows what may be called a simultaneous
rotation. Most of the animals and plants which live close round any
small piece of ground, could live on it (supposing it not to be in
any way peculiar in its nature), and may be said to be striving to the
utmost to live there; but, it is seen, that where they come into the
closest competition with each other, the advantages of diversification
of structure, with the accompanying differences of habit and
constitution, determine that the inhabitants, which thus jostle each
other most closely, shall, as a general rule, belong to what we call
different genera and orders.

The same principle is seen in the naturalisation of plants through man's
agency in foreign lands. It might have been expected that the plants
which have succeeded in becoming naturalised in any land would generally
have been closely allied to the indigenes; for these are commonly looked
at as specially created and adapted for their own country. It might,
also, perhaps have been expected that naturalised plants would have
belonged to a few groups more especially adapted to certain stations in
their new homes. But the case is very different; and Alph. De Candolle
has well remarked in his great and admirable work, that floras gain by
naturalisation, proportionally with the number of the native genera and
species, far more in new genera than in new species. To give a single
instance: in the last edition of Dr. Asa Gray's 'Manual of the Flora of
the Northern United States,' 260 naturalised plants are enumerated, and
these belong to 162 genera. We thus see that these naturalised plants
are of a highly diversified nature. They differ, moreover, to a large
extent from the indigenes, for out of the 162 genera, no less than 100
genera are not there indigenous, and thus a large proportional addition
is made to the genera of these States.

By considering the nature of the plants or animals which have struggled
successfully with the indigenes of any country, and have there become
naturalised, we can gain some crude idea in what manner some of the
natives would have had to be modified, in order to have gained an
advantage over the other natives; and we may, I think, at least safely
infer that diversification of structure, amounting to new generic
differences, would have been profitable to them.

The advantage of diversification in the inhabitants of the same region
is, in fact, the same as that of the physiological division of labour in
the organs of the same individual body--a subject so well elucidated by
Milne Edwards. No physiologist doubts that a stomach by being adapted to
digest vegetable matter alone, or flesh alone, draws most nutriment from
these substances. So in the general economy of any land, the more widely
and perfectly the animals and plants are diversified for different
habits of life, so will a greater number of individuals be capable of
there supporting themselves. A set of animals, with their organisation
but little diversified, could hardly compete with a set more perfectly
diversified in structure. It may be doubted, for instance, whether
the Australian marsupials, which are divided into groups differing but
little from each other, and feebly representing, as Mr. Waterhouse and
others have remarked, our carnivorous, ruminant, and rodent mammals,
could successfully compete with these well-pronounced orders. In the
Australian mammals, we see the process of diversification in an early
and incomplete stage of development. After the foregoing discussion,
which ought to have been much amplified, we may, I think, assume that
the modified descendants of any one species will succeed by so much
the better as they become more diversified in structure, and are thus
enabled to encroach on places occupied by other beings. Now let us see
how this principle of great benefit being derived from divergence of
character, combined with the principles of natural selection and of
extinction, will tend to act.

The accompanying diagram will aid us in understanding this rather
perplexing subject. Let A to L represent the species of a genus large
in its own country; these species are supposed to resemble each other
in unequal degrees, as is so generally the case in nature, and as is
represented in the diagram by the letters standing at unequal distances.
I have said a large genus, because we have seen in the second chapter,
that on an average more of the species of large genera vary than of
small genera; and the varying species of the large genera present a
greater number of varieties. We have, also, seen that the species, which
are the commonest and the most widely-diffused, vary more than rare
species with restricted ranges. Let (A) be a common, widely-diffused,
and varying species, belonging to a genus large in its own country. The
little fan of diverging dotted lines of unequal lengths proceeding from
(A), may represent its varying offspring. The variations are supposed
to be extremely slight, but of the most diversified nature; they are not
supposed all to appear simultaneously, but often after long intervals of
time; nor are they all supposed to endure for equal periods. Only
those variations which are in some way profitable will be preserved or
naturally selected. And here the importance of the principle of benefit
being derived from divergence of character comes in; for this
will generally lead to the most different or divergent variations
(represented by the outer dotted lines) being preserved and accumulated
by natural selection. When a dotted line reaches one of the horizontal
lines, and is there marked by a small numbered letter, a sufficient
amount of variation is supposed to have been accumulated to have formed
a fairly well-marked variety, such as would be thought worthy of record
in a systematic work.

The intervals between the horizontal lines in the diagram, may represent
each a thousand generations; but it would have been better if each had
represented ten thousand generations. After a thousand generations,
species (A) is supposed to have produced two fairly well-marked
varieties, namely a1 and m1. These two varieties will generally continue
to be exposed to the same conditions which made their parents variable,
and the tendency to variability is in itself hereditary, consequently
they will tend to vary, and generally to vary in nearly the same manner
as their parents varied. Moreover, these two varieties, being only
slightly modified forms, will tend to inherit those advantages which
made their common parent (A) more numerous than most of the other
inhabitants of the same country; they will likewise partake of those
more general advantages which made the genus to which the parent-species
belonged, a large genus in its own country. And these circumstances we
know to be favourable to the production of new varieties.

If, then, these two varieties be variable, the most divergent of
their variations will generally be preserved during the next thousand
generations. And after this interval, variety a1 is supposed in the
diagram to have produced variety a2, which will, owing to the principle
of divergence, differ more from (A) than did variety a1. Variety m1 is
supposed to have produced two varieties, namely m2 and s2, differing
from each other, and more considerably from their common parent (A). We
may continue the process by similar steps for any length of time; some
of the varieties, after each thousand generations, producing only
a single variety, but in a more and more modified condition, some
producing two or three varieties, and some failing to produce any. Thus
the varieties or modified descendants, proceeding from the common
parent (A), will generally go on increasing in number and diverging
in character. In the diagram the process is represented up to the
ten-thousandth generation, and under a condensed and simplified form up
to the fourteen-thousandth generation.

But I must here remark that I do not suppose that the process ever goes
on so regularly as is represented in the diagram, though in itself
made somewhat irregular. I am far from thinking that the most divergent
varieties will invariably prevail and multiply: a medium form may
often long endure, and may or may not produce more than one modified
descendant; for natural selection will always act according to the
nature of the places which are either unoccupied or not perfectly
occupied by other beings; and this will depend on infinitely complex
relations. But as a general rule, the more diversified in structure the
descendants from any one species can be rendered, the more places they
will be enabled to seize on, and the more their modified progeny will
be increased. In our diagram the line of succession is broken at regular
intervals by small numbered letters marking the successive forms which
have become sufficiently distinct to be recorded as varieties. But
these breaks are imaginary, and might have been inserted anywhere, after
intervals long enough to have allowed the accumulation of a considerable
amount of divergent variation.

As all the modified descendants from a common and widely-diffused
species, belonging to a large genus, will tend to partake of the
same advantages which made their parent successful in life, they will
generally go on multiplying in number as well as diverging in character:
this is represented in the diagram by the several divergent branches
proceeding from (A). The modified offspring from the later and more
highly improved branches in the lines of descent, will, it is probable,
often take the place of, and so destroy, the earlier and less improved
branches: this is represented in the diagram by some of the lower
branches not reaching to the upper horizontal lines. In some cases I do
not doubt that the process of modification will be confined to a
single line of descent, and the number of the descendants will not be
increased; although the amount of divergent modification may have been
increased in the successive generations. This case would be represented
in the diagram, if all the lines proceeding from (A) were removed,
excepting that from a1 to a10. In the same way, for instance, the
English race-horse and English pointer have apparently both gone on
slowly diverging in character from their original stocks, without either
having given off any fresh branches or races.

After ten thousand generations, species (A) is supposed to have produced
three forms, a10, f10, and m10, which, from having diverged in character
during the successive generations, will have come to differ largely, but
perhaps unequally, from each other and from their common parent. If we
suppose the amount of change between each horizontal line in our diagram
to be excessively small, these three forms may still be only well-marked
varieties; or they may have arrived at the doubtful category of
sub-species; but we have only to suppose the steps in the process of
modification to be more numerous or greater in amount, to convert these
three forms into well-defined species: thus the diagram illustrates
the steps by which the small differences distinguishing varieties
are increased into the larger differences distinguishing species. By
continuing the same process for a greater number of generations (as
shown in the diagram in a condensed and simplified manner), we get eight
species, marked by the letters between a14 and m14, all descended from
(A). Thus, as I believe, species are multiplied and genera are formed.

In a large genus it is probable that more than one species would vary.
In the diagram I have assumed that a second species (I) has produced, by
analogous steps, after ten thousand generations, either two well-marked
varieties (w10 and z10) or two species, according to the amount of
change supposed to be represented between the horizontal lines. After
fourteen thousand generations, six new species, marked by the letters
n14 to z14, are supposed to have been produced. In each genus, the
species, which are already extremely different in character, will
generally tend to produce the greatest number of modified descendants;
for these will have the best chance of filling new and widely different
places in the polity of nature: hence in the diagram I have chosen the
extreme species (A), and the nearly extreme species (I), as those which
have largely varied, and have given rise to new varieties and species.
The other nine species (marked by capital letters) of our original
genus, may for a long period continue transmitting unaltered
descendants; and this is shown in the diagram by the dotted lines not
prolonged far upwards from want of space.

But during the process of modification, represented in the diagram,
another of our principles, namely that of extinction, will have played
an important part. As in each fully stocked country natural selection
necessarily acts by the selected form having some advantage in the
struggle for life over other forms, there will be a constant tendency in
the improved descendants of any one species to supplant and exterminate
in each stage of descent their predecessors and their original parent.
For it should be remembered that the competition will generally be most
severe between those forms which are most nearly related to each other
in habits, constitution, and structure. Hence all the intermediate forms
between the earlier and later states, that is between the less and more
improved state of a species, as well as the original parent-species
itself, will generally tend to become extinct. So it probably will be
with many whole collateral lines of descent, which will be conquered by
later and improved lines of descent. If, however, the modified offspring
of a species get into some distinct country, or become quickly adapted
to some quite new station, in which child and parent do not come into
competition, both may continue to exist.

If then our diagram be assumed to represent a considerable amount of
modification, species (A) and all the earlier varieties will have become
extinct, having been replaced by eight new species (a14 to m14); and (I)
will have been replaced by six (n14 to z14) new species.

But we may go further than this. The original species of our genus were
supposed to resemble each other in unequal degrees, as is so generally
the case in nature; species (A) being more nearly related to B, C, and
D, than to the other species; and species (I) more to G, H, K, L, than
to the others. These two species (A) and (I), were also supposed to be
very common and widely diffused species, so that they must originally
have had some advantage over most of the other species of the
genus. Their modified descendants, fourteen in number at the
fourteen-thousandth generation, will probably have inherited some of
the same advantages: they have also been modified and improved in
a diversified manner at each stage of descent, so as to have become
adapted to many related places in the natural economy of their country.
It seems, therefore, to me extremely probable that they will have taken
the places of, and thus exterminated, not only their parents (A) and
(I), but likewise some of the original species which were most nearly
related to their parents. Hence very few of the original species will
have transmitted offspring to the fourteen-thousandth generation. We may
suppose that only one (F), of the two species which were least closely
related to the other nine original species, has transmitted descendants
to this late stage of descent.

The new species in our diagram descended from the original eleven
species, will now be fifteen in number. Owing to the divergent tendency
of natural selection, the extreme amount of difference in character
between species a14 and z14 will be much greater than that between
the most different of the original eleven species. The new species,
moreover, will be allied to each other in a widely different manner. Of
the eight descendants from (A) the three marked a14, q14, p14, will be
nearly related from having recently branched off from a10; b14 and
f14, from having diverged at an earlier period from a5, will be in some
degree distinct from the three first-named species; and lastly, o14,
e14, and m14, will be nearly related one to the other, but from having
diverged at the first commencement of the process of modification, will
be widely different from the other five species, and may constitute a
sub-genus or even a distinct genus.

The six descendants from (I) will form two sub-genera or even genera.
But as the original species (I) differed largely from (A), standing
nearly at the extreme points of the original genus, the six descendants
from (I) will, owing to inheritance, differ considerably from the eight
descendants from (A); the two groups, moreover, are supposed to have
gone on diverging in different directions. The intermediate species,
also (and this is a very important consideration), which connected the
original species (A) and (I), have all become, excepting (F), extinct,
and have left no descendants. Hence the six new species descended from
(I), and the eight descended from (A), will have to be ranked as very
distinct genera, or even as distinct sub-families.

Thus it is, as I believe, that two or more genera are produced by
descent, with modification, from two or more species of the same genus.
And the two or more parent-species are supposed to have descended from
some one species of an earlier genus. In our diagram, this is indicated
by the broken lines, beneath the capital letters, converging in
sub-branches downwards towards a single point; this point representing a
single species, the supposed single parent of our several new sub-genera
and genera.

It is worth while to reflect for a moment on the character of the new
species F14, which is supposed not to have diverged much in character,
but to have retained the form of (F), either unaltered or altered only
in a slight degree. In this case, its affinities to the other fourteen
new species will be of a curious and circuitous nature. Having descended
from a form which stood between the two parent-species (A) and (I),
now supposed to be extinct and unknown, it will be in some degree
intermediate in character between the two groups descended from these
species. But as these two groups have gone on diverging in character
from the type of their parents, the new species (F14) will not be
directly intermediate between them, but rather between types of the two
groups; and every naturalist will be able to bring some such case before
his mind.

In the diagram, each horizontal line has hitherto been supposed to
represent a thousand generations, but each may represent a million or
hundred million generations, and likewise a section of the successive
strata of the earth's crust including extinct remains. We shall, when we
come to our chapter on Geology, have to refer again to this subject,
and I think we shall then see that the diagram throws light on the
affinities of extinct beings, which, though generally belonging to the
same orders, or families, or genera, with those now living, yet are
often, in some degree, intermediate in character between existing
groups; and we can understand this fact, for the extinct species lived
at very ancient epochs when the branching lines of descent had diverged
less.

I see no reason to limit the process of modification, as now explained,
to the formation of genera alone. If, in our diagram, we suppose the
amount of change represented by each successive group of diverging
dotted lines to be very great, the forms marked a14 to p14, those marked
b14 and f14, and those marked o14 to m14, will form three very distinct
genera. We shall also have two very distinct genera descended from
(I) and as these latter two genera, both from continued divergence of
character and from inheritance from a different parent, will differ
widely from the three genera descended from (A), the two little groups
of genera will form two distinct families, or even orders, according to
the amount of divergent modification supposed to be represented in the
diagram. And the two new families, or orders, will have descended from
two species of the original genus; and these two species are supposed
to have descended from one species of a still more ancient and unknown
genus.

We have seen that in each country it is the species of the larger genera
which oftenest present varieties or incipient species. This, indeed,
might have been expected; for as natural selection acts through one form
having some advantage over other forms in the struggle for existence,
it will chiefly act on those which already have some advantage; and
the largeness of any group shows that its species have inherited from
a common ancestor some advantage in common. Hence, the struggle for the
production of new and modified descendants, will mainly lie between the
larger groups, which are all trying to increase in number. One large
group will slowly conquer another large group, reduce its numbers, and
thus lessen its chance of further variation and improvement. Within the
same large group, the later and more highly perfected sub-groups, from
branching out and seizing on many new places in the polity of Nature,
will constantly tend to supplant and destroy the earlier and less
improved sub-groups. Small and broken groups and sub-groups will finally
tend to disappear. Looking to the future, we can predict that the groups
of organic beings which are now large and triumphant, and which are
least broken up, that is, which as yet have suffered least extinction,
will for a long period continue to increase. But which groups will
ultimately prevail, no man can predict; for we well know that many
groups, formerly most extensively developed, have now become extinct.
Looking still more remotely to the future, we may predict that, owing to
the continued and steady increase of the larger groups, a multitude
of smaller groups will become utterly extinct, and leave no modified
descendants; and consequently that of the species living at any one
period, extremely few will transmit descendants to a remote futurity. I
shall have to return to this subject in the chapter on Classification,
but I may add that on this view of extremely few of the more ancient
species having transmitted descendants, and on the view of all the
descendants of the same species making a class, we can understand how
it is that there exist but very few classes in each main division of
the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Although extremely few of the most
ancient species may now have living and modified descendants, yet at the
most remote geological period, the earth may have been as well peopled
with many species of many genera, families, orders, and classes, as at
the present day.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER.

If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life,
organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organisation,
and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high
geometrical powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or
year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed;
then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all
organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence,
causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to
be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact
if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being's own welfare, in
the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if
variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals
thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the
struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they
will tend to produce offspring similarly characterised. This principle
of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural
Selection. Natural selection, on the principle of qualities being
inherited at corresponding ages, can modify the egg, seed, or young, as
easily as the adult. Amongst many animals, sexual selection will give
its aid to ordinary selection, by assuring to the most vigorous and best
adapted males the greatest number of offspring. Sexual selection will
also give characters useful to the males alone, in their struggles with
other males.

Whether natural selection has really thus acted in nature, in modifying
and adapting the various forms of life to their several conditions
and stations, must be judged of by the general tenour and balance of
evidence given in the following chapters. But we already see how it
entails extinction; and how largely extinction has acted in the world's
history, geology plainly declares. Natural selection, also, leads to
divergence of character; for more living beings can be supported on the
same area the more they diverge in structure, habits, and constitution,
of which we see proof by looking at the inhabitants of any small spot
or at naturalised productions. Therefore during the modification of the
descendants of any one species, and during the incessant struggle of all
species to increase in numbers, the more diversified these descendants
become, the better will be their chance of succeeding in the battle of
life. Thus the small differences distinguishing varieties of the same
species, will steadily tend to increase till they come to equal the
greater differences between species of the same genus, or even of
distinct genera.

We have seen that it is the common, the widely-diffused, and
widely-ranging species, belonging to the larger genera, which vary
most; and these will tend to transmit to their modified offspring
that superiority which now makes them dominant in their own countries.
Natural selection, as has just been remarked, leads to divergence of
character and to much extinction of the less improved and intermediate
forms of life. On these principles, I believe, the nature of the
affinities of all organic beings may be explained. It is a truly
wonderful fact--the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from
familiarity--that all animals and all plants throughout all time and
space should be related to each other in group subordinate to group,
in the manner which we everywhere behold--namely, varieties of the same
species most closely related together, species of the same genus less
closely and unequally related together, forming sections and sub-genera,
species of distinct genera much less closely related, and genera
related in different degrees, forming sub-families, families, orders,
sub-classes, and classes. The several subordinate groups in any class
cannot be ranked in a single file, but seem rather to be clustered
round points, and these round other points, and so on in almost endless
cycles. On the view that each species has been independently created, I
can see no explanation of this great fact in the classification of all
organic beings; but, to the best of my judgment, it is explained through
inheritance and the complex action of natural selection, entailing
extinction and divergence of character, as we have seen illustrated in
the diagram.

The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been
represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the
truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and
those produced during each former year may represent the long succession
of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs
have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the
surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups
of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great battle
for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser
and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was small,
budding twigs; and this connexion of the former and present buds by
ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct
and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs
which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now
grown into great branches, yet survive and bear all the other branches;
so with the species which lived during long-past geological periods,
very few now have living and modified descendants. From the first growth
of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and
these lost branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders,
families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which
are known to us only from having been found in a fossil state. As we
here and there see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low
down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is
still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the
Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by
its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been
saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As
buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch
out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I
believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its
dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface
with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.




5. LAWS OF VARIATION.

Effects of external conditions. Use and disuse, combined with natural
selection; organs of flight and of vision. Acclimatisation. Correlation
of growth. Compensation and economy of growth. False correlations.
Multiple, rudimentary, and lowly organised structures variable. Parts
developed in an unusual manner are highly variable: specific characters
more variable than generic: secondary sexual characters variable.
Species of the same genus vary in an analogous manner. Reversions to
long lost characters. Summary.

I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if the variations--so common and
multiform in organic beings under domestication, and in a lesser degree
in those in a state of nature--had been due to chance. This, of course,
is a wholly incorrect expression, but it serves to acknowledge plainly
our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation. Some authors
believe it to be as much the function of the reproductive system to
produce individual differences, or very slight deviations of structure,
as to make the child like its parents. But the much greater variability,
as well as the greater frequency of monstrosities, under domestication
or cultivation, than under nature, leads me to believe that deviations
of structure are in some way due to the nature of the conditions of
life, to which the parents and their more remote ancestors have been
exposed during several generations. I have remarked in the first
chapter--but a long catalogue of facts which cannot be here given would
be necessary to show the truth of the remark--that the reproductive
system is eminently susceptible to changes in the conditions of life;
and to this system being functionally disturbed in the parents, I
chiefly attribute the varying or plastic condition of the offspring. The
male and female sexual elements seem to be affected before that union
takes place which is to form a new being. In the case of "sporting"
plants, the bud, which in its earliest condition does not apparently
differ essentially from an ovule, is alone affected. But why, because
the reproductive system is disturbed, this or that part should vary more
or less, we are profoundly ignorant. Nevertheless, we can here and there
dimly catch a faint ray of light, and we may feel sure that there must
be some cause for each deviation of structure, however slight.

How much direct effect difference of climate, food, etc., produces on
any being is extremely doubtful. My impression is, that the effect is
extremely small in the case of animals, but perhaps rather more in that
of plants. We may, at least, safely conclude that such influences cannot
have produced the many striking and complex co-adaptations of structure
between one organic being and another, which we see everywhere
throughout nature. Some little influence may be attributed to climate,
food, etc.: thus, E. Forbes speaks confidently that shells at their
southern limit, and when living in shallow water, are more brightly
coloured than those of the same species further north or from greater
depths. Gould believes that birds of the same species are more brightly
coloured under a clear atmosphere, than when living on islands or near
the coast. So with insects, Wollaston is convinced that residence near
the sea affects their colours. Moquin-Tandon gives a list of plants
which when growing near the sea-shore have their leaves in some degree
fleshy, though not elsewhere fleshy. Several other such cases could be
given.

The fact of varieties of one species, when they range into the zone of
habitation of other species, often acquiring in a very slight degree
some of the characters of such species, accords with our view that
species of all kinds are only well-marked and permanent varieties. Thus
the species of shells which are confined to tropical and shallow seas
are generally brighter-coloured than those confined to cold and deeper
seas. The birds which are confined to continents are, according to
Mr. Gould, brighter-coloured than those of islands. The insect-species
confined to sea-coasts, as every collector knows, are often brassy or
lurid. Plants which live exclusively on the sea-side are very apt to
have fleshy leaves. He who believes in the creation of each species,
will have to say that this shell, for instance, was created with bright
colours for a warm sea; but that this other shell became bright-coloured
by variation when it ranged into warmer or shallower waters.

When a variation is of the slightest use to a being, we cannot tell how
much of it to attribute to the accumulative action of natural selection,
and how much to the conditions of life. Thus, it is well known to
furriers that animals of the same species have thicker and better fur
the more severe the climate is under which they have lived; but who
can tell how much of this difference may be due to the warmest-clad
individuals having been favoured and preserved during many generations,
and how much to the direct action of the severe climate? for it would
appear that climate has some direct action on the hair of our domestic
quadrupeds.

Instances could be given of the same variety being produced under
conditions of life as different as can well be conceived; and, on the
other hand, of different varieties being produced from the same species
under the same conditions. Such facts show how indirectly the conditions
of life must act. Again, innumerable instances are known to every
naturalist of species keeping true, or not varying at all, although
living under the most opposite climates. Such considerations as these
incline me to lay very little weight on the direct action of the
conditions of life. Indirectly, as already remarked, they seem to play
an important part in affecting the reproductive system, and in thus
inducing variability; and natural selection will then accumulate
all profitable variations, however slight, until they become plainly
developed and appreciable by us.

EFFECTS OF USE AND DISUSE.

From the facts alluded to in the first chapter, I think there can be
little doubt that use in our domestic animals strengthens and enlarges
certain parts, and disuse diminishes them; and that such modifications
are inherited. Under free nature, we can have no standard of comparison,
by which to judge of the effects of long-continued use or disuse, for we
know not the parent-forms; but many animals have structures which can
be explained by the effects of disuse. As Professor Owen has remarked,
there is no greater anomaly in nature than a bird that cannot fly; yet
there are several in this state. The logger-headed duck of South America
can only flap along the surface of the water, and has its wings in
nearly the same condition as the domestic Aylesbury duck. As the larger
ground-feeding birds seldom take flight except to escape danger, I
believe that the nearly wingless condition of several birds, which now
inhabit or have lately inhabited several oceanic islands, tenanted by
no beast of prey, has been caused by disuse. The ostrich indeed inhabits
continents and is exposed to danger from which it cannot escape by
flight, but by kicking it can defend itself from enemies, as well as any
of the smaller quadrupeds. We may imagine that the early progenitor
of the ostrich had habits like those of a bustard, and that as natural
selection increased in successive generations the size and weight of
its body, its legs were used more, and its wings less, until they became
incapable of flight.

Kirby has remarked (and I have observed the same fact) that the anterior
tarsi, or feet, of many male dung-feeding beetles are very often broken
off; he examined seventeen specimens in his own collection, and not one
had even a relic left. In the Onites apelles the tarsi are so habitually
lost, that the insect has been described as not having them. In some
other genera they are present, but in a rudimentary condition. In the
Ateuchus or sacred beetle of the Egyptians, they are totally deficient.
There is not sufficient evidence to induce us to believe that
mutilations are ever inherited; and I should prefer explaining the
entire absence of the anterior tarsi in Ateuchus, and their rudimentary
condition in some other genera, by the long-continued effects of disuse
in their progenitors; for as the tarsi are almost always lost in many
dung-feeding beetles, they must be lost early in life, and therefore
cannot be much used by these insects.

In some cases we might easily put down to disuse modifications of
structure which are wholly, or mainly, due to natural selection. Mr.
Wollaston has discovered the remarkable fact that 200 beetles, out of
the 550 species inhabiting Madeira, are so far deficient in wings that
they cannot fly; and that of the twenty-nine endemic genera, no less
than twenty-three genera have all their species in this condition!
Several facts, namely, that beetles in many parts of the world are very
frequently blown to sea and perish; that the beetles in Madeira, as
observed by Mr. Wollaston, lie much concealed, until the wind lulls and
the sun shines; that the proportion of wingless beetles is larger on
the exposed Dezertas than in Madeira itself; and especially the
extraordinary fact, so strongly insisted on by Mr. Wollaston, of the
almost entire absence of certain large groups of beetles, elsewhere
excessively numerous, and which groups have habits of life almost
necessitating frequent flight;--these several considerations have made
me believe that the wingless condition of so many Madeira beetles is
mainly due to the action of natural selection, but combined probably
with disuse. For during thousands of successive generations each
individual beetle which flew least, either from its wings having been
ever so little less perfectly developed or from indolent habit, will
have had the best chance of surviving from not being blown out to sea;
and, on the other hand, those beetles which most readily took to flight
will oftenest have been blown to sea and thus have been destroyed.

The insects in Madeira which are not ground-feeders, and which, as the
flower-feeding coleoptera and lepidoptera, must habitually use their
wings to gain their subsistence, have, as Mr. Wollaston suspects, their
wings not at all reduced, but even enlarged. This is quite compatible
with the action of natural selection. For when a new insect first
arrived on the island, the tendency of natural selection to enlarge
or to reduce the wings, would depend on whether a greater number of
individuals were saved by successfully battling with the winds, or
by giving up the attempt and rarely or never flying. As with mariners
shipwrecked near a coast, it would have been better for the good
swimmers if they had been able to swim still further, whereas it would
have been better for the bad swimmers if they had not been able to swim
at all and had stuck to the wreck.

The eyes of moles and of some burrowing rodents are rudimentary in size,
and in some cases are quite covered up by skin and fur. This state of
the eyes is probably due to gradual reduction from disuse, but aided
perhaps by natural selection. In South America, a burrowing rodent, the
tuco-tuco, or Ctenomys, is even more subterranean in its habits than the
mole; and I was assured by a Spaniard, who had often caught them, that
they were frequently blind; one which I kept alive was certainly in
this condition, the cause, as appeared on dissection, having been
inflammation of the nictitating membrane. As frequent inflammation of
the eyes must be injurious to any animal, and as eyes are certainly not
indispensable to animals with subterranean habits, a reduction in their
size with the adhesion of the eyelids and growth of fur over them,
might in such case be an advantage; and if so, natural selection would
constantly aid the effects of disuse.

It is well known that several animals, belonging to the most different
classes, which inhabit the caves of Styria and of Kentucky, are blind.
In some of the crabs the foot-stalk for the eye remains, though the eye
is gone; the stand for the telescope is there, though the telescope
with its glasses has been lost. As it is difficult to imagine that
eyes, though useless, could be in any way injurious to animals living in
darkness, I attribute their loss wholly to disuse. In one of the
blind animals, namely, the cave-rat, the eyes are of immense size; and
Professor Silliman thought that it regained, after living some days in
the light, some slight power of vision. In the same manner as in Madeira
the wings of some of the insects have been enlarged, and the wings of
others have been reduced by natural selection aided by use and disuse,
so in the case of the cave-rat natural selection seems to have struggled
with the loss of light and to have increased the size of the eyes;
whereas with all the other inhabitants of the caves, disuse by itself
seems to have done its work.

It is difficult to imagine conditions of life more similar than deep
limestone caverns under a nearly similar climate; so that on the
common view of the blind animals having been separately created for the
American and European caverns, close similarity in their organisation
and affinities might have been expected; but, as Schiodte and others
have remarked, this is not the case, and the cave-insects of the two
continents are not more closely allied than might have been anticipated
from the general resemblance of the other inhabitants of North America
and Europe. On my view we must suppose that American animals, having
ordinary powers of vision, slowly migrated by successive generations
from the outer world into the deeper and deeper recesses of the Kentucky
caves, as did European animals into the caves of Europe. We have some
evidence of this gradation of habit; for, as Schiodte remarks, "animals
not far remote from ordinary forms, prepare the transition from light to
darkness. Next follow those that are constructed for twilight; and, last
of all, those destined for total darkness." By the time that an animal
had reached, after numberless generations, the deepest recesses, disuse
will on this view have more or less perfectly obliterated its eyes, and
natural selection will often have effected other changes, such as an
increase in the length of the antennae or palpi, as a compensation for
blindness. Notwithstanding such modifications, we might expect still to
see in the cave-animals of America, affinities to the other inhabitants
of that continent, and in those of Europe, to the inhabitants of the
European continent. And this is the case with some of the American
cave-animals, as I hear from Professor Dana; and some of the European
cave-insects are very closely allied to those of the surrounding
country. It would be most difficult to give any rational explanation of
the affinities of the blind cave-animals to the other inhabitants of the
two continents on the ordinary view of their independent creation. That
several of the inhabitants of the caves of the Old and New Worlds should
be closely related, we might expect from the well-known relationship of
most of their other productions. Far from feeling any surprise that some
of the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as Agassiz has remarked
in regard to the blind fish, the Amblyopsis, and as is the case with
the blind Proteus with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am only
surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved,
owing to the less severe competition to which the inhabitants of these
dark abodes will probably have been exposed.

ACCLIMATISATION.

Habit is hereditary with plants, as in the period of flowering, in the
amount of rain requisite for seeds to germinate, in the time of sleep,
etc., and this leads me to say a few words on acclimatisation. As it is
extremely common for species of the same genus to inhabit very hot and
very cold countries, and as I believe that all the species of the same
genus have descended from a single parent, if this view be correct,
acclimatisation must be readily effected during long-continued descent.
It is notorious that each species is adapted to the climate of its own
home: species from an arctic or even from a temperate region cannot
endure a tropical climate, or conversely. So again, many succulent
plants cannot endure a damp climate. But the degree of adaptation of
species to the climates under which they live is often overrated. We
may infer this from our frequent inability to predict whether or not an
imported plant will endure our climate, and from the number of plants
and animals brought from warmer countries which here enjoy good health.
We have reason to believe that species in a state of nature are limited
in their ranges by the competition of other organic beings quite as much
as, or more than, by adaptation to particular climates. But whether or
not the adaptation be generally very close, we have evidence, in
the case of some few plants, of their becoming, to a certain
extent, naturally habituated to different temperatures, or becoming
acclimatised: thus the pines and rhododendrons, raised from seed
collected by Dr. Hooker from trees growing at different heights on the
Himalaya, were found in this country to possess different constitutional
powers of resisting cold. Mr. Thwaites informs me that he has observed
similar facts in Ceylon, and analogous observations have been made by
Mr. H. C. Watson on European species of plants brought from the Azores
to England. In regard to animals, several authentic cases could be given
of species within historical times having largely extended their
range from warmer to cooler latitudes, and conversely; but we do not
positively know that these animals were strictly adapted to their native
climate, but in all ordinary cases we assume such to be the case; nor
do we know that they have subsequently become acclimatised to their new
homes.

As I believe that our domestic animals were originally chosen by
uncivilised man because they were useful and bred readily under
confinement, and not because they were subsequently found capable
of far-extended transportation, I think the common and extraordinary
capacity in our domestic animals of not only withstanding the most
different climates but of being perfectly fertile (a far severer test)
under them, may be used as an argument that a large proportion of other
animals, now in a state of nature, could easily be brought to bear
widely different climates. We must not, however, push the foregoing
argument too far, on account of the probable origin of some of our
domestic animals from several wild stocks: the blood, for instance, of
a tropical and arctic wolf or wild dog may perhaps be mingled in our
domestic breeds. The rat and mouse cannot be considered as domestic
animals, but they have been transported by man to many parts of the
world, and now have a far wider range than any other rodent, living free
under the cold climate of Faroe in the north and of the Falklands in the
south, and on many islands in the torrid zones. Hence I am inclined to
look at adaptation to any special climate as a quality readily grafted
on an innate wide flexibility of constitution, which is common to most
animals. On this view, the capacity of enduring the most different
climates by man himself and by his domestic animals, and such facts
as that former species of the elephant and rhinoceros were capable
of enduring a glacial climate, whereas the living species are now all
tropical or sub-tropical in their habits, ought not to be looked at
as anomalies, but merely as examples of a very common flexibility of
constitution, brought, under peculiar circumstances, into play.

How much of the acclimatisation of species to any peculiar climate is
due to mere habit, and how much to the natural selection of varieties
having different innate constitutions, and how much to both means
combined, is a very obscure question. That habit or custom has some
influence I must believe, both from analogy, and from the incessant
advice given in agricultural works, even in the ancient Encyclopaedias
of China, to be very cautious in transposing animals from one district
to another; for it is not likely that man should have succeeded in
selecting so many breeds and sub-breeds with constitutions specially
fitted for their own districts: the result must, I think, be due to
habit. On the other hand, I can see no reason to doubt that natural
selection will continually tend to preserve those individuals which
are born with constitutions best adapted to their native countries. In
treatises on many kinds of cultivated plants, certain varieties are
said to withstand certain climates better than others: this is very
strikingly shown in works on fruit trees published in the United States,
in which certain varieties are habitually recommended for the northern,
and others for the southern States; and as most of these varieties are
of recent origin, they cannot owe their constitutional differences to
habit. The case of the Jerusalem artichoke, which is never propagated
by seed, and of which consequently new varieties have not been produced,
has even been advanced--for it is now as tender as ever it was--as
proving that acclimatisation cannot be effected! The case, also, of the
kidney-bean has been often cited for a similar purpose, and with
much greater weight; but until some one will sow, during a score of
generations, his kidney-beans so early that a very large proportion are
destroyed by frost, and then collect seed from the few survivors, with
care to prevent accidental crosses, and then again get seed from these
seedlings, with the same precautions, the experiment cannot be said to
have been even tried. Nor let it be supposed that no differences in the
constitution of seedling kidney-beans ever appear, for an account has
been published how much more hardy some seedlings appeared to be than
others.

On the whole, I think we may conclude that habit, use, and disuse, have,
in some cases, played a considerable part in the modification of the
constitution, and of the structure of various organs; but that the
effects of use and disuse have often been largely combined with, and
sometimes overmastered by, the natural selection of innate differences.

CORRELATION OF GROWTH.

I mean by this expression that the whole organisation is so tied
together during its growth and development, that when slight variations
in any one part occur, and are accumulated through natural selection,
other parts become modified. This is a very important subject, most
imperfectly understood. The most obvious case is, that modifications
accumulated solely for the good of the young or larva, will, it may
safely be concluded, affect the structure of the adult; in the same
manner as any malconformation affecting the early embryo, seriously
affects the whole organisation of the adult. The several parts of the
body which are homologous, and which, at an early embryonic period, are
alike, seem liable to vary in an allied manner: we see this in the right
and left sides of the body varying in the same manner; in the front and
hind legs, and even in the jaws and limbs, varying together, for the
lower jaw is believed to be homologous with the limbs. These tendencies,
I do not doubt, may be mastered more or less completely by natural
selection: thus a family of stags once existed with an antler only on
one side; and if this had been of any great use to the breed it might
probably have been rendered permanent by natural selection.

Homologous parts, as has been remarked by some authors, tend to cohere;
this is often seen in monstrous plants; and nothing is more common than
the union of homologous parts in normal structures, as the union of the
petals of the corolla into a tube. Hard parts seem to affect the form of
adjoining soft parts; it is believed by some authors that the diversity
in the shape of the pelvis in birds causes the remarkable diversity in
the shape of their kidneys. Others believe that the shape of the pelvis
in the human mother influences by pressure the shape of the head of the
child. In snakes, according to Schlegel, the shape of the body and
the manner of swallowing determine the position of several of the most
important viscera.

The nature of the bond of correlation is very frequently quite obscure.
M. Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire has forcibly remarked, that certain
malconformations very frequently, and that others rarely coexist,
without our being able to assign any reason. What can be more singular
than the relation between blue eyes and deafness in cats, and the
tortoise-shell colour with the female sex; the feathered feet and skin
between the outer toes in pigeons, and the presence of more or less down
on the young birds when first hatched, with the future colour of their
plumage; or, again, the relation between the hair and teeth in the naked
Turkish dog, though here probably homology comes into play? With respect
to this latter case of correlation, I think it can hardly be accidental,
that if we pick out the two orders of mammalia which are most
abnormal in their dermal coverings, viz. Cetacea (whales) and Edentata
(armadilloes, scaly ant-eaters, etc.), that these are likewise the most
abnormal in their teeth.

I know of no case better adapted to show the importance of the laws of
correlation in modifying important structures, independently of utility
and, therefore, of natural selection, than that of the difference
between the outer and inner flowers in some Compositous and
Umbelliferous plants. Every one knows the difference in the ray and
central florets of, for instance, the daisy, and this difference is
often accompanied with the abortion of parts of the flower. But, in some
Compositous plants, the seeds also differ in shape and sculpture; and
even the ovary itself, with its accessory parts, differs, as has been
described by Cassini. These differences have been attributed by some
authors to pressure, and the shape of the seeds in the ray-florets in
some Compositae countenances this idea; but, in the case of the corolla
of the Umbelliferae, it is by no means, as Dr. Hooker informs me, in
species with the densest heads that the inner and outer flowers most
frequently differ. It might have been thought that the development of
the ray-petals by drawing nourishment from certain other parts of the
flower had caused their abortion; but in some Compositae there is a
difference in the seeds of the outer and inner florets without any
difference in the corolla. Possibly, these several differences may be
connected with some difference in the flow of nutriment towards the
central and external flowers: we know, at least, that in irregular
flowers, those nearest to the axis are oftenest subject to peloria, and
become regular. I may add, as an instance of this, and of a striking
case of correlation, that I have recently observed in some garden
pelargoniums, that the central flower of the truss often loses the
patches of darker colour in the two upper petals; and that when this
occurs, the adherent nectary is quite aborted; when the colour is
absent from only one of the two upper petals, the nectary is only much
shortened.

With respect to the difference in the corolla of the central and
exterior flowers of a head or umbel, I do not feel at all sure that C.
C. Sprengel's idea that the ray-florets serve to attract insects, whose
agency is highly advantageous in the fertilisation of plants of these
two orders, is so far-fetched, as it may at first appear: and if it be
advantageous, natural selection may have come into play. But in regard
to the differences both in the internal and external structure of the
seeds, which are not always correlated with any differences in the
flowers, it seems impossible that they can be in any way advantageous
to the plant: yet in the Umbelliferae these differences are of such
apparent importance--the seeds being in some cases, according to Tausch,
orthospermous in the exterior flowers and coelospermous in the central
flowers,--that the elder De Candolle founded his main divisions of
the order on analogous differences. Hence we see that modifications of
structure, viewed by systematists as of high value, may be wholly due to
unknown laws of correlated growth, and without being, as far as we can
see, of the slightest service to the species.

We may often falsely attribute to correlation of growth, structures
which are common to whole groups of species, and which in truth are
simply due to inheritance; for an ancient progenitor may have acquired
through natural selection some one modification in structure, and, after
thousands of generations, some other and independent modification; and
these two modifications, having been transmitted to a whole group
of descendants with diverse habits, would naturally be thought to be
correlated in some necessary manner. So, again, I do not doubt that some
apparent correlations, occurring throughout whole orders, are entirely
due to the manner alone in which natural selection can act. For
instance, Alph. De Candolle has remarked that winged seeds are never
found in fruits which do not open: I should explain the rule by the fact
that seeds could not gradually become winged through natural selection,
except in fruits which opened; so that the individual plants producing
seeds which were a little better fitted to be wafted further, might get
an advantage over those producing seed less fitted for dispersal; and
this process could not possibly go on in fruit which did not open.

The elder Geoffroy and Goethe propounded, at about the same period,
their law of compensation or balancement of growth; or, as Goethe
expressed it, "in order to spend on one side, nature is forced to
economise on the other side." I think this holds true to a certain
extent with our domestic productions: if nourishment flows to one part
or organ in excess, it rarely flows, at least in excess, to another
part; thus it is difficult to get a cow to give much milk and to fatten
readily. The same varieties of the cabbage do not yield abundant and
nutritious foliage and a copious supply of oil-bearing seeds. When the
seeds in our fruits become atrophied, the fruit itself gains largely in
size and quality. In our poultry, a large tuft of feathers on the head
is generally accompanied by a diminished comb, and a large beard by
diminished wattles. With species in a state of nature it can hardly
be maintained that the law is of universal application; but many good
observers, more especially botanists, believe in its truth. I will
not, however, here give any instances, for I see hardly any way of
distinguishing between the effects, on the one hand, of a part being
largely developed through natural selection and another and adjoining
part being reduced by this same process or by disuse, and, on the other
hand, the actual withdrawal of nutriment from one part owing to the
excess of growth in another and adjoining part.

I suspect, also, that some of the cases of compensation which have been
advanced, and likewise some other facts, may be merged under a more
general principle, namely, that natural selection is continually
trying to economise in every part of the organisation. If under changed
conditions of life a structure before useful becomes less useful, any
diminution, however slight, in its development, will be seized on by
natural selection, for it will profit the individual not to have its
nutriment wasted in building up an useless structure. I can thus
only understand a fact with which I was much struck when examining
cirripedes, and of which many other instances could be given: namely,
that when a cirripede is parasitic within another and is thus protected,
it loses more or less completely its own shell or carapace. This is the
case with the male Ibla, and in a truly extraordinary manner with the
Proteolepas: for the carapace in all other cirripedes consists of
the three highly-important anterior segments of the head enormously
developed, and furnished with great nerves and muscles; but in the
parasitic and protected Proteolepas, the whole anterior part of the
head is reduced to the merest rudiment attached to the bases of the
prehensile antennae. Now the saving of a large and complex structure,
when rendered superfluous by the parasitic habits of the Proteolepas,
though effected by slow steps, would be a decided advantage to each
successive individual of the species; for in the struggle for life to
which every animal is exposed, each individual Proteolepas would have
a better chance of supporting itself, by less nutriment being wasted in
developing a structure now become useless.

Thus, as I believe, natural selection will always succeed in the long
run in reducing and saving every part of the organisation, as soon as it
is rendered superfluous, without by any means causing some other part
to be largely developed in a corresponding degree. And, conversely, that
natural selection may perfectly well succeed in largely developing any
organ, without requiring as a necessary compensation the reduction of
some adjoining part.

It seems to be a rule, as remarked by Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, both in
varieties and in species, that when any part or organ is repeated many
times in the structure of the same individual (as the vertebrae in
snakes, and the stamens in polyandrous flowers) the number is variable;
whereas the number of the same part or organ, when it occurs in lesser
numbers, is constant. The same author and some botanists have further
remarked that multiple parts are also very liable to variation in
structure. Inasmuch as this "vegetative repetition," to use Professor
Owen's expression, seems to be a sign of low organisation; the foregoing
remark seems connected with the very general opinion of naturalists,
that beings low in the scale of nature are more variable than those
which are higher. I presume that lowness in this case means that the
several parts of the organisation have been but little specialised
for particular functions; and as long as the same part has to perform
diversified work, we can perhaps see why it should remain variable, that
is, why natural selection should have preserved or rejected each little
deviation of form less carefully than when the part has to serve for one
special purpose alone. In the same way that a knife which has to cut
all sorts of things may be of almost any shape; whilst a tool for
some particular object had better be of some particular shape. Natural
selection, it should never be forgotten, can act on each part of each
being, solely through and for its advantage.

Rudimentary parts, it has been stated by some authors, and I believe
with truth, are apt to be highly variable. We shall have to recur to the
general subject of rudimentary and aborted organs; and I will here only
add that their variability seems to be owing to their uselessness, and
therefore to natural selection having no power to check deviations in
their structure. Thus rudimentary parts are left to the free play of the
various laws of growth, to the effects of long-continued disuse, and to
the tendency to reversion.

A PART DEVELOPED IN ANY SPECIES IN AN EXTRAORDINARY DEGREE OR MANNER,
IN COMPARISON WITH THE SAME PART IN ALLIED SPECIES, TENDS TO BE HIGHLY
VARIABLE.

Several years ago I was much struck with a remark, nearly to the above
effect, published by Mr. Waterhouse. I infer also from an observation
made by Professor Owen, with respect to the length of the arms of the
ourang-outang, that he has come to a nearly similar conclusion. It is
hopeless to attempt to convince any one of the truth of this proposition
without giving the long array of facts which I have collected, and which
cannot possibly be here introduced. I can only state my conviction that
it is a rule of high generality. I am aware of several causes of
error, but I hope that I have made due allowance for them. It should
be understood that the rule by no means applies to any part, however
unusually developed, unless it be unusually developed in comparison with
the same part in closely allied species. Thus, the bat's wing is a most
abnormal structure in the class mammalia; but the rule would not here
apply, because there is a whole group of bats having wings; it would
apply only if some one species of bat had its wings developed in some
remarkable manner in comparison with the other species of the same
genus. The rule applies very strongly in the case of secondary sexual
characters, when displayed in any unusual manner. The term, secondary
sexual characters, used by Hunter, applies to characters which are
attached to one sex, but are not directly connected with the act of
reproduction. The rule applies to males and females; but as females more
rarely offer remarkable secondary sexual characters, it applies more
rarely to them. The rule being so plainly applicable in the case of
secondary sexual characters, may be due to the great variability of
these characters, whether or not displayed in any unusual manner--of
which fact I think there can be little doubt. But that our rule is not
confined to secondary sexual characters is clearly shown in the case
of hermaphrodite cirripedes; and I may here add, that I particularly
attended to Mr. Waterhouse's remark, whilst investigating this Order,
and I am fully convinced that the rule almost invariably holds good
with cirripedes. I shall, in my future work, give a list of the more
remarkable cases; I will here only briefly give one, as it illustrates
the rule in its largest application. The opercular valves of sessile
cirripedes (rock barnacles) are, in every sense of the word, very
important structures, and they differ extremely little even in different
genera; but in the several species of one genus, Pyrgoma, these valves
present a marvellous amount of diversification: the homologous valves
in the different species being sometimes wholly unlike in shape; and the
amount of variation in the individuals of several of the species is so
great, that it is no exaggeration to state that the varieties differ
more from each other in the characters of these important valves than do
other species of distinct genera.

As birds within the same country vary in a remarkably small degree, I
have particularly attended to them, and the rule seems to me certainly
to hold good in this class. I cannot make out that it applies to plants,
and this would seriously have shaken my belief in its truth, had not the
great variability in plants made it particularly difficult to compare
their relative degrees of variability.

When we see any part or organ developed in a remarkable degree or manner
in any species, the fair presumption is that it is of high importance to
that species; nevertheless the part in this case is eminently liable to
variation. Why should this be so? On the view that each species has been
independently created, with all its parts as we now see them, I can see
no explanation. But on the view that groups of species have descended
from other species, and have been modified through natural selection, I
think we can obtain some light. In our domestic animals, if any part,
or the whole animal, be neglected and no selection be applied, that part
(for instance, the comb in the Dorking fowl) or the whole breed will
cease to have a nearly uniform character. The breed will then be said
to have degenerated. In rudimentary organs, and in those which have
been but little specialised for any particular purpose, and perhaps in
polymorphic groups, we see a nearly parallel natural case; for in such
cases natural selection either has not or cannot come into full play,
and thus the organisation is left in a fluctuating condition. But what
here more especially concerns us is, that in our domestic animals
those points, which at the present time are undergoing rapid change by
continued selection, are also eminently liable to variation. Look at the
breeds of the pigeon; see what a prodigious amount of difference there
is in the beak of the different tumblers, in the beak and wattle of
the different carriers, in the carriage and tail of our fantails, etc.,
these being the points now mainly attended to by English fanciers. Even
in the sub-breeds, as in the short-faced tumbler, it is notoriously
difficult to breed them nearly to perfection, and frequently individuals
are born which depart widely from the standard. There may be truly
said to be a constant struggle going on between, on the one hand, the
tendency to reversion to a less modified state, as well as an innate
tendency to further variability of all kinds, and, on the other hand,
the power of steady selection to keep the breed true. In the long run
selection gains the day, and we do not expect to fail so far as to breed
a bird as coarse as a common tumbler from a good short-faced strain. But
as long as selection is rapidly going on, there may always be expected
to be much variability in the structure undergoing modification. It
further deserves notice that these variable characters, produced by
man's selection, sometimes become attached, from causes quite unknown
to us, more to one sex than to the other, generally to the male sex, as
with the wattle of carriers and the enlarged crop of pouters.

Now let us turn to nature. When a part has been developed in an
extraordinary manner in any one species, compared with the other species
of the same genus, we may conclude that this part has undergone an
extraordinary amount of modification, since the period when the species
branched off from the common progenitor of the genus. This period will
seldom be remote in any extreme degree, as species very rarely endure
for more than one geological period. An extraordinary amount of
modification implies an unusually large and long-continued amount of
variability, which has continually been accumulated by natural
selection for the benefit of the species. But as the variability of
the extraordinarily-developed part or organ has been so great and
long-continued within a period not excessively remote, we might, as a
general rule, expect still to find more variability in such parts than
in other parts of the organisation, which have remained for a much
longer period nearly constant. And this, I am convinced, is the case.
That the struggle between natural selection on the one hand, and the
tendency to reversion and variability on the other hand, will in the
course of time cease; and that the most abnormally developed organs may
be made constant, I can see no reason to doubt. Hence when an organ,
however abnormal it may be, has been transmitted in approximately the
same condition to many modified descendants, as in the case of the wing
of the bat, it must have existed, according to my theory, for an
immense period in nearly the same state; and thus it comes to be no more
variable than any other structure. It is only in those cases in which
the modification has been comparatively recent and extraordinarily great
that we ought to find the GENERATIVE VARIABILITY, as it may be called,
still present in a high degree. For in this case the variability
will seldom as yet have been fixed by the continued selection of the
individuals varying in the required manner and degree, and by the
continued rejection of those tending to revert to a former and less
modified condition.

The principle included in these remarks may be extended. It is notorious
that specific characters are more variable than generic. To explain by a
simple example what is meant. If some species in a large genus of plants
had blue flowers and some had red, the colour would be only a specific
character, and no one would be surprised at one of the blue species
varying into red, or conversely; but if all the species had blue
flowers, the colour would become a generic character, and its variation
would be a more unusual circumstance. I have chosen this example because
an explanation is not in this case applicable, which most naturalists
would advance, namely, that specific characters are more variable
than generic, because they are taken from parts of less physiological
importance than those commonly used for classing genera. I believe this
explanation is partly, yet only indirectly, true; I shall, however, have
to return to this subject in our chapter on Classification. It would be
almost superfluous to adduce evidence in support of the above statement,
that specific characters are more variable than generic; but I have
repeatedly noticed in works on natural history, that when an author
has remarked with surprise that some IMPORTANT organ or part, which is
generally very constant throughout large groups of species, has DIFFERED
considerably in closely-allied species, that it has, also, been VARIABLE
in the individuals of some of the species. And this fact shows that a
character, which is generally of generic value, when it sinks in value
and becomes only of specific value, often becomes variable, though its
physiological importance may remain the same. Something of the same kind
applies to monstrosities: at least Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire seems to
entertain no doubt, that the more an organ normally differs in
the different species of the same group, the more subject it is to
individual anomalies.

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created,
why should that part of the structure, which differs from the same
part in other independently-created species of the same genus, be
more variable than those parts which are closely alike in the several
species? I do not see that any explanation can be given. But on the
view of species being only strongly marked and fixed varieties, we might
surely expect to find them still often continuing to vary in those parts
of their structure which have varied within a moderately recent period,
and which have thus come to differ. Or to state the case in another
manner:--the points in which all the species of a genus resemble each
other, and in which they differ from the species of some other genus,
are called generic characters; and these characters in common I
attribute to inheritance from a common progenitor, for it can rarely
have happened that natural selection will have modified several species,
fitted to more or less widely-different habits, in exactly the same
manner: and as these so-called generic characters have been inherited
from a remote period, since that period when the species first branched
off from their common progenitor, and subsequently have not varied or
come to differ in any degree, or only in a slight degree, it is not
probable that they should vary at the present day. On the other hand,
the points in which species differ from other species of the same genus,
are called specific characters; and as these specific characters have
varied and come to differ within the period of the branching off of the
species from a common progenitor, it is probable that they should still
often be in some degree variable,--at least more variable than those
parts of the organisation which have for a very long period remained
constant.

In connexion with the present subject, I will make only two other
remarks. I think it will be admitted, without my entering on details,
that secondary sexual characters are very variable; I think it also will
be admitted that species of the same group differ from each other more
widely in their secondary sexual characters, than in other parts of
their organisation; compare, for instance, the amount of difference
between the males of gallinaceous birds, in which secondary sexual
characters are strongly displayed, with the amount of difference between
their females; and the truth of this proposition will be granted. The
cause of the original variability of secondary sexual characters is
not manifest; but we can see why these characters should not have been
rendered as constant and uniform as other parts of the organisation; for
secondary sexual characters have been accumulated by sexual selection,
which is less rigid in its action than ordinary selection, as it does
not entail death, but only gives fewer offspring to the less favoured
males. Whatever the cause may be of the variability of secondary sexual
characters, as they are highly variable, sexual selection will have had
a wide scope for action, and may thus readily have succeeded in giving
to the species of the same group a greater amount of difference in their
sexual characters, than in other parts of their structure.

It is a remarkable fact, that the secondary sexual differences between
the two sexes of the same species are generally displayed in the very
same parts of the organisation in which the different species of
the same genus differ from each other. Of this fact I will give in
illustration two instances, the first which happen to stand on my list;
and as the differences in these cases are of a very unusual nature,
the relation can hardly be accidental. The same number of joints in the
tarsi is a character generally common to very large groups of beetles,
but in the Engidae, as Westwood has remarked, the number varies greatly;
and the number likewise differs in the two sexes of the same species:
again in fossorial hymenoptera, the manner of neuration of the wings is
a character of the highest importance, because common to large groups;
but in certain genera the neuration differs in the different species,
and likewise in the two sexes of the same species. This relation has a
clear meaning on my view of the subject: I look at all the species
of the same genus as having as certainly descended from the same
progenitor, as have the two sexes of any one of the species.
Consequently, whatever part of the structure of the common progenitor,
or of its early descendants, became variable; variations of this part
would it is highly probable, be taken advantage of by natural and sexual
selection, in order to fit the several species to their several places
in the economy of nature, and likewise to fit the two sexes of the same
species to each other, or to fit the males and females to different
habits of life, or the males to struggle with other males for the
possession of the females.

Finally, then, I conclude that the greater variability of specific
characters, or those which distinguish species from species, than of
generic characters, or those which the species possess in common;--that
the frequent extreme variability of any part which is developed in a
species in an extraordinary manner in comparison with the same part
in its congeners; and the not great degree of variability in a part,
however extraordinarily it may be developed, if it be common to a
whole group of species;--that the great variability of secondary sexual
characters, and the great amount of difference in these same characters
between closely allied species;--that secondary sexual and ordinary
specific differences are generally displayed in the same parts of the
organisation,--are all principles closely connected together. All being
mainly due to the species of the same group having descended from a
common progenitor, from whom they have inherited much in common,--to
parts which have recently and largely varied being more likely still
to go on varying than parts which have long been inherited and have not
varied,--to natural selection having more or less completely, according
to the lapse of time, overmastered the tendency to reversion and to
further variability,--to sexual selection being less rigid than ordinary
selection,--and to variations in the same parts having been accumulated
by natural and sexual selection, and thus adapted for secondary sexual,
and for ordinary specific purposes.

DISTINCT SPECIES PRESENT ANALOGOUS VARIATIONS; AND A VARIETY OF ONE
SPECIES OFTEN ASSUMES SOME OF THE CHARACTERS OF AN ALLIED SPECIES, OR
REVERTS TO SOME OF THE CHARACTERS OF AN EARLY PROGENITOR.

These propositions will be most readily understood by looking to our
domestic races. The most distinct breeds of pigeons, in countries most
widely apart, present sub-varieties with reversed feathers on the head
and feathers on the feet,--characters not possessed by the aboriginal
rock-pigeon; these then are analogous variations in two or more distinct
races. The frequent presence of fourteen or even sixteen tail-feathers
in the pouter, may be considered as a variation representing the normal
structure of another race, the fantail. I presume that no one will doubt
that all such analogous variations are due to the several races of the
pigeon having inherited from a common parent the same constitution and
tendency to variation, when acted on by similar unknown influences.
In the vegetable kingdom we have a case of analogous variation, in the
enlarged stems, or roots as commonly called, of the Swedish turnip and
Ruta baga, plants which several botanists rank as varieties produced by
cultivation from a common parent: if this be not so, the case will then
be one of analogous variation in two so-called distinct species; and to
these a third may be added, namely, the common turnip. According to
the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we
should have to attribute this similarity in the enlarged stems of these
three plants, not to the vera causa of community of descent, and a
consequent tendency to vary in a like manner, but to three separate yet
closely related acts of creation.

With pigeons, however, we have another case, namely, the occasional
appearance in all the breeds, of slaty-blue birds with two black bars
on the wings, a white rump, a bar at the end of the tail, with the outer
feathers externally edged near their bases with white. As all these
marks are characteristic of the parent rock-pigeon, I presume that no
one will doubt that this is a case of reversion, and not of a new yet
analogous variation appearing in the several breeds. We may I think
confidently come to this conclusion, because, as we have seen, these
coloured marks are eminently liable to appear in the crossed offspring
of two distinct and differently coloured breeds; and in this case there
is nothing in the external conditions of life to cause the reappearance
of the slaty-blue, with the several marks, beyond the influence of the
mere act of crossing on the laws of inheritance.

No doubt it is a very surprising fact that characters should reappear
after having been lost for many, perhaps for hundreds of generations.
But when a breed has been crossed only once by some other breed, the
offspring occasionally show a tendency to revert in character to the
foreign breed for many generations--some say, for a dozen or even a
score of generations. After twelve generations, the proportion of blood,
to use a common expression, of any one ancestor, is only 1 in 2048; and
yet, as we see, it is generally believed that a tendency to reversion
is retained by this very small proportion of foreign blood. In a breed
which has not been crossed, but in which BOTH parents have lost some
character which their progenitor possessed, the tendency, whether strong
or weak, to reproduce the lost character might be, as was formerly
remarked, for all that we can see to the contrary, transmitted for
almost any number of generations. When a character which has been lost
in a breed, reappears after a great number of generations, the most
probable hypothesis is, not that the offspring suddenly takes after an
ancestor some hundred generations distant, but that in each successive
generation there has been a tendency to reproduce the character in
question, which at last, under unknown favourable conditions, gains an
ascendancy. For instance, it is probable that in each generation of the
barb-pigeon, which produces most rarely a blue and black-barred bird,
there has been a tendency in each generation in the plumage to assume
this colour. This view is hypothetical, but could be supported by some
facts; and I can see no more abstract improbability in a tendency
to produce any character being inherited for an endless number of
generations, than in quite useless or rudimentary organs being, as we
all know them to be, thus inherited. Indeed, we may sometimes observe
a mere tendency to produce a rudiment inherited: for instance, in the
common snapdragon (Antirrhinum) a rudiment of a fifth stamen so often
appears, that this plant must have an inherited tendency to produce it.

As all the species of the same genus are supposed, on my theory, to have
descended from a common parent, it might be expected that they would
occasionally vary in an analogous manner; so that a variety of one
species would resemble in some of its characters another species; this
other species being on my view only a well-marked and permanent variety.
But characters thus gained would probably be of an unimportant nature,
for the presence of all important characters will be governed by natural
selection, in accordance with the diverse habits of the species, and
will not be left to the mutual action of the conditions of life and of
a similar inherited constitution. It might further be expected that the
species of the same genus would occasionally exhibit reversions to lost
ancestral characters. As, however, we never know the exact character
of the common ancestor of a group, we could not distinguish these two
cases: if, for instance, we did not know that the rock-pigeon was not
feather-footed or turn-crowned, we could not have told, whether these
characters in our domestic breeds were reversions or only analogous
variations; but we might have inferred that the blueness was a case of
reversion, from the number of the markings, which are correlated with
the blue tint, and which it does not appear probable would all appear
together from simple variation. More especially we might have inferred
this, from the blue colour and marks so often appearing when distinct
breeds of diverse colours are crossed. Hence, though under nature
it must generally be left doubtful, what cases are reversions to an
anciently existing character, and what are new but analogous variations,
yet we ought, on my theory, sometimes to find the varying offspring of
a species assuming characters (either from reversion or from analogous
variation) which already occur in some other members of the same group.
And this undoubtedly is the case in nature.

A considerable part of the difficulty in recognising a variable species
in our systematic works, is due to its varieties mocking, as it were,
some of the other species of the same genus. A considerable catalogue,
also, could be given of forms intermediate between two other forms,
which themselves must be doubtfully ranked as either varieties or
species; and this shows, unless all these forms be considered as
independently created species, that the one in varying has assumed some
of the characters of the other, so as to produce the intermediate form.
But the best evidence is afforded by parts or organs of an important and
uniform nature occasionally varying so as to acquire, in some degree,
the character of the same part or organ in an allied species. I have
collected a long list of such cases; but here, as before, I lie under
a great disadvantage in not being able to give them. I can only repeat
that such cases certainly do occur, and seem to me very remarkable.

I will, however, give one curious and complex case, not indeed as
affecting any important character, but from occurring in several species
of the same genus, partly under domestication and partly under nature.
It is a case apparently of reversion. The ass not rarely has very
distinct transverse bars on its legs, like those on the legs of a zebra:
it has been asserted that these are plainest in the foal, and from
inquiries which I have made, I believe this to be true. It has also
been asserted that the stripe on each shoulder is sometimes double.
The shoulder stripe is certainly very variable in length and outline. A
white ass, but NOT an albino, has been described without either spinal
or shoulder-stripe; and these stripes are sometimes very obscure, or
actually quite lost, in dark-coloured asses. The koulan of Pallas is
said to have been seen with a double shoulder-stripe. The hemionus has
no shoulder-stripe; but traces of it, as stated by Mr. Blyth and others,
occasionally appear: and I have been informed by Colonel Poole that the
foals of this species are generally striped on the legs, and faintly on
the shoulder. The quagga, though so plainly barred like a zebra over the
body, is without bars on the legs; but Dr. Gray has figured one specimen
with very distinct zebra-like bars on the hocks.

With respect to the horse, I have collected cases in England of the
spinal stripe in horses of the most distinct breeds, and of ALL colours;
transverse bars on the legs are not rare in duns, mouse-duns, and in one
instance in a chestnut: a faint shoulder-stripe may sometimes be seen
in duns, and I have seen a trace in a bay horse. My son made a careful
examination and sketch for me of a dun Belgian cart-horse with a double
stripe on each shoulder and with leg-stripes; and a man, whom I can
implicitly trust, has examined for me a small dun Welch pony with THREE
short parallel stripes on each shoulder.

In the north-west part of India the Kattywar breed of horses is so
generally striped, that, as I hear from Colonel Poole, who examined
the breed for the Indian Government, a horse without stripes is not
considered as purely-bred. The spine is always striped; the legs are
generally barred; and the shoulder-stripe, which is sometimes double
and sometimes treble, is common; the side of the face, moreover, is
sometimes striped. The stripes are plainest in the foal; and sometimes
quite disappear in old horses. Colonel Poole has seen both gray and
bay Kattywar horses striped when first foaled. I have, also, reason to
suspect, from information given me by Mr. W. W. Edwards, that with the
English race-horse the spinal stripe is much commoner in the foal than
in the full-grown animal. Without here entering on further details, I
may state that I have collected cases of leg and shoulder stripes in
horses of very different breeds, in various countries from Britain to
Eastern China; and from Norway in the north to the Malay Archipelago in
the south. In all parts of the world these stripes occur far oftenest
in duns and mouse-duns; by the term dun a large range of colour is
included, from one between brown and black to a close approach to
cream-colour.

I am aware that Colonel Hamilton Smith, who has written on this subject,
believes that the several breeds of the horse have descended from
several aboriginal species--one of which, the dun, was striped; and that
the above-described appearances are all due to ancient crosses with the
dun stock. But I am not at all satisfied with this theory, and should be
loth to apply it to breeds so distinct as the heavy Belgian cart-horse,
Welch ponies, cobs, the lanky Kattywar race, etc., inhabiting the most
distant parts of the world.

Now let us turn to the effects of crossing the several species of the
horse-genus. Rollin asserts, that the common mule from the ass and horse
is particularly apt to have bars on its legs. I once saw a mule with its
legs so much striped that any one at first would have thought that it
must have been the product of a zebra; and Mr. W. C. Martin, in his
excellent treatise on the horse, has given a figure of a similar mule.
In four coloured drawings, which I have seen, of hybrids between the ass
and zebra, the legs were much more plainly barred than the rest of the
body; and in one of them there was a double shoulder-stripe. In Lord
Moreton's famous hybrid from a chestnut mare and male quagga, the
hybrid, and even the pure offspring subsequently produced from the mare
by a black Arabian sire, were much more plainly barred across the
legs than is even the pure quagga. Lastly, and this is another most
remarkable case, a hybrid has been figured by Dr. Gray (and he informs
me that he knows of a second case) from the ass and the hemionus; and
this hybrid, though the ass seldom has stripes on its legs and the
hemionus has none and has not even a shoulder-stripe, nevertheless had
all four legs barred, and had three short shoulder-stripes, like those
on the dun Welch pony, and even had some zebra-like stripes on the sides
of its face. With respect to this last fact, I was so convinced that not
even a stripe of colour appears from what would commonly be called an
accident, that I was led solely from the occurrence of the face-stripes
on this hybrid from the ass and hemionus, to ask Colonel Poole whether
such face-stripes ever occur in the eminently striped Kattywar breed of
horses, and was, as we have seen, answered in the affirmative.

What now are we to say to these several facts? We see several very
distinct species of the horse-genus becoming, by simple variation,
striped on the legs like a zebra, or striped on the shoulders like
an ass. In the horse we see this tendency strong whenever a dun tint
appears--a tint which approaches to that of the general colouring of
the other species of the genus. The appearance of the stripes is not
accompanied by any change of form or by any other new character. We see
this tendency to become striped most strongly displayed in hybrids from
between several of the most distinct species. Now observe the case
of the several breeds of pigeons: they are descended from a pigeon
(including two or three sub-species or geographical races) of a bluish
colour, with certain bars and other marks; and when any breed assumes
by simple variation a bluish tint, these bars and other marks invariably
reappear; but without any other change of form or character. When the
oldest and truest breeds of various colours are crossed, we see a
strong tendency for the blue tint and bars and marks to reappear in the
mongrels. I have stated that the most probable hypothesis to account
for the reappearance of very ancient characters, is--that there is
a TENDENCY in the young of each successive generation to produce the
long-lost character, and that this tendency, from unknown causes,
sometimes prevails. And we have just seen that in several species of the
horse-genus the stripes are either plainer or appear more commonly in
the young than in the old. Call the breeds of pigeons, some of which
have bred true for centuries, species; and how exactly parallel is the
case with that of the species of the horse-genus! For myself, I venture
confidently to look back thousands on thousands of generations, and
I see an animal striped like a zebra, but perhaps otherwise very
differently constructed, the common parent of our domestic horse,
whether or not it be descended from one or more wild stocks, of the ass,
the hemionus, quagga, and zebra.

He who believes that each equine species was independently created,
will, I presume, assert that each species has been created with a
tendency to vary, both under nature and under domestication, in this
particular manner, so as often to become striped like other species of
the genus; and that each has been created with a strong tendency,
when crossed with species inhabiting distant quarters of the world, to
produce hybrids resembling in their stripes, not their own parents, but
other species of the genus. To admit this view is, as it seems to me, to
reject a real for an unreal, or at least for an unknown, cause. It makes
the works of God a mere mockery and deception; I would almost as soon
believe with the old and ignorant cosmogonists, that fossil shells had
never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells now
living on the sea-shore.

SUMMARY.

Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound. Not in one case out
of a hundred can we pretend to assign any reason why this or that part
differs, more or less, from the same part in the parents. But whenever
we have the means of instituting a comparison, the same laws appear to
have acted in producing the lesser differences between varieties of the
same species, and the greater differences between species of the same
genus. The external conditions of life, as climate and food, etc.,
seem to have induced some slight modifications. Habit in producing
constitutional differences, and use in strengthening, and disuse in
weakening and diminishing organs, seem to have been more potent in their
effects. Homologous parts tend to vary in the same way, and homologous
parts tend to cohere. Modifications in hard parts and in external parts
sometimes affect softer and internal parts. When one part is largely
developed, perhaps it tends to draw nourishment from the adjoining
parts; and every part of the structure which can be saved without
detriment to the individual, will be saved. Changes of structure at an
early age will generally affect parts subsequently developed; and there
are very many other correlations of growth, the nature of which we are
utterly unable to understand. Multiple parts are variable in number and
in structure, perhaps arising from such parts not having been closely
specialised to any particular function, so that their modifications have
not been closely checked by natural selection. It is probably from
this same cause that organic beings low in the scale of nature are
more variable than those which have their whole organisation more
specialised, and are higher in the scale. Rudimentary organs, from being
useless, will be disregarded by natural selection, and hence probably
are variable. Specific characters--that is, the characters which have
come to differ since the several species of the same genus branched
off from a common parent--are more variable than generic characters, or
those which have long been inherited, and have not differed within
this same period. In these remarks we have referred to special parts or
organs being still variable, because they have recently varied and thus
come to differ; but we have also seen in the second Chapter that the
same principle applies to the whole individual; for in a district where
many species of any genus are found--that is, where there has been much
former variation and differentiation, or where the manufactory of new
specific forms has been actively at work--there, on an average, we now
find most varieties or incipient species. Secondary sexual characters
are highly variable, and such characters differ much in the species of
the same group. Variability in the same parts of the organisation has
generally been taken advantage of in giving secondary sexual differences
to the sexes of the same species, and specific differences to the
several species of the same genus. Any part or organ developed to an
extraordinary size or in an extraordinary manner, in comparison with
the same part or organ in the allied species, must have gone through an
extraordinary amount of modification since the genus arose; and thus we
can understand why it should often still be variable in a much higher
degree than other parts; for variation is a long-continued and slow
process, and natural selection will in such cases not as yet have had
time to overcome the tendency to further variability and to
reversion to a less modified state. But when a species with any
extraordinarily-developed organ has become the parent of many modified
descendants--which on my view must be a very slow process, requiring
a long lapse of time--in this case, natural selection may readily
have succeeded in giving a fixed character to the organ, in however
extraordinary a manner it may be developed. Species inheriting nearly
the same constitution from a common parent and exposed to similar
influences will naturally tend to present analogous variations, and
these same species may occasionally revert to some of the characters of
their ancient progenitors. Although new and important modifications may
not arise from reversion and analogous variation, such modifications
will add to the beautiful and harmonious diversity of nature.

Whatever the cause may be of each slight difference in the offspring
from their parents--and a cause for each must exist--it is the steady
accumulation, through natural selection, of such differences, when
beneficial to the individual, that gives rise to all the more important
modifications of structure, by which the innumerable beings on the face
of this earth are enabled to struggle with each other, and the best
adapted to survive.




6. DIFFICULTIES ON THEORY.

Difficulties on the theory of descent with modification. Transitions.
Absence or rarity of transitional varieties. Transitions in habits of
life. Diversified habits in the same species. Species with habits widely
different from those of their allies. Organs of extreme perfection.
Means of transition. Cases of difficulty. Natura non facit saltum.
Organs of small importance. Organs not in all cases absolutely perfect.
The law of Unity of Type and of the Conditions of Existence embraced by
the theory of Natural Selection.

Long before having arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of
difficulties will have occurred to the reader. Some of them are so grave
that to this day I can never reflect on them without being staggered;
but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent,
and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to my theory.

These difficulties and objections may be classed under the following
heads:--

Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly
fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional
forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being,
as we see them, well defined?

Secondly, is it possible that an animal having, for instance,
the structure and habits of a bat, could have been formed by the
modification of some animal with wholly different habits? Can we
believe that natural selection could produce, on the one hand, organs
of trifling importance, such as the tail of a giraffe, which serves as a
fly-flapper, and, on the other hand, organs of such wonderful structure,
as the eye, of which we hardly as yet fully understand the inimitable
perfection?

Thirdly, can instincts be acquired and modified through natural
selection? What shall we say to so marvellous an instinct as that which
leads the bee to make cells, which have practically anticipated the
discoveries of profound mathematicians?

Fourthly, how can we account for species, when crossed, being sterile
and producing sterile offspring, whereas, when varieties are crossed,
their fertility is unimpaired?

The two first heads shall be here discussed--Instinct and Hybridism in
separate chapters.

ON THE ABSENCE OR RARITY OF TRANSITIONAL VARIETIES.

As natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable
modifications, each new form will tend in a fully-stocked country to
take the place of, and finally to exterminate, its own less improved
parent or other less-favoured forms with which it comes into
competition. Thus extinction and natural selection will, as we have
seen, go hand in hand. Hence, if we look at each species as descended
from some other unknown form, both the parent and all the transitional
varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very process of
formation and perfection of the new form.

But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed,
why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of
the earth? It will be much more convenient to discuss this question in
the chapter on the Imperfection of the geological record; and I will
here only state that I believe the answer mainly lies in the record
being incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed; the
imperfection of the record being chiefly due to organic beings not
inhabiting profound depths of the sea, and to their remains being
embedded and preserved to a future age only in masses of sediment
sufficiently thick and extensive to withstand an enormous amount of
future degradation; and such fossiliferous masses can be accumulated
only where much sediment is deposited on the shallow bed of the sea,
whilst it slowly subsides. These contingencies will concur only rarely,
and after enormously long intervals. Whilst the bed of the sea
is stationary or is rising, or when very little sediment is being
deposited, there will be blanks in our geological history. The crust of
the earth is a vast museum; but the natural collections have been made
only at intervals of time immensely remote.

But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species inhabit
the same territory we surely ought to find at the present time many
transitional forms. Let us take a simple case: in travelling from north
to south over a continent, we generally meet at successive intervals
with closely allied or representative species, evidently filling nearly
the same place in the natural economy of the land. These representative
species often meet and interlock; and as the one becomes rarer and
rarer, the other becomes more and more frequent, till the one replaces
the other. But if we compare these species where they intermingle, they
are generally as absolutely distinct from each other in every detail of
structure as are specimens taken from the metropolis inhabited by each.
By my theory these allied species have descended from a common parent;
and during the process of modification, each has become adapted to
the conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and
exterminated its original parent and all the transitional varieties
between its past and present states. Hence we ought not to expect at
the present time to meet with numerous transitional varieties in each
region, though they must have existed there, and may be embedded
there in a fossil condition. But in the intermediate region, having
intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking
intermediate varieties? This difficulty for a long time quite confounded
me. But I think it can be in large part explained.

In the first place we should be extremely cautious in inferring, because
an area is now continuous, that it has been continuous during a long
period. Geology would lead us to believe that almost every continent has
been broken up into islands even during the later tertiary periods;
and in such islands distinct species might have been separately formed
without the possibility of intermediate varieties existing in the
intermediate zones. By changes in the form of the land and of climate,
marine areas now continuous must often have existed within recent times
in a far less continuous and uniform condition than at present. But I
will pass over this way of escaping from the difficulty; for I believe
that many perfectly defined species have been formed on strictly
continuous areas; though I do not doubt that the formerly broken
condition of areas now continuous has played an important part in the
formation of new species, more especially with freely-crossing and
wandering animals.

In looking at species as they are now distributed over a wide area,
we generally find them tolerably numerous over a large territory, then
becoming somewhat abruptly rarer and rarer on the confines, and finally
disappearing. Hence the neutral territory between two representative
species is generally narrow in comparison with the territory proper to
each. We see the same fact in ascending mountains, and sometimes it
is quite remarkable how abruptly, as Alph. De Candolle has observed,
a common alpine species disappears. The same fact has been noticed by
Forbes in sounding the depths of the sea with the dredge. To those who
look at climate and the physical conditions of life as the all-important
elements of distribution, these facts ought to cause surprise, as
climate and height or depth graduate away insensibly. But when we
bear in mind that almost every species, even in its metropolis, would
increase immensely in numbers, were it not for other competing species;
that nearly all either prey on or serve as prey for others; in short,
that each organic being is either directly or indirectly related in
the most important manner to other organic beings, we must see that the
range of the inhabitants of any country by no means exclusively depends
on insensibly changing physical conditions, but in large part on the
presence of other species, on which it depends, or by which it is
destroyed, or with which it comes into competition; and as these species
are already defined objects (however they may have become so), not
blending one into another by insensible gradations, the range of any one
species, depending as it does on the range of others, will tend to be
sharply defined. Moreover, each species on the confines of its range,
where it exists in lessened numbers, will, during fluctuations in the
number of its enemies or of its prey, or in the seasons, be extremely
liable to utter extermination; and thus its geographical range will come
to be still more sharply defined.

If I am right in believing that allied or representative species, when
inhabiting a continuous area, are generally so distributed that each
has a wide range, with a comparatively narrow neutral territory between
them, in which they become rather suddenly rarer and rarer; then, as
varieties do not essentially differ from species, the same rule will
probably apply to both; and if we in imagination adapt a varying species
to a very large area, we shall have to adapt two varieties to two
large areas, and a third variety to a narrow intermediate zone. The
intermediate variety, consequently, will exist in lesser numbers from
inhabiting a narrow and lesser area; and practically, as far as I can
make out, this rule holds good with varieties in a state of nature. I
have met with striking instances of the rule in the case of varieties
intermediate between well-marked varieties in the genus Balanus. And it
would appear from information given me by Mr. Watson, Dr. Asa Gray, and
Mr. Wollaston, that generally when varieties intermediate between two
other forms occur, they are much rarer numerically than the forms which
they connect. Now, if we may trust these facts and inferences, and
therefore conclude that varieties linking two other varieties together
have generally existed in lesser numbers than the forms which they
connect, then, I think, we can understand why intermediate varieties
should not endure for very long periods;--why as a general rule they
should be exterminated and disappear, sooner than the forms which they
originally linked together.

For any form existing in lesser numbers would, as already remarked,
run a greater chance of being exterminated than one existing in large
numbers; and in this particular case the intermediate form would be
eminently liable to the inroads of closely allied forms existing on both
sides of it. But a far more important consideration, as I believe, is
that, during the process of further modification, by which two varieties
are supposed on my theory to be converted and perfected into two
distinct species, the two which exist in larger numbers from inhabiting
larger areas, will have a great advantage over the intermediate variety,
which exists in smaller numbers in a narrow and intermediate zone.
For forms existing in larger numbers will always have a better chance,
within any given period, of presenting further favourable variations for
natural selection to seize on, than will the rarer forms which exist in
lesser numbers. Hence, the more common forms, in the race for life, will
tend to beat and supplant the less common forms, for these will be
more slowly modified and improved. It is the same principle which, as
I believe, accounts for the common species in each country, as shown
in the second chapter, presenting on an average a greater number of
well-marked varieties than do the rarer species. I may illustrate what I
mean by supposing three varieties of sheep to be kept, one adapted to an
extensive mountainous region; a second to a comparatively narrow, hilly
tract; and a third to wide plains at the base; and that the inhabitants
are all trying with equal steadiness and skill to improve their stocks
by selection; the chances in this case will be strongly in favour of the
great holders on the mountains or on the plains improving their breeds
more quickly than the small holders on the intermediate narrow, hilly
tract; and consequently the improved mountain or plain breed will soon
take the place of the less improved hill breed; and thus the two breeds,
which originally existed in greater numbers, will come into close
contact with each other, without the interposition of the supplanted,
intermediate hill-variety.

To sum up, I believe that species come to be tolerably well-defined
objects, and do not at any one period present an inextricable chaos of
varying and intermediate links: firstly, because new varieties are
very slowly formed, for variation is a very slow process, and natural
selection can do nothing until favourable variations chance to occur,
and until a place in the natural polity of the country can be better
filled by some modification of some one or more of its inhabitants.
And such new places will depend on slow changes of climate, or on the
occasional immigration of new inhabitants, and, probably, in a still
more important degree, on some of the old inhabitants becoming slowly
modified, with the new forms thus produced and the old ones acting and
reacting on each other. So that, in any one region and at any one time,
we ought only to see a few species presenting slight modifications of
structure in some degree permanent; and this assuredly we do see.

Secondly, areas now continuous must often have existed within the
recent period in isolated portions, in which many forms, more especially
amongst the classes which unite for each birth and wander much, may have
separately been rendered sufficiently distinct to rank as representative
species. In this case, intermediate varieties between the several
representative species and their common parent, must formerly have
existed in each broken portion of the land, but these links will
have been supplanted and exterminated during the process of natural
selection, so that they will no longer exist in a living state.

Thirdly, when two or more varieties have been formed in different
portions of a strictly continuous area, intermediate varieties will, it
is probable, at first have been formed in the intermediate zones, but
they will generally have had a short duration. For these intermediate
varieties will, from reasons already assigned (namely from what we know
of the actual distribution of closely allied or representative species,
and likewise of acknowledged varieties), exist in the intermediate zones
in lesser numbers than the varieties which they tend to connect. From
this cause alone the intermediate varieties will be liable to accidental
extermination; and during the process of further modification through
natural selection, they will almost certainly be beaten and supplanted
by the forms which they connect; for these from existing in greater
numbers will, in the aggregate, present more variation, and thus be
further improved through natural selection and gain further advantages.

Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be
true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all the
species of the same group together, must assuredly have existed; but the
very process of natural selection constantly tends, as has been so often
remarked, to exterminate the parent forms and the intermediate links.
Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only
amongst fossil remains, which are preserved, as we shall in a future
chapter attempt to show, in an extremely imperfect and intermittent
record.

ON THE ORIGIN AND TRANSITIONS OF ORGANIC BEINGS WITH PECULIAR HABITS AND
STRUCTURE.

It has been asked by the opponents of such views as I hold, how, for
instance, a land carnivorous animal could have been converted into one
with aquatic habits; for how could the animal in its transitional state
have subsisted? It would be easy to show that within the same group
carnivorous animals exist having every intermediate grade between
truly aquatic and strictly terrestrial habits; and as each exists by a
struggle for life, it is clear that each is well adapted in its habits
to its place in nature. Look at the Mustela vison of North America,
which has webbed feet and which resembles an otter in its fur, short
legs, and form of tail; during summer this animal dives for and preys on
fish, but during the long winter it leaves the frozen waters, and preys
like other polecats on mice and land animals. If a different case had
been taken, and it had been asked how an insectivorous quadruped could
possibly have been converted into a flying bat, the question would have
been far more difficult, and I could have given no answer. Yet I think
such difficulties have very little weight.

Here, as on other occasions, I lie under a heavy disadvantage, for out
of the many striking cases which I have collected, I can give only one
or two instances of transitional habits and structures in closely allied
species of the same genus; and of diversified habits, either constant
or occasional, in the same species. And it seems to me that nothing less
than a long list of such cases is sufficient to lessen the difficulty in
any particular case like that of the bat.

Look at the family of squirrels; here we have the finest gradation from
animals with their tails only slightly flattened, and from others, as
Sir J. Richardson has remarked, with the posterior part of their bodies
rather wide and with the skin on their flanks rather full, to the
so-called flying squirrels; and flying squirrels have their limbs and
even the base of the tail united by a broad expanse of skin, which
serves as a parachute and allows them to glide through the air to
an astonishing distance from tree to tree. We cannot doubt that each
structure is of use to each kind of squirrel in its own country, by
enabling it to escape birds or beasts of prey, or to collect food more
quickly, or, as there is reason to believe, by lessening the danger
from occasional falls. But it does not follow from this fact that the
structure of each squirrel is the best that it is possible to conceive
under all natural conditions. Let the climate and vegetation change,
let other competing rodents or new beasts of prey immigrate, or old ones
become modified, and all analogy would lead us to believe that some at
least of the squirrels would decrease in numbers or become exterminated,
unless they also became modified and improved in structure in a
corresponding manner. Therefore, I can see no difficulty, more
especially under changing conditions of life, in the continued
preservation of individuals with fuller and fuller flank-membranes,
each modification being useful, each being propagated, until by the
accumulated effects of this process of natural selection, a perfect
so-called flying squirrel was produced.

Now look at the Galeopithecus or flying lemur, which formerly was
falsely ranked amongst bats. It has an extremely wide flank-membrane,
stretching from the corners of the jaw to the tail, and including the
limbs and the elongated fingers: the flank membrane is, also, furnished
with an extensor muscle. Although no graduated links of structure,
fitted for gliding through the air, now connect the Galeopithecus with
the other Lemuridae, yet I can see no difficulty in supposing that such
links formerly existed, and that each had been formed by the same steps
as in the case of the less perfectly gliding squirrels; and that each
grade of structure had been useful to its possessor. Nor can I see
any insuperable difficulty in further believing it possible that the
membrane-connected fingers and fore-arm of the Galeopithecus might be
greatly lengthened by natural selection; and this, as far as the organs
of flight are concerned, would convert it into a bat. In bats which have
the wing-membrane extended from the top of the shoulder to the
tail, including the hind-legs, we perhaps see traces of an apparatus
originally constructed for gliding through the air rather than for
flight.

If about a dozen genera of birds had become extinct or were unknown, who
would have ventured to have surmised that birds might have existed
which used their wings solely as flappers, like the logger-headed duck
(Micropterus of Eyton); as fins in the water and front legs on the land,
like the penguin; as sails, like the ostrich; and functionally for no
purpose, like the Apteryx. Yet the structure of each of these birds is
good for it, under the conditions of life to which it is exposed, for
each has to live by a struggle; but it is not necessarily the best
possible under all possible conditions. It must not be inferred from
these remarks that any of the grades of wing-structure here alluded to,
which perhaps may all have resulted from disuse, indicate the natural
steps by which birds have acquired their perfect power of flight; but
they serve, at least, to show what diversified means of transition are
possible.

Seeing that a few members of such water-breathing classes as the
Crustacea and Mollusca are adapted to live on the land, and seeing that
we have flying birds and mammals, flying insects of the most diversified
types, and formerly had flying reptiles, it is conceivable that
flying-fish, which now glide far through the air, slightly rising and
turning by the aid of their fluttering fins, might have been modified
into perfectly winged animals. If this had been effected, who would
have ever imagined that in an early transitional state they had been
inhabitants of the open ocean, and had used their incipient organs of
flight exclusively, as far as we know, to escape being devoured by other
fish?

When we see any structure highly perfected for any particular habit,
as the wings of a bird for flight, we should bear in mind that animals
displaying early transitional grades of the structure will seldom
continue to exist to the present day, for they will have been
supplanted by the very process of perfection through natural selection.
Furthermore, we may conclude that transitional grades between structures
fitted for very different habits of life will rarely have been developed
at an early period in great numbers and under many subordinate forms.
Thus, to return to our imaginary illustration of the flying-fish, it
does not seem probable that fishes capable of true flight would have
been developed under many subordinate forms, for taking prey of many
kinds in many ways, on the land and in the water, until their organs of
flight had come to a high stage of perfection, so as to have given them
a decided advantage over other animals in the battle for life. Hence the
chance of discovering species with transitional grades of structure in
a fossil condition will always be less, from their having existed
in lesser numbers, than in the case of species with fully developed
structures.

I will now give two or three instances of diversified and of changed
habits in the individuals of the same species. When either case occurs,
it would be easy for natural selection to fit the animal, by some
modification of its structure, for its changed habits, or exclusively
for one of its several different habits. But it is difficult to tell,
and immaterial for us, whether habits generally change first and
structure afterwards; or whether slight modifications of structure lead
to changed habits; both probably often change almost simultaneously. Of
cases of changed habits it will suffice merely to allude to that of the
many British insects which now feed on exotic plants, or exclusively on
artificial substances. Of diversified habits innumerable instances
could be given: I have often watched a tyrant flycatcher (Saurophagus
sulphuratus) in South America, hovering over one spot and then
proceeding to another, like a kestrel, and at other times standing
stationary on the margin of water, and then dashing like a kingfisher at
a fish. In our own country the larger titmouse (Parus major) may be seen
climbing branches, almost like a creeper; it often, like a shrike, kills
small birds by blows on the head; and I have many times seen and heard
it hammering the seeds of the yew on a branch, and thus breaking them
like a nuthatch. In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne
swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale,
insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply
of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not
already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears
being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their
structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was
produced as monstrous as a whale.

As we sometimes see individuals of a species following habits widely
different from those both of their own species and of the other species
of the same genus, we might expect, on my theory, that such individuals
would occasionally have given rise to new species, having anomalous
habits, and with their structure either slightly or considerably
modified from that of their proper type. And such instances do occur in
nature. Can a more striking instance of adaptation be given than that of
a woodpecker for climbing trees and for seizing insects in the chinks of
the bark? Yet in North America there are woodpeckers which feed largely
on fruit, and others with elongated wings which chase insects on the
wing; and on the plains of La Plata, where not a tree grows, there is a
woodpecker, which in every essential part of its organisation, even in
its colouring, in the harsh tone of its voice, and undulatory flight,
told me plainly of its close blood-relationship to our common species;
yet it is a woodpecker which never climbs a tree!

Petrels are the most aerial and oceanic of birds, yet in the quiet
Sounds of Tierra del Fuego, the Puffinuria berardi, in its general
habits, in its astonishing power of diving, its manner of swimming, and
of flying when unwillingly it takes flight, would be mistaken by any one
for an auk or grebe; nevertheless, it is essentially a petrel, but with
many parts of its organisation profoundly modified. On the other hand,
the acutest observer by examining the dead body of the water-ouzel would
never have suspected its sub-aquatic habits; yet this anomalous
member of the strictly terrestrial thrush family wholly subsists by
diving,--grasping the stones with its feet and using its wings under
water.

He who believes that each being has been created as we now see it, must
occasionally have felt surprise when he has met with an animal having
habits and structure not at all in agreement. What can be plainer than
that the webbed feet of ducks and geese are formed for swimming? yet
there are upland geese with webbed feet which rarely or never go near
the water; and no one except Audubon has seen the frigate-bird, which
has all its four toes webbed, alight on the surface of the sea. On the
other hand, grebes and coots are eminently aquatic, although their toes
are only bordered by membrane. What seems plainer than that the long
toes of grallatores are formed for walking over swamps and floating
plants, yet the water-hen is nearly as aquatic as the coot; and the
landrail nearly as terrestrial as the quail or partridge. In such
cases, and many others could be given, habits have changed without a
corresponding change of structure. The webbed feet of the upland goose
may be said to have become rudimentary in function, though not in
structure. In the frigate-bird, the deeply-scooped membrane between the
toes shows that structure has begun to change.

He who believes in separate and innumerable acts of creation will say,
that in these cases it has pleased the Creator to cause a being of one
type to take the place of one of another type; but this seems to me
only restating the fact in dignified language. He who believes in the
struggle for existence and in the principle of natural selection, will
acknowledge that every organic being is constantly endeavouring to
increase in numbers; and that if any one being vary ever so little,
either in habits or structure, and thus gain an advantage over some
other inhabitant of the country, it will seize on the place of that
inhabitant, however different it may be from its own place. Hence it
will cause him no surprise that there should be geese and frigate-birds
with webbed feet, either living on the dry land or most rarely alighting
on the water; that there should be long-toed corncrakes living in
meadows instead of in swamps; that there should be woodpeckers where not
a tree grows; that there should be diving thrushes, and petrels with the
habits of auks.

ORGANS OF EXTREME PERFECTION AND COMPLICATION.

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for
adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different
amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic
aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely
confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me,
that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very
imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be
shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and
the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any
variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under
changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a
perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though
insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a
nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how
life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make
me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light,
and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.

In looking for the gradations by which an organ in any species has been
perfected, we ought to look exclusively to its lineal ancestors; but
this is scarcely ever possible, and we are forced in each case to look
to species of the same group, that is to the collateral descendants
from the same original parent-form, in order to see what gradations are
possible, and for the chance of some gradations having been transmitted
from the earlier stages of descent, in an unaltered or little altered
condition. Amongst existing Vertebrata, we find but a small amount of
gradation in the structure of the eye, and from fossil species we can
learn nothing on this head. In this great class we should probably
have to descend far beneath the lowest known fossiliferous stratum to
discover the earlier stages, by which the eye has been perfected.

In the Articulata we can commence a series with an optic nerve merely
coated with pigment, and without any other mechanism; and from this
low stage, numerous gradations of structure, branching off in two
fundamentally different lines, can be shown to exist, until we reach
a moderately high stage of perfection. In certain crustaceans, for
instance, there is a double cornea, the inner one divided into
facets, within each of which there is a lens-shaped swelling. In other
crustaceans the transparent cones which are coated by pigment, and which
properly act only by excluding lateral pencils of light, are convex at
their upper ends and must act by convergence; and at their lower ends
there seems to be an imperfect vitreous substance. With these facts,
here far too briefly and imperfectly given, which show that there is
much graduated diversity in the eyes of living crustaceans, and bearing
in mind how small the number of living animals is in proportion to those
which have become extinct, I can see no very great difficulty (not more
than in the case of many other structures) in believing that natural
selection has converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve merely
coated with pigment and invested by transparent membrane, into an
optical instrument as perfect as is possessed by any member of the great
Articulate class.

He who will go thus far, if he find on finishing this treatise that
large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be explained by the
theory of descent, ought not to hesitate to go further, and to admit
that a structure even as perfect as the eye of an eagle might be formed
by natural selection, although in this case he does not know any of the
transitional grades. His reason ought to conquer his imagination; though
I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree
of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to such
startling lengths.

It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope.
We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued
efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the
eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this
inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator
works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the
eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick
layer of transparent tissue, with a nerve sensitive to light beneath,
and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing
slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities
and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and
with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form. Further we
must suppose that there is a power always intently watching each slight
accidental alteration in the transparent layers; and carefully selecting
each alteration which, under varied circumstances, may in any way, or in
any degree, tend to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each new
state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million; and each to
be preserved till a better be produced, and then the old ones to
be destroyed. In living bodies, variation will cause the slight
alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and
natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement.
Let this process go on for millions on millions of years; and during
each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not
believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as
superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of
man?

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which
could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find
out no such case. No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know
the transitional grades, more especially if we look to much-isolated
species, round which, according to my theory, there has been much
extinction. Or again, if we look to an organ common to all the members
of a large class, for in this latter case the organ must have been first
formed at an extremely remote period, since which all the many members
of the class have been developed; and in order to discover the early
transitional grades through which the organ has passed, we should have
to look to very ancient ancestral forms, long since become extinct.

We should be extremely cautious in concluding that an organ could not
have been formed by transitional gradations of some kind. Numerous cases
could be given amongst the lower animals of the same organ performing
at the same time wholly distinct functions; thus the alimentary canal
respires, digests, and excretes in the larva of the dragon-fly and in
the fish Cobites. In the Hydra, the animal may be turned inside out, and
the exterior surface will then digest and the stomach respire. In such
cases natural selection might easily specialise, if any advantage were
thus gained, a part or organ, which had performed two functions, for one
function alone, and thus wholly change its nature by insensible steps.
Two distinct organs sometimes perform simultaneously the same function
in the same individual; to give one instance, there are fish with gills
or branchiae that breathe the air dissolved in the water, at the same
time that they breathe free air in their swimbladders, this latter organ
having a ductus pneumaticus for its supply, and being divided by highly
vascular partitions. In these cases, one of the two organs might with
ease be modified and perfected so as to perform all the work by itself,
being aided during the process of modification by the other organ;
and then this other organ might be modified for some other and quite
distinct purpose, or be quite obliterated.

The illustration of the swimbladder in fishes is a good one, because
it shows us clearly the highly important fact that an organ originally
constructed for one purpose, namely flotation, may be converted into one
for a wholly different purpose, namely respiration. The swimbladder has,
also, been worked in as an accessory to the auditory organs of certain
fish, or, for I do not know which view is now generally held, a part
of the auditory apparatus has been worked in as a complement to the
swimbladder. All physiologists admit that the swimbladder is homologous,
or "ideally similar," in position and structure with the lungs of
the higher vertebrate animals: hence there seems to me to be no great
difficulty in believing that natural selection has actually converted a
swimbladder into a lung, or organ used exclusively for respiration.

I can, indeed, hardly doubt that all vertebrate animals having true
lungs have descended by ordinary generation from an ancient prototype,
of which we know nothing, furnished with a floating apparatus or
swimbladder. We can thus, as I infer from Professor Owen's interesting
description of these parts, understand the strange fact that every
particle of food and drink which we swallow has to pass over the
orifice of the trachea, with some risk of falling into the lungs,
notwithstanding the beautiful contrivance by which the glottis
is closed. In the higher Vertebrata the branchiae have wholly
disappeared--the slits on the sides of the neck and the loop-like course
of the arteries still marking in the embryo their former position. But
it is conceivable that the now utterly lost branchiae might have
been gradually worked in by natural selection for some quite distinct
purpose: in the same manner as, on the view entertained by some
naturalists that the branchiae and dorsal scales of Annelids are
homologous with the wings and wing-covers of insects, it is probable
that organs which at a very ancient period served for respiration have
been actually converted into organs of flight.

In considering transitions of organs, it is so important to bear in mind
the probability of conversion from one function to another, that I will
give one more instance. Pedunculated cirripedes have two minute folds of
skin, called by me the ovigerous frena, which serve, through the means
of a sticky secretion, to retain the eggs until they are hatched within
the sack. These cirripedes have no branchiae, the whole surface of the
body and sack, including the small frena, serving for respiration. The
Balanidae or sessile cirripedes, on the other hand, have no ovigerous
frena, the eggs lying loose at the bottom of the sack, in the
well-enclosed shell; but they have large folded branchiae. Now I think
no one will dispute that the ovigerous frena in the one family are
strictly homologous with the branchiae of the other family; indeed, they
graduate into each other. Therefore I do not doubt that little folds of
skin, which originally served as ovigerous frena, but which, likewise,
very slightly aided the act of respiration, have been gradually
converted by natural selection into branchiae, simply through an
increase in their size and the obliteration of their adhesive glands.
If all pedunculated cirripedes had become extinct, and they have already
suffered far more extinction than have sessile cirripedes, who would
ever have imagined that the branchiae in this latter family had
originally existed as organs for preventing the ova from being washed
out of the sack?

Although we must be extremely cautious in concluding that any organ
could not possibly have been produced by successive transitional
gradations, yet, undoubtedly, grave cases of difficulty occur, some of
which will be discussed in my future work.

One of the gravest is that of neuter insects, which are often very
differently constructed from either the males or fertile females; but
this case will be treated of in the next chapter. The electric organs
of fishes offer another case of special difficulty; it is impossible to
conceive by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced; but,
as Owen and others have remarked, their intimate structure closely
resembles that of common muscle; and as it has lately been shown that
Rays have an organ closely analogous to the electric apparatus, and yet
do not, as Matteuchi asserts, discharge any electricity, we must own
that we are far too ignorant to argue that no transition of any kind is
possible.

The electric organs offer another and even more serious difficulty; for
they occur in only about a dozen fishes, of which several are widely
remote in their affinities. Generally when the same organ appears in
several members of the same class, especially if in members having very
different habits of life, we may attribute its presence to inheritance
from a common ancestor; and its absence in some of the members to its
loss through disuse or natural selection. But if the electric organs had
been inherited from one ancient progenitor thus provided, we might have
expected that all electric fishes would have been specially related to
each other. Nor does geology at all lead to the belief that formerly
most fishes had electric organs, which most of their modified
descendants have lost. The presence of luminous organs in a few insects,
belonging to different families and orders, offers a parallel case of
difficulty. Other cases could be given; for instance in plants, the very
curious contrivance of a mass of pollen-grains, borne on a
foot-stalk with a sticky gland at the end, is the same in Orchis and
Asclepias,--genera almost as remote as possible amongst flowering
plants. In all these cases of two very distinct species furnished
with apparently the same anomalous organ, it should be observed that,
although the general appearance and function of the organ may be the
same, yet some fundamental difference can generally be detected. I
am inclined to believe that in nearly the same way as two men have
sometimes independently hit on the very same invention, so natural
selection, working for the good of each being and taking advantage of
analogous variations, has sometimes modified in very nearly the same
manner two parts in two organic beings, which owe but little of their
structure in common to inheritance from the same ancestor.

Although in many cases it is most difficult to conjecture by what
transitions an organ could have arrived at its present state; yet,
considering that the proportion of living and known forms to the extinct
and unknown is very small, I have been astonished how rarely an organ
can be named, towards which no transitional grade is known to lead.
The truth of this remark is indeed shown by that old canon in natural
history of "Natura non facit saltum." We meet with this admission in the
writings of almost every experienced naturalist; or, as Milne Edwards
has well expressed it, nature is prodigal in variety, but niggard in
innovation. Why, on the theory of Creation, should this be so? Why
should all the parts and organs of many independent beings, each
supposed to have been separately created for its proper place in nature,
be so invariably linked together by graduated steps? Why should not
Nature have taken a leap from structure to structure? On the theory of
natural selection, we can clearly understand why she should not; for
natural selection can act only by taking advantage of slight successive
variations; she can never take a leap, but must advance by the shortest
and slowest steps.

ORGANS OF LITTLE APPARENT IMPORTANCE.

As natural selection acts by life and death,--by the preservation of
individuals with any favourable variation, and by the destruction of
those with any unfavourable deviation of structure,--I have sometimes
felt much difficulty in understanding the origin of simple parts, of
which the importance does not seem sufficient to cause the preservation
of successively varying individuals. I have sometimes felt as much
difficulty, though of a very different kind, on this head, as in the
case of an organ as perfect and complex as the eye.

In the first place, we are much too ignorant in regard to the whole
economy of any one organic being, to say what slight modifications would
be of importance or not. In a former chapter I have given instances of
most trifling characters, such as the down on fruit and the colour of
the flesh, which, from determining the attacks of insects or from being
correlated with constitutional differences, might assuredly be acted on
by natural selection. The tail of the giraffe looks like an artificially
constructed fly-flapper; and it seems at first incredible that this
could have been adapted for its present purpose by successive slight
modifications, each better and better, for so trifling an object as
driving away flies; yet we should pause before being too positive even
in this case, for we know that the distribution and existence of cattle
and other animals in South America absolutely depends on their power of
resisting the attacks of insects: so that individuals which could by any
means defend themselves from these small enemies, would be able to range
into new pastures and thus gain a great advantage. It is not that the
larger quadrupeds are actually destroyed (except in some rare cases) by
the flies, but they are incessantly harassed and their strength reduced,
so that they are more subject to disease, or not so well enabled in a
coming dearth to search for food, or to escape from beasts of prey.

Organs now of trifling importance have probably in some cases been of
high importance to an early progenitor, and, after having been slowly
perfected at a former period, have been transmitted in nearly the
same state, although now become of very slight use; and any actually
injurious deviations in their structure will always have been checked by
natural selection. Seeing how important an organ of locomotion the
tail is in most aquatic animals, its general presence and use for many
purposes in so many land animals, which in their lungs or modified
swim-bladders betray their aquatic origin, may perhaps be thus accounted
for. A well-developed tail having been formed in an aquatic animal, it
might subsequently come to be worked in for all sorts of purposes, as
a fly-flapper, an organ of prehension, or as an aid in turning, as with
the dog, though the aid must be slight, for the hare, with hardly any
tail, can double quickly enough.

In the second place, we may sometimes attribute importance to characters
which are really of very little importance, and which have originated
from quite secondary causes, independently of natural selection. We
should remember that climate, food, etc., probably have some little
direct influence on the organisation; that characters reappear from
the law of reversion; that correlation of growth will have had a most
important influence in modifying various structures; and finally,
that sexual selection will often have largely modified the external
characters of animals having a will, to give one male an advantage
in fighting with another or in charming the females. Moreover when a
modification of structure has primarily arisen from the above or
other unknown causes, it may at first have been of no advantage to
the species, but may subsequently have been taken advantage of by the
descendants of the species under new conditions of life and with newly
acquired habits.

To give a few instances to illustrate these latter remarks. If green
woodpeckers alone had existed, and we did not know that there were many
black and pied kinds, I dare say that we should have thought that the
green colour was a beautiful adaptation to hide this tree-frequenting
bird from its enemies; and consequently that it was a character of
importance and might have been acquired through natural selection; as it
is, I have no doubt that the colour is due to some quite distinct cause,
probably to sexual selection. A trailing bamboo in the Malay Archipelago
climbs the loftiest trees by the aid of exquisitely constructed hooks
clustered around the ends of the branches, and this contrivance, no
doubt, is of the highest service to the plant; but as we see nearly
similar hooks on many trees which are not climbers, the hooks on the
bamboo may have arisen from unknown laws of growth, and have been
subsequently taken advantage of by the plant undergoing further
modification and becoming a climber. The naked skin on the head of a
vulture is generally looked at as a direct adaptation for wallowing in
putridity; and so it may be, or it may possibly be due to the direct
action of putrid matter; but we should be very cautious in drawing
any such inference, when we see that the skin on the head of the
clean-feeding male turkey is likewise naked. The sutures in the skulls
of young mammals have been advanced as a beautiful adaptation for aiding
parturition, and no doubt they facilitate, or may be indispensable
for this act; but as sutures occur in the skulls of young birds and
reptiles, which have only to escape from a broken egg, we may infer that
this structure has arisen from the laws of growth, and has been taken
advantage of in the parturition of the higher animals.

We are profoundly ignorant of the causes producing slight and
unimportant variations; and we are immediately made conscious of this by
reflecting on the differences in the breeds of our domesticated animals
in different countries,--more especially in the less civilized countries
where there has been but little artificial selection. Careful observers
are convinced that a damp climate affects the growth of the hair, and
that with the hair the horns are correlated. Mountain breeds always
differ from lowland breeds; and a mountainous country would probably
affect the hind limbs from exercising them more, and possibly even the
form of the pelvis; and then by the law of homologous variation, the
front limbs and even the head would probably be affected. The shape,
also, of the pelvis might affect by pressure the shape of the head of
the young in the womb. The laborious breathing necessary in high regions
would, we have some reason to believe, increase the size of the chest;
and again correlation would come into play. Animals kept by savages in
different countries often have to struggle for their own subsistence,
and would be exposed to a certain extent to natural selection, and
individuals with slightly different constitutions would succeed
best under different climates; and there is reason to believe that
constitution and colour are correlated. A good observer, also, states
that in cattle susceptibility to the attacks of flies is correlated with
colour, as is the liability to be poisoned by certain plants; so that
colour would be thus subjected to the action of natural selection. But
we are far too ignorant to speculate on the relative importance of the
several known and unknown laws of variation; and I have here alluded
to them only to show that, if we are unable to account for the
characteristic differences of our domestic breeds, which nevertheless we
generally admit to have arisen through ordinary generation, we ought
not to lay too much stress on our ignorance of the precise cause of the
slight analogous differences between species. I might have adduced for
this same purpose the differences between the races of man, which are
so strongly marked; I may add that some little light can apparently
be thrown on the origin of these differences, chiefly through sexual
selection of a particular kind, but without here entering on copious
details my reasoning would appear frivolous.

The foregoing remarks lead me to say a few words on the protest lately
made by some naturalists, against the utilitarian doctrine that every
detail of structure has been produced for the good of its possessor.
They believe that very many structures have been created for beauty in
the eyes of man, or for mere variety. This doctrine, if true, would be
absolutely fatal to my theory. Yet I fully admit that many structures
are of no direct use to their possessors. Physical conditions probably
have had some little effect on structure, quite independently of any
good thus gained. Correlation of growth has no doubt played a most
important part, and a useful modification of one part will often have
entailed on other parts diversified changes of no direct use. So again
characters which formerly were useful, or which formerly had arisen from
correlation of growth, or from other unknown cause, may reappear from
the law of reversion, though now of no direct use. The effects of sexual
selection, when displayed in beauty to charm the females, can be called
useful only in rather a forced sense. But by far the most important
consideration is that the chief part of the organisation of every
being is simply due to inheritance; and consequently, though each being
assuredly is well fitted for its place in nature, many structures now
have no direct relation to the habits of life of each species. Thus, we
can hardly believe that the webbed feet of the upland goose or of the
frigate-bird are of special use to these birds; we cannot believe that
the same bones in the arm of the monkey, in the fore leg of the horse,
in the wing of the bat, and in the flipper of the seal, are of special
use to these animals. We may safely attribute these structures to
inheritance. But to the progenitor of the upland goose and of the
frigate-bird, webbed feet no doubt were as useful as they now are to the
most aquatic of existing birds. So we may believe that the progenitor of
the seal had not a flipper, but a foot with five toes fitted for walking
or grasping; and we may further venture to believe that the several
bones in the limbs of the monkey, horse, and bat, which have been
inherited from a common progenitor, were formerly of more special use to
that progenitor, or its progenitors, than they now are to these animals
having such widely diversified habits. Therefore we may infer that
these several bones might have been acquired through natural selection,
subjected formerly, as now, to the several laws of inheritance,
reversion, correlation of growth, etc. Hence every detail of structure
in every living creature (making some little allowance for the direct
action of physical conditions) may be viewed, either as having been of
special use to some ancestral form, or as being now of special use to
the descendants of this form--either directly, or indirectly through the
complex laws of growth.

Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one
species exclusively for the good of another species; though throughout
nature one species incessantly takes advantage of, and profits by, the
structure of another. But natural selection can and does often produce
structures for the direct injury of other species, as we see in the fang
of the adder, and in the ovipositor of the ichneumon, by which its eggs
are deposited in the living bodies of other insects. If it could be
proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been
formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my
theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.
Although many statements may be found in works on natural history to
this effect, I cannot find even one which seems to me of any weight. It
is admitted that the rattlesnake has a poison-fang for its own defence
and for the destruction of its prey; but some authors suppose that at
the same time this snake is furnished with a rattle for its own injury,
namely, to warn its prey to escape. I would almost as soon believe that
the cat curls the end of its tail when preparing to spring, in order to
warn the doomed mouse. But I have not space here to enter on this and
other such cases.

Natural selection will never produce in a being anything injurious to
itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each.
No organ will be formed, as Paley has remarked, for the purpose of
causing pain or for doing an injury to its possessor. If a fair balance
be struck between the good and evil caused by each part, each will be
found on the whole advantageous. After the lapse of time, under changing
conditions of life, if any part comes to be injurious, it will be
modified; or if it be not so, the being will become extinct, as myriads
have become extinct.

Natural selection tends only to make each organic being as perfect as,
or slightly more perfect than, the other inhabitants of the same country
with which it has to struggle for existence. And we see that this is the
degree of perfection attained under nature. The endemic productions of
New Zealand, for instance, are perfect one compared with another; but
they are now rapidly yielding before the advancing legions of plants
and animals introduced from Europe. Natural selection will not produce
absolute perfection, nor do we always meet, as far as we can judge, with
this high standard under nature. The correction for the aberration of
light is said, on high authority, not to be perfect even in that most
perfect organ, the eye. If our reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm
a multitude of inimitable contrivances in nature, this same reason tells
us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some other contrivances
are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee
as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be
withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes
the death of the insect by tearing out its viscera?

If we look at the sting of the bee, as having originally existed in a
remote progenitor as a boring and serrated instrument, like that in so
many members of the same great order, and which has been modified
but not perfected for its present purpose, with the poison originally
adapted to cause galls subsequently intensified, we can perhaps
understand how it is that the use of the sting should so often cause the
insect's own death: for if on the whole the power of stinging be
useful to the community, it will fulfil all the requirements of natural
selection, though it may cause the death of some few members. If we
admire the truly wonderful power of scent by which the males of many
insects find their females, can we admire the production for this
single purpose of thousands of drones, which are utterly useless to the
community for any other end, and which are ultimately slaughtered by
their industrious and sterile sisters? It may be difficult, but we ought
to admire the savage instinctive hatred of the queen-bee, which urges
her instantly to destroy the young queens her daughters as soon as born,
or to perish herself in the combat; for undoubtedly this is for the
good of the community; and maternal love or maternal hatred, though
the latter fortunately is most rare, is all the same to the inexorable
principle of natural selection. If we admire the several ingenious
contrivances, by which the flowers of the orchis and of many other
plants are fertilised through insect agency, can we consider as equally
perfect the elaboration by our fir-trees of dense clouds of pollen, in
order that a few granules may be wafted by a chance breeze on to the
ovules?

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER.

We have in this chapter discussed some of the difficulties and
objections which may be urged against my theory. Many of them are very
grave; but I think that in the discussion light has been thrown on
several facts, which on the theory of independent acts of creation are
utterly obscure. We have seen that species at any one period are not
indefinitely variable, and are not linked together by a multitude of
intermediate gradations, partly because the process of natural selection
will always be very slow, and will act, at any one time, only on a very
few forms; and partly because the very process of natural selection
almost implies the continual supplanting and extinction of preceding
and intermediate gradations. Closely allied species, now living on
a continuous area, must often have been formed when the area was not
continuous, and when the conditions of life did not insensibly graduate
away from one part to another. When two varieties are formed in two
districts of a continuous area, an intermediate variety will often be
formed, fitted for an intermediate zone; but from reasons assigned, the
intermediate variety will usually exist in lesser numbers than the two
forms which it connects; consequently the two latter, during the course
of further modification, from existing in greater numbers, will have a
great advantage over the less numerous intermediate variety, and will
thus generally succeed in supplanting and exterminating it.

We have seen in this chapter how cautious we should be in concluding
that the most different habits of life could not graduate into each
other; that a bat, for instance, could not have been formed by natural
selection from an animal which at first could only glide through the
air.

We have seen that a species may under new conditions of life change its
habits, or have diversified habits, with some habits very unlike those
of its nearest congeners. Hence we can understand, bearing in mind that
each organic being is trying to live wherever it can live, how it has
arisen that there are upland geese with webbed feet, ground woodpeckers,
diving thrushes, and petrels with the habits of auks.

Although the belief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been
formed by natural selection, is more than enough to stagger any one; yet
in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in
complexity, each good for its possessor, then, under changing conditions
of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any
conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection. In the cases
in which we know of no intermediate or transitional states, we should
be very cautious in concluding that none could have existed, for the
homologies of many organs and their intermediate states show that
wonderful metamorphoses in function are at least possible. For instance,
a swim-bladder has apparently been converted into an air-breathing lung.
The same organ having performed simultaneously very different functions,
and then having been specialised for one function; and two very distinct
organs having performed at the same time the same function, the one
having been perfected whilst aided by the other, must often have largely
facilitated transitions.

We are far too ignorant, in almost every case, to be enabled to assert
that any part or organ is so unimportant for the welfare of a species,
that modifications in its structure could not have been slowly
accumulated by means of natural selection. But we may confidently
believe that many modifications, wholly due to the laws of growth, and
at first in no way advantageous to a species, have been subsequently
taken advantage of by the still further modified descendants of this
species. We may, also, believe that a part formerly of high importance
has often been retained (as the tail of an aquatic animal by its
terrestrial descendants), though it has become of such small importance
that it could not, in its present state, have been acquired by natural
selection,--a power which acts solely by the preservation of profitable
variations in the struggle for life.

Natural selection will produce nothing in one species for the exclusive
good or injury of another; though it may well produce parts, organs, and
excretions highly useful or even indispensable, or highly injurious to
another species, but in all cases at the same time useful to the owner.
Natural selection in each well-stocked country, must act chiefly through
the competition of the inhabitants one with another, and consequently
will produce perfection, or strength in the battle for life, only
according to the standard of that country. Hence the inhabitants of one
country, generally the smaller one, will often yield, as we see they do
yield, to the inhabitants of another and generally larger country. For
in the larger country there will have existed more individuals, and more
diversified forms, and the competition will have been severer, and
thus the standard of perfection will have been rendered higher. Natural
selection will not necessarily produce absolute perfection; nor, as far
as we can judge by our limited faculties, can absolute perfection be
everywhere found.

On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full
meaning of that old canon in natural history, "Natura non facit saltum."
This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world, is
not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must
by my theory be strictly true.

It is generally acknowledged that all organic beings have been formed on
two great laws--Unity of Type, and the Conditions of Existence. By unity
of type is meant that fundamental agreement in structure, which we see
in organic beings of the same class, and which is quite independent of
their habits of life. On my theory, unity of type is explained by unity
of descent. The expression of conditions of existence, so often insisted
on by the illustrious Cuvier, is fully embraced by the principle of
natural selection. For natural selection acts by either now adapting the
varying parts of each being to its organic and inorganic conditions of
life; or by having adapted them during long-past periods of time: the
adaptations being aided in some cases by use and disuse, being slightly
affected by the direct action of the external conditions of life, and
being in all cases subjected to the several laws of growth. Hence, in
fact, the law of the Conditions of Existence is the higher law; as it
includes, through the inheritance of former adaptations, that of Unity
of Type.




7. INSTINCT.

Instincts comparable with habits, but different in their origin.
Instincts graduated. Aphides and ants. Instincts variable. Domestic
instincts, their origin. Natural instincts of the cuckoo, ostrich, and
parasitic bees. Slave-making ants. Hive-bee, its cell-making instinct.
Difficulties on the theory of the Natural Selection of instincts. Neuter
or sterile insects. Summary.

The subject of instinct might have been worked into the previous
chapters; but I have thought that it would be more convenient to treat
the subject separately, especially as so wonderful an instinct as that
of the hive-bee making its cells will probably have occurred to many
readers, as a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory. I must
premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental
powers, any more than I have with that of life itself. We are concerned
only with the diversities of instinct and of the other mental qualities
of animals within the same class.

I will not attempt any definition of instinct. It would be easy to show
that several distinct mental actions are commonly embraced by this term;
but every one understands what is meant, when it is said that instinct
impels the cuckoo to migrate and to lay her eggs in other birds' nests.
An action, which we ourselves should require experience to enable us to
perform, when performed by an animal, more especially by a very young
one, without any experience, and when performed by many individuals in
the same way, without their knowing for what purpose it is performed,
is usually said to be instinctive. But I could show that none of these
characters of instinct are universal. A little dose, as Pierre Huber
expresses it, of judgment or reason, often comes into play, even in
animals very low in the scale of nature.

Frederick Cuvier and several of the older metaphysicians have compared
instinct with habit. This comparison gives, I think, a remarkably
accurate notion of the frame of mind under which an instinctive action
is performed, but not of its origin. How unconsciously many habitual
actions are performed, indeed not rarely in direct opposition to our
conscious will! yet they may be modified by the will or reason. Habits
easily become associated with other habits, and with certain periods
of time and states of the body. When once acquired, they often remain
constant throughout life. Several other points of resemblance between
instincts and habits could be pointed out. As in repeating a well-known
song, so in instincts, one action follows another by a sort of rhythm;
if a person be interrupted in a song, or in repeating anything by rote,
he is generally forced to go back to recover the habitual train of
thought: so P. Huber found it was with a caterpillar, which makes a very
complicated hammock; for if he took a caterpillar which had completed
its hammock up to, say, the sixth stage of construction, and put it into
a hammock completed up only to the third stage, the caterpillar simply
re-performed the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages of construction.
If, however, a caterpillar were taken out of a hammock made up, for
instance, to the third stage, and were put into one finished up to the
sixth stage, so that much of its work was already done for it, far from
feeling the benefit of this, it was much embarrassed, and, in order to
complete its hammock, seemed forced to start from the third stage, where
it had left off, and thus tried to complete the already finished work.

If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited--and I think
it can be shown that this does sometimes happen--then the resemblance
between what originally was a habit and an instinct becomes so close as
not to be distinguished. If Mozart, instead of playing the pianoforte at
three years old with wonderfully little practice, had played a tune
with no practice at all, he might truly be said to have done so
instinctively. But it would be the most serious error to suppose that
the greater number of instincts have been acquired by habit in
one generation, and then transmitted by inheritance to succeeding
generations. It can be clearly shown that the most wonderful instincts
with which we are acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many
ants, could not possibly have been thus acquired.

It will be universally admitted that instincts are as important as
corporeal structure for the welfare of each species, under its present
conditions of life. Under changed conditions of life, it is at least
possible that slight modifications of instinct might be profitable to a
species; and if it can be shown that instincts do vary ever so little,
then I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and
continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that may
be profitable. It is thus, as I believe, that all the most complex
and wonderful instincts have originated. As modifications of corporeal
structure arise from, and are increased by, use or habit, and are
diminished or lost by disuse, so I do not doubt it has been with
instincts. But I believe that the effects of habit are of quite
subordinate importance to the effects of the natural selection of what
may be called accidental variations of instincts;--that is of variations
produced by the same unknown causes which produce slight deviations of
bodily structure.

No complex instinct can possibly be produced through natural selection,
except by the slow and gradual accumulation of numerous, slight, yet
profitable, variations. Hence, as in the case of corporeal structures,
we ought to find in nature, not the actual transitional gradations by
which each complex instinct has been acquired--for these could be found
only in the lineal ancestors of each species--but we ought to find in
the collateral lines of descent some evidence of such gradations; or
we ought at least to be able to show that gradations of some kind are
possible; and this we certainly can do. I have been surprised to find,
making allowance for the instincts of animals having been but little
observed except in Europe and North America, and for no instinct being
known amongst extinct species, how very generally gradations, leading to
the most complex instincts, can be discovered. The canon of "Natura non
facit saltum" applies with almost equal force to instincts as to bodily
organs. Changes of instinct may sometimes be facilitated by the same
species having different instincts at different periods of life, or
at different seasons of the year, or when placed under different
circumstances, etc.; in which case either one or the other instinct
might be preserved by natural selection. And such instances of diversity
of instinct in the same species can be shown to occur in nature.

Again as in the case of corporeal structure, and conformably with my
theory, the instinct of each species is good for itself, but has never,
as far as we can judge, been produced for the exclusive good of others.
One of the strongest instances of an animal apparently performing an
action for the sole good of another, with which I am acquainted, is that
of aphides voluntarily yielding their sweet excretion to ants: that they
do so voluntarily, the following facts show. I removed all the ants from
a group of about a dozen aphides on a dock-plant, and prevented their
attendance during several hours. After this interval, I felt sure that
the aphides would want to excrete. I watched them for some time through
a lens, but not one excreted; I then tickled and stroked them with a
hair in the same manner, as well as I could, as the ants do with their
antennae; but not one excreted. Afterwards I allowed an ant to visit
them, and it immediately seemed, by its eager way of running about, to
be well aware what a rich flock it had discovered; it then began to play
with its antennae on the abdomen first of one aphis and then of another;
and each aphis, as soon as it felt the antennae, immediately lifted up
its abdomen and excreted a limpid drop of sweet juice, which was eagerly
devoured by the ant. Even the quite young aphides behaved in this
manner, showing that the action was instinctive, and not the result of
experience. But as the excretion is extremely viscid, it is probably a
convenience to the aphides to have it removed; and therefore probably
the aphides do not instinctively excrete for the sole good of the ants.
Although I do not believe that any animal in the world performs an
action for the exclusive good of another of a distinct species, yet
each species tries to take advantage of the instincts of others, as each
takes advantage of the weaker bodily structure of others. So again, in
some few cases, certain instincts cannot be considered as absolutely
perfect; but as details on this and other such points are not
indispensable, they may be here passed over.

As some degree of variation in instincts under a state of nature, and
the inheritance of such variations, are indispensable for the action of
natural selection, as many instances as possible ought to have been here
given; but want of space prevents me. I can only assert, that instincts
certainly do vary--for instance, the migratory instinct, both in extent
and direction, and in its total loss. So it is with the nests of birds,
which vary partly in dependence on the situations chosen, and on the
nature and temperature of the country inhabited, but often from causes
wholly unknown to us: Audubon has given several remarkable cases of
differences in nests of the same species in the northern and southern
United States. Fear of any particular enemy is certainly an instinctive
quality, as may be seen in nestling birds, though it is strengthened by
experience, and by the sight of fear of the same enemy in other animals.
But fear of man is slowly acquired, as I have elsewhere shown, by
various animals inhabiting desert islands; and we may see an instance
of this, even in England, in the greater wildness of all our large birds
than of our small birds; for the large birds have been most persecuted
by man. We may safely attribute the greater wildness of our large birds
to this cause; for in uninhabited islands large birds are not more
fearful than small; and the magpie, so wary in England, is tame in
Norway, as is the hooded crow in Egypt.

That the general disposition of individuals of the same species, born in
a state of nature, is extremely diversified, can be shown by a multitude
of facts. Several cases also, could be given, of occasional and strange
habits in certain species, which might, if advantageous to the species,
give rise, through natural selection, to quite new instincts. But I am
well aware that these general statements, without facts given in detail,
can produce but a feeble effect on the reader's mind. I can only repeat
my assurance, that I do not speak without good evidence.

The possibility, or even probability, of inherited variations
of instinct in a state of nature will be strengthened by briefly
considering a few cases under domestication. We shall thus also be
enabled to see the respective parts which habit and the selection of
so-called accidental variations have played in modifying the mental
qualities of our domestic animals. A number of curious and authentic
instances could be given of the inheritance of all shades of disposition
and tastes, and likewise of the oddest tricks, associated with certain
frames of mind or periods of time. But let us look to the familiar case
of the several breeds of dogs: it cannot be doubted that young pointers
(I have myself seen a striking instance) will sometimes point and even
back other dogs the very first time that they are taken out; retrieving
is certainly in some degree inherited by retrievers; and a tendency to
run round, instead of at, a flock of sheep, by shepherd-dogs. I cannot
see that these actions, performed without experience by the young,
and in nearly the same manner by each individual, performed with eager
delight by each breed, and without the end being known,--for the young
pointer can no more know that he points to aid his master, than
the white butterfly knows why she lays her eggs on the leaf of the
cabbage,--I cannot see that these actions differ essentially from true
instincts. If we were to see one kind of wolf, when young and without
any training, as soon as it scented its prey, stand motionless like a
statue, and then slowly crawl forward with a peculiar gait; and another
kind of wolf rushing round, instead of at, a herd of deer, and driving
them to a distant point, we should assuredly call these actions
instinctive. Domestic instincts, as they may be called, are certainly
far less fixed or invariable than natural instincts; but they have been
acted on by far less rigorous selection, and have been transmitted for
an incomparably shorter period, under less fixed conditions of life.

How strongly these domestic instincts, habits, and dispositions are
inherited, and how curiously they become mingled, is well shown when
different breeds of dogs are crossed. Thus it is known that a cross with
a bull-dog has affected for many generations the courage and obstinacy
of greyhounds; and a cross with a greyhound has given to a whole family
of shepherd-dogs a tendency to hunt hares. These domestic instincts,
when thus tested by crossing, resemble natural instincts, which in a
like manner become curiously blended together, and for a long period
exhibit traces of the instincts of either parent: for example, Le Roy
describes a dog, whose great-grandfather was a wolf, and this dog
showed a trace of its wild parentage only in one way, by not coming in a
straight line to his master when called.

Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken of as actions which have become
inherited solely from long-continued and compulsory habit, but this,
I think, is not true. No one would ever have thought of teaching, or
probably could have taught, the tumbler-pigeon to tumble,--an action
which, as I have witnessed, is performed by young birds, that have
never seen a pigeon tumble. We may believe that some one pigeon showed
a slight tendency to this strange habit, and that the long-continued
selection of the best individuals in successive generations made
tumblers what they now are; and near Glasgow there are house-tumblers,
as I hear from Mr. Brent, which cannot fly eighteen inches high without
going head over heels. It may be doubted whether any one would have
thought of training a dog to point, had not some one dog naturally shown
a tendency in this line; and this is known occasionally to happen, as I
once saw in a pure terrier. When the first tendency was once displayed,
methodical selection and the inherited effects of compulsory training in
each successive generation would soon complete the work; and unconscious
selection is still at work, as each man tries to procure, without
intending to improve the breed, dogs which will stand and hunt best.
On the other hand, habit alone in some cases has sufficed; no animal is
more difficult to tame than the young of the wild rabbit; scarcely any
animal is tamer than the young of the tame rabbit; but I do not suppose
that domestic rabbits have ever been selected for tameness; and I
presume that we must attribute the whole of the inherited change from
extreme wildness to extreme tameness, simply to habit and long-continued
close confinement.

Natural instincts are lost under domestication: a remarkable instance of
this is seen in those breeds of fowls which very rarely or never become
"broody," that is, never wish to sit on their eggs. Familiarity alone
prevents our seeing how universally and largely the minds of our
domestic animals have been modified by domestication. It is scarcely
possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the
dog. All wolves, foxes, jackals, and species of the cat genus, when
kept tame, are most eager to attack poultry, sheep, and pigs; and this
tendency has been found incurable in dogs which have been brought home
as puppies from countries, such as Tierra del Fuego and Australia, where
the savages do not keep these domestic animals. How rarely, on the other
hand, do our civilised dogs, even when quite young, require to be taught
not to attack poultry, sheep, and pigs! No doubt they occasionally
do make an attack, and are then beaten; and if not cured, they are
destroyed; so that habit, with some degree of selection, has probably
concurred in civilising by inheritance our dogs. On the other hand,
young chickens have lost, wholly by habit, that fear of the dog and cat
which no doubt was originally instinctive in them, in the same way as it
is so plainly instinctive in young pheasants, though reared under a hen.
It is not that chickens have lost all fear, but fear only of dogs and
cats, for if the hen gives the danger-chuckle, they will run (more
especially young turkeys) from under her, and conceal themselves in
the surrounding grass or thickets; and this is evidently done for the
instinctive purpose of allowing, as we see in wild ground-birds, their
mother to fly away. But this instinct retained by our chickens has
become useless under domestication, for the mother-hen has almost lost
by disuse the power of flight.

Hence, we may conclude, that domestic instincts have been acquired and
natural instincts have been lost partly by habit, and partly by man
selecting and accumulating during successive generations, peculiar
mental habits and actions, which at first appeared from what we must in
our ignorance call an accident. In some cases compulsory habit alone
has sufficed to produce such inherited mental changes; in other cases
compulsory habit has done nothing, and all has been the result of
selection, pursued both methodically and unconsciously; but in most
cases, probably, habit and selection have acted together.

We shall, perhaps, best understand how instincts in a state of nature
have become modified by selection, by considering a few cases. I will
select only three, out of the several which I shall have to discuss in
my future work,--namely, the instinct which leads the cuckoo to lay her
eggs in other birds' nests; the slave-making instinct of certain ants;
and the comb-making power of the hive-bee: these two latter instincts
have generally, and most justly, been ranked by naturalists as the most
wonderful of all known instincts.

It is now commonly admitted that the more immediate and final cause
of the cuckoo's instinct is, that she lays her eggs, not daily, but at
intervals of two or three days; so that, if she were to make her own
nest and sit on her own eggs, those first laid would have to be left
for some time unincubated, or there would be eggs and young birds of
different ages in the same nest. If this were the case, the process of
laying and hatching might be inconveniently long, more especially as she
has to migrate at a very early period; and the first hatched young would
probably have to be fed by the male alone. But the American cuckoo is
in this predicament; for she makes her own nest and has eggs and young
successively hatched, all at the same time. It has been asserted that
the American cuckoo occasionally lays her eggs in other birds' nests;
but I hear on the high authority of Dr. Brewer, that this is a mistake.
Nevertheless, I could give several instances of various birds which have
been known occasionally to lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Now let
us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the
habits of the American cuckoo; but that occasionally she laid an egg in
another bird's nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit,
or if the young were made more vigorous by advantage having been taken
of the mistaken maternal instinct of another bird, than by their own
mother's care, encumbered as she can hardly fail to be by having eggs
and young of different ages at the same time; then the old birds or the
fostered young would gain an advantage. And analogy would lead me
to believe, that the young thus reared would be apt to follow by
inheritance the occasional and aberrant habit of their mother, and in
their turn would be apt to lay their eggs in other birds' nests, and
thus be successful in rearing their young. By a continued process of
this nature, I believe that the strange instinct of our cuckoo could be,
and has been, generated. I may add that, according to Dr. Gray and
to some other observers, the European cuckoo has not utterly lost all
maternal love and care for her own offspring.

The occasional habit of birds laying their eggs in other birds' nests,
either of the same or of a distinct species, is not very uncommon with
the Gallinaceae; and this perhaps explains the origin of a singular
instinct in the allied group of ostriches. For several hen ostriches,
at least in the case of the American species, unite and lay first a
few eggs in one nest and then in another; and these are hatched by the
males. This instinct may probably be accounted for by the fact of the
hens laying a large number of eggs; but, as in the case of the cuckoo,
at intervals of two or three days. This instinct, however, of the
American ostrich has not as yet been perfected; for a surprising number
of eggs lie strewed over the plains, so that in one day's hunting I
picked up no less than twenty lost and wasted eggs.

Many bees are parasitic, and always lay their eggs in the nests of bees
of other kinds. This case is more remarkable than that of the cuckoo;
for these bees have not only their instincts but their structure
modified in accordance with their parasitic habits; for they do not
possess the pollen-collecting apparatus which would be necessary if
they had to store food for their own young. Some species, likewise, of
Sphegidae (wasp-like insects) are parasitic on other species; and M.
Fabre has lately shown good reason for believing that although the
Tachytes nigra generally makes its own burrow and stores it with
paralysed prey for its own larvae to feed on, yet that when this insect
finds a burrow already made and stored by another sphex, it takes
advantage of the prize, and becomes for the occasion parasitic. In this
case, as with the supposed case of the cuckoo, I can see no difficulty
in natural selection making an occasional habit permanent, if of
advantage to the species, and if the insect whose nest and stored food
are thus feloniously appropriated, be not thus exterminated.

SLAVE-MAKING INSTINCT.

This remarkable instinct was first discovered in the Formica (Polyerges)
rufescens by Pierre Huber, a better observer even than his celebrated
father. This ant is absolutely dependent on its slaves; without their
aid, the species would certainly become extinct in a single year. The
males and fertile females do no work. The workers or sterile females,
though most energetic and courageous in capturing slaves, do no other
work. They are incapable of making their own nests, or of feeding their
own larvae. When the old nest is found inconvenient, and they have to
migrate, it is the slaves which determine the migration, and actually
carry their masters in their jaws. So utterly helpless are the masters,
that when Huber shut up thirty of them without a slave, but with plenty
of the food which they like best, and with their larvae and pupae to
stimulate them to work, they did nothing; they could not even feed
themselves, and many perished of hunger. Huber then introduced a single
slave (F. fusca), and she instantly set to work, fed and saved the
survivors; made some cells and tended the larvae, and put all to rights.
What can be more extraordinary than these well-ascertained facts? If we
had not known of any other slave-making ant, it would have been
hopeless to have speculated how so wonderful an instinct could have been
perfected.

Formica sanguinea was likewise first discovered by P. Huber to be
a slave-making ant. This species is found in the southern parts of
England, and its habits have been attended to by Mr. F. Smith, of the
British Museum, to whom I am much indebted for information on this and
other subjects. Although fully trusting to the statements of Huber and
Mr. Smith, I tried to approach the subject in a sceptical frame of
mind, as any one may well be excused for doubting the truth of so
extraordinary and odious an instinct as that of making slaves. Hence
I will give the observations which I have myself made, in some little
detail. I opened fourteen nests of F. sanguinea, and found a few slaves
in all. Males and fertile females of the slave-species are found only in
their own proper communities, and have never been observed in the nests
of F. sanguinea. The slaves are black and not above half the size of
their red masters, so that the contrast in their appearance is very
great. When the nest is slightly disturbed, the slaves occasionally come
out, and like their masters are much agitated and defend the nest: when
the nest is much disturbed and the larvae and pupae are exposed, the
slaves work energetically with their masters in carrying them away to a
place of safety. Hence, it is clear, that the slaves feel quite at home.
During the months of June and July, on three successive years, I have
watched for many hours several nests in Surrey and Sussex, and never
saw a slave either leave or enter a nest. As, during these months,
the slaves are very few in number, I thought that they might behave
differently when more numerous; but Mr. Smith informs me that he has
watched the nests at various hours during May, June and August, both in
Surrey and Hampshire, and has never seen the slaves, though present
in large numbers in August, either leave or enter the nest. Hence he
considers them as strictly household slaves. The masters, on the other
hand, may be constantly seen bringing in materials for the nest, and
food of all kinds. During the present year, however, in the month of
July, I came across a community with an unusually large stock of slaves,
and I observed a few slaves mingled with their masters leaving the nest,
and marching along the same road to a tall Scotch-fir-tree, twenty-five
yards distant, which they ascended together, probably in search of
aphides or cocci. According to Huber, who had ample opportunities
for observation, in Switzerland the slaves habitually work with their
masters in making the nest, and they alone open and close the doors in
the morning and evening; and, as Huber expressly states, their principal
office is to search for aphides. This difference in the usual habits of
the masters and slaves in the two countries, probably depends merely
on the slaves being captured in greater numbers in Switzerland than in
England.

One day I fortunately chanced to witness a migration from one nest to
another, and it was a most interesting spectacle to behold the masters
carefully carrying, as Huber has described, their slaves in their jaws.
Another day my attention was struck by about a score of the slave-makers
haunting the same spot, and evidently not in search of food; they
approached and were vigorously repulsed by an independent community of
the slave species (F. fusca); sometimes as many as three of these
ants clinging to the legs of the slave-making F. sanguinea. The latter
ruthlessly killed their small opponents, and carried their dead
bodies as food to their nest, twenty-nine yards distant; but they were
prevented from getting any pupae to rear as slaves. I then dug up a
small parcel of the pupae of F. fusca from another nest, and put them
down on a bare spot near the place of combat; they were eagerly seized,
and carried off by the tyrants, who perhaps fancied that, after all,
they had been victorious in their late combat.

At the same time I laid on the same place a small parcel of the pupae of
another species, F. flava, with a few of these little yellow ants still
clinging to the fragments of the nest. This species is sometimes, though
rarely, made into slaves, as has been described by Mr. Smith.
Although so small a species, it is very courageous, and I have seen it
ferociously attack other ants. In one instance I found to my surprise
an independent community of F. flava under a stone beneath a nest of the
slave-making F. sanguinea; and when I had accidentally disturbed both
nests, the little ants attacked their big neighbours with surprising
courage. Now I was curious to ascertain whether F. sanguinea could
distinguish the pupae of F. fusca, which they habitually make into
slaves, from those of the little and furious F. flava, which they rarely
capture, and it was evident that they did at once distinguish them:
for we have seen that they eagerly and instantly seized the pupae of F.
fusca, whereas they were much terrified when they came across the pupae,
or even the earth from the nest of F. flava, and quickly ran away; but
in about a quarter of an hour, shortly after all the little yellow ants
had crawled away, they took heart and carried off the pupae.

One evening I visited another community of F. sanguinea, and found a
number of these ants entering their nest, carrying the dead bodies of F.
fusca (showing that it was not a migration) and numerous pupae. I traced
the returning file burthened with booty, for about forty yards, to
a very thick clump of heath, whence I saw the last individual of F.
sanguinea emerge, carrying a pupa; but I was not able to find the
desolated nest in the thick heath. The nest, however, must have been
close at hand, for two or three individuals of F. fusca were rushing
about in the greatest agitation, and one was perched motionless with its
own pupa in its mouth on the top of a spray of heath over its ravaged
home.

Such are the facts, though they did not need confirmation by me, in
regard to the wonderful instinct of making slaves. Let it be observed
what a contrast the instinctive habits of F. sanguinea present with
those of the F. rufescens. The latter does not build its own nest, does
not determine its own migrations, does not collect food for itself or
its young, and cannot even feed itself: it is absolutely dependent on
its numerous slaves. Formica sanguinea, on the other hand, possesses
much fewer slaves, and in the early part of the summer extremely few.
The masters determine when and where a new nest shall be formed, and
when they migrate, the masters carry the slaves. Both in Switzerland and
England the slaves seem to have the exclusive care of the larvae, and
the masters alone go on slave-making expeditions. In Switzerland the
slaves and masters work together, making and bringing materials for the
nest: both, but chiefly the slaves, tend, and milk as it may be called,
their aphides; and thus both collect food for the community. In England
the masters alone usually leave the nest to collect building materials
and food for themselves, their slaves and larvae. So that the masters in
this country receive much less service from their slaves than they do in
Switzerland.

By what steps the instinct of F. sanguinea originated I will not pretend
to conjecture. But as ants, which are not slave-makers, will, as I have
seen, carry off pupae of other species, if scattered near their nests,
it is possible that pupae originally stored as food might become
developed; and the ants thus unintentionally reared would then follow
their proper instincts, and do what work they could. If their presence
proved useful to the species which had seized them--if it were more
advantageous to this species to capture workers than to procreate
them--the habit of collecting pupae originally for food might by natural
selection be strengthened and rendered permanent for the very different
purpose of raising slaves. When the instinct was once acquired, if
carried out to a much less extent even than in our British F. sanguinea,
which, as we have seen, is less aided by its slaves than the same
species in Switzerland, I can see no difficulty in natural selection
increasing and modifying the instinct--always supposing each
modification to be of use to the species--until an ant was formed as
abjectly dependent on its slaves as is the Formica rufescens.

CELL-MAKING INSTINCT OF THE HIVE-BEE.

I will not here enter on minute details on this subject, but will merely
give an outline of the conclusions at which I have arrived. He must be
a dull man who can examine the exquisite structure of a comb, so
beautifully adapted to its end, without enthusiastic admiration. We
hear from mathematicians that bees have practically solved a recondite
problem, and have made their cells of the proper shape to hold the
greatest possible amount of honey, with the least possible consumption
of precious wax in their construction. It has been remarked that a
skilful workman, with fitting tools and measures, would find it
very difficult to make cells of wax of the true form, though this is
perfectly effected by a crowd of bees working in a dark hive. Grant
whatever instincts you please, and it seems at first quite inconceivable
how they can make all the necessary angles and planes, or even perceive
when they are correctly made. But the difficulty is not nearly so great
as it at first appears: all this beautiful work can be shown, I think,
to follow from a few very simple instincts.

I was led to investigate this subject by Mr. Waterhouse, who has shown
that the form of the cell stands in close relation to the presence of
adjoining cells; and the following view may, perhaps, be considered only
as a modification of his theory. Let us look to the great principle of
gradation, and see whether Nature does not reveal to us her method of
work. At one end of a short series we have humble-bees, which use their
old cocoons to hold honey, sometimes adding to them short tubes of wax,
and likewise making separate and very irregular rounded cells of wax. At
the other end of the series we have the cells of the hive-bee, placed in
a double layer: each cell, as is well known, is an hexagonal prism, with
the basal edges of its six sides bevelled so as to join on to a pyramid,
formed of three rhombs. These rhombs have certain angles, and the three
which form the pyramidal base of a single cell on one side of the comb,
enter into the composition of the bases of three adjoining cells on the
opposite side. In the series between the extreme perfection of the cells
of the hive-bee and the simplicity of those of the humble-bee, we have
the cells of the Mexican Melipona domestica, carefully described
and figured by Pierre Huber. The Melipona itself is intermediate in
structure between the hive and humble bee, but more nearly related to
the latter: it forms a nearly regular waxen comb of cylindrical cells,
in which the young are hatched, and, in addition, some large cells of
wax for holding honey. These latter cells are nearly spherical and of
nearly equal sizes, and are aggregated into an irregular mass. But the
important point to notice, is that these cells are always made at that
degree of nearness to each other, that they would have intersected or
broken into each other, if the spheres had been completed; but this is
never permitted, the bees building perfectly flat walls of wax between
the spheres which thus tend to intersect. Hence each cell consists of
an outer spherical portion and of two, three, or more perfectly flat
surfaces, according as the cell adjoins two, three or more other cells.
When one cell comes into contact with three other cells, which, from
the spheres being nearly of the same size, is very frequently and
necessarily the case, the three flat surfaces are united into a pyramid;
and this pyramid, as Huber has remarked, is manifestly a gross imitation
of the three-sided pyramidal basis of the cell of the hive-bee. As in
the cells of the hive-bee, so here, the three plane surfaces in any one
cell necessarily enter into the construction of three adjoining cells.
It is obvious that the Melipona saves wax by this manner of building;
for the flat walls between the adjoining cells are not double, but are
of the same thickness as the outer spherical portions, and yet each flat
portion forms a part of two cells.

Reflecting on this case, it occurred to me that if the Melipona had made
its spheres at some given distance from each other, and had made them of
equal sizes and had arranged them symmetrically in a double layer, the
resulting structure would probably have been as perfect as the comb of
the hive-bee. Accordingly I wrote to Professor Miller, of Cambridge,
and this geometer has kindly read over the following statement, drawn up
from his information, and tells me that it is strictly correct:--

If a number of equal spheres be described with their centres placed in
two parallel layers; with the centre of each sphere at the distance of
radius x the square root of 2 or radius x 1.41421 (or at some lesser
distance), from the centres of the six surrounding spheres in the
same layer; and at the same distance from the centres of the adjoining
spheres in the other and parallel layer; then, if planes of intersection
between the several spheres in both layers be formed, there will result
a double layer of hexagonal prisms united together by pyramidal bases
formed of three rhombs; and the rhombs and the sides of the hexagonal
prisms will have every angle identically the same with the best
measurements which have been made of the cells of the hive-bee.

Hence we may safely conclude that if we could slightly modify the
instincts already possessed by the Melipona, and in themselves not very
wonderful, this bee would make a structure as wonderfully perfect as
that of the hive-bee. We must suppose the Melipona to make her cells
truly spherical, and of equal sizes; and this would not be very
surprising, seeing that she already does so to a certain extent, and
seeing what perfectly cylindrical burrows in wood many insects can
make, apparently by turning round on a fixed point. We must suppose the
Melipona to arrange her cells in level layers, as she already does her
cylindrical cells; and we must further suppose, and this is the greatest
difficulty, that she can somehow judge accurately at what distance to
stand from her fellow-labourers when several are making their spheres;
but she is already so far enabled to judge of distance, that she always
describes her spheres so as to intersect largely; and then she unites
the points of intersection by perfectly flat surfaces. We have further
to suppose, but this is no difficulty, that after hexagonal prisms have
been formed by the intersection of adjoining spheres in the same layer,
she can prolong the hexagon to any length requisite to hold the stock of
honey; in the same way as the rude humble-bee adds cylinders of wax
to the circular mouths of her old cocoons. By such modifications of
instincts in themselves not very wonderful,--hardly more wonderful than
those which guide a bird to make its nest,--I believe that the hive-bee
has acquired, through natural selection, her inimitable architectural
powers.

But this theory can be tested by experiment. Following the example of
Mr. Tegetmeier, I separated two combs, and put between them a long,
thick, square strip of wax: the bees instantly began to excavate minute
circular pits in it; and as they deepened these little pits, they made
them wider and wider until they were converted into shallow basins,
appearing to the eye perfectly true or parts of a sphere, and of about
the diameter of a cell. It was most interesting to me to observe that
wherever several bees had begun to excavate these basins near together,
they had begun their work at such a distance from each other, that by
the time the basins had acquired the above stated width (i.e. about the
width of an ordinary cell), and were in depth about one sixth of the
diameter of the sphere of which they formed a part, the rims of the
basins intersected or broke into each other. As soon as this occurred,
the bees ceased to excavate, and began to build up flat walls of wax
on the lines of intersection between the basins, so that each hexagonal
prism was built upon the festooned edge of a smooth basin, instead of on
the straight edges of a three-sided pyramid as in the case of ordinary
cells.

I then put into the hive, instead of a thick, square piece of wax, a
thin and narrow, knife-edged ridge, coloured with vermilion. The bees
instantly began on both sides to excavate little basins near to each
other, in the same way as before; but the ridge of wax was so thin, that
the bottoms of the basins, if they had been excavated to the same depth
as in the former experiment, would have broken into each other from the
opposite sides. The bees, however, did not suffer this to happen, and
they stopped their excavations in due time; so that the basins, as soon
as they had been a little deepened, came to have flat bottoms; and these
flat bottoms, formed by thin little plates of the vermilion wax having
been left ungnawed, were situated, as far as the eye could judge,
exactly along the planes of imaginary intersection between the basins on
the opposite sides of the ridge of wax. In parts, only little bits, in
other parts, large portions of a rhombic plate had been left between the
opposed basins, but the work, from the unnatural state of things, had
not been neatly performed. The bees must have worked at very nearly the
same rate on the opposite sides of the ridge of vermilion wax, as they
circularly gnawed away and deepened the basins on both sides, in order
to have succeeded in thus leaving flat plates between the basins, by
stopping work along the intermediate planes or planes of intersection.

Considering how flexible thin wax is, I do not see that there is any
difficulty in the bees, whilst at work on the two sides of a strip
of wax, perceiving when they have gnawed the wax away to the proper
thinness, and then stopping their work. In ordinary combs it has
appeared to me that the bees do not always succeed in working at exactly
the same rate from the opposite sides; for I have noticed half-completed
rhombs at the base of a just-commenced cell, which were slightly concave
on one side, where I suppose that the bees had excavated too quickly,
and convex on the opposed side, where the bees had worked less quickly.
In one well-marked instance, I put the comb back into the hive, and
allowed the bees to go on working for a short time, and again examined
the cell, and I found that the rhombic plate had been completed, and had
become PERFECTLY FLAT: it was absolutely impossible, from the extreme
thinness of the little rhombic plate, that they could have effected this
by gnawing away the convex side; and I suspect that the bees in such
cases stand in the opposed cells and push and bend the ductile and warm
wax (which as I have tried is easily done) into its proper intermediate
plane, and thus flatten it.

From the experiment of the ridge of vermilion wax, we can clearly see
that if the bees were to build for themselves a thin wall of wax, they
could make their cells of the proper shape, by standing at the proper
distance from each other, by excavating at the same rate, and by
endeavouring to make equal spherical hollows, but never allowing the
spheres to break into each other. Now bees, as may be clearly seen by
examining the edge of a growing comb, do make a rough, circumferential
wall or rim all round the comb; and they gnaw into this from the
opposite sides, always working circularly as they deepen each cell. They
do not make the whole three-sided pyramidal base of any one cell at the
same time, but only the one rhombic plate which stands on the extreme
growing margin, or the two plates, as the case may be; and they never
complete the upper edges of the rhombic plates, until the hexagonal
walls are commenced. Some of these statements differ from those made by
the justly celebrated elder Huber, but I am convinced of their accuracy;
and if I had space, I could show that they are conformable with my
theory.

Huber's statement that the very first cell is excavated out of a little
parallel-sided wall of wax, is not, as far as I have seen, strictly
correct; the first commencement having always been a little hood of wax;
but I will not here enter on these details. We see how important a part
excavation plays in the construction of the cells; but it would be a
great error to suppose that the bees cannot build up a rough wall of wax
in the proper position--that is, along the plane of intersection between
two adjoining spheres. I have several specimens showing clearly that
they can do this. Even in the rude circumferential rim or wall of wax
round a growing comb, flexures may sometimes be observed, corresponding
in position to the planes of the rhombic basal plates of future cells.
But the rough wall of wax has in every case to be finished off, by being
largely gnawed away on both sides. The manner in which the bees build is
curious; they always make the first rough wall from ten to twenty times
thicker than the excessively thin finished wall of the cell, which will
ultimately be left. We shall understand how they work, by supposing
masons first to pile up a broad ridge of cement, and then to begin
cutting it away equally on both sides near the ground, till a smooth,
very thin wall is left in the middle; the masons always piling up the
cut-away cement, and adding fresh cement, on the summit of the ridge. We
shall thus have a thin wall steadily growing upward; but always crowned
by a gigantic coping. From all the cells, both those just commenced and
those completed, being thus crowned by a strong coping of wax, the
bees can cluster and crawl over the comb without injuring the delicate
hexagonal walls, which are only about one four-hundredth of an inch in
thickness; the plates of the pyramidal basis being about twice as thick.
By this singular manner of building, strength is continually given to
the comb, with the utmost ultimate economy of wax.

It seems at first to add to the difficulty of understanding how the
cells are made, that a multitude of bees all work together; one bee
after working a short time at one cell going to another, so that, as
Huber has stated, a score of individuals work even at the commencement
of the first cell. I was able practically to show this fact, by covering
the edges of the hexagonal walls of a single cell, or the extreme margin
of the circumferential rim of a growing comb, with an extremely thin
layer of melted vermilion wax; and I invariably found that the colour
was most delicately diffused by the bees--as delicately as a painter
could have done with his brush--by atoms of the coloured wax having been
taken from the spot on which it had been placed, and worked into the
growing edges of the cells all round. The work of construction seems
to be a sort of balance struck between many bees, all instinctively
standing at the same relative distance from each other, all trying to
sweep equal spheres, and then building up, or leaving ungnawed, the
planes of intersection between these spheres. It was really curious to
note in cases of difficulty, as when two pieces of comb met at an angle,
how often the bees would entirely pull down and rebuild in different
ways the same cell, sometimes recurring to a shape which they had at
first rejected.

When bees have a place on which they can stand in their proper positions
for working,--for instance, on a slip of wood, placed directly under the
middle of a comb growing downwards so that the comb has to be built over
one face of the slip--in this case the bees can lay the foundations
of one wall of a new hexagon, in its strictly proper place, projecting
beyond the other completed cells. It suffices that the bees should be
enabled to stand at their proper relative distances from each other
and from the walls of the last completed cells, and then, by striking
imaginary spheres, they can build up a wall intermediate between two
adjoining spheres; but, as far as I have seen, they never gnaw away and
finish off the angles of a cell till a large part both of that cell and
of the adjoining cells has been built. This capacity in bees of laying
down under certain circumstances a rough wall in its proper place
between two just-commenced cells, is important, as it bears on a fact,
which seems at first quite subversive of the foregoing theory; namely,
that the cells on the extreme margin of wasp-combs are sometimes
strictly hexagonal; but I have not space here to enter on this subject.
Nor does there seem to me any great difficulty in a single insect (as
in the case of a queen-wasp) making hexagonal cells, if she work
alternately on the inside and outside of two or three cells commenced at
the same time, always standing at the proper relative distance from
the parts of the cells just begun, sweeping spheres or cylinders, and
building up intermediate planes. It is even conceivable that an insect
might, by fixing on a point at which to commence a cell, and then moving
outside, first to one point, and then to five other points, at the
proper relative distances from the central point and from each other,
strike the planes of intersection, and so make an isolated hexagon: but
I am not aware that any such case has been observed; nor would any good
be derived from a single hexagon being built, as in its construction
more materials would be required than for a cylinder.

As natural selection acts only by the accumulation of slight
modifications of structure or instinct, each profitable to the
individual under its conditions of life, it may reasonably be asked, how
a long and graduated succession of modified architectural instincts,
all tending towards the present perfect plan of construction, could
have profited the progenitors of the hive-bee? I think the answer is
not difficult: it is known that bees are often hard pressed to get
sufficient nectar; and I am informed by Mr. Tegetmeier that it has been
experimentally found that no less than from twelve to fifteen pounds of
dry sugar are consumed by a hive of bees for the secretion of each pound
of wax; so that a prodigious quantity of fluid nectar must be collected
and consumed by the bees in a hive for the secretion of the wax
necessary for the construction of their combs. Moreover, many bees have
to remain idle for many days during the process of secretion. A large
store of honey is indispensable to support a large stock of bees during
the winter; and the security of the hive is known mainly to depend on a
large number of bees being supported. Hence the saving of wax by largely
saving honey must be a most important element of success in any family
of bees. Of course the success of any species of bee may be dependent
on the number of its parasites or other enemies, or on quite distinct
causes, and so be altogether independent of the quantity of honey which
the bees could collect. But let us suppose that this latter circumstance
determined, as it probably often does determine, the numbers of a
humble-bee which could exist in a country; and let us further suppose
that the community lived throughout the winter, and consequently
required a store of honey: there can in this case be no doubt that it
would be an advantage to our humble-bee, if a slight modification of
her instinct led her to make her waxen cells near together, so as to
intersect a little; for a wall in common even to two adjoining cells,
would save some little wax. Hence it would continually be more and more
advantageous to our humble-bee, if she were to make her cells more and
more regular, nearer together, and aggregated into a mass, like the
cells of the Melipona; for in this case a large part of the bounding
surface of each cell would serve to bound other cells, and much wax
would be saved. Again, from the same cause, it would be advantageous to
the Melipona, if she were to make her cells closer together, and more
regular in every way than at present; for then, as we have seen, the
spherical surfaces would wholly disappear, and would all be replaced by
plane surfaces; and the Melipona would make a comb as perfect as that of
the hive-bee. Beyond this stage of perfection in architecture, natural
selection could not lead; for the comb of the hive-bee, as far as we can
see, is absolutely perfect in economising wax.

Thus, as I believe, the most wonderful of all known instincts, that
of the hive-bee, can be explained by natural selection having taken
advantage of numerous, successive, slight modifications of simpler
instincts; natural selection having by slow degrees, more and more
perfectly, led the bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from
each other in a double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax along
the planes of intersection. The bees, of course, no more knowing that
they swept their spheres at one particular distance from each other,
than they know what are the several angles of the hexagonal prisms and
of the basal rhombic plates. The motive power of the process of natural
selection having been economy of wax; that individual swarm which wasted
least honey in the secretion of wax, having succeeded best, and having
transmitted by inheritance its newly acquired economical instinct to new
swarms, which in their turn will have had the best chance of succeeding
in the struggle for existence.

No doubt many instincts of very difficult explanation could be opposed
to the theory of natural selection,--cases, in which we cannot see
how an instinct could possibly have originated; cases, in which no
intermediate gradations are known to exist; cases of instinct of
apparently such trifling importance, that they could hardly have been
acted on by natural selection; cases of instincts almost identically the
same in animals so remote in the scale of nature, that we cannot account
for their similarity by inheritance from a common parent, and must
therefore believe that they have been acquired by independent acts of
natural selection. I will not here enter on these several cases, but
will confine myself to one special difficulty, which at first appeared
to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my whole theory. I allude to
the neuters or sterile females in insect-communities: for these neuters
often differ widely in instinct and in structure from both the males
and fertile females, and yet, from being sterile, they cannot propagate
their kind.

The subject well deserves to be discussed at great length, but I will
here take only a single case, that of working or sterile ants. How the
workers have been rendered sterile is a difficulty; but not much greater
than that of any other striking modification of structure; for it can
be shown that some insects and other articulate animals in a state of
nature occasionally become sterile; and if such insects had been social,
and it had been profitable to the community that a number should have
been annually born capable of work, but incapable of procreation, I
can see no very great difficulty in this being effected by natural
selection. But I must pass over this preliminary difficulty. The great
difficulty lies in the working ants differing widely from both the males
and the fertile females in structure, as in the shape of the thorax and
in being destitute of wings and sometimes of eyes, and in instinct. As
far as instinct alone is concerned, the prodigious difference in this
respect between the workers and the perfect females, would have been
far better exemplified by the hive-bee. If a working ant or other
neuter insect had been an animal in the ordinary state, I should have
unhesitatingly assumed that all its characters had been slowly acquired
through natural selection; namely, by an individual having been born
with some slight profitable modification of structure, this being
inherited by its offspring, which again varied and were again selected,
and so onwards. But with the working ant we have an insect differing
greatly from its parents, yet absolutely sterile; so that it could never
have transmitted successively acquired modifications of structure or
instinct to its progeny. It may well be asked how is it possible to
reconcile this case with the theory of natural selection?

First, let it be remembered that we have innumerable instances, both in
our domestic productions and in those in a state of nature, of all sorts
of differences of structure which have become correlated to certain
ages, and to either sex. We have differences correlated not only to
one sex, but to that short period alone when the reproductive system is
active, as in the nuptial plumage of many birds, and in the hooked jaws
of the male salmon. We have even slight differences in the horns of
different breeds of cattle in relation to an artificially imperfect
state of the male sex; for oxen of certain breeds have longer horns than
in other breeds, in comparison with the horns of the bulls or cows of
these same breeds. Hence I can see no real difficulty in any character
having become correlated with the sterile condition of certain members
of insect-communities: the difficulty lies in understanding how such
correlated modifications of structure could have been slowly accumulated
by natural selection.

This difficulty, though appearing insuperable, is lessened, or, as I
believe, disappears, when it is remembered that selection may be applied
to the family, as well as to the individual, and may thus gain the
desired end. Thus, a well-flavoured vegetable is cooked, and the
individual is destroyed; but the horticulturist sows seeds of the same
stock, and confidently expects to get nearly the same variety; breeders
of cattle wish the flesh and fat to be well marbled together; the animal
has been slaughtered, but the breeder goes with confidence to the same
family. I have such faith in the powers of selection, that I do not
doubt that a breed of cattle, always yielding oxen with extraordinarily
long horns, could be slowly formed by carefully watching which
individual bulls and cows, when matched, produced oxen with the longest
horns; and yet no one ox could ever have propagated its kind. Thus
I believe it has been with social insects: a slight modification of
structure, or instinct, correlated with the sterile condition of certain
members of the community, has been advantageous to the community:
consequently the fertile males and females of the same community
flourished, and transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to
produce sterile members having the same modification. And I believe
that this process has been repeated, until that prodigious amount of
difference between the fertile and sterile females of the same species
has been produced, which we see in many social insects.

But we have not as yet touched on the climax of the difficulty; namely,
the fact that the neuters of several ants differ, not only from the
fertile females and males, but from each other, sometimes to an almost
incredible degree, and are thus divided into two or even three castes.
The castes, moreover, do not generally graduate into each other, but are
perfectly well defined; being as distinct from each other, as are any
two species of the same genus, or rather as any two genera of the same
family. Thus in Eciton, there are working and soldier neuters, with jaws
and instincts extraordinarily different: in Cryptocerus, the workers of
one caste alone carry a wonderful sort of shield on their heads, the use
of which is quite unknown: in the Mexican Myrmecocystus, the workers of
one caste never leave the nest; they are fed by the workers of another
caste, and they have an enormously developed abdomen which secretes a
sort of honey, supplying the place of that excreted by the aphides, or
the domestic cattle as they may be called, which our European ants guard
or imprison.

It will indeed be thought that I have an overweening confidence in the
principle of natural selection, when I do not admit that such wonderful
and well-established facts at once annihilate my theory. In the simpler
case of neuter insects all of one caste or of the same kind, which have
been rendered by natural selection, as I believe to be quite possible,
different from the fertile males and females,--in this case, we may
safely conclude from the analogy of ordinary variations, that each
successive, slight, profitable modification did not probably at first
appear in all the individual neuters in the same nest, but in a few
alone; and that by the long-continued selection of the fertile parents
which produced most neuters with the profitable modification, all the
neuters ultimately came to have the desired character. On this view we
ought occasionally to find neuter-insects of the same species, in the
same nest, presenting gradations of structure; and this we do find,
even often, considering how few neuter-insects out of Europe have been
carefully examined. Mr. F. Smith has shown how surprisingly the neuters
of several British ants differ from each other in size and sometimes
in colour; and that the extreme forms can sometimes be perfectly linked
together by individuals taken out of the same nest: I have myself
compared perfect gradations of this kind. It often happens that the
larger or the smaller sized workers are the most numerous; or that both
large and small are numerous, with those of an intermediate size scanty
in numbers. Formica flava has larger and smaller workers, with some of
intermediate size; and, in this species, as Mr. F. Smith has observed,
the larger workers have simple eyes (ocelli), which though small can
be plainly distinguished, whereas the smaller workers have their ocelli
rudimentary. Having carefully dissected several specimens of these
workers, I can affirm that the eyes are far more rudimentary in the
smaller workers than can be accounted for merely by their proportionally
lesser size; and I fully believe, though I dare not assert so
positively, that the workers of intermediate size have their ocelli in
an exactly intermediate condition. So that we here have two bodies of
sterile workers in the same nest, differing not only in size, but
in their organs of vision, yet connected by some few members in an
intermediate condition. I may digress by adding, that if the smaller
workers had been the most useful to the community, and those males and
females had been continually selected, which produced more and more
of the smaller workers, until all the workers had come to be in this
condition; we should then have had a species of ant with neuters very
nearly in the same condition with those of Myrmica. For the workers of
Myrmica have not even rudiments of ocelli, though the male and female
ants of this genus have well-developed ocelli.

I may give one other case: so confidently did I expect to find
gradations in important points of structure between the different castes
of neuters in the same species, that I gladly availed myself of Mr. F.
Smith's offer of numerous specimens from the same nest of the driver
ant (Anomma) of West Africa. The reader will perhaps best appreciate
the amount of difference in these workers, by my giving not the actual
measurements, but a strictly accurate illustration: the difference was
the same as if we were to see a set of workmen building a house of whom
many were five feet four inches high, and many sixteen feet high; but
we must suppose that the larger workmen had heads four instead of three
times as big as those of the smaller men, and jaws nearly five times
as big. The jaws, moreover, of the working ants of the several sizes
differed wonderfully in shape, and in the form and number of the teeth.
But the important fact for us is, that though the workers can be grouped
into castes of different sizes, yet they graduate insensibly into each
other, as does the widely-different structure of their jaws. I speak
confidently on this latter point, as Mr. Lubbock made drawings for
me with the camera lucida of the jaws which I had dissected from the
workers of the several sizes.

With these facts before me, I believe that natural selection, by acting
on the fertile parents, could form a species which should regularly
produce neuters, either all of large size with one form of jaw, or all
of small size with jaws having a widely different structure; or lastly,
and this is our climax of difficulty, one set of workers of one size and
structure, and simultaneously another set of workers of a different size
and structure;--a graduated series having been first formed, as in the
case of the driver ant, and then the extreme forms, from being the most
useful to the community, having been produced in greater and greater
numbers through the natural selection of the parents which generated
them; until none with an intermediate structure were produced.

Thus, as I believe, the wonderful fact of two distinctly defined castes
of sterile workers existing in the same nest, both widely different from
each other and from their parents, has originated. We can see how useful
their production may have been to a social community of insects, on the
same principle that the division of labour is useful to civilised man.
As ants work by inherited instincts and by inherited tools or weapons,
and not by acquired knowledge and manufactured instruments, a perfect
division of labour could be effected with them only by the workers being
sterile; for had they been fertile, they would have intercrossed, and
their instincts and structure would have become blended. And nature
has, as I believe, effected this admirable division of labour in the
communities of ants, by the means of natural selection. But I am bound
to confess, that, with all my faith in this principle, I should never
have anticipated that natural selection could have been efficient in so
high a degree, had not the case of these neuter insects convinced me
of the fact. I have, therefore, discussed this case, at some little
but wholly insufficient length, in order to show the power of natural
selection, and likewise because this is by far the most serious special
difficulty, which my theory has encountered. The case, also, is very
interesting, as it proves that with animals, as with plants, any amount
of modification in structure can be effected by the accumulation of
numerous, slight, and as we must call them accidental, variations, which
are in any manner profitable, without exercise or habit having come into
play. For no amount of exercise, or habit, or volition, in the utterly
sterile members of a community could possibly have affected the
structure or instincts of the fertile members, which alone leave
descendants. I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative
case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck.

SUMMARY.

I have endeavoured briefly in this chapter to show that the mental
qualities of our domestic animals vary, and that the variations are
inherited. Still more briefly I have attempted to show that instincts
vary slightly in a state of nature. No one will dispute that instincts
are of the highest importance to each animal. Therefore I can see no
difficulty, under changing conditions of life, in natural selection
accumulating slight modifications of instinct to any extent, in any
useful direction. In some cases habit or use and disuse have probably
come into play. I do not pretend that the facts given in this chapter
strengthen in any great degree my theory; but none of the cases of
difficulty, to the best of my judgment, annihilate it. On the other
hand, the fact that instincts are not always absolutely perfect and
are liable to mistakes;--that no instinct has been produced for the
exclusive good of other animals, but that each animal takes advantage of
the instincts of others;--that the canon in natural history, of "natura
non facit saltum" is applicable to instincts as well as to corporeal
structure, and is plainly explicable on the foregoing views, but is
otherwise inexplicable,--all tend to corroborate the theory of natural
selection.

This theory is, also, strengthened by some few other facts in regard
to instincts; as by that common case of closely allied, but certainly
distinct, species, when inhabiting distant parts of the world and living
under considerably different conditions of life, yet often retaining
nearly the same instincts. For instance, we can understand on the
principle of inheritance, how it is that the thrush of South America
lines its nest with mud, in the same peculiar manner as does our British
thrush: how it is that the male wrens (Troglodytes) of North America,
build "cock-nests," to roost in, like the males of our distinct
Kitty-wrens,--a habit wholly unlike that of any other known bird.
Finally, it may not be a logical deduction, but to my imagination it
is far more satisfactory to look at such instincts as the young cuckoo
ejecting its foster-brothers,--ants making slaves,--the larvae of
ichneumonidae feeding within the live bodies of caterpillars,--not as
specially endowed or created instincts, but as small consequences of one
general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely,
multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.




8. HYBRIDISM.

Distinction between the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids.
Sterility various in degree, not universal, affected by close
interbreeding, removed by domestication. Laws governing the sterility
of hybrids. Sterility not a special endowment, but incidental on other
differences. Causes of the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids.
Parallelism between the effects of changed conditions of life and
crossing. Fertility of varieties when crossed and of their mongrel
offspring not universal. Hybrids and mongrels compared independently of
their fertility. Summary.

The view generally entertained by naturalists is that species, when
intercrossed, have been specially endowed with the quality of sterility,
in order to prevent the confusion of all organic forms. This view
certainly seems at first probable, for species within the same country
could hardly have kept distinct had they been capable of crossing
freely. The importance of the fact that hybrids are very generally
sterile, has, I think, been much underrated by some late writers. On the
theory of natural selection the case is especially important, inasmuch
as the sterility of hybrids could not possibly be of any advantage
to them, and therefore could not have been acquired by the continued
preservation of successive profitable degrees of sterility. I hope,
however, to be able to show that sterility is not a specially acquired
or endowed quality, but is incidental on other acquired differences.

In treating this subject, two classes of facts, to a large extent
fundamentally different, have generally been confounded together;
namely, the sterility of two species when first crossed, and the
sterility of the hybrids produced from them.

Pure species have of course their organs of reproduction in a perfect
condition, yet when intercrossed they produce either few or no
offspring. Hybrids, on the other hand, have their reproductive organs
functionally impotent, as may be clearly seen in the state of the male
element in both plants and animals; though the organs themselves are
perfect in structure, as far as the microscope reveals. In the first
case the two sexual elements which go to form the embryo are perfect; in
the second case they are either not at all developed, or are imperfectly
developed. This distinction is important, when the cause of the
sterility, which is common to the two cases, has to be considered. The
distinction has probably been slurred over, owing to the sterility in
both cases being looked on as a special endowment, beyond the province
of our reasoning powers.

The fertility of varieties, that is of the forms known or believed to
have descended from common parents, when intercrossed, and likewise
the fertility of their mongrel offspring, is, on my theory, of equal
importance with the sterility of species; for it seems to make a broad
and clear distinction between varieties and species.

First, for the sterility of species when crossed and of their hybrid
offspring. It is impossible to study the several memoirs and works of
those two conscientious and admirable observers, Kolreuter and Gartner,
who almost devoted their lives to this subject, without being deeply
impressed with the high generality of some degree of sterility.
Kolreuter makes the rule universal; but then he cuts the knot, for in
ten cases in which he found two forms, considered by most authors as
distinct species, quite fertile together, he unhesitatingly ranks them
as varieties. Gartner, also, makes the rule equally universal; and he
disputes the entire fertility of Kolreuter's ten cases. But in these and
in many other cases, Gartner is obliged carefully to count the seeds, in
order to show that there is any degree of sterility. He always compares
the maximum number of seeds produced by two species when crossed and by
their hybrid offspring, with the average number produced by both pure
parent-species in a state of nature. But a serious cause of error seems
to me to be here introduced: a plant to be hybridised must be castrated,
and, what is often more important, must be secluded in order to prevent
pollen being brought to it by insects from other plants. Nearly all the
plants experimentised on by Gartner were potted, and apparently were
kept in a chamber in his house. That these processes are often injurious
to the fertility of a plant cannot be doubted; for Gartner gives in
his table about a score of cases of plants which he castrated, and
artificially fertilised with their own pollen, and (excluding all cases
such as the Leguminosae, in which there is an acknowledged difficulty
in the manipulation) half of these twenty plants had their fertility
in some degree impaired. Moreover, as Gartner during several years
repeatedly crossed the primrose and cowslip, which we have such good
reason to believe to be varieties, and only once or twice succeeded in
getting fertile seed; as he found the common red and blue pimpernels
(Anagallis arvensis and coerulea), which the best botanists rank as
varieties, absolutely sterile together; and as he came to the same
conclusion in several other analogous cases; it seems to me that we
may well be permitted to doubt whether many other species are really so
sterile, when intercrossed, as Gartner believes.

It is certain, on the one hand, that the sterility of various species
when crossed is so different in degree and graduates away so insensibly,
and, on the other hand, that the fertility of pure species is so easily
affected by various circumstances, that for all practical purposes it is
most difficult to say where perfect fertility ends and sterility begins.
I think no better evidence of this can be required than that the two
most experienced observers who have ever lived, namely, Kolreuter and
Gartner, should have arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions
in regard to the very same species. It is also most instructive to
compare--but I have not space here to enter on details--the evidence
advanced by our best botanists on the question whether certain doubtful
forms should be ranked as species or varieties, with the evidence from
fertility adduced by different hybridisers, or by the same author,
from experiments made during different years. It can thus be shown that
neither sterility nor fertility affords any clear distinction between
species and varieties; but that the evidence from this source graduates
away, and is doubtful in the same degree as is the evidence derived from
other constitutional and structural differences.

In regard to the sterility of hybrids in successive generations; though
Gartner was enabled to rear some hybrids, carefully guarding them from a
cross with either pure parent, for six or seven, and in one case for
ten generations, yet he asserts positively that their fertility never
increased, but generally greatly decreased. I do not doubt that this is
usually the case, and that the fertility often suddenly decreases in
the first few generations. Nevertheless I believe that in all these
experiments the fertility has been diminished by an independent cause,
namely, from close interbreeding. I have collected so large a body of
facts, showing that close interbreeding lessens fertility, and, on
the other hand, that an occasional cross with a distinct individual or
variety increases fertility, that I cannot doubt the correctness of this
almost universal belief amongst breeders. Hybrids are seldom raised by
experimentalists in great numbers; and as the parent-species, or other
allied hybrids, generally grow in the same garden, the visits of insects
must be carefully prevented during the flowering season: hence hybrids
will generally be fertilised during each generation by their own
individual pollen; and I am convinced that this would be injurious
to their fertility, already lessened by their hybrid origin. I am
strengthened in this conviction by a remarkable statement repeatedly
made by Gartner, namely, that if even the less fertile hybrids be
artificially fertilised with hybrid pollen of the same kind, their
fertility, notwithstanding the frequent ill effects of manipulation,
sometimes decidedly increases, and goes on increasing. Now, in
artificial fertilisation pollen is as often taken by chance (as I know
from my own experience) from the anthers of another flower, as from the
anthers of the flower itself which is to be fertilised; so that a cross
between two flowers, though probably on the same plant, would be thus
effected. Moreover, whenever complicated experiments are in progress,
so careful an observer as Gartner would have castrated his hybrids, and
this would have insured in each generation a cross with the pollen from
a distinct flower, either from the same plant or from another plant of
the same hybrid nature. And thus, the strange fact of the increase
of fertility in the successive generations of ARTIFICIALLY FERTILISED
hybrids may, I believe, be accounted for by close interbreeding having
been avoided.

Now let us turn to the results arrived at by the third most experienced
hybridiser, namely, the Honourable and Reverend W. Herbert. He is as
emphatic in his conclusion that some hybrids are perfectly fertile--as
fertile as the pure parent-species--as are Kolreuter and Gartner that
some degree of sterility between distinct species is a universal law
of nature. He experimentised on some of the very same species as did
Gartner. The difference in their results may, I think, be in part
accounted for by Herbert's great horticultural skill, and by his having
hothouses at his command. Of his many important statements I will here
give only a single one as an example, namely, that "every ovule in a pod
of Crinum capense fertilised by C. revolutum produced a plant, which
(he says) I never saw to occur in a case of its natural fecundation." So
that we here have perfect, or even more than commonly perfect, fertility
in a first cross between two distinct species.

This case of the Crinum leads me to refer to a most singular fact,
namely, that there are individual plants, as with certain species of
Lobelia, and with all the species of the genus Hippeastrum, which can
be far more easily fertilised by the pollen of another and distinct
species, than by their own pollen. For these plants have been found to
yield seed to the pollen of a distinct species, though quite sterile
with their own pollen, notwithstanding that their own pollen was found
to be perfectly good, for it fertilised distinct species. So that
certain individual plants and all the individuals of certain species
can actually be hybridised much more readily than they can be
self-fertilised! For instance, a bulb of Hippeastrum aulicum produced
four flowers; three were fertilised by Herbert with their own pollen,
and the fourth was subsequently fertilised by the pollen of a compound
hybrid descended from three other and distinct species: the result was
that "the ovaries of the three first flowers soon ceased to grow, and
after a few days perished entirely, whereas the pod impregnated by
the pollen of the hybrid made vigorous growth and rapid progress to
maturity, and bore good seed, which vegetated freely." In a letter to
me, in 1839, Mr. Herbert told me that he had then tried the experiment
during five years, and he continued to try it during several subsequent
years, and always with the same result. This result has, also, been
confirmed by other observers in the case of Hippeastrum with its
sub-genera, and in the case of some other genera, as Lobelia, Passiflora
and Verbascum. Although the plants in these experiments appeared
perfectly healthy, and although both the ovules and pollen of the same
flower were perfectly good with respect to other species, yet as they
were functionally imperfect in their mutual self-action, we must infer
that the plants were in an unnatural state. Nevertheless these facts
show on what slight and mysterious causes the lesser or greater
fertility of species when crossed, in comparison with the same species
when self-fertilised, sometimes depends.

The practical experiments of horticulturists, though not made with
scientific precision, deserve some notice. It is notorious in how
complicated a manner the species of Pelargonium, Fuchsia, Calceolaria,
Petunia, Rhododendron, etc., have been crossed, yet many of these
hybrids seed freely. For instance, Herbert asserts that a hybrid from
Calceolaria integrifolia and plantaginea, species most widely dissimilar
in general habit, "reproduced itself as perfectly as if it had been a
natural species from the mountains of Chile." I have taken some pains
to ascertain the degree of fertility of some of the complex crosses of
Rhododendrons, and I am assured that many of them are perfectly fertile.
Mr. C. Noble, for instance, informs me that he raises stocks for
grafting from a hybrid between Rhododendron Ponticum and Catawbiense,
and that this hybrid "seeds as freely as it is possible to imagine." Had
hybrids, when fairly treated, gone on decreasing in fertility in each
successive generation, as Gartner believes to be the case, the fact
would have been notorious to nurserymen. Horticulturists raise large
beds of the same hybrids, and such alone are fairly treated, for by
insect agency the several individuals of the same hybrid variety are
allowed to freely cross with each other, and the injurious influence
of close interbreeding is thus prevented. Any one may readily convince
himself of the efficiency of insect-agency by examining the flowers of
the more sterile kinds of hybrid rhododendrons, which produce no pollen,
for he will find on their stigmas plenty of pollen brought from other
flowers.

In regard to animals, much fewer experiments have been carefully tried
than with plants. If our systematic arrangements can be trusted, that
is if the genera of animals are as distinct from each other, as are the
genera of plants, then we may infer that animals more widely separated
in the scale of nature can be more easily crossed than in the case of
plants; but the hybrids themselves are, I think, more sterile. I doubt
whether any case of a perfectly fertile hybrid animal can be considered
as thoroughly well authenticated. It should, however, be borne in
mind that, owing to few animals breeding freely under confinement, few
experiments have been fairly tried: for instance, the canary-bird has
been crossed with nine other finches, but as not one of these nine
species breeds freely in confinement, we have no right to expect that
the first crosses between them and the canary, or that their hybrids,
should be perfectly fertile. Again, with respect to the fertility in
successive generations of the more fertile hybrid animals, I hardly know
of an instance in which two families of the same hybrid have been raised
at the same time from different parents, so as to avoid the ill effects
of close interbreeding. On the contrary, brothers and sisters have
usually been crossed in each successive generation, in opposition to the
constantly repeated admonition of every breeder. And in this case, it is
not at all surprising that the inherent sterility in the hybrids should
have gone on increasing. If we were to act thus, and pair brothers and
sisters in the case of any pure animal, which from any cause had the
least tendency to sterility, the breed would assuredly be lost in a very
few generations.

Although I do not know of any thoroughly well-authenticated cases of
perfectly fertile hybrid animals, I have some reason to believe that
the hybrids from Cervulus vaginalis and Reevesii, and from Phasianus
colchicus with P. torquatus and with P. versicolor are perfectly
fertile. The hybrids from the common and Chinese geese (A. cygnoides),
species which are so different that they are generally ranked in
distinct genera, have often bred in this country with either pure
parent, and in one single instance they have bred inter se. This was
effected by Mr. Eyton, who raised two hybrids from the same parents but
from different hatches; and from these two birds he raised no less than
eight hybrids (grandchildren of the pure geese) from one nest. In India,
however, these cross-bred geese must be far more fertile; for I am
assured by two eminently capable judges, namely Mr. Blyth and Capt.
Hutton, that whole flocks of these crossed geese are kept in various
parts of the country; and as they are kept for profit, where neither
pure parent-species exists, they must certainly be highly fertile.

A doctrine which originated with Pallas, has been largely accepted
by modern naturalists; namely, that most of our domestic animals have
descended from two or more aboriginal species, since commingled by
intercrossing. On this view, the aboriginal species must either at first
have produced quite fertile hybrids, or the hybrids must have become in
subsequent generations quite fertile under domestication. This latter
alternative seems to me the most probable, and I am inclined to believe
in its truth, although it rests on no direct evidence. I believe, for
instance, that our dogs have descended from several wild stocks; yet,
with perhaps the exception of certain indigenous domestic dogs of South
America, all are quite fertile together; and analogy makes me greatly
doubt, whether the several aboriginal species would at first have freely
bred together and have produced quite fertile hybrids. So again there
is reason to believe that our European and the humped Indian cattle are
quite fertile together; but from facts communicated to me by Mr. Blyth,
I think they must be considered as distinct species. On this view of
the origin of many of our domestic animals, we must either give up the
belief of the almost universal sterility of distinct species of
animals when crossed; or we must look at sterility, not as an indelible
characteristic, but as one capable of being removed by domestication.

Finally, looking to all the ascertained facts on the intercrossing of
plants and animals, it may be concluded that some degree of sterility,
both in first crosses and in hybrids, is an extremely general result;
but that it cannot, under our present state of knowledge, be considered
as absolutely universal.

LAWS GOVERNING THE STERILITY OF FIRST CROSSES AND OF HYBRIDS.

We will now consider a little more in detail the circumstances and
rules governing the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids. Our chief
object will be to see whether or not the rules indicate that species
have specially been endowed with this quality, in order to prevent their
crossing and blending together in utter confusion. The following rules
and conclusions are chiefly drawn up from Gartner's admirable work on
the hybridisation of plants. I have taken much pains to ascertain how
far the rules apply to animals, and considering how scanty our knowledge
is in regard to hybrid animals, I have been surprised to find how
generally the same rules apply to both kingdoms.

It has been already remarked, that the degree of fertility, both of
first crosses and of hybrids, graduates from zero to perfect fertility.
It is surprising in how many curious ways this gradation can be shown to
exist; but only the barest outline of the facts can here be given. When
pollen from a plant of one family is placed on the stigma of a plant of
a distinct family, it exerts no more influence than so much inorganic
dust. From this absolute zero of fertility, the pollen of different
species of the same genus applied to the stigma of some one species,
yields a perfect gradation in the number of seeds produced, up to nearly
complete or even quite complete fertility; and, as we have seen, in
certain abnormal cases, even to an excess of fertility, beyond that
which the plant's own pollen will produce. So in hybrids themselves,
there are some which never have produced, and probably never would
produce, even with the pollen of either pure parent, a single fertile
seed: but in some of these cases a first trace of fertility may be
detected, by the pollen of one of the pure parent-species causing the
flower of the hybrid to wither earlier than it otherwise would have
done; and the early withering of the flower is well known to be a sign
of incipient fertilisation. From this extreme degree of sterility we
have self-fertilised hybrids producing a greater and greater number of
seeds up to perfect fertility.

Hybrids from two species which are very difficult to cross, and which
rarely produce any offspring, are generally very sterile; but the
parallelism between the difficulty of making a first cross, and the
sterility of the hybrids thus produced--two classes of facts which are
generally confounded together--is by no means strict. There are many
cases, in which two pure species can be united with unusual facility,
and produce numerous hybrid-offspring, yet these hybrids are remarkably
sterile. On the other hand, there are species which can be crossed
very rarely, or with extreme difficulty, but the hybrids, when at last
produced, are very fertile. Even within the limits of the same genus,
for instance in Dianthus, these two opposite cases occur.

The fertility, both of first crosses and of hybrids, is more easily
affected by unfavourable conditions, than is the fertility of pure
species. But the degree of fertility is likewise innately variable; for
it is not always the same when the same two species are crossed under
the same circumstances, but depends in part upon the constitution of the
individuals which happen to have been chosen for the experiment. So it
is with hybrids, for their degree of fertility is often found to differ
greatly in the several individuals raised from seed out of the same
capsule and exposed to exactly the same conditions.

By the term systematic affinity is meant, the resemblance between
species in structure and in constitution, more especially in the
structure of parts which are of high physiological importance and which
differ little in the allied species. Now the fertility of first crosses
between species, and of the hybrids produced from them, is largely
governed by their systematic affinity. This is clearly shown by hybrids
never having been raised between species ranked by systematists in
distinct families; and on the other hand, by very closely allied
species generally uniting with facility. But the correspondence between
systematic affinity and the facility of crossing is by no means strict.
A multitude of cases could be given of very closely allied species which
will not unite, or only with extreme difficulty; and on the other hand
of very distinct species which unite with the utmost facility. In
the same family there may be a genus, as Dianthus, in which very many
species can most readily be crossed; and another genus, as Silene,
in which the most persevering efforts have failed to produce between
extremely close species a single hybrid. Even within the limits of the
same genus, we meet with this same difference; for instance, the many
species of Nicotiana have been more largely crossed than the species of
almost any other genus; but Gartner found that N. acuminata, which is
not a particularly distinct species, obstinately failed to fertilise, or
to be fertilised by, no less than eight other species of Nicotiana. Very
many analogous facts could be given.

No one has been able to point out what kind, or what amount, of
difference in any recognisable character is sufficient to prevent two
species crossing. It can be shown that plants most widely different in
habit and general appearance, and having strongly marked differences in
every part of the flower, even in the pollen, in the fruit, and in the
cotyledons, can be crossed. Annual and perennial plants, deciduous and
evergreen trees, plants inhabiting different stations and fitted for
extremely different climates, can often be crossed with ease.

By a reciprocal cross between two species, I mean the case, for
instance, of a stallion-horse being first crossed with a female-ass, and
then a male-ass with a mare: these two species may then be said to have
been reciprocally crossed. There is often the widest possible difference
in the facility of making reciprocal crosses. Such cases are highly
important, for they prove that the capacity in any two species to cross
is often completely independent of their systematic affinity, or of any
recognisable difference in their whole organisation. On the other hand,
these cases clearly show that the capacity for crossing is connected
with constitutional differences imperceptible by us, and confined to the
reproductive system. This difference in the result of reciprocal crosses
between the same two species was long ago observed by Kolreuter. To give
an instance: Mirabilis jalappa can easily be fertilised by the pollen of
M. longiflora, and the hybrids thus produced are sufficiently fertile;
but Kolreuter tried more than two hundred times, during eight following
years, to fertilise reciprocally M. longiflora with the pollen of M.
jalappa, and utterly failed. Several other equally striking cases could
be given. Thuret has observed the same fact with certain sea-weeds
or Fuci. Gartner, moreover, found that this difference of facility in
making reciprocal crosses is extremely common in a lesser degree. He has
observed it even between forms so closely related (as Matthiola annua
and glabra) that many botanists rank them only as varieties. It is also
a remarkable fact, that hybrids raised from reciprocal crosses, though
of course compounded of the very same two species, the one species
having first been used as the father and then as the mother, generally
differ in fertility in a small, and occasionally in a high degree.

Several other singular rules could be given from Gartner: for instance,
some species have a remarkable power of crossing with other species;
other species of the same genus have a remarkable power of impressing
their likeness on their hybrid offspring; but these two powers do not at
all necessarily go together. There are certain hybrids which instead
of having, as is usual, an intermediate character between their two
parents, always closely resemble one of them; and such hybrids, though
externally so like one of their pure parent-species, are with rare
exceptions extremely sterile. So again amongst hybrids which are
usually intermediate in structure between their parents, exceptional and
abnormal individuals sometimes are born, which closely resemble one of
their pure parents; and these hybrids are almost always utterly sterile,
even when the other hybrids raised from seed from the same capsule have
a considerable degree of fertility. These facts show how completely
fertility in the hybrid is independent of its external resemblance to
either pure parent.

Considering the several rules now given, which govern the fertility
of first crosses and of hybrids, we see that when forms, which must be
considered as good and distinct species, are united, their fertility
graduates from zero to perfect fertility, or even to fertility under
certain conditions in excess. That their fertility, besides being
eminently susceptible to favourable and unfavourable conditions, is
innately variable. That it is by no means always the same in degree in
the first cross and in the hybrids produced from this cross. That the
fertility of hybrids is not related to the degree in which they resemble
in external appearance either parent. And lastly, that the facility of
making a first cross between any two species is not always governed by
their systematic affinity or degree of resemblance to each other. This
latter statement is clearly proved by reciprocal crosses between the
same two species, for according as the one species or the other is used
as the father or the mother, there is generally some difference,
and occasionally the widest possible difference, in the facility of
effecting an union. The hybrids, moreover, produced from reciprocal
crosses often differ in fertility.

Now do these complex and singular rules indicate that species have been
endowed with sterility simply to prevent their becoming confounded
in nature? I think not. For why should the sterility be so extremely
different in degree, when various species are crossed, all of which
we must suppose it would be equally important to keep from blending
together? Why should the degree of sterility be innately variable in
the individuals of the same species? Why should some species cross with
facility, and yet produce very sterile hybrids; and other species cross
with extreme difficulty, and yet produce fairly fertile hybrids?
Why should there often be so great a difference in the result of a
reciprocal cross between the same two species? Why, it may even be
asked, has the production of hybrids been permitted? to grant to species
the special power of producing hybrids, and then to stop their further
propagation by different degrees of sterility, not strictly related to
the facility of the first union between their parents, seems to be a
strange arrangement.

The foregoing rules and facts, on the other hand, appear to me clearly
to indicate that the sterility both of first crosses and of hybrids is
simply incidental or dependent on unknown differences, chiefly in the
reproductive systems, of the species which are crossed. The differences
being of so peculiar and limited a nature, that, in reciprocal crosses
between two species the male sexual element of the one will often freely
act on the female sexual element of the other, but not in a reversed
direction. It will be advisable to explain a little more fully by an
example what I mean by sterility being incidental on other differences,
and not a specially endowed quality. As the capacity of one plant to be
grafted or budded on another is so entirely unimportant for its welfare
in a state of nature, I presume that no one will suppose that this
capacity is a SPECIALLY endowed quality, but will admit that it is
incidental on differences in the laws of growth of the two plants. We
can sometimes see the reason why one tree will not take on another, from
differences in their rate of growth, in the hardness of their wood, in
the period of the flow or nature of their sap, etc.; but in a multitude
of cases we can assign no reason whatever. Great diversity in the size
of two plants, one being woody and the other herbaceous, one being
evergreen and the other deciduous, and adaptation to widely different
climates, does not always prevent the two grafting together. As in
hybridisation, so with grafting, the capacity is limited by systematic
affinity, for no one has been able to graft trees together belonging to
quite distinct families; and, on the other hand, closely allied species,
and varieties of the same species, can usually, but not invariably,
be grafted with ease. But this capacity, as in hybridisation, is by no
means absolutely governed by systematic affinity. Although many distinct
genera within the same family have been grafted together, in other cases
species of the same genus will not take on each other. The pear can be
grafted far more readily on the quince, which is ranked as a distinct
genus, than on the apple, which is a member of the same genus. Even
different varieties of the pear take with different degrees of facility
on the quince; so do different varieties of the apricot and peach on
certain varieties of the plum.

As Gartner found that there was sometimes an innate difference in
different INDIVIDUALS of the same two species in crossing; so Sagaret
believes this to be the case with different individuals of the same
two species in being grafted together. As in reciprocal crosses, the
facility of effecting an union is often very far from equal, so it
sometimes is in grafting; the common gooseberry, for instance, cannot
be grafted on the currant, whereas the currant will take, though with
difficulty, on the gooseberry.

We have seen that the sterility of hybrids, which have their
reproductive organs in an imperfect condition, is a very different
case from the difficulty of uniting two pure species, which have their
reproductive organs perfect; yet these two distinct cases run to a
certain extent parallel. Something analogous occurs in grafting; for
Thouin found that three species of Robinia, which seeded freely on
their own roots, and which could be grafted with no great difficulty on
another species, when thus grafted were rendered barren. On the other
hand, certain species of Sorbus, when grafted on other species, yielded
twice as much fruit as when on their own roots. We are reminded by this
latter fact of the extraordinary case of Hippeastrum, Lobelia, etc.,
which seeded much more freely when fertilised with the pollen of
distinct species, than when self-fertilised with their own pollen.

We thus see, that although there is a clear and fundamental difference
between the mere adhesion of grafted stocks, and the union of the male
and female elements in the act of reproduction, yet that there is a
rude degree of parallelism in the results of grafting and of crossing
distinct species. And as we must look at the curious and complex laws
governing the facility with which trees can be grafted on each other
as incidental on unknown differences in their vegetative systems, so I
believe that the still more complex laws governing the facility of
first crosses, are incidental on unknown differences, chiefly in their
reproductive systems. These differences, in both cases, follow to a
certain extent, as might have been expected, systematic affinity, by
which every kind of resemblance and dissimilarity between organic
beings is attempted to be expressed. The facts by no means seem to me
to indicate that the greater or lesser difficulty of either grafting or
crossing together various species has been a special endowment;
although in the case of crossing, the difficulty is as important for the
endurance and stability of specific forms, as in the case of grafting it
is unimportant for their welfare.

CAUSES OF THE STERILITY OF FIRST CROSSES AND OF HYBRIDS.

We may now look a little closer at the probable causes of the sterility
of first crosses and of hybrids. These two cases are fundamentally
different, for, as just remarked, in the union of two pure species the
male and female sexual elements are perfect, whereas in hybrids they are
imperfect. Even in first crosses, the greater or lesser difficulty in
effecting a union apparently depends on several distinct causes. There
must sometimes be a physical impossibility in the male element reaching
the ovule, as would be the case with a plant having a pistil too long
for the pollen-tubes to reach the ovarium. It has also been observed
that when pollen of one species is placed on the stigma of a distantly
allied species, though the pollen-tubes protrude, they do not penetrate
the stigmatic surface. Again, the male element may reach the female
element, but be incapable of causing an embryo to be developed, as seems
to have been the case with some of Thuret's experiments on Fuci. No
explanation can be given of these facts, any more than why certain trees
cannot be grafted on others. Lastly, an embryo may be developed, and
then perish at an early period. This latter alternative has not been
sufficiently attended to; but I believe, from observations communicated
to me by Mr. Hewitt, who has had great experience in hybridising
gallinaceous birds, that the early death of the embryo is a very
frequent cause of sterility in first crosses. I was at first very
unwilling to believe in this view; as hybrids, when once born, are
generally healthy and long-lived, as we see in the case of the common
mule. Hybrids, however, are differently circumstanced before and after
birth: when born and living in a country where their two parents can
live, they are generally placed under suitable conditions of life. But
a hybrid partakes of only half of the nature and constitution of its
mother, and therefore before birth, as long as it is nourished within
its mother's womb or within the egg or seed produced by the mother, it
may be exposed to conditions in some degree unsuitable, and consequently
be liable to perish at an early period; more especially as all very
young beings seem eminently sensitive to injurious or unnatural
conditions of life.

In regard to the sterility of hybrids, in which the sexual elements are
imperfectly developed, the case is very different. I have more than once
alluded to a large body of facts, which I have collected, showing that
when animals and plants are removed from their natural conditions,
they are extremely liable to have their reproductive systems seriously
affected. This, in fact, is the great bar to the domestication of
animals. Between the sterility thus superinduced and that of hybrids,
there are many points of similarity. In both cases the sterility is
independent of general health, and is often accompanied by excess of
size or great luxuriance. In both cases, the sterility occurs in various
degrees; in both, the male element is the most liable to be affected;
but sometimes the female more than the male. In both, the tendency
goes to a certain extent with systematic affinity, for whole groups
of animals and plants are rendered impotent by the same unnatural
conditions; and whole groups of species tend to produce sterile hybrids.
On the other hand, one species in a group will sometimes resist great
changes of conditions with unimpaired fertility; and certain species in
a group will produce unusually fertile hybrids. No one can tell, till he
tries, whether any particular animal will breed under confinement or any
plant seed freely under culture; nor can he tell, till he tries, whether
any two species of a genus will produce more or less sterile hybrids.
Lastly, when organic beings are placed during several generations under
conditions not natural to them, they are extremely liable to vary,
which is due, as I believe, to their reproductive systems having been
specially affected, though in a lesser degree than when sterility
ensues. So it is with hybrids, for hybrids in successive generations are
eminently liable to vary, as every experimentalist has observed.

Thus we see that when organic beings are placed under new and unnatural
conditions, and when hybrids are produced by the unnatural crossing of
two species, the reproductive system, independently of the general state
of health, is affected by sterility in a very similar manner. In the
one case, the conditions of life have been disturbed, though often in so
slight a degree as to be inappreciable by us; in the other case, or
that of hybrids, the external conditions have remained the same, but
the organisation has been disturbed by two different structures and
constitutions having been blended into one. For it is scarcely possible
that two organisations should be compounded into one, without some
disturbance occurring in the development, or periodical action, or
mutual relation of the different parts and organs one to another, or to
the conditions of life. When hybrids are able to breed inter se, they
transmit to their offspring from generation to generation the same
compounded organisation, and hence we need not be surprised that their
sterility, though in some degree variable, rarely diminishes.

It must, however, be confessed that we cannot understand, excepting
on vague hypotheses, several facts with respect to the sterility of
hybrids; for instance, the unequal fertility of hybrids produced from
reciprocal crosses; or the increased sterility in those hybrids which
occasionally and exceptionally resemble closely either pure parent. Nor
do I pretend that the foregoing remarks go to the root of the matter:
no explanation is offered why an organism, when placed under unnatural
conditions, is rendered sterile. All that I have attempted to show,
is that in two cases, in some respects allied, sterility is the common
result,--in the one case from the conditions of life having been
disturbed, in the other case from the organisation having been disturbed
by two organisations having been compounded into one.

It may seem fanciful, but I suspect that a similar parallelism extends
to an allied yet very different class of facts. It is an old and almost
universal belief, founded, I think, on a considerable body of evidence,
that slight changes in the conditions of life are beneficial to all
living things. We see this acted on by farmers and gardeners in their
frequent exchanges of seed, tubers, etc., from one soil or climate to
another, and back again. During the convalescence of animals, we plainly
see that great benefit is derived from almost any change in the
habits of life. Again, both with plants and animals, there is abundant
evidence, that a cross between very distinct individuals of the same
species, that is between members of different strains or sub-breeds,
gives vigour and fertility to the offspring. I believe, indeed, from
the facts alluded to in our fourth chapter, that a certain amount of
crossing is indispensable even with hermaphrodites; and that close
interbreeding continued during several generations between the nearest
relations, especially if these be kept under the same conditions of
life, always induces weakness and sterility in the progeny.

Hence it seems that, on the one hand, slight changes in the conditions
of life benefit all organic beings, and on the other hand, that slight
crosses, that is crosses between the males and females of the same
species which have varied and become slightly different, give vigour and
fertility to the offspring. But we have seen that greater changes, or
changes of a particular nature, often render organic beings in some
degree sterile; and that greater crosses, that is crosses between males
and females which have become widely or specifically different, produce
hybrids which are generally sterile in some degree. I cannot persuade
myself that this parallelism is an accident or an illusion. Both series
of facts seem to be connected together by some common but unknown bond,
which is essentially related to the principle of life.

FERTILITY OF VARIETIES WHEN CROSSED, AND OF THEIR MONGREL OFFSPRING.

It may be urged, as a most forcible argument, that there must be some
essential distinction between species and varieties, and that there
must be some error in all the foregoing remarks, inasmuch as varieties,
however much they may differ from each other in external appearance,
cross with perfect facility, and yield perfectly fertile offspring. I
fully admit that this is almost invariably the case. But if we look to
varieties produced under nature, we are immediately involved in hopeless
difficulties; for if two hitherto reputed varieties be found in any
degree sterile together, they are at once ranked by most naturalists
as species. For instance, the blue and red pimpernel, the primrose
and cowslip, which are considered by many of our best botanists as
varieties, are said by Gartner not to be quite fertile when crossed, and
he consequently ranks them as undoubted species. If we thus argue in
a circle, the fertility of all varieties produced under nature will
assuredly have to be granted.

If we turn to varieties, produced, or supposed to have been produced,
under domestication, we are still involved in doubt. For when it is
stated, for instance, that the German Spitz dog unites more easily
than other dogs with foxes, or that certain South American indigenous
domestic dogs do not readily cross with European dogs, the explanation
which will occur to everyone, and probably the true one, is that
these dogs have descended from several aboriginally distinct species.
Nevertheless the perfect fertility of so many domestic varieties,
differing widely from each other in appearance, for instance of the
pigeon or of the cabbage, is a remarkable fact; more especially when we
reflect how many species there are, which, though resembling each
other most closely, are utterly sterile when intercrossed. Several
considerations, however, render the fertility of domestic varieties less
remarkable than at first appears. It can, in the first place, be clearly
shown that mere external dissimilarity between two species does not
determine their greater or lesser degree of sterility when crossed; and
we may apply the same rule to domestic varieties. In the second place,
some eminent naturalists believe that a long course of domestication
tends to eliminate sterility in the successive generations of hybrids,
which were at first only slightly sterile; and if this be so, we surely
ought not to expect to find sterility both appearing and disappearing
under nearly the same conditions of life. Lastly, and this seems to me
by far the most important consideration, new races of animals and plants
are produced under domestication by man's methodical and unconscious
power of selection, for his own use and pleasure: he neither wishes to
select, nor could select, slight differences in the reproductive system,
or other constitutional differences correlated with the reproductive
system. He supplies his several varieties with the same food; treats
them in nearly the same manner, and does not wish to alter their general
habits of life. Nature acts uniformly and slowly during vast periods
of time on the whole organisation, in any way which may be for each
creature's own good; and thus she may, either directly, or more probably
indirectly, through correlation, modify the reproductive system in the
several descendants from any one species. Seeing this difference in the
process of selection, as carried on by man and nature, we need not be
surprised at some difference in the result.

I have as yet spoken as if the varieties of the same species were
invariably fertile when intercrossed. But it seems to me impossible to
resist the evidence of the existence of a certain amount of sterility in
the few following cases, which I will briefly abstract. The evidence
is at least as good as that from which we believe in the sterility of
a multitude of species. The evidence is, also, derived from hostile
witnesses, who in all other cases consider fertility and sterility as
safe criterions of specific distinction. Gartner kept during several
years a dwarf kind of maize with yellow seeds, and a tall variety with
red seeds, growing near each other in his garden; and although these
plants have separated sexes, they never naturally crossed. He then
fertilised thirteen flowers of the one with the pollen of the other; but
only a single head produced any seed, and this one head produced only
five grains. Manipulation in this case could not have been injurious, as
the plants have separated sexes. No one, I believe, has suspected that
these varieties of maize are distinct species; and it is important to
notice that the hybrid plants thus raised were themselves PERFECTLY
fertile; so that even Gartner did not venture to consider the two
varieties as specifically distinct.

Girou de Buzareingues crossed three varieties of gourd, which like
the maize has separated sexes, and he asserts that their mutual
fertilisation is by so much the less easy as their differences are
greater. How far these experiments may be trusted, I know not; but the
forms experimentised on, are ranked by Sagaret, who mainly founds his
classification by the test of infertility, as varieties.

The following case is far more remarkable, and seems at first quite
incredible; but it is the result of an astonishing number of experiments
made during many years on nine species of Verbascum, by so good an
observer and so hostile a witness, as Gartner: namely, that yellow
and white varieties of the same species of Verbascum when intercrossed
produce less seed, than do either coloured varieties when fertilised
with pollen from their own coloured flowers. Moreover, he asserts that
when yellow and white varieties of one species are crossed with yellow
and white varieties of a DISTINCT species, more seed is produced by the
crosses between the same coloured flowers, than between those which are
differently coloured. Yet these varieties of Verbascum present no other
difference besides the mere colour of the flower; and one variety can
sometimes be raised from the seed of the other.

From observations which I have made on certain varieties of hollyhock, I
am inclined to suspect that they present analogous facts.

Kolreuter, whose accuracy has been confirmed by every subsequent
observer, has proved the remarkable fact, that one variety of the common
tobacco is more fertile, when crossed with a widely distinct species,
than are the other varieties. He experimentised on five forms, which are
commonly reputed to be varieties, and which he tested by the severest
trial, namely, by reciprocal crosses, and he found their mongrel
offspring perfectly fertile. But one of these five varieties, when used
either as father or mother, and crossed with the Nicotiana glutinosa,
always yielded hybrids not so sterile as those which were produced
from the four other varieties when crossed with N. glutinosa. Hence the
reproductive system of this one variety must have been in some manner
and in some degree modified.

From these facts; from the great difficulty of ascertaining the
infertility of varieties in a state of nature, for a supposed variety if
infertile in any degree would generally be ranked as species; from
man selecting only external characters in the production of the most
distinct domestic varieties, and from not wishing or being able to
produce recondite and functional differences in the reproductive system;
from these several considerations and facts, I do not think that the
very general fertility of varieties can be proved to be of universal
occurrence, or to form a fundamental distinction between varieties
and species. The general fertility of varieties does not seem to me
sufficient to overthrow the view which I have taken with respect to
the very general, but not invariable, sterility of first crosses and of
hybrids, namely, that it is not a special endowment, but is incidental
on slowly acquired modifications, more especially in the reproductive
systems of the forms which are crossed.

HYBRIDS AND MONGRELS COMPARED, INDEPENDENTLY OF THEIR FERTILITY.

Independently of the question of fertility, the offspring of species
when crossed and of varieties when crossed may be compared in several
other respects. Gartner, whose strong wish was to draw a marked line of
distinction between species and varieties, could find very few and,
as it seems to me, quite unimportant differences between the so-called
hybrid offspring of species, and the so-called mongrel offspring of
varieties. And, on the other hand, they agree most closely in very many
important respects.

I shall here discuss this subject with extreme brevity. The most
important distinction is, that in the first generation mongrels are
more variable than hybrids; but Gartner admits that hybrids from
species which have long been cultivated are often variable in the first
generation; and I have myself seen striking instances of this fact.
Gartner further admits that hybrids between very closely allied species
are more variable than those from very distinct species; and this shows
that the difference in the degree of variability graduates away.
When mongrels and the more fertile hybrids are propagated for several
generations an extreme amount of variability in their offspring
is notorious; but some few cases both of hybrids and mongrels long
retaining uniformity of character could be given. The variability,
however, in the successive generations of mongrels is, perhaps, greater
than in hybrids.

This greater variability of mongrels than of hybrids does not seem to me
at all surprising. For the parents of mongrels are varieties, and mostly
domestic varieties (very few experiments having been tried on natural
varieties), and this implies in most cases that there has been recent
variability; and therefore we might expect that such variability would
often continue and be super-added to that arising from the mere act of
crossing. The slight degree of variability in hybrids from the first
cross or in the first generation, in contrast with their extreme
variability in the succeeding generations, is a curious fact and
deserves attention. For it bears on and corroborates the view which I
have taken on the cause of ordinary variability; namely, that it is due
to the reproductive system being eminently sensitive to any change in
the conditions of life, being thus often rendered either impotent or at
least incapable of its proper function of producing offspring identical
with the parent-form. Now hybrids in the first generation are descended
from species (excluding those long cultivated) which have not had their
reproductive systems in any way affected, and they are not variable; but
hybrids themselves have their reproductive systems seriously affected,
and their descendants are highly variable.

But to return to our comparison of mongrels and hybrids: Gartner
states that mongrels are more liable than hybrids to revert to either
parent-form; but this, if it be true, is certainly only a difference in
degree. Gartner further insists that when any two species, although
most closely allied to each other, are crossed with a third species,
the hybrids are widely different from each other; whereas if two very
distinct varieties of one species are crossed with another species, the
hybrids do not differ much. But this conclusion, as far as I can make
out, is founded on a single experiment; and seems directly opposed to
the results of several experiments made by Kolreuter.

These alone are the unimportant differences, which Gartner is able to
point out, between hybrid and mongrel plants. On the other hand, the
resemblance in mongrels and in hybrids to their respective parents,
more especially in hybrids produced from nearly related species, follows
according to Gartner the same laws. When two species are crossed,
one has sometimes a prepotent power of impressing its likeness on the
hybrid; and so I believe it to be with varieties of plants. With animals
one variety certainly often has this prepotent power over another
variety. Hybrid plants produced from a reciprocal cross, generally
resemble each other closely; and so it is with mongrels from a
reciprocal cross. Both hybrids and mongrels can be reduced to either
pure parent-form, by repeated crosses in successive generations with
either parent.

These several remarks are apparently applicable to animals; but the
subject is here excessively complicated, partly owing to the existence
of secondary sexual characters; but more especially owing to prepotency
in transmitting likeness running more strongly in one sex than in the
other, both when one species is crossed with another, and when one
variety is crossed with another variety. For instance, I think those
authors are right, who maintain that the ass has a prepotent power over
the horse, so that both the mule and the hinny more resemble the ass
than the horse; but that the prepotency runs more strongly in the
male-ass than in the female, so that the mule, which is the offspring of
the male-ass and mare, is more like an ass, than is the hinny, which is
the offspring of the female-ass and stallion.

Much stress has been laid by some authors on the supposed fact, that
mongrel animals alone are born closely like one of their parents; but
it can be shown that this does sometimes occur with hybrids; yet I grant
much less frequently with hybrids than with mongrels. Looking to the
cases which I have collected of cross-bred animals closely resembling
one parent, the resemblances seem chiefly confined to characters almost
monstrous in their nature, and which have suddenly appeared--such as
albinism, melanism, deficiency of tail or horns, or additional fingers
and toes; and do not relate to characters which have been slowly
acquired by selection. Consequently, sudden reversions to the perfect
character of either parent would be more likely to occur with mongrels,
which are descended from varieties often suddenly produced and
semi-monstrous in character, than with hybrids, which are descended from
species slowly and naturally produced. On the whole I entirely agree
with Dr. Prosper Lucas, who, after arranging an enormous body of facts
with respect to animals, comes to the conclusion, that the laws of
resemblance of the child to its parents are the same, whether the two
parents differ much or little from each other, namely in the union
of individuals of the same variety, or of different varieties, or of
distinct species.

Laying aside the question of fertility and sterility, in all other
respects there seems to be a general and close similarity in the
offspring of crossed species, and of crossed varieties. If we look at
species as having been specially created, and at varieties as having
been produced by secondary laws, this similarity would be an astonishing
fact. But it harmonises perfectly with the view that there is no
essential distinction between species and varieties.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER.

First crosses between forms sufficiently distinct to be ranked as
species, and their hybrids, are very generally, but not universally,
sterile. The sterility is of all degrees, and is often so slight that
the two most careful experimentalists who have ever lived, have come to
diametrically opposite conclusions in ranking forms by this test. The
sterility is innately variable in individuals of the same species, and
is eminently susceptible of favourable and unfavourable conditions. The
degree of sterility does not strictly follow systematic affinity, but is
governed by several curious and complex laws. It is generally different,
and sometimes widely different, in reciprocal crosses between the same
two species. It is not always equal in degree in a first cross and in
the hybrid produced from this cross.

In the same manner as in grafting trees, the capacity of one species
or variety to take on another, is incidental on generally unknown
differences in their vegetative systems, so in crossing, the greater
or less facility of one species to unite with another, is incidental
on unknown differences in their reproductive systems. There is no more
reason to think that species have been specially endowed with various
degrees of sterility to prevent them crossing and blending in nature,
than to think that trees have been specially endowed with various and
somewhat analogous degrees of difficulty in being grafted together in
order to prevent them becoming inarched in our forests.

The sterility of first crosses between pure species, which have their
reproductive systems perfect, seems to depend on several circumstances;
in some cases largely on the early death of the embryo. The sterility of
hybrids, which have their reproductive systems imperfect, and which
have had this system and their whole organisation disturbed by being
compounded of two distinct species, seems closely allied to that
sterility which so frequently affects pure species, when their natural
conditions of life have been disturbed. This view is supported by a
parallelism of another kind;--namely, that the crossing of forms only
slightly different is favourable to the vigour and fertility of their
offspring; and that slight changes in the conditions of life are
apparently favourable to the vigour and fertility of all organic beings.
It is not surprising that the degree of difficulty in uniting two
species, and the degree of sterility of their hybrid-offspring should
generally correspond, though due to distinct causes; for both depend
on the amount of difference of some kind between the species which are
crossed. Nor is it surprising that the facility of effecting a first
cross, the fertility of the hybrids produced, and the capacity of being
grafted together--though this latter capacity evidently depends on
widely different circumstances--should all run, to a certain extent,
parallel with the systematic affinity of the forms which are subjected
to experiment; for systematic affinity attempts to express all kinds of
resemblance between all species.

First crosses between forms known to be varieties, or sufficiently alike
to be considered as varieties, and their mongrel offspring, are very
generally, but not quite universally, fertile. Nor is this nearly
general and perfect fertility surprising, when we remember how liable we
are to argue in a circle with respect to varieties in a state of nature;
and when we remember that the greater number of varieties have
been produced under domestication by the selection of mere external
differences, and not of differences in the reproductive system. In
all other respects, excluding fertility, there is a close general
resemblance between hybrids and mongrels. Finally, then, the facts
briefly given in this chapter do not seem to me opposed to, but even
rather to support the view, that there is no fundamental distinction
between species and varieties.




9. ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD.

On the absence of intermediate varieties at the present day. On the
nature of extinct intermediate varieties; on their number. On the
vast lapse of time, as inferred from the rate of deposition and of
denudation. On the poorness of our palaeontological collections. On the
intermittence of geological formations. On the absence of intermediate
varieties in any one formation. On the sudden appearance of groups of
species. On their sudden appearance in the lowest known fossiliferous
strata.

In the sixth chapter I enumerated the chief objections which might be
justly urged against the views maintained in this volume. Most of them
have now been discussed. One, namely the distinctness of specific forms,
and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional links,
is a very obvious difficulty. I assigned reasons why such links do not
commonly occur at the present day, under the circumstances apparently
most favourable for their presence, namely on an extensive and
continuous area with graduated physical conditions. I endeavoured to
show, that the life of each species depends in a more important manner
on the presence of other already defined organic forms, than on climate;
and, therefore, that the really governing conditions of life do not
graduate away quite insensibly like heat or moisture. I endeavoured,
also, to show that intermediate varieties, from existing in lesser
numbers than the forms which they connect, will generally be beaten
out and exterminated during the course of further modification and
improvement. The main cause, however, of innumerable intermediate links
not now occurring everywhere throughout nature depends on the very
process of natural selection, through which new varieties continually
take the places of and exterminate their parent-forms. But just in
proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous
scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have
formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every
geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?
Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic
chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection
which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I
believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.

In the first place it should always be borne in mind what sort of
intermediate forms must, on my theory, have formerly existed. I have
found it difficult, when looking at any two species, to avoid picturing
to myself, forms DIRECTLY intermediate between them. But this is a
wholly false view; we should always look for forms intermediate between
each species and a common but unknown progenitor; and the progenitor
will generally have differed in some respects from all its modified
descendants. To give a simple illustration: the fantail and pouter
pigeons have both descended from the rock-pigeon; if we possessed all
the intermediate varieties which have ever existed, we should have an
extremely close series between both and the rock-pigeon; but we should
have no varieties directly intermediate between the fantail and pouter;
none, for instance, combining a tail somewhat expanded with a crop
somewhat enlarged, the characteristic features of these two breeds.
These two breeds, moreover, have become so much modified, that if we had
no historical or indirect evidence regarding their origin, it would not
have been possible to have determined from a mere comparison of their
structure with that of the rock-pigeon, whether they had descended from
this species or from some other allied species, such as C. oenas.

So with natural species, if we look to forms very distinct, for instance
to the horse and tapir, we have no reason to suppose that links ever
existed directly intermediate between them, but between each and an
unknown common parent. The common parent will have had in its whole
organisation much general resemblance to the tapir and to the horse; but
in some points of structure may have differed considerably from both,
even perhaps more than they differ from each other. Hence in all such
cases, we should be unable to recognise the parent-form of any two or
more species, even if we closely compared the structure of the parent
with that of its modified descendants, unless at the same time we had a
nearly perfect chain of the intermediate links.

It is just possible by my theory, that one of two living forms might
have descended from the other; for instance, a horse from a tapir; and
in this case DIRECT intermediate links will have existed between them.
But such a case would imply that one form had remained for a very long
period unaltered, whilst its descendants had undergone a vast amount of
change; and the principle of competition between organism and organism,
between child and parent, will render this a very rare event; for in all
cases the new and improved forms of life will tend to supplant the old
and unimproved forms.

By the theory of natural selection all living species have been
connected with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not
greater than we see between the varieties of the same species at the
present day; and these parent-species, now generally extinct, have in
their turn been similarly connected with more ancient species; and so on
backwards, always converging to the common ancestor of each great class.
So that the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all
living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great. But
assuredly, if this theory be true, such have lived upon this earth.

ON THE LAPSE OF TIME.

Independently of our not finding fossil remains of such infinitely
numerous connecting links, it may be objected, that time will not have
sufficed for so great an amount of organic change, all changes having
been effected very slowly through natural selection. It is hardly
possible for me even to recall to the reader, who may not be a practical
geologist, the facts leading the mind feebly to comprehend the lapse of
time. He who can read Sir Charles Lyell's grand work on the Principles
of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced
a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly
vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.
Not that it suffices to study the Principles of Geology, or to read
special treatises by different observers on separate formations, and to
mark how each author attempts to give an inadequate idea of the duration
of each formation or even each stratum. A man must for years examine for
himself great piles of superimposed strata, and watch the sea at work
grinding down old rocks and making fresh sediment, before he can hope to
comprehend anything of the lapse of time, the monuments of which we see
around us.

It is good to wander along lines of sea-coast, when formed of moderately
hard rocks, and mark the process of degradation. The tides in most cases
reach the cliffs only for a short time twice a day, and the waves eat
into them only when they are charged with sand or pebbles; for there
is reason to believe that pure water can effect little or nothing in
wearing away rock. At last the base of the cliff is undermined, huge
fragments fall down, and these remaining fixed, have to be worn away,
atom by atom, until reduced in size they can be rolled about by the
waves, and then are more quickly ground into pebbles, sand, or mud.
But how often do we see along the bases of retreating cliffs rounded
boulders, all thickly clothed by marine productions, showing how little
they are abraded and how seldom they are rolled about! Moreover, if
we follow for a few miles any line of rocky cliff, which is undergoing
degradation, we find that it is only here and there, along a short
length or round a promontory, that the cliffs are at the present time
suffering. The appearance of the surface and the vegetation show that
elsewhere years have elapsed since the waters washed their base.

He who most closely studies the action of the sea on our shores, will,
I believe, be most deeply impressed with the slowness with which rocky
coasts are worn away. The observations on this head by Hugh Miller,
and by that excellent observer Mr. Smith of Jordan Hill, are most
impressive. With the mind thus impressed, let any one examine beds of
conglomerate many thousand feet in thickness, which, though probably
formed at a quicker rate than many other deposits, yet, from being
formed of worn and rounded pebbles, each of which bears the stamp of
time, are good to show how slowly the mass has been accumulated. Let
him remember Lyell's profound remark, that the thickness and extent of
sedimentary formations are the result and measure of the degradation
which the earth's crust has elsewhere suffered. And what an amount of
degradation is implied by the sedimentary deposits of many countries!
Professor Ramsay has given me the maximum thickness, in most cases from
actual measurement, in a few cases from estimate, of each formation in
different parts of Great Britain; and this is the result:--

                                                      Feet

     Palaeozoic strata (not including igneous beds)..57,154.
     Secondary strata................................13,190.
     Tertiary strata..................................2,240.

--making altogether 72,584 feet; that is, very nearly thirteen and
three-quarters British miles. Some of these formations, which are
represented in England by thin beds, are thousands of feet in thickness
on the Continent. Moreover, between each successive formation, we have,
in the opinion of most geologists, enormously long blank periods.
So that the lofty pile of sedimentary rocks in Britain, gives but an
inadequate idea of the time which has elapsed during their accumulation;
yet what time this must have consumed! Good observers have estimated
that sediment is deposited by the great Mississippi river at the rate
of only 600 feet in a hundred thousand years. This estimate may be quite
erroneous; yet, considering over what wide spaces very fine sediment is
transported by the currents of the sea, the process of accumulation in
any one area must be extremely slow.

But the amount of denudation which the strata have in many places
suffered, independently of the rate of accumulation of the degraded
matter, probably offers the best evidence of the lapse of time. I
remember having been much struck with the evidence of denudation, when
viewing volcanic islands, which have been worn by the waves and pared
all round into perpendicular cliffs of one or two thousand feet in
height; for the gentle slope of the lava-streams, due to their formerly
liquid state, showed at a glance how far the hard, rocky beds had once
extended into the open ocean. The same story is still more plainly told
by faults,--those great cracks along which the strata have been upheaved
on one side, or thrown down on the other, to the height or depth of
thousands of feet; for since the crust cracked, the surface of the land
has been so completely planed down by the action of the sea, that no
trace of these vast dislocations is externally visible.

The Craven fault, for instance, extends for upwards of 30 miles, and
along this line the vertical displacement of the strata has varied
from 600 to 3000 feet. Professor Ramsay has published an account of
a downthrow in Anglesea of 2300 feet; and he informs me that he fully
believes there is one in Merionethshire of 12,000 feet; yet in these
cases there is nothing on the surface to show such prodigious movements;
the pile of rocks on the one or other side having been smoothly swept
away. The consideration of these facts impresses my mind almost in
the same manner as does the vain endeavour to grapple with the idea of
eternity.

I am tempted to give one other case, the well-known one of the
denudation of the Weald. Though it must be admitted that the denudation
of the Weald has been a mere trifle, in comparison with that which has
removed masses of our palaeozoic strata, in parts ten thousand feet
in thickness, as shown in Professor Ramsay's masterly memoir on this
subject. Yet it is an admirable lesson to stand on the North Downs and
to look at the distant South Downs; for, remembering that at no great
distance to the west the northern and southern escarpments meet and
close, one can safely picture to oneself the great dome of rocks which
must have covered up the Weald within so limited a period as since the
latter part of the Chalk formation. The distance from the northern to
the southern Downs is about 22 miles, and the thickness of the several
formations is on an average about 1100 feet, as I am informed by
Professor Ramsay. But if, as some geologists suppose, a range of
older rocks underlies the Weald, on the flanks of which the overlying
sedimentary deposits might have accumulated in thinner masses than
elsewhere, the above estimate would be erroneous; but this source of
doubt probably would not greatly affect the estimate as applied to the
western extremity of the district. If, then, we knew the rate at which
the sea commonly wears away a line of cliff of any given height, we
could measure the time requisite to have denuded the Weald. This, of
course, cannot be done; but we may, in order to form some crude notion
on the subject, assume that the sea would eat into cliffs 500 feet in
height at the rate of one inch in a century. This will at first appear
much too small an allowance; but it is the same as if we were to assume
a cliff one yard in height to be eaten back along a whole line of
coast at the rate of one yard in nearly every twenty-two years. I
doubt whether any rock, even as soft as chalk, would yield at this rate
excepting on the most exposed coasts; though no doubt the degradation
of a lofty cliff would be more rapid from the breakage of the fallen
fragments. On the other hand, I do not believe that any line of coast,
ten or twenty miles in length, ever suffers degradation at the same time
along its whole indented length; and we must remember that almost all
strata contain harder layers or nodules, which from long resisting
attrition form a breakwater at the base. Hence, under ordinary
circumstances, I conclude that for a cliff 500 feet in height, a
denudation of one inch per century for the whole length would be an
ample allowance. At this rate, on the above data, the denudation of the
Weald must have required 306,662,400 years; or say three hundred million
years.

The action of fresh water on the gently inclined Wealden district, when
upraised, could hardly have been great, but it would somewhat reduce the
above estimate. On the other hand, during oscillations of level, which
we know this area has undergone, the surface may have existed for
millions of years as land, and thus have escaped the action of the
sea: when deeply submerged for perhaps equally long periods, it would,
likewise, have escaped the action of the coast-waves. So that in all
probability a far longer period than 300 million years has elapsed since
the latter part of the Secondary period.

I have made these few remarks because it is highly important for us to
gain some notion, however imperfect, of the lapse of years. During each
of these years, over the whole world, the land and the water has
been peopled by hosts of living forms. What an infinite number of
generations, which the mind cannot grasp, must have succeeded each other
in the long roll of years! Now turn to our richest geological museums,
and what a paltry display we behold!

ON THE POORNESS OF OUR PALAEONTOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS.

That our palaeontological collections are very imperfect, is admitted by
every one. The remark of that admirable palaeontologist, the late Edward
Forbes, should not be forgotten, namely, that numbers of our fossil
species are known and named from single and often broken specimens, or
from a few specimens collected on some one spot. Only a small portion
of the surface of the earth has been geologically explored, and no part
with sufficient care, as the important discoveries made every year in
Europe prove. No organism wholly soft can be preserved. Shells and
bones will decay and disappear when left on the bottom of the sea, where
sediment is not accumulating. I believe we are continually taking a
most erroneous view, when we tacitly admit to ourselves that sediment
is being deposited over nearly the whole bed of the sea, at a rate
sufficiently quick to embed and preserve fossil remains. Throughout an
enormously large proportion of the ocean, the bright blue tint of the
water bespeaks its purity. The many cases on record of a formation
conformably covered, after an enormous interval of time, by another
and later formation, without the underlying bed having suffered in the
interval any wear and tear, seem explicable only on the view of the
bottom of the sea not rarely lying for ages in an unaltered condition.
The remains which do become embedded, if in sand or gravel, will when
the beds are upraised generally be dissolved by the percolation of
rain-water. I suspect that but few of the very many animals which live
on the beach between high and low watermark are preserved. For instance,
the several species of the Chthamalinae (a sub-family of sessile
cirripedes) coat the rocks all over the world in infinite numbers: they
are all strictly littoral, with the exception of a single Mediterranean
species, which inhabits deep water and has been found fossil in Sicily,
whereas not one other species has hitherto been found in any tertiary
formation: yet it is now known that the genus Chthamalus existed
during the chalk period. The molluscan genus Chiton offers a partially
analogous case.

With respect to the terrestrial productions which lived during the
Secondary and Palaeozoic periods, it is superfluous to state that our
evidence from fossil remains is fragmentary in an extreme degree. For
instance, not a land shell is known belonging to either of these
vast periods, with one exception discovered by Sir C. Lyell in the
carboniferous strata of North America. In regard to mammiferous remains,
a single glance at the historical table published in the Supplement to
Lyell's Manual, will bring home the truth, how accidental and rare is
their preservation, far better than pages of detail. Nor is their rarity
surprising, when we remember how large a proportion of the bones of
tertiary mammals have been discovered either in caves or in lacustrine
deposits; and that not a cave or true lacustrine bed is known belonging
to the age of our secondary or palaeozoic formations.

But the imperfection in the geological record mainly results from
another and more important cause than any of the foregoing; namely, from
the several formations being separated from each other by wide intervals
of time. When we see the formations tabulated in written works, or when
we follow them in nature, it is difficult to avoid believing that
they are closely consecutive. But we know, for instance, from Sir R.
Murchison's great work on Russia, what wide gaps there are in that
country between the superimposed formations; so it is in North America,
and in many other parts of the world. The most skilful geologist, if
his attention had been exclusively confined to these large territories,
would never have suspected that during the periods which were blank and
barren in his own country, great piles of sediment, charged with new and
peculiar forms of life, had elsewhere been accumulated. And if in each
separate territory, hardly any idea can be formed of the length of time
which has elapsed between the consecutive formations, we may infer that
this could nowhere be ascertained. The frequent and great changes in the
mineralogical composition of consecutive formations, generally implying
great changes in the geography of the surrounding lands, whence the
sediment has been derived, accords with the belief of vast intervals of
time having elapsed between each formation.

But we can, I think, see why the geological formations of each region
are almost invariably intermittent; that is, have not followed each
other in close sequence. Scarcely any fact struck me more when examining
many hundred miles of the South American coasts, which have been
upraised several hundred feet within the recent period, than the absence
of any recent deposits sufficiently extensive to last for even a short
geological period. Along the whole west coast, which is inhabited by a
peculiar marine fauna, tertiary beds are so scantily developed, that no
record of several successive and peculiar marine faunas will probably be
preserved to a distant age. A little reflection will explain why along
the rising coast of the western side of South America, no extensive
formations with recent or tertiary remains can anywhere be found, though
the supply of sediment must for ages have been great, from the enormous
degradation of the coast-rocks and from muddy streams entering the
sea. The explanation, no doubt, is, that the littoral and sub-littoral
deposits are continually worn away, as soon as they are brought up by
the slow and gradual rising of the land within the grinding action of
the coast-waves.

We may, I think, safely conclude that sediment must be accumulated in
extremely thick, solid, or extensive masses, in order to withstand the
incessant action of the waves, when first upraised and during subsequent
oscillations of level. Such thick and extensive accumulations of
sediment may be formed in two ways; either, in profound depths of the
sea, in which case, judging from the researches of E. Forbes, we may
conclude that the bottom will be inhabited by extremely few animals, and
the mass when upraised will give a most imperfect record of the forms
of life which then existed; or, sediment may be accumulated to any
thickness and extent over a shallow bottom, if it continue slowly to
subside. In this latter case, as long as the rate of subsidence and
supply of sediment nearly balance each other, the sea will remain
shallow and favourable for life, and thus a fossiliferous formation
thick enough, when upraised, to resist any amount of degradation, may be
formed.

I am convinced that all our ancient formations, which are rich in
fossils, have thus been formed during subsidence. Since publishing my
views on this subject in 1845, I have watched the progress of Geology,
and have been surprised to note how author after author, in treating
of this or that great formation, has come to the conclusion that it was
accumulated during subsidence. I may add, that the only ancient tertiary
formation on the west coast of South America, which has been bulky
enough to resist such degradation as it has as yet suffered, but which
will hardly last to a distant geological age, was certainly deposited
during a downward oscillation of level, and thus gained considerable
thickness.

All geological facts tell us plainly that each area has undergone
numerous slow oscillations of level, and apparently these oscillations
have affected wide spaces. Consequently formations rich in fossils and
sufficiently thick and extensive to resist subsequent degradation, may
have been formed over wide spaces during periods of subsidence, but only
where the supply of sediment was sufficient to keep the sea shallow and
to embed and preserve the remains before they had time to decay. On the
other hand, as long as the bed of the sea remained stationary, THICK
deposits could not have been accumulated in the shallow parts, which are
the most favourable to life. Still less could this have happened during
the alternate periods of elevation; or, to speak more accurately, the
beds which were then accumulated will have been destroyed by being
upraised and brought within the limits of the coast-action.

Thus the geological record will almost necessarily be rendered
intermittent. I feel much confidence in the truth of these views, for
they are in strict accordance with the general principles inculcated
by Sir C. Lyell; and E. Forbes independently arrived at a similar
conclusion.

One remark is here worth a passing notice. During periods of elevation
the area of the land and of the adjoining shoal parts of the sea will
be increased, and new stations will often be formed;--all circumstances
most favourable, as previously explained, for the formation of new
varieties and species; but during such periods there will generally be
a blank in the geological record. On the other hand, during subsidence,
the inhabited area and number of inhabitants will decrease (excepting
the productions on the shores of a continent when first broken up into
an archipelago), and consequently during subsidence, though there will
be much extinction, fewer new varieties or species will be formed; and
it is during these very periods of subsidence, that our great deposits
rich in fossils have been accumulated. Nature may almost be said to have
guarded against the frequent discovery of her transitional or linking
forms.

From the foregoing considerations it cannot be doubted that the
geological record, viewed as a whole, is extremely imperfect; but if we
confine our attention to any one formation, it becomes more difficult
to understand, why we do not therein find closely graduated varieties
between the allied species which lived at its commencement and at its
close. Some cases are on record of the same species presenting distinct
varieties in the upper and lower parts of the same formation, but, as
they are rare, they may be here passed over. Although each formation has
indisputably required a vast number of years for its deposition, I can
see several reasons why each should not include a graduated series
of links between the species which then lived; but I can by no
means pretend to assign due proportional weight to the following
considerations.

Although each formation may mark a very long lapse of years, each
perhaps is short compared with the period requisite to change one
species into another. I am aware that two palaeontologists, whose
opinions are worthy of much deference, namely Bronn and Woodward, have
concluded that the average duration of each formation is twice or thrice
as long as the average duration of specific forms. But insuperable
difficulties, as it seems to me, prevent us coming to any just
conclusion on this head. When we see a species first appearing in the
middle of any formation, it would be rash in the extreme to infer that
it had not elsewhere previously existed. So again when we find a species
disappearing before the uppermost layers have been deposited, it would
be equally rash to suppose that it then became wholly extinct. We forget
how small the area of Europe is compared with the rest of the world;
nor have the several stages of the same formation throughout Europe been
correlated with perfect accuracy.

With marine animals of all kinds, we may safely infer a large amount of
migration during climatal and other changes; and when we see a species
first appearing in any formation, the probability is that it only then
first immigrated into that area. It is well known, for instance, that
several species appeared somewhat earlier in the palaeozoic beds of
North America than in those of Europe; time having apparently been
required for their migration from the American to the European seas. In
examining the latest deposits of various quarters of the world, it has
everywhere been noted, that some few still existing species are common
in the deposit, but have become extinct in the immediately surrounding
sea; or, conversely, that some are now abundant in the neighbouring sea,
but are rare or absent in this particular deposit. It is an excellent
lesson to reflect on the ascertained amount of migration of the
inhabitants of Europe during the Glacial period, which forms only a part
of one whole geological period; and likewise to reflect on the great
changes of level, on the inordinately great change of climate, on the
prodigious lapse of time, all included within this same glacial period.
Yet it may be doubted whether in any quarter of the world, sedimentary
deposits, INCLUDING FOSSIL REMAINS, have gone on accumulating within
the same area during the whole of this period. It is not, for instance,
probable that sediment was deposited during the whole of the glacial
period near the mouth of the Mississippi, within that limit of depth at
which marine animals can flourish; for we know what vast geographical
changes occurred in other parts of America during this space of time.
When such beds as were deposited in shallow water near the mouth of
the Mississippi during some part of the glacial period shall have been
upraised, organic remains will probably first appear and disappear at
different levels, owing to the migration of species and to geographical
changes. And in the distant future, a geologist examining these beds,
might be tempted to conclude that the average duration of life of the
embedded fossils had been less than that of the glacial period, instead
of having been really far greater, that is extending from before the
glacial epoch to the present day.

In order to get a perfect gradation between two forms in the upper
and lower parts of the same formation, the deposit must have gone on
accumulating for a very long period, in order to have given sufficient
time for the slow process of variation; hence the deposit will generally
have to be a very thick one; and the species undergoing modification
will have had to live on the same area throughout this whole time.
But we have seen that a thick fossiliferous formation can only be
accumulated during a period of subsidence; and to keep the depth
approximately the same, which is necessary in order to enable the same
species to live on the same space, the supply of sediment must nearly
have counterbalanced the amount of subsidence. But this same movement
of subsidence will often tend to sink the area whence the sediment
is derived, and thus diminish the supply whilst the downward movement
continues. In fact, this nearly exact balancing between the supply of
sediment and the amount of subsidence is probably a rare contingency;
for it has been observed by more than one palaeontologist, that very
thick deposits are usually barren of organic remains, except near their
upper or lower limits.

It would seem that each separate formation, like the whole pile of
formations in any country, has generally been intermittent in its
accumulation. When we see, as is so often the case, a formation composed
of beds of different mineralogical composition, we may reasonably
suspect that the process of deposition has been much interrupted, as
a change in the currents of the sea and a supply of sediment of a
different nature will generally have been due to geographical changes
requiring much time. Nor will the closest inspection of a formation give
any idea of the time which its deposition has consumed. Many instances
could be given of beds only a few feet in thickness, representing
formations, elsewhere thousands of feet in thickness, and which must
have required an enormous period for their accumulation; yet no one
ignorant of this fact would have suspected the vast lapse of time
represented by the thinner formation. Many cases could be given of the
lower beds of a formation having been upraised, denuded, submerged, and
then re-covered by the upper beds of the same formation,--facts,
showing what wide, yet easily overlooked, intervals have occurred in
its accumulation. In other cases we have the plainest evidence in great
fossilised trees, still standing upright as they grew, of many long
intervals of time and changes of level during the process of deposition,
which would never even have been suspected, had not the trees chanced to
have been preserved: thus, Messrs. Lyell and Dawson found carboniferous
beds 1400 feet thick in Nova Scotia, with ancient root-bearing strata,
one above the other, at no less than sixty-eight different levels.
Hence, when the same species occur at the bottom, middle, and top of a
formation, the probability is that they have not lived on the same
spot during the whole period of deposition, but have disappeared and
reappeared, perhaps many times, during the same geological period.
So that if such species were to undergo a considerable amount of
modification during any one geological period, a section would not
probably include all the fine intermediate gradations which must on
my theory have existed between them, but abrupt, though perhaps very
slight, changes of form.

It is all-important to remember that naturalists have no golden rule
by which to distinguish species and varieties; they grant some little
variability to each species, but when they meet with a somewhat greater
amount of difference between any two forms, they rank both as species,
unless they are enabled to connect them together by close intermediate
gradations. And this from the reasons just assigned we can seldom hope
to effect in any one geological section. Supposing B and C to be two
species, and a third, A, to be found in an underlying bed; even if A
were strictly intermediate between B and C, it would simply be ranked as
a third and distinct species, unless at the same time it could be
most closely connected with either one or both forms by intermediate
varieties. Nor should it be forgotten, as before explained, that A
might be the actual progenitor of B and C, and yet might not at all
necessarily be strictly intermediate between them in all points of
structure. So that we might obtain the parent-species and its several
modified descendants from the lower and upper beds of a formation,
and unless we obtained numerous transitional gradations, we should not
recognise their relationship, and should consequently be compelled to
rank them all as distinct species.

It is notorious on what excessively slight differences many
palaeontologists have founded their species; and they do this the more
readily if the specimens come from different sub-stages of the same
formation. Some experienced conchologists are now sinking many of the
very fine species of D'Orbigny and others into the rank of varieties;
and on this view we do find the kind of evidence of change which on my
theory we ought to find. Moreover, if we look to rather wider intervals,
namely, to distinct but consecutive stages of the same great formation,
we find that the embedded fossils, though almost universally ranked as
specifically different, yet are far more closely allied to each other
than are the species found in more widely separated formations; but to
this subject I shall have to return in the following chapter.

One other consideration is worth notice: with animals and plants that
can propagate rapidly and are not highly locomotive, there is reason to
suspect, as we have formerly seen, that their varieties are generally
at first local; and that such local varieties do not spread widely and
supplant their parent-forms until they have been modified and perfected
in some considerable degree. According to this view, the chance of
discovering in a formation in any one country all the early stages of
transition between any two forms, is small, for the successive changes
are supposed to have been local or confined to some one spot. Most
marine animals have a wide range; and we have seen that with plants it
is those which have the widest range, that oftenest present varieties;
so that with shells and other marine animals, it is probably those
which have had the widest range, far exceeding the limits of the known
geological formations of Europe, which have oftenest given rise, first
to local varieties and ultimately to new species; and this again would
greatly lessen the chance of our being able to trace the stages of
transition in any one geological formation.

It should not be forgotten, that at the present day, with perfect
specimens for examination, two forms can seldom be connected by
intermediate varieties and thus proved to be the same species, until
many specimens have been collected from many places; and in the case
of fossil species this could rarely be effected by palaeontologists. We
shall, perhaps, best perceive the improbability of our being enabled to
connect species by numerous, fine, intermediate, fossil links, by asking
ourselves whether, for instance, geologists at some future period will
be able to prove, that our different breeds of cattle, sheep, horses,
and dogs have descended from a single stock or from several aboriginal
stocks; or, again, whether certain sea-shells inhabiting the shores
of North America, which are ranked by some conchologists as distinct
species from their European representatives, and by other conchologists
as only varieties, are really varieties or are, as it is called,
specifically distinct. This could be effected only by the future
geologist discovering in a fossil state numerous intermediate
gradations; and such success seems to me improbable in the highest
degree.

Geological research, though it has added numerous species to existing
and extinct genera, and has made the intervals between some few groups
less wide than they otherwise would have been, yet has done scarcely
anything in breaking down the distinction between species, by connecting
them together by numerous, fine, intermediate varieties; and this not
having been effected, is probably the gravest and most obvious of all
the many objections which may be urged against my views. Hence it will
be worth while to sum up the foregoing remarks, under an imaginary
illustration. The Malay Archipelago is of about the size of Europe from
the North Cape to the Mediterranean, and from Britain to Russia; and
therefore equals all the geological formations which have been examined
with any accuracy, excepting those of the United States of America. I
fully agree with Mr. Godwin-Austen, that the present condition of the
Malay Archipelago, with its numerous large islands separated by wide and
shallow seas, probably represents the former state of Europe, when most
of our formations were accumulating. The Malay Archipelago is one of
the richest regions of the whole world in organic beings; yet if all
the species were to be collected which have ever lived there, how
imperfectly would they represent the natural history of the world!

But we have every reason to believe that the terrestrial productions of
the archipelago would be preserved in an excessively imperfect manner in
the formations which we suppose to be there accumulating. I suspect that
not many of the strictly littoral animals, or of those which lived on
naked submarine rocks, would be embedded; and those embedded in gravel
or sand, would not endure to a distant epoch. Wherever sediment did not
accumulate on the bed of the sea, or where it did not accumulate at a
sufficient rate to protect organic bodies from decay, no remains could
be preserved.

In our archipelago, I believe that fossiliferous formations could be
formed of sufficient thickness to last to an age, as distant in futurity
as the secondary formations lie in the past, only during periods of
subsidence. These periods of subsidence would be separated from each
other by enormous intervals, during which the area would be either
stationary or rising; whilst rising, each fossiliferous formation
would be destroyed, almost as soon as accumulated, by the incessant
coast-action, as we now see on the shores of South America. During the
periods of subsidence there would probably be much extinction of life;
during the periods of elevation, there would be much variation, but the
geological record would then be least perfect.

It may be doubted whether the duration of any one great period of
subsidence over the whole or part of the archipelago, together with
a contemporaneous accumulation of sediment, would EXCEED the average
duration of the same specific forms; and these contingencies are
indispensable for the preservation of all the transitional gradations
between any two or more species. If such gradations were not fully
preserved, transitional varieties would merely appear as so many
distinct species. It is, also, probable that each great period of
subsidence would be interrupted by oscillations of level, and that
slight climatal changes would intervene during such lengthy periods; and
in these cases the inhabitants of the archipelago would have to migrate,
and no closely consecutive record of their modifications could be
preserved in any one formation.

Very many of the marine inhabitants of the archipelago now range
thousands of miles beyond its confines; and analogy leads me to believe
that it would be chiefly these far-ranging species which would oftenest
produce new varieties; and the varieties would at first generally
be local or confined to one place, but if possessed of any decided
advantage, or when further modified and improved, they would slowly
spread and supplant their parent-forms. When such varieties returned to
their ancient homes, as they would differ from their former state, in
a nearly uniform, though perhaps extremely slight degree, they would,
according to the principles followed by many palaeontologists, be ranked
as new and distinct species.

If then, there be some degree of truth in these remarks, we have no
right to expect to find in our geological formations, an infinite number
of those fine transitional forms, which on my theory assuredly have
connected all the past and present species of the same group into one
long and branching chain of life. We ought only to look for a few links,
some more closely, some more distantly related to each other; and these
links, let them be ever so close, if found in different stages of the
same formation, would, by most palaeontologists, be ranked as distinct
species. But I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor
a record of the mutations of life, the best preserved geological section
presented, had not the difficulty of our not discovering innumerable
transitional links between the species which appeared at the
commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my
theory.

ON THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF WHOLE GROUPS OF ALLIED SPECIES.

The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in
certain formations, has been urged by several palaeontologists,
for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and by none more forcibly than
by Professor Sedgwick, as a fatal objection to the belief in the
transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same
genera or families, have really started into life all at once, the fact
would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through
natural selection. For the development of a group of forms, all of which
have descended from some one progenitor, must have been an extremely
slow process; and the progenitors must have lived long ages before their
modified descendants. But we continually over-rate the perfection of the
geological record, and falsely infer, because certain genera or families
have not been found beneath a certain stage, that they did not exist
before that stage. We continually forget how large the world is,
compared with the area over which our geological formations have been
carefully examined; we forget that groups of species may elsewhere have
long existed and have slowly multiplied before they invaded the ancient
archipelagoes of Europe and of the United States. We do not make due
allowance for the enormous intervals of time, which have probably
elapsed between our consecutive formations,--longer perhaps in some
cases than the time required for the accumulation of each formation.
These intervals will have given time for the multiplication of species
from some one or some few parent-forms; and in the succeeding formation
such species will appear as if suddenly created.

I may here recall a remark formerly made, namely that it might require
a long succession of ages to adapt an organism to some new and peculiar
line of life, for instance to fly through the air; but that when this
had been effected, and a few species had thus acquired a great advantage
over other organisms, a comparatively short time would be necessary to
produce many divergent forms, which would be able to spread rapidly and
widely throughout the world.

I will now give a few examples to illustrate these remarks; and to show
how liable we are to error in supposing that whole groups of species
have suddenly been produced. I may recall the well-known fact that in
geological treatises, published not many years ago, the great class
of mammals was always spoken of as having abruptly come in at the
commencement of the tertiary series. And now one of the richest known
accumulations of fossil mammals belongs to the middle of the secondary
series; and one true mammal has been discovered in the new red sandstone
at nearly the commencement of this great series. Cuvier used to urge
that no monkey occurred in any tertiary stratum; but now extinct species
have been discovered in India, South America, and in Europe even as far
back as the eocene stage. The most striking case, however, is that of
the Whale family; as these animals have huge bones, are marine, and
range over the world, the fact of not a single bone of a whale having
been discovered in any secondary formation, seemed fully to justify the
belief that this great and distinct order had been suddenly produced
in the interval between the latest secondary and earliest tertiary
formation. But now we may read in the Supplement to Lyell's 'Manual,'
published in 1858, clear evidence of the existence of whales in the
upper greensand, some time before the close of the secondary period.

I may give another instance, which from having passed under my own eyes
has much struck me. In a memoir on Fossil Sessile Cirripedes, I have
stated that, from the number of existing and extinct tertiary species;
from the extraordinary abundance of the individuals of many species
all over the world, from the Arctic regions to the equator, inhabiting
various zones of depths from the upper tidal limits to 50 fathoms;
from the perfect manner in which specimens are preserved in the oldest
tertiary beds; from the ease with which even a fragment of a valve can
be recognised; from all these circumstances, I inferred that had sessile
cirripedes existed during the secondary periods, they would certainly
have been preserved and discovered; and as not one species had been
discovered in beds of this age, I concluded that this great group had
been suddenly developed at the commencement of the tertiary series. This
was a sore trouble to me, adding as I thought one more instance of the
abrupt appearance of a great group of species. But my work had hardly
been published, when a skilful palaeontologist, M. Bosquet, sent me a
drawing of a perfect specimen of an unmistakeable sessile cirripede,
which he had himself extracted from the chalk of Belgium. And, as if
to make the case as striking as possible, this sessile cirripede was a
Chthamalus, a very common, large, and ubiquitous genus, of which not one
specimen has as yet been found even in any tertiary stratum. Hence we
now positively know that sessile cirripedes existed during the secondary
period; and these cirripedes might have been the progenitors of our many
tertiary and existing species.

The case most frequently insisted on by palaeontologists of the
apparently sudden appearance of a whole group of species, is that of the
teleostean fishes, low down in the Chalk period. This group includes the
large majority of existing species. Lately, Professor Pictet has carried
their existence one sub-stage further back; and some palaeontologists
believe that certain much older fishes, of which the affinities are as
yet imperfectly known, are really teleostean. Assuming, however, that
the whole of them did appear, as Agassiz believes, at the commencement
of the chalk formation, the fact would certainly be highly remarkable;
but I cannot see that it would be an insuperable difficulty on my
theory, unless it could likewise be shown that the species of this group
appeared suddenly and simultaneously throughout the world at this same
period. It is almost superfluous to remark that hardly any fossil-fish
are known from south of the equator; and by running through Pictet's
Palaeontology it will be seen that very few species are known from
several formations in Europe. Some few families of fish now have a
confined range; the teleostean fish might formerly have had a similarly
confined range, and after having been largely developed in some one sea,
might have spread widely. Nor have we any right to suppose that the seas
of the world have always been so freely open from south to north as
they are at present. Even at this day, if the Malay Archipelago were
converted into land, the tropical parts of the Indian Ocean would form
a large and perfectly enclosed basin, in which any great group of marine
animals might be multiplied; and here they would remain confined, until
some of the species became adapted to a cooler climate, and were enabled
to double the southern capes of Africa or Australia, and thus reach
other and distant seas.

From these and similar considerations, but chiefly from our ignorance
of the geology of other countries beyond the confines of Europe and the
United States; and from the revolution in our palaeontological ideas
on many points, which the discoveries of even the last dozen years have
effected, it seems to me to be about as rash in us to dogmatize on the
succession of organic beings throughout the world, as it would be for
a naturalist to land for five minutes on some one barren point in
Australia, and then to discuss the number and range of its productions.

ON THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF GROUPS OF ALLIED SPECIES IN THE LOWEST KNOWN
FOSSILIFEROUS STRATA.

There is another and allied difficulty, which is much graver. I allude
to the manner in which numbers of species of the same group, suddenly
appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks. Most of the arguments
which have convinced me that all the existing species of the same group
have descended from one progenitor, apply with nearly equal force to
the earliest known species. For instance, I cannot doubt that all the
Silurian trilobites have descended from some one crustacean, which must
have lived long before the Silurian age, and which probably differed
greatly from any known animal. Some of the most ancient Silurian
animals, as the Nautilus, Lingula, etc., do not differ much from living
species; and it cannot on my theory be supposed, that these old species
were the progenitors of all the species of the orders to which they
belong, for they do not present characters in any degree intermediate
between them. If, moreover, they had been the progenitors of these
orders, they would almost certainly have been long ago supplanted and
exterminated by their numerous and improved descendants.

Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the
lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as,
or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to
the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods
of time, the world swarmed with living creatures.

To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial
periods, I can give no satisfactory answer. Several of the most eminent
geologists, with Sir R. Murchison at their head, are convinced that we
see in the organic remains of the lowest Silurian stratum the dawn of
life on this planet. Other highly competent judges, as Lyell and the
late E. Forbes, dispute this conclusion. We should not forget that only
a small portion of the world is known with accuracy. M. Barrande has
lately added another and lower stage to the Silurian system, abounding
with new and peculiar species. Traces of life have been detected in the
Longmynd beds beneath Barrande's so-called primordial zone. The presence
of phosphatic nodules and bituminous matter in some of the lowest azoic
rocks, probably indicates the former existence of life at these periods.
But the difficulty of understanding the absence of vast piles of
fossiliferous strata, which on my theory no doubt were somewhere
accumulated before the Silurian epoch, is very great. If these most
ancient beds had been wholly worn away by denudation, or obliterated
by metamorphic action, we ought to find only small remnants of the
formations next succeeding them in age, and these ought to be very
generally in a metamorphosed condition. But the descriptions which we
now possess of the Silurian deposits over immense territories in
Russia and in North America, do not support the view, that the older a
formation is, the more it has suffered the extremity of denudation and
metamorphism.

The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as
a valid argument against the views here entertained. To show that it
may hereafter receive some explanation, I will give the following
hypothesis. From the nature of the organic remains, which do not appear
to have inhabited profound depths, in the several formations of Europe
and of the United States; and from the amount of sediment, miles in
thickness, of which the formations are composed, we may infer that from
first to last large islands or tracts of land, whence the sediment was
derived, occurred in the neighbourhood of the existing continents of
Europe and North America. But we do not know what was the state of
things in the intervals between the successive formations; whether
Europe and the United States during these intervals existed as dry
land, or as a submarine surface near land, on which sediment was not
deposited, or again as the bed of an open and unfathomable sea.

Looking to the existing oceans, which are thrice as extensive as the
land, we see them studded with many islands; but not one oceanic island
is as yet known to afford even a remnant of any palaeozoic or secondary
formation. Hence we may perhaps infer, that during the palaeozoic and
secondary periods, neither continents nor continental islands existed
where our oceans now extend; for had they existed there, palaeozoic and
secondary formations would in all probability have been accumulated from
sediment derived from their wear and tear; and would have been at least
partially upheaved by the oscillations of level, which we may fairly
conclude must have intervened during these enormously long periods. If
then we may infer anything from these facts, we may infer that where
our oceans now extend, oceans have extended from the remotest period of
which we have any record; and on the other hand, that where continents
now exist, large tracts of land have existed, subjected no doubt to
great oscillations of level, since the earliest silurian period. The
coloured map appended to my volume on Coral Reefs, led me to conclude
that the great oceans are still mainly areas of subsidence, the great
archipelagoes still areas of oscillations of level, and the continents
areas of elevation. But have we any right to assume that things have
thus remained from eternity? Our continents seem to have been formed
by a preponderance, during many oscillations of level, of the force of
elevation; but may not the areas of preponderant movement have changed
in the lapse of ages? At a period immeasurably antecedent to the
silurian epoch, continents may have existed where oceans are now spread
out; and clear and open oceans may have existed where our continents now
stand. Nor should we be justified in assuming that if, for instance, the
bed of the Pacific Ocean were now converted into a continent, we should
there find formations older than the silurian strata, supposing such to
have been formerly deposited; for it might well happen that strata which
had subsided some miles nearer to the centre of the earth, and which
had been pressed on by an enormous weight of superincumbent water, might
have undergone far more metamorphic action than strata which have always
remained nearer to the surface. The immense areas in some parts of the
world, for instance in South America, of bare metamorphic rocks, which
must have been heated under great pressure, have always seemed to me to
require some special explanation; and we may perhaps believe that we see
in these large areas, the many formations long anterior to the silurian
epoch in a completely metamorphosed condition.

The several difficulties here discussed, namely our not finding in the
successive formations infinitely numerous transitional links between the
many species which now exist or have existed; the sudden manner in which
whole groups of species appear in our European formations; the almost
entire absence, as at present known, of fossiliferous formations beneath
the Silurian strata, are all undoubtedly of the gravest nature. We
see this in the plainest manner by the fact that all the most eminent
palaeontologists, namely Cuvier, Owen, Agassiz, Barrande, Falconer,
E. Forbes, etc., and all our greatest geologists, as Lyell, Murchison,
Sedgwick, etc., have unanimously, often vehemently, maintained the
immutability of species. But I have reason to believe that one great
authority, Sir Charles Lyell, from further reflexion entertains grave
doubts on this subject. I feel how rash it is to differ from these great
authorities, to whom, with others, we owe all our knowledge. Those who
think the natural geological record in any degree perfect, and who do
not attach much weight to the facts and arguments of other kinds given
in this volume, will undoubtedly at once reject my theory. For my part,
following out Lyell's metaphor, I look at the natural geological record,
as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing
dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only
to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short
chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few
lines. Each word of the slowly-changing language, in which the
history is supposed to be written, being more or less different in
the interrupted succession of chapters, may represent the apparently
abruptly changed forms of life, entombed in our consecutive, but widely
separated formations. On this view, the difficulties above discussed are
greatly diminished, or even disappear.




10. ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS.

On the slow and successive appearance of new species. On their different
rates of change. Species once lost do not reappear. Groups of species
follow the same general rules in their appearance and disappearance as
do single species. On Extinction. On simultaneous changes in the forms
of life throughout the world. On the affinities of extinct species to
each other and to living species. On the state of development of ancient
forms. On the succession of the same types within the same areas.
Summary of preceding and present chapters.

Let us now see whether the several facts and rules relating to the
geological succession of organic beings, better accord with the common
view of the immutability of species, or with that of their slow and
gradual modification, through descent and natural selection.

New species have appeared very slowly, one after another, both on the
land and in the waters. Lyell has shown that it is hardly possible to
resist the evidence on this head in the case of the several tertiary
stages; and every year tends to fill up the blanks between them, and to
make the percentage system of lost and new forms more gradual. In
some of the most recent beds, though undoubtedly of high antiquity if
measured by years, only one or two species are lost forms, and only one
or two are new forms, having here appeared for the first time, either
locally, or, as far as we know, on the face of the earth. If we may
trust the observations of Philippi in Sicily, the successive changes in
the marine inhabitants of that island have been many and most gradual.
The secondary formations are more broken; but, as Bronn has remarked,
neither the appearance nor disappearance of their many now extinct
species has been simultaneous in each separate formation.

Species of different genera and classes have not changed at the same
rate, or in the same degree. In the oldest tertiary beds a few living
shells may still be found in the midst of a multitude of extinct forms.
Falconer has given a striking instance of a similar fact, in an existing
crocodile associated with many strange and lost mammals and reptiles in
the sub-Himalayan deposits. The Silurian Lingula differs but little from
the living species of this genus; whereas most of the other Silurian
Molluscs and all the Crustaceans have changed greatly. The productions
of the land seem to change at a quicker rate than those of the sea, of
which a striking instance has lately been observed in Switzerland. There
is some reason to believe that organisms, considered high in the scale
of nature, change more quickly than those that are low: though there
are exceptions to this rule. The amount of organic change, as Pictet
has remarked, does not strictly correspond with the succession of our
geological formations; so that between each two consecutive formations,
the forms of life have seldom changed in exactly the same degree. Yet if
we compare any but the most closely related formations, all the species
will be found to have undergone some change. When a species has once
disappeared from the face of the earth, we have reason to believe
that the same identical form never reappears. The strongest apparent
exception to this latter rule, is that of the so-called "colonies" of M.
Barrande, which intrude for a period in the midst of an older formation,
and then allow the pre-existing fauna to reappear; but Lyell's
explanation, namely, that it is a case of temporary migration from a
distinct geographical province, seems to me satisfactory.

These several facts accord well with my theory. I believe in no fixed
law of development, causing all the inhabitants of a country to change
abruptly, or simultaneously, or to an equal degree. The process of
modification must be extremely slow. The variability of each species
is quite independent of that of all others. Whether such variability be
taken advantage of by natural selection, and whether the variations be
accumulated to a greater or lesser amount, thus causing a greater or
lesser amount of modification in the varying species, depends on many
complex contingencies,--on the variability being of a beneficial nature,
on the power of intercrossing, on the rate of breeding, on the slowly
changing physical conditions of the country, and more especially on the
nature of the other inhabitants with which the varying species comes
into competition. Hence it is by no means surprising that one species
should retain the same identical form much longer than others; or,
if changing, that it should change less. We see the same fact in
geographical distribution; for instance, in the land-shells and
coleopterous insects of Madeira having come to differ considerably from
their nearest allies on the continent of Europe, whereas the marine
shells and birds have remained unaltered. We can perhaps understand
the apparently quicker rate of change in terrestrial and in more highly
organised productions compared with marine and lower productions, by
the more complex relations of the higher beings to their organic and
inorganic conditions of life, as explained in a former chapter. When
many of the inhabitants of a country have become modified and improved,
we can understand, on the principle of competition, and on that of the
many all-important relations of organism to organism, that any form
which does not become in some degree modified and improved, will be
liable to be exterminated. Hence we can see why all the species in the
same region do at last, if we look to wide enough intervals of time,
become modified; for those which do not change will become extinct.

In members of the same class the average amount of change, during long
and equal periods of time, may, perhaps, be nearly the same; but as the
accumulation of long-enduring fossiliferous formations depends on great
masses of sediment having been deposited on areas whilst subsiding,
our formations have been almost necessarily accumulated at wide and
irregularly intermittent intervals; consequently the amount of organic
change exhibited by the fossils embedded in consecutive formations
is not equal. Each formation, on this view, does not mark a new and
complete act of creation, but only an occasional scene, taken almost at
hazard, in a slowly changing drama.

We can clearly understand why a species when once lost should never
reappear, even if the very same conditions of life, organic and
inorganic, should recur. For though the offspring of one species might
be adapted (and no doubt this has occurred in innumerable instances) to
fill the exact place of another species in the economy of nature, and
thus supplant it; yet the two forms--the old and the new--would not be
identically the same; for both would almost certainly inherit different
characters from their distinct progenitors. For instance, it is just
possible, if our fantail-pigeons were all destroyed, that fanciers, by
striving during long ages for the same object, might make a new breed
hardly distinguishable from our present fantail; but if the parent
rock-pigeon were also destroyed, and in nature we have every reason
to believe that the parent-form will generally be supplanted and
exterminated by its improved offspring, it is quite incredible that a
fantail, identical with the existing breed, could be raised from any
other species of pigeon, or even from the other well-established races
of the domestic pigeon, for the newly-formed fantail would be almost
sure to inherit from its new progenitor some slight characteristic
differences.

Groups of species, that is, genera and families, follow the same general
rules in their appearance and disappearance as do single species,
changing more or less quickly, and in a greater or lesser degree. A
group does not reappear after it has once disappeared; or its existence,
as long as it lasts, is continuous. I am aware that there are some
apparent exceptions to this rule, but the exceptions are surprisingly
few, so few, that E. Forbes, Pictet, and Woodward (though all strongly
opposed to such views as I maintain) admit its truth; and the rule
strictly accords with my theory. For as all the species of the same
group have descended from some one species, it is clear that as long as
any species of the group have appeared in the long succession of ages,
so long must its members have continuously existed, in order to have
generated either new and modified or the same old and unmodified forms.
Species of the genus Lingula, for instance, must have continuously
existed by an unbroken succession of generations, from the lowest
Silurian stratum to the present day.

We have seen in the last chapter that the species of a group sometimes
falsely appear to have come in abruptly; and I have attempted to give
an explanation of this fact, which if true would have been fatal to my
views. But such cases are certainly exceptional; the general rule being
a gradual increase in number, till the group reaches its maximum, and
then, sooner or later, it gradually decreases. If the number of
the species of a genus, or the number of the genera of a family, be
represented by a vertical line of varying thickness, crossing the
successive geological formations in which the species are found, the
line will sometimes falsely appear to begin at its lower end, not in a
sharp point, but abruptly; it then gradually thickens upwards, sometimes
keeping for a space of equal thickness, and ultimately thins out in the
upper beds, marking the decrease and final extinction of the species.
This gradual increase in number of the species of a group is strictly
conformable with my theory; as the species of the same genus, and the
genera of the same family, can increase only slowly and progressively;
for the process of modification and the production of a number of allied
forms must be slow and gradual,--one species giving rise first to two
or three varieties, these being slowly converted into species, which in
their turn produce by equally slow steps other species, and so on, like
the branching of a great tree from a single stem, till the group becomes
large.

ON EXTINCTION.

We have as yet spoken only incidentally of the disappearance of species
and of groups of species. On the theory of natural selection the
extinction of old forms and the production of new and improved forms are
intimately connected together. The old notion of all the inhabitants of
the earth having been swept away at successive periods by catastrophes,
is very generally given up, even by those geologists, as Elie de
Beaumont, Murchison, Barrande, etc., whose general views would naturally
lead them to this conclusion. On the contrary, we have every reason to
believe, from the study of the tertiary formations, that species and
groups of species gradually disappear, one after another, first from one
spot, then from another, and finally from the world. Both single species
and whole groups of species last for very unequal periods; some groups,
as we have seen, having endured from the earliest known dawn of life
to the present day; some having disappeared before the close of the
palaeozoic period. No fixed law seems to determine the length of time
during which any single species or any single genus endures. There is
reason to believe that the complete extinction of the species of a group
is generally a slower process than their production: if the appearance
and disappearance of a group of species be represented, as before, by
a vertical line of varying thickness, the line is found to taper more
gradually at its upper end, which marks the progress of extermination,
than at its lower end, which marks the first appearance and increase
in numbers of the species. In some cases, however, the extermination
of whole groups of beings, as of ammonites towards the close of the
secondary period, has been wonderfully sudden.

The whole subject of the extinction of species has been involved in the
most gratuitous mystery. Some authors have even supposed that as the
individual has a definite length of life, so have species a definite
duration. No one I think can have marvelled more at the extinction of
species, than I have done. When I found in La Plata the tooth of a horse
embedded with the remains of Mastodon, Megatherium, Toxodon, and other
extinct monsters, which all co-existed with still living shells at a
very late geological period, I was filled with astonishment; for seeing
that the horse, since its introduction by the Spaniards into South
America, has run wild over the whole country and has increased in
numbers at an unparalleled rate, I asked myself what could so recently
have exterminated the former horse under conditions of life apparently
so favourable. But how utterly groundless was my astonishment! Professor
Owen soon perceived that the tooth, though so like that of the existing
horse, belonged to an extinct species. Had this horse been still
living, but in some degree rare, no naturalist would have felt the least
surprise at its rarity; for rarity is the attribute of a vast number of
species of all classes, in all countries. If we ask ourselves why this
or that species is rare, we answer that something is unfavourable in its
conditions of life; but what that something is, we can hardly ever tell.
On the supposition of the fossil horse still existing as a rare species,
we might have felt certain from the analogy of all other mammals,
even of the slow-breeding elephant, and from the history of the
naturalisation of the domestic horse in South America, that under more
favourable conditions it would in a very few years have stocked the
whole continent. But we could not have told what the unfavourable
conditions were which checked its increase, whether some one or several
contingencies, and at what period of the horse's life, and in what
degree, they severally acted. If the conditions had gone on, however
slowly, becoming less and less favourable, we assuredly should not have
perceived the fact, yet the fossil horse would certainly have become
rarer and rarer, and finally extinct;--its place being seized on by some
more successful competitor.

It is most difficult always to remember that the increase of every
living being is constantly being checked by unperceived injurious
agencies; and that these same unperceived agencies are amply sufficient
to cause rarity, and finally extinction. We see in many cases in the
more recent tertiary formations, that rarity precedes extinction; and we
know that this has been the progress of events with those animals which
have been exterminated, either locally or wholly, through man's agency.
I may repeat what I published in 1845, namely, that to admit that
species generally become rare before they become extinct--to feel no
surprise at the rarity of a species, and yet to marvel greatly when
it ceases to exist, is much the same as to admit that sickness in the
individual is the forerunner of death--to feel no surprise at sickness,
but when the sick man dies, to wonder and to suspect that he died by
some unknown deed of violence.

The theory of natural selection is grounded on the belief that each new
variety, and ultimately each new species, is produced and maintained by
having some advantage over those with which it comes into competition;
and the consequent extinction of less-favoured forms almost inevitably
follows. It is the same with our domestic productions: when a new and
slightly improved variety has been raised, it at first supplants the
less improved varieties in the same neighbourhood; when much improved it
is transported far and near, like our short-horn cattle, and takes the
place of other breeds in other countries. Thus the appearance of new
forms and the disappearance of old forms, both natural and artificial,
are bound together. In certain flourishing groups, the number of new
specific forms which have been produced within a given time is probably
greater than that of the old forms which have been exterminated; but we
know that the number of species has not gone on indefinitely increasing,
at least during the later geological periods, so that looking to later
times we may believe that the production of new forms has caused the
extinction of about the same number of old forms.

The competition will generally be most severe, as formerly explained
and illustrated by examples, between the forms which are most like each
other in all respects. Hence the improved and modified descendants of
a species will generally cause the extermination of the parent-species;
and if many new forms have been developed from any one species, the
nearest allies of that species, i.e. the species of the same genus, will
be the most liable to extermination. Thus, as I believe, a number of
new species descended from one species, that is a new genus, comes to
supplant an old genus, belonging to the same family. But it must often
have happened that a new species belonging to some one group will have
seized on the place occupied by a species belonging to a distinct group,
and thus caused its extermination; and if many allied forms be developed
from the successful intruder, many will have to yield their places; and
it will generally be allied forms, which will suffer from some inherited
inferiority in common. But whether it be species belonging to the same
or to a distinct class, which yield their places to other species which
have been modified and improved, a few of the sufferers may often long
be preserved, from being fitted to some peculiar line of life, or from
inhabiting some distant and isolated station, where they have escaped
severe competition. For instance, a single species of Trigonia, a great
genus of shells in the secondary formations, survives in the Australian
seas; and a few members of the great and almost extinct group of Ganoid
fishes still inhabit our fresh waters. Therefore the utter extinction
of a group is generally, as we have seen, a slower process than its
production.

With respect to the apparently sudden extermination of whole families
or orders, as of Trilobites at the close of the palaeozoic period and
of Ammonites at the close of the secondary period, we must remember what
has been already said on the probable wide intervals of time between our
consecutive formations; and in these intervals there may have been much
slow extermination. Moreover, when by sudden immigration or by unusually
rapid development, many species of a new group have taken possession
of a new area, they will have exterminated in a correspondingly rapid
manner many of the old inhabitants; and the forms which thus yield
their places will commonly be allied, for they will partake of some
inferiority in common.

Thus, as it seems to me, the manner in which single species and whole
groups of species become extinct, accords well with the theory of
natural selection. We need not marvel at extinction; if we must
marvel, let it be at our presumption in imagining for a moment that we
understand the many complex contingencies, on which the existence of
each species depends. If we forget for an instant, that each species
tends to increase inordinately, and that some check is always in action,
yet seldom perceived by us, the whole economy of nature will be utterly
obscured. Whenever we can precisely say why this species is more
abundant in individuals than that; why this species and not another
can be naturalised in a given country; then, and not till then, we may
justly feel surprise why we cannot account for the extinction of this
particular species or group of species.

ON THE FORMS OF LIFE CHANGING ALMOST SIMULTANEOUSLY THROUGHOUT THE
WORLD.

Scarcely any palaeontological discovery is more striking than the fact,
that the forms of life change almost simultaneously throughout the
world. Thus our European Chalk formation can be recognised in many
distant parts of the world, under the most different climates, where not
a fragment of the mineral chalk itself can be found; namely, in North
America, in equatorial South America, in Tierra del Fuego, at the
Cape of Good Hope, and in the peninsula of India. For at these distant
points, the organic remains in certain beds present an unmistakeable
degree of resemblance to those of the Chalk. It is not that the same
species are met with; for in some cases not one species is identically
the same, but they belong to the same families, genera, and sections
of genera, and sometimes are similarly characterised in such trifling
points as mere superficial sculpture. Moreover other forms, which are
not found in the Chalk of Europe, but which occur in the formations
either above or below, are similarly absent at these distant points of
the world. In the several successive palaeozoic formations of Russia,
Western Europe and North America, a similar parallelism in the forms of
life has been observed by several authors: so it is, according to Lyell,
with the several European and North American tertiary deposits. Even
if the few fossil species which are common to the Old and New Worlds be
kept wholly out of view, the general parallelism in the successive forms
of life, in the stages of the widely separated palaeozoic and tertiary
periods, would still be manifest, and the several formations could be
easily correlated.

These observations, however, relate to the marine inhabitants of distant
parts of the world: we have not sufficient data to judge whether the
productions of the land and of fresh water change at distant points in
the same parallel manner. We may doubt whether they have thus changed:
if the Megatherium, Mylodon, Macrauchenia, and Toxodon had been brought
to Europe from La Plata, without any information in regard to their
geological position, no one would have suspected that they had coexisted
with still living sea-shells; but as these anomalous monsters coexisted
with the Mastodon and Horse, it might at least have been inferred that
they had lived during one of the latter tertiary stages.

When the marine forms of life are spoken of as having changed
simultaneously throughout the world, it must not be supposed that this
expression relates to the same thousandth or hundred-thousandth year, or
even that it has a very strict geological sense; for if all the marine
animals which live at the present day in Europe, and all those that
lived in Europe during the pleistocene period (an enormously remote
period as measured by years, including the whole glacial epoch), were to
be compared with those now living in South America or in Australia, the
most skilful naturalist would hardly be able to say whether the existing
or the pleistocene inhabitants of Europe resembled most closely those of
the southern hemisphere. So, again, several highly competent observers
believe that the existing productions of the United States are more
closely related to those which lived in Europe during certain later
tertiary stages, than to those which now live here; and if this be so,
it is evident that fossiliferous beds deposited at the present day on
the shores of North America would hereafter be liable to be classed with
somewhat older European beds. Nevertheless, looking to a remotely future
epoch, there can, I think, be little doubt that all the more modern
MARINE formations, namely, the upper pliocene, the pleistocene and
strictly modern beds, of Europe, North and South America, and Australia,
from containing fossil remains in some degree allied, and from not
including those forms which are only found in the older underlying
deposits, would be correctly ranked as simultaneous in a geological
sense.

The fact of the forms of life changing simultaneously, in the above
large sense, at distant parts of the world, has greatly struck those
admirable observers, MM. de Verneuil and d'Archiac. After referring
to the parallelism of the palaeozoic forms of life in various parts
of Europe, they add, "If struck by this strange sequence, we turn our
attention to North America, and there discover a series of analogous
phenomena, it will appear certain that all these modifications of
species, their extinction, and the introduction of new ones, cannot be
owing to mere changes in marine currents or other causes more or less
local and temporary, but depend on general laws which govern the whole
animal kingdom." M. Barrande has made forcible remarks to precisely the
same effect. It is, indeed, quite futile to look to changes of currents,
climate, or other physical conditions, as the cause of these great
mutations in the forms of life throughout the world, under the most
different climates. We must, as Barrande has remarked, look to some
special law. We shall see this more clearly when we treat of the present
distribution of organic beings, and find how slight is the relation
between the physical conditions of various countries, and the nature of
their inhabitants.

This great fact of the parallel succession of the forms of life
throughout the world, is explicable on the theory of natural selection.
New species are formed by new varieties arising, which have some
advantage over older forms; and those forms, which are already dominant,
or have some advantage over the other forms in their own country, would
naturally oftenest give rise to new varieties or incipient species; for
these latter must be victorious in a still higher degree in order to be
preserved and to survive. We have distinct evidence on this head, in
the plants which are dominant, that is, which are commonest in their own
homes, and are most widely diffused, having produced the greatest number
of new varieties. It is also natural that the dominant, varying, and
far-spreading species, which already have invaded to a certain extent
the territories of other species, should be those which would have
the best chance of spreading still further, and of giving rise in new
countries to new varieties and species. The process of diffusion
may often be very slow, being dependent on climatal and geographical
changes, or on strange accidents, but in the long run the dominant
forms will generally succeed in spreading. The diffusion would, it
is probable, be slower with the terrestrial inhabitants of distinct
continents than with the marine inhabitants of the continuous sea. We
might therefore expect to find, as we apparently do find, a less strict
degree of parallel succession in the productions of the land than of the
sea.

Dominant species spreading from any region might encounter still more
dominant species, and then their triumphant course, or even their
existence, would cease. We know not at all precisely what are all the
conditions most favourable for the multiplication of new and dominant
species; but we can, I think, clearly see that a number of individuals,
from giving a better chance of the appearance of favourable variations,
and that severe competition with many already existing forms, would
be highly favourable, as would be the power of spreading into new
territories. A certain amount of isolation, recurring at long intervals
of time, would probably be also favourable, as before explained. One
quarter of the world may have been most favourable for the production
of new and dominant species on the land, and another for those in the
waters of the sea. If two great regions had been for a long period
favourably circumstanced in an equal degree, whenever their inhabitants
met, the battle would be prolonged and severe; and some from one
birthplace and some from the other might be victorious. But in the
course of time, the forms dominant in the highest degree, wherever
produced, would tend everywhere to prevail. As they prevailed, they
would cause the extinction of other and inferior forms; and as these
inferior forms would be allied in groups by inheritance, whole groups
would tend slowly to disappear; though here and there a single member
might long be enabled to survive.

Thus, as it seems to me, the parallel, and, taken in a large sense,
simultaneous, succession of the same forms of life throughout the world,
accords well with the principle of new species having been formed by
dominant species spreading widely and varying; the new species thus
produced being themselves dominant owing to inheritance, and to having
already had some advantage over their parents or over other species;
these again spreading, varying, and producing new species. The forms
which are beaten and which yield their places to the new and victorious
forms, will generally be allied in groups, from inheriting some
inferiority in common; and therefore as new and improved groups spread
throughout the world, old groups will disappear from the world; and the
succession of forms in both ways will everywhere tend to correspond.

There is one other remark connected with this subject worth making. I
have given my reasons for believing that all our greater fossiliferous
formations were deposited during periods of subsidence; and that blank
intervals of vast duration occurred during the periods when the bed of
the sea was either stationary or rising, and likewise when sediment was
not thrown down quickly enough to embed and preserve organic remains.
During these long and blank intervals I suppose that the inhabitants
of each region underwent a considerable amount of modification and
extinction, and that there was much migration from other parts of the
world. As we have reason to believe that large areas are affected by the
same movement, it is probable that strictly contemporaneous formations
have often been accumulated over very wide spaces in the same quarter
of the world; but we are far from having any right to conclude that this
has invariably been the case, and that large areas have invariably been
affected by the same movements. When two formations have been deposited
in two regions during nearly, but not exactly the same period, we should
find in both, from the causes explained in the foregoing paragraphs, the
same general succession in the forms of life; but the species would not
exactly correspond; for there will have been a little more time in
the one region than in the other for modification, extinction, and
immigration.

I suspect that cases of this nature have occurred in Europe. Mr.
Prestwich, in his admirable Memoirs on the eocene deposits of England
and France, is able to draw a close general parallelism between the
successive stages in the two countries; but when he compares certain
stages in England with those in France, although he finds in both a
curious accordance in the numbers of the species belonging to the same
genera, yet the species themselves differ in a manner very difficult
to account for, considering the proximity of the two areas,--unless,
indeed, it be assumed that an isthmus separated two seas inhabited
by distinct, but contemporaneous, faunas. Lyell has made similar
observations on some of the later tertiary formations. Barrande, also,
shows that there is a striking general parallelism in the successive
Silurian deposits of Bohemia and Scandinavia; nevertheless he finds
a surprising amount of difference in the species. If the several
formations in these regions have not been deposited during the same
exact periods,--a formation in one region often corresponding with a
blank interval in the other,--and if in both regions the species
have gone on slowly changing during the accumulation of the several
formations and during the long intervals of time between them; in this
case, the several formations in the two regions could be arranged in
the same order, in accordance with the general succession of the form
of life, and the order would falsely appear to be strictly parallel;
nevertheless the species would not all be the same in the apparently
corresponding stages in the two regions.

ON THE AFFINITIES OF EXTINCT SPECIES TO EACH OTHER, AND TO LIVING FORMS.

Let us now look to the mutual affinities of extinct and living species.
They all fall into one grand natural system; and this fact is at once
explained on the principle of descent. The more ancient any form is, the
more, as a general rule, it differs from living forms. But, as Buckland
long ago remarked, all fossils can be classed either in still existing
groups, or between them. That the extinct forms of life help to fill up
the wide intervals between existing genera, families, and orders, cannot
be disputed. For if we confine our attention either to the living or
to the extinct alone, the series is far less perfect than if we combine
both into one general system. With respect to the Vertebrata, whole
pages could be filled with striking illustrations from our great
palaeontologist, Owen, showing how extinct animals fall in between
existing groups. Cuvier ranked the Ruminants and Pachyderms, as the two
most distinct orders of mammals; but Owen has discovered so many fossil
links, that he has had to alter the whole classification of these two
orders; and has placed certain pachyderms in the same sub-order with
ruminants: for example, he dissolves by fine gradations the apparently
wide difference between the pig and the camel. In regard to the
Invertebrata, Barrande, and a higher authority could not be named,
asserts that he is every day taught that palaeozoic animals, though
belonging to the same orders, families, or genera with those living at
the present day, were not at this early epoch limited in such distinct
groups as they now are.

Some writers have objected to any extinct species or group of species
being considered as intermediate between living species or groups. If by
this term it is meant that an extinct form is directly intermediate in
all its characters between two living forms, the objection is probably
valid. But I apprehend that in a perfectly natural classification many
fossil species would have to stand between living species, and some
extinct genera between living genera, even between genera belonging to
distinct families. The most common case, especially with respect to very
distinct groups, such as fish and reptiles, seems to be, that supposing
them to be distinguished at the present day from each other by a
dozen characters, the ancient members of the same two groups would be
distinguished by a somewhat lesser number of characters, so that the two
groups, though formerly quite distinct, at that period made some small
approach to each other.

It is a common belief that the more ancient a form is, by so much the
more it tends to connect by some of its characters groups now widely
separated from each other. This remark no doubt must be restricted
to those groups which have undergone much change in the course of
geological ages; and it would be difficult to prove the truth of
the proposition, for every now and then even a living animal, as the
Lepidosiren, is discovered having affinities directed towards very
distinct groups. Yet if we compare the older Reptiles and Batrachians,
the older Fish, the older Cephalopods, and the eocene Mammals, with the
more recent members of the same classes, we must admit that there is
some truth in the remark.

Let us see how far these several facts and inferences accord with the
theory of descent with modification. As the subject is somewhat complex,
I must request the reader to turn to the diagram in the fourth chapter.
We may suppose that the numbered letters represent genera, and the
dotted lines diverging from them the species in each genus. The diagram
is much too simple, too few genera and too few species being given,
but this is unimportant for us. The horizontal lines may represent
successive geological formations, and all the forms beneath the
uppermost line may be considered as extinct. The three existing genera,
a14, q14, p14, will form a small family; b14 and f14 a closely allied
family or sub-family; and o14, e14, m14, a third family. These three
families, together with the many extinct genera on the several lines of
descent diverging from the parent-form A, will form an order; for all
will have inherited something in common from their ancient and common
progenitor. On the principle of the continued tendency to divergence
of character, which was formerly illustrated by this diagram, the more
recent any form is, the more it will generally differ from its ancient
progenitor. Hence we can understand the rule that the most ancient
fossils differ most from existing forms. We must not, however, assume
that divergence of character is a necessary contingency; it depends
solely on the descendants from a species being thus enabled to seize
on many and different places in the economy of nature. Therefore it is
quite possible, as we have seen in the case of some Silurian forms,
that a species might go on being slightly modified in relation to its
slightly altered conditions of life, and yet retain throughout a vast
period the same general characteristics. This is represented in the
diagram by the letter F14.

All the many forms, extinct and recent, descended from A, make, as
before remarked, one order; and this order, from the continued effects
of extinction and divergence of character, has become divided into
several sub-families and families, some of which are supposed to have
perished at different periods, and some to have endured to the present
day.

By looking at the diagram we can see that if many of the extinct forms,
supposed to be embedded in the successive formations, were discovered
at several points low down in the series, the three existing families on
the uppermost line would be rendered less distinct from each other. If,
for instance, the genera a1, a5, a10, f8, m3, m6, m9 were disinterred,
these three families would be so closely linked together that they
probably would have to be united into one great family, in nearly the
same manner as has occurred with ruminants and pachyderms. Yet he who
objected to call the extinct genera, which thus linked the living
genera of three families together, intermediate in character, would be
justified, as they are intermediate, not directly, but only by a long
and circuitous course through many widely different forms. If many
extinct forms were to be discovered above one of the middle horizontal
lines or geological formations--for instance, above Number VI.--but
none from beneath this line, then only the two families on the left
hand (namely, a14, etc., and b14, etc.) would have to be united into
one family; and the two other families (namely, a14 to f14 now including
five genera, and o14 to m14) would yet remain distinct. These two
families, however, would be less distinct from each other than they were
before the discovery of the fossils. If, for instance, we suppose the
existing genera of the two families to differ from each other by a dozen
characters, in this case the genera, at the early period marked VI.,
would differ by a lesser number of characters; for at this early
stage of descent they have not diverged in character from the common
progenitor of the order, nearly so much as they subsequently diverged.
Thus it comes that ancient and extinct genera are often in some slight
degree intermediate in character between their modified descendants, or
between their collateral relations.

In nature the case will be far more complicated than is represented in
the diagram; for the groups will have been more numerous, they will
have endured for extremely unequal lengths of time, and will have been
modified in various degrees. As we possess only the last volume of the
geological record, and that in a very broken condition, we have no right
to expect, except in very rare cases, to fill up wide intervals in the
natural system, and thus unite distinct families or orders. All that we
have a right to expect, is that those groups, which have within known
geological periods undergone much modification, should in the older
formations make some slight approach to each other; so that the older
members should differ less from each other in some of their characters
than do the existing members of the same groups; and this by the
concurrent evidence of our best palaeontologists seems frequently to be
the case.

Thus, on the theory of descent with modification, the main facts with
respect to the mutual affinities of the extinct forms of life to each
other and to living forms, seem to me explained in a satisfactory
manner. And they are wholly inexplicable on any other view.

On this same theory, it is evident that the fauna of any great period
in the earth's history will be intermediate in general character between
that which preceded and that which succeeded it. Thus, the species
which lived at the sixth great stage of descent in the diagram are the
modified offspring of those which lived at the fifth stage, and are the
parents of those which became still more modified at the seventh stage;
hence they could hardly fail to be nearly intermediate in character
between the forms of life above and below. We must, however, allow for
the entire extinction of some preceding forms, and for the coming in of
quite new forms by immigration, and for a large amount of modification,
during the long and blank intervals between the successive formations.
Subject to these allowances, the fauna of each geological period
undoubtedly is intermediate in character, between the preceding and
succeeding faunas. I need give only one instance, namely, the manner
in which the fossils of the Devonian system, when this system was first
discovered, were at once recognised by palaeontologists as intermediate
in character between those of the overlying carboniferous, and
underlying Silurian system. But each fauna is not necessarily exactly
intermediate, as unequal intervals of time have elapsed between
consecutive formations.

It is no real objection to the truth of the statement, that the fauna of
each period as a whole is nearly intermediate in character between the
preceding and succeeding faunas, that certain genera offer exceptions
to the rule. For instance, mastodons and elephants, when arranged by Dr.
Falconer in two series, first according to their mutual affinities
and then according to their periods of existence, do not accord in
arrangement. The species extreme in character are not the oldest, or
the most recent; nor are those which are intermediate in character,
intermediate in age. But supposing for an instant, in this and other
such cases, that the record of the first appearance and disappearance
of the species was perfect, we have no reason to believe that forms
successively produced necessarily endure for corresponding lengths of
time: a very ancient form might occasionally last much longer than
a form elsewhere subsequently produced, especially in the case of
terrestrial productions inhabiting separated districts. To compare small
things with great: if the principal living and extinct races of the
domestic pigeon were arranged as well as they could be in serial
affinity, this arrangement would not closely accord with the order
in time of their production, and still less with the order of their
disappearance; for the parent rock-pigeon now lives; and many varieties
between the rock-pigeon and the carrier have become extinct; and
carriers which are extreme in the important character of length of beak
originated earlier than short-beaked tumblers, which are at the opposite
end of the series in this same respect.

Closely connected with the statement, that the organic remains from an
intermediate formation are in some degree intermediate in character,
is the fact, insisted on by all palaeontologists, that fossils from two
consecutive formations are far more closely related to each other, than
are the fossils from two remote formations. Pictet gives as a well-known
instance, the general resemblance of the organic remains from the
several stages of the chalk formation, though the species are distinct
in each stage. This fact alone, from its generality, seems to have
shaken Professor Pictet in his firm belief in the immutability of
species. He who is acquainted with the distribution of existing species
over the globe, will not attempt to account for the close resemblance of
the distinct species in closely consecutive formations, by the physical
conditions of the ancient areas having remained nearly the same. Let it
be remembered that the forms of life, at least those inhabiting the sea,
have changed almost simultaneously throughout the world, and therefore
under the most different climates and conditions. Consider the
prodigious vicissitudes of climate during the pleistocene period, which
includes the whole glacial period, and note how little the specific
forms of the inhabitants of the sea have been affected.

On the theory of descent, the full meaning of the fact of fossil remains
from closely consecutive formations, though ranked as distinct species,
being closely related, is obvious. As the accumulation of each formation
has often been interrupted, and as long blank intervals have intervened
between successive formations, we ought not to expect to find, as I
attempted to show in the last chapter, in any one or two formations all
the intermediate varieties between the species which appeared at the
commencement and close of these periods; but we ought to find after
intervals, very long as measured by years, but only moderately long
as measured geologically, closely allied forms, or, as they have been
called by some authors, representative species; and these we assuredly
do find. We find, in short, such evidence of the slow and scarcely
sensible mutation of specific forms, as we have a just right to expect
to find.

ON THE STATE OF DEVELOPMENT OF ANCIENT FORMS.

There has been much discussion whether recent forms are more highly
developed than ancient. I will not here enter on this subject, for
naturalists have not as yet defined to each other's satisfaction what is
meant by high and low forms. But in one particular sense the more recent
forms must, on my theory, be higher than the more ancient; for each new
species is formed by having had some advantage in the struggle for life
over other and preceding forms. If under a nearly similar climate, the
eocene inhabitants of one quarter of the world were put into competition
with the existing inhabitants of the same or some other quarter, the
eocene fauna or flora would certainly be beaten and exterminated;
as would a secondary fauna by an eocene, and a palaeozoic fauna by a
secondary fauna. I do not doubt that this process of improvement has
affected in a marked and sensible manner the organisation of the more
recent and victorious forms of life, in comparison with the ancient and
beaten forms; but I can see no way of testing this sort of progress.
Crustaceans, for instance, not the highest in their own class, may have
beaten the highest molluscs. From the extraordinary manner in which
European productions have recently spread over New Zealand, and have
seized on places which must have been previously occupied, we may
believe, if all the animals and plants of Great Britain were set free
in New Zealand, that in the course of time a multitude of British forms
would become thoroughly naturalized there, and would exterminate many
of the natives. On the other hand, from what we see now occurring in New
Zealand, and from hardly a single inhabitant of the southern hemisphere
having become wild in any part of Europe, we may doubt, if all the
productions of New Zealand were set free in Great Britain, whether any
considerable number would be enabled to seize on places now occupied by
our native plants and animals. Under this point of view, the productions
of Great Britain may be said to be higher than those of New Zealand. Yet
the most skilful naturalist from an examination of the species of the
two countries could not have foreseen this result.

Agassiz insists that ancient animals resemble to a certain extent the
embryos of recent animals of the same classes; or that the geological
succession of extinct forms is in some degree parallel to the
embryological development of recent forms. I must follow Pictet and
Huxley in thinking that the truth of this doctrine is very far from
proved. Yet I fully expect to see it hereafter confirmed, at least in
regard to subordinate groups, which have branched off from each other
within comparatively recent times. For this doctrine of Agassiz accords
well with the theory of natural selection. In a future chapter I
shall attempt to show that the adult differs from its embryo, owing
to variations supervening at a not early age, and being inherited at
a corresponding age. This process, whilst it leaves the embryo almost
unaltered, continually adds, in the course of successive generations,
more and more difference to the adult.

Thus the embryo comes to be left as a sort of picture, preserved by
nature, of the ancient and less modified condition of each animal. This
view may be true, and yet it may never be capable of full proof. Seeing,
for instance, that the oldest known mammals, reptiles, and fish strictly
belong to their own proper classes, though some of these old forms are
in a slight degree less distinct from each other than are the typical
members of the same groups at the present day, it would be vain to look
for animals having the common embryological character of the Vertebrata,
until beds far beneath the lowest Silurian strata are discovered--a
discovery of which the chance is very small.

ON THE SUCCESSION OF THE SAME TYPES WITHIN THE SAME AREAS, DURING THE
LATER TERTIARY PERIODS.

Mr. Clift many years ago showed that the fossil mammals from the
Australian caves were closely allied to the living marsupials of that
continent. In South America, a similar relationship is manifest, even
to an uneducated eye, in the gigantic pieces of armour like those of the
armadillo, found in several parts of La Plata; and Professor Owen has
shown in the most striking manner that most of the fossil mammals,
buried there in such numbers, are related to South American types. This
relationship is even more clearly seen in the wonderful collection of
fossil bones made by MM. Lund and Clausen in the caves of Brazil. I was
so much impressed with these facts that I strongly insisted, in 1839
and 1845, on this "law of the succession of types,"--on "this wonderful
relationship in the same continent between the dead and the living."
Professor Owen has subsequently extended the same generalisation to
the mammals of the Old World. We see the same law in this author's
restorations of the extinct and gigantic birds of New Zealand. We see
it also in the birds of the caves of Brazil. Mr. Woodward has shown that
the same law holds good with sea-shells, but from the wide distribution
of most genera of molluscs, it is not well displayed by them. Other
cases could be added, as the relation between the extinct and
living land-shells of Madeira; and between the extinct and living
brackish-water shells of the Aralo-Caspian Sea.

Now what does this remarkable law of the succession of the same types
within the same areas mean? He would be a bold man, who after comparing
the present climate of Australia and of parts of South America under the
same latitude, would attempt to account, on the one hand, by dissimilar
physical conditions for the dissimilarity of the inhabitants of these
two continents, and, on the other hand, by similarity of conditions,
for the uniformity of the same types in each during the later tertiary
periods. Nor can it be pretended that it is an immutable law that
marsupials should have been chiefly or solely produced in Australia; or
that Edentata and other American types should have been solely produced
in South America. For we know that Europe in ancient times was peopled
by numerous marsupials; and I have shown in the publications above
alluded to, that in America the law of distribution of terrestrial
mammals was formerly different from what it now is. North America
formerly partook strongly of the present character of the southern
half of the continent; and the southern half was formerly more closely
allied, than it is at present, to the northern half. In a similar manner
we know from Falconer and Cautley's discoveries, that northern India was
formerly more closely related in its mammals to Africa than it is at
the present time. Analogous facts could be given in relation to the
distribution of marine animals.

On the theory of descent with modification, the great law of the long
enduring, but not immutable, succession of the same types within the
same areas, is at once explained; for the inhabitants of each quarter of
the world will obviously tend to leave in that quarter, during the next
succeeding period of time, closely allied though in some degree modified
descendants. If the inhabitants of one continent formerly differed
greatly from those of another continent, so will their modified
descendants still differ in nearly the same manner and degree. But
after very long intervals of time and after great geographical changes,
permitting much inter-migration, the feebler will yield to the more
dominant forms, and there will be nothing immutable in the laws of past
and present distribution.

It may be asked in ridicule, whether I suppose that the megatherium and
other allied huge monsters have left behind them in South America the
sloth, armadillo, and anteater, as their degenerate descendants. This
cannot for an instant be admitted. These huge animals have become wholly
extinct, and have left no progeny. But in the caves of Brazil, there
are many extinct species which are closely allied in size and in other
characters to the species still living in South America; and some of
these fossils may be the actual progenitors of living species. It must
not be forgotten that, on my theory, all the species of the same genus
have descended from some one species; so that if six genera, each having
eight species, be found in one geological formation, and in the next
succeeding formation there be six other allied or representative genera
with the same number of species, then we may conclude that only one
species of each of the six older genera has left modified descendants,
constituting the six new genera. The other seven species of the old
genera have all died out and have left no progeny. Or, which would
probably be a far commoner case, two or three species of two or three
alone of the six older genera will have been the parents of the six new
genera; the other old species and the other whole genera having
become utterly extinct. In failing orders, with the genera and species
decreasing in numbers, as apparently is the case of the Edentata of
South America, still fewer genera and species will have left modified
blood-descendants.

SUMMARY OF THE PRECEDING AND PRESENT CHAPTERS.

I have attempted to show that the geological record is extremely
imperfect; that only a small portion of the globe has been geologically
explored with care; that only certain classes of organic beings have
been largely preserved in a fossil state; that the number both of
specimens and of species, preserved in our museums, is absolutely as
nothing compared with the incalculable number of generations which
must have passed away even during a single formation; that, owing
to subsidence being necessary for the accumulation of fossiliferous
deposits thick enough to resist future degradation, enormous intervals
of time have elapsed between the successive formations; that there has
probably been more extinction during the periods of subsidence, and more
variation during the periods of elevation, and during the latter the
record will have been least perfectly kept; that each single formation
has not been continuously deposited; that the duration of each formation
is, perhaps, short compared with the average duration of specific forms;
that migration has played an important part in the first appearance of
new forms in any one area and formation; that widely ranging species
are those which have varied most, and have oftenest given rise to new
species; and that varieties have at first often been local. All these
causes taken conjointly, must have tended to make the geological record
extremely imperfect, and will to a large extent explain why we do not
find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and
existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps.

He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will
rightly reject my whole theory. For he may ask in vain where are the
numberless transitional links which must formerly have connected the
closely allied or representative species, found in the several stages of
the same great formation. He may disbelieve in the enormous intervals
of time which have elapsed between our consecutive formations; he may
overlook how important a part migration must have played, when the
formations of any one great region alone, as that of Europe, are
considered; he may urge the apparent, but often falsely apparent, sudden
coming in of whole groups of species. He may ask where are the remains
of those infinitely numerous organisms which must have existed long
before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited: I can answer
this latter question only hypothetically, by saying that as far as we
can see, where our oceans now extend they have for an enormous period
extended, and where our oscillating continents now stand they have stood
ever since the Silurian epoch; but that long before that period, the
world may have presented a wholly different aspect; and that the older
continents, formed of formations older than any known to us, may now all
be in a metamorphosed condition, or may lie buried under the ocean.

Passing from these difficulties, all the other great leading facts in
palaeontology seem to me simply to follow on the theory of descent with
modification through natural selection. We can thus understand how it
is that new species come in slowly and successively; how species of
different classes do not necessarily change together, or at the same
rate, or in the same degree; yet in the long run that all undergo
modification to some extent. The extinction of old forms is the almost
inevitable consequence of the production of new forms. We can understand
why when a species has once disappeared it never reappears. Groups of
species increase in numbers slowly, and endure for unequal periods of
time; for the process of modification is necessarily slow, and depends
on many complex contingencies. The dominant species of the larger
dominant groups tend to leave many modified descendants, and thus new
sub-groups and groups are formed. As these are formed, the species of
the less vigorous groups, from their inferiority inherited from a common
progenitor, tend to become extinct together, and to leave no modified
offspring on the face of the earth. But the utter extinction of a whole
group of species may often be a very slow process, from the survival of
a few descendants, lingering in protected and isolated situations. When
a group has once wholly disappeared, it does not reappear; for the link
of generation has been broken.

We can understand how the spreading of the dominant forms of life, which
are those that oftenest vary, will in the long run tend to people the
world with allied, but modified, descendants; and these will generally
succeed in taking the places of those groups of species which are their
inferiors in the struggle for existence. Hence, after long intervals
of time, the productions of the world will appear to have changed
simultaneously.

We can understand how it is that all the forms of life, ancient and
recent, make together one grand system; for all are connected by
generation. We can understand, from the continued tendency to divergence
of character, why the more ancient a form is, the more it generally
differs from those now living. Why ancient and extinct forms often tend
to fill up gaps between existing forms, sometimes blending two groups
previously classed as distinct into one; but more commonly only bringing
them a little closer together. The more ancient a form is, the more
often, apparently, it displays characters in some degree intermediate
between groups now distinct; for the more ancient a form is, the more
nearly it will be related to, and consequently resemble, the common
progenitor of groups, since become widely divergent. Extinct forms
are seldom directly intermediate between existing forms; but are
intermediate only by a long and circuitous course through many extinct
and very different forms. We can clearly see why the organic remains of
closely consecutive formations are more closely allied to each other,
than are those of remote formations; for the forms are more closely
linked together by generation: we can clearly see why the remains of an
intermediate formation are intermediate in character.

The inhabitants of each successive period in the world's history have
beaten their predecessors in the race for life, and are, in so far,
higher in the scale of nature; and this may account for that vague yet
ill-defined sentiment, felt by many palaeontologists, that organisation
on the whole has progressed. If it should hereafter be proved that
ancient animals resemble to a certain extent the embryos of more recent
animals of the same class, the fact will be intelligible. The succession
of the same types of structure within the same areas during the later
geological periods ceases to be mysterious, and is simply explained by
inheritance.

If then the geological record be as imperfect as I believe it to be, and
it may at least be asserted that the record cannot be proved to be much
more perfect, the main objections to the theory of natural selection are
greatly diminished or disappear. On the other hand, all the chief laws
of palaeontology plainly proclaim, as it seems to me, that species have
been produced by ordinary generation: old forms having been supplanted
by new and improved forms of life, produced by the laws of variation
still acting round us, and preserved by Natural Selection.




11. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION.

Present distribution cannot be accounted for by differences in physical
conditions. Importance of barriers. Affinity of the productions of the
same continent. Centres of creation. Means of dispersal, by changes of
climate and of the level of the land, and by occasional means. Dispersal
during the Glacial period co-extensive with the world.

In considering the distribution of organic beings over the face of
the globe, the first great fact which strikes us is, that neither the
similarity nor the dissimilarity of the inhabitants of various regions
can be accounted for by their climatal and other physical conditions. Of
late, almost every author who has studied the subject has come to this
conclusion. The case of America alone would almost suffice to prove its
truth: for if we exclude the northern parts where the circumpolar land
is almost continuous, all authors agree that one of the most fundamental
divisions in geographical distribution is that between the New and Old
Worlds; yet if we travel over the vast American continent, from the
central parts of the United States to its extreme southern point, we
meet with the most diversified conditions; the most humid districts,
arid deserts, lofty mountains, grassy plains, forests, marshes, lakes,
and great rivers, under almost every temperature. There is hardly a
climate or condition in the Old World which cannot be paralleled in the
New--at least as closely as the same species generally require; for it
is a most rare case to find a group of organisms confined to any small
spot, having conditions peculiar in only a slight degree; for instance,
small areas in the Old World could be pointed out hotter than any in
the New World, yet these are not inhabited by a peculiar fauna or flora.
Notwithstanding this parallelism in the conditions of the Old and New
Worlds, how widely different are their living productions!

In the southern hemisphere, if we compare large tracts of land in
Australia, South Africa, and western South America, between latitudes
25 deg and 35 deg, we shall find parts extremely similar in all their
conditions, yet it would not be possible to point out three faunas and
floras more utterly dissimilar. Or again we may compare the productions
of South America south of lat. 35 deg with those north of 25 deg, which
consequently inhabit a considerably different climate, and they will be
found incomparably more closely related to each other, than they are to
the productions of Australia or Africa under nearly the same climate.
Analogous facts could be given with respect to the inhabitants of the
sea.

A second great fact which strikes us in our general review is, that
barriers of any kind, or obstacles to free migration, are related in a
close and important manner to the differences between the productions of
various regions. We see this in the great difference of nearly all the
terrestrial productions of the New and Old Worlds, excepting in the
northern parts, where the land almost joins, and where, under a slightly
different climate, there might have been free migration for the northern
temperate forms, as there now is for the strictly arctic productions.
We see the same fact in the great difference between the inhabitants of
Australia, Africa, and South America under the same latitude: for these
countries are almost as much isolated from each other as is possible. On
each continent, also, we see the same fact; for on the opposite sides
of lofty and continuous mountain-ranges, and of great deserts, and
sometimes even of large rivers, we find different productions; though as
mountain chains, deserts, etc., are not as impassable, or likely to have
endured so long as the oceans separating continents, the differences are
very inferior in degree to those characteristic of distinct continents.

Turning to the sea, we find the same law. No two marine faunas are more
distinct, with hardly a fish, shell, or crab in common, than those of
the eastern and western shores of South and Central America; yet these
great faunas are separated only by the narrow, but impassable, isthmus
of Panama. Westward of the shores of America, a wide space of open ocean
extends, with not an island as a halting-place for emigrants; here we
have a barrier of another kind, and as soon as this is passed we meet
in the eastern islands of the Pacific, with another and totally
distinct fauna. So that here three marine faunas range far northward
and southward, in parallel lines not far from each other, under
corresponding climates; but from being separated from each other
by impassable barriers, either of land or open sea, they are wholly
distinct. On the other hand, proceeding still further westward from the
eastern islands of the tropical parts of the Pacific, we encounter no
impassable barriers, and we have innumerable islands as halting-places,
until after travelling over a hemisphere we come to the shores of
Africa; and over this vast space we meet with no well-defined and
distinct marine faunas. Although hardly one shell, crab or fish is
common to the above-named three approximate faunas of Eastern and
Western America and the eastern Pacific islands, yet many fish range
from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean, and many shells are common to
the eastern islands of the Pacific and the eastern shores of Africa, on
almost exactly opposite meridians of longitude.

A third great fact, partly included in the foregoing statements, is the
affinity of the productions of the same continent or sea, though the
species themselves are distinct at different points and stations. It is
a law of the widest generality, and every continent offers innumerable
instances. Nevertheless the naturalist in travelling, for instance,
from north to south never fails to be struck by the manner in which
successive groups of beings, specifically distinct, yet clearly related,
replace each other. He hears from closely allied, yet distinct kinds of
birds, notes nearly similar, and sees their nests similarly constructed,
but not quite alike, with eggs coloured in nearly the same manner. The
plains near the Straits of Magellan are inhabited by one species of
Rhea (American ostrich), and northward the plains of La Plata by another
species of the same genus; and not by a true ostrich or emeu, like those
found in Africa and Australia under the same latitude. On these same
plains of La Plata, we see the agouti and bizcacha, animals having
nearly the same habits as our hares and rabbits and belonging to the
same order of Rodents, but they plainly display an American type of
structure. We ascend the lofty peaks of the Cordillera and we find an
alpine species of bizcacha; we look to the waters, and we do not find
the beaver or musk-rat, but the coypu and capybara, rodents of the
American type. Innumerable other instances could be given. If we look
to the islands off the American shore, however much they may differ in
geological structure, the inhabitants, though they may be all peculiar
species, are essentially American. We may look back to past ages, as
shown in the last chapter, and we find American types then prevalent on
the American continent and in the American seas. We see in these facts
some deep organic bond, prevailing throughout space and time, over
the same areas of land and water, and independent of their physical
conditions. The naturalist must feel little curiosity, who is not led to
inquire what this bond is.

This bond, on my theory, is simply inheritance, that cause which alone,
as far as we positively know, produces organisms quite like, or, as we
see in the case of varieties nearly like each other. The dissimilarity
of the inhabitants of different regions may be attributed to
modification through natural selection, and in a quite subordinate
degree to the direct influence of different physical conditions.
The degree of dissimilarity will depend on the migration of the more
dominant forms of life from one region into another having been effected
with more or less ease, at periods more or less remote;--on the nature
and number of the former immigrants;--and on their action and reaction,
in their mutual struggles for life;--the relation of organism to
organism being, as I have already often remarked, the most important of
all relations. Thus the high importance of barriers comes into play by
checking migration; as does time for the slow process of modification
through natural selection. Widely-ranging species, abounding in
individuals, which have already triumphed over many competitors in their
own widely-extended homes will have the best chance of seizing on new
places, when they spread into new countries. In their new homes they
will be exposed to new conditions, and will frequently undergo further
modification and improvement; and thus they will become still further
victorious, and will produce groups of modified descendants. On this
principle of inheritance with modification, we can understand how it is
that sections of genera, whole genera, and even families are confined to
the same areas, as is so commonly and notoriously the case.

I believe, as was remarked in the last chapter, in no law of necessary
development. As the variability of each species is an independent
property, and will be taken advantage of by natural selection, only so
far as it profits the individual in its complex struggle for life,
so the degree of modification in different species will be no uniform
quantity. If, for instance, a number of species, which stand in direct
competition with each other, migrate in a body into a new and afterwards
isolated country, they will be little liable to modification; for
neither migration nor isolation in themselves can do anything. These
principles come into play only by bringing organisms into new relations
with each other, and in a lesser degree with the surrounding physical
conditions. As we have seen in the last chapter that some forms have
retained nearly the same character from an enormously remote geological
period, so certain species have migrated over vast spaces, and have not
become greatly modified.

On these views, it is obvious, that the several species of the same
genus, though inhabiting the most distant quarters of the world, must
originally have proceeded from the same source, as they have descended
from the same progenitor. In the case of those species, which have
undergone during whole geological periods but little modification, there
is not much difficulty in believing that they may have migrated from the
same region; for during the vast geographical and climatal changes which
will have supervened since ancient times, almost any amount of migration
is possible. But in many other cases, in which we have reason to believe
that the species of a genus have been produced within comparatively
recent times, there is great difficulty on this head. It is also obvious
that the individuals of the same species, though now inhabiting distant
and isolated regions, must have proceeded from one spot, where their
parents were first produced: for, as explained in the last chapter, it
is incredible that individuals identically the same should ever have
been produced through natural selection from parents specifically
distinct.

We are thus brought to the question which has been largely discussed by
naturalists, namely, whether species have been created at one or more
points of the earth's surface. Undoubtedly there are very many cases of
extreme difficulty, in understanding how the same species could possibly
have migrated from some one point to the several distant and isolated
points, where now found. Nevertheless the simplicity of the view that
each species was first produced within a single region captivates the
mind. He who rejects it, rejects the vera causa of ordinary generation
with subsequent migration, and calls in the agency of a miracle. It is
universally admitted, that in most cases the area inhabited by a species
is continuous; and when a plant or animal inhabits two points so distant
from each other, or with an interval of such a nature, that the space
could not be easily passed over by migration, the fact is given as
something remarkable and exceptional. The capacity of migrating across
the sea is more distinctly limited in terrestrial mammals, than perhaps
in any other organic beings; and, accordingly, we find no inexplicable
cases of the same mammal inhabiting distant points of the world. No
geologist will feel any difficulty in such cases as Great Britain having
been formerly united to Europe, and consequently possessing the same
quadrupeds. But if the same species can be produced at two separate
points, why do we not find a single mammal common to Europe and
Australia or South America? The conditions of life are nearly the
same, so that a multitude of European animals and plants have become
naturalised in America and Australia; and some of the aboriginal plants
are identically the same at these distant points of the northern and
southern hemispheres? The answer, as I believe, is, that mammals have
not been able to migrate, whereas some plants, from their varied means
of dispersal, have migrated across the vast and broken interspace. The
great and striking influence which barriers of every kind have had on
distribution, is intelligible only on the view that the great majority
of species have been produced on one side alone, and have not been able
to migrate to the other side. Some few families, many sub-families,
very many genera, and a still greater number of sections of genera
are confined to a single region; and it has been observed by several
naturalists, that the most natural genera, or those genera in which the
species are most closely related to each other, are generally local,
or confined to one area. What a strange anomaly it would be, if, when
coming one step lower in the series, to the individuals of the same
species, a directly opposite rule prevailed; and species were not local,
but had been produced in two or more distinct areas!

Hence it seems to me, as it has to many other naturalists, that the
view of each species having been produced in one area alone, and having
subsequently migrated from that area as far as its powers of migration
and subsistence under past and present conditions permitted, is the most
probable. Undoubtedly many cases occur, in which we cannot explain how
the same species could have passed from one point to the other. But the
geographical and climatal changes, which have certainly occurred within
recent geological times, must have interrupted or rendered discontinuous
the formerly continuous range of many species. So that we are reduced to
consider whether the exceptions to continuity of range are so numerous
and of so grave a nature, that we ought to give up the belief, rendered
probable by general considerations, that each species has been produced
within one area, and has migrated thence as far as it could. It would
be hopelessly tedious to discuss all the exceptional cases of the same
species, now living at distant and separated points; nor do I for a
moment pretend that any explanation could be offered of many such cases.
But after some preliminary remarks, I will discuss a few of the most
striking classes of facts; namely, the existence of the same species
on the summits of distant mountain-ranges, and at distant points in the
arctic and antarctic regions; and secondly (in the following chapter),
the wide distribution of freshwater productions; and thirdly, the
occurrence of the same terrestrial species on islands and on the
mainland, though separated by hundreds of miles of open sea. If the
existence of the same species at distant and isolated points of the
earth's surface, can in many instances be explained on the view of each
species having migrated from a single birthplace; then, considering our
ignorance with respect to former climatal and geographical changes and
various occasional means of transport, the belief that this has been the
universal law, seems to me incomparably the safest.

In discussing this subject, we shall be enabled at the same time to
consider a point equally important for us, namely, whether the several
distinct species of a genus, which on my theory have all descended from
a common progenitor, can have migrated (undergoing modification
during some part of their migration) from the area inhabited by their
progenitor. If it can be shown to be almost invariably the case, that
a region, of which most of its inhabitants are closely related to,
or belong to the same genera with the species of a second region, has
probably received at some former period immigrants from this other
region, my theory will be strengthened; for we can clearly understand,
on the principle of modification, why the inhabitants of a region should
be related to those of another region, whence it has been stocked. A
volcanic island, for instance, upheaved and formed at the distance of a
few hundreds of miles from a continent, would probably receive from it
in the course of time a few colonists, and their descendants, though
modified, would still be plainly related by inheritance to the
inhabitants of the continent. Cases of this nature are common, and are,
as we shall hereafter more fully see, inexplicable on the theory of
independent creation. This view of the relation of species in one region
to those in another, does not differ much (by substituting the word
variety for species) from that lately advanced in an ingenious paper by
Mr. Wallace, in which he concludes, that "every species has come into
existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing
closely allied species." And I now know from correspondence, that this
coincidence he attributes to generation with modification.

The previous remarks on "single and multiple centres of creation" do
not directly bear on another allied question,--namely whether all the
individuals of the same species have descended from a single pair, or
single hermaphrodite, or whether, as some authors suppose, from many
individuals simultaneously created. With those organic beings which
never intercross (if such exist), the species, on my theory, must have
descended from a succession of improved varieties, which will never have
blended with other individuals or varieties, but will have supplanted
each other; so that, at each successive stage of modification and
improvement, all the individuals of each variety will have descended
from a single parent. But in the majority of cases, namely, with
all organisms which habitually unite for each birth, or which often
intercross, I believe that during the slow process of modification
the individuals of the species will have been kept nearly uniform by
intercrossing; so that many individuals will have gone on simultaneously
changing, and the whole amount of modification will not have been due,
at each stage, to descent from a single parent. To illustrate what I
mean: our English racehorses differ slightly from the horses of every
other breed; but they do not owe their difference and superiority to
descent from any single pair, but to continued care in selecting and
training many individuals during many generations.

Before discussing the three classes of facts, which I have selected as
presenting the greatest amount of difficulty on the theory of "single
centres of creation," I must say a few words on the means of dispersal.

MEANS OF DISPERSAL.

Sir C. Lyell and other authors have ably treated this subject. I can
give here only the briefest abstract of the more important facts. Change
of climate must have had a powerful influence on migration: a region
when its climate was different may have been a high road for migration,
but now be impassable; I shall, however, presently have to discuss this
branch of the subject in some detail. Changes of level in the land must
also have been highly influential: a narrow isthmus now separates two
marine faunas; submerge it, or let it formerly have been submerged, and
the two faunas will now blend or may formerly have blended: where the
sea now extends, land may at a former period have connected islands or
possibly even continents together, and thus have allowed terrestrial
productions to pass from one to the other. No geologist will dispute
that great mutations of level have occurred within the period of
existing organisms. Edward Forbes insisted that all the islands in the
Atlantic must recently have been connected with Europe or Africa, and
Europe likewise with America. Other authors have thus hypothetically
bridged over every ocean, and have united almost every island to some
mainland. If indeed the arguments used by Forbes are to be trusted,
it must be admitted that scarcely a single island exists which has not
recently been united to some continent. This view cuts the Gordian knot
of the dispersal of the same species to the most distant points, and
removes many a difficulty: but to the best of my judgment we are not
authorized in admitting such enormous geographical changes within
the period of existing species. It seems to me that we have abundant
evidence of great oscillations of level in our continents; but not of
such vast changes in their position and extension, as to have united
them within the recent period to each other and to the several
intervening oceanic islands. I freely admit the former existence of many
islands, now buried beneath the sea, which may have served as halting
places for plants and for many animals during their migration. In the
coral-producing oceans such sunken islands are now marked, as I believe,
by rings of coral or atolls standing over them. Whenever it is fully
admitted, as I believe it will some day be, that each species has
proceeded from a single birthplace, and when in the course of time we
know something definite about the means of distribution, we shall be
enabled to speculate with security on the former extension of the land.
But I do not believe that it will ever be proved that within the recent
period continents which are now quite separate, have been continuously,
or almost continuously, united with each other, and with the many
existing oceanic islands. Several facts in distribution,--such as the
great difference in the marine faunas on the opposite sides of almost
every continent,--the close relation of the tertiary inhabitants of
several lands and even seas to their present inhabitants,--a certain
degree of relation (as we shall hereafter see) between the distribution
of mammals and the depth of the sea,--these and other such facts seem to
me opposed to the admission of such prodigious geographical revolutions
within the recent period, as are necessitated on the view advanced
by Forbes and admitted by his many followers. The nature and relative
proportions of the inhabitants of oceanic islands likewise seem to me
opposed to the belief of their former continuity with continents. Nor
does their almost universally volcanic composition favour the admission
that they are the wrecks of sunken continents;--if they had originally
existed as mountain-ranges on the land, some at least of the islands
would have been formed, like other mountain-summits, of granite,
metamorphic schists, old fossiliferous or other such rocks, instead of
consisting of mere piles of volcanic matter.

I must now say a few words on what are called accidental means, but
which more properly might be called occasional means of distribution.
I shall here confine myself to plants. In botanical works, this or
that plant is stated to be ill adapted for wide dissemination; but for
transport across the sea, the greater or less facilities may be said to
be almost wholly unknown. Until I tried, with Mr. Berkeley's aid, a
few experiments, it was not even known how far seeds could resist the
injurious action of sea-water. To my surprise I found that out of 87
kinds, 64 germinated after an immersion of 28 days, and a few survived
an immersion of 137 days. For convenience sake I chiefly tried small
seeds, without the capsule or fruit; and as all of these sank in a few
days, they could not be floated across wide spaces of the sea, whether
or not they were injured by the salt-water. Afterwards I tried some
larger fruits, capsules, etc., and some of these floated for a long
time. It is well known what a difference there is in the buoyancy of
green and seasoned timber; and it occurred to me that floods might wash
down plants or branches, and that these might be dried on the banks, and
then by a fresh rise in the stream be washed into the sea. Hence I was
led to dry stems and branches of 94 plants with ripe fruit, and to place
them on sea water. The majority sank quickly, but some which whilst
green floated for a very short time, when dried floated much longer; for
instance, ripe hazel-nuts sank immediately, but when dried, they floated
for 90 days and afterwards when planted they germinated; an asparagus
plant with ripe berries floated for 23 days, when dried it floated
for 85 days, and the seeds afterwards germinated: the ripe seeds of
Helosciadium sank in two days, when dried they floated for above 90
days, and afterwards germinated. Altogether out of the 94 dried plants,
18 floated for above 28 days, and some of the 18 floated for a very much
longer period. So that as 64/87 seeds germinated after an immersion
of 28 days; and as 18/94 plants with ripe fruit (but not all the same
species as in the foregoing experiment) floated, after being dried, for
above 28 days, as far as we may infer anything from these scanty facts,
we may conclude that the seeds of 14/100 plants of any country might be
floated by sea-currents during 28 days, and would retain their power
of germination. In Johnston's Physical Atlas, the average rate of the
several Atlantic currents is 33 miles per diem (some currents running
at the rate of 60 miles per diem); on this average, the seeds of 14/100
plants belonging to one country might be floated across 924 miles of sea
to another country; and when stranded, if blown to a favourable spot by
an inland gale, they would germinate.

Subsequently to my experiments, M. Martens tried similar ones, but in a
much better manner, for he placed the seeds in a box in the actual sea,
so that they were alternately wet and exposed to the air like really
floating plants. He tried 98 seeds, mostly different from mine; but he
chose many large fruits and likewise seeds from plants which live
near the sea; and this would have favoured the average length of
their flotation and of their resistance to the injurious action of the
salt-water. On the other hand he did not previously dry the plants or
branches with the fruit; and this, as we have seen, would have caused
some of them to have floated much longer. The result was that 18/98 of
his seeds floated for 42 days, and were then capable of germination. But
I do not doubt that plants exposed to the waves would float for a less
time than those protected from violent movement as in our experiments.
Therefore it would perhaps be safer to assume that the seeds of about
10/100 plants of a flora, after having been dried, could be floated
across a space of sea 900 miles in width, and would then germinate.
The fact of the larger fruits often floating longer than the small,
is interesting; as plants with large seeds or fruit could hardly be
transported by any other means; and Alph. de Candolle has shown that
such plants generally have restricted ranges.

But seeds may be occasionally transported in another manner. Drift
timber is thrown up on most islands, even on those in the midst of the
widest oceans; and the natives of the coral-islands in the Pacific,
procure stones for their tools, solely from the roots of drifted trees,
these stones being a valuable royal tax. I find on examination, that
when irregularly shaped stones are embedded in the roots of trees, small
parcels of earth are very frequently enclosed in their interstices and
behind them,--so perfectly that not a particle could be washed away in
the longest transport: out of one small portion of earth thus COMPLETELY
enclosed by wood in an oak about 50 years old, three dicotyledonous
plants germinated: I am certain of the accuracy of this observation.
Again, I can show that the carcasses of birds, when floating on the sea,
sometimes escape being immediately devoured; and seeds of many kinds
in the crops of floating birds long retain their vitality: peas and
vetches, for instance, are killed by even a few days' immersion in
sea-water; but some taken out of the crop of a pigeon, which had
floated on artificial salt-water for 30 days, to my surprise nearly all
germinated.

Living birds can hardly fail to be highly effective agents in the
transportation of seeds. I could give many facts showing how frequently
birds of many kinds are blown by gales to vast distances across the
ocean. We may I think safely assume that under such circumstances their
rate of flight would often be 35 miles an hour; and some authors have
given a far higher estimate. I have never seen an instance of nutritious
seeds passing through the intestines of a bird; but hard seeds of fruit
will pass uninjured through even the digestive organs of a turkey. In
the course of two months, I picked up in my garden 12 kinds of seeds,
out of the excrement of small birds, and these seemed perfect, and
some of them, which I tried, germinated. But the following fact is more
important: the crops of birds do not secrete gastric juice, and do not
in the least injure, as I know by trial, the germination of seeds;
now after a bird has found and devoured a large supply of food, it is
positively asserted that all the grains do not pass into the gizzard for
12 or even 18 hours. A bird in this interval might easily be blown to
the distance of 500 miles, and hawks are known to look out for tired
birds, and the contents of their torn crops might thus readily get
scattered. Mr. Brent informs me that a friend of his had to give up
flying carrier-pigeons from France to England, as the hawks on the
English coast destroyed so many on their arrival. Some hawks and owls
bolt their prey whole, and after an interval of from twelve to twenty
hours, disgorge pellets, which, as I know from experiments made in the
Zoological Gardens, include seeds capable of germination. Some seeds of
the oat, wheat, millet, canary, hemp, clover, and beet germinated after
having been from twelve to twenty-one hours in the stomachs of different
birds of prey; and two seeds of beet grew after having been thus
retained for two days and fourteen hours. Freshwater fish, I find, eat
seeds of many land and water plants: fish are frequently devoured by
birds, and thus the seeds might be transported from place to place. I
forced many kinds of seeds into the stomachs of dead fish, and then gave
their bodies to fishing-eagles, storks, and pelicans; these birds after
an interval of many hours, either rejected the seeds in pellets or
passed them in their excrement; and several of these seeds retained
their power of germination. Certain seeds, however, were always killed
by this process.

Although the beaks and feet of birds are generally quite clean, I can
show that earth sometimes adheres to them: in one instance I removed
twenty-two grains of dry argillaceous earth from one foot of a
partridge, and in this earth there was a pebble quite as large as the
seed of a vetch. Thus seeds might occasionally be transported to great
distances; for many facts could be given showing that soil almost
everywhere is charged with seeds. Reflect for a moment on the millions
of quails which annually cross the Mediterranean; and can we doubt that
the earth adhering to their feet would sometimes include a few minute
seeds? But I shall presently have to recur to this subject.

As icebergs are known to be sometimes loaded with earth and stones, and
have even carried brushwood, bones, and the nest of a land-bird, I can
hardly doubt that they must occasionally have transported seeds from
one part to another of the arctic and antarctic regions, as suggested by
Lyell; and during the Glacial period from one part of the now temperate
regions to another. In the Azores, from the large number of the species
of plants common to Europe, in comparison with the plants of other
oceanic islands nearer to the mainland, and (as remarked by Mr. H. C.
Watson) from the somewhat northern character of the flora in comparison
with the latitude, I suspected that these islands had been partly
stocked by ice-borne seeds, during the Glacial epoch. At my request Sir
C. Lyell wrote to M. Hartung to inquire whether he had observed erratic
boulders on these islands, and he answered that he had found large
fragments of granite and other rocks, which do not occur in the
archipelago. Hence we may safely infer that icebergs formerly landed
their rocky burthens on the shores of these mid-ocean islands, and it
is at least possible that they may have brought thither the seeds of
northern plants.

Considering that the several above means of transport, and that several
other means, which without doubt remain to be discovered, have been in
action year after year, for centuries and tens of thousands of years,
it would I think be a marvellous fact if many plants had not thus
become widely transported. These means of transport are sometimes called
accidental, but this is not strictly correct: the currents of the sea
are not accidental, nor is the direction of prevalent gales of wind.
It should be observed that scarcely any means of transport would carry
seeds for very great distances; for seeds do not retain their vitality
when exposed for a great length of time to the action of seawater; nor
could they be long carried in the crops or intestines of birds. These
means, however, would suffice for occasional transport across tracts of
sea some hundred miles in breadth, or from island to island, or from a
continent to a neighbouring island, but not from one distant continent
to another. The floras of distant continents would not by such means
become mingled in any great degree; but would remain as distinct as we
now see them to be. The currents, from their course, would never bring
seeds from North America to Britain, though they might and do bring
seeds from the West Indies to our western shores, where, if not killed
by so long an immersion in salt-water, they could not endure our
climate. Almost every year, one or two land-birds are blown across
the whole Atlantic Ocean, from North America to the western shores of
Ireland and England; but seeds could be transported by these wanderers
only by one means, namely, in dirt sticking to their feet, which is in
itself a rare accident. Even in this case, how small would the chance
be of a seed falling on favourable soil, and coming to maturity! But it
would be a great error to argue that because a well-stocked island,
like Great Britain, has not, as far as is known (and it would be very
difficult to prove this), received within the last few centuries,
through occasional means of transport, immigrants from Europe or any
other continent, that a poorly-stocked island, though standing more
remote from the mainland, would not receive colonists by similar means.
I do not doubt that out of twenty seeds or animals transported to an
island, even if far less well-stocked than Britain, scarcely more than
one would be so well fitted to its new home, as to become naturalised.
But this, as it seems to me, is no valid argument against what would
be effected by occasional means of transport, during the long lapse of
geological time, whilst an island was being upheaved and formed, and
before it had become fully stocked with inhabitants. On almost bare
land, with few or no destructive insects or birds living there, nearly
every seed, which chanced to arrive, would be sure to germinate and
survive.

DISPERSAL DURING THE GLACIAL PERIOD.

The identity of many plants and animals, on mountain-summits, separated
from each other by hundreds of miles of lowlands, where the Alpine
species could not possibly exist, is one of the most striking cases
known of the same species living at distant points, without the apparent
possibility of their having migrated from one to the other. It is indeed
a remarkable fact to see so many of the same plants living on the snowy
regions of the Alps or Pyrenees, and in the extreme northern parts of
Europe; but it is far more remarkable, that the plants on the White
Mountains, in the United States of America, are all the same with those
of Labrador, and nearly all the same, as we hear from Asa Gray, with
those on the loftiest mountains of Europe. Even as long ago as 1747,
such facts led Gmelin to conclude that the same species must have been
independently created at several distinct points; and we might have
remained in this same belief, had not Agassiz and others called vivid
attention to the Glacial period, which, as we shall immediately see,
affords a simple explanation of these facts. We have evidence of almost
every conceivable kind, organic and inorganic, that within a very recent
geological period, central Europe and North America suffered under an
Arctic climate. The ruins of a house burnt by fire do not tell their
tale more plainly, than do the mountains of Scotland and Wales, with
their scored flanks, polished surfaces, and perched boulders, of the icy
streams with which their valleys were lately filled. So greatly has the
climate of Europe changed, that in Northern Italy, gigantic moraines,
left by old glaciers, are now clothed by the vine and maize. Throughout
a large part of the United States, erratic boulders, and rocks scored by
drifted icebergs and coast-ice, plainly reveal a former cold period.

The former influence of the glacial climate on the distribution of the
inhabitants of Europe, as explained with remarkable clearness by Edward
Forbes, is substantially as follows. But we shall follow the changes
more readily, by supposing a new glacial period to come slowly on, and
then pass away, as formerly occurred. As the cold came on, and as each
more southern zone became fitted for arctic beings and ill-fitted for
their former more temperate inhabitants, the latter would be supplanted
and arctic productions would take their places. The inhabitants of the
more temperate regions would at the same time travel southward, unless
they were stopped by barriers, in which case they would perish. The
mountains would become covered with snow and ice, and their former
Alpine inhabitants would descend to the plains. By the time that the
cold had reached its maximum, we should have a uniform arctic fauna and
flora, covering the central parts of Europe, as far south as the Alps
and Pyrenees, and even stretching into Spain. The now temperate regions
of the United States would likewise be covered by arctic plants and
animals, and these would be nearly the same with those of Europe; for
the present circumpolar inhabitants, which we suppose to have everywhere
travelled southward, are remarkably uniform round the world. We may
suppose that the Glacial period came on a little earlier or later in
North America than in Europe, so will the southern migration there have
been a little earlier or later; but this will make no difference in the
final result.

As the warmth returned, the arctic forms would retreat northward,
closely followed up in their retreat by the productions of the more
temperate regions. And as the snow melted from the bases of the
mountains, the arctic forms would seize on the cleared and thawed
ground, always ascending higher and higher, as the warmth increased,
whilst their brethren were pursuing their northern journey. Hence, when
the warmth had fully returned, the same arctic species, which had lately
lived in a body together on the lowlands of the Old and New Worlds,
would be left isolated on distant mountain-summits (having been
exterminated on all lesser heights) and in the arctic regions of both
hemispheres.

Thus we can understand the identity of many plants at points so
immensely remote as on the mountains of the United States and of Europe.
We can thus also understand the fact that the Alpine plants of each
mountain-range are more especially related to the arctic forms living
due north or nearly due north of them: for the migration as the cold
came on, and the re-migration on the returning warmth, will generally
have been due south and north. The Alpine plants, for example, of
Scotland, as remarked by Mr. H. C. Watson, and those of the Pyrenees, as
remarked by Ramond, are more especially allied to the plants of northern
Scandinavia; those of the United States to Labrador; those of the
mountains of Siberia to the arctic regions of that country. These views,
grounded as they are on the perfectly well-ascertained occurrence of a
former Glacial period, seem to me to explain in so satisfactory a manner
the present distribution of the Alpine and Arctic productions of Europe
and America, that when in other regions we find the same species on
distant mountain-summits, we may almost conclude without other evidence,
that a colder climate permitted their former migration across the low
intervening tracts, since become too warm for their existence.

If the climate, since the Glacial period, has ever been in any degree
warmer than at present (as some geologists in the United States believe
to have been the case, chiefly from the distribution of the fossil
Gnathodon), then the arctic and temperate productions will at a very
late period have marched a little further north, and subsequently have
retreated to their present homes; but I have met with no satisfactory
evidence with respect to this intercalated slightly warmer period, since
the Glacial period.

The arctic forms, during their long southern migration and re-migration
northward, will have been exposed to nearly the same climate, and, as
is especially to be noticed, they will have kept in a body together;
consequently their mutual relations will not have been much disturbed,
and, in accordance with the principles inculcated in this volume, they
will not have been liable to much modification. But with our Alpine
productions, left isolated from the moment of the returning warmth,
first at the bases and ultimately on the summits of the mountains, the
case will have been somewhat different; for it is not likely that all
the same arctic species will have been left on mountain ranges distant
from each other, and have survived there ever since; they will, also, in
all probability have become mingled with ancient Alpine species, which
must have existed on the mountains before the commencement of the
Glacial epoch, and which during its coldest period will have been
temporarily driven down to the plains; they will, also, have been
exposed to somewhat different climatal influences. Their mutual
relations will thus have been in some degree disturbed; consequently
they will have been liable to modification; and this we find has been
the case; for if we compare the present Alpine plants and animals of the
several great European mountain-ranges, though very many of the species
are identically the same, some present varieties, some are ranked
as doubtful forms, and some few are distinct yet closely allied or
representative species.

In illustrating what, as I believe, actually took place during
the Glacial period, I assumed that at its commencement the arctic
productions were as uniform round the polar regions as they are at the
present day. But the foregoing remarks on distribution apply not only
to strictly arctic forms, but also to many sub-arctic and to some few
northern temperate forms, for some of these are the same on the lower
mountains and on the plains of North America and Europe; and it may be
reasonably asked how I account for the necessary degree of uniformity
of the sub-arctic and northern temperate forms round the world, at the
commencement of the Glacial period. At the present day, the sub-arctic
and northern temperate productions of the Old and New Worlds are
separated from each other by the Atlantic Ocean and by the extreme
northern part of the Pacific. During the Glacial period, when the
inhabitants of the Old and New Worlds lived further southwards than at
present, they must have been still more completely separated by wider
spaces of ocean. I believe the above difficulty may be surmounted by
looking to still earlier changes of climate of an opposite nature.
We have good reason to believe that during the newer Pliocene period,
before the Glacial epoch, and whilst the majority of the inhabitants of
the world were specifically the same as now, the climate was warmer than
at the present day. Hence we may suppose that the organisms now living
under the climate of latitude 60 deg, during the Pliocene period lived
further north under the Polar Circle, in latitude 66 deg-67 deg; and
that the strictly arctic productions then lived on the broken land still
nearer to the pole. Now if we look at a globe, we shall see that under
the Polar Circle there is almost continuous land from western Europe,
through Siberia, to eastern America. And to this continuity of the
circumpolar land, and to the consequent freedom for intermigration
under a more favourable climate, I attribute the necessary amount of
uniformity in the sub-arctic and northern temperate productions of the
Old and New Worlds, at a period anterior to the Glacial epoch.

Believing, from reasons before alluded to, that our continents have
long remained in nearly the same relative position, though subjected
to large, but partial oscillations of level, I am strongly inclined to
extend the above view, and to infer that during some earlier and still
warmer period, such as the older Pliocene period, a large number of
the same plants and animals inhabited the almost continuous circumpolar
land; and that these plants and animals, both in the Old and New Worlds,
began slowly to migrate southwards as the climate became less warm, long
before the commencement of the Glacial period. We now see, as I believe,
their descendants, mostly in a modified condition, in the central parts
of Europe and the United States. On this view we can understand the
relationship, with very little identity, between the productions of
North America and Europe,--a relationship which is most remarkable,
considering the distance of the two areas, and their separation by the
Atlantic Ocean. We can further understand the singular fact remarked on
by several observers, that the productions of Europe and America during
the later tertiary stages were more closely related to each other
than they are at the present time; for during these warmer periods
the northern parts of the Old and New Worlds will have been almost
continuously united by land, serving as a bridge, since rendered
impassable by cold, for the inter-migration of their inhabitants.

During the slowly decreasing warmth of the Pliocene period, as soon as
the species in common, which inhabited the New and Old Worlds, migrated
south of the Polar Circle, they must have been completely cut off from
each other. This separation, as far as the more temperate productions
are concerned, took place long ages ago. And as the plants and animals
migrated southward, they will have become mingled in the one great
region with the native American productions, and have had to compete
with them; and in the other great region, with those of the Old
World. Consequently we have here everything favourable for much
modification,--for far more modification than with the Alpine
productions, left isolated, within a much more recent period, on the
several mountain-ranges and on the arctic lands of the two Worlds. Hence
it has come, that when we compare the now living productions of the
temperate regions of the New and Old Worlds, we find very few identical
species (though Asa Gray has lately shown that more plants are identical
than was formerly supposed), but we find in every great class many
forms, which some naturalists rank as geographical races, and others as
distinct species; and a host of closely allied or representative forms
which are ranked by all naturalists as specifically distinct.

As on the land, so in the waters of the sea, a slow southern migration
of a marine fauna, which during the Pliocene or even a somewhat earlier
period, was nearly uniform along the continuous shores of the Polar
Circle, will account, on the theory of modification, for many closely
allied forms now living in areas completely sundered. Thus, I think, we
can understand the presence of many existing and tertiary representative
forms on the eastern and western shores of temperate North America;
and the still more striking case of many closely allied crustaceans
(as described in Dana's admirable work), of some fish and other marine
animals, in the Mediterranean and in the seas of Japan,--areas now
separated by a continent and by nearly a hemisphere of equatorial ocean.

These cases of relationship, without identity, of the inhabitants of
seas now disjoined, and likewise of the past and present inhabitants of
the temperate lands of North America and Europe, are inexplicable on the
theory of creation. We cannot say that they have been created alike, in
correspondence with the nearly similar physical conditions of the areas;
for if we compare, for instance, certain parts of South America with
the southern continents of the Old World, we see countries closely
corresponding in all their physical conditions, but with their
inhabitants utterly dissimilar.

But we must return to our more immediate subject, the Glacial period.
I am convinced that Forbes's view may be largely extended. In Europe we
have the plainest evidence of the cold period, from the western shores
of Britain to the Oural range, and southward to the Pyrenees. We may
infer, from the frozen mammals and nature of the mountain vegetation,
that Siberia was similarly affected. Along the Himalaya, at points 900
miles apart, glaciers have left the marks of their former low descent;
and in Sikkim, Dr. Hooker saw maize growing on gigantic ancient
moraines. South of the equator, we have some direct evidence of former
glacial action in New Zealand; and the same plants, found on widely
separated mountains in this island, tell the same story. If one account
which has been published can be trusted, we have direct evidence of
glacial action in the south-eastern corner of Australia.

Looking to America; in the northern half, ice-borne fragments of rock
have been observed on the eastern side as far south as lat. 36 deg-37
deg, and on the shores of the Pacific, where the climate is now so
different, as far south as lat. 46 deg; erratic boulders have, also,
been noticed on the Rocky Mountains. In the Cordillera of Equatorial
South America, glaciers once extended far below their present level.
In central Chile I was astonished at the structure of a vast mound of
detritus, about 800 feet in height, crossing a valley of the Andes; and
this I now feel convinced was a gigantic moraine, left far below any
existing glacier. Further south on both sides of the continent, from
lat. 41 deg to the southernmost extremity, we have the clearest evidence
of former glacial action, in huge boulders transported far from their
parent source.

We do not know that the Glacial epoch was strictly simultaneous at these
several far distant points on opposite sides of the world. But we have
good evidence in almost every case, that the epoch was included within
the latest geological period. We have, also, excellent evidence, that it
endured for an enormous time, as measured by years, at each point. The
cold may have come on, or have ceased, earlier at one point of the globe
than at another, but seeing that it endured for long at each, and that
it was contemporaneous in a geological sense, it seems to me probable
that it was, during a part at least of the period, actually simultaneous
throughout the world. Without some distinct evidence to the contrary, we
may at least admit as probable that the glacial action was simultaneous
on the eastern and western sides of North America, in the Cordillera
under the equator and under the warmer temperate zones, and on both
sides of the southern extremity of the continent. If this be admitted,
it is difficult to avoid believing that the temperature of the whole
world was at this period simultaneously cooler. But it would suffice for
my purpose, if the temperature was at the same time lower along certain
broad belts of longitude.

On this view of the whole world, or at least of broad longitudinal
belts, having been simultaneously colder from pole to pole, much light
can be thrown on the present distribution of identical and allied
species. In America, Dr. Hooker has shown that between forty and fifty
of the flowering plants of Tierra del Fuego, forming no inconsiderable
part of its scanty flora, are common to Europe, enormously remote as
these two points are; and there are many closely allied species. On
the lofty mountains of equatorial America a host of peculiar species
belonging to European genera occur. On the highest mountains of Brazil,
some few European genera were found by Gardner, which do not exist in
the wide intervening hot countries. So on the Silla of Caraccas
the illustrious Humboldt long ago found species belonging to genera
characteristic of the Cordillera. On the mountains of Abyssinia, several
European forms and some few representatives of the peculiar flora of the
Cape of Good Hope occur. At the Cape of Good Hope a very few European
species, believed not to have been introduced by man, and on the
mountains, some few representative European forms are found, which
have not been discovered in the intertropical parts of Africa. On the
Himalaya, and on the isolated mountain-ranges of the peninsula of India,
on the heights of Ceylon, and on the volcanic cones of Java, many plants
occur, either identically the same or representing each other, and
at the same time representing plants of Europe, not found in the
intervening hot lowlands. A list of the genera collected on the loftier
peaks of Java raises a picture of a collection made on a hill in Europe!
Still more striking is the fact that southern Australian forms are
clearly represented by plants growing on the summits of the mountains
of Borneo. Some of these Australian forms, as I hear from Dr. Hooker,
extend along the heights of the peninsula of Malacca, and are thinly
scattered, on the one hand over India and on the other as far north as
Japan.

On the southern mountains of Australia, Dr. F. Muller has discovered
several European species; other species, not introduced by man, occur
on the lowlands; and a long list can be given, as I am informed by
Dr. Hooker, of European genera, found in Australia, but not in the
intermediate torrid regions. In the admirable 'Introduction to the Flora
of New Zealand,' by Dr. Hooker, analogous and striking facts are
given in regard to the plants of that large island. Hence we see that
throughout the world, the plants growing on the more lofty mountains,
and on the temperate lowlands of the northern and southern hemispheres,
are sometimes identically the same; but they are much oftener
specifically distinct, though related to each other in a most remarkable
manner.

This brief abstract applies to plants alone: some strictly analogous
facts could be given on the distribution of terrestrial animals. In
marine productions, similar cases occur; as an example, I may quote a
remark by the highest authority, Professor Dana, that "it is certainly a
wonderful fact that New Zealand should have a closer resemblance in its
crustacea to Great Britain, its antipode, than to any other part of
the world." Sir J. Richardson, also, speaks of the reappearance on the
shores of New Zealand, Tasmania, etc., of northern forms of fish. Dr.
Hooker informs me that twenty-five species of Algae are common to New
Zealand and to Europe, but have not been found in the intermediate
tropical seas.

It should be observed that the northern species and forms found in the
southern parts of the southern hemisphere, and on the mountain-ranges
of the intertropical regions, are not arctic, but belong to the northern
temperate zones. As Mr. H. C. Watson has recently remarked, "In receding
from polar towards equatorial latitudes, the Alpine or mountain floras
really become less and less arctic." Many of the forms living on
the mountains of the warmer regions of the earth and in the southern
hemisphere are of doubtful value, being ranked by some naturalists as
specifically distinct, by others as varieties; but some are certainly
identical, and many, though closely related to northern forms, must be
ranked as distinct species.

Now let us see what light can be thrown on the foregoing facts, on the
belief, supported as it is by a large body of geological evidence, that
the whole world, or a large part of it, was during the Glacial period
simultaneously much colder than at present. The Glacial period, as
measured by years, must have been very long; and when we remember over
what vast spaces some naturalised plants and animals have spread within
a few centuries, this period will have been ample for any amount of
migration. As the cold came slowly on, all the tropical plants and other
productions will have retreated from both sides towards the equator,
followed in the rear by the temperate productions, and these by the
arctic; but with the latter we are not now concerned. The tropical
plants probably suffered much extinction; how much no one can say;
perhaps formerly the tropics supported as many species as we see at the
present day crowded together at the Cape of Good Hope, and in parts of
temperate Australia. As we know that many tropical plants and animals
can withstand a considerable amount of cold, many might have escaped
extermination during a moderate fall of temperature, more especially by
escaping into the warmest spots. But the great fact to bear in mind is,
that all tropical productions will have suffered to a certain extent. On
the other hand, the temperate productions, after migrating nearer to
the equator, though they will have been placed under somewhat new
conditions, will have suffered less. And it is certain that many
temperate plants, if protected from the inroads of competitors, can
withstand a much warmer climate than their own. Hence, it seems to
me possible, bearing in mind that the tropical productions were in
a suffering state and could not have presented a firm front against
intruders, that a certain number of the more vigorous and dominant
temperate forms might have penetrated the native ranks and have reached
or even crossed the equator. The invasion would, of course, have been
greatly favoured by high land, and perhaps by a dry climate; for Dr.
Falconer informs me that it is the damp with the heat of the tropics
which is so destructive to perennial plants from a temperate climate. On
the other hand, the most humid and hottest districts will have afforded
an asylum to the tropical natives. The mountain-ranges north-west of the
Himalaya, and the long line of the Cordillera, seem to have afforded two
great lines of invasion: and it is a striking fact, lately communicated
to me by Dr. Hooker, that all the flowering plants, about forty-six in
number, common to Tierra del Fuego and to Europe still exist in North
America, which must have lain on the line of march. But I do not doubt
that some temperate productions entered and crossed even the LOWLANDS of
the tropics at the period when the cold was most intense,--when arctic
forms had migrated some twenty-five degrees of latitude from their
native country and covered the land at the foot of the Pyrenees. At this
period of extreme cold, I believe that the climate under the equator at
the level of the sea was about the same with that now felt there at the
height of six or seven thousand feet. During this the coldest period, I
suppose that large spaces of the tropical lowlands were clothed with a
mingled tropical and temperate vegetation, like that now growing with
strange luxuriance at the base of the Himalaya, as graphically described
by Hooker.

Thus, as I believe, a considerable number of plants, a few terrestrial
animals, and some marine productions, migrated during the Glacial period
from the northern and southern temperate zones into the intertropical
regions, and some even crossed the equator. As the warmth returned,
these temperate forms would naturally ascend the higher mountains, being
exterminated on the lowlands; those which had not reached the equator,
would re-migrate northward or southward towards their former homes; but
the forms, chiefly northern, which had crossed the equator, would travel
still further from their homes into the more temperate latitudes of the
opposite hemisphere. Although we have reason to believe from geological
evidence that the whole body of arctic shells underwent scarcely any
modification during their long southern migration and re-migration
northward, the case may have been wholly different with those intruding
forms which settled themselves on the intertropical mountains, and in
the southern hemisphere. These being surrounded by strangers will have
had to compete with many new forms of life; and it is probable that
selected modifications in their structure, habits, and constitutions
will have profited them. Thus many of these wanderers, though still
plainly related by inheritance to their brethren of the northern or
southern hemispheres, now exist in their new homes as well-marked
varieties or as distinct species.

It is a remarkable fact, strongly insisted on by Hooker in regard to
America, and by Alph. de Candolle in regard to Australia, that many
more identical plants and allied forms have apparently migrated from the
north to the south, than in a reversed direction. We see, however, a
few southern vegetable forms on the mountains of Borneo and Abyssinia.
I suspect that this preponderant migration from north to south is due
to the greater extent of land in the north, and to the northern forms
having existed in their own homes in greater numbers, and having
consequently been advanced through natural selection and competition
to a higher stage of perfection or dominating power, than the southern
forms. And thus, when they became commingled during the Glacial period,
the northern forms were enabled to beat the less powerful southern
forms. Just in the same manner as we see at the present day, that very
many European productions cover the ground in La Plata, and in a lesser
degree in Australia, and have to a certain extent beaten the natives;
whereas extremely few southern forms have become naturalised in any part
of Europe, though hides, wool, and other objects likely to carry seeds
have been largely imported into Europe during the last two or three
centuries from La Plata, and during the last thirty or forty years
from Australia. Something of the same kind must have occurred on the
intertropical mountains: no doubt before the Glacial period they were
stocked with endemic Alpine forms; but these have almost everywhere
largely yielded to the more dominant forms, generated in the larger
areas and more efficient workshops of the north. In many islands the
native productions are nearly equalled or even outnumbered by the
naturalised; and if the natives have not been actually exterminated,
their numbers have been greatly reduced, and this is the first stage
towards extinction. A mountain is an island on the land; and the
intertropical mountains before the Glacial period must have been
completely isolated; and I believe that the productions of these islands
on the land yielded to those produced within the larger areas of the
north, just in the same way as the productions of real islands have
everywhere lately yielded to continental forms, naturalised by man's
agency.

I am far from supposing that all difficulties are removed on the view
here given in regard to the range and affinities of the allied species
which live in the northern and southern temperate zones and on the
mountains of the intertropical regions. Very many difficulties remain
to be solved. I do not pretend to indicate the exact lines and means
of migration, or the reason why certain species and not others have
migrated; why certain species have been modified and have given rise to
new groups of forms, and others have remained unaltered. We cannot hope
to explain such facts, until we can say why one species and not another
becomes naturalised by man's agency in a foreign land; why one ranges
twice or thrice as far, and is twice or thrice as common, as another
species within their own homes.

I have said that many difficulties remain to be solved: some of the
most remarkable are stated with admirable clearness by Dr. Hooker in
his botanical works on the antarctic regions. These cannot be here
discussed. I will only say that as far as regards the occurrence of
identical species at points so enormously remote as Kerguelen Land, New
Zealand, and Fuegia, I believe that towards the close of the Glacial
period, icebergs, as suggested by Lyell, have been largely concerned in
their dispersal. But the existence of several quite distinct species,
belonging to genera exclusively confined to the south, at these and
other distant points of the southern hemisphere, is, on my theory of
descent with modification, a far more remarkable case of difficulty. For
some of these species are so distinct, that we cannot suppose that there
has been time since the commencement of the Glacial period for their
migration, and for their subsequent modification to the necessary
degree. The facts seem to me to indicate that peculiar and very distinct
species have migrated in radiating lines from some common centre; and I
am inclined to look in the southern, as in the northern hemisphere, to a
former and warmer period, before the commencement of the Glacial period,
when the antarctic lands, now covered with ice, supported a highly
peculiar and isolated flora. I suspect that before this flora was
exterminated by the Glacial epoch, a few forms were widely dispersed
to various points of the southern hemisphere by occasional means of
transport, and by the aid, as halting-places, of existing and now sunken
islands, and perhaps at the commencement of the Glacial period, by
icebergs. By these means, as I believe, the southern shores of America,
Australia, New Zealand have become slightly tinted by the same peculiar
forms of vegetable life.

Sir C. Lyell in a striking passage has speculated, in language almost
identical with mine, on the effects of great alternations of climate on
geographical distribution. I believe that the world has recently felt
one of his great cycles of change; and that on this view, combined with
modification through natural selection, a multitude of facts in the
present distribution both of the same and of allied forms of life can be
explained. The living waters may be said to have flowed during one short
period from the north and from the south, and to have crossed at the
equator; but to have flowed with greater force from the north so as
to have freely inundated the south. As the tide leaves its drift in
horizontal lines, though rising higher on the shores where the tide
rises highest, so have the living waters left their living drift on our
mountain-summits, in a line gently rising from the arctic lowlands to
a great height under the equator. The various beings thus left stranded
may be compared with savage races of man, driven up and surviving in the
mountain-fastnesses of almost every land, which serve as a record,
full of interest to us, of the former inhabitants of the surrounding
lowlands.




12. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION--continued.

Distribution of fresh-water productions. On the inhabitants of oceanic
islands. Absence of Batrachians and of terrestrial Mammals. On the
relation of the inhabitants of islands to those of the nearest mainland.
On colonisation from the nearest source with subsequent modification.
Summary of the last and present chapters.

As lakes and river-systems are separated from each other by barriers of
land, it might have been thought that fresh-water productions would not
have ranged widely within the same country, and as the sea is apparently
a still more impassable barrier, that they never would have extended to
distant countries. But the case is exactly the reverse. Not only have
many fresh-water species, belonging to quite different classes, an
enormous range, but allied species prevail in a remarkable manner
throughout the world. I well remember, when first collecting in the
fresh waters of Brazil, feeling much surprise at the similarity of
the fresh-water insects, shells, etc., and at the dissimilarity of the
surrounding terrestrial beings, compared with those of Britain.

But this power in fresh-water productions of ranging widely, though so
unexpected, can, I think, in most cases be explained by their having
become fitted, in a manner highly useful to them, for short and frequent
migrations from pond to pond, or from stream to stream; and liability
to wide dispersal would follow from this capacity as an almost necessary
consequence. We can here consider only a few cases. In regard to fish, I
believe that the same species never occur in the fresh waters of distant
continents. But on the same continent the species often range widely and
almost capriciously; for two river-systems will have some fish in common
and some different. A few facts seem to favour the possibility of their
occasional transport by accidental means; like that of the live fish
not rarely dropped by whirlwinds in India, and the vitality of their
ova when removed from the water. But I am inclined to attribute the
dispersal of fresh-water fish mainly to slight changes within the recent
period in the level of the land, having caused rivers to flow into each
other. Instances, also, could be given of this having occurred during
floods, without any change of level. We have evidence in the loess of
the Rhine of considerable changes of level in the land within a very
recent geological period, and when the surface was peopled by existing
land and fresh-water shells. The wide difference of the fish on opposite
sides of continuous mountain-ranges, which from an early period must
have parted river-systems and completely prevented their inosculation,
seems to lead to this same conclusion. With respect to allied
fresh-water fish occurring at very distant points of the world, no doubt
there are many cases which cannot at present be explained: but some
fresh-water fish belong to very ancient forms, and in such cases
there will have been ample time for great geographical changes, and
consequently time and means for much migration. In the second place,
salt-water fish can with care be slowly accustomed to live in fresh
water; and, according to Valenciennes, there is hardly a single group of
fishes confined exclusively to fresh water, so that we may imagine that
a marine member of a fresh-water group might travel far along the shores
of the sea, and subsequently become modified and adapted to the fresh
waters of a distant land.

Some species of fresh-water shells have a very wide range, and allied
species, which, on my theory, are descended from a common parent and
must have proceeded from a single source, prevail throughout the world.
Their distribution at first perplexed me much, as their ova are not
likely to be transported by birds, and they are immediately killed
by sea water, as are the adults. I could not even understand how some
naturalised species have rapidly spread throughout the same country. But
two facts, which I have observed--and no doubt many others remain to be
observed--throw some light on this subject. When a duck suddenly emerges
from a pond covered with duck-weed, I have twice seen these little
plants adhering to its back; and it has happened to me, in removing
a little duck-weed from one aquarium to another, that I have quite
unintentionally stocked the one with fresh-water shells from the other.
But another agency is perhaps more effectual: I suspended a duck's feet,
which might represent those of a bird sleeping in a natural pond, in
an aquarium, where many ova of fresh-water shells were hatching; and
I found that numbers of the extremely minute and just hatched shells
crawled on the feet, and clung to them so firmly that when taken out
of the water they could not be jarred off, though at a somewhat more
advanced age they would voluntarily drop off. These just hatched
molluscs, though aquatic in their nature, survived on the duck's feet,
in damp air, from twelve to twenty hours; and in this length of time a
duck or heron might fly at least six or seven hundred miles, and would
be sure to alight on a pool or rivulet, if blown across sea to an
oceanic island or to any other distant point. Sir Charles Lyell also
informs me that a Dyticus has been caught with an Ancylus (a fresh-water
shell like a limpet) firmly adhering to it; and a water-beetle of
the same family, a Colymbetes, once flew on board the 'Beagle,' when
forty-five miles distant from the nearest land: how much farther it
might have flown with a favouring gale no one can tell.

With respect to plants, it has long been known what enormous ranges many
fresh-water and even marsh-species have, both over continents and to the
most remote oceanic islands. This is strikingly shown, as remarked by
Alph. de Candolle, in large groups of terrestrial plants, which have
only a very few aquatic members; for these latter seem immediately to
acquire, as if in consequence, a very wide range. I think favourable
means of dispersal explain this fact. I have before mentioned that earth
occasionally, though rarely, adheres in some quantity to the feet and
beaks of birds. Wading birds, which frequent the muddy edges of ponds,
if suddenly flushed, would be the most likely to have muddy feet.
Birds of this order I can show are the greatest wanderers, and are
occasionally found on the most remote and barren islands in the open
ocean; they would not be likely to alight on the surface of the sea, so
that the dirt would not be washed off their feet; when making land,
they would be sure to fly to their natural fresh-water haunts. I do not
believe that botanists are aware how charged the mud of ponds is with
seeds: I have tried several little experiments, but will here give only
the most striking case: I took in February three table-spoonfuls of
mud from three different points, beneath water, on the edge of a little
pond; this mud when dry weighed only 6 3/4 ounces; I kept it covered
up in my study for six months, pulling up and counting each plant as it
grew; the plants were of many kinds, and were altogether 537 in number;
and yet the viscid mud was all contained in a breakfast cup! Considering
these facts, I think it would be an inexplicable circumstance if
water-birds did not transport the seeds of fresh-water plants to vast
distances, and if consequently the range of these plants was not very
great. The same agency may have come into play with the eggs of some of
the smaller fresh-water animals.

Other and unknown agencies probably have also played a part. I have
stated that fresh-water fish eat some kinds of seeds, though they reject
many other kinds after having swallowed them; even small fish swallow
seeds of moderate size, as of the yellow water-lily and Potamogeton.
Herons and other birds, century after century, have gone on daily
devouring fish; they then take flight and go to other waters, or are
blown across the sea; and we have seen that seeds retain their power
of germination, when rejected in pellets or in excrement, many hours
afterwards. When I saw the great size of the seeds of that fine
water-lily, the Nelumbium, and remembered Alph. de Candolle's remarks
on this plant, I thought that its distribution must remain quite
inexplicable; but Audubon states that he found the seeds of the great
southern water-lily (probably, according to Dr. Hooker, the Nelumbium
luteum) in a heron's stomach; although I do not know the fact, yet
analogy makes me believe that a heron flying to another pond and getting
a hearty meal of fish, would probably reject from its stomach a pellet
containing the seeds of the Nelumbium undigested; or the seeds might be
dropped by the bird whilst feeding its young, in the same way as fish
are known sometimes to be dropped.

In considering these several means of distribution, it should be
remembered that when a pond or stream is first formed, for instance,
on a rising islet, it will be unoccupied; and a single seed or egg
will have a good chance of succeeding. Although there will always be a
struggle for life between the individuals of the species, however
few, already occupying any pond, yet as the number of kinds is small,
compared with those on the land, the competition will probably be less
severe between aquatic than between terrestrial species; consequently
an intruder from the waters of a foreign country, would have a better
chance of seizing on a place, than in the case of terrestrial colonists.
We should, also, remember that some, perhaps many, fresh-water
productions are low in the scale of nature, and that we have reason to
believe that such low beings change or become modified less quickly
than the high; and this will give longer time than the average for
the migration of the same aquatic species. We should not forget the
probability of many species having formerly ranged as continuously as
fresh-water productions ever can range, over immense areas, and having
subsequently become extinct in intermediate regions. But the wide
distribution of fresh-water plants and of the lower animals, whether
retaining the same identical form or in some degree modified, I believe
mainly depends on the wide dispersal of their seeds and eggs by animals,
more especially by fresh-water birds, which have large powers of flight,
and naturally travel from one to another and often distant piece of
water. Nature, like a careful gardener, thus takes her seeds from a bed
of a particular nature, and drops them in another equally well fitted
for them.

ON THE INHABITANTS OF OCEANIC ISLANDS.

We now come to the last of the three classes of facts, which I have
selected as presenting the greatest amount of difficulty, on the view
that all the individuals both of the same and of allied species have
descended from a single parent; and therefore have all proceeded from a
common birthplace, notwithstanding that in the course of time they have
come to inhabit distant points of the globe. I have already stated that
I cannot honestly admit Forbes's view on continental extensions, which,
if legitimately followed out, would lead to the belief that within the
recent period all existing islands have been nearly or quite joined to
some continent. This view would remove many difficulties, but it would
not, I think, explain all the facts in regard to insular productions. In
the following remarks I shall not confine myself to the mere question of
dispersal; but shall consider some other facts, which bear on the
truth of the two theories of independent creation and of descent with
modification.

The species of all kinds which inhabit oceanic islands are few in number
compared with those on equal continental areas: Alph. de Candolle admits
this for plants, and Wollaston for insects. If we look to the large
size and varied stations of New Zealand, extending over 780 miles of
latitude, and compare its flowering plants, only 750 in number, with
those on an equal area at the Cape of Good Hope or in Australia,
we must, I think, admit that something quite independently of any
difference in physical conditions has caused so great a difference in
number. Even the uniform county of Cambridge has 847 plants, and the
little island of Anglesea 764, but a few ferns and a few introduced
plants are included in these numbers, and the comparison in some other
respects is not quite fair. We have evidence that the barren island of
Ascension aboriginally possessed under half-a-dozen flowering plants;
yet many have become naturalised on it, as they have on New Zealand and
on every other oceanic island which can be named. In St. Helena there is
reason to believe that the naturalised plants and animals have nearly or
quite exterminated many native productions. He who admits the doctrine
of the creation of each separate species, will have to admit, that a
sufficient number of the best adapted plants and animals have not been
created on oceanic islands; for man has unintentionally stocked them
from various sources far more fully and perfectly than has nature.

Although in oceanic islands the number of kinds of inhabitants is
scanty, the proportion of endemic species (i.e. those found nowhere else
in the world) is often extremely large. If we compare, for instance, the
number of the endemic land-shells in Madeira, or of the endemic birds in
the Galapagos Archipelago, with the number found on any continent, and
then compare the area of the islands with that of the continent, we
shall see that this is true. This fact might have been expected on my
theory, for, as already explained, species occasionally arriving after
long intervals in a new and isolated district, and having to compete
with new associates, will be eminently liable to modification, and
will often produce groups of modified descendants. But it by no means
follows, that, because in an island nearly all the species of one class
are peculiar, those of another class, or of another section of the same
class, are peculiar; and this difference seems to depend on the species
which do not become modified having immigrated with facility and in a
body, so that their mutual relations have not been much disturbed. Thus
in the Galapagos Islands nearly every land-bird, but only two out of the
eleven marine birds, are peculiar; and it is obvious that marine birds
could arrive at these islands more easily than land-birds. Bermuda, on
the other hand, which lies at about the same distance from North America
as the Galapagos Islands do from South America, and which has a very
peculiar soil, does not possess one endemic land bird; and we know from
Mr. J. M. Jones's admirable account of Bermuda, that very many North
American birds, during their great annual migrations, visit either
periodically or occasionally this island. Madeira does not possess one
peculiar bird, and many European and African birds are almost every year
blown there, as I am informed by Mr. E. V. Harcourt. So that these two
islands of Bermuda and Madeira have been stocked by birds, which for
long ages have struggled together in their former homes, and have become
mutually adapted to each other; and when settled in their new homes,
each kind will have been kept by the others to their proper places and
habits, and will consequently have been little liable to modification.
Madeira, again, is inhabited by a wonderful number of peculiar
land-shells, whereas not one species of sea-shell is confined to its
shores: now, though we do not know how seashells are dispersed, yet
we can see that their eggs or larvae, perhaps attached to seaweed or
floating timber, or to the feet of wading-birds, might be transported
far more easily than land-shells, across three or four hundred miles of
open sea. The different orders of insects in Madeira apparently present
analogous facts.

Oceanic islands are sometimes deficient in certain classes, and
their places are apparently occupied by the other inhabitants; in the
Galapagos Islands reptiles, and in New Zealand gigantic wingless birds,
take the place of mammals. In the plants of the Galapagos Islands, Dr.
Hooker has shown that the proportional numbers of the different
orders are very different from what they are elsewhere. Such cases are
generally accounted for by the physical conditions of the islands;
but this explanation seems to me not a little doubtful. Facility of
immigration, I believe, has been at least as important as the nature of
the conditions.

Many remarkable little facts could be given with respect to the
inhabitants of remote islands. For instance, in certain islands not
tenanted by mammals, some of the endemic plants have beautifully hooked
seeds; yet few relations are more striking than the adaptation of hooked
seeds for transportal by the wool and fur of quadrupeds. This
case presents no difficulty on my view, for a hooked seed might be
transported to an island by some other means; and the plant then
becoming slightly modified, but still retaining its hooked seeds,
would form an endemic species, having as useless an appendage as any
rudimentary organ,--for instance, as the shrivelled wings under the
soldered elytra of many insular beetles. Again, islands often possess
trees or bushes belonging to orders which elsewhere include only
herbaceous species; now trees, as Alph. de Candolle has shown, generally
have, whatever the cause may be, confined ranges. Hence trees would be
little likely to reach distant oceanic islands; and an herbaceous plant,
though it would have no chance of successfully competing in stature
with a fully developed tree, when established on an island and having to
compete with herbaceous plants alone, might readily gain an advantage
by growing taller and taller and overtopping the other plants. If so,
natural selection would often tend to add to the stature of herbaceous
plants when growing on an island, to whatever order they belonged, and
thus convert them first into bushes and ultimately into trees.

With respect to the absence of whole orders on oceanic islands, Bory St.
Vincent long ago remarked that Batrachians (frogs, toads, newts) have
never been found on any of the many islands with which the great oceans
are studded. I have taken pains to verify this assertion, and I have
found it strictly true. I have, however, been assured that a frog exists
on the mountains of the great island of New Zealand; but I suspect that
this exception (if the information be correct) may be explained through
glacial agency. This general absence of frogs, toads, and newts on
so many oceanic islands cannot be accounted for by their physical
conditions; indeed it seems that islands are peculiarly well fitted for
these animals; for frogs have been introduced into Madeira, the Azores,
and Mauritius, and have multiplied so as to become a nuisance. But as
these animals and their spawn are known to be immediately killed by
sea-water, on my view we can see that there would be great difficulty in
their transportal across the sea, and therefore why they do not exist on
any oceanic island. But why, on the theory of creation, they should not
have been created there, it would be very difficult to explain.

Mammals offer another and similar case. I have carefully searched the
oldest voyages, but have not finished my search; as yet I have not found
a single instance, free from doubt, of a terrestrial mammal (excluding
domesticated animals kept by the natives) inhabiting an island situated
above 300 miles from a continent or great continental island; and
many islands situated at a much less distance are equally barren. The
Falkland Islands, which are inhabited by a wolf-like fox, come nearest
to an exception; but this group cannot be considered as oceanic, as it
lies on a bank connected with the mainland; moreover, icebergs formerly
brought boulders to its western shores, and they may have formerly
transported foxes, as so frequently now happens in the arctic regions.
Yet it cannot be said that small islands will not support small mammals,
for they occur in many parts of the world on very small islands, if
close to a continent; and hardly an island can be named on which our
smaller quadrupeds have not become naturalised and greatly multiplied.
It cannot be said, on the ordinary view of creation, that there has
not been time for the creation of mammals; many volcanic islands are
sufficiently ancient, as shown by the stupendous degradation which they
have suffered and by their tertiary strata: there has also been time
for the production of endemic species belonging to other classes; and on
continents it is thought that mammals appear and disappear at a quicker
rate than other and lower animals. Though terrestrial mammals do not
occur on oceanic islands, aerial mammals do occur on almost every
island. New Zealand possesses two bats found nowhere else in the world:
Norfolk Island, the Viti Archipelago, the Bonin Islands, the Caroline
and Marianne Archipelagoes, and Mauritius, all possess their peculiar
bats. Why, it may be asked, has the supposed creative force produced
bats and no other mammals on remote islands? On my view this question
can easily be answered; for no terrestrial mammal can be transported
across a wide space of sea, but bats can fly across. Bats have been seen
wandering by day far over the Atlantic Ocean; and two North American
species either regularly or occasionally visit Bermuda, at the distance
of 600 miles from the mainland. I hear from Mr. Tomes, who has specially
studied this family, that many of the same species have enormous ranges,
and are found on continents and on far distant islands. Hence we have
only to suppose that such wandering species have been modified through
natural selection in their new homes in relation to their new position,
and we can understand the presence of endemic bats on islands, with the
absence of all terrestrial mammals.

Besides the absence of terrestrial mammals in relation to the remoteness
of islands from continents, there is also a relation, to a certain
extent independent of distance, between the depth of the sea separating
an island from the neighbouring mainland, and the presence in both of
the same mammiferous species or of allied species in a more or less
modified condition. Mr. Windsor Earl has made some striking observations
on this head in regard to the great Malay Archipelago, which is
traversed near Celebes by a space of deep ocean; and this space
separates two widely distinct mammalian faunas. On either side the
islands are situated on moderately deep submarine banks, and they are
inhabited by closely allied or identical quadrupeds. No doubt some few
anomalies occur in this great archipelago, and there is much difficulty
in forming a judgment in some cases owing to the probable naturalisation
of certain mammals through man's agency; but we shall soon have much
light thrown on the natural history of this archipelago by the admirable
zeal and researches of Mr. Wallace. I have not as yet had time to follow
up this subject in all other quarters of the world; but as far as I have
gone, the relation generally holds good. We see Britain separated by a
shallow channel from Europe, and the mammals are the same on both
sides; we meet with analogous facts on many islands separated by similar
channels from Australia. The West Indian Islands stand on a deeply
submerged bank, nearly 1000 fathoms in depth, and here we find American
forms, but the species and even the genera are distinct. As the amount
of modification in all cases depends to a certain degree on the lapse
of time, and as during changes of level it is obvious that islands
separated by shallow channels are more likely to have been continuously
united within a recent period to the mainland than islands separated
by deeper channels, we can understand the frequent relation between the
depth of the sea and the degree of affinity of the mammalian inhabitants
of islands with those of a neighbouring continent,--an inexplicable
relation on the view of independent acts of creation.

All the foregoing remarks on the inhabitants of oceanic
islands,--namely, the scarcity of kinds--the richness in endemic forms
in particular classes or sections of classes,--the absence of whole
groups, as of batrachians, and of terrestrial mammals notwithstanding
the presence of aerial bats,--the singular proportions of certain
orders of plants,--herbaceous forms having been developed into trees,
etc.,--seem to me to accord better with the view of occasional means of
transport having been largely efficient in the long course of time, than
with the view of all our oceanic islands having been formerly connected
by continuous land with the nearest continent; for on this latter
view the migration would probably have been more complete; and if
modification be admitted, all the forms of life would have been more
equally modified, in accordance with the paramount importance of the
relation of organism to organism.

I do not deny that there are many and grave difficulties in
understanding how several of the inhabitants of the more remote islands,
whether still retaining the same specific form or modified since their
arrival, could have reached their present homes. But the probability of
many islands having existed as halting-places, of which not a wreck now
remains, must not be overlooked. I will here give a single instance of
one of the cases of difficulty. Almost all oceanic islands, even the
most isolated and smallest, are inhabited by land-shells, generally by
endemic species, but sometimes by species found elsewhere. Dr. Aug. A.
Gould has given several interesting cases in regard to the land-shells
of the islands of the Pacific. Now it is notorious that land-shells are
very easily killed by salt; their eggs, at least such as I have tried,
sink in sea-water and are killed by it. Yet there must be, on my view,
some unknown, but highly efficient means for their transportal. Would
the just-hatched young occasionally crawl on and adhere to the feet of
birds roosting on the ground, and thus get transported? It occurred to
me that land-shells, when hybernating and having a membranous diaphragm
over the mouth of the shell, might be floated in chinks of drifted
timber across moderately wide arms of the sea. And I found that several
species did in this state withstand uninjured an immersion in sea-water
during seven days: one of these shells was the Helix pomatia, and after
it had again hybernated I put it in sea-water for twenty days, and it
perfectly recovered. As this species has a thick calcareous operculum,
I removed it, and when it had formed a new membranous one, I immersed it
for fourteen days in sea-water, and it recovered and crawled away:
but more experiments are wanted on this head. The most striking and
important fact for us in regard to the inhabitants of islands, is their
affinity to those of the nearest mainland, without being actually the
same species. Numerous instances could be given of this fact. I will
give only one, that of the Galapagos Archipelago, situated under the
equator, between 500 and 600 miles from the shores of South America.
Here almost every product of the land and water bears the unmistakeable
stamp of the American continent. There are twenty-six land birds,
and twenty-five of these are ranked by Mr. Gould as distinct species,
supposed to have been created here; yet the close affinity of most of
these birds to American species in every character, in their habits,
gestures, and tones of voice, was manifest. So it is with the other
animals, and with nearly all the plants, as shown by Dr. Hooker in
his admirable memoir on the Flora of this archipelago. The naturalist,
looking at the inhabitants of these volcanic islands in the Pacific,
distant several hundred miles from the continent, yet feels that he is
standing on American land. Why should this be so? why should the species
which are supposed to have been created in the Galapagos Archipelago,
and nowhere else, bear so plain a stamp of affinity to those created in
America? There is nothing in the conditions of life, in the geological
nature of the islands, in their height or climate, or in the proportions
in which the several classes are associated together, which resembles
closely the conditions of the South American coast: in fact there is
a considerable dissimilarity in all these respects. On the other hand,
there is a considerable degree of resemblance in the volcanic nature
of the soil, in climate, height, and size of the islands, between
the Galapagos and Cape de Verde Archipelagos: but what an entire and
absolute difference in their inhabitants! The inhabitants of the Cape
de Verde Islands are related to those of Africa, like those of the
Galapagos to America. I believe this grand fact can receive no sort of
explanation on the ordinary view of independent creation; whereas on the
view here maintained, it is obvious that the Galapagos Islands would be
likely to receive colonists, whether by occasional means of transport or
by formerly continuous land, from America; and the Cape de Verde
Islands from Africa; and that such colonists would be liable to
modification;--the principle of inheritance still betraying their
original birthplace.

Many analogous facts could be given: indeed it is an almost universal
rule that the endemic productions of islands are related to those of the
nearest continent, or of other near islands. The exceptions are few, and
most of them can be explained. Thus the plants of Kerguelen Land, though
standing nearer to Africa than to America, are related, and that very
closely, as we know from Dr. Hooker's account, to those of America: but
on the view that this island has been mainly stocked by seeds brought
with earth and stones on icebergs, drifted by the prevailing currents,
this anomaly disappears. New Zealand in its endemic plants is much more
closely related to Australia, the nearest mainland, than to any other
region: and this is what might have been expected; but it is also
plainly related to South America, which, although the next nearest
continent, is so enormously remote, that the fact becomes an anomaly.
But this difficulty almost disappears on the view that both New Zealand,
South America, and other southern lands were long ago partially stocked
from a nearly intermediate though distant point, namely from the
antarctic islands, when they were clothed with vegetation, before the
commencement of the Glacial period. The affinity, which, though
feeble, I am assured by Dr. Hooker is real, between the flora of the
south-western corner of Australia and of the Cape of Good Hope, is a far
more remarkable case, and is at present inexplicable: but this affinity
is confined to the plants, and will, I do not doubt, be some day
explained.

The law which causes the inhabitants of an archipelago, though
specifically distinct, to be closely allied to those of the nearest
continent, we sometimes see displayed on a small scale, yet in a most
interesting manner, within the limits of the same archipelago. Thus the
several islands of the Galapagos Archipelago are tenanted, as I have
elsewhere shown, in a quite marvellous manner, by very closely related
species; so that the inhabitants of each separate island, though mostly
distinct, are related in an incomparably closer degree to each other
than to the inhabitants of any other part of the world. And this is just
what might have been expected on my view, for the islands are situated
so near each other that they would almost certainly receive
immigrants from the same original source, or from each other. But this
dissimilarity between the endemic inhabitants of the islands may be
used as an argument against my views; for it may be asked, how has it
happened in the several islands situated within sight of each other,
having the same geological nature, the same height, climate, etc., that
many of the immigrants should have been differently modified, though
only in a small degree. This long appeared to me a great difficulty: but
it arises in chief part from the deeply-seated error of considering
the physical conditions of a country as the most important for its
inhabitants; whereas it cannot, I think, be disputed that the nature of
the other inhabitants, with which each has to compete, is at least as
important, and generally a far more important element of success. Now
if we look to those inhabitants of the Galapagos Archipelago which are
found in other parts of the world (laying on one side for the moment
the endemic species, which cannot be here fairly included, as we are
considering how they have come to be modified since their arrival), we
find a considerable amount of difference in the several islands. This
difference might indeed have been expected on the view of the islands
having been stocked by occasional means of transport--a seed, for
instance, of one plant having been brought to one island, and that of
another plant to another island. Hence when in former times an immigrant
settled on any one or more of the islands, or when it subsequently
spread from one island to another, it would undoubtedly be exposed to
different conditions of life in the different islands, for it would
have to compete with different sets of organisms: a plant, for instance,
would find the best-fitted ground more perfectly occupied by distinct
plants in one island than in another, and it would be exposed to the
attacks of somewhat different enemies. If then it varied, natural
selection would probably favour different varieties in the different
islands. Some species, however, might spread and yet retain the same
character throughout the group, just as we see on continents some
species spreading widely and remaining the same.

The really surprising fact in this case of the Galapagos Archipelago,
and in a lesser degree in some analogous instances, is that the new
species formed in the separate islands have not quickly spread to the
other islands. But the islands, though in sight of each other, are
separated by deep arms of the sea, in most cases wider than the British
Channel, and there is no reason to suppose that they have at any former
period been continuously united. The currents of the sea are rapid and
sweep across the archipelago, and gales of wind are extraordinarily
rare; so that the islands are far more effectually separated from each
other than they appear to be on a map. Nevertheless a good many species,
both those found in other parts of the world and those confined to the
archipelago, are common to the several islands, and we may infer from
certain facts that these have probably spread from some one island
to the others. But we often take, I think, an erroneous view of the
probability of closely allied species invading each other's territory,
when put into free intercommunication. Undoubtedly if one species has
any advantage whatever over another, it will in a very brief time wholly
or in part supplant it; but if both are equally well fitted for their
own places in nature, both probably will hold their own places and keep
separate for almost any length of time. Being familiar with the fact
that many species, naturalised through man's agency, have spread with
astonishing rapidity over new countries, we are apt to infer that most
species would thus spread; but we should remember that the forms which
become naturalised in new countries are not generally closely allied to
the aboriginal inhabitants, but are very distinct species, belonging in
a large proportion of cases, as shown by Alph. de Candolle, to distinct
genera. In the Galapagos Archipelago, many even of the birds, though
so well adapted for flying from island to island, are distinct on each;
thus there are three closely-allied species of mocking-thrush, each
confined to its own island. Now let us suppose the mocking-thrush
of Chatham Island to be blown to Charles Island, which has its own
mocking-thrush: why should it succeed in establishing itself there?
We may safely infer that Charles Island is well stocked with its own
species, for annually more eggs are laid there than can possibly be
reared; and we may infer that the mocking-thrush peculiar to Charles
Island is at least as well fitted for its home as is the species
peculiar to Chatham Island. Sir C. Lyell and Mr. Wollaston have
communicated to me a remarkable fact bearing on this subject; namely,
that Madeira and the adjoining islet of Porto Santo possess many
distinct but representative land-shells, some of which live in
crevices of stone; and although large quantities of stone are annually
transported from Porto Santo to Madeira, yet this latter island has not
become colonised by the Porto Santo species: nevertheless both islands
have been colonised by some European land-shells, which no doubt had
some advantage over the indigenous species. From these considerations
I think we need not greatly marvel at the endemic and representative
species, which inhabit the several islands of the Galapagos Archipelago,
not having universally spread from island to island. In many other
instances, as in the several districts of the same continent,
pre-occupation has probably played an important part in checking the
commingling of species under the same conditions of life. Thus, the
south-east and south-west corners of Australia have nearly the same
physical conditions, and are united by continuous land, yet they are
inhabited by a vast number of distinct mammals, birds, and plants.

The principle which determines the general character of the fauna
and flora of oceanic islands, namely, that the inhabitants, when not
identically the same, yet are plainly related to the inhabitants of
that region whence colonists could most readily have been derived,--the
colonists having been subsequently modified and better fitted to their
new homes,--is of the widest application throughout nature. We see
this on every mountain, in every lake and marsh. For Alpine species,
excepting in so far as the same forms, chiefly of plants, have spread
widely throughout the world during the recent Glacial epoch, are related
to those of the surrounding lowlands;--thus we have in South America,
Alpine humming-birds, Alpine rodents, Alpine plants, etc., all of
strictly American forms, and it is obvious that a mountain, as it became
slowly upheaved, would naturally be colonised from the surrounding
lowlands. So it is with the inhabitants of lakes and marshes, excepting
in so far as great facility of transport has given the same general
forms to the whole world. We see this same principle in the blind
animals inhabiting the caves of America and of Europe. Other analogous
facts could be given. And it will, I believe, be universally found to
be true, that wherever in two regions, let them be ever so distant, many
closely allied or representative species occur, there will likewise be
found some identical species, showing, in accordance with the foregoing
view, that at some former period there has been intercommunication or
migration between the two regions. And wherever many closely-allied
species occur, there will be found many forms which some naturalists
rank as distinct species, and some as varieties; these doubtful forms
showing us the steps in the process of modification.

This relation between the power and extent of migration of a species,
either at the present time or at some former period under different
physical conditions, and the existence at remote points of the world of
other species allied to it, is shown in another and more general way.
Mr. Gould remarked to me long ago, that in those genera of birds which
range over the world, many of the species have very wide ranges. I
can hardly doubt that this rule is generally true, though it would be
difficult to prove it. Amongst mammals, we see it strikingly displayed
in Bats, and in a lesser degree in the Felidae and Canidae. We see it,
if we compare the distribution of butterflies and beetles. So it is with
most fresh-water productions, in which so many genera range over the
world, and many individual species have enormous ranges. It is not meant
that in world-ranging genera all the species have a wide range, or even
that they have on an AVERAGE a wide range; but only that some of the
species range very widely; for the facility with which widely-ranging
species vary and give rise to new forms will largely determine their
average range. For instance, two varieties of the same species inhabit
America and Europe, and the species thus has an immense range; but, if
the variation had been a little greater, the two varieties would have
been ranked as distinct species, and the common range would have been
greatly reduced. Still less is it meant, that a species which apparently
has the capacity of crossing barriers and ranging widely, as in the case
of certain powerfully-winged birds, will necessarily range widely; for
we should never forget that to range widely implies not only the power
of crossing barriers, but the more important power of being victorious
in distant lands in the struggle for life with foreign associates. But
on the view of all the species of a genus having descended from a single
parent, though now distributed to the most remote points of the world,
we ought to find, and I believe as a general rule we do find, that some
at least of the species range very widely; for it is necessary that the
unmodified parent should range widely, undergoing modification during
its diffusion, and should place itself under diverse conditions
favourable for the conversion of its offspring, firstly into new
varieties and ultimately into new species.

In considering the wide distribution of certain genera, we should bear
in mind that some are extremely ancient, and must have branched off from
a common parent at a remote epoch; so that in such cases there will
have been ample time for great climatal and geographical changes and for
accidents of transport; and consequently for the migration of some of
the species into all quarters of the world, where they may have become
slightly modified in relation to their new conditions. There is, also,
some reason to believe from geological evidence that organisms low in
the scale within each great class, generally change at a slower rate
than the higher forms; and consequently the lower forms will have had a
better chance of ranging widely and of still retaining the same specific
character. This fact, together with the seeds and eggs of many low forms
being very minute and better fitted for distant transportation, probably
accounts for a law which has long been observed, and which has lately
been admirably discussed by Alph. de Candolle in regard to plants,
namely, that the lower any group of organisms is, the more widely it is
apt to range.

The relations just discussed,--namely, low and slowly-changing
organisms ranging more widely than the high,--some of the species of
widely-ranging genera themselves ranging widely,--such facts, as alpine,
lacustrine, and marsh productions being related (with the exceptions
before specified) to those on the surrounding low lands and dry lands,
though these stations are so different--the very close relation of the
distinct species which inhabit the islets of the same archipelago,--and
especially the striking relation of the inhabitants of each whole
archipelago or island to those of the nearest mainland,--are, I think,
utterly inexplicable on the ordinary view of the independent creation
of each species, but are explicable on the view of colonisation from the
nearest and readiest source, together with the subsequent modification
and better adaptation of the colonists to their new homes.

SUMMARY OF LAST AND PRESENT CHAPTERS.

In these chapters I have endeavoured to show, that if we make due
allowance for our ignorance of the full effects of all the changes of
climate and of the level of the land, which have certainly occurred
within the recent period, and of other similar changes which may have
occurred within the same period; if we remember how profoundly ignorant
we are with respect to the many and curious means of occasional
transport,--a subject which has hardly ever been properly experimentised
on; if we bear in mind how often a species may have ranged continuously
over a wide area, and then have become extinct in the intermediate
tracts, I think the difficulties in believing that all the individuals
of the same species, wherever located, have descended from the same
parents, are not insuperable. And we are led to this conclusion, which
has been arrived at by many naturalists under the designation of single
centres of creation, by some general considerations, more especially
from the importance of barriers and from the analogical distribution of
sub-genera, genera, and families.

With respect to the distinct species of the same genus, which on my
theory must have spread from one parent-source; if we make the same
allowances as before for our ignorance, and remember that some forms of
life change most slowly, enormous periods of time being thus granted for
their migration, I do not think that the difficulties are insuperable;
though they often are in this case, and in that of the individuals of
the same species, extremely grave.

As exemplifying the effects of climatal changes on distribution, I have
attempted to show how important has been the influence of the modern
Glacial period, which I am fully convinced simultaneously affected
the whole world, or at least great meridional belts. As showing how
diversified are the means of occasional transport, I have discussed at
some little length the means of dispersal of fresh-water productions.

If the difficulties be not insuperable in admitting that in the long
course of time the individuals of the same species, and likewise of
allied species, have proceeded from some one source; then I think all
the grand leading facts of geographical distribution are explicable on
the theory of migration (generally of the more dominant forms of life),
together with subsequent modification and the multiplication of new
forms. We can thus understand the high importance of barriers, whether
of land or water, which separate our several zoological and botanical
provinces. We can thus understand the localisation of sub-genera,
genera, and families; and how it is that under different latitudes, for
instance in South America, the inhabitants of the plains and mountains,
of the forests, marshes, and deserts, are in so mysterious a manner
linked together by affinity, and are likewise linked to the extinct
beings which formerly inhabited the same continent. Bearing in mind
that the mutual relations of organism to organism are of the highest
importance, we can see why two areas having nearly the same physical
conditions should often be inhabited by very different forms of
life; for according to the length of time which has elapsed since
new inhabitants entered one region; according to the nature of the
communication which allowed certain forms and not others to enter,
either in greater or lesser numbers; according or not, as those which
entered happened to come in more or less direct competition with each
other and with the aborigines; and according as the immigrants were
capable of varying more or less rapidly, there would ensue in different
regions, independently of their physical conditions, infinitely
diversified conditions of life,--there would be an almost endless amount
of organic action and reaction,--and we should find, as we do find,
some groups of beings greatly, and some only slightly modified,--some
developed in great force, some existing in scanty numbers--in the
different great geographical provinces of the world.

On these same principles, we can understand, as I have endeavoured to
show, why oceanic islands should have few inhabitants, but of these a
great number should be endemic or peculiar; and why, in relation to the
means of migration, one group of beings, even within the same class,
should have all its species endemic, and another group should have all
its species common to other quarters of the world. We can see why whole
groups of organisms, as batrachians and terrestrial mammals, should be
absent from oceanic islands, whilst the most isolated islands possess
their own peculiar species of aerial mammals or bats. We can see why
there should be some relation between the presence of mammals, in a more
or less modified condition, and the depth of the sea between an island
and the mainland. We can clearly see why all the inhabitants of an
archipelago, though specifically distinct on the several islets, should
be closely related to each other, and likewise be related, but less
closely, to those of the nearest continent or other source whence
immigrants were probably derived. We can see why in two areas, however
distant from each other, there should be a correlation, in the presence
of identical species, of varieties, of doubtful species, and of distinct
but representative species.

As the late Edward Forbes often insisted, there is a striking
parallelism in the laws of life throughout time and space: the laws
governing the succession of forms in past times being nearly the same
with those governing at the present time the differences in different
areas. We see this in many facts. The endurance of each species and
group of species is continuous in time; for the exceptions to the rule
are so few, that they may fairly be attributed to our not having as
yet discovered in an intermediate deposit the forms which are therein
absent, but which occur above and below: so in space, it certainly is
the general rule that the area inhabited by a single species, or by a
group of species, is continuous; and the exceptions, which are not rare,
may, as I have attempted to show, be accounted for by migration at
some former period under different conditions or by occasional means of
transport, and by the species having become extinct in the intermediate
tracts. Both in time and space, species and groups of species have their
points of maximum development. Groups of species, belonging either to a
certain period of time, or to a certain area, are often characterised by
trifling characters in common, as of sculpture or colour. In looking
to the long succession of ages, as in now looking to distant provinces
throughout the world, we find that some organisms differ little, whilst
others belonging to a different class, or to a different order, or even
only to a different family of the same order, differ greatly. In both
time and space the lower members of each class generally change less
than the higher; but there are in both cases marked exceptions to the
rule. On my theory these several relations throughout time and space
are intelligible; for whether we look to the forms of life which have
changed during successive ages within the same quarter of the world, or
to those which have changed after having migrated into distant quarters,
in both cases the forms within each class have been connected by the
same bond of ordinary generation; and the more nearly any two forms are
related in blood, the nearer they will generally stand to each other in
time and space; in both cases the laws of variation have been the same,
and modifications have been accumulated by the same power of natural
selection.




13. MUTUAL AFFINITIES OF ORGANIC BEINGS: MORPHOLOGY:
EMBRYOLOGY: RUDIMENTARY ORGANS.

CLASSIFICATION, groups subordinate to groups. Natural system. Rules and
difficulties in classification, explained on the theory of descent
with modification. Classification of varieties. Descent always used in
classification. Analogical or adaptive characters. Affinities, general,
complex and radiating. Extinction separates and defines groups.
MORPHOLOGY, between members of the same class, between parts of the same
individual. EMBRYOLOGY, laws of, explained by variations not supervening
at an early age, and being inherited at a corresponding age. RUDIMENTARY
ORGANS; their origin explained. Summary.

From the first dawn of life, all organic beings are found to resemble
each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups
under groups. This classification is evidently not arbitrary like the
grouping of the stars in constellations. The existence of groups would
have been of simple signification, if one group had been exclusively
fitted to inhabit the land, and another the water; one to feed on flesh,
another on vegetable matter, and so on; but the case is widely different
in nature; for it is notorious how commonly members of even the same
subgroup have different habits. In our second and fourth chapters, on
Variation and on Natural Selection, I have attempted to show that it is
the widely ranging, the much diffused and common, that is the dominant
species belonging to the larger genera, which vary most. The varieties,
or incipient species, thus produced ultimately become converted, as I
believe, into new and distinct species; and these, on the principle
of inheritance, tend to produce other new and dominant species.
Consequently the groups which are now large, and which generally include
many dominant species, tend to go on increasing indefinitely in size.
I further attempted to show that from the varying descendants of each
species trying to occupy as many and as different places as possible in
the economy of nature, there is a constant tendency in their characters
to diverge. This conclusion was supported by looking at the great
diversity of the forms of life which, in any small area, come into the
closest competition, and by looking to certain facts in naturalisation.

I attempted also to show that there is a constant tendency in the forms
which are increasing in number and diverging in character, to supplant
and exterminate the less divergent, the less improved, and preceding
forms. I request the reader to turn to the diagram illustrating the
action, as formerly explained, of these several principles; and he
will see that the inevitable result is that the modified descendants
proceeding from one progenitor become broken up into groups subordinate
to groups. In the diagram each letter on the uppermost line may
represent a genus including several species; and all the genera on this
line form together one class, for all have descended from one ancient
but unseen parent, and, consequently, have inherited something in
common. But the three genera on the left hand have, on this same
principle, much in common, and form a sub-family, distinct from that
including the next two genera on the right hand, which diverged from a
common parent at the fifth stage of descent. These five genera have also
much, though less, in common; and they form a family distinct from
that including the three genera still further to the right hand, which
diverged at a still earlier period. And all these genera, descended from
(A), form an order distinct from the genera descended from (I). So that
we here have many species descended from a single progenitor grouped
into genera; and the genera are included in, or subordinate to,
sub-families, families, and orders, all united into one class. Thus, the
grand fact in natural history of the subordination of group under group,
which, from its familiarity, does not always sufficiently strike us, is
in my judgment fully explained.

Naturalists try to arrange the species, genera, and families in each
class, on what is called the Natural System. But what is meant by
this system? Some authors look at it merely as a scheme for arranging
together those living objects which are most alike, and for separating
those which are most unlike; or as an artificial means for enunciating,
as briefly as possible, general propositions,--that is, by one sentence
to give the characters common, for instance, to all mammals, by another
those common to all carnivora, by another those common to the dog-genus,
and then by adding a single sentence, a full description is given
of each kind of dog. The ingenuity and utility of this system are
indisputable. But many naturalists think that something more is meant
by the Natural System; they believe that it reveals the plan of the
Creator; but unless it be specified whether order in time or space,
or what else is meant by the plan of the Creator, it seems to me that
nothing is thus added to our knowledge. Such expressions as that
famous one of Linnaeus, and which we often meet with in a more or less
concealed form, that the characters do not make the genus, but that
the genus gives the characters, seem to imply that something more is
included in our classification, than mere resemblance. I believe that
something more is included; and that propinquity of descent,--the only
known cause of the similarity of organic beings,--is the bond, hidden as
it is by various degrees of modification, which is partially revealed to
us by our classifications.

Let us now consider the rules followed in classification, and the
difficulties which are encountered on the view that classification
either gives some unknown plan of creation, or is simply a scheme for
enunciating general propositions and of placing together the forms most
like each other. It might have been thought (and was in ancient times
thought) that those parts of the structure which determined the habits
of life, and the general place of each being in the economy of nature,
would be of very high importance in classification. Nothing can be more
false. No one regards the external similarity of a mouse to a shrew, of
a dugong to a whale, of a whale to a fish, as of any importance. These
resemblances, though so intimately connected with the whole life of the
being, are ranked as merely "adaptive or analogical characters;" but to
the consideration of these resemblances we shall have to recur. It
may even be given as a general rule, that the less any part of the
organisation is concerned with special habits, the more important it
becomes for classification. As an instance: Owen, in speaking of the
dugong, says, "The generative organs being those which are most remotely
related to the habits and food of an animal, I have always regarded as
affording very clear indications of its true affinities. We are least
likely in the modifications of these organs to mistake a merely adaptive
for an essential character." So with plants, how remarkable it is that
the organs of vegetation, on which their whole life depends, are of
little signification, excepting in the first main divisions; whereas the
organs of reproduction, with their product the seed, are of paramount
importance!

We must not, therefore, in classifying, trust to resemblances in parts
of the organisation, however important they may be for the welfare of
the being in relation to the outer world. Perhaps from this cause it has
partly arisen, that almost all naturalists lay the greatest stress on
resemblances in organs of high vital or physiological importance. No
doubt this view of the classificatory importance of organs which
are important is generally, but by no means always, true. But their
importance for classification, I believe, depends on their greater
constancy throughout large groups of species; and this constancy depends
on such organs having generally been subjected to less change in the
adaptation of the species to their conditions of life. That the
mere physiological importance of an organ does not determine its
classificatory value, is almost shown by the one fact, that in allied
groups, in which the same organ, as we have every reason to suppose, has
nearly the same physiological value, its classificatory value is widely
different. No naturalist can have worked at any group without being
struck with this fact; and it has been most fully acknowledged in the
writings of almost every author. It will suffice to quote the highest
authority, Robert Brown, who in speaking of certain organs in the
Proteaceae, says their generic importance, "like that of all their
parts, not only in this but, as I apprehend, in every natural family,
is very unequal, and in some cases seems to be entirely lost." Again in
another work he says, the genera of the Connaraceae "differ in having
one or more ovaria, in the existence or absence of albumen, in the
imbricate or valvular aestivation. Any one of these characters singly
is frequently of more than generic importance, though here even when
all taken together they appear insufficient to separate Cnestis from
Connarus." To give an example amongst insects, in one great division
of the Hymenoptera, the antennae, as Westwood has remarked, are most
constant in structure; in another division they differ much, and the
differences are of quite subordinate value in classification; yet no one
probably will say that the antennae in these two divisions of the same
order are of unequal physiological importance. Any number of instances
could be given of the varying importance for classification of the same
important organ within the same group of beings.

Again, no one will say that rudimentary or atrophied organs are of high
physiological or vital importance; yet, undoubtedly, organs in this
condition are often of high value in classification. No one will dispute
that the rudimentary teeth in the upper jaws of young ruminants,
and certain rudimentary bones of the leg, are highly serviceable in
exhibiting the close affinity between Ruminants and Pachyderms. Robert
Brown has strongly insisted on the fact that the rudimentary florets are
of the highest importance in the classification of the Grasses.

Numerous instances could be given of characters derived from parts which
must be considered of very trifling physiological importance, but which
are universally admitted as highly serviceable in the definition of
whole groups. For instance, whether or not there is an open passage from
the nostrils to the mouth, the only character, according to Owen, which
absolutely distinguishes fishes and reptiles--the inflection of the
angle of the jaws in Marsupials--the manner in which the wings of
insects are folded--mere colour in certain Algae--mere pubescence on
parts of the flower in grasses--the nature of the dermal covering, as
hair or feathers, in the Vertebrata. If the Ornithorhynchus had been
covered with feathers instead of hair, this external and trifling
character would, I think, have been considered by naturalists as
important an aid in determining the degree of affinity of this strange
creature to birds and reptiles, as an approach in structure in any one
internal and important organ.

The importance, for classification, of trifling characters, mainly
depends on their being correlated with several other characters of more
or less importance. The value indeed of an aggregate of characters is
very evident in natural history. Hence, as has often been remarked, a
species may depart from its allies in several characters, both of high
physiological importance and of almost universal prevalence, and yet
leave us in no doubt where it should be ranked. Hence, also, it has been
found, that a classification founded on any single character,
however important that may be, has always failed; for no part of the
organisation is universally constant. The importance of an aggregate of
characters, even when none are important, alone explains, I think, that
saying of Linnaeus, that the characters do not give the genus, but
the genus gives the characters; for this saying seems founded on an
appreciation of many trifling points of resemblance, too slight to be
defined. Certain plants, belonging to the Malpighiaceae, bear perfect
and degraded flowers; in the latter, as A. de Jussieu has remarked, "the
greater number of the characters proper to the species, to the genus,
to the family, to the class, disappear, and thus laugh at our
classification." But when Aspicarpa produced in France, during several
years, only degraded flowers, departing so wonderfully in a number
of the most important points of structure from the proper type of the
order, yet M. Richard sagaciously saw, as Jussieu observes, that this
genus should still be retained amongst the Malpighiaceae. This case
seems to me well to illustrate the spirit with which our classifications
are sometimes necessarily founded.

Practically when naturalists are at work, they do not trouble themselves
about the physiological value of the characters which they use in
defining a group, or in allocating any particular species. If they find
a character nearly uniform, and common to a great number of forms, and
not common to others, they use it as one of high value; if common to
some lesser number, they use it as of subordinate value. This principle
has been broadly confessed by some naturalists to be the true one; and
by none more clearly than by that excellent botanist, Aug. St. Hilaire.
If certain characters are always found correlated with others, though
no apparent bond of connexion can be discovered between them, especial
value is set on them. As in most groups of animals, important organs,
such as those for propelling the blood, or for aerating it, or those for
propagating the race, are found nearly uniform, they are considered as
highly serviceable in classification; but in some groups of animals all
these, the most important vital organs, are found to offer characters of
quite subordinate value.

We can see why characters derived from the embryo should be of equal
importance with those derived from the adult, for our classifications of
course include all ages of each species. But it is by no means obvious,
on the ordinary view, why the structure of the embryo should be more
important for this purpose than that of the adult, which alone plays its
full part in the economy of nature. Yet it has been strongly urged
by those great naturalists, Milne Edwards and Agassiz, that embryonic
characters are the most important of any in the classification of
animals; and this doctrine has very generally been admitted as true.
The same fact holds good with flowering plants, of which the two main
divisions have been founded on characters derived from the embryo,--on
the number and position of the embryonic leaves or cotyledons, and on
the mode of development of the plumule and radicle. In our discussion
on embryology, we shall see why such characters are so valuable, on the
view of classification tacitly including the idea of descent.

Our classifications are often plainly influenced by chains of
affinities. Nothing can be easier than to define a number of characters
common to all birds; but in the case of crustaceans, such definition has
hitherto been found impossible. There are crustaceans at the opposite
ends of the series, which have hardly a character in common; yet the
species at both ends, from being plainly allied to others, and these to
others, and so onwards, can be recognised as unequivocally belonging to
this, and to no other class of the Articulata.

Geographical distribution has often been used, though perhaps not quite
logically, in classification, more especially in very large groups of
closely allied forms. Temminck insists on the utility or even necessity
of this practice in certain groups of birds; and it has been followed by
several entomologists and botanists.

Finally, with respect to the comparative value of the various groups of
species, such as orders, sub-orders, families, sub-families, and genera,
they seem to be, at least at present, almost arbitrary. Several of the
best botanists, such as Mr. Bentham and others, have strongly insisted
on their arbitrary value. Instances could be given amongst plants and
insects, of a group of forms, first ranked by practised naturalists as
only a genus, and then raised to the rank of a sub-family or family; and
this has been done, not because further research has detected important
structural differences, at first overlooked, but because numerous
allied species, with slightly different grades of difference, have been
subsequently discovered.

All the foregoing rules and aids and difficulties in classification
are explained, if I do not greatly deceive myself, on the view that
the natural system is founded on descent with modification; that the
characters which naturalists consider as showing true affinity between
any two or more species, are those which have been inherited from a
common parent, and, in so far, all true classification is genealogical;
that community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been
unconsciously seeking, and not some unknown plan of creation, or the
enunciation of general propositions, and the mere putting together and
separating objects more or less alike.

But I must explain my meaning more fully. I believe that the ARRANGEMENT
of the groups within each class, in due subordination and relation to
the other groups, must be strictly genealogical in order to be natural;
but that the AMOUNT of difference in the several branches or groups,
though allied in the same degree in blood to their common progenitor,
may differ greatly, being due to the different degrees of modification
which they have undergone; and this is expressed by the forms being
ranked under different genera, families, sections, or orders. The reader
will best understand what is meant, if he will take the trouble of
referring to the diagram in the fourth chapter. We will suppose the
letters A to L to represent allied genera, which lived during the
Silurian epoch, and these have descended from a species which existed at
an unknown anterior period. Species of three of these genera (A, F, and
I) have transmitted modified descendants to the present day, represented
by the fifteen genera (a14 to z14) on the uppermost horizontal line. Now
all these modified descendants from a single species, are represented as
related in blood or descent to the same degree; they may metaphorically
be called cousins to the same millionth degree; yet they differ widely
and in different degrees from each other. The forms descended from A,
now broken up into two or three families, constitute a distinct order
from those descended from I, also broken up into two families. Nor can
the existing species, descended from A, be ranked in the same genus with
the parent A; or those from I, with the parent I. But the existing genus
F14 may be supposed to have been but slightly modified; and it will
then rank with the parent-genus F; just as some few still living organic
beings belong to Silurian genera. So that the amount or value of the
differences between organic beings all related to each other in the same
degree in blood, has come to be widely different. Nevertheless their
genealogical ARRANGEMENT remains strictly true, not only at the present
time, but at each successive period of descent. All the modified
descendants from A will have inherited something in common from their
common parent, as will all the descendants from I; so will it be with
each subordinate branch of descendants, at each successive period. If,
however, we choose to suppose that any of the descendants of A or of
I have been so much modified as to have more or less completely lost
traces of their parentage, in this case, their places in a natural
classification will have been more or less completely lost,--as
sometimes seems to have occurred with existing organisms. All the
descendants of the genus F, along its whole line of descent, are
supposed to have been but little modified, and they yet form a single
genus. But this genus, though much isolated, will still occupy its
proper intermediate position; for F originally was intermediate in
character between A and I, and the several genera descended from these
two genera will have inherited to a certain extent their characters.
This natural arrangement is shown, as far as is possible on paper, in
the diagram, but in much too simple a manner. If a branching diagram had
not been used, and only the names of the groups had been written in a
linear series, it would have been still less possible to have given a
natural arrangement; and it is notoriously not possible to represent in
a series, on a flat surface, the affinities which we discover in nature
amongst the beings of the same group. Thus, on the view which I hold,
the natural system is genealogical in its arrangement, like a pedigree;
but the degrees of modification which the different groups have
undergone, have to be expressed by ranking them under different
so-called genera, sub-families, families, sections, orders, and classes.

It may be worth while to illustrate this view of classification, by
taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of
mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the
best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the
world; and if all extinct languages, and all intermediate and slowly
changing dialects, had to be included, such an arrangement would, I
think, be the only possible one. Yet it might be that some very ancient
language had altered little, and had given rise to few new languages,
whilst others (owing to the spreading and subsequent isolation and
states of civilisation of the several races, descended from a common
race) had altered much, and had given rise to many new languages and
dialects. The various degrees of difference in the languages from the
same stock, would have to be expressed by groups subordinate to
groups; but the proper or even only possible arrangement would still be
genealogical; and this would be strictly natural, as it would connect
together all languages, extinct and modern, by the closest affinities,
and would give the filiation and origin of each tongue.

In confirmation of this view, let us glance at the classification
of varieties, which are believed or known to have descended from one
species. These are grouped under species, with sub-varieties under
varieties; and with our domestic productions, several other grades of
difference are requisite, as we have seen with pigeons. The origin
of the existence of groups subordinate to groups, is the same with
varieties as with species, namely, closeness of descent with various
degrees of modification. Nearly the same rules are followed in
classifying varieties, as with species. Authors have insisted on the
necessity of classing varieties on a natural instead of an artificial
system; we are cautioned, for instance, not to class two varieties of
the pine-apple together, merely because their fruit, though the most
important part, happens to be nearly identical; no one puts the swedish
and common turnips together, though the esculent and thickened stems
are so similar. Whatever part is found to be most constant, is used in
classing varieties: thus the great agriculturist Marshall says the horns
are very useful for this purpose with cattle, because they are less
variable than the shape or colour of the body, etc.; whereas with sheep
the horns are much less serviceable, because less constant. In classing
varieties, I apprehend if we had a real pedigree, a genealogical
classification would be universally preferred; and it has been attempted
by some authors. For we might feel sure, whether there had been more
or less modification, the principle of inheritance would keep the forms
together which were allied in the greatest number of points. In tumbler
pigeons, though some sub-varieties differ from the others in the
important character of having a longer beak, yet all are kept together
from having the common habit of tumbling; but the short-faced breed has
nearly or quite lost this habit; nevertheless, without any reasoning
or thinking on the subject, these tumblers are kept in the same group,
because allied in blood and alike in some other respects. If it could be
proved that the Hottentot had descended from the Negro, I think he would
be classed under the Negro group, however much he might differ in colour
and other important characters from negroes.

With species in a state of nature, every naturalist has in fact brought
descent into his classification; for he includes in his lowest grade,
or that of a species, the two sexes; and how enormously these sometimes
differ in the most important characters, is known to every naturalist:
scarcely a single fact can be predicated in common of the males and
hermaphrodites of certain cirripedes, when adult, and yet no one dreams
of separating them. The naturalist includes as one species the several
larval stages of the same individual, however much they may differ from
each other and from the adult; as he likewise includes the so-called
alternate generations of Steenstrup, which can only in a technical sense
be considered as the same individual. He includes monsters; he includes
varieties, not solely because they closely resemble the parent-form, but
because they are descended from it. He who believes that the cowslip
is descended from the primrose, or conversely, ranks them together as
a single species, and gives a single definition. As soon as three
Orchidean forms (Monochanthus, Myanthus, and Catasetum), which had
previously been ranked as three distinct genera, were known to be
sometimes produced on the same spike, they were immediately included as
a single species. But it may be asked, what ought we to do, if it could
be proved that one species of kangaroo had been produced, by a long
course of modification, from a bear? Ought we to rank this one
species with bears, and what should we do with the other species?
The supposition is of course preposterous; and I might answer by the
argumentum ad hominem, and ask what should be done if a perfect kangaroo
were seen to come out of the womb of a bear? According to all analogy,
it would be ranked with bears; but then assuredly all the other species
of the kangaroo family would have to be classed under the bear genus.
The whole case is preposterous; for where there has been close descent
in common, there will certainly be close resemblance or affinity.

As descent has universally been used in classing together the
individuals of the same species, though the males and females and larvae
are sometimes extremely different; and as it has been used in classing
varieties which have undergone a certain, and sometimes a considerable
amount of modification, may not this same element of descent have been
unconsciously used in grouping species under genera, and genera under
higher groups, though in these cases the modification has been greater
in degree, and has taken a longer time to complete? I believe it has
thus been unconsciously used; and only thus can I understand the several
rules and guides which have been followed by our best systematists. We
have no written pedigrees; we have to make out community of descent by
resemblances of any kind. Therefore we choose those characters which,
as far as we can judge, are the least likely to have been modified
in relation to the conditions of life to which each species has been
recently exposed. Rudimentary structures on this view are as good as, or
even sometimes better than, other parts of the organisation. We care not
how trifling a character may be--let it be the mere inflection of
the angle of the jaw, the manner in which an insect's wing is folded,
whether the skin be covered by hair or feathers--if it prevail
throughout many and different species, especially those having very
different habits of life, it assumes high value; for we can account for
its presence in so many forms with such different habits, only by its
inheritance from a common parent. We may err in this respect in regard
to single points of structure, but when several characters, let them
be ever so trifling, occur together throughout a large group of beings
having different habits, we may feel almost sure, on the theory of
descent, that these characters have been inherited from a common
ancestor. And we know that such correlated or aggregated characters have
especial value in classification.

We can understand why a species or a group of species may depart, in
several of its most important characteristics, from its allies, and yet
be safely classed with them. This may be safely done, and is often
done, as long as a sufficient number of characters, let them be ever so
unimportant, betrays the hidden bond of community of descent. Let two
forms have not a single character in common, yet if these extreme forms
are connected together by a chain of intermediate groups, we may at
once infer their community of descent, and we put them all into the same
class. As we find organs of high physiological importance--those
which serve to preserve life under the most diverse conditions of
existence--are generally the most constant, we attach especial value to
them; but if these same organs, in another group or section of a
group, are found to differ much, we at once value them less in
our classification. We shall hereafter, I think, clearly see why
embryological characters are of such high classificatory importance.
Geographical distribution may sometimes be brought usefully into play in
classing large and widely-distributed genera, because all the species of
the same genus, inhabiting any distinct and isolated region, have in all
probability descended from the same parents.

We can understand, on these views, the very important distinction
between real affinities and analogical or adaptive resemblances.
Lamarck first called attention to this distinction, and he has been ably
followed by Macleay and others. The resemblance, in the shape of the
body and in the fin-like anterior limbs, between the dugong, which is a
pachydermatous animal, and the whale, and between both these mammals and
fishes, is analogical. Amongst insects there are innumerable instances:
thus Linnaeus, misled by external appearances, actually classed an
homopterous insect as a moth. We see something of the same kind even
in our domestic varieties, as in the thickened stems of the common and
swedish turnip. The resemblance of the greyhound and racehorse is hardly
more fanciful than the analogies which have been drawn by some authors
between very distinct animals. On my view of characters being of real
importance for classification, only in so far as they reveal descent, we
can clearly understand why analogical or adaptive character, although of
the utmost importance to the welfare of the being, are almost valueless
to the systematist. For animals, belonging to two most distinct lines
of descent, may readily become adapted to similar conditions, and thus
assume a close external resemblance; but such resemblances will not
reveal--will rather tend to conceal their blood-relationship to their
proper lines of descent. We can also understand the apparent paradox,
that the very same characters are analogical when one class or order is
compared with another, but give true affinities when the members of the
same class or order are compared one with another: thus the shape of
the body and fin-like limbs are only analogical when whales are compared
with fishes, being adaptations in both classes for swimming through the
water; but the shape of the body and fin-like limbs serve as characters
exhibiting true affinity between the several members of the whale
family; for these cetaceans agree in so many characters, great and
small, that we cannot doubt that they have inherited their general shape
of body and structure of limbs from a common ancestor. So it is with
fishes.

As members of distinct classes have often been adapted by successive
slight modifications to live under nearly similar circumstances,--to
inhabit for instance the three elements of land, air, and water,--we can
perhaps understand how it is that a numerical parallelism has sometimes
been observed between the sub-groups in distinct classes. A naturalist,
struck by a parallelism of this nature in any one class, by arbitrarily
raising or sinking the value of the groups in other classes (and all our
experience shows that this valuation has hitherto been arbitrary), could
easily extend the parallelism over a wide range; and thus the septenary,
quinary, quaternary, and ternary classifications have probably arisen.

As the modified descendants of dominant species, belonging to the larger
genera, tend to inherit the advantages, which made the groups to which
they belong large and their parents dominant, they are almost sure to
spread widely, and to seize on more and more places in the economy
of nature. The larger and more dominant groups thus tend to go on
increasing in size; and they consequently supplant many smaller and
feebler groups. Thus we can account for the fact that all organisms,
recent and extinct, are included under a few great orders, under still
fewer classes, and all in one great natural system. As showing how
few the higher groups are in number, and how widely spread they are
throughout the world, the fact is striking, that the discovery of
Australia has not added a single insect belonging to a new order; and
that in the vegetable kingdom, as I learn from Dr. Hooker, it has added
only two or three orders of small size.

In the chapter on geological succession I attempted to show, on the
principle of each group having generally diverged much in character
during the long-continued process of modification, how it is that the
more ancient forms of life often present characters in some slight
degree intermediate between existing groups. A few old and intermediate
parent-forms having occasionally transmitted to the present day
descendants but little modified, will give to us our so-called osculant
or aberrant groups. The more aberrant any form is, the greater must be
the number of connecting forms which on my theory have been exterminated
and utterly lost. And we have some evidence of aberrant forms having
suffered severely from extinction, for they are generally represented by
extremely few species; and such species as do occur are generally very
distinct from each other, which again implies extinction. The genera
Ornithorhynchus and Lepidosiren, for example, would not have been less
aberrant had each been represented by a dozen species instead of by
a single one; but such richness in species, as I find after some
investigation, does not commonly fall to the lot of aberrant genera. We
can, I think, account for this fact only by looking at aberrant forms
as failing groups conquered by more successful competitors, with a
few members preserved by some unusual coincidence of favourable
circumstances.

Mr. Waterhouse has remarked that, when a member belonging to one group
of animals exhibits an affinity to a quite distinct group, this affinity
in most cases is general and not special: thus, according to Mr.
Waterhouse, of all Rodents, the bizcacha is most nearly related to
Marsupials; but in the points in which it approaches this order, its
relations are general, and not to any one marsupial species more than
to another. As the points of affinity of the bizcacha to Marsupials are
believed to be real and not merely adaptive, they are due on my theory
to inheritance in common. Therefore we must suppose either that all
Rodents, including the bizcacha, branched off from some very ancient
Marsupial, which will have had a character in some degree intermediate
with respect to all existing Marsupials; or that both Rodents and
Marsupials branched off from a common progenitor, and that both groups
have since undergone much modification in divergent directions.
On either view we may suppose that the bizcacha has retained, by
inheritance, more of the character of its ancient progenitor than have
other Rodents; and therefore it will not be specially related to any one
existing Marsupial, but indirectly to all or nearly all Marsupials, from
having partially retained the character of their common progenitor, or
of an early member of the group. On the other hand, of all Marsupials,
as Mr. Waterhouse has remarked, the phascolomys resembles most nearly,
not any one species, but the general order of Rodents. In this case,
however, it may be strongly suspected that the resemblance is only
analogical, owing to the phascolomys having become adapted to habits
like those of a Rodent. The elder De Candolle has made nearly similar
observations on the general nature of the affinities of distinct orders
of plants.

On the principle of the multiplication and gradual divergence in
character of the species descended from a common parent, together with
their retention by inheritance of some characters in common, we can
understand the excessively complex and radiating affinities by which all
the members of the same family or higher group are connected together.
For the common parent of a whole family of species, now broken up by
extinction into distinct groups and sub-groups, will have transmitted
some of its characters, modified in various ways and degrees, to all;
and the several species will consequently be related to each other by
circuitous lines of affinity of various lengths (as may be seen in the
diagram so often referred to), mounting up through many predecessors.
As it is difficult to show the blood-relationship between the
numerous kindred of any ancient and noble family, even by the aid of a
genealogical tree, and almost impossible to do this without this aid,
we can understand the extraordinary difficulty which naturalists have
experienced in describing, without the aid of a diagram, the various
affinities which they perceive between the many living and extinct
members of the same great natural class.

Extinction, as we have seen in the fourth chapter, has played an
important part in defining and widening the intervals between the
several groups in each class. We may thus account even for the
distinctness of whole classes from each other--for instance, of birds
from all other vertebrate animals--by the belief that many ancient forms
of life have been utterly lost, through which the early progenitors of
birds were formerly connected with the early progenitors of the other
vertebrate classes. There has been less entire extinction of the forms
of life which once connected fishes with batrachians. There has been
still less in some other classes, as in that of the Crustacea, for here
the most wonderfully diverse forms are still tied together by a long,
but broken, chain of affinities. Extinction has only separated groups:
it has by no means made them; for if every form which has ever lived
on this earth were suddenly to reappear, though it would be
quite impossible to give definitions by which each group could be
distinguished from other groups, as all would blend together by steps
as fine as those between the finest existing varieties, nevertheless
a natural classification, or at least a natural arrangement, would be
possible. We shall see this by turning to the diagram: the letters, A
to L, may represent eleven Silurian genera, some of which have produced
large groups of modified descendants. Every intermediate link between
these eleven genera and their primordial parent, and every intermediate
link in each branch and sub-branch of their descendants, may be supposed
to be still alive; and the links to be as fine as those between the
finest varieties. In this case it would be quite impossible to give any
definition by which the several members of the several groups could be
distinguished from their more immediate parents; or these parents from
their ancient and unknown progenitor. Yet the natural arrangement in the
diagram would still hold good; and, on the principle of inheritance, all
the forms descended from A, or from I, would have something in common.
In a tree we can specify this or that branch, though at the actual fork
the two unite and blend together. We could not, as I have said, define
the several groups; but we could pick out types, or forms, representing
most of the characters of each group, whether large or small, and thus
give a general idea of the value of the differences between them. This
is what we should be driven to, if we were ever to succeed in collecting
all the forms in any class which have lived throughout all time
and space. We shall certainly never succeed in making so perfect a
collection: nevertheless, in certain classes, we are tending in this
direction; and Milne Edwards has lately insisted, in an able paper, on
the high importance of looking to types, whether or not we can separate
and define the groups to which such types belong.

Finally, we have seen that natural selection, which results from the
struggle for existence, and which almost inevitably induces extinction
and divergence of character in the many descendants from one dominant
parent-species, explains that great and universal feature in the
affinities of all organic beings, namely, their subordination in group
under group. We use the element of descent in classing the individuals
of both sexes and of all ages, although having few characters in common,
under one species; we use descent in classing acknowledged varieties,
however different they may be from their parent; and I believe this
element of descent is the hidden bond of connexion which naturalists
have sought under the term of the Natural System. On this idea of the
natural system being, in so far as it has been perfected, genealogical
in its arrangement, with the grades of difference between the
descendants from a common parent, expressed by the terms genera,
families, orders, etc., we can understand the rules which we are
compelled to follow in our classification. We can understand why we
value certain resemblances far more than others; why we are permitted to
use rudimentary and useless organs, or others of trifling physiological
importance; why, in comparing one group with a distinct group, we
summarily reject analogical or adaptive characters, and yet use these
same characters within the limits of the same group. We can clearly see
how it is that all living and extinct forms can be grouped together
in one great system; and how the several members of each class
are connected together by the most complex and radiating lines of
affinities. We shall never, probably, disentangle the inextricable web
of affinities between the members of any one class; but when we have
a distinct object in view, and do not look to some unknown plan of
creation, we may hope to make sure but slow progress.

MORPHOLOGY.

We have seen that the members of the same class, independently of
their habits of life, resemble each other in the general plan of their
organisation. This resemblance is often expressed by the term "unity of
type;" or by saying that the several parts and organs in the different
species of the class are homologous. The whole subject is included under
the general name of Morphology. This is the most interesting department
of natural history, and may be said to be its very soul. What can be
more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a
mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and
the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and
should include the same bones, in the same relative positions? Geoffroy
St. Hilaire has insisted strongly on the high importance of relative
connexion in homologous organs: the parts may change to almost any
extent in form and size, and yet they always remain connected together
in the same order. We never find, for instance, the bones of the arm and
forearm, or of the thigh and leg, transposed. Hence the same names can
be given to the homologous bones in widely different animals. We see the
same great law in the construction of the mouths of insects: what can
be more different than the immensely long spiral proboscis of a
sphinx-moth, the curious folded one of a bee or bug, and the great jaws
of a beetle?--yet all these organs, serving for such different purposes,
are formed by infinitely numerous modifications of an upper lip,
mandibles, and two pairs of maxillae. Analogous laws govern the
construction of the mouths and limbs of crustaceans. So it is with the
flowers of plants.

Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity
of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine
of final causes. The hopelessness of the attempt has been expressly
admitted by Owen in his most interesting work on the 'Nature of Limbs.'
On the ordinary view of the independent creation of each being, we can
only say that so it is;--that it has so pleased the Creator to construct
each animal and plant.

The explanation is manifest on the theory of the natural selection of
successive slight modifications,--each modification being profitable
in some way to the modified form, but often affecting by correlation of
growth other parts of the organisation. In changes of this nature, there
will be little or no tendency to modify the original pattern, or to
transpose parts. The bones of a limb might be shortened and widened to
any extent, and become gradually enveloped in thick membrane, so as to
serve as a fin; or a webbed foot might have all its bones, or certain
bones, lengthened to any extent, and the membrane connecting them
increased to any extent, so as to serve as a wing: yet in all this great
amount of modification there will be no tendency to alter the framework
of bones or the relative connexion of the several parts. If we suppose
that the ancient progenitor, the archetype as it may be called, of all
mammals, had its limbs constructed on the existing general pattern,
for whatever purpose they served, we can at once perceive the plain
signification of the homologous construction of the limbs throughout the
whole class. So with the mouths of insects, we have only to suppose that
their common progenitor had an upper lip, mandibles, and two pair
of maxillae, these parts being perhaps very simple in form; and then
natural selection will account for the infinite diversity in structure
and function of the mouths of insects. Nevertheless, it is conceivable
that the general pattern of an organ might become so much obscured as to
be finally lost, by the atrophy and ultimately by the complete abortion
of certain parts, by the soldering together of other parts, and by the
doubling or multiplication of others,--variations which we know to be
within the limits of possibility. In the paddles of the extinct gigantic
sea-lizards, and in the mouths of certain suctorial crustaceans, the
general pattern seems to have been thus to a certain extent obscured.

There is another and equally curious branch of the present subject;
namely, the comparison not of the same part in different members of a
class, but of the different parts or organs in the same individual.
Most physiologists believe that the bones of the skull are homologous
with--that is correspond in number and in relative connexion with--the
elemental parts of a certain number of vertebrae. The anterior and
posterior limbs in each member of the vertebrate and articulate classes
are plainly homologous. We see the same law in comparing the wonderfully
complex jaws and legs in crustaceans. It is familiar to almost every
one, that in a flower the relative position of the sepals, petals,
stamens, and pistils, as well as their intimate structure, are
intelligible on the view that they consist of metamorphosed leaves,
arranged in a spire. In monstrous plants, we often get direct evidence
of the possibility of one organ being transformed into another; and we
can actually see in embryonic crustaceans and in many other animals, and
in flowers, that organs, which when mature become extremely different,
are at an early stage of growth exactly alike.

How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation! Why
should the brain be enclosed in a box composed of such numerous and such
extraordinarily shaped pieces of bone? As Owen has remarked, the
benefit derived from the yielding of the separate pieces in the act of
parturition of mammals, will by no means explain the same construction
in the skulls of birds. Why should similar bones have been created in
the formation of the wing and leg of a bat, used as they are for such
totally different purposes? Why should one crustacean, which has an
extremely complex mouth formed of many parts, consequently always have
fewer legs; or conversely, those with many legs have simpler mouths?
Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils in any individual
flower, though fitted for such widely different purposes, be all
constructed on the same pattern?

On the theory of natural selection, we can satisfactorily answer these
questions. In the vertebrata, we see a series of internal vertebrae
bearing certain processes and appendages; in the articulata, we see the
body divided into a series of segments, bearing external appendages;
and in flowering plants, we see a series of successive spiral whorls of
leaves. An indefinite repetition of the same part or organ is the common
characteristic (as Owen has observed) of all low or little-modified
forms; therefore we may readily believe that the unknown progenitor of
the vertebrata possessed many vertebrae; the unknown progenitor of
the articulata, many segments; and the unknown progenitor of flowering
plants, many spiral whorls of leaves. We have formerly seen that
parts many times repeated are eminently liable to vary in number and
structure; consequently it is quite probable that natural selection,
during a long-continued course of modification, should have seized on
a certain number of the primordially similar elements, many times
repeated, and have adapted them to the most diverse purposes. And as
the whole amount of modification will have been effected by slight
successive steps, we need not wonder at discovering in such parts or
organs, a certain degree of fundamental resemblance, retained by the
strong principle of inheritance.

In the great class of molluscs, though we can homologise the parts of
one species with those of another and distinct species, we can indicate
but few serial homologies; that is, we are seldom enabled to say that
one part or organ is homologous with another in the same individual. And
we can understand this fact; for in molluscs, even in the lowest members
of the class, we do not find nearly so much indefinite repetition of
any one part, as we find in the other great classes of the animal and
vegetable kingdoms.

Naturalists frequently speak of the skull as formed of metamorphosed
vertebrae: the jaws of crabs as metamorphosed legs; the stamens and
pistils of flowers as metamorphosed leaves; but it would in these cases
probably be more correct, as Professor Huxley has remarked, to speak
of both skull and vertebrae, both jaws and legs, etc.,--as having been
metamorphosed, not one from the other, but from some common element.
Naturalists, however, use such language only in a metaphorical sense:
they are far from meaning that during a long course of descent,
primordial organs of any kind--vertebrae in the one case and legs in the
other--have actually been modified into skulls or jaws. Yet so strong
is the appearance of a modification of this nature having occurred,
that naturalists can hardly avoid employing language having this plain
signification. On my view these terms may be used literally; and the
wonderful fact of the jaws, for instance, of a crab retaining numerous
characters, which they would probably have retained through inheritance,
if they had really been metamorphosed during a long course of descent
from true legs, or from some simple appendage, is explained.

EMBRYOLOGY.

It has already been casually remarked that certain organs in the
individual, which when mature become widely different and serve for
different purposes, are in the embryo exactly alike. The embryos, also,
of distinct animals within the same class are often strikingly similar:
a better proof of this cannot be given, than a circumstance mentioned
by Agassiz, namely, that having forgotten to ticket the embryo of some
vertebrate animal, he cannot now tell whether it be that of a mammal,
bird, or reptile. The vermiform larvae of moths, flies, beetles, etc.,
resemble each other much more closely than do the mature insects; but
in the case of larvae, the embryos are active, and have been adapted
for special lines of life. A trace of the law of embryonic resemblance,
sometimes lasts till a rather late age: thus birds of the same genus,
and of closely allied genera, often resemble each other in their first
and second plumage; as we see in the spotted feathers in the thrush
group. In the cat tribe, most of the species are striped or spotted
in lines; and stripes can be plainly distinguished in the whelp of
the lion. We occasionally though rarely see something of this kind in
plants: thus the embryonic leaves of the ulex or furze, and the first
leaves of the phyllodineous acaceas, are pinnate or divided like the
ordinary leaves of the leguminosae.

The points of structure, in which the embryos of widely different
animals of the same class resemble each other, often have no direct
relation to their conditions of existence. We cannot, for instance,
suppose that in the embryos of the vertebrata the peculiar loop-like
course of the arteries near the branchial slits are related to similar
conditions,--in the young mammal which is nourished in the womb of its
mother, in the egg of the bird which is hatched in a nest, and in the
spawn of a frog under water. We have no more reason to believe in such
a relation, than we have to believe that the same bones in the hand of
a man, wing of a bat, and fin of a porpoise, are related to similar
conditions of life. No one will suppose that the stripes on the whelp
of a lion, or the spots on the young blackbird, are of any use to these
animals, or are related to the conditions to which they are exposed.

The case, however, is different when an animal during any part of its
embryonic career is active, and has to provide for itself. The period of
activity may come on earlier or later in life; but whenever it comes on,
the adaptation of the larva to its conditions of life is just as perfect
and as beautiful as in the adult animal. From such special adaptations,
the similarity of the larvae or active embryos of allied animals is
sometimes much obscured; and cases could be given of the larvae of two
species, or of two groups of species, differing quite as much, or
even more, from each other than do their adult parents. In most cases,
however, the larvae, though active, still obey more or less closely the
law of common embryonic resemblance. Cirripedes afford a good instance
of this: even the illustrious Cuvier did not perceive that a barnacle
was, as it certainly is, a crustacean; but a glance at the larva shows
this to be the case in an unmistakeable manner. So again the two main
divisions of cirripedes, the pedunculated and sessile, which differ
widely in external appearance, have larvae in all their several stages
barely distinguishable.

The embryo in the course of development generally rises in organisation:
I use this expression, though I am aware that it is hardly possible to
define clearly what is meant by the organisation being higher or lower.
But no one probably will dispute that the butterfly is higher than the
caterpillar. In some cases, however, the mature animal is generally
considered as lower in the scale than the larva, as with certain
parasitic crustaceans. To refer once again to cirripedes: the larvae in
the first stage have three pairs of legs, a very simple single eye, and
a probosciformed mouth, with which they feed largely, for they increase
much in size. In the second stage, answering to the chrysalis stage of
butterflies, they have six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory
legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes, and extremely complex
antennae; but they have a closed and imperfect mouth, and cannot feed:
their function at this stage is, to search by their well-developed
organs of sense, and to reach by their active powers of swimming, a
proper place on which to become attached and to undergo their final
metamorphosis. When this is completed they are fixed for life: their
legs are now converted into prehensile organs; they again obtain a
well-constructed mouth; but they have no antennae, and their two eyes
are now reconverted into a minute, single, and very simple eye-spot.
In this last and complete state, cirripedes may be considered as
either more highly or more lowly organised than they were in the larval
condition. But in some genera the larvae become developed either into
hermaphrodites having the ordinary structure, or into what I have called
complemental males: and in the latter, the development has assuredly
been retrograde; for the male is a mere sack, which lives for a short
time, and is destitute of mouth, stomach, or other organ of importance,
excepting for reproduction.

We are so much accustomed to see differences in structure between the
embryo and the adult, and likewise a close similarity in the embryos of
widely different animals within the same class, that we might be led to
look at these facts as necessarily contingent in some manner on growth.
But there is no obvious reason why, for instance, the wing of a bat, or
the fin of a porpoise, should not have been sketched out with all the
parts in proper proportion, as soon as any structure became visible in
the embryo. And in some whole groups of animals and in certain members
of other groups, the embryo does not at any period differ widely from
the adult: thus Owen has remarked in regard to cuttle-fish, "there is no
metamorphosis; the cephalopodic character is manifested long before
the parts of the embryo are completed;" and again in spiders, "there
is nothing worthy to be called a metamorphosis." The larvae of insects,
whether adapted to the most diverse and active habits, or quite
inactive, being fed by their parents or placed in the midst of proper
nutriment, yet nearly all pass through a similar worm-like stage of
development; but in some few cases, as in that of Aphis, if we look to
the admirable drawings by Professor Huxley of the development of this
insect, we see no trace of the vermiform stage.

How, then, can we explain these several facts in embryology,--namely
the very general, but not universal difference in structure between the
embryo and the adult;--of parts in the same individual embryo, which
ultimately become very unlike and serve for diverse purposes, being
at this early period of growth alike;--of embryos of different species
within the same class, generally, but not universally, resembling each
other;--of the structure of the embryo not being closely related to its
conditions of existence, except when the embryo becomes at any period
of life active and has to provide for itself;--of the embryo apparently
having sometimes a higher organisation than the mature animal, into
which it is developed. I believe that all these facts can be explained,
as follows, on the view of descent with modification.

It is commonly assumed, perhaps from monstrosities often affecting the
embryo at a very early period, that slight variations necessarily
appear at an equally early period. But we have little evidence on
this head--indeed the evidence rather points the other way; for it is
notorious that breeders of cattle, horses, and various fancy animals,
cannot positively tell, until some time after the animal has been born,
what its merits or form will ultimately turn out. We see this plainly in
our own children; we cannot always tell whether the child will be tall
or short, or what its precise features will be. The question is not, at
what period of life any variation has been caused, but at what period
it is fully displayed. The cause may have acted, and I believe generally
has acted, even before the embryo is formed; and the variation may be
due to the male and female sexual elements having been affected by
the conditions to which either parent, or their ancestors, have been
exposed. Nevertheless an effect thus caused at a very early period, even
before the formation of the embryo, may appear late in life; as when
an hereditary disease, which appears in old age alone, has been
communicated to the offspring from the reproductive element of one
parent. Or again, as when the horns of cross-bred cattle have been
affected by the shape of the horns of either parent. For the welfare of
a very young animal, as long as it remains in its mother's womb, or in
the egg, or as long as it is nourished and protected by its parent,
it must be quite unimportant whether most of its characters are fully
acquired a little earlier or later in life. It would not signify, for
instance, to a bird which obtained its food best by having a long beak,
whether or not it assumed a beak of this particular length, as long as
it was fed by its parents. Hence, I conclude, that it is quite possible,
that each of the many successive modifications, by which each species
has acquired its present structure, may have supervened at a not very
early period of life; and some direct evidence from our domestic animals
supports this view. But in other cases it is quite possible that each
successive modification, or most of them, may have appeared at an
extremely early period.

I have stated in the first chapter, that there is some evidence to
render it probable, that at whatever age any variation first appears
in the parent, it tends to reappear at a corresponding age in the
offspring. Certain variations can only appear at corresponding ages, for
instance, peculiarities in the caterpillar, cocoon, or imago states of
the silk-moth; or, again, in the horns of almost full-grown cattle. But
further than this, variations which, for all that we can see, might have
appeared earlier or later in life, tend to appear at a corresponding
age in the offspring and parent. I am far from meaning that this is
invariably the case; and I could give a good many cases of variations
(taking the word in the largest sense) which have supervened at an
earlier age in the child than in the parent.

These two principles, if their truth be admitted, will, I believe,
explain all the above specified leading facts in embryology. But first
let us look at a few analogous cases in domestic varieties. Some authors
who have written on Dogs, maintain that the greyhound and bulldog,
though appearing so different, are really varieties most closely allied,
and have probably descended from the same wild stock; hence I was
curious to see how far their puppies differed from each other: I was
told by breeders that they differed just as much as their parents, and
this, judging by the eye, seemed almost to be the case; but on actually
measuring the old dogs and their six-days old puppies, I found that
the puppies had not nearly acquired their full amount of proportional
difference. So, again, I was told that the foals of cart and race-horses
differed as much as the full-grown animals; and this surprised me
greatly, as I think it probable that the difference between these two
breeds has been wholly caused by selection under domestication; but
having had careful measurements made of the dam and of a three-days old
colt of a race and heavy cart-horse, I find that the colts have by no
means acquired their full amount of proportional difference.

As the evidence appears to me conclusive, that the several domestic
breeds of Pigeon have descended from one wild species, I compared young
pigeons of various breeds, within twelve hours after being hatched; I
carefully measured the proportions (but will not here give details) of
the beak, width of mouth, length of nostril and of eyelid, size of
feet and length of leg, in the wild stock, in pouters, fantails, runts,
barbs, dragons, carriers, and tumblers. Now some of these birds, when
mature, differ so extraordinarily in length and form of beak, that
they would, I cannot doubt, be ranked in distinct genera, had they been
natural productions. But when the nestling birds of these several breeds
were placed in a row, though most of them could be distinguished from
each other, yet their proportional differences in the above specified
several points were incomparably less than in the full-grown birds. Some
characteristic points of difference--for instance, that of the width
of mouth--could hardly be detected in the young. But there was one
remarkable exception to this rule, for the young of the short-faced
tumbler differed from the young of the wild rock-pigeon and of the other
breeds, in all its proportions, almost exactly as much as in the adult
state.

The two principles above given seem to me to explain these facts in
regard to the later embryonic stages of our domestic varieties. Fanciers
select their horses, dogs, and pigeons, for breeding, when they are
nearly grown up: they are indifferent whether the desired qualities
and structures have been acquired earlier or later in life, if the
full-grown animal possesses them. And the cases just given, more
especially that of pigeons, seem to show that the characteristic
differences which give value to each breed, and which have been
accumulated by man's selection, have not generally first appeared at
an early period of life, and have been inherited by the offspring at a
corresponding not early period. But the case of the short-faced tumbler,
which when twelve hours old had acquired its proper proportions,
proves that this is not the universal rule; for here the characteristic
differences must either have appeared at an earlier period than usual,
or, if not so, the differences must have been inherited, not at the
corresponding, but at an earlier age.

Now let us apply these facts and the above two principles--which latter,
though not proved true, can be shown to be in some degree probable--to
species in a state of nature. Let us take a genus of birds, descended
on my theory from some one parent-species, and of which the several new
species have become modified through natural selection in accordance
with their diverse habits. Then, from the many slight successive steps
of variation having supervened at a rather late age, and having been
inherited at a corresponding age, the young of the new species of our
supposed genus will manifestly tend to resemble each other much more
closely than do the adults, just as we have seen in the case of
pigeons. We may extend this view to whole families or even classes. The
fore-limbs, for instance, which served as legs in the parent-species,
may become, by a long course of modification, adapted in one descendant
to act as hands, in another as paddles, in another as wings; and on the
above two principles--namely of each successive modification supervening
at a rather late age, and being inherited at a corresponding late
age--the fore-limbs in the embryos of the several descendants of the
parent-species will still resemble each other closely, for they will not
have been modified. But in each individual new species, the embryonic
fore-limbs will differ greatly from the fore-limbs in the mature animal;
the limbs in the latter having undergone much modification at a rather
late period of life, and having thus been converted into hands, or
paddles, or wings. Whatever influence long-continued exercise or use on
the one hand, and disuse on the other, may have in modifying an organ,
such influence will mainly affect the mature animal, which has come
to its full powers of activity and has to gain its own living; and the
effects thus produced will be inherited at a corresponding mature age.
Whereas the young will remain unmodified, or be modified in a lesser
degree, by the effects of use and disuse.

In certain cases the successive steps of variation might supervene, from
causes of which we are wholly ignorant, at a very early period of life,
or each step might be inherited at an earlier period than that at which
it first appeared. In either case (as with the short-faced tumbler) the
young or embryo would closely resemble the mature parent-form. We have
seen that this is the rule of development in certain whole groups of
animals, as with cuttle-fish and spiders, and with a few members of the
great class of insects, as with Aphis. With respect to the final cause
of the young in these cases not undergoing any metamorphosis, or closely
resembling their parents from their earliest age, we can see that this
would result from the two following contingencies; firstly, from the
young, during a course of modification carried on for many generations,
having to provide for their own wants at a very early stage of
development, and secondly, from their following exactly the same habits
of life with their parents; for in this case, it would be indispensable
for the existence of the species, that the child should be modified at
a very early age in the same manner with its parents, in accordance with
their similar habits. Some further explanation, however, of the embryo
not undergoing any metamorphosis is perhaps requisite. If, on the other
hand, it profited the young to follow habits of life in any degree
different from those of their parent, and consequently to be constructed
in a slightly different manner, then, on the principle of inheritance at
corresponding ages, the active young or larvae might easily be rendered
by natural selection different to any conceivable extent from their
parents. Such differences might, also, become correlated with successive
stages of development; so that the larvae, in the first stage, might
differ greatly from the larvae in the second stage, as we have seen to
be the case with cirripedes. The adult might become fitted for sites or
habits, in which organs of locomotion or of the senses, etc., would be
useless; and in this case the final metamorphosis would be said to be
retrograde.

As all the organic beings, extinct and recent, which have ever lived on
this earth have to be classed together, and as all have been connected
by the finest gradations, the best, or indeed, if our collections were
nearly perfect, the only possible arrangement, would be genealogical.
Descent being on my view the hidden bond of connexion which naturalists
have been seeking under the term of the natural system. On this view
we can understand how it is that, in the eyes of most naturalists, the
structure of the embryo is even more important for classification than
that of the adult. For the embryo is the animal in its less modified
state; and in so far it reveals the structure of its progenitor. In
two groups of animal, however much they may at present differ from each
other in structure and habits, if they pass through the same or similar
embryonic stages, we may feel assured that they have both descended from
the same or nearly similar parents, and are therefore in that degree
closely related. Thus, community in embryonic structure reveals
community of descent. It will reveal this community of descent, however
much the structure of the adult may have been modified and obscured; we
have seen, for instance, that cirripedes can at once be recognised by
their larvae as belonging to the great class of crustaceans. As the
embryonic state of each species and group of species partially shows us
the structure of their less modified ancient progenitors, we can clearly
see why ancient and extinct forms of life should resemble the embryos of
their descendants,--our existing species. Agassiz believes this to be a
law of nature; but I am bound to confess that I only hope to see the
law hereafter proved true. It can be proved true in those cases alone in
which the ancient state, now supposed to be represented in many embryos,
has not been obliterated, either by the successive variations in a long
course of modification having supervened at a very early age, or by the
variations having been inherited at an earlier period than that at which
they first appeared. It should also be borne in mind, that the supposed
law of resemblance of ancient forms of life to the embryonic stages of
recent forms, may be true, but yet, owing to the geological record not
extending far enough back in time, may remain for a long period, or for
ever, incapable of demonstration.

Thus, as it seems to me, the leading facts in embryology, which are
second in importance to none in natural history, are explained on the
principle of slight modifications not appearing, in the many descendants
from some one ancient progenitor, at a very early period in the life of
each, though perhaps caused at the earliest, and being inherited at a
corresponding not early period. Embryology rises greatly in interest,
when we thus look at the embryo as a picture, more or less obscured, of
the common parent-form of each great class of animals.

RUDIMENTARY, ATROPHIED, OR ABORTED ORGANS.

Organs or parts in this strange condition, bearing the stamp of
inutility, are extremely common throughout nature. For instance,
rudimentary mammae are very general in the males of mammals: I presume
that the "bastard-wing" in birds may be safely considered as a digit
in a rudimentary state: in very many snakes one lobe of the lungs is
rudimentary; in other snakes there are rudiments of the pelvis and hind
limbs. Some of the cases of rudimentary organs are extremely curious;
for instance, the presence of teeth in foetal whales, which when grown
up have not a tooth in their heads; and the presence of teeth, which
never cut through the gums, in the upper jaws of our unborn calves. It
has even been stated on good authority that rudiments of teeth can be
detected in the beaks of certain embryonic birds. Nothing can be plainer
than that wings are formed for flight, yet in how many insects do we see
wings so reduced in size as to be utterly incapable of flight, and not
rarely lying under wing-cases, firmly soldered together!

The meaning of rudimentary organs is often quite unmistakeable: for
instance there are beetles of the same genus (and even of the same
species) resembling each other most closely in all respects, one
of which will have full-sized wings, and another mere rudiments of
membrane; and here it is impossible to doubt, that the rudiments
represent wings. Rudimentary organs sometimes retain their potentiality,
and are merely not developed: this seems to be the case with the mammae
of male mammals, for many instances are on record of these organs having
become well developed in full-grown males, and having secreted milk. So
again there are normally four developed and two rudimentary teats in
the udders of the genus Bos, but in our domestic cows the two sometimes
become developed and give milk. In individual plants of the same
species the petals sometimes occur as mere rudiments, and sometimes in
a well-developed state. In plants with separated sexes, the male flowers
often have a rudiment of a pistil; and Kolreuter found that by crossing
such male plants with an hermaphrodite species, the rudiment of the
pistil in the hybrid offspring was much increased in size; and this
shows that the rudiment and the perfect pistil are essentially alike in
nature.

An organ serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly
aborted for one, even the more important purpose; and remain perfectly
efficient for the other. Thus in plants, the office of the pistil is to
allow the pollen-tubes to reach the ovules protected in the ovarium at
its base. The pistil consists of a stigma supported on the style; but in
some Compositae, the male florets, which of course cannot be fecundated,
have a pistil, which is in a rudimentary state, for it is not crowned
with a stigma; but the style remains well developed, and is clothed with
hairs as in other compositae, for the purpose of brushing the pollen out
of the surrounding anthers. Again, an organ may become rudimentary for
its proper purpose, and be used for a distinct object: in certain fish
the swim-bladder seems to be rudimentary for its proper function of
giving buoyancy, but has become converted into a nascent breathing organ
or lung. Other similar instances could be given.

Rudimentary organs in the individuals of the same species are very
liable to vary in degree of development and in other respects. Moreover,
in closely allied species, the degree to which the same organ has been
rendered rudimentary occasionally differs much. This latter fact is well
exemplified in the state of the wings of the female moths in certain
groups. Rudimentary organs may be utterly aborted; and this implies,
that we find in an animal or plant no trace of an organ, which analogy
would lead us to expect to find, and which is occasionally found
in monstrous individuals of the species. Thus in the snapdragon
(antirrhinum) we generally do not find a rudiment of a fifth stamen; but
this may sometimes be seen. In tracing the homologies of the same
part in different members of a class, nothing is more common, or more
necessary, than the use and discovery of rudiments. This is well shown
in the drawings given by Owen of the bones of the leg of the horse, ox,
and rhinoceros.

It is an important fact that rudimentary organs, such as teeth in the
upper jaws of whales and ruminants, can often be detected in the embryo,
but afterwards wholly disappear. It is also, I believe, a universal
rule, that a rudimentary part or organ is of greater size relatively to
the adjoining parts in the embryo, than in the adult; so that the organ
at this early age is less rudimentary, or even cannot be said to be in
any degree rudimentary. Hence, also, a rudimentary organ in the adult,
is often said to have retained its embryonic condition.

I have now given the leading facts with respect to rudimentary organs.
In reflecting on them, every one must be struck with astonishment: for
the same reasoning power which tells us plainly that most parts and
organs are exquisitely adapted for certain purposes, tells us with equal
plainness that these rudimentary or atrophied organs, are imperfect and
useless. In works on natural history rudimentary organs are generally
said to have been created "for the sake of symmetry," or in order "to
complete the scheme of nature;" but this seems to me no explanation,
merely a restatement of the fact. Would it be thought sufficient to
say that because planets revolve in elliptic courses round the sun,
satellites follow the same course round the planets, for the sake of
symmetry, and to complete the scheme of nature? An eminent physiologist
accounts for the presence of rudimentary organs, by supposing that they
serve to excrete matter in excess, or injurious to the system; but can
we suppose that the minute papilla, which often represents the pistil
in male flowers, and which is formed merely of cellular tissue, can thus
act? Can we suppose that the formation of rudimentary teeth which are
subsequently absorbed, can be of any service to the rapidly growing
embryonic calf by the excretion of precious phosphate of lime? When a
man's fingers have been amputated, imperfect nails sometimes appear on
the stumps: I could as soon believe that these vestiges of nails have
appeared, not from unknown laws of growth, but in order to excrete horny
matter, as that the rudimentary nails on the fin of the manatee were
formed for this purpose.

On my view of descent with modification, the origin of rudimentary
organs is simple. We have plenty of cases of rudimentary organs in our
domestic productions,--as the stump of a tail in tailless breeds,--the
vestige of an ear in earless breeds,--the reappearance of minute
dangling horns in hornless breeds of cattle, more especially, according
to Youatt, in young animals,--and the state of the whole flower in the
cauliflower. We often see rudiments of various parts in monsters. But
I doubt whether any of these cases throw light on the origin of
rudimentary organs in a state of nature, further than by showing that
rudiments can be produced; for I doubt whether species under nature ever
undergo abrupt changes. I believe that disuse has been the main agency;
that it has led in successive generations to the gradual reduction of
various organs, until they have become rudimentary,--as in the case of
the eyes of animals inhabiting dark caverns, and of the wings of birds
inhabiting oceanic islands, which have seldom been forced to take
flight, and have ultimately lost the power of flying. Again, an organ
useful under certain conditions, might become injurious under others,
as with the wings of beetles living on small and exposed islands; and in
this case natural selection would continue slowly to reduce the organ,
until it was rendered harmless and rudimentary.

Any change in function, which can be effected by insensibly small steps,
is within the power of natural selection; so that an organ rendered,
during changed habits of life, useless or injurious for one purpose,
might easily be modified and used for another purpose. Or an organ
might be retained for one alone of its former functions. An organ, when
rendered useless, may well be variable, for its variations cannot be
checked by natural selection. At whatever period of life disuse or
selection reduces an organ, and this will generally be when the being
has come to maturity and to its full powers of action, the principle
of inheritance at corresponding ages will reproduce the organ in its
reduced state at the same age, and consequently will seldom affect or
reduce it in the embryo. Thus we can understand the greater relative
size of rudimentary organs in the embryo, and their lesser relative size
in the adult. But if each step of the process of reduction were to
be inherited, not at the corresponding age, but at an extremely early
period of life (as we have good reason to believe to be possible) the
rudimentary part would tend to be wholly lost, and we should have a case
of complete abortion. The principle, also, of economy, explained in a
former chapter, by which the materials forming any part or structure, if
not useful to the possessor, will be saved as far as is possible, will
probably often come into play; and this will tend to cause the entire
obliteration of a rudimentary organ.

As the presence of rudimentary organs is thus due to the tendency
in every part of the organisation, which has long existed, to
be inherited--we can understand, on the genealogical view of
classification, how it is that systematists have found rudimentary
parts as useful as, or even sometimes more useful than, parts of high
physiological importance. Rudimentary organs may be compared with the
letters in a word, still retained in the spelling, but become useless
in the pronunciation, but which serve as a clue in seeking for its
derivation. On the view of descent with modification, we may conclude
that the existence of organs in a rudimentary, imperfect, and useless
condition, or quite aborted, far from presenting a strange difficulty,
as they assuredly do on the ordinary doctrine of creation, might
even have been anticipated, and can be accounted for by the laws of
inheritance.

SUMMARY.

In this chapter I have attempted to show, that the subordination of
group to group in all organisms throughout all time; that the nature of
the relationship, by which all living and extinct beings are united by
complex, radiating, and circuitous lines of affinities into one
grand system; the rules followed and the difficulties encountered by
naturalists in their classifications; the value set upon characters, if
constant and prevalent, whether of high vital importance, or of the most
trifling importance, or, as in rudimentary organs, of no importance; the
wide opposition in value between analogical or adaptive characters, and
characters of true affinity; and other such rules;--all naturally follow
on the view of the common parentage of those forms which are considered
by naturalists as allied, together with their modification through
natural selection, with its contingencies of extinction and divergence
of character. In considering this view of classification, it should be
borne in mind that the element of descent has been universally used in
ranking together the sexes, ages, and acknowledged varieties of the same
species, however different they may be in structure. If we extend the
use of this element of descent,--the only certainly known cause of
similarity in organic beings,--we shall understand what is meant by the
natural system: it is genealogical in its attempted arrangement,
with the grades of acquired difference marked by the terms varieties,
species, genera, families, orders, and classes.

On this same view of descent with modification, all the great facts in
Morphology become intelligible,--whether we look to the same pattern
displayed in the homologous organs, to whatever purpose applied, of the
different species of a class; or to the homologous parts constructed on
the same pattern in each individual animal and plant.

On the principle of successive slight variations, not necessarily
or generally supervening at a very early period of life, and being
inherited at a corresponding period, we can understand the great leading
facts in Embryology; namely, the resemblance in an individual embryo of
the homologous parts, which when matured will become widely different
from each other in structure and function; and the resemblance in
different species of a class of the homologous parts or organs, though
fitted in the adult members for purposes as different as possible.
Larvae are active embryos, which have become specially modified in
relation to their habits of life, through the principle of modifications
being inherited at corresponding ages. On this same principle--and
bearing in mind, that when organs are reduced in size, either from
disuse or selection, it will generally be at that period of life when
the being has to provide for its own wants, and bearing in mind how
strong is the principle of inheritance--the occurrence of rudimentary
organs and their final abortion, present to us no inexplicable
difficulties; on the contrary, their presence might have been even
anticipated. The importance of embryological characters and of
rudimentary organs in classification is intelligible, on the view that
an arrangement is only so far natural as it is genealogical.

Finally, the several classes of facts which have been considered in
this chapter, seem to me to proclaim so plainly, that the innumerable
species, genera, and families of organic beings, with which this world
is peopled, have all descended, each within its own class or group, from
common parents, and have all been modified in the course of descent,
that I should without hesitation adopt this view, even if it were
unsupported by other facts or arguments.




14. RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION.

Recapitulation of the difficulties on the theory of Natural Selection.
Recapitulation of the general and special circumstances in its favour.
Causes of the general belief in the immutability of species. How far the
theory of natural selection may be extended. Effects of its adoption on
the study of Natural history. Concluding remarks.

As this whole volume is one long argument, it may be convenient to the
reader to have the leading facts and inferences briefly recapitulated.

That many and grave objections may be advanced against the theory of
descent with modification through natural selection, I do not deny. I
have endeavoured to give to them their full force. Nothing at first can
appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and
instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though
analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable
slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless,
this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great,
cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions,
namely,--that gradations in the perfection of any organ or instinct,
which we may consider, either do now exist or could have existed, each
good of its kind,--that all organs and instincts are, in ever so slight
a degree, variable,--and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence
leading to the preservation of each profitable deviation of structure or
instinct. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.

It is, no doubt, extremely difficult even to conjecture by what
gradations many structures have been perfected, more especially amongst
broken and failing groups of organic beings; but we see so many strange
gradations in nature, as is proclaimed by the canon, "Natura non facit
saltum," that we ought to be extremely cautious in saying that any organ
or instinct, or any whole being, could not have arrived at its present
state by many graduated steps. There are, it must be admitted, cases of
special difficulty on the theory of natural selection; and one of the
most curious of these is the existence of two or three defined castes
of workers or sterile females in the same community of ants; but I have
attempted to show how this difficulty can be mastered.

With respect to the almost universal sterility of species when first
crossed, which forms so remarkable a contrast with the almost universal
fertility of varieties when crossed, I must refer the reader to the
recapitulation of the facts given at the end of the eighth chapter,
which seem to me conclusively to show that this sterility is no more
a special endowment than is the incapacity of two trees to be grafted
together, but that it is incidental on constitutional differences in the
reproductive systems of the intercrossed species. We see the truth of
this conclusion in the vast difference in the result, when the same two
species are crossed reciprocally; that is, when one species is first
used as the father and then as the mother.

The fertility of varieties when intercrossed and of their mongrel
offspring cannot be considered as universal; nor is their very general
fertility surprising when we remember that it is not likely that either
their constitutions or their reproductive systems should have been
profoundly modified. Moreover, most of the varieties which have been
experimentised on have been produced under domestication; and as
domestication apparently tends to eliminate sterility, we ought not to
expect it also to produce sterility.

The sterility of hybrids is a very different case from that of first
crosses, for their reproductive organs are more or less functionally
impotent; whereas in first crosses the organs on both sides are in a
perfect condition. As we continually see that organisms of all kinds
are rendered in some degree sterile from their constitutions having been
disturbed by slightly different and new conditions of life, we need
not feel surprise at hybrids being in some degree sterile, for their
constitutions can hardly fail to have been disturbed from being
compounded of two distinct organisations. This parallelism is supported
by another parallel, but directly opposite, class of facts; namely, that
the vigour and fertility of all organic beings are increased by slight
changes in their conditions of life, and that the offspring of slightly
modified forms or varieties acquire from being crossed increased vigour
and fertility. So that, on the one hand, considerable changes in the
conditions of life and crosses between greatly modified forms, lessen
fertility; and on the other hand, lesser changes in the conditions of
life and crosses between less modified forms, increase fertility.

Turning to geographical distribution, the difficulties encountered
on the theory of descent with modification are grave enough. All the
individuals of the same species, and all the species of the same genus,
or even higher group, must have descended from common parents; and
therefore, in however distant and isolated parts of the world they are
now found, they must in the course of successive generations have passed
from some one part to the others. We are often wholly unable even to
conjecture how this could have been effected. Yet, as we have reason to
believe that some species have retained the same specific form for very
long periods, enormously long as measured by years, too much stress
ought not to be laid on the occasional wide diffusion of the same
species; for during very long periods of time there will always be a
good chance for wide migration by many means. A broken or interrupted
range may often be accounted for by the extinction of the species in
the intermediate regions. It cannot be denied that we are as yet very
ignorant of the full extent of the various climatal and geographical
changes which have affected the earth during modern periods; and
such changes will obviously have greatly facilitated migration. As an
example, I have attempted to show how potent has been the influence
of the Glacial period on the distribution both of the same and of
representative species throughout the world. We are as yet profoundly
ignorant of the many occasional means of transport. With respect to
distinct species of the same genus inhabiting very distant and isolated
regions, as the process of modification has necessarily been slow,
all the means of migration will have been possible during a very long
period; and consequently the difficulty of the wide diffusion of species
of the same genus is in some degree lessened.

As on the theory of natural selection an interminable number of
intermediate forms must have existed, linking together all the species
in each group by gradations as fine as our present varieties, it may be
asked, Why do we not see these linking forms all around us? Why are
not all organic beings blended together in an inextricable chaos? With
respect to existing forms, we should remember that we have no right to
expect (excepting in rare cases) to discover DIRECTLY connecting links
between them, but only between each and some extinct and supplanted
form. Even on a wide area, which has during a long period remained
continuous, and of which the climate and other conditions of life change
insensibly in going from a district occupied by one species into another
district occupied by a closely allied species, we have no just right to
expect often to find intermediate varieties in the intermediate zone.
For we have reason to believe that only a few species are undergoing
change at any one period; and all changes are slowly effected. I have
also shown that the intermediate varieties which will at first probably
exist in the intermediate zones, will be liable to be supplanted by the
allied forms on either hand; and the latter, from existing in greater
numbers, will generally be modified and improved at a quicker rate than
the intermediate varieties, which exist in lesser numbers; so that
the intermediate varieties will, in the long run, be supplanted and
exterminated.

On this doctrine of the extermination of an infinitude of connecting
links, between the living and extinct inhabitants of the world, and at
each successive period between the extinct and still older species, why
is not every geological formation charged with such links? Why does
not every collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the
gradation and mutation of the forms of life? We meet with no such
evidence, and this is the most obvious and forcible of the many
objections which may be urged against my theory. Why, again, do whole
groups of allied species appear, though certainly they often falsely
appear, to have come in suddenly on the several geological stages? Why
do we not find great piles of strata beneath the Silurian system, stored
with the remains of the progenitors of the Silurian groups of fossils?
For certainly on my theory such strata must somewhere have been
deposited at these ancient and utterly unknown epochs in the world's
history.

I can answer these questions and grave objections only on the
supposition that the geological record is far more imperfect than most
geologists believe. It cannot be objected that there has not been time
sufficient for any amount of organic change; for the lapse of time has
been so great as to be utterly inappreciable by the human intellect. The
number of specimens in all our museums is absolutely as nothing compared
with the countless generations of countless species which certainly have
existed. We should not be able to recognise a species as the parent
of any one or more species if we were to examine them ever so closely,
unless we likewise possessed many of the intermediate links between
their past or parent and present states; and these many links we
could hardly ever expect to discover, owing to the imperfection of the
geological record. Numerous existing doubtful forms could be named which
are probably varieties; but who will pretend that in future ages so
many fossil links will be discovered, that naturalists will be able
to decide, on the common view, whether or not these doubtful forms are
varieties? As long as most of the links between any two species are
unknown, if any one link or intermediate variety be discovered, it will
simply be classed as another and distinct species. Only a small portion
of the world has been geologically explored. Only organic beings of
certain classes can be preserved in a fossil condition, at least in any
great number. Widely ranging species vary most, and varieties are often
at first local,--both causes rendering the discovery of intermediate
links less likely. Local varieties will not spread into other and
distant regions until they are considerably modified and improved; and
when they do spread, if discovered in a geological formation, they will
appear as if suddenly created there, and will be simply classed as new
species. Most formations have been intermittent in their accumulation;
and their duration, I am inclined to believe, has been shorter than the
average duration of specific forms. Successive formations are separated
from each other by enormous blank intervals of time; for fossiliferous
formations, thick enough to resist future degradation, can be
accumulated only where much sediment is deposited on the subsiding bed
of the sea. During the alternate periods of elevation and of stationary
level the record will be blank. During these latter periods there will
probably be more variability in the forms of life; during periods of
subsidence, more extinction.

With respect to the absence of fossiliferous formations beneath the
lowest Silurian strata, I can only recur to the hypothesis given in the
ninth chapter. That the geological record is imperfect all will admit;
but that it is imperfect to the degree which I require, few will be
inclined to admit. If we look to long enough intervals of time, geology
plainly declares that all species have changed; and they have changed in
the manner which my theory requires, for they have changed slowly and
in a graduated manner. We clearly see this in the fossil remains from
consecutive formations invariably being much more closely related to
each other, than are the fossils from formations distant from each other
in time.

Such is the sum of the several chief objections and difficulties
which may justly be urged against my theory; and I have now briefly
recapitulated the answers and explanations which can be given to them. I
have felt these difficulties far too heavily during many years to doubt
their weight. But it deserves especial notice that the more important
objections relate to questions on which we are confessedly ignorant;
nor do we know how ignorant we are. We do not know all the possible
transitional gradations between the simplest and the most perfect
organs; it cannot be pretended that we know all the varied means
of Distribution during the long lapse of years, or that we know how
imperfect the Geological Record is. Grave as these several difficulties
are, in my judgment they do not overthrow the theory of descent with
modification.

Now let us turn to the other side of the argument. Under domestication
we see much variability. This seems to be mainly due to the reproductive
system being eminently susceptible to changes in the conditions of life;
so that this system, when not rendered impotent, fails to reproduce
offspring exactly like the parent-form. Variability is governed by many
complex laws,--by correlation of growth, by use and disuse, and by
the direct action of the physical conditions of life. There is
much difficulty in ascertaining how much modification our domestic
productions have undergone; but we may safely infer that the amount has
been large, and that modifications can be inherited for long periods.
As long as the conditions of life remain the same, we have reason to
believe that a modification, which has already been inherited for many
generations, may continue to be inherited for an almost infinite number
of generations. On the other hand we have evidence that variability,
when it has once come into play, does not wholly cease; for new
varieties are still occasionally produced by our most anciently
domesticated productions.

Man does not actually produce variability; he only unintentionally
exposes organic beings to new conditions of life, and then nature acts
on the organisation, and causes variability. But man can and does select
the variations given to him by nature, and thus accumulate them in any
desired manner. He thus adapts animals and plants for his own benefit or
pleasure. He may do this methodically, or he may do it unconsciously by
preserving the individuals most useful to him at the time, without
any thought of altering the breed. It is certain that he can largely
influence the character of a breed by selecting, in each successive
generation, individual differences so slight as to be quite
inappreciable by an uneducated eye. This process of selection has been
the great agency in the production of the most distinct and useful
domestic breeds. That many of the breeds produced by man have to a large
extent the character of natural species, is shown by the inextricable
doubts whether very many of them are varieties or aboriginal species.

There is no obvious reason why the principles which have acted so
efficiently under domestication should not have acted under nature.
In the preservation of favoured individuals and races, during the
constantly-recurrent Struggle for Existence, we see the most powerful
and ever-acting means of selection. The struggle for existence
inevitably follows from the high geometrical ratio of increase which is
common to all organic beings. This high rate of increase is proved by
calculation, by the effects of a succession of peculiar seasons, and by
the results of naturalisation, as explained in the third chapter. More
individuals are born than can possibly survive. A grain in the balance
will determine which individual shall live and which shall die,--which
variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease,
or finally become extinct. As the individuals of the same species
come in all respects into the closest competition with each other, the
struggle will generally be most severe between them; it will be almost
equally severe between the varieties of the same species, and next in
severity between the species of the same genus. But the struggle will
often be very severe between beings most remote in the scale of nature.
The slightest advantage in one being, at any age or during any season,
over those with which it comes into competition, or better adaptation
in however slight a degree to the surrounding physical conditions, will
turn the balance.

With animals having separated sexes there will in most cases be a
struggle between the males for possession of the females. The most
vigorous individuals, or those which have most successfully struggled
with their conditions of life, will generally leave most progeny. But
success will often depend on having special weapons or means of defence,
or on the charms of the males; and the slightest advantage will lead to
victory.

As geology plainly proclaims that each land has undergone great physical
changes, we might have expected that organic beings would have varied
under nature, in the same way as they generally have varied under the
changed conditions of domestication. And if there be any variability
under nature, it would be an unaccountable fact if natural selection
had not come into play. It has often been asserted, but the assertion is
quite incapable of proof, that the amount of variation under nature is
a strictly limited quantity. Man, though acting on external characters
alone and often capriciously, can produce within a short period a
great result by adding up mere individual differences in his domestic
productions; and every one admits that there are at least individual
differences in species under nature. But, besides such differences, all
naturalists have admitted the existence of varieties, which they think
sufficiently distinct to be worthy of record in systematic works. No one
can draw any clear distinction between individual differences and slight
varieties; or between more plainly marked varieties and sub-species,
and species. Let it be observed how naturalists differ in the rank
which they assign to the many representative forms in Europe and North
America.

If then we have under nature variability and a powerful agent always
ready to act and select, why should we doubt that variations in any way
useful to beings, under their excessively complex relations of life,
would be preserved, accumulated, and inherited? Why, if man can by
patience select variations most useful to himself, should nature fail in
selecting variations useful, under changing conditions of life, to her
living products? What limit can be put to this power, acting during long
ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and
habits of each creature,--favouring the good and rejecting the bad? I
can see no limit to this power, in slowly and beautifully adapting
each form to the most complex relations of life. The theory of natural
selection, even if we looked no further than this, seems to me to be in
itself probable. I have already recapitulated, as fairly as I could,
the opposed difficulties and objections: now let us turn to the special
facts and arguments in favour of the theory.

On the view that species are only strongly marked and permanent
varieties, and that each species first existed as a variety, we can
see why it is that no line of demarcation can be drawn between species,
commonly supposed to have been produced by special acts of creation,
and varieties which are acknowledged to have been produced by secondary
laws. On this same view we can understand how it is that in each region
where many species of a genus have been produced, and where they now
flourish, these same species should present many varieties; for where
the manufactory of species has been active, we might expect, as a
general rule, to find it still in action; and this is the case if
varieties be incipient species. Moreover, the species of the larger
genera, which afford the greater number of varieties or incipient
species, retain to a certain degree the character of varieties; for
they differ from each other by a less amount of difference than do the
species of smaller genera. The closely allied species also of the larger
genera apparently have restricted ranges, and they are clustered in
little groups round other species--in which respects they resemble
varieties. These are strange relations on the view of each species
having been independently created, but are intelligible if all species
first existed as varieties.

As each species tends by its geometrical ratio of reproduction to
increase inordinately in number; and as the modified descendants of each
species will be enabled to increase by so much the more as they become
more diversified in habits and structure, so as to be enabled to seize
on many and widely different places in the economy of nature, there
will be a constant tendency in natural selection to preserve the most
divergent offspring of any one species. Hence during a long-continued
course of modification, the slight differences, characteristic of
varieties of the same species, tend to be augmented into the greater
differences characteristic of species of the same genus. New and
improved varieties will inevitably supplant and exterminate the older,
less improved and intermediate varieties; and thus species are rendered
to a large extent defined and distinct objects. Dominant species
belonging to the larger groups tend to give birth to new and dominant
forms; so that each large group tends to become still larger, and at
the same time more divergent in character. But as all groups cannot thus
succeed in increasing in size, for the world would not hold them, the
more dominant groups beat the less dominant. This tendency in the large
groups to go on increasing in size and diverging in character, together
with the almost inevitable contingency of much extinction, explains the
arrangement of all the forms of life, in groups subordinate to groups,
all within a few great classes, which we now see everywhere around us,
and which has prevailed throughout all time. This grand fact of the
grouping of all organic beings seems to me utterly inexplicable on the
theory of creation.

As natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive,
favourable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification;
it can act only by very short and slow steps. Hence the canon of "Natura
non facit saltum," which every fresh addition to our knowledge tends to
make more strictly correct, is on this theory simply intelligible. We
can plainly see why nature is prodigal in variety, though niggard in
innovation. But why this should be a law of nature if each species has
been independently created, no man can explain.

Many other facts are, as it seems to me, explicable on this theory. How
strange it is that a bird, under the form of woodpecker, should have
been created to prey on insects on the ground; that upland geese, which
never or rarely swim, should have been created with webbed feet; that a
thrush should have been created to dive and feed on sub-aquatic insects;
and that a petrel should have been created with habits and structure
fitting it for the life of an auk or grebe! and so on in endless other
cases. But on the view of each species constantly trying to increase in
number, with natural selection always ready to adapt the slowly varying
descendants of each to any unoccupied or ill-occupied place in nature,
these facts cease to be strange, or perhaps might even have been
anticipated.

As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts the inhabitants
of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their
associates; so that we need feel no surprise at the inhabitants of
any one country, although on the ordinary view supposed to have been
specially created and adapted for that country, being beaten and
supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land. Nor ought
we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can
judge, absolutely perfect; and if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas
of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee causing the bee's
own death; at drones being produced in such vast numbers for one
single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the
astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred
of the queen bee for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidae feeding
within the live bodies of caterpillars; and at other such cases. The
wonder indeed is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of
the want of absolute perfection have not been observed.

The complex and little known laws governing variation are the same, as
far as we can see, with the laws which have governed the production of
so-called specific forms. In both cases physical conditions seem to have
produced but little direct effect; yet when varieties enter any zone,
they occasionally assume some of the characters of the species proper
to that zone. In both varieties and species, use and disuse seem to have
produced some effect; for it is difficult to resist this conclusion
when we look, for instance, at the logger-headed duck, which has wings
incapable of flight, in nearly the same condition as in the domestic
duck; or when we look at the burrowing tucutucu, which is occasionally
blind, and then at certain moles, which are habitually blind and have
their eyes covered with skin; or when we look at the blind animals
inhabiting the dark caves of America and Europe. In both varieties and
species correlation of growth seems to have played a most important
part, so that when one part has been modified other parts are
necessarily modified. In both varieties and species reversions to
long-lost characters occur. How inexplicable on the theory of creation
is the occasional appearance of stripes on the shoulder and legs of the
several species of the horse-genus and in their hybrids! How simply is
this fact explained if we believe that these species have descended from
a striped progenitor, in the same manner as the several domestic breeds
of pigeon have descended from the blue and barred rock-pigeon!

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created,
why should the specific characters, or those by which the species of
the same genus differ from each other, be more variable than the generic
characters in which they all agree? Why, for instance, should the colour
of a flower be more likely to vary in any one species of a genus, if
the other species, supposed to have been created independently, have
differently coloured flowers, than if all the species of the genus have
the same coloured flowers? If species are only well-marked varieties,
of which the characters have become in a high degree permanent, we can
understand this fact; for they have already varied since they branched
off from a common progenitor in certain characters, by which they have
come to be specifically distinct from each other; and therefore these
same characters would be more likely still to be variable than the
generic characters which have been inherited without change for an
enormous period. It is inexplicable on the theory of creation why a part
developed in a very unusual manner in any one species of a genus,
and therefore, as we may naturally infer, of great importance to the
species, should be eminently liable to variation; but, on my view, this
part has undergone, since the several species branched off from a common
progenitor, an unusual amount of variability and modification, and
therefore we might expect this part generally to be still variable. But
a part may be developed in the most unusual manner, like the wing of a
bat, and yet not be more variable than any other structure, if the part
be common to many subordinate forms, that is, if it has been inherited
for a very long period; for in this case it will have been rendered
constant by long-continued natural selection.

Glancing at instincts, marvellous as some are, they offer no greater
difficulty than does corporeal structure on the theory of the natural
selection of successive, slight, but profitable modifications. We
can thus understand why nature moves by graduated steps in endowing
different animals of the same class with their several instincts. I have
attempted to show how much light the principle of gradation throws
on the admirable architectural powers of the hive-bee. Habit no doubt
sometimes comes into play in modifying instincts; but it certainly is
not indispensable, as we see, in the case of neuter insects, which leave
no progeny to inherit the effects of long-continued habit. On the view
of all the species of the same genus having descended from a common
parent, and having inherited much in common, we can understand how it is
that allied species, when placed under considerably different conditions
of life, yet should follow nearly the same instincts; why the thrush of
South America, for instance, lines her nest with mud like our British
species. On the view of instincts having been slowly acquired through
natural selection we need not marvel at some instincts being apparently
not perfect and liable to mistakes, and at many instincts causing other
animals to suffer.

If species be only well-marked and permanent varieties, we can at once
see why their crossed offspring should follow the same complex laws
in their degrees and kinds of resemblance to their parents,--in being
absorbed into each other by successive crosses, and in other such
points,--as do the crossed offspring of acknowledged varieties. On
the other hand, these would be strange facts if species have been
independently created, and varieties have been produced by secondary
laws.

If we admit that the geological record is imperfect in an extreme
degree, then such facts as the record gives, support the theory of
descent with modification. New species have come on the stage slowly and
at successive intervals; and the amount of change, after equal intervals
of time, is widely different in different groups. The extinction of
species and of whole groups of species, which has played so conspicuous
a part in the history of the organic world, almost inevitably follows on
the principle of natural selection; for old forms will be supplanted
by new and improved forms. Neither single species nor groups of species
reappear when the chain of ordinary generation has once been broken. The
gradual diffusion of dominant forms, with the slow modification of their
descendants, causes the forms of life, after long intervals of time, to
appear as if they had changed simultaneously throughout the world.
The fact of the fossil remains of each formation being in some degree
intermediate in character between the fossils in the formations above
and below, is simply explained by their intermediate position in the
chain of descent. The grand fact that all extinct organic beings belong
to the same system with recent beings, falling either into the same or
into intermediate groups, follows from the living and the extinct being
the offspring of common parents. As the groups which have descended
from an ancient progenitor have generally diverged in character, the
progenitor with its early descendants will often be intermediate in
character in comparison with its later descendants; and thus we can see
why the more ancient a fossil is, the oftener it stands in some degree
intermediate between existing and allied groups. Recent forms are
generally looked at as being, in some vague sense, higher than ancient
and extinct forms; and they are in so far higher as the later and more
improved forms have conquered the older and less improved organic beings
in the struggle for life. Lastly, the law of the long endurance of
allied forms on the same continent,--of marsupials in Australia, of
edentata in America, and other such cases,--is intelligible, for within
a confined country, the recent and the extinct will naturally be allied
by descent.

Looking to geographical distribution, if we admit that there has been
during the long course of ages much migration from one part of the world
to another, owing to former climatal and geographical changes and to the
many occasional and unknown means of dispersal, then we can understand,
on the theory of descent with modification, most of the great leading
facts in Distribution. We can see why there should be so striking a
parallelism in the distribution of organic beings throughout space, and
in their geological succession throughout time; for in both cases the
beings have been connected by the bond of ordinary generation, and the
means of modification have been the same. We see the full meaning of the
wonderful fact, which must have struck every traveller, namely, that on
the same continent, under the most diverse conditions, under heat and
cold, on mountain and lowland, on deserts and marshes, most of the
inhabitants within each great class are plainly related; for they will
generally be descendants of the same progenitors and early colonists.
On this same principle of former migration, combined in most cases with
modification, we can understand, by the aid of the Glacial period, the
identity of some few plants, and the close alliance of many others,
on the most distant mountains, under the most different climates; and
likewise the close alliance of some of the inhabitants of the sea in
the northern and southern temperate zones, though separated by the whole
intertropical ocean. Although two areas may present the same physical
conditions of life, we need feel no surprise at their inhabitants
being widely different, if they have been for a long period completely
separated from each other; for as the relation of organism to organism
is the most important of all relations, and as the two areas will have
received colonists from some third source or from each other, at various
periods and in different proportions, the course of modification in the
two areas will inevitably be different.

On this view of migration, with subsequent modification, we can see why
oceanic islands should be inhabited by few species, but of these, that
many should be peculiar. We can clearly see why those animals which
cannot cross wide spaces of ocean, as frogs and terrestrial mammals,
should not inhabit oceanic islands; and why, on the other hand, new and
peculiar species of bats, which can traverse the ocean, should so often
be found on islands far distant from any continent. Such facts as the
presence of peculiar species of bats, and the absence of all other
mammals, on oceanic islands, are utterly inexplicable on the theory of
independent acts of creation.

The existence of closely allied or representative species in any two
areas, implies, on the theory of descent with modification, that the
same parents formerly inhabited both areas; and we almost invariably
find that wherever many closely allied species inhabit two areas, some
identical species common to both still exist. Wherever many closely
allied yet distinct species occur, many doubtful forms and varieties of
the same species likewise occur. It is a rule of high generality that
the inhabitants of each area are related to the inhabitants of the
nearest source whence immigrants might have been derived. We see this in
nearly all the plants and animals of the Galapagos archipelago, of Juan
Fernandez, and of the other American islands being related in the most
striking manner to the plants and animals of the neighbouring American
mainland; and those of the Cape de Verde archipelago and other African
islands to the African mainland. It must be admitted that these facts
receive no explanation on the theory of creation.

The fact, as we have seen, that all past and present organic beings
constitute one grand natural system, with group subordinate to group,
and with extinct groups often falling in between recent groups, is
intelligible on the theory of natural selection with its contingencies
of extinction and divergence of character. On these same principles
we see how it is, that the mutual affinities of the species and genera
within each class are so complex and circuitous. We see why certain
characters are far more serviceable than others for classification;--why
adaptive characters, though of paramount importance to the being, are
of hardly any importance in classification; why characters derived from
rudimentary parts, though of no service to the being, are often of high
classificatory value; and why embryological characters are the most
valuable of all. The real affinities of all organic beings are due
to inheritance or community of descent. The natural system is a
genealogical arrangement, in which we have to discover the lines of
descent by the most permanent characters, however slight their vital
importance may be.

The framework of bones being the same in the hand of a man, wing of
a bat, fin of the porpoise, and leg of the horse,--the same number of
vertebrae forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant,--and
innumerable other such facts, at once explain themselves on the theory
of descent with slow and slight successive modifications. The similarity
of pattern in the wing and leg of a bat, though used for such different
purpose,--in the jaws and legs of a crab,--in the petals, stamens, and
pistils of a flower, is likewise intelligible on the view of the
gradual modification of parts or organs, which were alike in the early
progenitor of each class. On the principle of successive variations
not always supervening at an early age, and being inherited at a
corresponding not early period of life, we can clearly see why the
embryos of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes should be so closely
alike, and should be so unlike the adult forms. We may cease marvelling
at the embryo of an air-breathing mammal or bird having branchial slits
and arteries running in loops, like those in a fish which has to breathe
the air dissolved in water, by the aid of well-developed branchiae.

Disuse, aided sometimes by natural selection, will often tend to reduce
an organ, when it has become useless by changed habits or under changed
conditions of life; and we can clearly understand on this view the
meaning of rudimentary organs. But disuse and selection will generally
act on each creature, when it has come to maturity and has to play its
full part in the struggle for existence, and will thus have little power
of acting on an organ during early life; hence the organ will not be
much reduced or rendered rudimentary at this early age. The calf, for
instance, has inherited teeth, which never cut through the gums of the
upper jaw, from an early progenitor having well-developed teeth; and we
may believe, that the teeth in the mature animal were reduced, during
successive generations, by disuse or by the tongue and palate having
been fitted by natural selection to browse without their aid; whereas in
the calf, the teeth have been left untouched by selection or disuse,
and on the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages have been
inherited from a remote period to the present day. On the view of each
organic being and each separate organ having been specially created, how
utterly inexplicable it is that parts, like the teeth in the embryonic
calf or like the shrivelled wings under the soldered wing-covers of some
beetles, should thus so frequently bear the plain stamp of inutility!
Nature may be said to have taken pains to reveal, by rudimentary organs
and by homologous structures, her scheme of modification, which it seems
that we wilfully will not understand.

I have now recapitulated the chief facts and considerations which have
thoroughly convinced me that species have changed, and are still slowly
changing by the preservation and accumulation of successive slight
favourable variations. Why, it may be asked, have all the most eminent
living naturalists and geologists rejected this view of the mutability
of species? It cannot be asserted that organic beings in a state of
nature are subject to no variation; it cannot be proved that the amount
of variation in the course of long ages is a limited quantity; no clear
distinction has been, or can be, drawn between species and well-marked
varieties. It cannot be maintained that species when intercrossed are
invariably sterile, and varieties invariably fertile; or that sterility
is a special endowment and sign of creation. The belief that species
were immutable productions was almost unavoidable as long as the history
of the world was thought to be of short duration; and now that we have
acquired some idea of the lapse of time, we are too apt to assume,
without proof, that the geological record is so perfect that it would
have afforded us plain evidence of the mutation of species, if they had
undergone mutation.

But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one
species has given birth to other and distinct species, is that we are
always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the
intermediate steps. The difficulty is the same as that felt by so many
geologists, when Lyell first insisted that long lines of inland cliffs
had been formed, and great valleys excavated, by the slow action of the
coast-waves. The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the
term of a hundred million years; it cannot add up and perceive the full
effects of many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite
number of generations.

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this
volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince
experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of
facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view
directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under
such expressions as the "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and
to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any
one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained
difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts
will certainly reject my theory. A few naturalists, endowed with
much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt on the
immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look
with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will
be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever
is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by
conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of
prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

Several eminent naturalists have of late published their belief that
a multitude of reputed species in each genus are not real species; but
that other species are real, that is, have been independently created.
This seems to me a strange conclusion to arrive at. They admit that
a multitude of forms, which till lately they themselves thought were
special creations, and which are still thus looked at by the majority of
naturalists, and which consequently have every external characteristic
feature of true species,--they admit that these have been produced by
variation, but they refuse to extend the same view to other and very
slightly different forms. Nevertheless they do not pretend that they
can define, or even conjecture, which are the created forms of life, and
which are those produced by secondary laws. They admit variation as a
vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without
assigning any distinction in the two cases. The day will come when this
will be given as a curious illustration of the blindness of preconceived
opinion. These authors seem no more startled at a miraculous act of
creation than at an ordinary birth. But do they really believe that at
innumerable periods in the earth's history certain elemental atoms have
been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues? Do they believe
that at each supposed act of creation one individual or many were
produced? Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants
created as eggs or seed, or as full grown? and in the case of mammals,
were they created bearing the false marks of nourishment from the
mother's womb? Although naturalists very properly demand a full
explanation of every difficulty from those who believe in the mutability
of species, on their own side they ignore the whole subject of the first
appearance of species in what they consider reverent silence.

It may be asked how far I extend the doctrine of the modification of
species. The question is difficult to answer, because the more distinct
the forms are which we may consider, by so much the arguments fall away
in force. But some arguments of the greatest weight extend very far.
All the members of whole classes can be connected together by chains of
affinities, and all can be classified on the same principle, in groups
subordinate to groups. Fossil remains sometimes tend to fill up
very wide intervals between existing orders. Organs in a rudimentary
condition plainly show that an early progenitor had the organ in a
fully developed state; and this in some instances necessarily implies
an enormous amount of modification in the descendants. Throughout whole
classes various structures are formed on the same pattern, and at an
embryonic age the species closely resemble each other. Therefore I
cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modification embraces all
the members of the same class. I believe that animals have descended
from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or
lesser number.

Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all
animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy
may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in
common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their
cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see
this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often
similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by
the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oak-tree.
Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic
beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some
one primordial form, into which life was first breathed. When the views
entertained in this volume on the origin of species, or when analogous
views are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee that there will be a
considerable revolution in natural history. Systematists will be able
to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be incessantly
haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be in essence
a species. This I feel sure, and I speak after experience, will be no
slight relief. The endless disputes whether or not some fifty species
of British brambles are true species will cease. Systematists will
have only to decide (not that this will be easy) whether any form be
sufficiently constant and distinct from other forms, to be capable of
definition; and if definable, whether the differences be sufficiently
important to deserve a specific name. This latter point will become a
far more essential consideration than it is at present; for differences,
however slight, between any two forms, if not blended by intermediate
gradations, are looked at by most naturalists as sufficient to raise
both forms to the rank of species. Hereafter we shall be compelled to
acknowledge that the only distinction between species and well-marked
varieties is, that the latter are known, or believed, to be connected
at the present day by intermediate gradations, whereas species
were formerly thus connected. Hence, without quite rejecting the
consideration of the present existence of intermediate gradations
between any two forms, we shall be led to weigh more carefully and to
value higher the actual amount of difference between them. It is quite
possible that forms now generally acknowledged to be merely varieties
may hereafter be thought worthy of specific names, as with the primrose
and cowslip; and in this case scientific and common language will come
into accordance. In short, we shall have to treat species in the same
manner as those naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are
merely artificial combinations made for convenience. This may not be a
cheering prospect; but we shall at least be freed from the vain search
for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term species.

The other and more general departments of natural history will rise
greatly in interest. The terms used by naturalists of affinity,
relationship, community of type, paternity, morphology, adaptive
characters, rudimentary and aborted organs, etc., will cease to be
metaphorical, and will have a plain signification. When we no longer
look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something
wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of
nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex
structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each
useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at
any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the
experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when
we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from
experience, will the study of natural history become!

A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the
causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects
of use and disuse, on the direct action of external conditions, and so
forth. The study of domestic productions will rise immensely in value.
A new variety raised by man will be a far more important and interesting
subject for study than one more species added to the infinitude of
already recorded species. Our classifications will come to be, as far as
they can be so made, genealogies; and will then truly give what may be
called the plan of creation. The rules for classifying will no doubt
become simpler when we have a definite object in view. We possess no
pedigrees or armorial bearings; and we have to discover and trace
the many diverging lines of descent in our natural genealogies, by
characters of any kind which have long been inherited. Rudimentary
organs will speak infallibly with respect to the nature of long-lost
structures. Species and groups of species, which are called aberrant,
and which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid us in
forming a picture of the ancient forms of life. Embryology will reveal
to us the structure, in some degree obscured, of the prototypes of each
great class.

When we can feel assured that all the individuals of the same species,
and all the closely allied species of most genera, have within a not
very remote period descended from one parent, and have migrated
from some one birthplace; and when we better know the many means
of migration, then, by the light which geology now throws, and will
continue to throw, on former changes of climate and of the level of the
land, we shall surely be enabled to trace in an admirable manner
the former migrations of the inhabitants of the whole world. Even at
present, by comparing the differences of the inhabitants of the sea
on the opposite sides of a continent, and the nature of the various
inhabitants of that continent in relation to their apparent means of
immigration, some light can be thrown on ancient geography.

The noble science of Geology loses glory from the extreme imperfection
of the record. The crust of the earth with its embedded remains must not
be looked at as a well-filled museum, but as a poor collection made
at hazard and at rare intervals. The accumulation of each great
fossiliferous formation will be recognised as having depended on an
unusual concurrence of circumstances, and the blank intervals between
the successive stages as having been of vast duration. But we shall be
able to gauge with some security the duration of these intervals by a
comparison of the preceding and succeeding organic forms. We must be
cautious in attempting to correlate as strictly contemporaneous
two formations, which include few identical species, by the general
succession of their forms of life. As species are produced and
exterminated by slowly acting and still existing causes, and not
by miraculous acts of creation and by catastrophes; and as the most
important of all causes of organic change is one which is almost
independent of altered and perhaps suddenly altered physical conditions,
namely, the mutual relation of organism to organism,--the improvement of
one being entailing the improvement or the extermination of others; it
follows, that the amount of organic change in the fossils of consecutive
formations probably serves as a fair measure of the lapse of actual
time. A number of species, however, keeping in a body might remain for a
long period unchanged, whilst within this same period, several of these
species, by migrating into new countries and coming into competition
with foreign associates, might become modified; so that we must not
overrate the accuracy of organic change as a measure of time. During
early periods of the earth's history, when the forms of life were
probably fewer and simpler, the rate of change was probably slower; and
at the first dawn of life, when very few forms of the simplest structure
existed, the rate of change may have been slow in an extreme degree. The
whole history of the world, as at present known, although of a length
quite incomprehensible by us, will hereafter be recognised as a mere
fragment of time, compared with the ages which have elapsed since
the first creature, the progenitor of innumerable extinct and living
descendants, was created.

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important
researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the
necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.
Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view
that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords
better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator,
that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants
of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those
determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all
beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some
few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system
was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the
past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its
unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living
very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity;
for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the
greater number of species of each genus, and all the species of many
genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We
can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretel that it
will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger
and dominant groups, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new
and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal
descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may
feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once
been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world.
Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally
inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for
the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to
progress towards perfection.

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many
plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various
insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth,
and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different
from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner,
have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in
the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is
almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct
action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a
Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a
consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and
the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature,
from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable
of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly
follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one;
and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed
law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.



INDEX.


   Aberrant groups, 429.

   Abyssinia, plants of, 375.

   Acclimatisation, 139.

   Affinities:
   of extinct species, 329.
   of organic beings, 411.

   Agassiz:
   on Amblyopsis, 139.
   on groups of species suddenly appearing, 302, 305.
   on embryological succession, 338.
   on the glacial period, 366.
   on embryological characters, 418.
   on the embryos of vertebrata, 439.
   on parallelism of embryological development and geological succession,
   449.

   Algae of New Zealand, 376.

   Alligators, males, fighting, 88.

   Amblyopsis, blind fish, 139.

   America, North:
   productions allied to those of Europe, 371.
   boulders and glaciers of, 373.
   South, no modern formations on west coast, 290.

   Ammonites, sudden extinction of, 321.

   Anagallis, sterility of, 247.

   Analogy of variations, 159.

   Ancylus, 386.

   Animals:
   not domesticated from being variable, 17.
   domestic, descended from several stocks, 19.
   acclimatisation of, 141.
   of Australia, 116.
   with thicker fur in cold climates, 133.
   blind, in caves, 137.
   extinct, of Australia, 339.

   Anomma, 240.

   Antarctic islands, ancient flora of, 399.

   Antirrhinum, 161.

   Ants:
   attending aphides, 211.
   slave-making instinct, 219.

   Ants, neuter, structure of, 236.

   Aphides attended by ants, 211.

   Aphis, development of, 442.

   Apteryx, 182.

   Arab horses, 35,

   Aralo-Caspian Sea, 339.

   Archiac, M. de, on the succession of species, 325.

   Artichoke, Jerusalem, 142.

   Ascension, plants of, 389.

   Asclepias, pollen of, 193.

   Asparagus, 359.

   Aspicarpa, 417.

   Asses, striped, 163.

   Ateuchus, 135,

   Audubon:
   on habits of frigate-bird, 185.
   on variation in birds'-nests, 212,
   on heron eating seeds, 387.

   Australia:
   animals of, 116.
   dogs of, 215.
   extinct animals of, 339.
   European plants in, 375.

   Azara on flies destroying cattle, 72.

   Azores, flora of, 363.

   Babington, Mr., on British plants, 48.

   Balancement of growth, 147.

   Bamboo with hooks, 197.

   Barberry, flowers of, 98.

   Barrande, M.:
   on Silurian colonies, 313.
   on the succession of species, 325.
   on parallelism of palaeozoic formations, 328.
   on affinities of ancient species, 330.

   Barriers, importance of, 347.

   Batrachians on islands, 393.

   Bats:
   how structure acquired, 180.
   distribution of, 394.

   Bear, catching water-insects, 184.

   Bee:
   sting of, 202.
   queen, killing rivals, 202.

   Bees fertilising flowers, 73.

   Bees:
   hive, not sucking the red clover, 95.
   cell-making instinct, 224.
   humble, cells of, 225.
   parasitic, 218.

   Beetles:
   wingless, in Madeira, 135.
   with deficient tarsi, 135.

   Bentham, Mr.:
   on British plants, 48.
   on classification, 419.

   Berkeley, Mr., on seeds in salt-water, 358.

   Bermuda, birds of, 391.

   Birds:
   acquiring fear, 212.
   annually cross the Atlantic, 364.
   colour of, on continents, 132.
   fossil, in caves of Brazil, 339.
   of Madeira, Bermuda, and Galapagos, 390.
   song of males, 89.
   transporting seeds, 361.
   waders, 386.
   wingless, 134, 182.
   with traces of embryonic teeth, 451.

   Bizcacha, 349.
   affinities of, 429.

   Bladder for swimming in fish, 190.

   Blindness of cave animals, 137,

   Blyth, Mr.:
   on distinctness of Indian cattle, 18.
   on striped Hemionus, 163.
   on crossed geese, 253.

   Boar, shoulder-pad of, 88.

   Borrow, Mr., on the Spanish pointer, 35.

   Bory St. Vincent on Batrachians, 393.

   Bosquet, M., on fossil Chthamalus, 304.

   Boulders, erratic, on the Azores, 363.

   Branchiae, 190.

   Brent, Mr.:
   on house-tumblers, 214.
   on hawks killing pigeons, 362.

   Brewer, Dr., on American cuckoo, 217.

   Britain, mammals of, 395.

   Bronn on duration of specific forms, 293.

   Brown, Robert, on classification, 414.

   Buckman on variation in plants, 10.

   Buzareingues on sterility of varieties, 270.

   Cabbage, varieties of, crossed, 99.

   Calceolaria, 251.

   Canary-birds, sterility of hybrids, 252.

   Cape de Verde islands, 398.

   Cape of Good Hope, plants of, 110, 375.

   Carrier-pigeons killed by hawks, 362.

   Cassini on flowers of compositae, 145.

   Catasetum, 424.

   Cats:
   with blue eyes, deaf, 12.
   variation in habits of, 91.
   curling tail when going to spring, 201.

   Cattle:
   destroying fir-trees, 71.
   destroyed by flies in La Plata, 72.
   breeds of, locally extinct, 111.
   fertility of Indian and European breeds, 254.

   Cave, inhabitants of, blind, 137.

   Centres of creation, 352.

   Cephalopodae, development of, 442.

   Cervulus, 253.

   Cetacea, teeth and hair, 144.

   Ceylon, plants of, 375.

   Chalk formation, 322.

   Characters:
   divergence of, 111.
   sexual, variable, 156.
   adaptive or analogical, 427.

   Charlock, 76,

   Checks:
   to increase, 67.
   mutual, 71.

   Chickens, instinctive tameness of, 216.

   Chthamalinae, 288.

   Chthamalus, cretacean species of, 304.

   Circumstances favourable:
   to selection of domestic products, 40.
   to natural selection, 101.

   Cirripedes:
   capable of crossing, 101.
   carapace aborted, 148.
   their ovigerous frena, 192.
   fossil, 304.
   larvae of, 440.

   Classification, 413.

   Clift, Mr., on the succession of types, 339.

   Climate:
   effects of, in checking increase of beings, 68.
   adaptation of, to organisms, 139.

   Cobites, intestine of, 190.

   Cockroach, 76.

   Collections, palaeontological, poor, 287.

   Colour:
   influenced by climate, 132.
   in relation to attacks by flies, 198.

   Columba livia, parent of domestic pigeons, 23.

   Colymbetes, 386.

   Compensation of growth, 147.

   Compositae:
   outer and inner florets of, 144.
   male flowers of, 451.

   Conclusion, general, 480.

   Conditions, slight changes in, favourable to fertility, 267.

   Coot, 185.

   Coral:
   islands, seeds drifted to, 360.
   reefs, indicating movements of earth, 309.

   Corn-crake, 185.

   Correlation:
   of growth in domestic productions, 11.
   of growth, 143, 198.

   Cowslip, 49.

   Creation, single centres of, 352.

   Crinum, 250.

   Crosses, reciprocal, 258.

   Crossing:
   of domestic animals, importance in altering breeds, 20.
   advantages of, 96.
   unfavourable to selection, 102.

   Crustacea of New Zealand, 376.

   Crustacean, blind, 137.

   Cryptocerus, 238.

   Ctenomys, blind, 137.

   Cuckoo, instinct of, 216.

   Currants, grafts of, 262.

   Currents of sea, rate of, 359.

   Cuvier:
   on conditions of existence, 206.
   on fossil monkeys, 303.

   Cuvier, Fred., on instinct, 208.

   Dana, Professor:
   on blind cave-animals, 139.
   on relations of crustaceans of Japan, 372.
   on crustaceans of New Zealand, 376.

   De Candolle:
   on struggle for existence, 62.
   on umbelliferae, 146.
   on general affinities, 430.

   De Candolle, Alph.:
   on low plants, widely dispersed, 406.
   on widely-ranging plants being variable, 53.
   on naturalisation, 115.
   on winged seeds, 146.
   on Alpine species suddenly becoming rare, 175.
   on distribution of plants with large seeds, 360.
   on vegetation of Australia, 379.
   on fresh-water plants, 386.
   on insular plants, 389.

   Degradation of coast-rocks, 282.

   Denudation:
   rate of, 285.
   of oldest rocks, 308.

   Development of ancient forms, 336.

   Devonian system, 334.

   Dianthus, fertility of crosses, 256.

   Dirt on feet of birds, 362.

   Dispersal:
   means of, 356.
   during glacial period, 365.

   Distribution:
   geographical, 346.
   means of, 356.

   Disuse, effects of, under nature, 134.

   Divergence of character, 111.

   Division, physiological, of labour, 115.

   Dogs:
   hairless, with imperfect teeth, 12.
   descended from several wild stocks, 18.
   domestic instincts of, 213.
   inherited civilisation of, 215.
   fertility of breeds together, 254.
   of crosses, 268,
   proportions of, when young, 444.

   Domestication, variation under, 7.

   Downing, Mr., on fruit-trees in America, 85.

   Downs, North and South, 285.

   Dragon-flies, intestines of, 190.

   Drift-timber, 360.

   Driver-ant, 240.

   Drones killed by other bees, 202.

   Duck:
   domestic, wings of, reduced, 11.
   logger-headed, 182.

   Duckweed, 385.

   Dugong, affinities of, 414.

   Dung-beetles with deficient tarsi, 135.

   Dyticus, 386.

   Earl, Mr. W., on the Malay Archipelago, 395.

   Ears:
   drooping, in domestic animals, 11.
   rudimentary, 454.

   Earth, seeds in roots of trees, 361.

   Eciton, 238.

   Economy of organisation, 147.

   Edentata:
   teeth and hair, 144.
   fossil species of, 339.

   Edwards, Milne:
   on physiological divisions of labour, 115.
   on gradations of structure, 194.
   on embryological characters, 418.

   Eggs, young birds escaping from, 87.

   Electric organs, 192.

   Elephant:
   rate of increase, 64.
   of glacial period, 141.

   Embryology, 439.

   Existence:
   struggle for, 60.
   conditions of, 206.

   Extinction:
   as bearing on natural selection, 109.
   of domestic varieties, 111.
   317.

   Eye:
   structure of, 187.
   correction for aberration, 202.

   Eyes reduced in moles, 137.

   Fabre, M., on parasitic sphex, 218.

   Falconer, Dr.:
   on naturalization of plants in India, 65.
   on fossil crocodile, 313.
   on elephants and mastodons, 334,
   and Cautley on mammals of sub-Himalayan beds, 340.

   Falkland Island, wolf of, 393.

   Faults, 285.

   Faunas, marine, 348.

   Fear, instinctive, in birds, 212.

   Feet of birds, young molluscs adhering to, 385.

   Fertility:
   of hybrids, 249.
   from slight changes in conditions, 267.
   of crossed varieties, 267.

   Fir-trees:
   destroyed by cattle, 71.
   pollen of, 203.

   Fish:
   flying, 182.
   teleostean, sudden appearance of, 305.
   eating seeds, 362, 387.
   fresh-water, distribution of, 384.

   Fishes:
   ganoid, now confined to fresh water, 107.
   electric organs of, 192.
   ganoid, living in fresh water, 321.
   of southern hemisphere, 376.

   Flight, powers of, how acquired, 182.

   Flowers:
   structure of, in relation to crossing, 97.
   of compositae and umbelliferae, 144.

   Forbes, E.:
   on colours of shells, 132.
   on abrupt range of shells in depth, 175.
   on poorness of palaeontological collections, 287.
   on continuous succession of genera, 316.
   on continental extensions, 357.
   on distribution during glacial period, 366,
   on parallelism in time and space, 409.

   Forests, changes in, in America, 74.

   Formation, Devonian, 334.

   Formations:
   thickness of, in Britain, 284.
   intermittent, 290.

   Formica rufescens, 219.

   Formica sanguinea, 219.

   Formica flava, neuter of, 239.

   Frena, ovigerous, of cirripedes, 192.

   Fresh-water productions, dispersal of, 383.

   Fries on species in large genera being closely allied to other
   species, 57.

   Frigate-bird, 185.

   Frogs on islands, 393.

   Fruit-trees:
   gradual improvement of, 37.
   in United States, 85.
   varieties of, acclimatised in United States, 142.

   Fuci, crossed, 258.

   Fur, thicker in cold climates, 133.

   Furze, 439.

   Galapagos Archipelago:
   birds of, 390.
   productions of, 398, 400.

   Galeopithecus, 181.

   Game, increase of, checked by vermin, 68.

   Gartner:
   on sterility of hybrids, 247, 255.
   on reciprocal crosses, 258.
   on crossed maize and verbascum, 270.
   on comparison of hybrids and mongrels, 272.

   Geese:
   fertility when crossed, 253.
   upland, 185.

   Genealogy important in classification, 425.

   Geoffrey St. Hilaire:
   on balancement, 147.
   on homologous organs, 434.

   Geoffrey St. Hilaire, Isidore:
   on variability of repeated parts, 149.
   on correlation in monstrosities, 11.
   on correlation, 144.
   on variable parts being often monstrous, 155.

   Geographical distribution, 346.

   Geography, ancient, 487.

   Geology:
   future progress of, 487.
   imperfection of the record, 279.

   Giraffe, tail of, 195.

   Glacial period, 365.

   Gmelin on distribution, 365.

   Gnathodon, fossil, 368.

   Godwin-Austen, Mr., on the Malay Archipelago, 299.

   Goethe on compensation of growth, 147.

   Gooseberry, grafts of, 262.

   Gould, Dr. A., on land-shells, 397.

   Gould, Mr.:
   on colours of birds, 132.
   on birds of the Galapagos, 398.
   on distribution of genera of birds, 404.

   Gourds, crossed, 270.

   Grafts, capacity of, 261.

   Grasses, varieties of, 113.

   Gray, Dr. Asa:
   on trees of United States, 100.
   on naturalised plants in the United States, 115.
   on rarity of intermediate varieties, 176.
   on Alpine plants, 365.

   Gray, Dr. J. E., on striped mule, 165.

   Grebe, 185.

   Groups, aberrant, 429.

   Grouse:
   colours of, 84.
   red, a doubtful species, 49.

   Growth:
   compensation of, 147.
   correlation of, in domestic products, 11.
   correlation of, 143.

   Habit:
   effect of, under domestication, 11.
   effect of, under nature, 134.
   diversified, of same species, 183.

   Hair and teeth, correlated, 144.

   Harcourt, Mr. E. V., on the birds of Madeira, 391.

   Hartung, M., on boulders in the Azores, 363.

   Hazel-nuts, 359.

   Hearne on habits of bears, 184.

   Heath, changes in vegetation, 72,

   Heer, O., on plants of Madeira, 107.

   Helix pomatia, 397.

   Helosciadium, 359.

   Hemionus, striped, 163.

   Herbert, W.:
   on struggle for existence, 62.
   on sterility of hybrids, 249.

   Hermaphrodites crossing, 96.

   Heron eating seed, 387.

   Heron, Sir R., on peacocks, 89.

   Heusinger on white animals not poisoned by certain plants, 12.

   Hewitt, Mr., on sterility of first crosses. 264.

   Himalaya:
   glaciers of, 373.
   plants of, 375.

   Hippeastrum, 250.

   Holly-trees, sexes of, 93.

   Hollyhock, varieties of, crossed, 271.

   Hooker, Dr., on trees of New Zealand, 100.

   Hooker, Dr.:
   on acclimatisation of Himalayan trees, 140.
   on flowers of umbelliferae, 145.
   on glaciers of Himalaya, 373.
   on algae of New Zealand, 376.
   on vegetation at the base of the Himalaya, 378.
   on plants of Tierra del Fuego, 374, 378.
   on Australian plants, 375, 399.
   on relations of flora of South America, 379.
   on flora of the Antarctic lands, 381, 399.
   on the plants of the Galapagos, 391, 398.

   Hooks:
   on bamboos, 197.
   to seeds on islands, 392.

   Horner, Mr., on the antiquity of Egyptians, 18.

   Horns, rudimentary, 454.

   Horse, fossil, in La Plata, 318.

   Horses:
   destroyed by flies in La Plata, 72.
   striped, 163.
   proportions of, when young, 445.

   Horticulturists, selection applied by, 32.

   Huber on cells of bees, 230.

   Huber, P.:
   on reason blended with instinct, 208.
   on habitual nature of instincts, 208.
   on slave making ants, 219.
   on Melipona domestica, 225.

   Humble-bees, cells of, 225.

   Hunter, J., on secondary sexual characters, 150.

   Hutton, Captain, on crossed geese, 253.

   Huxley, Professor:
   on structure of hermaphrodites, 101.
   on embryological succession, 338.
   on homologous organs, 438.
   on the development of aphis, 442.

   Hybrids and mongrels compared, 272.

   Hybridism, 245.

   Hydra, structure of, 190.

   Ibla, 148.

   Icebergs transporting seeds, 363.

   Increase, rate of, 63.

   Individuals:
   numbers favourable to selection, 102.
   many, whether simultaneously created, 356.

   Inheritance:
   laws of, 12.
   at corresponding ages, 14, 86.

   Insects:
   colour of, fitted for habitations, 84.
   sea-side, colours of, 132.
   blind, in caves, 138.
   luminous, 193.
   neuter, 236.

   Instinct, 207.

   Instincts, domestic, 213.

   Intercrossing, advantages of, 96.

   Islands, oceanic, 388.

   Isolation favourable to selection, 104.

   Japan, productions of, 372.

   Java, plants of, 375.

   Jones, Mr. J. M., on the birds of Bermuda, 391.

   Jussieu on classification, 417.

   Kentucky, caves of, 137.

   Kerguelen-land, flora of, 381, 399.

   Kidney-bean, acclimatisation of, 142.

   Kidneys of birds, 144.

   Kirby on tarsi deficient in beetles, 135.

   Knight, Andrew, on cause of variation, 7.

   Kolreuter:
   on the barberry, 98.
   on sterility of hybrids, 247.
   on reciprocal crosses, 258.
   on crossed varieties of nicotiana, 271.
   on crossing male and hermaphrodite flowers, 451.

   Lamarck on adaptive characters, 427.

   Land-shells:
   distribution of, 397.
   of Madeira, naturalised, 402.

   Languages, classification of, 422.

   Lapse, great, of time, 282.

   Larvae, 440.

   Laurel, nectar secreted by the leaves, 92.

   Laws of variation, 131.

   Leech, varieties of, 76.

   Leguminosae, nectar secreted by glands, 92.

   Lepidosiren, 107, 330.

   Life, struggle for, 60.

   Lingula, Silurian, 306.

   Linnaeus, aphorism of, 413.

   Lion:
   mane of, 88.
   young of, striped, 439.

   Lobelia fulgens, 73, 98,

   Lobelia, sterility of crosses, 250.

   Loess of the Rhine, 384.

   Lowness of structure connected with variability, 149.

   Lowness, related to wide distribution, 406.

   Lubbock, Mr., on the nerves of coccus, 46.

   Lucas, Dr. P.:
   on inheritance, 12.
   on resemblance of child to parent, 275.

   Lund and Clausen on fossils of Brazil, 339.

   Lyell, Sir C.:
   on the struggle for existence, 62.
   on modern changes of the earth, 95.
   on measure of denudation, 283.
   on a carboniferous land-shell, 289.
   on fossil whales, 303.
   on strata beneath Silurian system, 307.
   on the imperfection of the geological record, 310.
   on the appearance of species, 312.
   on Barrande's colonies, 313.
   on tertiary formations of Europe and North America, 323.
   on parallelism of tertiary formations, 328.
   on transport of seeds by icebergs, 363.
   on great alternations of climate, 382.
   on the distribution of fresh-water shells, 385.
   on land-shells of Madeira, 402.

   Lyell and Dawson on fossilized trees in Nova Scotia, 296.

   Macleay on analogical characters, 427.

   Madeira:
   plants of, 107.
   beetles of, wingless, 135.
   fossil land-shells of, 339.
   birds of, 390.

   Magpie tame in Norway, 212.

   Maize, crossed, 270.

   Malay Archipelago:
   compared with Europe, 299.
   mammals of, 395.

   Malpighiaceae, 417.

   Mammae, rudimentary, 451.

   Mammals:
   fossil, in secondary formation, 303.
   insular, 393.

   Man, origin of races of, 199.

   Manatee, rudimentary nails of, 454.

   Marsupials:
   of Australia, 116.
   fossil species of, 339.

   Martens, M., experiment on seeds, 360.

   Martin, Mr. W. C., on striped mules, 165.

   Matteuchi on the electric organs of rays, 193.

   Matthiola, reciprocal crosses of, 258.

   Means of dispersal, 356.

   Melipona domestica, 225.

   Metamorphism of oldest rocks 308.

   Mice:
   destroying bees, 74.
   acclimatisation of, 141.

   Migration, bears on first appearance of fossils, 296.

   Miller, Professor, on the cells of bees, 226.

   Mirabilis, crosses of, 258.

   Missel-thrush, 76.

   Misseltoe, complex relations of, 3.

   Mississippi, rate of deposition at mouth, 284.

   Mocking-thrush of the Galapagos, 402.

   Modification of species, how far applicable, 483.

   Moles, blind, 137.

   Mongrels:
   fertility and sterility of, 267.
   and hybrids compared, 272.

   Monkeys, fossil, 303,

   Monocanthus, 424.

   Mons, Van, on the origin of fruit-trees, 29, 39.

   Moquin-Tandon on sea-side plants, 132.

   Morphology, 434.

   Mozart, musical powers of, 209.

   Mud, seeds in, 386.

   Mules, striped, 165.

   Muller, Dr. F., on Alpine Australian plants, 375.

   Murchison, Sir R.:
   on the formations of Russia, 289.
   on azoic formations, 307.
   on extinction, 317.

   Mustela vison, 179.

   Myanthus, 424.

   Myrmecocystus, 238.

   Myrmica, eyes of, 240.

   Nails, rudimentary, 453.

   Natural history:
   future progress of, 484.
   selection, 80.
   system, 413.

   Naturalisation:
   of forms distinct from the indigenous species, 115.
   in New Zealand, 201.

   Nautilus, Silurian, 306.

   Nectar of plants, 92.

   Nectaries, how formed, 92.

   Nelumbium luteum, 387.

   Nests, variation in, 212.

   Neuter insects, 236.

   Newman, Mr., on humble-bees, 74.

   New Zealand:
   productions of, not perfect, 201.
   naturalised products of, 337.
   fossil birds of, 339.
   glacial action in, 373,
   crustaceans of, 376.
   algae of, 376.
   number of plants of, 389.
   flora of, 399.

   Nicotiana:
   crossed varieties of, 271.
   certain species very sterile, 257.

   Noble, Mr., on fertility of Rhododendron, 251.

   Nodules, phosphatic, in azoic rocks, 307,

   Oak, varieties of, 50.

   Onites apelles, 135.

   Orchis, pollen of, 193,

   Organs:
   of extreme perfection, 186,
   electric, of fishes, 192.
   of little importance, 194.
   homologous, 434.
   rudiments of, 450.

   Ornithorhynchus, 107, 416.

   Ostrich:
   not capable of flight, 134.
   habit of laying eggs together, 218.
   American, two species of, 349.

   Otter, habits of, how acquired, 179.

   Ouzel, water, 185.

   Owen, Professor:
   on birds not flying, 134.
   on vegetative repetition, 149.
   on variable length of arms in ourang-outang, 150.
   on the swim-bladder of fishes, 191.
   on electric organs, 192.
   on fossil horse of La Plata, 319.
   on relations of ruminants and pachyderms, 329.
   on fossil birds of New Zealand, 339.
   on succession of types, 339.
   on affinities of the dugong, 414.
   on homologous organs, 435.
   on the metamorphosis of cephalopods and spiders, 442.

   Pacific Ocean, faunas of, 348.

   Paley on no organ formed to give pain, 201.

   Pallas on the fertility of the wild stocks of domestic animals, 253.

   Paraguay, cattle destroyed by flies, 72.

   Parasites, 217.

   Partridge, dirt on feet, 362.

   Parts:
   greatly developed, variable, 150.
   degrees of utility of, 201.

   Parus major, 183.

   Passiflora, 251.

   Peaches in United States, 85.

   Pear, grafts of, 261.

   Pelargonium:
   flowers of, 145.
   sterility of, 251.

   Pelvis of women, 144,

   Peloria, 145.

   Period, glacial, 365.

   Petrels, habits of, 184.

   Phasianus, fertility of hybrids, 253.

   Pheasant, young, wild, 216.

   Philippi on tertiary species in Sicily, 312.

   Pictet, Professor:
   on groups of species suddenly appearing, 302, 305.
   on rate of organic change, 313.
   on continuous succession of genera, 316.
   on close alliance of fossils in consecutive formations, 335.
   on embryological succession, 338.

   Pierce, Mr., on varieties of wolves, 91.

   Pigeons:
   with feathered feet and skin between toes, 12.
   breeds described, and origin of, 20.
   breeds of, how produced, 39, 42.
   tumbler, not being able to get out of egg, 87.
   reverting to blue colour, 160.
   instinct of tumbling, 214.
   carriers, killed by hawks, 362.
   young of, 445.

   Pistil, rudimentary, 451.

   Plants:
   poisonous, not affecting certain coloured animals, 12.
   selection applied to, 32.
   gradual improvement of, 37.
   not improved in barbarous countries, 38.
   destroyed by insects, 67.
   in midst of range, have to struggle with other plants, 77.
   nectar of, 92,
   fleshy, on sea-shores, 132.
   fresh-water, distribution of, 386.
   low in scale, widely distributed, 406.

   Plumage, laws of change in sexes of birds, 89.

   Plums in the United States, 85.

   Pointer dog:
   origin of, 35.
   habits of, 213.

   Poison not affecting certain coloured animals, 12.

   Poison, similar effect of, on animals and plants, 484.

   Pollen of fir-trees, 203,

   Poole, Col., on striped hemionus, 163.

   Potamogeton, 387.

   Prestwich, Mr., on English and French eocene formations, 328.

   Primrose, 49.
   sterility of, 247.

   Primula, varieties of, 49.

   Proteolepas, 148.

   Proteus, 139.

   Psychology, future progress of, 488.

   Quagga, striped, 165.

   Quince, grafts of, 261.

   Rabbit, disposition of young, 215.

   Races, domestic, characters of, 16.

   Race-horses:
   Arab, 35.
   English, 356.

   Ramond on plants of Pyrenees, 368.

   Ramsay, Professor:
   on thickness of the British formations, 284.
   on faults, 285.

   Ratio of increase, 63.

   Rats:
   supplanting each other, 76.
   acclimatisation of, 141.
   blind in cave, 137.

   Rattle-snake, 201.

   Reason and instinct, 208.

   Recapitulation, general, 459.

   Reciprocity of crosses, 258.

   Record, geological, imperfect, 279.

   Rengger on flies destroying cattle, 72.

   Reproduction, rate of, 63.

   Resemblance to parents in mongrels and hybrids, 273.

   Reversion:
   law of inheritance, 14.
   in pigeons to blue colour, 160.

   Rhododendron, sterility of, 251.

   Richard, Professor, on Aspicarpa, 417.

   Richardson, Sir J.:
   on structure of squirrels, 180.
   on fishes of the southern hemisphere, 376.

   Robinia, grafts of, 262.

   Rodents, blind, 137.

   Rudimentary organs, 450.

   Rudiments important for classification, 416.

   Sageret on grafts, 262.

   Salmons, males fighting, and hooked jaws of, 88.

   Salt-water, how far injurious to seeds, 358.

   Saurophagus sulphuratus, 183.

   Schiodte on blind insects, 138.

   Schlegel on snakes, 144

   Sea-water, how far injurious to seeds, 358.

   Sebright, Sir J.:
   on crossed animals, 20.
   on selection of pigeons, 31.

   Sedgwick, Professor, on groups of species suddenly appearing, 302.

   Seedlings destroyed by insects, 67.

   Seeds:
   nutriment in, 77.
   winged, 146.
   power of resisting salt-water, 358.
   in crops and intestines of birds, 361.
   eaten by fish, 362, 387.
   in mud, 386.
   hooked, on islands, 392.

   Selection:
   of domestic products, 29.
   principle not of recent origin, 33.
   unconscious, 34.
   natural, 80.
   sexual, 87.
   natural, circumstances favourable to, 101,

   Sexes, relations of, 87.

   Sexual:
   characters variable, 156.
   selection, 87.

   Sheep:
   Merino, their selection, 31.
   two sub-breeds unintentionally produced, 36.
   mountain, varieties of, 76.

   Shells:
   colours of, 132.
   littoral, seldom embedded, 288.
   fresh-water, dispersal of, 385.
   of Madeira, 391,
   land, distribution of, 397.

   Silene, fertility of crosses, 257.

   Silliman, Professor, on blind rat, 137.

   Skulls of young mammals, 197, 437.

   Slave-making instinct, 219.

   Smith, Col. Hamilton, on striped horses, 164.

   Smith, Mr. Fred.:
   on slave-making ants, 219.
   on neuter ants, 239.

   Smith, Mr., of Jordan Hill, on the degradation of coast-rocks, 283.

   Snap-dragon, 161.

   Somerville, Lord, on selection of sheep, 31.

   Sorbus, grafts of, 262.

   Spaniel, King Charles's breed, 35.

   Species:
   polymorphic, 46.
   common, variable, 53.
   in large genera variable, 54.
   groups of, suddenly appearing, 302, 306.
   beneath Silurian formations, 306.
   successively appearing, 312.
   changing simultaneously throughout the world, 322.

   Spencer, Lord, on increase in size of cattle, 35.

   Sphex, parasitic, 218.

   Spiders, development of, 442.

   Spitz-dog crossed with fox, 268.

   Sports in plants, 9.

   Sprengel, C. C.:
   on crossing, 98.
   on ray-florets, 145.

   Squirrels, gradations in structure, 180.

   Staffordshire, heath, changes in, 72.

   Stag-beetles, fighting, 88.

   Sterility:
   from changed conditions of life, 9.
   of hybrids, 246.
   laws of, 254.
   causes of, 263.
   from unfavourable conditions, 265.
   of certain varieties, 269.

   St. Helena, productions of, 389.

   St. Hilaire, Aug., on classification, 418.

   St. John, Mr., on habits of cats, 91.

   Sting of bee, 202.

   Stocks, aboriginal, of domestic animals, 18,

   Strata, thickness of, in Britain, 284.

   Stripes on horses, 163.

   Structure, degrees of utility of, 201.

   Struggle for existence, 60.

   Succession, geological, 312.

   Succession of types in same areas, 338.

   Swallow, one species supplanting another, 76.

   Swim-bladder, 190.

   System, natural, 413.

   Tail:
   of giraffe, 195.
   of aquatic animals, 196.
   rudimentary, 454.

   Tarsi deficient, 135.

   Tausch on umbelliferous flowers, 146.

   Teeth and hair:
   correlated, 144.
   embryonic, traces of, in birds, 451.
   rudimentary, in embryonic calf, 450, 480.

   Tegetmeier, Mr., on cells of bees, 228, 233.

   Temminck on distribution aiding classification, 419.

   Thouin on grafts, 262.

   Thrush:
   aquatic species of, 185.
   mocking, of the Galapagos, 402.
   young of, spotted, 439.
   nest of, 243.

   Thuret, M., on crossed fuci, 258.

   Thwaites, Mr., on acclimatisation, 140.

   Tierra del Fuego:
   dogs of, 215.
   plants of, 374, 378.

   Timber-drift, 360.

   Time, lapse of, 282.

   Titmouse, 183.

   Toads on islands, 393.

   Tobacco, crossed varieties of, 271.

   Tomes, Mr., on the distribution of bats, 394.

   Transitions in varieties rare, 172.

   Trees:
   on islands belong to peculiar orders, 392.
   with separated sexes, 99.

   Trifolium pratense, 73, 94.

   Trifolium incarnatum, 94.

   Trigonia, 321.

   Trilobites, 306.
   sudden extinction of, 321,

   Troglodytes, 243.

   Tucutucu, blind, 137.

   Tumbler pigeons:
   habits of, hereditary, 214.
   young of, 446,

   Turkey-cock, brush of hair on breast, 90.

   Turkey:
   naked skin on head, 197.
   young, wild, 216.

   Turnip and cabbage, analogous variations of, 159.

   Type, unity of, 206.

   Types, succession of, in same areas, 338.

   Udders:
   enlarged by use, 11.
   rudimentary, 451.

   Ulex, young leaves of, 439.

   Umbelliferae, outer and inner florets of, 144.

   Unity of type, 206.

   Use:
   effects of, under domestication, 11.
   effects of, in a state of nature, 134.

   Utility, how far important in the construction of each part, 199.

   Valenciennes on fresh-water fish, 384.

   Variability of mongrels and hybrids, 274.

   Variation:
   under domestication, 7.
   caused by reproductive system being affected by conditions of life, 8.
   under nature, 44.
   laws of, 131.

   Variations:
   appear at corresponding ages, 14, 86.
   analogous in distinct species, 159.

   Varieties:
   natural, 44.
   struggle between, 75.
   domestic, extinction of, 111.
   transitional, rarity of, 172.
   when crossed, fertile, 267.
   when crossed, sterile, 269.
   classification of, 423.

   Verbascum:
   sterility of, 251.
   varieties of, crossed, 270.

   Verneuil, M. de, on the succession of species, 325.

   Viola tricolor, 73.

   Volcanic islands, denudation of, 284.

   Vulture, naked skin on head, 197.

   Wading-birds, 386.

   Wallace, Mr.:
   on origin of species, 2.
   on law of geographical distribution, 355.
   on the Malay Archipelago, 395.

   Wasp, sting of, 202.

   Water, fresh, productions of, 383.

   Water-hen, 185.

   Waterhouse, Mr.:
   on Australian marsupials, 116.
   on greatly developed parts being variable, 150.
   on the cells of bees, 225.
   on general affinities, 429.

   Water-ouzel, 185.

   Watson, Mr. H. C.:
   on range of varieties of British plants, 58.
   on acclimatisation, 140.
   on flora of Azores, 363.
   on Alpine plants, 367, 376.
   on rarity of intermediate varieties, 176.

   Weald, denudation of, 285.

   Web of feet in water-birds, 185.

   West Indian islands, mammals of, 395.

   Westwood:
   on species in large genera being closely allied to others, 57.
   on the tarsi of Engidae, 157.
   on the antennae of hymenopterous insects, 416.

   Whales, fossil, 303.

   Wheat, varieties of, 113.

   White Mountains, flora of, 365.

   Wings, reduction of size, 134.

   Wings:
   of insects homologous with branchiae, 191.
   rudimentary, in insects, 451.

   Wolf:
   crossed with dog, 214.
   of Falkland Isles, 393.

   Wollaston, Mr.:
   on varieties of insects, 48.
   on fossil varieties of land-shells in Madeira, 52.
   on colours of insects on sea-shore, 132.
   on wingless beetles, 135.
   on rarity of intermediate varieties, 176.
   on insular insects, 389.
   on land-shells of Madeira, naturalised, 402.

   Wolves, varieties of, 90.

   Woodpecker:
   habits of, 184.
   green colour of, 197.

   Woodward, Mr.:
   on the duration of specific forms, 293.
   on the continuous succession of genera, 316.
   on the succession of types, 339.

   World, species changing simultaneously throughout, 322.

   Wrens, nest of, 243.

   Youatt, Mr.:
   on selection, 31.
   on sub-breeds of sheep, 36.
   on rudimentary horns in young cattle, 454.

   Zebra, stripes on, 163.


   THE END.






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Title: On the Origin of Species
       6th Edition

Author: Charles Darwin

Release Date: December, 1999  [Etext #2009]
Posting Date: November 23, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES ***




Produced by Sue Asscher





THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION;

or, the PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S.,

Author of "The Descent of Man," etc., etc.


Sixth London Edition, with all Additions and Corrections.

The 6th Edition is often considered the definitive edition.

Also see Project Gutenberg Etext #1228 for the First Edition.



"But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as
this--we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated
interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by
the establishment of general laws."--Whewell: "Bridgewater Treatise".

"The only distinct meaning of the word 'natural' is STATED, FIXED or
SETTLED; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an
intelligent agent to render it so, i.e., to effect it continually or at
stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it
for once."--Butler: "Analogy of Revealed Religion".

"To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety,
or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search
too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book
of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour
an endless progress or proficience in both."--Bacon: "Advancement of
Learning".




AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF OPINION ON THE ORIGIN OF
SPECIES,

PREVIOUSLY TO THE PUBLICATION OF THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS WORK.

I will here give a brief sketch of the progress of opinion on the Origin
of Species. Until recently the great majority of naturalists believed
that species were immutable productions, and had been separately
created. This view has been ably maintained by many authors. Some few
naturalists, on the other hand, have believed that species undergo
modification, and that the existing forms of life are the descendants
by true generation of pre existing forms. Passing over allusions to
the subject in the classical writers (Aristotle, in his "Physicae
Auscultationes" (lib.2, cap.8, s.2), after remarking that rain does not
fall in order to make the corn grow, any more than it falls to spoil the
farmer's corn when threshed out of doors, applies the same argument
to organisation; and adds (as translated by Mr. Clair Grece, who first
pointed out the passage to me), "So what hinders the different parts (of
the body) from having this merely accidental relation in nature? as the
teeth, for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sharp, adapted
for dividing, and the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating
the food; since they were not made for the sake of this, but it was the
result of accident. And in like manner as to other parts in which there
appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever, therefore, all
things together (that is all the parts of one whole) happened like as if
they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved,
having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and
whatsoever things were not thus constituted, perished and still perish."
We here see the principle of natural selection shadowed forth, but
how little Aristotle fully comprehended the principle, is shown by his
remarks on the formation of the teeth.), the first author who in modern
times has treated it in a scientific spirit was Buffon. But as his
opinions fluctuated greatly at different periods, and as he does not
enter on the causes or means of the transformation of species, I need
not here enter on details.

Lamarck was the first man whose conclusions on the subject excited much
attention. This justly celebrated naturalist first published his views
in 1801; he much enlarged them in 1809 in his "Philosophie Zoologique",
and subsequently, 1815, in the Introduction to his "Hist. Nat. des
Animaux sans Vertebres". In these works he up holds the doctrine that
all species, including man, are descended from other species. He first
did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of
all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the
result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. Lamarck seems
to have been chiefly led to his conclusion on the gradual change of
species, by the difficulty of distinguishing species and varieties,
by the almost perfect gradation of forms in certain groups, and by
the analogy of domestic productions. With respect to the means of
modification, he attributed something to the direct action of the
physical conditions of life, something to the crossing of already
existing forms, and much to use and disuse, that is, to the effects of
habit. To this latter agency he seems to attribute all the beautiful
adaptations in nature; such as the long neck of the giraffe for
browsing on the branches of trees. But he likewise believed in a law
of progressive development, and as all the forms of life thus tend to
progress, in order to account for the existence at the present day of
simple productions, he maintains that such forms are now spontaneously
generated. (I have taken the date of the first publication of Lamarck
from Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's ("Hist. Nat. Generale", tom. ii.
page 405, 1859) excellent history of opinion on this subject. In
this work a full account is given of Buffon's conclusions on the same
subject. It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin,
anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in
his "Zoonomia" (vol. i. pages 500-510), published in 1794. According to
Isid. Geoffroy there is no doubt that Goethe was an extreme partisan of
similar views, as shown in the introduction to a work written in 1794
and 1795, but not published till long afterward; he has pointedly
remarked ("Goethe als Naturforscher", von Dr. Karl Meding, s. 34) that
the future question for naturalists will be how, for instance, cattle
got their horns and not for what they are used. It is rather a singular
instance of the manner in which similar views arise at about the same
time, that Goethe in Germany, Dr. Darwin in England, and Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire (as we shall immediately see) in France, came to the same
conclusion on the origin of species, in the years 1794-5.)

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, as is stated in his "Life", written by his
son, suspected, as early as 1795, that what we call species are various
degenerations of the same type. It was not until 1828 that he published
his conviction that the same forms have not been perpetuated since
the origin of all things. Geoffroy seems to have relied chiefly on the
conditions of life, or the "monde ambiant" as the cause of change. He
was cautious in drawing conclusions, and did not believe that existing
species are now undergoing modification; and, as his son adds, "C'est
donc un probleme a reserver entierement a l'avenir, suppose meme que
l'avenir doive avoir prise sur lui."

In 1813 Dr. W.C. Wells read before the Royal Society "An Account of a
White Female, part of whose skin resembles that of a Negro"; but his
paper was not published until his famous "Two Essays upon Dew and Single
Vision" appeared in 1818. In this paper he distinctly recognises the
principle of natural selection, and this is the first recognition which
has been indicated; but he applies it only to the races of man, and to
certain characters alone. After remarking that negroes and mulattoes
enjoy an immunity from certain tropical diseases, he observes, firstly,
that all animals tend to vary in some degree, and, secondly, that
agriculturists improve their domesticated animals by selection; and
then, he adds, but what is done in this latter case "by art, seems to
be done with equal efficacy, though more slowly, by nature, in the
formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for the country which they
inhabit. Of the accidental varieties of man, which would occur among
the first few and scattered inhabitants of the middle regions of Africa,
some one would be better fitted than others to bear the diseases of the
country. This race would consequently multiply, while the others would
decrease; not only from their in ability to sustain the attacks of
disease, but from their incapacity of contending with their more
vigorous neighbours. The colour of this vigorous race I take for
granted, from what has been already said, would be dark. But the same
disposition to form varieties still existing, a darker and a darker race
would in the course of time occur: and as the darkest would be the best
fitted for the climate, this would at length become the most prevalent,
if not the only race, in the particular country in which it had
originated." He then extends these same views to the white inhabitants
of colder climates. I am indebted to Mr. Rowley, of the United States,
for having called my attention, through Mr. Brace, to the above passage
of Dr. Wells' work.

The Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, afterward Dean of Manchester, in the
fourth volume of the "Horticultural Transactions", 1822, and in his
work on the "Amaryllidaceae" (1837, pages 19, 339), declares that
"horticultural experiments have established, beyond the possibility of
refutation, that botanical species are only a higher and more permanent
class of varieties." He extends the same view to animals. The dean
believes that single species of each genus were created in an originally
highly plastic condition, and that these have produced, chiefly by
inter-crossing, but likewise by variation, all our existing species.

In 1826 Professor Grant, in the concluding paragraph in his well-known
paper ("Edinburgh Philosophical Journal", vol. XIV, page 283) on the
Spongilla, clearly declares his belief that species are descended
from other species, and that they become improved in the course of
modification. This same view was given in his Fifty-fifth Lecture,
published in the "Lancet" in 1834.

In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on "Naval Timber and
Arboriculture", in which he gives precisely the same view on the origin
of species as that (presently to be alluded to) propounded by Mr.
Wallace and myself in the "Linnean Journal", and as that enlarged in
the present volume. Unfortunately the view was given by Mr. Matthew very
briefly in scattered passages in an appendix to a work on a different
subject, so that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself drew
attention to it in the "Gardeners' Chronicle", on April 7, 1860. The
differences of Mr. Matthew's views from mine are not of much importance:
he seems to consider that the world was nearly depopulated at successive
periods, and then restocked; and he gives as an alternative, that new
forms may be generated "without the presence of any mold or germ of
former aggregates." I am not sure that I understand some passages; but
it seems that he attributes much influence to the direct action of
the conditions of life. He clearly saw, however, the full force of the
principle of natural selection.

The celebrated geologist and naturalist, Von Buch, in his excellent
"Description Physique des Isles Canaries" (1836, page 147), clearly
expresses his belief that varieties slowly become changed into permanent
species, which are no longer capable of intercrossing.

Rafinesque, in his "New Flora of North America", published in 1836,
wrote (page 6) as follows: "All species might have been varieties once,
and many varieties are gradually becoming species by assuming constant
and peculiar characters;" but further on (page 18) he adds, "except the
original types or ancestors of the genus."

In 1843-44 Professor Haldeman ("Boston Journal of Nat. Hist. U. States",
vol. iv, page 468) has ably given the arguments for and against the
hypothesis of the development and modification of species: he seems to
lean toward the side of change.

The "Vestiges of Creation" appeared in 1844. In the tenth and much
improved edition (1853) the anonymous author says (page 155): "The
proposition determined on after much consideration is, that the several
series of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the
highest and most recent, are, under the providence of God, the results,
FIRST, of an impulse which has been imparted to the forms of life,
advancing them, in definite times, by generation, through grades of
organisation terminating in the highest dicotyledons and vertebrata,
these grades being few in number, and generally marked by intervals
of organic character, which we find to be a practical difficulty in
ascertaining affinities; SECOND, of another impulse connected with the
vital forces, tending, in the course of generations, to modify organic
structures in accordance with external circumstances, as food, the
nature of the habitat, and the meteoric agencies, these being the
'adaptations' of the natural theologian." The author apparently believes
that organisation progresses by sudden leaps, but that the effects
produced by the conditions of life are gradual. He argues with much
force on general grounds that species are not immutable productions.
But I cannot see how the two supposed "impulses" account in a scientific
sense for the numerous and beautiful coadaptations which we see
throughout nature; I cannot see that we thus gain any insight how, for
instance, a woodpecker has become adapted to its peculiar habits of
life. The work, from its powerful and brilliant style, though displaying
in the early editions little accurate knowledge and a great want of
scientific caution, immediately had a very wide circulation. In my
opinion it has done excellent service in this country in calling
attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing
the ground for the reception of analogous views.

In 1846 the veteran geologist M.J. d'Omalius d'Halloy published in an
excellent though short paper ("Bulletins de l'Acad. Roy. Bruxelles",
tom. xiii, page 581) his opinion that it is more probable that new
species have been produced by descent with modification than that they
have been separately created: the author first promulgated this opinion
in 1831.

Professor Owen, in 1849 ("Nature of Limbs", page 86), wrote as follows:
"The archetypal idea was manifested in the flesh under diverse such
modifications, upon this planet, long prior to the existence of those
animal species that actually exemplify it. To what natural laws or
secondary causes the orderly succession and progression of such organic
phenomena may have been committed, we, as yet, are ignorant." In his
address to the British Association, in 1858, he speaks (page li) of "the
axiom of the continuous operation of creative power, or of the ordained
becoming of living things." Further on (page xc), after referring
to geographical distribution, he adds, "These phenomena shake our
confidence in the conclusion that the Apteryx of New Zealand and the
Red Grouse of England were distinct creations in and for those islands
respectively. Always, also, it may be well to bear in mind that by the
word 'creation' the zoologist means 'a process he knows not what.'" He
amplifies this idea by adding that when such cases as that of the Red
Grouse are "enumerated by the zoologist as evidence of distinct creation
of the bird in and for such islands, he chiefly expresses that he
knows not how the Red Grouse came to be there, and there exclusively;
signifying also, by this mode of expressing such ignorance, his belief
that both the bird and the islands owed their origin to a great first
Creative Cause." If we interpret these sentences given in the same
address, one by the other, it appears that this eminent philosopher felt
in 1858 his confidence shaken that the Apteryx and the Red Grouse first
appeared in their respective homes "he knew not how," or by some process
"he knew not what."

This address was delivered after the papers by Mr. Wallace and myself on
the Origin of Species, presently to be referred to, had been read before
the Linnean Society. When the first edition of this work was published,
I was so completely deceived, as were many others, by such expressions
as "the continuous operation of creative power," that I included
Professor Owen with other palaeontologists as being firmly convinced
of the immutability of species; but it appears ("Anat. of Vertebrates",
vol. iii, page 796) that this was on my part a preposterous error. In
the last edition of this work I inferred, and the inference still seems
to me perfectly just, from a passage beginning with the words "no doubt
the type-form," etc.(Ibid., vol. i, page xxxv), that Professor Owen
admitted that natural selection may have done something in the formation
of a new species; but this it appears (Ibid., vol. iii. page 798)
is inaccurate and without evidence. I also gave some extracts from a
correspondence between Professor Owen and the editor of the "London
Review", from which it appeared manifest to the editor as well as to
myself, that Professor Owen claimed to have promulgated the theory of
natural selection before I had done so; and I expressed my surprise
and satisfaction at this announcement; but as far as it is possible to
understand certain recently published passages (Ibid., vol. iii. page
798) I have either partially or wholly again fallen into error. It
is consolatory to me that others find Professor Owen's controversial
writings as difficult to understand and to reconcile with each other,
as I do. As far as the mere enunciation of the principle of natural
selection is concerned, it is quite immaterial whether or not Professor
Owen preceded me, for both of us, as shown in this historical sketch,
were long ago preceded by Dr. Wells and Mr. Matthews.

M. Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, in his lectures delivered in 1850 (of
which a Resume appeared in the "Revue et Mag. de Zoolog.", Jan., 1851),
briefly gives his reason for believing that specific characters "sont
fixes, pour chaque espece, tant qu'elle se perpetue au milieu des memes
circonstances: ils se modifient, si les circonstances ambiantes viennent
a changer. En resume, L'OBSERVATION des animaux sauvages demontre deja
la variabilite LIMITEE des especes. Les EXPERIENCES sur les animaux
sauvages devenus domestiques, et sur les animaux domestiques redevenus
sauvages, la demontrent plus clairment encore. Ces memes experiences
prouvent, de plus, que les differences produites peuvent etre de VALEUR
GENERIQUE." In his "Hist. Nat. Generale" (tom. ii, page 430, 1859) he
amplifies analogous conclusions.

From a circular lately issued it appears that Dr. Freke, in 1851
("Dublin Medical Press", page 322), propounded the doctrine that all
organic beings have descended from one primordial form. His grounds of
belief and treatment of the subject are wholly different from mine;
but as Dr. Freke has now (1861) published his Essay on the "Origin of
Species by means of Organic Affinity", the difficult attempt to give any
idea of his views would be superfluous on my part.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in an Essay (originally published in the "Leader",
March, 1852, and republished in his "Essays", in 1858), has contrasted
the theories of the Creation and the Development of organic beings
with remarkable skill and force. He argues from the analogy of domestic
productions, from the changes which the embryos of many species undergo,
from the difficulty of distinguishing species and varieties, and from
the principle of general gradation, that species have been modified;
and he attributes the modification to the change of circumstances.
The author (1855) has also treated Psychology on the principle of the
necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.

In 1852 M. Naudin, a distinguished botanist, expressly stated, in an
admirable paper on the Origin of Species ("Revue Horticole", page 102;
since partly republished in the "Nouvelles Archives du Museum", tom. i,
page 171), his belief that species are formed in an analogous manner as
varieties are under cultivation; and the latter process he attributes to
man's power of selection. But he does not show how selection acts under
nature. He believes, like Dean Herbert, that species, when nascent,
were more plastic than at present. He lays weight on what he calls the
principle of finality, "puissance mysterieuse, indeterminee; fatalite
pour les uns; pour les autres volonte providentielle, dont l'action
incessante sur les etres vivantes determine, a toutes les epoques de
l'existence du monde, la forme, le volume, et la duree de chacun d'eux,
en raison de sa destinee dans l'ordre de choses dont il fait partie.
C'est cette puissance qui harmonise chaque membre a l'ensemble, en
l'appropriant a la fonction qu'il doit remplir dans l'organisme general
de la nature, fonction qui est pour lui sa raison d'etre." (From
references in Bronn's "Untersuchungen uber die Entwickelungs-Gesetze",
it appears that the celebrated botanist and palaeontologist Unger
published, in 1852, his belief that species undergo development and
modification. Dalton, likewise, in Pander and Dalton's work on Fossil
Sloths, expressed, in 1821, a similar belief. Similar views have, as is
well known, been maintained by Oken in his mystical "Natur-Philosophie".
From other references in Godron's work "Sur l'Espece", it seems that
Bory St. Vincent, Burdach, Poiret and Fries, have all admitted that
new species are continually being produced. I may add, that of the
thirty-four authors named in this Historical Sketch, who believe in
the modification of species, or at least disbelieve in separate acts
of creation, twenty-seven have written on special branches of natural
history or geology.)

In 1853 a celebrated geologist, Count Keyserling ("Bulletin de la Soc.
Geolog.", 2nd Ser., tom. x, page 357), suggested that as new diseases,
supposed to have been caused by some miasma have arisen and spread over
the world, so at certain periods the germs of existing species may have
been chemically affected by circumambient molecules of a particular
nature, and thus have given rise to new forms.

In this same year, 1853, Dr. Schaaffhausen published an excellent
pamphlet ("Verhand. des Naturhist. Vereins der Preuss. Rheinlands",
etc.), in which he maintains the development of organic forms on the
earth. He infers that many species have kept true for long periods,
whereas a few have become modified. The distinction of species he
explains by the destruction of intermediate graduated forms. "Thus
living plants and animals are not separated from the extinct by new
creations, but are to be regarded as their descendants through continued
reproduction."

A well-known French botanist, M. Lecoq, writes in 1854 ("Etudes sur
Geograph." Bot. tom. i, page 250), "On voit que nos recherches sur la
fixite ou la variation de l'espece, nous conduisent directement aux
idees emises par deux hommes justement celebres, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
et Goethe." Some other passages scattered through M. Lecoq's large
work make it a little doubtful how far he extends his views on the
modification of species.

The "Philosophy of Creation" has been treated in a masterly manner by
the Rev. Baden Powell, in his "Essays on the Unity of Worlds", 1855.
Nothing can be more striking than the manner in which he shows that the
introduction of new species is "a regular, not a casual phenomenon," or,
as Sir John Herschel expresses it, "a natural in contradistinction to a
miraculous process."

The third volume of the "Journal of the Linnean Society" contains
papers, read July 1, 1858, by Mr. Wallace and myself, in which, as
stated in the introductory remarks to this volume, the theory of
Natural Selection is promulgated by Mr. Wallace with admirable force and
clearness.

Von Baer, toward whom all zoologists feel so profound a respect,
expressed about the year 1859 (see Prof. Rudolph Wagner,
"Zoologisch-Anthropologische Untersuchungen", 1861, s. 51) his
conviction, chiefly grounded on the laws of geographical distribution,
that forms now perfectly distinct have descended from a single
parent-form.

In June, 1859, Professor Huxley gave a lecture before the Royal
Institution on the "Persistent Types of Animal Life". Referring to such
cases, he remarks, "It is difficult to comprehend the meaning of such
facts as these, if we suppose that each species of animal and plant, or
each great type of organisation, was formed and placed upon the surface
of the globe at long intervals by a distinct act of creative power; and
it is well to recollect that such an assumption is as unsupported by
tradition or revelation as it is opposed to the general analogy of
nature. If, on the other hand, we view "Persistent Types" in relation to
that hypothesis which supposes the species living at any time to be the
result of the gradual modification of pre-existing species, a hypothesis
which, though unproven, and sadly damaged by some of its supporters,
is yet the only one to which physiology lends any countenance; their
existence would seem to show that the amount of modification which
living beings have undergone during geological time is but very small in
relation to the whole series of changes which they have suffered."

In December, 1859, Dr. Hooker published his "Introduction to the
Australian Flora". In the first part of this great work he admits the
truth of the descent and modification of species, and supports this
doctrine by many original observations.

The first edition of this work was published on November 24, 1859, and
the second edition on January 7, 1860.



CONTENTS.


  INTRODUCTION


  CHAPTER I.

  VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION.

  Causes of Variability--Effects of Habit and the use or disuse of
  Parts--Correlated Variation--Inheritance--Character of Domestic
  Varieties--Difficulty of distinguishing between Varieties and
  Species--Origin of Domestic Varieties from one or more Species--Domestic
  Pigeons, their Differences and Origin--Principles of Selection,
  anciently followed, their Effects--Methodical and Unconscious
  Selection--Unknown Origin of our Domestic Productions--Circumstances
  favourable to Man's power of Selection.


  CHAPTER II.

  VARIATION UNDER NATURE.

  Variability--Individual Differences--Doubtful species--Wide ranging,
  much diffused, and common species, vary most--Species of the larger
  genera in each country vary more frequently than the species of the
  smaller genera--Many of the species of the larger genera resemble
  varieties in being very closely, but unequally, related to each other,
  and in having restricted ranges.


  CHAPTER III.

  STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.

  Its bearing on natural selection--The term used in a wide
  sense--Geometrical ratio of increase--Rapid increase of naturalised
  animals and plants--Nature of the checks to increase--Competition
  universal--Effects of climate--Protection from the number of
  individuals--Complex relations of all animals and plants throughout
  nature--Struggle for life most severe between individuals and varieties
  of the same species; often severe between species of the same genus--The
  relation of organism to organism the most important of all relations.


  CHAPTER IV.

  NATURAL SELECTION; OR THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.

  Natural Selection--its power compared with man's selection--its power
  on characters of trifling importance--its power at all ages and on
  both sexes--Sexual Selection--On the generality of intercrosses
  between individuals of the same species--Circumstances favourable and
  unfavourable to the results of Natural Selection, namely, intercrossing,
  isolation, number of individuals--Slow action--Extinction caused by
  Natural Selection--Divergence of Character, related to the diversity of
  inhabitants of any small area and to naturalisation--Action of Natural
  Selection, through Divergence of Character and Extinction, on the
  descendants from a common parent--Explains the Grouping of all organic
  beings--Advance in organisation--Low forms preserved--Convergence of
  character--Indefinite multiplication of species--Summary.


  CHAPTER V.

  LAWS OF VARIATION.

  Effects of changed conditions--Use and disuse, combined with natural
  selection; organs of flight and of vision--Acclimatisation--Correlated
  variation--Compensation and economy of growth--False
  correlations--Multiple, rudimentary, and lowly organised structures
  variable--Parts developed in an unusual manner are highly variable;
  specific characters more variable than generic; secondary sexual
  characters variable--Species of the same genus vary in an analogous
  manner--Reversions to long-lost characters--Summary.


  CHAPTER VI.

  DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY.

  Difficulties of the theory of descent with modification--Absence
  or rarity of transitional varieties--Transitions in habits of
  life--Diversified habits in the same species--Species with habits
  widely different from those of their allies--Organs of extreme
  perfection--Modes of transition--Cases of difficulty--Natura non facit
  saltum--Organs of small importance--Organs not in all cases absolutely
  perfect--The law of Unity of Type and of the Conditions of Existence
  embraced by the theory of Natural Selection.


  CHAPTER VII.

  MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION.

  Longevity--Modifications not necessarily simultaneous--Modifications
  apparently of no direct service--Progressive development--Characters of
  small functional importance, the most constant--Supposed incompetence
  of natural selection to account for the incipient stages of useful
  structures--Causes which interfere with the acquisition through natural
  selection of useful structures--Gradations of structure with changed
  functions--Widely different organs in members of the same class,
  developed from one and the same source--Reasons for disbelieving in
  great and abrupt modifications.


  CHAPTER VIII.

  INSTINCT.

  Instincts comparable with habits, but different in their
  origin--Instincts graduated--Aphides and ants--Instincts
  variable--Domestic instincts, their origin--Natural instincts of
  the cuckoo, molothrus, ostrich, and parasitic bees--Slave-making
  ants--Hive-bee, its cell-making instinct--Changes of instinct and
  structure not necessarily simultaneous--Difficulties on the theory of
  the Natural Selection of instincts--Neuter or sterile insects--Summary.


  CHAPTER IX.

  HYBRIDISM.

  Distinction between the sterility of first crosses and of
  hybrids--Sterility various in degree, not universal, affected by close
  interbreeding, removed by domestication--Laws governing the sterility
  of hybrids--Sterility not a special endowment, but incidental on
  other differences, not accumulated by natural selection--Causes of
  the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids--Parallelism between the
  effects of changed conditions of life and of crossing--Dimorphism and
  Trimorphism--Fertility of varieties when crossed and of their mongrel
  offspring not universal--Hybrids and mongrels compared independently of
  their fertility--Summary.


  CHAPTER X.

  ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD.

  On the absence of intermediate varieties at the present day--On the
  nature of extinct intermediate varieties; on their number--On the lapse
  of time, as inferred from the rate of denudation and of deposition--On
  the lapse of time as estimated in years--On the poorness of our
  palaeontological collections--On the intermittence of geological
  formations--On the denudation of granitic areas--On the absence of
  intermediate varieties in any one formation--On the sudden appearance
  of groups of species--On their sudden appearance in the lowest known
  fossiliferous strata--Antiquity of the habitable earth.


  CHAPTER XI.

  ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS.

  On the slow and successive appearance of new species--On their different
  rates of change--Species once lost do not reappear--Groups of species
  follow the same general rules in their appearance and disappearance as
  do single species--On extinction--On simultaneous changes in the forms
  of life throughout the world--On the affinities of extinct species to
  each other and to living species--On the state of development of
  ancient forms--On the succession of the same types within the same
  areas--Summary of preceding and present chapter.


  CHAPTER XII.

  GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION.

  Present distribution cannot be accounted for by differences in physical
  conditions--Importance of barriers--Affinity of the productions of the
  same continent--Centres of creation--Means of dispersal by changes of
  climate and of the level of the land, and by occasional means--Dispersal
  during the Glacial period--Alternate Glacial periods in the north and
  south.


  CHAPTER XIII.

  GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION--CONTINUED.

  Distribution of fresh-water productions--On the inhabitants of oceanic
  islands--Absence of Batrachians and of terrestrial Mammals--On
  the relation of the inhabitants of islands to those of the nearest
  mainland--On colonisation from the nearest source with subsequent
  modification--Summary of the last and present chapter.


  CHAPTER XIV.

  MUTUAL AFFINITIES OF ORGANIC BEINGS: MORPHOLOGY--EMBRYOLOGY--RUDIMENTARY
  ORGANS.

  Classification, groups subordinate to groups--Natural system--Rules and
  difficulties in classification, explained on the theory of descent
  with modification--Classification of varieties--Descent always used in
  classification--Analogical or adaptive characters--Affinities,
  general, complex and radiating--Extinction separates and defines
  groups--Morphology, between members of the same class, between parts of
  the same individual--Embryology, laws of, explained by variations not
  supervening at an early age, and being inherited at a corresponding
  age--Rudimentary Organs; their origin explained--Summary.


  CHAPTER XV.

  RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION.

  Recapitulation of the objections to the theory of Natural
  Selection--Recapitulation of the general and special circumstances
  in its favour--Causes of the general belief in the immutability
  of species--How far the theory of Natural Selection may be
  extended--Effects of its adoption on the study of Natural
  history--Concluding remarks.


  GLOSSARY OF SCIENTIFIC TERMS.


  INDEX.




ORIGIN OF SPECIES.




INTRODUCTION.

When on board H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with
certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South
America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past
inhabitants of that continent. These facts, as will be seen in the
latter chapters of this volume, seemed to throw some light on the origin
of species--that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one
of our greatest philosophers. On my return home, it occurred to me,
in 1837, that something might perhaps be made out on this question by
patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could
possibly have any bearing on it. After five years' work I allowed myself
to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I
enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions, which then seemed to
me probable: from that period to the present day I have steadily pursued
the same object. I hope that I may be excused for entering on these
personal details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in
coming to a decision.

My work is now (1859) nearly finished; but as it will take me many more
years to complete it, and as my health is far from strong, I have been
urged to publish this abstract. I have more especially been induced to
do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying the natural history of
the Malay Archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general
conclusions that I have on the origin of species. In 1858 he sent me a
memoir on this subject, with a request that I would forward it to Sir
Charles Lyell, who sent it to the Linnean Society, and it is published
in the third volume of the Journal of that Society. Sir C. Lyell and Dr.
Hooker, who both knew of my work--the latter having read my sketch
of 1844--honoured me by thinking it advisable to publish, with Mr.
Wallace's excellent memoir, some brief extracts from my manuscripts.

This abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I
cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements;
and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy.
No doubt errors may have crept in, though I hope I have always been
cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only
the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in
illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice. No one can
feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in
detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been
grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this. For I am well aware
that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts
cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly
opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained
only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both
sides of each question; and this is here impossible.

I much regret that want of space prevents my having the satisfaction of
acknowledging the generous assistance which I have received from very
many naturalists, some of them personally unknown to me. I cannot,
however, let this opportunity pass without expressing my deep
obligations to Dr. Hooker, who, for the last fifteen years, has aided me
in every possible way by his large stores of knowledge and his excellent
judgment.

In considering the origin of species, it is quite conceivable that a
naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings,
on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution,
geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the
conclusion that species had not been independently created, but had
descended, like varieties, from other species. Nevertheless, such a
conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it
could be shown how the innumerable species, inhabiting this world
have been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure
and coadaptation which justly excites our admiration. Naturalists
continually refer to external conditions, such as climate, food, etc.,
as the only possible cause of variation. In one limited sense, as
we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it is preposterous to
attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance,
of the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably
adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the
mistletoe, which draws its nourishment from certain trees, which has
seeds that must be transported by certain birds, and which has flowers
with separate sexes absolutely requiring the agency of certain insects
to bring pollen from one flower to the other, it is equally preposterous
to account for the structure of this parasite, with its relations to
several distinct organic beings, by the effects of external conditions,
or of habit, or of the volition of the plant itself.

It is, therefore, of the highest importance to gain a clear insight into
the means of modification and coadaptation. At the commencement of
my observations it seemed to me probable that a careful study of
domesticated animals and of cultivated plants would offer the best
chance of making out this obscure problem. Nor have I been disappointed;
in this and in all other perplexing cases I have invariably found that
our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of variation under domestication,
afforded the best and safest clue. I may venture to express my
conviction of the high value of such studies, although they have been
very commonly neglected by naturalists.

From these considerations, I shall devote the first chapter of this
abstract to variation under domestication. We shall thus see that a
large amount of hereditary modification is at least possible; and, what
is equally or more important, we shall see how great is the power of man
in accumulating by his selection successive slight variations. I will
then pass on to the variability of species in a state of nature; but
I shall, unfortunately, be compelled to treat this subject far too
briefly, as it can be treated properly only by giving long catalogues of
facts. We shall, however, be enabled to discuss what circumstances
are most favourable to variation. In the next chapter the struggle
for existence among all organic beings throughout the world, which
inevitably follows from the high geometrical ratio of their increase,
will be considered. This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the
whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each
species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there
is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any
being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself,
under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have
a better chance of surviving, and thus be NATURALLY SELECTED. From
the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to
propagate its new and modified form.

This fundamental subject of natural selection will be treated at
some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how natural
selection almost inevitably causes much extinction of the less improved
forms of life, and leads to what I have called divergence of character.
In the next chapter I shall discuss the complex and little known laws
of variation. In the five succeeding chapters, the most apparent and
gravest difficulties in accepting the theory will be given: namely,
first, the difficulties of transitions, or how a simple being or a
simple organ can be changed and perfected into a highly developed
being or into an elaborately constructed organ; secondly the subject of
instinct, or the mental powers of animals; thirdly, hybridism, or the
infertility of species and the fertility of varieties when intercrossed;
and fourthly, the imperfection of the geological record. In the next
chapter I shall consider the geological succession of organic beings
throughout time; in the twelfth and thirteenth, their geographical
distribution throughout space; in the fourteenth, their classification
or mutual affinities, both when mature and in an embryonic condition. In
the last chapter I shall give a brief recapitulation of the whole work,
and a few concluding remarks.

No one ought to feel surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained in
regard to the origin of species and varieties, if he make due allowance
for our profound ignorance in regard to the mutual relations of the
many beings which live around us. Who can explain why one species ranges
widely and is very numerous, and why another allied species has a narrow
range and is rare? Yet these relations are of the highest importance,
for they determine the present welfare and, as I believe, the future
success and modification of every inhabitant of this world. Still less
do we know of the mutual relations of the innumerable inhabitants of the
world during the many past geological epochs in its history. Although
much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no
doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of
which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently
entertained, and which I formerly entertained--namely, that each species
has been independently created--is erroneous. I am fully convinced that
species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called
the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally
extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of
any one species are the descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am
convinced that natural selection has been the most important, but not
the exclusive, means of modification.




CHAPTER I. VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION.

 Causes of Variability--Effects of Habit and the use and disuse of
 Parts--Correlated Variation--Inheritance--Character of Domestic
 Varieties--Difficulty of distinguishing between Varieties and
 Species--Origin of Domestic Varieties from one or more Species--Domestic
 Pigeons, their Differences and Origin--Principles of Selection,
 anciently followed, their Effects--Methodical and Unconscious
 Selection--Unknown Origin of our Domestic Productions--Circumstances
 favourable to Man's power of Selection.


CAUSES OF VARIABILITY.

When we compare the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of
our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which
strikes us is, that they generally differ more from each other than do
the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature. And
if we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have
been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most
different climates and treatment, we are driven to conclude that this
great variability is due to our domestic productions having been raised
under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from,
those to which the parent species had been exposed under nature. There
is, also, some probability in the view propounded by Andrew Knight, that
this variability may be partly connected with excess of food. It seems
clear that organic beings must be exposed during several generations to
new conditions to cause any great amount of variation; and that, when
the organisation has once begun to vary, it generally continues varying
for many generations. No case is on record of a variable organism
ceasing to vary under cultivation. Our oldest cultivated plants, such
as wheat, still yield new varieties: our oldest domesticated animals are
still capable of rapid improvement or modification.

As far as I am able to judge, after long attending to the subject, the
conditions of life appear to act in two ways--directly on the whole
organisation or on certain parts alone and in directly by affecting the
reproductive system. With respect to the direct action, we must bear in
mind that in every case, as Professor Weismann has lately insisted,
and as I have incidently shown in my work on "Variation under
Domestication," there are two factors: namely, the nature of the
organism and the nature of the conditions. The former seems to be much
the more important; for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under,
as far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and, on the other hand,
dissimilar variations arise under conditions which appear to be
nearly uniform. The effects on the offspring are either definite or in
definite. They may be considered as definite when all or nearly all the
offspring of individuals exposed to certain conditions during several
generations are modified in the same manner. It is extremely difficult
to come to any conclusion in regard to the extent of the changes which
have been thus definitely induced. There can, however, be little doubt
about many slight changes, such as size from the amount of food,
colour from the nature of the food, thickness of the skin and hair from
climate, etc. Each of the endless variations which we see in the plumage
of our fowls must have had some efficient cause; and if the same cause
were to act uniformly during a long series of generations on many
individuals, all probably would be modified in the same manner. Such
facts as the complex and extraordinary out growths which variably
follow from the insertion of a minute drop of poison by a gall-producing
insect, shows us what singular modifications might result in the case of
plants from a chemical change in the nature of the sap.

In definite variability is a much more common result of changed
conditions than definite variability, and has probably played a more
important part in the formation of our domestic races. We see in
definite variability in the endless slight peculiarities which
distinguish the individuals of the same species, and which cannot be
accounted for by inheritance from either parent or from some more remote
ancestor. Even strongly-marked differences occasionally appear in the
young of the same litter, and in seedlings from the same seed-capsule.
At long intervals of time, out of millions of individuals reared in the
same country and fed on nearly the same food, deviations of structure so
strongly pronounced as to deserve to be called monstrosities arise; but
monstrosities cannot be separated by any distinct line from slighter
variations. All such changes of structure, whether extremely slight or
strongly marked, which appear among many individuals living together,
may be considered as the in definite effects of the conditions of life
on each individual organism, in nearly the same manner as the chill
effects different men in an in definite manner, according to their
state of body or constitution, causing coughs or colds, rheumatism, or
inflammation of various organs.

With respect to what I have called the in direct action of changed
conditions, namely, through the reproductive system of being affected,
we may infer that variability is thus induced, partly from the fact of
this system being extremely sensitive to any change in the conditions,
and partly from the similarity, as Kolreuter and others have remarked,
between the variability which follows from the crossing of distinct
species, and that which may be observed with plants and animals when
reared under new or unnatural conditions. Many facts clearly show how
eminently susceptible the reproductive system is to very slight changes
in the surrounding conditions. Nothing is more easy than to tame an
animal, and few things more difficult than to get it to breed freely
under confinement, even when the male and female unite. How many animals
there are which will not breed, though kept in an almost free state in
their native country! This is generally, but erroneously attributed to
vitiated instincts. Many cultivated plants display the utmost vigour,
and yet rarely or never seed! In some few cases it has been discovered
that a very trifling change, such as a little more or less water at some
particular period of growth, will determine whether or not a plant will
produce seeds. I cannot here give the details which I have collected and
elsewhere published on this curious subject; but to show how singular
the laws are which determine the reproduction of animals under
confinement, I may mention that carnivorous animals, even from the
tropics, breed in this country pretty freely under confinement, with
the exception of the plantigrades or bear family, which seldom produce
young; whereas, carnivorous birds, with the rarest exception, hardly
ever lay fertile eggs. Many exotic plants have pollen utterly worthless,
in the same condition as in the most sterile hybrids. When, on the one
hand, we see domesticated animals and plants, though often weak and
sickly, breeding freely under confinement; and when, on the other hand,
we see individuals, though taken young from a state of nature perfectly
tamed, long-lived, and healthy (of which I could give numerous
instances), yet having their reproductive system so seriously affected
by unperceived causes as to fail to act, we need not be surprised at
this system, when it does act under confinement, acting irregularly,
and producing offspring somewhat unlike their parents. I may add that
as some organisms breed freely under the most unnatural conditions--for
instance, rabbits and ferrets kept in hutches--showing that their
reproductive organs are not easily affected; so will some animals
and plants withstand domestication or cultivation, and vary very
slightly--perhaps hardly more than in a state of nature.

Some naturalists have maintained that all variations are connected with
the act of sexual reproduction; but this is certainly an error; for I
have given in another work a long list of "sporting plants;" as they are
called by gardeners; that is, of plants which have suddenly produced a
single bud with a new and sometimes widely different character from that
of the other buds on the same plant. These bud variations, as they may
be named, can be propagated by grafts, offsets, etc., and sometimes
by seed. They occur rarely under nature, but are far from rare under
culture. As a single bud out of many thousands produced year after year
on the same tree under uniform conditions, has been known suddenly to
assume a new character; and as buds on distinct trees, growing
under different conditions, have sometimes yielded nearly the same
variety--for instance, buds on peach-trees producing nectarines, and
buds on common roses producing moss-roses--we clearly see that the
nature of the conditions is of subordinate importance in comparison
with the nature of the organism in determining each particular form of
variation; perhaps of not more importance than the nature of the spark,
by which a mass of combustible matter is ignited, has in determining the
nature of the flames.

EFFECTS OF HABIT AND OF THE USE OR DISUSE OF PARTS; CORRELATED
VARIATION; INHERITANCE.

Changed habits produce an inherited effect as in the period of the
flowering of plants when transported from one climate to another. With
animals the increased use or disuse of parts has had a more marked
influence; thus I find in the domestic duck that the bones of the wing
weigh less and the bones of the leg more, in proportion to the whole
skeleton, than do the same bones in the wild duck; and this change may
be safely attributed to the domestic duck flying much less, and walking
more, than its wild parents. The great and inherited development of the
udders in cows and goats in countries where they are habitually milked,
in comparison with these organs in other countries, is probably another
instance of the effects of use. Not one of our domestic animals can be
named which has not in some country drooping ears; and the view which
has been suggested that the drooping is due to disuse of the muscles of
the ear, from the animals being seldom much alarmed, seems probable.

Many laws regulate variation, some few of which can be dimly seen, and
will hereafter be briefly discussed. I will here only allude to what may
be called correlated variation. Important changes in the embryo or larva
will probably entail changes in the mature animal. In monstrosities,
the correlations between quite distinct parts are very curious; and many
instances are given in Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's great work on this
subject. Breeders believe that long limbs are almost always accompanied
by an elongated head. Some instances of correlation are quite whimsical;
thus cats which are entirely white and have blue eyes are generally
deaf; but it has been lately stated by Mr. Tait that this is confined to
the males. Colour and constitutional peculiarities go together, of which
many remarkable cases could be given among animals and plants. From
facts collected by Heusinger, it appears that white sheep and pigs
are injured by certain plants, while dark-coloured individuals escape:
Professor Wyman has recently communicated to me a good illustration of
this fact; on asking some farmers in Virginia how it was that all their
pigs were black, they informed him that the pigs ate the paint-root
(Lachnanthes), which coloured their bones pink, and which caused
the hoofs of all but the black varieties to drop off; and one of the
"crackers" (i.e. Virginia squatters) added, "we select the black members
of a litter for raising, as they alone have a good chance of living."
Hairless dogs have imperfect teeth; long-haired and coarse-haired
animals are apt to have, as is asserted, long or many horns; pigeons
with feathered feet have skin between their outer toes; pigeons with
short beaks have small feet, and those with long beaks large feet. Hence
if man goes on selecting, and thus augmenting, any peculiarity, he will
almost certainly modify unintentionally other parts of the structure,
owing to the mysterious laws of correlation.

The results of the various, unknown, or but dimly understood laws of
variation are infinitely complex and diversified. It is well worth while
carefully to study the several treatises on some of our old cultivated
plants, as on the hyacinth, potato, even the dahlia, etc.; and it
is really surprising to note the endless points of structure and
constitution in which the varieties and sub-varieties differ slightly
from each other. The whole organisation seems to have become plastic,
and departs in a slight degree from that of the parental type.

Any variation which is not inherited is unimportant for us. But the
number and diversity of inheritable deviations of structure, both
those of slight and those of considerable physiological importance,
are endless. Dr. Prosper Lucas' treatise, in two large volumes, is the
fullest and the best on this subject. No breeder doubts how strong is
the tendency to inheritance; that like produces like is his fundamental
belief: doubts have been thrown on this principle only by theoretical
writers. When any deviation of structure often appears, and we see it
in the father and child, we cannot tell whether it may not be due to the
same cause having acted on both; but when among individuals, apparently
exposed to the same conditions, any very rare deviation, due to some
extraordinary combination of circumstances, appears in the parent--say,
once among several million individuals--and it reappears in the
child, the mere doctrine of chances almost compels us to attribute
its reappearance to inheritance. Every one must have heard of cases of
albinism, prickly skin, hairy bodies, etc., appearing in several members
of the same family. If strange and rare deviations of structure are
truly inherited, less strange and commoner deviations may be freely
admitted to be inheritable. Perhaps the correct way of viewing the whole
subject would be, to look at the inheritance of every character whatever
as the rule, and non-inheritance as the anomaly.

The laws governing inheritance are for the most part unknown; no one
can say why the same peculiarity in different individuals of the same
species, or in different species, is sometimes inherited and sometimes
not so; why the child often reverts in certain characteristics to its
grandfather or grandmother or more remote ancestor; why a peculiarity is
often transmitted from one sex to both sexes, or to one sex alone,
more commonly but not exclusively to the like sex. It is a fact of
some importance to us, that peculiarities appearing in the males of our
domestic breeds are often transmitted, either exclusively or in a much
greater degree, to the males alone. A much more important rule, which I
think may be trusted, is that, at whatever period of life a peculiarity
first appears, it tends to reappear in the offspring at a corresponding
age, though sometimes earlier. In many cases this could not be
otherwise; thus the inherited peculiarities in the horns of cattle could
appear only in the offspring when nearly mature; peculiarities in the
silk-worm are known to appear at the corresponding caterpillar or cocoon
stage. But hereditary diseases and some other facts make me believe
that the rule has a wider extension, and that, when there is no apparent
reason why a peculiarity should appear at any particular age, yet that
it does tend to appear in the offspring at the same period at which it
first appeared in the parent. I believe this rule to be of the highest
importance in explaining the laws of embryology. These remarks are of
course confined to the first APPEARANCE of the peculiarity, and not
to the primary cause which may have acted on the ovules or on the male
element; in nearly the same manner as the increased length of the horns
in the offspring from a short-horned cow by a long-horned bull, though
appearing late in life, is clearly due to the male element.

Having alluded to the subject of reversion, I may here refer to
a statement often made by naturalists--namely, that our domestic
varieties, when run wild, gradually but invariably revert in character
to their aboriginal stocks. Hence it has been argued that no deductions
can be drawn from domestic races to species in a state of nature. I
have in vain endeavoured to discover on what decisive facts the above
statement has so often and so boldly been made. There would be great
difficulty in proving its truth: we may safely conclude that very many
of the most strongly marked domestic varieties could not possibly live
in a wild state. In many cases we do not know what the aboriginal stock
was, and so could not tell whether or not nearly perfect reversion
had ensued. It would be necessary, in order to prevent the effects of
intercrossing, that only a single variety should be turned loose in
its new home. Nevertheless, as our varieties certainly do occasionally
revert in some of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me
not improbable that if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to
cultivate, during many generations, the several races, for instance,
of the cabbage, in very poor soil--in which case, however, some
effect would have to be attributed to the DEFINITE action of the poor
soil--that they would, to a large extent, or even wholly, revert to the
wild aboriginal stock. Whether or not the experiment would succeed is
not of great importance for our line of argument; for by the experiment
itself the conditions of life are changed. If it could be shown that our
domestic varieties manifested a strong tendency to reversion--that is,
to lose their acquired characters, while kept under the same conditions
and while kept in a considerable body, so that free intercrossing might
check, by blending together, any slight deviations in their structure,
in such case, I grant that we could deduce nothing from domestic
varieties in regard to species. But there is not a shadow of evidence
in favour of this view: to assert that we could not breed our cart
and race-horses, long and short-horned cattle, and poultry of various
breeds, and esculent vegetables, for an unlimited number of generations,
would be opposed to all experience.

CHARACTER OF DOMESTIC VARIETIES; DIFFICULTY OF DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN
VARIETIES AND SPECIES; ORIGIN OF DOMESTIC VARIETIES FROM ONE OR MORE
SPECIES.

When we look to the hereditary varieties or races of our domestic
animals and plants, and compare them with closely allied species, we
generally perceive in each domestic race, as already remarked, less
uniformity of character than in true species. Domestic races often
have a somewhat monstrous character; by which I mean, that, although
differing from each other and from other species of the same genus, in
several trifling respects, they often differ in an extreme degree in
some one part, both when compared one with another, and more especially
when compared with the species under nature to which they are nearest
allied. With these exceptions (and with that of the perfect fertility of
varieties when crossed--a subject hereafter to be discussed), domestic
races of the same species differ from each other in the same manner as
do the closely allied species of the same genus in a state of nature,
but the differences in most cases are less in degree. This must be
admitted as true, for the domestic races of many animals and plants have
been ranked by some competent judges as the descendants of aboriginally
distinct species, and by other competent judges as mere varieties.
If any well marked distinction existed between a domestic race and a
species, this source of doubt would not so perpetually recur. It has
often been stated that domestic races do not differ from each other in
characters of generic value. It can be shown that this statement is not
correct; but naturalists differ much in determining what characters are
of generic value; all such valuations being at present empirical. When
it is explained how genera originate under nature, it will be seen that
we have no right to expect often to find a generic amount of difference
in our domesticated races.

In attempting to estimate the amount of structural difference between
allied domestic races, we are soon involved in doubt, from not knowing
whether they are descended from one or several parent species. This
point, if it could be cleared up, would be interesting; if, for
instance, it could be shown that the greyhound, bloodhound, terrier,
spaniel and bull-dog, which we all know propagate their kind truly, were
the offspring of any single species, then such facts would have great
weight in making us doubt about the immutability of the many closely
allied natural species--for instance, of the many foxes--inhabiting the
different quarters of the world. I do not believe, as we shall presently
see, that the whole amount of difference between the several breeds of
the dog has been produced under domestication; I believe that a small
part of the difference is due to their being descended from distinct
species. In the case of strongly marked races of some other domesticated
species, there is presumptive or even strong evidence that all are
descended from a single wild stock.

It has often been assumed that man has chosen for domestication animals
and plants having an extraordinary inherent tendency to vary, and
likewise to withstand diverse climates. I do not dispute that these
capacities have added largely to the value of most of our domesticated
productions; but how could a savage possibly know, when he first tamed
an animal, whether it would vary in succeeding generations, and whether
it would endure other climates? Has the little variability of the ass
and goose, or the small power of endurance of warmth by the reindeer,
or of cold by the common camel, prevented their domestication? I
cannot doubt that if other animals and plants, equal in number to our
domesticated productions, and belonging to equally diverse classes and
countries, were taken from a state of nature, and could be made to breed
for an equal number of generations under domestication, they would on
an average vary as largely as the parent species of our existing
domesticated productions have varied.

In the case of most of our anciently domesticated animals and plants,
it is not possible to come to any definite conclusion, whether they are
descended from one or several wild species. The argument mainly relied
on by those who believe in the multiple origin of our domestic animals
is, that we find in the most ancient times, on the monuments of Egypt,
and in the lake-habitations of Switzerland, much diversity in the
breeds; and that some of these ancient breeds closely resemble, or are
even identical with, those still existing. But this only throws far
backward the history of civilisation, and shows that animals were
domesticated at a much earlier period than has hitherto been supposed.
The lake-inhabitants of Switzerland cultivated several kinds of wheat
and barley, the pea, the poppy for oil and flax; and they possessed
several domesticated animals. They also carried on commerce with other
nations. All this clearly shows, as Heer has remarked, that they had at
this early age progressed considerably in civilisation; and this again
implies a long continued previous period of less advanced civilisation,
during which the domesticated animals, kept by different tribes in
different districts, might have varied and given rise to distinct races.
Since the discovery of flint tools in the superficial formations of many
parts of the world, all geologists believe that barbarian men existed at
an enormously remote period; and we know that at the present day there
is hardly a tribe so barbarous as not to have domesticated at least the
dog.

The origin of most of our domestic animals will probably forever remain
vague. But I may here state that, looking to the domestic dogs of the
whole world, I have, after a laborious collection of all known facts,
come to the conclusion that several wild species of Canidae have been
tamed, and that their blood, in some cases mingled together, flows in
the veins of our domestic breeds. In regard to sheep and goats I can
form no decided opinion. From facts communicated to me by Mr. Blyth,
on the habits, voice, constitution and structure of the humped Indian
cattle, it is almost certain that they are descended from a different
aboriginal stock from our European cattle; and some competent judges
believe that these latter have had two or three wild progenitors,
whether or not these deserve to be called species. This conclusion, as
well as that of the specific distinction between the humped and common
cattle, may, indeed, be looked upon as established by the admirable
researches of Professor Rutimeyer. With respect to horses, from reasons
which I cannot here give, I am doubtfully inclined to believe, in
opposition to several authors, that all the races belong to the same
species. Having kept nearly all the English breeds of the fowl alive,
having bred and crossed them, and examined their skeletons, it appears
to me almost certain that all are the descendants of the wild Indian
fowl, Gallus bankiva; and this is the conclusion of Mr. Blyth, and
of others who have studied this bird in India. In regard to ducks and
rabbits, some breeds of which differ much from each other, the evidence
is clear that they are all descended from the common duck and wild
rabbit.

The doctrine of the origin of our several domestic races from several
aboriginal stocks, has been carried to an absurd extreme by some
authors. They believe that every race which breeds true, let the
distinctive characters be ever so slight, has had its wild prototype.
At this rate there must have existed at least a score of species of wild
cattle, as many sheep, and several goats, in Europe alone, and several
even within Great Britain. One author believes that there formerly
existed eleven wild species of sheep peculiar to Great Britain! When we
bear in mind that Britain has now not one peculiar mammal, and France
but few distinct from those of Germany, and so with Hungary, Spain,
etc., but that each of these kingdoms possesses several peculiar breeds
of cattle, sheep, etc., we must admit that many domestic breeds must
have originated in Europe; for whence otherwise could they have been
derived? So it is in India. Even in the case of the breeds of the
domestic dog throughout the world, which I admit are descended from
several wild species, it cannot be doubted that there has been an
immense amount of inherited variation; for who will believe that animals
closely resembling the Italian greyhound, the bloodhound, the bull-dog,
pug-dog, or Blenheim spaniel, etc.--so unlike all wild Canidae--ever
existed in a state of nature? It has often been loosely said that all
our races of dogs have been produced by the crossing of a few
aboriginal species; but by crossing we can only get forms in some degree
intermediate between their parents; and if we account for our several
domestic races by this process, we must admit the former existence of
the most extreme forms, as the Italian greyhound, bloodhound, bull-dog,
etc., in the wild state. Moreover, the possibility of making distinct
races by crossing has been greatly exaggerated. Many cases are on record
showing that a race may be modified by occasional crosses if aided
by the careful selection of the individuals which present the desired
character; but to obtain a race intermediate between two quite distinct
races would be very difficult. Sir J. Sebright expressly experimented
with this object and failed. The offspring from the first cross between
two pure breeds is tolerably and sometimes (as I have found with
pigeons) quite uniform in character, and every thing seems simple
enough; but when these mongrels are crossed one with another for several
generations, hardly two of them are alike, and then the difficulty of
the task becomes manifest.

BREEDS OF THE DOMESTIC PIGEON, THEIR DIFFERENCES AND ORIGIN.

Believing that it is always best to study some special group, I have,
after deliberation, taken up domestic pigeons. I have kept every breed
which I could purchase or obtain, and have been most kindly favoured
with skins from several quarters of the world, more especially by the
Hon. W. Elliot from India, and by the Hon. C. Murray from Persia. Many
treatises in different languages have been published on pigeons, and
some of them are very important, as being of considerable antiquity. I
have associated with several eminent fanciers, and have been permitted
to join two of the London Pigeon Clubs. The diversity of the breeds is
something astonishing. Compare the English carrier and the short-faced
tumbler, and see the wonderful difference in their beaks, entailing
corresponding differences in their skulls. The carrier, more especially
the male bird, is also remarkable from the wonderful development of the
carunculated skin about the head, and this is accompanied by greatly
elongated eyelids, very large external orifices to the nostrils, and a
wide gape of mouth. The short-faced tumbler has a beak in outline almost
like that of a finch; and the common tumbler has the singular inherited
habit of flying at a great height in a compact flock, and tumbling in
the air head over heels. The runt is a bird of great size, with long,
massive beak and large feet; some of the sub-breeds of runts have very
long necks, others very long wings and tails, others singularly short
tails. The barb is allied to the carrier, but, instead of a long beak,
has a very short and broad one. The pouter has a much elongated body,
wings, and legs; and its enormously developed crop, which it glories in
inflating, may well excite astonishment and even laughter. The turbit
has a short and conical beak, with a line of reversed feathers down the
breast; and it has the habit of continually expanding, slightly, the
upper part of the oesophagus. The Jacobin has the feathers so much
reversed along the back of the neck that they form a hood, and it
has, proportionally to its size, elongated wing and tail feathers. The
trumpeter and laugher, as their names express, utter a very different
coo from the other breeds. The fantail has thirty or even forty
tail-feathers, instead of twelve or fourteen, the normal number in all
the members of the great pigeon family: these feathers are kept expanded
and are carried so erect that in good birds the head and tail touch: the
oil-gland is quite aborted. Several other less distinct breeds might be
specified.

In the skeletons of the several breeds, the development of the bones of
the face, in length and breadth and curvature, differs enormously. The
shape, as well as the breadth and length of the ramus of the lower jaw,
varies in a highly remarkable manner. The caudal and sacral vertebrae
vary in number; as does the number of the ribs, together with their
relative breadth and the presence of processes. The size and shape of
the apertures in the sternum are highly variable; so is the degree
of divergence and relative size of the two arms of the furcula. The
proportional width of the gape of mouth, the proportional length of the
eyelids, of the orifice of the nostrils, of the tongue (not always in
strict correlation with the length of beak), the size of the crop and
of the upper part of the oesophagus; the development and abortion of
the oil-gland; the number of the primary wing and caudal feathers; the
relative length of the wing and tail to each other and to the body;
the relative length of the leg and foot; the number of scutellae on
the toes, the development of skin between the toes, are all points of
structure which are variable. The period at which the perfect plumage is
acquired varies, as does the state of the down with which the nestling
birds are clothed when hatched. The shape and size of the eggs vary. The
manner of flight, and in some breeds the voice and disposition, differ
remarkably. Lastly, in certain breeds, the males and females have come
to differ in a slight degree from each other.

Altogether at least a score of pigeons might be chosen, which, if shown
to an ornithologist, and he were told that they were wild birds, would
certainly be ranked by him as well-defined species. Moreover, I do not
believe that any ornithologist would in this case place the English
carrier, the short-faced tumbler, the runt, the barb, pouter, and
fantail in the same genus; more especially as in each of these breeds
several truly-inherited sub-breeds, or species, as he would call them,
could be shown him.

Great as are the differences between the breeds of the pigeon, I am
fully convinced that the common opinion of naturalists is correct,
namely, that all are descended from the rock-pigeon (Columba livia),
including under this term several geographical races or sub-species,
which differ from each other in the most trifling respects. As several
of the reasons which have led me to this belief are in some degree
applicable in other cases, I will here briefly give them. If the several
breeds are not varieties, and have not proceeded from the rock-pigeon,
they must have descended from at least seven or eight aboriginal stocks;
for it is impossible to make the present domestic breeds by the crossing
of any lesser number: how, for instance, could a pouter be produced
by crossing two breeds unless one of the parent-stocks possessed the
characteristic enormous crop? The supposed aboriginal stocks must all
have been rock-pigeons, that is, they did not breed or willingly perch
on trees. But besides C. livia, with its geographical sub-species, only
two or three other species of rock-pigeons are known; and these have
not any of the characters of the domestic breeds. Hence the supposed
aboriginal stocks must either still exist in the countries where they
were originally domesticated, and yet be unknown to ornithologists; and
this, considering their size, habits and remarkable characters, seems
improbable; or they must have become extinct in the wild state. But
birds breeding on precipices, and good flyers, are unlikely to be
exterminated; and the common rock-pigeon, which has the same habits with
the domestic breeds, has not been exterminated even on several of the
smaller British islets, or on the shores of the Mediterranean. Hence the
supposed extermination of so many species having similar habits with
the rock-pigeon seems a very rash assumption. Moreover, the several
above-named domesticated breeds have been transported to all parts of
the world, and, therefore, some of them must have been carried back
again into their native country; but not one has become wild or feral,
though the dovecot-pigeon, which is the rock-pigeon in a very slightly
altered state, has become feral in several places. Again, all recent
experience shows that it is difficult to get wild animals to breed
freely under domestication; yet on the hypothesis of the multiple origin
of our pigeons, it must be assumed that at least seven or eight species
were so thoroughly domesticated in ancient times by half-civilized man,
as to be quite prolific under confinement.

An argument of great weight, and applicable in several other cases, is,
that the above-specified breeds, though agreeing generally with the wild
rock-pigeon in constitution, habits, voice, colouring, and in most parts
of their structure, yet are certainly highly abnormal in other parts; we
may look in vain through the whole great family of Columbidae for a beak
like that of the English carrier, or that of the short-faced tumbler, or
barb; for reversed feathers like those of the Jacobin; for a crop like
that of the pouter; for tail-feathers like those of the fantail. Hence
it must be assumed, not only that half-civilized man succeeded in
thoroughly domesticating several species, but that he intentionally or
by chance picked out extraordinarily abnormal species; and further, that
these very species have since all become extinct or unknown. So many
strange contingencies are improbable in the highest degree.

Some facts in regard to the colouring of pigeons well deserve
consideration. The rock-pigeon is of a slaty-blue, with white loins;
but the Indian sub-species, C. intermedia of Strickland, has this
part bluish. The tail has a terminal dark bar, with the outer feathers
externally edged at the base with white. The wings have two black bars.
Some semi-domestic breeds, and some truly wild breeds, have, besides the
two black bars, the wings chequered with black. These several marks do
not occur together in any other species of the whole family. Now, in
every one of the domestic breeds, taking thoroughly well-bred birds, all
the above marks, even to the white edging of the outer tail-feathers,
sometimes concur perfectly developed. Moreover, when birds belonging to
two or more distinct breeds are crossed, none of which are blue or have
any of the above-specified marks, the mongrel offspring are very apt
suddenly to acquire these characters. To give one instance out of
several which I have observed: I crossed some white fantails, which
breed very true, with some black barbs--and it so happens that blue
varieties of barbs are so rare that I never heard of an instance in
England; and the mongrels were black, brown and mottled. I also crossed
a barb with a spot, which is a white bird with a red tail and red spot
on the forehead, and which notoriously breeds very true; the mongrels
were dusky and mottled. I then crossed one of the mongrel barb-fantails
with a mongrel barb-spot, and they produced a bird of as beautiful a
blue colour, with the white loins, double black wing-bar, and barred and
white-edged tail-feathers, as any wild rock-pigeon! We can understand
these facts, on the well-known principle of reversion to ancestral
characters, if all the domestic breeds are descended from the
rock-pigeon. But if we deny this, we must make one of the two following
highly improbable suppositions. Either, first, that all the several
imagined aboriginal stocks were coloured and marked like the
rock-pigeon, although no other existing species is thus coloured and
marked, so that in each separate breed there might be a tendency to
revert to the very same colours and markings. Or, secondly, that each
breed, even the purest, has within a dozen, or at most within a score,
of generations, been crossed by the rock-pigeon: I say within a dozen
or twenty generations, for no instance is known of crossed descendants
reverting to an ancestor of foreign blood, removed by a greater number
of generations. In a breed which has been crossed only once the tendency
to revert to any character derived from such a cross will naturally
become less and less, as in each succeeding generation there will be
less of the foreign blood; but when there has been no cross, and there
is a tendency in the breed to revert to a character which was lost
during some former generation, this tendency, for all that we can see to
the contrary, may be transmitted undiminished for an indefinite
number of generations. These two distinct cases of reversion are often
confounded together by those who have written on inheritance.

Lastly, the hybrids or mongrels from between all the breeds of the
pigeon are perfectly fertile, as I can state from my own observations,
purposely made, on the most distinct breeds. Now, hardly any cases
have been ascertained with certainty of hybrids from two quite distinct
species of animals being perfectly fertile. Some authors believe
that long-continued domestication eliminates this strong tendency to
sterility in species. From the history of the dog, and of some other
domestic animals, this conclusion is probably quite correct, if applied
to species closely related to each other. But to extend it so far as to
suppose that species, aboriginally as distinct as carriers, tumblers,
pouters, and fantails now are, should yield offspring perfectly fertile,
inter se, seems to me rash in the extreme.

From these several reasons, namely, the improbability of man having
formerly made seven or eight supposed species of pigeons to breed freely
under domestication--these supposed species being quite unknown in a
wild state, and their not having become anywhere feral--these species
presenting certain very abnormal characters, as compared with all other
Columbidae, though so like the rock-pigeon in most other respects--the
occasional reappearance of the blue colour and various black marks in
all the breeds, both when kept pure and when crossed--and lastly, the
mongrel offspring being perfectly fertile--from these several reasons,
taken together, we may safely conclude that all our domestic breeds are
descended from the rock-pigeon or Columba livia with its geographical
sub-species.

In favour of this view, I may add, firstly, that the wild C. livia has
been found capable of domestication in Europe and in India; and that it
agrees in habits and in a great number of points of structure with all
the domestic breeds. Secondly, that although an English carrier or a
short-faced tumbler differs immensely in certain characters from the
rock-pigeon, yet that by comparing the several sub-breeds of these two
races, more especially those brought from distant countries, we can
make, between them and the rock-pigeon, an almost perfect series; so
we can in some other cases, but not with all the breeds. Thirdly,
those characters which are mainly distinctive of each breed are in each
eminently variable, for instance, the wattle and length of beak of
the carrier, the shortness of that of the tumbler, and the number of
tail-feathers in the fantail; and the explanation of this fact will be
obvious when we treat of selection. Fourthly, pigeons have been watched
and tended with the utmost care, and loved by many people. They have
been domesticated for thousands of years in several quarters of the
world; the earliest known record of pigeons is in the fifth Aegyptian
dynasty, about 3000 B.C., as was pointed out to me by Professor Lepsius;
but Mr. Birch informs me that pigeons are given in a bill of fare in
the previous dynasty. In the time of the Romans, as we hear from Pliny,
immense prices were given for pigeons; "nay, they are come to this pass,
that they can reckon up their pedigree and race." Pigeons were much
valued by Akber Khan in India, about the year 1600; never less than
20,000 pigeons were taken with the court. "The monarchs of Iran and
Turan sent him some very rare birds;" and, continues the courtly
historian, "His Majesty, by crossing the breeds, which method was never
practised before, has improved them astonishingly." About this same
period the Dutch were as eager about pigeons as were the old Romans. The
paramount importance of these considerations in explaining the immense
amount of variation which pigeons have undergone, will likewise be
obvious when we treat of selection. We shall then, also, see how it is
that the several breeds so often have a somewhat monstrous character.
It is also a most favourable circumstance for the production of distinct
breeds, that male and female pigeons can be easily mated for life; and
thus different breeds can be kept together in the same aviary.

I have discussed the probable origin of domestic pigeons at some,
yet quite insufficient, length; because when I first kept pigeons and
watched the several kinds, well knowing how truly they breed, I
felt fully as much difficulty in believing that since they had been
domesticated they had all proceeded from a common parent, as any
naturalist could in coming to a similar conclusion in regard to the
many species of finches, or other groups of birds, in nature. One
circumstance has struck me much; namely, that nearly all the breeders of
the various domestic animals and the cultivators of plants, with whom
I have conversed, or whose treatises I have read, are firmly convinced
that the several breeds to which each has attended, are descended
from so many aboriginally distinct species. Ask, as I have asked, a
celebrated raiser of Hereford cattle, whether his cattle might not have
descended from Long-horns, or both from a common parent-stock, and he
will laugh you to scorn. I have never met a pigeon, or poultry, or duck,
or rabbit fancier, who was not fully convinced that each main breed was
descended from a distinct species. Van Mons, in his treatise on pears
and apples, shows how utterly he disbelieves that the several sorts,
for instance a Ribston-pippin or Codlin-apple, could ever have proceeded
from the seeds of the same tree. Innumerable other examples could be
given. The explanation, I think, is simple: from long-continued study
they are strongly impressed with the differences between the several
races; and though they well know that each race varies slightly, for
they win their prizes by selecting such slight differences, yet they
ignore all general arguments, and refuse to sum up in their minds slight
differences accumulated during many successive generations. May not
those naturalists who, knowing far less of the laws of inheritance than
does the breeder, and knowing no more than he does of the intermediate
links in the long lines of descent, yet admit that many of our domestic
races are descended from the same parents--may they not learn a lesson
of caution, when they deride the idea of species in a state of nature
being lineal descendants of other species?

PRINCIPLES OF SELECTION ANCIENTLY FOLLOWED, AND THEIR EFFECTS.

Let us now briefly consider the steps by which domestic races have been
produced, either from one or from several allied species. Some effect
may be attributed to the direct and definite action of the external
conditions of life, and some to habit; but he would be a bold man who
would account by such agencies for the differences between a dray and
race-horse, a greyhound and bloodhound, a carrier and tumbler pigeon.
One of the most remarkable features in our domesticated races is that we
see in them adaptation, not indeed to the animal's or plant's own good,
but to man's use or fancy. Some variations useful to him have probably
arisen suddenly, or by one step; many botanists, for instance, believe
that the fuller's teasel, with its hooks, which can not be rivalled by
any mechanical contrivance, is only a variety of the wild Dipsacus; and
this amount of change may have suddenly arisen in a seedling. So it has
probably been with the turnspit dog; and this is known to have been
the case with the ancon sheep. But when we compare the dray-horse and
race-horse, the dromedary and camel, the various breeds of sheep fitted
either for cultivated land or mountain pasture, with the wool of one
breed good for one purpose, and that of another breed for another
purpose; when we compare the many breeds of dogs, each good for man
in different ways; when we compare the game-cock, so pertinacious in
battle, with other breeds so little quarrelsome, with "everlasting
layers" which never desire to sit, and with the bantam so small and
elegant; when we compare the host of agricultural, culinary, orchard,
and flower-garden races of plants, most useful to man at different
seasons and for different purposes, or so beautiful in his eyes, we
must, I think, look further than to mere variability. We can not suppose
that all the breeds were suddenly produced as perfect and as useful as
we now see them; indeed, in many cases, we know that this has not been
their history. The key is man's power of accumulative selection: nature
gives successive variations; man adds them up in certain directions
useful to him. In this sense he may be said to have made for himself
useful breeds.

The great power of this principle of selection is not hypothetical.
It is certain that several of our eminent breeders have, even within a
single lifetime, modified to a large extent their breeds of cattle
and sheep. In order fully to realise what they have done it is almost
necessary to read several of the many treatises devoted to this subject,
and to inspect the animals. Breeders habitually speak of an animal's
organisation as something plastic, which they can model almost as they
please. If I had space I could quote numerous passages to this effect
from highly competent authorities. Youatt, who was probably better
acquainted with the works of agriculturalists than almost any other
individual, and who was himself a very good judge of animals, speaks of
the principle of selection as "that which enables the agriculturist, not
only to modify the character of his flock, but to change it altogether.
It is the magician's wand, by means of which he may summon into life
whatever form and mould he pleases." Lord Somerville, speaking of
what breeders have done for sheep, says: "It would seem as if they had
chalked out upon a wall a form perfect in itself, and then had given it
existence." In Saxony the importance of the principle of selection in
regard to merino sheep is so fully recognised, that men follow it as a
trade: the sheep are placed on a table and are studied, like a picture
by a connoisseur; this is done three times at intervals of months, and
the sheep are each time marked and classed, so that the very best may
ultimately be selected for breeding.

What English breeders have actually effected is proved by the enormous
prices given for animals with a good pedigree; and these have been
exported to almost every quarter of the world. The improvement is by no
means generally due to crossing different breeds; all the best breeders
are strongly opposed to this practice, except sometimes among closely
allied sub-breeds. And when a cross has been made, the closest selection
is far more indispensable even than in ordinary cases. If selection
consisted merely in separating some very distinct variety and breeding
from it, the principle would be so obvious as hardly to be worth
notice; but its importance consists in the great effect produced by
the accumulation in one direction, during successive generations, of
differences absolutely inappreciable by an uneducated eye--differences
which I for one have vainly attempted to appreciate. Not one man in
a thousand has accuracy of eye and judgment sufficient to become an
eminent breeder. If gifted with these qualities, and he studies his
subject for years, and devotes his lifetime to it with indomitable
perseverance, he will succeed, and may make great improvements; if he
wants any of these qualities, he will assuredly fail. Few would readily
believe in the natural capacity and years of practice requisite to
become even a skilful pigeon-fancier.

The same principles are followed by horticulturists; but the variations
are here often more abrupt. No one supposes that our choicest
productions have been produced by a single variation from the aboriginal
stock. We have proofs that this is not so in several cases in which
exact records have been kept; thus, to give a very trifling instance,
the steadily increasing size of the common gooseberry may be quoted.
We see an astonishing improvement in many florists' flowers, when the
flowers of the present day are compared with drawings made only
twenty or thirty years ago. When a race of plants is once pretty well
established, the seed-raisers do not pick out the best plants, but
merely go over their seed-beds, and pull up the "rogues," as they call
the plants that deviate from the proper standard. With animals this kind
of selection is, in fact, likewise followed; for hardly any one is so
careless as to breed from his worst animals.

In regard to plants, there is another means of observing the accumulated
effects of selection--namely, by comparing the diversity of flowers in
the different varieties of the same species in the flower-garden; the
diversity of leaves, pods, or tubers, or whatever part is valued, in the
kitchen-garden, in comparison with the flowers of the same varieties;
and the diversity of fruit of the same species in the orchard, in
comparison with the leaves and flowers of the same set of varieties. See
how different the leaves of the cabbage are, and how extremely alike the
flowers; how unlike the flowers of the heartsease are, and how alike the
leaves; how much the fruit of the different kinds of gooseberries differ
in size, colour, shape, and hairiness, and yet the flowers present very
slight differences. It is not that the varieties which differ largely
in some one point do not differ at all in other points; this is hardly
ever--I speak after careful observation--perhaps never, the case. The
law of correlated variation, the importance of which should never be
overlooked, will ensure some differences; but, as a general rule, it
cannot be doubted that the continued selection of slight variations,
either in the leaves, the flowers, or the fruit, will produce races
differing from each other chiefly in these characters.

It may be objected that the principle of selection has been reduced to
methodical practice for scarcely more than three-quarters of a century;
it has certainly been more attended to of late years, and many treatises
have been published on the subject; and the result has been, in a
corresponding degree, rapid and important. But it is very far from
true that the principle is a modern discovery. I could give several
references to works of high antiquity, in which the full importance of
the principle is acknowledged. In rude and barbarous periods of English
history choice animals were often imported, and laws were passed to
prevent their exportation: the destruction of horses under a certain
size was ordered, and this may be compared to the "roguing" of plants
by nurserymen. The principle of selection I find distinctly given in an
ancient Chinese encyclopaedia. Explicit rules are laid down by some of
the Roman classical writers. From passages in Genesis, it is clear that
the colour of domestic animals was at that early period attended to.
Savages now sometimes cross their dogs with wild canine animals, to
improve the breed, and they formerly did so, as is attested by passages
in Pliny. The savages in South Africa match their draught cattle by
colour, as do some of the Esquimaux their teams of dogs. Livingstone
states that good domestic breeds are highly valued by the negroes in the
interior of Africa who have not associated with Europeans. Some of these
facts do not show actual selection, but they show that the breeding of
domestic animals was carefully attended to in ancient times, and is now
attended to by the lowest savages. It would, indeed, have been a strange
fact, had attention not been paid to breeding, for the inheritance of
good and bad qualities is so obvious.

UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION.

At the present time, eminent breeders try by methodical selection, with
a distinct object in view, to make a new strain or sub-breed, superior
to anything of the kind in the country. But, for our purpose, a form of
selection, which may be called unconscious, and which results from every
one trying to possess and breed from the best individual animals, is
more important. Thus, a man who intends keeping pointers naturally tries
to get as good dogs as he can, and afterwards breeds from his own best
dogs, but he has no wish or expectation of permanently altering the
breed. Nevertheless we may infer that this process, continued during
centuries, would improve and modify any breed, in the same way as
Bakewell, Collins, etc., by this very same process, only carried on more
methodically, did greatly modify, even during their lifetimes, the forms
and qualities of their cattle. Slow and insensible changes of this kind
could never be recognised unless actual measurements or careful drawings
of the breeds in question have been made long ago, which may serve for
comparison. In some cases, however, unchanged, or but little changed,
individuals of the same breed exist in less civilised districts, where
the breed has been less improved. There is reason to believe that King
Charles' spaniel has been unconsciously modified to a large extent
since the time of that monarch. Some highly competent authorities are
convinced that the setter is directly derived from the spaniel, and
has probably been slowly altered from it. It is known that the English
pointer has been greatly changed within the last century, and in this
case the change has, it is believed, been chiefly effected by crosses
with the foxhound; but what concerns us is, that the change has been
effected unconsciously and gradually, and yet so effectually that,
though the old Spanish pointer certainly came from Spain, Mr. Borrow
has not seen, as I am informed by him, any native dog in Spain like our
pointer.

By a similar process of selection, and by careful training, English
race-horses have come to surpass in fleetness and size the parent Arabs,
so that the latter, by the regulations for the Goodwood Races, are
favoured in the weights which they carry. Lord Spencer and others have
shown how the cattle of England have increased in weight and in early
maturity, compared with the stock formerly kept in this country. By
comparing the accounts given in various old treatises of the former
and present state of carrier and tumbler pigeons in Britain, India,
and Persia, we can trace the stages through which they have insensibly
passed, and come to differ so greatly from the rock-pigeon.

Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects of a course of
selection which may be considered as unconscious, in so far that the
breeders could never have expected, or even wished, to produce the
result which ensued--namely, the production of the distinct strains. The
two flocks of Leicester sheep kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr. Burgess, as
Mr. Youatt remarks, "Have been purely bred from the original stock
of Mr. Bakewell for upwards of fifty years. There is not a suspicion
existing in the mind of any one at all acquainted with the subject that
the owner of either of them has deviated in any one instance from the
pure blood of Mr. Bakewell's flock, and yet the difference between the
sheep possessed by these two gentlemen is so great that they have the
appearance of being quite different varieties."

If there exist savages so barbarous as never to think of the inherited
character of the offspring of their domestic animals, yet any one animal
particularly useful to them, for any special purpose, would be carefully
preserved during famines and other accidents, to which savages are
so liable, and such choice animals would thus generally leave more
offspring than the inferior ones; so that in this case there would be a
kind of unconscious selection going on. We see the value set on animals
even by the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, by their killing and
devouring their old women, in times of dearth, as of less value than
their dogs.

In plants the same gradual process of improvement through the occasional
preservation of the best individuals, whether or not sufficiently
distinct to be ranked at their first appearance as distinct varieties,
and whether or not two or more species or races have become blended
together by crossing, may plainly be recognised in the increased size
and beauty which we now see in the varieties of the heartsease, rose,
pelargonium, dahlia, and other plants, when compared with the older
varieties or with their parent-stocks. No one would ever expect to get
a first-rate heartsease or dahlia from the seed of a wild plant. No one
would expect to raise a first-rate melting pear from the seed of a wild
pear, though he might succeed from a poor seedling growing wild, if it
had come from a garden-stock. The pear, though cultivated in classical
times, appears, from Pliny's description, to have been a fruit of very
inferior quality. I have seen great surprise expressed in horticultural
works at the wonderful skill of gardeners in having produced such
splendid results from such poor materials; but the art has been simple,
and, as far as the final result is concerned, has been followed almost
unconsciously. It has consisted in always cultivating the best known
variety, sowing its seeds, and, when a slightly better variety chanced
to appear, selecting it, and so onwards. But the gardeners of the
classical period, who cultivated the best pears which they could
procure, never thought what splendid fruit we should eat; though we
owe our excellent fruit in some small degree to their having naturally
chosen and preserved the best varieties they could anywhere find.

A large amount of change, thus slowly and unconsciously accumulated,
explains, as I believe, the well-known fact, that in a number of cases
we cannot recognise, and therefore do not know, the wild parent-stocks
of the plants which have been longest cultivated in our flower and
kitchen gardens. If it has taken centuries or thousands of years to
improve or modify most of our plants up to their present standard of
usefulness to man, we can understand how it is that neither Australia,
the Cape of Good Hope, nor any other region inhabited by quite
uncivilised man, has afforded us a single plant worth culture. It is
not that these countries, so rich in species, do not by a strange chance
possess the aboriginal stocks of any useful plants, but that the native
plants have not been improved by continued selection up to a standard
of perfection comparable with that acquired by the plants in countries
anciently civilised.

In regard to the domestic animals kept by uncivilised man, it should
not be overlooked that they almost always have to struggle for their
own food, at least during certain seasons. And in two countries very
differently circumstanced, individuals of the same species, having
slightly different constitutions or structure, would often succeed
better in the one country than in the other, and thus by a process of
"natural selection," as will hereafter be more fully explained, two
sub-breeds might be formed. This, perhaps, partly explains why the
varieties kept by savages, as has been remarked by some authors,
have more of the character of true species than the varieties kept in
civilised countries.

On the view here given of the important part which selection by man has
played, it becomes at once obvious, how it is that our domestic races
show adaptation in their structure or in their habits to man's wants
or fancies. We can, I think, further understand the frequently abnormal
character of our domestic races, and likewise their differences being so
great in external characters, and relatively so slight in internal parts
or organs. Man can hardly select, or only with much difficulty, any
deviation of structure excepting such as is externally visible; and
indeed he rarely cares for what is internal. He can never act by
selection, excepting on variations which are first given to him in some
slight degree by nature. No man would ever try to make a fantail till he
saw a pigeon with a tail developed in some slight degree in an unusual
manner, or a pouter till he saw a pigeon with a crop of somewhat unusual
size; and the more abnormal or unusual any character was when it first
appeared, the more likely it would be to catch his attention. But to use
such an expression as trying to make a fantail is, I have no doubt, in
most cases, utterly incorrect. The man who first selected a pigeon
with a slightly larger tail, never dreamed what the descendants of
that pigeon would become through long-continued, partly unconscious and
partly methodical, selection. Perhaps the parent bird of all fantails
had only fourteen tail-feathers somewhat expanded, like the present Java
fantail, or like individuals of other and distinct breeds, in which as
many as seventeen tail-feathers have been counted. Perhaps the first
pouter-pigeon did not inflate its crop much more than the turbit now
does the upper part of its oesophagus--a habit which is disregarded by
all fanciers, as it is not one of the points of the breed.

Nor let it be thought that some great deviation of structure would
be necessary to catch the fancier's eye: he perceives extremely small
differences, and it is in human nature to value any novelty, however
slight, in one's own possession. Nor must the value which would formerly
have been set on any slight differences in the individuals of the same
species, be judged of by the value which is now set on them, after
several breeds have fairly been established. It is known that with
pigeons many slight variations now occasionally appear, but these are
rejected as faults or deviations from the standard of perfection in
each breed. The common goose has not given rise to any marked varieties;
hence the Toulouse and the common breed, which differ only in colour,
that most fleeting of characters, have lately been exhibited as distinct
at our poultry-shows.

These views appear to explain what has sometimes been noticed, namely,
that we know hardly anything about the origin or history of any of our
domestic breeds. But, in fact, a breed, like a dialect of a language,
can hardly be said to have a distinct origin. A man preserves and breeds
from an individual with some slight deviation of structure, or takes
more care than usual in matching his best animals, and thus improves
them, and the improved animals slowly spread in the immediate
neighbourhood. But they will as yet hardly have a distinct name,
and from being only slightly valued, their history will have been
disregarded. When further improved by the same slow and gradual process,
they will spread more widely, and will be recognised as something
distinct and valuable, and will then probably first receive a provincial
name. In semi-civilised countries, with little free communication, the
spreading of a new sub-breed will be a slow process. As soon as the
points of value are once acknowledged, the principle, as I have called
it, of unconscious selection will always tend--perhaps more at one
period than at another, as the breed rises or falls in fashion--perhaps
more in one district than in another, according to the state of
civilisation of the inhabitants--slowly to add to the characteristic
features of the breed, whatever they may be. But the chance will be
infinitely small of any record having been preserved of such slow,
varying, and insensible changes.

CIRCUMSTANCES FAVOURABLE TO MAN'S POWER OF SELECTION.

I will now say a few words on the circumstances, favourable or the
reverse, to man's power of selection. A high degree of variability is
obviously favourable, as freely giving the materials for selection to
work on; not that mere individual differences are not amply sufficient,
with extreme care, to allow of the accumulation of a large amount
of modification in almost any desired direction. But as variations
manifestly useful or pleasing to man appear only occasionally, the
chance of their appearance will be much increased by a large number of
individuals being kept. Hence number is of the highest importance for
success. On this principle Marshall formerly remarked, with respect
to the sheep of part of Yorkshire, "As they generally belong to poor
people, and are mostly IN SMALL LOTS, they never can be improved." On
the other hand, nurserymen, from keeping large stocks of the same plant,
are generally far more successful than amateurs in raising new and
valuable varieties. A large number of individuals of an animal or
plant can be reared only where the conditions for its propagation are
favourable. When the individuals are scanty all will be allowed to
breed, whatever their quality may be, and this will effectually prevent
selection. But probably the most important element is that the animal or
plant should be so highly valued by man, that the closest attention is
paid to even the slightest deviations in its qualities or structure.
Unless such attention be paid nothing can be effected. I have seen it
gravely remarked, that it was most fortunate that the strawberry began
to vary just when gardeners began to attend to this plant. No doubt the
strawberry had always varied since it was cultivated, but the slight
varieties had been neglected. As soon, however, as gardeners picked out
individual plants with slightly larger, earlier, or better fruit, and
raised seedlings from them, and again picked out the best seedlings and
bred from them, then (with some aid by crossing distinct species)
those many admirable varieties of the strawberry were raised which have
appeared during the last half-century.

With animals, facility in preventing crosses is an important element
in the formation of new races--at least, in a country which is already
stocked with other races. In this respect enclosure of the land plays a
part. Wandering savages or the inhabitants of open plains rarely possess
more than one breed of the same species. Pigeons can be mated for life,
and this is a great convenience to the fancier, for thus many races may
be improved and kept true, though mingled in the same aviary; and this
circumstance must have largely favoured the formation of new breeds.
Pigeons, I may add, can be propagated in great numbers and at a very
quick rate, and inferior birds may be freely rejected, as when killed
they serve for food. On the other hand, cats, from their nocturnal
rambling habits, can not be easily matched, and, although so much valued
by women and children, we rarely see a distinct breed long kept up; such
breeds as we do sometimes see are almost always imported from some other
country. Although I do not doubt that some domestic animals vary less
than others, yet the rarity or absence of distinct breeds of the cat,
the donkey, peacock, goose, etc., may be attributed in main part
to selection not having been brought into play: in cats, from the
difficulty in pairing them; in donkeys, from only a few being kept by
poor people, and little attention paid to their breeding; for recently
in certain parts of Spain and of the United States this animal has been
surprisingly modified and improved by careful selection; in peacocks,
from not being very easily reared and a large stock not kept; in geese,
from being valuable only for two purposes, food and feathers, and more
especially from no pleasure having been felt in the display of distinct
breeds; but the goose, under the conditions to which it is exposed when
domesticated, seems to have a singularly inflexible organisation, though
it has varied to a slight extent, as I have elsewhere described.

Some authors have maintained that the amount of variation in our
domestic productions is soon reached, and can never afterward be
exceeded. It would be somewhat rash to assert that the limit has been
attained in any one case; for almost all our animals and plants have
been greatly improved in many ways within a recent period; and this
implies variation. It would be equally rash to assert that characters
now increased to their utmost limit, could not, after remaining fixed
for many centuries, again vary under new conditions of life. No doubt,
as Mr. Wallace has remarked with much truth, a limit will be at last
reached. For instance, there must be a limit to the fleetness of any
terrestrial animal, as this will be determined by the friction to
be overcome, the weight of the body to be carried, and the power of
contraction in the muscular fibres. But what concerns us is that the
domestic varieties of the same species differ from each other in almost
every character, which man has attended to and selected, more than do
the distinct species of the same genera. Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire
has proved this in regard to size, and so it is with colour, and
probably with the length of hair. With respect to fleetness, which
depends on many bodily characters, Eclipse was far fleeter, and
a dray-horse is comparably stronger, than any two natural species
belonging to the same genus. So with plants, the seeds of the different
varieties of the bean or maize probably differ more in size than do the
seeds of the distinct species in any one genus in the same two families.
The same remark holds good in regard to the fruit of the several
varieties of the plum, and still more strongly with the melon, as well
as in many other analogous cases.

To sum up on the origin of our domestic races of animals and plants.
Changed conditions of life are of the highest importance in causing
variability, both by acting directly on the organisation, and
indirectly by affecting the reproductive system. It is not probable
that variability is an inherent and necessary contingent, under all
circumstances. The greater or less force of inheritance and reversion
determine whether variations shall endure. Variability is governed
by many unknown laws, of which correlated growth is probably the most
important. Something, but how much we do not know, may be attributed to
the definite action of the conditions of life. Some, perhaps a great,
effect may be attributed to the increased use or disuse of parts. The
final result is thus rendered infinitely complex. In some cases the
intercrossing of aboriginally distinct species appears to have played
an important part in the origin of our breeds. When several breeds have
once been formed in any country, their occasional intercrossing, with
the aid of selection, has, no doubt, largely aided in the formation
of new sub-breeds; but the importance of crossing has been much
exaggerated, both in regard to animals and to those plants which are
propagated by seed. With plants which are temporarily propagated by
cuttings, buds, etc., the importance of crossing is immense; for the
cultivator may here disregard the extreme variability both of hybrids
and of mongrels, and the sterility of hybrids; but plants not propagated
by seed are of little importance to us, for their endurance is only
temporary. Over all these causes of change, the accumulative action of
selection, whether applied methodically and quickly, or unconsciously
and slowly, but more efficiently, seems to have been the predominant
power.




CHAPTER II. VARIATION UNDER NATURE.

 Variability--Individual differences--Doubtful species--Wide ranging,
 much diffused, and common species, vary most--Species of the larger
 genera in each country vary more frequently than the species of the
 smaller genera--Many of the species of the larger genera resemble
 varieties in being very closely, but unequally, related to each other,
 and in having restricted ranges.


Before applying the principles arrived at in the last chapter to organic
beings in a state of nature, we must briefly discuss whether these
latter are subject to any variation. To treat this subject properly, a
long catalogue of dry facts ought to be given; but these I shall reserve
for a future work. Nor shall I here discuss the various definitions
which have been given of the term species. No one definition has
satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what
he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the
unknown element of a distinct act of creation. The term "variety" is
almost equally difficult to define; but here community of descent is
almost universally implied, though it can rarely be proved. We have also
what are called monstrosities; but they graduate into varieties. By a
monstrosity I presume is meant some considerable deviation of structure,
generally injurious, or not useful to the species. Some authors use
the term "variation" in a technical sense, as implying a modification
directly due to the physical conditions of life; and "variations" in
this sense are supposed not to be inherited; but who can say that the
dwarfed condition of shells in the brackish waters of the Baltic, or
dwarfed plants on Alpine summits, or the thicker fur of an animal from
far northwards, would not in some cases be inherited for at least a few
generations? And in this case I presume that the form would be called a
variety.

It may be doubted whether sudden and considerable deviations of
structure, such as we occasionally see in our domestic productions, more
especially with plants, are ever permanently propagated in a state
of nature. Almost every part of every organic being is so beautifully
related to its complex conditions of life that it seems as improbable
that any part should have been suddenly produced perfect, as that a
complex machine should have been invented by man in a perfect state.
Under domestication monstrosities sometimes occur which resemble normal
structures in widely different animals. Thus pigs have occasionally been
born with a sort of proboscis, and if any wild species of the same genus
had naturally possessed a proboscis, it might have been argued that this
had appeared as a monstrosity; but I have as yet failed to find, after
diligent search, cases of monstrosities resembling normal structures in
nearly allied forms, and these alone bear on the question. If monstrous
forms of this kind ever do appear in a state of nature and are capable
of reproduction (which is not always the case), as they occur rarely
and singly, their preservation would depend on unusually favourable
circumstances. They would, also, during the first and succeeding
generations cross with the ordinary form, and thus their abnormal
character would almost inevitably be lost. But I shall have to return
in a future chapter to the preservation and perpetuation of single or
occasional variations.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES.

The many slight differences which appear in the offspring from the
same parents, or which it may be presumed have thus arisen, from being
observed in the individuals of the same species inhabiting the same
confined locality, may be called individual differences. No one supposes
that all the individuals of the same species are cast in the same actual
mould. These individual differences are of the highest importance for
us, for they are often inherited, as must be familiar to every one;
and they thus afford materials for natural selection to act on and
accumulate, in the same manner as man accumulates in any given direction
individual differences in his domesticated productions. These individual
differences generally affect what naturalists consider unimportant
parts; but I could show, by a long catalogue of facts, that parts
which must be called important, whether viewed under a physiological or
classificatory point of view, sometimes vary in the individuals of the
same species. I am convinced that the most experienced naturalist
would be surprised at the number of the cases of variability, even in
important parts of structure, which he could collect on good authority,
as I have collected, during a course of years. It should be remembered
that systematists are far from being pleased at finding variability
in important characters, and that there are not many men who will
laboriously examine internal and important organs, and compare them in
many specimens of the same species. It would never have been expected
that the branching of the main nerves close to the great central
ganglion of an insect would have been variable in the same species;
it might have been thought that changes of this nature could have been
effected only by slow degrees; yet Sir J. Lubbock has shown a degree of
variability in these main nerves in Coccus, which may almost be compared
to the irregular branching of the stem of a tree. This philosophical
naturalist, I may add, has also shown that the muscles in the larvae
of certain insects are far from uniform. Authors sometimes argue in a
circle when they state that important organs never vary; for these
same authors practically rank those parts as important (as some few
naturalists have honestly confessed) which do not vary; and, under
this point of view, no instance will ever be found of an important part
varying; but under any other point of view many instances assuredly can
be given.

There is one point connected with individual differences which is
extremely perplexing: I refer to those genera which have been called
"protean" or "polymorphic," in which species present an inordinate
amount of variation. With respect to many of these forms, hardly two
naturalists agree whether to rank them as species or as varieties. We
may instance Rubus, Rosa, and Hieracium among plants, several genera of
insects, and of Brachiopod shells. In most polymorphic genera some
of the species have fixed and definite characters. Genera which
are polymorphic in one country seem to be, with a few exceptions,
polymorphic in other countries, and likewise, judging from Brachiopod
shells, at former periods of time. These facts are very perplexing, for
they seem to show that this kind of variability is independent of the
conditions of life. I am inclined to suspect that we see, at least in
some of these polymorphic genera, variations which are of no service or
disservice to the species, and which consequently have not been seized
on and rendered definite by natural selection, as hereafter to be
explained.

Individuals of the same species often present, as is known to every one,
great differences of structure, independently of variation, as in the
two sexes of various animals, in the two or three castes of sterile
females or workers among insects, and in the immature and larval states
of many of the lower animals. There are, also, cases of dimorphism and
trimorphism, both with animals and plants. Thus, Mr. Wallace, who has
lately called attention to the subject, has shown that the females of
certain species of butterflies, in the Malayan Archipelago, regularly
appear under two or even three conspicuously distinct forms, not
connected by intermediate varieties. Fritz Muller has described
analogous but more extraordinary cases with the males of certain
Brazilian Crustaceans: thus, the male of a Tanais regularly occurs
under two distinct forms; one of these has strong and differently shaped
pincers, and the other has antennae much more abundantly furnished with
smelling-hairs. Although in most of these cases, the two or three forms,
both with animals and plants, are not now connected by intermediate
gradations, it is possible that they were once thus connected. Mr.
Wallace, for instance, describes a certain butterfly which presents in
the same island a great range of varieties connected by intermediate
links, and the extreme links of the chain closely resemble the two forms
of an allied dimorphic species inhabiting another part of the Malay
Archipelago. Thus also with ants, the several worker-castes are
generally quite distinct; but in some cases, as we shall hereafter see,
the castes are connected together by finely graduated varieties. So it
is, as I have myself observed, with some dimorphic plants. It certainly
at first appears a highly remarkable fact that the same female butterfly
should have the power of producing at the same time three distinct
female forms and a male; and that an hermaphrodite plant should produce
from the same seed-capsule three distinct hermaphrodite forms, bearing
three different kinds of females and three or even six different kinds
of males. Nevertheless these cases are only exaggerations of the common
fact that the female produces offspring of two sexes which sometimes
differ from each other in a wonderful manner.

DOUBTFUL SPECIES.

The forms which possess in some considerable degree the character of
species, but which are so closely similar to other forms, or are so
closely linked to them by intermediate gradations, that naturalists do
not like to rank them as distinct species, are in several respects the
most important for us. We have every reason to believe that many of
these doubtful and closely allied forms have permanently retained their
characters for a long time; for as long, as far as we know, as have good
and true species. Practically, when a naturalist can unite by means of
intermediate links any two forms, he treats the one as a variety of the
other, ranking the most common, but sometimes the one first described
as the species, and the other as the variety. But cases of great
difficulty, which I will not here enumerate, sometimes arise in deciding
whether or not to rank one form as a variety of another, even when
they are closely connected by intermediate links; nor will the commonly
assumed hybrid nature of the intermediate forms always remove the
difficulty. In very many cases, however, one form is ranked as a variety
of another, not because the intermediate links have actually been found,
but because analogy leads the observer to suppose either that they do
now somewhere exist, or may formerly have existed; and here a wide door
for the entry of doubt and conjecture is opened.

Hence, in determining whether a form should be ranked as a species or
a variety, the opinion of naturalists having sound judgment and wide
experience seems the only guide to follow. We must, however, in many
cases, decide by a majority of naturalists, for few well-marked and
well-known varieties can be named which have not been ranked as species
by at least some competent judges.

That varieties of this doubtful nature are far from uncommon cannot be
disputed. Compare the several floras of Great Britain, of France, or
of the United States, drawn up by different botanists, and see what
a surprising number of forms have been ranked by one botanist as good
species, and by another as mere varieties. Mr. H.C. Watson, to whom I
lie under deep obligation for assistance of all kinds, has marked for
me 182 British plants, which are generally considered as varieties, but
which have all been ranked by botanists as species; and in making this
list he has omitted many trifling varieties, but which nevertheless have
been ranked by some botanists as species, and he has entirely omitted
several highly polymorphic genera. Under genera, including the most
polymorphic forms, Mr. Babington gives 251 species, whereas Mr. Bentham
gives only 112--a difference of 139 doubtful forms! Among animals which
unite for each birth, and which are highly locomotive, doubtful forms,
ranked by one zoologist as a species and by another as a variety, can
rarely be found within the same country, but are common in separated
areas. How many of the birds and insects in North America and Europe,
which differ very slightly from each other, have been ranked by one
eminent naturalist as undoubted species, and by another as varieties,
or, as they are often called, geographical races! Mr. Wallace, in
several valuable papers on the various animals, especially on the
Lepidoptera, inhabiting the islands of the great Malayan Archipelago,
shows that they may be classed under four heads, namely, as variable
forms, as local forms, as geographical races or sub-species, and as true
representative species. The first or variable forms vary much within the
limits of the same island. The local forms are moderately constant and
distinct in each separate island; but when all from the several islands
are compared together, the differences are seen to be so slight and
graduated that it is impossible to define or describe them, though
at the same time the extreme forms are sufficiently distinct. The
geographical races or sub-species are local forms completely fixed and
isolated; but as they do not differ from each other by strongly marked
and important characters, "There is no possible test but individual
opinion to determine which of them shall be considered as species and
which as varieties." Lastly, representative species fill the same
place in the natural economy of each island as do the local forms and
sub-species; but as they are distinguished from each other by a greater
amount of difference than that between the local forms and sub-species,
they are almost universally ranked by naturalists as true species.
Nevertheless, no certain criterion can possibly be given by which
variable forms, local forms, sub species and representative species can
be recognised.

Many years ago, when comparing, and seeing others compare, the birds
from the closely neighbouring islands of the Galapagos Archipelago,
one with another, and with those from the American mainland, I was
much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary is the distinction between
species and varieties. On the islets of the little Madeira group there
are many insects which are characterized as varieties in Mr. Wollaston's
admirable work, but which would certainly be ranked as distinct species
by many entomologists. Even Ireland has a few animals, now generally
regarded as varieties, but which have been ranked as species by some
zoologists. Several experienced ornithologists consider our British red
grouse as only a strongly marked race of a Norwegian species, whereas
the greater number rank it as an undoubted species peculiar to Great
Britain. A wide distance between the homes of two doubtful forms leads
many naturalists to rank them as distinct species; but what distance, it
has been well asked, will suffice if that between America and Europe
is ample, will that between Europe and the Azores, or Madeira, or the
Canaries, or between the several islets of these small archipelagos, be
sufficient?

Mr. B.D. Walsh, a distinguished entomologist of the United States, has
described what he calls Phytophagic varieties and Phytophagic species.
Most vegetable-feeding insects live on one kind of plant or on one
group of plants; some feed indiscriminately on many kinds, but do not
in consequence vary. In several cases, however, insects found living on
different plants, have been observed by Mr. Walsh to present in their
larval or mature state, or in both states, slight, though constant
differences in colour, size, or in the nature of their secretions.
In some instances the males alone, in other instances, both males and
females, have been observed thus to differ in a slight degree. When the
differences are rather more strongly marked, and when both sexes and
all ages are affected, the forms are ranked by all entomologists as good
species. But no observer can determine for another, even if he can do so
for himself, which of these Phytophagic forms ought to be called species
and which varieties. Mr. Walsh ranks the forms which it may be supposed
would freely intercross, as varieties; and those which appear to have
lost this power, as species. As the differences depend on the insects
having long fed on distinct plants, it cannot be expected that
intermediate links connecting the several forms should now be found.
The naturalist thus loses his best guide in determining whether to rank
doubtful forms as varieties or species. This likewise necessarily occurs
with closely allied organisms, which inhabit distinct continents or
islands. When, on the other hand, an animal or plant ranges over the
same continent, or inhabits many islands in the same archipelago, and
presents different forms in the different areas, there is always a
good chance that intermediate forms will be discovered which will link
together the extreme states; and these are then degraded to the rank of
varieties.

Some few naturalists maintain that animals never present varieties; but
then these same naturalists rank the slightest difference as of specific
value; and when the same identical form is met with in two distant
countries, or in two geological formations, they believe that two
distinct species are hidden under the same dress. The term species thus
comes to be a mere useless abstraction, implying and assuming a separate
act of creation. It is certain that many forms, considered by highly
competent judges to be varieties, resemble species so completely in
character that they have been thus ranked by other highly competent
judges. But to discuss whether they ought to be called species or
varieties, before any definition of these terms has been generally
accepted, is vainly to beat the air.

Many of the cases of strongly marked varieties or doubtful species well
deserve consideration; for several interesting lines of argument, from
geographical distribution, analogical variation, hybridism, etc., have
been brought to bear in the attempt to determine their rank; but space
does not here permit me to discuss them. Close investigation, in many
cases, will no doubt bring naturalists to agree how to rank doubtful
forms. Yet it must be confessed that it is in the best known countries
that we find the greatest number of them. I have been struck with the
fact that if any animal or plant in a state of nature be highly useful
to man, or from any cause closely attracts his attention, varieties of
it will almost universally be found recorded. These varieties, moreover,
will often be ranked by some authors as species. Look at the common oak,
how closely it has been studied; yet a German author makes more than a
dozen species out of forms, which are almost universally considered
by other botanists to be varieties; and in this country the highest
botanical authorities and practical men can be quoted to show that the
sessile and pedunculated oaks are either good and distinct species or
mere varieties.

I may here allude to a remarkable memoir lately published by A. de
Candolle, on the oaks of the whole world. No one ever had more ample
materials for the discrimination of the species, or could have worked on
them with more zeal and sagacity. He first gives in detail all the many
points of structure which vary in the several species, and estimates
numerically the relative frequency of the variations. He specifies above
a dozen characters which may be found varying even on the same branch,
sometimes according to age or development, sometimes without any
assignable reason. Such characters are not of course of specific value,
but they are, as Asa Gray has remarked in commenting on this memoir,
such as generally enter into specific definitions. De Candolle then goes
on to say that he gives the rank of species to the forms that differ by
characters never varying on the same tree, and never found connected
by intermediate states. After this discussion, the result of so much
labour, he emphatically remarks: "They are mistaken, who repeat that the
greater part of our species are clearly limited, and that the doubtful
species are in a feeble minority. This seemed to be true, so long as
a genus was imperfectly known, and its species were founded upon a few
specimens, that is to say, were provisional. Just as we come to know
them better, intermediate forms flow in, and doubts as to specific
limits augment." He also adds that it is the best known species which
present the greatest number of spontaneous varieties and sub-varieties.
Thus Quercus robur has twenty-eight varieties, all of which, excepting
six, are clustered round three sub-species, namely Q. pedunculata,
sessiliflora and pubescens. The forms which connect these three
sub-species are comparatively rare; and, as Asa Gray again remarks, if
these connecting forms which are now rare were to become totally extinct
the three sub-species would hold exactly the same relation to each other
as do the four or five provisionally admitted species which closely
surround the typical Quercus robur. Finally, De Candolle admits that
out of the 300 species, which will be enumerated in his Prodromus
as belonging to the oak family, at least two-thirds are provisional
species, that is, are not known strictly to fulfil the definition above
given of a true species. It should be added that De Candolle no longer
believes that species are immutable creations, but concludes that the
derivative theory is the most natural one, "and the most accordant with
the known facts in palaeontology, geographical botany and zoology, of
anatomical structure and classification."

When a young naturalist commences the study of a group of organisms
quite unknown to him he is at first much perplexed in determining what
differences to consider as specific and what as varietal; for he knows
nothing of the amount and kind of variation to which the group is
subject; and this shows, at least, how very generally there is some
variation. But if he confine his attention to one class within one
country he will soon make up his mind how to rank most of the doubtful
forms. His general tendency will be to make many species, for he will
become impressed, just like the pigeon or poultry fancier before alluded
to, with the amount of difference in the forms which he is continually
studying; and he has little general knowledge of analogical variation
in other groups and in other countries by which to correct his first
impressions. As he extends the range of his observations he will meet
with more cases of difficulty; for he will encounter a greater number of
closely-allied forms. But if his observations be widely extended he
will in the end generally be able to make up his own mind; but he will
succeed in this at the expense of admitting much variation, and the
truth of this admission will often be disputed by other naturalists.
When he comes to study allied forms brought from countries not now
continuous, in which case he cannot hope to find intermediate links,
he will be compelled to trust almost entirely to analogy, and his
difficulties will rise to a climax.

Certainly no clear line of demarcation has as yet been drawn between
species and sub-species--that is, the forms which in the opinion of some
naturalists come very near to, but do not quite arrive at, the rank of
species; or, again, between sub-species and well-marked varieties, or
between lesser varieties and individual differences. These differences
blend into each other by an insensible series; and a series impresses
the mind with the idea of an actual passage.

Hence I look at individual differences, though of small interest to the
systematist, as of the highest importance for us, as being the first
step towards such slight varieties as are barely thought worth recording
in works on natural history. And I look at varieties which are in any
degree more distinct and permanent, as steps toward more strongly marked
and permanent varieties; and at the latter, as leading to sub-species,
and then to species. The passage from one stage of difference to another
may, in many cases, be the simple result of the nature of the organism
and of the different physical conditions to which it has long been
exposed; but with respect to the more important and adaptive characters,
the passage from one stage of difference to another may be safely
attributed to the cumulative action of natural selection, hereafter
to be explained, and to the effects of the increased use or disuse
of parts. A well-marked variety may therefore be called an incipient
species; but whether this belief is justifiable must be judged by the
weight of the various facts and considerations to be given throughout
this work.

It need not be supposed that all varieties or incipient species attain
the rank of species. They may become extinct, or they may endure as
varieties for very long periods, as has been shown to be the case by Mr.
Wollaston with the varieties of certain fossil land-shells in Madeira,
and with plants by Gaston de Saporta. If a variety were to flourish so
as to exceed in numbers the parent species, it would then rank as the
species, and the species as the variety; or it might come to supplant
and exterminate the parent species; or both might co-exist, and both
rank as independent species. But we shall hereafter return to this
subject.

From these remarks it will be seen that I look at the term species
as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set
of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not
essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less
distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again,
in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied
arbitrarily, for convenience sake.

WIDE-RANGING, MUCH DIFFUSED, AND COMMON SPECIES VARY MOST.

Guided by theoretical considerations, I thought that some interesting
results might be obtained in regard to the nature and relations of the
species which vary most, by tabulating all the varieties in several
well-worked floras. At first this seemed a simple task; but Mr. H.C.
Watson, to whom I am much indebted for valuable advice and assistance
on this subject, soon convinced me that there were many difficulties, as
did subsequently Dr. Hooker, even in stronger terms. I shall reserve for
a future work the discussion of these difficulties, and the tables of
the proportional numbers of the varying species. Dr. Hooker permits me
to add that after having carefully read my manuscript, and examined
the tables, he thinks that the following statements are fairly well
established. The whole subject, however, treated as it necessarily here
is with much brevity, is rather perplexing, and allusions cannot be
avoided to the "struggle for existence," "divergence of character," and
other questions, hereafter to be discussed.

Alphonse de Candolle and others have shown that plants which have
very wide ranges generally present varieties; and this might have been
expected, as they are exposed to diverse physical conditions, and as
they come into competition (which, as we shall hereafter see, is a far
more important circumstance) with different sets of organic beings. But
my tables further show that, in any limited country, the species which
are the most common, that is abound most in individuals, and the species
which are most widely diffused within their own country (and this is a
different consideration from wide range, and to a certain extent from
commonness), oftenest give rise to varieties sufficiently well-marked to
have been recorded in botanical works. Hence it is the most flourishing,
or, as they may be called, the dominant species--those which range
widely, are the most diffused in their own country, and are the most
numerous in individuals--which oftenest produce well-marked varieties,
or, as I consider them, incipient species. And this, perhaps, might have
been anticipated; for, as varieties, in order to become in any degree
permanent, necessarily have to struggle with the other inhabitants of
the country, the species which are already dominant will be the most
likely to yield offspring, which, though in some slight degree modified,
still inherit those advantages that enabled their parents to become
dominant over their compatriots. In these remarks on predominence, it
should be understood that reference is made only to the forms which come
into competition with each other, and more especially to the members
of the same genus or class having nearly similar habits of life. With
respect to the number of individuals or commonness of species, the
comparison of course relates only to the members of the same group. One
of the higher plants may be said to be dominant if it be more numerous
in individuals and more widely diffused than the other plants of the
same country, which live under nearly the same conditions. A plant of
this kind is not the less dominant because some conferva inhabiting
the water or some parasitic fungus is infinitely more numerous in
individuals, and more widely diffused. But if the conferva or parasitic
fungus exceeds its allies in the above respects, it will then be
dominant within its own class.

SPECIES OF THE LARGER GENERA IN EACH COUNTRY VARY MORE FREQUENTLY THAN
THE SPECIES OF THE SMALLER GENERA.

If the plants inhabiting a country as described in any Flora, be divided
into two equal masses, all those in the larger genera (i.e., those
including many species) being placed on one side, and all those in the
smaller genera on the other side, the former will be found to include a
somewhat larger number of the very common and much diffused or dominant
species. This might have been anticipated, for the mere fact of many
species of the same genus inhabiting any country, shows that there
is something in the organic or inorganic conditions of that country
favourable to the genus; and, consequently, we might have expected to
have found in the larger genera, or those including many species, a
larger proportional number of dominant species. But so many causes tend
to obscure this result, that I am surprised that my tables show even a
small majority on the side of the larger genera. I will here allude
to only two causes of obscurity. Fresh water and salt-loving plants
generally have very wide ranges and are much diffused, but this seems to
be connected with the nature of the stations inhabited by them, and has
little or no relation to the size of the genera to which the species
belong. Again, plants low in the scale of organisation are generally
much more widely diffused than plants higher in the scale; and here
again there is no close relation to the size of the genera. The cause of
lowly-organised plants ranging widely will be discussed in our chapter
on Geographical Distribution.

From looking at species as only strongly marked and well-defined
varieties, I was led to anticipate that the species of the larger genera
in each country would oftener present varieties, than the species of the
smaller genera; for wherever many closely related species (i.e., species
of the same genus) have been formed, many varieties or incipient species
ought, as a general rule, to be now forming. Where many large trees
grow, we expect to find saplings. Where many species of a genus have
been formed through variation, circumstances have been favourable
for variation; and hence we might expect that the circumstances would
generally still be favourable to variation. On the other hand, if we
look at each species as a special act of creation, there is no apparent
reason why more varieties should occur in a group having many species,
than in one having few.

To test the truth of this anticipation I have arranged the plants of
twelve countries, and the coleopterous insects of two districts, into
two nearly equal masses, the species of the larger genera on one side,
and those of the smaller genera on the other side, and it has invariably
proved to be the case that a larger proportion of the species on the
side of the larger genera presented varieties, than on the side of the
smaller genera. Moreover, the species of the large genera which present
any varieties, invariably present a larger average number of varieties
than do the species of the small genera. Both these results follow when
another division is made, and when all the least genera, with from only
one to four species, are altogether excluded from the tables. These
facts are of plain signification on the view that species are only
strongly marked and permanent varieties; for wherever many species of
the same genus have been formed, or where, if we may use the expression,
the manufactory of species has been active, we ought generally to find
the manufactory still in action, more especially as we have every reason
to believe the process of manufacturing new species to be a slow one.
And this certainly holds true if varieties be looked at as incipient
species; for my tables clearly show, as a general rule, that, wherever
many species of a genus have been formed, the species of that genus
present a number of varieties, that is, of incipient species, beyond the
average. It is not that all large genera are now varying much, and are
thus increasing in the number of their species, or that no small genera
are now varying and increasing; for if this had been so, it would have
been fatal to my theory; inasmuch as geology plainly tells us that small
genera have in the lapse of time often increased greatly in size;
and that large genera have often come to their maxima, declined, and
disappeared. All that we want to show is, that where many species of a
genus have been formed, on an average many are still forming; and this
certainly holds good.

MANY OF THE SPECIES INCLUDED WITHIN THE LARGER GENERA RESEMBLE VARIETIES
IN BEING VERY CLOSELY, BUT UNEQUALLY, RELATED TO EACH OTHER, AND IN
HAVING RESTRICTED RANGES.

There are other relations between the species of large genera and their
recorded varieties which deserve notice. We have seen that there is no
infallible criterion by which to distinguish species and well-marked
varieties; and when intermediate links have not been found between
doubtful forms, naturalists are compelled to come to a determination by
the amount of difference between them, judging by analogy whether or not
the amount suffices to raise one or both to the rank of species. Hence
the amount of difference is one very important criterion in settling
whether two forms should be ranked as species or varieties. Now Fries
has remarked in regard to plants, and Westwood in regard to insects,
that in large genera the amount of difference between the species is
often exceedingly small. I have endeavoured to test this numerically by
averages, and, as far as my imperfect results go, they confirm the view.
I have also consulted some sagacious and experienced observers,
and, after deliberation, they concur in this view. In this respect,
therefore, the species of the larger genera resemble varieties, more
than do the species of the smaller genera. Or the case may be put in
another way, and it may be said, that in the larger genera, in which a
number of varieties or incipient species greater than the average are
now manufacturing, many of the species already manufactured still to a
certain extent resemble varieties, for they differ from each other by a
less than the usual amount of difference.

Moreover, the species of the larger genera are related to each other, in
the same manner as the varieties of any one species are related to
each other. No naturalist pretends that all the species of a genus are
equally distinct from each other; they may generally be divided into
sub-genera, or sections, or lesser groups. As Fries has well remarked,
little groups of species are generally clustered like satellites around
other species. And what are varieties but groups of forms, unequally
related to each other, and clustered round certain forms--that is, round
their parent-species. Undoubtedly there is one most important point of
difference between varieties and species, namely, that the amount of
difference between varieties, when compared with each other or with
their parent-species, is much less than that between the species of the
same genus. But when we come to discuss the principle, as I call it, of
divergence of character, we shall see how this may be explained, and
how the lesser differences between varieties tend to increase into the
greater differences between species.

There is one other point which is worth notice. Varieties generally have
much restricted ranges. This statement is indeed scarcely more than a
truism, for if a variety were found to have a wider range than that of
its supposed parent-species, their denominations would be reversed.
But there is reason to believe that the species which are very closely
allied to other species, and in so far resemble varieties, often have
much restricted ranges. For instance, Mr. H.C. Watson has marked for me
in the well-sifted London catalogue of Plants (4th edition) sixty-three
plants which are therein ranked as species, but which he considers as
so closely allied to other species as to be of doubtful value: these
sixty-three reputed species range on an average over 6.9 of the
provinces into which Mr. Watson has divided Great Britain. Now, in this
same catalogue, fifty-three acknowledged varieties are recorded, and
these range over 7.7 provinces; whereas, the species to which these
varieties belong range over 14.3 provinces. So that the acknowledged
varieties have very nearly the same restricted average range, as have
the closely allied forms, marked for me by Mr. Watson as doubtful
species, but which are almost universally ranked by British botanists as
good and true species.

SUMMARY.

Finally, varieties cannot be distinguished from species--except, first,
by the discovery of intermediate linking forms; and, secondly, by a
certain indefinite amount of difference between them; for two forms,
if differing very little, are generally ranked as varieties,
notwithstanding that they cannot be closely connected; but the amount
of difference considered necessary to give to any two forms the rank of
species cannot be defined. In genera having more than the average number
of species in any country, the species of these genera have more than
the average number of varieties. In large genera the species are apt to
be closely but unequally allied together, forming little clusters round
other species. Species very closely allied to other species apparently
have restricted ranges. In all these respects the species of large
genera present a strong analogy with varieties. And we can clearly
understand these analogies, if species once existed as varieties, and
thus originated; whereas, these analogies are utterly inexplicable if
species are independent creations.

We have also seen that it is the most flourishing or dominant species
of the larger genera within each class which on an average yield the
greatest number of varieties, and varieties, as we shall hereafter see,
tend to become converted into new and distinct species. Thus the larger
genera tend to become larger; and throughout nature the forms of life
which are now dominant tend to become still more dominant by leaving
many modified and dominant descendants. But, by steps hereafter to be
explained, the larger genera also tend to break up into smaller genera.
And thus, the forms of life throughout the universe become divided into
groups subordinate to groups.




CHAPTER III. STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.

 Its bearing on natural selection--The term used in a wide
 sense--Geometrical ratio of increase--Rapid increase of naturalised
 animals and plants--Nature of the checks to increase--Competition
 universal--Effects of climate--Protection from the number of
 individuals--Complex relations of all animals and plants throughout
 nature--Struggle for life most severe between individuals and varieties
 of the same species: often severe between species of the same genus--The
 relation of organism to organism the most important of all relations.

Before entering on the subject of this chapter I must make a few
preliminary remarks to show how the struggle for existence bears on
natural selection. It has been seen in the last chapter that
among organic beings in a state of nature there is some individual
variability: indeed I am not aware that this has ever been disputed.
It is immaterial for us whether a multitude of doubtful forms be called
species or sub-species or varieties; what rank, for instance, the two or
three hundred doubtful forms of British plants are entitled to hold,
if the existence of any well-marked varieties be admitted. But the
mere existence of individual variability and of some few well-marked
varieties, though necessary as the foundation for the work, helps us but
little in understanding how species arise in nature. How have all those
exquisite adaptations of one part of the organisation to another part,
and to the conditions of life and of one organic being to another being,
been perfected? We see these beautiful co-adaptations most plainly in
the woodpecker and the mistletoe; and only a little less plainly in the
humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of a quadruped or feathers
of a bird; in the structure of the beetle which dives through the water;
in the plumed seed which is wafted by the gentlest breeze; in short, we
see beautiful adaptations everywhere and in every part of the organic
world.

Again, it may be asked, how is it that varieties, which I have called
incipient species, become ultimately converted into good and distinct
species, which in most cases obviously differ from each other far
more than do the varieties of the same species? How do those groups
of species, which constitute what are called distinct genera and which
differ from each other more than do the species of the same genus,
arise? All these results, as we shall more fully see in the next
chapter, follow from the struggle for life. Owing to this struggle,
variations, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if they
be in any degree profitable to the individuals of a species, in their
infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to their
physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such
individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring. The
offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of
the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a
small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which
each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term natural
selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.
But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of
the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient. We
have seen that man by selection can certainly produce great results, and
can adapt organic beings to his own uses, through the accumulation of
slight but useful variations, given to him by the hand of Nature. But
Natural Selection, we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready
for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as
the works of Nature are to those of Art.

We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence.
In my future work this subject will be treated, as it well deserves,
at greater length. The elder De Candolle and Lyell have largely and
philosophically shown that all organic beings are exposed to severe
competition. In regard to plants, no one has treated this subject with
more spirit and ability than W. Herbert, Dean of Manchester, evidently
the result of his great horticultural knowledge. Nothing is easier than
to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or
more difficult--at least I found it so--than constantly to bear this
conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind,
the whole economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity,
abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite
misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we
often see superabundance of food; we do not see or we forget that the
birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds,
and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these
songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and
beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind, that, though food may be
now superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year.

THE TERM, STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE, USED IN A LARGE SENSE.

I should premise that I use this term in a large and metaphorical sense,
including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is
more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in
leaving progeny. Two canine animals, in a time of dearth, may be truly
said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live. But a
plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life against the
drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent on the
moisture. A plant which annually produces a thousand seeds, of which
only one of an average comes to maturity, may be more truly said to
struggle with the plants of the same and other kinds which already
clothe the ground. The mistletoe is dependent on the apple and a few
other trees, but can only in a far-fetched sense be said to struggle
with these trees, for, if too many of these parasites grow on the same
tree, it languishes and dies. But several seedling mistletoes, growing
close together on the same branch, may more truly be said to struggle
with each other. As the mistletoe is disseminated by birds, its
existence depends on them; and it may metaphorically be said to struggle
with other fruit-bearing plants, in tempting the birds to devour and
thus disseminate its seeds. In these several senses, which pass into
each other, I use for convenience sake the general term of Struggle for
Existence.

GEOMETRICAL RATIO OF INCREASE.

A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which
all organic beings tend to increase. Every being, which during its
natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds, must suffer destruction
during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional
year, otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers
would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support
the product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly
survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either
one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals
of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the
doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and
vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase
of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage. Although some
species may be now increasing, more or less rapidly, in numbers, all
cannot do so, for the world would not hold them.

There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally
increases at so high a rate, that, if not destroyed, the earth would
soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding
man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in less than
a thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his
progeny. Linnaeus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only
two seeds--and there is no plant so unproductive as this--and their
seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then in twenty years there
would be a million plants. The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder
of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its
probable minimum rate of natural increase; it will be safest to assume
that it begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on breeding
till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and
surviving till one hundred years old; if this be so, after a period of
from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants
alive descended from the first pair.

But we have better evidence on this subject than mere theoretical
calculations, namely, the numerous recorded cases of the astonishingly
rapid increase of various animals in a state of nature, when
circumstances have been favourable to them during two or three following
seasons. Still more striking is the evidence from our domestic animals
of many kinds which have run wild in several parts of the world; if the
statements of the rate of increase of slow-breeding cattle and horses
in South America, and latterly in Australia, had not been well
authenticated, they would have been incredible. So it is with plants;
cases could be given of introduced plants which have become common
throughout whole islands in a period of less than ten years. Several of
the plants, such as the cardoon and a tall thistle, which are now the
commonest over the wide plains of La Plata, clothing square leagues
of surface almost to the exclusion of every other plant, have been
introduced from Europe; and there are plants which now range in India,
as I hear from Dr. Falconer, from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya, which
have been imported from America since its discovery. In such cases, and
endless others could be given, no one supposes that the fertility of
the animals or plants has been suddenly and temporarily increased in any
sensible degree. The obvious explanation is that the conditions of life
have been highly favourable, and that there has consequently been less
destruction of the old and young and that nearly all the young have been
enabled to breed. Their geometrical ratio of increase, the result
of which never fails to be surprising, simply explains their
extraordinarily rapid increase and wide diffusion in their new homes.

In a state of nature almost every full-grown plant annually produces
seed, and among animals there are very few which do not annually pair.
Hence we may confidently assert that all plants and animals are tending
to increase at a geometrical ratio--that all would rapidly stock every
station in which they could any how exist, and that this geometrical
tendency to increase must be checked by destruction at some period of
life. Our familiarity with the larger domestic animals tends, I think,
to mislead us; we see no great destruction falling on them, and we do
not keep in mind that thousands are annually slaughtered for food,
and that in a state of nature an equal number would have somehow to be
disposed of.

The only difference between organisms which annually produce eggs or
seeds by the thousand, and those which produce extremely few, is,
that the slow breeders would require a few more years to people, under
favourable conditions, a whole district, let it be ever so large. The
condor lays a couple of eggs and the ostrich a score, and yet in the
same country the condor may be the more numerous of the two. The Fulmar
petrel lays but one egg, yet it is believed to be the most numerous bird
in the world. One fly deposits hundreds of eggs, and another, like the
hippobosca, a single one. But this difference does not determine how
many individuals of the two species can be supported in a district. A
large number of eggs is of some importance to those species which depend
on a fluctuating amount of food, for it allows them rapidly to increase
in number. But the real importance of a large number of eggs or seeds is
to make up for much destruction at some period of life; and this period
in the great majority of cases is an early one. If an animal can in any
way protect its own eggs or young, a small number may be produced, and
yet the average stock be fully kept up; but if many eggs or young are
destroyed, many must be produced or the species will become extinct. It
would suffice to keep up the full number of a tree, which lived on an
average for a thousand years, if a single seed were produced once in a
thousand years, supposing that this seed were never destroyed and could
be ensured to germinate in a fitting place; so that, in all cases, the
average number of any animal or plant depends only indirectly on the
number of its eggs or seeds.

In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing
considerations always in mind--never to forget that every single organic
being may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers;
that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy
destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old during each
generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten any check, mitigate the
destruction ever so little, and the number of the species will almost
instantaneously increase to any amount.

NATURE OF THE CHECKS TO INCREASE.

The causes which check the natural tendency of each species to increase
are most obscure. Look at the most vigorous species; by as much as it
swarms in numbers, by so much will it tend to increase still further. We
know not exactly what the checks are even in a single instance. Nor will
this surprise any one who reflects how ignorant we are on this head,
even in regard to mankind, although so incomparably better known than
any other animal. This subject of the checks to increase has been ably
treated by several authors, and I hope in a future work to discuss it at
considerable length, more especially in regard to the feral animals of
South America. Here I will make only a few remarks, just to recall to
the reader's mind some of the chief points. Eggs or very young animals
seem generally to suffer most, but this is not invariably the case. With
plants there is a vast destruction of seeds, but from some observations
which I have made it appears that the seedlings suffer most from
germinating in ground already thickly stocked with other plants.
Seedlings, also, are destroyed in vast numbers by various enemies; for
instance, on a piece of ground three feet long and two wide, dug and
cleared, and where there could be no choking from other plants, I marked
all the seedlings of our native weeds as they came up, and out of 357
no less than 295 were destroyed, chiefly by slugs and insects. If turf
which has long been mown, and the case would be the same with turf
closely browsed by quadrupeds, be let to grow, the more vigorous plants
gradually kill the less vigorous, though fully grown plants; thus out of
twenty species grown on a little plot of mown turf (three feet by four)
nine species perished, from the other species being allowed to grow up
freely.

The amount of food for each species, of course, gives the extreme limit
to which each can increase; but very frequently it is not the obtaining
food, but the serving as prey to other animals, which determines the
average number of a species. Thus, there seems to be little doubt that
the stock of partridges, grouse, and hares on any large estate depends
chiefly on the destruction of vermin. If not one head of game were shot
during the next twenty years in England, and, at the same time, if no
vermin were destroyed, there would, in all probability, be less game
than at present, although hundreds of thousands of game animals are now
annually shot. On the other hand, in some cases, as with the elephant,
none are destroyed by beasts of prey; for even the tiger in India most
rarely dares to attack a young elephant protected by its dam.

Climate plays an important part in determining the average numbers of
a species, and periodical seasons of extreme cold or drought seem to be
the most effective of all checks. I estimated (chiefly from the greatly
reduced numbers of nests in the spring) that the winter of 1854-5
destroyed four-fifths of the birds in my own grounds; and this is
a tremendous destruction, when we remember that ten per cent. is an
extraordinarily severe mortality from epidemics with man. The action of
climate seems at first sight to be quite independent of the struggle for
existence; but in so far as climate chiefly acts in reducing food, it
brings on the most severe struggle between the individuals, whether of
the same or of distinct species, which subsist on the same kind of food.
Even when climate, for instance, extreme cold, acts directly, it will
be the least vigorous individuals, or those which have got least food
through the advancing winter, which will suffer the most. When we travel
from south to north, or from a damp region to a dry, we invariably
see some species gradually getting rarer and rarer, and finally
disappearing; and the change of climate being conspicuous, we are
tempted to attribute the whole effect to its direct action. But this is
a false view; we forget that each species, even where it most abounds,
is constantly suffering enormous destruction at some period of its life,
from enemies or from competitors for the same place and food; and if
these enemies or competitors be in the least degree favoured by any
slight change of climate, they will increase in numbers; and as each
area is already fully stocked with inhabitants, the other species must
decrease. When we travel southward and see a species decreasing in
numbers, we may feel sure that the cause lies quite as much in other
species being favoured, as in this one being hurt. So it is when we
travel northward, but in a somewhat lesser degree, for the number of
species of all kinds, and therefore of competitors, decreases northward;
hence in going northward, or in ascending a mountain, we far oftener
meet with stunted forms, due to the DIRECTLY injurious action of
climate, than we do in proceeding southward or in descending a mountain.
When we reach the Arctic regions, or snow-capped summits, or absolute
deserts, the struggle for life is almost exclusively with the elements.

That climate acts in main part indirectly by favouring other species we
clearly see in the prodigious number of plants which in our gardens can
perfectly well endure our climate, but which never become naturalised,
for they cannot compete with our native plants nor resist destruction by
our native animals.

When a species, owing to highly favourable circumstances, increases
inordinately in numbers in a small tract, epidemics--at least, this
seems generally to occur with our game animals--often ensue; and here
we have a limiting check independent of the struggle for life. But even
some of these so-called epidemics appear to be due to parasitic worms,
which have from some cause, possibly in part through facility of
diffusion among the crowded animals, been disproportionally favoured:
and here comes in a sort of struggle between the parasite and its prey.

On the other hand, in many cases, a large stock of individuals of the
same species, relatively to the numbers of its enemies, is absolutely
necessary for its preservation. Thus we can easily raise plenty of
corn and rape-seed, etc., in our fields, because the seeds are in great
excess compared with the number of birds which feed on them; nor can
the birds, though having a superabundance of food at this one season,
increase in number proportionally to the supply of seed, as their
numbers are checked during the winter; but any one who has tried knows
how troublesome it is to get seed from a few wheat or other such plants
in a garden; I have in this case lost every single seed. This view of
the necessity of a large stock of the same species for its preservation,
explains, I believe, some singular facts in nature such as that of very
rare plants being sometimes extremely abundant, in the few spots where
they do exist; and that of some social plants being social, that is
abounding in individuals, even on the extreme verge of their range. For
in such cases, we may believe, that a plant could exist only where
the conditions of its life were so favourable that many could exist
together, and thus save the species from utter destruction. I should
add that the good effects of intercrossing, and the ill effects of close
interbreeding, no doubt come into play in many of these cases; but I
will not here enlarge on this subject.

COMPLEX RELATIONS OF ALL ANIMALS AND PLANTS TO EACH OTHER IN THE
STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.

Many cases are on record showing how complex and unexpected are the
checks and relations between organic beings, which have to struggle
together in the same country. I will give only a single instance, which,
though a simple one, interested me. In Staffordshire, on the estate of
a relation, where I had ample means of investigation, there was a large
and extremely barren heath, which had never been touched by the hand
of man; but several hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been
enclosed twenty-five years previously and planted with Scotch fir. The
change in the native vegetation of the planted part of the heath was
most remarkable, more than is generally seen in passing from one quite
different soil to another: not only the proportional numbers of the
heath-plants were wholly changed, but twelve species of plants (not
counting grasses and carices) flourished in the plantations, which could
not be found on the heath. The effect on the insects must have been
still greater, for six insectivorous birds were very common in the
plantations, which were not to be seen on the heath; and the heath was
frequented by two or three distinct insectivorous birds. Here we see how
potent has been the effect of the introduction of a single tree, nothing
whatever else having been done, with the exception of the land having
been enclosed, so that cattle could not enter. But how important an
element enclosure is, I plainly saw near Farnham, in Surrey. Here
there are extensive heaths, with a few clumps of old Scotch firs on
the distant hill-tops: within the last ten years large spaces have been
enclosed, and self-sown firs are now springing up in multitudes, so
close together that all cannot live. When I ascertained that these young
trees had not been sown or planted I was so much surprised at their
numbers that I went to several points of view, whence I could examine
hundreds of acres of the unenclosed heath, and literally I could not
see a single Scotch fir, except the old planted clumps. But on looking
closely between the stems of the heath, I found a multitude of seedlings
and little trees, which had been perpetually browsed down by the cattle.
In one square yard, at a point some hundred yards distant from one of
the old clumps, I counted thirty-two little trees; and one of them, with
twenty-six rings of growth, had, during many years tried to raise its
head above the stems of the heath, and had failed. No wonder that, as
soon as the land was enclosed, it became thickly clothed with vigorously
growing young firs. Yet the heath was so extremely barren and so
extensive that no one would ever have imagined that cattle would have so
closely and effectually searched it for food.

Here we see that cattle absolutely determine the existence of the Scotch
fir; but in several parts of the world insects determine the existence
of cattle. Perhaps Paraguay offers the most curious instance of this;
for here neither cattle nor horses nor dogs have ever run wild, though
they swarm southward and northward in a feral state; and Azara and
Rengger have shown that this is caused by the greater number in Paraguay
of a certain fly, which lays its eggs in the navels of these animals
when first born. The increase of these flies, numerous as they are,
must be habitually checked by some means, probably by other parasitic
insects. Hence, if certain insectivorous birds were to decrease in
Paraguay, the parasitic insects would probably increase; and this would
lessen the number of the navel-frequenting flies--then cattle and horses
would become feral, and this would certainly greatly alter (as indeed
I have observed in parts of South America) the vegetation: this again
would largely affect the insects; and this, as we have just seen
in Staffordshire, the insectivorous birds, and so onwards in
ever-increasing circles of complexity. Not that under nature the
relations will ever be as simple as this. Battle within battle must be
continually recurring with varying success; and yet in the long-run the
forces are so nicely balanced that the face of nature remains for long
periods of time uniform, though assuredly the merest trifle would give
the victory to one organic being over another. Nevertheless, so profound
is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we
hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the
cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the
duration of the forms of life!

I am tempted to give one more instance showing how plants and animals,
remote in the scale of nature, are bound together by a web of complex
relations. I shall hereafter have occasion to show that the exotic
Lobelia fulgens is never visited in my garden by insects, and
consequently, from its peculiar structure, never sets a seed. Nearly
all our orchidaceous plants absolutely require the visits of insects
to remove their pollen-masses and thus to fertilise them. I find
from experiments that humble-bees are almost indispensable to the
fertilisation of the heartsease (Viola tricolor), for other bees do
not visit this flower. I have also found that the visits of bees are
necessary for the fertilisation of some kinds of clover; for instance
twenty heads of Dutch clover (Trifolium repens) yielded 2,290 seeds, but
twenty other heads, protected from bees, produced not one. Again, 100
heads of red clover (T. pratense) produced 2,700 seeds, but the same
number of protected heads produced not a single seed. Humble bees alone
visit red clover, as other bees cannot reach the nectar. It has been
suggested that moths may fertilise the clovers; but I doubt whether they
could do so in the case of the red clover, from their weight not being
sufficient to depress the wing petals. Hence we may infer as highly
probable that, if the whole genus of humble-bees became extinct or very
rare in England, the heartsease and red clover would become very rare,
or wholly disappear. The number of humble-bees in any district depends
in a great measure upon the number of field-mice, which destroy their
combs and nests; and Colonel Newman, who has long attended to the habits
of humble-bees, believes that "more than two-thirds of them are
thus destroyed all over England." Now the number of mice is largely
dependent, as every one knows, on the number of cats; and Colonel
Newman says, "Near villages and small towns I have found the nests
of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the
number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence it is quite credible that
the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might
determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the
frequency of certain flowers in that district!

In the case of every species, many different checks, acting at different
periods of life, and during different seasons or years, probably come
into play; some one check or some few being generally the most potent,
but all will concur in determining the average number, or even
the existence of the species. In some cases it can be shown that
widely-different checks act on the same species in different districts.
When we look at the plants and bushes clothing an entangled bank, we
are tempted to attribute their proportional numbers and kinds to what we
call chance. But how false a view is this! Every one has heard that when
an American forest is cut down, a very different vegetation springs
up; but it has been observed that ancient Indian ruins in the Southern
United States, which must formerly have been cleared of trees, now
display the same beautiful diversity and proportion of kinds as in the
surrounding virgin forests. What a struggle must have gone on during
long centuries between the several kinds of trees, each annually
scattering its seeds by the thousand; what war between insect and
insect--between insects, snails, and other animals with birds and beasts
of prey--all striving to increase, all feeding on each other, or on the
trees, their seeds and seedlings, or on the other plants which first
clothed the ground and thus checked the growth of the trees. Throw up
a handful of feathers, and all fall to the ground according to definite
laws; but how simple is the problem where each shall fall compared to
that of the action and reaction of the innumerable plants and animals
which have determined, in the course of centuries, the proportional
numbers and kinds of trees now growing on the old Indian ruins!

The dependency of one organic being on another, as of a parasite on its
prey, lies generally between beings remote in the scale of nature. This
is likewise sometimes the case with those which may strictly be said to
struggle with each other for existence, as in the case of locusts and
grass-feeding quadrupeds. But the struggle will almost invariably
be most severe between the individuals of the same species, for they
frequent the same districts, require the same food, and are exposed
to the same dangers. In the case of varieties of the same species, the
struggle will generally be almost equally severe, and we sometimes see
the contest soon decided: for instance, if several varieties of wheat be
sown together, and the mixed seed be resown, some of the varieties which
best suit the soil or climate, or are naturally the most fertile, will
beat the others and so yield more seed, and will consequently in a few
years supplant the other varieties. To keep up a mixed stock of even
such extremely close varieties as the variously coloured sweet-peas,
they must be each year harvested separately, and the seed then mixed
in due proportion, otherwise the weaker kinds will steadily decrease in
number and disappear. So again with the varieties of sheep: it has
been asserted that certain mountain-varieties will starve out other
mountain-varieties, so that they cannot be kept together. The same
result has followed from keeping together different varieties of the
medicinal leech. It may even be doubted whether the varieties of any
of our domestic plants or animals have so exactly the same strength,
habits, and constitution, that the original proportions of a mixed
stock (crossing being prevented) could be kept up for half-a-dozen
generations, if they were allowed to struggle together, in the same
manner as beings in a state of nature, and if the seed or young were not
annually preserved in due proportion.

STRUGGLE FOR LIFE MOST SEVERE BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS AND VARIETIES OF THE
SAME SPECIES.

As the species of the same genus usually have, though by no means
invariably, much similarity in habits and constitution, and always in
structure, the struggle will generally be more severe between them, if
they come into competition with each other, than between the species of
distinct genera. We see this in the recent extension over parts of the
United States of one species of swallow having caused the decrease of
another species. The recent increase of the missel-thrush in parts of
Scotland has caused the decrease of the song-thrush. How frequently we
hear of one species of rat taking the place of another species under
the most different climates! In Russia the small Asiatic cockroach
has everywhere driven before it its great congener. In Australia the
imported hive-bee is rapidly exterminating the small, stingless native
bee. One species of charlock has been known to supplant another species;
and so in other cases. We can dimly see why the competition should be
most severe between allied forms, which fill nearly the same place in
the economy of nature; but probably in no one case could we precisely
say why one species has been victorious over another in the great battle
of life.

A corollary of the highest importance may be deduced from the foregoing
remarks, namely, that the structure of every organic being is related,
in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all other
organic beings, with which it comes into competition for food or
residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys. This
is obvious in the structure of the teeth and talons of the tiger; and in
that of the legs and claws of the parasite which clings to the hair on
the tiger's body. But in the beautifully plumed seed of the dandelion,
and in the flattened and fringed legs of the water-beetle, the relation
seems at first confined to the elements of air and water. Yet the
advantage of the plumed seeds no doubt stands in the closest relation
to the land being already thickly clothed with other plants; so that the
seeds may be widely distributed and fall on unoccupied ground. In the
water-beetle, the structure of its legs, so well adapted for diving,
allows it to compete with other aquatic insects, to hunt for its own
prey, and to escape serving as prey to other animals.

The store of nutriment laid up within the seeds of many plants seems at
first sight to have no sort of relation to other plants. But from the
strong growth of young plants produced from such seeds, as peas and
beans, when sown in the midst of long grass, it may be suspected that
the chief use of the nutriment in the seed is to favour the growth of
the seedlings, whilst struggling with other plants growing vigorously
all around.

Look at a plant in the midst of its range! Why does it not double or
quadruple its numbers? We know that it can perfectly well withstand a
little more heat or cold, dampness or dryness, for elsewhere it ranges
into slightly hotter or colder, damper or drier districts. In this case
we can clearly see that if we wish in imagination to give the plant the
power of increasing in numbers, we should have to give it some advantage
over its competitors, or over the animals which prey on it. On the
confines of its geographical range, a change of constitution with
respect to climate would clearly be an advantage to our plant; but we
have reason to believe that only a few plants or animals range so far,
that they are destroyed exclusively by the rigour of the climate. Not
until we reach the extreme confines of life, in the Arctic regions or on
the borders of an utter desert, will competition cease. The land may be
extremely cold or dry, yet there will be competition between some few
species, or between the individuals of the same species, for the warmest
or dampest spots.

Hence we can see that when a plant or animal is placed in a new country,
among new competitors, the conditions of its life will generally be
changed in an essential manner, although the climate may be exactly the
same as in its former home. If its average numbers are to increase in
its new home, we should have to modify it in a different way to what we
should have had to do in its native country; for we should have to give
it some advantage over a different set of competitors or enemies.

It is good thus to try in imagination to give any one species an
advantage over another. Probably in no single instance should we know
what to do. This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual
relations of all organic beings; a conviction as necessary, as it is
difficult to acquire. All that we can do is to keep steadily in mind
that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio;
that each, at some period of its life, during some season of the year,
during each generation, or at intervals, has to struggle for life and
to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle we may
console ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not
incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and
that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.




CHAPTER IV. NATURAL SELECTION; OR THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.

 Natural Selection--its power compared with man's selection--its power
 on characters of trifling importance--its power at all ages and on
 both sexes--Sexual Selection--On the generality of intercrosses
 between individuals of the same species--Circumstances favourable and
 unfavourable to the results of Natural Selection, namely, intercrossing,
 isolation, number of individuals--Slow action--Extinction caused by
 Natural Selection--Divergence of Character, related to the diversity of
 inhabitants of any small area and to naturalisation--Action of Natural
 Selection, through Divergence of Character and Extinction, on the
 descendants from a common parent--Explains the Grouping of all organic
 beings--Advance in organisation--Low forms preserved--Convergence of
 character--Indefinite multiplication of species--Summary.


How will the struggle for existence, briefly discussed in the last
chapter, act in regard to variation? Can the principle of selection,
which we have seen is so potent in the hands of man, apply under nature?
I think we shall see that it can act most efficiently. Let the endless
number of slight variations and individual differences occurring in our
domestic productions, and, in a lesser degree, in those under nature, be
borne in mind; as well as the strength of the hereditary tendency. Under
domestication, it may truly be said that the whole organisation becomes
in some degree plastic. But the variability, which we almost universally
meet with in our domestic productions is not directly produced, as
Hooker and Asa Gray have well remarked, by man; he can neither originate
varieties nor prevent their occurrence; he can only preserve and
accumulate such as do occur. Unintentionally he exposes organic beings
to new and changing conditions of life, and variability ensues; but
similar changes of conditions might and do occur under nature. Let it
also be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are
the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their
physical conditions of life; and consequently what infinitely varied
diversities of structure might be of use to each being under changing
conditions of life. Can it then be thought improbable, seeing that
variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other
variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex
battle of life, should occur in the course of many successive
generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more
individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having
any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance
of surviving and procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel
sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly
destroyed. This preservation of favourable individual differences and
variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have
called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations
neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection,
and would be left either a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in
certain polymorphic species, or would ultimately become fixed, owing to
the nature of the organism and the nature of the conditions.

Several writers have misapprehended or objected to the term Natural
Selection. Some have even imagined that natural selection induces
variability, whereas it implies only the preservation of such variations
as arise and are beneficial to the being under its conditions of life.
No one objects to agriculturists speaking of the potent effects of man's
selection; and in this case the individual differences given by nature,
which man for some object selects, must of necessity first occur. Others
have objected that the term selection implies conscious choice in the
animals which become modified; and it has even been urged that, as
plants have no volition, natural selection is not applicable to them!
In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a
false term; but who ever objected to chemists speaking of the elective
affinities of the various elements?--and yet an acid cannot strictly be
said to elect the base with which it in preference combines. It has been
said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but
who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling
the movements of the planets? Every one knows what is meant and is
implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are almost necessary
for brevity. So again it is difficult to avoid personifying the word
Nature; but I mean by nature, only the aggregate action and product of
many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained
by us. With a little familiarity such superficial objections will be
forgotten.

We shall best understand the probable course of natural selection by
taking the case of a country undergoing some slight physical change, for
instance, of climate. The proportional numbers of its inhabitants will
almost immediately undergo a change, and some species will probably
become extinct. We may conclude, from what we have seen of the intimate
and complex manner in which the inhabitants of each country are
bound together, that any change in the numerical proportions of the
inhabitants, independently of the change of climate itself, would
seriously affect the others. If the country were open on its borders,
new forms would certainly immigrate, and this would likewise seriously
disturb the relations of some of the former inhabitants. Let it be
remembered how powerful the influence of a single introduced tree or
mammal has been shown to be. But in the case of an island, or of a
country partly surrounded by barriers, into which new and better adapted
forms could not freely enter, we should then have places in the economy
of nature which would assuredly be better filled up if some of the
original inhabitants were in some manner modified; for, had the area
been open to immigration, these same places would have been seized on
by intruders. In such cases, slight modifications, which in any way
favoured the individuals of any species, by better adapting them to
their altered conditions, would tend to be preserved; and natural
selection would have free scope for the work of improvement.

We have good reason to believe, as shown in the first chapter,
that changes in the conditions of life give a tendency to increased
variability; and in the foregoing cases the conditions the changed, and
this would manifestly be favourable to natural selection, by affording
a better chance of the occurrence of profitable variations. Unless such
occur, natural selection can do nothing. Under the term of "variations,"
it must never be forgotten that mere individual differences are
included. As man can produce a great result with his domestic animals
and plants by adding up in any given direction individual differences,
so could natural selection, but far more easily from having incomparably
longer time for action. Nor do I believe that any great physical change,
as of climate, or any unusual degree of isolation, to check immigration,
is necessary in order that new and unoccupied places should be left
for natural selection to fill up by improving some of the varying
inhabitants. For as all the inhabitants of each country are struggling
together with nicely balanced forces, extremely slight modifications in
the structure or habits of one species would often give it an advantage
over others; and still further modifications of the same kind would
often still further increase the advantage, as long as the species
continued under the same conditions of life and profited by similar
means of subsistence and defence. No country can be named in which all
the native inhabitants are now so perfectly adapted to each other and to
the physical conditions under which they live, that none of them could
be still better adapted or improved; for in all countries, the natives
have been so far conquered by naturalised productions that they have
allowed some foreigners to take firm possession of the land. And as
foreigners have thus in every country beaten some of the natives, we
may safely conclude that the natives might have been modified with
advantage, so as to have better resisted the intruders.

As man can produce, and certainly has produced, a great result by his
methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not natural
selection effect? Man can act only on external and visible characters:
Nature, if I may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or
survival of the fittest, cares nothing for appearances, except in so far
as they are useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ,
on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of
life. Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the
being which she tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by
her, as is implied by the fact of their selection. Man keeps the natives
of many climates in the same country. He seldom exercises each selected
character in some peculiar and fitting manner; he feeds a long and a
short-beaked pigeon on the same food; he does not exercise a long-backed
or long-legged quadruped in any peculiar manner; he exposes sheep
with long and short wool to the same climate; does not allow the most
vigorous males to struggle for the females; he does not rigidly destroy
all inferior animals, but protects during each varying season, as far as
lies in his power, all his productions. He often begins his selection
by some half-monstrous form, or at least by some modification prominent
enough to catch the eye or to be plainly useful to him. Under nature,
the slightest differences of structure or constitution may well turn the
nicely-balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so be preserved.
How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! How short his time,
and consequently how poor will be his results, compared with those
accumulated by Nature during whole geological periods! Can we wonder,
then, that Nature's productions should be far "truer" in character than
man's productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the
most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of
far higher workmanship?

It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly
scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting
those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently
and insensibly working, WHENEVER AND WHEREVER OPPORTUNITY OFFERS, at
the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and
inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in
progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and
then so imperfect is our view into long-past geological ages that we see
only that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly
were.

In order that any great amount of modification should be effected in a
species, a variety, when once formed must again, perhaps after a long
interval of time, vary or present individual differences of the same
favourable nature as before; and these must again be preserved, and so
onward, step by step. Seeing that individual differences of the
same kind perpetually recur, this can hardly be considered as an
unwarrantable assumption. But whether it is true, we can judge only
by seeing how far the hypothesis accords with and explains the general
phenomena of nature. On the other hand, the ordinary belief that the
amount of possible variation is a strictly limited quantity, is likewise
a simple assumption.

Although natural selection can act only through and for the good of each
being, yet characters and structures, which we are apt to consider as of
very trifling importance, may thus be acted on. When we see leaf-eating
insects green, and bark-feeders mottled-grey; the alpine ptarmigan white
in winter, the red-grouse the colour of heather, we must believe that
these tints are of service to these birds and insects in preserving them
from danger. Grouse, if not destroyed at some period of their lives,
would increase in countless numbers; they are known to suffer largely
from birds of prey; and hawks are guided by eyesight to their prey,--so
much so that on parts of the continent persons are warned not to keep
white pigeons, as being the most liable to destruction. Hence natural
selection might be effective in giving the proper colour to each kind
of grouse, and in keeping that colour, when once acquired, true and
constant. Nor ought we to think that the occasional destruction of an
animal of any particular colour would produce little effect; we should
remember how essential it is in a flock of white sheep to destroy a lamb
with the faintest trace of black. We have seen how the colour of hogs,
which feed on the "paint-root" in Virginia, determines whether they
shall live or die. In plants, the down on the fruit and the colour of
the flesh are considered by botanists as characters of the most trifling
importance; yet we hear from an excellent horticulturist, Downing,
that in the United States smooth-skinned fruits suffer far more from a
beetle, a Curculio, than those with down; that purple plums suffer far
more from a certain disease than yellow plums; whereas another disease
attacks yellow-fleshed peaches far more than those with other coloured
flesh. If, with all the aids of art, these slight differences make a
great difference in cultivating the several varieties, assuredly, in a
state of nature, where the trees would have to struggle with other trees
and with a host of enemies, such differences would effectually settle
which variety, whether a smooth or downy, a yellow or a purple-fleshed
fruit, should succeed.

In looking at many small points of difference between species, which,
as far as our ignorance permits us to judge, seem quite unimportant, we
must not forget that climate, food, etc., have no doubt produced some
direct effect. It is also necessary to bear in mind that, owing to
the law of correlation, when one part varies and the variations are
accumulated through natural selection, other modifications, often of the
most unexpected nature, will ensue.

As we see that those variations which, under domestication, appear at
any particular period of life, tend to reappear in the offspring at the
same period; for instance, in the shape, size and flavour of the seeds
of the many varieties of our culinary and agricultural plants; in the
caterpillar and cocoon stages of the varieties of the silkworm; in the
eggs of poultry, and in the colour of the down of their chickens; in the
horns of our sheep and cattle when nearly adult; so in a state of nature
natural selection will be enabled to act on and modify organic beings at
any age, by the accumulation of variations profitable at that age, and
by their inheritance at a corresponding age. If it profit a plant to
have its seeds more and more widely disseminated by the wind, I can see
no greater difficulty in this being effected through natural selection,
than in the cotton-planter increasing and improving by selection the
down in the pods on his cotton-trees. Natural selection may modify
and adapt the larva of an insect to a score of contingencies, wholly
different from those which concern the mature insect; and these
modifications may affect, through correlation, the structure of the
adult. So, conversely, modifications in the adult may affect the
structure of the larva; but in all cases natural selection will ensure
that they shall not be injurious: for if they were so, the species would
become extinct.

Natural selection will modify the structure of the young in relation to
the parent and of the parent in relation to the young. In social animals
it will adapt the structure of each individual for the benefit of the
whole community; if the community profits by the selected change. What
natural selection cannot do, is to modify the structure of one species,
without giving it any advantage, for the good of another species;
and though statements to this effect may be found in works of natural
history, I cannot find one case which will bear investigation. A
structure used only once in an animal's life, if of high importance to
it, might be modified to any extent by natural selection; for instance,
the great jaws possessed by certain insects, used exclusively for
opening the cocoon--or the hard tip to the beak of unhatched birds,
used for breaking the eggs. It has been asserted, that of the best
short-beaked tumbler-pigeons a greater number perish in the egg than are
able to get out of it; so that fanciers assist in the act of hatching.
Now, if nature had to make the beak of a full-grown pigeon very short
for the bird's own advantage, the process of modification would be very
slow, and there would be simultaneously the most rigorous selection
of all the young birds within the egg, which had the most powerful and
hardest beaks, for all with weak beaks would inevitably perish: or, more
delicate and more easily broken shells might be selected, the thickness
of the shell being known to vary like every other structure.

It may be well here to remark that with all beings there must be much
fortuitous destruction, which can have little or no influence on the
course of natural selection. For instance, a vast number of eggs or
seeds are annually devoured, and these could be modified through natural
selection only if they varied in some manner which protected them from
their enemies. Yet many of these eggs or seeds would perhaps, if not
destroyed, have yielded individuals better adapted to their conditions
of life than any of those which happened to survive. So again a vast
number of mature animals and plants, whether or not they be the best
adapted to their conditions, must be annually destroyed by accidental
causes, which would not be in the least degree mitigated by certain
changes of structure or constitution which would in other ways be
beneficial to the species. But let the destruction of the adults be ever
so heavy, if the number which can exist in any district be not wholly
kept down by such causes--or again let the destruction of eggs or
seeds be so great that only a hundredth or a thousandth part are
developed--yet of those which do survive, the best adapted individuals,
supposing that there is any variability in a favourable direction,
will tend to propagate their kind in larger numbers than the less
well adapted. If the numbers be wholly kept down by the causes just
indicated, as will often have been the case, natural selection will
be powerless in certain beneficial directions; but this is no valid
objection to its efficiency at other times and in other ways; for we
are far from having any reason to suppose that many species ever undergo
modification and improvement at the same time in the same area.

SEXUAL SELECTION.

Inasmuch as peculiarities often appear under domestication in one sex
and become hereditarily attached to that sex, so no doubt it will be
under nature. Thus it is rendered possible for the two sexes to be
modified through natural selection in relation to different habits
of life, as is sometimes the case; or for one sex to be modified in
relation to the other sex, as commonly occurs. This leads me to say a
few words on what I have called sexual selection. This form of selection
depends, not on a struggle for existence in relation to other organic
beings or to external conditions, but on a struggle between the
individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the
other sex. The result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but
few or no offspring. Sexual selection is, therefore, less rigorous than
natural selection. Generally, the most vigorous males, those which are
best fitted for their places in nature, will leave most progeny. But in
many cases victory depends not so much on general vigour, but on having
special weapons, confined to the male sex. A hornless stag or spurless
cock would have a poor chance of leaving numerous offspring. Sexual
selection, by always allowing the victor to breed, might surely give
indomitable courage, length of spur, and strength to the wing to
strike in the spurred leg, in nearly the same manner as does the brutal
cockfighter by the careful selection of his best cocks. How low in the
scale of nature the law of battle descends I know not; male alligators
have been described as fighting, bellowing, and whirling round, like
Indians in a war-dance, for the possession of the females; male salmons
have been observed fighting all day long; male stag-beetles sometimes
bear wounds from the huge mandibles of other males; the males of certain
hymenopterous insects have been frequently seen by that inimitable
observer M. Fabre, fighting for a particular female who sits by, an
apparently unconcerned beholder of the struggle, and then retires
with the conqueror. The war is, perhaps, severest between the males
of polygamous animals, and these seem oftenest provided with special
weapons. The males of carnivorous animals are already well armed; though
to them and to others, special means of defence may be given through
means of sexual selection, as the mane of the lion, and the hooked jaw
to the male salmon; for the shield may be as important for victory as
the sword or spear.

Among birds, the contest is often of a more peaceful character. All
those who have attended to the subject, believe that there is the
severest rivalry between the males of many species to attract, by
singing, the females. The rock-thrush of Guiana, birds of paradise,
and some others, congregate, and successive males display with the most
elaborate care, and show off in the best manner, their gorgeous plumage;
they likewise perform strange antics before the females, which, standing
by as spectators, at last choose the most attractive partner. Those who
have closely attended to birds in confinement well know that they
often take individual preferences and dislikes: thus Sir R. Heron has
described how a pied peacock was eminently attractive to all his hen
birds. I cannot here enter on the necessary details; but if man can in a
short time give beauty and an elegant carriage to his bantams, according
to his standard of beauty, I can see no good reason to doubt that female
birds, by selecting, during thousands of generations, the most melodious
or beautiful males, according to their standard of beauty, might produce
a marked effect. Some well-known laws, with respect to the plumage of
male and female birds, in comparison with the plumage of the young, can
partly be explained through the action of sexual selection on variations
occurring at different ages, and transmitted to the males alone or to
both sexes at corresponding ages; but I have not space here to enter on
this subject.

Thus it is, as I believe, that when the males and females of any animal
have the same general habits of life, but differ in structure, colour,
or ornament, such differences have been mainly caused by sexual
selection: that is, by individual males having had, in successive
generations, some slight advantage over other males, in their weapons,
means of defence, or charms; which they have transmitted to their
male offspring alone. Yet, I would not wish to attribute all sexual
differences to this agency: for we see in our domestic animals
peculiarities arising and becoming attached to the male sex, which
apparently have not been augmented through selection by man. The tuft of
hair on the breast of the wild turkey-cock cannot be of any use, and it
is doubtful whether it can be ornamental in the eyes of the female bird;
indeed, had the tuft appeared under domestication it would have been
called a monstrosity.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ACTION OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE SURVIVAL OF THE
FITTEST.

In order to make it clear how, as I believe, natural selection acts, I
must beg permission to give one or two imaginary illustrations. Let us
take the case of a wolf, which preys on various animals, securing some
by craft, some by strength, and some by fleetness; and let us suppose
that the fleetest prey, a deer for instance, had from any change in
the country increased in numbers, or that other prey had decreased
in numbers, during that season of the year when the wolf was hardest
pressed for food. Under such circumstances the swiftest and slimmest
wolves have the best chance of surviving, and so be preserved or
selected, provided always that they retained strength to master their
prey at this or some other period of the year, when they were compelled
to prey on other animals. I can see no more reason to doubt that
this would be the result, than that man should be able to improve the
fleetness of his greyhounds by careful and methodical selection, or by
that kind of unconscious selection which follows from each man trying to
keep the best dogs without any thought of modifying the breed. I may
add that, according to Mr. Pierce, there are two varieties of the wolf
inhabiting the Catskill Mountains, in the United States, one with a
light greyhound-like form, which pursues deer, and the other more bulky,
with shorter legs, which more frequently attacks the shepherd's flocks.

Even without any change in the proportional numbers of the animals on
which our wolf preyed, a cub might be born with an innate tendency to
pursue certain kinds of prey. Nor can this be thought very improbable;
for we often observe great differences in the natural tendencies of our
domestic animals; one cat, for instance, taking to catch rats, another
mice; one cat, according to Mr. St. John, bringing home winged game,
another hares or rabbits, and another hunting on marshy ground and
almost nightly catching woodcocks or snipes. The tendency to catch rats
rather than mice is known to be inherited. Now, if any slight innate
change of habit or of structure benefited an individual wolf, it would
have the best chance of surviving and of leaving offspring. Some of its
young would probably inherit the same habits or structure, and by the
repetition of this process, a new variety might be formed which would
either supplant or coexist with the parent-form of wolf. Or, again,
the wolves inhabiting a mountainous district, and those frequenting the
lowlands, would naturally be forced to hunt different prey; and from the
continued preservation of the individuals best fitted for the two sites,
two varieties might slowly be formed. These varieties would cross and
blend where they met; but to this subject of intercrossing we shall soon
have to return. I may add, that, according to Mr. Pierce, there are two
varieties of the wolf inhabiting the Catskill Mountains in the United
States, one with a light greyhound-like form, which pursues deer, and
the other more bulky, with shorter legs, which more frequently attacks
the shepherd's flocks.

It should be observed that in the above illustration, I speak of the
slimmest individual wolves, and not of any single strongly marked
variation having been preserved. In former editions of this work I
sometimes spoke as if this latter alternative had frequently occurred.
I saw the great importance of individual differences, and this led me
fully to discuss the results of unconscious selection by man,
which depends on the preservation of all the more or less valuable
individuals, and on the destruction of the worst. I saw, also, that
the preservation in a state of nature of any occasional deviation of
structure, such as a monstrosity, would be a rare event; and that, if at
first preserved, it would generally be lost by subsequent intercrossing
with ordinary individuals. Nevertheless, until reading an able and
valuable article in the "North British Review" (1867), I did not
appreciate how rarely single variations, whether slight or strongly
marked, could be perpetuated. The author takes the case of a pair of
animals, producing during their lifetime two hundred offspring, of
which, from various causes of destruction, only two on an average
survive to pro-create their kind. This is rather an extreme estimate
for most of the higher animals, but by no means so for many of the lower
organisms. He then shows that if a single individual were born, which
varied in some manner, giving it twice as good a chance of life as that
of the other individuals, yet the chances would be strongly against its
survival. Supposing it to survive and to breed, and that half its young
inherited the favourable variation; still, as the Reviewer goes onto
show, the young would have only a slightly better chance of surviving
and breeding; and this chance would go on decreasing in the succeeding
generations. The justice of these remarks cannot, I think, be disputed.
If, for instance, a bird of some kind could procure its food more easily
by having its beak curved, and if one were born with its beak strongly
curved, and which consequently flourished, nevertheless there would be
a very poor chance of this one individual perpetuating its kind to the
exclusion of the common form; but there can hardly be a doubt, judging
by what we see taking place under domestication, that this result would
follow from the preservation during many generations of a large number
of individuals with more or less strongly curved beaks, and from the
destruction of a still larger number with the straightest beaks.

It should not, however, be overlooked that certain rather strongly
marked variations, which no one would rank as mere individual
differences, frequently recur owing to a similar organisation being
similarly acted on--of which fact numerous instances could be given with
our domestic productions. In such cases, if the varying individual did
not actually transmit to its offspring its newly-acquired character, it
would undoubtedly transmit to them, as long as the existing conditions
remained the same, a still stronger tendency to vary in the same manner.
There can also be little doubt that the tendency to vary in the same
manner has often been so strong that all the individuals of the same
species have been similarly modified without the aid of any form of
selection. Or only a third, fifth, or tenth part of the individuals may
have been thus affected, of which fact several instances could be given.
Thus Graba estimates that about one-fifth of the guillemots in the Faroe
Islands consist of a variety so well marked, that it was formerly ranked
as a distinct species under the name of Uria lacrymans. In cases of this
kind, if the variation were of a beneficial nature, the original form
would soon be supplanted by the modified form, through the survival of
the fittest.

To the effects of intercrossing in eliminating variations of all kinds,
I shall have to recur; but it may be here remarked that most animals and
plants keep to their proper homes, and do not needlessly wander about;
we see this even with migratory birds, which almost always return to the
same spot. Consequently each newly-formed variety would generally be at
first local, as seems to be the common rule with varieties in a state
of nature; so that similarly modified individuals would soon exist in a
small body together, and would often breed together. If the new variety
were successful in its battle for life, it would slowly spread from
a central district, competing with and conquering the unchanged
individuals on the margins of an ever-increasing circle.

It may be worth while to give another and more complex illustration of
the action of natural selection. Certain plants excrete sweet juice,
apparently for the sake of eliminating something injurious from the sap:
this is effected, for instance, by glands at the base of the stipules in
some Leguminosae, and at the backs of the leaves of the common laurel.
This juice, though small in quantity, is greedily sought by insects; but
their visits do not in any way benefit the plant. Now, let us suppose
that the juice or nectar was excreted from the inside of the flowers of
a certain number of plants of any species. Insects in seeking the nectar
would get dusted with pollen, and would often transport it from one
flower to another. The flowers of two distinct individuals of the same
species would thus get crossed; and the act of crossing, as can be fully
proved, gives rise to vigorous seedlings, which consequently would have
the best chance of flourishing and surviving. The plants which produced
flowers with the largest glands or nectaries, excreting most nectar,
would oftenest be visited by insects, and would oftenest be crossed; and
so in the long-run would gain the upper hand and form a local variety.
The flowers, also, which had their stamens and pistils placed, in
relation to the size and habits of the particular insect which visited
them, so as to favour in any degree the transportal of the pollen, would
likewise be favoured. We might have taken the case of insects visiting
flowers for the sake of collecting pollen instead of nectar; and as
pollen is formed for the sole purpose of fertilisation, its destruction
appears to be a simple loss to the plant; yet if a little pollen
were carried, at first occasionally and then habitually, by the
pollen-devouring insects from flower to flower, and a cross thus
effected, although nine-tenths of the pollen were destroyed it
might still be a great gain to the plant to be thus robbed; and the
individuals which produced more and more pollen, and had larger anthers,
would be selected.

When our plant, by the above process long continued, had been rendered
highly attractive to insects, they would, unintentionally on their part,
regularly carry pollen from flower to flower; and that they do this
effectually I could easily show by many striking facts. I will give only
one, as likewise illustrating one step in the separation of the sexes of
plants. Some holly-trees bear only male flowers, which have four stamens
producing a rather small quantity of pollen, and a rudimentary pistil;
other holly-trees bear only female flowers; these have a full-sized
pistil, and four stamens with shrivelled anthers, in which not a grain
of pollen can be detected. Having found a female tree exactly sixty
yards from a male tree, I put the stigmas of twenty flowers, taken from
different branches, under the microscope, and on all, without exception,
there were a few pollen-grains, and on some a profusion. As the wind had
set for several days from the female to the male tree, the pollen could
not thus have been carried. The weather had been cold and boisterous and
therefore not favourable to bees, nevertheless every female flower which
I examined had been effectually fertilised by the bees, which had flown
from tree to tree in search of nectar. But to return to our imaginary
case; as soon as the plant had been rendered so highly attractive to
insects that pollen was regularly carried from flower to flower, another
process might commence. No naturalist doubts the advantage of what has
been called the "physiological division of labour;" hence we may believe
that it would be advantageous to a plant to produce stamens alone in one
flower or on one whole plant, and pistils alone in another flower or on
another plant. In plants under culture and placed under new conditions
of life, sometimes the male organs and sometimes the female organs
become more or less impotent; now if we suppose this to occur in ever
so slight a degree under nature, then, as pollen is already carried
regularly from flower to flower, and as a more complete separation of
the sexes of our plant would be advantageous on the principle of
the division of labour, individuals with this tendency more and more
increased, would be continually favoured or selected, until at last a
complete separation of the sexes might be effected. It would take up
too much space to show the various steps, through dimorphism and other
means, by which the separation of the sexes in plants of various kinds
is apparently now in progress; but I may add that some of the species
of holly in North America are, according to Asa Gray, in an exactly
intermediate condition, or, as he expresses it, are more or less
dioeciously polygamous.

Let us now turn to the nectar-feeding insects; we may suppose the
plant of which we have been slowly increasing the nectar by continued
selection, to be a common plant; and that certain insects depended in
main part on its nectar for food. I could give many facts showing how
anxious bees are to save time: for instance, their habit of cutting
holes and sucking the nectar at the bases of certain flowers, which with
a very little more trouble they can enter by the mouth. Bearing such
facts in mind, it may be believed that under certain circumstances
individual differences in the curvature or length of the proboscis,
etc., too slight to be appreciated by us, might profit a bee or other
insect, so that certain individuals would be able to obtain their
food more quickly than others; and thus the communities to which they
belonged would flourish and throw off many swarms inheriting the same
peculiarities. The tubes of the corolla of the common red or incarnate
clovers (Trifolium pratense and incarnatum) do not on a hasty glance
appear to differ in length; yet the hive-bee can easily suck the nectar
out of the incarnate clover, but not out of the common red clover, which
is visited by humble-bees alone; so that whole fields of the red clover
offer in vain an abundant supply of precious nectar to the hive-bee.
That this nectar is much liked by the hive-bee is certain; for I have
repeatedly seen, but only in the autumn, many hive-bees sucking the
flowers through holes bitten in the base of the tube by humble bees.
The difference in the length of the corolla in the two kinds of clover,
which determines the visits of the hive-bee, must be very trifling; for
I have been assured that when red clover has been mown, the flowers of
the second crop are somewhat smaller, and that these are visited by many
hive-bees. I do not know whether this statement is accurate; nor whether
another published statement can be trusted, namely, that the Ligurian
bee, which is generally considered a mere variety of the common
hive-bee, and which freely crosses with it, is able to reach and suck
the nectar of the red clover. Thus, in a country where this kind of
clover abounded, it might be a great advantage to the hive-bee to have a
slightly longer or differently constructed proboscis. On the other hand,
as the fertility of this clover absolutely depends on bees visiting the
flowers, if humble-bees were to become rare in any country, it might be
a great advantage to the plant to have a shorter or more deeply divided
corolla, so that the hive-bees should be enabled to suck its flowers.
Thus I can understand how a flower and a bee might slowly become, either
simultaneously or one after the other, modified and adapted to each
other in the most perfect manner, by the continued preservation of all
the individuals which presented slight deviations of structure mutually
favourable to each other.

I am well aware that this doctrine of natural selection, exemplified in
the above imaginary instances, is open to the same objections which
were first urged against Sir Charles Lyell's noble views on "the modern
changes of the earth, as illustrative of geology;" but we now seldom
hear the agencies which we see still at work, spoken of as trifling and
insignificant, when used in explaining the excavation of the deepest
valleys or the formation of long lines of inland cliffs. Natural
selection acts only by the preservation and accumulation of small
inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being; and
as modern geology has almost banished such views as the excavation of a
great valley by a single diluvial wave, so will natural selection banish
the belief of the continued creation of new organic beings, or of any
great and sudden modification in their structure.

ON THE INTERCROSSING OF INDIVIDUALS.

I must here introduce a short digression. In the case of animals
and plants with separated sexes, it is of course obvious that two
individuals must always (with the exception of the curious and not well
understood cases of parthenogenesis) unite for each birth; but in the
case of hermaphrodites this is far from obvious. Nevertheless there is
reason to believe that with all hermaphrodites two individuals, either
occasionally or habitually, concur for the reproduction of their kind.
This view was long ago doubtfully suggested by Sprengel, Knight and
Kolreuter. We shall presently see its importance; but I must here treat
the subject with extreme brevity, though I have the materials prepared
for an ample discussion. All vertebrate animals, all insects and some
other large groups of animals, pair for each birth. Modern research
has much diminished the number of supposed hermaphrodites and of real
hermaphrodites a large number pair; that is, two individuals regularly
unite for reproduction, which is all that concerns us. But still there
are many hermaphrodite animals which certainly do not habitually pair,
and a vast majority of plants are hermaphrodites. What reason, it may be
asked, is there for supposing in these cases that two individuals ever
concur in reproduction? As it is impossible here to enter on details, I
must trust to some general considerations alone.

In the first place, I have collected so large a body of facts, and made
so many experiments, showing, in accordance with the almost universal
belief of breeders, that with animals and plants a cross between
different varieties, or between individuals of the same variety but of
another strain, gives vigour and fertility to the offspring; and on the
other hand, that CLOSE interbreeding diminishes vigour and fertility;
that these facts alone incline me to believe that it is a general law
of nature that no organic being fertilises itself for a perpetuity
of generations; but that a cross with another individual is
occasionally--perhaps at long intervals of time--indispensable.

On the belief that this is a law of nature, we can, I think, understand
several large classes of facts, such as the following, which on any
other view are inexplicable. Every hybridizer knows how unfavourable
exposure to wet is to the fertilisation of a flower, yet what a
multitude of flowers have their anthers and stigmas fully exposed to the
weather! If an occasional cross be indispensable, notwithstanding that
the plant's own anthers and pistil stand so near each other as almost
to ensure self-fertilisation, the fullest freedom for the entrance of
pollen from another individual will explain the above state of exposure
of the organs. Many flowers, on the other hand, have their organs of
fructification closely enclosed, as in the great papilionaceous or
pea-family; but these almost invariably present beautiful and curious
adaptations in relation to the visits of insects. So necessary are the
visits of bees to many papilionaceous flowers, that their fertility is
greatly diminished if these visits be prevented. Now, it is scarcely
possible for insects to fly from flower to flower, and not to carry
pollen from one to the other, to the great good of the plant.
Insects act like a camel-hair pencil, and it is sufficient, to ensure
fertilisation, just to touch with the same brush the anthers of one
flower and then the stigma of another; but it must not be supposed that
bees would thus produce a multitude of hybrids between distinct species;
for if a plant's own pollen and that from another species are placed
on the same stigma, the former is so prepotent that it invariably and
completely destroys, as has been shown by Gartner, the influence of the
foreign pollen.

When the stamens of a flower suddenly spring towards the pistil, or
slowly move one after the other towards it, the contrivance seems
adapted solely to ensure self-fertilisation; and no doubt it is useful
for this end: but the agency of insects is often required to cause the
stamens to spring forward, as Kolreuter has shown to be the case with
the barberry; and in this very genus, which seems to have a special
contrivance for self-fertilisation, it is well known that, if
closely-allied forms or varieties are planted near each other, it is
hardly possible to raise pure seedlings, so largely do they naturally
cross. In numerous other cases, far from self-fertilisation being
favoured, there are special contrivances which effectually prevent the
stigma receiving pollen from its own flower, as I could show from the
works of Sprengel and others, as well as from my own observations: for
instance, in Lobelia fulgens, there is a really beautiful and elaborate
contrivance by which all the infinitely numerous pollen-granules are
swept out of the conjoined anthers of each flower, before the stigma of
that individual flower is ready to receive them; and as this flower is
never visited, at least in my garden, by insects, it never sets a seed,
though by placing pollen from one flower on the stigma of another, I
raise plenty of seedlings. Another species of Lobelia, which is visited
by bees, seeds freely in my garden. In very many other cases, though
there is no special mechanical contrivance to prevent the stigma
receiving pollen from the same flower, yet, as Sprengel, and more
recently Hildebrand and others have shown, and as I can confirm, either
the anthers burst before the stigma is ready for fertilisation, or the
stigma is ready before the pollen of that flower is ready, so that
these so-named dichogamous plants have in fact separated sexes, and
must habitually be crossed. So it is with the reciprocally dimorphic and
trimorphic plants previously alluded to. How strange are these facts!
How strange that the pollen and stigmatic surface of the same flower,
though placed so close together, as if for the very purpose of
self-fertilisation, should be in so many cases mutually useless to each
other! How simply are these facts explained on the view of an occasional
cross with a distinct individual being advantageous or indispensable!

If several varieties of the cabbage, radish, onion, and of some other
plants, be allowed to seed near each other, a large majority of the
seedlings thus raised turn out, as I found, mongrels: for instance, I
raised 233 seedling cabbages from some plants of different varieties
growing near each other, and of these only 78 were true to their kind,
and some even of these were not perfectly true. Yet the pistil of each
cabbage-flower is surrounded not only by its own six stamens but by
those of the many other flowers on the same plant; and the pollen of
each flower readily gets on its stigma without insect agency; for I
have found that plants carefully protected from insects produce the
full number of pods. How, then, comes it that such a vast number of the
seedlings are mongrelized? It must arise from the pollen of a distinct
VARIETY having a prepotent effect over the flower's own pollen; and
that this is part of the general law of good being derived from the
intercrossing of distinct individuals of the same species. When distinct
SPECIES are crossed the case is reversed, for a plant's own pollen
is always prepotent over foreign pollen; but to this subject we shall
return in a future chapter.

In the case of a large tree covered with innumerable flowers, it may be
objected that pollen could seldom be carried from tree to tree, and at
most only from flower to flower on the same tree; and flowers on the
same tree can be considered as distinct individuals only in a limited
sense. I believe this objection to be valid, but that nature has largely
provided against it by giving to trees a strong tendency to bear flowers
with separated sexes. When the sexes are separated, although the male
and female flowers may be produced on the same tree, pollen must be
regularly carried from flower to flower; and this will give a better
chance of pollen being occasionally carried from tree to tree. That
trees belonging to all orders have their sexes more often separated than
other plants, I find to be the case in this country; and at my request
Dr. Hooker tabulated the trees of New Zealand, and Dr. Asa Gray those
of the United States, and the result was as I anticipated. On the
other hand, Dr. Hooker informs me that the rule does not hold good in
Australia: but if most of the Australian trees are dichogamous, the same
result would follow as if they bore flowers with separated sexes. I have
made these few remarks on trees simply to call attention to the subject.

Turning for a brief space to animals: various terrestrial species are
hermaphrodites, such as the land-mollusca and earth-worms; but these
all pair. As yet I have not found a single terrestrial animal which
can fertilise itself. This remarkable fact, which offers so strong a
contrast with terrestrial plants, is intelligible on the view of an
occasional cross being indispensable; for owing to the nature of the
fertilising element there are no means, analogous to the action of
insects and of the wind with plants, by which an occasional cross could
be effected with terrestrial animals without the concurrence of two
individuals. Of aquatic animals, there are many self-fertilising
hermaphrodites; but here the currents of water offer an obvious means
for an occasional cross. As in the case of flowers, I have as yet
failed, after consultation with one of the highest authorities, namely,
Professor Huxley, to discover a single hermaphrodite animal with the
organs of reproduction so perfectly enclosed that access from without,
and the occasional influence of a distinct individual, can be shown to
be physically impossible. Cirripedes long appeared to me to present,
under this point of view, a case of great difficulty; but I have been
enabled, by a fortunate chance, to prove that two individuals, though
both are self-fertilising hermaphrodites, do sometimes cross.

It must have struck most naturalists as a strange anomaly that, both
with animals and plants, some species of the same family and even of
the same genus, though agreeing closely with each other in their whole
organisation, are hermaphrodites, and some unisexual. But if, in fact,
all hermaphrodites do occasionally intercross, the difference between
them and unisexual species is, as far as function is concerned, very
small.

From these several considerations and from the many special facts which
I have collected, but which I am unable here to give, it appears that
with animals and plants an occasional intercross between distinct
individuals is a very general, if not universal, law of nature.

CIRCUMSTANCES FAVOURABLE FOR THE PRODUCTION OF NEW FORMS THROUGH NATURAL
SELECTION.

This is an extremely intricate subject. A great amount of variability,
under which term individual differences are always included, will
evidently be favourable. A large number of individuals, by giving a
better chance within any given period for the appearance of profitable
variations, will compensate for a lesser amount of variability in each
individual, and is, I believe, a highly important element of success.
Though nature grants long periods of time for the work of natural
selection, she does not grant an indefinite period; for as all organic
beings are striving to seize on each place in the economy of nature, if
any one species does not become modified and improved in a corresponding
degree with its competitors it will be exterminated. Unless favourable
variations be inherited by some at least of the offspring, nothing can
be effected by natural selection. The tendency to reversion may often
check or prevent the work; but as this tendency has not prevented man
from forming by selection numerous domestic races, why should it prevail
against natural selection?

In the case of methodical selection, a breeder selects for some definite
object, and if the individuals be allowed freely to intercross, his work
will completely fail. But when many men, without intending to alter
the breed, have a nearly common standard of perfection, and all try to
procure and breed from the best animals, improvement surely but slowly
follows from this unconscious process of selection, notwithstanding that
there is no separation of selected individuals. Thus it will be under
nature; for within a confined area, with some place in the natural
polity not perfectly occupied, all the individuals varying in the right
direction, though in different degrees, will tend to be preserved.
But if the area be large, its several districts will almost certainly
present different conditions of life; and then, if the same species
undergoes modification in different districts, the newly formed
varieties will intercross on the confines of each. But we shall see in
the sixth chapter that intermediate varieties, inhabiting intermediate
districts, will in the long run generally be supplanted by one of the
adjoining varieties. Intercrossing will chiefly affect those animals
which unite for each birth and wander much, and which do not breed at a
very quick rate. Hence with animals of this nature, for instance birds,
varieties will generally be confined to separated countries; and this
I find to be the case. With hermaphrodite organisms which cross only
occasionally, and likewise with animals which unite for each birth, but
which wander little and can increase at a rapid rate, a new and improved
variety might be quickly formed on any one spot, and might there
maintain itself in a body and afterward spread, so that the individuals
of the new variety would chiefly cross together. On this principle
nurserymen always prefer saving seed from a large body of plants, as the
chance of intercrossing is thus lessened.

Even with animals which unite for each birth, and which do not propagate
rapidly, we must not assume that free intercrossing would always
eliminate the effects of natural selection; for I can bring forward
a considerable body of facts showing that within the same area two
varieties of the same animal may long remain distinct, from haunting
different stations, from breeding at slightly different seasons, or from
the individuals of each variety preferring to pair together.

Intercrossing plays a very important part in nature by keeping the
individuals of the same species, or of the same variety, true and
uniform in character. It will obviously thus act far more efficiently
with those animals which unite for each birth; but, as already stated,
we have reason to believe that occasional intercrosses take place with
all animals and plants. Even if these take place only at long intervals
of time, the young thus produced will gain so much in vigour and
fertility over the offspring from long-continued self-fertilisation,
that they will have a better chance of surviving and propagating their
kind; and thus in the long run the influence of crosses, even at rare
intervals, will be great. With respect to organic beings extremely low
in the scale, which do not propagate sexually, nor conjugate, and which
cannot possibly intercross, uniformity of character can be retained by
them under the same conditions of life, only through the principle
of inheritance, and through natural selection which will destroy any
individuals departing from the proper type. If the conditions of life
change and the form undergoes modification, uniformity of character
can be given to the modified offspring, solely by natural selection
preserving similar favourable variations.

Isolation also is an important element in the modification of species
through natural selection. In a confined or isolated area, if not very
large, the organic and inorganic conditions of life will generally be
almost uniform; so that natural selection will tend to modify all
the varying individuals of the same species in the same manner.
Intercrossing with the inhabitants of the surrounding districts,
will also be thus prevented. Moritz Wagner has lately published an
interesting essay on this subject, and has shown that the service
rendered by isolation in preventing crosses between newly-formed
varieties is probably greater even than I supposed. But from reasons
already assigned I can by no means agree with this naturalist, that
migration and isolation are necessary elements for the formation of new
species. The importance of isolation is likewise great in preventing,
after any physical change in the conditions, such as of climate,
elevation of the land, etc., the immigration of better adapted
organisms; and thus new places in the natural economy of the district
will be left open to be filled up by the modification of the old
inhabitants. Lastly, isolation will give time for a new variety to be
improved at a slow rate; and this may sometimes be of much importance.
If, however, an isolated area be very small, either from being
surrounded by barriers, or from having very peculiar physical
conditions, the total number of the inhabitants will be small; and this
will retard the production of new species through natural selection, by
decreasing the chances of favourable variations arising.

The mere lapse of time by itself does nothing, either for or against
natural selection. I state this because it has been erroneously asserted
that the element of time has been assumed by me to play an all-important
part in modifying species, as if all the forms of life were necessarily
undergoing change through some innate law. Lapse of time is only so far
important, and its importance in this respect is great, that it gives
a better chance of beneficial variations arising and of their being
selected, accumulated, and fixed. It likewise tends to increase the
direct action of the physical conditions of life, in relation to the
constitution of each organism.

If we turn to nature to test the truth of these remarks, and look at any
small isolated area, such as an oceanic island, although the number of
the species inhabiting it is small, as we shall see in our chapter on
Geographical Distribution; yet of these species a very large proportion
are endemic,--that is, have been produced there and nowhere else in the
world. Hence an oceanic island at first sight seems to have been highly
favourable for the production of new species. But we may thus deceive
ourselves, for to ascertain whether a small isolated area, or a large
open area like a continent, has been most favourable for the production
of new organic forms, we ought to make the comparison within equal
times; and this we are incapable of doing.

Although isolation is of great importance in the production of new
species, on the whole I am inclined to believe that largeness of area
is still more important, especially for the production of species which
shall prove capable of enduring for a long period, and of spreading
widely. Throughout a great and open area, not only will there be a
better chance of favourable variations, arising from the large number of
individuals of the same species there supported, but the conditions of
life are much more complex from the large number of already existing
species; and if some of these many species become modified and improved,
others will have to be improved in a corresponding degree, or they
will be exterminated. Each new form, also, as soon as it has been much
improved, will be able to spread over the open and continuous area, and
will thus come into competition with many other forms. Moreover, great
areas, though now continuous, will often, owing to former oscillations
of level, have existed in a broken condition, so that the good effects
of isolation will generally, to a certain extent, have concurred.
Finally, I conclude that, although small isolated areas have been in
some respects highly favourable for the production of new species, yet
that the course of modification will generally have been more rapid on
large areas; and what is more important, that the new forms produced on
large areas, which already have been victorious over many competitors,
will be those that will spread most widely, and will give rise to the
greatest number of new varieties and species. They will thus play a more
important part in the changing history of the organic world.

In accordance with this view, we can, perhaps, understand some
facts which will be again alluded to in our chapter on Geographical
Distribution; for instance, the fact of the productions of the
smaller continent of Australia now yielding before those of the larger
Europaeo-Asiatic area. Thus, also, it is that continental productions
have everywhere become so largely naturalised on islands. On a small
island, the race for life will have been less severe, and there will
have been less modification and less extermination. Hence, we can
understand how it is that the flora of Madeira, according to Oswald
Heer, resembles to a certain extent the extinct tertiary flora of
Europe. All fresh water basins, taken together, make a small area
compared with that of the sea or of the land. Consequently, the
competition between fresh water productions will have been less severe
than elsewhere; new forms will have been more slowly produced, and old
forms more slowly exterminated. And it is in fresh water basins that
we find seven genera of Ganoid fishes, remnants of a once preponderant
order: and in fresh water we find some of the most anomalous forms now
known in the world, as the Ornithorhynchus and Lepidosiren, which, like
fossils, connect to a certain extent orders at present widely separated
in the natural scale. These anomalous forms may be called living
fossils; they have endured to the present day, from having inhabited
a confined area, and from having been exposed to less varied, and
therefore less severe, competition.

To sum up, as far as the extreme intricacy of the subject permits, the
circumstances favourable and unfavourable for the production of new
species through natural selection. I conclude that for terrestrial
productions a large continental area, which has undergone many
oscillations of level, will have been the most favourable for the
production of many new forms of life, fitted to endure for a long
time and to spread widely. While the area existed as a continent the
inhabitants will have been numerous in individuals and kinds, and will
have been subjected to severe competition. When converted by subsidence
into large separate islands there will still have existed many
individuals of the same species on each island: intercrossing on the
confines of the range of each new species will have been checked: after
physical changes of any kind immigration will have been prevented, so
that new places in the polity of each island will have had to be filled
up by the modification of the old inhabitants; and time will have been
allowed for the varieties in each to become well modified and perfected.
When, by renewed elevation, the islands were reconverted into a
continental area, there will again have been very severe competition;
the most favoured or improved varieties will have been enabled to
spread; there will have been much extinction of the less improved forms,
and the relative proportional numbers of the various inhabitants of the
reunited continent will again have been changed; and again there will
have been a fair field for natural selection to improve still further
the inhabitants, and thus to produce new species.

That natural selection generally act with extreme slowness I fully
admit. It can act only when there are places in the natural polity of a
district which can be better occupied by the modification of some of its
existing inhabitants. The occurrence of such places will often depend
on physical changes, which generally take place very slowly, and on the
immigration of better adapted forms being prevented. As some few of
the old inhabitants become modified the mutual relations of others will
often be disturbed; and this will create new places, ready to be filled
up by better adapted forms; but all this will take place very slowly.
Although all the individuals of the same species differ in some slight
degree from each other, it would often be long before differences of
the right nature in various parts of the organisation might occur. The
result would often be greatly retarded by free intercrossing. Many will
exclaim that these several causes are amply sufficient to neutralise the
power of natural selection. I do not believe so. But I do believe that
natural selection will generally act very slowly, only at long intervals
of time, and only on a few of the inhabitants of the same region. I
further believe that these slow, intermittent results accord well with
what geology tells us of the rate and manner at which the inhabitants of
the world have changed.

Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much
by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change,
to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all organic
beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life,
which may have been effected in the long course of time through nature's
power of selection, that is by the survival of the fittest.

EXTINCTION CAUSED BY NATURAL SELECTION.

This subject will be more fully discussed in our chapter on Geology; but
it must here be alluded to from being intimately connected with natural
selection. Natural selection acts solely through the preservation of
variations in some way advantageous, which consequently endure. Owing to
the high geometrical rate of increase of all organic beings, each area
is already fully stocked with inhabitants, and it follows from this,
that as the favoured forms increase in number, so, generally, will the
less favoured decrease and become rare. Rarity, as geology tells us,
is the precursor to extinction. We can see that any form which
is represented by few individuals will run a good chance of utter
extinction, during great fluctuations in the nature or the seasons, or
from a temporary increase in the number of its enemies. But we may go
further than this; for as new forms are produced, unless we admit that
specific forms can go on indefinitely increasing in number, many old
forms must become extinct. That the number of specific forms has not
indefinitely increased, geology plainly tells us; and we shall presently
attempt to show why it is that the number of species throughout the
world has not become immeasurably great.

We have seen that the species which are most numerous in individuals
have the best chance of producing favourable variations within any given
period. We have evidence of this, in the facts stated in the second
chapter, showing that it is the common and diffused or dominant species
which offer the greatest number of recorded varieties. Hence, rare
species will be less quickly modified or improved within any given
period; they will consequently be beaten in the race for life by the
modified and improved descendants of the commoner species.

From these several considerations I think it inevitably follows,
that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural
selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct.
The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing
modification and improvement, will naturally suffer most. And we have
seen in the chapter on the Struggle for Existence that it is the most
closely-allied forms,--varieties of the same species, and species of
the same genus or related genera,--which, from having nearly the same
structure, constitution and habits, generally come into the severest
competition with each other. Consequently, each new variety or species,
during the progress of its formation, will generally press hardest
on its nearest kindred, and tend to exterminate them. We see the same
process of extermination among our domesticated productions, through
the selection of improved forms by man. Many curious instances could be
given showing how quickly new breeds of cattle, sheep and other animals,
and varieties of flowers, take the place of older and inferior kinds. In
Yorkshire, it is historically known that the ancient black cattle were
displaced by the long-horns, and that these "were swept away by the
short-horns" (I quote the words of an agricultural writer) "as if by
some murderous pestilence."

DIVERGENCE OF CHARACTER.

The principle, which I have designated by this term, is of high
importance, and explains, as I believe, several important facts. In
the first place, varieties, even strongly-marked ones, though having
somewhat of the character of species--as is shown by the hopeless doubts
in many cases how to rank them--yet certainly differ far less from each
other than do good and distinct species. Nevertheless according to my
view, varieties are species in the process of formation, or are, as
I have called them, incipient species. How, then, does the lesser
difference between varieties become augmented into the greater
difference between species? That this does habitually happen, we must
infer from most of the innumerable species throughout nature presenting
well-marked differences; whereas varieties, the supposed prototypes and
parents of future well-marked species, present slight and ill-defined
differences. Mere chance, as we may call it, might cause one variety
to differ in some character from its parents, and the offspring of this
variety again to differ from its parent in the very same character and
in a greater degree; but this alone would never account for so habitual
and large a degree of difference as that between the species of the same
genus.

As has always been my practice, I have sought light on this head from
our domestic productions. We shall here find something analogous. It
will be admitted that the production of races so different as short-horn
and Hereford cattle, race and cart horses, the several breeds of
pigeons, etc., could never have been effected by the mere chance
accumulation of similar variations during many successive generations.
In practice, a fancier is, for instance, struck by a pigeon having a
slightly shorter beak; another fancier is struck by a pigeon having a
rather longer beak; and on the acknowledged principle that "fanciers do
not and will not admire a medium standard, but like extremes," they
both go on (as has actually occurred with the sub-breeds of the
tumbler-pigeon) choosing and breeding from birds with longer and longer
beaks, or with shorter and shorter beaks. Again, we may suppose that at
an early period of history, the men of one nation or district required
swifter horses, while those of another required stronger and bulkier
horses. The early differences would be very slight; but, in the course
of time, from the continued selection of swifter horses in the one case,
and of stronger ones in the other, the differences would become greater,
and would be noted as forming two sub-breeds. Ultimately after the
lapse of centuries, these sub-breeds would become converted into two
well-established and distinct breeds. As the differences became greater,
the inferior animals with intermediate characters, being neither very
swift nor very strong, would not have been used for breeding, and will
thus have tended to disappear. Here, then, we see in man's productions
the action of what may be called the principle of divergence, causing
differences, at first barely appreciable, steadily to increase, and
the breeds to diverge in character, both from each other and from their
common parent.

But how, it may be asked, can any analogous principle apply in nature?
I believe it can and does apply most efficiently (though it was a long
time before I saw how), from the simple circumstance that the more
diversified the descendants from any one species become in structure,
constitution, and habits, by so much will they be better enabled to
seize on many and widely diversified places in the polity of nature, and
so be enabled to increase in numbers.

We can clearly discern this in the case of animals with simple habits.
Take the case of a carnivorous quadruped, of which the number that can
be supported in any country has long ago arrived at its full average.
If its natural power of increase be allowed to act, it can succeed in
increasing (the country not undergoing any change in conditions) only by
its varying descendants seizing on places at present occupied by other
animals: some of them, for instance, being enabled to feed on new kinds
of prey, either dead or alive; some inhabiting new stations, climbing
trees, frequenting water, and some perhaps becoming less carnivorous.
The more diversified in habits and structure the descendants of our
carnivorous animals become, the more places they will be enabled to
occupy. What applies to one animal will apply throughout all time to
all animals--that is, if they vary--for otherwise natural selection can
effect nothing. So it will be with plants. It has been experimentally
proved, that if a plot of ground be sown with one species of grass,
and a similar plot be sown with several distinct genera of grasses,
a greater number of plants and a greater weight of dry herbage can be
raised in the latter than in the former case. The same has been found
to hold good when one variety and several mixed varieties of wheat have
been sown on equal spaces of ground. Hence, if any one species of grass
were to go on varying, and the varieties were continually selected which
differed from each other in the same manner, though in a very slight
degree, as do the distinct species and genera of grasses, a greater
number of individual plants of this species, including its modified
descendants, would succeed in living on the same piece of ground. And
we know that each species and each variety of grass is annually sowing
almost countless seeds; and is thus striving, as it may be said, to
the utmost to increase in number. Consequently, in the course of many
thousand generations, the most distinct varieties of any one species
of grass would have the best chance of succeeding and of increasing
in numbers, and thus of supplanting the less distinct varieties; and
varieties, when rendered very distinct from each other, take the rank of
species.

The truth of the principle that the greatest amount of life can be
supported by great diversification of structure, is seen under many
natural circumstances. In an extremely small area, especially if freely
open to immigration, and where the contest between individual and
individual must be very severe, we always find great diversity in its
inhabitants. For instance, I found that a piece of turf, three feet by
four in size, which had been exposed for many years to exactly the same
conditions, supported twenty species of plants, and these belonged to
eighteen genera and to eight orders, which shows how much these plants
differed from each other. So it is with the plants and insects on small
and uniform islets: also in small ponds of fresh water. Farmers find
that they can raise more food by a rotation of plants belonging to the
most different orders: nature follows what may be called a simultaneous
rotation. Most of the animals and plants which live close round any
small piece of ground, could live on it (supposing its nature not to be
in any way peculiar), and may be said to be striving to the utmost
to live there; but, it is seen, that where they come into the closest
competition, the advantages of diversification of structure, with the
accompanying differences of habit and constitution, determine that the
inhabitants, which thus jostle each other most closely, shall, as a
general rule, belong to what we call different genera and orders.

The same principle is seen in the naturalisation of plants through man's
agency in foreign lands. It might have been expected that the plants
which would succeed in becoming naturalised in any land would generally
have been closely allied to the indigenes; for these are commonly looked
at as specially created and adapted for their own country. It might
also, perhaps, have been expected that naturalised plants would have
belonged to a few groups more especially adapted to certain stations in
their new homes. But the case is very different; and Alph. de Candolle
has well remarked, in his great and admirable work, that floras gain by
naturalisation, proportionally with the number of the native genera and
species, far more in new genera than in new species. To give a single
instance: in the last edition of Dr. Asa Gray's "Manual of the Flora of
the Northern United States," 260 naturalised plants are enumerated, and
these belong to 162 genera. We thus see that these naturalised plants
are of a highly diversified nature. They differ, moreover, to a large
extent, from the indigenes, for out of the 162 naturalised genera,
no less than 100 genera are not there indigenous, and thus a large
proportional addition is made to the genera now living in the United
States.

By considering the nature of the plants or animals which have in any
country struggled successfully with the indigenes, and have there become
naturalised, we may gain some crude idea in what manner some of the
natives would have had to be modified in order to gain an advantage over
their compatriots; and we may at least infer that diversification of
structure, amounting to new generic differences, would be profitable to
them.

The advantage of diversification of structure in the inhabitants of the
same region is, in fact, the same as that of the physiological division
of labour in the organs of the same individual body--a subject so well
elucidated by Milne Edwards. No physiologist doubts that a stomach by
being adapted to digest vegetable matter alone, or flesh alone, draws
most nutriment from these substances. So in the general economy of
any land, the more widely and perfectly the animals and plants are
diversified for different habits of life, so will a greater number of
individuals be capable of there supporting themselves. A set of animals,
with their organisation but little diversified, could hardly compete
with a set more perfectly diversified in structure. It may be doubted,
for instance, whether the Australian marsupials, which are divided into
groups differing but little from each other, and feebly representing, as
Mr. Waterhouse and others have remarked, our carnivorous, ruminant, and
rodent mammals, could successfully compete with these well-developed
orders. In the Australian mammals, we see the process of diversification
in an early and incomplete stage of development.

THE PROBABLE EFFECTS OF THE ACTION OF NATURAL SELECTION THROUGH
DIVERGENCE OF CHARACTER AND EXTINCTION, ON THE DESCENDANTS OF A COMMON
ANCESTOR.

After the foregoing discussion, which has been much compressed, we may
assume that the modified descendants of any one species will succeed so
much the better as they become more diversified in structure, and are
thus enabled to encroach on places occupied by other beings. Now let
us see how this principle of benefit being derived from divergence of
character, combined with the principles of natural selection and of
extinction, tends to act.

The accompanying diagram will aid us in understanding this rather
perplexing subject. Let A to L represent the species of a genus large
in its own country; these species are supposed to resemble each other
in unequal degrees, as is so generally the case in nature, and as is
represented in the diagram by the letters standing at unequal distances.
I have said a large genus, because as we saw in the second chapter, on
an average more species vary in large genera than in small genera; and
the varying species of the large genera present a greater number of
varieties. We have, also, seen that the species, which are the commonest
and most widely-diffused, vary more than do the rare and restricted
species. Let (A) be a common, widely-diffused, and varying species,
belonging to a genus large in its own country. The branching and
diverging dotted lines of unequal lengths proceeding from (A), may
represent its varying offspring. The variations are supposed to be
extremely slight, but of the most diversified nature; they are not
supposed all to appear simultaneously, but often after long intervals of
time; nor are they all supposed to endure for equal periods. Only
those variations which are in some way profitable will be preserved or
naturally selected. And here the importance of the principle of benefit
derived from divergence of character comes in; for this will generally
lead to the most different or divergent variations (represented by
the outer dotted lines) being preserved and accumulated by natural
selection. When a dotted line reaches one of the horizontal lines,
and is there marked by a small numbered letter, a sufficient amount of
variation is supposed to have been accumulated to form it into a fairly
well-marked variety, such as would be thought worthy of record in a
systematic work.

The intervals between the horizontal lines in the diagram, may represent
each a thousand or more generations. After a thousand generations,
species (A) is supposed to have produced two fairly well-marked
varieties, namely a1 and m1. These two varieties will generally still
be exposed to the same conditions which made their parents variable, and
the tendency to variability is in itself hereditary; consequently they
will likewise tend to vary, and commonly in nearly the same manner as
did their parents. Moreover, these two varieties, being only slightly
modified forms, will tend to inherit those advantages which made their
parent (A) more numerous than most of the other inhabitants of the same
country; they will also partake of those more general advantages which
made the genus to which the parent-species belonged, a large genus
in its own country. And all these circumstances are favourable to the
production of new varieties.

If, then, these two varieties be variable, the most divergent of
their variations will generally be preserved during the next thousand
generations. And after this interval, variety a1 is supposed in the
diagram to have produced variety a2, which will, owing to the principle
of divergence, differ more from (A) than did variety a1. Variety m1 is
supposed to have produced two varieties, namely m2 and s2, differing
from each other, and more considerably from their common parent (A). We
may continue the process by similar steps for any length of time; some
of the varieties, after each thousand generations, producing only
a single variety, but in a more and more modified condition, some
producing two or three varieties, and some failing to produce any. Thus
the varieties or modified descendants of the common parent (A), will
generally go on increasing in number and diverging in character. In the
diagram the process is represented up to the ten-thousandth generation,
and under a condensed and simplified form up to the fourteen-thousandth
generation.

But I must here remark that I do not suppose that the process ever goes
on so regularly as is represented in the diagram, though in itself made
somewhat irregular, nor that it goes on continuously; it is far more
probable that each form remains for long periods unaltered, and then
again undergoes modification. Nor do I suppose that the most divergent
varieties are invariably preserved: a medium form may often long endure,
and may or may not produce more than one modified descendant; for
natural selection will always act according to the nature of the places
which are either unoccupied or not perfectly occupied by other beings;
and this will depend on infinitely complex relations. But as a general
rule, the more diversified in structure the descendants from any one
species can be rendered, the more places they will be enabled to seize
on, and the more their modified progeny will increase. In our diagram
the line of succession is broken at regular intervals by small numbered
letters marking the successive forms which have become sufficiently
distinct to be recorded as varieties. But these breaks are imaginary,
and might have been inserted anywhere, after intervals long enough to
allow the accumulation of a considerable amount of divergent variation.

As all the modified descendants from a common and widely-diffused
species, belonging to a large genus, will tend to partake of the
same advantages which made their parent successful in life, they will
generally go on multiplying in number as well as diverging in character:
this is represented in the diagram by the several divergent branches
proceeding from (A). The modified offspring from the later and more
highly improved branches in the lines of descent, will, it is probable,
often take the place of, and so destroy, the earlier and less improved
branches: this is represented in the diagram by some of the lower
branches not reaching to the upper horizontal lines. In some cases no
doubt the process of modification will be confined to a single line of
descent, and the number of modified descendants will not be increased;
although the amount of divergent modification may have been augmented.
This case would be represented in the diagram, if all the lines
proceeding from (A) were removed, excepting that from a1 to a10. In the
same way the English racehorse and English pointer have apparently
both gone on slowly diverging in character from their original stocks,
without either having given off any fresh branches or races.

After ten thousand generations, species (A) is supposed to have produced
three forms, a10, f10, and m10, which, from having diverged in character
during the successive generations, will have come to differ largely, but
perhaps unequally, from each other and from their common parent. If we
suppose the amount of change between each horizontal line in our diagram
to be excessively small, these three forms may still be only well-marked
varieties; but we have only to suppose the steps in the process of
modification to be more numerous or greater in amount, to convert these
three forms into doubtful or at least into well-defined species:
thus the diagram illustrates the steps by which the small differences
distinguishing varieties are increased into the larger differences
distinguishing species. By continuing the same process for a greater
number of generations (as shown in the diagram in a condensed and
simplified manner), we get eight species, marked by the letters between
a14 and m14, all descended from (A). Thus, as I believe, species are
multiplied and genera are formed.

In a large genus it is probable that more than one species would vary.
In the diagram I have assumed that a second species (I) has produced, by
analogous steps, after ten thousand generations, either two well-marked
varieties (w10 and z10) or two species, according to the amount of
change supposed to be represented between the horizontal lines. After
fourteen thousand generations, six new species, marked by the letters
n14 to z14, are supposed to have been produced. In any genus, the
species which are already very different in character from each
other, will generally tend to produce the greatest number of modified
descendants; for these will have the best chance of seizing on new and
widely different places in the polity of nature: hence in the diagram I
have chosen the extreme species (A), and the nearly extreme species (I),
as those which have largely varied, and have given rise to new varieties
and species. The other nine species (marked by capital letters) of our
original genus, may for long but unequal periods continue to transmit
unaltered descendants; and this is shown in the diagram by the dotted
lines unequally prolonged upwards.

But during the process of modification, represented in the diagram,
another of our principles, namely that of extinction, will have played
an important part. As in each fully stocked country natural selection
necessarily acts by the selected form having some advantage in the
struggle for life over other forms, there will be a constant tendency in
the improved descendants of any one species to supplant and exterminate
in each stage of descent their predecessors and their original
progenitor. For it should be remembered that the competition will
generally be most severe between those forms which are most nearly
related to each other in habits, constitution and structure. Hence all
the intermediate forms between the earlier and later states, that is
between the less and more improved states of a the same species, as well
as the original parent-species itself, will generally tend to become
extinct. So it probably will be with many whole collateral lines of
descent, which will be conquered by later and improved lines. If,
however, the modified offspring of a species get into some distinct
country, or become quickly adapted to some quite new station, in which
offspring and progenitor do not come into competition, both may continue
to exist.

If, then, our diagram be assumed to represent a considerable amount of
modification, species (A) and all the earlier varieties will have become
extinct, being replaced by eight new species (a14 to m14); and species
(I) will be replaced by six (n14 to z14) new species.

But we may go further than this. The original species of our genus were
supposed to resemble each other in unequal degrees, as is so generally
the case in nature; species (A) being more nearly related to B, C, and
D than to the other species; and species (I) more to G, H, K, L, than to
the others. These two species (A and I), were also supposed to be very
common and widely diffused species, so that they must originally have
had some advantage over most of the other species of the genus. Their
modified descendants, fourteen in number at the fourteen-thousandth
generation, will probably have inherited some of the same advantages:
they have also been modified and improved in a diversified manner at
each stage of descent, so as to have become adapted to many related
places in the natural economy of their country. It seems, therefore,
extremely probable that they will have taken the places of, and thus
exterminated, not only their parents (A) and (I), but likewise some of
the original species which were most nearly related to their parents.
Hence very few of the original species will have transmitted offspring
to the fourteen-thousandth generation. We may suppose that only one (F)
of the two species (E and F) which were least closely related to the
other nine original species, has transmitted descendants to this late
stage of descent.

The new species in our diagram, descended from the original eleven
species, will now be fifteen in number. Owing to the divergent tendency
of natural selection, the extreme amount of difference in character
between species a14 and z14 will be much greater than that between the
most distinct of the original eleven species. The new species, moreover,
will be allied to each other in a widely different manner. Of the eight
descendants from (A) the three marked a14, q14, p14, will be nearly
related from having recently branched off from a10; b14 and f14, from
having diverged at an earlier period from a5, will be in some degree
distinct from the three first-named species; and lastly, o14, e14, and
m14, will be nearly related one to the other, but, from having diverged
at the first commencement of the process of modification, will be widely
different from the other five species, and may constitute a sub-genus or
a distinct genus.

The six descendants from (I) will form two sub-genera or genera. But as
the original species (I) differed largely from (A), standing nearly
at the extreme end of the original genus, the six descendants from (I)
will, owing to inheritance alone, differ considerably from the eight
descendants from (A); the two groups, moreover, are supposed to have
gone on diverging in different directions. The intermediate species,
also (and this is a very important consideration), which connected the
original species (A) and (I), have all become, except (F), extinct, and
have left no descendants. Hence the six new species descended from
(I), and the eight descendants from (A), will have to be ranked as very
distinct genera, or even as distinct sub-families.

Thus it is, as I believe, that two or more genera are produced by
descent with modification, from two or more species of the same genus.
And the two or more parent-species are supposed to be descended from
some one species of an earlier genus. In our diagram this is indicated
by the broken lines beneath the capital letters, converging in
sub-branches downwards towards a single point; this point represents
a species, the supposed progenitor of our several new sub-genera and
genera.

It is worth while to reflect for a moment on the character of the new
species F14, which is supposed not to have diverged much in character,
but to have retained the form of (F), either unaltered or altered only
in a slight degree. In this case its affinities to the other fourteen
new species will be of a curious and circuitous nature. Being descended
from a form that stood between the parent-species (A) and (I),
now supposed to be extinct and unknown, it will be in some degree
intermediate in character between the two groups descended from these
two species. But as these two groups have gone on diverging in character
from the type of their parents, the new species (F14) will not be
directly intermediate between them, but rather between types of the two
groups; and every naturalist will be able to call such cases before his
mind.

In the diagram each horizontal line has hitherto been supposed to
represent a thousand generations, but each may represent a million or
more generations; it may also represent a section of the successive
strata of the earth's crust including extinct remains. We shall, when we
come to our chapter on geology, have to refer again to this subject,
and I think we shall then see that the diagram throws light on the
affinities of extinct beings, which, though generally belonging to the
same orders, families, or genera, with those now living, yet are often,
in some degree, intermediate in character between existing groups; and
we can understand this fact, for the extinct species lived at various
remote epochs when the branching lines of descent had diverged less.

I see no reason to limit the process of modification, as now explained,
to the formation of genera alone. If, in the diagram, we suppose the
amount of change represented by each successive group of diverging
dotted lines to be great, the forms marked a14 to p14, those marked
b14 and f14, and those marked o14 to m14, will form three very distinct
genera. We shall also have two very distinct genera descended from (I),
differing widely from the descendants of (A). These two groups of genera
will thus form two distinct families, or orders, according to the amount
of divergent modification supposed to be represented in the diagram. And
the two new families, or orders, are descended from two species of the
original genus; and these are supposed to be descended from some still
more ancient and unknown form.

We have seen that in each country it is the species belonging to the
larger genera which oftenest present varieties or incipient species.
This, indeed, might have been expected; for as natural selection acts
through one form having some advantage over other forms in the struggle
for existence, it will chiefly act on those which already have some
advantage; and the largeness of any group shows that its species have
inherited from a common ancestor some advantage in common. Hence, the
struggle for the production of new and modified descendants will mainly
lie between the larger groups, which are all trying to increase in
number. One large group will slowly conquer another large group,
reduce its number, and thus lessen its chance of further variation and
improvement. Within the same large group, the later and more highly
perfected sub-groups, from branching out and seizing on many new places
in the polity of nature, will constantly tend to supplant and destroy
the earlier and less improved sub-groups. Small and broken groups and
sub-groups will finally disappear. Looking to the future, we can predict
that the groups of organic beings which are now large and triumphant,
and which are least broken up, that is, which have as yet suffered least
extinction, will, for a long period, continue to increase. But which
groups will ultimately prevail, no man can predict; for we know that
many groups, formerly most extensively developed, have now become
extinct. Looking still more remotely to the future, we may predict
that, owing to the continued and steady increase of the larger groups,
a multitude of smaller groups will become utterly extinct, and leave no
modified descendants; and consequently that, of the species living at
any one period, extremely few will transmit descendants to a remote
futurity. I shall have to return to this subject in the chapter on
classification, but I may add that as, according to this view, extremely
few of the more ancient species have transmitted descendants to the
present day, and, as all the descendants of the same species form a
class, we can understand how it is that there exist so few classes in
each main division of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Although few of
the most ancient species have left modified descendants, yet, at remote
geological periods, the earth may have been almost as well peopled with
species of many genera, families, orders and classes, as at the present
day.

ON THE DEGREE TO WHICH ORGANISATION TENDS TO ADVANCE.

Natural selection acts exclusively by the preservation and accumulation
of variations, which are beneficial under the organic and inorganic
conditions to which each creature is exposed at all periods of life.
The ultimate result is that each creature tends to become more and more
improved in relation to its conditions. This improvement inevitably
leads to the gradual advancement of the organisation of the greater
number of living beings throughout the world. But here we enter on a
very intricate subject, for naturalists have not defined to each other's
satisfaction what is meant by an advance in organisation. Among the
vertebrata the degree of intellect and an approach in structure to man
clearly come into play. It might be thought that the amount of change
which the various parts and organs pass through in their development
from embryo to maturity would suffice as a standard of comparison; but
there are cases, as with certain parasitic crustaceans, in which several
parts of the structure become less perfect, so that the mature animal
cannot be called higher than its larva. Von Baer's standard seems
the most widely applicable and the best, namely, the amount of
differentiation of the parts of the same organic being, in the adult
state, as I should be inclined to add, and their specialisation
for different functions; or, as Milne Edwards would express it, the
completeness of the division of physiological labour. But we shall see
how obscure this subject is if we look, for instance, to fishes, among
which some naturalists rank those as highest which, like the sharks,
approach nearest to amphibians; while other naturalists rank the common
bony or teleostean fishes as the highest, inasmuch as they are most
strictly fish-like, and differ most from the other vertebrate classes.
We see still more plainly the obscurity of the subject by turning
to plants, among which the standard of intellect is of course quite
excluded; and here some botanists rank those plants as highest which
have every organ, as sepals, petals, stamens and pistils, fully
developed in each flower; whereas other botanists, probably with more
truth, look at the plants which have their several organs much modified
and reduced in number as the highest.

If we take as the standard of high organisation, the amount of
differentiation and specialisation of the several organs in each being
when adult (and this will include the advancement of the brain for
intellectual purposes), natural selection clearly leads towards this
standard: for all physiologists admit that the specialisation of organs,
inasmuch as in this state they perform their functions better, is
an advantage to each being; and hence the accumulation of variations
tending towards specialisation is within the scope of natural selection.
On the other hand, we can see, bearing in mind that all organic
beings are striving to increase at a high ratio and to seize on every
unoccupied or less well occupied place in the economy of nature, that
it is quite possible for natural selection gradually to fit a being to
a situation in which several organs would be superfluous or useless: in
such cases there would be retrogression in the scale of organisation.
Whether organisation on the whole has actually advanced from the
remotest geological periods to the present day will be more conveniently
discussed in our chapter on Geological Succession.

But it may be objected that if all organic beings thus tend to rise in
the scale, how is it that throughout the world a multitude of the lowest
forms still exist; and how is it that in each great class some forms
are far more highly developed than others? Why have not the more highly
developed forms every where supplanted and exterminated the lower?
Lamarck, who believed in an innate and inevitable tendency towards
perfection in all organic beings, seems to have felt this difficulty
so strongly that he was led to suppose that new and simple forms are
continually being produced by spontaneous generation. Science has not as
yet proved the truth of this belief, whatever the future may reveal.
On our theory the continued existence of lowly organisms offers no
difficulty; for natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, does
not necessarily include progressive development--it only takes advantage
of such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under
its complex relations of life. And it may be asked what advantage,
as far as we can see, would it be to an infusorian animalcule--to an
intestinal worm--or even to an earth-worm, to be highly organised. If
it were no advantage, these forms would be left, by natural selection,
unimproved or but little improved, and might remain for indefinite ages
in their present lowly condition. And geology tells us that some of
the lowest forms, as the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an
enormous period in nearly their present state. But to suppose that most
of the many now existing low forms have not in the least advanced since
the first dawn of life would be extremely rash; for every naturalist who
has dissected some of the beings now ranked as very low in the
scale, must have been struck with their really wondrous and beautiful
organisation.

Nearly the same remarks are applicable, if we look to the different
grades of organisation within the same great group; for instance, in the
vertebrata, to the co-existence of mammals and fish--among mammalia, to
the co-existence of man and the ornithorhynchus--among fishes, to the
co-existence of the shark and the lancelet (Amphioxus), which latter
fish in the extreme simplicity of its structure approaches the
invertebrate classes. But mammals and fish hardly come into competition
with each other; the advancement of the whole class of mammals, or of
certain members in this class, to the highest grade would not lead to
their taking the place of fishes. Physiologists believe that the brain
must be bathed by warm blood to be highly active, and this requires
aerial respiration; so that warm-blooded mammals when inhabiting the
water lie under a disadvantage in having to come continually to the
surface to breathe. With fishes, members of the shark family would not
tend to supplant the lancelet; for the lancelet, as I hear from Fritz
Muller, has as sole companion and competitor on the barren sandy shore
of South Brazil, an anomalous annelid. The three lowest orders of
mammals, namely, marsupials, edentata, and rodents, co-exist in South
America in the same region with numerous monkeys, and probably interfere
little with each other. Although organisation, on the whole, may have
advanced and be still advancing throughout the world, yet the scale will
always present many degrees of perfection; for the high advancement of
certain whole classes, or of certain members of each class, does not at
all necessarily lead to the extinction of those groups with which
they do not enter into close competition. In some cases, as we shall
hereafter see, lowly organised forms appear to have been preserved to
the present day, from inhabiting confined or peculiar stations, where
they have been subjected to less severe competition, and where their
scanty numbers have retarded the chance of favourable variations
arising.

Finally, I believe that many lowly organised forms now exist throughout
the world, from various causes. In some cases variations or individual
differences of a favourable nature may never have arisen for natural
selection to act on and accumulate. In no case, probably, has time
sufficed for the utmost possible amount of development. In some few
cases there has been what we must call retrogression or organisation.
But the main cause lies in the fact that under very simple conditions
of life a high organisation would be of no service--possibly would be of
actual disservice, as being of a more delicate nature, and more liable
to be put out of order and injured.

Looking to the first dawn of life, when all organic beings, as we may
believe, presented the simplest structure, how, it has been asked,
could the first step in the advancement or differentiation of parts
have arisen? Mr. Herbert Spencer would probably answer that, as soon as
simple unicellular organisms came by growth or division to be compounded
of several cells, or became attached to any supporting surface, his law
"that homologous units of any order become differentiated in proportion
as their relations to incident forces become different" would come into
action. But as we have no facts to guide us, speculation on the subject
is almost useless. It is, however, an error to suppose that there would
be no struggle for existence, and, consequently, no natural selection,
until many forms had been produced: variations in a single species
inhabiting an isolated station might be beneficial, and thus the whole
mass of individuals might be modified, or two distinct forms might
arise. But, as I remarked towards the close of the introduction, no
one ought to feel surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained on the
origin of species, if we make due allowance for our profound ignorance
on the mutual relations of the inhabitants of the world at the present
time, and still more so during past ages.

CONVERGENCE OF CHARACTER.

Mr. H.C. Watson thinks that I have overrated the importance of
divergence of character (in which, however, he apparently believes), and
that convergence, as it may be called, has likewise played a part. If
two species belonging to two distinct though allied genera, had both
produced a large number of new and divergent forms, it is conceivable
that these might approach each other so closely that they would have
all to be classed under the same genus; and thus the descendants of two
distinct genera would converge into one. But it would in most cases
be extremely rash to attribute to convergence a close and general
similarity of structure in the modified descendants of widely distinct
forms. The shape of a crystal is determined solely by the molecular
forces, and it is not surprising that dissimilar substances should
sometimes assume the same form; but with organic beings we should
bear in mind that the form of each depends on an infinitude of complex
relations, namely on the variations which have arisen, these being due
to causes far too intricate to be followed out--on the nature of the
variations which have been preserved or selected, and this depends on
the surrounding physical conditions, and in a still higher degree on
the surrounding organisms with which each being has come into
competition--and lastly, on inheritance (in itself a fluctuating
element) from innumerable progenitors, all of which have had their forms
determined through equally complex relations. It is incredible that the
descendants of two organisms, which had originally differed in a marked
manner, should ever afterwards converge so closely as to lead to a near
approach to identity throughout their whole organisation. If this had
occurred, we should meet with the same form, independently of genetic
connection, recurring in widely separated geological formations; and the
balance of evidence is opposed to any such an admission.

Mr. Watson has also objected that the continued action of natural
selection, together with divergence of character, would tend to make an
indefinite number of specific forms. As far as mere inorganic conditions
are concerned, it seems probable that a sufficient number of species
would soon become adapted to all considerable diversities of heat,
moisture, etc.; but I fully admit that the mutual relations of organic
beings are more important; and as the number of species in any country
goes on increasing, the organic conditions of life must become more and
more complex. Consequently there seems at first no limit to the amount
of profitable diversification of structure, and therefore no limit to
the number of species which might be produced. We do not know that even
the most prolific area is fully stocked with specific forms: at the Cape
of Good Hope and in Australia, which support such an astonishing number
of species, many European plants have become naturalised. But geology
shows us, that from an early part of the tertiary period the number of
species of shells, and that from the middle part of this same period,
the number of mammals has not greatly or at all increased. What then
checks an indefinite increase in the number of species? The amount of
life (I do not mean the number of specific forms) supported on an
area must have a limit, depending so largely as it does on physical
conditions; therefore, if an area be inhabited by very many species,
each or nearly each species will be represented by few individuals;
and such species will be liable to extermination from accidental
fluctuations in the nature of the seasons or in the number of their
enemies. The process of extermination in such cases would be rapid,
whereas the production of new species must always be slow. Imagine the
extreme case of as many species as individuals in England, and the
first severe winter or very dry summer would exterminate thousands on
thousands of species. Rare species, and each species will become rare
if the number of species in any country becomes indefinitely increased,
will, on the principal often explained, present within a given period
few favourable variations; consequently, the process of giving birth to
new specific forms would thus be retarded. When any species becomes
very rare, close interbreeding will help to exterminate it; authors have
thought that this comes into play in accounting for the deterioration
of the aurochs in Lithuania, of red deer in Scotland and of bears
in Norway, etc. Lastly, and this I am inclined to think is the most
important element, a dominant species, which has already beaten many
competitors in its own home, will tend to spread and supplant many
others. Alph. de Candolle has shown that those species which spread
widely tend generally to spread VERY widely, consequently they will tend
to supplant and exterminate several species in several areas, and thus
check the inordinate increase of specific forms throughout the world.
Dr. Hooker has recently shown that in the southeast corner of Australia,
where, apparently, there are many invaders from different quarters of
the globe, the endemic Australian species have been greatly reduced in
number. How much weight to attribute to these several considerations I
will not pretend to say; but conjointly they must limit in each country
the tendency to an indefinite augmentation of specific forms.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER.

If under changing conditions of life organic beings present individual
differences in almost every part of their structure, and this cannot be
disputed; if there be, owing to their geometrical rate of increase, a
severe struggle for life at some age, season or year, and this certainly
cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the
relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions
of life, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and
habits, to be advantageous to them, it would be a most extraordinary
fact if no variations had ever occurred useful to each being's own
welfare, in the same manner as so many variations have occurred useful
to man. But if variations useful to any organic being ever do occur,
assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of
being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle
of inheritance, these will tend to produce offspring similarly
characterised. This principle of preservation, or the survival of the
fittest, I have called natural selection. It leads to the improvement
of each creature in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of
life; and consequently, in most cases, to what must be regarded as an
advance in organisation. Nevertheless, low and simple forms will long
endure if well fitted for their simple conditions of life.

Natural selection, on the principle of qualities being inherited at
corresponding ages, can modify the egg, seed, or young as easily as the
adult. Among many animals sexual selection will have given its aid to
ordinary selection by assuring to the most vigorous and best adapted
males the greatest number of offspring. Sexual selection will also give
characters useful to the males alone in their struggles or rivalry with
other males; and these characters will be transmitted to one sex or to
both sexes, according to the form of inheritance which prevails.

Whether natural selection has really thus acted in adapting the various
forms of life to their several conditions and stations, must be judged
by the general tenour and balance of evidence given in the following
chapters. But we have already seen how it entails extinction; and how
largely extinction has acted in the world's history, geology plainly
declares. Natural selection, also, leads to divergence of character; for
the more organic beings diverge in structure, habits and constitution,
by so much the more can a large number be supported on the area, of
which we see proof by looking to the inhabitants of any small spot, and
to the productions naturalised in foreign lands. Therefore, during
the modification of the descendants of any one species, and during
the incessant struggle of all species to increase in numbers, the more
diversified the descendants become, the better will be their chance
of success in the battle for life. Thus the small differences
distinguishing varieties of the same species, steadily tend to increase,
till they equal the greater differences between species of the same
genus, or even of distinct genera.

We have seen that it is the common, the widely diffused, and widely
ranging species, belonging to the larger genera within each class, which
vary most; and these tend to transmit to their modified offspring
that superiority which now makes them dominant in their own countries.
Natural selection, as has just been remarked, leads to divergence of
character and to much extinction of the less improved and intermediate
forms of life. On these principles, the nature of the affinities, and
the generally well defined distinctions between the innumerable organic
beings in each class throughout the world, may be explained. It is a
truly wonderful fact--the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from
familiarity--that all animals and all plants throughout all time and
space should be related to each other in groups, subordinate to groups,
in the manner which we everywhere behold--namely, varieties of the same
species most closely related, species of the same genus less closely and
unequally related, forming sections and sub-genera, species of distinct
genera much less closely related, and genera related in different
degrees, forming sub-families, families, orders, sub-classes, and
classes. The several subordinate groups in any class cannot be ranked
in a single file, but seem clustered round points, and these round
other points, and so on in almost endless cycles. If species had been
independently created, no explanation would have been possible of this
kind of classification; but it is explained through inheritance and the
complex action of natural selection, entailing extinction and divergence
of character, as we have seen illustrated in the diagram.

The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been
represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the
truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and
those produced during former years may represent the long succession
of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs
have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the
surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups
of species have at all times overmastered other species in the great
battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into
lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was
young, budding twigs; and this connexion of the former and present
buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all
extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many
twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three,
now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear the other branches;
so with the species which lived during long-past geological periods,
very few have left living and modified descendants. From the first
growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off;
and these fallen branches of various sizes may represent those whole
orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives,
and which are known to us only in a fossil state. As we here and there
see a thin, straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree,
and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its
summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or
Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two
large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal
competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise
by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop
on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has
been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken
branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its
ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.




CHAPTER V. LAWS OF VARIATION.

 Effects of changed conditions--Use and disuse, combined with natural
 selection; organs of flight and of vision--Acclimatisation--Correlated
 variation--Compensation and economy of growth--False
 correlations--Multiple, rudimentary, and lowly organised structures
 variable--Parts developed in an unusual manner are highly variable:
 specific characters more variable than generic: secondary sexual
 characters variable--Species of the same genus vary in an analogous
 manner--Reversions to long-lost characters--Summary.


I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if the variations--so common and
multiform with organic beings under domestication, and in a lesser
degree with those under nature--were due to chance. This, of course is
a wholly incorrect expression, but it serves to acknowledge plainly
our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation. Some authors
believe it to be as much the function of the reproductive system to
produce individual differences, or slight deviations of structure, as
to make the child like its parents. But the fact of variations and
monstrosities occurring much more frequently under domestication than
under nature, and the greater variability of species having wide ranges
than of those with restricted ranges, lead to the conclusion that
variability is generally related to the conditions of life to which each
species has been exposed during several successive generations. In the
first chapter I attempted to show that changed conditions act in two
ways, directly on the whole organisation or on certain parts alone, and
indirectly through the reproductive system. In all cases there are two
factors, the nature of the organism, which is much the most important of
the two, and the nature of the conditions. The direct action of changed
conditions leads to definite or indefinite results. In the latter case
the organisation seems to become plastic, and we have much fluctuating
variability. In the former case the nature of the organism is such that
it yields readily, when subjected to certain conditions, and all, or
nearly all, the individuals become modified in the same way.

It is very difficult to decide how far changed conditions, such as of
climate, food, etc., have acted in a definite manner. There is reason
to believe that in the course of time the effects have been greater than
can be proved by clear evidence. But we may safely conclude that the
innumerable complex co-adaptations of structure, which we see throughout
nature between various organic beings, cannot be attributed simply to
such action. In the following cases the conditions seem to have produced
some slight definite effect: E. Forbes asserts that shells at their
southern limit, and when living in shallow water, are more brightly
coloured than those of the same species from further north or from a
greater depth; but this certainly does not always hold good. Mr. Gould
believes that birds of the same species are more brightly coloured under
a clear atmosphere, than when living near the coast or on islands; and
Wollaston is convinced that residence near the sea affects the colours
of insects. Moquin-Tandon gives a list of plants which, when growing
near the sea-shore, have their leaves in some degree fleshy, though not
elsewhere fleshy. These slightly varying organisms are interesting in
as far as they present characters analogous to those possessed by the
species which are confined to similar conditions.

When a variation is of the slightest use to any being, we cannot tell
how much to attribute to the accumulative action of natural selection,
and how much to the definite action of the conditions of life. Thus, it
is well known to furriers that animals of the same species have thicker
and better fur the further north they live; but who can tell how much of
this difference may be due to the warmest-clad individuals having been
favoured and preserved during many generations, and how much to the
action of the severe climate? For it would appear that climate has some
direct action on the hair of our domestic quadrupeds.

Instances could be given of similar varieties being produced from the
same species under external conditions of life as different as can well
be conceived; and, on the other hand, of dissimilar varieties being
produced under apparently the same external conditions. Again,
innumerable instances are known to every naturalist, of species keeping
true, or not varying at all, although living under the most opposite
climates. Such considerations as these incline me to lay less weight on
the direct action of the surrounding conditions, than on a tendency to
vary, due to causes of which we are quite ignorant.

In one sense the conditions of life may be said, not only to cause
variability, either directly or indirectly, but likewise to include
natural selection, for the conditions determine whether this or that
variety shall survive. But when man is the selecting agent, we clearly
see that the two elements of change are distinct; variability is in
some manner excited, but it is the will of man which accumulates the
variations in certain direction; and it is this latter agency which
answers to the survival of the fittest under nature.

EFFECTS OF THE INCREASED USE AND DISUSE OF PARTS, AS CONTROLLED BY
NATURAL SELECTION.

From the facts alluded to in the first chapter, I think there can be
no doubt that use in our domestic animals has strengthened and enlarged
certain parts, and disuse diminished them; and that such modifications
are inherited. Under free nature we have no standard of comparison by
which to judge of the effects of long-continued use or disuse, for we
know not the parent-forms; but many animals possess structures which
can be best explained by the effects of disuse. As Professor Owen has
remarked, there is no greater anomaly in nature than a bird that cannot
fly; yet there are several in this state. The logger-headed duck of
South America can only flap along the surface of the water, and has its
wings in nearly the same condition as the domestic Aylesbury duck: it is
a remarkable fact that the young birds, according to Mr. Cunningham, can
fly, while the adults have lost this power. As the larger ground-feeding
birds seldom take flight except to escape danger, it is probable that
the nearly wingless condition of several birds, now inhabiting or which
lately inhabited several oceanic islands, tenanted by no beasts of prey,
has been caused by disuse. The ostrich indeed inhabits continents, and
is exposed to danger from which it cannot escape by flight, but it
can defend itself, by kicking its enemies, as efficiently as many
quadrupeds. We may believe that the progenitor of the ostrich genus had
habits like those of the bustard, and that, as the size and weight of
its body were increased during successive generations, its legs were
used more and its wings less, until they became incapable of flight.

Kirby has remarked (and I have observed the same fact) that the anterior
tarsi, or feet, of many male dung-feeding beetles are often broken off;
he examined seventeen specimens in his own collection, and not one had
even a relic left. In the Onites apelles the tarsi are so habitually
lost that the insect has been described as not having them. In some
other genera they are present, but in a rudimentary condition. In the
Ateuchus or sacred beetle of the Egyptians, they are totally deficient.
The evidence that accidental mutilations can be inherited is at present
not decisive; but the remarkable cases observed by Brown-Sequard in
guinea-pigs, of the inherited effects of operations, should make us
cautious in denying this tendency. Hence, it will perhaps be safest to
look at the entire absence of the anterior tarsi in Ateuchus, and their
rudimentary condition in some other genera, not as cases of inherited
mutilations, but as due to the effects of long-continued disuse; for
as many dung-feeding beetles are generally found with their tarsi lost,
this must happen early in life; therefore the tarsi cannot be of much
importance or be much used by these insects.

In some cases we might easily put down to disuse modifications of
structure which are wholly, or mainly due to natural selection. Mr.
Wollaston has discovered the remarkable fact that 200 beetles, out of
the 550 species (but more are now known) inhabiting Madeira, are so far
deficient in wings that they cannot fly; and that, of the twenty-nine
endemic genera, no less than twenty-three have all their species in
this condition! Several facts, namely, that beetles in many parts of the
world are very frequently blown to sea and perish; that the beetles in
Madeira, as observed by Mr. Wollaston, lie much concealed, until the
wind lulls and the sun shines; that the proportion of wingless beetles
is larger on the exposed Desertas than in Madeira itself; and especially
the extraordinary fact, so strongly insisted on by Mr. Wollaston, that
certain large groups of beetles, elsewhere excessively numerous, which
absolutely require the use of their wings, are here almost entirely
absent. These several considerations make me believe that the wingless
condition of so many Madeira beetles is mainly due to the action of
natural selection, combined probably with disuse. For during many
successive generations each individual beetle which flew least, either
from its wings having been ever so little less perfectly developed or
from indolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving from not
being blown out to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles which most
readily took to flight would oftenest have been blown to sea, and thus
destroyed.

The insects in Madeira which are not ground-feeders, and which, as
certain flower-feeding coleoptera and lepidoptera, must habitually use
their wings to gain their subsistence, have, as Mr. Wollaston suspects,
their wings not at all reduced, but even enlarged. This is quite
compatible with the action of natural selection. For when a new insect
first arrived on the island, the tendency of natural selection to
enlarge or to reduce the wings, would depend on whether a greater number
of individuals were saved by successfully battling with the winds, or
by giving up the attempt and rarely or never flying. As with mariners
shipwrecked near a coast, it would have been better for the good
swimmers if they had been able to swim still further, whereas it would
have been better for the bad swimmers if they had not been able to swim
at all and had stuck to the wreck.

The eyes of moles and of some burrowing rodents are rudimentary in size,
and in some cases are quite covered by skin and fur. This state of the
eyes is probably due to gradual reduction from disuse, but aided
perhaps by natural selection. In South America, a burrowing rodent, the
tuco-tuco, or Ctenomys, is even more subterranean in its habits than the
mole; and I was assured by a Spaniard, who had often caught them, that
they were frequently blind. One which I kept alive was certainly in
this condition, the cause, as appeared on dissection, having been
inflammation of the nictitating membrane. As frequent inflammation of
the eyes must be injurious to any animal, and as eyes are certainly not
necessary to animals having subterranean habits, a reduction in their
size, with the adhesion of the eyelids and growth of fur over them,
might in such case be an advantage; and if so, natural selection would
aid the effects of disuse.

It is well known that several animals, belonging to the most different
classes, which inhabit the caves of Carniola and Kentucky, are blind. In
some of the crabs the foot-stalk for the eye remains, though the eye is
gone; the stand for the telescope is there, though the telescope with
its glasses has been lost. As it is difficult to imagine that eyes,
though useless, could be in any way injurious to animals living in
darkness, their loss may be attributed to disuse. In one of the blind
animals, namely, the cave-rat (Neotoma), two of which were captured by
Professor Silliman at above half a mile distance from the mouth of
the cave, and therefore not in the profoundest depths, the eyes were
lustrous and of large size; and these animals, as I am informed by
Professor Silliman, after having been exposed for about a month to a
graduated light, acquired a dim perception of objects.

It is difficult to imagine conditions of life more similar than deep
limestone caverns under a nearly similar climate; so that, in accordance
with the old view of the blind animals having been separately created
for the American and European caverns, very close similarity in their
organisation and affinities might have been expected. This is certainly
not the case if we look at the two whole faunas; with respect to the
insects alone, Schiodte has remarked: "We are accordingly prevented
from considering the entire phenomenon in any other light than something
purely local, and the similarity which is exhibited in a few forms
between the Mammoth Cave (in Kentucky) and the caves in Carniola,
otherwise than as a very plain expression of that analogy which subsists
generally between the fauna of Europe and of North America." On my view
we must suppose that American animals, having in most cases ordinary
powers of vision, slowly migrated by successive generations from the
outer world into the deeper and deeper recesses of the Kentucky caves,
as did European animals into the caves of Europe. We have some evidence
of this gradation of habit; for, as Schiodte remarks: "We accordingly
look upon the subterranean faunas as small ramifications which have
penetrated into the earth from the geographically limited faunas of the
adjacent tracts, and which, as they extended themselves into darkness,
have been accommodated to surrounding circumstances. Animals not
far remote from ordinary forms, prepare the transition from light to
darkness. Next follow those that are constructed for twilight; and, last
of all, those destined for total darkness, and whose formation is quite
peculiar." These remarks of Schiodte's it should be understood, apply
not to the same, but to distinct species. By the time that an animal had
reached, after numberless generations, the deepest recesses, disuse
will on this view have more or less perfectly obliterated its eyes, and
natural selection will often have effected other changes, such as an
increase in the length of the antennae or palpi, as a compensation for
blindness. Notwithstanding such modifications, we might expect still to
see in the cave-animals of America, affinities to the other inhabitants
of that continent, and in those of Europe to the inhabitants of the
European continent. And this is the case with some of the American
cave-animals, as I hear from Professor Dana; and some of the European
cave-insects are very closely allied to those of the surrounding
country. It would be difficult to give any rational explanation of the
affinities of the blind cave-animals to the other inhabitants of the
two continents on the ordinary view of their independent creation. That
several of the inhabitants of the caves of the Old and New Worlds should
be closely related, we might expect from the well-known relationship
of most of their other productions. As a blind species of Bathyscia is
found in abundance on shady rocks far from caves, the loss of vision in
the cave species of this one genus has probably had no relation to its
dark habitation; for it is natural that an insect already deprived of
vision should readily become adapted to dark caverns. Another blind
genus (Anophthalmus) offers this remarkable peculiarity, that the
species, as Mr. Murray observes, have not as yet been found anywhere
except in caves; yet those which inhabit the several caves of Europe and
America are distinct; but it is possible that the progenitors of these
several species, while they were furnished with eyes, may formerly have
ranged over both continents, and then have become extinct, excepting in
their present secluded abodes. Far from feeling surprise that some of
the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as Agassiz has remarked in
regard to the blind fish, the Amblyopsis, and as is the case with the
blind Proteus, with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am only
surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved,
owing to the less severe competition to which the scanty inhabitants of
these dark abodes will have been exposed.

ACCLIMATISATION.

Habit is hereditary with plants, as in the period of flowering, in the
time of sleep, in the amount of rain requisite for seeds to germinate,
etc., and this leads me to say a few words on acclimatisation. As it
is extremely common for distinct species belonging to the same genus to
inhabit hot and cold countries, if it be true that all the species of
the same genus are descended from a single parent-form, acclimatisation
must be readily effected during a long course of descent. It is
notorious that each species is adapted to the climate of its own home:
species from an arctic or even from a temperate region cannot endure a
tropical climate, or conversely. So again, many succulent plants cannot
endure a damp climate. But the degree of adaptation of species to the
climates under which they live is often overrated. We may infer this
from our frequent inability to predict whether or not an imported plant
will endure our climate, and from the number of plants and animals
brought from different countries which are here perfectly healthy. We
have reason to believe that species in a state of nature are closely
limited in their ranges by the competition of other organic beings quite
as much as, or more than, by adaptation to particular climates. But
whether or not this adaptation is in most cases very close, we have
evidence with some few plants, of their becoming, to a certain extent,
naturally habituated to different temperatures; that is, they become
acclimatised: thus the pines and rhododendrons, raised from seed
collected by Dr. Hooker from the same species growing at different
heights on the Himalayas, were found to possess in this country
different constitutional powers of resisting cold. Mr. Thwaites informs
me that he has observed similar facts in Ceylon; analogous observations
have been made by Mr. H.C. Watson on European species of plants brought
from the Azores to England; and I could give other cases. In regard to
animals, several authentic instances could be adduced of species having
largely extended, within historical times, their range from warmer to
colder latitudes, and conversely; but we do not positively know that
these animals were strictly adapted to their native climate, though in
all ordinary cases we assume such to be the case; nor do we know that
they have subsequently become specially acclimatised to their new homes,
so as to be better fitted for them than they were at first.

As we may infer that our domestic animals were originally chosen by
uncivilised man because they were useful, and because they bred readily
under confinement, and not because they were subsequently found capable
of far-extended transportation, the common and extraordinary capacity
in our domestic animals of not only withstanding the most different
climates, but of being perfectly fertile (a far severer test) under
them, may be used as an argument that a large proportion of other
animals now in a state of nature could easily be brought to bear widely
different climates. We must not, however, push the foregoing argument
too far, on account of the probable origin of some of our domestic
animals from several wild stocks: the blood, for instance, of a tropical
and arctic wolf may perhaps be mingled in our domestic breeds. The rat
and mouse cannot be considered as domestic animals, but they have been
transported by man to many parts of the world, and now have a far wider
range than any other rodent; for they live under the cold climate of
Faroe in the north and of the Falklands in the south, and on many an
island in the torrid zones. Hence adaptation to any special climate may
be looked at as a quality readily grafted on an innate wide flexibility
of constitution, common to most animals. On this view, the capacity of
enduring the most different climates by man himself and by his domestic
animals, and the fact of the extinct elephant and rhinoceros having
formerly endured a glacial climate, whereas the living species are now
all tropical or sub-tropical in their habits, ought not to be looked
at as anomalies, but as examples of a very common flexibility of
constitution, brought, under peculiar circumstances, into action.

How much of the acclimatisation of species to any peculiar climate is
due to mere habit, and how much to the natural selection of varieties
having different innate constitutions, and how much to both means
combined, is an obscure question. That habit or custom has some
influence, I must believe, both from analogy and from the incessant
advice given in agricultural works, even in the ancient Encyclopaedias
of China, to be very cautious in transporting animals from one district
to another. And as it is not likely that man should have succeeded in
selecting so many breeds and sub-breeds with constitutions specially
fitted for their own districts, the result must, I think, be due to
habit. On the other hand, natural selection would inevitably tend to
preserve those individuals which were born with constitutions best
adapted to any country which they inhabited. In treatises on many kinds
of cultivated plants, certain varieties are said to withstand certain
climates better than others; this is strikingly shown in works on
fruit-trees published in the United States, in which certain varieties
are habitually recommended for the northern and others for the southern
states; and as most of these varieties are of recent origin, they cannot
owe their constitutional differences to habit. The case of the Jerusalem
artichoke, which is never propagated in England by seed, and of which,
consequently, new varieties have not been produced, has even been
advanced, as proving that acclimatisation cannot be effected, for it
is now as tender as ever it was! The case, also, of the kidney-bean has
been often cited for a similar purpose, and with much greater weight;
but until some one will sow, during a score of generations, his
kidney-beans so early that a very large proportion are destroyed by
frost, and then collect seed from the few survivors, with care
to prevent accidental crosses, and then again get seed from these
seedlings, with the same precautions, the experiment cannot be said to
have been even tried. Nor let it be supposed that differences in the
constitution of seedling kidney-beans never appear, for an account has
been published how much more hardy some seedlings are than others; and
of this fact I have myself observed striking instances.

On the whole, we may conclude that habit, or use and disuse, have,
in some cases, played a considerable part in the modification of the
constitution and structure; but that the effects have often been largely
combined with, and sometimes overmastered by, the natural selection of
innate variations.

CORRELATED VARIATION.

I mean by this expression that the whole organisation is so tied
together, during its growth and development, that when slight variations
in any one part occur and are accumulated through natural selection,
other parts become modified. This is a very important subject, most
imperfectly understood, and no doubt wholly different classes of facts
may be here easily confounded together. We shall presently see that
simple inheritance often gives the false appearance of correlation. One
of the most obvious real cases is, that variations of structure arising
in the young or larvae naturally tend to affect the structure of the
mature animal. The several parts which are homologous, and which, at
an early embryonic period, are identical in structure, and which are
necessarily exposed to similar conditions, seem eminently liable to vary
in a like manner: we see this in the right and left sides of the body
varying in the same manner; in the front and hind legs, and even in the
jaws and limbs, varying together, for the lower jaw is believed by some
anatomists to be homologous with the limbs. These tendencies, I do not
doubt, may be mastered more or less completely by natural selection:
thus a family of stags once existed with an antler only on one side; and
if this had been of any great use to the breed, it might probably have
been rendered permanent by natural selection.

Homologous parts, as has been remarked by some authors, tend to cohere;
this is often seen in monstrous plants: and nothing is more common than
the union of homologous parts in normal structures, as in the union of
the petals into a tube. Hard parts seem to affect the form of adjoining
soft parts; it is believed by some authors that with birds the diversity
in the shape of the pelvis causes the remarkable diversity in the shape
of the kidneys. Others believe that the shape of the pelvis in the human
mother influences by pressure the shape of the head of the child. In
snakes, according to Schlegel, the shape of the body and the manner
of swallowing determine the position and form of several of the most
important viscera.

The nature of the bond is frequently quite obscure. M. Is. Geoffroy St.
Hilaire has forcibly remarked that certain malconformations frequently,
and that others rarely, coexist without our being able to assign any
reason. What can be more singular than the relation in cats between
complete whiteness and blue eyes with deafness, or between the
tortoise-shell colour and the female sex; or in pigeons, between their
feathered feet and skin betwixt the outer toes, or between the presence
of more or less down on the young pigeon when first hatched, with the
future colour of its plumage; or, again, the relation between the hair
and the teeth in the naked Turkish dog, though here no doubt homology
comes into play? With respect to this latter case of correlation, I
think it can hardly be accidental that the two orders of mammals which
are most abnormal in their dermal covering, viz., Cetacea (whales) and
Edentata (armadilloes, scaly ant-eaters, etc.), are likewise on the
whole the most abnormal in their teeth, but there are so many exceptions
to this rule, as Mr. Mivart has remarked, that it has little value.

I know of no case better adapted to show the importance of the laws of
correlation and variation, independently of utility, and therefore of
natural selection, than that of the difference between the outer and
inner flowers in some Compositous and Umbelliferous plants. Everyone is
familiar with the difference between the ray and central florets of, for
instance, the daisy, and this difference is often accompanied with the
partial or complete abortion of the reproductive organs. But in some
of these plants the seeds also differ in shape and sculpture. These
differences have sometimes been attributed to the pressure of the
involucra on the florets, or to their mutual pressure, and the shape of
the seeds in the ray-florets of some Compositae countenances this idea;
but with the Umbelliferae it is by no means, as Dr. Hooker informs me,
the species with the densest heads which most frequently differ in their
inner and outer flowers. It might have been thought that the development
of the ray-petals, by drawing nourishment from the reproductive organs
causes their abortion; but this can hardly be the sole case, for in some
Compositae the seeds of the outer and inner florets differ, without any
difference in the corolla. Possibly these several differences may be
connected with the different flow of nutriment towards the central and
external flowers. We know, at least, that with irregular flowers those
nearest to the axis are most subject to peloria, that is to become
abnormally symmetrical. I may add, as an instance of this fact, and as
a striking case of correlation, that in many pelargoniums the two upper
petals in the central flower of the truss often lose their patches
of darker colour; and when this occurs, the adherent nectary is quite
aborted, the central flower thus becoming peloric or regular. When the
colour is absent from only one of the two upper petals, the nectary is
not quite aborted but is much shortened.

With respect to the development of the corolla, Sprengel's idea that
the ray-florets serve to attract insects, whose agency is highly
advantageous, or necessary for the fertilisation of these plants, is
highly probable; and if so, natural selection may have come into
play. But with respect to the seeds, it seems impossible that their
differences in shape, which are not always correlated with any
difference in the corolla, can be in any way beneficial; yet in the
Umbelliferae these differences are of such apparent importance--the
seeds being sometimes orthospermous in the exterior flowers and
coelospermous in the central flowers--that the elder De Candolle founded
his main divisions in the order on such characters. Hence modifications
of structure, viewed by systematists as of high value, may be wholly due
to the laws of variation and correlation, without being, as far as we
can judge, of the slightest service to the species.

We may often falsely attribute to correlated variation structures which
are common to whole groups of species, and which in truth are simply
due to inheritance; for an ancient progenitor may have acquired through
natural selection some one modification in structure, and, after
thousands of generations, some other and independent modification; and
these two modifications, having been transmitted to a whole group of
descendants with diverse habits, would naturally be thought to be in
some necessary manner correlated. Some other correlations are apparently
due to the manner in which natural selection can alone act. For
instance, Alph. De Candolle has remarked that winged seeds are never
found in fruits which do not open; I should explain this rule by
the impossibility of seeds gradually becoming winged through natural
selection, unless the capsules were open; for in this case alone could
the seeds, which were a little better adapted to be wafted by the wind,
gain an advantage over others less well fitted for wide dispersal.

COMPENSATION AND ECONOMY OF GROWTH.

The elder Geoffroy and Goethe propounded, at about the same time, their
law of compensation or balancement of growth; or, as Goethe expressed
it, "in order to spend on one side, nature is forced to economise on
the other side." I think this holds true to a certain extent with our
domestic productions: if nourishment flows to one part or organ in
excess, it rarely flows, at least in excess, to another part; thus it is
difficult to get a cow to give much milk and to fatten readily. The same
varieties of the cabbage do not yield abundant and nutritious foliage
and a copious supply of oil-bearing seeds. When the seeds in our fruits
become atrophied, the fruit itself gains largely in size and quality.
In our poultry, a large tuft of feathers on the head is generally
accompanied by a diminished comb, and a large beard by diminished
wattles. With species in a state of nature it can hardly be maintained
that the law is of universal application; but many good observers, more
especially botanists, believe in its truth. I will not, however, here
give any instances, for I see hardly any way of distinguishing between
the effects, on the one hand, of a part being largely developed through
natural selection and another and adjoining part being reduced by the
same process or by disuse, and, on the other hand, the actual withdrawal
of nutriment from one part owing to the excess of growth in another and
adjoining part.

I suspect, also, that some of the cases of compensation which have been
advanced, and likewise some other facts, may be merged under a more
general principle, namely, that natural selection is continually
trying to economise in every part of the organisation. If under changed
conditions of life a structure, before useful, becomes less useful, its
diminution will be favoured, for it will profit the individual not to
have its nutriment wasted in building up a useless structure. I can
thus only understand a fact with which I was much struck when examining
cirripedes, and of which many other instances could be given: namely,
that when a cirripede is parasitic within another cirripede and is thus
protected, it loses more or less completely its own shell or carapace.
This is the case with the male Ibla, and in a truly extraordinary manner
with the Proteolepas: for the carapace in all other cirripedes consists
of the three highly important anterior segments of the head enormously
developed, and furnished with great nerves and muscles; but in the
parasitic and protected Proteolepas, the whole anterior part of the
head is reduced to the merest rudiment attached to the bases of the
prehensile antennae. Now the saving of a large and complex structure,
when rendered superfluous, would be a decided advantage to each
successive individual of the species; for in the struggle for life
to which every animal is exposed, each would have a better chance of
supporting itself, by less nutriment being wasted.

Thus, as I believe, natural selection will tend in the long run to
reduce any part of the organisation, as soon as it becomes, through
changed habits, superfluous, without by any means causing some other
part to be largely developed in a corresponding degree. And conversely,
that natural selection may perfectly well succeed in largely developing
an organ without requiring as a necessary compensation the reduction of
some adjoining part.

MULTIPLE, RUDIMENTARY, AND LOWLY-ORGANISED STRUCTURES ARE VARIABLE.

It seems to be a rule, as remarked by Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, both
with varieties and species, that when any part or organ is repeated
many times in the same individual (as the vertebrae in snakes, and the
stamens in polyandrous flowers) the number is variable; whereas the
number of the same part or organ, when it occurs in lesser numbers,
is constant. The same author as well as some botanists, have further
remarked that multiple parts are extremely liable to vary in structure.
As "vegetative repetition," to use Professor Owen's expression, is
a sign of low organisation; the foregoing statements accord with the
common opinion of naturalists, that beings which stand low in the scale
of nature are more variable than those which are higher. I presume that
lowness here means that the several parts of the organisation have been
but little specialised for particular functions; and as long as the same
part has to perform diversified work, we can perhaps see why it
should remain variable, that is, why natural selection should not have
preserved or rejected each little deviation of form so carefully as when
the part has to serve for some one special purpose. In the same way that
a knife which has to cut all sorts of things may be of almost any shape;
whilst a tool for some particular purpose must be of some particular
shape. Natural selection, it should never be forgotten, can act solely
through and for the advantage of each being.

Rudimentary parts, as is generally admitted, are apt to be highly
variable. We shall have to recur to this subject; and I will here only
add that their variability seems to result from their uselessness,
and consequently from natural selection having had no power to check
deviations in their structure.

A PART DEVELOPED IN ANY SPECIES IN AN EXTRAORDINARY DEGREE OR MANNER,
IN COMPARISON WITH THE SAME PART IN ALLIED SPECIES, TENDS TO BE HIGHLY
VARIABLE.

Several years ago I was much struck by a remark to the above effect made
by Mr. Waterhouse. Professor Owen, also, seems to have come to a nearly
similar conclusion. It is hopeless to attempt to convince any one of the
truth of the above proposition without giving the long array of facts
which I have collected, and which cannot possibly be here introduced. I
can only state my conviction that it is a rule of high generality. I
am aware of several causes of error, but I hope that I have made due
allowances for them. It should be understood that the rule by no means
applies to any part, however unusually developed, unless it be unusually
developed in one species or in a few species in comparison with the same
part in many closely allied species. Thus, the wing of the bat is a most
abnormal structure in the class of mammals; but the rule would not apply
here, because the whole group of bats possesses wings; it would apply
only if some one species had wings developed in a remarkable manner in
comparison with the other species of the same genus. The rule applies
very strongly in the case of secondary sexual characters, when displayed
in any unusual manner. The term, secondary sexual characters, used by
Hunter, relates to characters which are attached to one sex, but are
not directly connected with the act of reproduction. The rule applies
to males and females; but more rarely to females, as they seldom offer
remarkable secondary sexual characters. The rule being so plainly
applicable in the case of secondary sexual characters, may be due to the
great variability of these characters, whether or not displayed in any
unusual manner--of which fact I think there can be little doubt. But
that our rule is not confined to secondary sexual characters is clearly
shown in the case of hermaphrodite cirripedes; I particularly attended
to Mr. Waterhouse's remark, whilst investigating this order, and I am
fully convinced that the rule almost always holds good. I shall, in a
future work, give a list of all the more remarkable cases. I will here
give only one, as it illustrates the rule in its largest application.
The opercular valves of sessile cirripedes (rock barnacles) are, in
every sense of the word, very important structures, and they differ
extremely little even in distinct genera; but in the several species
of one genus, Pyrgoma, these valves present a marvellous amount of
diversification; the homologous valves in the different species being
sometimes wholly unlike in shape; and the amount of variation in the
individuals of the same species is so great that it is no exaggeration
to state that the varieties of the same species differ more from each
other in the characters derived from these important organs, than do the
species belonging to other distinct genera.

As with birds the individuals of the same species, inhabiting the same
country, vary extremely little, I have particularly attended to them;
and the rule certainly seems to hold good in this class. I cannot make
out that it applies to plants, and this would have seriously shaken my
belief in its truth, had not the great variability in plants made it
particularly difficult to compare their relative degrees of variability.

When we see any part or organ developed in a remarkable degree or manner
in a species, the fair presumption is that it is of high importance
to that species: nevertheless it is in this case eminently liable to
variation. Why should this be so? On the view that each species has been
independently created, with all its parts as we now see them, I can see
no explanation. But on the view that groups of species are descended
from some other species, and have been modified through natural
selection, I think we can obtain some light. First let me make some
preliminary remarks. If, in our domestic animals, any part or the
whole animal be neglected, and no selection be applied, that part (for
instance, the comb in the Dorking fowl) or the whole breed will cease to
have a uniform character: and the breed may be said to be degenerating.
In rudimentary organs, and in those which have been but little
specialised for any particular purpose, and perhaps in polymorphic
groups, we see a nearly parallel case; for in such cases natural
selection either has not or cannot come into full play, and thus the
organisation is left in a fluctuating condition. But what here more
particularly concerns us is, that those points in our domestic animals,
which at the present time are undergoing rapid change by continued
selection, are also eminently liable to variation. Look at the
individuals of the same breed of the pigeon; and see what a prodigious
amount of difference there is in the beak of tumblers, in the beak and
wattle of carriers, in the carriage and tail of fantails, etc., these
being the points now mainly attended to by English fanciers. Even in the
same sub-breed, as in that of the short-faced tumbler, it is notoriously
difficult to breed nearly perfect birds, many departing widely from the
standard. There may truly be said to be a constant struggle going on
between, on the one hand, the tendency to reversion to a less perfect
state, as well as an innate tendency to new variations, and, on the
other hand, the power of steady selection to keep the breed true. In
the long run selection gains the day, and we do not expect to fail so
completely as to breed a bird as coarse as a common tumbler pigeon from
a good short-faced strain. But as long as selection is rapidly going
on, much variability in the parts undergoing modification may always be
expected.

Now let us turn to nature. When a part has been developed in an
extraordinary manner in any one species, compared with the other species
of the same genus, we may conclude that this part has undergone an
extraordinary amount of modification since the period when the several
species branched off from the common progenitor of the genus. This
period will seldom be remote in any extreme degree, as species rarely
endure for more than one geological period. An extraordinary amount of
modification implies an unusually large and long-continued amount of
variability, which has continually been accumulated by natural
selection for the benefit of the species. But as the variability of
the extraordinarily developed part or organ has been so great and
long-continued within a period not excessively remote, we might, as a
general rule, still expect to find more variability in such parts than
in other parts of the organisation which have remained for a much longer
period nearly constant. And this, I am convinced, is the case. That the
struggle between natural selection on the one hand, and the tendency to
reversion and variability on the other hand, will in the course of
time cease; and that the most abnormally developed organs may be made
constant, I see no reason to doubt. Hence, when an organ, however
abnormal it may be, has been transmitted in approximately the same
condition to many modified descendants, as in the case of the wing of
the bat, it must have existed, according to our theory, for an immense
period in nearly the same state; and thus it has come not to be more
variable than any other structure. It is only in those cases in which
the modification has been comparatively recent and extraordinarily great
that we ought to find the GENERATIVE VARIABILITY, as it may be called,
still present in a high degree. For in this case the variability
will seldom as yet have been fixed by the continued selection of the
individuals varying in the required manner and degree, and by the
continued rejection of those tending to revert to a former and less
modified condition.

SPECIFIC CHARACTERS MORE VARIABLE THAN GENERIC CHARACTERS.

The principle discussed under the last heading may be applied to our
present subject. It is notorious that specific characters are more
variable than generic. To explain by a simple example what is meant: if
in a large genus of plants some species had blue flowers and some had
red, the colour would be only a specific character, and no one would be
surprised at one of the blue species varying into red, or conversely;
but if all the species had blue flowers, the colour would become
a generic character, and its variation would be a more unusual
circumstance. I have chosen this example because the explanation which
most naturalists would advance is not here applicable, namely, that
specific characters are more variable than generic, because they are
taken from parts of less physiological importance than those commonly
used for classing genera. I believe this explanation is partly, yet only
indirectly, true; I shall, however, have to return to this point in
the chapter on Classification. It would be almost superfluous to adduce
evidence in support of the statement, that ordinary specific characters
are more variable than generic; but with respect to important
characters, I have repeatedly noticed in works on natural history, that
when an author remarks with surprise that some important organ or part,
which is generally very constant throughout a large group of species,
DIFFERS considerably in closely-allied species, it is often VARIABLE
in the individuals of the same species. And this fact shows that a
character, which is generally of generic value, when it sinks in value
and becomes only of specific value, often becomes variable, though its
physiological importance may remain the same. Something of the same kind
applies to monstrosities: at least Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire apparently
entertains no doubt, that the more an organ normally differs in the
different species of the same group, the more subject it is to anomalies
in the individuals.

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created,
why should that part of the structure, which differs from the same
part in other independently created species of the same genus, be
more variable than those parts which are closely alike in the several
species? I do not see that any explanation can be given. But on the
view that species are only strongly marked and fixed varieties, we might
expect often to find them still continuing to vary in those parts of
their structure which have varied within a moderately recent period, and
which have thus come to differ. Or to state the case in another manner:
the points in which all the species of a genus resemble each other, and
in which they differ from allied genera, are called generic characters;
and these characters may be attributed to inheritance from a common
progenitor, for it can rarely have happened that natural selection will
have modified several distinct species, fitted to more or less widely
different habits, in exactly the same manner: and as these so-called
generic characters have been inherited from before the period when the
several species first branched off from their common progenitor, and
subsequently have not varied or come to differ in any degree, or only in
a slight degree, it is not probable that they should vary at the present
day. On the other hand, the points in which species differ from other
species of the same genus are called specific characters; and as these
specific characters have varied and come to differ since the period when
the species branched off from a common progenitor, it is probable
that they should still often be in some degree variable--at least more
variable than those parts of the organisation which have for a very long
period remained constant.

SECONDARY SEXUAL CHARACTERS VARIABLE.

I think it will be admitted by naturalists, without my entering on
details, that secondary sexual characters are highly variable. It will
also be admitted that species of the same group differ from each other
more widely in their secondary sexual characters, than in other parts
of their organisation; compare, for instance, the amount of difference
between the males of gallinaceous birds, in which secondary sexual
characters are strongly displayed, with the amount of difference between
the females. The cause of the original variability of these characters
is not manifest; but we can see why they should not have been rendered
as constant and uniform as others, for they are accumulated by sexual
selection, which is less rigid in its action than ordinary selection,
as it does not entail death, but only gives fewer offspring to the
less favoured males. Whatever the cause may be of the variability
of secondary sexual characters, as they are highly variable, sexual
selection will have had a wide scope for action, and may thus have
succeeded in giving to the species of the same group a greater amount of
difference in these than in other respects.

It is a remarkable fact, that the secondary differences between the two
sexes of the same species are generally displayed in the very same parts
of the organisation in which the species of the same genus differ from
each other. Of this fact I will give in illustration the first two
instances which happen to stand on my list; and as the differences in
these cases are of a very unusual nature, the relation can hardly be
accidental. The same number of joints in the tarsi is a character common
to very large groups of beetles, but in the Engidae, as Westwood has
remarked, the number varies greatly and the number likewise differs in
the two sexes of the same species. Again in the fossorial hymenoptera,
the neuration of the wings is a character of the highest importance,
because common to large groups; but in certain genera the neuration
differs in the different species, and likewise in the two sexes of the
same species. Sir J. Lubbock has recently remarked, that several minute
crustaceans offer excellent illustrations of this law. "In Pontella,
for instance, the sexual characters are afforded mainly by the anterior
antennae and by the fifth pair of legs: the specific differences also
are principally given by these organs." This relation has a clear
meaning on my view: I look at all the species of the same genus as
having as certainly descended from the same progenitor, as have the two
sexes of any one species. Consequently, whatever part of the structure
of the common progenitor, or of its early descendants, became variable;
variations of this part would, it is highly probable, be taken advantage
of by natural and sexual selection, in order to fit the several places
in the economy of nature, and likewise to fit the two sexes of the same
species to each other, or to fit the males to struggle with other males
for the possession of the females.

Finally, then, I conclude that the greater variability of specific
characters, or those which distinguish species from species, than of
generic characters, or those which are possessed by all the species;
that the frequent extreme variability of any part which is developed in
a species in an extraordinary manner in comparison with the same part in
its congeners; and the slight degree of variability in a part, however
extraordinarily it may be developed, if it be common to a whole group of
species; that the great variability of secondary sexual characters and
their great difference in closely allied species; that secondary sexual
and ordinary specific differences are generally displayed in the
same parts of the organisation, are all principles closely connected
together. All being mainly due to the species of the same group being
the descendants of a common progenitor, from whom they have inherited
much in common, to parts which have recently and largely varied being
more likely still to go on varying than parts which have long been
inherited and have not varied, to natural selection having more or less
completely, according to the lapse of time, overmastered the tendency
to reversion and to further variability, to sexual selection being
less rigid than ordinary selection, and to variations in the same parts
having been accumulated by natural and sexual selection, and thus having
been adapted for secondary sexual, and for ordinary purposes.

DISTINCT SPECIES PRESENT ANALOGOUS VARIATIONS, SO THAT A VARIETY OF
ONE SPECIES OFTEN ASSUMES A CHARACTER PROPER TO AN ALLIED SPECIES, OR
REVERTS TO SOME OF THE CHARACTERS OF AN EARLY PROGENITOR.

These propositions will be most readily understood by looking to our
domestic races. The most distinct breeds of the pigeon, in countries
widely apart, present sub-varieties with reversed feathers on the
head, and with feathers on the feet, characters not possessed by the
aboriginal rock-pigeon; these then are analogous variations in two or
more distinct races. The frequent presence of fourteen or even
sixteen tail-feathers in the pouter may be considered as a variation
representing the normal structure of another race, the fantail. I
presume that no one will doubt that all such analogous variations are
due to the several races of the pigeon having inherited from a common
parent the same constitution and tendency to variation, when acted on by
similar unknown influences. In the vegetable kingdom we have a case of
analogous variation, in the enlarged stems, or as commonly called roots,
of the Swedish turnip and ruta-baga, plants which several botanists rank
as varieties produced by cultivation from a common parent: if this
be not so, the case will then be one of analogous variation in two
so-called distinct species; and to these a third may be added, namely,
the common turnip. According to the ordinary view of each species having
been independently created, we should have to attribute this similarity
in the enlarged stems of these three plants, not to the vera causa
of community of descent, and a consequent tendency to vary in a like
manner, but to three separate yet closely related acts of creation. Many
similar cases of analogous variation have been observed by Naudin in the
great gourd family, and by various authors in our cereals. Similar
cases occurring with insects under natural conditions have lately been
discussed with much ability by Mr. Walsh, who has grouped them under his
law of equable variability.

With pigeons, however, we have another case, namely, the occasional
appearance in all the breeds, of slaty-blue birds with two black bars
on the wings, white loins, a bar at the end of the tail, with the outer
feathers externally edged near their bases with white. As all these
marks are characteristic of the parent rock-pigeon, I presume that no
one will doubt that this is a case of reversion, and not of a new yet
analogous variation appearing in the several breeds. We may, I think,
confidently come to this conclusion, because, as we have seen, these
coloured marks are eminently liable to appear in the crossed offspring
of two distinct and differently coloured breeds; and in this case there
is nothing in the external conditions of life to cause the reappearance
of the slaty-blue, with the several marks, beyond the influence of the
mere act of crossing on the laws of inheritance.

No doubt it is a very surprising fact that characters should reappear
after having been lost for many, probably for hundreds of generations.
But when a breed has been crossed only once by some other breed, the
offspring occasionally show for many generations a tendency to revert in
character to the foreign breed--some say, for a dozen or even a score of
generations. After twelve generations, the proportion of blood, to use a
common expression, from one ancestor, is only 1 in 2048; and yet, as we
see, it is generally believed that a tendency to reversion is retained
by this remnant of foreign blood. In a breed which has not been
crossed, but in which BOTH parents have lost some character which their
progenitor possessed, the tendency, whether strong or weak, to reproduce
the lost character might, as was formerly remarked, for all that we
can see to the contrary, be transmitted for almost any number of
generations. When a character which has been lost in a breed, reappears
after a great number of generations, the most probable hypothesis is,
not that one individual suddenly takes after an ancestor removed by
some hundred generations, but that in each successive generation the
character in question has been lying latent, and at last, under unknown
favourable conditions, is developed. With the barb-pigeon, for instance,
which very rarely produces a blue bird, it is probable that there is a
latent tendency in each generation to produce blue plumage. The abstract
improbability of such a tendency being transmitted through a vast number
of generations, is not greater than that of quite useless or rudimentary
organs being similarly transmitted. A mere tendency to produce a
rudiment is indeed sometimes thus inherited.

As all the species of the same genus are supposed to be descended from
a common progenitor, it might be expected that they would occasionally
vary in an analogous manner; so that the varieties of two or more
species would resemble each other, or that a variety of one species
would resemble in certain characters another and distinct species,
this other species being, according to our view, only a well-marked and
permanent variety. But characters exclusively due to analogous variation
would probably be of an unimportant nature, for the preservation of
all functionally important characters will have been determined through
natural selection, in accordance with the different habits of the
species. It might further be expected that the species of the same
genus would occasionally exhibit reversions to long-lost characters.
As, however, we do not know the common ancestor of any natural group,
we cannot distinguish between reversionary and analogous characters.
If, for instance, we did not know that the parent rock-pigeon was not
feather-footed or turn-crowned, we could not have told, whether such
characters in our domestic breeds were reversions or only analogous
variations; but we might have inferred that the blue colour was a case
of reversion from the number of the markings, which are correlated with
this tint, and which would not probably have all appeared together from
simple variation. More especially we might have inferred this from the
blue colour and the several marks so often appearing when differently
coloured breeds are crossed. Hence, although under nature it must
generally be left doubtful, what cases are reversions to formerly
existing characters, and what are new but analogous variations, yet
we ought, on our theory, sometimes to find the varying offspring of a
species assuming characters which are already present in other members
of the same group. And this undoubtedly is the case.

The difficulty in distinguishing variable species is largely due to
the varieties mocking, as it were, other species of the same genus.
A considerable catalogue, also, could be given of forms intermediate
between two other forms, which themselves can only doubtfully be ranked
as species; and this shows, unless all these closely allied forms be
considered as independently created species, that they have in varying
assumed some of the characters of the others. But the best evidence of
analogous variations is afforded by parts or organs which are generally
constant in character, but which occasionally vary so as to resemble,
in some degree, the same part or organ in an allied species. I have
collected a long list of such cases; but here, as before, I lie under
the great disadvantage of not being able to give them. I can only repeat
that such cases certainly occur, and seem to me very remarkable.

I will, however, give one curious and complex case, not indeed as
affecting any important character, but from occurring in several species
of the same genus, partly under domestication and partly under nature.
It is a case almost certainly of reversion. The ass sometimes has very
distinct transverse bars on its legs, like those on the legs of a zebra.
It has been asserted that these are plainest in the foal, and from
inquiries which I have made, I believe this to be true. The stripe on
the shoulder is sometimes double, and is very variable in length and
outline. A white ass, but NOT an albino, has been described without
either spinal or shoulder stripe; and these stripes are sometimes very
obscure, or actually quite lost, in dark-coloured asses. The koulan
of Pallas is said to have been seen with a double shoulder-stripe.
Mr. Blyth has seen a specimen of the hemionus with a distinct
shoulder-stripe, though it properly has none; and I have been informed
by Colonel Poole that foals of this species are generally striped on the
legs and faintly on the shoulder. The quagga, though so plainly barred
like a zebra over the body, is without bars on the legs; but Dr. Gray
has figured one specimen with very distinct zebra-like bars on the
hocks.

With respect to the horse, I have collected cases in England of the
spinal stripe in horses of the most distinct breeds, and of ALL colours;
transverse bars on the legs are not rare in duns, mouse-duns, and in one
instance in a chestnut; a faint shoulder-stripe may sometimes be seen
in duns, and I have seen a trace in a bay horse. My son made a careful
examination and sketch for me of a dun Belgian cart-horse with a double
stripe on each shoulder and with leg-stripes. I have myself seen a dun
Devonshire pony, and a small dun Welsh pony has been carefully described
to me, both with THREE parallel stripes on each shoulder.

In the northwest part of India the Kattywar breed of horses is so
generally striped, that, as I hear from Colonel Poole, who examined
this breed for the Indian Government, a horse without stripes is not
considered as purely bred. The spine is always striped; the legs are
generally barred; and the shoulder-stripe, which is sometimes double
and sometimes treble, is common; the side of the face, moreover, is
sometimes striped. The stripes are often plainest in the foal; and
sometimes quite disappear in old horses. Colonel Poole has seen both
gray and bay Kattywar horses striped when first foaled. I have also
reason to suspect, from information given me by Mr. W.W. Edwards, that
with the English race-horse the spinal stripe is much commoner in the
foal than in the full-grown animal. I have myself recently bred a foal
from a bay mare (offspring of a Turkoman horse and a Flemish mare) by
a bay English race-horse. This foal, when a week old, was marked on its
hinder quarters and on its forehead with numerous very narrow, dark,
zebra-like bars, and its legs were feebly striped. All the stripes soon
disappeared completely. Without here entering on further details I may
state that I have collected cases of leg and shoulder stripes in horses
of very different breeds in various countries from Britain to Eastern
China; and from Norway in the north to the Malay Archipelago in the
south. In all parts of the world these stripes occur far oftenest
in duns and mouse-duns; by the term dun a large range of colour is
included, from one between brown and black to a close approach to cream
colour.

I am aware that Colonel Hamilton Smith, who has written on this subject,
believes that the several breeds of the horse are descended from several
aboriginal species, one of which, the dun, was striped; and that the
above-described appearances are all due to ancient crosses with the dun
stock. But this view may be safely rejected, for it is highly improbable
that the heavy Belgian cart-horse, Welsh ponies, Norwegian cobs, the
lanky Kattywar race, etc., inhabiting the most distant parts of the
world, should have all have been crossed with one supposed aboriginal
stock.

Now let us turn to the effects of crossing the several species of the
horse genus. Rollin asserts that the common mule from the ass and horse
is particularly apt to have bars on its legs; according to Mr. Gosse,
in certain parts of the United States, about nine out of ten mules have
striped legs. I once saw a mule with its legs so much striped that any
one might have thought that it was a hybrid zebra; and Mr. W.C. Martin,
in his excellent treatise on the horse, has given a figure of a similar
mule. In four coloured drawings, which I have seen, of hybrids between
the ass and zebra, the legs were much more plainly barred than the rest
of the body; and in one of them there was a double shoulder-stripe. In
Lord Morton's famous hybrid, from a chestnut mare and male quagga, the
hybrid and even the pure offspring subsequently produced from the same
mare by a black Arabian sire, were much more plainly barred across the
legs than is even the pure quagga. Lastly, and this is another most
remarkable case, a hybrid has been figured by Dr. Gray (and he informs
me that he knows of a second case) from the ass and the hemionus; and
this hybrid, though the ass only occasionally has stripes on his
legs and the hemionus has none and has not even a shoulder-stripe,
nevertheless had all four legs barred, and had three short
shoulder-stripes, like those on the dun Devonshire and Welsh ponies, and
even had some zebra-like stripes on the sides of its face. With respect
to this last fact, I was so convinced that not even a stripe of colour
appears from what is commonly called chance, that I was led solely
from the occurrence of the face-stripes on this hybrid from the ass and
hemionus to ask Colonel Poole whether such face-stripes ever occurred
in the eminently striped Kattywar breed of horses, and was, as we have
seen, answered in the affirmative.

What now are we to say to these several facts? We see several distinct
species of the horse genus becoming, by simple variation, striped on the
legs like a zebra, or striped on the shoulders like an ass. In the horse
we see this tendency strong whenever a dun tint appears--a tint which
approaches to that of the general colouring of the other species of the
genus. The appearance of the stripes is not accompanied by any change
of form, or by any other new character. We see this tendency to become
striped most strongly displayed in hybrids from between several of the
most distinct species. Now observe the case of the several breeds
of pigeons: they are descended from a pigeon (including two or three
sub-species or geographical races) of a bluish colour, with certain bars
and other marks; and when any breed assumes by simple variation a bluish
tint, these bars and other marks invariably reappear; but without any
other change of form or character. When the oldest and truest breeds of
various colours are crossed, we see a strong tendency for the blue tint
and bars and marks to reappear in the mongrels. I have stated that the
most probable hypothesis to account for the reappearance of very ancient
characters, is--that there is a TENDENCY in the young of each successive
generation to produce the long-lost character, and that this tendency,
from unknown causes, sometimes prevails. And we have just seen that in
several species of the horse genus the stripes are either plainer or
appear more commonly in the young than in the old. Call the breeds of
pigeons, some of which have bred true for centuries, species; and how
exactly parallel is the case with that of the species of the horse
genus! For myself, I venture confidently to look back thousands on
thousands of generations, and I see an animal striped like a zebra, but
perhaps otherwise very differently constructed, the common parent of
our domestic horse (whether or not it be descended from one or more wild
stocks) of the ass, the hemionus, quagga, and zebra.

He who believes that each equine species was independently created,
will, I presume, assert that each species has been created with a
tendency to vary, both under nature and under domestication, in this
particular manner, so as often to become striped like the other species
of the genus; and that each has been created with a strong tendency,
when crossed with species inhabiting distant quarters of the world, to
produce hybrids resembling in their stripes, not their own parents, but
other species of the genus. To admit this view is, as it seems to me, to
reject a real for an unreal, or at least for an unknown cause. It makes
the works of God a mere mockery and deception; I would almost as soon
believe with the old and ignorant cosmogonists, that fossil shells had
never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells now
living on the sea-shore.

SUMMARY.

Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound. Not in one case out
of a hundred can we pretend to assign any reason why this or that part
has varied. But whenever we have the means of instituting a comparison,
the same laws appear to have acted in producing the lesser differences
between varieties of the same species, and the greater differences
between species of the same genus. Changed conditions generally induce
mere fluctuating variability, but sometimes they cause direct and
definite effects; and these may become strongly marked in the course
of time, though we have not sufficient evidence on this head. Habit in
producing constitutional peculiarities, and use in strengthening, and
disuse in weakening and diminishing organs, appear in many cases to have
been potent in their effects. Homologous parts tend to vary in the same
manner, and homologous parts tend to cohere. Modifications in hard parts
and in external parts sometimes affect softer and internal parts. When
one part is largely developed, perhaps it tends to draw nourishment from
the adjoining parts; and every part of the structure which can be saved
without detriment will be saved. Changes of structure at an early age
may affect parts subsequently developed; and many cases of correlated
variation, the nature of which we are unable to understand, undoubtedly
occur. Multiple parts are variable in number and in structure, perhaps
arising from such parts not having been closely specialised for any
particular function, so that their modifications have not been closely
checked by natural selection. It follows probably from this same cause,
that organic beings low in the scale are more variable than those
standing higher in the scale, and which have their whole organisation
more specialised. Rudimentary organs, from being useless, are not
regulated by natural selection, and hence are variable. Specific
characters--that is, the characters which have come to differ since the
several species of the same genus branched off from a common parent--are
more variable than generic characters, or those which have long been
inherited, and have not differed within this same period. In these
remarks we have referred to special parts or organs being still
variable, because they have recently varied and thus come to differ; but
we have also seen in the second chapter that the same principle applies
to the whole individual; for in a district where many species of a
genus are found--that is, where there has been much former variation and
differentiation, or where the manufactory of new specific forms has been
actively at work--in that district and among these species, we now find,
on an average, most varieties. Secondary sexual characters are highly
variable, and such characters differ much in the species of the same
group. Variability in the same parts of the organisation has generally
been taken advantage of in giving secondary sexual differences to the
two sexes of the same species, and specific differences to the
several species of the same genus. Any part or organ developed to an
extraordinary size or in an extraordinary manner, in comparison with
the same part or organ in the allied species, must have gone through an
extraordinary amount of modification since the genus arose; and thus we
can understand why it should often still be variable in a much higher
degree than other parts; for variation is a long-continued and slow
process, and natural selection will in such cases not as yet have had
time to overcome the tendency to further variability and to
reversion to a less modified state. But when a species with an
extraordinarily developed organ has become the parent of many modified
descendants--which on our view must be a very slow process, requiring a
long lapse of time--in this case, natural selection has succeeded in
giving a fixed character to the organ, in however extraordinary a manner
it may have been developed. Species inheriting nearly the same
constitution from a common parent, and exposed to similar influences,
naturally tend to present analogous variations, or these same species
may occasionally revert to some of the characters of their ancient
progenitors. Although new and important modifications may not arise from
reversion and analogous variation, such modifications will add to the
beautiful and harmonious diversity of nature.

Whatever the cause may be of each slight difference between the
offspring and their parents--and a cause for each must exist--we have
reason to believe that it is the steady accumulation of beneficial
differences which has given rise to all the more important modifications
of structure in relation to the habits of each species.




CHAPTER VI. DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY.

 Difficulties of the theory of descent with modification--Absence
 or rarity of transitional varieties--Transitions in habits of
 life--Diversified habits in the same species--Species with habits
 widely different from those of their allies--Organs of extreme
 perfection--Modes of transition--Cases of difficulty--Natura non facit
 saltum--Organs of small importance--Organs not in all cases absolutely
 perfect--The law of Unity of Type and of the Conditions of Existence
 embraced by the theory of Natural Selection.


Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of
difficulties will have occurred to him. Some of them are so serious that
to this day I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree
staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only
apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to the theory.

These difficulties and objections may be classed under the following
heads: First, why, if species have descended from other species by fine
gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why
is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see
them, well defined?

Secondly, is it possible that an animal having, for instance,
the structure and habits of a bat, could have been formed by the
modification of some other animal with widely different habits and
structure? Can we believe that natural selection could produce, on
the one hand, an organ of trifling importance, such as the tail of a
giraffe, which serves as a fly-flapper, and, on the other hand, an organ
so wonderful as the eye?

Thirdly, can instincts be acquired and modified through natural
selection? What shall we say to the instinct which leads the bee to make
cells, and which has practically anticipated the discoveries of profound
mathematicians?

Fourthly, how can we account for species, when crossed, being sterile
and producing sterile offspring, whereas, when varieties are crossed,
their fertility is unimpaired?

The two first heads will be here discussed; some miscellaneous
objections in the following chapter; Instinct and Hybridism in the two
succeeding chapters.

ON THE ABSENCE OR RARITY OF TRANSITIONAL VARIETIES.

As natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable
modifications, each new form will tend in a fully-stocked country to
take the place of, and finally to exterminate, its own less improved
parent-form and other less-favoured forms with which it comes into
competition. Thus extinction and natural selection go hand in hand.
Hence, if we look at each species as descended from some unknown form,
both the parent and all the transitional varieties will generally have
been exterminated by the very process of the formation and perfection of
the new form.

But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed,
why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of
the earth? It will be more convenient to discuss this question in the
chapter on the imperfection of the geological record; and I will here
only state that I believe the answer mainly lies in the record being
incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed. The crust of
the earth is a vast museum; but the natural collections have been
imperfectly made, and only at long intervals of time.

But it may be urged that when several closely allied species inhabit
the same territory, we surely ought to find at the present time many
transitional forms. Let us take a simple case: in travelling from north
to south over a continent, we generally meet at successive intervals
with closely allied or representative species, evidently filling nearly
the same place in the natural economy of the land. These representative
species often meet and interlock; and as the one becomes rarer and
rarer, the other becomes more and more frequent, till the one replaces
the other. But if we compare these species where they intermingle, they
are generally as absolutely distinct from each other in every detail of
structure as are specimens taken from the metropolis inhabited by each.
By my theory these allied species are descended from a common parent;
and during the process of modification, each has become adapted to
the conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and
exterminated its original parent-form and all the transitional varieties
between its past and present states. Hence we ought not to expect at
the present time to meet with numerous transitional varieties in each
region, though they must have existed there, and may be embedded
there in a fossil condition. But in the intermediate region, having
intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking
intermediate varieties? This difficulty for a long time quite confounded
me. But I think it can be in large part explained.

In the first place we should be extremely cautious in inferring, because
an area is now continuous, that it has been continuous during a long
period. Geology would lead us to believe that most continents have been
broken up into islands even during the later tertiary periods; and in
such islands distinct species might have been separately formed without
the possibility of intermediate varieties existing in the intermediate
zones. By changes in the form of the land and of climate, marine areas
now continuous must often have existed within recent times in a far less
continuous and uniform condition than at present. But I will pass
over this way of escaping from the difficulty; for I believe that many
perfectly defined species have been formed on strictly continuous areas;
though I do not doubt that the formerly broken condition of areas
now continuous, has played an important part in the formation of new
species, more especially with freely-crossing and wandering animals.

In looking at species as they are now distributed over a wide area,
we generally find them tolerably numerous over a large territory, then
becoming somewhat abruptly rarer and rarer on the confines, and finally
disappearing. Hence the neutral territory between two representative
species is generally narrow in comparison with the territory proper to
each. We see the same fact in ascending mountains, and sometimes it
is quite remarkable how abruptly, as Alph. De Candolle has observed, a
common alpine species disappears. The same fact has been noticed by E.
Forbes in sounding the depths of the sea with the dredge. To those who
look at climate and the physical conditions of life as the all-important
elements of distribution, these facts ought to cause surprise, as
climate and height or depth graduate away insensibly. But when we
bear in mind that almost every species, even in its metropolis, would
increase immensely in numbers, were it not for other competing species;
that nearly all either prey on or serve as prey for others; in short,
that each organic being is either directly or indirectly related in the
most important manner to other organic beings--we see that the range
of the inhabitants of any country by no means exclusively depends
on insensibly changing physical conditions, but in large part on
the presence of other species, on which it lives, or by which it is
destroyed, or with which it comes into competition; and as these species
are already defined objects, not blending one into another by insensible
gradations, the range of any one species, depending as it does on the
range of others, will tend to be sharply defined. Moreover, each species
on the confines of its range, where it exists in lessened numbers, will,
during fluctuations in the number of its enemies or of its prey, or in
the nature of the seasons, be extremely liable to utter extermination;
and thus its geographical range will come to be still more sharply
defined.

As allied or representative species, when inhabiting a continuous area,
are generally distributed in such a manner that each has a wide range,
with a comparatively narrow neutral territory between them, in which
they become rather suddenly rarer and rarer; then, as varieties do not
essentially differ from species, the same rule will probably apply to
both; and if we take a varying species inhabiting a very large area,
we shall have to adapt two varieties to two large areas, and a third
variety to a narrow intermediate zone. The intermediate variety,
consequently, will exist in lesser numbers from inhabiting a narrow and
lesser area; and practically, as far as I can make out, this rule holds
good with varieties in a state of nature. I have met with striking
instances of the rule in the case of varieties intermediate between
well-marked varieties in the genus Balanus. And it would appear from
information given me by Mr. Watson, Dr. Asa Gray, and Mr. Wollaston,
that generally, when varieties intermediate between two other forms
occur, they are much rarer numerically than the forms which they
connect. Now, if we may trust these facts and inferences, and conclude
that varieties linking two other varieties together generally have
existed in lesser numbers than the forms which they connect, then we can
understand why intermediate varieties should not endure for very
long periods: why, as a general rule, they should be exterminated and
disappear, sooner than the forms which they originally linked together.

For any form existing in lesser numbers would, as already remarked,
run a greater chance of being exterminated than one existing in large
numbers; and in this particular case the intermediate form would be
eminently liable to the inroads of closely allied forms existing on both
sides of it. But it is a far more important consideration, that during
the process of further modification, by which two varieties are supposed
to be converted and perfected into two distinct species, the two which
exist in larger numbers, from inhabiting larger areas, will have a great
advantage over the intermediate variety, which exists in smaller numbers
in a narrow and intermediate zone. For forms existing in larger numbers
will have a better chance, within any given period, of presenting
further favourable variations for natural selection to seize on, than
will the rarer forms which exist in lesser numbers. Hence, the more
common forms, in the race for life, will tend to beat and supplant the
less common forms, for these will be more slowly modified and improved.
It is the same principle which, as I believe, accounts for the common
species in each country, as shown in the second chapter, presenting on
an average a greater number of well-marked varieties than do the rarer
species. I may illustrate what I mean by supposing three varieties of
sheep to be kept, one adapted to an extensive mountainous region; a
second to a comparatively narrow, hilly tract; and a third to the wide
plains at the base; and that the inhabitants are all trying with equal
steadiness and skill to improve their stocks by selection; the chances
in this case will be strongly in favour of the great holders on the
mountains or on the plains improving their breeds more quickly than the
small holders on the intermediate narrow, hilly tract; and consequently
the improved mountain or plain breed will soon take the place of the
less improved hill breed; and thus the two breeds, which originally
existed in greater numbers, will come into close contact with each
other, without the interposition of the supplanted, intermediate hill
variety.

To sum up, I believe that species come to be tolerably well-defined
objects, and do not at any one period present an inextricable chaos of
varying and intermediate links: first, because new varieties are very
slowly formed, for variation is a slow process, and natural selection
can do nothing until favourable individual differences or variations
occur, and until a place in the natural polity of the country can
be better filled by some modification of some one or more of its
inhabitants. And such new places will depend on slow changes of climate,
or on the occasional immigration of new inhabitants, and, probably, in
a still more important degree, on some of the old inhabitants becoming
slowly modified, with the new forms thus produced and the old ones
acting and reacting on each other. So that, in any one region and at
any one time, we ought to see only a few species presenting slight
modifications of structure in some degree permanent; and this assuredly
we do see.

Secondly, areas now continuous must often have existed within the recent
period as isolated portions, in which many forms, more especially
among the classes which unite for each birth and wander much, may have
separately been rendered sufficiently distinct to rank as representative
species. In this case, intermediate varieties between the several
representative species and their common parent, must formerly have
existed within each isolated portion of the land, but these links
during the process of natural selection will have been supplanted and
exterminated, so that they will no longer be found in a living state.

Thirdly, when two or more varieties have been formed in different
portions of a strictly continuous area, intermediate varieties will, it
is probable, at first have been formed in the intermediate zones, but
they will generally have had a short duration. For these intermediate
varieties will, from reasons already assigned (namely from what we know
of the actual distribution of closely allied or representative species,
and likewise of acknowledged varieties), exist in the intermediate zones
in lesser numbers than the varieties which they tend to connect. From
this cause alone the intermediate varieties will be liable to accidental
extermination; and during the process of further modification through
natural selection, they will almost certainly be beaten and supplanted
by the forms which they connect; for these, from existing in greater
numbers will, in the aggregate, present more varieties, and thus be
further improved through natural selection and gain further advantages.

Lastly, looking not to any one time, but at all time, if my theory be
true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all
the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed; but the
very process of natural selection constantly tends, as has been so often
remarked, to exterminate the parent forms and the intermediate links.
Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only
among fossil remains, which are preserved, as we shall attempt to show
in a future chapter, in an extremely imperfect and intermittent record.

ON THE ORIGIN AND TRANSITION OF ORGANIC BEINGS WITH PECULIAR HABITS AND
STRUCTURE.

It has been asked by the opponents of such views as I hold, how, for
instance, could a land carnivorous animal have been converted into one
with aquatic habits; for how could the animal in its transitional
state have subsisted? It would be easy to show that there now exist
carnivorous animals presenting close intermediate grades from strictly
terrestrial to aquatic habits; and as each exists by a struggle for
life, it is clear that each must be well adapted to its place in nature.
Look at the Mustela vison of North America, which has webbed feet,
and which resembles an otter in its fur, short legs, and form of tail;
during summer this animal dives for and preys on fish, but during the
long winter it leaves the frozen waters, and preys, like other polecats
on mice and land animals. If a different case had been taken, and it
had been asked how an insectivorous quadruped could possibly have been
converted into a flying bat, the question would have been far more
difficult to answer. Yet I think such difficulties have little weight.

Here, as on other occasions, I lie under a heavy disadvantage, for, out
of the many striking cases which I have collected, I can give only
one or two instances of transitional habits and structures in allied
species; and of diversified habits, either constant or occasional, in
the same species. And it seems to me that nothing less than a long list
of such cases is sufficient to lessen the difficulty in any particular
case like that of the bat.

Look at the family of squirrels; here we have the finest gradation from
animals with their tails only slightly flattened, and from others, as
Sir J. Richardson has remarked, with the posterior part of their bodies
rather wide and with the skin on their flanks rather full, to the
so-called flying squirrels; and flying squirrels have their limbs and
even the base of the tail united by a broad expanse of skin, which
serves as a parachute and allows them to glide through the air to
an astonishing distance from tree to tree. We cannot doubt that each
structure is of use to each kind of squirrel in its own country, by
enabling it to escape birds or beasts of prey, or to collect food more
quickly, or, as there is reason to believe, to lessen the danger
from occasional falls. But it does not follow from this fact that the
structure of each squirrel is the best that it is possible to conceive
under all possible conditions. Let the climate and vegetation change,
let other competing rodents or new beasts of prey immigrate, or old ones
become modified, and all analogy would lead us to believe that some,
at least, of the squirrels would decrease in numbers or become
exterminated, unless they also become modified and improved in structure
in a corresponding manner. Therefore, I can see no difficulty,
more especially under changing conditions of life, in the continued
preservation of individuals with fuller and fuller flank-membranes,
each modification being useful, each being propagated, until, by the
accumulated effects of this process of natural selection, a perfect
so-called flying squirrel was produced.

Now look at the Galeopithecus or so-called flying lemur, which was
formerly ranked among bats, but is now believed to belong to the
Insectivora. An extremely wide flank-membrane stretches from the corners
of the jaw to the tail, and includes the limbs with the elongated
fingers. This flank-membrane is furnished with an extensor muscle.
Although no graduated links of structure, fitted for gliding through the
air, now connect the Galeopithecus with the other Insectivora, yet there
is no difficulty in supposing that such links formerly existed, and that
each was developed in the same manner as with the less perfectly gliding
squirrels; each grade of structure having been useful to its possessor.
Nor can I see any insuperable difficulty in further believing it
possible that the membrane-connected fingers and fore-arm of the
Galeopithecus might have been greatly lengthened by natural selection;
and this, as far as the organs of flight are concerned, would
have converted the animal into a bat. In certain bats in which the
wing-membrane extends from the top of the shoulder to the tail and
includes the hind-legs, we perhaps see traces of an apparatus originally
fitted for gliding through the air rather than for flight.

If about a dozen genera of birds were to become extinct, who would have
ventured to surmise that birds might have existed which used their wings
solely as flappers, like the logger headed duck (Micropterus of Eyton);
as fins in the water and as front legs on the land, like the penguin;
as sails, like the ostrich; and functionally for no purpose, like the
apteryx? Yet the structure of each of these birds is good for it, under
the conditions of life to which it is exposed, for each has to live by a
struggle: but it is not necessarily the best possible under all possible
conditions. It must not be inferred from these remarks that any of the
grades of wing-structure here alluded to, which perhaps may all be the
result of disuse, indicate the steps by which birds actually acquired
their perfect power of flight; but they serve to show what diversified
means of transition are at least possible.

Seeing that a few members of such water-breathing classes as the
Crustacea and Mollusca are adapted to live on the land; and seeing that
we have flying birds and mammals, flying insects of the most diversified
types, and formerly had flying reptiles, it is conceivable that
flying-fish, which now glide far through the air, slightly rising and
turning by the aid of their fluttering fins, might have been modified
into perfectly winged animals. If this had been effected, who would
have ever imagined that in an early transitional state they had been
inhabitants of the open ocean, and had used their incipient organs of
flight exclusively, so far as we know, to escape being devoured by other
fish?

When we see any structure highly perfected for any particular habit,
as the wings of a bird for flight, we should bear in mind that animals
displaying early transitional grades of the structure will seldom have
survived to the present day, for they will have been supplanted by their
successors, which were gradually rendered more perfect through natural
selection. Furthermore, we may conclude that transitional states between
structures fitted for very different habits of life will rarely have
been developed at an early period in great numbers and under many
subordinate forms. Thus, to return to our imaginary illustration of
the flying-fish, it does not seem probable that fishes capable of true
flight would have been developed under many subordinate forms, for
taking prey of many kinds in many ways, on the land and in the water,
until their organs of flight had come to a high stage of perfection,
so as to have given them a decided advantage over other animals in
the battle for life. Hence the chance of discovering species with
transitional grades of structure in a fossil condition will always be
less, from their having existed in lesser numbers, than in the case of
species with fully developed structures.

I will now give two or three instances, both of diversified and of
changed habits, in the individuals of the same species. In either case
it would be easy for natural selection to adapt the structure of the
animal to its changed habits, or exclusively to one of its several
habits. It is, however, difficult to decide and immaterial for us,
whether habits generally change first and structure afterwards; or
whether slight modifications of structure lead to changed habits; both
probably often occurring almost simultaneously. Of cases of changed
habits it will suffice merely to allude to that of the many British
insects which now feed on exotic plants, or exclusively on artificial
substances. Of diversified habits innumerable instances could be given:
I have often watched a tyrant flycatcher (Saurophagus sulphuratus) in
South America, hovering over one spot and then proceeding to another,
like a kestrel, and at other times standing stationary on the margin of
water, and then dashing into it like a kingfisher at a fish. In our own
country the larger titmouse (Parus major) may be seen climbing branches,
almost like a creeper; it sometimes, like a shrike, kills small birds by
blows on the head; and I have many times seen and heard it hammering the
seeds of the yew on a branch, and thus breaking them like a nuthatch. In
North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with
widely open mouth, thus catching, almost like a whale, insects in the
water.

As we sometimes see individuals following habits different from those
proper to their species and to the other species of the same genus, we
might expect that such individuals would occasionally give rise to
new species, having anomalous habits, and with their structure either
slightly or considerably modified from that of their type. And such
instances occur in nature. Can a more striking instance of adaptation be
given than that of a woodpecker for climbing trees and seizing insects
in the chinks of the bark? Yet in North America there are woodpeckers
which feed largely on fruit, and others with elongated wings which chase
insects on the wing. On the plains of La Plata, where hardly a tree
grows, there is a woodpecker (Colaptes campestris) which has two toes
before and two behind, a long-pointed tongue, pointed tail-feathers,
sufficiently stiff to support the bird in a vertical position on a post,
but not so stiff as in the typical wood-peckers, and a straight, strong
beak. The beak, however, is not so straight or so strong as in the
typical woodpeckers but it is strong enough to bore into wood. Hence
this Colaptes, in all the essential parts of its structure, is a
woodpecker. Even in such trifling characters as the colouring, the harsh
tone of the voice, and undulatory flight, its close blood-relationship
to our common woodpecker is plainly declared; yet, as I can assert, not
only from my own observations, but from those of the accurate Azara, in
certain large districts it does not climb trees, and it makes its
nest in holes in banks! In certain other districts, however, this same
woodpecker, as Mr. Hudson states, frequents trees, and bores holes in
the trunk for its nest. I may mention as another illustration of the
varied habits of this genus, that a Mexican Colaptes has been described
by De Saussure as boring holes into hard wood in order to lay up a store
of acorns.

Petrels are the most aerial and oceanic of birds, but, in the quiet
sounds of Tierra del Fuego, the Puffinuria berardi, in its general
habits, in its astonishing power of diving, in its manner of swimming
and of flying when made to take flight, would be mistaken by any one for
an auk or a grebe; nevertheless, it is essentially a petrel, but with
many parts of its organisation profoundly modified in relation to its
new habits of life; whereas the woodpecker of La Plata has had its
structure only slightly modified. In the case of the water-ouzel, the
acutest observer, by examining its dead body, would never have suspected
its sub-aquatic habits; yet this bird, which is allied to the thrush
family, subsists by diving,--using its wings under water and
grasping stones with its feet. All the members of the great order of
Hymenopterous insects are terrestrial, excepting the genus Proctotrupes,
which Sir John Lubbock has discovered to be aquatic in its habits; it
often enters the water and dives about by the use not of its legs but of
its wings, and remains as long as four hours beneath the surface; yet
it exhibits no modification in structure in accordance with its abnormal
habits.

He who believes that each being has been created as we now see it, must
occasionally have felt surprise when he has met with an animal having
habits and structure not in agreement. What can be plainer than that the
webbed feet of ducks and geese are formed for swimming? Yet there are
upland geese with webbed feet which rarely go near the water; and no one
except Audubon, has seen the frigate-bird, which has all its four toes
webbed, alight on the surface of the ocean. On the other hand, grebes
and coots are eminently aquatic, although their toes are only bordered
by membrane. What seems plainer than that the long toes, not furnished
with membrane, of the Grallatores, are formed for walking over swamps
and floating plants. The water-hen and landrail are members of this
order, yet the first is nearly as aquatic as the coot, and the second is
nearly as terrestrial as the quail or partridge. In such cases, and
many others could be given, habits have changed without a corresponding
change of structure. The webbed feet of the upland goose may be said to
have become almost rudimentary in function, though not in structure.
In the frigate-bird, the deeply scooped membrane between the toes shows
that structure has begun to change.

He who believes in separate and innumerable acts of creation may say,
that in these cases it has pleased the Creator to cause a being of one
type to take the place of one belonging to another type; but this seems
to me only restating the fact in dignified language. He who believes in
the struggle for existence and in the principle of natural selection,
will acknowledge that every organic being is constantly endeavouring to
increase in numbers; and that if any one being varies ever so little,
either in habits or structure, and thus gains an advantage over some
other inhabitant of the same country, it will seize on the place of that
inhabitant, however different that may be from its own place. Hence it
will cause him no surprise that there should be geese and frigate-birds
with webbed feet, living on the dry land and rarely alighting on the
water, that there should be long-toed corncrakes, living in meadows
instead of in swamps; that there should be woodpeckers where hardly a
tree grows; that there should be diving thrushes and diving Hymenoptera,
and petrels with the habits of auks.

ORGANS OF EXTREME PERFECTION AND COMPLICATION.

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for
adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different
amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic
aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely
confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the
sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind
declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei,
as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells
me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one
complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to
its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies
and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case;
and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing
conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and
complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by
our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.
How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than
how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest
organisms in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving
light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements
in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves,
endowed with this special sensibility.

In searching for the gradations through which an organ in any species
has been perfected, we ought to look exclusively to its lineal
progenitors; but this is scarcely ever possible, and we are forced
to look to other species and genera of the same group, that is to the
collateral descendants from the same parent-form, in order to see what
gradations are possible, and for the chance of some gradations having
been transmitted in an unaltered or little altered condition. But the
state of the same organ in distinct classes may incidentally throw light
on the steps by which it has been perfected.

The simplest organ which can be called an eye consists of an optic
nerve, surrounded by pigment-cells and covered by translucent skin, but
without any lens or other refractive body. We may, however, according
to M. Jourdain, descend even a step lower and find aggregates of
pigment-cells, apparently serving as organs of vision, without any
nerves, and resting merely on sarcodic tissue. Eyes of the above simple
nature are not capable of distinct vision, and serve only to distinguish
light from darkness. In certain star-fishes, small depressions in the
layer of pigment which surrounds the nerve are filled, as described by
the author just quoted, with transparent gelatinous matter, projecting
with a convex surface, like the cornea in the higher animals. He
suggests that this serves not to form an image, but only to concentrate
the luminous rays and render their perception more easy. In this
concentration of the rays we gain the first and by far the most
important step towards the formation of a true, picture-forming eye; for
we have only to place the naked extremity of the optic nerve, which in
some of the lower animals lies deeply buried in the body, and in
some near the surface, at the right distance from the concentrating
apparatus, and an image will be formed on it.

In the great class of the Articulata, we may start from an optic nerve
simply coated with pigment, the latter sometimes forming a sort of
pupil, but destitute of lens or other optical contrivance. With insects
it is now known that the numerous facets on the cornea of their great
compound eyes form true lenses, and that the cones include curiously
modified nervous filaments. But these organs in the Articulata are so
much diversified that Muller formerly made three main classes with seven
subdivisions, besides a fourth main class of aggregated simple eyes.

When we reflect on these facts, here given much too briefly, with
respect to the wide, diversified, and graduated range of structure in
the eyes of the lower animals; and when we bear in mind how small the
number of all living forms must be in comparison with those which have
become extinct, the difficulty ceases to be very great in believing that
natural selection may have converted the simple apparatus of an optic
nerve, coated with pigment and invested by transparent membrane, into
an optical instrument as perfect as is possessed by any member of the
Articulata class.

He who will go thus far, ought not to hesitate to go one step further,
if he finds on finishing this volume that large bodies of facts,
otherwise inexplicable, can be explained by the theory of modification
through natural selection; he ought to admit that a structure even as
perfect as an eagle's eye might thus be formed, although in this case
he does not know the transitional states. It has been objected that in
order to modify the eye and still preserve it as a perfect instrument,
many changes would have to be effected simultaneously, which, it is
assumed, could not be done through natural selection; but as I have
attempted to show in my work on the variation of domestic animals, it is
not necessary to suppose that the modifications were all simultaneous,
if they were extremely slight and gradual. Different kinds of
modification would, also, serve for the same general purpose: as Mr.
Wallace has remarked, "If a lens has too short or too long a focus, it
may be amended either by an alteration of curvature, or an alteration of
density; if the curvature be irregular, and the rays do not converge
to a point, then any increased regularity of curvature will be an
improvement. So the contraction of the iris and the muscular
movements of the eye are neither of them essential to vision, but only
improvements which might have been added and perfected at any stage of
the construction of the instrument." Within the highest division of
the animal kingdom, namely, the Vertebrata, we can start from an eye
so simple, that it consists, as in the lancelet, of a little sack of
transparent skin, furnished with a nerve and lined with pigment, but
destitute of any other apparatus. In fishes and reptiles, as Owen has
remarked, "The range of gradation of dioptric structures is very
great." It is a significant fact that even in man, according to the high
authority of Virchow, the beautiful crystalline lens is formed in the
embryo by an accumulation of epidermic cells, lying in a sack-like fold
of the skin; and the vitreous body is formed from embryonic subcutaneous
tissue. To arrive, however, at a just conclusion regarding the
formation of the eye, with all its marvellous yet not absolutely perfect
characters, it is indispensable that the reason should conquer the
imagination; but I have felt the difficulty far to keenly to be
surprised at others hesitating to extend the principle of natural
selection to so startling a length.

It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope.
We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued
efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the
eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this
inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator
works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the
eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick
layer of transparent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a
nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this
layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate
into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different
distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly
changing in form. Further we must suppose that there is a power,
represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always
intently watching each slight alteration in the transparent layers; and
carefully preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in any way
or degree, tends to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each
new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million; each to be
preserved until a better is produced, and then the old ones to be all
destroyed. In living bodies, variation will cause the slight alteration,
generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection
will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process
go on for millions of years; and during each year on millions of
individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical
instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the
works of the Creator are to those of man?

MODES Of TRANSITION.

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which
could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find
out no such case. No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know
the transitional grades, more especially if we look to much-isolated
species, around which, according to the theory, there has been much
extinction. Or again, if we take an organ common to all the members of
a class, for in this latter case the organ must have been originally
formed at a remote period, since which all the many members of the class
have been developed; and in order to discover the early transitional
grades through which the organ has passed, we should have to look to
very ancient ancestral forms, long since become extinct.

We should be extremely cautious in concluding that an organ could not
have been formed by transitional gradations of some kind. Numerous cases
could be given among the lower animals of the same organ performing
at the same time wholly distinct functions; thus in the larva of the
dragon-fly and in the fish Cobites the alimentary canal respires,
digests, and excretes. In the Hydra, the animal may be turned inside
out, and the exterior surface will then digest and the stomach respire.
In such cases natural selection might specialise, if any advantage
were thus gained, the whole or part of an organ, which had previously
performed two functions, for one function alone, and thus by insensible
steps greatly change its nature. Many plants are known which regularly
produce at the same time differently constructed flowers; and if such
plants were to produce one kind alone, a great change would be effected
with comparative suddenness in the character of the species. It is,
however, probable that the two sorts of flowers borne by the same plant
were originally differentiated by finely graduated steps, which may
still be followed in some few cases.

Again, two distinct organs, or the same organ under two very different
forms, may simultaneously perform in the same individual the same
function, and this is an extremely important means of transition: to
give one instance--there are fish with gills or branchiae that breathe
the air dissolved in the water, at the same time that they breathe free
air in their swim-bladders, this latter organ being divided by highly
vascular partitions and having a ductus pneumaticus for the supply of
air. To give another instance from the vegetable kingdom: plants climb
by three distinct means, by spirally twining, by clasping a support with
their sensitive tendrils, and by the emission of aerial rootlets; these
three means are usually found in distinct groups, but some few species
exhibit two of the means, or even all three, combined in the same
individual. In all such cases one of the two organs might readily be
modified and perfected so as to perform all the work, being aided during
the progress of modification by the other organ; and then this other
organ might be modified for some other and quite distinct purpose, or be
wholly obliterated.

The illustration of the swim-bladder in fishes is a good one, because
it shows us clearly the highly important fact that an organ originally
constructed for one purpose, namely flotation, may be converted into
one for a widely different purpose, namely respiration. The swim-bladder
has, also, been worked in as an accessory to the auditory organs
of certain fishes. All physiologists admit that the swim-bladder is
homologous, or "ideally similar" in position and structure with the
lungs of the higher vertebrate animals: hence there is no reason to
doubt that the swim-bladder has actually been converted into lungs, or
an organ used exclusively for respiration.

According to this view it may be inferred that all vertebrate animals
with true lungs are descended by ordinary generation from an ancient
and unknown prototype which was furnished with a floating apparatus or
swim-bladder. We can thus, as I infer from Professor Owen's interesting
description of these parts, understand the strange fact that every
particle of food and drink which we swallow has to pass over the
orifice of the trachea, with some risk of falling into the lungs,
notwithstanding the beautiful contrivance by which the glottis
is closed. In the higher Vertebrata the branchiae have wholly
disappeared--but in the embryo the slits on the sides of the neck and
the loop-like course of the arteries still mark their former position.
But it is conceivable that the now utterly lost branchiae might have
been gradually worked in by natural selection for some distinct purpose:
for instance, Landois has shown that the wings of insects are developed
from the trachea; it is therefore highly probable that in this great
class organs which once served for respiration have been actually
converted into organs for flight.

In considering transitions of organs, it is so important to bear in mind
the probability of conversion from one function to another, that I will
give another instance. Pedunculated cirripedes have two minute folds of
skin, called by me the ovigerous frena, which serve, through the means
of a sticky secretion, to retain the eggs until they are hatched within
the sack. These cirripedes have no branchiae, the whole surface of
the body and of the sack, together with the small frena, serving for
respiration. The Balanidae or sessile cirripedes, on the other hand,
have no ovigerous frena, the eggs lying loose at the bottom of the sack,
within the well-enclosed shell; but they have, in the same relative
position with the frena, large, much-folded membranes, which freely
communicate with the circulatory lacunae of the sack and body, and which
have been considered by all naturalists to act as branchiae. Now I
think no one will dispute that the ovigerous frena in the one family are
strictly homologous with the branchiae of the other family; indeed, they
graduate into each other. Therefore it need not be doubted that the two
little folds of skin, which originally served as ovigerous frena, but
which, likewise, very slightly aided in the act of respiration, have
been gradually converted by natural selection into branchiae, simply
through an increase in their size and the obliteration of their adhesive
glands. If all pedunculated cirripedes had become extinct, and they have
suffered far more extinction than have sessile cirripedes, who would
ever have imagined that the branchiae in this latter family had
originally existed as organs for preventing the ova from being washed
out of the sack?

There is another possible mode of transition, namely, through the
acceleration or retardation of the period of reproduction. This has
lately been insisted on by Professor Cope and others in the United
States. It is now known that some animals are capable of reproduction
at a very early age, before they have acquired their perfect characters;
and if this power became thoroughly well developed in a species, it
seems probable that the adult stage of development would sooner or later
be lost; and in this case, especially if the larva differed much from
the mature form, the character of the species would be greatly changed
and degraded. Again, not a few animals, after arriving at maturity, go
on changing in character during nearly their whole lives. With mammals,
for instance, the form of the skull is often much altered with age, of
which Dr. Murie has given some striking instances with seals. Every
one knows how the horns of stags become more and more branched, and the
plumes of some birds become more finely developed, as they grow older.
Professor Cope states that the teeth of certain lizards change much in
shape with advancing years. With crustaceans not only many trivial,
but some important parts assume a new character, as recorded by Fritz
Muller, after maturity. In all such cases--and many could be given--if
the age for reproduction were retarded, the character of the species, at
least in its adult state, would be modified; nor is it improbable that
the previous and earlier stages of development would in some cases be
hurried through and finally lost. Whether species have often or ever
been modified through this comparatively sudden mode of transition, I
can form no opinion; but if this has occurred, it is probable that the
differences between the young and the mature, and between the mature and
the old, were primordially acquired by graduated steps.

SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION.

Although we must be extremely cautious in concluding that any organ
could not have been produced by successive, small, transitional
gradations, yet undoubtedly serious cases of difficulty occur.

One of the most serious is that of neuter insects, which are often
differently constructed from either the males or fertile females; but
this case will be treated of in the next chapter. The electric organs of
fishes offer another case of special difficulty; for it is impossible
to conceive by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced. But
this is not surprising, for we do not even know of what use they are.
In the gymnotus and torpedo they no doubt serve as powerful means of
defence, and perhaps for securing prey; yet in the ray, as observed
by Matteucci, an analogous organ in the tail manifests but little
electricity, even when the animal is greatly irritated; so little that
it can hardly be of any use for the above purposes. Moreover, in the
ray, besides the organ just referred to, there is, as Dr. R. McDonnell
has shown, another organ near the head, not known to be electrical, but
which appears to be the real homologue of the electric battery in the
torpedo. It is generally admitted that there exists between these organs
and ordinary muscle a close analogy, in intimate structure, in the
distribution of the nerves, and in the manner in which they are acted
on by various reagents. It should, also, be especially observed that
muscular contraction is accompanied by an electrical discharge; and,
as Dr. Radcliffe insists, "in the electrical apparatus of the torpedo
during rest, there would seem to be a charge in every respect like that
which is met with in muscle and nerve during the rest, and the discharge
of the torpedo, instead of being peculiar, may be only another form of
the discharge which attends upon the action of muscle and motor nerve."
Beyond this we cannot at present go in the way of explanation; but as
we know so little about the uses of these organs, and as we know nothing
about the habits and structure of the progenitors of the existing
electric fishes, it would be extremely bold to maintain that no
serviceable transitions are possible by which these organs might have
been gradually developed.

These organs appear at first to offer another and far more serious
difficulty; for they occur in about a dozen kinds of fish, of which
several are widely remote in their affinities. When the same organ is
found in several members of the same class, especially if in members
having very different habits of life, we may generally attribute its
presence to inheritance from a common ancestor; and its absence in some
of the members to loss through disuse or natural selection. So that, if
the electric organs had been inherited from some one ancient progenitor,
we might have expected that all electric fishes would have been
specially related to each other; but this is far from the case. Nor does
geology at all lead to the belief that most fishes formerly possessed
electric organs, which their modified descendants have now lost. But
when we look at the subject more closely, we find in the several fishes
provided with electric organs, that these are situated in different
parts of the body, that they differ in construction, as in the
arrangement of the plates, and, according to Pacini, in the process or
means by which the electricity is excited--and lastly, in being supplied
with nerves proceeding from different sources, and this is perhaps
the most important of all the differences. Hence in the several
fishes furnished with electric organs, these cannot be considered as
homologous, but only as analogous in function. Consequently there is
no reason to suppose that they have been inherited from a common
progenitor; for had this been the case they would have closely resembled
each other in all respects. Thus the difficulty of an organ, apparently
the same, arising in several remotely allied species, disappears,
leaving only the lesser yet still great difficulty: namely, by what
graduated steps these organs have been developed in each separate group
of fishes.

The luminous organs which occur in a few insects, belonging to widely
different families, and which are situated in different parts of the
body, offer, under our present state of ignorance, a difficulty almost
exactly parallel with that of the electric organs. Other similar cases
could be given; for instance in plants, the very curious contrivance of
a mass of pollen-grains, borne on a foot-stalk with an adhesive gland,
is apparently the same in Orchis and Asclepias, genera almost as remote
as is possible among flowering plants; but here again the parts are not
homologous. In all cases of beings, far removed from each other in the
scale of organisation, which are furnished with similar and peculiar
organs, it will be found that although the general appearance and
function of the organs may be the same, yet fundamental differences
between them can always be detected. For instance, the eyes of
Cephalopods or cuttle-fish and of vertebrate animals appear wonderfully
alike; and in such widely sundered groups no part of this resemblance
can be due to inheritance from a common progenitor. Mr. Mivart has
advanced this case as one of special difficulty, but I am unable to
see the force of his argument. An organ for vision must be formed of
transparent tissue, and must include some sort of lens for throwing
an image at the back of a darkened chamber. Beyond this superficial
resemblance, there is hardly any real similarity between the eyes of
cuttle-fish and vertebrates, as may be seen by consulting Hensen's
admirable memoir on these organs in the Cephalopoda. It is impossible
for me here to enter on details, but I may specify a few of the points
of difference. The crystalline lens in the higher cuttle-fish consists
of two parts, placed one behind the other like two lenses, both having
a very different structure and disposition to what occurs in the
vertebrata. The retina is wholly different, with an actual inversion of
the elemental parts, and with a large nervous ganglion included within
the membranes of the eye. The relations of the muscles are as different
as it is possible to conceive, and so in other points. Hence it is not
a little difficult to decide how far even the same terms ought to be
employed in describing the eyes of the Cephalopoda and Vertebrata. It
is, of course, open to any one to deny that the eye in either case could
have been developed through the natural selection of successive slight
variations; but if this be admitted in the one case it is clearly
possible in the other; and fundamental differences of structure in the
visual organs of two groups might have been anticipated, in accordance
with this view of their manner of formation. As two men have sometimes
independently hit on the same invention, so in the several foregoing
cases it appears that natural selection, working for the good of each
being, and taking advantage of all favourable variations, has produced
similar organs, as far as function is concerned, in distinct organic
beings, which owe none of their structure in common to inheritance from
a common progenitor.

Fritz Muller, in order to test the conclusions arrived at in this
volume, has followed out with much care a nearly similar line of
argument. Several families of crustaceans include a few species,
possessing an air-breathing apparatus and fitted to live out of the
water. In two of these families, which were more especially examined by
Muller, and which are nearly related to each other, the species agree
most closely in all important characters: namely in their sense organs,
circulating systems, in the position of the tufts of hair within
their complex stomachs, and lastly in the whole structure of the
water-breathing branchiae, even to the microscopical hooks by which they
are cleansed. Hence it might have been expected that in the few species
belonging to both families which live on the land, the equally important
air-breathing apparatus would have been the same; for why should this
one apparatus, given for the same purpose, have been made to differ,
while all the other important organs were closely similar, or rather,
identical.

Fritz Muller argues that this close similarity in so many points
of structure must, in accordance with the views advanced by me, be
accounted for by inheritance from a common progenitor. But as the vast
majority of the species in the above two families, as well as most
other crustaceans, are aquatic in their habits, it is improbable in the
highest degree that their common progenitor should have been adapted for
breathing air. Muller was thus led carefully to examine the apparatus in
the air-breathing species; and he found it to differ in each in several
important points, as in the position of the orifices, in the manner in
which they are opened and closed, and in some accessory details. Now
such differences are intelligible, and might even have been expected, on
the supposition that species belonging to distinct families had slowly
become adapted to live more and more out of water, and to breathe the
air. For these species, from belonging to distinct families, would have
differed to a certain extent, and in accordance with the principle that
the nature of each variation depends on two factors, viz., the nature of
the organism and that of the surrounding conditions, their variability
assuredly would not have been exactly the same. Consequently natural
selection would have had different materials or variations to work on,
in order to arrive at the same functional result; and the structures
thus acquired would almost necessarily have differed. On the hypothesis
of separate acts of creation the whole case remains unintelligible. This
line of argument seems to have had great weight in leading Fritz Muller
to accept the views maintained by me in this volume.

Another distinguished zoologist, the late Professor Claparede, has
argued in the same manner, and has arrived at the same result. He
shows that there are parasitic mites (Acaridae), belonging to distinct
sub-families and families, which are furnished with hair-claspers. These
organs must have been independently developed, as they could not have
been inherited from a common progenitor; and in the several groups they
are formed by the modification of the fore legs, of the hind legs, of
the maxillae or lips, and of appendages on the under side of the hind
part of the body.

In the foregoing cases, we see the same end gained and the same function
performed, in beings not at all or only remotely allied, by organs in
appearance, though not in development, closely similar. On the other
hand, it is a common rule throughout nature that the same end should
be gained, even sometimes in the case of closely related beings, by the
most diversified means. How differently constructed is the feathered
wing of a bird and the membrane-covered wing of a bat; and still more so
the four wings of a butterfly, the two wings of a fly, and the two wings
with the elytra of a beetle. Bivalve shells are made to open and shut,
but on what a number of patterns is the hinge constructed, from the long
row of neatly interlocking teeth in a Nucula to the simple ligament of
a Mussel! Seeds are disseminated by their minuteness, by their capsule
being converted into a light balloon-like envelope, by being embedded
in pulp or flesh, formed of the most diverse parts, and rendered
nutritious, as well as conspicuously coloured, so as to attract and
be devoured by birds, by having hooks and grapnels of many kinds and
serrated awns, so as to adhere to the fur of quadrupeds, and by being
furnished with wings and plumes, as different in shape as they are
elegant in structure, so as to be wafted by every breeze. I will give
one other instance: for this subject of the same end being gained by the
most diversified means well deserves attention. Some authors maintain
that organic beings have been formed in many ways for the sake of
mere variety, almost like toys in a shop, but such a view of nature is
incredible. With plants having separated sexes, and with those in which,
though hermaphrodites, the pollen does not spontaneously fall on the
stigma, some aid is necessary for their fertilisation. With several
kinds this is effected by the pollen-grains, which are light and
incoherent, being blown by the wind through mere chance on to the
stigma; and this is the simplest plan which can well be conceived. An
almost equally simple, though very different plan occurs in many plants
in which a symmetrical flower secretes a few drops of nectar, and is
consequently visited by insects; and these carry the pollen from the
anthers to the stigma.

From this simple stage we may pass through an inexhaustible number of
contrivances, all for the same purpose and effected in essentially the
same manner, but entailing changes in every part of the flower. The
nectar may be stored in variously shaped receptacles, with the
stamens and pistils modified in many ways, sometimes forming trap-like
contrivances, and sometimes capable of neatly adapted movements through
irritability or elasticity. From such structures we may advance till we
come to such a case of extraordinary adaptation as that lately described
by Dr. Cruger in the Coryanthes. This orchid has part of its labellum or
lower lip hollowed out into a great bucket, into which drops of almost
pure water continually fall from two secreting horns which stand above
it; and when the bucket is half-full, the water overflows by a spout on
one side. The basal part of the labellum stands over the bucket, and is
itself hollowed out into a sort of chamber with two lateral entrances;
within this chamber there are curious fleshy ridges. The most ingenious
man, if he had not witnessed what takes place, could never have imagined
what purpose all these parts serve. But Dr. Cruger saw crowds of large
humble-bees visiting the gigantic flowers of this orchid, not in order
to suck nectar, but to gnaw off the ridges within the chamber above the
bucket; in doing this they frequently pushed each other into the bucket,
and their wings being thus wetted they could not fly away, but were
compelled to crawl out through the passage formed by the spout or
overflow. Dr. Cruger saw a "continual procession" of bees thus crawling
out of their involuntary bath. The passage is narrow, and is roofed over
by the column, so that a bee, in forcing its way out, first rubs its
back against the viscid stigma and then against the viscid glands of the
pollen-masses. The pollen-masses are thus glued to the back of the
bee which first happens to crawl out through the passage of a lately
expanded flower, and are thus carried away. Dr. Cruger sent me a flower
in spirits of wine, with a bee which he had killed before it had quite
crawled out, with a pollen-mass still fastened to its back. When the
bee, thus provided, flies to another flower, or to the same flower a
second time, and is pushed by its comrades into the bucket and then
crawls out by the passage, the pollen-mass necessarily comes first into
contact with the viscid stigma, and adheres to it, and the flower is
fertilised. Now at last we see the full use of every part of the flower,
of the water-secreting horns of the bucket half-full of water, which
prevents the bees from flying away, and forces them to crawl out through
the spout, and rub against the properly placed viscid pollen-masses and
the viscid stigma.

The construction of the flower in another closely allied orchid, namely,
the Catasetum, is widely different, though serving the same end; and is
equally curious. Bees visit these flowers, like those of the Coryanthes,
in order to gnaw the labellum; in doing this they inevitably touch
a long, tapering, sensitive projection, or, as I have called it, the
antenna. This antenna, when touched, transmits a sensation or vibration
to a certain membrane which is instantly ruptured; this sets free a
spring by which the pollen-mass is shot forth, like an arrow, in the
right direction, and adheres by its viscid extremity to the back of the
bee. The pollen-mass of the male plant (for the sexes are separate in
this orchid) is thus carried to the flower of the female plant, where it
is brought into contact with the stigma, which is viscid enough to
break certain elastic threads, and retain the pollen, thus effecting
fertilisation.

How, it may be asked, in the foregoing and in innumerable other
instances, can we understand the graduated scale of complexity and the
multifarious means for gaining the same end. The answer no doubt is, as
already remarked, that when two forms vary, which already differ from
each other in some slight degree, the variability will not be of the
same exact nature, and consequently the results obtained through natural
selection for the same general purpose will not be the same. We should
also bear in mind that every highly developed organism has passed
through many changes; and that each modified structure tends to be
inherited, so that each modification will not readily be quite lost,
but may be again and again further altered. Hence, the structure of each
part of each species, for whatever purpose it may serve, is the sum of
many inherited changes, through which the species has passed during its
successive adaptations to changed habits and conditions of life.

Finally, then, although in many cases it is most difficult even to
conjecture by what transitions organs could have arrived at their
present state; yet, considering how small the proportion of living and
known forms is to the extinct and unknown, I have been astonished how
rarely an organ can be named, towards which no transitional grade is
known to lead. It is certainly true, that new organs appearing as if
created for some special purpose rarely or never appear in any being; as
indeed is shown by that old, but somewhat exaggerated, canon in natural
history of "Natura non facit saltum." We meet with this admission in the
writings of almost every experienced naturalist; or, as Milne Edwards
has well expressed it, "Nature is prodigal in variety, but niggard in
innovation." Why, on the theory of Creation, should there be so much
variety and so little real novelty? Why should all the parts and organs
of many independent beings, each supposed to have been separately
created for its own proper place in nature, be so commonly linked
together by graduated steps? Why should not Nature take a sudden leap
from structure to structure? On the theory of natural selection, we can
clearly understand why she should not; for natural selection acts only
by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take
a great and sudden leap, but must advance by the short and sure, though
slow steps.

ORGANS OF LITTLE APPARENT IMPORTANCE, AS AFFECTED BY NATURAL SELECTION.

As natural selection acts by life and death, by the survival of the
fittest, and by the destruction of the less well-fitted individuals,
I have sometimes felt great difficulty in understanding the origin or
formation of parts of little importance; almost as great, though of
a very different kind, as in the case of the most perfect and complex
organs.

In the first place, we are much too ignorant in regard to the whole
economy of any one organic being to say what slight modifications would
be of importance or not. In a former chapter I have given instances of
very trifling characters, such as the down on fruit and the colour of
its flesh, the colour of the skin and hair of quadrupeds, which, from
being correlated with constitutional differences, or from determining
the attacks of insects, might assuredly be acted on by natural
selection. The tail of the giraffe looks like an artificially
constructed fly-flapper; and it seems at first incredible that this
could have been adapted for its present purpose by successive slight
modifications, each better and better fitted, for so trifling an object
as to drive away flies; yet we should pause before being too positive
even in this case, for we know that the distribution and existence of
cattle and other animals in South America absolutely depend on their
power of resisting the attacks of insects: so that individuals which
could by any means defend themselves from these small enemies, would be
able to range into new pastures and thus gain a great advantage. It is
not that the larger quadrupeds are actually destroyed (except in some
rare cases) by flies, but they are incessantly harassed and their
strength reduced, so that they are more subject to disease, or not so
well enabled in a coming dearth to search for food, or to escape from
beasts of prey.

Organs now of trifling importance have probably in some cases been of
high importance to an early progenitor, and, after having been slowly
perfected at a former period, have been transmitted to existing species
in nearly the same state, although now of very slight use; but any
actually injurious deviations in their structure would of course have
been checked by natural selection. Seeing how important an organ of
locomotion the tail is in most aquatic animals, its general presence and
use for many purposes in so many land animals, which in their lungs or
modified swim-bladders betray their aquatic origin, may perhaps be thus
accounted for. A well-developed tail having been formed in an aquatic
animal, it might subsequently come to be worked in for all sorts of
purposes, as a fly-flapper, an organ of prehension, or as an aid in
turning, as in the case of the dog, though the aid in this latter
respect must be slight, for the hare, with hardly any tail, can double
still more quickly.

In the second place, we may easily err in attributing importance to
characters, and in believing that they have been developed through
natural selection. We must by no means overlook the effects of the
definite action of changed conditions of life, of so-called spontaneous
variations, which seem to depend in a quite subordinate degree on the
nature of the conditions, of the tendency to reversion to long-lost
characters, of the complex laws of growth, such as of correlation,
comprehension, of the pressure of one part on another, etc., and finally
of sexual selection, by which characters of use to one sex are often
gained and then transmitted more or less perfectly to the other sex,
though of no use to the sex. But structures thus indirectly gained,
although at first of no advantage to a species, may subsequently
have been taken advantage of by its modified descendants, under new
conditions of life and newly acquired habits.

If green woodpeckers alone had existed, and we did not know that there
were many black and pied kinds, I dare say that we should have thought
that the green colour was a beautiful adaptation to conceal this
tree-frequenting bird from its enemies; and consequently that it was
a character of importance, and had been acquired through natural
selection; as it is, the colour is probably in chief part due to sexual
selection. A trailing palm in the Malay Archipelago climbs the loftiest
trees by the aid of exquisitely constructed hooks clustered around the
ends of the branches, and this contrivance, no doubt, is of the highest
service to the plant; but as we see nearly similar hooks on many trees
which are not climbers, and which, as there is reason to believe from
the distribution of the thorn-bearing species in Africa and South
America, serve as a defence against browsing quadrupeds, so the spikes
on the palm may at first have been developed for this object, and
subsequently have been improved and taken advantage of by the plant, as
it underwent further modification and became a climber. The naked skin
on the head of a vulture is generally considered as a direct adaptation
for wallowing in putridity; and so it may be, or it may possibly be due
to the direct action of putrid matter; but we should be very cautious in
drawing any such inference, when we see that the skin on the head of the
clean-feeding male turkey is likewise naked. The sutures in the skulls
of young mammals have been advanced as a beautiful adaptation for aiding
parturition, and no doubt they facilitate, or may be indispensable
for this act; but as sutures occur in the skulls of young birds and
reptiles, which have only to escape from a broken egg, we may infer that
this structure has arisen from the laws of growth, and has been taken
advantage of in the parturition of the higher animals.

We are profoundly ignorant of the cause of each slight variation or
individual difference; and we are immediately made conscious of this
by reflecting on the differences between the breeds of our domesticated
animals in different countries, more especially in the less civilized
countries, where there has been but little methodical selection. Animals
kept by savages in different countries often have to struggle for
their own subsistence, and are exposed to a certain extent to natural
selection, and individuals with slightly different constitutions would
succeed best under different climates. With cattle susceptibility to the
attacks of flies is correlated with colour, as is the liability to be
poisoned by certain plants; so that even colour would be thus subjected
to the action of natural selection. Some observers are convinced that a
damp climate affects the growth of the hair, and that with the hair the
horns are correlated. Mountain breeds always differ from lowland breeds;
and a mountainous country would probably affect the hind limbs from
exercising them more, and possibly even the form of the pelvis; and then
by the law of homologous variation, the front limbs and the head would
probably be affected. The shape, also, of the pelvis might affect
by pressure the shape of certain parts of the young in the womb. The
laborious breathing necessary in high regions tends, as we have
good reason to believe, to increase the size of the chest; and again
correlation would come into play. The effects of lessened exercise,
together with abundant food, on the whole organisation is probably still
more important, and this, as H. von Nathusius has lately shown in
his excellent Treatise, is apparently one chief cause of the great
modification which the breeds of swine have undergone. But we are far
too ignorant to speculate on the relative importance of the several
known and unknown causes of variation; and I have made these remarks
only to show that, if we are unable to account for the characteristic
differences of our several domestic breeds, which nevertheless are
generally admitted to have arisen through ordinary generation from
one or a few parent-stocks, we ought not to lay too much stress on
our ignorance of the precise cause of the slight analogous differences
between true species.

UTILITARIAN DOCTRINE, HOW FAR TRUE: BEAUTY, HOW ACQUIRED.

The foregoing remarks lead me to say a few words on the protest lately
made by some naturalists against the utilitarian doctrine that every
detail of structure has been produced for the good of its possessor.
They believe that many structures have been created for the sake of
beauty, to delight man or the Creator (but this latter point is beyond
the scope of scientific discussion), or for the sake of mere variety,
a view already discussed. Such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely
fatal to my theory. I fully admit that many structures are now of no
direct use to their possessors, and may never have been of any use to
their progenitors; but this does not prove that they were formed
solely for beauty or variety. No doubt the definite action of changed
conditions, and the various causes of modifications, lately specified,
have all produced an effect, probably a great effect, independently of
any advantage thus gained. But a still more important consideration is
that the chief part of the organisation of every living creature is due
to inheritance; and consequently, though each being assuredly is well
fitted for its place in nature, many structures have now no very close
and direct relation to present habits of life. Thus, we can
hardly believe that the webbed feet of the upland goose, or of the
frigate-bird, are of special use to these birds; we cannot believe
that the similar bones in the arm of the monkey, in the fore leg of the
horse, in the wing of the bat, and in the flipper of the seal, are of
special use to these animals. We may safely attribute these structures
to inheritance. But webbed feet no doubt were as useful to the
progenitor of the upland goose and of the frigate-bird, as they now
are to the most aquatic of living birds. So we may believe that the
progenitor of the seal did not possess a flipper, but a foot with five
toes fitted for walking or grasping; and we may further venture to
believe that the several bones in the limbs of the monkey, horse and
bat, were originally developed, on the principle of utility, probably
through the reduction of more numerous bones in the fin of some ancient
fish-like progenitor of the whole class. It is scarcely possible to
decide how much allowance ought to be made for such causes of change,
as the definite action of external conditions, so-called spontaneous
variations, and the complex laws of growth; but with these important
exceptions, we may conclude that the structure of every living creature
either now is, or was formerly, of some direct or indirect use to its
possessor.

With respect to the belief that organic beings have been created
beautiful for the delight of man--a belief which it has been pronounced
is subversive of my whole theory--I may first remark that the sense of
beauty obviously depends on the nature of the mind, irrespective of
any real quality in the admired object; and that the idea of what is
beautiful, is not innate or unalterable. We see this, for instance, in
the men of different races admiring an entirely different standard of
beauty in their women. If beautiful objects had been created solely for
man's gratification, it ought to be shown that before man appeared
there was less beauty on the face of the earth than since he came on the
stage. Were the beautiful volute and cone shells of the Eocene epoch,
and the gracefully sculptured ammonites of the Secondary period, created
that man might ages afterwards admire them in his cabinet? Few objects
are more beautiful than the minute siliceous cases of the diatomaceae:
were these created that they might be examined and admired under the
higher powers of the microscope? The beauty in this latter case, and
in many others, is apparently wholly due to symmetry of growth. Flowers
rank among the most beautiful productions of nature; but they have
been rendered conspicuous in contrast with the green leaves, and in
consequence at the same time beautiful, so that they may be easily
observed by insects. I have come to this conclusion from finding it an
invariable rule that when a flower is fertilised by the wind it never
has a gaily-coloured corolla. Several plants habitually produce two
kinds of flowers; one kind open and coloured so as to attract insects;
the other closed, not coloured, destitute of nectar, and never visited
by insects. Hence, we may conclude that, if insects had not been
developed on the face of the earth, our plants would not have been
decked with beautiful flowers, but would have produced only such poor
flowers as we see on our fir, oak, nut and ash trees, on grasses,
spinach, docks and nettles, which are all fertilised through the agency
of the wind. A similar line of argument holds good with fruits; that
a ripe strawberry or cherry is as pleasing to the eye as to the
palate--that the gaily-coloured fruit of the spindle-wood tree and the
scarlet berries of the holly are beautiful objects--will be admitted by
everyone. But this beauty serves merely as a guide to birds and
beasts, in order that the fruit may be devoured and the matured seeds
disseminated. I infer that this is the case from having as yet found
no exception to the rule that seeds are always thus disseminated when
embedded within a fruit of any kind (that is within a fleshy or
pulpy envelope), if it be coloured of any brilliant tint, or rendered
conspicuous by being white or black.

On the other hand, I willingly admit that a great number of male
animals, as all our most gorgeous birds, some fishes, reptiles, and
mammals, and a host of magnificently coloured butterflies, have been
rendered beautiful for beauty's sake. But this has been effected through
sexual selection, that is, by the more beautiful males having been
continually preferred by the females, and not for the delight of man. So
it is with the music of birds. We may infer from all this that a nearly
similar taste for beautiful colours and for musical sounds runs through
a large part of the animal kingdom. When the female is as beautifully
coloured as the male, which is not rarely the case with birds and
butterflies, the cause apparently lies in the colours acquired through
sexual selection having been transmitted to both sexes, instead of to
the males alone. How the sense of beauty in its simplest form--that is,
the reception of a peculiar kind of pleasure from certain colours, forms
and sounds--was first developed in the mind of man and of the lower
animals, is a very obscure subject. The same sort of difficulty is
presented if we enquire how it is that certain flavours and odours give
pleasure, and others displeasure. Habit in all these cases appears
to have come to a certain extent into play; but there must be some
fundamental cause in the constitution of the nervous system in each
species.

Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in a species
exclusively for the good of another species; though throughout
nature one species incessantly takes advantage of, and profits by the
structures of others. But natural selection can and does often produce
structures for the direct injury of other animals, as we see in the fang
of the adder, and in the ovipositor of the ichneumon, by which its eggs
are deposited in the living bodies of other insects. If it could be
proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been
formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my
theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.
Although many statements may be found in works on natural history to
this effect, I cannot find even one which seems to me of any weight. It
is admitted that the rattlesnake has a poison-fang for its own defence
and for the destruction of its prey; but some authors suppose that at
the same time it is furnished with a rattle for its own injury, namely,
to warn its prey. I would almost as soon believe that the cat curls the
end of its tail when preparing to spring, in order to warn the doomed
mouse. It is a much more probable view that the rattlesnake uses its
rattle, the cobra expands its frill and the puff-adder swells while
hissing so loudly and harshly, in order to alarm the many birds and
beasts which are known to attack even the most venomous species. Snakes
act on the same principle which makes the hen ruffle her feathers and
expand her wings when a dog approaches her chickens. But I have not
space here to enlarge on the many ways by which animals endeavour to
frighten away their enemies.

Natural selection will never produce in a being any structure more
injurious than beneficial to that being, for natural selection acts
solely by and for the good of each. No organ will be formed, as Paley
has remarked, for the purpose of causing pain or for doing an injury
to its possessor. If a fair balance be struck between the good and evil
caused by each part, each will be found on the whole advantageous. After
the lapse of time, under changing conditions of life, if any part comes
to be injurious, it will be modified; or if it be not so, the being will
become extinct, as myriads have become extinct.

Natural selection tends only to make each organic being as perfect as,
or slightly more perfect than the other inhabitants of the same country
with which it comes into competition. And we see that this is the
standard of perfection attained under nature. The endemic productions of
New Zealand, for instance, are perfect, one compared with another; but
they are now rapidly yielding before the advancing legions of plants
and animals introduced from Europe. Natural selection will not produce
absolute perfection, nor do we always meet, as far as we can judge, with
this high standard under nature. The correction for the aberration of
light is said by Muller not to be perfect even in that most perfect
organ, the human eye. Helmholtz, whose judgment no one will dispute,
after describing in the strongest terms the wonderful powers of the
human eye, adds these remarkable words: "That which we have discovered
in the way of inexactness and imperfection in the optical machine and
in the image on the retina, is as nothing in comparison with the
incongruities which we have just come across in the domain of the
sensations. One might say that nature has taken delight in accumulating
contradictions in order to remove all foundation from the theory of a
pre-existing harmony between the external and internal worlds." If our
reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable
contrivances in nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily
err on both sides, that some other contrivances are less perfect. Can we
consider the sting of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many
kinds of enemies, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures,
and thus inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing out its
viscera?

If we look at the sting of the bee, as having existed in a remote
progenitor, as a boring and serrated instrument, like that in so many
members of the same great order, and that it has since been modified
but not perfected for its present purpose, with the poison originally
adapted for some other object, such as to produce galls, since
intensified, we can perhaps understand how it is that the use of the
sting should so often cause the insect's own death: for if on the whole
the power of stinging be useful to the social community, it will fulfil
all the requirements of natural selection, though it may cause the death
of some few members. If we admire the truly wonderful power of scent by
which the males of many insects find their females, can we admire the
production for this single purpose of thousands of drones, which are
utterly useless to the community for any other purpose, and which are
ultimately slaughtered by their industrious and sterile sisters? It may
be difficult, but we ought to admire the savage instinctive hatred
of the queen-bee, which urges her to destroy the young queens, her
daughters, as soon as they are born, or to perish herself in the combat;
for undoubtedly this is for the good of the community; and maternal love
or maternal hatred, though the latter fortunately is most rare, is all
the same to the inexorable principles of natural selection. If we admire
the several ingenious contrivances by which orchids and many other
plants are fertilised through insect agency, can we consider as equally
perfect the elaboration of dense clouds of pollen by our fir-trees, so
that a few granules may be wafted by chance on to the ovules?

SUMMARY: THE LAW OF UNITY OF TYPE AND OF THE CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE
EMBRACED BY THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION.

We have in this chapter discussed some of the difficulties and
objections which may be urged against the theory. Many of them are
serious; but I think that in the discussion light has been thrown on
several facts, which on the belief of independent acts of creation are
utterly obscure. We have seen that species at any one period are not
indefinitely variable, and are not linked together by a multitude of
intermediate gradations, partly because the process of natural selection
is always very slow, and at any one time acts only on a few forms;
and partly because the very process of natural selection implies the
continual supplanting and extinction of preceding and intermediate
gradations. Closely allied species, now living on a continuous area,
must often have been formed when the area was not continuous, and when
the conditions of life did not insensibly graduate away from one part to
another. When two varieties are formed in two districts of a continuous
area, an intermediate variety will often be formed, fitted for an
intermediate zone; but from reasons assigned, the intermediate variety
will usually exist in lesser numbers than the two forms which it
connects; consequently the two latter, during the course of further
modification, from existing in greater numbers, will have a great
advantage over the less numerous intermediate variety, and will thus
generally succeed in supplanting and exterminating it.

We have seen in this chapter how cautious we should be in concluding
that the most different habits of life could not graduate into each
other; that a bat, for instance, could not have been formed by natural
selection from an animal which at first only glided through the air.

We have seen that a species under new conditions of life may change its
habits, or it may have diversified habits, with some very unlike those
of its nearest congeners. Hence we can understand, bearing in mind that
each organic being is trying to live wherever it can live, how it has
arisen that there are upland geese with webbed feet, ground woodpeckers,
diving thrushes, and petrels with the habits of auks.

Although the belief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been
formed by natural selection, is enough to stagger any one; yet in
the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in
complexity, each good for its possessor, then under changing conditions
of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any
conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection. In the cases
in which we know of no intermediate or transitional states, we should
be extremely cautious in concluding that none can have existed, for the
metamorphoses of many organs show what wonderful changes in function
are at least possible. For instance, a swim-bladder has apparently been
converted into an air-breathing lung. The same organ having performed
simultaneously very different functions, and then having been in part
or in whole specialised for one function; and two distinct organs
having performed at the same time the same function, the one having been
perfected whilst aided by the other, must often have largely facilitated
transitions.

We have seen that in two beings widely remote from each other in the
natural scale, organs serving for the same purpose and in external
appearance closely similar may have been separately and independently
formed; but when such organs are closely examined, essential differences
in their structure can almost always be detected; and this naturally
follows from the principle of natural selection. On the other hand, the
common rule throughout nature is infinite diversity of structure for
gaining the same end; and this again naturally follows from the same
great principle.

In many cases we are far too ignorant to be enabled to assert that
a part or organ is so unimportant for the welfare of a species, that
modifications in its structure could not have been slowly accumulated
by means of natural selection. In many other cases, modifications
are probably the direct result of the laws of variation or of growth,
independently of any good having been thus gained. But even such
structures have often, as we may feel assured, been subsequently taken
advantage of, and still further modified, for the good of species under
new conditions of life. We may, also, believe that a part formerly of
high importance has frequently been retained (as the tail of an aquatic
animal by its terrestrial descendants), though it has become of such
small importance that it could not, in its present state, have been
acquired by means of natural selection.

Natural selection can produce nothing in one species for the exclusive
good or injury of another; though it may well produce parts, organs, and
excretions highly useful or even indispensable, or highly injurious
to another species, but in all cases at the same time useful to the
possessor. In each well-stocked country natural selection acts through
the competition of the inhabitants and consequently leads to success
in the battle for life, only in accordance with the standard of that
particular country. Hence the inhabitants of one country, generally the
smaller one, often yield to the inhabitants of another and generally the
larger country. For in the larger country there will have existed more
individuals, and more diversified forms, and the competition will
have been severer, and thus the standard of perfection will have been
rendered higher. Natural selection will not necessarily lead to absolute
perfection; nor, as far as we can judge by our limited faculties, can
absolute perfection be everywhere predicated.

On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full
meaning of that old canon in natural history, "Natura non facit saltum."
This canon, if we look to the present inhabitants alone of the world, is
not strictly correct; but if we include all those of past times, whether
known or unknown, it must on this theory be strictly true.

It is generally acknowledged that all organic beings have been formed on
two great laws--Unity of Type, and the Conditions of Existence. By unity
of type is meant that fundamental agreement in structure which we see
in organic beings of the same class, and which is quite independent of
their habits of life. On my theory, unity of type is explained by unity
of descent. The expression of conditions of existence, so often insisted
on by the illustrious Cuvier, is fully embraced by the principle of
natural selection. For natural selection acts by either now adapting the
varying parts of each being to its organic and inorganic conditions
of life; or by having adapted them during past periods of time: the
adaptations being aided in many cases by the increased use or disuse
of parts, being affected by the direct action of external conditions
of life, and subjected in all cases to the several laws of growth and
variation. Hence, in fact, the law of the Conditions of Existence is the
higher law; as it includes, through the inheritance of former variations
and adaptations, that of Unity of Type.




CHAPTER VII. MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION.

 Longevity--Modifications not necessarily simultaneous--Modifications
 apparently of no direct service--Progressive development--Characters of
 small functional importance, the most constant--Supposed incompetence
 of natural selection to account for the incipient stages of useful
 structures--Causes which interfere with the acquisition through natural
 selection of useful structures--Gradations of structure with changed
 functions--Widely different organs in members of the same class,
 developed from one and the same source--Reasons for disbelieving in
 great and abrupt modifications.


I will devote this chapter to the consideration of various miscellaneous
objections which have been advanced against my views, as some of the
previous discussions may thus be made clearer; but it would be useless
to discuss all of them, as many have been made by writers who have not
taken the trouble to understand the subject. Thus a distinguished German
naturalist has asserted that the weakest part of my theory is, that I
consider all organic beings as imperfect: what I have really said is,
that all are not as perfect as they might have been in relation to their
conditions; and this is shown to be the case by so many native forms
in many quarters of the world having yielded their places to intruding
foreigners. Nor can organic beings, even if they were at any one time
perfectly adapted to their conditions of life, have remained so, when
their conditions changed, unless they themselves likewise changed; and
no one will dispute that the physical conditions of each country, as
well as the number and kinds of its inhabitants, have undergone many
mutations.

A critic has lately insisted, with some parade of mathematical accuracy,
that longevity is a great advantage to all species, so that he who
believes in natural selection "must arrange his genealogical tree" in
such a manner that all the descendants have longer lives than their
progenitors! Cannot our critics conceive that a biennial plant or one of
the lower animals might range into a cold climate and perish there every
winter; and yet, owing to advantages gained through natural selection,
survive from year to year by means of its seeds or ova? Mr. E. Ray
Lankester has recently discussed this subject, and he concludes, as far
as its extreme complexity allows him to form a judgment, that longevity
is generally related to the standard of each species in the scale of
organisation, as well as to the amount of expenditure in reproduction
and in general activity. And these conditions have, it is probable, been
largely determined through natural selection.

It has been argued that, as none of the animals and plants of Egypt,
of which we know anything, have changed during the last three or four
thousand years, so probably have none in any part of the world. But, as
Mr. G.H. Lewes has remarked, this line of argument proves too much,
for the ancient domestic races figured on the Egyptian monuments, or
embalmed, are closely similar or even identical with those now living;
yet all naturalists admit that such races have been produced through
the modification of their original types. The many animals which have
remained unchanged since the commencement of the glacial period, would
have been an incomparably stronger case, for these have been exposed
to great changes of climate and have migrated over great distances;
whereas, in Egypt, during the last several thousand years, the
conditions of life, as far as we know, have remained absolutely uniform.
The fact of little or no modification having been effected since the
glacial period, would have been of some avail against those who believe
in an innate and necessary law of development, but is powerless against
the doctrine of natural selection or the survival of the fittest, which
implies that when variations or individual differences of a beneficial
nature happen to arise, these will be preserved; but this will be
effected only under certain favourable circumstances.

The celebrated palaeontologist, Bronn, at the close of his German
translation of this work, asks how, on the principle of natural
selection, can a variety live side by side with the parent species?
If both have become fitted for slightly different habits of life
or conditions, they might live together; and if we lay on one side
polymorphic species, in which the variability seems to be of a peculiar
nature, and all mere temporary variations, such as size, albinism,
etc., the more permanent varieties are generally found, as far as I can
discover, inhabiting distinct stations, such as high land or low land,
dry or moist districts. Moreover, in the case of animals which wander
much about and cross freely, their varieties seem to be generally
confined to distinct regions.

Bronn also insists that distinct species never differ from each other in
single characters, but in many parts; and he asks, how it always comes
that many parts of the organisation should have been modified at the
same time through variation and natural selection? But there is no
necessity for supposing that all the parts of any being have been
simultaneously modified. The most striking modifications, excellently
adapted for some purpose, might, as was formerly remarked, be acquired
by successive variations, if slight, first in one part and then in
another; and as they would be transmitted all together, they would
appear to us as if they had been simultaneously developed. The best
answer, however, to the above objection is afforded by those domestic
races which have been modified, chiefly through man's power of
selection, for some special purpose. Look at the race and dray-horse, or
at the greyhound and mastiff. Their whole frames, and even their mental
characteristics, have been modified; but if we could trace each step
in the history of their transformation--and the latter steps can be
traced--we should not see great and simultaneous changes, but first
one part and then another slightly modified and improved. Even when
selection has been applied by man to some one character alone--of which
our cultivated plants offer the best instances--it will invariably be
found that although this one part, whether it be the flower, fruit, or
leaves, has been greatly changed, almost all the other parts have been
slightly modified. This may be attributed partly to the principle of
correlated growth, and partly to so-called spontaneous variation.

A much more serious objection has been urged by Bronn, and recently by
Broca, namely, that many characters appear to be of no service whatever
to their possessors, and therefore cannot have been influenced through
natural selection. Bronn adduces the length of the ears and tails in the
different species of hares and mice--the complex folds of enamel in the
teeth of many animals, and a multitude of analogous cases. With respect
to plants, this subject has been discussed by Nageli in an admirable
essay. He admits that natural selection has effected much, but he
insists that the families of plants differ chiefly from each other in
morphological characters, which appear to be quite unimportant for the
welfare of the species. He consequently believes in an innate tendency
towards progressive and more perfect development. He specifies the
arrangement of the cells in the tissues, and of the leaves on the axis,
as cases in which natural selection could not have acted. To these
may be added the numerical divisions in the parts of the flower, the
position of the ovules, the shape of the seed, when not of any use for
dissemination, etc.

There is much force in the above objection. Nevertheless, we ought, in
the first place, to be extremely cautious in pretending to decide what
structures now are, or have formerly been, of use to each species. In
the second place, it should always be borne in mind that when one part
is modified, so will be other parts, through certain dimly seen causes,
such as an increased or diminished flow of nutriment to a part, mutual
pressure, an early developed part affecting one subsequently developed,
and so forth--as well as through other causes which lead to the
many mysterious cases of correlation, which we do not in the least
understand. These agencies may be all grouped together, for the sake of
brevity, under the expression of the laws of growth. In the third
place, we have to allow for the direct and definite action of changed
conditions of life, and for so-called spontaneous variations, in which
the nature of the conditions apparently plays a quite subordinate part.
Bud-variations, such as the appearance of a moss-rose on a common rose,
or of a nectarine on a peach-tree, offer good instances of spontaneous
variations; but even in these cases, if we bear in mind the power of a
minute drop of poison in producing complex galls, we ought not to feel
too sure that the above variations are not the effect of some local
change in the nature of the sap, due to some change in the conditions.
There must be some efficient cause for each slight individual
difference, as well as for more strongly marked variations which
occasionally arise; and if the unknown cause were to act persistently,
it is almost certain that all the individuals of the species would be
similarly modified.

In the earlier editions of this work I underrated, as it now seems
probable, the frequency and importance of modifications due to
spontaneous variability. But it is impossible to attribute to this cause
the innumerable structures which are so well adapted to the habits
of life of each species. I can no more believe in this than that
the well-adapted form of a race-horse or greyhound, which before the
principle of selection by man was well understood, excited so much
surprise in the minds of the older naturalists, can thus be explained.

It may be worth while to illustrate some of the foregoing remarks. With
respect to the assumed inutility of various parts and organs, it is
hardly necessary to observe that even in the higher and best-known
animals many structures exist, which are so highly developed that no one
doubts that they are of importance, yet their use has not been, or has
only recently been, ascertained. As Bronn gives the length of the ears
and tail in the several species of mice as instances, though trifling
ones, of differences in structure which can be of no special use, I may
mention that, according to Dr. Schobl, the external ears of the common
mouse are supplied in an extraordinary manner with nerves, so that
they no doubt serve as tactile organs; hence the length of the ears can
hardly be quite unimportant. We shall, also, presently see that the tail
is a highly useful prehensile organ to some of the species; and its use
would be much influence by its length.

With respect to plants, to which on account of Nageli's essay I shall
confine myself in the following remarks, it will be admitted that the
flowers of the orchids present a multitude of curious structures,
which a few years ago would have been considered as mere morphological
differences without any special function; but they are now known to be
of the highest importance for the fertilisation of the species through
the aid of insects, and have probably been gained through natural
selection. No one until lately would have imagined that in dimorphic and
trimorphic plants the different lengths of the stamens and pistils, and
their arrangement, could have been of any service, but now we know this
to be the case.

In certain whole groups of plants the ovules stand erect, and in others
they are suspended; and within the same ovarium of some few plants, one
ovule holds the former and a second ovule the latter position. These
positions seem at first purely morphological, or of no physiological
signification; but Dr. Hooker informs me that within the same ovarium
the upper ovules alone in some cases, and in others the lower ones
alone are fertilised; and he suggests that this probably depends on
the direction in which the pollen-tubes enter the ovarium. If so, the
position of the ovules, even when one is erect and the other suspended
within the same ovarium, would follow the selection of any slight
deviations in position which favoured their fertilisation, and the
production of seed.

Several plants belonging to distinct orders habitually produce flowers
of two kinds--the one open, of the ordinary structure, the other closed
and imperfect. These two kinds of flowers sometimes differ wonderfully
in structure, yet may be seen to graduate into each other on the same
plant. The ordinary and open flowers can be intercrossed; and the
benefits which certainly are derived from this process are thus secured.
The closed and imperfect flowers are, however, manifestly of high
importance, as they yield with the utmost safety a large stock of seed,
with the expenditure of wonderfully little pollen. The two kinds of
flowers often differ much, as just stated, in structure. The petals in
the imperfect flowers almost always consist of mere rudiments, and the
pollen-grains are reduced in diameter. In Ononis columnae five of the
alternate stamens are rudimentary; and in some species of Viola three
stamens are in this state, two retaining their proper function, but
being of very small size. In six out of thirty of the closed flowers in
an Indian violet (name unknown, for the plants have never produced with
me perfect flowers), the sepals are reduced from the normal number of
five to three. In one section of the Malpighiaceae the closed flowers,
according to A. de Jussieu, are still further modified, for the five
stamens which stand opposite to the sepals are all aborted, a sixth
stamen standing opposite to a petal being alone developed; and this
stamen is not present in the ordinary flowers of this species; the style
is aborted; and the ovaria are reduced from three to two. Now although
natural selection may well have had the power to prevent some of
the flowers from expanding, and to reduce the amount of pollen, when
rendered by the closure of the flowers superfluous, yet hardly any of
the above special modifications can have been thus determined, but
must have followed from the laws of growth, including the functional
inactivity of parts, during the progress of the reduction of the pollen
and the closure of the flowers.

It is so necessary to appreciate the important effects of the laws of
growth, that I will give some additional cases of another kind, namely
of differences in the same part or organ, due to differences in relative
position on the same plant. In the Spanish chestnut, and in certain
fir-trees, the angles of divergence of the leaves differ, according to
Schacht, in the nearly horizontal and in the upright branches. In the
common rue and some other plants, one flower, usually the central or
terminal one, opens first, and has five sepals and petals, and five
divisions to the ovarium; while all the other flowers on the plant are
tetramerous. In the British Adoxa the uppermost flower generally has
two calyx-lobes with the other organs tetramerous, while the surrounding
flowers generally have three calyx-lobes with the other organs
pentamerous. In many Compositae and Umbelliferae (and in some other
plants) the circumferential flowers have their corollas much more
developed than those of the centre; and this seems often connected with
the abortion of the reproductive organs. It is a more curious fact,
previously referred to, that the achenes or seeds of the circumference
and centre sometimes differ greatly in form, colour and other
characters. In Carthamus and some other Compositae the central achenes
alone are furnished with a pappus; and in Hyoseris the same head yields
achenes of three different forms. In certain Umbelliferae the exterior
seeds, according to Tausch, are orthospermous, and the central one
coelospermous, and this is a character which was considered by De
Candolle to be in other species of the highest systematic importance.
Professor Braun mentions a Fumariaceous genus, in which the flowers in
the lower part of the spike bear oval, ribbed, one-seeded nutlets; and
in the upper part of the spike, lanceolate, two-valved and two-seeded
siliques. In these several cases, with the exception of that of the
well-developed ray-florets, which are of service in making the flowers
conspicuous to insects, natural selection cannot, as far as we can
judge, have come into play, or only in a quite subordinate manner. All
these modifications follow from the relative position and inter-action
of the parts; and it can hardly be doubted that if all the flowers and
leaves on the same plant had been subjected to the same external and
internal condition, as are the flowers and leaves in certain positions,
all would have been modified in the same manner.

In numerous other cases we find modifications of structure, which are
considered by botanists to be generally of a highly important nature,
affecting only some of the flowers on the same plant, or occurring on
distinct plants, which grow close together under the same conditions. As
these variations seem of no special use to the plants, they cannot
have been influenced by natural selection. Of their cause we are quite
ignorant; we cannot even attribute them, as in the last class of cases,
to any proximate agency, such as relative position. I will give only
a few instances. It is so common to observe on the same plant, flowers
indifferently tetramerous, pentamerous, etc., that I need not give
examples; but as numerical variations are comparatively rare when the
parts are few, I may mention that, according to De Candolle, the flowers
of Papaver bracteatum offer either two sepals with four petals (which
is the common type with poppies), or three sepals with six petals. The
manner in which the petals are folded in the bud is in most groups a
very constant morphological character; but Professor Asa Gray states
that with some species of Mimulus, the aestivation is almost as
frequently that of the Rhinanthideae as of the Antirrhinideae, to which
latter tribe the genus belongs. Aug. St. Hilaire gives the following
cases: the genus Zanthoxylon belongs to a division of the Rutaceae with
a single ovary, but in some species flowers may be found on the same
plant, and even in the same panicle, with either one or two ovaries.
In Helianthemum the capsule has been described as unilocular or
tri-locular; and in H. mutabile, "Une lame PLUS OU MOINS LARGE,
s'etend entre le pericarpe et le placenta." In the flowers of Saponaria
officinalis Dr. Masters has observed instances of both marginal and free
central placentation. Lastly, St. Hilaire found towards the southern
extreme of the range of Gomphia oleaeformis two forms which he did
not at first doubt were distinct species, but he subsequently saw them
growing on the same bush; and he then adds, "Voila donc dans un meme
individu des loges et un style qui se rattachent tantot a un axe
verticale et tantot a un gynobase."

We thus see that with plants many morphological changes may be
attributed to the laws of growth and the inter-action of parts,
independently of natural selection. But with respect to Nageli's
doctrine of an innate tendency towards perfection or progressive
development, can it be said in the case of these strongly pronounced
variations, that the plants have been caught in the act of progressing
towards a higher state of development? On the contrary, I should infer
from the mere fact of the parts in question differing or varying greatly
on the same plant, that such modifications were of extremely small
importance to the plants themselves, of whatever importance they may
generally be to us for our classifications. The acquisition of a useless
part can hardly be said to raise an organism in the natural scale; and
in the case of the imperfect, closed flowers, above described, if any
new principle has to be invoked, it must be one of retrogression rather
than of progression; and so it must be with many parasitic and degraded
animals. We are ignorant of the exciting cause of the above specified
modifications; but if the unknown cause were to act almost uniformly for
a length of time, we may infer that the result would be almost uniform;
and in this case all the individuals of the species would be modified in
the same manner.

From the fact of the above characters being unimportant for the welfare
of the species, any slight variations which occurred in them would
not have been accumulated and augmented through natural selection. A
structure which has been developed through long-continued selection,
when it ceases to be of service to a species, generally becomes
variable, as we see with rudimentary organs; for it will no longer be
regulated by this same power of selection. But when, from the nature
of the organism and of the conditions, modifications have been induced
which are unimportant for the welfare of the species, they may be, and
apparently often have been, transmitted in nearly the same state to
numerous, otherwise modified, descendants. It cannot have been of much
importance to the greater number of mammals, birds, or reptiles, whether
they were clothed with hair, feathers or scales; yet hair has been
transmitted to almost all mammals, feathers to all birds, and scales to
all true reptiles. A structure, whatever it may be, which is common to
many allied forms, is ranked by us as of high systematic importance,
and consequently is often assumed to be of high vital importance to the
species. Thus, as I am inclined to believe, morphological differences,
which we consider as important--such as the arrangement of the leaves,
the divisions of the flower or of the ovarium, the position of the
ovules, etc., first appeared in many cases as fluctuating variations,
which sooner or later became constant through the nature of the organism
and of the surrounding conditions, as well as through the intercrossing
of distinct individuals, but not through natural selection; for as these
morphological characters do not affect the welfare of the species, any
slight deviations in them could not have been governed or accumulated
through this latter agency. It is a strange result which we thus arrive
at, namely, that characters of slight vital importance to the species,
are the most important to the systematist; but, as we shall hereafter
see when we treat of the genetic principle of classification, this is by
no means so paradoxical as it may at first appear.

Although we have no good evidence of the existence in organic beings of
an innate tendency towards progressive development, yet this necessarily
follows, as I have attempted to show in the fourth chapter, through the
continued action of natural selection. For the best definition which
has ever been given of a high standard of organisation, is the degree
to which the parts have been specialised or differentiated; and natural
selection tends towards this end, inasmuch as the parts are thus enabled
to perform their functions more efficiently.

A distinguished zoologist, Mr. St. George Mivart, has recently collected
all the objections which have ever been advanced by myself and others
against the theory of natural selection, as propounded by Mr. Wallace
and myself, and has illustrated them with admirable art and force. When
thus marshalled, they make a formidable array; and as it forms no
part of Mr. Mivart's plan to give the various facts and considerations
opposed to his conclusions, no slight effort of reason and memory is
left to the reader, who may wish to weigh the evidence on both sides.
When discussing special cases, Mr. Mivart passes over the effects of the
increased use and disuse of parts, which I have always maintained to be
highly important, and have treated in my "Variation under Domestication"
at greater length than, as I believe, any other writer. He likewise
often assumes that I attribute nothing to variation, independently of
natural selection, whereas in the work just referred to I have collected
a greater number of well-established cases than can be found in any
other work known to me. My judgment may not be trustworthy, but after
reading with care Mr. Mivart's book, and comparing each section with
what I have said on the same head, I never before felt so strongly
convinced of the general truth of the conclusions here arrived at,
subject, of course, in so intricate a subject, to much partial error.

All Mr. Mivart's objections will be, or have been, considered in the
present volume. The one new point which appears to have struck many
readers is, "That natural selection is incompetent to account for the
incipient stages of useful structures." This subject is intimately
connected with that of the gradation of the characters, often
accompanied by a change of function, for instance, the conversion of a
swim-bladder into lungs, points which were discussed in the last chapter
under two headings. Nevertheless, I will here consider in some detail
several of the cases advanced by Mr. Mivart, selecting those which are
the most illustrative, as want of space prevents me from considering
all.

The giraffe, by its lofty stature, much elongated neck, fore legs, head
and tongue, has its whole frame beautifully adapted for browsing on the
higher branches of trees. It can thus obtain food beyond the reach of
the other Ungulata or hoofed animals inhabiting the same country; and
this must be a great advantage to it during dearths. The Niata cattle
in South America show us how small a difference in structure may make,
during such periods, a great difference in preserving an animal's
life. These cattle can browse as well as others on grass, but from the
projection of the lower jaw they cannot, during the often recurrent
droughts, browse on the twigs of trees, reeds, etc., to which food the
common cattle and horses are then driven; so that at these times the
Niatas perish, if not fed by their owners. Before coming to Mr. Mivart's
objections, it may be well to explain once again how natural selection
will act in all ordinary cases. Man has modified some of his animals,
without necessarily having attended to special points of structure, by
simply preserving and breeding from the fleetest individuals, as with
the race-horse and greyhound, or as with the game-cock, by breeding
from the victorious birds. So under nature with the nascent giraffe, the
individuals which were the highest browsers and were able during dearths
to reach even an inch or two above the others, will often have been
preserved; for they will have roamed over the whole country in search of
food. That the individuals of the same species often differ slightly
in the relative lengths of all their parts may be seen in many works of
natural history, in which careful measurements are given. These slight
proportional differences, due to the laws of growth and variation, are
not of the slightest use or importance to most species. But it will have
been otherwise with the nascent giraffe, considering its probable habits
of life; for those individuals which had some one part or several parts
of their bodies rather more elongated than usual, would generally
have survived. These will have intercrossed and left offspring, either
inheriting the same bodily peculiarities, or with a tendency to vary
again in the same manner; while the individuals less favoured in the
same respects will have been the most liable to perish.

We here see that there is no need to separate single pairs, as man does,
when he methodically improves a breed: natural selection will preserve
and thus separate all the superior individuals, allowing them freely
to intercross, and will destroy all the inferior individuals. By this
process long-continued, which exactly corresponds with what I have
called unconscious selection by man, combined, no doubt, in a most
important manner with the inherited effects of the increased use of
parts, it seems to me almost certain that an ordinary hoofed quadruped
might be converted into a giraffe.

To this conclusion Mr. Mivart brings forward two objections. One is
that the increased size of the body would obviously require an increased
supply of food, and he considers it as "very problematical whether the
disadvantages thence arising would not, in times of scarcity, more than
counterbalance the advantages." But as the giraffe does actually exist
in large numbers in Africa, and as some of the largest antelopes in the
world, taller than an ox, abound there, why should we doubt that, as
far as size is concerned, intermediate gradations could formerly have
existed there, subjected as now to severe dearths. Assuredly the being
able to reach, at each stage of increased size, to a supply of food,
left untouched by the other hoofed quadrupeds of the country, would have
been of some advantage to the nascent giraffe. Nor must we overlook the
fact, that increased bulk would act as a protection against almost all
beasts of prey excepting the lion; and against this animal, its tall
neck--and the taller the better--would, as Mr. Chauncey Wright has
remarked, serve as a watch-tower. It is from this cause, as Sir S. Baker
remarks, that no animal is more difficult to stalk than the giraffe.
This animal also uses its long neck as a means of offence or defence,
by violently swinging its head armed with stump-like horns. The
preservation of each species can rarely be determined by any one
advantage, but by the union of all, great and small.

Mr. Mivart then asks (and this is his second objection), if natural
selection be so potent, and if high browsing be so great an advantage,
why has not any other hoofed quadruped acquired a long neck and lofty
stature, besides the giraffe, and, in a lesser degree, the camel,
guanaco and macrauchenia? Or, again, why has not any member of the
group acquired a long proboscis? With respect to South Africa, which was
formerly inhabited by numerous herds of the giraffe, the answer is not
difficult, and can best be given by an illustration. In every meadow
in England, in which trees grow, we see the lower branches trimmed or
planed to an exact level by the browsing of the horses or cattle; and
what advantage would it be, for instance, to sheep, if kept there, to
acquire slightly longer necks? In every district some one kind of animal
will almost certainly be able to browse higher than the others; and it
is almost equally certain that this one kind alone could have its neck
elongated for this purpose, through natural selection and the effects
of increased use. In South Africa the competition for browsing on the
higher branches of the acacias and other trees must be between giraffe
and giraffe, and not with the other ungulate animals.

Why, in other quarters of the world, various animals belonging to this
same order have not acquired either an elongated neck or a proboscis,
cannot be distinctly answered; but it is as unreasonable to expect a
distinct answer to such a question as why some event in the history of
mankind did not occur in one country while it did in another. We are
ignorant with respect to the conditions which determine the numbers and
range of each species, and we cannot even conjecture what changes of
structure would be favourable to its increase in some new country. We
can, however, see in a general manner that various causes might have
interfered with the development of a long neck or proboscis. To reach
the foliage at a considerable height (without climbing, for which hoofed
animals are singularly ill-constructed) implies greatly increased
bulk of body; and we know that some areas support singularly few large
quadrupeds, for instance South America, though it is so luxuriant,
while South Africa abounds with them to an unparalleled degree. Why this
should be so we do not know; nor why the later tertiary periods should
have been much more favourable for their existence than the present
time. Whatever the causes may have been, we can see that certain
districts and times would have been much more favourable than others for
the development of so large a quadruped as the giraffe.

In order that an animal should acquire some structure specially and
largely developed, it is almost indispensable that several other parts
should be modified and coadapted. Although every part of the body varies
slightly, it does not follow that the necessary parts should always
vary in the right direction and to the right degree. With the different
species of our domesticated animals we know that the parts vary in
a different manner and degree, and that some species are much more
variable than others. Even if the fitting variations did arise, it
does not follow that natural selection would be able to act on them and
produce a structure which apparently would be beneficial to the species.
For instance, if the number of individuals existing in a country is
determined chiefly through destruction by beasts of prey--by external
or internal parasites, etc.--as seems often to be the case, then natural
selection will be able to do little, or will be greatly retarded, in
modifying any particular structure for obtaining food. Lastly, natural
selection is a slow process, and the same favourable conditions must
long endure in order that any marked effect should thus be produced.
Except by assigning such general and vague reasons, we cannot explain
why, in many quarters of the world, hoofed quadrupeds have not acquired
much elongated necks or other means for browsing on the higher branches
of trees.

Objections of the same nature as the foregoing have been advanced by
many writers. In each case various causes, besides the general ones just
indicated, have probably interfered with the acquisition through natural
selection of structures, which it is thought would be beneficial to
certain species. One writer asks, why has not the ostrich acquired the
power of flight? But a moment's reflection will show what an enormous
supply of food would be necessary to give to this bird of the desert
force to move its huge body through the air. Oceanic islands are
inhabited by bats and seals, but by no terrestrial mammals; yet as some
of these bats are peculiar species, they must have long inhabited their
present homes. Therefore Sir C. Lyell asks, and assigns certain reasons
in answer, why have not seals and bats given birth on such islands to
forms fitted to live on the land? But seals would necessarily be first
converted into terrestrial carnivorous animals of considerable size, and
bats into terrestrial insectivorous animals; for the former there would
be no prey; for the bats ground-insects would serve as food, but these
would already be largely preyed on by the reptiles or birds, which first
colonise and abound on most oceanic islands. Gradations of structure,
with each stage beneficial to a changing species, will be favoured only
under certain peculiar conditions. A strictly terrestrial animal, by
occasionally hunting for food in shallow water, then in streams or
lakes, might at last be converted into an animal so thoroughly aquatic
as to brave the open ocean. But seals would not find on oceanic
islands the conditions favourable to their gradual reconversion into a
terrestrial form. Bats, as formerly shown, probably acquired their
wings by at first gliding through the air from tree to tree, like the
so-called flying squirrels, for the sake of escaping from their enemies,
or for avoiding falls; but when the power of true flight had once been
acquired, it would never be reconverted back, at least for the above
purposes, into the less efficient power of gliding through the air.
Bats, might, indeed, like many birds, have had their wings greatly
reduced in size, or completely lost, through disuse; but in this case
it would be necessary that they should first have acquired the power of
running quickly on the ground, by the aid of their hind legs alone, so
as to compete with birds or other ground animals; and for such a change
a bat seems singularly ill-fitted. These conjectural remarks have been
made merely to show that a transition of structure, with each step
beneficial, is a highly complex affair; and that there is nothing
strange in a transition not having occurred in any particular case.

Lastly, more than one writer has asked why have some animals had their
mental powers more highly developed than others, as such development
would be advantageous to all? Why have not apes acquired the
intellectual powers of man? Various causes could be assigned; but as
they are conjectural, and their relative probability cannot be weighed,
it would be useless to give them. A definite answer to the latter
question ought not to be expected, seeing that no one can solve the
simpler problem, why, of two races of savages, one has risen higher in
the scale of civilisation than the other; and this apparently implies
increased brain power.

We will return to Mr. Mivart's other objections. Insects often resemble
for the sake of protection various objects, such as green or decayed
leaves, dead twigs, bits of lichen, flowers, spines, excrement of birds,
and living insects; but to this latter point I shall hereafter recur.
The resemblance is often wonderfully close, and is not confined to
colour, but extends to form, and even to the manner in which the insects
hold themselves. The caterpillars which project motionless like dead
twigs from the bushes on which they feed, offer an excellent instance of
a resemblance of this kind. The cases of the imitation of such objects
as the excrement of birds, are rare and exceptional. On this head,
Mr. Mivart remarks, "As, according to Mr. Darwin's theory, there is a
constant tendency to indefinite variation, and as the minute incipient
variations will be in ALL DIRECTIONS, they must tend to neutralize
each other, and at first to form such unstable modifications that it is
difficult, if not impossible, to see how such indefinite oscillations
of infinitesimal beginnings can ever build up a sufficiently appreciable
resemblance to a leaf, bamboo, or other object, for natural selection to
seize upon and perpetuate."

But in all the foregoing cases the insects in their original state
no doubt presented some rude and accidental resemblance to an object
commonly found in the stations frequented by them. Nor is this at
all improbable, considering the almost infinite number of surrounding
objects and the diversity in form and colour of the hosts of insects
which exist. As some rude resemblance is necessary for the first start,
we can understand how it is that the larger and higher animals do not
(with the exception, as far as I know, of one fish) resemble for the
sake of protection special objects, but only the surface which commonly
surrounds them, and this chiefly in colour. Assuming that an insect
originally happened to resemble in some degree a dead twig or a decayed
leaf, and that it varied slightly in many ways, then all the variations
which rendered the insect at all more like any such object, and thus
favoured its escape, would be preserved, while other variations would
be neglected and ultimately lost; or, if they rendered the insect at
all less like the imitated object, they would be eliminated. There would
indeed be force in Mr. Mivart's objection, if we were to attempt to
account for the above resemblances, independently of natural selection,
through mere fluctuating variability; but as the case stands there is
none.

Nor can I see any force in Mr. Mivart's difficulty with respect to "the
last touches of perfection in the mimicry;" as in the case given by
Mr. Wallace, of a walking-stick insect (Ceroxylus laceratus), which
resembles "a stick grown over by a creeping moss or jungermannia."
So close was this resemblance, that a native Dyak maintained that the
foliaceous excrescences were really moss. Insects are preyed on by birds
and other enemies whose sight is probably sharper than ours, and
every grade in resemblance which aided an insect to escape notice or
detection, would tend towards its preservation; and the more perfect the
resemblance so much the better for the insect. Considering the nature
of the differences between the species in the group which includes
the above Ceroxylus, there is nothing improbable in this insect having
varied in the irregularities on its surface, and in these having become
more or less green-coloured; for in every group the characters which
differ in the several species are the most apt to vary, while the
generic characters, or those common to all the species, are the most
constant.

The Greenland whale is one of the most wonderful animals in the world,
and the baleen, or whalebone, one of its greatest peculiarities. The
baleen consists of a row, on each side of the upper jaw, of about 300
plates or laminae, which stand close together transversely to the longer
axis of the mouth. Within the main row there are some subsidiary rows.
The extremities and inner margins of all the plates are frayed into
stiff bristles, which clothe the whole gigantic palate, and serve to
strain or sift the water, and thus to secure the minute prey on which
these great animals subsist. The middle and longest lamina in the
Greenland whale is ten, twelve, or even fifteen feet in length; but in
the different species of Cetaceans there are gradations in length; the
middle lamina being in one species, according to Scoresby, four feet,
in another three, in another eighteen inches, and in the Balaenoptera
rostrata only about nine inches in length. The quality of the whalebone
also differs in the different species.

With respect to the baleen, Mr. Mivart remarks that if it "had once
attained such a size and development as to be at all useful, then
its preservation and augmentation within serviceable limits would be
promoted by natural selection alone. But how to obtain the beginning of
such useful development?" In answer, it may be asked, why should not
the early progenitors of the whales with baleen have possessed a mouth
constructed something like the lamellated beak of a duck? Ducks,
like whales, subsist by sifting the mud and water; and the family has
sometimes been called Criblatores, or sifters. I hope that I may not
be misconstrued into saying that the progenitors of whales did actually
possess mouths lamellated like the beak of a duck. I wish only to show
that this is not incredible, and that the immense plates of baleen in
the Greenland whale might have been developed from such lamellae by
finely graduated steps, each of service to its possessor.

The beak of a shoveller-duck (Spatula clypeata) is a more beautiful
and complex structure than the mouth of a whale. The upper mandible is
furnished on each side (in the specimen examined by me) with a row or
comb formed of 188 thin, elastic lamellae, obliquely bevelled so as to
be pointed, and placed transversely to the longer axis of the mouth.
They arise from the palate, and are attached by flexible membrane to
the sides of the mandible. Those standing towards the middle are the
longest, being about one-third of an inch in length, and they project
fourteen one-hundredths of an inch beneath the edge. At their bases
there is a short subsidiary row of obliquely transverse lamellae. In
these several respects they resemble the plates of baleen in the mouth
of a whale. But towards the extremity of the beak they differ much, as
they project inward, instead of straight downward. The entire head of
the shoveller, though incomparably less bulky, is about one-eighteenth
of the length of the head of a moderately large Balaenoptera rostrata,
in which species the baleen is only nine inches long; so that if we were
to make the head of the shoveller as long as that of the Balaenoptera,
the lamellae would be six inches in length, that is, two-thirds of the
length of the baleen in this species of whale. The lower mandible of
the shoveller-duck is furnished with lamellae of equal length with these
above, but finer; and in being thus furnished it differs conspicuously
from the lower jaw of a whale, which is destitute of baleen. On the
other hand, the extremities of these lower lamellae are frayed into
fine bristly points, so that they thus curiously resemble the plates
of baleen. In the genus Prion, a member of the distinct family of the
Petrels, the upper mandible alone is furnished with lamellae, which are
well developed and project beneath the margin; so that the beak of this
bird resembles in this respect the mouth of a whale.

From the highly developed structure of the shoveller's beak we may
proceed (as I have learned from information and specimens sent to me by
Mr. Salvin), without any great break, as far as fitness for sifting
is concerned, through the beak of the Merganetta armata, and in some
respects through that of the Aix sponsa, to the beak of the common
duck. In this latter species the lamellae are much coarser than in the
shoveller, and are firmly attached to the sides of the mandible; they
are only about fifty in number on each side, and do not project at
all beneath the margin. They are square-topped, and are edged with
translucent, hardish tissue, as if for crushing food. The edges of the
lower mandible are crossed by numerous fine ridges, which project very
little. Although the beak is thus very inferior as a sifter to that of
a shoveller, yet this bird, as every one knows, constantly uses it for
this purpose. There are other species, as I hear from Mr. Salvin, in
which the lamellae are considerably less developed than in the common
duck; but I do not know whether they use their beaks for sifting the
water.

Turning to another group of the same family. In the Egyptian goose
(Chenalopex) the beak closely resembles that of the common duck; but the
lamellae are not so numerous, nor so distinct from each other, nor do
they project so much inward; yet this goose, as I am informed by Mr. E.
Bartlett, "uses its bill like a duck by throwing the water out at the
corners." Its chief food, however, is grass, which it crops like the
common goose. In this latter bird the lamellae of the upper mandible
are much coarser than in the common duck, almost confluent, about
twenty-seven in number on each side, and terminating upward in
teeth-like knobs. The palate is also covered with hard rounded knobs.
The edges of the lower mandible are serrated with teeth much more
prominent, coarser and sharper than in the duck. The common goose does
not sift the water, but uses its beak exclusively for tearing or cutting
herbage, for which purpose it is so well fitted that it can crop grass
closer than almost any other animal. There are other species of geese,
as I hear from Mr. Bartlett, in which the lamellae are less developed
than in the common goose.

We thus see that a member of the duck family, with a beak constructed
like that of a common goose and adapted solely for grazing, or even
a member with a beak having less well-developed lamellae, might be
converted by small changes into a species like the Egyptian goose--this
into one like the common duck--and, lastly, into one like the shoveller,
provided with a beak almost exclusively adapted for sifting the water;
for this bird could hardly use any part of its beak, except the hooked
tip, for seizing or tearing solid food. The beak of a goose, as I may
add, might also be converted by small changes into one provided with
prominent, recurved teeth, like those of the Merganser (a member of the
same family), serving for the widely different purpose of securing live
fish.

Returning to the whales. The Hyperoodon bidens is destitute of true
teeth in an efficient condition, but its palate is roughened, according
to Lacepede, with small unequal, hard points of horn. There is,
therefore, nothing improbable in supposing that some early Cetacean form
was provided with similar points of horn on the palate, but rather more
regularly placed, and which, like the knobs on the beak of the goose,
aided it in seizing or tearing its food. If so, it will hardly be denied
that the points might have been converted through variation and natural
selection into lamellae as well-developed as those of the Egyptian
goose, in which case they would have been used both for seizing objects
and for sifting the water; then into lamellae like those of the domestic
duck; and so onward, until they became as well constructed as those of
the shoveller, in which case they would have served exclusively as
a sifting apparatus. From this stage, in which the lamellae would be
two-thirds of the length of the plates of baleen in the Balaenoptera
rostrata, gradations, which may be observed in still-existing Cetaceans,
lead us onward to the enormous plates of baleen in the Greenland whale.
Nor is there the least reason to doubt that each step in this scale
might have been as serviceable to certain ancient Cetaceans, with
the functions of the parts slowly changing during the progress of
development, as are the gradations in the beaks of the different
existing members of the duck-family. We should bear in mind that each
species of duck is subjected to a severe struggle for existence, and
that the structure of every part of its frame must be well adapted to
its conditions of life.

The Pleuronectidae, or Flat-fish, are remarkable for their asymmetrical
bodies. They rest on one side--in the greater number of species on the
left, but in some on the right side; and occasionally reversed adult
specimens occur. The lower, or resting-surface, resembles at first sight
the ventral surface of an ordinary fish; it is of a white colour, less
developed in many ways than the upper side, with the lateral fins often
of smaller size. But the eyes offer the most remarkable peculiarity; for
they are both placed on the upper side of the head. During early youth,
however, they stand opposite to each other, and the whole body is then
symmetrical, with both sides equally coloured. Soon the eye proper to
the lower side begins to glide slowly round the head to the upper side;
but does not pass right through the skull, as was formerly thought to be
the case. It is obvious that unless the lower eye did thus travel round,
it could not be used by the fish while lying in its habitual position on
one side. The lower eye would, also, have been liable to be abraded by
the sandy bottom. That the Pleuronectidae are admirably adapted by
their flattened and asymmetrical structure for their habits of life,
is manifest from several species, such as soles, flounders, etc., being
extremely common. The chief advantages thus gained seem to be protection
from their enemies, and facility for feeding on the ground. The
different members, however, of the family present, as Schiodte
remarks, "a long series of forms exhibiting a gradual transition from
Hippoglossus pinguis, which does not in any considerable degree alter
the shape in which it leaves the ovum, to the soles, which are entirely
thrown to one side."

Mr. Mivart has taken up this case, and remarks that a sudden spontaneous
transformation in the position of the eyes is hardly conceivable, in
which I quite agree with him. He then adds: "If the transit was gradual,
then how such transit of one eye a minute fraction of the journey
towards the other side of the head could benefit the individual
is, indeed, far from clear. It seems, even, that such an incipient
transformation must rather have been injurious." But he might have found
an answer to this objection in the excellent observations published
in 1867 by Malm. The Pleuronectidae, while very young and still
symmetrical, with their eyes standing on opposite sides of the head,
cannot long retain a vertical position, owing to the excessive depth of
their bodies, the small size of their lateral fins, and to their being
destitute of a swim-bladder. Hence, soon growing tired, they fall to
the bottom on one side. While thus at rest they often twist, as Malm
observed, the lower eye upward, to see above them; and they do this so
vigorously that the eye is pressed hard against the upper part of the
orbit. The forehead between the eyes consequently becomes, as could be
plainly seen, temporarily contracted in breadth. On one occasion Malm
saw a young fish raise and depress the lower eye through an angular
distance of about seventy degrees.

We should remember that the skull at this early age is cartilaginous and
flexible, so that it readily yields to muscular action. It is also known
with the higher animals, even after early youth, that the skull
yields and is altered in shape, if the skin or muscles be permanently
contracted through disease or some accident. With long-eared rabbits,
if one ear flops forward and downward, its weight drags forward all the
bones of the skull on the same side, of which I have given a figure.
Malm states that the newly-hatched young of perches, salmon, and several
other symmetrical fishes, have the habit of occasionally resting on
one side at the bottom; and he has observed that they often then
strain their lower eyes so as to look upward; and their skulls are thus
rendered rather crooked. These fishes, however, are soon able to hold
themselves in a vertical position, and no permanent effect is thus
produced. With the Pleuronectidae, on the other hand, the older they
grow the more habitually they rest on one side, owing to the increasing
flatness of their bodies, and a permanent effect is thus produced on the
form of the head, and on the position of the eyes. Judging from analogy,
the tendency to distortion would no doubt be increased through the
principle of inheritance. Schiodte believes, in opposition to some other
naturalists, that the Pleuronectidae are not quite symmetrical even
in the embryo; and if this be so, we could understand how it is that
certain species, while young, habitually fall over and rest on the left
side, and other species on the right side. Malm adds, in confirmation
of the above view, that the adult Trachypterus arcticus, which is not a
member of the Pleuronectidae, rests on its left side at the bottom, and
swims diagonally through the water; and in this fish, the two sides
of the head are said to be somewhat dissimilar. Our great authority
on Fishes, Dr. Gunther, concludes his abstract of Malm's paper, by
remarking that "the author gives a very simple explanation of the
abnormal condition of the Pleuronectoids."

We thus see that the first stages of the transit of the eye from one
side of the head to the other, which Mr. Mivart considers would be
injurious, may be attributed to the habit, no doubt beneficial to the
individual and to the species, of endeavouring to look upward with both
eyes, while resting on one side at the bottom. We may also attribute to
the inherited effects of use the fact of the mouth in several kinds
of flat-fish being bent towards the lower surface, with the jaw bones
stronger and more effective on this, the eyeless side of the head, than
on the other, for the sake, as Dr. Traquair supposes, of feeding with
ease on the ground. Disuse, on the other hand, will account for the less
developed condition of the whole inferior half of the body, including
the lateral fins; though Yarrel thinks that the reduced size of these
fins is advantageous to the fish, as "there is so much less room for
their action than with the larger fins above." Perhaps the lesser number
of teeth in the proportion of four to seven in the upper halves of the
two jaws of the plaice, to twenty-five to thirty in the lower halves,
may likewise be accounted for by disuse. From the colourless state of
the ventral surface of most fishes and of many other animals, we may
reasonably suppose that the absence of colour in flat-fish on the side,
whether it be the right or left, which is under-most, is due to the
exclusion of light. But it cannot be supposed that the peculiar speckled
appearance of the upper side of the sole, so like the sandy bed of the
sea, or the power in some species, as recently shown by Pouchet, of
changing their colour in accordance with the surrounding surface, or the
presence of bony tubercles on the upper side of the turbot, are due to
the action of the light. Here natural selection has probably come into
play, as well as in adapting the general shape of the body of these
fishes, and many other peculiarities, to their habits of life. We should
keep in mind, as I have before insisted, that the inherited effects
of the increased use of parts, and perhaps of their disuse, will be
strengthened by natural selection. For all spontaneous variations in the
right direction will thus be preserved; as will those individuals
which inherit in the highest degree the effects of the increased and
beneficial use of any part. How much to attribute in each particular
case to the effects of use, and how much to natural selection, it seems
impossible to decide.

I may give another instance of a structure which apparently owes its
origin exclusively to use or habit. The extremity of the tail in
some American monkeys has been converted into a wonderfully perfect
prehensile organ, and serves as a fifth hand. A reviewer, who agrees
with Mr. Mivart in every detail, remarks on this structure: "It is
impossible to believe that in any number of ages the first slight
incipient tendency to grasp could preserve the lives of the individuals
possessing it, or favour their chance of having and of rearing
offspring." But there is no necessity for any such belief. Habit, and
this almost implies that some benefit great or small is thus derived,
would in all probability suffice for the work. Brehm saw the young of
an African monkey (Cercopithecus) clinging to the under surface of their
mother by their hands, and at the same time they hooked their little
tails round that of their mother. Professor Henslow kept in confinement
some harvest mice (Mus messorius) which do not possess a structurally
prehensive tail; but he frequently observed that they curled their
tails round the branches of a bush placed in the cage, and thus aided
themselves in climbing. I have received an analogous account from Dr.
Gunther, who has seen a mouse thus suspend itself. If the harvest mouse
had been more strictly arboreal, it would perhaps have had its tail
rendered structurally prehensile, as is the case with some members of
the same order. Why Cercopithecus, considering its habits while young,
has not become thus provided, it would be difficult to say. It is,
however, possible that the long tail of this monkey may be of more
service to it as a balancing organ in making its prodigious leaps, than
as a prehensile organ.

The mammary glands are common to the whole class of mammals, and are
indispensable for their existence; they must, therefore, have been
developed at an extremely remote period, and we can know nothing
positively about their manner of development. Mr. Mivart asks: "Is it
conceivable that the young of any animal was ever saved from destruction
by accidentally sucking a drop of scarcely nutritious fluid from an
accidentally hypertrophied cutaneous gland of its mother? And even
if one was so, what chance was there of the perpetuation of such a
variation?" But the case is not here put fairly. It is admitted by most
evolutionists that mammals are descended from a marsupial form; and
if so, the mammary glands will have been at first developed within
the marsupial sack. In the case of the fish (Hippocampus) the eggs are
hatched, and the young are reared for a time, within a sack of this
nature; and an American naturalist, Mr. Lockwood, believes from what he
has seen of the development of the young, that they are nourished by
a secretion from the cutaneous glands of the sack. Now, with the
early progenitors of mammals, almost before they deserved to be thus
designated, is it not at least possible that the young might have been
similarly nourished? And in this case, the individuals which secreted a
fluid, in some degree or manner the most nutritious, so as to partake of
the nature of milk, would in the long run have reared a larger number
of well-nourished offspring, than would the individuals which secreted a
poorer fluid; and thus the cutaneous glands, which are the homologues of
the mammary glands, would have been improved or rendered more effective.
It accords with the widely extended principle of specialisation, that
the glands over a certain space of the sack should have become more
highly developed than the remainder; and they would then have formed a
breast, but at first without a nipple, as we see in the Ornithorhyncus,
at the base of the mammalian series. Through what agency the glands over
a certain space became more highly specialised than the others, I will
not pretend to decide, whether in part through compensation of growth,
the effects of use, or of natural selection.

The development of the mammary glands would have been of no service, and
could not have been affected through natural selection, unless the young
at the same time were able to partake of the secretion. There is no
greater difficulty in understanding how young mammals have instinctively
learned to suck the breast, than in understanding how unhatched chickens
have learned to break the egg-shell by tapping against it with their
specially adapted beaks; or how a few hours after leaving the shell they
have learned to pick up grains of food. In such cases the most probable
solution seems to be, that the habit was at first acquired by practice
at a more advanced age, and afterwards transmitted to the offspring
at an earlier age. But the young kangaroo is said not to suck, only to
cling to the nipple of its mother, who has the power of injecting milk
into the mouth of her helpless, half-formed offspring. On this head
Mr. Mivart remarks: "Did no special provision exist, the young one must
infallibly be choked by the intrusion of the milk into the wind-pipe.
But there IS a special provision. The larynx is so elongated that
it rises up into the posterior end of the nasal passage, and is thus
enabled to give free entrance to the air for the lungs, while the milk
passes harmlessly on each side of this elongated larynx, and so safely
attains the gullet behind it." Mr. Mivart then asks how did natural
selection remove in the adult kangaroo (and in most other mammals, on
the assumption that they are descended from a marsupial form), "this at
least perfectly innocent and harmless structure?" It may be suggested
in answer that the voice, which is certainly of high importance to many
animals, could hardly have been used with full force as long as the
larynx entered the nasal passage; and Professor Flower has suggested
to me that this structure would have greatly interfered with an animal
swallowing solid food.

We will now turn for a short space to the lower divisions of the
animal kingdom. The Echinodermata (star-fishes, sea-urchins, etc.) are
furnished with remarkable organs, called pedicellariae, which consist,
when well developed, of a tridactyle forceps--that is, of one formed of
three serrated arms, neatly fitting together and placed on the summit of
a flexible stem, moved by muscles. These forceps can seize firmly hold
of any object; and Alexander Agassiz has seen an Echinus or sea-urchin
rapidly passing particles of excrement from forceps to forceps down
certain lines of its body, in order that its shell should not be fouled.
But there is no doubt that besides removing dirt of all kinds, they
subserve other functions; and one of these apparently is defence.

With respect to these organs, Mr. Mivart, as on so many previous
occasions, asks: "What would be the utility of the FIRST RUDIMENTARY
BEGINNINGS of such structures, and how could such insipient buddings
have ever preserved the life of a single Echinus?" He adds, "not even
the SUDDEN development of the snapping action would have been beneficial
without the freely movable stalk, nor could the latter have been
efficient without the snapping jaws, yet no minute, nearly indefinite
variations could simultaneously evolve these complex co-ordinations of
structure; to deny this seems to do no less than to affirm a startling
paradox." Paradoxical as this may appear to Mr. Mivart, tridactyle
forcepses, immovably fixed at the base, but capable of a snapping
action, certainly exist on some star-fishes; and this is intelligible
if they serve, at least in part, as a means of defence. Mr. Agassiz, to
whose great kindness I am indebted for much information on the subject,
informs me that there are other star-fishes, in which one of the three
arms of the forceps is reduced to a support for the other two; and
again, other genera in which the third arm is completely lost. In
Echinoneus, the shell is described by M. Perrier as bearing two kinds of
pedicellariae, one resembling those of Echinus, and the other those of
Spatangus; and such cases are always interesting as affording the means
of apparently sudden transitions, through the abortion of one of the two
states of an organ.

With respect to the steps by which these curious organs have been
evolved, Mr. Agassiz infers from his own researches and those of Mr.
Muller, that both in star-fishes and sea-urchins the pedicellariae must
undoubtedly be looked at as modified spines. This may be inferred from
their manner of development in the individual, as well as from a long
and perfect series of gradations in different species and genera, from
simple granules to ordinary spines, to perfect tridactyle pedicellariae.
The gradation extends even to the manner in which ordinary spines
and the pedicellariae, with their supporting calcareous rods, are
articulated to the shell. In certain genera of star-fishes, "the very
combinations needed to show that the pedicellariae are only modified
branching spines" may be found. Thus we have fixed spines, with three
equi-distant, serrated, movable branches, articulated to near their
bases; and higher up, on the same spine, three other movable branches.
Now when the latter arise from the summit of a spine they form, in fact,
a rude tridactyle pedicellariae, and such may be seen on the same spine
together with the three lower branches. In this case the identity in
nature between the arms of the pedicellariae and the movable branches
of a spine, is unmistakable. It is generally admitted that the ordinary
spines serve as a protection; and if so, there can be no reason to doubt
that those furnished with serrated and movable branches likewise serve
for the same purpose; and they would thus serve still more effectively
as soon as by meeting together they acted as a prehensile or snapping
apparatus. Thus every gradation, from an ordinary fixed spine to a fixed
pedicellariae, would be of service.

In certain genera of star-fishes these organs, instead of being fixed
or borne on an immovable support, are placed on the summit of a flexible
and muscular, though short, stem; and in this case they probably
subserve some additional function besides defence. In the sea-urchins
the steps can be followed by which a fixed spine becomes articulated to
the shell, and is thus rendered movable. I wish I had space here to
give a fuller abstract of Mr. Agassiz's interesting observations on the
development of the pedicellariae. All possible gradations, as he adds,
may likewise be found between the pedicellariae of the star-fishes and
the hooks of the Ophiurians, another group of the Echinodermata; and
again between the pedicellariae of sea-urchins and the anchors of the
Holothuriae, also belonging to the same great class.

Certain compound animals, or zoophytes, as they have been termed, namely
the Polyzoa, are provided with curious organs called avicularia. These
differ much in structure in the different species. In their most perfect
condition they curiously resemble the head and beak of a vulture in
miniature, seated on a neck and capable of movement, as is likewise the
lower jaw or mandible. In one species observed by me, all the avicularia
on the same branch often moved simultaneously backwards and forwards,
with the lower jaw widely open, through an angle of about 90 degrees,
in the course of five seconds; and their movement caused the whole
polyzoary to tremble. When the jaws are touched with a needle they seize
it so firmly that the branch can thus be shaken.

Mr. Mivart adduces this case, chiefly on account of the supposed
difficulty of organs, namely the avicularia of the Polyzoa and the
pedicellariae of the Echinodermata, which he considers as "essentially
similar," having been developed through natural selection in widely
distinct divisions of the animal kingdom. But, as far as structure is
concerned, I can see no similarity between tridactyle pedicellariae and
avicularia. The latter resembles somewhat more closely the chelae or
pincers of Crustaceans; and Mr. Mivart might have adduced with equal
appropriateness this resemblance as a special difficulty, or even their
resemblance to the head and beak of a bird. The avicularia are believed
by Mr. Busk, Dr. Smitt and Dr. Nitsche--naturalists who have carefully
studied this group--to be homologous with the zooids and their
cells which compose the zoophyte, the movable lip or lid of the cell
corresponding with the lower and movable mandible of the avicularium.
Mr. Busk, however, does not know of any gradations now existing between
a zooid and an avicularium. It is therefore impossible to conjecture by
what serviceable gradations the one could have been converted into the
other, but it by no means follows from this that such gradations have
not existed.

As the chelae of Crustaceans resemble in some degree the avicularia of
Polyzoa, both serving as pincers, it may be worth while to show that
with the former a long series of serviceable gradations still exists. In
the first and simplest stage, the terminal segment of a limb shuts down
either on the square summit of the broad penultimate segment, or against
one whole side, and is thus enabled to catch hold of an object, but the
limb still serves as an organ of locomotion. We next find one corner of
the broad penultimate segment slightly prominent, sometimes furnished
with irregular teeth, and against these the terminal segment shuts down.
By an increase in the size of this projection, with its shape, as well
as that of the terminal segment, slightly modified and improved, the
pincers are rendered more and more perfect, until we have at last
an instrument as efficient as the chelae of a lobster. And all these
gradations can be actually traced.

Besides the avicularia, the polyzoa possess curious organs called
vibracula. These generally consist of long bristles, capable of movement
and easily excited. In one species examined by me the vibracula were
slightly curved and serrated along the outer margin, and all of them on
the same polyzoary often moved simultaneously; so that, acting like
long oars, they swept a branch rapidly across the object-glass of my
microscope. When a branch was placed on its face, the vibracula became
entangled, and they made violent efforts to free themselves. They are
supposed to serve as a defence, and may be seen, as Mr. Busk remarks,
"to sweep slowly and carefully over the surface of the polyzoary,
removing what might be noxious to the delicate inhabitants of the cells
when their tentacula are protruded." The avicularia, like the vibracula,
probably serve for defence, but they also catch and kill small living
animals, which, it is believed, are afterwards swept by the currents
within reach of the tentacula of the zooids. Some species are provided
with avicularia and vibracula, some with avicularia alone and a few with
vibracula alone.

It is not easy to imagine two objects more widely different in
appearance than a bristle or vibraculum, and an avicularium like the
head of a bird; yet they are almost certainly homologous and have been
developed from the same common source, namely a zooid with its cell.
Hence, we can understand how it is that these organs graduate in some
cases, as I am informed by Mr. Busk, into each other. Thus, with the
avicularia of several species of Lepralia, the movable mandible is so
much produced and is so like a bristle that the presence of the upper
or fixed beak alone serves to determine its avicularian nature. The
vibracula may have been directly developed from the lips of the cells,
without having passed through the avicularian stage; but it seems more
probable that they have passed through this stage, as during the early
stages of the transformation, the other parts of the cell, with the
included zooid, could hardly have disappeared at once. In many cases the
vibracula have a grooved support at the base, which seems to represent
the fixed beak; though this support in some species is quite absent.
This view of the development of the vibracula, if trustworthy, is
interesting; for supposing that all the species provided with avicularia
had become extinct, no one with the most vivid imagination would ever
have thought that the vibracula had originally existed as part of an
organ, resembling a bird's head, or an irregular box or hood. It is
interesting to see two such widely different organs developed from a
common origin; and as the movable lip of the cell serves as a protection
to the zooid, there is no difficulty in believing that all the
gradations, by which the lip became converted first into the lower
mandible of an avicularium, and then into an elongated bristle,
likewise served as a protection in different ways and under different
circumstances.

In the vegetable kingdom Mr. Mivart only alludes to two cases, namely
the structure of the flowers of orchids, and the movements of climbing
plants. With respect to the former, he says: "The explanation of their
ORIGIN is deemed thoroughly unsatisfactory--utterly insufficient to
explain the incipient, infinitesimal beginnings of structures which are
of utility only when they are considerably developed." As I have fully
treated this subject in another work, I will here give only a few
details on one alone of the most striking peculiarities of the flowers
of orchids, namely, their pollinia. A pollinium, when highly developed,
consists of a mass of pollen-grains, affixed to an elastic foot-stalk
or caudicle, and this to a little mass of extremely viscid matter. The
pollinia are by this means transported by insects from one flower to
the stigma of another. In some orchids there is no caudicle to the
pollen-masses, and the grains are merely tied together by fine threads;
but as these are not confined to orchids, they need not here be
considered; yet I may mention that at the base of the orchidaceous
series, in Cypripedium, we can see how the threads were probably
first developed. In other orchids the threads cohere at one end of the
pollen-masses; and this forms the first or nascent trace of a caudicle.
That this is the origin of the caudicle, even when of considerable
length and highly developed, we have good evidence in the aborted
pollen-grains which can sometimes be detected embedded within the
central and solid parts.

With respect to the second chief peculiarity, namely, the little mass
of viscid matter attached to the end of the caudicle, a long series of
gradations can be specified, each of plain service to the plant. In most
flowers belonging to other orders the stigma secretes a little viscid
matter. Now, in certain orchids similar viscid matter is secreted, but
in much larger quantities by one alone of the three stigmas; and this
stigma, perhaps in consequence of the copious secretion, is rendered
sterile. When an insect visits a flower of this kind, it rubs off some
of the viscid matter, and thus at the same time drags away some of the
pollen-grains. From this simple condition, which differs but
little from that of a multitude of common flowers, there are endless
gradations--to species in which the pollen-mass terminates in a very
short, free caudicle--to others in which the caudicle becomes firmly
attached to the viscid matter, with the sterile stigma itself much
modified. In this latter case we have a pollinium in its most highly
developed and perfect condition. He who will carefully examine the
flowers of orchids for himself will not deny the existence of the above
series of gradations--from a mass of pollen-grains merely tied together
by threads, with the stigma differing but little from that of the
ordinary flowers, to a highly complex pollinium, admirably adapted for
transportal by insects; nor will he deny that all the gradations in
the several species are admirably adapted in relation to the general
structure of each flower for its fertilisation by different insects. In
this, and in almost every other case, the enquiry may be pushed further
backwards; and it may be asked how did the stigma of an ordinary flower
become viscid, but as we do not know the full history of any one
group of beings, it is as useless to ask, as it is hopeless to attempt
answering, such questions.

We will now turn to climbing plants. These can be arranged in a long
series, from those which simply twine round a support, to those which I
have called leaf-climbers, and to those provided with tendrils. In these
two latter classes the stems have generally, but not always, lost the
power of twining, though they retain the power of revolving, which the
tendrils likewise possess. The gradations from leaf-climbers to tendril
bearers are wonderfully close, and certain plants may be differently
placed in either class. But in ascending the series from simple twiners
to leaf-climbers, an important quality is added, namely sensitiveness
to a touch, by which means the foot-stalks of the leaves or flowers, or
these modified and converted into tendrils, are excited to bend round
and clasp the touching object. He who will read my memoir on these
plants will, I think, admit that all the many gradations in function and
structure between simple twiners and tendril-bearers are in each case
beneficial in a high degree to the species. For instance, it is clearly
a great advantage to a twining plant to become a leaf-climber; and it is
probable that every twiner which possessed leaves with long foot-stalks
would have been developed into a leaf-climber, if the foot-stalks had
possessed in any slight degree the requisite sensitiveness to a touch.

As twining is the simplest means of ascending a support, and forms the
basis of our series, it may naturally be asked how did plants acquire
this power in an incipient degree, afterwards to be improved and
increased through natural selection. The power of twining depends,
firstly, on the stems while young being extremely flexible (but this
is a character common to many plants which are not climbers); and,
secondly, on their continually bending to all points of the compass, one
after the other in succession, in the same order. By this movement the
stems are inclined to all sides, and are made to move round and round.
As soon as the lower part of a stem strikes against any object and is
stopped, the upper part still goes on bending and revolving, and thus
necessarily twines round and up the support. The revolving movement
ceases after the early growth of each shoot. As in many widely separated
families of plants, single species and single genera possess the power
of revolving, and have thus become twiners, they must have independently
acquired it, and cannot have inherited it from a common progenitor.
Hence, I was led to predict that some slight tendency to a movement of
this kind would be found to be far from uncommon with plants which did
not climb; and that this had afforded the basis for natural selection
to work on and improve. When I made this prediction, I knew of only one
imperfect case, namely, of the young flower-peduncles of a Maurandia
which revolved slightly and irregularly, like the stems of twining
plants, but without making any use of this habit. Soon afterwards
Fritz Muller discovered that the young stems of an Alisma and of a
Linum--plants which do not climb and are widely separated in the natural
system--revolved plainly, though irregularly, and he states that he has
reason to suspect that this occurs with some other plants. These slight
movements appear to be of no service to the plants in question; anyhow,
they are not of the least use in the way of climbing, which is the point
that concerns us. Nevertheless we can see that if the stems of these
plants had been flexible, and if under the conditions to which they are
exposed it had profited them to ascend to a height, then the habit
of slightly and irregularly revolving might have been increased and
utilised through natural selection, until they had become converted into
well-developed twining species.

With respect to the sensitiveness of the foot-stalks of the leaves and
flowers, and of tendrils, nearly the same remarks are applicable as in
the case of the revolving movements of twining plants. As a vast number
of species, belonging to widely distinct groups, are endowed with this
kind of sensitiveness, it ought to be found in a nascent condition in
many plants which have not become climbers. This is the case: I observed
that the young flower-peduncles of the above Maurandia curved themselves
a little towards the side which was touched. Morren found in several
species of Oxalis that the leaves and their foot-stalks moved,
especially after exposure to a hot sun, when they were gently and
repeatedly touched, or when the plant was shaken. I repeated these
observations on some other species of Oxalis with the same result; in
some of them the movement was distinct, but was best seen in the young
leaves; in others it was extremely slight. It is a more important fact
that according to the high authority of Hofmeister, the young shoots and
leaves of all plants move after being shaken; and with climbing plants
it is, as we know, only during the early stages of growth that the
foot-stalks and tendrils are sensitive.

It is scarcely possible that the above slight movements, due to a touch
or shake, in the young and growing organs of plants, can be of any
functional importance to them. But plants possess, in obedience to
various stimuli, powers of movement, which are of manifest importance
to them; for instance, towards and more rarely from the light--in
opposition to, and more rarely in the direction of, the attraction
of gravity. When the nerves and muscles of an animal are excited by
galvanism or by the absorption of strychnine, the consequent movements
may be called an incidental result, for the nerves and muscles have not
been rendered specially sensitive to these stimuli. So with plants it
appears that, from having the power of movement in obedience to certain
stimuli, they are excited in an incidental manner by a touch, or by
being shaken. Hence there is no great difficulty in admitting that in
the case of leaf-climbers and tendril-bearers, it is this tendency which
has been taken advantage of and increased through natural selection. It
is, however, probable, from reasons which I have assigned in my memoir,
that this will have occurred only with plants which had already acquired
the power of revolving, and had thus become twiners.

I have already endeavoured to explain how plants became twiners,
namely, by the increase of a tendency to slight and irregular revolving
movements, which were at first of no use to them; this movement, as
well as that due to a touch or shake, being the incidental result of
the power of moving, gained for other and beneficial purposes. Whether,
during the gradual development of climbing plants, natural selection
has been aided by the inherited effects of use, I will not pretend to
decide; but we know that certain periodical movements, for instance the
so-called sleep of plants, are governed by habit.

I have now considered enough, perhaps more than enough, of the cases,
selected with care by a skilful naturalist, to prove that natural
selection is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of
useful structures; and I have shown, as I hope, that there is no great
difficulty on this head. A good opportunity has thus been afforded for
enlarging a little on gradations of structure, often associated with
strange functions--an important subject, which was not treated at
sufficient length in the former editions of this work. I will now
briefly recapitulate the foregoing cases.

With the giraffe, the continued preservation of the individuals of some
extinct high-reaching ruminant, which had the longest necks, legs, etc.,
and could browse a little above the average height, and the continued
destruction of those which could not browse so high, would have sufficed
for the production of this remarkable quadruped; but the prolonged
use of all the parts, together with inheritance, will have aided in an
important manner in their co-ordination. With the many insects which
imitate various objects, there is no improbability in the belief that
an accidental resemblance to some common object was in each case the
foundation for the work of natural selection, since perfected through
the occasional preservation of slight variations which made the
resemblance at all closer; and this will have been carried on as long
as the insect continued to vary, and as long as a more and more perfect
resemblance led to its escape from sharp-sighted enemies. In certain
species of whales there is a tendency to the formation of irregular
little points of horn on the palate; and it seems to be quite within the
scope of natural selection to preserve all favourable variations, until
the points were converted, first into lamellated knobs or teeth, like
those on the beak of a goose--then into short lamellae, like those of
the domestic ducks--and then into lamellae, as perfect as those of the
shoveller-duck--and finally into the gigantic plates of baleen, as
in the mouth of the Greenland whale. In the family of the ducks, the
lamellae are first used as teeth, then partly as teeth and partly as
a sifting apparatus, and at last almost exclusively for this latter
purpose.

With such structures as the above lamellae of horn or whalebone, habit
or use can have done little or nothing, as far as we can judge, towards
their development. On the other hand, the transportal of the lower eye
of a flat-fish to the upper side of the head, and the formation of
a prehensile tail, may be attributed almost wholly to continued use,
together with inheritance. With respect to the mammae of the higher
animals, the most probable conjecture is that primordially the cutaneous
glands over the whole surface of a marsupial sack secreted a nutritious
fluid; and that these glands were improved in function through natural
selection, and concentrated into a confined area, in which case they
would have formed a mamma. There is no more difficulty in understanding
how the branched spines of some ancient Echinoderm, which served as
a defence, became developed through natural selection into tridactyle
pedicellariae, than in understanding the development of the pincers of
crustaceans, through slight, serviceable modifications in the ultimate
and penultimate segments of a limb, which was at first used solely
for locomotion. In the avicularia and vibracula of the Polyzoa we have
organs widely different in appearance developed from the same source;
and with the vibracula we can understand how the successive gradations
might have been of service. With the pollinia of orchids, the threads
which originally served to tie together the pollen-grains, can be traced
cohering into caudicles; and the steps can likewise be followed by which
viscid matter, such as that secreted by the stigmas of ordinary flowers,
and still subserving nearly but not quite the same purpose, became
attached to the free ends of the caudicles--all these gradations being
of manifest benefit to the plants in question. With respect to climbing
plants, I need not repeat what has been so lately said.

It has often been asked, if natural selection be so potent, why has not
this or that structure been gained by certain species, to which it would
apparently have been advantageous? But it is unreasonable to expect a
precise answer to such questions, considering our ignorance of the past
history of each species, and of the conditions which at the present day
determine its numbers and range. In most cases only general reasons,
but in some few cases special reasons, can be assigned. Thus to adapt
a species to new habits of life, many co-ordinated modifications are
almost indispensable, and it may often have happened that the requisite
parts did not vary in the right manner or to the right degree. Many
species must have been prevented from increasing in numbers through
destructive agencies, which stood in no relation to certain structures,
which we imagine would have been gained through natural selection
from appearing to us advantageous to the species. In this case, as the
struggle for life did not depend on such structures, they could not
have been acquired through natural selection. In many cases complex and
long-enduring conditions, often of a peculiar nature, are necessary for
the development of a structure; and the requisite conditions may seldom
have concurred. The belief that any given structure, which we think,
often erroneously, would have been beneficial to a species, would
have been gained under all circumstances through natural selection, is
opposed to what we can understand of its manner of action. Mr. Mivart
does not deny that natural selection has effected something; but he
considers it as "demonstrably insufficient" to account for the phenomena
which I explain by its agency. His chief arguments have now been
considered, and the others will hereafter be considered. They seem to me
to partake little of the character of demonstration, and to have little
weight in comparison with those in favour of the power of natural
selection, aided by the other agencies often specified. I am bound to
add, that some of the facts and arguments here used by me, have been
advanced for the same purpose in an able article lately published in the
"Medico-Chirurgical Review."

At the present day almost all naturalists admit evolution under some
form. Mr. Mivart believes that species change through "an internal force
or tendency," about which it is not pretended that anything is known.
That species have a capacity for change will be admitted by all
evolutionists; but there is no need, as it seems to me, to invoke
any internal force beyond the tendency to ordinary variability, which
through the aid of selection, by man has given rise to many well-adapted
domestic races, and which, through the aid of natural selection, would
equally well give rise by graduated steps to natural races or species.
The final result will generally have been, as already explained, an
advance, but in some few cases a retrogression, in organisation.

Mr. Mivart is further inclined to believe, and some naturalists agree
with him, that new species manifest themselves "with suddenness and by
modifications appearing at once." For instance, he supposes that the
differences between the extinct three-toed Hipparion and the horse arose
suddenly. He thinks it difficult to believe that the wing of a bird "was
developed in any other way than by a comparatively sudden modification
of a marked and important kind;" and apparently he would extend the
same view to the wings of bats and pterodactyles. This conclusion,
which implies great breaks or discontinuity in the series, appears to me
improbable in the highest degree.

Everyone who believes in slow and gradual evolution, will of course
admit that specific changes may have been as abrupt and as great as
any single variation which we meet with under nature, or even under
domestication. But as species are more variable when domesticated or
cultivated than under their natural conditions, it is not probable that
such great and abrupt variations have often occurred under nature, as
are known occasionally to arise under domestication. Of these latter
variations several may be attributed to reversion; and the characters
which thus reappear were, it is probable, in many cases at first
gained in a gradual manner. A still greater number must be called
monstrosities, such as six-fingered men, porcupine men, Ancon sheep,
Niata cattle, etc.; and as they are widely different in character from
natural species, they throw very little light on our subject. Excluding
such cases of abrupt variations, the few which remain would at best
constitute, if found in a state of nature, doubtful species, closely
related to their parental types.

My reasons for doubting whether natural species have changed as abruptly
as have occasionally domestic races, and for entirely disbelieving that
they have changed in the wonderful manner indicated by Mr. Mivart, are
as follows. According to our experience, abrupt and strongly marked
variations occur in our domesticated productions, singly and at rather
long intervals of time. If such occurred under nature, they would
be liable, as formerly explained, to be lost by accidental causes of
destruction and by subsequent intercrossing; and so it is known to be
under domestication, unless abrupt variations of this kind are specially
preserved and separated by the care of man. Hence, in order that a new
species should suddenly appear in the manner supposed by Mr. Mivart,
it is almost necessary to believe, in opposition to all analogy, that
several wonderfully changed individuals appeared simultaneously within
the same district. This difficulty, as in the case of unconscious
selection by man, is avoided on the theory of gradual evolution, through
the preservation of a large number of individuals, which varied more
or less in any favourable direction, and of the destruction of a large
number which varied in an opposite manner.

That many species have been evolved in an extremely gradual manner,
there can hardly be a doubt. The species and even the genera of many
large natural families are so closely allied together that it is
difficult to distinguish not a few of them. On every continent, in
proceeding from north to south, from lowland to upland, etc., we meet
with a host of closely related or representative species; as we likewise
do on certain distinct continents, which we have reason to believe were
formerly connected. But in making these and the following remarks, I am
compelled to allude to subjects hereafter to be discussed. Look at
the many outlying islands round a continent, and see how many of their
inhabitants can be raised only to the rank of doubtful species. So it is
if we look to past times, and compare the species which have just passed
away with those still living within the same areas; or if we compare
the fossil species embedded in the sub-stages of the same geological
formation. It is indeed manifest that multitudes of species are related
in the closest manner to other species that still exist, or have lately
existed; and it will hardly be maintained that such species have been
developed in an abrupt or sudden manner. Nor should it be forgotten,
when we look to the special parts of allied species, instead of to
distinct species, that numerous and wonderfully fine gradations can be
traced, connecting together widely different structures.

Many large groups of facts are intelligible only on the principle that
species have been evolved by very small steps. For instance, the fact
that the species included in the larger genera are more closely related
to each other, and present a greater number of varieties than do the
species in the smaller genera. The former are also grouped in little
clusters, like varieties round species; and they present other analogies
with varieties, as was shown in our second chapter. On this same
principle we can understand how it is that specific characters are more
variable than generic characters; and how the parts which are developed
in an extraordinary degree or manner are more variable than other parts
of the same species. Many analogous facts, all pointing in the same
direction, could be added.

Although very many species have almost certainly been produced by
steps not greater than those separating fine varieties; yet it may
be maintained that some have been developed in a different and abrupt
manner. Such an admission, however, ought not to be made without strong
evidence being assigned. The vague and in some respects false analogies,
as they have been shown to be by Mr. Chauncey Wright, which have been
advanced in favour of this view, such as the sudden crystallisation of
inorganic substances, or the falling of a facetted spheroid from one
facet to another, hardly deserve consideration. One class of facts,
however, namely, the sudden appearance of new and distinct forms of
life in our geological formations supports at first sight the belief in
abrupt development. But the value of this evidence depends entirely on
the perfection of the geological record, in relation to periods remote
in the history of the world. If the record is as fragmentary as many
geologists strenuously assert, there is nothing strange in new forms
appearing as if suddenly developed.

Unless we admit transformations as prodigious as those advocated by Mr.
Mivart, such as the sudden development of the wings of birds or bats, or
the sudden conversion of a Hipparion into a horse, hardly any light
is thrown by the belief in abrupt modifications on the deficiency of
connecting links in our geological formations. But against the belief in
such abrupt changes, embryology enters a strong protest. It is notorious
that the wings of birds and bats, and the legs of horses or other
quadrupeds, are undistinguishable at an early embryonic period, and
that they become differentiated by insensibly fine steps. Embryological
resemblances of all kinds can be accounted for, as we shall hereafter
see, by the progenitors of our existing species having varied after
early youth, and having transmitted their newly-acquired characters to
their offspring, at a corresponding age. The embryo is thus left almost
unaffected, and serves as a record of the past condition of the species.
Hence it is that existing species during the early stages of their
development so often resemble ancient and extinct forms belonging to the
same class. On this view of the meaning of embryological resemblances,
and indeed on any view, it is incredible that an animal should have
undergone such momentous and abrupt transformations as those above
indicated, and yet should not bear even a trace in its embryonic
condition of any sudden modification, every detail in its structure
being developed by insensibly fine steps.

He who believes that some ancient form was transformed suddenly through
an internal force or tendency into, for instance, one furnished with
wings, will be almost compelled to assume, in opposition to all analogy,
that many individuals varied simultaneously. It cannot be denied that
such abrupt and great changes of structure are widely different from
those which most species apparently have undergone. He will further be
compelled to believe that many structures beautifully adapted to all the
other parts of the same creature and to the surrounding conditions,
have been suddenly produced; and of such complex and wonderful
co-adaptations, he will not be able to assign a shadow of an
explanation. He will be forced to admit that these great and sudden
transformations have left no trace of their action on the embryo.
To admit all this is, as it seems to me, to enter into the realms of
miracle, and to leave those of science.




CHAPTER VIII. INSTINCT.

 Instincts comparable with habits, but different in their
 origin--Instincts graduated--Aphides and ants--Instincts
 variable--Domestic instincts, their origin--Natural instincts of
 the cuckoo, molothrus, ostrich, and parasitic bees--Slave-making
 ants--Hive-bee, its cell-making instinct--Changes of instinct and
 structure not necessarily simultaneous--Difficulties of the theory of
 the Natural Selection of instincts--Neuter or sterile insects--Summary.


Many instincts are so wonderful that their development will probably
appear to the reader a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole
theory. I may here premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of
the mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself. We are
concerned only with the diversities of instinct and of the other mental
faculties in animals of the same class.

I will not attempt any definition of instinct. It would be easy to show
that several distinct mental actions are commonly embraced by this term;
but every one understands what is meant, when it is said that instinct
impels the cuckoo to migrate and to lay her eggs in other birds'
nests. An action, which we ourselves require experience to enable us to
perform, when performed by an animal, more especially by a very young
one, without experience, and when performed by many individuals in the
same way, without their knowing for what purpose it is performed, is
usually said to be instinctive. But I could show that none of these
characters are universal. A little dose of judgment or reason, as Pierre
Huber expresses it, often comes into play, even with animals low in the
scale of nature.

Frederick Cuvier and several of the older metaphysicians have compared
instinct with habit. This comparison gives, I think, an accurate notion
of the frame of mind under which an instinctive action is performed, but
not necessarily of its origin. How unconsciously many habitual actions
are performed, indeed not rarely in direct opposition to our conscious
will! yet they may be modified by the will or reason. Habits easily
become associated with other habits, with certain periods of time and
states of the body. When once acquired, they often remain constant
throughout life. Several other points of resemblance between instincts
and habits could be pointed out. As in repeating a well-known song,
so in instincts, one action follows another by a sort of rhythm; if a
person be interrupted in a song, or in repeating anything by rote, he is
generally forced to go back to recover the habitual train of thought: so
P. Huber found it was with a caterpillar, which makes a very complicated
hammock; for if he took a caterpillar which had completed its hammock
up to, say, the sixth stage of construction, and put it into a
hammock completed up only to the third stage, the caterpillar simply
re-performed the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages of construction.
If, however, a caterpillar were taken out of a hammock made up, for
instance, to the third stage, and were put into one finished up to the
sixth stage, so that much of its work was already done for it, far from
deriving any benefit from this, it was much embarrassed, and, in order
to complete its hammock, seemed forced to start from the third stage,
where it had left off, and thus tried to complete the already finished
work.

If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited--and it can be
shown that this does sometimes happen--then the resemblance between what
originally was a habit and an instinct becomes so close as not to be
distinguished. If Mozart, instead of playing the pianoforte at three
years old with wonderfully little practice, had played a tune with no
practice at all, be might truly be said to have done so instinctively.
But it would be a serious error to suppose that the greater number
of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation, and then
transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations. It can be clearly
shown that the most wonderful instincts with which we are acquainted,
namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, could not possibly have
been acquired by habit.

It will be universally admitted that instincts are as important as
corporeal structures for the welfare of each species, under its present
conditions of life. Under changed conditions of life, it is at least
possible that slight modifications of instinct might be profitable to a
species; and if it can be shown that instincts do vary ever so little,
then I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and
continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that was
profitable. It is thus, as I believe, that all the most complex and
wonderful instincts have originated. As modifications of corporeal
structure arise from, and are increased by, use or habit, and are
diminished or lost by disuse, so I do not doubt it has been with
instincts. But I believe that the effects of habit are in many cases of
subordinate importance to the effects of the natural selection of
what may be called spontaneous variations of instincts;--that is of
variations produced by the same unknown causes which produce slight
deviations of bodily structure.

No complex instinct can possibly be produced through natural selection,
except by the slow and gradual accumulation of numerous, slight, yet
profitable, variations. Hence, as in the case of corporeal structures,
we ought to find in nature, not the actual transitional gradations by
which each complex instinct has been acquired--for these could be found
only in the lineal ancestors of each species--but we ought to find in
the collateral lines of descent some evidence of such gradations; or
we ought at least to be able to show that gradations of some kind are
possible; and this we certainly can do. I have been surprised to find,
making allowance for the instincts of animals having been but little
observed, except in Europe and North America, and for no instinct being
known among extinct species, how very generally gradations, leading to
the most complex instincts, can be discovered. Changes of instinct may
sometimes be facilitated by the same species having different instincts
at different periods of life, or at different seasons of the year, or
when placed under different circumstances, etc.; in which case either
the one or the other instinct might be preserved by natural selection.
And such instances of diversity of instinct in the same species can be
shown to occur in nature.

Again, as in the case of corporeal structure, and conformably to my
theory, the instinct of each species is good for itself, but has never,
as far as we can judge, been produced for the exclusive good of others.
One of the strongest instances of an animal apparently performing an
action for the sole good of another, with which I am acquainted, is that
of aphides voluntarily yielding, as was first observed by Huber, their
sweet excretion to ants: that they do so voluntarily, the following
facts show. I removed all the ants from a group of about a dozen aphides
on a dock-plant, and prevented their attendance during several hours.
After this interval, I felt sure that the aphides would want to excrete.
I watched them for some time through a lens, but not one excreted; I
then tickled and stroked them with a hair in the same manner, as well
as I could, as the ants do with their antennae; but not one excreted.
Afterwards, I allowed an ant to visit them, and it immediately seemed,
by its eager way of running about to be well aware what a rich flock it
had discovered; it then began to play with its antennae on the abdomen
first of one aphis and then of another; and each, as soon as it felt the
antennae, immediately lifted up its abdomen and excreted a limpid drop
of sweet juice, which was eagerly devoured by the ant. Even the quite
young aphides behaved in this manner, showing that the action was
instinctive, and not the result of experience. It is certain, from the
observations of Huber, that the aphides show no dislike to the ants:
if the latter be not present they are at last compelled to eject their
excretion. But as the excretion is extremely viscid, it is no doubt a
convenience to the aphides to have it removed; therefore probably they
do not excrete solely for the good of the ants. Although there is no
evidence that any animal performs an action for the exclusive good of
another species, yet each tries to take advantage of the instincts of
others, as each takes advantage of the weaker bodily structure of other
species. So again certain instincts cannot be considered as absolutely
perfect; but as details on this and other such points are not
indispensable, they may be here passed over.

As some degree of variation in instincts under a state of nature, and
the inheritance of such variations, are indispensable for the action of
natural selection, as many instances as possible ought to be given; but
want of space prevents me. I can only assert that instincts certainly
do vary--for instance, the migratory instinct, both in extent and
direction, and in its total loss. So it is with the nests of birds,
which vary partly in dependence on the situations chosen, and on the
nature and temperature of the country inhabited, but often from causes
wholly unknown to us. Audubon has given several remarkable cases
of differences in the nests of the same species in the northern and
southern United States. Why, it has been asked, if instinct be variable,
has it not granted to the bee "the ability to use some other material
when wax was deficient?" But what other natural material could bees
use? They will work, as I have seen, with wax hardened with vermilion
or softened with lard. Andrew Knight observed that his bees, instead of
laboriously collecting propolis, used a cement of wax and turpentine,
with which he had covered decorticated trees. It has lately been shown
that bees, instead of searching for pollen, will gladly use a very
different substance, namely, oatmeal. Fear of any particular enemy is
certainly an instinctive quality, as may be seen in nestling birds,
though it is strengthened by experience, and by the sight of fear of the
same enemy in other animals. The fear of man is slowly acquired, as
I have elsewhere shown, by the various animals which inhabit desert
islands; and we see an instance of this, even in England, in the greater
wildness of all our large birds in comparison with our small birds;
for the large birds have been most persecuted by man. We may safely
attribute the greater wildness of our large birds to this cause; for in
uninhabited islands large birds are not more fearful than small; and the
magpie, so wary in England, is tame in Norway, as is the hooded crow in
Egypt.

That the mental qualities of animals of the same kind, born in a state
of nature, vary much, could be shown by many facts. Several cases could
also be adduced of occasional and strange habits in wild animals, which,
if advantageous to the species, might have given rise, through natural
selection, to new instincts. But I am well aware that these general
statements, without the facts in detail, can produce but a feeble effect
on the reader's mind. I can only repeat my assurance, that I do not
speak without good evidence.

INHERITED CHANGES OF HABIT OR INSTINCT IN DOMESTICATED ANIMALS.

The possibility, or even probability, of inherited variations
of instinct in a state of nature will be strengthened by briefly
considering a few cases under domestication. We shall thus be enabled
to see the part which habit and the selection of so-called spontaneous
variations have played in modifying the mental qualities of our domestic
animals. It is notorious how much domestic animals vary in their mental
qualities. With cats, for instance, one naturally takes to catching
rats, and another mice, and these tendencies are known to be inherited.
One cat, according to Mr. St. John, always brought home game birds,
another hares or rabbits, and another hunted on marshy ground and almost
nightly caught woodcocks or snipes. A number of curious and authentic
instances could be given of various shades of disposition and taste, and
likewise of the oddest tricks, associated with certain frames of mind or
periods of time. But let us look to the familiar case of the breeds
of dogs: it cannot be doubted that young pointers (I have myself seen
striking instances) will sometimes point and even back other dogs the
very first time that they are taken out; retrieving is certainly in some
degree inherited by retrievers; and a tendency to run round, instead of
at, a flock of sheep, by shepherd-dogs. I cannot see that these actions,
performed without experience by the young, and in nearly the same manner
by each individual, performed with eager delight by each breed, and
without the end being known--for the young pointer can no more know that
he points to aid his master, than the white butterfly knows why she lays
her eggs on the leaf of the cabbage--I cannot see that these actions
differ essentially from true instincts. If we were to behold one kind
of wolf, when young and without any training, as soon as it scented its
prey, stand motionless like a statue, and then slowly crawl forward with
a peculiar gait; and another kind of wolf rushing round, instead of at,
a herd of deer, and driving them to a distant point, we should assuredly
call these actions instinctive. Domestic instincts, as they may be
called, are certainly far less fixed than natural instincts; but
they have been acted on by far less rigorous selection, and have
been transmitted for an incomparably shorter period, under less fixed
conditions of life.

How strongly these domestic instincts, habits, and dispositions are
inherited, and how curiously they become mingled, is well shown when
different breeds of dogs are crossed. Thus it is known that a cross with
a bull-dog has affected for many generations the courage and obstinacy
of greyhounds; and a cross with a greyhound has given to a whole family
of shepherd-dogs a tendency to hunt hares. These domestic instincts,
when thus tested by crossing, resemble natural instincts, which in a
like manner become curiously blended together, and for a long period
exhibit traces of the instincts of either parent: for example, Le Roy
describes a dog, whose great-grandfather was a wolf, and this dog
showed a trace of its wild parentage only in one way, by not coming in a
straight line to his master, when called.

Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken of as actions which have become
inherited solely from long-continued and compulsory habit, but this is
not true. No one would ever have thought of teaching, or probably could
have taught, the tumbler-pigeon to tumble--an action which, as I have
witnessed, is performed by young birds, that have never seen a pigeon
tumble. We may believe that some one pigeon showed a slight tendency to
this strange habit, and that the long-continued selection of the best
individuals in successive generations made tumblers what they now are;
and near Glasgow there are house-tumblers, as I hear from Mr. Brent,
which cannot fly eighteen inches high without going head over heels. It
may be doubted whether any one would have thought of training a dog to
point, had not some one dog naturally shown a tendency in this line; and
this is known occasionally to happen, as I once saw, in a pure terrier:
the act of pointing is probably, as many have thought, only the
exaggerated pause of an animal preparing to spring on its prey. When the
first tendency to point was once displayed, methodical selection and the
inherited effects of compulsory training in each successive generation
would soon complete the work; and unconscious selection is still in
progress, as each man tries to procure, without intending to improve the
breed, dogs which stand and hunt best. On the other hand, habit alone
in some cases has sufficed; hardly any animal is more difficult to tame
than the young of the wild rabbit; scarcely any animal is tamer than the
young of the tame rabbit; but I can hardly suppose that domestic rabbits
have often been selected for tameness alone; so that we must attribute
at least the greater part of the inherited change from extreme wildness
to extreme tameness, to habit and long-continued close confinement.

Natural instincts are lost under domestication: a remarkable instance of
this is seen in those breeds of fowls which very rarely or never become
"broody," that is, never wish to sit on their eggs. Familiarity alone
prevents our seeing how largely and how permanently the minds of our
domestic animals have been modified. It is scarcely possible to doubt
that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog. All wolves,
foxes, jackals and species of the cat genus, when kept tame, are most
eager to attack poultry, sheep and pigs; and this tendency has been
found incurable in dogs which have been brought home as puppies from
countries such as Tierra del Fuego and Australia, where the savages do
not keep these domestic animals. How rarely, on the other hand, do
our civilised dogs, even when quite young, require to be taught not to
attack poultry, sheep, and pigs! No doubt they occasionally do make an
attack, and are then beaten; and if not cured, they are destroyed;
so that habit and some degree of selection have probably concurred in
civilising by inheritance our dogs. On the other hand, young chickens
have lost wholly by habit, that fear of the dog and cat which no doubt
was originally instinctive in them, for I am informed by Captain Hutton
that the young chickens of the parent stock, the Gallus bankiva, when
reared in India under a hen, are at first excessively wild. So it is
with young pheasants reared in England under a hen. It is not that
chickens have lost all fear, but fear only of dogs and cats, for if
the hen gives the danger chuckle they will run (more especially young
turkeys) from under her and conceal themselves in the surrounding grass
or thickets; and this is evidently done for the instinctive purpose of
allowing, as we see in wild ground-birds, their mother to fly away.
But this instinct retained by our chickens has become useless under
domestication, for the mother-hen has almost lost by disuse the power of
flight.

Hence, we may conclude that under domestication instincts have been
acquired and natural instincts have been lost, partly by habit and
partly by man selecting and accumulating, during successive generations,
peculiar mental habits and actions, which at first appeared from what we
must in our ignorance call an accident. In some cases compulsory habit
alone has sufficed to produce inherited mental changes; in other cases
compulsory habit has done nothing, and all has been the result of
selection, pursued both methodically and unconsciously; but in most
cases habit and selection have probably concurred.

SPECIAL INSTINCTS.

We shall, perhaps, best understand how instincts in a state of nature
have become modified by selection by considering a few cases. I will
select only three, namely, the instinct which leads the cuckoo to lay
her eggs in other birds' nests; the slave-making instinct of certain
ants; and the cell-making power of the hive-bee: these two latter
instincts have generally and justly been ranked by naturalists as the
most wonderful of all known instincts.

INSTINCTS OF THE CUCKOO.

It is supposed by some naturalists that the more immediate cause of
the instinct of the cuckoo is that she lays her eggs, not daily, but
at intervals of two or three days; so that, if she were to make her own
nest and sit on her own eggs, those first laid would have to be left
for some time unincubated or there would be eggs and young birds of
different ages in the same nest. If this were the case the process of
laying and hatching might be inconveniently long, more especially as
she migrates at a very early period; and the first hatched young would
probably have to be fed by the male alone. But the American cuckoo is
in this predicament, for she makes her own nest and has eggs and young
successively hatched, all at the same time. It has been both asserted
and denied that the American cuckoo occasionally lays her eggs in other
birds' nests; but I have lately heard from Dr. Merrill, of Iowa, that he
once found in Illinois a young cuckoo, together with a young jay in the
nest of a blue jay (Garrulus cristatus); and as both were nearly full
feathered, there could be no mistake in their identification. I could
also give several instances of various birds which have been known
occasionally to lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Now let us suppose
that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the
American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird's
nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit through being
enabled to emigrate earlier or through any other cause; or if the
young were made more vigorous by advantage being taken of the mistaken
instinct of another species than when reared by their own mother,
encumbered as she could hardly fail to be by having eggs and young of
different ages at the same time, then the old birds or the fostered
young would gain an advantage. And analogy would lead us to believe
that the young thus reared would be apt to follow by inheritance the
occasional and aberrant habit of their mother, and in their turn
would be apt to lay their eggs in other birds' nests, and thus be
more successful in rearing their young. By a continued process of this
nature, I believe that the strange instinct of our cuckoo has been
generated. It has, also recently been ascertained on sufficient
evidence, by Adolf Muller, that the cuckoo occasionally lays her eggs
on the bare ground, sits on them and feeds her young. This rare event
is probably a case of reversion to the long-lost, aboriginal instinct of
nidification.

It has been objected that I have not noticed other related instincts
and adaptations of structure in the cuckoo, which are spoken of as
necessarily co-ordinated. But in all cases, speculation on an instinct
known to us only in a single species, is useless, for we have hitherto
had no facts to guide us. Until recently the instincts of the European
and of the non-parasitic American cuckoo alone were known; now, owing
to Mr. Ramsay's observations, we have learned something about three
Australian species, which lay their eggs in other birds' nests. The
chief points to be referred to are three: first, that the common cuckoo,
with rare exceptions, lays only one egg in a nest, so that the large and
voracious young bird receives ample food. Secondly, that the eggs are
remarkably small, not exceeding those of the skylark--a bird about
one-fourth as large as the cuckoo. That the small size of the egg is a
real case of adaptation we may infer from the fact of the mon-parasitic
American cuckoo laying full-sized eggs. Thirdly, that the young cuckoo,
soon after birth, has the instinct, the strength and a properly shaped
back for ejecting its foster-brothers, which then perish from cold and
hunger. This has been boldly called a beneficent arrangement, in
order that the young cuckoo may get sufficient food, and that its
foster-brothers may perish before they had acquired much feeling!

Turning now to the Australian species: though these birds generally lay
only one egg in a nest, it is not rare to find two and even three eggs
in the same nest. In the bronze cuckoo the eggs vary greatly in size,
from eight to ten lines in length. Now, if it had been of an advantage
to this species to have laid eggs even smaller than those now laid, so
as to have deceived certain foster-parents, or, as is more probable, to
have been hatched within a shorter period (for it is asserted that
there is a relation between the size of eggs and the period of their
incubation), then there is no difficulty in believing that a race or
species might have been formed which would have laid smaller and smaller
eggs; for these would have been more safely hatched and reared. Mr.
Ramsay remarks that two of the Australian cuckoos, when they lay their
eggs in an open nest, manifest a decided preference for nests containing
eggs similar in colour to their own. The European species apparently
manifests some tendency towards a similar instinct, but not rarely
departs from it, as is shown by her laying her dull and pale-coloured
eggs in the nest of the hedge-warbler with bright greenish-blue eggs.
Had our cuckoo invariably displayed the above instinct, it would
assuredly have been added to those which it is assumed must all have
been acquired together. The eggs of the Australian bronze cuckoo vary,
according to Mr. Ramsay, to an extraordinary degree in colour; so
that in this respect, as well as in size, natural selection might have
secured and fixed any advantageous variation.

In the case of the European cuckoo, the offspring of the foster-parents
are commonly ejected from the nest within three days after the cuckoo is
hatched; and as the latter at this age is in a most helpless condition,
Mr. Gould was formerly inclined to believe that the act of ejection was
performed by the foster-parents themselves. But he has now received a
trustworthy account of a young cuckoo which was actually seen, while
still blind and not able even to hold up its own head, in the act of
ejecting its foster-brothers. One of these was replaced in the nest by
the observer, and was again thrown out. With respect to the means by
which this strange and odious instinct was acquired, if it were of great
importance for the young cuckoo, as is probably the case, to receive as
much food as possible soon after birth, I can see no special difficulty
in its having gradually acquired, during successive generations, the
blind desire, the strength, and structure necessary for the work of
ejection; for those cuckoos which had such habits and structure best
developed would be the most securely reared. The first step towards the
acquisition of the proper instinct might have been mere unintentional
restlessness on the part of the young bird, when somewhat advanced
in age and strength; the habit having been afterwards improved, and
transmitted to an earlier age. I can see no more difficulty in this than
in the unhatched young of other birds acquiring the instinct to break
through their own shells; or than in young snakes acquiring in their
upper jaws, as Owen has remarked, a transitory sharp tooth for cutting
through the tough egg-shell. For if each part is liable to individual
variations at all ages, and the variations tend to be inherited at
a corresponding or earlier age--propositions which cannot be
disputed--then the instincts and structure of the young could be slowly
modified as surely as those of the adult; and both cases must stand or
fall together with the whole theory of natural selection.

Some species of Molothrus, a widely distinct genus of American birds,
allied to our starlings, have parasitic habits like those of the cuckoo;
and the species present an interesting gradation in the perfection
of their instincts. The sexes of Molothrus badius are stated by an
excellent observer, Mr. Hudson, sometimes to live promiscuously together
in flocks, and sometimes to pair. They either build a nest of their own
or seize on one belonging to some other bird, occasionally throwing out
the nestlings of the stranger. They either lay their eggs in the nest
thus appropriated, or oddly enough build one for themselves on the top
of it. They usually sit on their own eggs and rear their own young; but
Mr. Hudson says it is probable that they are occasionally parasitic, for
he has seen the young of this species following old birds of a distinct
kind and clamouring to be fed by them. The parasitic habits of another
species of Molothrus, the M. bonariensis, are much more highly developed
than those of the last, but are still far from perfect. This bird, as
far as it is known, invariably lays its eggs in the nests of strangers;
but it is remarkable that several together sometimes commence to build
an irregular untidy nest of their own, placed in singular ill-adapted
situations, as on the leaves of a large thistle. They never, however, as
far as Mr. Hudson has ascertained, complete a nest for themselves. They
often lay so many eggs--from fifteen to twenty--in the same foster-nest,
that few or none can possibly be hatched. They have, moreover, the
extraordinary habit of pecking holes in the eggs, whether of their own
species or of their foster parents, which they find in the appropriated
nests. They drop also many eggs on the bare ground, which are thus
wasted. A third species, the M. pecoris of North America, has acquired
instincts as perfect as those of the cuckoo, for it never lays more than
one egg in a foster-nest, so that the young bird is securely reared. Mr.
Hudson is a strong disbeliever in evolution, but he appears to have been
so much struck by the imperfect instincts of the Molothrus bonariensis
that he quotes my words, and asks, "Must we consider these habits, not
as especially endowed or created instincts, but as small consequences of
one general law, namely, transition?"

Various birds, as has already been remarked, occasionally lay their eggs
in the nests of other birds. This habit is not very uncommon with the
Gallinaceae, and throws some light on the singular instinct of the
ostrich. In this family several hen birds unite and lay first a few eggs
in one nest and then in another; and these are hatched by the males.
This instinct may probably be accounted for by the fact of the hens
laying a large number of eggs, but, as with the cuckoo, at intervals of
two or three days. The instinct, however, of the American ostrich, as
in the case of the Molothrus bonariensis, has not as yet been perfected;
for a surprising number of eggs lie strewed over the plains, so that in
one day's hunting I picked up no less than twenty lost and wasted eggs.

Many bees are parasitic, and regularly lay their eggs in the nests
of other kinds of bees. This case is more remarkable than that of the
cuckoo; for these bees have not only had their instincts but their
structure modified in accordance with their parasitic habits; for they
do not possess the pollen-collecting apparatus which would have been
indispensable if they had stored up food for their own young. Some
species of Sphegidae (wasp-like insects) are likewise parasitic; and
M. Fabre has lately shown good reason for believing that, although
the Tachytes nigra generally makes its own burrow and stores it with
paralysed prey for its own larvae, yet that, when this insect finds a
burrow already made and stored by another sphex, it takes advantage of
the prize, and becomes for the occasion parasitic. In this case, as
with that of the Molothrus or cuckoo, I can see no difficulty in natural
selection making an occasional habit permanent, if of advantage to the
species, and if the insect whose nest and stored food are feloniously
appropriated, be not thus exterminated.

SLAVE-MAKING INSTINCT.

This remarkable instinct was first discovered in the Formica (Polyerges)
rufescens by Pierre Huber, a better observer even than his celebrated
father. This ant is absolutely dependent on its slaves; without their
aid, the species would certainly become extinct in a single year. The
males and fertile females do no work of any kind, and the workers or
sterile females, though most energetic and courageous in capturing
slaves, do no other work. They are incapable of making their own nests,
or of feeding their own larvae. When the old nest is found inconvenient,
and they have to migrate, it is the slaves which determine the
migration, and actually carry their masters in their jaws. So utterly
helpless are the masters, that when Huber shut up thirty of them without
a slave, but with plenty of the food which they like best, and with
their larvae and pupae to stimulate them to work, they did nothing; they
could not even feed themselves, and many perished of hunger. Huber then
introduced a single slave (F. fusca), and she instantly set to work, fed
and saved the survivors; made some cells and tended the larvae, and
put all to rights. What can be more extraordinary than these
well-ascertained facts? If we had not known of any other slave-making
ant, it would have been hopeless to speculate how so wonderful an
instinct could have been perfected.

Another species, Formica sanguinea, was likewise first discovered by P.
Huber to be a slave-making ant. This species is found in the southern
parts of England, and its habits have been attended to by Mr. F. Smith,
of the British Museum, to whom I am much indebted for information on
this and other subjects. Although fully trusting to the statements of
Huber and Mr. Smith, I tried to approach the subject in a sceptical
frame of mind, as any one may well be excused for doubting the existence
of so extraordinary an instinct as that of making slaves. Hence, I
will give the observations which I made in some little detail. I opened
fourteen nests of F. sanguinea, and found a few slaves in all. Males and
fertile females of the slave-species (F. fusca) are found only in their
own proper communities, and have never been observed in the nests of F.
sanguinea. The slaves are black and not above half the size of their
red masters, so that the contrast in their appearance is great. When the
nest is slightly disturbed, the slaves occasionally come out, and like
their masters are much agitated and defend the nest: when the nest is
much disturbed, and the larvae and pupae are exposed, the slaves work
energetically together with their masters in carrying them away to a
place of safety. Hence, it is clear that the slaves feel quite at home.
During the months of June and July, on three successive years, I watched
for many hours several nests in Surrey and Sussex, and never saw a slave
either leave or enter a nest. As, during these months, the slaves are
very few in number, I thought that they might behave differently when
more numerous; but Mr. Smith informs me that he has watched the nests at
various hours during May, June and August, both in Surrey and Hampshire,
and has never seen the slaves, though present in large numbers in
August, either leave or enter the nest. Hence, he considers them as
strictly household slaves. The masters, on the other hand, may be
constantly seen bringing in materials for the nest, and food of all
kinds. During the year 1860, however, in the month of July, I came
across a community with an unusually large stock of slaves, and I
observed a few slaves mingled with their masters leaving the nest, and
marching along the same road to a tall Scotch-fir tree, twenty-five
yards distant, which they ascended together, probably in search of
aphides or cocci. According to Huber, who had ample opportunities
for observation, the slaves in Switzerland habitually work with their
masters in making the nest, and they alone open and close the doors in
the morning and evening; and, as Huber expressly states, their principal
office is to search for aphides. This difference in the usual habits of
the masters and slaves in the two countries, probably depends merely
on the slaves being captured in greater numbers in Switzerland than in
England.

One day I fortunately witnessed a migration of F. sanguinea from one
nest to another, and it was a most interesting spectacle to behold the
masters carefully carrying their slaves in their jaws instead of
being carried by them, as in the case of F. rufescens. Another day my
attention was struck by about a score of the slave-makers haunting the
same spot, and evidently not in search of food; they approached and were
vigorously repulsed by an independent community of the slave species (F.
fusca); sometimes as many as three of these ants clinging to the legs of
the slave-making F. sanguinea. The latter ruthlessly killed their
small opponents and carried their dead bodies as food to their nest,
twenty-nine yards distant; but they were prevented from getting any
pupae to rear as slaves. I then dug up a small parcel of the pupae of F.
fusca from another nest, and put them down on a bare spot near the place
of combat; they were eagerly seized and carried off by the tyrants, who
perhaps fancied that, after all, they had been victorious in their late
combat.

At the same time I laid on the same place a small parcel of the pupae of
another species, F. flava, with a few of these little yellow ants still
clinging to the fragments of their nest. This species is sometimes,
though rarely, made into slaves, as has been described by Mr. Smith.
Although so small a species, it is very courageous, and I have seen it
ferociously attack other ants. In one instance I found to my surprise
an independent community of F. flava under a stone beneath a nest of the
slave-making F. sanguinea; and when I had accidentally disturbed both
nests, the little ants attacked their big neighbours with surprising
courage. Now I was curious to ascertain whether F. sanguinea could
distinguish the pupae of F. fusca, which they habitually make into
slaves, from those of the little and furious F. flava, which they rarely
capture, and it was evident that they did at once distinguish them;
for we have seen that they eagerly and instantly seized the pupae of F.
fusca, whereas they were much terrified when they came across the pupae,
or even the earth from the nest, of F. flava, and quickly ran away; but
in about a quarter of an hour, shortly after all the little yellow ants
had crawled away, they took heart and carried off the pupae.

One evening I visited another community of F. sanguinea, and found a
number of these ants returning home and entering their nests, carrying
the dead bodies of F. fusca (showing that it was not a migration) and
numerous pupae. I traced a long file of ants burdened with booty, for
about forty yards back, to a very thick clump of heath, whence I saw the
last individual of F. sanguinea emerge, carrying a pupa; but I was not
able to find the desolated nest in the thick heath. The nest, however,
must have been close at hand, for two or three individuals of F. fusca
were rushing about in the greatest agitation, and one was perched
motionless with its own pupa in its mouth on the top of a spray of
heath, an image of despair over its ravaged home.

Such are the facts, though they did not need confirmation by me, in
regard to the wonderful instinct of making slaves. Let it be observed
what a contrast the instinctive habits of F. sanguinea present with
those of the continental F. rufescens. The latter does not build its own
nest, does not determine its own migrations, does not collect food
for itself or its young, and cannot even feed itself: it is absolutely
dependent on its numerous slaves. Formica sanguinea, on the other
hand, possesses much fewer slaves, and in the early part of the summer
extremely few. The masters determine when and where a new nest shall
be formed, and when they migrate, the masters carry the slaves. Both in
Switzerland and England the slaves seem to have the exclusive care of
the larvae, and the masters alone go on slave-making expeditions. In
Switzerland the slaves and masters work together, making and bringing
materials for the nest: both, but chiefly the slaves, tend and milk
as it may be called, their aphides; and thus both collect food for
the community. In England the masters alone usually leave the nest to
collect building materials and food for themselves, their slaves and
larvae. So that the masters in this country receive much less service
from their slaves than they do in Switzerland.

By what steps the instinct of F. sanguinea originated I will not pretend
to conjecture. But as ants which are not slave-makers, will, as I have
seen, carry off pupae of other species, if scattered near their nests,
it is possible that such pupae originally stored as food might become
developed; and the foreign ants thus unintentionally reared would then
follow their proper instincts, and do what work they could. If their
presence proved useful to the species which had seized them--if it were
more advantageous to this species, to capture workers than to procreate
them--the habit of collecting pupae, originally for food, might by
natural selection be strengthened and rendered permanent for the
very different purpose of raising slaves. When the instinct was once
acquired, if carried out to a much less extent even than in our British
F. sanguinea, which, as we have seen, is less aided by its slaves than
the same species in Switzerland, natural selection might increase and
modify the instinct--always supposing each modification to be of use to
the species--until an ant was formed as abjectly dependent on its slaves
as is the Formica rufescens.

CELL-MAKING INSTINCT OF THE HIVE-BEE.

I will not here enter on minute details on this subject, but will merely
give an outline of the conclusions at which I have arrived. He must be
a dull man who can examine the exquisite structure of a comb, so
beautifully adapted to its end, without enthusiastic admiration. We
hear from mathematicians that bees have practically solved a recondite
problem, and have made their cells of the proper shape to hold the
greatest possible amount of honey, with the least possible consumption
of precious wax in their construction. It has been remarked that a
skilful workman, with fitting tools and measures, would find it very
difficult to make cells of wax of the true form, though this is effected
by a crowd of bees working in a dark hive. Granting whatever instincts
you please, it seems at first quite inconceivable how they can make
all the necessary angles and planes, or even perceive when they are
correctly made. But the difficulty is not nearly so great as at first
appears: all this beautiful work can be shown, I think, to follow from a
few simple instincts.

I was led to investigate this subject by Mr. Waterhouse, who has shown
that the form of the cell stands in close relation to the presence of
adjoining cells; and the following view may, perhaps, be considered only
as a modification of his theory. Let us look to the great principle of
gradation, and see whether Nature does not reveal to us her method of
work. At one end of a short series we have humble-bees, which use their
old cocoons to hold honey, sometimes adding to them short tubes of wax,
and likewise making separate and very irregular rounded cells of wax. At
the other end of the series we have the cells of the hive-bee, placed in
a double layer: each cell, as is well known, is an hexagonal prism,
with the basal edges of its six sides bevelled so as to join an inverted
pyramid, of three rhombs. These rhombs have certain angles, and the
three which form the pyramidal base of a single cell on one side of the
comb, enter into the composition of the bases of three adjoining cells
on the opposite side. In the series between the extreme perfection of
the cells of the hive-bee and the simplicity of those of the humble-bee,
we have the cells of the Mexican Melipona domestica, carefully described
and figured by Pierre Huber. The Melipona itself is intermediate in
structure between the hive and humble bee, but more nearly related to
the latter: it forms a nearly regular waxen comb of cylindrical cells,
in which the young are hatched, and, in addition, some large cells of
wax for holding honey. These latter cells are nearly spherical and of
nearly equal sizes, and are aggregated into an irregular mass. But the
important point to notice is, that these cells are always made at that
degree of nearness to each other that they would have intersected or
broken into each other if the spheres had been completed; but this is
never permitted, the bees building perfectly flat walls of wax between
the spheres which thus tend to intersect. Hence, each cell consists of
an outer spherical portion, and of two, three, or more flat surfaces,
according as the cell adjoins two, three or more other cells. When one
cell rests on three other cells, which, from the spheres being nearly
of the same size, is very frequently and necessarily the case, the three
flat surfaces are united into a pyramid; and this pyramid, as Huber has
remarked, is manifestly a gross imitation of the three-sided pyramidal
base of the cell of the hive-bee. As in the cells of the hive-bee, so
here, the three plane surfaces in any one cell necessarily enter into
the construction of three adjoining cells. It is obvious that the
Melipona saves wax, and what is more important, labour, by this manner
of building; for the flat walls between the adjoining cells are not
double, but are of the same thickness as the outer spherical portions,
and yet each flat portion forms a part of two cells.

Reflecting on this case, it occurred to me that if the Melipona had made
its spheres at some given distance from each other, and had made them of
equal sizes and had arranged them symmetrically in a double layer,
the resulting structure would have been as perfect as the comb of the
hive-bee. Accordingly I wrote to Professor Miller, of Cambridge, and
this geometer has kindly read over the following statement, drawn up
from his information, and tells me that it is strictly correct:--

If a number of equal spheres be described with their centres placed in
two parallel layers; with the centre of each sphere at the distance of
radius x sqrt(2) or radius x 1.41421 (or at some lesser distance), from
the centres of the six surrounding spheres in the same layer; and at the
same distance from the centres of the adjoining spheres in the other and
parallel layer; then, if planes of intersection between the several
spheres in both layers be formed, there will result a double layer of
hexagonal prisms united together by pyramidal bases formed of three
rhombs; and the rhombs and the sides of the hexagonal prisms will have
every angle identically the same with the best measurements which have
been made of the cells of the hive-bee. But I hear from Professor Wyman,
who has made numerous careful measurements, that the accuracy of the
workmanship of the bee has been greatly exaggerated; so much so, that
whatever the typical form of the cell may be, it is rarely, if ever,
realised.

Hence we may safely conclude that, if we could slightly modify the
instincts already possessed by the Melipona, and in themselves not very
wonderful, this bee would make a structure as wonderfully perfect as
that of the hive-bee. We must suppose the Melipona to have the power of
forming her cells truly spherical, and of equal sizes; and this would
not be very surprising, seeing that she already does so to a certain
extent, and seeing what perfectly cylindrical burrows many insects make
in wood, apparently by turning round on a fixed point. We must suppose
the Melipona to arrange her cells in level layers, as she already does
her cylindrical cells; and we must further suppose, and this is the
greatest difficulty, that she can somehow judge accurately at what
distance to stand from her fellow-labourers when several are making
their spheres; but she is already so far enabled to judge of distance,
that she always describes her spheres so as to intersect to a certain
extent; and then she unites the points of intersection by perfectly flat
surfaces. By such modifications of instincts which in themselves are not
very wonderful--hardly more wonderful than those which guide a bird to
make its nest--I believe that the hive-bee has acquired, through natural
selection, her inimitable architectural powers.

But this theory can be tested by experiment. Following the example of
Mr. Tegetmeier, I separated two combs, and put between them a long,
thick, rectangular strip of wax: the bees instantly began to excavate
minute circular pits in it; and as they deepened these little pits, they
made them wider and wider until they were converted into shallow basins,
appearing to the eye perfectly true or parts of a sphere, and of
about the diameter of a cell. It was most interesting to observe that,
wherever several bees had begun to excavate these basins near together,
they had begun their work at such a distance from each other that by
the time the basins had acquired the above stated width (i.e. about the
width of an ordinary cell), and were in depth about one sixth of the
diameter of the sphere of which they formed a part, the rims of the
basins intersected or broke into each other. As soon as this occurred,
the bees ceased to excavate, and began to build up flat walls of wax
on the lines of intersection between the basins, so that each hexagonal
prism was built upon the scalloped edge of a smooth basin, instead of on
the straight edges of a three-sided pyramid as in the case of ordinary
cells.

I then put into the hive, instead of a thick, rectangular piece of wax,
a thin and narrow, knife-edged ridge, coloured with vermilion. The bees
instantly began on both sides to excavate little basins near to each
other, in the same way as before; but the ridge of wax was so thin, that
the bottoms of the basins, if they had been excavated to the same depth
as in the former experiment, would have broken into each other from the
opposite sides. The bees, however, did not suffer this to happen, and
they stopped their excavations in due time; so that the basins, as soon
as they had been a little deepened, came to have flat bases; and these
flat bases, formed by thin little plates of the vermilion wax left
ungnawed, were situated, as far as the eye could judge, exactly along
the planes of imaginary intersection between the basins on the opposite
side of the ridge of wax. In some parts, only small portions, in other
parts, large portions of a rhombic plate were thus left between the
opposed basins, but the work, from the unnatural state of things, had
not been neatly performed. The bees must have worked at very nearly the
same rate in circularly gnawing away and deepening the basins on both
sides of the ridge of vermilion wax, in order to have thus succeeded in
leaving flat plates between the basins, by stopping work at the planes
of intersection.

Considering how flexible thin wax is, I do not see that there is any
difficulty in the bees, whilst at work on the two sides of a strip
of wax, perceiving when they have gnawed the wax away to the proper
thinness, and then stopping their work. In ordinary combs it has
appeared to me that the bees do not always succeed in working at exactly
the same rate from the opposite sides; for I have noticed half-completed
rhombs at the base of a just-commenced cell, which were slightly concave
on one side, where I suppose that the bees had excavated too quickly,
and convex on the opposed side where the bees had worked less quickly.
In one well-marked instance, I put the comb back into the hive, and
allowed the bees to go on working for a short time, and again examined
the cell, and I found that the rhombic plate had been completed, and had
become PERFECTLY FLAT: it was absolutely impossible, from the extreme
thinness of the little plate, that they could have effected this by
gnawing away the convex side; and I suspect that the bees in such cases
stand in the opposed cells and push and bend the ductile and warm wax
(which as I have tried is easily done) into its proper intermediate
plane, and thus flatten it.

From the experiment of the ridge of vermilion wax we can see that, if
the bees were to build for themselves a thin wall of wax, they could
make their cells of the proper shape, by standing at the proper distance
from each other, by excavating at the same rate, and by endeavouring to
make equal spherical hollows, but never allowing the spheres to break
into each other. Now bees, as may be clearly seen by examining the edge
of a growing comb, do make a rough, circumferential wall or rim all
round the comb; and they gnaw this away from the opposite sides, always
working circularly as they deepen each cell. They do not make the whole
three-sided pyramidal base of any one cell at the same time, but only
that one rhombic plate which stands on the extreme growing margin, or
the two plates, as the case may be; and they never complete the upper
edges of the rhombic plates, until the hexagonal walls are commenced.
Some of these statements differ from those made by the justly celebrated
elder Huber, but I am convinced of their accuracy; and if I had space, I
could show that they are conformable with my theory.

Huber's statement, that the very first cell is excavated out of a little
parallel-sided wall of wax, is not, as far as I have seen, strictly
correct; the first commencement having always been a little hood of
wax; but I will not here enter on details. We see how important a part
excavation plays in the construction of the cells; but it would be a
great error to suppose that the bees cannot build up a rough wall of wax
in the proper position--that is, along the plane of intersection between
two adjoining spheres. I have several specimens showing clearly that
they can do this. Even in the rude circumferential rim or wall of wax
round a growing comb, flexures may sometimes be observed, corresponding
in position to the planes of the rhombic basal plates of future cells.
But the rough wall of wax has in every case to be finished off, by being
largely gnawed away on both sides. The manner in which the bees build is
curious; they always make the first rough wall from ten to twenty times
thicker than the excessively thin finished wall of the cell, which will
ultimately be left. We shall understand how they work, by supposing
masons first to pile up a broad ridge of cement, and then to begin
cutting it away equally on both sides near the ground, till a smooth,
very thin wall is left in the middle; the masons always piling up the
cut-away cement, and adding fresh cement on the summit of the ridge. We
shall thus have a thin wall steadily growing upward but always crowned
by a gigantic coping. From all the cells, both those just commenced and
those completed, being thus crowned by a strong coping of wax, the
bees can cluster and crawl over the comb without injuring the delicate
hexagonal walls. These walls, as Professor Miller has kindly ascertained
for me, vary greatly in thickness; being, on an average of twelve
measurements made near the border of the comb, 1/352 of an inch in
thickness; whereas the basal rhomboidal plates are thicker, nearly in
the proportion of three to two, having a mean thickness, from twenty-one
measurements, of 1/229 of an inch. By the above singular manner of
building, strength is continually given to the comb, with the utmost
ultimate economy of wax.

It seems at first to add to the difficulty of understanding how the
cells are made, that a multitude of bees all work together; one bee
after working a short time at one cell going to another, so that, as
Huber has stated, a score of individuals work even at the commencement
of the first cell. I was able practically to show this fact, by covering
the edges of the hexagonal walls of a single cell, or the extreme margin
of the circumferential rim of a growing comb, with an extremely thin
layer of melted vermilion wax; and I invariably found that the colour
was most delicately diffused by the bees--as delicately as a painter
could have done it with his brush--by atoms of the coloured wax having
been taken from the spot on which it had been placed, and worked into
the growing edges of the cells all round. The work of construction seems
to be a sort of balance struck between many bees, all instinctively
standing at the same relative distance from each other, all trying to
sweep equal spheres, and then building up, or leaving ungnawed, the
planes of intersection between these spheres. It was really curious to
note in cases of difficulty, as when two pieces of comb met at an angle,
how often the bees would pull down and rebuild in different ways the
same cell, sometimes recurring to a shape which they had at first
rejected.

When bees have a place on which they can stand in their proper positions
for working--for instance, on a slip of wood, placed directly under the
middle of a comb growing downwards, so that the comb has to be built
over one face of the slip--in this case the bees can lay the foundations
of one wall of a new hexagon, in its strictly proper place, projecting
beyond the other completed cells. It suffices that the bees should be
enabled to stand at their proper relative distances from each other
and from the walls of the last completed cells, and then, by striking
imaginary spheres, they can build up a wall intermediate between two
adjoining spheres; but, as far as I have seen, they never gnaw away and
finish off the angles of a cell till a large part both of that cell and
of the adjoining cells has been built. This capacity in bees of laying
down under certain circumstances a rough wall in its proper place
between two just-commenced cells, is important, as it bears on a fact,
which seems at first subversive of the foregoing theory; namely, that
the cells on the extreme margin of wasp-combs are sometimes strictly
hexagonal; but I have not space here to enter on this subject. Nor does
there seem to me any great difficulty in a single insect (as in the case
of a queen-wasp) making hexagonal cells, if she were to work alternately
on the inside and outside of two or three cells commenced at the same
time, always standing at the proper relative distance from the parts
of the cells just begun, sweeping spheres or cylinders, and building up
intermediate planes.

As natural selection acts only by the accumulation of slight
modifications of structure or instinct, each profitable to the
individual under its conditions of life, it may reasonably be asked, how
a long and graduated succession of modified architectural instincts,
all tending towards the present perfect plan of construction, could
have profited the progenitors of the hive-bee? I think the answer is not
difficult: cells constructed like those of the bee or the wasp gain in
strength, and save much in labour and space, and in the materials of
which they are constructed. With respect to the formation of wax, it is
known that bees are often hard pressed to get sufficient nectar; and
I am informed by Mr. Tegetmeier that it has been experimentally proved
that from twelve to fifteen pounds of dry sugar are consumed by a
hive of bees for the secretion of a pound of wax; so that a prodigious
quantity of fluid nectar must be collected and consumed by the bees in
a hive for the secretion of the wax necessary for the construction
of their combs. Moreover, many bees have to remain idle for many days
during the process of secretion. A large store of honey is indispensable
to support a large stock of bees during the winter; and the security
of the hive is known mainly to depend on a large number of bees being
supported. Hence the saving of wax by largely saving honey, and the
time consumed in collecting the honey, must be an important element of
success any family of bees. Of course the success of the species may
be dependent on the number of its enemies, or parasites, or on quite
distinct causes, and so be altogether independent of the quantity of
honey which the bees can collect. But let us suppose that this latter
circumstance determined, as it probably often has determined, whether
a bee allied to our humble-bees could exist in large numbers in any
country; and let us further suppose that the community lived through the
winter, and consequently required a store of honey: there can in
this case be no doubt that it would be an advantage to our imaginary
humble-bee if a slight modification of her instincts led her to make her
waxen cells near together, so as to intersect a little; for a wall in
common even to two adjoining cells would save some little labour and
wax. Hence, it would continually be more and more advantageous to our
humble-bees, if they were to make their cells more and more regular,
nearer together, and aggregated into a mass, like the cells of the
Melipona; for in this case a large part of the bounding surface of each
cell would serve to bound the adjoining cells, and much labour and wax
would be saved. Again, from the same cause, it would be advantageous to
the Melipona, if she were to make her cells closer together, and more
regular in every way than at present; for then, as we have seen, the
spherical surfaces would wholly disappear and be replaced by plane
surfaces; and the Melipona would make a comb as perfect as that of
the hive-bee. Beyond this stage of perfection in architecture, natural
selection could not lead; for the comb of the hive-bee, as far as we can
see, is absolutely perfect in economising labour and wax.

Thus, as I believe, the most wonderful of all known instincts, that
of the hive-bee, can be explained by natural selection having taken
advantage of numerous, successive, slight modifications of simpler
instincts; natural selection having, by slow degrees, more and more
perfectly led the bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from
each other in a double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax along
the planes of intersection. The bees, of course, no more knowing that
they swept their spheres at one particular distance from each other,
than they know what are the several angles of the hexagonal prisms and
of the basal rhombic plates; the motive power of the process of natural
selection having been the construction of cells of due strength and of
the proper size and shape for the larvae, this being effected with the
greatest possible economy of labour and wax; that individual swarm which
thus made the best cells with least labour, and least waste of honey
in the secretion of wax, having succeeded best, and having transmitted
their newly-acquired economical instincts to new swarms, which in their
turn will have had the best chance of succeeding in the struggle for
existence.

OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION AS APPLIED TO INSTINCTS:
NEUTER AND STERILE INSECTS.

It has been objected to the foregoing view of the origin of instincts
that "the variations of structure and of instinct must have been
simultaneous and accurately adjusted to each other, as a modification
in the one without an immediate corresponding change in the other would
have been fatal." The force of this objection rests entirely on the
assumption that the changes in the instincts and structure are abrupt.
To take as an illustration the case of the larger titmouse, (Parus
major) alluded to in a previous chapter; this bird often holds the seeds
of the yew between its feet on a branch, and hammers with its beak till
it gets at the kernel. Now what special difficulty would there be in
natural selection preserving all the slight individual variations in the
shape of the beak, which were better and better adapted to break open
the seeds, until a beak was formed, as well constructed for this purpose
as that of the nuthatch, at the same time that habit, or compulsion, or
spontaneous variations of taste, led the bird to become more and more of
a seed-eater? In this case the beak is supposed to be slowly modified
by natural selection, subsequently to, but in accordance with, slowly
changing habits or taste; but let the feet of the titmouse vary and grow
larger from correlation with the beak, or from any other unknown cause,
and it is not improbable that such larger feet would lead the bird to
climb more and more until it acquired the remarkable climbing instinct
and power of the nuthatch. In this case a gradual change of structure is
supposed to lead to changed instinctive habits. To take one more case:
few instincts are more remarkable than that which leads the swift of
the Eastern Islands to make its nest wholly of inspissated saliva. Some
birds build their nests of mud, believed to be moistened with saliva;
and one of the swifts of North America makes its nest (as I have
seen) of sticks agglutinated with saliva, and even with flakes of this
substance. Is it then very improbable that the natural selection of
individual swifts, which secreted more and more saliva, should at last
produce a species with instincts leading it to neglect other materials
and to make its nest exclusively of inspissated saliva? And so in other
cases. It must, however, be admitted that in many instances we cannot
conjecture whether it was instinct or structure which first varied.

No doubt many instincts of very difficult explanation could be opposed
to the theory of natural selection--cases, in which we cannot see how
an instinct could have originated; cases, in which no intermediate
gradations are known to exist; cases of instincts of such trifling
importance, that they could hardly have been acted on by natural
selection; cases of instincts almost identically the same in animals
so remote in the scale of nature that we cannot account for their
similarity by inheritance from a common progenitor, and consequently
must believe that they were independently acquired through natural
selection. I will not here enter on these several cases, but will
confine myself to one special difficulty, which at first appeared to
me insuperable, and actually fatal to the whole theory. I allude to
the neuters or sterile females in insect communities: for these neuters
often differ widely in instinct and in structure from both the males
and fertile females, and yet, from being sterile, they cannot propagate
their kind.

The subject well deserves to be discussed at great length, but I will
here take only a single case, that of working or sterile ants. How the
workers have been rendered sterile is a difficulty; but not much greater
than that of any other striking modification of structure; for it can
be shown that some insects and other articulate animals in a state of
nature occasionally become sterile; and if such insects had been social,
and it had been profitable to the community that a number should have
been annually born capable of work, but incapable of procreation, I can
see no especial difficulty in this having been effected through natural
selection. But I must pass over this preliminary difficulty. The great
difficulty lies in the working ants differing widely from both the males
and the fertile females in structure, as in the shape of the thorax, and
in being destitute of wings and sometimes of eyes, and in instinct. As
far as instinct alone is concerned, the wonderful difference in this
respect between the workers and the perfect females would have been
better exemplified by the hive-bee. If a working ant or other neuter
insect had been an ordinary animal, I should have unhesitatingly
assumed that all its characters had been slowly acquired through
natural selection; namely, by individuals having been born with slight
profitable modifications, which were inherited by the offspring, and
that these again varied and again were selected, and so onwards. But
with the working ant we have an insect differing greatly from its
parents, yet absolutely sterile; so that it could never have transmitted
successively acquired modifications of structure or instinct to its
progeny. It may well be asked how it is possible to reconcile this case
with the theory of natural selection?

First, let it be remembered that we have innumerable instances, both in
our domestic productions and in those in a state of nature, of all sorts
of differences of inherited structure which are correlated with certain
ages and with either sex. We have differences correlated not only with
one sex, but with that short period when the reproductive system is
active, as in the nuptial plumage of many birds, and in the hooked jaws
of the male salmon. We have even slight differences in the horns of
different breeds of cattle in relation to an artificially imperfect
state of the male sex; for oxen of certain breeds have longer horns than
the oxen of other breeds, relatively to the length of the horns in
both the bulls and cows of these same breeds. Hence, I can see no
great difficulty in any character becoming correlated with the sterile
condition of certain members of insect communities; the difficulty lies
in understanding how such correlated modifications of structure could
have been slowly accumulated by natural selection.

This difficulty, though appearing insuperable, is lessened, or, as I
believe, disappears, when it is remembered that selection may be applied
to the family, as well as to the individual, and may thus gain the
desired end. Breeders of cattle wish the flesh and fat to be well
marbled together. An animal thus characterized has been slaughtered,
but the breeder has gone with confidence to the same stock and has
succeeded. Such faith may be placed in the power of selection that a
breed of cattle, always yielding oxen with extraordinarily long horns,
could, it is probable, be formed by carefully watching which individual
bulls and cows, when matched, produced oxen with the longest horns; and
yet no one ox would ever have propagated its kind. Here is a better and
real illustration: According to M. Verlot, some varieties of the double
annual stock, from having been long and carefully selected to the right
degree, always produce a large proportion of seedlings bearing double
and quite sterile flowers, but they likewise yield some single and
fertile plants. These latter, by which alone the variety can be
propagated, may be compared with the fertile male and female ants, and
the double sterile plants with the neuters of the same community. As
with the varieties of the stock, so with social insects, selection has
been applied to the family, and not to the individual, for the sake
of gaining a serviceable end. Hence, we may conclude that slight
modifications of structure or of instinct, correlated with the sterile
condition of certain members of the community, have proved advantageous;
consequently the fertile males and females have flourished, and
transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile
members with the same modifications. This process must have been
repeated many times, until that prodigious amount of difference between
the fertile and sterile females of the same species has been produced
which we see in many social insects.

But we have not as yet touched on the acme of the difficulty; namely,
the fact that the neuters of several ants differ, not only from the
fertile females and males, but from each other, sometimes to an almost
incredible degree, and are thus divided into two or even three castes.
The castes, moreover, do not generally graduate into each other, but are
perfectly well defined; being as distinct from each other as are any
two species of the same genus, or rather as any two genera of the same
family. Thus, in Eciton, there are working and soldier neuters, with
jaws and instincts extraordinarily different: in Cryptocerus, the
workers of one caste alone carry a wonderful sort of shield on their
heads, the use of which is quite unknown: in the Mexican Myrmecocystus,
the workers of one caste never leave the nest; they are fed by the
workers of another caste, and they have an enormously developed abdomen
which secretes a sort of honey, supplying the place of that excreted
by the aphides, or the domestic cattle as they may be called, which our
European ants guard and imprison.

It will indeed be thought that I have an overweening confidence in the
principle of natural selection, when I do not admit that such wonderful
and well-established facts at once annihilate the theory. In the simpler
case of neuter insects all of one caste, which, as I believe, have been
rendered different from the fertile males and females through natural
selection, we may conclude from the analogy of ordinary variations, that
the successive, slight, profitable modifications did not first arise in
all the neuters in the same nest, but in some few alone; and that by
the survival of the communities with females which produced most neuters
having the advantageous modification, all the neuters ultimately came to
be thus characterized. According to this view we ought occasionally
to find in the same nest neuter-insects, presenting gradations of
structure; and this we do find, even not rarely, considering how few
neuter-insects out of Europe have been carefully examined. Mr. F. Smith
has shown that the neuters of several British ants differ surprisingly
from each other in size and sometimes in colour; and that the extreme
forms can be linked together by individuals taken out of the same nest:
I have myself compared perfect gradations of this kind. It sometimes
happens that the larger or the smaller sized workers are the most
numerous; or that both large and small are numerous, while those of an
intermediate size are scanty in numbers. Formica flava has larger
and smaller workers, with some few of intermediate size; and, in this
species, as Mr. F. Smith has observed, the larger workers have simple
eyes (ocelli), which, though small, can be plainly distinguished,
whereas the smaller workers have their ocelli rudimentary. Having
carefully dissected several specimens of these workers, I can affirm
that the eyes are far more rudimentary in the smaller workers than can
be accounted for merely by their proportionately lesser size; and I
fully believe, though I dare not assert so positively, that the workers
of intermediate size have their ocelli in an exactly intermediate
condition. So that here we have two bodies of sterile workers in the
same nest, differing not only in size, but in their organs of vision,
yet connected by some few members in an intermediate condition. I may
digress by adding, that if the smaller workers had been the most useful
to the community, and those males and females had been continually
selected, which produced more and more of the smaller workers, until all
the workers were in this condition; we should then have had a species of
ant with neuters in nearly the same condition as those of Myrmica. For
the workers of Myrmica have not even rudiments of ocelli, though the
male and female ants of this genus have well-developed ocelli.

I may give one other case: so confidently did I expect occasionally to
find gradations of important structures between the different castes
of neuters in the same species, that I gladly availed myself of Mr. F.
Smith's offer of numerous specimens from the same nest of the driver
ant (Anomma) of West Africa. The reader will perhaps best appreciate
the amount of difference in these workers by my giving, not the actual
measurements, but a strictly accurate illustration: the difference was
the same as if we were to see a set of workmen building a house, of whom
many were five feet four inches high, and many sixteen feet high; but we
must in addition suppose that the larger workmen had heads four instead
of three times as big as those of the smaller men, and jaws nearly five
times as big. The jaws, moreover, of the working ants of the several
sizes differed wonderfully in shape, and in the form and number of the
teeth. But the important fact for us is that, though the workers can
be grouped into castes of different sizes, yet they graduate insensibly
into each other, as does the widely-different structure of their jaws. I
speak confidently on this latter point, as Sir J. Lubbock made drawings
for me, with the camera lucida, of the jaws which I dissected from the
workers of the several sizes. Mr. Bates, in his interesting "Naturalist
on the Amazons," has described analogous cases.

With these facts before me, I believe that natural selection, by acting
on the fertile ants or parents, could form a species which should
regularly produce neuters, all of large size with one form of jaw, or
all of small size with widely different jaws; or lastly, and this is the
greatest difficulty, one set of workers of one size and structure, and
simultaneously another set of workers of a different size and structure;
a graduated series having first been formed, as in the case of the
driver ant, and then the extreme forms having been produced in greater
and greater numbers, through the survival of the parents which generated
them, until none with an intermediate structure were produced.

An analogous explanation has been given by Mr. Wallace, of the equally
complex case, of certain Malayan butterflies regularly appearing under
two or even three distinct female forms; and by Fritz Muller, of certain
Brazilian crustaceans likewise appearing under two widely distinct male
forms. But this subject need not here be discussed.

I have now explained how, I believe, the wonderful fact of two
distinctly defined castes of sterile workers existing in the same
nest, both widely different from each other and from their parents, has
originated. We can see how useful their production may have been to a
social community of ants, on the same principle that the division of
labour is useful to civilised man. Ants, however, work by inherited
instincts and by inherited organs or tools, while man works by acquired
knowledge and manufactured instruments. But I must confess, that, with
all my faith in natural selection, I should never have anticipated that
this principle could have been efficient in so high a degree, had not
the case of these neuter insects led me to this conclusion. I have,
therefore, discussed this case, at some little but wholly insufficient
length, in order to show the power of natural selection, and likewise
because this is by far the most serious special difficulty which my
theory has encountered. The case, also, is very interesting, as it
proves that with animals, as with plants, any amount of modification
may be effected by the accumulation of numerous, slight, spontaneous
variations, which are in any way profitable, without exercise or habit
having been brought into play. For peculiar habits, confined to the
workers of sterile females, however long they might be followed, could
not possibly affect the males and fertile females, which alone leave
descendants. I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative
case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of inherited
habit, as advanced by Lamarck.

SUMMARY.

I have endeavoured in this chapter briefly to show that the mental
qualities of our domestic animals vary, and that the variations are
inherited. Still more briefly I have attempted to show that instincts
vary slightly in a state of nature. No one will dispute that instincts
are of the highest importance to each animal. Therefore, there is no
real difficulty, under changing conditions of life, in natural selection
accumulating to any extent slight modifications of instinct which are in
any way useful. In many cases habit or use and disuse have probably
come into play. I do not pretend that the facts given in this chapter
strengthen in any great degree my theory; but none of the cases of
difficulty, to the best of my judgment, annihilate it. On the other
hand, the fact that instincts are not always absolutely perfect and are
liable to mistakes; that no instinct can be shown to have been produced
for the good of other animals, though animals take advantage of the
instincts of others; that the canon in natural history, of "Natura
non facit saltum," is applicable to instincts as well as to corporeal
structure, and is plainly explicable on the foregoing views, but is
otherwise inexplicable--all tend to corroborate the theory of natural
selection.

This theory is also strengthened by some few other facts in regard
to instincts; as by that common case of closely allied, but distinct,
species, when inhabiting distant parts of the world and living under
considerably different conditions of life, yet often retaining nearly
the same instincts. For instance, we can understand, on the principle of
inheritance, how it is that the thrush of tropical South America lines
its nest with mud, in the same peculiar manner as does our British
thrush; how it is that the Hornbills of Africa and India have the same
extraordinary instinct of plastering up and imprisoning the females in a
hole in a tree, with only a small hole left in the plaster through which
the males feed them and their young when hatched; how it is that the
male wrens (Troglodytes) of North America, build "cock-nests," to roost
in, like the males of our Kitty-wrens,--a habit wholly unlike that of
any other known bird. Finally, it may not be a logical deduction, but to
my imagination it is far more satisfactory to look at such instincts as
the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, ants making slaves, the
larvae of ichneumonidae feeding within the live bodies of caterpillars,
not as specially endowed or created instincts, but as small consequences
of one general law leading to the advancement of all organic
beings--namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest
die.




CHAPTER IX. HYBRIDISM.

 Distinction between the sterility of first crosses and of
 hybrids--Sterility various in degree, not universal, affected by close
 interbreeding, removed by domestication--Laws governing the sterility
 of hybrids--Sterility not a special endowment, but incidental on
 other differences, not accumulated by natural selection--Causes of
 the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids--Parallelism between the
 effects of changed conditions of life and of crossing--Dimorphism and
 trimorphism--Fertility of varieties when crossed and of their mongrel
 offspring not universal--Hybrids and mongrels compared independently of
 their fertility--Summary.


The view commonly entertained by naturalists is that species, when
intercrossed, have been specially endowed with sterility, in order
to prevent their confusion. This view certainly seems at first highly
probable, for species living together could hardly have been kept
distinct had they been capable of freely crossing. The subject is in
many ways important for us, more especially as the sterility of species
when first crossed, and that of their hybrid offspring, cannot have been
acquired, as I shall show, by the preservation of successive profitable
degrees of sterility. It is an incidental result of differences in the
reproductive systems of the parent-species.

In treating this subject, two classes of facts, to a large extent
fundamentally different, have generally been confounded; namely, the
sterility of species when first crossed, and the sterility of the
hybrids produced from them.

Pure species have of course their organs of reproduction in a perfect
condition, yet when intercrossed they produce either few or no
offspring. Hybrids, on the other hand, have their reproductive organs
functionally impotent, as may be clearly seen in the state of the
male element in both plants and animals; though the formative organs
themselves are perfect in structure, as far as the microscope reveals.
In the first case the two sexual elements which go to form the embryo
are perfect; in the second case they are either not at all developed, or
are imperfectly developed. This distinction is important, when the
cause of the sterility, which is common to the two cases, has to be
considered. The distinction probably has been slurred over, owing to the
sterility in both cases being looked on as a special endowment, beyond
the province of our reasoning powers.

The fertility of varieties, that is of the forms known or believed to be
descended from common parents, when crossed, and likewise the fertility
of their mongrel offspring, is, with reference to my theory, of equal
importance with the sterility of species; for it seems to make a broad
and clear distinction between varieties and species.

DEGREES OF STERILITY.

First, for the sterility of species when crossed and of their hybrid
offspring. It is impossible to study the several memoirs and works of
those two conscientious and admirable observers, Kolreuter and Gartner,
who almost devoted their lives to this subject, without being deeply
impressed with the high generality of some degree of sterility.
Kolreuter makes the rule universal; but then he cuts the knot, for in
ten cases in which he found two forms, considered by most authors as
distinct species, quite fertile together, he unhesitatingly ranks them
as varieties. Gartner, also, makes the rule equally universal; and he
disputes the entire fertility of Kolreuter's ten cases. But in these and
in many other cases, Gartner is obliged carefully to count the seeds, in
order to show that there is any degree of sterility. He always compares
the maximum number of seeds produced by two species when first crossed,
and the maximum produced by their hybrid offspring, with the average
number produced by both pure parent-species in a state of nature. But
causes of serious error here intervene: a plant, to be hybridised, must
be castrated, and, what is often more important, must be secluded
in order to prevent pollen being brought to it by insects from other
plants. Nearly all the plants experimented on by Gartner were potted,
and were kept in a chamber in his house. That these processes are often
injurious to the fertility of a plant cannot be doubted; for Gartner
gives in his table about a score of cases of plants which he castrated,
and artificially fertilised with their own pollen, and (excluding
all cases such as the Leguminosae, in which there is an acknowledged
difficulty in the manipulation) half of these twenty plants had their
fertility in some degree impaired. Moreover, as Gartner repeatedly
crossed some forms, such as the common red and blue pimpernels
(Anagallis arvensis and coerulea), which the best botanists rank as
varieties, and found them absolutely sterile, we may doubt whether many
species are really so sterile, when intercrossed, as he believed.

It is certain, on the one hand, that the sterility of various species
when crossed is so different in degree and graduates away so insensibly,
and, on the other hand, that the fertility of pure species is so easily
affected by various circumstances, that for all practical purposes it is
most difficult to say where perfect fertility ends and sterility begins.
I think no better evidence of this can be required than that the two
most experienced observers who have ever lived, namely Kolreuter and
Gartner, arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions in regard to some
of the very same forms. It is also most instructive to compare--but I
have not space here to enter on details--the evidence advanced by our
best botanists on the question whether certain doubtful forms should be
ranked as species or varieties, with the evidence from fertility adduced
by different hybridisers, or by the same observer from experiments made
during different years. It can thus be shown that neither sterility nor
fertility affords any certain distinction between species and varieties.
The evidence from this source graduates away, and is doubtful in the
same degree as is the evidence derived from other constitutional and
structural differences.

In regard to the sterility of hybrids in successive generations; though
Gartner was enabled to rear some hybrids, carefully guarding them from a
cross with either pure parent, for six or seven, and in one case for
ten generations, yet he asserts positively that their fertility never
increases, but generally decreases greatly and suddenly. With respect
to this decrease, it may first be noticed that when any deviation in
structure or constitution is common to both parents, this is often
transmitted in an augmented degree to the offspring; and both sexual
elements in hybrid plants are already affected in some degree. But I
believe that their fertility has been diminished in nearly all these
cases by an independent cause, namely, by too close interbreeding. I
have made so many experiments and collected so many facts, showing on
the one hand that an occasional cross with a distinct individual or
variety increases the vigour and fertility of the offspring, and on
the other hand that very close interbreeding lessens their vigour and
fertility, that I cannot doubt the correctness of this conclusion.
Hybrids are seldom raised by experimentalists in great numbers; and as
the parent-species, or other allied hybrids, generally grow in the same
garden, the visits of insects must be carefully prevented during the
flowering season: hence hybrids, if left to themselves, will generally
be fertilised during each generation by pollen from the same flower; and
this would probably be injurious to their fertility, already lessened
by their hybrid origin. I am strengthened in this conviction by a
remarkable statement repeatedly made by Gartner, namely, that if even
the less fertile hybrids be artificially fertilised with hybrid pollen
of the same kind, their fertility, notwithstanding the frequent ill
effects from manipulation, sometimes decidedly increases, and goes on
increasing. Now, in the process of artificial fertilisation, pollen is
as often taken by chance (as I know from my own experience) from the
anthers of another flower, as from the anthers of the flower itself
which is to be fertilised; so that a cross between two flowers, though
probably often on the same plant, would be thus effected. Moreover,
whenever complicated experiments are in progress, so careful an observer
as Gartner would have castrated his hybrids, and this would have insured
in each generation a cross with pollen from a distinct flower, either
from the same plant or from another plant of the same hybrid nature.
And thus, the strange fact of an increase of fertility in the successive
generations of ARTIFICIALLY FERTILISED hybrids, in contrast with those
spontaneously self-fertilised, may, as I believe, be accounted for by
too close interbreeding having been avoided.

Now let us turn to the results arrived at by a third most experienced
hybridiser, namely, the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert. He is as emphatic in
his conclusion that some hybrids are perfectly fertile--as fertile as
the pure parent-species--as are Kolreuter and Gartner that some degree
of sterility between distinct species is a universal law of nature.
He experimented on some of the very same species as did Gartner. The
difference in their results may, I think, be in part accounted for by
Herbert's great horticultural skill, and by his having hot-houses at his
command. Of his many important statements I will here give only a single
one as an example, namely, that "every ovule in a pod of Crinum capense
fertilised by C. revolutum produced a plant, which I never saw to occur
in a case of its natural fecundation." So that here we have perfect, or
even more than commonly perfect fertility, in a first cross between two
distinct species.

This case of the Crinum leads me to refer to a singular fact, namely,
that individual plants of certain species of Lobelia, Verbascum and
Passiflora, can easily be fertilised by the pollen from a distinct
species, but not by pollen from the same plant, though this pollen can
be proved to be perfectly sound by fertilising other plants or species.
In the genus Hippeastrum, in Corydalis as shown by Professor Hildebrand,
in various orchids as shown by Mr. Scott and Fritz Muller, all the
individuals are in this peculiar condition. So that with some species,
certain abnormal individuals, and in other species all the individuals,
can actually be hybridised much more readily than they can be fertilised
by pollen from the same individual plant! To give one instance, a bulb
of Hippeastrum aulicum produced four flowers; three were fertilised
by Herbert with their own pollen, and the fourth was subsequently
fertilised by the pollen of a compound hybrid descended from three
distinct species: the result was that "the ovaries of the three first
flowers soon ceased to grow, and after a few days perished entirely,
whereas the pod impregnated by the pollen of the hybrid made vigorous
growth and rapid progress to maturity, and bore good seed, which
vegetated freely." Mr. Herbert tried similar experiments during many
years, and always with the same result. These cases serve to show on
what slight and mysterious causes the lesser or greater fertility of a
species sometimes depends.

The practical experiments of horticulturists, though not made with
scientific precision, deserve some notice. It is notorious in how
complicated a manner the species of Pelargonium, Fuchsia, Calceolaria,
Petunia, Rhododendron, etc., have been crossed, yet many of these
hybrids seed freely. For instance, Herbert asserts that a hybrid from
Calceolaria integrifolia and plantaginea, species most widely dissimilar
in general habit, "reproduces itself as perfectly as if it had been a
natural species from the mountains of Chile." I have taken some pains
to ascertain the degree of fertility of some of the complex crosses of
Rhododendrons, and I am assured that many of them are perfectly fertile.
Mr. C. Noble, for instance, informs me that he raises stocks for
grafting from a hybrid between Rhod. ponticum and catawbiense, and that
this hybrid "seeds as freely as it is possible to imagine." Had hybrids,
when fairly treated, always gone on decreasing in fertility in each
successive generation, as Gartner believed to be the case, the fact
would have been notorious to nurserymen. Horticulturists raise large
beds of the same hybrid, and such alone are fairly treated, for by
insect agency the several individuals are allowed to cross freely with
each other, and the injurious influence of close interbreeding is thus
prevented. Any one may readily convince himself of the efficiency of
insect agency by examining the flowers of the more sterile kinds of
hybrid Rhododendrons, which produce no pollen, for he will find on their
stigmas plenty of pollen brought from other flowers.

In regard to animals, much fewer experiments have been carefully tried
than with plants. If our systematic arrangements can be trusted, that
is, if the genera of animals are as distinct from each other as are the
genera of plants, then we may infer that animals more widely distinct
in the scale of nature can be crossed more easily than in the case
of plants; but the hybrids themselves are, I think, more sterile. It
should, however, be borne in mind that, owing to few animals breeding
freely under confinement, few experiments have been fairly tried: for
instance, the canary-bird has been crossed with nine distinct species of
finches, but, as not one of these breeds freely in confinement, we have
no right to expect that the first crosses between them and the canary,
or that their hybrids, should be perfectly fertile. Again, with respect
to the fertility in successive generations of the more fertile hybrid
animals, I hardly know of an instance in which two families of the same
hybrid have been raised at the same time from different parents, so
as to avoid the ill effects of close interbreeding. On the contrary,
brothers and sisters have usually been crossed in each successive
generation, in opposition to the constantly repeated admonition of every
breeder. And in this case, it is not at all surprising that the inherent
sterility in the hybrids should have gone on increasing.

Although I know of hardly any thoroughly well-authenticated cases of
perfectly fertile hybrid animals, I have reason to believe that the
hybrids from Cervulus vaginalis and Reevesii, and from Phasianus
colchicus with P. torquatus, are perfectly fertile. M. Quatrefages
states that the hybrids from two moths (Bombyx cynthia and arrindia)
were proved in Paris to be fertile inter se for eight generations. It
has lately been asserted that two such distinct species as the hare and
rabbit, when they can be got to breed together, produce offspring, which
are highly fertile when crossed with one of the parent-species. The
hybrids from the common and Chinese geese (A. cygnoides), species which
are so different that they are generally ranked in distinct genera, have
often bred in this country with either pure parent, and in one single
instance they have bred inter se. This was effected by Mr. Eyton, who
raised two hybrids from the same parents, but from different hatches;
and from these two birds he raised no less than eight hybrids
(grandchildren of the pure geese) from one nest. In India, however,
these cross-bred geese must be far more fertile; for I am assured by
two eminently capable judges, namely Mr. Blyth and Captain Hutton, that
whole flocks of these crossed geese are kept in various parts of
the country; and as they are kept for profit, where neither pure
parent-species exists, they must certainly be highly or perfectly
fertile.

With our domesticated animals, the various races when crossed together
are quite fertile; yet in many cases they are descended from two or more
wild species. From this fact we must conclude either that the aboriginal
parent-species at first produced perfectly fertile hybrids, or that the
hybrids subsequently reared under domestication became quite fertile.
This latter alternative, which was first propounded by Pallas, seems by
far the most probable, and can, indeed, hardly be doubted. It is, for
instance, almost certain that our dogs are descended from several wild
stocks; yet, with perhaps the exception of certain indigenous domestic
dogs of South America, all are quite fertile together; but analogy makes
me greatly doubt, whether the several aboriginal species would at first
have freely bred together and have produced quite fertile hybrids.
So again I have lately acquired decisive evidence that the crossed
offspring from the Indian humped and common cattle are inter se
perfectly fertile; and from the observations by Rutimeyer on their
important osteological differences, as well as from those by Mr. Blyth
on their differences in habits, voice, constitution, etc., these two
forms must be regarded as good and distinct species. The same remarks
may be extended to the two chief races of the pig. We must, therefore,
either give up the belief of the universal sterility of species when
crossed; or we must look at this sterility in animals, not as an
indelible characteristic, but as one capable of being removed by
domestication.

Finally, considering all the ascertained facts on the intercrossing of
plants and animals, it may be concluded that some degree of sterility,
both in first crosses and in hybrids, is an extremely general result;
but that it cannot, under our present state of knowledge, be considered
as absolutely universal.

LAWS GOVERNING THE STERILITY OF FIRST CROSSES AND OF HYBRIDS.

We will now consider a little more in detail the laws governing the
sterility of first crosses and of hybrids. Our chief object will be to
see whether or not these laws indicate that species have been specially
endowed with this quality, in order to prevent their crossing and
blending together in utter confusion. The following conclusions are
drawn up chiefly from Gartner's admirable work on the hybridisation
of plants. I have taken much pains to ascertain how far they apply
to animals, and, considering how scanty our knowledge is in regard to
hybrid animals, I have been surprised to find how generally the same
rules apply to both kingdoms.

It has been already remarked, that the degree of fertility, both of
first crosses and of hybrids, graduates from zero to perfect fertility.
It is surprising in how many curious ways this gradation can be shown;
but only the barest outline of the facts can here be given. When pollen
from a plant of one family is placed on the stigma of a plant of a
distinct family, it exerts no more influence than so much inorganic
dust. From this absolute zero of fertility, the pollen of different
species applied to the stigma of some one species of the same genus,
yields a perfect gradation in the number of seeds produced, up to nearly
complete or even quite complete fertility; and, as we have seen, in
certain abnormal cases, even to an excess of fertility, beyond that
which the plant's own pollen produces. So in hybrids themselves, there
are some which never have produced, and probably never would produce,
even with the pollen of the pure parents, a single fertile seed: but in
some of these cases a first trace of fertility may be detected, by
the pollen of one of the pure parent-species causing the flower of the
hybrid to wither earlier than it otherwise would have done; and the
early withering of the flower is well known to be a sign of incipient
fertilisation. From this extreme degree of sterility we have
self-fertilised hybrids producing a greater and greater number of seeds
up to perfect fertility.

The hybrids raised from two species which are very difficult to cross,
and which rarely produce any offspring, are generally very sterile; but
the parallelism between the difficulty of making a first cross, and the
sterility of the hybrids thus produced--two classes of facts which are
generally confounded together--is by no means strict. There are many
cases, in which two pure species, as in the genus Verbascum, can be
united with unusual facility, and produce numerous hybrid offspring,
yet these hybrids are remarkably sterile. On the other hand, there are
species which can be crossed very rarely, or with extreme difficulty,
but the hybrids, when at last produced, are very fertile. Even within
the limits of the same genus, for instance in Dianthus, these two
opposite cases occur.

The fertility, both of first crosses and of hybrids, is more easily
affected by unfavourable conditions, than is that of pure species. But
the fertility of first crosses is likewise innately variable; for it
is not always the same in degree when the same two species are crossed
under the same circumstances; it depends in part upon the constitution
of the individuals which happen to have been chosen for the experiment.
So it is with hybrids, for their degree of fertility is often found to
differ greatly in the several individuals raised from seed out of the
same capsule and exposed to the same conditions.

By the term systematic affinity is meant, the general resemblance
between species in structure and constitution. Now the fertility
of first crosses, and of the hybrids produced from them, is largely
governed by their systematic affinity. This is clearly shown by hybrids
never having been raised between species ranked by systematists in
distinct families; and on the other hand, by very closely allied
species generally uniting with facility. But the correspondence between
systematic affinity and the facility of crossing is by no means strict.
A multitude of cases could be given of very closely allied species which
will not unite, or only with extreme difficulty; and on the other hand
of very distinct species which unite with the utmost facility. In
the same family there may be a genus, as Dianthus, in which very many
species can most readily be crossed; and another genus, as Silene,
in which the most persevering efforts have failed to produce between
extremely close species a single hybrid. Even within the limits of the
same genus, we meet with this same difference; for instance, the many
species of Nicotiana have been more largely crossed than the species of
almost any other genus; but Gartner found that N. acuminata, which is
not a particularly distinct species, obstinately failed to fertilise, or
to be fertilised, by no less than eight other species of Nicotiana. Many
analogous facts could be given.

No one has been able to point out what kind or what amount of
difference, in any recognisable character, is sufficient to prevent two
species crossing. It can be shown that plants most widely different in
habit and general appearance, and having strongly marked differences in
every part of the flower, even in the pollen, in the fruit, and in the
cotyledons, can be crossed. Annual and perennial plants, deciduous and
evergreen trees, plants inhabiting different stations and fitted for
extremely different climates, can often be crossed with ease.

By a reciprocal cross between two species, I mean the case, for
instance, of a female-ass being first crossed by a stallion, and then
a mare by a male-ass: these two species may then be said to have been
reciprocally crossed. There is often the widest possible difference
in the facility of making reciprocal crosses. Such cases are highly
important, for they prove that the capacity in any two species to cross
is often completely independent of their systematic affinity, that is
of any difference in their structure or constitution, excepting in their
reproductive systems. The diversity of the result in reciprocal crosses
between the same two species was long ago observed by Kolreuter. To give
an instance: Mirabilis jalapa can easily be fertilised by the pollen of
M. longiflora, and the hybrids thus produced are sufficiently fertile;
but Kolreuter tried more than two hundred times, during eight following
years, to fertilise reciprocally M. longiflora with the pollen of M.
jalapa, and utterly failed. Several other equally striking cases could
be given. Thuret has observed the same fact with certain sea-weeds
or Fuci. Gartner, moreover, found that this difference of facility in
making reciprocal crosses is extremely common in a lesser degree. He has
observed it even between closely related forms (as Matthiola annua
and glabra) which many botanists rank only as varieties. It is also a
remarkable fact that hybrids raised from reciprocal crosses, though of
course compounded of the very same two species, the one species having
first been used as the father and then as the mother, though they rarely
differ in external characters, yet generally differ in fertility in a
small, and occasionally in a high degree.

Several other singular rules could be given from Gartner: for instance,
some species have a remarkable power of crossing with other species;
other species of the same genus have a remarkable power of impressing
their likeness on their hybrid offspring; but these two powers do not at
all necessarily go together. There are certain hybrids which, instead
of having, as is usual, an intermediate character between their two
parents, always closely resemble one of them; and such hybrids, though
externally so like one of their pure parent-species, are with rare
exceptions extremely sterile. So again among hybrids which are usually
intermediate in structure between their parents, exceptional and
abnormal individuals sometimes are born, which closely resemble one of
their pure parents; and these hybrids are almost always utterly sterile,
even when the other hybrids raised from seed from the same capsule have
a considerable degree of fertility. These facts show how completely the
fertility of a hybrid may be independent of its external resemblance to
either pure parent.

Considering the several rules now given, which govern the fertility
of first crosses and of hybrids, we see that when forms, which must be
considered as good and distinct species, are united, their fertility
graduates from zero to perfect fertility, or even to fertility under
certain conditions in excess; that their fertility, besides being
eminently susceptible to favourable and unfavourable conditions, is
innately variable; that it is by no means always the same in degree in
the first cross and in the hybrids produced from this cross; that the
fertility of hybrids is not related to the degree in which they resemble
in external appearance either parent; and lastly, that the facility of
making a first cross between any two species is not always governed by
their systematic affinity or degree of resemblance to each other. This
latter statement is clearly proved by the difference in the result of
reciprocal crosses between the same two species, for, according as the
one species or the other is used as the father or the mother, there
is generally some difference, and occasionally the widest possible
difference, in the facility of effecting an union. The hybrids,
moreover, produced from reciprocal crosses often differ in fertility.

Now do these complex and singular rules indicate that species have been
endowed with sterility simply to prevent their becoming confounded
in nature? I think not. For why should the sterility be so extremely
different in degree, when various species are crossed, all of which
we must suppose it would be equally important to keep from blending
together? Why should the degree of sterility be innately variable in
the individuals of the same species? Why should some species cross with
facility and yet produce very sterile hybrids; and other species cross
with extreme difficulty, and yet produce fairly fertile hybrids?
Why should there often be so great a difference in the result of a
reciprocal cross between the same two species? Why, it may even be
asked, has the production of hybrids been permitted? To grant to species
the special power of producing hybrids, and then to stop their further
propagation by different degrees of sterility, not strictly related to
the facility of the first union between their parents, seems a strange
arrangement.

The foregoing rules and facts, on the other hand, appear to me clearly
to indicate that the sterility, both of first crosses and of hybrids,
is simply incidental or dependent on unknown differences in their
reproductive systems; the differences being of so peculiar and limited
a nature, that, in reciprocal crosses between the same two species,
the male sexual element of the one will often freely act on the female
sexual element of the other, but not in a reversed direction. It will be
advisable to explain a little more fully, by an example, what I mean
by sterility being incidental on other differences, and not a specially
endowed quality. As the capacity of one plant to be grafted or budded on
another is unimportant for their welfare in a state of nature, I presume
that no one will suppose that this capacity is a SPECIALLY endowed
quality, but will admit that it is incidental on differences in the laws
of growth of the two plants. We can sometimes see the reason why one
tree will not take on another from differences in their rate of growth,
in the hardness of their wood, in the period of the flow or nature of
their sap, etc.; but in a multitude of cases we can assign no reason
whatever. Great diversity in the size of two plants, one being woody and
the other herbaceous, one being evergreen and the other deciduous, and
adaptation to widely different climates, does not always prevent the two
grafting together. As in hybridisation, so with grafting, the capacity
is limited by systematic affinity, for no one has been able to graft
together trees belonging to quite distinct families; and, on the other
hand, closely allied species and varieties of the same species, can
usually, but not invariably, be grafted with ease. But this capacity,
as in hybridisation, is by no means absolutely governed by systematic
affinity. Although many distinct genera within the same family have been
grafted together, in other cases species of the same genus will not take
on each other. The pear can be grafted far more readily on the quince,
which is ranked as a distinct genus, than on the apple, which is a
member of the same genus. Even different varieties of the pear take with
different degrees of facility on the quince; so do different varieties
of the apricot and peach on certain varieties of the plum.

As Gartner found that there was sometimes an innate difference in
different INDIVIDUALS of the same two species in crossing; so Sagaret
believes this to be the case with different individuals of the same
two species in being grafted together. As in reciprocal crosses, the
facility of effecting an union is often very far from equal, so it
sometimes is in grafting. The common gooseberry, for instance, cannot
be grafted on the currant, whereas the currant will take, though with
difficulty, on the gooseberry.

We have seen that the sterility of hybrids which have their reproductive
organs in an imperfect condition, is a different case from the
difficulty of uniting two pure species, which have their reproductive
organs perfect; yet these two distinct classes of cases run to a large
extent parallel. Something analogous occurs in grafting; for Thouin
found that three species of Robinia, which seeded freely on their own
roots, and which could be grafted with no great difficulty on a fourth
species, when thus grafted were rendered barren. On the other hand,
certain species of Sorbus, when grafted on other species, yielded twice
as much fruit as when on their own roots. We are reminded by this latter
fact of the extraordinary cases of Hippeastrum, Passiflora, etc., which
seed much more freely when fertilised with the pollen of a distinct
species than when fertilised with pollen from the same plant.

We thus see that, although there is a clear and great difference between
the mere adhesion of grafted stocks and the union of the male and female
elements in the act of reproduction, yet that there is a rude degree of
parallelism in the results of grafting and of crossing distinct species.
And as we must look at the curious and complex laws governing the
facility with which trees can be grafted on each other as incidental on
unknown differences in their vegetative systems, so I believe that the
still more complex laws governing the facility of first crosses are
incidental on unknown differences in their reproductive systems. These
differences in both cases follow, to a certain extent, as might
have been expected, systematic affinity, by which term every kind of
resemblance and dissimilarity between organic beings is attempted to be
expressed. The facts by no means seem to indicate that the greater or
lesser difficulty of either grafting or crossing various species
has been a special endowment; although in the case of crossing, the
difficulty is as important for the endurance and stability of specific
forms as in the case of grafting it is unimportant for their welfare.

ORIGIN AND CAUSES OF THE STERILITY OF FIRST CROSSES AND OF HYBRIDS.

At one time it appeared to me probable, as it has to others, that
the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids might have been slowly
acquired through the natural selection of slightly lessened degrees of
fertility, which, like any other variation, spontaneously appeared in
certain individuals of one variety when crossed with those of another
variety. For it would clearly be advantageous to two varieties or
incipient species if they could be kept from blending, on the same
principle that, when man is selecting at the same time two varieties, it
is necessary that he should keep them separate. In the first place,
it may be remarked that species inhabiting distinct regions are often
sterile when crossed; now it could clearly have been of no advantage
to such separated species to have been rendered mutually sterile,
and consequently this could not have been effected through natural
selection; but it may perhaps be argued, that, if a species was rendered
sterile with some one compatriot, sterility with other species would
follow as a necessary contingency. In the second place, it is almost as
much opposed to the theory of natural selection as to that of special
creation, that in reciprocal crosses the male element of one form should
have been rendered utterly impotent on a second form, while at the same
time the male element of this second form is enabled freely to fertilise
the first form; for this peculiar state of the reproductive system could
hardly have been advantageous to either species.

In considering the probability of natural selection having come into
action, in rendering species mutually sterile, the greatest difficulty
will be found to lie in the existence of many graduated steps, from
slightly lessened fertility to absolute sterility. It may be admitted
that it would profit an incipient species, if it were rendered in some
slight degree sterile when crossed with its parent form or with some
other variety; for thus fewer bastardised and deteriorated offspring
would be produced to commingle their blood with the new species in
process of formation. But he who will take the trouble to reflect on the
steps by which this first degree of sterility could be increased through
natural selection to that high degree which is common with so
many species, and which is universal with species which have been
differentiated to a generic or family rank, will find the subject
extraordinarily complex. After mature reflection, it seems to me that
this could not have been effected through natural selection. Take the
case of any two species which, when crossed, produced few and sterile
offspring; now, what is there which could favour the survival of those
individuals which happened to be endowed in a slightly higher degree
with mutual infertility, and which thus approached by one small step
towards absolute sterility? Yet an advance of this kind, if the theory
of natural selection be brought to bear, must have incessantly occurred
with many species, for a multitude are mutually quite barren. With
sterile neuter insects we have reason to believe that modifications in
their structure and fertility have been slowly accumulated by natural
selection, from an advantage having been thus indirectly given to the
community to which they belonged over other communities of the same
species; but an individual animal not belonging to a social community,
if rendered slightly sterile when crossed with some other variety, would
not thus itself gain any advantage or indirectly give any advantage
to the other individuals of the same variety, thus leading to their
preservation.

But it would be superfluous to discuss this question in detail: for with
plants we have conclusive evidence that the sterility of crossed species
must be due to some principle, quite independent of natural selection.
Both Gartner and Kolreuter have proved that in genera including numerous
species, a series can be formed from species which when crossed yield
fewer and fewer seeds, to species which never produce a single seed, but
yet are affected by the pollen of certain other species, for the germen
swells. It is here manifestly impossible to select the more sterile
individuals, which have already ceased to yield seeds; so that this acme
of sterility, when the germen alone is effected, cannot have been gained
through selection; and from the laws governing the various grades of
sterility being so uniform throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms,
we may infer that the cause, whatever it may be, is the same or nearly
the same in all cases.

We will now look a little closer at the probable nature of the
differences between species which induce sterility in first crosses and
in hybrids. In the case of first crosses, the greater or less difficulty
in effecting a union and in obtaining offspring apparently depends
on several distinct causes. There must sometimes be a physical
impossibility in the male element reaching the ovule, as would be the
case with a plant having a pistil too long for the pollen-tubes to
reach the ovarium. It has also been observed that when the pollen of one
species is placed on the stigma of a distantly allied species, though
the pollen-tubes protrude, they do not penetrate the stigmatic surface.
Again, the male element may reach the female element, but be incapable
of causing an embryo to be developed, as seems to have been the case
with some of Thuret's experiments on Fuci. No explanation can be given
of these facts, any more than why certain trees cannot be grafted on
others. Lastly, an embryo may be developed, and then perish at an early
period. This latter alternative has not been sufficiently attended to;
but I believe, from observations communicated to me by Mr. Hewitt, who
has had great experience in hybridising pheasants and fowls, that the
early death of the embryo is a very frequent cause of sterility in first
crosses. Mr. Salter has recently given the results of an examination of
about 500 eggs produced from various crosses between three species
of Gallus and their hybrids; the majority of these eggs had been
fertilised; and in the majority of the fertilised eggs, the embryos had
either been partially developed and had then perished, or had become
nearly mature, but the young chickens had been unable to break through
the shell. Of the chickens which were born, more than four-fifths died
within the first few days, or at latest weeks, "without any obvious
cause, apparently from mere inability to live;" so that from the 500
eggs only twelve chickens were reared. With plants, hybridized embryos
probably often perish in a like manner; at least it is known that
hybrids raised from very distinct species are sometimes weak and
dwarfed, and perish at an early age; of which fact Max Wichura has
recently given some striking cases with hybrid willows. It may be here
worth noticing that in some cases of parthenogenesis, the embryos within
the eggs of silk moths which had not been fertilised, pass through their
early stages of development and then perish like the embryos produced by
a cross between distinct species. Until becoming acquainted with these
facts, I was unwilling to believe in the frequent early death of
hybrid embryos; for hybrids, when once born, are generally healthy and
long-lived, as we see in the case of the common mule. Hybrids, however,
are differently circumstanced before and after birth: when born and
living in a country where their two parents live, they are generally
placed under suitable conditions of life. But a hybrid partakes of only
half of the nature and constitution of its mother; it may therefore,
before birth, as long as it is nourished within its mother's womb, or
within the egg or seed produced by the mother, be exposed to conditions
in some degree unsuitable, and consequently be liable to perish at an
early period; more especially as all very young beings are eminently
sensitive to injurious or unnatural conditions of life. But after all,
the cause more probably lies in some imperfection in the original act
of impregnation, causing the embryo to be imperfectly developed, rather
than in the conditions to which it is subsequently exposed.

In regard to the sterility of hybrids, in which the sexual elements are
imperfectly developed, the case is somewhat different. I have more than
once alluded to a large body of facts showing that, when animals and
plants are removed from their natural conditions, they are extremely
liable to have their reproductive systems seriously affected. This,
in fact, is the great bar to the domestication of animals. Between the
sterility thus superinduced and that of hybrids, there are many points
of similarity. In both cases the sterility is independent of general
health, and is often accompanied by excess of size or great luxuriance.
In both cases the sterility occurs in various degrees; in both, the male
element is the most liable to be affected; but sometimes the female
more than the male. In both, the tendency goes to a certain extent with
systematic affinity, for whole groups of animals and plants are rendered
impotent by the same unnatural conditions; and whole groups of species
tend to produce sterile hybrids. On the other hand, one species in a
group will sometimes resist great changes of conditions with unimpaired
fertility; and certain species in a group will produce unusually fertile
hybrids. No one can tell till he tries, whether any particular animal
will breed under confinement, or any exotic plant seed freely under
culture; nor can he tell till he tries, whether any two species of a
genus will produce more or less sterile hybrids. Lastly, when organic
beings are placed during several generations under conditions not
natural to them, they are extremely liable to vary, which seems to be
partly due to their reproductive systems having been specially affected,
though in a lesser degree than when sterility ensues. So it is with
hybrids, for their offspring in successive generations are eminently
liable to vary, as every experimentalist has observed.

Thus we see that when organic beings are placed under new and unnatural
conditions, and when hybrids are produced by the unnatural crossing of
two species, the reproductive system, independently of the general state
of health, is affected in a very similar manner. In the one case, the
conditions of life have been disturbed, though often in so slight a
degree as to be inappreciable by us; in the other case, or that of
hybrids, the external conditions have remained the same, but the
organisation has been disturbed by two distinct structures and
constitutions, including of course the reproductive systems, having been
blended into one. For it is scarcely possible that two organisations
should be compounded into one, without some disturbance occurring in the
development, or periodical action, or mutual relations of the different
parts and organs one to another or to the conditions of life. When
hybrids are able to breed inter se, they transmit to their offspring
from generation to generation the same compounded organisation, and
hence we need not be surprised that their sterility, though in some
degree variable, does not diminish; it is even apt to increase,
this being generally the result, as before explained, of too close
interbreeding. The above view of the sterility of hybrids being caused
by two constitutions being compounded into one has been strongly
maintained by Max Wichura.

It must, however, be owned that we cannot understand, on the above or
any other view, several facts with respect to the sterility of hybrids;
for instance, the unequal fertility of hybrids produced from reciprocal
crosses; or the increased sterility in those hybrids which occasionally
and exceptionally resemble closely either pure parent. Nor do I pretend
that the foregoing remarks go to the root of the matter: no explanation
is offered why an organism, when placed under unnatural conditions,
is rendered sterile. All that I have attempted to show is, that in two
cases, in some respects allied, sterility is the common result--in the
one case from the conditions of life having been disturbed, in the other
case from the organisation having been disturbed by two organisations
being compounded into one.

A similar parallelism holds good with an allied yet very different
class of facts. It is an old and almost universal belief, founded on a
considerable body of evidence, which I have elsewhere given, that slight
changes in the conditions of life are beneficial to all living things.
We see this acted on by farmers and gardeners in their frequent
exchanges of seed, tubers, etc., from one soil or climate to another,
and back again. During the convalescence of animals, great benefit is
derived from almost any change in their habits of life. Again, both with
plants and animals, there is the clearest evidence that a cross between
individuals of the same species, which differ to a certain extent, gives
vigour and fertility to the offspring; and that close interbreeding
continued during several generations between the nearest relations, if
these be kept under the same conditions of life, almost always leads to
decreased size, weakness, or sterility.

Hence it seems that, on the one hand, slight changes in the conditions
of life benefit all organic beings, and on the other hand, that slight
crosses, that is, crosses between the males and females of the same
species, which have been subjected to slightly different conditions, or
which have slightly varied, give vigour and fertility to the offspring.
But, as we have seen, organic beings long habituated to certain
uniform conditions under a state of nature, when subjected, as under
confinement, to a considerable change in their conditions, very
frequently are rendered more or less sterile; and we know that a cross
between two forms that have become widely or specifically different,
produce hybrids which are almost always in some degree sterile. I am
fully persuaded that this double parallelism is by no means an accident
or an illusion. He who is able to explain why the elephant, and a
multitude of other animals, are incapable of breeding when kept under
only partial confinement in their native country, will be able to
explain the primary cause of hybrids being so generally sterile. He will
at the same time be able to explain how it is that the races of some of
our domesticated animals, which have often been subjected to new and
not uniform conditions, are quite fertile together, although they are
descended from distinct species, which would probably have been sterile
if aboriginally crossed. The above two parallel series of facts seem
to be connected together by some common but unknown bond, which is
essentially related to the principle of life; this principle, according
to Mr. Herbert Spencer, being that life depends on, or consists in, the
incessant action and reaction of various forces, which, as throughout
nature, are always tending towards an equilibrium; and when this
tendency is slightly disturbed by any change, the vital forces gain in
power.

RECIPROCAL DIMORPHISM AND TRIMORPHISM.

This subject may be here briefly discussed, and will be found to throw
some light on hybridism. Several plants belonging to distinct orders
present two forms, which exist in about equal numbers and which differ
in no respect except in their reproductive organs; one form having
a long pistil with short stamens, the other a short pistil with long
stamens; the two having differently sized pollen-grains. With trimorphic
plants there are three forms likewise differing in the lengths of their
pistils and stamens, in the size and colour of the pollen-grains, and
in some other respects; and as in each of the three forms there are two
sets of stamens, the three forms possess altogether six sets of stamens
and three kinds of pistils. These organs are so proportioned in length
to each other that half the stamens in two of the forms stand on a level
with the stigma of the third form. Now I have shown, and the result
has been confirmed by other observers, that in order to obtain full
fertility with these plants, it is necessary that the stigma of the
one form should be fertilised by pollen taken from the stamens of
corresponding height in another form. So that with dimorphic species
two unions, which may be called legitimate, are fully fertile; and
two, which may be called illegitimate, are more or less infertile. With
trimorphic species six unions are legitimate, or fully fertile, and
twelve are illegitimate, or more or less infertile.

The infertility which may be observed in various dimorphic and
trimorphic plants, when they are illegitimately fertilised, that is by
pollen taken from stamens not corresponding in height with the pistil,
differs much in degree, up to absolute and utter sterility; just in the
same manner as occurs in crossing distinct species. As the degree
of sterility in the latter case depends in an eminent degree on the
conditions of life being more or less favourable, so I have found it
with illegitimate unions. It is well known that if pollen of a distinct
species be placed on the stigma of a flower, and its own pollen be
afterwards, even after a considerable interval of time, placed on the
same stigma, its action is so strongly prepotent that it generally
annihilates the effect of the foreign pollen; so it is with the pollen
of the several forms of the same species, for legitimate pollen is
strongly prepotent over illegitimate pollen, when both are placed on the
same stigma. I ascertained this by fertilising several flowers, first
illegitimately, and twenty-four hours afterwards legitimately, with
pollen taken from a peculiarly coloured variety, and all the seedlings
were similarly coloured; this shows that the legitimate pollen,
though applied twenty-four hours subsequently, had wholly destroyed
or prevented the action of the previously applied illegitimate pollen.
Again, as in making reciprocal crosses between the same two species,
there is occasionally a great difference in the result, so the same
thing occurs with trimorphic plants; for instance, the mid-styled form
of Lythrum salicaria was illegitimately fertilised with the greatest
ease by pollen from the longer stamens of the short-styled form, and
yielded many seeds; but the latter form did not yield a single seed when
fertilised by the longer stamens of the mid-styled form.

In all these respects, and in others which might be added, the forms
of the same undoubted species, when illegitimately united, behave in
exactly the same manner as do two distinct species when crossed. This
led me carefully to observe during four years many seedlings, raised
from several illegitimate unions. The chief result is that these
illegitimate plants, as they may be called, are not fully fertile. It
is possible to raise from dimorphic species, both long-styled and
short-styled illegitimate plants, and from trimorphic plants all three
illegitimate forms. These can then be properly united in a legitimate
manner. When this is done, there is no apparent reason why they
should not yield as many seeds as did their parents when legitimately
fertilised. But such is not the case. They are all infertile, in various
degrees; some being so utterly and incurably sterile that they did
not yield during four seasons a single seed or even seed-capsule. The
sterility of these illegitimate plants, when united with each other in
a legitimate manner, may be strictly compared with that of hybrids when
crossed inter se. If, on the other hand, a hybrid is crossed with either
pure parent-species, the sterility is usually much lessened: and so it
is when an illegitimate plant is fertilised by a legitimate plant. In
the same manner as the sterility of hybrids does not always run
parallel with the difficulty of making the first cross between the two
parent-species, so that sterility of certain illegitimate plants was
unusually great, while the sterility of the union from which they
were derived was by no means great. With hybrids raised from the same
seed-capsule the degree of sterility is innately variable, so it is in a
marked manner with illegitimate plants. Lastly, many hybrids are profuse
and persistent flowerers, while other and more sterile hybrids produce
few flowers, and are weak, miserable dwarfs; exactly similar cases occur
with the illegitimate offspring of various dimorphic and trimorphic
plants.

Altogether there is the closest identity in character and behaviour
between illegitimate plants and hybrids. It is hardly an exaggeration
to maintain that illegitimate plants are hybrids, produced within the
limits of the same species by the improper union of certain forms, while
ordinary hybrids are produced from an improper union between so-called
distinct species. We have also already seen that there is the closest
similarity in all respects between first illegitimate unions and first
crosses between distinct species. This will perhaps be made more fully
apparent by an illustration; we may suppose that a botanist found two
well-marked varieties (and such occur) of the long-styled form of the
trimorphic Lythrum salicaria, and that he determined to try by crossing
whether they were specifically distinct. He would find that they yielded
only about one-fifth of the proper number of seed, and that they behaved
in all the other above specified respects as if they had been two
distinct species. But to make the case sure, he would raise plants from
his supposed hybridised seed, and he would find that the seedlings were
miserably dwarfed and utterly sterile, and that they behaved in all
other respects like ordinary hybrids. He might then maintain that he
had actually proved, in accordance with the common view, that his two
varieties were as good and as distinct species as any in the world; but
he would be completely mistaken.

The facts now given on dimorphic and trimorphic plants are important,
because they show us, first, that the physiological test of lessened
fertility, both in first crosses and in hybrids, is no safe criterion
of specific distinction; secondly, because we may conclude that there is
some unknown bond which connects the infertility of illegitimate unions
with that of their illegitimate offspring, and we are led to extend the
same view to first crosses and hybrids; thirdly, because we find, and
this seems to me of especial importance, that two or three forms of the
same species may exist and may differ in no respect whatever, either in
structure or in constitution, relatively to external conditions, and yet
be sterile when united in certain ways. For we must remember that it is
the union of the sexual elements of individuals of the same form, for
instance, of two long-styled forms, which results in sterility; while it
is the union of the sexual elements proper to two distinct forms which
is fertile. Hence the case appears at first sight exactly the reverse
of what occurs, in the ordinary unions of the individuals of the same
species and with crosses between distinct species. It is, however,
doubtful whether this is really so; but I will not enlarge on this
obscure subject.

We may, however, infer as probable from the consideration of dimorphic
and trimorphic plants, that the sterility of distinct species when
crossed and of their hybrid progeny, depends exclusively on the nature
of their sexual elements, and not on any difference in their structure
or general constitution. We are also led to this same conclusion by
considering reciprocal crosses, in which the male of one species cannot
be united, or can be united with great difficulty, with the female of
a second species, while the converse cross can be effected with perfect
facility. That excellent observer, Gartner, likewise concluded that
species when crossed are sterile owing to differences confined to their
reproductive systems.

FERTILITY OF VARIETIES WHEN CROSSED, AND OF THEIR MONGREL OFFSPRING, NOT
UNIVERSAL.

It may be urged as an overwhelming argument that there must be some
essential distinction between species and varieties inasmuch as the
latter, however much they may differ from each other in external
appearance, cross with perfect facility, and yield perfectly fertile
offspring. With some exceptions, presently to be given, I fully admit
that this is the rule. But the subject is surrounded by difficulties,
for, looking to varieties produced under nature, if two forms hitherto
reputed to be varieties be found in any degree sterile together, they
are at once ranked by most naturalists as species. For instance, the
blue and red pimpernel, which are considered by most botanists as
varieties, are said by Gartner to be quite sterile when crossed, and
he consequently ranks them as undoubted species. If we thus argue in
a circle, the fertility of all varieties produced under nature will
assuredly have to be granted.

If we turn to varieties, produced, or supposed to have been produced,
under domestication, we are still involved in some doubt. For when it
is stated, for instance, that certain South American indigenous domestic
dogs do not readily unite with European dogs, the explanation which will
occur to everyone, and probably the true one, is that they are descended
from aboriginally distinct species. Nevertheless the perfect fertility
of so many domestic races, differing widely from each other in
appearance, for instance, those of the pigeon, or of the cabbage, is a
remarkable fact; more especially when we reflect how many species there
are, which, though resembling each other most closely, are utterly
sterile when intercrossed. Several considerations, however, render the
fertility of domestic varieties less remarkable. In the first place,
it may be observed that the amount of external difference between two
species is no sure guide to their degree of mutual sterility, so that
similar differences in the case of varieties would be no sure guide. It
is certain that with species the cause lies exclusively in differences
in their sexual constitution. Now the varying conditions to which
domesticated animals and cultivated plants have been subjected, have had
so little tendency towards modifying the reproductive system in a manner
leading to mutual sterility, that we have good grounds for admitting
the directly opposite doctrine of Pallas, namely, that such conditions
generally eliminate this tendency; so that the domesticated descendants
of species, which in their natural state probably would have been in
some degree sterile when crossed, become perfectly fertile together.
With plants, so far is cultivation from giving a tendency towards
sterility between distinct species, that in several well-authenticated
cases already alluded to, certain plants have been affected in an
opposite manner, for they have become self-impotent, while still
retaining the capacity of fertilising, and being fertilised by, other
species. If the Pallasian doctrine of the elimination of sterility
through long-continued domestication be admitted, and it can hardly
be rejected, it becomes in the highest degree improbable that similar
conditions long-continued should likewise induce this tendency; though
in certain cases, with species having a peculiar constitution, sterility
might occasionally be thus caused. Thus, as I believe, we can understand
why, with domesticated animals, varieties have not been produced
which are mutually sterile; and why with plants only a few such cases,
immediately to be given, have been observed.

The real difficulty in our present subject is not, as it appears to me,
why domestic varieties have not become mutually infertile when crossed,
but why this has so generally occurred with natural varieties, as soon
as they have been permanently modified in a sufficient degree to take
rank as species. We are far from precisely knowing the cause; nor is
this surprising, seeing how profoundly ignorant we are in regard to the
normal and abnormal action of the reproductive system. But we can
see that species, owing to their struggle for existence with numerous
competitors, will have been exposed during long periods of time to more
uniform conditions, than have domestic varieties; and this may well make
a wide difference in the result. For we know how commonly wild animals
and plants, when taken from their natural conditions and subjected
to captivity, are rendered sterile; and the reproductive functions of
organic beings which have always lived under natural conditions would
probably in like manner be eminently sensitive to the influence of an
unnatural cross. Domesticated productions, on the other hand, which,
as shown by the mere fact of their domestication, were not originally
highly sensitive to changes in their conditions of life, and which can
now generally resist with undiminished fertility repeated changes of
conditions, might be expected to produce varieties, which would be
little liable to have their reproductive powers injuriously affected by
the act of crossing with other varieties which had originated in a like
manner.

I have as yet spoken as if the varieties of the same species were
invariably fertile when intercrossed. But it is impossible to resist the
evidence of the existence of a certain amount of sterility in the few
following cases, which I will briefly abstract. The evidence is at least
as good as that from which we believe in the sterility of a multitude of
species. The evidence is also derived from hostile witnesses, who in
all other cases consider fertility and sterility as safe criterions of
specific distinction. Gartner kept, during several years, a dwarf kind
of maize with yellow seeds, and a tall variety with red seeds growing
near each other in his garden; and although these plants have separated
sexes, they never naturally crossed. He then fertilised thirteen
flowers of the one kind with pollen of the other; but only a single
head produced any seed, and this one head produced only five grains.
Manipulation in this case could not have been injurious, as the plants
have separated sexes. No one, I believe, has suspected that these
varieties of maize are distinct species; and it is important to notice
that the hybrid plants thus raised were themselves PERFECTLY fertile;
so that even Gartner did not venture to consider the two varieties as
specifically distinct.

Girou de Buzareingues crossed three varieties of gourd, which like
the maize has separated sexes, and he asserts that their mutual
fertilisation is by so much the less easy as their differences are
greater. How far these experiments may be trusted, I know not; but
the forms experimented on are ranked by Sagaret, who mainly founds his
classification by the test of infertility, as varieties, and Naudin has
come to the same conclusion.

The following case is far more remarkable, and seems at first
incredible; but it is the result of an astonishing number of experiments
made during many years on nine species of Verbascum, by so good an
observer and so hostile a witness as Gartner: namely, that the yellow
and white varieties when crossed produce less seed than the similarly
coloured varieties of the same species. Moreover, he asserts that, when
yellow and white varieties of one species are crossed with yellow and
white varieties of a DISTINCT species, more seed is produced by the
crosses between the similarly coloured flowers, than between those which
are differently coloured. Mr. Scott also has experimented on the species
and varieties of Verbascum; and although unable to confirm Gartner's
results on the crossing of the distinct species, he finds that the
dissimilarly coloured varieties of the same species yield fewer seeds,
in the proportion of eighty-six to 100, than the similarly coloured
varieties. Yet these varieties differ in no respect, except in the
colour of their flowers; and one variety can sometimes be raised from
the seed of another.

Kolreuter, whose accuracy has been confirmed by every subsequent
observer, has proved the remarkable fact that one particular variety
of the common tobacco was more fertile than the other varieties, when
crossed with a widely distinct species. He experimented on five forms
which are commonly reputed to be varieties, and which he tested by
the severest trial, namely, by reciprocal crosses, and he found their
mongrel offspring perfectly fertile. But one of these five varieties,
when used either as the father or mother, and crossed with the Nicotiana
glutinosa, always yielded hybrids not so sterile as those which were
produced from the four other varieties when crossed with N. glutinosa.
Hence the reproductive system of this one variety must have been in some
manner and in some degree modified.

From these facts it can no longer be maintained that varieties when
crossed are invariably quite fertile. From the great difficulty of
ascertaining the infertility of varieties in a state of nature, for a
supposed variety, if proved to be infertile in any degree, would almost
universally be ranked as a species; from man attending only to external
characters in his domestic varieties, and from such varieties not having
been exposed for very long periods to uniform conditions of life; from
these several considerations we may conclude that fertility does not
constitute a fundamental distinction between varieties and species when
crossed. The general sterility of crossed species may safely be looked
at, not as a special acquirement or endowment, but as incidental on
changes of an unknown nature in their sexual elements.

HYBRIDS AND MONGRELS COMPARED, INDEPENDENTLY OF THEIR FERTILITY.

Independently of the question of fertility, the offspring of species
and of varieties when crossed may be compared in several other respects.
Gartner, whose strong wish it was to draw a distinct line between
species and varieties, could find very few, and, as it seems to me,
quite unimportant differences between the so-called hybrid offspring of
species, and the so-called mongrel offspring of varieties. And, on the
other hand, they agree most closely in many important respects.

I shall here discuss this subject with extreme brevity. The most
important distinction is, that in the first generation mongrels are
more variable than hybrids; but Gartner admits that hybrids from
species which have long been cultivated are often variable in the first
generation; and I have myself seen striking instances of this fact.
Gartner further admits that hybrids between very closely allied species
are more variable than those from very distinct species; and this shows
that the difference in the degree of variability graduates away.
When mongrels and the more fertile hybrids are propagated for several
generations, an extreme amount of variability in the offspring in both
cases is notorious; but some few instances of both hybrids and mongrels
long retaining a uniform character could be given. The variability,
however, in the successive generations of mongrels is, perhaps, greater
than in hybrids.

This greater variability in mongrels than in hybrids does not seem at
all surprising. For the parents of mongrels are varieties, and mostly
domestic varieties (very few experiments having been tried on natural
varieties), and this implies that there has been recent variability;
which would often continue and would augment that arising from the act
of crossing. The slight variability of hybrids in the first generation,
in contrast with that in the succeeding generations, is a curious fact
and deserves attention. For it bears on the view which I have taken of
one of the causes of ordinary variability; namely, that the reproductive
system, from being eminently sensitive to changed conditions of life,
fails under these circumstances to perform its proper function of
producing offspring closely similar in all respects to the parent-form.
Now, hybrids in the first generation are descended from species
(excluding those long cultivated) which have not had their reproductive
systems in any way affected, and they are not variable; but hybrids
themselves have their reproductive systems seriously affected, and their
descendants are highly variable.

But to return to our comparison of mongrels and hybrids: Gartner states
that mongrels are more liable than hybrids to revert to either parent
form; but this, if it be true, is certainly only a difference in degree.
Moreover, Gartner expressly states that the hybrids from long cultivated
plants are more subject to reversion than hybrids from species in their
natural state; and this probably explains the singular difference in
the results arrived at by different observers. Thus Max Wichura doubts
whether hybrids ever revert to their parent forms, and he experimented
on uncultivated species of willows, while Naudin, on the other hand,
insists in the strongest terms on the almost universal tendency to
reversion in hybrids, and he experimented chiefly on cultivated plants.
Gartner further states that when any two species, although most closely
allied to each other, are crossed with a third species, the hybrids are
widely different from each other; whereas if two very distinct varieties
of one species are crossed with another species, the hybrids do not
differ much. But this conclusion, as far as I can make out, is founded
on a single experiment; and seems directly opposed to the results of
several experiments made by Kolreuter.

Such alone are the unimportant differences which Gartner is able to
point out between hybrid and mongrel plants. On the other hand, the
degrees and kinds of resemblance in mongrels and in hybrids to their
respective parents, more especially in hybrids produced from nearly
related species, follow, according to Gartner the same laws. When two
species are crossed, one has sometimes a prepotent power of impressing
its likeness on the hybrid. So I believe it to be with varieties of
plants; and with animals, one variety certainly often has this prepotent
power over another variety. Hybrid plants produced from a reciprocal
cross generally resemble each other closely, and so it is with mongrel
plants from a reciprocal cross. Both hybrids and mongrels can be
reduced to either pure parent form, by repeated crosses in successive
generations with either parent.

These several remarks are apparently applicable to animals; but the
subject is here much complicated, partly owing to the existence of
secondary sexual characters; but more especially owing to prepotency
in transmitting likeness running more strongly in one sex than in
the other, both when one species is crossed with another and when one
variety is crossed with another variety. For instance, I think those
authors are right who maintain that the ass has a prepotent power over
the horse, so that both the mule and the hinny resemble more closely the
ass than the horse; but that the prepotency runs more strongly in the
male than in the female ass, so that the mule, which is an offspring of
the male ass and mare, is more like an ass than is the hinny, which is
the offspring of the female-ass and stallion.

Much stress has been laid by some authors on the supposed fact, that
it is only with mongrels that the offspring are not intermediate in
character, but closely resemble one of their parents; but this does
sometimes occur with hybrids, yet I grant much less frequently than
with mongrels. Looking to the cases which I have collected of cross-bred
animals closely resembling one parent, the resemblances seem chiefly
confined to characters almost monstrous in their nature, and which have
suddenly appeared--such as albinism, melanism, deficiency of tail or
horns, or additional fingers and toes; and do not relate to characters
which have been slowly acquired through selection. A tendency to sudden
reversions to the perfect character of either parent would, also,
be much more likely to occur with mongrels, which are descended from
varieties often suddenly produced and semi-monstrous in character, than
with hybrids, which are descended from species slowly and naturally
produced. On the whole, I entirely agree with Dr. Prosper Lucas, who,
after arranging an enormous body of facts with respect to animals,
comes to the conclusion that the laws of resemblance of the child to its
parents are the same, whether the two parents differ little or much from
each other, namely, in the union of individuals of the same variety, or
of different varieties, or of distinct species.

Independently of the question of fertility and sterility, in all
other respects there seems to be a general and close similarity in the
offspring of crossed species, and of crossed varieties. If we look at
species as having been specially created, and at varieties as having
been produced by secondary laws, this similarity would be an astonishing
fact. But it harmonises perfectly with the view that there is no
essential distinction between species and varieties.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER.

First crosses between forms, sufficiently distinct to be ranked as
species, and their hybrids, are very generally, but not universally,
sterile. The sterility is of all degrees, and is often so slight that
the most careful experimentalists have arrived at diametrically opposite
conclusions in ranking forms by this test. The sterility is innately
variable in individuals of the same species, and is eminently
susceptible to action of favourable and unfavourable conditions. The
degree of sterility does not strictly follow systematic affinity, but is
governed by several curious and complex laws. It is generally different,
and sometimes widely different in reciprocal crosses between the same
two species. It is not always equal in degree in a first cross and in
the hybrids produced from this cross.

In the same manner as in grafting trees, the capacity in one species or
variety to take on another, is incidental on differences, generally
of an unknown nature, in their vegetative systems, so in crossing,
the greater or less facility of one species to unite with another is
incidental on unknown differences in their reproductive systems. There
is no more reason to think that species have been specially endowed with
various degrees of sterility to prevent their crossing and blending
in nature, than to think that trees have been specially endowed with
various and somewhat analogous degrees of difficulty in being grafted
together in order to prevent their inarching in our forests.

The sterility of first crosses and of their hybrid progeny has not been
acquired through natural selection. In the case of first crosses it
seems to depend on several circumstances; in some instances in chief
part on the early death of the embryo. In the case of hybrids, it
apparently depends on their whole organisation having been disturbed by
being compounded from two distinct forms; the sterility being closely
allied to that which so frequently affects pure species, when exposed to
new and unnatural conditions of life. He who will explain these latter
cases will be able to explain the sterility of hybrids. This view is
strongly supported by a parallelism of another kind: namely, that,
firstly, slight changes in the conditions of life add to the vigour
and fertility of all organic beings; and secondly, that the crossing of
forms, which have been exposed to slightly different conditions of life,
or which have varied, favours the size, vigour and fertility of their
offspring. The facts given on the sterility of the illegitimate unions
of dimorphic and trimorphic plants and of their illegitimate progeny,
perhaps render it probable that some unknown bond in all cases connects
the degree of fertility of first unions with that of their offspring.
The consideration of these facts on dimorphism, as well as of the
results of reciprocal crosses, clearly leads to the conclusion that
the primary cause of the sterility of crossed species is confined to
differences in their sexual elements. But why, in the case of distinct
species, the sexual elements should so generally have become more or
less modified, leading to their mutual infertility, we do not know; but
it seems to stand in some close relation to species having been exposed
for long periods of time to nearly uniform conditions of life.

It is not surprising that the difficulty in crossing any two species,
and the sterility of their hybrid offspring, should in most cases
correspond, even if due to distinct causes: for both depend on the
amount of difference between the species which are crossed. Nor is
it surprising that the facility of effecting a first cross, and the
fertility of the hybrids thus produced, and the capacity of being
grafted together--though this latter capacity evidently depends on
widely different circumstances--should all run, to a certain extent,
parallel with the systematic affinity of the forms subjected to
experiment; for systematic affinity includes resemblances of all kinds.

First crosses between forms known to be varieties, or sufficiently alike
to be considered as varieties, and their mongrel offspring, are very
generally, but not, as is so often stated, invariably fertile. Nor
is this almost universal and perfect fertility surprising, when it
is remembered how liable we are to argue in a circle with respect to
varieties in a state of nature; and when we remember that the greater
number of varieties have been produced under domestication by the
selection of mere external differences, and that they have not been long
exposed to uniform conditions of life. It should also be especially kept
in mind, that long-continued domestication tends to eliminate
sterility, and is therefore little likely to induce this same quality.
Independently of the question of fertility, in all other respects there
is the closest general resemblance between hybrids and mongrels, in
their variability, in their power of absorbing each other by repeated
crosses, and in their inheritance of characters from both parent-forms.
Finally, then, although we are as ignorant of the precise cause of the
sterility of first crosses and of hybrids as we are why animals and
plants removed from their natural conditions become sterile, yet the
facts given in this chapter do not seem to me opposed to the belief that
species aboriginally existed as varieties.




CHAPTER X. ON THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD.

 On the absence of intermediate varieties at the present day--On the
 nature of extinct intermediate varieties; on their number--On the lapse
 of time, as inferred from the rate of denudation and of deposition
 number--On the lapse of time as estimated by years--On the poorness of
 our palaeontological collections--On the intermittence of geological
 formations--On the denudation of granitic areas--On the absence of
 intermediate varieties in any one formation--On the sudden appearance
 of groups of species--On their sudden appearance in the lowest known
 fossiliferous strata--Antiquity of the habitable earth.


In the sixth chapter I enumerated the chief objections which might be
justly urged against the views maintained in this volume. Most of them
have now been discussed. One, namely, the distinctness of specific forms
and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional links,
is a very obvious difficulty. I assigned reasons why such links do not
commonly occur at the present day under the circumstances apparently
most favourable for their presence, namely, on an extensive and
continuous area with graduated physical conditions. I endeavoured to
show, that the life of each species depends in a more important manner
on the presence of other already defined organic forms, than on climate,
and, therefore, that the really governing conditions of life do not
graduate away quite insensibly like heat or moisture. I endeavoured,
also, to show that intermediate varieties, from existing in lesser
numbers than the forms which they connect, will generally be beaten
out and exterminated during the course of further modification and
improvement. The main cause, however, of innumerable intermediate links
not now occurring everywhere throughout nature depends, on the very
process of natural selection, through which new varieties continually
take the places of and supplant their parent-forms. But just in
proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous
scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly
existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation
and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly
does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this,
perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged
against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme
imperfection of the geological record.

In the first place, it should always be borne in mind what sort of
intermediate forms must, on the theory, have formerly existed. I have
found it difficult, when looking at any two species, to avoid picturing
to myself forms DIRECTLY intermediate between them. But this is a wholly
false view; we should always look for forms intermediate between each
species and a common but unknown progenitor; and the progenitor
will generally have differed in some respects from all its modified
descendants. To give a simple illustration: the fantail and pouter
pigeons are both descended from the rock-pigeon; if we possessed all
the intermediate varieties which have ever existed, we should have an
extremely close series between both and the rock-pigeon; but we should
have no varieties directly intermediate between the fantail and pouter;
none, for instance, combining a tail somewhat expanded with a crop
somewhat enlarged, the characteristic features of these two breeds.
These two breeds, moreover, have become so much modified, that, if we
had no historical or indirect evidence regarding their origin, it would
not have been possible to have determined from a mere comparison of
their structure with that of the rock-pigeon, C. livia, whether they had
descended from this species or from some other allied species, such as
C. oenas.

So with natural species, if we look to forms very distinct, for instance
to the horse and tapir, we have no reason to suppose that links directly
intermediate between them ever existed, but between each and an unknown
common parent. The common parent will have had in its whole organisation
much general resemblance to the tapir and to the horse; but in some
points of structure may have differed considerably from both, even
perhaps more than they differ from each other. Hence, in all such cases,
we should be unable to recognise the parent-form of any two or more
species, even if we closely compared the structure of the parent with
that of its modified descendants, unless at the same time we had a
nearly perfect chain of the intermediate links.

It is just possible, by the theory, that one of two living forms might
have descended from the other; for instance, a horse from a tapir; and
in this case DIRECT intermediate links will have existed between them.
But such a case would imply that one form had remained for a very long
period unaltered, whilst its descendants had undergone a vast amount of
change; and the principle of competition between organism and organism,
between child and parent, will render this a very rare event; for in all
cases the new and improved forms of life tend to supplant the old and
unimproved forms.

By the theory of natural selection all living species have been
connected with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not
greater than we see between the natural and domestic varieties of the
same species at the present day; and these parent-species, now generally
extinct, have in their turn been similarly connected with more ancient
forms; and so on backwards, always converging to the common ancestor of
each great class. So that the number of intermediate and transitional
links, between all living and extinct species, must have been
inconceivably great. But assuredly, if this theory be true, such have
lived upon the earth.

ON THE LAPSE OF TIME, AS INFERRED FROM THE RATE OF DEPOSITION AND EXTENT
OF DENUDATION.

Independently of our not finding fossil remains of such infinitely
numerous connecting links, it may be objected that time cannot have
sufficed for so great an amount of organic change, all changes having
been effected slowly. It is hardly possible for me to recall to the
reader who is not a practical geologist, the facts leading the mind
feebly to comprehend the lapse of time. He who can read Sir Charles
Lyell's grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future
historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural
science, and yet does not admit how vast have been the past periods of
time, may at once close this volume. Not that it suffices to study
the Principles of Geology, or to read special treatises by different
observers on separate formations, and to mark how each author attempts
to give an inadequate idea of the duration of each formation, or even
of each stratum. We can best gain some idea of past time by knowing the
agencies at work; and learning how deeply the surface of the land has
been denuded, and how much sediment has been deposited. As Lyell has
well remarked, the extent and thickness of our sedimentary formations
are the result and the measure of the denudation which the earth's crust
has elsewhere undergone. Therefore a man should examine for himself the
great piles of superimposed strata, and watch the rivulets bringing down
mud, and the waves wearing away the sea-cliffs, in order to comprehend
something about the duration of past time, the monuments of which we see
all around us.

It is good to wander along the coast, when formed of moderately hard
rocks, and mark the process of degradation. The tides in most cases
reach the cliffs only for a short time twice a day, and the waves eat
into them only when they are charged with sand or pebbles; for there is
good evidence that pure water effects nothing in wearing away rock. At
last the base of the cliff is undermined, huge fragments fall down, and
these remaining fixed, have to be worn away atom by atom, until after
being reduced in size they can be rolled about by the waves, and then
they are more quickly ground into pebbles, sand, or mud. But how often
do we see along the bases of retreating cliffs rounded boulders, all
thickly clothed by marine productions, showing how little they are
abraded and how seldom they are rolled about! Moreover, if we follow for
a few miles any line of rocky cliff, which is undergoing degradation,
we find that it is only here and there, along a short length or round
a promontory, that the cliffs are at the present time suffering. The
appearance of the surface and the vegetation show that elsewhere years
have elapsed since the waters washed their base.

We have, however, recently learned from the observations of Ramsay, in
the van of many excellent observers--of Jukes, Geikie, Croll and
others, that subaerial degradation is a much more important agency than
coast-action, or the power of the waves. The whole surface of the land
is exposed to the chemical action of the air and of the rainwater,
with its dissolved carbonic acid, and in colder countries to frost; the
disintegrated matter is carried down even gentle slopes during heavy
rain, and to a greater extent than might be supposed, especially in
arid districts, by the wind; it is then transported by the streams
and rivers, which, when rapid deepen their channels, and triturate the
fragments. On a rainy day, even in a gently undulating country, we see
the effects of subaerial degradation in the muddy rills which flow down
every slope. Messrs. Ramsay and Whitaker have shown, and the observation
is a most striking one, that the great lines of escarpment in the
Wealden district and those ranging across England, which formerly were
looked at as ancient sea-coasts, cannot have been thus formed, for each
line is composed of one and the same formation, while our sea-cliffs are
everywhere formed by the intersection of various formations. This being
the case, we are compelled to admit that the escarpments owe their
origin in chief part to the rocks of which they are composed, having
resisted subaerial denudation better than the surrounding surface;
this surface consequently has been gradually lowered, with the lines of
harder rock left projecting. Nothing impresses the mind with the vast
duration of time, according to our ideas of time, more forcibly than the
conviction thus gained that subaerial agencies, which apparently have
so little power, and which seem to work so slowly, have produced great
results.

When thus impressed with the slow rate at which the land is worn
away through subaerial and littoral action, it is good, in order to
appreciate the past duration of time, to consider, on the one hand, the
masses of rock which have been removed over many extensive areas, and on
the other hand the thickness of our sedimentary formations. I remember
having been much struck when viewing volcanic islands, which have been
worn by the waves and pared all round into perpendicular cliffs of
one or two thousand feet in height; for the gentle slope of the
lava-streams, due to their formerly liquid state, showed at a glance how
far the hard, rocky beds had once extended into the open ocean. The same
story is told still more plainly by faults--those great cracks along
which the strata have been upheaved on one side, or thrown down on the
other, to the height or depth of thousands of feet; for since the crust
cracked, and it makes no great difference whether the upheaval was
sudden, or, as most geologists now believe, was slow and effected by
many starts, the surface of the land has been so completely planed down
that no trace of these vast dislocations is externally visible. The
Craven fault, for instance, extends for upward of thirty miles, and
along this line the vertical displacement of the strata varies from 600
to 3,000 feet. Professor Ramsay has published an account of a downthrow
in Anglesea of 2,300 feet; and he informs me that he fully believes that
there is one in Merionethshire of 12,000 feet; yet in these cases there
is nothing on the surface of the land to show such prodigious movements;
the pile of rocks on either side of the crack having been smoothly swept
away.

On the other hand, in all parts of the world the piles of sedimentary
strata are of wonderful thickness. In the Cordillera, I estimated one
mass of conglomerate at ten thousand feet; and although conglomerates
have probably been accumulated at a quicker rate than finer sediments,
yet from being formed of worn and rounded pebbles, each of which bears
the stamp of time, they are good to show how slowly the mass must
have been heaped together. Professor Ramsay has given me the maximum
thickness, from actual measurement in most cases, of the successive
formations in DIFFERENT parts of Great Britain; and this is the
result:--

                                                  Feet

 Palaeozoic strata (not including igneous beds)..57,154
 Secondary strata................................13,190
 Tertiary strata..................................2,240

 --making altogether 72,584 feet;


that is, very nearly thirteen and three-quarters British miles.
Some of these formations, which are represented in England by thin beds,
are thousands of feet in thickness on the Continent. Moreover, between
each successive formation we have, in the opinion of most geologists,
blank periods of enormous length. So that the lofty pile of sedimentary
rocks in Britain gives but an inadequate idea of the time which has
elapsed during their accumulation. The consideration of these various
facts impresses the mind almost in the same manner as does the vain
endeavour to grapple with the idea of eternity.

Nevertheless this impression is partly false. Mr. Croll, in an
interesting paper, remarks that we do not err "in forming too great a
conception of the length of geological periods," but in estimating them
by years. When geologists look at large and complicated phenomena, and
then at the figures representing several million years, the two produce
a totally different effect on the mind, and the figures are at once
pronounced too small. In regard to subaerial denudation, Mr. Croll
shows, by calculating the known amount of sediment annually brought down
by certain rivers, relatively to their areas of drainage, that 1,000
feet of solid rock, as it became gradually disintegrated, would thus
be removed from the mean level of the whole area in the course of six
million years. This seems an astonishing result, and some considerations
lead to the suspicion that it may be too large, but if halved or
quartered it is still very surprising. Few of us, however, know what a
million really means: Mr. Croll gives the following illustration: Take
a narrow strip of paper, eighty-three feet four inches in length, and
stretch it along the wall of a large hall; then mark off at one end
the tenth of an inch. This tenth of an inch will represent one hundred
years, and the entire strip a million years. But let it be borne in
mind, in relation to the subject of this work, what a hundred years
implies, represented as it is by a measure utterly insignificant in a
hall of the above dimensions. Several eminent breeders, during a single
lifetime, have so largely modified some of the higher animals, which
propagate their kind much more slowly than most of the lower animals,
that they have formed what well deserves to be called a new sub-breed.
Few men have attended with due care to any one strain for more than half
a century, so that a hundred years represents the work of two breeders
in succession. It is not to be supposed that species in a state of
nature ever change so quickly as domestic animals under the guidance of
methodical selection. The comparison would be in every way fairer
with the effects which follow from unconscious selection, that is, the
preservation of the most useful or beautiful animals, with no intention
of modifying the breed; but by this process of unconscious selection,
various breeds have been sensibly changed in the course of two or three
centuries.

Species, however, probably change much more slowly, and within the same
country only a few change at the same time. This slowness follows from
all the inhabitants of the same country being already so well adapted to
each other, that new places in the polity of nature do not occur until
after long intervals, due to the occurrence of physical changes of some
kind, or through the immigration of new forms. Moreover, variations
or individual differences of the right nature, by which some of the
inhabitants might be better fitted to their new places under the altered
circumstance, would not always occur at once. Unfortunately we have no
means of determining, according to the standard of years, how long a
period it takes to modify a species; but to the subject of time we must
return.

ON THE POORNESS OF PALAEONTOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS.

Now let us turn to our richest museums, and what a paltry display we
behold! That our collections are imperfect is admitted by every one. The
remark of that admirable palaeontologist, Edward Forbes, should never
be forgotten, namely, that very many fossil species are known and
named from single and often broken specimens, or from a few specimens
collected on some one spot. Only a small portion of the surface of the
earth has been geologically explored, and no part with sufficient
care, as the important discoveries made every year in Europe prove.
No organism wholly soft can be preserved. Shells and bones decay and
disappear when left on the bottom of the sea, where sediment is not
accumulating. We probably take a quite erroneous view, when we assume
that sediment is being deposited over nearly the whole bed of the sea,
at a rate sufficiently quick to embed and preserve fossil remains.
Throughout an enormously large proportion of the ocean, the bright blue
tint of the water bespeaks its purity. The many cases on record of a
formation conformably covered, after an immense interval of time, by
another and later formation, without the underlying bed having suffered
in the interval any wear and tear, seem explicable only on the view
of the bottom of the sea not rarely lying for ages in an unaltered
condition. The remains which do become embedded, if in sand or gravel,
will, when the beds are upraised, generally be dissolved by the
percolation of rain water charged with carbonic acid. Some of the many
kinds of animals which live on the beach between high and low water mark
seem to be rarely preserved. For instance, the several species of the
Chthamalinae (a sub-family of sessile cirripedes) coat the rocks all
over the world in infinite numbers: they are all strictly littoral, with
the exception of a single Mediterranean species, which inhabits deep
water and this has been found fossil in Sicily, whereas not one other
species has hitherto been found in any tertiary formation: yet it is
known that the genus Chthamalus existed during the Chalk period.
Lastly, many great deposits, requiring a vast length of time for their
accumulation, are entirely destitute of organic remains, without our
being able to assign any reason: one of the most striking instances is
that of the Flysch formation, which consists of shale and sandstone,
several thousand, occasionally even six thousand feet in thickness,
and extending for at least 300 miles from Vienna to Switzerland; and
although this great mass has been most carefully searched, no fossils,
except a few vegetable remains, have been found.

With respect to the terrestrial productions which lived during the
Secondary and Palaeozoic periods, it is superfluous to state that
our evidence is fragmentary in an extreme degree. For instance, until
recently not a land-shell was known belonging to either of these vast
periods, with the exception of one species discovered by Sir C. Lyell
and Dr. Dawson in the carboniferous strata of North America; but now
land-shells have been found in the lias. In regard to mammiferous
remains, a glance at the historical table published in Lyell's
Manual, will bring home the truth, how accidental and rare is their
preservation, far better than pages of detail. Nor is their rarity
surprising, when we remember how large a proportion of the bones of
tertiary mammals have been discovered either in caves or in lacustrine
deposits; and that not a cave or true lacustrine bed is known belonging
to the age of our secondary or palaeozoic formations.

But the imperfection in the geological record largely results from
another and more important cause than any of the foregoing; namely, from
the several formations being separated from each other by wide intervals
of time. This doctrine has been emphatically admitted by many geologists
and palaeontologists, who, like E. Forbes, entirely disbelieve in the
change of species. When we see the formations tabulated in written
works, or when we follow them in nature, it is difficult to avoid
believing that they are closely consecutive. But we know, for instance,
from Sir R. Murchison's great work on Russia, what wide gaps there are
in that country between the superimposed formations; so it is in
North America, and in many other parts of the world. The most skilful
geologist, if his attention had been confined exclusively to these large
territories, would never have suspected that during the periods which
were blank and barren in his own country, great piles of sediment,
charged with new and peculiar forms of life, had elsewhere been
accumulated. And if, in every separate territory, hardly any idea can be
formed of the length of time which has elapsed between the consecutive
formations, we may infer that this could nowhere be ascertained.
The frequent and great changes in the mineralogical composition
of consecutive formations, generally implying great changes in the
geography of the surrounding lands, whence the sediment was derived,
accord with the belief of vast intervals of time having elapsed between
each formation.

We can, I think, see why the geological formations of each region are
almost invariably intermittent; that is, have not followed each other
in close sequence. Scarcely any fact struck me more when examining many
hundred miles of the South American coasts, which have been upraised
several hundred feet within the recent period, than the absence of
any recent deposits sufficiently extensive to last for even a short
geological period. Along the whole west coast, which is inhabited by
a peculiar marine fauna, tertiary beds are so poorly developed that no
record of several successive and peculiar marine faunas will probably be
preserved to a distant age. A little reflection will explain why, along
the rising coast of the western side of South America, no extensive
formations with recent or tertiary remains can anywhere be found, though
the supply of sediment must for ages have been great, from the enormous
degradation of the coast rocks and from the muddy streams entering the
sea. The explanation, no doubt, is that the littoral and sub-littoral
deposits are continually worn away, as soon as they are brought up by
the slow and gradual rising of the land within the grinding action of
the coast-waves.

We may, I think, conclude that sediment must be accumulated in extremely
thick, solid, or extensive masses, in order to withstand the incessant
action of the waves, when first upraised and during subsequent
oscillations of level, as well as the subsequent subaerial degradation.
Such thick and extensive accumulations of sediment may be formed in two
ways; either in profound depths of the sea, in which case the bottom
will not be inhabited by so many and such varied forms of life as the
more shallow seas; and the mass when upraised will give an imperfect
record of the organisms which existed in the neighbourhood during
the period of its accumulation. Or sediment may be deposited to any
thickness and extent over a shallow bottom, if it continue slowly to
subside. In this latter case, as long as the rate of subsidence and
supply of sediment nearly balance each other, the sea will remain
shallow and favourable for many and varied forms, and thus a rich
fossiliferous formation, thick enough, when upraised, to resist a large
amount of denudation, may be formed.

I am convinced that nearly all our ancient formations, which are
throughout the greater part of their thickness RICH IN FOSSILS, have
thus been formed during subsidence. Since publishing my views on this
subject in 1845, I have watched the progress of geology, and have been
surprised to note how author after author, in treating of this or that
great formation, has come to the conclusion that it was accumulated
during subsidence. I may add, that the only ancient tertiary formation
on the west coast of South America, which has been bulky enough to
resist such degradation as it has as yet suffered, but which will
hardly last to a distant geological age, was deposited during a downward
oscillation of level, and thus gained considerable thickness.

All geological facts tell us plainly that each area has undergone
numerous slow oscillations of level, and apparently these oscillations
have affected wide spaces. Consequently, formations rich in fossils and
sufficiently thick and extensive to resist subsequent degradation, will
have been formed over wide spaces during periods of subsidence, but only
where the supply of sediment was sufficient to keep the sea shallow and
to embed and preserve the remains before they had time to decay. On the
other hand, as long as the bed of the sea remained stationary, THICK
deposits cannot have been accumulated in the shallow parts, which are
the most favourable to life. Still less can this have happened during
the alternate periods of elevation; or, to speak more accurately, the
beds which were then accumulated will generally have been destroyed by
being upraised and brought within the limits of the coast-action.

These remarks apply chiefly to littoral and sublittoral deposits. In the
case of an extensive and shallow sea, such as that within a large part
of the Malay Archipelago, where the depth varies from thirty or forty
to sixty fathoms, a widely extended formation might be formed during
a period of elevation, and yet not suffer excessively from denudation
during its slow upheaval; but the thickness of the formation could not
be great, for owing to the elevatory movement it would be less than
the depth in which it was formed; nor would the deposit be much
consolidated, nor be capped by overlying formations, so that it would
run a good chance of being worn away by atmospheric degradation and by
the action of the sea during subsequent oscillations of level. It has,
however, been suggested by Mr. Hopkins, that if one part of the area,
after rising and before being denuded, subsided, the deposit formed
during the rising movement, though not thick, might afterwards become
protected by fresh accumulations, and thus be preserved for a long
period.

Mr. Hopkins also expresses his belief that sedimentary beds of
considerable horizontal extent have rarely been completely destroyed.
But all geologists, excepting the few who believe that our present
metamorphic schists and plutonic rocks once formed the primordial
nucleus of the globe, will admit that these latter rocks have been
stripped of their covering to an enormous extent. For it is scarcely
possible that such rocks could have been solidified and crystallised
while uncovered; but if the metamorphic action occurred at profound
depths of the ocean, the former protecting mantle of rock may not have
been very thick. Admitting then that gneiss, mica-schist, granite,
diorite, etc., were once necessarily covered up, how can we account for
the naked and extensive areas of such rocks in many parts of the world,
except on the belief that they have subsequently been completely denuded
of all overlying strata? That such extensive areas do exist cannot be
doubted: the granitic region of Parime is described by Humboldt as being
at least nineteen times as large as Switzerland. South of the Amazon,
Boue colours an area composed of rocks of this nature as equal to that
of Spain, France, Italy, part of Germany, and the British Islands, all
conjoined. This region has not been carefully explored, but from the
concurrent testimony of travellers, the granitic area is very large:
thus Von Eschwege gives a detailed section of these rocks, stretching
from Rio de Janeiro for 260 geographical miles inland in a straight
line; and I travelled for 150 miles in another direction, and saw
nothing but granitic rocks. Numerous specimens, collected along the
whole coast, from near Rio de Janeiro to the mouth of the Plata, a
distance of 1,100 geographical miles, were examined by me, and they all
belonged to this class. Inland, along the whole northern bank of the
Plata, I saw, besides modern tertiary beds, only one small patch of
slightly metamorphosed rock, which alone could have formed a part of the
original capping of the granitic series. Turning to a well-known region,
namely, to the United States and Canada, as shown in Professor H.D.
Rogers' beautiful map, I have estimated the areas by cutting out and
weighing the paper, and I find that the metamorphic (excluding the
"semi-metamorphic") and granite rocks exceed, in the proportion of 19 to
12.5, the whole of the newer Palaeozoic formations. In many regions the
metamorphic and granite rocks would be found much more widely extended
than they appear to be, if all the sedimentary beds were removed which
rest unconformably on them, and which could not have formed part of
the original mantle under which they were crystallised. Hence, it is
probable that in some parts of the world whole formations have been
completely denuded, with not a wreck left behind.


One remark is here worth a passing notice. During periods of elevation
the area of the land and of the adjoining shoal parts of the sea will
be increased and new stations will often be formed--all circumstances
favourable, as previously explained, for the formation of new varieties
and species; but during such periods there will generally be a blank
in the geological record. On the other hand, during subsidence, the
inhabited area and number of inhabitants will decrease (excepting on
the shores of a continent when first broken up into an archipelago), and
consequently during subsidence, though there will be much extinction,
few new varieties or species will be formed; and it is during these very
periods of subsidence that the deposits which are richest in fossils
have been accumulated.

ON THE ABSENCE OF NUMEROUS INTERMEDIATE VARIETIES IN ANY SINGLE
FORMATION.

From these several considerations it cannot be doubted that the
geological record, viewed as a whole, is extremely imperfect; but if
we confine our attention to any one formation, it becomes much more
difficult to understand why we do not therein find closely graduated
varieties between the allied species which lived at its commencement and
at its close. Several cases are on record of the same species presenting
varieties in the upper and lower parts of the same formation. Thus
Trautschold gives a number of instances with Ammonites, and Hilgendorf
has described a most curious case of ten graduated forms of Planorbis
multiformis in the successive beds of a fresh-water formation in
Switzerland. Although each formation has indisputably required a vast
number of years for its deposition, several reasons can be given why
each should not commonly include a graduated series of links between the
species which lived at its commencement and close, but I cannot assign
due proportional weight to the following considerations.

Although each formation may mark a very long lapse of years, each
probably is short compared with the period requisite to change one
species into another. I am aware that two palaeontologists, whose
opinions are worthy of much deference, namely Bronn and Woodward, have
concluded that the average duration of each formation is twice or thrice
as long as the average duration of specific forms. But insuperable
difficulties, as it seems to me, prevent us from coming to any just
conclusion on this head. When we see a species first appearing in the
middle of any formation, it would be rash in the extreme to infer
that it had not elsewhere previously existed. So again, when we find
a species disappearing before the last layers have been deposited, it
would be equally rash to suppose that it then became extinct. We forget
how small the area of Europe is compared with the rest of the world;
nor have the several stages of the same formation throughout Europe been
correlated with perfect accuracy.

We may safely infer that with marine animals of all kinds there has been
a large amount of migration due to climatal and other changes; and when
we see a species first appearing in any formation, the probability is
that it only then first immigrated into that area. It is well known, for
instance, that several species appear somewhat earlier in the palaeozoic
beds of North America than in those of Europe; time having apparently
been required for their migration from the American to the European
seas. In examining the latest deposits, in various quarters of the
world, it has everywhere been noted, that some few still existing
species are common in the deposit, but have become extinct in the
immediately surrounding sea; or, conversely, that some are now abundant
in the neighbouring sea, but are rare or absent in this particular
deposit. It is an excellent lesson to reflect on the ascertained amount
of migration of the inhabitants of Europe during the glacial epoch,
which forms only a part of one whole geological period; and likewise to
reflect on the changes of level, on the extreme change of climate,
and on the great lapse of time, all included within this same glacial
period. Yet it may be doubted whether, in any quarter of the
world, sedimentary deposits, INCLUDING FOSSIL REMAINS, have gone on
accumulating within the same area during the whole of this period. It is
not, for instance, probable that sediment was deposited during the whole
of the glacial period near the mouth of the Mississippi, within that
limit of depth at which marine animals can best flourish: for we know
that great geographical changes occurred in other parts of America
during this space of time. When such beds as were deposited in shallow
water near the mouth of the Mississippi during some part of the glacial
period shall have been upraised, organic remains will probably first
appear and disappear at different levels, owing to the migrations
of species and to geographical changes. And in the distant future, a
geologist, examining these beds, would be tempted to conclude that the
average duration of life of the embedded fossils had been less than that
of the glacial period, instead of having been really far greater, that
is, extending from before the glacial epoch to the present day.

In order to get a perfect gradation between two forms in the upper
and lower parts of the same formation, the deposit must have gone on
continuously accumulating during a long period, sufficient for the slow
process of modification; hence, the deposit must be a very thick one;
and the species undergoing change must have lived in the same district
throughout the whole time. But we have seen that a thick formation,
fossiliferous throughout its entire thickness, can accumulate only
during a period of subsidence; and to keep the depth approximately the
same, which is necessary that the same marine species may live on the
same space, the supply of sediment must nearly counterbalance the
amount of subsidence. But this same movement of subsidence will tend to
submerge the area whence the sediment is derived, and thus diminish the
supply, whilst the downward movement continues. In fact, this nearly
exact balancing between the supply of sediment and the amount of
subsidence is probably a rare contingency; for it has been observed
by more than one palaeontologist that very thick deposits are usually
barren of organic remains, except near their upper or lower limits.

It would seem that each separate formation, like the whole pile of
formations in any country, has generally been intermittent in its
accumulation. When we see, as is so often the case, a formation composed
of beds of widely different mineralogical composition, we may
reasonably suspect that the process of deposition has been more or less
interrupted. Nor will the closest inspection of a formation give us any
idea of the length of time which its deposition may have consumed.
Many instances could be given of beds, only a few feet in thickness,
representing formations which are elsewhere thousands of feet in
thickness, and which must have required an enormous period for their
accumulation; yet no one ignorant of this fact would have even suspected
the vast lapse of time represented by the thinner formation. Many cases
could be given of the lower beds of a formation having been upraised,
denuded, submerged, and then re-covered by the upper beds of the same
formation--facts, showing what wide, yet easily overlooked, intervals
have occurred in its accumulation. In other cases we have the plainest
evidence in great fossilised trees, still standing upright as they grew,
of many long intervals of time and changes of level during the process
of deposition, which would not have been suspected, had not the trees
been preserved: thus Sir C. Lyell and Dr. Dawson found carboniferous
beds 1,400 feet thick in Nova Scotia, with ancient root-bearing strata,
one above the other, at no less than sixty-eight different levels.
Hence, when the same species occurs at the bottom, middle, and top of
a formation, the probability is that it has not lived on the same
spot during the whole period of deposition, but has disappeared and
reappeared, perhaps many times, during the same geological period.
Consequently if it were to undergo a considerable amount of modification
during the deposition of any one geological formation, a section would
not include all the fine intermediate gradations which must on our
theory have existed, but abrupt, though perhaps slight, changes of form.

It is all-important to remember that naturalists have no golden rule
by which to distinguish species and varieties; they grant some little
variability to each species, but when they meet with a somewhat greater
amount of difference between any two forms, they rank both as species,
unless they are enabled to connect them together by the closest
intermediate gradations; and this, from the reasons just assigned, we
can seldom hope to effect in any one geological section. Supposing B
and C to be two species, and a third, A, to be found in an older and
underlying bed; even if A were strictly intermediate between B and C,
it would simply be ranked as a third and distinct species, unless at the
same time it could be closely connected by intermediate varieties
with either one or both forms. Nor should it be forgotten, as before
explained, that A might be the actual progenitor of B and C, and yet
would not necessarily be strictly intermediate between them in all
respects. So that we might obtain the parent-species and its several
modified descendants from the lower and upper beds of the same
formation, and unless we obtained numerous transitional gradations, we
should not recognise their blood-relationship, and should consequently
rank them as distinct species.

It is notorious on what excessively slight differences many
palaeontologists have founded their species; and they do this the more
readily if the specimens come from different sub-stages of the same
formation. Some experienced conchologists are now sinking many of the
very fine species of D'Orbigny and others into the rank of varieties;
and on this view we do find the kind of evidence of change which on
the theory we ought to find. Look again at the later tertiary deposits,
which include many shells believed by the majority of naturalists to
be identical with existing species; but some excellent naturalists,
as Agassiz and Pictet, maintain that all these tertiary species are
specifically distinct, though the distinction is admitted to be very
slight; so that here, unless we believe that these eminent naturalists
have been misled by their imaginations, and that these late tertiary
species really present no difference whatever from their living
representatives, or unless we admit, in opposition to the judgment of
most naturalists, that these tertiary species are all truly distinct
from the recent, we have evidence of the frequent occurrence of slight
modifications of the kind required. If we look to rather wider intervals
of time, namely, to distinct but consecutive stages of the same great
formation, we find that the embedded fossils, though universally ranked
as specifically different, yet are far more closely related to each
other than are the species found in more widely separated formations;
so that here again we have undoubted evidence of change in the direction
required by the theory; but to this latter subject I shall return in the
following chapter.

With animals and plants that propagate rapidly and do not wander
much, there is reason to suspect, as we have formerly seen, that their
varieties are generally at first local; and that such local varieties
do not spread widely and supplant their parent-form until they have been
modified and perfected in some considerable degree. According to this
view, the chance of discovering in a formation in any one country all
the early stages of transition between any two forms, is small, for the
successive changes are supposed to have been local or confined to some
one spot. Most marine animals have a wide range; and we have seen that
with plants it is those which have the widest range, that oftenest
present varieties, so that, with shells and other marine animals, it is
probable that those which had the widest range, far exceeding the limits
of the known geological formations in Europe, have oftenest given rise,
first to local varieties and ultimately to new species; and this again
would greatly lessen the chance of our being able to trace the stages of
transition in any one geological formation.

It is a more important consideration, leading to the same result, as
lately insisted on by Dr. Falconer, namely, that the period during which
each species underwent modification, though long as measured by years,
was probably short in comparison with that during which it remained
without undergoing any change.

It should not be forgotten, that at the present day, with perfect
specimens for examination, two forms can seldom be connected by
intermediate varieties, and thus proved to be the same species, until
many specimens are collected from many places; and with fossil
species this can rarely be done. We shall, perhaps, best perceive the
improbability of our being enabled to connect species by numerous, fine,
intermediate, fossil links, by asking ourselves whether, for instance,
geologists at some future period will be able to prove that our
different breeds of cattle, sheep, horses, and dogs are descended from
a single stock or from several aboriginal stocks; or, again, whether
certain sea-shells inhabiting the shores of North America, which are
ranked by some conchologists as distinct species from their European
representatives, and by other conchologists as only varieties, are
really varieties, or are, as it is called, specifically distinct. This
could be effected by the future geologist only by his discovering in
a fossil state numerous intermediate gradations; and such success is
improbable in the highest degree.

It has been asserted over and over again, by writers who believe in
the immutability of species, that geology yields no linking forms. This
assertion, as we shall see in the next chapter, is certainly erroneous.
As Sir J. Lubbock has remarked, "Every species is a link between other
allied forms." If we take a genus having a score of species, recent
and extinct, and destroy four-fifths of them, no one doubts that the
remainder will stand much more distinct from each other. If the extreme
forms in the genus happen to have been thus destroyed, the genus itself
will stand more distinct from other allied genera. What geological
research has not revealed, is the former existence of infinitely
numerous gradations, as fine as existing varieties, connecting together
nearly all existing and extinct species. But this ought not to be
expected; yet this has been repeatedly advanced as a most serious
objection against my views.

It may be worth while to sum up the foregoing remarks on the causes
of the imperfection of the geological record under an imaginary
illustration. The Malay Archipelago is about the size of Europe from
the North Cape to the Mediterranean, and from Britain to Russia; and
therefore equals all the geological formations which have been examined
with any accuracy, excepting those of the United States of America. I
fully agree with Mr. Godwin-Austen, that the present condition of the
Malay Archipelago, with its numerous large islands separated by wide and
shallow seas, probably represents the former state of Europe, while most
of our formations were accumulating. The Malay Archipelago is one of
the richest regions in organic beings; yet if all the species were to
be collected which have ever lived there, how imperfectly would they
represent the natural history of the world!

But we have every reason to believe that the terrestrial productions of
the archipelago would be preserved in an extremely imperfect manner in
the formations which we suppose to be there accumulating. Not many
of the strictly littoral animals, or of those which lived on naked
submarine rocks, would be embedded; and those embedded in gravel or
sand would not endure to a distant epoch. Wherever sediment did not
accumulate on the bed of the sea, or where it did not accumulate at a
sufficient rate to protect organic bodies from decay, no remains could
be preserved.

Formations rich in fossils of many kinds, and of thickness sufficient to
last to an age as distant in futurity as the secondary formations lie
in the past, would generally be formed in the archipelago only during
periods of subsidence. These periods of subsidence would be separated
from each other by immense intervals of time, during which the area
would be either stationary or rising; whilst rising, the fossiliferous
formations on the steeper shores would be destroyed, almost as soon as
accumulated, by the incessant coast-action, as we now see on the shores
of South America. Even throughout the extensive and shallow seas within
the archipelago, sedimentary beds could hardly be accumulated of
great thickness during the periods of elevation, or become capped
and protected by subsequent deposits, so as to have a good chance of
enduring to a very distant future. During the periods of subsidence,
there would probably be much extinction of life; during the periods
of elevation, there would be much variation, but the geological record
would then be less perfect.

It may be doubted whether the duration of any one great period of
subsidence over the whole or part of the archipelago, together with
a contemporaneous accumulation of sediment, would EXCEED the average
duration of the same specific forms; and these contingencies are
indispensable for the preservation of all the transitional gradations
between any two or more species. If such gradations were not all fully
preserved, transitional varieties would merely appear as so many new,
though closely allied species. It is also probable that each great
period of subsidence would be interrupted by oscillations of level,
and that slight climatical changes would intervene during such lengthy
periods; and in these cases the inhabitants of the archipelago would
migrate, and no closely consecutive record of their modifications could
be preserved in any one formation.

Very many of the marine inhabitants of the archipelago now range
thousands of miles beyond its confines; and analogy plainly leads to the
belief that it would be chiefly these far-ranging species, though
only some of them, which would oftenest produce new varieties; and
the varieties would at first be local or confined to one place, but
if possessed of any decided advantage, or when further modified and
improved, they would slowly spread and supplant their parent-forms. When
such varieties returned to their ancient homes, as they would differ
from their former state in a nearly uniform, though perhaps extremely
slight degree, and as they would be found embedded in slightly
different sub-stages of the same formation, they would, according to
the principles followed by many palaeontologists, be ranked as new and
distinct species.

If then there be some degree of truth in these remarks, we have no right
to expect to find, in our geological formations, an infinite number of
those fine transitional forms, which, on our theory, have connected
all the past and present species of the same group into one long and
branching chain of life. We ought only to look for a few links, and such
assuredly we do find--some more distantly, some more closely, related
to each other; and these links, let them be ever so close, if found in
different stages of the same formation, would, by many palaeontologists,
be ranked as distinct species. But I do not pretend that I should ever
have suspected how poor was the record in the best preserved geological
sections, had not the absence of innumerable transitional links between
the species which lived at the commencement and close of each formation,
pressed so hardly on my theory.

ON THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF WHOLE GROUPS OF ALLIED SPECIES.

The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in
certain formations, has been urged by several palaeontologists--for
instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick, as a fatal objection to the
belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging
to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once,
the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural
selection. For the development by this means of a group of forms, all
of which are descended from some one progenitor, must have been an
extremely slow process; and the progenitors must have lived long before
their modified descendants. But we continually overrate the perfection
of the geological record, and falsely infer, because certain genera or
families have not been found beneath a certain stage, that they did not
exist before that stage. In all cases positive palaeontological evidence
may be implicitly trusted; negative evidence is worthless, as experience
has so often shown. We continually forget how large the world is,
compared with the area over which our geological formations have been
carefully examined; we forget that groups of species may elsewhere
have long existed, and have slowly multiplied, before they invaded the
ancient archipelagoes of Europe and the United States. We do not make
due allowance for the enormous intervals of time which have elapsed
between our consecutive formations, longer perhaps in many cases
than the time required for the accumulation of each formation. These
intervals will have given time for the multiplication of species from
some one parent-form: and in the succeeding formation, such groups or
species will appear as if suddenly created.

I may here recall a remark formerly made, namely, that it might require
a long succession of ages to adapt an organism to some new and peculiar
line of life, for instance, to fly through the air; and consequently
that the transitional forms would often long remain confined to some one
region; but that, when this adaptation had once been effected, and a
few species had thus acquired a great advantage over other organisms,
a comparatively short time would be necessary to produce many divergent
forms, which would spread rapidly and widely throughout the world.
Professor Pictet, in his excellent Review of this work, in commenting
on early transitional forms, and taking birds as an illustration, cannot
see how the successive modifications of the anterior limbs of a supposed
prototype could possibly have been of any advantage. But look at the
penguins of the Southern Ocean; have not these birds their front limbs
in this precise intermediate state of "neither true arms nor true
wings?" Yet these birds hold their place victoriously in the battle for
life; for they exist in infinite numbers and of many kinds. I do not
suppose that we here see the real transitional grades through which
the wings of birds have passed; but what special difficulty is there in
believing that it might profit the modified descendants of the penguin,
first to become enabled to flap along the surface of the sea like the
logger-headed duck, and ultimately to rise from its surface and glide
through the air?

I will now give a few examples to illustrate the foregoing remarks, and
to show how liable we are to error in supposing that whole groups of
species have suddenly been produced. Even in so short an interval as
that between the first and second editions of Pictet's great work on
Palaeontology, published in 1844-46 and in 1853-57, the conclusions on
the first appearance and disappearance of several groups of animals
have been considerably modified; and a third edition would require still
further changes. I may recall the well-known fact that in geological
treatises, published not many years ago, mammals were always spoken of
as having abruptly come in at the commencement of the tertiary series.
And now one of the richest known accumulations of fossil mammals belongs
to the middle of the secondary series; and true mammals have been
discovered in the new red sandstone at nearly the commencement of
this great series. Cuvier used to urge that no monkey occurred in any
tertiary stratum; but now extinct species have been discovered in India,
South America and in Europe, as far back as the miocene stage. Had it
not been for the rare accident of the preservation of footsteps in
the new red sandstone of the United States, who would have ventured to
suppose that no less than at least thirty different bird-like animals,
some of gigantic size, existed during that period? Not a fragment of
bone has been discovered in these beds. Not long ago, palaeontologists
maintained that the whole class of birds came suddenly into existence
during the eocene period; but now we know, on the authority of Professor
Owen, that a bird certainly lived during the deposition of the upper
greensand; and still more recently, that strange bird, the Archeopteryx,
with a long lizard-like tail, bearing a pair of feathers on each joint,
and with its wings furnished with two free claws, has been discovered in
the oolitic slates of Solenhofen. Hardly any recent discovery shows more
forcibly than this how little we as yet know of the former inhabitants
of the world.

I may give another instance, which, from having passed under my own eyes
has much struck me. In a memoir on Fossil Sessile Cirripedes, I stated
that, from the large number of existing and extinct tertiary species;
from the extraordinary abundance of the individuals of many species
all over the world, from the Arctic regions to the equator, inhabiting
various zones of depths, from the upper tidal limits to fifty fathoms;
from the perfect manner in which specimens are preserved in the oldest
tertiary beds; from the ease with which even a fragment of a valve
can be recognised; from all these circumstances, I inferred that, had
sessile cirripedes existed during the secondary periods, they would
certainly have been preserved and discovered; and as not one species had
then been discovered in beds of this age, I concluded that this great
group had been suddenly developed at the commencement of the tertiary
series. This was a sore trouble to me, adding, as I then thought, one
more instance of the abrupt appearance of a great group of species. But
my work had hardly been published, when a skilful palaeontologist, M.
Bosquet, sent me a drawing of a perfect specimen of an unmistakable
sessile cirripede, which he had himself extracted from the chalk of
Belgium. And, as if to make the case as striking as possible, this
cirripede was a Chthamalus, a very common, large, and ubiquitous genus,
of which not one species has as yet been found even in any tertiary
stratum. Still more recently, a Pyrgoma, a member of a distinct
subfamily of sessile cirripedes, has been discovered by Mr. Woodward in
the upper chalk; so that we now have abundant evidence of the existence
of this group of animals during the secondary period.

The case most frequently insisted on by palaeontologists of the
apparently sudden appearance of a whole group of species, is that of the
teleostean fishes, low down, according to Agassiz, in the Chalk period.
This group includes the large majority of existing species. But certain
Jurassic and Triassic forms are now commonly admitted to be teleostean;
and even some palaeozoic forms have thus been classed by one high
authority. If the teleosteans had really appeared suddenly in the
northern hemisphere at the commencement of the chalk formation, the
fact would have been highly remarkable; but it would not have formed an
insuperable difficulty, unless it could likewise have been shown that at
the same period the species were suddenly and simultaneously developed
in other quarters of the world. It is almost superfluous to remark
that hardly any fossil-fish are known from south of the equator; and
by running through Pictet's Palaeontology it will be seen that very few
species are known from several formations in Europe. Some few families
of fish now have a confined range; the teleostean fishes might formerly
have had a similarly confined range, and after having been largely
developed in some one sea, have spread widely. Nor have we any right to
suppose that the seas of the world have always been so freely open from
south to north as they are at present. Even at this day, if the Malay
Archipelago were converted into land, the tropical parts of the Indian
Ocean would form a large and perfectly enclosed basin, in which any
great group of marine animals might be multiplied; and here they would
remain confined, until some of the species became adapted to a cooler
climate, and were enabled to double the southern capes of Africa or
Australia, and thus reach other and distant seas.

From these considerations, from our ignorance of the geology of other
countries beyond the confines of Europe and the United States, and
from the revolution in our palaeontological knowledge effected by the
discoveries of the last dozen years, it seems to me to be about as rash
to dogmatize on the succession of organic forms throughout the world, as
it would be for a naturalist to land for five minutes on a barren
point in Australia, and then to discuss the number and range of its
productions.

ON THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF GROUPS OF ALLIED SPECIES IN THE LOWEST KNOWN
FOSSILIFEROUS STRATA.

There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I
allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main
divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known
fossiliferous rocks. Most of the arguments which have convinced me that
all the existing species of the same group are descended from a single
progenitor, apply with equal force to the earliest known species.
For instance, it cannot be doubted that all the Cambrian and Silurian
trilobites are descended from some one crustacean, which must have lived
long before the Cambrian age, and which probably differed greatly from
any known animal. Some of the most ancient animals, as the Nautilus,
Lingula, etc., do not differ much from living species; and it cannot on
our theory be supposed, that these old species were the progenitors of
all the species belonging to the same groups which have subsequently
appeared, for they are not in any degree intermediate in character.

Consequently, if the theory be true, it is indisputable that before the
lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited long periods elapsed, as long as,
or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Cambrian age
to the present day; and that during these vast periods the world swarmed
with living creatures. Here we encounter a formidable objection; for it
seems doubtful whether the earth, in a fit state for the habitation of
living creatures, has lasted long enough. Sir W. Thompson concludes that
the consolidation of the crust can hardly have occurred less than twenty
or more than four hundred million years ago, but probably not less than
ninety-eight or more than two hundred million years. These very wide
limits show how doubtful the data are; and other elements may have
hereafter to be introduced into the problem. Mr. Croll estimates that
about sixty million years have elapsed since the Cambrian period,
but this, judging from the small amount of organic change since the
commencement of the Glacial epoch, appears a very short time for the
many and great mutations of life, which have certainly occurred since
the Cambrian formation; and the previous one hundred and forty million
years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the
varied forms of life which already existed during the Cambrian period.
It is, however, probable, as Sir William Thompson insists, that the
world at a very early period was subjected to more rapid and violent
changes in its physical conditions than those now occurring; and such
changes would have tended to induce changes at a corresponding rate in
the organisms which then existed.

To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging
to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can
give no satisfactory answer. Several eminent geologists, with Sir R.
Murchison at their head, were until recently convinced that we beheld
in the organic remains of the lowest Silurian stratum the first dawn
of life. Other highly competent judges, as Lyell and E. Forbes, have
disputed this conclusion. We should not forget that only a small portion
of the world is known with accuracy. Not very long ago M. Barrande
added another and lower stage, abounding with new and peculiar species,
beneath the then known Silurian system; and now, still lower down in the
Lower Cambrian formation, Mr Hicks has found South Wales beds rich in
trilobites, and containing various molluscs and annelids. The presence
of phosphatic nodules and bituminous matter, even in some of the
lowest azotic rocks, probably indicates life at these periods; and
the existence of the Eozoon in the Laurentian formation of Canada is
generally admitted. There are three great series of strata beneath the
Silurian system in Canada, in the lowest of which the Eozoon is found.
Sir W. Logan states that their "united thickness may possibly far
surpass that of all the succeeding rocks, from the base of the
palaeozoic series to the present time. We are thus carried back to a
period so remote, that the appearance of the so-called primordial
fauna (of Barrande) may by some be considered as a comparatively modern
event." The Eozoon belongs to the most lowly organised of all classes of
animals, but is highly organised for its class; it existed in countless
numbers, and, as Dr. Dawson has remarked, certainly preyed on other
minute organic beings, which must have lived in great numbers. Thus the
words, which I wrote in 1859, about the existence of living beings long
before the Cambrian period, and which are almost the same with those
since used by Sir W. Logan, have proved true. Nevertheless, the
difficulty of assigning any good reason for the absence of vast piles
of strata rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian system is very great. It
does not seem probable that the most ancient beds have been quite worn
away by denudation, or that their fossils have been wholly obliterated
by metamorphic action, for if this had been the case we should have
found only small remnants of the formations next succeeding them in
age, and these would always have existed in a partially metamorphosed
condition. But the descriptions which we possess of the Silurian
deposits over immense territories in Russia and in North America, do not
support the view that the older a formation is the more invariably it
has suffered extreme denudation and metamorphism.

The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as
a valid argument against the views here entertained. To show that it
may hereafter receive some explanation, I will give the following
hypothesis. From the nature of the organic remains which do not appear
to have inhabited profound depths, in the several formations of Europe
and of the United States; and from the amount of sediment, miles in
thickness, of which the formations are composed, we may infer that from
first to last large islands or tracts of land, whence the sediment was
derived, occurred in the neighbourhood of the now existing continents
of Europe and North America. This same view has since been maintained by
Agassiz and others. But we do not know what was the state of things in
the intervals between the several successive formations; whether Europe
and the United States during these intervals existed as dry land, or as
a submarine surface near land, on which sediment was not deposited, or
as the bed of an open and unfathomable sea.

Looking to the existing oceans, which are thrice as extensive as the
land, we see them studded with many islands; but hardly one truly
oceanic island (with the exception of New Zealand, if this can be called
a truly oceanic island) is as yet known to afford even a remnant of any
palaeozoic or secondary formation. Hence, we may perhaps infer, that
during the palaeozoic and secondary periods, neither continents nor
continental islands existed where our oceans now extend; for had they
existed, palaeozoic and secondary formations would in all probability
have been accumulated from sediment derived from their wear and tear;
and would have been at least partially upheaved by the oscillations of
level, which must have intervened during these enormously long periods.
If, then, we may infer anything from these facts, we may infer that,
where our oceans now extend, oceans have extended from the remotest
period of which we have any record; and on the other hand, that where
continents now exist, large tracts of land have existed, subjected, no
doubt, to great oscillations of level, since the Cambrian period. The
coloured map appended to my volume on Coral Reefs, led me to conclude
that the great oceans are still mainly areas of subsidence, the great
archipelagoes still areas of oscillations of level, and the continents
areas of elevation. But we have no reason to assume that things have
thus remained from the beginning of the world. Our continents seem to
have been formed by a preponderance, during many oscillations of
level, of the force of elevation. But may not the areas of preponderant
movement have changed in the lapse of ages? At a period long antecedent
to the Cambrian epoch, continents may have existed where oceans are
now spread out, and clear and open oceans may have existed where our
continents now stand. Nor should we be justified in assuming that if,
for instance, the bed of the Pacific Ocean were now converted into a
continent we should there find sedimentary formations, in recognisable
condition, older than the Cambrian strata, supposing such to have been
formerly deposited; for it might well happen that strata which had
subsided some miles nearer to the centre of the earth, and which had
been pressed on by an enormous weight of superincumbent water, might
have undergone far more metamorphic action than strata which have always
remained nearer to the surface. The immense areas in some parts of the
world, for instance in South America, of naked metamorphic rocks, which
must have been heated under great pressure, have always seemed to me to
require some special explanation; and we may perhaps believe that we see
in these large areas the many formations long anterior to the Cambrian
epoch in a completely metamorphosed and denuded condition.

The several difficulties here discussed, namely, that, though we find in
our geological formations many links between the species which now exist
and which formerly existed, we do not find infinitely numerous fine
transitional forms closely joining them all together. The sudden
manner in which several groups of species first appear in our European
formations, the almost entire absence, as at present known, of
formations rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian strata, are all
undoubtedly of the most serious nature. We see this in the fact that
the most eminent palaeontologists, namely, Cuvier, Agassiz, Barrande,
Pictet, Falconer, E. Forbes, etc., and all our greatest geologists, as
Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, etc., have unanimously, often vehemently,
maintained the immutability of species. But Sir Charles Lyell now
gives the support of his high authority to the opposite side, and most
geologists and palaeontologists are much shaken in their former belief.
Those who believe that the geological record is in any degree perfect,
will undoubtedly at once reject my theory. For my part, following out
Lyell's metaphor, I look at the geological record as a history of
the world imperfectly kept and written in a changing dialect. Of this
history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three
countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been
preserved, and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each
word of the slowly-changing language, more or less different in the
successive chapters, may represent the forms of life, which are entombed
in our consecutive formations, and which falsely appear to have been
abruptly introduced. On this view the difficulties above discussed are
greatly diminished or even disappear.




CHAPTER XI. ON THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ORGANIC BEINGS.

 On the slow and successive appearance of new species--On their different
 rates of change--Species once lost do not reappear--Groups of species
 follow the same general rules in their appearance and disappearance as
 do single species--On extinction--On simultaneous changes in the forms
 of life throughout the world--On the affinities of extinct species to
 each other and to living species--On the state of development of
 ancient forms--On the succession of the same types within the same
 areas--Summary of preceding and present chapters.


Let us now see whether the several facts and laws relating to the
geological succession of organic beings accord best with the common view
of the immutability of species, or with that of their slow and gradual
modification, through variation and natural selection.

New species have appeared very slowly, one after another, both on the
land and in the waters. Lyell has shown that it is hardly possible to
resist the evidence on this head in the case of the several tertiary
stages; and every year tends to fill up the blanks between the stages,
and to make the proportion between the lost and existing forms more
gradual. In some of the most recent beds, though undoubtedly of high
antiquity if measured by years, only one or two species are extinct,
and only one or two are new, having appeared there for the first time,
either locally, or, as far as we know, on the face of the earth. The
secondary formations are more broken; but, as Bronn has remarked,
neither the appearance nor disappearance of the many species embedded in
each formation has been simultaneous.

Species belonging to different genera and classes have not changed at
the same rate, or in the same degree. In the older tertiary beds a few
living shells may still be found in the midst of a multitude of extinct
forms. Falconer has given a striking instance of a similar fact, for an
existing crocodile is associated with many lost mammals and reptiles in
the sub-Himalayan deposits. The Silurian Lingula differs but little from
the living species of this genus; whereas most of the other Silurian
Molluscs and all the Crustaceans have changed greatly. The productions
of the land seem to have changed at a quicker rate than those of the
sea, of which a striking instance has been observed in Switzerland.
There is some reason to believe that organisms high in the scale, change
more quickly than those that are low: though there are exceptions to
this rule. The amount of organic change, as Pictet has remarked, is not
the same in each successive so-called formation. Yet if we compare any
but the most closely related formations, all the species will be found
to have undergone some change. When a species has once disappeared
from the face of the earth, we have no reason to believe that the same
identical form ever reappears. The strongest apparent exception to this
latter rule is that of the so-called "colonies" of M. Barrande, which
intrude for a period in the midst of an older formation, and then allow
the pre-existing fauna to reappear; but Lyell's explanation, namely,
that it is a case of temporary migration from a distinct geographical
province, seems satisfactory.

These several facts accord well with our theory, which includes no fixed
law of development, causing all the inhabitants of an area to change
abruptly, or simultaneously, or to an equal degree. The process of
modification must be slow, and will generally affect only a few species
at the same time; for the variability of each species is independent of
that of all others. Whether such variations or individual differences as
may arise will be accumulated through natural selection in a greater
or less degree, thus causing a greater or less amount of permanent
modification, will depend on many complex contingencies--on
the variations being of a beneficial nature, on the freedom of
intercrossing, on the slowly changing physical conditions of the
country, on the immigration of new colonists, and on the nature of the
other inhabitants with which the varying species come into competition.
Hence it is by no means surprising that one species should retain the
same identical form much longer than others; or, if changing, should
change in a less degree. We find similar relations between the existing
inhabitants of distinct countries; for instance, the land-shells and
coleopterous insects of Madeira have come to differ considerably from
their nearest allies on the continent of Europe, whereas the marine
shells and birds have remained unaltered. We can perhaps understand
the apparently quicker rate of change in terrestrial and in more highly
organised productions compared with marine and lower productions, by
the more complex relations of the higher beings to their organic and
inorganic conditions of life, as explained in a former chapter. When
many of the inhabitants of any area have become modified and improved,
we can understand, on the principle of competition, and from the
all-important relations of organism to organism in the struggle for
life, that any form which did not become in some degree modified and
improved, would be liable to extermination. Hence, we see why all
the species in the same region do at last, if we look to long enough
intervals of time, become modified; for otherwise they would become
extinct.

In members of the same class the average amount of change, during long
and equal periods of time, may, perhaps, be nearly the same; but as the
accumulation of enduring formations, rich in fossils, depends on great
masses of sediment being deposited on subsiding areas, our formations
have been almost necessarily accumulated at wide and irregularly
intermittent intervals of time; consequently the amount of organic
change exhibited by the fossils embedded in consecutive formations
is not equal. Each formation, on this view, does not mark a new and
complete act of creation, but only an occasional scene, taken almost at
hazard, in an ever slowly changing drama.

We can clearly understand why a species when once lost should never
reappear, even if the very same conditions of life, organic and
inorganic, should recur. For though the offspring of one species might
be adapted (and no doubt this has occurred in innumerable instances)
to fill the place of another species in the economy of nature, and
thus supplant it; yet the two forms--the old and the new--would not be
identically the same; for both would almost certainly inherit different
characters from their distinct progenitors; and organisms already
differing would vary in a different manner. For instance, it is
possible, if all our fantail-pigeons were destroyed, that fanciers might
make a new breed hardly distinguishable from the present breed; but if
the parent rock-pigeon were likewise destroyed, and under nature we have
every reason to believe that parent forms are generally supplanted
and exterminated by their improved offspring, it is incredible that a
fantail, identical with the existing breed, could be raised from any
other species of pigeon, or even from any other well established race
of the domestic pigeon, for the successive variations would almost
certainly be in some degree different, and the newly-formed variety
would probably inherit from its progenitor some characteristic
differences.

Groups of species, that is, genera and families, follow the same general
rules in their appearance and disappearance as do single species,
changing more or less quickly, and in a greater or lesser degree. A
group, when it has once disappeared, never reappears; that is, its
existence, as long as it lasts, is continuous. I am aware that there
are some apparent exceptions to this rule, but the exceptions are
surprisingly few, so few that E. Forbes, Pictet, and Woodward (though
all strongly opposed to such views as I maintain) admit its truth; and
the rule strictly accords with the theory. For all the species of
the same group, however long it may have lasted, are the modified
descendants one from the other, and all from a common progenitor. In
the genus Lingula, for instance, the species which have successively
appeared at all ages must have been connected by an unbroken series of
generations, from the lowest Silurian stratum to the present day.

We have seen in the last chapter that whole groups of species sometimes
falsely appear to have been abruptly developed; and I have attempted
to give an explanation of this fact, which if true would be fatal to my
views. But such cases are certainly exceptional; the general rule being
a gradual increase in number, until the group reaches its maximum, and
then, sooner or later, a gradual decrease. If the number of the species
included within a genus, or the number of the genera within a family, be
represented by a vertical line of varying thickness, ascending through
the successive geological formations, in which the species are found,
the line will sometimes falsely appear to begin at its lower end, not in
a sharp point, but abruptly; it then gradually thickens upwards, often
keeping of equal thickness for a space, and ultimately thins out in the
upper beds, marking the decrease and final extinction of the species.
This gradual increase in number of the species of a group is strictly
conformable with the theory; for the species of the same genus, and the
genera of the same family, can increase only slowly and progressively;
the process of modification and the production of a number of allied
forms necessarily being a slow and gradual process, one species first
giving rise to two or three varieties, these being slowly converted
into species, which in their turn produce by equally slow steps other
varieties and species, and so on, like the branching of a great tree
from a single stem, till the group becomes large.

ON EXTINCTION.

We have as yet only spoken incidentally of the disappearance of species
and of groups of species. On the theory of natural selection, the
extinction of old forms and the production of new and improved forms are
intimately connected together. The old notion of all the inhabitants of
the earth having been swept away by catastrophes at successive periods
is very generally given up, even by those geologists, as Elie de
Beaumont, Murchison, Barrande, etc., whose general views would naturally
lead them to this conclusion. On the contrary, we have every reason to
believe, from the study of the tertiary formations, that species and
groups of species gradually disappear, one after another, first from one
spot, then from another, and finally from the world. In some few cases,
however, as by the breaking of an isthmus and the consequent irruption
of a multitude of new inhabitants into an adjoining sea, or by the final
subsidence of an island, the process of extinction may have been rapid.
Both single species and whole groups of species last for very unequal
periods; some groups, as we have seen, have endured from the earliest
known dawn of life to the present day; some have disappeared before
the close of the palaeozoic period. No fixed law seems to determine
the length of time during which any single species or any single genus
endures. There is reason to believe that the extinction of a whole group
of species is generally a slower process than their production: if their
appearance and disappearance be represented, as before, by a vertical
line of varying thickness the line is found to taper more gradually at
its upper end, which marks the progress of extermination, than at its
lower end, which marks the first appearance and the early increase in
number of the species. In some cases, however, the extermination of
whole groups, as of ammonites, towards the close of the secondary
period, has been wonderfully sudden.

The extinction of species has been involved in the most gratuitous
mystery. Some authors have even supposed that, as the individual has a
definite length of life, so have species a definite duration. No one can
have marvelled more than I have done at the extinction of species. When
I found in La Plata the tooth of a horse embedded with the remains of
Mastodon, Megatherium, Toxodon and other extinct monsters, which all
co-existed with still living shells at a very late geological period,
I was filled with astonishment; for, seeing that the horse, since its
introduction by the Spaniards into South America, has run wild over the
whole country and has increased in numbers at an unparalleled rate, I
asked myself what could so recently have exterminated the former horse
under conditions of life apparently so favourable. But my astonishment
was groundless. Professor Owen soon perceived that the tooth, though
so like that of the existing horse, belonged to an extinct species. Had
this horse been still living, but in some degree rare, no naturalist
would have felt the least surprise at its rarity; for rarity is the
attribute of a vast number of species of all classes, in all countries.
If we ask ourselves why this or that species is rare, we answer that
something is unfavourable in its conditions of life; but what that
something is, we can hardly ever tell. On the supposition of the fossil
horse still existing as a rare species, we might have felt certain, from
the analogy of all other mammals, even of the slow-breeding elephant,
and from the history of the naturalisation of the domestic horse in
South America, that under more favourable conditions it would in a very
few years have stocked the whole continent. But we could not have
told what the unfavourable conditions were which checked its increase,
whether some one or several contingencies, and at what period of the
horse's life, and in what degree they severally acted. If the conditions
had gone on, however slowly, becoming less and less favourable, we
assuredly should not have perceived the fact, yet the fossil horse would
certainly have become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct--its place
being seized on by some more successful competitor.

It is most difficult always to remember that the increase of every
living creature is constantly being checked by unperceived hostile
agencies; and that these same unperceived agencies are amply sufficient
to cause rarity, and finally extinction. So little is this subject
understood, that I have heard surprise repeatedly expressed at such
great monsters as the Mastodon and the more ancient Dinosaurians having
become extinct; as if mere bodily strength gave victory in the battle of
life. Mere size, on the contrary, would in some cases determine, as has
been remarked by Owen, quicker extermination, from the greater amount
of requisite food. Before man inhabited India or Africa, some cause must
have checked the continued increase of the existing elephant. A highly
capable judge, Dr. Falconer, believes that it is chiefly insects which,
from incessantly harassing and weakening the elephant in India, check
its increase; and this was Bruce's conclusion with respect to
the African elephant in Abyssinia. It is certain that insects and
blood-sucking bats determine the existence of the larger naturalised
quadrupeds in several parts of South America.

We see in many cases in the more recent tertiary formations that rarity
precedes extinction; and we know that this has been the progress of
events with those animals which have been exterminated, either locally
or wholly, through man's agency. I may repeat what I published in 1845,
namely, that to admit that species generally become rare before they
become extinct--to feel no surprise at the rarity of a species, and yet
to marvel greatly when the species ceases to exist, is much the same as
to admit that sickness in the individual is the forerunner of death--to
feel no surprise at sickness, but, when the sick man dies, to wonder and
to suspect that he died by some deed of violence.

The theory of natural selection is grounded on the belief that each new
variety and ultimately each new species, is produced and maintained by
having some advantage over those with which it comes into competition;
and the consequent extinction of less-favoured forms almost inevitably
follows. It is the same with our domestic productions: when a new and
slightly improved variety has been raised, it at first supplants the
less improved varieties in the same neighbourhood; when much improved it
is transported far and near, like our short-horn cattle, and takes the
place of other breeds in other countries. Thus the appearance of new
forms and the disappearance of old forms, both those naturally and
artificially produced, are bound together. In flourishing groups, the
number of new specific forms which have been produced within a given
time has at some periods probably been greater than the number of
the old specific forms which have been exterminated; but we know that
species have not gone on indefinitely increasing, at least during the
later geological epochs, so that, looking to later times, we may believe
that the production of new forms has caused the extinction of about the
same number of old forms.

The competition will generally be most severe, as formerly explained
and illustrated by examples, between the forms which are most like each
other in all respects. Hence the improved and modified descendants of
a species will generally cause the extermination of the parent-species;
and if many new forms have been developed from any one species, the
nearest allies of that species, i.e. the species of the same genus, will
be the most liable to extermination. Thus, as I believe, a number of
new species descended from one species, that is a new genus, comes to
supplant an old genus, belonging to the same family. But it must often
have happened that a new species belonging to some one group has seized
on the place occupied by a species belonging to a distinct group, and
thus have caused its extermination. If many allied forms be developed
from the successful intruder, many will have to yield their places;
and it will generally be the allied forms, which will suffer from some
inherited inferiority in common. But whether it be species belonging
to the same or to a distinct class, which have yielded their places to
other modified and improved species, a few of the sufferers may often
be preserved for a long time, from being fitted to some peculiar line of
life, or from inhabiting some distant and isolated station, where they
will have escaped severe competition. For instance, some species of
Trigonia, a great genus of shells in the secondary formations, survive
in the Australian seas; and a few members of the great and almost
extinct group of Ganoid fishes still inhabit our fresh waters.
Therefore, the utter extinction of a group is generally, as we have
seen, a slower process than its production.

With respect to the apparently sudden extermination of whole families or
orders, as of Trilobites at the close of the palaeozoic period, and of
Ammonites at the close of the secondary period, we must remember what
has been already said on the probable wide intervals of time between our
consecutive formations; and in these intervals there may have been
much slow extermination. Moreover, when, by sudden immigration or by
unusually rapid development, many species of a new group have taken
possession of an area, many of the older species will have been
exterminated in a correspondingly rapid manner; and the forms which thus
yield their places will commonly be allied, for they will partake of the
same inferiority in common.

Thus, as it seems to me, the manner in which single species and whole
groups of species become extinct accords well with the theory of natural
selection. We need not marvel at extinction; if we must marvel, let it
be at our presumption in imagining for a moment that we understand
the many complex contingencies on which the existence of each species
depends. If we forget for an instant that each species tends to increase
inordinately, and that some check is always in action, yet seldom
perceived by us, the whole economy of nature will be utterly obscured.
Whenever we can precisely say why this species is more abundant
in individuals than that; why this species and not another can be
naturalised in a given country; then, and not until then, we may justly
feel surprise why we cannot account for the extinction of any particular
species or group of species.

ON THE FORMS OF LIFE CHANGING ALMOST SIMULTANEOUSLY THROUGHOUT THE
WORLD.

Scarcely any palaeontological discovery is more striking than the fact
that the forms of life change almost simultaneously throughout the
world. Thus our European Chalk formation can be recognised in many
distant regions, under the most different climates, where not a fragment
of the mineral chalk itself can be found; namely, in North America, in
equatorial South America, in Tierra del Fuego, at the Cape of Good Hope,
and in the peninsula of India. For at these distant points, the organic
remains in certain beds present an unmistakable resemblance to those
of the Chalk. It is not that the same species are met with; for in some
cases not one species is identically the same, but they belong to
the same families, genera, and sections of genera, and sometimes are
similarly characterised in such trifling points as mere superficial
sculpture. Moreover, other forms, which are not found in the Chalk of
Europe, but which occur in the formations either above or below, occur
in the same order at these distant points of the world. In the several
successive palaeozoic formations of Russia, Western Europe and North
America, a similar parallelism in the forms of life has been observed
by several authors; so it is, according to Lyell, with the European and
North American tertiary deposits. Even if the few fossil species which
are common to the Old and New Worlds were kept wholly out of view, the
general parallelism in the successive forms of life, in the palaeozoic
and tertiary stages, would still be manifest, and the several formations
could be easily correlated.

These observations, however, relate to the marine inhabitants of the
world: we have not sufficient data to judge whether the productions
of the land and of fresh water at distant points change in the same
parallel manner. We may doubt whether they have thus changed: if the
Megatherium, Mylodon, Macrauchenia, and Toxodon had been brought
to Europe from La Plata, without any information in regard to their
geological position, no one would have suspected that they had
co-existed with sea-shells all still living; but as these anomalous
monsters co-existed with the Mastodon and Horse, it might at least
have been inferred that they had lived during one of the later tertiary
stages.

When the marine forms of life are spoken of as having changed
simultaneously throughout the world, it must not be supposed that this
expression relates to the same year, or even to the same century, or
even that it has a very strict geological sense; for if all the marine
animals now living in Europe, and all those that lived in Europe during
the pleistocene period (a very remote period as measured by years,
including the whole glacial epoch) were compared with those now existing
in South America or in Australia, the most skilful naturalist would
hardly be able to say whether the present or the pleistocene inhabitants
of Europe resembled most closely those of the southern hemisphere. So,
again, several highly competent observers maintain that the existing
productions of the United States are more closely related to those which
lived in Europe during certain late tertiary stages, than to the
present inhabitants of Europe; and if this be so, it is evident that
fossiliferous beds now deposited on the shores of North America would
hereafter be liable to be classed with somewhat older European beds.
Nevertheless, looking to a remotely future epoch, there can be little
doubt that all the more modern MARINE formations, namely, the upper
pliocene, the pleistocene and strictly modern beds of Europe, North and
South America, and Australia, from containing fossil remains in some
degree allied, and from not including those forms which are found
only in the older underlying deposits, would be correctly ranked as
simultaneous in a geological sense.

The fact of the forms of life changing simultaneously in the above large
sense, at distant parts of the world, has greatly struck those admirable
observers, MM. de Verneuil and d'Archiac. After referring to the
parallelism of the palaeozoic forms of life in various parts of Europe,
they add, "If struck by this strange sequence, we turn our attention to
North America, and there discover a series of analogous phenomena,
it will appear certain that all these modifications of species, their
extinction, and the introduction of new ones, cannot be owing to mere
changes in marine currents or other causes more or less local and
temporary, but depend on general laws which govern the whole animal
kingdom." M. Barrande has made forcible remarks to precisely the same
effect. It is, indeed, quite futile to look to changes of currents,
climate, or other physical conditions, as the cause of these great
mutations in the forms of life throughout the world, under the most
different climates. We must, as Barrande has remarked, look to some
special law. We shall see this more clearly when we treat of the present
distribution of organic beings, and find how slight is the relation
between the physical conditions of various countries and the nature of
their inhabitants.

This great fact of the parallel succession of the forms of life
throughout the world, is explicable on the theory of natural selection.
New species are formed by having some advantage over older forms; and
the forms, which are already dominant, or have some advantage over the
other forms in their own country, give birth to the greatest number of
new varieties or incipient species. We have distinct evidence on this
head, in the plants which are dominant, that is, which are commonest and
most widely diffused, producing the greatest number of new varieties.
It is also natural that the dominant, varying and far-spreading species,
which have already invaded, to a certain extent, the territories of
other species, should be those which would have the best chance of
spreading still further, and of giving rise in new countries to other
new varieties and species. The process of diffusion would often be
very slow, depending on climatal and geographical changes, on strange
accidents, and on the gradual acclimatization of new species to the
various climates through which they might have to pass, but in the
course of time the dominant forms would generally succeed in spreading
and would ultimately prevail. The diffusion would, it is probable, be
slower with the terrestrial inhabitants of distinct continents than with
the marine inhabitants of the continuous sea. We might therefore expect
to find, as we do find, a less strict degree of parallelism in the
succession of the productions of the land than with those of the sea.

Thus, as it seems to me, the parallel, and, taken in a large sense,
simultaneous, succession of the same forms of life throughout the world,
accords well with the principle of new species having been formed by
dominant species spreading widely and varying; the new species thus
produced being themselves dominant, owing to their having had some
advantage over their already dominant parents, as well as over other
species; and again spreading, varying, and producing new forms. The
old forms which are beaten and which yield their places to the new and
victorious forms, will generally be allied in groups, from inheriting
some inferiority in common; and, therefore, as new and improved groups
spread throughout the world, old groups disappear from the world; and
the succession of forms everywhere tends to correspond both in their
first appearance and final disappearance.

There is one other remark connected with this subject worth making. I
have given my reasons for believing that most of our great formations,
rich in fossils, were deposited during periods of subsidence; and that
blank intervals of vast duration, as far as fossils are concerned,
occurred during the periods when the bed of the sea was either
stationary or rising, and likewise when sediment was not thrown down
quickly enough to embed and preserve organic remains. During these
long and blank intervals I suppose that the inhabitants of each region
underwent a considerable amount of modification and extinction, and
that there was much migration from other parts of the world. As we have
reason to believe that large areas are affected by the same movement,
it is probable that strictly contemporaneous formations have often been
accumulated over very wide spaces in the same quarter of the world;
but we are very far from having any right to conclude that this has
invariably been the case, and that large areas have invariably been
affected by the same movements. When two formations have been deposited
in two regions during nearly, but not exactly, the same period,
we should find in both, from the causes explained in the foregoing
paragraphs, the same general succession in the forms of life; but the
species would not exactly correspond; for there will have been a
little more time in the one region than in the other for modification,
extinction, and immigration.

I suspect that cases of this nature occur in Europe. Mr. Prestwich, in
his admirable Memoirs on the eocene deposits of England and France, is
able to draw a close general parallelism between the successive stages
in the two countries; but when he compares certain stages in England
with those in France, although he finds in both a curious accordance in
the numbers of the species belonging to the same genera, yet the species
themselves differ in a manner very difficult to account for considering
the proximity of the two areas, unless, indeed, it be assumed that an
isthmus separated two seas inhabited by distinct, but contemporaneous
faunas. Lyell has made similar observations on some of the later
tertiary formations. Barrande, also, shows that there is a striking
general parallelism in the successive Silurian deposits of Bohemia and
Scandinavia; nevertheless he finds a surprising amount of difference in
the species. If the several formations in these regions have not been
deposited during the same exact periods--a formation in one region often
corresponding with a blank interval in the other--and if in both regions
the species have gone on slowly changing during the accumulation of the
several formations and during the long intervals of time between them;
in this case the several formations in the two regions could be arranged
in the same order, in accordance with the general succession of the
forms of life, and the order would falsely appear to be strictly
parallel; nevertheless the species would not all be the same in the
apparently corresponding stages in the two regions.

ON THE AFFINITIES OF EXTINCT SPECIES TO EACH OTHER, AND TO LIVING FORMS.

Let us now look to the mutual affinities of extinct and living species.
All fall into a few grand classes; and this fact is at once explained on
the principle of descent. The more ancient any form is, the more, as a
general rule, it differs from living forms. But, as Buckland long ago
remarked, extinct species can all be classed either in still existing
groups, or between them. That the extinct forms of life help to fill
up the intervals between existing genera, families, and orders, is
certainly true; but as this statement has often been ignored or even
denied, it may be well to make some remarks on this subject, and to give
some instances. If we confine our attention either to the living or to
the extinct species of the same class, the series is far less perfect
than if we combine both into one general system. In the writings of
Professor Owen we continually meet with the expression of generalised
forms, as applied to extinct animals; and in the writings of Agassiz, of
prophetic or synthetic types; and these terms imply that such forms
are, in fact, intermediate or connecting links. Another distinguished
palaeontologist, M. Gaudry, has shown in the most striking manner that
many of the fossil mammals discovered by him in Attica serve to break
down the intervals between existing genera. Cuvier ranked the Ruminants
and Pachyderms as two of the most distinct orders of mammals; but so
many fossil links have been disentombed that Owen has had to alter the
whole classification, and has placed certain Pachyderms in the same
sub-order with ruminants; for example, he dissolves by gradations the
apparently wide interval between the pig and the camel. The Ungulata
or hoofed quadrupeds are now divided into the even-toed or odd-toed
divisions; but the Macrauchenia of South America connects to a certain
extent these two grand divisions. No one will deny that the Hipparion
is intermediate between the existing horse and certain other ungulate
forms. What a wonderful connecting link in the chain of mammals is the
Typotherium from South America, as the name given to it by Professor
Gervais expresses, and which cannot be placed in any existing order. The
Sirenia form a very distinct group of the mammals, and one of the most
remarkable peculiarities in existing dugong and lamentin is the entire
absence of hind limbs, without even a rudiment being left; but the
extinct Halitherium had, according to Professor Flower, an ossified
thigh-bone "articulated to a well-defined acetabulum in the pelvis," and
it thus makes some approach to ordinary hoofed quadrupeds, to which the
Sirenia are in other respects allied. The cetaceans or whales are
widely different from all other mammals, but the tertiary Zeuglodon and
Squalodon, which have been placed by some naturalists in an order
by themselves, are considered by Professor Huxley to be undoubtedly
cetaceans, "and to constitute connecting links with the aquatic
carnivora."

Even the wide interval between birds and reptiles has been shown by
the naturalist just quoted to be partially bridged over in the
most unexpected manner, on the one hand, by the ostrich and extinct
Archeopteryx, and on the other hand by the Compsognathus, one of
the Dinosaurians--that group which includes the most gigantic of all
terrestrial reptiles. Turning to the Invertebrata, Barrande asserts, a
higher authority could not be named, that he is every day taught that,
although palaeozoic animals can certainly be classed under existing
groups, yet that at this ancient period the groups were not so
distinctly separated from each other as they now are.

Some writers have objected to any extinct species, or group of species,
being considered as intermediate between any two living species, or
groups of species. If by this term it is meant that an extinct form is
directly intermediate in all its characters between two living forms or
groups, the objection is probably valid. But in a natural classification
many fossil species certainly stand between living species, and some
extinct genera between living genera, even between genera belonging to
distinct families. The most common case, especially with respect to very
distinct groups, such as fish and reptiles, seems to be that, supposing
them to be distinguished at the present day by a score of characters,
the ancient members are separated by a somewhat lesser number of
characters, so that the two groups formerly made a somewhat nearer
approach to each other than they now do.

It is a common belief that the more ancient a form is, by so much the
more it tends to connect by some of its characters groups now widely
separated from each other. This remark no doubt must be restricted
to those groups which have undergone much change in the course of
geological ages; and it would be difficult to prove the truth of
the proposition, for every now and then even a living animal, as the
Lepidosiren, is discovered having affinities directed towards very
distinct groups. Yet if we compare the older Reptiles and Batrachians,
the older Fish, the older Cephalopods, and the eocene Mammals, with the
recent members of the same classes, we must admit that there is truth in
the remark.

Let us see how far these several facts and inferences accord with the
theory of descent with modification. As the subject is somewhat complex,
I must request the reader to turn to the diagram in the fourth chapter.
We may suppose that the numbered letters in italics represent genera,
and the dotted lines diverging from them the species in each genus. The
diagram is much too simple, too few genera and too few species being
given, but this is unimportant for us. The horizontal lines may
represent successive geological formations, and all the forms beneath
the uppermost line may be considered as extinct. The three existing
genera, a14, q14, p14, will form a small family; b14 and f14, a closely
allied family or subfamily; and o14, i14, m14, a third family. These
three families, together with the many extinct genera on the several
lines of descent diverging from the parent form (A) will form an order;
for all will have inherited something in common from their ancient
progenitor. On the principle of the continued tendency to divergence
of character, which was formerly illustrated by this diagram, the more
recent any form is the more it will generally differ from its ancient
progenitor. Hence, we can understand the rule that the most ancient
fossils differ most from existing forms. We must not, however, assume
that divergence of character is a necessary contingency; it depends
solely on the descendants from a species being thus enabled to seize
on many and different places in the economy of nature. Therefore it is
quite possible, as we have seen in the case of some Silurian forms,
that a species might go on being slightly modified in relation to its
slightly altered conditions of life, and yet retain throughout a vast
period the same general characteristics. This is represented in the
diagram by the letter F14.

All the many forms, extinct and recent, descended from (A), make, as
before remarked, one order; and this order, from the continued effects
of extinction and divergence of character, has become divided into
several sub-families and families, some of which are supposed to have
perished at different periods, and some to have endured to the present
day.

By looking at the diagram we can see that if many of the extinct forms
supposed to be embedded in the successive formations, were discovered
at several points low down in the series, the three existing families on
the uppermost line would be rendered less distinct from each other. If,
for instance, the genera a1, a5, a10, f8, m3, m6, m9, were disinterred,
these three families would be so closely linked together that they
probably would have to be united into one great family, in nearly the
same manner as has occurred with ruminants and certain pachyderms. Yet
he who objected to consider as intermediate the extinct genera, which
thus link together the living genera of three families, would be partly
justified, for they are intermediate, not directly, but only by a long
and circuitous course through many widely different forms. If many
extinct forms were to be discovered above one of the middle horizontal
lines or geological formations--for instance, above No. VI.--but none
from beneath this line, then only two of the families (those on the left
hand a14, etc., and b14, etc.) would have to be united into one; and
there would remain two families which would be less distinct from each
other than they were before the discovery of the fossils. So again, if
the three families formed of eight genera (a14 to m14), on the uppermost
line, be supposed to differ from each other by half-a-dozen important
characters, then the families which existed at a period marked VI would
certainly have differed from each other by a less number of characters;
for they would at this early stage of descent have diverged in a less
degree from their common progenitor. Thus it comes that ancient and
extinct genera are often in a greater or less degree intermediate
in character between their modified descendants, or between their
collateral relations.

Under nature the process will be far more complicated than is
represented in the diagram; for the groups will have been more numerous;
they will have endured for extremely unequal lengths of time, and will
have been modified in various degrees. As we possess only the last
volume of the geological record, and that in a very broken condition,
we have no right to expect, except in rare cases, to fill up the wide
intervals in the natural system, and thus to unite distinct families or
orders. All that we have a right to expect is, that those groups which
have, within known geological periods, undergone much modification,
should in the older formations make some slight approach to each other;
so that the older members should differ less from each other in some of
their characters than do the existing members of the same groups;
and this by the concurrent evidence of our best palaeontologists is
frequently the case.

Thus, on the theory of descent with modification, the main facts with
respect to the mutual affinities of the extinct forms of life to each
other and to living forms, are explained in a satisfactory manner. And
they are wholly inexplicable on any other view.

On this same theory, it is evident that the fauna during any one great
period in the earth's history will be intermediate in general character
between that which preceded and that which succeeded it. Thus the
species which lived at the sixth great stage of descent in the diagram
are the modified offspring of those which lived at the fifth stage, and
are the parents of those which became still more modified at the
seventh stage; hence they could hardly fail to be nearly intermediate in
character between the forms of life above and below. We must, however,
allow for the entire extinction of some preceding forms, and in any one
region for the immigration of new forms from other regions, and for a
large amount of modification during the long and blank intervals between
the successive formations. Subject to these allowances, the fauna of
each geological period undoubtedly is intermediate in character, between
the preceding and succeeding faunas. I need give only one instance,
namely, the manner in which the fossils of the Devonian system,
when this system was first discovered, were at once recognised by
palaeontologists as intermediate in character between those of the
overlying carboniferous and underlying Silurian systems. But each fauna
is not necessarily exactly intermediate, as unequal intervals of time
have elapsed between consecutive formations.

It is no real objection to the truth of the statement that the fauna of
each period as a whole is nearly intermediate in character between the
preceding and succeeding faunas, that certain genera offer exceptions
to the rule. For instance, the species of mastodons and elephants, when
arranged by Dr. Falconer in two series--in the first place according
to their mutual affinities, and in the second place according to their
periods of existence--do not accord in arrangement. The species extreme
in character are not the oldest or the most recent; nor are those which
are intermediate in character, intermediate in age. But supposing for
an instant, in this and other such cases, that the record of the first
appearance and disappearance of the species was complete, which is far
from the case, we have no reason to believe that forms successively
produced necessarily endure for corresponding lengths of time. A very
ancient form may occasionally have lasted much longer than a form
elsewhere subsequently produced, especially in the case of terrestrial
productions inhabiting separated districts. To compare small things with
great; if the principal living and extinct races of the domestic pigeon
were arranged in serial affinity, this arrangement would not closely
accord with the order in time of their production, and even less with
the order of their disappearance; for the parent rock-pigeon still
lives; and many varieties between the rock-pigeon and the carrier
have become extinct; and carriers which are extreme in the important
character of length of beak originated earlier than short-beaked
tumblers, which are at the opposite end of the series in this respect.

Closely connected with the statement, that the organic remains from an
intermediate formation are in some degree intermediate in character,
is the fact, insisted on by all palaeontologists, that fossils from two
consecutive formations are far more closely related to each other, than
are the fossils from two remote formations. Pictet gives as a well-known
instance, the general resemblance of the organic remains from the
several stages of the Chalk formation, though the species are distinct
in each stage. This fact alone, from its generality, seems to have
shaken Professor Pictet in his belief in the immutability of species.
He who is acquainted with the distribution of existing species over the
globe, will not attempt to account for the close resemblance of distinct
species in closely consecutive formations, by the physical conditions of
the ancient areas having remained nearly the same. Let it be remembered
that the forms of life, at least those inhabiting the sea, have changed
almost simultaneously throughout the world, and therefore under the most
different climates and conditions. Consider the prodigious vicissitudes
of climate during the pleistocene period, which includes the whole
glacial epoch, and note how little the specific forms of the inhabitants
of the sea have been affected.

On the theory of descent, the full meaning of the fossil remains from
closely consecutive formations, being closely related, though ranked as
distinct species, is obvious. As the accumulation of each formation
has often been interrupted, and as long blank intervals have intervened
between successive formations, we ought not to expect to find, as
I attempted to show in the last chapter, in any one or in any two
formations, all the intermediate varieties between the species which
appeared at the commencement and close of these periods: but we ought
to find after intervals, very long as measured by years, but only
moderately long as measured geologically, closely allied forms, or, as
they have been called by some authors, representative species; and these
assuredly we do find. We find, in short, such evidence of the slow and
scarcely sensible mutations of specific forms, as we have the right to
expect.

ON THE STATE OF DEVELOPMENT OF ANCIENT COMPARED WITH LIVING FORMS.

We have seen in the fourth chapter that the degree of differentiation
and specialisation of the parts in organic beings, when arrived at
maturity, is the best standard, as yet suggested, of their degree of
perfection or highness. We have also seen that, as the specialisation of
parts is an advantage to each being, so natural selection will tend to
render the organisation of each being more specialised and perfect,
and in this sense higher; not but that it may leave many creatures with
simple and unimproved structures fitted for simple conditions of life,
and in some cases will even degrade or simplify the organisation, yet
leaving such degraded beings better fitted for their new walks of life.
In another and more general manner, new species become superior to their
predecessors; for they have to beat in the struggle for life all
the older forms, with which they come into close competition. We may
therefore conclude that if under a nearly similar climate the eocene
inhabitants of the world could be put into competition with the existing
inhabitants, the former would be beaten and exterminated by the
latter, as would the secondary by the eocene, and the palaeozoic by
the secondary forms. So that by this fundamental test of victory in the
battle for life, as well as by the standard of the specialisation of
organs, modern forms ought, on the theory of natural selection, to
stand higher than ancient forms. Is this the case? A large majority of
palaeontologists would answer in the affirmative; and it seems that this
answer must be admitted as true, though difficult of proof.

It is no valid objection to this conclusion, that certain Brachiopods
have been but slightly modified from an extremely remote geological
epoch; and that certain land and fresh-water shells have remained nearly
the same, from the time when, as far as is known, they first appeared.
It is not an insuperable difficulty that Foraminifera have not, as
insisted on by Dr. Carpenter, progressed in organisation since even the
Laurentian epoch; for some organisms would have to remain fitted for
simple conditions of life, and what could be better fitted for this end
than these lowly organised Protozoa? Such objections as the above
would be fatal to my view, if it included advance in organisation as
a necessary contingent. They would likewise be fatal, if the above
Foraminifera, for instance, could be proved to have first come into
existence during the Laurentian epoch, or the above Brachiopods during
the Cambrian formation; for in this case, there would not have been time
sufficient for the development of these organisms up to the standard
which they had then reached. When advanced up to any given point, there
is no necessity, on the theory of natural selection, for their further
continued process; though they will, during each successive age, have to
be slightly modified, so as to hold their places in relation to slight
changes in their conditions. The foregoing objections hinge on the
question whether we really know how old the world is, and at what period
the various forms of life first appeared; and this may well be disputed.

The problem whether organisation on the whole has advanced is in
many ways excessively intricate. The geological record, at all times
imperfect, does not extend far enough back to show with unmistakable
clearness that within the known history of the world organisation has
largely advanced. Even at the present day, looking to members of the
same class, naturalists are not unanimous which forms ought to be ranked
as highest: thus, some look at the selaceans or sharks, from their
approach in some important points of structure to reptiles, as the
highest fish; others look at the teleosteans as the highest. The ganoids
stand intermediate between the selaceans and teleosteans; the latter
at the present day are largely preponderant in number; but formerly
selaceans and ganoids alone existed; and in this case, according to
the standard of highness chosen, so will it be said that fishes have
advanced or retrograded in organisation. To attempt to compare members
of distinct types in the scale of highness seems hopeless; who will
decide whether a cuttle-fish be higher than a bee--that insect which
the great Von Baer believed to be "in fact more highly organised than a
fish, although upon another type?" In the complex struggle for life it
is quite credible that crustaceans, not very high in their own class,
might beat cephalopods, the highest molluscs; and such crustaceans,
though not highly developed, would stand very high in the scale of
invertebrate animals, if judged by the most decisive of all trials--the
law of battle. Beside these inherent difficulties in deciding which
forms are the most advanced in organisation, we ought not solely to
compare the highest members of a class at any two periods--though
undoubtedly this is one and perhaps the most important element in
striking a balance--but we ought to compare all the members, high
and low, at two periods. At an ancient epoch the highest and lowest
molluscoidal animals, namely, cephalopods and brachiopods, swarmed in
numbers; at the present time both groups are greatly reduced,
while others, intermediate in organisation, have largely increased;
consequently some naturalists maintain that molluscs were formerly more
highly developed than at present; but a stronger case can be made out on
the opposite side, by considering the vast reduction of brachiopods, and
the fact that our existing cephalopods, though few in number, are more
highly organised than their ancient representatives. We ought also to
compare the relative proportional numbers, at any two periods, of the
high and low classes throughout the world: if, for instance, at the
present day fifty thousand kinds of vertebrate animals exist, and if
we knew that at some former period only ten thousand kinds existed, we
ought to look at this increase in number in the highest class, which
implies a great displacement of lower forms, as a decided advance in the
organisation of the world. We thus see how hopelessly difficult it is to
compare with perfect fairness, under such extremely complex relations,
the standard of organisation of the imperfectly-known faunas of
successive periods.

We shall appreciate this difficulty more clearly by looking to certain
existing faunas and floras. From the extraordinary manner in which
European productions have recently spread over New Zealand, and have
seized on places which must have been previously occupied by the
indigenes, we must believe, that if all the animals and plants of Great
Britain were set free in New Zealand, a multitude of British forms would
in the course of time become thoroughly naturalized there, and would
exterminate many of the natives. On the other hand, from the fact that
hardly a single inhabitant of the southern hemisphere has become wild in
any part of Europe, we may well doubt whether, if all the productions
of New Zealand were set free in Great Britain, any considerable number
would be enabled to seize on places now occupied by our native plants
and animals. Under this point of view, the productions of Great Britain
stand much higher in the scale than those of New Zealand. Yet the
most skilful naturalist, from an examination of the species of the two
countries, could not have foreseen this result.

Agassiz and several other highly competent judges insist that ancient
animals resemble to a certain extent the embryos of recent animals
belonging to the same classes; and that the geological succession of
extinct forms is nearly parallel with the embryological development of
existing forms. This view accords admirably well with our theory. In a
future chapter I shall attempt to show that the adult differs from its
embryo, owing to variations having supervened at a not early age, and
having been inherited at a corresponding age. This process, whilst it
leaves the embryo almost unaltered, continually adds, in the course of
successive generations, more and more difference to the adult. Thus the
embryo comes to be left as a sort of picture, preserved by nature, of
the former and less modified condition of the species. This view may be
true, and yet may never be capable of proof. Seeing, for instance, that
the oldest known mammals, reptiles, and fishes strictly belong to their
proper classes, though some of these old forms are in a slight degree
less distinct from each other than are the typical members of the same
groups at the present day, it would be vain to look for animals having
the common embryological character of the Vertebrata, until beds rich
in fossils are discovered far beneath the lowest Cambrian strata--a
discovery of which the chance is small.

ON THE SUCCESSION OF THE SAME TYPES WITHIN THE SAME AREAS, DURING THE
LATER TERTIARY PERIODS.

Mr. Clift many years ago showed that the fossil mammals from the
Australian caves were closely allied to the living marsupials of that
continent. In South America, a similar relationship is manifest, even to
an uneducated eye, in the gigantic pieces of armour, like those of the
armadillo, found in several parts of La Plata; and Professor Owen has
shown in the most striking manner that most of the fossil mammals,
buried there in such numbers, are related to South American types. This
relationship is even more clearly seen in the wonderful collection of
fossil bones made by MM. Lund and Clausen in the caves of Brazil. I was
so much impressed with these facts that I strongly insisted, in 1839
and 1845, on this "law of the succession of types,"--on "this wonderful
relationship in the same continent between the dead and the living."
Professor Owen has subsequently extended the same generalisation to
the mammals of the Old World. We see the same law in this author's
restorations of the extinct and gigantic birds of New Zealand. We see
it also in the birds of the caves of Brazil. Mr. Woodward has shown that
the same law holds good with sea-shells, but, from the wide distribution
of most molluscs, it is not well displayed by them. Other cases could
be added, as the relation between the extinct and living land-shells of
Madeira; and between the extinct and living brackish water-shells of the
Aralo-Caspian Sea.

Now, what does this remarkable law of the succession of the same types
within the same areas mean? He would be a bold man who, after comparing
the present climate of Australia and of parts of South America, under
the same latitude, would attempt to account, on the one hand through
dissimilar physical conditions, for the dissimilarity of the inhabitants
of these two continents; and, on the other hand through similarity
of conditions, for the uniformity of the same types in each continent
during the later tertiary periods. Nor can it be pretended that it is
an immutable law that marsupials should have been chiefly or solely
produced in Australia; or that Edentata and other American types should
have been solely produced in South America. For we know that Europe in
ancient times was peopled by numerous marsupials; and I have shown
in the publications above alluded to, that in America the law of
distribution of terrestrial mammals was formerly different from what it
now is. North America formerly partook strongly of the present character
of the southern half of the continent; and the southern half was
formerly more closely allied, than it is at present, to the northern
half. In a similar manner we know, from Falconer and Cautley's
discoveries, that Northern India was formerly more closely related in
its mammals to Africa than it is at the present time. Analogous facts
could be given in relation to the distribution of marine animals.

On the theory of descent with modification, the great law of the long
enduring, but not immutable, succession of the same types within the
same areas, is at once explained; for the inhabitants of each quarter of
the world will obviously tend to leave in that quarter, during the next
succeeding period of time, closely allied though in some degree modified
descendants. If the inhabitants of one continent formerly differed
greatly from those of another continent, so will their modified
descendants still differ in nearly the same manner and degree. But
after very long intervals of time, and after great geographical changes,
permitting much intermigration, the feebler will yield to the more
dominant forms, and there will be nothing immutable in the distribution
of organic beings.

It may be asked in ridicule whether I suppose that the megatherium and
other allied huge monsters, which formerly lived in South America, have
left behind them the sloth, armadillo, and anteater, as their degenerate
descendants. This cannot for an instant be admitted. These huge animals
have become wholly extinct, and have left no progeny. But in the caves
of Brazil there are many extinct species which are closely allied in
size and in all other characters to the species still living in South
America; and some of these fossils may have been the actual progenitors
of the living species. It must not be forgotten that, on our theory, all
the species of the same genus are the descendants of some one species;
so that, if six genera, each having eight species, be found in one
geological formation, and in a succeeding formation there be six other
allied or representative genera, each with the same number of species,
then we may conclude that generally only one species of each of the
older genera has left modified descendants, which constitute the new
genera containing the several species; the other seven species of each
old genus having died out and left no progeny. Or, and this will be a
far commoner case, two or three species in two or three alone of the six
older genera will be the parents of the new genera: the other species
and the other old genera having become utterly extinct. In failing
orders, with the genera and species decreasing in numbers as is the case
with the Edentata of South America, still fewer genera and species will
leave modified blood-descendants.

SUMMARY OF THE PRECEDING AND PRESENT CHAPTERS.

I have attempted to show that the geological record is extremely
imperfect; that only a small portion of the globe has been geologically
explored with care; that only certain classes of organic beings have
been largely preserved in a fossil state; that the number both of
specimens and of species, preserved in our museums, is absolutely as
nothing compared with the number of generations which must have passed
away even during a single formation; that, owing to subsidence being
almost necessary for the accumulation of deposits rich in fossil species
of many kinds, and thick enough to outlast future degradation, great
intervals of time must have elapsed between most of our successive
formations; that there has probably been more extinction during
the periods of subsidence, and more variation during the periods
of elevation, and during the latter the record will have been least
perfectly kept; that each single formation has not been continuously
deposited; that the duration of each formation is probably short
compared with the average duration of specific forms; that migration has
played an important part in the first appearance of new forms in any
one area and formation; that widely ranging species are those which have
varied most frequently, and have oftenest given rise to new species;
that varieties have at first been local; and lastly, although each
species must have passed through numerous transitional stages, it is
probable that the periods, during which each underwent modification,
though many and long as measured by years, have been short in comparison
with the periods during which each remained in an unchanged condition.
These causes, taken conjointly, will to a large extent explain
why--though we do find many links--we do not find interminable
varieties, connecting together all extinct and existing forms by the
finest graduated steps. It should also be constantly borne in mind that
any linking variety between two forms, which might be found, would be
ranked, unless the whole chain could be perfectly restored, as a new
and distinct species; for it is not pretended that we have any sure
criterion by which species and varieties can be discriminated.

He who rejects this view of the imperfection of the geological record,
will rightly reject the whole theory. For he may ask in vain where are
the numberless transitional links which must formerly have connected the
closely allied or representative species, found in the successive stages
of the same great formation? He may disbelieve in the immense intervals
of time which must have elapsed between our consecutive formations;
he may overlook how important a part migration has played, when the
formations of any one great region, as those of Europe, are considered;
he may urge the apparent, but often falsely apparent, sudden coming in
of whole groups of species. He may ask where are the remains of those
infinitely numerous organisms which must have existed long before the
Cambrian system was deposited? We now know that at least one animal did
then exist; but I can answer this last question only by supposing that
where our oceans now extend they have extended for an enormous period,
and where our oscillating continents now stand they have stood since the
commencement of the Cambrian system; but that, long before that epoch,
the world presented a widely different aspect; and that the older
continents, formed of formations older than any known to us, exist now
only as remnants in a metamorphosed condition, or lie still buried under
the ocean.

Passing from these difficulties, the other great leading facts
in palaeontology agree admirably with the theory of descent with
modification through variation and natural selection. We can thus
understand how it is that new species come in slowly and successively;
how species of different classes do not necessarily change together, or
at the same rate, or in the same degree; yet in the long run that all
undergo modification to some extent. The extinction of old forms is the
almost inevitable consequence of the production of new forms. We can
understand why, when a species has once disappeared, it never reappears.
Groups of species increase in numbers slowly, and endure for unequal
periods of time; for the process of modification is necessarily
slow, and depends on many complex contingencies. The dominant species
belonging to large and dominant groups tend to leave many modified
descendants, which form new sub-groups and groups. As these are
formed, the species of the less vigorous groups, from their inferiority
inherited from a common progenitor, tend to become extinct together, and
to leave no modified offspring on the face of the earth. But the
utter extinction of a whole group of species has sometimes been a slow
process, from the survival of a few descendants, lingering in protected
and isolated situations. When a group has once wholly disappeared, it
does not reappear; for the link of generation has been broken.

We can understand how it is that dominant forms which spread widely and
yield the greatest number of varieties tend to people the world with
allied, but modified, descendants; and these will generally succeed
in displacing the groups which are their inferiors in the struggle for
existence. Hence, after long intervals of time, the productions of the
world appear to have changed simultaneously.

We can understand how it is that all the forms of life, ancient and
recent, make together a few grand classes. We can understand, from the
continued tendency to divergence of character, why the more ancient
a form is, the more it generally differs from those now living. Why
ancient and extinct forms often tend to fill up gaps between existing
forms, sometimes blending two groups, previously classed as distinct
into one; but more commonly bringing them only a little closer together.
The more ancient a form is, the more often it stands in some degree
intermediate between groups now distinct; for the more ancient a form
is, the more nearly it will be related to, and consequently resemble,
the common progenitor of groups, since become widely divergent. Extinct
forms are seldom directly intermediate between existing forms; but are
intermediate only by a long and circuitous course through other extinct
and different forms. We can clearly see why the organic remains of
closely consecutive formations are closely allied; for they are closely
linked together by generation. We can clearly see why the remains of an
intermediate formation are intermediate in character.

The inhabitants of the world at each successive period in its history
have beaten their predecessors in the race for life, and are, in so
far, higher in the scale, and their structure has generally become more
specialised; and this may account for the common belief held by so many
palaeontologists, that organisation on the whole has progressed. Extinct
and ancient animals resemble to a certain extent the embryos of the more
recent animals belonging to the same classes, and this wonderful fact
receives a simple explanation according to our views. The succession
of the same types of structure within the same areas during the later
geological periods ceases to be mysterious, and is intelligible on the
principle of inheritance.

If, then, the geological record be as imperfect as many believe, and
it may at least be asserted that the record cannot be proved to be much
more perfect, the main objections to the theory of natural selection are
greatly diminished or disappear. On the other hand, all the chief laws
of palaeontology plainly proclaim, as it seems to me, that species have
been produced by ordinary generation: old forms having been supplanted
by new and improved forms of life, the products of variation and the
survival of the fittest.




CHAPTER XII. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION.

 Present distribution cannot be accounted for by differences in physical
 conditions--Importance of barriers--Affinity of the productions of the
 same continent--Centres of creation--Means of dispersal by changes of
 climate and of the level of the land, and by occasional means--Dispersal
 during the Glacial period--Alternate Glacial periods in the North and
 South.


In considering the distribution of organic beings over the face of
the globe, the first great fact which strikes us is, that neither the
similarity nor the dissimilarity of the inhabitants of various regions
can be wholly accounted for by climatal and other physical conditions.
Of late, almost every author who has studied the subject has come to
this conclusion. The case of America alone would almost suffice to prove
its truth; for if we exclude the arctic and northern temperate parts,
all authors agree that one of the most fundamental divisions in
geographical distribution is that between the New and Old Worlds; yet
if we travel over the vast American continent, from the central parts of
the United States to its extreme southern point, we meet with the most
diversified conditions; humid districts, arid deserts, lofty mountains,
grassy plains, forests, marshes, lakes and great rivers, under almost
every temperature. There is hardly a climate or condition in the Old
World which cannot be paralleled in the New--at least so closely as the
same species generally require. No doubt small areas can be pointed out
in the Old World hotter than any in the New World; but these are not
inhabited by a fauna different from that of the surrounding districts;
for it is rare to find a group of organisms confined to a small area,
of which the conditions are peculiar in only a slight degree.
Notwithstanding this general parallelism in the conditions of Old and
New Worlds, how widely different are their living productions!

In the southern hemisphere, if we compare large tracts of land in
Australia, South Africa, and western South America, between latitudes
25 and 35 degrees, we shall find parts extremely similar in all their
conditions, yet it would not be possible to point out three faunas
and floras more utterly dissimilar. Or, again, we may compare the
productions of South America south of latitude 35 degrees with those
north of 25 degrees, which consequently are separated by a space of
ten degrees of latitude, and are exposed to considerably different
conditions; yet they are incomparably more closely related to each other
than they are to the productions of Australia or Africa under nearly
the same climate. Analogous facts could be given with respect to the
inhabitants of the sea.

A second great fact which strikes us in our general review is, that
barriers of any kind, or obstacles to free migration, are related in a
close and important manner to the differences between the productions of
various regions. We see this in the great difference in nearly all the
terrestrial productions of the New and Old Worlds, excepting in the
northern parts, where the land almost joins, and where, under a slightly
different climate, there might have been free migration for the northern
temperate forms, as there now is for the strictly arctic productions.
We see the same fact in the great difference between the inhabitants of
Australia, Africa, and South America under the same latitude; for these
countries are almost as much isolated from each other as is possible. On
each continent, also, we see the same fact; for on the opposite sides of
lofty and continuous mountain-ranges, and of great deserts and even of
large rivers, we find different productions; though as mountain chains,
deserts, etc., are not as impassable, or likely to have endured so long,
as the oceans separating continents, the differences are very inferior
in degree to those characteristic of distinct continents.

Turning to the sea, we find the same law. The marine inhabitants of
the eastern and western shores of South America are very distinct, with
extremely few shells, crustacea, or echinodermata in common; but Dr.
Gunther has recently shown that about thirty per cent of the fishes are
the same on the opposite sides of the isthmus of Panama; and this fact
has led naturalists to believe that the isthmus was formerly open.
Westward of the shores of America, a wide space of open ocean extends,
with not an island as a halting-place for emigrants; here we have a
barrier of another kind, and as soon as this is passed we meet in the
eastern islands of the Pacific with another and totally distinct fauna.
So that three marine faunas range northward and southward in parallel
lines not far from each other, under corresponding climate; but from
being separated from each other by impassable barriers, either of
land or open sea, they are almost wholly distinct. On the other hand,
proceeding still further westward from the eastern islands of the
tropical parts of the Pacific, we encounter no impassable barriers, and
we have innumerable islands as halting-places, or continuous coasts,
until, after travelling over a hemisphere, we come to the shores of
Africa; and over this vast space we meet with no well-defined and
distinct marine faunas. Although so few marine animals are common to the
above-named three approximate faunas of Eastern and Western America and
the eastern Pacific islands, yet many fishes range from the Pacific into
the Indian Ocean, and many shells are common to the eastern islands of
the Pacific and the eastern shores of Africa on almost exactly opposite
meridians of longitude.

A third great fact, partly included in the foregoing statement, is the
affinity of the productions of the same continent or of the same sea,
though the species themselves are distinct at different points and
stations. It is a law of the widest generality, and every continent
offers innumerable instances. Nevertheless, the naturalist, in
travelling, for instance, from north to south, never fails to be
struck by the manner in which successive groups of beings, specifically
distinct, though nearly related, replace each other. He hears from
closely allied, yet distinct kinds of birds, notes nearly similar, and
sees their nests similarly constructed, but not quite alike, with eggs
coloured in nearly the same manner. The plains near the Straits of
Magellan are inhabited by one species of Rhea (American ostrich), and
northward the plains of La Plata by another species of the same genus;
and not by a true ostrich or emu, like those inhabiting Africa and
Australia under the same latitude. On these same plains of La Plata we
see the agouti and bizcacha, animals having nearly the same habits as
our hares and rabbits, and belonging to the same order of Rodents, but
they plainly display an American type of structure. We ascend the lofty
peaks of the Cordillera, and we find an alpine species of bizcacha; we
look to the waters, and we do not find the beaver or muskrat, but the
coypu and capybara, rodents of the South American type. Innumerable
other instances could be given. If we look to the islands off the
American shore, however much they may differ in geological structure,
the inhabitants are essentially American, though they may be all
peculiar species. We may look back to past ages, as shown in the last
chapter, and we find American types then prevailing on the American
continent and in the American seas. We see in these facts some deep
organic bond, throughout space and time, over the same areas of land and
water, independently of physical conditions. The naturalist must be dull
who is not led to inquire what this bond is.

The bond is simply inheritance, that cause which alone, as far as we
positively know, produces organisms quite like each other, or, as we
see in the case of varieties, nearly alike. The dissimilarity of the
inhabitants of different regions may be attributed to modification
through variation and natural selection, and probably in a subordinate
degree to the definite influence of different physical conditions.
The degrees of dissimilarity will depend on the migration of the more
dominant forms of life from one region into another having been more
or less effectually prevented, at periods more or less remote--on the
nature and number of the former immigrants--and on the action of the
inhabitants on each other in leading to the preservation of different
modifications; the relation of organism to organism in the struggle for
life being, as I have already often remarked, the most important of
all relations. Thus the high importance of barriers comes into play by
checking migration; as does time for the slow process of modification
through natural selection. Widely-ranging species, abounding in
individuals, which have already triumphed over many competitors in their
own widely-extended homes, will have the best chance of seizing on new
places, when they spread out into new countries. In their new homes they
will be exposed to new conditions, and will frequently undergo further
modification and improvement; and thus they will become still further
victorious, and will produce groups of modified descendants. On this
principle of inheritance with modification we can understand how it is
that sections of genera, whole genera, and even families, are confined
to the same areas, as is so commonly and notoriously the case.

There is no evidence, as was remarked in the last chapter, of the
existence of any law of necessary development. As the variability of
each species is an independent property, and will be taken advantage of
by natural selection, only so far as it profits each individual in its
complex struggle for life, so the amount of modification in different
species will be no uniform quantity. If a number of species, after
having long competed with each other in their old home, were to migrate
in a body into a new and afterwards isolated country, they would be
little liable to modification; for neither migration nor isolation in
themselves effect anything. These principles come into play only by
bringing organisms into new relations with each other and in a lesser
degree with the surrounding physical conditions. As we have seen in the
last chapter that some forms have retained nearly the same character
from an enormously remote geological period, so certain species have
migrated over vast spaces, and have not become greatly or at all
modified.

According to these views, it is obvious that the several species of the
same genus, though inhabiting the most distant quarters of the world,
must originally have proceeded from the same source, as they are
descended from the same progenitor. In the case of those species which
have undergone, during whole geological periods, little modification,
there is not much difficulty in believing that they have migrated from
the same region; for during the vast geographical and climatical
changes which have supervened since ancient times, almost any amount of
migration is possible. But in many other cases, in which we have
reason to believe that the species of a genus have been produced within
comparatively recent times, there is great difficulty on this head. It
is also obvious that the individuals of the same species, though now
inhabiting distant and isolated regions, must have proceeded from
one spot, where their parents were first produced: for, as has been
explained, it is incredible that individuals identically the same should
have been produced from parents specifically distinct.

SINGLE CENTRES OF SUPPOSED CREATION.

We are thus brought to the question which has been largely discussed by
naturalists, namely, whether species have been created at one or more
points of the earth's surface. Undoubtedly there are many cases of
extreme difficulty in understanding how the same species could possibly
have migrated from some one point to the several distant and isolated
points, where now found. Nevertheless the simplicity of the view that
each species was first produced within a single region captivates the
mind. He who rejects it, rejects the vera causa of ordinary generation
with subsequent migration, and calls in the agency of a miracle. It is
universally admitted, that in most cases the area inhabited by a species
is continuous; and that when a plant or animal inhabits two points so
distant from each other, or with an interval of such a nature, that the
space could not have been easily passed over by migration, the fact
is given as something remarkable and exceptional. The incapacity of
migrating across a wide sea is more clear in the case of terrestrial
mammals than perhaps with any other organic beings; and, accordingly,
we find no inexplicable instances of the same mammals inhabiting distant
points of the world. No geologist feels any difficulty in Great Britain
possessing the same quadrupeds with the rest of Europe, for they were
no doubt once united. But if the same species can be produced at two
separate points, why do we not find a single mammal common to Europe and
Australia or South America? The conditions of life are nearly the
same, so that a multitude of European animals and plants have become
naturalised in America and Australia; and some of the aboriginal plants
are identically the same at these distant points of the northern and
southern hemispheres? The answer, as I believe, is, that mammals have
not been able to migrate, whereas some plants, from their varied means
of dispersal, have migrated across the wide and broken interspaces. The
great and striking influence of barriers of all kinds, is intelligible
only on the view that the great majority of species have been produced
on one side, and have not been able to migrate to the opposite side.
Some few families, many subfamilies, very many genera, a still greater
number of sections of genera, are confined to a single region; and it
has been observed by several naturalists that the most natural genera,
or those genera in which the species are most closely related to each
other, are generally confined to the same country, or if they have a
wide range that their range is continuous. What a strange anomaly it
would be if a directly opposite rule were to prevail when we go down one
step lower in the series, namely to the individuals of the same species,
and these had not been, at least at first, confined to some one region!

Hence, it seems to me, as it has to many other naturalists, that the
view of each species having been produced in one area alone, and having
subsequently migrated from that area as far as its powers of migration
and subsistence under past and present conditions permitted, is the most
probable. Undoubtedly many cases occur in which we cannot explain how
the same species could have passed from one point to the other. But the
geographical and climatical changes which have certainly occurred within
recent geological times, must have rendered discontinuous the formerly
continuous range of many species. So that we are reduced to consider
whether the exceptions to continuity of range are so numerous, and of so
grave a nature, that we ought to give up the belief, rendered probable
by general considerations, that each species has been produced within
one area, and has migrated thence as far as it could. It would be
hopelessly tedious to discuss all the exceptional cases of the same
species, now living at distant and separated points; nor do I for a
moment pretend that any explanation could be offered of many instances.
But, after some preliminary remarks, I will discuss a few of the most
striking classes of facts, namely, the existence of the same species
on the summits of distant mountain ranges, and at distant points in the
Arctic and Antarctic regions; and secondly (in the following chapter),
the wide distribution of fresh water productions; and thirdly, the
occurrence of the same terrestrial species on islands and on the nearest
mainland, though separated by hundreds of miles of open sea. If the
existence of the same species at distant and isolated points of the
earth's surface can in many instances be explained on the view of each
species having migrated from a single birthplace; then, considering our
ignorance with respect to former climatical and geographical changes,
and to the various occasional means of transport, the belief that a
single birthplace is the law seems to me incomparably the safest.

In discussing this subject we shall be enabled at the same time to
consider a point equally important for us, namely, whether the several
species of a genus which must on our theory all be descended from a
common progenitor, can have migrated, undergoing modification during
their migration from some one area. If, when most of the species
inhabiting one region are different from those of another region, though
closely allied to them, it can be shown that migration from the one
region to the other has probably occurred at some former period, our
general view will be much strengthened; for the explanation is obvious
on the principle of descent with modification. A volcanic island, for
instance, upheaved and formed at the distance of a few hundreds of miles
from a continent, would probably receive from it in the course of time
a few colonists, and their descendants, though modified, would still be
related by inheritance to the inhabitants of that continent. Cases of
this nature are common, and are, as we shall hereafter see, inexplicable
on the theory of independent creation. This view of the relation of the
species of one region to those of another, does not differ much from
that advanced by Mr. Wallace, who concludes that "every species has come
into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing
closely allied species." And it is now well known that he attributes
this coincidence to descent with modification.

The question of single or multiple centres of creation differs from
another though allied question, namely, whether all the individuals
of the same species are descended from a single pair, or single
hermaphrodite, or whether, as some authors suppose, from many
individuals simultaneously created. With organic beings which never
intercross, if such exist, each species, must be descended from a
succession of modified varieties, that have supplanted each other,
but have never blended with other individuals or varieties of the same
species, so that, at each successive stage of modification, all the
individuals of the same form will be descended from a single parent.
But in the great majority of cases, namely, with all organisms which
habitually unite for each birth, or which occasionally intercross, the
individuals of the same species inhabiting the same area will be kept
nearly uniform by intercrossing; so that many individuals will go on
simultaneously changing, and the whole amount of modification at each
stage will not be due to descent from a single parent. To illustrate
what I mean: our English race-horses differ from the horses of every
other breed; but they do not owe their difference and superiority to
descent from any single pair, but to continued care in the selecting and
training of many individuals during each generation.

Before discussing the three classes of facts, which I have selected as
presenting the greatest amount of difficulty on the theory of "single
centres of creation," I must say a few words on the means of dispersal.

MEANS OF DISPERSAL.

Sir C. Lyell and other authors have ably treated this subject. I can
give here only the briefest abstract of the more important facts. Change
of climate must have had a powerful influence on migration. A region now
impassable to certain organisms from the nature of its climate, might
have been a high road for migration, when the climate was different. I
shall, however, presently have to discuss this branch of the subject
in some detail. Changes of level in the land must also have been highly
influential: a narrow isthmus now separates two marine faunas; submerge
it, or let it formerly have been submerged, and the two faunas will now
blend together, or may formerly have blended. Where the sea now extends,
land may at a former period have connected islands or possibly even
continents together, and thus have allowed terrestrial productions to
pass from one to the other. No geologist disputes that great mutations
of level have occurred within the period of existing organisms. Edward
Forbes insisted that all the islands in the Atlantic must have been
recently connected with Europe or Africa, and Europe likewise with
America. Other authors have thus hypothetically bridged over every
ocean, and united almost every island with some mainland. If, indeed,
the arguments used by Forbes are to be trusted, it must be admitted that
scarcely a single island exists which has not recently been united to
some continent. This view cuts the Gordian knot of the dispersal of the
same species to the most distant points, and removes many a difficulty;
but to the best of my judgment we are not authorized in admitting such
enormous geographical changes within the period of existing species. It
seems to me that we have abundant evidence of great oscillations in the
level of the land or sea; but not of such vast changes in the position
and extension of our continents, as to have united them within the
recent period to each other and to the several intervening oceanic
islands. I freely admit the former existence of many islands, now buried
beneath the sea, which may have served as halting places for plants and
for many animals during their migration. In the coral-producing oceans
such sunken islands are now marked by rings of coral or atolls standing
over them. Whenever it is fully admitted, as it will some day be, that
each species has proceeded from a single birthplace, and when in
the course of time we know something definite about the means of
distribution, we shall be enabled to speculate with security on the
former extension of the land. But I do not believe that it will ever be
proved that within the recent period most of our continents which now
stand quite separate, have been continuously, or almost continuously
united with each other, and with the many existing oceanic islands.
Several facts in distribution--such as the great difference in the
marine faunas on the opposite sides of almost every continent--the close
relation of the tertiary inhabitants of several lands and even seas to
their present inhabitants--the degree of affinity between the mammals
inhabiting islands with those of the nearest continent, being in part
determined (as we shall hereafter see) by the depth of the intervening
ocean--these and other such facts are opposed to the admission of such
prodigious geographical revolutions within the recent period, as are
necessary on the view advanced by Forbes and admitted by his followers.
The nature and relative proportions of the inhabitants of oceanic
islands are likewise opposed to the belief of their former continuity of
continents. Nor does the almost universally volcanic composition of
such islands favour the admission that they are the wrecks of sunken
continents; if they had originally existed as continental mountain
ranges, some at least of the islands would have been formed, like other
mountain summits, of granite, metamorphic schists, old fossiliferous and
other rocks, instead of consisting of mere piles of volcanic matter.

I must now say a few words on what are called accidental means, but
which more properly should be called occasional means of distribution.
I shall here confine myself to plants. In botanical works, this or that
plant is often stated to be ill adapted for wide dissemination; but the
greater or less facilities for transport across the sea may be said to
be almost wholly unknown. Until I tried, with Mr. Berkeley's aid, a
few experiments, it was not even known how far seeds could resist
the injurious action of sea-water. To my surprise I found that out
of eighty-seven kinds, sixty-four germinated after an immersion of
twenty-eight days, and a few survived an immersion of 137 days. It
deserves notice that certain orders were far more injured than others:
nine Leguminosae were tried, and, with one exception, they resisted the
salt-water badly; seven species of the allied orders, Hydrophyllaceae
and Polemoniaceae, were all killed by a month's immersion. For
convenience sake I chiefly tried small seeds without the capsules or
fruit; and as all of these sank in a few days, they could not have been
floated across wide spaces of the sea, whether or not they were injured
by salt water. Afterwards I tried some larger fruits, capsules, etc.,
and some of these floated for a long time. It is well known what a
difference there is in the buoyancy of green and seasoned timber; and it
occurred to me that floods would often wash into the sea dried plants or
branches with seed-capsules or fruit attached to them. Hence I was led
to dry the stems and branches of ninety-four plants with ripe fruit, and
to place them on sea-water. The majority sank quickly, but some which,
whilst green, floated for a very short time, when dried floated much
longer; for instance, ripe hazel-nuts sank immediately, but when dried
they floated for ninety days, and afterwards when planted germinated;
an asparagus plant with ripe berries floated for twenty-three days,
when dried it floated for eighty-five days, and the seeds afterwards
germinated: the ripe seeds of Helosciadium sank in two days, when
dried they floated for above ninety days, and afterwards germinated.
Altogether, out of the ninety-four dried plants, eighteen floated for
above twenty-eight days; and some of the eighteen floated for a very
much longer period. So that as 64/87 kinds of seeds germinated after an
immersion of twenty-eight days; and as 18/94 distinct species with ripe
fruit (but not all the same species as in the foregoing experiment)
floated, after being dried, for above twenty-eight days, we may
conclude, as far as anything can be inferred from these scanty facts,
that the seeds of 14/100 kinds of plants of any country might be floated
by sea-currents during twenty-eight days, and would retain their power
of germination. In Johnston's Physical Atlas, the average rate of the
several Atlantic currents is thirty-three miles per diem (some currents
running at the rate of sixty miles per diem); on this average, the seeds
of 14/100 plants belonging to one country might be floated across 924
miles of sea to another country; and when stranded, if blown by an
inland gale to a favourable spot, would germinate.

Subsequently to my experiments, M. Martens tried similar ones, but in a
much better manner, for he placed the seeds in a box in the actual sea,
so that they were alternately wet and exposed to the air like really
floating plants. He tried ninety-eight seeds, mostly different from
mine, but he chose many large fruits, and likewise seeds, from plants
which live near the sea; and this would have favoured both the average
length of their flotation and their resistance to the injurious action
of the salt-water. On the other hand, he did not previously dry the
plants or branches with the fruit; and this, as we have seen, would have
caused some of them to have floated much longer. The result was that
18/98 of his seeds of different kinds floated for forty-two days, and
were then capable of germination. But I do not doubt that plants exposed
to the waves would float for a less time than those protected from
violent movement as in our experiments. Therefore, it would perhaps be
safer to assume that the seeds of about 10/100 plants of a flora, after
having been dried, could be floated across a space of sea 900 miles in
width, and would then germinate. The fact of the larger fruits often
floating longer than the small, is interesting; as plants with large
seeds or fruit which, as Alph. de Candolle has shown, generally have
restricted ranges, could hardly be transported by any other means.

Seeds may be occasionally transported in another manner. Drift timber
is thrown up on most islands, even on those in the midst of the widest
oceans; and the natives of the coral islands in the Pacific procure
stones for their tools, solely from the roots of drifted trees, these
stones being a valuable royal tax. I find that when irregularly shaped
stones are embedded in the roots of trees, small parcels of earth
are very frequently enclosed in their interstices and behind them, so
perfectly that not a particle could be washed away during the longest
transport: out of one small portion of earth thus COMPLETELY enclosed by
the roots of an oak about fifty years old, three dicotyledonous plants
germinated: I am certain of the accuracy of this observation. Again,
I can show that the carcasses of birds, when floating on the sea,
sometimes escape being immediately devoured; and many kinds of seeds
in the crops of floating birds long retain their vitality: peas and
vetches, for instance, are killed by even a few days' immersion in
sea-water; but some taken out of the crop of a pigeon, which had floated
on artificial sea-water for thirty days, to my surprise nearly all
germinated.

Living birds can hardly fail to be highly effective agents in the
transportation of seeds. I could give many facts showing how frequently
birds of many kinds are blown by gales to vast distances across the
ocean. We may safely assume that under such circumstances their rate of
flight would often be thirty-five miles an hour; and some authors have
given a far higher estimate. I have never seen an instance of nutritious
seeds passing through the intestines of a bird; but hard seeds of fruit
pass uninjured through even the digestive organs of a turkey. In the
course of two months, I picked up in my garden twelve kinds of seeds,
out of the excrement of small birds, and these seemed perfect, and some
of them, which were tried, germinated. But the following fact is more
important: the crops of birds do not secrete gastric juice, and do not,
as I know by trial, injure in the least the germination of seeds;
now, after a bird has found and devoured a large supply of food, it is
positively asserted that all the grains do not pass into the gizzard for
twelve or even eighteen hours. A bird in this interval might easily be
blown to the distance of five hundred miles, and hawks are known to look
out for tired birds, and the contents of their torn crops might thus
readily get scattered. Some hawks and owls bolt their prey whole, and
after an interval of from twelve to twenty hours, disgorge pellets,
which, as I know from experiments made in the Zoological Gardens,
include seeds capable of germination. Some seeds of the oat, wheat,
millet, canary, hemp, clover, and beet germinated after having been from
twelve to twenty-one hours in the stomachs of different birds of prey;
and two seeds of beet grew after having been thus retained for two days
and fourteen hours. Fresh-water fish, I find, eat seeds of many land and
water plants; fish are frequently devoured by birds, and thus the seeds
might be transported from place to place. I forced many kinds of
seeds into the stomachs of dead fish, and then gave their bodies to
fishing-eagles, storks, and pelicans; these birds, after an interval of
many hours, either rejected the seeds in pellets or passed them in their
excrement; and several of these seeds retained the power of germination.
Certain seeds, however, were always killed by this process.

Locusts are sometimes blown to great distances from the land. I myself
caught one 370 miles from the coast of Africa, and have heard of others
caught at greater distances. The Rev. R.T. Lowe informed Sir C. Lyell
that in November, 1844, swarms of locusts visited the island of Madeira.
They were in countless numbers, as thick as the flakes of snow in the
heaviest snowstorm, and extended upward as far as could be seen with a
telescope. During two or three days they slowly careered round and round
in an immense ellipse, at least five or six miles in diameter, and at
night alighted on the taller trees, which were completely coated with
them. They then disappeared over the sea, as suddenly as they had
appeared, and have not since visited the island. Now, in parts of Natal
it is believed by some farmers, though on insufficient evidence, that
injurious seeds are introduced into their grass-land in the dung left
by the great flights of locusts which often visit that country. In
consequence of this belief Mr. Weale sent me in a letter a small packet
of the dried pellets, out of which I extracted under the microscope
several seeds, and raised from them seven grass plants, belonging to
two species, of two genera. Hence a swarm of locusts, such as that which
visited Madeira, might readily be the means of introducing several kinds
of plants into an island lying far from the mainland.

Although the beaks and feet of birds are generally clean, earth
sometimes adheres to them: in one case I removed sixty-one grains, and
in another case twenty-two grains of dry argillaceous earth from the
foot of a partridge, and in the earth there was a pebble as large as the
seed of a vetch. Here is a better case: the leg of a woodcock was sent
to me by a friend, with a little cake of dry earth attached to the
shank, weighing only nine grains; and this contained a seed of
the toad-rush (Juncus bufonius) which germinated and flowered. Mr.
Swaysland, of Brighton, who during the last forty years has paid close
attention to our migratory birds, informs me that he has often shot
wagtails (Motacillae), wheatears, and whinchats (Saxicolae), on their
first arrival on our shores, before they had alighted; and he has
several times noticed little cakes of earth attached to their feet. Many
facts could be given showing how generally soil is charged with seeds.
For instance, Professor Newton sent me the leg of a red-legged partridge
(Caccabis rufa) which had been wounded and could not fly, with a ball of
hard earth adhering to it, and weighing six and a half ounces. The earth
had been kept for three years, but when broken, watered and placed
under a bell glass, no less than eighty-two plants sprung from it: these
consisted of twelve monocotyledons, including the common oat, and at
least one kind of grass, and of seventy dicotyledons, which consisted,
judging from the young leaves, of at least three distinct species.
With such facts before us, can we doubt that the many birds which are
annually blown by gales across great spaces of ocean, and which
annually migrate--for instance, the millions of quails across the
Mediterranean--must occasionally transport a few seeds embedded in
dirt adhering to their feet or beaks? But I shall have to recur to this
subject.

As icebergs are known to be sometimes loaded with earth and stones, and
have even carried brushwood, bones, and the nest of a land-bird, it can
hardly be doubted that they must occasionally, as suggested by Lyell,
have transported seeds from one part to another of the arctic and
antarctic regions; and during the Glacial period from one part of the
now temperate regions to another. In the Azores, from the large number
of plants common to Europe, in comparison with the species on the other
islands of the Atlantic, which stand nearer to the mainland, and (as
remarked by Mr. H.C. Watson) from their somewhat northern character, in
comparison with the latitude, I suspected that these islands had been
partly stocked by ice-borne seeds during the Glacial epoch. At my
request Sir C. Lyell wrote to M. Hartung to inquire whether he had
observed erratic boulders on these islands, and he answered that he had
found large fragments of granite and other rocks, which do not occur in
the archipelago. Hence we may safely infer that icebergs formerly landed
their rocky burdens on the shores of these mid-ocean islands, and it
is at least possible that they may have brought thither the seeds of
northern plants.

Considering that these several means of transport, and that other means,
which without doubt remain to be discovered, have been in action year
after year for tens of thousands of years, it would, I think, be a
marvellous fact if many plants had not thus become widely transported.
These means of transport are sometimes called accidental, but this is
not strictly correct: the currents of the sea are not accidental, nor
is the direction of prevalent gales of wind. It should be observed
that scarcely any means of transport would carry seeds for very great
distances; for seeds do not retain their vitality when exposed for a
great length of time to the action of sea water; nor could they be long
carried in the crops or intestines of birds. These means, however, would
suffice for occasional transport across tracts of sea some hundred
miles in breadth, or from island to island, or from a continent to a
neighbouring island, but not from one distant continent to another. The
floras of distant continents would not by such means become mingled;
but would remain as distinct as they now are. The currents, from their
course, would never bring seeds from North America to Britain, though
they might and do bring seeds from the West Indies to our western
shores, where, if not killed by their very long immersion in salt
water, they could not endure our climate. Almost every year, one or two
land-birds are blown across the whole Atlantic Ocean, from North
America to the western shores of Ireland and England; but seeds could be
transported by these rare wanderers only by one means, namely, by dirt
adhering to their feet or beaks, which is in itself a rare accident.
Even in this case, how small would be the chance of a seed falling on
favourable soil, and coming to maturity! But it would be a great error
to argue that because a well-stocked island, like Great Britain, has
not, as far as is known (and it would be very difficult to prove this),
received within the last few centuries, through occasional means
of transport, immigrants from Europe or any other continent, that a
poorly-stocked island, though standing more remote from the mainland,
would not receive colonists by similar means. Out of a hundred kinds of
seeds or animals transported to an island, even if far less well-stocked
than Britain, perhaps not more than one would be so well fitted to
its new home, as to become naturalised. But this is no valid argument
against what would be effected by occasional means of transport, during
the long lapse of geological time, whilst the island was being upheaved,
and before it had become fully stocked with inhabitants. On almost bare
land, with few or no destructive insects or birds living there, nearly
every seed which chanced to arrive, if fitted for the climate, would
germinate and survive.

DISPERSAL DURING THE GLACIAL PERIOD.

The identity of many plants and animals, on mountain-summits, separated
from each other by hundreds of miles of lowlands, where Alpine species
could not possibly exist, is one of the most striking cases known of the
same species living at distant points, without the apparent possibility
of their having migrated from one point to the other. It is indeed a
remarkable fact to see so many plants of the same species living on the
snowy regions of the Alps or Pyrenees, and in the extreme northern parts
of Europe; but it is far more remarkable, that the plants on the White
Mountains, in the United States of America, are all the same with those
of Labrador, and nearly all the same, as we hear from Asa Gray, with
those on the loftiest mountains of Europe. Even as long ago as 1747,
such facts led Gmelin to conclude that the same species must have
been independently created at many distinct points; and we might have
remained in this same belief, had not Agassiz and others called vivid
attention to the Glacial period, which, as we shall immediately see,
affords a simple explanation of these facts. We have evidence of almost
every conceivable kind, organic and inorganic, that, within a very
recent geological period, central Europe and North America suffered
under an Arctic climate. The ruins of a house burnt by fire do not tell
their tale more plainly than do the mountains of Scotland and Wales,
with their scored flanks, polished surfaces, and perched boulders, of
the icy streams with which their valleys were lately filled. So greatly
has the climate of Europe changed, that in Northern Italy, gigantic
moraines, left by old glaciers, are now clothed by the vine and maize.
Throughout a large part of the United States, erratic boulders and
scored rocks plainly reveal a former cold period.

The former influence of the glacial climate on the distribution of the
inhabitants of Europe, as explained by Edward Forbes, is substantially
as follows. But we shall follow the changes more readily, by supposing
a new glacial period slowly to come on, and then pass away, as formerly
occurred. As the cold came on, and as each more southern zone became
fitted for the inhabitants of the north, these would take the places of
the former inhabitants of the temperate regions. The latter, at the
same time would travel further and further southward, unless they were
stopped by barriers, in which case they would perish. The mountains
would become covered with snow and ice, and their former Alpine
inhabitants would descend to the plains. By the time that the cold had
reached its maximum, we should have an arctic fauna and flora, covering
the central parts of Europe, as far south as the Alps and Pyrenees,
and even stretching into Spain. The now temperate regions of the United
States would likewise be covered by arctic plants and animals and
these would be nearly the same with those of Europe; for the present
circumpolar inhabitants, which we suppose to have everywhere travelled
southward, are remarkably uniform round the world.

As the warmth returned, the arctic forms would retreat northward,
closely followed up in their retreat by the productions of the more
temperate regions. And as the snow melted from the bases of the
mountains, the arctic forms would seize on the cleared and thawed
ground, always ascending, as the warmth increased and the snow still
further disappeared, higher and higher, whilst their brethren were
pursuing their northern journey. Hence, when the warmth had fully
returned, the same species, which had lately lived together on the
European and North American lowlands, would again be found in the arctic
regions of the Old and New Worlds, and on many isolated mountain-summits
far distant from each other.

Thus we can understand the identity of many plants at points so
immensely remote as the mountains of the United States and those of
Europe. We can thus also understand the fact that the Alpine plants
of each mountain-range are more especially related to the arctic forms
living due north or nearly due north of them: for the first migration
when the cold came on, and the re-migration on the returning warmth,
would generally have been due south and north. The Alpine plants, for
example, of Scotland, as remarked by Mr. H.C. Watson, and those of
the Pyrenees, as remarked by Ramond, are more especially allied to the
plants of northern Scandinavia; those of the United States to Labrador;
those of the mountains of Siberia to the arctic regions of that country.
These views, grounded as they are on the perfectly well-ascertained
occurrence of a former Glacial period, seem to me to explain in so
satisfactory a manner the present distribution of the Alpine and Arctic
productions of Europe and America, that when in other regions we find
the same species on distant mountain-summits, we may almost conclude,
without other evidence, that a colder climate formerly permitted their
migration across the intervening lowlands, now become too warm for their
existence.

As the arctic forms moved first southward and afterwards backward to
the north, in unison with the changing climate, they will not have
been exposed during their long migrations to any great diversity of
temperature; and as they all migrated in a body together, their mutual
relations will not have been much disturbed. Hence, in accordance with
the principles inculcated in this volume, these forms will not have
been liable to much modification. But with the Alpine productions, left
isolated from the moment of the returning warmth, first at the bases
and ultimately on the summits of the mountains, the case will have
been somewhat different; for it is not likely that all the same arctic
species will have been left on mountain ranges far distant from each
other, and have survived there ever since; they will also, in all
probability, have become mingled with ancient Alpine species, which must
have existed on the mountains before the commencement of the Glacial
epoch, and which during the coldest period will have been temporarily
driven down to the plains; they will, also, have been subsequently
exposed to somewhat different climatical influences. Their mutual
relations will thus have been in some degree disturbed; consequently
they will have been liable to modification; and they have been modified;
for if we compare the present Alpine plants and animals of the several
great European mountain ranges, one with another, though many of the
species remain identically the same, some exist as varieties, some as
doubtful forms or sub-species and some as distinct yet closely allied
species representing each other on the several ranges.

In the foregoing illustration, I have assumed that at the commencement
of our imaginary Glacial period, the arctic productions were as uniform
round the polar regions as they are at the present day. But it is also
necessary to assume that many sub-arctic and some few temperate forms
were the same round the world, for some of the species which now exist
on the lower mountain slopes and on the plains of North America and
Europe are the same; and it may be asked how I account for this degree
of uniformity of the sub-arctic and temperate forms round the world,
at the commencement of the real Glacial period. At the present day, the
sub-arctic and northern temperate productions of the Old and New Worlds
are separated from each other by the whole Atlantic Ocean and by the
northern part of the Pacific. During the Glacial period, when the
inhabitants of the Old and New Worlds lived further southwards than they
do at present, they must have been still more completely separated from
each other by wider spaces of ocean; so that it may well be asked
how the same species could then or previously have entered the two
continents. The explanation, I believe, lies in the nature of the
climate before the commencement of the Glacial period. At this, the
newer Pliocene period, the majority of the inhabitants of the world were
specifically the same as now, and we have good reason to believe that
the climate was warmer than at the present day. Hence, we may suppose
that the organisms which now live under latitude 60 degrees, lived
during the Pliocene period further north, under the Polar Circle, in
latitude 66-67 degrees; and that the present arctic productions then
lived on the broken land still nearer to the pole. Now, if we look at
a terrestrial globe, we see under the Polar Circle that there is almost
continuous land from western Europe through Siberia, to eastern America.
And this continuity of the circumpolar land, with the consequent freedom
under a more favourable climate for intermigration, will account for the
supposed uniformity of the sub-arctic and temperate productions of the
Old and New Worlds, at a period anterior to the Glacial epoch.

Believing, from reasons before alluded to, that our continents have long
remained in nearly the same relative position, though subjected to great
oscillations of level, I am strongly inclined to extend the above view,
and to infer that during some earlier and still warmer period, such as
the older Pliocene period, a large number of the same plants and animals
inhabited the almost continuous circumpolar land; and that these plants
and animals, both in the Old and New Worlds, began slowly to migrate
southwards as the climate became less warm, long before the commencement
of the Glacial period. We now see, as I believe, their descendants,
mostly in a modified condition, in the central parts of Europe and the
United States. On this view we can understand the relationship with very
little identity, between the productions of North America and Europe--a
relationship which is highly remarkable, considering the distance of
the two areas, and their separation by the whole Atlantic Ocean. We can
further understand the singular fact remarked on by several observers
that the productions of Europe and America during the later tertiary
stages were more closely related to each other than they are at the
present time; for during these warmer periods the northern parts of the
Old and New Worlds will have been almost continuously united by
land, serving as a bridge, since rendered impassable by cold, for the
intermigration of their inhabitants.

During the slowly decreasing warmth of the Pliocene period, as soon as
the species in common, which inhabited the New and Old Worlds, migrated
south of the Polar Circle, they will have been completely cut off from
each other. This separation, as far as the more temperate productions
are concerned, must have taken place long ages ago. As the plants and
animals migrated southward, they will have become mingled in the one
great region with the native American productions, and would have had to
compete with them; and in the other great region, with those of the
Old World. Consequently we have here everything favourable for
much modification--for far more modification than with the Alpine
productions, left isolated, within a much more recent period, on the
several mountain ranges and on the arctic lands of Europe and North
America. Hence, it has come, that when we compare the now living
productions of the temperate regions of the New and Old Worlds, we find
very few identical species (though Asa Gray has lately shown that more
plants are identical than was formerly supposed), but we find in every
great class many forms, which some naturalists rank as geographical
races, and others as distinct species; and a host of closely allied or
representative forms which are ranked by all naturalists as specifically
distinct.

As on the land, so in the waters of the sea, a slow southern migration
of a marine fauna, which, during the Pliocene or even a somewhat earlier
period, was nearly uniform along the continuous shores of the Polar
Circle, will account, on the theory of modification, for many closely
allied forms now living in marine areas completely sundered. Thus, I
think, we can understand the presence of some closely allied, still
existing and extinct tertiary forms, on the eastern and western shores
of temperate North America; and the still more striking fact of many
closely allied crustaceans (as described in Dana's admirable work), some
fish and other marine animals, inhabiting the Mediterranean and the seas
of Japan--these two areas being now completely separated by the breadth
of a whole continent and by wide spaces of ocean.

These cases of close relationship in species either now or formerly
inhabiting the seas on the eastern and western shores of North America,
the Mediterranean and Japan, and the temperate lands of North America
and Europe, are inexplicable on the theory of creation. We cannot
maintain that such species have been created alike, in correspondence
with the nearly similar physical conditions of the areas; for if we
compare, for instance, certain parts of South America with parts of
South Africa or Australia, we see countries closely similar in all their
physical conditions, with their inhabitants utterly dissimilar.

ALTERNATE GLACIAL PERIODS IN THE NORTH AND SOUTH.

But we must return to our more immediate subject. I am convinced that
Forbes's view may be largely extended. In Europe we meet with the
plainest evidence of the Glacial period, from the western shores of
Britain to the Ural range, and southward to the Pyrenees. We may infer
from the frozen mammals and nature of the mountain vegetation, that
Siberia was similarly affected. In the Lebanon, according to Dr. Hooker,
perpetual snow formerly covered the central axis, and fed glaciers which
rolled 4,000 feet down the valleys. The same observer has recently found
great moraines at a low level on the Atlas range in North Africa. Along
the Himalaya, at points 900 miles apart, glaciers have left the marks of
their former low descent; and in Sikkim, Dr. Hooker saw maize growing
on ancient and gigantic moraines. Southward of the Asiatic continent, on
the opposite side of the equator, we know, from the excellent researches
of Dr. J. Haast and Dr. Hector, that in New Zealand immense glaciers
formerly descended to a low level; and the same plants, found by Dr.
Hooker on widely separated mountains in this island tell the same story
of a former cold period. From facts communicated to me by the Rev. W.B.
Clarke, it appears also that there are traces of former glacial action
on the mountains of the south-eastern corner of Australia.

Looking to America: in the northern half, ice-borne fragments of rock
have been observed on the eastern side of the continent, as far south as
latitude 36 and 37 degrees, and on the shores of the Pacific, where
the climate is now so different, as far south as latitude 46 degrees.
Erratic boulders have, also, been noticed on the Rocky Mountains. In
the Cordillera of South America, nearly under the equator, glaciers once
extended far below their present level. In central Chile I examined
a vast mound of detritus with great boulders, crossing the Portillo
valley, which, there can hardly be a doubt, once formed a huge moraine;
and Mr. D. Forbes informs me that he found in various parts of the
Cordillera, from latitude 13 to 30 degrees south, at about the height of
12,000 feet, deeply-furrowed rocks, resembling those with which he was
familiar in Norway, and likewise great masses of detritus, including
grooved pebbles. Along this whole space of the Cordillera true glaciers
do not now exist even at much more considerable heights. Further
south, on both sides of the continent, from latitude 41 degrees to the
southernmost extremity, we have the clearest evidence of former glacial
action, in numerous immense boulders transported far from their parent
source.

From these several facts, namely, from the glacial action having
extended all round the northern and southern hemispheres--from
the period having been in a geological sense recent in both
hemispheres--from its having lasted in both during a great length of
time, as may be inferred from the amount of work effected--and lastly,
from glaciers having recently descended to a low level along the whole
line of the Cordillera, it at one time appeared to me that we could not
avoid the conclusion that the temperature of the whole world had been
simultaneously lowered during the Glacial period. But now, Mr. Croll,
in a series of admirable memoirs, has attempted to show that a glacial
condition of climate is the result of various physical causes, brought
into operation by an increase in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit.
All these causes tend towards the same end; but the most powerful
appears to be the indirect influence of the eccentricity of the orbit
upon oceanic currents. According to Mr. Croll, cold periods regularly
recur every ten or fifteen thousand years; and these at long intervals
are extremely severe, owing to certain contingencies, of which the most
important, as Sir C. Lyell has shown, is the relative position of the
land and water. Mr. Croll believes that the last great glacial period
occurred about 240,000 years ago, and endured, with slight alterations
of climate, for about 160,000 years. With respect to more ancient
glacial periods, several geologists are convinced, from direct evidence,
that such occurred during the miocene and eocene formations, not to
mention still more ancient formations. But the most important result for
us, arrived at by Mr. Croll, is that whenever the northern hemisphere
passes through a cold period the temperature of the southern hemisphere
is actually raised, with the winters rendered much milder, chiefly
through changes in the direction of the ocean currents. So conversely it
will be with the northern hemisphere, while the southern passes through
a glacial period. This conclusion throws so much light on geographical
distribution that I am strongly inclined to trust in it; but I will
first give the facts which demand an explanation.

In South America, Dr. Hooker has shown that besides many closely allied
species, between forty and fifty of the flowering plants of Tierra del
Fuego, forming no inconsiderable part of its scanty flora, are common to
North America and Europe, enormously remote as these areas in opposite
hemispheres are from each other. On the lofty mountains of equatorial
America a host of peculiar species belonging to European genera occur.
On the Organ Mountains of Brazil some few temperate European, some
Antarctic and some Andean genera were found by Gardner which do not
exist in the low intervening hot countries. On the Silla of Caraccas
the illustrious Humboldt long ago found species belonging to genera
characteristic of the Cordillera.

In Africa, several forms characteristic of Europe, and some few
representatives of the flora of the Cape of Good Hope, occur on the
mountains of Abyssinia. At the Cape of Good Hope a very few European
species, believed not to have been introduced by man, and on the
mountains several representative European forms are found which have
not been discovered in the intertropical parts of Africa. Dr. Hooker has
also lately shown that several of the plants living on the upper parts
of the lofty island of Fernando Po, and on the neighbouring Cameroon
Mountains, in the Gulf of Guinea, are closely related to those on the
mountains of Abyssinia, and likewise to those of temperate Europe. It
now also appears, as I hear from Dr. Hooker, that some of these same
temperate plants have been discovered by the Rev. R.T. Lowe on the
mountains of the Cape Verde Islands. This extension of the same
temperate forms, almost under the equator, across the whole continent of
Africa and to the mountains of the Cape Verde archipelago, is one of the
most astonishing facts ever recorded in the distribution of plants.

On the Himalaya, and on the isolated mountain ranges of the peninsula of
India, on the heights of Ceylon, and on the volcanic cones of Java, many
plants occur either identically the same or representing each other,
and at the same time representing plants of Europe not found in the
intervening hot lowlands. A list of the genera of plants collected on
the loftier peaks of Java, raises a picture of a collection made on
a hillock in Europe. Still more striking is the fact that peculiar
Australian forms are represented by certain plants growing on the
summits of the mountains of Borneo. Some of these Australian forms, as
I hear from Dr. Hooker, extend along the heights of the peninsula of
Malacca, and are thinly scattered on the one hand over India, and on the
other hand as far north as Japan.

On the southern mountains of Australia, Dr. F. Muller has discovered
several European species; other species, not introduced by man, occur
on the lowlands; and a long list can be given, as I am informed by
Dr. Hooker, of European genera, found in Australia, but not in the
intermediate torrid regions. In the admirable "Introduction to the Flora
of New Zealand," by Dr. Hooker, analogous and striking facts are given
in regard to the plants of that large island. Hence, we see that certain
plants growing on the more lofty mountains of the tropics in all parts
of the world, and on the temperate plains of the north and south, are
either the same species or varieties of the same species. It should,
however, be observed that these plants are not strictly arctic forms;
for, as Mr. H.C. Watson has remarked, "in receding from polar toward
equatorial latitudes, the Alpine or mountain flora really become less
and less Arctic." Besides these identical and closely allied forms, many
species inhabiting the same widely sundered areas, belong to genera not
now found in the intermediate tropical lowlands.

These brief remarks apply to plants alone; but some few analogous facts
could be given in regard to terrestrial animals. In marine productions,
similar cases likewise occur; as an example, I may quote a statement
by the highest authority, Prof. Dana, that "it is certainly a wonderful
fact that New Zealand should have a closer resemblance in its crustacea
to Great Britain, its antipode, than to any other part of the world."
Sir J. Richardson, also, speaks of the reappearance on the shores of New
Zealand, Tasmania, etc., of northern forms of fish. Dr. Hooker informs
me that twenty-five species of Algae are common to New Zealand and to
Europe, but have not been found in the intermediate tropical seas.

From the foregoing facts, namely, the presence of temperate forms
on the highlands across the whole of equatorial Africa, and along the
Peninsula of India, to Ceylon and the Malay Archipelago, and in a less
well-marked manner across the wide expanse of tropical South America, it
appears almost certain that at some former period, no doubt during
the most severe part of a Glacial period, the lowlands of these great
continents were everywhere tenanted under the equator by a considerable
number of temperate forms. At this period the equatorial climate at the
level of the sea was probably about the same with that now experienced
at the height of from five to six thousand feet under the same latitude,
or perhaps even rather cooler. During this, the coldest period, the
lowlands under the equator must have been clothed with a mingled
tropical and temperate vegetation, like that described by Hooker as
growing luxuriantly at the height of from four to five thousand feet
on the lower slopes of the Himalaya, but with perhaps a still greater
preponderance of temperate forms. So again in the mountainous island of
Fernando Po, in the Gulf of Guinea, Mr. Mann found temperate European
forms beginning to appear at the height of about five thousand feet. On
the mountains of Panama, at the height of only two thousand feet, Dr.
Seemann found the vegetation like that of Mexico, "with forms of the
torrid zone harmoniously blended with those of the temperate."

Now let us see whether Mr. Croll's conclusion that when the northern
hemisphere suffered from the extreme cold of the great Glacial period,
the southern hemisphere was actually warmer, throws any clear light on
the present apparently inexplicable distribution of various organisms
in the temperate parts of both hemispheres, and on the mountains of the
tropics. The Glacial period, as measured by years, must have been very
long; and when we remember over what vast spaces some naturalised plants
and animals have spread within a few centuries, this period will have
been ample for any amount of migration. As the cold became more and more
intense, we know that Arctic forms invaded the temperate regions; and
from the facts just given, there can hardly be a doubt that some of the
more vigorous, dominant and widest-spreading temperate forms invaded the
equatorial lowlands. The inhabitants of these hot lowlands would at the
same time have migrated to the tropical and subtropical regions of the
south, for the southern hemisphere was at this period warmer. On the
decline of the Glacial period, as both hemispheres gradually recovered
their former temperature, the northern temperate forms living on the
lowlands under the equator, would have been driven to their former homes
or have been destroyed, being replaced by the equatorial forms returning
from the south. Some, however, of the northern temperate forms would
almost certainly have ascended any adjoining high land, where, if
sufficiently lofty, they would have long survived like the Arctic
forms on the mountains of Europe. They might have survived, even if the
climate was not perfectly fitted for them, for the change of temperature
must have been very slow, and plants undoubtedly possess a certain
capacity for acclimatisation, as shown by their transmitting to their
offspring different constitutional powers of resisting heat and cold.

In the regular course of events the southern hemisphere would in
its turn be subjected to a severe Glacial period, with the northern
hemisphere rendered warmer; and then the southern temperate forms would
invade the equatorial lowlands. The northern forms which had before been
left on the mountains would now descend and mingle with the southern
forms. These latter, when the warmth returned, would return to their
former homes, leaving some few species on the mountains, and carrying
southward with them some of the northern temperate forms which had
descended from their mountain fastnesses. Thus, we should have some
few species identically the same in the northern and southern temperate
zones and on the mountains of the intermediate tropical regions. But
the species left during a long time on these mountains, or in opposite
hemispheres, would have to compete with many new forms and would be
exposed to somewhat different physical conditions; hence, they would
be eminently liable to modification, and would generally now exist as
varieties or as representative species; and this is the case. We must,
also, bear in mind the occurrence in both hemispheres of former Glacial
periods; for these will account, in accordance with the same principles,
for the many quite distinct species inhabiting the same widely separated
areas, and belonging to genera not now found in the intermediate torrid
zones.

It is a remarkable fact, strongly insisted on by Hooker in regard to
America, and by Alph. de Candolle in regard to Australia, that many more
identical or slightly modified species have migrated from the north to
the south, than in a reversed direction. We see, however, a few southern
forms on the mountains of Borneo and Abyssinia. I suspect that this
preponderant migration from the north to the south is due to the greater
extent of land in the north, and to the northern forms having existed
in their own homes in greater numbers, and having consequently been
advanced through natural selection and competition to a higher stage of
perfection, or dominating power, than the southern forms. And thus, when
the two sets became commingled in the equatorial regions, during the
alternations of the Glacial periods, the northern forms were the more
powerful and were able to hold their places on the mountains, and
afterwards migrate southward with the southern forms; but not so the
southern in regard to the northern forms. In the same manner, at the
present day, we see that very many European productions cover the ground
in La Plata, New Zealand, and to a lesser degree in Australia, and have
beaten the natives; whereas extremely few southern forms have become
naturalised in any part of the northern hemisphere, though hides, wool,
and other objects likely to carry seeds have been largely imported into
Europe during the last two or three centuries from La Plata and during
the last forty or fifty years from Australia. The Neilgherrie Mountains
in India, however, offer a partial exception; for here, as I hear from
Dr. Hooker, Australian forms are rapidly sowing themselves and becoming
naturalised. Before the last great Glacial period, no doubt the
intertropical mountains were stocked with endemic Alpine forms;
but these have almost everywhere yielded to the more dominant forms
generated in the larger areas and more efficient workshops of the north.
In many islands the native productions are nearly equalled, or even
outnumbered, by those which have become naturalised; and this is the
first stage towards their extinction. Mountains are islands on the land;
and their inhabitants have yielded to those produced within the larger
areas of the north, just in the same way as the inhabitants of real
islands have everywhere yielded and are still yielding to continental
forms naturalised through man's agency.

The same principles apply to the distribution of terrestrial animals and
of marine productions, in the northern and southern temperate zones, and
on the intertropical mountains. When, during the height of the Glacial
period, the ocean-currents were widely different to what they now are,
some of the inhabitants of the temperate seas might have reached
the equator; of these a few would perhaps at once be able to migrate
southwards, by keeping to the cooler currents, while others might remain
and survive in the colder depths until the southern hemisphere was in
its turn subjected to a glacial climate and permitted their further
progress; in nearly the same manner as, according to Forbes, isolated
spaces inhabited by Arctic productions exist to the present day in the
deeper parts of the northern temperate seas.

I am far from supposing that all the difficulties in regard to the
distribution and affinities of the identical and allied species, which
now live so widely separated in the north and south, and sometimes on
the intermediate mountain ranges, are removed on the views above given.
The exact lines of migration cannot be indicated. We cannot say why
certain species and not others have migrated; why certain species
have been modified and have given rise to new forms, while others have
remained unaltered. We cannot hope to explain such facts, until we can
say why one species and not another becomes naturalised by man's agency
in a foreign land; why one species ranges twice or thrice as far, and is
twice or thrice as common, as another species within their own homes.

Various special difficulties also remain to be solved; for instance,
the occurrence, as shown by Dr. Hooker, of the same plants at points
so enormously remote as Kerguelen Land, New Zealand, and Fuegia; but
icebergs, as suggested by Lyell, may have been concerned in their
dispersal. The existence at these and other distant points of the
southern hemisphere, of species, which, though distinct, belong to
genera exclusively confined to the south, is a more remarkable case.
Some of these species are so distinct, that we cannot suppose that there
has been time since the commencement of the last Glacial period for
their migration and subsequent modification to the necessary degree.
The facts seem to indicate that distinct species belonging to the same
genera have migrated in radiating lines from a common centre; and I am
inclined to look in the southern, as in the northern hemisphere, to a
former and warmer period, before the commencement of the last Glacial
period, when the Antarctic lands, now covered with ice, supported a
highly peculiar and isolated flora. It may be suspected that before this
flora was exterminated during the last Glacial epoch, a few forms
had been already widely dispersed to various points of the southern
hemisphere by occasional means of transport, and by the aid, as
halting-places, of now sunken islands. Thus the southern shores of
America, Australia, and New Zealand may have become slightly tinted by
the same peculiar forms of life.

Sir C. Lyell in a striking passage has speculated, in language almost
identical with mine, on the effects of great alternations of climate
throughout the world on geographical distribution. And we have now seen
that Mr. Croll's conclusion that successive Glacial periods in the one
hemisphere coincide with warmer periods in the opposite hemisphere,
together with the admission of the slow modification of species,
explains a multitude of facts in the distribution of the same and of the
allied forms of life in all parts of the globe. The living waters have
flowed during one period from the north and during another from the
south, and in both cases have reached the equator; but the stream of
life has flowed with greater force from the north than in the opposite
direction, and has consequently more freely inundated the south. As the
tide leaves its drift in horizontal lines, rising higher on the shores
where the tide rises highest, so have the living waters left their
living drift on our mountain summits, in a line gently rising from
the Arctic lowlands to a great latitude under the equator. The various
beings thus left stranded may be compared with savage races of man,
driven up and surviving in the mountain fastnesses of almost every
land, which serves as a record, full of interest to us, of the former
inhabitants of the surrounding lowlands.




CHAPTER XIII. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION--continued.

 Distribution of fresh-water productions--On the inhabitants of oceanic
 islands--Absence of Batrachians and of terrestrial Mammals--On
 the relation of the inhabitants of islands to those of the nearest
 mainland--On colonisation from the nearest source with subsequent
 modification--Summary of the last and present chapters.


FRESH-WATER PRODUCTIONS.

As lakes and river-systems are separated from each other by barriers of
land, it might have been thought that fresh-water productions would not
have ranged widely within the same country, and as the sea is apparently
a still more formidable barrier, that they would never have extended to
distant countries. But the case is exactly the reverse. Not only have
many fresh-water species, belonging to different classes, an enormous
range, but allied species prevail in a remarkable manner throughout
the world. When first collecting in the fresh waters of Brazil, I well
remember feeling much surprise at the similarity of the fresh-water
insects, shells, etc., and at the dissimilarity of the surrounding
terrestrial beings, compared with those of Britain.

But the wide ranging power of fresh-water productions can, I think,
in most cases be explained by their having become fitted, in a manner
highly useful to them, for short and frequent migrations from pond
to pond, or from stream to stream, within their own countries; and
liability to wide dispersal would follow from this capacity as an almost
necessary consequence. We can here consider only a few cases; of these,
some of the most difficult to explain are presented by fish. It was
formerly believed that the same fresh-water species never existed on
two continents distant from each other. But Dr. Gunther has lately
shown that the Galaxias attenuatus inhabits Tasmania, New Zealand, the
Falkland Islands and the mainland of South America. This is a wonderful
case, and probably indicates dispersal from an Antarctic centre during a
former warm period. This case, however, is rendered in some degree less
surprising by the species of this genus having the power of crossing by
some unknown means considerable spaces of open ocean: thus there is
one species common to New Zealand and to the Auckland Islands, though
separated by a distance of about 230 miles. On the same continent
fresh-water fish often range widely, and as if capriciously; for in two
adjoining river systems some of the species may be the same and some
wholly different.

It is probable that they are occasionally transported by what may be
called accidental means. Thus fishes still alive are not very rarely
dropped at distant points by whirlwinds; and it is known that the ova
retain their vitality for a considerable time after removal from the
water. Their dispersal may, however, be mainly attributed to changes in
the level of the land within the recent period, causing rivers to flow
into each other. Instances, also, could be given of this having occurred
during floods, without any change of level. The wide differences of the
fish on the opposite sides of most mountain-ranges, which are continuous
and consequently must, from an early period, have completely prevented
the inosculation of the river systems on the two sides, leads to the
same conclusion. Some fresh-water fish belong to very ancient forms,
and in such cases there will have been ample time for great geographical
changes, and consequently time and means for much migration. Moreover,
Dr. Gunther has recently been led by several considerations to infer
that with fishes the same forms have a long endurance. Salt-water
fish can with care be slowly accustomed to live in fresh water; and,
according to Valenciennes, there is hardly a single group of which
all the members are confined to fresh water, so that a marine species
belonging to a fresh-water group might travel far along the shores
of the sea, and could, it is probable, become adapted without much
difficulty to the fresh waters of a distant land.

Some species of fresh-water shells have very wide ranges, and allied
species which, on our theory, are descended from a common parent, and
must have proceeded from a single source, prevail throughout the world.
Their distribution at first perplexed me much, as their ova are not
likely to be transported by birds; and the ova, as well as the adults,
are immediately killed by sea-water. I could not even understand
how some naturalised species have spread rapidly throughout the same
country. But two facts, which I have observed--and many others no
doubt will be discovered--throw some light on this subject. When ducks
suddenly emerge from a pond covered with duck-weed, I have twice seen
these little plants adhering to their backs; and it has happened to me,
in removing a little duck-weed from one aquarium to another, that I have
unintentionally stocked the one with fresh-water shells from the other.
But another agency is perhaps more effectual: I suspended the feet of a
duck in an aquarium, where many ova of fresh-water shells were hatching;
and I found that numbers of the extremely minute and just-hatched shells
crawled on the feet, and clung to them so firmly that when taken out
of the water they could not be jarred off, though at a somewhat more
advanced age they would voluntarily drop off. These just-hatched
molluscs, though aquatic in their nature, survived on the duck's feet,
in damp air, from twelve to twenty hours; and in this length of time
a duck or heron might fly at least six or seven hundred miles, and
if blown across the sea to an oceanic island, or to any other distant
point, would be sure to alight on a pool or rivulet. Sir Charles Lyell
informs me that a Dyticus has been caught with an Ancylus (a fresh-water
shell like a limpet) firmly adhering to it; and a water-beetle of
the same family, a Colymbetes, once flew on board the "Beagle," when
forty-five miles distant from the nearest land: how much farther it
might have been blown by a favouring gale no one can tell.

With respect to plants, it has long been known what enormous ranges many
fresh-water, and even marsh-species, have, both over continents and
to the most remote oceanic islands. This is strikingly illustrated,
according to Alph. de Candolle, in those large groups of terrestrial
plants, which have very few aquatic members; for the latter seem
immediately to acquire, as if in consequence, a wide range. I think
favourable means of dispersal explain this fact. I have before mentioned
that earth occasionally adheres in some quantity to the feet and beaks
of birds. Wading birds, which frequent the muddy edges of ponds, if
suddenly flushed, would be the most likely to have muddy feet. Birds
of this order wander more than those of any other; and are occasionally
found on the most remote and barren islands of the open ocean; they
would not be likely to alight on the surface of the sea, so that any
dirt on their feet would not be washed off; and when gaining the land,
they would be sure to fly to their natural fresh-water haunts. I do not
believe that botanists are aware how charged the mud of ponds is with
seeds: I have tried several little experiments, but will here give only
the most striking case: I took in February three tablespoonfuls of mud
from three different points, beneath water, on the edge of a little
pond; this mud when dry weighed only 6 and 3/4 ounces; I kept it covered
up in my study for six months, pulling up and counting each plant as it
grew; the plants were of many kinds, and were altogether 537 in number;
and yet the viscid mud was all contained in a breakfast cup! Considering
these facts, I think it would be an inexplicable circumstance if
water-birds did not transport the seeds of fresh-water plants to
unstocked ponds and streams, situated at very distant points. The same
agency may have come into play with the eggs of some of the smaller
fresh-water animals.

Other and unknown agencies probably have also played a part. I have
stated that fresh-water fish eat some kinds of seeds, though they reject
many other kinds after having swallowed them; even small fish swallow
seeds of moderate size, as of the yellow water-lily and Potamogeton.
Herons and other birds, century after century, have gone on daily
devouring fish; they then take flight and go to other waters, or are
blown across the sea; and we have seen that seeds retain their power of
germination, when rejected many hours afterwards in pellets or in
the excrement. When I saw the great size of the seeds of that fine
water-lily, the Nelumbium, and remembered Alph. de Candolle's remarks
on the distribution of this plant, I thought that the means of its
dispersal must remain inexplicable; but Audubon states that he found
the seeds of the great southern water-lily (probably according to Dr.
Hooker, the Nelumbium luteum) in a heron's stomach. Now this bird must
often have flown with its stomach thus well stocked to distant ponds,
and, then getting a hearty meal of fish, analogy makes me believe
that it would have rejected the seeds in the pellet in a fit state for
germination.

In considering these several means of distribution, it should be
remembered that when a pond or stream is first formed, for instance on a
rising islet, it will be unoccupied; and a single seed or egg will have
a good chance of succeeding. Although there will always be a struggle
for life between the inhabitants of the same pond, however few in kind,
yet as the number even in a well-stocked pond is small in comparison
with the number of species inhabiting an equal area of land, the
competition between them will probably be less severe than between
terrestrial species; consequently an intruder from the waters of a
foreign country would have a better chance of seizing on a new place,
than in the case of terrestrial colonists. We should also remember that
many fresh-water productions are low in the scale of nature, and we have
reason to believe that such beings become modified more slowly than the
high; and this will give time for the migration of aquatic species.
We should not forget the probability of many fresh-water forms having
formerly ranged continuously over immense areas, and then having become
extinct at intermediate points. But the wide distribution of fresh-water
plants, and of the lower animals, whether retaining the same identical
form, or in some degree modified, apparently depends in main part on the
wide dispersal of their seeds and eggs by animals, more especially by
fresh-water birds, which have great powers of flight, and naturally
travel from one piece of water to another.

ON THE INHABITANTS OF OCEANIC ISLANDS.

We now come to the last of the three classes of facts, which I have
selected as presenting the greatest amount of difficulty with respect to
distribution, on the view that not only all the individuals of the
same species have migrated from some one area, but that allied species,
although now inhabiting the most distant points, have proceeded from a
single area, the birthplace of their early progenitors. I have already
given my reasons for disbelieving in continental extensions within the
period of existing species on so enormous a scale that all the many
islands of the several oceans were thus stocked with their present
terrestrial inhabitants. This view removes many difficulties, but it
does not accord with all the facts in regard to the productions of
islands. In the following remarks I shall not confine myself to the mere
question of dispersal, but shall consider some other cases bearing on
the truth of the two theories of independent creation and of descent
with modification.

The species of all kinds which inhabit oceanic islands are few in number
compared with those on equal continental areas: Alph. de Candolle admits
this for plants, and Wollaston for insects. New Zealand, for instance,
with its lofty mountains and diversified stations, extending over 780
miles of latitude, together with the outlying islands of Auckland,
Campbell and Chatham, contain altogether only 960 kinds of flowering
plants; if we compare this moderate number with the species which swarm
over equal areas in Southwestern Australia or at the Cape of Good Hope,
we must admit that some cause, independently of different physical
conditions, has given rise to so great a difference in number. Even the
uniform county of Cambridge has 847 plants, and the little island of
Anglesea 764, but a few ferns and a few introduced plants are included
in these numbers, and the comparison in some other respects is not quite
fair. We have evidence that the barren island of Ascension aboriginally
possessed less than half-a-dozen flowering plants; yet many species have
now become naturalised on it, as they have in New Zealand and on every
other oceanic island which can be named. In St. Helena there is reason
to believe that the naturalised plants and animals have nearly or quite
exterminated many native productions. He who admits the doctrine of the
creation of each separate species, will have to admit that a sufficient
number of the best adapted plants and animals were not created for
oceanic islands; for man has unintentionally stocked them far more fully
and perfectly than did nature.

Although in oceanic islands the species are few in number, the
proportion of endemic kinds (i.e. those found nowhere else in the world)
is often extremely large. If we compare, for instance, the number of
endemic land-shells in Madeira, or of endemic birds in the Galapagos
Archipelago, with the number found on any continent, and then compare
the area of the island with that of the continent, we shall see that
this is true. This fact might have been theoretically expected, for, as
already explained, species occasionally arriving, after long intervals
of time in the new and isolated district, and having to compete with new
associates, would be eminently liable to modification, and would often
produce groups of modified descendants. But it by no means follows that,
because in an island nearly all the species of one class are peculiar,
those of another class, or of another section of the same class, are
peculiar; and this difference seems to depend partly on the species
which are not modified having immigrated in a body, so that their mutual
relations have not been much disturbed; and partly on the frequent
arrival of unmodified immigrants from the mother-country, with which
the insular forms have intercrossed. It should be borne in mind that the
offspring of such crosses would certainly gain in vigour; so that even
an occasional cross would produce more effect than might have been
anticipated. I will give a few illustrations of the foregoing remarks:
in the Galapagos Islands there are twenty-six land birds; of these
twenty-one (or perhaps twenty-three) are peculiar; whereas of the eleven
marine birds only two are peculiar; and it is obvious that marine birds
could arrive at these islands much more easily and frequently than
land-birds. Bermuda, on the other hand, which lies at about the same
distance from North America as the Galapagos Islands do from South
America, and which has a very peculiar soil, does not possess a single
endemic land bird; and we know from Mr. J.M. Jones's admirable account
of Bermuda, that very many North American birds occasionally or even
frequently visit this island. Almost every year, as I am informed by
Mr. E.V. Harcourt, many European and African birds are blown to Madeira;
this island is inhabited by ninety-nine kinds, of which one alone is
peculiar, though very closely related to a European form; and three or
four other species are confined to this island and to the Canaries.
So that the islands of Bermuda and Madeira have been stocked from the
neighbouring continents with birds, which for long ages have there
struggled together, and have become mutually co-adapted. Hence, when
settled in their new homes, each kind will have been kept by the others
to its proper place and habits, and will consequently have been but
little liable to modification. Any tendency to modification will also
have been checked by intercrossing with the unmodified immigrants,
often arriving from the mother-country. Madeira again is inhabited by
a wonderful number of peculiar land-shells, whereas not one species
of sea-shell is peculiar to its shores: now, though we do not know how
sea-shells are dispersed, yet we can see that their eggs or larvae,
perhaps attached to seaweed or floating timber, or to the feet of wading
birds, might be transported across three or four hundred miles of open
sea far more easily than land-shells. The different orders of insects
inhabiting Madeira present nearly parallel cases.

Oceanic islands are sometimes deficient in animals of certain whole
classes, and their places are occupied by other classes; thus in the
Galapagos Islands reptiles, and in New Zealand gigantic wingless birds,
take, or recently took, the place of mammals. Although New Zealand
is here spoken of as an oceanic island, it is in some degree doubtful
whether it should be so ranked; it is of large size, and is not
separated from Australia by a profoundly deep sea; from its geological
character and the direction of its mountain ranges, the Rev. W.B. Clarke
has lately maintained that this island, as well as New Caledonia, should
be considered as appurtenances of Australia. Turning to plants, Dr.
Hooker has shown that in the Galapagos Islands the proportional numbers
of the different orders are very different from what they are elsewhere.
All such differences in number, and the absence of certain whole
groups of animals and plants, are generally accounted for by supposed
differences in the physical conditions of the islands; but this
explanation is not a little doubtful. Facility of immigration seems to
have been fully as important as the nature of the conditions.

Many remarkable little facts could be given with respect to the
inhabitants of oceanic islands. For instance, in certain islands not
tenanted by a single mammal, some of the endemic plants have beautifully
hooked seeds; yet few relations are more manifest than that hooks serve
for the transportal of seeds in the wool or fur of quadrupeds. But a
hooked seed might be carried to an island by other means; and the plant
then becoming modified would form an endemic species, still retaining
its hooks, which would form a useless appendage, like the shrivelled
wings under the soldered wing-covers of many insular beetles. Again,
islands often possess trees or bushes belonging to orders which
elsewhere include only herbaceous species; now trees, as Alph. de
Candolle has shown, generally have, whatever the cause may be, confined
ranges. Hence trees would be little likely to reach distant oceanic
islands; and an herbaceous plant, which had no chance of successfully
competing with the many fully developed trees growing on a continent,
might, when established on an island, gain an advantage over other
herbaceous plants by growing taller and taller and overtopping them.
In this case, natural selection would tend to add to the stature of the
plant, to whatever order it belonged, and thus first convert it into a
bush and then into a tree.

ABSENCE OF BATRACHIANS AND TERRESTRIAL MAMMALS ON OCEANIC ISLANDS.

With respect to the absence of whole orders of animals on oceanic
islands, Bory St. Vincent long ago remarked that Batrachians (frogs,
toads, newts) are never found on any of the many islands with which the
great oceans are studded. I have taken pains to verify this assertion,
and have found it true, with the exception of New Zealand, New
Caledonia, the Andaman Islands, and perhaps the Solomon Islands and the
Seychelles. But I have already remarked that it is doubtful whether New
Zealand and New Caledonia ought to be classed as oceanic islands; and
this is still more doubtful with respect to the Andaman and Solomon
groups and the Seychelles. This general absence of frogs, toads and
newts on so many true oceanic islands cannot be accounted for by their
physical conditions; indeed it seems that islands are peculiarly fitted
for these animals; for frogs have been introduced into Madeira, the
Azores, and Mauritius, and have multiplied so as to become a nuisance.
But as these animals and their spawn are immediately killed (with the
exception, as far as known, of one Indian species) by sea-water, there
would be great difficulty in their transportal across the sea, and
therefore we can see why they do not exist on strictly oceanic islands.
But why, on the theory of creation, they should not have been created
there, it would be very difficult to explain.

Mammals offer another and similar case. I have carefully searched the
oldest voyages, and have not found a single instance, free from doubt,
of a terrestrial mammal (excluding domesticated animals kept by the
natives) inhabiting an island situated above 300 miles from a continent
or great continental island; and many islands situated at a much less
distance are equally barren. The Falkland Islands, which are inhabited
by a wolf-like fox, come nearest to an exception; but this group cannot
be considered as oceanic, as it lies on a bank in connection with the
mainland at a distance of about 280 miles; moreover, icebergs formerly
brought boulders to its western shores, and they may have formerly
transported foxes, as now frequently happens in the arctic regions. Yet
it cannot be said that small islands will not support at least small
mammals, for they occur in many parts of the world on very small
islands, when lying close to a continent; and hardly an island can be
named on which our smaller quadrupeds have not become naturalised and
greatly multiplied. It cannot be said, on the ordinary view of creation,
that there has not been time for the creation of mammals; many volcanic
islands are sufficiently ancient, as shown by the stupendous degradation
which they have suffered, and by their tertiary strata: there has also
been time for the production of endemic species belonging to other
classes; and on continents it is known that new species of mammals
appear and disappear at a quicker rate than other and lower animals.
Although terrestrial mammals do not occur on oceanic islands, aerial
mammals do occur on almost every island. New Zealand possesses two bats
found nowhere else in the world: Norfolk Island, the Viti Archipelago,
the Bonin Islands, the Caroline and Marianne Archipelagoes, and
Mauritius, all possess their peculiar bats. Why, it may be asked, has
the supposed creative force produced bats and no other mammals on
remote islands? On my view this question can easily be answered; for no
terrestrial mammal can be transported across a wide space of sea, but
bats can fly across. Bats have been seen wandering by day far over the
Atlantic Ocean; and two North American species, either regularly or
occasionally, visit Bermuda, at the distance of 600 miles from the
mainland. I hear from Mr. Tomes, who has specially studied this family,
that many species have enormous ranges, and are found on continents
and on far distant islands. Hence, we have only to suppose that such
wandering species have been modified in their new homes in relation to
their new position, and we can understand the presence of endemic bats
on oceanic islands, with the absence of all other terrestrial mammals.

Another interesting relation exists, namely, between the depth of the
sea separating islands from each other, or from the nearest continent,
and the degree of affinity of their mammalian inhabitants. Mr. Windsor
Earl has made some striking observations on this head, since greatly
extended by Mr. Wallace's admirable researches, in regard to the great
Malay Archipelago, which is traversed near Celebes by a space of deep
ocean, and this separates two widely distinct mammalian faunas. On
either side, the islands stand on a moderately shallow submarine
bank, and these islands are inhabited by the same or by closely allied
quadrupeds. I have not as yet had time to follow up this subject in all
quarters of the world; but as far as I have gone, the relation holds
good. For instance, Britain is separated by a shallow channel from
Europe, and the mammals are the same on both sides; and so it is with
all the islands near the shores of Australia. The West Indian Islands,
on the other hand, stand on a deeply submerged bank, nearly one thousand
fathoms in depth, and here we find American forms, but the species and
even the genera are quite distinct. As the amount of modification which
animals of all kinds undergo partly depends on the lapse of time, and as
the islands which are separated from each other, or from the mainland,
by shallow channels, are more likely to have been continuously united
within a recent period than the islands separated by deeper channels, we
can understand how it is that a relation exists between the depth of the
sea separating two mammalian faunas, and the degree of their affinity,
a relation which is quite inexplicable on the theory of independent acts
of creation.

The foregoing statements in regard to the inhabitants of oceanic
islands, namely, the fewness of the species, with a large proportion
consisting of endemic forms--the members of certain groups, but not
those of other groups in the same class, having been modified--the
absence of certain whole orders, as of batrachians and of terrestrial
mammals, notwithstanding the presence of aerial bats, the singular
proportions of certain orders of plants, herbaceous forms having been
developed into trees, etc., seem to me to accord better with the belief
in the efficiency of occasional means of transport, carried on during
a long course of time, than with the belief in the former connection of
all oceanic islands with the nearest continent; for on this latter
view it is probable that the various classes would have immigrated more
uniformly, and from the species having entered in a body, their mutual
relations would not have been much disturbed, and consequently, they
would either have not been modified, or all the species in a more
equable manner.

I do not deny that there are many and serious difficulties in
understanding how many of the inhabitants of the more remote islands,
whether still retaining the same specific form or subsequently modified,
have reached their present homes. But the probability of other islands
having once existed as halting-places, of which not a wreck now remains,
must not be overlooked. I will specify one difficult case. Almost all
oceanic islands, even the most isolated and smallest, are inhabited
by land-shells, generally by endemic species, but sometimes by species
found elsewhere striking instances of which have been given by Dr. A.A.
Gould in relation to the Pacific. Now it is notorious that land-shells
are easily killed by sea-water; their eggs, at least such as I have
tried, sink in it and are killed. Yet there must be some unknown,
but occasionally efficient means for their transportal. Would the
just-hatched young sometimes adhere to the feet of birds roosting on
the ground and thus get transported? It occurred to me that land-shells,
when hybernating and having a membranous diaphragm over the mouth of the
shell, might be floated in chinks of drifted timber across moderately
wide arms of the sea. And I find that several species in this state
withstand uninjured an immersion in sea-water during seven days. One
shell, the Helix pomatia, after having been thus treated, and again
hybernating, was put into sea-water for twenty days and perfectly
recovered. During this length of time the shell might have been
carried by a marine country of average swiftness to a distance of 660
geographical miles. As this Helix has a thick calcareous operculum
I removed it, and when it had formed a new membranous one, I again
immersed it for fourteen days in sea-water, and again it recovered and
crawled away. Baron Aucapitaine has since tried similar experiments. He
placed 100 land-shells, belonging to ten species, in a box pierced with
holes, and immersed it for a fortnight in the sea. Out of the hundred
shells twenty-seven recovered. The presence of an operculum seems
to have been of importance, as out of twelve specimens of Cyclostoma
elegans, which is thus furnished, eleven revived. It is remarkable,
seeing how well the Helix pomatia resisted with me the salt-water, that
not one of fifty-four specimens belonging to four other species of Helix
tried by Aucapitaine recovered. It is, however, not at all probable that
land-shells have often been thus transported; the feet of birds offer a
more probable method.

ON THE RELATIONS OF THE INHABITANTS OF ISLANDS TO THOSE OF THE NEAREST
MAINLAND.

The most striking and important fact for us is the affinity of the
species which inhabit islands to those of the nearest mainland,
without being actually the same. Numerous instances could be given. The
Galapagos Archipelago, situated under the equator, lies at a distance of
between 500 and 600 miles from the shores of South America. Here almost
every product of the land and of the water bears the unmistakable stamp
of the American continent. There are twenty-six land birds. Of these
twenty-one, or perhaps twenty-three, are ranked as distinct species,
and would commonly be assumed to have been here created; yet the close
affinity of most of these birds to American species is manifest in every
character in their habits, gestures, and tones of voice. So it is with
the other animals, and with a large proportion of the plants, as
shown by Dr. Hooker in his admirable Flora of this archipelago. The
naturalist, looking at the inhabitants of these volcanic islands in the
Pacific, distant several hundred miles from the continent, feels that
he is standing on American land. Why should this be so? Why should
the species which are supposed to have been created in the Galapagos
Archipelago, and nowhere else, bear so plainly the stamp of affinity to
those created in America? There is nothing in the conditions of life, in
the geological nature of the islands, in their height or climate, or in
the proportions in which the several classes are associated together,
which closely resembles the conditions of the South American coast. In
fact, there is a considerable dissimilarity in all these respects. On
the other hand, there is a considerable degree of resemblance in the
volcanic nature of the soil, in the climate, height, and size of the
islands, between the Galapagos and Cape Verde Archipelagos: but what an
entire and absolute difference in their inhabitants! The inhabitants of
the Cape Verde Islands are related to those of Africa, like those of
the Galapagos to America. Facts, such as these, admit of no sort of
explanation on the ordinary view of independent creation; whereas, on
the view here maintained, it is obvious that the Galapagos Islands would
be likely to receive colonists from America, whether by occasional means
of transport or (though I do not believe in this doctrine) by formerly
continuous land, and the Cape Verde Islands from Africa; such colonists
would be liable to modification--the principle of inheritance still
betraying their original birthplace.

Many analogous facts could be given: indeed it is an almost universal
rule that the endemic productions of islands are related to those of the
nearest continent, or of the nearest large island. The exceptions are
few, and most of them can be explained. Thus, although Kerguelen Land
stands nearer to Africa than to America, the plants are related, and
that very closely, as we know from Dr. Hooker's account, to those of
America: but on the view that this island has been mainly stocked
by seeds brought with earth and stones on icebergs, drifted by the
prevailing currents, this anomaly disappears. New Zealand in its endemic
plants is much more closely related to Australia, the nearest mainland,
than to any other region: and this is what might have been expected; but
it is also plainly related to South America, which, although the next
nearest continent, is so enormously remote, that the fact becomes an
anomaly. But this difficulty partially disappears on the view that New
Zealand, South America, and the other southern lands, have been stocked
in part from a nearly intermediate though distant point, namely, from
the antarctic islands, when they were clothed with vegetation, during
a warmer tertiary period, before the commencement of the last Glacial
period. The affinity, which, though feeble, I am assured by Dr. Hooker
is real, between the flora of the south-western corner of Australia
and of the Cape of Good Hope, is a far more remarkable case; but this
affinity is confined to the plants, and will, no doubt, some day be
explained.

The same law which has determined the relationship between the
inhabitants of islands and the nearest mainland, is sometimes displayed
on a small scale, but in a most interesting manner, within the limits
of the same archipelago. Thus each separate island of the Galapagos
Archipelago is tenanted, and the fact is a marvellous one, by many
distinct species; but these species are related to each other in a very
much closer manner than to the inhabitants of the American continent,
or of any other quarter of the world. This is what might have been
expected, for islands situated so near to each other would almost
necessarily receive immigrants from the same original source, and
from each other. But how is it that many of the immigrants have been
differently modified, though only in a small degree, in islands situated
within sight of each other, having the same geological nature, the same
height, climate, etc? This long appeared to me a great difficulty: but
it arises in chief part from the deeply-seated error of considering
the physical conditions of a country as the most important; whereas it
cannot be disputed that the nature of the other species with which
each has to compete, is at least as important, and generally a far
more important element of success. Now if we look to the species which
inhabit the Galapagos Archipelago, and are likewise found in other
parts of the world, we find that they differ considerably in the several
islands. This difference might indeed have been expected if the
islands have been stocked by occasional means of transport--a seed, for
instance, of one plant having been brought to one island, and that of
another plant to another island, though all proceeding from the same
general source. Hence, when in former times an immigrant first settled
on one of the islands, or when it subsequently spread from one to
another, it would undoubtedly be exposed to different conditions in the
different islands, for it would have to compete with a different set of
organisms; a plant, for instance, would find the ground best-fitted for
it occupied by somewhat different species in the different islands, and
would be exposed to the attacks of somewhat different enemies. If, then,
it varied, natural selection would probably favour different varieties
in the different islands. Some species, however, might spread and yet
retain the same character throughout the group, just as we see some
species spreading widely throughout a continent and remaining the same.

The really surprising fact in this case of the Galapagos Archipelago,
and in a lesser degree in some analogous cases, is that each new species
after being formed in any one island, did not spread quickly to the
other islands. But the islands, though in sight of each other, are
separated by deep arms of the sea, in most cases wider than the British
Channel, and there is no reason to suppose that they have at any former
period been continuously united. The currents of the sea are rapid and
deep between the islands, and gales of wind are extraordinarily rare; so
that the islands are far more effectually separated from each other than
they appear on a map. Nevertheless, some of the species, both of
those found in other parts of the world and of those confined to the
archipelago, are common to the several islands; and we may infer from
the present manner of distribution that they have spread from one island
to the others. But we often take, I think, an erroneous view of the
probability of closely allied species invading each other's territory,
when put into free intercommunication. Undoubtedly, if one species has
any advantage over another, it will in a very brief time wholly or in
part supplant it; but if both are equally well fitted for their own
places, both will probably hold their separate places for almost
any length of time. Being familiar with the fact that many species,
naturalised through man's agency, have spread with astonishing rapidity
over wide areas, we are apt to infer that most species would thus
spread; but we should remember that the species which become naturalised
in new countries are not generally closely allied to the aboriginal
inhabitants, but are very distinct forms, belonging in a large
proportion of cases, as shown by Alph. de Candolle, to distinct genera.
In the Galapagos Archipelago, many even of the birds, though so well
adapted for flying from island to island, differ on the different
islands; thus there are three closely allied species of mocking-thrush,
each confined to its own island. Now let us suppose the mocking-thrush
of Chatham Island to be blown to Charles Island, which has its own
mocking-thrush; why should it succeed in establishing itself there?
We may safely infer that Charles Island is well stocked with its own
species, for annually more eggs are laid and young birds hatched
than can possibly be reared; and we may infer that the mocking-thrush
peculiar to Charles Island is at least as well fitted for its home as is
the species peculiar to Chatham Island. Sir C. Lyell and Mr. Wollaston
have communicated to me a remarkable fact bearing on this subject;
namely, that Madeira and the adjoining islet of Porto Santo possess many
distinct but representative species of land-shells, some of which
live in crevices of stone; and although large quantities of stone are
annually transported from Porto Santo to Madeira, yet this latter island
has not become colonised by the Porto Santo species: nevertheless, both
islands have been colonised by some European land-shells, which no
doubt had some advantage over the indigenous species. From these
considerations I think we need not greatly marvel at the endemic species
which inhabit the several islands of the Galapagos Archipelago not
having all spread from island to island. On the same continent, also,
pre-occupation has probably played an important part in checking the
commingling of the species which inhabit different districts with
nearly the same physical conditions. Thus, the south-east and south-west
corners of Australia have nearly the same physical conditions, and are
united by continuous land, yet they are inhabited by a vast number of
distinct mammals, birds, and plants; so it is, according to Mr. Bates,
with the butterflies and other animals inhabiting the great, open, and
continuous valley of the Amazons.

The same principle which governs the general character of the
inhabitants of oceanic islands, namely, the relation to the source
whence colonists could have been most easily derived, together with
their subsequent modification, is of the widest application throughout
nature. We see this on every mountain-summit, in every lake and marsh.
For Alpine species, excepting in as far as the same species have become
widely spread during the Glacial epoch, are related to those of
the surrounding lowlands; thus we have in South America, Alpine
humming-birds, Alpine rodents, Alpine plants, etc., all strictly
belonging to American forms; and it is obvious that a mountain, as
it became slowly upheaved, would be colonised from the surrounding
lowlands. So it is with the inhabitants of lakes and marshes, excepting
in so far as great facility of transport has allowed the same forms
to prevail throughout large portions of the world. We see the same
principle in the character of most of the blind animals inhabiting the
caves of America and of Europe. Other analogous facts could be given.
It will, I believe, be found universally true, that wherever in
two regions, let them be ever so distant, many closely allied or
representative species occur, there will likewise be found some
identical species; and wherever many closely-allied species occur,
there will be found many forms which some naturalists rank as distinct
species, and others as mere varieties; these doubtful forms showing us
the steps in the process of modification.

The relation between the power and extent of migration in certain
species, either at the present or at some former period, and the
existence at remote points of the world of closely allied species, is
shown in another and more general way. Mr. Gould remarked to me long
ago, that in those genera of birds which range over the world, many of
the species have very wide ranges. I can hardly doubt that this rule
is generally true, though difficult of proof. Among mammals, we see it
strikingly displayed in Bats, and in a lesser degree in the Felidae and
Canidae. We see the same rule in the distribution of butterflies and
beetles. So it is with most of the inhabitants of fresh water, for many
of the genera in the most distinct classes range over the world, and
many of the species have enormous ranges. It is not meant that all, but
that some of the species have very wide ranges in the genera which range
very widely. Nor is it meant that the species in such genera have, on an
average, a very wide range; for this will largely depend on how far the
process of modification has gone; for instance, two varieties of the
same species inhabit America and Europe, and thus the species has an
immense range; but, if variation were to be carried a little further,
the two varieties would be ranked as distinct species, and their range
would be greatly reduced. Still less is it meant, that species which
have the capacity of crossing barriers and ranging widely, as in the
case of certain powerfully-winged birds, will necessarily range widely;
for we should never forget that to range widely implies not only the
power of crossing barriers, but the more important power of being
victorious in distant lands in the struggle for life with foreign
associates. But according to the view that all the species of a genus,
though distributed to the most remote points of the world, are descended
from a single progenitor, we ought to find, and I believe as a general
rule we do find, that some at least of the species range very widely.

We should bear in mind that many genera in all classes are of ancient
origin, and the species in this case will have had ample time for
dispersal and subsequent modification. There is also reason to believe,
from geological evidence, that within each great class the lower
organisms change at a slower rate than the higher; consequently they
will have had a better chance of ranging widely and of still retaining
the same specific character. This fact, together with that of the seeds
and eggs of most lowly organised forms being very minute and better
fitted for distant transportal, probably accounts for a law which has
long been observed, and which has lately been discussed by Alph. de
Candolle in regard to plants, namely, that the lower any group of
organisms stands the more widely it ranges.

The relations just discussed--namely, lower organisms ranging more
widely than the higher--some of the species of widely-ranging genera
themselves ranging widely--such facts, as alpine, lacustrine, and
marsh productions being generally related to those which live on the
surrounding low lands and dry lands--the striking relationship between
the inhabitants of islands and those of the nearest mainland--the still
closer relationship of the distinct inhabitants of the islands of
the same archipelago--are inexplicable on the ordinary view of the
independent creation of each species, but are explicable if we admit
colonisation from the nearest or readiest source, together with the
subsequent adaptation of the colonists to their new homes.

SUMMARY OF THE LAST AND PRESENT CHAPTERS.

In these chapters I have endeavoured to show that if we make due
allowance for our ignorance of the full effects of changes of climate
and of the level of the land, which have certainly occurred within the
recent period, and of other changes which have probably occurred--if we
remember how ignorant we are with respect to the many curious means of
occasional transport--if we bear in mind, and this is a very important
consideration, how often a species may have ranged continuously over a
wide area, and then have become extinct in the intermediate tracts--the
difficulty is not insuperable in believing that all the individuals of
the same species, wherever found, are descended from common parents.
And we are led to this conclusion, which has been arrived at by many
naturalists under the designation of single centres of creation, by
various general considerations, more especially from the importance
of barriers of all kinds, and from the analogical distribution of
subgenera, genera, and families.

With respect to distinct species belonging to the same genus, which
on our theory have spread from one parent-source; if we make the same
allowances as before for our ignorance, and remember that some forms of
life have changed very slowly, enormous periods of time having been thus
granted for their migration, the difficulties are far from insuperable;
though in this case, as in that of the individuals of the same species,
they are often great.

As exemplifying the effects of climatical changes on distribution, I
have attempted to show how important a part the last Glacial period has
played, which affected even the equatorial regions, and which, during
the alternations of the cold in the north and the south, allowed the
productions of opposite hemispheres to mingle, and left some of them
stranded on the mountain-summits in all parts of the world. As showing
how diversified are the means of occasional transport, I have discussed
at some little length the means of dispersal of fresh-water productions.

If the difficulties be not insuperable in admitting that in the long
course of time all the individuals of the same species, and likewise
of the several species belonging to the same genus, have proceeded
from some one source; then all the grand leading facts of geographical
distribution are explicable on the theory of migration, together with
subsequent modification and the multiplication of new forms. We can thus
understand the high importance of barriers, whether of land or water, in
not only separating but in apparently forming the several zoological and
botanical provinces. We can thus understand the concentration of related
species within the same areas; and how it is that under different
latitudes, for instance, in South America, the inhabitants of the plains
and mountains, of the forests, marshes, and deserts, are linked together
in so mysterious a manner, and are likewise linked to the extinct beings
which formerly inhabited the same continent. Bearing in mind that the
mutual relation of organism to organism is of the highest importance,
we can see why two areas, having nearly the same physical conditions,
should often be inhabited by very different forms of life; for according
to the length of time which has elapsed since the colonists entered one
of the regions, or both; according to the nature of the communication
which allowed certain forms and not others to enter, either in greater
or lesser numbers; according or not as those which entered happened to
come into more or less direct competition with each other and with the
aborigines; and according as the immigrants were capable of varying
more or less rapidly, there would ensue in the to or more regions,
independently of their physical conditions, infinitely diversified
conditions of life; there would be an almost endless amount of organic
action and reaction, and we should find some groups of beings greatly,
and some only slightly modified; some developed in great force, some
existing in scanty numbers--and this we do find in the several great
geographical provinces of the world.

On these same principles we can understand, as I have endeavoured to
show, why oceanic islands should have few inhabitants, but that of
these, a large proportion should be endemic or peculiar; and why, in
relation to the means of migration, one group of beings should have all
its species peculiar, and another group, even within the same class,
should have all its species the same with those in an adjoining quarter
of the world. We can see why whole groups of organisms, as batrachians
and terrestrial mammals, should be absent from oceanic islands, whilst
the most isolated islands should possess their own peculiar species of
aerial mammals or bats. We can see why, in islands, there should be some
relation between the presence of mammals, in a more or less modified
condition, and the depth of the sea between such islands and the
mainland. We can clearly see why all the inhabitants of an archipelago,
though specifically distinct on the several islets, should be closely
related to each other, and should likewise be related, but less closely,
to those of the nearest continent, or other source whence immigrants
might have been derived. We can see why, if there exist very closely
allied or representative species in two areas, however distant from each
other, some identical species will almost always there be found.

As the late Edward Forbes often insisted, there is a striking
parallelism in the laws of life throughout time and space; the laws
governing the succession of forms in past times being nearly the same
with those governing at the present time the differences in different
areas. We see this in many facts. The endurance of each species and
group of species is continuous in time; for the apparent exceptions to
the rule are so few that they may fairly be attributed to our not having
as yet discovered in an intermediate deposit certain forms which are
absent in it, but which occur above and below: so in space, it certainly
is the general rule that the area inhabited by a single species, or by a
group of species, is continuous, and the exceptions, which are not rare,
may, as I have attempted to show, be accounted for by former migrations
under different circumstances, or through occasional means of transport,
or by the species having become extinct in the intermediate tracts. Both
in time and space species and groups of species have their points of
maximum development. Groups of species, living during the same period
of time, or living within the same area, are often characterised by
trifling features in common, as of sculpture or colour. In looking to
the long succession of past ages, as in looking to distant provinces
throughout the world, we find that species in certain classes differ
little from each other, whilst those in another class, or only in a
different section of the same order, differ greatly from each other. In
both time and space the lowly organised members of each class generally
change less than the highly organised; but there are in both cases
marked exceptions to the rule. According to our theory, these several
relations throughout time and space are intelligible; for whether we
look to the allied forms of life which have changed during successive
ages, or to those which have changed after having migrated into distant
quarters, in both cases they are connected by the same bond of ordinary
generation; in both cases the laws of variation have been the same,
and modifications have been accumulated by the same means of natural
selection.




CHAPTER XIV. MUTUAL AFFINITIES OF ORGANIC BEINGS:

MORPHOLOGY--EMBRYOLOGY--RUDIMENTARY ORGANS.

 Classification, groups subordinate to groups--Natural system--Rules and
 difficulties in classification, explained on the theory of descent
 with modification--Classification of varieties--Descent always used in
 classification--Analogical or adaptive characters--Affinities,
 general, complex and radiating--Extinction separates and defines
 groups--Morphology, between members of the same class, between parts of
 the same individual--Embryology, laws of, explained by variations not
 supervening at an early age, and being inherited at a corresponding
 age--Rudimentary organs; their origin explained--Summary.


CLASSIFICATION.

From the most remote period in the history of the world organic beings
have been found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that
they can be classed in groups under groups. This classification is
not arbitrary like the grouping of the stars in constellations. The
existence of groups would have been of simple significance, if one group
had been exclusively fitted to inhabit the land, and another the water;
one to feed on flesh, another on vegetable matter, and so on; but the
case is widely different, for it is notorious how commonly members of
even the same subgroup have different habits. In the second and fourth
chapters, on Variation and on Natural Selection, I have attempted
to show that within each country it is the widely ranging, the much
diffused and common, that is the dominant species, belonging to
the larger genera in each class, which vary most. The varieties, or
incipient species, thus produced, ultimately become converted into new
and distinct species; and these, on the principle of inheritance, tend
to produce other new and dominant species. Consequently the groups which
are now large, and which generally include many dominant species, tend
to go on increasing in size. I further attempted to show that from the
varying descendants of each species trying to occupy as many and as
different places as possible in the economy of nature, they constantly
tend to diverge in character. This latter conclusion is supported by
observing the great diversity of forms, which, in any small area, come
into the closest competition, and by certain facts in naturalisation.

I attempted also to show that there is a steady tendency in the forms
which are increasing in number and diverging in character, to supplant
and exterminate the preceding, less divergent and less improved forms.
I request the reader to turn to the diagram illustrating the action, as
formerly explained, of these several principles; and he will see that
the inevitable result is, that the modified descendants proceeding from
one progenitor become broken up into groups subordinate to groups. In
the diagram each letter on the uppermost line may represent a genus
including several species; and the whole of the genera along this upper
line form together one class, for all are descended from one ancient
parent, and, consequently, have inherited something in common. But the
three genera on the left hand have, on this same principle, much in
common, and form a subfamily, distinct from that containing the next
two genera on the right hand, which diverged from a common parent at
the fifth stage of descent. These five genera have also much in common,
though less than when grouped in subfamilies; and they form a family
distinct from that containing the three genera still further to the
right hand, which diverged at an earlier period. And all these genera,
descended from (A), form an order distinct from the genera descended
from (I). So that we here have many species descended from a single
progenitor grouped into genera; and the genera into subfamilies,
families and orders, all under one great class. The grand fact of the
natural subordination of organic beings in groups under groups, which,
from its familiarity, does not always sufficiently strike us, is in
my judgment thus explained. No doubt organic beings, like all other
objects, can be classed in many ways, either artificially by single
characters, or more naturally by a number of characters. We know,
for instance, that minerals and the elemental substances can be thus
arranged. In this case there is of course no relation to genealogical
succession, and no cause can at present be assigned for their falling
into groups. But with organic beings the case is different, and the view
above given accords with their natural arrangement in group under group;
and no other explanation has ever been attempted.

Naturalists, as we have seen, try to arrange the species, genera and
families in each class, on what is called the Natural System. But what
is meant by this system? Some authors look at it merely as a scheme for
arranging together those living objects which are most alike, and for
separating those which are most unlike; or as an artificial method of
enunciating, as briefly as possible, general propositions--that is,
by one sentence to give the characters common, for instance, to all
mammals, by another those common to all carnivora, by another those
common to the dog-genus, and then, by adding a single sentence, a full
description is given of each kind of dog. The ingenuity and utility of
this system are indisputable. But many naturalists think that something
more is meant by the Natural System; they believe that it reveals the
plan of the Creator; but unless it be specified whether order in time
or space, or both, or what else is meant by the plan of the Creator,
it seems to me that nothing is thus added to our knowledge. Expressions
such as that famous one by Linnaeus, which we often meet with in a more
or less concealed form, namely, that the characters do not make the
genus, but that the genus gives the characters, seem to imply that some
deeper bond is included in our classifications than mere resemblance.
I believe that this is the case, and that community of descent--the one
known cause of close similarity in organic beings--is the bond, which,
though observed by various degrees of modification, is partially
revealed to us by our classifications.

Let us now consider the rules followed in classification, and the
difficulties which are encountered on the view that classification
either gives some unknown plan of creation, or is simply a scheme for
enunciating general propositions and of placing together the forms most
like each other. It might have been thought (and was in ancient times
thought) that those parts of the structure which determined the habits
of life, and the general place of each being in the economy of nature,
would be of very high importance in classification. Nothing can be more
false. No one regards the external similarity of a mouse to a shrew, of
a dugong to a whale, of a whale to a fish, as of any importance. These
resemblances, though so intimately connected with the whole life of the
being, are ranked as merely "adaptive or analogical characters;" but to
the consideration of these resemblances we shall recur. It may even be
given as a general rule, that the less any part of the organisation
is concerned with special habits, the more important it becomes for
classification. As an instance: Owen, in speaking of the dugong, says,
"The generative organs, being those which are most remotely related to
the habits and food of an animal, I have always regarded as affording
very clear indications of its true affinities. We are least likely in
the modifications of these organs to mistake a merely adaptive for an
essential character." With plants how remarkable it is that the organs
of vegetation, on which their nutrition and life depend, are of little
signification; whereas the organs of reproduction, with their product
the seed and embryo, are of paramount importance! So again, in formerly
discussing certain morphological characters which are not functionally
important, we have seen that they are often of the highest service in
classification. This depends on their constancy throughout many allied
groups; and their constancy chiefly depends on any slight deviations not
having been preserved and accumulated by natural selection, which acts
only on serviceable characters.

That the mere physiological importance of an organ does not determine
its classificatory value, is almost proved by the fact, that in allied
groups, in which the same organ, as we have every reason to suppose, has
nearly the same physiological value, its classificatory value is widely
different. No naturalist can have worked at any group without being
struck with this fact; and it has been fully acknowledged in the
writings of almost every author. It will suffice to quote the highest
authority, Robert Brown, who, in speaking of certain organs in the
Proteaceae, says their generic importance, "like that of all their
parts, not only in this, but, as I apprehend in every natural family,
is very unequal, and in some cases seems to be entirely lost." Again,
in another work he says, the genera of the Connaraceae "differ in having
one or more ovaria, in the existence or absence of albumen, in the
imbricate or valvular aestivation. Any one of these characters singly is
frequently of more than generic importance, though here even, when
all taken together, they appear insufficient to separate Cnestis from
Connarus." To give an example among insects: in one great division
of the Hymenoptera, the antennae, as Westwood has remarked, are most
constant in structure; in another division they differ much, and the
differences are of quite subordinate value in classification; yet no one
will say that the antennae in these two divisions of the same order are
of unequal physiological importance. Any number of instances could be
given of the varying importance for classification of the same important
organ within the same group of beings.

Again, no one will say that rudimentary or atrophied organs are of high
physiological or vital importance; yet, undoubtedly, organs in this
condition are often of much value in classification. No one will dispute
that the rudimentary teeth in the upper jaws of young ruminants,
and certain rudimentary bones of the leg, are highly serviceable in
exhibiting the close affinity between Ruminants and Pachyderms. Robert
Brown has strongly insisted on the fact that the position of the
rudimentary florets is of the highest importance in the classification
of the Grasses.

Numerous instances could be given of characters derived from parts which
must be considered of very trifling physiological importance, but which
are universally admitted as highly serviceable in the definition of
whole groups. For instance, whether or not there is an open passage from
the nostrils to the mouth, the only character, according to Owen, which
absolutely distinguishes fishes and reptiles--the inflection of the
angle of the lower jaw in Marsupials--the manner in which the wings of
insects are folded--mere colour in certain Algae--mere pubescence on
parts of the flower in grasses--the nature of the dermal covering, as
hair or feathers, in the Vertebrata. If the Ornithorhynchus had been
covered with feathers instead of hair, this external and trifling
character would have been considered by naturalists as an important aid
in determining the degree of affinity of this strange creature to birds.

The importance, for classification, of trifling characters, mainly
depends on their being correlated with many other characters of more or
less importance. The value indeed of an aggregate of characters is very
evident in natural history. Hence, as has often been remarked, a
species may depart from its allies in several characters, both of high
physiological importance, and of almost universal prevalence, and yet
leave us in no doubt where it should be ranked. Hence, also, it has been
found that a classification founded on any single character,
however important that may be, has always failed; for no part of the
organisation is invariably constant. The importance of an aggregate of
characters, even when none are important, alone explains the aphorism
enunciated by Linnaeus, namely, that the characters do not give the
genus, but the genus gives the character; for this seems founded on the
appreciation of many trifling points of resemblance, too slight to be
defined. Certain plants, belonging to the Malpighiaceae, bear perfect
and degraded flowers; in the latter, as A. de Jussieu has remarked, "The
greater number of the characters proper to the species, to the genus,
to the family, to the class, disappear, and thus laugh at our
classification." When Aspicarpa produced in France, during several
years, only these degraded flowers, departing so wonderfully in a number
of the most important points of structure from the proper type of the
order, yet M. Richard sagaciously saw, as Jussieu observes, that this
genus should still be retained among the Malpighiaceae. This case well
illustrates the spirit of our classifications.

Practically, when naturalists are at work, they do not trouble
themselves about the physiological value of the characters which they
use in defining a group or in allocating any particular species. If they
find a character nearly uniform, and common to a great number of forms,
and not common to others, they use it as one of high value; if common to
some lesser number, they use it as of subordinate value. This principle
has been broadly confessed by some naturalists to be the true one; and
by none more clearly than by that excellent botanist, Aug. St. Hilaire.
If several trifling characters are always found in combination, though
no apparent bond of connexion can be discovered between them, especial
value is set on them. As in most groups of animals, important organs,
such as those for propelling the blood, or for aerating it, or those for
propagating the race, are found nearly uniform, they are considered as
highly serviceable in classification; but in some groups all these,
the most important vital organs, are found to offer characters of quite
subordinate value. Thus, as Fritz Muller has lately remarked, in the
same group of crustaceans, Cypridina is furnished with a heart, while in
two closely allied genera, namely Cypris and Cytherea, there is no such
organ; one species of Cypridina has well-developed branchiae, while
another species is destitute of them.

We can see why characters derived from the embryo should be of
equal importance with those derived from the adult, for a natural
classification of course includes all ages. But it is by no means
obvious, on the ordinary view, why the structure of the embryo should
be more important for this purpose than that of the adult, which alone
plays its full part in the economy of nature. Yet it has been strongly
urged by those great naturalists, Milne Edwards and Agassiz, that
embryological characters are the most important of all; and this
doctrine has very generally been admitted as true. Nevertheless,
their importance has sometimes been exaggerated, owing to the adaptive
characters of larvae not having been excluded; in order to show this,
Fritz Muller arranged, by the aid of such characters alone, the great
class of crustaceans, and the arrangement did not prove a natural one.
But there can be no doubt that embryonic, excluding larval characters,
are of the highest value for classification, not only with animals but
with plants. Thus the main divisions of flowering plants are founded on
differences in the embryo--on the number and position of the cotyledons,
and on the mode of development of the plumule and radicle. We shall
immediately see why these characters possess so high a value in
classification, namely, from the natural system being genealogical in
its arrangement.

Our classifications are often plainly influenced by chains of
affinities. Nothing can be easier than to define a number of characters
common to all birds; but with crustaceans, any such definition has
hitherto been found impossible. There are crustaceans at the opposite
ends of the series, which have hardly a character in common; yet the
species at both ends, from being plainly allied to others, and these to
others, and so onwards, can be recognised as unequivocally belonging to
this, and to no other class of the Articulata.

Geographical distribution has often been used, though perhaps not quite
logically, in classification, more especially in very large groups of
closely allied forms. Temminck insists on the utility or even necessity
of this practice in certain groups of birds; and it has been followed by
several entomologists and botanists.

Finally, with respect to the comparative value of the various groups of
species, such as orders, suborders, families, subfamilies, and genera,
they seem to be, at least at present, almost arbitrary. Several of the
best botanists, such as Mr. Bentham and others, have strongly insisted
on their arbitrary value. Instances could be given among plants and
insects, of a group first ranked by practised naturalists as only a
genus, and then raised to the rank of a subfamily or family; and this
has been done, not because further research has detected important
structural differences, at first overlooked, but because numerous
allied species, with slightly different grades of difference, have been
subsequently discovered.

All the foregoing rules and aids and difficulties in classification may
be explained, if I do not greatly deceive myself, on the view that
the natural system is founded on descent with modification--that the
characters which naturalists consider as showing true affinity between
any two or more species, are those which have been inherited from
a common parent, all true classification being genealogical--that
community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been
unconsciously seeking, and not some unknown plan of creation, or the
enunciation of general propositions, and the mere putting together and
separating objects more or less alike.

But I must explain my meaning more fully. I believe that the ARRANGEMENT
of the groups within each class, in due subordination and relation to
each other, must be strictly genealogical in order to be natural; but
that the AMOUNT of difference in the several branches or groups, though
allied in the same degree in blood to their common progenitor, may
differ greatly, being due to the different degrees of modification which
they have undergone; and this is expressed by the forms being ranked
under different genera, families, sections or orders. The reader will
best understand what is meant, if he will take the trouble to refer to
the diagram in the fourth chapter. We will suppose the letters A to L
to represent allied genera existing during the Silurian epoch, and
descended from some still earlier form. In three of these genera (A,
F, and I) a species has transmitted modified descendants to the present
day, represented by the fifteen genera (a14 to z14) on the uppermost
horizontal line. Now, all these modified descendants from a single
species are related in blood or descent in the same degree. They may
metaphorically be called cousins to the same millionth degree, yet
they differ widely and in different degrees from each other. The forms
descended from A, now broken up into two or three families, constitute
a distinct order from those descended from I, also broken up into two
families. Nor can the existing species descended from A be ranked in
the same genus with the parent A, or those from I with parent I. But the
existing genus F14 may be supposed to have been but slightly modified,
and it will then rank with the parent genus F; just as some few still
living organisms belong to Silurian genera. So that the comparative
value of the differences between these organic beings, which are all
related to each other in the same degree in blood, has come to be widely
different. Nevertheless, their genealogical ARRANGEMENT remains strictly
true, not only at the present time, but at each successive period
of descent. All the modified descendants from A will have inherited
something in common from their common parent, as will all the
descendants from I; so will it be with each subordinate branch of
descendants at each successive stage. If, however, we suppose any
descendant of A or of I to have become so much modified as to have
lost all traces of its parentage in this case, its place in the natural
system will be lost, as seems to have occurred with some few existing
organisms. All the descendants of the genus F, along its whole line of
descent, are supposed to have been but little modified, and they form
a single genus. But this genus, though much isolated, will still occupy
its proper intermediate position. The representation of the groups as
here given in the diagram on a flat surface, is much too simple. The
branches ought to have diverged in all directions. If the names of
the groups had been simply written down in a linear series the
representation would have been still less natural; and it is notoriously
not possible to represent in a series, on a flat surface, the affinities
which we discover in nature among the beings of the same group. Thus,
the natural system is genealogical in its arrangement, like a pedigree.
But the amount of modification which the different groups have undergone
has to be expressed by ranking them under different so-called genera,
subfamilies, families, sections, orders, and classes.

It may be worth while to illustrate this view of classification, by
taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of
mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the
best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the
world; and if all extinct languages, and all intermediate and slowly
changing dialects, were to be included, such an arrangement would be
the only possible one. Yet it might be that some ancient languages had
altered very little and had given rise to few new languages, whilst
others had altered much owing to the spreading, isolation and state of
civilisation of the several co-descended races, and had thus given rise
to many new dialects and languages. The various degrees of difference
between the languages of the same stock would have to be expressed by
groups subordinate to groups; but the proper or even the only possible
arrangement would still be genealogical; and this would be strictly
natural, as it would connect together all languages, extinct and recent,
by the closest affinities, and would give the filiation and origin of
each tongue.

In confirmation of this view, let us glance at the classification of
varieties, which are known or believed to be descended from a single
species. These are grouped under the species, with the subvarieties
under the varieties; and in some cases, as with the domestic pigeon,
with several other grades of difference. Nearly the same rules are
followed as in classifying species. Authors have insisted on the
necessity of arranging varieties on a natural instead of an artificial
system; we are cautioned, for instance, not to class two varieties of
the pine-apple together, merely because their fruit, though the most
important part, happens to be nearly identical; no one puts the Swedish
and common turnip together, though the esculent and thickened stems
are so similar. Whatever part is found to be most constant, is used in
classing varieties: thus the great agriculturist Marshall says the horns
are very useful for this purpose with cattle, because they are less
variable than the shape or colour of the body, etc.; whereas with sheep
the horns are much less serviceable, because less constant. In classing
varieties, I apprehend that if we had a real pedigree, a genealogical
classification would be universally preferred; and it has been attempted
in some cases. For we might feel sure, whether there had been more or
less modification, that the principle of inheritance would keep the
forms together which were allied in the greatest number of points. In
tumbler pigeons, though some of the subvarieties differ in the important
character of the length of the beak, yet all are kept together from
having the common habit of tumbling; but the short-faced breed has
nearly or quite lost this habit; nevertheless, without any thought on
the subject, these tumblers are kept in the same group, because allied
in blood and alike in some other respects.

With species in a state of nature, every naturalist has in fact brought
descent into his classification; for he includes in his lowest grade,
that of species, the two sexes; and how enormously these sometimes
differ in the most important characters is known to every naturalist:
scarcely a single fact can be predicated in common of the adult males
and hermaphrodites of certain cirripedes, and yet no one dreams of
separating them. As soon as the three Orchidean forms, Monachanthus,
Myanthus, and Catasetum, which had previously been ranked as three
distinct genera, were known to be sometimes produced on the same plant,
they were immediately considered as varieties; and now I have been able
to show that they are the male, female, and hermaphrodite forms of the
same species. The naturalist includes as one species the various larval
stages of the same individual, however much they may differ from each
other and from the adult; as well as the so-called alternate generations
of Steenstrup, which can only in a technical sense be considered as
the same individual. He includes monsters and varieties, not from their
partial resemblance to the parent-form, but because they are descended
from it.

As descent has universally been used in classing together the
individuals of the same species, though the males and females and larvae
are sometimes extremely different; and as it has been used in classing
varieties which have undergone a certain, and sometimes a considerable
amount of modification, may not this same element of descent have been
unconsciously used in grouping species under genera, and genera under
higher groups, all under the so-called natural system? I believe it
has been unconsciously used; and thus only can I understand the several
rules and guides which have been followed by our best systematists.
As we have no written pedigrees, we are forced to trace community
of descent by resemblances of any kind. Therefore, we choose those
characters which are the least likely to have been modified, in relation
to the conditions of life to which each species has been recently
exposed. Rudimentary structures on this view are as good as, or even
sometimes better than other parts of the organisation. We care not how
trifling a character may be--let it be the mere inflection of the angle
of the jaw, the manner in which an insect's wing is folded, whether the
skin be covered by hair or feathers--if it prevail throughout many and
different species, especially those having very different habits of
life, it assumes high value; for we can account for its presence in so
many forms with such different habits, only by inheritance from a
common parent. We may err in this respect in regard to single points of
structure, but when several characters, let them be ever so trifling,
concur throughout a large group of beings having different habits, we
may feel almost sure, on the theory of descent, that these characters
have been inherited from a common ancestor; and we know that such
aggregated characters have especial value in classification.

We can understand why a species or a group of species may depart from
its allies, in several of its most important characteristics, and yet be
safely classed with them. This may be safely done, and is often done,
as long as a sufficient number of characters, let them be ever so
unimportant, betrays the hidden bond of community of descent. Let two
forms have not a single character in common, yet, if these extreme forms
are connected together by a chain of intermediate groups, we may at
once infer their community of descent, and we put them all into the same
class. As we find organs of high physiological importance--those
which serve to preserve life under the most diverse conditions of
existence--are generally the most constant, we attach especial value to
them; but if these same organs, in another group or section of a
group, are found to differ much, we at once value them less in our
classification. We shall presently see why embryological characters are
of such high classificatory importance. Geographical distribution
may sometimes be brought usefully into play in classing large genera,
because all the species of the same genus, inhabiting any distinct and
isolated region, are in all probability descended from the same parents.

ANALOGICAL RESEMBLANCES.

We can understand, on the above views, the very important distinction
between real affinities and analogical or adaptive resemblances. Lamarck
first called attention to this subject, and he has been ably followed by
Macleay and others. The resemblance in the shape of the body and in the
fin-like anterior limbs between dugongs and whales, and between these
two orders of mammals and fishes, are analogical. So is the resemblance
between a mouse and a shrew-mouse (Sorex), which belong to different
orders; and the still closer resemblance, insisted on by Mr. Mivart,
between the mouse and a small marsupial animal (Antechinus) of
Australia. These latter resemblances may be accounted for, as it seems
to me, by adaptation for similarly active movements through thickets and
herbage, together with concealment from enemies.

Among insects there are innumerable instances; thus Linnaeus, misled by
external appearances, actually classed an homopterous insect as a moth.
We see something of the same kind even with our domestic varieties, as
in the strikingly similar shape of the body in the improved breeds of
the Chinese and common pig, which are descended from distinct species;
and in the similarly thickened stems of the common and specifically
distinct Swedish turnip. The resemblance between the greyhound and
race-horse is hardly more fanciful than the analogies which have been
drawn by some authors between widely different animals.

On the view of characters being of real importance for classification,
only in so far as they reveal descent, we can clearly understand why
analogical or adaptive characters, although of the utmost importance to
the welfare of the being, are almost valueless to the systematist.
For animals, belonging to two most distinct lines of descent, may have
become adapted to similar conditions, and thus have assumed a close
external resemblance; but such resemblances will not reveal--will rather
tend to conceal their blood-relationship. We can thus also understand
the apparent paradox, that the very same characters are analogical when
one group is compared with another, but give true affinities when the
members of the same group are compared together: thus the shape of the
body and fin-like limbs are only analogical when whales are compared
with fishes, being adaptations in both classes for swimming through
the water; but between the the several members of the whale family, the
shape of the body and the fin-like limbs offer characters exhibiting
true affinity; for as these parts are so nearly similar throughout
the whole family, we cannot doubt that they have been inherited from a
common ancestor. So it is with fishes.

Numerous cases could be given of striking resemblances in quite distinct
beings between single parts or organs, which have been adapted for the
same functions. A good instance is afforded by the close resemblance of
the jaws of the dog and Tasmanian wolf or Thylacinus--animals which are
widely sundered in the natural system. But this resemblance is confined
to general appearance, as in the prominence of the canines, and in the
cutting shape of the molar teeth. For the teeth really differ much: thus
the dog has on each side of the upper jaw four pre-molars and only two
molars; while the Thylacinus has three pre-molars and four molars.
The molars also differ much in the two animals in relative size and
structure. The adult dentition is preceded by a widely different milk
dentition. Any one may, of course, deny that the teeth in either case
have been adapted for tearing flesh, through the natural selection of
successive variations; but if this be admitted in the one case, it is
unintelligible to me that it should be denied in the other. I am glad to
find that so high an authority as Professor Flower has come to this same
conclusion.

The extraordinary cases given in a former chapter, of widely different
fishes possessing electric organs--of widely different insects
possessing luminous organs--and of orchids and asclepiads having
pollen-masses with viscid discs, come under this same head of analogical
resemblances. But these cases are so wonderful that they were introduced
as difficulties or objections to our theory. In all such cases some
fundamental difference in the growth or development of the parts, and
generally in their matured structure, can be detected. The end gained is
the same, but the means, though appearing superficially to be the same,
are essentially different. The principle formerly alluded to under the
term of ANALOGICAL VARIATION has probably in these cases often come into
play; that is, the members of the same class, although only distantly
allied, have inherited so much in common in their constitution, that
they are apt to vary under similar exciting causes in a similar
manner; and this would obviously aid in the acquirement through natural
selection of parts or organs, strikingly like each other, independently
of their direct inheritance from a common progenitor.

As species belonging to distinct classes have often been adapted
by successive slight modifications to live under nearly similar
circumstances--to inhabit, for instance, the three elements of land,
air and water--we can perhaps understand how it is that a numerical
parallelism has sometimes been observed between the subgroups of
distinct classes. A naturalist, struck with a parallelism of this
nature, by arbitrarily raising or sinking the value of the groups in
several classes (and all our experience shows that their valuation is as
yet arbitrary), could easily extend the parallelism over a wide range;
and thus the septenary, quinary, quaternary and ternary classifications
have probably arisen.

There is another and curious class of cases in which close external
resemblance does not depend on adaptation to similar habits of life, but
has been gained for the sake of protection. I allude to the wonderful
manner in which certain butterflies imitate, as first described by Mr.
Bates, other and quite distinct species. This excellent observer has
shown that in some districts of South America, where, for instance, an
Ithomia abounds in gaudy swarms, another butterfly, namely, a Leptalis,
is often found mingled in the same flock; and the latter so closely
resembles the Ithomia in every shade and stripe of colour, and even
in the shape of its wings, that Mr. Bates, with his eyes sharpened
by collecting during eleven years, was, though always on his guard,
continually deceived. When the mockers and the mocked are caught and
compared, they are found to be very different in essential structure,
and to belong not only to distinct genera, but often to distinct
families. Had this mimicry occurred in only one or two instances, it
might have been passed over as a strange coincidence. But, if we proceed
from a district where one Leptalis imitates an Ithomia, another mocking
and mocked species, belonging to the same two genera, equally close in
their resemblance, may be found. Altogether no less than ten genera are
enumerated, which include species that imitate other butterflies. The
mockers and mocked always inhabit the same region; we never find an
imitator living remote from the form which it imitates. The mockers are
almost invariably rare insects; the mocked in almost every case abounds
in swarms. In the same district in which a species of Leptalis closely
imitates an Ithomia, there are sometimes other Lepidoptera mimicking
the same Ithomia: so that in the same place, species of three genera of
butterflies and even a moth are found all closely resembling a butterfly
belonging to a fourth genus. It deserves especial notice that many of
the mimicking forms of the Leptalis, as well as of the mimicked forms,
can be shown by a graduated series to be merely varieties of the same
species; while others are undoubtedly distinct species. But why, it may
be asked, are certain forms treated as the mimicked and others as the
mimickers? Mr. Bates satisfactorily answers this question by showing
that the form which is imitated keeps the usual dress of the group to
which it belongs, while the counterfeiters have changed their dress and
do not resemble their nearest allies.

We are next led to enquire what reason can be assigned for certain
butterflies and moths so often assuming the dress of another and
quite distinct form; why, to the perplexity of naturalists, has nature
condescended to the tricks of the stage? Mr. Bates has, no doubt, hit on
the true explanation. The mocked forms, which always abound in numbers,
must habitually escape destruction to a large extent, otherwise they
could not exist in such swarms; and a large amount of evidence has now
been collected, showing that they are distasteful to birds and other
insect-devouring animals. The mocking forms, on the other hand, that
inhabit the same district, are comparatively rare, and belong to
rare groups; hence, they must suffer habitually from some danger, for
otherwise, from the number of eggs laid by all butterflies, they would
in three or four generations swarm over the whole country. Now if a
member of one of these persecuted and rare groups were to assume a dress
so like that of a well-protected species that it continually deceived
the practised eyes of an entomologist, it would often deceive predaceous
birds and insects, and thus often escape destruction. Mr. Bates may
almost be said to have actually witnessed the process by which the
mimickers have come so closely to resemble the mimicked; for he
found that some of the forms of Leptalis which mimic so many other
butterflies, varied in an extreme degree. In one district several
varieties occurred, and of these one alone resembled, to a certain
extent, the common Ithomia of the same district. In another district
there were two or three varieties, one of which was much commoner than
the others, and this closely mocked another form of Ithomia. From facts
of this nature, Mr. Bates concludes that the Leptalis first varies; and
when a variety happens to resemble in some degree any common butterfly
inhabiting the same district, this variety, from its resemblance to a
flourishing and little persecuted kind, has a better chance of escaping
destruction from predaceous birds and insects, and is consequently
oftener preserved; "the less perfect degrees of resemblance being
generation after generation eliminated, and only the others left to
propagate their kind." So that here we have an excellent illustration of
natural selection.

Messrs. Wallace and Trimen have likewise described several equally
striking cases of imitation in the Lepidoptera of the Malay Archipelago
and Africa, and with some other insects. Mr. Wallace has also detected
one such case with birds, but we have none with the larger quadrupeds.
The much greater frequency of imitation with insects than with other
animals, is probably the consequence of their small size; insects cannot
defend themselves, excepting indeed the kinds furnished with a sting,
and I have never heard of an instance of such kinds mocking other
insects, though they are mocked; insects cannot easily escape by
flight from the larger animals which prey on them; therefore, speaking
metaphorically, they are reduced, like most weak creatures, to trickery
and dissimulation.

It should be observed that the process of imitation probably never
commenced between forms widely dissimilar in colour. But, starting with
species already somewhat like each other, the closest resemblance,
if beneficial, could readily be gained by the above means, and if
the imitated form was subsequently and gradually modified through any
agency, the imitating form would be led along the same track, and thus
be altered to almost any extent, so that it might ultimately assume an
appearance or colouring wholly unlike that of the other members of the
family to which it belonged. There is, however, some difficulty on this
head, for it is necessary to suppose in some cases that ancient members
belonging to several distinct groups, before they had diverged to their
present extent, accidentally resembled a member of another and protected
group in a sufficient degree to afford some slight protection, this
having given the basis for the subsequent acquisition of the most
perfect resemblance.

ON THE NATURE OF THE AFFINITIES CONNECTING ORGANIC BEINGS.

As the modified descendants of dominant species, belonging to the larger
genera, tend to inherit the advantages which made the groups to which
they belong large and their parents dominant, they are almost sure to
spread widely, and to seize on more and more places in the economy of
nature. The larger and more dominant groups within each class thus tend
to go on increasing in size, and they consequently supplant many
smaller and feebler groups. Thus, we can account for the fact that all
organisms, recent and extinct, are included under a few great orders and
under still fewer classes. As showing how few the higher groups are in
number, and how widely they are spread throughout the world, the fact
is striking that the discovery of Australia has not added an insect
belonging to a new class, and that in the vegetable kingdom, as I learn
from Dr. Hooker, it has added only two or three families of small size.

In the chapter on geological succession I attempted to show, on the
principle of each group having generally diverged much in character
during the long-continued process of modification, how it is that the
more ancient forms of life often present characters in some degree
intermediate between existing groups. As some few of the old and
intermediate forms having transmitted to the present day descendants
but little modified, these constitute our so-called osculant or aberrant
groups. The more aberrant any form is, the greater must be the number of
connecting forms which have been exterminated and utterly lost. And
we have evidence of aberrant groups having suffered severely from
extinction, for they are almost always represented by extremely few
species; and such species as do occur are generally very distinct from
each other, which again implies extinction. The genera Ornithorhynchus
and Lepidosiren, for example, would not have been less aberrant had
each been represented by a dozen species, instead of as at present by a
single one, or by two or three. We can, I think, account for this fact
only by looking at aberrant groups as forms which have been conquered
by more successful competitors, with a few members still preserved under
unusually favourable conditions.

Mr. Waterhouse has remarked that when a member belonging to one group of
animals exhibits an affinity to a quite distinct group, this affinity
in most cases is general and not special: thus, according to Mr.
Waterhouse, of all Rodents, the bizcacha is most nearly related to
Marsupials; but in the points in which it approaches this order, its
relations are general, that is, not to any one Marsupial species more
than to another. As these points of affinity are believed to be real
and not merely adaptive, they must be due in accordance with our view to
inheritance from a common progenitor. Therefore, we must suppose either
that all Rodents, including the bizcacha, branched off from some ancient
Marsupial, which will naturally have been more or less intermediate in
character with respect to all existing Marsupials; or that both Rodents
and Marsupials branched off from a common progenitor, and that both
groups have since undergone much modification in divergent directions.
On either view we must suppose that the bizcacha has retained, by
inheritance, more of the character of its ancient progenitor than have
other Rodents; and therefore it will not be specially related to any one
existing Marsupial, but indirectly to all or nearly all Marsupials, from
having partially retained the character of their common progenitor, or
of some early member of the group. On the other hand, of all Marsupials,
as Mr. Waterhouse has remarked, the Phascolomys resembles most nearly,
not any one species, but the general order of Rodents. In this case,
however, it may be strongly suspected that the resemblance is only
analogical, owing to the Phascolomys having become adapted to habits
like those of a Rodent. The elder De Candolle has made nearly similar
observations on the general nature of the affinities of distinct
families of plants.

On the principle of the multiplication and gradual divergence in
character of the species descended from a common progenitor, together
with their retention by inheritance of some characters in common, we can
understand the excessively complex and radiating affinities by which all
the members of the same family or higher group are connected together.
For the common progenitor of a whole family, now broken up by extinction
into distinct groups and subgroups, will have transmitted some of its
characters, modified in various ways and degrees, to all the species;
and they will consequently be related to each other by circuitous lines
of affinity of various lengths (as may be seen in the diagram so often
referred to), mounting up through many predecessors. As it is difficult
to show the blood-relationship between the numerous kindred of any
ancient and noble family, even by the aid of a genealogical tree, and
almost impossible to do so without this aid, we can understand
the extraordinary difficulty which naturalists have experienced in
describing, without the aid of a diagram, the various affinities which
they perceive between the many living and extinct members of the same
great natural class.

Extinction, as we have seen in the fourth chapter, has played an
important part in defining and widening the intervals between the
several groups in each class. We may thus account for the distinctness
of whole classes from each other--for instance, of birds from all other
vertebrate animals--by the belief that many ancient forms of life have
been utterly lost, through which the early progenitors of birds were
formerly connected with the early progenitors of the other and at that
time less differentiated vertebrate classes. There has been much
less extinction of the forms of life which once connected fishes with
Batrachians. There has been still less within some whole classes, for
instance the Crustacea, for here the most wonderfully diverse forms
are still linked together by a long and only partially broken chain of
affinities. Extinction has only defined the groups: it has by no means
made them; for if every form which has ever lived on this earth were
suddenly to reappear, though it would be quite impossible to give
definitions by which each group could be distinguished, still a natural
classification, or at least a natural arrangement, would be possible.
We shall see this by turning to the diagram: the letters, A to L, may
represent eleven Silurian genera, some of which have produced large
groups of modified descendants, with every link in each branch and
sub-branch still alive; and the links not greater than those between
existing varieties. In this case it would be quite impossible to give
definitions by which the several members of the several groups could be
distinguished from their more immediate parents and descendants. Yet the
arrangement in the diagram would still hold good and would be natural;
for, on the principle of inheritance, all the forms descended, for
instance from A, would have something in common. In a tree we can
distinguish this or that branch, though at the actual fork the two unite
and blend together. We could not, as I have said, define the several
groups; but we could pick out types, or forms, representing most of
the characters of each group, whether large or small, and thus give a
general idea of the value of the differences between them. This is what
we should be driven to, if we were ever to succeed in collecting all the
forms in any one class which have lived throughout all time and space.
Assuredly we shall never succeed in making so perfect a collection:
nevertheless, in certain classes, we are tending toward this end;
and Milne Edwards has lately insisted, in an able paper, on the high
importance of looking to types, whether or not we can separate and
define the groups to which such types belong.

Finally, we have seen that natural selection, which follows from the
struggle for existence, and which almost inevitably leads to
extinction and divergence of character in the descendants from any
one parent-species, explains that great and universal feature in the
affinities of all organic beings, namely, their subordination in group
under group. We use the element of descent in classing the individuals
of both sexes and of all ages under one species, although they may have
but few characters in common; we use descent in classing acknowledged
varieties, however different they may be from their parents; and I
believe that this element of descent is the hidden bond of connexion
which naturalists have sought under the term of the Natural System.
On this idea of the natural system being, in so far as it has been
perfected, genealogical in its arrangement, with the grades of
difference expressed by the terms genera, families, orders, etc., we
can understand the rules which we are compelled to follow in our
classification. We can understand why we value certain resemblances far
more than others; why we use rudimentary and useless organs, or others
of trifling physiological importance; why, in finding the relations
between one group and another, we summarily reject analogical or
adaptive characters, and yet use these same characters within the limits
of the same group. We can clearly see how it is that all living and
extinct forms can be grouped together within a few great classes; and
how the several members of each class are connected together by the most
complex and radiating lines of affinities. We shall never, probably,
disentangle the inextricable web of the affinities between the members
of any one class; but when we have a distinct object in view, and do not
look to some unknown plan of creation, we may hope to make sure but slow
progress.

Professor Haeckel in his "Generelle Morphologie" and in another works,
has recently brought his great knowledge and abilities to bear on what
he calls phylogeny, or the lines of descent of all organic beings.
In drawing up the several series he trusts chiefly to embryological
characters, but receives aid from homologous and rudimentary organs, as
well as from the successive periods at which the various forms of life
are believed to have first appeared in our geological formations. He has
thus boldly made a great beginning, and shows us how classification will
in the future be treated.

MORPHOLOGY.

We have seen that the members of the same class, independently of
their habits of life, resemble each other in the general plan of their
organisation. This resemblance is often expressed by the term "unity of
type;" or by saying that the several parts and organs in the different
species of the class are homologous. The whole subject is included under
the general term of Morphology. This is one of the most interesting
departments of natural history, and may almost be said to be its very
soul. What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for
grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle
of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on
the same pattern, and should include similar bones, in the same relative
positions? How curious it is, to give a subordinate though striking
instance, that the hind feet of the kangaroo, which are so well fitted
for bounding over the open plains--those of the climbing, leaf-eating
koala, equally well fitted for grasping the branches of trees--those
of the ground-dwelling, insect or root-eating, bandicoots--and those of
some other Australian marsupials--should all be constructed on the same
extraordinary type, namely with the bones of the second and third digits
extremely slender and enveloped within the same skin, so that they
appear like a single toe furnished with two claws. Notwithstanding this
similarity of pattern, it is obvious that the hind feet of these several
animals are used for as widely different purposes as it is possible to
conceive. The case is rendered all the more striking by the American
opossums, which follow nearly the same habits of life as some of their
Australian relatives, having feet constructed on the ordinary plan.
Professor Flower, from whom these statements are taken, remarks in
conclusion: "We may call this conformity to type, without getting much
nearer to an explanation of the phenomenon;" and he then adds "but is
it not powerfully suggestive of true relationship, of inheritance from a
common ancestor?"

Geoffroy St. Hilaire has strongly insisted on the high importance of
relative position or connexion in homologous parts; they may differ to
almost any extent in form and size, and yet remain connected together in
the same invariable order. We never find, for instance, the bones of
the arm and forearm, or of the thigh and leg, transposed. Hence the same
names can be given to the homologous bones in widely different animals.
We see the same great law in the construction of the mouths of insects:
what can be more different than the immensely long spiral proboscis of a
sphinx-moth, the curious folded one of a bee or bug, and the great jaws
of a beetle? Yet all these organs, serving for such widely different
purposes, are formed by infinitely numerous modifications of an upper
lip, mandibles, and two pairs of maxillae. The same law governs the
construction of the mouths and limbs of crustaceans. So it is with the
flowers of plants.

Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity
of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine
of final causes. The hopelessness of the attempt has been expressly
admitted by Owen in his most interesting work on the "Nature of Limbs."
On the ordinary view of the independent creation of each being, we can
only say that so it is; that it has pleased the Creator to construct all
the animals and plants in each great class on a uniform plan; but this
is not a scientific explanation.

The explanation is to a large extent simple, on the theory of the
selection of successive slight modifications, each being profitable in
some way to the modified form, but often affecting by correlation other
parts of the organisation. In changes of this nature, there will be
little or no tendency to alter the original pattern, or to transpose
the parts. The bones of a limb might be shortened and flattened to any
extent, becoming at the same time enveloped in thick membrane, so as to
serve as a fin; or a webbed hand might have all its bones, or certain
bones, lengthened to any extent, with the membrane connecting them
increased, so as to serve as a wing; yet all these modifications would
not tend to alter the framework of the bones or the relative connexion
of the parts. If we suppose that an early progenitor--the archetype,
as it may be called--of all mammals, birds and reptiles, had its limbs
constructed on the existing general pattern, for whatever purpose
they served, we can at once perceive the plain signification of the
homologous construction of the limbs throughout the class. So with the
mouths of insects, we have only to suppose that their common progenitor
had an upper lip, mandibles, and two pairs of maxillae, these parts
being perhaps very simple in form; and then natural selection will
account for the infinite diversity in structure and function of the
mouths of insects. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that the general
pattern of an organ might become so much obscured as to be finally lost,
by the reduction and ultimately by the complete abortion of
certain parts, by the fusion of other parts, and by the doubling or
multiplication of others, variations which we know to be within
the limits of possibility. In the paddles of the gigantic extinct
sea-lizards, and in the mouths of certain suctorial crustaceans, the
general pattern seems thus to have become partially obscured.

There is another and equally curious branch of our subject; namely,
serial homologies, or the comparison of the different parts or organs
in the same individual, and not of the same parts or organs in different
members of the same class. Most physiologists believe that the bones of
the skull are homologous--that is, correspond in number and in relative
connexion--with the elemental parts of a certain number of vertebrae.
The anterior and posterior limbs in all the higher vertebrate classes
are plainly homologous. So it is with the wonderfully complex jaws
and legs of crustaceans. It is familiar to almost every one, that in
a flower the relative position of the sepals, petals, stamens, and
pistils, as well as their intimate structure, are intelligible on the
view that they consist of metamorphosed leaves, arranged in a spire. In
monstrous plants, we often get direct evidence of the possibility of one
organ being transformed into another; and we can actually see, during
the early or embryonic stages of development in flowers, as well as
in crustaceans and many other animals, that organs, which when mature
become extremely different are at first exactly alike.

How inexplicable are the cases of serial homologies on the ordinary view
of creation! Why should the brain be enclosed in a box composed of
such numerous and such extraordinarily shaped pieces of bone apparently
representing vertebrae? As Owen has remarked, the benefit derived
from the yielding of the separate pieces in the act of parturition by
mammals, will by no means explain the same construction in the skulls of
birds and reptiles. Why should similar bones have been created to
form the wing and the leg of a bat, used as they are for such
totally different purposes, namely flying and walking? Why should one
crustacean, which has an extremely complex mouth formed of many parts,
consequently always have fewer legs; or conversely, those with many
legs have simpler mouths? Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and
pistils, in each flower, though fitted for such distinct purposes, be
all constructed on the same pattern?

On the theory of natural selection, we can, to a certain extent, answer
these questions. We need not here consider how the bodies of some
animals first became divided into a series of segments, or how they
became divided into right and left sides, with corresponding organs, for
such questions are almost beyond investigation. It is, however, probable
that some serial structures are the result of cells multiplying by
division, entailing the multiplication of the parts developed from
such cells. It must suffice for our purpose to bear in mind that
an indefinite repetition of the same part or organ is the common
characteristic, as Owen has remarked, of all low or little specialised
forms; therefore the unknown progenitor of the Vertebrata probably
possessed many vertebrae; the unknown progenitor of the Articulata, many
segments; and the unknown progenitor of flowering plants, many leaves
arranged in one or more spires. We have also formerly seen that parts
many times repeated are eminently liable to vary, not only in number,
but in form. Consequently such parts, being already present in
considerable numbers, and being highly variable, would naturally afford
the materials for adaptation to the most different purposes; yet they
would generally retain, through the force of inheritance, plain traces
of their original or fundamental resemblance. They would retain this
resemblance all the more, as the variations, which afforded the basis
for their subsequent modification through natural selection, would
tend from the first to be similar; the parts being at an early stage of
growth alike, and being subjected to nearly the same conditions. Such
parts, whether more or less modified, unless their common origin became
wholly obscured, would be serially homologous.

In the great class of molluscs, though the parts in distinct species
can be shown to be homologous, only a few serial homologies; such as the
valves of Chitons, can be indicated; that is, we are seldom enabled
to say that one part is homologous with another part in the same
individual. And we can understand this fact; for in molluscs, even
in the lowest members of the class, we do not find nearly so much
indefinite repetition of any one part as we find in the other great
classes of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.

But morphology is a much more complex subject than it at first appears,
as has lately been well shown in a remarkable paper by Mr. E. Ray
Lankester, who has drawn an important distinction between certain
classes of cases which have all been equally ranked by naturalists as
homologous. He proposes to call the structures which resemble each other
in distinct animals, owing to their descent from a common progenitor
with subsequent modification, "homogenous"; and the resemblances which
cannot thus be accounted for, he proposes to call "homoplastic". For
instance, he believes that the hearts of birds and mammals are as a
whole homogenous--that is, have been derived from a common progenitor;
but that the four cavities of the heart in the two classes are
homoplastic--that is, have been independently developed. Mr. Lankester
also adduces the close resemblance of the parts on the right and left
sides of the body, and in the successive segments of the same individual
animal; and here we have parts commonly called homologous which bear no
relation to the descent of distinct species from a common progenitor.
Homoplastic structures are the same with those which I have classed,
though in a very imperfect manner, as analogous modifications or
resemblances. Their formation may be attributed in part to distinct
organisms, or to distinct parts of the same organism, having varied in
an analogous manner; and in part to similar modifications, having
been preserved for the same general purpose or function, of which many
instances have been given.

Naturalists frequently speak of the skull as formed of metamorphosed
vertebrae; the jaws of crabs as metamorphosed legs; the stamens and
pistils in flowers as metamorphosed leaves; but it would in most cases
be more correct, as Professor Huxley has remarked, to speak of both
skull and vertebrae, jaws and legs, etc., as having been metamorphosed,
not one from the other, as they now exist, but from some common and
simpler element. Most naturalists, however, use such language only in a
metaphorical sense: they are far from meaning that during a long course
of descent, primordial organs of any kind--vertebrae in the one case and
legs in the other--have actually been converted into skulls or jaws. Yet
so strong is the appearance of this having occurred that naturalists
can hardly avoid employing language having this plain signification.
According to the views here maintained, such language may be used
literally; and the wonderful fact of the jaws, for instance, of a crab
retaining numerous characters, which they probably would have retained
through inheritance, if they had really been metamorphosed from true
though extremely simple legs, is in part explained.

DEVELOPMENT AND EMBRYOLOGY.

This is one of the most important subjects in the whole round of natural
history. The metamorphoses of insects, with which every one is familiar,
are generally effected abruptly by a few stages; but the transformations
are in reality numerous and gradual, though concealed. A certain
ephemerous insect (Chloeon) during its development, moults, as shown by
Sir J. Lubbock, above twenty times, and each time undergoes a certain
amount of change; and in this case we see the act of metamorphosis
performed in a primary and gradual manner. Many insects, and especially
certain crustaceans, show us what wonderful changes of structure can be
effected during development. Such changes, however, reach their acme in
the so-called alternate generations of some of the lower animals. It is,
for instance, an astonishing fact that a delicate branching coralline,
studded with polypi, and attached to a submarine rock, should produce,
first by budding and then by transverse division, a host of huge
floating jelly-fishes; and that these should produce eggs, from which
are hatched swimming animalcules, which attach themselves to rocks and
become developed into branching corallines; and so on in an endless
cycle. The belief in the essential identity of the process of alternate
generation and of ordinary metamorphosis has been greatly strengthened
by Wagner's discovery of the larva or maggot of a fly, namely the
Cecidomyia, producing asexually other larvae, and these others, which
finally are developed into mature males and females, propagating their
kind in the ordinary manner by eggs.

It may be worth notice that when Wagner's remarkable discovery was first
announced, I was asked how was it possible to account for the larvae of
this fly having acquired the power of a sexual reproduction. As long as
the case remained unique no answer could be given. But already Grimm has
shown that another fly, a Chironomus, reproduces itself in nearly the
same manner, and he believes that this occurs frequently in the order.
It is the pupa, and not the larva, of the Chironomus which has this
power; and Grimm further shows that this case, to a certain extent,
"unites that of the Cecidomyia with the parthenogenesis of the
Coccidae;" the term parthenogenesis implying that the mature females of
the Coccidae are capable of producing fertile eggs without the concourse
of the male. Certain animals belonging to several classes are now known
to have the power of ordinary reproduction at an unusually early age;
and we have only to accelerate parthenogenetic reproduction by gradual
steps to an earlier and earlier age--Chironomus showing us an almost
exactly intermediate stage, viz., that of the pupa--and we can perhaps
account for the marvellous case of the Cecidomyia.

It has already been stated that various parts in the same individual,
which are exactly alike during an early embryonic period, become widely
different and serve for widely different purposes in the adult state. So
again it has been shown that generally the embryos of the most distinct
species belonging to the same class are closely similar, but become,
when fully developed, widely dissimilar. A better proof of this latter
fact cannot be given than the statement by Von Baer that "the embryos of
mammalia, of birds, lizards and snakes, probably also of chelonia, are
in the earliest states exceedingly like one another, both as a whole and
in the mode of development of their parts; so much so, in fact, that we
can often distinguish the embryos only by their size. In my possession
are two little embryos in spirit, whose names I have omitted to attach,
and at present I am quite unable to say to what class they belong. They
may be lizards or small birds, or very young mammalia, so complete is
the similarity in the mode of formation of the head and trunk in these
animals. The extremities, however, are still absent in these embryos.
But even if they had existed in the earliest stage of their development
we should learn nothing, for the feet of lizards and mammals, the wings
and feet of birds, no less than the hands and feet of man, all arise
from the same fundamental form." The larvae of most crustaceans, at
corresponding stages of development, closely resemble each other,
however different the adults may become; and so it is with very many
other animals. A trace of the law of embryonic resemblance occasionally
lasts till a rather late age: thus birds of the same genus, and of
allied genera, often resemble each other in their immature plumage; as
we see in the spotted feathers in the young of the thrush group. In
the cat tribe, most of the species when adult are striped or spotted in
lines; and stripes or spots can be plainly distinguished in the whelp of
the lion and the puma. We occasionally, though rarely, see something of
the same kind in plants; thus the first leaves of the ulex or furze, and
the first leaves of the phyllodineous acacias, are pinnate or divided
like the ordinary leaves of the leguminosae.

The points of structure, in which the embryos of widely different
animals within the same class resemble each other, often have no direct
relation to their conditions of existence. We cannot, for instance,
suppose that in the embryos of the vertebrata the peculiar loop-like
courses of the arteries near the branchial slits are related to similar
conditions--in the young mammal which is nourished in the womb of its
mother, in the egg of the bird which is hatched in a nest, and in the
spawn of a frog under water. We have no more reason to believe in such a
relation than we have to believe that the similar bones in the hand of
a man, wing of a bat, and fin of a porpoise, are related to similar
conditions of life. No one supposes that the stripes on the whelp of
a lion, or the spots on the young blackbird, are of any use to these
animals.

The case, however, is different when an animal, during any part of its
embryonic career, is active, and has to provide for itself. The period
of activity may come on earlier or later in life; but whenever it comes
on, the adaptation of the larva to its conditions of life is just as
perfect and as beautiful as in the adult animal. In how important a
manner this has acted, has recently been well shown by Sir J. Lubbock
in his remarks on the close similarity of the larvae of some insects
belonging to very different orders, and on the dissimilarity of the
larvae of other insects within the same order, according to their habits
of life. Owing to such adaptations the similarity of the larvae of
allied animals is sometimes greatly obscured; especially when there is
a division of labour during the different stages of development, as
when the same larva has during one stage to search for food, and during
another stage has to search for a place of attachment. Cases can even be
given of the larvae of allied species, or groups of species, differing
more from each other than do the adults. In most cases, however, the
larvae, though active, still obey, more or less closely, the law of
common embryonic resemblance. Cirripedes afford a good instance of
this: even the illustrious Cuvier did not perceive that a barnacle was
a crustacean: but a glance at the larva shows this in an unmistakable
manner. So again the two main divisions of cirripedes, the pedunculated
and sessile, though differing widely in external appearance, have larvae
in all their stages barely distinguishable.

The embryo in the course of development generally rises in organisation.
I use this expression, though I am aware that it is hardly possible to
define clearly what is meant by organisation being higher or lower.
But no one probably will dispute that the butterfly is higher than
the caterpillar. In some cases, however, the mature animal must be
considered as lower in the scale than the larva, as with certain
parasitic crustaceans. To refer once again to cirripedes: the larvae in
the first stage have three pairs of locomotive organs, a simple single
eye, and a probosciformed mouth, with which they feed largely, for they
increase much in size. In the second stage, answering to the chrysalis
stage of butterflies, they have six pairs of beautifully constructed
natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes, and extremely
complex antennae; but they have a closed and imperfect mouth, and
cannot feed: their function at this stage is, to search out by their
well-developed organs of sense, and to reach by their active powers
of swimming, a proper place on which to become attached and to undergo
their final metamorphosis. When this is completed they are fixed for
life: their legs are now converted into prehensile organs; they again
obtain a well-constructed mouth; but they have no antennae, and their
two eyes are now reconverted into a minute, single, simple eye-spot.
In this last and complete state, cirripedes may be considered as
either more highly or more lowly organised than they were in the
larval condition. But in some genera the larvae become developed into
hermaphrodites having the ordinary structure, or into what I have called
complemental males; and in the latter the development has assuredly been
retrograde; for the male is a mere sack, which lives for a short time
and is destitute of mouth, stomach, and every other organ of importance,
excepting those for reproduction.

We are so much accustomed to see a difference in structure between the
embryo and the adult, that we are tempted to look at this difference as
in some necessary manner contingent on growth. But there is no reason
why, for instance, the wing of a bat, or the fin of a porpoise, should
not have been sketched out with all their parts in proper proportion, as
soon as any part became visible. In some whole groups of animals and in
certain members of other groups this is the case, and the embryo does
not at any period differ widely from the adult: thus Owen has remarked
in regard to cuttle-fish, "there is no metamorphosis; the cephalopodic
character is manifested long before the parts of the embryo are
completed." Land-shells and fresh-water crustaceans are born having
their proper forms, while the marine members of the same two great
classes pass through considerable and often great changes during their
development. Spiders, again, barely undergo any metamorphosis. The
larvae of most insects pass through a worm-like stage, whether they are
active and adapted to diversified habits, or are inactive from being
placed in the midst of proper nutriment, or from being fed by their
parents; but in some few cases, as in that of Aphis, if we look to
the admirable drawings of the development of this insect, by Professor
Huxley, we see hardly any trace of the vermiform stage.

Sometimes it is only the earlier developmental stages which fail. Thus,
Fritz Muller has made the remarkable discovery that certain shrimp-like
crustaceans (allied to Penoeus) first appear under the simple
nauplius-form, and after passing through two or more zoea-stages, and
then through the mysis-stage, finally acquire their mature structure:
now in the whole great malacostracan order, to which these crustaceans
belong, no other member is as yet known to be first developed under the
nauplius-form, though many appear as zoeas; nevertheless Muller assigns
reasons for his belief, that if there had been no suppression of
development, all these crustaceans would have appeared as nauplii.

How, then, can we explain these several facts in embryology--namely, the
very general, though not universal, difference in structure between the
embryo and the adult; the various parts in the same individual embryo,
which ultimately become very unlike, and serve for diverse purposes,
being at an early period of growth alike; the common, but not
invariable, resemblance between the embryos or larvae of the most
distinct species in the same class; the embryo often retaining, while
within the egg or womb, structures which are of no service to it, either
at that or at a later period of life; on the other hand, larvae which
have to provide for their own wants, being perfectly adapted to the
surrounding conditions; and lastly, the fact of certain larvae standing
higher in the scale of organisation than the mature animal into which
they are developed? I believe that all these facts can be explained as
follows.

It is commonly assumed, perhaps from monstrosities affecting the embryo
at a very early period, that slight variations or individual differences
necessarily appear at an equally early period. We have little evidence
on this head, but what we have certainly points the other way; for it
is notorious that breeders of cattle, horses and various fancy animals,
cannot positively tell, until some time after birth, what will be the
merits and demerits of their young animals. We see this plainly in our
own children; we cannot tell whether a child will be tall or short, or
what its precise features will be. The question is not, at what period
of life any variation may have been caused, but at what period the
effects are displayed. The cause may have acted, and I believe often has
acted, on one or both parents before the act of generation. It deserves
notice that it is of no importance to a very young animal, as long as it
is nourished and protected by its parent, whether most of its characters
are acquired a little earlier or later in life. It would not signify,
for instance, to a bird which obtained its food by having a much-curved
beak whether or not while young it possessed a beak of this shape, as
long as it was fed by its parents.

I have stated in the first chapter, that at whatever age any variation
first appears in the parent, it tends to reappear at a corresponding age
in the offspring. Certain variations can only appear at corresponding
ages; for instance, peculiarities in the caterpillar, cocoon, or imago
states of the silk-moth; or, again, in the full-grown horns of cattle.
But variations which, for all that we can see might have appeared either
earlier or later in life, likewise tend to reappear at a corresponding
age in the offspring and parent. I am far from meaning that this is
invariably the case, and I could give several exceptional cases of
variations (taking the word in the largest sense) which have supervened
at an earlier age in the child than in the parent.

These two principles, namely, that slight variations generally appear
at a not very early period of life, and are inherited at a corresponding
not early period, explain, as I believe, all the above specified leading
facts in embryology. But first let us look to a few analogous cases in
our domestic varieties. Some authors who have written on Dogs maintain
that the greyhound and bull-dog, though so different, are really closely
allied varieties, descended from the same wild stock, hence I was
curious to see how far their puppies differed from each other. I was
told by breeders that they differed just as much as their parents, and
this, judging by the eye, seemed almost to be the case; but on actually
measuring the old dogs and their six-days-old puppies, I found that
the puppies had not acquired nearly their full amount of proportional
difference. So, again, I was told that the foals of cart and
race-horses--breeds which have been almost wholly formed by selection
under domestication--differed as much as the full-grown animals; but
having had careful measurements made of the dams and of three-days-old
colts of race and heavy cart-horses, I find that this is by no means the
case.

As we have conclusive evidence that the breeds of the Pigeon are
descended from a single wild species, I compared the young pigeons
within twelve hours after being hatched. I carefully measured the
proportions (but will not here give the details) of the beak, width of
mouth, length of nostril and of eyelid, size of feet and length of leg,
in the wild parent species, in pouters, fantails, runts, barbs, dragons,
carriers, and tumblers. Now, some of these birds, when mature, differ in
so extraordinary a manner in the length and form of beak, and in other
characters, that they would certainly have been ranked as distinct
genera if found in a state of nature. But when the nestling birds of
these several breeds were placed in a row, though most of them could
just be distinguished, the proportional differences in the above
specified points were incomparably less than in the full-grown birds.
Some characteristic points of difference--for instance, that of the
width of mouth--could hardly be detected in the young. But there was
one remarkable exception to this rule, for the young of the short-faced
tumbler differed from the young of the wild rock-pigeon, and of the
other breeds, in almost exactly the same proportions as in the adult
stage.

These facts are explained by the above two principles. Fanciers select
their dogs, horses, pigeons, etc., for breeding, when nearly grown up.
They are indifferent whether the desired qualities are acquired earlier
or later in life, if the full-grown animal possesses them. And the
cases just given, more especially that of the pigeons, show that
the characteristic differences which have been accumulated by man's
selection, and which give value to his breeds, do not generally appear
at a very early period of life, and are inherited at a corresponding not
early period. But the case of the short-faced tumbler, which when twelve
hours old possessed its proper characters, proves that this is not the
universal rule; for here the characteristic differences must either have
appeared at an earlier period than usual, or, if not so, the differences
must have been inherited, not at a corresponding, but at an earlier age.

Now, let us apply these two principles to species in a state of nature.
Let us take a group of birds, descended from some ancient form and
modified through natural selection for different habits. Then, from
the many slight successive variations having supervened in the several
species at a not early age, and having been inherited at a corresponding
age, the young will have been but little modified, and they will still
resemble each other much more closely than do the adults, just as we
have seen with the breeds of the pigeon. We may extend this view to
widely distinct structures and to whole classes. The fore-limbs, for
instance, which once served as legs to a remote progenitor, may have
become, through a long course of modification, adapted in one descendant
to act as hands, in another as paddles, in another as wings; but on the
above two principles the fore-limbs will not have been much modified in
the embryos of these several forms; although in each form the fore-limb
will differ greatly in the adult state. Whatever influence long
continued use or disuse may have had in modifying the limbs or other
parts of any species, this will chiefly or solely have affected it when
nearly mature, when it was compelled to use its full powers to gain its
own living; and the effects thus produced will have been transmitted to
the offspring at a corresponding nearly mature age. Thus the young will
not be modified, or will be modified only in a slight degree, through
the effects of the increased use or disuse of parts.

With some animals the successive variations may have supervened at a
very early period of life, or the steps may have been inherited at an
earlier age than that at which they first occurred. In either of these
cases the young or embryo will closely resemble the mature parent-form,
as we have seen with the short-faced tumbler. And this is the rule of
development in certain whole groups, or in certain sub-groups alone,
as with cuttle-fish, land-shells, fresh-water crustaceans, spiders, and
some members of the great class of insects. With respect to the final
cause of the young in such groups not passing through any metamorphosis,
we can see that this would follow from the following contingencies:
namely, from the young having to provide at a very early age for their
own wants, and from their following the same habits of life with their
parents; for in this case it would be indispensable for their existence
that they should be modified in the same manner as their parents. Again,
with respect to the singular fact that many terrestrial and fresh-water
animals do not undergo any metamorphosis, while marine members of the
same groups pass through various transformations, Fritz Muller has
suggested that the process of slowly modifying and adapting an animal
to live on the land or in fresh water, instead of in the sea, would be
greatly simplified by its not passing through any larval stage; for it
is not probable that places well adapted for both the larval and
mature stages, under such new and greatly changed habits of life, would
commonly be found unoccupied or ill-occupied by other organisms. In this
case the gradual acquirement at an earlier and earlier age of the adult
structure would be favoured by natural selection; and all traces of
former metamorphoses would finally be lost.

If, on the other hand, it profited the young of an animal to follow
habits of life slightly different from those of the parent-form, and
consequently to be constructed on a slightly different plan, or if
it profited a larva already different from its parent to change still
further, then, on the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages,
the young or the larvae might be rendered by natural selection more and
more different from their parents to any conceivable extent. Differences
in the larva might, also, become correlated with successive stages of
its development; so that the larva, in the first stage, might come to
differ greatly from the larva in the second stage, as is the case with
many animals. The adult might also become fitted for sites or habits, in
which organs of locomotion or of the senses, etc., would be useless; and
in this case the metamorphosis would be retrograde.

From the remarks just made we can see how by changes of structure in
the young, in conformity with changed habits of life, together with
inheritance at corresponding ages, animals might come to pass through
stages of development, perfectly distinct from the primordial condition
of their adult progenitors. Most of our best authorities are now
convinced that the various larval and pupal stages of insects have thus
been acquired through adaptation, and not through inheritance from some
ancient form. The curious case of Sitaris--a beetle which passes through
certain unusual stages of development--will illustrate how this might
occur. The first larval form is described by M. Fabre, as an active,
minute insect, furnished with six legs, two long antennae, and four
eyes. These larvae are hatched in the nests of bees; and when the male
bees emerge from their burrows, in the spring, which they do before
the females, the larvae spring on them, and afterwards crawl on to the
females while paired with the males. As soon as the female bee deposits
her eggs on the surface of the honey stored in the cells, the larvae of
the Sitaris leap on the eggs and devour them. Afterwards they undergo
a complete change; their eyes disappear; their legs and antennae become
rudimentary, and they feed on honey; so that they now more closely
resemble the ordinary larvae of insects; ultimately they undergo a
further transformation, and finally emerge as the perfect beetle. Now,
if an insect, undergoing transformations like those of the Sitaris, were
to become the progenitor of a whole new class of insects, the course of
development of the new class would be widely different from that of
our existing insects; and the first larval stage certainly would not
represent the former condition of any adult and ancient form.

On the other hand it is highly probable that with many animals the
embryonic or larval stages show us, more or less completely, the
condition of the progenitor of the whole group in its adult state. In
the great class of the Crustacea, forms wonderfully distinct from each
other, namely, suctorial parasites, cirripedes, entomostraca, and even
the malacostraca, appear at first as larvae under the nauplius-form; and
as these larvae live and feed in the open sea, and are not adapted for
any peculiar habits of life, and from other reasons assigned by Fritz
Muller, it is probable that at some very remote period an independent
adult animal, resembling the Nauplius, existed, and subsequently
produced, along several divergent lines of descent, the above-named
great Crustacean groups. So again, it is probable, from what we know of
the embryos of mammals, birds, fishes and reptiles, that these animals
are the modified descendants of some ancient progenitor, which was
furnished in its adult state with branchiae, a swim-bladder, four
fin-like limbs, and a long tail, all fitted for an aquatic life.

As all the organic beings, extinct and recent, which have ever lived,
can be arranged within a few great classes; and as all within each
class have, according to our theory, been connected together by fine
gradations, the best, and, if our collections were nearly perfect, the
only possible arrangement, would be genealogical; descent being the
hidden bond of connexion which naturalists have been seeking under the
term of the Natural System. On this view we can understand how it is
that, in the eyes of most naturalists, the structure of the embryo is
even more important for classification than that of the adult. In two or
more groups of animals, however much they may differ from each other
in structure and habits in their adult condition, if they pass through
closely similar embryonic stages, we may feel assured that they are all
descended from one parent-form, and are therefore closely related.
Thus, community in embryonic structure reveals community of descent; but
dissimilarity in embryonic development does not prove discommunity of
descent, for in one of two groups the developmental stages may have been
suppressed, or may have been so greatly modified through adaptation to
new habits of life as to be no longer recognisable. Even in groups, in
which the adults have been modified to an extreme degree, community of
origin is often revealed by the structure of the larvae; we have seen,
for instance, that cirripedes, though externally so like shell-fish,
are at once known by their larvae to belong to the great class of
crustaceans. As the embryo often shows us more or less plainly the
structure of the less modified and ancient progenitor of the group, we
can see why ancient and extinct forms so often resemble in their
adult state the embryos of existing species of the same class. Agassiz
believes this to be a universal law of nature; and we may hope hereafter
to see the law proved true. It can, however, be proved true only in
those cases in which the ancient state of the progenitor of the group
has not been wholly obliterated, either by successive variations having
supervened at a very early period of growth, or by such variations
having been inherited at an earlier age than that at which they first
appeared. It should also be borne in mind, that the law may be true,
but yet, owing to the geological record not extending far enough back
in time, may remain for a long period, or for ever, incapable of
demonstration. The law will not strictly hold good in those cases in
which an ancient form became adapted in its larval state to some special
line of life, and transmitted the same larval state to a whole group
of descendants; for such larval state will not resemble any still more
ancient form in its adult state.

Thus, as it seems to me, the leading facts in embryology, which
are second to none in importance, are explained on the principle of
variations in the many descendants from some one ancient progenitor,
having appeared at a not very early period of life, and having been
inherited at a corresponding period. Embryology rises greatly in
interest, when we look at the embryo as a picture, more or less
obscured, of the progenitor, either in its adult or larval state, of all
the members of the same great class.

RUDIMENTARY, ATROPHIED, AND ABORTED ORGANS.

Organs or parts in this strange condition, bearing the plain stamp of
inutility, are extremely common, or even general, throughout nature. It
would be impossible to name one of the higher animals in which some
part or other is not in a rudimentary condition. In the mammalia, for
instance, the males possess rudimentary mammae; in snakes one lobe of
the lungs is rudimentary; in birds the "bastard-wing" may safely be
considered as a rudimentary digit, and in some species the whole wing is
so far rudimentary that it cannot be used for flight. What can be more
curious than the presence of teeth in foetal whales, which when grown up
have not a tooth in their heads; or the teeth, which never cut through
the gums, in the upper jaws of unborn calves?

Rudimentary organs plainly declare their origin and meaning in various
ways. There are beetles belonging to closely allied species, or even
to the same identical species, which have either full-sized and perfect
wings, or mere rudiments of membrane, which not rarely lie under
wing-covers firmly soldered together; and in these cases it is
impossible to doubt, that the rudiments represent wings. Rudimentary
organs sometimes retain their potentiality: this occasionally occurs
with the mammae of male mammals, which have been known to become well
developed and to secrete milk. So again in the udders of the genus Bos,
there are normally four developed and two rudimentary teats; but the
latter in our domestic cows sometimes become well developed and yield
milk. In regard to plants, the petals are sometimes rudimentary, and
sometimes well developed in the individuals of the same species. In
certain plants having separated sexes Kolreuter found that by crossing a
species, in which the male flowers included a rudiment of a pistil, with
an hermaphrodite species, having of course a well-developed pistil, the
rudiment in the hybrid offspring was much increased in size; and this
clearly shows that the rudimentary and perfect pistils are essentially
alike in nature. An animal may possess various parts in a perfect state,
and yet they may in one sense be rudimentary, for they are useless: thus
the tadpole of the common salamander or water-newt, as Mr. G.H. Lewes
remarks, "has gills, and passes its existence in the water; but the
Salamandra atra, which lives high up among the mountains, brings forth
its young full-formed. This animal never lives in the water. Yet if
we open a gravid female, we find tadpoles inside her with exquisitely
feathered gills; and when placed in water they swim about like the
tadpoles of the water-newt. Obviously this aquatic organisation has no
reference to the future life of the animal, nor has it any adaptation
to its embryonic condition; it has solely reference to ancestral
adaptations, it repeats a phase in the development of its progenitors."

An organ, serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly
aborted for one, even the more important purpose, and remain perfectly
efficient for the other. Thus, in plants, the office of the pistil is
to allow the pollen-tubes to reach the ovules within the ovarium.
The pistil consists of a stigma supported on the style; but in some
Compositae, the male florets, which of course cannot be fecundated, have
a rudimentary pistil, for it is not crowned with a stigma; but the style
remains well developed and is clothed in the usual manner with hairs,
which serve to brush the pollen out of the surrounding and conjoined
anthers. Again, an organ may become rudimentary for its proper purpose,
and be used for a distinct one: in certain fishes the swim-bladder seems
to be rudimentary for its proper function of giving buoyancy, but has
become converted into a nascent breathing organ or lung. Many similar
instances could be given.

Useful organs, however little they may be developed, unless we have
reason to suppose that they were formerly more highly developed, ought
not to be considered as rudimentary. They may be in a nascent condition,
and in progress towards further development. Rudimentary organs, on
the other hand, are either quite useless, such as teeth which never cut
through the gums, or almost useless, such as the wings of an ostrich,
which serve merely as sails. As organs in this condition would formerly,
when still less developed, have been of even less use than at present,
they cannot formerly have been produced through variation and
natural selection, which acts solely by the preservation of useful
modifications. They have been partially retained by the power of
inheritance, and relate to a former state of things. It is, however,
often difficult to distinguish between rudimentary and nascent organs;
for we can judge only by analogy whether a part is capable of further
development, in which case alone it deserves to be called nascent.
Organs in this condition will always be somewhat rare; for beings thus
provided will commonly have been supplanted by their successors with the
same organ in a more perfect state, and consequently will have become
long ago extinct. The wing of the penguin is of high service, acting as
a fin; it may, therefore, represent the nascent state of the wing: not
that I believe this to be the case; it is more probably a reduced organ,
modified for a new function: the wing of the Apteryx, on the other hand,
is quite useless, and is truly rudimentary. Owen considers the simple
filamentary limbs of the Lepidosiren as the "beginnings of organs
which attain full functional development in higher vertebrates;" but,
according to the view lately advocated by Dr. Gunther, they are probably
remnants, consisting of the persistent axis of a fin, with the lateral
rays or branches aborted. The mammary glands of the Ornithorhynchus may
be considered, in comparison with the udders of a cow, as in a nascent
condition. The ovigerous frena of certain cirripedes, which have ceased
to give attachment to the ova and are feebly developed, are nascent
branchiae.

Rudimentary organs in the individuals of the same species are very
liable to vary in the degree of their development and in other respects.
In closely allied species, also, the extent to which the same organ
has been reduced occasionally differs much. This latter fact is well
exemplified in the state of the wings of female moths belonging to
the same family. Rudimentary organs may be utterly aborted; and this
implies, that in certain animals or plants, parts are entirely absent
which analogy would lead us to expect to find in them, and which
are occasionally found in monstrous individuals. Thus in most of
the Scrophulariaceae the fifth stamen is utterly aborted; yet we may
conclude that a fifth stamen once existed, for a rudiment of it is found
in many species of the family, and this rudiment occasionally becomes
perfectly developed, as may sometimes be seen in the common snap-dragon.
In tracing the homologies of any part in different members of the same
class, nothing is more common, or, in order fully to understand the
relations of the parts, more useful than the discovery of rudiments.
This is well shown in the drawings given by Owen of the leg bones of the
horse, ox, and rhinoceros.

It is an important fact that rudimentary organs, such as teeth in the
upper jaws of whales and ruminants, can often be detected in the embryo,
but afterwards wholly disappear. It is also, I believe, a universal
rule, that a rudimentary part is of greater size in the embryo
relatively to the adjoining parts, than in the adult; so that the organ
at this early age is less rudimentary, or even cannot be said to be in
any degree rudimentary. Hence rudimentary organs in the adult are often
said to have retained their embryonic condition.

I have now given the leading facts with respect to rudimentary organs.
In reflecting on them, every one must be struck with astonishment; for
the same reasoning power which tells us that most parts and organs are
exquisitely adapted for certain purposes, tells us with equal plainness
that these rudimentary or atrophied organs are imperfect and useless. In
works on natural history, rudimentary organs are generally said to have
been created "for the sake of symmetry," or in order "to complete the
scheme of nature." But this is not an explanation, merely a restatement
of the fact. Nor is it consistent with itself: thus the boa-constrictor
has rudiments of hind limbs and of a pelvis, and if it be said that
these bones have been retained "to complete the scheme of nature," why,
as Professor Weismann asks, have they not been retained by other snakes,
which do not possess even a vestige of these same bones? What would be
thought of an astronomer who maintained that the satellites revolve in
elliptic courses round their planets "for the sake of symmetry," because
the planets thus revolve round the sun? An eminent physiologist accounts
for the presence of rudimentary organs, by supposing that they serve to
excrete matter in excess, or matter injurious to the system; but can we
suppose that the minute papilla, which often represents the pistil in
male flowers, and which is formed of mere cellular tissue, can thus act?
Can we suppose that rudimentary teeth, which are subsequently absorbed,
are beneficial to the rapidly growing embryonic calf by removing
matter so precious as phosphate of lime? When a man's fingers have been
amputated, imperfect nails have been known to appear on the stumps, and
I could as soon believe that these vestiges of nails are developed in
order to excrete horny matter, as that the rudimentary nails on the fin
of the manatee have been developed for this same purpose.

On the view of descent with modification, the origin of rudimentary
organs is comparatively simple; and we can understand to a large extent
the laws governing their imperfect development. We have plenty of cases
of rudimentary organs in our domestic productions, as the stump of a
tail in tailless breeds, the vestige of an ear in earless breeds of
sheep--the reappearance of minute dangling horns in hornless breeds of
cattle, more especially, according to Youatt, in young animals--and the
state of the whole flower in the cauliflower. We often see rudiments of
various parts in monsters; but I doubt whether any of these cases throw
light on the origin of rudimentary organs in a state of nature, further
than by showing that rudiments can be produced; for the balance of
evidence clearly indicates that species under nature do not undergo
great and abrupt changes. But we learn from the study of our domestic
productions that the disuse of parts leads to their reduced size; and
that the result is inherited.

It appears probable that disuse has been the main agent in rendering
organs rudimentary. It would at first lead by slow steps to the more
and more complete reduction of a part, until at last it became
rudimentary--as in the case of the eyes of animals inhabiting dark
caverns, and of the wings of birds inhabiting oceanic islands, which
have seldom been forced by beasts of prey to take flight, and have
ultimately lost the power of flying. Again, an organ, useful under
certain conditions, might become injurious under others, as with the
wings of beetles living on small and exposed islands; and in this case
natural selection will have aided in reducing the organ, until it was
rendered harmless and rudimentary.

Any change in structure and function, which can be effected by small
stages, is within the power of natural selection; so that an organ
rendered, through changed habits of life, useless or injurious for one
purpose, might be modified and used for another purpose. An organ
might, also, be retained for one alone of its former functions. Organs,
originally formed by the aid of natural selection, when rendered useless
may well be variable, for their variations can no longer be checked by
natural selection. All this agrees well with what we see under nature.
Moreover, at whatever period of life either disuse or selection reduces
an organ, and this will generally be when the being has come to maturity
and to exert its full powers of action, the principle of inheritance at
corresponding ages will tend to reproduce the organ in its reduced state
at the same mature age, but will seldom affect it in the embryo. Thus
we can understand the greater size of rudimentary organs in the embryo
relatively to the adjoining parts, and their lesser relative size in the
adult. If, for instance, the digit of an adult animal was used less and
less during many generations, owing to some change of habits, or if an
organ or gland was less and less functionally exercised, we may infer
that it would become reduced in size in the adult descendants of this
animal, but would retain nearly its original standard of development in
the embryo.

There remains, however, this difficulty. After an organ has ceased being
used, and has become in consequence much reduced, how can it be still
further reduced in size until the merest vestige is left; and how can it
be finally quite obliterated? It is scarcely possible that disuse can go
on producing any further effect after the organ has once been rendered
functionless. Some additional explanation is here requisite which I
cannot give. If, for instance, it could be proved that every part of the
organisation tends to vary in a greater degree towards diminution than
toward augmentation of size, then we should be able to understand how an
organ which has become useless would be rendered, independently of the
effects of disuse, rudimentary and would at last be wholly suppressed;
for the variations towards diminished size would no longer be checked by
natural selection. The principle of the economy of growth, explained in
a former chapter, by which the materials forming any part, if not useful
to the possessor, are saved as far as is possible, will perhaps come
into play in rendering a useless part rudimentary. But this principle
will almost necessarily be confined to the earlier stages of the process
of reduction; for we cannot suppose that a minute papilla, for instance,
representing in a male flower the pistil of the female flower, and
formed merely of cellular tissue, could be further reduced or absorbed
for the sake of economising nutriment.

Finally, as rudimentary organs, by whatever steps they may have been
degraded into their present useless condition, are the record of a
former state of things, and have been retained solely through the
power of inheritance--we can understand, on the genealogical view of
classification, how it is that systematists, in placing organisms in
their proper places in the natural system, have often found rudimentary
parts as useful as, or even sometimes more useful than, parts of high
physiological importance. Rudimentary organs may be compared with the
letters in a word, still retained in the spelling, but become useless in
the pronunciation, but which serve as a clue for its derivation. On the
view of descent with modification, we may conclude that the existence
of organs in a rudimentary, imperfect, and useless condition, or quite
aborted, far from presenting a strange difficulty, as they assuredly
do on the old doctrine of creation, might even have been anticipated in
accordance with the views here explained.

SUMMARY.

In this chapter I have attempted to show that the arrangement of all
organic beings throughout all time in groups under groups--that the
nature of the relationships by which all living and extinct organisms
are united by complex, radiating, and circuitous lines of affinities
into a few grand classes--the rules followed and the difficulties
encountered by naturalists in their classifications--the value set upon
characters, if constant and prevalent, whether of high or of the
most trifling importance, or, as with rudimentary organs of no
importance--the wide opposition in value between analogical or adaptive
characters, and characters of true affinity; and other such rules--all
naturally follow if we admit the common parentage of allied forms,
together with their modification through variation and natural
selection, with the contingencies of extinction and divergence of
character. In considering this view of classification, it should be
borne in mind that the element of descent has been universally used
in ranking together the sexes, ages, dimorphic forms, and acknowledged
varieties of the same species, however much they may differ from each
other in structure. If we extend the use of this element of descent--the
one certainly known cause of similarity in organic beings--we shall
understand what is meant by the Natural System: it is genealogical in
its attempted arrangement, with the grades of acquired difference marked
by the terms, varieties, species, genera, families, orders, and classes.

On this same view of descent with modification, most of the great facts
in Morphology become intelligible--whether we look to the same pattern
displayed by the different species of the same class in their homologous
organs, to whatever purpose applied, or to the serial and lateral
homologies in each individual animal and plant.

On the principle of successive slight variations, not necessarily
or generally supervening at a very early period of life, and being
inherited at a corresponding period, we can understand the leading facts
in embryology; namely, the close resemblance in the individual embryo
of the parts which are homologous, and which when matured become
widely different in structure and function; and the resemblance of the
homologous parts or organs in allied though distinct species, though
fitted in the adult state for habits as different as is possible. Larvae
are active embryos, which have become specially modified in a greater
or less degree in relation to their habits of life, with their
modifications inherited at a corresponding early age. On these same
principles, and bearing in mind that when organs are reduced in size,
either from disuse or through natural selection, it will generally be at
that period of life when the being has to provide for its own wants, and
bearing in mind how strong is the force of inheritance--the occurrence
of rudimentary organs might even have been anticipated. The importance
of embryological characters and of rudimentary organs in classification
is intelligible, on the view that a natural arrangement must be
genealogical.

Finally, the several classes of facts which have been considered in
this chapter, seem to me to proclaim so plainly, that the innumerable
species, genera and families, with which this world is peopled, are all
descended, each within its own class or group, from common parents, and
have all been modified in the course of descent, that I should without
hesitation adopt this view, even if it were unsupported by other facts
or arguments.




CHAPTER XV. RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION.

 Recapitulation of the objections to the theory of Natural
 Selection--Recapitulation of the general and special circumstances
 in its favour--Causes of the general belief in the immutability
 of species--How far the theory of Natural Selection may be
 extended--Effects of its adoption on the study of Natural
 History--Concluding remarks.


As this whole volume is one long argument, it may be convenient to the
reader to have the leading facts and inferences briefly recapitulated.

That many and serious objections may be advanced against the theory of
descent with modification through variation and natural selection, I do
not deny. I have endeavoured to give to them their full force. Nothing
at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex
organs and instincts have been perfected, not by means superior
to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of
innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor.
Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination
insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following
propositions, namely, that all parts of the organisation and instincts
offer, at least individual differences--that there is a struggle for
existence leading to the preservation of profitable deviations of
structure or instinct--and, lastly, that gradations in the state of
perfection of each organ may have existed, each good of its kind. The
truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.

It is, no doubt, extremely difficult even to conjecture by what
gradations many structures have been perfected, more especially among
broken and failing groups of organic beings, which have suffered much
extinction; but we see so many strange gradations in nature, that we
ought to be extremely cautious in saying that any organ or instinct, or
any whole structure, could not have arrived at its present state by
many graduated steps. There are, it must be admitted, cases of special
difficulty opposed to the theory of natural selection; and one of the
most curious of these is the existence in the same community of two
or three defined castes of workers or sterile female ants; but I have
attempted to show how these difficulties can be mastered.

With respect to the almost universal sterility of species when first
crossed, which forms so remarkable a contrast with the almost universal
fertility of varieties when crossed, I must refer the reader to the
recapitulation of the facts given at the end of the ninth chapter, which
seem to me conclusively to show that this sterility is no more a special
endowment than is the incapacity of two distinct kinds of trees to be
grafted together; but that it is incidental on differences confined to
the reproductive systems of the intercrossed species. We see the truth
of this conclusion in the vast difference in the results of crossing the
same two species reciprocally--that is, when one species is first used
as the father and then as the mother. Analogy from the consideration of
dimorphic and trimorphic plants clearly leads to the same conclusion,
for when the forms are illegitimately united, they yield few or no seed,
and their offspring are more or less sterile; and these forms belong
to the same undoubted species, and differ from each other in no respect
except in their reproductive organs and functions.

Although the fertility of varieties when intercrossed, and of their
mongrel offspring, has been asserted by so many authors to be universal,
this cannot be considered as quite correct after the facts given on the
high authority of Gartner and Kolreuter. Most of the varieties which
have been experimented on have been produced under domestication; and as
domestication (I do not mean mere confinement) almost certainly tends
to eliminate that sterility which, judging from analogy, would have
affected the parent-species if intercrossed, we ought not to expect
that domestication would likewise induce sterility in their modified
descendants when crossed. This elimination of sterility apparently
follows from the same cause which allows our domestic animals to breed
freely under diversified circumstances; and this again apparently
follows from their having been gradually accustomed to frequent changes
in their conditions of life.

A double and parallel series of facts seems to throw much light on the
sterility of species, when first crossed, and of their hybrid offspring.
On the one side, there is good reason to believe that slight changes in
the conditions of life give vigour and fertility to all organic beings.
We know also that a cross between the distinct individuals of the same
variety, and between distinct varieties, increases the number of their
offspring, and certainly gives to them increased size and vigour. This
is chiefly owing to the forms which are crossed having been exposed
to somewhat different conditions of life; for I have ascertained by a
labourious series of experiments that if all the individuals of the same
variety be subjected during several generations to the same conditions,
the good derived from crossing is often much diminished or wholly
disappears. This is one side of the case. On the other side, we know
that species which have long been exposed to nearly uniform conditions,
when they are subjected under confinement to new and greatly changed
conditions, either perish, or if they survive, are rendered sterile,
though retaining perfect health. This does not occur, or only in a very
slight degree, with our domesticated productions, which have long been
exposed to fluctuating conditions. Hence when we find that hybrids
produced by a cross between two distinct species are few in number,
owing to their perishing soon after conception or at a very early age,
or if surviving that they are rendered more or less sterile, it seems
highly probable that this result is due to their having been in fact
subjected to a great change in their conditions of life, from being
compounded of two distinct organisations. He who will explain in a
definite manner why, for instance, an elephant or a fox will not breed
under confinement in its native country, whilst the domestic pig or dog
will breed freely under the most diversified conditions, will at the
same time be able to give a definite answer to the question why two
distinct species, when crossed, as well as their hybrid offspring,
are generally rendered more or less sterile, while two domesticated
varieties when crossed and their mongrel offspring are perfectly
fertile.

Turning to geographical distribution, the difficulties encountered on
the theory of descent with modification are serious enough. All the
individuals of the same species, and all the species of the same genus,
or even higher group, are descended from common parents; and therefore,
in however distant and isolated parts of the world they may now be
found, they must in the course of successive generations have travelled
from some one point to all the others. We are often wholly unable even
to conjecture how this could have been effected. Yet, as we have reason
to believe that some species have retained the same specific form for
very long periods of time, immensely long as measured by years, too much
stress ought not to be laid on the occasional wide diffusion of the same
species; for during very long periods there will always have been a good
chance for wide migration by many means. A broken or interrupted range
may often be accounted for by the extinction of the species in the
intermediate regions. It cannot be denied that we are as yet
very ignorant as to the full extent of the various climatical and
geographical changes which have affected the earth during modern
periods; and such changes will often have facilitated migration. As an
example, I have attempted to show how potent has been the influence of
the Glacial period on the distribution of the same and of allied species
throughout the world. We are as yet profoundly ignorant of the many
occasional means of transport. With respect to distinct species of the
same genus, inhabiting distant and isolated regions, as the process of
modification has necessarily been slow, all the means of migration
will have been possible during a very long period; and consequently the
difficulty of the wide diffusion of the species of the same genus is in
some degree lessened.

As according to the theory of natural selection an interminable number
of intermediate forms must have existed, linking together all the
species in each group by gradations as fine as our existing varieties,
it may be asked, Why do we not see these linking forms all around us?
Why are not all organic beings blended together in an inextricable
chaos? With respect to existing forms, we should remember that we
have no right to expect (excepting in rare cases) to discover DIRECTLY
connecting links between them, but only between each and some extinct
and supplanted form. Even on a wide area, which has during a long period
remained continuous, and of which the climatic and other conditions of
life change insensibly in proceeding from a district occupied by one
species into another district occupied by a closely allied species, we
have no just right to expect often to find intermediate varieties in
the intermediate zones. For we have reason to believe that only a few
species of a genus ever undergo change; the other species becoming
utterly extinct and leaving no modified progeny. Of the species which do
change, only a few within the same country change at the same time;
and all modifications are slowly effected. I have also shown that
the intermediate varieties which probably at first existed in the
intermediate zones, would be liable to be supplanted by the allied forms
on either hand; for the latter, from existing in greater numbers,
would generally be modified and improved at a quicker rate than the
intermediate varieties, which existed in lesser numbers; so that
the intermediate varieties would, in the long run, be supplanted and
exterminated.

On this doctrine of the extermination of an infinitude of connecting
links, between the living and extinct inhabitants of the world, and at
each successive period between the extinct and still older species, why
is not every geological formation charged with such links? Why does
not every collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the
gradation and mutation of the forms of life? Although geological
research has undoubtedly revealed the former existence of many links,
bringing numerous forms of life much closer together, it does not yield
the infinitely many fine gradations between past and present species
required on the theory, and this is the most obvious of the many
objections which may be urged against it. Why, again, do whole groups
of allied species appear, though this appearance is often false, to have
come in suddenly on the successive geological stages? Although we
now know that organic beings appeared on this globe, at a period
incalculably remote, long before the lowest bed of the Cambrian system
was deposited, why do we not find beneath this system great piles
of strata stored with the remains of the progenitors of the Cambrian
fossils? For on the theory, such strata must somewhere have been
deposited at these ancient and utterly unknown epochs of the world's
history.

I can answer these questions and objections only on the supposition
that the geological record is far more imperfect than most geologists
believe. The number of specimens in all our museums is absolutely as
nothing compared with the countless generations of countless species
which have certainly existed. The parent form of any two or more species
would not be in all its characters directly intermediate between
its modified offspring, any more than the rock-pigeon is directly
intermediate in crop and tail between its descendants, the pouter and
fantail pigeons. We should not be able to recognise a species as the
parent of another and modified species, if we were to examine the two
ever so closely, unless we possessed most of the intermediate links;
and owing to the imperfection of the geological record, we have no just
right to expect to find so many links. If two or three, or even more
linking forms were discovered, they would simply be ranked by many
naturalists as so many new species, more especially if found in
different geological substages, let their differences be ever so slight.
Numerous existing doubtful forms could be named which are probably
varieties; but who will pretend that in future ages so many fossil links
will be discovered, that naturalists will be able to decide whether
or not these doubtful forms ought to be called varieties? Only a small
portion of the world has been geologically explored. Only organic beings
of certain classes can be preserved in a fossil condition, at least
in any great number. Many species when once formed never undergo any
further change but become extinct without leaving modified descendants;
and the periods during which species have undergone modification, though
long as measured by years, have probably been short in comparison with
the periods during which they retained the same form. It is the dominant
and widely ranging species which vary most frequently and vary most, and
varieties are often at first local--both causes rendering the discovery
of intermediate links in any one formation less likely. Local
varieties will not spread into other and distant regions until they are
considerably modified and improved; and when they have spread, and are
discovered in a geological formation, they appear as if suddenly created
there, and will be simply classed as new species. Most formations have
been intermittent in their accumulation; and their duration has probably
been shorter than the average duration of specific forms. Successive
formations are in most cases separated from each other by blank
intervals of time of great length, for fossiliferous formations
thick enough to resist future degradation can, as a general rule, be
accumulated only where much sediment is deposited on the subsiding bed
of the sea. During the alternate periods of elevation and of stationary
level the record will generally be blank. During these latter periods
there will probably be more variability in the forms of life; during
periods of subsidence, more extinction.

With respect to the absence of strata rich in fossils beneath the
Cambrian formation, I can recur only to the hypothesis given in the
tenth chapter; namely, that though our continents and oceans have
endured for an enormous period in nearly their present relative
positions, we have no reason to assume that this has always been the
case; consequently formations much older than any now known may lie
buried beneath the great oceans. With respect to the lapse of time not
having been sufficient since our planet was consolidated for the assumed
amount of organic change, and this objection, as urged by Sir William
Thompson, is probably one of the gravest as yet advanced, I can only
say, firstly, that we do not know at what rate species change, as
measured by years, and secondly, that many philosophers are not as yet
willing to admit that we know enough of the constitution of the universe
and of the interior of our globe to speculate with safety on its past
duration.

That the geological record is imperfect all will admit; but that it is
imperfect to the degree required by our theory, few will be inclined
to admit. If we look to long enough intervals of time, geology plainly
declares that species have all changed; and they have changed in the
manner required by the theory, for they have changed slowly and in
a graduated manner. We clearly see this in the fossil remains from
consecutive formations invariably being much more closely related to
each other than are the fossils from widely separated formations.

Such is the sum of the several chief objections and difficulties
which may justly be urged against the theory; and I have now briefly
recapitulated the answers and explanations which, as far as I can see,
may be given. I have felt these difficulties far too heavily during many
years to doubt their weight. But it deserves especial notice that
the more important objections relate to questions on which we are
confessedly ignorant; nor do we know how ignorant we are. We do not know
all the possible transitional gradations between the simplest and the
most perfect organs; it cannot be pretended that we know all the varied
means of Distribution during the long lapse of years, or that we
know how imperfect is the Geological Record. Serious as these several
objections are, in my judgment they are by no means sufficient to
overthrow the theory of descent with subsequent modification.

Now let us turn to the other side of the argument. Under domestication
we see much variability, caused, or at least excited, by changed
conditions of life; but often in so obscure a manner, that we are
tempted to consider the variations as spontaneous. Variability is
governed by many complex laws, by correlated growth, compensation,
the increased use and disuse of parts, and the definite action of the
surrounding conditions. There is much difficulty in ascertaining how
largely our domestic productions have been modified; but we may safely
infer that the amount has been large, and that modifications can be
inherited for long periods. As long as the conditions of life remain the
same, we have reason to believe that a modification, which has already
been inherited for many generations, may continue to be inherited for
an almost infinite number of generations. On the other hand we have
evidence that variability, when it has once come into play, does not
cease under domestication for a very long period; nor do we know that
it ever ceases, for new varieties are still occasionally produced by our
oldest domesticated productions.

Variability is not actually caused by man; he only unintentionally
exposes organic beings to new conditions of life and then nature acts on
the organisation and causes it to vary. But man can and does select
the variations given to him by nature, and thus accumulates them in any
desired manner. He thus adapts animals and plants for his own benefit or
pleasure. He may do this methodically, or he may do it unconsciously by
preserving the individuals most useful or pleasing to him without any
intention of altering the breed. It is certain that he can largely
influence the character of a breed by selecting, in each successive
generation, individual differences so slight as to be inappreciable
except by an educated eye. This unconscious process of selection has
been the great agency in the formation of the most distinct and useful
domestic breeds. That many breeds produced by man have to a large extent
the character of natural species, is shown by the inextricable doubts
whether many of them are varieties or aboriginally distinct species.

There is no reason why the principles which have acted so efficiently
under domestication should not have acted under nature. In the survival
of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly recurrent
Struggle for Existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of
Selection. The struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high
geometrical ratio of increase which is common to all organic beings.
This high rate of increase is proved by calculation--by the rapid
increase of many animals and plants during a succession of peculiar
seasons, and when naturalised in new countries. More individuals are
born than can possibly survive. A grain in the balance may determine
which individuals shall live and which shall die--which variety or
species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally
become extinct. As the individuals of the same species come in all
respects into the closest competition with each other, the struggle will
generally be most severe between them; it will be almost equally severe
between the varieties of the same species, and next in severity between
the species of the same genus. On the other hand the struggle will often
be severe between beings remote in the scale of nature. The slightest
advantage in certain individuals, at any age or during any season, over
those with which they come into competition, or better adaptation in
however slight a degree to the surrounding physical conditions, will, in
the long run, turn the balance.

With animals having separated sexes, there will be in most cases a
struggle between the males for the possession of the females. The most
vigorous males, or those which have most successfully struggled with
their conditions of life, will generally leave most progeny. But success
will often depend on the males having special weapons or means of
defence or charms; and a slight advantage will lead to victory.

As geology plainly proclaims that each land has undergone great physical
changes, we might have expected to find that organic beings have varied
under nature, in the same way as they have varied under domestication.
And if there has been any variability under nature, it would be an
unaccountable fact if natural selection had not come into play. It has
often been asserted, but the assertion is incapable of proof, that the
amount of variation under nature is a strictly limited quantity. Man,
though acting on external characters alone and often capriciously,
can produce within a short period a great result by adding up mere
individual differences in his domestic productions; and every one
admits that species present individual differences. But, besides such
differences, all naturalists admit that natural varieties exist,
which are considered sufficiently distinct to be worthy of record
in systematic works. No one has drawn any clear distinction between
individual differences and slight varieties; or between more plainly
marked varieties and subspecies and species. On separate continents, and
on different parts of the same continent, when divided by barriers of
any kind, and on outlying islands, what a multitude of forms exist,
which some experienced naturalists rank as varieties, others as
geographical races or sub species, and others as distinct, though
closely allied species!

If, then, animals and plants do vary, let it be ever so slightly or
slowly, why should not variations or individual differences, which are
in any way beneficial, be preserved and accumulated through natural
selection, or the survival of the fittest? If man can by patience select
variations useful to him, why, under changing and complex conditions
of life, should not variations useful to nature's living products often
arise, and be preserved or selected? What limit can be put to this
power, acting during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole
constitution, structure, and habits of each creature, favouring the good
and rejecting the bad? I can see no limit to this power, in slowly and
beautifully adapting each form to the most complex relations of life.
The theory of natural selection, even if we look no further than
this, seems to be in the highest degree probable. I have already
recapitulated, as fairly as I could, the opposed difficulties and
objections: now let us turn to the special facts and arguments in favour
of the theory.

On the view that species are only strongly marked and permanent
varieties, and that each species first existed as a variety, we can
see why it is that no line of demarcation can be drawn between species,
commonly supposed to have been produced by special acts of creation,
and varieties which are acknowledged to have been produced by secondary
laws. On this same view we can understand how it is that in a region
where many species of a genus have been produced, and where they now
flourish, these same species should present many varieties; for where
the manufactory of species has been active, we might expect, as a
general rule, to find it still in action; and this is the case if
varieties be incipient species. Moreover, the species of the larger
genera, which afford the greater number of varieties or incipient
species, retain to a certain degree the character of varieties; for
they differ from each other by a less amount of difference than do the
species of smaller genera. The closely allied species also of a larger
genera apparently have restricted ranges, and in their affinities they
are clustered in little groups round other species--in both respects
resembling varieties. These are strange relations on the view that each
species was independently created, but are intelligible if each existed
first as a variety.

As each species tends by its geometrical rate of reproduction to
increase inordinately in number; and as the modified descendants of
each species will be enabled to increase by as much as they become more
diversified in habits and structure, so as to be able to seize on many
and widely different places in the economy of nature, there will be a
constant tendency in natural selection to preserve the most divergent
offspring of any one species. Hence during a long-continued course of
modification, the slight differences characteristic of varieties of
the same species, tend to be augmented into the greater differences
characteristic of the species of the same genus. New and improved
varieties will inevitably supplant and exterminate the older, less
improved and intermediate varieties; and thus species are rendered to a
large extent defined and distinct objects. Dominant species belonging
to the larger groups within each class tend to give birth to new and
dominant forms; so that each large group tends to become still larger,
and at the same time more divergent in character. But as all groups
cannot thus go on increasing in size, for the world would not hold them,
the more dominant groups beat the less dominant. This tendency in the
large groups to go on increasing in size and diverging in character,
together with the inevitable contingency of much extinction, explains
the arrangement of all the forms of life in groups subordinate to
groups, all within a few great classes, which has prevailed throughout
all time. This grand fact of the grouping of all organic beings under
what is called the Natural System, is utterly inexplicable on the theory
of creation.

As natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive,
favourable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modifications;
it can act only by short and slow steps. Hence, the canon of "Natura
non facit saltum," which every fresh addition to our knowledge tends
to confirm, is on this theory intelligible. We can see why throughout
nature the same general end is gained by an almost infinite diversity of
means, for every peculiarity when once acquired is long inherited, and
structures already modified in many different ways have to be adapted
for the same general purpose. We can, in short, see why nature is
prodigal in variety, though niggard in innovation. But why this should
be a law of nature if each species has been independently created no man
can explain.

Many other facts are, as it seems to me, explicable on this theory. How
strange it is that a bird, under the form of a woodpecker, should prey
on insects on the ground; that upland geese, which rarely or never swim,
would possess webbed feet; that a thrush-like bird should dive and feed
on sub-aquatic insects; and that a petrel should have the habits and
structure fitting it for the life of an auk! and so in endless other
cases. But on the view of each species constantly trying to increase in
number, with natural selection always ready to adapt the slowly varying
descendants of each to any unoccupied or ill-occupied place in nature,
these facts cease to be strange, or might even have been anticipated.

We can to a certain extent understand how it is that there is so much
beauty throughout nature; for this may be largely attributed to the
agency of selection. That beauty, according to our sense of it, is not
universal, must be admitted by every one who will look at some venomous
snakes, at some fishes, and at certain hideous bats with a distorted
resemblance to the human face. Sexual selection has given the most
brilliant colours, elegant patterns, and other ornaments to the males,
and sometimes to both sexes of many birds, butterflies and other
animals. With birds it has often rendered the voice of the male musical
to the female, as well as to our ears. Flowers and fruit have been
rendered conspicuous by brilliant colours in contrast with the green
foliage, in order that the flowers may be easily seen, visited and
fertilised by insects, and the seeds disseminated by birds. How it comes
that certain colours, sounds and forms should give pleasure to man and
the lower animals, that is, how the sense of beauty in its simplest form
was first acquired, we do not know any more than how certain odours and
flavours were first rendered agreeable.

As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts and improves the
inhabitants of each country only in relation to their co-inhabitants;
so that we need feel no surprise at the species of any one country,
although on the ordinary view supposed to have been created and
specially adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the
naturalised productions from another land. Nor ought we to marvel if all
the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely
perfect; as in the case even of the human eye; or if some of them be
abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of
the bee, when used against the enemy, causing the bee's own death; at
drones being produced in such great numbers for one single act, and
being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing
waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the
queen-bee for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidae feeding within
the living bodies of caterpillars; and at other such cases. The wonder,
indeed, is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the
want of absolute perfection have not been detected.

The complex and little known laws governing the production of varieties
are the same, as far as we can judge, with the laws which have governed
the production of distinct species. In both cases physical conditions
seem to have produced some direct and definite effect, but how much
we cannot say. Thus, when varieties enter any new station, they
occasionally assume some of the characters proper to the species of that
station. With both varieties and species, use and disuse seem to have
produced a considerable effect; for it is impossible to resist this
conclusion when we look, for instance, at the logger-headed duck, which
has wings incapable of flight, in nearly the same condition as in the
domestic duck; or when we look at the burrowing tucu-tucu, which is
occasionally blind, and then at certain moles, which are habitually
blind and have their eyes covered with skin; or when we look at the
blind animals inhabiting the dark caves of America and Europe. With
varieties and species, correlated variation seems to have played an
important part, so that when one part has been modified other parts have
been necessarily modified. With both varieties and species, reversions
to long-lost characters occasionally occur. How inexplicable on the
theory of creation is the occasional appearance of stripes on the
shoulders and legs of the several species of the horse-genus and of
their hybrids! How simply is this fact explained if we believe that
these species are all descended from a striped progenitor, in the same
manner as the several domestic breeds of the pigeon are descended from
the blue and barred rock-pigeon!

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created,
why should specific characters, or those by which the species of the
same genus differ from each other, be more variable than the generic
characters in which they all agree? Why, for instance, should the colour
of a flower be more likely to vary in any one species of a genus, if
the other species possess differently coloured flowers, than if all
possessed the same coloured flowers? If species are only well-marked
varieties, of which the characters have become in a high degree
permanent, we can understand this fact; for they have already varied
since they branched off from a common progenitor in certain characters,
by which they have come to be specifically distinct from each other;
therefore these same characters would be more likely again to vary than
the generic characters which have been inherited without change for an
immense period. It is inexplicable on the theory of creation why a part
developed in a very unusual manner in one species alone of a genus,
and therefore, as we may naturally infer, of great importance to that
species, should be eminently liable to variation; but, on our view, this
part has undergone, since the several species branched off from a common
progenitor, an unusual amount of variability and modification, and
therefore we might expect the part generally to be still variable. But
a part may be developed in the most unusual manner, like the wing of a
bat, and yet not be more variable than any other structure, if the part
be common to many subordinate forms, that is, if it has been inherited
for a very long period; for in this case it will have been rendered
constant by long-continued natural selection.

Glancing at instincts, marvellous as some are, they offer no greater
difficulty than do corporeal structures on the theory of the natural
selection of successive, slight, but profitable modifications. We
can thus understand why nature moves by graduated steps in endowing
different animals of the same class with their several instincts. I have
attempted to show how much light the principle of gradation throws on
the admirable architectural powers of the hive-bee. Habit no doubt
often comes into play in modifying instincts; but it certainly is not
indispensable, as we see in the case of neuter insects, which leave no
progeny to inherit the effects of long-continued habit. On the view of
all the species of the same genus having descended from a common parent,
and having inherited much in common, we can understand how it is that
allied species, when placed under widely different conditions of life,
yet follow nearly the same instincts; why the thrushes of tropical and
temperate South America, for instance, line their nests with mud
like our British species. On the view of instincts having been slowly
acquired through natural selection, we need not marvel at some instincts
being not perfect and liable to mistakes, and at many instincts causing
other animals to suffer.

If species be only well-marked and permanent varieties, we can at once
see why their crossed offspring should follow the same complex laws
in their degrees and kinds of resemblance to their parents--in being
absorbed into each other by successive crosses, and in other such
points--as do the crossed offspring of acknowledged varieties. This
similarity would be a strange fact, if species had been independently
created and varieties had been produced through secondary laws.

If we admit that the geological record is imperfect to an extreme
degree, then the facts, which the record does give, strongly support the
theory of descent with modification. New species have come on the stage
slowly and at successive intervals; and the amount of change after
equal intervals of time, is widely different in different groups. The
extinction of species and of whole groups of species, which has played
so conspicuous a part in the history of the organic world, almost
inevitably follows from the principle of natural selection; for old
forms are supplanted by new and improved forms. Neither single species
nor groups of species reappear when the chain of ordinary generation
is once broken. The gradual diffusion of dominant forms, with the slow
modification of their descendants, causes the forms of life, after
long intervals of time, to appear as if they had changed simultaneously
throughout the world. The fact of the fossil remains of each formation
being in some degree intermediate in character between the fossils
in the formations above and below, is simply explained by their
intermediate position in the chain of descent. The grand fact that all
extinct beings can be classed with all recent beings, naturally follows
from the living and the extinct being the offspring of common parents.
As species have generally diverged in character during their long course
of descent and modification, we can understand why it is that the more
ancient forms, or early progenitors of each group, so often occupy a
position in some degree intermediate between existing groups. Recent
forms are generally looked upon as being, on the whole, higher in the
scale of organisation than ancient forms; and they must be higher, in
so far as the later and more improved forms have conquered the older and
less improved forms in the struggle for life; they have also generally
had their organs more specialised for different functions. This fact is
perfectly compatible with numerous beings still retaining simple and but
little improved structures, fitted for simple conditions of life; it is
likewise compatible with some forms having retrograded in organisation,
by having become at each stage of descent better fitted for new and
degraded habits of life. Lastly, the wonderful law of the long endurance
of allied forms on the same continent--of marsupials in Australia, of
edentata in America, and other such cases--is intelligible, for within
the same country the existing and the extinct will be closely allied by
descent.

Looking to geographical distribution, if we admit that there has been
during the long course of ages much migration from one part of the world
to another, owing to former climatical and geographical changes and
to the many occasional and unknown means of dispersal, then we can
understand, on the theory of descent with modification, most of the
great leading facts in Distribution. We can see why there should be so
striking a parallelism in the distribution of organic beings throughout
space, and in their geological succession throughout time; for in both
cases the beings have been connected by the bond of ordinary generation,
and the means of modification have been the same. We see the full
meaning of the wonderful fact, which has struck every traveller, namely,
that on the same continent, under the most diverse conditions, under
heat and cold, on mountain and lowland, on deserts and marshes, most of
the inhabitants within each great class are plainly related; for they
are the descendants of the same progenitors and early colonists. On
this same principle of former migration, combined in most cases with
modification, we can understand, by the aid of the Glacial period, the
identity of some few plants, and the close alliance of many others, on
the most distant mountains, and in the northern and southern temperate
zones; and likewise the close alliance of some of the inhabitants of the
sea in the northern and southern temperate latitudes, though separated
by the whole intertropical ocean. Although two countries may present
physical conditions as closely similar as the same species ever require,
we need feel no surprise at their inhabitants being widely different,
if they have been for a long period completely sundered from each other;
for as the relation of organism to organism is the most important of
all relations, and as the two countries will have received colonists at
various periods and in different proportions, from some other country
or from each other, the course of modification in the two areas will
inevitably have been different.

On this view of migration, with subsequent modification, we see why
oceanic islands are inhabited by only few species, but of these, why
many are peculiar or endemic forms. We clearly see why species belonging
to those groups of animals which cannot cross wide spaces of the ocean,
as frogs and terrestrial mammals, do not inhabit oceanic islands; and
why, on the other hand, new and peculiar species of bats, animals which
can traverse the ocean, are often found on islands far distant from any
continent. Such cases as the presence of peculiar species of bats on
oceanic islands and the absence of all other terrestrial mammals,
are facts utterly inexplicable on the theory of independent acts of
creation.

The existence of closely allied representative species in any two areas,
implies, on the theory of descent with modification, that the same
parent-forms formerly inhabited both areas; and we almost invariably
find that wherever many closely allied species inhabit two areas, some
identical species are still common to both. Wherever many closely allied
yet distinct species occur, doubtful forms and varieties belonging to
the same groups likewise occur. It is a rule of high generality that the
inhabitants of each area are related to the inhabitants of the nearest
source whence immigrants might have been derived. We see this in the
striking relation of nearly all the plants and animals of the Galapagos
Archipelago, of Juan Fernandez, and of the other American islands, to
the plants and animals of the neighbouring American mainland; and of
those of the Cape de Verde Archipelago, and of the other African islands
to the African mainland. It must be admitted that these facts receive no
explanation on the theory of creation.

The fact, as we have seen, that all past and present organic beings can
be arranged within a few great classes, in groups subordinate to groups,
and with the extinct groups often falling in between the recent
groups, is intelligible on the theory of natural selection with its
contingencies of extinction and divergence of character. On these same
principles we see how it is that the mutual affinities of the forms
within each class are so complex and circuitous. We see why certain
characters are far more serviceable than others for classification; why
adaptive characters, though of paramount importance to the beings, are
of hardly any importance in classification; why characters derived from
rudimentary parts, though of no service to the beings, are often of high
classificatory value; and why embryological characters are often the
most valuable of all. The real affinities of all organic beings, in
contradistinction to their adaptive resemblances, are due to inheritance
or community of descent. The Natural System is a genealogical
arrangement, with the acquired grades of difference, marked by the
terms, varieties, species, genera, families, etc.; and we have to
discover the lines of descent by the most permanent characters, whatever
they may be, and of however slight vital importance.

The similar framework of bones in the hand of a man, wing of a bat,
fin of the porpoise, and leg of the horse--the same number of vertebrae
forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant--and innumerable
other such facts, at once explain themselves on the theory of descent
with slow and slight successive modifications. The similarity of pattern
in the wing and in the leg of a bat, though used for such different
purpose--in the jaws and legs of a crab--in the petals, stamens, and
pistils of a flower, is likewise, to a large extent, intelligible on
the view of the gradual modification of parts or organs, which were
aboriginally alike in an early progenitor in each of these classes.
On the principle of successive variations not always supervening at an
early age, and being inherited at a corresponding not early period of
life, we clearly see why the embryos of mammals, birds, reptiles, and
fishes should be so closely similar, and so unlike the adult forms. We
may cease marvelling at the embryo of an air-breathing mammal or bird
having branchial slits and arteries running in loops, like those of
a fish which has to breathe the air dissolved in water by the aid of
well-developed branchiae.

Disuse, aided sometimes by natural selection, will often have reduced
organs when rendered useless under changed habits or conditions of life;
and we can understand on this view the meaning of rudimentary organs.
But disuse and selection will generally act on each creature, when it
has come to maturity and has to play its full part in the struggle for
existence, and will thus have little power on an organ during early
life; hence the organ will not be reduced or rendered rudimentary at
this early age. The calf, for instance, has inherited teeth, which never
cut through the gums of the upper jaw, from an early progenitor having
well-developed teeth; and we may believe, that the teeth in the mature
animal were formerly reduced by disuse owing to the tongue and palate,
or lips, having become excellently fitted through natural selection to
browse without their aid; whereas in the calf, the teeth have been left
unaffected, and on the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages
have been inherited from a remote period to the present day. On the
view of each organism with all its separate parts having been specially
created, how utterly inexplicable is it that organs bearing the plain
stamp of inutility, such as the teeth in the embryonic calf or the
shrivelled wings under the soldered wing-covers of many beetles, should
so frequently occur. Nature may be said to have taken pains to
reveal her scheme of modification, by means of rudimentary organs,
of embryological and homologous structures, but we are too blind to
understand her meaning.

I have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which have
thoroughly convinced me that species have been modified, during a long
course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the natural
selection of numerous successive, slight, favourable variations; aided
in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse
of parts; and in an unimportant manner, that is, in relation to adaptive
structures, whether past or present, by the direct action of external
conditions, and by variations which seem to us in our ignorance to arise
spontaneously. It appears that I formerly underrated the frequency
and value of these latter forms of variation, as leading to permanent
modifications of structure independently of natural selection. But as my
conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated
that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural
selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition
of this work, and subsequently, I placed in a most conspicuous
position--namely, at the close of the Introduction--the following words:
"I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the
exclusive means of modification." This has been of no avail. Great is
the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows
that fortunately this power does not long endure.

It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so
satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection, the
several large classes of facts above specified. It has recently been
objected that this is an unsafe method of arguing; but it is a method
used in judging of the common events of life, and has often been used
by the greatest natural philosophers. The undulatory theory of light has
thus been arrived at; and the belief in the revolution of the earth on
its own axis was until lately supported by hardly any direct evidence.
It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far
higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain what
is the essence of the attraction of gravity? No one now objects
to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of
attraction; notwithstanding that Leibnitz formerly accused Newton of
introducing "occult qualities and miracles into philosophy."

I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock
the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how
transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery
ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also
attacked by Leibnitz, "as subversive of natural, and inferentially of
revealed, religion." A celebrated author and divine has written to
me that "he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a
conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms
capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe
that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by
the action of His laws."

Why, it may be asked, until recently did nearly all the most eminent
living naturalists and geologists disbelieve in the mutability of
species? It cannot be asserted that organic beings in a state of nature
are subject to no variation; it cannot be proved that the amount of
variation in the course of long ages is a limited quantity; no clear
distinction has been, or can be, drawn between species and well-marked
varieties. It cannot be maintained that species when intercrossed are
invariably sterile and varieties invariably fertile; or that sterility
is a special endowment and sign of creation. The belief that species
were immutable productions was almost unavoidable as long as the history
of the world was thought to be of short duration; and now that we have
acquired some idea of the lapse of time, we are too apt to assume,
without proof, that the geological record is so perfect that it would
have afforded us plain evidence of the mutation of species, if they had
undergone mutation.

But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one
species has given birth to other and distinct species, is that we are
always slow in admitting any great changes of which we do not see the
steps. The difficulty is the same as that felt by so many geologists,
when Lyell first insisted that long lines of inland cliffs had been
formed, and great valleys excavated, by the agencies which we still see
at work. The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of
even a million years; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of
many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite number of
generations.

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this
volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince
experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of
facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view
directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under
such expressions as the "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and
to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any
one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained
difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts
will certainly reject the theory. A few naturalists, endowed with
much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt the
immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look
with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will
be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever
is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by
conscientiously expressing his conviction; for thus only can the load of
prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

Several eminent naturalists have of late published their belief that
a multitude of reputed species in each genus are not real species; but
that other species are real, that is, have been independently created.
This seems to me a strange conclusion to arrive at. They admit that
a multitude of forms, which till lately they themselves thought were
special creations, and which are still thus looked at by the majority of
naturalists, and which consequently have all the external characteristic
features of true species--they admit that these have been produced by
variation, but they refuse to extend the same view to other and slightly
different forms. Nevertheless, they do not pretend that they can define,
or even conjecture, which are the created forms of life, and which are
those produced by secondary laws. They admit variation as a vera causa
in one case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without assigning
any distinction in the two cases. The day will come when this will
be given as a curious illustration of the blindness of preconceived
opinion. These authors seem no more startled at a miraculous act of
creation than at an ordinary birth. But do they really believe that at
innumerable periods in the earth's history certain elemental atoms have
been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues? Do they believe
that at each supposed act of creation one individual or many were
produced? Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants
created as eggs or seed, or as full grown? and in the case of mammals,
were they created bearing the false marks of nourishment from the
mother's womb? Undoubtedly some of these same questions cannot be
answered by those who believe in the appearance or creation of only a
few forms of life or of some one form alone. It has been maintained
by several authors that it is as easy to believe in the creation of a
million beings as of one; but Maupertuis' philosophical axiom "of least
action" leads the mind more willingly to admit the smaller number; and
certainly we ought not to believe that innumerable beings within each
great class have been created with plain, but deceptive, marks of
descent from a single parent.

As a record of a former state of things, I have retained in the
foregoing paragraphs, and elsewhere, several sentences which imply that
naturalists believe in the separate creation of each species; and I have
been much censured for having thus expressed myself. But undoubtedly
this was the general belief when the first edition of the present work
appeared. I formerly spoke to very many naturalists on the subject of
evolution, and never once met with any sympathetic agreement. It is
probable that some did then believe in evolution, but they were either
silent or expressed themselves so ambiguously that it was not easy to
understand their meaning. Now, things are wholly changed, and almost
every naturalist admits the great principle of evolution. There are,
however, some who still think that species have suddenly given birth,
through quite unexplained means, to new and totally different forms.
But, as I have attempted to show, weighty evidence can be opposed to the
admission of great and abrupt modifications. Under a scientific point of
view, and as leading to further investigation, but little advantage
is gained by believing that new forms are suddenly developed in an
inexplicable manner from old and widely different forms, over the old
belief in the creation of species from the dust of the earth.

It may be asked how far I extend the doctrine of the modification of
species. The question is difficult to answer, because the more distinct
the forms are which we consider, by so much the arguments in favour of
community of descent become fewer in number and less in force. But some
arguments of the greatest weight extend very far. All the members of
whole classes are connected together by a chain of affinities, and all
can be classed on the same principle, in groups subordinate to groups.
Fossil remains sometimes tend to fill up very wide intervals between
existing orders.

Organs in a rudimentary condition plainly show that an early progenitor
had the organ in a fully developed condition, and this in some
cases implies an enormous amount of modification in the descendants.
Throughout whole classes various structures are formed on the same
pattern, and at a very early age the embryos closely resemble each
other. Therefore I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with
modification embraces all the members of the same great class or
kingdom. I believe that animals are descended from at most only four or
five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number.

Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all
animals and plants are descended from some one prototype. But analogy
may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in
common, in their chemical composition, their cellular structure, their
laws of growth, and their liability to injurious influences. We see
this even in so trifling a fact as that the same poison often similarly
affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly
produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oak-tree. With all
organic beings, excepting perhaps some of the very lowest, sexual
reproduction seems to be essentially similar. With all, as far as is at
present known, the germinal vesicle is the same; so that all
organisms start from a common origin. If we look even to the two main
divisions--namely, to the animal and vegetable kingdoms--certain
low forms are so far intermediate in character that naturalists have
disputed to which kingdom they should be referred. As Professor Asa Gray
has remarked, "the spores and other reproductive bodies of many of the
lower algae may claim to have first a characteristically animal, and
then an unequivocally vegetable existence." Therefore, on the principle
of natural selection with divergence of character, it does not seem
incredible that, from some such low and intermediate form, both animals
and plants may have been developed; and, if we admit this, we must
likewise admit that all the organic beings which have ever lived on this
earth may be descended from some one primordial form. But this inference
is chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it
be accepted. No doubt it is possible, as Mr. G.H. Lewes has urged, that
at the first commencement of life many different forms were evolved;
but if so, we may conclude that only a very few have left modified
descendants. For, as I have recently remarked in regard to the members
of each great kingdom, such as the Vertebrata, Articulata, etc., we have
distinct evidence in their embryological, homologous, and rudimentary
structures, that within each kingdom all the members are descended from
a single progenitor.

When the views advanced by me in this volume, and by Mr. Wallace or when
analogous views on the origin of species are generally admitted, we can
dimly foresee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural
history. Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at
present; but they will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt
whether this or that form be a true species. This, I feel sure and I
speak after experience, will be no slight relief. The endless disputes
whether or not some fifty species of British brambles are good species
will cease. Systematists will have only to decide (not that this will be
easy) whether any form be sufficiently constant and distinct from
other forms, to be capable of definition; and if definable, whether the
differences be sufficiently important to deserve a specific name. This
latter point will become a far more essential consideration than it is
at present; for differences, however slight, between any two forms,
if not blended by intermediate gradations, are looked at by most
naturalists as sufficient to raise both forms to the rank of species.

Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction
between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are
known, or believed to be connected at the present day by intermediate
gradations, whereas species were formerly thus connected. Hence, without
rejecting the consideration of the present existence of intermediate
gradations between any two forms, we shall be led to weigh more
carefully and to value higher the actual amount of difference between
them. It is quite possible that forms now generally acknowledged to be
merely varieties may hereafter be thought worthy of specific names; and
in this case scientific and common language will come into accordance.
In short, we shall have to treat species in the same manner as those
naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely artificial
combinations made for convenience. This may not be a cheering prospect;
but we shall at least be freed from the vain search for the undiscovered
and undiscoverable essence of the term species.

The other and more general departments of natural history will rise
greatly in interest. The terms used by naturalists, of affinity,
relationship, community of type, paternity, morphology, adaptive
characters, rudimentary and aborted organs, etc., will cease to be
metaphorical and will have a plain signification. When we no longer look
at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as something wholly
beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature
as one which has had a long history; when we contemplate every complex
structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each
useful to the possessor, in the same way as any great mechanical
invention is the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason,
and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each
organic being, how far more interesting--I speak from experience--does
the study of natural history become!

A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the
causes and laws of variation, on correlation, on the effects of use and
disuse, on the direct action of external conditions, and so forth.
The study of domestic productions will rise immensely in value. A new
variety raised by man will be a far more important and interesting
subject for study than one more species added to the infinitude of
already recorded species. Our classifications will come to be, as far as
they can be so made, genealogies; and will then truly give what may be
called the plan of creation. The rules for classifying will no doubt
become simpler when we have a definite object in view. We possess no
pedigree or armorial bearings; and we have to discover and trace
the many diverging lines of descent in our natural genealogies, by
characters of any kind which have long been inherited. Rudimentary
organs will speak infallibly with respect to the nature of long-lost
structures. Species and groups of species which are called aberrant, and
which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid us in forming a
picture of the ancient forms of life. Embryology will often reveal to us
the structure, in some degree obscured, of the prototypes of each great
class.

When we can feel assured that all the individuals of the same species,
and all the closely allied species of most genera, have, within a not
very remote period descended from one parent, and have migrated
from some one birth-place; and when we better know the many means
of migration, then, by the light which geology now throws, and will
continue to throw, on former changes of climate and of the level of the
land, we shall surely be enabled to trace in an admirable manner
the former migrations of the inhabitants of the whole world. Even at
present, by comparing the differences between the inhabitants of the
sea on the opposite sides of a continent, and the nature of the various
inhabitants of that continent in relation to their apparent means of
immigration, some light can be thrown on ancient geography.

The noble science of geology loses glory from the extreme imperfection
of the record. The crust of the earth, with its embedded remains, must
not be looked at as a well-filled museum, but as a poor collection
made at hazard and at rare intervals. The accumulation of each great
fossiliferous formation will be recognised as having depended on an
unusual occurrence of favourable circumstances, and the blank intervals
between the successive stages as having been of vast duration. But
we shall be able to gauge with some security the duration of these
intervals by a comparison of the preceding and succeeding organic
forms. We must be cautious in attempting to correlate as strictly
contemporaneous two formations, which do not include many identical
species, by the general succession of the forms of life. As species are
produced and exterminated by slowly acting and still existing causes,
and not by miraculous acts of creation; and as the most important of all
causes of organic change is one which is almost independent of altered
and perhaps suddenly altered physical conditions, namely, the mutual
relation of organism to organism--the improvement of one organism
entailing the improvement or the extermination of others; it follows,
that the amount of organic change in the fossils of consecutive
formations probably serves as a fair measure of the relative, though not
actual lapse of time. A number of species, however, keeping in a body
might remain for a long period unchanged, whilst within the same period,
several of these species, by migrating into new countries and coming
into competition with foreign associates, might become modified; so
that we must not overrate the accuracy of organic change as a measure of
time.

In the future I see open fields for far more important researches.
Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already well laid
by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental
power and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the origin
of man and his history.

Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view
that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords
better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator,
that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants
of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those
determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all
beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some
few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system
was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the
past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its
unaltered likeness to a distinct futurity. And of the species now living
very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity;
for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the
greater number of species in each genus, and all the species in many
genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We
can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it
will be the common and widely spread species, belonging to the larger
and dominant groups within each class, which will ultimately prevail and
procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are
the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian
epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation
has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the
whole world. Hence, we may look with some confidence to a secure future
of great length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the
good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to
progress towards perfection.

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many
plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various
insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth,
and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different
from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner,
have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in
the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is
almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct
action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of
Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence
to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the
Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from
famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of
conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly
follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms
or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according
to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.


GLOSSARY OF THE PRINCIPAL SCIENTIFIC TERMS USED IN THE PRESENT VOLUME.

(I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. W.S. Dallas for this Glossary,
which has been given because several readers have complained to me
that some of the terms used were unintelligible to them. Mr. Dallas has
endeavoured to give the explanations of the terms in as popular a form
as possible.)

ABERRANT.--Forms or groups of animals or plants which deviate in
important characters from their nearest allies, so as not to be easily
included in the same group with them, are said to be aberrant.

ABERRATION (in Optics).--In the refraction of light by a convex lens the
rays passing through different parts of the lens are brought to a focus
at slightly different distances--this is called SPHERICAL ABERRATION; at
the same time the coloured rays are separated by the prismatic action of
the lens and likewise brought to a focus at different distances--this is
CHROMATIC ABERRATION.

ABNORMAL.--Contrary to the general rule.

ABORTED.--An organ is said to be aborted, when its development has been
arrested at a very early stage.

ALBINISM.--Albinos are animals in which the usual colouring matters
characteristic of the species have not been produced in the skin and its
appendages. Albinism is the state of being an albino.

ALGAE.--A class of plants including the ordinary sea-weeds and the
filamentous fresh-water weeds.

ALTERNATION OF GENERATIONS.--This term is applied to a peculiar mode of
reproduction which prevails among many of the lower animals, in which
the egg produces a living form quite different from its parent, but from
which the parent-form is reproduced by a process of budding, or by the
division of the substance of the first product of the egg.

AMMONITES.--A group of fossil, spiral, chambered shells, allied to the
existing pearly Nautilus, but having the partitions between the chambers
waved in complicated patterns at their junction with the outer wall of
the shell.

ANALOGY.--That resemblance of structures which depends upon similarity
of function, as in the wings of insects and birds. Such structures are
said to be ANALOGOUS, and to be ANALOGUES of each other.

ANIMALCULE.--A minute animal: generally applied to those visible only by
the microscope.

ANNELIDS.--A class of worms in which the surface of the body exhibits
a more or less distinct division into rings or segments, generally
provided with appendages for locomotion and with gills. It includes the
ordinary marine worms, the earth-worms, and the leeches.

ANTENNAE.--Jointed organs appended to the head in Insects, Crustacea and
Centipedes, and not belonging to the mouth.

ANTHERS.--The summits of the stamens of flowers, in which the pollen or
fertilising dust is produced.

APLACENTALIA, APLACENTATA or APLACENTAL MAMMALS.--See MAMMALIA.

ARCHETYPAL.--Of or belonging to the Archetype, or ideal primitive form
upon which all the beings of a group seem to be organised.

ARTICULATA.--A great division of the Animal Kingdom characterised
generally by having the surface of the body divided into rings called
segments, a greater or less number of which are furnished with jointed
legs (such as Insects, Crustaceans and Centipedes).

ASYMMETRICAL.--Having the two sides unlike.

ATROPHIED.--Arrested in development at a very early stage.

BALANUS.--The genus including the common Acorn-shells which live in
abundance on the rocks of the sea-coast.

BATRACHIANS.--A class of animals allied to the Reptiles, but undergoing
a peculiar metamorphosis, in which the young animal is generally aquatic
and breathes by gills. (Examples, Frogs, Toads, and Newts.)

BOULDERS.--Large transported blocks of stone generally embedded in clays
or gravels.

BRACHIOPODA.--A class of marine Mollusca, or soft-bodied animals,
furnished with a bivalve shell, attached to submarine objects by a stalk
which passes through an aperture in one of the valves, and furnished
with fringed arms, by the action of which food is carried to the mouth.

BRANCHIAE.--Gills or organs for respiration in water.

BRANCHIAL.--Pertaining to gills or branchiae.

CAMBRIAN SYSTEM.--A series of very ancient Palaeozoic rocks, between the
Laurentian and the Silurian. Until recently these were regarded as the
oldest fossiliferous rocks.

CANIDAE.--The Dog-family, including the Dog, Wolf, Fox, Jackal, etc.

CARAPACE.--The shell enveloping the anterior part of the body in
Crustaceans generally; applied also to the hard shelly pieces of the
Cirripedes.

CARBONIFEROUS.--This term is applied to the great formation which
includes, among other rocks, the coal-measures. It belongs to the
oldest, or Palaeozoic, system of formations.

CAUDAL.--Of or belonging to the tail.

CEPHALOPODS.--The highest class of the Mollusca, or soft-bodied animals,
characterised by having the mouth surrounded by a greater or less
number of fleshy arms or tentacles, which, in most living species, are
furnished with sucking-cups. (Examples, Cuttle-fish, Nautilus.)

CETACEA.--An order of Mammalia, including the Whales, Dolphins, etc.,
having the form of the body fish-like, the skin naked, and only the fore
limbs developed.

CHELONIA.--An order of Reptiles including the Turtles, Tortoises, etc.

CIRRIPEDES.--An order of Crustaceans including the Barnacles and
Acorn-shells. Their young resemble those of many other Crustaceans in
form; but when mature they are always attached to other objects, either
directly or by means of a stalk, and their bodies are enclosed by a
calcareous shell composed of several pieces, two of which can open to
give issue to a bunch of curled, jointed tentacles, which represent the
limbs.

COCCUS.--The genus of Insects including the Cochineal. In these the
male is a minute, winged fly, and the female generally a motionless,
berry-like mass.

COCOON.--A case usually of silky material, in which insects are
frequently enveloped during the second or resting-stage (pupa) of
their existence. The term "cocoon-stage" is here used as equivalent to
"pupa-stage."

COELOSPERMOUS.--A term applied to those fruits of the Umbelliferae which
have the seed hollowed on the inner face.

COLEOPTERA.--Beetles, an order of Insects, having a biting mouth and the
first pair of wings more or less horny, forming sheaths for the second
pair, and usually meeting in a straight line down the middle of the
back.

COLUMN.--A peculiar organ in the flowers of Orchids, in which the
stamens, style and stigma (or the reproductive parts) are united.

COMPOSITAE or COMPOSITOUS PLANTS.--Plants in which the inflorescence
consists of numerous small flowers (florets) brought together into
a dense head, the base of which is enclosed by a common envelope.
(Examples, the Daisy, Dandelion, etc.)

CONFERVAE.--The filamentous weeds of fresh water.

CONGLOMERATE.--A rock made up of fragments of rock or pebbles, cemented
together by some other material.

COROLLA.--The second envelope of a flower usually composed of coloured,
leaf-like organs (petals), which may be united by their edges either in
the basal part or throughout.

CORRELATION.--The normal coincidence of one phenomenon, character, etc.,
with another.

CORYMB.--A bunch of flowers in which those springing from the lower part
of the flower stalks are supported on long stalks so as to be nearly on
a level with the upper ones.

COTYLEDONS.--The first or seed-leaves of plants.

CRUSTACEANS.--A class of articulated animals, having the skin of the
body generally more or less hardened by the deposition of calcareous
matter, breathing by means of gills. (Examples, Crab, Lobster, Shrimp,
etc.)

CURCULIO.--The old generic term for the Beetles known as Weevils,
characterised by their four-jointed feet, and by the head being produced
into a sort of beak, upon the sides of which the antennae are inserted.

CUTANEOUS.--Of or belonging to the skin.

DEGRADATION.--The wearing down of land by the action of the sea or of
meteoric agencies.

DENUDATION.--The wearing away of the surface of the land by water.

DEVONIAN SYSTEM or FORMATION.--A series of Palaeozoic rocks, including
the Old Red Sandstone.

DICOTYLEDONS, or DICOTYLEDONOUS PLANTS.--A class of plants characterised
by having two seed-leaves, by the formation of new wood between the bark
and the old wood (exogenous growth) and by the reticulation of the veins
of the leaves. The parts of the flowers are generally in multiples of
five.

DIFFERENTATION.--The separation or discrimination of parts or organs
which in simpler forms of life are more or less united.

DIMORPHIC.--Having two distinct forms.--DIMORPHISM is the condition of
the appearance of the same species under two dissimilar forms.

DIOECIOUS.--Having the organs of the sexes upon distinct individuals.

DIORITE.--A peculiar form of Greenstone.

DORSAL.--Of or belonging to the back.

EDENTATA.--A peculiar order of Quadrupeds, characterised by the absence
of at least the middle incisor (front) teeth in both jaws. (Examples,
the Sloths and Armadillos.)

ELYTRA.--The hardened fore-wings of Beetles, serving as sheaths for the
membranous hind-wings, which constitute the true organs of flight.

EMBRYO.--The young animal undergoing development within the egg or womb.

EMBRYOLOGY.--The study of the development of the embryo.

ENDEMIC.--Peculiar to a given locality.

ENTOMOSTRACA.--A division of the class Crustacea, having all the
segments of the body usually distinct, gills attached to the feet or
organs of the mouth, and the feet fringed with fine hairs. They are
generally of small size.

EOCENE.--The earliest of the three divisions of the Tertiary epoch
of geologists. Rocks of this age contain a small proportion of shells
identical with species now living.

EPHEMEROUS INSECTS.--Insects allied to the May-fly.

FAUNA.--The totality of the animals naturally inhabiting a certain
country or region, or which have lived during a given geological period.

FELIDAE.--The Cat-family.

FERAL.--Having become wild from a state of cultivation or domestication.

FLORA.--The totality of the plants growing naturally in a country, or
during a given geological period.

FLORETS.--Flowers imperfectly developed in some respects, and collected
into a dense spike or head, as in the Grasses, the Dandelion, etc.

FOETAL.--Of or belonging to the foetus, or embryo in course of
development.

FORAMINIFERA.--A class of animals of very low organisation and generally
of small size, having a jelly-like body, from the surface of which
delicate filaments can be given off and retracted for the prehension
of external objects, and having a calcareous or sandy shell, usually
divided into chambers and perforated with small apertures.

FOSSILIFEROUS.--Containing fossils.

FOSSORIAL.--Having a faculty of digging. The Fossorial Hymenoptera are a
group of Wasp-like Insects, which burrow in sandy soil to make nests for
their young.

FRENUM (pl. FRENA).--A small band or fold of skin.

FUNGI (sing. FUNGUS).--A class of cellular plants, of which Mushrooms,
Toadstools, and Moulds, are familiar examples.

FURCULA.--The forked bone formed by the union of the collar-bones in
many birds, such as the common Fowl.

GALLINACEOUS BIRDS.--An order of birds of which the common Fowl, Turkey,
and Pheasant, are well-known examples.

GALLUS.--The genus of birds which includes the common Fowl.

GANGLION.--A swelling or knot from which nerves are given off as from a
centre.

GANOID FISHES.--Fishes covered with peculiar enamelled bony scales. Most
of them are extinct.

GERMINAL VESICLE.--A minute vesicle in the eggs of animals, from which
the development of the embryo proceeds.

GLACIAL PERIOD.--A period of great cold and of enormous extension of ice
upon the surface of the earth. It is believed that glacial periods have
occurred repeatedly during the geological history of the earth, but
the term is generally applied to the close of the Tertiary epoch, when
nearly the whole of Europe was subjected to an arctic climate.

GLAND.--An organ which secretes or separates some peculiar product from
the blood or sap of animals or plants.

GLOTTIS.--The opening of the windpipe into the oesophagus or gullet.

GNEISS.--A rock approaching granite in composition, but more or less
laminated, and really produced by the alteration of a sedimentary
deposit after its consolidation.

GRALLATORES.--The so-called wading-birds (storks, cranes, snipes, etc.),
which are generally furnished with long legs, bare of feathers above the
heel, and have no membranes between the toes.

GRANITE.--A rock consisting essentially of crystals of felspar and mica
in a mass of quartz.

HABITAT.--The locality in which a plant or animal naturally lives.

HEMIPTERA.--An order or sub-order of insects, characterised by the
possession of a jointed beak or rostrum, and by having the fore-wings
horny in the basal portion and membranous at the extremity, where they
cross each other. This group includes the various species of bugs.

HERMAPHRODITE.--Possessing the organs of both sexes.

HOMOLOGY.--That relation between parts which results from their
development from corresponding embryonic parts, either in different
animals, as in the case of the arm of man, the fore-leg of a quadruped,
and the wing of a bird; or in the same individual, as in the case of the
fore and hind legs in quadrupeds, and the segments or rings and their
appendages of which the body of a worm, a centipede, etc., is composed.
The latter is called serial homology. The parts which stand in such a
relation to each other are said to be homologous, and one such part
or organ is called the homologue of the other. In different plants
the parts of the flower are homologous, and in general these parts are
regarded as homologous with leaves.

HOMOPTERA.--An order or sub-order of insects having (like the Hemiptera)
a jointed beak, but in which the fore-wings are either wholly membranous
or wholly leathery, The Cicadae, frog-hoppers, and Aphides, are
well-known examples.

HYBRID.--The offspring of the union of two distinct species.

HYMENOPTERA.--An order of insects possessing biting jaws and usually
four membranous wings in which there are a few veins. Bees and wasps are
familiar examples of this group.

HYPERTROPHIED.--Excessively developed.

ICHNEUMONIDAE.--A family of hymenopterous insects, the members of which
lay their eggs in the bodies or eggs of other insects.

IMAGO.--The perfect (generally winged) reproductive state of an insect.

INDIGENES.--The aboriginal animal or vegetable inhabitants of a country
or region.

INFLORESCENCE.--The mode of arrangement of the flowers of plants.

INFUSORIA.--A class of microscopic animalcules, so called from their
having originally been observed in infusions of vegetable matters. They
consist of a gelatinous material enclosed in a delicate membrane, the
whole or part of which is furnished with short vibrating hairs (called
cilia), by means of which the animalcules swim through the water or
convey the minute particles of their food to the orifice of the mouth.

INSECTIVOROUS.--Feeding on insects.

INVERTEBRATA, or INVERTEBRATE ANIMALS.--Those animals which do not
possess a backbone or spinal column.

LACUNAE.--Spaces left among the tissues in some of the lower animals
and serving in place of vessels for the circulation of the fluids of the
body.

LAMELLATED.--Furnished with lamellae or little plates.

LARVA (pl. LARVAE).--The first condition of an insect at its issuing
from the egg, when it is usually in the form of a grub, caterpillar, or
maggot.

LARYNX.--The upper part of the windpipe opening into the gullet.

LAURENTIAN.--A group of greatly altered and very ancient rocks, which is
greatly developed along the course of the St. Laurence, whence the name.
It is in these that the earliest known traces of organic bodies have
been found.

LEGUMINOSAE.--An order of plants represented by the common peas and
beans, having an irregular flower in which one petal stands up like a
wing, and the stamens and pistil are enclosed in a sheath formed by two
other petals. The fruit is a pod (or legume).

LEMURIDAE.--A group of four-handed animals, distinct from the monkeys
and approaching the insectivorous quadrupeds in some of their characters
and habits. Its members have the nostrils curved or twisted, and a claw
instead of a nail upon the first finger of the hind hands.

LEPIDOPTERA.--An order of insects, characterised by the possession of
a spiral proboscis, and of four large more or less scaly wings. It
includes the well-known butterflies and moths.

LITTORAL.--Inhabiting the seashore.

LOESS.--A marly deposit of recent (Post-Tertiary) date, which occupies a
great part of the valley of the Rhine.

MALACOSTRACA.--The higher division of the Crustacea, including the
ordinary crabs, lobsters, shrimps, etc., together with the woodlice and
sand-hoppers.

MAMMALIA.--The highest class of animals, including the ordinary hairy
quadrupeds, the whales and man, and characterised by the production
of living young which are nourished after birth by milk from the
teats (MAMMAE, MAMMARY GLANDS) of the mother. A striking difference in
embryonic development has led to the division of this class into two
great groups; in one of these, when the embryo has attained a certain
stage, a vascular connection, called the PLACENTA, is formed between the
embryo and the mother; in the other this is wanting, and the young are
produced in a very incomplete state. The former, including the greater
part of the class, are called PLACENTAL MAMMALS; the latter,
or APLACENTAL MAMMALS, include the Marsupials and Monotremes
(ORNITHORHYNCHUS).

MAMMIFEROUS.--Having mammae or teats (see MAMMALIA).

MANDIBLES.--in insects, the first or uppermost pair of jaws, which are
generally solid, horny, biting organs. In birds the term is applied
to both jaws with their horny coverings. In quadrupeds the mandible is
properly the lower jaw.

MARSUPIALS.--An order of Mammalia in which the young are born in a
very incomplete state of development, and carried by the mother,
while sucking, in a ventral pouch (marsupium), such as the kangaroos,
opossums, etc. (see MAMMALIA).

MAXILLAE.--in insects, the second or lower pair of jaws, which
are composed of several joints and furnished with peculiar jointed
appendages called palpi, or feelers.

MELANISM.--The opposite of albinism; an undue development of colouring
material in the skin and its appendages.

METAMORPHIC ROCKS.--Sedimentary rocks which have undergone alteration,
generally by the action of heat, subsequently to their deposition and
consolidation.

MOLLUSCA.--One of the great divisions of the animal kingdom, including
those animals which have a soft body, usually furnished with a shell,
and in which the nervous ganglia, or centres, present no definite
general arrangement. They are generally known under the denomination of
"shellfish"; the cuttle-fish, and the common snails, whelks, oysters,
mussels, and cockles, may serve as examples of them.

MONOCOTYLEDONS, or MONOCOTYLEDONOUS PLANTS.--Plants in which the seed
sends up only a single seed-leaf (or cotyledon); characterised by the
absence of consecutive layers of wood in the stem (endogenous growth),
by the veins of the leaves being generally straight, and by the parts of
the flowers being generally in multiples of three. (Examples, grasses,
lilies, orchids, palms, etc.)

MORAINES.--The accumulations of fragments of rock brought down by
glaciers.

MORPHOLOGY.--The law of form or structure independent of function.

MYSIS-STAGE.--A stage in the development of certain crustaceans
(prawns), in which they closely resemble the adults of a genus (Mysis)
belonging to a slightly lower group.

NASCENT.--Commencing development.

NATATORY.--Adapted for the purpose of swimming.

NAUPLIUS-FORM.--The earliest stage in the development of many Crustacea,
especially belonging to the lower groups. In this stage the animal has a
short body, with indistinct indications of a division into segments,
and three pairs of fringed limbs. This form of the common fresh-water
CYCLOPS was described as a distinct genus under the name of NAUPLIUS.

NEURATION.--The arrangement of the veins or nervures in the wings of
insects.

NEUTERS.--Imperfectly developed females of certain social insects (such
as ants and bees), which perform all the labours of the community.
Hence, they are also called WORKERS.

NICTITATING MEMBRANE.--A semi-transparent membrane, which can be drawn
across the eye in birds and reptiles, either to moderate the effects of
a strong light or to sweep particles of dust, etc., from the surface of
the eye.

OCELLI.--The simple eyes or stemmata of insects, usually situated on the
crown of the head between the great compound eyes.

OESOPHAGUS.--The gullet.

OOLITIC.--A great series of secondary rocks, so called from the texture
of some of its members, which appear to be made up of a mass of small
EGG-LIKE calcareous bodies.

OPERCULUM.--A calcareous plate employed by many Molluscae to close the
aperture of their shell. The OPERCULAR VALVES of Cirripedes are those
which close the aperture of the shell.

ORBIT.--The bony cavity for the reception of the eye.

ORGANISM.--An organised being, whether plant or animal.

ORTHOSPERMOUS.--A term applied to those fruits of the Umbelliferae which
have the seed straight.

OSCULANT.--Forms or groups apparently intermediate between and
connecting other groups are said to be osculant.

OVA.--Eggs.

OVARIUM or OVARY (in plants).--The lower part of the pistil or female
organ of the flower, containing the ovules or incipient seeds; by growth
after the other organs of the flower have fallen, it usually becomes
converted into the fruit.

OVIGEROUS.--Egg-bearing.

OVULES (of plants).--The seeds in the earliest condition.

PACHYDERMS.--A group of Mammalia, so called from their thick skins, and
including the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, etc.

PALAEOZOIC.--The oldest system of fossiliferous rocks.

PALPI.--Jointed appendages to some of the organs of the mouth in insects
and Crustacea.

PAPILIONACEAE.--An order of plants (see LEGUMINOSAE), The flowers of
these plants are called PAPILIONACEOUS, or butterfly-like, from the
fancied resemblance of the expanded superior petals to the wings of a
butterfly.

PARASITE.--An animal or plant living upon or in, and at the expense of,
another organism.

PARTHENOGENESIS.--The production of living organisms from unimpregnated
eggs or seeds.

PEDUNCULATED.--Supported upon a stem or stalk. The pedunculated oak has
its acorns borne upon a footstool.

PELORIA or PELORISM.--The appearance of regularity of structure in the
flowers of plants which normally bear irregular flowers.

PELVIS.--The bony arch to which the hind limbs of vertebrate animals are
articulated.

PETALS.--The leaves of the corolla, or second circle of organs in a
flower. They are usually of delicate texture and brightly coloured.

PHYLLODINEOUS.--Having flattened, leaf-like twigs or leafstalks instead
of true leaves.

PIGMENT.--The colouring material produced generally in the superficial
parts of animals. The cells secreting it are called PIGMENT-CELLS.

PINNATE.--Bearing leaflets on each side of a central stalk.

PISTILS.--The female organs of a flower, which occupy a position in the
centre of the other floral organs. The pistil is generally divisible
into the ovary or germen, the style and the stigma.

PLACENTALIA, PLACENTATA.--or PLACENTAL MAMMALS, See MAMMALIA.

PLANTIGRADES.--Quadrupeds which walk upon the whole sole of the foot,
like the bears.

PLASTIC.--Readily capable of change.

PLEISTOCENE PERIOD.--The latest portion of the Tertiary epoch.

PLUMULE (in plants).--The minute bud between the seed-leaves of
newly-germinated plants.

PLUTONIC ROCKS.--Rocks supposed to have been produced by igneous action
in the depths of the earth.

POLLEN.--The male element in flowering plants; usually a fine dust
produced by the anthers, which, by contact with the stigma effects the
fecundation of the seeds. This impregnation is brought about by means of
tubes (POLLEN-TUBES) which issue from the pollen-grains adhering to the
stigma, and penetrate through the tissues until they reach the ovary.

POLYANDROUS (flowers).--Flowers having many stamens.

POLYGAMOUS PLANTS.--Plants in which some flowers are unisexual and
others hermaphrodite. The unisexual (male and female) flowers, may be on
the same or on different plants.

POLYMORPHIC.--Presenting many forms.

POLYZOARY.--The common structure formed by the cells of the Polyzoa,
such as the well-known seamats.

PREHENSILE.--Capable of grasping.

PREPOTENT.--Having a superiority of power.

PRIMARIES.--The feathers forming the tip of the wing of a bird, and
inserted upon that part which represents the hand of man.

PROCESSES.--Projecting portions of bones, usually for the attachment of
muscles, ligaments, etc.

PROPOLIS.--A resinous material collected by the hivebees from the
opening buds of various trees.

PROTEAN.--Exceedingly variable.

PROTOZOA.--The lowest great division of the animal kingdom. These
animals are composed of a gelatinous material, and show scarcely any
trace of distinct organs. The Infusoria, Foraminifera, and sponges, with
some other forms, belong to this division.

PUPA (pl. PUPAE).--The second stage in the development of an insect,
from which it emerges in the perfect (winged) reproductive form. In most
insects the PUPAL STAGE is passed in perfect repose. The CHRYSALIS is
the pupal state of butterflies.

RADICLE.--The minute root of an embryo plant.

RAMUS.--One half of the lower jaw in the Mammalia. The portion which
rises to articulate with the skull is called the ASCENDING RAMUS.

RANGE.--The extent of country over which a plant or animal is naturally
spread. RANGE IN TIME expresses the distribution of a species or group
through the fossiliferous beds of the earth's crust.

RETINA.--The delicate inner coat of the eye, formed by nervous filaments
spreading from the optic nerve, and serving for the perception of the
impressions produced by light.

RETROGRESSION.--Backward development. When an animal, as it approaches
maturity, becomes less perfectly organised than might be expected
from its early stages and known relationships, it is said to undergo a
RETROGRADE DEVELOPMENT or METAMORPHOSIS.

RHIZOPODS.--A class of lowly organised animals (Protozoa), having a
gelatinous body, the surface of which can be protruded in the form of
root-like processes or filaments, which serve for locomotion and
the prehension of food. The most important order is that of the
Foraminifera.

RODENTS.--The gnawing Mammalia, such as the rats, rabbits, and
squirrels. They are especially characterised by the possession of a
single pair of chisel-like cutting teeth in each jaw, between which and
the grinding teeth there is a great gap.

RUBUS.--The bramble genus.

RUDIMENTARY.--Very imperfectly developed.

RUMINANTS.--The group of quadrupeds which ruminate or chew the cud, such
as oxen, sheep, and deer. They have divided hoofs, and are destitute of
front teeth in the upper jaw.

SACRAL.--Belonging to the sacrum, or the bone composed usually of two
or more united vertebrae to which the sides of the pelvis in vertebrate
animals are attached.

SARCODE.--The gelatinous material of which the bodies of the lowest
animals (Protozoa) are composed.

SCUTELLAE.--The horny plates with which the feet of birds are generally
more or less covered, especially in front.

SEDIMENTARY FORMATIONS.--Rocks deposited as sediments from water.

SEGMENTS.--The transverse rings of which the body of an articulate
animal or annelid is composed.

SEPALS.--The leaves or segments of the calyx, or outermost envelope
of an ordinary flower. They are usually green, but sometimes brightly
coloured.

SERRATURES.--Teeth like those of a saw.

SESSILE.--Not supported on a stem or footstalk.

SILURIAN SYSTEM.--A very ancient system of fossiliferous rocks belonging
to the earlier part of the Palaeozoic series.

SPECIALISATION.--The setting apart of a particular organ for the
performance of a particular function.

SPINAL CORD.--The central portion of the nervous system in the
Vertebrata, which descends from the brain through the arches of the
vertebrae, and gives off nearly all the nerves to the various organs of
the body.

STAMENS.--The male organs of flowering plants, standing in a circle
within the petals. They usually consist of a filament and an anther,
the anther being the essential part in which the pollen, or fecundating
dust, is formed.

STERNUM.--The breast-bone.

STIGMA.--The apical portion of the pistil in flowering plants.

STIPULES.--Small leafy organs placed at the base of the footstalks of
the leaves in many plants.

STYLE.--The middle portion of the perfect pistil, which rises like a
column from the ovary and supports the stigma at its summit.

SUBCUTANEOUS.--Situated beneath the skin.

SUCTORIAL.--Adapted for sucking.

SUTURES (in the skull).--The lines of junction of the bones of which the
skull is composed.

TARSUS (pl. TARSI).--The jointed feet of articulate animals, such as
insects.

TELEOSTEAN FISHES.--Fishes of the kind familiar to us in the present
day, having the skeleton usually completely ossified and the scales
horny.

TENTACULA or TENTACLES.--Delicate fleshy organs of prehension or touch
possessed by many of the lower animals.

TERTIARY.--The latest geological epoch, immediately preceding the
establishment of the present order of things.

TRACHEA.--The windpipe or passage for the admission of air to the lungs.

TRIDACTYLE.--Three-fingered, or composed of three movable parts attached
to a common base.

TRILOBITES.--A peculiar group of extinct crustaceans, somewhat
resembling the woodlice in external form, and, like some of them,
capable of rolling themselves up into a ball. Their remains are found
only in the Palaeozoic rocks, and most abundantly in those of Silurian
age.

TRIMORPHIC.--Presenting three distinct forms.

UMBELLIFERAE.--An order of plants in which the flowers, which contain
five stamens and a pistil with two styles, are supported upon footstalks
which spring from the top of the flower stem and spread out like the
wires of an umbrella, so as to bring all the flowers in the same head
(UMBEL) nearly to the same level. (Examples, parsley and carrot.)

UNGULATA.--Hoofed quadrupeds.

UNICELLULAR.--Consisting of a single cell.

VASCULAR.--Containing blood-vessels.

VERMIFORM.--Like a worm.

VERTEBRATA or VERTEBRATE ANIMALS.--The highest division of the animal
kingdom, so called from the presence in most cases of a backbone
composed of numerous joints or VERTEBRAE, which constitutes the centre
of the skeleton and at the same time supports and protects the central
parts of the nervous system.

WHORLS.--The circles or spiral lines in which the parts of plants are
arranged upon the axis of growth.

WORKERS.--See neuters.

ZOEA-STAGE.--The earliest stage in the development of many of the
higher Crustacea, so called from the name of ZOEA applied to these young
animals when they were supposed to constitute a peculiar genus.

ZOOIDS.--In many of the lower animals (such as the Corals, Medusae,
etc.) reproduction takes place in two ways, namely, by means of eggs and
by a process of budding with or without separation from the parent of
the product of the latter, which is often very different from that of
the egg. The individuality of the species is represented by the whole
of the form produced between two sexual reproductions; and these forms,
which are apparently individual animals, have been called ZOOIDE.




INDEX.


  Aberrant groups

  Abyssinia, plants of

  Acclimatisation

  Adoxa

  Affinities of extinct species
 --of organic beings

  Agassiz on Amblyopsis
 --on groups of species suddenly appearing
 --on prophetic forms
 --on embryological succession
 --on the Glacial period
 --on embryological characters
 --on the latest tertiary forms
 --on parallelism of embryological development and geological succession
 --Alex., on pedicellariae

  Algae of New Zealand

  Alligators, males, fighting

  Alternate generations

  Amblyopsis, blind fish

  America, North, productions allied to those of Europe
 --boulders and glaciers of
 --South, no modern formations on west coast

  Ammonites, sudden extinction of

  Anagallis, sterility of

  Analogy of variations

  Andaman Islands inhabited by a toad

  Ancylus

  Animals, not domesticated from being variable
 --domestic; descended from several stocks
 --acclimatisation of

  Animals of Australia
 --with thicker fur in cold climates
 --blind, in caves
 --extinct, of Australia

  Anomma

  Antarctic islands, ancient flora of

  Antechinus

  Ants attending aphides
 --slave-making instinct
 --neuters, structure of

  Apes, not having acquired intellectual powers

  Aphides attended by ants

  Aphis, development of

  Apteryx

  Arab horses

  Aralo-Caspian Sea

  Archeopteryx

  Archiac, M. de, on the succession of species

  Artichoke, Jerusalem

  Ascension, plants of

  Asclepias, pollen of

  Asparagus

  Aspicarpa

  Asses, striped
 --improved by selection

  Ateuchus

  Aucapitaine, on land-shells

  Audubon, on habits of frigate-bird
 --on variation in birds' nests
 --on heron eating seeds

  Australia, animals of
 --dogs of
 --extinct animals of
 --European plants in
 --glaciers of

  Azara, on flies destroying cattle

  Azores, flora of

  Babington, Mr., on British plants

  Baer, Von, standard of Highness
 --comparison of bee and fish
 --embryonic similarity of the Vertebrata

  Baker, Sir S., on the giraffe

  Balancement of growth

  Baleen

  Barberry, flowers of

  Barrande, M., on Silurian colonies
 --on the succession of species
 --on parallelism of palaeozoic formations
 --on affinities of ancient species

  Barriers, importance of

  Bates, Mr., on mimetic butterflies

  Batrachians on islands

  Bats, how structure acquired
 --distribution of

  Bear, catching water-insects

  Beauty, how acquired

  Bee, sting of
 --queen, killing rivals
 --Australian, extermination of

  Bees, fertilizing flowers
 --hive, not sucking the red clover
 --hive, cell-making instinct
 --Ligurian
 --variation in habits

  Bees, parasitic
 --humble, cells of

  Beetles, wingless, in Madeira
 --with deficient tarsi

  Bentham, Mr., on British plants
 --on classification

  Berkeley, Mr., on seeds in salt-water

  Bermuda, birds of

  Birds acquiring fear
 --beauty of
 --annually cross the Atlantic
 --colour of, on continents
 --footsteps, and remains of, in secondary rocks
 --fossil, in caves of Brazil
 --of Madeira, Bermuda, and Galapagos
 --song of males
 --transporting seeds
 --waders
 --wingless

  Bizcacha, affinities of

  Bladder for swimming, in fish

  Blindness of cave animals

  Blyth, Mr., on distinctness of Indian cattle
 --on striped Hemionus
 --on crossed geese

  Borrow, Mr., on the Spanish pointer

  Bory St. Vincent, on Batrachians

  Bosquet, M., on fossil Chthamalus

  Boulders, erratic, on the Azores

  Branchiae
 --of crustaceans

  Braun, Prof., on the seeds of Fumariaceae

  Brent, Mr., on house-tumblers

  Britain, mammals of

  Broca, Prof., on Natural Selection

  Bronn, Prof., on duration of specific forms
 --various objections by

  Brown, Robert, on classification

  Brown-Sequard, on inherited mutilations

  Busk, Mr., on the Polyzoa

  Butterflies, mimetic

  Buzareingues, on sterility of varieties

  Cabbage, varieties of, crossed

  Calceolaria

  Canary-birds, sterility of hybrids

  Cape de Verde Islands, productions of
 --plants of, on mountains

  Cape of Good Hope, plants of

  Carpenter, Dr., on foraminifera

  Carthemus

  Catasetum

  Cats, with blue eyes, deaf
 --variation in habits of
 --curling tail when going to spring

  Cattle destroying fir-trees
 --destroyed by flies in Paraguay
 --breeds of, locally extinct
 --fertility of Indian and European breeds
 --Indian

  Cave, inhabitants of, blind

  Cecidomyia

  Celts, proving antiquity of man

  Centres of creation

  Cephalopodae, structures of eyes
 --development of

  Cercopithecus, tail of

  Ceroxylus laceratus

  Cervulus

  Cetacea, teeth and hair
 --development of the whalebone

  Cetaceans

  Ceylon, plants of

  Chalk formation

  Characters, divergence of
 --sexual, variable
 --adaptive or analogical

  Charlock

  Checks to increase
 --mutual

  Chelae of Crustaceans

  Chickens, instinctive tameness of

  Chironomus, its asexual reproduction

  Chthamalinae

  Chthamalus, cretacean species of

  Circumstances favourable to selection of domestic products
 --to natural selection

  Cirripedes capable of crossing
 --carapace aborted
 --their ovigerous frena
 --fossil
 --larvae of

  Claparede, Prof., on the hair-claspers of the Acaridae

  Clarke, Rev. W.B., on old glaciers in Australia

  Classification

  Clift, Mr., on the succession of types

  Climate, effects of, in checking increase of beings
 --adaptation of, to organisms

  Climbing plants
 --development of

  Clover visited by bees

  Cobites, intestine of

  Cockroach

  Collections, palaeontological, poor

  Colour, influenced by climate
 --in relation to attacks by flies

  Columba livia, parent of domestic pigeons

  Colymbetes

  Compensation of growth

  Compositae, flowers and seeds of
 --outer and inner florets of
 --male flowers of

  Conclusion, general

  Conditions, slight changes in, favourable to fertility

  Convergence of genera

  Coot

  Cope, Prof., on the acceleration or retardation of the period of
  reproduction

  Coral-islands, seeds drifted to
 --reefs, indicating movements of earth

  Corn-crake

  Correlated variation in domestic productions

  Coryanthes

  Creation, single centres of

  Crinum

  Croll, Mr., on subaerial denudation
 --on the age of our oldest formations
 --on alternate Glacial periods in the North and South

  Crosses, reciprocal

  Crossing of domestic animals, importance in altering breeds
 --advantages of
 --unfavourable to selection

  Cruger, Dr., on Coryanthes

  Crustacea of New Zealand

  Crustacean, blind
  air-breathers

  Crustaceans, their chelae

  Cryptocerus

  Ctenomys, blind

  Cuckoo, instinct of

  Cunningham, Mr., on the flight of the logger-headed duck

  Currants, grafts of

  Currents of sea, rate of

  Cuvier on conditions of existence
 --on fossil monkeys

  Cuvier, Fred., on instinct

  Cyclostoma, resisting salt water

  Dana, Prof., on blind cave-animals
 --on relations of crustaceans of Japan
 --on crustaceans of New Zealand

  Dawson, Dr., on eozoon

  De Candolle, Aug. Pyr., on struggle for existence
 --on umbelliferae
 --on general affinities

  De Candolle, Alph., on the variability of oaks
 --on low plants, widely dispersed
 --on widely-ranging plants being variable
 --on naturalisation
 --on winged seeds
 --on Alpine species suddenly becoming rare
 --on distribution of plants with large seeds
 --on vegetation of Australia
 --on fresh-water plants
 --on insular plants

  Degradation of rocks

  Denudation, rate of
 --of oldest rocks
 --of granite areas

  Development of ancient forms

  Devonian system

  Dianthus, fertility of crosses

  Dimorphism in plants

  Dirt on feet of birds

  Dispersal, means of
 --during Glacial period

  Distribution, geographical
 --means of

  Disuse, effect of, under nature

  Diversification of means for same general purpose

  Division, physiological, of labour

  Divergence of character

  Dog, resemblance of jaw to that of the Thylacinus

  Dogs, hairless, with imperfect teeth
 --descended from several wild stocks
 --domestic instincts of
 --inherited civilisation of
 --fertility of breeds together
 --of crosses
 --proportions of body in different breeds, when young

  Domestication, variation under

  Double flowers

  Downing, Mr., on fruit-trees in America

  Dragon-flies, intestines of

  Drift-timber

  Driver-ant

  Drones killed by other bees

  Duck, domestic, wings of, reduced
 --beak of
 --logger-headed

  Duckweed

  Dugong, affinities of

  Dung-beetles with deficient tarsi

  Dyticus

  Earl, Mr., W., on the Malay Archipelago

  Ears, drooping, in domestic animals
 --rudimentary

  Earth, seeds in roots of trees
 --charged with seeds

  Echinodermata, their pedicellariae

  Eciton

  Economy of organisation

  Edentata, teeth and hair
 --fossil species of

  Edwards, Milne, on physiological division of labour
 --on gradations of structure

  Edwards, on embryological characters

  Eggs, young birds escaping from

  Egypt, productions of, not modified

  Electric organs

  Elephant, rate of increase
 --of Glacial period

  Embryology

  Eozoon Canadense

  Epilipsy inherited

  Existence, struggle for
 --condition of

  Extinction, as bearing on natural selection
 --of domestic varieties

  Eye, structure of
 --correction for aberration

  Eyes, reduced, in moles

  Fabre, M., on hymenoptera fighting
 --on parasitic sphex
 --on Sitaris

  Falconer, Dr., on naturalisation of plants in India
 --on elephants and mastodons
 --and Cautley on mammals of sub-Himalayan beds

  Falkland Islands, wolf of

  Faults

  Faunas, marine

  Fear, instinctive, in birds

  Feet of birds, young molluscs adhering to

  Fertilisation variously effected

  Fertility of hybrids
 --from slight changes in conditions
 --of crossed varieties

  Fir-trees destroyed by cattle
 --pollen of

  Fish, flying
 --teleostean, sudden appearance of
 --eating seeds
 --fresh-water, distribution of

  Fishes, ganoid, now confined to fresh water
 --ganoid, living in fresh water
 --electric organs of
 --of southern hemisphere

  Flight, powers of, how acquired

  Flint-tools, proving antiquity of man

  Flower, Prof., on the larynx
 --on Halitherium
 --on the resemblance between the jaws of the dog and Thylacinus
 --on the homology of the feet of certain marsupials

  Flowers, structure of
 --in relation to crossing
 --of composite and umbelliferae
 --beauty of
 --double

  Flysch formation, destitute of organic remains

  Forbes, Mr. D., on glacial action in the Andes

  Forbes, E., on colours of shells
 --on abrupt range of shells in depth
 --on poorness of palaeontological collections
 --on continuous succession of genera
 --on continental extensions
 --on distribution during Glacial period
 --on parallelism in time and space

  Forests, changes in, in America

  Formation, Devonian
 --Cambrian
 --intermittent
 --thickness of, in Britain

  Formica
 --rufescens
 --sanguinea
 --flava, neuter of

  Forms, lowly organised, long enduring

  Frena, ovigerous, of cirripedes

  Fresh-water productions, dispersal of

  Fries on species in large genera being closely allied to other species

  Frigate-bird

  Frogs on islands

  Fruit-trees, gradual improvement of
 --in United States
 --varieties of, acclimatised in United States

  Fuci, crossed

  Fur, thicker in cold climates

  Furze

  Galapagos Archipelago, birds of
 --productions of

  Galaxias, its wide range

  Galeopithecus

  Game, increase of, checked by vermin

  Gartner on sterility of hybrids
 --on reciprocal crosses
 --on crossed maize and verbascum
 --on comparison of hybrids and mongrels

  Gaudry, Prof., on intermediate genera of fossil mammals in Attica

  Geese, fertility when crossed
 --upland

  Geikie, Mr., on subaerial denudation

  Genealogy, important in classification

  Generations, alternate

  Geoffroy St. Hilaire, on balancement
 --on homologous organs

  Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Isidore, on variability of repeated parts
 --on correlation, in monstrosities
 --on correlation
 --on variable parts being often monstrous

  Geographical distribution

  Geography, ancient

  Geology, future progress of
 --imperfection of the record

  Gervais, Prof., on Typotherium

  Giraffe, tail of
 --structure of

  Glacial period
 --affecting the North and South

  Glands, mammary

  Gmelin, on distribution

  Godwin-Austin, Mr., on the Malay Archipelago

  Goethe, on compensation of growth

  Gomphia

  Gooseberry, grafts of

  Gould, Dr. Aug. A., on land-shells

  Gould, Mr., on colours of birds
 --on instincts of cuckoo
 --on distribution of genera of birds

  Gourds, crossed

  Graba, on the Uria lacrymans

  Grafting, capacity of

  Granite, areas of denuded

  Grasses, varieties of

  Gray, Dr. Asa, on the variability of oaks
 --on man not causing variability
 --on sexes of the holly
 --on trees of the United States
 --on naturalised plants in the United States
 --on aestivation
 --on rarity of intermediate varieties
 --on Alpine plants

  Gray, Dr. J.E., on striped mule

  Grebe

  Grimm, on asexual reproduction

  Groups, aberrant

  Grouse, colours of
 --red, a doubtful species

  Growth, compensation of

  Gunther, Dr., on flat-fish
 --on prehensile tails
 --on the fishes of Panama
 --on the range of fresh-water fishes
 --on the limbs of Lepidosiren

  Haast, Dr., on glaciers of New Zealand

  Habit, effect of, under domestication
 --effect of, under nature
 --diversified, of same species

  Hackel, Prof., on classification and the lines of descent

  Hair and teeth, correlated

  Halitherium

  Harcourt, Mr. E.V., on the birds of Madeira

  Hartung, M., on boulders in the Azores

  Hazel-nuts

  Hearne, on habits of bears

  Heath, changes in vegetation

  Hector, Dr., on glaciers of New Zealand

  Heer, Oswald, on ancient cultivated plants
 --on plants of Madeira

  Helianthemum

  Helix pomatia, resisting salt water

  Helmholtz, M., on the imperfection of the human eye

  Helosciadium

  Hemionus, striped

  Hensen, Dr., on the eyes of Cephalopods

  Herbert, W., on struggle for existence
 --on sterility of hybrids

  Hermaphrodites crossing

  Heron eating seed

  Heron, Sir R., on peacocks

  Heusinger, on white animals poisoned by certain plants

  Hewitt, Mr., on sterility of first crosses

  Hildebrand, Prof., on the self-sterility of Corydalis

  Hilgendorf, on intermediate varieties

  Himalaya, glaciers of
 --plants of

  Hippeastrum

  Hippocampus

  Hofmeister, Prof., on the movements of plants

  Holly-trees, sexes of

  Hooker, Dr., on trees of New Zealand
 --on acclimatisation of Himalayan trees
 --on flowers of umbelliferae
 --on the position of ovules
 --on glaciers of Himalaya
 --on algae of New Zealand
 --on vegetation at the base of the Himalaya
 --on plants of Tierra del Fuego
 --on Australian plants
 --on relations of flora of America
 --on flora of the Antarctic lands
 --on the plants of the Galapagos
 --on glaciers of the Lebanon
 --on man not causing variability
 --on plants of mountains of Fernando Po

  Hooks on palms
 --on seeds, on islands

  Hopkins, Mr., on denudation

  Hornbill, remarkable instinct of

  Horns, rudimentary

  Horse, fossil in La Plata
 --proportions of, when young

  Horses destroyed by flies in Paraguay
 --striped

  Horticulturists, selection applied by

  Huber on cells of bees

  Huber, P., on reason blended with instinct
 --on habitual nature of instincts
 --on slave-making ants
 --on Melipona domestica

  Hudson, Mr., on the Ground-woodpecker of La Plata
 --on the Molothrus

  Humble-bees, cells of

  Hunter, J., on secondary sexual characters

  Hutton, Captain, on crossed geese

  Huxley, Prof., on structure of hermaphrodites
 --on the affinities of the Sirenia
 --on forms connecting birds and reptiles
 --on homologous organs
 --on the development of aphis

  Hybrids and mongrels compared

  Hybridism

  Hydra, structure of

  Hymenoptera, fighting

  Hymenopterous insect, diving

  Hyoseris

  Ibla

  Icebergs transporting seeds

  Increase, rate of

  Individuals, numbers favourable to selection
 --many, whether simultaneously created

  Inheritance, laws of
 --at corresponding ages

  Insects, colour of, fitted for their stations
 --sea-side, colours of
 --blind, in caves
 --luminous
 --their resemblance to certain objects
 --neuter

  Instinct, not varying simultaneously with structure

  Instincts, domestic

  Intercrossing, advantages of

  Islands, oceanic

  Isolation favourable to selection

  Japan, productions of

  Java, plants of

  Jones, Mr. J.M., on the birds of Bermuda

  Jordain, M., on the eye-spots of star fishes

  Jukes, Prof., on subaerial denudation

  Jussieu on classification

  Kentucky, caves of

  Kerguelen-land, flora of

  Kidney-bean, acclimatisation of

  Kidneys of birds

  Kirby, on tarsi deficient in beetles

  Knight, Andrew, on cause of variation

  Kolreuter, on intercrossing
 --on the barberry
 --on sterility of hybrids
 --on reciprocal crosses
 --on crossed varieties of nicotiana
 --on crossing male and hermaphrodite flowers

  Lamarck, on adaptive characters

  Lancelet, eyes of

  Landois, on the development of the wings of insects

  Land-shells, distribution of
 --of Madeira, naturalised
 --resisting salt water

  Languages, classification of

  Lankester, Mr. E. Ray, on longevity
 --on homologies

  Lapse, great, of time

  Larvae

  Laurel, nectar secreted by the leaves

  Laurentian formation

  Laws of variation

  Leech, varieties of

  Leguminosae, nectar secreted by glands

  Leibnitz, attack on Newton

  Lepidosiren, limbs in a nascent condition

  Lewes, Mr. G.H., on species not having changed in Egypt
 --on the Salamandra atra
 --on many forms of life having been at first evolved

  Life, struggle for

  Lingula, Silurian

  Linnaeus, aphorism of

  Lion, mane of
 --young of, striped

  Lobelia fulgens

  Lobelia, sterility of crosses

  Lockwood, Mr., on the ova of the Hippocampus

  Locusts transporting seeds

  Logan, Sir W., on Laurentian formation

  Lowe, Rev. R.T., on locusts visiting Madeira

  Lowness, of structure connected with variability
 --related to wide distribution

  Lubbock, Sir J., on the nerves of coccus
 --on secondary sexual characters
 --on a diving hymenopterous insect
 --on affinities
 --on metamorphoses

  Lucas, Dr. P., on inheritance
 --on resemblance of child to parent

  Lund and Clausen, on fossils of Brazil

  Lyell, Sir C., on the struggle for existence
 --on modern changes of the earth
 --on terrestrial animals not having been developed on islands
 --on a carboniferous land-shell
 --on strata beneath Silurian system
 --on the imperfection of the geological record
 --on the appearance of species
 --on Barrande's colonies
 --on tertiary formations of Europe and North America
 --on parallelism of tertiary formations
 --on transport of seeds by icebergs
 --on great alternations of climate
 --on the distribution of fresh-water shells
 --on land-shells of Madeira

  Lyell and Dawson, on fossilized trees in Nova Scotia

  Lythrum salicaria, trimorphic

  Macleay, on analogical characters

  Macrauchenia

  McDonnell, Dr., on electric organs

  Madeira, plants of
 --beetles of, wingless
 --fossil land-shells of
 --birds of

  Magpie tame in Norway

  Males, fighting

  Maize, crossed

  Malay Archipelago, compared with Europe
 --mammals of

  Malm, on flat-fish

  Malpighiaceae, small imperfect flowers of

  Mammae, their development
 --rudimentary

  Mammals, fossil, in secondary formation
 --insular

  Man, origin of

  Manatee, rudimentary nails of

  Marsupials, fossil species of

  Marsupials of Australia, structure of their feet

  Martens, M., experiment on seeds

  Martin, Mr. W.C., on striped mules

  Masters, Dr., on Saponaria

  Matteucci, on the electric organs of rays

  Matthiola, reciprocal crosses of

  Maurandia

  Means of dispersal

  Melipona domestica

  Merrill, Dr., on the American cuckoo

  Metamorphism of oldest rocks

  Mice destroying bees
 --acclimatisation of
 --tails of

  Miller, Prof., on the cells of bees

  Mirabilis, crosses of

  Missel-thrush

  Mistletoe, complex relations of

  Mivart, Mr., on the relation of hair and teeth
 --on the eyes of cephalopods
 --various objections to Natural Selection
 --on abrupt modifications
 --on the resemblance of the mouse and antechinus

  Mocking-thrush of the Galapagos

  Modification of species, not abrupt

  Moles, blind

  Molothrus, habits of

  Mongrels, fertility and sterility of
 --and hybrids compared

  Monkeys, fossil

  Monachanthus

  Mons, Van, on the origin of fruit-trees

  Monstrosities

  Moquin-Tandon, on sea-side plants

  Morphology

  Morren, on the leaves of Oxalis

  Moths, hybrid

  Mozart, musical powers of

  Mud, seeds in

  Mules, striped

  Muller, Adolph, on the instincts of the cuckoo

  Muller, Dr. Ferdinand, on Alpine Australian plants

  Muller, Fritz, on dimorphic crustaceans
 --on the lancelet
 --on air-breathing crustaceans
 --on the self-sterility of orchids
 --on embryology in relation to classification
 --on the metamorphoses of crustaceans
 --on terrestrial and fresh-water organisms not undergoing any metamorphosis
 --on climbing plants

  Multiplication of species not indefinite

  Murchison, Sir, R., on the formations of Russia
 --on azoic formations
 --on extinction

  Murie, Dr., on the modification of the skull in old age

  Murray, Mr. A., on cave-insects

  Mustela vison

  Myanthus

  Myrmecocystus

  Myrmica, eyes of

  Nageli, on morphological characters

  Nails, rudimentary

  Nathusius, Von, on pigs

  Natural history, future progress of
 --selection
 --system

  Naturalisation of forms distinct from the indigenous species
 --in New Zealand

  Naudin, on analagous variations in gourds
 --on hybrid gourds
 --on reversion

  Nautilus, Silurian

  Nectar of plants

  Nectaries, how formed

  Nelumbium luteum

  Nests, variation in

  Neuter insects

  New Zealand, productions of, not perfect
 --naturalised products of
 --fossil birds of
 --glaciers of
 --crustaceans of
 --algae of
 --number of plants of
 --flora of

  Newman, Col., on humble-bees

  Newton, Prof., on earth attached to a partridge's foot

  Newton, Sir I., attacked for irreligion

  Nicotiana, crossed varieties of
 --certain species very sterile

  Nitsche, Dr., on the Polyzoa

  Noble, Mr., on fertility of Rhododendron

  Nodules, phosphatic, in azoic rocks

  Oak, varieties of

  Onites apelles

  Orchids, fertilisation of
 --the development of their flowers
 --forms of

  Orchis, pollen of

  Organisation, tendency to advance

  Organs of extreme perfection
 --electric, of fishes
 --of little importance
 --homologous
 --rudiments of, and nascent

  Ornithorhynchus, mammae of

  Ostrich not capable of flight
 --habit of laying eggs together
 --American, two species of

  Otter, habits of, how acquired

  Ouzel, water

  Owen, Prof., on birds not flying
 --on vegetative repetition
 --on variability of unusually developed parts
 --on the eyes of fishes
 --on the swim-bladder of fishes
 --on fossil horse of La Plata
 --on generalised form
 --on relation of ruminants and pachyderms
 --on fossil birds of New Zealand
 --on succession of types
 --on affinities of the dugong
 --on homologous organs
 --on the metamorphosis of cephalopods

  Pacific Ocean, faunas of

  Pacini, on electric organs

  Paley, on no organ formed to give pain

  Pallas, on the fertility of the domesticated descendants of wild stocks

  Palm with hooks

  Papaver bracteatum

  Paraguay, cattle destroyed by flies

  Parasites

  Partridge, with ball of dirt attached to foot

  Parts greatly developed, variable

  Parus major

  Passiflora

  Peaches in United States

  Pear, grafts of

  Pedicellariae

  Pelargonium, flowers of
 --sterility of

  Peloria

  Pelvis of women

  Period, glacial

  Petrels, habits of

  Phasianus, fertility of hybrids

  Pheasant, young, wild

  Pictet, Prof., on groups of species suddenly appearing
 --on rate of organic change
 --on continuous succession of genera
 --on close alliance of fossils in consecutive formations
 --on change in latest tertiary forms
 --on early transitional links

  Pierce, Mr., on varieties of wolves

  Pigeons with feathered feet and skin between toes
 --breeds described, and origin of
 --breeds of, how produced
 --tumbler, not being able to get out of egg
 --reverting to blue colour
 --instinct of tumbling
 --young of

  Pigs, black, not affected by the paint-root
 --modified by want of exercise

  Pistil, rudimentary

  Plants, poisonous, not affecting certain coloured animals
 --selection, applied to
 --gradual improvement of
 --not improved in barbarous countries
 --dimorphic
 --destroyed by insects
 --in midst of range, have to struggle with other plants
 --nectar of
 --fleshy, on sea-shores
 --climbing
 --fresh-water, distribution of
 --low in scale, widely distributed

  Pleuronectidae, their structure

  Plumage, laws of change in sexes of birds

  Plums in the United States

  Pointer dog, origin of
 --habits of

  Poison not affecting certain coloured animals

  Poison, similar effect of, on animals and plants

  Pollen of fir-trees
 --transported by various means

  Pollinia, their development

  Polyzoa, their avicularia

  Poole, Col., on striped hemionus

  Potemogeton

  Pouchet, on the colours of flat-fish

  Prestwich, Mr., on English and French eocene formations

  Proctotrupes

  Proteolepas

  Proteus

  Psychology, future progress of

  Pyrgoma, found in the chalk

  Quagga, striped

  Quatrefages, M., on hybrid moths

  Quercus, variability of

  Quince, grafts of

  Rabbits, disposition of young

  Races, domestic, characters of

  Race-horses, Arab
 --English

  Radcliffe, Dr., the electrical organs of the torpedo

  Ramond, on plants of Pyrenees

  Ramsay, Prof., on subaerial denudation
 --on thickness of the British formations
 --on faults

  Ramsay, Mr., on instincts of cuckoo

  Ratio of increase

  Rats, supplanting each other
 --acclimatisation of
 --blind, in cave

  Rattle-snake

  Reason and instinct

  Recapitulation, general

  Reciprocity of crosses

  Record, geological, imperfect

  Rengger, on flies destroying cattle

  Reproduction, rate of

  Resemblance, protective, of insects
 --to parents in mongrels and hybrids

  Reversion, law of inheritance
 --in pigeons, to blue colour

  Rhododendron, sterility of

  Richard, Prof., on Aspicarpa

  Richardson, Sir J., on structure of squirrels
 --on fishes of the southern hemisphere

  Robinia, grafts of

  Rodents, blind

  Rogers, Prof., Map of N. America

  Rudimentary organs

  Rudiments important for classification

  Rutimeyer, on Indian cattle

  Sageret, on grafts

  Salamandra atra

  Saliva used in nests

  Salmons, males fighting, and hooked jaws of

  Salt-water, how far injurious to seeds
 --not destructive to land-shells

  Salter, Mr., on early death of hybrid embryos

  Salvin, Mr., on the beaks of ducks

  Saurophagus sulphuratus

  Schacht, Prof., on Phyllotaxy

  Schiodte, on blind insects
 --on flat-fish

  Schlegel, on snakes

  Schobl, Dr., on the ears of mice

  Scott, Mr. J., on the self-sterility of orchids
 --on the crossing of varieties of verbascum

  Sea-water, how far injurious to seeds
 --not destructive to land-shells

  Sebright, Sir J., on crossed animals

  Sedgwick, Prof., on groups of species suddenly appearing

  Seedlings destroyed by insects

  Seeds, nutriment in
 --winged
 --means of dissemination
 --power of resisting salt-water
 --in crops and intestines of birds
 --eaten by fish
 --in mud
 --hooked, on islands

  Selection of domestic products
 --principle not of recent origin
 --unconscious
 --natural
 --sexual
 --objections to term
 --natural, has not induced sterility

  Sexes, relations of

  Sexual characters variable
 --selection

  Sheep, Merino, their selection
 --two sub-breeds, unintentionally produced
 --mountain, varieties of

  Shells, colours of, littoral
 --hinges of
 --seldom embedded

  Shells, fresh-water, long retain the same forms
 --fresh-water, dispersal of
 --of Madeira
 --land, distribution of
 --land, resisting salt water

  Shrew-mouse

  Silene, infertility of crosses

  Silliman, Prof., on blind rat

  Sirenia, their affinities

  Sitaris, metamorphosis of

  Skulls of young mammals

  Slave-making instinct

  Smith, Col. Hamilton, on striped horses

  Smith, Dr., on the Polyzoa

  Smith, Mr. Fred., on slave-making ants
 --on neuter ants

  Snake with tooth for cutting through egg-shell

  Somerville, Lord, on selection of sheep

  Sorbus, grafts of

  Sorex

  Spaniel, King Charles' breed

  Specialisation of organs

  Species, polymorphic
 --dominant
 --common, variable
 --in large genera variable
 --groups of, suddenly appearing
 --beneath Silurian formations
 --successively appearing
 --changing simultaneously throughout the world

  Spencer, Lord, on increase in size of cattle

  Spencer, Mr. Herbert, on the first steps in differentiation
 --on the tendency to an equilibrium in all forces

  Sphex, parasitic

  Spiders, development of

  Sports in plants

  Sprengel, C.C., on crossing
 --on ray-florets

  Squalodon

  Squirrels, gradations in structure

  Staffordshire, heath, changes in

  Stag-beetles, fighting

  Star fishes, eyes of
 --their pedicellariae

  Sterility from changed conditions of life
 --of hybrids
 --laws of
 --causes of
 --from unfavourable conditions
 --not induced through natural selection

  St. Helena, productions of

  St. Hilaire, Aug., on variability of certain plants
 --on classification

  St. John, Mr., on habits of cats

  Sting of bee

  Stocks, aboriginal, of domestic animals

  Strata, thickness of, in Britain

  Stripes on horses

  Structure, degrees of utility of

  Struggle for existence

  Succession, geological
 --of types in same areas

  Swallow, one species supplanting another

  Swaysland, Mr., on earth adhering to the feet of migratory birds

  Swifts, nests of

  Swim-bladder

  Switzerland, lake inhabitants of

  System, natural

  Tail of giraffe
 --of aquatic animals
 --prehensile
 --rudimentary

  Tanais, dimorphic

  Tarsi deficient

  Tausch, Dr., on umbelliferae

  Teeth and hair correlated
 --rudimentary, in embryonic calf

  Tegetmeier, Mr., on cells of bees

  Temminck, on distribution aiding classification

  Tendrils, their development

  Thompson, Sir W., on the age of the habitable world
 --on the consolidation of the crust of the earth

  Thouin, on grafts

  Thrush, aquatic species of
 --mocking, of the Galapagos
 --young of, spotted
 --nest of

  Thuret, M., on crossed fuci

  Thwaites, Mr., on acclimatisation

  Thylacinus

  Tierra del Fuego, dogs of
 --plants of

  Timber-drift

  Time, lapse of
 --by itself not causing modification

  Titmouse

  Toads on islands

  Tobacco, crossed varieties of

  Tomes, Mr., on the distribution of bats

  Transitions in varieties rare

  Traquair, Dr., on flat-fish

  Trautschold, on intermediate varieties

  Trees on islands belong to peculiar orders
 --with separated sexes

  Trifolium pratense
 --incarnatum

  Trigonia

  Trilobites
 --sudden extinction of

  Trimen, Mr., on imitating-insects

  Trimorphism in plants

  Troglodytes

  Tuco-tuco, blind

  Tumbler pigeons, habits of, hereditary
 --young of

  Turkey-cock, tuft of hair on breast

  Turkey, naked skin on head
 --young of, instinctively wild

  Turnip and cabbage, analogous variations of

  Type, unity of

  Types, succession of, in same areas

  Typotherium

  Udders enlarged by use
 --rudimentary

  Ulex, young leaves of

  Umbelliferae, flowers and seeds of
 --outer and inner florets of

  Unity of type

  Uria lacrymans

  Use, effects of
 --under domestication
 --in a state of nature

  Utility, how far important in the construction of each part

  Valenciennes, on fresh-water fish

  Variability of mongrels and hybrids

  Variation, under domestication
 --caused by reproductive system being affected by conditions of life
 --under nature
 --laws of
 --correlated

  Variations appear at corresponding ages
 --analogous in distinct species

  Varieties, natural
 --struggle between
 --domestic, extinction of
 --transitional, rarity of

  Varieties, when crossed
 --fertile
 --sterile
 --classification of

  Verbascum, sterility of
 --varieties of, crossed

  Verlot, M., on double stocks

  Verneuil, M. de, on the succession of species

  Vibracula of the Polyzoa

  Viola, small imperfect flowers of
 --tricolor

  Virchow, on the structure of the crystalline lens

  Virginia, pigs of

  Volcanic islands, denudation of

  Vulture, naked skin on head

  Wading-birds

  Wagner, Dr., on Cecidomyia

  Wagner, Moritz, on the importance of isolation

  Wallace, Mr., on origin of species
 --on the limit of variation under domestication
 --on dimorphic lepidoptera
 --on races in the Malay Archipelago
 --on the improvement of the eye
 --on the walking-stick insect
 --on laws of geographical distribution
 --on the Malay Archipelago
 --on mimetic animals

  Walsh, Mr. B.D., on phytophagic forms
 --on equal variability

  Water, fresh, productions of

  Water-hen

  Waterhouse, Mr., on Australian marsupials
 --on greatly developed parts being variable
 --on the cells of bees
 --on general affinities

  Water-ouzel

  Watson, Mr. H.C., on range of varieties of British plants
 --on acclimatisation
 --on flora of Azores
 --on rarity of intermediate varieties
 --on Alpine plants
 --on convergence
 --on the indefinite multiplication of species

  Weale, Mr., on locusts transporting seeds

  Web of feet in water-birds

  Weismann, Prof., on the causes of variability
 --on rudimentary organs

  West Indian islands, mammals of

  Westwood, on species in large genera being closely allied to others
 --on the tarsi of Engidae
 --on the antennae of hymenopterous insects

  Whales

  Wheat, varieties of

  White Mountains, flora of

  Whittaker, Mr., on lines of escarpment

  Wichura, Max, on hybrids

  Wings, reduction of size
 --of insects homologous with branchiae
 --rudimentary, in insects

  Wolf crossed with dog
 --of Falkland Isles

  Wollaston, Mr., on varieties of insects
 --on fossil varieties of shells in Madeira

  Wollaston, Mr., on colours of insects on sea-shore
 --on wingless beetles
 --on rarity of intermediate varieties
 --on insular insects
 --on land-shells of Madeira naturalised

  Wolves, varieties of

  Woodcock with earth attached to leg

  Woodpecker, habits of
 --green colour of

  Woodward, Mr., on the duration of specific forms
 --on Pyrgoma
 --on the continuous succession of genera
 --on the succession of types

  World, species changing simultaneously throughout

  Wright, Mr. Chauncey, on the giraffe
 --on abrupt modifications

  Wrens, nest of

  Wyman, Prof., on correlation of colour and effects of poison
 --on the cells of the bee

  Youatt, Mr., on selection
 --on sub-breeds of sheep
 --on rudimentary horns in young cattle

  Zanthoxylon

  Zebra, stripes on

  Zeuglodons





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